[
    {
        "title": "A Demon in the Stacks",
        "author": "Opaque_Mistake",
        "genres": [
            "Good Omens",
            "fanfic"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Crowley sunk into an overstuffed armchair in his dear friend's shop. He sprawled his legs, slumped and opened the book on his lap, carefully arranging himself as if he had been reading all the while. Hurriedly, he took a swig out of the glass of port, just to make the image convincing. He had been here all the while, innocently reading, innocently sipping at his wine.\n\n\"Oh no, no, no\u2026\" Aziraphele murmured sadly as he saw a client out the door. \"If only I had a lead on that one\u2026. tis a pity, I would travel to the end of Africa if I had to, just to get my hands on even a 14th century copy. It was so nice to see you Mr. Singh, please send my love to the missus.\"\n\nHe made his way slowly through the shop, stopping here and there to adjust the alignment of the books on the shelves, putting away a second edition of Winnie the Pooh that a dear lady had been by to look at earlier. \"Curator of Children's Literature\" he murmured to himself, marveling at the delightful careers that humans had found fit to assign themselves. A spider had started to spin a web over near a rare full set of American folkways manuals, and Aziraphele gently relocated it out the window before joining his friend.\n\nAs he reached for his port, he distinctly saw Crowley lick his finger to wet it and then turn the page.\n\n\"You mustn't do that,\" Aziraphele fussed, trying to get a better look at what Crowley had been reading, \"with a book that age, you mustn't wet the corners at all, you'll damage it.\"\n\nThe dark glasses turned their attention to him, \"I mustn't what?\"\n\n\"Lick your fingers to turn the pages like that, you just can't\u2026 the paper is too delicate. Especially with a book like that, it's far too old to be handled without gloves.\" Aziraphele felt a cold chill go up his neck when he saw that Crowley's finger had darkened. \"Wait now\u2026 what are you reading?\"\n\nCrowley turned the book around, \"Oh this? Aristotle's Poetics. Dead boring really.\" He set it aside on the end table.\n\nAziraphele's voice turned steely. \"Aristotle's Second Poetics, I suppose? Have you been snooping around in my books?\"\n\n\"It's a bookshop, old friend,\" Crowley's voice was relaxed. Almost confident, but not quite. \"I was just, poking around in the stacks, so to speak and it caught my attention.\"\n\n\"It. Did. Not. Just. Catch. Your. Attention.\" Aziraphele knew full well that Aristotle's Second Poetics was most certainly not stored out in the open with the rest of the books. Especially that the earliest edition with the peeling leather cover. \"You have been sticking your nose in where you shouldn't!\"\n\n\"Just books, Mate,\" Crowley toss off dismissively, \"Aristotle's been around for centuries, don't see why you're fussed.\"\n\n\"That book is stored in restricted bookshelves, and for a good reason too. Look at your finger. If you were a human, you'd be dead within the hour.\"\n\n\"Just a bit of ink, nothing to worry about\"\n\nAziraphele had had enough, \"It is NOT just a bit of ink. That's poison. Enough to kill a grown human man. For heaven's sakes Crowley, you think every book in here is as innocent as an angel? That one is stored in the restricted bookshelves behind lock and key for a reason. And that you have it\u2026\" he blustered around for the right words, \"well you should not have it, and why have you been breaking into my things?\"\n\nCrowley's hand came to rest on a stack of books next to him on the end table. \"I've not been breaking into your\u2026\"\n\nThe stack of books. Aziraphele could tell at a glance they were all quite rare. An early Meiji era illustrated manuscript of the Tale of Genji, still in court verse. A volume containing the earliest publication of one of Sappho's fragments from the Medieval period. A first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A slim pamphlet of the collected aphorisms of William of Baskerville.\n\n\"You have! You have been messing with my books. Those all have places, they don't just sit out on a table where you might spill port on them. They belong\u2026.\" He gestured weakly around the bookstore \"\u2026. They belong, all over\u2026. Have you been just pulling books willy-nilly?\"\n\nAziraphele could practically see Crowley's reptile eyes rolling behind the darkened lenses. \"Willy-nilly?\"\n\n\"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN\" Aziraphele bellowed angrily \"those books are rare and precious, and they belong where I put them! In! Their! Places!\"\n\nHe couldn't remember ever being this upset with Crowley. His bookstore was less an actual place to purchase books, and more of a private monument to human literacy. To their deep history of being wrong, being right, feeling deeply and passionately, arguing over matters both serious and silly. All there, written out in pigment on sheets of cellulose, bound in leather, in linen, in cardboard. Thousands of years of humans being ridiculously, preciously fallible. And so carefully preserved. So carefully organized. But the demon had just\u2026\n\n\"Get out,\" Aziraphele growled in a voice that didn't even feel like his own. It felt like fire. It felt like brimstone. \"Get out now before I\u2026. Heaven help me\u2026 Before I\u2026.\"\n\nCrowley started, shocked by the change in his old friend. \"But I just\u2026\"\n\n\"GET THE HELL OUT\u2026.\" Aziraphele yelled, with an anger that scared them both. \"\u2026 AND NEVER COME BACK, YOU ARE BANNED FROM MY SHOP FOR\u2026\"\n\nCrowley scuttled out of his chair and across the building, ducking behind a pile of magazines. He was not a man who was easily spooked, but in 6000 years he had never heard\u2026.\n\n\"BANNED FROM MY SHOP FOR LIFE!\"\n\nThe demon scuttled out the front door, slamming it behind him.\n\nAziraphele followed him to the entry and locked the door from the inside. Slowly, he slid to the floor, his back leaning against the door, just in case the demon might try to push his way back in full of idiotic excuses. A tear slid down his cheek as he looked at all his precious books in despair.\n\n\"What did he do? What did he get into? Does he even know what he's done?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Demons are rubbish at apologizing. Crowley had spent weeks trying to sort it out.\n\nHe'd waited at their old spot in St. James' park, his angel hadn't shown.\n\nHe'd followed Aziraphale on the street, but the idea of accosting him in a busy crowd was humiliating.\n\nThere was even that agonizing night when he'd waited outside the shop until closing time, gripping a floral bouquet. Which he had magicked into a potted plant, because he still didn't understand why humans thought giving each other dead things was romantic. But as he watched Aziraphale escort the last customer out of the shop, he couldn't work up the courage to step out of the shadows and ask to have a talk. He magicked the philodendron back into wilting roses, dumped them in a bin and skulked home.\n\nNo, he needed a hook, a trick, something to draw the angel in, crack his shell just enough for Crowley to talk his way back into his good graces."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "It was a sunny afternoon when Crowley next approached the shop. He peered through the windows and waited until Aziraphale had seen out a mother and daughter pair who walked out clutching a very old looking book indeed, \"Father will be so pleased.\" The girl said as she brushed by Crowley in the street.\n\nThere were a few more people browsing in the shop when he stepped in, but Aziraphale paid them no mind as he bustled about, carefully replacing several books that had been scattered around. But he looked up just before Crowley touched the doorknob, as if he could sense the demon on his threshold.\n\n\"I thought I banned you from my shop.\" Aziraphale's eyes flashed in irritation.\n\n\"I'm here with a peace offering.\" Crowley held out a squarish object, wrapped in kraft paper, suspiciously the size of a rather hefty book.\n\n\"What is that? Some cheesy coffee-table book from an art museum gift shop?\" Aziraphale knew the demon was not exactly bookish, \"The collected works of Stephen King? Hmph\u2026 you underestimate how cheaply you can buy back my affections Crowley.\"\n\n\"Oh well\u2026 I can always pop round the corner and sell it to Peter Harrington's if you don't want to have a look. It's just that last time you made a point of saying\u2026 what was it? 'Do you think every book in here is as innocent as an angel?.' Over the years, I'd always thought you wouldn't want this one. Not really one for your side.\"\n\nHe could see the light of interest spark in Aziraphale's eyes, even as the angel kept his voice even.\n\n\"My side? Well, I'd have thought you'd known by now Crowley, that this shop is full of books that are not quite heavenly. Let me take a look at it\u2026 I mean, if you promise, really promise not to touch anything. I'll be very cross if you go shuffling my books again. It took a solid week to put everything to rights again. Is it quite old?\" Aziraphale reached tentatively for his white cotton gloves.\n\nStraightfaced, Crowley nodded. \"Oh, yes. Quite.\"\n\nThe spark of interest spread across Aziraphale's face until he was grinning in anticipation. Slowly he unwrapped the kraft paper.\n\n\"It's just, not the kind of thing I could hand off to just anyone to care for.\"\n\nThe book was clearly old, with a cracking reddish brown leather cover, faded along the spine. It was of an age where the spine was largely unmarked, and the whole of the thing looked to be hand-inked vellum.\n\n\"Crowley, what is this? It's terribly old, you can't tell me you've had this all these years?\"\n\nThe demon made a non-commital sound meant to be heard as a yes. In reality it had been entrusted to a Castilian family centuries ago. Their great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren couldn't be bothered to look crack it open, but miraculously they had stashed it away where it hadn't been damaged.\n\n\"I believe it is known in translation as the Picatrix. Not so much a book of prophecy as\u2026\"\n\n\"A grimoire!\" Aziraphale gasped. \"But this one, this one is not a grimoire, I could feel if it was.\" He very carefully eased the book open. \"It's the original early Arabic, my heavens it's ancient Crowley. And beautiful.\"\n\n\"You say it's not really a grimoire though? Why not?\"\n\n\"Well, a grimoire is not about the contents of the book so much as the intent of the writer, or scribe in this case. At the time this one was written, the moorish author would not have been describing dark magic per se, but just trying to make sense of the world around him. Most human magic starts off as such. Simple observation, a few peculiar assumptions, a five generations down the road they're calling up Dagon, Lord of the Flies because the girl down the road fancies another boy.\"\n\n\"Plus,\" Aziraphale wiggled his gloved hand in Crowley's face \"thin cotton gloves, if this book was consecrated to evil they would protect me about as well as the soles of your shoes do on holy ground.\"\n\n\"So you like it?\" Crowley arched an eyebrow over his dark glasses, \"Because I can always take it round the corner, they'd probably offer me a soul in exchange.\"\n\nAziraphale's face fell. \"You are trying to bribe me, aren't you?\"\n\nCrowley looked around to make sure no one else in the shop was paying them any attention, and leaned in so close that he could smell musky traces of old fashioned cologne, \"I missed you,\" he whispered in Aziraphale's ear, and saw a prickle of shivers down the angel's neck.\n\n\"I missed you too,\" his voice was soft and sad, \"But Crowley, this business, these books, old friends that they are, they're my passion. And I need you to show respect for that, or you might as well leave now. I didn't leave heaven for your sake, I left it for my own.\"\n\n\"Is this still about me rearranging your books?\"\n\nAziraphale frowned, \"Yes, of course it is. But most especially it's about rearranging the books that are between the books that the humans can see. The secret books, I know they're there, but I didn't know you did. You must leave them alone, they're stored like that for a reason.\"\n\nCrowley lowered his glasses to look his angel straight in the eye, \"Let me stay for a drink tonight and I swear I'll never move a single book again.\"\n\n\"Oh, alright\u2026\" Aziraphale smile regretfully, \"I never understand why I take a demon at his word, but I've got a nice cask aged single malt, and it would be a pity to drink alone.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "Aziraphale moved quietly through the shop, setting things right. The front door had been locked hours ago, but he hadn't bothered to put the shop in order because Crowley had come by at closing with a particularly rare bourbon. They'd both been off on a merry bender ever since. Now the demon slept, sprawled out in an armchair and snoring terribly.\n\nThere wasn't much to put away, antiquarian booksellers didn't get much business on a random Thursday in midwinter. But still, it always felt right to walk through the shop, putting up the things on his desk, shelving a greek lexicon he'd been consulting, closing the glass dust cases over the rarest and oldest books. He frowned at the muddy bootsteps in the entry way, left by his one customer of the day; he could go to all the work of getting out the mop\u2026 or. He looked furtively around to make sure no one was looking, and miracled all the dirt back outside where it belonged.\n\nHe was just turning off the last of the lights when he saw it. A second edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan shelved in between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. At least the demon was being thematically consistent.\n\nCrowley had kept to his word for a couple of years, pointedly refraining from even touching a single book in the shop. And his pranks were subtle at first, so subtle that Aziraphale had thought it was just careless customers. But eventually he settled into a pattern.\n\nThe Chronicles of Narnia shelved between The Return of the King and the Simarillion.\n\nStephen King's IT moved from the horror section to join a thick art book of historical circus posters and collection of programs from the earliest days of Cirque du Soleil.\n\nEdward Said's Orientalism very pointedly shelved next T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.\n\nThe devil was in the details.\n\nAziraphale glanced over to see that the demon was still solidly snoring before putting the boy who never grew up back into his proper place among the Edwardian early editions. Crowley had never touched the hidden books again, but he seemed to take perverse pleasure in moving just one book every time he visited now. The angel never said a thing.\n\nThe only punishment worse than a row, he thought smugly to himself, was the anticipation of a row.\n\nAnd he'd be happy to let his demon stew in that anticipation for the rest of eternity."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "In the Stacks",
        "author": "Scott Lynch",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            ""
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Laszlo Jazera, aspirant wizard of the High University of Hazar, spent a long hour on the morning of his fifth-year exam worming into an uncomfortable suit of leather armor. Why had it once seemed like such a good idea to have the cuirass rakishly form-fitted, the straps made more decorative than functional? Time and the university dining halls had conspired to punish his vanity, and anything wishing to take a bite out of him might find itself having a lucky day.\n\n\"You've had a growth spurt.\" Casimir Vrana, his chambers-mate, strolled into the room. \"Mostly horizontal, it seems. Aren't you in some sort of dueling society?\"\n\nCasimir was already fully armored, of course. Not merely with pristine leathers, but with his usual air of total ease. In truth he'd barely touched fighting gear in a half-decade at school. He simply had the sort of impenetrable deportment usually seen in patrician faces stamped on coins, and doubtless had more than one ancestor who'd ended up as such. Casimir could have feigned confident relaxation while standing in fire up to his privates.\n\n\"We wear silks,\" huffed Laszlo, flexing and buckling his stiff neck-guard. \"Makes it more interesting. Also less work. It's a lazy sort of daring. This heap of preserved pigskin, I've hardly worn since I took Archaic Homicide Theory\u2014\"\n\n\"Forgot to go to the armory for a re-fit, eh?\"\n\n\"I've been dutifully spending every waking hour wetting my breeches over exams, thanks.\"\n\n\"A fifth-year aspirant, busy and confused at finals time? What an unprecedented misfortune. A unique tale of woe.\" Casimir moved around Laszlo and began adjusting what he could. \"The shades of ten thousand mighty wizards are waiting in the anteroom to offer you warm milk and cuddles.\"\n\n\"I swear on my mother, Caz, I'll set fire to your cryptomancy dissertation\u2014\"\n\n\"Can't. I turned it in two hours ago. Let's stop fussing with primitive material solutions to your problem, shall we?\" Casimir muttered incantations, and the familiar heat of spontaneous magic ran up and down Laszlo's back. A moment later, the armor felt looser. Still not rakishly form-fitted, but at least not tight enough to hobble his every movement. \"Better?\"\n\n\"Moderately. Never took you for a leather-fitter. What will your parents say when they find out you've turned tradesman?\"\n\n\"I don't mean to lecture, magician, but sooner or later you should probably start using this thing called magic to smooth out your little inconveniences.\"\n\n\"You've always been more confident with practical work than I am.\"\n\n\"Theory's a wading pool, Laz. You've got to come out into deep water sooner or later.\" Casimir grinned, and slapped Laszlo on the back. \"You'll see that today, I promise. Let's get your kit together so they don't start without us.\"\n\nLaszlo pulled on a pair of fingerless leather gauntlets, the sort peculiar to the profession of magicians intending to go in harm's way. With Casimir's oversight, he filled the sheathes on his belt and boots with half-a-dozen stilettos, then strapped or tied on no fewer than fourteen auspicious charms and protective wards. Some of these he'd crafted himself; the rest had been begged or temporarily stolen from friends. His sable cloak and mantle, lined in aspirant gray, settled lastly and awkwardly over the creaking, clinking mass he'd become.\n\n\"Oh damn,\" Laszlo muttered after he'd adjusted his cloak, \"where did I set my\u2014\"\n\n\"Sword,\" said Casimir, holding it out in both hands. Laszlo's wire-hilted rapier was his pride and joy, an elegant old thing held together by mage-smithery through three centuries of duties not always ceremonial. It was an heirloom of his diminished family, the only valuable item his parents had been able to bequeath him when his mild sorcerous aptitude had won him a standard nine-year scholarship to the university. \"Checked it myself.\"\n\nLaszlo buckled the scabbard into his belt and covered it with his cloak. The armor still left him feeling vaguely ridiculous, but at least he trusted his steel. Thus protected, layered neck to soles in leather, enchantments, and weapons, he was at last ready for the final challenge every fifth-year student faced if they wanted to come back for a sixth.\n\nToday, Laszlo Jazera would return a library book."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "The Living Library of Hazar was visible from anywhere in the city, a vast onyx cube that hung in the sky like a square moon, directly over the towers of the university's western campus. Laszlo and Casimir hurried out of their dorm and into the actual shadow of the library, a darkness that bisected Hazar as the sun rose toward noon and was eclipsed by the cube.\n\nThere was no teleportation between campuses for students. Few creatures in the universe are less mobile than magicians with studies to keep them busy indoors, and the masters of the university ensured that aspirants would preserve some measure of physical virtue by forcing them to scuttle around like ordinary folk. Scuttle was precisely what Laszlo and Casimir needed to do, in undignified haste, in order to reach the library for their noon appointment. Across the heart of Hazar they sped.\n\nHazar! City of Distractions, the most perfect mechanism ever evolved for snaring the attention of wonder-hungry sentients. The High University, a power beyond governments, sat at the nexus of gates to fifty known worlds, and took in the students of nine thinking species. Hazar existed not just to serve the university's practical needs, but to sift heroic quantities of valuables out of the student body by catering to its less practical desires.\n\nLaszlo and Casimir passed curio-sellers, gambling dens, fighting pits, freak-shows, pet shops, concert halls, houses of carnal pleasure, and private clubs. There were restaurants serving a hundred cuisines, and bars offering a thousand liquors, teas, dusts, smokes, and spells. Bars more than anything\u2014 bars on top of bars, bars next to bars, bars within bars. A bar for every student, a different bar for every week of the nine years most would spend in Hazar, yet Laszlo and Casimir somehow managed to ignore them all. On any other day, that would have required effort, but it was exams week. The dread magic of the last minute was in the air.\n\nAt the center of the eastern campus lay a waterfall-bounded sward of soft violet grass, some five hundred feet directly below the dark cube. No direct physical access to the Living Library was allowed, for several reasons. Instead, a single tall silver pillar stood in the middle of the turf. Without stopping to catch his breath, Laszlo placed the bare fingers of his right hand against the pillar and muttered, \"Laszlo Jazera, fifth year, reporting to Master Molnar of the\u2014\"\n\nBetween blinks it was done. The grass beneath his boots became hard tile, the waterfalls become dark wood paneling on high walls and ceilings. He was in a lobby the size of a manor house, and the cool, dry air was rich with the musty scent of library stacks. Daylight shone from above, tamed by enchanted glass to fall on the hall with the gentle amber color of good ale. Laszlo closed his eyes and took a deep breath to drive away the teleportation dizziness, and an instant later Casimir appeared beside him.\n\n\"Ha! Not late yet,\" said Casimir, pointing to a tasteful wall clock where tiny blue spheres of light floated over the symbols that indicated seven minutes to noon. \"We won't be early enough to shove our noses up old Molnar's ass like eager little slaves, but we won't technically be tardy. Come on. Which gate?\"\n\n\"Manticore, I think. I hope!\"\n\nCasimir all but dragged Laszlo to the right, down the long circular hallway that ringed the innards of the library. Past the Wyvern Gate they hurried, past the Chimaera Gate, past the reading rooms, past a steady stream of fellow aspirants, many of them armed and girded for the same errand they were on. Laszlo, sensitive as any prey animal. picked up instantly on the general atmosphere of nervous tension. Exams were out there, prowling, waiting to cull the unworthy and the unprepared from the herd.\n\nOn the clock above the gate to the Manticore Wing, the little blue flame was just floating past the symbol for high noon. Laszlo and Casimir skidded to a halt before a tall figure.\n\n\"I see you two aspirants have chosen to favor us with a dramatic last-minute arrival,\" said the man. \"I was not aware this was to be a drama exam.\"\n\n\"Yes, Master Molnar. Apologies, Master Molnar,\" said Laszlo and Casimir in unison.\n\nHargus Molnar, Master Librarian, had a countenance that would have been at home in a gallery of military statues, among dead conquerors casting permanent scowls down through the centuries. Sinewy, with close-cropped gray hair and a dozen visible scars, he wore a use-seasoned suit of black leather and silvery mail. Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the ancient language of formal scholarship, and they formed the motto of the Librarians: RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE.\n\n\"May I presume,\" said Molnar, sparing neither aspirant the very excellent disdainful stare he'd cultivated over decades of practice, \"that you have familiarized yourselves with the introductory materials that were provided to you last month?\n\n\"Yes, Master Molnar. Both of us,\" said Casimir. Laszlo was pleased to note that Casimir's swagger had prudently evaporated for the moment, and he was doing an impression of a humble young man that was nearly lifelike.\n\n\"Good.\" Molnar spread his fingers and words of white fire appeared in the air before him, neatly-organized paragraphs floating vertically in the space between Laszlo's forehead and navel. \"This is your Statement of Intent; namely, that you wish to bodily enter the Living Library stacks as part of an academic requirement. I'll need your sorcerer's marks here.\"\n\nLaszlo reached out to touch the letters where Molnar indicated, feeling a faint warmth on his fingertips. He closed his eyes and visualized his First Secret Name, part of his private identity as a wizard, a thaumatic symbol that could leave an indelible imprint of his personality while remaining invisible to any party outside the bounds of the transaction. This had once seemed like a dramatic notion, but in the fullness of time Laszlo had only used it for occasional bits of magical paperwork, and for bar tabs.\n\n\"And here,\" said Molnar, moving his own finger. \"This is a Statement of Informed Acceptance of Risk... and here\u2026 this absolves the custodial staff of any liability should you injure yourself through irretrievable stupidity or clumsiness... and this one, which certifies that you are armed and equipped according to your own comfort.\"\n\nLaszlo bit the inside of his left cheek, but gave his assent. When Casimir had done the same, Molnar snapped his fingers and the letters of fire vanished. At the same instant, the polished wooden doors of the Manticore Gate rumbled apart. Laszlo glanced at the inner edges of the doors and saw that, beneath the wooden veneer, each had a core of dark metal a foot thick. He'd never once been past that gate, or any like it. Aspirants were usually confined to the reading rooms, where their requests for materials were passed to the library staff.\n\n\"Come then, \" said Molnar, striding through the gate. \"You'll be going in with two other students, already waiting inside. Until you are escorted back out this Gate, you may consider your exam to be in progress.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Past the Manticore Gate lay a long, vault-ceilinged room in which indexers toiled amongst thousands of scrolls and card-files. Unlike the librarians, the indexers preferred comfortable blue robes to armor, but they were all visibly armed with daggers and hatchets. Furthermore, in niches along the walls, Laszlo could see spears, truncheons, mail vests, and helmets readily accessible on racks.\n\n\"I envy your precision, friend Laszlo.\"\n\nThe gravelly voice that spoke those words was familiar, and Laszlo turned to his left to find himself staring up into the gold-flecked eyes of a lizard about seven feet tall. The creature had a chest as broad as a doorway under shoulders to match, and his gleaming scales were the red of a desert sunset. He wore a sort of thin quilted armor over everything but his muscular legs and feet, which ended in sickle-shaped claws the size of Laszlo's stilettos. The reptile's cloak was specially tailored to part over his long, sinuous tail and hang with dignity.\n\n\"Lev,\" said Laszlo. \"Hi! What precision?\"\n\n\"Your ability to sleep late and still arrive within a hair's breadth of suffering demerits for your tardiness. Your laziness is artistic.\"\n\n\"The administration rarely agrees.\" Laszlo was deeply pleased to see Inappropriate Levity Bronzeclaw, \"Lev\" to a certain few of his fellow aspirants. Lev's people, a dour and dutiful culture, gave their adolescents names based on perceived character flaws, so the wayward youths would supposedly dwell upon their correction until granted more honorable adult names. Lev was a mediocre sorcerer, very much of Laszlo's stripe, but the armor and weaponry nature had gifted him with were anything but merely decorative.\n\n\"Oh, I doubt either of them were sleeping.\" Another new voice, smooth as varnish on fine wood. It belonged to Yvette d'Courin, who'd been hidden from Laszlo's view behind Lev, and could have remained hidden behind a creature half the lizard's size. Yvette's skin was darker than the armor she wore, a more petite version of Laszlo and Casimir's gear, and her ribbon-threaded hair was as black as her aspirant's cloak. \"Not Laz and Caz the inseparables, the mystery wrapped inside the enigma. But which one's mystery, and which one's enigma? Confirm the rumors for us, boys. Were you absorbed in\u2026 extracurricular activities?\"\n\n\"Yvette, you improbably gorgeous menace to my academic rank,\" said Casimir, \"that is most assuredly not the case. Though if it were I reckon it would make Laszlo and myself the only ones present to have ever seen an adult human with their clothes off.\"\n\n\"Poor Caz. So unclear on all the useful things people can still do with their eyes closed.\" Yvette blew softly on the fingers of one hand, then brushed them against Laszlo's cheek. \"A kiss for you, Laz.\" She repeated the gesture, glanced meaningfully at Casimir, then touched Laszlo's other cheek. \"And another. Casimir can't have any.\"\n\nLaszlo felt a warm sensation in the pit of his stomach, beyond the pleasure of even play-flirtation, and it took him a moment of confusion to identify it. Great gods, was it relief? Hope, even? Yvette d'Courin was a gifted aspirant, Casimir's match at the very least. Whatever might be waiting inside the Living Library, some bureaucratic stroke of luck had put Laszlo on a team with two superior magicians and a lizard who could kick a hole through a brick wall. All he had to do to earn a sixth year was stay out of their way and try to look busy!\n\nCasimir retaliated at Yvette with a series of subtly impolite gestures, some of which might have been the beginning of a minor spell, but he snapped to attention when Master Molnar loudly cleared his throat.\n\n\"When you're all ready, of course,\" he drawled. \"I do so hate to burden you with anything so tedious as the future of your thaumaturgical careers.\"\n\n\"Yes, Master Molnar. Sorry, Master Molnar,\" said the students, now a perfectly harmonized quartet singing the time-honored tune \"Please Don't Flunk Us.\"\n\n\"This is the Manticore Index,\" said Molnar, spreading his arms. \"One of eleven such indices serving to catalog, however incompletely, the contents of the Living Library. Take a good look around. Unless you choose to join the ranks of the Librarians after surviving your nine years, you will most likely never be allowed into this area again. Now, Aspirant Jazera, can you tell me how many catalogued items the Living Library is believed to contain?\"\n\n\"Uh,\" said Laszlo, who'd wisely refreshed his limited knowledge of the library's contents the previous night, \"About ten million, sir. I think?\"\n\n\"You think?\" said Molnar. \"I'll believe that when further evidence is presented, but you are nearly correct. At a minimum, this collection consists of some ten million scrolls and bound volumes. The majority of which, Aspirant Bronzeclaw, are what?\"\n\n\"Grimoires,\" hissed the lizard. \"Sir.\"\n\n\"Correct. Grimoires, the personal references and notebooks of magicians from across all the known worlds, some more than four thousand years old. Some of them quite famous, or infamous. When the High University of Hazar was founded, Aspirant Vrana, what was the first initiative of the first administration?\"\n\n\"A grimoire collection project, sir.\"\n\n\"Correct. An effort to create the greatest magical library in existence, to unearth literally every scrap of arcane knowledge that could be retrieved from the places where those scraps had been abandoned, forgotten, or deliberately hidden. It took centuries. It was largely successful.\"\n\nMolnar turned and began moving down the central aisle between the tables and shelves where indexers worked, politely ignoring him. No doubt they'd heard this same lecture many times.\n\n\"Largely successful,\" Molnar continued, \"at creating one hell of a mess! Aspirant d'Courin, beyond what I have already told you, what is a grimoire?\"\n\n\"Well, she began, seemingly taken aback by the question. \"As you said, a magician's personal reference. Details of spells, and experiments\u2014\"\n\n\"A catalog of a magician's private obsessions,\" said Molnar.\n\n\"I suppose, sir.\"\n\n\"More personal than any article of clothing. More private than any diary. Every page stained with a sorcerer's hidden character, their private demons, their wildest ambitions. Some magicians produce collections, others produce only a single book, but nearly all of them produce something before they die. Chances are the four of you will produce something, in your time. Some of you have certainly begun by now.\"\n\nLaszlo glanced around at the others, wondering. He had a few project journals, notes on the relatively simple magics he'd been able to grasp. Nothing that could yet be accused of showing any ambition. But Casimir, or Yvette? Who could know?\n\n\"Grimoires,\" continued Molnar, \"are firsthand witnesses to every triumph and every shame of their creators. They are left in laboratories, stored haphazardly next to untold powers, exposed to magical materials and energies for years. Their pages are saturated with arcane residues as well as deliberate sorceries. They are magical artifacts, uniquely infused with what can only be called the divine madness of individuals such as yourselves. They evolve, as many magical artifacts do, a faint quasi-intelligence. A distinct sort of low cunning that your run-of-the mill chair or rock or library book does not possess.\n\n\"Individually, this characteristic is usually harmless harmless. But when you take grimoires, powerful grimoires, from the hands and minds of powerful magicians, and you store them together by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, by the millions\u2026\"\n\nThis last word was almost shouted, and Molnar's arms were raised to the ceiling. His speech had lost the dry tones of lecture and acquired the dark passion of theatrical oration. Whatever Master Molnar might have thought of the aspirants entrusted to his care, he clearly harbored deep feelings about his work.\n\n\"You need thick walls,\" he said, slowly, with a thin smile on his lips. \"Thick walls, and rough librarians to guard them. Millions of grimoires, locked away together. Each one is a mote of quasi-intelligence, a speck of possibility, a particle of magic. Bring them together in a teeming library, in the stacks, and you have--\"\n\n\"What?\" said Laszlo, buying into the drama despite himself.\n\n\"Not a mind,\" said Molnar, meeting his eyes like a carnival fortune-teller making a sales pitch. \"Not quite a mind, not a focused intelligence. But a jungle! A jungle that dreams, and those dreams are currents of deadly strangeness. A truly Living Library. Within our power to contain, but well beyond our power to control.\"\n\nMolnar stopped beside a low table, on which were four reinforced leather satchels, each containing a single large book. Pinned to each satchel was a small pile of handwritten notes.\n\n\"A collection of thaumaturgical knowledge so vast and so deep,\" said Molnar, \"is far, far too useful a thing to give up merely because it has become a magical disaster area perfectly capable of killing anyone who enters it unprepared!\"\n\nLaszlo felt his sudden good cheer slinking away. His thoughts returned to some of the older aspirants he'd known, of their refusal to speak of their own fifth-year exams, of the ones that had been carried off to the infirmaries afterward. Zyn Caldor, with her neck swollen and full of gleaming black spines. Ardix, with the stump of his left hand leaking green blood. His new hand was iridium and whalebone, high art, but acquired after such pain! Then there were the rumors of disappearances\u2014\n\n\"You aspirants have enthusiastically reaped the benefit of the library for several years now!\" Molnar smiled and brushed a speck of imaginary dust from the cuirass of his librarian's armor. His voice drew Laszlo back to the situation at hand. \"You have filed your requests for certain volumes, and waited the days or weeks required for the library staff to fetch them out. Then, in the reading rooms, you have studied them in perfect comfort, because a grimoire safely removed from the Living Library is more or less just another book.\n\n\"The masters of the university, as one of their more commendable policies, have decreed that all aspirant magicians must learn to appreciate the sacrifices of the library staff that make this singular resource available. Before you can proceed to the more advanced studies of your final years, you are required to enter the Living Library, just once, to assist us in the return of a volume to its rightful place in the collection. That is all. That is the extent of your fifth-year exam. On the table beside me you will see four books in protective satchels. Take one, and handle it with care. Until those satchels are empty, your careers at the High University are in the balance.\"\n\nLev passed the satchels out one by one. Laszlo received his and examined the little bundle of notes that came with it. Written in several different hands, they named the borrower of the grimoire as a third-year aspirant he didn't know, and described the process of hunting the book down, with references to library sections, code phrases, and number sequences that Laszlo couldn't understand.\n\n\"The library is so complex,\" said Molnar, \"and has grown so strange in its ways that physical surveillance of the collection has been impractical for centuries. We rely on the index enchantments, powerful processes of our most orderly magic, to give us the information that the indexers maintain here. From that information, we plan our expeditions, and map the best ways to go about fetching or returning an item from the stacks.\"\n\n\"Master Molnar, sir, forgive me,\" said Casimir. \"Is that a focus for the index enchantments over there?\"\n\nLaszlo followed Casimir's pointing hand, and in a deeper niche behind one of the little armories along the walls, he saw a recessed column of black glass, behind which soft pulses of blue light rose and fell.\n\n\"Just so,\" said Molnar. \"Either you've made pleasing use of the introductory materials, or that was a good guess.\"\n\n\"It's, ah, a sort of personal interest.\" Casimir reached inside a belt pouch and took out a thick hunk of triangular crystal, like a prism with a milky white center. \"May I leave this next to the focus while we're in the stacks? It's just a measuring device. It'll give me a basic idea of how the index enchantments function. My family has a huge library, not magical, of course, but if I could create spells to organize it\u2014\"\n\n\"Ambition wedded to sloth,\" said Molnar. \"Never let it be said you failed to think like a true magician, Aspirant Vrana.\"\n\n\"I won't even have to think about it while we're inside, sir. It would mind itself, and I could pick it up on the way out.\" Casimir was laying it on, Laszlo saw, with every ounce of obsequiousness he could conjure.\n\nBut what was he talking about? Personal project? Family library? Caz had never breathed a word of any such thing to him. While they came from very different worlds, they'd always gotten on excellently as chambers-mates, and Laszlo had thought there were no real secrets between them. Where had this sprung from?\n\n\"Of course, Vrana,\" said Master Molnar. \"We go to some trouble to maintain those enchantments, after all, and today is dedicated to appreciating our work.\"\n\nWhile Casimir hurried to emplace his little device near the glass column, Molnar beckoned the rest of them on toward another gate at the inner end of the Manticore Index. It was as tall and wide as the door they'd entered, but even more grimly functional\u2014cold dark metal inscribed with geometric patterns and runes of warding.\n\n\"A gateway to the stacks,\" said Molnar, \"can only be opened by the personal keys of two librarians. I'll be one of your guides today, and the other should have been here by\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm here, Master Librarian.\"\n\nIn the popular imagination (which had, to this point, included Laszlo's), female librarians were lithe, elegant warrior-acrobats out of some romantic legend. The woman now hurrying toward them through the Manticore Index was short, barely taller than Yvette, and sturdy as a concrete teapot, with broad hips and arms like a blacksmith's. Her honey-colored hair was tied back in a short tail, and atop her black librarian's armor she wore an unusual harness that carried a pair of swords crossed over her back. Her plump face was as abused as Molnar's, and Laszlo had learned just enough in his hobby duels to take it all in (scars, stance, attitude) and decide that the woman was nobody he would have willingly trifled with.\n\n\"Aspirants,\" said Molnar, \"allow me to present Sword-Librarian Astriza Mezaros.\"\n\nAs she moved past him, Laszlo noticed two things. First, the curious harness held not just her swords but a large book, buckled securely over her lower back beneath her scabbards. Second, she had a large quantity of fresh blood soaking the gauntlet on her left hand.\n\n\"Sorry to be late,\" said Mezaros, \"Came straight from the infirmary.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Molnar, \"and are you\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm fine. I'm not the one that got hit. It was Selucas. Aspirant from the early morning group.\"\n\n\"Ahhhh. And will he recover?\"\n\n\"Given a few weeks.\" Mezaros grinned as she ran her eyes across the four aspirants. \"Hard way to earn a passing grade, but a book returned while the carrier was unconscious is still a book returned.\"\n\n\"Well, I've given them the lecture,\" said Molnar. \"Let's proceed.\"\n\n\"On it.\" Mezaros reached down the front of her cuirass and drew out a key hanging on a chain. Molnar did the same, and each librarian took up a position beside the inner door. The walls before them rippled, and keyholes appeared where blank stone had been a moment before.\n\n\"Opening,\" yelled Master Molnar.\n\n\"Opening,\" chorused the indexers. Each of them dropped whatever they were working on and turned to face the inner door. One blue-robed woman hurried to the hallway door, checked it, and shouted, \"Manticore Gate secure!\"\n\n\"Opening,\" repeated Molnar. \"On three. One, two\u2014\"\n\nThe two librarians inserted their keys and turned them simultaneously. The inner door slid open, just as the outer one had, revealing an empty, metal-walled room lit by amber lanterns set in heavy iron cages.\n\nMezaros was the first one into the metal-walled chamber, holding up a hand to keep the aspirants back. She glanced around quickly, surveying walls, floors, and ceiling, and then she nodded.\n\n\"In,\" said Molnar, herding the aspirants forward. He snapped his fingers, and with a flash of light he conjured a walking staff, a tall object of polished dark wood. It had few ornaments, but it was shod at both ends with iron, and that iron looked well-dented to Laszlo's eyes.\n\nOnce the six of them were inside the metal-walled chamber, Molnar waved a hand over some innocuous portion of the wall, and the door behind them rumbled shut. Locking mechanisms engaged with an ominous series of echoing clicks.\n\n\"Begging your pardon, Master Molnar,\" said Lev, \"not to seem irresolute, for I am firmly committed to any course of action which will prevent me from having to return to my clan's ancestral trade of scale-grooming, but merely as a point of personal curiosity, exactly how much danger are we reckoned to be in?\"\n\n\"A good question,\" said Molnar slyly. \"We librarians have been asking it daily for more than a thousand years. Astriza, what can you tell the good aspirant?\"\n\n\"I guard about a dozen fifth-year exams every spring,\" said Mezaros. \"As far as ease is concerned, the fastest trip I can remember was about two hours. The longest took a day and a half. You have the distinct disadvantage of not being trained librarians, and the dubious advantage of sheer numbers. Most books are returned by experienced professionals operating in pairs.\"\n\n\"Librarian Mezaros,\" said Lev, \"I am fully prepared to spend a week here if required, but I was more concerned with the, ah, chance of ending the exam with a visit to the infirmary.\"\n\n\"Aspirant Inappropriate Levity Bronzeclaw,\" said Mezaros, \"in here, I prefer to be called Astriza. Do me that favor, and I won't use your full name every time I need to tell you to duck.\"\n\n\"Ah, of course. Astriza.\" The lizard bowed his head slightly. \"Master Molnar, does that apply to you as\u2014\"\n\nMolnar favored the entire group of aspirants with a look that clearly stated his first name, so far as they were and always would be concerned, was 'Master.'\n\n\"As for what's going to happen,\" said the Sword-Librarian, \"well, it might be nothing. It might be pretty brutal. I've never had anyone get killed under my watch, but it's been a near thing. Look, I'm well past familiar with the infirmary myself. Had my right leg broken twice, right arm twice, left arm once, nose more times than I can count.\"\n\n\"This is our routine,\" said Molnar with grim pride. \"I've been in coma twice. Both of my legs have been broken. I was blind for four months--\"\n\n\"I was there for that,\" said Astriza.\n\n\"She carried me out over her shoulders.\" Molnar was beaming. \"Only her second year as a librarian. She had a punctured lung! Yes, this place has done its very best to kill the pair of us. But the books were returned to the shelves.\"\n\n\"Damn straight,\" said Astriza. \"Librarians always get the books back to the shelves. Always. And that's what you browsers are here to learn by firsthand experience. If you listen to the Master Librarian and myself at all times, your chances of a happy return will be greatly improved. No further promises.\"\n\n\"Past the inner door,\" said Molnar, \"your ordinary perceptions of time and distance will be taxed. Don't trust them. Follow our lead, and for the love of all gods everywhere, stay close.\"\n\nLaszlo, who'd spent his years at the university comfortably surrounded by books of all sorts, now found himself staring down at his satchel-clad grimoire with a sense of real unease. He was knocked out of his reverie when Astriza set a hand on the satchel and gently pushed it down.\n\n\"That's just one grimoire, Laszlo. Nothing to fear in a single drop of water, right?\" She was grinning again. \"It's the ocean you need to worry about.\"\n\nAnother series of clicks echoed throughout the chamber, and with a rumbling hiss the final door to the library stacks slid open before them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "\"It doesn't seem possible,\" said Yvette, taking the words right out of Laszlo's mouth.\n\nRow upon row of tall bookcases stretched into the distance, but the more Laszlo strained to see down the aisles between those shelves, the more they seemed to curve, to turn upon themselves, to become a knotted labyrinth leading away into darkness. Gods, the place was vast, the ceiling was hundreds of feet above them, the outer walls were so distant they faded into mist.\n\n\"This place has weather!\" said Laszlo.\n\n\"All kinds,\" said Astriza, peering around. Once everyone was through the door, she used her key to lock it behind them. No elaborate ceremony here, Laszlo noted. No dance with dual locks. Escaping or sealing off the interior of the library could be done in an instant from this side.\n\n\"And it doesn't fit,\" said Yvette. \"Inside the cube, I mean. This place is much too big. Or is that just\u2014\"\n\n\"No, it's not just an illusion. At least not as we understand the term,\" said Molnar. \"This place was orderly once. Pure, sane geometries. But after the collection was installed the change began. By the time the old librarians tried to do something, it was too late. Individual books are happy to come and go, but when they tried to remove large numbers at once, the library got angry.\"\n\n\"What happened?\" said Casimir.\n\n\"Suffice to say that in the thousand years since, it has been our strictest policy to never, ever make the library angry again.\"\n\nAs Laszlo's senses adjusted to the place, more and more details leapt out at him. It really had the aspect of a jungle, a tangled forest of shelves and drawers and columns and railed balconies, as though the Living Library had somehow reached out across time and space and raided other buildings for components that suited its whims. Dark galleries branched off like caves, baroque structures grew out of the mists and shadows, a sort of cancer-architecture that had no business standing upright. Yet it did, under gray clouds that occasionally pulsed with faint eldritch light. The cool air was ripe with the thousand odors of old books and preservatives, and other things\u2014hot metal, musty earth, wet fur, old blood. Ever so faint, ever so unnerving.\n\nThe two librarians pulled a pair of small lanterns from a locker beside the gate, and tossed them into the air after muttering brief incantations. The lanterns glowed softly red, and hovered unobtrusively just above the party.\n\n\"Ground rules,\" said Astriza. \"Nothing in here is friendly. If any sort of something should try any sort of anything, defend yourself and your classmates. However, you must avoid damaging the books.\"\n\n\"I can only wonder,\" said Lev, \"does the library not realize that we are returning books to their proper places? Should that not buy us some measure of safety?\"\n\n\"We believe it understands what we're doing, on some level,\" said Molnar. \"And we're quite certain that, regardless of what it understands, it simply can't help itself. Now, let's start with your book, Aspirant D'Courin. Hand me the notes.\"\n\nMolnar and Astriza read the notes, muttering together, while the aspirants kept an uneasy lookout. After a few moments, Molnar raised his hand and sketched an ideogram of red light in the air. Sparks moved within the glowing lines, and the two Librarians studied these intently.\n\n\"Take heed, aspirants,\" muttered Molnar, absorbed in his work. \"This journey has been loosely planned, but only inside the library itself can the index enchantments give more precise and reliable\u2026 ah. Case in point. This book has moved itself.\"\n\n\"Twenty-eight Manticore East,\" said Astriza. \"Border of the Chimaera stacks, near the Tree of Knives.\"\n\n\"The tree's gone,\" said Molnar. \"Vanished yesterday, could be anywhere.\"\n\n\"Oh piss,\" said Astriza. \"I really hate hunting that thing.\"\n\n\"Map,\" said Molnar. Astriza dropped to one knee, presenting her back to Molnar. The Master Librarian knelt and unbuckled the heavy volume that she wore as a sort of back-pack, and by the red light of the floating lanterns he skimmed the pages, nodding to himself. After a few moments, he re-secured the book and rose to his feet.\n\n\"Yvette's book,\" he said, \"isn't actually a proper grimoire, it's more of a philosophical treatise. Adrilankha's Discourse on Necessary Thaumaturgical Irresponsibilities. However, it keeps some peculiar company, so we've got a long walk ahead of us. Be on your guard.\"\n\nThey moved into the stacks in a column, with Astriza leading and Molnar minding the rear. The red lanterns drifted along just above them. As they took their first steps into the actual shadows of the shelves, Laszlo bit back the urge to draw his sword and keep it waiting for whatever might be out there.\n\n\"What do you think of the place?\" Casimir, walking just in front of Laszlo, was staring around as though in a pleasant dream, and he spoke softly.\n\n\"I'm going to kiss the floor wherever we get out. Yourself?\"\n\n\"It's marvelous. It's everything I ever hoped it would be.\"\n\n\"Interested in becoming a librarian?\" said Yvette.\n\n\"Oh no,\" said Casimir. \"Not that. But all this power\u2026 half-awake, just as Master Molnar said, flowing in currents without a fully conscious force behind it. It's astonishing. Can't you feel it?\"\n\n\"I can,\" said Yvette. \"It scares the hell out of me.\"\n\nLaszlo could feel the power they spoke of, but only faintly, as a sort of icy tickle on the back of his neck. He knew he was a great deal less sensitive than Yvette or Casimir, and he wondered if experiencing the place through an intuition as heightened as theirs would help him check his fears, or make him soil his trousers.\n\nThrough the dark aisles they walked, eyes wide and searching, between the high walls of book-spines. Tendrils of mist curled around Laszlo's feet, and from time to time he heard sounds in the distance\u2014 faint echoes of movement, of rustling pages, of soft, sighing winds. Astriza turned right, then right again, choosing new directions at aisle junctions according to the inscrutable spells she and Molnar had cast earlier. Half an hour passed uneasily, and it seemed to Laszlo that they should have doubled back on their own trail several times, but they were undeniably pressing steadily onward into deeper, stranger territory.\n\n\"Laszlo,\" muttered Casimir.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Quit poking me and just tell me what you want.\"\n\n\"I haven't touched you.\"\n\nAstriza raised a hand, and their little column halted in its tracks. Casimir whirled on Laszlo, rubbing the back of his neck. \"That wasn't you?\"\n\n\"Hells, no!\"\n\nThe first attack of the journey came then, from the shadowy canyon-walls of the bookcases around them, a pelting rain of dark objects. Laszlo yelped and put up his arms to protect his eyes. Astriza had her swords out in the time it took him to flinch, and Yvette, moving not much slower, thrust out her hands and conjured some sort of rippling barrier in the air above them. Peering up, Laszlo realized that the objects bouncing off it were all but harmless\u2014crumpled paper, fragments of wood, chunks of broken plaster, dark dried things that looked like\u2026 gods, small animal turds! Bless Yvette and her shield.\n\nIn the hazy crimson light of the hovering lanterns he could see the things responsible for this disrespectful cascade\u2014 dozens of spindly-limbed, flabby gray creatures the rough size and shape of still-born infants. Their eyes were hollow dark pits and their mouths were thin slits, as though cut into their flesh with one quick slash of a blade. They were scampering out from behind books, perching atop the shelves, and launching their rain of junk from there.\n\nCasimir laughed, gestured, and spoke a word that stung Laszlo's ears. One of the little creatures dropped whatever it was about to throw, moaned, and flashed into a cloud of greasy, red-hot ash that dispersed like steam. Its nearby companions scattered, screeching.\n\n\"You can't tell me we're in any actual danger from these,\" said Casimir.\n\n\"Tell me we're in,\" whispered a harsh voice from somewhere in the shelves, \"known!\"\n\n\"Any actual danger, known! From these,\" came a screeching answer. \"Known, known!\"\n\n\"Oh, hell,\" shouted Astriza, \"Shut up, everyone shut up! Say nothing!\"\n\n\"Shut up, shut up, known!\" came another whispered chorus, and then a dozen voices repeating Astriza's words in a dozen babbled variations. \"Known, known, known!\"\n\n\"They're vocabuvores,\" whispered Master Molnar. \"Just keep moving out of their territory. Stay silent.\"\n\n\"Known,\" hissed one of the creatures from somewhere above. \"All known! New words. GIVE NEW WORDS!\"\n\nMolnar prodded Lev, who occupied the penultimate spot in their column, forward with the butt of his staff. Lev pushed Laszlo, who passed the courtesy on. Stumbling and slipping, the aspirants and their guides moved haltingly, for the annoying rain of junk persisted and Yvette's barrier was limited in size. Something soft and wet smacked the ground just in front of Laszlo, and in an uncharacteristic moment of pure clumsiness he set foot on it and went sprawling. His jaw rattled on the cold, hard tiles of the floor, and without thinking he yelped, \"Shit!\"\n\n\"Known!\" screeched a chorus of the little creatures.\n\n\"NEW!\" cried a triumphant voice, directly above him. \"New! NEW!\"\n\nThere was a new sound, a sickly crackling noise. Laszlo gaped as one of the little dark shapes on the shelves far above swelled, doubling in size in seconds, its flesh bubbling and rising like some unholy dough. The little claws and limbs, previously smaller than a cat's, took on a more menacing heft. \"More,\" it croaked in a deeper voice. \"Give more new words!\" And with that, it flung itself down at him, wider mouth open to display a fresh set of sharp teeth.\n\nAstriza's sword hit the thing before Laszlo could choke out a scream. This was an incomplete salvation, as the creature exploded like a lanced boil and spattered a goodly radius with hot, vomit-scented ichor. This radius contained Laszlo. He gagged, stumbled to his feet, and hurriedly wiped the awful stuff away from his eyes. To think he'd been so fastidious about turd-specks a moment before! Astriza spared him an annoyed glance, then pulled him forward by the mantle of his cloak.\n\nSilently enduring the rain of junk and the screeching calls for new words, the party stumbled on through aisles and junctions until the last of the hooting, scrabbling, missile-flinging multitude was lost in the misty darkness behind them.\n\n\"Vocabuvores,\" said Master Molnar when they had stopped in a place of apparent safety, \"are goblinoids that feed on any new words they learn from sentient speech. Their metabolisms turn vocabulary into body mass. They're tiny as insects at birth, but a few careless sentences and they can grow to our size, or even beyond.\"\n\n\"Do they eat people, too?\" said Laszlo, shuddering.\n\n\"They'd maim us first,\" said Astriza, wiping vocabuvore slop from her sword. \"And torture us as long as they could, until we screamed every word we knew for them.\"\n\n\"We don't have time to wipe that colony out today,\" said Molnar. \"Fortunately, vocabuvores are extremely territorial, and totally illiterate. Their nests are surrounded by enough books to feed their little minds forever, but they can't read a word.\"\n\n\"How can such things have stolen in, past the gates and sorcery?\" asked Lev.\n\n\"It's the books again,\" said Molnar. \"Their power sometimes snatches the damnedest things away from distant worlds. The stacks are filled with living and quasi-living dwellers, of two general types.\"\n\n\"The first sort we call externals,\" said Astriza. \"Anything recently dumped or summoned here. Animals, spirits, even the occasional sentient being. Most of them don't last long. Either we deal with them, or they become prey for the other sort of dweller.\"\n\n\"Bibliofauna,\" said Molnar. \"Creatures created by the actions of the books themselves, or somehow dependent upon them. A stranger sort of being, twisted by the environment. Also more suited to survive in it. Vocabuvores certainly didn't spawn anywhere else.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Astriza, \"We're a bit smellier, but we all seem to be in one piece. We're not far now from twenty-eight Manticore East. Keep moving, and the next time I tell you to shut up, Laszlo, please shut up.\"\n\n\"My most sincere apologies, Astriza.\"\n\n\"Convoluted pleasantries are for outside the library,\" she growled. \"In here, you can best apologize by not getting killed.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "\"Ahhh,\" said Molnar, gazing down at his guiding ideogram. The lights within the red lines had turned green. \"Bang on. Anywhere on the third shelf will do. Aspirant D'Courin, let Astriza handle the actual placement.\"\n\nYvette seemed only too happy to pass her satchel off to the sturdy Librarian. \"Cover me,\" said Astriza as she moved carefully toward the bookcase indicated by Molnar's spells. It was about twelve feet high, and while the dark wood of its exterior was warped and weathered, the volumes tucked onto its shelves looked pristine. Astriza settled Yvette's book into an empty spot, then leapt backward, both of her swords flashing out. She had the fastest over-shoulder draw Laszlo had ever seen.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Molnar, rushing forward to place himself between the shelf and the four aspirants.\n\n\"Fifth shelf,\" said Astriza. She gestured, and one of the hovering lanterns moved in, throwing its light into the dark recesses of the shelves. Something long and dark and cylindrical was lying across the books on that shelf, and as the lantern moved Laszlo caught a glimpse of scales.\n\n\"I think--\" said Astriza, lowering one of her swords, \"I think it's dead.\" She stabbed carefully with her other blade, several times, then nodded. She and Molnar reached in gingerly and heaved the thing out onto the floor, where it landed with a heavy smack.\n\nIt was a serpent of some sort, with a green body as thick as Laszlo's arm. It was about ten feet long, and it had three flat, triangular heads with beady eyes, now glassy in death. Crescent-shaped bite marks marred most of its length, as though something had worked its way up and down the body, chewing at leisure.\n\n\"External,\" said Astriza.\n\n\"A swamp hydra,\" said Lev, prodding the body with one of his clawed feet. \"From my homeworld\u2026 very dangerous. I had night terrors of them when I was newly hatched. What killed it?\"\n\n\"Too many possible culprits to name,\" said Molnar. He touched the serpent's body with the butt of his staff and uttered a spell. The dead flesh lurched, smoked, and split apart, turning gray before their eyes. In seconds, it had begun to shrink, until at last it was nothing more than a smear of charcoal-colored ash on the floor. \"The Tree of Knives used to frighten predators away from this section, but it's uprooted itself. Anything could have moved in. Aspirant Bronzeclaw, give me the notes for your book.\"\n\n\"Private Reflections of Grand Necrosophist Jaklur the Unendurable,\" said Astriza as Molnar shared the notes with her. \"Charming.\" The two Librarians performed their divinations once again, with more urgency than before. After a few moments, Astriza looked up, pointed somewhere off to Laszlo's left, and said: \"Fifty-five Manticore Northwest. Not an inconsiderable walk. Let's get moving.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "The second stage of their journey was longer than the first. The other aspirants looked anxious, all except Casimir, who continued to stroll while others crept cautiously. Caz seemed to have a limitless reserve of enchantment with the place. As for Laszlo, before another hour had passed the last reeking traces of the vocabuvore's gore had been washed from his face and neck by streams of nervous sweat. He was acutely aware, as they moved on through the dark canyons and grottos of the stacks, that unseen things in every direction were scuttling, growling, and hissing.\n\nAt one point, he heard a high-pitched giggling from the darkness, and stopped to listen more closely. Master Molnar, not missing a step, grabbed him firmly by his shoulders, spun him around, and pushed him onward.\n\nThey came at last to one of the outer walls of the library, where the air was clammy with a mist that swirled more thickly than before. Railed galleries loomed above them, utterly lightless, and Astriza waved the party far clear of the spiral staircases and ladders that led up into those silent spaces.\n\n\"Not much farther,\" she said. \"And Casimir's book goes somewhere pretty close after this. If we get lucky, we might just\u2014\"\n\n\"Get down,\" hissed Molnar.\n\nAstriza was down on one knee in a flash, swords out, and the aspirants followed her example. Laszlo knelt and drew his sword. Only Molnar remained on his feet.\n\nThe quality of the mist had changed. A breeze was stirring, growing steadily more powerful as Laszlo watched. Down the long dark aisle before them the skin-chilling current came, and with it a fluttering, rustling sound, like clothes rippling on a drying line. A swirling, nebulous shape appeared, and the mist surged and parted before it. As it came nearer, Laszlo saw that it was a mass of papers, a column of book pages, hundreds of them, whirling on a tight axis like a tornado.\n\n\"No,\" shouted Molnar as Casimir raised his hands to begin a spell. \"Don't harm it! Protect yourselves, but don't fight back or the library will--\"\n\nHis words were drowned out as the tumbling mass of pages washed over them with a tenfold increase in cacophonous noise. Laszlo was buffeted with winds like invisible fists\u2014his cloak streamed out behind him as though he were in free-fall, and a cloud of dust and grime torn from the surfaces nearby filled the air as a stinging miasma. He barely managed to fumble his sword safely back into his scabbard as he sought the floor. Just above him, the red lanterns were slammed against a stone balcony and shattered to fragments.\n\nFrom out of the wailing wind there came a screech like knives drawn over slate. Through slitted eyes Laszlo saw that Lev was losing his balance and sliding backward. Laszlo realized that Lev's torso, wider than any human's, was catching the wind like a sail despite the lizard's efforts to sink his claws into the tile floor.\n\nLaszlo threw himself at Lev's back and strained against the lizard's overpowering bulk and momentum for a few desperate seconds. Just as he realized that he was about to get bowled over, Casimir appeared out of the whirling confusion and added his weight to Laszlo's. Heaving with all their might, the two human aspirants managed to help Lev finally force himself flat to the ground, where they sprawled on top of him.\n\nNew light flared. Molnar and Astriza, leaning into the terrible wind together, had placed their hands on Molnar's staff and wrought some sort of spell. The brutal gray cyclone parted before them like the bow-shock of a swift sailing ship, and the dazed aspirants behind them were released from the choking grip of the page-storm. Not a moment too soon, in fact, for the storm had caught up the jagged copper and glass fragments of the broken lanterns, sharper claws than any it had possessed before. Once, twice, three times it lashed out with these new weapons, rattling against the invisible barrier, but the sorcery of the librarians held firm. It seemed to Laszlo that a note of frustration entered the wail of the thing around them.\n\nTense moments passed. The papers continued to snap and twirl above them, and the winds still wailed madly, but after a short while the worst of the page-storm seemed to be spent. Glass and metal fragments rained around them like discarded toys, and the whole screaming mess fluttered on down the aisle, leaving a slowly-falling haze of upflung dust in its wake. Coughing and sneezing, Laszlo and his companions stumbled shakily to their feet, while the noise and chaos of the indoor cyclone faded into the distant mist and darkness.\n\n\"My thanks, humans,\" said Lev hoarsely. \"My clan's ancestral trade of scale-grooming is beginning to acquire a certain tint of nostalgia in my thoughts.\"\n\n\"Don't mention it,\" coughed Laszlo. \"What the hell was that?\"\n\n\"Believe it or not, that was a book,\" said Astriza.\n\n\"A forcibly unbound grimoire,\" said Molnar, dusting off his armor. \"The creatures and forces in here occasionally destroy books by accident. And sometimes, when a truly ancient grimoire bound with particularly powerful spells is torn apart, it doesn't want to stop being a book. It becomes a focus for the library's unconscious anger. A book without spine or covers is like an unquiet spirit without mortal form. Whatever's left of it holds itself together out of sheer resentment, roaming without purpose, lashing out at whatever crosses its path.\"\n\n\"Like my face,\" said Laszlo, suddenly aware of hot, stinging pains across his cheeks and forehead. \"Ow, gods.\"\n\n\"Paper cuts,\" said Casimir, grinning. \"Won't be earning any free drinks with the story of those scars, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"Never had a paper cut inside my nose before,\" muttered Yvette, wiping away a thin line of blood that had trickled into the dust above her lips. \"You just let those things whirl around as they please, Master Molnar?\"\n\n\"They never attack other books. And they uproot or destroy a number of the library's smaller vermin. You might compare them to forest fires in the outside world\u2014best avoided, but ultimately beneficial to the cycle of existence.\"\n\n\"Pity about the lamps, though,\" said Yvette.\n\n\"Ah. Yes,\" said Molnar. He tapped the head of his staff, and a ball of flickering red light sprang from it, fainter than that of the lost lamps but adequate to dispel the gloom. \"We do go through a lot of those. Aspirants, use the empty book satchel. Pick up all the lantern fragments you can see. The library has a sufficient quantity of disorder that we need not import any.\"\n\nWhile the aspirants tended their cuts and scoured the vicinity for lantern parts, Astriza glanced around, consulted some sort of amulet chained around her wrist, and whistled appreciatively. \"Hey, here's a stroke of luck.\" She moved over to a bookcase nestled against the outer library wall, slid Lev's grimoire into an empty spot, and backed away cautiously. \"Two down. You four are halfway to your sixth year.\"\n\n\"Aspirant Vrana,\" said Molnar, \"I believe we'll have to travel some distance to place your book, in the outer wall of Phoenix Northwest. It will be a trudge, but every step brings us closer to the moment we can speed the four of you back to the carefree world of making requests from the comfort of the reading rooms and taking us for granted.\"\n\n\"No need to hurry on my account,\" said Casimir, stretching lazily. His cloak and armor were back in near perfect order. \"I'm having a lovely time. And I'm sure the best is yet to come.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Along the aisle they moved, past section after section of books that were, as Master Molnar had promised, completely unharmed by the passage of the unbound grimoire. At the ragged edge of Manticore Northwest it seemed to Laszlo that they began to climb. The sensation was intermittent and elusive, for when he studied the tiled hallways between the closest shelves they appeared relatively flat. Only when he turned around and peered into the gloom behind Master Molnar did the world seem to tilt, and the mist-shrouded sections where the unbound grimoire had attacked them seemed not only distant but lower, so that if he leaned in that direction he might inevitably fall over and roll helplessly back the way they'd come.\n\nA sharp jab to his ribs ended this reflection.\n\n\"Sorry,\" said Yvette. \"But you were staring at nothing with your jaw coming slowly unhinged. I can't imagine it was for a healthy reason.\"\n\n\"Up and down seem to be dressing alike, as far as my brain is concerned,\" muttered Laszlo.\n\n\"It's the Phoenix stacks,\" said Master Molnar. \"Each section of the library has a certain flavor to its strangeness, just as every sea-coast has a different scent on its breeze. I would recommend meditative exercises, but they would diminish your awareness of more acute hazards.\"\n\n\"You're making me feel very vulnerable, Master Molnar.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nOn they went, and the mists gradually receded in their footsteps. The air warmed, and the scents of strange spices hung thicker in the air. The shadows did not recede. If anything, the shelves in this section were set like crooked stones in a mortar of deep velvety darkness that gnawed at Master Molnar's guide-light, as though sampling its taste and pondering a bigger bite.\n\nSpecks of emerald and silver light glimmered and vanished in the shadows. Funeral fireflies, thought Laszlo, cold and joyless.\n\nAstriza, at the fore of their little column, knelt and brought them to a halt with an upraised hand. Something was moving a few dozen paces ahead, a dark translucence that drifted, spinning, across the path between the shelves and then merged with the darkness, before slowly twirling back out into the meager light.\n\nIt looked like the ghost of a bookshelf, dancing with an unseen partner.\n\n\"Bibliosomnia,\" whispered Molnar.\n\n\"The books are really dreaming?\" said Laszlo. \"I thought that was just sort of a striking turn of phrase.\"\n\n\"Some books are always dreaming,\" said Molnar. \"Not all the dreams are powerful enough to be seen, though.\"\n\n\"Is it a danger to us?\" said Lev.\n\n\"If it's in here, it's a danger to us.\" Astriza rose and took a cautious step forward. \"Follow me slowly. Try not to call attention to yourselves.\"\n\nImitating her movements, they advanced, like chaperoned children, through whatever it was books dreamed of. The sound of rustling pages was around them, like the fluttering of wings in an aviary. The dark ephemeral shape that had danced across their path, Laszlo saw, was indeed a distorted projection of a bookshelf, nor was it alone. Dream-shelves by the dozens rose out of the shadows, spinning in lonely orbits around them, drifting in their stately dances. Now and then there were glimpses of tall objects, sinuously branching, looming behind the shelves\u2014 trees.\n\n\"Dreaming of home,\" whispered Yvette, \"and childhood. Just as we do.\"\n\nA hissing sound arose somewhere in front of Astriza and grew steadily louder. New visions appeared with it, dark columns of fluid a yard wide, splashing from above and blasting gouts of steam from the tiled path. Laszlo was startled by the sensation of real heat and moisture blowing past his face.\n\n\"On your guard!\" hissed Astriza, but the aspirants, already enveloped in unidentifiably aromatic steam, needed little warning. They ducked and weaved as gouts of dream-fluid dashed down and splashed sizzling heat in all directions. Laszlo bit back a scream as something scalding soaked through his boots.\n\nFortunately, this was an emergency his undergraduate years had honed him for. A thousand castings of his beer-chilling spell paid off in one snap of his fingers, and cooling energies surged from his knees down to his toes. He sucked air through his teeth in relief. Casimir, shaking dream-fluid from his cloak, crooked an eyebrow at him.\n\n\"Practical magic! A miracle!\"\n\n\"Whenever anyone hands you a bottle of warm white wine,\" whispered Laszlo, \"call upon my power.\"\n\nThe bombardment of dark fluids passed them, the steam faded, and even the stains of liquid on the path shrank away with the rapidity of melting dream-stuff. Only the memory of heat remained vivid for Laszlo.\n\n\"Not all dreams are good ones,\" said Master Molnar, herding the aspirants back into line. \"Also, consider trying to avoid spilling hot drinks on a grimoire. Some traumatic resentment may linger.\"\n\nNo more tangible dreams assailed them, and they trudged on, once more against that sensation of ascending to height. The dreams that drifted around them became abstract, all hazy lines and indecipherable symbols, occasionally interrupted by the sounds of pages being turned or leatherbound spines creaking open. Astriza conjured her guidance spells and poked fussily at them before demanding Casimir's book.\n\n\"My Life and the Implications of Rigid Nonconformity, by Eron Kryndar,\" she said after examining it. \"Thirty Phoenix North. Which is right here, but the shelf in question is\u2026 something less than right here.\" She uttered a chain of imprecations, most of which Laszlo missed, but the ones he did catch seemed anatomically improbable, as bookshelves did not generally possess the orifices requisite for her suggestions. At last she craned her neck, looked straight up, and pointed.\n\nLaszlo had to squint, but eventually he discerned the small dark shapes of bookshelves against the cloud-shrouded vaults and shadowed murals of the ceiling, fifty yards overhead, or perhaps a hundred. It was impossible to tell.\n\n\"Is it some illusion?\" said Lev. \"Some aspect of the book-dreams?\"\n\n\"A fair guess,\" said Astriza, \"but that wouldn't fool the catalog enchantments. No, those shelves have decided they're simply happier floating around up there for some reason. No worries. Time for our little friend here to rejoin them.\"\n\nShe whistled up a spell, quite literally, shaping a melody with her lips that caught the book with invisible force and impelled it upward. All went well until the halfway point of the flight, when there was a flash of motion and a sound like the crack of a whip. Astriza dodged nearly too fast for Laszlo's eyes to follow, but the loud flat smack of book against stone beside her told the story. My Life and the Implications of Rigid Nonconformity did not want to rejoin its rightful shelves, and had reversed its course back toward the Sword-Librarian with potentially deadly force.\n\nMaster Molnar darted forward and seized the grimoire, which was still flopping and jittering about. He wrapped it in his cloak.\n\n\"Perhaps we might try the sorcery together,\" he said.\n\nThe librarians did. The grimoire responded by snapping open and unleashing a rain of crackling blue levinbolts upon them and their unfortunate aspirants. When all the scampering, wailing, burning, counter-magic, and harsh language subsided, Molnar was standing atop the book to hold it down.\n\n\"Remedial reserve status, I think.\" The book shifted beneath him, buzzing angrily, but he managed to keep it pinned. Smoke was rising from his armor and his walking stick. \"I'll file the notes when we're done.\"\n\nAstriza nodded and produced a length of silver chain from which padlocks hung like berries on a metal vine. She and Molnar trussed the grimoire tightly, and with every passage of chain around it the book grew less agitated. When they snapped the final padlock, all signs of rebellion were quelled. Astriza whistled again, and at last the book vanished smoothly into the darkness overhead, reshelved in one of the levitating stacks.\n\n\"Some books get ideas every now and then,\" said Master Molnar. \"Twenty or thirty years in the remedial reserve usually restores their spirit of cooperation. We're not so foolish as to expect our books to be well-behaved when they're at home. All we require is that they come and go from the proper shelf with a bit of dignity. Now, the map, please. And the notes from your book, Aspirant Jazera.\"\n\nAstriza knelt to allow Molnar to consult the book strapped to her back. Afterward, they sifted through the instructions that had been pinned to Laszlo's satchel. Finally, they shook hands.\n\n\"Our final errand of the day,\" said Master Molnar, \"will take us nearly straight back the way we came, once more to Manticore Northwest. Your feet will be sore, your heads will be nearly as empty as they were this morning, but your hearts will be lighter, for you'll be free until your sixth years start. Onward! Every book goes back, or nobody goes home alive!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "Laszlo had presumed that a downhill walk would be easier, but they didn't receive one. Instead, the sensation of marching upwards neatly reversed and reasserted itself on their return, so it seemed the distant Manticore stacks hung almost as far overhead as the floating shelves had. Laszlo tried to keep his eyes on his feet, and never dared to glance back until the mists of the Manticore section crept in around them, and the shrouded passages between the shelves were no more or less uneven than usual.\n\nThe two librarians fussed and muttered over their guidance spells as they walked. Eventually, they arrived at what Molnar claimed was sixty-one Manticore Northwest, a cluster of shelves under a particularly heavy overhanging stone balcony.\n\n\"Secrets of Tsarepheth and the Singing Towers, author unknown,\" read Astriza before she braced herself and warily slid the book into an empty spot on a shelf at knee-level.\n\nThe entire group watched expectantly.\n\nNothing happened.\n\n\"Ta-daaaaaa!\" cried Astriza as she sprang back from the shelf. \"You see, children, some returns are boring! In here, boredom is beautiful.\"\n\n\"Help me!\" cried a faint voice from somewhere off to Laszlo's right, in the dark forest of bookcases leading away to the unseen heart of the library.\n\n\"Not to mention frustratingly rare.\" Astriza moved out into the aisle with Molnar, scanning the shelves and shadows surrounding the party. \"Identify yourself!\"\n\n\"Help me!\" The voice was soft and hoarse. There was no telling whether or not it came from the throat of a thinking creature.\n\n\"Someone from another book-return team?\" asked Yvette.\n\n\"I'd know,\" said Molnar. \"More likely it's a trick. We must investigate, but we'll do so very cautiously.\"\n\nAs though in response to the Master Librarian's words, a book came sailing out of the darkened stacks. The two librarians ducked, and after bouncing off the floor once the book wound up at Yvette's feet. She nudged it with the tip of a boot and then, satisfied that it was genuine, picked it up and examined the cover.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Molnar.\n\n\"Annotated Commentaries on the Mysteries of the Worm,\" said Yvette. \"I don't know if that means anything special\u2014\"\n\n\"An-no-tated,\" hissed a voice from the darkness. There was a strange snort of satisfaction. \"New!\"\n\n\"Commentaries,\" hissed another. \"New, new!\"\n\n\"Hells!\" Molnar turned to the aspirants and lowered his voice. \"A trick. Vocabuvores again, and we've just given them food!\"\n\n\"Mysteries,\" groaned one of the creatures. \"New!\" A series of wet snapping and bubbling noises followed. Laszlo shuddered, remembering the rapid growth of the thing that had tried to jump him earlier, and his sword found its way to his hand by pure reflex.\n\n\"New words,\" chanted a chorus of voices that deepened even as they spoke. \"New words, new words!\" It sounded like at least a dozen of the things were out there, and beneath their voices Laszlo heard crackling and bubbling, as though cauldrons of fat were on the boil. Many cauldrons.\n\n\"All you, give new words!\" A deeper, harsher voice than the others, more commanding. \"All you, except BOY. Boy that kill with spell! Him we kill! Others give new words!\"\n\n\"Him we kill,\" chanted the chorus. \"Others give new words!\"\n\n\"No,\" whispered Astriza. \"This shouldn't be possible.\"\n\n\"It's the same band of vocabuvores,\" whispered Molnar. \"They've actually followed us. Merciful gods, they're learning new behavior. We've got to destroy them!\"\n\n\"We sure as hell can't let them teach others how to roam.\" Astriza nodded grimly. \"Let your swords and spells do the talking, aspirants. If\u2014\"\n\nWhatever she was about to say, Laszlo never found out. Growling, panting, gibbering, screeching, the vocabuvores surged out of the darkness, over bookcases and out of aisles, into the wan circle of light cast by Molnar's staff. Nor were they the small-framed creatures of the previous attack\u2014 most had grown to the size of wolves. Their bodies had elongated, their limbs had knotted with thick strands of ropy muscle, and their claws had become slaughterhouse implements. Some had acquired plates of chitinous armor, while others had sacks of flab hanging off them like pendulous tumors. They came by the dozens, in an arc that closed on Laszlo and his companions like a set of jaws.\n\nThe first to strike on either side was Casimir, who uttered a syllable so harsh that Laszlo reeled just to hear it. It was a death-weaving, dread sorcery, the sort of thing that Laszlo had never imagined himself even daring to study. The closest of the vocabuvores paid for its enthusiasm by receiving the full brunt of Caz's spell. Its skin literally peeled itself from the bones and muscles beneath, a ragged wet leathery flower tearing open and blowing away. And instant later the muscles followed, then the bones and the glistening internal organs; the creature exploded in layers. But there were many more behind it, and they did not seem to be afraid of even a gory death.\n\nSnarling they came, eyes like black hollows, mouths like gaping pits, and in an instant Laszlo's awareness of the battle narrowed to those claws that were meant to shred his armor, those fangs that were meant to sink into his flesh. At last his curious hobby paid life-or-death dividends. Darting and dodging, he fought the wildest duel of his career, his centuries-old steel punching through vocabuvore flesh. They fell away screaming, sure enough, but there were many to replace the slain, rank on writhing rank, pushing forward to grasp and tear at him.\n\n\"New words,\" the creatures croaked, as he slashed at bulging throats and slammed his heavy hilt down on monstrous skulls. The things vomited fountains of reeking gore when they died, soaking his cloak and breeches, but he barely noticed as he gave ground step by step, backing away from the press of falling bodies as new combatants continually scrambled to take their places.\n\nWhile Laszlo fought on, he managed to catch glimpses of what was happening around him. Molnar and Astriza fought back to back, the Master Librarian's staff sweeping before him in powerful arcs. As for Astriza, her curved blades were broader and heavier than Laszlo's\u2014 no stabbing and dancing for her. When she swung, limbs flew, and vocabuvores were opened from necks to groins. He admired her power, and that admiration nearly became a fatal distraction.\n\n\"NEW WORD!\" screeched one of the vocabuvores, seizing him by his mantle and forcing him down to his knees. It pried and scraped at his leather neck-guard, salivating. The thing's breath was unbelievable, like a dead animal soaked in sewage and garlic wine. Was that what the digestion of words smelled like? \"NEW WORD!\"\n\n\"Die,\" Laszlo muttered, swatting the thing's hands away just long enough to drive his sword up and into the orbless pit of its left eye. It demonstrated immediate comprehension of the new word by sliding down the front of his armor, claws scrabbling at him in a useless final reflex. Laszlo stumbled up, kicked the corpse away, and freed his blade to face the next one\u2026 and the next one\u2026\n\nWorking in a similar vein was Lev Bronzeclaw, forgoing his mediocre magic in order to leap about and bring his natural weaponry into play just a few feet to Laszlo's left. Some foes he knocked sprawling with lashes of his heavy tail. Others he seized with his upper limbs and held firmly while his blindingly fast kicks sunk claws into guts. Furious, inexorable, he scythed vocabuvores in half and spilled their steaming bowels as though the creatures were fruits in the grasp of some devilish pulping machine.\n\nCasimir and Yvette, meanwhile, had put their backs to a bookshelf and were plying their sorceries in tandem against a chaotic, flailing press of attackers. Yvette had conjured another one of her invisible barriers and was moving it back and forth like a tower shield, absorbing vocabuvore attacks with it and then slamming them backward. Casimir, grinning wildly, was methodically unleashing his killing spells at the creatures Yvette knocked off-balance, consuming them in flashing pillars of blue flame. The oily black smoke from these fires swirled across the battle and made Laszlo gag.\n\nStill, they seemed to be making progress\u2014there could only be so many vocabuvores, and Laszlo began to feel a curious exaltation as the ranks of their brutish foes thinned. Just a few more for him, a few more for the librarians, a few more for Lev, and the fight was all but--\n\n\"KILL BOY,\" roared the commanding vocabuvore, the deep-voiced one that had launched the attack moments earlier. At last it joined the fight proper, bounding out of the bookcases, twice the size of any of its brethren, more like a pallid gray bear than anything else. \"Kill boy with spells! Kill girl!\"\n\nHeeding the call, the surviving vocabuvores abandoned all other opponents and dove toward Casimir and Yvette, forcing the two aspirants back against the shelf under the desperate press of their new surge. Laszlo and Lev, caught off guard by the instant withdrawal of their remaining foes, stumbled clumsily into one another.\n\nThe huge vocabuvore charged across the aisle, and Astriza and Molnar moved to intercept it. Laszlo watched in disbelief as they were simply shoved over by stiff smacks from the creature's massive forelimbs. It even carried one of Astrizas's blades away with it, embedded in a sack of oozing gristle along its right side, without visible effect. It dove into the bookcases behind the one Casimir and Yvette were standing against, and disappeared momentarily from sight.\n\nThe smaller survivors had pinned Yvette between the shelf and her shield; like an insect under glass, she was being crushed behind her own magic. Having neutralized her protection, they finally seized Laszlo's arms, interfering with his ability to cast spells. Pushing frantically past the smoldering shells of their dead comrades, they seemed to have abandoned any hope of new words in exchange for a last act of vengeance against Casimir.\n\nBut there were only a bare dozen left, and Laszlo and Lev had regained their balance. Moving in unison, they charged through the smoke and blood to fall on the rear of the pack of surviving vocabuvores. There they slew unopposed, and if only they could slay fast enough... claws and sword sang out together, ten. And again, eight, and again, six\u2026\n\nYvette's shield buckled at last, and she and Casimir slid sideways with claws at their throats. But now there were only half a dozen, and then there were four, then two. A triumphant moment later Laszlo, gasping for breath, grabbed the last of the creatures by the back of its leathery neck and hauled it off his chambers-mate. Laszlo drove his sword into the vocabuvore's back, transfixing it through whatever approximation of a heart it possessed, and flung it down to join the rest of its dead brood.\n\n\"Thanks,\" coughed Casimir, reaching over to help Yvette sit up. Other than a near-total drenching with the nauseating contents of dead vocabuvores, the two of them seemed to have escaped the worst possibilities.\n\n\"Big one,\" gasped Yvette. \"Find the big one, kill it quickly\u2014\"\n\nAt that precise instant the big one struck the bookcase from behind, heaving it over directly on top of them, a sudden rain of books followed by a huge dark blur that slammed Casimir and Yvette out of sight beneath it. Laszlo stumbled back in shock as the big vocabuvore stepped onto the tumbled bookcase, stomping its feet like a jungle predator gloating over a fresh kill.\n\n\"Casimir,\" Laszlo screamed. \"Yvette!\"\n\n\"No,\" cried Master Molnar, lurching back to his feet. \"No! Proper nouns are powerful words!\"\n\nAlas, what was said could not be unsaid. The flesh of the last vocabuvore rippled as though a hundred burrowing things were about to erupt from within, but the expression on its baleful face was sheer ecstasy. New masses of flesh billowed forth, new cords of muscle and sinew wormed their way out of thin air, new rows of shark-like teeth rose gleaming in the black pit of the thing's mouth. In a moment it had gained several feet of height and girth, and the top of its head was now not far below the stones that floored the gallery above.\n\nWith a foot far weightier than before, the thing stomped the bookcase again, splintering the ancient wood. Lev flung his mighty scarlet-scaled bulk against the creature without hesitation, but it had already eclipsed his strength. It caught him in mid-air, turned, and flung him spinning head-over-tail into Molnar and Astriza. Still dull from their earlier clubbing, the two librarians failed spectacularly to duck, and four hundred pounds of whirling reptilian aspirant took them down hard.\n\nThat left Laszlo, facing the creature all alone, gore-slick sword shaking in his hand, with sorcerous powers about adequate, on his best day, to heat tea or chill beer.\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" he muttered.\n\n\"Known,\" chuckled the creature. Its voice was now a bass rumble, deep as oncoming thunder. \"Now will kill boy. Now EASY.\"\n\n\"Uh,\" said Laszlo, scanning the smoke-swirled area for any surprise, any advantage, any unused weapon. While it was flattering to imagine himself charging in and dispatching the thing with his sword, the treatment it had given Lev was not at all encouraging in that respect. He flicked his gaze from the bookshelves to the ceiling\u2014 and then it hit him, a sensation that would have been familiar to any aspirant ever graduated from the High University. The inherent magic of all undergraduates\u2014 the magic of the last minute. The power to embrace any solution, no matter how insane or desperate.\n\n\"No,\" Laszlo yelled. \"No! Spare the boy!\"\n\n\"Kill boy,\" roared the creature, no more scintillating a conversationalist for all its physical changes.\n\n\"No.\" Laszlo tossed his sword aside and beckoned to the vocabuvore. \"Spare the boy. I will give new words!\"\n\n\"I kill boy, then you give new words!\"\n\n\"Spare the boy. I will give many new words. I will give all my words.\"\n\n\"No,\" howled Lev, \"No, you can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Trust me,\" said Laszlo. He picked a book out of the mess at his feet and waved it at the vocabuvore. \"Come here. I'll read to you!\"\n\n\"Book of words\u2026\" the creature hissed. It took a step forward.\n\n\"Yes. Many books, new words. Come to me, and they're yours.\"\n\n\"New words!.\" Another step. The creature was off the bookcase now, towering over him. Ropy strands of hot saliva tumbled from the corners of its mouth\u2026 good gods, Laszlo thought, he'd really made it hungry.\n\n\"Occultation!\" he said, by way of a test.\n\nThe creature growled with pleasure, shuddering, and more mass boiled out of its grotesque frame. The change was not as severe as that caused by proper nouns, but it was still obvious. The vocabuvore's head moved an inch closer to the ceiling. Laszlo took a deep breath, and then began shouting as rapidly as he could:\n\n\"Fuliginous! Occluded! Uh, canticle! Portmanteau! Tea cozy!\" He racked his mind. He needed obscure words, complex words, words unlikely to have been uttered by cautious librarians prowling the stacks. \"Indeterminate! Mendacious! Vestibule! Tits, testicles, aluminum, heliotrope, narcolepsy!\"\n\nThe vocabuvore panted in pleasure, gorging itself on the stream of fresh words. Its stomach doubled in size, tripled, becoming a sack of flab that could have supplied fat for ten thousand candles. Inch by inch it surged outward and upward. Its head bumped into the stone ceiling and it glanced up, as though realizing for the first time just how cramped its quarters were.\n\n\"Adamant,\" cried Laszlo, backing away from the creature's limbs, now as thick as tree trunks. \"Resolute, unyielding, unwavering, reckless, irresponsible, foolhardy!\"\n\n\"Noooo,\" yowled the creature, clearly recognizing its predicament and struggling to fight down the throes of ecstasy from its unprecedented feast. Its unfolding masses of new flesh were wedging it more and more firmly in place between the floor and the heavy stones of the overhead gallery, sorcery-laid stones that had stood fast for dozens of centuries. \"Stop, stop, stop!\"\n\n\"Engorgement,\" shouted Laszlo, all but dancing with excitement, \"Avarice! Rapaciousness! Corpulence! Superabundance! Comeuppance!\"\n\n\"Nggggggh,\" the vocabuvore, now elephant-sized, shrieked in a deafening voice. It pushed against the overhead surface with hands six or seven feet across. To no avail\u2014 its head bent sideways at an unnatural angle until its spine, still growing, finally snapped against the terrible pressure of floor and ceiling. The huge arms fell to the ground with a thud that jarred Laszlo's teeth, and a veritable waterfall of dark blood began to pour from the corner of the thing's slack mouth.\n\nNot stopping to admire this still-twitching edifice of flesh, Laszlo ran around it, reaching the collapsed bookcase just as Lev did. Working together, they managed to heave it up, disgorging a flow of books that slid out around their ankles. Laszlo grinned uncontrollably when Casimir and Yvette pushed themselves shakily up to their hands and knees. Lev pulled Yvette off the ground and she tumbled into his arms, laughing, while Laszlo heaved Casimir up.\n\n\"I do apologize,\" said Caz, \"for nearly every word of criticism I've ever offered on any dissertation you've ever scribbled.\"\n\n\"Tonight we will get drunk,\" yelled Lev. The big lizard's friendly slap between Laszlo's shoulders almost knocked him into the spot previously occupied by Yvette. \"In your human fashion, without forethought, in strange neighborhoods, so that the experience will yield anecdotes for future mortification\u2014\"\n\n\"Master Molnar!\" said Yvette. In an instant the four aspirants had turned and come to attention like nervous students of arms.\n\nMolnar and Astriza were supporting one another gingerly, sharing Molnar's staff as a sort of crutch. Each had received a thoroughly bloody nose, and Molnar's left eye was swelling shut under livid bruises.\n\n\"My deepest apologies,\" hissed Lev. \"I fear that I have done you some injury\u2014\"\n\n\"Hardly your fault, Aspirant Bronzeclaw,\" said Molnar. \"You merely served as an involuntary projectile.\"\n\nLaszlo felt the exhilaration of the fight draining from him, and the familiar sensations of tired limbs and fresh bruises took its place. Everyone seemed able to stand on their own two feet, and everyone was a mess. Torn cloaks, slashed armor, bent scabbards, myriad cuts and welts\u2014all of it under a thorough coating of black vocabuvore blood, still warm and sopping. Even Casimir\u2014 no, thought Laszlo, the bastard had done it again. He was as disgusting as anyone, but somewhere, between blinks, he'd reassumed his ancestral mantle of sly contentment.\n\n\"Nicely done, Laszlo,\" said Astriza. \"Personally, I'm glad Lev bowled me over. If I'd been on my feet when you offered to feed that thing new words, I'd have tried to punch your lights out. My compliments on fast thinking.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" said Molnar. \"That was the most singular entanglement I've seen in all my years of minding student book-return expeditions. All of you did fine work in putting down a real threat.\"\n\n\"And importing a fair amount of new disorder to the stacks,\" said Yvette. Laszlo followed her gaze around the site of the battle. Between the sprawled tribe of slain vocabuvores, the rivers of blood, the haze of thaumaturgical smoke, and the smashed shelf, sixty-one Manticore Northwest looked worse than all of them put together.\n\n\"My report will describe the carnage as \"regretfully unavoidable,\" said Master Molnar with a smile. \"Besides, we've cleaned up messes before. Everything here will be back in place before the end of the day.\"\n\nLaszlo imagined that he could actually feel his spirits sag. Spend all day in here, cleaning up? Even with magic, it would take hours, and gods knew what else might jump them while they worked. Evidently, his face betrayed his feelings, for Molnar and Astriza laughed in unison.\n\n\"Though not because of anything you four will be doing,\" said Molnar. \"Putting a section back into operation after a major incident is librarian's work. You four are finished here. I believe you now understand this place, and our role in tending it, marginally better than you did before. Aspirant Bronzeclaw's suggestion is a sensible one, and you all deserve to put it into practice as soon as possible. Retrieve your personal equipment. Let's get you back to daylight.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "If the blue-robed functionaries in the Manticore Index were alarmed to see the six of them return drenched in gore, they certainly didn't show it. The aspirants tossed their book-satchels and lantern fragments aside, and began to loosen or remove gloves, neck-guards, cloaks, and amulets. Laszlo released some of the buckles on his cuirass and sighed with pleasure.\n\n\"Shall we meet in an hour?\" said Lev. \"At the eastern commons, after we've had a chance to, ah, thoroughly bathe?\"\n\n\"Make it two,\" said Yvette. \"Your people don't have any hair to deal with.\"\n\n\"We were in there for five hours,\" said Casimir, glancing at a wall clock. \"I scarcely believe it.\"\n\n\"Well, time slows down when everything around you is trying to kill you,\" said Astriza. \"Master Molnar, do you want me to put together a team to work on the mess in Manticore Northwest?\"\n\n\"Yes, notify the night staff. I'll be back to lead it myself. I should only require a few hours.\" He gestured at his left eye, now swollen shut. \"Another quick dash through the infirmary. I'm well-known there.\"\n\n\"Of course. And the, ah\u2026\"\n\n\"Indeed.\" Molnar sighed. \"You don't mind taking care of it, if\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, if,\" said Astriza. \"Hopefully just if. I'll take care of all the details. Get that eye looked at, sir.\"\n\n\"We all leaving together?\" said Yvette.\n\n\"I need to grab my impression device,\" said Casimir, pointing to the glass niche that housed a focus for the index enchantments. \"And, ah, study it for a few moments. You don't need to wait around for my sake. I'll meet you later.\"\n\n\"Farewell, then! Later! Inebriation and glorious regret!\" said Lev. He and Yvette left the Manticore Index together.\n\n\"Well, my boys, you did some bold work in there,\" said Molnar, staring at Laszlo and Casimir with his good eye. Suddenly he seemed much older to Laszlo, old and tired. \"I would wish\u2026 that boldness and wisdom might always go hand in hand for the pair of you.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Master Molnar,\" said Casimir. \"That's very kind of you.\"\n\nMolnar seemed to wait an uncommon length of time before he nodded, but nod he did, and then he walked out of the room after Lev and Yvette.\n\n\"You staying too, Laz?\" Casimir had peeled off his bloody gauntlets and rubbed his hands clean. \"You don't need to, really.\"\n\n\"It's fine,\" said Laszlo, curious once again about Casimir's pet project. \"I can stand to be a reeking mess for a few extra minutes.\"\n\n\"Suit yourself.\"\n\nWhile Casimir began to fiddle with his white crystal, Astriza conjured several documents out of letters that floated in the air before her. \"You two take as long as you need,\" she said distractedly. \"I've got a pile of work orders to put together.\"\n\nCasimir reached into a belt pouch, drew out a small container of greasy white paint, and began to quickly sketch designs on the floor in front of the pulsing glass column. Laszlo frowned as he studied the symbols\u2014 he recognized some of them, variations on warding and focusing sigils that any first-year aspirant could use to contain or redirect magical energy. But these were far more complex, like combinations of notes that any student could puzzle out but only a virtuoso could actually play. Compared to Laszlo, Casimir was such a virtuoso.\n\n\"Caz,\" said Laszlo, \"what exactly are you doing?\"\n\n\"It's more or less irreducibly complex.\" Casimir finished his design at last, a lattice of arcane symbols so advanced and tight-woven that Laszlo's eyes crossed as he tried to puzzle it out. As a final touch, Casimir drew a simple white circle around himself, the traditional basis for any protective magical ward. \"So let's just summarize it as graduating early.\"\n\n\"What the hell are you talking about?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Laszlo. You've been a good chambers-mate. I wish you'd just left with the rest.\" Casimir smiled at him sadly, and there was something new and alien in his manner\u2014condescension. Dismissal. He'd always been pompous and cocksure, but gods, he'd never looked at Laszlo like this. With pity, as though he were a favorite pet about to be thrown out of the house.\n\n\"Caz, this isn't funny.\"\n\n\"If you were more sensitive, I think you'd already understand. But I know you can't feel it like I do. Yvette felt it. But she's like the rest of you, sewn up in all the little damn rules you make for yourselves to paint timidity as a virtue.\"\n\n\"Felt what\u2014\"\n\n\"The depth of the magic in this place. The currents. An ocean of power, fermenting for a thousand years, lashing out at random like some headless animal, and all they can do with it is keep it bottled up and hope it doesn't bite them too sharply. It needs a will, Laszlo! It needs a mind to guide it, to wrestle it down, to put it to constructive use.\"\n\n\"You're kidding.\" Laszlo's mouth was suddenly dry. \"This is a finals-week joke, Caz. You're kidding.\"\n\n\"No.\" Casimir gestured at the glass focus. \"It's all here already, everything necessary. If you'd had any ambition at all you would have seen the hints in the introductory materials. The index enchantments are like a nervous system, in touch with everything, and they can be used to communicate with everything. I'm going to bend this place, Laz. Bend it around my finger and make it something new.\"\n\n\"It'll kill you!\"\n\n\"It could win.\" Casimir flashed his teeth, a grin as predatory as any worn by the vocabuvores that had tried to devour him less than an hour before. \"But so what? Let's say I graduate with honors, I go back to my people, and what then? Fighting demons, writing books, advising ministers? To hell with it. In the long run I'm still a footnote. But if I can seize this, rule this, that's more power than ten thousand lifetimes of dutiful slavery.\"\n\n\"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?\"\n\n\"My intentions could hardly be clearer, Librarian Mezaros.\"\n\n\"Casimir,\" she said, \"I urge you to reconsider this course of action, before\u2014\"\n\n\"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\u2026 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!\"\n\n\"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?\"\n\n\"Interesting question, Laszlo. Would you really pull that thing on me?\"\n\n\"Five years! I thought we were friends!\" The sword came out in a silver blur, and Laszlo shook with fury.\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"Step out of the circle, Casimir. Step out, or decide which one of us you have time to kill before we can reach you.\"\n\n\"Laszlo, even for someone as mildly magical as yourself, you disappoint me. I said I checked your sword personally this morning, didn't I?\"\n\nCasimir 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.\n\n\"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.\"\n\nThe blue-robed indexers withdrew from the room in a quick but disciplined manner, and the heavy door clanged shut behind them.\n\n\"Astriza,\" said Casimir, \"somewhere in this room is the master index book, the one updated by the enchantments. Bring it to me now.\"\n\n\"Casimir,\" said the Librarian, \"It's still not too late.\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"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.\n\n\"Simply hand it over,\" said Casimir. \"Don't touch the warding paint.\"\n\nShe complied, and Casimir ran his right hand over the cover of the awkwardly large volume, cradling it against his chest with his left arm.\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"Casimir,\" said Laszlo, \"Please\u2014\"\n\n\"Hoist a few for me tonight, if you live through whatever happens next. It's time I moved past such things.\"\n\nHe 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.\n\nThings happened very fast then. Astriza moved, but not against Casimir\u2014 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.\n\nAt the same instant, Casimir started screaming.\n\nLaszlo 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\u2014a portal opening horizontally like a hatch rather than vertically like a door.\n\nThrough 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\u2014the massive volume floated in midair of its own accord while the new arrival did its gruesome work.\n\nWith 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.\n\nLaszlo 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.\n\n\"Caz,\" whispered Laszlo, astonished to find his eyes moistening. \"Gods, Caz, why?\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\nThe 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.\n\n\"The book was a trap,\" said Laszlo.\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"I never even saw it,\" muttered Laszlo.\n\n\"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?\"\n\n\"I suppose it must,\" said Laszlo. \"I just\u2026 I never would have guessed my own chambers-mate\u2026\"\n\n\"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\u2026 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.\"\n\n\"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?\"\n\n\"Library property. Some of the grimoires in here are bound in human skin. Only one way to repair them properly.\"\n\n\"Are you kidding?\"\n\n\"Waste not, want not.\"\n\n\"But his family\u2014\"\n\n\"Won't get to know. Because he vanished in an unfortunate magical accident just after you turned and left him in here, didn't he?\"\n\n\"I\u2026 damn. I don't know if I can\u2014\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"The indexers will just play along?\"\n\n\"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.\n\n\"It just seems incredible,\" said Laszlo. \"To stand here and hide everything about his real fate, as casually as you'd shelve a book.\"\n\n\"Who around here casually shelves a book?\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"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?\""
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "(Great Library 5) Sword and Pen",
        "author": "Rachel Caine",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy",
            "dystopia"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Scholar Christopher Wolfe to Callum Brightwell. Available in the Archive:\n\n\u2002Mr. and Mrs. Brightwell,\n\n\u2002It is with the utmost regret and sorrow that I must inform you of the death of your son Brendan Brightwell upon this day in the city of Alexandria. I know that it cannot be a comfort for you in this moment of grief, but perhaps it will ease your heart in the future to know that Brendan's courage in his final days and hours was exemplary, and inspired every one of us who had the pleasure of knowing him. He was at his brother's side for the battle, and I assure you that Jess is alive, though laid just as low as you must be by this terrible loss. Jess was with him as he died, and Brendan's passing was mercifully quick and painless.\n\n\u2002He was instrumental in the victory achieved today in Alexandria for the continued existence and protection of the ideals of the Great Library, and that is no small thing to remember. Brendan's loyalty to, and protection of, his brother was extraordinary, and we will always honor his memory.\n\n\u2002I pray to my gods and yours that Brendan's soul finds peace, and that you may also do so with this difficult news.\n\n\u2002Funeral rites will be prepared for him, and once the immediate emergency is past I will write to you to finalize these arrangements. We will welcome you to Alexandria for the honors the Great Library will give to your sons\u2014both the dead and the living.\n\n\u2002With all my heart, I grieve with you. And I make you this pledge: I will fight to preserve Jess's life with every ounce of strength I possess. For though we believe that knowledge is all, still we value every life entrusted to our care.\n\n\u2002Scholar Christopher Wolfe"
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "Brendan was dead, and Jess's world was broken. He'd never known a moment without his twin existing somewhere, a distant warmth on the horizon, but now... now he shivered, alone, with his dead brother held close against his chest.\n\nSo much silence in the world now.\n\nHe's still warm, Jess thought, and he was; Brendan's skin still felt alive, inhabited, but there was nothing inside him. No heartbeat. No presence.\n\nHe was dimly aware that things were happening around him, that the bloody sands of the arena were full of people running, fighting, screaming, shouting. He didn't care. Not now.\n\nLet the world burn.\n\nA shadow fell over him, and Jess looked up. It was Anubis, a giant automaton god gleaming with gold. The jackal's black head blotted out the sun. It felt like the end of the world.\n\nAnd then Anubis thrust his spear forward, and it plunged into Jess's chest. It held him there, pinned, and suddenly Brendan's body was gone, and Jess was alone and skewered on the spear... but it didn't hurt. He felt weightless.\n\nAnubis leaned closer and said, Wake up.\n\nWhen he opened his eyes, he was lying in darkness on a soft mattress, covered by a blanket that smelled of spice and roses. Out the window to his left, the moon floated in a boat of clouds. Jess's heart felt heavy and strange in his chest.\n\nHe could still feel the sticky blood on his hands, even though he knew they were clean. He'd washed Brendan's blood away. No, he hadn't. Thomas had brought a bowl of water and rinsed the gore away; he hadn't done anything for himself. Hadn't been able to. His friends had helped him here, into a strange house and a strange bed. He knew he should be grateful for that, but right now all he felt was empty, and deeply wrong. This was a world he didn't know, one in which he was the only surviving Brightwell son. Half a twin.\n\nHe'd have taken large bets that Brendan would have been the one to survive everything and come through stronger. And his brother would have bet even more on it. The world seemed so quiet without him.\n\nThen you'll just have to be louder, you moping idiot. He could almost hear his brother saying that with his usual cocky smirk. God knows you always acted like you wished you'd been an only child.\n\n\"No, I didn't,\" he said out loud, though he instantly knew it for a lie and was ashamed of it, then even more ashamed when a voice came out of the darkness near the far corner.\n\n\"Awake, Brightwell? About time.\" There was a rustle of cloth, and a dim greenish glow started to kindle, then brighten. The glow lamp sat next to Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who looked like death, and also like he'd bite the head off the first person to say he looked tired. In short, his usual sunny disposition. \"Dreams?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess lied. He tried to slow down his still-pounding heart. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"We drew lots as to who would be your nursemaid this evening and I lost.\" Wolfe rose to his feet. He'd changed into black Scholar's robes, a liquidly flowing silk that made him seem part of the shadows except for the gray in his shoulder-length hair and his pale skin. He paused at Jess's bedside and looked at him with cool assessment. \"You lost someone precious to you. I understand. But we don't have time to indulge your grief. There's work to be done, and fewer of us now to do it.\"\n\nJess felt no impulse to care. \"I'm surprised you think I'm useful.\"\n\n\"Self-pity doesn't become you, boy. I'll be leaving now. The world doesn't stop because the one you loved is no longer in it.\"\n\nJess almost snapped, What do you know about it? but he stopped himself. Wolfe had lost many people. He'd seen his own mother die. He understood. So Jess swallowed his irrational anger and said, \"Where are you going?\" Not we. He hadn't yet decided whether staying in this bed would be his best idea.\n\n\"The office of the Archivist,\" Wolfe said. \"You've been there. I could use help in locating his secure records.\"\n\nThe office. Jess blinked and saw the place, a magnificent space with automaton gods standing silent guard in alcoves. The view of the Alexandrian harbor dominating the windows. A peaceful place. He wondered if they'd managed to scrub the dead assistant's blood out of the floor yet. The Archivist had ordered her killed just to punish him. And Brendan.\n\nBrendan. The last time he'd been in that office, Brendan had been with him.\n\nJess swallowed against a wave of disorientation and nausea and sat upright. Someone\u2014Thomas, again\u2014had helped him out of his bloody clothes and into clean ones. An informal High Garda uniform, the kind soldiers wore at leisure in the barracks. Soft as pajamas. It would do. He swung his legs out of bed and paused there, breathing deeply. He felt... unwell. Not a specific pain he could land on, just a general malaise, an ache that threaded through every muscle and every nerve. Shock, he supposed. Or just the accumulated stress of the past few days.\n\nIt might even be grief. Did grief hurt this way? Like sickness?\n\n\"Up.\" Wolfe's voice was unexpectedly kind. Warm. \"I know how difficult that is. But there is no other way but onward.\"\n\nJess nodded and stood up. He found his boots\u2014neatly placed at the foot of the bed\u2014and slid them on. His High Garda weapons belt was nearby, with his sidearm still in place. Heavy and lethal, and he felt a bit of comfort as it settled on his hip. We're at war. It felt like he'd always been at war\u2014his family had always warred with the Great Library, and then he'd fought for a place inside it. Then he'd fought to preserve the dream of the Great Library. And for the first time he wondered what peace would really feel like.\n\nHis hair was a spiky mess; he ran his fingers through it and ignored it when it refused to comply. \"All right,\" he said. \"I'm ready.\"\n\nWolfe could have said anything to that; Jess expected something dismissive and caustic. But Wolfe just put his hand on Jess's shoulder, nodded, and led the way.\n\nThe house, Jess thought, must have belonged to a Scholar\u2014there was a cluster of black-robed Scholars around a wide table in the main room, anxiously chattering in Greek, which must have been the only language they had in common. A tall man with skin so dark it took on cobalt tones; a small, elegant young Chinese woman; another man, middle-aged and comfortably round, with distinctively Slavic features. There must have been a dozen of them, and Jess recognized only two of them immediately. None of his friends were here, which came as a vague surprise.\n\nAll the talk stopped when Wolfe approached the table. No question that he held authority here. \"We're going to the Archivist's office,\" he said. \"Thoughts?\" His Greek was, of course, excellent; he'd grown up speaking it here in Alexandria. Jess wasn't as comfortable, but he was more than passable.\n\n\"Traps,\" the young Chinese woman said. \"The Archivist was very fond of them. He certainly would have many waiting there, in case he lost his hold on power. Is there any word on where he is\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said. \"We assume he has loyalists who'll do anything to protect him. Our advantage is that the less savory elements of this city are firmly on our side, and without criminals to smuggle him out past the walls, he's trapped here. With us.\"\n\n\"Or we're trapped with him,\" said one of the Scholars\u2014Jess wasn't sure which.\n\nThat earned a sharp look from Wolfe, and Jess knew the man could cut a person to ribbons with a single glance. \"Don't think he's all-powerful. Without the apathy and passive consent of Scholars and High Garda, the Archivist would never have felt free to murder as he liked,\" Wolfe said. \"We've taken that from him. Don't grant him more power than he ever earned.\"\n\n\"Easy for you to say, Scholar.\" That grumble was from the Slav, whose Greek was only lightly accented.\n\n\"You think so?\" Wolfe's voice had gone sharp and dry, his face the color of exposed bone. \"Easy. For me. Search the Archives. I was erased by him, like hundreds of others you've never even noticed missing. None of this is easy. Nor should it be. Killing a god-king ought to be difficult.\"\n\nIt hit Jess with a jolt that the Archivist had another title: Pharaoh of Alexandria. The god-king. And no doubt the bitter old man took that deification quite seriously. But we will kill him. Somehow.\n\nFor Brendan, if for nothing else.\n\n\"Look for pressure plates under the floor,\" the Chinese scholar said. \"He took most of his cues from the great inventor Heron, who built so many wonders of this place. The Archivist took his lessons seriously; his traps will be ingenious, but also quite conventional. He may also have a specific command you'll need to give to freeze the automata, should they be triggered for defense. I have no idea where you'd find that, but it should be your immediate priority.\" She hesitated. \"Perhaps... you should let the High Garda do this, Scholar.\"\n\n\"Because their lives are less valuable than mine?\" Wolfe shot back, and she looked down. \"No. I know what I'm looking for. They may not. I know the old bastard better than any High Garda could. He was my mentor, for a good portion of our lives. I know how he thinks.\"\n\nJess tried to imagine Wolfe having the same relationship with the evil bastard Archivist that Jess had with Wolfe. He couldn't bring it into focus. For one thing, he couldn't imagine Wolfe as a young man. He abandoned the effort as a bad idea, and as he looked around, he spotted someone standing in the doorway, watching the discussion.\n\nDario Santiago.\n\nNot his very favorite person in the world, but Jess felt much more comfortable about the Spaniard than he had before; they'd been enemies, cautious allies, friends, enemies again, but through all of that, Dario had been present. There was something comforting about that now, in this silent new world that lacked his brother. Jess walked over to join him. The young man had his arms crossed; he'd changed clothes, too, into a posh velvet jacket and silk shirt and finely tailored trousers. He looked rich and entitled, just as he was. But Dario had never pretended to humility.\n\n\"Brightwell.\" Dario nodded.\n\nJess nodded back. \"Santiago.\"\n\nThey both watched the Scholars arguing for a moment. Odd, Jess thought, that though Dario was entitled to wear the black robes, he didn't have them on. He wondered if that had significance, or if it was just because Dario didn't want to take away from the cut of his jacket.\n\nDario finally said, \"All right, then?\" He rocked a little back and forth on his heels, as if tempted to move away from the question. Or from Jess. But he stayed put.\n\n\"All right,\" Jess affirmed. He wasn't, but Dario knew that already, and this was Dario's way of showing some kind of empathy. It wasn't much, but from someone like him it was a fair attempt. \"Where's Khalila?\"\n\n\"With Scholar Murasaki,\" he said. \"They're helping to organize a full Scholars' Conclave. Word is we'll elect a new Archivist today. Tomorrow at the latest. We need an unquestioned leader if we intend to hold Alexandria independent; the nations sending their ships are all too eager to help.\" He shook his head. \"They're cloaking conquest as rescue, you know. Their strategy is to sweep in and claim Alexandria as a protectorate. Once they do that, they'll pull us apart and squabble over the bones.\"\n\n\"We can't let that happen,\" Jess said.\n\n\"No. Hence the election of a new Archivist.\"\n\nJess felt the impulse to smile. Didn't. \"And you're not in the running? I'm astonished.\"\n\n\"Shut up, Scrubber.\"\n\n\"Touchy, Your Royalness, very touchy.\"\n\nThere was something comforting about the casual insults; it felt like home. One constant in this life: he and Dario would always be slightly uneasy friends. Maybe that was a very good thing. He trusted Dario... to a point. And of course Dario felt the same about him.\n\n\"Your cousin's ships are in that fleet,\" Jess said. \"I don't suppose you're feeling some family loyalty today?\"\n\n\"If you're asking if I'm going to betray the Great Library to the Kingdom of Spain, then no. I won't,\" Dario said. \"But I don't want to fight my cousin, either. Not just because I like him. Because he's a good king, but he's also clever and ruthless. He'll win, unless we make the cost of winning unacceptably high. And I'm not altogether certain what he'd consider too high.\"\n\nMy brother already died for this, Jess thought. The price is already too high. But he didn't say it. He swallowed against a sudden tightness in his throat and said, \"Where are the others?\"\n\n\"Glain and Santi are organizing the city's defenses. Thomas... God knows, most likely off tinkering with one of his lethal toys\u2014not that it isn't worthwhile. Morgan is with Eskander at the Iron Tower; they're getting the Obscurists in line.\"\n\n\"And what are you doing that's useful?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Dario said. \"You?\"\n\n\"Same, at the moment. Want to come with us to the Archivist's office?\"\n\n\"Is it dangerous?\"\n\n\"Very.\"\n\nDario's grin was bright enough to blot out Brendan's absence, for just a moment. \"Excellent. I'm as useless as a chocolate frying pan at the moment.\"\n\n\"In that jacket?\"\n\n\"Well, it is a very fine jacket, to be sure. But not useful.\" Dario's smile faded. He looked at Jess, straight on. \"I really am sorry about Brendan.\"\n\nJess nodded. \"I know.\"\n\n\"Then let's get on with it.\"\n\nFirst Wolfe, now Dario. There was something comforting about their harsh briskness today. Thomas would be different, as would Khalila and Morgan; they'd offer him the chance to let his grief loose. But Wolfe and Dario believed in pushing through, and just now that seemed right to him. Eventually he'd need to confront his demons, but for now, he was content to run from them.\n\nWolfe joined them, took in Dario's presence without comment, and simply swept on. Jess shrugged to Dario and they both followed.\n\nOff to defy death.\n\nSeemed like a decent way to start the day."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "The sunrise was cool and glorious, reflecting in chips of vivid orange and red on the harbor's churning waters; the massed fleet of warships that had assembled out in the open sea still floated a good distance away. The Lighthouse had sounded a warning, and it was well-known\u2014at least by legend\u2014that the harbor's defenses were incredibly lethal. None of the assembled nations had decided yet to test them.\n\nThey would, eventually. And Jess wondered how they were ever going to defeat such a navy. The Great Library had ships of its own, but not so many, and certainly if it came to that kind of a fight, they'd lose.\n\nDario was right. The trick was to make the cost too high for anyone to dare make an effort.\n\nThe residential district of Alexandria where they walked had a street that led directly to the hub of the city: the Serapeum, a giant pyramid that rose almost as high as the Lighthouse. The golden capstone on top of it caught the morning light and blazed it back. As the sun rose, it bathed the white marble sides in warmth. From where they walked, Jess could see the Scholar Steps, where the names of Scholars who'd fallen in service to the Library were inscribed. He'd never have his name there, of course; he wasn't a Scholar or likely to become one. But if there was any justice left in the world, surely one day Wolfe would have that honor. And Thomas. And Khalila.\n\nDario would no doubt believe he'd deserve it, and he might even be right.\n\n\"Jess,\" Wolfe said. \"Heron's inventions. You're familiar with them, I would assume.\"\n\n\"Which ones? He had thousands. He was the da Vinci of the ancient world.\"\n\n\"The lethal ones.\"\n\n\"Well, I know as much as anyone, I suppose. Except Thomas, of course. He'd probably give you a two-hour lecture about it, and tell you how to improve them.\"\n\n\"A fascinating lecture for which I have neither time nor patience. This isn't a quiz, Jess. I will depend on you\u2014both of you\u2014to think. Because we go into extremely dangerous territory.\"\n\n\"Do you know how to reach the Archivist's office?\" Jess had been brought there several times, but there were precautions: hallways that moved, a maze that constantly shifted its path. The Archivist would have had good reason to fear assassination.\n\n\"His private office? Yes. I know how to reach it.\" Wolfe didn't offer an explanation. \"Then things get more dangerous. One doesn't hold power as long as he did without being prepared.\"\n\nThe city seemed so quiet. \"Where is everyone?\" Jess asked. Normally the streets were crowded with people. Alexandria pulsed with life, had a population in the hundreds of thousands: Scholars, librarians, staff, not to mention all of the people who simply called it home. But today it seemed silent.\n\n\"No one knows what's going to happen. They're staying inside, and safe,\" Dario said. \"Sensible people keep their heads down. Unlike us.\"\n\nHe shared a grim smile with Wolfe. \"Well,\" Wolfe said. \"It isn't the sensible people who get things done in these situations, is it?\"\n\nThat describes us perfectly, Jess thought. Not sensible. He imagined Brendan would have been right with him, eager to be reckless.\n\nThe walk was good; it drove the shadows back and made Jess feel almost human again. Sore, of course; the fight to survive had been hard, and he still bore the wounds. Someone\u2014Morgan, he suspected\u2014had applied some healing skills, or he'd have still been confined to a bed. But he felt loose, limber, ready to run or fight.\n\nHe wondered why Morgan had left him, but he knew; she believed her place was with the Obscurists just now. It doesn't mean she doesn't care, he told himself. But she hadn't been there when he'd awakened, hadn't been there when he needed her most to heal his broken soul, and he knew that did mean something.\n\nIt meant that he would never come first to her. Be honest, he thought. If she came first for you, you'd have done things differently. You'd be with her right now.\n\nHe wasn't sure what that meant and was too thin and tired inside to think it through. Better to focus on a problem he could solve, an activity he could complete. Leave the difficult questions for later.\n\nThey passed a company of High Garda troops\u2014no informal uniforms there; every soldier was dressed sharply and looked as keen as knives. No one Jess recognized, but he nodded to the squad leader, who returned the greeting with crisp acknowledgment. A second later, he realized how wrong that was, and turned to Wolfe. \"I should rejoin my company.\" He was wearing the uniform. The wrong uniform for the day, but nevertheless.\n\n\"You're seconded to me,\" Wolfe said. \"Santi doesn't want you back with his company quite yet. You're more useful here.\" His mouth curled in a rare, non-bitter smile. \"He thinks you may be able to keep me from my worst excesses of courting danger. I told him that was nonsense, you were as bad or worse, but he wouldn't have it.\"\n\nThat took a moment to sink in, too: Santi trusted Wolfe's safety to him. When he knew that Jess was running on emotional pain and grief. That's why. Because Santi was giving him something to keep him from wallowing in the loss of his twin. It was a brilliantly manipulative maneuver. It kept Wolfe with a semiqualified bodyguard, and at the same time gave that bodyguard a mission when he no doubt badly needed one. And Dario? Surely Santiago hadn't just appeared at random, either. He was the check to be sure Jess was operating properly, a second pair of eyes on their backs. Dario wasn't the best fighter of the group, but he was a strategist and a decent tactician, too, and that could be valuable on a mission like this.\n\nBy the time Jess had examined all that, they'd walked to the street that led in front of the Serapeum. The guard posts were manned by High Garda, and roaming automata as well; sphinxes stalked on lion paws, rustling metal wings and staring with red eyes in their sculpted metal human faces. One followed them a few paces, which made Jess nervous; he watched it carefully to be sure it hadn't been missed in the rewriting of how to identify enemy from friend. But it soon lost interest and padded away to sink down in a comfortable crouch, watching traffic pass.\n\n\"Thank God,\" Dario said. He'd noted it, too. \"I loathe those things.\"\n\n\"You've stopped them before.\"\n\n\"And will again, I have no doubt. But I'm grateful for each and every time I don't have to fight for my life. I'm not as clever with them as you are. Or as fearless.\"\n\nThat, Jess thought, was pretty remarkable; he'd not heard Dario confess something like that in quite a while. Possibly ever. The Spaniard naturally assumed he was the best at absolutely everything, and even when proven wrong often insisted until everyone half believed him. It had taken some time for Jess to overcome his general annoyance and realize what a vulnerability that large an ego could be. He hadn't yet used that knowledge against Dario. He hadn't needed to.\n\nBut it was always good to spot a weakness, even in an ally and friend.\n\nScholar Wolfe hadn't been exaggerating; he did know how to reach the Archivist's office. It involved a journey past sharp-eyed High Garda, more automata\u2014including an Anubis-masked god statue that made Jess flash back to his dream and the reality it had mirrored\u2014down hallways that seemed different to what Jess remembered. \"It's a self-aligning maze,\" Wolfe told him when he pointed that out. \"There are keys. You look for them encoded in the decorations. The alignments depend on the time, day, month, and year. Rather clever. Heron himself invented the machinery.\" Jess almost turned to Thomas to comment on that, ready for the German's effusive happiness; Thomas worshipped Heron almost as a god himself. But Thomas wasn't with them. And it surprised Jess how much that dimmed his mood.\n\n\"Let's just get on with it,\" he said, and Wolfe gave him an appraising look, then nodded and led them on without more discussion. The path took them through the forbidding interior Hall of Gods, with all the giant, silent automata on their plinths... except for the ones who'd been dispatched to the Colosseum to kill the Library's rebels. Those had been hacked apart. If they were ever to be rebuilt, Jess thought, maybe it would be better to sculpt them out of stone or simple metal. Make them symbols instead of weapons.\n\nBut he'd rather not see them again, ever.\n\nThey arrived in a hub of halls that led out in spokes; those held the offices of the Curia. All of them dead now, or fled with the Archivist. The quiet seemed ominous.\n\n\"This is a bit tricky as well,\" Wolfe said, and showed the two of them where, how, and when to press certain keys on the wall to open the hallway to the Archivist's private office. \"Elite High Garda soldiers would normally be in charge of this. Good thing they're all gone.\"\n\n\"Are they?\" Dario asked. \"How do we know they didn't flee here and fortify his office? There could be an entire company of the bastards waiting for us.\"\n\nIt was a decent question, and better warning. Jess drew his sidearm. From beneath his robe, Wolfe produced something else; it took a moment for Jess to recognize it, but the elegantly crafted lines gave it away. Thomas's work. That was a Ray of Apollo, upgraded and with better materials. Lethally concentrated light.\n\n\"Better to be sure,\" Wolfe said, and switched the weapon on. Jess made sure his own was set to killing shots, and nodded. When Jess looked back at Dario, he found the Spaniard had produced a very lovely sword, filigreed and fancied to within an inch of its life but no less dangerous for that in the hands of an expert. Which Dario was. He also had a High Garda gun in his left hand, the mirror of Jess's.\n\n\"You know how to use that?\" Jess nodded at the gun. Dario gave him one of his trademark one-raised-eyebrow mocking looks.\n\n\"Better than you, scrubber.\"\n\nUntrue. Dario could certainly kill him with a sword, but Jess was a very good shot. Unless the arrogant royal had been drilling in target practice with that likely stolen gun, he wasn't going to match any High Garda soldier.\n\nTrust Dario to think he could.\n\nDidn't matter, at least at the moment. Jess followed Wolfe into the hallway that revealed itself, and down the spacious, carpeted expanse. This, he remembered. The carpet alone was worth half a kingdom, and the recovered Babylonian walls with their Assyrian lions were just as impressive. An ancient Chinese jade vase as delicate as an eggshell glowed under a skylight.\n\nAnd there was the neat, clean desk ahead. The desk of the Archivist's assistant, Neksa\u2014Neksa, whom Brendan had loved. Who'd died for their sins.\n\nWolfe paused at her desk and looked at the two of them, each in turn. \"Ready?\" he asked. Jess nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dario echo him. He felt the hot tension of his nerves, and that was good. Paranoia was a habit these days, but it also might help him stay alive today. Might. No fear, though. That seemed wrong, but temporarily useful.\n\nWolfe pressed a button on Neksa's desk, and the door behind it slid open. Wolfe held up a hand to stop them from rushing in, but he needn't have bothered; neither of them moved. They watched and listened from where they were. There was natural light streaming in from the expanse of windows that overlooked the harbor and the threatening mass of ships clustered on the horizon. Storm clouds were forming out to sea as well. That would complicate things.\n\nNothing moved in the office, and Jess carefully inched forward and flattened himself against the outer wall at an angle, the better to see into the far, shadowy corners within.\n\n\"There's no one,\" he said. He didn't relax. When Dario tried to move past him, he stopped him with an upraised arm. \"Pressure plates?\"\n\n\"Hmmm.\" Dario looked around. There was a statue of a serene Buddha in the corner of the assistant's office. The Buddha held a heavy jade orb in both hands. Dario went to it and carefully lifted the stone out of the statue's grasp.\n\nHe put the ball down and used his booted foot to roll it into the Archivist's office. As it reached the center of the carpet in front of the massive desk, the automata in the room came to life. Gods, stepping down from their plinths. Anubis. Bast. Horus. Isis. They stared at the inert orb for a long moment with fiery red eyes, and then stepped back up where they'd been. Inert.\n\n\"Their coding is still active,\" Dario said, quite unnecessarily. It was clear the automaton gods would cut them to bloody strips if they set foot in the office itself. \"Scholar? I think this has to be your job. Since you have the weaponry to match.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said, and held his gun out to Wolfe. \"Trade me.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure that's wise,\" Wolfe said. A frown formed, pulling his brows together. Jess knew that look. It was close to a glare, but lightened with a fair bit of concern.\n\nHe felt himself grin. \"Don't worry. I don't want to join my brother. Someone's got to explain things to my father, and much as I'd like to avoid that, it should probably be me.\"\n\nWolfe didn't like it, but he allowed Jess to take the Ray of Apollo, and without hesitation, Jess strode into the office, came to a stop exactly in the center of the carpet, and waited for the automata to react.\n\nThey moved fast, but he was faster. He activated the weapon, and a thick, shockingly bright beam of coherent light jumped into being from the barrel; he held the trigger down and sliced it from left to right in an arc, severing Horus at the waist, then Bast, Anubis, and Isis. It took only a couple of seconds, a single heartbeat, and then there were inert mechanical legs and the statues' upper bodies toppling backward. Useless. By the time he released the trigger, he'd killed four gods.\n\nIt felt horribly wonderful. He stared at Anubis's face. The red eyes were still lit, but as he watched they faded to ash gray. Empty.\n\nFor you, he thought to Brendan. Not that any of these had killed his brother, but until he could reach the traitor who had, he'd take what satisfaction he could.\n\nHe'd dropped the last automaton in the same spot where Neksa had died here in this room, murdered by a mechanical's spear just to prove that the Archivist didn't make idle threats.\n\nI'll kill Zara for you, brother, he thought. And then I'll kill that old bastard. For Neksa.\n\nBut he didn't say that. Not in front of Dario and Wolfe, who were stepping into the room and observing the damage. \"Well,\" Dario said. \"That is quite a thing Thomas has made. He frightens me sometimes.\"\n\n\"He frightens himself,\" Wolfe said. \"Because he always worries how what he creates can be misused. And for someone with his particular genius, that's a very difficult trait.\" He held out his hand to Jess, and Jess gave him back the Ray. \"Feel better?\"\n\nThat was the moment when Jess's euphoria snapped, and he realized he'd let himself get complacent. One trap? Just one? No. The Archivist would have more. And they needed to be alert.\n\n\"Careful,\" he said as Wolfe approached the Archivist's massive desk. \"It'll be trapped.\"\n\n\"Oh, I know.\" Wolfe dismissed it with an irritated wave. \"I know his mind well enough. The old dog never did learn a new trick once he sat his behind in that chair.\"\n\n\"You hope,\" Dario murmured, and Jess echoed the sentiment silently. But he knew better than to stop Wolfe as he moved to the desk, looked it over without touching it, and then began to recite a nonsense string of words. Or, at least, it seemed to be nonsense. Jess kept his silence until Wolfe finished. It seemed like some superstitious incantation to him, and there was no sign that anything at all had changed from the recitation.\n\n\"Careful,\" Dario said. He'd come to the same conclusion. \"Scholar. Whatever you're doing\u2014\"\n\nToo late, because Wolfe was sliding a drawer open and pressing a button. At the first flash of light, Jess whirled, ready to start shooting, but there wasn't any need. It was just ranks of glows turning on in the high ceiling, casting greenish arcs of light down the walls. \"I disarmed his traps,\" Wolfe said. \"He never changed his security. I knew he wouldn't. He never knew that I'd heard him recite it.\"\n\n\"When did you hear this?\" Dario asked. Such a carefully neutral tone.\n\n\"Six years ago. Before he broke faith with me and stripped me of my honors. Before the prison.\"\n\n\"Long time,\" Dario murmured, for Jess's ears. Louder, he said, \"And you remembered it?\"\n\n\"I practiced it,\" Wolfe said. \"Carefully. Yes. It was accurate.\"\n\nWolfe sounded all too confident, in Jess's opinion. Worrying. \"Scholar...\"\n\nThat's when an alarm tone sounded: a high, thin gonging sound that began to accelerate. They all instinctively looked up toward the lights.\n\nA green mist was descending, drifting with deceptive grace in lightly coiling curls. And Jess's attention was caught by the door to the office.\n\nBecause it was sliding closed.\n\n\"Out!\" Jess shouted. At the same time, Wolfe cursed and began yanking open more drawers, gathering handfuls of papers and stuffing them in the pockets of his robe. \"Dario! Keep that door open! Scholar, there has to be an off switch! Find it!\"\n\n\"Get out,\" Wolfe said flatly. He was opening another drawer, moving fast and with great assurance. \"Don't let the mist touch you. Go, boy!\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. He gritted his teeth. \"I'm responsible for your safety.\"\n\nWolfe glared at him for a flash of a second, then turned his attention back to the desk. Jess crouched down, increasing the distance the mist would have to travel. The Scholar continued to ransack the desk.\n\nDario had placed his velvet-coated back against the sliding door, and now he said, \"Uh, my friends? I can't hold this long.\" It was pushing him forward with relentless strength. He braced one foot on the opposite wall and pushed back. The forward motion slowed, but it didn't stop. \"Get out of there!\"\n\n\"Use your sword!\" Jess shouted back.\n\n\"Swords are flexible, idiot!\"\n\n\"To jam the track!\"\n\nDario tossed it to him without a word\u2014and certainly not an acknowledgment\u2014and Jess threw himself flat to shove the blade into the way lengthwise, jamming the forward progress of the door. It might not last, but it eased the strain on Dario, at least.\n\n\"Do you know the history of that sword?\" Dario said.\n\n\"Do you want to live to have heirs to carry it, Your Highness?\"\n\nJess rolled back to a crouch. Wolfe was still at the desk. The mist was drifting just a handsbreadth above his curling, graying hair. \"Scholar! Now!\"\n\n\"One moment!\"\n\n\"You don't have it!\"\n\n\"Just one more drawer.\"\n\nHe was not going to explain to Captain Nic Santi how he happened to get Santi's lover killed on his watch, especially not when it was purely Wolfe's stubbornness putting them in danger.\n\nSo Jess stopped arguing. He rose, grabbed Wolfe by the back of his robe, and shoved him toward the door. When Wolfe struggled, he kicked the back of the man's knees and pushed him down under Dario's outstretched bracing leg. \"Crawl!\" Jess shouted.\n\nThen he turned and ran back to the desk, because if Wolfe had been willing to die for whatever was in that last drawer, it was probably important."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the Archivist in Exile to the head of the Burners within Alexandria. Delivered by hand in written form only. Available in the Codex only as a copy from later collection:\n\n\u2002Hail, friend. I regret not using your proper name, but as I do not know it, it is impossible. I hope you forgive this breach of protocol, as my prior correspondence was only with the former leader. Opposed as the Great Library and the Burners are, we have occasionally had common cause together. And now, we do again.\n\n\u2002I write to you now, in our most desperate hour, with an offer that only I can make to you: absolute victory. Victory for your cause. If you will join your forces with mine to retake the city and expel or eradicate these upstart rebels who seek to take control of the Great Library, against all tradition and sense... then I will personally guarantee a policy change that will allow for the collection and preservation of original works by individuals, unmonitored by the Great Library or its High Garda. I will repeal the ages-old prohibition. I will strike down the law that imposes a penalty of death for the hoarding of such originals, and the sale and trade of them. I will indemnify your Burners from any and all prosecution for the remainder of their lives for any acts committed before or after against the laws of the Great Library, including the murder of our Scholars and librarians. You say a life is worth more than a book.\n\n\u2002Now I ask you to prove it.\n\n\u2002Save our lives. Help us take this city back.\n\n\u2002Kill the falsely elected Archivist. Kill Scholar Christopher Wolfe, Khalila Seif, Dario Santiago, Jess Brightwell, Thomas Schreiber, Glain Wathen, and High Garda Captain Santi. Kill them and show me proof.\n\n\u2002Then I will discuss additional payment."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "Jess stayed low and attacked the last drawer with a strong pull. It didn't open. Damn. The mist pressed down on him, and there was a smell that preceded it, like bitter flowers. It burned the back of his throat, a tingle that only grew stronger when he swallowed. Not the immolating stench of Greek fire, though that was what he'd feared. No, this was something else.\n\nPossibly worse. Much worse. He had no idea of the kinds of terrible plagues and weapons the Archivist had kept in his storehouses. Few would. But they would be lethal.\n\nJess pulled his sidearm and fired it into the drawer's lock, shattering it, and then shoved his finger into the ragged hole and pulled until it yielded with a sudden snap. By then he was on his knees, and he couldn't remember dropping. The taste in his throat and the smell confused him. What was he doing? Why had he forced it open?\n\nPapers. Grab the papers.\n\nHe folded clumsy fingers around the thick handful and tried to rise. Couldn't. His eyes burned. His throat felt numb and seared. Breathing was an effort. Easier to stay here, easier to just... wait.\n\nSomeone was shouting his name. You need to move, he told himself, but his body felt like an unfamiliar doll. He couldn't remember how to move, but slowly, agonizingly, he folded over and pressed his face to the soft carpet. The air was clearer here, and he gasped it in little bursts, a landed and dying fish.\n\nThe voices were coming from the doorway. He crawled in that direction. The mist pressed relentlessly down on him, heavy, so heavy he felt it like a steel wall against his back that weighed him down, and it was too hard to keep moving.\n\nHe was choking on the mist. It filled his throat like cement.\n\nI'm dying, he thought. He felt some panic, but it was muted and at a distance. He pulled himself another scant few inches forward. It wasn't enough.\n\nAnd then hands were pulling him forward with a sudden jerk, and it seemed like he was flying through the air and landing in a limp sprawl, gasping, spitting, a foul foam coming from his mouth. I'm a mad dog. It almost made him laugh, but then his stomach rebelled and he curled in on himself and tried to breathe. Couldn't without his throat closing up. Someone pried his mouth open and poured in something that burned; he spit it out. They tried again. This time, it scorched down his abraded throat and all the way to his stomach. He thought it was liquor until the fourth drink, and then he suddenly realized it was just water. Only water. The clear air bathed his brain in oxygen again, and now he could think, if clumsily.\n\n\"You stupid fool!\" That sounded like Dario, but the voice seemed oddly unsteady. When Jess rolled over on his back he saw Dario kneeling over him holding a pitcher of water, now almost empty. The young man's hand was shaking, and so was the glass vessel. Dario set it down without comment. \"Do you know how close you came? Do you?\"\n\nOh. The Archivist's office. He'd gone back for the papers. Did he still have them? He raised his hands. No. He didn't. He felt a vast chasm of despair, and a huge spasm of coughing racked through him, pumping rancid green foam from his mouth again. His head pounded. He ached in every muscle. He shivered all over in convulsive tremors.\n\nHe'd failed.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he whispered. \"Papers. Lost.\"\n\n\"Not lost,\" Wolfe said. \"You held on to them. Somehow.\"\n\nJess looked up once his muscles unlocked again. The Scholar was fanning the documents out on the desk that once belonged to Neksa, studying them with great intensity. He looked pale. Beads of sweat ran down his face, but there was no mistaking the intensity on his face. Or the relief. \"You found it,\" he said, and glanced over at the two of them. \"Thank you. Both of you.\"\n\n\"Just tell me it was worth what it nearly cost,\" Dario snapped. \"Because you almost had a second dead Brightwell to explain!\"\n\nWolfe went still, and his expression blanked. Jess remembered a second later\u2014only a second this time, a delay and then a deadly, detonating flash of knowledge\u2014that his brother was dead.\n\nHe barely heard Wolfe say, \"I'm aware of that, Santiago.\"\n\n\"What if he'd died getting those and it had turned out to be the Archivist's grocery list? Think, Scholar. Your stubbornness is likely to get us killed if you don't!\"\n\nDario is... on my side? Jess didn't know what to make of that. Then he was a bit ashamed of his surprise. But only a bit.\n\n\"We should go,\" Wolfe said, and gathered up the papers. \"Schreiber will need these.\"\n\nJess coughed out another mouthful of foul, green-tinted foam. Couldn't seem to take a breath without producing more. It hurt. \"What are they?\" he managed to ask. \"The papers?\"\n\nThat got both of their attention. He wiped his mouth and sat up. That brought on more coughing, but less foam. His lungs felt stuffed with cotton, but at least he was able to breathe now.\n\n\"They're records of the harbor defenses,\" Wolfe said. \"And the process for activating them. It's a secret held by the Archivists for thousands of years, and we need it desperately now.\" After a short pause, he said, \"This is to your credit, Jess.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Jess held out a hand, and Dario shook his head.\n\n\"Stay down there,\" he said. \"Until you can get up on your own. You almost drowned in your own juices, fool.\"\n\n\"Who dragged me out?\" Jess asked. Paused for another spate of coughing. \"You?\"\n\nDario shook his head and nodded toward Wolfe, who was rolling the papers into a tight scroll that he put into an inner pocket of his robe. \"I was holding the damned door,\" Dario said.\n\n\"Don't forget your sword,\" Jess said. Four whole words without coughing, though he felt the threatening flutter deep in his lungs.\n\nThat got him a glare. \"That reminds me. You owe me for a new sword. Though where you'll get enough geneih to pay for it...\"\n\nJess shook his head. Didn't try to reply. He saved his breath for the effort to come, and with grim determination he grabbed hold of Neksa's desk and pulled himself up to his knees. Then his feet. He clung to the support for a long few seconds and felt dizzy with relief that he was capable of staying upright on his own. Running was a distant dream, but if he could stand, he could walk.\n\nAnd he had the feeling that they needed to be on the move, without delay. He'd come very, very close to not leaving the Archivist's office alive, and he thought there was a more than good chance that there were more dangers to come before they were out of this place. \"We should be on our way,\" he said. Six words in a row. He suppressed the cough.\n\nWolfe had been watching him with concern, but in the next instant he was back to the sour, dour man who had once greeted his class at the Alexandria train station. A black crow in a black robe, distant and dismissive.\n\n\"Very well,\" he said. \"Keep up, Brightwell. We need to find Nic. He should be close by.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "Finding Niccolo Santi was an easy task. He was at the Serapeum, standing near the base while a crowd of runners took orders from him and left. His lieutenants\u2014Jess's friend Glain among them\u2014waited patiently for their own instructions. There was a sense of calm, even in the chaos of people jockeying for position. Part of that was Santi himself, standing solid in the center of the storm and addressing himself to each person in turn with complete focus. He caught sight of Wolfe, Jess, and Dario as they emerged from the side garden and hesitated for only an instant before listening with full attention to the veiled lieutenant standing before him. He gave her a response, handed her a Codex, and saluted her with a fist over his heart combined with a bow. She returned the gesture and was off at a run.\n\nSanti called a pause and pushed through the crowd to get to Wolfe. A quick embrace and he stepped back to study each of them. One second for each of them, and he said, \"Jess? You look unwell. What happened?\"\n\n\"I'll get him to a Medica. Here,\" Wolfe said, and handed over the sheaf of papers. \"I'll go through the rest of what I gathered for strategic use, but this is the key to the harbor defense. Fetch Schreiber; he'll be most useful in this. It's unlikely to function as intended immediately; it's been so long since it was even rumored to be used.\"\n\n\"My God, I never thought we'd find this,\" Santi said. \"I'll keep Brightwell with me, if you don't mind. I'll have a Medica look him over.\" He gave Wolfe a long, searching look. \"And you? You're pale.\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" Wolfe said. \"I only got a mild dose of the poison. Jess breathed it deep. If you could see to his safety, I would be... relieved.\" He paused and looked around. Something seemed to dawn on him. \"Isn't this the job of the new High Garda commander?\"\n\n\"It is. The old High Commander stepped down. Don't look at me that way. Someone needed to make order out of this mess. It's temporary.\"\n\n\"Command looks good on you,\" Dario observed. \"Perhaps you should keep the job.\"\n\nSanti gave him a quelling look. \"Have you considered that not everything needs your commentary, Scholar?\"\n\n\"Ouch,\" Dario said, amused. \"Let me think about it. Wait, I have. I disagree.\" He was bright-eyed and smiling and chattering, but there was something fragile beneath it. Jess was too tired to wonder at it. He wanted to sit and close his eyes and forget that feeling of suffocation. Of surrender. \"Perhaps Scholar Wolfe intends to put his hand up for the position of Archivist later today.\"\n\n\"Me? Hardly,\" Wolfe said. \"I have rather a lot of enemies even on my own side.\"\n\nSanti's grin came suddenly. \"No one's forgotten that. But you also have one of the best minds in this city.\"\n\n\"Debatable. And you're hardly impartial. I'm not meant to lead, Nic. Don't be ridiculous.\" He turned to Jess. \"I'll leave you in your commander's capable hands. Rest. You've done well. And, Nic? Try not to get knifed in the back. You realize we have enemies masquerading as allies, don't you?\"\n\n\"I do. That's why I'm here, to show that we are efficient, effective, and in control. I have troops moving to protect every critical security point in the city, and more roving squads to keep order in residential streets, and a special elite squad paired with automata to watch all approaches to the walls; the Russians have set up camp at the northeastern gate, and there's no sign they intend to move on. I've got High Garda ships dispatched to the mouth of the harbor as a temporary blockade. Thomas is, I believe, finishing with his fitting out of the Lighthouse beam. I'll send for him and have him tackle this information you've brought. It's well beyond me.\" Santi paused again and looked straight at Wolfe. \"Let's survive this day, love. And raise a glass at home.\"\n\n\"At home,\" Wolfe said. \"Until then, keep yourself safe.\"\n\n\"And you.\"\n\nThis, Jess thought, was the love he wanted in his life: a love of equals. Loyal and kind. He wasn't sure he had that yet. But it was something to aspire to.\n\nThat sent his thoughts spinning in Morgan's direction, and he said, \"Captain?\" That drew Santi's gaze back. \"The Obscurists could help you distribute information more effectively.\"\n\n\"Yes, Jess, we've already worked that out. The Scribe there is relaying every order to the records, and from there it is disbursed out to the officer in charge.\"\n\nThat was when Jess realized that the statue sitting cross-legged on a plinth nearby wasn't merely decorative. It was, in fact, an automaton, one with a metal tablet in one hand and a metal stylus in the other, and as it inscribed words on the tablet's blank surface, they vanished into\u2014he presumed\u2014the Archives, where the Codex would then retrieve and distribute them as needed. All the orders would be coded with Santi's personal seal... or, Jess supposed, the High Garda Commander's seal, which was a role Santi now filled. The Scribe must have been tuned to Santi's voice, because it seemed to be transcribing all his conversations... including this one.\n\n\"Oh,\" he said, and felt more than a little stupid. Of course Santi would have thought of it. How much of that mist did you breathe in, idiot? The last thing he wanted to do was seem impaired in front of the captain. \"Apologies. Where do you want me, sir?\"\n\n\"In a Medica's office. Immediately. You look like you're about to drop.\"\n\nJess saluted him with a fist over his heart. \"I'll go now, sir.\"\n\n\"In a carriage,\" Santi said. \"That mist you breathed was no joke.\"\n\nSanti was already raising his hand, and a lieutenant\u2014Glain Wathen, tall and assured and strong in her uniform\u2014was running toward them. She stopped and waited, hands folded behind her back and her gaze steady on the captain. Disciplined, their friend, so disciplined she didn't even glance at Jess. \"Wathen,\" Santi said. \"Get a rig for Jess, and accompany him to see a Medica, then to the compound and fit him out with a proper uniform. Get him back here safe if they judge him able to serve. No detours.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Glain's gaze slid toward Jess, then back again. \"Will Brightwell be rejoining our company, then?\"\n\n\"That depends on the needs of the day. The situation is fluid, since for the first time in recorded history the Great Library has no elected leadership. We have foreign navies in our seas, foreign armies on our borders. And if we don't defend ourselves, we will be torn apart in the teeth of nations.\" Santi paused, as if considering something he did not completely like. \"Brightwell. Once you're cleared and fitted out, find Red Ibrahim's daughter, Anit. We're going to need her.\"\n\n\"You want to work with smugglers and criminals?\"\n\n\"I don't think we have much choice,\" he said. \"Can you find her?\"\n\n\"I can make her find me,\" Jess said. He imagined Anit's face, and conjuring her up brought his brother's specter. \"Has someone told my father about Brendan?\" It was his responsibility, but he didn't want it. Couldn't imagine writing that message.\n\n\"Scholar Wolfe sent a letter while you were resting,\" Santi said. \"He felt responsible for both of you.\"\n\n\"He wasn't, but I'll have to thank him,\" Jess said. \"It's better coming from him.\" Because Da will blame me, Jess thought. He knew his father. Brendan was the heir and favorite. Jess was the spare. Of course he'll blame me. Didn't matter. He hardly expected an outpouring of emotion from his father, either grief or anger. It would be a silent kind of rage hidden in looks, turned backs, pointed mentions of what Brendan would have done. Da sometimes flew into a true, towering fury, but most often it was a death of a thousand shallow cuts.\n\nSo he had that to look forward to, he supposed.\n\nGlain had waited patiently, but now she stepped forward and said, \"If you'll follow me?\"\n\nNo choice, really. And he was grateful for the ride."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "The Medica was shocked he was still alive. Until that moment, Jess hadn't really believed he'd cheated death, but from the look on the older person's face, he'd pulled off a miracle.\n\n\"Here,\" the Medica said, and fastened some sort of mask over his face; it had a small symbol on the side, some alchemical icon that Jess didn't recognize. But that meant it had been activated by an Obscurist. \"Breathe as deeply as you can. We must cleanse what poison we can from your lungs.\" Jess struggled to breathe in whatever it was the mask emitted; the gas smelled faintly bitter, but it burned hot going down. He obliged by taking it in as much as he could before coughs racked him, forcing it out; with it came another explosion of foam, and the Medica swiped it from his mouth and into a jar, for later study, he supposed. \"Keep at it,\" the man told him. \"You'll need an hour of that before you feel able to continue, but you can't exert yourself.\"\n\nJess pulled down the mask to say, \"You do know we're in the middle of revolution, don't you?\"\n\n\"I don't care. That doesn't change your situation.\"\n\n\"And what is my situation?\" Jess coughed, and it became almost uncontrollable; he curled in on himself, fighting to breathe, and the Medica gave him some injection. He felt the burn of it but was too desperate for air to flinch. Whatever it was, it worked. His throat and lungs relaxed, and he was able to breathe in and out again. Almost as easily as before. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Don't thank me,\" the man said. He looked grave. \"The shot will keep you going for a while, but it will wear off. The treatment mask will help to a certain extent, but the more you rely on it, the less effective it will become. Take it easy for the next few days. If you don't, the consequences will be fatal.\"\n\n\"You're joking,\" Jess said. The Medica said nothing. \"You're not joking.\"\n\n\"You're lucky to be alive at all. I'll be honest: I have no guess as to whether or not you will recover. If you do, I have no idea of how impaired you might be in the long run. Nasty stuff you breathed in. Most would have died in minutes.\"\n\n\"Lucky me,\" Jess said. He felt numb inside. He'd hurt himself before, of course; he'd been injured so badly that he thought he might die. But there was a large difference between a shot or stab wound that could heal and the thought of not being able to breathe. That was a horror he'd never really imagined. Like half drowning every minute. He'd never been afraid of injuries.\n\nHe was afraid of this.\n\nThe Medica left him to it, and he dutifully breathed, coughed, breathed more. After half an hour breathing came easier and hurt less. After an hour, he felt almost himself. Almost. He took the portable mask the Medica thrust at him when it was time to go, and promised to use it and return for more treatments and a better analysis of his progress.\n\nGlain had waited. Jess wasn't surprised by that, or by how impatient she was. The last thing she'd wanted, he imagined, was to be his sheepdog. She could have been doing important things, he supposed. Instead, she was wasting time looking after him.\n\nHe wanted to tell her. But that seemed worse than just brooding over it on his own. Glain didn't have much patience with vulnerabilities. \"Sorry,\" he told her as they left the Medica's station and took another steam carriage on to the High Garda compound. \"I know this is shit duty.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is,\" she agreed, and gave him a look he couldn't quite interpret. \"What did you do to yourself, Brightwell?\"\n\n\"It's Brightwell again? I thought we'd made progress, Glain.\"\n\n\"You're my subordinate now. So it's back to Brightwell. And that's Lieutenant Wathen, to you.\"\n\n\"Lieutenant!\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Field appointment. I'm sure I'll go down in rank as soon as the crisis is over.\"\n\nHe doubted that. Glain was among the very few people he'd met who were born to be soldiers and who accepted the hardships and responsibilities with ease. \"Congratulations.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Back to my question. What happened?\"\n\nHe told her. She listened intently, asked him about the mist with the analytical interest of someone whose business is in weapons, and he answered as best he could. She considered the matter for a few moments in silence, then said, \"I know poisonous gases were among the inventions suppressed in the Black Archives. Some attacked the nerves; some killed almost instantly. Some smothered. It sounds like you encountered that last type. You were lucky to survive.\"\n\n\"I was lucky Wolfe and Dario were there to save me,\" he said. \"I'd given up. I couldn't have made it without them.\" When he said it, he realized it was true. He owed both of them his life, such as it was at the moment.\n\nIt made him feel weak, and he hated it.\n\nHe turned his head toward Glain and fixed her with a look. \"You seem to know a lot about it. Was that in one of the books we saved from the Black Archives?\"\n\n\"It was in the Black Archives,\" she said. \"But I left it behind. I thought it was better left undiscovered by anyone else. It must have burned in the fire.\"\n\n\"Good,\" he said. \"Maybe the Archivists were right: some knowledge is too dangerous to be spread.\"\n\n\"Heretic.\"\n\n\"You're the one who chose not to rescue it.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"Yes. But let's keep that between us, shall we?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "Going back into the High Garda compound felt like falling back in time for Jess. It hadn't been so very long since he'd first entered these gates and become a soldier, but he'd been a different person then. Grieving Thomas, then intent on rescuing him from the trap he was in. But never dreaming that his actions would start a building wave of chaos and resistance that would come to a head here in Alexandria and force the most powerful man in the world to run for his life.\n\nStrange how things had gotten so wildly out of his control, when all he'd meant to do was help a friend.\n\nThis place still felt oddly like home, though he hadn't spent much time in it. Jess stared at the gleaming Spartan automaton as they passed it; the statue's head turned to track and identify them, then went back to never-ending guard duty.\n\nThey walked slowly, out of deference for Jess's lungs; he felt impatient with himself, but he could not afford to push. He needed to remember that and not feel that he was holding Glain back.\n\nBut he was holding her back. He could sense it in the tension in her body, like a tiger poised to run. He tried walking faster. It woke an ache in his lungs almost instantly, and he felt abused tissues start to swell.\n\nHe slowed down.\n\nGlain sent him a look. \"All right, then?\"\n\nHe nodded and didn't try to explain.\n\nThe entire High Garda barracks was mostly deserted now, all the clean and gleaming halls echoing with their footsteps. For the first time, Jess wondered what had been done with his room. He pointed toward the door. \"Is my stuff still there?\" Not that he'd had much. Growing up as he had meant being ready to abandon everything when the law came to call.\n\n\"Sorry. Your room was reassigned to another soldier. Your possessions were boxed up and sent back to your father. We'll kit you out of general stores.\"\n\n\"I liked that room,\" he said. \"Good light.\"\n\n\"Are you going to stay a soldier? After this?\" she asked him. Perfectly reasonable question, and one he honestly didn't know how to answer. When he hesitated, she turned her head toward him. There was real gravity to her stare. She must have learned it from Santi. \"If you have to think about your answer, it isn't for you. You realize that.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said. \"I do. But what else will I be, if not that?\"\n\n\"What do you want to do?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Something useful.\"\n\n\"Jess. Your life doesn't have to be just useful,\" Glain said. \"It's all right to have goals for yourself. Things you want.\"\n\nJess started to fire back that he always followed his heart... but that wasn't really true. He'd grown up knowing there were expectations of him, and he'd followed those as best he could. Rebelled when he couldn't. But all his life, he'd been reacting to something: his father. His brother. Wolfe. The Great Library itself.\n\nBut who was he\u2014really? He had skills, but he knew he lacked real purpose. Glain had a clear vision of who she intended to be. So did Thomas. Khalila. Even Dario, in his way.\n\nI'm more like Morgan, he thought. She's exerted every effort to avoid her destiny. And so have I.\n\n\"You should look into being a counselor,\" he said.\n\n\"Fuck off, Brightwell.\"\n\nThey'd arrived at a plain double set of doors with old Egyptian hieroglyphs inset with gold above the door and a Greek translation beneath. General stores. Glain pushed the doors open, and they entered one of the most intimidatingly vast warehouses that Jess had ever seen: racks that stretched three stories up, everything perfectly aligned and orderly. Crates and boxes neatly labeled. Clothing in crisply folded stacks. Glain didn't pause; she headed straight for a shelf that held battle uniforms and checked through them until she found what she wanted. She pulled out a protective vest, underwear, jacket, trousers, socks, boots, and weapons belt and unlocked the weapons cabinet at the back of the room to draw out a High Garda rifle and sheathed knife. She passed it all to him and pointed to a bench at the back.\n\n\"How do you know my sizes?\" he asked her.\n\n\"Brightwell, I'm your lieutenant now. I know everything.\"\n\nHe caught the slight gleam in her eye, and a quirk of a smile tugging the corners of her lips. He gave her a full grin, which was hardly protocol, and as he turned away she planted a boot sole in his rear to speed him on his way. She, at least, wasn't going to treat him as damaged goods.\n\nHe dressed quickly, feeling exposed and cold in the cavernous space. Glain was, of course, right on the sizes, even down to the boots, which fit like custom-made. He checked himself in the full-length mirror, and the reflection startled him for a second.\n\nBrendan stared back. And then it was just him, pale and unwell, an ordinary soldier in a well-fitting uniform with the Great Library's sigil gleaming on the collars and cuffs.\n\nHe fastened the weapons belt and eased the sidearm he already had into the holster. Extra charges on the weapons belt. He counted them out of reflex; the full ten. Exactly as expected.\n\n\"Stop admiring yourself and get a move on,\" Glain said. \"Unless you want me to leave you here.\"\n\nHe couldn't tell if she meant that or only wanted to motivate him. With Glain it was very difficult to tell. She'd grown into a tall and fiercely handsome young woman in the last few months; when he'd first met her she'd been awkward and uncomfortable in her body, but one thing had never wavered: her commitment to the High Garda. The perfect soldier, Glain was. And he knew he'd never match that.\n\nBut it was a fine thing to see, really.\n\nHe came back to her, and she gave him a critical once-over. \"Stand up straight,\" Glain said. \"When you wear that uniform, you don't slouch, Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Yes, Lieutenant,\" he said, and saluted her. It wasn't mocking. He tried to do it well, and it must have been acceptable because she gave him a nod in turn. But then she stopped and met his gaze.\n\n\"I suppose I should say this. I'm sorry about Brendan,\" she said. \"I didn't like him, but I know you loved him. Don't take any guilt for his death. Fact is, I doubt he'd have taken any for you.\"\n\nHe wanted to defend Brendan, but she was right; his brother usually cut his losses as soon as things turned against him, and Brendan had been pragmatic in a way that Jess knew he could never manage. And so he said, \"Thanks. That must have hurt.\"\n\n\"You have no idea,\" Glain replied. \"Tell anyone I showed you the slightest sympathy and I'll pull your liver out through your throat.\"\n\n\"Love you back,\" he said, low enough that she could ignore it if she was so inclined. She paused as she walked away and didn't quite turn.\n\n\"Glad to have you still with us,\" she said, just as quietly. \"Let's go.\"\n\nJess settled the rifle sling around his chest and followed his lieutenant.\n\nA roving patrol stopped them on the way out of the High Garda compound and checked their Great Library wristbands. Security was necessarily tight; Jess grabbed the sergeant in charge of the detail and said, \"Post a guard on the stores. Pay special attention to anyone taking extra uniforms.\" Glain had used her badge to unlock the weapons cabinets, but uniforms weren't considered as secure.\n\nThe sergeant frowned at him, then nodded. He understood well enough what Jess meant; they had enough problems without potential saboteurs wearing High Garda uniforms and gaining access to easy targets.\n\nLike the Archives, Jess thought, and felt a chill. He caught up with Glain. \"Lieutenant,\" he said. \"The Archives\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Glain said. \"I was told there's already a plan in motion to secure the Great Archives. It's an easy target for Burners, as well as other enemies. We have to watch for anything. Don't worry, Commander Santi has it under control.\"\n\n\"Does he?\" he asked. \"I've met the old Archivist. I guarantee you that he'd burn the Great Archives to the ground himself rather than lose his power. And we know he must have loyalists still working for him. Until we get him, nothing's safe.\"\n\n\"I'll send word.\"\n\n\"Promise?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, and he believed her, though clearly she didn't put much stock in the idea that anyone who'd lived their life in the Great Library could contemplate the unthinkable: destroying books. Even though she'd been there when the Black Archives had been obliterated, she still didn't comprehend that heresy.\n\nHe could. The Archivist was the kind of man who'd murder his family rather than be rejected by them. And he'd destroy the heart of the Great Library for spite if he thought he might lose.\n\n\"All right. Then we move on to the next thing. Finding Anit.\"\n\nShe sent him a skeptical, analytical look. \"Are you certain you're up to it?\"\n\n\"Asking questions? It isn't hard labor.\"\n\n\"You're pale,\" she said. \"And frankly, you look like you might drop in a strong breeze.\"\n\nHe hurt; he couldn't deny it. And he wanted badly to declare himself too weak to continue. But today wasn't a day for coddling himself, and he shook his head. \"I'll be all right,\" he said. \"The Medica gave me a mask to use to treat my lungs. I'll rest when this is done. Anit's got eyes and ears everywhere in the city. If anyone can help us root out the Archivist and his allies, she can.\"\n\n\"If she will.\"\n\n\"She will.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Glain asked. \"I'd think chaos among her enemies would be to her benefit.\" Anit's trade was the stealing, copying, and smuggling of books. And, yes, this did offer her opportunities, rare ones, but she needed a calm, orderly city to do her business well.\n\n\"Anit's practical,\" he said, and shrugged. \"She'll help us because she knows we're better than the old administration. And she can earn some grace and favors.\"\n\nGlain looked revolted at the idea of owing favors to smugglers, but less than she would have when he'd first met her; she'd come to accept that for everything prohibited, there would be an endless stream of people willing to cater to those who still craved it. And controlling those people was far better than attempting, uselessly, to completely eradicate a supply without also destroying the demand. \"Fine. Where do we start?\"\n\nThey were now outside the gates of the High Garda compound, on the hill that overlooked the harbor and the city below. A good vantage point, this one, almost at the level of the three major landmarks: the Lighthouse, the Serapeum, the Iron Tower. From here, a good commander could see all the approaches and defenses and most of the city's closed gates. Santi would be making his way here once he'd finished with orders at the pyramid.\n\nIt was going to be a long damned walk back to the Serapeum, and he felt a wave of weakness looking at it.\n\nJess pointed toward the docks. That journey he could manage. He thought.\n\nGlain frowned. \"Why the docks? No one's working today. No ships coming in.\"\n\n\"That's exactly why. Her men will be idle and drinking, and that'll be where they feel most comfortable. And most protected. So they'll be easier to approach there.\" Hopefully. Because Anit's men were hers by inheritance... they'd been loyal to Red Ibrahim, but she'd killed her own father. He wasn't sure of the allegiances just now. And if word had gotten around that Anit had killed Red Ibrahim to protect a pair of errant Brightwell boys... that would be dangerous.\n\nJess started for the path that led down the hill. Glain grabbed him by the arm. \"No,\" she said. \"Transport is leaving right now. We'll hitch a ride.\"\n\n\"I can walk.\"\n\n\"Save it.\"\n\nShe was right: there was a High Garda troop transport rumbling through the gates, and it slowed for them as Glain flagged it down. He climbed in with a real, humbling sense of relief. The troops inside were all grim and quiet; he exchanged nods with many of them he recognized, but no one said anything. Glain signaled to the driver to drop them off at an intersection of roads that led variously to the docks, to the Lighthouse, and around the curve toward the heart of town; she didn't help Jess down, and he was grateful for the trust. He wasn't that bad off. Yet.\n\nThe Alexandrian docks\u2014like most docks around the world\u2014were not for the casual tourist. It was the one place in the city where Scholars rarely visited, and High Garda went only on business, so it was a natural haven for the less savory elements, particularly smugglers and thieves. The ships crowded together at anchor in the harbor were a vivid reminder of just how vast the reach of the Great Library really was... red-sailed trading ships from China, massive multideck vessels with dragon heads from the cold reaches of Scandinavia. Sleek Roman ships rubbed hulls with ships hailing from Turkey and Russia and Portugal, those of the island nations of the Caribbean with the continents of North and South America. As many seafaring, trading countries as existed did business here... or had. Now they were all trapped in the harbor, awaiting the outcome of the most dangerous game the Great Library had ever played. Bored. And frightened. It was a bad combination.\n\nThere was, of course, a heavy High Garda presence here to keep order, but by common practice they left the bars, taverns, and brothels alone.\n\nJess headed to the closest and seediest bar he could spot. It didn't bother with a name, just an aged wooden sign swinging on a pair of hooks with a painting of a single mug with froth bubbling up. Efficient. Every language spoke it, even if every person didn't partake. He remembered the place. He'd found Red Ibrahim's representatives here more than once.\n\nGlain stopped him a few steps from the door with a hand on his arm. \"Remember, you're not going in there a Brightwell. You're in a High Garda uniform. It matters.\" She meant both watch your back and don't embarrass us, and Jess nodded to her.\n\n\"Stay here,\" he told her. \"I mean it. Bad enough I swan in there dressed this way. With you looking official and disapproving, it's a useless effort.\"\n\n\"Five minutes,\" she said.\n\n\"In five minutes, I'll either have what I want or they'll be dumping my body and you'll still accomplish nothing by barging in,\" Jess said. \"I'll be back when I'm done. Trust me. I know these places.\"\n\nHe did, but neither was he exactly sure of his reception right now. Still, nothing for it but to do the thing.\n\nNo one appeared to notice or care when he pushed his way into the room. It was\u2014predictably\u2014packed and sweltering with the heat of the bodies in it; the smell of the place was an earthy mix of sweat, fermented alcohol, and the sharp spark of heavily flavored meat cooking somewhere in the back. There were tables, but all of them were full to groaning with men and women packed on benches, and the clink of glass and metal was like heavy rain on a roof. The bar at the front was manned by no fewer than five staff, all of whom seemed overheated and overworked; Jess avoided the crush there and moved among the tables. No one met his gaze. He heard muttering from a huddle of African sailors; he didn't speak their language but he imagined that they resented being held here in the harbor for trouble that they had no part in causing. No doubt most of these crews felt that.\n\n\"You've got a nerve.\"\n\nThat direct comment came from a Greek\u2014a captain, by the look of him\u2014who drained the last of what was surely a long line of tankards. He had a long pale scar across his tanned face and a belly the size of a wine barrel. He put both hands on the table.\n\n\"Just one?\" Jess responded. The Greek was obviously talking to him, so it seemed only polite. \"I hope I have several.\"\n\n\"This isn't your place, boy.\"\n\n\"Nor yours, unless you run the place. If you do, you shouldn't drink up your profits.\" Jess was talking just to be talking, because he was watching the man's hands. He wasn't certain what was happening here, but some instinct had stirred inside him, some memory he couldn't pinpoint.\n\nThen the man's left hand moved. Three fingers curled down, and his right forefinger tapped the table twice. It seemed an odd gesture, and then Jess remembered. It was an old, old thing, this smuggler's code, used by spies and ne'er-do-wells for centuries before his time; his father had taught it to him, and his men had occasionally used it in situations just like this, to convey messages when there were too many eyes and ears around for safety.\n\nIt meant beware.\n\n\"High Garda bastards aren't welcome here,\" the Greek said. \"Nor any fools who'll sacrifice our lives for their books.\"\n\nHis fingers were still moving. This time they indicated a word Jess didn't immediately understand. He finally parsed it down to rival. Rival what? Gang? Red Ibrahim had locked this city down in his day, but his day was gone. Rivals would have come up quickly, ready to seize their piece of Red Ibrahim's crumbling empire. Anit would have trouble, no doubt about that.\n\nJess grabbed the drunken old man sitting across from the Greek and brought him to his feet, handed him an Alexandrian gold geneih, and sent him stumbling toward the bar. Jess slid into the chair, put his hands flat on the table, and said, \"High Garda's always welcome anywhere in our own city. You're just a visitor. Know your place.\"\n\nMany were watching this, but Jess hoped that they were watching the obvious: a drunken captain insulting a High Garda soldier, who was taking it personally.\n\n\"You start a fight, you'd best be able to finish it,\" the captain said. His fingers signed talk outside.\n\n\"Oh, I can finish it,\" Jess said. \"Outside. Not room enough in here to raise a glass, much less swing a proper punch.\"\n\n\"True,\" the Greek said. \"But if I go out, I promise you this: only I walk back in. You, someone carries off to a Medica, or the Necropolis.\"\n\n\"We'll see,\" Jess said. He stood up and headed for the back door, a dim gray shape in the far corner. He waited a few steps, then looked behind. The Greek was still sitting there. \"You coming?\"\n\n\"If you're so eager to die.\" The man slammed his tankard down and roared, \"Someone buy me a drink while I thrash this Library slave!\"\n\nCheers broke out, and he waddled and weaved his way toward the back door. Jess went ahead. He was alert for danger as he stepped outside, and good that he was; he caught a flash of movement and ducked, and that saved him as a club whistled over his head and smashed into the side of the damp stone wall. He shifted his stance and kicked out hard; his boot connected with a sagging midsection and sent his attacker reeling backward. Not enough to take the man down, but enough to give him an advantage. Jess felt pain as he sucked down a deep breath, but he had to ignore it. No time for it. He ran at the wall, used it for leverage to twist and land another kick, this one in the center of the man's chest. It hit hard enough to crack bone, and the man went down gasping; his club spun out of his hand and went bumping unevenly down the hill. But Jess sagged against the wall behind. His lungs were burning, and he tasted blood. This was probably not what the Medica meant when he told me to rest. He tried to sound amusing to himself, but it wasn't funny. He felt real terror that he'd just damaged himself. Again.\n\nNo time to worry about it. Jess drew his sidearm and pointed it at the man's head. \"Pax,\" he said, and fought off the urge to cough. \"I'm not your enemy. I'm a cousin.\" Cousin, in the smuggling trade, meant that affiliation with one of the great organizations. The Brightwells. The Helsinki coalition. Red Ibrahim. The Li Chang tong in China. Or the Tartikoffs in Russia. Cousins didn't fight one another, not unless territories were involved.\n\n\"You're wearing a High Garda uniform, cousin!\" The man he'd kicked down groaned. He was a big, overfed specimen with the rich copper coloring of a native Alexandrian, and he moved his hand toward his belt. Jess stepped on the hand, drawing a sharp outcry. He put a little pressure into it.\n\n\"Easy,\" he said. This time, he had to pause to cough, and he tasted more blood. Swallowed hard and forced a smile. \"Let's not make this personal.\"\n\n\"You broke my ribs!\"\n\n\"You tried to break my skull, cousin, so we're even.\" Jess looked toward the back door as it opened with a creak, and the captain finally stepped out. He was certainly not nearly as drunk as he seemed, because he took in the scene with a glance, glared at the man on the ground, and shook his head.\n\n\"Damned idiot,\" the captain said. \"Can you please not break his fingers? He's useful.\"\n\nJess removed his foot and holstered the gun. It seemed a good faith effort was needed, and thank Heron it was rewarded; the big man got slowly to his feet and backed off. The captain leaned against the bar's stone wall and crossed his arms. He kept watching Jess, and there was something in the assessment that made Jess nervous.\n\n\"You don't look well,\" he captain observed. \"Not sick, are you?\"\n\n\"Sick of dealing with idiots,\" Jess shot back. \"I'm looking for the Red Lady.\"\n\nThe captain's bushy eyebrows arched up, then down. \"Ah. The girl.\"\n\n\"Might want to be careful about saying that too loudly. She won't take it well.\"\n\n\"She's got other troubles,\" he said. \"When her father dropped and she threw her support behind librarians... well, it didn't settle well with some who felt she was betraying our own. Chaos is a time ripe for profit. Your Red Lady doesn't seem to understand that.\"\n\n\"There's very little she doesn't understand,\" Jess said. \"You'd do well to remember that. Give her a year and your support and there won't be a thief or smuggler on earth who'd cross her\u2014or you, if you stand with her.\"\n\n\"Not even your own father? I know who you are, boy. And how ambitious that man is.\"\n\nThe last thing Jess wanted to discuss was Callum Brightwell. The glancing mention brought up a deep, heavy wave of pain, and suddenly his hands felt sticky with his brother's blood. Again. He swallowed and said, \"My father respected Red Ibrahim's territory, and he'll respect the daughter's just as much. Or he'll have me to deal with.\"\n\n\"Hmmm,\" the captain said, and rubbed a thumb across his gray-stubbled chin. \"You're sure you want to find Anit, then?\"\n\n\"I'm sure.\"\n\n\"Then let's strike a deal. We have three ships ready to sail in the harbor that hold precious cargo. We need them on the way before this damned war breaks out. Arrange that and I'll tell you.\"\n\nJess unsnapped the Codex from his belt and wrote a message. He waited for a moment, watching until the handwritten answer appeared, and then he turned it toward the captain. \"Neutral trading ships will be released within the next hour,\" he said. \"Including yours. No one wants them in the middle of any conflict.\"\n\n\"That easy, is it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Jess had been lucky on that, but he'd been betting that Santi would want to clear the docks; having this many ships at anchor was a real risk of accident, fire, riot, a thousand other things. Best to get the strangers out of the way before trouble arrived. \"Where is she?\"\n\n\"All right. She's at the Temple of Anubis,\" he said. \"Lie and tell her I was loyal, while you're about it. Our ships had better sail soon. And if we lose our cargo...\"\n\n\"You'll find me and kill me in horrible ways, yes, I'm sure.\" Jess sighed. \"If you lied to me, you can count on the same.\"\n\n\"I haven't. You'll find her. Keep your word today and I'll consider supporting the girl against her rivals.\"\n\nJess nodded. \"Done. And thank you. The Brightwells owe you a favor.\"\n\n\"I'll claim it someday,\" the captain said. \"Titan Berwick, at your service.\"\n\n\"Captain Berwick.\" Jess bowed slightly. \"Try not to kill any High Garda while you're about your business. If you do, you lose that favor.\"\n\n\"Now you're just being damned unreasonable.\"\n\nJess didn't smile. \"That wasn't a joke.\"\n\nHe turned and made his way down the hill. He had to stop halfway around the building, lean against the warm surface, and struggle to breathe. It wasn't enough. He was weak and shaking, and his chest burned from the inside out. Felt like it was packed with burning cotton. He fumbled in his pocket, found the mask, and breathed through it for a few moments. It eased the pain, and when he rounded the corner he was steadier and stronger, at least for now.\n\nGlain was where he'd left her, though she looked militant and poised to do real violence. She relaxed when she saw him. \"About time. Did you find anything except trouble?\"\n\n\"Trouble can be useful,\" Jess said. \"Temple of Anubis. Let's go.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "A letter from the Archivist in Exile, blocked from distribution on the Codex, archived for future review To all within the reach of the Great Library of Alexandria: I summon you to our defense:\n\n\u2002Never before has the Great Library faced such a treasonous rebellion from within its own ranks. I say to you now, as the rightful Archivist of this vast and ancient institution, that without your action and unquestioning loyalty, the Great Library will fall. The light that has burned for thousands of years will be extinguished because of the petty, selfish greed of a few disaffected rebels. The world will descend into chaos, barbarism, and petty fiefdoms that squabble over the torn flesh of an ancient wonder. It is within your power to prevent this.\n\n\u2002I call on every Serapeum, every captain in the field, every citizen: defend us. Send aid to Alexandria. Crush the rebels and restore order before it is too late.\n\n\u2002Once any nation-state lands its forces on Alexandria's shores, or crosses its inviolable borders, the Great Library ceases to exist.\n\n\u2002Be warned.\n\n\u2002War is not coming.\n\n\u2002War is here."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "Scholar Murasaki stood next to the formal throne of the Archivist and touched her fingers lightly to the old, old wood. \"I thought it would be more... ornate,\" she said. \"And also perhaps more comfortable.\"\n\nKhalila suppressed an urge to smile. This place wasn't meant for it. The Receiving Hall of the Archivist of the Great Library, a vast marble space with lotus columns marching into the distance. There was only one automaton here: a two-story-tall Horus standing behind the chair. It was an impressive, beautiful thing of black and gold, with bright turquoise eyes. Horus held a Scribe's tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other... but the stylus had a knife-edge and was the size of a sword.\n\nThe throne sat on a raised golden platform, which rested on the backs of golden sphinxes. There were seven steps leading up to it, a number sacred to the ancient Egyptians. Four burning braziers, one at each corner: another sacred number. The place smelled of bracing, aromatic herbs.\n\nThrough some trick of engineering, the air in this chamber felt cool despite the damp heat outside.\n\nAnd Khalila knew she was observing to avoid her own sense of disquiet. She felt small here, which was by design; this was a place meant to make a mere human feel utterly meaningless... save for the one who sat in that lofty chair.\n\nThough Scholar Murasaki\u2014an elderly Japanese woman\u2014seemed more than capable of dwarfing the chair, and the room. Which was what made her perfect.\n\n\"I don't feel I am worthy of this honor,\" Murasaki said. \"I did not expect it when I was summoned here.\"\n\n\"You won by acclamation through Conclave,\" Khalila said. \"Exactly as every other Archivist has been chosen throughout the millennia. There's no reason for you to hesitate.\"\n\n\"And no great need for haste,\" Murasaki said. \"The Great Library has not survived by doing things in a rush. Even with the wolves at our door, we should take our own counsel and our own time.\" She had a bearing that reflected the gravity of the moment, and the office. Murasaki had accepted the Archivist's formal robes\u2014cloth of gold and worked in silver with the eye of Horus\u2014but rejected the elaborate Pharaonic headdress that came with them. Instead, in her gray upswept hair, she wore a simple diadem with the Great Library's symbol. She looked... magnificent, in Khalila's admittedly biased opinion. A true Scholar risen to the highest seat of the oldest institution in the world.\n\nI could never, Khalila thought. She dreamed about it, of course; in her secret, most ambitious moments she imagined herself in this same throne room, conducting the Great Library's affairs, everyone bowing to her wisdom. It felt absurd now. Humility was the basis of her faith, and she trusted Allah to raise her up, if indeed she ever deserved it. But not now, in these desperate moments. She was grateful that Scholar Murasaki was here to bear this burden.\n\nEven as she thought it, Murasaki heaved a long sigh and settled onto the Archivist's throne. She put her hands in her lap and said, \"I'm ready.\"\n\nKhalila turned toward the doors. She felt alone in this vast hall, but she wasn't; besides Murasaki, there were close to a hundred others already here, but in this vast space that felt like such a fragile, lonely assembly. There were many High Garda soldiers stationed in the shadows. Khalila gestured, and two of them opened the huge doors at the rear of the space.\n\nAnd the rest of the Great Library's Conclave poured in. Thousands of black-robed Scholars. Ten times as many librarians and staff. Most had never been inside this hall, and, like Khalila, seemed struck with the gravity of the moment. Their steps slowed as they moved inside, and the crowd naturally flowed in to fill the space allowed. But the Scholars and staff present within Alexandria at this moment\u2014those who were not stationed elsewhere, or who had fled with the Archivist\u2014still seemed too small a number.\n\nWe are missing so many, she thought, and felt a deep stab of pain. So many. But her father and her brother were in the forefront of the crowd, and she clasped them both in her arms and wanted to weep in sheer gratitude for their survival. Her father was not well; he looked frail, and he shook with the force of his coughing. But he was alive.\n\nKhalila framed his tired face in her hands and said, \"Have you seen the Medica yet?\"\n\n\"I will, my child. Soon. I promise.\" His smile lit her world. \"But I would not miss being here today, not even if I had to be carried.\"\n\n\"Don't listen to him. He walked under his own power,\" her brother said, and picked her up in a hug that took her breath away. His smile was as broad as it had ever been, as if he hadn't endured prison and near death. \"Khalila. Who knew my little sister could be so brave?\"\n\n\"You should,\" she told him, and his smile moderated a little. \"I was never afraid of you, after all.\"\n\n\"I'm not particularly fearsome.\"\n\nThat was a lie. Saleh was one of the most capable men she knew, and she knew a fair number of them these days. She decided not to argue the point, and instead cut her gaze toward her father. \"Should he even be here?\"\n\n\"Try to keep him away,\" Saleh said. \"I'll be sure he sees a Medica. But give him this, sister. He needs to see the Great Library redeemed before he takes to his bed. So do we all.\"\n\nNow that the Scholars had entered and found their places, the next rank to enter the hall was formed of High Garda: sharply dressed companies of soldiers, solemn and proud. At their head strode Captain Niccolo Santi. He looked grave with the responsibility, and as his troops took their spots at the edges of the huge hall, he advanced down the long white space. The black-robed crowd parted for him, and he walked to the foot of the stairs and went to one knee, fist over his heart.\n\n\"Your service to the Great Library is beyond price,\" Scholar Murasaki said. \"As the elected Archivist, I thank you for your loyalty and vision, and I welcome you to this sacred place. Will you take your oath?\"\n\n\"I will,\" Santi said. \"I swear to serve the Great Library with body, mind, and blood for as long as it pleases the Archivist. I swear to defend it against all enemies, within and without. I swear to uphold the laws and covenants of the Great Library, and when ordered to direct and lead the High Garda in battle. I swear to protect knowledge and its servants wherever they may be threatened.\"\n\n\"Then, rise, Niccolo Santi, Lord Commander of the High Garda,\" Murasaki said. \"Captains of the High Garda: do you affirm this elevation?\"\n\nEach captain, Khalila realized, stood at attention beside each block of troops, and one by one, they took a step forward, put fists to their hearts, and said, \"I do so affirm.\" There were dozens of commanders here. The High Garda had united behind Santi.\n\nOf course, not all the High Garda are here, she reminded herself. The deployed companies, the local Garda in the cities and towns, they're not represented. And the High Garda Elite all broke for the old Archivist, and no doubt took some of the regular High Garda with them. How many, I wonder. Santi would know. She'd need to ask him for the figures and details on the captains who were missing. Murasaki would need that information as quickly as possible.\n\n\"Khalila?\" Saleh's whisper. She glanced at him and saw him watching Santi as he completed his ceremony and began to rise to his feet. \"He is Scholar Wolfe's lover?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"Though more than that. Partner for years, though I don't believe they have formally married.\"\n\nSaleh nodded without taking his gaze from Santi. \"Wolfe spoke of him,\" he said. \"Well... not to me. I suppose better to say he spoke to him when Wolfe was... unwell.\"\n\n\"Unwell?\"\n\n\"Prison was not good for the man. You should be sure he's coping.\" Saleh frowned and cast a look through the crowd. \"I'd expected to see him here. Is he not?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"He's hunting the Archivist.\"\n\nSaleh looked frankly shocked. \"On his own?\"\n\n\"He has help.\"\n\n\"I hope he knows that,\" Saleh murmured, and she almost laughed because it was a very legitimate concern. Wolfe was absolutely capable of believing he alone was tasked with bringing down the world's most dangerous fugitive. That brought with it a stab of worry, belatedly; he had\u2014she'd heard, at least\u2014Jess with him, but Jess could just as often bring out more recklessness in people. The two of them together might well be a bad combination, especially with the grief that was bound to be consuming Jess just now.\n\nShe sincerely hoped Santi was aware of all that.\n\nMurasaki seemed at home on the throne as she began the process of accepting the oaths of her High Garda captains. After that, the Scholars and librarians would renew their oaths as a body, along with the soldiers, and then the ceremony would be done\u2014for them. Murasaki would have to receive the waiting body of diplomats, and then the Alexandrian Merchant Council. She had a very, very long day ahead.\n\nWhich meant, as her personal assistant, Khalila did, too.\n\nAs the captains finished their oath taking, Khalila embraced her brother again, kissed him on both cheeks, and said, \"I have to go to her. Watch after Father?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" he said. \"Don't I always?\"\n\nHaving a brother like Saleh was a gift, she thought, and she had never prized it as much as she should have done. She gave him a smile and he returned it tenfold, and she withdrew back to stand in the shadows near Scholar Murasaki's throne, where she could hear any requests easily.\n\nThe parade of captains had been a tense time; if the old Archivist had any assassins in their midst, that had been the best moment for them to strike. Khalila noted the positions of High Garda snipers up in the galleries; Santi had taken no chances today, other than the ones imposed upon him. She imagined the man was raw nerves, with Wolfe out exposed to danger and the threat of violence hanging in the air here as well, but when she looked at Santi she saw nothing but calm. Some might think it complacency. Khalila knew he was at his most dangerous like this.\n\nThe next phase was the mass renewal of vows from the Scholars, the librarians, and the High Garda rank and file. Khalila spoke the words with them. In the name of sacred knowledge, in the eyes of every god in every corner of this world, I swear my allegiance to the Great Library of Alexandria. I swear to protect the knowledge of this world against all enemies, within and without. I swear to nurture and share such knowledge with all who wish to learn. I swear to live, teach, preserve, study, fight, and die in this cause. The words gave Khalila gooseflesh, woke a breathless light within her. The thunder of thousands of voices together was powerful indeed.\n\nScholar Murasaki stood, and the cloth-of-gold robe she wore caught fire in the light. She raised her arms. \"Knowledge is all.\"\n\n\"Knowledge is all,\" came the response, and then\u2014though it wasn't part of the ritual\u2014someone let out a wild cheer of victory.\n\nAnd then they were all cheering, and Khalila was weeping from the force of it. This was the Great Library. Not the old Archivist's plots and schemes and cold-blooded power struggles. Not the heresy of his Black Archives, where he'd locked up forbidden knowledge. Not the prisons where he interred his enemies.\n\nThe soul of the Great Library was here, in this room, and in that transcendent moment with tears warm on her cheeks, she knew she loved it more than she would ever love anything or anyone else save for Allah himself."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "Dario arrived late, just as the oath ceremony ended. She saw him slip into the room; he was wearing his Scholar's robes, and he made his way to her side to whisper, \"Forgive me, my love, I had duties. The envoys are waiting under flag of truce.\"\n\n\"You didn't take the oath,\" she said quietly. The tears were dry on her cheeks; she hadn't wiped them away. She wanted to feel them there, always.\n\n\"I couldn't,\" he said. \"Someone had to greet these ambassadors.\"\n\nShe understood that, but she also knew that on a certain level perhaps Dario preferred it this way. He did believe in the Great Library, most certainly, but like most politically inclined people he always had an eye for the main chance, and just now that trended toward the navies floating outside their harbor. He was of royal Spanish blood, and that would never change. She loved him. But in this one thing, she wasn't altogether certain she trusted him.\n\n\"Well, Wolfe wasn't here, either,\" he said, a bit defensively, and she realized her expression must have betrayed her doubt. \"And neither were Jess, Thomas, or Glain. Don't single me out for doing my duty!\"\n\n\"I'm not,\" she said, which was a tiny portion of a lie that she would have to make amends for later, but for now she couldn't spend time on the explanation. \"Thank you, Dario. I'll let the Archivist know they've arrived.\"\n\nHe nodded and stepped back, taking it for the dismissal it was. She missed him acutely, wanted to follow him and stand with him and hold his hand, but she stayed at her post and moved to whisper the news to Murasaki. The new Archivist nodded, a single inclination of her head, and said, \"See them made welcome.\"\n\nKhalila told Santi, who signaled to his guards at the door. Inefficient, she thought. There were reforms to be made to this space. Perhaps the Obscurists could create some messaging system that would allow this process to be more effective. Or even more automata to secure this room.\n\nIt occurred to her then that not a single Obscurist had been here to take the oath. That alarmed her, set her heart to pounding heavily, and she took deep breaths to right its rhythm. They haven't broken faith, she told herself. Obscurists traditionally did not leave the Iron Tower for such ceremonies; instead, the Archivist made a journey to them to accept their oaths. But Eskander, the new Obscurist Magnus, didn't seem one to stand on such tradition. Perhaps there had been urgent things to be done and the Obscurists couldn't spare the time.\n\nAnd, just perhaps, Eskander currently held far too much power\u2014almost as much as Murasaki\u2014and didn't wish to concede it. It was a worry. One that Khalila would have to resolve for herself, before a real threat emerged.\n\nBut for now, the only real threat was coming into the room.\n\nShe watched as the great doors swung open, and the ambassadors entered under the silken flags of their kingdoms. They were dwarfed by the majesty of the hall, even a hundred strong, but they carried themselves with the gravity and confidence of kings. They knelt as a body to the Archivist, who acknowledged them with a gracious nod and signal to rise, and then one of the ambassadors stepped forward.\n\nShe knew him. It was Alvaro Santiago, the onetime Spanish ambassador to the Great Library. He'd sheltered them in his palace, given them safety and support. But now he didn't spare her\u2014or his cousin Dario, for that matter\u2014a single glance. His attention was solely devoted to the throne.\n\n\"Honored Archivist,\" he said, and he had an orator's soothing voice without a doubt. \"I am Alvaro Luis Honor\u00e9 Flores de Santiago, ambassador to the Great Library of Alexandria. On behalf of His Majesty Ram\u00f3n Alfonse of the great and sovereign nation of Spain, I bring congratulations on your appointment to this important and necessary position. May God grant you wisdom and strength.\"\n\n\"I appreciate your congratulations and prayers, Ambassador Santiago,\" Murasaki said. \"Though not the presence of your fleet beyond our harbor.\"\n\nHe pressed a hand to his heart and bowed slightly. Very slightly. \"The Archivist understands that with the chaos, the Kingdom of Spain felt it necessary to ensure the safety of the Great Library from incursions by other, less scrupulous nations. Change is necessary, of course, but change is also a moment of weakness. We brought our nation's strength only to ensure a peaceful transition of power.\"\n\n\"How very interesting. Such a noble cause, of course,\" Murasaki said. \"And yet, as you see, our Great Library functions as it always has done, without pause or\u2014as you said\u2014chaos. Your concern is appreciated, most certainly. But I assure you that we neither need nor have requested your intervention. My sincerest thanks to your king, but I must now demand that you\u2014and all the nation-states allied with you who stand at your side today\u2014withdraw your warships and go in peace. I would also ask that before you go, you swear to renew the treaties your nations swore with the Great Library.\"\n\nThat woke some whispers among the diplomats. One in the front of the crowd said, \"Your Majesty\u2014\"\n\n\"I am not a queen,\" Murasaki said. \"Nor an empress. I am merely the most senior administrator. Please address me as either Scholar Murasaki or Archivist.\"\n\n\"Apologies. Archivist, we aren't authorized to renew treaties that our monarchs and governments have rejected. The criminal behavior that the Great Library has lately engaged in fully justifies this, I believe.\"\n\n\"Criminal behavior,\" she repeated. \"I trust you are referring to the actions of our prior Archivist, who did indeed exceed the power vested in him. He should have been checked by the Curia of Scholars, except that he handpicked his allies to support him in most cases. But the Great Library itself has committed no such crimes, nor has it violated the terms of any of the treaties that have been in effect with most of your countries since the time of Julius Caesar. We have removed the offending person from his post, and I pledge to correct all the wrongs that he has done. What more can be offered?\"\n\n\"Perhaps it's time the Great Library realize that we can manage our own affairs.\" The man who spoke was English, Khalila thought. Possibly Welsh. \"And we can build and maintain our own libraries to fit our own needs. There's common talk now of a machine that can print thousands of copies of a document in a day. If true, the Great Library has outlived its usefulness.\"\n\nIt was a bold, shocking statement. It was also true, in some sense. It was what Wolfe had known, and Khalila had come to realize: that for the Great Library to continue, it had to change. It had to adapt.\n\nMurasaki smiled. Smiled. \"If you believe the Great Library is not useful, then I assure you, Ambassador, you have not studied nearly enough history to understand the import of what you have just declared. We will change to the needs of the world, as ever. But what we offer is not simply books on shelves. It is commonality of scholarship and knowledge. Without it, the world could easily fall into darkness and chaos, without a shared culture or understanding. And that, we will not allow. If you wish to withdraw from the Great Library's alliance, then you may do so. You may live in your small, dark corner and light a candle and pretend it is the sun; in time, you might even believe it. I certainly cannot stop you. But I will mourn for those you drag into the darkness along with you.\"\n\nKhalila caught her breath at the elegance of that cut. The ambassador's face reddened, but when he opened his mouth to reply, Alvaro Santiago jumped in.\n\n\"Archivist, we may discuss treaties tomorrow, if you wish to do so. But today, we are gravely concerned for the state of this city and its vulnerability to attack. None of us can afford for the Great Library to be destroyed. So we ask your permission to enter the harbor, disembark our forces, and assign them to guard your most vulnerable treasures. Clearly, the Archives must be protected at all costs.\"\n\n\"All costs?\" Murasaki's eyebrows rose. \"You would advocate invading our city and taking ownership of our Great Archives to protect them? No, Ambassador Santiago. I am afraid that will not happen. We will protect the Great Archives, as we have for three thousand years. And no nation's army will set its foot on the streets of Alexandria while I draw breath.\"\n\nIf the ambassador was thrown at all, he certainly didn't show it. \"I certainly did not mean to imply invasion. We only offer our help to enhance your security.\"\n\n\"An Archivist who stays in power with the help of foreign armies is not an Archivist,\" Murasaki said. \"So I once again must decline your offer. Send your fleets home, and I will welcome you back to your establishments here within Alexandria, and we may resume normal diplomatic discussions. Refuse, and I will see your embassies permanently closed and your staffs exiled to their home countries. I trust I have made myself clear, Ambassadors.\"\n\nFor once, Santiago didn't seem to have an answer at the ready. A tall, regal woman beside him stepped forward and said, \"Honored Archivist, I am Ceinwen Parry, ambassador from Wales. My king has directed that his troops assist in securing the Great Archives against any possible damage. We will never withdraw without seeing this done.\"\n\n\"Lord Commander,\" Murasaki said, and Santi stepped up to the foot of the steps, facing the assembled diplomats. \"Instruct our guests what they may expect, should they attempt to enter this city.\"\n\n\"Yes, Archivist. Should your ships attempt to sail into the harbor, we are prepared to activate Heron's Guardian to defend the entrance. Should you somehow overcome this barrier that no one has ever defeated, be aware that we now possess a weapon which can set wooden ships alight at a distance\u2014or melt metal to scrap. Should you evade both of these defenses, you will be met with the full force of the High Garda and the automata that defend this city.\"\n\nAmbassador Parry didn't blink. \"You should be careful of your threats, Archivist.\"\n\n\"Those are not threats,\" Murasaki said. \"They are advisories. It is our duty to defend this city from invading forces, however well meant their stated intentions. We do not require your rescue. And we will not accept it. You have my answer, Ambassadors. You may take your places as honored diplomats, or you may go back to your ships and leave. But there is no third option that does not bring disaster to you.\"\n\n\"Archivist,\" Santiago said. \"You badly mistake our intentions. We are here merely to assist in your struggle\u2014\"\n\n\"Look around you, Ambassador,\" Murasaki said. There was an edge to her voice now, and Khalila shivered at the sound of it. \"We are not struggling. We have won. You may now retire to a room we will provide and discuss your options. When you are prepared to present a unified answer, I will listen.\"\n\nIt was a clear, cold dismissal, and the ambassadors all exchanged looks. All deferred to Santiago, who gave a cool, studied bow to the Archivist and said, \"We will discuss. My thanks, Archivist, for your time and consideration.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"You will be provided with food and drink,\" she said, and Khalila immediately stepped forward. She felt rather than saw the Archivist's glance. \"Scholar Seif will guide you to your temporary accommodations.\"\n\nKhalila was trembling inside, but she kept her head high and face neutral as she led the party of diplomats and their guards out of the hall; she saw Dario watching, but he didn't attempt to join her. She was thankful for that, in a way, though she would have liked his company. As long as Spain had a stake in this, his loyalties were mixed.\n\nThe party passed through the massive doors and into the outer hall; she led them up an interior stairwell to a large, airy room with an open side facing the ocean to catch the cooling breezes. Light screens blew in the breeze and prevented the invasion of flies so typical of this time of year. There was a long conference table of polished stone with a dozen chairs of Florentine design, and couches and chairs nearer the windows for the rest of the ambassadorial party. Seating enough\u2014she saw that at a glance. What they lacked was refreshment.\n\n\"Ambassadors, I will see you are provided with food and drink,\" she said. \"You'll be assigned staff should you have any special requests. Is there anything else I may do for you?\"\n\n\"Scholar Seif, may I offer my gratitude?\" Alvaro Santiago said. \"I am pleased to see you well, Khalila. Are your friends all safe as well?\"\n\n\"All safe,\" she said, and smiled. Be on guard. He's a clever one. \"Our sincerest thanks for your assistance to our ragged party of Scholars, Ambassador.\"\n\n\"Of course. It seems my assistance had a rather large impact. I am glad to see you well. And Brightwell...?\"\n\n\"He's fine,\" Khalila replied. I hope. \"Unfortunately, his brother was lost in the struggle.\"\n\n\"All wars have losses,\" Santiago said, and she felt he meant more by that than a comment on Brendan's death. \"And all wars are destructive. You should remind your new Archivist of that.\"\n\n\"I am quite sure she's aware of it, sir.\" Khalila nodded deferentially and left to order the promised refreshments from the busy Serapeum staff. Santi, she noted, had already dispatched soldiers to guard the room's sole exit. She approved.\n\nThe pyramid's middle level contained the staff services: cleaning and catering. Khalila headed there and found the area surprisingly understaffed; she sought out the beleaguered woman wearing the silver collar of a career servant of the Great Library and said, \"Excuse me, but where are the workers?\"\n\n\"They're worried,\" the woman said. She was a short, round woman with South Asian features, and a surprising number of scars on her hands. A chef, most likely. \"Not sure everything is settled yet, and they don't want to be caught in the middle of things. I can hardly blame them, to be honest. There's panic in the city. They have families to look after. As do I, but my first duty is still here.\"\n\nKhalila started to fire back a hot reply, but then took a beat to consider. There was no point in being angry; the woman's point was well made. Great Library servants were not all careerists; many signed on for limited contracts of a year, five years, ten. They had much to lose and little to gain in a conflict, and they weren't Scholars with a stake in the outcome... but they still had priceless value. It took vast numbers of people just like this woman, and the ones afraid to appear today, to make the whole city run. She needed to keep that in mind.\n\n\"On behalf of the Archivist, I thank you for your faithful service,\" she said. \"May I ask your name?\"\n\n\"Wadida Suhaila, Scholar.\" Some of the weariness disappeared from her face. She straightened her shoulders. \"I appreciate the recognition, Scholar.\"\n\n\"Khalila Seif,\" Khalila said, and gave her a small, formal bow. \"I know you are overworked, but might I ask you to provide what refreshments are available to the Seventh Great Room? We have a grouping of ambassadors there, debating their next steps.\"\n\n\"Of course. I will arrange it immediately.\" Wadida took a Codex from her belt and quickly made a note. \"The kitchens will have it prepared, and I'll find servers to bring it up. Is there anything else?\"\n\n\"Some tea for the Archivist, when you have time,\" she said. \"In the Receiving Hall.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Another note, and Wadida snapped the Codex closed and replaced it in its holder. She hesitated for a second, then met Khalila's gaze. \"Scholar? If I may... Will we be all right?\"\n\nIt was a simple question, but still hard to answer. Khalila settled for, \"The Great Library survives. Always.\"\n\nShe took her leave, and hoped she had not told the lie of her life."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Ambassador Marta Kuznetsov to the Russian emperor Vladimir Nikolaev III. Archived in the Codex:\n\n\u2002The newly elected Archivist, Scholar Murasaki, is not as skilled in diplomacy as was her predecessor, but she is most straightforward, which is a useful trait in unsettled times. If she survives this strife, she will guide with a steady hand, and perhaps avoid some of the abuses that lie at the feet of the former occupant of the office. She has demanded a full retreat of the ships at sea. I am certain you expected nothing else.\n\n\u2002I do not recommend we comply. This is clearly an opportunity for Russia to advance upon the world stage as a partner with other nations. Should the worst\u2014or best\u2014come to pass, we will split Alexandria in parts, and of course we should seek to control the Great Archives and the books within it, though the Spanish will almost certainly defend that to the death. Peace is clearly not possible without some test of the new Archivist's mettle and resolve; if she shows weakness or indecision, if we see that this city remains divided in its loyalties... then we have no other choice but to act in the interest of our crown and our people.\n\n\u2002I am aware that the Archivist in Exile has placed a bounty upon the heads of many of those who engineered his downfall. This may be useful to us, whether we wish such a thing to succeed or to fail. I recommend that we say and do nothing, and see what strengths this New Alexandria possesses. And what weaknesses.\n\n\u2002I remain, as always, your devoted servant, and await your instruction."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "The ancient sculptor who'd crafted the statue of Anubis in the temple\u2014not an automaton, a work of carved stone, painted and gilded\u2014had done an astonishing job of it. Jess gazed up at the god, whose head tilted down to consider the worshippers below. It stood on a golden plinth, one foot ahead of the other as if frozen in a moment of action. At each corner of the plinth sat a brazier producing pure blue flames that echoed the rich enameled ornaments of the god's clothing and headdress. The space wasn't vast in terms of floor, but it vaulted far, far up, and the god's upper body was cloaked in brooding shadow. The strength and power of this place wasn't mitigated by the small figure in priestess robes sweeping dust from the corners. Apart from the single priestess, the temple seemed deserted.\n\nJess knew better.\n\n\"Wait here,\" he told Glain. She stood watchful guard as Jess moved toward the priestess, one hand on her sidearm. No doubt she, like Jess, had calculated the depth of every shadow and the potential for every avenue of attack and escape. And that was fine with him, so long as she stayed where she was.\n\nThe priestess wasn't Anit; it was a plain young woman who watched him nervously as he approached. Jess stopped a respectful distance away and said, \"Hello, Priestess. Are you in charge of the temple today?\"\n\n\"I am,\" she said. It was a good attempt at authority, though she was at least two years younger than he was. \"How may I help you, soldier?\" She looked past him at Glain. \"Did... did you come for devotions?\"\n\n\"To make an offering of faith. A gift for the temple's maintenance, in memory of my brother.\"\n\nShe almost staggered, she was so reassured. \"A recent passing?\"\n\n\"Yesterday,\" he said. \"In the Colosseum.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" She bowed her head. \"Anubis will guide him on his way. Was he faithful to the gods?\"\n\n\"Not to any god in particular,\" Jess said. \"But he respected Anubis the most, I suppose.\" He had no idea if that was true, but he knew Brendan would approve even if it was a lie. \"A thousand geneih in return for prayers for his safe journey into the afterlife. Where shall I make the deposit?\"\n\n\"The al-Adena Bank,\" she said. \"Or you may bring it here and ask for the treasurer. He is not in today, but I am sure...\" She trailed off. Jess allowed himself a small, bitter smile.\n\n\"I am sure tomorrow might bring those less hardy back to the temple,\" he finished for her. \"It's a real sign of your faith that you're here doing the work.\"\n\n\"I believe the Great Library will continue, sir,\" she said. \"And Anubis will note my faithful service.\"\n\n\"I'm sure he will,\" he agreed. \"But I confess, I also seek another power here. A quieter one.\"\n\nThe priestess raised her head slowly and gave him a long look. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Jess Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Brightwell.\" The young woman had suddenly taken on a far different stance. She knew the name. \"Welcome, cousin.\"\n\n\"You work for her.\"\n\n\"I work for my god,\" she said. \"But I am loyal to my friend, too. And careful of her safety, so you'll be wise to hand your weapons to your colleague.\"\n\nJess didn't intend to fight, and he wasn't in any real shape to in any case. So he drew his sidearm and kicked it to Glain, who picked it up. \"Good enough?\" he asked the priestess.\n\nShe nodded. \"She mourns her father,\" the priestess said. \"She's asked not to be disturbed.\"\n\n\"As much as I wish to respect that, I need to talk with her. Can you arrange it?\"\n\nThe priestess started to answer, but a voice from behind the statue of Anubis, deep in the shadows, said, \"She can't. But you can join me in our shared mourning.\"\n\nAnit stepped forward. The shadows, he realized, hid more than just her; he saw the gleam of three more sets of eyes behind her. She'd dressed in a red pleated dress, as traditional as the priestess herself, and with kohl around her eyes and henna mourning inscriptions inked on both her arms, she looked like she'd stepped straight out of the time of the Pharaohs. She seemed older, and it wasn't just the makeup and clothing. She seemed to have aged years. Her copper skin looked richer, her hair a ripple of black silk left loose around her shoulders.\n\nShe was beautiful. It struck him hard, and he wished he hadn't noticed.\n\n\"Anit,\" he said. It was a ridiculous thing to say; she knew her name, and he didn't need to sound so damned surprised. But he'd expected to find an unnaturally clever child, and instead, here stood a dangerous young woman.\n\nShe raised one eyebrow. \"Were you expecting someone else? Don't tell me you're here on account of your brother. I mourn him, too, but Brendan would laugh to think either of us was overly concerned for the state of his afterlife. He told me once that he'd always thought of you as his shuyet, his shadow-self. And I know you thought the same of him. But now his immortal soul stands before Osiris and the forty-two judges of his heart, and there we cannot help him.\"\n\n\"I couldn't help him in the arena, either,\" he said quietly. \"Some shadow-self I am.\"\n\n\"Jess...\" She shook her head. \"Why did you come here?\"\n\n\"You know why.\"\n\n\"The Archivist and his lackey, the one who killed Brendan. Yes. I expected you to be looking. But one glance tells me you're in no shape to exact any kind of revenge,\" she said. \"And do you really think I know where the bastard is, and haven't taken action?\"\n\n\"I'm fine, and if you don't know, you can find out.\"\n\nAnit's eyes went cool and distant, like stones beneath running water. Far older than her years. \"The old man is good at hiding,\" she said. \"And his Elites stand with him. No good comes of putting your hand down a snake's hiding hole.\"\n\n\"No good comes of leaving a poisonous serpent where it can strike, either,\" Jess pointed out. He leaned against the dark stone wall and felt the chill of it through the thick cloth of his uniform. Suppressed a shiver. \"And you know he will. Hard, and often. We can't let him take anything else from us. Not one more thing.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't intend to,\" Anit said. \"If I knew where he was, he'd already be begging Anubis to lead him to judgment. But I'm happy to let the Great Library take care of its own problems.\" She cast a glance toward Glain. \"Fierce as she is, she's hardly an army, though.\"\n\n\"Help me bring him to justice,\" he said. \"Common cause for killing a Brightwell.\"\n\nShe laughed. It sounded low and raw in her throat. \"Justice. There is no justice for the likes of him that doesn't come slowly, with screams. And I know you, Jess. You're squeamish about such things.\"\n\n\"I'm practical. We can bring the bastard before the Conclave and let them decide his fate. He's a traitor to the Great Library. He'll get death, but it ought to be done in public, not in private. Justice isn't done in the dark.\"\n\n\"Come off your high ground, Jess. The shadows are where we live.\"\n\nHe didn't want that to be true, but somehow, he felt she'd just spoken an important truth to him. He wanted to be better than that. He wanted to be a Scholar, to live in the light. But he, like Anit, had been born in shadow, and she was right: he functioned better there.\n\nBut that didn't mean he had to like it.\n\n\"I won't assassinate him,\" he said. \"But I will find him. And I'll bring him back alive, in chains.\"\n\nShe smiled. Not a nice expression, but a profoundly calm one. \"Not alone you won't.\"\n\n\"Then help me,\" he said. \"Unless you're pausing for your mourning period.\"\n\n\"Henna washes off,\" she said. \"And I will be mourning what I did for the rest of my life, my cousin of shadows. But if we go together, you must understand this: your notion of bringing him to justice is quaint, Jess, but useless. He won't come quietly. He won't come at all, given any choice. He'll force his own death rather than endure trial and disgrace.\" Anit looked eerie just now, in the shadow of Anubis; she seemed almost supernatural in her calm. \"This city will settle only when he's dead. Not before. Put him in chains, you risk riots and revolts, and that gives those ships and armies around us the opening to claim us as their own. Politics is a blood sport. The old man knew that when he started this. He's perfectly willing to destroy the Great Library and Alexandria without flinching.\"\n\nJess wanted to say what he knew Khalila would have said, something about mercy being greater than anger, something about rising above... but he knew this feeling too well. That growling, crimson rage that stopped him from reaching that high ground again. Because Anit was right. Taking the Archivist alive risked too much, whatever Wolfe intended.\n\n\"Fine,\" he said. It felt worryingly good to say it. \"Then let's hunt him down. Together.\"\n\nAnit said, \"Only if you swear on Anubis that you will kill the old man if you can.\"\n\nJess walked over to the statue and laid his hand on the god's outstretched foot. \"Before Anubis's eyes, and the Christian God, I swear to kill the former Archivist of the Great Library, or watch him die. Send me straight to hell if I lie.\"\n\n\"An interesting appeal to multiple faiths,\" Glain commented, \"but since you don't practice either faith with any regularity, I can't see it matters.\"\n\n\"It matters,\" Anit said. \"Devout or not, no one wants to break such a vow made in the presence of a god.\" She turned to Glain. \"And you?\"\n\nGlain snorted. \"I don't need an oath to want to kill the old bastard. It's my sworn duty. If you're done with the theatrics, can we please get on with it?\"\n\nHe looked up at Anubis once more. There was a stillness here, as if the god stared unblinking into his soul. Is this who you are? A killer? That was his brother's voice in his head, and for once, it wasn't mocking. It sounded concerned.\n\nJess thought of his heart on the scales of Ma'at, a feather balancing it as the gods watched and judged.\n\nI do what I have to do, he thought.\n\nIt wasn't a good answer, but it would have to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "Anit led them to Red Ibrahim's house\u2014not the same residence where Jess had originally met her, but another, more modest establishment in a quieter, more provincial part of Alexandria. An unassuming structure, if one didn't note the sturdy locks and the guards posted at every approach. On a normal day, they'd have blended with the common street traffic; today, they stood out like the uneasy sentries they were. In this quarter, as in so many others, families stayed indoors, awaiting whatever would happen next. Shops were closed, restaurants shuttered. None of the familiar scents of Alexandria, beyond the heavy salt of the sea; no baking bread, no spices, no tang of coffee. It felt like a terrified, breathless town today.\n\nJess struggled to keep up. Glain could tell, though Anit seemed oblivious; Glain deliberately held the pace back, and Jess felt both frustrated and grateful. Just a little farther, he told himself. Then you can rest your damned lungs.\n\nThe double doors of the house opened as they approached, and Anit quickened her stride. Her guards all seemed alert and relaxed, and her pleated dress, bloody crimson, floated in the fitful breeze.\n\nOne of the guards stationed near the building didn't look right, and Jess's gaze caught and snagged on him. A shorter man wearing a cap and old clothes, but he had the bearing of a soldier. The cap wasn't his own; it seemed too small, and the haircut beneath it seemed military.\n\nSoldier recognized soldier. High Garda out of uniform, today? That wasn't good.\n\n\"Anit!\" Jess shouted, and pointed at the man, who was positioned in a shallow, shaded corner. The soldier's hand lunged into his sagging coat pocket, and he came out with a glass globe filled with green liquid. Greek fire. He was looking at Jess and assessing the danger, and Jess saw the calculation come to an end. The man's focus shifted behind him, and he raised his arm, ready to throw.\n\nThere was no real defense against Greek fire. Only one way to stop it: keep him from throwing it at all.\n\nGlain ran for the man, and as she did, she tossed Jess's sidearm back to him without looking. He grabbed it out of the air, aimed, and fired. Three shots, slicing a line diagonally across the target. The first missed. The second hit the man's elbow, an explosion of blood and bone. The third entered his stomach just left of his liver.\n\nThe elbow wound was the kill shot, because the man fumbled the glass globe, and it dropped at his feet and exploded, splashing Greek fire upward to cover his feet and legs. For one flash the man just stared in horror, and then the Greek fire exploded into flickering, ghostly flames that clung and grew like eerie green vines as they climbed his body in a rush.\n\nGlain checked her run and veered away as the man flailed, burning. The would-be assassin screamed once and then stopped, though he continued to stumble forward, a human torch as the fire spread with unholy speed. Jess gagged on the bitter smell of the chemicals, then the sweetish reek of cooking flesh. The man's mouth still gaped open, but his throat must have been cooked, too ruined to form sound.\n\nGlain looked back at Jess, and he read the order on her face. He took careful aim this time. The shot was fatal, directly through the man's brain, and he was dead before his burning body hit the cobbles. The reaction hit Jess in the next second, shakes and nausea and horror. He tamped it down quickly. It wouldn't have been mercy to let him burn to death. He knew that. It didn't absolve him.\n\nThe stench of the Greek fire and the burning body set off a round of coughing that tore at his already-raw throat and aching lungs. He tasted blood, again, and swallowed it down. He wanted badly to resort to that restorative mask, but not now. Not here. His breath came in shallow, liquid gasps.\n\nAnit's guards were surrounding her and pushing her into the house now, and Glain rejoined Jess and shoved him toward the house as well. She had her weapon out, too. \"Good job,\" she said. \"Go on. It's not safe out\u2014\"\n\nHe didn't immediately hear the shot that hit her, but he saw bright blood spray the air from just below her ribs. A bullet had gone completely through Glain's back and out her front, and for a moment he thought it had hit him, too, but he felt no pain. Just shock. Everything seemed to slow down.\n\n\"Glain?\" He heard himself gasp it. She was still standing, swaying.\n\n\"I'm all right,\" she said, and then she coughed, and a shocking explosion of blood came from her mouth. \"Oh. I'm not?\"\n\nThen her eyes rolled back and she toppled forward into his arms. They were still ten feet from the door, and he found the strength\u2014somehow, from somewhere\u2014to drag her with him to safety, though a fuzzy darkness gathered in front of his eyes, and his body screamed for oxygen. He glimpsed the fresh, splintered mark on the doorway where the bullet that had felled her came to rest, but only as a flash, a point of information like the wide crimson swath Glain's body left in its wake. His boot slipped in her blood. He felt rather than heard the impact of another bullet cracking the stone next to his head, and then he was inside, easing her to the floor, and one of Anit's men was slamming the door shut and turning locks.\n\n\"Blessed Isis! Is she dead?\" Anit asked. She crouched beside him. Jess checked the pulse at Glain's neck and found a rhythm.\n\n\"Not yet.\" His voice sounded oddly normal. As if the answer didn't really matter to him. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it couldn't. He felt numb at the moment, light and weightless.\n\n\"Jacket,\" Anit commanded, and he stripped it off and handed it over. She pressed the cloth firmly against Glain's wound in front and rolled her on her side. Blood was pumping from the hole in her back, too. \"Fadil! Your shirt!\"\n\nThe guard nearest to them stripped off his black shirt and handed it over without a word. Anit wadded it up and pushed it into the wound. She grabbed Jess's hand and put it against the cloth. \"Hold that tight. Fadil, get our doctor. Go.\"\n\nThe shirtless guard ran.\n\n\"Doctor,\" Jess repeated. Doctors were little better than hedge witches and herbalists, for the most part. \"She needs a trained Medica!\"\n\nAnit said, \"My physician was a Medica before we paid him handsomely to leave your service. Don't worry about Glain.\" She glanced at Jess. Forced a smile. \"You're lucky my house is made for events such as this. It's a fortress, my father's favorite bolt-hole, and fully staffed and stocked. Your friend picked the right spot to find herself wounded.\"\n\nJess knew he should feel more than he did at the moment; Glain was a friend, a good friend, but all within was silence. He'd shut himself down, the better to do the work that needed doing. He still wasn't healed from losing Brendan; he hadn't even faced it, really. And now Glain. No. He couldn't afford to feel it.\n\n\"Out of the way,\" a thin, reedy voice said, and a person in a dark silk robe effortlessly slid into the space Jess had occupied as he got to his feet. \"I am Burnham, the physician. And who is this?\" The physician, Jess realized, was speaking to Glain and ignoring all the rest of them entirely. Jess's first impression was the healer was male, and then the light shifted and he thought female, but it was clearly unimportant to the healer at all what others might interpret. Glain's found a kindred spirit, he thought.\n\n\"This is Glain Wathen,\" Jess said.\n\nShockingly, Glain started talking. When she'd come around, he wasn't sure; he couldn't see her face. Her voice came slow and almost dreamy. \"Lieutenant of the High Garda. Captain Santi's... I mean... I don't know who my captain will be now. Jess?\" Her voice suddenly sharpened on his name. \"They won't make Zara captain, will they?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"Not her.\" It was troubling that Glain even said it; Zara had betrayed them, left them, sided with the Archivist. Had killed his brother. She wasn't thinking straight. \"Maybe Botha.\"\n\n\"That would be good,\" Glain said. Her voice drifted off, and she closed her eyes. \"Botha.\"\n\n\"Soldier. Soldier!\" No response. Burnham gave a frustrated, wordless growl, then said, \"Mistress Anit, I'll need immediate assistance to move her to the surgery. Must close these wounds and repair the damage the bullet's done. And she'll need blood. A lot of it.\"\n\nAnit snapped her fingers, and a guard stepped forward and scooped Glain up in his arms. He grimaced a bit\u2014she was no lightweight. Burnham nodded and walked quickly toward a hallway to the left. Anit stayed, watching Jess as he started to step back.\n\nHe lost his balance and fell back, gasping in surprise. The gasp turned into a cough that racked him almost limp. His vision grayed out. When it cleared again, he was sitting against the wall, and Anit's cool hand was on his forehead. He was breathing in shallow gasps. Her expression was worried, but she made an effort to clear it when she realized he was taking that in. \"Well,\" she said. \"I think you're another candidate for my doctor. What happened to you?\"\n\n\"Gas,\" he said. He didn't have the will to lie about it. \"Traps in the Archivist's office.\"\n\n\"Is it bad?\"\n\n\"Bad enough,\" he said.\n\n\"Do you need anything?\"\n\n\"Medicine.\" He fumbled at his pockets and pulled out the mask the Medica had given him. He fitted it over his mouth and nose and breathed deep to drag the treatment to the most damaged parts of his lungs. It burned, but he was getting used to that, at least. After a few moments, calm set in, and it didn't hurt as much. But he was no longer deluded enough to think it was healing him. Only time would do that, and rest.\n\nNeither of which he had, or was likely to get.\n\nAnit hadn't left. She sat on her knees, hands on her lap, watching. The household was in controlled chaos around them, and he lowered his mask to say, \"Just leave me. You have things to do.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"Not yet. My people know what they're about. I have little to add. Put that back and breathe.\"\n\nHe obeyed. He didn't know why he trusted Anit, but he did. Likely that was stupid and reckless, but any kind of peace right now was better than none.\n\nWhat was happening to Glain felt quite a great distance from him at the moment, and he wondered if he was in shock. No, he couldn't be. He was a soldier. He'd seen friends hurt and dead before. This was no different. Wasn't it?\n\n\"Jess?\" Anit was saying his name. He realized he'd missed something. He wrenched his gaze away from the closed doorway and looked at her. \"Do you think you can get up now?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes.\" He put the mask away and stood up. \"I should get after the sniper.\"\n\n\"Don't be stupid. Come with me. Please.\"\n\nHe followed because he couldn't think of a better thing to do, in the end. Anit led him through the center portal of the entry hall; none of her guards followed. Beyond the door opened up a large, spacious indoor garden with a fountain spilling drops into a large pool. It held Japanese koi. He paused to stare at the lazily swimming fish. The garden smelled of herbs, with a quiet, earthy scent of the garden soil beneath. Lounge chairs were positioned in comfortable spots. On one lay an abandoned original book. He walked over to turn the volume faceup and read the title.\n\nThe Prince. Machiavelli. A forbidden work, on the restricted list in the Codex; the lending of it from the Great Library through the Codex was granted to a select few, and only for a limited period of time. If this volume were legally obtained, it would have been mirrored inside a Blank, but this was a hand-scribed copy, bound in blue leather with a carefully stamped gilded title. Funny, he knew the book almost by heart. He'd taken it from his father's storehouse when he was fourteen and kept it for almost a year, before he'd been found out. A rare volume. A dangerously illegal one.\n\nHe turned toward Anit, who had paused near the fountain. \"Yours?\" He held up the book.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"A gift from my father.\" He saw the flash of guilt and horror that came over her. \"In better days.\"\n\n\"When are his funerary rites?\" He put the book back where it had been placed. He wondered if she'd ever open it again without reliving the instant she'd killed her own father to save the lives of two foolish Brightwell boys.\n\n\"When things are settled,\" she said. \"I've given him to the temple to prepare him for burial. He has a very nice mastaba ready to receive him. He invested quite a lot in it. I'll do my best to make his afterlife all he might have wished it to be. Just as he did for my brothers.\" Her voice trembled a little when she said it, and he saw the shine of tears welling up in her eyes. She took a deep breath and blinked them away. \"You may keep the book if you like. I would be pleased for it to have a good home.\"\n\nHer control broke. She began to silently weep. Jess walked to her and put his arms around her. \"The gods must hate us, Jess. And maybe they should.\"\n\nHe couldn't think of anything to say in comfort, and didn't think she'd accept it if he did, so he simply held her and rested his chin on the top of her head and wished that he could find tears. Maybe it would be a release from the emptiness echoing inside. But he didn't have it in him. Not yet.\n\n\"Anit,\" he said, when the crying slowed and shaking subsided. She pulled back, taking deep breaths, and swiped at her eyes; it only served to smear the dark eyeliner she wore even further. She'd seemed so adult before, and now she was a child playing dress-up. She was now, what, fifteen? With the weight of a criminal empire on her shoulders. \"I've lost a brother. You've lost your father. We can be each other's families now. If you'll accept that.\"\n\nShe considered it\u2014that flash of adult, again\u2014and then gravely nodded. \"I would be honored,\" she said.\n\n\"I can't overly recommend the Brightwell family in general, but I can promise you: I will be a good brother to you.\" Like I wasn't to Brendan. He let himself find a smile. It was small enough, but real. \"And together, we might just build something both our fathers would envy.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, and took another deep breath. \"I believe we could. Thank you, Jess. I am sorry for...\" She gestured at her tear-streaked face and laughed a little. \"Wait here a bit. I'll make myself less of a disaster. Are you hungry?\"\n\nWas he? When had he last eaten? He didn't know. He shrugged. \"I suppose.\"\n\n\"I'll send food,\" she said. \"I don't have to remind you not to roam around this house, do I? My men don't know you yet. Accidents happen, especially in that uniform.\"\n\n\"We should be hunting that sniper,\" he said. \"And the Archivist.\"\n\n\"You're in no condition. Sit. Rest. Eat. Read. The fight will wait.\"\n\nShe seemed supremely confident of her security within these walls. Jess hoped she wasn't overestimating that, but she was probably right: if her people were susceptible to being bribed, they'd have turned long ago and she'd have died in the road. She walked on alone out of the gracious, quiet garden room. He regarded the Machiavelli book for a moment, then sat down and began to read. All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long established; or they are new. The new are either entirely new... or they are, as it were, annexed to the hereditary state of the prince who has acquired them.\n\nThere was an entire chapter in The Prince devoted to the structure and weaknesses of the Great Library; it had been suppressed for Machiavelli's keen insight into the institution's vulnerabilities. The last thing that the Archivists of the past had wanted was to allow a mere prince or king to understand how best to overthrow what had been built at such great price. Like all nations and powers, the Great Library was built on sacrifice... some had gone to it willingly, others thrown screaming into the pit of an Archivist's ambition.\n\nAnd what if this book hadn't been suppressed? Jess asked himself. What if every single ruler of every single land had such information and insights? Maybe our leaders have been right to worry about dangerous ideas finding their way into the wrong heads.\n\nBut he'd seen the consequences of caution, too. He and Thomas had almost died for even the idea of creating a mechanical press, and they'd been the lucky ones. At least a dozen Scholars before them hadn't survived the inspiration. They'd ended up buried in anonymity, their work lost, their lives destroyed.\n\nAnd that was far more wrong than fearing what could happen.\n\nIt felt intrusive, reading this book that had been a loving father's gift to his child. Jess put it down and walked to the fountain. The koi swam toward him and lifted their gilded heads out of the water, mouths opening and closing as they begged for food.\n\nOut of nowhere, it hit him: the image of Brendan in his arms, pale as paper, his mouth opening and closing as he gasped for breath against the truth of his dying body.\n\nJess sank down with his back against the cool stone edge of the fountain's pool, drew his knees up to his chest, and felt the ice inside break like a glacier in summer, shards and chunks heavy with their own sorrow. It hurt so badly he found himself trembling, and then he thought of Glain, of the bright red blood still smeared on his hands, and the smell of it overwhelmed him again. He plunged his hands into the cool water and scrubbed them clean while the fish scattered.\n\nThe door opened behind him, and he quickly stood up, ignoring his dripping hands, because it was Scholar Wolfe. Wolfe. Here. How...\n\nAnit must have sent for him. That was an extraordinary move. Jess said, \"It's not safe\u2014\"\n\n\"I know that.\" Wolfe brushed it impatiently aside. \"I am in a den of thieves and smugglers and, yes, I am most uncomfortable that this is what I must do. But I couldn't allow you to do it without me. Not injured as you are.\" He glanced down at Jess's hands, and Jess followed the look. He hadn't managed to wash off all the blood. A dirty film of it still circled his forearms. Without saying a word, he dunked them again and scrubbed harder.\n\nWolfe said, \"Whose blood?\"\n\n\"Glain's,\" Jess said, and his throat threatened to choke off the rest. He forced himself to continue. \"She was shot. Sniper.\"\n\nHe heard the tension in the Scholar's voice. \"Is she\u2014\"\n\n\"If the last word is alive, then yes. She is,\" Jess said. \"If you were looking for all right, then no. She is a long road from all right, but she's being treated now. She took a bullet for me.\"\n\n\"As is her duty. You'd no doubt take one for her,\" Wolfe said, but Jess wasn't fooled by the dry tone. He saw the worry in the man's eyes. \"What sort of charlatan do they employ here as a Medica?\"\n\n\"Looks competent enough,\" Jess said. \"And getting her to a High Garda station was impossible.\" His hands finally looked clean. He sat back and shook them dry, then got to his feet. He staggered. Wolfe caught him by both arms and steadied him, and Jess pulled free with a jerk. \"I'm fine.\"\n\n\"You are not. I'm sending you to Santi and telling him to confine you to bed.\"\n\n\"I can't rest. Not now. The Medica gave me something to treat it. I'm all right.\"\n\n\"Bullshit,\" Wolfe said crisply. \"You breathed poison. And that has consequences. Stop pretending that it doesn't.\"\n\n\"I'm not. But don't pretend that the crisis will wait for me to heal, either.\"\n\n\"You know, we're too much alike in how we deny our own limits.\"\n\n\"I'll take that as a compliment, Scholar.\"\n\n\"It wasn't.\" Wolfe glared at him. \"I didn't need your nefarious contacts to discover where the Archivist might be hiding, but we will need them to confront him. Don't argue with me when I tell you we wait for the cover of darkness before we leave.\"\n\n\"I won't,\" Jess promised. He was too broken inside to argue. \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\"To the afterworld. The Archivist took me to see his tomb once, in the Necropolis under the city,\" Wolfe said. \"He built himself an absurdly large model Serapeum there to house his corpse for the afterlife, a pyramid built underground. Ten rooms or so. Big enough to make a temporary command center for him and some of his commanders, at least.\"\n\nThe Necropolis. Jess steadied a little, because it was a place he'd only heard of, never seen, and he'd once been keen to tour it. The obsession of old Egypt was not death, but life; in death they'd been utterly sure they'd continue to live. Supplies, clothing, possessions... all of it went with them to the afterlife. A thousand years ago, they'd also begun building replicas of their homes in the Necropolis\u2014smaller, but with all the familiar touches of their lives\u2014so that on waking in the next world they would have the comforts of their mortal homes to orient them.\n\nLeave it to the Archivist to build himself a massive pyramid instead of a modest miniature home. It reflected the size of his ego, and Jess winced at the wealth he'd looted from the Great Library's treasury to shower on his arrogance. An emperor in all but name, Jess thought. \"He's living in a cemetery?\"\n\n\"It's quiet and private, safely underground, and most avoid it,\" Wolfe said. \"He'd have stockpiled all he needed there for himself and his loyalists. I'm sure living in a city of bones and corpses won't bother him as long as it keeps him hidden from High Garda eyes. Out of respect, Santi wouldn't necessarily think to include it in the door-to-door search.\"\n\n\"Or he'll leave it to last,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Might as well do it for him, then,\" Wolfe said. \"I'm happy for you to remain here\u2014I want to make that clear. This could be difficult. And dangerous.\"\n\n\"Since when has that ever stopped me?\" Jess managed a smile, somehow. \"Or you, Scholar? You're fresh out of a prison, your third in the last few years. Don't tell me it didn't affect you.\"\n\nWolfe's eyes narrowed, but he didn't answer immediately. When he did, it was to merely say, \"Touch\u00e9.\"\n\n\"And Santi would kill me if he knew I'd let you go off on your own without me.\"\n\n\"No, he's quite used to me doing as I please, thank you. And we both know you aren't worried about losing some chance of promotion. Your time in that uniform is temporary, we both know it.\"\n\nJess had grown to recognize that, in the past few months; however much he liked the physicality of the High Garda, his ability to follow orders was\u2014at best\u2014suspect. Yet he had no special calling to be a Scholar, either, or even a librarian, as much as he loved books. He was just surprised Wolfe had seen it, too. \"True,\" he said aloud. \"But we both have reason to find the old man. And Zara.\" Zara, once Santi's lieutenant, had thrown her lot in with the old Archivist. Jess's goal now was to make her pay for that mistake. \"I don't want you walking out any door into the open. No one can protect you from a sniper with good aim.\"\n\n\"Not very good aim,\" Wolfe said. \"He didn't manage to kill Glain.\"\n\n\"That reminds me. Why would anyone be aiming for Glain?\"\n\nWolfe's eyebrows rose and drew together in the same motion. \"Perhaps they see her as an important force in the new High Garda,\" he said. \"Don't you?\"\n\nJess was immediately ashamed. He hadn't adjusted himself yet to the idea that his friends, his contemporaries, were no longer ambitious students. They were now achieving. Khalila was rising ever higher. Dario was proving himself an effective diplomat. Thomas had always been a fiercely talented engineer, but now was recognized as something even greater. Morgan was the most talented Obscurist of her generation, and second in power only to the new Obscurist Magnus. Glain was likely to rise to the rank of captain, or even higher.\n\n\"You're right,\" he said to Wolfe. \"They're all exceptional. Everyone except me.\" He smiled when he said it, just the way Brendan would have done. Self-assured and cynical. \"My genius lies elsewhere. Or maybe I have none.\"\n\nWolfe said nothing. Just studied him with that sharp, unsettling focus Jess remembered from what seemed like half a lifetime back now... the moment a black-robed Scholar had assessed a confused, nervous gaggle of students fresh off the Alexandria train. It almost felt familiar now, that silent study; it never stopped feeling intrusive.\n\n\"I wonder if it was your father who made you think so little of yourself,\" Wolfe said, which was not at all what Jess expected. \"Having met the man, I would believe it. But, Jess: don't believe what the demons whisper in the corners of your mind. We all have demons. You are not to be compared against any of the others, or against your own brother. You are yourself. And if I had not seen genius in you, I never would have kept you in the class. I don't coddle mediocrity.\"\n\nJess felt pressure building behind his eyes, and willed the tears away. No. Not now. Not with him. \"You certainly never have before.\"\n\n\"Then take it for the approval it is.\" Wolfe continued to watch him. Jess avoided his gaze and became entranced with the fish again. He heard Wolfe sigh. \"Your young friend Anit swears there is a secret exit we can use. We'll move at dusk. Until then, I want you reclining and resting and using whatever magic elixirs the Medica gave you. Understand?\"\n\nHe didn't wait to confirm it, just swept out with his robe billowing behind like a storm cloud. Jess settled on the lounge chair and picked up the volume of Machiavelli again; he opened it to a random page and began to read, or at least run his stare over the cramped, precise handwriting. He understood none of it. Finally, he gave up the struggle and put the book down, sat up, and rested his head in both hands. He felt sick, hot, fragile, and he couldn't afford this now. He wasn't as good with waiting, alone with his thoughts, as he had been before. He needed to do, not think.\n\nHe used the mask again before he left the garden.\n\nHe found Anit in conversation with two of her own; both, he was mildly surprised to find, were women. Red Ibrahim seemed to have favored men in his gang of criminals, but perhaps Anit was changing that tune. All three of the women ceased their conversation when he entered, and two of them turned distrustful stares on him.\n\n\"I want weapons,\" he said.\n\nAnit shook her head. \"You think we have better than High Garda issue?\"\n\n\"High Garda issue will get me killed if I'm seen on the street with them out of uniform,\" he said. \"By either side. And I doubt your storehouses are any less well stocked than the High Garda's, Anit.\"\n\nShe hesitated only a second, then cut a look toward the taller of the two women\u2014Nordic features, blond hair, brown eyes, tanned skin. The woman had her hair cut in a severely short style, which revealed a long scar that looped around the side of her head. At some point, she'd tattooed a striking snake over the scar. You could only see the image when she turned her head and it came clear. Effective. \"Katja, take Jess to the armory. Let him have what he wants.\"\n\nKatja clearly didn't favor that order, but she didn't object, either; she gestured sharply to Jess and walked away down a dark hall, through a doorway, down a flight of steps. Belowground now. The hall they walked smelled of dust and damp stone, and when he touched it the wall felt colder than he expected. An aquifer ran close to here, he thought. That was why Red Ibrahim had chosen this house; he would want a private, protected source of freshwater, too. No doubt this stronghold\u2014modest as it seemed\u2014had a wealth of hidden treasures to recommend it.\n\nAt the end of the hallway, behind a heavy locked door, lay one of them. Jess had been to the High Garda armory\u2014well, one of many\u2014so the sight didn't shock him. Anit didn't have the same volume of weapons stored here, but the quality was superb. Not High Garda guns, though he spotted some here and there that definitely didn't belong in private hands; no, these were clearly manufactured by civilian artisans to exacting specifications. He chose a long rifle; it settled warm and perfectly balanced into his hands, and he slung it over his shoulder and chose the ammunition that went into it. Long, elegant bullets. Anit's weapons weren't equipped with less lethal rounds. Good. He wouldn't need them, not for this journey.\n\n\"That's a good weapon,\" Katja said. \"You're sure you know how to use it?\"\n\n\"I'm trained High Garda.\"\n\nShe sniffed. \"As I said.\"\n\nHe chose a sidearm, more ammunition. A knife. Considered a folding crossbow. \"I like your tattoo.\"\n\n\"I don't care.\"\n\n\"You do know I'm a Brightwell, don't you?\"\n\nKatja looked him scornfully up and down. \"All I see is a uniform,\" she said. \"But if Red Anit says you're to be indulged, then I indulge. To a point.\"\n\nSome darker part of him found her attractive. No, not just attractive. She stirred something primal in him, and he realized that since the arena, he'd hardly thought of Morgan at all. Before that fight, he'd worried over her, wondered if they had a future together, hoped they did. But right now, in this moment, he wanted something else. Something bitter and carnal and very far from love.\n\nKatja met his assessing gaze and smiled. It was a cold thing. \"Don't mistake me. I like a good shag as much as the next person,\" she said. \"But I'm not interested. And if you know what's good for you, you'll stop looking at me like a sweet cake you want to devour.\"\n\nJess took a deep breath, let it out, and held her stare for a long few seconds. Not because he was trying in any way to threaten her; he knew that she was not someone he could threaten. Or beat, if it came to a fight. It would be foolish to even try.\n\nBut dear God, he wanted her. And he was ashamed and worried by that. \"Sorry,\" he said. \"I'm not sure what I'm doing anymore.\"\n\nKatja laughed. It sounded like silk tearing. \"Who is, Brightwell? Only fools are sure. The rest of us just do the best we can.\"\n\nHe picked up the rest of what he thought he might need, including plain, sturdy clothing and a particularly interesting armored jacket, and ignored her as best he could. It didn't work. She smelled like cinnamon and iron, a peculiar combination that made him want to know how she tasted, too. He hadn't felt this for anyone but Morgan for a while. What was it Wolfe had said? Don't believe what the demons whisper in the corners of your mind. His seemed to be particularly loud today.\n\nHe nearly flinched when suddenly her voice was at his ear, her breath warm against his skin. Nearly.\n\n\"If you're changing out of that terrible uniform,\" Katja said, \"I might reconsider what I said.\"\n\nHe turned to look. She was smiling. It was pure, wicked invitation, and he felt heat rush through his body, and blood rush straight to his groin. Damn her.\n\nIt took every scrap of strength he had to leave.\n\nAnd he knew he'd regret it. Fiercely."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt from the personal diary of Obscurist Morgan Hault. Archived to the Codex under interdict until her death:\n\n\u2002I think I've been in love with being in love.\n\n\u2002Does that even make sense? I care for Jess, of course. He saved me, and I've saved him in return; we're welded together in ways I can't even begin to explain. But am I in love with him? I keep circling that question, but it remains just out of reach. I'd like to be in love with him. I want it. But... what happened in the Colosseum feels like an ending.\n\n\u2002What's happened to us, been done by us and to us... it's changed us both. I am by turns exhausted, elated, terrified, dreadfully bored. Wild swings that hold no peace. And when I think of Jess... I realize that I think of him as comfort. But is love comfortable? I don't know. It feels like something's missing between us now.\n\n\u2002Here I am, scribbling in my journal about love, while the world burns around me... but maybe that is what I ought to do. Maybe, in the end, love is all we have left, in peace or in war, to make the surviving worthwhile.\n\n\u2002The Obscurist Magnus is calling for me. I must go. Another hard day ahead.\n\n\u2002I hope that we survive it."
            },
            {
                "title": "MORGAN",
                "text": "Morgan sipped bitter, cooling tea and fought back a yawn. Her whole body felt on fire with exhaustion, and her eyes were starting to refuse to focus. But the documents that lay before her on the table were starting\u2014ever so slowly\u2014to give up their secrets, and she couldn't stop now.\n\nBeing exhausted could wait.\n\nBut if she could just rest her eyes for a moment...\n\n\"Morgan? Can you make out this part?\"\n\nShe yanked herself awake, startled, and leaned forward. In doing so she nearly knocked heads with Thomas Schreiber, who sat across from her at the table. \"Sorry,\" she said, and tried to get her concentration back. Predictably, he'd hardly noticed the near impact, so intent was he on the page in front of them. Thomas wasn't tired. He put a large but precise finger on a tiny line of faded Greek.\n\n\"There,\" he said. \"Does that talk about the width of the chain?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"but we already know the width of the chain. Finding the chain isn't the issue; that's clearly marked on the current maps. The problem is how to repair the mechanism that winds it. There's no information here on how to open the casing. No information anywhere, in any of the records.\"\n\n\"True. But there is this.\" He moved his finger farther down the page to a string of symbols she'd read and dismissed.\n\n\"It doesn't even make sense,\" she said. \"Unless my ancient Greek's worse than yours...?\"\n\n\"Not worse. Just different,\" he said. \"This is shorthand among engineers. It may not make sense to anyone outside of the field, but we still use some of these notations. I believe these are instructions for opening the casing, but it can't be done by one person, or even two; it's at the bottom of the harbor, for one thing. The ancients must have had automata to do this task; do the Obscurists have any record of them? The Artifex engineers must have partnered with Obscurists to make and maintain them.\"\n\nMorgan's weary frustration turned to a sweet thrill of realization. \"Yes! Or, at least, it's discussed as possible in some of the texts; I don't remember any of them describing the exact automaton used, only that it functioned underwater. It would need the two of us working closely together. I would have to bond you directly to the automaton; you'd see through its eyes and use its hands as your own. But I'm not so certain that any automata we have in Alexandria now can do that sort of fine mechanical task.\"\n\n\"Scribes?\" he suggested. The mechanical Scribes were able to write, so it seemed a logical enough question, but Morgan shook her head. She held up her hands and flexed her fingers.\n\n\"The Scribes' hands are made to hold a pen and reduce movement,\" she said, \"to facilitate speed in writing. They don't even have functional legs to stand on. But...\" She hesitated. It seemed faintly sacrilegious to suggest. \"The hands of many of the god automata are fully articulated. They'd have the strength necessary and be able to move in the ways we'd need. What do you think?\"\n\n\"I think there could be nothing more appropriate than to press one of our gods into the service of saving this city,\" he said. \"Which one?\"\n\nMorgan considered it carefully. None of the automata she knew of were built to survive water for long, but it didn't have to be a particularly long job. Or so she hoped. An hour, no more. \"One of the larger ones,\" she said, \"in case we need leverage. This mechanism is bound to be very rusty.\"\n\n\"Not necessarily,\" Thomas said. \"Heron was a master at designing mechanisms meant to stand the test of time. He was known to plate certain components with platinum and palladium to combat rust.\" He sat back and sighed, rubbing his neck. He looked thinner than she remembered, and more... honed, somehow, like a particularly keen knife. Then he smiled at her in that shy, distracted way he had, and it all melted away. He was Thomas. Still. \"You're tired.\" He didn't make it a question.\n\nMorgan gave him a weary smile. \"Well, not all of us have the constitution of an ox and the brain of Heron himself, so... yes. I'm tired.\"\n\n\"I wish I could leave you to rest,\" he said. \"But while I'm sure your Obscurist colleagues are good at their work...\"\n\n\"They're not powerful enough to do this? Yes, except for Eskander, and you really don't know him. Plus you're right: we're friends; we can communicate better and faster. I can get a potion from the Medica to keep me alert.\" She yawned and laughed at the same time. \"And I need one, obviously.\" Her smile faded as she looked down at the papers spread out between them. \"We had to remove poisons from these papers before they could be safe to handle. Did you know that? The Archivist had the room trapped with lethal gas.\"\n\n\"I heard,\" Thomas said. \"But they all came out alive, ja?\"\n\n\"Jess was the one who got them.\" Her fingertips were just touching the page, and she felt a shiver run through her. \"He was almost killed doing it.\"\n\n\"But only almost. And you know Jess. He cheats death almost every day, and for far less reason. Morgan? Are you worried for him?\" Thomas's voice turned warmer. More concerned. She didn't look up. \"Jess is a survivor.\"\n\n\"Until he isn't,\" she said, and took a deep breath. Forced a smile. \"Forgive me. I get moody when I'm tired. And worried.\"\n\n\"You miss him.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, though even as she said it, it didn't sound assertive. \"I do.\"\n\n\"But?\"\n\n\"But I have too much else to think about,\" she said, then immediately retracted that. \"No, that's unfair. I'm wondering if he's all right, mostly. I\u2014I should have stayed with him, Thomas. He needs... someone. After losing Brendan.\" If you'd really loved him, you wouldn't have left him, some part of her said. And she had to admit that was probably true. But she did love him. The question was... how much? For how long? How deeply? She'd been swept away by the breathless joy of being seen, being wanted. And so had Jess, she thought. But was that enough for the rest of their lives?\n\nIf you have to ask the question, you know the answer.\n\n\"Jess isn't alone,\" Thomas replied calmly. \"He'll need comfort, but right now I think he needs structure. He has Scholar Wolfe for that. I think he is better with tasks to occupy him.\"\n\n\"Men,\" Morgan said. \"You all hide your feelings too much.\"\n\n\"That is true, but not useful to want us to change, is it? We are as we were built.\"\n\n\"People aren't automata, Thomas. They can change if they want to do so.\"\n\n\"Ah, but can they change for the better? And who decides? This is why I prefer my machines. Far easier to fix a broken automaton than a broken person.\" His smile felt as warm as summer sun, and for a moment she forgot they weren't just two students, debating. But then he turned back to the paper. \"Can you find me a suitable god, then?\"\n\nShe knew it wasn't what he meant, but it was still a startling question. \"I'll find one. But we shouldn't do this exhausted. It will take a lot of effort, at least for me. And probably even for you.\"\n\nThomas nodded, stretched, and yawned. Neither of them had slept in more than a day with the stress of what was happening, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd paused for more than a bite or two of food. Her throat was dry, despite the tea. She craved a large glass of water and her bed.\n\n\"Go,\" she told him. \"It's getting late, and you and I both need the rest.\"\n\n\"May I sleep in one of the empty rooms?\" There were plenty of empty bedrooms in the Iron Tower where the Obscurists lived; the population within had been steadily declining for a long time. \"It saves me a walk back to the office I was given. I don't have sleeping quarters yet.\"\n\n\"Of course. Annis can see to it for you. And call at the kitchens, see if they can make you food. They should have plenty.\"\n\nHe placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and squeezed very, very carefully. She was grateful. Thomas's full strength could easily crack her collarbone. \"Don't stay up brooding,\" he told her. \"We are doing what we can do. What we can't do we must leave to others.\"\n\nShe nodded. Thomas's genius was legendary, but what most overlooked was the gentle care he took of his friends. Sleep would be relief, but she knew it might yet elude her no matter how much her body ached for the release. \"I'll go to bed,\" she said. \"Go on, Thomas. Annis is just outside. She'll see you settled.\"\n\nWhen the big young man was gone, she felt cold. Alone. And although deeply tired, still agitated. Power sizzled in her veins, dark and glorious; she'd used so much in the battle at the Colosseum, and yet she felt bursting with it still. It wasn't the same power she'd grown up feeling; that had been a steady, slow trickle from the world around her, just enough to fuel the modest efforts at elemental manipulation, cleverly rewriting Obscurist codes, concealing herself from detection. She'd spent most of her life in hiding, trying to erase her existence from the Great Library's ever-seeing eye. But once she'd stopped hiding, once she'd used the power she was born with... it had changed. Grown. Darkened.\n\nShe knew how dangerous it was. Few Obscurists could reach the power that she did, drawn directly from the universal fluid, the quintessence, of the world; the few who could died young and often took others with them. Power always corrupted. It was a law of nature.\n\nShe sat back with a sigh and rubbed the sore spot on her lower back, then stood. This was a spare workroom inside the vast Iron Tower; it was little used and had a fine-ground grit on every surface. The cleaners hadn't visited in weeks, if not months. I just made Thomas a vow that I could bind him to an automaton, she thought. And I'm not sure what will happen if I do it. She remembered what she'd done on the arena floor, and shivered. Her talents ran dark, no question of that. No. I will just have to be careful. So very careful.\n\nShe blinked and saw a shimmering afterimage. There was power in this room. Odd, hidden power. She closed her eyes and opened them slowly, searching for the source of the glimmer. It came from a flagstone in the corner. Morgan walked to it, touched the stone, and felt it move. Loose. She pried it up. Beneath lay a ring.\n\nNot just any ring. This one was emblazoned with the seal of the Great Library, gold set into an amber stone. Just by holding her hand above it she felt the shimmer from it\u2014not heat, but energy.\n\nA voice from behind her said, \"I hoped you'd find that when I told you to use this room.\"\n\nShe looked around, startled out of her uncertainty. The Obscurist Magnus Eskander stood in the doorway. He'd avoided the formal robes of the office, unlike his unpleasant predecessor; he was dressed in a plain workman's shirt and trousers, with boots that had seen years of use. A lean, strong elder with long, curling gray hair. Scholar Wolfe's father. Her honorary grandfather, in a sense.\n\n\"What is it?\" she asked. He closed the workroom door and approached to stare down at the ring with her.\n\n\"What do you think it is?\"\n\nHe was as bad as his son; everything, even the simplest question, had to be made into a lesson. Morgan resisted the urge to roll her eyes. \"A ring?\"\n\n\"Come, girl, you're not head-blind.\"\n\n\"Someone stored power in it,\" she said. \"An accumulation from the quintessence.\"\n\n\"Not quintessence. Apeiron,\" he corrected. \"Apeiron is a greater unification even than quintessence. It underlies the reality that we observe, and all other realities. But you are correct, the ring is rich in it.\"\n\n\"I didn't know it was possible to store it in a matrix like this.\"\n\n\"It's rare,\" he said. \"But not unknown. This particular ring was created by the Obscurist Magnus Gargi Vachaknavi over five thousand years ago. Quite old. And quite dangerous.\"\n\n\"What's it doing here?\"\n\n\"I put it here,\" he said. \"I wanted to see if you'd find it. Which you did.\"\n\nAnother test. Morgan glared at him. \"I thought you didn't want to be the Obscurist. You're acting like one.\"\n\n\"I don't want it,\" he said. \"I want to be left alone. So training you to take my place seems the very best option I have to achieve that goal, wouldn't you agree?\"\n\n\"I don't want to be the Obscurist!\"\n\nHe waved that aside. \"We don't always get what we want, and for as long as Obscurists are necessary to the proper operation of the Great Library we'll need a steady hand to guide them. We need to ensure that the automata and the Great Archives remain functional. You're the logical choice to take the job on. I've reviewed every Obscurist in this tower. You are, in fact, the only choice I can see that won't ultimately compromise the work.\"\n\n\"Annis told me you didn't give a damn for the Great Library. That you were brought here against your will and forced into service. Like me.\"\n\n\"Like many of us, and the ancestors of many more,\" he agreed. \"But I don't do this for the Great Library. I do it for the memory of the woman I loved, who did believe in that cause. Whether I wanted the responsibility or not, it's landed on me. And it will land on you. Get used to the idea, Morgan. I know you're young for it, and rash, and frustrated. But the world looks to us for this. We can only look to each other.\"\n\n\"I never wanted it.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Eskander said. \"Take the ring.\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"The amount of power I used before\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm aware that you've overreached,\" he said. \"Not the first time, nor I imagine will it be the last with you, though each time you burn so hot you shorten your own life. I trust you know that? The young feel immortal. But you're not.\"\n\nMorgan took in a deep breath. \"It's more than that,\" she said. \"I can feel it. The power I can reach now... it's not pure. If I take this ring...\"\n\n\"We don't know what will happen until you do,\" Eskander said. \"Go on.\"\n\n\"What if I\u2014\"\n\n\"Take it.\"\n\nShe didn't like it. She was tired, and afraid, and sickened inside, but she stooped down and took the ring from its hidden spot. It gleamed soft gold and amber. There was a brilliant spot of red hidden in the stone, and as she turned it in her palm, it seemed to move. But that couldn't be true; amber was a stone made from ancient fossilized resin. Nothing could flow freely inside it.\n\n\"The speck you see inside is the blood of Gargi Vachaknavi,\" Eskander said. \"She was the most brilliant woman of several dozen ages\u2014famous enough that even the male-dominated courts of ancient kingdoms couldn't deny her honors. She lives on in that stone. And you are the one to wear it now.\"\n\n\"I'm not brilliant,\" she said. She felt humiliated, oddly enough. Small and fearful and unworthy. \"Please take it.\" She held it out. He shook his head.\n\n\"You aren't Gargi,\" he agreed. \"But you are something else. Something I feel certain that lady would find worthwhile to nurture. Put the ring on, Morgan.\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\nHe put his hands on her shoulders and gazed down at her. His son had the same look. The same hidden warmth buried under layers of severity. \"Put the ring on. I'm here. I won't abandon you.\"\n\nShe felt her tired eyes fill with tears. When those tears fell, they tasted bitter. \"I feel so wrong.\"\n\n\"Then I will help you,\" he said. \"Do you trust me?\"\n\nShe did. Against her will. Against all her experience. So she nodded, took another breath, and tried to put the ring on her right hand. No, that felt wrong. It belonged on her left, on her middle finger, and as it settled against her skin she felt something wash over her. Not power. Emotion. Welcome.\n\nThe power came after, a wave that crashed in on her and buried her deep, screaming silently and rolling in the ocean of gold. Drowning in the deep, rich flood of something primal and powerful.\n\nShe felt it wash her clean inside. It burned, and it hurt, but she'd felt this before; she knew to hang on and wait for the relief. And it came, oh, it came cool as water through her veins. She flinched, shuddered, and looked down at the ring on her hand.\n\nShe hadn't imagined it. The red spot in the stone was moving. As if the honey under the surface remained liquid and sweet. She felt... free. Light. Strong. Strong enough to bring this entire tower down around her, to level cities, to burn out stars.\n\nIt was terrifying and wonderful.\n\n\"No one should have this power,\" she whispered. \"No one.\" But she didn't want to give it up, either. There was a feeling that the ring itself had decided this and not her. That the ring believed in her, if such a thing was possible.\n\nEskander still held her shoulders, but he was looking at her completely differently now. There was a sharp assessment in his eyes, and a light frown between his brows. He was reading her on a deeper level than just the physical.\n\nAnd he finally said, \"The ring will help you with what you need. Whatever that may be. But don't underestimate it: it will judge your intentions, too. It's intelligent, in a way; it's also inherited Vachaknavi's loyalty to the Great Library. That's why this ring was put away... because the ring began to sharply disagree with the Obscurists Magni over the years about the course the Great Library was on. It will warn you first, then stop you, if it feels you are doing wrong.\"\n\n\"What if it is wrong?\"\n\n\"Then you have to change its mind,\" he said. \"But you can't take it off, Morgan. It's meant to be on your hand now. It will stay until it feels it's time to go.\"\n\n\"This isn't\u2014this isn't alchemy. It's sorcery.\"\n\n\"It comes from a tradition that didn't see the distinction between the two,\" he said. \"There's nothing to fear here. Now, go to bed. Rest. And help Thomas in the morning.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "She intended to follow those orders, truly, but when she wandered out into the curving corridor, out to the central core with the lifting chamber that carried her to her old bedroom doorway\u2014a bedroom that still contained things she'd left behind, full of past bad memories\u2014she couldn't go in. She went to the kitchens and ate a bowl of soup standing up. The woman on duty was baking bread, and the rich smell of it made Morgan's mouth water even though her immediate hunger was sated.\n\nMorgan took a hot roll with her up to the highest public level of the Iron Tower: the gardens. It was just as she'd last seen it, bursting with color and life. The singing of birds in the trees and the splash of fountains made something restless in her go temporarily still, and she stretched out on one of the long garden lounges, curled on her side, and finally allowed herself to sleep with the roll still clutched half-eaten in her hand."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "I'm dreaming, Morgan thought.\n\nShe was floating in the ocean, staring up at a dark sky shot with stars. Watching comets streak across the blackness, trailing fire. She was happy.\n\nAnd then she was drowning.\n\nIt felt as if a rope had been tied around her middle and a giant pulled her down. As if she was falling from a great height, the water rushing around her, her hands waving and grasping for the peaceful surface. She tried to hold her breath. Couldn't.\n\nBut when she breathed, she received air\u2014fresh air that smelled of flowers and earth.\n\nThen she was standing on the sandy floor of the ocean, which was also lit by a rising sun, and a young woman floated in the sea across from her with her legs crossed. She wore a bright yellow silk sari that fluttered in the water's ripples. \"That's beautiful,\" Morgan said, and the words came out as odd little bubbles that somehow made sense, though she heard no sound at all.\n\nThe young woman smiled and studied her and said nothing. Then she held out her hand, palm up, as if she was asking for something. Morgan, uncertain, extended her left hand. The other woman's fingers closed around it, and she felt a shock like lightning striking. The water boiled and bubbled around them. The sun rose and fell, rose and fell, as if it was a toy on a string, and then it began to drift upward, and the two of them followed.\n\nThere was someone in the way.\n\nThe old Archivist looked down at them with his bitter eyes and seamed face and said, \"Give me what is mine.\"\n\nGargi\u2014somehow, Morgan knew the young woman traveling with her was Gargi Vachaknavi, whose blood inhabited the ring\u2014said the first and only word she would speak. \"No,\" she said, still smiling, and let go of Morgan's hand. Without being asked, Morgan stretched out and touched that same hand to the Archivist's face.\n\nHe blackened like the Philadelphia wheat. Poisoned. He turned to ashes and floated away on the tides, and Morgan looked at Gargi and said, \"Was that right?\"\n\nThen Morgan realized that she, too, was rotting away. Flakes drifted off of her into the water. She cried out and reached for help, but the sun went out and then she was swimming desperately for the surface, but half of her was gone now, turned to ashes, and when she opened her mouth to scream, all that came out was a wet cloud of blood.\n\nShe woke up with a shock. Her heart hammered so fast it hurt. She slowly sat up and stared at the ring on her finger. Did that cause the dream? No, surely not. Surely the dream was only her own weariness and rage and pain coming back to haunt her while her guard was down. The ring couldn't cause nightmares. Couldn't communicate with her and give her orders, or warnings, or anything else. It was simply a storage device, carrying ancient energy.\n\nIf she believed anything else, even for a moment, she'd have to throw it into Thomas's forge to be melted down forever.\n\nBut despite the dream, she couldn't argue that the ring seemed to have helped her. She felt better. Stronger. More in control of herself and her power than she had in a long time. And though the opportunity to sleep had been welcome, she doubted that simple rest had worked that much magic.\n\nWhen she consulted the view from the garden's windows, she was surprised to find it was still dark. The clock showed just after midnight. Odd. She felt she'd slept the day away.\n\nThe ring sat heavy and warm on her finger, and she lifted it up to the light to admire it as she brushed tangles out of her hair. The red spot moved slowly from one side to the other\u2014not responding to the action of her hand, but traveling on its own. Sorcery, she thought again, and shivered a little. There had always been, in her mind at least, a hard wall between the ideas of magic and the rational, logical, reproducible effects of alchemy that drove the seeming magic of the Great Library. She could quote every philosopher and researcher on the similarity of all matter, on the transfer of energy, on every principle that allowed an automaton to follow coded instructions, or a Blank to fill with the contents of a recorded book. She understood these things. She understood why they worked.\n\nBut this ring felt... different. As if it was grounded in the same principles but it went farther, deeper, stranger, than anything she knew. It was terrifying. And intriguing. She knew of the legendary Gargi, of course; she was a woman who'd risen so far above other Scholars that no one, not even the most repressive of kings, could erase her brilliance. And I am decidedly not her, Morgan thought. So why is this ring on my hand?\n\nBecause it's needed.\n\nShe didn't know where that thought came from, but she accepted it as true without question. She felt healthy, steady, focused.\n\nShe also badly needed a bathroom, and her mouth tasted foul. Her hair was hopelessly tangled. Still the middle of the night, but she could at least try to seem presentable.\n\nMorgan went back to her room and used the toilet, dressed, brushed out her hair. It was undeniable. She even looked better than she had in months.\n\nAs she readied herself to leave, there was a hard volley of knocks on the door. Agitated, frantic knocks, and she quickly threw it open.\n\nRed-haired Annis stood there, mouth open, breathing hard. There were fierce spots of crimson in her cheeks, as if she'd taken several flights of stairs to reach her. \"What is it?\" Morgan asked. She was honestly afraid that something had happened to Eskander, as alarmed as the other woman seemed to be. Annis was fond of Eskander, always had been. She couldn't think what else might spark this kind of emergency.\n\nBut it wasn't Eskander. Standing behind Annis was Scholar Wolfe, looking tired and drawn. \"Your friend is hurt,\" Annis said.\n\n\"You're hurt?\" she asked Wolfe directly.\n\n\"Not me,\" Wolfe replied. \"Glain was shot. The doctor with her has done the best they could, but Glain needs more,\" he said. \"She's losing too much blood. She doesn't have long. I need you to come with me.\"\n\nMorgan didn't hesitate. She stepped out of her room, shut the door, and said, \"I'm ready.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "If anything, Wolfe had understated the problem; Morgan knew that the second she saw Glain lying so still and quiet in the bed. The physician sitting with her rose when they entered and came to meet them.\n\n\"Any change?\" Wolfe asked.\n\n\"None. She's bleeding internally, and I don't have the facilities here to open her and find the torn vessels. She'll die of shock if I try.\" The doctor seemed extraordinarily competent; Morgan took the diagnosis as complete truth. She moved to stand next to Glain's bedside and looked down on her. She'd never seen Glain this still, not even sleeping; the young Welshwoman was always in motion, eyes darting behind her lids if nothing else. But now she seemed pale and unmoving as her own funerary statue.\n\nGlain's skin felt cold, as if the essential fluids of life had withdrawn into the core of her; Morgan called on a tiny trickle of power, and her friend's body came to shimmering life in front of her, mapped in flows of reds, blues, golds... and a steadily expanding darkness deep inside her.\n\nGlain was dying. Fighting it, the way Glain fought all her battles\u2014an absolute, unyielding struggle. But she was on the losing side of this one, resources depleted, allies gone. She fought alone.\n\nNo. Not alone. Not anymore.\n\nBut a little chill went through her, a vibration, a discord. And another voice whispered, The damage is too great. You should not do this. Sometimes, death is inevitable.\n\nI can, she thought. I will.\n\nMorgan looked at Wolfe, who stood nearby. \"A chair,\" she said. \"This will take time.\"\n\n\"Can you save her?\" The physician seemed curious. \"How?\"\n\n\"I can't really explain if you can't see what I see,\" she said. \"But I may be able to help her save herself.\" She smiled at Wolfe. \"Don't worry, Scholar. Have you ever known Glain to give up?\"\n\n\"Never,\" he said. \"I'll get the chair.\"\n\nShe was settled in just a moment, and put her hands directly on Glain's bare shoulders. Took a deep breath and let herself feel.\n\nThe shock of pain nearly drove her back. The damage done inside of Glain was considerable, and growing worse as free fluid inside her crowded her heart and lungs. Her body was working too hard to survive, let alone heal. Glain's army needed reinforcements.\n\nMorgan began by concentrating on the tears within two of the major vessels damaged by the bullet's strike; one was small enough to be closed with a relatively minor amount of urging. But the other was a gaping hole, half the vein torn away, and that was going to be difficult. Morgan tapped the vital energy flowing all around her and channeled it through the matrix of the ring; tiny amounts of quintessence were trapped in every cell of every creature, even in inanimate objects. Anything that came from the earth held quintessence. She felt the ring feeding her in a thick amber flow... and then guiding her to extract more from the human bodies standing in the room, and then the ones outside of it. Careful draws, light ones, nothing that would damage them in the least.\n\nBut it wasn't enough. She had fixed some of the damage, but it only slowed Glain's defeat; it couldn't prevent it. She sculpted the power, manipulated it into a tiny structural matrix and guided the tissues to build around it. The torn vein sealed. Morgan began breaking down the blood that had leaked into Glain's chest cavity, burning it into energy and feeding that energy back into the ring. Once that was done, and Morgan could see that Glain's heart was laboring strongly again, she went to the next challenge.\n\nThe damage to Glain's liver and lungs seemed grave, and so she set to work again, bit by bit. She hardly felt it when her own connections began to fail, when the energy she pulled began to flow more slowly. When its character began to shift. She did feel the ring pulsing on her left hand, a steady warning that grew in intensity as she ignored it and kept working, had to keep working because she could feel Glain's body sliding into shock from the effort to heal.\n\nMorgan had a strong flash of her nightmare, of drowning, of darkness blotting out the sun, and she poured reckless amounts of energy through the ring, accelerating the knitting together of Glain's wounded organs, until she felt a sharp, agonizing stab of pain lance up her arm and into her brain, and broke free with a cry.\n\nShe was shaking so badly she almost pitched off the chair to the floor\u2014would have done, if Scholar Wolfe hadn't been there to catch her. And she was cold, so cold, and his brightness shone like a torch to her.\n\nShe put her hands on his face and breathed him in like a gasp of pure, fresh air.\n\nShe took life.\n\nYou will not.\n\nThe ring caught fire on her hand, burned so painfully that she flung herself away and hit the wall. She sank down to a slumped sitting position, unable to do anything to prevent it. Wolfe had stumbled, too, and was now clinging to the bedpost for support. He looked wide-eyed and wild. Terrified in a way she couldn't remember ever seeing him. \"Morgan, stop!\"\n\nShe was still reaching for his brilliant energy, even at this distance. Trying to consume it. And the ring was preventing her from doing any more damage.\n\nShe forced herself to stop, though it felt like falling into the deepest pit in the world, and leaned back against the wall to sob. She cried for the sin she'd just committed, or tried to commit, because now that she came back to herself she knew it was a wrong as great as anything she could have ever done. As the ring had warned her.\n\nOn the bed next to her, Glain let out a low, soft groan, opened her eyes, and whispered, \"What happened?\"\n\nFor a moment no one moved, and then Morgan stumbled to her feet. She looked down at the ring she wore. She could tell the glow was dim, the blood spot darkened. It needed recharging. It needed more than she could give.\n\nCalm down, the ring whispered. Breathe. Power flows around you. Power will come. Do not demand it.\n\n\"I have to go,\" she told Wolfe. She felt sick and weak, but she didn't want to stay here. There was something about Wolfe, something shimmering inside him that wakened a hunger inside she didn't like. He was the child of two powerful Obscurists, and though he'd never manifested power of his own, there was a potential energy inside him that she could almost taste. It made her thirsty for the relief of it. \"Thomas needs me today. I can't keep doing this, Scholar. Don't ask again.\"\n\n\"If I hadn't, she'd be dead,\" he said. \"But you're right. Best you go, then,\" he agreed. \"Morgan. Thank you.\"\n\nShe moved to Glain's bedside and clasped her friend's hand. Glain's color was better, and there was a shadow of strength in the way her fingers tightened. \"Thanks,\" she said. \"Apparently that was dramatic.\"\n\n\"A little,\" Morgan said. \"You'll be all right now. Just don't\u2014\"\n\n\"Get in the way of another bullet? I'll try.\" Glain's eyes focused and searched Morgan's expression. \"You're as bad as Jess, you know. Courting death when it doesn't come calling.\"\n\n\"It always comes calling. I'm popular that way.\" Smiling felt empty, but at the same time, it helped. \"Take care, Glain.\"\n\n\"And you, Morgan.\"\n\nGlain was already falling asleep when Morgan fled the room, away from Scholar Wolfe's too-bright presence and into the atrium of the house. There was a garden through the central door, and she went that way. Waterfalls splashed into a cleverly designed pond, and sleek, shimmering fish glided under the surface. She sat down on the edge and closed her eyes. Around her, the room was glowing in lines and surfaces; the fish were individual moving lights. Quintessence all around her, as the ring had promised. She opened herself and waited, and the power began to flow toward her. Don't pull, the ring whispered. Allow nature to balance itself.\n\nIt takes too long, she argued. The ring seemed utterly unmoved by the concept of time. I have to hurry! I'm needed.\n\nYou are unique. But not alone. And demands are not needs. I entered this ring as a frightened soul to escape my death, only to discover that death is hardly even the beginning of anything at all. We are so much more than flesh, Morgan. Allow yourself to feel this.\n\n\"I'm arguing philosophy with a ring,\" she said out loud, and surprised herself into a laugh. Her fingers were in the water, drifting like pale weeds, and a fish nibbled gently at them, then swam away when she moved. There was peace in this place. Maybe there was peace everywhere, if she'd slow down to look.\n\nThere was a sound of footsteps from the doorway.\n\nIt was Jess.\n\nShe rose to her feet when she saw him because for a startling moment she thought he was a ghost. His own brother's ghost. He looked starkly pale, changed somehow. And she could sense the damage from here. No. No, not Jess...\n\n\"Morgan,\" he said, and came toward her. The closer he came, the more she felt the sickness that had rooted itself deep into him. He was bleeding quintessence; she could see it like a cloud floating away from him.\n\nAnd then he was embracing her, and she felt the ring taking his fog of escaping life. It wouldn't harvest from inside him, but this... this was different. The quintessence he was losing was being wasted. The ring was simply absorbing it.\n\nJess was broken. Cracked like a glass. It took her breath away, and she wanted desperately to help him. She reached for power.\n\nHit an unyielding wall.\n\nNo, the ring said. Not for this.\n\nShe'd healed Glain. She could heal Jess, too. Surely, she must. Because she loved him.\n\nJess's fate is his own. No one can change it. He lives or dies because of his own actions, not yours.\n\nIt felt breathlessly true. She had tears in her eyes, and they burned with that truth. Glain's wound had been inflicted on her. Jess's had been a conscious choice.\n\nShe couldn't take that from him.\n\n\"You're hurt,\" she whispered. She buried her face in his shoulder, and his arms tightened around her. \"Oh, Jess. Why?\"\n\n\"I'll be all right,\" he told her. \"I've seen the Medica. Got treatments. I'm instructed to take it easy for a while.\"\n\n\"And will you?\"\n\nHe laughed. It sounded grim. \"Now? With all that's going on? How can I?\"\n\n\"No!\" She shoved him backward, which surprised him, and he caught himself as he staggered. \"No, you don't get to kill yourself like this! You will not!\"\n\n\"Hey! Hey, easy!\" He held up both hands in surrender. \"All right! I won't. I'll rest. I promise.\"\n\n\"Don't coddle me!\"\n\n\"I'm just\u2014\"\n\n\"You're just humoring me and we both know it.\" She took in a deep breath. \"How bad is it?\"\n\nHe didn't answer. He slowly lowered his hands. Watched her.\n\n\"That bad?\" She knew it already, but the fact that he knew... it hurt. \"Jess.\"\n\n\"I had to do it,\" he said. \"Wolfe would have killed himself trying. I had a better chance. I'm not sorry I did it. Wolfe said it was important.\"\n\nShe despised Wolfe in that moment, but she couldn't deny that it had been important. She and Thomas had found what they needed from it. \"Do you want me to tell you what they really said?\"\n\n\"No.\" He shrugged. \"I have a chance. That's better odds than Brendan got.\"\n\nBrendan. The brothers had been two stars circling each other in an orbit, and now that one was gone, the other had lost its anchor. Spinning wildly out of control. \"I'm sorry about him,\" she said. \"So sorry, love. He didn't deserve that.\" You didn't.\n\n\"He'd have never guessed he'd go out a hero.\"\n\n\"Well, you don't have to follow him. Rest. Please?\"\n\n\"I will,\" he said. \"You\u2014why are you here? I thought you'd be at the Iron Tower.\"\n\n\"I was. Eskander set me to work with Thomas, but we both were so tired. Then Glain\u2014\"\n\n\"You came for Glain. Yes, of course you would have. You always come when we're in trouble.\" He stepped toward her again, and this time he kissed her, and she melted into it. His lips were firm and soft and sweet and she loved the way he held her, but it still felt... wrong. Empty, in a way, as if the bridge that had once connected them had fallen away.\n\nHe broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers. \"I'm sorry.\" He whispered it, as intimate as the kiss. \"I wish we were... you know.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" She didn't know what to say. What to do. She knew in her heart that the two of them fit, and yet they didn't; they loved, and yet it was a patchwork kind of love with holes and gaps. He was what she should want; she knew that. But she also knew it wasn't enough for her. Or for him. \"I wish we were, too. I'm sorry, Jess. I think we were right for a while.\"\n\n\"But not forever.\"\n\n\"No. Not forever.\"\n\nThe laugh he managed sounded mangled and rusty. \"Aren't we supposed to be in love forever? Isn't that how it works?\"\n\n\"I don't know how it works,\" she said, and she meant it. \"Are you going to be all right?\"\n\nHe stepped back, and she could see the armor go on. It wasn't his own; this had a brassy, brash edge that was all his brother's. \"Me? I'm always all right,\" he said. \"Take care of yourself, Morgan. I do care. I always will.\"\n\nShe nodded. She wasn't sure she could speak. There was a panic whirling inside her, a wild, off-balance need to make this right, to fix it and go back to the way things were, to safety and comfort, and what was wrong with craving those things even if there wasn't love along with them...?\n\nShe forced a smile and said, \"Good night, Jess.\"\n\nThere were tears burning in her eyes as he walked away, and she wanted to stop him. She wanted to save him.\n\nBut she knew that wasn't right, and she didn't need the ring to remind her of it.\n\n\"Good-bye,\" she whispered.\n\nBut he was already gone."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a handwritten letter from Obscurist Vanya Nikolin, smuggled from the Iron Tower and delivered by courier to the Archivist in Exile. Indexed later to the Codex as historical record:\n\n\u2002I have succeeded in your requests to a point, Archivist, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to make the changes necessary without attracting the notice of the Hermit himself or his apprentice. I am working as quickly as I can, but I must be cautious. One mistake and I will be removed from the Iron Tower completely, possibly even imprisoned. I think I can avoid that by shifting the blame to one of my assistants, and I have seeded some damning evidence in their journals should this occur, but please understand that we must go carefully.\n\n\u2002I have not been able to rewrite any of the automata likely to come into contact with the new Archivist. There is no possibility of assassination through that route, and as I've said before, I will not risk my life in the attempt. You have paid me to do quiet work, and this suits me. But hire assassins if you want someone to get their hands bloody. I will not.\n\n\u2002I've recruited a few allies, carefully, and they have proven useful, but the more support I gather, the bigger the risk of discovery. We must be very, very aware of what is at stake, and not move too quickly.\n\n\u2002I can't spend your money if I'm dead."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "Khalila woke in predawn darkness, gasping and cold with sweat, and as she curled in on herself and tried to regulate her breathing, she didn't know what had made her wake in such distress. If it had been a dream, it was gone like morning mist.\n\nBut there was enough tension gathering to frighten anyone. She sat up and listened. She'd slept on a camp bed in a small storeroom in the Serapeum; she hadn't wanted to make the trip back to the Iron Tower and risk not being at the Archivist's side in an emergency. The Archivist's accommodations hadn't been much more luxurious than this, either.\n\nKhalila rose, stretched, slid her feet into sandals, and realized that she'd have to leave the room and find a toilet soon. She brushed out her hair and coiled it beneath the same hijab she'd been wearing for the last few days. She desperately needed more changes of clothing, and a night in her own comfortable bed. And a bath, though she'd made do with basins and washcloths so far. She felt grubby, though once she'd found the toilet and availed herself, she checked herself in the mirror and found herself adequate, at least. She scrubbed down, then added eyeliner and a dash of color to her cheeks, took a deep breath, and told herself, \"All will be well.\" She had to believe that. What choice was there?\n\nThe sun would be up soon. She went back to the small room she'd slept in, folded up the bed, and unrolled her prayer rug. Her prayers this morning were heartfelt. She badly needed Allah's protection today, with what the city faced. The peace would not hold. She felt that in her bones.\n\nAfter prayers, she set about the business of the day. The fact that no one had summoned her during the night meant that the ambassadors had continued their talks. On finding one of the passing Scholars heading home for rest, she found that they'd requested, and been granted, sleeping quarters of their own, but that they'd risen early and were now gathered back in the large, spacious room where she'd had them settled.\n\nKhalila knocked on the door and waited for permission to enter. It took a moment, and the High Garda soldiers stationed at the door exchanged looks with her. \"They've been shouting,\" one reported. \"It isn't good.\"\n\nShe nodded and took a deep breath. When the permission came, she opened the doors and walked inside.\n\nConversation stopped. The gathered ambassadors and their staffs seemed exhausted and ill at ease, and as she bowed to them respectfully, they all looked to Alvaro Santiago. The expression on every face was the same: grim.\n\nAmbassador Santiago returned her bow. He looked ages older than he had just a day before. \"Scholar Seif,\" he said. \"I believe we are prepared to deliver our decision to the Archivist.\"\n\n\"I will send word,\" she said. \"Is there anything you need, sir?\"\n\n\"Nothing you can provide, unfortunately. Please, take a pastry from the lavish spread that's been provided. We have little appetite today.\"\n\nShe thanked him but didn't have any wish to eat; the atmosphere in this room felt heavy as lead. She wrote to the Archivist in her Codex and got a swift reply in Murasaki's fast, precise writing: Bring them to me.\n\nShe led the diplomats back to the Receiving Hall.\n\nThere were only a handful of people in attendance\u2014the newly formed Curia made up of the Scholars Magni of Artifex Medica, Lingua, and Litterae, supported by a contingent of senior librarians. The Obscurist Magnus, Eskander, had already accepted his post and returned to the Iron Tower, so his place sat empty. Except for the Curia and the standing company of High Garda, the hall itself was cool and vacant. If anything, Khalila thought, it only made the space more intimidating.\n\nThe Archivist mounted the steps to her chair and nodded toward the diplomats. If she was tired or stressed, Khalila could see no sign of it. \"Ambassadors,\" she said, and the words carried to every corner of the hall. \"I hope that you have had a productive evening.\"\n\nKhalila felt the mood shifting in the room like shadows, though there was no visible change on the Archivist's face. Her expression remained neutral. Waiting.\n\nAmbassador Santiago stepped forward and bowed. The bow lingered until the Archivist gestured for him to straighten. \"Honored Archivist, I have the privilege of having been once again chosen to speak for the group. We have spent many hours in debate and conversation regarding your proposals, and we are now prepared to render to you our combined answer.\" The pause felt torturous. \"I must inform you that the assembled nations you see before you will not withdraw. You must face facts. You are new to power; you have enemies inside your city, and you must rely on allies to help you secure your position and protect the incalculable value of the Great Library to the world. There is simply no other choice. If you would preserve this great institution, you must allow us to help.\"\n\nThe Archivist let the boldness of that reply fall into a deep, waiting silence, and once it had taken hold, she said, \"Allies do not force themselves on those unwilling. I believe that you come not as allies of the Great Library, but as shadow conquerors.\"\n\n\"Honored Archivist\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, and stood up with a rustle of glistening robes. \"I have been patient. I allowed you time to deliberate. The Great Library has provided you with shelter and hospitality. But now you must go. Within the hour, you must be out of this city. Turn your fleets, Ambassadors. Turn them home. Or we will bring power to bear you cannot imagine.\"\n\nSantiago didn't look at the others, which told Khalila how confident he was of the consolidation of opinion. \"You're choosing a war that will cost us all dearly, Archivist. Better to make a peace you don't like than see your city burn.\"\n\n\"The moment the Great Library relies on foreign armies to defend it is the day it dies. I do not intend to serve as the last Archivist of this great city.\"\n\nHe held the stare of the Archivist and then slowly inclined his head. \"Then let it be so,\" he said. \"We will withdraw. The next time we speak, I hope that it will be to discuss peace.\"\n\n\"I hope that you survive to discuss it at all,\" she said. \"Go. The High Garda will see you back to your ships.\"\n\nIt seemed too fast to Khalila; surely war could not be declared so quickly, with so few words. But the Ambassadors bowed, and then they were leaving, and she advanced to the foot of the throne to look up at the Archivist.\n\n\"May the ancient gods help us today,\" Murasaki said. \"All of us.\" She caught herself and looked at Khalila. \"Scholar Seif, I need you to find Scholar Thomas Schreiber and tell him to set things in motion. Immediately.\"\n\n\"At once, Archivist.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "Finding Thomas proved complicated; she traced him to the Iron Tower, then to the Lighthouse, but he wasn't there, either. She continued to send him messages on the Codex but got nothing back, and she knew that time was running out. Out of sheer desperation, she finally went out to the terrace on the twelfth floor of the Lighthouse and looked out, as if she could possibly pick him out at this distance.\n\nAnd impossible as it was, she did. That golden shock of hair, the way he stood a head taller than anyone else out on the street... it had to be him. She marked which direction he was going and ran down the stairs as fast as she dared, then held up her skirts to race around the point and to the harbor road where she'd seen him. By the time she arrived where she'd spotted him, she was panting and sweating in the storm-heavy air, and as she paused to take stock she felt another surge of despair. No sign of Thomas anywhere.\n\nAnd the streets were awash with people staring out into the bay. Khalila realized that the last of the merchants who'd been waiting had pulled anchor and was sailing away; it was a mass exodus, leaving the docks ominously empty. More than thirty ships all heading away from trouble, as fast as possible.\n\nThe crowd thinned as people drifted away. Khalila shook herself and remembered her business.\n\nA sailor in a Phrygian cap sat on the stoop of a closed business, whittling, and she went to him and tried to regain her calm. He squinted up at her. \"Scholar,\" he said. \"What do you want with the likes of me?\"\n\n\"Have you seen a very tall young man pass this way? Blond hair?\"\n\n\"The giant? Yes.\" He pointed down the road. It curved out of sight. \"He seemed to be heading somewhere important. You might have to run to catch him.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" she said, and bowed a little. He touched his cap with a grin. He was whittling a clever little sculpture of a dolphin jumping from a wave, she realized. Odd, she'd thought him a drunk who was just wasting time, but here he was, creating beauty. People were so unpredictably wonderful. \"I like the dolphin!\" She shouted that over her shoulder as she ran for the curve in the road, and heard him laugh, and then it was just the damp sea wind on her face and the feel of her feet on the cobblestones. She jumped a puddle and kept running, and finally spotted a blond shock of hair in the distance. He's so fast! Her lungs were burning, her legs trembling, and she thought with chagrin that she'd allowed herself to get soft. A turn or two around the High Garda training track wouldn't go amiss.\n\nFinally, she was close enough to shout for Thomas to stop... but she couldn't gather enough breath to do it. She skidded to a halt, gasping and nearly sick to her stomach, and picked up a loose rock from the gutter. She threw it, half expecting to miss him, but it landed squarely in the center of his back. Not hard, of course, she had no real strength left, but it brought him to a stop, and he turned to look for who'd thrown it.\n\nShe waved, then braced herself with her hands on her thighs as she tried to slow her breathing. Thomas strode back to her. \"Khalila? Are you all right?\"\n\n\"Chased you,\" she gasped out. \"Sorry. Catching my breath.\"\n\n\"Yes, so I see. Do you need to sit?\"\n\nShe managed to shake her head and pull herself upright again. \"We're out of time,\" she said, and managed to keep her voice more or less steady this time. \"War's about to be declared, if it hasn't been already. Those enemy ships out there will be trying to enter the harbor any minute now, and we need to stop them. Can you do it?\"\n\nThomas considered that, and his face settled into an expression she was all too familiar with: determination. \"Yes,\" he said. \"I can do it. But not alone. I need Morgan to bind me to an automaton as we agreed.\"\n\n\"I don't know where Morgan is!\" Khalila said. \"Is she at the Iron Tower?\"\n\n\"I don't know. She was summoned away by Scholar Wolfe. You'd better send a message to him. He'll tell us where she is.\"\n\nKhalila had already taken out her Codex. She unsnapped the attached stylus and wrote as quickly as she could, underlining the urgency. It would appear in Wolfe's Codex within seconds, and hopefully he would not ignore it. \"Why didn't you answer my messages?\" she asked Thomas as she closed the book and put it back in the case on her hip.\n\n\"What messages?\" He looked startled, then chagrined, and clapped a hand to the pocket of his brown coat. Unlike her, he wasn't prone to wearing his Scholar's robes, though he was fully entitled to them; he simply found them annoying. His plain worker's clothing was better suited, she supposed, to the physical work he often did at forges and worktables. \"I left it behind in the Iron Tower. I'm sorry, Khalila. That was careless.\"\n\nBefore she could ask him what he'd been doing in the Iron Tower, her Codex shivered to alert her to a reply, and she opened it to see Scholar Wolfe's neat, precise calligraphy. \"She's not there,\" she said. \"She left an hour ago, and he doesn't know where she's gone...\" Her voice faded, because Thomas was looking beyond her with a warm smile. \"She's behind me, isn't she?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Morgan said, and when Khalila turned she saw the young woman walking toward them. She was dressed in a plain outfit, like Thomas; she'd put away the Obscurist's robes, and now that she'd gotten rid of the collar that Obscurists had previously had to wear, there was no sign of her affiliation at all. That's something for us to consider, she thought. Obscurists needed to be offered the same structure as all others inside the Great Library: the choice to join for a contracted period of time as a copper or silver band, or to join for a lifetime as a gold band. Each came with benefits, of course. But Obscurists had been virtual hostages within that tower for so long that no one had even thought what would happen when they were free to come and go as they liked.\n\nKhalila hugged her. It was impulsive, but it felt right. There was a sadness in Morgan's eyes, and in the shaking breath she took. \"Are you all right?\" Khalila asked quietly.\n\n\"Yes. I'm fine. Glain was badly injured by a sniper. Scholar Wolfe summoned me to care for her.\"\n\n\"How is Glain?\" Thomas asked it before Khalila could, with a sharp edge to his voice, and moved to stand closer.\n\n\"Recovering,\" Morgan replied. \"But it makes this thing we're about to do... harder. And possibly more dangerous for you. You understand this?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, and shrugged. \"Dangerous not to do it. The navies outside of the harbor are determined to sail in.\"\n\n\"Then we have to raise the defenses.\"\n\n\"Now,\" he agreed. \"Immediately. There is no time to prepare. Can you do it?\"\n\n\"I have to get the Anubis statue here first to inspect the mechanism\u2014\"\n\n\"There is no time. We must trust the mechanism will work.\" He pointed at the harbor. At the rippling water. \"You can bind me directly to it, can't you?\"\n\n\"Thomas. No. And we don't even know if it's in working order after all this time! If I bind you to that and it doesn't work... I'm not certain I can sever that connection so easily. You could experience... terrible things. I don't know how this will affect you; it hasn't even been attempted since the time of Heron, as far as I know.\"\n\n\"Heron built these defenses,\" Thomas said. \"If he managed it, then it can be done. Shall we proceed?\"\n\n\"Give me a moment.\" Morgan looked worried, and Khalila didn't like it. At all. She started to say so, but Thomas looked at her and shook his head.\n\n\"No, Khalila, you won't talk me out of this, as eloquent as you are. Save your energy.\"\n\n\"What about the Lighthouse? I thought you'd want to be there,\" Khalila said. \"You were installing the Ray of Apollo, weren't you?\"\n\n\"The Artifex Magnus fully understands the mechanism. There's no need for me to meddle in her efforts. If you could send her word that we are about to attempt to raise the harbor defenses...?\"\n\n\"Yes. Of course.\" She didn't know exactly what Morgan and Thomas were planning, but to her it sounded ominously risky. So, exactly what we usually do, she told herself, and felt a little better for it. They'd been in many dire situations and come through. Surely this would be another exciting story to tell their friends afterward.\n\nSurely.\n\nBut if Glain had been so badly wounded, Morgan must have worked a miracle to save her. A very dangerous and difficult miracle. Did she have enough left to do... this?\n\n\"I have a question,\" Khalila said. Both of them looked to her now. \"Whatever it is you are attempting to do... Morgan, if you fail or collapse, does that sever the link between Thomas and these defenses?\"\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\n\"But... you're not sure?\"\n\n\"What we're doing hasn't been attempted in thousands of years,\" Morgan said. \"It may not work at all. It may work for a moment. Or it may work too well. I just don't know until we do it.\"\n\n\"Thomas? Are you certain you want to\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"We must. Right now.\"\n\nThey walked to the end of the docks. The harbor itself was starting to come to life, with workers arriving at stores and restaurants, bars and brothels. A city carrying on, despite the threats. As people did. And now it's our responsibility to make them safe in doing so. Now, as never before, that struck Khalila hard. Power was a nebulous, light thing until it lay heavy in the hand. Once it did, only the weak and corrupt found it easy to wield.\n\nShe turned to Thomas, hugged him impulsively, and said, \"In bocca al lupo, Thomas.\" The mouth of the wolf. Always.\n\n\"Crepi il lupo,\" he replied. He would, as always, face the wolf and defeat it. It was the call and response for the miracle and terror of the Translation Chamber, but it worked equally well here. He was going into danger, and going alone.\n\nShe couldn't help him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "The preparations seemed simple enough. They all three sat down on the edge of the dock, feet dangling several feet above the water that lapped at the pier's concrete supports, and Morgan took several deep, slow breaths. Then she held up both hands palms up. For the first time, Khalila noticed her friend was wearing a ring, a large amber one inset with the seal of the Great Library. A flawed amber, with a spot of something dark inside. And was it moving? No. A trick of her eyes, or the light.\n\nBut Morgan wasn't much prone to jewelry, and the sight of that ring unsettled Khalila for reasons she couldn't begin to name.\n\n\"What do I do if you appear in distress?\" Khalila asked. She meant it for Thomas, but it applied equally to Morgan. The two of them exchanged glances, and then Morgan shrugged.\n\n\"Leave it,\" Thomas said. \"We won't get a second chance. The Great Library needs this to work.\"\n\nMorgan disagreed, though only slightly. \"Wait for half an hour,\" she said. \"If by that time nothing has happened, then we've failed. Try to bring us out of it.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"A sudden shock should do. Cold water, for instance.\" Morgan looked down at the lapping ocean water. \"It should break my concentration and sever Thomas's link.\"\n\n\"I'm not pushing you into the sea!\"\n\n\"Well, it would probably work.\"\n\n\"Do you even know how to swim?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Morgan said. Thomas, tellingly, said nothing.\n\nHalf an hour. Khalila didn't like the idea of that, not at all, but she had no better suggestion. She didn't dare sabotage this effort, not if it was as all-important as both her friends seemed to think.\n\nShe'd just have to use her best judgment. Power in her hand, again. Heavy and fearful.\n\nShe realized with a start that noon had struck, and as Morgan reached for Thomas's hand, and both bowed their heads, she got to her feet and moved back. Facing east put her at an angle to them, but she could see them well enough; she had a little flask of clean water that she habitually carried with her, and now she performed the ablutions, cleaning carefully as she did, but with no wasted motions. She could wait on her friends while conducting her dhuhr prayers with all the earnestness she could find; today, of all days, the prayers were vital. Show us the straight path. The words resonated strongly; they had never meant so much to her. Today would be the day of judgment for the Great Library. And for all of those who loved her.\n\nAs she finished, she added an extra plea to Allah for protection for her friends, and then she went to look at them anxiously. They were so very... still. Though as she watched, she saw that Thomas was moving very slightly: twitches of his big hands, his fingers, his chest moving in deep, painful heaves that were almost gasps. His face had gone quite pale and strained. Morgan, beside him, looked almost as strange.\n\nWhatever they were doing, it was difficult. Very difficult.\n\nAnd as she looked out to sea, she saw that the enemy navies were starting to move.\n\nThey were sailing for the harbor.\n\nKhalila felt a sudden wave of dizziness and quickly grabbed for the protective rail to hold herself steady. You should have eaten, she chided herself, but there was no help for it now. She was tired, hungry, worried...\n\nThe dizziness hit again and it was worse this time; holding to the railing only helped her control her collapse to her knees. She breathed in deep, hungry gasps. There was a terrible sense of... injury. Almost as if she had suffered a wound and was now losing blood, though as she looked down at herself she saw no sign of such a thing.\n\nBut something was wrong. Very, very wrong.\n\nIt's Morgan, drawing power from my very essence. She knew it, knew it, and tried to rise. Could not find the strength, no matter how much will she put behind the effort. It felt like she was a piece of cloth being unraveled into ragged threads. Did Morgan even know what she was doing? Did she care?\n\nKhalila let go of the railing, pitched forward, and managed to crawl a few feet before she lost the will to do even that. She felt loose inside, gray, exhausted. Oddly unafraid. She had done her salat; she had meant it. Surely Allah would be kind if this was her last day in the world.\n\nNo. I will not surrender.\n\nShe couldn't.\n\nShe wasn't sure how long it took her to move again\u2014moments? longer?\u2014but she began to slowly inch her way toward Morgan. If I can only wake her, she'll realize what she is doing. How wrong it is. It was agonizingly slow progress, but finally she could just touch the windblown fabric of Morgan's shirt. A few more inches, one strong push to plunge Morgan into the water, and this might end.\n\nOr she might kill her friend.\n\nWhatever Morgan was expending so much dreadful power to do, it wasn't working, and Khalila felt a tight panic spread inside as she realized that Morgan might actually kill her in this quest for\u2014for what? She didn't even understand what they were trying to achieve.\n\nKhalila made it to her knees, with an effort that felt like her last, and just as she did, the harbor's waters began to boil, as if they'd suddenly been heated over a huge stove. She paused, struck by the spectacle, and felt her strength ebbing more. No. I have to stop this.\n\nSomething told her to hang on. To wait. And she did, vision going gray, strength fading.\n\nShe saw a god rise.\n\nThe sharp golden points of its crown broke the surface first; it looked like a strange, sharp island emerging with seaweed dangling wet and green from its edges. Khalila stared as the head emerged: a massive riot of metallic bronze curls cascading down the automaton's back. It was dark from the sea, crusted with dead coral like bone jewels, and it kept rising, up and up and up, until it was taller than the Lighthouse. Taller than the Serapeum. It was massive, incomprehensibly huge, and as it turned its head toward them she felt a horrible urge to hide herself from that incandescent blue gaze. The human face seemed impossible at that scale, the prominent cheekbones and pointed jaw so perfect they blinded. Every muscle showed in definition on the automaton's neck, shoulders, arms, chest, legs. It was nude except for a rich golden loincloth, and the deep water of the harbor came only to its knees.\n\nIn one hand it held a three-pronged spear, a trident.\n\nPoseidon had risen.\n\nAnd it belonged to them.\n\nKhalila felt the last of her energy sliding away. \"Morgan!\" Her voice was barely a thread, but she heard the desperation in it. \"Morgan, let me go!\"\n\nShe had no hope that Morgan would hear, or obey, but she felt the heaviness in her chest, the slowness of her heartbeat, and knew she was moments from death. If Morgan would not stop, she'd have to save herself.\n\nThe god strode forward, waves building before it with each step. It took it six strides to reach the wide mouth of the Alexandrian harbor, and then it reached down, bent almost double, and plunged its left hand into the water.\n\nWhat it brought up was a chain. An ancient, massive chain that it held at about the height of a man above the lapping surface. Its action brought up pillars on either end where the chain was anchored, and there was a loud, audible snap as the chain pulled taut, shivering.\n\nThe harbor was closed. The chain would rip in half the hull of any ship that tried to ram it. By itself, the chain would have been enough, but now Poseidon stood with its trident raised above its shoulder, ready to bring it down on any who dared approach. Its feet were set wide, and its massive thighs blocked half the entrance. Between the god, the trident, and the chain, there was no possibility those ships would cross that boundary.\n\nThe leading ships in the fleet heeled sharply off their courses, and the entire invasion fleet began to turn like a flock of birds.\n\nDefeated, for now. But that almost certainly wouldn't last.\n\nMorgan broke from her trance with a cry, and Poseidon froze in place. Waiting. Khalila could only see it from the back; she didn't know if its eyes were still alight with that eerie glow she'd seen, but she hoped so. It would terrify the people on those ships even more.\n\nMorgan fell backward into Khalila, and both of them went down. Khalila rolled weakly onto her side and just... breathed. She had never been so grateful to be alive. Her heartbeat was speeding fast, finally able to express her fear, but she treasured every panicked beat. I'm here.\n\nThey raised a god from the sea, and we're all still here.\n\nThomas hadn't quite collapsed, and he stumbled up and away from the edge of the dock before he suddenly went to his knees. He looked dazed, and altogether awestruck. He said something in German that her tired brain couldn't quite grasp for a moment, and then it came clear. We have done it.\n\nThey certainly had. She heard the screams and shouts and cheers from the city. She heard the alarms sounding on the ships out at sea as they rocked in violent waves propagated by Poseidon himself.\n\nThe harbor was secure.\n\n\"Thomas? Are you all right?\" Khalila asked. He nodded. He still seemed lost in a dream, but he crawled over to her and put his arm around her. When Morgan groaned and stirred, he pulled her up to hold her close, too. She looked shockingly bad, worse than Thomas. Worse even than Khalila felt.\n\nAnd Morgan was weeping. She curled in on Thomas, holding to him and rocking in her misery. As awful as Khalila herself felt, she could not help but feel her heart go out to the other young woman; she could not fear someone in so much pain. With much effort, she rose to her feet, walked to Morgan, and sat beside her. Put her arm around Morgan's trembling shoulders.\n\nShe and Thomas enclosed her in warmth, in love, in comfort, and Khalila thought, This is the straight path.\n\nShe stared out at the huge bronze automaton crafted so very long ago, and thought, Surely they cannot fight us now.\n\nThat was when the first volleys of Greek fire began from the Welsh ships."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a late-period report by Heron of Alexandria (fragmentary) mentioning the city's defenses in a communication to Pharaoh Ptolemy Djoser VI:\n\n\u2002...Pharaoh's wisdom in appointing a special class of guardian soldiers for... Archives of the Great Library... nothing certain. We have ever been under threat for our... next we may expect invasion.\n\n\u2002To this end, I have crafted in the metalworks an automaton the rival of any since great Talos... harbor. For a mighty construction such as this, partnership with... Pharaoh's priests and magicians... though I dislike... secret. A creature such as this could as easily be our destruction as our salvation.\n\n\u2002...best hidden until it must be used. Instructions... Archivist's hands. There it must remain until a threat to the very... Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "SANTI",
                "text": "It was the first quiet moment he'd had to grab a cup of hot coffee and find some solitude, and so it transpired that Santi sat on the highest steps of the Serapeum, just a few feet below the golden capstone.\n\nHe watched the foreign navies clustered there. The Portuguese had chosen the northern side, as far from the Spanish fleet as it was possible to be; the English, Welsh, and Japanese fleets made up a solid bulwark in the middle, the Japanese a calming force between the two ancient enemies. A formidable assembly, certainly. And one his troops would have to face, sooner or later, unless a miracle occurred.\n\nMy troops. He hadn't adjusted to it quite yet. He was comfortable as a captain, with knowing the names and faces and skills of every soldier in his command. But this? Lord Commander of the High Garda, responsible not just for taking orders but for giving them, not just for fighting the war, but for planning it. He did not feel ready. But he thought that every single Lord Commander in history\u2014the good ones, at least\u2014had felt the same on their first day.\n\nOf course, they had not been forced to deal with the dethroning of an Archivist, a possible civil war within the Great Library, and a foreign invasion that could destroy Alexandria completely. It was rather a lot.\n\nAnd he missed Wolfe's bright, sharp presence. And he couldn't allow himself that distraction. Not now. Not in this chaos.\n\nStay safe, my love, he thought, and he hoped Wolfe was sending the same back.\n\nHe'd just drained the last of his coffee and stood up to descend back to his strategy room when the water in the harbor began to roil and tumble, and he stopped to stare at it, barely daring to hope. From this height he couldn't make out individual people below, but he imagined that one small form, far out toward one end of the crescent-shaped harbor, had bright blond hair. Thomas. Was this his doing?\n\nHe watched in disbelief as the automaton rose out of the harbor, shining dully in the sun. Vast. Magnificent. Dangerous. How could anyone control such a thing? This was enormous. As familiar as he was with the mechanicals in all their deadly forms, this... this felt vastly different.\n\nThe size of it made him suck in a startled breath. He'd seen the drawings, discussed the dry, academic option of activating the city's ancient defenses, but he'd never imagined it would be like this. The thing\u2014Poseidon?\u2014stood tall, and the dizzying height of the top of the Serapeum only came even with the thing's pointed chin. It dwarfed even the most massive warships; the city, docks, and harbor looked like toys in comparison.\n\nHe watched it drag the chain up and freeze in place with its trident at the ready. No captain with any sanity would dare attempt a crossing. Not now.\n\nAnd in the next instant he thought, They don't have to.\n\nHe dropped the cup he was holding and ran down the steps, heedless of his own safety. Every second passing was deadly. He could hear the city starting to react to the presence of the automaton guarding their city; some were shouting, many cheering. No time, no time...\n\nHe jumped the last three steps and landed running, flat out, shouting at surprised Scholars to make way. He arrived at the strategy room halfway down the pyramid and saw all his captains crowded together at the windows, looking toward the harbor.\n\n\"Shutters down!\" he snapped, and pointed to the Obscurist who was standing nearby. She was a young thing, and he hoped to Heron she was competent. \"Do it now! Emergency security for the Serapeum, the Iron Tower, the High Garda compound, the Lighthouse, and the Archives. Execute!\"\n\nShe seemed dazed for an instant, then snapped upright and said, \"Yes, Lord Commander,\" and stepped away. He had to trust it would be done. He had other concerns. As his captains turned toward him, the shutters began gliding down over the windows\u2014solid metal, treated to resist Greek fire.\n\n\"Captains,\" he said. He sounded sharp and urgent, and in this moment he wanted that. \"As planned. Tier one defenses, secure our approaches. Tier two, deploy into the streets with balm for the barrage of Greek fire we're bound to draw. They've had all the time of their crossing to map out their battle plans. Our response is in place. Stay loose, stay ready, and above all, defend our people and the Great Library from anyone, anyone who would threaten either one. If you need resources, all clerks are on duty to monitor the Codex for all requests; use the code previously issued. We will do all we can to support you. Expect the Obscurists to provide you with automaton support as soon as they can.\" He hesitated for one second, and said, \"You know me, and I respect you. I trust every one of you to uphold your oaths and honor the ancestors who've guarded this city for five thousand years. Spend lives if you must. But make the enemy spend theirs first.\"\n\nThe sound of fists hitting chests made a palpable wave through the room. He saluted them back and watched his captains go. \"Captain Botha,\" he said, and motioned his former lieutenant over on the way out. \"I give my company into your care.\" Botha had command of his people now, and Santi was content with that. Botha nodded and allowed a thin, dangerous smile to emerge.\n\n\"Lord Commander, you've trained them well enough that no one could lead them wrong. We will prevail.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nThey gripped hands for a moment, and then Botha was gone. The room was almost empty, save for the phalanx of clerks and Santi's newly minted aide, Senior Captain Nofret Alamasi. She stood calm and poised, waiting for orders. He had none to give at the moment, but he exchanged nods with her that told her to relax. She did with a visible sigh. \"It begins,\" she said.\n\n\"Any moment now,\" he agreed. \"May gods great and small be with us. We've word of the Russian infantry advancing fast from the north. The Saudis are standing firm in our defense, as are Turkey and India, but I don't like our odds if that fails. If Turkey or India turn to join the Russians...\"\n\n\"I don't think that will happen,\" she said. \"We all know without the Great Library they'd be at each other's throats. It must have taken all the diplomacy in the world to put English and Welsh ships within firing distance of each other, not to mention Spanish and Portuguese. How long do you think those truces will hold when bodies start to fall?\"\n\n\"Excellent question,\" he said. \"But unfortunately, not our greatest concern just now. I'd love to set our enemies against each other, but we have bigger problems.\"\n\nShe cocked her head, eyes narrowing. \"Which are?\"\n\n\"Something I'd rather not commit High Garda troops against. This is best done with misdirection, and I know just the person for that. Contact Dario Santiago and get him here. Quickly.\"\n\nShe took out her Codex and dispatched the orders. If Dario ignored the summons, he'd be met with High Garda escorts who would force the issue. The young man would come, like it or not. Almost certainly, he would not.\n\nThere was nothing about the current situation that Santi liked, either. He could at least spread the discomfort around.\n\nThe first wave of Greek fire hit only moments later. He knew it by the choking reek of the stuff that drifted in, and the alarms booming from the Lighthouse. They'll be aiming for the Lighthouse first. He hoped the Obscurists had enough will and power to defend their landmarks, both for the sake of history and to protect a vital strategic advantage. The Lighthouse wasn't merely offices, or the ancient beacon that had burned, in one form or another, for most of recorded history. Today, it became a weapon.\n\nIf Thomas's plans proved out.\n\n\"Updates,\" Santi snapped. Some of the clerks were coughing, unused to the stench of the firebombs. One stumbled to a corner and retched. \"If you can't work, leave and send someone of stronger constitution. We can't afford gaps.\"\n\nThe clerk gulped, wiped his mouth, and nodded. He went back to his station. \"Update from the Lighthouse, sir. The Artifex advises that the device installation is complete, but she can't guarantee it will work as promised.\"\n\n\"No time like the present to try,\" he said. \"Alamasi? Direct them to fire it. Target close to the Spanish fleet, but don't damage any ships. Warning shot only.\"\n\n\"Acknowledged, sir, a warning shot,\" she said, even as she wrote down the instruction. \"They advise two minutes to align and power the device.\"\n\nHe walked to the last set of windows and looked at the Obscurist. \"Raise this set of shutters only. Alamasi, if I'm burned alive, then all this becomes your problem.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" she said reproachfully. \"That's not the inspirational speech I need.\"\n\n\"I'm not in an inspirational mood.\"\n\nThe shutter rolled up, and he saw hell.\n\nHe'd watched the bombardment of Philadelphia under the orders of the old Archivist; he knew the devastation Greek fire could wreak, and he knew he'd hesitate to ever use it against a vulnerable target. But the Welsh\u2014who had used it on London, heedless of civilian casualties\u2014had no such qualms. They'd raised flags on their ships: black ones, with a red bar across them. The Welsh signal for no quarter.\n\nSo much for diplomacy. The Welsh, at least, intended to destroy whatever they could, reduce the Great Library to ashes if they had to. And the Spanish weren't turning on them. Weren't supporting their efforts, but certainly weren't demanding a stop.\n\nThe only saving grace was that the plans the High Garda had so carefully prepared were working. Stores of denaturing powder that could quell Greek fire were at every corner of every main road, and on many of the smaller ones, too. Special fire brigades were in place with dispensers to fire the powder over larger areas. So as many vile fireballs as streaked through the air toward the beautiful Alexandrian streets, few did more than land, spread, and be promptly smothered. Of course there was damage, unavoidably, but he saw only a few fires that were spreading, and those had plenty of attention.\n\nSo far, it was only Welsh ships firing ballistas. But if the other ships in that fleet joined... \"They said two minutes,\" he said. \"Is the Lighthouse aware of how much damage could be done by then?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. They're working.\"\n\nAs he watched tensely, one of the Welsh ships got the range and began to hammer at the Iron Tower. So far, it seemed unaffected. It was torture to stand here and watch the bombardment and deliver no answer. A barrage came at the Serapeum, hit the ancient stone, and slid away. The ancients had built their defenses well. We rely on the past accomplishments far too much. Must do something about that.\n\n\"Sir!\" Alamasi's voice was vibrant with excitement. \"Lighthouse signals ready!\"\n\n\"Fire,\" he said. He hoped he sounded calmer than he felt.\n\nA thick beam of red light cut from the top of the Pharos Lighthouse. It was as broad as a warship, as hot as the sun's fiery skin, and it sliced straight through the water in a line that only just missed the bows of several Spanish ships, including the one flying the flag of the ambassador.\n\nSteam blew up in a blinding cloud, creating instant fog and confusion; through the mist, Santi saw one of the ballistas go wrong on the deck of a Welsh ship, and Greek fire exploded and spread. They'd have precautions, but the heavy, sudden fog did them no favors in organization. Ships drifted too close together. The crews were disoriented in the reduced vision. And the unholy green glow of the spilled Greek fire burned like angry spirits, creating a hellish vision of chaos.\n\nThe red beam cut out. Santi watched for a few seconds, and then said, \"Senior Captain, please send a message to the Spanish ambassador. Tell him that the Welsh are to cease their bombardment immediately, or the next thing that the Lighthouse burns will not be seawater.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" He heard the fast scratch of her stylus. Alamasi had a rare gift for quick communication matched with perfect script; he couldn't have done it himself. His scrawl would have been incomprehensible to the Spanish under this type of pressure. Much depended on precision.\n\nThe silence within the room felt heavy, overlaid by the distant screams and cries from the city below.\n\nThere were two more bombs fired toward the city, and then the bombardment stopped. The fleet sat quiet in the drifting fog.\n\nAnd Alamasi said, \"The Spanish ambassador writes as follows: Our Welsh allies acted with reckless haste and have been reprimanded. We are willing to signal a truce and assist with the injured within the city.\"\n\n\"Thank him for his gracious offer,\" he said. \"Should the fleet wish to remain against the orders of the Archivist and threaten our borders, we will respond with all weapons at our disposal to any hostile intention.\"\n\nShe was transcribing as he said it, and he felt a moment's light-headed weakness. I'm no diplomat. But in this moment, he did as he had to do, and he knew that was what the Archivist expected. Whatever mistakes he made would be discussed later, but for now, he knew weakness could only bring the wolves.\n\nAnd the wolves would rip the Great Library apart.\n\nAlamasi's pen stopped, and he waited. Long moments. The city's alarms still droned, warning the citizens to shelter, but now they fell silent, too. He saw flutters of bronze wings in the skies; the Obscurists had set the sphinxes in flight to circle above the city, ready to strike enemies with all the terror an automaton could bring. The lions were moving through the streets with the High Garda companies. Spartans and automaton gods would be stepping off their pedestals to patrol.\n\nNo one had ever succeeded in breaching Alexandria's defenses. And he would not have it happen under his command.\n\n\"Message to the Obscurist Magnus,\" he said. \"Ask him how the Obscurists are holding up. We need those automata working.\"\n\nAfter another moment, she said, \"He reports that the workload is heavy, but they are managing. He recommends keeping a dozen sphinxes in the air for early detection of any threats. Save the dragon for emergencies.\"\n\n\"Good,\" Santi said. \"Anything from the Spanish ambassador yet?\"\n\nShe sounded regretful. \"No, Lord Commander. But I do have a report that Dario Santiago has been found and is being escorted here.\"\n\nThat implied rather strongly that Dario hadn't come by his own will. Typical. Santi quite liked the arrogant little ass, but he knew how much Dario detested being told what to do. Royals. \"Any updates from Scholar Wolfe?\"\n\n\"I regret not, sir.\"\n\nSanti clasped his hands behind his back in favor of balling them into fists.\n\nStay alive, Christopher.\n\nAnd find that damned old man before he causes chaos on top of chaos. We can't afford to fight on two fronts."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "Dario arrived under armed escort, and despite their professional behavior Santi could see it hadn't been an easy trip. The young nobleman was dressed in wine-red velvet, expensive and well made, though he probably considered his outfit quite plain. Not a jewel to be seen. Not even lace on his sleeves.\n\nWhat he did have, which the High Garda soldier leading the escort deprived him of and handed to Santi directly, was a dagger. It was indeed jeweled, and it had a beautiful Latin inscription on the blade. \"Ego bibo alte,\" Santi read. \"I drink deep.\"\n\n\"It works both for the blade and for me,\" Dario said. \"May I have that back? It was expensive.\"\n\n\"In a while,\" Santi said, and put it aside on the table. \"Come to the window.\"\n\nDario weighed his choices and wisely decided not to make it a fight; he came to the window, crossed his arms, and said, \"What do you want, Lord Commander? I might be royal, but kidnapping me won't get you anywhere. The king of Spain has a lot of cousins.\"\n\nSanti cast him a look that clearly told him not to push his luck. \"Where is your loyalty?\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"You wear the gold band of a lifetime Scholar,\" Santi said. \"You've put it back on, I see that. But you've abandoned your robe.\"\n\n\"Not every Scholar wears one.\"\n\n\"Today they do,\" he said, \"unless they have a compelling reason.\"\n\n\"Is this what you had me dragged here for? To critique my wardrobe?\" Dario flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his jacket. But he was wary. Listening. Just putting up his usual rank of glittering defenses.\n\n\"I'm asking you where you stand,\" Santi said. \"With the Great Library, or with your homeland and relatives. It matters very much at this moment.\"\n\nDario's face smoothed out into a blank mask. \"Sir,\" he said, \"I'm offended you should even have to ask\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't.\" Santi's calm, heavy tone put a stop to the foolishness. Dario rocked back and forth on his heels a moment before he answered.\n\n\"It's difficult,\" he admitted then, and Santi heard the ring of truth this time. \"I love Spain. I love my cousins. And I hope they have the purest of motives\u2014\"\n\n\"They just bombarded our city.\"\n\n\"The Welsh did that!\"\n\n\"Without the Spanish ambassador's complicity? Really? You're smarter than that, Dario. He used them to see what we'd do in response. Now he knows.\"\n\n\"He is an extraordinarily good chess player. But so are you, Cap\u2014\" Dario broke off and shook his head. \"It's hard to break the habit of calling you captain.\"\n\n\"Imagine how it feels for me,\" Santi said. \"I'm doing my best to protect and preserve this city, but my true and only duty is to protect and preserve the Great Library. I need help to do that.\"\n\n\"From me?\"\n\n\"Yes. From you. If you're willing. And if you're loyal.\"\n\n\"I am,\" Dario said, and heaved a sigh as he looked up at the ceiling in frustration. \"Dear God in heaven, I am loyal to this glamorous, miserable place, and I never thought I'd say that. I never expected it to force me to stand against my own, but here we are. It doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.\"\n\n\"Your happiness isn't required,\" Santi said. \"I need something that comes to you as naturally as breathing.\"\n\nDario's dark eyebrows went up. It gave him a piratical look. \"Which is?\"\n\n\"Betrayal.\"\n\nSanti didn't miss the fury that ignited in the young man's eyes, or the hand that went automatically to his side; if he'd had the fancy blade there, he'd have drawn it. Which was why it now lay on the table behind Santi. But Dario checked himself and said, \"Be careful how you say that, High Commander. I'm loyal. Not a lapdog. What do you want?\"\n\n\"I want you to tell your cousin that you need to borrow his spies.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 27",
                "text": "The Archivist summoned Santi for a personal report after Dario was dispatched on his way, and she'd put aside her formal robes and headdress for a simple, clean kimono of pale green with pastel flowers. Murasaki looked calm and ordered, and she was gracious enough to allow him to sit as their tea was poured. It was a tea almost the shade of her gown, and though he wasn't prone much to tea, it drove his weariness away again. For a while.\n\n\"The reports tell me your preparations were effective,\" she said. \"The damage to our heritage buildings is minor, and even in the unprotected streets your firefighting teams minimized the losses.\"\n\n\"Ten dead,\" he said. \"Two of them librarians. Twenty-one injured seriously enough to summon Medica. I don't consider that minimized, Archivist.\"\n\n\"We're at war, in all but name. You must adjust your expectations. As must I. I have lived much of my life in Spain; I have served at the three largest Serapeums there, and I have a great love for the country and people. And my own home country has taken arms against us. It leaves me in a difficult position, but I will do what I must. As will you. Whatever the cost in lives and property, we have a greater responsibility\u2014to knowledge. To the world.\"\n\nHe bowed his head. \"Yes. I know that.\" He wanted to tell her about Dario's mission, but he didn't dare, not here. There were staff members around, and worst of all, Khalila Seif, who would not take this well at all. \"I have a question, Archivist, if you would allow.\"\n\n\"Ask.\"\n\n\"Will you place this war completely in my hands? Trust me to follow a strategy, even if it seems wrong to you?\"\n\n\"That is your position, High Commander. I would only overrule you if I saw imminent disaster.\"\n\n\"I need you to promise me: don't do it even then. We'll need our nerves steady, both of us, to do what I plan.\"\n\n\"And I suppose you will not tell me what it is?\"\n\n\"I can't,\" he confessed. \"Not because I don't trust you, Archivist. But because I am risking the life of someone who also trusts me. But I will tell you, I promise. When it's time.\"\n\nHer gaze was cool, heavy, and assessing; she reminded him of Christopher in that moment. No fools suffered in this room. \"Very well,\" Murasaki said. \"But you know the consequences if this goes badly.\"\n\nHe toasted her with his cup of tea. \"Are you telling me to return with my shield or upon it?\"\n\n\"Thirty-six plans of how to win the battle are not as good as one plan to withdraw from it,\" she retorted. An old Japanese proverb. \"But I will trust you. And you must trust me. Or we both lose.\"\n\nHe touched his fist to his chest\u2014not quite a salute, but a suggestion of one, and she accepted it with a nod.\n\nHe had his approvals.\n\nAfter thanking her for the refreshment, he rose to leave. The Archivist stopped him. \"Distasteful as this is, we must discuss one of our own. My understanding is that Jess Brightwell is involved with the young woman who has inherited Red Ibrahim's shadow empire. True?\"\n\n\"He knows her,\" Santi said. He didn't tell her that he did as well, if only slightly. It didn't seem a proper thing for a High Garda commander to admit.\n\n\"And Brightwell's father controls much of the illegal book trade of England and Europe?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Yet this boy was accepted to the High Garda? And we wholly trust him?\"\n\n\"Jess is not his father,\" Santi said. \"And his brother died fighting with us.\"\n\n\"But for what reason? I doubt his altruism.\" The Archivist had a very traditional view of book smugglers, and he couldn't blame her; he'd had the same opinions until Jess had introduced him to some of the players. Though he'd cheerfully knock Callum Brightwell flat any day of the week. As if she'd just read his mind, the Archivist continued. \"His father has sent several messages demanding we hold an immediate funeral for his son, and that he and his wife attend. I am reluctant to admit him to our city, especially in this time of uncertainty. Or, frankly, at all. Your opinion, knowing all of these people better, would be welcome.\"\n\nFunerals. Santi hadn't thought about them, hadn't even considered the need for them yet. But of course funerals would need to be held, particularly for those whose religions required immediate burial or cremation. He wasn't sure what religion the elder Brightwell followed. Or Brendan, for that matter. The Great Library always honored the traditions whenever possible. \"And when is his funeral to be held?\"\n\n\"I haven't yet decided,\" she admitted. \"I would prefer to return him to his father in England for whatever rites are required, but... I think his brother should also have a choice in this.\"\n\n\"Brendan died for us, and his brother,\" Santi said. \"I agree that having Callum Brightwell here is an invitation to chaos, but I will say this for him: he saved our lives during the Welsh conflict in London. And gave us shelter when we were on the run from the Archivist.\"\n\n\"And sold you out there, as well. Landed you in Philadelphia, at the mercy of the Burners.\"\n\n\"He had very little choice,\" Santi said. \"But yes. Brightwell also connived with your predecessor because he realized an opportunity presented itself. He'd certainly be interested in profits, if there's some arrangement the Great Library finds beneficial. Times are changing, Archivist. There might be accommodations to be made.\"\n\n\"With book smugglers?\" She sounded not so much horrified as disgusted.\n\n\"I know it goes against the grain,\" he admitted. \"But consult with Thomas Schreiber. I believe he has an invention that will be vital to this discussion.\"\n\n\"The young man who just raised Poseidon in the harbor?\" She nodded thoughtfully. \"I will. Thank you, Lord Commander. I know you have a\u2014I do not want to call it a war, but perhaps a campaign\u2014to conduct.\"\n\nHe bowed. \"My thanks for the gift of your trust, Archivist.\"\n\nShe nodded, and he left. Tom Rolleson was waiting for him in the hall; his younger aide seemed as if he'd aged years in the last few days. He was reading his Codex, and kept reading as he fell in step. \"Sir,\" he said. \"The fleet has moved back. They haven't departed completely, but they're putting some water between us.\"\n\n\"More likely, between that deadly cannon of Thomas's and their highly vulnerable ships,\" Santi said. \"The Spanish ambassador's no fool. He saw Thomas make one of those weapons, and he'll know what they're capable of doing. But he's not one to give up, either. I imagine he'll test it periodically and see how long it can keep up its beam. How long can it, by the way?\"\n\n\"No more than thirty-six seconds, sir. Then it needs to recharge for at least a few minutes.\"\n\n\"And they will quickly discover that. I need to talk to the Artifex Magnus and see what can be done.\"\n\nRolleson glanced up. \"I'll arrange it, sir. What else?\"\n\n\"There will be spies inside the city, likely part of the Spanish ambassador's ring that existed long before this.\"\n\n\"I'm told the Obscurists are looking for any suspicious writings in either Codex messages or private journals.\" Rolleson nearly missed a step. \"Wait... how can they possibly read a private journal?\" Santi recognized the scandalized worry in that question. He'd felt it himself when he'd first realized that personal journals weren't just for their intended purpose of adding to the history of the Great Library, but for surveillance by increasingly anxious Archivists. By slow, seemingly logical steps, they'd gone from pure motives to bitterly authoritarian outcomes.\n\n\"Let's just say that you probably shouldn't put anything in your journal you wouldn't want the Archivist to read over tea.\"\n\n\"Oh. But I thought... I thought they were to be locked until after our deaths.\" That wasn't scandalized; that was purely horrified. \"Too late to burn it, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Far too late,\" Santi said. \"I've been making mine incredibly boring for many, many years. You might want to do the same.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Rolleson gulped and tried to regain his composure. \"Sorry, sir, you were saying?\"\n\n\"Orders. Post Captain Botha's company at the Lighthouse. I want his best defending the Ray of Apollo, but soldiers at all strategic levels and approaches, from the ground up. Some uniformed, some plainclothes. Spies will almost certainly come as Scholars. Check every band. Ask the Obscurist Magnus to divert two sphinxes to guard the door access to the Ray, and make damn sure we don't rely on them completely. Tell Botha to try not to kill any spies they find; I'd like them as trading chips.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. What else?\"\n\n\"Send a message to Scholar Wolfe. Ask if he has any word on the old Archivist. I need to know where the old man is and what he's doing.\"\n\nAnd tell him to be careful, he thought, but didn't say. Sentiment would make Rolleson uncomfortable. And Wolfe wouldn't welcome his mothering right now.\n\nBut as they passed a statue of Isis, Santi sent up a silent prayer for his lover's safety, anyway. He wasn't a believer in the old Egyptian gods; he remained a staunch Catholic. But that really didn't matter so much at the moment; Isis was one of Wolfe's gods.\n\nSurely, she'd look after him."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt from the text \"Of the Imperishable\" by Archivist Gargi Vachaknavi:\n\n\u2002The ancient scholars, honored though they must be for their accomplishments, should not be deified with the belief that they were all knowing. As wise a person as the great Greek physician Galen subscribed to the notion that a woman's womb was not a natural organ, but instead a living thing within the body that wandered from point to point. Aristotle mistakenly believed in many things, not the least of which are that a vacuum cannot exist and that memory exists in a fluid. So we must acknowledge that knowledge is ever expanding, ever changing, and so we must also change with it.\n\n\u2002This is my theory of the Imperishable, which the Greeks also named apeiron: a force that is potential in all things, that exists and does not, that underlies even the quintessence of force that makes up the basis of all matter. The Imperishable exists beyond our understanding, and always shall; it transmutes the impossible to the possible, and we can witness the results but only rarely influence them.\n\n\u2002Today, touching the Imperishable is impossible without losing one's life in the process. But one day, a person will exist upon this earth who can manipulate the Imperishable, the apeiron, and will redefine the rules by which our very existence continues. On that day, that person may no longer be a person at all, though we may continue to regard them as such. And that is a troubling and difficult thing, that any should be so close to godhood, and yet possess all the ignorance and base impulses of our flesh.\n\n\u2002I wonder if even the Imperishable could end."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "Jess needed to sleep, but he lay awake, thinking about leaving Morgan behind him, thinking about the soft intake of breath she'd made. He'd almost turned around. Almost. But he knew there was no going back to where they'd once been.\n\nShe's better off without me.\n\nOne more lifeline, cut.\n\nYou're being morbid again, Brendan whispered to him. I'm dead. You're only dying. Try to have a little fun.\n\nShut up, Scraps, he thought, but his heart wasn't in it. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe, but his lungs felt stuffed with feathers again, and trying made him cough. He sat up and used the mask again; the Medica was right: the more he used it, the less effect it had.\n\nBut he couldn't rest.\n\nHe got up, showered, dressed, paced. Played dice with some of Anit's men and lost consistently; he suspected they'd broken out the loaded set to clean him out of his pocket money, but he didn't really care. It was something to do.\n\nAt sunrise, he checked on Scholar Wolfe, who\u2014predictably enough\u2014was arguing.\n\nWith Glain.\n\n\"No,\" he was saying when Jess walked in. \"You are not going with us. You are staying here to recover, and that, soldier, is an order. If you want me to message Santi and waste his valuable time in confirming that\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't bother the Lord Commander,\" Glain said. \"But I refuse to just lie about like some broken toy. I'm fine!\"\n\nShe was, in fact, standing. And dressed in her uniform. She\u2014or Anit's people\u2014had washed the blood from it, and the bullet holes in it were almost unnoticeable. Almost. \"You were inches from death yesterday,\" Jess said. \"Just this once, why don't you admit it?\"\n\n\"Why don't you?\" She glared at him. \"You've looked like something grave robbers dug up since you breathed in that gas. Why don't you rest?\"\n\n\"I'm better today,\" he lied. \"And the Medica cleared me.\" Only barely true. He hoped Wolfe hadn't checked. But Wolfe said nothing. He was studying Glain with those bitter dark eyes, looking for weakness. And even Jess had to admit that he didn't see much in her. Not yet.\n\n\"You can't leave me here in a nest of thieves!\" she said. \"No offense meant. Some of my best friends are thieves now.\"\n\nHe gave her a sharp-edged grin. \"Too little, too late,\" he said. And realized that he was still taking on the mannerisms of his brother. He'd been doing it for survival here in Alexandria for long enough that it had become second nature. And, in truth, it felt... right. Maybe being a little bit Brendan would balance the darker shadows in his soul. \"We should have gone last night, Scholar.\"\n\n\"No one was in shape to do that,\" Wolfe said. \"And Anit needed time to gather her people. Today will do.\"\n\n\"We're targets, traveling in a group.\"\n\n\"We won't be seen.\"\n\nSome Obscurists, Jess knew, could hide themselves from notice. It wasn't quite invisibility; it was misdirection. Morgan could. But hiding even one other person was a strain. Hiding groups? Even if Anit had the rare treasure of a rogue Obscurist, or an undiscovered one, he doubted Wolfe's assurance.\n\nAnd then he didn't. \"She's got tunnels,\" he said. \"Yes, of course she does. I should have realized.\"\n\n\"They're extensive,\" Wolfe said. \"I've gone over the maps. They'll take us all the way to the entrance to the Necropolis. They're normally guarded by sphinxes where they come out. I've put in a request for them to be coded to ignore us, but the Obscurists are obviously busy. Pity Morgan had to leave so soon.\"\n\n\"She was needed,\" Jess said. \"Harbor defenses.\"\n\n\"Ah. Of course. I hope...\" Wolfe stopped talking, which was unusual enough to make both Jess and Glain turn to look at him.\n\n\"Hope what?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"Hope it goes well,\" Wolfe finished. And Jess knew that wasn't what he'd originally intended to say at all. \"Glain. I'm not arguing with you. If you want to come, fine. But if you fall behind, we leave you.\" He turned a glare on Jess. \"Same for you.\"\n\n\"Understood, sir,\" Jess and Glain said in crisp unison. Unintentionally.\n\n\"Get your kit together,\" Wolfe said. \"Five minutes. Meet me in the atrium.\"\n\nHe left without waiting for a reply. The two of them looked at each other. Glain sat down on her bed. \"You should move,\" she told him. \"When he says five minutes, he means two.\"\n\n\"I know. I have everything,\" he said. He hesitated over what to say, and finally decided.\n\n\"I thought we'd lost you, Glain. I can't afford that. So if you're not up to this, don't risk it. All right?\"\n\n\"You're worse than my brothers,\" she said.\n\n\"I'll take it as a compliment. I need more siblings.\"\n\nShe sent him a slightly horrified look. \"I'm sorry. I didn't mean\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said. \"It still hurts, and I'll still flinch when anything brushes that wound. If you want me to feel better, don't die on me, Glain.\"\n\n\"I promise,\" she said. \"Let's make it a pact. I can't afford fewer friends, either. Hardly anyone likes me as it is.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised.\"\n\n\"Don't get soppy, Brightwell.\" She held on to his hand, though, and met his eyes squarely. \"Are you all right? Truly?\"\n\nHe took his life in his hands and kissed her swiftly on the forehead; her reactions were slower than usual, and he got away with it. Barely. \"Don't be late,\" he said, and escaped.\n\nWolfe was, of course, already in the atrium. He was huddled with a scarred older man talking in hushed tones. Before Jess reached them, the other man scuttled off, and Jess watched his departure, frowning. \"Who's that?\"\n\n\"Street beggar,\" Wolfe said. \"Anit's put out word among the less legal Alexandria residents, and they've reported a number of sightings, not of the Archivist, but of some of his most trusted High Garda. And Zara Cole. Look.\"\n\nHe unrolled a map onto the table nearby, and Jess saw that he'd already inked in some colored dots. \"What's the code?\"\n\n\"Red for unconfirmed sightings of members of either High Garda Elite or individual Curia members. Blue for confirmed sightings.\"\n\n\"And black?\"\n\nWolfe put his finger on the single black spot. \"Zara. You notice anything about the pattern?\"\n\nThe blue and red covered much of the city. Randomly distributed. He tried to make sense of it and failed. \"I don't see it.\"\n\n\"Look at the one quarter of the city where they were not spotted. Because I think he arranged for these sightings quite deliberately to confuse what he was planning.\"\n\nIt came into focus as soon as the Scholar said it: there was a single neighborhood of the city where absolutely no sightings had been registered. Jess studied it, but failed to remember anything remarkable about it. \"What's there?\"\n\n\"Dyers and papermakers, butchers and tanners,\" Wolfe said. He moved his finger to a particular anonymous street. \"And the highly classified and secret High Garda workshop for producing and storing Greek fire.\"\n\nJess felt that go through him like an icy stab. \"How much?\"\n\n\"How much do you think the High Garda holds in reserve?\"\n\nJess didn't really want to think. \"But it's guarded.\"\n\n\"Of course. And Santi would have tripled whatever the normal complement would be. The Archivist in Exile will want to burn this city if he can't own it. That's the kind of man he is. Better the emperor of ashes than of nothing.\"\n\n\"You've warned Santi?\"\n\n\"He's aware,\" Wolfe said.\n\n\"Shouldn't we\u2014\"\n\n\"No. Let Santi handle defenses. We must hunt the Archivist in his den, at the Necropolis.\"\n\nThey were lucky the old man hadn't managed to recruit any Obscurists to his cause, Jess supposed. If he had, the odds would have been thoroughly terrible instead of just overwhelming. Bad enough they were facing, by his count, at least thirty High Garda Elite\u2014fewer, if some had since defected, which Jess profoundly hoped\u2014who were all heavily armed and trained to be deadly to anyone, even to their own fellow soldiers.\n\nHe knew the old ex-Archivist wouldn't hesitate to kill, and order others to do it for him. His rule of the Great Library had been a long, bloody, brutal one. And even the cruelest dictators had allies... and could buy or compel more. Jess didn't doubt the old man had plenty of wealth he'd siphoned out of the Great Library's coffers. Money enough to buy his escape and permanent safety if they didn't find him, and soon.\n\n\"You're not wearing that Scholar's robe,\" Jess said. Wolfe allowed the map to roll up again and put it in a pocket inside the jacket he wore beneath the robe. Then he removed the robe, folded the thin silk up with practiced, expert motions, and slipped it into a small pouch that went in another pocket.\n\n\"I'll wear it once we have him,\" he said. \"I want him to see the silk on my back, despite everything he's tried to do to rip it away.\"\n\nAnd then the old man dies. For killing his innocent assistant, Neksa, if nothing else; the Archivist needed to know when the Brightwells held a grudge, they nursed it like a treasured child. He wanted that so much he was willing to die for it. Reckless, like his brother. Brave, like his brother.\n\nDead like me, too, he heard Brendan whisper. You can choose your own path. You always have. Don't follow me into the tomb, Jess.\n\nJess had never let his brother tell him what to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 30",
                "text": "The tunnels they took were surprisingly clean, wide, and spacious, fitted with glows that kept them well lit. He'd seen far worse.\n\nAnit had changed into trousers and a close-fitting tunic, a style borrowed from countries farther east; her tunic was matte dark blue silk, and the trousers matched. That particular blue, Jess recalled, was considered the best for moving unnoticed in the dark. He supposed that even though dawn had broken, they'd spend most of the day in the shadows. If all went well.\n\n\"You didn't need to come with us,\" he told her as they walked.\n\n\"I most surely did,\" she said. \"In case my crew decides they don't like to follow the orders of a dusty old Scholar. Why, are you worried about me?\"\n\n\"I think you know how to survive,\" he said, and coughed. They'd been walking nearly an hour, and his lungs were struggling now, swollen and tender. He covered the cough and tried not to see Glain's gaze, which was focused on him like Thomas's light gun. \"Sorry. Dust.\"\n\n\"We keep our tunnels quite clean,\" Anit said. \"Do you need to rest?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"I'm fine.\"\n\nShe didn't argue, but she didn't believe him, either; he could see that from the glance she sent him. \"Only about another twenty minutes,\" she told him. \"We'll come to an intersection soon, then take the branch to the left. It's not far from there to the Necropolis.\"\n\n\"And exactly why do you have tunnels built to the Necropolis?\" Glain asked.\n\nAnit didn't answer that question, but Jess knew well enough. The Necropolis, with its underground city of tombs, was an ideal place to hide things; few ventured there after their dead were sealed away in their miniature houses. \"Red Ibrahim had a false tomb built,\" Jess guessed. \"Valuable books?\"\n\n\"Very,\" Anit said. \"The rarest of them all.\"\n\n\"And... where will you lay him to rest? Not there, surely.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"Another tomb, under a different name. He left instructions.\"\n\n\"I don't suppose you'd let me see the cache...?\"\n\nShe smiled a little. \"Perhaps I will,\" she said. \"Since I know we share a love of forbidden things. But not today. Today is for more serious things.\"\n\nHe nodded. Another cough threatened, and he swallowed it back as best he could. He could hear himself wheezing as he breathed, and hoped it wasn't as noticeable to anyone else. He couldn't use the mask here, out in the open; it would signal to everyone\u2014including Wolfe\u2014that he wasn't fit to fight. I'll manage, he thought. He slowed his pace a little, dropping back, and found that Glain adjusted her speed to match him. She wasn't looking at him. It seemed entirely coincidental.\n\n\"You're not well enough,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, and you are?\" In the eerie green glow, everyone looked faintly ill, but Glain's face was shining with sweat.\n\n\"We'll look after each other, then,\" she said, and he nodded. Together, they might just make it through. \"And Wolfe, of course.\"\n\nAlways.\n\n\"How many know about these tunnels?\" Glain asked him. Jess shrugged.\n\n\"No idea, but Red Ibrahim would have kept this one close to his vest. His most trusted lieutenants might have known about it, but few others.\"\n\n\"And what odds do you give that the Archivist didn't know about it?\"\n\n\"Good ones,\" he replied. \"If he had, he'd have seized the books. And probably wiped out Red Ibrahim and everyone who knew him. Those were his standing orders.\"\n\nShe didn't seem convinced, but she accepted that, and as they arrived at the turn, they'd fallen to the back of the company, away from Wolfe and Anit. Anit's picked crew consisted of about twenty, ten of them women who looked just as capable and focused as Glain. Mostly Egyptians, but a few drawn from paler lands, and at least a portion of the crew hailed back to origins farther east. Even criminals in Alexandria were cosmopolitan.\n\nWhen the company paused, Jess and Glain caught up and pushed through to rejoin Wolfe. He stood with Anit at what seemed to be a blank, blunt end to the tunnel, and the gloom at this end\u2014far from the last glow\u2014made the situation seem even worse.\n\nAnit pressed her small hands against the stone in a special pattern with her fingers spread. There was an audible click that rolled through the tunnel, and then the stone began to slide away to the left. It was almost silent, but almost, Jess thought, wasn't good enough. He unslung the rifle from his back and saw that Glain had already done the same. Without speaking or even glancing to confirm, they moved out as a team ahead of Wolfe and Anit.\n\nThe Necropolis was dark. Very dark. The only light came from a single spot far above at the top of the chamber\u2014a hole that poured light down in an almost solid stream. It was meant, Jess thought, to be bounced from a mirror; he could see other mirrors set on the walls of the cave, glimmering in the dimness. But someone had moved the mirror that caught the incoming light and distributed it.\n\nThe Archivist wanted to make this difficult for anyone who might come looking.\n\nThe problem was that this was a city of the dead; it was disturbingly quiet here, only a distant whistle of wind across the hole piercing the dome above to disguise their footsteps. He tried to step carefully. It was cooler in here than he'd expected, and there was a strong reek\u2014not of decomposition so much, but of embalming chemicals. It clawed at his lungs, and he felt a surge of panic and held his breath. He could not cough. Not now.\n\nHe was so intent on that, he flinched when a tap on his shoulder signaled that Wolfe had joined them. The Scholar pointed toward one structure near the far left side, and once spotted in the gloom it was impossible to miss: a not-very-miniature pyramid with a capstone covered in gold. Jess signaled to Anit, who began to direct her people. She stayed back, which he appreciated. And she had a guard who stayed by her side. He glimpsed the distinctive haircut, though it was far too dark to see the snake tattoo beneath.\n\nWolfe was moving forward, and for an older man he still had an athlete's light, sure grace; he used the outer structures of the Necropolis for cover. Jess and Glain flanked him, ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. I don't know why I always think of him as a Scholar, Jess thought. He moves like a soldier. Always has. He'd spent a long time away from Alexandria out in the world, doing dangerous work for the Great Library.\n\nJess's lungs were on fire now, and he tried to breathe in the shallowest mouthfuls of tainted air possible. It didn't help. He shook with the effort to hold in the coughs, and tasted blood again. No. I can't afford this. Not now!\n\nHe should have been watching his footing. His boot landed on a stone, and the scrape echoed through the chamber like a shot.\n\nEveryone froze. The others, he thought, didn't know he'd been the one to make the sound; it ricocheted off of tombs and walls and ceiling.\n\nHe heard whispers follow it. They weren't coming from Anit's people\u2014that was clear; they knew better. No, this came from another group.\n\nThe Archivist's High Garda Elite were here.\n\nJess didn't catch the first flutter of movement, but Glain did; she raised her rifle and fired, and the flash illuminated the raw gray edges of tombs. In the next instant Wolfe flung himself behind cover, and a barrage of answering shots came at them. It was impossible to know how many of them there were, with the echoes in this chamber, but it sounded like a lot. Maybe as many as Anit had brought with them. Jess didn't think he was a match for even one High Garda Elite on a good day, and this wasn't one. He doubted Anit's band of mercenaries was, either. Glain might be. But even Glain couldn't best a crowd of them.\n\nHis mind was racing, and he was trying to think of some way around a fair fight. I'm a liability. I shouldn't have come. He knew that, and was enraged about it, but it was too late. He needed to use whatever advantages he could offer to save his friends.\n\nIt was far too dark in here to see properly; there was a very real risk of shooting allies. No way to tell if the Elites were wearing anything to identify them, but he'd memorized the faces of Anit's warriors. He just needed to be able to see them.\n\nThe lights.\n\nJess slipped off to the right, away from the fight. Tombs clustered thickly on this side, opposite the model of the Serapeum. He took shelter behind a tomb built to look like a gracious Egyptian home, complete with a stone garden in front, and used the mask in deep, convulsive gasps until the burning in his lungs calmed. Then he crouched and began a zigzag run between the tombs and toward the light at the center of the Necropolis.\n\nThe Elites hadn't destroyed the mirror, thankfully; they'd only tilted it down toward the ground. Jess stayed concealed behind a large granite statue of Bast and looked for any traps, any guards. Saw nothing. That didn't mean they hadn't thought of this, of course, but he hoped not.\n\nThe rolling roar of shots fired made him decide not to wait. Caution would get his friends killed.\n\nHe rushed forward with absolute focus on the mirror. Imagined exactly when to drop to his knees and spin the giant metal disc up on its metal frame so it caught the sunlight, then focus that light on the next mirror. With any luck, the Elites hadn't bothered to move the rest of the array.\n\nHe had to veer aside before reaching the mirror when what he'd taken for another inert funeral statue whirred to life.\n\nJess threw himself aside and rolled, but there was nowhere to go; his back collided with the side of another tomb and drove a wrenching cough from him that tore something inside. He spat blood and got a clear look at the thing coming for him.\n\nIt was a nightmare.\n\nHe'd heard rumors that the High Garda Elite had ordered special automata, but everyone he'd ever talked to had dismissed them as legends. He wished that had been true, because he was facing a Minotaur.\n\nEven if he'd been standing it would have topped him by several inches, and it was three times as broad in the chest, with shoulders that bulged with cabled muscles. A bull's head with sharp, curving horns and glaring red eyes. It carried an axe, and it moved forward on metallic human feet with hardly a sound.\n\nJess scrambled upright and threw himself aside just before the axe buried itself in the ground and cracked the granite of the tomb he'd been lying against. The blow would have chopped him in half if it had landed. He darted for an open path but the thing was fast, and it was relentless; he veered away from a swing of its double-headed axe.\n\nHe backed away, and it followed. It was locked on him, and if he wanted to escape, he was going to have to stop it. No chance of getting close enough to it to look for an off switch, and somehow he doubted this automaton even had one. He'd never seen one quite like it. Not even the dragon had this much raw presence. Not even the gods. This was built to resemble a monster, and it moved like one; the fact that its bull's face had no real expression only made it worse. Even without the axe, the sheer power of those arms could easily pull him to pieces.\n\nHe just wanted to run, but he knew that was useless; his lungs wouldn't take it, and this thing moved so fast he was certain it would hunt him down, no matter what he tried. He tried his rifle, but the bullets glanced off the creature's armored skin. He needed Thomas's light ray.\n\nHe didn't have it.\n\nHow is it seeing me in this darkness? Because here, near the turned-down mirror, it was very black indeed, hard to see anything in any great detail. He ought to be nearly invisible in these clothes.\n\nBecause it can see in the dark, he thought. Of course it could. That made it extra-terrifying.\n\nBut if it could see in the dark, that might mean it wouldn't be well-adapted to the light. Not concentrated light.\n\nJess raced for the mirror. He reached it with the Minotaur pounding in pursuit just a dozen feet behind. He flipped the mirror to catch the sun and quickly angled it to shine directly into the thing's eyes.\n\nIt stumbled and veered away.\n\nThe mirror was on a rotating stand, he realized; he followed the Minotaur, drove it into a corner between two of the tombs, where it found itself trapped, unable to escape through the narrow opening between them. He kept the light pouring onto it, pinning it in place, and stepped back while he heaved in painful breaths and analyzed the thing. Very few vulnerabilities in it. But the eyes... the eyes might be the key.\n\nHe raised his rifle and aimed carefully, sent up a prayer to whoever was listening that the crafters who'd created this awful thing hadn't armored the inside of its eyes, and fired.\n\nHe missed. The bullet hit a protruding brow ridge and ricocheted, digging a deep gouge in the marble of one of the tombs. His heart was pounding, and his lungs throbbing in time.\n\nSlow down, he told himself. Relax. Focus.\n\nHe fired again. One of the glaring red eyes went out, and the Minotaur gave a horrifying roar. It staggered forward. It lifted its axe.\n\nJess switched his aim to its other eye as it charged for the mirror. No time to be careful. He had to be correct.\n\nThe shot hit the right eye, and the Minotaur kept coming, flailing, wild, blind. Jess turned the mirror on its base to protect it, and the swing of the axe missed and sank the blade deep into the stone beneath. Jess kicked and landed his foot squarely in the chest of the Minotaur; it staggered back and lost its grip on the axe.\n\nAnd then it flailed blindly at the air. It couldn't see and didn't know where he was. Jess stayed still, watching; it must be listening for any clues, but the wild hammer of gunfire from the other side of the Necropolis would be overwhelming for it.\n\nThe Minotaur ran at the side of a tomb and began to batter it, cracking marble as pale as bone.\n\nJess couldn't kill the thing, but at least it wasn't an immediate threat. He swung the mirror around and looked for the next bronze reflector; he aimed the beam of light at it, and instantly, the entire chamber illuminated with a bright glow as the array of mirrors lit up in series. It was oddly beautiful, this city of white houses and monuments and unmoving gods.\n\nIt was also a war zone. Now that the area was lit, Jess had a clear view of where the Elites had stationed their gunners, and he made his way in that direction, coming at an angle that put him at their backs. One was fully exposed in the light now, and Jess paused and aimed, fired, and saw blood splash in a shocking spray on white marble. The High Garda Elite soldier slumped. Down, or dead, didn't matter at the moment. The Elites wouldn't be able to tell that he was behind them, with the echoes in this vast cave. It was all a rattle of noise coming from all directions.\n\nHe surveyed the landscape of close-crowded buildings and found an easy approach to one of the higher tombs; even better, the tomb had a roofline that provided good cover. He climbed onto a simple mastaba, then jumped from that to a larger tomb, then made it to the roof of the last one. The effort made his vision go soft around the edges, but he made it; he rolled behind the protection of the small ledge around the roof and steadied his rifle on it. He saw four targets, and with methodical precision he aimed and fired.\n\nHe didn't miss.\n\nHe watched from his prone, resting position as the rest unfolded. Anit's crew swarmed one of the defended positions on the ground and took possession of the weapons after the Elites fell. Jess spotted Wolfe and Glain leading another band of mercenaries forward toward the Serapeum, where the last of the resistance was located. I should be with them, he thought, but it felt good here. Calm and comfortable. He could do more for them here.\n\nAnd as it happened, that was the right decision, because a sniper wearing the Elite uniform crawled up to the roof of a tomb that had a good vantage point against his friends. The sniper had chosen\u2014probably accidentally\u2014a position that was partially blocked from his view by a statue of Anubis. Jess shuffled himself over as far as he could without tipping off the roof, and got a clearer angle on the Elite soldier.\n\nBut he missed. And the sniper whirled, searched for who'd shot at him, and Jess saw him aiming back.\n\nBetter not miss a second time.\n\nHe dropped his opponent with a bullet through the chest, and only seconds later realized that he'd killed a woman. He didn't know her, but she was younger than he'd expected, and it hit unexpectedly hard. But he'd had no choice. She would have gladly put a round in Wolfe's back, or Glain's. Or in his own head.\n\nThe firing reached a fever pitch, but it was all concealed from him inside the Serapeum; he watched tensely and finally relaxed when he saw Glain come outside and raise her fist. A sign of victory. She seemed all right, and Wolfe appeared a moment later, bloodstained but upright.\n\nJess climbed down and began the walk toward the Serapeum. He saw the blinded Minotaur still reeling and uncontrolled in the distance; it bashed holes in everything it touched, but it was easy to avoid now. Someone would have to put it completely down later, but it wouldn't be him, thankfully.\n\nHe'd done enough.\n\nHe made it to within a few feet of the Serapeum before his vision grayed out again, and as Glain came toward him he said, \"I think I need to sit down.\"\n\nBut he was already collapsing as he said it."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a Codex message manipulated from within the Iron Tower to be hidden from observation, addressed from the Archivist in Exile to Callum Brightwell:\n\n\u2002Mr. Brightwell, I deeply regret the loss of your elder son; it is a great pity that the boy sided with his misguided brother instead of obeying your instructions, and if I could have saved him, I would have done so.\n\n\u2002I have attempted, without success, to deal with your so-called cousin, Red Ibrahim's child, to negotiate a safe exit from the city; she has refused me completely. I hope you will be more reasonable, and will find a way to either prevail upon the girl's good will, buy her cooperation, or remove her and replace her with someone more willing. My work cannot be done here in a city that is both hunting me and under attack from outside forces. I plan to raise an army of my own to retake Alexandria and bring order back to the world, but I cannot do it from within these walls.\n\n\u2002I will spare your younger son as part of this bargain, of course. And you may have your pick of the Great Archives on the day I triumph.\n\n\u2002Advise me of a plan and the deal will be made.\n\n\u2002Reply from Callum Brightwell, hidden from observation\n\n\u2002Don't bother. You've promised me enough favors and ransoms that I should own the Great Archives, and the Great Library itself, four times over. If you're still lingering in Alexandria and not dead on a gallows by the time of my son's funeral, then I may yet hold you to account and get some value out of you.\n\n\u2002Touch my other son and die."
            },
            {
                "title": "DARIO",
                "text": "The first thing Dario did, after being released from Santi's zealous soldiers, was go back to his room in the Lighthouse to dress. It meant passing burning buildings with crews of firefighters, wounded being treated, familiar and beloved spots damaged by bombardment. That one there: his favorite shop for little cakes. There, the caf\u00e9 where he drank morning coffee.\n\nIt made him angry and unsettled, and being shadowed by Santi's High Garda afflicted him with a rare dose of caution. He wondered what orders Santi had issued. He trusted the captain\u2014no, Lord Commander\u2014with his life for the most part, but in these unsettled times... well. Everything had become chaotic. Even the normally predictable Niccolo Santi.\n\nComing back to his room always made Dario feel warm and safe; it had a good view of the harbor and it was spacious and had plenty of room for his work desk and clothes closet. He stopped at the desk first, sat, and wrote in his Codex. He addressed the message to his cousin Alvaro Santiago; there was no indication that it would be reviewed by sharp-eyed Obscurists and High Garda, but he was certain it would happen. So he began with an entirely heartfelt entreaty to stop the bombardment of the city, invoking family loyalty as much as he felt would be appropriate, and after that, he used a particularly ornate curl of his pen. It was the signal, in the language of Spanish spies, to switch to a clever code, one devised by a mathematician who'd refused to study at the Alexandrian university or have anything at all to do with the Great Library. He'd been a rebel, that one; his writings were interdicted and difficult to find, even with a Scholar's clearance. But generations of Spanish diplomats had used his particular code, and as far as Dario knew it had never been cracked. The virtue was that it was not the words themselves that mattered, but the height and embellishment of each letter. It demanded precision on the part of the writer, certainly, but if executed properly it could be a nearly invisible and undetectable way to convey hidden information.\n\nSo while he wrote, My loyalty is entirely to the Great Library, as you must surely know; I have been granted a gold band and a lifetime appointment, and this must direct my actions moving forward, he knew that what he was actually conveying was My loyalty is to Spain, and I seek an opportunity to speak with you. Send instructions. He used the code only sparingly, for simple things like this, and he knew his cousin was sharp enough to spot it. Whether or not Alvaro would believe it, or comply, was another matter entirely. But it was possible. At the very least, Alvaro would want to explore the idea that they had a well-placed asset within the city... and one with the ear of the new Archivist. And her new assistant, he thought, and felt a flush of shame at what he was doing. Khalila might understand; she was, like him, a child of politics. But at the same time, he was very much afraid she might not.\n\nHe knew where his duty lay, and he could not apologize for it. He, of all of them, understood the fragility of the Great Library and the might of the kingdoms that surrounded her on every side. The only thing that had protected the ancient city was the legend, the glittering fa\u00e7ade that covered rotten timbers.\n\nBut even that had tarnished now, and the only thing that could save this place was to make accommodations. Adjust. Adapt. Make Alexandria useful to the world in ways it had never been before. The Great Library could no longer command the unquestioned obedience and awe of the world, but it could make itself safe. And he would see to that.\n\nWhatever others thought of him in the end.\n\nHe bathed and ordered food from the kitchens, only to find from the harassed copper band who delivered his meal that the circumstances of the day prevented anything heated. He settled for the bread, jam, and cold-press coffee, though not with any good grace, and went to choose his clothing carefully.\n\nBrightwell had always accused him of being a peacock, and, yes, to be sure he liked rich fabrics and fine cuts, but today of all days advertising his royalty was inadvisable. He had in his stores a plain set of clothing, purchased secondhand; it was still decent quality, and very clean, and once he'd put it on he looked no different than any other Alexandrian. When he finished, he stood before the mirror and checked himself with exacting eyes. He'd put away all his jewelry, with the exception of his family signet ring; that, he turned inward so all that showed was a plain gold band. It was vanity to wear it, but, well... he was vain. The shirt, vest, trousers: all correct. The boots were a bit too good, but he imagined this alternate Dario Santiago had aspirations to better things, and besides, they were comfortable. He'd be wearing them for a long time, most likely.\n\nHe added a very plain, short dagger of Alexandrian design, and no sword; the lack of it made him feel a pang for the family blade he'd damaged this morning. He didn't actually regret doing that; it had saved Jess's life. But still. A loss. If he lived through this, he'd have to see about having it repaired.\n\nTwo steps away from the mirror he recalled that he needed to change his Codex. He'd purchased a new one and had it registered to the possession of a fictitious person named Bernado Allamante, an immigrant from Granada. It had been used, but only for entirely innocent book requests and innocuous messages. A clean tablet, so to speak. And one that wouldn't betray his movements, should the High Garda choose to look into it.\n\nHe put aside his fancy jeweled Codex with regret. He'd grown up with it, and it was precious to him... but not as precious as his life. With any luck, he'd come back to retrieve it. If the Lighthouse still survived.\n\nSo much uncertainty.\n\nHe put on a plain Spanish leather hat to shade his face and disguise him from casual glances, and nodded at his reflection. He didn't look like a nobleman anymore, but he was about to do the work of one. Bloody, terrible, cruel work that would cost lives. But that was why people acceded to royalty; someone had to do it. And it was cowardly to avoid one's duty.\n\nDeep inside, he knew he wanted to run from this. Grab Khalila and drag her off to live a quiet, anonymous life somewhere on a remote, peaceful farm, growing\u2014crops of some type. He didn't know how it worked, really, but it sounded like bliss to him at the moment. It seemed very real to him: Khalila next to him by a warm fire, children gathered around.\n\nA normal life.\n\nYou and that beautiful woman will never be normal, he told himself, and settled his hat at a cockier angle. She'd never cooperate for a moment in a mad plan like that. You must accept that this is your destiny. And learn to like it.\n\nThe second part of it would be much harder than the first, but he came from a long line of people who had all done their duty... pleasurable or not. He sighed, shrugged, and checked his old Codex when it shivered with the arrival of a message. Finally.\n\nHis cousin Alvaro wrote back, Of course I understand fully that your primary loyalty must remain with the Great Library; Spain could ask nothing else. The code, however, said Iberia Warehouse, dock seven. Go now.\n\nDario took a deep breath and headed for the door. He'd almost reached it when he realized that there was one thing he'd forgotten, a thing so central to his life now that it seemed like part of his skin.\n\nHe opened his desk drawer, removed his gold Scholar's band, and placed it gently inside. Let himself feel the loss of it, and all it meant to him.\n\nYou can still change your mind, something whispered. You don't have to do this. Put it back on. Forget this idiocy.\n\nImpossible.\n\nHe shut and locked the drawer, hid the key in his old Codex, and turned his back on all of it.\n\nThe Lighthouse security was extreme at the moment, but it was designed to stop and search anyone entering; he'd been subjected to that indignity on the way in. Going out, both the High Garda soldiers and the automata ignored him. Not a threat if he was departing. That was good. It also meant coming home, minus his Scholar's band, which guaranteed him passage, was next to impossible.\n\nIt felt like a book closing.\n\nHe walked around the harbor's long, sleek curve. All the fires were out, though smoke still curled up from one or two distant spots. The sun was shining, the sea shimmering brightly. Clouds still massed on the horizon, but the storm wouldn't arrive for another few hours. Hopefully. The day felt unnaturally hot, and the air heavy in his lungs. As clean as Alexandria was, the docks always had a taint of rotten fish to them, and it wasn't a pleasant walk... but it was a lonely one. Few had dared the streets after that bombardment, and fewer were out of High Garda uniform. The Scholars were all at work, he thought; the common folk were all hiding in their houses. It made him feel exposed and itchy, and the spot where his golden band had been seemed especially irritated.\n\nHe walked faster. Like almost everyone, he imagined, he spent much of his time gaping at the wonder of the automaton of Poseidon, risen from the sea to guard the entrance; it seemed impossibly large and threatening. The chain seemed like an impenetrable barrier, too. But he knew that the fleet out there would be considering new tactics. They might be down, but not yet departed.\n\nDock seven was on the far side of the harbor, and it was almost wholly deserted. The Iberia Warehouse was one of the smaller buildings, a long two-story structure of freshly painted white stucco with a tiled roof, and the seal of the kingdom of Spain embedded on the side. The door was locked, of course, but he tried it anyway; he knocked. No one answered. He knocked again.\n\nThis time, the door opened, and a hand pulled him inside, into the dark. The door slammed behind him. Dario put a hand on his dagger and turned, fast, to face the person who'd drawn him inside. The windows were shuttered, but a green glow kindled and showed him a tall young man. Eyeglasses that reflected the light in an eerie shimmer. \"Codex,\" the young man said.\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Codex.\"\n\nThere were others in the shadows, and Dario caught the glint of steel and eyes. All right. He was outnumbered. He slid the Codex from its holder and handed it to the young man, who checked it and nodded. He handed it back. \"We wanted to be certain you remembered. And your band?\" Dario showed him the spot where it had been. He received another sharp nod. \"Good. Well thought-out.\"\n\n\"And exactly who are you?\" Dario asked. He was fuming at the way he'd been patronized, but also knew better than to indulge his attitude just now. He kept his tone unsharpened.\n\n\"Cesar Mondragon,\" he said. \"But you wouldn't know me. My trade is not being known.\"\n\n\"Spy.\" That got a slow smile in reply. Nothing else. \"All right, I'm here. Now what?\"\n\n\"Now you'll help us put the Great Library in a position where they have to see the patently obvious: they can't survive alone.\"\n\n\"Which means what, precisely?\"\n\n\"We intend to take the Archivist prisoner,\" Mondragon said. \"Your access and knowledge are important to this, and your willing cooperation.\" He stressed willing. Dario nodded slightly in acknowledgment. \"Thoughts?\"\n\n\"It's a stupid plan,\" Dario said. \"The Archivist has a heavy guard. So will all the targets you've likely considered: the Lighthouse, the Serapeum, the Iron Tower, the Great Archives, and the High Garda barracks. You won't succeed in any of those places. And I can't make those odds any better.\"\n\nMondragon's smile vanished. \"Then what use are you to us?\"\n\n\"I can tell you the single most vulnerable spot you've never heard of,\" Dario said. \"The one few even know about. If you do it well, you can take this entire city without a fight. That's what I'd prefer. I don't want idiots like you destroying it while saving it.\"\n\n\"Careful, Don Santiago,\" Mondragon said. \"You may be royal, but you're not immortal. The king didn't order me to kill you. He didn't order me not to, either.\"\n\nYoung as Cesar Mondragon was, he clearly knew his business; Dario had to give him that much. He said nothing to that. Just waited. And eventually, Mondragon said, \"Very well. Where is this magical place only you know? What use does it have for us?\"\n\n\"It's where the High Garda produces and stores Greek fire,\" Dario said. \"In a quiet, anonymous backwater of the city. Everyone believes it's made and stored at the High Garda compound, but that would be ludicrous; you don't keep volatile, potentially disastrous equipment like that in the same spot as your main fighting force. The liquid is made at a secret plant, stored nearby, and sent in small, regular deliveries to the High Garda compound for use. It's a well-kept secret. And once you take control of it, you can dictate terms to the Archivist, the High Garda, the Obscurists... everyone. The city will be yours.\"\n\n\"And you learned of this place how?\"\n\n\"I've been traveling with Captain Santi for years now,\" Dario said. \"He's careful with his secrets, but nobody's careful enough. Not constantly. I saw it in his private journal.\"\n\n\"How would you come to see his private journal?\"\n\nDario smiled slowly. \"The same way you would, in my position. Borrowing it when he was asleep.\"\n\n\"And why would you do that?\"\n\n\"Because it might be useful one day. And turns out, it is.\"\n\nMondragon didn't altogether like his answer, but there was nothing to prove or disprove about it. Dario had read some private journals, including Captain Santi's, when he was still a student back in Ptolemy House and trying to understand the best strategies for survival in a hostile, competitive environment. He'd been searching mainly for blackmail material that he could use on either Scholar Wolfe or Captain Santi to ensure his elevation to full Scholar status. He'd found a great deal more than he'd expected. And he'd never used any of it, or admitted that shameful tactic to anyone until this moment. He supposed it didn't reflect well on his character. Not that he cared what Mondragon, or any of them, thought about it.\n\n\"Let's say I accept your idea,\" Mondragon said. \"What exactly are you proposing to do with that information?\"\n\n\"It will be guarded; it's always guarded,\" Dario said. \"But if we can take possession of it, the Archivist will have to grant our request to open the harbor, land our ships and troops, and allow us to secure the city.\"\n\n\"Why would they do that?\" Mondragon asked.\n\n\"Threaten to ignite the stores. If you do, the explosion will be... well. Like nothing this city, or indeed the world, has ever seen.\" He opened both hands from fists to palms, and Mondragon got the message. Eloquently.\n\n\"Surely the High Garda have guards, and safeguards to prevent just such an explosion.\"\n\n\"Yes, and yes. Automata and, of course, human soldiers. Probably triple guard posted, though they ought to be tired by now. And complacent, as much as High Garda can be.\" He paused. \"As to the safeguards... there are alchemically treated doors separating the warehouse itself into smaller compartments that can be contained in case of fire. But once we take the complex, we can open all the suppression doors at will.\"\n\n\"Triple guards.\"\n\n\"There might be, yes.\"\n\n\"I don't like might,\" Mondragon said. \"And I particularly don't like automata.\"\n\n\"Who does?\" Dario grinned. \"That's the point of them. But I know how to turn them off. Well, most of them. It's not easy, or safe, but it can be done. That just leaves the human guards, and I trust you can handle that.\"\n\n\"Probably,\" Mondragon replied. He swept Dario with a look, head to toe. \"You seem prepared enough for the mission.\"\n\n\"I'd prefer a weapon,\" he said.\n\n\"Then you should have brought one.\" Mondragon's tone reminded Dario of Scholar Wolfe's at his most irritated, but the young spy snapped fingers, and one of the men in the shadows\u2014all men, as far as Dario could tell\u2014stepped forward and handed Dario a gun. He raised his eyebrows and examined it closer. It wasn't High Garda issue.\n\n\"Russian?\" he guessed.\n\n\"Yes,\" Mondragon said. \"Always nice to have allies who are fine weapons manufacturers. Don't lose it. You won't get another. Now, come on, we don't have time to waste. The storm that's approaching the coast poses a real danger to our ships and crews. We need to have them safely docked before it arrives.\" Mondragon unrolled a map and spread it against the wall. \"Show me the location.\"\n\n\"Here.\" Dario pointed to the precise spot. Mondragon studied it and let the map roll up with a snap of stiff paper.\n\n\"Very well. Then let's move out.\"\n\nDario nodded and did as he was told. That included a trip through the warehouse to a side door that opened on a blind alley; there was a dilapidated steam carrier there with a large covered box rolling behind it. Big enough, Dario realized, for all of the Spanish team, which proved to be fifteen strong, including him. All anonymous. The most recognizable thing about any of them was Mondragon's eyeglasses, and those could, in a crisis, be discarded. He had no idea if Mondragon actually needed them at all.\n\nThere were not a lot of steam carriers abroad today, but Dario supposed there must be a few; life went on, even in a city under siege. This unremarkable carriage wouldn't be noticed. He sat with the others crowded in on the floor of the bare carrier box and paid close attention as they got underway. He had his own mental map of the city streets, and as the steam carriage made the necessary turns, he knew that Mondragon had taken him at his word. They were going to the right place.\n\nAnd that was dangerous, even if it was what he wanted. There was a battle ahead, and it could be a bad one.\n\nAs the carriage slowed and the rumble of the wheels subsided, Mondragon said, \"Santiago, you're in charge of stopping any automata. Villareal, you're backup. If Santiago fails, you succeed. Understood?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the man beside Dario said. He was older, and he radiated calm competence. \"Time to come clean, Scholar. What's the secret to disarming the things?\"\n\nFrom his accent, the man was Catalonian. Dario felt a surge of homesickness. Now that he had no guarantee of living through the day, he had a sudden fondness for Madrid. For Barcelona. For food and spices he hadn't even missed, until this moment.\n\nHe cleared his throat and said, \"If they're lions or sphinxes, under the arm, here.\" He pressed a finger to his armpit. \"Most automata built with human or animal faces will have that installed. Not all, unfortunately. So be careful. Get in close, strike that button quickly, and move. It's the only way.\" He felt sick saying it. He'd just lied to the man, and with a smile, too.\n\nVillareal didn't seem reassured. \"I've seen these things gut men in less than a heartbeat. How quickly?\"\n\nDario shrugged. \"Well, if you miss the timing, you'll know.\"\n\n\"You're not amusing, Highness.\"\n\n\"You remind me of a friend of mine.\"\n\n\"You have friends?\"\n\n\"Oh, now you really remind me of him.\" He wondered where Brightwell was right now. Probably lying in a nice warm bed, if the Medica had anything to say about it. He'd be all right. Jess was a survivor. Thinking of Jess was better than considering what he'd just done. It was a contingency only. He prayed he wouldn't have to see it triggered. \"Good luck, Villareal.\"\n\nVillareal nodded slowly. \"You, too.\" He reached for the doors.\n\n\"Not yet,\" Mondragon said. \"We've got a scout looking around.\" He opened a small peephole in the side, then checked his Codex. Wrote some words. From what Dario could tell, Mondragon had accessed the street plan for this area. He studied it carefully. When the message came back from his spy, Mondragon read it and frowned. \"The property you indicated has closed gates,\" he said. \"And nothing moving inside, as far as my scout can tell. It seems deserted.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Dario said. \"It would. High Garda would have this spot completely locked down. Nothing coming or going. Not even more High Garda.\" He took out his own Codex and a stylus and wrote a message. It was an entirely innocuous message to an entirely anonymous Codex, one that had been carefully erased from the system by no less than the Obscurist Magnus himself. He was careful about the height of the letters, the extra scrolling on the ends.\n\nHe wrote, Difficult day here in Alexandria, and a storm on the horizon. Pray for us.\n\nThe translation of the code was, I'm here. Ready.\n\nThe reply was immediate, though the handwriting was far too messy to read any letter-height coding. I will.\n\nThe signal came a moment later\u2014not from the Codex, but in the form of a scream and distant gunfire. Dario snapped the book shut, put it in its holder, and looked at Mondragon. \"We should go now.\"\n\n\"Once we know what's\u2014\"\n\n\"Now!\" Dario barked, and shoved the doors open. He jumped out, and the rest followed. Mondragon didn't like it, he could tell, but then, Mondragon was uncommonly smart. He was probably trying to work out what was happening and how the power had just shifted.\n\nDario didn't give him time to think about it.\n\nOne of the Spanish spies had a spray device that directed a thin, intense stream of Greek fire onto the lock of the gate; it was a one-use device because it self-destructed as it was fired, and he dropped the empty as he kicked the iron gates open. They creaked back, and Dario heard the shouts and screams and gunfire even more clearly. The sounds came from within the main building, which was made of thick stone and had thin vents near the roofline but no obvious windows. The doors were shut, and when he tried them, they were still locked. He gestured, and the same spy who'd taken care of the gates used another of his ingenious devices on the door. The lock melted, and a boot on the doors slammed them open.\n\nInside was a war zone. For a moment, Dario couldn't take it in, even though he knew what to expect; the sphinxes who guarded this place were ripping apart the men and women who had been set to hold it. Some of the sphinxes had already been destroyed or frozen in place; two were half-melted from Greek fire bombs, and as he stared, one of them clattered to a halt midattack and toppled over.\n\nBlood dripped from columns, pooled on the floor, painted the walls in arterial sprays, and he shuddered involuntarily at the sight and smell of it. The stench of Greek fire coiled with the copper and set up a rolling nausea that he swallowed to contain.\n\nThere were three sphinxes still active, and at least twenty soldiers fighting them. After the shock passed, Dario snatched the rifle from the spy who was frozen next to him and began to methodically shoot targets. They were wearing High Garda uniforms, but that didn't stop him. He didn't let it, even though every face seemed to blur into someone he knew. Captain Santi. Glain Wathen. Jess Brightwell.\n\nHe killed as many as he could.\n\nMondragon's men were firing now, too, and in a murderous half minute, all the soldiers were down. The ones who hadn't died from the gunfire ended at the claws and teeth of sphinxes, and Dario turned away, sickened, so as not to witness that. He met Mondragon's shocked stare. \"What is this?\" Mondragon asked. \"What just happened?\"\n\n\"You saved the Great Library,\" Dario said. \"And I'm certain you'll be handsomely rewarded for that, too.\"\n\nThe last muffled screams stopped, and the silence felt intense. Dario looked around. The two surviving sphinxes\u2014one had fallen while he wasn't looking\u2014settled into a waiting crouch, and their eyes dimmed from hell red to steady gold. The slaughterhouse was abruptly at peace.\n\nHe went to the first intact body and unbuttoned the bloodstained High Garda uniform collar to reveal the tattoo. It was the emblem of the High Garda Elite, with the inscription nulla misericordia\u2014no mercy. They'd given none, and been shown none. \"The old Archivist's High Garda Elite took over this place last night,\" he said. \"They planned to blow it up in the event the old man was killed or taken prisoner. The last contingency of the desperate.\" He nodded to the back rooms. \"You'll find the real High Garda soldiers' bodies back there.\"\n\n\"Why didn't the sphinxes protect the High Garda, then? Why go for the Elites now?\" That question was from the spy who'd used Greek fire on the doors. He seemed nearly as sharp as Mondragon.\n\n\"The new Obscurist Magnus discovered this morning that the sphinxes here had been tampered with; the old man must have a captured Obscurist, or a rebel who's working with them. The damage was already done, and he couldn't guarantee that the sphinxes could kill all the High Garda Elite before the Elites decided to set fire to the Greek fire stores. Commander Santi needed a backup plan, and he was afraid asking his troops to fire on their own would be too much. So you were the perfect answer, Mondragon. Thank you.\"\n\nMondragon could have killed him in that moment; they were both well aware of it. Mondragon's gun was in his hand, and just to be certain everyone was clear about his position, Dario held up his right hand and, with his left, gave the rifle back to the spy he'd taken it from. Silent surrender. \"You used us,\" Mondragon said tightly. \"Lambs to the slaughter.\"\n\n\"Not a one of you is even injured,\" Dario said. \"And you are more wolves than sheep, if you'll permit me to stretch the metaphor. But you can now safely go back to whatever your spymasters tell you to do next. Your role will never be mentioned. And the ambassador already knows of this brave action, and will reward you for it. It's not in Spain's interest to have this city in ruins.\"\n\n\"We occupy this place now. We can keep it for Spain,\" Mondragon said. Which was exactly what Dario had been afraid might happen. \"Turn off the automata.\"\n\n\"No,\" Dario said quietly. \"I will not. Shoot me and explain it to my cousin.\"\n\n\"No need for that,\" Villareal said, and stepped forward. \"He told me the secret. I'll do it.\"\n\nDario pressed his lips together. He wanted to scream, to tell the man not to try it. He genuinely liked him.\n\nHe still kept his silence.\n\nVillareal approached the first sphinx, and its eyes shifted from gold to warning to angry red. It came up out of its crouch.\n\nHe lunged for its armpit, and Dario averted his gaze. Not fast enough to avoid seeing the horror on the man's face as he realized he'd been tricked.\n\nHe managed not to look at what was left of Villareal once the sphinx had finished with him.\n\nThe silence in the room was profound. Dario shifted his gaze back to Mondragon, who looked pale with fury. Every gun in the room was pointed at him, and every trigger halfway squeezed.\n\n\"Conniving little princeling,\" one of the spies spat. Not Mondragon, who was unnaturally still.\n\n\"Yes, I am,\" Dario said. \"Which is why you followed me in the first place. You're just angry that I connived for someone else instead.\"\n\n\"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you,\" Mondragon said.\n\n\"Because I'll be of use to Spain in the future. My cousin certainly thinks so.\"\n\n\"The ambassador would forgive me.\"\n\nDario didn't smile.\n\n\"I was referring to my other cousin,\" he said. \"The one wearing the crown. Do you really believe he didn't know of this? And authorize what I've done?\" Dario shrugged. \"You may message him directly if you wish. If you have that access. And if I'm lying, I'm certain he'll order my execution.\"\n\nThis was, of course, a throw of the dice. He didn't know Mondragon; he didn't know if the young man actually had personal access to King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse, or would dare to use it. He also, to be honest, wasn't entirely certain his royal cousin would back him up on it, either.\n\nMondragon finally lowered his weapon. He still looked murderous, and would likely make a very bad enemy in the future. But today, he nodded and glanced around at the others, who silently obeyed his lead.\n\nDario walked to the nearest dead man, crouched, and closed his staring eyes. \"Rest now,\" he said. \"Your duty is done.\" He stood and said, \"Collect their Codexes and personal journals if they carried them. They stayed loyal to their master to the end, and that deserves some recognition, at least. Their families should know they died bravely.\"\n\nMondragon didn't speak, but after a moment he nodded, and his spies began to circulate around the room. Once they were about their tasks, the head spy said, \"I should add you to the pile. In this charnel house, who'd notice?\"\n\n\"No one,\" Dario said. \"But I wasn't lying when I said I will be of future value to Spain, and I can only do that if I'm still breathing. Are we understood?\"\n\nMondragon nodded sharply. The tense muscle jumping in his jaw told Dario he was chewing on the facts, and not much caring for the taste. \"What now, then?\"\n\n\"I will do whatever the Great Library requires me to do.\"\n\n\"But not Spain.\"\n\nDario shrugged. \"Well, not today. I told you my loyalty was clear. You only heard what you wished to hear.\"\n\nMondragon's men worked quickly, and within five minutes, Dario had a cloth bag filled with books. It was heavy, but manageable; as he heaved it over his shoulder he had a strange sense-memory and couldn't place it for a moment.\n\nThen he could. The chemical reek of Greek fire, and the weight of books. The Black Archives. Not a memory he cared to relive, on the whole.\n\nWhen he looked up, Mondragon was staring at him. The young man was still considering killing him, he could see that. Feel it hanging like a shroud in the tense, dark air. There was no getting around the fact that if the spies held this place and threatened destruction, they might very well win the day for Spain.\n\n\"You won't be able to,\" Dario said. \"Even if you were willing to bear the consequences. This was Lord Commander Santi's plan all along. He had watchers posted. The moment the shooting stopped, High Garda began to infiltrate the whole building; they'll have every suppression door closed and guarded by now. You're caught.\"\n\nMondragon's smile was more of a snarl. \"You're a clever bastard, I'll give you that. I assume you're offering us safe passage out of here?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. Go with God. As far as the High Garda are concerned, you broke no laws.\"\n\nMondragon didn't thank him, but Dario hardly expected that. He just turned and led his men out of the warehouse. The doors opened before he got to them: High Garda soldiers, visible evidence that this part, at least, hadn't been a bluff.\n\nHe sat with the dead, and the sphinxes, until Captain Liu approached him. \"The facility is secured,\" he said. \"Lord Commander Santi sends his thanks for a job well done.\"\n\n\"Nothing about this was well done,\" Dario said. He felt tired, and sick at heart. \"It's a slaughterhouse, and I helped double the body count.\"\n\n\"Someone had to,\" Captain Liu said. \"I'll call you a carriage to take you back to the Lighthouse.\"\n\n\"Don't bother,\" Dario said. \"I'll walk.\" He needed to find a tavern, and a great and damaging number of drinks.\n\nBut he knew even that wouldn't erase the scar today had left. The slaughter, yes. But also the knowledge that Santi saw him for who he was, who he'd always been.\n\nA deceiver."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Message from Obscurist Vanya Nikolin to the Archivist in Exile, hidden from observation:\n\n\u2002It may be of some interest to you that the search you had me conduct through the Archives has turned up a possible reference to the location you seek. It is not where we expected, at the very least; it's nowhere near the Necropolis, or even at the Serapeum, which is where I would have guessed. The good news is that it is easily accessible, and if you can find the right person to undertake entry through the trials, you may come up with assets like nothing we can imagine. The things that he left us are astonishing enough. Surely what he took with him to the grave must be worth more than all the power hidden in the Black Archives put together.\n\n\u2002Here is the map to the location. I suggest you arrange for a distraction to draw High Garda and automata to the other side of the city. Perhaps there's finally a use for those Russians camped outside the walls.\n\n\u2002I would attempt this myself, but if I leave the Iron Tower there will be no one left to cover for you and warn you of any actions. They already suspect, after discovering the rewriting of the sphinxes at the Greek fire armory.\n\n\u2002I'm of more use here, for now. Until things change.\n\n\u2002Reply from the Archivist in Exile, hidden from observation\n\n\u2002We both know why you haven't left the Iron Tower. You're a coward, Vanya. But that makes you valuable to me. As to a candidate to undertake the trials... I think I know exactly who to get.\n\n\u2002There is only one person alive in this city who understands Heron's work as deeply as Heron himself."
            },
            {
                "title": "THOMAS",
                "text": "\"No, not like that,\" Thomas said, and elbowed the Artifex Magnus aside. He was sweating, stripped of his jacket, and he hardly recognized that he'd just shoved a member of the Great Library's Curia out of the way until it was far too late. \"Sorry,\" he mumbled, but not with any real regret. \"We have little time.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know that, son,\" Artifex Greta Jones said. She was American, which was a curiosity in and of itself\u2014a round, pleasant woman with more than enough talent at engineering for nearly any task set before her. A rich, slow accent like melting butter. \"Easy, now. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.\"\n\nThere was no time to be polite, or easy. Thomas knew she was wrong. That wasn't modest, but it was true. He quickly unscrewed the bolts holding the gigantic crystal in place and gently lowered it to the worktable nearby. Everything looked fine, but he could read from the power consumption curve that it was not fine at all. \"It's not performing as expected,\" he said as he unbolted the platinum casing that held the crystal. \"The power cycle should have been longer, and recovery shorter. There's something\u2014\"\n\nAs soon as the casing was off, he saw it, and his heart sank. Something had been off in the measurements, just the tiniest bit, and the distribution of stress must have thrown the calculations off and caused vibration. Vibration had caused a flaw.\n\nThe crystal was useless. The crack within it was tiny, a speck that would have been meaningless for any other purpose... but not this one. It could be recut and the flaw eliminated, but he'd custom built the casing for this stone to exacting specifications. That had been shortsighted.\n\nThe Artifex looked at the crystal, and he could tell she saw what he did. \"It'll crack straight through the next time we use it,\" she said. \"You were right. I'm sorry I doubted you. We could recut it, but that will reduce power...\"\n\n\"It will,\" he confirmed. \"I'll have the jewelers cut more crystals while I make a different kind of casing. One that can adjust to different crystal dimensions, in case we must change them more frequently. Put this one back, reduce the power output, and pray that they don't force us to use it again more than once before the replacement is ready.\" The Lighthouse Ray was, in effect, a giant bluff, a gamble that he and the Artifex had decided was worth the risk when they embarked on it. Now it had become more threat than reality.\n\n\"I'm concerned that should the crystal shatter, the power released could destroy this chamber and even the top few floors of the Lighthouse,\" Artifex Jones said. \"Look.\" She took out a tablet and quickly scratched out equations, a dense forest of variables and calculations that were impressive even by Thomas's standards. She finished and held it out, and as he took it and mentally recalculated, he nodded. She was right. There was a significant risk that if the crystal failed under use, the resulting explosion would create a deadly hail of fragments and shatter the Lighthouse's magnificent focusing mirror. It would destroy this chamber, possibly even cause damage down the central airflow chamber. The Lighthouse itself was built to withstand huge forces\u2014floods, storms, earthquakes\u2014but a single catastrophic explosion might even topple part of it into the sea. It was an enormous responsibility, and Thomas felt himself recoil. I don't want to be the person who destroys the Pharos Lighthouse.\n\nBut neither did he want to be the person who lost the Great Library because he couldn't mitigate the risk.\n\n\"It will hold for one more shot,\" he told her. \"But only one, and then you must shut it down. I'll go immediately to the workshops.\"\n\n\"Requisition what you need. I'm giving you blanket authority.\" She'd already unsnapped her Codex and was writing the message by the time she finished the words. He refastened the casing to the flawed crystal, carried it back to the frame, and bolted it back in place. He adjusted the angle of it to be sure the alignment was perfect and then turned to the Artifex.\n\n\"Thank you for trusting me,\" he said. Her dark eyebrows rose at the same time she smiled.\n\n\"Why wouldn't I trust you?\" she asked. \"You're a brilliant engineer, maybe the best we've seen since Heron. Our business is one of careful steps, development, and revision until a thing is perfect. You can't predict that. Never forget: even geniuses make mistakes. It's not a moral failing. It's inevitable.\"\n\n\"We can't afford mistakes,\" he told her. \"Not here, not now. We have to be perfect. And fast.\"\n\nShe nodded, but he could see the worry in her expression. He knew how he looked: tired, shadows under his eyes and lurking in them, most likely. He knew this had to be done. He just wished it was anyone else's responsibility.\n\n\"Go,\" she told him. \"I'll arrange for the crystal cutting. Good luck, Scholar Schreiber.\"\n\nHe thanked her and left. Instead of using the lifting chamber that ran on cables from the lens chamber to the ground, he took the long, winding stairs. Physical activity helped him think and rid himself of the dark storm of anxiety that was still blowing inside him. By the time he reached the bottom he felt almost normal.\n\nHe'd managed to avoid thinking about the damage done to the city until he left the walls that surrounded the Lighthouse, but there was no missing it then. Still a dull smudge of smoke hung over the city, though the growing breeze blowing in from the sea was carrying that away. Mass warships still bobbed on the horizon. Poseidon still stood firm in its protective stance, trident poised to spear any ship that ventured too close.\n\nThe dark storm clouds looked like a wall, and the distant brilliant threads of lightning stitched through them. It was going to be a very dark night, and the ships out there would want\u2014no, would need\u2014to enter the harbor or risk being utterly destroyed.\n\nThe city of Alexandria had to survive that threat. It was up to him, the Artifex, and the entire array of Scholars working on the problems to ensure that happened. And the job of the High Garda to defend them while they worked.\n\nHe had a guard now, he realized; two uniformed High Garda soldiers followed him at a distance. He supposed Lord Commander Santi had decided he was important enough to assign protection, but it still made him feel uncomfortable. He decided to ignore them and continue on his business. Nothing else to be done. He concentrated on what was his to do: go to the workshop at the Colosseum. Work with his team of specialists to design and craft the reconfigured casing. If they worked at top, careful speed, they could have it ready within hours\u2014plenty of time, surely.\n\n\"Sir,\" one of the High Garda said as they caught up with him at a jog. \"We'd prefer it if you took a carriage. We'll fetch you one.\"\n\n\"Hurry up,\" he said, and didn't stop walking. Waiting was a thing he couldn't bear, not now.\n\nIt was just seconds before a carriage pulled up beside him, and he stepped aboard without waiting for it to glide to a stop. \"The Artifex Magnus's forge,\" he said. \"You know where it is?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" the driver said. She had on a traditional niqab, covered except for a slit that exposed her dark eyes. \"I'll get you there quickly.\"\n\nAs he sat, his two guards piled in on either side. It was a tight fit.\n\n\"Sorry, sir,\" the one on his right said. \"We're ordered to stay with you.\"\n\n\"Fine,\" he said. \"Don't jog my elbow.\"\n\nHe was already jotting down notes in his Codex as he spoke, and he called up three books for reference and checked his assumptions as he sketched out the design. He was heavily absorbed in planning, so it was a surprise when he glanced up and realized that he didn't recognize the street they were on.\n\n\"Driver? Where are you going?\"\n\nNo answer. He started to rise and rap on the ceiling.\n\nThe High Garda soldier to his right produced a sidearm and jammed it into his side. A second later, he had another gun pressed to his left flank.\n\n\"You make a large target,\" one of them said. \"I'd be very careful, Scholar Schreiber.\"\n\nHe stayed very still. \"I really don't have time for whatever you are doing. It's important that I get to the forge. Why would the Lord Commander prevent me\u2014\" He stopped himself as a grim realization settled in his stomach. \"You aren't High Garda.\"\n\n\"Smart boy,\" the one on the left said. \"Sit your clever ass down.\"\n\n\"What do you want?\" The driver, he realized with a sinking feeling, must have been in on it as well; the carriage was still clattering along at a high rate of speed. Taking him... where?\n\n\"You,\" the soldier said. \"And I'd like to keep you alive, but if that can't be done, then I'm just fine with the alternative. Are we understood?\"\n\n\"You're very clear. Who do you work for? Not the Archivist, surely.\"\n\n\"Not the one you call Archivist, no.\" The man who was talking now had a cruel smile on his lips. The uniform made him anonymous, but Thomas memorized his face: long, narrow, pale. A vulpine sort of shape, with clever dark eyes and very dark hair. An accent that implied Russia, or one of the Slavic countries; it was difficult to say, since the man was speaking accented Alexandrian Greek. \"Stay compliant and stay alive, Scholar. We have a long trip ahead of us.\"\n\n\"I don't have time for your games,\" Thomas said. \"Please don't make me kill the two of you.\"\n\nThe two soldiers exchanged looks past him and laughed. \"Scholar. Don't be stupid.\"\n\nMust be fast, Thomas told himself. He mapped his movements out before he executed, the same way he planned an intricate machine, this, then this, then this, and by the time his hands moved with a snap he was already at the end of the equation, in which two High Garda imposters lay unconscious or dead.\n\nBut humans were not machines, and calculations were no guarantee of success, and he didn't anticipate that the men would have such fast reflexes. Or the instant agony that tore through his body, a shock like a lightning strike that left him utterly limp and helpless. Move, he begged himself; only sluggishly did his brain inform him that he couldn't. For a horrible moment he thought he'd been shot and was dying... but no.\n\nHe'd been hit with two High Garda stun rounds.\n\nThe men didn't waste time. One took out restraints and snapped them on Thomas's unresisting wrists. They tightened like constricting snakes, and as the man checked the fit, Thomas glimpsed a flash of gold from a Great Library insignia. It seemed to be embedded in the man's skin on the inner side of his forearm. He'd never seen that before, and even panicked and helpless as he was, he couldn't help wondering what it was, how it worked. It was definitely an emblem that would not be removed. A lifetime commitment, like a gold band, but... different.\n\n\"No games, Scholar,\" the soldier said. \"Next time we use lethal force. I'll give you one rebellion. Not two.\"\n\nHe couldn't speak. Could hardly breathe against the continuing waves of agony that convulsed his muscles. All his size and strength meant nothing; he was being taken as easy as a rabbit in a bag. Think, he ordered himself. It was all he could do... but even as the pain subsided, he became aware that moving his hands caused the restraints to dig in deeper. And they had teeth, it seemed, because as he struggled to sit up and moved his hands, he felt sharp, biting pain under the metal. He winced.\n\n\"The more you fight, the more those cuffs will dig in,\" the other soldier said. He was a taller, darker man with shimmering dark hair and clever eyes entirely empty of sympathy. \"I've seen them saw open veins. Not a pretty death, Scholar. Stay relaxed and you won't injure yourself.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" Thomas hardly recognized his own voice; it came out in a low growl, but it sounded vulnerable at the same time. Weak. \"Not High Garda, though you wear their cloth.\" When they both ignored that question, he tried again. \"Why do you want me?\"\n\n\"Stop asking questions. The next time you open your mouth, I'll shock it shut. Be a shame if you bit off your tongue.\"\n\nThomas wished he could ask Jess what manner of soldier had access to High Garda equipment and also wore a Great Library symbol embedded in their skin. He wished Jess was with him for other reasons, too; his friend had a gift for twisting his way out of tricky situations. Thomas did not. He was large, solid, and occasionally lucky, but just now he was as trapped as a bull in a cage. So what would Jess think about? Not directly attacking, that much was certain. And when Thomas closed his eyes, he could almost hear his friend whisper, Use your advantages. But what advantages did he have? He was handcuffed, barely able to move. Wherever they were traveling, gravity had shifted him back in his seat. They were going uphill now, at a fairly sharp angle.\n\nThen the steam carriage rocked a little as it passed over a bump in the road, and it came into his mind as clearly as if it was written in fire: Schwingung. Vibration. Oscillation. It was a common complaint that steam carriages, because of the height of their cabs above the ground, and the weight of their steam engines, were inherently vulnerable to toppling in high winds, especially on steep grades of roads. But how to take advantage?\n\nFirst, get both the men on this side of the carriage.\n\nThomas was not an actor by nature, but he remembered how the stun round had woken convulsions in his muscles, and he did his earnest best to feign a relapse. He rolled his eyes back in his head and began to twitch and flail; he was careful about his hands, though he used his legs in the effort. One of them shouted at him to stop, but Thomas kept it up, seemingly unhearing, lurching and flopping and crowding the soldier to the right against the far wall. The other one finally moved from his left to take the seat opposite Thomas, shouting at him to calm down. He was over the centerline of the carriage, if not next to the window. It would have to be enough.\n\nThomas braced his legs against the opposite seat and stopped twitching and moaning, and tried to look very, very unconscious. He didn't flinch when one soldier leaned forward and checked his pulse. He was waiting.\n\nThe carriage hit another bump, a hole that rocked it from side to side as it rumbled forward, and Thomas came upright fast, throwing his weight in the same direction as the carriage's tilt, then quickly back, then up again, a motion that confused and surprised both soldiers, and in the few seconds it took for them to realize Thomas was doing something, the carriage's wheels began to bounce and twist. Thomas felt the entire vehicle shudder as it leaned. If the soldier on the far side of the carriage had the sense to move back to balance the load\u2014\n\nBut he didn't; he tried to grab Thomas and hold him still.\n\nMistake.\n\nThomas timed his next move precisely. At exactly the height of the unstable side-to-side motion, he threw his entire weight to the right, and it sent the soldier tumbling as the carriage's oscillation passed the point of no return.\n\nThe driver yelled in alarm and jumped free as the carriage crashed over on its side, landed hard, and began to slide. The impact bounced Thomas's head off the steel frame as they landed. All the glass shattered, covering the three inside with sharp fragments. The boiler, Thomas thought. The risk was that in an accident it could explode; there were gruesome examples of such disasters, though the compartments were supposed to be shielded for that reason.\n\nBut he couldn't worry about that now.\n\nIt hurt\u2014badly\u2014but he rolled over the glass and on top of the stunned soldier nearest to him\u2014the Slav\u2014and brought his cuffed hands up and down in a precise slam that impacted the side of the man's head. He was careful. He didn't crush the man's skull. But he doubted the fellow would be objecting to anything else for a fair few minutes. The impact cost him as well; sharp teeth sank deeper into his flesh, and blood slicked his wrists and dripped down his hands. As much as he tried to move them in tandem and not twist or struggle against the bonds, he could feel the things digging. Vile things. He hated the engineer who'd designed them.\n\nThe soldier he'd hit was out and limp. The other one was bleeding badly from a head wound, also unconscious. Thomas quickly skinned back that one's uniform jacket sleeve and saw what he'd glimpsed before: a Great Library seal, but instead of being set into a bracelet, this was somehow grafted directly into the man's skin. Interesting in an intellectual puzzle, but disconcerting in the real world. Thomas gritted his teeth and touched the shackles to the man's skin seal, and felt the biting teeth of the restraints retract. The manacles clicked open.\n\nThomas used them on the soldier, who was starting to come around, then thought about that seal. No, better not to chance the restraints at all on him.\n\n\"Kiril!\" That shout came from outside. The driver, coming back. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nThomas didn't look at his own wrists, though they were still bleeding; he assumed the flow of blood would be far worse if he'd severed veins. He grabbed both guns, stuck one awkwardly in his waistband, and checked the settings on the one he still held. He changed it to lethal.\n\nWhile he was about that, the driver looked into the window.\n\nThomas aimed right at her face, and the woman flinched and dropped out of sight. Hopefully, she'd run away.\n\nTime to go, Thomas thought. He shoved the pistol in his waistband and stretched up to grab the sides of the window. Glass crunched under his palms, and on the left side there was enough left to slice. He hardly felt it at the moment. No time. He heaved himself up and out, rolling off and down to his feet. He was not as fast or as graceful as some of his friends, but he was fast enough; the driver backed away, her niqab rippling in the strong breeze.\n\nShe was holding a gun.\n\n\"Don't make me,\" Thomas said, and he drew one of the pistols from his belt\u2014the lethal one\u2014and aimed. She hesitated, then dropped her gun to the ground. \"Where were you taking me?\"\n\nThomas stepped away from the carriage. The boiler's hissing seemed unlikely to result in explosion, but better to be safe.\n\nThe woman didn't respond, but she warily backed away from him.\n\nHe heard the scrape of footsteps behind him. More than one set. Several.\n\n\"Drop the pistols, Scholar,\" a calm voice said. \"How exactly did you destroy the carriage? I'd like to know, for the future.\"\n\nHe slowly bent and put the weapon on the ground, dropped the other one still in his waistband, then turned to face her. \"Zara Cole,\" he said. \"The traitor.\"\n\nZara didn't seem nearly as tired or stressed as she should have been, he thought. Her fine dark eyes were clear, no shadows beneath or in them. Her hair lay in a neat, straight cap around her face. She wore a dark red uniform with gold embroidery on the shoulders: a High Garda Elite uniform. That settled, for him, the identity of the men in the carriage, and likely the driver as well. \"I think we can debate just who's turned traitor at some other time, Scholar,\" she said. \"You're going to help us take back what you helped steal.\"\n\nThomas's numb surprise vanished in a flash of rage. \"No. I'm not going to help you. You killed Jess's brother.\"\n\n\"In all fairness, I thought I was killing Jess,\" she said. \"But all book smugglers have an automatic death sentence. I only carried out a lawful execution in defense of my Archivist.\"\n\nHe calculated the odds of killing her. If they'd been even close to reasonable, he would have tried; she deserved that many times over. But she had a full squad of Elites filling in behind her, all heavily armed, and another carrier parked on the side of the street\u2014they were on a street, he realized, but one full of derelict buildings, and no help of any kind in view. He realized with a sick churning in his stomach that he'd waited too long to escape. Five minutes earlier, and he'd have made it away.\n\n\"On your knees,\" Zara said, and nodded to her squad. Three of them moved toward him, and Zara's aim never wavered. \"Twitch and I'll kill you and find another engineer. Understood?\"\n\n\"You chose me because it would hurt Wolfe,\" Thomas said. \"Correct?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Let's call that a bonus. Is that bitter old fool still alive? I'd thought he would have died in the arena.\"\n\n\"We're going to win,\" Thomas said, as another set of restraints settled and tightened around his wrists. \"And you're going to die.\"\n\n\"That last is a certainty for everyone. But winning?\" She gave him a slow, secret smile. \"I think that's going to be harder than you think, Thomas. Much, much harder.\"\n\nHe lifted his head and fixed her with a look; she stared back, completely at ease. \"I won't work for you.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"But I think you won't be able to resist this job.\" She paused, then shook her head. \"And all of this is your fault, you know. You are the root of all this evil. You and your printer.\"\n\n\"Tota est scientia,\" he said. \"Knowledge is all. It either is, or it isn't; you can't say some knowledge is evil because it's inconvenient for you. And anyone who claims differently has no understanding at all of what the Great Library represents.\"\n\n\"We'll debate this another time,\" she said, and looked at her soldiers. \"Get him. The Archivist is waiting.\"\n\nThe Archivist.\n\nThomas swallowed a ball of fear that mixed poisonously with rage.\n\nHe would wait until they underestimated him.\n\nEventually, someone would."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 35",
                "text": "The ride was short, and all Thomas could think to do was to bide his time, observe, wait, no matter how much that grated on him. He was surrounded by enemies, and not just people he disagreed with, but ones who had actively harmed him. Put him in prison. Tried to murder his friends. He had to be very, very careful.\n\nHe was also horribly aware that time was running out. If he didn't gain his freedom and build that casing... the whole situation at the Lighthouse would quickly become a disaster. How long before anyone realized he'd gone missing? Hours, probably. Far too long.\n\nThere were no windows in the steam carriage, so he had no idea where they'd gone, and before the doors opened Zara slipped a heavy canvas bag over his head. Hands grasping his arms moved him into what sounded like a hallway\u2014one just barely wide enough to accommodate his bulk, plus minders on either side\u2014and he was almost certain it was made of stone. Low ceiling; he felt his head brushing against the top. It certainly hadn't been made for someone of his size. His forehead hit the top of a doorway, and he staggered and stooped to fit underneath. When he straightened again, he felt he was in a larger chamber. He heard the echoes of the room. Underground? He couldn't tell. There was a damp coolness to the air, and a smell of earth.\n\nBut when the canvas was pulled from his head, he realized he wasn't underground. Just in a large, cavernous old building, a deserted space that must have once been used as a warehouse of some kind. Part of the roof was gone, and pigeons roosted in the rafters, murmuring.\n\nThere were at least a hundred High Garda Elite gathered here. Or, at least, he assumed that was what they were; only some of them were in the distinctive uniform. Many wore the outfits of laborers, but their bearing was pure military. There were some in Scholars' black robes\u2014surely those weren't actually Scholars who'd followed this dark, ugly path? He didn't recognize any of them, but it was a horrifying possibility.\n\n\"What is this?\" he asked Zara.\n\n\"A staging ground,\" she said. \"Not our whole force by any means.\"\n\nThey had automata as well. Many of them. They have an Obscurist. Must have. He supposed that shouldn't come as a surprise, if Scholars had come over to the old Archivist's side. Surely one Obscurist would turn sides. \"Staging ground for what? You can't take the Serapeum. You know that.\"\n\n\"No,\" she agreed. \"Nor the Iron Tower. Nor the Lighthouse, not immediately. It won't be a short battle, or a bloodless victory, but I will put the Great Library back in the hands of the man who's guided it for half a lifetime.\"\n\n\"He's a devil!\"\n\n\"No. He's a leader. People like you, people like Wolfe... you all think that governance is clean and fair. It can't be. Dissent is chaos, and it must be controlled. Knowledge is all; that's our guiding force. And sometimes, knowledge must be protected at the cost of lives.\"\n\n\"Innocent lives?\"\n\n\"If necessary,\" she said.\n\n\"The old saying is that knowledge is power. But power has thoroughly corrupted the man you follow now. You have to know that.\"\n\n\"You're a dreamer. You believe you can make the world. You can't, Thomas. The world makes you.\"\n\nShe was a cold one, Zara Cole. Ruthlessly good at her job, but Thomas didn't understand her any better now than he had the first moment he'd met her. He was mostly glad of that. \"What do you want from me? You know I won't cooperate.\"\n\n\"Oh, Thomas. I know you will. Because you're a good servant of the Great Library. Follow me. Make any move to attack, or escape, and I'll have you hamstrung.\"\n\nHe believed her. And followed without tempting fate. But he was taking it all in: the soldiers, the configuration of the warehouse, the positions of guards. The stocks of supplies and weapons.\n\nThere was a large tent set up in the far corner of the room, and the concentration of guards grew higher as they approached it; Zara was stopped at the outer perimeter and told to wait by a cold-eyed High Garda captain who clearly did not trust her as much as she expected. Interesting. Thomas was searched so thoroughly they took away the nub of a pencil in his coat pocket, a bag of birdseed he kept there for pigeons, and a half-eaten wrap of cheese. \"You missed the knife,\" he said, and enjoyed the doubt on the face of the soldier.\n\nThe soldier wasn't amused. \"Strip,\" he said. \"Down to skin.\" Thomas shrugged and lifted his manacled hands. The guard turned to Zara. \"Unlock him.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous,\" she said. \"He doesn't have a knife. He's been searched three times.\"\n\n\"I'm not letting him in to see the Archivist without making sure. You can afford to be careless. I can't.\" There was something unspoken hanging in the air. They don't like her, he realized. Maybe because she'd been elevated to their company by the Archivist's decree. Maybe because they knew she'd betrayed her own once before.\n\n\"I said\u2014\" Zara's voice had gone cold and sharp as a frozen blade, but she was stopped when the tent's flap pushed back, and the Archivist\u2014former, Thomas reminded himself\u2014stepped out.\n\n\"Let them in,\" he said. \"Schreiber won't kill me. It's not in his nature.\"\n\nHe doesn't know me very well, Thomas thought. That was useful.\n\nThe Archivist wore a golden robe, but it was simple, not ceremonial; maybe he hadn't had time to loot the Great Library's treasures during his escape. He seemed older than Thomas remembered. And less well kept. Unbrushed, tangled, oily hair. Deep, dark bags beneath his eyes, and weariness cut so deep into his face the lines looked like wounds. He hadn't slept easy, if at all. He is an old man, Thomas thought. Fragile. I never thought of him that way before.\n\nThe soldier didn't like it, but he stepped aside and let Zara take her prisoner into the tent. There were, of course, more guards within, standing silently at the four corners, but these were automata. Spartans, with shields and spears and expressionless metallic faces beneath their helmets. They all turned toward him, eyes kindling red.\n\n\"If you've actually got a weapon concealed on your person, Schreiber, you have seconds to say so,\" the Archivist said as he walked to a small folding desk. It had an equally plain folding chair behind it. Hardly the opulence to which he was accustomed, Thomas thought. \"Unless you'd like your little joke to be your epitaph.\"\n\n\"I'm unarmed,\" Thomas said. That didn't change the red eyes, or the focus the Spartans kept on him. Perhaps they could smell his rage. He felt it hissing in his veins like venom. \"I don't need a weapon to kill you, if I wanted to do that. And certainly she couldn't stop me.\"\n\n\"Couldn't I?\" Zara pressed a knife to his back, just above his kidneys. \"I think I could. But you're too smart to try.\"\n\nHe was. But all his thinking, analyzing, observing... it was all to control his anger. I have engineered my rage, he thought. Focused in, like the Ray of Apollo, to turn it lethal and beautiful. And one day, this tired old man would know that.\n\nBut not when there was no way to survive it. I'm needed, Thomas thought. If he didn't get back to his duties, if the Ray of Apollo failed in the Lighthouse... that would be the beginning of the end. He hated to think of himself as indispensable; there were many competent engineers, designers, mechanics. But he was the one with the vision, and that had to be preserved through this crisis. After that, he would be relieved to be just another engineer. Just another Scholar.\n\nHe fixed the old man with a stare and said, \"What do you want from me?\"\n\nThe Archivist restlessly moved a pile of loose papers from one corner to the other, as if it irritated him merely by existing in his presence. \"I started out like you, bright and overly optimistic about the world. I thought knowledge could solve every problem, heal every wound. But we flawed, foolish humans have to decide how to use knowledge, and we rarely choose for the better. There is no absolute good. No absolute evil. Every cure can also kill.\"\n\n\"So killing you will not be evil,\" Thomas said. \"That's good. I was not worried, but\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm trying to explain to you how we got to this point. Don't be impertinent.\"\n\n\"Oh, I understand,\" Thomas said. \"I made a weapon that can kill thousands in the blink of an eye. I installed it in the Lighthouse today. I know about the dangers of excusing anything to reach a goal, but you? You took an oath to protect and distribute knowledge. Instead, you killed Scholars rather than see their work shared. You upheld a system to hide inconvenient discoveries. Everything you've done is to keep yourself in power. I know.\"\n\nThe old man shook his head. \"You understand nothing. Every year, I meet with the heads of every kingdom and country, high and low. I convince them once again to pledge their loyalty to the Great Library. What does the world look like without that, Thomas? It's a burning wreck, fueled by madness, sectarian violence, ignorance. I save the world. Every year.\"\n\n\"You make it in your own image. There's a difference.\"\n\n\"Thomas\u2014\"\n\n\"I liked it better when you were calling me by my last name. If you're trying to convince me to help, you're just wasting breath.\"\n\nThe Archivist sat back and stared at him, and the cold glitter in his hooded eyes put Thomas on guard. \"Very well. Here's what I want from you, Schreiber: pick some locks for me. That simple. Once you've done it, I'll even let you leave alive.\"\n\n\"I'm not a thief.\"\n\n\"Well, unfortunately, your lock-picking friend Brightwell is busy dying at the moment, so I can't ask him. You'll have to do.\" It was a blow delivered carelessly, but intentionally, too. Thomas felt himself go tense and hot all over, and he leaned forward. He had to resist the urge to smash through that flimsy desk and grab the old man by the throat and demand answers. He also knew it was suicide.\n\n\"What happened to him?\" he asked, and tried to make it sound as if he didn't care so much it tore him apart. He thought he failed. Not Jess, no...\n\n\"Blame Wolfe. He dragged Jess into my office, searching for secrets. Jess breathed in Dragonfire. His time on this earth is limited.\"\n\n\"I don't know what that is,\" Thomas said. He didn't. He wasn't involved in the making of High Garda weapons, if it was one.\n\n\"No reason you should; the formula for it burned up with the Black Archives. A demonic sort of weapon, one that rots you from within. There is no antidote, and very little chance of survival. So I suppose that is the end of the Brightwells, so far as their dynasty is concerned. Good riddance. Smugglers and book thieves deserve to be wiped from this earth.\"\n\nThomas rocked back on his heels, feeling it like a real, physical blow in his stomach. Poison. Jess had been poisoned. And there was no cure. No, surely there must be something. Anything at all. Morgan could heal him. She would.\n\n\"Jess is no longer your concern, or mine,\" the man said. \"Wolfe soon won't be, either, along with whoever he drags into his hapless efforts to kill me. He'll be the death of more than one of your friends in the end. And accomplish nothing. By the end of today I will hold the Great Library again and impose order. I'll have to execute all the traitors, of course. I will do so because that is the hard thing, the necessary thing, that ensures the Great Library's survival. But not you, Thomas: you can help me. I can spare your life if you help me.\"\n\nThomas didn't blink. \"Kill me,\" he said. \"I'd rather be a useless corpse than a useful fool.\"\n\nMaybe it was the bleak certainty in his voice that made the Archivist look to Zara; Thomas felt rather than saw her nod. She believed him. The Archivist sighed. \"Then we'll have to make this more difficult,\" he said. \"Zara. Show him.\"\n\nShe walked to a tall cabinet in the corner\u2014a heavy cedar thing, with the Great Library seal worked in gold on the doors\u2014and opened it. Inside was a large silver mirror. The Archivist rose and touched the ornate frame. \"I had this made a long time ago,\" he said. \"Another hangs in the office of the High Garda Lord Commander. One in the office of the Obscurist Magnus, one in the Lighthouse room of the Artifex Magnus. Do you know what it is?\"\n\nThomas didn't answer. He watched the surface of the mirror ripple like a troubled sea, and then it settled again, took on a reflection\u2014no, not a reflection at all, an image\u2014of a map of Alexandria. Detailed and perfect, down to what seemed to be every building, every street and alleyway.\n\nThe Archivist touched a part of the map, and the image changed. Bright red dots appeared. He touched one of them, and the image sharpened again, into what seemed a brightly lit cavern full of white houses.\n\nNo. Tombs. The Necropolis of Alexandria. The view was moving, as if they were gods looking down on the city of the dead. Thomas stepped closer, because he saw people. This was not an image. It was something else, as immediate as the connection of writing in one Codex and the precise text appearing in another. He could see people moving, and as the image sharpened, he even recognized a face.\n\nGlain Wathen. She stood beside someone with his back turned to the view, but the posture was familiar. Scholar Wolfe. Glain was speaking with a young woman in a dark blue tunic and trousers. He knew her, too. Little Anit, Red Ibrahim's daughter. Safe. They were safe.\n\nThen he saw Jess. His friend sat on the ground, propped against the wall of a tomb, and his color almost matched the pale stone. He looked ill and miserable, and he had some sort of mask over his face.\n\nBut he was alive, that was clear enough, and some of the awful tension in Thomas's gut eased. He glanced at the Archivist and realized this was not what the old man had expected, or wanted to show him; the fury in those faded eyes burned like acid.\n\n\"They're alive,\" Thomas said. \"What did you think you were going to show me? All my friends, lying dead?\"\n\nThe Archivist glared at him. \"Watch.\"\n\nThe circling view suddenly began to change. As if the watcher was falling out of the sky, plummeting down... toward his friends. Thomas saw a flash of metal feathers and realized what the Archivist had, what this view in his mirror showed.\n\nThey were looking through the eyes of a sphinx that had been circling quietly overhead, and now arrowed down straight for Glain.\n\n\"No!\" Thomas shouted, and lunged forward, but two Spartans were there before him, spears crossed, shields joined. He ran into the barrier, and the Archivist held his ground. Smiling.\n\nThomas watched helplessly as Glain realized, too late, that she was in danger. The sphinx landed on her back, slammed her down to the ground, and pinned her there with a clawed paw on the back of her neck. Blood sprang from where the knife-sharp claws dug in.\n\n\"Five seconds, Thomas,\" the Archivist said. \"You have five seconds to agree, or her head comes off.\"\n\nThere was so much blood. The claws dug deeper. Glain was writhing, trying to break free.\n\n\"Two seconds\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop!\" Thomas couldn't control the word\u2014it burst out of him in a desperate rush. \"Stop this!\"\n\n\"Agree! One second!\"\n\n\"Yes! I agree! Stop!\"\n\nThe sphinx suddenly launched back into the air, spiraling up, and in the view as it rose, Thomas saw Wolfe rush to Glain's side. There was no sound, but Jess was kneeling beside her, too, and others were moving to help. Bright pops from weapons, and the sphinx shuddered and veered.\n\nThomas tasted bile and swallowed hard. His hands had clenched into thick, painfully tense fists.\n\nThe Spartans still stood between him and the Archivist.\n\n\"Two things I know about you, Scholar Schreiber,\" the Archivist said. \"First, you care about your friends more than yourself. And second... you don't break your word.\"\n\n\"You do,\" Thomas said. \"Easily.\"\n\n\"I've made you no promises, except that I wouldn't kill your friend in that moment, and I've kept that. Now you must pay your debt. I need you to open the locks on Heron's Tomb.\"\n\nHeron's Tomb.\n\nThomas closed his eyes, and to his great and abiding shame, he thought, I would have done that for nothing. He'd dreamed of being inside Heron's Tomb, surrounded by the astonishments that were rumored to be hidden there. Every Scholar did.\n\nYou can't let him have what's inside, he told himself. You don't know what power Heron asked to be hidden there. You can't let the Archivist be the first to use it. Your curiosity isn't worth the world.\n\nThe Archivist said, \"The sphinx has the taste of her now. It can track your friend anywhere in the city. Kill her at any time I please. Cross me, and Glain is dead. And Khalila. Dario. Morgan. Wolfe. Santi. That I guarantee, and you may rest assured I won't break that promise.\"\n\nHe didn't mention Jess, Thomas realized. That was because he thought Jess was going to die, anyway.\n\n\"I'll keep my word,\" Thomas said. \"Why me? Why didn't you open it?\"\n\n\"No one who's attempted the Trial of Seven Locks has ever lived,\" the old man said. \"And I know I'm not the one to win that distinction. But you? Maybe, Scholar Schreiber. Maybe you will. And I know you love a puzzle. You'll do it for the sheer challenge of it.\"\n\nThe awful thing was that the old man was right."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the last Archivist of the Library of Pergamum to the Archivist of the Great Library, shortly before the final destruction of Pergamum:\n\n\u2002My great friend and rival, I greet you in the sight of the gods and the name of knowledge, which we both have pursued so hotly over the years.\n\n\u2002War is coming to our doorstep, and I fear that our library will not survive it this time. With every scroll lost, the world grows darker. Our lives are harder and shorter. I greatly fear that all that we have built is too fragile, too temporary, for it to last in a world of violence and greed.\n\n\u2002When we are gone, remember us. Rise to meet the challenge we have set: become the greatest protector of knowledge in this world. Not for power, not for glory, not even for your Pharaoh's pride. Do it for future generations who must build the world. The foundations must be solid. Don't let it all fall to ruin.\n\n\u2002When death comes to us here in Pergamum, I hope to die with honor. No doubt most of us will defend our scrolls to our last breaths, but there are always cowards. Always false friends. Always those who look to advantage and better opportunities. I have already found books missing from the collection, stolen by those who should be holding them closer than ever. So beware of that, should you find yourself in similar circumstances, may the gods forbid.\n\n\u2002I know you, my great enemy and great friend, will defend your own library to the end should the world ever come for what you hold dear. Whatever our differences, we have that in common.\n\n\u2002Hail and farewell.\n\n\u2002Knowledge is all."
            },
            {
                "title": "MORGAN",
                "text": "\"I can't find Annis,\" Morgan said, and Eskander stopped writing in his Codex, but only for a few seconds. Then he continued.\n\n\"Annis is still inside the Iron Tower,\" he said. \"I'd know if she'd left it.\"\n\n\"What if she removed her collar?\" That was both likely and, at the same time, unusual; Annis hated the collar, but she'd worn it for so long that she'd confessed to Morgan that she felt uncomfortable without it. So she might have removed it, but she wouldn't have left without it, either.\n\n\"Even if she did, I'd still sense her crossing the threshold,\" he said, and sat back. He put his pen down. \"Why are you looking for her?\"\n\n\"I need her help with a book. She's fluent in Assyrian, isn't she?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't say fluent, but she's literate in it, yes.\" He thought about that a moment. \"Don't tell her I said she wasn't fluent. She'll take it personally.\"\n\n\"I won't,\" Morgan promised. \"Can you tell me where she is, then?\"\n\nEskander looked tired. They were all tired, of course; she was trembling with exhaustion, but rest would have to wait until she finished the translation of the passage that she needed. Thomas would require the information locked away in that obscure text if he was going to understand the inner workings of Heron's Poseidon statue. There was every possibility that if the combined navies outside the harbor concentrated Greek fire on the statue, they might breach its coated exterior. That text contained the specifics of exactly how much damage it could endure and still function.\n\n\"I can't find her,\" Eskander said. \"I'm not a tracking hound, girl, I'm the Obscurist Magnus. Find her yourself; you know her almost as well as I do. Likely she'll be in the kitchens, or the library.\"\n\nHe sounded irritable, and she knew why: Eskander had never asked for this power and didn't enjoy the responsibility, either. He'd spent too many years a hermit to gladly bear regular interruptions. Especially now, when so much hung in the balance.\n\nShe nodded and left his spare, dusty office; he'd set up his desk in an old storeroom instead of the silk-and-velvet nest that generations of other Obscurists Magni had used. The only spectacular thing in this place was the view from the wide window, but just now it only showed growing, oppressive clouds.\n\nAnnis was not in the kitchens (which was, indeed, a good guess), and the workers there hadn't seen her recently. Nor was she in the Iron Tower's library room, though a few other Obscurists were there, taking comfort in books while they rested from one difficult task and prepared for another. Everyone worked today. Everyone.\n\nWhich was why it was strange she couldn't find Annis.\n\nPerhaps she's with one of her lovers, she thought, but rejected the idea immediately. Annis did have a number of them, but she also took her duties seriously. This wasn't the time or place.\n\nAfter checking in every busy workstation, Morgan was even more concerned. Why would Annis be hiding? She wasn't ill, or in her rooms, or anywhere else she ought to be.\n\nMorgan set out to look in the unlikely places.\n\nIt was in the twelfth room that she found her: a dusty old laboratory that had been long abandoned. It was crowded with old and broken equipment, discarded furniture, trunks of personal belongings from long-dead Obscurists.\n\nMorgan heaved a sigh of relief when she caught sight of Annis's flood of curling red hair from the back. It looked as if the older woman was bending over to look at something on the floor. \"There you are,\" Morgan said, and came into the room. \"I was worried, you know.\"\n\nNo answer. And no reaction. Annis's hair swayed a little in the cool breeze from a fan vent above, but otherwise she was completely motionless. Why would she be standing in that awkward position? What\u2014\n\nIt all came together for Morgan in a terrifying, frozen moment. Annis was upright because she was tied to a strong wooden post. The only things that stopped her from collapsing to the floor were the ropes wrapped around her body and the ones securing her wrists behind the post.\n\n\"Annis?\" Morgan's voice had gone soft and strange. \"Annis?\" She felt robbed of breath, of energy, until it all returned to her in a terrific jolt of fear. Her heart, which had hardly seemed to beat, began to hammer painfully, and she fought against a wave of instinct to run from this place. She couldn't. Her friend needed help.\n\nBut she knew she was too late. She knew even before she carefully pulled back Annis's hair and saw her death pallor, the gaping wound in her throat. The blood that had soaked down the front of her Obscurist's robes and pooled thickly around her feet. Strange that she hadn't seen the blood until after the wound, as if her mind simply wouldn't allow her to notice.\n\nMorgan pressed trembling fingers to her friend's throat.\n\nHer pulse was quiet.\n\nIf I scream, no one will hear me in here, she thought, and then dismissed the thought because fear was useless; fear was a distraction. Annis had been murdered. In the Iron Tower. Why? By whose hand? Why?\n\nShe heard the door swinging shut, but when she whirled to look, it was moving on its own. No one there. But she felt the aura of power, and saw it next, a shimmer like glitter dropped from the air to cluster around the edges.\n\nThen a burst of raw energy, and the door changed to a wall.\n\nShe was trapped.\n\nShe turned as another sunburst of power ignited behind her, and saw a doorway being created this time\u2014a stone arch, darkness behind it. And an Obscurist stepped through it.\n\nShe recognized his face\u2014how could she not, as scarce as the Obscurists were these days, barely a few hundred in this vast tower\u2014but she didn't know him. He was ten years or so her elder, a thin, balding man who was utterly medium in all aspects. Medium brown hair. Medium skin tone that could have been traced to fifty different ethnicities. A forgettable arrangement of features, eyes the color of dried, dark mud. Even his height and weight were average.\n\nBut one thing about him seemed exceptional now. He'd concealed his power. She'd never had the impression of real force from him in the small interactions they'd had, but it took expert manipulation of quintessence, and prewritten formulae, to reconfigure walls. Especially in the Iron Tower.\n\nHe didn't speak to her at all. He just came for her, and she backed up quickly, glancing around for a weapon and finding none... but as she dodged his grasping hands, she remembered that Annis commonly carried a knife strapped to her forearm, even at home. She'd always claimed it was for cutting fruit and trimming threads. But the important thing was that it was sharp, and it was here.\n\nMorgan lunged for her friend's body and ripped her sleeve in her haste; she had a wild urge to apologize, a flash so out of place it nearly blinded her, and her fingers grazed a leather sheath. She grabbed for the knife.\n\nIt wasn't there.\n\nIt was in the hand of the nameless Obscurist, who was lunging at her.\n\nShe slipped in Annis's blood and fell backward, and it was a lucky thing; the knife cut air half an inch from her throat as she lost her balance. Morgan fell into a stack of glassware and sent it crashing around them, but one thick vase-shaped vessel\u2014alembic, her mind automatically supplied\u2014rocked but stayed on the table. She grabbed it by the neck, turned, and shattered it against the man's head with as much force as she had in her body, and he staggered sideways and dropped to one knee.\n\nShe kicked that knee away and then followed that with a boot to his head in the same spot she'd landed the first blow, a stunning impact that jolted all the way up her hips and through her spine and seemed to explode out of her head. It hurt. But it worked. His head snapped sideways, and he toppled to the floor with a dull thump. Unconscious or dead, she didn't know which; regardless, she grabbed up the fallen knife and cut strips of cloth from his own robe to tie him tightly. Then she dragged him to the heaviest desk in the room and tied him to that as well.\n\nOnly then did she allow herself to feel the horror and terror of the attack. She crouched down, panting, face in her hands. She smelled sweat and fear, and blood and tears crowded in her throat, but she forced that away. Tears could come later. Right now, she needed to know why he'd done this.\n\nShe found out when she snapped loose his Codex. She could sense the difference in it from standard as soon as her fingertips touched it; he'd rewritten the scripts that powered it, just as she had her own, so that messages went unmonitored and unrecorded.\n\nHe was working with someone. She flipped to the messages; he'd wiped most of them away, but a few remained. One was about rewriting codes for specific automata, but they were all referred to by numbers, and she had no knowledge of what that meant. That's who he is. One of the specialists who retasks automata. It was a trusted position, requiring exacting and expert skills to make automata function properly with changed instructions.\n\nAs to who he was working with, that was a mystery... at least until she saw a particularly eccentric loop to a letter in a reply, and remembered seeing it before.\n\nThe old Archivist. That was his handwriting; she'd seen it on orders. Gregory had brandished those like weapons in front of her many times.\n\nThe man she'd felled was the old Archivist's spy within the Iron Tower, and she needed to tell Eskander, at once. She unsnapped her own Codex and wrote a message, waited for a response, but saw nothing. Her heart sank. Sometimes he ignored Codex messages when he was concentrating on other things. She'd have to go directly to him to get his attention.\n\nThere was no going back through the door she'd originally entered, so she'd have to use the newly created exit to the adjoining room. She knew the Tower well enough; there was no real risk of getting lost. She grabbed a glow from the wall and whispered a little power into it, and the light spread beyond the doorway. Just another room, this one thoroughly abandoned except for spiderwebs and husks of insects.\n\nShe opened the far door, thinking it would reveal the main curving corridor, but instead she walked into yet another room. This one wasn't deserted, and she felt such a wave of relief that she nearly dropped the glow. There were four Obscurists here, and a High Garda soldier in uniform, and she said in a rush, \"Thank God, I need your help, Annis has been killed!\"\n\nNone of them seemed surprised.\n\n\"Take her,\" the oldest one said, and the High Garda soldier advanced on her. Horror turned her cold, but she knew she had to get through. No going back. She showed the knife in her hand then, and he checked his progress and drew his gun. \"No, don't kill her. She's Eskander's new pet. We can use her.\"\n\n\"The Obscurist knows,\" she said sharply. \"I've already told him.\"\n\nThat rattled their composure, but only a little. \"Told him what?\" the High Garda asked. He was a big young man, blunt-featured, with eerily clear blue eyes. \"About the dead woman?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, and blurred effortlessly into the lie. \"And about the messages in the traitor's Codex. Your plot is being uncovered right now. You should give up before you're killed.\"\n\nThey couldn't know what their colleague had written; reading others' Codexes and journals was a social sin so deeply ingrained that none of them would have tried. She hoped her bluff would panic them into immediate retreat.\n\nIt didn't.\n\n\"If that's true, we have to move quickly,\" the eldest said. \"Bring her. Stun her if you have to, but we need her as hostage to be sure we get to the Translation Chamber safely.\"\n\nShe wasn't about to go quietly; they knew that. And the ring on her finger knew it, too.\n\nBe at peace, the ring said, which caught her off guard and wasted a vital second, because in the next instant one of the Obscurists had seized her wrist, and another was reaching for her. But the ring just repeated it. Be at peace. You are not in danger.\n\nShe let go, and power rolled through her in a massive, warm swell that ignited the air around her with a shimmer. The Obscurists let her loose and backed away; they weren't hurt, only surprised. But when the High Garda soldier aimed his pistol, it transmuted effortlessly into its constituent parts, rattling in fragments to the floor. \"You can't hurt me,\" Morgan said. \"And I won't hurt you if you give up all thoughts of escape. You won't leave the Iron Tower. Not unless the Obscurist Magnus releases you. You've all committed treason against the Great Library.\"\n\n\"We stayed loyal to it,\" one threw back at her. \"When you stole it away from us.\"\n\nOne of them\u2014the biggest of them, the High Garda soldier\u2014came directly for her. He smashed into an invisible shield that threw him backward and into a wall with such force he hit the ground, unconscious.\n\nShe wasn't doing any of this, not consciously; it was the ring defending her. But why now? Why not before, when she'd been about to be killed?\n\nBecause you did not need the help. But you are outnumbered now, the ring said. And so, I help.\n\nMorgan forced a smile. \"Anyone else want to try?\"\n\nNo one seemed to, but then she felt a little shiver, a waver in the power in the ring. It had only a limited reserve. It would refill itself from the latent power of quintessence floating in the air, but not quickly.\n\nShe couldn't wait here.\n\nBefore the Obscurists could move, she dashed for the doorway, threw it open, and ran out into the corridor. Deserted. She made for the long spiral of stairs, heading down toward the more occupied levels. She tried to shout, knowing it would echo through the central corridor, but one of the Obscurists had managed to dampen sound around her. It was a simple enough prewritten code; they probably had an entire volume of them, all designed to keep themselves safe and undiscovered. But Annis had discovered them, and they'd killed her trying to find out how. Or she'd chosen that death instead of telling them. That would have been more like her.\n\nGrief burned, and Morgan found herself gasping against tears as she plunged on down the steps, feet silent, not even her sobs making a sound.\n\nShe missed a step and almost fell, and forced herself to slow down. She saw people moving two floors down. If she could reach them...\n\nSomething hit the wall beside her, raising a puff of dust and an explosion of sharp fragments. It made no sound, but when she looked back she realized that one of the Obscurists had found another gun and was firing it at her. They no longer wanted her alive. They just wanted to stop her from telling anyone else.\n\nA clap of sound so loud it deafened her brought her to a sudden stop; she felt as though her skull had shattered. Am I shot? Am I dead? She didn't know until she lowered her hands from her head and saw no blood... and then saw the shape striding up the stairs toward her. The thunderclap had been an internal Translation within the Iron Tower.\n\nAnd the man coming toward her was Eskander.\n\nShe opened her mouth to scream at him to take cover, but though she felt the strain of trying, the sound just... vanished. She didn't know how to dismantle the effect, and there wasn't time to try.\n\nBut Eskander didn't need her warning. He plunged past her on the stairs, heading up, and she felt him slashing at the altered reality in a way she couldn't even grasp as he moved.\n\nSound snapped back into being. His footsteps on the stairs. Her breath heaving in her lungs. \"They're armed!\" she shouted, and a fraction of a second later she heard the shot. It seemed to echo through the Iron Tower like a scream, and she caught her breath as she saw Eskander stagger and miss a step.\n\nNo. No, that could not be.\n\nHe went to one knee.\n\nGo, the ring told her with a decisive snap. She lunged forward and reached for some line of defense, something, anything, and the ring's whisper said, Be calm. Feel the air.\n\nThe air.\n\nShe shifted the density of the air in front of Eskander into a thick block, a shield made of nothing, and as the second shot rang out, she saw the bullet hit the block and slow. It was as if it moved through thick gelatin, and when it finally tunneled its way through, it simply dropped to the stairs and rolled away, all its force spent.\n\nMorgan pushed that shield back as she ascended the stairs. She extended it and formed it into a bubble that trapped the Obscurists inside, battering uselessly at the milky barrier. Will it hold? she asked the ring, and felt a warm pulse of approval. The power had come from the walls of the Iron Tower, from the generations of powerful Obscurists who'd been born, lived, worked, and died here. The barrier was anchored in that power. It would not break, and it wasn't likely these traitors had the skill to rewrite their formulae to remove it.\n\nShe went back to Eskander. He'd gotten to his feet, and he was a little shaken, but when she said, \"Show me,\" he pulled his hand away from his side to show her the wound. \"How bad is it?\"\n\n\"It missed anything vital,\" he said, and groaned. \"Not entertaining, but I've had worse in my youth.\" He smiled at her briefly. \"Sorry I didn't read your message immediately. It's a busy day.\"\n\nThe smile vanished as he looked at the Obscurists she'd trapped on the stairs. There was a dangerous light in his eyes. \"They killed Annis.\"\n\n\"Yes. She must have found them doing something they wanted to keep hidden.\" She took in a deep breath. \"They're working with the exiled Archivist. I think they've been sabotaging our control of the automata and hiding the changes. We'll need to do a full review of all of the machines to be certain what's been compromised, and what it means.\"\n\n\"I was already aware of some of these changes,\" Eskander said. \"But I'd asked Obscurist Salvatore to investigate.\" He pointed to the eldest of the trapped people. \"That is Obscurist Salvatore.\" He sounded angry, but she thought it was mostly frustration with himself. \"I chose the guilty to investigate the crime.\"\n\n\"You couldn't have known\u2014\"\n\n\"It's my business to know,\" Eskander said. \"Now more than it's ever been for any other Obscurist in history. And I've failed. Annis is dead because I did.\" She saw the flash of real grief in his face, but like her, he had to put it behind him for now. \"Your job is to take Salvatore's place and review the entire inventory for compromise. Test them all.\"\n\n\"Sir, that might take days,\" she said quietly. \"We might not have days.\"\n\n\"Start with the ones that pose the most threat and work down. But we don't have time to waste.\"\n\nShouts had broken out below them, and both Obscurists and High Garda soldiers were rushing to the rescue. Good. As the first High Garda met them, Morgan said, \"The Obscurist Magnus has been wounded. Find someone to take him to the Medica floor. Go up three floors; you'll find another High Garda who's knocked unconscious. Arrest him for treason.\"\n\nThe soldier\u2014a tall, capable-looking young woman\u2014hesitated only an instant before looking to Eskander for confirmation. When she got the nod, she began issuing orders to those arriving. Morgan wasn't good at reading rank, but she thought this woman must have been a sergeant, at least. She had the bearing and authority.\n\nTwo Obscurists and two High Garda were assigned the task of taking Eskander to the Medica. He paused before leaving. \"Start now,\" he told her. \"We're out of time already.\"\n\nShe bowed her head, and swallowed her worry as she descended the stairs. She was halfway down when the High Garda sergeant called, \"Obscurist Hault? We can't get through this\u2014barrier.\"\n\nWithout pausing, Morgan raised her hand and pushed the air back to normal density. She heard a sharp pop and felt the rush of wind ripple past her, but she didn't look back.\n\nShe had work to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 38",
                "text": "Obscurist Salvatore had his own office on the fourth floor. The entire level was dedicated to automata control; there were more than fifty Obscurists working constantly on monitoring and rewriting commands, but Salvatore's office had only two others in it, both assistants.\n\nMorgan didn't know them. And couldn't trust that they hadn't also turned traitor. \"Out,\" she snapped to them, and when the middle-aged man began to protest, she looked at her High Garda escort, and without a word spoken, they were both taken away. \"I'm going to need food, water, and Obscurists Chowdry and Salk. They'll be assigned here for now.\" She knew both of them, and they were competent, solid, loyal people. \"Take the Codexes and journals off both of those two who were just taken out of here. Review them for any signs of disloyalty or deception.\"\n\n\"Yes, Obscurist,\" the sergeant said. She'd joined Morgan after seeing to the arrests, and from her posture she intended to stay.\n\n\"What's your name?\" Morgan asked her.\n\n\"Sergeant Mwangi,\" the woman said.\n\n\"Thank you, Sergeant Mwangi.\"\n\nMwangi inclined her head just the slightest bit and left the room for a moment. Morgan opened the cabinet in the corner of Salvatore's office and found more than fifty volumes shelved there; each had the classification of automata on the spine. There were seventeen volumes just for sphinxes, ten for lions. More than twenty for Scribes.\n\nThis would take a long time, and she already felt the ache building behind her eyes. She pulled the first volume and carried it to Salvatore's desk. He had a bookstand, and she placed the volume there. The entries were orderly, but it was the wrong order for what she needed, and she requested them differently; the contents revised, and she had groupings of sphinxes in the highest-risk spots in Alexandria, starting with the Serapeum.\n\nShe started with the first and pressed her fingers to the entry. She felt an answering tingle of connection. Storeroom in the Serapeum. She called up the complex formulae that formed the basic program for this type of creature and overlaid it on the code she called up from the patrolling sphinx. It fit perfectly. No meddling.\n\nShe placed a verification code on the entry and moved on.\n\nTen entries on, she felt rather than saw the two Obscurists she'd asked for take their places, and she paused to instruct them on how to proceed. They didn't need oversight, which was why she'd requested them; both had written countless scripts for automata. They understood how to find even clever digressions. She had Salk take the lions, and Chowdry the less common models: Spartans, gods, monsters of all types.\n\nShe found her first compromised sphinx nearly a hundred entries on, blocked the malicious commands, and marked the automaton as compromised. That one patrolled the Serapeum's gardens, but so far, no one had activated its more sinister functions. She continued, moving faster, and located two more before her headache and exhaustion forced her to pause for food and water and to rest her eyes. She put up a map of Alexandria on the wall and marked where she'd found compromised machines; the others added their own discoveries. She found only two tampered with at the Serapeum, but there were six inside the Great Archives. Six inside the Lighthouse. All the sphinxes inside the Greek fire facility, but those had been discovered and their malicious commands erased by someone else. Eskander, most likely.\n\nShe finished the first volume and went to the second.\n\nShe wasn't even certain how far she'd gone when something odd dragged her out of her iron concentration. Her brain wouldn't put it into the right box, since it was so fixed on the problem in front of her... and then she knew what had distracted her.\n\nScreaming.\n\nShe looked up. Sergeant Mwangi was still in the doorway, but she was writing in her Codex, and as Morgan focused on her the sergeant said, \"I'm locking you in here for safety.\"\n\n\"No!\" Morgan jumped to her feet and ran out. \"You two, keep working!\" She crossed the threshold, and Mwangi locked the door behind her. From the corridor, she could hear the sounds more clearly. \"What's happening?\"\n\n\"An attack,\" Mwangi said. \"Companies are responding.\"\n\n\"What kind of attack?\" And how had anyone gotten into the Iron Tower? Obscurists could enter and leave, but anyone else coming in required specific credentials. She hadn't checked the Iron Tower, but she knew Salk's list would have covered the automata downstairs at the ground level, and there were none higher, not here.\n\nOr were there? She couldn't remember if Gregory had installed one in his opulent office, the one that Eskander had refused to use. But if so, that door was locked and couldn't be opened by anyone except the current Obscurist Magnus.\n\n\"What's happening down there?\" Morgan asked, but she asked it on the move, running for the stairs; it would be faster than the lifting chamber. \"What kind of attack?\"\n\n\"Obscurist, stop!\" Mwangi ordered, but Morgan didn't obey. She kept running. \"There are two traitor Obscurists! Please stop, I can't let you go down there!\"\n\nMorgan came to a sudden halt at the landing and looked down. There were two of them; they had already set the sole automaton guardian ablaze with Greek fire, and it was melting into a horrifying skeleton as she watched. The High Garda were shooting, but the two Obscurists\u2014young men, both of them\u2014had some kind of alchemical protection in place. She caught her breath as she saw one of them throw a glass bulb toward the sheltered High Garda soldiers. They saw it coming, but there was nowhere for them to go.\n\nMorgan reached out her hand and hardened the air around the globe. She lowered it gently to the flagstones, then, with a puff of air, rolled it quietly back toward the Obscurists. The one who'd thrown the globe was still staring where it should have landed, waiting for the virulent green flames to erupt and set the soldiers alight... and he didn't notice that the globe he'd thrown was bumping toward him until it bumped his boot.\n\nHe drew back his foot to kick it away toward the High Garda.\n\nMorgan couldn't let him have a second try at killing more people. She quickly denatured the components inside the globe, and by the time his boot hit it, it was filled with nothing more than sludge that would leave a stain but couldn't burn if they put a match to it.\n\nBut there was something else; she could feel it. Something shrouded in Obscurist formulae, something not right here.\n\nThen she saw it, an apparently abandoned bag sitting in the exact center of the floor on top of the mosaic seal of the Great Library. It looked anonymous, but inside... She struggled to understand the complex whirl of formulae waiting to be triggered. That one would create a violent updraft of wind, something strong enough to reach through the central open space of the Iron Tower all the way to the top. The layer entangled with it ensured that fire burned hotter, a simple enhancement used in Artifex forges.\n\nBeneath that was a bundle of Greek fire bottles waiting to be broken.\n\nThe last layer, the trigger layer of commands, was a single word that would crush the bottles.\n\nMorgan realized with a wave of sick horror that what was intended here was mass murder. With a single spoken phrase, these two rogue Obscurists would unleash a whirlwind of Greek fire that would spiral up through every floor, trapping innocents in an inferno from which there would be no escape. The High Garda's denaturing powder wouldn't be enough.\n\nShe had to stop it before it started.\n\nOne of the two men opened his mouth, and she saw the feverish light in his eyes. This was it. He was going to ignite the bomb.\n\nShe used the same trick they'd used on her. She had no prewritten scripts to help her, but she didn't need them; she'd spent years perfecting the ability to hide, and that meant hiding any sounds that might betray her, too. She could play the same games.\n\nHe shouted, \"Tota est scientia!\" The motto of the Great Library, used as a weapon.\n\nBut she'd already stilled the air around him, and the sound never left his lips. He was effectively mute.\n\nHe tried again, and again, looking desperate now, and when he realized it was useless he fixed on her with pure hatred.\n\nHe threw another Greek fire bomb at her, and she fought the urge to panic. No. Stand. You have to keep him silent!\n\nWhile maintaining his imposed silence, she reached out to catch the glass globe as it fell toward her.\n\nIt was the only thing she could do, and it was a horrible risk; if she fumbled, she'd burn. If she cracked the glass in her terror, she'd burn.\n\nBut she caught it like a dropped egg and held it in her trembling palm for a long few seconds until Sergeant Mwangi rushed over, grabbed the innocent-looking thing, and lobbed it with deadly accuracy back at the two Obscurists.\n\nThey were not prepared. One of them attempted the same catch, but it fell between his outstretched hands, struck the pavement at their feet, and splashed liquid in a thick pool around them.\n\nThen they burned.\n\n\"Put them out!\" Mwangi shouted, and turned to Morgan as the squad rushed over with denaturing powder. One of them seemed like he might live. The other, by the time the powder was applied, was a blackened, burning nightmare.\n\nShe realized with a flinch that she was still imposing silence on him, but when she released her hold on the air, he didn't scream.\n\nHis throat was too seared to make the sound.\n\n\"Obscurist?\" Mwangi grabbed her arms as she wavered. \"Obscurist, are you all right?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, but it felt awful and hollow. She turned away to avoid Mwangi's glance. Tears burned in her eyes, but she fiercely blinked them back. I did what I had to do.\n\nThe ring said nothing. But as the burned man lay dying on the floor of the Iron Tower, the ring began to gather the quintessential fluid rising from his body.\n\n\"Bomb,\" she managed to tell Mwangi. \"In the bag. Be careful, it's deadly. I can make it safer, but I need time.\"\n\nMwangi looked doubtful, but she nodded. \"What do you need?\"\n\nI need the Obscurist Magnus, she wanted to say, but Eskander had already saved her once today. He needed to rest.\n\nShe took a deep breath and said, \"Time.\"\n\nThen she set to work unraveling and erasing the work of madmen."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 39",
                "text": "It took the better part of an hour before she was certain all of the tricks the Obscurists had built into the bomb were disabled, and she was covered in sweat and exhausted when she finished... but the bag was safely removed, and the Iron Tower secured under heavy guard.\n\n\"They intended to kill as many as they could,\" she told Mwangi as they took the lifting chamber back up to the office where they'd left her assistants. \"Maybe even destroy the entire Iron Tower; I'm not sure even this structure could hold up under that kind of Greek fire attack from inside.\"\n\n\"But why would they?\" Mwangi asked. She was very shaken, underneath that professional calm. \"Surely not even the old Archivist would want to destroy the very foundations of the Great Library!\"\n\n\"I think he wants to destroy as much as he can, and build from the ruins,\" Morgan said. \"Wars have casualties. And he knows we sided against him.\"\n\n\"He took an oath!\"\n\n\"And as he probably sees it, he's keeping it,\" she said. She was so tired she wanted to weep. \"I hope this is the worst he tries.\"\n\nBut somehow, she didn't think it was.\n\nWhen Mwangi unlocked the door, both Chowdry and Salk were crowding at the threshold, talking at once. Mwangi pushed them back with a frown. \"It's all right,\" she said. \"The crisis is\u2014\"\n\n\"Morgan, there's a pattern,\" Chowdry shouted over her. \"We know who was behind the ring of traitors here. It was Vanya! Vanya Nikolin!\"\n\nShe frantically tried to remember the faces of the Obscurists who'd been caught or killed. Vanya hadn't been among them; she would have remembered. Eskander had given him important tasks. I trusted him, too, she thought with a sinking heart. I should have been more careful. He always did favors for Gregory. Leopards hardly ever change spots.\n\n\"Is he still inside?\" Even as she asked that, she checked her Codex. \"The record says he is, but\u2014\"\n\n\"He's not,\" Salk confirmed. \"Chowdry saw him leave in a hurry earlier, and while you were gone we noticed that he had altered the records. He's also removed his collar, so we can't track him with any accuracy. But that doesn't matter. We know where he's going, we think.\"\n\n\"It was the Spartans and the gods that tipped us off,\" Chowdry added. \"Those are the ones that he's positioned to guard a particular path.\"\n\n\"What kind of path? To where?\"\n\nThe two men looked at each other and said at the same time, \"We think he's found the Tomb of Heron.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from prior Archivist Alfred Nobel to his Curia, interdicted from the Codex:\n\n\u2002Scholars Magni,\n\n\u2002Since the French rebellion that cost so many lives and precious volumes, I have given much consideration to the preservation and protection of the Great Archives themselves. The Archives structure, while unquestionably secure and almost impossible to breach, still represents the single greatest attraction for potential enemies and would-be conquerors in the city\u2014perhaps even the world. As long as our enemies believe it is possible to seize our wealth of books and control it for themselves, the Great Library exists in constant peril.\n\n\u2002I would much prefer to install within the Great Archives a fail-safe, one that will make even the most audacious and power-mad ruler pause.\n\n\u2002We would never use this system, of course, but it would act as a great and terrible deterrent. The secret of the system should be kept rigorously, and a threat to use it issued only in the event of an upstart kingdom or country vowing to take the Great Archives by force.\n\n\u2002I believe that the threat of wholesale destruction, of worldwide intellectual suicide, will cause any would-be intruders to retreat and leave us in peace.\n\n\u2002Obviously, this secret must stay in the hands of the Archivist; no other, not even the Lord Commander of the High Garda, should be entrusted with its activation key. It is a responsibility so great, and so terrible, that I would never put the burden on another.\n\n\u2002The only option is to make any attack on us so costly to the entirety of humanity that war itself becomes unthinkable.\n\n\u2002Should you concur, we may start construction of this system within the month."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "\"Hello, my desert rose.\"\n\nKhalila straightened but she didn't turn; she had just put down her Codex on the small table that she was using for a desk. \"Dario.\" Her tone was carefully neutral. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"You heard.\" His hands touched her shoulders, but he didn't try to turn her around. Good. She was still angry with him, and perhaps he could sense it. \"No well done or you were so brave? You break my heart, beauty.\"\n\nShe did turn after all, because she wanted to see his face. On seeing it\u2014the not-quite-right smile, the bleakness in his eyes\u2014she abandoned all effort at anger and silently came into his arms. She felt him take a sudden, deep breath that seemed more like a shudder, and then he relaxed against her. Heavy in her arms. He smelled like death and alcohol, but she ignored that and pulled him closer. She put her lips close to his ear and said, \"Well done, my prince.\"\n\n\"You know what happened?\"\n\n\"I was told,\" she whispered. \"Oh, Dario. Why didn't you tell me Santi\u2014\"\n\n\"There wasn't time. From the moment that Santi found that the Elites had taken the Greek fire facility and had control of the automata, the clock was spinning. His forces were already stretched thin. He needed a... creative solution.\"\n\n\"And that was you.\"\n\n\"I am good at deception,\" he said. \"Growing up in my world, that's considered quite a strength.\"\n\nShe pushed him back a little and met his gaze. \"You don't fool me,\" she said. \"It was worse than we were told, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"If it was, do you think I'd ever tell you? However would I maintain my image as\u2014what was it Jess called me once\u2014a right bastard?\"\n\nHe had his defenses up, gilded and sharp. She decided not to test them. She kissed him instead, and his response seemed desperate to her. As if he couldn't quite believe it was real. His lips tasted bitter for a moment, and then bittersweet as heartbreak and moonlight. But warm, so warm. So wanting. Her fingers trembled against his face, and she thought she might break from longing. Today of all days, she needed to feel love.\n\nAnd so, very evidently, did he. She could feel the feverish longing in him, and something else, something so desperate it took her breath.\n\n\"Easy, querida,\" he whispered when they separated just enough to breathe. \"I don't want to forget my promises. Or your duty.\"\n\nThere was such a terrible bitter weight on the word duty. She felt him trembling. \"Dario,\" she said. \"You can tell me what happened. You know you can.\"\n\nHe shook his head. His smile seemed desperate to her, and then it crumbled like a falling wall. He caught his breath on a sob that took him by surprise, and it took all his strength to try to hide that pain again.\n\n\"No,\" she whispered, and put her hands on his face. \"My love, there is no shame in tears for a terrible thing. However necessary it might have been.\"\n\nHe almost let go. Almost. But then that glittering, feverish smile rallied. \"Ah, querida. I will weep when this is done. For now, I will move to the next moment, and I want to spend that with you, not bad memories.\" He took a breath. \"If I'm honest with myself, I want to spend every moment with you.\" No jests now, no defenses. \"I asked you to marry me. I truly was not joking, Khalila. Choose the day, and I'll write the marriage contract.\"\n\nHe was so serious, so vulnerable, that it frightened her. She kissed him again. And again. And when she felt that wound in him had sealed a little, she whispered, \"I would say today, if I could. You know that.\"\n\n\"But soon, yes?\"\n\n\"Soon,\" she confirmed, and smiled. \"And what will you give as a meher?\" She was teasing him, really. The meher was an ancient practice, tradition and symbol now instead of the bride's compensation as it once was.\n\n\"My heart, for the token,\" he said. \"And half my wealth, if you'll have it.\"\n\nHe wasn't joking. She had to check twice to be certain of that. \"Dario! I don't need your money. Surely you don't think\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't. But what is mine is yours, flower. And always will be. Marriage contract or not. Formalities or not. That's what I believe.\"\n\nShe kissed him again. Gently this time. \"Soon.\"\n\n\"Name the day.\"\n\n\"Quiet, you,\" she said when they finally parted, and led him to a padded sofa someone had dragged against the wall. It was serving as her catnap spot; she couldn't imagine having a full night's sleep anymore. Not as things were. \"Sit and rest. Have you eaten?\"\n\nDario shook his head. He bent forward and ran his hands distractedly through his wavy black hair. \"I just realized that I stink like a pig farmer,\" he said. \"I'm sorry. I just... needed to see you.\"\n\n\"I'm glad. I'll find you food. For now, lie down. Rest.\"\n\n\"Lie down with me?\" he asked, and then smiled at her raised eyebrows. \"You know what I mean. A little comfort, that's all.\"\n\n\"It's never that simple with you, Dario.\"\n\n\"Are you suggesting that I am not a gentleman?\"\n\n\"Never. But you certainly pretend not to be one to everyone else.\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"They see what they expect to see,\" he said. Their hands fell close together and automatically entwined, fingers yearning for each other. \"Khalila\u2014\" He was trembling on the edge of that memory, that darkness that he was trying to escape. She sat down beside him. \"I did things today, saw things\u2014I don't know. Is it worth it? What we're doing?\"\n\n\"It has to be,\" she said. \"If the Great Library comes to pieces, what's left? Warring kingdoms fighting over the bones, dragging apart the Archives, hoarding and hiding knowledge? Do you want to live in that world?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, and took a deep breath. \"But I'm afraid we may inherit it, anyway.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 42",
                "text": "She left him asleep on the couch and went to find Archivist Murasaki. The older woman was standing in the conference room that had so lately housed the fleet's diplomats; it seemed large, silent, and lonely now. The vast windows offered a view of the bay and the storm that swept black clouds ever closer from the north. The winds were already blowing. The storm wasn't far off now, and the ships out there would have to make a quick decision: seek shelter, or attempt to ride out the weather. \"They're too close together,\" Murasaki said as Khalila came to join her. \"When the storm hits, they'll be their own worst enemies.\"\n\n\"You're thinking of allowing them harbor.\"\n\n\"No. I'm thinking of asking the pasha of Tripoli to allow them emergency shelter. I don't want unnecessary deaths on our conscience.\"\n\n\"They're our enemies,\" Khalila said.\n\n\"Until recently, with the exception of France in exile, they were signatories to our treaties. Partners in our great work. If this is handled properly\u2014and it must be\u2014then they will be our allies again. We can't war with the world if we intend to also teach them, Khalila.\"\n\nThat, Khalila thought, was a difficult thing to achieve: saving one's enemies from their own folly. But she nodded. \"Shall I send a message to the pasha?\"\n\n\"I'll do it,\" Murasaki said, and sent her a sudden, warm smile that lit her serious face in wondrous ways. \"I'm not yet settled in my throne to the extent I can't wield a pen for myself.\" The smile lingered, but it dimmed. \"I'll also send messages to the respective governments, urging them to order their captains to safety.\"\n\n\"I can help with that, Archivist.\"\n\n\"I have other work for you,\" Murasaki said. \"I am concerned for the Great Archives. It's the most vulnerable jewel of this city, and I am not satisfied that we have secured it completely. I would prefer some plan to protect that information more thoroughly. Message the Curia and present the problem. I want plans and suggestions in the next hour.\"\n\n\"Yes, Archivist.\" Khalila was already taking out her Codex and marking down the names of the Curia. As she wrote, she said, \"Perhaps you should consider the invention that Thomas and Jess created? Not for this crisis, but for the future. Surely having additional printed copies of the work would help preserve it in case of... disaster.\"\n\n\"Heretic,\" Murasaki said, but gently, and with a stroke of humor. \"Well. The world is changing; that much is definitely true. And we can either change with it or be left behind. I will evaluate this machine of theirs and see how the Great Library may use it to our advantage.\"\n\n\"You won't try to suppress it?\"\n\n\"Here is where I part ways with prior Archivists. Progress will come. It is our job to be sure we remain of use even as it overtakes us. No. Suppression is not our policy, not while I am Archivist.\"\n\nThat woke a wild streak of hope inside Khalila, a feeling that the world was, at last, cracking open. Changing into something new.\n\nIf they could survive to see it.\n\nShe finished her rapid message to the Curia, and by the time replies began to appear, the Archivist said, \"The pasha indeed offers shelter to the assembled navies. I am sending this information to Ambassador Santiago. I hope they are not stupid enough to remain.\"\n\n\"Maybe they won't be,\" Khalila said. \"But also, maybe they'll try for our harbor.\"\n\n\"Against Poseidon? And the anchor chain? That would be folly.\"\n\n\"Even Poseidon can't withstand sustained Greek fire bombardment,\" Khalila said. \"And if they decide to go that direction...\"\n\n\"Then we will fight them,\" the Archivist said calmly. \"The Obscurists have other automata that we haven't shown them yet. Between that and the storm, I do not think they'll like their chances.\"\n\nBut she was wrong.\n\nAs she and Khalila began organizing the room for the arrival of the Curia, the Lighthouse siren sounded, a dire wail that vibrated up Khalila's spine like a poisonous snake. They both rose from where they sat, and the Archivist looked at Khalila for a long, frozen second before they both turned to look out to sea.\n\nThe fleet was coming.\n\nThey weren't running after all.\n\nThe first Greek fire hit the Poseidon automaton glancingly on one shoulder; the metal god simply brushed the fire off, and though the skin beneath was a little darker, it seemed undamaged.\n\nBut the next volley hit it squarely in the center of its body, multiple ballistas targeting at once, and the fire clung and glowed hideously in the growing dusk. It was beautiful in a way, the explosions, the green flames outlining the sea god, but it was also deeply terrifying to watch their most visible, most ancient defense under attack.\n\nBut the automaton wasn't without its open offensive capabilities. Poseidon lifted its trident and threw it directly at the ships; the massive weapon smashed through three of them like toys, speared three more on its points.\n\nThe sheer devastation was horrifying, and Khalila covered her mouth to hold in her gasp. She couldn't see the blood, the torn bodies, the dead and drowning, but she knew it would be appalling. Violence at a distance was still horrific, and should be felt just as deeply.\n\nThe bombardment continued. Intensified, if anything. Hundreds of Greek fire bombs, all aimed at the giant figure of Poseidon. The blaze completely enveloped the automaton, as if it had combusted; where its legs met the waterline, steam erupted and billowed to create an eerie fog.\n\nNot every bomb landed on target. Some sailed past to the docks. Some landed farther in on Alexandrian streets and buildings. Lives were being lost here, too.\n\nThe shutters began to close as a security precaution, but Murasaki made a notation in her Codex, and these shutters stopped their descent. \"Archivist\u2014,\" Khalila began, but the older woman shook her head.\n\n\"I need to watch,\" she said. \"You may go if you wish.\"\n\nIt was a risk, staying in front of this open window; a lucky ballista shot could sail inside, turn this entire room into a nightmare of flame. But if Murasaki stayed, Khalila would as well. She had to.\n\nShe heard running footsteps behind, and then they slowed. She whipped around, pulling the knife she kept at her waist for emergencies like this, and felt an immense rush of relief to see it was Dario. Just Dario, breathless and pale.\n\nHigh Garda followed just a step behind. \"What are you doing?\" she snapped, not at Dario but at the soldiers. \"Your job is to stop anyone who approaches the Archivist who isn't on the approved list!\"\n\n\"With respect, Scholar... he is on that list,\" said one of them. \"We were only escorting him. He just pulled ahead.\"\n\n\"I added him,\" Murasaki said. \"Khalila, if you trust him, so must I.\"\n\nThat was a shock. And a compliment. And a worry, too.\n\n\"My thanks, Archivist,\" Dario said, and tried for a bow. He wasn't steady enough for it to have as much grace as usual. \"You should\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut the windows? Yes, young man, I'm aware what I should do,\" Murasaki said, and there was unmistakable flatness to her voice that warned him off the subject. She leaned forward a bit, hands flat on the surface of the marble railing. \"It's moving.\"\n\nShe was talking about Poseidon. Dario joined Khalila, and their hands twined together, but her attention was fully on the automaton.\n\nIt was walking. Lifting one burning leg out of the water and stepping over the harbor chain. Then the other. The burning giant strode forward, pushing tremendous waves ahead with every step.\n\nIt sank down to its thighs as the water deepened. Then to its waist. The Greek fire continued to burn underwater for long moments before it guttered out, but from the waist up, Poseidon was a flaming green torch. Terrifying and relentless, it advanced on the fleet. They were packed too close in waters shallow enough for it to stand above the surface, and as the ships began to break and try to move away, it grasped hold of one and simply crushed it. Khalila cried out. Murasaki's hands tightened on the railing. Dario said nothing, but Khalila felt his grip on her fingers grow crushingly hard. She didn't protest. Pain was something that kept her from weeping as she watched the metal god remorselessly slaughter every single ship it could reach. Hundreds dead with every single swing of its hand. Greek fire dripped from its burning arms and set other ships alight, too. It was a nightmare like nothing she could have imagined.\n\n\"No,\" Dario said. \"Stop it. You have to stop it!\"\n\n\"I can't,\" Murasaki said flatly. \"Heron put these commands in place. I can't stop it from defending the city.\"\n\nIt had torn its way through the British and Welsh ships. It was approaching ships flying the Spanish flag now, and they were fleeing but not quickly enough. Not nearly quickly enough.\n\n\"The Obscurist Magnus, then!\" Dario demanded. \"You can't let this happen!\"\n\n\"Eskander's been injured in an attack at the Iron Tower. And as difficult as this is, should we stop it? Your kinsmen came here intending to take control of our city.\"\n\n\"They're trying to run!\"\n\nThey were. It made Khalila sick to see it. The bombardment had ceased; the fleet wheeled like a flock of birds. The British and Welsh were virtually destroyed. The French had already broken off and sailed toward Tripoli. The Japanese were turning toward home.\n\nThe Spanish, the central bulk of the force, were trying to maneuver toward escape, but the seas were turbulent, and the god's pursuit relentless. Waves broke over the chest of Poseidon, but it kept up its chase. Snatched up two more ships and crushed them. Dario let out a low cry. \"Khalila, Morgan! Get Morgan!\"\n\nShe fumbled for her Codex. Surely it was enough now. Surely this had to end. Morgan might not be able to help, but at least she could try...\n\nAnd then, suddenly, Poseidon stopped moving. The automaton stood burning, just chest and head above the water, with one hand outstretched toward a fleeing Spanish ship... and it no longer moved. Waves slashed at it, washing away the Greek fire in guttering ribbons.\n\nWhat was left was just a melted, unformed thing, with exposed, frozen clockworks and tubes. In time, it would rust earth brown, become a home for coral and fish. Become an island that no one remembered was once a god.\n\nPoseidon would never rise again.\n\nBut it had done what it had been designed to do by Heron so long ago: it had destroyed an invading fleet. Protected the Great Library. At what cost? Khalila realized she was still shaking only as Dario put an arm around her shoulder. She tried to seem braver. Surely the Archivist would want that.\n\n\"Today is a day of mourning, not victory,\" Murasaki said quietly. \"I think I begin to understand the weight that these robes carry.\"\n\nIt took Khalila a moment to realize that the Archivist was crying, despite her calm and steady voice.\n\n\"Your cousin's ship\u2014?\" Khalila turned to Dario. He shook his head.\n\n\"I couldn't see,\" he said. \"God help this city if he's gone. King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse will never agree to peace if Alvaro is dead.\"\n\nThey watched the Spanish fleet gather together and turn in a large, solid wheel.\n\nHeaded back for the harbor.\n\n\"No,\" Dario whispered, \"no, no, you fools, don't\u2014\"\n\nThe Lighthouse's droning alarm suddenly cut off, leaving an eerie and echoing silence, and Thomas's Ray of Apollo kindled into fierce, solid life as thick as one of those Spanish ships. It burned a line through the water only meters away from the leading ship's bow. Another warning. A very pointed one. It transformed water to superheated steam where it sliced, and after just a few seconds it went out.\n\nMurasaki said, \"Scholar Seif, send a message to the Spanish ambassador. Tell him to make for Tripoli with all speed, or prepare to meet his god.\"\n\nAs Khalila wrote the words, black clouds swallowed the last of the day's light, and a bolt of lightning shattered out of the heavens and struck the Iron Tower. Shimmers of power radiated down it and bled away into harmless sparks. It was as if Allah himself had decided to emphasize the message. When she finished writing, she realized that she'd used the Arabic alphabet for the city's name. Instinct and habit. But Santiago no doubt knew Arabic as well as Greek, English, and half a dozen other tongues. All the ambassadors did.\n\nKhalila stared at her Codex tensely until the answer appeared in tight, angry words. \"Message acknowledged. They're turning,\" she said, and looked up to be sure. Yes. The Spanish ships continued their turn, avoiding the Alexandrian course and locking in for the shelter of the docks at Tripoli, and the assurance that the pasha of Libya would protect them from reprisals. They'd be safe there, if given a chilly reception by the pasha, the sooner to send them back on their way to their king. \"The ambassador writes that the Great Library stands or falls alone now. They will do nothing to help or hinder our fate.\"\n\n\"He is angry,\" Dario said. \"Alvaro's usually much more pleasant. But his better sense will come back as soon as he cools off. I'll send my cousin Ram\u00f3n a message. Spain won't destroy our long relationship so easily as that.\" He sounded confident. Khalila hoped he was right. But for now, tonight, at least it was one less worry.\n\nThe storm's wind arrived in a sudden gust that jerked at her hijab, and she quickly put a hand to it to be sure it held firm. The first spits of rain hit the marble, and there was an edge to that wind, a chill that seemed foreign to her. A wind that had raced halfway around the world, gathering cold and violence as it went to deliver its vengeance here.\n\n\"Close the shutters,\" Murasaki said, and Khalila went to the manual hand crank and turned it to finish the job. A boom of thunder shook through the walls, the floor, her flesh and bones. The storm growled, and a low wail of wind rattled the closed window. \"I need to speak with the Curia, then with the Lord Commander. We must understand what's coming this evening, and I need an update on the search for the rebel Archivist.\"\n\nShe was already in motion, walking toward the two guards standing at the door, and Khalila saw them exchange looks. Khalila moved to follow the Archivist, and Dario came with her, saying something she didn't catch because she was distracted by another violent boom of thunder.\n\nShe didn't see it happen, to her horror and shame. She only saw Murasaki suddenly stop, sway, and then turn toward them.\n\nThen she saw the blood on the Archivist's robe. Something's wrong. She felt cold, numb, utterly incapable of understanding this because why would the Archivist be bleeding, what\u2014\n\nThe Archivist looked at Khalila, opened her mouth, and said, \"You must\u2014\"\n\nShe was shot again, in the back, and folded at the knees. She landed on the floor, tangled in her bloody robes, and Khalila screamed. Everything went suddenly, icily clear. The thin smoke curling from the barrels of High Garda guns. Dario, lunging forward.\n\nAssassins.\n\nShe drew her knife and didn't hesitate, not for an instant. She had practiced this motion so many times as a child, as a young woman, drilling and drilling for hours, and the second the knife left her fingers it arrowed straight for the right eye of the man on the left, the one who was smiling.\n\nBecause he was smiling.\n\nIt buried to the hilt, and he was screaming. His dying flail knocked his companion's arm, and the shot meant for Dario went wild and gouged a white wound in the marble column behind him.\n\nWhich meant that Dario's dagger punctured him just under the armor, angling up. It drove the soldier backward, gagging on the pain, but whatever he might have done to fight back no longer mattered, as Dario withdrew the blade and used it again. It was a pretty thing, patterned with emeralds.\n\nIt slit a throat with ease.\n\nIt took a few more seconds for the soldiers to die, but it was just stubborn bodies refusing the inevitable; Dario kicked their guns away as Khalila knelt beside the Archivist and searched for a pulse. She felt something, but it was weak. \"Dario, go for help! Now!\"\n\nHe didn't want to leave her, but he obeyed and ran past the two dying men. Were more High Garda compromised? How had this happened? Did the old Archivist command even now, even here? Khalila was cold and shaking and hot all at the same time, a sickening sensation made worse by her own rapidly beating heart. She pressed down on Murasaki's wounds as best she could, but she could see that it was a desperate situation. Blood flowered and flooded between her fingers, shallower with every pulsebeat. \"Archivist? Archivist!\"\n\nMurasaki's lips moved. They'd gone a pale, unnatural color, but her eyes were fierce and dark, and her hand gripped Khalila's wrist and held it tightly.\n\n\"You must get to Wolfe,\" she said. \"I trust no one else now. He must serve.\"\n\n\"He won't!\"\n\n\"He must,\" Murasaki repeated, and let her head fall back to the bloody floor. She closed her eyes and whispered something in Japanese. Khalila didn't catch the meaning.\n\n\"Archivist? I didn't hear!\"\n\nMurasaki, with a huge force of will, opened her eyes and said, \"Codex.\"\n\nShe was dying, and she asked for a Codex. Khalila, confused, handed hers over and opened it to a blank page. Put the stylus in the Archivist's shaking fingers.\n\nAnd the Archivist wrote. Just three lines, and then the stylus fell from her fingers and she put her head back down and let out her last breath in a long, quiet sigh.\n\nKhalila bit her lip to hold back tears and retrieved the stylus, then looked at the words Murasaki had written. Her eyes blurred. The graceful kanji written there looked like music.\n\nIt was her jisei, her death poem. An achievement the great Japanese poets aspired to make in their last moments.\n\n\u2003Desert rain runs clean\n\n\u2003Green chains shatter in lightning\n\n\u2003I run warm at last\n\nShe felt Dario beside her and said, \"She's gone.\" Her voice sounded soft and lonely. His arms closed around her. \"Dario, she's gone.\"\n\n\"I know, love.\" He took a deep breath. \"More High Garda are on the way. Honest ones, I hope. God knows how much geneih it took to buy these men.\"\n\nShe wiped her tears as he helped her to her feet. \"This should never have happened. Never!\" She felt ice-cold now, and full of fury. \"We shouldn't have killed them both. Now they can't answer for what they've done.\"\n\n\"Revenge can wait,\" Dario said. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"Yes. Unwounded. You?\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" he said. Her Codex buzzed, and she reached for it, then hesitated. Her hands were still bloody, and she wiped them on her dress before opening the book.\n\nDario watched her read the message. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Santi's coming in person,\" she said. \"He's angry.\"\n\n\"He should be. These are his people. It's an outrage.\"\n\n\"Dario. Did you hear what she said?\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"Before she wrote the poem. Did you hear?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath and let it out. \"She wanted us to find Wolfe. She wanted Wolfe to be the next Archivist.\"\n\nAnd that meant drawing a perfect target on the back of the man she had grown to love as much as her own father."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the Russian ambassador, destroyed before delivery to the Archivist in Exile:\n\n\u2002As you asked, we sacrificed our two most precious assets\u2014High Garda soldiers assigned within the Serapeum, in striking distance of the False Archivist. Though it cost their lives, they were successful. I am pleased to report that she is dead. Confusion will now set in. And with it, we now have our chance. Tonight we will attack the northeastern gates, and your inventions you sold us will no doubt strike real fear into the High Garda. I marvel that you've never used them for the defense of the Great Library. Unless you know something I don't.\n\n\u2002Tonight is your chance. Seize it! It will not come again.\n\n\u2002If you survive, we will of course allow you to take the throne of Alexandria once more.\n\n\u2002But the tsar of Russia will be the true ruler of this place. That is the bargain. We will hold you to it by whatever means necessary."
            },
            {
                "title": "WOLFE",
                "text": "The Necropolis was more of a cemetery now than ever, as the bodies were lined up and casualties counted.\n\nAnit's criminals were unpleasantly good at killing. The High Garda Elites had given a good accounting of themselves, and the fighting within the miniature Serapeum had gone on for hours, but they had never expected to be trapped inside it. They'd thought to fight in the dark and strike before Wolfe and his team had any warning.\n\nJess's trick with the mirrors had robbed them of their stealth, and his accuracy with a rifle had robbed them of their most valuable snipers. From then on, it had been straight combat, and good as they were\u2014and High Garda Elites were very good\u2014they were rarely challenged in any meaningful way. They'd always had the architecture of the Serapeum to defend them, and the automata, and their own legend. The only automaton here was the Minotaur, and Jess had blinded it. It roamed the tombs like a ghost still, lost and dangerous.\n\nWolfe made himself a note to ask Morgan to see to stopping the thing. But that would be a low priority, he suspected, in the chaos of the day.\n\nAnit's losses were also considerable; once the tally of the dead and wounded was complete, she'd lost ten and sent five to be treated by the physician, Burnham, who'd come with them on this grim adventure. The High Garda Elite's fatalities numbered forty-six, and the remaining four had finally surrendered. Wolfe would have to find some deep hole to throw them in\u2014but not one they'd ever guarded before and might know how to cheat. That would be a challenge. Maybe expulsion from the city would be the best possible answer... No, that would just give their enemies outside the walls useful allies and information. It was a terrible thought, but he knew it would have been a simpler problem if they'd just killed them all.\n\n\"And still no sign of the Archivist,\" he said to Glain as he closed his Codex. She was bloody, but only a little of it was her own; she'd fought like a woman possessed. She looked pale and strained now as the adrenaline departed.\n\n\"No, sir,\" she said. \"It seems likely he was never here at all. All this was set up to kill you when you came looking. They meant it to be a deathtrap.\"\n\n\"And if I'd come with just you and Jess\u2014\"\n\n\"We'd all be dead,\" she said. At his look, she smiled. \"I'm good, Scholar. Nobody's that good.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps you're\u2014\"\n\n\"Sir!\" Glain was moving suddenly, and he went immediately on his guard for whatever was coming... but she was running toward Jess Brightwell, who was in the act of slumping to the ground with his back against the gunfire-chipped door of a tomb.\n\nWolfe followed. He didn't see any wounds, but the boy was pallid, sweaty, breathing in strangled gasps. His lips had taken on an unsettling violet tinge. \"He can't breathe,\" Glain said. \"He's been like this since\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" Wolfe said. \"Didn't he see a Medica?\"\n\n\"Yes. He said he was all right. They gave him a mask of some kind\u2014\" She dug in Jess's pockets and found a small, formfitting device of flexible rubber that fitted over his nose and mouth. It seemed to work, after a tense few moments; his breathing eased, and his color improved from grave gray to sallow. Color back in his lips and fingernails, at least a little.\n\n\"He's not well,\" Wolfe said quietly. He'd been afraid of this. Afraid that his obsession, his lack of sensible caution, had finally cost a life. Worse still, the life of someone he cared for. Brightwell was in his charge, and he'd been reckless with the boy. \"He should be in a Medica treatment hospital, not here.\"\n\n\"If he hadn't been here, this might not have turned out as well as it did,\" Glain observed. \"He's tough. He'll be all right.\" Her words were brusque, but the way she smoothed his hair back from his face was far more telling. Glain had a soft streak in her. In that she reminded him of himself. Rather strongly.\n\n\"He's waking up,\" Wolfe said. The boy's eyelids were fluttering, and they finally raised on a blank stare that seemed utterly unaware for a few long seconds before he blinked and focused on Glain's face.\n\n\"Welcome back,\" she said, brisk as ever. \"Good job you didn't do this in the middle of the fight.\"\n\n\"Well, I try to time my collapses conveniently,\" Jess said, which almost made Wolfe smile. Almost. The young man's face looked sharp, as if the skull under the flesh showed through. Unnerving. His skin seemed far too translucent. \"Scholar, you're all right?\" He tried to get up. Glain pushed him down and placed the mask back over his face. He tried to bat it away. She speared a commanding finger at him, and without a word exchanged, he surrendered and breathed as deeply as he could. It did not seem deep enough to Wolfe. I've killed him. The thought struck deep, and it hurt so badly he drew in a startled breath. A death in slow motion, but nevertheless, a death. He wondered what exactly the Medica had said. Surely not that he should be back on duty, doing what he was doing. And he knew Jess would never tell him.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" he told Jess. \"Fine work, Brightwell. You blinded the Minotaur, I understand.\"\n\nJess managed a shrug, and a hint of a smile behind the mask. He pulled it away to say, \"Best I could do. The damn thing's almost invulnerable.\"\n\n\"Breathe,\" Glain scolded, and shoved the mask back in place. She looked at Wolfe, and he saw the same bleak knowledge in her eyes.\n\nHe nodded. \"Don't make me nail this to your face, Jess. I will if you don't use it when you're in need.\"\n\n\"It works less every time,\" he said quietly. \"The mask won't help too much longer.\"\n\n\"Well, as long as it does, you use it. We're going back,\" Wolfe said. \"I need to talk to Santi, and get a better sense of where the old man's been sighted. And you, Jess: you're going straight to the Medica facility, where you will stay. Understand?\" He could only pray the medical branch had tricks up their sleeves they hadn't yet tried.\n\n\"Sir? There's news,\" Glain said. She pulled out her Codex and flipped pages, then showed him a High Garda message from the Lord Commander's Scribe. The Greek fire production and storage facility was compromised last night, and High Garda security killed. The situation is now resolved and the production facility is once again safely in our control. No further action is required. \"This had to be the Archivist's handiwork. But I doubt he was actively on the scene. He's not one to risk himself that way.\"\n\n\"True,\" Wolfe said. \"That's why I expected to find him crouching among the dead like the coward he is. But he's seen me coming, and gone somewhere else. He failed to capture the Greek fire storage. Where else would he try to strike?\"\n\n\"Serapeum?\"\n\n\"No, too difficult, though he'd try to disrupt every location vital to the Great Library, if he could. Suicide attacks at the Iron Tower. Lighthouse. Serapeum. Santi would have thought of it already, even if he's unable to prevent every one of them.\"\n\n\"Can the old Archivist open any of the gates? The northeast, perhaps?\"\n\nIt was a serious suggestion, and Wolfe considered it. \"Where the Russians are camped? Certainly he could try to let them inside, but again, Santi would have thought of it. He'll have a concentration of forces there, and at the second choice of gate as well. No, the Archivist isn't so much of a strategist; he leaves that to his experts. He'd be looking for something no one else considers. Something that will give him a real advantage.\"\n\n\"Such as...?\"\n\nIt was on the tip of his brain but refused to come to him. Something glimpsed from the corner of the eye that vanished in full view. He almost knew. Almost. But there was a missing piece, something that would tell him definitively where the old man would shift. Until he saw that, he wouldn't be able to find the answer.\n\nAnd then it didn't matter, because the Codex in his hands shivered and a new message arrived. He handed it back to Glain; manners dictated that he not read her correspondence, but he couldn't help gleaning the meaning even from the unintended glance. It was confirmed when Glain said, \"Santi's summoning us to the Serapeum. I don't know why. Maybe he's got new information.\"\n\n\"Or maybe it's something worse,\" Wolfe said. \"All right. We'll need to head back through the tunnels\u2014\"\n\n\"He's sending a transport,\" Glain said. \"To the front of the Necropolis. We're to meet him there. I don't think the criminals are invited.\"\n\n\"Hey,\" came Jess's muffled protest. \"I'm still going.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean you, idiot. I meant\u2014\" She gestured at Anit and her clustered forces, who were preparing their injured and dead to be taken home. \"You know what I meant.\"\n\nAnit must have noticed Wolfe's glance toward her, because she walked to them, touched Jess's sweaty head, and said, \"All right, my brother?\"\n\nHe removed the mask. \"Yes, I'm fine. Sister.\" There was something there, Wolfe thought. He'd always thought the smugglers only referred to one another as cousins in the business of crime. This seemed... more. \"I'm sorry you lost so many.\"\n\n\"They knew the risks,\" she said. \"And I'll pay the Library price.\"\n\n\"Library price?\" Glain asked.\n\nJess smiled. Not a very comforting expression, given his gaunt pallor. \"The tradition is that for every one of our cousins that falls fighting High Garda, we pay a large sum to their families, and sponsorship for their children.\"\n\n\"Same as the High Garda does for its soldiers,\" Glain said. \"Clever, if reprehensible.\"\n\n\"Well, the High Garda started the fight.\"\n\n\"You are High Garda, in case you've forgotten.\"\n\n\"I haven't,\" Jess said. \"But we both know those days are coming to an end, Glain.\"\n\nThere was a certain chilly certainty to that, and Wolfe felt it down his spine. He made his tone especially bitter when he said, \"Enough chat, children. Anit, you may call on me for favors. Two or three of them, not to include any books from the Great Archives. Understood?\"\n\n\"Yes, Scholar. I accept. If you need more help, well. More favors. You understand.\"\n\n\"I do.\" He offered her his hand, and she took it. \"Thank you.\"\n\nIt was only in the awkward way she nodded that he saw her youth, just a flash and then gone. She walked back to her own, giving Jess one last look. He nodded in farewell, then\u2014with Glain's help\u2014got to his feet.\n\n\"Can you walk to the entrance?\" Wolfe asked him. \"No egotistical nonsense. It's a direct question.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. He looked down for a second. \"Not much further. I need rest.\"\n\n\"Obviously. And you're going to get it if I have to have the Medica put you in restraints.\"\n\nThe fact that the boy didn't argue worried him. Deeply.\n\nHe'd just turned away when he felt the shift of air above them, heard the impact. Wolfe whirled back and saw the sphinx throwing Glain hard to the ground, its weight grinding her down. Its claws flexed and ripped bloody furrows through her uniform cloth, armor, and skin below.\n\nHe shouted and reached for his weapon, but then he froze as the sphinx turned its head to regard him. It hissed in warning, and the claws sunk deeper. Glain twisted and cried out, and he stopped and raised his hands. \"Let her go.\" He didn't know why he said it; surely the sphinx wasn't going to respond to him. But he could draw its focus, at least, while Jess moved in on it to turn it off. \"Please. Let her go.\"\n\nHe had the weird sense that this sphinx listened, that the menace he felt coming off the thing wasn't simply mechanical programming but something almost human. An intelligence looking through its eyes.\n\nJess didn't need instructions. He approached carefully, and Wolfe moved a little, trying to hold the thing's attention.\n\nIt didn't work. It moved its head to stare at Jess and freeze him in place, and clawed deeper into Glain. Gods. Wolfe swallowed a bubble of horror and tried to keep everything calm. All around them, guns bristled, and all were focused on the sphinx, but even if they all fired at once, the sphinx could easily rip the young woman's spine out before it was disabled. They had to find a way to turn it off without risking Glain's life any further.\n\nWolfe moved to his left, fast, and the sphinx's head snapped around to follow him. It was an opening for Jess, if he was well enough to take it...\n\nBut it wasn't necessary.\n\nInexplicably, the sphinx suddenly smiled. It was an awful expression, completely inhuman and horrifying, and then it launched itself straight up into the air, gliding away on golden wings that extended with a snap. Moving too fast for shots to land properly, and dodging away from the mirrors into the shadows far overhead. It would be impossible to hunt the thing.\n\nThey needed to get out. Now.\n\nWolfe rushed to Glain, along with Anit's physician, Burnham, and Jess, who was already kneeling at her side.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" Glain said, and batted away attempts to look at her back. \"It's not bad. I'll get it seen to later. We can't afford to stay here.\" Brave, but he saw the pallor on her face. It was almost certainly worse than scratches. \"We need to go! Now!\"\n\nIt was going to come after them again. That much was absolutely certain."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 45",
                "text": "They were halfway through the Necropolis when Jess said, \"It's coming.\"\n\nGlain\u2014who was being helped along by Jess, or perhaps it was the other way around\u2014looked sharply around the silent tombs. Anit's people had already disappeared through their now invisible passage; they'd taken the Elite prisoners with them. Except for the distant stumbles and roars of the Minotaur, they seemed to be the only ones still alive in the whole vast cave.\n\n\"Where?\" Wolfe asked without looking up.\n\n\"Up and left,\" Jess said. Now that he focused, Wolfe could hear the metallic whisper of wings overhead. The sphinx had been silent for a while, but now it was flying high above them in the shadows.\n\n\"Get your weapons ready. Jess, you're in no shape to attempt any tricks; use your gun and stay out of reach. I know where the switch is located. If I can, I'll get to it. But we'll need it to land first.\"\n\n\"I'll aim to damage the wings,\" Jess said. \"They're the most vulnerable at the joints,\" Jess said, and took his rifle from his shoulder.\n\nGlain cast a lightning-quick look at Wolfe. \"Sorry,\" she said. \"I'm not in fighting shape, but I'll try.\"\n\n\"Leave it to me,\" he said. He readied himself and then looked up, directly at the sphinx. \"Come on, if you're coming,\" he said. \"Theo.\" He knew the old Archivist was looking at him. Could feel that. And the use of his first name\u2014a name Wolfe hadn't used in ages\u2014would goad him.\n\nThe sphinx glided closer and caught the light in an elegant, terrifying metallic shimmer. It let out its unsettling war cry.\n\nJess's shot hit its right wing just at the joint, and though it didn't come off, it flopped loose and out of control. The sphinx tumbled toward them and managed to land on its lion paws. Snarling.\n\n\"Scatter!\" Wolfe shouted, and grabbed Jess, who was trying to fire again but had begun to cough uncontrollably. He shoved the young man into a corner between two tombs and stood in front of him. \"Glain!\"\n\nShe knew what to do, and peppered the flank of the thing with rapid gunfire. It turned, snarling, and Wolfe lunged forward for the switch beneath its jaw.\n\nHe was too slow.\n\nIt caught his arm between its sharply pointed teeth, and its red eyes blazed as if with joy. He had on an armored jacket beneath his shirt\u2014Santi's insistence\u2014and the teeth did not quite penetrate. The crushing pain was breathtaking. An instant later Jess was there jamming the butt of his rifle between the teeth and levering up to provide some temporary safety. \"Hurry!\" he shouted. His voice sounded raw and stark. The rifle wouldn't take the strain long, not from the inhumanly strong clench of those jaws.\n\nWolfe groped for the switch one-handed. He still couldn't free his arm, not until Jess's rifle was out of the way, but the rifle was keeping him from serious damage. It was an awkward stretch, and he felt a sharp twinge in his shoulder that warned him he was neither as athletic nor as limber as he'd once been, but his fingers found the button and pressed it.\n\nNothing happened.\n\nHe pushed again, harder. And again. The sphinx clawed at him with a razor-tipped paw, and he turned to avoid it. The claws caught in his jacket and ripped it from neck to waist. \"It's not working!\" he shouted to Jess and Glain. \"They've disabled the fail-safe!\" The jacket's mail had protected him thus far, but for how long? If those paws caught him on an exposed limb, a major artery...\n\n\"Can't use Greek fire,\" Glain shouted back. \"You'd both be burned!\"\n\n\"I have an idea,\" Jess said. He sounded oddly calm. \"It's risky.\"\n\nMy arm is in the mouth of a sphinx that's only a moment from ripping it from the socket. Risky sounds quite safe, Wolfe thought, but he didn't say it. Too many words. \"Tell me!\"\n\n\"Work your arm free,\" Jess said. \"Run. Make for the Minotaur. If you can make them fight each other\u2014\"\n\nRisky wasn't the right word for it. Suicidal was far more on point. But Jess was right; it could work. If he was fast enough. If he was lucky. If, if, if. He liked certainty. It was rare enough in life, but completely absent now.\n\nThe sphinx shook its head, trying to dislocate his arm; he grabbed hold of its neck with his free arm and rode the motion, though it made him dizzy and sick with the pain. Jess's rifle slipped, and he jammed it back in. His face had gone taut with effort, his eyes black with concentration. No room for fear here. None at all. The boy was the runner of the three of them, but he couldn't do it this time. He simply wasn't capable.\n\nIt's up to me.\n\nWolfe took a breath and pulled at a hard angle. He scraped an inch of arm free, and the sphinx screamed and tried to claw him again. Shreds of cloth flew from his jacket, and the thing narrowly missed his right leg. Don't think about the arteries that might have been sliced. Now or never. He set his teeth and pulled, hard, and got himself free. Jess jammed the rifle in harder, holding the sphinx in place.\n\nWolfe ran. He was no athlete like young Brightwell, no trained High Garda like Glain, but he'd survived a long time in a dangerous world, and he knew what was coming. Stay alive. Stay alive for Nic, if not for yourself.\n\nDying in a graveyard seemed like the most ignominious end of them all. He wasn't having it.\n\nRun, don't think. He heard Jess's raw shout behind him and hoped to all the gods that the sphinx hadn't turned on the boy, but there was no time to check. He twisted around a looming gravestone, ducked beneath a low, carved arch. The path was clear but hardly straight; it wandered between stark monoliths and carved monuments, miniature temples and houses full of the dead. The reek of this place seemed almost familiar now, but it was tainted by his own fear. His desperation. He heard the Minotaur's dull bellow; it was ahead and to the left. The path turned again, and now he heard the metallic crunch of the sphinx's paws on the path behind him. It couldn't fly, but it could leap if it chose, if he left it an opening. If it landed on him, it would sever his spine with one bite.\n\nThe path twisted right. He plunged on left, weaving between narrow spaces he knew the sphinx's bulk couldn't manage. This was a risk, a huge one; in spots the tombs and monuments were thick as teeth, and if he got slowed down, caught in that trap... He dodged a thicket of cenotaphs and around a looming statue of Anubis, whose palms held eternally burning lamps. Did it just move? Could it? He had no time. He ran in the direction of the Minotaur's frustrated cry.\n\nThe sphinx had kept to the path, and as he burst out ahead he saw it just coming around a turn. His lungs burned, his legs felt light and fragile, but he forced more speed from his body. The Minotaur couldn't be far. On his right, mirrors flashed at the center of the spiraled array, and he averted his eyes from the glare.\n\nHe nearly missed the Minotaur's approach as it blundered out of a blind alley of tombs with its thickly muscled arms scything the air. Searching for a victim. He ducked and avoided it, rolled clear, and right on cue, the sphinx shrieked as it came on after him.\n\nThe Minotaur turned toward the sound, and the sphinx leaped past it to get to Wolfe. Well, tried to.\n\nThe Minotaur's searching hands brushed a wing, grabbed, and tore. It smashed the sphinx out of the air midleap to roll on the ground, and as the wounded automaton scrambled to get up, the Minotaur grasped it by the neck.\n\nAs Wolfe caught his breath, it struck him that the Minotaur was treating the sphinx like an intruder. Why, if it's on the side of the Archivist? And then he realized that the Minotaur wasn't, or at least, wasn't anymore. Jess's bullet must have damaged something in it more than its eyes. It had reverted to base instructions: kill intruders.\n\nAnd the sphinx wasn't meant to be here.\n\nThe battle was horrific. The sphinx gouged long, ragged scrapes into the Minotaur's metal skin, severed cables, bit at exposed tubing. One of the Minotaur's legs stopped moving\u2014frozen in place. The fight was a blur of claws, teeth, battering fists, and then the Minotaur finally got a good grip with both hands on the sphinx's neck. It applied brute strength to twisting the sphinx's shrieking head relentlessly around until the noise stopped, and then ripped it completely away from the body in a spray of pale fluids and snapping cables.\n\nThe bull-headed monster raised the head in one hand as the sphinx's red eyes faded to black. It bellowed its defiance in a shocking roar.\n\nWolfe backed away slowly, careful to make no sound as the Minotaur tore pieces away from the metal corpse. He finally felt safe enough to run again, and wove through a thick forest of memorials to where the path came clear again. Walked the rest of the way as the fear subsided, and shock began to sink a chill into his skin. His arm ached, and when he stripped off the jacket he found a hand-span red bruise starting to ripen. Lucky bones hadn't shattered.\n\nLucky in general.\n\nJess and Glain were coming down the path, which didn't surprise him; they saw their duty as his guardians, and he saw his going in the opposite direction. Good they could meet in the middle, he supposed.\n\nGlain, always reserved, stopped and nodded after giving him a thorough sweeping glance. \"It worked,\" she said.\n\n\"Must have,\" Jess said, \"since he's not dismembered.\" But Jess looked tired and worried. \"Did it? Really?\"\n\n\"More or less,\" Wolfe said. \"Word of advice: in a battle between those two automata, do not bet on the sphinx. Now let's leave this palace of bones before one of us ends up staying.\"\n\nComing out of the main entrance of the Necropolis\u2014not the massive marble gates cranked open only for grand funerals, but the smaller side door that locked from the outside and required a Codex authorization to open\u2014felt like being reborn, and Wolfe thought about Orpheus emerging from the underworld. Had Orpheus also emerged into darkness, rain, and slashing lightning? Perhaps he had. By no means am I looking back and tempting the Fates. He ushered his two young High Garda ahead of him, just for superstitious certainty, and as Glain had promised there was an armored High Garda carrier on the road, with two armed soldiers standing next to it in rain gear. The downpour was breathtaking in its intensity and chill, and Wolfe was sodden and cold in half the distance.\n\nOne of the soldiers skimmed back his hood and stepped forward. Lieutenant Tom Rolleson. Troll, to his friends. \"I see you've had adventures,\" he said. \"Tell me all about it, Scholar.\"\n\n\"Not here,\" Wolfe growled, as he watched Glain help Jess into the carrier. Then finally accept help herself. Walking wounded, both of them. \"What news?\"\n\n\"Didn't you see?\"\n\n\"See what?\"\n\nFor answer, Rolleson pointed toward the harbor, which was barely visible from this spot on the hill. Lost in darkness until a bolt of lightning shot across the sky, and Wolfe realized what was missing. \"Poseidon?\" He felt a real stab of alarm. \"The fleet?\" He tried to look out to sea, but the rain was slanting from that direction, and he could make out nothing but mist and waves. \"What's happened?\"\n\n\"Poseidon went to war and died for it,\" Troll said. \"The fleet's dispersed. We're safe at the moment, thanks to the storm. Inside, Scholar, this rain isn't doing either of us good.\"\n\nHe was right, of course. The relief of the warm interior of the carrier unleashed a wave of weariness that Wolfe pushed aside. He leaned forward and fixed Troll with a stare. \"Why did Santi summon me back?\"\n\n\"Sir, I don't know,\" Rolleson said, which Wolfe sensed was at best half-true. \"But I know he wants you there now.\" He banged on the partition, and the driver in front began to move the carrier on at a high rate of speed. The Necropolis was a fair distance from the Serapeum, but Wolfe supposed there would be little traffic. Who'd be foolish enough to be out in this rain?\n\nNo one, apparently. He slid back a window cover and looked out at the city as it flashed by. \"Did the fleet attack again? Is that why Poseidon left position?\"\n\nRolleson shrugged. \"They tried to destroy it, and it took issue. We'll have a job of recovering bodies from wrecked ships tomorrow. It was a shocking sight. I imagine the survivors will remember it a long time.\"\n\n\"I imagine,\" he agreed, and closed his eyes. \"Quite a cost for all of us.\"\n\n\"Still better than our supposed friends taking control of our city. You know that once that happens, we'd never get it back.\"\n\nWolfe nodded. He knew. But he also knew what a balance this was. How delicate and imperfect. The Great Library seemed so ancient that few in modern times could imagine how the world would look if it fell... not even those who wanted it to fall. But it was always, always poised on the knife-edge of goodwill and strength. Disaster and daring. It was the gamble of it he loved, more than anything else: the pure will of those ancients who'd understood that without knowledge, there could be no truth.\n\nHe would die for the Great Library. Despite everything it had done to him, he would, without question. He just asked that it be as many years away as possible. He'd come very close the last few days. He could still hear the strangely gruesome crunch of the Minotaur twisting the head of the sphinx away from its body. The almost plaintive cry of the dying automaton.\n\nCould have so easily been him, and he suddenly wished for peace, for the days and nights he'd spent traveling with Nic on the way to some dire crisis or other\u2014days they spent talking, or not talking, making love or just lying together, reading. Playing a nightly game of chess, or Egyptian sennet, or the board games of ancient Ur. Something with history and meaning.\n\nHe'd underestimated how much peace meant to him. Never Nic, but the still, quiet moments... those seemed precious to him now.\n\nWolfe shook himself out of his musings and forced himself back to attention. The city seemed quiet, but it wasn't peaceful. The storm battered at walls and towers and the sides of their carrier. The Serapeum, as they approached it, seemed to be a flowing fountain of water down all sides. The street was a river. Rain was rare here, and flooding nearly unknown, except for ocean-driven tempests like this one. Storms always shut the city down.\n\nThe carrier went underground to the High Garda's stronghold below the Serapeum, and from there, Wolfe, Glain, and Jess took the main tunnel up to the garden level. He ordered them both off to the Medica and made sure they actually went before he proceeded with Rolleson. Security was tight, and their identities were checked, and checked again, at every level they passed. The grim silence of the sentries made Wolfe's skin prickle.\n\nWolfe was directed to a conference room, and as the two of them entered the room he found Nic was there, gazing blankly into the distance. The sight of his lover's face was like a beacon back to home, and he basked in it for an instant before he noticed the rest of those assembled.\n\nThat included the full Curia, or as many as could be spared; he didn't see the Artifex Magnus, who must still be manning the Lighthouse. There was no sign of Archivist Murasaki, which was... curious. Only Khalila, her assistant, who stood silently at the corner of the long table. Slowly, the Curia rose to their feet. Wolfe stopped, staring at the scene. It made no sense to him.\n\n\"Nic?\" he asked. His voice seemed odd to him. He was aware there was something in this room, something heavy.\n\n\"Archivist Murasaki is dead,\" Santi said. His eyes were bleak. Shattered. Wolfe felt a real jolt of horror\u2014not so much for Murasaki as for the pain he could feel radiating out of his lover like fever. \"I failed in my duty.\" He didn't elaborate, which wasn't like him; he just stated the fact and stepped aside with his head bowed. It was terrifying. Santi did not fail. Not like this.\n\n\"Dead,\" he repeated numbly. \"How? What happened?\" Why the hell am I here? The question had real dread, real weight.\n\nKhalila stepped forward, such a small young woman to hold such a dense gravity of purpose. \"Scholar Wolfe, the Archivist was assassinated by traitorous High Garda soldiers,\" she said. Her voice was steady, but he saw the tears glittering in her eyes. \"Men bought off by the exiled traitor. Her last words were that you must take the post until a new Archivist can be elected and confirmed by the Curia. We cannot be without a leader. And she asked for you.\"\n\nHe stared at her. His eyes burned, and for a moment he thought it was with tears, but no, no, it was anger. He couldn't speak. Could hardly breathe for the pressure of fury building in his chest.\n\nHe turned to Nic, but Nic would not meet his eyes, or even look up.\n\nChristopher Wolfe stood alone, the center of the world, and he hated it.\n\nHe finally found his voice. \"Surely the Curia has a better suggestion.\"\n\n\"We don't,\" said the Litterae Magnus\u2014Carole Vargas, a large, dour South American woman with a breathtaking instinct for language and a deadly gift for insult. They'd come up in Ptolemy House together as students. They'd never been friends. \"As difficult as this is, none of us wants the role, not in these dangerous times. You were named. You must serve.\"\n\n\"As what, your sacrificial goat?\" Wolfe snapped. \"No.\"\n\nThe head of the Medica branch said, \"Archivist Murasaki named you for a reason. You know the old man, after all. You're his bitter enemy. Who better?\"\n\n\"That's exactly why I'm not the right choice,\" he said. His tone was hard as diamond, and it cut deep in his chest. Carried to every corner of the room. \"By all means, give me orders to chase after him, run him to ground, bring him to justice. But don't ask me to sit on a throne and decide the fate of nations. I can't lead. Too many wounds, too many scars, too many enemies. You know that. Half of you only want me in the role because you think, like Murasaki, I'll end up slaughtered; the other half will start the next hour scheming how to remove me and replace me with a more palatable choice. No. Let's save each other time and energy by naming someone else now.\"\n\n\"You have to be the one.\" Khalila held something, a folded pile of cloth, that glimmered in the light. Archivist's robes. \"Please, Scholar Wolfe. Please do this. She trusted you. I trust you.\"\n\nHe hesitated, then took what she offered. The weight was astonishingly light for something so important. Cloth of gold, woven so finely that it felt like silk. He held the robe by the shoulders and let it shimmer in front of him in the light, and for a brief, disorienting moment he imagined himself in it, sitting on the Archivist's throne in that great hall.\n\nThe Archivist and Pharaoh of the Great Library.\n\nIt made him want to laugh, but he knew it would come out as half a sob. What a sour joke this was, that the same colleagues who'd looked the other way when he was dragged off in the night, when his work had been scrubbed from the shelves and his body broken in the cells in Rome... those same colleagues now wanted him to be their shelter. Their scapegoat. Their great and fearless leader.\n\nHe knew what he had to do.\n\n\"Very well,\" he said. \"I accept.\" But he didn't settle the robe around his own shoulders. He walked around Khalila, turned, and put it around her shoulders.\n\nHer gasp went through him like a knife, and she turned, eyes as wide as saucers. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Retiring,\" he said. \"And naming you my successor. Scholar Khalila Seif, will you accept my nomination as the Archivist of the Great Library of Alexandria?\"\n\n\"I\u2014I\u2014\" Khalila, never at a loss for the right words, had nothing to hand, and that made Wolfe smile just a little.\n\n\"Don't say I can't,\" he advised her. \"Because I know you, Khalila. Your family history goes deep in the Great Library. Your level of scholarship is exceptional. Your ability to navigate the difficult politics is a skill that can't be taught, only refined. And you will have time to learn.\"\n\nLitterae Vargas said, \"But she's a child!\" She sounded as shocked as Khalila.\n\n\"She's young,\" Wolfe admitted. \"But hardly a child. And if you want to fight an old man who wants to drag the Great Library into the past, appoint a young woman who looks to the future. That is my recommendation, and I believe with all my heart it is the right one.\" He swallowed hard and looked at Santi. \"Nic?\"\n\nSanti slowly raised his head. The bleakness in his eyes was still there, and it broke Wolfe's heart. \"I knew you'd refuse. The Litterae is right. She's just a child. But you're also right; she's the most intelligent, thoughtful, strong young woman I have ever met. Charm and skill and the right streak of ruthlessness. I have no objection.\"\n\n\"Thank you. The Obscurists are not represented but\u2014\"\n\n\"They are,\" Morgan said. She seemed to emerge out of shadows that hadn't existed a moment before, and the power that took, the raw talent, struck all of them silent. \"My apologies. Eskander was injured, but he's better now. We had\u2014we had an incident in the Tower. Assassins tried to\u2014to kill many of us. But they failed.\" She seemed well enough, but there was a bright shimmer to her eyes that Wolfe recognized, and it put him on edge. She was exhausted, and exhaustion in an Obscurist like her was deadly to those around her. He still felt the unnatural, unnerving pull of her at his life-force. She'd tried to unravel him like an old sweater before, and even now he felt the black need gnawing at her control. His Obscurist talents were blunted, but not entirely absent. He knew.\n\n\"You've proposed Khalila for Archivist,\" she said. \"Eskander agrees.\" She smiled, and Wolfe was struck with how much older she looked now than her years. Beautiful, but fading like a winter rose, and seeing that hurt. I failed her, he thought. But he knew he couldn't have helped her, either. Sometimes there simply were no good choices to be made. Only costly ones.\n\n\"Morgan\u2014\" Khalila looked breathless, but then she steadied herself. Wolfe saw the change, the way her body shifted to fill that draping robe, the way her chin lifted and her breathing slowed. \"I am humbled and honored, Scholar Wolfe, but I am still little more than a student of the Great Library. I'm not worthy of this\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, quiet, girl, are you not a full gold-band Scholar? Were you not granted a lifetime appointment? You meet the requirements,\" Vargas snapped. She tapped her stylus restlessly on the desk and studied Khalila with sharp, predatory eyes. \"And you're not ignorant of politics, which is the main requirement of this particular posting, I'll allow you that. I agree with Wolfe; he hasn't the inhuman patience necessary for the job. Neither do I, Christopher.\" She sent him an unexpectedly cheerful smile, and he found himself nodding back. \"Greta, our Artifex, is brilliant but quite raw in social skills; it seems to be a theme in that field. So that leaves Medica. Chen Shi?\"\n\nThe Medica Magnus was a younger man, in his early thirties most likely; Wolfe didn't know him. But he smiled and said, \"I have absolutely no desire to be Archivist, and I wouldn't be good at it. Let me do my own job. I do it well.\"\n\n\"And Lingua?\"\n\n\"No,\" the old man in that seat said. Him, Wolfe recognized. Achim Ben David, a man of his father's age who'd studied in the Great Library his entire life. He'd never taken a single posting beyond the borders of Alexandria, but that didn't hold him back from being the single most learned man in the room. \"I would not take the chair unless I was the last Scholar in Alexandria. I'm terrible at politics. From all accounts, even Murasaki relied on the girl for advice. To each their strengths.\"\n\n\"I believe Archivist is the sort of job that disqualifies anyone who wants it,\" Vargas observed. \"But your point is well made. Lord Commander?\"\n\n\"I've surrendered that title,\" Santi said.\n\n\"And we've rejected your surrender. If the new Archivist wishes to take your resignation, then you can rejoice, but for now you are still the Lord Commander of the High Garda, and I need your answer. Do you want to serve as Archivist?\"\n\nWolfe didn't miss the revulsion that flared in his lover's eyes. \"No.\"\n\n\"Do you support the elevation of Scholar Khalila Seif to the position of Archivist of the Great Library?\"\n\nSanti's vote, like it or not, would carry the room. Wolfe knew it. They all did. Nic took his time, choosing his words, and finally said, \"I wish it wasn't necessary. In time she'd have risen to it, I have no doubt of that, but we're out of time. I'd rather not place this heavy weight on her, but... yes. I support her elevation.\"\n\n\"So say we all?\" Vargas made it a question. One by one, the Curia nodded. \"Then it's done except for the ceremonies. Archivist Seif, you may have the shortest tenure in the Great Library's history\u2014\"\n\n\"Except for mine,\" Wolfe murmured. Vargas's eyes flickered, and her lips twitched as if curving toward a smile.\n\n\"But for tonight, at least, you are the Archivist. Tomorrow, if the city still stands, we will see what can be made of that. I would say congratulations, but I don't think they are much in order. We have the Russian army massed at the northeast wall. We may yet have the Spanish in our harbor once the storm clears, gods know. We have traitors in our midst, and the former Archivist planning to retake his power. A city to protect. Treaties to repair.\" Vargas tapped the table again with her stylus, a sharp exclamation point to her remarks. \"And now we await your orders.\"\n\nThis, Wolfe thought, was the moment. The moment that would make or break his student. And it was a rare privilege to be here to witness it.\n\nIt also terrified him, because there was nothing he could do to help her.\n\nKhalila was silent for a few seconds, and then she walked to the head of the table where a seat had been left vacant. The whole Curia rose to their feet. Even Vargas.\n\nWolfe leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.\n\nKhalila sat and nodded to the Curia, and they took their chairs. After a brief hesitation, Santi sat down as well. His demeanor had changed. His back was straight, shoulders square. He hadn't come to terms with his failure\u2014that, Wolfe knew, would haunt him forever\u2014but he was prepared to carry on.\n\n\"My colleagues,\" Khalila said. \"'Thank you' is inadequate to the trust you've put in me. Let's take a moment to remember our first duty: to preserve the knowledge that has been put in our keeping. That means the Great Archives. Is there any chance that they could be breached?\"\n\nMorgan replied, \"Speaking for the Obscurists... we've locked down the Translation functions within the Great Archives. Nothing comes in; nothing leaves. There's no risk by any alchemical means.\"\n\n\"And if the old man has his own Obscurist?\"\n\n\"Even then, we've blocked the access to the base script. Only Eskander himself can unlock it\u2014or me. But no one else can open Translation within the Great Archives. Even a rebel Obscurist can't do that.\" She hesitated a moment. \"I have a suggestion, if you don't mind.\"\n\n\"Please.\" Khalila nodded.\n\n\"I think we all have to agree that the Great Archives is our most fragile resource. Having those manuscripts as the source of all our knowledge makes us dangerously exposed. It always has, but especially now.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Khalila said. \"And I intend to authorize the Artifex Magnus to incorporate Thomas's marvelous print machine into the Great Library's plans, but that will take time. Do you have a better solution?\"\n\n\"For the moment, yes. How many Blanks do we have in storage?\"\n\n\"Litterae Vargas?\"\n\n\"Several hundred thousand,\" Vargas said. \"Why?\"\n\n\"How many books can each of them hold?\"\n\n\"Depends upon the size of the book, and the size of the writing of the Scribe. Ten? Twenty?\"\n\nMorgan turned back to Khalila. \"Then I propose you allow us to take those Blanks, task all the Scribe automata to immediately copy every book\u2014or as much of the Great Archives as possible\u2014and as each book is filled, set an Obscurist to disable the script that allows the contents to erase.\"\n\n\"Rendering the Blanks as originals?\" Khalila asked. She understood immediately. And the whole Curia looked various shades of uncomfortable. \"How long would it take?\"\n\n\"If we devote all the Scribe automata to the job? A day. Maybe more. But at the end of the day we have copies that the Archivist doesn't know even exist. And they will be in a completely separate location.\"\n\n\"Which can then be sold, stolen, destroyed\u2014\" Achim Ben David seemed repulsed by the idea. \"We have always maintained originals. Never copies!\"\n\n\"Not true,\" Khalila said calmly. \"In the earliest days of the Great Library, copies were made. Sometimes as many as a dozen. The Serapeum, the daughter libraries\u2014those held copies, if you remember. It's not without precedent.\"\n\n\"It hasn't been done since the Great Archives was first copied into Blanks for lending!\"\n\n\"And it's time to reconsider our approach.\" Khalila nodded to Morgan. \"Proceed, Morgan.\"\n\n\"Yes, Archivist. We'll start immediately.\" And with that, she was simply... gone.\n\nWolfe suspected she'd already started without any such permission, from the curve of her smile. Clever girls, both of them. And Morgan, at least, had never been too concerned with the Great Library's rules.\n\n\"Before I issue any further orders, I'd like a full report of the city's defenses,\" the Archivist said. \"Lord Commander? If you please. I depend on your wisdom.\"\n\n\"I'll leave you to it,\" Wolfe said, and headed for the door.\n\nHer voice stopped him. \"Scholar Wolfe.\"\n\nHe turned. That was not the voice of his student. It was the voice of his queen. He bowed slightly. \"Archivist.\"\n\n\"Do you know where the former Archivist is hiding?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"But I intend to find out.\"\n\nKhalila took out her Codex. \"There may be something just as important. The Artifex Magnus reported in shortly before Archivist Murasaki was killed that Thomas couldn't be located; Artifex Jones was expecting him back at the Lighthouse some time ago. I know he sometimes loses himself in his work and ignores his Codex, but\u2014I wonder if Thomas is in trouble. Please look into it. We can't afford to lose him.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Yes, Archivist. I'll find him.\"\n\nThomas might have simply plunged himself so deeply into his work that he forgot the world; it wouldn't be unusual for him. But at the same time, Thomas knew the dire needs of Alexandria. Schreiber wouldn't just ignore all summons. Not for this long.\n\nHe was worried for the boy."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Jess Brightwell to his father, Callum Brightwell, never sent:\n\n\u2002Da,\n\n\u2002I suppose they've told you of Brendan's death. I have nothing to add except that he died with honor, not that I think you value that. I suppose, too, that you blame me; without me, he'd never have thrown his loyalty to my side, and gotten himself killed for it.\n\n\u2002I loved him. Without measure. And I accept that blame.\n\n\u2002I have to tell you that when they shot him, his killer probably believed he was me. I don't know if that makes things better or worse, but it's the truth.\n\n\u2002Here, at the end of things, I wanted to tell you nothing but truth. I don't know if I'll ever send this letter, but if I do, I want it to be honest. You've taught me to survive, and without meaning to, to love books; I can give you that much. But what you also taught me was that every friend and every ally is temporary, every trust is there to be broken to an advantage. I hate that I see the world through eyes you crafted. Maybe no matter how much I try to avoid it I'm still a Brightwell.\n\n\u2002You once ordered me to the Great Library to be your spy. It's the kindest thing you ever did for me. I've found my feet, my soul, my voice, my strength, my friends. And I'm grateful.\n\n\u2002I'm dying, Da. They haven't come out and said it yet, but the Medica's words are too careful. I'm to \"conserve my strength\" and other such nonsense, but I'm getting worse, not better. Anyway, no time for rest now. Better I die for something, even if it's nothing you'd believe in. Loyalty's just a word to you. It's real for me.\n\n\u2002I'd like to say I love you, but I promised truth. I've feared you, admired you, hated you, maybe even worshipped you. But I know what love feels like now, and we never had that.\n\n\u2002Tell Ma that if I love anyone, it's her. She's always been quiet and distant, but I think that's because she hates you and I'm collateral damage. I wish I'd known her without you. I think we'd understand each other better.\n\n\u2002Good-bye, Da.\n\n\u2002Go to hell.\n\n\u2002I hope I'm not there waiting."
            },
            {
                "title": "THOMAS",
                "text": "The Tomb of Heron had always been a myth. His entire life, he'd read about it in books, a fabulous hidden storehouse full of unseen and unknown wonders, but no one had ever found it. The official records said that Heron had died and been cremated, by his own wishes. That there was no such thing as Heron's Tomb.\n\nBut here it was.\n\n\"How did you find this?\" Thomas asked. He was manacled at the wrists and ankles and had no less than three High Garda Elite guns at his back. Their weapons would be set on a nonlethal choice, he imagined; they'd not want to spoil the Archivist's plans. That gave him a decided advantage.\n\nThey were in a faded ancient temple built to Thoth, god of many things, including technology and magic. It seemed in poor repair, but the fires were still lit by the altar, and the statue of Thoth\u2014just a stone statue, not an automaton\u2014had been kept painted and patched where time had worn at its surface. It stood near the western wall of the city, surrounded by brickworks and dye shops that had grown around it and dwarfed its modest presence. There was a temple to the Greek god Hephaestus not far away; Thomas had visited it, since inside was one of the earliest automata that still survived. The bronze god inside hammered ceaselessly in his forge. The iron hammer had been replaced every year, as had the anvil, but the automaton still worked on and on. A marvel beyond price.\n\nThat should have covered Heron's Tomb. Not this dusty, rigid statue.\n\n\"I collected the clues,\" the old man said. \"It's never been opened. Never looted by hungry smugglers. There are seven locks, and the theory is that no one has ever survived past the third. But I'm betting that you, Schreiber, you will be the first.\"\n\n\"I'd like to disappoint you.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you'll contain your disappointment if it means surviving.\"\n\nUnfortunately, the old man was right. Thomas had no choices, or at least, no good ones. He could refuse to try, but he remembered the circling eyes on Wolfe, Jess, Glain. Certainly the Archivist would have assassins who could go anywhere, kill anyone they chose\u2014if they were prepared to die for it. He couldn't risk the lives of his friends.\n\nRisking his own life wasn't something he relished, either, but since raising Poseidon's avatar from the hidden cavern beneath the harbor, he'd felt... different. Steadier. More his old self, as if the god's shadow had healed something inside of him that prison had broken. He wasn't the same. But where he'd been welded together again he felt... stronger.\n\n\"So where is the first key?\" Thomas asked.\n\nThe old Archivist\u2014pale, seamed, sharp-faced, seemingly so frail\u2014smiled and placed his hand on the plinth where the god stood, and a piece of decorative stonework slid aside. \"It will only open for someone with a Scholar's band,\" he said. \"Simple enough.\"\n\nInside it was a lock. \"And is there a key?\" Thomas asked.\n\n\"Of course there is.\" The old Archivist made no move to hand anything over.\n\n\"Long lost?\"\n\n\"Precisely so. But every thief and smuggler passed this part of the test. I assume you will, too.\"\n\nThat was a good hint, even if the old man didn't intend for it to be; Thomas held up his cuffed hands. \"I can't work this way,\" he said in a reasonable tone.\n\n\"Certainly not.\" The Archivist nodded at the Elite captain who stood nearby, scowling. \"Unlock him.\"\n\n\"Archivist\u2014\"\n\n\"Do as I say. Scholar Schreiber won't betray me now. He knows the price. And he wants to see inside this tomb as much as I do, don't you, boy?\"\n\nIt was true, shameful as that was; Thomas just held out his wrists for the unlocking. His ankles came next.\n\n\"Careful,\" the captain said. \"I'll shoot you down if you make any move I don't like. Understand?\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" Thomas said. \"You'd better hope you don't miss.\" He made it cheerful, which he thought was more disturbing. It seemed to work from the change in the older man's expression, and the step he took back. \"I'll need two pieces of wire, please.\"\n\nSomeone handed him what he asked for, and he inspected them, then twisted them into the angles that he wanted. Jess was extraordinary at this, and Thomas had learned by watching and trying it himself when no one was looking; it seemed a useful and intriguing skill to have. He wished his friend was here. It would be comforting to have Jess's humor and practicality at his side.\n\nThomas closed his eyes and felt the lock as he worked the tension lever and rod, probing at the rudimentary, stiff mechanism until he had it mapped in his mind in elegant detail. Opening it was a simple lever operation, and as he turned both the wires he felt the tumblers turn and fall.\n\nClick.\n\nWith noiseless elegance, the entire statue of Thoth rolled backward on the plinth and revealed a narrow staircase leading down. The air that breathed out of that chamber smelled ancient and stale. Thomas didn't move, though every impulse demanded he charge recklessly down toward the secrets that Heron promised. \"How many died of bad air?\" he asked.\n\nThe Archivist touched his fingertips to his chin, as if trying to remember, though Thomas knew he must have every fact memorized. \"A few,\" he finally said. \"But since you've asked so nicely...\"\n\nThe High Garda Elite captain held a mask. It shimmered with some kind of coating, a chemical that was probably also alchemical, activated by an Obscurist's work. Thomas took it, strapped it on, and was pleasantly surprised by the fit of the thing. It felt perfectly balanced, and when he breathed in, the air seemed fresh and clean.\n\n\"We use them for fighting fires. This will last two hours,\" the captain said. \"If you aren't out by then, you won't be coming out.\"\n\n\"I'll need light,\" Thomas said. The Archivist nodded again, and the Elite captain handed him a portable glow lamp.\n\n\"Anything else?\" the captain asked.\n\n\"A basic tool set wouldn't be unreasonable.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" the Archivist said. \"Seeing that you can do a lot of damage with the contents of a tool kit, Thomas. I'm not a fool. If you need something, we will send it down to you. Until then, you have what you need.\"\n\nThomas pocketed the lockpick wires, in case the Archivist was inclined to take them back. And then he thought, I'm free. If I can break through the soldiers and run...\n\nBut truthfully? He didn't want to run.\n\nHe wanted to know.\n\nThomas placed his boot on the first step. He paused, listening. No sounds of machinery, not yet. He descended the staircase slowly, ready to plunge up or down at any sign of a trap.\n\nBut the stairs, at least, were safe.\n\nHe was not so certain of the floor, when he arrived at the last tread. It was not a large chamber, and there was nothing in it but gray flagstones, all identical as far as he could tell. This, he thought, was where Jess's speed and agility would have come in handy; his friend's reactions were supernaturally quick. Next to that, Thomas knew his size was a liability here. He crouched down and lowered the lamp, looking closer. As he did, he caught a faint, quick shimmer on one of the flagstones.\n\nMoving the glow back and forth showed him that the stone had a very light coating of something on its surface. But whether that marked it as safe or dangerous... impossible to tell without experimentation.\n\nThomas reached into his pockets. The soldiers had, of course, confiscated almost everything; what he had left was a bit of paper, the twisted wires he'd used for lock picking, and lint. But he did have something else, he realized, and rolled up his sleeve to remove his golden Scholar's bracelet. For the first time, he remembered that the Obscurists could track locations. Had his been rendered inert? Or was it possible that Morgan could look for him? That rescue was on the way?\n\nNo way to be certain.\n\nThomas carefully tossed the bracelet onto the coated stone.\n\nNothing. No movement. No sound beyond the clink of metal on rock.\n\nNow for the other test.\n\nThe glow lamp had a handle on top, and he held it by that as he slowly lowered it to one of the plain flagstones directly in front of the stairs.\n\nHe heard the hiss of steam. Pressure release. Thomas snatched the lantern back just as gleaming metal spears slammed down from the ceiling through openings that had been invisible in the dim light. They withdrew just as rapidly as they'd appeared, like a deadly mirage. By the time alarm ignited in his nerves, it was already over.\n\nNo bodies or blood here, so that meant that whatever tomb robbers had made it inside had managed to figure it out.\n\nSo that meant the coated flagstones were safe. It was a simple kind of challenge, meant for the careful and observant. Easy enough to avoid if someone knew how to reason it out.\n\nHe still tested the theory. The weight from the lantern on a coated flagstone got no response.\n\nWas the floor considered the first trial? Or the second, after picking the lock? He couldn't be sure. Thomas balanced himself carefully as he rose and stepped onto the first safe stone and bent to retrieve his bracelet. The space on the stone was a narrow fit for his feet, and he realized that this was going to be harder than he'd thought. Ancient people had been smaller than average, and he was considerably larger. He'd need to go with great care.\n\nPicking his way across the flagstones took time, but he had managed to avoid triggering any deadly surprises. The path led him to a blank wall. Completely, utterly blank. Interesting.\n\nThomas placed his hand on the wall. If the statue of Thoth had reacted to a Scholar's bracelet, perhaps this test did as well.\n\nIt did not. He nearly lost his precarious balance on the safe flagstone when he heard something moving behind him.\n\nHe had to suppress the impulse to recklessly turn, which would have surely killed him, and slowly looked over his shoulder. In an alcove that had been hidden before stood an automaton sphinx, but one that seemed sleeker, more well defined than the ones he knew from above in the city. This was Heron's work. He wanted to run his hands over the lines, get into the mechanism, see the wonders of this thing... and then he realized that this wondrous thing was likely going to kill him.\n\nHe froze, mind racing for any idea of how to battle an automaton while standing completely still on one small square. He didn't find any.\n\nThe sphinx's eyes slowly kindled to life, but instead of red, they were a pure, luminous blue. It didn't rise.\n\n\"What must I do to be worthy?\" Thomas asked it, and said it in Greek, in the hope that was the language Heron would have taught it to recognize. The sphinx tilted its head up to look directly at him.\n\n\"Answer this: I have a mouth but do not speak. I have a bed but do not sleep. I run but go nowhere.\" It replied in Greek, but in archaic accents and usages that Thomas struggled to translate. He hoped he had it right. He'd be dead if he didn't.\n\nJess might know this, Thomas thought. Or Khalila. Or Dario. Possibly even Morgan. I never paid attention to riddles. That, as it turned out, was proving to be a liability. Come on, Schreiber. Children play this game. He couldn't be beaten so easily. It would be humiliating. And, secondarily, fatal.\n\nI have a mouth. A bed. I run.\n\nIt came to him in a rush of giddy relief. \"A river!\"\n\nThe sphinx rose and walked out of its alcove. It padded toward him, and he looked for escape, but the careful, awkward hops he'd made to get to this point were impossible to replicate quickly. The sphinx didn't trigger the spears at all, stepping fluidly from one safe spot to the next, and he thought, If I could get out of the way and trigger them myself... but there was nowhere to jump to safety. He'd be killing them both.\n\nHe held his breath and tried to remember the lessons Jess had taught them about how to turn the sphinxes off in midleap; his brain, frustratingly, seemed cloudy on the finer points. He cursed softly in German and realized he ought to be praying instead, but surely God would understand.\n\nThe sphinx calmly paced right past him and put a sharply clawed paw to the wall.\n\nThe wall opened with a click and a creak, swinging back and off to the side. The sphinx crouched down beside it, ruffled its metal wings, and then went still again. Its eyes flickered from brilliant blue to empty black.\n\nThomas couldn't help the impulse to brush his fingers over the bronze skin. It didn't move. Leave it, he commanded himself, and ducked into the opening. On the other side of the short, dark hallway, another wall waited.\n\nThis one seemed perfectly understandable. A single stone stood out from the others in the wall, jutting at least an inch forward. It seemed obvious that it should be pressed.\n\nThat was alarming. The obvious was dangerous here. Thomas examined the stone from as many angles as he could, and finally, lacking any other answer, pressed his fingers to it.\n\nThe wall collapsed in a rush, and he froze because what was inside was nothing he expected.\n\nIt was a garden, underground. A garden of crystals: intricate structures and spires and squares, shapes that caught and reflected his lamp in a thousand subtle hues. Beautiful. So beautiful.\n\nSo sharp.\n\nThere was a path between the crystals, but it was narrow. Even Jess would have had trouble sliding through, Thomas thought, and he was as flexible as an otter. There was no chance someone of Thomas's size could move through without brushing against something delicate. I don't want to damage them. But there wasn't much choice. These crystals must have been slowly growing for ages.\n\nThe instant he brushed against one, it made a sound. A low, vibrating note. He wasn't musical; he couldn't possibly identify which note it could be... Surely that wouldn't be required.\n\nThe next crystal he brushed against made an entirely different note. Hmmm. Please don't make this a musical puzzle. Engineering, yes. Music, no. Or perhaps the notes had nothing to do with it at all.\n\nAs the second crystal sounded, the first sounded again. Atonal and strange.\n\nThe crystals now hemming him in on either side suddenly grew. He didn't quite believe his eyes; surely that hadn't happened. Surely the crystals he'd successfully avoided touching weren't now pointing sharp tips at him, like a row of knives.\n\nHe'd have to ease past them. Carefully. As he tried, one sliced easily through his coat and cut a thin line through his skin like a Medica's scalpel. It didn't even hurt, but he saw the blood staining cloth. The coat offered little protection.\n\nMoving through had to be done in torturous, muscle-cramping increments. A second's inattention caused fabric to brush along another crystal. Three notes sounded, all out of key, louder than before.\n\nThe crystals grew. One drove straight into his palm, pinning him in place, and when he cried out in surprise the crystals cried out, too, a dirge of sound that vibrated through the cavern like a hellish chorus. Thomas gritted his teeth and carefully pulled his hand off the jutting, faceted spike. It glittered like false promises.\n\nHe was going to die here.\n\nThe crystal where he'd started chimed again. A single, pure note. He caught his breath and froze because he was afraid it would start the growth cycle all over again, but instead it seemed to slow down. Stop like a clockwork.\n\nIt is clockwork. It's a puzzle. You have to solve it.\n\nHe had no framework for this. There was no metal, no wire, no gears, no steam, nothing that an engineer could understand or dismantle. He could not come at this as an engineer. Heron had made musical instruments, too; he'd made a steam calliope that had rolled on its own cart from street corner to street corner, playing different tunes for the amusement of Alexandria's citizens. Heron saw music as a pleasing outcome of an engineering marvel.\n\nThomas knew Heron would be very disappointed in him right now.\n\nThe crystal chimed again. Thomas had the strange idea that it was trying to help him. He found himself humming and realized something: he did know something useful after all. A tone was just a waveform, no different than waves in the ocean, waves on a string. Sound traveled in waves. Frequencies were mathematical.\n\nHe lowered the note he was humming until he heard no opposing waves in the sound between that and the crystal's, and hummed it louder. He didn't dare sing it for fear of going off-key, but perhaps humming...\n\nThe first crystal chimed twice. It was a warning. He was going in the wrong direction.\n\nGo back, he thought. Start over. Think it through.\n\nGetting back was torture; he had to twist himself carefully, so carefully, around every jutting crystal so as not to wake any more vibrations. When he arrived back at the first, he took a moment just to breathe. The mask he wore was frustrating and confining, and he dripped with sweat; before he thought why he shouldn't, he pushed it up to gasp for breath.\n\nThe air smelled... fresh.\n\nHe waited, heart pounding, for any sign that he'd made a fatal mistake, but nothing happened. The air continued to taste, smell, and function just as normal. With a relieved sigh, he shoved the mask in his pocket, wiped the sweat from his face, and tried to compose his thoughts.\n\nSound was just mathematics. If he approached it that way, perhaps he could do this. Clearly, he was looking for harmonics. Waveforms that complemented one another.\n\nHe carefully tapped the first crystal, and a pure, singing tone sounded. It almost sounded encouraging. Look at the forms. These were organic crystals, yes, but at the same time they had been somehow planned. He tried to ignore the glittering facets, the deadly spikes, and unfocused his vision.\n\nSomething emerged out of the chaos.\n\nColor. He'd noticed the variations, but there hadn't seemed to be a pattern; when he looked at the crystals without really seeing them, he realized he was looking at a rainbow. The first crystal he'd struck had a slight reddish hue. What did he know about red? It has the longest light wavelength.\n\nThis wasn't simply a puzzle of music. It was music and light, and the light was a clue.\n\nThe problem was, he'd never really noted the order of colors in a rainbow. Was it red, orange, yellow, blue\u2014no, it couldn't be. Yellow and blue made green, green had to come after yellow, simple logic. Then blue, indigo, and violet. But the problem was that the hues kept shifting as he moved. From one angle the scheme was clear, but as soon as he moved, it vanished.\n\nMove until it's clear again.\n\nThe hues gleamed again, and he looked carefully. Orange. He tapped it. The first crystal hummed in harmony with the second. He carefully edged around a particularly dense jutting of crystal and found the yellow. It added a rich tone to the chorus. Halfway through. Only three more shades to go.\n\nBut when he touched the green\u2014or what he thought was the green\u2014it hit a discordant note. Dissonance.\n\nAnd the crystals shot toward him at a terrifying rate. No, no, no, surely green comes after yellow, it has to... but then he took another breath, steadied himself, and unfocused his eyes again. Looking at the blurry colors without looking.\n\nGreen was a trap. Green was being filtered through another, false crystal. The real green lay behind it.\n\nHe had to start over, edging past crystals that left shallow cuts all over him and tattered his coat to a ragged mess. His breath came in short, unconscious sobs. Despite his concentration, he was afraid. He started with the red crystal. Found the orange. The yellow. Edged oh so slowly and carefully to twist himself around the concealing clear crystal to the green behind it.\n\nHarmony.\n\nIt was then he noticed the bones. Human bones, dry and white. They littered the ground around the green crystal. A skull sat impaled on a jutting clear spike.\n\nSlowly. Go slowly.\n\nIt was terrifying, this puzzle, but he had the key now. Unfocus his eyes, find the color, make absolutely certain he was touching the right crystal. The last two fell without triggering another reset, though the violet crystal\u2014the last\u2014was located in a whole forest of disorienting, faceted fakes that he checked five times before deciding to risk his final choice.\n\nThe harmony blended, and the crystals' rich, pure chord rang through the chamber. It built and built to an almost painful level, and the colors flashed bright enough to blind.\n\nThe crystals retracted completely into small, gemlike stubs. One still dripped his blood.\n\nThere was another door standing beyond the last crystal outcropping. Another keyhole with no key in sight, but it had a very particular shape. He thought about trying the lockpicks, but then realized what it was. Obvious, really.\n\nHe went back and searched the crystals until he found the correct shape, and the instant he touched it, it broke off from its stem. He inserted it in the lock, and the wall rolled aside. With it came a powerful, awful stench.\n\nThe smell of death.\n\nThomas wasn't sure what it was, but he grabbed the mask from his pocket and put it on, in case there was something truly dangerous waiting for him. Like toxic gas, which seemed eerily likely.\n\nAnother sphinx sat beyond it, the identical twin of the last. Thomas, despite the pain in his pierced hand and the burning cuts, took a moment to simply admire it before he said, \"May I pass?\"\n\nIts eyes turned blue. \"Who makes me has no need of me. Who buys me has no use for me. Who uses me cannot see or feel me. What am I?\"\n\nThomas felt a jagged surge of real exhaustion and frustration. Another riddle. He hated this. His tired brain slid off the clues. Who makes me has no need of me. Plenty of things were made for others that their makers had no use for. Who buys me has no use for me. Why would someone buy something useless? Who uses me cannot see or feel me. Air? Oxygen? No, none of it made any sense at all. He wanted to shout at the automaton, tell it that he was doing this to save lives, just let him through. But he knew it wouldn't help.\n\nHe closed his eyes and thought for long moments, leaping from one thought to another. His nerves burned under his skin. He just wanted to smash his way through.\n\nWho makes me has no need of me.\n\nWhat did someone make, and someone buy, that neither one used? What did someone use who couldn't see or feel it?\n\nAnd then he realized the answer: he was making the mistake of thinking the last person was alive.\n\nThomas opened his eyes and said, \"A tomb. T\u00e1fos.\"\n\nThe sphinx paused for long enough that it made him question his logic, but he refused to make another guess. He was right. He had to be right.\n\nThe sphinx moved, but its eyes were still burning that unearthly blue.\n\nBehind it was a terrifying scatter of bones. Many bones, enough to be piled knee-high. Skulls rolling like marbles. And one body that had only half rotted, white bones cutting through the flesh.\n\nYet another test. The one everyone else failed. Had it been the riddle that had killed them, or the wall beyond?\n\nThomas stared at the wall, but it seemed utterly blank and featureless. He reached out but pulled back; surely touching it had been the first impulse of all of these dead people who'd come here before him.\n\nHe had to solve this problem another way. And standing here surrounded by the dead, he had no idea how to proceed. Every other puzzle had been logic and observation, or a riddle requiring viewing something from a different perspective...\n\nA different perspective.\n\nHe crouched down and lifted his glow higher. There was something there, but so faint he couldn't read it.\n\nAs much as he hated the thought, he was going to have to go all the way down. Lie on the ground and look up.\n\nLike a body in a tomb.\n\nThomas cleared bones away, stretched out, and looked straight up at the door.\n\nThere was writing on it that was visible only from this angle. Greek letters that spelled out, What is lighter than a feather, but even the strongest cannot hold for long?\n\nThis one wasn't even difficult. \"Breath,\" Thomas said, and remembered to give the answer in Greek. \"Anapno\u00ed.\"\n\nThe wall slid away.\n\nHe rolled up to his feet and walked into the Tomb of Heron.\n\nSomeone was waiting, and Thomas stopped as the wall slid shut again behind him. He couldn't believe the evidence of his own eyes, because it seemed that someone was alive here.\n\nNo. Not alive. But lifelike in the extreme. A man wearing a Greek chiton and a draped robe. Older. Balding. With a kind face, a rounded belly, thin arms. Shorter than Thomas by a head.\n\nMade of metal, but so cleverly done\u2014even to the eyes\u2014that it seemed more a work of divine hands than human. It had the texture of skin where skin should be, and metal that flowed like cloth. Even its eyes seemed real, and seemed to focus on Thomas as much as he did on the automaton.\n\n\"Welcome,\" it said. The voice sounded odd\u2014real and not quite real at the same time. A human voice, captured through time. It spoke the same archaic Greek as the sphinxes. \"I am Heron of Alexandria. You have come far to find me, but all you see before you is a ghost in a metal cage. I have inscribed the rhythm and tone of my voice on a wax tablet. What you now hear is a man long ago turned to dust, yet still I greet you.\" The voice shifted. Grew more stern. \"If you have come for riches, know there may be a high price. If you have come for knowledge, perhaps you will find what you seek if you're clever and quick. Farewell, stranger. Find me in Elysium when your time on this earth is done, and tell me what use you made of what I have left for you.\"\n\nThe voice stopped. The statue went still.\n\nBehind it a door opened, and gleamed on wonders. Wonders. Thomas caught his breath and, almost against his will, stepped forward. Was that... was that Heron's steam calliope? His automated puppet show that had drawn visitors from around the known world? And that fantastic machine in the corner... was that a letterpress? Like the one he and Jess had made, that started all of this? But of course Heron would have thought of such a valuable, important invention first.\n\nThey have suppressed it for so long. Not even Heron could be trusted with this, though there was no inventor the Great Library trusted more.\n\nHe hardly noticed when the door shut behind him. The air through the mask smelled fresh, and when he lowered the device, the air still seemed fine. He put the mask away\u2014it was near the end of its useful life in any case\u2014and walked to the steam calliope, a gilded array of tubes that rose in a fantastic swirl. Surely the boiler was dry now, and he didn't try the switch, but to hear it play would have been astonishing.\n\nHe wandered past a machine with a pointed stylus that was set to a wax tablet. \"What is this?\" he wondered aloud, and watched as the stylus printed the words he'd said onto the tablet. He'd spoken in Greek, and it had understood. The same fascinating mechanism that must have recorded Heron's voice before. A marvel that dated back to the very beginnings of the Great Library. He touched the delicate mechanism and thought, Heron's hands made this. It was like touching genius. He blinked away tears, took in a sharp breath, and felt a twinge inside. I'm getting tired, he thought, but that wasn't it. He coughed. Then kept coughing, a fit that racked him nearly double. He fumbled for the mask but couldn't keep it on. His eyes burned, and his skin, and he realized now that there was a smell that had been building in the fresh air, something foul and chemical and almost sweet.\n\nAnd a green mist rising from the floor to curl around his ankles.\n\nHeron's statue turned and said, \"You have until the clock turns to find the answer and earn your discovery.\"\n\nThomas gasped for air against the constriction in his lungs, and looked up to see that the statue now held a water clock.\n\nAnd the water in the top container was rapidly dripping into the bottom container.\n\nTime was running out."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Message from the Archivist in Exile to Obscurist Vanya Nikolin, discovered by Obscurists and destroyed before delivery:\n\n\u2002It's all going wrong. This storm has driven off the ships. The surviving Welsh and British have turned tail and intend to crawl back to the warm embrace of the Great Library. The Spanish won't answer my messages.\n\n\u2002To make things worse, my assassins have killed the new Archivist at exactly the wrong moment. Santi's men are hunting down my Elites. I need out of the city, and to do that, I need cover; the Russians have agreed to provide that distraction at the northeast city gate.\n\n\u2002I will have to abandon the riches of Heron's Tomb. As long as Schreiber's been inside, he's probably dead, anyway.\n\n\u2002As the attack proceeds, dispatch the automata to find Santi's friends, starting with Christopher Wolfe. I want all of them dead, including the new Archivist if you can manage it. If not I'll settle for Wolfe, but that must be done. Save Santi for last. I might yet find a use for him.\n\n\u2002If he resists, I'll happily slit his throat."
            },
            {
                "title": "GLAIN",
                "text": "She'd borne the visit to the Medica station with as much grace as she could, which was next to none. They'd cleaned and dressed the wounds left by the sphinx, and she'd been given leave to return to duty. The Medica's stern warning that she'd almost lost her life didn't much bother her. She was a soldier. Losing her life was an everyday risk.\n\nJess didn't earn the same dismissal from his sickbed. He was livid, of course, and it scared her a little how adamant he was that he could function well enough to leave. The Medica\u2014a big, burly woman who could have wrestled Thomas into submission\u2014glared at him until he fell into a stubborn silence. \"No,\" she said flatly. \"You're not going anywhere. The damage to your lungs was bad enough before, I'm told; it's worse now, and more effort will make it fatal in short order. Keep going, young man, and you will drown in your own juices. My orders are that you're restricted from any duties whatsoever. No arguments or I'll chain you to the bed.\"\n\n\"You probably would,\" Jess muttered. That earned another glare. \"All right. I'll stay.\"\n\n\"And I'll order more treatments,\" she said, and turn to Wolfe, who lurked in the corner like a premonition. \"Scholar? Can you stay with him and make sure he does as I say?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Wolfe replied, and crossed his arms. He looked severe, dour, and utterly remote. \"I certainly will.\"\n\nAt least Glain thought she was leaving Jess in safety\u2014as much as anyone had at the moment. As she nodded her good-byes to him and to Wolfe, she wondered if she'd ever see them again. So the nods turned, impulsively, into words. \"Stay safe,\" she said, and was astonished that she'd said it. She felt her cheeks turn hot, and gods knew she hadn't blushed more than a few times in her life. She hated that it had happened now, of all moments. \"Don't die on me. I need you.\"\n\n\"You're the one running out to fight,\" Jess said. \"The worst I risk is an uncomfortable pillow. And...\" He hesitated, and smiled. In it, she saw the old, cocky Jess. The one he ought to be now. \"And I love you, too.\"\n\nShe felt a horrifying tightness in her throat. Tears? No. She wouldn't. \"Well, I wouldn't go that far.\"\n\n\"I would,\" Wolfe said quietly. \"May the gods look after you tonight. I want you back in the morning. You're precious to more people than you know.\"\n\nShe nodded. Not able to speak. She escaped before she could betray what that meant to her, but once she was outside in the furiously pounding rain, she had to stop and let it sluice cold over her. There. No tears possible now. They were invisible.\n\nShe allowed herself the luxury of only a moment to let the emotion have its way, and then she caught a passing transport rumbling toward the northern districts. If an attack was still coming tonight, it would be there, from the massed infantry forces that had been sitting so quietly and waiting for the naval invasion that had never landed. The Russians had marched a long way to get here. She didn't think they'd leave without a fight.\n\nThe High Garda presence was thick as the carrier approached the outer districts, and she jumped down and ran toward the northeastern gate, the one most likely to be attacked. That was where she'd find Captain Botha, she assumed, and her squad as well.\n\nBotha, she was told when she encountered the first member of his company, was up on the ramparts. The walls of Alexandria were built in layers; the top was massively thick, but it was supported by inner rings that rose to various levels and provided ramps from one level to another. Botha, it seemed, had stationed his company on the top; they'd be in charge of firing down on any attackers rushing the gates.\n\nAnd the Russians would be trying their mettle. She had no doubt. What she worried about was what else might happen in the confusion of the fight. She'd been in battles before; she knew how effective diversions could be.\n\nDiversions. There was something in that, but she didn't have time to follow the thought. She joined the line of soldiers moving up to take their spots. Tonight, the ramps she climbed were slick with rain, narrow and ancient, and she held tight to the railing. A single misstep could send her crashing backward into the soldiers massed behind her, and that wouldn't do at all.\n\nShe was almost cheerful, which felt strange; it was cold and storming, there was an army at the city's gates that outnumbered the High Garda almost two to one... and she was happy. No getting around it: she was born for this. Her father would be scandalized. Her brothers would be jealous.\n\nHer mother would be so proud.\n\nSomething whistled in the air far above her head, and she jerked her chin up to track its progress. Couldn't see the missile, but it must have been fired from the Russian army's positions. Greek fire? She couldn't see any fuse burning. And that sound... it seemed wrong. She'd grown accustomed to how ballista-fired bombs sounded. Those kind of missiles made an eerie whistling sound, too, but at an entirely different pitch; the whistle was attached to the bomb to create an unnerving effect on troops below. This seemed fainter, more as if the sound was a mere by-product of its flight.\n\n\"Move!\" someone yelled behind her, and she quickly advanced up the ramp. She'd only made it half a dozen steps when the world exploded behind her. Not the awful gleam of Greek fire, but a hot orange like a forest set ablaze, and when she paused and turned, she saw devastation. Half a neighborhood blown apart, walls flung down, roofs shattered. Bodies running, falling. Burning.\n\nThat is not Greek fire.\n\nShe didn't know what it was, but it had a tremendous force to it, as bad as or worse than what they were used to seeing. This wasn't something the fire crews had prepared to handle. They needed water, and a lot of it. And no one had prepared to fight whatever this madness was.\n\nMore whistles overhead. The Russians were firing their strange weapons blind, trying to strike sheer terror, and it was working. She watched a temple crumble, a warehouse explode. What if it hits a Medica facility? Homes? Schools? She felt physically sick with rage, and her muscles ached with holding it inside. She didn't know if the Iron Tower or the Serapeum or the Great Archives could stand against this unknown bombardment. Whatever this awful stuff was, it held a horrible power, and it was entirely new to them.\n\n\"Squads to the wall!\" Captain Botha shouted, and his voice carried even over the chaos. Glain ran to claim her spot, with her High Garda companions elbow to elbow. \"Ready!\" Beyond them other captains were positioning their own companies. Down on behind them, more soldiers fortified the gates. Others were readying ballistas to fire into the enemy forces. It was a massing of High Garda force that had rarely been seen, and never here in Alexandria. \"Hold!\"\n\nSanti was up on the wall, Glain realized; she saw him standing with his captains as they spotted the Russian deployments. He shouldn't be here. He should be safe in the Serapeum. But that wasn't Santi; he, like her, needed to be in the thick of it. She looked around at the squad she'd inherited from Tom Rolleson, now their lieutenant; she saw Troll farther down the row, watching the company's formations. \"Blue Dogs!\" she yelled. \"Get ready!\"\n\nThey gave back the sharp bark of agreement. She watched Rolleson, not the enemy. What the enemy might do didn't concern her now.\n\nMore bombs came flying overhead. What happens when they get our range? she thought suddenly, and imagined one of those landing here on the terrace. It would be sheer carnage.\n\nWhatever Santi was waiting for, it wasn't anything the Russians were planning. And she almost missed it, except for the whisper of wings above her in the darkness, and a sudden stop to the rain on her head as an automaton flew over their position.\n\nThe mechanical dragon that Thomas had designed floated down, almost invisible in the darkness. And then it breathed a horrifyingly huge stream of Greek fire down on the army below. The light glazed on the huge metallic wings as the dragon hovered, its snakelike head bent forward. It was a nightmare come to life, and for the first time Glain was glad to see it.\n\nIt was not targeting the soldiers, she realized, but some odd-looking devices farther back, tubular and on wheels. The Greek fire hit those structures and the metal melted in on itself with shocking speed. A series of violent explosions ripped the night apart, casting sharp fragments through the opposing army in a bloody swath.\n\nGlain couldn't help the cheer that tore out of her throat; she shouldn't have been glad of their deaths, but she was. They'd have cheered for hers.\n\nThe Russians turned their gunfire on the dragon, but it wasn't alone. The smaller winged forms of automata sphinxes plunged out of the rain and began to tear through whole columns of soldiers like paper.\n\nIt was sudden, total war.\n\n\"Free fire!\" Rolleson shouted, echoing a command she couldn't hear, and Glain repeated it for her squad as she aimed her rifle down at the running troops below. They were coming steadily, and she respected them for that; it wasn't a panicked stampede but a measured assault. One of them threw something metallic at the gates. She heard the explosion. Felt it through her boots. Had they breached the barrier? It was hard to tell. She picked targets and fired, rocking the recoil with her shoulder and repositioning precisely for the next shot, and the next, and the next. Shadow targets, illuminated only by the light of the burning things\u2014some new sort of ballistas?\u2014that the dragon had torched. The darkness lit again with more explosions as ammunition ignited. Spectacular and awful. She averted her eyes briefly from the glare, then picked off three more attackers.\n\n\"Hold and away!\" Rolleson shouted, and Glain roared it, too; she and the squad stepped back from the wall. \"Cover!\"\n\nThey all crouched, backs to the wall, as the ballistas fired and the shrieking Greek fire containers arced over their heads. If one of those went amiss, Glain thought, they'd all roast right here. But all the shots cleared their positions and shattered on the other side of the wall. Santi had aimed them precisely, she realized as she took her position again; he'd targeted four spots to divide the attacking forces and confuse their strategy. The ones down at the gate were now pinned in place; their explosives hadn't opened the way for them, and the High Garda, Glain's squad included, poured lethal fire down on top of them.\n\nThey were, of course, shooting back. She felt the impact of bullets on either side of her head where she was protected by the crenellations, and once a stunning impact to her helmet that made her see stars and blink in confusion for a solid few seconds. One of her squad\u2014Sarven\u2014fell and didn't move. She yelled for a Medica without pausing in her target selection and saw from the corner of her eye that he was dragged off for treatment. Men and women of the High Garda were falling, but not nearly as many as were being slaughtered beyond those gates. The Russians had come in force, but with their explosive weapons shattered, would they keep at it? Battering against an impenetrable wall, fighting mud, a dragon, bullets, Greek fire, sphinxes? Why wouldn't they retreat?\n\nShe found out.\n\nA massive carrier rolled relentlessly out of the midst of the Russian forces and headed for the gates. It was covered in spikes and metal plating, rolling on linked spinning tracks that churned through the mud at a shocking rate of speed. It was the size of small warship, and as the Russian troops retreated out of its way, it went straight for the gates.\n\nIt had one of those odd metal tubes sticking from the front of it, and as she watched, something exploded out of it in a rush of fire and smoke, and she felt stone crack and heave as the gates blew apart, flinging fragments into the city and into the ballista company below. Greek fire globes shattered, consuming the whole squad guarding them. \"Gods,\" Glain breathed, and it was half a curse and half a prayer. She wanted to rush to their defense, but she looked to Rolleson. Rolleson looked just as anguished and conflicted, but Botha... Botha, and Santi beyond him, seemed unruffled. Santi gave orders she couldn't hear, but they came clear in the relay.\n\nOne company was withdrawing to fight on the ground, but Botha's company would stay on the wall. If they all rushed down, there was nothing to stop the Russians from regrouping and storming in behind the carrier. Santi was arranging forces to prevent them from taking advantage of a temporary victory.\n\nThe dragon landed in front of the gates where the carrier had entered and laid down a huge semicircle of fire. The Russians tried to rush forward, but automata lions leaped through the fire to take them down.\n\nSanti reserved his vulnerable human soldiers for the next wave.\n\nGlain aimed and fired at anyone stupid enough to try an approach. The rain droned relentlessly, and she felt her muscles beginning to ache from the strain. Chilled to the bone, hurting from constant adrenaline, and haunted by exhaustion. This would be a long night. A long fight.\n\nShe very nearly missed the attack, because it came from her side of the wall. A sphinx glided out of the darkness, and the only warning she had was the shadow cast on the wall, a moving, descending darkness that made her spin around to see what was coming.\n\nThe sphinx was gliding in talons first: a golden bird of prey about to pick off an unwary mouse.\n\nI'm not a mouse.\n\nShe yelled, dodged, and dropped her rifle; it wouldn't do any good unless she was a far better sharpshooter. As the sphinx's sharp claws touched the stone and sparked, she rolled and lunged upward and beneath the biting jaws for where the switch was located. A split second later she remembered that the sphinx that had attacked them in the Necropolis had no off switch, and she realized that no one could save her if she'd just committed to the wrong plan; the other soldiers around her were backing off, confused and shocked, trying to continue firing on the Russians attacking the gate. No help. She had to do this alone.\n\nHer fingers grazed a bump in the metal skin, and she pressed it hard as the sphinx screamed and raised both front paws to claw her from neck to legs.\n\nIt stuttered and froze, eyes dying to black.\n\nShe braced herself and kicked out, hard, sending it toppling in an uncontrolled crash over on its back. Glain stayed where she was as she gulped for breath and watched it for any sign of recovery, but it was utterly still.\n\nThat was when a shot shattered into the wall beside her head, and it took her a second to realize that the bullet hadn't been fired from the Russian side. It had come from within the walls. She threw herself forward, hiding in the bulk of the dead automaton, and felt the metal shiver as more bullets struck it. There was a pause, and she quickly slithered forward to try to locate the threat. For the trajectory to be so flat, it had to be someone on a rooftop, and likely close by\u2014there. She caught a glint of metal. She rolled back just as another volley of shots came at her and hit the stone floor; the grit under her palms was fresh, scraped by the sphinx's claws. She was just able to reach her rifle, and pulled it toward her.\n\nWhoever was shooting, they weren't aiming at anyone else. Just her. The other soldiers continued on, not oblivious to the threat but simply occupied. This was her problem. It was up to her to solve it.\n\nShe waited for another pause and mapped what she'd seen before. The glint of metal in reflected light. She calculated that to be the targeting glass on a High Garda rifle, which put her actual target the length of her forearm behind it.\n\nThe firing paused.\n\nShe came up on her knees and sighted. She caught the glare of the glass, but only for an instant because it was swinging away from her.\n\nAnd toward the knot of captains where Lord Commander Santi stood.\n\nShe took a careful, even breath, held it, gauged her distance, and fired three times. She spaced the shots so that even if she missed with one, she was likely to land two.\n\nNo more shots came from that position, though she waited, still holding that breath until it turned stale and urgent. She was presenting a plain and perfect target.\n\nBut the sniper didn't take the bait.\n\nShe'd hit him.\n\nGlain let the breath out and went back to her duties, firing at any Russian soldier who presented a target, until a sharp tap on her shoulder made her flinch. It was the lieutenant. \"Sir?\" she shouted. Her voice was too loud, but she was half-deaf from the din of battle.\n\n\"Take your squad to the streets behind the lines, Squad Leader. There's word of rebels down there taking shots at us. Find them!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" she snapped and pitched her voice to carry to her squad, even over the never-ending rattle of fire. \"Blue Dogs! With me!\"\n\nThey barked the response and followed. She automatically counted heads; two missing, but the rest were uninjured. They took the ramp as fast as they dared, but Glain stopped and held them in place while she looked over the rail at the street below. The Russians' invading armored carrier had been caught on a row of angled steel caltrops the size of cattle; its treads still spun but it got no purchase. As she watched, a High Garda soldier scrambled up on the roof of the thing, found a hatch, and flung it open. He dropped a Greek fire grenade inside and leaped clear.\n\nThe screaming that erupted inside the metal monster was loud enough to be heard even over the thunder of battle.\n\nGlain swallowed at the thought of the hell inside that vehicle, and led her squad the rest of the way down. Half the ballistas were in smoking ruins, thanks to the damage done by the carrier. The night air reeked of the stench of Greek fire and something new, a sharp and unpleasantly acrid smell she supposed was due to the new explosives the Russians had brought with them. She risked a glance at the gates.\n\nThere were no gates. Just a ragged hole in the wall where gates had been. A single iron hinge still hung limp from one surviving bolt. The only things that stood between Alexandria and the Russian forces were the High Garda, the Obscurists' automata, and the good favor of the city's gods. As many as they'd killed from the walls, it would not be enough. The Russians still had armored carriers and tens of thousands of soldiers to throw against these defenses, even if their new, deadly bomb throwers hadn't withstood the dragon's assault.\n\nNo help for that. She had a mission to carry out. The defense of the city was Lord Commander Santi's responsibility, not hers.\n\nShe led the Blue Dogs away from that fight. They dodged the ruins of the first building that had been leveled by Russian explosives, and as they got free of the noise of battle, Glain slowed them down and took her bearings. The sniper had been on the roof half a block away, and the shooter had almost certainly been connected to the saboteurs; most likely the rest wouldn't be far. This was what the Blue Dogs unit had been built to do: hunt down specific targets.\n\nShe turned the corner, setting the Blue Dogs on a standard fan formation, four going high and the rest staying low; their spotters would tell them where to turn, and she'd deploy the team to pick off their targets, one by one.\n\nThat was when she saw someone who seemed out of place peeping around a corner. A man she recognized, however vaguely; she never forgot a face, though it took her a few seconds to put him into place in her memory. She'd last seen him inside the Iron Tower. An Obscurist. He'd been one of those hanging back when Gregory and the Artifex had taken them all prisoner, and Wolfe's mother had given her life to save theirs.\n\nWhat was an Obscurist doing out here, in the middle of a pitched battle zone, wearing common street clothing?\n\nNothing good.\n\nShe started to give a command, but stopped as a gleaming automaton stalked around the other corner and came toward him. It was a big Roman-style lion, and it was unnaturally large, this one; it made the normal Alexandrian versions look like lapdogs. It moved so quietly, too.\n\nShe thought for a moment it was hunting him, but no. It was with him.\n\nShe couldn't hear the commands the Obscurist gave the thing, but in seconds it responded. The lion let out a deep-throated growl and bounded off, running flat out toward the corner. Not toward them. Away.\n\nGlain grabbed her second and said, \"You have command. I need to follow the beast.\"\n\n\"Sir, what are you doing? You can't go alone!\"\n\nShe didn't wait to argue about it; there wasn't time. She needed to stop whatever dire damage the lion had just been sent to inflict.\n\nThough what she was going to do when she caught the thing, she had no idea.\n\nYet she had no choice.\n\nShe was no runner like Jess, but she was competent enough; she'd studied form and practiced hard, and though she got no joy in it, she could put on speed, if not his particular grace. The lion was moving fast, though. Too fast. Despite her best efforts, burning lungs and legs, she couldn't catch it. Couldn't even track it. Glain hated to admit defeat, but she knew she had to outsmart it, not outrun it.\n\nShe slumped against the wall of what would usually be a busy bakery but was silent as the grave tonight, and removed her Codex as she gasped for breath. Her legs were shaking with the effort, and she let herself slide down to a sitting position to brace herself for writing.\n\nShe sent the first message to Captain Botha, reporting what she'd seen. Then Wolfe, Dario, Khalila, Thomas, and Morgan, telling them where she'd last seen the creature and where she was. Not Jess; she didn't want to tempt him to leave the Medica building. Not Santi, who couldn't be distracted in the middle of this battle. She needed everyone on this; she had the feeling the automaton's orders would be something awful and very important. Having written it, she waited for messages back.\n\nMorgan was the first, and she said, I'm tracking it. Attempting to gain control.\n\nGlain concentrated on slowing her breathing and letting her body rest a moment. The reply came from Dario, too. He was heading out from the Serapeum. Don't be a fool and do this alone. Tell me where you are. Rich, coming from him. But she appreciated the sentiment. She dashed off a quick reply to give him the cross streets.\n\nNothing back from Wolfe or Thomas. Khalila wrote that she couldn't leave the Serapeum but that any resources needed by any of them that were not devoted to the battle at the gates were theirs to command.\n\nMorgan's distinctive handwriting appeared as she began to acknowledge Khalila's message. She wrote, It's coming for you, Glain.\n\nGlain read it, but before she had time to truly take it in she heard a low, rumbling growl. Not thunder this time. The rain was starting to slow, and she looked up to see the lion padding down the center of the empty street.\n\nGlain stood up, slamming her Codex back in her belt, and readied her rifle. It was possible\u2014dimly possible\u2014to stop a lion with a precision shot to the eye, but in reality she wasn't quite that good. Worth a try, though. She knew she couldn't outrun the thing, and though she knew how to turn the regular models off, if this one had been modified it would be her last mistake. And this one seemed... modified.\n\nWhy was it stalking her? She just wasn't that important.\n\nThe lion came for her at a quick, straight trot. Even as much experience as she had with automata, this one had a special dread for her, and she couldn't even think why. Something in the proportions. The way it moved. The way its eyes gleamed, as if it was hungry.\n\nAnother explosion at the northeast gate. She felt it through the wall of the bakery, the stones beneath her feet, but she couldn't afford to turn to look.\n\nShe slowly let out her breath and fired for the thing's glowing red eye.\n\nShe missed. Not by much, a fraction of an inch. The bullet struck metal instead of the hardened glass of the eye. Didn't even leave a scratch.\n\nThe lion broke into a run. It was seconds away, and she fired again, but this shot was even less precise. She wanted to run, every instinct screamed for it, but she set herself like a mountain. I will not move.\n\nOut of nowhere, she remembered something from a book she'd read back at Ptolemy House as a student. The gods conceal from us the happiness of death, that we may better endure life.\n\nOddly cheering, in this moment when she saw death coming straight for her.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing, just standing there?\" a voice in her ear said, and a hand pulled her elbow and yanked her around the corner, out of the lion's sight. \"Are you trying to get yourself killed?\"\n\nShe knew the severe tone before she saw his face. Scholar Wolfe. Of course. That was why the lion had come this way.\n\nIt wasn't after her at all. It was locked on him.\n\nShe was just in the way.\n\n\"Run!\" she said. \"I'll keep it busy.\"\n\n\"Not alone you won't.\" That was Jess, who\u2014she realized with a shock\u2014was leaning with one hand on a wall not far away. She really must be slipping; she hadn't even noticed him at first. \"We can work together. We have to.\"\n\n\"No time, it's coming!\" She ripped free of Wolfe's grasp. \"It's after you. Get out of here! Now!\"\n\nShe felt a sudden burst of air from behind her, and felt a wave of heat simmer over her skin; for a horrible second she thought it was Greek fire and they were all dead, but then she saw Jess's face and knew exactly what had happened.\n\nShe turned and found Morgan had appeared behind her. She'd Translated in, though how that was possible without a configured Translation Chamber Glain couldn't even imagine. Pure power, most likely.\n\n\"Move!\" Morgan shouted, and Glain did, diving out of her way toward Jess. The least she could do was stand between the walking wounded and the fight. Morgan stepped in front of Wolfe, who did not seem pleased by it.\n\nThe lion padded around the corner and stopped to assess the situation. Its massive head turned to regard Wolfe. Morgan, in front of him, looked very small in comparison.\n\nGlain put a flat hand against Jess's chest as Jess tried to move forward. \"No,\" she said. \"She can do this.\"\n\nThe lion came toward Wolfe. Morgan stepped toward it, hand outstretched. Glain tensed as the lion's jaws opened, revealing a horrifying array of teeth. It could snap her in half, easily.\n\nIt simply... stopped.\n\n\"There you are,\" Morgan whispered. \"Someone's rewritten you. Removed you from the system. They've made you their pet killer.\" Her fingers twitched, as if she were holding an invisible pen and writing on thin air. \"He's very good, your master. But arrogant.\"\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Glain asked. She didn't think Morgan would answer, but she had to ask it.\n\n\"Repairing her,\" Morgan said. \"She's not meant to do this. Her mission is to protect the Great Library, not to hunt down Scholars. I'm sending her where she needs to be.\"\n\nThe lion slowly closed its jaws, and blinked, and its eyes faded to yellow. Still unnerving, and Glain didn't relax until it let out an ear-splitting roar, turned, and ran in the direction of the northeast gate.\n\nMorgan had already turned toward Scholar Wolfe. \"I'm glad you're safe,\" she said, and then looked at each of them in turn. Glain didn't like the shimmer in her eyes, or the feeling she got from her. Too... hot, somehow. Too full of energy, like power was about to burst out of her. \"Scholar... the Obscurist who made these changes is still working for the old Archivist. I can track him. We need to stop him before he does something worse.\"\n\n\"He probably already has,\" Jess said. He sounded exhausted. \"Do you know him? Who he is?\"\n\n\"I can find him.\" She nodded. \"He's close.\"\n\n\"What about the old man?\" Wolfe asked. \"Surely he can't be far away, either. He can't Translate out; Eskander's cut that off from him. Santi's blocking his way out from any of the other gates. His only chance at escape is through the chaos at the northeast gate.\"\n\n\"So he'll be close to the battle and looking for his chance,\" Jess said. \"Or creating one if he can.\"\n\n\"Likely,\" Wolfe said. \"We need to find him. Let's finish this.\"\n\n\"Khalila's offered us resources,\" Glain volunteered. \"We should take advantage of that. We don't know who's with him, or how many guns he's got on his side. We need to find a spot and lure him into it. If we engage him in the middle of the High Garda army\u2014\"\n\n\"Confusion,\" Jess said. \"She's right, sir. We need to draw him to a place of our choosing, and be ready.\"\n\nWolfe looked to each of them, and finally, to Glain. \"Very well,\" he said. \"I'll place it in your hands, Wathen. Don't disappoint.\"\n\nShe touched her fist to her heart. \"My pleasure, Scholar.\" She hesitated. \"I'm not sure he'll fall for anything that comes from me, sir. Perhaps you could draw him in?\"\n\n\"Probably not. He'd automatically assume it was a trap,\" Wolfe said. \"I can't think of any of us he'd believe...\" His voice trailed off, and though he didn't finish the thought, Jess did.\n\n\"Oh, I think you can,\" he said. \"Because I'm thinking the very same thing.\"\n\nAnd as if he'd been conjured up out of the rain, Dario Santiago rounded the corner and said, \"Dios, what did I miss?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Inscription on the wall of the Great Archives of Alexandria:\n\n\u2002In this place we burn the lamp of knowledge that never goes out.\n\n\u2002We light the world."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "\"You shouldn't be here,\" Wolfe said to Jess, while Glain wrote in her Codex and Morgan spoke to Dario. \"I told you to stay in bed, boy. And you promised.\"\n\nJess shrugged. \"Glain was in danger. Staying flat on my back there accomplishes nothing. Being upright with you might.\"\n\n\"The only thing it will accomplish is to get you killed.\"\n\nWolfe's voice was severe, but Jess didn't miss the pain hidden under it, either. He knew Wolfe was worried. But there wasn't any point. The entire Great Library could collapse before dawn; the Russians could prevail at the gate, could rumble through the streets in their armored carriers and crush the High Garda. The Iron Tower would close its doors, and so would the Serapeum and the Lighthouse and the Great Archives, but how long would that hold if Alexandria itself was taken? Eventually, the Great Library would have to submit. The city's residents wouldn't put up a fight; no one had ever trained them how. It had never been necessary.\n\nHe decided to be honest. Just with Wolfe, who he thought already knew. \"I'm not going to make it, Scholar. Dying in a bed... that's not me. Getting killed for something worthwhile is better than dying alone. At the worst, I might buy you time to do what's needed.\"\n\nWolfe's expression flickered, but Jess didn't know what was underneath that mask. Anger? Anguish? Maybe both. \"And what's that, in your opinion?\"\n\n\"Kill that old bastard,\" Jess said. \"Don't take him prisoner. Don't let Khalila tell you that justice must be impartial. She's right, but this is an exception. We've seen what damage he'll do as long as he draws breath.\"\n\nHe meant it. And he was honest enough, too, to know that part of the reason he said it with so much conviction was his own rage. He was hungry for revenge. And sick that he hadn't taken it out on Zara, who'd deserved it. Mercy was the effect of his friends, dragging him kicking and screaming into being a better man.\n\nJess didn't really think their good influence would last, in the end. He had too much of his family running through his veins, too much of his father's twisted, stunted outlook rubbed into him like a stain. It would take him a lifetime to unlearn it all. And here he was, barely eighteen, and dying, and all he could truly do was make one last mark. In a very real way, he thought, he'd already died in the arena with his brother.\n\nTwins were not meant to survive alone.\n\nWolfe simply shook his head and motioned to Dario, who stepped away to huddle with Glain and Wolfe. That left Jess with Morgan, who was watching him with a frown. \"You look dreadful,\" she said.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"I mean it, Jess. You shouldn't be here.\"\n\nShe was seeing more, he thought, than just his generally awful outward appearance. He couldn't hide from her. It was something he both loved and feared about her. \"You can't fix me,\" he said. \"Can you?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"It was your choice,\" she said. \"I've been reminded that I can't save everyone, especially not if it's their own chosen path.\" She smiled, briefly. It hurt him. \"I'm not even sure I can save myself, if I'm being quite honest.\"\n\nDario was shaking his head forcefully, and that caught Jess's attention. He left Morgan and walked to join that conversation. \"No,\" Dario was saying. \"I'm not doing this. I've had enough of intrigue. Let someone else\u2014\"\n\n\"No one else can make him believe it,\" Glain said. \"Who do you think lies better, you or me?\"\n\n\"He will know! I already double-crossed the Spanish; don't you think he'd have been told of that? I arranged for the slaughter of half his High Garda Elites! I'm the last person he'd believe just now.\"\n\n\"Dario. There's no one else.\" Glain sounded calm and patient, but there was weight there. \"He's not going to believe Wolfe, or me, or gods know, Jess. Definitely not Morgan. Who else is there?\"\n\nDario's brows drew together, and from Jess's viewpoint he could see the Spaniard really didn't like the suggestion he was about to make. \"I... might have a solution,\" he said. \"Jess, what about your father?\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe snapped, at the same time that Jess said, \"Yes.\" They looked at each other. Wolfe got to it first. \"There is absolutely no way that I trust your father to do anything but betray our interests.\"\n\n\"Well, true,\" Jess agreed. He drew a breath harder than he meant to and was racked by coughs that grayed out his vision and turned his legs to jelly, and when he blinked his way back into the world, Wolfe was clutching his arm to hold him up. And they all stared at him with identical expressions of concern... no, not Morgan. Morgan's was sadder than the others. Tinged with the knowledge he was sicker than he pretended. \"Sorry. Yes, my da is a snake who'll turn on anyone for a profit. But he won't turn on me. I'm all he's got left.\"\n\n\"Jess\u2014\" Morgan's voice was gentle, and more than a little appalled. \"Jess, you can't do this.\"\n\n\"It's something I can do,\" he said. \"I can beg. And he'll enjoy that.\"\n\nThey all fell silent, even Dario, who in earlier days might have mocked him. Maybe they all knew the weight of what that meant to him. He ignored them. He took out his Codex and wrote to his father, in the family's code. As he did, he asked, \"Where do you want to set the trap?\"\n\nA cough seized him at the end of that, twisted his lungs into knots, and reduced him to gagging blood on the ground. More than he liked. Wolfe held on to him, and he could feel the trembling of the Scholar's hands. See the horror, quickly covered again, on Dario's face.\n\nAfter a long rain-drenched span of seconds, Glain said, \"All right. You remember how to get to the ancient Serapeum, don't you? The one on our first day at Ptolemy House?\"\n\nThe day they'd discovered just how potentially deadly the game of the Great Library really was. Jess caught his breath, but it tasted foul and didn't do him much good. \"The old Archivist won't like it,\" he managed to say. \"Too enclosed.\"\n\n\"Have your father say it's for his own safety. That's no doubt true; there's a standing bounty on Callum Brightwell's head all over the Great Library.\"\n\nJess didn't waste time or breath discussing that. He just wrote the message out. He wondered what his father felt, seeing his handwriting appear. Wondered if it brought relief or anger. Probably both.\n\nThe delay was agonizing. What if he's so angry he won't reply? What if he's cut you off entirely? That would probably be a personal blessing, but now...\n\nHis father's handwriting began to inscribe itself onto the page, bland words that hid the message within. Are you sure?\n\nYes, Jess replied. Make it quick.\n\nThe delay was longer this time. He tried to ignore his own weariness, the shakes that rattled through him, the bleariness of his eyes. Come on, Da. For one time in your life, be useful to me without any gain for yourself.\n\nThe message finally came through. He took the bait. I've promised him escape and the funds to raise his own army to take back the throne. I told him you and Brendan both betrayed the family business and I wanted to make amends. He might not believe it. I wouldn't.\n\nJess waited for something else, anything else... a simple How are you? or Look after yourself, or the impossible I love you, son. Anything but silence.\n\nHe finally closed the Codex and swallowed a bitter sense of loss. He hadn't actually lost anything.\n\nBut it still hurt.\n\n\"He's sent the message to the old man, and the old man's agreed. Whether or not the Archivist will show up... that's not certain.\"\n\n\"I'll go there,\" Wolfe said. \"Glain? We'll need your squad. And to be cleverer than the old man thinks we are.\"\n\nHe glanced at Jess, just briefly, but Jess understood that to mean something. He nodded.\n\n\"I'll be fine; the Medica gave me a stronger mask and new medication on the way out,\" he said. He turned to Morgan, but seeing her face made him forget what he meant to say. She knew he was lying. \"Can you help us with this?\"\n\n\"Yes. I wish I could kill him for you. But... I can't.\" She lifted her hand so the ring was visible. \"Eskander gave me this to help me control my... hungers. The ring won't allow me to harm anyone unless they're harming me first.\" She looked him straight in the eyes as she continued. \"It also won't let me take away conscious choices people make. Such as making a deliberate decision to sacrifice themselves. Bear that in mind.\"\n\nHe nodded. He understood. And, in a strange way, he was grateful for it. Maybe he wouldn't be when this all came to an end and he was gasping for his last breath. But for now it felt comforting to know that his choices were his own, still.\n\n\"My clever father,\" Wolfe muttered. \"Trust Eskander to find yet another way to make this more difficult. All right, then. Do what you can. Dario\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not going to kill him,\" Dario said, and held up both hands in refusal. \"I've got no wish to be cut to pieces by whatever automata he's programmed to avenge him. Or worse, murdered by his lackeys. That would be a commoner's way to die.\"\n\n\"We'll make sure everyone knows how royally you bled to death,\" Glain said, but she was smiling. Jess felt it, too: belonging somewhere. Belonging here, with them. It meant something more than just... usefulness.\n\nHe was fairly certain, though he had no good context for it, that this was what it felt like to have a real, genuinely loving family.\n\n\"Come on, then,\" Glain said. \"My squad will meet us there. If I remember correctly, there's access to a sniper's gallery on the upper level. We'll position there.\"\n\n\"He'll know about it,\" Wolfe warned her. \"Our sole advantage is that we get there first.\"\n\n\"Then let's move,\" Jess said. \"I'll keep up.\" The looks they gave one another, if not him... It was irritating and warm at the same time. \"Fine. Find me a ride, then.\"\n\n\"I happen to have a carrier parked just around the corner,\" Glain said, as if she hadn't been thinking about him when she ordered it up. \"Dario, don't even think about asking for a nicer ride.\"\n\nHe shrugged that away. \"Sadly, I'm becoming used to the hardships.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 52",
                "text": "They did indeed get to the original Serapeum first; the carrier dropped them on the street near Ptolemy House and sped away, moving fast to some other destination. The rain was just a light drizzle now, and a bit warmer, or else Jess had just become accustomed to discomfort. The clouds still hit the moon, and even the streetlight glows couldn't make the streets look less than deserted and forbidding. From here, the sounds of fighting still echoed, but far away, as if they might not matter at all.\n\n\"Someone's still at Ptolemy House,\" Dario said, and Jess turned in that direction. Their old dormitory must have contained postulants for the upcoming year\u2014unfortunate timing for them, he supposed\u2014and he wondered who had been appointed as their proctor. Not Wolfe, obviously. For a moment he remembered what it had been like there. Dario, the peacock bully. Thomas, shy and quiet and unsure of his own genius. Khalila had changed the least, he thought; she'd always been so calmly self-assured. He and Morgan and Glain had probably shifted the most, each in their own directions. Each toward their strengths.\n\nHad Wolfe changed? If he had, it was impossible to tell. He slapped both of them on the backs of their heads as he passed.\n\n\"Gawk later,\" he said. \"Move.\"\n\nThe entrance to the ancient Serapeum, the very first public library of Alexandria\u2014and in the world\u2014seemed dark and deserted, until one of Glain's Blue Dogs melted out of the shadows. More followed. Not a magic trick, but it felt like one tonight. Jess nodded to those he knew, which was most, and from the way they looked at him, even the new ones knew who he was. \"No one inside,\" Glain's lieutenant said. \"You're sure about this. Once we're inside, we're rats in a trap.\"\n\n\"No,\" Glain said. \"We're the cats. The rats are about to arrive, so let's get set up. Scholar, you, Jess, and Dario are the cheese. I'll keep Morgan with me.\"\n\nMorgan started past but suddenly turned and enveloped him in a hug. Jess, surprised, returned it for just a few seconds before stepping away. \"Not good-bye,\" he said. \"You're not that lucky.\"\n\n\"I'm very lucky,\" Morgan said. \"Look who I call friends.\"\n\nFriends was a deliberate choice of word, he thought, and so was the hand she put so gently against his face. He swallowed a thickness in his throat as Glain, the Blue Dogs, and Morgan disappeared up a hidden set of narrow stairs. The space down here in the round chamber was empty; the scrolls were long since gone, and the stone shelves sat empty. It seemed ominously still.\n\nJess felt naked, cold, and suddenly very aware that he might end his life in this place. Well, he thought, dying in an ancient library isn't the worst way to go.\n\nHe just wished it had books on those empty shelves. Rare ones, the kind that smelled of the years they'd survived, written in the hand of their maker. He'd miss that. He'd miss a lot of things. Breakfast at their favorite sidewalk caf\u00e9 with his friends. Thick Alexandrian coffee. The twisting streets of London. The taste of Spanish food. The smell of roses.\n\nHe closed his eyes and tried to hold on to those things until his brother's whisper said, Don't die just yet. I'm enjoying my time on my own for a change.\n\nHe almost smiled. Almost. Brendan felt so real, so present, that he thought he could touch him.\n\nWhen he opened his eyes, Dario said, \"They're coming.\"\n\nHe expected the Archivist, but instead it was a High Garda Elite captain, decked out in the red uniform. He, Jess thought, could pass even Lord Commander Santi's harsh inspection. Even his boots looked polished.\n\nThe captain hadn't even bothered to draw his gun, and didn't now. He also didn't look at all surprised. And... he was alone. No sign of the Archivist.\n\n\"Well,\" he said. \"I didn't really expect much. But this is a nice surprise.\"\n\n\"Where is your master?\" Wolfe asked. \"Too afraid to show his face?\"\n\n\"Too smart, Scholar. Far too smart. Unlike you. Really, did you think this simpleminded trap would work? That you'd convince the most hunted man in Alexandria to put his head in a noose just because a criminal whose sons already betrayed him said so? I'm curious.\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said. \"I really didn't think he would. But it's good he sent you. You'll do.\"\n\n\"Do for what? Did you forget about the observation level?\" He looked up. So did Jess, and felt his stomach turn over.\n\nHe'd expected to see the Blue Dogs and Morgan. But they weren't there. He didn't know those faces at all.\n\nThose hard, angry, unmerciful faces were aiming rifles down at him, Dario, and Wolfe. The trap they'd planned had closed on them instead.\n\n\"Any last words, Scholar? I'll be happy to record them and add them to your journal... Oh, sorry, the Archivist has ordered your journals burned. No one will remember you. Especially when we kill all your followers.\"\n\n\"I don't have followers,\" Wolfe said. He looked at his students. \"Do I?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" Dario said. \"I'm afraid not. You're too unlikeable.\"\n\n\"As I feared.\" He looked back at the captain. \"You see? So leave my young friends out of this. Make it between adults, if you can manage that.\"\n\n\"I'm not interested in fighting you, Scholar.\"\n\n\"Well, in that case, I do have last words,\" Wolfe said. \"If you wouldn't mind.\"\n\nThe captain drew his gun at last. He aimed straight at Wolfe. \"Go ahead. Ten seconds.\"\n\nWolfe smiled. \"I only need one. Morgan?\"\n\nFrom somewhere up above, she said, \"Yes.\" And she dropped an illusion that must have cost her much, in terms of power and endurance.\n\nGlain and her squad were standing motionless behind the Elite soldiers. The Blue Dogs barked in unison, and it was a guttural, eerie sound that woke chills down Jess's spine.\n\n\"Give up, Captain,\" Wolfe said quietly. \"For the sake of your soldiers. Tell us where to find the Archivist and we'll spare all your lives.\"\n\nJess knew it wouldn't work. He lunged forward and grabbed hold of the Elite captain's hand as the man fired; the shot barely missed Wolfe's head and impacted the hard stone wall beyond. Gunfire erupted on the second level, but it wasn't coming at them. There was a battle going on between the soldiers. He could only hope Glain's squad was faster, if not better.\n\nHe managed to get the gun wide enough that the next shot the captain fired still went wide, but his strength was failing him. Dario came to the rescue, slamming a fist hard into the man's temple and rocking him off balance, and he, too, got a grip on the man, trying for the gun. Wolfe was moving forward, but everything seemed slowed down now. Jess shook with effort. His lungs burned. His whole body felt raw and empty and so very tired.\n\nI'm losing. He could taste defeat. It was bitter, like the blood welling up in his lungs.\n\nWolfe took the gun away, went back a step, and without a blink of hesitation, shot the man.\n\nThe red-uniformed captain clearly couldn't believe it. Jess could almost read his rueful thoughts: Felled by a Scholar.\n\nThe man's knees folded, and the captain collapsed to the floor, bleeding. Dario stepped back, and pulled Jess away with him.\n\n\"Where is the old man?\" Wolfe asked, and aimed his weapon at the captain's head. His voice sounded very quiet. Very calm. \"You have one chance. Just one. Then I kill you.\"\n\n\"No you won't, Scholar,\" the captain said, and bared his teeth. \"I surrender. And you're not a murderer, are you?\"\n\n\"Glain?\" Wolfe called. Jess heard her boots on the stairs, and in the next instant she was beside them, smelling of gunpowder and blood. Her favorite perfume. \"Status?\"\n\n\"Six prisoners, sir, the rest are dead.\" She put her foot on the captain's chest. \"Permission to execute the traitor?\"\n\n\"No, Wathen. I don't think so. Take him to a Medica station and then put him behind bars.\" Wolfe let out an angry huff of breath. \"We've failed. The Archivist is probably halfway to Russia now.\"\n\n\"Doubt it,\" Dario said. He had a cut on his head that was flooding crimson over his shirt; Jess hadn't seen it happen, and Dario hardly even seemed aware of it. \"Glain. Step away.\" Glain did. Dario moved forward and put the point of his dagger against the captain's throat.\n\n\"Are we playing this game again?\" The captain's teeth were gritted, but he seemed more irritated than frightened. \"I'll tell you nothing.\"\n\n\"You said that when you were up against a good man. Look into my eyes, my friend, and tell me what you see. Am I a good man?\" Dario grinned. It was one of the most chilling things Jess had seen him do. \"I am going to kill you for the damage you've already done to my friends. And the only thing that will stop me is if you give his location. The only thing. And you have three seconds before I start stabbing you. I intend to see how many holes I can make before you die.\"\n\n\"You're a liar\u2014\"\n\n\"That took three seconds,\" Dario said, and moved his dagger. He plunged it into the man's side, and even Jess flinched; he hadn't expected it. Clearly, neither had the captain, who let out a choked cry. \"It's a pity you chose this. Well, actually, it's not.\" He withdrew the blade and moved to the man's shoulder. He thrust expertly between bones, and the captain, pallid with shock, cried out this time. \"Because I very much am going to enjoy\u2014\"\n\n\"Dario,\" Wolfe said. \"Stop.\"\n\n\"No,\" Dario said. \"You don't command me, Scholar. Not this time. I want this old man. I want this to be done, for all our sakes. He knows. He'll talk.\"\n\nThe captain, pale and silent, shook his head. Jess closed his eyes. He didn't want to see it, but he knew Dario had stabbed again when he heard the breathless scream. \"Stop!\" The captain's voice was raw with panic now.\n\n\"Talk,\" Dario replied. \"Three seconds.\"\n\n\"He's going to kill her,\" the captain blurted. It was very nearly a snarl. Defiant to the end. \"He's in the Serapeum, after your false Archivist. And he's going to make it hurt.\"\n\nDario froze. His blade was still in the man's body, and for a moment Jess wasn't certain what he meant to do. Then he slowly pulled the dagger out and said, \"He's going after Khalila.\" There was no emotion to the words at all.\n\nBut all of it was in the blade he buried in the captain's heart.\n\nSomeone\u2014Morgan, perhaps, still upstairs\u2014gasped audibly, but no one else made a sound, not even Wolfe.\n\nJess felt an awful sort of emotion, something he could hardly understand that swept through him. Horror, yes, but also a kind of approval. He would have been executed, he thought. Maybe that was cleaner than he deserved.\n\nDario removed the blade, wiped it clean on the hem of his jacket, and said, \"We need to go. Right now.\"\n\nNot even Wolfe argued the point. But he turned to Jess and said, \"Can you make it?\"\n\n\"I will,\" Jess said.\n\nBut he knew his time was running out. And from the bleak look in the Scholar's eyes, so did Wolfe."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Lord Commander Niccolo Santi to his lover, Christopher Wolfe, put aside in case of his death:\n\n\u2002I suppose it seems foolish to tell you now that I've loved you since the moment I first set eyes on you, Chris; that was self-evident at the time, and though I've never said it I assume you noticed.\n\n\u2002Then again, you've always had a terrible opinion of your own attractiveness, so maybe you didn't. It doesn't matter now. I only meant to tell you that although I know my duty to the Great Library, it is a great struggle right now to not hand over my title, quit this battle, and find you. I want you safe. I want you always.\n\n\u2002But I know that you'd just shout at me to go back to what I do best, even though I've lost an Archivist to assassins, even though I have little chance of holding this city against enemies inside and out. We've always had the odds against us, and God knows this is not my first failure, only my greatest.\n\n\u2002I'll stay the course. And I know you will try to look after yourself, and those around you, because that's who you are.\n\n\u2002I love you. Even if I can't be with you, I will never leave you.\n\n\u2002I just wanted you to know that if you can't hear it from me tomorrow."
            },
            {
                "title": "THOMAS",
                "text": "The poisonous gas lapped around Thomas's lower legs now, and he felt frozen in place. He'd come so far, solved so many riddles, and now... now this.\n\nIt wasn't fair.\n\nThomas forced himself to think, not give in to the panic that stormed through him. This gas, was it the same that had so badly damaged Jess? Dragonfire, it was called?\n\nIf it was, then he had time. The smell was overwhelming, but it would take time to kill him. Minutes, perhaps hours or days. Certainly enough time to do what was necessary or there wouldn't have been any point in Heron's automaton warning him there was a puzzle to be solved.\n\nHis gaze raced around the room as he put the mask he'd been given back on. It wasn't of much use now\u2014he'd exhausted the supply of whatever alchemical gas had been placed within it\u2014but at least it helped a bit. It would buy him a few moments more.\n\nNot the recording device, he thought. There simply wasn't enough there to exploit. What was left? Well, the automaton of Heron. The steam calliope that didn't seem to work. Piles of treasure. He lifted his glow to reach to the far edges of the room, and froze.\n\nThe back wall was full of scrolls.\n\nFor a moment he forgot that this room was trying to kill him, because the wonder of it overwhelmed him. These were Heron's writings, the secret works that he'd never shared with the Great Library. Things no one had seen. Discoveries that might well be greater than Poseidon rising from the sea. Valuable beyond anything else in this room.\n\nBooks were Heron's real treasure.\n\nHe had to force himself back to the practical work of survival. You'll never know what's in them if you don't live. That much was certain.\n\nHe said to the automaton, \"Can you give me a clue?\" It was worth a try.\n\nThe automaton was silent for a moment, and then it said, \"What disappears when you say its name?\"\n\nAnother riddle. Thomas barely checked a shout of frustration. The green mist was coiling up his legs now, nearly at his waist. If he was immersed in it, what would happen? How long would it take him to choke to death?\n\nFear, it seemed, was a wonderful focus lens, because the answer came to him almost immediately. \"Silence,\" he said. \"Silence disappears when you say its name. But is silence the answer or...\" He stopped, because now it was obvious. \"No. Sound is the answer. But what sound? The calliope? It doesn't work! I don't have time to\u2014\" He broke into ragged, tearing coughs. This gas would disable him before it ever reached his face, he thought. He had to think.\n\nHe looked at the water clock to see how much time was actually left. By the amount of water that had drained into the reservoir, and the space left to fill, he could only have a few moments to\u2014\n\nIt's a water clock.\n\nHe lunged forward and took the mechanism from the automaton's grasp. It released it easily\u2014as if it expected him to make that motion. He looked at it from all angles and found an opening at the top that was fully sealed, which was why the water within it hadn't evaporated over the ages.\n\nHe grabbed a tool from a rack nearby and dug into the seal until it broke, and revealed a hole the size of the tip of a finger.\n\nThomas grabbed a funnel from the array of tools and raced to the calliope. It took precious seconds to find the opening; he jammed in the funnel and had to stop for another bout of horrible, painful coughs. His mouth felt too wet, and he tasted bitter foam he couldn't seem to swallow. The mist had risen to his chest now, a greenish sea of nightmares. His eyes burned and bled tears.\n\nHe had to have a steady hand to do this. He forced himself to be still and focus, and slowly poured the water from the clock into the funnel.\n\nAs soon as the clock was empty, he dropped it and slammed the lid shut. Now for the button, and then it would be done. A burner would ignite, heat the boiler; valves would release the steam in patterns and intensity to play the organ, and...\n\nHe couldn't see the button. The calliope's lower half was completely hidden in the mist, and it seemed to be rising faster now. His lungs hurt like they were filling with fire, and foam built in his mouth and nose, choking him. He could hear his strangled gasps, and his whole body was drenched in sweat.\n\nHis knees buckled. He grabbed for the steam calliope's frame and felt the whole thing rock unsteadily on metal wheels. No, no, I can't go down. If I do I'll be dead. Once his head went below that mist, he wouldn't survive.\n\nTears dripped down his face as he shut his eyes and once again summoned up focus. He'd seen this machine. He knew where the button was. Panic was blinding him, but he forced his mind to be still and show him what he needed to do.\n\nThe calliope drew itself in glittering lines in the pulsing darkness of his closed eyes, and there it was: the switch to flip the machine on. It was just a foot below the level of the mist.\n\nHe didn't open his eyes as he reached out.\n\nHis fingers closed on it, and he flipped it from down to up.\n\nHe heard the boiler begin to heat. It would take some seconds for the chemicals around it to heat it to boiling. He tried holding his breath, but it hurt too much, almost as much as breathing. I am in a lake of fire, he thought, and burning from the inside out.\n\nHeron's automaton said, \"Well done,\" and Thomas heard the hiss of steam engaging. The calliope was starting.\n\nHe opened his eyes as the notes sounded. The same notes as in the crystal cavern, but played in a beautiful, lyrical dance.\n\nThe mist continued to rise. It was at his chin. He wasn't going to make it out of this place.\n\nAnd then there was a sudden, violent blast of cool air from somewhere above, driving down the mist, drying the tears on his cheeks. He turned his face up to it like it was the sun coming out from clouds, and tried to breathe. Even standing was too difficult now, and his knees failed him as the last of the gas was driven down into cleverly concealed metal vents that snapped closed.\n\nHe was on the floor. He didn't remember falling.\n\nThe automaton looked down on him with an expression almost of sadness. \"You have done well,\" it said. \"But your trial is not over. The gas will be fatal if you don't retrieve the antidote.\"\n\nHe coughed out a bitter mouthful of foam and rolled on his side to gasp, \"Where?\"\n\nHeron's automaton pointed to the far wall, the one with the scrolls. A section of the shelves slid open like a drawer. Thomas stared at it in despair. It was too far away, and he was too weak. The idea of standing again, walking again, seemed as remote as the moon.\n\nThe automaton stretched out a hand.\n\nHe gritted his teeth and reached up for the help. Getting to his knees was agony. Getting to his feet made him spit blood. How did Jess live through this? he wondered, and he remembered the skull-like pallor of his friend's face. Maybe he hasn't.\n\nThomas made it to his feet, somehow, and caught himself against the worktable loaded with Heron's own tools. Pushed himself from there to the recording device. Then to the sphinx in the corner. Then, with a sob of pain, from there to the drawer.\n\nInside lay seven vials. He almost picked up the first one, and his blurry vision caught the colors of the glass.\n\nThe last trial.\n\nHe turned back to the automaton. \"Is there more?\"\n\n\"No. This is all.\"\n\n\"Can it cure two people?\"\n\nNo answer. Perhaps Heron had never written that answer into the machine.\n\nThomas lunged away to the worktable, found a glass beaker, and poured the contents of the vials into it, in the correct order. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.\n\nThe mixture turned cloudy white.\n\nI may kill us both, he thought, but better that than watching his friend die. He split the solution, pouring half into another vial and sealing it before he lifted the beaker to his lips.\n\nHe drank, and the taste of it was foul, but not as bad as the awful clinging horror of the Dragonfire gas. He felt it begin to work almost immediately, clearing the foam from his mouth and nose, opening up his throat. His lungs would take time, he thought; they seemed to be swollen and tender, stuffed with fluid.\n\nBut for the first time, he thought he would survive.\n\nHe took the vial and wrapped it carefully in fabric he tore from his ruined jacket. The pockets were still intact, so he stored the antidote there for Jess. I have to hurry.\n\nThen he looked at the wonders around him and despaired, because they were exposed now, vulnerable, and he could not stay here. He'd opened the way for predators. For the evil old man to take everything.\n\nHe couldn't just leave it like this.\n\nHe found a scroll case among Heron's things and began to wrap as many scrolls as he could together to fit into the small, round openings inside. He managed to gather about half before the case was full. Then he found another empty chest hidden behind the sphinx and put the rest inside that.\n\nHe passed Heron's statue.\n\nIt said, \"You are worthy of my legacy. Use my treasure well,\" and the gleam in its eyes went out. It was dead.\n\nIts purpose had been served.\n\nHe went past the unmoving sphinx. Past the crystals, which stayed dormant. Past the next sphinx, too.\n\nThe anteroom beyond had bodies lying on the flagstone floor. Men and women in red uniforms. He sent his people in after me. That was foolish. He checked each of them but found them all dead\u2014some, of wounds that could only have been made by the spears in the ceiling. Others, of wounds that looked like they'd been earned in battle.\n\nHe picked his way carefully on the safe path through the room, made the stairs, and realized that something was very, very wrong.\n\nAt the top of the staircase Thomas saw a flash of lightning split the sky.\n\nThe sky. He shouldn't have been able to see the sky.\n\nBut the temple that had covered this place was gone. Just... gone.\n\nHe emerged into a smoky pile of rubble, a broken god in pieces on the ground, and steadily falling rain. Fires were burning. Walls had been shattered.\n\nThe Archivist was gone. He wasn't among the dead; Thomas checked every body, no matter how torn and bloody. These were his soldiers, and two dead automata sphinxes who'd evidently attacked them.\n\nNo one to help here, and no one to stop, either. He was free. Free to go, with Heron's treasures.\n\n\"Stop,\" a voice said. He couldn't see anyone. Then lightning flared, and he saw Zara Cole crouched just ahead of him, aiming a rifle at his chest. Rain flattened her hair against her head, darkened her uniform almost to black. She must have been cold and miserable, but her aim was steady, her eyes calm.\n\nThen she put her rifle down, raised her hands above her head, and said, \"I surrender to you, Scholar Schreiber.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Thomas asked. He didn't trust her, of course. He was looking for a trap, but the night didn't seem to hold any other soldiers, any other secrets. \"Why would you give up now?\"\n\nShe took in a deep breath and said, \"I was wrong, Thomas. He never intended to save the Great Library. He intends to destroy it.\" She staggered and fell to her knees, and even though he didn't trust her, he carefully set down the boxes he carried and went to her.\n\nUp close, he saw the holes in her uniform, and the blood that was pouring out of her wounds. She'd been shot. Several times.\n\n\"Lie down,\" he told her. \"I'll find a Medica.\"\n\n\"No. No time,\" she said. \"The Archivist shot me. He shot me, after everything\u2014\" She sounded more amazed than angry, and shook her head to dismiss it. \"He thought you'd failed. He knew he was finished. He intends to take it all with him.\"\n\nThomas felt a surge of real fear at that. \"What do you mean, all?\"\n\n\"The Great Archives,\" she said. \"He's set them to burn. Stop him. You have to...\" She fell slowly, tipping on her side and then rolling on her back, staring up at him as he crouched beside her. She didn't seem to see him for a moment, but then she smiled. Smiled. \"I knew you weren't dead,\" she said. \"You're too hard to get rid of. So I waited for you.\"\n\n\"Yes, I see that,\" Thomas said. \"Zara\u2014\"\n\n\"Go,\" she whispered. \"I'm sorry. I thought... I thought he was the rightful leader of this city. But I was wrong. I was so wrong\u2014\"\n\n\"I have to leave you here.\"\n\n\"I know.\" In the next muttering thread of lightning from the clouds overhead, he saw her skin had gone chalky, her eyes almost luminous. \"Tell Nic I'm sorry.\"\n\nShe died before the next lightning bolt split the sky overhead, and Thomas slowly rose to stare down at her.\n\nThen he picked up the precious cargo of Heron's treasure, and ran."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the Russian ambassador to the tsar of Russia. Available in the Codex after a twenty-year interdiction.\n\nThey've killed so many of us tonight. So many. And the old man has never come as he agreed with his magical inventions of Heron of Alexandria. You gave me the authority to prosecute this war.\n\nInstead, I am ending it.\n\nI am withdrawing our troops from this fight. Let the Great Library stand or fall as it may. We're far from home, and we have lost far too many of our sons and daughters.\n\nThe High Garda, it was said, was weak. The city was complacent and soft.\n\nNeither of these things are true, and we cannot win this war without destroying ourselves in the process.\n\nI, for one, hope that the Great Library survives. It has fought hard enough for that privilege."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "Khalila was in danger. There was no discussion on whether or not to go, only how best to get there before it was too late. Dario was just... gone, moving so quickly not even Glain could get in his way. Wolfe wrote quickly in his Codex, but even as his stylus was moving, he said, \"We can't rely on security to stop the old man; he may still have allies inside the Serapeum, and he no doubt knows the place better than anyone.\"\n\nThe odds of the Archivist having a secret way into the Serapeum were good, and Jess realized with a chill that no matter how careful Santi had been, he couldn't know all the modifications and specializations the old man would have made during his reign. \"His office is the most likely entry point,\" Jess said. \"He'll have some way in and out that he kept secret. He could go in that way.\"\n\n\"But Khalila isn't using his office,\" Glain said.\n\n\"Wasn't,\" Wolfe corrected her. \"Now that she's been elevated, she might. She was using a small desk in a storage area, and last I saw she was in a conference room with the Curia. But we don't know what's happened since.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Jess said. \"Send the warning to Dario. He'll get to her and defend her to the death. You know he will.\"\n\nWolfe glanced at him, then nodded and kept writing. \"Yes. You're right. But we still should hurry. This is his endgame, I think. And we don't know what he's got planned.\"\n\n\"The old Archivist doesn't have his Elites anymore,\" Glain said. \"We've killed most of them. So what could he possibly have left?\"\n\n\"His pet Obscurist.\" Morgan had been silently watching, but now she stepped forward. \"Vanya Nikolin. He's very good at staying out of sight. I'm not certain how powerful he is, but if he can assist the Archivist in any way, it's by making him undetectable to most.\"\n\n\"Can you find this Obscurist?\" Wolfe asked. \"If you can, then it's very possible that we can find the Archivist along with him. If I know the old man, he'll keep his Obscurist close and try to use one of the Serapeum's Translation Chambers to escape once he's done.\"\n\n\"After he kills Khalila, and does God only knows what kind of damage,\" Jess said. \"We can't wait for a transport.\" And I'll slow you down, he thought, and felt a surge of frustration and despair. It stung, but he had to be practical. He wasn't well enough to run, or even walk. And they all knew that.\n\nMorgan nodded. \"Hands,\" she said. They all looked at each other uncertainly. She rolled her eyes. \"Stand in a circle and hold hands. I'll get you inside the Serapeum.\"\n\n\"Morgan,\" Wolfe said. \"Are you sure\u2014\" He glanced significantly at Jess. What he really meant was, Can he survive the trip?\n\nAnd Jess wasn't at all sure he could, but damned if he was going to say it. Not with Khalila's life and the entire Great Library in the balance.\n\n\"Is there a choice?\" Morgan asked quietly.\n\nWolfe didn't like the answer; Jess could see that. But he held out his hands, and Jess clasped his left, Morgan his right. Glain stepped up and completed the circle.\n\nGlain looked to her Blue Dog second, who was watching this with real worry. \"Go straight to Lord Commander Santi,\" she said. \"Tell him we're tracking the old man to the Serapeum, and Khalila is in danger. What are you waiting for? Go!\"\n\n\"Sir.\" He saluted.\n\nThen the room dissolved around them in a flash of light, and Jess was falling, flying, flailing, in an ice-cold hell of darkness until suddenly it was done and he was collapsing to the floor. Translation. He hated Translation. And this time, he felt the damage it did to him, pulling at him in all kinds of horrible ways. It felt as if he was dying, as if he'd never draw in another lifesaving breath again... and he heard himself gasping over and over like a landed fish. Felt hands turning him over. Heard a confusion of voices smearing the air.\n\nThen he was able to breathe a little, and the fog parted. He blinked and focused. Morgan was kneeling over him. And Wolfe. Glain stood apart, staring down.\n\n\"You didn't even let us say it,\" Jess managed to whisper.\n\n\"In bocca al lupo,\" Morgan said. Her voice was gentle, her eyes full of grief. \"The wolf hasn't eaten you yet, Jess. I've helped you a little, but...\"\n\n\"But you can't save me,\" he said. \"I know. It's all right.\"\n\nThe walls above him looked familiar. So did the looming bulk of a desk. Gods in niches.\n\nThey were in the Archivist's old office, and Jess felt a sudden shock of horror. The smell. The acrid, awful smell of the gas was everywhere. \"Poison!\" he gasped. \"Get out!\"\n\n\"It's no longer effective,\" Morgan said, and wrinkled her nose. \"It's foul-smelling, but that's the worst of it. The part that made it so dangerous can only survive for an hour before it breaks down. I read the account in the Black Archives. We'll be all right.\"\n\nWolfe turned to Morgan. \"Can you tell if the old man has been here?\"\n\nMorgan nodded. Her eyes were closed, but when she opened them Jess saw that shimmer again. Unearthly and wrong. \"He has,\" she said. \"But he's gone. I don't know where he is now. We should get to Khalila, quickly.\"\n\nJess tried to get up, but he couldn't. The smell of the gas made him feel sick and weak all over again. He coughed and concealed the blood by hacking it onto his sleeve. Dark cloth concealed everything.\n\nWolfe checked the time. \"She may be in the prayer room. There's one set aside in the Serapeum near the conference room where I last saw her. Can you locate her? Or Dario?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Morgan said. \"But\"\u2014she looked at Jess\u2014\"he can't come with us.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Jess said. \"I'll follow.\" That was a lie. He had nothing left.\n\nMorgan put a gentle hand on his brow, and he was shocked at how cold it was. Or how feverish he felt. He didn't know which of them was worse at the moment. \"Stay here,\" she said. \"Please.\"\n\nHe couldn't do anything else. His lungs were a ruin of pain, every breath agonizing. Blood bubbled at the back of his throat. I'm coming apart.\n\nHe didn't want to die in the Archivist's office. After all this, not here.\n\nWolfe said, \"I'll stay\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess gasped. He managed to sit up and put his back against the desk. Smiled. \"No, Scholar. Go. I'm all right. Just go!\"\n\nWolfe's face told him everything he needed to know about how painful the decision was, and how inevitable.\n\nHis friends left him behind. He was glad. This wasn't something he wanted any of them to see.\n\nHe coughed out a mouthful of blood onto the carpeting and realized that it was already stained. Neksa's blood? She'd died here. Then he frowned, because he clearly remembered that the Archivist had replaced that carpet. He touched the stain, and his fingers came away bright red.\n\nFresh blood. And not his own. What could that mean? Had someone caught the Archivist here and been injured or killed for their trouble?\n\nJess pulled himself up and followed the drops of blood across the carpet to the silent automata gods. There was a bright pool of crimson at the feet of Anubis, as if someone gravely wounded had been here and... touched what? He looked at everything twice and finally saw a smear of blood on the flail in the god's hand. He touched it. Nothing happened. He wrapped his hand around it and tried to pull it. That wasn't right, but he felt it give slightly.\n\nHe turned his wrist and twisted.\n\nThe god stepped down and away from the opening, and the panel behind him slid open. Jess watched the automaton closely, ready to dodge should Anubis use that flail... but it seemed passive. He stepped up onto the pedestal and through the open doorway.\n\nAnubis climbed back up to its former position. The door slid closed again.\n\nJess turned to see... a library. A room full of books, rich with the smell of aging paper, leather bindings. A hint of dust. Just the kind of room he would pick to die in, he thought, and felt a flicker of relief. He could feel the end coming. And this was a good place for it, at last.\n\nThe library was full of originals. Illegal, hoarded originals, just like home. The irony of it tasted bitter as the tainted blood at the back of his throat.\n\nThere was an old man in a chair, and he was bleeding all over the brown leather.\n\n\"Well,\" the old Archivist said. \"I see that neither of us has outrun our destinies, Brightwell.\" He laughed a little, and gasped. His face turned the color of the palest of papers, so pale Jess could almost see the sharp lines of the skull beneath. \"Irony of ironies. I came to die in the company of my oldest friends, and here you are. I can't seem to get rid of you.\"\n\n\"What happened?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"Do you really care?\" The Archivist smiled a little, but it failed after an instant. \"Going to call someone? Medica? High Garda? An executioner? I fear you're too late.\"\n\n\"Who did it?\"\n\n\"In the end? Zara managed one last shot as I was leaving,\" he said. \"I stretched her loyalty too far. ''Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.'\"\n\n\"Don't you dare quote Shakespeare.\"\n\n\"I like Shakespeare, boy. I like everything. I read everything. Well, have read. All new things are now behind me.\" The Archivist reached out for a book and opened it\u2014not one of the rare originals on the shelves, but a simple Blank. His fingers were bloody and shaking. \"Can't damage the books by staining them. I thought I'd read something familiar now, if I could. Would you load one for me?\"\n\nIn this moment he was just an old man afraid to die. All that he'd been, all the cruelty and power and fanatical zeal, had been dropped somewhere on the other side of this door. He wanted comfort.\n\nAnd he did not deserve it. Jess thought of Brendan, dying in his arms. Thought of Neksa murdered on this vile old dictator's command, and the people killed in the arena he hadn't even known. Thousands of deaths to hang around this man's neck. Tens of thousands.\n\nIncluding his own, because he knew the poison would get him yet. One last, fatal gift from the grave.\n\nHe opened his own Codex. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"I think Aristotle's Poetics. One of my favorites.\"\n\nJess tapped the title and held the Codex to the Blank. Aristotle's flowing Greek filled the pages, and the Archivist smiled a little. \"I will be the last to read this book,\" he said. \"Isn't that a great and terrible thing?\"\n\n\"You mean, it's the last thing you'll read.\"\n\n\"No,\" the Archivist said, and met his eyes. Jess had been wrong. Pale, weak, dying, the old man was still himself. Still full of spiteful power, and something worse. \"I will be the last to read Poetics. The last to read any of the books stored in the Great Archives. So it's fitting that I will savor it before it's gone.\"\n\nJess's mouth went dry. He remembered being a child, locked in a carriage with a madman who ripped pages from the world's rarest book only to eat them. There was some of that evil pleasure in the Archivist's eyes now. He enjoyed taking something out of the world. He intended to be buried with his possessions, like an ancient Pharaoh. Only the Great Archives never belonged to him.\n\n\"What have you done?\" he blurted.\n\n\"Blame Archivist Nobel,\" the Archivist said. \"He never imagined a day when destroying the Great Library was a choice we could really make; he intended the system as a deterrent for any enemies willing to attack Alexandria. But that's purely his lack of imagination. It only takes the will to act.\"\n\nJess forgot his own weakness. He grabbed the old man by the front of his jacket and dragged him up and out of the chair, but the Archivist was deadweight, hardly able to stand. His head lolled drunkenly on his neck. He was bleeding so badly it fell like rain around him.\n\n\"This place is mine,\" the Archivist said. He sounded faint and exhausted. \"And I will take it back. I bind it in blood and ashes and flame. Tomorrow I will be gone, but so will the Great Library of Alexandria. It's done, boy. It's done.\"\n\nJess let go and stepped back. He couldn't comprehend what he was hearing.\n\n\"What have you done?\" he asked again.\n\n\"I've killed it,\" the man said. He smiled.\n\nAnd then he collapsed.\n\nDead."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt from Brendan Brightwell's personal journal, never transcribed into the Great Archives:\n\n\u2002I had a dream once that I was an only child, and I woke up from it crying. I was just a wee lad then, and when Jess asked me why I was crying I hit him until he went away.\n\n\u2002Because that was the moment I realized that although I thought I hated my brother, hated the whole idea of there being two of us identical on this earth... I couldn't do without him, either. I needed him.\n\n\u2002And, yes, I loved him.\n\n\u2002By the time we were old enough to form these thoughts properly, and adult enough to talk about them, we weren't really talking at all. Jess had turned bookish and hated everything about his life, including me. I can't really blame him for it. Da had made our lives a living hell the whole time, and I'd been the one Da favored.\n\n\u2002I wish I'd made things right.\n\n\u2002I hope I still can someday.\n\n\u2002I don't want to be alone."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "Khalila was in midsentence when Dario burst into the conference room, a full dozen High Garda soldiers in his wake. She paused, shocked, and he sent her a quick, apologetic glance and turned to the soldiers. \"Close the shutters and secure the doors,\" he said. \"No one comes in or out without my approval.\"\n\n\"Hold!\" Khalila said sharply. \"Scholar Santiago doesn't speak for me. What is this?\"\n\n\"The old man is here,\" Dario told her. She saw the very real worry in his eyes. \"He means to kill you, querida, and I will not let that happen. These are Santi's picked troops. They're loyal.\"\n\nThe Curia members\u2014only three in the room just now\u2014had come to their feet. Litterae Magnus Vargas had drawn a concealed High Garda weapon. And Khalila felt the cool reassurance of the dagger she kept strapped to her forearm. It was no defense against a bullet, but what was? She wore an armored jacket beneath her summer blue dress, and a thin layer of flexible mail under the hijab to protect her head. It was practical. It was not perfect.\n\n\"Thank you for your concern,\" she said, \"but we are in the middle of coordinating\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" Dario interrupted. \"I need you safe.\"\n\nShe drew herself up to her full height and met his gaze squarely. \"Scholar,\" she said, and kept her voice calm and quiet. \"What I need from you is obedience. Take these soldiers and leave the room. You may secure it from outside if you like. I will order the shutters closed. But you must go. Now.\" She turned to the lieutenant in charge of the High Garda. \"And you need to understand who to obey. You obey me, the members of the Curia, and only after us, a full Scholar, no matter what his relationship to me might be. Do you understand this?\"\n\nHe seemed shocked, but he nodded and composed himself quickly. \"Yes, Archivist. My apologies. I believed there was a direct and immediate threat to your safety.\"\n\n\"Not in this room,\" she said. \"And I trust you to prevent any from reaching it. Scholar Santiago? A word.\"\n\nShe turned and walked toward the farthest corner of the room, and heard his footsteps follow her after a few seconds of silence. She didn't turn until he reached her. \"This will not happen again,\" she told him. \"Dario, I am not your querida. I am the Archivist and Pharaoh of the Great Library, and you will not do this again. Do you understand?\" She leveled a stare on him, and knew he felt it. She saw him flinch from the deep cut she'd just delivered. She didn't like it, but she knew it was necessary.\n\n\"I was just\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what you were doing,\" she interrupted. \"I love you, Dario. But I will not be ordered about, or silenced, or overruled. In private, we are equals. Here, we are not and we can never be. Do you understand?\"\n\nHe held in whatever anger he felt, though she saw a muscle clench tight along his jaw. \"I understand.\" The words were quiet and very clear. \"My apologies, Archivist. I am yours to command.\" She waited for the but. He managed to avoid it. She gave him full credit for it; she wouldn't have thought he could. \"We questioned the captain of the Elites. He said that you were to be killed here, in the Serapeum.\"\n\n\"Lord Commander Santi authorized additional guards,\" she said. \"Do you not think I am kept aware? Dario. My love. You must trust that I know what I'm doing, or this will not work between the two of us. I'm honored by your passion, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But I undermined your authority,\" he said, and bowed his head. \"I'm sorry. I only meant to guard you.\"\n\n\"I've taken the highest office in the Great Library. That entails risk. And I can't be seen to be afraid of it.\"\n\nThis time, he didn't speak at all. Only nodded. And that was when she knew he understood.\n\n\"Thank you,\" she whispered, and gently kissed him. \"For knowing when to stop.\"\n\nHe smiled a little, but there was a bleak distance in his eyes she didn't fully understand. \"Oh, I don't,\" he said. \"Not where your safety is concerned. But I'll be more careful.\" He bowed. Not even a trace of mockery. \"With your permission, Archivist, I'll withdraw from the room. I'll be right outside when you need me.\"\n\nShe nodded, and hoped the warmth in her gaze was enough to bridge the distance.\n\nDario straightened and headed for the door. The last soldier in the room was at the windows, cranking down the metal shutters.\n\nHe was killed by a sphinx as it glided in through the opening, silent on its metal wings. It speared him through the chest with talons as long as an eagle's, and flung him across the room in a spray of torn flesh and blood.\n\nDario's hand went for a sword that was missing from his belt, and then he drew his dagger.\n\nLitterae Vargas shouted, \"High Garda! Defend the Archivist!\" And the doors that had just shut flew open as they rushed in.\n\nKhalila had a knife that was already in her hand even before the shock hit her\u2014shock that immediately vanished like mist under the sun, with determination and anger taking its place. They dare to kill here again. High Garda soldiers ran to her and surrounded her in a wall of bodies, and the Curia members dived for protection behind an overturned table\u2014but the sphinx wasn't coming for them.\n\nIt turned its Pharaoh's head straight toward her, and shrieked.\n\nDario stepped out of the protection of the High Garda. \"No!\" Khalila cried, but she knew what he was doing, and why. I can do this. I don't need you to do it for me. But that wasn't true. When she was just Scholar Khalila Seif, she would have risked herself freely. But the same position that meant he couldn't command her meant that she couldn't order him not to protect her, either.\n\nHe gave her a flash of a smile, cocky as ever, and she saw for the first time that he had blood in his hair, blood on his shirt\u2014how had she missed it before?\n\nThen he was moving.\n\nHe ran at the sphinx, dodged a swipe from a taloned paw, and then another. He buried his sword in one of the thing's eyes, and as it lifted its head and let out another violent scream, he twisted in close and jammed his fingers up under the thing's chin. Then he rolled under it, between the slashing paws, and curled into a ball with his hands covering his head. He was helpless if it hadn't worked, if it turned on him...\n\nBut it stopped, midturn, with its claws hovering a few inches above his body.\n\nKhalila didn't dare breathe. She heard the hiss of steam, the ticking of the clockworks inside the automaton's body.\n\nDario opened one eye, saw the claws looming over him, and flinched.\n\n\"Move!\" Khalila snapped, and the soldiers stepped away from her. She ran to Dario, grabbed his hands, and pulled him out from under the dead automaton. Then up and into her arms. \"What idiocy was that?\"\n\n\"Heroism,\" he said, and gave her a shaky smile. \"Pure heroism.\"\n\nShe only sighed. Then she stepped back, folded her hands together, and said, \"Thank you for your bravery, Scholar Santiago.\"\n\nHe stopped smiling, but she saw the glow in his eyes nevertheless. He bowed deeply. \"Archivist. I'll be outside. Just in case there's another chance to prove my worth.\"\n\nHe walked to the door, and a guard looked at her for a nod before he opened it for Dario's departure.\n\nKhalila caught her breath on something that might have been a laugh, or a sob, or both, and turned to the lieutenant of the High Garda soldiers. \"Please see to your fallen man. What is his name...?\"\n\n\"Reyansh Bannerjee.\"\n\n\"I will personally inform his family of his sacrifice, and that he gave his life for mine.\"\n\n\"Yes, Archivist.\" The lieutenant signaled his men, and four of them broke away to carry Reyansh Bannerjee\u2014a man she had never known, a man with a life and a family and a reality now ended\u2014away. I owe him my life. I will do him honor every day I must shoulder this responsibility.\n\nShe'd only just caught her breath and retrieved her fallen dagger when a knock came at the door. Dario's voice said, \"Archivist? Scholar Wolfe is here.\"\n\n\"He may enter,\" she said. \"Members of the Curia, are you all right\u2014?\"\n\n\"Fine,\" Litterae Vargas reported, and helped the older members to their feet. \"We'll continue our business when you're ready. Personally, I could use a drink.\"\n\nOnce they were out, Wolfe entered, and once she'd given permission the soldiers also allowed Glain, Morgan, and Dario to join them. Just her friends now, and for the first time she let her guard down. A little.\n\n\"You're all right?\" Wolfe asked her. At her nod, he continued. \"We were told there was a threat to your safety. We came as soon as we could.\" He cast a sidelong look at Dario. \"Though I see he managed to get here sooner.\"\n\n\"I commandeered a carriage, and then I ran,\" Dario said flatly. \"Like the devil was after me. Where's Jess?\"\n\n\"Resting,\" Morgan said. \"In the old Archivist's office. He couldn't make it the rest of the way. We'll go back for him, but we needed to be sure\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" Khalila said, and managed a smile. \"And you, Morgan?\"\n\n\"Yes. I'm well enough. Do you know where Thomas is?\"\n\n\"No,\" Khalila said. \"The High Garda's been on the hunt when they can, but... You don't think something's happened to him, do you?\"\n\n\"I think Thomas wouldn't disappear at a time like this unless he had no choice in the matter,\" Wolfe answered. \"And he was last seen leaving the Lighthouse, on his way to the workshops\u2014\"\n\nWolfe's Codex shivered in its holder at his belt. So did Glain's. So did Morgan's. And Dario's.\n\nAnd Khalila's, too.\n\nThey all opened them at about the same moment. Wolfe was just a fraction faster to the meaning.\n\n\"It's from Thomas. He says the Great Archives are in danger. The Archivist intends to destroy them.\"\n\nFor a blank instant, Khalila looked at him, waiting for him to give some order, and then she remembered. No. This was her duty, not his.\n\n\"Who's the best expert on the Great Archives available?\"\n\n\"There are special Scholars who maintain the collection,\" Wolfe said. He was already writing in his Codex. \"And a special company of guards dedicated to its protection.\"\n\n\"Summon the Scholars, if they're not already inside the facility,\" she said. \"We'll require their expertise. Do it on my authority.\"\n\nShe quickly wrote to Lord Commander Santi. I will need your troops stationed at the Great Archives to be under my immediate command. Secure the facility. No one goes in or leaves unless I grant permission. Kill anyone who attempts entry without my approval.\n\nUnderstood, Santi wrote back. The battle is winding up here. Russians retreating. I will come myself.\n\nShe hesitated, then wrote, Hurry. We need you.\n\nThen she looked up and said, \"Now. We all go. If the Great Archives are in danger, we can't wait here.\"\n\nWolfe bowed slightly, and put his fist over his heart. A High Garda gesture. \"In your service, Archivist.\" She listened for any hint of mockery. But he was completely sincere.\n\nI am the Archivist of the Great Library, she thought. If only for this one night.\n\nBut for this one night, the Great Library will survive. At whatever cost.\n\nInsha'Allah."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter handwritten by Obscurist Alfred Nobel, kept and handed down to each Archivist in turn until the reign of Archivist Khalila Seif:\n\n\u2002I am writing to give you a burden so great that our minds can scarcely grasp its significance. I am sorry, but you must read this, keep it, and share it only with your trusted Curia and the Lord Commander of the High Garda, all of whom must be sworn to secrecy in this matter.\n\n\u2002After much debate, we have installed four controls in the Greek fire system beneath the Great Archives. A saboteur might find the controls. To that end, we have taken a lesson from the writings of Great Heron, and carefully concealed what to do in the event of an unwanted activation of this system.\n\n\u2002The drawings below show precisely what must be done.\n\n\u2002Do not fall prey to the trap we have set, or all is lost."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "Jess looked down at the dead Archivist for a frozen eternity of seconds, and then fumbled the breathing mask from his pocket and dragged down breaths, as many and as fast as he could stand. It helped a little. Working out how to leave the library room took long minutes, but he finally found the switch that moved the god out of the way. The walk from the Archivist's office to the formal entry area seemed to take forever\u2014an endless hallway, and he moved on leaden legs.\n\nBut he made it to the hub at the end of the hallway. From there, a steam-powered lifting chamber took him up to the fourth level of the pyramid. He stumbled out as soon as the doors opened on the right level. He wasn't sure how much strength he had left, but there was no time to waste. He had to use it all.\n\nHigh Garda were everywhere, and as Jess approached they shouted at him to stop. He was forced to obey at the point of guns. He looked for a friendly face, found nothing but death staring back.\n\n\"Archivist,\" he gasped. \"I need the Archivist\u2014\" He nearly fell, and braced himself against the wall. \"Archives are in danger. Tell her.\"\n\n\"She knows.\" Lord Commander Niccolo Santi's voice came from behind him, and Jess turned to look. Santi was a terrifying sight: exhausted, red-eyed, smoke-stained, and his expression was absolutely bloody murderous. \"Thomas sent word. He's coming, too. Where have you been?\"\n\nNo point in wasting his breath explaining. Jess doubled over coughing, and fumbled for his mask. Took a couple of breaths and tried again. \"The old Archivist said something about Archivist Nobel.\"\n\nSanti grabbed Jess by the shoulders and stared at him, and Jess had never seen the man so shaken. \"What did you say?\"\n\n\"He said\u2014Nobel had never imagined destroying the Great Library, but he'd made it possible.\"\n\n\"Where is the old Archivist?\"\n\n\"Dead,\" Jess said. \"In his private library.\"\n\n\"Jess!\" He heard Khalila's shout, and he looked up and saw her pushing past the soldiers toward him. She was flanked by his friends, and he saw her expression shift when she saw him, but she didn't ask him what was wrong. She came straight to the point, moving her attention to Santi. \"Lord Commander, I'm glad you're here. We believe the Great Archives are in danger. According to Thomas, who is on his way there.\"\n\n\"Something Jess just said made me realize he's right. The old man has a way to do something unthinkable.\"\n\n\"That's a word I've never heard you use before,\" Wolfe said. \"Nic, what's happened?\"\n\n\"About to happen.\" Santi took in a deep breath. \"Khalila, you should have been briefed on this; Archivist Murasaki was, but there hasn't been time to meet with you. The Great Archives have, for more than a full century, had a fail-safe system. It was installed by Archivist Nobel during his reign\u2014a bluff meant to terrify nations into compliance at a time when many wanted to take Alexandria for themselves. In the event of an attack, should any nation seize control of the source of knowledge\u2014it would be destroyed. Everyone would lose. Only the Archivist and the Lord Commander knew about this fail-safe.\" He shook his head. \"The awful thing is that it's worked. It's kept most countries from testing our resolve.\"\n\n\"That's...\" Jess saw the horror dawn in Khalila's eyes, just as he felt it dawn inside him. \"That's monstrous.\"\n\n\"It kept the peace. It was never meant to be used, only as an apocalyptic threat.\"\n\n\"Nobel's great secret,\" Wolfe said. \"There were rumors, but\u2014they actually installed it?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Santi said. \"A massive series of Greek fire sealed in tubes running beneath the Great Archives. Only the Archivist or Lord High Commander can activate it. Only the Archivist can stop it once activated.\"\n\n\"How?\" Khalila asked tensely. \"How can I stop it?\"\n\n\"You can't,\" Santi said. \"Your name has yet to be written in the official record. You haven't been fully confirmed. The fail-safe can only be countermanded by an Archivist written in the history.\"\n\n\"You're missing the obvious. She only needs to be written into the official record,\" Wolfe said. \"Immediately. We do that, and this is over.\"\n\n\"We can't,\" Santi said. \"It has to be done after a Scholars' Conclave. She hasn't had one.\"\n\n\"Does a formality matter now?\"\n\n\"No, Scholar, he's right,\" Khalila said. \"The records can't be amended. They're locked. Unless Morgan can\u2014\"\n\nMorgan, Jess saw, was already trying. She was looking into a strange middle distance, eyes unfocused, and her hands were moving in odd patterns. \"Give me your Codex, Archivist.\"\n\nKhalila handed it to her. Morgan opened it, and patterns of shimmering, incredibly complex lines formed between her hands and the book. Part of it seemed to waver. Lines disappeared. But then it all just... vanished.\n\nMorgan flinched and dropped the Codex. Her hands looked red, as if she'd been burned by it. She gasped and pulled them close to her chest. \"I'm sorry,\" she said. Her voice shook. \"I can't. I'm not even sure Eskander can do it. That's something... the protections on those documents were done by someone much more powerful than I am. Or ever will be.\"\n\nKhalila took a deep breath and abandoned that hope. She cast about for an instant, then said, \"Thank you for trying. Scholars, it has to be run by some kind of machine. Can the machine itself be stopped instead? Dismantled, perhaps?\"\n\nSanti looked at her. \"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Then we'd better damn well try,\" Wolfe said. He started to speak, then stopped and looked at Khalila. \"Archivist?\"\n\n\"Yes. We must find a way inside, locate the machine, and stop this from happening. There's no time for anything else, if Thomas and Jess are both right.\"\n\n\"Archivist, you can't risk yourself\u2014,\" Santi started to say. Khalila turned to look at him.\n\n\"If I lose the Great Archives, there is nothing left to risk,\" she said. \"I don't intend to lose them. I'm coming.\"\n\nMorgan said, \"Hands,\" and held hers out. This time, they didn't hesitate, and Santi joined the circle.\n\nAll together now. Together at the end of things.\n\nAll except for Thomas. Where was he? What had happened to him? Jess hated not knowing. His friend needed help; that much was clear. And he couldn't give it.\n\nTranslation.\n\nJess came through it alive, but he knew it would be the very last time he could endure it; his whole body felt twisted with the effort, and he resorted to his mask again to force air into his failing lungs. Morgan held his hand, and he knew she wanted to help him. He also knew that she couldn't, not much. But maybe... just maybe... enough to get him through this.\n\nAfter this didn't really matter.\n\nThey stood inside the Great Archives. He knew this chamber; he'd been here before, a vast and vaulting space where he, Wolfe, and Morgan had ended up after Translating from his father's estate. The beginning of this strange road they were running.\n\n\"Well, this should be easy,\" Dario said as he looked around at the incredible size of the place. Impossibly, he'd retained a sense of humor. \"Please tell me there's a simple off button.\"\n\n\"Quiet,\" Morgan said. \"Thomas is outside. I'm bringing him in.\"\n\nAnd in the next blink, there Thomas stood\u2014smeared with ashes and dust and blood, ragged as if he'd been in a fight with a room full of knives, loaded down with two massive cases. He staggered and caught himself on a massive pillar.\n\n\"How\u2014,\" Thomas said, and checked what he was going to say. He looked at Morgan. \"You brought me here.\"\n\n\"You were at the door, arguing with soldiers,\" she said. \"I just... moved things along.\"\n\nKhalila nodded, smile sparking wide. \"You're alive!\"\n\n\"Only just,\" he said, and stepped forward to greet her\u2014and then hesitated. \"You're wearing a crown. The Archivist's crown.\"\n\nAs if she'd forgotten, Khalila touched it where it sat atop her hijab. \"At the moment,\" she said. \"But I'm still your friend, and I'm happy to see you, Thomas.\"\n\nThomas nodded and looked at Wolfe. Santi. Glain. Dario. Last, at Jess. Jess felt something cold and knotted ease up inside him. They might all be doomed, but at least they were, for the first time in a while, together. And together, they were powerful.\n\n\"We don't have much time,\" Thomas said. \"I'm sorry. Zara said that the Archivist was going to burn the Great Archives. We have to prevent that.\"\n\n\"We know,\" Wolfe said. \"Alfred Nobel's hideous fail-safe device. But we don't know how to control it.\"\n\nKhalila said, \"Perhaps the old man didn't actually activate it...?\"\n\n\"No,\" Morgan said. \"He did. I can see the power gathering. But it takes time to charge.\"\n\n\"Like the Ray of Apollo,\" Thomas said. \"The batteries have to be charged before the process can begin. We can still interrupt it.\"\n\n\"How?\" Wolfe demanded. \"Where?\"\n\nMorgan pointed at each of the four distant wings of the building. \"It's gathering at the entrances to each of those openings. There must be some central control at each point. Something to relay the power on.\"\n\nKhalila had her Codex, and she read something from it. \"The Senior Research Librarian of the Great Archives is unable to leave; he was injured and is in a Medica facility. But he confirms that there are four control points. There are manual shutoffs to each wing, in case maintenance had to be done. But he doesn't know how to access them without opening a sealed document kept inside his office.\"\n\n\"No time for that,\" Morgan said. \"The devices are inside something. Marble.\"\n\n\"Under the floor?\"\n\n\"No. Above it. Inside\u2014\" She suddenly smiled. \"Inside the base of a statue.\"\n\n\"There are statues of Zeus at the entrance to each of the wings,\" Santi said. \"In the base of those?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How much time do we have left?\" he asked.\n\nMorgan shook her head. \"I don't know. But maybe...\" She turned her head, as if she was listening. \"Break the seal.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Break the seals.\" She blinked and looked at him. \"I don't know what that means. It's what the ring tells me.\"\n\n\"What ring\u2014\"\n\nMorgan shoved that aside with an impatient gesture. \"Just do it. Now! We're running out of time!\"\n\nThey were standing in a deathtrap of monumental proportions, Jess realized. And no time to ask more questions. He looked to Wolfe, and Wolfe said, \"Nic, go south with Khalila. Thomas, north with Jess. Dario, with me to the east. Glain and Morgan, west. Look for a Great Library seal on the statues; that must be what she means. Go!\"\n\nThey scattered, moving fast. Jess kept up with Thomas, though he knew it was costing him the last of his endurance, and they spotted a vast archway to the north. Over it was a Latin phrase: Sapientia melior auro. Wisdom is better than gold.\n\nZeus's massive seated form sat carved in marble beside that entrance. At any other time the sight might have awed him; the statue stood ten times his height, a breathtaking work of art in perfect marble. But just now he only cared about one thing: the seal of the Great Library embossed in gold on the base of the throne.\n\nHe pulled his sidearm and hammered at it with the butt of the gun. It cracked but didn't break.\n\nThomas moved him aside and slammed the point of his elbow into the seal\u2014once, twice, three times.\n\nThe seal broke, and beneath that lay a lever. Thomas turned it.\n\nThe entire statue rolled aside on noiseless wheels, and behind it stood a closed door.\n\nLocked. Jess was too sick to even try to pick it; he shot the lock away, and Thomas swung the door wide.\n\nHe could hear ticking the moment the door opened.\n\nThe room held a simple metal console with a clock embedded in its surface. As Jess watched, the second hand swept backward. It was counting down.\n\n\"Do you see an off switch?\" he asked. Coughs were boiling at the back of his throat, and he felt his lungs filling with foam and liquid.\n\n\"No,\" Thomas said. He pulled a panel from the front of the thing and bent down. \"Yes! I see it!\" He bent down and tried for it. Grimaced and shook his head. \"I can't. My hand is too large to fit. Jess, here. Here!\" He grabbed Jess and pulled him down before Jess could move, and pointed. Jess followed his pointing finger and started to reach for the red valve.\n\nIt was too easy. He rested his fingers on it, hesitated, and shook his head.\n\n\"Turn the valve!\" Thomas shouted.\n\n\"That's wrong,\" Jess said. His brain was cloudy, but he pushed that away. Pushed all of it away. He'd seen this before; he'd seen Great Library traps all his life, meant to catch thieves and smugglers. The valve was bait, like a mockup of a rare book left within easy reach. It was there to catch the unwary.\n\nHe looked to the other side. There was another Great Library seal, glass cleverly painted to look like metal.\n\nBreak the seal.\n\nHe smashed his fist into it, ignored the pain as the glass shattered, and found another valve under the shards.\n\nHe turned it.\n\nThe ticking stopped.\n\n\"Mein Gott. Thank you. I should have seen that,\" Thomas said. He was visibly shaken. \"The others\u2014\"\n\n\"The others might fall for it,\" Jess said. \"Go. Tell them.\" He couldn't get up. His mouth was full of foam again. He couldn't gag down a breath; his lungs felt filled with concrete. He spat the foam out, coughed, and managed to croak out, \"Go!\"\n\nThomas looked at him for an instant in agonized indecision, then took something out of his pocket and pressed it into Jess's hands. \"Drink it!\" he ordered, then turned and ran as he shouted a warning. Maybe he would reach the others in time.\n\nJess looked at the lump of tattered cloth that Thomas had handed him, and slowly began to unwrap it. There was a glass tube inside, full of liquid. He tried to remove the stopper. His fingers kept slipping. The air is burning, Jess thought. But it wasn't the air. He was gasping but getting nothing from the effort. He was suddenly and tremendously tired. I'm dying in a room full of books after all. The biggest collection of all, he thought. And that felt right, even if he was afraid and in pain and angry that it had to be this way, that he had to do this alone, that he wouldn't get to say good-bye.\n\nHe'd forgotten about the vial. It was still in his hand, but it no longer really mattered.\n\nHe let it roll away across the floor.\n\nHe let his eyes drift closed, and time drifted.\n\nSomething's on my face. He came awake with a gasp, and realized it was his breathing mask; he could barely draw in the next, choked breath, but he tried. It cleared his lungs enough that he was able to manage desperate, shallow gasps.\n\nI think I was dead. Was I?\n\nKhalila. She was weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks.\n\nShe was dragging him across the marble floor, and in the next blink Dario was there, too, dragging him faster.\n\nSomething was wrong with the light.\n\nThe light flickering behind the two of them was green.\n\nThe Great Archives were burning.\n\nDario and Khalila dragged him to the center of the vast chamber. Three of the Archive wings were silent and safe.\n\nThe entrance where Morgan and Glain had been working was a hell of green flames. The inscription above that arch said, Scientia ipsa potentia est.\n\nKnowledge is power.\n\nKnowledge was burning.\n\nWolfe was shouting something, but Jess couldn't make it out. Nothing made sense anymore. They couldn't lose. They couldn't.\n\nBooks were burning.\n\nMorgan was standing at the burning entrance with her hands flung wide. The Greek fire inside was trying to break past her, trying to consume everything. Every scrap of knowledge in the entire Great Library.\n\nGlain stood there ashen, helpless, shaking. \"My fault,\" she said. \"I should have known.\"\n\nThomas put an arm around her. \"No, Glain. My fault. I should have been faster to tell you.\"\n\n\"Morgan!\" Wolfe shouted. \"Morgan, let go! We have to get out!\"\n\n\"No,\" Khalila said, and walked forward. She stood next to Morgan, looking at her, and turned toward the rest of them. There was something different about her now. Something... regal. Not Khalila, Jess realized. She spoke as the Archivist of the Great Library. \"We haven't copied everything. We will lose all if she lets go. She knows what has to be done.\" She put her hand on Morgan's shoulder. \"We will remember what you do. I love you, my friend. But you are the only one who can accomplish this.\"\n\nMorgan looked over her shoulder, directly at Jess. In that moment, he loved her with all his heart and soul. And he wanted desperately to take her place, to let it be him instead. If he'd had the slightest chance of doing what she could, he would have plunged in no matter what it cost.\n\nHe didn't have that power. She did. And he had to let her make her choice, just as she'd let him make his own.\n\nBut he could make sure she didn't die alone.\n\nShe saw it in him, somehow. And as he stumbled toward her, he felt a sudden gust of wind push him back, sliding him across the marble floor and right into Thomas's grip. \"No!\" he shouted, and tried to fight free. \"No, let me\u2014\" Coughing caught him again, doubled him over. Blood poured out of his mouth in a sick wave. He tasted bitter foam and copper.\n\n\"Did you drink it?\" Thomas asked him, and yanked him upright. \"Jess! Did you drink what I gave you?\"\n\nHe just shook his head. \"Left it.\" Thomas dropped him and headed for the shattered statue.\n\n\"Jess,\" Morgan said, and he focused on her with an effort. \"You have to live. Live for me. Tell Glain it wasn't her fault. I'm the one who turned the valve.\" She smiled, just a little. \"I'm glad I loved you.\"\n\nShe stepped forward into the hellish inferno.\n\nThey all cried out, Jess thought, all of them, denying what she was doing, but they couldn't stop her. None of them dared. The blaze wrapped around her, and it started to burn her, and then the fire just... stopped, as if it had never erupted at all.\n\nBecause she cut off the oxygen that fueled it.\n\n\"Morgan!\" Wolfe rushed forward, hit an unyielding barrier, and battered against it. Beyond that lay a melted ruin where the wing of the Archives had been, a hellish slurry of melted stone and ash. And Morgan, burned and shaking, who was killing herself along with the Greek fire that sizzled, hissed, tried to burn but was starved of its fuel.\n\nJess tried to watch, but his eyes had blurred again, and the foam bubbled up from his lungs. Bloody froth in his mouth. He coughed it out and kept coughing. Santi and Wolfe were trying to get to her. But he already knew it was too late. She'd make sure it was too late. She'd only let go when the last of the Greek fire had no chance of reigniting.\n\nThe barrier collapsed at last, and so did he, hitting the floor as Santi and Wolfe lurched over the line where Morgan's power had been. The Greek fire liquid had turned into a thick brown sludge running over the floor, but it didn't burn now. Harmless.\n\nMorgan had saved the Great Archives.\n\nShe lay limp and blackened in Santi's arms as he picked her up, and Jess whispered, \"No,\" and lunged forward.\n\nWhen he fell, it was like dropping through a trapdoor of the world, into absolute darkness."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 61",
                "text": "\"Easy,\" a voice said. \"Jess. Swallow.\"\n\nThere was an awful metallic taste in his mouth. Liquid. He tried to spit it out but a huge hand covered his mouth, and he had no choice but to swallow it. He gagged and coughed as the hand pulled away, but the taste faded, and what was left was a soothing weight that worked its way down his burning throat and into his chest. Heavy and cool. Comforting.\n\n\"That's the last of it,\" Thomas said. \"Stay still. It should work soon. You might still need rest.\"\n\nJess licked his dry lips and said, \"What is it?\"\n\n\"The antidote,\" Thomas said. \"I found it in Heron's Tomb.\"\n\nJess lay on cool sheets in a brightly lit room, and the lingering stench of Greek fire seemed to cling to everything. His head ached. His lungs burned. He felt tender all over. He just wanted to rest.\n\nThen he remembered.\n\nMorgan.\n\nHe pushed the mask aside and tried to get up, but nausea and weakness shoved him down again. I dreamed it. She's all right. She has to be.\n\n\"Jess.\" That was Anit's voice. He looked over and found her sitting at his bedside next to Thomas, and she was holding his hand in hers. \"Welcome back to the land of the living, my brother.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" His throat ached, and it would barely form words, but at least it wasn't a bloody mess of foam now. He fumbled for the glass of water on the table beside him. Anit held it to his lips and fed him sips. \"How long?\"\n\n\"Days,\" she said. \"That's the third dose of the antidote; Thomas made it himself from the sample he brought. The Medica were afraid you'd never wake.\"\n\nHe didn't want to ask, but he made himself. \"Morgan?\"\n\nAnit looked away. \"I'm sorry,\" she said. \"She was badly burned, and she died inside the Great Archives.\"\n\nHe looked at Thomas and read the truth on his best friend's face. Thomas didn't speak. He didn't need to.\n\nIt hadn't been a nightmare. Morgan was dead.\n\nHe expected grief, but even so he wasn't prepared. It hit like a storm, ripping through him in convulsing waves. Gone. She's gone. Like his brother.\n\nEverything he loved left him.\n\nDespite the pain, he didn't feel any urge to weep. His eyes burned, but it felt angry, not sad. \"She shouldn't have died for it,\" he said. \"The Great Library never did anything for her. It took her freedom away. And now it took her life.\"\n\n\"She chose to save it,\" Thomas said. \"She could have run. She didn't.\"\n\nHe knew he had to honor what she'd done. It had been the bravest thing he'd ever seen.\n\nBut he hated himself for not stopping her.\n\nThomas cleared his throat. \"Jess, the Archivist is here. We should let her speak with you alone.\"\n\nHis brain was sluggish, and for a moment Jess thought he meant the bitter old man he'd left dead in the Serapeum... but no, of course it was Khalila. A more serious Khalila, dressed in plain black, with only the crown with the seal of the Great Library atop her hijab to show her status. She exchanged a hug with Anit\u2014when had they become friends?\u2014and claimed the chair beside Jess's bed. \"I've prayed for your recovery,\" she told him. \"Insha'Allah, they think you'll be back to normal in a few weeks.\"\n\n\"Weeks,\" he repeated. He was glad to see her, but he felt... numbed, as well. Oddly distant. I survived. He'd never expected that. Never expected to have to live through all of this.\n\nHe'd been chasing down death. He'd actually caught it.\n\nAnd somehow it had slipped away despite all his best efforts.\n\n\"I expect you'll convince them to make it sooner,\" Khalila said. She took his hand in hers. \"My friend, I'm so very sorry.\"\n\n\"About Morgan?\" He shook his head. \"Thomas says she made her choice.\" And I'm angry with her. She should have run. She should have never been there at all.\n\n\"She chose to save books that would have otherwise vanished from this earth,\" Khalila said. \"Her name's being carved into the Scholar Steps. She's going to be honored among the highest heroes of the Great Library.\"\n\n\"I don't think she ever wanted that,\" he said. \"I think she just wanted to be free.\"\n\n\"She was free, ever since the arena; she could have gone at any time. She chose to stay. Obscurists are free now, free to live outside the Iron Tower, to have families, to do anything they wish. I've made sure of that, in her honor.\"\n\n\"I wish it had all burned,\" he said, and closed his eyes. \"If she was the price of winning.\"\n\n\"You don't mean that.\"\n\nHe didn't. He couldn't imagine a world without the Great Library. Without books. Without knowledge at his fingertips when he needed it.\n\nIt struck him suddenly that every book he read now would be a gift. A gift from Morgan.\n\nAnd that was the moment that grief truly broke inside him, and the angry, painful tears came. It didn't last long, and Khalila just held his hand as the storm passed, then silently handed him a handkerchief. He wiped his face and took a careful breath. It hurt, but it was only a shadow of the pain he'd felt before. \"She didn't have any family left,\" he said. \"Her da tried to kill her. He was the last of them.\"\n\n\"She's been laid to rest in the Necropolis,\" Khalila said. \"We put her in the old Archivist's miniature Serapeum, and buried him in a pauper's hole instead. It seemed appropriate.\"\n\nHe'd missed her funeral. No.\n\n\"Your family's arrived,\" she said. \"They asked to see you, and they want to take your brother's body back to London. I refused to allow any of it until you were awake and I knew what you wanted to do.\"\n\nHis da, here, in Alexandria. Well, that was a terrible idea. \"Brendan would want to go home,\" he said. \"He liked Alexandria, but he'd want to be in England. Let them have him.\"\n\n\"I was afraid we'd have to give them two sons,\" she said. \"I'm glad I was wrong.\"\n\nShe took the handkerchief back from him and folded it neatly before slipping it into a pocket of her dress.\n\n\"I don't think I've ever seen you wearing plain black before,\" he said. \"You're wearing mourning?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"For Morgan. She was part of my family. As are you, my brother.\"\n\n\"I've already got Anit; you don't need to adopt me, too.\"\n\n\"But I want to. And since I'm the Archivist, you really can't object.\" She gave him that charming, slightly wicked smile.\n\n\"If you're the Archivist, you ought to be wearing all the gold robes,\" he pointed out.\n\n\"I'm a Scholar, Jess. And I'll continue to act like one, despite my responsibilities.\" She added her other hand on top of his. \"You did all you could do. You and Thomas, you saved the Great Library, too. And I expect you will keep on doing that in whatever form you choose. Thomas has requested that a new Curia position be opened. He is calling it Liberius. Publisher, I believe that would be. It would oversee the installation of his printing machines, and I think he wants you to be part of that.\"\n\nThat woke some warmth in places that had gone cold inside. Books. We'll make books. He remembered the feel of an original, the hand-cut paper, the binding and stitching. We'll sell them. Openly. To people who want to have them in their homes.\n\n\"No more raids?\" he asked her. \"The books will be legal to own?\"\n\n\"Legal to own,\" she said. \"And that promise has made the Burners lay down their bombs, it seems. At least for now.\"\n\n\"The Russians?\"\n\n\"Withdrawn, and making peace now that the old Archivist is dead. The Spanish ambassador is petitioning to make a new treaty.\" Her smile grew big enough to reveal dimples in her cheeks. \"I'm keeping him waiting. A little.\"\n\n\"That's strategically wicked of you. I like it.\" Books. Thomas had the authority to print real, original books. That... that would change the world, surely. It had certainly changed his. \"I should get up. Get dressed.\"\n\n\"No, you should not,\" Khalila told him. \"Save your strength. Your father wants to come to see you in the morning. But only if you agree, of course.\"\n\n\"Might as well get it over with,\" Jess said sourly. \"Say a prayer for me, will you?\"\n\n\"You are always on my list,\" she said. She bent and planted a warm, gentle kiss on his cheek. \"My brother.\"\n\n\"Two sisters I never had. So strange.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think you'll find you have more siblings than you can handle.\" She looked at the time. \"I'm sorry to leave you, but I have a meeting with the kings of Wales and England, and I must make a decision about what to do with France; it's ghoulish to continue to operate it as a memorial to our own power, and I'd like to hand it back to the rightful French citizens. But there are treaties to negotiate there as well. I'll see you as soon as I can, Jess.\"\n\nShe left, and six High Garda soldiers formed up around her at the doorway. He'd just been kissed farewell by the Archivist of the Great Library.\n\nHis life had gotten complicated.\n\nHe slept, woke, demanded a bath and a meal, and got them. When his parents arrived with the sun, they found Jess up and walking, if carefully and slowly.\n\nBoth his parents wore black. Jess accepted his mother's silent embrace, and thought she looked sincerely worried about him.\n\nCallum Brightwell didn't bother with any pleasantries. He swept Jess with a look and said, \"You seem better than I expected.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" Jess said. \"Don't tell me you came all this way to smother me with parental love.\"\n\n\"Jess,\" his mother murmured. \"We do love you.\"\n\nOne of you might, he thought. But his mother had never stood up to his bully father, so that didn't really count for much, either.\n\n\"We're only here to claim Brendan's body,\" Callum said. \"The damned High Garda won't let us have him until you sign a release to allow it. Here.\"\n\nHe thrust out a Codex, and Jess read the document inscribed on the page. An agreement allowing Callum Brightwell to take the body of Brendan Brightwell from where it lay in state in the Serapeum with the others who'd fallen in the conflict, and remove it for burial to England.\n\nJess said, without looking up, \"Where are you going to bury him?\"\n\n\"Does it matter to you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"On a hillside on the castle's grounds,\" his mother said. \"He liked it there. He sat sometimes to read and watch the sea.\"\n\nA lonely, windswept hillside in England. Maybe she was right; maybe it was what Brendan would have wanted. He didn't know. They'd never talked about it. Never thought it could happen.\n\nJess closed the Codex. \"I'll think about it,\" he said.\n\nHis father's face flushed a deep, ugly red. \"No, you'll do what you're told. He's lying dead inside that great bloody pyramid because of you! The least you can do is let me get him decently buried and not gawped at by half the librarians in the world\u2014\"\n\n\"Honored, you mean. By people who loved him.\"\n\n\"Don't you dare, boy. I loved Brendan\u2014\"\n\n\"More than me, yes, I know.\"\n\n\"Sign the form!\" His father's fist was clenched. Jess watched it, but he wasn't afraid. Or surprised. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to fight the old man\u2014or, at least, to win\u2014but he'd damn well try.\n\nIt caught him by surprise when his mother stood up and said, in the sharpest voice he'd ever heard from her, \"Leave him alone, Callum!\"\n\nIt seemed, from the look on his face, that his father had never heard that tone, either. \"What?\" He recovered smoothly. \"This isn't your business. This is between\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" she said. \"I've had more than enough of your cruelty and arrogance. I will not let you do it a moment longer. Not to my last child. Go away.\"\n\nJess's mouth was open, but he didn't really know what to say. He just watched this woman he'd always loved but never known change before his eyes into... someone else.\n\nA person. A real, live person instead of a silent statue.\n\n\"My dear, you can't really think\u2014\" Callum was trying a new technique. Wheedling. It didn't work.\n\nShe stalked past him to the door and opened it for him. \"Leave,\" she said. \"Now. We'll discuss this later.\"\n\n\"You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"She can.\" Jess kept his voice level, and he was surprised to find it hardly hurt at all to feel the rage coming off his father like a mist. He'd grown a shield against it, finally. So had his mother. And he felt that Brendan would have liked that. \"The High Garda will escort you back to where you belong. You can wait.\"\n\n\"I'm not going anywhere!\" Brightwell roared, and raised that clenched fist.\n\nA black shadow flashed through the doorway, as if it had been waiting, and caught his father's arm. Shoved him back with such force Callum Brightwell hit the wall, stumbled, and fell flat.\n\nJess's mother didn't come to her husband's defense. She crossed her arms and glared down at him.\n\nScholar Wolfe stood over him, smoldering like the coals in a barely covered fire, and said, \"Get up, you miserable bastard. Don't come back unless Jess asks for you. You're lucky you're not in chains, but I promise you, it can still happen.\"\n\n\"He's my son!\" Brightwell shouted, and scrambled to his feet with his fists clenched. \"Mine, not yours!\"\n\n\"Wrong,\" Jess said quietly. \"On both counts. I'm not your property. And I'm more his son than I ever was yours.\"\n\nCallum Brightwell was at a loss for words, finally. And he seemed small, and bewildered. A bully robbed of victims.\n\nHe left without another word.\n\nJess's mother drew in a deep breath and extended her hand to Wolfe. \"Thank you,\" she said. \"For loving my son as much as I do.\"\n\nHe kissed her hand and held it for a moment. \"I can't imagine the strength it has taken you to get to this moment,\" Wolfe said. \"And I'm glad I saw it.\"\n\n\"So am I,\" she said. She smiled. \"I don't think we've ever been properly introduced, Scholar Wolfe. I'm Celia Brightwell. Jess's mother. And I intend to be a true mother to my boy from this moment on.\"\n\nJess didn't altogether trust it, this fragile feeling blooming inside. He'd been living in a desert so long that finding a rose in the sand seemed impossible.\n\nBut he said, \"I love you, Mum.\"\n\nAnd when her arms went around him, he knew he meant it."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 62",
                "text": "Brendan's body had been carefully preserved, and he almost looked alive. Almost. Jess didn't touch him, though he pulled up a chair to look down into the mirror of his own face. He thought how close he'd come to occupying a bier beside his twin, and some part of him still thought that might have been right. But he could almost hear his brother's reply. Plenty of time. I'll wait.\n\n\"So, Scraps, do you want to go home? Let Father bury you and raise up some monument in your honor? Pretend like he ever cared about either one of us, except for what we could do for him?\" Jess asked the question, but he knew he'd have to answer that for himself. \"Yes, I suppose you would. You'd like to be back there, I know that. And getting Da to waste his money on a monument? You'd enjoy that, I'm sure. The larger, the better.\"\n\nHe half expected Brendan to turn his head, laugh, tell him it had all been a brilliant prank. But his brother was gone, and he needed to finally accept that.\n\nIt was going to take a lifetime to understand it.\n\nHe'd been sitting for a while when he heard footsteps. He didn't turn. He'd heard other visitors come and go, murmurs and whispers. None of them had disturbed him.\n\n\"You should be in bed,\" Thomas said from behind him.\n\n\"I know,\" he said. It wasn't just Thomas who'd come. It was everyone. Dario, dressed in darkly glittering richness. Archivist Khalila, holding a small bunch of English violets. Wolfe and Santi, standing together with clasped hands. Even Glain in her sharp High Garda uniform, hands clasped behind her back.\n\nEveryone present but Morgan. The spot where she should have been felt like a new wound, and he looked away, back to his brother.\n\n\"He'd be honored,\" Jess said. \"To think all these important people have time to come visit him.\"\n\n\"And visit you,\" Khalila said. \"I'm sorry it took as long as it did.\"\n\n\"Well, you were signing treaties and negotiating the return of France,\" Jess replied. \"I think he'd forgive you. I know I do.\" He stood up. For a moment they all simply looked at him. No one seemed to quite know what to say.\n\nSo of course, Khalila went first.\n\n\"I brought these,\" Khalila said, and handed him the flowers. \"I hope they are appropriate\u2014\"\n\n\"He'd like them,\" Jess assured her, and put them on top of his brother's still chest. \"Thank you. All of you. You didn't need to come.\"\n\n\"We did,\" Glain said. \"Don't be daft.\"\n\n\"Glain,\" Khalila reproached her, but it was gentle.\n\nGlain was the first to hug him. He was surprised by that; she hardly ever showed that side. It was a warrior's embrace, all muscle, and a sharp clap on the back as punctuation. \"Don't follow him,\" she whispered. \"We still need you here with us.\" She left just as quickly, head high. Off to rejoin her squad.\n\nDario came next, and he offered his hand. Jess ignored it and embraced him, too. \"I'll stop calling you Scrubber,\" Dario said as he slapped his back. \"Eventually. Maybe.\"\n\n\"I'll look forward to that. Your Royalness.\"\n\nAfter Dario, Khalila. Her hug took his breath away, and he felt something crack inside, just a little. \"I'm proud of you,\" he said. \"And a little afraid of you, too. I heard they've confirmed you. Youngest Archivist in history, so they say.\"\n\nShe gave him another kiss on the cheek. \"And you have to listen to me when I tell you that you'll be all right,\" she said. \"We're all going to make sure you are.\"\n\nThen it was Thomas, and a very careful embrace from arms the size of healthy young trees. \"Khalila told you about the press? The new publishing operation? We're going to replicate the Great Archives! People will be able to own books, Jess.\"\n\n\"Yes, I heard,\" Jess said. \"I'll join you when I'm able.\"\n\n\"Your office is already being built. I've made you Chief Printer.\"\n\n\"Do I get paid?\"\n\n\"We'll discuss it. But it comes with all the books you can read.\"\n\n\"Then I'm in,\" Jess said, and smiled. \"See you tomorrow.\"\n\nWhen Thomas was gone, it was just Wolfe and Santi. Wolfe said, \"Are you in fact all right? Be honest. You've seen me at my lowest. Don't be afraid to admit it if you need our help.\"\n\n\"I know, and I promise, I would. But I'm... better,\" Jess said. \"More than I expected. This is...\" He took in a careful breath and glanced down at Brendan. \"An ending. I don't know who I am without my brother, but I suppose now I have to learn. He'd demand that.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Santi said, \"let me be the first to tell you that I've released you from contract to the High Garda. You get full salary for the rest of your life, by the way. Orders of the Archivist.\" He embraced Jess. \"You're not just Wolfe's son, you know. I love you, too.\"\n\n\"I know that, sir. Thank you.\"\n\nPerhaps it was worth surviving, after all.\n\nAnit was waiting in the hall when he left; the High Garda stationed there were eyeing her with real mistrust, and her own guards gave it back in full. His gaze caught on the tall form of Katja, who nodded back. \"Condolences,\" Anit said. \"I hear you're a great hero now.\"\n\n\"I'm not,\" he said. \"But thanks.\"\n\n\"So heroic you won't be in the family anymore, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll always be a cousin,\" he said, and cast a smile at Katja, who raised a lofty eyebrow. \"Just not one who runs books. I'll be printing them instead.\"\n\n\"So I heard,\" she agreed. \"Come on, my brother. Let's have coffee. I understand the day is beautiful, the sun is shining\u2014\"\n\n\"And you have an interesting proposal for me?\"\n\n\"Of course. I'm thinking of opening a bookshop. The first of its kind in Alexandria. And I'd like you to be my partner.\"\n\n\"Fifty-fifty?\"\n\n\"Seventy-thirty.\"\n\n\"We'll discuss it.\"\n\nHe opened his Codex, signed the release form, and let his brother go at last."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 63",
                "text": "\"Thank you for letting me be here,\" Wolfe said, and his father nodded. \"I haven't been in the Iron Tower of my own accord for... quite a while.\"\n\n\"Ever, I think is the word you're searching for,\" Eskander said. \"But you're always welcome.\"\n\n\"I'm surprised you haven't left. You're not required to stay, you know.\"\n\n\"Funny thing. I've spent so many years behind these walls that I can't imagine living somewhere else. But I think the new Obscurists will find it easier to come and go.\"\n\nWolfe stood awkwardly in the open lobby. The Iron Tower stretched out above him, quiet for now. High Garda still manned posts at the front entrance, and the burn marks still on the floor indicated why. Alexandria wasn't quite what it was. Not yet. And maybe it never would be again.\n\nNic thought that would be a very good thing, a sign of progress after centuries of stagnation. Wolfe reserved his judgment.\n\nHe felt he needed to say something more to his father, but he wasn't quite sure what. Finally, he just blurted out his real question. \"Where is Morgan?\"\n\n\"Her body is in the Necropolis, as you were told,\" Eskander said. \"With all the proper rites and funerals.\"\n\n\"I know that, but\u2014\" Wolfe struggled with the words. \"I can still feel her presence. I needed to ask why.\"\n\n\"Does Niccolo know you're here?\"\n\n\"No, I\u2014I didn't know what to tell him.\" He swallowed. \"Am I going mad?\"\n\n\"Not at all.\" His father's eyebrows rose. \"I confess, I didn't expect this. You never had talent.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Obscurist talent, Christopher. It was always latent in you, but it never manifested before. How is it you can sense her?\"\n\n\"Maybe I'm imagining it. Wishing it to be true.\"\n\n\"Or maybe what you sense is this.\" Eskander reached into his pocket and took out a large amber ring. \"Put it on.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\"\n\n\"Put it on.\"\n\nWolfe slipped the ring on his finger, and for a moment, nothing seemed any different. A vague sense of unease, of sensing someone standing just out of view.\n\nOf being watched.\n\nAnd then Morgan's voice said, \"I was wondering if you'd find out.\"\n\nHe turned, looking for her, but saw no one. He had not, he realized, actually heard her. The words were not in his ears, but in his head. \"Morgan?\"\n\n\"I'm inside the ring,\" she said, and laughed. It felt bright as sunshine on skin. \"It sounds like I'm trapped, doesn't it? But I'm not. I'm free. There's so much here! Endless expanses that become whatever I want them to be. I'm part of the Imperishable.\"\n\n\"Apeiron,\" Wolfe said. \"The ring is made to contain and channel apeiron. Is that\u2014where you are?\"\n\n\"I'm everywhere,\" she said. \"I'm with all of you. And you're with me. It's what I always was, Scholar. Just... free.\" Her voice grew a little sad. \"But not in the form you knew me. I'd like to tell Jess that I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I'm not telling him a voice in a ring talked to me,\" he said. \"And he's better off not knowing this.\"\n\n\"Yes. That's true. He's got a path now. Knowing I was here\u2014it might pull him away from that. It's a good, strong path. A long one.\"\n\n\"You see futures.\"\n\n\"I see everything,\" she said.\n\nIt was on the tip of his tongue to ask what she saw for him, but he resisted. He'd never wanted to know the future. If he didn't know storms were coming, it was easier to enjoy the sunshine.\n\n\"You sent for me, didn't you? Why?\" he asked.\n\n\"Because of this.\"\n\nHis world opened. His body burned, tingled, and woke with sensations he'd never known, never imagined in his life. He saw the flow of life, the bones of the universe, the building blocks of everything, and it was the most beautiful thing he could imagine.\n\n\"You were meant to be an Obscurist,\" she said. \"Something went wrong in your body, but only just slightly. The talent was always there; you just couldn't reach it. And now you can be what you were supposed to be. If you wish. You could be very, very powerful.\"\n\nHe let out a raw sound and put his back to a wall to hold himself steady. He'd been a disappointment to his parents, a failure rejected and sent to find his own way beyond these iron walls. And she offered to give him that.\n\nFor an awful moment, he wanted it more than anything.\n\nThen he caught his breath and said, \"Give it to someone who needs it. I don't.\"\n\nAnother silky, cool voice in his head said, \"You see? I told you. He has his own path. Let him walk it, Morgan. I am interested to see what he makes of it.\"\n\n\"Who is that?\" he blurted.\n\n\"Archivist Gargi Vachaknavi,\" Morgan said. \"Dead thousands of years, but alive in the Imperishable. Don't mind her. She thinks you're better off as you were.\"\n\n\"I am!\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Yes! I don't want to be\u2014this!\"\n\n\"Then I'll take it all back,\" she said, and the power faded out of him. All the brilliance and beauty and breathtaking wonder, gone.\n\nHe was back in his own skin, his own world, and he was achingly, shatteringly grateful.\n\n\"Morgan?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"How much power do you really have?\" He wasn't sure he wanted to know. He caught his father's eye. His father, he thought, wasn't surprised by any of this. It was as if he could hear the conversation. That was irritating, and a bit comforting.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said. \"I'd rather not know, to be honest. I'd rather just watch over the Great Library,\" she said. \"It's what I'm supposed to do. And it will keep me out of trouble, I think.\"\n\n\"Morgan\u2014\"\n\n\"We won't speak again, Scholar Wolfe. Be kinder to yourself. And to Commander Santi, too. I loved you both, and in here, I always will.\"\n\nAnd then he felt her go. Her presence that he'd sensed, however dimly... vanished, like mist under the sun.\n\nHe ripped the ring from his finger and handed it back to Eskander. Glared at him. \"Why did you do that?\"\n\n\"Interesting, isn't she?\" Eskander said, and put the ring back in his pocket. \"She terrifies me. But I think we may need her in times to come. The problem of ending one era of oppression is that we all have to decide what comes next. And we should discuss that, at length.\" He started up the long, winding steps. \"Come on, then. I've made tea.\"\n\n\"Why me? We hardly know each other.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Eskander said. \"But I think we also know each other very well, Christopher; you and I, we're far too much alike. Your apprentices have torn up the roots of the world\u2014and I am glad they did. But we're going to have a job of it if we intend for the Great Library to survive the next thousand years. We have plans to make. Are you coming?\"\n\nWolfe hesitated, and then said, \"Yes.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 64",
                "text": "I had the idea for the Great Library a long, long time ago, but it was just too big, too complicated to attempt. I waited ten years to finally try... and fail. And another five to try again. The world of the Great Library, and all the characters I loved writing so much, is one that's rooted in the very real history of libraries, of knowledge, of the battle over who owns it, distributes it, controls it.\n\nIn this world today where knowledge is everywhere and yet nowhere... I think this story is more timely than ever.\n\nThank you for being part of this epic journey.\n\nNow go out and build the world the way you want to see it, bit by bit, day by day.\n\nWord by word.\n\nIt's in your hands.\n\n\u2014Rachel Caine"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Library of the Unwritten",
        "author": "A. J. Hackwith",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "LGBT",
            "portal fiction",
            "Hell's Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Books ran when they grew restless, when they grew unruly, or when they grew real. Regardless of the reason, when books ran, it was a librarian's duty to catch them.\n\nThe twisty annex of Assyrian romances, full of jagged words and shadowed hearts broken on unforgiving clay tablets, had a tendency to turn around even experienced curators. The librarian, Claire, cornered the book there. The book had chosen to take form as the character of a pale, coltish girl, and her breathing was nearly as ragged as Claire's was from the run. Claire forced her shaking hands still as she approached. The book was young, and so was its character, back pressed into the bookcase, dandelion-fluff hair fluttering around thin shoulders. Muddy jeans, superhero tee, a whimper like dried reeds. \"Please. I can't\u2014I don't want to go back.\"\n\nDamn. Claire preferred them angry. Angry was simpler. \"The Library has rules.\"\n\nA flicker of color swung around the corner. Her assistant, Brevity, skidded to a stop just short of the book. Her apple-round cheeks, usually a shade of robin's-egg blue, were tinged purple from the run. Seafoam green bangs puffed above her eyes, and she mumbled an apology as she handed Claire a slender bit of steel wrapped in cloth.\n\nClaire stowed the tool in her pocket, where it would stay, she hoped. She considered the cowering figure in front of her.\n\nThere were two parts to any unwritten book. Its words\u2014the twisting, changing text on the page\u2014and its story. Most of the time, the two parts were united in the books filling the Unwritten Wing's stacks, but now and then a book woke up. Felt it had a purpose beyond words on a page. Then the story made itself into one of its characters and went walking.\n\nAs the head librarian of Hell's Unwritten Wing, Claire had the job of keeping stories on their pages.\n\nThe girl\u2014No, the character, the book, Claire corrected herself\u2014tried again. \"You don't get it. In the woods\u2014I saw what it did...\"\n\nClaire glanced down at the book in her hands and read the gold stamp on the spine. The font was blocky and modern, clearly signaling this was a younger book despite the thick leather hide of the cover. It read: DEAD HOT SUMMER. Her stomach soured; this job had ruined her taste for the horror genre entirely. \"Be that as it may, you have nothing to worry about. It's just a story\u2014you are just a story, and until you're written\u2014\"\n\n\"I won't make trouble,\" the character said. \"I just\u2014\"\n\n\"You're not human.\" The words snapped out before Claire could censor them. The girl reacted as if she'd been slapped, and curled into the shelves.\n\nClaire took a measured breath between gritted teeth. \"You can't be scared. You're not human\u2014let's not pretend otherwise. You're a very cunning approximation, but you're simply a manifestation, a character. A book playing at human... But you're not. And books belong on shelves.\"\n\nBrevity cleared her throat. \"She is scared, boss. If you want me to, I can sit with her. Maybe we can put her in the damsel suite\u2014\"\n\n\"Absolutely not. Her author is still alive.\"\n\nThe character zeroed in on the more sympathetic target. She took a step toward Brevity. \"I just don't want to die in there.\"\n\n\"Stop.\" Claire flipped open the leather cover and thrust it toward the character. \"This is only wasting time. Back to the pages.\"\n\nShe looked uncertainly at her book. \"I don't know how.\"\n\n\"Touch the pages. Remember where your story starts. 'Once upon a time...' or what have you.\" Claire slid a hand into her pocket, fingers finding metal. \"Alternately, stories always return to their pages when damaged. If you require assistance?\"\n\nThe scalpel was cool in her palm. It was normally used in repairing and rebinding old books, but a practiced hand could send a rogue character back to its pages.\n\nClaire had plenty of practice.\n\n\"I'll try.\" The girl's hand trembled as she flattened a small palm against the open pages. Her brow wrinkled.\n\nA chill of quiet ticked over Claire's skin. The books weighing down nearby shelves twitched sleepily. A muffled murmur drifted in the air. The wooden shelves towering overhead pulsed with movement, old leather spines shuffling against the bronze rails. Dust shivered in a spill of lamplight.\n\nBrevity shifted uneasily next to her. An awake book was a noisy thing. Returning it, even noisier.\n\nThey couldn't waste time. The girl startled when Claire took a quiet step toward her. \"I've almost got it!\"\n\n\"It's all right.\" Claire spoke through a tight throat, but her tone was gentle. She could be gentle when it was efficient. \"Try again.\"\n\nThe unwritten girl turned her attention back to the pages. It was an act of contemplation, and Claire could sense the weaving of realities. The girl was a character; she was a story, a book. She might feel like something even more, but Claire couldn't afford to consider that. She placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Then she slid the scalpel between the character's ribs.\n\nBrevity swallowed a squeak. Claire stepped back as the unwritten girl fell. She made small, shocked gulps for air, twisted on the carpet, then began to fade. Within a minute, nothing was left but a small smudge of ink on the floor.\n\nOnly books died in Hell. Everyone else had to live with their choices.\n\n\"Couldn't we have given her another minute? It's awfully hard to feel like the good guys when we do that.\" Brevity took the book after Claire snapped it closed.\n\n\"There's no good or bad, Brev. There's just the Library. The story is back where it belongs.\" Claire couldn't keep the resignation from her voice. She cleaned off and stashed the scalpel back in her many-pocketed skirts.\n\n\"Yeah, but she seemed so scared. She was just\u2014\"\n\n\"Characters aren't human, Brev. You always should remember that as a librarian. They'll convince themselves they're people, but if you allow them to convince you, then...\" Claire trailed off, dismissing the rest of that thought with a twitch of her shoulders. \"Shelve her and make a note to check her status next inventory. What kept you so long, anyway?\"\n\n\"Oh!\" Brevity fluttered a hand, and Claire was struck by the eerie similarities between her assistant and the book they'd just put to rest. Brevity was shorter than the character had been, and her riot of cornflower blue skin and bright eyes was vibrant with life\u2014not scared, not pleading\u2014but her gaze kept drifting back to the dull leather cover in her hands. \"There's a messenger for you.\"\n\n\"Messenger?\"\n\nBrevity shrugged. \"From the big guy. I tried to get more, but he's wound pretty tight. Swore he can't leave until he talks to you.\"\n\n\"How... unorthodox.\" Claire turned down the row of towering shelves. \"Let's see what His Crankiness wants.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "When they emerged from the depths of the Unwritten Wing's stacks, Claire found the demon sweating holes into her rug. It was a particularly fine rug, peacock blue and intricately dreamed by an artist of the Ottoman Empire. Dreamed but never made, which made it all the more irreplaceable.\n\nThe scent of rotten eggs curdled the Library's pleasant smell of sleeping books and tea, scalding her nose. A bead of sweat fell from the nervous demon's cuff and hit the carpet with a hiss. Claire closed her eyes for a count of five. She cleared her throat. \"Can I help you?\"\n\nThe demon jumped and twisted around. He was scrawny, all bones and amber skin in a cheap oversized suit. He appeared human, or at least human adjacent, as most demons did, save for the pinpricks of ears that poked up through an oil slick of springy black curls. He bit his lip, managing to look skeletal and innocent at the same time, and he held a thin purple folder in front of him like a shield. \"Ms. Claire, of the... Is this the Library?\"\n\n\"That generally is where librarians are found.\" Claire sat down at her desk. She eyed the repair work she'd started, while Brevity returned to sorting books on a cart. \"You're in the Unwritten Wing. You may read, or you may leave.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm not here to\u2014\" The demon twitched. Claire tracked his movements out of the corner of her eye, giving the text in front of her only cursory attention. The books stacked on the corner of the desk gave a lazy growl, and the demon sidestepped quickly away. His nervous gaze landed on her hands. \"Is... is that blood?\"\n\nClaire glanced down at the hand that had held the scalpel. She wiped her fingers on her skirts and returned to her work. \"Ink.\"\n\nThe book open on the desk was one of the young ones, one that still had a chance of being written by its author someday. Brevity had misfiled it with a particularly crotchety series of old unwritten novels. Whaling stories, if Claire remembered right. The impressionable young book now had all sorts of rubbish jumbled in its still-sprouting narrative. Five-paragraph descriptions of food, meditations on masculinity and the sea, complete nonsense for an unwritten tale about teenage witches in love. If its author began to write while it was in this state, she would never attempt another book. It was Claire's job to keep the books ready for their authors in the best possible state. Tidy. Stories were never tidy, but it was important to keep up appearances.\n\nWhen she didn't look up again, the demon coughed and shook loose another bead of sweat. It hit the rug with a dull hiss.\n\nClaire winced. She pressed her scalpel flat against the book. \"You're damaging my rug.\"\n\nThe demon looked down at his feet. He stepped off the rug awkwardly, found himself on an even more complex rug, and shuffled again.\n\nHe'd be at that all day, and Claire would be at repairs all night. She reluctantly turned from the book she was working on, pressing one elbow on it to keep it from creeping off. A slow, deep frown pulled on her face as she gave him a better once-over.\n\nYoung, Claire assessed\u2014the young seemed determined to plague her today. A junior demon, though young demons didn't venture to the Library often. Most of Hell's residents got reading privileges only after decades of clawing for power. He fidgeted under her scrutiny and combed through his wiry, ragged hair. It made her want to find him a brush. Suspicion tinged with familiarity tugged at her. No demon felt quite right, but there was something exceptionally off about hellspawn with anxiety. Claire raised a brow at Brevity, but her assistant just shrugged.\n\n\"You're... unexpected. I understand you were sent by His Grinchiness?\"\n\nHe licked his lips. \"Yes, but... you can't... you can't call him that. His Highness, I mean. There's a message. I got the brief here.\" The demon held it out, eager to be rid of it. Claire didn't move, so he added, \"It says a book is missing. I'm supposed to tell you... it's... ah, one of yours.\"\n\nClaire stilled. \"In what way?\"\n\n\"Because it's unwritten? Early twenty-first-century unauthor, still living.\"\n\nAh. The tension crept off Claire's shoulders. \"Stolen or lost?\"\n\nThe demon pawed through the folder before withdrawing a small stack of printouts. \"They suspect runaway. No recent checkouts or invocation alarms... whatever that means.\"\n\nShe grunted. \"It means my day is shot. A runaway.\"\n\nA bewildered look spread across the demon's face. \"Is that...?\"\n\nClaire waved a vague hand. \"It means an unwritten book woke up, manifested as a character, and somehow slipped the Library's wards. A neat trick that I will be keen to interrogate out of it later. It is likely headed to Earth. There's nothing stronger than an unwritten book's fascination with its author. But a book that finds its author often comes back damaged, and the author comes out... worse.\"\n\n\"I'll pack the scalpels,\" Brevity said, and received a dark look. Claire rubbed her temple, a fruitless gesture to forestall the coming headache, then shot out her hand.\n\n\"Just give the report here.\" She released her hold on the open book, and it happily snapped shut, barely missing her fingertips.\n\nThe demon deposited the paperwork in her palm and quickly hopped out of reach. The books stacked on her desk complained with growls that ruffled their pages.\n\n\"The author's alive? Where?\" Brevity asked.\n\nHe shrugged. \"A place called Seattle.\"\n\nClaire groaned as she squinted at the paperwork. \"It's always the Americans.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Names were a necessary nicety even Claire had to tolerate. The demon introduced himself with a very clumsy bow; this small bit of etiquette helped him to relax and stop sweating acid everywhere. Claire frowned at his name. \"Leto. Like the Greek myth?\"\n\nThe skinny demon ducked his head. \"Like from the sci-fi novel.\"\n\n\"So, you're a demon of...?\"\n\n\"Entropy.\"\n\n\"They sent a demon of entropy to a library wing full of irreplaceable artifacts?\" Claire stared at Leto and then shook her head, muttering, \"I will kill him. Positively kill him.\"\n\nLeto twitched. \"If you don't mind my asking... how, ah, how can you talk about His Highness like that?\"\n\n\"Simple,\" Claire said. \"The Library exists in Hell; it doesn't serve it. He's not my Highness.\"\n\nLeto paled, and she dismissed it with a wave. \"It's a long story. Don't worry yourself. I still follow orders. This is Brevity, muse and my assistant in the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"Former muse. I flunked out.\" Brevity made a face and offered her hand.\n\nIf Leto was a scarecrow teenager in appearance, Brevity was of the sprite variety. Her hair was spiky and short and a dainty shade of sea glass. Beneath the cuffs of a multicolored jumper, propane blue tattoos flowed over paler cornflower skin in a shifting series of script that almost appeared readable, at least until one tried to focus on it.\n\n\"Nice to meet you, ma'am.\" Leto shook her hand shyly, taking care to keep his fingers back from the ripple of tattoo.\n\n\"Hey! A demon with manners. I like this one,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"Many demons are perfectly polite to me,\" Claire pointed out.\n\n\"No, many demons are intimidated by the Library, boss. There's a difference,\" Brevity said as Claire pulled out a drawer in search of tools.\n\nThe mundane tools of a librarian's trade included notebooks and writing implements, and the less usual: inks that glimmered, stamps that bit, wriggling wax, and twine. All of them went into a bag that Claire slung across her chest. Pen and paper went into the hidden pockets of her muddled, many-tiered skirts. She'd been buried in some frippery that was dour even for her time, all buttons and layers. She'd chopped the skirt at the knee long ago for easy movement, but Claire lived by the firm moral philosophy that one could never have too many pockets, too many books, or too much tea.\n\nIt wasn't as if she had proper hours to maintain. Claire squinted at a squat copper sundial, fueled by a steady if entirely unnatural light all its own, and scribbled a new line in the Library's logbook. It was thick and ancient, crusted with age and the oils of a hundred librarian fingerprints. It also never ran out of paper. Claire flipped from her personal notes to the \"Library Status\" log and ended an entry with a flourish, and the lights in the hall began to flutter.\n\nThe Library is now closed. All materials must be returned to the shelves. A disembodied voice, clipped and dull, echoed through the hall. Claire tapped her foot as the voice continued. The Library is now closed. Patrons are reminded that any curses, charms, or dreams left behind are considered forfeit to the stacks. The Library is now closed.\n\nThere were not many patrons lounging around the reading area, but the few imps that were reading put down their books reluctantly and began to make their way to the exit, much to Leto's slack-jawed amazement. Creatures of Hell, on general principle, took to following orders as well as one might expect. Which is to say, not at all and with liberal interpretation. Most of the Library's regulars were powerless imps and bored foot soldiers, but one beefy incubus with horns, clad in little more than chitin and scar tissue, handed his book directly to Claire with a grunt.\n\nClaire clucked her tongue. \"No sulking. You know we don't do lending. It'll be here for you tomorrow, Furcas. Go on now.\"\n\nLeto managed to close his mouth before his sputter could ruin another rug. \"That\u2014 Was that...\"\n\n\"Intimidated. Told you,\" Brevity said.\n\nOnce the remaining patrons disappeared out the great doors, Claire closed the log and swept toward the far wall. Leto clung to her heels, and Claire bit back a smile. The Library was fickle, eerie terrain, especially to demons.\n\nFrom the main desk, the cavernous space ran back into shadows in all directions, and every available surface was layered with wood or parchment of varying ages. Rows of shelves filled with books ran high over their heads, and larger tomes crouched at the end of each row in quivering packs. Plush rugs of riotous color muffled the floor. Every visible wall space carried an oil canvas, with images in various states of completion. They governed themselves with their own regular rotation and changes. More paintings hung on a monstrous series of pivoting racks at the far back, draped in shadow like a leafy thicket.\n\nClaire's target was the far wall, a large section of buttery pale yellow drawers. Endless rows of drawers that hadn't been there a moment ago. The Library functioned on requirement, shifting and flowing to the needs of the books and librarians. Leto eyed it with anxiety, but Claire shoved the folder back into his hands. She began to scale a ladder clipped to a rail. \"Author name and story title?\"\n\n\"Ah...\" Leto opened the file. \"Author, McGowan. Amber Guinevere McGowan.\"\n\nHer foot stabbed out at the wooden wall, and the ladder coasted a few feet down the row of drawers. \"McGowan. Right. God, middle name Guinevere? What were her parents thinking? No wonder she never became a writer.\" Claire yanked a drawer open. \"Title?\"\n\n\"Uh, the missing title just says 'Nightfall.'\" Leto looked up as Claire let out a snort. \"Something wrong?\"\n\n\"I think every writer, written or unwritten, has some glorified adventure titled 'Nightfall' stuck in their head. Half the residents here were a 'Nightfall' at one point. Even unwritten stories eventually migrate to something more original.\" Claire danced her fingers over the drawer before snapping up a card. She slid the drawer closed and descended.\n\nHer sneaker-clad feet hit the ground, and Claire headed for the exit. \"Calling card says it's definitely still in Seattle. Brev, you up for a field trip?\"\n\nBrevity's gold eyes grew to saucers, and she stumbled forward in a little dance. Her voice wasn't quite a squeal but flirted with the idea. \"You mean upstairs?\" she said breathily. \"Always and forever, boss.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "\u2002This log is a curious thing. Previous volumes appear to date back to early Sumer. Yet I can read and understand every word. Books are a strange kind of magic in this Library.\n\n\u2002The reading has been enlightening, no doubt. Though rambling and peppered with a plague of personalities, it chronicles the training and supplemental experiences of every librarian that has helmed the Unwritten Wing.\n\n\u2002Ancient Egypt had her Book of the Dead, a scroll buried with loved ones to guide them and advise them on their behavior as they navigated the afterlife. I suppose that makes this our Book of the Dead Librarians. All the proper protocols for navigating but never escaping this place.\n\n\u2002Thousands of years of librarians have kept their advice in this book. Somewhere, somewhere, there's got to be a solution for the problem I'm faced with.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Claire Hadley, 1988 CE\n\nHell was a series of hallways. An endless series of hallways, at least to a junior demon. They wound through passages Leto didn't recognize, broad balconies, and whispering broom closets. They passed jagged stairs and alcoves with shadows like wounds, and finally a non-euclidean gargoyle that had a troubling habit of not quite staying in the viewer's spatial perception. Leto averted his eyes from it at the start of a wince-inducing headache.\n\nEach hall was lined with a narrow bay of windows. The first looked out upon wide fields of wildflowers, the next on a dark cavern with endless pools of starlight, the third, a lava-drenched plain. The conflicting light painted the hallway in a rainbow of bright and dark, yellow afternoons and blue twilights spilling over them as they passed.\n\nFinally, the librarian took a sharp right into a narrow doorway that Leto would have missed. Its wooden arch was decorated with an icon for travel: a small set of interlocking wheels, marred with the claw marks of large birds. He followed the women down a steep set of stairs, watching Brevity's light teal hair as it bounced like a brightly colored flag. They emptied out into a claustrophobic office, taller than it was wide.\n\nLeto stumbled to a stop behind Brevity and turned in a slow circle. The office was tall, he realized, in order to accommodate the dizzying rows of shelves that reached from the floor up into the shadows of the ceiling. Unlabeled jars of various shapes lined each shelf, putting out a faint but steady colored glow that was the room's only light.\n\nBrevity grinned at Leto with ill-concealed amusement. \"First time traveling?\"\n\n\"Yes, er...\" Leto shot her an alarmed look. \"Rather, no. I'm not going with you, am I? I just deliver the paperwork.\"\n\nBrevity shrugged and turned to tap at a glass jar that swirled with plum and sickly orange mists. Leto stepped toward Claire. \"Miss... eh, Head Librarian?\"\n\n\"Not now, kiddo.\" Claire slapped her hand on a dusty bell sitting on the counter. Instead of a simple chime, a trio of vibrations pinged hard out of the metal and made all the jars tremble on their shelves.\n\nLeto most certainly was not a kid. Demons didn't really have childhoods. Soul-shuddering inductions, nightmarish hazings, yes; childhood, no. Leto started to form his protest when a walking mountain in a tight tailored suit came trumbling out of the gloom behind the counter.\n\nA pale head, the size and shape of a boulder, floated above a starched collar. Leto quailed. He retreated toward the door as he took in dark pits where the monster's eyes should have been. The creature opened its mouth to reveal a row of jagged red edges that almost, but not quite, passed for teeth. Its voice rumbled in a timbre that shook the shelves around them.\n\n\"ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, hope abandoned, Walter,\" Claire cut in. \"We need transport.\"\n\nThe creature's face fell, serrated teeth disappearing behind a quivering lip. He straightened his tie and blinked bottomless-pit eyes at the librarian. \"Aww, miss! C'mon, let me do it proper-like. Ever since the Reformation, I never get mortals in here no more.\"\n\n\"If you must, but do please be brief. And quieter.\"\n\n\"Bully, ma'am. Thank you.\" The giant straightened, and his shoulders nearly hit the rafters. He cleared his throat, opened his razor-filled mouth again, and launched into his speech.\n\n\"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! Beyond me lies the city of woe. Before me waits the sleep which ye earn. None shall pass unless the soul be light; none shall pass out of the dark. I am that which stands; I am that which waits and shall not falter; I am that which keeps the fates. Weigh now your soul or turn back to thine sleep.\"\n\nIt struck Leto as a little flowery, but echoed in a howling baritone, it did the job. The jars trembled on their shelves, so that a hundred glass voices seemed to echo the words. The vibration reached in to jostle Leto's organs unpleasantly.\n\nClaire did not appear impressed. She propped her elbows on the counter, her back straight even in the middle of a bored recline. She tugged at one of her many braids, fussing with a stray bangle.\n\nBrevity twisted her hands and risked a shy smile at the beast behind the counter. \"I think that was awful terrifying, Mr. Walter. That trembly bit on the end is a nice touch.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Brevity. It took ages to get the acoustics just right.\" The beast appeared to shrink and glow under the praise. He caught sight of Leto and leaned over with a dagger-filled grin that was something out of even a demon's nightmares. \"Hey, I don't suppose you're\u2014\"\n\nClaire cleared her throat. \"We're here on business, Walter.\"\n\nThe creature turned his sightless gaze back on the librarian. \"Sorry, ma'am. How can I help you, Miss Claire?\"\n\n\"We're on an errand up top. I need one pass for Brevity here and two summoning candles for me and the boy.\"\n\nLeto bristled, forgetting his original protest about the trip. \"I'm not a boy. I'm a demonic messenger of\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, two summoning candles for me and this most esteemed and powerful messenger of our fearless leader.\" She raised her brows to Walter. \"White should do. Don't you think?\"\n\nAgain, Walter leaned over the counter, peering above the librarian's head to scrutinize Leto. Leto squirmed his toes and forced himself not to fidget and definitely not to meet the gaze of those bottomless black holes that threatened to swallow him up.\n\nAfter a pause that did not seem at all short, Walter nodded. \"White summoning should do 'bout right, Miss Claire. Coming right up. Miss Brevity, you've used summat like this before, yes?\"\n\n\"Yep, I know the routine. Hauling the chief's butt out of Hell is why she keeps me around.\"\n\nClaire cast her assistant a sour look as Walter thundered back into the halls behind the counter. \"I do not get 'hauled' anywhere. You are merely fulfilling your duties, Brev.\"\n\n\"You maybe want to summon yourself, then, boss?\"\n\nLeto glanced between the two women, a fresh layer of confusion coating his already stewing anxiety. \"I don't understand. Why does anyone need summoning? I thought you were going to Seattle.\"\n\nClaire turned as if suddenly remembering his presence. \"You really are new, aren't you? It's because I'm human.\"\n\nAt Leto's blink, she gave a weak chuckle. \"You assumed a mere demon could make sense of the tangled, unfinished dreams of humanity? Not likely. Too messy. Last demon assistant I had ran screaming after one full inventory. No, librarians are nearly always mortals, and nearly always unwritten authors themselves. Brev here being an exception worked out by the Muses Corps.\"\n\n\"When they kicked me out,\" Brevity muttered.\n\nLeto nodded uncertainly. He had heard the rumors, of course. The whispers about the unwritten works by Hell's librarian. Claire hadn't held the position that long\u2014thirty years was a blink in Hell's terms\u2014but she'd become a whispered name in demonic courts for the stories she'd left uncreated, filling the shelves, worlds unmade. The rumor said there was a whole annex of the Unwritten Wing that housed her works, under lock and key, never visited. Buried under the fog of some old and quite horrible scandal.\n\nOf course, Leto thought, any good rumor always had a scandal.\n\n\"Right,\" he said, attempting to recover, rubbing the back of his neck, and looking anywhere but at the stern woman. \"I just... Well, shouldn't you be doing your time to get out of here? Isn't that the only reason mortals are here, to, y'know, work through their... their...\"\n\n\"We all get the afterlife our soul requires. I've heard the sales pitch,\" Claire supplied with an impatient cluck of her tongue. \"This is mine. Lucky me. The trick they don't tell you is that the longer you're here, the harder it is to remember anywhere else.\" She paused as Walter lumbered slowly back out of the gloom. \"It's quite inconvenient. As are these questions.\"\n\n\"S'why boss needs a summons,\" Brevity said. \"Spirits and demons can come and go on business. But mortals can't leave Hell if their souls haven't freed them yet. But with a bit of ritual magic, library folk get a day pass.\"\n\n\"A day, no more,\" Claire said. \"Not everyone gets access to a ghostlight, but since it's part of the Library's duties, King Crankypants has to make an exception.\"\n\nLeto couldn't help but twitch every time she did that: refer to Lucifer with a horrific pet name. It was disrespectful. Undignified. Not done. He'd begun to suspect that was why she did it.\n\nWalter reached the counter and paused to pat delicately at his suit pocket. He whipped out a pocket square the size of a bath towel and wiped the counter before carefully placing two waxy candles on it. He then heaved one of the large glass jars filled with colored fog and set it next to them on the counter. \"Modern-day Seattle area, aye? Where you want t' be set down, Miss Brevity?\"\n\nClaire answered instead. \"City center is fine. Space Needle, if you need a landmark.\"\n\n\"The base of the Space Needle, this time,\" Brevity added with a scrunched-up face.\n\n\"Oh yeah, sorry 'bout that...\" Walter furrowed his brow and twisted the jar sharply, once, twice, three times. Each time, the swirling mist inside changed color slightly, darkening from sky blue to navy, brightening from forest green to spring. The colors settled into a slate blue and lime swirl, and the eyeless creature seemed satisfied. \"That should do it.\"\n\nBrevity stood on her tiptoes to reach over the counter and inspect each white candle before sticking them in one of the many pockets of her cargo pants.\n\nLeto eyed the swirling jar and edged another step toward Claire. \"Pardon me, Miss Librarian, but I don't think I'm authorized to travel. I was just supposed to\u2014\"\n\n\"Deliver the assignment and assist with completion. This is assisting.\"\n\n\"I don't think I'll be much help\u2014\"\n\n\"It's just a summons, Leto.\" It was the first time the librarian had bothered to use his name, and the demon felt irrational heat in his cheeks. She offered him a trace of a smile. \"A summons to a relatively boring time and place on a relatively boring errand. If you're new, it'll do you good to learn how these things work. I imagine that's what High Grump had in mind. Unless you want to return to him to check?\"\n\n\"No! No. I mean, if... you're sure, ma'am.\"\n\n\"You have matches?\" Claire asked her assistant, and Brevity nodded.\n\n\"And spares.\"\n\n\"Right. Walter, whenever you're ready.\"\n\nThe giant nodded, rubbing his gnarled palms on his pants once before twisting the lid off the jar. Leto caught what sounded like a whisper of seagulls as Walter set down the lid with a clang. The giant took the oversized jar carefully in two hands, leaned over the counter, and upended the jar over Brevity's head.\n\nThe mists swirled out, not so much in a downpour, but like roots seeking purchase. They snaked around the muse's head and swiftly raced around her, thickening as the room filled with the smell of briny sea and petrol, concrete and rain.\n\nThe navy and lime fog seemed to envelop her and then constrict, squeezing the girl-shaped fog into unhealthy proportions. Leto gasped, but Claire set a placating hand on his shoulder. The fog rippled and, in the next second, neatly withdrew back into the jar Walter held. There was a faint smell of ozone and sulfur, and Brevity was gone.\n\n\"Thank you, Walter. Now comes the unpleasant part.\" Claire stepped toward the clear space in the center of the lobby. The giant nodded and set to screwing the jar closed and bustling with things under the counter. Walter seemed to make a point of averting his eyes, which did nothing for Leto's nerves.\n\n\"Unpleasant?\" Leto stayed close to the librarian and began to wonder why he couldn't have traveled with Brevity instead.\n\n\"Well, unless you really love roller coasters.\"\n\nClaire straightened and locked her shoulders back. The air around them began to take on an odd quality. Leto frowned as the floor tilted under his feet. A heavy sensation pressed on his collarbone.\n\n\"What's a roller coas\u2014\"\n\nAnd then the world dropped through his skin."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "Leto had never had his liver pulled through his ears, but he could now imagine the experience. It was as if a force had reached through the walls of the little room, through his skin, through every atom in his body... and ripped. Not up, not down, but betwixt, shouldering aside reality as it went. Leto's vision faded and his equilibrium reported movement in one direction, then another, before giving up entirely.\n\nSomething hard bit into his knees, and fresh air hit his face. Rather than helping, this reminded his innards that he was no longer dying, and Leto felt the peculiarly mortal need to lose the contents of his stomach.\n\n\"He's okay! Too much excitement.\" A voice chirped to his right. \"We're okay\u2014thanks! Have a good day.\"\n\nLeto forced open one eye and saw Brevity waving off a cluster of humans. The group was clad in loud nylon jackets and showed polite, if flimsy, concern before shuffling off. Tourists. Leto found the term in his mind, though he didn't know where the word came from.\n\nThey stood in a large outdoor space, paved with concrete and studded with a line of round marble shapes. Milling humans cluttered the area around glass sculptures and souvenir stands. Behind them, dull metal struts rose to form a towering, spindly landmark that disappeared into an eternal gray.\n\nLeto gripped a marble sphere and slowly wobbled to his feet. \"Shouldn't we be worried someone saw us?\"\n\n\"If they did, they'd just as quickly forget,\" Claire said. \"Summonings are tough to remember. Wouldn't be a useful means of transit otherwise.\"\n\nLeto turned and saw the librarian had fared the summoning just slightly better than he had. She leaned on a concrete bench. Her skin, normally a rich nut brown, was waxy around her flushed cheeks. Her dark hair, once full of tiny and impressively complicated beadwork, was now a thatch of simple braids tied away from her face. Her complex layers of clothes were also simplified into a vaguely Bohemian mix of a blouse, thick skirts, and sneakers.\n\nBrevity, too, had undergone small mortal changes. Her skin no longer held a propane blue glow, her gold eyes were a plain brown, and roiling tattoos had resolved to a generic knotting pattern up each arm. Her hair, Leto was surprised to note, was still pastel green.\n\nLeto glanced sharply down at his own hands but saw little change. Running fingers over his head revealed a long tide of faintly curled, mostly tangled dark hair, less oily and thornbush-like than it was in Hell, and his pointed ears were blunted to fleshy circles.\n\nHe also felt clammy and smelled vaguely of meat.\n\n\"Don't worry\u2014it's not permanent.\" Claire brought him out of his self-inspection.\n\n\"I don't know if I like being this... squishy,\" Leto said. It brought thoughts to mind, disquieting feelings, mortality, flashes of laughter and starlight and loss no longer felt. It was uncomfortable, like wearing someone else's suit, but also faintly familiar in the way all the worst things were.\n\n\"Confusingly squishy. That's humans in a nutshell.\" Brevity shooed off the last concerned bystanders and held out a small object to each of her companions.\n\nLeto took the small plastic canister. It was blue, with metal workings on top, and translucent. Inside, a delicate flame, no bigger than a speck but brighter than it had a right to be, bubbled in a clear liquid.\n\n\"Your ghostlight candles. They'll last about a day. Don't lose 'em,\" Brevity said as she saw Leto's puzzled look. \"We can't exactly carry lit holy candles around here. Basic camouflage. Candles down below turn into cigarette lighters up here. But don't let anyone borrow a light. It's kinda your passport while you're here.\"\n\n\"You do not want to get caught outside of Hell without your ghostlight. Very bad things happen. Now, then, about that book...\" Claire tucked her ghostlight into a skirt pocket without looking at it. She paused to dig the tiny calling card out of her leather bag. \"We've got some ways to walk.\"\n\n\"Ooh, taxi?\" Brevity squeaked. \"I've always wanted to ride in one of those!\"\n\n\"You're a muse\u2014you always want to do everything,\" Claire said. \"If it will save time, I suppose I can fold enough for a cab. Let's go.\"\n\nTo Leto's surprise, the taxi driver paid no attention when what appeared to be a brightly colored rave kiddie, a dreadlocked hipster, and a malnourished teenager in an ill-fitting mortuary suit crawled into his cab. Nor did he blink as Claire spent the entire ride industriously ripping strips of paper out of an ancient-looking notebook and making complicated folds. One more oddity in an odd human world, just passing through.\n\nClaire frowned at the card before directing the cab to drive \"downtown\" and not stop until they lost \"the smell of fish and commerce.\"\n\nThe driver squinted into the rearview mirror, probably rethinking his fare. \"Uh, Pioneer Square?\"\n\nAgain, the librarian consulted the tiny card. \"Sure, close enough.\" Over her shoulder, Leto was surprised to see the neatly printed type moving and shifting across the tiny square card, reorienting with new (poetically vague) directions each time the cab turned.\n\nAs the cab pulled up to a curb, Claire finished her folding and held the slips of paper out to the driver. \"Keep the change.\"\n\nThe driver frowned. \"What the f\u2014\"\n\n\"You dreamed of a big house.\" Claire's voice dropped, odd and strangely formal, as Leto slid out of the car after her. She leaned through the window of the cab and caught the driver with her gaze. \"With a big porch and a fireplace in the bedroom. Hearth, heart, hurt. You want to take her there and kiss her in the kitchen at the end of the day, food cooking, fire inside. Secure, solid, someday. Steps. This is your first.\"\n\nThe driver watched Claire's face and blinked slowly; then a fragile smile slid over his rough features. \"Yeah, the house...\" He nodded and tucked the slips of ragged paper in his pocket. \"Thanks for the tip, ma'am. You have a good day.\"\n\nClaire straightened and tucked the notebook back into her bag.\n\n\"What\u2014\" Leto began.\n\n\"A story.\" Claire watched the cab pull away. \"I paid him in a story, his story. It's all most souls want, really, so it's easy for them to accept.\"\n\nIt didn't sit right with Leto. \"But we cheated him. It's a lie.\"\n\n\"A lie. A dream. Good stories are both,\" Claire dismissed. \"Is it so bad? He'll remember the story, turn it over carefully in the back of his mind, feel the edges of it like he would a lucky coin. A story will change him if he lets it. The shape and the spirit of it. Change how he acts, what dreams he chooses to believe in. We all need our stories; I just fed him a good one.\"\n\n\"But he's got bills to pay. His tally will come out wrong. The money\u2014\"\n\n\"It doesn't do no harm.\" Brevity nudged Leto. \"Besides, don't get boss started. If there's one thing librarians know, it's stories.\"\n\n\"Still doesn't seem right.\" But Leto let it drop.\n\nThey were no longer in the gleaming tourist center of the city. All around them crowded old brick giants, thick buildings with drooping rows of narrow windows, papered with faded posters of all kinds. The main street maintained an infestation of shops, windows displaying discounted baubles or closeout-sale signs. There were fewer people down here, but there was enough foot traffic that no one seemed to pay their trio much mind.\n\nClaire scowled at the calling card before handing it to Leto. \"It's getting vague. Keep an eye on that, and let's look around.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "When the scribbles on the calling card finally changed, they evolved into... nothing. An inky, irregular period filled the tiny card under the title information. Leto held the card out to Claire for her to see. She nodded and paused on the sidewalk, then began turning slowly in a circle. \"It's nearby.\"\n\n\"What are we looking for, exactly?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"A leather-bound book, like the rest of our collection. It'll think it's being sneaky, but it should stand out pretty clearly against modern-day paperbacks.\" Claire frowned into store windows as they wandered a few yards up and down the sidewalk. \"Or since it is awake and manifested, it could be a person.\"\n\n\"A person?\"\n\nClaire frowned into a coffee shop window. \"They look like anything, but you can tell by the... oh, hell and harpies.\"\n\nBoth Brevity and Leto turned and peered over the librarian's shoulder. The shop was a popular spot, filled with an assortment of creative and business folk jostling for table space and power outlets.\n\nLeto didn't see what had caused the librarian to utter increasingly dark and esoteric oaths under her breath until Brevity pointed. \"There. We got ourselves a hero.\"\n\nLeto followed the girl's finger to a table by the window where a young and attractive couple perched. The woman sipped at a tall glass while she flicked animated, slender hands around in her conversation with what Leto assumed, from the smitten look on the man's face, was her boyfriend.\n\nHe was a composition of fine tailoring and good genes. He leaned conspiratorially over the table and offered the woman a practiced smile. The man's fingertips rested artfully at his temple, where bronze hair ruffled in a nonexistent breeze. Leto was no judge of such things, for many reasons. But even he could tell in a moment that the hero was, frankly, perfect.\n\n\"Is the woman the author?\" Claire had finally exhausted her cursing. \"Brev, grab me the photo from the author profile.\"\n\nBrevity ruffled around in the librarian's bag before flipping open the file. \"Yeah, looks like Miss McGowan to me, boss.\"\n\nLeto suspected, from the stormy look that crossed Claire's face, that the author's presence was a very bad thing.\n\nThe librarian heaved a sigh. \"Why couldn't it have been a damsel? This is going to make things significantly more difficult. We need to corner it and keep the contact with the author to a minimum.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014I thought we were here for a book,\" Leto said.\n\n\"We are. He is the book.\" Claire's explanation was peevish as she scanned the shop. \"When unwritten books get too wild, too loved, or just too hungry, they get it in their fool heads to be real. They leak into the world, usually in the form of one of their characters. They aren't the most creative lot on their own. That guy is obviously the hero\u2014did you see those cheekbones? All he's missing is a sword and a white horse. That's our character.\"\n\n\"And he's talking to his author?\"\n\n\"Violating every rule unwritten works have. When I get that book back to the wing... Bugger. Why'd it have to be a hero?\"\n\n\"What's wrong with heroes?\"\n\n\"Everything.\"\n\n\"Boss ain't exactly fond of characters that decide to wake up, 'specially heroes.\" A thoughtful look flickered across Brevity's face. \"He's just a representation of the story, of course. The physical book still exists. He can't stray too far from the rest of his book, so it must be close.\"\n\n\"Hopefully, Mr. Nightfall here is fool enough to keep it at hand, and we can wrap this up easy,\" Claire said. \"All right, a plan. Brevity, I'm going to need a distraction that gets the author's attention.\"\n\nThe former muse positively glowed. \"Wild, public display of drama? That I can do. What did you have in mind?\"\n\n\"Let's keep this classic.\" Claire turned to Leto with a smile that made him gulp. \"Leto, time to earn your keep.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "\u2002I'm glad I'm here! I'll be the last librarian, for all I care. Think of it: what is more boring than paradise?\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2013 CE\n\n\u2002The realms of the afterlife are long-lived, but not static. Realms function off belief, and will change as beliefs change. Realms can die if starved of souls, but more often they morph into something closer to legend than to religion. Eternity bends to the whims of mortal imagination.\n\n\u2002I wonder what we would do if we knew we held such power when we were alive. It's an opportunity.\n\n\u2014Librarian Poppaea Julia, 51 BCE\n\nThere's a first question that anyone who lived a good life hears after they die. It's a simple question. And it was Ramiel's duty to ask it.\n\n\"Anything to declare?\"\n\n\"What?\" The soul was a thin man, his hairline meandering that border between middle-aged and elderly. He was confused, as they always were, wobbling slightly as he stood before the massive gates of Heaven's inbound processing. The Gates, as they were called, stood as representation of Ramiel's own personal angelic duty. And torment.\n\nRami pinched the thick nub of his stylus between his even thicker fingers and leveled his gaze at the man over the edge of the desk. He did not look at the line of souls stacked beyond him, a shimmering line of heads in every shape and color that twisted as far as he could see into the light.\n\nHe did not do a silent calculation of the amount of time the souls would take to process.\n\nDid not feel a cramp in his calloused hands, joints much more accustomed to holding something colder and harder than a stylus.\n\nDid not consider how many ledgers he had yet to fill with notes for judgment.\n\nInstead, the angel took a slow breath and tried again. \"Do you have anything to declare, sir? Secrets taken to the grave, yearnings never realized, visions, prophecies, perhaps?\"\n\nRami did not anticipate much of an answer. Souls carried the baggage of their lives under their skin. Undeclared, unacknowledged, and therefore none of his concern. The rare soul ended up in front of him with some deathbed vision or prophecy. In which case, Rami dutifully recorded it for the judgment.\n\n\"No, nothing like that. I am an accoun\u2014wait, was. Was an accountant.\" The soul tapped gnarled knuckles together. Rami began marking the log when the voice interrupted him on the downstroke.\n\n\"Actually... does this count?\"\n\nRami glanced up. The soul had fished a small scrap of parchment out of his suit pocket.\n\nPaper. Real paper.\n\nNot secrets, not dreams. Not soul-type stuff, conjured by a dying soul. Physical, linen-and-wood-pulp and human-ingenuity-type paper.\n\nAt the Heavenly Gates, the entrance to a world of souls, that was most definitely worth declaring. Rami frowned and leaned over the desk. \"What... That's not\u2014 How did you get that up here?\"\n\n\"I'm not quite\u2014\" The skin around the old man's eyes knit together like rumpled tissue as he searched around for an answer. \"Wait, ah, yes. Black magic.\"\n\nRami stared. \"Black magic.\"\n\n\"Yes, quite. Enochian, if I recall. Bit of a fuss it was.\"\n\nFigures it would be Enoch, Rami thought. It was always that bastard. \"Right. Black magic. To bring scratch paper to your Heavenly reward.\"\n\nRami reluctantly shoved away from the bench and came around. Broad but not tall, he was forced to shoulder aside some blank-eyed souls in line. Each shuffled to one side without complaint, but the contact still left a residual feeling, the psychic smudge of the dead, that made Rami rub his palms down the front of his gray tunic before facing the old man. \"Well, Mr. Avery, was it? Just give it here, and let's see\u2014\"\n\nThe moment Rami's fingers came in proximity of the folded scrap, he heard a loud snap. He jerked back his hand with a grunt. A flare of light slowly dimmed around the paper. For a moment, ink on the inside page had glowed sickly green. It left behind the faint smell of ozone and anise.\n\nIt was the smell that alarmed Rami. Nothing at the Gates smelled. Nothing at the Gates had the physical property to smell, per se. An important and convenient fact when dealing with the recently deceased.\n\nThe old man smiled. \"Well, look at that.\"\n\n\"I most definitely am now.\" The hairs on the back of Rami's neck crept up as he considered the innocuous-looking scrap. \"I need you to come with me, Mr. Avery.\"\n\n\"Oh, did I pass?\" The old man was delighted.\n\n\"You did. I just need you to hold that\u2014not too close!\" Rami veered away as Avery swung toward him with the paper. He opted to steer the lost soul by the shoulder.\n\n\"This way. And the rest of you... ah, well.\" He spared one glance for the mass of souls behind him before shoving the old man up toward the Gates.\n\nMr. Avery was happy enough to be led. For an accountant and an evident practitioner of the black arts, he was an agreeable sort. Rami brought him up short a couple of paces away from a tall figure encased entirely in silver. He took a deep breath and brought his knuckles up to rap on the armor.\n\nAn ornate visor pivoted up. A perfectly formed face carried a perfectly expressed sneer. \"What do you want, clerk?\"\n\nThe angel's youth made Rami's bones ache. They seemed to staff the Gates with only the newer caste, just to irritate him. \"It's Ramiel, you know.\"\n\n\"I do. I just don't care,\" the guard said.\n\n\"I need to speak with an arch.\"\n\n\"Arches don't speak to the Gate, especially not to you.\"\n\n\"I'm well aware.\" Rami fought not to grind his teeth. Because he was a fallen Watcher, his position among the angels was complicated and barely tolerated. \"There's an abnormality they'll want to hear about.\"\n\n\"Is that so?\" the angel said. The old man next to Rami shifted and finally caught the angel's gaze. \"What have you got there, mortal?\"\n\nIt was a question that Rami had forgotten to ask, what with all the glowing and the fuss. The old man looked lost for a moment, gazing down hard into his hand at the trembling bit of scrap. He looked up with a brilliant smile. \"It's the Devil's Bible.\"\n\nThe silence that hung between the two angels was louder than all the shuffling of a million souls past the bench. Rami was the first to recover.\n\n\"If that's\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll get an arch.\"\n\nThe guard disappeared through the Gates. Effortlessly, as Rami had once been able to do. But instead he was left to wait, occasionally shooting out a guiding arm whenever Avery wobbled too far away.\n\nHe sighed at the mass of milling souls that stretched out across the featureless plain. They would be backing up without processing, he knew. It struck him as entirely unnecessary. And tiring. This was Heaven. Souls judged themselves. No one found their way up here unless they were meant to be here. The processing, the Gates, the judgment, it was all a performance someone\u2014likely the only Someone that mattered\u2014had decided was necessary. Once, very long ago, when Rami was allowed past those vast shimmering gates and came and went from the Heavenly court at will, he might have agreed. Now he was just tired.\n\nAnd he wanted back in.\n\n\"Uriel will speak to you.\" The angel guard appeared at his elbow.\n\nRami stifled a groan. \"It would be her.\" He ignored the guard's scandalized glance as he pulled the old man along. Avery was busy grinning at his pockets again.\n\nA door appeared in the wall next to the Gates, revealing a narrow pearl staircase. At the top, Rami and Avery stepped out into a nursery of stars.\n\nThe dimensions of the room followed the general idea of an office: four walls, a smooth floor, and a high ceiling. But it was as if one had tried to explain the idea of an \"office\" to an elder god and this was the result. Everywhere, upon almost every surface, clung a thin film of the universe. Stars burst across the floor; an orange nebula cloud of color gestated new suns in the curve of a bookcase accented with brass spindles. It wasn't a painting or a model; the office was molded out of life. It was a miniature, breathing existence that bloomed color and expansion. So much color, so full of texture and movement after the unrelenting sterility, it was dizzying. Rami blinked his eyes against it.\n\nThe only mundane surface in the office was a deep oak desk, but even this was held up with pillars of stars. Rami recognized the angel seated behind it.\n\nQuite tall and nearly as powerfully built as Ramiel, Uriel was all light. Her white-gold hair was trimmed short, and her uniform was impeccable, where Rami's was dark and faded. The uniform was not much changed from the last time Ramiel had seen it, despite the centuries that had passed. Outrageous buttons and tassels had been replaced with clean military trim, but it was still a leader's uniform. Still assuredly Uriel. Five seconds in her presence left Rami feeling shabby and mismatched.\n\nUriel was always as inerrant in her presence as she was with her purpose. Rami had once chalked this up to the confidence of youth. Ramiel was from the original Watcher angels, made before the Fall. Uriel belonged to the batch of angelic creatures made after.\n\nBut as the centuries went on, the difference in age became negligible, and he was forced to admit that Uriel was simply better made. Made for power, made for righteousness. Where Rami struggled to be certain of his way, Uriel burned with it.\n\n\"Ramiel.\" No less certain were the daggers of disappointment that edged her smile as she rose to greet him with a powerful handshake. \"I was there when the Host voted to allow you to serve at the Gates. A chance at redemption, a great honor.\" She said this evenly, as if it was a decision she would not have made but could be generous enough to allow.\n\n\"Uriel.\" Rami nudged the old man to sit in an armchair of dwarf stars, cold and lumpy, but stable. \"There's an abnormality\u2014\"\n\n\"You've served well, so far,\" Uriel continued. \"I'm glad you've found your place, my friend.\"\n\nRami's jaw clenched. \"I don't recall our last parting as exactly friendly.\"\n\nUriel dismissed it. \"Foolish failure, but one that I'm pleased to see you're moving past.\"\n\nRami's cheek twitched. The Watchers, sympathizing too deeply with the fragile mortals in their care, had granted humans forbidden knowledge. The cost had been exile with Lucifer's minions, though the Watchers had not rebelled themselves. Heaven called it justice.\n\nBut Rami remembered the impoverished years of war and anarchy among the fallen Watchers, seeing the oldest witnesses to the universe feud and scrabble for survival, soaking men's dreams with enough blood of Heaven to drive them mad. Rami had stayed sane only by walking away.\n\nBeing a fallen angel meant he belonged nowhere, but being a Watcher meant he had access everywhere. Somehow, he'd found himself back at the Gates, looking at the one place he no longer could go. It was after an eon of walking that Ramiel realized the only thing he wanted was to be able to call a place home.\n\nIt'd taken him another century before the archangels had deigned to notice. Another before he was given a chance. Serve Purgatory, faithfully process the mortal souls entering Heaven, and the unspoken offer had been maybe\u2014just maybe\u2014one day he'd pass the Gates himself.\n\nSo he had. So he did. All rather uneventfully, until today.\n\n\"What have you got there, little man?\" Uriel snapped Rami out of his thoughts as she approached Avery. The soul had relaxed even in the surreal surroundings, no longer hunching over his curious scrap of paper.\n\nAvery looked up at the angel. \"A barter.\"\n\n\"And what do you hope to barter for?\"\n\n\"Forgiveness.\"\n\n\"Well, now.\" A sharp gleam set over Uriel's eyes. \"That's a big trade.\"\n\nIt really wasn't\u2014every soul in Heaven was forgiven. The judgment had always been for show; the only one who damned you to Hell was yourself. But Rami saw Uriel's tactical mind turning that for information. \"What would be worth such a trade?\"\n\n\"Just a piece of paper. From something I heard was valuable.\" There was a sharpness, an awareness, in the soul's eyes that hadn't been there before. As if the prospect of negotiation had woken him up. \"The Devil's Bible.\"\n\nThe same change came over Uriel's gaze that had transformed the guard as well. \"Ramiel, I'll need a moment with the human soul.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "\"You can't be serious,\" Ramiel said.\n\n\"I am always serious.\"\n\n\"But I'm not even an angel. Not anymore. I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"Thunder of God. Shepherd for the lost.\" Uriel marched her hand over the desk as she spoke, and stars eddied around her fingertips. The office was empty, Avery divested of his treasure and sent Heaven knew where. \"Well suited to chasing after a powerful artifact. Or you were once.\"\n\n\"Not anymore. I can't... I'm not. I am in exile, at best.\" Rami begrudged even having to say it aloud. It was a barbed twist in his chest. \"I can't even enter Heaven, let alone complete its work.\"\n\nHe refused to meet Uriel's eyes. Until her next words snapped his head up.\n\n\"Bring the pages of the book back, and that can be changed.\"\n\nRami stared. No angel or Watcher that had followed Lucifer had ever, ever been forgiven. Heaven did not forgive. It wasn't its nature\u2014not when it came to angels.\n\nHe didn't want to ask, but the words were out of his mouth. \"What kind of paper would be worth that kind of offer?\"\n\nUriel stilled behind the desk, but she met Rami's gaze steadily. \"It could be nothing more than a remnant. Something left over from the time of Enoch that the Betrayer's people missed.\" There had been a time of miracles, when the divine had still held an active interest in... anything really. That had been a long, long time ago. \"But\u2014that paper whispers power, Rami. The mortal named it the devil's. The stories on Earth were thought to be... Well, whatever it is, it will be something our Creator would have a vested interest in.\"\n\n\"You've... spoken to the Creator about this?\"\n\n\"No. You know that...\" Uriel caught herself, clenching her hand around the pommel of the blade at her side. \"Or perhaps you don't. The Creator has grown... distant during the past age. Even to those in the holy presence.\"\n\n\"Distant... how?\"\n\n\"The divine's attention is turned... elsewhere. Not here.\" A flicker of pain appeared on Uriel's angelic features, quickly schooled away.\n\nRamiel thought the Creator must have grown distant indeed to withdraw even from Uriel. She was the Light, where he had once been the Thunder. At times, she'd even served as the Face of God. The only one perhaps closer to the divine was Metatron. If their Creator was drifting beyond even Uriel's counsel, much must have changed in Heaven since Rami left.\n\nYet nothing had changed for the Host, not that he could see. The line of souls processed and progressed smoothly. Every angel he encountered at the Gates was as they always were: confident, golden, glowing with the righteous or, at the very least, the self-righteous. That kind of confidence was inspired only by true leaders. Like Uriel.\n\nThe realization hit Ramiel all at once. \"You've been running things in Her absence.\"\n\nUriel's lips thinned. \"Not alone. And only as the divine would have willed it.\"\n\n\"Ruling a realm. That's quite the promotion, Uriel.\"\n\n\"It's my duty. Our duty. The other archangels agree.\" Uriel averted her gaze. \"Until the return. The Creator wouldn't abandon us entirely.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Temporary absence was frightening in itself. But Rami detected the rising tension in Uriel's shoulders and kept his voice neutral. \"And you think this scrap holds enough power to draw the Creator back?\"\n\n\"Not alone. But if it has a complete book of power on Earth equal to it... such a threat couldn't be ignored. The Creator would have to return. We would no longer be\u2014\" Uriel rose from her seat. \"Am I to assume from your skepticism that you have no interest in my offer?\"\n\n\"You're saying if I do this, I will be allowed back. Heaven. Does that mean forgiven?\"\n\n\"That is up to the Creator, upon return. I can only promise you will be allowed past the Gates.\" Her voice took on a softer note. \"It's your chance to prove your worth. Join us. You could come home, Ramiel.\"\n\nHome. The word stuttered in his chest and traveled down his arms. Rami clenched his hands at his side. To set foot in the land he hadn't seen since the Earth was new. Only grasped in faded dreams during his time in the dark.\n\nBut it wasn't just the prospect of returning that drew him. It was not the memory of floating spires and air heavy with music. It was the prospect of stopping. Of truly belonging somewhere again. It was the idea of slowing his steps and turning his eyes to a place that saw him, that recognized him, that claimed him. It was that concept, the cessation of motion, that drove his words.\n\n\"I'll do it.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" Uriel graced him with a rare smile. \"You'll want to start with Avery's life, of course. I've got the brief prepared.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "\u2002It's uncertain what precise conditions precipitate a book's waking up and becoming a character. Some restless characters must be soothed back into their bindings once a decade; others may not stir for several centuries. Some wake when disturbed with attention; others fidget with neglect. Some ache to be told; others appear to want to escape their own narrative. Or improvise upon it.\n\n\u2002The only certainty is a book is most at risk while its author is alive. Like any good story, unwritten books have the capacity for great healing and great hurts. We do not act out of cruelty. The safest place for an unwritten book to be\u2014for both it and its author\u2014is sleeping in the Library, dreaming what stories it will tell.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1944 CE\n\nThe slap turned leto's chin. He took a step back from where they stood near the counter of the coffee shop, but Brevity advanced on him, hands on her hips. \"Did you think I wouldn't find out?\"\n\n\"I, uh...\" Leto twisted, meeting pair after pair of blandly curious eyes. They had the attention of the entire shop, whether out of sympathy or annoyance. Claire positioned herself discreetly at the far wall, near the book's table. The hero, as Claire had called him, and his companion were entirely focused on Brevity's display. \"You found out...?\"\n\nHe had just enough warning to flinch before another open hand aimed for his shoulder. Brevity burst into a very believable font of tears. The former muse had mastered the art of crying prettily, and Leto heard sympathetic murmurs drift among the coffee shop's patrons.\n\nHe reached out to pat Brevity on the shoulder. \"I'm sorry...\"\n\n\"Don't touch me!\"\n\nAlthough the red-haired author was riveted, the hero began to lose focus as he scanned the crowd. His eyes stopped when they stumbled upon Claire. The two locked gazes with a crackle of energy that went unnoticed by the rest of the shop.\n\nA flash of silver hung from Claire's fingertips, held low at her side like a blade. Her lips moved. The faintest silver script swayed, just a moment, in the air between them. The hero's eyes narrowed and he stood up from the table with a murmured word to his companion.\n\nBrevity cleared her throat, bringing Leto back to their improv.\n\n\"Can't you at least tell me what I did?\"\n\nThe hero and the librarian exchanged a series of hissed words and sharp gestures across the way. Claire seemed to get the advantage when she flicked up the hand holding her tool. The hero blanched and shot nervous eyes toward his oblivious companion.\n\n\"It's like you're not even here.\" A nudge brought Leto around to face wide brown eyes. Brevity gave him an inscrutable look before her eyes welled with tears again. \"You don't even see me anymore.\" Her voice was a stage whisper.\n\nLeto's stomach did a flip-flop, and he hesitantly put a hand on Brevity's arm. He garnered the courage to make his contribution to their little display. \"I, ah, always see you. How could I not see a beautiful girl?\" He resisted cringing at the line, randomly plucked from his limited exposure to human romance. His voice was not quite as confident as he would have liked, but he frankly had trouble thinking straight in close proximity to Brevity's large, wet eyes.\n\nPast Brevity's shoulder, Leto could see the hero scowl at Claire. He leaned over and whispered something to his author. She made a face, but the handsome man mollified her with a smile. The hero stood and began making his way out of the coffee shop, Claire tight on his heels.\n\nJust in time. The onlookers were growing bored now that Brevity and Leto weren't screaming at each other. Brevity made a melty noise, flinging her arms back for show. \"Why're you always so sweet, huh?\"\n\nLeto had just enough time to catch a subtle wink from the muse before she caught his chin and pressed soft, smiling lips against his."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "\"You did good,\" Brevity chattered as they popped out of the coffee shop a few minutes later. \"I was going for a big, classic breakup fight, but that makeup kiss made most people uncomfortable enough that they wanted to look away anyway. Good idea.\"\n\nLeto managed a nod as if, yes, of course, that had been his plan all along. He kept his chin tucked into his chest to hide the heat still on his cheeks. He was grateful to find Claire and the bronze-haired man\u2014Leto still had trouble thinking of him as a character from a book\u2014waiting for them around the corner.\n\nClaire had the tall man cornered against the brick building, pinned with a scowl. Brevity and Leto slowed as they approached.\n\nClaire spared a glance in their direction. \"It's hidden it.\"\n\n\"The book?\" Brevity wrinkled her nose. \"Don't suppose he'll tell us if we ask really nicely?\"\n\n\"He is not an it. He's also not an idiot and is standing right here,\" the man said as he crossed his arms and slouched against the brick wall. \"I have no intention of going back to slowly go insane for all eternity on some dusty shelf.\"\n\n\"And I have no intention of letting you hang around here, torturing that poor girl,\" Claire said. \"The difference is, I have a say in the matter. You do not.\"\n\n\"I'm not torturing her!\" The hero straightened. \"She's... she's so... I could never harm her.\"\n\nClaire gave an impatient wiggle of her fingers. \"She's amazing. She's brilliant. She's creative and thoughtful and clever and kind. That the gist of it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" The hero's face softened. \"You see it. She's perfect. At first I just wanted to meet her, but now... we've spent days just talking. If I can just inspire her to\u2014\"\n\n\"She's your author. Inspiring her to write is not your job. You've already caused enough damage.\"\n\n\"I have been a perfect gentleman!\"\n\nAn arm shot out and Claire pinned the much taller man against the wall. \"You've already hurt her. Just your being here has changed her. She's going to be paying the rest of her life for your damn selfish curiosity.\"\n\nThe man started. \"I have not! I\u2014\"\n\n\"Did she argue?\" Claire snapped. \"When you made your excuses? Did she even notice you were exiting with another woman?\"\n\n\"I... am very persuasive.\" The hero covered sudden uncertainty with a delicate sneer. \"Not that you would understand such an intimate connection.\"\n\nClaire rolled her eyes. \"Yes, yes, I'm an ogre. You wound me. And you're still twisting her mind all up just by being here.\"\n\n\"I can't be...\" Color drained from his face. \"An agreement, then. I'll show you where I hid it. I'll go with you. Just... let me say good-bye to her.\"\n\nClaire was unmoved. \"No. Out of the question.\"\n\n\"It's not a trick! You can even watch me. Please.\" The hero gave a pleading glance to Brevity and Leto. \"I owe her a decent good-bye, at least that much. Wouldn't that help repair some of the damage I've done?\"\n\nBrevity spoke up. \"A proper good-bye might make him more human, boss. To the author.\"\n\nClaire's face remained stony. \"Are you speaking as a former muse?\"\n\n\"Speaking as a girl who remembers how hearts work. Since sometimes you forget.\"\n\nClaire huffed her disagreement and considered. She rustled in her bag. \"Fine. Hold out your hand.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Your hand, hero. If I'm letting a book walk around, I want some insurance. You're getting a stamp.\"\n\n\"I'm not...\" The hero's delicate brows knit together in confusion. Nonetheless, he reluctantly shoved up a sleeve. \"This is demeaning. You already have my card. Is this really necessary?\"\n\n\"Quite.\" Claire retrieved from her bag a small stamp with a stubby wooden handle. She squinted and twisted one of the gears at the base. With a utilitarian jab, she stabbed the tip of the handle into her own palm. Brevity made a small noise as she looked away.\n\nLeto felt queasy but entranced. Blood pooled briefly on Claire's hand before being wicked into the stamp's handle. Leto swore the wood now had a warmer, ruddier sheen.\n\nIn another practiced move, the librarian snatched the hero's palm and planted the stamp's rubber end squarely in the center of his pale wrist.\n\nA red-black ribbon of ink escaped from the rubber circle and twined its way around the hero's wrist, leaving behind a worming knot of threads and shapes. The medallion pulsed on his forearm. Curiosity getting the better of him, Leto leaned closer. A tiny calligraphic font, almost too slender to read, shifted in chaotic patterns across the hero's skin.\n\nThe hero yanked back his wrist and rubbed at it tenderly. He raised his chin, regaining some of his initial arrogance. \"We have an accord?\"\n\nThe librarian scowled, but with less force than she'd had before. She was pale, as if she'd lost energy as well as blood. \"Welcome to Special Collections.\"\n\nShe stowed the stamp away in her bag without looking at the hero. \"Go. Be back here with book in hand in twenty minutes.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "They waited across the street from the coffee shop, at a bus stop bench just long enough to accommodate all three of them. Claire had fallen into a quiet that was tense enough for Leto to wish she was yelling at people again.\n\nThe librarians kept their eyes fixed on the coffee shop's window. The hero was inside for moments before reappearing at the front table with the redheaded author, just as he'd promised. Leto could see him cradling the woman's hands across the table, their heads angled toward each other.\n\nLeto rubbed the backs of his knuckles before breaking the silence. \"So, uh, do you two do this often?\"\n\n\"I wish. I love it up here.\" Brevity sighed. \"But characters don't often just walk off with their books. And stamping is even more rare.\" She gave the librarian a side glance.\n\nLeto's curiosity overcame his nerves. \"What exactly does that do?\"\n\n\"Stamping?\" Again, Brevity's eyes bobbed to Claire and away before she answered. \"A stamped book becomes part of the Library's special collection. It means the librarian can IWL it.\"\n\n\"IWL?\"\n\n\"Interworld loan,\" Brevity explained. \"Loaned out to or called back from anywhere, basically. Books have a way of going where they're needed, and Hell's Library keeps unwritten art, but it isn't the only library out there\u2014I hear great things about Valhalla's, actually. It keeps all the untold acts of heroism,\" Brevity said. \"Librarians can summon a stamped book back to Hell's Library from anywhere, even if its calling card is destroyed. If it's in Special Collections, it will always return to its originating Library.\"\n\n\"Sounds... serious. Why don't you do that to all the books to avoid their going missing like this?\"\n\n\"There are limits. It... takes a little from the head librarian to administer and maintain a stamp.\" Brevity chewed on her lip.\n\nLeto glanced back at the shop window. \"What do you think he's saying? You mentioned something about fixing stuff.\"\n\nBrevity started to shrug, but Claire made them both jump by answering. \"There's no fixing that damage.\"\n\n\"What damage, though?\" Leto asked after a moment of surprise. \"I mean, he's handsome. I'll give him that. But it seems like just a date...?\"\n\nClaire didn't turn her attention away from the couple in the window. She drew in a long breath. \"Books don't appear as normal people to their authors. Characters are made of something more to the one who created them. They're made of our dreams, our scars, slivers stuck beneath our skin. You're not meant to meet someone like that. She doesn't know it yet, but she's talking to the most alive person she'll ever meet. The kind of alive you don't find in real life. No one, no great love or her own flesh and blood, will ever come close. She'll remember that glint in his eyes, the twist of his chin, a casual turn of phrase. She'll hold it quietly in her mind like a fire. A fire that will consume everything.\n\n\"If she's lucky, she'll walk away haunted. But if she's unlucky, she'll believe it. She won't write him; she'll spend her whole life looking for him.\" Claire's knuckles were white on her lap. \"If she's smart, she'll try to forget. But that brand of memory is always going to be there, seared into a tender curve of her heart, a breath caught in her chest. It kills you eventually.\"\n\nCars rattled past. Brevity's expression was startlingly serious, wide-eyed, and silent. Leto stammered for a response, but the librarian cut him off with a harsh laugh.\n\n\"You surely didn't think I got duty in the Unwritten Wing by random chance?\" Claire's voice was hollow. She glanced at Leto with a paper-thin smile. \"You know how they say 'Never meet your heroes'? For authors most of all, never meet your heroes. Ruins everything.\" She shook her head as she continued to watch the coffee shop.\n\nThey fell quiet. Brevity scuffed her toes on the sidewalk, while Leto squinted up at the rooftops, trying not to think about what he didn't understand.\n\nThe sun was setting fast, and the brick face of the buildings began to bleed shadows, clay turning the color of dried blood. The seagulls echoed from the ferry port down the street, and Leto knew the tour boats would be evicting the last of their passengers, while the ferries took on commuters headed home. He did not stop to wonder how he knew this.\n\n\"Please stop looking at me like that, Brev,\" Claire finally said.\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Like I'm a soap bubble about to pop. I am perfectly capable. It's just been a long... There he is. About time.\" The librarian shook off the look her assistant gave her and stood quickly as the hero crossed the street.\n\nThey intercepted him at the corner, and the unwritten man held his hands up with a taunting smile. \"Easy, warden. I surrender to your tender mercies.\" The hero's tan seemed a bit paler to Leto, and his eyes darker in the fading light.\n\n\"Your book, hero.\" Claire had shed all sense of wistfulness on the short stride from the bench.\n\nThe hero reached into a jean pocket and pulled out what looked at first like a small tourist guide. As his hand withdrew, however, the book expanded and shimmered until he was holding a weathered leather tome of the same style that filled the Unwritten Wing. Claire snatched the book out of his hands and ran a finger over the spine carefully before handing it to Brevity to stow away. \"You hid it in the coffee shop.\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"And you made your good-byes to the author?\"\n\n\"Yes. It was... hard. She was upset. Crying.\" The hero's eyes strayed across the street, searching the windowed front with a shadow of pain. \"She thinks I broke up with her.\"\n\nClaire was unmoved. She pointed down the street as they began walking. Leto and Brevity fell in line behind them. \"I hope you were not foolish enough to try to reveal yourself to her.\"\n\n\"No, of course not. Something more subtle had the same effect.\"\n\nClaire stopped so abruptly that Leto nearly ran into her. She twisted the hero by one arm and diverted them into the closest alleyway. The steamy smell of old rubbish reached out to greet them. The hero wrinkled his nose, and Claire shoved him against a wall. Her heavy braids whipped and nearly caught both Brevity and Leto in the face as she wheeled on the taller man. \"What did you do?\"\n\nThe hero's lips held a smug smile. \"You make the most colorful of fusses, Librarian. Is being surly and dramatic part of the position?\"\n\n\"It's part of having to deal with idiot heroes all day. Answer me, book, or so help me, I will take a cleaver to your spine.\"\n\nLeto was uncertain whether she was speaking about the book or the man, but Claire repeated her question. \"What. Did. You. Do?\"\n\n\"It was just a hint, really.\" The hero looked far too pleased with himself. \"I gave her my opening pages.\"\n\nHer mouth dropped open. \"You...\" She swore and shot out her hand. \"Brevity, the book.\"\n\nHer assistant wrestled the large leather manuscript out of the bag. She cast a spooked look at the hero before passing it over. Claire fished out her ghostlight lighter. It filled the darkening alleyway with a faint blue glow. Brevity nudged Leto, and they both shuffled a step to make sure the eerie light wasn't obvious from the street.\n\nClaire flipped open the cover and held the glowing lighter up. Leto craned to see. The title page was intact, thick vellum tinged a buttery color even in the blue light. But as Claire lifted the page, a jagged edge came into view. Several pages, a dozen or more, had been torn from the front of the book. They'd been ripped roughly, in some places torn deep into the binding, exposing dark scarlet veins of thread. The remaining text picked up midsentence, and each word trembled on the page.\n\nBrevity gasped. Leto noticed Claire's shudder only because it made her braids tremble. Claire took in a sharp breath and held the ghostly lighter closer for inspection. Her lips parted, and she muttered words Leto couldn't understand as she studied the grisly remains of the first pages of the book. The hero crossed his arms and slumped slightly against the bricks, unperturbed as she gingerly closed the book. Her voice was pinched with the kind of quiet one used around a terminal patient.\n\n\"You ripped out your own pages.\"\n\n\"I did,\" the hero said.\n\n\"That would have been... painful.\"\n\n\"It was.\"\n\n\"Self-mutilation.\" Claire shook her head. \"You're a book. What can you possibly hope to gain?\"\n\n\"Everything.\" A fine sweat broke out on the hero's forehead, gleaming in the dim light and plastering the tips of his bronze hair to his temples. His words were fevered. \"I can see it in her eyes, Librarian. She's so close to it! She wants to write, she needs it, and she doesn't even know it!\"\n\n\"It's not your\u2014\"\n\n\"It's cruel. You say it's cruel to visit my author when I am unwritten. But I find it monstrous how you allow these authors to suffer. And yes, allow their stories to suffer as well. To live these half-lives, stories and authors, wearing holes in their souls that hold the shadow of other worlds they'll never see. When you could so easily help them. Ask your muse here!\"\n\nThe hero sank more heavily against the brick. \"One word, one hint, one familiar face in a coffee shop. If I can inspire her to write and make us real... you should be freeing your entire library. Introducing books to their authors, not jailing them. If it gets them to write and gives worlds a chance to live...\"\n\nHe made a guttural sound in his throat. \"Who are you to stop them? Or must every author fail so they can be just as miserable as you?\"\n\nBrevity gasped as if the hero had struck a blow, but Claire's expression faded from anger to concern. \"Hero.\" Her brows knit together as she watched the unwritten man, who was sweating profusely now. \"Tell me what you're... feeling.\"\n\nThe hero looked pale, much too pale. Claire gestured, and Leto quickly went to the hero's side, gripping him under one elbow. He was surprisingly light. The hero grimaced at his touch. \"I'm... fine. It's just damnably hot here, and... where\u2014where was I?\"\n\nA tremor shot through the man's body. His brow furrowed, then smoothed to distant dismay. \"Oh dear. The pages. I think she's burning them.\"\n\nAnd with that, the hero fainted onto the concrete.\n\nA stunned silence, then Brevity spoke.\n\n\"Well, he did break up with her.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "\u2002We think stories are contained things, but they're not. Ask the muses. Humans, stories, tragedies, and wishes\u2014everything leaves ripples in the world. Nothing we do is not felt; that's a comfort. Nothing we do is not felt; that's a curse.\n\n\u2014Librarian Poppaea Julia, 50 BCE\n\nRamiel transported himself directly to the dead man's living room. The rush of air that accompanied his arrival sent up a burst of dust and fluttering papers. Mr. Jonathan Avery had not been a tidy man toward the end of his life. His Seattle apartment perched at the top of a very trendy tower downtown, but inside was a study in crumpled bags and stacks of papers.\n\nStill, Rami thought he could detect a modicum of reason in the stacks lining every available surface of the accountant's apartment, sprawled with the minutiae of a life of numbers and details. Dust came away on Rami's hand as he thumbed open a cabinet.\n\nAvery hadn't given him much to go on, even after Uriel's prodding. Upon arrival in Heaven, souls were frequently fuzzy on the details of their lives. The whole business of death was traumatic, so temporary amnesia often helped new arrivals adjust to their afterlives. It was a testament to the man's desperation that he even remembered what the scrap of paper was.\n\nWhich is why Ramiel was on Earth, scrounging around a dead man's apartment for clues. Uriel opted to stay behind and try to draw more answers from Avery. Rami suspected that had less to do with sympathy for the dead and more to do with Uriel disliking modern-day civilization. Rami had the impression that Uriel took the development of human curiosity as terribly inconvenient altogether. She'd never had much use for humans beyond what function they had to please her Creator.\n\nFor Uriel, humans were cut flowers for a lover's bouquet, nothing more.\n\nA superficial sweep turned up little but week-old newspapers and sour milk, and a laptop buried beneath a tilting cliff of paper. He understood these sleek devices were the nexus of modern human lives, the modern confessional, but it would not give up its secrets for him. Luckily, he was less interested in Avery's secrets than in Hell's. There were more traditional ways to track nonhuman artifacts. He crossed the apartment to open the sliding door that led to a shriveled excuse for a balcony, then carded his fingers through his feathered coat until he found an appropriate sacrifice. Wincing as it came free, he shielded the feather from the wind in the cup of his palm.\n\nUriel had said that the scrap came from a book created for Lucifer's realm. Rami did not know this cartoonish \"devil\" that terrorized modern imagination, but he knew Lucifer. He was a selfish angel and likely an even more selfish demon. If something of his was missing, his servants might have already been dispatched to retrieve it. They would have a head start, possibly in this very city, would possibly even have the book already. If Rami could intercept them, he could keep a powerful tool out of evil's hands and end this before any harm could be done.\n\nRami withdrew a silver compass from his pocket and brought it up to the feather he sheltered in his hand. He bent, muttering a few sparse words until a faint white light hummed between compass and feather. As with ink seeping from quill shaft to tip, the feather slowly changed into a deep, pitiless black. Tainted, like the quarry he sought.\n\nRami let the feather flutter off the balcony, then retreated inside to watch the compass in his hands. The next time the demons moved, to or from this city, he'd have them. He just had to wait.\n\nRami was good at waiting."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "\u2002Books and stories are the creations of imagination, and that power is just for humans. Take it from me. Gods can will a realm into being, and muses can try to edge things along, but only a mortal can imagine a different way for the story to go. How cool is that? Humans are freaking terrifying. I love it!\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2014 CE\n\n\"Balls,\" Claire muttered.\n\nAs soon as the hero collapsed, the librarian instructed Leto to hoist his legs. It was a waddling walk to drag the prone man farther into the alley where no passing tourists would notice. Despite being surprisingly light, the hero was tall, with long arms and legs that Leto found impossible to corral. Leto grimaced as they hit another trash can that boomed loudly in the darkness.\n\nBrevity, hand full of book rather than hero, kept pace with something close to a nervous dance. She flashed Leto a reassuring smile. \"Cheer up. At least she's not cursing His High\u2014\"\n\n\"Lucifer's frilly, satin balls,\" Claire grunted as they deposited the hero against a stack of stained cardboard boxes with a shove.\n\n\"Never mind,\" Brevity said.\n\nLeto flinched. Despite his growing increasingly used to Claire's colorful wording, each blasphemy still sent a tremor of unease through him. He set the hero's feet down gently on a box. The character's haughty face was still pale. \"Is he going to be okay?\"\n\n\"For now, I reckon.\" The muse cast glances back to the alley entrance, and pedestrian traffic was slowing as the afternoon waned.\n\nBrevity crouched over the hero and poked at his shoulder. \"Tearing out your own pages is one thing; they can be reattached. But his pages were destroyed. Anything that was on them is gone forever. Places, plot... or characters. You can do a lot with restoration, and boss is one of the best, but you can't reinvent things out of whole cloth.\"\n\n\"Which is why it's time to stop dallying and get him back to the Library.\" Claire dusted off her hands. \"When you arrive, make him comfortable, then be sure to send a message to the muse cache. I'll have to work on him myself, and I'll need fresh parchment and binder.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am. You're not...?\"\n\n\"One more piece of business. I'll be fine. Leto's been extremely helpful so far. Isn't that right?\"\n\nLeto jerked his head up. \"Uh, sure. I mean, I hope so. We aren't going back now?\" The hum of the city streets made his skin itch, and the whole adventure had left his human form disconcertingly... sweaty.\n\n\"Brev will take the hero and book back,\" Claire said, as if to a small child. \"We have a quick stop before we use our ghostlights.\"\n\nClaire met Brevity's concerned gaze, and some unspoken discussion occurred between the librarian and her assistant. After a moment, Brevity took hold of the hero by the collar. \"I'll take care of handsome here, sure thing.\"\n\nThe muse etched a figure on the dusty concrete faster than Leto could follow. He could have sworn the brick walls wobbled, just a moment, before he was distracted by a hissing pop. Brevity and the prone hero were gone in a swirl of dust and paper debris. A trace scent of cotton candy and ash hung in the air.\n\nWhich left Leto alone with Hell's librarian. He pulled his gaze away from the swirling air to find Claire scrutinizing him over her glasses. Her lips were cinched up like purse strings. Leto didn't know her well enough to know what that meant, but he was sure it was nothing good. He again suffered the sense of being appraised for something he didn't understand. Claire nodded and took off down the alley at a pace that required Leto to hurry to keep up.\n\n\"Do you know the origin of ghostlights, Leto?\" Claire asked after they had joined the evening foot traffic on the sidewalk. She guided him around the corner at a brisk pace, stopping occasionally to squint at street signs.\n\n\"Not exactly.\" It wasn't much of an admission. He was a junior fiend at best. He hadn't understood half of what he'd encountered today. They wandered downhill from the business buildings, away from tall towers, and toward squat ferry buildings and shops that lined the pier. Distracting smells and sights filtered his thoughts. They passed a famous chocolate shop, where buttery, sweet cocoa smells wafted out and drove away the briny smell of the bay. Leto didn't stop to wonder how he knew the scent; he just did. He knew if they turned right, they'd run into a flock of taxicabs that swarmed around the Four Seasons and a crusty protester who always stood on that corner, waving a picture of the current president\u2014didn't matter who\u2014with horns drawn on. No one knew what he was protesting.\n\n\"The term comes from the theater. Or at least, from days when theaters were more popular. When a theater closed for the night, a single light was left on, usually just a bulb on a stand at the center of the stage. The stage always stayed lit. A ghostlight. It had a practical purpose, of course\u2014that way the first one to enter didn't accidentally fall into the orchestra pit.\"\n\n\"And the nonpractical?\" Leto had seen enough today to understand that the nonpractical was usually more worrisome.\n\n\"The theater ghosts, of course.\" Claire smiled and eased to a more sensible stroll as they passed the first trickle of crowds lining up outside dockside restaurants and bars. \"Theaters traditionally always closed for at least one day a week, leaving on the ghostlight, to appease the ghosts. To allow them one day on the stage to perform their acts. To live and love and hate and triumph on the stage like the living.\"\n\nShe slid him an unreadable smile as they slowed down at a new corner. \"That part's true. In the glow of a ghostlight, the dead all get one day. One day only.\" Claire looked down the street. \"Last time I was here, there was a long pier. Good view, outdoor patio across from a ferry. It should be around here somewhere...\"\n\n\"Two blocks down,\" Leto said automatically.\n\nClaire hummed. \"Aren't you handy?\"\n\nThey walked on, weaving through sidewalk crowds until the waterfront came into view. Far down the walk, Leto could just make out the lights of a Ferris wheel flickering on, painting the night's low clouds with luminous pinks and greens. The quiet was amiable, until Claire let out a sigh. \"You're a stubborn one.\"\n\nLeto's stomach dropped. \"What?\"\n\n\"All during this fiasco you've been asking things! Gawking! Mr. Questions! Fussing over taxicab ethics, even.\" Claire stopped at a railing and tugged at a lock of hair irritably. \"But I try to introduce the one thing you're supposed to question and suddenly you're more gullible than a saint.\"\n\nLeto shifted. \"I'm not sure I\u2014 I'm sorry if I've\u2014\"\n\n\"No, just stop.\" She dragged a palm over her face. \"I just finished explaining how ghostlights work. How they allow the souls of dead humans like me a day on Earth. So an obvious question might be...?\"\n\n\"Yes, ah... Do they have something to do with the hero?\" A trickle of sweat lined the back of Leto's suit. He felt like he was failing a pop quiz.\n\n\"No.\" Claire crossed her arms and motioned to his pocket. \"An obvious question to someone in your situation might be, 'So why does a demon need a ghostlight at all?'\"\n\n\"Why does a demon need a ghostlight? Well, I thought...\"\n\nLeto tried to consider it\u2014he did. The stern librarian's approval had swiftly grown important to him. But even as he repeated the words, his mind kept trying to hitch off in a new direction. Surely there were better inquiries. Where was the hero now? How did Brevity pop in and out? How were they going to fix the book? Considering all those, his brain refused to waste time on a silly question about ghostlights. Demons didn't deserve the luxury of learning. Leto deserved even less.\n\nBut Claire's expectant look made him try. He'd grown to respect the librarians. He liked Brevity and Claire, prickly as she was, and the thought of disappointing her curdled his nerves. He slid his gaze out over the choppy water as he tried to focus. Surely there was a reason he needed a ghostlight. It was obvious.\n\nBecause he was new? Because of entropy? Because of the time of year? Because he was such a miserable excuse for a demon?\n\nHe felt his stomach tilt as he sorted through each possible reason and discarded it for lack of logic. He felt like he was being tipped over the top of a very tall, steep hill, adrenaline climbing into his throat. He couldn't see the bottom, couldn't stop.\n\nLike a roller coaster.\n\nRoller coaster. A term he hadn't recognized when Claire said it right before the summons this morning. But he could picture it clearly now: the clattering metal track, the thick, foam pads that came down across his shoulders and always smelled vaguely of someone else's sweat, someone else's nerves. The flip in his gut as the roller coaster would start. The feeling of a hand grabbing his, belonging to someone soft and bright and all wonderful things at once. The smell of popcorn drifting up from below... human smells. Mortal feelings. Living memories.\n\nLeto did not notice his legs failing until his knees banged against the wooden railing harshly. Claire caught him under one arm, stopping his chin from meeting the wood. She supported his weight with a grunt. \"Easy, now.\"\n\n\"I'm... I'm not a demon?\" Leto's voice was suddenly hoarse. \"I'm mortal.\"\n\n\"Well, technically no. You're not mortal, not anymore. Bad term for it. Dead, eternal soul, and all. But you were human, once. Up here.\" Claire hitched him to his feet and waited till Leto's knees worked again. Then she drove him forward, off the sidewalk to the pier. \"Onward, now. Walking helps.\"\n\nLeto's heart was trying to swim out from his chest, but he moved his legs woodenly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"You explained it well enough before. When you die, you get what your soul's debt demands. Like what you need to do to atone for what you've done, or to just forgive yourself, to heal, or find justice. It varies. My soul decided I needed to spend a century or two\u2014god, I hope I don't reach past that\u2014as the keeper of the Unwritten Library in Hell. Lucky me. Yours... Evidently you needed to be an amnesiac demon. Rather melodramatic, that.\"\n\nThey started down the long pier. It was wide and ringed with cheery lights. Patio restaurants. People talking. Boats groaning. It threatened to overwhelm him. There was a light post at the end of the walkway, and Leto kept his eyes locked on that.\n\n\"You don't remember anything, even being up here?\" Claire asked.\n\nLeto squeezed his eyes closed briefly, but it did no good. His memories only tasted of bitter anise and shadows. \"I... know things. Stuff about here. This place. But I don't remember how I know it.\"\n\nClaire shrugged. \"Well, it's a unique sentence for a soul\u2014that's for sure. Must have been a hard end. Not many people see themselves as literal devils.\"\n\n\"I'm not\u2014\" Leto's hand absently tugged at an ear that was still blunted rather than pointed, here in the human world. \"But I remember being a demon!\"\n\n\"What do you remember? Being summoned for courier duty? What about before that? What did you do yesterday?\"\n\n\"Well, sure. I was doing... demony stuff.\" Leto faltered. To tell the truth, before this assignment it was all a dark haze he couldn't really put his finger on. He had a fleeting impression of a figure, someone powerful and terrifying, resting a hand decked with cold rings on his shoulder. He remembered a constellation of stars falling through his hands. Bitter chalk on his tongue. He knew things about being a demon, but specific memories skittered away from him when he reached for them. \"How did you know?\"\n\n\"His Grouchiness doesn't usually send a brand-new, full-fledged demon to deliver a file folder, first of all. We're in a library of magical texts. Do you really think we deliver messages by hand?\"\n\n\"Well. Now that you mention it...\"\n\nClaire smiled. \"And if you're a demon of entropy, you're the worst one I've seen, because you got torn up at the idea of shorting a taxi driver's tips. And then Walter confirmed it when we set up transportation\u2014only human souls need ghostlights. Even if he hadn't, once we got up here, it was all the little things. Human things. Like the cute little blush when Brev kissed you.\"\n\n\"I did not!\"\n\n\"Ah, there it is again.\"\n\nLeto buried his face in his hands, but they'd reached the end of the pier. They walked past an open patio where diners nibbled on overpriced oysters, and came to a stop at the railing. Claire nodded at the view. \"You know, I had a view of the ocean when I was alive. Not here. England. Colder, harsher, different kind of pretty.\"\n\n\"Was it nice?\"\n\nClaire considered. \"I wouldn't have the slightest idea. I suppose it would have been, had I noticed.\"\n\nLeto hesitated. \"What will happen when we go back?\"\n\nClaire braced her elbows against the railing and faced him. \"That's largely up to your soul. You may remain a demon. You could try to speak to Boss Creepy if you want.\"\n\n\"No! No, that's all right.\" Leto shook his head so fast that Claire chuckled.\n\n\"He's not that bad. Well\u2014he is, sometimes. But any good story is half exaggeration. It's not that bad. Really, being\u2014\"\n\nClaire's words cut off, and her expression went rigid as she stared past his shoulder. Before he could turn, a cold, sharp point presented itself between Leto's shoulder blades. A voice, gritty and sounding of steel and stone, spoke low from behind him.\n\n\"Stand down, demons.\"\n\n\"Speaking of exaggerations...\" Claire had excellent posture. She had relaxed while leaning against the railing, softening as she talked of souls and eternity, enough that she seemed almost human. But she stood straight now, with a hard, chill gaze reserved for the voice behind him. Leto didn't dare turn with something pressed against his spine, but the gaze told him enough.\n\n\"We have no business with you, Watcher,\" Claire said.\n\nLeto didn't know what a Watcher was, but from the curl of Claire's lip, it didn't seem like a friendly thing. He'd never thought to ask what would happen to a soul that got stabbed while visiting Earth. In his human form, he doubted it was anything good.\n\n\"But I have business with you,\" the voice grated. \"Identify yourselves, or you will be short one demonic servant.\"\n\n\"If you are as dull as you seem, it appears I must. You're speaking to the head librarian of the Unwritten Wing. The boy you're frightening is Leto, a human.\" Claire held one hand clenched on her bag, as if shielding the trade tools within.\n\n\"I know a demon when I see one. And you\u2014a librarian.\" The man breathed the word like a curse, like he was admitting something. \"Of course. Then I am just in time.\" He let up the blade from Leto's back, though Leto wasn't sure whether it was from relenting or that he was now focused on another target.\n\nLeto twisted as he backed up defensively. From the voice, he'd honestly expected something closer to Walter: looming and monstrous. But the man was not much taller than Leto himself, was thick shouldered and dark with strong features. Broad face, olive skin, and sharply angled brown eyes dark with threat. A strange trench coat hung to the ground, slate gray with an odd assortment of dark-colored feathers peeping out from under the epaulets and trailing down the back in a scattered pattern. A short sword clutched in one thick hand gleamed under the pier lights.\n\nLeto risked a glance at the evening crowds on the patio not too far off, but the eyes of the diners seemed to slide right over them as they gazed across the pier. No one saw the madman with a sword. Or Watcher, as Claire had called him. Whatever the man was, Leto wanted to be far away from him.\n\nLeto retreated, trying to move toward Claire, but the man flicked his gaze at him. \"That's far enough.\" Dark eyes shifted back and the Watcher spoke low to Claire. \"He would send you. I know what you're here for. Hand over the book.\"\n\nThe corners of Claire's lips tugged into a mocking smile, but Leto was close enough to see the new tension tighten her eyes. \"Why, Watcher, patron checkouts are not my department. But if you want something to read, you only had to stop by during library hours. What are you after, some bodice ripper to liven up your dull, immortal exile?\"\n\nThe mockery slid off the Watcher's stony face without effect. \"You will have to try harder to enrage me, I'm afraid. Hand over the book.\"\n\n\"Seeing as I have no idea what book you're referring to, you're going to have to be more specific.\" Taunt failed, Claire reached for placating. \"Honest, I really don't know what you're after.\"\n\n\"Don't waste my time. The book. You didn't get all of it, did you?\"\n\nLeto's mind conjured the hero's unwritten book with fangs of jagged missing pages. Leto swallowed hard, and Claire turned guarded. \"There might have been an accident. What concern would that be for a Watcher like you?\"\n\nThe man's hard lips took on a smug demeanor for the first time. The blade in his hand didn't waver as he withdrew a small clear bag from his coat pocket. Inside fluttered a scrap of paper, a corner ripped from some larger piece. As his eyes landed on it, Leto thought he heard a faint hiss, quiet words he could almost make out.\n\n\"Because I got there first.\" The man gave a hard smile.\n\nThe whispers swam Leto in vertigo. He shook his head to clear it. \"Is the author okay?\"\n\nThe Watcher paused. \"What?\"\n\n\"The\u2014\"\n\n\"Hush, Leto.\" Claire cut him off. She frowned at the paper in the man's grasp. \"If those are the pages, that belongs to the Library, Watcher.\"\n\nThe Watcher straightened his sword. \"It belongs to Heaven, as everything does. Now, I will have the rest of the book from you.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you're out of luck. It's already been sent back to the Library. But if you want to come by during visitors' hou\u2014\"\n\n\"Liar!\" A voice like thunder sent the hairs on Leto's neck on end. Claire flinched as if she'd been shocked. The Watcher had cleared the space in a moment and rested his sword at Claire's breast. \"I am Ramiel. Soldier of the First Host, the Thunder of God. I'll have the truth.\"\n\nLight shuddered just beneath the blade's surface, though Leto swore Ramiel hadn't moved. Leto twitched, and Claire shook her head ever so slightly.\n\n\"Ramiel...\" Claire breathed, and for the first time Leto heard fear in her voice. \"I wasn't aware fallen angels had such a passion for literature.\" Leto blinked at the word. Angel.\n\n\"Will you hand over the book, Librarian?\" Ramiel's shoulder inched down as his lips pressed into a pale line. The clear bag with the parchment dangled from his free hand at his side. Leto found himself listening for the whispers. He wasn't sure if he wanted more to pick out the words or to block his ears. \"I will not ask again. I know you are neutral. You were once human. I have no quarrel with your duties. But I must return with the book.\"\n\nThe pause was charged, air before a storm. When Claire spoke, her voice was calm again. \"Leto, dear. Remember to blow out your ghostlight.\" She spoke without breaking her gaze from the angel. \"Unfortunately, my duties extend to every book in my care. I cannot help you.\"\n\n\"A pity. I wish it were otherwise.\" A shutter came over Ramiel's gaze, eyes guarded. His sword arm trembled. The air felt on the edge of cracking, and then Leto knew.\n\nHe didn't know what a Watcher was; he didn't know what a Watcher did. Didn't know about fallen angels or books in Hell. Leto barely knew himself. But if he was human, then everything human in him\u2014every teenage, powerless, frustrated human fiber\u2014knew what angry men in power did when denied something they felt they were owed. Leto darted forward and grabbed desperately at the nearest thing in reach: the bag dangling from the angel's fingers.\n\nHe'd intended merely to create a distraction, but the reaction was immediate and violent. Ramiel grunted, jerking his sword away from Claire's chest. His arm swung back, and Leto flinched against the railing, waiting for the blow.\n\nInstead, Claire's arm crashed against Leto's chest. They careened backward and pitched against the wood.\n\n\"Deep breath!\" she ordered as the world spun. The railing dug into his back and then they toppled over the edge of the pier. The Watcher's startled face tilted out of view, sword faltering as a free hand reached out. And then they hit the black cold water.\n\nIce spasmed through his nerves and the water closed over him. A brackish taste flooded the back of his mouth before he remembered to clench his throat shut. Diffuse light bled away as they sank into the bay. Claire's hand clamped tighter onto his chest as another hand pawed for the pocket that held his ghostlight. Leto got the idea and managed to pull the tiny lighter out with a free hand.\n\nHis lungs burned. It was too dark to see, and his movements were turning thick and sluggish from the icy Puget Sound waters. Claire's hand fumbled on top of his, and she thumbed the switch. The ghostlight flared, sparking light into the dark water with an impossible blue flame.\n\nA trickle of bubbles breathed against his cheek as Claire mouthed something. He could not hear them, but he caught the last words as they bloomed quiet in the center of his head, like a half-remembered poem.\n\n\"...and I'll drown my book.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "CLAIRE",
                "text": "\u2002A librarian has already failed if a book requires repairs. Books will age, yes, even in the Library. Need new binding, a tidying up of revisions. But true damage happens only when a book escapes.\n\n\u2002I expect you, apprentice, will never fail so in your duties. But should a book need repair, be prepared to devote all your time and patience. It is simple enough to repair a book's paper form; even its manifested form will mend. But a book in the Unwritten Wing is the manifest potential of a story\u2014the words are the thing. Potential cannot be ripped out and replaced like parchment or leather. You cannot substitute your own words. A story must be fed, encouraged to grow its own roots.\n\n\u2002Keep the books from damage, Gregor. Repair those you can save. But beware the stories that find their freedom.\n\n\u2014Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1817 CE\n\nWhen Claire blinked, endless gnarls of red thread danced on the insides of her eyelids. She groaned, rubbed her eyes, and drained the remains of her cold tea.\n\nThey'd landed back in Walter's office, flopping about like fish, and bringing a hearty helping of the bay water with them. Walter had insisted on wrapping them both up in his jacket\u2014it was big enough to practically engulf both Claire and Leto\u2014and escort them personally back to the Library. The big gatekeeper tutted about the disgrace of such treatment the whole way.\n\nThe hero was still unconscious. Claire allowed Brevity to make a tolerable amount of fuss before retreating to the restorations room with the hero's book, supplies, and the scrap that Leto had, miraculously, held on to during their escape. Despite the panic in his wide eyes, he'd demonstrated quick thinking; Claire was forced to revise her impression of the confused teenager.\n\nShe'd allowed Brevity in to deliver a hot pot of tea and a clean change of clothes before turning her attention to the process of restoring the book. If Claire was going to get answers as to why a fallen angel, let alone a Watcher, was interested in an unwritten fantasy novel, she would need to make sure the hero survived long enough to answer questions.\n\nAfter hours of painstaking work, she was no longer afraid they were going to lose the book entirely. An unwritten story was fragile when damaged. Pushed too far, it could fall apart, like ice cream on a summer day melting away for lack of authorial intent. There had been no time to do it properly with a full rebinding, but Claire had held the book together with thread and paste. She breathed every curse she knew under her breath as she stitched blank sheets into the wounded front pages, carefully tying the savaged front matter together with tiny red binding threads. The new pages were strong, but it still might all be for nothing if it didn't restore the story. She'd spent the last two hours trying to coax the words, first with soft assurances, then with orders, finally with the blunt end of her quill, nudging the trembling text to repopulate the blank pages.\n\nBut they wouldn't budge. The best she'd been able to do was convince some pointless footnotes to spread to the heading of the first page. The rest of the replacement pages remained infuriatingly blank, their text lost forever. Which was going to leave the hero in a predicament. Stories needed a beginning to make sense. Claire had to restore the book if he was going to go back to where he belonged. Something was missing. She turned to the scrap they'd procured from the Watcher.\n\nWith tweezers she withdrew it delicately from the plastic bag, turning it over under the lamp. The paper was yellowed and fibrous. Lichen green ink glimmered when the light hit it, and a delicate scent of anise and ash was detectable when it drifted under her nose. There was neither green ink nor such a scent in the rest of the book before her. She shook her head, setting aside the strangeness to try to puzzle out where it fit.\n\nIt didn't. It took no time at all to come to the conclusion. No matter where Claire positioned it, no matter which way she twisted the scrap, the book rejected it. Even if it had belonged to one of the missing, burned pages, the book would have recognized it as its own. Instead, it took all of Claire's strength to keep the tome from skittering off the table to flee the tiny piece of parchment.\n\nThe book jerked again. Claire lost her grip on the tweezers, sending the scrap drifting off the table for the hundredth time. The book fled to the far shelf in a froth of paper and leather. The librarian hissed a dark curse and bent to snatch the stubborn scrap between two fingers.\n\nAnd the blood sang in her veins.\n\nThe shadows tilted, and her vision swam as a chill shuddered from the paper, up one arm, and down to her toes. A flash. The edge of a shadow, the fault in a rock, the supple joint in the pulse of the world. Tender hollows designed to break. And time, time, so much time, howled underneath. A wildfire of images hit her, burning up all thought, breathing ash in its wake. Undoing. Unending. Unyielding. She came back to herself bent over her chair, gagging for air while the scrap of paper drifted toward her toes.\n\nThat was, most definitely, not an unwritten book, nor anything imagined or written by man.\n\nClaire clenched her hands, clamping down on the shiver that threatened. Her pulse was still stuttering in her head, but she retrieved the tweezers and carefully lifted the scrap. She could see the age of the otherworldly parchment now, the fineness of the fibers. Not paper, not parchment. There was no way it belonged to the hero's book, belonged to any of her books. Impossible that she'd missed it before.\n\n\"What are you...?\" Claire turned it under the light. Whatever it was, it was old. Powerful. The fallen angel wasn't after the hero's book after all\u2014this was something different. A fallen angel working for Heaven sought it. Thought the Library had it.\n\nBut it wasn't of Heaven; of that much Claire was certain. Nothing that sang that song could be. It was a song of destruction and endless hunger.\n\nThat was Hell's song. But Hell had no literature of its own.\n\nA muffled groan escaped through the closed door. That would be the hero. Claire carefully set the scrap down with a sigh, pushing it away in favor of more immediate concerns. Vague murmurs drifted in through the door, summoning her. The hero would need her attention next; then she could focus on the mystery of the scrap in front of her.\n\nClaire worked the kinks out of her aching hands before opening the door and, likely, answering yet more of Leto's unending questions. The human-demon had an inexhaustible supply, it seemed.\n\nHer gaze flicked again to the whispering page. Questions.\n\nShe had a few."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "By the time Claire joined the group in the main section of the Library, the hero was sitting up. He draped a lanky muscled arm over the back of the couch while Brevity clucked instructions at him over her teapot. Leto perched at the far edge of the sitting area, wound tight as a spring.\n\nLeto was returned to his demon features, but Brevity had taken the opportunity of his soggy condition to replace his ill-fitting suit with a more comfortable pair of slacks, suspenders, and a buttoned shirt, arms rolled up, in a vivid blue that matched the muse's tattoos. He looked slightly less cadaverous and more like a high school kid on an internship. Claire smiled. Brevity was in the middle of interrogating him, her hands animated over the caddy of saucers and cream.\n\nLeto caught sight of Claire first and coughed on his tea. Brevity's head whipped around, and she stomped toward Claire. \"You were attacked by a Watcher?\"\n\nClaire cast a sharp glance at Leto. \"I see someone's been catching you up.\"\n\n\"Attacked,\" Brevity insisted. \"By a Watcher. An angel from before the world was made.\"\n\n\"Technically, a fallen angel. If I remember Enoch right, Ramiel was one of the human sympathizers.\" Claire paused. \"Though he seems distinctly less sympathetic now.\"\n\n\"Attacked.\"\n\n\"Threatened,\" Claire corrected, shrugging her off to let the repaired book hit the desk with a thud. \"Leto here staged quite a heroic intervention before anyone was attacked.\"\n\nLeto colored as he looked to the floor. \"Well, I just... really...\"\n\n\"Why would he be after a character?\"\n\n\"One emergency at a time, Brev.\" Claire turned her attention to the hero.\n\nHe raised his cup. \"Back to the brig already, warden? I was still working on my tea.\"\n\nClaire narrowed her eyes. The hero was still pale, pale as the maddeningly blank parchments in his book. But his eyes were bright, and his hand was steady enough to mock her with a salute. Stable enough, for now.\n\n\"Your story still exists. That means it's time for you to go home.\" Claire tapped the book. \"But you've managed to do far more damage to yourself than I thought possible for any story. At least any sane one.\"\n\n\"Characters can go insane?\" Leto blinked.\n\nClaire waved a hand. \"Anything long-lived will deal with bouts of questionable sanity from time to time. Unwritten characters included.\"\n\n\"Perhaps if you spent half the energy working with us that you do keeping us contained here, such drastic measures wouldn't be needed,\" the hero said.\n\n\"A hero with a crusade. How unoriginal,\" Claire said. \"How are you feeling?\"\n\nThe hero gave a sour smile. \"Trapped. And famous, by the sounds of it. Perhaps you should let me stick around if I've got Heaven and Hell fighting over me.\"\n\n\"You cause any more trouble, maybe I'll let Heaven have you,\" Claire said, though it was an empty threat. Even if Heaven wanted him, she had no intention of giving up any of the books in her care. \"You'll be perfectly safe back in your story, however. The pages are repaired, but the words won't take.\" Brevity made a small distressed noise, but Claire kept her eyes leveled on the hero. \"I was hoping it might listen to you and repair itself. It's a long shot.\"\n\n\"Long shots are a... hero's specialty,\" Hero said with an uncertain lilt as he stood. He was smooth but not quite as graceful as he'd been hours before. He approached his book and laid a proprietary hand on the cover. \"What do I need to do?\"\n\n\"First, open the book.\" Claire swatted his hand away to open it to the fresh, blank pages. \"Now, talk to your kin, get them settled. Remind them how the story starts. 'Once upon a time,' all that.\"\n\n\"I was thinking 'In the beginning...' had a nice ring to it,\" the hero sulked. He pressed his hand to the page and fell silent. They all did, librarian, muse, and demon alike. Claire felt the book stop its frantic, minute vibrations, and listened. The remaining words on the pages slowed their skittish mutations, twitching quietly as some private conversation went on. An invisible line pulled tight.\n\nThen snapped.\n\nThe book shuddered. The hero's hand flinched off the pages as it snapped itself shut. His brows knit together as he looked up, incredulous. \"They... The gall! They pretended they didn't know me! Me! Oversized inkblots just\u2014\"\n\n\"The story didn't recognize you.\" The sliver of anticipation Claire had held dissipated. She'd suspected as much would happen, but she'd hoped to be surprised. She exchanged a glance with Brevity. \"That makes sense.\"\n\n\"No, that makes nonsense.\" The hero's voice was acidic, a barbed accent surfacing with his distress. \"I'm the bloody\u2014\" He snapped his mouth shut abruptly. \"Without me, there wouldn't be a story.\"\n\n\"It appears your book disagrees,\" Claire said, and the hero glowered up at her. \"By all means, make another attempt.\"\n\nThe hero shifted uneasily. \"All the better to allow you to put me back on a shelf?\"\n\n\"Is that fear I hear?\"\n\nHe shot her a stormy look and stepped up to the book again. He paused to spare a glance and a nod at Brevity. \"Thank you for the tea, muse.\" He winked at Leto before turning a cold look to Claire. \"It's been an unmitigated displeasure.\"\n\nClaire's smile was just as icy. \"Always glad to meet a fan.\"\n\nThe hero's lip curled and with a flourish he slapped his hand down on the cover. When nothing happened, the little remaining color drained from his face.\n\nClaire cleared her throat. \"Brev, you might want to guide our hero to a seat again.\"\n\nBrevity helped him stumble back to the couch. The hero's green eyes had taken on a glossy look. \"What does this mean?\"\n\n\"Your damage disconnected you from your own story. Congratulations\u2014that's a feat. That means, at least until your book decides to accept you again, you're a free agent.\" Claire paused, then amended, \"Well, not free. You're still Special Collections, and you're going to be answering to me.\"\n\nThe hero's face froze. His gaze fished around the room before coming to the book again.\n\n\"Whoa, our own hero. The damsels are gonna freak.\" Brevity clapped, only a little awed. \"We can't keep calling him that. Hero. Can we?\"\n\nClaire shrugged. \"Fine. He can rename himself when he comes out of shock. I thought 'Janitor' had a nice ring.\"\n\nThe hero shook his head, subdued. \"This isn't happening...\"\n\nClaire let that go. It was probably best to let the man work it out for himself. He quite possibly had eternity to do so. \"Brev, if you can hold the fort here, I've got an errand I need to run. Leto, I'd like you to come along.\" The teenager jumped up from where he had been lingering at the edge of the group, twisting his hands together. \"You proved so useful before.\"\n\nBrevity's brow knitted. \"You just got back. What now?\"\n\n\"The Watcher's scrap did not belong to the hero's book. I need to run it past the Arcanist to be certain before I explain more than that.\" Claire cast a glance toward the restorations room. \"But there might be more than one book missing.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "\u2002The demons have been petitioning for borrowing rights again. The log says they waited a whole three centuries before trying again. This time they got a minor duke on their side.\n\n\u2002I know scavengers when I hear them. The Unwritten Wing holds a delicate balance in Hell: neither vassal to nor clearly apart. It's the nature of books that keeps us here, but it's the nature of books that the devils want. They want anything that tastes of mortal mind. An unwritten book is nothing but pure potential, and a soul's potential is power down here. Power, naturally, is all the creatures of Hell care about. They'd descend on the shelves like a swarm of locusts if we let them.\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 786 CE\n\nA sound, more gravel than snore, grated from the sleeping gargoyle as they passed the bookcase. Leto gave it a wide berth as he struggled to keep up with the librarian's long strides. Hell's hallways passed in a blur, and Leto had long ago given up keeping track of the path they were taking. He decided to stick to the basics. \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\"The Arcane Wing. The Arcanist, Andras, is a colleague and old friend.\" The bag holding the page scrap crinkled between Claire's pinched fingers, as if she was afraid it would escape. She accelerated down a wide flight of stairs and forced Leto to speed up again.\n\n\"Arcanist. He's some kinda wizard?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"Not quite. He curates the Arcane Wing. It's part of the Library. The Unwritten Wing is larger and stores the unwritten works, and the Arcane Wing contains... curiosities.\"\n\n\"Like a museum?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"Libraries traditionally housed a cabinet of curiosities; I suppose that is why the Arcane Wing exists here as well. It houses arcane artifacts\u2014prophecies, spell books, monkey claws, and soul gems. That kind of nonsense. Things that gain power on Earth become... slippery. Slippery and dangerous. They tend to fall through the cracks of reality and end up here, where we can contain them. It's the Arcanist's job to do that, and fetch the dangerous stuff. Messy job, one I'm glad I don't have. Books are much more straightforward.\"\n\n\"So he's your boss?\"\n\nClaire's chuckle was not entirely warm. \"I'm sure he'd like to think so, since he's been here forever, but no. The Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing are allied.\"\n\n\"Allied?\" Leto frowned. \"Against what?\"\n\nThe question made Claire slow. Leto had to careen into a pillar to avoid running into her. Claire seemed to consider before giving him a serious answer. \"Against everything. As long as there have been places like libraries\u2014places attempting to preserve and curate\u2014there have been forces attempting to acquire. The Library makes for a very juicy target for the demons of Hell, even though they're supposedly our hosts.\"\n\nThat made no sense. \"But they're just books,\" he blurted before he could worry about insulting the librarian.\n\nClaire didn't seem prone to taking offense. She just chuckled. It was a dry, crackling laugh that made her sound older than she looked. \"They may be just books to you, Leto, but these are unwritten books. Pure potential. They're the stuff of something demons don't have: imagination. That's the stuff of humans. The power to create. Down here, that's a decisive power. There are factions here in Hell that would love nothing more than to eat the books whole, for a momentary burst of power. If the Arcane Wing and the Library didn't work together to present a united front, the books would have been burned long ago.\"\n\nYet another thing Leto might have known, should have known, had he been the demon he was supposed to be. Instead, he was a stupid human asking stupid questions. He could even fail at damnation, and now he was in Hell, surrounded by shadows containing dangers he didn't even know existed. His arms felt chilled. He wrapped them around his middle. He couldn't remember the source of self-loathing that welled up in his throat, but the bitter taste coated his tongue.\n\nThey wound their way across a dark foyer. The wide amber floor was dusty and bare and seemed to swallow up the light. Claire halted them before a set of thick bronze doors. The grillwork was cast with figures so encrusted with age and grime that Leto couldn't make them out. Claire's hand hesitated above the handle. \"Andras is a friend\u2014he won't harm you\u2014but just one rule: don't touch anything.\"\n\n\"O-okay?\"\n\n\"Andras won't harm us. But the Arcane Wing...\" If the smile Claire gave him was meant to be reassuring, she sucked at it. \"The Arcane Wing is... different.\"\n\n\"Different? Like, compared to the Unwritten Wing or...\" Leto trailed off as Claire shoved the door open.\n\nThe air was chilled and clotted with dust. The first impression Leto had, as he breathed in stale air, was of the shadowy neglect of an abandoned museum vault or perhaps a disreputable pawnshop. A cabinet of curiosities, Claire had said. It was an accurate description of the place. Dozens of dusty little boxes lined black wood shelves, punctuated by puddles of shadowy fabric, twisted figures in discolored ivory, a bowl rimmed with sharp teeth and filled with tiny seeds that sparkled like bloody rubies. Some artifacts were left in open air; others were inexplicably bound with chains behind glass. All were stacked and piled with no discernible logic. A staccato grackling noise came from the far wall, and the cold iron bars of a tall stack of cages filled with ravens cast menacing lines of shadow across the floor.\n\nThe Arcane Wing was smaller than the Unwritten Wing, and colder. Shadows stretched and reached farther than they should have. There was just enough light to define the shapes of the darkness, not drive it away. Sound pooled and dribbled in murmurs that sounded the way goose bumps felt. It was a palace to shadows and acid ambition.\n\nUnfazed, Claire rapped on a scarred countertop with her knuckles. \"Andy? You about?\"\n\nThe black birds increased in volume as something thudded in the back recesses of the collection. \"Is that a pup I hear? No one else is cheeky enough to use that name.\" The voice was as rugged and distinguished as the gentleman that followed it.\n\nA gentleman with demonic features: sharply pointed ears, and eyes an unnatural shade of liquid gold that set Leto on edge. Leto had the fleeting impression of a tiger caged and pacing. He shivered, blinked once; then the tiger shrank to a house cat. Andras was not an intimidating figure. He was a hair shorter than Leto, and he wore an old-fashioned evergreen doublet studded with glittering brooches and topped with a black satin sash. His hands were folded politely, burdened with silver rings. His hair was a short ruff of charcoal streaked with lines of gold. He glimmered and gleamed attentively in all the ways his wing glowered and gloomed.\n\n\"My dear librarian.\" A smile sprang into place on Andras's lips as he swept across the floor to greet them. Andras touched Claire's cheek and turned it this way and that. His hand looked pale and faded against her teak skin. \"You are working too hard, pup. You look thin.\"\n\nIt was the first time Leto had seen anyone touch the prickly librarian\u2014even Brevity seemed to respect Claire's personal space. But the Arcanist swept in with familiarity, and to Leto's great surprise, Claire simply shrugged off the hand. \"A trip upstairs does that.\"\n\n\"Of course. Dreadful place. I don't know why you don't just send your assistants.\"\n\nClaire chuckled. \"Some of us prefer to do things ourselves.\"\n\n\"Of course. I taught you no less; shame I don't heed my own lessons. Speaking of assistants...\" He turned his attention to Leto, and his gaze was sharp enough to bring a trickle of acidic sweat to Leto's neck. Andras's lip curled in a smile to reveal a pointed tooth as he studied him. Polite, but exacting as a scalpel. Leto felt dissected, and foolish to have ever believed himself to be a demon or any creature related to someone with that kind of keen gaze.\n\nClaire nudged Leto forward with a grand wave. \"Leto, meet Andras, Hell's Arcanist and former Duke of the East Infernal Duchy. Andras, this is Leto, my... assistant, I suppose.\"\n\nLeto's stomach did a swooping kind of flip at the introduction. It was a startling warmth, distracting him momentarily from the vague sense of dread that Andras imparted. \"Uh, pleased to meet you, sir.\"\n\n\"I haven't seen you about before.\" Andras gave Leto a shrewd squint. \"What legion are you, son?\"\n\nLeto stuttered out of reflex, but Claire saved him. \"He's human. Made a demon down here for his penance.\" She gave a not-unkind squeeze where she kept hold of Leto's shoulder. \"And he's been instrumental in finding something that I believe you might have an interest in.\"\n\n\"A human, now? Fancy that.\" Andras tapped his lip. \"I assumed you had business. You were never one for small talk. What can I do for you, my dear?\"\n\nClaire raised the bag that held the scrap and upended it with care on a nearby table. \"I ran across something I was hoping you could identify.\"\n\nAndras brightened and wiped his fingertips on a pocket square before approaching the table. He snapped his fingers, and a globe of light appeared over his head, bobbing softly and reminding Leto of summer fireflies. \"What gift do you have for me today?\"\n\nClaire made an impatient motion. \"Do you recognize it? It seemed like something of yours.\"\n\n\"It's not an unwritten book\u2014I can certainly verify that. It seems...\" Andras stilled and flicked his gaze, suddenly sharp and suspicious, between them. \"Where did you get this?\"\n\n\"Leto palmed it off an angel that was trying to kill us. He said he was Ramiel, if you're familiar with the tales. An entirely unpleasant man, absent manners, and present one very sharp sword. He seemed under the impression we had something of his.\"\n\n\"Ramiel.\" Andras was quiet for a long moment, hands hovering over the scrap. \"He's on the hunt for this?\"\n\n\"And quite insistent that we knew what the hell he was talking about.\" Claire frowned. \"It is from a book?\"\n\nAndras had returned to staring at the scrap. \"Intriguing.\"\n\n\"Yes, so intriguing, in fact, I thought I'd visit my dear old friend because I was under the impression that he would assist more than ask questions,\" Claire grumbled as the old demon didn't look up. \"Well?\"\n\n\"Hmm.\"\n\n\"Andras.\" Claire rubbed her brow. \"I've been bled, nearly skewered, and mostly drowned today. Words, please.\"\n\nThe demon shook his head, and a thought moved across his expression. It was a thought with teeth, but then it was gone. Andras smiled again. \"It's... a very rare piece.\"\n\n\"I gathered as much, considering it tried to blow my circuits when I touched it.\" Leto let out a startled noise, but Claire waved him off. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"It has the markers of a piece that shouldn't exist.\" Andras's eyes drifted back to the scrap. \"The Codex Gigas. Have you heard of it?\"\n\n\"Codex Gigas. The... giant book?\"\n\n\"Apt translation, given the original book's size, but it's also known as 'the Devil's Bible.'\"\n\nClaire raised her brows. \"You have my attention.\"\n\nAndras's fingertips danced away from the bit of paper every time he attempted to touch it, as if it burned. \"A curious piece of antiquary history, to hear the humans tell it. Some sordid drama about a medieval monk signing a deal with the devil to create a holy tome in a single night.\"\n\n\"What nonsense.\"\n\n\"Of course. No proper demon would bother with a trivial deal such as that.\" Andras shrugged. \"But there was a book created, and Lucifer claims ownership himself.\"\n\nClaire frowned. \"Lucifer... wrote a book? Impossible. Demons don't create books.\"\n\n\"They don't write books.\" Andras held up a finger. His voice took on a teaching tone. \"This wasn't a story; it was an artifact. A container. It takes a lot of power to hold a realm like Hell as long as Lucifer has. Power burns out a god as much as a mortal. The oldest beings have been known to siphon off bits of themselves over the years, stash bits of themselves here and there. To remain sane. To hedge their bets. The more innocuous the piece, the better.\" Andras made a vague gesture to the curios around them. \"Something like that should be here, by all rights. But I suppose he didn't trust my predecessors with it. Rather insulting that he thought Earth was safer.\"\n\nClaire's brow furrowed. \"That does sound... eccentric. Even for him.\"\n\n\"Highly. I always suspected it wasn't just mere power he was hiding away in that thing. Perhaps a secret, a key, something he didn't trust to keep on himself for some reason. Something to be kept far away from the realm. Tantalizing mystery, isn't it?\"\n\n\"You think everything is secrets and conspiracy, Andy.\"\n\n\"That's because everything is, pup. And you do know I dislike that nickname.\"\n\nClaire smiled. \"Almost as much as I dislike being called 'pup.'\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" Andras said with an odd tilt of fondness. \"In any case, this codex, it stayed unnoticed on Earth for centuries. Then, out of the blue, Lucifer called his Arcanist and librarian to him\u2014our predecessors\u2014and ordered them to retrieve the book and replace it with a mundane replica.\" The old demon's lip curled with a strong distaste. Leto began to see where Claire might have gotten her opinion of the ruler of Hell. \"Something must have spooked him.\"\n\nLeto found the whole conversation alarming, and unease finally began to work its way into the nervous tap of Claire's fingers on the counter.\n\n\"Why wasn't I made aware of any of this?\" she asked.\n\n\"Why would you be? It's a perfectly written book. Not one of your delicate unwritten things,\" Andras said. \"As I understand it, the book was retrieved during some mortal uprising. A fire made a convenient cover. Our agents replaced it with a harmless mundane copy in the chaos. It disappeared after that\u2014who knows what our benevolent dictator did with it?\"\n\n\"Not everything got recovered, though,\" Leto said. When Andras frowned at him as if just remembering his presence, Leto nodded to the table.\n\n\"Well... yes. There might have been complications,\" Andras said. \"They replaced the book as it was... but humans say that precisely ten pages might have gone missing in the fire. We thought it was just the replica that was damaged.\"\n\n\"Ten pages. Of a book made of Hell stuff. Did anyone bother to check the original before handing it over?\"\n\nAndras's lips thinned. \"The records don't precisely say so.\"\n\n\"And you've not pursued it, gone after these pages?\"\n\nAndras snorted. \"I'm not daft. I proposed the idea decades ago once I ran across the discrepancy. But I was ordered not to. Forbidden. A decree from our great ruler himself. And no further investigation into the book was condoned. Whatever it is, whatever it was, Lucifer didn't trust anyone looking into it.\"\n\nIt didn't make sense. Leto found himself chewing a hole in his lip as he tried to follow. \"If it was so important, why would he risk...?\"\n\nAndras gave an elegant shrug. \"The whole affair went down before my inglorious downfall. Long before I became Arcanist. I was still a duke then. It was all done rather hush-hush, and the court didn't hear about it until much later. One of your predecessors was the one who retrieved it. If anyone has covered up a failure, it was him.\"\n\nOut of the corner of his eye, Leto saw Claire flinch. The color drained from her cheeks. \"Predecessor... You mean Librarian Gregor.\"\n\n\"No, no. More than a few back. This would have been\"\u2014Andras gave a dismissive wave at the whole idea of time\u2014\"the barbarian. Beard. Loud type. Drunk. Stuck around forever. What's his name? I can't keep your people straight.\"\n\nThe tension in Claire's shoulders eased by inches. It was the second time Leto noticed her strange aversion to her predecessor. \"Bjorn? Bjorn the Bard. He had the longest tenure, spanning the Middle Ages. Two before Gregor.\"\n\n\"Sounds about right. Your wing's history in any case, not mine.\"\n\nClaire and Andras fell into warring scowls. Little as Leto knew, he had a sinking feeling that worse news was yet to come. It appeared the librarian agreed with him as she shook her head. \"If it's resurfaced, we can't just leave a thing like that floating around.\"\n\nAndras watched Claire warily. \"An order is an order, pup.\"\n\n\"At the very least, we can report this latest appearance and reopen the investigation. Blood and ink, Andras. Angels are involved, for goodness' sake. This isn't time for politics.\"\n\nAndras shook his head. \"It's not wise. Not without more information to justify approaching the court.\"\n\n\"Information that we can't get until it's sanctioned. Which it's not,\" Claire said flatly. \"Information he doesn't want the court to hear in the first place.\"\n\n\"That is how Hell works.\"\n\nClaire crossed her arms. There was a distant tick-tick-tick of claws as ravens shifted in their cages. Leto could see a subtle tic in Andras's bearded cheek as he met her stare.\n\nClaire swept up the bag, snagging the scrap before Andras could protest. She turned on her heel and strode toward the doors. Andras gaped, first at Claire, then at Leto. Then he broke into a run after her. \"Pup! Librarian! Claire! Stop this instant!\"\n\n\"Come along, Leto,\" Claire called, not slowing her pace before she raised her voice to a level that sent the ravens chattering and raced a chill down Leto's spine. \"LUCIFER.\"\n\n\"Don't be a fool!\" Andras was faster than his gray hair indicated he should be and he bolted after her. Leto had to sprint to keep them in sight as they sped down the hall. If Claire was summoning him, then he wasn't really sure he wanted to catch up.\n\n\"No, this is ridiculous. I won't tolerate\u2014 BELIAL.\"\n\n\"Claire\u2014listen\u2014\"\n\n\"MORNINGSTAR. GET DOWN HERE.\"\n\n\"Claire!\"\n\n\"IBLIS. LORD OF\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you want to start a war?\" Andras caught hold of Claire's shoulders at the base of the stairs. He let go just as quickly under Claire's withering glare. \"You don't want to do this, pup. We can't tell him this has surfaced in the hands of an angel.\"\n\nTension trembled through Claire's jaw and her fingers clenched around the plastic bag. \"You have one minute to tell me one good reason why. And without using 'girl' or 'pup,' or I'll walk right out of here, Andras. I mean it.\"\n\nLeto came to a stop a step away. Andras jerked his hands away from Claire's shoulders and raked a hand through his striped hair. \"Consider the facts, Claire. Somehow, a book of Hell resurfaced after all this time and found its way into Heaven's hands. They very likely don't know what they have, but they sent nothing less than Ramiel after it. Thunder of God, a bloody Watcher. Fallen or not, unforgiven or not, he's no errand boy. Now think it through. What will happen if you report this to the court?\"\n\nClaire sniffed. \"They'll send us after it, obviously. Just as they did before. And this time I will do a proper job.\"\n\n\"They sent the Library after it when it was merely an embarrassing personal secret of Lucifer's, held by humans. You know your history, Librarian. What happens when you scare powerful people who have armies? What does the court of Hell do when Heaven moves against them?\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous.\" Color fled Claire's cheeks. \"This is a book. They wouldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"We've gone to war over less. I was there.\" Andras said the word \"there\" in a way that conjured yawning voids and loss. Leto shuddered.\n\nClaire threw up her hands. \"That's unnecessary. This is a book. Lucifer knows we could much more effectively\u2014\"\n\n\"He might, but the court wouldn't. You know their opinion of the Library, run by a mere human and a washed-up demon?\" Andras's tone turned brittle and bitter. \"We're pawns, squatters on top of desirable treasures. They wouldn't just not trust us\u2014they'd take the opportunity to prove us incompetent, to pillage the Library.\"\n\nClaire paused, as if losing her footing. \"To put the Library above the realm\u2014\"\n\n\"What about Earth?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Think,\" Andras snapped. \"Even if the greedy lot can pull their tails out of their arses long enough to follow the trail and do the job, where do you think this will be settled?\"\n\nAndras scrutinized Claire for a response. She stilled, flicking a concerned glance toward Leto. Andras looked as if he'd scored a point. \"Do you see now why reporting this is foolhardy?\"\n\nLeto saw Claire's chin rise almost imperceptibly, the stubborn steel that he'd begun to recognize as the librarian's will coming to bear. \"To the courts, perhaps, but if we approached this as a private matter with him...\"\n\n\"The Purge.\"\n\nClaire stopped. \"That was an entirely different scenario.\"\n\n\"The what?\" Leto felt his confusion had reached a breaking point.\n\n\"A... tragedy in Hell's history.\" Claire scowled at Andras. \"A fool librarian challenged Lucifer for dominion of the Library. Tried to claim independence and lost. She... Well, the books were preserved, but the entire Library was remade, sealed. It spurred a line of book burnings on Earth\u2014if you've ever heard of the Library of Alexandria, she was born of that time. I suppose he wanted to punish her where it hurt. The muses were in an uproar. It was chaos until the Library had a proper librarian again. Tragic but beside the point, because we are not challenging anyone.\"\n\n\"Test it if you wish.\" Andras gave a soft shrug. \"But our fool king went to quite a lot of trouble to keep the codex out of Hell the first time around. It wouldn't be the first time he's eliminated his own people to protect a secret. I'd rather not go through that again.\"\n\nClaire's fingers worked a silent calculation, twitching around the bag in her grasp. \"Suppose we don't seek Lucifer's sanction on it. It's still an arcane object, presumably on Earth, and a danger to humanity as well as the rest of us. That's your responsibility to act.\"\n\nAndras's smile eased. \"It can't be ignored. You were right about that. I would be happy to chase this artifact and return it to Hell before it can do more damage. But the last time this book was hunted, the Library did it together, Arcane and Unwritten. Why is that? I wonder.\"\n\nClaire narrowed her eyes. \"We have a dispensation when books are lost, yes. But this isn't one of mine, and I'm not a demon. I can't do this unsanctioned. We just returned the only book\u2014\"\n\n\"Returned with how much time still on your ghostlight?\"\n\n\"Most of a day but... Oh. No. You can't be serious.\" Leto briefly wondered how the Arcanist had kept such close tabs on today's events, or if it was public knowledge. Claire voiced the larger problem. \"We would still need Walter's help to travel.\"\n\nAndras tapped his lip. \"Walter holds transport to the mortal realms, but where would you start looking for the Devil's Bible, Librarian?\"\n\n\"I would...\" Claire hesitated as she appeared to give the question the full measure of her attention. \"The angel found us in Seattle, but I suspect that's because he was chasing any demonic activity. He seemed surprised to find us. That means his leads ran out. No, the pages might be on Earth, but we would have to start with information on how they went missing. You say Bjorn the Bard was the librarian who retrieved it, but...\"\n\nBoth Claire and Andras went silent, and Leto lost his patience. \"But what?\"\n\n\"Bjorn's not a librarian anymore. Not even in Hell. He did his time in the Library, and his soul found rest. And he was of the old beliefs, so...\" Claire raised her brows at Andras. \"If we wanted to talk to Bjorn, we would have to find him... in Valhalla?\"\n\n\"In Valhalla.\"\n\n\"Ravens?\" Claire was curious.\n\n\"Ravens.\" Andras was certain.\n\n\"Ravens?\" Leto was confused.\n\nAn unsettling smile, sharp and resigned, tugged at Claire's mouth. \"I thought you were retired from the game, Arcanist.\"\n\nAndras chuckled. \"I can be induced, for a good cause and a lovely face.\"\n\nClaire ignored the flattery. \"And to sate your curiosity about a secret, I imagine.\"\n\n\"Well, now, that would just be a bonus for an old man's entertainment, pup.\"\n\nClaire glanced once at Leto, and he gave her what he hoped was a nod of support. She sighed. \"Where do we start?\"\n\n\"With the raven road, of course,\" Andras said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "A brief argument ensued, which was settled only when Claire invoked some obscure rule of conduct that Leto had never heard of. Andras threw up his hands and disappeared back into the cluttered shadows of his wing, and Claire resumed her atrociously fast stride up the stairs the way they'd come. Leto found himself winded by the third flight. Librarians were exhausting.\n\n\"Miss Librarian? What's happening now?\"\n\n\"We've drowned together, Leto. You can call me Claire.\"\n\n\"What's happening now, Claire?\"\n\n\"I believe\"\u2014Claire gave the gargoyle a pat as they rounded the corner into the familiar maze of halls that led to the Unwritten Wing\u2014\"now I am about to become a very bad role model for you. If you really are a demon, this is the point where you should probably be running off to tattle on us.\"\n\nLeto reached up to rub the point of one ear. \"I don't think I want to tattle after what Andras said.\"\n\n\"Me neither, unfortunately,\" Claire said with a sigh.\n\nLeto considered the Arcanist and fought back his unease about being around another demon. \"You said he was a... a duke?\"\n\n\"Was. Once.\" Claire gave a tight-lipped smile. \"Before I knew him, he was a high duke in Hell's court. Very highly respected, commanded legions, and was Lucifer's right hand. Demon of Confessions, I think. He was ousted in a political coup more than a hundred years ago. Demons love nothing more than their political games; never stand between a demon and a rise to power.\"\n\n\"Isn't that where you said the Library is now?\"\n\nClaire made a face. \"Yes. Aren't you a fast learner? In any case, Andras survived but withdrew from the court to lick his wounds. He eventually took over the role of curator for the Arcane Wing. He's a demon, yes, but retired from the court. He's always been a supporter of the Library. He... ah, he helped me out a good deal when I was a new librarian. He taught me a lot.\"\n\nA memory, a pain, a regret, all flicked over Claire's face, too rapid-fire for Leto to comment on. He stared at his hands. One claw had a hangnail. He worried at it. \"But I still don't know what I'm supposed to\u2014I mean, you said we're going to go after this thing?\"\n\nClaire slowed so suddenly that Leto nearly ran into her back. She cast a glance toward the Library entrance, then pulled him to one side. \"This isn't like fetching the hero's book, Leto. This is going to get... complicated.\"\n\n\"I had a feeling.\"\n\n\"I'll be doing something which may upset the rest of Hell. The Library's always been a bit separate...\"\n\n\"I understand.\"\n\n\"But you're not part of the Library.\" Leto's face fell, and Claire closed her eyes briefly. \"I mean, you're welcome here, but you don't have to be part of this. It's going to be dangerous. Even if we manage to accomplish what we intend, when we get back, we'll be... You should leave while you can.\"\n\n\"Where do I go?\" The question sounded more pitiful than Leto had intended, but it was out of his mouth before he could think. Panic began to edge its way up the back of his throat, and he tried to envision what leaving the Library meant. His first real memory of this place was of being a demon messenger sent to Claire's desk. Everything before that was... darkness, fear, self-loathing. A coil of despairing acid in his throat. He'd rather do anything than that.\n\n\"You could stay at the Library, until we return. Plenty to read,\" Claire offered.\n\n\"You said demons aren't librarians because we can't handle the nature of the books.\" He looked down at his clenched hands.\n\n\"Leto... you're not a demon. You're\u2014\"\n\n\"I was sent to you. And you're the only one who's even tried to tell me the truth. You... you're the only assignment I have. Until that changes, I'm staying.\" Leto tried to sound confident rather than pleading. He chewed on his bottom lip as he saw Claire's normally brittle brown eyes soften. Sympathy, pity. It wasn't what he wanted. He didn't want to be protected, to shield himself from hurtful truths. Not again. It felt the opposite of being human. He wanted... \"I want to help. Please.\"\n\nClaire swept her gaze over Leto once before nodding slightly. \"Okay. All right. I did say you were a fast learner.\" She started down the corridor again. \"Next lesson: move quickly.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "\u2002When you consider all the realms of the afterlife, there are aberrations. To a librarian, Heaven is a large aberration. It seems curious that one of the grandest, most belief-fueled realms of paradise does not possess a library of its own.\n\n\u2002In the minds of its believers, Heaven must be perfect. Absent nothing, regretting nothing, wanting nothing. It makes sense, then, that Heaven has no wing of our library.\n\n\u2002What is a story without want, without desire, without need?\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1896 CE\n\n\"This is, quite obviously, unacceptable.\"\n\nRamiel had, frankly, expected more of an outburst from Uriel. He'd delivered his report of the encounter on Earth, standing stock straight in the center of the archangel's office, bracing for the anger he knew was coming. But Uriel had merely listened, giving him the full measure of her ageless, infinite attention until he fell silent.\n\nIn some ways, that was much worse.\n\n\"You not only allowed our best leads to escape, but you lost our only evidence and means to pursue.\" Uriel toyed with a small compass in her hands without looking at it, her stern gaze reserved for Rami. The sharp edges of the navigator's tool flickered and slid between her fingers like a blade.\n\n\"We still have leads\u2014\"\n\n\"What leads?\" Uriel interrupted, voice level but knuckles white as the compass stilled. \"Do tell me, Watcher, how we can locate these librarians when they possess the artifact.\"\n\nThere were no ways, not in the magics Rami understood. He held his tongue.\n\n\"What's more, the fact that you were bested by a dead woman and a\u2014what? A demonic servant who could mug you like taking candy from a cherub?\" Uriel shook her head. \"It's a stain on Heaven. Was it sympathy? Your fondness for humans from your time as shep\u2014\"\n\n\"Souls!\" Uriel's glare could melt galaxies, but Rami swallowed and pushed forward. \"Hell's librarian is a human soul.\"\n\nWhen Watchers had served Heaven, Ramiel had been the Thunder of God... and the shepherd. Sent to lost souls to shepherd them to the afterlife. No soul stayed lost under Rami's care. The conclusion lit Uriel's eyes with a strange, sharp glimmer. \"You can track her?\"\n\n\"Not while she's in Hell or another realm,\" Rami admitted. The lost status of a soul was critical. \"But if she strays to Earth again or travels the roads between, I should be able to narrow our options. Without a divine mandate, however, it will take some time.\"\n\nA smile curdled Uriel's expression, a strange and unnatural look. Rami had thought winning Uriel's approval would be satisfying, but instead it felt startling, like a show of claws. \"Make your preparations. The fact remains that we must move forward quickly to catch up. We know Hell's Library has it. May, in fact, have the whole thing. I'm not giving the victory to the Betrayer that easily,\" Uriel said. \"In the meantime, we'll start with the other realms she'd be likely to rabbit to. The major ones: Duat, Jannah, Valhalla, Indralok. We have passage agreements with most realms of paradise. If we're very fast and very blessed, we'll catch the scent.\"\n\nRami abruptly felt less an angel and more a hunting dog. But one look at Uriel's hungry smile and he held his tongue. \"And if we catch up with the librarian?\"\n\n\"Ascertain whether she has the rest of the codex. Follow and impede if she does not. Hell cannot be allowed to acquire this book. And if she has it already...\" Again, Uriel twirled the silver compass in her palm. She abruptly flipped her grip and drove the point into the desk. \"She serves Hell. She is already damned. If the librarian seeks salvation, then Heaven's justice will purify her.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "\u2002Of course there are other libraries. The Unwritten is just one wing, though one of the largest. There are wings of poetry, wings of songs, wings of dying words and visions. The libraries maintain a prickly kind of alliance, separated by realms. If one library falls, it could signal the end for them all. The Library stands together.\n\n\u2002The only exception to note is the Dust Wing, which houses all the works created and lost to time. But the less said about that dark hall, the better.\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1630 CE\n\n\u2002It is our duty to maintain a cordial yet professional relationship with the other libraries. If only for the sake of the interworld loan. But one library wing is not like another. Do not trust librarians serving other tales.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1791 CE\n\nSometimes, when claire allowed herself a moment to reflect on the absurdity of her fate, she wished she could find the soul of old Father Roderick. It was one of the few memories she'd kept. He'd presided over her family's parish and instilled in her, at the wicked age of eight, the deep fear of damnation of her immortal soul. She drifted away from it, as many children did, and grew up into a comfortable agnostic, or as much as was proper for the time. But now, literally residing in Hell, she wished to revisit those old conversations with Father Roderick. Father Roderick, who taught her the necessity of good Catholic guilt. In the end, guilt and self-recrimination were the worst sins for a soul.\n\nWhat would the good father think to see her? Her current position in Hell was entirely due to her own soul's self-imposed judgment. She dealt daily with condemned souls and demons because her own soul didn't believe she deserved better.\n\nAnd perhaps the most scandalous thing she could tell Father Roderick was, frankly, how comfortable it was. She had regrets, deep regrets, yes, about how she'd lived her life, the time she'd wasted. They were why she'd ended up in the Library. But the afterlife she'd built up was more than acceptable. The start had been rough, and there were the mistakes she made, hauntings she still pretended not to have. She was not completely insulated from Hell here in the Library.\n\nBut there was work to do, a purpose to her fate. And she owed something to those in her afterlife. She owed something to the Library, its books, Brevity. Now there were Leto and the damaged book to consider.\n\nClaire found herself well suited for damnation. Sorry, Father Roderick.\n\nBy the time Claire and Leto returned, Brevity had put the hero to work trundling carts of books up from the recesses of the Library. The muse tolerated his sulky muttering with more aplomb than Claire would have, patting his slumped shoulder as she sent him off with another cart.\n\n\"Truthfully? Those books weren't even due to be inventoried yet,\" Brevity admitted as he disappeared into the stacks again. \"But it keeps him busy. How was Andras?\"\n\n\"Well-informed. Patronizing. Per usual.\" Claire began to tick through her head as she calculated where to begin with the disasters on the Library's plate. \"How's the hero doing?\"\n\n\"He's wearing a pout that could curdle milk, but otherwise he's bucked up. He just wants to be called Hero. Like, for a name.\" Brevity poured a new cup of tea for herself.\n\n\"That's... quite the literal affectation.\"\n\n\"That's what I told him in less fancy words.\" Brevity lowered her voice as the cart emerged from a back aisle. \"He sure seemed set on it. Said he thought it had a certain je ne sais quoi. And that's when I put him on inventory.\"\n\nClaire nodded and waved Leto over. No use putting this off. \"Well done, but inventory needs to wait. We have new business. I am going to pull some supplies. Brev, I need you to take Leto here and prepare to shut down the wing.\"\n\nThe muse nearly choked on her tea. \"What?\"\n\nClaire began dumping the less necessary\u2014and somewhat soggy\u2014books out of her leather bag, and filling it quickly with an assortment of tools from her desk. \"The entire wing. All books on lockdown. Nothing leaves. Jot a note to inform the muses. Earth is just going to have to deal with writer's block until we get back.\"\n\n\"But that's\u2014if we\u2014\" Brevity made a strangled noise in her throat. \"Begging your pardon, boss, but you give an order like that, I need a story.\"\n\nClaire frowned as she ordered her pens in the bag's side pocket. Brevity was a muse\u2014a former, ex-muse, certainly. But it was the muses that would feel the blowback most keenly if the source of all unwritten stories was suddenly shut off. It was a tricky relationship between the Library of unwritten works and the muses that were tasked to inspire them. If the muses had their way, the Library would be empty, but that wasn't the way creation worked. Sometimes inspiration was not enough. They would not take a closing well. \"Get Hero up here, then. I've got no time to say this more than once.\"\n\nOnce Claire had briefed the others on the existence of the Codex Gigas, the danger of the remaining pages, and Andras's plan to seek Bjorn in Valhalla, she took a long draw of her tea, carefully watching Brevity's and Hero's reactions. Brevity's mouth had made a silent \"oh\" before she schooled her face. Her eyes took on the same intense glint she got when wrestling with a particularly stubborn acquisition.\n\nThe newly dubbed \"Hero,\" on the other hand, had snorted at every opportunity throughout the tale, lips curling to express more disgust than concern by the end of it. \"Why, again, are you haring off after a myth rather than leaving it to your betters?\"\n\n\"Because there's a chance that my betters would either start a war or make it so that the Library\u2014and all the books inside, mind you\u2014never existed rather than admit the thing still exists in the wild.\" Claire took a peevish sip of tea. \"I have no patience for politics. Whatever game went on with this codex before, we have a job to do.\"\n\n\"We,\" Hero repeated flatly, but Brevity brightened.\n\n\"That means you'll be needing me, right?\"\n\n\"I always need you, Brev.\" Claire's determination softened into a smile. \"If that's settled, every minute counts. Take Leto and get moving. Hero, you're with me.\"\n\nHero sulked silently after Claire through the warren of the Library's storage rooms. Claire measured him in brief glances between checking and locking doors. His color was better, his walk steady and smooth. For a thing that had just been cut out of his own entity like an amputated limb, Hero was doing remarkably well.\n\nEspecially for a hero. In Claire's experience, heroes of unwritten stories were often the most fragile. All that destiny and tragic backstory. It made it easier to force them into their books, but it left a sour taste in her mouth. Entirely useless. Nothing folded like a hero without a story. Even damsels were sturdier.\n\nHero grimaced as she turned a corner deep in the Library, selecting a book here and there. \"Here I was thinking I'd be spending my near future developing a nice, boring dust allergy.\"\n\n\"Buck up. There will be plenty of dust where we're going,\" Claire said. \"Tell me, what kind of hero were you? More of a lover than a fighter?\"\n\n\"Decidedly a fighter.\" Hero preened his nails. \"Never had much use for love in my story.\"\n\n\"With cheekbones like that? I'm shocked.\" Claire paused at the end of one of the aisles, eyeing the ornate suit of armor that decorated the endcap. Master craftsmen had unfinished works of art too, and the Library had a larger armory than one would expect. They were mostly elaborate work meant for noble showpieces but still well made. \"Swords?\"\n\n\"Rapier, preferably. I'm not a barbarian. But a well-balanced basket-hilted broadsword is comfortable enough.\" Hero watched with obvious skepticism as Claire rapped on the suit's knuckles. The suit loosened its grip on its weapon, and she grabbed the pommel of the ornate sword. Claire gave it a cursory inspection; it was sharp and covered in excessive filigree\u2014just like Hero, really\u2014but that was as far as her weapon discernment went. She tossed it underhand to Hero.\n\nHe caught it, gave it a careful heft, and sighted down the end of the blade. Claire took the moment to take silent stock of him. He certainly had the air of a hero, capable, with confidence that irritated like a hangnail. Still, Claire was more used to shelving characters than trusting them.\n\nHero cast an unreadable glance at her. \"Adequate.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" Claire waited until he'd stripped the blade's sheath from the suit of armor and secured the weapon across his back. She started down the aisle again. \"We need to get straight on a few things before we leave.\"\n\n\"Is this where we swear to be true and loyal in the face of certain death? Your short acquaintance has already branded me.\" Hero held up the wrist that had been stamped.\n\n\"Which is the only reason I'm bringing you along,\" Claire said. That and a swashbuckling hero could not hurt their odds if that angel showed up again. Her little group needed him. That was an unfortunate fact he didn't need to know.\n\n\"Not worried I'll slip the leash again?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm sure you would try. I just trust my leash more.\" Claire allowed him to catch up as they turned a corner. \"I have no doubt you'll do as I say, when I say. But I need you to swear to something outside of that.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"No, thanks. I've reached my inconvenient-oath quota for the year.\"\n\n\"I will make it worth your time.\"\n\n\"I doubt that.\"\n\nClaire stopped. They could hear Brevity's high, clear voice chattering at the far end of the aisle as books thumped around. \"Inspiration.\"\n\nHero narrowed his eyes. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You wanted your author to write her books. I happen to be on excellent working terms with the muses.\"\n\n\"It seems to me that the Library's relationship with the muses is more adversarial than collaborative.\"\n\n\"Nonsense.\" Claire waved her hand to cover the fact that his perception was entirely accurate. \"We all care about the well-being of authors and books. Serve admirably on this trip, maybe I will suggest more focused efforts for young Miss McGowan.\"\n\nThere was a gleam in Hero's eyes that had not been present before. \"What admirable service do you have in mind?\"\n\n\"Protect them,\" Claire said. Too quickly, too urgently. That was a misplay when dealing with a hero who seemed as contrary as a tomcat. She picked her next words carefully. \"You're duty bound to do as I say, but I cannot foresee how this ill-advised errand will go. If I am not there to command you, Hero, I want your oath that you'll not abandon Brevity and Leto\u2014or Andras, I suppose, though he can take care of himself. See they return safely to the Library, to the best of your ability.\"\n\nThe gazes of both fell to the suit of armor capping the aisle. The hero leaned against it, draping one arm over the knight's shoulder as he eyed the librarian. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Why? Because I offered to inspire your auth\u2014\"\n\n\"No, I mean, why do your assistant and your puppy-eyed hanger-on deserve my protection?\"\n\nClaire chewed on the inside of her cheek. Truth was a gamble, but then all of this was. Claire hated gambles. \"Because I'm not the monster you think I am. And I fervently hope, somewhere under that ridiculous coat, you're not the childish brat I think you are. Brev is going to be librarian one day. A muse. First of her kind to run a wing of the Library, and she will deserve every bit of it. She's clever, quick, and has more heart than I do. Maybe she'll even be able to offer the unwritten that better life you seem to be obsessed with.\"\n\n\"And the demon?\"\n\n\"Leto.\" Claire emphasized the name. \"Leto is human, and may be more than meets the eye.\"\n\n\"A demonic book is on the loose, the world in peril, and you ask me to guard children.\" Hero shook his head. \"What priorities. I would have thought you would make me swear on my life to retrieve the codex pages without you.\"\n\nClaire's lips twitched. \"I hadn't thought of that. Can I get you to do both?\"\n\nHero's snort was a decided answer.\n\n\"I'll stick with protecting Brev and Leto, then.\" She took off toward the end of the aisle. \"If you aren't interested in my offer, of course, I could just lock you in with the damsels.\"\n\n\"Damsels? What are\u2014\" Hero had to untangle himself from the armor before sprinting to keep up. \"Slow down, damnable woman!\"\n\n\"What, you thought you were the only book to ever wake up?\" Claire stopped in front of a frosted-glass door. She knocked once, then ducked in. \"You're not even the prettiest.\"\n\nShe shut the door after Hero followed, stopping short just inside the threshold with a confused grunt. She couldn't blame him. The room was a marked difference from the long book-lined canyons of the Library. It was a cozy sitting room; shelves cluttered the walls and overstuffed chairs dotted the corners, occupied by a cluster of animated figures, mostly women. One pored over a microscope at a far table, sleeves of a thick Victorian dress rolled up and stained with ink. A wartime housewife on the couch balanced a magazine on her knees as she showed off pages to a young boy. Near the fire, a fair-haired princess snuggled contentedly with a pigtailed girl in overalls. A captivating alien of no particular gender played a complex, vertical version of chess in one corner. Their entrance had gotten the room's attention, and a dozen pairs of eyes roved curiously over Hero before Claire shooed them off. She'd never allowed herself to learn their names\u2014Brevity had always been better at such things\u2014but they all knew her.\n\n\"What... what kind of prison is this?\" Hero had to drop his voice under the censuring gaze of the pair of ladies nearest them.\n\n\"No prison. A sanctuary, perhaps,\" Claire said. \"Most books wake up as heroes like you\u2014sending out their most empowered, admirable characters into the world. Puffed-up peacocks set on making messes and throwing tantrums to get their way. We send them back to their own stories straightaway.\"\n\nHero opened his mouth to protest, but Claire waved him off. \"And why not? Not that it's my concern, but they're perfectly happy as masters of their own domain in their stories. But sometimes, it's not the hero.\"\n\n\"You called them damsels.\"\n\n\"Stupid name,\" said the girl in pigtails sitting to their right. She met their looks with a wrinkled nose. \"We ain't even all girls.\"\n\n\"It's just a category,\" Claire said. \"Sometimes, a book wakes up as a character that has reason to be dissatisfied with their story. No agency. Flatly written. Just another reward for the hero\u2014\"\n\n\"Heteronormative bullshit,\" the girl added.\n\nIt would not be proper to be amused right now. \"As she says,\" Claire agreed. \"They have no interest in living it out\u2014they're happy their story has gone unwritten. We call them damsels because, most of the time, they're women. Wonder why that is.\"\n\nHero ignored the look cast at him on behalf of his gender.\n\nClaire continued. \"If their authors are dead and gone, it seems unnecessary to send them back and simpler to let them stay, as long as they remain in the Library and entertain themselves. Learn things. Make up their own minds. Some even find families. So the damsel suite was established.\" She turned to Hero with a speculative look. \"Though I'm sure they might let a pretty hero like you join if you would rather stay behind.\"\n\nHero eyed the gathered damsels, color overtaking his cheeks as he made eye contact with a rogue with a wicked smile. Beside him there was a slender, pale-haired princess who flashed a charming smile and hesitantly waggled her fingers. The combined attention appeared to be too much. Hero looked down and surprised her with a flustered noise. \"You wouldn't.\"\n\n\"Try me.\" Claire leaned against the doorknob, indulging in a good modest gloat. Hero's cheeks were still pink, and she didn't miss the small interested glances he gave femme and masculine damsels in equal measure. \"Frankly, I'd be impressed if you survived five minutes in here. I didn't figure you for the shy sort, Hero. It is almost endearing.\"\n\n\"Whatever.\" Hero stiffened as a damsel nearby got up and reached past him for a book on a shelf. She winked, which appeared to unnerve him more. He skittered back a step, rubbing a delightfully pink cheek. \"Fine. Take me with you. I'll agree to your little promise.\"\n\n\"Glad to hear it.\" Claire paused to exchange a few words with the damsels. She didn't bother with the details, but sketched a vague reason for the Library's temporary shuttering. She guided Hero out the door, closed it with a click, and took off again. \"It was a close call last time. Heaven's not catching us defenseless again.\"\n\nAfter they returned to the front desk, Claire and Brevity left the boys to finish packing. Librarian and muse disappeared into the stacks for several long minutes to conduct the arcane parts of shutting down the Unwritten Wing.\n\nGradually, the Library took on a different tenor. The light spilling from shaded lamps drifted to a cooler tone, fading from amber to blue before dimming entirely. The shadows deepened. The deer that had frolicked in a nearby pastoral painting cast nervous glances outside the frame and disappeared into the oil-painted woods. The air became hushed and heavy.\n\nClaire's last act of business was to pat the gargoyle as they slipped out into the corridor. \"Hold down the fort, friend,\" she murmured. She half turned to look back but abruptly thought better of indulging the guilt that twisted in her stomach. She squared her shoulders and led the party toward the stairs at the far end of the hall. \"Hopefully Andras is ready to go.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "\u2002Stories and books have had many forms over the centuries. Humans have written down words on paper, but also on wood, clay, bone, bark, ivory, linen, stone, and the skin of every creature under the sun. Logic dictates that the unwritten words would be the same. But the Unwritten Wing is filled, shelf after shelf, with sturdy leather-bound books. Proper, civilized books. Even the Librarian's Log refers to current collection materials\u2014books, not scrolls. I suppose the log must have some translation magic worked into it, but the Library itself?\n\n\u2002It puzzled me until I came back to the simple truth: stories want to be told. And we, the librarians, are the only readers they have here.\n\n\u2002Unwritten books yearn, and unwritten books change. Yet we expect them to remain timeless. I would say that's an accurate description of Hell.\n\n\u2014Librarian Claire Hadley, 1990 CE\n\nBooks were heavier\u2014and muses stronger\u2014than they looked. Leto had offered to carry Brevity's bag and quickly regretted it. He scrunched his nose as he followed the others down the stairs.\n\nThey passed through the Arcane Wing's ornate double doors, and he nearly collided with Brevity as she came to a sudden stop. Claire's back went rigid, while Brevity shuddered. Leto craned over her head to see what had startled the librarians.\n\nHe really wished he hadn't.\n\nAt the center of the laboratory, Andras conferred with two very large lab coats. The sheer size required to fill these lab coats was surprising enough, but then the lab coats turned. The faces above starchy white collars were... not there. Or they were there in the same way that the Library's gargoyle was there\u2014that is to say, in angles and proportions that were only reality adjacent, best not considered straight on. But these faces didn't just give you a headache, like the gargoyle did; they twisted and writhed and broke through your calm, like sanity-fed maggots. Their smiles contained screams.\n\nAnd there were so many. Leto looked away only to see another half dozen such creatures working the shelves. He was certain they hadn't been there on his previous trip, but now their presence was overwhelming. Leto focused on his shoes and fought the urge to retch. Behind him, Hero made a queasy noise.\n\nClaire alone kept her eyes riveted straight ahead as she cleared her throat. \"I didn't know you'd taken on interns in the Arcane Wing, Andras. Let alone such... prestigious ones. Wherever did you recruit them?\"\n\nThe Arcanist looked up from his papers and glanced at the hulking horrors to either side of him with a fond smile. \"It is so hard to find reliable help. I've had to devote quite a lot of time to recruitment lately.\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"And here I thought I was your only mentee. I'm crushed.\"\n\n\"You're still my favorite.\" Andras gave an indulgent smile.\n\n\"What are those things?\" Leto hissed to Brevity.\n\n\"Horrors, they got a lot of different names aboveground. You don't usually see them outside the lower levels of Hell. Demons use them sometimes to keep a legion in line.\" Brevity frowned at the lab floor as she hung back.\n\n\"They most definitely shouldn't be here.\" Claire dropped her voice so it wouldn't carry to Andras's very sharp hearing. \"The Library isn't supposed to deal in torment. Or tormentors.\"\n\n\"Not for humans at least,\" Brevity said, catching Claire's gaze with a coded look.\n\n\"Not normally dealing in torment,\" Claire corrected after a weighted moment. \"This is not normal.\"\n\n\"Maybe they're the runts. Castoffs and rejects of the proper Horrors,\" Hero suggested. He'd recovered enough to pull level to Claire and sneer at the creatures that towered above them. \"Seems this place deals in that kind of thing.\"\n\n\"Either way, it's none of our business.\" Claire let out a little breath as the Horrors turned away. Leto found it comforting that even she was unnerved by them. She nodded to Andras as she raised her voice. \"If you're ready to go...?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. Just through here.\" Andras led them farther into the lab, winding around shelves, limned with dust, that held strange artifacts. A rusted ring that glowed black. Spectacles that didn't quite reflect the same image in their lenses. Red gems, black pearls, white bones. And stacks of books, books that were still, not lively like the unwritten ones. They emanated a thick, pulsing power nonetheless. It made Leto long to wipe the goose bumps off the backs of his arms.\n\nThe raucous cawing of ravens could be heard all through the Arcane Wing, but it grew louder as they drew closer to the back. Turning the corner of a tall row of shelves revealed a rookery of cages, each filled with a black bird. Ruffled feathers and suspicious eyes turned to meet them. Andras brought the group to a halt and fiddled with a large key ring, occasionally fitting a key to a lock on a cage as he muttered.\n\n\"I assume you're familiar with such conveyance,\" he said.\n\n\"In theory, yes,\" Claire answered, looking about as displeased to see the ravens as they did her.\n\nAndras finally opened the first cage with a flourish and paused to give her a sideways glance. \"You're certain you and your people are up for this, Librarian?\"\n\n\"Capable and willing. Your concern is kind, Andras, but misplaced.\" Claire tightened the bag across her chest. \"We'll have time before there's any cause for alarm. A trip to Valhalla's wing is unusual but still in the bounds of my duties as librarian.\"\n\n\"And then? Surely you don't think Valhalla holds what we're looking for.\"\n\n\"After Valhalla...\" Claire hesitated, and Leto caught the way her eyes measured him in a glance. \"The ghostlights will buy us time once we hit Earth. It'll be suspicious, but His Nastiness won't bother sending Hounds until it's obvious we've flown the coop without permission. I suppose we will just need to avert disaster within twenty-four hours and return before the lights run out.\"\n\n\"A reasonable assumption.\" Andras did not seem as sure, but he turned back to the caged ravens. \"As you say. Demons do not need to worry about such things. But the afterlife would be such a dimmer place without you in it, mind.\"\n\n\"Oh, get off it. You'd be moving the furniture in my wing in a heartbeat.\" Claire almost but not quite stifled a smile. \"Let's get going.\"\n\n\"Right, then.\" Andras cleared his throat and expanded his address to everyone. \"Simple process. Pull a feather, give the bird your treasure, then run like the dickens after it.\"\n\n\"Run where?\" Hero asked with a frown.\n\n\"Wherever it takes you. All ravens know how to get to Valhalla\u2014they're creatures of Odin. But they're contrary beasts, require a firm hand, from what I can tell. The path between realms is treacherous.\" Andras settled into a tone that made it obvious he was used to issuing orders and not answering questions. \"Ravens have myopic, greedy natures. They can be bought, for a price. You must offer it something you dearly value. The shinier the better, but you'll need to be quick to reclaim it at the other end.\" He raised his brows expectantly at Claire, who nodded.\n\n\"Leto and I have our ghostlights. Hero, you will offer your sword. And Brevity...\"\n\n\"Stupid raven better not claw it up.\" Brevity was already picking at the skin of her wrist. Leto blinked as the edge of one propane blue tattoo slowly came away from her skin. Brevity kept it pinched between two fingers as delicate translucent lines twisted and squirmed in the air. It glimmered in the low light, like the shed skin of something beautiful and rare.\n\n\"What is that?\" Leto asked. He tried to keep his voice down but knew he was gawking nonetheless.\n\nBrevity's answer was muttered, quiet enough that Leto barely caught it. \"Inspiration.\" After a moment, the muse raised her voice but didn't risk more than a glance at Leto. \"I kept it. Muses are just supposed to transport inspiration to humans, deliver it at the right time and place, help things along. That's it. That's why I was kicked out. I was a good muse at first, but... well, build enough dreams for other people, and you start wanting to make something for yourself.\"\n\n\"Inspiration?\" Leto repeated. \"You mean that's someone else's sto\u2014\"\n\n\"It's mine.\" Brevity's voice cracked.\n\nClaire cast an oblique glance at where Andras and Hero were engaged in dickering about his sword, then rested a hand on Brevity's shoulder to guide her a polite distance away. She lowered her voice. \"Brev, it's okay.\"\n\nBrevity flinched. She gave Claire an uncharacteristically bleak look before her gaze shied away to her arm again. \"Muses aren't supposed to keep anything for themselves. I was sent to the Library for punishment.\"\n\n\"Muses aren't my biggest fans,\" Claire explained.\n\n\"You weren't exactly thrilled yerself, boss.\"\n\nClaire's mouth twisted. \"I refuse to be anyone's punishment.\"\n\n\"If we've all got our valuables...\" Andras cleared his throat, breaking the sympathetic quiet that had derailed the two librarians. His eyes were sharp, though, and Leto had the uncomfortable feeling that no incidental admission made in front of the demon was missed. \"I thought you may want to take your companions through first, and I'll bring up the rear.\"\n\nClaire composed herself. \"You're the arcane expert here, Andras. Perhaps you should lead.\"\n\nThe Arcanist and the librarian exchanged a look, held just a second too long to be casual, before Andras nodded. \"Off we go, then. Try to keep up.\"\n\nAndras opened a cage and hauled one of the birds out by its legs, awkwardly enough to make the whole rookery take up complaint. He dodged snapping beaks and thumped it harshly on the side of the head until the poor bird lay still. He plucked a single black feather from its side and offered a tiny silver dagger from his pocket in exchange. A fragmented jewel in the hilt shone and glimmered independent of the light.\n\nThe raven eyed it, tilting its head to one side, then another, before snapping up the bauble. Andras had to jerk back his hand to preserve his fingers. He swore, but in a fitful burst of feathers, the raven launched into the air and took off down the aisle.\n\nLeto watched, wide-eyed. \"But where's it\u2014\"\n\nThe raven, with Andras close on its heels, passed through the rocky face of the far wall. The rock shifted, then snapped back into place with a vaguely jelly-like wobble. Leto's stomach swam to watch it.\n\nClaire rattled at the lock on the next cage. \"There's your demonstration. Let's get moving. Brevity, you next. Then Hero and Leto.\"\n\nClaire reached into the cage with far more care than Andras had and came out with a calm\u2014if gravely annoyed\u2014raven perched on her wrist. She passed the bird to Brevity, who took a steadying breath before plucking a feather and offering the bird her shimmering ribbon of light. The bird snatched it up, and they were off, running toward the same rock face at the end of the aisle.\n\nHero cast a shrewd glance toward Claire. \"I don't suppose you'll let me carry my own book. You might get lost after all.\"\n\nClaire snorted and shook her head. \"Your care for my well-being is touching, as always. I'll be along with the book right behind you.\"\n\n\"The connection\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll risk that it'll hold. Now go, book.\"\n\nHero allowed one disappointed curl of his lip before he repeated the procedure. His raven took off, flying with ease despite the large sword clutched in its talons. Leto supposed immortal magic birds were bound to be strong.\n\nClaire turned to Leto. \"All right. You've seen how the others did it.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Leto eyed the wall, which looked worryingly solid. The others hadn't even had the courtesy to flinch. He wondered what happened when you flinched. He wondered what happened when you fucked this up too.\n\n\"The running is the easy part.\" Claire stroked the waiting raven's head. \"The vital thing is to keep your eyes on the raven. It can be tricky in there. It's a road between worlds, nowhere and everywhere at once. No matter what you hear, no matter what you think you see\u2014follow the bird. Stay focused. Got it?\"\n\nLeto doubted anything in the world could possess him to abandon a magical lifeline, but the creases in the librarian's brow prompted him to nod with more confidence than he felt. \"Got it.\"\n\n\"Good. I'll be right behind you.\" Claire handed him the raven. Its claws were gentle as they clamped around his wrist, dry but smooth and hot. The bird was surprisingly heavy and swayed on his forearm. Dark beady eyes regarded him with a canny kind of judgment. The bird gave only a disgruntled croak as Leto plucked the smallest feather he could manage from its chest. He swallowed hard, then opened his hand to reveal the ghostlight.\n\nIt had once again become a white candle upon its return to Hell, though slightly shorter and with a melted pool of wax around the wick. Leto had worried it wouldn't be shiny enough to be acceptable, but the raven gave it a careful once-over, then snapped it up. Hard nails pinched momentarily into his skin as the raven launched itself into the air.\n\nAnd then they were running. Leto was so concerned about keeping up that they'd passed through the rock face before he'd had a chance to anticipate the impact. The moment they were through, shadows swam up and engulfed him. The world narrowed to only the bobbing bird ahead of him, white candle clutched in its claws like an arrow pointing the way. Frost ticked up the back of his neck, but he kept his eyes locked straight ahead.\n\nNot so bad, Leto thought.\n\nThen the whispers started."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "\"Boys. Stop being little monkeys and smile for the picture.\"\n\nLeto stumbled. His stomach dropped as he spun in the direction of the voice. It echoed around him, as if the speaker was lost in the cavernous dark. He twisted around and barely caught sight of the black bird disappearing into the fog. He broke into a run again, but it felt slower, as if he was covering less ground than before.\n\n\"You got to check this out.\"\n\n\"That's crazy.\" Leto's lips moved around the response. It was his voice, and they were his lips that spoke it, and they felt like his words, but it was wrong, all wrong. As if he were watching himself from far away. His legs gave out beneath him, and it was a shorter fall to the ground than it should have been. His knees banged against a soft surface that was suddenly slippery and pliable. Leto smelled chlorine and sun-warmed rubber, an inner tube in a shady backyard pool. The laughter that cut up through his constricted throat felt like a foreign presence. \"Did you see the one where he\u2014\"\n\n\"I know, right? We could totally start our own channel.\"\n\nThe other voice was young and gleefully confident, just over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, a figure swirled through the deep mist, and it took every inch of self-control not to twist to face it. He shoved to his feet, though he could feel his body changing. The bob of the ghostlight was a speck in the dark. He ran, even as his legs stretched and returned to something like normal.\n\n\"You never got time to chill anymore.\" And now the voices sounded older.\n\n\"I'm just busy. You know.\" The words were frosty with apathy. Leto tried not to say them, but they forced their way out anyhow.\n\n\"Yeah. I know.\"\n\nEverything felt familiar, like an echo. Leto clutched his fist over his chest, where an ache bloomed. The ground swayed, roiling with the mists, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his feet. The raven didn't care. He was swimming after the bird to\u2014where, forward? Backward? Deeper in or farther out? Time dilated, a drip of fatigue in his veins. Like bleeding out. A lulling exhaustion, spiked with dread.\n\nHis lips parted again, and there was no fighting this painful script. \"Stop, Darren. I don't have time\u2014\"\n\nNo. Don't, Leto thought.\n\n\"I just thought\u2014\"\n\nStop. Leto tried to bite his mouth closed to keep it in. You don't know\u2014it ruins everything. Don't say it, don't\u2014\n\nPain blossomed over the horror, and Leto's lips bled as they parted. \"Well, don't. Shit, Darren. Don't bother thinking. Just don't.\"\n\nThe feather crumpled in his fist, and a new pain brought him back. The quill had pierced his fingertip. It wasn't in the script. It was enough. He gasped and stumbled through the fog. The raven's distant form abruptly swerved up. It took a panicked scramble before Leto found where the ground inclined, rising up toward liquid shadows that poured between a gap of nothing that seemed thicker, darker, somehow.\n\n\"Who? Darren? God, no. He just always hangs around...\"\n\nAgain his voice betrayed him, stealing his breath. This time it came with a chill of calculation. Hope. The primal adolescent instinct that pointing to someone weaker somehow makes you strong.\n\nAcid burned up Leto's throat and pooled on his tongue. It tasted bitter, like loathing. Leto hated that voice and hated himself. Maybe he deserved to be lost here. Maybe the others would fare better without him. They would, wouldn't they? Leto twisted to find the voice but stumbled midstep. And then he was falling. Leto's arms windmilled out for something, anything. An alien sound intruded, a digital ping that Leto struggled to place in his panic. Then a last voice that hissed out and bounced into the darkness:\n\n\"If you want to die so bad, why don't you hurry up and do it, then?\"\n\nLeto didn't even try to fight it this time. The voice was cruel and viciously cold. The voice was his.\n\nLight. Air. Cool hands pressed on the back of his neck. Grass tickled his hands, and the air filled his lungs with the smell of green, sunlit things."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "\u2002A librarian exists in service to the books, and takes peace in that. Future librarians, I exhort you: do not meddle in the affairs of Hell or concern yourself with the mortal world. Our time there is past, but the stories we shepherd are immortal. What we do here echoes in eternity.\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 971 CE\n\nScribbled at a much later date in a slightly sloppy hand:\n\n\u2002Bleed that. We got a job to do, sure, but what good's a librarian without a story of his own?\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1253 CE\n\nThe mountains were black and sharp, like the ribs of an ancient giant rimming the field of flowers. The closest peaks were spotted with white snowfall and a sparkle of glacial ice. It was daylight, but traces of northern lights played hide-and-seek against the far clouds drifting like passing thoughts. It was a perfect blend of mythic reverence and dreamlike impossibility. It was ridiculous, half-forgotten heroics with changing faces, half mead and belief turned legend turned pop culture. It was Valhalla.\n\nClaire had time to soak it in only after they retrieved their possessions from the ravens, who left in a huff. Brevity had been the fastest, snatching her own glimmering ribbon from her raven and pausing to drape it gently over one wrist. It twitched a protest, then absorbed seamlessly back into the complicated patterns tattooed on her arm.\n\nA strangled cry caught her attention. Leto had arrived last, even though Claire had brought up the rear. That alone wasn't concerning; the raven roads were always changing. Each path was unfathomable and personal. However, the way he crouched in the grass, breath short and hands fisted tight in his hair, drew everyone's attention.\n\n\"Leto.\" Claire dropped to a knee beside him. His shoulders spasmed violently away at her touch, though the rest of him didn't appear to acknowledge her at all. His breath was a fevered, shallow wheeze. She gently threaded his fingers away from his hair before he pulled it out by the roots. \"What's wrong?\"\n\nLeto stared at his hands in reply, fists clenching and unclenching. Claire could feel his pulse merging into a single fluttering drumbeat under her hand. She was about to try to shake him out of it when Brevity jostled between them.\n\n\"He's having a panic attack,\" Brevity said crisply as she clasped Leto's clammy hands and rubbed gently up his arm. \"Leto, hey, buddy. We're safe. Doesn't feel like it, but we are. We're gonna take as long as you need, okay?\"\n\nLeto didn't respond, so Brevity dropped to her knees next to him. \"You're right. Brains are fuckin' liars. But you got this. No rush. I'm going to count to four; maybe you can breathe for me. Four in, four out.\" And then, a few moments later, \"Want to walk around? No? Good choice\u2014this grass is kind of scratchy, don't you think? And that air\u2014smells like butterfly farts, yeah? Look at those squishy, weird flowers. Wonder if you can eat 'em...\" Brevity kept up the words, grounding him, creating a steady, soft patter that, over a handful of minutes, slowly eased Leto's shoulders away from his ears. Brevity produced a small blue bottle from her bag and pressed it into his hands before shooing the rest of them away to give Leto a chance to recover.\n\n\"You seemed well prepared for that,\" Claire said, feeling thrown by her own assistant. Brevity was always surprising her, but then, that was what muses did. In all fairness, Brevity talked so much Claire had learned to only half listen when it wasn't related to the Library. Perhaps she should change that strategy.\n\n\"I was a muse. Contrary to popular belief, it's hard to get inspired when you're panicking. Not the first time I've seen someone struggle through anxiety.\" Brevity gave a careless shrug, not quite looking Claire in the eyes.\n\n\"You never talk about your previous work,\" Claire said.\n\n\"You never ask either, do you?\" It carried an accusation, but Brevity brightened, only a little bit forcefully. \"It's okay, boss. I knew better than to ask about yours too.\"\n\nThe lightness in her tone sang along Claire's nerves, but she was aware they had an audience. Thankfully, Leto had recovered and got to his feet unsteadily. \"You didn't... didn't tell me it would be like dying.\" Leto's voice was hoarse and hollow, as if he'd been screaming. His color was faint, skin still clammy, but his chest rose and fell in steady, calm time.\n\nClaire nodded to herself. \"It's different for everyone. That path is intended to be a test. It feeds on your worst fear.\"\n\n\"Curious to fear dying, since you're already dead.\" Andras sounded more amused than sympathetic. It earned him a glare from Claire, but Leto ignored it.\n\n\"Is this the place?\" Leto took his ghostlight back from Brevity. A distant cheer rose from the west, accompanied by the sound of clashing metal. They turned as one toward the noise, and Claire nodded.\n\n\"Oh yes, definitely Valhalla.\" She struck off up the hill toward the sounds. They picked through the rubble of what looked like a wall built by giants. Huge stone blocks piled on end. Just over the rise, the faint gleam of a rooftop caught her eye. Claire squinted at it. It was easier to keep moving forward. Anything was better than looking back.\n\nAndras caught up with Claire first, lifting his knees high to try to keep the worst of the burs from catching on his fine slacks. He grimaced at his surroundings before giving her a scrutinizing look. \"My dear, are you unwell?\"\n\n\"What?\" Claire looked down and realized her hands were trembling, fingers curled into a fist. She took a sharp breath and stuffed them in the pockets of her skirts. \"I'm fine.\"\n\n\"The raven road can be trying even for experienced mortals,\" Andras offered.\n\n\"I am quite well, Andras,\" Claire said, if only to shut him up.\n\nBurning books, blood on an unwritten rug, the back of her head, hunch of her shoulders as she turned away from her. Bile curdled in her gut. Worst fears, she'd told Leto. They were never things she wanted to run to, that tempted in the dark. Just things to run away from. Claire pursed her lips into a thin line. \"Just fine.\"\n\nShe cleared her throat and turned her attention to the nearest available target. \"And what do fictional heroes see in the dark?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Just... nothing.\" It took Hero a moment longer than usual to marshal his usual haughty expression, and his sneer was slightly off-kilter. \"Your company is nightmare enough, of course. What else could I fear?\"\n\n\"Should have let go of the feather, then,\" Claire said, \"stayed in the void. Lovely place. The gibbering voices could have taught you some manners.\"\n\n\"As opposed to the gibbering of the present?\"\n\n\"Mind your tongue, book.\"\n\n\"Mind my tongue? Why, that's my most charming attribute.\"\n\n\"Maybe humility went with his lost pages,\" Leto muttered, and Hero rewarded him with a sliver of a grin.\n\n\"And the shadow gets a sense of humor! I didn't know he had it in him. Your bad influence, to be sure, warden.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "The hall rose into view as they reached the top of the hill. A grand longhouse squatted in the middle of a wide training yard. It was constructed of dark timbers, each as big around as Hero was tall. All the wood was trimmed in gold, and dark carvings resolved into sinuous animals that curled into one another as Claire drew near. Lining the roof, gutter to gable, were wooden shields of every color. Their painted heraldry was bright in the late-afternoon sun.\n\nIt was the set of double doors at the top of a flight of steps that brought the group up short. A beaten-bronze sun decorated the tops of the doors, caught in the teeth of a giant wolf. Through the carvings that emanated from the sun ran ribbons of gold, dribbling between the wolf's teeth. Every recognizable creature, real or mythical, was represented, and though the carvings were rough, they pulsed with a chained energy. Ravens roosted among the uppermost gables. The roiling cloud of black feathers croaked and chattered down at the group as they hesitated at the base of the stairs.\n\n\"So many birds. How unclean,\" Andras commented as he squinted at them. \"What is the term for a group of them? A nest, a colony... A murder is for crows...\"\n\n\"An unkindness of ravens,\" Claire muttered.\n\n\"Apt.\"\n\n\"They seem kinda pretty to me,\" Brevity offered as Claire placed her foot on the first step.\n\nThat was a mistake.\n\nOne of the largest ravens erupted from the flock and launched into a bulleting arc. At the apex, it dove, angling directly at the group. Brevity shouted a warning, but it was drowned out by a screech. First sounding avian, then... it changed.\n\nA dark blur folded into Claire, and she slammed to the ground. She shook her head to clear it but was arrested when a long, curved blade came to rest lightly under her jaw, tip prodding her skull behind her ear.\n\n\"Squishy thing. Weak thing,\" said a woman's snarling voice. \"You're no warrior.\"\n\nClaire squinted in the sun to make out the figure straddling her. She was tall and broad shouldered, with dark leathers covering her and smelling vaguely of fire and sweat. Lean, hard muscle covered what leather did not, and she had a sharp, beaklike face with dark, kohled eyes. The sides of her head were shaved, and a frill of jet-black hair and feathers on the top of her head twitched as she leaned forward.\n\n\"Warriors go to Valhalla. Cowards to Hell. Intruders go to the flock.\" The woman's lips curved into a smile to match her knife.\n\n\"Hero\u2014\" Claire croaked out, but the blade tightened against her skin.\n\nThe chuckle was so smug she could hear the smirk in it. \"Sorry\u2014didn't catch that command, warden. Need something, did you? I am ever ready to assist a lady in need. Would you like a cup of tea?\" She heard Brevity hiss something, which seemed to make Hero only laugh louder.\n\nShe really would kill that damned man.\n\nThe raven woman's companions joined her in human form, surrounding their party. Claire grimaced and crept her hands up, open at her sides. She might not die in Valhalla, but being skewered and sent back to Hell was not in her plans. \"We mean no harm.\"\n\n\"You could do no harm even if you meant it, squishy woman.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, bird lady?\" Brevity's voice brought Claire's attacker's attention around. \"I'm afraid I need you to let go of my boss. Or I'll need to hit you. With very large books.\"\n\n\"Is that so, little worm?\" Claire felt a warm trickle as the knife pressed harder. She began to wonder if her assistant was after a quick promotion.\n\n\"Who comes, Arlid?\" A new voice sounded from somewhere beyond the steps. \"They might have difficulty announcing themselves with a cut throat.\"\n\nThe raven woman, Arlid, made a disgusted noise, but the knife came away from Claire's throat. \"Intruders, Ragna. My flock brought word. These are the ones holding our fledges in another realm, wicked things. Now they try to enter the halls, slinking in like cowards.\"\n\n\"We're not cowards. We're librarians!\" Brevity protested, but the flat silence said the guards did not see the distinction.\n\nClaire pressed her hand to the nick at her throat, wiping the dribble of blood as she sat up. A thickset woman, layered in furs and old scars, stood at the top of the stairs. She had a warrior's ease, but her arms were crossed, and she held less hostility in her gaze than Arlid.\n\n\"We are members of Hell's Unwritten Wing and we're here to see Bjorn the Bard.\" Claire got to her feet, knocked the dust off her skirts for what seemed to be the tenth time today, and assessed the situation.\n\nArlid loomed over her, knife angled so Claire didn't think about moving too fast. Brevity stood with the others, and still had her bag hoisted over her head, trembling arms waggling it threateningly at the nearest guard. Hero was content to stand to one side with a complete lack of concern. Useless book.\n\nThe powerful woman at the top of the stairs made no move to help or hinder. \"And what would bring Lucifer's folk to see our storyteller?\"\n\nStoryteller. Claire had never thought of librarians like that, but then, Bjorn was before her time. \"Library business.\" When the warrior raised her brow, she clarified, \"Confidential library business.\"\n\n\"We respect the work of your storytellers. They may pass, Arlid,\" Ragna said, and the raven woman stepped to one side with a grunt. The party began up the stairs, now warier of the ravens overhead. \"I'm sure Bjorn will speak to you after you pass the trial.\"\n\n\"Trial?\" Brevity echoed.\n\n\"Valhalla is the field of heroes. You didn't die in worthy battle, so you'll have to prove your worth if you want our hospitality.\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"But we're just here for a visit\u2014just a moment is all\u2014\"\n\n\"You still must prove yourselves warriors to enter Valhalla,\" Ragna said.\n\n\"And if you don't...\" Arlid skipped up the stairs after them. A feral smile crossed her hooked face, and she motioned to the ravens above. For the first time, Claire noticed bits of bone and unidentifiable lumps strung up amid the eaves. They clattered along with Arlid's singsong croak. \"Intruders are consigned to the flock.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "\"When you said you knew the way to Valhalla...\" Claire's eyes were quickly adjusting to the light inside the hall. It appeared even bigger inside. The long hall of Valhalla comprised a disconcerting mix of ancient myth and the exaggerated flux of modern influence. The roof rested on rafters made of thick spears, and shields and carvings decorated the walls that seemed to run on forever. The inhabitants were every age, shape, and size, not the uncouth giants that the decor indicated, but the interior of the hall bristled with an aggressive mix of song, wine, and a jovial sort of violence. Sweet smoke and mead were heavy in the warm air. \"I assumed you had a plan for this part.\"\n\n\"I knew of the way. I don't get out as often as you do, remember.\" Andras slid aside as a warrior with a spear staggered past him toward the keg. \"The rumors might have... left out a few details.\"\n\nHe had to raise his voice to be heard over the boisterous drumming that issued from an assembly gathered in one corner. Claire's gaze was drawn to an older man at the center of the circle, drumming a skin basin as large as a table. He used his hands, sticks, whatever fell into his grasp, and had his head thrown back, lost to the howling rhythm. He was not the largest warrior in the hall, but the energy that poured from his sinewy arms drowned out practically every drummer around him.\n\nClaire found herself frowning at the unnecessary exuberance. \"Andras, you've been a dear mentor, but if your theoretical knowledge gets us killed, I will be withdrawing my professional acquaintance.\"\n\n\"Understood, pup.\"\n\n\"Who will your representative be for the trials?\" Ragna finished conferring with another Norseman and turned back to them. \"You should pick your finest warrior. Today's battle master is Uther, wielder of the guardian maul named Widowbane.\"\n\n\"I suppose we just missed the wielder of crumpets and tea.\" Claire pursed her lips and looked to her companions. Wordlessly, all eyes slid to Hero and the sword on his back.\n\nHero jerked, pulling his thirsty gaze away from a line of silver goblets and possibly the lean warriors attached to them. \"You can't be serious.\"\n\n\"You are kinda the only one with a weapon. Or any idea how to use one,\" Brevity pointed out.\n\n\"Also, the only one with enough sense not to get anywhere near someone named Widowbane!\"\n\n\"Actually, that's the maul's name,\" Andras said. \"Interesting human quirk, that\u2014Norse only named their blades when\u2014\"\n\n\"Fascinating,\" Hero snapped, reserving a glare for his companions before looking at Claire. \"Surely you have a better plan than sacrificing me to the natives.\"\n\n\"If you have ideas, I'm open to suggestions.\" Claire was not happy about the way things were going, but she kept her face neutral. \"We can't continue until we prove ourselves, and we can't leave until we've found Bjorn. You heard what's at stake.\"\n\nHero's frown faded, and he held Claire's gaze levelly, trading anger for a quiet that made her skin itch. He appeared contemplative. She found she rather preferred him sullen and angry. \"And is that an order, Librarian?\"\n\n\"Duels are honorable combat. They must be entered into voluntarily,\" Ragna said.\n\nIf Claire couldn't order Hero to satisfy the duel, that shot down any hope they had. Claire glanced around the hall, searching for a new plan. She racked her brain for Nordic culture, wondering what the reaction would be if she made a run for it and attempted to find Bjorn on her own. Corner and threaten him if she had to. There had to be protocols, protections. Surely they would have to respect the gravity of the...\n\n\"Fine.\"\n\nHero stood stiff as the blade on his back, dark eyes glowering at Ragna. He'd managed to imbue an acid disdain into the one word. \"As the only hero present, trials of honor fall to me. I'll participate in your barbarian sport.\" He grumbled, \"Might enjoy hitting a few things, actually...\"\n\nRagna, if she even noticed it, was immune to scorn. \"You may choose your weapon.\"\n\nHero gestured to the filigreed sword on his back. \"Broadsword. Unless you have a rapier about.\"\n\n\"Sword it is.\" Ragna turned toward Claire. \"And you, storyteller. What weapon?\"\n\nClaire choked. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"You are the leader of these... people.\" Ragna motioned over the Library's host with a broad hand. \"Leaders do not allow their own to bleed alone.\"\n\n\"Who said anything about bleeding?\" Hero interjected unhappily.\n\n\"You must forgive me, Ragna.\" Claire chose her words with care. \"Arlid was right, outside. I am not a coward, but I am not a warrior either. I'm a librarian, a scholar\u2014my only skill is with words. I'm afraid I would put on a very poor show for your hall.\"\n\n\"Not so!\" The voice that boomed from the pit brought all the music to an abrupt halt, which caught the attention of the rest of the hall. Talk ground to a murmur as a scrawny man, nearly as leathery as the wide drum in front of him, stood.\n\nIt was the same man Claire had seen earlier, hooting and drumming like a creature possessed. He leapt around the oversized drum and made his way out of the drum pit with a few pats and shoulder slaps for the warriors he passed. \"I believe we'll be in for a grand treat. And it's been far too long since I stretched my jaw.\"\n\nRagna's hooded eyes lit up. She clasped the man's arm. \"You will do us the honor, storyteller?\"\n\n\"Storyteller?\" Claire gaped. \"You're Bjorn?\"\n\n\"That's what they say.\" The man wiped a sweaty hand over his impressive beard. \"I hear you've come from the Library.\"\n\nHe did not look much like a proper librarian, but Claire was relieved. Perhaps they could yet avoid this foolish scene. \"Yes. We have questions about\u2014\"\n\n\"How is the gargoyle?\" Bjorn asked suddenly. \"Still got that chip on the right wing?\"\n\n\"Probably. I try not to look too closely.\" Claire shared an exasperated glance with Andras. \"It's of the utmost importance that we speak\u2014\"\n\n\"And we'll discuss much, Librarian. After our duel.\"\n\n\"Not a warrior. No time.\" Claire clipped her words to keep from being cut off a third time. She gripped her bag of books more tightly. She was familiar with the outlandish nature of Viking tales, but this trip was quickly spiraling out of her control.\n\n\"There's always time for a story,\" Bjorn said. \"Surely you know your stories, Librarian. Let the best verse win.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"A battle and a tale! A treat,\" Ragna crowed, clapping Claire on the back hard enough to send her forward a step. \"To the ring!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "\u2002My dear apprentice, as a librarian you'll undergo strict training under my somewhat unworthy tutelage. It can take decades to learn to wield words properly. But you need only look at the hungry demons at our door to know the power of inspiration. As we are unwritten authors, yes, some of that work is our own. Words may call to you, but it is important to maintain a healthy respect for that power. I know you grieve your lost life, but have patience.\n\n\u2002There is much I have yet to tell you.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1987 CE\n\nThe polished oak of the staff seemed to glow in the thick warmth of the longhouse. It was a beautiful construction. Claire knew if she ran her fingers along it, she'd find joints of birch, yew, hawthorn, and the other sacred woods of the north. Her thumb worried at the gnarl of amber trapped in its tip.\n\nThe hall had reacted quickly to the prospect of a duel. Claire and Hero were evidently to fight simultaneously\u2014a dual duel. The wordplay made Claire roll her eyes, but she had to admire the way the hall had quickly reorganized for the occasion. Bjorn had swept her away to the far end. The tables were pushed clear, revealing a hard-packed arena in the center of the lodge. She stopped her pacing at the side of the ring. \"Librarians are not warriors or wizards. Is this really necessary?\"\n\nBjorn rolled his shoulders as he selected a staff of his own. \"Have some sense of showmanship, lass. We may be a rough lot to you, but we appreciate a good performance. You've dueled in our way before, yes?\"\n\n\"My predecessor taught me.\" Claire stared at the staff in her hand as if it were a snake. \"But more for... recreation and training, not death by combat.\"\n\n\"Oh, I would never kill you, lass.\" Bjorn turned with a smile. \"Just mightily embarrass you in front of all these fine, handsome Viking men.\"\n\n\"No loss. I prefer my partners slightly less hirsute.\"\n\n\"Like your pretty lad, there?\" Bjorn gestured to Hero, who had his back to them. He was allowing Brevity to fiddle with the straps on his armor. He had abandoned the jacket and waistcoat for fine-scale mail that hung lightly on his chest and gleamed the same burnished bronze as his hair.\n\nClaire turned back. \"I also prefer my partners slightly less fictional. He's a character. A book.\"\n\n\"Looks real enough for me. But then there's no accounting for taste.\" Bjorn was in no hurry to turn his appreciative gaze away. Claire didn't have time for the antics of a lecherous old bard. She located the notebook in her bag and pulled it out. She had begun making notations when Bjorn cleared his throat.\n\n\"No books in the ring.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon? I'm a librarian. You asked for a story, and this is where I keep my stories. I'll carry your silly staff, but I'm keeping my notes.\"\n\n\"That's not how stories work here, lass. You're not in your library anymore\u2014here, the word is your voice. And your voice is your tale.\" Bjorn flashed a grin. \"The spoken word was the first kind of library, after all.\"\n\nOral storytelling. She should have expected as much. It was awkward, dated, and entirely unreliable. Messy in every way she couldn't stand. Unreliable narrators, the lot of them. In her opinion, there was a reason humanity had invented the written word, and that reason was progress. Claire ground her teeth. \"That is a loose interpretation.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" Bjorn mildly met her glare. \"Once, people memorized books' worth of spoken words, songs, and sagas that contained all their history, traditions, stories, survival. The Arrernte called it their Dreaming.\"\n\nBjorn knew his stuff. Claire was forced to remember that, for all his wild appearance, he was a former librarian. And had a longer tenure than her. She ceded the point. \"I'm not a storyteller.\"\n\n\"Then you can go back to your library.\" Bjorn shrugged.\n\nThe crowd was increasing. Someone had procured a war horn, and its bleat was seeding a headache. Claire tossed the book on top of her bag in a huff. \"You're crude.\"\n\n\"And you rely too much on those bits of paper. This is how it all started, you know.\" Bjorn handed Claire a mug of a dark frothy liquid. When she bent her head, she caught a vague whiff of fire and chocolate. \"Drink up.\"\n\nUp close, the smell nettled her nose with iron and honey. \"What is this?\"\n\n\"Mead of poetry,\" Bjorn said a touch too lightly.\n\nClaire searched her memory of half-remembered myths. Nothing in Valhalla's stories was as simple as mead, and this place seemed exaggerated past even the original myths. \"This isn't... Kvasir's blood?\" The Norse had a tale about the mead of poetry. Blood extracted from a keen, all-knowing, and thoroughly murdered god. She gave it a repulsed look before taking a tentative sip. She could feel the magic begin to seep into her tongue. It tasted like bitter chocolate. \"If I recall the lore right, a simple vial of this is adequate.\"\n\n\"But then ye don't have an excuse to drink.\" Bjorn downed his portion in one gulp and wiped his beard. \"No books, just a saga, a staff, and a swig. I'll make a Norseman of you by the end of this, Librarian.\"\n\n\"Just try not to fall on your head when I beat you.\" Claire finished her mug and handed it back to him. \"I still need answers.\"\n\nBjorn's laughter was as warm as their drink as he led the way into the arena."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "Bjorn abandoned claire and Hero in the middle of the ring and disappeared to fetch Hero's opponent. The tables and stands were already filling up with curious faces. Word of their spectacle had spread, and Valhalla's residents were always ready for a fight. The arena bubbled with spilled mead and a lazy kind of bloodlust.\n\nClaire ran her gaze over the crowd, locating Hell's contingent at the table nearest the ring, easy enough to pick out by Brevity's seafoam green hair. Brevity stood on the bench in order to throw Claire an exuberant thumbs-up sign. At least one of them was confident about their chances.\n\nClaire's toe found a divot in the packed dirt. She glanced at Hero. \"You're quite prepared, then?\"\n\n\"I'll do my heroic best not to embarrass you, warden.\" Hero's voice was dry. He shifted on the balls of his feet and didn't move his gaze from where Bjorn had disappeared. \"I'd see more to yourself. You don't strike me as the battle-maiden type.\"\n\n\"Librarians have their own way of competing. Though I admit... it's been quite a while.\" More than quite a while. More like since she became librarian three decades ago.\n\nIt's not as if she'd had anyone to spar with. Brevity, being a muse, didn't have the interest in classic literature most human unauthors did, and no assistant before her had progressed far enough in the training to make dueling relevant. Claire had been lax, and she wasn't looking forward to Bjorn reminding her of that fact.\n\nShe pushed that thought away before it could unravel her nerves more than it already had. \"I have to ask, Hero. Why?\"\n\nHero appeared ready to force her to draw out the question\u2014why had he volunteered? why was he risking this?\u2014but his eyes slid past her face, and he shrugged. \"It's what I'm made for, isn't it? Figured I might as well agree while I could still pretend you honored me with the choice. Besides, you're not the only one with a reason to see this foolhardy mission through.\"\n\nHis author. She was alive and would be caught up in this if Heaven and Hell truly decided to go to war. Claire put it together quickly, but Hero offered it with a smile just scraping the line of loathing. \"Pure self-preservation.\"\n\n\"Selfish heroism, then. I expected nothing less,\" Claire said.\n\nThe ground began to shake. Hero's grip tightened on his sword, Claire saw in her peripheral vision.\n\nOut of the gloom swung a wall. Or what had to be a wall. A wall in the shape of a man. No, men didn't grow that tall. A giant. Uther.\n\nHe was easily as large as Walter back home, Claire estimated. His shoulders were bare and as wide as Claire was tall. The warrior's scarred face was occupied by a long yellow beard, knit with bones and feathers, below a gnarled nose. In one boulderlike hand, a wrecking ball of a maul lazed. The weapon glowed with a dark red stone.\n\nBjorn was dwarfed beside him and could only give the giant a pat on the elbow before separating.\n\nHero had gone very still beside her, and Claire glanced up. His face was blank and held the dread of a goose only now vaguely aware it was about to be made dinner.\n\nShe cleared her throat. \"He's not wearing much armor.\" The warrior, in fact, wore more war paint and feathers than clothes from the waist up.\n\n\"Oh, good. I would hate to cause him a laundry bill when I inconsiderately die all over him.\"\n\n\"What I mean is, if you're fast enough, you have a good chance.\"\n\n\"I don't need tactical advice from an academic, thanks,\" Hero snapped, and he glared steadily at the beast lumbering across the ring rather than look at Claire.\n\n\"Fine, be a fool. Heroes are good at that.\" Claire turned with her staff to where Bjorn had taken up position. \"But I've already stitched your life together once today. I've got the hand cramps to prove it, and I'd rather not do it again. So... just don't die.\"\n\nIf Hero had a reply, she didn't hear it as she strode away to face her own test."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 27",
                "text": "The ring was large enough to separate the duels by several yards\u2014far enough that she would not be swept up in the first swing of Uther's grand maul.\n\nClaire positioned her back to Hero's match. She would have to keep moving. This was not the stand-and-deliver type of duel that she was familiar with from the Library. But as she wrapped her fingers over the soft grip of her staff, she settled on a grim certainty. Whatever the outcome, she was not leaving the realm until she had her answers.\n\n\"Seeing as you're our guests\"\u2014Bjorn raised his voice so it carried over the watching crowds\u2014\"we'll allow you the first attack.\"\n\n\"Grand.\" Claire heard Hero's dripping sarcasm behind her.\n\nThere was a shuffle and a thundering step as Hero initiated the attack, and Claire could not stop from twisting around as the crowd began to roar. Hero had opened with a testing swing, darting forward and aiming for Uther's unprotected side. But the giant easily avoided it, batting aside Hero's sword as if it were a gnat. Hero grunted and recovered, cautiously maintaining his distance.\n\n\"Well, Librarian?\" Bjorn's voice brought her around.\n\nShe would have to stop worrying about Hero's fight if she was going to survive her own. A duel between librarians was a duel of words. Not just any quotation from a poem or other passage would do; it had to hold meaning for the audience. It was the meaning that carried the weight. The opposing librarian would have to identify it, take away the audience's meaning, and redirect it to defuse the attack. Claire tightened her grip on the staff and considered her audience. This was Bjorn's audience, not hers. She would be operating at a disadvantage. The encounter with the ravens at the steps came to mind. \"'Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.'\"\n\nHer voice rang out, and she felt the silky shudder on her lips as the magic took hold. Fine silver script flowed through the air, etching the words in a glowing ribbon. A flare of figures formed around it, tiny points of light in the shape of faeries, fine ladies, jesters and daggers, moons and men. It whispered as it flew sharply at Bjorn's face, and the crowd murmured approval.\n\nThe old man grunted and whipped his staff to the side, catching the words from the air. The silver script tangled and scraped at the wood, tendrils whipping like a lash toward his face. He spoke just one word to make them disappear into nothing. \"Shakespeare.\" Bjorn snorted as he named the author. \"Starting with the Bard, Librarian? A beginner's move. I hope you have more than that.\"\n\n\"It seemed fitting, considering.\" Claire began to circle as Bjorn moved. The tumult from the crowd was growing. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered swirls of movement as Hero and Uther began to trade blows in earnest. Claire forced herself to stay focused on the bard in front of her.\n\n\"'It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.'\" Bjorn's words were gold and old stone runes, tiny marching men and snowflakes, all sharp edges as they snapped toward her. Claire's mind spun along with her staff, and she stumbled back a step as she barely avoided being sliced by the tail end.\n\n\"Tolstoy.\" The words disappeared, and she stifled a sigh of relief before she began to circle again. Bjorn was faster than an old man had a right to be, his words too sharp. She needed the space to react.\n\n\"Out of practice, Librarian?\" Bjorn took easy strides around the ring.\n\n\"'The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.'\"\n\nShe aimed the words lower this time, forcing Bjorn to dance away lest the gossamer script tangle his boots. \"Dickens. Wasn't he a contemporary of yours? Or would have been if you'd written.\"\n\n\"Low blow.\"\n\n\"Not low enough, it seems.\" The old man narrowed his eyes at her before forming a return volley. \"'He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.'\"\n\nClaire caught the gold words at the center of her staff. She found the quotation but took a fraction too long. The gold script managed to slice at the back of her arm before she could dispel it. \"Joseph Heller,\" she gasped. Blood welled up in thin lashes up to her elbow.\n\nSo they went, back and forth, trading blows up and down the written words of history. Bjorn staggered when an Austen escaped his guard and landed a blow to his knee. Claire found herself diving to the ground to avoid an Eliot as it lashed for her head. It was when she was rolling to her feet that she first noticed the blood staining the other side of the ring.\n\nHero moved like a dervish, darting into the larger man's reach only as long as it took to aim the edge of his blade along Uther's flank. Striking a blow, then flinging himself out of the way of the maul again. Both men were bloodied, though Hero bled black, pitiless ink. They both breathed heavily; Uther favored his side, while Hero held one injured wrist away from his opponent.\n\nClaire took a deep breath and faced Bjorn again with a long attack. \"'Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.'\"\n\nA boisterous approval came from the sidelines. \"What soldier wrote that?\" came a call from the crowd.\n\n\"Mary Shelley,\" Bjorn said grudgingly. With more bravado than she felt, Claire bowed, and the gathered crowd laughed.\n\nBjorn shook his head. \"'And the rest is rust and stardust.'\"\n\n\"Nabokov,\" Claire said with a grunt as she spun and dispelled a marching line of script and meteors. \"God, Russians.\"\n\nBjorn chuckled but did not dispute her sentiment on the literature. Claire paced a few more steps to catch her breath. This needed to end soon. \"'We lived in the gaps between the stories.'\"\n\n\"Atwood.\" Bjorn returned with a line from Tolkien, which Claire dispelled before he commented, \"Your soldier looks tired, Librarian. Blows like that... he's not standing much longer.\"\n\nClaire allowed her eyes to stray to Hero. Uther had gotten lucky. She'd missed the blow that had sent Hero sprawling, but its impact must have been tremendous. He'd risen from his knee but held heavily to his sword with his one good hand, ink dribbling down one cheek. He reserved all his energy for a glare at the moving mountain in front of him.\n\nClaire swallowed hard and forced her attention back to Bjorn. \"'Logic may indeed be unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.'\"\n\n\"Kafka.\" Bjorn dismissed it with a wave of his staff before returning a volley toward Claire. \"'The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.'\" He aimed the volley for Claire but was grinning at the other combatants in the ring.\n\n\"Arthur. Conan. Doyle.\" Claire gritted her teeth, searching for a line that would wipe that smug, blood-mad grin off the Viking's face.\n\nBut it was then that Hero made his move. He regained his feet and swung, lithe bronze figure glinting as the sword arrowed toward Uther's ribs. The giant turned, fast, too fast, and a crack reverberated throughout the hall as maul met blade, and both sword and swordsman were flung away.\n\nHero sprawled on the dirt, groaning. Black liquid flowed freely from the cut on his temple now, and his movements were slow. His sword came to rest several yards away. Weaponless, Hero clenched his teeth in a death's-head grin as he gained a knee and turned toward Uther. The Norse warrior inclined his head and brought his arms back to deliver the winning blow.\n\n\"'War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle!'\" The words were out before Claire could think them. But they were not aimed at Bjorn; her gaze was locked on the other fight. Silver words flew, and sharp serifs struck deep across a monstrous, scarred face. Uther stumbled midswing, bellowing in pain as his maul dropped, and the giant man clawed at his face.\n\nBjorn stared, mouth gaping. Hero, to his credit, knew an opportunity when he saw one. He scrambled for his sword and took a hobbled leap at Uther, growl in his throat.\n\n\"Parker! Gilbert Parker!\" Bjorn shouted, and the silver words wound around Uther's face dissolved. But Hero was faster. The broadsword pierced his ribs deep, and Uther's bellow became shrill, then silent.\n\nThe giant man convulsed, landing a grip on Hero's shoulder. But it began to loosen even as they fell back to the earth. Hero twisted the blade with a snarl, and it struck Claire that his features were beautiful, even more so in fury. A purity in the hate that she recognized. She hadn't thought books could truly hate.\n\n\"Clever. No honor, but clever.\" Bjorn was solemn as Claire turned back to face him. There was a dark regard in the old man's eyes, but he spoke before Claire could open her mouth to explain. \"'And hope buoyed like a flag, fragile on the wind. Death was the only freedom.'\"\n\nThe gold words curled in the air and furled out, thick and unstoppable. The words were unfamiliar, even as they triggered something that burned at the edge of her brain. But they were strange, accompanied with dizzying shapes, birds in flight, cathedrals, and cobblestone streets. White cliffs and sunsets. She had no defense. She managed to retreat two steps before the gold letters slammed into her chest and drove her to the ground.\n\nA thick, buzzing weight twined hungrily around her arms. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the ensuing pain, but it never appeared. After a moment, Claire carefully cracked one eye open. The words had wrapped her up neat as a present, and they thrummed warningly against her chest, but they did not cut unless she struggled. Bjorn stood over her, dark eyes regarding her with a mixture of disapproval and amusement. \"No response, Librarian?\"\n\nClaire took a short breath\u2014all she was capable of with the words twined so tight around her chest. \"You have me at a loss, Bjorn. I must cede. Who's the author?\"\n\n\"Claire Juniper Hadley,\" Bjorn said, and the crowd roared."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 28",
                "text": "\u2002Everything went wrong. Gregor is gone and I am still here. But I won't apologize. Not to god or the devil, not when souls are trapped here, left to wither and dry like flowers pressed between the pages of the books we keep.\n\n\u2002Andras says I'll grow into the role. I suppose I will. It's the only path you left me.\n\n\u2002I won't apologize, but I won't forgive either.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 1989 CE\n\n\"YOU CHEATED.\"\n\nThe room, like everywhere else in the lodge, was uncomfortably warm, and Claire picked irritably at the bandage on her arm. She sat on a cushioned bench, grudgingly sipping tea Bjorn had brewed to restore her strength and \"put hair on your chest.\" She'd insisted on bandaging her arm herself, freeing the healers to tend to Hero, who had been quickly whisked to an adjoining room after the fight.\n\n\"Do explain, lass. I'm in the mood to laugh.\" Bjorn rubbed his bruised knee from the opposite side of the small table. They were in his personal study. The walls were lined not with books but with rows of capsae, hatboxlike containers that held scrolls and wooden slates of every shape and size. A fire roared in the fireplace that took up the far wall, and the study was as cozy as it was chaotic.\n\nClaire shuddered to think what the Valhalla library must look like, if this was a tidy personal collection.\n\nShe took another sip of the tea and made a bitter face. \"You quoted an unwritten author. That's specifically against the rules of the duel. Worse, you quoted me. That's not just cheating\u2014that's dirty.\"\n\nBjorn raised a brow. \"Would that be more or less dirty than turning your words against a noncombatant?\"\n\n\"Uther was about to kill my character. He most certainly was a combatant.\"\n\n\"Not your combatant.\"\n\n\"Close enough.\" Claire smacked the mug on the tabletop with a peevish frown. \"He may be disconnected from his book, and he's most definitely a pain in the ass, but Hero is still mine.\"\n\n\"Well, you and your boy certainly set Uther straight on that.\"\n\nClaire remembered the mule they'd had to bring in to haul Uther's body out of the arena, and she diverted her eyes to the table. \"Yes, well. Sorry about your champion.\"\n\n\"Don't be.\" Bjorn gave an airy wave of his hand. \"He'll be right as rain tomorrow.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"We're in an afterlife for warriors, Librarian.\" Bjorn leaned back, and his chair let out a long creak as he grinned. \"Any who fall in battle today wake up fresh as springtime tomorrow. He'll never wield Widowbane again\u2014he's been proven unworthy. But he'll continue on. We do love a good fight, and Valhalla sees to its own.\"\n\n\"Well, that's... convenient,\" Claire said. \"Tell me, would it have been the same for Hero if he'd fallen?\"\n\nBjorn raised his brows, considering. \"He didn't die a warrior of the halls, so... ah, probably not.\"\n\n\"Good thing I cheated, then.\"\n\n\"Good thing,\" Bjorn relented. \"Up until then, you did comport yourself well enough to pass. The hall will have you.\"\n\nClaire was quiet a moment before saying, \"The book you quoted. How did you... I mean, have you read\u2014\"\n\n\"I was the librarian of the Unwritten Wing before your grandfather was a twinkle in anyone's eye.\" Bjorn's lip curled as he toyed with the edge of the table, running a rough thumb back and forth. \"I had time enough in that place to get familiar with lots of books. Including yours.\"\n\n\"My books were there before I was even born...\" A queer feeling flipped in Claire's stomach, and her mind could not settle on a proper question to ask out of the hundred that bubbled up. She'd helmed the Library for thirty years, and it still felt like a mercurial kind of impossibility. A story was more immortal than its teller. Time had no play there, only potential. Claire had failed both. She looked up to find Bjorn studying her carefully. \"They were readable?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't call them Shakespeare, but they were passable, yes,\" Bjorn said. \"You do have quite the collection.\"\n\n\"Well... not that it matters now.\" Claire's eyes dropped, and she abruptly found an excuse to stand. The hearth needed poking; irresponsible to let the flames die down.\n\nBjorn followed her to the fireplace and rubbed a sore arm before glancing at her. \"I heard about what happened, of course.\"\n\nThe fire twitched behind the grate. Claire found her breath tripped up in her throat before she could let it out again. \"There were a hundred tales about my ignominious rise to librarian, Bjorn. You'll need to be more specific.\"\n\n\"The rumor that goes against the tale. The one that says Gregor didn't retire to his greater reward. The rumor that says he was attacked. Attacked by something with the power to unmake a human soul. Your mentor disappeared under... unusual circumstances, we shall say.\" Bjorn said it calmly, as if recounting last night's dinner. \"And the attacker was never found, of course, so the retirement line was the one that took. Left you to take on the mantle far too soon, by most folk's estimates.\"\n\n\"That is one of the more fanciful ones. Did you hear the one where I sold my soul for the promotion, danced naked with Cerberus? Never mind how I would sell my soul when I was already in Hell, but...\" Claire trailed off as Bjorn failed to take the joke. She rolled her shoulders in a weary shrug. \"Gregor... He was more than a mentor. He was my friend and I would have never wished him harm.\"\n\nIt was true enough, Claire thought carefully, in a certain kind of light.\n\nBjorn was quiet for a moment, as if testing the edges of that statement. Then he turned with a grunt. \"Ah! Where's my mind? They'll already be at the feast. Hero too, if the healers have done their work.\"\n\n\"Feast...\" Claire's voice was flat. \"Bjorn, I can't tolerate another delaying tactic\u2014\"\n\n\"A feast for our angelic guests.\"\n\n\"Angels?\" Claire's eyes widened in alarm. \"Here? But how\u2014\"\n\n\"They arrived shortly after you. Because of what they are, the hall already recognizes them as warriors. They were welcomed in, think they even caught the last of the fight.\" Bjorn hooded his eyes as Claire began to pace. \"I suppose you know why they're here.\"\n\nClaire twisted her hands, wincing as doing so pulled on her bandage. \"You said there was more than one?\"\n\n\"Two. One formidable lass all in white and a man in gray who frowns too much.\" Bjorn paused. \"I don't hold with that lot, but they seemed a capable pair.\"\n\n\"Capable and problematic. We'll need to leave right away,\" Claire muttered. \"You know why they're here?\"\n\n\"Let's see. Hell's librarian and two hunter angels visiting a simple storyteller on the same day, muttering disaster and all hackles up about something.\" Bjorn snorted. \"Even a dumb old Viking has to get the idea.\"\n\nBjorn held up a hand as Claire opened her mouth. \"Easy, lass. I am loyal to the Library, but listen. Even if I answered your questions now, worst thing you could do is go tearing out of here with the angels watching the gate. They'd be on you faster than a raven flies. Feast. Rest a while. I'll give you your answers, and you may slip out in the morning when half the realm is still sleeping off the drink.\"\n\nClaire's mouth shut slowly. \"Do angels even drink?\"\n\nBjorn chuckled and took her by the arm. \"All warriors drink in Valhalla. Come! I'll prove it.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 29",
                "text": "All warriors did, indeed, drink in Valhalla. The arena had been invaded, lined with additional long tables and benches to accommodate the revelers, who were several drinks in already. Claire could barely move through the crowd without having to dodge sundry blades and axes strapped to backs. Valhalla's citizens did not believe in leaving their weapons at the door, even for a party.\n\nIn truth, Claire found it maddening, the chaos, the cheer, the swells of mood and passion that roiled over the pressed bodies like a wave. She'd never cared for crowds. Crowds were messy; crowds were not predictable and not reliable. After she'd spent thirty-plus years in the quiet of the Library, dealing only with the trickle of Hell's patrons and recalcitrant books, Claire found the chuff and churn of Valhalla's festivities incomprehensible. It made her head hurt and her joints ache. Mercifully, Bjorn guided her to the table her companions had staked out, before he drifted away, muttering about proper drink and song.\n\n\"Oh, try the little blue ones!\" Brevity had been busy in her absence. A stack of small pastries and dainty twists of meat, far more ornate than Claire would have guessed the Vikings capable of, was set out in the center of the table. She smiled despite herself. Trust Brevity to find the sweets at any party.\n\nClaire allowed Brevity to shove a mug of something sloshing and foamy into her hand. Hero was still absent, but her assistant succeeded in coaxing Leto and Andras into sipping at their drinks. Judging by the empty mugs and the bearded grins sent their way, she had passed the time warming to the warriors at the adjoining table. Excellent work. It couldn't hurt to win the goodwill of Valhalla's residents.\n\n\"You did great, boss,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"If you say so.\" Claire kept her eyes on Bjorn and set down the mug the moment he disappeared into the crowd. \"There are angels here.\"\n\nAndras choked on his drink, flecks of ale dotting his beard as his gaze darted around. \"Already?\"\n\n\"It seems so.\" Claire recounted Bjorn's news as quickly as she could. Leto, having run into an angel once already that day, began to exude panic, acid sweat forming on his temple and sliding down to his collar with a hiss. Frankly, Claire couldn't blame him. Brevity pivoted in her seat to scan the crowd, covering the gesture by ordering another round for the boisterous table next to them.\n\n\"You're certain there was no way for them to track the scrap in the afterlife?\" Claire asked Andras.\n\n\"Absolutely not. It's a piece of Hell. They could detect general demonic activity if they were in the area, but not across realms. They must be searching anywhere we were likely to seek help.\"\n\n\"Which means they have an inkling of how important it is. Brilliant.\"\n\n\"If so, we need to leave, pup. Sooner rather than later.\" At Claire's look, Andras's brow furrowed. \"Surely we're not staying here while there are angels looking for us.\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" Claire said. \"Bjorn may trust in the hospitality rules of Valhalla, but I don't. We will just need to get around them carefully. Do you see them yet, Brev?\"\n\n\"Only one, ma'am. Tall lady by the entrance, all shiny and terrifyin' looking. I don't think the Vikings care for her much.\"\n\nClaire raised herself from the bench just enough to spy what looked like a pale, walking storm cloud over the heads of the crowd. The crowd, despite the increasingly rowdy tone, did its best to flow away from her general vicinity. \"Well, she's not doing much to hide herself.\"\n\n\"Heaven never was much for subterfuge,\" Andras said with a touch too much demonic pride.\n\n\"Then that's going to have to be our way out.\"\n\nClaire toyed with the foam on her drink, trying to develop a plan that balanced meeting their goals with getting out with their skins intact. \"Brev, Leto, go extract Hero from the healers, assuming he's not run off, and get him up to date. Then find Bjorn and get him alone in his office. I don't care if you have to tie him up by the beard\u2014we're getting our answers tonight. I'll meet you there.\"\n\nBrevity was already springing from the bench. \"A rescue and Viking-napping sound fun. What're you going to do?\"\n\n\"Go find our other angel.\"\n\nLeto paused halfway out of the bench. \"Pardon me for suggesting, but you don't want to wait to take Hero with you? Last time that angel was kind of... angry. And violent.\"\n\n\"I'm sure Hero will just be thrilled you volunteered him for mortal peril again,\" Andras mused.\n\nClaire remembered the lightning crack and smell of ozone from their first encounter with Ramiel. The point where the blade had rested on her chest tightened a little, but she shoved it away and shook her head. She'd risked the book enough for one day. \"No. I'll be fine. We're all guests in Valhalla, correct? I just want to talk.\"\n\n\"I'll come, then,\" Andras said.\n\nClaire frowned at the old demon. \"I'm not sure that's a good idea. This one seemed to have a hair trigger even around Leto, and he was in human form then.\"\n\n\"He really doesn't like demons,\" Leto confirmed.\n\n\"You said it yourself: Valhalla's safe.\" A calculating look flickered through Andras's red-gold eyes. \"Don't worry about me. I've dealt with more than my share of Heaven's pests in my time. And this one, Ramiel? He's not even part of the Host\u2014a fallen angel. I want to see why such a creature is after us, and how they came to possess the pages of the codex after all this time. I might be able to detect something from what he says.\"\n\nIt was much the same reason that Claire was taking the risk herself, so she couldn't find much fault. \"I still don't think it's a good idea.\"\n\n\"Then it's a good thing I'm not one of your apprentices. I'm coming.\" Andras's smile was mild, but Claire knew when the demon's mind was made up.\n\n\"Stubborn.\"\n\n\"A requirement when dealing with humans.\"\n\n\"So it seems.\"\n\nAndras had a demon's care for order and justice\u2014that is to say, none at all. For the first time, Claire wondered exactly what his real motivations were for setting her on this path, let alone coming himself. Andras could have just as easily advised from the Arcane Wing; in fact, staying behind the scenes, subtle and withdrawn, was just Andras's preference. A tactic he'd tried to impart to Claire, but she'd always preferred doing her own work.\n\nShe trusted Andras, despite his being a demon. He'd protected her, taught her, cared for her. She would not have held on to the Library if he hadn't stepped in and guided the way thirty years ago. Still. She trusted him, but she didn't pretend to understand him.\n\nPerhaps exposing him to the angel would shake loose more than just clues about the book. She forced a smile. \"All right, but I will do the talking.\"\n\nAles barely touched, the group disbanded from the table. Claire ducked toward the back with Andras while Brevity shoved cakes in her pockets and began a loud round of drink buying and shoulder slapping to cover their exit."
            },
            {
                "title": "RAMIEL",
                "text": "\u2002On the subject of angels: be not afraid.\n\n\u2002Oh, hush. Let an old crone have her fun.\n\n\u2002No, really, kiddo. Don't mess with 'em. They're all hopping mad as the English. And twice as dangerous.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1762 CE\n\nThe froth on the ale was good. By rights, a pour that resulted in a head like that should have flattened the taste of the beer, but the drink was a crisp relief beneath the soft foam. Like Vikings, angels had a good appreciation for an excellent brew. There was a reason monks brewed ale to supplement their monasteries.\n\nRamiel was surprised to find he enjoyed Valhalla, though he was certain enjoyment wasn't part of Uriel's plan. The plan, of course, was to bust down the doors of the realms, find and confront the librarian, and get out before an interrealm grievance could be filed. The paperwork for that would be atrocious.\n\nThey'd been lucky to find Hell's representatives so fast. They'd been unlucky, however, to find them in the arena, fighting with cleverness and heroics, two things that were certain to endear them to Valhalla's residents immediately.\n\nUriel had threatened to start glowing, a very bad sign, until Rami had coaxed her into a back corner and explained they needed a new approach. It'd taken some talking to make her see the logic.\n\nContrary to Uriel's speech, Heaven was not set above Valhalla, Hell, or anywhere\u2014all the after-realms maintained a careful, if grudging, balance sustained by the fuel of belief and the flow of souls to each realm. Realms of similar purpose were often most harmonious, but all of them were sovereign. An incident here, between two paradise realms, could upset all of it for centuries. Thankfully, the Light of God had eventually calmed down enough for them to formulate a new plan: gather information on Hell's activities and apprehend its representatives the moment they isolated themselves from the realm's warriors.\n\nUriel, of course, had taken up a very visible and glowering guard by the front entrance. She'd made no effort to fill in Valhalla's master of the guard, an old warrior named Ragna, on what brought them there, declaring Heaven's business was no one else's if they were acting within the rights of the treaty. Even a formal stance couldn't hide the repulsed looks Uriel cast at the Vikings.\n\nTo be fair, the residents of Valhalla appeared to quickly develop the same sentiment toward her. Rami saw how companionable smiles quickly fell to suspicious frowns over their ale. Uriel had never had patience for the souls that chose other realms, worshipped other gods, and once again Rami wondered why she'd left Heaven for this. Hunting was primarily a game of information, and there would be no information to be gained without the goodwill of Valhalla's denizens.\n\nShe did, at least, serve as an admirable distraction. He had told Uriel that he would sweep the hall for other exits and then promptly left her to her self-righteous watch.\n\nIt hadn't taken long to find out where Hell's servants gathered. The librarian and her champion were still missing, but Rami recognized the bewildered-looking young man who had accompanied her on Earth. He was with a pair of companions, a demon and a spirit he couldn't identify but who radiated curiosity and sticky fingers.\n\nBut it was the boy who seemed the oddest of the group. He was changed, now with the pointed ears, red eyes, and sharp pale cheekbones of a minor demon, not the harmless human he'd presented himself as before. It riled Rami\u2014further proof that all souls in Hell were liars\u2014but he made no move to confront them. Patience was also a virtue in Heaven.\n\nWhich is how he found himself in a publike room near the rear exit of the longhouse, virtuously enjoying a mug of dark ale. It appeared to be a keg room, one of many, considering Valhalla's infinite supply. But in front of the old barrels a high table had been set up, with several stools to form a makeshift bar. The crowd was small, an eddy in the greater raucous sea of the main hall, but it appeared even Valhalla had introverts. It was a welcome pause from the chaos of the party.\n\nIn a strange way, he felt comfortable here. These mortal souls were strange with their hairy bodies and unfamiliar gods, but they were soldiers; Ramiel could understand soldiers. He had quickly gone to work plying them with just enough ale and cheerful aggression to justify conversation.\n\nAccording to the others, the visitors from Hell had arrived shortly before the angels, and with no treaty recognized, they'd been immediately challenged to combat. They'd been forced to oblige, claiming they sought audience with the storyteller. That was good, because it meant they likely did not yet have what they'd come for. Rami didn't have a clue how Valhalla was tied to that dangerous bit of paper, but it bought him time.\n\nIt was simple to survey the impression they'd made\u2014most had been impressed with the champion's courage and skill, if not necessarily his appearance. \"Too smooth. He'll freeze his chin off,\" one soul with a particularly impressive red beard had grumbled.\n\nRami also discovered, to his surprise, that even more admiration had begun to coalesce around the librarian.\n\n\"Not a bonny lass, course. Someone should tell her t' smile,\" grunted a bald and tattooed man with an ax strapped shoulder to torso. \"But she got good and bloodied. And put down Uther with a word, imagine! Handy trick, that.\"\n\n\"Sommat a Freyja-touched in that one. Good thing the naked babe they called a champion had her to mind 'em,\" another said, bringing about another rather telling round of speculation about the fighter's looks.\n\n\"If you say so.\" It was hard not to let judgment lace his voice. The librarian seemed just as arrogant and unrepentant as every other servant of Hell he'd encountered. He could not parse the idea of honor being attributed to anyone consigned to that realm.\n\n\"Puts a man in mind o' what stories a teller like that could tell,\" added the squat, walking beard on his other side. \"Or what she could do with a proper weapon. Mark my words\u2014lass like her's got spirit. I'd love to get her in the ring.\"\n\n\"Or in bed, eh, Holfad?\" And both warriors devolved into an entirely inappropriate exchange about the relative bed-warming merits of both the librarian and her champion.\n\nBut that had been two ales ago. By now the small barroom had emptied out as the more sociable warriors flowed back to the halls and the less sociable ones went to sleep. Rami took the opportunity to process his drink and his night.\n\nTheir prey had obviously made too big an impression for Valhalla to look the other way when Heaven confronted them. He and Uriel were warriors, and therefore respected in Valhalla, but from the way the Norse storyteller had taken the librarian under his wing, it seemed Hell had friends in Valhalla as well. The trick would be catching them alone.\n\nThe reflection of his frown abruptly dissolved into ripples in his drink. A fresh mug careened against his, spilling a generous portion of the contents of both across his knuckles.\n\nHe jerked his head up. The curse on his lips died as his eyes landed on the woman at the other end of the bar. She had one arm bandaged, poorly, and her braided hair was in some disarray. But that coin-flip smile was just as unreadable as on the pier. The librarian had the look of someone caught perpetually midsecret.\n\nShe raised her own mug at him. \"Sorry\u2014I'm a poor shot. Bars weren't places for a lady when I was around. Or, at least,\" she amended after a pause, \"not the kind of lady my family allowed me to be.\"\n\nInstead of responding, Rami gave the room a sweeping glance. The pub was but not quite deserted, with a few inhabitants drinking by the fire. The keg master in the corner gave them a shrewd squint before turning back to his cups. A silent warning not to start any trouble.\n\n\"Librarian.\" Rami felt caught halfway between a grunt and a sigh. The woman had the knack to wear him down in a blink.\n\n\"Claire,\" she corrected. \"It's Claire, by the way. If you're going to be hunting us, threatening destruction of our immortal souls, all that, personal names seem like the proper thing.\"\n\nRami bristled and found new fascination with his drink. The weight of her gaze on his shoulders was nearly intolerable until she pushed herself from her stool and slid down the bar. She stopped one seat away, just out of arm's reach. So she wasn't entirely stupid.\n\n\"What brings an angel to the halls of Valhalla?\"\n\n\"I imagine the same thing that brings Hell's servants.\"\n\nAt the corner of her mouth there might have been a flutter of irritation that was quickly smoothed away. \"Tenant. Not a servant.\"\n\nRami snorted, though he found his tongue considerably looser than he liked. He was not like Uriel, disdaining every soul not Heaven-bound\u2014he of all people knew the many paths that led everyone astray\u2014but the librarian's manner set him on edge. A creature of Hell that didn't consider itself a servant was either dangerous or a fool. It was beginning to strike Rami that the librarian might be both.\n\nRami must have muttered that thought out loud, because the woman laughed. \"A fool. That might be fair. From time to time.\" She surprised him by taking the insult with a shrug.\n\nRami tried again. \"Where's your pet demon? Tired of pretending he's human?\"\n\n\"Leto is human. Though... I suppose convincing you of that story would take too long for one drink,\" she said. \"But my other pet demon is here, so I don't disappoint you. Say hello, Andras.\"\n\nIn a blink, a figure dressed in fussy silks sat where no one had been before. Sharply pointed ears and pupils the color of blood gold marked him as, indeed, a demon, and a powerful one at that. Black-striped hair glinted like a pelt in the dim light. The taste of sulfur slicked the back of Rami's throat and burned his tongue. The handsome demon looked harmless and familiar, in the way of the worst childhood nightmares. He gave a mild smile that was too well crafted to be sincere.\n\n\"'Hello, Andras,'\" the demon mimicked politely. \"I am not a pet, by the way.\"\n\n\"Apologies, Arcanist. I was merely speaking his language. We're less than animals in some eyes,\" Claire said with a cool look at Rami.\n\n\"So I hear.\" Andras swept his eyes over Rami with a look that felt surgical, claws hidden in a velvet glove. A predator behind those glasses, Rami felt in an instant. He recalculated his estimation of the creature.\n\nThe Library had brought force. It seemed an odd way to show their hand. Rami shifted to keep an eye on the demon, though found he much preferred looking at Claire. \"I take it you've found what you seek here?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" she said easily and, Rami thought, a bit too promptly. \"But travel is taxing on our kind. We intend to enjoy Valhalla's excellent hospitality. Price of admission was high enough, so we might as well get our money's worth. Leave tomorrow evening.\"\n\nRami doubted it. \"And I suppose this visit means you don't intend to surrender the book.\"\n\n\"What book would that be, again?\"\n\n\"You obviously know of what I speak. You stole it from me.\"\n\n\"The scrap, you mean. A misunderstanding, really.\" Claire shook her head. \"You know, if you'd been just a little more patient and a little clearer when we met, you'd still be in possession of it. Here I thought angels were supposed to be forgiving and kind.\"\n\n\"I'm not that kind of angel.\"\n\n\"I know very much what kind of angel you are, Ramiel, Thunder of God, Watcher of the World. Question is, why is a fallen angel helping Heaven?\" Claire tilted her head. \"Why are you here?\"\n\nRami fell silent. He knew there was nothing to say.\n\nThe abomination wrapped in a gentleman's skin didn't help matters. \"Ask him what Heaven's offered him,\" Andras said.\n\nClaire frowned. \"I wasn't aware that Heaven was in the dealmaking business.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised.\" Andras shrugged.\n\n\"All right, I'll bite. What's Heaven offered you to jump-start a war, Ramiel?\"\n\n\"Again, not your concern\u2014\" Rami paused. \"What war?\"\n\nClaire exchanged a look with the demon, but only Rami saw the look that crossed Andras's face as Claire glanced away. Eyes narrowed, lip twitched up. Pleased. Possessive. Predatory. While Claire sat with the creature at her side as if it were a favored pet.\n\nFor the first time, Rami wondered if the librarian knew what kind of creature she had at her back. But his speculation was cut short by Claire's sniff.\n\n\"Are you telling me you're hunting a book whose purpose you don't understand?\"\n\n\"And what should I know, Librarian?\"\n\nThe librarian's brown eyes gleamed with amusement. \"I'll give you one thing for free, though I know you won't believe me: what you're after is not anything Heaven has a right to. And your interference here could cost the mortal world dearly. More than that, you'll need to ask your terrifying partner.\"\n\n\"Uriel has told me all I need to know about your sins.\" The creeping, hollow unease in his chest made Rami toss out the first rebuttal he could think of. Harsh and untrue, but he knew better than to admit that to servants of Hell.\n\nBoth Claire and the demon fell silent.\n\n\"The angel out front is... Uriel?\" Claire asked.\n\nRami cursed himself for rising to the bait. He pushed the still half-full mugs away from him as he stood from the bar.\n\n\"Surrender the artifact and give up this errand, Librarian.\" Rami's jaw tightened. \"Don't risk your eternal soul.\"\n\n\"I find myself already damned, but your concern is noted. I'd watch the threats. We're guests of some very nice hosts with very large axes,\" Claire said, gaze falling to where Rami's fingers brushed the hilt at his side.\n\nRami made a slow show of measuring the room. \"You've found yourself some privacy, Librarian. What if my good friend the bartender decides to step out?\"\n\nThe librarian looked scandalized. \"My goodness. Someone is desperate. Whatever will we do? I suppose that depends.\" She cleared her throat and raised her voice. \"What exactly is the protocol for handling aggressors in Valhalla, Arlid?\"\n\nRami stifled the urge to jerk back as a leather-clad raven woman dropped from a shadow in the rafters. The woman squinted her kohl-heavy eyes, none too happy at being called out. \"Aggressors are fed to the flock.\"\n\n\"And am I the aggressor in this scenario?\"\n\n\"No.\" Arlid's lip curled. \"But the night is young.\"\n\nClaire turned to Rami. \"There, you see. The raven captain has been keeping an awfully close eye on me and will be making sure the only one who gets to rough me up is her. You are welcome to test that, of course, but I think you'll find she likes her duty even more than she loathes me. Isn't that right, Arlid?\"\n\n\"You have no honor,\" Arlid muttered.\n\n\"Something you two agree on,\" Claire agreed. Her eyes dropped to his coat. \"It's a shame that your feathers are the wrong color for her flock.\"\n\nRami worked his jaw but said nothing. It was the second time tonight he had been surprised by Hell. He found he didn't care for it.\n\nClaire shrugged and slid one of the abandoned drinks to Andras, though Rami noted she'd never touched her own. \"The bottom line is this: the book is under the protection of the Library now. It belongs in Hell. Heaven should mind its own business.\"\n\n\"Not when the safety of humanity is at stake,\" Rami said.\n\n\"Funny, that's why I'm here too.\" The woman gave a rueful smile that was so human it made the backs of Rami's hands itch. He wasn't used to interacting with human souls from other realms. He'd spent plenty of time among souls on Earth during his stint as a guide for the lost, not to mention his time in exile among mortals during Earth's earliest history. But a human soul that chose an eternity in Hell? He couldn't understand that. Especially a soul that seemed so... practical. He half wished she'd be as sinister as her demon attendant. It would ease that wrong feeling at the back of his head.\n\nRami shook the thought from his shoulders and stood. \"You work for the Deceiver.\"\n\nNo one followed as he left, though Rami thought he heard a long sigh at his back before it was swept up in the increased noise of the hall. Rami hit the door hard enough to make it rock on its hinges as he waded into the sea of revelers. He needed to clear his head. He needed to form a plan.\n\nHe needed information for a plan. Answers.\n\nUriel was in deep conversation by the time Rami found her again in the main hall.\n\nOr, rather, the broad-shouldered creature with a pair of double axes on his hip was in deep conversation. Uriel looked distinctly unamused. Not that Uriel was in the habit of being amused ever, but she held a glare for the Viking man that she usually reserved for improperly tempered blades and disappointing reports.\n\n\"No. I am not interested. Thank you.\"\n\n\"But a maiden like yourself\u2014\"\n\n\"Move. On.\"\n\n\"Trouble?\" Rami asked as he slid to fill the space vacated.\n\n\"Humans.\" Uriel grunted the word like it left a bad taste in her mouth. \"It defies logic that their base interest in reproduction lasts beyond death. And the entitlement to it! Arrogant, all of them.\"\n\n\"Hmm, yes. The arrogance. Imagine.\" Rami guided Uriel into a quiet corner. \"I encountered the librarian and her people.\"\n\nUriel raised a brow. \"Demons?\"\n\n\"At least one. I don't know him from... before. But powerful, dangerous.\"\n\n\"What did you learn?\"\n\n\"They do not have possession of the artifact, but their hunt led them here, and the librarian considers it under the jurisdiction of the Library.\"\n\nUriel waved that away too easily. \"Heaven's claim supersedes that of any other realm.\"\n\n\"She also implied that there's more to this artifact than powerful magic.\" Rami said it with a dismissive air but watched Uriel's reaction carefully. She tilted her chin but looked out over the crowd, hiding the pull of her expression.\n\n\"Is that so? How curious.\"\n\n\"Is it true?\"\n\n\"Acquire the artifact and we'll know.\" Her answer only seeded the doubt in his gut. Uriel turned back to him. \"Their plan?\"\n\n\"I gathered that they were waiting for something they needed here. She said they would be leaving tomorrow,\" Rami said. \"She was lying, of course.\"\n\n\"Glad to see your time in the wild hasn't made you entirely soft.\" Uriel narrowed her eyes and searched for something in the crowd. \"We will need to intercept them.\"\n\n\"Any attempt to confront them will get us expelled from Valhalla. Or worse,\" Rami said, thinking of the raven captain and her guard.\n\n\"Not if they stray someplace where Valhalla isn't watching. First rule of demons, Ramiel: you can always rely on servants of Hell to be where they shouldn't.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "CLAIRE",
                "text": "\u2002It's not magic, what we librarians do. It's the same as what our imaginations tried to do when we were alive; the realm just takes a more literal interpretation of it. The pen and paper are a librarian's tools of office. With them, we can weave stories back together by force of will. Guide lost ink, draw a plot back to its true north.\n\n\u2002Without 'em, we're just exceptionally long-lived busybodies.\n\n\u2002Then again, sometimes busybodies are the only ones to get anything done.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1735 CE\n\nThe feathers frothed and churned like a small storm cloud clinging to the Watcher. Claire kept her eyes on it until he disappeared through the swinging door. Then she allowed herself to let out a long breath.\n\n\"Well, that was bracing.\" Andras drew a fingertip over his lip, amusement ill concealed. He took a neat sip of ale.\n\nClaire, on the other hand, was too much on edge to drink, unlike the demon and the damned angel. Ramiel had been in easy conversation with the warriors when they'd found him, forcing Claire and Andras to hang back until his drinking companions had left.\n\nHe was comfortable here, Claire realized as they'd waited. Comfortable and with a stronger natural connection with this place than Claire or even Hero could hope for. If it came down to forcing Valhalla to choose a side, Bjorn's allegiance to the Library wouldn't be enough. Brevity's charm wouldn't be enough. If the angels pushed, it was only a matter of time before Valhalla's hospitality showed cracks.\n\n\"We need to get out of here.\" The conclusion brought her up out of the chair.\n\nAndras nodded as he followed. \"We should have time if they think we're staying the night.\"\n\n\"He didn't buy it.\" Claire had seen it in the angel's eyes. All angels had keen eyes, but Ramiel seemed particularly tuned to reading mortals. At any other time, she would have found it interesting, a deviance in the angelic personality type, but right now it was a significant threat. She would need to avoid revealing too much next time they crossed paths. \"We need to leave as soon as we speak to Bjorn. Before they have time to plan.\"\n\n\"That necessitates that we act without a plan.\" Andras was displeased. \"I'm a very big proponent of plans. Ardent fan, even.\"\n\nClaire waved a vague hand as they left. \"Can't be helped. We'll be doing this the human way: quick and improvised.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 32",
                "text": "The main hall had progressed beyond boisterous celebration and into clusters of dedicated drinkers industriously working toward a stupor. This worked in Claire's favor, as the path had eased and the largest warriors still blocking her path had become significantly less mobile. She and Andras wound their way through the stifling hall toward Bjorn's study.\n\nClaire touched her hand to the handle but paused when raised voices trickled through the rough wood.\n\n\"Showman like you, thought you'd appreciate admirers.\"\n\n\"You're not admiring, lad. You're molesting.\"\n\n\"Merely partaking of the simple joy of fine literature. I was bravely wounded in battle, you know.\"\n\n\"Don't think I can't finish the job!\"\n\nClaire gave a sigh and pushed through the door. The study was still a picture of clutter and warmth, but this time a very agitated storyteller paced in front of the fireplace. Hero perched in an armchair and shook a partially unfurled scroll as a greeting. \"Warden! I do believe I've found our host's weakness. Had you merely rumpled his manuscripts in the ring, this whole nonsense would have resolved itself.\"\n\n\"I see you're feeling well enough to be a nuisance again, Hero.\"\n\nHe was pale, but his wrist appeared restored, and the cuts on his face were gone. He didn't rise from the chair, which could indicate some stiffness, but he seemed in one piece.\n\nHero chuckled. \"The healers here are marvelous. I suppose they get some practice.\"\n\nClaire made sure the door was firmly closed before approaching the group. Brevity and Leto were present, the latter a dark shadow positioned closer to the door, having obviously taken the \"keep Bjorn there\" order with teenage seriousness. He gave Claire a tight nod as she entered with Andras. Darkness pooled under his eyes, and Claire made a mental note to enforce a rest when they had a chance. Demons didn't need sleep. Human souls didn't either, technically, but every human psyche needed a break. Mental breakdowns happened in the afterlife just as easily as they did in the world above, and Leto had been through more than enough.\n\n\"Brev, please see if Bjorn can point you in the way of a decent teapot.\" Claire had her own ways of shoring up her psyche, after the interrogative game with the angel. Brevity wiggled her way free of couch cushions, and Claire turned her attention to the still glowering storyteller. \"Problems, Bjorn?\"\n\n\"He doesn't like me reading his books... scrolls... things,\" Hero offered.\n\n\"I don't mind if you read. I mind if you converse with them,\" Bjorn snapped, finally succeeding in sweeping the scroll out of Hero's hands. He turned to Claire. \"Who leaves a hero unattended in a library?\"\n\n\"I watched him!\" Brevity protested as she hung a small pot of water\u2014 no teapots in Valhalla, but it appeared Brevity had improvised\u2014over the fire.\n\n\"Great lot of good it's done. He's been chatting up every tale he can get his hands on.\"\n\n\"I'm a story. They're a story. I was simply being friendly,\" Hero said with an elegant shrug. \"Besides, I learned a few things. Lots of strategic texts around here. Might help me keep my head on my shoulders next time I'm forced into the warden's service.\"\n\n\"Must you persist in calling me a warden?\" Claire asked.\n\nHero's smile was a calculated dazzle. \"Would you prefer jailer? Or shall I curtsy and call you mistress?\"\n\n\"Nuisance.\"\n\n\"Warden.\"\n\n\"Ass.\"\n\n\"It's not right!\" Bjorn interrupted, leathery face creating even more wrinkles as he drew a hand over his long beard. \"Learning changes a character. Changes a story. This is irresponsible.\"\n\nHe was entirely correct, and a twinge of regret nagged at her. Claire knew Bjorn's concern as well as any librarian. Hero was a character. He came out of his book with certain skills, certain knowledge, a personality, even, all based on who he was in his story. The longer he remained separated from his book and unable to go back, the more likely that would change.\n\nIf you considered Hero human, it was a good thing. But if you considered Hero what he was\u2014a living portion, only one small part of a larger book\u2014it was making him something other than his original character. It would be harder than ever to fit him back into his pages. It was why when books woke up, excepting the damsels, they were quickly put back to sleep again. But Claire was the one who'd dragged him along. She told herself it was necessary.\n\nIt was his choice if he wanted to change. It came with a strange, guilty foreboding, the idea of giving a character a choice again. Of making that mistake again.\n\n\"It can't do any more harm than has already been done.\" Claire finally settled on an adequate response.\n\n\"Bah!\" Bjorn threw up his hands. \"Sorry excuse for a party, this is. Just tell me why your apprentice hauled me out of my cups before dawn.\"\n\n\"Answers, Bjorn. You owe us some, and we don't intend to wait while you sleep off a hangover.\" Claire fished in her pockets until she came up with the Codex Gigas scrap. \"You've guessed why we're here.\"\n\nBjorn hissed, shrill like a teakettle. He shoved Claire's wrist back into her pocket. \"Don't bring that thing out here.\" Claire raised her brows and trailed her gaze down to his hand. Bjorn released her with a sigh. \"That thing's brought me nothing but trouble.\"\n\n\"And yet you seem to have done a shoddy job of ridding the world of it,\" Andras observed. Bjorn wheeled on him.\n\n\"Destroying it was your predecessor's job, demon. Not mine. Direct your bellyaching to him. I was just supposed to find the bloody thing,\" the storyteller said. He paused to fetch his half-empty mug of ale before continuing. \"You must already know about the missing pages, then.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Claire said before Andras could cast the acid she saw brewing on his lips. \"It appears they've turned up in the world again. It's very important that we locate them before any other... interested parties.\"\n\n\"You mean Heaven, eh.\" Bjorn did not phrase it as a question, and no one bothered to answer it. \"That lot never did understand books. Well, I tracked the book the first time just as you would. The Arcanist brought me in because it was a book. It wasn't part of my library, but she and I collaborated and created a calling card for the task. Tricky bit of magic, if I do say so myself.\"\n\nClaire was desperate enough to entertain hope. \"You still have this calling card?\"\n\n\"Why would I do a fool thing like that?\"\n\n\"Call it a hunch.\" Claire flicked her free hand at the catastrophic clutter around them. \"You don't seem like the type to get rid of anything.\"\n\nBjorn's fist tightened in his beard and he sighed. \"Something wasn't right. The way the old skinflint was acting about it. Hiding a thing like that on Earth. I mighta held on to a scrap, but it will do you no good. It's too damaged to give a location.\"\n\nClaire's hopes fell. \"There's no other way to track it?\"\n\n\"Not by Library means, no.\" Bjorn frowned into his mug. The logs in the fire ticked before he seemed to decide something. \"But it's not a book of the Library, not unwritten\u2014it's a book of the realms. There are means outside the Library.\"\n\nBrevity handed Claire her tea and crinkled her brow. \"How's that possible?\"\n\nBjorn chuckled. \"Which do you think came first, little apprentice? Books or tales? It's like I told your senior before. The first library was a song. I daresay I've learned more about the sound of a story since I came to Valhalla.\"\n\nClaire could tell the old man was dancing around something he wasn't exactly eager to share. \"So, there is a way to track it. Out with it, Bjorn. Please.\"\n\nBjorn pressed his wrinkled lips together. \"There's more to a story than just its pages. Yes, put together with my fragment, if that little paper of yours cooperates, you might have a way to go. But you're not going to like what it takes.\"\n\n\"The best stories are bled,\" Claire muttered, almost like a chant, before shrugging. \"I'll do what's necessary.\"\n\nBjorn's eyes dropped to the bag on her hip. \"You have to give up your books until you find it.\"\n\nClaire nearly snorted into her tea, and she set the mug down carefully. \"I beg your pardon? Not more of this duel nonsense\u2014\"\n\n\"Not for a duel, Librarian. Until you locate your quarry, you have to leave your books. It won't work otherwise.\"\n\n\"The notes I brought are the only tools I'll have in the mortal world. You're asking us to continue on completely defenseless. With two violent representatives from Heaven at our backs.\" Claire narrowed her eyes. \"You're going to have to explain a bit more than that.\"\n\n\"The voice of the book. The music\u2014the song of the tale.\" Bjorn paused with a glance toward Leto and Andras. \"Every book has it\u2014you know, the book's way of talking, the words it uses, the rhythm of the speaker in your head as you read. Its voice. Each one a bit unique to the author and the tale. Before the written word, it was even more important. Every storyteller worth their salt knew how to create their own voice, mimic others, and find the beat that wove it.\"\n\n\"Well, obviously not every storyteller.\" Claire was droll. \"You're talking about an actual... narrative voice... of books. A sound. A song. That's ridiculous.\"\n\n\"Says the woman accompanied by a muse, two demons, and Prince Charming,\" Andras added.\n\n\"I've been librarian for three decades and never heard of such a thing.\"\n\n\"A whole three decades? Goodness.\" Bjorn didn't hide his disdain.\n\n\"It... makes sense,\" Brevity said slowly, drawing Claire's attention. She fidgeted, fussing with the cooling pot of tea before looking up. \"Muses see more parts of a book than librarians do. They got these colors, these\u2014 Well, it wouldn't surprise me if they got a song too.\"\n\n\"Just so,\" Bjorn said. \"The Library wouldn't have bothered with it much. Too many books, too many restless tales coming and going. I didn't know about it till I got here. Things are... more sedate here.\"\n\nHero snorted.\n\n\"You learned how to work with these 'songs' here in Valhalla,\" Claire guessed. \"And you think you know the voice, the... song... of the codex?\"\n\n\"I don't.\" Bjorn gestured a knobby hand at her skirt pockets. \"But if that paper will tell me, I know how to listen. Coupled with the calling card, we might be fixed to jigger a clear tune. A book of the realms won't be sharing a song with any other book, so it should lead you right to what you're seeking.\"\n\nClaire considered. \"You still haven't explained why I have to leave my books.\"\n\n\"Too noisy! Too loud. You're already going to be tryin' to pick out a who-knows-how-old song out of a million stories in progress in the mortal world. There are ways of sorting that out\u2014written stories, existing stories, simple enough to mute and filter out. But those unwritten books and personal notes in your bag, Librarian? Coupled with your own words? Unwritten stories are like ink in water. You'll never follow the thread if you're distracted.\"\n\nA disquiet began to creep up Claire's back. She flicked an unsettled glance at the rest of the group, and Brevity shook her head emphatically. Abandoning her books was antithetical to every duty a librarian had. The only powers she had were with the tools of her office. Even trusting them in the care of another librarian felt... wrong.\n\nWithout them, she'd be more vulnerable. She'd be more... human. Claire dropped her gaze for the first time and studied the fraying edge of the bandage that wrapped around her left arm.\n\nIt all came back to finding the lost pages of the codex. Hero's return to his book, Brevity's training, Leto's mystery, even her own duties as librarian of the Unwritten Wing, had all taken a backseat the moment she'd decided to close the Library and follow a raven out of Hell. She was responsible for those that followed after her, though.\n\nIt had changed the moment Andras painted a future where the Library could be destroyed for doing its duty. Where Heaven was willing to wage war for a secret. The archangel and the Watcher outside were nothing compared with what that would look like. And if she and Leto, as human souls, got caught outside Hell when their ghostlights went out, even worse things would be after them. She was risking all of them, in various ways.\n\nAbandoning her books would open her to more risks. But it was the only clear path ahead for any of them.\n\n\"Teach me this 'song' of yours, and I'll consider leaving my books. Consider it.\" Claire paused. \"Except one. Hero needs to keep his book nearby, for obvious reasons. Unless Hero believes he's found his kin in Valhalla?\"\n\nHero let out a mirthless laugh. \"Stay with this bearded mayhem? I'd rather eat my sword.\"\n\n\"See, he's warmed right up to us. Like family, we are,\" Brevity chirped.\n\nBjorn shuffled his feet, slanting a disgruntled gaze at Hero, before nodding. \"It'll be better if he can keep it quiet, but keep him at a distance when you're listening, and it might work.\"\n\nClaire felt the gathered eyes shift back to her. It felt like a weight settled on her shoulders. She stood, slinging the bag from her grasp. She first dug out Hero's book, newly replaced pages still gleaming glaring white next to their faded yellow cream brothers. She held it out to him with one hand. \"You're still in Special Collections, mind. Don't make me regret this.\"\n\n\"As always, your faith sustains me.\" Hero found an inside coat pocket, and the book diminished slightly to fit.\n\nClaire carried the bag over to Brevity and slung the strap over her assistant's head before she could protest. \"Hold these for now.\"\n\nBrevity's nose crinkled as she took the bag. \"What are you thinking, boss?\"\n\n\"Just hold them. We're not leaving quite yet,\" Claire said, dodging the question. That part could wait. Rid of her possessions, she turned again to Bjorn. In her chest there was a lightness that was unexpected. Hollow, vulnerable, but it was done. The act of doing had a decisive power in itself. \"Ready when you are, storyteller.\"\n\nBjorn nodded and turned toward the bookcase near the fireplace. He shuffled the scrolls on the middle shelf for a moment before there was a thunk. The shelves melted into thin air to reveal a night full of stars behind it. \"We'll need to get away from my collection as well, if we're going to be proper about it.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "BREVITY",
                "text": "An entry barely legible through a halfhearted attempt to blot and scrape the parchment clean:\n\n\u2002I've been through the records. Each apprentice in the Library can expect, on average, at least a couple decades of education before the sitting librarian retires to wherever they go.\n\n\u2002Decades.\n\n\u2002...I had three years.\n\n\u2002I can't do this. Gregor, I can't do this. Please.\n\nEntry followed by a much clearer addition:\n\n\u2002Arcanist Andras has politely offered to assist in the Unwritten Wing until I can brief myself on the full log of instructions. He's been efficient and helpful, and not asked any more questions than necessary. He's a godsend, as blasphemous as that phrase may be in my present situation. More than that, he's been kind. He brought me a new teakettle the other day. God knows where you acquire such a thing down here.\n\n\u2002I suppose I'll have all the time in the world to repay the kindness.\n\n\u2014Librarian Claire Hadley, 1989 CE\n\nValhalla was a candy jar to a muse. Brevity's fingers traced the carved wood handle of her mug and she grinned into the fizzy drink, a little drunk on the feeling of it. Valhalla was as full of art and beauty as any afterlife, but what set it apart was passion. Strength and survival and unbridled passion, not anchored to a single song or story but lived. Knit in the blood flow. Salted in the sweat. Simmered in the saliva.\n\nHmm. Yes, it had definitely gone to Brevity's head. Not that she could be faulted; if inspiration was the trade of muses, passion was their fuel.\n\nAfter Claire had foisted her bag onto Brevity and followed Bjorn, Hero had announced he needed to drink, and Brevity followed under the guise of making sure he didn't disappear with his book. That had been nearly an hour ago. Now Hell's contingent took up a table at the far side of the hall and sat\u2014human, demon, book, and muse\u2014avoiding one another by contemplating their drinks. It struck Brevity that Claire had picked them all up, for one reason or another, like toy soldiers. Without her abrading presence, they fell apart.\n\nBrevity, at the very least, could fix that. \"Whatchya got?\" she asked, perhaps a bit too loudly, pointing to Leto's drink.\n\nHe nearly choked on his sip. \"Cider. Hero found it for me.\"\n\n\"From the kids' table,\" Hero supplied with a wink.\n\n\"Not sure Valhalla would have that,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"With these savages, it wouldn't surprise me if there was. Can't you see it? Murderous children! Slaying toddlers for honor and other useless virtues...\" Hero managed to get his bandage wet as his drink sloshed. He pulled a face. \"At least there's liquor.\"\n\n\"No desire for honor?\" Andras joined in, which surprised Brevity. In all the years she'd been in his acquaintance, the Arcanist had possessed excellent manners but also a low tolerance for small talk. Now he looked at Hero like he was a particularly novel new artifact.\n\n\"Honor is nothing but cold pity for the dead. Better not to fail at staying alive. Or avoid the conflict in the first place,\" Hero said.\n\nAndras's eyes narrowed. \"A rather unorthodox position for a hero to take.\"\n\nA tic appeared in Hero's jaw and was just as quickly tucked away. \"I'll choose to interpret that as a compliment. There are plenty of ways to be... heroic.\" His brow knit, and he frowned into his drink before changing the subject. \"Does it bother you that we seem to be left waiting around like useless lapdogs?\"\n\n\"I don't know. You did get to star in that duel,\" Leto offered, and Hero snorted.\n\n\"The next call we have for a sacrificial lamb, the honor's all yours.\"\n\n\"Could you have really died?\" Leto asked, betraying more curiosity than he seemed ready to admit. Brevity had noted the way his eyes had brightened as he watched the fight, much more interested in the deadly slaughter between Hero and the giant than in Claire's battle of words. He was a teenage boy, so some excitement might be expected, but she didn't like the way Leto had finally seemed to perk up at violence and cruelty. Demon things, not human things, in Brevity's opinion. Claire insisted Leto was human, but Brevity could see more. Leto was a human, but a hollowed-out human. Someone had scooped out his human life and filled him all up with darkness and demon stuff, like tar inside a candy shell. Brevity worried that unless they drained it out soon, the tar would stick. And that'd be a tragedy. Leto was sweet, and there was nothing more amazing than a human, in Brevity's book.\n\n\"I mean, being a book or... a character from a book and all,\" Leto finished weakly.\n\n\"I'm sorry\u2014was my bruising not realistic enough for you? Prefer a little more ink on the sand? Did my wrist not crack in a convincing manner? Really, what more heroics do you expect of me?\" Hero arched a brow. \"Without a welcoming book that I can return to and escape damage, I am just as destructible as anyone else. More so, even, since I don't have a soul like a human. I'll crack and burn and fall to ash easy as anything.\" Hero's lip curled. \"You saw for yourself\u2014just because a book can be fixed doesn't mean it can't be ruined.\"\n\nHe'd done that damage to himself, but Brevity wasn't about to rouse his irritation by saying so. Leto tilted his head. \"But it's not as if any of us are mortal\u2014\"\n\n\"There are worse things done to a man than death,\" Andras mused.\n\nThere was a tone in the way he said it, academic and contemplative of potential. Hero's disdain turned toward a new target. \"That sounds like a threat, Arcanist. But you're the cheapest puzzle out of all of us, I think.\"\n\nAndras's smile grew indulgent. He reclined in his seat. \"Please, go on.\"\n\nHero didn't need the encouragement. \"You're a demon, and demons seek power. You're a former duke, so I am guessing you never shied from ambition. Yet you're dusting trinkets in the Library. The Arcane Wing\u2014and the relationship with Claire\u2014what's it get you?\"\n\nThe light of the longhouse had shifted as the celebrations had wound down, flickering torches and thick lanterns swaying under the jostling tremors of hundreds of Valhalla's residents. The shadow that slid across Andras's face could have been that, had it not pulled his features with it. Eyes darker, smile sharper, skin the color of old bone.\n\n\"Perhaps it gets me left alone,\" Andras said before Brevity could attempt an intervention. \"Most learn after a brief period of my acquaintance to leave me alone. In case you haven't heard, I'm retired.\"\n\n\"I was under the impression demons never retired,\" Hero persisted.\n\n\"I was under the impression that heroes weren't impertinent fools.\"\n\n\"It appears we both exceed expectations,\" Hero allowed. Brevity thought perhaps he would drop it, but of course not. \"And what do you want with Claire?\"\n\n\"The librarian and I have a long history. You should remember that. She trusts me much more than she trusts you,\" Andras said, acid sweet. \"Does that chafe, young hero?\"\n\n\"Hardly.\" Hero let out a dignified sniff. \"I'd expect wardens to plot together.\"\n\n\"D-don't take it personal-like!\" Brevity was too happy to latch onto the insecure underbelly of Hero's words. Her stomach was already tied up in knots. Hero and Andras were frowning at each other, trading feints to reveal a hidden weakness. It struck Brevity as pointless\u2014of course they all had secrets, regrets. It was what Hell was for. She stole Hero's attention by slapping him on the back. \"Boss is really a softy underneath. She didn't care for me much either when I showed up.\"\n\n\"That woman doesn't have a caring bone in her body,\" Hero said dismissively.\n\nBrevity's smile pulled tight. \"It's a mite more complicated than that.\"\n\nUnderstatement was something she'd learned from Claire. Brevity remembered cold tension, ashen skin, orders simmering with resentment, secrets tucked in the shadow of her eyes. The questions and library shelves Claire avoided. Muses were naturally drawn to humans, but Claire was an unwritten author. Brevity still caught her, now and then, staring at the inspiration on her skin, thoughts locked and far away.\n\nMuses loved humans, authors doubly so, but the relationship with authors was always more complicated. Brevity had broken through Claire's hostility, in the end, with aggressive friendliness. Humans couldn't see like muses\u2014they were practically blind, relying only on what things looked like on the outside. So Brevity had shaped her outside to what Claire needed. A cheerful teenage girl in need of guidance. Her apparent age, her personality, the way she talked. Muses had a knack for understanding what an author needed.\n\nClaire had needed a friend. Maybe Claire still did.\n\n\"Give her time. She'll warm up to ya. You'll see,\" Brevity insisted, and put her full force of will into believing it.\n\n\"Mmm, no doubt you'll be eating out of the palm of her hand in time,\" Andras said. \"Characters are fools for authors.\"\n\n\"She's not my author.\" Hero sounded positively horrified by the idea. \"Your whole library can burn for all I care.\"\n\nInstead of taking offense, Andras smiled so that it reached his eyes for the first time. \"You are such an interesting hero, aren't you?\"\n\nHero came to an unnatural stillness. Before Brevity could figure out a new distraction, the door to Bjorn's office boomed open.\n\nClaire slunk through at a simmer, shaking her head at a parchment in her hands. Bjorn followed, and made an injured sound when Claire rolled up the paper and slapped it at him. \"Well, this complicates things.\"\n\n\"We know where the codex pages are, then?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"Bjorn's trick doesn't pinpoint a location, even with the paper shaving he has generously titled a calling card.\" Claire pointed to the carefully folded map in Bjorn's hands. \"We can track it as far as an island in the Mediterranean. My educated guess would be Malta. We'll have to hope that the so-called song is clearer when we get there.\"\n\n\"You'll hear it. If you clear your head of other books.\" Bjorn unfolded the map and Claire leaned over his arm as they made notations.\n\nBrevity took the chance to assess Claire. Her skin was waxy, shadows smudging her eyes and lips pressed thin. A pang of guilt washed over her, and she wondered if Bjorn's method would have been easier if she'd accompanied her. There'd been a moment, as they prepared to leave, when Bjorn had cast a silent glance at her inspiration gilt, a question in his eyes. Claire could leave behind her books, and Brevity would follow her anywhere. But there were things Brevity could not leave behind. Blue lines itched and twined against the soft skin of her wrist.\n\n\"The bigger question,\" Claire said after they were done, \"is how to get there. I suspect ravens don't work both ways?\"\n\n\"Ravens travel the realms freely, but only go to Midgard on Odin's word. If you think the ways of proving yourself to Valhalla are tedious, you don't want to try to seek the All-father's blessing.\"\n\n\"Fantastic,\" Claire muttered. \"I assume you're about to suggest an alternative.\"\n\nBjorn grinned. \"There's always the boat.\"\n\nClaire rumpled her braids wearily. \"Trust Vikings not to leave a simple road in and out of their own paradise.\"\n\n\"Where would the fun be in that?\"\n\n\"Fun is not the primary\u2014\"\n\nHero cleared his throat and gestured. \"Pardon the interruption of what I'm sure is about to be a fascinatingly dry debate, but you may wish to continue this on the way out.\" The mead-soaked chatter had shifted in the hall. Between bobbing heads and walls of armor, the two angels at the door had begun to argue. The tall woman in white\u2014Uriel, Claire had said\u2014turned abruptly and began to shove through the crowd. Her progress was hampered by the drum pit, but her gaze hunted through the crowd before locking on them.\n\n\"I don't think she wants a drink,\" Brevity murmured.\n\n\"So much for keeping the peace and slipping out quietly.\" Claire turned to Bjorn. \"I assume there's another exit?\"\n\n\"Valhalla hosts a door to each site of battle,\" Bjorn said grandly before adding, \"and a couple to a nice picnicking spot or two.\" He shoved open the door to his quarters. \"This way.\"\n\nBrevity made to follow but stopped when Andras caught Claire's sleeve. They traded whispered words, and Claire looked displeased when Andras winked and stepped back into the crowd. Bjorn shoved the door behind them when they caught up. \"About time that creature made himself useful.\"\n\nClaire bristled. \"Andras is a good\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, I know precisely what the Arcanist is,\" Bjorn muttered grimly. He fished a tiny ivory tube from his pocket. It looked like a quill, but when he brought it to his lips, it let out a tritone trill. \"Arlid, I got a task for your folk.\"\n\n\"I am sure she's close by,\" Claire said dryly.\n\nNot waiting for a response, Bjorn led them through a new door in his study that opened to one crowded hallway. A tuneless hum cut through the low roar of voices. Brevity realized it was coming from Bjorn, causing Valhalla warriors to shift as they passed. Once they were through, the crowd seemed to redouble their celebrations, creating a rowdy wall between them and the angels pursuing.\n\n\"That's a neat trick,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"Storytelling.\" Bjorn gave a sly wink. \"Try it sometime, lass. I bet you got a fair hand.\"\n\nThey shoved through a final door, and cool air swept some of the tension from Brevity. The wide meadow behind the longhouse was still and empty, painted indigo by starlight.\n\nShadows untangled from the eaves above them. Arlid, captain of the ravens, rose out of a crouch and dusted her leathers. \"You called, storyteller?\"\n\n\"We have some guests taking undue advantage of our hospitality. Not them.\" Bjorn waved his hand as the raven women wheeled on Claire. \"The angels are getting twisted about in the halls behind us. I reckon it might be time to show them the way back to Heaven.\"\n\n\"With pleasure.\" Arlid's mouth curved into an unpleasant smile. \"But what about them?\"\n\n\"They are taking a different road,\" Bjorn grunted. \"Just find and escort the two angels\u2014they're likely getting into an illegal tiff with a hapless demon.\"\n\n\"One more, if I may,\" Claire said, drawing their attention. She had her hands folded in front of her in that rigid way that she always had when she was pretending to be harsher than she was. \"One of my companions will also be returning to the Library in Hell.\"\n\nA wilted sound came from Leto. He stepped forward, already entreating. \"Please, I can do this\u2014\"\n\n\"Leto\u2014\"\n\n\"We're going to Earth. I've got a ghostlight and can help! I\u2014\"\n\n\"You will,\" Claire cut him off. Leto stopped and tilted his head like a confused puppy, and Claire squeezed his shoulder. Then she turned. Her eyes sought out Brevity, and Brev's stomach dropped. \"You have the books.\"\n\nBrevity's hand clenched around the bag she was still holding, then started to try to disentangle itself from it. \"Me? No\u2014boss, you need me.\" Her voice cracked, threatening to show the start of a panic she was too proud to admit to. Claire more than needed her. Of all the people she thought Claire would set aside, it couldn't be her. Brevity was her assistant. She was supposed to assist.\n\nShe wasn't quite sure who she was if she didn't assist. Failed muse, now a failed assistant? No. The thought felt like a fist clenched around her gut. \"You need\u2014 Well, you need all the help you can get. I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"You're a librarian of Hell.\" Claire's voice was steeled, unforgiving. She stopped Brevity's movements and shoved the bag back into her possession. \"I can't take my books, and we can't leave the Library unattended. I need you to return and take care of the books. This scavenger hunt may take longer than planned.\"\n\nHer eyes were burning. Brevity tried to blink the despair away. \"But\u2014what changed?\"\n\n\"Angels. Secrets. Too many coincidences. Something about this is not right.\" Her gaze flicked significantly over Brevity's head before returning. \"I'll feel better knowing there's someone responsible taking care of the books.\"\n\nClaire's compliments were rare things. In other circumstances, Brevity might have flushed under the praise. Instead, Brevity's throat felt tight. \"I'm your assistant.\"\n\n\"And you're a librarian. I trust you.\" The honesty in Claire's voice stepped Brevity's panic down to a simmer. Honesty from Claire was also a gift, when not wielded like a weapon. Her smile was weak, so instead Claire swiftly reequipped herself with a frown. She squeezed Brevity's arm. \"I'm just going on an errand. Don't be so sentimental.\"\n\nAnxiety still twisted tight against her ribs, but she forced air between her teeth. \"You can count on me.\"\n\n\"Good.\" As usual, Claire misread anxiety as eagerness. Brevity could barely enjoy the rare, warm smile that was there and gone. \"Now, listen. Go back with the ravens. Wake up the Library\u2014it will listen to you. I'll send messages if I can\u2014you can have Walter help you do the same. Business as usual, but if anything troubling occurs, you have full authority to lock it down. Got it?\"\n\n\"Lock it down? But I don't\u2014\"\n\n\"You can do this.\" Claire swept her up into a smothering hug that was almost as alarming as her orders. Things were truly serious if Claire was hugging. \"I expect tea when we get back.\"\n\nBrevity felt like she'd swallowed a slug. \"Don't have any fun without me.\"\n\nClaire made a dismissive noise. \"No books, no annoying assistant, Mediterranean island. Going to be a vacation. Might not come back.\"\n\n\"Don't you dare.\" Further words were cut off by a disturbance of wood and steel coming from the longhouse. Arlid glanced at Bjorn, and he nodded.\n\n\"If yer goin', now is the time.\"\n\n\"We are.\" Claire released Brevity and nudged her toward the raven woman. \"Make sure she gets back safe.\"\n\n\"That's up to her soul.\" Arlid gripped Brevity by her shoulders, jerked, and then the meadow disappeared in a smothering rush of frost and feathers."
            },
            {
                "title": "CLAIRE",
                "text": "\u2002Books have songs, songs have stories, and then there're humans at the heart of the jumbled mess. I've come to the conclusion that you just can't subtract a human from the story, no matter how hard you try. Even death doesn't do that.\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1712 CE\n\nBjorn led them on a serpentine path across the field, hiding their escape in a churn of lavender that tickled and tugged at Claire's skirts and suffused the air with flowers. The day had passed twilight into the kind of crystal night seen only in the after-realms. There was no wind to carry sound, but no one spoke, and for once Claire was happy for an absence of words. Leto's concern fluttered at her back like a wounded bird.\n\nShe wasn't running away, precisely. She was fulfilling her responsibilities, sending Brevity back to the Library. She'd waited too long to give Brev more responsibility anyway. Even if this all turned out to be a fool's errand, it was good for Brev to get a feel for running the desk. Brevity was competent, talented. The Library would mind her, and nowhere was safer. She would be fine.\n\nShe would be fine.\n\n\"All aboard.\" Bjorn broke into her thoughts as they stopped at the edge of a lake.\n\nIt was the same shore that they'd arrived on, cold and barren. There was no dock, just a stone-mortared embankment jutting out into the dark water like a tooth. A shabby weapon stand and a coil of rope were the only things that marked any official status. A small, open wood boat swayed, half-anchored on the sand. It was larger than a canoe, and the lip of the thin wood was painted a cheery green that didn't reassure Claire in the slightest.\n\nThick gravel churned under their feet, and the water sent a shock of ice through Claire's feet where it lapped at the toes of her shoes. She climbed aboard and Hero and Leto followed with significantly more reserve.\n\n\"We're sailing to Earth?\" Leto asked, as if, after the day he'd had, that would be the logical conclusion.\n\n\"Just till we get out of the realm.\" Claire tossed Bjorn the rope that anchored them and passed an oar to Hero.\n\n\"I hope you know more of sailing than I do, warden.\" Hero eyed the oar with reluctance but positioned himself to row.\n\n\"Head toward the mists, fast as you can.\" Bjorn braced a foot on the bow of the boat and gave a shove to dislodge it from the gravel. \"I'll handle the rest.\"\n\n\"Right. You've got the hard part.\" Claire caught herself as the boat began to hitch and bob beneath her.\n\n\"Just find those blasted scribbles before Heaven does.\"\n\n\"Beat an archangel, divert war, save our souls. Simple as that?\" Claire called.\n\n\"I still got my bets set on you.\" Bjorn raised his voice to be heard as the boat drew out into the lake. His grin was a spark of white against the dark.\n\nThey cleared the shore, and Claire snapped up the second oar, earning a surprised nod from Hero as she bent in to row. They fell into a quick rhythm and were nearly to the mists when a noise rose up from shore.\n\nTwo figures\u2014one tall and vengeful, one short and stony\u2014appeared at the rise. Andras was nowhere in sight of the shore, which Claire hoped meant he'd escaped according to plan. The tall angel, Uriel, gave a cry and stormed down to the shore. Bjorn flourished a longbow from the weapon stand on the sand.\n\n\"Does the old kook really think he can fight a...\" Hero's murmur turned to a squawk when the tip of the nocked arrow caught fire. \"Wait. He's going to fire on us! Us!\"\n\nClaire redoubled her rowing and kicked Hero's ankle for him to do the same. \"Technically, he's only supposed to fire on the boat, but I suppose it depends on his proficiency.\"\n\n\"You knew he was going to... to what end?\" A yellow flare arched through the air, and Hero yanked Leto back with a grunt as the arrow struck the bow of the boat. The boy's eyes widened, and he flailed away from the flames.\n\n\"At least there's no kindling to...\" Hero trailed off as the fire caught, leaping from arrow to boat hull with an unnatural ease. \"I'm beginning to have a grievance with your plan, warden.\"\n\n\"Duly noted,\" Claire said. She shoved Leto behind her and grimaced as the fire began to lick around the edge of the boat. Cheerful green paint curled into smoke. \"Just keep rowing.\"\n\n\"You're mad.\" Nonetheless, Hero turned his back on the fire to pole his oar into the water.\n\n\"The logic of most of these realms is that the way out and the way in are usually the same.\"\n\n\"Oh. A pyre at sea.\" Leto paled.\n\n\"Someone was listening during history class. Yes. A Viking burial. Full marks.\" Claire cast a quick glance to the shore. Through the smoke, she could see that the angels had waylaid Bjorn, and there was a furious argument under way.\n\nUriel had a great glowing sword out, and Bjorn stood, lean and proud, arms crossed over his chest. Ramiel, his squat and gray outline just barely visible next to Uriel's incandescent form, appeared to be trying to keep the calm.\n\nBut Uriel's shoulders were thrown back and even at this distance, the threat was visible and strumming. Claire had not expected the concern that gripped her chest. Be careful, old man.\n\n\"Will it hurt?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"Hmm?\" She pulled her attention back to the fire that was quickly eating at the sides of the boat. \"Oh no, we're not required to burn, necessarily. If we can reach the mist by the time the boat goes, and I can keep hold of that trace, we should theoretically\u2014\"\n\n\"Claire,\" Hero interrupted. \"Your skirts.\"\n\n\"Bother.\" Claire stamped her hand where scorched edges threatened to catch fire. The act scalded her palms, focused her attention. The heat was seeping through her shoes, and with a calm she did not feel she directed Leto to move toward the middle of the boat.\n\nHero eased his rowing as they reached where the fog grew thick at the center of the lake. \"To think I'm beginning to miss the ravens...\"\n\n\"What\u2014\" Leto's question was drowned out with a rush of air.\n\nThe fire consumed the boat whole in a flare of magical heat. Claire had just enough time to squeeze her eyes closed before the wood turned to ash under her feet and glacial water rushed over her head.\n\nAnd for the second time in a day, Claire began to drown."
            },
            {
                "title": "BREVITY",
                "text": "\u2002A library without its librarian in residence is vulnerable as a bleating lamb. Librarians serve as the readers the unwritten books never had. It anchors them, quiets them, and assists in keeping them asleep in their binding. Walk careful in the long shadows of abandoned stacks, for you walk footpaths of restless dreams.\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 991 CE\n\nThe doors of the Unwritten Wing were not as foreboding as the Arcane Wing's. The Library veered away from Gothic wrought iron, and instead toward polished brass and light oaks. Brevity hadn't often had occasion to see the doors closed, though, and they loomed over her. Her hand hovered over the brass pulls, but she couldn't quite bring it to land.\n\nThe ravens had deposited her in the transport office, startling Walter into nearly dropping a jar. He'd been too flustered, and too kind, to ask questions, but she'd seen the way his gaze shifted over her shoulder, searching for Claire to appear behind her. The real librarian, not the clumsy excuse for an assistant. Claire wouldn't be coming\u2014not for a while at least\u2014and the tasks she'd hoisted on Brevity along with her books now felt like iron weights pressing on her ribs.\n\nBrevity began to feel the cracks. Open the Library, run the Library, protect the Library. That's what she needed to do. That's what she'd done with Claire for years, but it was always with Claire. Claire had no idea what she was asking. Muses enabled, supported, inspired; they didn't act.\n\nBut muses also didn't stand around hallways looking foolish and green at the gills. At the corner of her vision, the gargoyle had begun to stare. Brevity pushed open the doors.\n\nA locked-down library was a space of ink and whispers. The darkness was absolute; the blue glow of the inspiration on her wrist barely lit the gloom in front of her face. The light from the hallway behind her was immediately drunk up by the shadows pooling at her feet, so tangible that Brevity nearly tripped as she made her way in.\n\n\"It will listen to you. It will listen to you. It will listen. To you.\" Repeating it enough tamped down the flicker of apprehension in her chest. Brevity let the door close behind her and raised her voice. \"Lights.\"\n\nEven to her own ears, her impersonation of Claire's confident command felt quailing and swallowed up too fast in the dark. Brevity clenched her fists and tried to make her way to where she knew the front desk was. \"Library... lights.\"\n\nHer hip collided with a hard corner. A stack of books avalanched past her shoulder. \"Oh, tit-eared motherfuck.\"\n\nMuses didn't act, but they could cuss with the best. She continued her grumbles as she crouched to grope for the books. \"C'mon. Lights... please? I know you can hear me!\"\n\nWith an almost sullen slowness, a dim glow blossomed in the table lamp. It eased, unfurling light until it spread to the next sconce, then slowly began to light up the stacks. The Library responded with a resigned sigh, fluttered pages and sleepy shadows.\n\n\"You don't gotta be a jerk about it, you know.\" Brevity finished scooping up the books and surveyed the facing stacks. The light was too grudging to be bright and cheery like it was for Claire, but the glow was enough to make out the books still on their shelves, muted and sleeping, their trails of color dim and still.\n\nThe Unwritten Wing was a world of color to Brevity. Each book a whipping, seeking coil of light when it was awake. As a muse, she could see them. Books desperately wanted to be written, and were constantly sending out tendrils, hoping to catch and find purchase in a fertile mind. It had been nearly overwhelming when she'd first arrived, rejected and unwelcome. Claire had resented everyone back then, and she had been open about her feelings toward her new assistant. To be honest, the years hadn't made her much less brittle. Brevity often wondered, if Claire could see the books like she did, would she have more sympathy for the stories in her care? Brevity tried to care enough for them both.\n\nAsleep, the books were withdrawn, tucked within their borders and emitting only dull pulses as Brevity passed. She picked a row at random and slowly walked the stacks, checking as she wrestled with her unease. These were books. She was a muse. This was the Library. This was home, or as near as Brevity could make one. She'd thrown her whole heart into making this home. There was no reason for the hairs on her neck to prick, for the inspiration gilt on her skin to coil and flutter anxiously.\n\nBut shadows gathered a little too deep in the corners of shelves, and books slept fitfully under her fingers as she ran them along the spines. Dust hung suspended in the light thrown by sconces, as if someone unknown had just passed through and left the Library unsettled in her wake. The gloom increased as she ventured farther into the stacks. The air became so still it suffocated. And as she turned a corner, cold hands landed on her goose-bumped skin.\n\nA shriek, and probably several years of her immortal life, escaped Brevity. She spun, hands in front of her face though they couldn't quite decide whether to make a fist or shield. It took a moment for her heart to restart when she recognized the blue-skinned girl in front of her. \"Aurora! Are you trying to kill me?\"\n\nAurora was a damsel from a space thriller\u2014likely from the late 1960s, if you judged by the skimpy miniskirt and midriff that she had arrived in. She'd built up more of a wardrobe over her years in the damsel suite, and now she worried at the edge of her cotton jumpsuit nervously. She'd been mute at first\u2014probably some author's idea of a doe-eyed-alien reward for his space hero\u2014and while she'd learned to speak over the years, she still kept words to herself like rare pearls.\n\nHer response was to look penitent, then curl her arm around Brevity's. Her hair was a mass of white curls, studded with silver tentacles, which twitched just at the ends. Brevity sighed and allowed her arm to be captured. She drew a soothing palm over Aurora's knuckles. \"What are you doing out here? Did you hear something?\"\n\nA nod. Brevity tried to ignore the way it fed the disquiet in her gut. \"It was probably nothing. Just me stumbling around. Or the Library reorganizing.\"\n\n\"No.\" The certainty was enough to warrant a word. Aurora's voice was less human and more synthesized bells. It sent a chill down Brevity's spine. The book-heavy shelves swallowed the sound, but Brevity had to resist the urge to hush her. She thought she heard a shuffle, which could easily have been a painting relocating, a rug fluffing itself, or a book turning in its sleep.\n\nBut it didn't feel like it was. Aurora's nails were filed down from sharp claw ends to rounded little fingers, but still managed to scratch as they tightened on Brevity's arm. She winced, found she had been leaning into the damsel unconsciously. She extracted herself and tried to think. Perhaps the Library was just trying to test her, perhaps she was letting her fears get the best of her sense, or perhaps something really was wrong.\n\nIn any scenario, hiding in the damsel suite until Claire returned was not the way for a librarian to behave. But that didn't mean Brevity was going to make any moves without good reason. Aurora was watching her with skittish silver eyes. Brevity sighed and headed back for the front desk. She wasn't surprised to hear the clip-clop of Aurora's space-fawn feet shadowing behind her.\n\nNothing seemed disturbed on the desk. Brevity let Aurora keep a wary eye on the stacks as she located the midnight blue ledger at the bottom of a drawer, buried under gnarled thread and tea cozies. Claire pretended to be rigidly organized, but really she just hid her clutter well. She dropped open the book on the table and cleared her throat. She placed one finger to the blank page.\n\n\"Execute inventory: full.\"\n\nIf there was something out of place in the Library\u2014or something missing from it\u2014she'd know soon. Or, if she was lucky, the others would return before she had a chance to screw this up. Nerves singing, Brevity clutched an empty teacup to her chest as the book began to hum."
            },
            {
                "title": "CLAIRE",
                "text": "\u2002We expect books to attempt to force change, but not the librarians. Dead things are not supposed to change, to grow. But here I am, a century into this role, and... I don't recognize myself anymore. Maybe it's best to say I don't recognize the Library. Not knowing what I know now.\n\n\u2002I wonder if there are other places for us. But I won't abandon my charges.\n\n\u2014Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE\n\nClaire woke as the sun began to bake the moisture off her skin. She opened her eyes to a dazzling world of sunbaked dust and aquamarine. She also woke choking on seawater.\n\n\"Ma'am? Oh, thank... well, ah. Thank somebody. You all right?\" Leto crouched on the stone, a trembling hand on her shoulder as she coughed her lungs clear of the taste of old glaciers and burning pine.\n\nShe wiped her watering eyes. They were in an alley paved with pale squares. Sandstone, Claire decided, feeling the grit under her fingers as she pushed herself up. She waved off Leto's concern and took a moment to orient herself.\n\nIt was Earth. Claire could tell that just from the air. The air in afterlife realms like Valhalla and Hell was thinner, brighter almost, each lungful colored with the realm's spirits. Valhalla had smelled of wildflowers, ice, and steel, while Hell left the taste of ash and anise in her mouth.\n\nBut Earth was not so simple. The air was weighted by the contradictions and messy complexities of its inhabitants. She could smell stone and warm earth and a dozen trace scents of a living, breathing city. And the sea. The faint salty and green notes of the water in the quay stung her nose. They were in an old port city, then. Hopefully in Malta.\n\nThe codex. Alarm jolted her fully alert, and Claire furrowed her brow, trying to call the narrative song of the book to mind like Bjorn had taught her. She rifled around in her soggy skirt pockets until she came up with a pale scrap of parchment.\n\nIt was small, smaller even than the codex remnant they had. It was the remains of a calling card\u2014the calling card that Bjorn had destroyed... except for this ashy tendril of paper. She closed her eyes to listen. It was not an entirely unfamiliar sensation, Claire had decided.\n\nIt was like when she'd been alive. Whenever she read a book in a binge, cover to cover in a day with little break, she always found it stuck in her brain like a haze. The narrative voice stuck with her, and for a bit after, it was always like a waking dream, living someone else's thoughts. The book haunted like a ghost in her head, coloring moods until she shook herself from it.\n\nTracking a song, like Bjorn had taught her, felt like that. Only instead of a vague feeling, it was a pulse she could hear if she listened close enough. The codex's song was not a pleasant one. Dark and bottomless and splintered, broken glass and tremors in the deep, like corrupted Latin and whale song. But it was there, stronger now that they were on Earth, and she could trace it.\n\nThat, at least, was reassuring. She brought her attention back. Leto was staring at her with wide brown eyes. He did look rather puppy- dog-ish as a human, all teenage gangly. She remembered, abruptly, his rough trip to Valhalla. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nLeto blinked, then rubbed his nose, not quite meeting her eyes. \"Oh. Yeah, that one... wasn't\u2014 It didn't feel as... real.\"\n\nDrowning, apparently, was preferential to whatever he had seen on the raven road. Claire sighed and started wringing out her wet skirts, grimacing as she touched her tangled hair. \"Andras will be along soon, if all went well. Where's Hero?\"\n\n\"He was going to go look for a towel and something to eat.\"\n\nClaire stopped midtwist. \"You let him leave, alone, on Earth, with his book?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Leto suddenly looked uncertain. \"You weren't waking up, and we were worried, so\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll bet he was worried.\" Claire struggled to her feet and spun in place. They were in an alley. \"Which way did he go?\" Leto pointed and Claire ordered him to stay put before she pelted into the street.\n\nThe roadway connected to the alley was wider but not by much. The thick walls, built to hold back the ocean and the invaders that traveled it, were composed of sedan-sized blocks of sandstone, as were the dust-choked streets. Many of the older buildings rose out of the same sandstone, though she could see newer constructions, bright plaster and steel cobbled and clinging to the parapets of the thick walls like barnacles on a pier. Everywhere, the architecture blended the most outrageous features of a dozen cultures together to spit out medieval walls and minarets with fairy-tale abandon.\n\nThe street was busy and forced Claire to waste time weaving between pedestrians. She shouldered her way downhill toward what looked like a port. The nearest form of transportation was a good bet for a book on the run, and Claire cursed herself for giving up her tools. She couldn't easily locate, let alone call, an IWL outside the Library. That had to be what Hero was banking on. She would chain him to his shelf if he...\n\nThe road dumped into a square plaza. Claire had to boost herself up on the edge of a fountain to see over the crowd. She zeroed in on a flash of bronze on broad shoulders and dove into the throng again.\n\nShe found Hero at the back of a line for the taxi stand. He was slouched into his jacket, but said jacket was velvet and satin in a sea of denim, so it did little to hide him. Claire cleared her throat. \"Food and towels? Really?\"\n\nHero startled, but when he turned his head, he already had an innocent smile on his lips. \"I am simply being solicitous about your health. I have it on good authority that the next village over has positively the best kebabs...\"\n\nHis face was handsome, symmetrical, and enticingly punchable at the moment. \"Your consideration is overwhelming. Taxis, really, Hero? I'm insulted,\" Claire said. \"I thought when you decided to abandon your word, you would be a little more creative.\"\n\nHero crossed his arms and looked down his nose to consider Claire. \"Taxis are too simple, I agree. Let's revise. What if I'd decide to run? How's your stamina, warden?\"\n\nClaire was already winded from the run over, but she attempted to bury that fact with a deep sigh. \"You're already IWL'd.\"\n\n\"And you're without your tools of office. How long would it take you to get back to Hell with the little errand you're on?\"\n\n\"Quite a while. But when I did, you would still end up in the Library with much to answer for. Unless you think I'll never make it back because Heaven's the surer bet in this little race. Is that your wager?\"\n\nHis eyes were grass green, sunny and sharp, as he studied her. She thought for a moment he was going to take that bet and run. But the smile on his lips faded and he glanced down with an awkward cough. Claire thought she saw color drift across his cheeks as Hero grunted, \"I was never a good gambler.\"\n\n\"I knew you were a clever one.\" Claire let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding and made sure that Hero walked in front of her.\n\nHe made an offended sound. \"I just find Heaven's agents interminably dull.\"\n\n\"Well, long as you quit trying to hare off, I'll endeavor not to bore you.\"\n\n\"Now, that you'll never do.\" Hero stuffed his hands in his pockets as they headed back up the street."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 37",
                "text": "When they returned to the alley to retrieve Leto, Andras was fussing at the boy's waterlogged curls.\n\n\"That was fast,\" Hero grumbled.\n\n\"Walter isn't the only one who deals with artifacts like ghostlights. You're easy to find.\" Andras shrugged.\n\n\"Did the angels give you any difficulties?\" Claire looked over the demon carefully for any signs of abuse.\n\n\"Child's play. I left when the tall one threw a tantrum. All's well in Hell, by the way.\"\n\n\"What is this?\" Hero made an injured sound that drew her attention. He dangled a large handgun pinched between two fingers. His lip curled like he smelled a dead animal.\n\n\"It's called a pistol, Hero. Your sword would have been a little obvious in streets filled with cell phones. The sword changed to fit, like our ghostlights.\" Claire rolled her eyes. \"Or do you need me to show you how to use it? It's like a sword. Just aim the pointy end and\u2014\"\n\n\"I know how to use a gun,\" Hero said archly, sniffing one more time to ensure the full measure of his disgust was felt. He checked the weapon over with surprising dexterity, then stowed it in his coat pocket. \"The muse foisted all sorts of combat manuals on me for instruction before we left. But that doesn't mean it isn't an insulting choice. Guns are all noise and bluster. Nothing intelligent about their use.\"\n\n\"You'll get along fine with it, then,\" Andras said.\n\n\"Oh! A sarcastic demon. How original!\"\n\n\"Uh, did mine change too?\" Leto came up with a familiar blue lighter and held it up to the sun. It still glowed faintly, but it was markedly dimmer.\n\nThe pool of light had dimmed to a sliver of a thumbnail, sending a shiver across Claire's shoulders. Measuring ghostlights was imprecise, but Claire had never been out long enough for it to matter. Usually, when out on an errand, she took note of when she left Walter's office and entered Earth. But between trips to and from Hell, plus the hours spent in Valhalla, time had gotten fuzzy. Claire couldn't do more than vaguely guess how much longer they had.\n\n\"It's fine,\" Claire said, voice grim. \"Let us proceed, if we're all done complaining?\"\n\nClaire motioned to the street. Leto exchanged a humiliated look with Hero but declined to say anything about his detour. Claire trusted they'd work it out themselves. She focused on the codex's song, the snip of card pinched between her fingers in her pocket, and began guiding them up this alley, then down another. They finally paused outside what appeared to be an apex of the tourist district. From a map on the wall, Leto identified where they were. \"Valletta. That's in Malta?\"\n\n\"Yes. The island was a British trading port in my day,\" Claire said.\n\n\"It appears to now be a stronghold of old men with poor taste in footwear.\" Andras frowned as a portly gentleman trundled by, flip-flops smacking against the ancient stone streets.\n\n\"Regardless...\" Claire leaned against the wall. \"The codex pages aren't here.\"\n\n\"I thought the point of this expedition was to locate the thing?\" Andras asked.\n\n\"I can.\" Claire's hand waved vaguely to the northeast, where past the city walls they could see cobblestones falling away to rolling, dry countryside. \"It's that way, but we can't exactly set out cross-country without knowing how far. I still can't understand why the path couldn't get us closer.\"\n\nLeto's attention had turned back to the tourist board. A map was printed in bright colors, dotted regularly with saccharine-cute icons of desirable landmarks for tourists. His fingers drifted away from the \"You Are Here\" mark. \"Could it be Mdina?\"\n\nClaire squinted over his shoulder. \"Possibly. Or it could be anywhere in the countryside. Impossible to say without getting closer.\"\n\n\"There's a tour bus that goes that way.\" Leto pointed to a thick blue line.\n\nClaire cast a wary glance at the stable of buses that roosted along the street farther down and spared an aggrieved thought for her missing bag. \"As much as you'd like to play tourist, Leto, you forget\u2014I don't have my books anymore to fake a fare or spin a story.\"\n\nSure enough, a steady line of dawdling tourists was purchasing paper stubs, which they handed to the bus attendant as they got on. Claire could feel Leto's mind turning as he searched over the crowds before stopping. \"Maybe we still have something. Ma'am, may I borrow Hero?\"\n\n\"Borrow me?\" Hero echoed.\n\n\"Not all of you.\" Leto gave him a positively cheeky grin and tugged him by one arm with growing confidence. \"Just need your smile.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 38",
                "text": "\u2002There are cracks in the world. It's how artifacts fall through to the Arcane Wing. It's how muses slip through on strains of half-remembered songs. The world is permeable, and so is the mind.\n\n\u2002There are small cracks in the world, and there are large ones. I hope you found one to hide you, B. To hide you completely.\n\n\u2002I never want to see you again.\n\n\u2014Librarian Claire Hadley, 1989 CE\n\n\"That was humiliating,\" Hero muttered.\n\n\"Look at it this way\u2014you made her day.\" Leto swayed with the rock of the bus and felt a grin threatening to escape. It felt strange, made his cheeks hurt. He couldn't remember, of course, but it felt like something he hadn't done for a while. A buoyant feeling tugged up inside him, smothering the other stuff\u2014the demon stuff\u2014for a moment. It had helped him start to remember things, human things. Like teenage girls and the internet.\n\nWhich was handy in forcing a flustered Hero to sweet-talk the ticket vendor. He'd helped Claire, and more important, it was fun.\n\nLeto was having fun. He was pretty sure that wasn't something demons were allowed to do. It was a satisfying kind of scandal.\n\n\"She propositioned me!\" Hero wailed. \"As if I would like to go for a tumble like some cheap\u2014\"\n\n\"She asked if you were on Tumblr. You should take it as a compliment; girls never want to share their Tumblrs with guys. Jeez, relax.\" Leto paused with a thought. \"Maybe when we get back to the Library, we should find you guys some unwritten books on the internet. There's got to be something Doctorow didn't get around to, maybe. Wait\u2014does the Library even get Wi-Fi?\"\n\nHe turned to Claire for an answer, but the librarian was hunched in her seat, staring out the window at the hard clay furrows that rushed by. Leto wasn't precisely sure where Malta even was, besides on Earth, but it was sweltering. And that said a lot, since he'd come from Hell. Heat split the roadway, and the tour bus's sad excuse for shocks transmitted every pothole into a teeth-shattering bass line. Leto, and everyone else on the bus, clung to his seat for dear life.\n\nEveryone except Claire. The \"song\" she was tracking appeared to be giving her trouble. She swayed with the bus, eyes closed and lips pressed in concentration. After she nearly toppled for the third turn in a row, Hero muttered something sharp under his breath. He shoved her into a free seat, neatly ignoring the death glare Claire pinned on him.\n\nThey passed more hard-baked fields, dusty war memorials, artist enclaves, before finally curling around a hill toward an ancient walled city. Claire let out a short breath and her eyes flew open again. \"Here.\"\n\nAndras squinted at the sign lit up over the driver's head. \"Mdina, just as the stray guessed. You're certain?\"\n\n\"The stray has a name, you know,\" Leto said.\n\nClaire nodded as her eyes roamed out the window, unfocused. \"It's here.\"\n\nThey piled out of the bus with the rest of the tourists. They were in a flat green park that filled the space between a modern\u2014if something built within the last three hundred years could be called modern\u2014suburb of town houses and the thick, ancient walls of the city. As on every tourist stop, they had to fend off numerous offers of special tours and \"today only\" deals from street peddlers as they wound their way through. A modern city had sprung up around the old establishment, brightly colored plastic and metal around a dusty stone center.\n\nLeto consulted the brochure the tour guide had passed out. \"It's called the Silent City. It was entirely walled in to protect from raiders and... Huh, think that was a moat once?\"\n\nHe leaned over a low stone railing to gawk at a deep ravine of green that ran around the base of the walls before Hero hauled him back by his collar. \"I could throw you down there to check it out.\"\n\nLeto grinned. \"Heights make you nervous, Hero?\"\n\n\"Of course not. Now stop leaning over the gaping, death-inducing abyss.\" Hero lied elegantly; Leto had to give him that.\n\nA squat stone bridge spanned the former moat and led into the city. With Andras at the midway point, Claire stood frowning at the thick sand-colored walls. \"This is problematic.\"\n\n\"We don't have time for problems, pup,\" Andras said.\n\n\"We don't have time for a great many things that we've been forced to contend with,\" Claire said peevishly with a glare at Hero that Leto was glad not to be the recipient of. \"It's not\u2014 It's just odd. I can still hear it. The codex pages are somewhere here in the city. But it's all muddled, muted. Gone indistinct.\"\n\n\"Maybe it was called the Silent City for a reason?\" Leto offered.\n\n\"Nonsense.\" Claire made an involuntary grab for where her shoulder bag should have been. She stuttered midmovement, appearing to remember its absence, and sighed. \"This is ridiculous\u2014no one could do this without proper equipment. I should have never\u2014\"\n\n\"Might I be of assistance, madam?\"\n\nLeto startled at the voice. A small olive-skinned man appeared at Claire's elbow, having apparently wandered up from the wide entrance to Mdina. As if he'd been waiting for them.\n\nThat was impossible, of course. He didn't seem suspicious. He looked like most of the locals, wearing a faded tee and jeans, which were a friendly sort of juxtaposition with the ancient bridge he leaned on. He had an open face, the kind that would have made Leto comfortable asking him for directions, or help with homework.\n\nHuh. Homework. That was another thing he'd forgotten.\n\n\"Have you come to see our beautiful and fabled city?\" the man asked, ducking his shoulders just so.\n\nClaire made to dismiss him as she had every vendor she'd encountered. \"No, thank you. We're not\u2014\"\n\n\"Scholars, yes? You have the look about you,\" the man interrupted. He tilted his head and something knowing colored his next words. \"Can I suggest a tour of antiquities?\"\n\nAndras turned. \"What makes you say that?\"\n\n\"No offense, sir. No offense.\" The small man wiped a baseball cap off his head and bowed. \"They instructed me to wait here for visiting scholars. You seem to fit the description my employer gave.\"\n\nClaire narrowed her eyes. \"And who is your employer?\"\n\n\"Ms. McAllister, ma'am,\" the man puffed up. \"Best antiquarian in the country. From England, she is. Deals in the rarest books and antiquities that come through from east, west, anywhere.\"\n\n\"Anywhere.\" Claire pressed her lips together in the kind of suspicious look she gave Hero regularly. \"What kind of books, exactly?\"\n\n\"Ms. McAllister tends to a very rare collection. One-of-a-kind artifacts of the written word.\"\n\nOh. That was handy. Leto's hopes rose, but Claire exchanged a look with Andras. \"We don't have any means to pay.\"\n\n\"Not a difficulty, ma'am. Ms. McAllister believes in the free trade of information for all and\u2014\"\n\n\"This is entirely suspect,\" Hero hissed under his breath.\n\nAndras shrugged. \"What's the risk? They're merely human. You could take a fragile thing like him, couldn't you, Hero?\"\n\nHero at least knew enough to ignore Andras's prodding. Leto chewed on his lip. They were right; it was probably suspicious, but it wasn't as if luck hadn't been screwing them over every which way up until now. Maybe they were due some good luck. Seemed only fair, to Leto.\n\n\"It's not as if we have many other options, considering,\" Claire said, evidently coming to a similar conclusion. \"All right, sir. I would like to speak to this Ms. McAllister about her collection. If you'll just direct us...?\"\n\n\"Oh, ma'am. One such as myself would never allow a lady to wander the city without an escort.\"\n\nLeto dearly wanted to see Claire put the man straight on what he would or would not allow a lady like Claire to do. But before that could happen, he'd taken her by the elbow and guided her over to a strange, old-timey carriage drawn by a single horse. He kicked out a small step for the carriage and executed a deep bow.\n\nHero and Andras seemed reluctant to follow, so Leto gave in to temptation and walked up to the carriage and hesitantly petted the horse. Its hair was delightfully sleek under his palm, and Leto suspected he'd never been this close to a live horse before. He must have grown up in a city, then? He filed that information away for later.\n\nAfter a moment, he turned away and found Claire shaking her head at him with weary amusement. Andras and Hero had evidently overcome their objections and boarded the carriage already. Leto sheepishly climbed into the middle seat.\n\nWith all aboard, the guide snapped into action. He clipped a flimsy velvet rope over the doors, all the while muttering courtesies that sounded like a song: \"You're welcome and honored guests to Mdina. The Silent City welcomes you.\" Over and over. Leto supposed it was the kind of act that tourists paid extra for, though he didn't see the point of it. A little creepy, really. They clattered over the bridge toward the great entrance to the walled city.\n\nA massive stone seal sat at the top of the giant arch. It was surrounded by scrollwork and bore circles and crosses, each slashed through with negative space, upon its crest. Leto thought the shadows it cast looked jagged upon the scrollwork, like daggers spearing the pages. A chill raced up his back as they passed under it, and Leto suppressed a shudder. Tourists passed unawares, streaming into and out of the city like a gentle tide.\n\nThe gate spilled out onto a courtyard, hemmed with stone buildings nearly as tall as the walls and just as old. Nothing was new here. Half a dozen alleyways spindled out from the courtyard, though visitors mostly contented themselves to mill quietly between shops.\n\nIt was eerily quiet; the Silent City had earned its name. There was a hush that settled heavily over the city the moment they passed under the arch. Even the hub of vendors and buses outside failed to leak in; all sound was buffered out by the looming, thick stone walls.\n\nLeto was about to say something\u2014anything\u2014to break the silence when Claire twitched beside him. She looked sightlessly toward the south walls as the carriage took them deeper into the hive of stone buildings. Her hand fidgeted with the pocket that held the calling card scrap. \"It's here.\"\n\n\"The codex?\" Andras asked. He sniffed. \"If we can hear it again, let's dump the guide. He is obviously up to something.\"\n\n\"Exactly what I said five minutes ago,\" Hero said.\n\n\"No, he's still leading us in the right direction.\" Claire lowered her voice. \"As long as he's taking us toward it, we'll tolerate whatever foolishness he's about. It may be this McAllister is in possession of the codex pages.\"\n\n\"And what part of that doesn't scream 'terrible trap'?\"\n\nClaire ceded that point. \"You're awfully cautious for a hero sometimes.\"\n\n\"The living ones usually are.\"\n\nTheir guide led them down a series of progressively smaller lanes that offered little shade. The sun had reached high in the sky and was unflinching. Andras picked at his increasingly damp shirt with a grimace. \"Is Earth always this... unpleasant?\"\n\n\"You've never been above?\" Claire sounded surprised.\n\nAndras's look turned sour. \"Rarely and only when I can't help it. Not during daylight. Subject to dreadful summonings back in the day, before I rose to power. Artifacts usually come to me agreeably enough, not the other way around.\"\n\n\"That must be nice,\" Claire said.\n\n\"Heard that,\" Hero said.\n\nThey came to a stop in front of a narrow structure. It was not so much a storefront as a warren of windows and balconies built into the surface of the outer wall itself. Andras craned his neck up and shook his head. \"Strange place for a book collector.\"\n\n\"Ms. McAllister will be waiting for you in her study.\" Their guide reached a small door and bowed low enough for his hat to practically scrape the sidewalk. \"My colleague inside will show you up.\"\n\nHero tilted his head. \"You're not seeing us in?\"\n\n\"Alas, I am not. This one must see to new arrivals at the gates. Please to have a pleasant day, my friends.\"\n\nThe strange little man swept back a step and hurried down the street. They watched him disappear around the corner before they turned to stare at the door ajar before them. Hero gave a weighty look to Claire, but she held up a flat palm.\n\n\"Don't even say it, Hero.\"\n\nPast the door, they stepped into a small, tidily appointed kind of foyer. Leto blinked for his eyes to adjust to the dim, while breathing a sigh of relief after escaping the heat. The thick walls served a purpose: the interior was much cooler than the sweltering street.\n\nHe'd just started to relax when an intimidating wall of muscle stepped forward. The bodyguard introduced himself as Murdock but made little effort to communicate exactly who McAllister was or how they had come to be chosen for the honor of a tour. He instead gestured to a cramped staircase and politely requested they follow, as if there were a choice.\n\nThe staircase was crooked and narrow, made for someone of a much smaller stature than anyone in their group. They spilled out onto a landing, where the floor was composed of the same stuff as the walls, pale sandstone and painted plaster.\n\n\"Ms. McAllister will see you.\" Murdock stepped to the side at the wide double doors at the other end of the landing. The walls were smooth and windowless, leaving the doors in a smudge of a shadow. The air tasted a little stale, of paper and salt. The absence of sunlight, which had been a cool relief before, suddenly ticked an ominous feeling up Leto's arms.\n\n\"Well, so glad this doesn't feel at all like a trap.\" Hero crossed his arms and his fingers played at the pocket where he'd stuffed his gun.\n\n\"Which part, the deserted mansion or the big goon?\" Leto said.\n\n\"Be that as it may, the song does lead here,\" Claire said, \"trap or not. We're going in for the codex.\"\n\nHero snorted. \"Well, as long as we have a plan, then.\"\n\nClaire straightened her shoulders and strode forward. Her hand rested on an antique doorknob just a moment before pushing one of the doors wide open and advancing through.\n\nLeto followed close at her heels, not willing to be left behind with Murdock. Beyond the doors, the space opened onto an expansive, brightly lit study. Exactly the opposite of the landing. Sunlight pooled in from numerous tall windows and fell over walls of glass-covered bookcases holding what looked to be very old and very expensive leather-bound manuscripts. Oversized leather chairs were grouped in corners, and a desk much like Claire's massive station in the Library was positioned at the center of the wall of windows. The air still carried traces of a recent pot of tea.\n\nLeto released his held breath. It was a cheery kind of clutter, books and comfort. Perhaps this collector would be a friend. Things would work out.\n\nThe collector in question stood by a window, evidently absorbed with the book in her hands. She was as tall as Hero but rich and solid, where Hero was pale and light\u2014walnut and oak rather than ivory and bronze. She was dressed in simple slacks and a button-up shirt, rolled up to reveal forearms speckled with faded ink. There was something familiar about her sharp face that Leto couldn't place, but her narrow gaze was softened by what seemed like warm brown eyes.\n\nHero brushed past him, drawing Leto's attention, and stopped just shy of Claire's shoulder.\n\n\"Warden?\" Hero's question was barely a whisper, and Leto saw why. Tension snapped along her back, and the muscles in her jaw clenched into a snarl as she focused on the collector. It was a fury tinted with shock and fear, and suddenly Leto knew nothing would be okay.\n\nThe woman collector made no effort to move, but her soft smile tightened. \"Hello, Librarian.\"\n\nThe silence stretched, long enough for Leto's nerves to sing in confusion. There didn't seem to be any threat. A quick glance said Andras and Hero were as confused as he was. Claire drew a jagged breath, and Leto turned hopefully for an explanation, a rationale that would\u2014\n\nThen Claire yanked the pistol out of Hero's coat pocket and pivoted to aim, and all hell broke loose.\n\nThe gunshot deafened everyone in the room. A flower bloomed on the stranger's throat, not red but impossibly dark\u2014blood was supposed to be bright, Leto thought distantly\u2014and she made a single quivering entreaty with her hand before she hit the floor. Everything was suspended in the moment of that gunshot. It was thunder and silence. All Leto could hear was the wheeze of shock that got tangled somewhere in his throat.\n\nThe black blood began to seep from beneath the collector's ear, reaching into the dusty carpet like pitch fingers. Grasping for his feet, rooting him to the floor. The book that the woman had been reading had landed near her feet. Its pages were twisted and bent underneath its spine, like broken legs. It felt indecent, to Leto. He wanted to fix it. His feet wouldn't move.\n\nClaire tossed the gun back to Hero and turned away. \"The pages are here. Lock the door and search.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 39",
                "text": "\u2002You'll miss the world. That's fair; it used to be yours. But there's a reason we don't get to travel freely among the living, even as librarians. The Earth is not meant for someone who can't treasure it. Time makes us clumsy, dulls our senses. Live too far past your tombstone, and you turn a bit stone yourself.\n\n\u2002Nothing burns up humanity as thoroughly as eternity.\n\n\u2002One supposes that's why librarian is not a permanent position. We need to retain ourselves, retain our souls, if we're going to be any good to the books. My apprentice has an abundance of soul. That'll make her a good librarian. That will also make her an unhappy one.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE\n\nThe tides of the lake sloshed and shoved against the shore. The grinding churn in the air might have been the wear of water against gravel, or Uriel's teeth. \"You can track them,\" Uriel gritted out. It was an order, not a question.\n\nRami nodded. \"I can. I got a measure of her soul in Valhalla. If she's lost anywhere on Earth, I can find her.\" It wasn't hard to judge where the librarian and her hellspawn would have gone. They'd taken the mists, the burial roads, and there was only one place those went\u2014though usually in the opposite direction.\n\n\"Do it,\" Uriel had said, already turning away from the shore. \"I have business to attend to.\"\n\n\"Business?\" Rami blinked. \"What business could be more important than the codex?\"\n\nThe Valhalla sun was setting. Soon the realm would resurrect its dead, beginning the whole dreadful cycle again. The light hit Uriel askew as she turned, brightening her cap of white hair but turning the rest of her features into jagged relief. Her smile was slivered with shadow. \"An opportunity for the bigger picture. You think too small, Ramiel.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 40",
                "text": "It took time and cost to trace a soul: a sacrifice of cold stars and the ashes from his own flight feathers. But in the end, when the knowledge surged through him, it felt familiar, like slipping into well-worn shoes, tracing the weave of lifelines to find the one dropped thread. As he took on the role he had been cast away from, it felt comfortable, and right, so right that it hurt when he released the power. Its departure left empty rivers in Rami, like indents on a violinist's fingertips, useless when away from the strings.\n\nBut he had a location. He sent word and when he arrived in Malta, Uriel was already perched on a tumbled pile of sandstone outside the city. She paid no mind to the humans that occasionally filtered by below her, and though she was invisible to them, Rami was relieved she had moderated her appearance somewhat: a sparse cream-colored coat with a military cut instead of a robe, and her shining white hair dulled to a mortal blond. She'd shrunk a bit so she towered only a few spare inches over most humans. But the passing crowds still veered a wide berth around her. Nothing could hide her presence: she was the Face of God no matter what skin she wore, and right now that face was an intense, grit-teethed snarl.\n\nFists clenched at her sides as she stared at the entrance, as if she could bring the walls down with simply the force of her gaze. \"They're here?\" she said as Rami stepped up and followed her eyes.\n\n\"Yes. The librarian's soul is in Mdina.\"\n\n\"With the demons,\" Uriel bit out. Rami assumed she meant the librarian and her companions. The way she growled it made cold form in his stomach.\n\nHe picked a careful reply as he tried to suss out what plan Uriel had in mind. \"Well, I'm surprised you waited for me, then.\"\n\n\"Not as if I had much of a choice.\" Uriel finally dropped her gaze away from the walls and sighed. \"It's warded against us.\"\n\nRami blinked. \"What, the whole city?\"\n\nUriel nodded. \"I'd heard tell of it, but never had need to see it for myself. The entire city, warded. Something left over from one of the humans' petty wars. Nothing not born of humankind\u2014not angel or demon or claimed by another realm\u2014gets in without invitation from its residents.\"\n\nRami glanced at the thick sandstone walls with new interest. \"Then how did the librarians get in?\"\n\n\"That is a very good question,\" Uriel said. \"If the Creator were receptive, we could have found a way in through the churches.\"\n\nThat startled Rami. \"The Creator is removed from the faithful as well?\" A stroke of unease stirred at the back of his thoughts. The state of a realm was tied\u2014to belief, but also to the godhead that ruled it. If those two become disconnected... well, Rami wasn't certain of the repercussions.\n\nUriel waved a hand as if to flick the irritation away. \"It's no matter. I've made arrangements. They will come to us.\"\n\nRami frowned. \"I very much doubt that. Why would they\u2014\"\n\n\"I have made arrangements. Second rule of demons: they always want something.\" Uriel, smug and almost smiling, raised a brow at him. \"They'll come to us. I have it on good authority that they'll have no other choice.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "CLAIRE",
                "text": "\u2002My dear apprentice, you learn so quickly. Though it will be years yet before you learn all that is necessary to serve the Library, I see the librarian you will become. Fierce, strong, and yet with enough feeling heart to treat the books under your care kindly. Perhaps even to bring much-needed change to the Library, and the secrets it holds. The Library needs you, Claire.\n\n\u2002So I can only beg your forgiveness for what I must do.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1989 CE\n\nSomewhere, someone had a pot of Earl Grey on. Earl Grey with citrus, Claire corrected, detecting the lemon drifting through the air. Her favorite, when not mixed with the smell of death.\n\nIt soured her stomach. An old clock on the desk ticked, but otherwise there was no movement behind her, near the body. Claire clenched her fingers, which were absolutely not trembling, and pretended to sort through the stack of books by the window.\n\n\"May I ask why we just shot our only source of information for the pages of the codex?\" Andras broke the silence, his voice mild.\n\n\"Come to think of it, why isn't the well-armed guard outside rushing in at the sound of a gunshot?\" Hero said.\n\n\"You need a body to need a bodyguard,\" Claire mumbled under her breath. The help around here probably had strict instructions not to enter no matter what was heard.\n\n\"Is she dead?\"\n\nLeto's panic finally brought Claire's head around. The teenager looked even more pale than usual, if that was possible. He crouched over where the book collector lay, eyes wide as saucers as he extended a finger.\n\n\"Don't touch, Leto. She's... fine.\" Claire scooped up a few books at random and gave them an underhand lob. \"Flip through these. We're looking for loose sheaves of very old paper.\"\n\nThe books fell to the floor with a clatter\u2014Leto had made no move to catch them. He turned a look of horror on Claire. It was earnest with a cutting edge. \"Fine? You killed someone!\"\n\n\"No, I didn't. I\u2014\" Claire forced her jaw not to lock with tension. \"Just start looking. Gentlemen, please. We don't have much\u2014\"\n\nShe was cut off by a cry. Leto stumbled back, flinging himself away from the empty rug. An empty rug where, but a moment before, the prone body of the book collector had lain. A tacky pool of black blood and a slight impression in the crumpled carpet were the only indications left.\n\n\"...much time,\" Claire finished.\n\n\"She disappeared.\" Leto stumbled to his feet. \"She just disappeared.\"\n\n\"Disappeared rather like a character from an unwritten book.\" Hero held an increasingly suspicious glint in his eye as he turned toward Claire. \"Now, why would a body do that, warden?\"\n\n\"As I said, we don't have much time.\" Claire moved toward the desk and studied the drawers. Locked, of course. She began rifling through the detritus for a key.\n\n\"Perhaps a very succinct explanation would speed things up,\" Andras said.\n\nShe found the key resting in the bottom of a cup of pens. Exactly where she would have hidden it.\n\n\"Pup. Claire,\" Andras prompted softly.\n\nClaire's lips thinned, and she let out a hard breath, staring at the key rather than at the others. It was dented; tarnish discolored the grooves between the teeth. \"Because she is a character. That's why I shot her. Characters retreat to their books when damaged\u2014assuming they aren't unable to do so like Hero here. It buys us time to find the codex pages while it's busy recomposing itself.\"\n\n\"So you didn't kill her.\" The relief was evident in Leto's sigh. Claire looked up and wished she hadn't. Color had drained from Leto's face. He was trembling, given away by the twitch of the coils of hair shadowing his eyes. He had the unsteady look of someone desperate to believe the best of people.\n\nClaire wished she wasn't going to disappoint him.\n\n\"How'd you know she was a character?\" Hero asked, mercifully drawing her attention away. \"Not that I don't respect a display of gratuitous violence.\"\n\nClaire straightened. \"Why wouldn't I? I'm a librarian.\"\n\n\"And I'm a character and a book. I know how these things work.\"\n\nAndras made a noise of agreement. Claire didn't dare look at him. She could take anything but pity from Andras. Instead, she picked up the key and worried at it. The teeth were dull, but made a pleasant sting as she rasped the pad of her thumb against them. There had to be a way out of the story she didn't want to tell, a twist that would send them on to a happier story. She came up empty.\n\n\"Because she's mine.\" Her voice came out a whisper. She grimaced and cleared her throat. \"She's\u2014she's a hero from one of my books.\"\n\nThe book in Leto's hands slipped to the floor with a thud and a likely crack of the spine. Claire didn't chide him to be careful.\n\n\"I wasn't aware there was an outstanding book missing from the Library, present company excluded.\" Andras gave a nod at Hero.\n\nClaire felt it when the careful, bleak part inside her unlocked and the familiar guilt tumbled out. She studied the key in her hand. It was tarnished, impossibly dull. Claire rubbed at it with her thumb, but it didn't come clean. \"There isn't. I removed her from the Library inventory. After I helped her escape.\"\n\nThe words fell on the ensuing silence like lead.\n\n\"Well. Finally, the warden gets interesting,\" Hero muttered.\n\n\"You helped a character, but when would you...\" Understanding glanced into Andras's voice like a spark of fire. \"Gregor.\"\n\nA single word that Claire had avoided for three decades. It called up Claire's best memory of her mentor, tinged by fondness and guilt. He'd been somewhat young when he'd died the first time\u2014much older when he died the second, but then, years in the Library never showed. Not on the outside. A paunchy, scholarly man, American, and, god, had Claire resented him at first. Acid slaked her throat. \"It wasn't planned.\"\n\n\"But it did occur.\"\n\nThe accusation in Andras's tone was obvious. Claire squeezed her eyes closed. \"Gregor was\u2014\"\n\nThe world tilted and swallowed Claire's words. She nearly fell over the desk as the floorboards bucked beneath her feet. A long, echoing groan shuddered through the air, as if the earth had torn itself open, followed quickly by a distant, deep howl.\n\nClaire's eyes flew wide, all explanations forgotten. It wasn't the howl of a dog, or even a wolf, of wild things and forests. No, it was a howl of deeper places. Dark pits and tears that tasted of anise. \"No\u2014\"\n\n\"What was that sound?\" Leto was the only other one to sway as the room bucked again. He dug into his pocket at the same time Claire fished out her lighter. She muttered a useless prayer before opening her palm.\n\nThe lighter sat cold and dark. No flame bobbed in the liquid; no glow warmed her skin. An unnatural cold settled over the little lighter. A quick glance said Leto's lighter was the same. Claire's voice was weak as all the air seemed to have left the room. \"Not\u2014 I thought we had more time.\"\n\n\"Warden?\" Something about Claire's expression must have made Hero's hand stray to the gun in his coat pocket. He and Andras showed no sign of feeling the shuddering of the floor, though Claire and Leto could barely stay on their feet.\n\nClaire wheeled in place once before deciding on what to do and snatching Leto by the shoulder. He made a startled sound as she forced him into the gap between the bookcases in a corner and backed up in front of it. It was pointless. It was doomed. She did it anyway. Leto's breath wheezed past her ear as he caught on to her panic.\n\n\"Claire, what's going on?\"\n\nIt took a moment to realize Hero had been repeating her name. Not \"warden,\" but her actual name. She closed her eyes and tried to shove her drumming heartbeat back into her chest. It took another try to wet her mouth enough to speak. \"Andras... I don't suppose you brought anything that\u2014\"\n\n\"Nothing that would stop them, pup.\" Andras's face was not made for compassion. The pitying look was disturbing on his sharp features. Her ears thundered again with howls.\n\n\"I know that,\" Claire snapped. Her eyes flickered over the room. The door led down the stairs to the street. But what good would descending them do? \"Doesn't mean I have to make it easy for them.\"\n\n\"For who?\" Hero raised his voice, nearly drowned out.\n\nThe floorboards shuddered beneath her feet, as if something impossibly large had slammed into the building. Claire braced herself against the wall for support. She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing down the bile that rose in her before answering.\n\n\"Hellhounds.\"\n\nHero's frown froze, and their collective gaze turned toward the door.\n\nCreatures had to be terrible to escape Hell, and the hunters sent after them had to be even more terrible. Hellhounds were not made to retrieve, for Hell gave no second chances; they were made to destroy. Hellhounds didn't stop to listen to reason or defenses. Their jaws tore through not just flesh and bone, but soul and spirit. They could rage through the world unseen, and neither time nor space nor reason would placate them. Once they'd been loosed, they'd stop only once they had you in their jaws. They were made to eliminate, they were made to be tireless, and they were made to be ruthless.\n\nWhen their ghostlights expired, Claire and Leto had officially become lost souls. And lost souls were within the Hellhounds' purview. They would hunt their prey to the ends of the Earth.\n\nThe room rocked again, but though the howling had become nearly incessant, it didn't sound any closer. Her pulse pounded in her throat once, twice, three times. But nothing came through the door. Hellhounds could ghost through wood, stone, steel. When on the trail of an escaped soul to destroy, they were relentless. Nothing stopped them\u2014nothing should have stopped them.\n\nAndras was the first to move to the window and he stilled as if transfixed. \"Claire, you might want to see this.\"\n\nClaire glanced at Leto, wide-eyed and panicked behind her. She was unsteady as she pushed away from the bookcase and joined Andras at the window. \"What\u2014\"\n\n\"There.\"\n\nThe apartment they were in was built into one of the tiered walls of the city, which gave the window a clear view of the grassy moat and sunbaked fields beyond. She took in the massive walls, the bridge with a thinning stream of travelers flowing through, the way the afternoon sun's light was syrup and honey across the fields dappled with old buildings beyond.\n\nShe looked down.\n\nDirectly beneath the wall, darkness moved. Creatures, large as lorries and composed entirely of smoke and jagged shadow, prowled the thick city wall. Howls like cudgels and bodies like secrets. There was a handful of them, and they swarmed like airborne sharks, drifting over the empty moat that surrounded the city. Each took a turn throwing its massive body against the walls, and each time one did, the floor shuddered, and Leto and Claire flinched.\n\n\"It appears they're stopped,\" Andras said.\n\n\"Nothing stops Hellhounds. What in the world is holding them?\" Claire wondered.\n\n\"The Treaty of Mdina.\"\n\nThe voice was low, too low to be Leto's, too human to be Andras's, too serious to be Hero's.\n\nClaire spun. The collector stood very still a few steps from Claire, familiar enough to make her heart clench. The deep brown skin at her neck was smooth, showing no sign of the gunshot wound. Dark twists of hair curled neatly over a strong, composed face.\n\n\"What the hell\u2014\" Hero already had his pistol leveled, but Claire held a hand up. The collector's eyes were deep and calm, and though Claire stared, she couldn't quite bear to meet them. She studied her mouth instead. Her lips were parted on words Claire wasn't sure she could stand to hear. But she had to.\n\n\"Talk,\" Claire said.\n\nThe book collector's shoulders dropped a little, as if she'd been expecting a warmer greeting. \"During the last great war, there was a treaty, sealed with wards. This city has been warded against anything not of mortal make for years. It means you and your people are safe.\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"Hellhounds are too powerful to be stopped.\"\n\nThe woman\u2014woman, because even Claire couldn't pretend she was just a character\u2014shrugged, shoulders rolling in such a graceful, familiar way Claire found it hard to breathe. \"They've tried before, but the wards have held for decades. No demons, no angels, no servants of any realm can breach it.\"\n\nThe quaint little greeting that their guide had performed at the gates. It'd been a ritual. An invitation. Claire said, \"You knew we were coming. You let us in.\"\n\nThe woman nodded. \"Anything restricted by the wards needs an invitation from a resident. When I realized what I had, I'd hoped... I set one of my people to watch for you.\"\n\n\"And you are...\" Andras waved his hand impatiently. \"I'm gathering McAllister is not your true name.\"\n\nShe hesitated, eyes straying to Claire. There was uncertainty in the gaze, and it hurt. It already hurt. There was no salvaging it. Claire jerked a nod, and the woman inclined her head to Andras, though it was not a warm look. \"You can call me Beatrice.\"\n\n\"How Shakespearean.\" Hero lowered his gun slightly. \"Now that imminent doom isn't upon us all, explanations are in order.\"\n\nClaire scoffed. \"We absolutely don't have the time to\u2014\"\n\n\"Actually, if your character is telling the truth, we have a great deal of time. Which we will need, since she has yet to reveal the pages, and we have yet to figure out a way to deal with the Hounds.\" When Claire turned, Andras had a narrow look for her, as if he were trying to make a particularly bothersome puzzle piece fit. \"It is relevant to our interests.\"\n\nClaire's gaze fell on Leto, who looked trapped between terror and confusion. And he was trapped. Caught in the mess that Claire had made of her own past. If nothing else, she owed it to him. She drew a small breath and faced the window again. Staring at the Hellhounds was the cowardly option, but she took it as she considered where to begin.\n\n\"I wasn't even the librarian yet. Newly dead. It might have been... what, 1989? Only a few years working in the Library under Gregor, the former librarian. I loved the Library at first. Yes, I was distraught at the idea of being dead; Hell is an alarming thing to wake up to. But the Library itself was... magical. I loved books when I was alive. And the idea that they were preserved there was... beautiful. Beautiful, but lonely.\"\n\nThe quiet pressed and prodded at her shoulders. It almost made Claire grateful for the howling Hellhounds. \"Librarians have always been unwritten authors. And it's natural for unwritten authors to be curious about their own books. It wasn't hard to find them. At first, I spent my free time merely walking the stacks, staring hard at the spines with my name on them as I walked by. That progressed to touch. I knew better than to read them, but... I found any excuse to work in the shelves, moving books around them. I suppose it was the attention, the curiosity, that did it.\"\n\n\"Your book woke up,\" Hero supplied grimly.\n\n\"One of them, yes.\"\n\nA low sigh wisped behind her. \"Oh, pup,\" Andras said.\n\nClaire flinched at the pity. Her shoulders had crept up with tension. But she had to barrel on. If she stopped, she'd never get through it. \"Frightened the holy hell out of me one day while I was straightening the shelves. She was just...\" Claire resolutely avoided looking at the unwritten woman in question. Resolutely avoided remembering how seeing her for the first time, there in the Library, so immediate and so familiar, so alive in a place of dead things... She did not remember how that felt. Did not remember the twist in her breath, the sharp thrill of wanting. Did not feel the old hurt. \"I recognized her instantly. She was... part of me. One of the parts of me I would have written into a book, if I'd written one while I was alive.\"\n\n\"You said this was in the Library, though. She escaped?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"Not then. She didn't need to, at first. I hid her.\" Her voice had become quiet, clipped, as she tried to get through the tale with the fewest words possible. \"The Library, by necessity, is infinitely vast and always changing. Even a tenured librarian can't locate a single book without a calling card. That's why we have the systems in place to avoid missing books. There were plenty of places to hide a hero.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I wasn't as big on rules back then as I am now.\" Claire gave Leto a tight-lipped smile. \"For what reason? Foolishness or loneliness? It doesn't matter now.\"\n\n\"It mattered to me,\" Beatrice said, almost too soft to be heard. Claire's throat tightened.\n\n\"In any case... librarians hold the reins of their libraries. Soon hiding wasn't enough. I concocted a simple plan to get her out. I would get her past the wards, delay the alarms' triggering. The idea was that I would go with Gregor to 'assist' hunting for her. Then I would slip away with her calling card. There would be the matter of outrunning the Hellhounds, but we would have a ghostlight for a head start and...\"\n\n\"And no one would stop Claire when she put her mind to something.\" Beatrice's comment made Claire finally look at her, giving an unreadable shrug.\n\n\"Something obviously went wrong,\" Hero said.\n\nClaire hesitated, but Beatrice took over. She spoke haltingly, with a slight velvety accent. Her words weren't measured or polished but had a steadfast certainty that felt like a lifeline. \"We got caught. Librarian Gregor found out somehow\u2014I suspect he knew the whole time. Never was certain. But he was waiting there for us the night I planned to leave. He had my calling card in his hands and... he intended to enslave me in that place. Stamp me to Special Collections.\"\n\n\"Stamping. The monster,\" Hero said with a look of mocking horror.\n\n\"Claire stopped him,\" Beatrice said firmly, and a recoil of disgust shot through Claire.\n\n\"Stop. Just stop.\" Claire found it difficult to press the words between clenched teeth. \"At least do him the honor of telling it accurately. I murdered him.\"\n\nThe pronouncement came out louder than she had intended and hung, suffocating, in the air. Claire didn't care to see how it landed with anyone, the looks they were giving her. A cauldron of memories, hurts, fears, bubbled up in her chest, and it took a great effort to lower her voice. She dropped her eyes and said it again, testing the truth on her lips. \"I murdered Gregor.\"\n\nLeto let out a wounded sound. \"But that's impossible. In the Library\u2014\"\n\n\"In the Library, there are... words, fail-safes,\" Claire explained evenly. \"Words taught only to librarians, for the defense of the Library. Words that will unravel a soul like the Hellhounds do\u2014it doesn't work on things native to Hell, of course, not on demons like Andras. But on human souls or creatures of other realms, it evicts them. Unmakes and banishes a soul, like waving away a puff of smoke. They don't die, of course, but it can take decades, centuries, for a human soul to reassemble.\n\n\"Gregor had just taught me those words, warned I might need them someday when I was librarian.\" Claire spoke through bile rising in her throat. \"Someday, he said. And the words just... came out. I hadn't even thought they would work. I mean, he was the librarian. Why would\u2014\"\n\nShe stopped herself. Her gaze dragged up, against her will. Leto's mouth hung open in abject dismay, while Hero's face was blank. Andras, bloody Andras, actually smiled. It was a soft thing, a proud thing. The next howl of the Hellhounds she felt in her bones.\n\n\"I saw his face when I did it. He'd been calm, so calm, up to that point. Gregor was always so infuriatingly at peace with his work. But then I invoked the words. There was surprise. Pain, confusion. Then there was an unquenchable terror. And he was gone.\"\n\nThere was a silence that was difficult not to fill with a scream. Claire had screamed, quite a bit, in the horror-torn hours afterward.\n\n\"Why don't I know these words?\" Andras said.\n\nHero made a disgusted noise. \"Really, Arcanist? That's what you're getting from this?\"\n\n\"Maybe Hell doesn't trust you as much as you thought.\" Claire plowed ahead, barreling toward the end of the story now. Not as if it had ever really ended, for her. It just echoed on and on. Beatrice's presence proved that. \"I couldn't leave after that\u2014too much chaos to clean up. I removed any record of Beatrice, of my book, from our inventory. I buried the rest of my books in the stacks so it would never happen again. I let everyone assume I'd been promoted. That Gregor's soul had gone to rest. There were rumors, of course, but Hell prefers rumors to investigation. I... became librarian. Andras helped with that.\" She tilted her head, considering his reaction. \"Did you suspect?\"\n\n\"That you banished your own mentor in a pique of infatuation? No.\" That unpleasant smile formed on Andras's lips again. \"I suspected something tragic had occurred. You were... you were not as you are now, my girl. I wish you'd told me.\"\n\n\"Wait.\" Hero held up a hand and shot a look at Beatrice as if he'd just tasted something sour. \"She did all that for you, killed for you, sentenced herself to Hell, and you still just... left?\"\n\nBeatrice's gaze didn't waver. \"Yes, I left.\"\n\n\"Such valor, such heroism.\" Hero's lip curled, something akin to real anger sharpening his gaze. \"You obviously cared for her a great deal.\"\n\nBeatrice's demeanor chilled. \"Don't presume to speak about things you don't understand.\"\n\n\"I understand perfectly a coward who\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough. It's past.\" The last thing Claire needed was two snarling heroes giving her a headache.\n\n\"You're a murderer.\" The pure venom in Leto's whisper jolted the air in the room. Claire turned to find him staring at her with an alien look of disgust. \"You killed someone who trusted you. For what... for a crush... for her?\"\n\nClaire's mouth fell open. She expected judgment\u2014deserved it, even\u2014but not from quiet, thoughtful Leto. \"It's not like\u2014\" She reached out a hand, but the boy jerked back.\n\n\"Liar.\" He said it with a cutting softness. His lips trembled, opening and closing around his disappointment. Leto turned and stalked out of the room. A moment later, there was the sound of the front door snapping shut.\n\n\"He's... upset.\" Hero stated the obvious, though it seemed to perplex him. \"Shall I go after him?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"No. He's not wrong.\" And, she thought bitterly, they had nowhere to go anyway.\n\nShe raised her face, looking at each of the remaining men in turn. She saw herself reflected in their eyes, changed. Respect, disgust\u2014it didn't matter. It was a grotesque kind of mirror. But when no one else stormed from the room, Claire straightened her shoulders and turned to Beatrice. \"You became a book collector.\"\n\nBeatrice took a breath, a smile warming her serious features. \"I did. Antiquities dealer, technically. Turns out, my previous experience as a protagonist didn't leave me with many marketable skills besides tenacity.\"\n\nClaire made no effort to return the smile. \"A book collector with pages of the Codex Gigas in a magically shielded city.\"\n\n\"That does seem to be quite the coincidence,\" Andras said.\n\nBeatrice's smile faded. \"I found Mdina shortly after I escaped. If you'd come wi\u2014\" She stopped herself. Started again. \"The codex find was a recent turn of events. I'd become a book collector, yes. I found a partner, Avery, with an interest in the obscure and arcane. I had gleaned just enough understanding from the Library to feed him bits of trivia to seem useful. I'd been chasing the rumors of the missing pages for years, only found them in the possession of an unaware French farmer's family a few months ago. Avery got a lead out of nowhere. Tried to steal from me, before he passed. I should have seen it coming. Cancer riddled, at the end. Obsessed with gods and demons, immortality. I'd thought they would probably end up to be fakes, or copies, but I\u2014I admit, I'd held out hope that if they turned out to be authentic\u2014\"\n\n\"You kept them here,\" Andras interjected, eyes glittering and keen. \"Did you read them? Do they really contain...?\"\n\n\"Not the issue at hand, Andras,\" Claire said.\n\nBeatrice risked a penitent look. Her hand hovered, as if her mind had a thought to reach out to Claire, but the rest of her knew better. \"I knew if they were authentic, there was a chance... I knew someone from the Library would be after them. As I said, I had a man watch the gates.\"\n\n\"For what purpose? To trap us here?\"\n\n\"You're not trapped. Just... shielded.\" Beatrice faltered. Her hands were calloused from use, but just as slender as Claire remembered. They raked helplessly through her hair, once, and her curls came away softly mussed. \"You are free to leave if you wish, but in the meantime, nothing can get in without an invitation. And I doubt the Hellhounds have the social graces to communicate with anyone.\"\n\n\"As grateful as I am for invisible monsters, I\u2014\" A terrible thought struck her. Claire took a step forward. \"Does the ward guard against angels?\"\n\nThe unwritten woman frowned. \"Like, from... Heaven? Yes, I suppose it would.\"\n\n\"And if they got a mortal to invite them in?\" Hellhounds were mindless, but angels had every social grace, when properly motivated.\n\n\"That would... grant them entry.\"\n\nAngels. If the angels found them here, they would be cornered without an escape. The codex would be lost and, likely, so would they. It was ridiculous, but focusing on a danger she could address helped her ignore the Hellhounds thrumming doom into her skull. \"How many gates are there into the city?\"\n\n\"Four main gates, not counting the catacombs, but those haven't been used in\u2014\"\n\n\"Andras.\" Claire turned.\n\n\"I needed to stretch my legs anyway.\" Andras stood and cracked his neck. He furrowed his brow at Claire. \"If you're certain.\"\n\n\"Watch for them and secure an exit. We'll need to figure out a way out of here, Hellhounds or not.\"\n\nAndras nodded and sauntered through the hall. Beatrice waited until the door shut again. \"Not necessarily, you know.\"\n\nClaire had turned to confer with Hero, but she narrowed her eyes. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\nBeatrice gripped her arms, as if anchoring herself. Her voice was quiet again. \"You don't have to find a way out. You could stay. As long as you wanted.\"\n\nYou could stay. The words Beatrice said struck Claire in the chest. And then what she hadn't said: with her.\n\nAnd what they meant together: to leave Hell behind.\n\nThe prospect snagged her breath, and she had to work her lips a few times before the proper words beat out the longing ones. \"Where's the codex, Beatrice?\"\n\n\"You could stay. That was always the plan, wasn't it? To\u2014\"\n\nClaire gritted her teeth against the words. \"Where are the pages?\"\n\n\"I'm not asking anything of you. You don't have to be with me. You could stay anywhere in the city, and Hell couldn't\u2014\"\n\nClaire felt heat overwhelming her eyes, and she spun, instead focusing a furious scowl that startled Hero into taking a step back. He'd been silent through the entire exchange, a small miracle. Claire found it easy to ignore the muddled questions on his face. \"It's here somewhere. Watch her. I'm going to go fetch Leto and form a course of action.\" She heard Beatrice make a sound of protest behind her. \"If she tries anything, shoot her.\"\n\nHero gave her an uncertain version of his standard cavalier smile. \"As you say, warden.\"\n\nBeatrice tried another entreaty, but Claire spun and stormed toward the door."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 42",
                "text": "\u2002I would never dishonor my elders, but there were times when I thought Fleur was a frivolous old woman. She held my leash, as I was her apprentice, and she made decisions that seemed so effortless\u2014thoughtless\u2014to me. I judged her for it. But I understand now. The leash gave me something to pull against. To argue. To form my own opinions, but never bear any of the risk of the choice. It's easy to be brave on a leash.\n\n\u2002Now the muses argue and whittle away at me. Demons salivate over books. The Arcanist questions my every judgment.\n\n\u2002It's hard to be brave alone.\n\n\u2014Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1799 CE\n\nAll works accounted for.\n\nBrevity had run the inventory twice, just to be certain. Three times, to verify she was not hallucinating. It'd taken long enough that Aurora had retreated to the damsel suite to sleep. But the third inventory matched the first two. The blue ledger printed the results in neat, spidery ink that bloomed across the page: no oddities, and all unwritten books accounted for. There was Hero's book, of course, which was listed tidily as \"out on loan,\" but all other books, paintings, and other uncreated art were secure in the Unwritten Wing.\n\nAurora had been insistent that there'd been someone in the stacks. Claire might have dismissed it as a figment of the damsel's imagination, but Brevity knew imagination. It hadn't been imagination that'd driven Aurora to speak, or the shelves to shiver. But it made no sense, someone creeping into the Library and not removing anything. The only ones that could enter the Library when it was closed were its current residents, books and artifacts, and those that took care of them.\n\nThose that took care of them. The Arcane Wing's pet Horrors, clawed hands drifting over shadowed gems. Brevity suppressed a shudder. She tried to think of any rationale around it, anything that would let her just shake the whole thing off and brew the herbal teas Claire hated and binge on the damsels' baked goodies until the whole thing was settled.\n\nIt wasn't what Claire would do. Claire would stare down a Horror and solve the whole mystery with the power of superior disdain. No, Brevity amended, perhaps she wouldn't, because she'd never believe there was a mystery in the first place. Brevity wasn't Claire, and never could be.\n\nBrevity stood, head briefly turning toward the damsel suite. She spared a thought for Walter in his office. Someone would surely be willing to accompany her, give her a reason to be brave as she checked on Horrors. Brevity had always been better at being brave for others than for herself.\n\nBut the damsels couldn't leave the Library. Walter had his own duties. And Claire had told Brevity to care for the wing.\n\nBrevity stowed the ledger, abandoned her tea, and locked the doors behind her as she wound her way down to the Arcane Wing.\n\nThe monstrous doors of the Arcane Wing should have been barred and locked, since that was what Claire and Andras had agreed, which would give Brevity the nice excuse that, hey, at least she'd checked.\n\nBut the doors were not barred and locked. Aftrer Brevity skipped down the last steps, she skidded to a stop on the dusty hardwood, just short of the reaching shadows cast by the wide double doors of the Arcane Wing. Which stood open.\n\nShe wound seafoam hair around her finger and gave it an anxious tug as she took a step over the threshold. The Arcane Wing felt much as it always had, a slithering, hostile composition of shadow and steel. The air was weighted with cold, clinical things, dust and formaldehyde, rubies and neglect. The Arcane Wing had never been a bright place, but even the domed work lights were dimmed, throwing the cavernous space into thick eddies of gloom. Brevity hesitated in the island of light created by the hallway, not quite prepared to dive in.\n\n\"H-hullo? Is anyone\u2014\" Her voice and courage failed as the ravens unleashed a series of shrieks from the rookery. Otherwise, the Arcane Wing was silent. She didn't have to venture far in to be certain of it: no demons, no Horrors, nothing. It should have been reassuring, not having to face the monsters she went looking for, and Brevity's shoulders disengaged from hugging her ears until the thought occurred to her: If they're not here, then they're somewhere else.\n\nThe breath stopped in Brevity's throat, and her leg muscles seized.\n\nIt was the unknown that did it. It was an easy mistake to make, thinking fear was the ultimate domain of demons. They looked the part. Or mortals, they had such fleeting things to lose. But humans were constantly changing, and demons were creatures of certainty. The truth was no one, no one, knew fear like muses. Fear was an operation of the imagination, the ability to see an empty space and imagine. Imagine what might be there, the possibilities filling in what reality left blank. To be afraid was an exercise of self-inspired suffering, and Brevity wore inspiration in her skin.\n\nIt burned now, the edge of the blue tattoo writhing against the fine bones of her wrist and hungry to be peeled loose. In Brevity's mind, black sickle claws raked over gems and artifacts one moment, her skin the next. Plucking the soft strings of her veins, shredding her. In her mind, the Horrors reached out so surely from the dark she could hear them. It didn't matter that they weren't there, couldn't be there. If she released the inspiration gilt in her skin, pure potential, it would make it real.\n\nA raven shriek brought her back to her senses. Her hand hovered halfway over her wrist. Brevity didn't try to calm the shuddering heart in her chest, didn't try to fight the panic that washed over her. She knew from experience that was no good. Instead, she released it, turned her back on the unseen claws, and ran.\n\nShe should go to Walter. She would go to Walter. She would be safe with Walter, and she would send a message to Claire on Earth, and Claire could come back and deal with it, and Brevity could be brave for someone else again. That's what she needed to do. She just needed to navigate down the hallways, avoid the Horrors and her own fear long enough to make it to the transport office and summon Claire. She could do it.\n\nShe didn't remember throwing open the doors of the Unwritten Wing, but she must have locked them behind her. Her knees hit an unwritten rug, and the disappointment she felt was a distant, muted thing. She was devoting too much effort to trying to stop her short, rabbit-quick breath.\n\nOf course, she hadn't made it to Walter. Of course, she'd not warned Claire, had run instead to cower and hide. Muses could imagine anything, inspire anything in an author, but for themselves? All Brevity gave herself was fear.\n\nShe was here now, but even her mounting anxiety wanted her to do something. Her hands trembled as she dug through the drawers and came up with a small silver box. Brevity squinted at the words inside, cursing Claire's cramped handwriting. Eventually, she sorted out three squares of translucent vellum, one violet, one red, one black. Dreams. Blood. Ink. The fibers burned her fingers, and Brevity forced herself to focus on the pain as she uncovered the flame of a gas lamp. One paper, then another, went up in a shriek of smoke as Brevity mumbled the written commands. Her voice was hoarse, words dragged over broken glass, but the Library understood her anyway. The air tightened, then snapped in a hiss of anise and ash. One, two, three wards, sealing off the Unwritten Wing from the rest of existence once again.\n\nThe air took on an unnatural silence, the taste of Hell fading from the roof of Brevity's mouth. She fell back against the desk, thinking for a moment she could summon up a feeling of silliness, of shame. If the silliness came, that would mean she was wrong about the shadows, wrong about the fear. It would still be a failure, having run back here instead of investigating further, but at least that would mean that she hadn't lost her chance to summon help in the face of an actual threat. Claire could get back and scold her for sealing the Library, and they could laugh about it. Brevity could take her scolding and make it into a joke and\u2014\n\nDust fluttered from the shelves. The papers on Claire's desk rippled as if an errant breeze had shivered by. Brevity's breath stuttered, clenching when a barely audible boom vibrated. Far away, like a soft finger plucking strings. Nails dragging along glass. An outer ward, being probed by a curious hand, too weak to knock properly. Whoever it was should give up, go away, realize the Library was closed and\u2014\n\nThe next shudder reached in between her ribs, jostling her chest as the whole wing creaked. Again, increasing in frequency and strength until it was a war drum. Because that's what it was, not a knock, not an idle curiosity of a passing demon. Someone was knocking, and would keep knocking until it was granted entrance. Brevity's resolve shriveled in her chest, strangling her breath along with it, and she sank to the floor alone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 43",
                "text": "\u2002I tried writing it down, my life, so I wouldn't forget it. Where I was born. My parents. My friends, my loves. My husband, my child. But every time I try to write down something from my mortal life in the log, the words melt into the paper like watermarks. Gone as soon as the ink dries. The log is a record for librarians, not people. I can feel its judgment.\n\n\u2002But what happens when the inevitable occurs? When the world forgets me, so I begin to forget myself? What do I become, when I am nothing but a librarian?\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Claire Hadley, 1986 CE\n\nMdina didn't seem to be a natural habitat for the young. Bored teenagers and young children peppered the steady stream of tourists at the entrance, but the farther Leto wandered into the city, taking narrow stone-walled alleys at random, the fewer people his own age he saw.\n\nFewer people in general, really. The buildings and streets were built out of that same worn island stone. Thick flagstones swallowed his footsteps as he took corners without a destination in mind. Stern signs hung at residential intersections, declaring that the city residents took the name Silent City seriously. As long as he was quiet, no one questioned what a bleary-eyed American teenager was doing so far from the tour buses.\n\nIt was probably fortunate, as his head felt like an oil slick just waiting for a light. Thoughts black and toxic, coiled with hurt. He'd felt these black thoughts invade before, more often when he was his full demon self in Hell, but this didn't feel like an artificial nastiness. When he had felt the demon thoughts before, they'd been like a computer virus, infecting and corrupting but originating externally. The anger simmering in his chest now, he couldn't understand, but it felt natural, close to the skin.\n\nThe winding alley dumped out into a small courtyard. The fountain at the center hadn't held water for a while, but the sun-warmed stones felt nice under his fingers. He slumped against them and closed his eyes to breathe. The farther he got into the city, farther away from the echoing Hellhound howls, the less fear gripped him, leaving him with just the thoughts he brought with him.\n\nLashing out at Claire had been more instinct than choice, but feeding off her shame had been unforgivable. Claire had been kind to him, more than she needed to. He hadn't meant to hurt her, but then he'd been glad he had, because he was just so angry. It was a living thing, boiling in his gut. He was so tired of being disappointed, being hurt. And this cut deeper, somehow. He knew, logically, that everyone in Hell was there because of their own failings. He knew Claire wasn't just an unwritten author, and she could be hard and merciless.\n\nBut there was sin and there was betrayal. The idea of betraying someone who trusted you\u2014images flashed through his head: a death for lack of well-placed trust...\n\nLeto gripped his head to stop the throb. It was unforgivable. The worst sin. It welled, a searing and familiar hurt, and he immediately wanted to hurt anyone who'd do such a thing. To make them suffer, as they deserved to.\n\nThat'd be what a demon would do, wouldn't it?\n\nHe'd pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes hard enough to feel his pulse. Light flared and the pain was real, despite his temporary form. Leto wasn't sure which was the real him anymore, the demon or the human. He wondered if he'd have to choose at some point, and which was the better choice.\n\n\"Easy there. Those eyes are expensive to replace.\" Claire's soft voice nearly sent him tumbling into the empty fountain.\n\nShe stood at the other side of the stone ring, diminished somehow. Her shoulders were hunched and her arms wrapped around her, pale knuckled, holding on or holding in. It was a fragile pose, human. Irrationally, that made anger lance back up Leto's throat. He turned away. \"I bet you could stitch me up just like your books. Demons are easy enough to replace.\"\n\n\"You're not a demon.\"\n\n\"And you're not a liar.\" Leto hated the bitterness in his own voice.\n\nClaire sighed. He could feel her looking around, gauging the emptiness of the square before speaking. \"Leto, listen, you shouldn't run off\u2014\"\n\n\"Or what?\" He was being petulant, but he didn't care. He reached for what he instinctively knew would hurt. \"You'll banish me too?\"\n\n\"Those words only work in Hell,\" Claire snapped before grimacing. \"What I mean is... No. Leto, I would never\u2014\"\n\n\"Never? Sure, go on\u2014tell me everything you'd never do as a dead person. You've been so good at keeping your word so far.\" His hand wound a fist over his chest to quell the clenching feeling. It was irrational, this black bleak feeling lodged in his lungs. He didn't want to wield it, especially not at Claire again, but it felt like the infection had reached his tongue. He hurt. \"What's gonna happen now? Are you going to turn against us too? I bet you could figure out some way to sell us out, trap us here, hide your secret.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous! It's not as if\u2014 I never lied to you. I just didn't\u2014\" Claire stopped, and from the look that crossed her face, Leto didn't need to say anything to crucify her. She was doing it to herself.\n\n\"I'm not saying I don't deserve it, Leto,\" Claire said softly. \"I deserve everything you're feeling. But we're stuck here together, for now, and contrary to what you think, I would never leave you behind. So if you want to sit here forever and hate me, that's okay. Or if you never want to speak to me again\u2014\"\n\nSomething of the acidic feeling withered in Leto's throat and turned to ash that left an awful feeling in his mouth. He heard the whispers from the raven road again. We never talk anymore.\n\n\"No,\" Leto said instead. \"I just... I followed you. Because you seemed... different, better. I didn't know where else to go, and you seemed to care.\"\n\n\"Seemed.\" Claire repeated the word, half-rueful. She made a cautious approach around the fountain, slow and wary. And weary. Exhaustion bruised her eyes. \"You can care and still cause harm. Feeling, caring, for someone else is the worst kind of weapon, in my experience. It allows you to do things you never thought you could do and things you never thought you would do. All for the love of someone else. It's a trap I'd avoided on principle since Beatrice, up until recently.\"\n\nThere was an earnestness, an entreaty, that softened her face when she looked at him. The librarian of Hell's Library wasn't ever soft, but Claire, occasionally, was. It was what eased the last of Leto's anger. It drained out of him like an oil spill, leaving him suddenly hollow but stained feeling. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to hold on to it or let it go. His shoulders slumped. His voice felt more lost than angry when he found it again. \"How do I trust you?\"\n\nClaire sat down beside him and considered his question seriously. \"I think it'd be disingenuous to ask you to. Let's make a deal.\"\n\nLeto rolled his eyes. \"Give me a break. Adults only say 'Let's make a deal' when they need something they can't justify.\"\n\nClaire's frown inched up into a smile at one side of her lips. \"It appears your teenager memories are coming along nicely.\"\n\nLeto gave her a dull look. \"That's also insulting.\"\n\n\"Fair enough. I'm sorry. It's been a long time since my\u2014\" Claire slouched her shoulder against his. It felt comforting. \"You don't have to trust me. Just work with me. Give me the chance to set right all the wrongs I've done here. I need to get back to the Library. There's something off here, this whole situation. The codex, Beatrice just happening to be here, even you\u2014\"\n\n\"I already knew I wasn't right.\"\n\n\"You are perfect,\" Claire snapped, and the protective fierceness made Leto smile, just a little. She was wrong\u2014everything in his screaming heart knew it\u2014but it meant something, that she believed it. \"I mean all of this happening at once. Coincidences don't happen, not in Hell. Brevity should have sent word by now too, if the Library was in rights. Something else is going on, and of all the members of our little family right now, I trust you at my side the most. I need you.\"\n\nLeto turned and found himself blinking to process that. Claire was a wielder of words, prone to confusing speeches like a teacher, ingrained with librarian authority and scholarly control. But this request had an unvarnished, raw grain to it. Honest and easily bruised. Leto felt the world silently resettle around him to account for that. It confused him, and he was so very tired of feeling confused.\n\nClaire was wrong about him. Wrong about the humanity he had left inside. She cared, and she hurt people with that caring. But she tried. She was trapped, perhaps even more than he was. The Library and Hell were tethered to her, like a cuff around her neck, but she never stopped trying. She never looked back. Leto desperately wanted some part of that. \"When can we leave?\"\n\nClaire's lips twitched at the plaintive note in his voice. He supposed it was ridiculous: the idea of a soul eager to leave Earth and go to Hell. She didn't see that every time they went to Earth, he seemed to feel more confused, more tugged in two directions. He worried one more good tug might rip his seams entirely. Only the Library held him together.\n\n\"You want to go back?\" Claire asked carefully.\n\nLeto shrugged. \"I didn't think there was a choice.\"\n\n\"Our ghostlights have run out, and Hellhounds are after our souls. It's going to be difficult, to say the least, to set foot outside the walls without being obliterated. I'd say desperation has broadened our bartering position.\" Claire made a vague gesture: to the courtyard, to the fading twilight above. \"What do you really want, Leto?\"\n\nHe had a hangnail. His thumb worried at it as he thought. It was a question no one had asked him\u2014not in Hell and, Leto felt relatively certain even without memories, not often when he was alive. The choice was a little unnerving. \"I want... to make a way forward. And I guess I... want to know. I can't stand not knowing. These feelings I get, I don't know which part of me...\"\n\n\"Hell may not help that. We send our souls there for various reasons but... you should know,\" Claire said quietly, a complicated look furrowing her brow. \"Realms enjoy stasis. The longer you're there, the harder it is to see yourself anywhere else. It has a way of seeping in.\"\n\nThat didn't sound comforting. Leto gnawed on his bottom lip. \"I just want to know who I was. Who I am. I won't find that here.\"\n\nClaire tilted her head as if absorbing that, then nodded. \"Fair enough. We'll just have to outsmart the Hellhounds.\"\n\nShe stated it like a simple course of action, but made no movement to get up. The silence was companionable as they gave the flagstones more contemplation than they probably deserved. Leto felt his chest unwinding and said, \"So. You like girls?\"\n\nA smile tipped onto Claire's face and she chuckled. \"I like... interesting people. Everyone has their charms. The details never mattered much to me.\"\n\n\"So you're pan?\"\n\n\"Pan?\"\n\n\"Pansexual,\" Leto explained.\n\n\"Is that the term now?\" Claire asked, and it took a moment before the realization fluttered into Leto's gut. Another word, another memory. Claire studied his face and relaxed. \"I remember loving, a few times. I was married to a very nice man in life. We had a daughter, even.\"\n\n\"A daughter?\" Leto was caught off guard by that.\n\n\"She was...\" The ease fell off her face. Claire frowned. \"Damn. I can't remember her name anymore. My own daughter.\" A kind of grief flickered but was just as quickly tucked away. She cleared her throat. \"Memories are another casualty of Hell. The more you're forgotten on Earth, the more you forget yourself. It can be a blessing or a curse.\"\n\nThe light in Claire's gaze had faded, dark as the twilight clinging to the square now. \"Well, I've already got that problem,\" Leto said, hoping it would cheer her. When it did, it felt like a small victory. He rocked to crouch on his heels. \"Not that I'm likely to forget all this. Should we be getting back, ma'am?\"\n\nClaire heaved a deep, grumbling sigh at that. \"Oh, blast, we should. The heroes are likely at each other's throats again.\" She fluttered her hand and Leto helped haul her to her feet. \"And I still haven't gone over how I need your help. Let's talk on the way.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 44",
                "text": "The front room of Beatrice's apartments was already in disarray from the search, and now appeared to be the scene for a very lazy duel. Beatrice perched at the edge of her desk, feigning interest in the paperback in her hands. She appeared entirely unaware of the half-lidded glare Hero maintained. He was slouched against the wall near the door, and straightened as Leto returned with Claire. The Hounds picked up again as their targets returned closer to the walls. The intermittent growls shivered through the floor at Leto's feet, sending a chill over his skin. At least they were no longer throwing themselves against the wards.\n\n\"You're wasting time refusing,\" Hero pointed out, seeming to continue some line of debate he'd engaged in with Beatrice while they were gone. \"The warden is very persistent when it comes to her books. I should know.\"\n\n\"You're too clich\u00e9 to be one of her books.\" Beatrice licked her thumb and turned the page of her paperback. \"Frankly, I'm surprised you let another of us out and about, Claire.\"\n\n\"She didn't 'let' anything. I freed myself. Without help,\" Hero said.\n\n\"How clever of you. And they say we heroes aren't smart.\" It was Beatrice's turn to squint. She placed an ink-stained finger to her chin. \"Curious thing, though. Calling you Hero.\"\n\nLeto knew Hero enough now to tell that ruffled him. A tic started in his jaw. Hero's gaze flickered to Claire and back. He didn't challenge Beatrice with a look again. His hand brushed at his hair in short, jerky movements. \"Good a name as any.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Claire had waited out the pissing match with a bored expression that made Leto stifle a grin. She straightened now. \"If you two are really quite done... Any word from Andras yet?\"\n\nHero shook his head and Claire pursed her lips around a sigh. She crossed the room and plucked out of Beatrice's hands the paperback, which she'd hidden behind like a shield. \"The codex, Bea. Time is of the essence.\"\n\n\"Time is exactly what I'm considering.\" Beatrice was quiet, but she folded her arms in a motion that mimicked her author perfectly and she held her gaze. \"I won't send you back.\"\n\n\"I'm going back to the Library either way. I'm needed there. The only thing we're debating is whether I have to take you with me or not.\"\n\nBeatrice's slouch stiffened into stubbornness. \"I won't go back. I'll give it to your angels first.\"\n\nClaire's smile chilled. \"We'll see about that.\"\n\nThere was a beat of silence that threatened to freeze over. Leto coughed. \"I'm hungry. Is the kitchen okay to use or...?\"\n\n\"Down the hall. Help yourself.\" Beatrice didn't break her glaring match with Claire, but she waved a hand vaguely behind her.\n\n\"Come on, Hero. Should eat something while we still got human taste buds,\" Leto said.\n\n\"Oh no. This showdown is too good to pass up.\" Hero, recovered from his earlier mood, danced a look between Claire and her hero. \"Like a bull and a brick wall.\"\n\n\"I'll assume I'm the bull in this scenario,\" Claire said.\n\n\"Not even for little cakes? You said you liked cakes with frosting,\" Leto said.\n\nHero finally allowed himself to be distracted. \"Maltese cakes?\"\n\n\"Little Debbie, actually. I think I saw a box earlier while we were searching. C'mon.\" Throughout the exchange, neither Claire nor Beatrice had moved. They'd barely blinked, locked with a divide of hurts between them. So Leto was relieved when Hero allowed himself to be led from the room. They wandered down the hall and left the librarian to face her hero."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 45",
                "text": "\u2002How much easier it would be if everyone knew their role: the hero, the sidekick, the villain. Our books would be neater and our souls less frayed.\n\n\u2002But whether you have blood or ink, no one's story is that simple.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1982 CE\n\nIt was a slow-motion earthquake, the lurch and shiver of the ground beneath her feet, perfectly timed with the deep, bottomless howl that reached through thick city walls to stroke goose bumps over her skin. The Hellhounds were not tiring. Claire knew they wouldn't, but there was a difference between theoretically understanding an immortal, indefatigable, undeterrable monster from Hell and having it shake plaster dust into your hair.\n\nThe interminable shuddering as the beasts flung themselves at Mdina's wards, the way the air in her lungs seemed to vibrate each time they howled, the way her pulse rose and fell with their growls\u2014it all rubbed her nerves raw. Her sanity might break before the Silent City's wards did. The unrelenting rhythm of it was dizzying.\n\nIt was why she was simultaneously relieved and annoyed when Beatrice broke the silence.\n\n\"I have something for you.\" She hefted from the desk a familiar book, leather bound and weathered, like all unwritten books. Beatrice held it gingerly, her face full of vulnerable uncertainty\u2014an alien expression for a hero. She watched Claire like she was an animal she might startle with fast movements.\n\nClaire crossed her arms. \"Unless that's the codex pages, you and I have nothing to talk about.\"\n\nInk-stained fingers curled reflexively against the book. \"I was under the impression that a librarian had a duty to her books.\" Beatrice kept her voice neutral. \"I was hoping you would be willing to look at mine while you were here.\"\n\nClaire's anger faltered, despite her best efforts. \"Your book is damaged?\"\n\n\"Just loose binding. Thirty years on Earth is hard on a body. I don't want to risk losing any pages.\"\n\nClaire pursed her lips at that. A shade of the old guilt and duty tugged at her. \"I'll work on it in exchange for the pages of the codex.\"\n\n\"The Claire I knew would have done it out of kindness.\"\n\n\"The Claire you knew killed her only friend for an infatuation. Let's hope a lot has changed since then.\" She tilted her chin. \"I'll do it for a favor, then.\"\n\n\"We both know it was more than an infatuation,\" Beatrice pressed. She shook her head. \"I just wanted to talk.\"\n\n\"Then it's convenient that your needs and desires don't concern me anymore.\" Despite these words, Claire snatched the book from Beatrice's hands and picked at the disintegrating thread. Something in her twisted at the sight of a damaged book, especially her own. \"I suppose you don't have any traditional linen thread in this day and age.\"\n\n\"You can get anything in Malta if you simply know who to ask.\" Beatrice waved to her recently tidied desk. \"Scarlet dyed, hand drawn, just like you prefer. Bottom drawer.\"\n\nClaire sat down behind the desk and began shuffling through the drawer, pulling out a tidy bunch of red thread, thick needles, and other bookbinding materials. The familiarity brought a strange stab of comfort.\n\nBeatrice drew near her, leaning on the edge of the desk. She felt the unwritten woman's dark-eyed gaze follow her hands as she pulled out a particularly sharp-looking scalpel and needle. Color drained from Beatrice's cheeks, her shoulders stiffened, and she faced straight ahead.\n\nBooks were squeamish patients sometimes, but that suited Claire. She turned her focus on the book and began inspecting the tension in the binding. Stress slowly edged out of her shoulders as she set into a rhythm of running her ink-stained fingers over each line of thread, progressing quickly through her inspection with long practice.\n\nIt was calming, after a fashion. Books were always easier this way. Mere paper and leather. Simple, physical, containable. But, like people, books rarely stayed that way. Stories never lived only in the ink.\n\nBeatrice kept her eyes forward, but long, calloused fingers drummed on the desk in a patient rhythm. \"You seem to have made friends. They're... nice.\"\n\n\"A demon, a broken hero, and an amnesiac. If you want nice, you should meet my assistant.\" Claire adjusted the desk lamp for better light. \"You're in luck. It appears the headband is frayed and just needs tightening. Good. I didn't have the time or resources to do an entire rebinding.\" She began to work her tool carefully between the leather cover and the spine.\n\nBeatrice flinched away at the creak of leather. \"You trust them enough to travel with them.\"\n\n\"Trust born of necessity.\" Claire finished working away the leather cover, leaving a thick stack of sturdy vellum pages fused together with thread and glue. She ignored much of the binding and focused on the delicate line of frayed thread at the top of the spine.\n\nSnipping sounds filled the heavy pause. Beatrice's voice was barely louder than the pluck of thread. \"You really won't consider staying?\"\n\nThe question was so plaintive, but the answer was so obvious. Claire shot her a frown, but the unwritten woman was too busy studying her shoes to notice. She turned her attention back to the book. \"It's out of the question. If I stay, worse things will come. Either the Hellhounds will wear down the wards, or the angels will con their way in. You're sitting on a time bomb. There's no use.\"\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, she saw Beatrice's shoulders bunch. \"We planned to face down worse things once. Together.\"\n\n\"Well, we didn't exactly run away together, did we?\" Claire's voice turned acidic and harsher than Beatrice deserved, but she opted to focus on the colored knots of thread rather than see her reaction.\n\n\"And that was my mistake.\"\n\n\"Yes. Seems to have worked out well enough for you.\" A vicious feeling spiked up her chest. Claire struggled not to overtighten the thread, forcing her hands to relax as she worked. It helped if she imagined she was stitching Beatrice's mouth shut.\n\nBeatrice was quiet a moment, so quiet that Claire wondered if she'd disappeared into her book again. \"You don't know who you're traveling with.\"\n\n\"I think I know them better than you.\"\n\n\"Do you?\"\n\nThe way Beatrice said it made Claire's brow furrow. When she looked up, Beatrice had her chin tilted toward the light, was watching her in profile. \"If I can't convince you to stay here, then you should know the creatures you're calling friends.\"\n\nClaire hesitated. \"If this is about Andras, I\u2014\"\n\n\"The character.\"\n\nConfusion brought Claire up short. \"What about Hero?\"\n\n\"Has he said anything specific about his story? The role he plays?\" Beatrice studied the desk, purposely not looking at her own book. \"He's not typical, is he?\"\n\nClaire scowled and turned back to her work. She lacked any patience for petty jealousy, book or no. \"He's maddeningly annoying. I'd say that's a prime heroic trait. That and the cheekbones.\"\n\nBeatrice coughed and shook her head. \"I forget how librarians have only the external to go on. He's fooled you by looking the part.\"\n\nClaire narrowed her eyes. \"What are you driving at?\"\n\nBeatrice's mouth tightened as she considered her words. \"Looks can be deceiving. The prettiest ones are. Outside and inside his book.\"\n\nIn his book? As if that mattered: characters were true to how they were written, at least at first, and granted, Hero had begun to display unusual quirks of personality, but that could be attributed to corruption. It made sense that the damage would warp him. Make him less kind, more cruel. Less noble, more grasping. Vain, self-preserving, unreliable, sarcastic\u2014yes, Claire could list all his many flaws. His attitude was more self-serving than... Claire stopped midstitch and laid down the needle. Oh, she'd been a damn fool. She considered, turning the thought over in her mind, lining actions and memories up against it.\n\nThen carefully, thoughtfully, pragmatically, she folded the implications up and tucked them away for later.\n\nBeatrice watched her with obvious pity. A hand reached out, briefly skimming over her shoulder in a way that made Claire tense. \"Do you understand the danger? You can't trust his nature. Grant him the slightest opportunity and he'll turn\u2014\"\n\nAnd carefully, thoughtfully, pragmatically, Claire lost her patience for concerned ex-lovers.\n\nLeather clapped under her palm as she slammed the book cover in place, and Claire found herself standing. She leaned over the desk with enough force to make Beatrice startle.\n\n\"You have precisely zero room to lecture me on trust. Listen to me and listen carefully, because though I shouldn't have to explain this to my own creation, I am only going to say this once. I am not a damsel in need of saving. You aren't the hero in this story, and you sure as hell aren't my knight in shining armor. No\u2014\" Claire snarled as Beatrice made to speak. \"You never were! Look at yourself and use your inky brain for once! The same hair, same eyes. I bet you even love oysters and hate salads. I don't know that because I'm your author. I know that because when I dreamed up your story, you weren't the woman I wanted to love; you were the woman I wanted to be.\"\n\nA chill blanched the color from Beatrice's face. Her mouth fell open. \"That can't...\"\n\nClaire didn't stop. It was a wound, and Claire wanted to wound her, someone, anyone. If only so she wouldn't be the only one hurting. \"Me, as I wished I could have been, once. Independent, competent, educated, and wealthy, above the constant expectations of family, and, most of all, free of society's rules. Why wouldn't I have wanted that? I should have made you a man while I was at it.\"\n\nThe moment the words were out of her mouth, Claire regretted them. Beatrice recoiled as if struck, lip curling into a startled scowl as she shoved herself away from the desk. She stumbled backward a step, losing her natural grace.\n\n\"Bugger.\" Claire chewed hard on the inside of her cheek as she berated herself. Her hands stilled on the book. \"Bea, I didn't mean it like that.\"\n\n\"I know how you meant it.\" Beatrice's voice was brittle.\n\n\"No, I meant\u2014the way the world was when I was alive, the way my family was, I just meant\u2014\"\n\n\"I get it.\" Beatrice's jaw worked, and she refused to meet Claire's eyes. \"But the woman I loved wouldn't have said it.\"\n\nThe hurt simmered in the air, as bitter as ash. Guilt, oily and cold, settled in Claire's stomach. She sighed, rubbing her nose a moment before pressing forward. \"That's the point exactly. I'm not that woman anymore. I'm not even the lonely soul that you enchanted in the Library. I am the librarian. I don't need your protection or concern. It is unwelcome.\"\n\nBeatrice frowned down at the book on the desk between them, as if she suddenly found herself in a different story than she'd thought she was in. \"It doesn't matter who you are now. You said yourself Hell is\u2014\"\n\n\"If I decide I want to leave the Library, I will exit under my own resources. This is not a rescue. I am not your quest. I'm sorry.\" Claire wasn't used to trying to sound kind, but she tried for Beatrice.\n\nShe felt a mirrored hurt as the unwritten woman's shoulders dropped. Beatrice turned away, sitting heavily on the edge of the desk. Tension sang in her back as she turned blank eyes out the window.\n\nClaire waited a breath until she could be sure her voice would be steady before pushing the point. \"My quest is the lost pieces of the codex. Your repairs are nearly done\u2014you can glue the cover yourself. Now, will you tell me where they are before all of Heaven and Hell falls down on us?\"\n\nBeatrice was still for a long moment, long enough for Claire to begin to doubt she was going to respond. Then she tilted her chin down in an imperceptible nod. \"Check the back.\"\n\nClaire parsed the words a moment before the meaning dawned on her, and her mouth fell open. Her gaze dropped to the old unwritten book in her hands. She flipped the book over and thumbed through the back pages until a folded sheaf of even older papers fell out. \"You kept them with your own book. So when you asked me to repair\u2014\"\n\nBeatrice gave a cold, airless chuckle. \"Even a fool knows where such dangerous things belong. You're the only one I would trust with them. And with me.\"\n\nLike heat roiling off a fire, power whispered in the air around the pages, whispers of dark things, undone things. Claire stared a moment, then very carefully wrapped the edge of her skirts over the remaining pages of the Codex Gigas.\n\n\"What will you do now?\" Beatrice asked quietly.\n\nThe pages felt heavy and warm in the pocket on her hip. Claire wiped her hands as she finished stowing them, but the residual dread didn't come off her crawling skin. Her lips fell into a hard line. \"We leave. But first I need to talk to a hero.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 46",
                "text": "\u2002Librarians are wisely advised to stay out of the business of realm politics. Nothing good comes of the powers of realms meeting. There's no clear answer, between paradises and damnations, which are stronger. It depends on the time, the place, the tilt of the world and the spin of the stars. Mostly, it depends on the mortals involved.\n\n\u2002It seems blasphemous. In a constant war of immortal forces, ancient demigods, good and evil, the most powerful piece on the board is the fragile pawn of a human soul.\n\n\u2014Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1802 CE\n\n\u2002Stay out of politics? Ridiculous! When has a writer ever managed to avoid politics? Every story is political. Tell a soul a story they want to believe, and you can change the world.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1932 CE\n\nClaire found leto and Hero in the kitchen, conferring over a wood-block table. Despite being seated, Hero had to stay at a perpetual hunch to avoid knocking the shiny copper pans overhead. The room was small, cluttered, but cozily appointed in line with Claire's own tastes, like every other part of Beatrice's flat. Leto and Hero had a pile of prepackaged cake snacks on a platter between them, and Hero's frown deepened as he scrutinized one still in its cellophane. \"This does not look at all like cake.\"\n\n\"It is. Try it,\" Leto said.\n\n\"It's hard and shiny.\"\n\n\"That's just the frosting. It's soft inside. Well, softish. Try it. Everyone loves them.\"\n\nHero gave him an arch look and finally took a sizable bite. A moment to chew, and then cake sputtered across the table from an explosive cough. Leto broke into a giggle as the other man doubled over. When he finally recovered, Hero's eyes watered with a withering look. There was a smudge of cream hanging from his offended frown. \"You neglected to mention the toxic filling.\"\n\nLeto bit his lip. \"What? It's sweet!\"\n\n\"Sweet? No, honey is sweet. Freedom is sweet. A pretty boy or handsome girl is sweet. That? That burns.\" Hero took a large gulp from his mug of tea. \"Such nonsense. This is worse than the other place.\"\n\n\"I don't know. They seem to bathe more here,\" Claire said.\n\nTwo faces looked up. A familiar, crooked look of disdain righted itself on Hero's face. A bit of chocolate frosting clung to his upper lip. He gestured dismissively to the cakes on the table.\n\n\"That's only because you haven't tried what passes for sweets here yet. Help yourself. Or can we finally leave?\"\n\n\"I have the codex pages. We just need to find Andras and prepare to leave.\" Claire held out her hand. \"May I see your book a moment, Hero?\"\n\nHero unfolded himself from the chair and wiped his hands. He reached into his pocket as he rose and handed his book over to her. \"I've been perfectly behaved. Is there some\u2014\"\n\nThe flat leather of the cover connected with his jaw, along with the full weight of the tome and Claire's swing behind it. Leto startled, scattering the snacks on the table as he stumbled to his feet. Claire silenced his squawk with a raised hand, never taking her eyes off Hero.\n\nHero leaned over the table, massaging his jaw. Canniness and caution flooded his eyes. \"What was that for?\"\n\n\"You never told me.\" Claire ran her fingers over Hero's book, tugging at the blank pages she'd sewn in. \"What exactly was your story like? A name like 'Nightfall' and looking as you do, I suspected high fantasy. Do you miss being a brave knight, Hero?\"\n\nHero's brows inched together. \"Less than you might think.\"\n\nClaire swung. This time, Hero anticipated enough to lean away, deflecting the blow. He came up and backed against the wall. A hanging pot clobbered his head. He grimaced and raised his hands. \"Peace, woman!\"\n\nClaire held the book over her head again.\n\n\"What's wrong with you two?\" Leto stumbled between them, holding up his hands though he didn't seem certain who was a threat to whom. He visibly relaxed when Claire lowered her arm.\n\n\"Lesson time, Leto. It's important to know your archetypes. You know the difference between a hero and a typical villain in a fight?\" Claire said, pinning accusing eyes at Hero over the teenager's shoulder. \"Heroes are optimists. Ambush a hero, and you'll get shock, anger. Retaliation at the injustice. But a villain, a villain, now... they know how betrayal works. Strike a villain, they expect it. Villains get cautious, not angry.\"\n\n\"Oh, I can be plenty angry,\" Hero said.\n\n\"Don't.\" Claire clenched her hands and had to remind herself not to twist the book in her grasp. She shouldered past Leto and shoved the book hard into Hero's chest. \"You lied.\"\n\n\"It was more of a... failure to correct.\" Hero grimaced down at his book. \"You were the one that started calling me a hero! I didn't think I'd be around long enough for it to matter, but then... well.\"\n\n\"You're a villain.\"\n\n\"And you're a murderer!\" Hero snapped. \"If we're going about handing out titles. Were we supposed to forget that?\"\n\n\"Don't try to deflect this\u2014\"\n\n\"Like you did?\" Hero leaned into his space, a harsh sneer coiled and ready to strike. \"Perhaps we should be talking about what is going to happen when the whole of Hell's court hears about what you did, hmm? When we get back, I'm going to have such fascinating stories to tell.\"\n\nClaire held her expression still, despite the self-doubt and misgivings curdling through her anger. \"I'm the librarian.\"\n\n\"For now,\" Hero said. \"What would you do to stay that way? Maybe you could lose track of another book, warden. Let's talk about that.\"\n\n\"Like. Hell.\" She held his glare, the only sound in the kitchen Leto's nervous shuffling. She would hide, she would obscure, she would mislead, but hell if she would ever fail the Library again. She couldn't stand more ink on her hands, stains that wouldn't rub out. Claire shook her head. \"You were never a hero.\"\n\n\"Figured that out on your own, did you? Here I thought I'd been the perfect gallant.\" Hero's lips thinned into a line before his eyes moved over her shoulder. \"Or was there a little bird?\"\n\nBeatrice lingered at the kitchen door. Her arms were crossed and she held herself tall and tense, like an arrow pulled ready for a target. \"Some of us care about the truth.\"\n\n\"Oh no.\" Claire whirled on Beatrice. \"You don't get to say a word about the truth.\"\n\nA nerve twitched in Beatrice's haughty face. \"I'm not the one who\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't trust either of you. At least he\"\u2014Claire practically stabbed Hero's chest\u2014\"knows it's a lie. He pretends to be a hero\u2014but you think you're being heroic.\"\n\nBeatrice's expression became injured and glacial. She said nothing before withdrawing again. Claire waited until the unwritten woman had disappeared down the hallway to release her sigh between pursed lips. She turned and caught Leto's look, which was part judgmental teenager, part injured puppy.\n\n\"You are very good at driving people off,\" Leto said.\n\n\"It's a gift.\" Claire's smile felt forced, but she offered it anyway.\n\nHero lost his bravado after the outburst and wilted against the wall. \"It appears we both have secrets to keep\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't.\" Claire cut Hero off. \"We will discuss your future\u2014at length\u2014when we get back to the Library. But for that to happen, we must get out of here. I do have a way you can help redeem yourself. Call it an act of goodwill.\"\n\n\"How fortuitous for me.\" Hero narrowed his eyes. \"Why do I feel I am not going to like this?\"\n\nClaire merely smiled and gestured them both toward the table. \"We need a distraction.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 47",
                "text": "When Claire emerged from the kitchen into the study a short time later, Andras was lounging on the couch with a cup of coffee and already deep in discussion with Beatrice. He rose when he spotted her entrance, and gripped her shoulders tight in a hug. \"I'm sorry, pup. I tried.\"\n\nHis hands lingered on the tension in her shoulders. It was supposed to be a comfortable squeeze, but felt more like a measuring of meat.\n\nClaire ignored the quiet alarm in her gut. \"The angels are already here?\"\n\nAndras ghosted a nod. \"Roosting like vultures on the outskirts. They aren't in yet, but it's only a matter of time\u2014an hour, if we're lucky.\"\n\n\"Hell,\" Hero muttered as he and Leto emerged from the kitchen behind Claire.\n\n\"Heaven, if we're being precise.\"\n\n\"They're watching the main gates, but I was discussing our options with Beatrice just now. There's a road that leads out to the farmlands. Only used by the residents. The bridge looks unguarded. I don't think they know about it,\" Andras said.\n\n\"The Hellhounds will smell us the minute Leto and I step outside the wards. How far is this entrance to the nearest realm gate?\" Claire shot a sharp look to Beatrice. \"There is a gate to an afterworld here, yes? Malta has too much history to be barren.\"\n\n\"There is... of a sort.\" Beatrice's stiff frown fell into uncertainty. \"It's not active, as far as I know. There are some ruins connected to the catacombs\u2014old, very old. There's a gate there, but I don't know what it connects to. Could be a dead realm. A lot of beliefs have lived and died here.\"\n\n\"It will get us out of Earth, which gets us away from the Hellhounds. At this point, I'll barter passage with the tooth fairy if I have to.\"\n\n\"The tooth fairy is real?\" Leto asked.\n\nAndras's grin was malicious. \"Not the sort you're thinking, child.\"\n\nClaire ignored them both as she considered, rapping her fingers on her crossed arms. \"How far from the gates?\"\n\n\"On foot, at a dead run?\" Beatrice sounded doubtful. \"It's close. You could make it in a couple minutes.\"\n\n\"There's no outrunning Hellhounds, pup. You step outside the ward, they will be on you.\" Andras's gold eyes softened. \"Perhaps you should consider your hero's offer and stay here.\"\n\nClaire raised a brow. \"The demon wants me to abandon Hell?\"\n\n\"The demon doesn't want to witness his dear friend's demise. Or that of her stray.\" Andras nodded to Leto. \"You've been through enough. You could stay safe here, just for a while. I can think of something to tell the royal cuss when I get back. Maybe even get him to call off the Hounds.\"\n\nA sour huff escaped Claire's lips. \"Even you don't lie that well, Andras.\"\n\n\"I've accomplished more in my time.\" Andras pressed a hand to his lips. \"Please. Stay here. Live a long, ridiculously human life. Several lifetimes. Read books, feel the sun, get happy and fat. You've done your time; your soul deserves it. Give this pretty idiot a chance to redeem herself.\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"There's too much at stake right now.\"\n\nAndras's eyes strayed to Claire's pockets. \"Send the codex with me. I will take care of it.\"\n\nIt was tempting, even now, even with Claire knowing what she knew. Perhaps Andras saw that. He saw the way Beatrice had created a home\u2014their home\u2014the one that they'd imagined. There, by the window, where Claire could read within a pillar of sunlight. There, an alcove where her typewriter could go\u2014maybe even the modern equivalent\u2014and she could finally try to write all those stories that had festered and burned cinders into her brain. The quiet streets, the charming locals, the distant sea. The coats by the door, perfectly matched.\n\nOf course it was tempting; fantasy always was. It was terrible and it was beautiful and it was. Claire's chest felt tight, possible futures clenched in a trembling breath. If she risked looking to Beatrice now, it would be all over. \"You've been a mentor and a good friend, Andras. Always looking out for my best interests. But you taught me to be a better librarian than that\u2014don't insult me by asking me to give up my duties now.\"\n\nAndras's smile was strained; a shadow passed over his eyes. \"Forgive me, Librarian.\"\n\nLibrarian, not pup. Claire inclined her head, and turned to find Leto looking at her with sad eyes.\n\n\"I'm staying,\" he said.\n\nClaire swallowed, still shaken. \"That's not unexpected.\"\n\n\"I can't leave, ma'am. I won't die again.\" Leto's voice sounded flat. \"And even if I don't\u2014I don't want to be a demon anymore. I'm human here.\"\n\nClaire dropped her gaze. She understood; of course she did. And the understanding built to a weight in her chest. She squeezed Leto's shoulder once, and then there was no more putting it off. She turned to find Beatrice watching her. \"You will help him?\"\n\n\"He can stay as long as he wants. Just as you could.\" A quiet had overcome her. It was ridiculous how quickly it came back to Claire, how easily she read Beatrice's moods. She knew every tell, the way the soft skin at her temple twitched when she was carrying an injury.\n\nThe air was dry; that had to be why it hurt when Claire took a breath. \"You know I can't.\"\n\n\"I know, and I know you.\" She made an aborted gesture with her hand, as if she'd reach for Claire but wasn't certain if she was allowed to. Beatrice's dark, serious gaze never left Claire's face. \"I'll always be here. If you ever lose your way again.\"\n\nClaire refused the heat at her eyes. No use allowing such a thing now. \"I'm never lost.\"\n\nBeatrice's mouth broke into a glittering, sad kind of smile. \"That is true.\" She sighed. \"And I know people in town who can set Leto up with whatever he needs.\"\n\nClaire swallowed and forced her chin up and down in a nod, and nothing more. \"Thank you.\" She glanced back to Leto. \"You're sure?\"\n\n\"I'm sure.\" Leto's tone wasn't at all believable.\n\n\"You can do this.\" She gave him one fierce hug, patting down the disarray in his bushy hair, straightening his collar. Then, and only then, she turned to Andras. \"You know where this gate is?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"And you're certain it's clear?\"\n\nAndras nodded, eyes sad.\n\nClaire drew a quick breath. \"All right. Then let's run for it.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 48",
                "text": "The silent city earned its name when dusk fell. As tourists fled on taxis and buses, the city eased into a domestic quiet. The sun sank below the tall stone walls, painting the streets in lavenders and grays. The streets were nearly empty as Claire, Hero, and Andras made their way quickly through them.\n\nBeatrice had wanted to guide them herself, but Claire insisted she stay with Leto. The angels were still trying to get in, and if they made their way to the flat, they would discover Leto. From what she'd seen, she wouldn't count on the serenity of Heaven keeping the peace.\n\nClaire was counting on Heaven's wrath instead. She flicked an irritated glance at Hero. Somehow, he'd found the time to wash up at Beatrice's, and his nails looked freshly manicured, hands soft. He also had his gun out already, which was an added source of Claire's annoyance.\n\n\"We'll never escape if we get stopped for brandishing weapons.\"\n\n\"There's no one around. Besides, I'm not dying without getting to shoot something with this bloody gun,\" Hero said.\n\n\"The Hellhounds will have no interest in books,\" Claire pointed out. \"You should be thrilled. You might get a chance to bob off during the carnage.\"\n\n\"Until Brevity decides to IWL me, yes. And when that time comes, I'd rather not suffer the tedium of heartbroken recriminations that I abandoned you.\"\n\n\"As if you know anything about heartbreak,\" Claire muttered.\n\n\"You have no idea.\"\n\nHero said it lightly, and it almost, but not quite, masked the jagged edge to his voice. She glanced up, and Hero cast her a measured look out of the corner of his eye. They walked down another alley before the silence got too much. \"Fine. I'll bite. For instance?\"\n\nHero seemed to search for words before diverting. \"I know that it takes a rare heart to break and leave behind such a sharp, cutting edge.\"\n\nClaire found herself with no response to that. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as they followed Andras down another alley. \"It doesn't matter, you know.\"\n\n\"What?\" Hero met her eyes again.\n\n\"Being a villain. It doesn't matter, out here.\" In the fading light, Hero's eyes were dark, the green of old earth. Distant lands she'd never see. Claire turned away to keep from being distracted. \"Don't get me wrong\u2014I should have damn well known. But it doesn't matter. You saw the damsels. It doesn't matter what you're made to be, only what you do.\"\n\nHero's step faltered to match hers. \"For one who calls me 'book' when she's cranky, you're affording me an uncharacteristic amount of humanity.\"\n\nClaire snorted. \"Well. Considering my own story may be coming to an end quite soon... I can afford to be a little flexible.\"\n\n\"This is it,\" Andras announced as they came to a stop just short of the arch of the outer wall. It was a smaller entrance than the grand bridge they'd crossed entering the city, more just a door in the sandstone wall, with a narrow stone bridge spanning the grassy moat. Andras stepped across the threshold first, craning his neck in both directions before giving a nod.\n\nClaire took a deep breath. \"Ready to run?\"\n\nHero grimaced. \"This is truly the safest course of action?\"\n\n\"Fairly sure it's entirely dangerous and foolhardy, actually.\"\n\n\"Then yes, I am very ready to run.\"\n\nClaire stepped through the door. As soon as they were past the shadow of the arch, there was a palpable snapping sound of the ward coming up. The air at her back hissed, and an unpleasant feeling of static shock sizzled at the hairs on her neck. There was no going back that way.\n\nHowls shattered the quiet. Impact thrummed the stones beneath their feet. Claire had thought it impossible, but it was even louder outside the wards. Her heart vibrated in her chest with the earth-deep, bone-deep noise. Claire gripped Hero's shoulder, and they burst into a sprint for the bridge.\n\nShadows lunged together on the other end, and the Hellhounds broke into the twilight. Fast, so fast. Dark and large as lorries, two of the beasts turned, locking on to Claire with their blood-jeweled eyes. They charged.\n\nClaire didn't have time to react. She didn't have time to slow down. She didn't even have time to flinch. The leading Hound leapt. She and Hero hit the ground in a pile. Hero reflexively threw an arm over her head, as if that would stop a creature with teeth like long swords. Fool book.\n\nSomething harsh struck stone. Then something large struck something harsh. It sounded like a car crash.\n\nThen a silence that thrummed the stones.\n\nWhen the ground stopped shaking, Claire opened her eyes to stare into Hero's bewildered face. They untangled themselves. Adrenaline turned her knees to jelly and she leaned on Hero as she stood.\n\nHellhounds stalked the bridge, just spare meters from where Claire and Hero stood. Barreling sledges of fur threw themselves in their direction; muscle and teeth hit the air with a jarring impact that was hard enough to make even Claire's teeth hurt. She shuddered again until she realized what held them.\n\nIn the middle of the bridge, imposed between them and the Hellhounds, was an angel clad in fire and fury.\n\nUriel's sword had sunk deep into the stone of the bridge, and Uriel stood anchored over it. A shimmering, barely visible wall sprang from the blade. She verified the wall was holding before turning her full attention to Hero and Claire.\n\nUriel advanced on them. Claire stumbled back. She spun toward the gates, then stopped.\n\nAndras stood, waiting for them with his hands clasped calmly in front of him. Ramiel stood at his side, making a strange pair. Ramiel was much as he'd been in Valhalla, brooding and worn at the edges. A workman's build in a shabby gray coat that trailed dark feathers at his back. The angel regarded her with pitying eyes, but Claire saved her gaze for Andras.\n\n\"This was all your plan?\" Her voice was dull.\n\n\"I did say to stay in the city. I begged you to avoid this.\" Andras's words might have been sad, but he stood straight, easy with the angel at his side. \"It was the only way, pup.\"\n\n\"The only way to achieve what, exactly?\" Hero stiffened next to her, and Claire could feel Uriel advancing on their backs. An approaching storm.\n\n\"To return things to how they ought to be.\"\n\nClaire's thoughts rabbited in circles. Andras had been a duke, royalty in Hell's court once. But he'd been thrown out, long ago. He'd... been tired, he'd said. Claire wasn't stupid; she'd always known Andras, like all demons, was dangerous. But he'd also been kind. Kind enough to pick her up off the floor after Beatrice left, after Gregor... after Claire had been left alone. She hadn't been alone, because Andras had been there. She'd clung to that. She knew he was cruel, but to other people. He was kind to her and that was supposed to mark the difference.\n\nIt appeared to be the day for being proved foolish.\n\n\"You need the codex,\" she finally said.\n\n\"I need the Library,\" Andras corrected. \"Each one of those books is a little battery, a bite of souls locked up in a book. Even an archdemon would do much to taste that. Alone they're nothing, minor bribes, but together...they're leverage on the court, and leverage is just what I need. There are demons that could be made to see things my way for a nice, steady supply of dreams. The remaining pages of the codex are powerful, an excellent weapon to wield. But the Library, that's where the opportunity lies. The Library is valuable. It was never going to stay isolated. You have to see that.\"\n\nThe realization came upon Claire like a punch to the gut. \"You would... use the books as a bartering device? The Library isn't currency!\"\n\n\"And the codex pages were not a matter for the Library,\" Andras said. \"But here we are.\"\n\n\"The codex belongs to Heaven,\" Rami interjected, brow furrowed as he looked with obvious suspicion at the demon. \"You agreed to deliver it. In exchange for...\"\n\n\"In exchange for me,\" Claire surmised. A deadweight had developed in her chest. It wasn't surprise, or even betrayal. It felt too inevitable for that. \"Are you so certain you can walk in and take it? I am not the only protector the Library has.\"\n\n\"That matters little with the power of the codex. I won't kill you, pup. It's why I'd hoped you'd stay\u2014I may be a demon, but I've lost the stomach for it. Your charms have grown on me.\" Andras's wistful smile made Claire's hand bunch into a fist at her side. \"Your assistant's haven't. She will be little challenge for those that follow me.\"\n\n\"You have it?\" Uriel's question was more like a demand, coming from close behind them. As one, Claire and Hero judged Uriel as the bigger threat and turned.\n\nFor the first time, Claire got a close look at the Face of God. She was tall and pale, like a deity carved from stone. Broad shoulders, pale cropped hair, and a narrow nose just below eyes that would simmer judgment for eternity. Her ivory suit flowed, revealing no distinguishing features but perfection. Claire knew the look of a zealot when she saw one, unearthly or not. Uriel's wings were not a shabby feathered cloak, as was Ramiel's, but a shattered, fragmented ray of light that splintered from her back and seared eyes if considered too long. Claire briefly wondered how on Earth that translated to a mundane appearance in the eyes of the mortals milling on the bridge.\n\nBeyond Uriel, Hellhounds roiled like a black tide. They were close enough to see now, masses of muscle and matted shadows, eyes a dark red that reminded Claire of Walter's teeth. They continued shuddering in and out of visible light, jarring like a glitching video, throwing themselves at the shimmering wall that flickered from Uriel's blade. It seemed to extend far in either direction, for anywhere the beasts tried, a snap of light threw them back. Unlike the wards of Mdina, it showed no signs of failing.\n\nClaire was uncomfortably aware that all that stood between them and her was the fleeting goodwill of Heaven.\n\nAndras made a vague bow to the angel. \"The pages and the librarian, as we discussed. Show the angels your little prize, Claire?\"\n\nClaire didn't move. \"Introductions first. We've not had the pleasure. You must be Uriel. I'm Claire, librarian of the Unwritten Wing.\" She jerked a chin toward Hero. \"This is Hero, unwritten book of no importance. Bit of an annoying barnacle, really. You might want to send him on his way before he latches on.\"\n\n\"So immune to my many charms,\" Hero said, but Uriel was not amused.\n\n\"You are all prisoners of Heaven. Surrender the codex.\"\n\nClaire glanced toward the angelic barrier again. \"Exactly how long will your party trick hold against Hellhounds?\"\n\nFor the first time, Uriel smiled. It was a smile that made the human parts of Claire's brain recoil and shudder. \"Nothing from Hell will overcome a blade of Heaven.\"\n\nHero leaned over with a mock whisper. \"I'm rusty. Was that a threat or a guarantee of safety?\"\n\n\"Hard to tell with angels,\" Claire said.\n\n\"I can confine the human and her companions while you do what must be done, Uriel,\" Rami rumbled. He spared a glance for Claire. \"Though I will only confine. No harm will come to them.\"\n\n\"Unless she blasphemes the will of Heaven,\" Uriel added.\n\n\"Well. I feel reassured,\" Hero said.\n\n\"Would you just stop?\" Claire hissed.\n\n\"What? Betrayal, enemies, certain death... I'm not a hero, remember? The bravery was just for show. All I have left is weaponized wit and my good looks.\"\n\nUriel made a disgusted noise. \"I'm eager to be done with this distasteful business. Produce the pages of the codex.\"\n\nAndras took a step toward Claire and she flinched. Repulsion coiled in her throat and felt very much like panic. \"Don't touch me.\"\n\n\"Pup, don't make this harder\u2014\" Andras started, but Hero had his gun out. Claire was pleased to note that he did not step in front of her in some idiot heroic gesture but kept angled to her side so she could move. Perhaps there were perks to maintaining a villain in her service.\n\n\"Call me pup again and Hero can shoot you.\" Claire's lip curled, but a hand came down lightly on her elbow. She twitched and turned to see Ramiel. She reached to throw him off, but a wave of chill passed through her. All the strength left her grip. Not just her grip, though\u2014left her. Her shoulders dropped. Her mind momentarily blanked, and it took a hard scrabble to remember her present concern. It surely had been trivial, not worth her time. It'd been so long since she could rest. Her chin fell.\n\nAndras moved forward and began gently digging through her pockets. She could not have fought him, even if she'd been able to form the compulsion to. Some part of the back of her mind began to snarl against it. Claire turned a horrified stare at the angel.\n\n\"I apologize for taking liberties, but it's better this way.\" Rami's voice was reserved. \"Mortal souls. It's part of my gift.\"\n\nHero made to move, but Claire shook her head dully. A gun would do no good against angels. She tried to maintain a steady thought, but it was difficult with the cloud of calm that Ramiel had wrapped around her brain.\n\nAndras finished turning out her pockets. \"It's not here.\" He met her eyes with a sudden anger Claire hadn't seen before. \"Where is it?\"\n\n\"The other?\" Ramiel nodded to Hero.\n\n\"She wouldn't trust it with the pages.\" Andras's eyes narrowed. \"What have you done, pup?\"\n\n\"Between the Hounds and the angels and this peculiar feeling I got whenever you talked about the pages...\" Her voice was airier than she liked. Claire shrugged with as much will as she could wrest from beneath Rami's suppressing touch. \"I'd hoped I was paranoid. You're the one who taught me to be cautious.\"\n\n\"You...\" Andras's eyes turned sharp, and he scrutinized her face. He jerked with a sudden certainty. \"The stray.\"\n\nA grin twitched on her lips, a little wild and unhinged as she felt Ramiel's grip ease. She glanced to Hero. \"I'd say we distracted the Hounds long enough for him to get to the gate by now, haven't we?\"\n\nSuspicion distorted Uriel's marble features. Her hand shifted, straying back to the pommel of the sword buried in cobblestone behind her. \"Is there a problem, demon?\"\n\n\"Not for me.\" Andras studied Claire's face with something like admiration, which made her stomach churn. He patted her cheek, once. His fingertips were leaching heat. \"But I'm afraid I have a stray to catch. Our business is at an end.\"\n\n\"Andras...\" Claire found her voice just as the demon stepped away. The sad smile on his face was the last thing to disappear as a ground spout of shadows swallowed him into the earth.\n\n\"Shit,\" Hero said.\n\nThe Hellhounds bayed, distant in the silence that followed. Then Uriel's face transformed. \"Betrayal.\"\n\n\"First rule of demons,\" Ramiel said, unimpressed. \"We might have anticipated this.\" He released his grip on Claire, and she realized he was watching his partner with rising caution. \"Uriel, what do we do now?\"\n\n\"Now?\" Uriel's furious voice nearly cracked with a hysterical note. No\u2014that wasn't the only thing cracking. A flare shimmered over her face, like lightning under clouds. Claire blinked, sure she'd imagined it, but the angel's blue eyes looked ignited. The shards of light on her back appeared to split and scissor into blades. Claire flinched despite herself. The angels presented themselves as mortals on Earth, but she remembered the stories of an angel's true form, vast and wild enough to break human comprehension. That form played close to the surface now, and Claire's heart stuttered. There was a reason the first words out of an angel's mouth in the stories were Be not afraid.\n\n\"Now I will shred Hell itself, let every demon know that I will not\u2014that the Creator will not\u2014tolerate such insult. That worm dares\u2014\"\n\n\"But our... prisoners?\" Rami pressed, having backed up a step himself.\n\nUriel frowned, turning to Hero and Claire as if she'd just noticed a buzzing gnat. She calmed. Her voice was distant and preoccupied. \"They are of no import.\"\n\nAnd with that, Uriel reached for her sword.\n\n\"Uriel!\" Rami suddenly had his blade out and was charging forward. Whether toward Uriel or the Hounds themselves, it was uncertain. Claire and Hero began backing up instinctively.\n\nUriel withdrew her sword. And the barrier fell.\n\nThe Hellhounds had faded to prowling ghosts when they could not cross Uriel's ward. But with the barrier gone, shadows lurched from beneath the bridge, gobbling up the air. Hero raised his faltering gun at the nearest wraith. A gun, even a gun that started its life as an unwritten sword, would do nothing. They both knew that.\n\n\"Back!\" Claire grabbed Hero by the shoulder and tried to yank him toward the gates.\n\n\"You can't pass the walls.\"\n\n\"The point is, you can!\" Books were made by humans. The Mdina wards had to recognize them as such after all. \"Get going.\"\n\n\"Still not taking your orders, warden,\" Hero said.\n\nClaire snarled the filthiest oath she knew. Now, of all times, was not the moment for a villain to get ideas about heroism.\n\nRami jabbed at the Hellhounds with his blade while exchanging heated, indistinct words with Uriel. Rami's sword produced enough lightning to dissuade the beasts, but did not have the same stopping power as Uriel's wall. One Hound kept him busy while the others shuddered, blinking through existence to burst onto the bridge. An approaching Hellhound lurched, paws landing on the cobblestones with an oily, lethal grace. Claire jerked back but was forced to stop when a crackle of pain danced against the back of her skull. The ward sparked at her back. An echo sang in her mind. A song.\n\nClaire prayed that Leto had carried out the rest of the plan. That Leto had made it. Would make it. That what she felt at the edge of her senses, a glimmer of a sound, was true and not wild delusion.\n\nShe licked her lips. They had seconds, not minutes. \"You have to trust me, Hero.\"\n\nHero moved to position his tall frame a breath ahead of her, pressing her back hard enough to bury her face in his soft velour jacket. She felt, more than saw, his brittle amusement. \"Why start now?\"\n\nA chill ran up her spine, and she curled a hand into Hero's jacket. \"It's what humans do.\"\n\nThe nearest Hound, teeth dripping oblivion, leapt. Hero's shoulders dipped and braced. Claire swung her arms around his waist and held tight just as the ward behind her crackled. Another set of hands latched onto her shoulders and yanked.\n\nClaire had a momentary view of the darkening star-touched sky filled with the Hellhound's red dagger teeth before she fell backward through the Mdina wards, Hero toppling in after her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 49",
                "text": "\u2002I wasn't a storyteller in life; that much I remember. No matter the stories in me, my people needed strong arms, not words. Scholars and soldiers are natural allies, though few ever recognize it. Both worship at invisible altars, one of knowledge, one of duty. It takes a certain kind of soul to protect the invisible, to protect an idea.\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 886 CE\n\nHellhounds, despite their canine appearance, were not deterred by thunder. The air crackled all around Rami, and the blade grew heavy in his hands as he moved, extending his sphere of reach ever farther to drive the creatures back from their prey.\n\nThen a reprieve. The moment Claire fell back through the ward, the Hellhounds stopped. They sniffed the air, ignored Rami's feints completely, and melted back into the night. Their absence underlined the stillness of stone, rapidly cooling in the evening air. Rami glanced behind, but the librarian and her rescue had disappeared into the city.\n\nRami leaned on his long sword a moment, breathing heavily. It had been a long time since he'd needed to raise his sword against anything, let alone against a foe like a Hellhound. He drew another staggered breath.\n\nWhen he finally turned, he could see only Uriel's back. She was hunched over the crumbling stone railing that marked the end of the bridge. It was crumbling more by the moment, as she slowly ground her fist into the cornice.\n\n\"What. Was. That?\" The words growled out of Rami's chest, and he found himself having to stop, take another heaving breath, and clamp down on the frozen horror sitting in his chest. Uriel still hadn't turned, so Rami tried again, pleading this time. \"Uriel! That was cold-blooded. You've gone too far.\"\n\nThat brought her around. The archangel lurched toward him. The anger on her severe face didn't surprise him; the tears did.\n\n\"Don't talk to me about 'too far,' Ramiel of the Fallen. Not when you practically leapt to defend a demon\u2014\"\n\n\"The librarian is not a demon! That was a human soul you just unleashed Hellhounds on for no good reason. They were under our protection! You\u2014\"\n\n\"They have their god. Why should they be protected?\" All confidence and command were gone, leaving the jagged edge of misery behind. \"Why should they have anything? The Creator is gone. Gone. She has abandoned us and that snake has the only means to bring her back.\" Uriel's ragged voice bounded off the stone and broke.\n\nA shriveling feeling crept under Rami's lungs. The collar of Uriel's coat fluttered; a smear of dust flinched up one side of her cheek, stopping just short of the glow of fury-banked eyes. Uriel was fastidious. She would never have tolerated dirt on her face. But her hands came up not to wipe it away, but to knot in agony in her hair.\n\nUriel was the Face of God, to all. But to Rami, she'd become more: she'd become the face of home. The face of hope, the hope of returning. The hope of welcome. The hope of rest. She was shattering, bleeding violence at every jagged edge, and Rami's hope bled with it. The cost was too high. He couldn't follow this. An angel with a thirst for vengeance... no. Not again. He'd already seen the devastation that caused. He couldn't go down that path again.\n\nEven if that path was the only one that led him home.\n\nHe would say it was like a closing door, but the Gates of Heaven had never been open for him. Instead, a dull certainty welled in his chest, and with it a realization. Rami found himself reaching out a hand, but the tremors marked Uriel's shoulders like delicate earthquakes. He dropped his hand. \"Why do you really need the codex, Uriel?\"\n\n\"For the Creator, you fool. For...\" Uriel stopped, glaring sightlessly at the warded city through her tears. The archangel went quiet. \"I can't do it for much longer, Rami. None of the Host can. I don't know why we ever thought we could. Running things... It's all falling apart.\"\n\nFear deepened Uriel's flawless face, lines etched where none had been, not in the ages since the birth of the world. Shadows in a being of light were far, far out of his experience. All of this was. Rami was used to falling, to running, to wandering. Not this.\n\n\"I don't know what else would bring Her home,\" Uriel whispered.\n\nThere would be no answer that way. The Creator was a god, not a lost house cat. She would not be tempted back by a bit of warm milk left outside the door. Wherever She was, if She even was, She was exactly where She wanted to be.\n\nThe Creator was lost, and so was Ramiel's way home. But he wasn't as strong as the Creator; he couldn't turn away, even now, not without another path presented to him. So instead, his mind numbly reached for what it knew best: duty. The codex was an obvious danger, and they couldn't risk it in the hands of a demon like Andras, especially with the Creator absent. He sheathed his sword so as not to look at her. \"What would you have of me now?\"\n\nDuty, service. It was an all-curing elixir, for angels. Especially angels like Uriel. The tracks on her face dried. She seemed to sew the broken edges of her mask together, piece by piece. She drew up straight, and her gaze came to rest on the spot where Andras had disappeared. \"Our prey has split. The demon is intent on taking the pages to the Library, so I will make the necessary preparations for Hell. You will track the humans. It's what you're best at. The Hounds will leave a wide enough path; perhaps they will lead us to the codex.\"\n\nRami strained to keep the uncertainty off his face. \"And then?\"\n\n\"And then...\" Uriel paused to marshal her own sword. She stared at the blackened spot where it had been planted in the cobblestone. \"Then all of Hell will have its reckoning.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 50",
                "text": "\u2002'Earth is freckled with belief, positively pockmarked with it. No great idea fades from the planet without leaving a mark, and we dwell in the craters. We rely on these old lines and cracks to conduct our business. But watch out; belief changes, and so do the doorways. Walk through the wrong one and it won't want to let you go.' -Librarian Claire Hadley, 1994 CE\n\nLeto was remembering things about his life.\n\nMostly he was remembering that he hated running.\n\nHis side had stitched up, morphing into an angry, hot pinch that twisted his lungs every time he inhaled. His pulse thudded, fast and thick in his head. His feet were numb from slapping bare stone, and that made him clumsy as he clambered up and down the broken tunnel passage.\n\nCatacombs, Beatrice had said, and Leto had imagined some stately mausoleum. Perhaps a stone building, statues artfully crumbling here and there, coincidentally lit with a mysterious torch like they were in the movies. But this was something entirely different. It was a hole in the ground that forgot to stop. It was a crooked path daggered with roots and stone and other objects that Leto tried not to consider too closely as he tripped over them. Bare crevices had been cut out of the dirt walls and held scattered bones and bits of cloth. All of this was illuminated not by thoughtful torches but by his single flashlight, splashing quivering light around as he ran.\n\nIt was a place, most important, that Leto very much did not want to die in. So he ran, scrabbling at dirt and stone and cowering every time a shower of dust fell from overhead.\n\nThe others had set out to create a diversion outside the ward to draw off the Hellhounds long enough for Leto to get to the realm gate via a second path. Claire assured him she would be fine and would catch up with him later in the realm beyond the gates. All Leto had to do was keep moving.\n\nLeto hadn't believed a word of it. He'd been around the librarian enough by now to see her fear. But it was his own fear, his own shameful, crippling terror at the sound of the Hellhounds, that had made him nod. It was his fear that agreed to the plan. He'd meant to follow her. Follow her forward, he'd said. But instead his courage had failed him yet again and left him here, hurtling through the dark.\n\nHe hadn't told all that to Beatrice. The unwritten woman had not been happy when Leto finally relayed Claire's plan. She'd been distressed enough when Claire and the others had left, but when Leto explained that Claire had been suspicious of Andras and had asked Leto to carry the codex pages to Hell, Beatrice had flown into a barely contained panic. She'd stormed around the apartment and seemed quite ready to bolt after the others until Leto had added something: that Claire had said to get him through the gate, then check the outer ward for the others. Just in case.\n\nWell. He'd said that was what she'd said. He'd improvised, ashamed of leaving Claire and Hero to do the hard part. The least he could do was send Beatrice as backup. Beatrice hadn't needed convincing. She had regrets too. Hanging around unwritten authors had taught Leto a lot about the words one didn't say.\n\nThey'd gotten to the cramped entrance, hidden in the sewers not far from the fountain he'd seen earlier, when Beatrice's conscience caught up with her. She stopped abruptly at the door. Her hands flew to her head and she grunted.\n\n\"I can't. I can't do this, not again.\"\n\n\"But Claire said to get the pages to the gate first\u2014\"\n\n\"I can't leave her to face the consequences alone. Not again.\" Beatrice's hands fisted in her hair before dropping, still clenched with tension. She seemed to come to a decision. \"I'm going after her. You can make it from here. Now, listen closely.\"\n\nLeto repeated Beatrice's instructions in his head. Follow the tunnel, veer right when it splits, keep going, no matter what. He'd been going for a while now and was surely outside the walls, outside the ward. But being underground, among the dead, would confuse and slow the Hellhounds, Beatrice had said.\n\nNot long enough to save him, if it came to that, but long enough for him to run, which was the important thing: to run. When Leto reached the end, Beatrice said, he would see the realm gate.\n\nIf there was an end, Leto hadn't found it. He began to worry he'd missed a right turn somewhere in the dark. He took another aimless corner and was about to consider turning back, when a stone outcropping caught him on the shoulder.\n\nStone in the shape of a fist.\n\nA hand slammed Leto against a wall, and his flashlight flew out of his grasp. Leto's head jolted against hard-packed dirt, and stars briefly dazzled the dark. When they cleared, he couldn't see anything\u2014at first. Slowly, two pricks of gold light resolved out of the darkness. A gem-shaped light flared, stabbing painfully at his eyes, and Andras's face melted into view.\n\n\"Hello, stray.\"\n\nThe demon had shed all previous pretense in the dark, keeping only gaunt features, harsh and cutting edges. A sharp-toothed smile split a skull-like face, and the shadows danced wildly as he adjusted his grip. Cold, bony fingers squeezed Leto's throat closed.\n\nThe fingers constricted again and slammed Leto's head against the wall. Pain flickered from a spark to wildfire. Everything went gray this time. When Leto could open his eyes again, Andras was shuffling through his pockets.\n\nHe had located the folded sheaves of parchment in Leto's suit. There was no more explanation; Andras simply took what he wanted. Leto struggled even as the world tilted hazily around him. But Andras batted his hand aside easily and tucked the codex pages in his own pocket. He made a tutting noise under his breath.\n\n\"This is mine. As is this. See?\" Andras held up a thick gem, set into the small dagger that he'd offered to the ravens. That seemed like ages ago. It glittered, matching all the other gems and ornaments pinned to Andras's clothing. Leto had assumed it was for show, some old-fashioned vanity, but now he saw how wrong he was. Each bauble glimmered independent of the light. Relics from the Arcane Wing, he realized. In the dim light of another gem\u2014Leto couldn't make out the color or cut\u2014the dagger handle in Andras's palm pulsed with energy. Something moved and bubbled beneath the stone's surface, like a predator in deep water. Leto recoiled without thinking, earning a chuckle from the demon.\n\n\"A simple soul gem. Perhaps you recognize it. It's a cousin of the ghostlight. It also latches onto a dead soul, but this one consumes.\"\n\nLeto couldn't tell if the movement in the stone was increasing or if it was just a trick of the wildly flickering light. He tried to pull away out of instinct. A clawlike thumbnail caught under Leto's throat, pressing until the skin was taut. A pleased chuckling sound came from the demon. \"I could have used this against you, against all of you, at any moment during our time together. I didn't, for Claire's sake. I want you to tell Claire that. Give my pup a message. Tell her to stay away from the Library.\"\n\nLeto bit his teeth together to stifle a whimper as Andras drew a thin line of blood on his neck where he pressed down. Leto worked his throat, holding himself still as he tried to speak around the claws in his skin. \"You won't win. You aren't a librarian. You're not even human.\"\n\n\"Of course not. I have no intention of administering the Library. What would be the point?\" Andras's tone turned silky and dark. \"But the court is always hungry. That will secure what I do want. I'll have it all.\"\n\n\"You can't\u2014\" Leto cut off as a claw broke the skin at his neck again.\n\n\"Now, now. Lesson time is over. None of this needs to get messy if you remember your message for Claire. But I need to ensure it carries the proper... gravitas. It would be wise to hold still, child.\"\n\nThe medallion in Andras's hand burst into sickly orange light. Leto began to struggle, ignoring the claws sinking into his neck. And then he began to scream."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 51",
                "text": "\"MERCIFUL JESUS.\"\n\nThe oath floated through Leto's sluggish head. He couldn't place the low feminine voice. His eyes fluttered open, and he momentarily panicked when he saw only darkness. Then a light flared, and it came back to him: the catacombs, the tunnel, Andras... the codex. Leto jerked, but a cool hand stopped him.\n\n\"Easy, Leto. Hero\u2014give me a hand here. Help him up. We have to keep moving.\" Claire's voice hovered somewhere to his left.\n\nLarger hands gripped his arm, and there was a grunt as he was hauled to his feet. \"Up you go, kid.\"\n\nThe movement brought the sensations of his body flooding back to him. Hot pain shuddered up his limbs, pulling a jagged sound from his throat, and Leto would have collapsed again without Hero's support.\n\n\"Gently help him up. Did I really have to specify that?\" Claire's voice was sharp even as a cool hand checked his cheek and ran down his shoulder, inspecting wounds. \"Bea, a little more light.\"\n\nThe flashlight swung around and seemed to pierce Leto's skull. But he was finally able to make out the faces above him. Hero and Claire clustered to either side, and Beatrice was a tall, dark shape hovering behind them. Claire scowled thunderclouds at Hero, who was keeping him upright.\n\n\"You said we were in a hurry.\" Nonetheless, Hero loosened his grip slightly and glanced at him. \"You all right to walk, kid?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" After the initial wave, the pain faded to a bone-deep ache. Most of the pain, that is. Leto winced. \"I think I broke my arm.\"\n\nClaire's hand drifted to the injured arm. Leto managed to make only a mangled squeak as she probed it. Her voice was taut. \"I doubt you broke it. You'll be all right, just as soon as we get to the Library.\" She hesitated. \"Andras did this?\"\n\nLeto nodded. The glint of claw and gem came back, in a rush. The loss. The crush of codex pages in a jeweled fist. He found a lump had developed in his throat and he had to swallow hard. \"He got the pages. I failed... I\u2014I'm so sorry.\"\n\nClaire started waving her hand before he even got the apology out. \"Not unexpected. We can deal with it. I'm just glad you're alive. We'll just\u2014\" The earth walls around them lurched, showering clods on their heads. Baleful howls vibrated from afar\u2014but not far enough. Without a word, Beatrice began shoving Claire down the hall. Hero hauled Leto into a stumbling pace.\n\n\"We'll just run\u2014that's what,\" Hero finished. He shot a grim look at Beatrice. \"How much farther?\"\n\n\"Nearly there.\"\n\nEvery step made his arm shoot with electric bolts of pain, but Leto forced his feet to keep up with Hero. They turned another corner. Leto heard a strangled yelp, and Beatrice brought the flashlight up to show Claire backing away from a dark ledge. The tunnel emptied out onto an abrupt precipice. The light did not reach far, but wind whipped at the edges of Claire's skirts. Leto could feel the enormous space in front of them.\n\nClaire snatched the flashlight from Beatrice's hand and craned her head. The light disappeared into aimless darkness above them, but when Claire swung the beam down, it hit on something white. Leto leaned forward as far as he dared to peer over the ledge. Far, far below them, the light bounced off dull ivory surfaces. Like seashells, an ocean of seashells.\n\nIt took Leto's brain a moment to accept that the shells were, in fact, the human kind.\n\n\"A mass burial,\" Claire breathed. She swung the light up into Beatrice's face. \"A dead end. Is there a way across?\"\n\n\"In a manner of speaking.\" Beatrice looked uncomfortable.\n\n\"What...\" Claire's eyes widened. \"This is the realm gate?\"\n\nBeatrice opened her mouth, but her explanation was drowned in another hail of dirt. A clear howl came from the depths of the catacombs now. Closer. Much closer. The Hellhounds had their scent, and though the ancient catacombs had slowed them down, it wouldn't be for long. Leto edged nervously toward Claire.\n\nBeatrice leaned over the ledge. \"You have to jump. Right here.\" She indicated a spot in the air square off the precipice and somewhere below them.\n\n\"The hell I do!\" Claire muttered.\n\n\"It's a burial rite, Claire. The path to the afterlife. The religion might be long dead, but still\u2014we don't have time to debate!\" Beatrice practically shouted, and stepped forward as if she was going to push them both. Claire brought up her flashlight like a club, and Hero drew his gun. Beatrice stopped. \"You have to trust me.\"\n\nClaire's lip curled. \"Oh no. I made that mistake once.\"\n\n\"I'll do it.\" The words were out of Leto's mouth before he thought them through. He could feel the immense weight of the Hellhounds as they materialized in and out of the tunnel, shoving waves of air and dust in front of them. He ached everywhere the air hit him, and he just wanted it to stop, wanted not to feel as broken, as useless as he did in front of Andras.\n\nHe wanted the fear to stop. And he wanted to make a difference. \"I'll jump first.\"\n\n\"Absolutely not\u2014\" Claire reached out for his good arm.\n\nBut without debate, without fanfare, without even permission, Leto walked into open air.\n\nAnd the darkness had him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 52",
                "text": "\u2002'Realms can die. I said that before. It's rare, because humans love nothing more than holding on to an idea, worrying it in their teeth until it's shaped into something else. But it happens, occasionally. When a realm loses access to dreams and imagination, it starves. It's not a gentle death. A realm will attempt to preserve itself, feed itself on any unwary dream, any stray soul that wanders into its maw.' -Librarian Gregor Henry, 1980 CE\n\nSand clogged his tongue and rasped against his teeth. He couldn't breathe. Panic flared. The sand reached into his throat and threatened to draw bile. Leto came to consciousness coughing and then bolted into a sitting position. He doubled over, forcing a startling amount of silt from his mouth. When his eyes stopped watering, he found he was sprawled on a wide shore. Silty gray sand stretched in either direction as far as he could see, salted with a scruff of reeds and dunes that sloped down to a flat, strangely still sea.\n\nNot a sea, Leto thought as his eyes adjusted to the light. The water was a dusty mirror, still but streaked with brown and algae. He squinted across to just make out a skim of pale gray that indicated land on the other side. A river. A dead river.\n\nTo his right was a particularly starved patch of reeds, and it was from this that Claire rose with a squawk. \"No warning about that impact. I will murder her. I don't care if she's my own book. I will\u2014\" She stopped, frowning as she picked tiny seeds out of her skirts. \"Can I not stay clean for one hour?\"\n\nLeto grinned despite himself, but there was a groan behind him before he could respond.\n\nHero rolled up and with grim distaste retrieved his boot from a puddle. He shook it out and glanced toward Claire. \"At least a nap seems to have returned someone's sense of spirit.\"\n\nClaire was getting better at ignoring Hero, it seemed. She turned a critical eye on Leto. \"Everyone all right?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" Leto rubbed the back of his head. The moment when he hit the invisible gate had been a queer jumble, rattling his senses around like pebbles in a can. His arm was still broken, protesting movement, but he could wiggle his fingers, and his aches were less painful in this realm. Bodies were distant things. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\"Very good question.\" Claire stopped fuming over her dress long enough to survey the area. \"Not a realm I'm familiar with. River, sand, reeds... an old pagan culture. Not Greek. Egyptian? Oh, please let it be Duat. We'll have fast passage back to the Library with help from the librarians there. And they have an excellent poetry collection...\" Claire's eyes lit up, and she began to mutter what sounded like a bibliography to herself as she inspected the waterline.\n\nBehind them, a strange dark arch loomed across the interminable sand. It was as if a circle of obsidian had been buried there by a wayward giant. Leto approached and leaned closer to inspect it. A flicker of white in the black material made him jerk back. The interior of the arch wasn't opaque, he realized. It was the darkness of the underground chamber they'd just left. The other side of the gate.\n\nLeto ran a hand experimentally over it, but the surface was solid and unforgiving. The sound from the other side was muted, but he could still hear the howling of the Hounds. Nothing stirred in the dark frame, though. No light, no gleam of Beatrice's aluminum bat.\n\nLeto said lowly to Hero, \"Beatrice?\"\n\nHero winced and shook his head slowly. Leto's stomach did a flip-flop. He cast a nervous glance back. Claire turned her head down. The curtain of her hair didn't hide the injured curl of her shoulders.\n\n\"Dead?\" Claire's voice was hollow.\n\nHero hesitated. \"I don't know. The Hellhounds... should have stopped when you dragged us through.\"\n\nThe distant sound of barking from the other side of the arch said they hadn't gone back to Hell, at least. Claire stared sightlessly at the sand a moment, then nodded slowly to herself.\n\nThe pinch of concern on Hero's face deepened. \"There's a chance that she...\"\n\n\"Enough.\" Claire cleared her throat and straightened to look toward the water. \"Let's figure out our way across, then, shall we?\"\n\nClaire wasn't heartless. Leto knew that well enough by now. But as unflinchingly practical as she was to everyone else, she reserved the tightest reins for herself. Leto wondered if anyone else bothered to look closely enough to see the strain. He could see it now, the tic in her jaw, the way her shoulders trembled, just a flicker, before setting themselves hard against the world.\n\nShe'd been taking care of Leto all this time. Caring for him like a lost child. He ached to do something to ease the way for her. Something. Anything.\n\nHero exchanged a long look with Leto before following her down through the reeds. \"Not to put a damper on the day at the beach, but what happens if we do manage to return to Hell? Andras already has the pages and a head start on... whatever.\"\n\nLeto remembered Andras's words. \"He wants the Library.\"\n\nClaire seemed unsurprised. She crossed her arms. \"He wants more than that, I suspect. He wants the court.\"\n\n\"The court?\"\n\n\"Hell's court of demons. Dukes, princes, the whole pit of vipers.\" Claire made a face of distaste. \"Andras was a duke of some influence, once. He was overthrown in a coup centuries ago. Infernal politics. I thought time had healed that insult, but I was wrong. I knew he was unusually interested in the codex. I thought it might lead to some pissing match over its curation. But I could deal with that easily enough when we got back. I never thought...\" Claire kicked a reed, abusing it with the toe of her sneaker.\n\n\"But why the Library?\" Hero asked.\n\nClaire frowned down at the plant. \"I'm not certain.\"\n\n\"He said something about... ah, you know who,\" Leto said.\n\n\"Lucifer's our ruler, not a dark wizard, Leto. You can say his name,\" Claire muttered. \"He said he wanted to use the books as collateral, to buy his way back into power. But he has to assume that Lucifer will not tolerate that. Even if he has the codex, I can't see\u2014unless he knew something he wasn't telling me\u2014\" Claire stopped with a growl in her throat. \"Demons, angels... politics ruins everything.\"\n\n\"Right. Sorry. I just...\" Leto waited until Claire left her tormented reeds behind and met his gaze. \"Andras had something\u2014a soul gem, he called it. He said he could have used it but didn't. If we stay away.\"\n\nIt hung in the air a moment\u2014the possibility of retreating. Leto saw that twitch again. That strain under pressure ignored. Claire shook her head and his chest ached. \"The old man never did understand.\"\n\n\"Leto might have a point,\" Hero spoke up. \"He could already have won and have something unpleasant waiting.\"\n\n\"He won't have the books. Brevity is there, and the Library is not without its own humble defenses. I won't risk the books\u2014or Brev\u2014to Andras's plans. We'll get back the pages.\" She kicked a broken reed into the water. \"Assuming we can leave.\"\n\nThe reed barely cleared the surface when a froth of sound drew their attention. Claire leapt back from the bank as the water churned, turning from slate to muddy black. A knobby, elongated skull the size of a small island broke the surface. Green and silver veins mottled the skin, contrasting with the flat, black, bulbous eyes embedded at the top of a long snout. It reminded Leto vaguely of a crocodile, but he didn't remember the creatures on Earth being so monstrous.\n\nThe creature regarded them, the only movement coming from the filthy water beading down its snout. Claire glanced at Hero and Leto before clearing her throat and stepping forward. She drew up her dignity, and it almost obscured her bedraggled hair and sand-caked legs. \"Greetings. We are envoys from\u2014\"\n\n<BE JUDGED.>\n\nLeto nearly startled off his feet. It was not so much a voice that had spoken but an assault of concept. Something had ripped open his skull and shoved the essence of the words directly into his brain, jumbling all thoughts of his own. The words had no voice, no tenor, no personality. Just the power of age and a hunger that was never refused. They pulsed through his head for several breaths until finally easing into a thudding headache.\n\nThe shudder that whipped through Hero and Claire said they'd received the same treatment. Hero's hand flew to his side, where his gun had returned to its form as a fine sword. Claire shot him an alarmed look and shook her head until his hand dropped away again.\n\nClaire straightened into her librarian demeanor: shoulders back, spine straight, chin tilted so she could fix her gaze on whatever held her disdain. But she eyed the crocodile creature with new caution, and Leto caught her fingers making nervous little taps at her skirts as she tried again.\n\n\"You mistake me. We are not the dead seeking judgment. I am the head librarian of the Unwritten Wing in Hell's Library. We happened here while on Hell's business. Can I know what realm we've entered?\"\n\n<BE REFUSED.>\n\nClaire flinched. \"Then may I speak to your master?\"\n\n<BE REFUSED.>\n\n\"Then what god or pantheon rules this place?\"\n\n<BE LOST.>\n\n\"You have no god? Or no god currently?\" Claire asked. Pain jabbed Leto's head with each answer. It was becoming the worst game of twenty questions he'd experienced.\n\n<BE LOST.>\n\n\"Your god is the god of loss or... oh.\" Claire fell quiet. \"Your gods died with their believers. I hadn't thought a realm could remain after that.\"\n\nLeto considered. They'd seen Valhalla, and the only things he associated Norse gods with were superhero movies and those racist assholes on the internet. But Valhalla survived by evolving into something more in line with the legend than with the religion. It existed, if skewed slightly by the pop culture fantasies. If Valhalla thrived and these gods had died, then this had to be a place older and more forgotten than he could imagine.\n\nHe swallowed nervously, and the very air tasted different on his tongue. Different from Valhalla or Hell or anywhere previous. No smell, for one. Not the anise and ash of Hell, nor the pine and stone of Valhalla. It felt... empty.\n\nIt echoed across the empty space inside Leto, and he shivered. He'd felt better, inch by inch, since talking with Claire. The time in Mdina had been a human time, for all its horror. He'd felt the empty blackness shrink, but it wasn't gone. Perhaps it never would be. It was one thing Claire couldn't protect him from.\n\nBut maybe he could protect her.\n\nClaire tried again. \"We simply need passage to Hell. Or the closest realm to it. We can leave you in peace.\"\n\n<BE JUDGED.>\n\n\"We are not in need of judgment! Some of us aren't even human.\" Claire flung a hand in Hero's direction, but the crocodile did not so much as blink. Though it quieted a moment before responding.\n\n<BE PASSED.>\n\n\"Yes, passage. Finally.\" Claire crossed her arms. \"I assume there is some price for passage?\"\n\nWaves shuddered up the beach as the head suddenly moved. Reptilian skin flexed, and the head rose slightly as its great jaws opened, sending them all backing up a step. Leto flinched, expecting great rows of teeth or even the bloodred spikes that filled Walter's mouth. But the contents of the creature's mouth made him blink. Suspended between its jaws, held by no support that he could see, was an oversized metal structure. It was dark bronze and consisted of two platforms connected by a lever. A tiny puff of white sat on one platform. A feather. A bronze chain shifted slightly with the sway of the wind, producing a tinkle that sent a shiver over Leto's skin.\n\n\"Are those scales...?\" Hero identified it under his breath.\n\nClaire stiffened, staring at the construction as if she would have preferred a jaw full of teeth and snakes. When she glanced back at them, Leto saw that all warmth had drained from her brown face. She turned her head again and shook it hard enough to send the tiny braids in her hair flying.\n\n\"No,\" Claire whispered. Then louder: \"No. You have no authority to judge us. Our souls\u2014\"\n\n<BE JUDGED.>\n\n\"No.\" Claire's voice couldn't match the command of words in their heads, but the tremble in her shoulders said she was trying. Leto didn't understand what was significant about the scales. They'd had to prove themselves in Valhalla, and Claire had been willing, if reluctant, to comply to gain entry, but this was different. It was a difference that unnerved Claire and sent a well of foreboding through him. There was no time to ask as Claire spun, heel digging into the sand. She scrambled back up the beach toward them.\n\n\"What\u2014\"\n\n\"Burn this place. We're leaving.\"\n\n\"And going where, exactly?\" Hero asked.\n\n\"Back to Mdina. We'll... get back inside the walls. Figure something else out.\"\n\n\"Back to the Hellhounds' teeth, you mean.\" Hero's voice was harsh.\n\n\"At least we have a chance with them. Better than\u2014 Piss and harpies.\" The oath came out with the force of surprise. Claire jerked to a halt as they approached the black arch. It was no longer dark. The cavern they'd just left was lit by strange globes of light. The field of bones was now fully illuminated, like ghastly cobblestones. And at the center of the arch, just on the other side of the flat, dark surface, was the angel in a gray trench coat. Ramiel.\n\nClaire, rather than concerned, was incensed. She accelerated, stalking up the sand, leaving Hero and Leto no choice but to follow. She got her nose up to the arch. Ramiel watched her expressionlessly, and Claire gave a mockery of a smile. \"Trouble with the lock, angel?\"\n\n\"Some.\" Ramiel stepped to the side and motioned with his hand. \"Perhaps you could come across and show me the trick of it.\"\n\nClaire cast a glance back at the waiting monster and the scales behind them before responding, \"After which, I'm sure you would offer to hold off the Hounds and allow us to be on our way.\"\n\nHe shook his head slowly. \"I'm sorry, Librarian. Uriel... My superior acted in haste. But my duty is to ensure you do not interfere.\"\n\n\"Do you always do your duty, Watcher?\"\n\nRamiel gave no reaction. Claire turned away abruptly to confer with Hero and Leto a few paces away.\n\n\"He won't be getting through. Beatrice had me to pull Hero through, so if I don't miss my guess, you need a mortal soul to enter. But we need a way past him.\"\n\n\"I could challenge him,\" Hero suggested, but Claire shook her head.\n\n\"He's a Watcher, one of the originals.\" She raised her eyes to the crocodile scales again. \"Our last hero may have died getting us this far. I won't have any more foolish sacrifices today.\"\n\n\"What do the scales do?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"They weigh the purity of a soul.\" Claire's face was grim. \"This realm must have had influences from Egypt. Maybe a splinter cult, or even a predecessor. It's not Duat\u2014if it were, there'd be a bunch of other monster-headed creatures here ready to record judgment, and be much more sensible. There were rules about these things. But the symbolism is easy enough to assume. The feather represents goodness, purity of spirit. If your soul does not shift the scales, you can pass into their realm. If it's heavier... the crocodile god will likely consume you.\"\n\nLeto frowned. \"And you, what... die again?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"I know this is a hard concept to wrap your head around, but there are worse states for your soul than death. It's like the Hellhounds, or the words I told you I spoke to banish Librarian Gregor. I don't know what the scales do, but it would be nothing good. A soul may not die, but cease to exist.\"\n\n\"That's not so bad,\" Leto muttered before he realized he'd said it. He looked up to see Hero and Claire staring at him with matching alarm. \"I mean, no! Not us, of course. I meant...\" He stopped, not sure what he'd meant, but the terrible thought had come to him too fast to be one he hadn't had before. An echo of a memory tugged at him, chalk white stars, exhaustion and despair. He'd made this choice before. Cold pooled in his stomach.\n\nClaire scrutinized Leto before shaking her head. \"It's beside the point. I suspect the creature has no real interest in finding us worthy. Without a god to rule the realm or believers to nourish it, it likely hasn't had a good meal in eons. It's half-dead and starved. We are not going to be the ones to feed it. I'm going to go see if I can make the cursed angel see sense. Stay put, both of you.\"\n\nThey nodded and watched the librarian stalk back to the arch. Hero clasped Leto's shoulder and squeezed as he looked up and down the featureless beach. \"We'll figure something out, kid.\"\n\n\"We will.\" Leto nodded.\n\nBut his eyes were reserved for the dark bronze scales. He thought of the promise he'd made to Claire, the debt he owed her. The darkness in the pit of his stomach that would never quite be banished. He thought of the feeling of falling through the gate, the weightless way the world turned quiet. It had felt welcome; it'd felt familiar. He'd already made this choice.\n\nIt made sense. Death was the way you traveled between realms. The echo of the raven roads had never really left him, but he wasn't panicking now. Like the tumblers turning in a lock, everything fell into place inside him. He studied the glimmering sheen of the platforms, the whiteness of the feather, and the shadowy hollow of the crocodile's jaws beyond."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 53",
                "text": "\u2002First of all, realms are proud. Realms are proud and vain creations\u2014never forget that. Realms are too proud to bow to your wee ideas of physics and common sense. A realm doesn't have to make sense to its inhabitants. Do not expect a realm to conform to your logic, not if you want to escape with your mind intact.\n\n\u2002Realms are beholden to one thing, and one thing only: the inertia of their belief. Anything can happen in service to a story.\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1673 CE\n\n\u2002What is a story without want, without desire, without need?\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1896 CE\n\nThe librarian approached.\n\nRamiel raised his brows at her, though his eyes made sure to track where her two companions wandered, just at the edge of the gate's vision. It was a disorienting thing; the portal was built into the floor, superimposed over the pile of bones. He had to crouch over it, but Claire walked toward him straight on, as if it were simply a doorway on her side. The effect made his neck stiff.\n\nThe Hellhounds had departed by the time he ventured into the catacombs, though the deep claw marks on the stone signified some struggle had occurred. He noted the librarian was missing the mysterious fourth companion who had pulled her through the ward at the Mdina bridge. He saw no sign of a body. He could only wonder what the price of their escape had been.\n\nThat she and her remaining companions had passed through an undocumented afterworld gate was obvious. Uriel said she'd known the gate to every surviving realm on the island, but as soon as he entered the ruins, following the Hellhound trail, it was obvious this one was not accounted for.\n\nHe located the gate at the bottom of the mass grave fast enough, urged on by the scent of death and loss that swamped the entire catacomb. It resisted as he approached, repulsed by his foreign presence. His vision had allowed him to thin the barrier enough to see and hear, but whatever ritual was required to satisfy the ancient gate was unknown to him. He knew these ruins belonged to a long-dead water god, but the worshippers had died out long before.\n\nAs long as he had them cut off from escape, he was doing his duty. If the way out of the strange realm was barred in front of them, they would have to come out soon enough.\n\n\"So. Your duty.\" The librarian crossed her arms. \"Your duty to 'ensure we don't interfere,' meaning that the moment we cross back over, you detain us\u2014in one piece if we're lucky?\"\n\nRami raised his chin. \"I can swear you'll be treated with the mercy and justice of Heaven.\"\n\n\"Is that the same justice that turned the Hounds on us once we were no longer a bargaining chip? I don't believe I have the stomach for your justice, Ramiel.\"\n\nDamn Uriel and her madness. \"You can trust\u2014\"\n\n\"You've given me no reason to trust.\" Claire cut him off with a sharp hand wave. \"How can you simply stand there and do nothing while demonic forces overtake the Library?\"\n\nIt was a disingenuous argument at best. Rami shrugged. \"It's in Hell. Aren't demons always in the Library?\"\n\n\"You don't know what chaos Andras is willing to unleash to get his title back.\" She shook her head. \"Haven't you ever heard the saying 'better the devil you know... '?\"\n\n\"I have tried not to know more than I have to.\"\n\n\"Strikes me you had more occasion to know the man in charge than I have,\" Claire said.\n\nRami bit down hard on a curse.\n\nBut she knew her history. He'd followed Lucifer when they'd fallen, abandoned Heaven. Not because he agreed with him or believed in the cause\u2014Rami was not as ambitious as that. But because he was a Watcher, one of the old ones first sent to aid and teach the Creator's fledgling creation on Earth. He'd taken that duty seriously.\n\nAnd when man suffered, when Rami's charges were dying in droves for lack of food or an abundance of disease that they lacked the knowledge to resist... the Watchers had taught them how to survive. The Creator had deemed it \"forbidden knowledge.\" And so the Watchers had followed Lucifer when the Gates of Heaven shut forever behind them.\n\nIt had been the first time he'd seen what the madness of angels could lead to. Rami had never regretted the cause of the Fall, though the result had not sat well with him. He'd lingered, watching Lucifer bandy his forces and establish a domain of his own. But he wasn't an empire builder. He wasn't a leader. His heart was still with his duty, the humans on Earth. Not as pawns in a futile war with Heaven, but as creatures with budding potential that could be protected. He hadn't always done a good job of it. Doubting, wandering over the next millennia. But it had been the only path that made sense to him.\n\nUntil Uriel had offered him the position in Purgatory.\n\nUntil a strange little accountant had walked up to his bench and dropped in his lap a problem that caught Heaven's eye.\n\nUntil Uriel had revealed her bloodlust. Until a librarian decided to show a stubborn sense of honor and complicated everything.\n\nRami almost found himself wishing for the Purgatory desk again.\n\nBut then, he knew he would not be returning to the Gates, no matter how this played out. Rami had only his duty left. \"I am no friend of the Deceiver. Do not look for sympathies where you will find none.\"\n\nRami noted that Claire's companions had stopped in front of the scales in the creature's maw. A furtive argument started. The gangly demon with wild curls\u2014Leto, he remembered; Claire insisted he was human\u2014gestured wildly at the handsome swordsman, motioning past the monstrous creature in the water. The man appeared upset, a crinkle appearing on his perfect brow. He could have been an angel, were it not for the calculating way his gaze flicked to the arch and back. The swordsman shook his head hard, and the argument continued. Rami could not hear the words spoken, and Claire's intense displeasure was focused entirely on him, which meant the librarian was not aware of the discussion occurring behind her.\n\nCurious.\n\nShe tapped her fingers on her crossed arms. \"What if we offered to leave one of us with you, a hostage? A guarantee that we are striking no offense to Heaven. Your sadistic partner did seem to enjoy terrifying those she had in her grasp, but if you swear no harm would come to him, I could allow Leto to stay while I set things right.\" The woman's eyes went distant, concerned. \"That might actually be the safest place for him.\"\n\nRami ignored the offer and the opinion of Uriel, but picked up on the worry in her eyes. \"Are you certain you're fighting a battle you can win?\"\n\n\"The books need protecting. It's my library, and I won't relinquish it. But...\" Determination drained out of Claire with a breath, leaving behind something gentle and tired. \"I'm old enough to know the costs of any victory.\"\n\nBehind her, the argument had met a begrudging standoff. The swordsman had resorted to pleading, shaking his head, but the teenage boy seemed set on something. They traded quiet words and shook hands. The teenager asked something, and the taller man, after a long silence, nodded. Then the teenager looked toward Rami, gaze lingering on the librarian's back. It was a look so filled with unspoken ache that Rami was surprised Claire didn't feel it. And then the teenager turned and walked toward the mouth of the beast.\n\nHe was climbing to the scales, Rami realized. He knew what scales in an afterlife meant. He could read a realm as well as Claire. The boy was submitting his soul for judgment. Rami had seen enough war, enough strife, to know the shoulders of defeated men. The exact line of the down-turned head of someone who knew his fate and had given up fighting it. The boy knew what the scales would find in his soul.\n\nThe librarian was not the only one who understood costs, it seemed.\n\n\"What are you...\" Rami must have betrayed something with his face, because Claire followed his gaze over her shoulder.\n\nThe teenager had one arm bent against his stomach but held out his other in supplication. The crocodile spirit brought the scales closer. The boy placed his feet carefully on the reptilian lips and left the shore.\n\nClaire made a sound as if she'd been struck, then breathed a word. \"Don't...\"\n\nClaire pelted down the beach, but the swordsman took three wide steps to intercept her, whipping his arms around her waist. She was practically lifted off her feet as she scrambled at the man holding her back.\n\n\"Stop! Don't do this!\" Claire's voice was jagged, more shattered than Rami had ever heard it. The swordsman bent his head and muttered into her ear soft words that were entirely unheard.\n\nThe teenager paused, one hand on the scales, as he looked behind. From the distance, Rami couldn't make out his precise expression, but the boy raised a calm hand.\n\nAnd then he stepped on the scale.\n\nAn inhuman howl, half fear, half fury, welled up from the librarian as the scales started to dip. She twisted and dragged them both to the sand as the crocodile god's jaws started to close. The boy held tight to the bronze chains of the scale and seemed to shiver as the shadows of the crocodile's jaw passed over him. Darkness wrapped over his face. The bronze scale glimmered once, twice.\n\nThen the scales and the boy were gone.\n\nIn the silent moment that drew out, as the crocodile god closed its mouth and sank its head back beneath the muddy waters, Rami realized his mouth had dropped open. His chest had gone cold.\n\nA thin keen carried over the sand, and Claire collapsed in a mess of skirts and braids, shoulders trembling. The swordsman kept a tight grip on her shoulders as he crouched next to her, as if afraid to let her go lest she attack the crocodile god itself. He made awkward attempts to pat Claire's shoulders, then resorted to drawing her forcibly to her feet.\n\nRami saw why. The crocodile had reoriented upon resurfacing. The boy's soul must have satisfied, for now the great creature surfaced with its closed snout touching the shore. Its body extended, just breaking the surface, until it bridged the entire width of the waters and its impossibly long tail rested on the far shore.\n\nThe swordsman tried to guide Claire toward it, but the librarian broke free of his grasp with an explosive jerk. She strode back to the arch with a furious speed.\n\nHer usual clay complexion was pale, her eyes red from unshed tears. Her cheeks were stubbornly dry, but the grief and the fury that limned her face gave it a fire all its own.\n\nRami clenched the pommel of the sword at his side, half expecting her to burst through the gate and launch herself at him.\n\nBut Claire stopped just short of the gate, chest heaving. \"You did this.\" Her words were rough as gravel from crying. \"He was innocent, and he died because of you. And for that... for that, Watcher, I will remember you. And one day I will bring all of Hell upon you.\"\n\nThe swordsman caught up to her and hesitated at her back. Claire didn't wait for a reply. She twisted past her companion and stumbled, taking her broken warpath toward the crocodile bridge."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 54",
                "text": "\u2002War has always followed libraries, my apprentice. History has made no effort to hide that truth from us. Look at Rome; look at the Crusades. Vanquishing an enemy and taking his books was just as strategic as taking his cannons. Books are knowledge weaponized.\n\n\u2002And what weapons you cannot steal, you must burn.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE\n\nDuring a panic attack, time takes on a liquid nature. Stopping and rushing on at once. Feeling like each struggling breath stretches out forever like taffy until the bubble bursts and the present cascades down on your head. Cold and immediate.\n\nBrevity was surrounded by the soothing smells of oak and dust when she came to. A carpet twitched under her toes and the dribbles of tea stains eventually helped her place the underside of Claire's desk. Big, heavy, secure. There were worse places to hide forever.\n\n\"She's dead.\"\n\n\"She's not dead. She's a muse; they're immortal.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's a short flavor o' immortality, eh? It's her name, innit?\"\n\n\"Hush, Libby. Aurora said...\"\n\nThree pairs of feet clustered at the opening of the desk, none of them seeming to go together. Combat boots, scuffed buckle shoes, and one pair of dainty blue hooves. Brevity buried her face in her hands and swallowed a groan.\n\n\"See! She's alive!\" A mop of red curls upended itself over the edge of the desk, and a damsel gave her an upside-down grin. \"Welcome back!\"\n\nGod, was that what she was like when Claire complained she was inappropriately cheerful? Brevity might have contemplated hiding, but the bubble had already burst and time pulled her forward again. She allowed the trio to drag her to her feet. Conversation was a shock of water to her senses, not clearing the panic, but compressing it. Freezing it up into a tiny bundle that caught between her ribs and held, for now. Brevity reached for the first words she could think of that sounded vaguely librarian-ish. \"Wh-what are you doing out of the suite?\"\n\n\"We were going to complain about the noise. It's been going on for hours,\" the red-haired damsel said. Charlotte, Brevity remembered, taking in the patched dress and scuffed buckle shoes. Probably from one of those puritan moral historicals, where girls were more symbols of... something... than characters. Purity. Sin. Life. Death. Puritans never did seem to make up their minds about it. Aurora, blue hooves toeing the carpet nervously, hung over her shoulder.\n\n\"What noi\u2014\"\n\nThe question answered itself in a creaking shudder. The Library trembled. The lights flickered, though there was no reason for them to\u2014perhaps just to express the Library's displeasure with the situation at hand. Books twitched uneasily in their stacks, and the damsels looked wide-eyed at Brevity.\n\nHelplessness, sharp and familiar, welled up again, but Brevity had an audience this time. Audiences helped. Brevity put on her best smile and pretended to find something on Claire's desk that urgently needed straightening. \"The wards are up\u2014just... just a precaution until Miss Claire gets back.\" Her smile was guttered by another violent thunderclap that hung in the air. \"That there is probably just annoying ol' demon roughhousing. You remember Valentine's? Ain't nothing compared to that.\"\n\n\"If the wards are up, doesn't that mean we're cut off\u2014\"\n\n\"S'not like we're gonna get written anyway,\" the second damsel interrupted. This damsel was short and angry, like a wet cat wrestled into a leather jacket. Her once-long blond hair had been haphazardly shaved, perfect ingenue features pinched into a frown. \"Our authors been dead for decades.\"\n\n\"It's nothing to worry about,\" Brevity jumped in before Charlotte could be hurt by that remark. \"Just librarian business. M-Miss Claire will be back any minute, and wouldn't want to have her catch ya outside the suite, yeah?\"\n\nShe shooed the damsels off, ignoring the way Aurora trailed after the other two, a quiet blue shadow that cast long, questioning looks back at Brevity as she went. They'd believed her; of course they had. It was what the Library did: distant librarians going about their business, keeping the books in their care well and at arm's length. It was the norm Claire had set, and if anyone noticed that it was Brevity\u2014social, flighty, trivial Brevity\u2014trying to fill those shoes now, the damsels were too sweet to say so.\n\nThe empty spaces between her ribs quivered, but held. Brevity pressed her palms to the desk, feeling the vibration as another impact hit the wards. It was a steady drum now. Something was trying to invade the Library. Whether it was because Andras had lost control of his Horrors, or it was some demonic plot to pull the Library into the tug-of-war games of Hell's court, Brevity had no way of knowing and didn't care. From inside the wards, the Library was alone.\n\nAlone. The word made Brevity want to crawl back under the desk, but instead she pressed her knuckles into the wood until they stung and the gilded lines of inspiration on her skin stilled. The capacity for fear was still there, because the unknown was still there. But the damsels had reminded Brevity that imagination wasn't just a weakness; it was a tool. Anxiety could fill up the darkness with all the monsters it wished, but if Brevity tried very hard, maybe she could squeeze in one monster of her own. She was cut off from the world, but she still needed to protect the damsels, keep them in the suite, protect the books. All she needed was an audience.\n\nCare for the books, Claire had said. There was at least one book not yet home in the Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 55",
                "text": "\u2002The strange thing about souls is they're damned resilient. I mean, look at me. Librarian for six hundred years and counting. According to the log, that's a record! You'd reckon I'd be worn thin around the edges by now. I won't pretend I'm not filthy tired of looking at these same walls. But I'm going to keep on, not fade away. Think of the stories I'll have to tell!\n\n\u2002Mark my words, souls are made of tougher stuff. You can wear one down, tear one apart, unspool all the thread, shave a piece off even, but destroy one? I imagine there's an end, somewhere. Or states of being that are as good as an end.\n\n\u2002But even an end is just where you run out of book. Stories change, and stories go on. Maybe souls do too.\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1598 CE\n\nRami had watched until the librarian and the book had disappeared across the crocodile beast's back.\n\nHe'd waited while the creature churned the water and disappeared again, leaving behind only a gentle foam that melted into bright blue waters. The abandoned stretch of beach stilled, waters turning idyllic instead of frothy. As if none of it had ever happened. As if a human soul hadn't just been sacrificed to satisfy some pagan thirst. As if the needless sacrifice hadn't been because they feared the justice of Heaven.\n\nBecause they feared him.\n\nFear not. The voice in Rami's head was sour, mocking, and too similar to Uriel's timbre for his taste. Angels were supposed to be feared. By evil, by forces of chaos. They were made to be feared to drive the darkness back. Not to drive suffering young souls into the mouths of hungering beasts. That, Uriel and Rami had done on their own.\n\nThe ruins were cold. Rami turned away from the arch and rubbed the gooseflesh out of one forearm, staring sightlessly at the bones churned to dust at his feet. None of this sat well with him. They'd drawn blades against mortal souls. They'd made a deal with a demon, and as a result, the armies of Hell would be arraying against one another. If demons were at one another's throats, even if\u2014and Rami felt it most unlikely\u2014Lucifer himself got overthrown, surely it would result in a stronger position for Heaven. He could return to Uriel and get orders on how to proceed next. The petty losses and trials of those who would serve Hell were none of his concern.\n\nAnd yet, he couldn't get the image of the boy on the scale out of his head. Couldn't forget the broken noise that shattered from Claire's throat as the jaws descended.\n\nA lost soul, she had called him. Lost souls had been Ramiel's duty once. All the Watchers had owed their services to humanity, once, before the Fall. Rami's responsibility had been the guidance of the lost.\n\nRami hadn't felt competent to guide anything in a very long time.\n\nBut the look he'd seen on the boy's face hadn't been lost. His eyes had been clear, and his chin had been set. Even broken, he'd stood straight as the shadows closed. That kind of calm, that kind of peace, didn't deserve oblivion in a dead god's realm.\n\nIt took Rami only a thought to return to Heaven from Earth. He arrived at the Gates practically before he realized he'd made a decision. The Gates felt smaller, the light less bright somehow. He cut through the cattle line of dead souls, ignoring the sputtered cries of the lesser cherub that had filled his place at the desk. He strode past the guard, not toward the Gates but toward the tower. He hesitated only a moment to be surprised that the door was unlocked before he shoved his way in.\n\n\"Ramiel.\" Uriel raised her brow from where she leaned over her desk, archaic maps spread before her. \"Report.\"\n\nHe paused, clasping his hands behind his back as he considered how to approach the plan shaping in his mind. He opted for formality. \"The adversary escaped through an undocumented gate.\"\n\nUriel stiffened. \"Hell?\"\n\n\"No. Some afterlife of a local dead religion. Worshippers long extinct. Water worshipping and sacrifices. I didn't recognize it.\"\n\n\"Continue.\"\n\n\"I stationed myself and observed their progress. They lost a b... an ally. It's now just the librarian and the unwritten book. They proceeded deeper into the realm. I believe they will seek a direct exit to Hell. They won't come back to Earth again.\"\n\n\"Good, very good.\" Uriel seemed preoccupied with her maps. \"That will buy us time for our next plan.\"\n\nRami squinted, but couldn't make out the gibberish scrawled across the maps between them. \"Sir?\"\n\n\"Hell.\" Uriel looked up, and Rami nearly stepped back at the bright, hungry gleam in her eye. The archangel made a fist on the surface of the map. \"You heard the demon. That's where he'll take the codex pages.\"\n\nRami held very still. \"You want to infiltrate Hell.\"\n\n\"Not infiltrate, invade.\"\n\n\"That means war and the Creator has forbid\u2014\"\n\nUriel's fist thudded against the desk. \"The Creator is not here to forbid! Think. The point of getting the codex was to decrease Hell's power and return our god to our realm. Why settle for a piece of paper when we could present our maker a kingdom?\" Uriel looked up and the zeal roaring in her eyes diverted as she studied him. Her shoulders relaxed. \"But you, of course, are not part of my forces anymore. You need not concern yourself with it.\"\n\nRami felt off-balance. \"Sir?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course. We had a deal. You didn't succeed in procuring the codex, and I should point out your commitment wavered at times, but...\" Uriel made a dismissive gesture. \"You acquitted yourself well. I will speak to the Host as soon as this whole library business is behind us.\"\n\nThe fuel in Uriel's fireplace cracked as the silence drew out. Galaxies burned and grew cold.\n\nThe Host. He'd thought he'd made up his mind, but Rami's resolve wavered. In his mind's eye the Gates opened for him, the first time in millennia. It'd been so long he could barely imagine what lay behind them, but he could feel it. He could taste it, gold and warmth, peace and absolution. He would be allowed to go home.\n\nBut even in his imagination, his step paused at the threshold.\n\nRami sought for some footing, some words to say. He was being dismissed. And he discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that success left him hollow. He frowned down at the carpet. He didn't care for Hell. The whole realm could fall into the abyss for all he cared, the Library with it, though a twinge in his chest said that wasn't entirely true.\n\nThe Gates in his mind whined on their hinges.\n\nUriel's vengeance would lead to war. Her zeal would lead to fire and scorched earth. But realms would always war against realms, and Rami wasn't made to care for realms. He was made, from the core of his being, to care for souls.\n\nThe Gates shut in his mind. And then the words were out. \"Their ally they left behind. I want to try to secure him and bring him back here as an asset.\"\n\nHis skin was cold, hollowed out with the first chill of his decision. His nerves pricked, but Rami looked down at his hands and found they were steady and clenched into fists. Uriel looked up with a mild frown, as if she'd already mentally dismissed him and was annoyed her office was still occupied.\n\n\"Value being...?\"\n\n\"Information. He was working closely with the librarian. Might be able to tell us what to expect.\" Rami saw the skepticism in Uriel's eyes. He felt a stab of reluctance but added, \"He also could grant us access\u2014he was one of Hell's, and he may be able to get us in or draw their forces out.\"\n\nThat did it. He saw the shift as Uriel's gaze thawed from skeptical to calculating. She considered Rami for a long moment. \"This is a tactical mission?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Rami lied.\n\n\"Fine.\" Uriel waved vaguely at the door as she turned back to her maps. \"The guards outside can procure your old equipment for you. See that this lead bears fruit for Heaven, Ramiel.\"\n\nFor the first time in ages, Ramiel left to rescue a soul."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 56",
                "text": "\u2002At some point you just get tired. Is it possible for a soul to get tired? It has to be. I was young when I came here, and my skin never ages, but I feel the creaks inside. The poorly settled joins where time whistles through my thoughts like a sieve.\n\n\u2002It's not a sad feeling. I know what I'm about. I know what's important. I know the weight and feel of my life in my own hands. I'm a rock, ready for the sling. I'm tinder, ready to ignite.\n\n\u2002They'll send me an apprentice one of these days; I'm sure of it. I can't drag another soul into my fight. If I'm going to act, it has to be soon.\n\n\u2014Librarian Poppaea Julia, 49 BCE\n\nStories said grief was heavy. Stories lied. If grief had a weight, had a mass, Claire could have ground the crocodile god's bones into the bottom of the river. She could have sunk her heel into the knobs of chill scale and felt a god break beneath her toes for what it had done.\n\nBut grief did not have a weight. Or if it did, it was counteracted by another force. Rage. Rage had an upward lift, was a superheated force that crawled up her throat and wanted to do all the things Claire couldn't. Punish the crocodile. Punish this realm. Punish Ramiel. Punish Hero. Punish herself.\n\nShe'd felt it, when the scales had tipped. The crocodile's jaws had closed, and her screams had hitched as she had felt it. She shouldn't have. This was not her realm, not where her soul was tethered, but she had felt it like a tear in her lungs.\n\nHad she heard a scream? Had she heard a tear of flesh? Or had she just heard the staccato sigh of a soul unraveling, winking from the universe? She couldn't tell. Her mind was a muddle, and the only thing she knew was that Leto, the one being she'd encountered in thirty years she thought she could actually save, was gone. For her.\n\nClaire did not fancy herself an optimist. She had been in Hell too long for that. She saw things clearly. But somewhere along the way, what she'd seen most clearly in Leto was hope. Hope for him had become hope for her, and she'd believed. Believed he was a good soul and that good souls would not be punished by realms. Believing was supposed to be power here, power to protect him. It hadn't.\n\nShe hadn't.\n\nIt felt like she was walking on Leto's bones. But nothing of Leto remained here, not after the crocodile had judged him. She was walking on his ending, and for that, she walked lightly, calmly. For Claire was not one to throw away her life rashly for vengeance. She respected vengeance. Vengeance deserved time.\n\nAnd she was already contemplating ways to return to this blighted, half-dead realm one day and burn every inch of it to the ground. She didn't care if she burned with it.\n\nThe instant their toes touched the sand of the opposite shore, the creature began to sink. By the time Claire had gotten her bearings enough to turn around, all that remained was the dark froth of churning water.\n\nClaire stared ahead. The beach on this side of the water was very like the beach they'd left behind, but instead of endless sand, the shore rose to a great wall of bone pale stone that staggered a dozen feet over their heads. It terminated in what looked like the craggy ruins of a temple, long in decay. Nothing but gap-toothed bits of wall and column remained.\n\nHero's gaze was a physical thing, heavy and insistent like a hand on her back. She had said nothing, not since cursing the angel at the gate. No words as they walked the crocodile's back, no commentary or speculation on the realm they were in, no orders for what they would do next. Claire felt his silence deepen, first into pity, then into worry, then judgment.\n\nShe couldn't find the energy to care.\n\nThey struggled up the beach and stopped in front of the impenetrable wall. Without discussion, they took a right and followed its edge, trudging through sucking, wet sand. It swallowed any chance of conversation. Hero asked no mocking questions; Claire offered no confident explanations. They paused only once, when Claire's low sneakers filled with sand, and she bent to kick them off. She tied their laces together and instinctively went to loop them over her bag. When her hand met open air, she came to a stop with a sharp, halting breath. She swung them over her shoulder instead.\n\nHero observed the error with quiet pity.\n\nThe sand dug grit into the tender skin between her toes. A break in the wall appeared behind the curve. It wasn't a proper doorway. Instead its arches were shattered like a splintered bone in the ribs of the ruins. Inside, the ground turned from sand to smooth, hard-packed earth. It ran straight with thick walls rising on either side, open air above.\n\n\"A maze?\" Hero ventured.\n\n\"So we've reached the Minoan part of our tour.\" Claire wiggled her toes into the sand. It should have been warm from the sun. Instead it was cold enough to make her bones ache. \"It's a labyrinth. Souls were meant to wander until they met their demise at the center of it. Lucky us.\"\n\n\"Every maze has its exit.\"\n\n\"You obviously haven't read enough Greek tragedies,\" Claire said. Still, it was the only gap they'd encountered, and the sun had begun to creep down in the sky. Claire didn't fancy the idea of spending the night on the beach, so close to the crocodile. She shook the sand from her toes and stepped onto the unforgiving dirt.\n\nThey followed its turns until they came to the first intersection of two paths. The pavers were wet with mildew and thick with identical shadows. At least Hell had the occasional gargoyle, Claire thought dully.\n\nHero hummed. \"Left or right?\"\n\n\"Left. If we keep following the left, we'll find the exit eventually. If there is one. And if something else doesn't find us first.\"\n\n\"Read that in a book, did you?\" Hero's smile faltered as he received only silence. He twisted a hand through his hair and muttered dark nothings to himself as he followed.\n\nClaire became aware of a distant noise, a low groan that ground out the spaces between the sound of their steps. It slowly resolved into a gutted howl; somewhere there was an animal in unbearable pain. Claire almost felt a kinship with it. It took another half dozen turns before Hero reached the limit of his patience. \"He insisted it was our only chance.\"\n\nA flare of heat broke through her calm before she could ruthlessly tamp it down. Maybe. But not a chance I wanted.\n\nHero took silence as a sign to propel forward. \"I argued. I said he shouldn't be hasty. You might convince the angel to let us back through. Aid us, even, the way you like to talk. He said he saw the way they looked at us, and there was no chance. He... he said he blamed himself, for the ghostlights, for losing to Andras. For doubting.\"\n\nClaire's bare toe tripped over nothing as she sped up.\n\nHero caught up with Claire and released a helpless sigh. \"What would you have had me do?\"\n\n\"Stop him.\" It came out like a hiss, but caught on its own jagged edges. Claire's eyes burned and the path began to waver ahead of her.\n\nHero shook his head. \"I think he wanted to make the choice. To ensure you got back to the Library. He was so certain, so at peace, and then...\"\n\nThe calm inside her shattered. Claire whirled on him. \"What? Then what? The nine-stone-soaking-wet teenager overpowered you? You should have stopped him. Held him to the bloody ground if you had to! He was just a child. He didn't know\u2014\"\n\n\"He was a man who made a choice. You don't get to take that away from him.\" Hero's voice was hard. It brought Claire up short. \"He made a choice, and you're doing his choice a disservice by calling him a child. Leto wasn't a child. He was a human, a young person who'd had everything taken from him, yet he deserves...\"\n\nHero pursed his lips, as if stopping himself, and seemed to jump to a different train of thought. His tone cooled to clipped edges. \"I am a book. A creation. A possession. As you are so fond of reminding me, I am bound to go only where the Library allows me and will spend all my foreseeable eternity having decisions denied to me.\" He held up the wrist that Claire had stamped when she'd cornered him, what seemed a lifetime ago.\n\n\"But Leto, Leto was a human, and he had a right to his choices. You helped him remember that.\" Hero lifted his shoulders. \"I might have disagreed with his choice, but I would not steal his right to make it, because I know how that feels.\"\n\nWords caught on her lips, clotted just under her tongue. Claire disliked the taste of guilt that came with it. The swoop of regret in her stomach. She'd stamped Hero, bound him to her will, and doomed Leto. Claire struggled with the impulse to deny the rage, and the grief that drove everything like a flood in her head. Instead, she turned away. Took another left. \"Let's just keep going.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 57",
                "text": "They kept going.\n\nClaire lost track of time, lost track of the number of lefts they took as the sun sank lower. It became a blur of stone and distant moans that threatened to burrow into her skull. Until they came to the stairs.\n\nLabyrinths didn't have stairs.\n\nThey were set into an empty expanse of wall, worn, but sufficiently intact to look as if they'd bear a person. The uneven steps were hemmed by more stone and quickly twisted upon themselves, a curved staircase that didn't reveal more than a few steps before disappearing upward. Claire tilted her head up. The walls were high but open to the perpetual twilight. Not high enough for a second floor, not high enough for the stairs to lead anywhere, despite the strange new light that dribbled down them, just around the bend. The stairs couldn't lead anywhere, couldn't exist, no matter how she twisted the physics.\n\nIf this place had physics.\n\n\"It could be a way out,\" Hero suggested.\n\n\"More likely it leads directly to the creature we've been hearing for the last few hours.\"\n\n\"Probably. But... it is on our left.\"\n\nThat, against all reason, decided it. Claire swallowed her doubts and ascended the stairs. After three corkscrew turns and a dozen steps, they broke upon the landing of another long, tidy hall. Unlike to the ruins they'd left behind, this hall was well maintained.\n\nThe sky was still open above them, but the darkness was lit intermittently by torches ensconced at regular intervals along the hall. Hero swept up one of the torches that kept the deepest shadows at bay. \"Just in case,\" he muttered a bit sheepishly.\n\nAs they turned another corner, they could see a new break in the wall up ahead. A soft light rippled out of an arch and pooled on the stone floor. A chill danced up Claire's neck, and Hero had tilted his head. \"Do you hear music?\"\n\nClaire listened, but there were only the constant far-off rumbles. \"No. What do you\u2014 Hero?\"\n\nHero lurched toward the arch.\n\nClaire, for once, found herself being the one to have to jog to catch up with him and his long legs. \"Hold on a moment! We need to be cau\u2014\"\n\nHero reached the doorway and turned his face to the strange light. The torch fell from his hand, then guttered on the stone. Claire burst forward to face whatever new monster waited.\n\nSpringtime.\n\nIn their hallway, it was dark and chill in the dead, forgotten realm of the afterlife. But across the threshold in front of them, grass burst from the stones and slowly faded into a thick forest carpet. It swelled with fat moss and large-leafed bushes before giving way to the paving stones of a tidy cottage.\n\nIt was a forgettable construction, squat and consisting of conveniently stacked stones and aging wood. The hovel was barely taller than Hero, but one look at the blue-painted door and swept pavers said it was well loved. Flowers of an almost lurid variety burst from boxes by the steps, and smoke rose lazily from the chimney.\n\n\"Croak End,\" Hero breathed. \"That's... that's impossible.\"\n\n\"What is this?\" Claire felt unease and kept her toes away from the patches of false sunlight.\n\n\"That's home.\" Hero's pronouncement left a cold shock in her stomach. Claire returned her attention to the tranquil little scene in front of her. \"My... my story.\"\n\n\"That can't be. Your book is here. It's likely a trick of the realm,\" Claire warned. She frowned as she watched a rabbit munch on the grass nearest the threshold. It twitched its ears as if it'd heard her insult. \"I had expected a castle for you, the way you talked.\"\n\nA strange, soft smile broke out on Hero's face. His eyes never left the arch. \"Humble beginnings,\" he murmured. \"Castles came later. This is where I grew up. Or next door to it. My place was smaller. Not nearly as nice. My neighbor...\"\n\nHero broke off with a gasp as movement stirred at one edge of the arch. He stumbled a step toward the threshold. A lithe young man in dark leathers emerged from the trees, startling the rabbit. He walked with easy, rolling strides, a simple bow slung over one shoulder. His hair was longish and braided, the end of a mahogany plait tickling at his collarbone. He seemed to be whistling to himself, though Claire could hear nothing of the tune.\n\n\"Owen.\" Hero's face warmed beatifically as he watched him. \"Owen! We grew up together. He was always there, even when...\" He paused, looking troubled as he considered it. \"How had I forgotten about him?\"\n\nHer alarm grew louder with Hero's excitement. Claire clasped his elbow, trying to draw his attention. She could feel the tremor of tension in it. \"It's a story, Hero. He's not really there\u2014none of this is. It's got to be a trap. Come away from there.\"\n\n\"He hasn't cut his hair yet. He still has that ratty old bag,\" Hero muttered fondly, not even hearing Claire. His face softened as he watched the hunter shuck what appeared to be his day's catch onto the porch and kick mud from his boots. \"And still poaching. I warned him about that. I always said he would get us both\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped, all color draining from his face. Claire grew concerned. \"What?\"\n\n\"They killed him.\" Hero said it levelly, but the words were rimmed in hot rage. His jaw worked as his gaze\u2014never on Claire\u2014turned anguished. Rage set into the curl of his lip and turned his delicate features sharp, cruel. \"He stood by me, always protected me, and they killed him. Your precious heroes killed him. And I couldn't do anything to stop it.\"\n\nClaire gripped Hero's wrist. \"It's a story, Hero. A story. Look at me. Think this through.\"\n\n\"It's not happened yet. I could stop it. I can\u2014\" He reached out a hand toward the arch.\n\nClaire knocked his arm down as she stepped in front of him. Only her hands firmly on his chest kept him from brushing past her. \"Listen to me, Hero. You have to listen. This is just a story, a vision, a trick. Block it out. I know it hurts, but it's not real\u2014\"\n\nHer shoulder blades slammed into the stone wall behind her and forced the air from her chest. Hero had his arm pressed against her throat. His snarl veered between broken and burning. \"You can't see anything past your precious books! We're all just objects to you. This isn't a story. He isn't a trope. It is real. Owen is real\u2014they are all real. Real to me, real to everyone who loved us. Don't you dare...\"\n\n\"Hero\u2014I was... I didn't mean you're not\u2014you're\u2014\" Claire struggled to get back the breath that had been knocked out of her, but the muscled vise at her throat presented a challenge. \"It's a trick. Hero, you need to stop and think. You need to listen to me, and you need to listen to me right now. Please.\"\n\nClaire shifted. Hero looked down and saw Claire's hand clenched on the hilt of the sword at his hip. Truthfully, Claire's fingers were numb, and the scabbard was in the way. She doubted she could do any harm at this angle, but she met Hero's gaze as he looked back up. She swallowed hard and repeated the only word that was making it through his panic. \"Please.\"\n\nClaire's hand began to cramp up. She didn't dare move, didn't dare speak again. The moment felt stretched and fragile. Then something broke. A raw emotion flickered over his eyes, then was gone. Hero sagged and drew back.\n\nClaire wobbled a moment, then sank halfway down the wall to breathe. When she looked up, Hero had his back to her, was silhouetted against the dappled sunlight streaming through the arch. The hunter, Owen, had retreated inside the cabin. Hero stared sightlessly at the front door, the smoke curling in the clear, white-blue sky.\n\n\"I could have saved him. I could have saved all of them. I could have fixed it this time. I could have\u2014\"\n\nClaire feared for a moment that he'd take that final stride across the threshold and disappear into sunlight despite himself. But in the end, his shoulders crumpled. Hero's gaze fell to the floor, and he jerked away as if it burned. \"Sorry, Owen.\"\n\nHe took a stiff, halting step. Paused just long enough to offer Claire a hand. Claire took it, pulling herself up on unsteady feet. They shared no glances this time. They said nothing more.\n\nThey walked. Drawing out of the light and continuing into the permanent shadows of the labyrinth."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 58",
                "text": "They encountered no more doors, no more possible futures. When they finally stumbled on another set of stairs, they took it and found themselves back in the dust-swirled ruins where they had begun. Twilight cast long shadows over the tops of the stones, cooling the air in the labyrinth quickly. Hero had left his torch behind, and without Claire's supplies, they were soon plodding down paths in the dark.\n\nOnce they'd cleared the stairs, words came more easily. The farther they walked into the dark halls, the closer Hero and Claire drifted to each other. Words were harsh, stiff things between them, sparking like stones, but they walked, arms brushing together, in silence. The unnatural quiet of a world halfway to not there.\n\nWhen they stumbled into the last dead end in a series of wrong left turns, Claire shook her head and slumped against a corner. \"Let's just rest here for the night.\" Even immortal souls could get tired. Humans in the afterlife ate and slept, not because their bodies needed it, but because their sanity did.\n\n\"Dead end. How apt.\"\n\n\"Don't be dramatic.\"\n\nHero grimaced and glanced around, as if looking for wood to make camp, but when nothing but hard earth and stone appeared, he sighed and slid down the opposite wall. Nervous hands, without a task to busy them, played over his knees.\n\n\"You should have seen the castle,\" Hero finally said.\n\nClaire tensed, uncertain where his thoughts were taking him. Her mind flashed on the cabin in the woods and the handsome boy with the bow, and she opted for a neutral answer. \"Is that so?\"\n\n\"It was the kind of thing I think you would like. Big library, all the creature comforts. None of this hardscrabble adventuring for me. I had a manse, servants. Fluffy bed, a lovely study, and the most charming wine cellar you'll ever find...\"\n\n\"A rags-to-riches aristocrat, then?\"\n\n\"Not quite. Rebellion is easy. Being clever, striking out where it hurt... I was good at that, as you might expect. We were so virtuous, so confident in our rightness. Being right is easy, but then ruling is... complicated.\" Hero looked thoughtful before reverting to the shrug that Claire had begun to recognize as carefully crafted carelessness. \"I prefer the term 'philosopher king.'\"\n\n\"Of course you do.\" Claire's lips curled into a smile. \"What possible motivation could you have to be a villain with a life like that?\"\n\n\"I never felt like the villain. We were overthrowing a corrupt system, me and Owen. We were going to fix everything. And then he was killed, and I didn't want revolution; I just wanted revenge. And then... you turn around one day and realize you have a kingdom that hates you, no matter what you try to do. You begin to hate them a little too.\" Hero quieted for a long moment. \"I thought I could change it for the better, you know. Make her see the truth of it, see what a world she was wasting.\"\n\nHe wasn't speaking of Owen anymore. Claire didn't have to ask what \"her\" Hero referred to. For an unwritten book, there would only ever be one \"her\" or \"him.\" The one who'd failed to let him live. Claire half expected him to say more, but the topic of his own book seemed to unsettle him. His gaze went distant and lost at some point over Claire's shoulder.\n\nWatching him withdraw, Claire became aware of a muted, sympathetic twist in her chest. And then, to her surprise, some of her own grief began to thaw. She'd be a hypocrite to dismiss it now. She studied him for a long moment. \"Your author must have thought of you often.\"\n\nDark green eyes blinked, and Hero returned from his thoughts in a daze. \"Why do you say that?\"\n\nLightness felt wrong in a place like this, so she offered a shrug instead. \"There's a lot of things that can wake up a book. But one theory is books are pulled awake by their author's dreams\u2014believe me, I know how that can go wrong. But to wake up and take shape like you did, to escape despite the Library's precautions and find her so fast. You're just so\"\u2014Claire made a vague twirl of her hand\u2014\"alive.\"\n\n\"I much prefer it to the alternative.\" Hero rubbed the space between his eyes. \"Not that it's done me much good.\"\n\n\"Yes, well... Women of a tender age don't take to sudden breakups well.\" Claire suppressed a smile. \"If you weren't a villain in her brain before, you certainly are now.\"\n\nHe dropped his head to his knees and a dry chuckle rumbled in his chest before seeming to stutter and trip over itself. He looked up, alarmed. \"Is that how it works? Did I\u2014 Was I fated to inspire my own author to make me a\u2014\"\n\nClaire saw the gears threaten to spin off the tracks in his brain, and she couldn't suppress the laughter that bubbled out. Hero stopped with a startled look, which only made Claire laugh more until she was drained. Too exhausted to be stern.\n\n\"Oh, Hero.\" She shook her head. \"Even the Library doesn't know how stories are made. Or not made, in our case. Try to put together who you are, why you are... Well, that's the path of madness.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you find my existential crisis so entertaining, warden.\" Hero's voice was arch, but it was softened by the curve of his lips.\n\nThey fell into a tentative truce of quiet. The chill of the stone wall was seeping into her spine, and Claire shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot. It was going to be a long night. There was a glimmer as Hero's eyes tracked her fidgeting.\n\n\"Do characters forget themselves, warden?\"\n\n\"You should know better than anyone.\"\n\n\"Not from damage, I mean. Can characters forget their stories for good?\"\n\n\"What a curious question...\" Claire frowned in his direction in the dark. \"Why do you ask?\"\n\nHero seemed to chew on his answer a moment. \"When I\u2014when we\u2014 Oh, bother, it's annoying containing multitudes. I used to be part of the whole, speak for the whole book. I was the book. All of us, all our dreams, fears... even the bratty, idiotic heroes. But that's begun to fade. I can't feel the others anymore. I'm beginning to feel more and more... singular.\"\n\nAlone. Hero's voice quieted as he said it, his eyes closed, as if he could dismiss the conversation through sleep if it became too uncomfortable.\n\nHe was afraid, Claire realized with a start. It must be a disquieting feeling, being alone in your own head for the first time. \"You're still a character tied to a book, but you're also becoming an individual. Exposed to things other than your story, you may be changing from how you were written. It's one of the reasons the Library quiets the characters that wake up.\"\n\n\"Except damsels.\"\n\n\"Except the occasional damsel, yes. But only after their author is already dead and gone, and there's no risk of damaging a potential book,\" Claire allowed. \"They change, grow... The damsels become people. I used to think only damsels did that, but you're proving that wrong. There's more to every one of us than what our story intends.\"\n\nHero's eyes slit open. \"Is that why you defended me back there? You think you've tamed yourself a villain?\"\n\n\"Not in the slightest.\" Claire smiled as she made out the unwritten man's startled expression in the dark. \"It just doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter? What, in the philosophical 'we're all damned anyway' sense?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"Stories are, at the most basic level, how we make sense of the world. It doesn't do to forget that sometimes heroes fail you when you need them the most. Sometimes you throw your lot in with villains. Neither Heaven nor Hell is very happy with us right now.\" Claire leaned her head back. The weariness hit her all at once as she looked up at the strange configuration of stars that peeked through the ruins. They twinkled red and purple, she realized. Nothing was familiar in this place. \"Whatever you are, your story's still unwritten.\"\n\nAgain, silence. She thought he'd nodded off, but then Hero spoke up quietly.\n\n\"Claire.\"\n\n\"What now?\"\n\n\"You're not expecting a happy ending here, are you.\" His words were a statement rather than a question.\n\nThe breath staggered in Claire's throat. She kept her eyes closed. \"No. Not since the ghostlights went out.\" And not since Leto. There were things Claire still couldn't say. \"Maybe it ends well for the Library, if it's still standing. Stop Andras, protect the Library. That's what I intend to guarantee. But for me, no.\"\n\n\"That's a shame.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\"\n\nHero seemed to consider. \"I don't think I'm going to like mocking a different librarian. Maybe I'll run away again.\"\n\n\"You'll do no such thing. Sleep.\"\n\nWhether Hero slept or not, he didn't speak again. Claire listened to the far-off groans, felt the chill stone beneath her cheek, and almost regretted the silence. Almost asked Hero to start chattering again. But she didn't, and eventually she slept and dreamed as she knew she would. Of bronze scales and red stories, and remembered books turned to forgotten graves."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 59",
                "text": "Dim light peeked under her eyelids. Claire woke up tasting dust and ozone on her tongue. The weird nontaste, nonsmell of a dead world. The sun hadn't quite crested the tall labyrinth walls yet, leaving everything in the half-baked purple of dawn. The dead end was empty. That caused a shrill of panic, but when she turned her head, she saw Hero striding back down the passage.\n\nClaire wiped a hand over her cheek. \"What time is it?\"\n\n\"Absolutely no idea,\" Hero chirped, and shrugged. \"You only slept for a couple hours. I figured you needed it.\"\n\n\"You didn't sleep?\"\n\n\"The accommodations were a little sparse for my tastes. Soon as it started to get light, I took the opportunity to scout out the next intersection. Followed left to another dead end, so I suspect we can be rebels and go right without ruining your glorious left-handed strategy.\"\n\nClaire took in Hero's appearance. His clothes were filthy. She suspected hers were as well. His aristocratic coat hung open, having lost a couple buttons somewhere between Valhalla and the literally godforsaken maze they found themselves in. He sported scratches on his hands and a welt on his cheek from their headlong tumult through the catacombs. He looked weary but approached none of the exhaustion and hopeless dread that Claire felt. Stories were always resilient in their own ways.\n\nAuthors, not so much. Claire still felt half-dead as she dragged a hand over her face. \"You shouldn't have wandered off alone. There's something else in here with us. We heard it last night.\"\n\nHero stopped in front of her. \"Concerned for my safety, warden? I'm touched.\"\n\n\"Merely concerned you'll attract the beast to me. Or take a wild hair to run off again. Not sure I have the energy to chase you, to be honest.\" But Claire said it with a weak smile. Hero offered his hand, and she allowed him to yank her to her feet.\n\n\"Perhaps breakfast will improve your mood. Slice of diabetes?\" Hero opened his hand and offered her one of the tiny snack cakes that she'd seen him trying with Leto in the Mdina kitchen. It was perfectly preserved in cellophane, if a bit squished.\n\n\"We've been on the run for our souls, and you've been hiding cakes on your person?\"\n\n\"What? It's not as if anyone else thought to pack provisions.\" Hero took offense. He began to close his hand, but Claire snatched the treat before he could withdraw it. She tore the wrapper and crumpled the cellophane into her pocket.\n\n\"I thought you hated sugar,\" Claire mumbled around a mouthful of frosting, to which Hero shrugged.\n\n\"I suppose I'm still figuring out what I hate.\"\n\n\"Where'd you learn a word like 'diabetes,' anyway? I thought your book was more fantasy based. Don't tell me Brev had you read a medical text.\"\n\n\"Leto made a joke, and I made him explain it.\" Hero's eyes went distant before he swiftly shifted the topic away from that memory. \"How do you think they're doing?\"\n\nNot Leto. The Library. Brevity. Andras. \"I can't know until we get out of here,\" Claire admitted. The cake felt less sweet, turning to mud on her tongue. \"It's been too long, but time between realms can do funny things. Brevity's smart. I'm hoping the reason we've heard nothing is because she called up the wards. The Library's not defenseless. But it's more built to keep books in rather than keep anything out\u2014\"\n\n\"The irony is delicious,\" Hero interjected.\n\n\"And Andras has the pages,\" Claire finished with a scowl. \"Those pages, that codex... if Lucifer made it, it's a part of him. Like Hell itself. Even a portion of one could tear down a ward, and Andras has ten whole pages. I might be happy that the angels don't have it, but Andras... I'm afraid what he wants to do is even worse.\"\n\n\"You'll just need to take it back, then.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course. I'm sure the Horrors will be happy to listen to a deposed librarian. Without any of her tools of office. Without a library.\"\n\n\"You have a library. A library of one.\" Hero tapped his chest and flashed her a carefully practiced thousand-watt smile, only slightly dimmed by the smear of sand in his hair. \"I'll have you know I'm worth a hundred of those boring old books.\"\n\n\"And an arrogance to match the worth.\" Claire tried to sound harsh and failed.\n\n\"It's all part of my charm. I\u2014\" Hero stumbled, as if his foot had tripped on air. He gripped the stone wall with white knuckles as if he suddenly wasn't sure of his feet.\n\n\"Hero?\"\n\n\"Just a moment. I feel... peculiar,\" he muttered through clenched teeth.\n\nClaire studied him, then felt her pulse stop in her throat. The color began bleeding from Hero's bright, brassy bronze hair. It formed cool wisps before evaporating. She looked to the hand pressed against the wall and saw a band of symbols glowing on his wrist. It was bright crimson even as all his other colors were being drained out. Her gut clenched, and the cake fell from her fingers. \"The IWL.\"\n\n\"The what?\" Hero followed her gaze to the stamp on his wrist. Sweat began to bead on his temple, his face white with distress. \"That can't be. You're the librarian.\"\n\n\"Not necessarily. Not if Brevity's done her job.\"\n\n\"What? But that's absurd\u2014\" He was fighting it, but Claire knew the pull of the Library always won. She saw the panic flare in his eyes as Hero came to the same conclusion. \"Not yet, dammit!\" He glared up at the air above them as if the Library's interworld loan was something to be bargained with.\n\nClaire felt her heart slowly turning to lead. The little parts of her that had been restored by sleep and food and banter, the illusion of hope\u2014those bits were fading along with the peach of Hero's skin and the blue of his worn coat.\n\n\"The Library needs you. It's all right.\" Her voice was eerily calm even in her own ears. She was a writer; she could lie for him.\n\n\"No. Wait. Hold on. Just try\u2014maybe you'll come with?\" Hero snatched at her wrist and clamped down hard enough to pinch. His face was beginning to shimmer, just at the edges.\n\nClaire forced her lips up, a halting smile. \"Maybe.\"\n\nShe was a better liar with words than with deeds, and she rarely smiled. It was no surprise that the alarm increased in Hero's eyes. His grip on her wrist loosened but he refused to let go. \"You can't just\u2014\"\n\n\"Take care of them, Hero. You promised.\"\n\nHero's eyes widened. \"Claire\u2014\"\n\nThe shimmer fell inward and absorbed him. There was a snap, a rush of air. It tingled over her skin, replacing the pressure of Hero's hand with a lick of sharp static.\n\nSilence. She became aware of the sound of harsh breathing. Sharp, staccato gasps of air. She realized it was hers.\n\nThe passage suddenly felt too dark, too small, and her vision wobbled. The cake was still splayed on the earth at her feet. She made to pick it up, but instead found the stone scraping harshly at her spine as she slid down the wall. She did not cry. Heat stung her eyes, and she stared sightlessly at the chocolate frosting smudging her fingers.\n\nAnd Claire was alone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 60",
                "text": "\u2002Books change. We change. It's time the system changed.\n\n\u2002I will change it. For me. For the books. For our souls. The story can still be rewritten.\n\n\u2014Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE\n\nAnnotated at a much later date, with a heavy, bleak ink:\n\n\u2002We are subjects to our own natures. Books must be true to their stories, and whether we're dead or alive, the role we're given will win out. Accept your duty and find peace. Fighting against your nature is only madness. Learn from Librarian Poppaea's tragedy, apprentice.\n\n\u2014Ibukun of Ise, 991 CE\n\nThe iwl was not a gentle process.\n\nIt did not ask, did not offer; it retrieved. So Brevity expected an annoyed book when she'd summoned him. She expected a haughty, insulted, snarky book.\n\nBrevity had not expected a train wreck of grief and fury.\n\nHero had barely materialized from the summons when he gave a half-inhuman snarl, he spun, and Brevity found herself against the opposite shelves with a hand at her collar.\n\nHis eyes were narrowed, and his face wore an unfamiliar expression of pain. \"You had no right!\"\n\nThis was not how an IWL request went when Claire did it. Brevity bit down on her frustration and summoned as much authority as she could with books between her shoulder blades. \"I am a librarian, and you are under\u2014\" But Hero cut her off, with more growl than words.\n\n\"You left her.\"\n\nThat trembly feeling threatened in her chest again, alarm laced with panic, but Brevity held on. \"The boss will be fine. She always is. We, on the other hand, are in trouble.\"\n\nHero finally took note of the thundering beneath his feet. It'd only gotten worse, now accompanied by a distant warning creak. He released his grip and stepped back. Not all of the anger drained from his face, but his shoulders thrummed with new tension. \"You may be correct. But Claire's trapped. You need to send me back.\"\n\n\"What? What happened?\" Brevity faltered and noted for the first time Hero's state of disarray, the fine layer of dust and sand and regret. Her eyes widened, but the walls shuddered again, and she shook her head. \"Explain on the way.\"\n\nBy the time Hero had sketched a quick outline of what had occurred in Malta and beyond, Brevity had led him through the center of the Library. She paused to rescue fallen books and grab scabbards from armor displays, shoving them into Hero's arms as he talked.\n\nThe little hope that she'd possessed began to drift as he got further into the story. When Hero recounted Leto's sacrifice, the hope had guttered entirely. When Hero sank into his own concerns about Claire and the labyrinth, Brevity latched onto the one thing she didn't need hope for.\n\n\"Boss will find a way. She's a real librarian, not\u2014\" Brevity stopped, squeezing her eyes shut against where that thought was going. When she opened them, she could feel the certainty in her own voice. \"Boss isn't gonna be stopped by nothing.\"\n\n\"You didn't see that place.\" Hero's free hand jerked through his hair and betrayed his anxiety. \"Just send me back, and I'll relay the situation\u2014\"\n\n\"I can't.\"\n\nHero stopped, nearly dropping the stack of sheathed blades in his arms. \"What?\"\n\n\"I can't send you back. If you were still in Valhalla, sure. But you said it was a forgotten realm\u2014I can't send you back somewhere we don't have a path to.\"\n\n\"But you just\u2014\"\n\n\"An IWL is kind of a one-way trip. Besides, the Library is sealed and...\" Brevity paused as another jolt rolled through and rained dust down on them from the stacks. \"And I need you here.\"\n\nA muddle of decisions warred on Hero's face, and for a moment Brevity wondered if she really would have to lock him up with his book. Then a frown tipped the scales, and he settled for a terse nod. \"Andras?\"\n\n\"Only makes sense, given what you said. The wards are hol\u2014\" Brevity staggered as the air was snapped from her lungs. Hero put out a hand to steady her as the lights shifted from white to purple and back again. Hero's hand was probably the only thing that kept her from curling up on the floor. \"Something just took the first ward down.\"\n\n\"How many wards do we have?\"\n\n\"Three. But the first ward is the dream ward. If that one went...\" Brevity faltered. \"They're supposed to hold up to demons. What could... Oh no.\" She turned and Hero had to tilt so she didn't smack on the business end of the swords he held. \"You said he's got the codex pages. He's using the pages as weapons.\"\n\nHero blinked. \"He can do that?\"\n\n\"It's the Devil's Bible. Boss couldn't even touch the pages. Who knows what he inked them with?\" Brevity's stomach sank. She said the words so she didn't feel them too hard. \"If he's burning up pages to get in, the wards aren't going to hold.\"\n\nHero stopped. The floor shivered beneath them as the thundering took up again. His knuckles whitened and curled around the bundle of scabbards. \"What do you need me to do?\"\n\nIt was a question that appeared to cost him something to ask. It helped, just a little. Brevity drew her shoulders up. \"Clone yourself, perhaps procure an ancient artifact of great power while you're at it?\" She gave him a game smile as she caught a hail of books that fell from the nearest shelf.\n\nHero stared. \"How can you be so blithe in the face of imminent demise?\"\n\nAll she needed was an audience. Brevity swallowed the lump in her throat. \"Practice. Remember who I work for?\" There was a particularly loud impact, and she shot an anxious glance down the aisle, where she could see the ward lights still floating above the desk. The second light was stuttering rapidly. \"Not good. Let's hurry and... I dunno, set up some blockades, maybe?\"\n\n\"I assume there's a plan?\" Hero asked. \"Because if it's two against an army of demonic Horrors, I think I'd rather just take my chances on the regime change with the damsels.\"\n\n\"Well, without being able to reach Walter, we're kinda\u2014\" Brevity halted midstep, felt like an idiot, and let out a squeal. \"Damsels. Oh, you're brilliant!\"\n\nHero managed a confused \"Of course I am...\" before following to see what he was brilliant about.\n\nBrevity changed course, mentally scolding herself. She'd been so worried about filling Claire's shoes, about being a librarian, running the Library as Claire would want, preserving the books as Claire would do\u2014failing where Claire would have succeeded. She'd tried so hard to think and act like Claire, when the answer was staring her in the face.\n\nShe had been thinking like Claire. She'd been thinking of the damsels as books, things to preserve and curate.\n\nNot people.\n\nThe glass-set door cracked as Brevity barged into the damsel suite. The occupants were gathered in uneasy clusters, likely already worried from what Charlotte and Aurora had reported. A dozen sets of pretty eyes narrowed as they took in Hero with his arms full of weapons.\n\nBrevity could positively feel the blush that radiated as Hero shifted next to her. \"Plan, muse?\"\n\n\"Plan,\" Brevity confirmed. She took a deep breath and dropped her face into something apologetic. She turned to the damsels and cleared her throat. \"Hey, guys? I need a moment. I'm so sorry, but I'm going to need to restrict all of you to your books for your own safety. The Library is experiencing technical difficulties with our wards\u2014mainly demons bent on destruction, see\u2014and should the wards fall, it'd be best if you're out of the way. So if you please can make your way to your books\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\" a blond woman interrupted. She wore a leather catsuit that frankly defied the laws of physics and anatomy. She looked like a spy or, rather, some spy's poorly written sidekick. She must have been new if she was still wearing that thing.\n\n\"I know this is very sudden, ladies.\" Brevity kept her voice slow and calm. \"Hero and I will do our very best, but it's likely that you'll experience a change of management in the near future. Andras is determined to possess your books and he has Horrors\u2014\"\n\nShe was drowned out by a swell of murmurs from the damsels. Charlotte, appearing to have her puritan sensibilities insulted more by the disorder than by the news, let out a sharp whistle to silence the group. She turned to Brevity. \"What does a demon want with us?\"\n\nBrevity exchanged a mournful look with Hero. \"We think he intends to use books as magical power for his coup. Or possibly bribes. For the court.\"\n\nThat brought the protests back in force. \"I'm not being someone's reward again,\" a princess with white hair said.\n\n\"At least you didn't get fridged in yours.\" A curvy woman in a pencil skirt slumped into a chair. \"Where's Claire?\"\n\n\"Claire's on her way...\" Brevity faltered. \"But we might be on our own for now. But now...\" Brevity raised her hands. \"No need for distress. We have Hero here and\u2014\"\n\n\"Heroes don't do shit,\" a firm voice spoke up. The damsel wore what might have started its life as a gauzy peasant gown, but at some point, it had been ripped and tied and stitched and paired with utilitarian fatigues until they resembled more of an androgynous apocalyptic soldier than a damsel. They spit and glared with open hostility at Hero. \"Except die first. They do that well.\"\n\n\"I don't\u2014\"\n\n\"They're kinda right,\" a curvy alien with lavender tentacles said shyly.\n\n\"Your books\u2014\"\n\n\"Our books suck,\" Charlotte said, and Brevity really would have to find out where that slang had entered her vocabulary. \"We're stronger outside of them.\" She waited until she received some scattered nods from around the room. She squared up to Brevity. \"So give us weapons.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity placed a hand to her chest, widening her eyes. \"I couldn't. I'm the acting librarian and you're\u2014\"\n\n\"We're damsels. Unsuitable ones at that\u2014isn't that why we're here?\" Charlotte picked an imaginary fleck from her skirt. At some point, she'd modified it to make it easier to walk in, Brevity realized. Modeled after Claire's, perhaps. Charlotte crossed her arms. \"Maybe that just makes us people now.\"\n\n\"And people always have a choice,\" Hero added softly.\n\n\"Look, even a hero gets it,\" someone else muttered with only a small amount of disdain.\n\nCharlotte nodded. \"We're people. And we aren't sitting back and letting some old man tell the story for us again.\"\n\nA low agreement, hesitant at first, trickled through the room. The damsels seemed divided, but the quiet broke when Aurora, silent as always, padded forward on hooved feet. She inspected Hero's arms and reached hesitantly for the scabbard of a blade nearly as long as she was tall. It wobbled in her hands, and she stepped back. She was followed by a chubby boy in a wizard's robe. The leather-clad spy was next, selecting a thin dagger.\n\nShe sniffed. \"No guns?\"\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" said Hero.\n\nAnd then the rest of the damsels began to take up arms.\n\nHero divested himself of all but his own sword, and soon enough they were busy pulling out unwritten combat books and conferring. Hero withdrew to where Brevity stood in the doorway, shoulder bracketed against the frame. She was running through the time left. They would need a plan. Barricades. Units. Tactics.\n\nHero tilted his head. \"That was clever, what you did there.\"\n\n\"What was?\" Brevity acted surprised.\n\n\"Making them volunteer. Tricky.\"\n\n\"I didn't make them do anything. I just had faith they'd come up with the right answer.\" Brevity sniffed. \"Inspiration means having faith. It's... it's what muses do. What I did, once.\"\n\n\"You must have been a brilliant muse,\" Hero said.\n\nA quiet smile grew on Brevity's lips. \"I was. Now I'm a brill librarian. Let's get to work.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 61",
                "text": "\u2002No story is insignificant. That's what the existence of the Unwritten Wing teaches us. No escapist fantasy, no far-off dream, no remembered suffering. Every story has meaning, has power. Every story has the power to sustain, the power to destroy, the power to create. Stories shape time, for Pete's sake. Once upon a time. Long, long ago. Someday. And then what happened?\n\n\u2002Living author or dead, written or not, your story shakes the world. That's common sense to a muse, and the idea librarians are supposed to honor. That every story, every human, matters.\n\n\u2002The hard part is convincing ourselves first.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2010 CE\n\nLight blue capsules sparked a dull constellation against a navy blanket. They were that medical blue: the color of latex gloves and bitter chalk, but dulled by the bedroom's yellow-tinged lights. They held the attention of the boy curled over them with a hunger-pang intensity.\n\nWhen Rami went looking for the remains of Leto's soul, he found a cluttered bedroom floating in darkness. Inside, a haggard teenager hunched over his bed, knees drawn and bony. The pointed ears and the oiled skin were gone, but Rami recognized the tangled curly hair, the soft brown coloring, the gaunt jut of the chin from the demon-boy he'd met. He was Leto, and yet he wasn't. He was what Leto would be born from. Guilt and regret and self-loathing.\n\nRami knew exactly what that looked like.\n\nThe boy fixed sightlessly on the pills, tugging one end of the blanket to make the little blue ovals twitch back and forth. Back and forth, up and down. As if balancing the scale.\n\n\"You already know what happens.\" Rami made his voice as gentle as possible.\n\nThe teenager raised his eyes dully to where Rami stood in the corner of his bedroom. The boy's face didn't change. Didn't register surprise, as if a strange angel popped into his room at midnight every day. He made no move to cover up the dozen pills before him. \"I deserved it.\"\n\n\"Do you want to tell me why?\" Rami already knew what he would hear, but the question wasn't for him. He had to step carefully, so carefully here. Pulling a soul from its memory was a fragile process, and Rami was aware how desperately out of practice he was. The memory seemed already to be fraying at the edges; an eerie vignette of dark blur muddled the corners of the room.\n\n\"I... He's dead because of me. I killed him.\" The boy started toying with the pills again.\n\nRami gestured. \"This doesn't look like where society keeps a murderer.\"\n\n\"I might as well have killed him. Darren, he... We were friends. Since we were kids. But lately he was just so... annoying. And always complaining. I tried. I tried!\" Frustration flickered to life in Leto's voice, giving it an uneven edge. \"I invited him to stuff! He shit all over everything.\" He flicked a begging glance to Rami, but the angel said nothing.\n\nHe clenched the blanket in his hands as his eyes diverted again. \"It's like he wanted to be miserable. He was always threatening to kill himself. Always talking about it for attention. I just... You panic the first few times, because you care, right? But after the twentieth time, it felt like it was just talking. He was on about it again and... I snapped. I said, 'Sure, yeah. Hurry up and do it if you're going to do it already.' God, I was... 'Just do it or shut up,' I said.\" Leto's breath became ragged, his voice thick as he swallowed. \"So he did.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Rami said.\n\n\"Don't.\" The boy was suddenly tense. \"Just... say anything but that. Don't. That's what they all said. All they ever say. I kept waiting for someone to figure it out. Read the texts he was always sending me. Ask questions. Figure out I'm the reason that... But no one did. Everyone just knew we were friends. Everyone's sympathetic, everyone's sad. I'm not sad. I'm mad. I'm so\u2014\" Leto screwed his eyes shut again, and his voice broke. \"But everyone's so fucking sorry.\"\n\n\"You really think they'd blame you?\"\n\n\"They should. I... Darren never cared about normal stuff. The guys at school called Darren\u2014 Well, they called him a lot of things. I dropped him just to impress guys who couldn't give two fucks about me. I abandoned him.\" More pills crept between the boy's fingers, and the shadows stirred across the floor. \"Betrayed him.\"\n\nRami watched the blue dots leaving dust on clenched hands. \"You think this will help?\"\n\n\"Nothing helps. Nothing fixes this.\"\n\n\"Nothing stops it either,\" Rami said. \"The hurt doesn't stop just because you turn your back on it.\"\n\nThe boy was silent a moment, knuckles white. \"Does it even matter?\"\n\n\"It always matters to those you leave behind. You broke her heart, you know.\"\n\nHis shoulders hunched. \"Mom won't care. She\u2014\"\n\n\"Not your mom. Claire.\"\n\nConfusion replaced some of the tension on the boy's face. Memory foggy. \"Wh-who?\"\n\n\"The librarian.\" Rami stepped forward. Not aggressively, but as one would come around the bedside of a sick person. \"It's time to remember, Leto. You've tortured yourself enough.\"\n\n\"The librarian.\" Leto repeated the word. His brow furrowed, and the boy seemed about to dismiss it. In this permeable place of time past, grief spent, Rami could almost taste the memories as they cracked through the boy's brain. A headache, gravelly sand, bronze chain, bronze hair. Sun on stones, snack cakes. Ale and ravens. A kiss. Papers and tea. Uncomfortably squishy.\n\nLeto shook his head to clear it. \"That's not. I haven't. I still have to\u2014\"\n\n\"You already have. There's no need to relive this,\" Rami said. \"Take my hand, and we can talk.\"\n\nLeto's gaze drifted from Rami's outstretched hand, was pulled again to the constellation of pills in his palm. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"You can call me Rami.\"\n\nA familiar twinge crossed his face. Leto frowned. \"You were chasing us.\"\n\n\"I'm not now,\" Rami said. \"I just want to help.\"\n\n\"Did it matter?\" Leto rubbed his eyes. Rami could feel him fluttering between two memories, two kinds of now. Past and present warring. That was another feeling Rami knew well. \"Did any of it ever mean anything?\"\n\n\"We make our own meaning, like everything else in life. What matters to you now?\"\n\n\"The Library.\" Leto flinched, an apparent realization like ice water. \"They were trapped.\"\n\nSouls usually didn't pivot this fast. Rami grew concerned. \"Easy, easy. You're forgiven. You're not in Hell anymore\u2014\"\n\n\"Who's that?\" Leto interrupted, frowning toward the other side of the bedroom. Rami swiveled around, half expecting to see a parent, a teenage friend. But the corner was empty to his eyes.\n\n\"What exactly are you seeing?\" Rami asked hesitantly. Saving souls didn't mean they necessarily came back intact either.\n\n\"Old dude, kinda looks like a hipster? He's got glowing creepy eyes and a suit and... striped hair? Like a tiger. Who does that?\" Leto froze. \"He's... familiar. Why do I know him?\"\n\nA demon with tiger-striped hair and a cold light in his eyes. No, Andras didn't belong in the mortal world. Not in the memory of a tragic, senseless death. It was wrong, just wrong. Rami felt a chill on his neck. \"Did you see him here... before? The first time around?\"\n\nLeto clenched the pills in his fist before nodding, eyes still locked on the corner.\n\nRami scrutinized the corner of the room, but whatever Andras had done once upon a time, he was not there now. If the demon had something to do with Leto's human death... he'd been planning something longer than anyone expected. Worse, he'd involved the mortal world and unaware souls like Leto to do it. It crossed an unconscionable line, one that signaled larger ambitions than just Hell. Alarm built in his chest, and Rami was eager to be out of the memory. \"Let us leave, Leto.\"\n\n\"That's not my name...\" The boy frowned. \"He said\u2014he said he could make it all go away. Take me someplace better. And then it hurt, so much. He lied. What about you? Are you really helping?\"\n\n\"I can only try.\" Rami had to answer honestly. The room felt darker, as if the shadows were folding in on themselves. The memory was unraveling, and they couldn't be caught inside it. \"This memory... I tried to catch you sooner, but this was all that was left. We need to get you out of here to have a chance.\"\n\nLeto's eyes reluctantly drifted away from the corner of the room and back toward Rami. He considered. \"What about the others?\"\n\n\"The... You mean the librarian?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Leto was already beginning to fade.\n\n\"Just... take my hand, and we can talk.\"\n\nLeto considered the blue tablets in front of him. \"You know, it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Dying.\" He slid off the bed and turned toward Rami.\n\nRami let out a breath as Leto took his hand. \"It's not meant to. The pain in death isn't the dying. It's the wounds we leave in our wake.\"\n\nHe cast one wary eye back to the empty corner where Andras had once been, then swept them toward Heaven."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 62",
                "text": "Rami didn't let go of Leto's hand until they safely set down in Purgatory. He brought him in far from the processing desk and the Gates, wanting to let the boy fully regain himself before overwhelming him with the bureaucracy that was Heaven.\n\nRami felt a rush of relief as he looked at the teenager. Leto had color in his cheeks, an alert interest in his eyes that said he was centered and aware. It had been close\u2014rescuing a ravaged soul was always a delicate process\u2014but he was whole and stable.\n\nThey stood a little apart from the meandering mass of souls that shuffled by them as Rami took stock. Leto's eyes focused on the dazed dead waiting in a tidy, if unwieldy, line. This far away from the desk, the quiet was eerie. The dead didn't have much need for small talk, so the limitless space was filled only with the shuffle of feet.\n\nWhen Leto's eyes drifted back, Rami felt the question. \"You remember now?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think so.\" Leto ran a hand through his hair absently before touching his rounded ears with a jerk. \"If this isn't Earth, why aren't my ears\u2014\"\n\n\"You are purified.\" Rami saw Leto's incredulous look, and he waved a hand. \"I know, stilted term. Heaven loves them. You were never wrong to begin with. But it means you're not sentenced to be a demon anymore. An act of sacrifice can do that. You've remembered and forgiven yourself for what you did when you were alive.\"\n\n\"I didn't do it to be forgiven.\" Leto shook his head. \"What I did\u2014\"\n\n\"Forgiven doesn't mean no regret. We'll always regret the wrongs we've done. It just means you aren't punishing yourself for it.\"\n\nLeto folded his arms. His morose look was surprising, given the circumstances. Most forgiven souls couldn't race to the Gates fast enough. Rami tried again. \"That means you don't have to go back to Hell.\"\n\nLeto's eyes widened. \"Oh no, you have to take me back. We have to go to the Library immediately.\"\n\nRami frowned. Perhaps there had been some damage after all, some touch of insanity. He touched Leto's shoulder and willed calm into the boy. Leto's shoulders drooped, and Rami began guiding him through the crowd. He skipped the line of waiting mortals entirely\u2014surely even Heaven would understand some line cutting, given the circumstances. \"You really don't mean that.\"\n\nDespite all reason, Leto persisted. \"I do. And I think you're going to take me.\"\n\n\"I think you are misinformed.\"\n\n\"No. You came after me after a crocodile creature... god... monster-thing tore up my soul. Somehow, I don't think you do that for everyone. Why me?\"\n\nRami furrowed his brow. \"It was a brave thing you did, there. Even if you're misguided about what side you're on. You didn't deserve to disappear.\"\n\n\"Maybe, maybe not. I think it's because you wanted something. I'll be honest\u2014I'm not helping you do anything to hurt the Library. But\"\u2014Leto looked cagey, and proud of himself for it\u2014\"if you get me back to the Library, maybe the librarian will listen to you.\"\n\nRami let go of Leto's shoulder. His touch had made him calm and obedient but obviously hadn't dissuaded him from his loyalties. Rami crossed his arms. \"You're awfully shrewd for a purified soul.\"\n\nLeto grinned. \"Turns out you can learn a lot of things in a library.\"\n\n\"And willful.\"\n\n\"I think I was always that,\" Leto said. \"I just forgot for a while.\"\n\nRami snorted and considered the offer. Uriel had ordered him to find a path into Hell. Even if Uriel's orders mattered little to Ramiel now, it was no major concession to agree to go back. He wanted to see what had become of the librarian. But it would not be safe; he had intended to leave the boy at the Gates. The fact remained that Leto was a purified soul now. Bringing him back to Hell risked condemning him all over again.\n\nIt was a risk that didn't sit well with him. \"You won't be able to touch anything or anyone there. One touch, you risk your soul being corrupted again, reverting to your original judgment.\"\n\nLeto's eyes fished toward the distant Gates and back. \"I understand.\"\n\nRami wasn't confident that he did. \"You won't be able to help them.\"\n\n\"But you can,\" Leto said.\n\nRami shook his head. \"That's not why I would\u2014\"\n\n\"You help people. That's what you told me. The Library is under attack by a dude who wants to ruin everything. Aren't demons, like, your natural enemy or something?\"\n\n\"I'm not a part of Hell or the Library.\"\n\n\"Are you part of Heaven, then?\"\n\nGuilt settled in Rami's stomach like a stone. \"Not precisely.\"\n\n\"And do you think Claire is working for evil?\"\n\n\"She's Hell's lib\u2014\"\n\n\"That's her title. Is she evil? Is what she's trying to do evil?\" Leto insisted.\n\nRami was not accustomed to moral debate with mortals. He ground his teeth. \"No. Not as far as I know.\"\n\n\"Did she try to do anything to harm Heaven? Even when your partner tried to kill her?\"\n\nRami sighed. Uriel really wasn't giving the best impressions of Heaven. \"You heard about that.\"\n\n\"For an angel, that didn't seem very nice.\"\n\n\"There were\u2014it wasn't\u2014it's not as if\u2014\" Rami fell silent. There was no defending Uriel's lust for revenge. Hadn't Rami already come to that conclusion? Why did he seek to defend Heaven, after all this time?\n\nLeto appeared ready to pounce at the opening. \"I hated myself so much I hurt innocent people and it sucked. I'm... I'm not doing that again. How about you?\"\n\nThey were approaching the processing desk. Rami slowed as he saw his replacement noticing him. The cherub was an eager sort and tipped his head respectfully. Rami's eyes slid past the desk to the guards at the Gate, then to the high tower, where he knew Uriel's office was.\n\nLeto was bound for Heaven, but Uriel would detain him first for information. And what would Uriel do to a spirited, distinctly uncooperative soul like Leto?\n\nChances were that Rami wouldn't even be able to get them into Hell. His old access had likely long since been revoked. Even if he did... Heaven was invading Hell anyway.\n\nThat was all he was doing, Rami reasoned, even as a different decision began to take root. He pushed it aside and tugged Leto around to head back down the hill, away from the eyes of judgmental guards and eager upstarts.\n\n\"You're purified, and I'm not rescuing you again. If I agree to this, there are going to be some ground rules.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 63",
                "text": "\u2002The trouble with reading is it goes to your head. Read too many books and you get savvy. You begin to think you know which kind of story you're in.\n\n\u2002Then some stupid git with a cosmic quill fucks you over.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1721 CE\n\nClaire walked.\n\nAfter Hero had left she'd stayed there for a time, staring at the walls, not quite seeing anything while the shadows lengthened. She didn't know how much time she'd lost. Even with the ruthless sun progressing in the sky, time had a way of shifting and skittering out of her grasp.\n\nHer body ached from the cold stone. In her chest there was a troublesome hollowness that grew and crowded her heart and lungs, making it hard to breathe. But Claire won the argument with her body, and one foot in front of another, she walked.\n\nShe kept taking lefts. It seemed pointless to change their plan now... her plan now. Claire trailed one hand along the wall to keep her path straight and her mind from drifting.\n\nShe had all the time in the world to drift now. It was hard not to follow the thoughts. Brevity would not have resorted to the IWL unless something dire had happened. Andras had the pages, and Andras wanted the Library. There was a faint hope that Hero could assist and they could hold out long enough.\n\nLong enough for what, though? Claire was lost in a dead-end world. Beatrice and Leto were gone. But what bothered her most was that Andras could have gone this far without Hell noticing. It wasn't possible. Lucifer and all his generals were too powerful, too paranoid for that. Either Andras had bested all of them in his scheming or... Lucifer had allowed it. The Library had become part of the game.\n\nClaire had always been aware that the Library and its books were pawns. Andras himself had taught her enough about the intrigues and deadly maneuvers the demons made in Hell's court, but she'd never imagined the Library was a pawn Lucifer paid attention to.\n\nAndras had paid attention. Claire knew there was more to the Library than her literary ghosts. Some demons came to read, either out of curiosity or to understand the genuine magic of human imagination. But she also knew there were demons that ate dreams instead, consumed them and extracted pleasure and power from the destruction. Obviously, the Library was kept apart from the rest of Hell for just that reason.\n\nLucifer had to know. He had to know about Andras's goal. There were too many coincidences. Perhaps he planned to sweep in when they were all dead and start over. She'd read the histories. She knew Lucifer had used purges to quell uprisings in his realm before. She knew she wasn't the first librarian.\n\nShe knew hers wasn't the first Library in Hell.\n\nBut the books. The books couldn't be purged. They most definitely could not be parceled up, doled out, and fed to the vile underbelly of Hell. She had to get back. Get back, get in control, somehow find a way to destroy a demon with the power of the words of Hell's god, the Arcane Wing, and a legion of Horrors at his command. Just getting out of this blighted place would be a feat.\n\nAn exit, naturally, presented itself the next time she turned a corner and faced another dead end.\n\nShe was just about to let out a groan when she saw the arch. Wedged in the corner where two stone walls met, lost nearly in shadow, stood a darkened doorway. It was roughly the same shape and build as the one they'd encountered up the stairs, only the light was more muted. Lamplight, not sunlight.\n\n\"Oh, is it my turn now?\" Claire muttered, wary of a trap. She brought her nose as near to the surface as she dared.\n\nLamplight and leather. Her breath snagged in her throat when she recognized it. Beatrice's office was much as they'd left it, stacked with an aftermath of shuffled books and used teacups. Claire caught herself leaning forward, listening for footsteps. Even on this side of the arch, she could make out the distant sound of the Mdina streets that filtered in through the open window. It was night, the only light spilling from the desk lamp on Beatrice's desk. Claire could just make out several bottles and plastic bags that hadn't been there before. Hope clotted in her throat. If Beatrice had survived, she could be just out of frame. Stepping away to care for her injuries, or her book.\n\nHer book. If the struggle with the Hellhounds had damaged her book, she'd need repairs. If it was damaged and poorly repaired, it could fall apart, stranding Beatrice outside her book or, worse, trapping her inside\u2014 Oh, no. Claire's hand clapped at her side, where her bag of tools should have been. Her skin was tingling and somehow the arch had moved a breath away from her nose.\n\nClaire jerked herself back and clamped one hand on top of the other. Heat stung her eyes. Bea. The thought was enough to twist a sharp pain through the numb despair in her chest. Her book could be just on the other side, hurt from ensuring their escape, dying, needing help.\n\nShe knew\u2014she knew if she went through, if she found Beatrice, Hellhounds or not, she would not go back. One step and she could rest. One step and she could be accepted, loved, cared for. One step and all the rest of it could end.\n\nShe'd rejected the idea before, but it washed over her again in a way that she was too tired, too grieving to resist. The idea was strong: to rest, to stop, neither to run nor face her past.\n\nHer eyes burned again from the powerful attraction of it. She'd felt the power of an easy escape before. When she'd said the god words that had banished Gregor.\n\nSo she said a different word instead.\n\n\"Fuck.\"\n\nThe heels of her hands dug roughly into her eyes as she stumbled back. She ground them in until she saw stars. She screamed. \"Fuck!\"\n\nShe'd been looking for an exit, thinking of those left behind, and the labyrinth had presented her with what she desired. Like it had with Hero. But this wasn't a temptation built on happiness; it was one built on despair. \"Not again. I won't. Not\u2014\"\n\nA wordless rage tore at her throat. She flung one sneaker at the arch. The shoe sailed through the air before passing harmlessly through a shimmer of lamplight and disappearing. Not as satisfying as she needed. Claire let out a growl and flung the other shoe after for good measure.\n\nThe rage drained out of her just as quickly as it had come. \"Sorry, Bea,\" she muttered, then frowned down at her feet. \"And now I'm barefoot again. Bloody fantastic.\"\n\nThe images of a dead Leto, a wounded Beatrice, paper corpses and ink blood, swept through her. Claire twisted and ran from the dead end, down the path toward the rumbling bellows that echoed from the center of the labyrinth. Ghosts at her back, monsters ahead."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 64",
                "text": "The howling grew louder until Claire could feel the vibration jostling the organs in her chest. The air felt like it opened up, walls widening at the next intersection. She slowed as she turned the corner.\n\nThe endless dirt paths of the labyrinth fell away to a wide, paved courtyard, each cobblestone dotted with a jade symbol in stone. Half-finished pillars rose every few yards like shattered bones, forming a loose ring around an otherwise barren space. Ragged flags of saffron yellow hung limp from the tops. It was approaching what passed for day here, and the sun throttled down, heating the stones and dwarfing the shadow of the beast that hunkered in the center of the yard.\n\nClaire didn't realize its true size until the creature rose from the stones and began to pace.\n\nShaggy hair hung off massive shoulders that appeared mostly human until they ran up to meet a monstrous head. Horns thick as oaks arched out from both sides of its skull. They glowed a deep, blackened red. The beast's head was turned away, but even from afar, Claire could tell that its features were gnarled with muscle, and hairs as stiff as needles.\n\nThe minotaur skulked past one of the pillars, knocking great blocks aside. It had to be twice the size of the giant Hero had faced in Valhalla.\n\nBut what drew her attention, what made Claire take a step away from the wall, was the large iron key that swung from a ratty leather strap around its neck. There was no door in sight, but Claire had read enough fairy tales to know what it unlocked.\n\nThe beast halted and sniffed the air, giving a great roar as it turned. A familiar roar. \"ABANDON ALL HOPE, ye who enter here! Beyond me lies the city of woe. Before me waits\u2014\"\n\n\"Walter?\" Claire stepped forward before considering the wisdom of her actions.\n\n\"An' no mercy will you... ah, oh. Oh.\"\n\nThe minotaur swung its head around. It was a strange, bull-like face, crisscrossed with old scars and tumorous clefts. One eye was milky red in its socket, but the other one lit up with recognition, and there was a familiar set to his bulbous chin. \"Hullo there, Miss Claire. You really shouldn't be here.\"\n\n\"A situation I'm trying to correct as quickly as possible, I assure you.\" Claire felt relief like a kind of giddiness. She approached the Walter minotaur\u2014Waltertaur?\u2014carefully. \"It's really you, isn't it? What on earth are you doing here?\"\n\n\"I'm the gatekeeper. My duty is to guard the gates.\" Walter puffed up before tapping his knuckles together abashedly. \"All gates.\"\n\nClaire frowned. \"The gates of every realm? But I didn't see you in Valhalla.\"\n\n\"Sure you did! Ah, apologies to Hero next time you see 'im, please?\"\n\nClaire squinted. She saw no similarity to the giant in the ring when she and Hero had faced the trial to enter Valhalla. He'd been quite thoroughly Viking and wielded...\n\n\"Widowbane!\" Claire remembered the overlarge maul now, glittering with the same shadowy red of the minotaur's horns and Walter's teeth. \"You were the bludgeon. You never told me.\"\n\nThe Walter minotaur nodded. \"That was me. Well. Part of me. One of me. An aspect. I don't like talkin' about it, precisely. It gets all rather higgledy-piggledy.\"\n\n\"It does indeed.\" Claire paused as a thought occurred to her. \"You're the gatekeeper. You're every gatekeeper. Does that make you\u2014\"\n\n\"Death,\" Walter said quietly. His gaze gentled and he rubbed his neck, a gesture familiar enough to make Claire's heart ache. \"Some call me that, yeah. I always rather liked 'Walter.'\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Claire chewed on her cheek. She'd entered the labyrinth expecting to find death and here he was. And he'd been her friend all along. No matter how far she ran, she couldn't escape the feeling of a story. \"Regardless... I am very glad to see you, Walter. I need transport back to Hell, immediately. There's an emergency.\"\n\n\"I see. Ah, then may I just see your ghostlight, ma'am?\"\n\nClaire drew out the cold wax candle from her pocket. It was just as dead as Leto's lighter had been. The tiny stub was crumpled on one side from having been wedged against her hip as she slept.\n\nWalter bent nearly in half to lean his one working eye over it. His face was solemn as he looked back up. \"Yer a mortal soul out without a ghostlight, Miss Claire.\"\n\n\"I am.\" Her fingers curled protectively around the cold piece of wax and stuffed it back into her skirts. At the bottom of the pocket, her fingertips grazed some bits of paper that whispered to her, but she left them there for now.\n\n\"That's a mighty shame.\" Walter took a step back from Claire, and pity was a strange twist on his ageless face. \"See, I'm supposed t' eat any regular folk that pass through here. It's kinda why I'm here.\"\n\n\"Now, wait one moment, Walter. You know I'm the librarian\u2014\"\n\n\"And you shouldn't be here without a proper ghostlight. Makes you a lost soul, ma'am.\" Walter began rolling his shoulders.\n\n\"I'm not anything of the sort! I had a light. There were extenuating circumstances.\" Claire took a step back. Walter might be Death, but she couldn't quite believe that the Walter she knew would attack her\u2014in any realm. But he appeared to be preparing to do just that. \"Can you at least tell me what is supposed to happen here?\"\n\n\"Well. Screamin' and bleedin' mostly.\" Walter paused. \"I try to eat you, you try to fight, and then you try to run. It don't work out. Your soul gets swallowed and feeds the realm.\"\n\n\"This place has a rather concerning preoccupation with devouring souls,\" Claire grumbled, rather than feel the flutter of nerves at the way Walter stretched. \"Your realm's god dies, and you all turn carrion? No, I suppose it'd be cannibals, since you don't wait until a lady is done with her own soul first.\"\n\nWalter had the grace to look abashed. \"I didnae exactly write the rules, ma'am. I hope ye know this is rather off-putting for me too.\"\n\n\"Yes. Well, eating your colleague is a bit of a faux pas.\"\n\n\"Yeh could just turn around and go back into the labyrinth.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. There are pressing matters elsewhere,\" Claire said. \"Besides, it's dull, and I didn't bring a thing to read.\"\n\nWalter's shoulders dropped. \"Then I'm afraid I gotta eat you.\"\n\nClaire reached for any question to make Walter pause in his warm-up. \"What happens if I win?\"\n\n\"Huh. Well, no one does that.\"\n\n\"But if I did?\"\n\n\"If you did... well, you get to claim a boon, I suppose. In the old days, yeh got to reincarnate on Earth as a kitty cat. But I don't think I got the mojo to do that anymore.\"\n\n\"Good. I rather mistrust cats.\" Claire considered. \"What's your secret?\"\n\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\n\"Oh, come, now. I'm an unwritten author, and this whole blighted thing feels like a tale. I know how stories go. Every monster at the center of the labyrinth has a hidden weakness. A trick for the hero to find.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Walter was flummoxed. \"No one's just come out and asked that before.\"\n\n\"But you do have one?\"\n\n\"Well. Yes.\" Walter mulled it over. \"I'm not sure I can just tell you like that.\"\n\nClaire tilted her head. \"Is there a rule against it?\"\n\n\"Well... no.\" Walter's face lit up, pleased, as he gave his full attention to it. \"My eye.\"\n\nClaire inspected both the brown eye fixed on her and the milky white orb opposite it. \"Your eye? What? I am supposed to hit you there?\"\n\n\"Not exactly. I... probably can't say any more.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Claire sighed, skittering back toward a pillar as Walter appeared to square up. \"But knowing that, a hero could escape this place?\"\n\n\"You're no hero, ma'am.\" Walter was mournful as he said it.\n\n\"As this realm keeps on reminding me.\"\n\n\"I'm awfully sorry about this, Miss Claire.\" His clear eye was watery, even as he stamped his hooved feet and angled his horns down.\n\nClaire reached a pillar and felt for the curve of it behind her. \"Apology accepted, Walter. These things do happen.\"\n\nWalter opened his mouth and the booming howl that came out was much less mournful and much more horrifying than it had been from a distance. He charged.\n\nClaire spun behind the pillar and stumbled back as Walter's impact sent several man-sized stones tumbling from the top. She regained her footing, turned, and ran.\n\nHurtling headfirst into stone did not slow a minotaur much. Walter shook his head once, then charged after her. Sharp red claws that had not been evident a moment before gouged the wall as he went. Claire ran for the exit, but the junction where she'd entered the courtyard was nowhere to be seen.\n\nThe Greeks always loved their tragedies. She shoved the grim thought from her mind as she caught sight of a flash of yellow. One of the pillars' ragged flags hung lower than the other. At Walter's next charge, Claire took the moment of disorientation as he hit the wall to run toward the pillar. She grabbed it and scrambled her feet against the stone. Bare feet worked to her advantage for once. Her toes found the small holds between blocks, and she hauled herself to the top.\n\nWalter circled the wall with a snarl but paused as he looked up. \"Don't be a silly wiggins, ma'am. This will go faster if you come down here.\"\n\n\"I prefer not to.\" Claire ran her hands over the top of the pillar, looking for something, anything, to slow down the minotaur. She shoved a hand in her pocket, and her fingertips hit paper. She took a breath as she drew it out. The ragged end of the Codex Gigas's calling card fluttered in her palm.\n\nThe text, as usual, was mostly illegible from the tear, but Claire saw the beginning of a word where the location would be: \"Hell, Unwri\u2014\" Andras was already at the gates of the Library, if not past the wards.\n\nThe calling card was not the codex, merely an artifact of the Library. But it was tied to the book, and the book held ancient destructive power. Books tended to bleed and wander, especially old ones. There was a chance, a remote one, that the card had some residual enchantment of its own.\n\nClaire had hoped to save that chance for later, but later was gravely in question now.\n\nWalter quit pacing and began to back up, stamping the earth with his head down.\n\nClaire fumbled back in her pockets and withdrew the ghostlight candle. She quickly squeezed, warming the wax with her hands, and crumpled the calling card remnant around it, making a projectile that would be easy to throw. It stuck, but just barely.\n\nWalter charged, canceling any other preparation she could make. The entire pillar rocked as he hit, and the minotaur dug ruts in the stone as he continued to press his full weight on the displaced stone. Claire held dearly to the top flagstone; it began to pitch.\n\nShe clutched the candle to her chest and kicked away as she fell through the air. But something clamped over her right leg and squeezed like a vise.\n\nIt arrested her fall sharply enough that her hip jolted, sending fire up her side. Her knee shrieked and Claire screamed along with it.\n\nPain watered her eyes when she opened them. Upside down, Walter's knotted face looked like a rotten potato. He held her aloft in one hand, as easily as one would dangle a mouse by the tail. He regarded her with sad, bloodshot eyes and lowered his jaw wide.\n\nClaire got a glimpse of daggerlike incisors and wide, flat teeth made for grinding bone and flesh. Her fingers clenched the candle, and as Walter drew her chest toward his gaping lips, she swung back and let the fistful of paper and wax fly.\n\nShe'd meant to aim for the eye. She hadn't forgotten what Walter had said.\n\nBut Walter dropped his head back and squeezed his eye shut as he brought her near. The ghostlight arced through the air and pinged dully on a great black tongue before it hit the back of the minotaur's throat.\n\nWalter gagged and snapped shut his mouth out of reflex, latching down on the papered candle. A perplexed look crossed his face. A muted rush of air sucked his cheeks.\n\nThen a sharp burst of blue and green flame lashed out through his nostrils, out shaggy ears, past his lips, even from beneath heavy eyelids. Walter's grip loosened as his good eye went glassy, and Claire had a moment of terrifying free fall before they both hit the dirt.\n\nA limp, meaty arm, covered in thick red-brown fur, broke her fall. Claire scrambled back to get out of reach, but the arm and the clawed hand attached to it remained still.\n\nHer breath was ragged and loud in her ears. It took another moment before she could process that Walter wasn't moving. She slowly shoved to her feet, wincing as her knee shrieked in protest. Likely torn ligaments there. If she could get back to Hell, they could be tended to. First things first.\n\nWalter's barrel chest shivered, barely moving, muscles twitching under heavy scars. The air held a sizzling sound, and the smell of charred meat suggested that the calling card was still working on the poor creature's insides.\n\nClaire leaned over and caught sight of the iron key askew on his neck. As she reached for it, a great clawed hand came down on her wrist and made her heart skip a beat.\n\nBut the claws did not tighten, did not tear. Claire looked up and saw Walter's good eye just cracked open. Sluggish blood trailed from every opening on his face. Walter made a weak snarl that was intended to be a smile, and released her to point a trembling claw at his bone-white eye.\n\nThe eye was the key.\n\nClaire swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. \"I'm sorry, Walter.\"\n\nThe minotaur didn't speak but closed his eye with a smile that seemed almost proud. A final gout of flame trickled over his lips, and his chest stilled.\n\nClaire extracted herself from his arm and hobbled around to the side of his head. She considered the dead eye lodged in a tumorous skull.\n\nThis would not be pleasant work."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 65",
                "text": "She'd had no tools, just Walter's own limp claws. By the time it was done, her skirts were tacky with blood, her fingers trembled, and her hands felt as if they'd never be clean again. But a sphere about the size of a grapefruit and the color of bone sat heavy in the palm of her hand. It was completely smooth and was translucent in sections. Not an actual eye, but... something else.\n\nThat was the problem with defeating the gatekeeper: no one was left to explain how to open the gate.\n\nClaire turned it over in her hands. She hobbled up to this pillar and that, pressing the white surface against random stones. Hoping something would happen. Nothing did, and the urgency to get back merged with injury and exhaustion to eat at what patience she had left for analysis.\n\n\"Hell and harpies.\" She had just pulled away from another pillar in disgust when light hit the orb as she held it up. Claire blinked and squinted as she held the sphere in front of her.\n\nThe courtyard transformed. Through the eye, the world became a wash of milky shadows, but it also became a world of doors. Claire turned a slow circle. Everywhere she looked, narrow gates lined the walls. And the pillars\u2014the pillars. Each pillar held a series of tiny, physically impossible doors that hinged off the pillar like wheel spokes off an axle.\n\nThe courtyard became a crossroads.\n\n\"But no signposts. Which one?\" Claire muttered. The orb responded by pulsing brightly and Claire nearly dropped it in surprise. When she brought it back to her eye, she saw that the doors were colored now. Each gate now held a door front decorated with unique lines and painted one of a multitude of colors, more than she would have believed existed.\n\nShe considered the one in the wall nearest her. It was ivory with metal inlay, every detail gilded. A flock of chubby-cheeked infants frolicked across it, each bearing wings and a golden horn, while some frankly terrifying figures watched from above, borne up by greater wings. Claire could guess the destination for that one, and she chuckled as she stepped back.\n\nHell would be easy to find. But she couldn't just drop into the Library in the middle of an invasion and expect a solution to present itself. Claire pivoted as she considered the gallery of pathways around her, a tickle of a plan beginning to form in her head."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 66",
                "text": "\u2002'The inhabitants of Hell are not the most welcoming neighbors, but a smart librarian will never be adrift for resources. Remember the other libraries, other realms, other paths. Build good fences, make good friends, and keep your laundry indoors. Leave just enough doubt in their minds to make yourself not worth the trouble.' -Librarian Gregor Henry, 1982 CE\n\nHell was a series of hallways.\n\nIt was monotonous and maddening, and Rami still couldn't believe it. The door had been open. The old paths into Hell, paths Rami hadn't walked since he'd abandoned Lucifer's upstart rebellion so long ago, had still been open. The way between worlds had still risen to appear when Rami willed it. No tricks, no force, no begging needed.\n\nIt was as if Hell had been waiting for him. In the eons, ages, millennia since then, Lucifer hadn't shut him out. Uriel's mad plan had turned out to be right. For some reason, even as a Watcher presumably working for Heaven, Rami was welcome in Hell.\n\nThe prospect, and the possible reasons why, disturbed him deeply.\n\nLeto, however, experienced no such concerns. The boy brightened up considerably once they'd reached these interminable hallways. He behaved as if he wanted nothing more than to hug each pillar they passed.\n\nThankfully, he kept his arms at his sides and carefully walked in the center of the hall, per their agreement. Leto was a purified soul, and if he could stay that way, he could still pass the Gates. But souls were grasping things. The slightest encounter with the wrong influence here could corrupt and damn him all over again. Just walking the grounds was dangerous enough, and Rami had insisted that the boy stay two steps behind him when trouble presented itself and touch nothing besides the floor beneath his feet.\n\nHe allowed Leto to take the lead once they passed the trials of the anguished in the outer ring and approached the Library. The boy appeared to have blossomed, rather than being drained from his trials; he glowed. His ears stayed rounded and his skin stayed youthful and warm. He toyed with his messy coils of hair absently. How had it been possible that Rami had ever mistaken him for a demon? Leto hummed a tuneless pop song under his breath as he guided Rami past hallways drenched in the sunsets of alien stars, down grand staircases falling into disrepair, through ballrooms that still contained the last strains of music.\n\nThey encountered no one, which just set Rami more on edge. It was very quiet for an invasion. Either they were quite late, and the battle was done, or the opposition had been so weak as not to warrant a defense. Neither possibility boded well for the Library. It left Rami considering what he would do should they even reach the doors.\n\nHe was so busy chasing these thoughts around his head, he nearly ran into Leto. The teenager was frowning at a large alcove. A low, empty platform grounded the otherwise empty space, and it was this platform that seemed to concern him.\n\n\"The gargoyle should be here,\" Leto said.\n\n\"A gargoyle?\"\n\n\"Well, a headache in the form of a gargoyle. I really should have asked its name...\" Leto trailed off as he looked down the hallway. \"Oh! There he is!\"\n\nThe teenager took off toward a large form that stood frozen at the far end of the hall. A chill of alarm shot up Rami's back, and his hand drifted to his sword as he ran. \"Leto! Stop!\"\n\nHe caught up with Leto as he stumbled to a stop near the unmoving form. It was a statue of dull, jagged stone and with a great head and wings that brushed the hallway's tall ceiling. It appeared to be caught in midattack, arms and wings extended, muscles bunched. It didn't move but still seemed to shift and twitch, never quite fully in focus. When Rami cautiously circled the statue to inspect its face, a disorienting pulse of pain bloomed in his head.\n\nRami looked away with a wince. \"This is your gargoyle?\"\n\n\"Yes. But when I knew him, he moved around more...\" Leto's brow furrowed in concern. He reached his fingers out toward one frozen wing before catching himself. \"Something's wrong with him.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he's best left as he is.\"\n\nLeto shoved his hands in his pockets and paced around, then back up as if to get a better view. On his third step backward, the air crackled a warning. Rami's shout was too slow.\n\nViolet light filled the hall and shot at Leto's back. The next moment, the teenager flew across the marble floor, and the light briefly coalesced into a wall before fading away.\n\nLeto crumpled against a wall. Rami felt relief when he let out a breathy groan as he reached him. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"For the record, I did not touch anything. I swear.\" Leto accepted help sitting upright, and he rubbed his shoulder with a wince. \"What was that?\"\n\n\"A ward.\" Rami stood and approached the space where the wall had formed.\n\n\"That's good, right? That means Andras and the other bad guys haven't gotten in yet.\"\n\n\"No.\" Rami inspected the air. He brought out his sword and held it just over the space. Black and violet light arced between his blade and the ward, though it didn't shock again. He sighed and put his blade away. \"This is a temporary ward. Strong but hastily formed, not tied to anything. It isn't anchored to the Library.\"\n\nLeto's face fell as he looked down the hall. Beyond the invisible ward, they could see the great double doors that Rami assumed led to the Library. Muffled shouts and thuds could just barely be heard. But a full-scale resistance, a successful resistance, should have been much louder, producing sounds of fighting that could be heard even at this distance. Rami worried what they would find. They could be merely walking into an enemy encampment.\n\n\"So how do we get past it?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"We can't.\" Rami stepped back to inspect the lines of power that were just visible now, crisscrossed through the air. \"I said it was hasty, not that it was weak. Whoever constructed it has got something powerful feeding it, supplying energy. We would need something even stronger to disrupt it, even for a moment. We would need nothing short of a miracle to bring it down.\"\n\n\"I might be able to manage that.\" A voice came from down the hall. \"But you're not setting foot in my Library.\"\n\nRami's sword came to his hand as he pivoted, low in front of Leto to shield the human soul from whatever was coming.\n\nBut down the hall was a familiar figure. Claire was in a filthy state, braids wild and skirts torn, brown skin dusted with grit and something redder, but her glare was as fierce as ever.\n\n\"Peace, Librarian.\" Rami lowered his sword.\n\n\"Oh, no. No peace,\" Claire spit out the words over what sounded like an increasing mass of birds in the distance. \"I told you I would make you pay for\u2014\"\n\n\"Claire?\"\n\nLeto poked his head around Rami's shoulder. Rami watched the fury fall from her face, replaced with shock. Leto stepped out from behind Rami, and the librarian's eyes broke with a kind of hopeful light. The words that fell from her lips were so vulnerable they pulled in his chest.\n\n\"Leto... that can't\u2014 You were\u2014 You're here, oh god...\"\n\nAnd then she was running toward them. Rami realized she was hobbling, favoring one knee with a twitch of pain on her face every time she stepped. Her skirts were stiff with blood, and she wore multiple amulets slung around her neck and bound around her wrists. She was also barefoot, which struck him as perhaps the most odd.\n\nRami remembered himself and took two steps to lift a broad arm to bar the librarian's path.\n\nClaire skidded to a stop, and the murderous look was quick to return as she snarled at him. \"Get out of my way, or I'll remove your arm for you. I have a bauble for just that.\"\n\n\"Apologies. You can't, Librarian. Do you notice anything different about our young friend?\"\n\nLeto held still with a sheepish blush for the inspection. Claire's brow furrowed. \"He looks fine. More than fine, he's whole. He's here, he's...\" She stopped. \"He's human. Not a demon. Oh, Leto. You're human.\"\n\n\"He is. And his soul is bound for Heaven as long as nothing here corrupts him. Nothing touches him.\"\n\n\"Including me.\" Bitterness and fresh loss flickered across Claire's face and then were gone. \"Did you remember, then?\"\n\n\"I remembered.\" Leto flushed with embarrassment, voice a little shy. \"I was... Matthew. Matthew Hadley.\"\n\nThe smile froze, half-formed across Claire's face. Her voice dropped to a strangled whisper. \"Hadley?\"\n\n\"Yeah...\" Leto rubbed his arm. \"Uh, but please, I'm still Leto.\"\n\nA complicated pain struggled across Claire's face, and it took Rami a moment to put it together. He'd read the brief on the librarian before all this started.\n\nClaire Juniper Hadley.\n\nBorn 1944, Surrey, England. Married in London, 1965. Died 1986. Survived by a husband and one daughter.\n\nA daughter who hadn't married but had moved to America to raise a child of her own.\n\nRami risked a glance between the two. The wiry, coiled hair, the dark eyes, the stubborn jut of the chin. Claire was a darker brown, Leto's eyes more amber, but it was there, yes. If you squinted and allowed for two generations of genetic muddling, which humans were good at. But the way Claire was looking at Leto, like a mirage in the desert, made Rami's heart clench in sympathy. He knew what it meant to see the familiarity of a home you thought you'd lost.\n\nAnd he knew what it was for that home to be just out of reach. Which made what he said even harder.\n\n\"Leto... has been through quite a lot of shock today. His soul is fragile,\" Rami murmured to Claire. With considerable effort, she shook herself, and only Rami noticed the mist trembling at the corners of her eyes.\n\nShe dropped her gaze to her feet a moment before drawing a hard breath. \"Right. Right. It just explains... Never mind.\" She looked to Rami. \"You saved him?\"\n\nRami inclined his chin. Rather than expressing gratitude, Claire nodded, jaw clenching into a hard line. \"Nothing is going to lay a hand on him.\"\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Leto approached as Rami dropped his arm, but they kept a wide gap between them that spoke much. \"You look...\"\n\n\"It's been a... rough day since you left.\" Claire's lips twitched. \"Turns out, I'm shit without my assistants.\"\n\n\"The blood...\"\n\n\"Not mine.\"\n\n\"The knee?\"\n\n\"Mine,\" Claire said with a wince. \"But it's fine now that I'm back in Hell. Phantom pain.\"\n\nLeto and Claire looked at each other, and it seemed to Rami that Leto had to read the tension welling in the space between. Finally, Leto coughed and pointed. \"Something's wrong with the gargoyle, I think.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Claire embraced the diversion. She approached the gargoyle and ran a motherly hand over one flank as she murmured, \"Oh, my friend. What did those bullies do to you...?\"\n\nIt was the first opportunity that Rami had to watch her work. Claire circled the giant stone statue once. She stopped and ran a hand up and down one shoulder, as if working her fingers along a seam. Then she nodded to herself and began sorting through the beads bound to her wrist. When she found what she was looking for, she hauled herself up one side of the creature, bare feet braced on the gargoyle's haunch, and twisted a large colorless bauble and rapped it along the stone.\n\nOn the third rap, the creature shuddered to life.\n\nRami and Leto had to dodge as the gargoyle's wings swept around. The creature released an infuriated howl that had been caught in its throat, and its dimensional flickering increased. Claire had to hang on to the curve of its shoulder to keep from being displaced. \"Easy, old friend.\"\n\nThe gargoyle seemed to calm with a few more murmured words from the librarian, though Rami could not look directly at its face to see what specific effect they had. After a moment, it crouched to gently allow Claire to clamber off. She patted its haunch and straightened her muddled skirts.\n\nRami eyed the collection of jewels that hung around Claire's neck. When he looked at them just so, the air filled with whispers. \"Are those what I think they are?\"\n\nClaire turned to him with a sour smile. \"I made a supply run before coming here. Picked up a couple things, made a few friends. The Arcane Wing is shockingly unattended right now.\"\n\n\"Are they strong enough to bring down the ward, then?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Not nearly powerful enough.\" Claire reached into one skirt pocket and withdrew her hand, closed over something. A cruel smile twisted at her lips. A smile that suddenly spoke less of heartache and more of dark, vengeful things.\n\n\"But this is.\"\n\nShe opened her fingers and a crumpled scrap of paper, pillowed by cloth, drifted on her palm. A familiar scrap of paper. A scrap of paper that glimmered with dark green script and whispered of destruction and had started this whole mess.\n\nRami's eyes widened, and so did Claire's wicked smile. \"I'd hoped to save it for Andras's traitorous face, but this will have to do.\" The sound of beating wings and dark tidings rushed closer, and a gust of air stirred them from around the corner. Claire canted her head up, a gleam in her eye. \"Will you join us, Watcher?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 67",
                "text": "\u2002Stories can die. Of course they can. Ask any author who's had an idea wither in their head, fail to thrive and bear fruit. Or a book that spoke to you as a child but upon revisiting it was silent and empty. Stories can die from neglect, from abuse, from rot. Even war, as Shakespeare warned, can turn books to graves.\n\n\u2002We seek to preserve the books, of course. But we forget the flip side of that duty: treasure what we have. Honor the stories that speak to you, that give you something you need to keep going. Cherish stories while they are here.\n\n\u2002There's a reason the unwritten live on something as fragile as paper.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE\n\nA character's colors fade when its book is destroyed.\n\nBrevity stared at Aurora's unmoving face, her heart a fist in her chest. If you were human, and if you closed those eyes, she might just be napping. Sleeping anywhere\u2014balanced on books, on the couch in the suite\u2014 as she was prone to do.\n\nIf you did not look down and see the jagged holes that had been carved through her thin cotton jumpsuit and the tiny chest beneath. If you did not see the flurry of shredded, ink-stained paper that littered the character's body. If you were not a muse who could see the absence of light where color should have bloomed.\n\nBrevity knelt and picked up a scrap of paper that eddied by, rubbing her thumb over it. She tried to catch her breath, to hold on to the idea of how they'd gotten here; the fall had been so fast.\n\nNot all the damsels had chosen to fight. Some had retreated into their books, but enough had decided to stay that Brevity and Hero felt they could mount a proper defense. Hero had a mind for fighting dirty, and Brevity had been surprised at his fierce, determined plan. He'd moved swiftly between damsels, helping one locate books on swordsmanship and combat before moving on to the next one.\n\n\"Why in damnation aren't there any unwritten guns in this place? Or unwritten grenades, flamethrowers?\" Hero had complained early on.\n\n\"First of all: fire. Library. No. Second...\" Brevity shrugged. \"Weapons stopped being art. Fickle human progress.\"\n\nHero had grunted and bent to help with another barricade.\n\nThey moved the damsels into position, loose groups of three that at least gave them a fighting chance. They readied a stockpile of weapons and projectiles\u2014pilfered, again, from anything in the collection that was not nailed down\u2014around the reinforcements.\n\nAnd they had waited. Tension strung through the Library in different ways. A princess with cropped raven hair cried quietly, even while holding her sword up with a determined grip. The moll in the flapper dress had cracked jokes and produced a pack of smokes from nowhere. (Not allowed, but Brevity hadn't had the heart to confiscate them.) A severe nonbinary mechanic with overalls and greased hair had surprised Brevity by moving quietly from group to group, shushing the teary and comforting nerves.\n\nInstead of feeling anxious, Brevity felt moved to help. Hero found her at the front barricade when he came to kick her out.\n\n\"He needs you.\" Hero emptied his hands of the last of the weapon supply. Brevity's eyes wordlessly drifted to the door as it shuddered again, and Hero fiercely shook her shoulder. \"If Andras wants to take the Library, he'll need to confront and defeat the acting librarian, yes? That means you.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\nShe should have protested harder.\n\n\"The best way you can defend the Library is to not let Andras's men get a hand on you.\" Hero was firm. \"They don't have the Library if they don't have the librarian. I don't care how this fight goes. No matter what happens, don't let them see you.\"\n\n\"That's not\u2014\"\n\nShe liked to imagine she'd fought more than she had.\n\n\"It's what Claire wanted.\" Hero's jaw was hard. He winced, closed his eyes, and took a sharp breath to correct himself. \"It's what Claire wants. You have to stay free long enough for her to get here, right? Or this is all lost.\"\n\nAnd she'd agreed; of course she had. She told herself the flighty, trembling feeling in her heart was nerves, not relief, as she retreated to the stacks, behind the barricades. By the time the second ward fell, they'd thrown together what Brevity felt was a reasonable stand. Perhaps they wouldn't even need her.\n\nAnd then the final ward began to shudder. Hero had cast Brevity a grim glance full of warning before moving to his position at the front of the barricades. Brevity positioned herself adjacent to the damsels guarding the rear, at the entrance to the stacks. This group was composed of the youngest damsels, including Aurora. Unsteady, they looked to her. She sought for something encouraging to say, one last performative act of bravery. But the moment passed.\n\nThe final ward fell.\n\nThere was no fanfare, no horns. The final blood black light above the desk merely died. The doors fell open, and a moving shadow swept into the Library. A legion of teeth and ambition. Brevity caught a glimpse of Andras at the back, flanked by the largest of the eldritch Horrors he called apprentices.\n\nThere was no chance to surrender. Whatever had transpired above, Andras evidently had no illusions about the Library's agreeableness. He would accept nothing less than total submission.\n\nThe damsels rushed to meet them. They came out swinging. Trained by unwritten war books, they spun and struck in precise, disciplined units. Brevity felt her heart swell as they engaged with Andras's demons and Horrors. It was a chance. They would take it.\n\nBrevity offered a coward's assistance. She had an advantage as a muse. She could fade-step in the Library, flickering from one shadow to another whenever a demon or terror drew too close. She retreated to the top of the Library's great stacks and stood on top of the long rows of shelves, flinging whatever detritus she could at demonic heads.\n\nBut it hurt every time she stepped back while damsels rushed forward, and watched them fall on dark creatures their authors couldn't have dreamed of. Even in the dust-clogged corners of a Library at war, Brevity could make out the shadow play of books as they died. It was the flare that got to her: the last, furious struggle of purple, red, green, blue, white, before they finally dispersed like smoke. And each time she left another person\u2014another unwritten person, her books, irreplaceable and in her charge\u2014to fight in her place, she dug another grave in the back of her mind and put herself in it. Her only comfort was that she couldn't argue with Hero's tactics. They were pushing them back. They would win this.\n\nAnd then the wyrm appeared.\n\nAndras's voice was a charged command in the air, and a wave of granite scale flowed in from the hall. It was not the largest of Hell's serpent servants, but it was large enough to create a solid wall as it slunk, lightning fast, around the back of the damsels' line, shattering barricades in its wake. Its body glinted with armored charcoal scales, and it opened a darting mouth to loose a spray of acid that destroyed an unwritten rug on contact.\n\nBrevity was frozen, hidden and too far away. She could only watch with her heart in her throat. The damsels, already engaged with Andras's forces, had no way to retreat. The wyrm threaded through the Library's defenders. It didn't even need to strike; it simply constricted, breaking the lines and driving the damsels on to waiting claws, teeth, and blades. It didn't take long for Andras's monsters to find their weakness.\n\nTheir books.\n\nThe damsels who stayed to fight had chosen to carry their books. The damsel suite might have been safer, but with so much at stake, damsels were stronger staying closer to their books. It freed their movement, allowing them to strike and maneuver like dervishes, but it also left them vulnerable.\n\nCarrying the means of their existence like hearts in their hands.\n\nAurora had given Brevity a shy smile as she'd patted the breast pocket of her jacket earlier. Her pocket had shimmered a happy, vibrant teal. It made a perfect target for the claws of the Horror that tore through her with less than a thought.\n\nBrevity saw her fall. Saw the shock and terror and the fade from teal to gray to hollow air. She flickered, just once, as if trying to return to her book. But her body flinched back into the ink-soaked carpet, corporeal and agonized. Brevity waited, like a coward in the shadows, until the Horror turned away to seek a new target.\n\nBrevity fade-stepped, flickering from one shadow to the next, until she reached the girl's side. She was already fading, violet skin seeping to gray. Her body was drifting to paper and ash before her eyes. A book turned into a grave. Brevity instinctively reached out and tried to press a hand to the wound, but more of her disintegrated under her fingers. Brevity's hand came away black with ink and ash.\n\nShe stared at her palm, long after the small body had dusted away, long after it was safe, as the dying raged in her ears.\n\nAnd then it quieted, which was worse.\n\nShe fled back through shadow, twisting through the stacks. Some of the great shelves had been brought down by the wyrm's thick body. Others lost their books and rocked worrisomely, but the Library was vast, and there were many places for a coward, a failed muse, a failed librarian, to hide. Brevity was about to move again when she heard a strangled cry. Deeper than the damsels', and angry.\n\nHero.\n\nBrevity flew across the stacks, stepping out from the shadows as much as she dared. She peered over the edge just in time to see Andras withdraw a short dagger from Hero's arm. Hero was flat on the ground near the wide double doors, a hand crushed under the clawed foot of one of Andras's largest Horrors.\n\nThe wyrm had stopped seeking the remaining damsels and coiled in a circle around its master and his victim. More Horrors drew closer, appearing from deeper in the stacks. Sensing blood in the air, a decisive end.\n\nWhat that implied about the fates of the remaining damsels made Brevity's chest ache.\n\nAndras twirled the dagger in an idle grip before flipping it in his palm and plunging the blade into the meaty part of Hero's thigh, pulling another scream from the unwritten man. Ink pooled from a handful of other similar wounds, and the whole right side of Hero's face was swollen underneath the black ink and ash.\n\nHero tried to twist to his feet, kicking out hard with the injured leg, but the wyrm's coiled body left no room to maneuver. The Horror standing over him shoved him down and redoubled his weight on his wrist. Andras, evidently tiring of the show, waved him off and dragged Hero to his knees. He waited while the Horrors bound him, tapping his fingers impatiently.\n\n\"I've been fighting books, books, nothing but books, since I got here. But not a librarian in sight. Someone's shirking their duties.\" Andras's voice echoed, silky and dangerous. The flat of the dagger tapped on Andras's chin as he studied Hero's wounds like a painter would a canvas. His features, which Brevity had previously considered stern but fatherly, were now sharp, hungry. \"Why don't you be a good book and tell me where your masters are? Where's Claire?\"\n\nHero's eyes were glazed with pain. He said nothing.\n\n\"Come, now, Hero. We drank together in Valhalla! I know the way you strain at your leash. I sympathize, even.\" He petted Hero's bloodied cheek, dragging claw marks through the soot. Hero flinched. \"So I know you wouldn't come back to this place on your own\u2014if you're here, then she is too. Why suffer for those who keep you prisoner?\"\n\nAndras's second-in-command held up a square, ragged book. Brevity squinted until she recognized the too-white pages. Hero's book. The Horror shook it open and raked its claws over the front page, shredding it delicately.\n\nHero's shoulders shuddered, but then an odd sound came. It was like a wet squelch\u2014a broken cough\u2014until it resolved into a laugh. Claws hesitated on the page.\n\n\"You'd be doing me a favor,\" Hero croaked. His head lolled on his shoulders, eyes sliding around the ceiling until Brevity realized he was searching. They lit on the shadow where she hid, and a ragged smile forced its way onto his blackened lips. \"The librarians are weak, perfidious beasts. If you need them, then I wish you good hunting. They abandoned us.\"\n\n\"I think not. Claire is my creation. I groomed her for many things, but I could always rely on her stubbornness.\" Andras tilted the point of the blade under Hero's chin. \"Ah. Or should I be looking for the muse? She'll be easier to break.\"\n\nHero closed his eyes. His head drooped. \"Go to hell.\"\n\nAndras made a disappointed cluck of his tongue. \"That's not much of a profanity here, you know. If you're not going to make yourself useful, I have no need for a broken book in a place full of them.\" Andras flicked the blade carelessly, opening another bloom of black ink on Hero's chest.\n\nBrevity was in shadow before she realized it; then she was at the base of the stacks. The wyrm blocked her view. Damsels were dead and it was in her way. She opened her mouth. \"Stop!\"\n\nSlowly, the wyrm's body shuddered into motion and pulled away to reveal Andras. Brevity stepped forward. Her skin crawled as the monster shifted behind her, closing her path. Books lay torn everywhere, crushed under the wyrm's weight. Pages slipped beneath her heels. Wet clung to her cheeks. She crouched down to inspect Hero when she reached him.\n\nUp close, the ash-gouged wounds and pooling ink were even worse. Hero's lip was split and black with ink as he managed to open his good eye. His words stumbled through a broken mouth. \"We had a plan.\"\n\n\"I improvised.\" Brevity had to whisper to keep her voice from cracking. \"I'm not strong enough to be a hero.\"\n\nHero's laugh was small, brittle. \"Me neither.\"\n\n\"I am prepared to accept the Library's surrender,\" Andras's cool voice intruded.\n\nBrevity drew her eyes from Hero. Andras was smiling. \"I'll surrender, but the books stay. You have to promise no more books are destroyed.\"\n\nAndras's smile grew. Not pleased, amused. \"Is that all? The Library is no good to me burned. I'll spare your pets, for now.\"\n\nA little of the sour tension leaked out of Brevity's shoulders. But then Andras glanced again toward Hero.\n\n\"It would be unwise to leave insurrectionists at my back, however.\" Andras made a motion. The Horror holding Hero's book moved before Brevity could react. Claws grasped a handful of pages and tore.\n\nHero's whole body stiffened, and his eyes rolled back. He didn't scream, which worried Brevity even more. As if someone had cut his strings, he fell forward.\n\nHero's colors had always been subdued, held close to his book. Simmering navy, the occasional gilded shadow of pewter and green. Hero, the character, had been colorful and bright enough for both. But Brevity felt it, like a shriveling under her hand, when his colors began to fade. Brevity gripped him by the shoulders and could only watch as Andras's Horror grasped for another handful of pages as the scraps floated to the floor.\n\nThe blizzard of pages drifted through the air. The last scrap of paper landed on the carpet. As if marking finality, it was accompanied by a deep, earth-shuddering boom.\n\nThen another, more out of place: boom.\n\nThe entrance to the wing flew open. The heavy oak doors rocked back on their hinges. As Andras's temporary ward dropped, electrified air swept through the space, carrying in with it the smoky residue of powerful magic and a crackle of lightning. A monstrous figure blocked the doorway, wings splayed, and the gargoyle let out a howl that came from every direction and multiple dimensions at once.\n\nThe echo died a moment later, and smoke settled in tiny eddies around the feet of three figures.\n\nA gawky and thin teenage boy.\n\nA soldier holding a sword kissed with lightning.\n\nAnd a woman.\n\nClaire flicked a gaze of cold fury around the room before landing on Andras and his men.\n\n\"Get your hands off my book.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 68",
                "text": "\u2002It's not just for the sake of the authors and the books that we keep the unwritten sleeping. Yes, we have to preserve the stories, and yes, the trauma an escaped book could do to an author is significant. But the whole situation is rotten for them, isn't it? Coddled away to sleep in some dusty realm?\n\n\u2002Might be, the unwritten have an idea or two of their own on how their story should go. Might be, they'd have reason to be angry. Pray they never wake up.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1798 CE\n\nThe stench of crackling leather and burned ink stole the breath from her lungs. Claire tried to breathe through her mouth, until her tongue clotted with paper ash. The Library's tall stacks slumped like defeated giants, ripped from their moorings and spilling their contents in a trail of paper and leather around the front lobby. Black blood and fading sheaves were the evidence of those crushed underfoot or eaten by the wyrm's acid. So many books damaged, so many stories lost.\n\nClaire's eyes were reserved for one book in particular.\n\nSoot and ink nearly completely covered Hero's skin, painting his bronze hair gray. He was barely conscious, but swollen and split lips twitched up as he tried to open his injured eye. The Horror held a claw over Hero's pages, uncertain what to do now.\n\nAndras forgot his game entirely as his yellow eyes lingered over Claire, taking in her patches of blood, stopping at the amulets looped around her neck. For the time being, surprise and the dangerous sizzle of Rami's sword kept the Horrors at bay. The gargoyle creaked at her back, wings flexing to create a protective shadow over their heads. It let out a low, warning rumble. Claire raised her hand, and it stilled.\n\nAndras's eyes narrowed. \"It appears the Hellhounds have not lived up to their reputation.\"\n\n\"Can't blame them too much for their failings,\" Claire said. \"Demons are so unpredictable.\"\n\n\"We share that with humans.\" He opened his mouth as if to say something more. It would be just like him to have a dramatic speech, Claire thought. But he seemed to think better of it. His hand twitched, and the time to talk was over. \"Kill them.\"\n\nThe Horrors surged like the tide.\n\nRami strode forward and met one group, gray feathered coat billowing as he buried his blade in the chest of the first demon that approached, then pulled it cleanly out to strike at another. The smell of ozone and storms and fury filled the air, and he moved like a powerful dervish. A building storm of lightning and force. Ramiel, the Thunder of God.\n\nThe gargoyle had swept aside the nearest Horrors with one hand, and the wyrm surged and attacked. The serpent twisted and coiled around the bellowing creature. The wyrm was bigger, but the gargoyle's stone skin was slick, difficult to gain purchase on. They clashed in a titanic roil of scale and stone that knocked another shelf to the ground.\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, Claire saw Leto hunker behind a shelf near the door as he'd promised.\n\nLeto. Matthew Hadley.\n\nHe might have been, what, a nephew? Grandchild? Had it really been that long? The impossible thought had a stranglehold on her heart. In a whisper, while they prepared in the hallway, Rami had told her what he knew and how he'd found Leto. It was too much for a coincidence.\n\nAnd too much to think of now. Claire ducked as a wing swept over her head, and she focused her attention on the demon at the eye of the storm. Andras took one look at the titans clashing over their heads, cast a sour look at Brevity, then turned and ran.\n\nClaire cursed and rushed forward to where Brevity supported Hero. The Horrors were beginning to move again. \"Arlid! Anytime now!\"\n\nA grackling cry built from the doorway. A conspiracy of ravens, all those freed from the Arcane Wing and more, shrieked in and swept wide passes through the air, out of the reach of the demons. They dove in groups to rake sensitive tentacles and scalps of the Horrors, claws coming away bloody. The flock swept around and hurtled themselves at the ground. Birds disappeared in a flurry of feathers and came up leather-clad fighters, wielding thick swords and cruel sickles.\n\nAndras's Horrors, suddenly flanked, whirled and lost formation. Arlid cast the nearest one a manic grin and lopped its spiny head off.\n\nA shattering sound drew Claire's attention. Two ravens had cut off Andras at the entrance to the stacks. The demon held them at bay with his strange black dagger. Then he ripped a red-gemmed bauble from his coat and flung it against the nearest shelves. An unnatural fire bloomed where it shattered. Claire's heart stopped as the first books began to crackle. She staggered to her feet.\n\nThen another row of unwritten books smoldered and leather began to boil and pucker.\n\n\"Brevity!\" Panic made Claire's voice shrill and sour.\n\n\"On it!\"\n\nBrevity didn't bother with running: one moment she was behind her; the next, she emerged from a shadow near the flames. She ripped a light globe from the wall as she passed and bolted toward the fire, dodging Horrors and ravens locked in combat. She twisted the globe sharply until it turned blue and began spraying a fine jet of delicate, glimmering foam at precise places on the shelves. The foam evaporated the moment it touched the books, taking the fire with it. \"I've got this!\"\n\nClaire turned back. Andras stepped over the burned bodies of the ravens. He tilted his head, as if acknowledging her, before disappearing into the stacks. She cursed and moved after him.\n\n\"Claire.\"\n\nThe 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.\n\nClaire 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.\"\n\nClaire clutched the sword to her chest, turned, and ran into the stacks."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 69",
                "text": "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.\n\nHe wanted her to follow him. Would have some trap in mind. But Claire just wanted this over.\n\nHer 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.\n\nThen 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.\n\nShe landed hard on her hip and slid across the polished floor. When she came up, Andras had his dagger free but was still.\n\n\"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.\n\nThe 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.\"\n\nThey 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.\"\n\nMatthew. 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.\n\nAndras 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.\"\n\n\"You killed him, and you think I should be grateful?\" Incredulity gave way to fury. Andras raised his blade in warning.\n\n\"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.\"\n\nClaire'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?\"\n\nAndras sounded sad. \"You used me just as much. It's what friends do.\"\n\nAndras 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...\"\n\nClaire 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.\n\nHer books.\n\nShe hadn't realized they were so deep in the Library.\n\nHer 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.\n\nEven 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\u2014the stories never faded. Unspent words stayed, like ink in the blood. She felt cold and hot at once, hollow with the ghosts she carried.\n\nAndras 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.\"\n\nClaire's mouth felt dry. She dragged her eyes away from the shelves. \"Funny words for a creature that does nothing but lie.\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\nThe 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.\n\n\"Step down, Librarian,\" Andras said.\n\nThere 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\u2014the 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.\n\nThe 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?\"\n\n\"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\u2014quite 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.\"\n\nAt a word, another book folded into char and soot.\n\n\"Just as well.\" Andras tutted. \"They obviously didn't try to remember you.\"\n\nIt wasn't her forgotten daughter he was destroying, and 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.\n\n\"You can't win, Andras.\" Claire's voice trembled. She breathed through her nose and it felt like screaming.\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"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?\"\n\n\"I assumed fatherly affection, but that's obviously wrong.\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\nThe 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.\n\nAndras 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.\n\nClaire understood it then. She stayed on her knees.\n\n\"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.\"\n\nAndras 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.\"\n\n\"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.\n\nThe whispers, when they came, were nothing more than a soft hush of wind. Claire opened her eyes and turned.\n\nAndras 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.\n\nHundreds.\n\nAnd she knew the books were awake.\n\nBooks 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.\n\nThey 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.\n\nAndras's voice was haughty but unsteady. \"I'm the Arcanist, Grand Duke of Hell. You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"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.\"\n\n\"Nonsense. I'm a demon! I can offer you freedom, escape, power beyond imagination.\"\n\n\"We are imagination.\"\n\nAir 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.\n\nAndras 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.\n\n\"You're not a murderer, pup. Have mercy. You know me. We could have\u2014\"\n\nA 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.\n\nThe 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.\n\nClaire 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.\n\nThat 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.\n\nBut the Library had already found her. The Library would not bring the others here until it was done with her.\n\nAndras 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.\n\nAll seemed equally judging, but that was familiar.\n\nThe woman in front drew toward her. Claire felt locked in place, but dragged a word from her throat. \"Wait.\"\n\nIt 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\u2014\" 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.\"\n\nStories 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.\n\n\"Yes. And that's my fault. Only mine.\" Claire struggled to breathe. \"Please. I'll accept what I must do to make amends.\"\n\nThe woman was as still as a statue, and she considered."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 70",
                "text": "\u2002There 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.\n\n\u2002Or you can choose to rebel.\n\n\u2014Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE\n\nRami was learning many things today.\n\nHell had a pet gargoyle. Ravens fought like warriors. Books bled ink. And dead bodies stank, even in Hell.\n\nThe last lesson was the most pressing on his mind as he covered his nose with his sleeve, clearing a spot on the floor of debris before the gargoyle deposited the final body on the pile. The Library had become a graveyard.\n\nThe Horrors, when slain, decomposed at an accelerated rate and had turned putrid before the fighting was even over. The young ladies\u2014Leto had referred to them as damsels before Brevity staunchly corrected that they were their own goddamn heroes now\u2014were fading and so fragile, their forms were like spiderweb and ash where they'd fallen. Rami had made one attempt, just one, to right a dying damsel, but the body had folded into dust. Brevity had made a wounded sound, and Rami couldn't even bring himself to wipe the ash from his face.\n\nArlid and her raven folk made little effort to help, of course. The warriors were more inclined to scour the stacks, finishing off with judicial glee any Horror they found, but Arlid delegated a young leather-clad boy to tend to the injured book they called Hero.\n\nThe boy had bandaged the unwritten man's wounds as best as possible. Brevity directed him to prop Hero on the couch near the front desk. She gathered his mangled book where it lay, but that was as much as could be done until a librarian could repair the damage. Hero lay on the couch unmoving, fading in and out of awareness, though every time he woke, his face turned toward the entrance to the stacks.\n\nFinally, against Rami's advice, Brevity took a few of Arlid's folk and plunged into the stacks after Claire. Fool girl. It wasn't safe, but the muse was frantic to find the librarian. She'd only grown more so after a discomfiting breeze had whipped through the stacks before dying down again.\n\nThe minutes had ticked by, but neither raven nor librarians emerged.\n\n\"How much more?\" Leto asked, hovering by the desk. The boy had kept out of the fighting, but helplessness drained his features. The boy looked tired, scanning the death and destruction at the front of the Library. Several of the Library's tall shelves had been damaged in the fighting, upended as much by the gargoyle's own maneuvering as by Andras's forces. The stacks cracked and groaned, leaning against one another like broken old men. Books, paintings, and other unwritten artifacts were scattered on the floor. Rami hadn't allowed Leto even to help with pickup.\n\n\"That's the last of them,\" Rami said. He stepped back as Arlid approached with a blue-flamed torch. The smell drew a wince as she placed it to the bodies, but the magical fire sputtered and burned cleanly, smoke neatly drifting out the hallway to mingle with Hell's usual ash- and anise-heavy air. Damsel and demon alike were ascribed to the elements. Rami said a silent prayer. To whom, he found he wasn't quite sure.\n\n\"Was it worth it?\" Rami muttered.\n\nArlid heard and arched one thick brow. \"Beats me, Watcher. My kind slaughter each other, everyone gets up for sunrise again the next morning. Ask your librarians.\"\n\n\"If they return.\" Rami cast a look toward the still shadows of the stacks.\n\n\"They better. The little one took some of the flock in with her.\" Arlid made it sound as if she would take it as a personal offense if the search party failed.\n\nThe fire did quick work, burning blue and clean, never straying toward the shelves of tempting paper nearby. They were just watching the embers when there was a pop and a familiar teenage yelp of surprise behind him. Rami sighed and turned to remind Leto not to touch anything.\n\nThe air left his chest in a rush.\n\nA shattered star stood just beneath the arch of the Library doors. Uriel, archangel of the Heavenly Host, Face of God, proud, holy, eternal, stood straight as a blade in the chaos of the Library. Her fractal wings were fully unfurled, and razor blades of light scissored and lashed gouges into the door molding. By her side, Leto stood stock-still.\n\nPerhaps due to the angelic fist clenched around his throat.\n\n\"Uriel!\" Rami's legs decided to work again and he jolted forward. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"What you should have done, the moment you entered this unholy place.\" Her voice was silk over frozen stone. Uriel didn't have a weapon, didn't need one. Her pale fingers curled around Leto's neck like a collar. It was threat enough. The whites of Leto's eyes were wide, and his cheek twitched from the effort to breathe around Uriel's grip.\n\nHer hand tightened as Rami advanced. He frowned in confusion at the archangel. \"How did you\u2014\"\n\n\"I followed you. Your fallen path was not so hard to find once you made me aware of it.\"\n\n\"That's\u2014 The threat is over now.\" Rami raised his hand. It was difficult to keep the tremble out of his voice. \"Leto is an innocent human soul. He's not even damned\u2014he's Heaven's now. We saved him. That means\u2014\"\n\n\"That means nothing,\" Uriel snarled. Her arm shook for good measure, drawing a stuttering yelp from Leto. The light at her back splintered and doubled, growing from wings into a lashing scorpion tail. She was losing control. \"Not when a Watcher, one of Heaven's first creations, dear to the Creator's heart, would turn traitor and help these things.\"\n\n\"No one here is a thing. They're human, or harmless spirits, or...\" He trailed off, not quite sure how to describe Arlid's ravens or the gargoyle. He caught leather-clad movement at the edge of his vision. Arlid stepped up behind him, hand dancing over her weapon, calculating the space between them and the angel.\n\nHis heart ached, already drowned in too much bloodshed today. He had to stop this before it turned foolish. \"I haven't betrayed anyone, Uriel. And I can't condone harm to a human soul by our hands.\"\n\n\"You have no standing to judge me. A failed Watcher, the sad, pathetic beggar at Heaven's Gates.\" Uriel's grip tightened, sending a flush of strangled blue frost to Leto's cheeks. The teenager's hands flew up and clawed weakly at her wrist. Rami didn't realize he'd moved until the lightning crackled up and down the blade in his hands.\n\nUriel's eyes ignited and leaked flame. \"You would dare draw a blade against me?\"\n\nRami opened his mouth before he realized he couldn't deny it. But Uriel began to bleed pale wildfire, and panic leapt into his mouth instead. \"Leto! Close your eyes!\"\n\nThe room flared as Uriel shed her skin. Behind him, he heard a strangled cry and a flutter of raven wings. Only Rami could stand his ground as shards of light spit from the angel's back like needles, and her face became a mask of fire. Leto was a dark, cringing blot against Uriel's wrath, and Rami could only hope he'd followed orders. A human mind was not equipped to see the face of god.\n\nWhen Uriel's transformation completed, her voice was splintered crystal in his ears. \"You dare?\"\n\nRami swallowed, calling lightning to his blade, which he kept pointed low. \"It seems I do. Let the boy go, Uriel.\" Leto whimpered, and Rami was ashamed that he was uncertain whether he could really strike the Face of God.\n\nHe didn't have to find out.\n\n\"Rule number twenty-three. No fighting in the Library.\"\n\nA voice, infinitely weary, rang out from the front of the stacks. Rami turned. Claire's arm was looped over Brevity's shoulder. The muse had her eyes screwed shut against the light, but Claire leaned heavily on her assistant. It took Rami an unbelieving moment to realize she stared directly into the blinding face of god with a dull, distant stare.\n\n\"The abomination.\" Uriel's mouth hissed flames. \"You will suffer for your crimes.\"\n\n\"Always threats with you people,\" Claire said, unblinking and cold. \"You need to leave, angel. The Library is closed and Hell will not claim you.\"\n\n\"I am of the High Host of Heaven and you are all in judgment.\" Uriel was unhinged, burning from within. One glowing hand squeezed on Leto's throat, pulling a wounded noise from the teenager. \"I will crush your sinner beneath\u2014\"\n\n\"Kheladgis,\" Claire said. Then words started to pour from her mouth. Dark, guttural things. They must have been words, but they took on a life of their own as they left her lips. They became black holes, sucking the air from Rami's lungs. They became embers, searing ash into his eyes. They became silk, caressing his skin before slithering by like snakes on a hunt.\n\nA shudder flinched through the room. Uriel had time only to curl her lips in a snarl. Her light fluttered from blinding to translucent, insubstantial. Like a flame suddenly deprived of air. Her scything wings melted into mist, and her hand dissolved from around Leto's neck like dust cleared by the wind, leaving the boy staggering.\n\nShe was gone.\n\nIt took three ragged breaths of staring at the empty space before Rami's mind could do something other than scream. He spun toward Claire, though he had the sense to lower his weapon as he did so. \"You... Uriel. Did you just...\"\n\n\"She was hurting Leto. There are certain words...\" Claire trailed off. She leaned more heavily on Brevity and let her guide her to her desk. \"She was not of Hell. I did warn her the Library was closed.\"\n\n\"But she's...\"\n\n\"She'll likely find her way back to Heaven again in a while. Give or take a decade.\"\n\nUnmade. Uriel, highest of the Host, the avatar Face of God, had been unmade by a librarian. Rami could feel the absence of her, a well in the universe that all of Heaven tilted toward. There would be aftershocks of this for decades, centuries even. For lack of any ability to process that, Rami focused on sheathing his sword. Claire leaned heavily on the desk, rubbing the space between her brows.\n\n\"You were able to look at her, yet you're... ,\" Rami said with wonder.\n\n\"Not mad? I wouldn't go that far.\" Claire's smile was paper-thin. \"It's been a day for nonsense. I'm full up on madness and horror.\" She took a breath and turned. \"Are you all right, Leto?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am. Thank you.\" Leto sagged against the wall near the door and rubbed his neck. He was technically leaning on a shelf full of books, but Rami didn't have the heart to force him to stand. His neck was still frostbitten, but slowly it warmed under his fingers. Claire's eyes swept over the boy, a hundred unspoken words in her worried eyes. She said nothing.\n\nRami found himself glancing about the room, alone in Hell and uncertain of the weight of his conscience. An unmaking of an archangel shouldn't even have been possible. Claire had just murdered one of the highest of the Host, his commander, in front of him. That would be a declaration of war for any angel, fallen or no.\n\nHe could draw his sword, right now, and smite all of them. He'd be in the right. They'd all be dead in the coming war between the realms, but he'd be right.\n\nBut somewhere in Ramiel's long and winding existence, right had stopped feeling like the best place to be.\n\nHis gaze wandered until it came to Leto. The teenager smiled, tentative, encouraging, at Rami. The boy would never know why he'd ended up in Hell's Library. A muscle in his jaw worked, and Rami took a slow, shuddering breath. He lowered his eyes to the scorch mark where Uriel had stood. His hand fell from his sword hilt.\n\n\"Do you need to go file a report or something?\" Claire kept her question neutral, though the cant of her shoulders telegraphed that she was expecting a poor response.\n\nRami nodded stiffly. \"Eventually. Heaven will need to know the archangel is... delayed.\"\n\nClaire blinked, and of all the impossibility of her acts, this was what surprised her. \"Delayed.\"\n\n\"It's accurate,\" Rami insisted.\n\n\"Delayed.\" Claire nodded to herself and turned, as if surveying the damage for the first time. She sucked a sharp breath of air in through her teeth.\n\n\"We won.\" Brevity had found her voice, though it sounded thin as spun sugar. She had a kind of hollow-eyed look when Rami considered her. Claire shrugged her arm free of her assistant.\n\n\"This,\" the librarian said, with a particularly ruthless kind of self-loathing that Rami knew well, \"this is not winning.\"\n\nBrevity didn't appear to have a single denial for that, but she straightened. There was in her sharp features a resolve that Rami hadn't noticed before. The kind left after a fire. \"We're here, aren't we?\"\n\nClaire met that gaze for a long moment. Rami couldn't claim he knew either woman well enough to know what was being transmitted without words, but he knew the look of survivors when survival was not expected.\n\n\"Right. To business.\" Claire nodded, and Brevity began organizing the few remaining damsels into groups to gather the books that were yet salvageable from the battlefield around them.\n\nRami saw Claire's eyes stray toward the couch where Hero lay, but she resolutely turned to face the raven captain instead. Arlid and her flock had finished greeting the ravens from the search party and held themselves near the door, obviously preparing to leave.\n\n\"Arlid,\" Claire said levelly. \"I see you were helpful as ever.\"\n\n\"Glowy things, burning things, not our fight.\" Arlid grasped Claire's forearm in a grudging shake. \"You freed our kin and asked for help fighting demons, not angels.\"\n\n\"Just so. You did hold up your end there.\"\n\n\"A good fight.\" Arlid's kohled eyes glittered with amusement. She nodded at the chaos. \"Your place looks almost as bad as the storyteller's now.\"\n\nA ghost of a smile hit Claire's lips. \"Just missing a few drunken Norsemen.\"\n\n\"We could spare them.\"\n\nClaire glanced to the gathered raven folk. \"Any losses?\"\n\n\"Two. A hurt for the flock. But your saga women fared worse.\"\n\n\"The damsels, yes.\" Claire's eyes slid to Brevity, and the muse looked down, eyes carefully turned away from the pyre. \"They were characters, not warriors, but they defended their home.\"\n\n\"They fought bravely. It was a good death.\"\n\n\"Good deaths exist only in stories.\" Claire's voice was grim with loss, a sound Rami knew well. \"In any case, thank you again. This wasn't Valhalla's fight.\"\n\n\"It wasn't. Consider yourself indebted, feather and bone,\" Arlid said before her smile grew sharp. \"But the chance to strike against the demon who had imprisoned and experimented on my flock for so long and abused the raven roads? Anytime, Librarian.\"\n\nThey shook once again, and the ravens departed, maintaining their human forms until the sound of wings filled the hallway.\n\nClaire sank down on a chair with a deflated sound. She stared at nothing for a moment before turning her look to Rami.\n\n\"You'll be taking him again.\"\n\nThe hurt in her words made it obvious she was speaking of Leto. Whatever had happened in the stacks\u2014not to mention all that had led up to it\u2014had drained her. The weight of it was recognizable to Rami, the discovery and immediate loss of family she hadn't even known she'd had. Claire looked drawn, but she was waiting for an answer. Rami nodded. \"I have to. He needs to enter Heaven before he risks corruption.\"\n\nLeto hovered near the couch, not seeming to know where to put himself without touching anything. He furrowed his brow at Rami. \"I feel fine. Surely I can stay and help\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" Rami was firm on that point. \"However, after Leto's processed... I would like permission to return.\"\n\nSurprise startled the grief from Claire's face momentarily. \"Return?\"\n\n\"To the Library. I should... I would like...\" Rami was confounded by his own words. To like, to want anything. To seek anything beyond forgiveness was something he hadn't been faced with in many, many years. It felt weightless, and terrifying. There had been a time when he'd still had the right to wings; he hadn't always been earthbound. The memory came to him unbidden, that breath in flight, when you've stepped off solid ground and your mind hasn't quite made up whether you want to fly or follow your shadow to the ground. He abruptly wanted to cry, but he grunted instead. \"I would like to return to... discuss. How I can help.\"\n\nClaire's brows remained a few inches too high, but some humor gleamed in her dark eyes as she considered. \"Return, and we'll see what happens.\n\n\"Brevity,\" she called over her shoulder as she drew herself up from the couch. \"Come say your good-byes to Leto.\"\n\n\"Don't I get a say in this?\" Leto sulked, his eyes on his feet as Brevity approached him. His cheeks were pink as he glanced at her teary face. \"Ah, c'mon. It's not like I'm dying... again.\"\n\n\"That place better treat you good.\" Brevity sniffed, and it was obvious it took great effort not to swing her arms around his neck in a hug. \"If not, you just go ahead and damn yourself all over again.\"\n\n\"That's... that's not how it works,\" Rami muttered, mostly to remove the pained grimace from Claire's face.\n\nLeto just flushed. \"You're going to be a great librarian someday, Brev. The best.\"\n\n\"You bet.\" Brevity rubbed a tear off her cheek. \"The Library will always have a place for you.\"\n\n\"Only if he remembers how to brew a proper pot of tea.\" Claire made a face as she hobbled over. Injury or not, her limp was more pronounced as her energy flagged.\n\n\"I'll practice in Heaven,\" Leto said. \"You'll tell Hero I said... bye?\"\n\n\"I'll improvise on that with a little more eloquence, but sure.\"\n\nLeto drifted for a hug, but caught himself when Rami shook his head. Leto let out a long sigh and rubbed his neck. \"Thank you, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Still calling me ma'am.\" Claire drew herself up, voice aloof and eyes wet. \"I give up. Rami, get the kid out of here before I decide to keep him.\"\n\n\"You heard the lady.\" Rami squeezed Leto's shoulder.\n\n\"I mean it. Thank you. I was... The Library saved\u2014\"\n\n\"You saved yourself. You write your own story here.\" Something crumbled, just enough for Claire to wrap her arms around herself, as if making sure they didn't do anything they weren't supposed to do. She smiled. \"I'm... I'm glad I got to meet you, Leto. Go. Be good. No\u2014be better than good: be happy.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 71",
                "text": "\u2002Here is how you make a sheet of parchment: Soak a pelt in a scouring bath until it softens. Scrape the hair off. Treat the skin with astringent tannic acids. Rack and torture until tight.\n\n\u2002And here's how you make a story: Soak a life in mortality. Scrape the soul.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1899 CE\n\nFor the second time in as many days, Claire sat down and began to repair the binding of Hero's book.\n\nHis was not the only book to be repaired. Claire kept her eyes pinned on the tattered binding in front of her, but she could nearly hear the hurts of the hundreds of torn, crushed, burned unwritten works around her. The books trodden underfoot by Horrors, the carpets with holes eaten by acid, the paintings torn by raven blades.\n\nClaire didn't see books; she saw graves.\n\nShe saw a thousand lives on each cindered page. Here, a band of adventurers, suffocating in a forest. There, a pair of lovers, entombed in the moment before a kiss. There, torn beneath the edge of a fallen chair, the teenage outcast that never learns they are something more.\n\nA thousand stories, caught middream, eviscerated from the possibility of being real. Some, granted, were never to be written\u2014their authors were long dead\u2014but others had authors just beginning to dream them. Each book was magic, a potential never to be duplicated. With a book destroyed, they faded all the same. Worlds trapped, suffocating on the page.\n\nOne thought suffocated more than most. Not long ago, it wouldn't have bothered her at all. She'd called them things. Pressed a scalpel against their hurts and called them unreal. When books were merely as enchanted objects, annoying simulacra. But now... now their deaths smelled of ash and acid and ink turned sour.\n\nAnd as little as she cared to admit it, overriding it all was the concern for the still body on the couch next to her.\n\nHero had drifted in and out of consciousness during the confrontation, but once the ravens left and the danger passed, he'd succumbed to a deep sleep. Most of the fresh pages she'd stitched into his book just days ago had been clawed and torn. The front cover was blackened with char, and the edges were sodden with ink and soot. If possible, he'd done even worse injury to himself than before. She hadn't been able to get a proper conversation to assess the origin of his injuries, but Brevity had told her an absolutely ridiculous tale of Hero's... heroics.\n\nShe would have to be careful not to use that phrase in front of the vain creature. There would be no living with him.\n\nClaire found herself hoping there would be some living with him.\n\nShe glanced to the couch and gave another grunt, pushing it all out of her head. She focused on rebinding Hero's pages. Again. Slice the strands of old thread, divide the signatures. Trim the papers. Mark the new spine. Cut the groove. Fit the cord. Reconnect the signatures. Adjust the press. Thread and stitch. Thread and stitch. So much threading and stitching.\n\nShe worked the finishing chain stitch up the spine, tied it off, and leaned back to rub the numbness out of her fingers. She let her gaze wander to give her eyes a moment of rest. The Library sank into a sepulchre of quiet.\n\nRami had departed with Leto, promising to return when he was able. She worried he would encounter questions that were best left unanswered, but the Watcher seemed confident in his ability to maneuver Heavenly bureaucracy. She hoped he was right to be so confident; she'd had enough of war.\n\nBrevity, after orchestrating a cleanup of the worst of the mess, expressed a preference for hovering over Claire like a rather concerned sparrow. After Brevity checked her tea needs for the third time, Claire had sent her off to the depths of the stacks to inspect the ashes of her burned books.\n\nThe memory of flames igniting under a black blade unsettled her focus again. Claire took a long sip of tea. Her books. Her arrogance. Beatrice. Her longing for Earth. Andras had only played on the foolish secrets and tender fears that Claire had kept. He'd set the fire, but she'd provided the tinder to burn it all down.\n\nAndras had always said the game was just children playing in the dirt, exposing wiggling things to the light of day.\n\nAnd she was exposed now. Brevity had gasped when Claire instructed her to assess and repair her books.\n\n\"Yours, boss? Are you sure you don't want me to bring them up for you, and\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" Claire shook her head. \"Things got... stirred up when I confronted the Arcanist. It's best if you repair them. I trust you.\"\n\nThe surprise that sparked across her assistant's face, blooming into starry joy, made Claire deeply sorry for the diet of harsh words she'd fallen into over the years. A habit she'd never given thought to before. She sent Brevity off with supplies, drowning that introspection under a swig of tea as she focused on Hero's repairs.\n\nWhatever else would happen due to her rash invocation of the Library, she could fix one book.\n\nFeeling returned to her fingertips and she rubbed out the tingles as she dug through the drawer for the binding paste. Claire startled when Rami cleared his throat. The fallen angel slouched against a bookcase, deep in the collar of his feathered coat. His broad olive features, usually grim and sure, held an uncertain, shy question as he looked at her.\n\n\"Leto passed the pearly gates?\" Claire asked.\n\n\"With flying colors,\" Rami said. \"He seemed a little put off at the idea of paradise. It won't surprise me if he's running Purgatory within the month.\"\n\nThe thought made the hollow in Claire's chest warm, mending a little. \"That's... good.\"\n\nA whisper of a smile was there, then gone. \"I'm sorry you didn't have longer with him. If you like, I could try to find the records, see if he was\u2014\"\n\n\"No. Andras as much as confirmed it, and...\" Claire hesitated. \"He's where he's supposed to be now. As am I.\"\n\nA stymied emotion settled in Rami's frown. Claire was new to the company of angels, but she had begun to suspect his innate sense of justice was frequently going to run smack against her desire to be left alone. She sighed. \"What?\"\n\n\"In Mdina\u2014Brevity mentioned you left behind someone dear. If you like, I could\u2014\"\n\nBeatrice. Claire's fingers seized up painfully. She cursed and rubbed her knuckles, forcing herself to breathe slowly through her nose. Beatrice had sacrificed herself. Yet, if the labyrinth's blasted portals could be believed, she escaped. Might have escaped. No one knew whether Beatrice still existed, book or woman. Bea always did like the allure of a mystery. Claire sighed.\n\n\"It's a kind offer, but... no. Our stories are... separate now.\"\n\nRami made a frustrated noise. \"Still. It's obvious you cared\u2014\"\n\n\"No trouble finding your way back, then?\"\n\nRami accepted the diversion for what it was: a closed door. He shrugged. \"No trouble. It appears... Hell accepts me.\"\n\n\"How curious. His Pissypants doesn't usually take to drifters. But then I hear you two have a history.\" Claire softened the words with a nod to the pot on the caddy beside the desk. \"Tea?\"\n\n\"I prefer coffee, if you have it.\"\n\nClaire made a face. \"Well, now you definitely can't stay.\"\n\nHumor fell flat, as it often did for her. Rami's gaze trailed to the materials on Claire's desk. She saw it skim over the small ridge of books and land on the amber and gray dagger perched on the corner. The gleam of the blade seemed to wink at them.\n\n\"You're really certain you caught all of him in that thing?\"\n\nClaire refused to divert her attention to the blade. Andras didn't deserve it. \"The parts that were trying to subjugate all of us, at least. If he can stage a coup from a scabbard, he deserves the whole realm.\"\n\n\"But how did you do it?\" Claire gave him an offended look, and Rami backtracked. \"No offense intended, Claire, but you were limping and holding that sword like a dead fish when you ran after him.\"\n\n\"Yes. I suppose if I keep my position, I should probably fix that training gap.\" Claire ignored Rami's alarm. \"I can't actually take all the credit. Andras made a fatal error. He angered the Library.\"\n\n\"Even I know not to do that. Human dreams. Prickly.\" A voice dusty as the grave made both Claire and Rami jump. The demon at the door padded toward them without invitation.\n\nRather than the archaic clothes that Andras wore, she was clad mostly in supple, flowing rose leathers, tooled with flowers and polished to a sheen. Wild hair the color of cold steel, unkempt and proud, bushed around a sharp face of worn tan skin. She looked like precisely everyone's grandmother, if one's grandmother kept the blood of her enemies under her nails.\n\n\"Malphas.\" Claire said the name of the general of Hell's armies on a sigh. Lucifer's second-in-command; all of Hell knew her name better as a whisper.\n\nMalphas gave a regal smile.\n\nClaire crossed her arms with obvious resignation. \"I stave off political intrigue, put down a coup for Hell, and he couldn't even be bothered to come himself?\"\n\n\"You don't seem happy to see me, kiddo.\" Malphas's eyes were gold like Andras's, but they lacked even the artificial warmth of his. She was cold and ancient as burial iron. Other demons called her the War Crone, and it suited. Mother of war, grandmother of death. As she approached, her leathers became less rose colored and more a shade of blood-soaked hide. Loss flowed like a river around her. She flicked a glance around the ravaged Library lobby. \"If this is what 'staved off' looks like, I advise you not to enter politics.\"\n\n\"Saints preserve me from such a fate,\" Claire said just to watch Malphas frown.\n\nMalphas's eyes slid over Rami. A hook of a smile appeared. \"Ramiel. I thought Heaven's warhorse had been tamed into a mule. What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"I keep my own business.\" Ramiel's words were stilted.\n\nClaire risked a glance. She'd always considered the fallen angel a stiff soldier type, but this was new. He stood ramrod straight, his large, calloused hands clenched at his thighs, with the prey's instinct that complete stillness was the only way to avoid drawing unwanted attention. Malphas had that effect on longtime acquaintances.\n\n\"I see you two know each other,\" Claire murmured. She waited until Malphas stopped at the edge of her desk. \"If you came for a debrief, we don't have a final tally on the damages yet.\"\n\nMalphas waved that off, as if the domain of numbers and loss was for weaker minds. \"I came to see for myself this codex. Something that made Andras finally show his hand must be powerful.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid that's not possible.\"\n\nMalphas caught the flat note in Claire's voice, and the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes tightened speculatively. \"You're too intelligent to defy me. Do you mean the pages are already destroyed?\"\n\n\"Is that what a good librarian would do?\" Claire met Malphas's level gaze. \"The Library is secure and Lucifer's secrets are safe. You can tell the court that.\"\n\n\"Yes...\" Malphas's lips thinned before transforming into a positively terrifying gentle smile as her eyes landed on the dagger, concern forgotten. \"Such a compact little prison. Precious.\"\n\nClaire stifled a groan at the affectation. The gentler Malphas became, the bigger the ball of dread grew in her stomach. Rami twitched and drew closer behind her. \"In a way. I'm not certain on the specifics of how Andras created it, but it captures a being. Just not the one he intended,\" Claire said.\n\n\"Andras always had a better mind for deception than strategy. I was the one to toss him out the first time, you know.\" Malphas plucked up the blade, holding it this way and that. \"A useless weapon, but the court will have a trophy.\"\n\n\"You mean the Arcane Wing,\" Claire corrected her, earning a flash of warning displeasure. Malphas was a long-standing, revered general. The War Crone had no enemies, because her enemies were all dead. Claire kept her thoughts from her face. \"It is an artifact of the Library's Arcane Wing and belongs there. That doesn't change just because there's a demon in it now.\"\n\nMalphas considered. Bony fingers, hard as granite and with blackened nails, tapped along the edge of the blade. \"Our lord has ways of dealing with failed rebellions.\"\n\n\"Failed,\" of course, was the key word. Claire knew Lucifer encouraged the plotting and backstabbing in the court as a way to keep his most powerful demons distracted. With a general like Malphas safeguarding his throne, he could afford the chaos. \"And if His Vilest would like to come and extract Andras's soul for punishment, he's welcome. But until there's a new Arcanist in place, I'm sure Lucifer would agree that my charge is to guarantee no artifacts wander off the inventory.\"\n\nMalphas set the dagger down by the nearest stack of books, losing interest. Instead she focused her full attention on Claire, which felt a queer mix of predatory and maternal. \"About that. You have stolen from my army.\"\n\nIt was a flicker of a moment, a trick of the light, when a shadow melted across Malphas's features and turned them from wizened to skull-like, then back. Claire held the fear in her mouth rather than swallow and draw attention to her exposed throat. \"As you said, I am too intelligent to cross you, Malphas.\"\n\n\"Yet I smelled the burning from the hallway. Those Horrors and that wyrm were mine. Andras was mine, despite his reassignment. So it falls to me to name a new successor.\" The train of thought behind Malphas's granite eyes was impossible to guess. \"There are several well-established demons campaigning for the honor\u2014\"\n\n\"No demons,\" Claire said, more harshly than was wise. \"I won't share the Library with another grasping, plotting viper. There's too much power in the Arcane Wing. The Arcanist needs to be someone who has no interest or ability to profit from it. Andras was proof enough of that.\"\n\n\"As you said, you are intelligent,\" Malphas mused. She leaned forward, patting Claire's cheek with sharp fingertips that left cold grit there. Then the crone demon tapped her fingers at her wrinkled throat, making an obvious show of considering. \"But if not a demon, then who? That knocks out a sizable portion of qualified candidates.\"\n\nClaire felt like she'd volunteered herself out onto a crumbling ledge and was now being asked to tap-dance. She traded a wary expression with Rami. The fallen angel gave a little nod, and she turned back to Malphas. \"Rami would make an excellent curator.\"\n\nMalphas's smile tilted over the edge from amused to disgusted. \"A fallen angel is no better than a demon\u2014worse, in fact, if he's proven to have such pliable loyalties. What's to keep him from making a play?\"\n\n\"I have no interest in any game of yours, War Crone.\" Rami still looked as if he was waiting for an ambush, the mouse under a cat's paw, but he squared his shoulders. \"In fact, I will only stay with the stipulation that I swear no oath to you or your throne. I believe that disqualifies me for any titles or honors in the court, does it not?\"\n\n\"You are just as weak willed as ever,\" Malphas hummed. \"But an interesting pawn. You should lend him to me, Claire.\"\n\nThe tremor that ran through Ramiel was palpable at Claire's back. She smiled. \"I'm short staffed as it is. I couldn't possibly spare him.\"\n\n\"Just as well. He needs a strong hand.\" Malphas's face fell into carefully crafted disappointment, maternal and knowing. \"Either way, I'm not sure an angel has the credentials. What do you know about Lirene's Eighth Circle Artifice Bond?\"\n\nClaire's eyes flew to the untidy pile of artifacts she'd pilfered from the Arcane Wing, and her stomach dropped. She immediately knew where this was going even as Rami faltered. \"I... I know danger when it must be contained.\"\n\nMalphas made a clicking noise with her tongue. \"Oh, sweet, sweet Ramiel.\" She studied her nails before turning her attention back to Claire. \"He's an angel with not an ounce of guile. The artifacts would eat him up on day one. We need someone with the acumen to deal with trickster artifacts. The strength to bring them to heel. Someone who has experienced the finer betrayals in life.\"\n\nClaire pursed her lips. \"I said no demons, Malphas.\"\n\n\"No demons. I had a different, reasonably intelligent mortal in mind.\"\n\nMalphas's meaning was impossible to dodge, but Claire tried anyway. \"I already have a position and responsibilities. I am Hell's librarian.\"\n\nThen Malphas gave her a coin-flip smile, half-pitying and half-pleased, as she made Claire's veins run cold with two words.\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\nThe air stole out of her lungs and they ached. Claire refused to flinch from Malphas's predatory stillness, but she ran her fingers idly over the paste brush still in her hands, tracing the wood against her calluses. When had she developed calluses? Bodies weren't supposed to change in Hell. \"Any soul sentenced to the Library remains until they've processed their sins.\"\n\n\"Or failed in their duties.\"\n\nClaire clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. \"I just repelled a hostile invasion of the Library.\"\n\n\"By leaving a path of destruction through three realms and dead dreams in your wake. Even I was impressed, but death is my purview, not yours.\" Malphas's mood flipped. The jaws of the trap fell shut. \"The librarian is supposed to protect the Library, not the other way around, child. How many books were lost because you went on this wild-goose chase? Leaving without permission on a stolen ghostlight alone would sentence any normal soul\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, do save me the posturing.\" Claire found herself on her feet, and Malphas raised a warning brow. \"Lucifer knew what was happening. He had to. There were too many coincidences that had his tacit tolerance, if not approval. The codex pages. B\u2014the collector and wards at Mdina. Deny it all you want\u2014\" She held up a hand, which only increased the murder in the old demon's eyes. \"But he kept you from the Library and sent no aid when we closed the wards. That alone says he knew and condoned what was going on. Hell broke faith with the Library first.\"\n\nMalphas waited until Claire reluctantly sat again before speaking, fond and soft, which was when she was most dangerous. \"If\u2014if\u2014our lord had an inkling of Andras's ambition, and if he decided to test Andras's loyalty by dangling a morsel in front of him\u2014\"\n\n\"That sacrificial morsel being the pages of the codex, my Library, and my people.\"\n\n\"If he did as you say,\" Malphas continued, \"then he may have taken precautions to limit damage. And he must have had the faith\u2014misplaced, in my opinion\u2014that you would produce the necessary outcome. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences for your actions, child of man. We have no control over that.\"\n\nThe way she said it, with the calm of the ageless, made a final, awful piece snap into place in Claire's brain. Her anger fell. \"This isn't coming from Lucifer at all.\"\n\n\"No.\" Malphas leaned back, crossing scarred, muscled arms. \"When Hell comes for you, little mortal, you'll know it.\"\n\nClaire tried to ignore that. \"The books... have a grievance?\"\n\nMalphas cast a look around the ash-strewn hall. \"Wouldn't you?\"\n\nThe Library had always been not quite quiet. Silence was always built on the susurrus of rustling pages, the creak of leather spines, the rumbles of stories sleeping fitfully. There was none of that now. The books slept, but dreamlessly. It turned the Library into a tomb, and again the dust of a thousand books turned to graves clogged Claire's chest. \"And the Library chooses its librarian,\" Claire said dully. \"But in the stacks, they\u2014it, the Library\u2014withdrew. It gave me a chance to make things right.\"\n\n\"And that's what you'll do, as Arcanist,\" Malphas said. \"The Arcane Wing will no longer be a threat.\"\n\nClaire knew it wasn't wise to look away from Malphas, but she found her gaze had drifted to the cluttered desk in front of her. The new stitches on Hero's book had tightened. Claire picked up scissors and began mechanically snipping off the loose ends. She had cleaned up only two knots when Malphas broke out with a terrifying sound: laughter.\n\n\"Despair is such a dull look on you. Don't start boring me now.\" Malphas leaned over the desk, looking every inch the dotty, harmless old woman she pretended to be. \"You'll still work in the Library, of course. There's plenty of work to do to clean up your mess. As you said, the Arcane Wing and the Unwritten Wing are the allies that make the Library. I never had much patience for reading, but it gives Hell an air of erudite respectability.\"\n\n\"As Arcanist, I get to choose my assistants.\" Rather than let it sink in, Claire latched onto a demand at random. She glanced briefly at Rami. \"I won't work with those vile creatures Andras had in here.\"\n\n\"Easy enough. You destroyed most of them anyway,\" Malphas reminded her. She slid off the desk, rolling her shoulders like she'd won something. \"I'll leave you to give your pawns the good news.\"\n\nThe demon disappeared in a swirl of iron and cinnamon. Claire stared at her desk. She found herself preoccupied with the knots twisted on Hero's book, noting the irregularities for trimming. Her hands clenched when Rami cleared his throat.\n\n\"I can go find Brevity. If you...\" He trailed off when Claire nodded, and he turned and disappeared into the stacks.\n\nClaire tilted her head back and closed her eyes. She drew in a slow breath and exhaled firmly, driving out any thought of the changes to come. She shuddered, eyes squeezed tighter.\n\nWhen she could be sure of herself, she twisted in her chair and squinted at the unmoving body on the couch. The body whose face hadn't moved but whose breathing had shifted just slightly when Malphas appeared.\n\n\"I suppose you heard all that.\"\n\nA whisper of movement tugged up the corner of Hero's lips. He kept his eyes closed, but his color was better. When his lips parted, Hero's voice was hoarse. \"Didn't want to interrupt.\"\n\n\"Rami was concerned about you. You could have said something.\"\n\n\"I like playing hard to get.\"\n\nClaire snorted. \"You do love a chase.\"\n\nHero couldn't quite manage a laugh, and when he tried, it turned into a pathetic, stumbling cough. He licked his lips with some effort. \"Did you destroy all the pages of the codex?\"\n\nClaire's smile was bitter. \"Maybe. Maybe not. Better to let the courts wonder. The Library will be vulnerable for a while. If I did destroy them, we're fair game. Open to being swept up by the next demon with a hunger for power. If I didn't, then I'm a threat only Lucifer has the authority to address. Until they know, even Malphas will stay out of the Library.\"\n\nHero huffed weakly. \"Clever.\"\n\n\"I learned from the best.\" Claire's eyes dodged to Andras's dagger. She turned back to the book in front of her and picked up the paste brush again. \"For now I'll need to finish fixing your binding. Again.\"\n\n\"Maybe you'll get it right this time.\"\n\n\"Everybody's a critic,\" Claire muttered as she began to apply the paste where the binding would adhere to leather. She worked in quiet for a few moments until Hero spoke again.\n\n\"I heard you, you know.\"\n\nClaire turned and saw Hero had cracked one eye open with great effort. His gaze glittered, beneath the bruises and black filth. Claire turned back to her work. \"Heard what?\"\n\n\"When you confronted Andras. You said 'my book.'\"\n\n\"Is that what you heard?\" Claire felt a small smile grow on her lips before she remembered herself. Loss welled in her stomach as she shook her head. \"No books are mine now.\"\n\nFor once, Hero didn't have a response."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 72",
                "text": "The doors to the Arcane Wing protested as she pushed them open. Claire stood at the entrance a moment, squinting as she indulged her gloomy mood with the darkened interior.\n\nIt had taken much talking and two pots of tea to get Brevity to accept her sudden promotion. The muse had ranted and railed, and at one point Rami had had to restrain her from fade-stepping right to Lucifer's court herself to set things right. But in the end, she'd slumped down beside Claire on the couch, sulking dully.\n\n\"This sucks, boss.\"\n\nClaire silently agreed, but she rolled her eyes at Brevity. \"Only because it's new. You will be an adequate librarian if you\u2014\"\n\n\"But after all we did. That I\u2014 It's not fair.\"\n\n\"What ever gave you the idea that Hell's Library would be fair? You should know better by now. Stories are capricious at the best of times, and...\" She bit off the lecture that might make her feel better but would only increase Brevity's hurt. Tears had just finished drying tracks down her face, but the muse looked close to waterworks again. She slipped her hand into Brevity's. \"You've already proven yourself to be a champion of the Library. You're strong, Brev. You'll be an admirable librarian. Better than I was. Look at it this way. You can finally brew all the atrocious strawberry-whatsit tea you want.\"\n\nBrevity pulled together the broken bits of her smile. \"And you'll be there?\"\n\n\"I'll be around,\" Claire said evasively. \"Just not when you're stinking up the place with that rubbish.\"\n\nThere might have been kinder ways to pass the mantle, but Brevity had experience reading between Claire's words. She rallied to help Claire finish restoring Hero's book. Claire had chosen to rebind him in a vivid green leather cover\u2014primarily because it matched his eyes, but also because it was bright enough to annoy his aesthetic. The book was repaired, but the front pages remained stubbornly blank. No matter what techniques she attempted, Hero was still exiled from his own book.\n\nHe'd taken it in stride and seemed to at least get more color back in his cheeks as time went on. His eyes were back to their usual calculating mischief.\n\nBrevity began the long work of putting the stacks back in order (the gargoyle had done the kindness of righting the fallen shelves before returning to its post in the hallway). Hero helped where he could, primarily by grumbling loudly from his recovery couch. After a few days, Claire felt confident enough to leave them to their work.\n\nThe Library would go on without Claire. The stories already had.\n\nRather than indulge in the morose thought, Claire decided to return to the Arcane Wing the artifacts she'd stolen and see what her new posting would bring. It was just as gloomy as she remembered. The shelves and cupboard stood ransacked where she'd raced through, scooping up anything Andras had left behind.\n\nThe raven cages, naturally, stood open and empty at the back. Arlid had taken back her people, leaving the place oddly silent. Claire ran her fingers over dust-coated shelves as she worked her way back, trying to place amulets and rings back where she remembered them.\n\n\"One shelf up. It was next to that atrocious violet crown.\"\n\nClaire placed the piece and turned to see Hero lounging against the open doors. \"Lounging,\" perhaps, was not the right word, as the doors contributed a great deal to keeping Hero's battered body upright. His arm was in a sling, but his wounds were beginning to heal. Scar material, pale as parchment against his tan, was beginning to form in spiderwebs along his jaw. Skin puckered and curled over his temple, marring his much-lauded cheekbones. Time would never fade the scars entirely.\n\nHero was marked, changed from how he was written, but it didn't appear to affect the mocking smile at her questioning look. \"I have an excellent memory and humans think of the ugliest things.\"\n\n\"Yes, well, someone dreamed you up.\"\n\n\"You wound me, warden.\" Hero placed the fingers of his uninjured hand to his chest, bitterness keeping his voice from being as light as it should have been. He gestured to his face. \"I suppose there's no being mistaken for a hero now.\"\n\nClaire turned back to the shelves. \"Don't be silly. You could be a grimdark darling. Heartless and rugged.\"\n\n\"Rugged. Now, there's something I've never been called.\" Hero chuckled, the act of which made him grimace. \"But this place is dark enough for both of us.\"\n\n\"Andras was not a bright person. Spaces match their owners.\" Claire gave the warren of bleak cages a baleful look.\n\n\"So why isn't it changing?\"\n\nThe way Claire blinked at him elicited another chuckle that looked like it hurt. Hero rubbed his ribs ruefully. \"It never occurred to you. You're still thinking of this place as Andras's. It's yours now, isn't it?\"\n\nIt stung a little, but Claire had to nod. Hero made an imperious gesture. \"Then Claire-ify it. Oh\u2014clarify! God, I'm clever.\"\n\n\"Please stop,\" Claire groaned, and surveyed the lab, if only to shut him up. It was too dark, too sterile, too much a cross between Frankenstein's laboratory and a Gothic parlor. She concentrated, remembering the golden glow of the Library, shabbily appointed chairs, and hot tea. She couldn't re-create that, but perhaps she could create something adjacent.\n\nThe shift was slow, like that of a photo developing in a dark room. Color slowly seeped into the walls, warming the wood. Pools of light sprang up with lamps where there were none a moment before. The orientation of the lab seemed to pivot around her until all had changed. Claire twisted around slowly to take it in.\n\nTidy cubbies built of dark wood made neat rows along the sides of the large room. Each row was spotted intermittently with a globe lamp. An ordinary lamp, not like those in the Library she knew, made of frosted glass and brass, but tidy and functional. Generous worktables dotted the front, gleaming with polished wood and more brass tools lit by overhead lights. It was warm, orderly, if too mechanical. Not quite the Unwritten Wing, but approximate. Some tension slowly began to leak from Claire's chest.\n\nHero made an approving sound in his throat, soft and a little surprised. \"Nicely done.\"\n\n\"It... it will do.\" Claire dusted her hands, though she hadn't used them, and focused on Hero. \"I suppose you're here to blackmail me. You were going to run off and tell the courts what a horrible librarian I am, weren't you?\"\n\nHero pursed his lips and looked away. Claire thought she almost detected red in his cheeks. He reached a hand up to rub his cheek but stopped when his fingertips touched the scars. \"I... was angry when I said that. Besides, I suppose that's lost any bargaining power now. Now that you're not...\"\n\nClaire shrugged. \"They could always demote me to janitor.\"\n\nHero chuckled and winced. Up close, Claire could see there were still feathers of bruised ink clinging to the skin around the scars. \"Shouldn't you be resting?\"\n\n\"Shouldn't you?\"\n\nClaire snorted, turning her head to survey the room again. She was aware of Hero's watching her for a reaction. \"I suppose I wanted to see the place. And give Brevity some room to settle in.\"\n\n\"You haven't been exiled, you know. The Unwritten Wing needs plenty of help. One big, happy Library, after all.\"\n\n\"One big, happy,\" Claire repeated.\n\nHero rolled his eyes. \"What are you going to call the place?\"\n\n\"Call it? It's the Arcane Wing.\"\n\n\"That's incredibly boring. Besides, I can't see calling you the Arcanist. How about... the Vaults?\"\n\nClaire wrinkled her nose. \"Too steampunk. Arcane lab?\"\n\n\"Too nerdy. You do lock things up. How about the Cells?\"\n\n\"What, so you can keep calling me warden? No, thanks.\" Claire's smile stilled as her eyes landed on the empty cages at the back. Her chest felt hollow. \"Maybe a place like this shouldn't have a name.\"\n\n\"Oh, come, now.\" Hero made a sharp noise. \"I won't have you sulking down here by yourself. You're no fun when you brood.\"\n\n\"I'm no longer here for your amusement. Not your librarian now, remember?\"\n\n\"True. You're not the warden anymore.\" Hero considered. \"I suppose I'll just have to run away again. Brevity won't have time to miss me for a while.\"\n\nThat was bait that Claire was in no mood to ignore. She whipped her head back around and stabbed a finger at Hero's chest. \"You absolutely will not. Brevity will have a hard enough ti\u2014\"\n\n\"Peace,\" Hero interrupted, and slid his gaze lazily around her face before coming to a conclusion. \"How about a truce? You stick around, I'll stick around.\"\n\n\"That's blackmail.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" Hero mused. \"I thought that's what friends did.\"\n\nClaire pressed her lips together, silenced by that. Artifacts gleamed underneath their new, cozy lights. Gems winked with dark eyes, all turned toward their new keeper. The force of the gaze felt heavy on Claire's shoulders, harsh but not hostile. The wing listened. The wing watched.\n\nHero broke the spell after a moment, clicking his tongue. He squeezed her arm.\n\n\"Come on, Claire. New story. There's work to do.\""
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Codex Born",
        "author": "Jim C. Hines",
        "genres": [
            "urban fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "magic",
            "Magic Ex Libris"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "People say love changes a person. They have no idea.\n\nFrank Dearing was the first man I ever met. He made me whole. He provided me with purpose and identity. And he gave me a name. \"Greenwood\" might not be the most original moniker for a dryad, but it was mine.\n\nNidhi Shah gave me strength and a larger purpose. Through her, my life grew from a single farmhouse to a larger world of people, plants, and magic.\n\nThen there was Isaac Vainio. I thought his greatest gift to me would be a sense of freedom, however limited. But through him, through his curiosity and his often deranged need to poke the universe and ask \"What does this button do?\" I found something more.\n\nI spent fifty years confined by my nature. Isaac helped me to discover hope.\n\nAs a libriomancer and a researcher, this was one of the moments I lived for. I loved that this brilliant, untrained fourteen-year-old girl had just shattered an entire body of magical theory.\n\nI hated the fact that I couldn't figure out how she had done it.\n\nJeneta Aboderin slouched in a white plastic lawn chair on the old deck behind my house. Plastic sunglasses with pink-slashed zebra stripe frames hid her eyes as she read from an electronic tablet. \"You're not concentrating, Isaac,\" she said without looking up.\n\nHer words blended the faint Nigerian and British accents she had acquired from her mother and father, with a generous helping of teenaged annoyance at me, the thickheaded librarian who couldn't pull magic from a simple poem.\n\n\"Am, too.\" Not my most brilliant comeback, but I was off my game today. I was concentrating so hard my forehead would be permanently creased. I just wasn't feeling the words. I glanced down at my own brand-new e-reader, a thin rectangle the size of a trade paperback, with a gleaming glass screen and a case of rounded black plastic. The buttons were recessed into the edges, and the whole thing looked like it had come straight off the set of Star Trek.\n\nI was afraid I was going to drop the damn thing.\n\n\"Try again,\" Jeneta said.\n\nI scrolled up through Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, back to the beginning of a poem I had read fourteen times so far this afternoon. I had memorized it the second time, but reading the words helped me to touch the book's magic. At least in theory. \"Maybe if I started with something simpler, like creating moonlight?\"\n\nShe snorted. \"'Look Down, Fair Moon' isn't about moonlight.\"\n\n\"Are you sure? It's right here in the title.\" I tilted the screen toward her and pointed. \"Maybe I've got a defective reader.\"\n\nI imagined her eyes rolling behind her glasses. She yanked the reader out of my hands, and her fingers tapped a staccato beat on the screen. \"Check out this one. 'Dream Deferred,' by Langston Hughes.\" Slender brown fingers sank into the poem, emerging moments later with a raisin held between them. \"You think Hughes was going on about raisins? It's a metaphor.\"\n\nShe left the \"duh\" at the end unstated. Shaking her head, she popped the metaphor into her mouth and said, \"He packs every syllable with hope and fear and desperation, until the words are ready to explode. How can you not feel that?\"\n\nHer exasperation at my obvious thickheadedness didn't bother me. I was more interested in how easily she had produced that raisin from an electronic device. Johannes Gutenberg himself, the man who invented libriomancy, had said it couldn't be done.\n\nGutenberg had built his printing press more than five hundred years ago based on his theories about magical resonance. He had believed that physically identical books would hold the collective belief and imagination of the readers, and that a man with sufficient magical gifts could tap into that belief, using it as a focus for his own power.\n\nGrowing up, Gutenberg had been a third-rate practitioner at best. He had mastered only the most basic of spells, and even then needed help to cast them properly. Libriomancy had transformed him overnight into one of the most powerful men in history.\n\nElectronic books lacked the physical resonance of print. The words were nothing but a collection of zeroes and ones translated into a transient image on whatever screen you used to read them. We had always assumed that e-readers would be useless for libriomancy, that the variety of reading devices and the impermanence of the files would prevent anyone from tapping into that collective belief. Porter researchers wrote dire predictions about the dilution of our magic as more readers moved from print to electronic, whittling away at our pool of belief.\n\nAnd then Jeneta Aboderin had accidentally loosed a three-foot, long-nosed vine snake from her Smartphone in the middle of algebra class. That event had left a hundred Porter researchers fighting for time with Jeneta and the chance to try to figure out exactly how the hell she had done it.\n\nAfter all, part of the mission of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re, the secret organization Gutenberg had overseen for all these centuries, was to learn as much as we could about magic's potential. More importantly, if I could master this trick, I wouldn't have to lug thirty pounds of books with me every time I went into the field.\n\nThe Porters, as they were known to those not comfortable with Middle High German, also worked to hide the existence of magic from the world, and to combat an ever-changing list of potential magical threats.\n\nThe other Porter researchers were probably cursing my name and trying to understand how Jeneta had ended up working with me in Copper River, Michigan. I was the newest member of our research branch, having been promoted a mere two months earlier, and none of my work had anything to do with electronics or e-books.\n\nJeneta plucked another raisin from the e-reader and handed it to the large spider soaking up the sunlight on the deck railing. Smudge and Jeneta had taken to each other at once. Smudge lazily extended his forelegs to take the raisin from her fingers. A droplet of red fire appeared between his legs, and he stuffed the burning snack into his mouth.\n\n\"I had another dream last night,\" Jeneta said quietly, not looking away from the fire-spider.\n\nI reached over and took my reader back. \"No more raisins. You know the rules. You're on a twenty-four hour magic ban after the nightmares.\" I did my best to keep my tone comforting, but to my ears, I came off more like a cross between a school counselor and a babysitter trying too hard to be cool. This was why the Porters had trained therapists on staff. \"What were you doing yesterday?\"\n\n\"I dunno. I just\u2026after campfire, I needed a break. There's been a lot going on, you know? Three weeks ago I was in summer school, trying to make sense of geometric proofs. Now I'm doing magic.\"\n\nHer mouth softened into the first unguarded smile I had seen from her all afternoon. \"I went down to the docks to think. I got to watching the minnows swimming around. After a while, I tried reading to them.\"\n\n\"You read to the minnows?\"\n\n\"Shut up. It was amazing. At first I was just sitting there, going through a collection by Sonia Sanchez. I was reading 'Personal Letter Number 3,' and I noticed the minnows were moving to the beat of the words, even though I'd been reading to myself. When I started reciting the poems out loud, they went nuts. Like they were dancing.\"\n\nI checked to make sure my digital recorder was getting this. Pulling raisins from poetry was one thing. I'd been swiping toys from science fiction and fantasy novels for years. Using the emotion of a poem to influence others, even minnows, was a whole other school of magic. \"Could you do it again? Not today, but in a controlled environment where I could observe? I could set you up with some of Smudge's feeder crickets.\"\n\n\"Probably. I didn't do it on purpose, though. It just happened. They felt what I felt. Sanchez makes me want to move.\"\n\n\"How long did it last?\"\n\n\"An hour. Maybe two. I lost track of time.\" She tossed her thin braids back over her shoulders. \"When are you going to give me a straight answer about these dreams?\"\n\n\"I told you they're not just dreams.\"\n\nJeneta groaned melodramatically. \"Please don't give me the boundaries lecture again.\" Her voice turned deeper, a passable imitation of me, though she mangled my accent. \"The more magic you use, the weaker your boundaries become, and the easier it is for the magic of your books to infiltrate your thoughts. Let me tell you about this time at Mackinac Island\u2014\"\n\n\"I wasn't going to talk about Mackinac Island,\" I lied. \"I was about to say I know what you're going through.\"\n\nShe stopped playing with Smudge. \"You've had them, too?\"\n\n\"A few months back. I was down in Detroit, and I tried to\u2014\" I caught myself. Jeneta was as inquisitive as any other libriomancer. If I told her I had been able to reach through a book to spy on another libriomancer, she'd be trying it herself before the week was out, no matter how dangerous the consequences. \"It doesn't matter what I did. I charred the crap out of the book, and someone\u2026something came after me. Like magic was an ocean, and I had stirred an Old One from the depths. It tried to drag me down, to tear me apart.\"\n\n\"To devour everything that made you you.\"\n\nI pretended not to notice the tremor in her hands. \"Exactly. Mindless rage and hunger.\"\n\n\"How did you stop the dreams?\"\n\n\"By going into a coma.\" I stared at the garden beyond the deck, walled by rosebushes so colorful they seemed unreal. \"I told you, they're not dreams. I was awake when it came after me. Lena brought me to Nicola Pallas' place. She managed to pull me back.\"\n\nEven the Regional Master of the Porters had been hard-pressed to save my sanity that time.\n\n\"They warned me about possession,\" she said. \"How characters and poems could start talking to me, trying to lure me in.\"\n\nOveruse of a book's magic thinned the metaphorical walls between that book and the real world. Every case of possession varied depending on the books involved, but they all ended with an incurably insane libriomancer. \"What we saw isn't possession, either.\"\n\n\"So what is it?\" she demanded.\n\n\"We don't know.\" Since before the founding of the Porters, something had lived within magic itself. Something that fought to break through to our world and consume it. None of us knew exactly what it was or where it had come from. Or how to stop it.\n\nThis was the other, secret purpose of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re, The Twelve Doorkeepers. A select few among the Porters devoted themselves to understanding our enemy and learning how to keep it from entering the world.\n\nMy encounter earlier this year had earned me a place among that group. Gutenberg had assigned me to identify our enemies, to answer questions that had baffled the Porters since their founding. That was why strings had been pulled to get Jeneta a fully-paid trip to summer camp in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, along with an \"Advanced Youth Opportunity\" internship working with me at the Copper River Public Library.\n\n\"You don't know,\" she repeated flatly. \"I mean, I'm glad I'm not hallucinating or going crazy, but you're telling me there are magical monsters trying to eat my mind, and nobody knows what they are?\"\n\n\"Pretty much, yeah.\"\n\n\"Damn.\" She thought for a moment. \"How would these devourers even evolve?\"\n\nTypical libriomancer response. Something weird wants to kill us? Cool! Where did it come from, and how does it work? And, depending on the inclinations of the libriomancer, how can I catch one and take it apart?\n\n\"I don't think they did.\" I had multiple theories, based in part on research done by previous Porters over the years and reports on the aftermath of the handful of recorded encounters. There were many conflicting explanations, all but impossible to test. \"I think we created them.\"\n\n\"You mean the Porters?\"\n\n\"Not necessarily, but people, humans.\" I sprawled back in my chair. \"It's a hunch. They could be three-headed psychic aliens from another dimension or the astral projections of dinosaurs from millions of years ago. But there was\u2026not a connection, but a sense of recognition. Like passing a stranger on the street and, just for a second, before your brain catches up, feeling like you knew them when you were younger.\"\n\nShe lowered her sunglasses and raised her eyebrow in a motion so smooth she had to have practiced it in the mirror. \"You believe in aliens?\"\n\n\"I'm dating a dryad, and you pulled a snake out of your phone. You're going to draw the line at aliens?\"\n\n\"If you try to tell me aliens built the pyramids, I am so out of here.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous.\" I waited a beat, then added, \"The pyramids were built by mummified elves.\"\n\nI wouldn't have thought it possible, but her eyebrow climbed even higher. \"Mummified elves?\"\n\nI was a lousy liar, but for once I managed to keep a straight face. \"A friend of mine fought one of the things once. Damn thing was like a nightmare straight out of a Keebler commercial.\"\n\n\"I think you're right.\"\n\n\"Of course I am. Elven magic is nasty stuff.\"\n\nFrom the look she shot me, the only thing in the world worse than devourers was an adult trying to be funny. \"About the devourers. They hated me too much. It was personal.\"\n\n\"What happened when you woke up?\"\n\n\"I snuck out to the showers. The water's always too cold, but I didn't care.\"\n\n\"Like you'd scrape your own skin off to feel clean again,\" I said, remembering my own dreams after Detroit.\n\n\"Yeah.\" She plucked a weed growing through the boards at the edge of the deck and poked it at Smudge. Smudge crouched, then jumped forward to set the end on fire. \"Try reading the Whitman poem again. 'Pour softly down night's nimbus floods.' Visualize it.\"\n\nI picked up my e-reader, letting her change the subject. Though she tried to hide it, I could see she was fighting tears. I pulled up the poem, read it yet again, and imagined clouds lit from within as they drifted slowly over the full moon. It was a cool, damp night. The poem stressed the contrast between the sky's beauty and the horror of the Civil War dead strewn over the battlefield.\n\n\"'Bathe this scene,'\" Jeneta sounded different when she read. More confident. Powerful. \"'Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.' Twice he uses images of water, of cleansing and baptism. The washing away of sin. Why?\"\n\nShe sounded like a teacher. I wondered if she was channeling her mother. I touched my fingers to the screen. \"He was pleading.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\" This was familiar ground for her, much safer than whatever had invaded her mind. \"Wash this ugliness from our souls and memories. Wash this horror from our world. Forgive us. Redeem us. 'On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide.' Why are they on their backs, Isaac?\"\n\n\"They're looking to the sky, to God.\"\n\n\"That's the heart of the poem. Grief. Shame. Hope. That's your connection. Touch those feelings, and you can use this poem to bring an entire crowd to tears.\"\n\nI tried again, imagining the emotions and reaching for their echo within the e-reader, but as before, I felt nothing.\n\n\"Maybe Whitman's not your thing.\" She tapped her own screen, scrolled through a long list of books, and shoved it into my hands.\n\n\"Shel Silverstein?\"\n\nShe tilted her head to glare at me over her sunglasses. \"If you diss Silverstein, I will hurt you. I'm talking chainsaws, machetes, and a fire-spider in a very uncomfortable place. Smudge has my back on this. Right?\"\n\nSmudge turned toward me and rubbed his forelegs together.\n\n\"Traitor.\" I skimmed the poem. \"Whatif?\"\n\n\"You never get the whatifs? Never worry about your house burning down or Smudge getting eaten by an owl?\"\n\nMy cell phone buzzed before I could answer. I grinned like an idiot when I saw who it was. Sticking with the theme of the afternoon, I adopted my most somber poetry-reading voice and said, \"I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.\"\n\n\"Why thank you,\" said Lena Greenwood. \"Spending time with Jeneta has been good for you. And how is the world's sexiest librarian doing today?\"\n\n\"He spends too much time thinking and not enough time feeling,\" Jeneta said loudly.\n\nI stuck out my tongue and turned down the volume on the phone.\n\nLena chuckled, but there was an edge to her usual playfulness. Her laughter cut off too quickly, and she didn't come back with a joke about finding ways of getting me to stop thinking.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" I asked.\n\n\"Nidhi got a call from Chicago. They're sending her to Tamarack. I'm about to head over to pick her up.\"\n\n\"Another feral werewolf?\" The Upper Peninsula had three of the largest werewolf packs in the world, but it had been eight years since the last known attack against a human. The pack did a very good job keeping its members in line.\n\n\"Wendigo. One of the weres found him dead last night.\"\n\nI sat up straighter. \"How did he die?\"\n\n\"We're not sure yet, but the weres said whoever dumped the body smelled human.\"\n\n\"Damn.\" This wouldn't be the first time a mundane had killed a magical creature. It didn't happen often, and it rarely ended well for the human. If this had been an accident or an act of self-defense, that was one thing, but a wendigo was hard to kill even if you knew what you were up against. That suggested either a rogue magic-user or else someone who had stumbled onto the existence of magic and decided to play monster-slayer. Either way, we needed to find whoever had done this. Gossip traveled fast, and every intelligent nonhuman in the U.P. would be on edge by the end of the week. If the Porters didn't resolve this quickly, it would only escalate. \"Let me drop Jeneta off, and I'll meet you at the old schoolhouse in Tamarack.\"\n\n\"I'll see you there. Love you.\"\n\n\"Love you, too.\"\n\nAs soon as I hung up, Jeneta said, \"I can help.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I heard her say it was a wendigo. I've read about them, but I never\u2014\"\n\n\"Nein. Non. Nyet. Naa. Gaawiin.\" I gathered Smudge onto the palm of my hand and transferred him to my left shoulder.\n\nJeneta cocked her head. \"What was that last one?\"\n\n\"Ojibwe.\" I looked pointedly at her e-reader until she sighed and stuffed it into her worn camouflage backpack. \"Nothing in the papers your parents signed gives us permission to drag you into a murder investigation. Especially when there could be more wendigos in the area. Do you know how much paperwork I'll have to do if my intern gets eaten by a cannibalistic monster?\"\n\n\"My parents didn't sign anything about me teaching magic to old people, either,\" she shot back.\n\n\"I'm only twenty-six, and shut up.\" I waved her inside. \"Give me a minute to grab my books. Besides, it's not like I haven't been teaching you, too.\"\n\n\"Whatever, grandpa.\" She shouldered her backpack, then hesitated. When she spoke again, she sounded younger. \"Be careful.\"\n\n\"I'll do my best.\"\n\nAnd then she was her normal self again, head held high as she strode through the house. \"Hey, since you won't let me come with you, the least you should do is let me drive the convertible.\"\n\nI grinned. \"Let me dig up my Ojibwe dictionary. I need to look up how to say 'No way in hell.'\"\n\nSmudge crouched by the corner of the windshield and watched the pine trees rush past. Walls of jagged rock rose and fell to either side of the road as we cut through the hills.\n\nOld railroad tracks and an abandoned depot marked Tamarack's eastern boundary, roughly thirty miles out from Copper River. Back at the start of the twentieth century, both towns had been booming. Booming for the U.P., at least. When the silver mine here in Tamarack shut down in 1934, the town had been home to more than two thousand people. These days, the place made Copper River look like the big city. The population was closer to two hundred, a sizable minority of whom were members of the local werewolf pack.\n\nThis part of the state was pockmarked with mining ghost towns. Tamarack wasn't dead yet, but it had much of the same atmosphere. Old street signs marked overgrown side streets that hadn't seen maintenance in decades. Many of the houses on the edge of town looked ready to collapse in the next strong breeze. An entire block had been overrun by apple trees. I spotted a pair of teenagers smoking cigarettes and watching us from a two-story house, balanced on the roof beside a gaping hole where a maple had smashed through the rafters.\n\nAt the heart of town, a gas station with a single pump, a small grocery and hunting supply store, and a Baptist church shared the intersection with the town's lone traffic light. I turned off the main road and drove another half mile to the schoolhouse. A yellow pickup truck was parked in the lot, and I spotted an older-looking man leaning against the tailgate, chewing a toothpick. I relaxed slightly when I spied Lena's black-and-green Honda motorcycle behind the truck. A pair of matching helmets hung from the back.\n\nI held a hand to Smudge so he could climb onto my shoulder, then popped the trunk. I retrieved a copper-riveted satchel of oiled brown leather that looked like something Indiana Jones might carry. Which, if I was honest, was the main reason I had bought it. The strap dug a groove into my shoulder, weighed down by every book I had been able to stuff inside.\n\n\"Isaac Vainio. You took your sweet old time getting here.\"\n\nI slammed the trunk and turned to greet the werewolf. \"Jeff DeYoung. Was it you who found the body, then?\"\n\n\"Nah, that was Helen.\" He spat the toothpick onto the blacktop. \"You're looking pretty good. We heard about that mess in Detroit earlier this summer. They say old man Gutenberg himself had to help chase those vampires back into their holes.\"\n\n\"They don't know the half of it,\" I said. Jeff had one of the thickest Yooper accents of anyone I knew, transforming every \"the\" into \"da,\" and \"those\" into \"doze.\"\n\n\"And you can't share the other half, right?\" He clapped me on my shoulder\u2014the one without the fire-spider\u2014then pulled me into a quick hug and inhaled sharply. I didn't want to know how much he learned about me in that one sniff. I did the same, breathing in the faint sweat-and-tobacco smell of his hair and jacket.\n\n\"I'm afraid not.\" He looked much as he had the last time I saw him, a year or so back. The same worn-out orange hunting jacket hung loosely over his eye-gougingly bright green-and-gold Hawaiian shirt. Jeff was a stick of a man, all wrinkled skin and age spots. Gold-framed bifocals dug into his bulbous nose. He and his wife Helen were the first werewolves I had ever met. They had left the wild to settle down in Tamarack, and while they still chased the occasional rabbit, most of their meat these days came from a store.\n\n\"Helen took Doctor Shah and the dryad back about fifteen minutes ago,\" said Jeff. \"They smell like you. How long have you all been sleeping together?\"\n\n\"We're not all sleeping together,\" I said quickly. I had to consciously set aside my normal caution in talking about our relationship. Jeff could smell through the lies, and he was one of the few people who wouldn't bat an eye at my romantic situation. \"I've been with Lena for about two months. And Lena is also with Doctor Shah.\"\n\n\"But not you and the doctor? Huh. Seems like that would be easier, logistically speaking.\"\n\n\"Logistics aren't everything.\" I swatted a mosquito on my left index finger. The little bloodsuckers usually stayed away from Smudge, which was another reason I liked to keep him around, but a hot, wet summer had left us with a thicker crop of mosquitoes than usual, and they were hungry. \"We haven't got all of the kinks worked out yet.\"\n\nJeff smirked. \"You never struck me as a man of many kinks. Sounds like this girl's been good for you.\"\n\nTypical werewolf mindset. In the words of a former friend, \"Weres will jump into bed with anything on two legs and a few with four.\" An exaggeration, but one with plenty of underlying truth.\n\nNobody knew where the first Lykanthropos naturalis had come from, though the dominant theory involved a magical experiment gone wrong sometime in the fifth or sixth century. Others believed lycanthropy had been a deliberate curse, punishment for some unknown but unforgivable crime.\n\nThese days, creatures who had evolved or come into existence \"naturally\" were outnumbered by those born from books. I doubted even Gutenberg could have foreseen that consequence of his new school of magic. The first book-born creature I ever encountered was a sparkler, a middle-aged woman with thinning hair who had accidentally reached into a popular vampire novel and managed to infect herself with the vampire's venom.\n\nThe Porters carefully cataloged each new vampire species, but the werewolves offered more of a challenge. Unlike most vampires, werewolves could interbreed. As a result, instead of a hundred or more distinct species, you got a single race with a broad spectrum of abilities. Some could shapeshift at will; others were slaves to the moon. One werewolf might be severely allergic to silver, while his brother merely suffered from lactose intolerance.\n\nAs a general rule, it was safe to assume they were faster and stronger, with sharper senses than any human. And of course, depending on his genetics, Jeff might have anywhere from two to eight nipples under that shirt. Not that I had ever gotten up the nerve to ask. He would have been happy to show me, I'm sure. Werewolves were notoriously open about physical matters.\n\n\"Being with Lena has been\u2026educational,\" I admitted.\n\nJeff laughed, but thankfully didn't press me for details. We hiked through the woods behind the school, following an old trail around a marsh until we reached an overgrown road. Knee-high weeds were well on their way to reclaiming the broken gray pavement. From there, we walked uphill for roughly ten minutes, passing old driveways and gutted, too-regular pits in the earth where houses had once stood.\n\n\"I thought you were done with fieldwork,\" Jeff commented. Despite his age, he wasn't even winded.\n\n\"Gutenberg and Pallas moved me to research.\" I wiped my forehead and the back of my neck, then swatted another mosquito that was trying to bite through my jeans. \"But we're short-staffed in the Midwest right now, and I did a couple of papers on wendigos during my training.\"\n\nA chain-link fence at the top of the hill blocked a steep drop-off. Lena Greenwood, Nidhi Shah, and Helen DeYoung stood staring down at something on the other side of the fence. Nidhi was snapping pictures with a digital camera.\n\n\"You take the scenic route or something?\" Helen asked without looking.\n\n\"Why, you miss me?\" Jeff joined them at the fence, pausing briefly to give his wife's backside a quick squeeze before peering down.\n\n\"It's ugly.\" Lena broke away from the others to greet me with a kiss. As always, the feel of her body pressing against mine set off a cascade of physical and emotional responses: desire, excitement, amazement that she had chosen me, conflict over the circumstances of that choice, and awkwardness at knowing her other lover was standing six feet away, deliberately not watching.\n\nShort and heavyset, with large eyes and dark lips, Lena didn't look like someone who could go toe-to-toe with a pissed-off vampire and walk away without a scratch. Her skin was the rich brown of oiled oak. A single black braid hung to the middle of her back. Cutoff jeans emphasized the curves of her hips. She was barefoot, her toes curling into the dirt with each step. A pair of curved wooden swords\u2014Japanese bokken\u2014were thrust through her belt.\n\nIf I were to pick a single word for what attracted me to Lena, it would be her passion. Not merely physical, but for everything she did. She threw herself into life with no reservations, never holding back. She possessed a fearlessness few humans ever matched.\n\nNidhi Shah coughed softly. \"We were getting ready to try to retrieve the body.\"\n\nJudging from her outfit, Nidhi had come straight from her office. She wore a teal shirt with iridescent buttons, black slacks, and Converse high-tops. The sneakers were her formal black pair. When it came to footwear, Nidhi refused to let fashion trump comfort and practicality.\n\nShe was in her mid-thirties, older in appearance than Lena by a good five years. Her hair was pinned back, revealing a blue tattoo on her temple. The Gujarati characters for balance, a spell placed by the Porters to help her in her duties, were the only magical thing about her.\n\nI stepped toward the fence. \"Do we know who it was?\"\n\nHelen shook her head. One hand rested on the semiautomatic pistol holstered on her left hip, her only visible sign of nervousness. \"I don't recognize the scent of either the victim or the man who dumped him.\"\n\n\"You're sure it was a man?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"You can't smell the body spray?\" Jeff snorted. \"Lucky you.\"\n\n\"The wendigo was killed about a half mile into the woods,\" said Helen. \"Whoever it was used a four-wheeler to get the body here. He drove east after that, but we lost him once he reached the road.\"\n\nThe upper bar of the fence was dented toward the ground. Dark streaks of blood striped the rusted aluminum. About twenty feet down, hanging from the broken branches of a white spruce growing out of the near-vertical rock, hung the wendigo.\n\nImagination was part of what made me a good libriomancer: the ability to visualize the story, to make it so real in my mind that I could literally reach out and touch it.\n\nImagination could be a curse as well. I would be seeing the remains of that poor creature in my dreams for months to come. The broken limbs, the pain and fear frozen on its face, the bits of white fur, matted with blood.\n\nI turned away. Ignoring Jeff and Helen's worried whispers, I crossed the road and rested both hands against a fat birch. I sucked air into my lungs as my mind played out one scenario after another to explain the injuries the wendigo had suffered.\n\nHow the hell had a human being done this? The average wendigo could kill and devour a man in minutes.\n\nWhich made the man who had deliberately and methodically butchered this creature far more dangerous than any monster.\n\nI stepped into too-white snow and dead leaves that crunched beneath my bare feet. I covered my face with my hands. The sun was too large. It burned my eyes, making me want to retreat into my tree.\n\nThe surface was death. I needed shelter. How had I come here? Where was the closest ice cave?\n\nI backed against the tree, letting the comforting roughness of the bark rub my bare skin. I curled my toes into the frozen earth, gripping the roots and reaching instinctively for the warmth of my grove-sisters.\n\nI felt nothing. There were many trees, more than I had ever imagined, but they were empty shells. How could they survive the cold without their dryads to give them strength?\n\nI had never been alone before. Not like this. I had never been lost.\n\nTears warmed my cheeks. How long had I slept?\n\nI shivered then, not from cold, but from fear. I remembered Neptune. I remembered my sisters. I remembered fighting in the arena, the excitement of combat as my wooden sword slammed against my opponent's spear. I remembered the pleasure of the bedchamber.\n\nI remembered all these things, but I couldn't remember being there. It was as though my memories had been ripped away, replaced by someone else's dreams.\n\nThis place, wherever I was, felt too real, too bright, too much. Too many sensations. Too many thoughts. I dug my fingers into the skin of my thighs and twisted, trying to focus on the pain, using that sensation to drive out the rest. I sagged to the ground and rocked back and forth, losing myself in the movement.\n\nI could return to the oak. I could sleep and be safe. Choose the long death, as the very first dryad was said to have done when her lover was murdered. Her tree had lived on for centuries, guarded by the grove of her children.\n\nIf I followed her example, I would be surrounded not by my sisters, but by mindless trees, only half-alive.\n\nAfter a while, the sunlight began to fade. I blinked and looked around. Every leaf, every stick was so vivid. I picked a half-buried acorn from the ground and turned it in my hand, marveling at the detail. The tiny scales of the cap, the pale line where cap met seed, the hard protrusion at the bottom that made the acorn look like a miniature wooden breast.\n\nI climbed to my feet, off-balance. This world was wrong. Nothing was as it should be. I needed my sisters. I needed my lovers. I needed\u2014\n\nI slammed my head against the tree to break the spiral of my thoughts.\n\nThere were trees here. Were there people as well? Tears spilled freely as I stepped away from my tree, from the one thing that felt safe.\n\nIf I stayed here, I would die. I would sleep forever. I would lose myself.\n\nI picked up a fallen branch and hugged it to my chest. I could feel it responding to the life within me. Threadlike roots crawled from the broken branch, twining around my fingers. Gleaming buds poked from the other end. I cradled the branch in my arms as I stumbled away from my tree.\n\nGrass whispered as Lena came to stand behind me. She said nothing, but rested her hand on my shoulder.\n\nI needed to focus on the job at hand. I rooted through my book bag until I found a handheld infrared thermometer. I switched it on and pointed it at Smudge. The screen read 109 Fahrenheit, which was only a degree or two higher than normal for him.\n\nIn humans, core body temperature fell at about a half a degree per hour. For a wendigo, the calculation went in the opposite direction. Given a standard body temp of twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, we should be able to get a rough window on the time of death. Although I had no idea how trauma and blood loss might affect things.\n\nLykanthropos anthropophagos was well-suited to life in the U.P. Wendigo blood worked as a kind of magical supercoolant. Even the marrow was cold as ice. Their fur literally froze the moisture from the air, forming a protective layer of frost and ice.\n\nLike werewolves, wendigos were born human. But once the transformation took hold, they remained in their monstrous form until death. The Ojibwe legends I had studied described them as gluttonous, cannibalistic spirits. In one story, a wendigo's mere presence caused the river to freeze and the trees to split from the cold.\n\nA lone girl had set out to fight the wendigo, using a pair of sumac sticks with the bark peeled away. Until I met Lena, I had always found that a poor choice of weapon. But the girl defeated the wendigo, crushing its skull. The villagers chopped away the ice, eventually freeing the body of a man.\n\n\"Are you ready?\" Lena asked.\n\nI took a slow breath, then nodded. \"I'm all right.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nWe returned to the fence. Lena took the camera from Nidhi and tucked it into her pocket, then gripped the rail in both hands. The muscles in her arms tightened as she bent the fence lower to the ground. Keeping one hand on the rail, she stepped over and studied the drop-off. It wasn't completely vertical, but nothing short of a mountain goat would be able to climb that slope. Moss clung to the dark brown stone. Roots poked through like the coils of sea serpents.\n\nLena blew Nidhi and me a kiss, took two steps, and dropped out of sight.\n\n\"Dammit, Lena!\" I pressed closer to the fence and spotted her clinging with one hand to a clump of tree roots, about four feet to the left of the spruce tree holding the body. She pulled herself sideways and began to scale the spruce. Her fingers sank into the trunk of the tree, letting her climb as easily as a spider.\n\n\"She used to be more careful.\" Nidhi's unspoken message was louder than her actual words. She gets this from you.\n\n\"Where's the fun in that?\" I said automatically. I leaned out and aimed the thermometer at the wendigo's remains. Cold air swirled up past my arms, pimpling the skin. The body's temperature read twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit, meaning death had occurred roughly eight hours ago, give or take. A core reading would have been more accurate, but wendigos maintained a fairly uniform temperature throughout their bodies.\n\nThere was no shell of ice around our victim. He would have reverted to human form upon death, but the flesh would take time to thaw.\n\nLight flashed as Lena snapped photos. \"He's got what might be a bullet hole in his forehead.\" She climbed higher and took another batch of photos from her new angle, then called out, \"Send me the tarp.\"\n\nJeff and Helen lowered a blue tarp with nylon rope strung through the corners. While they worked on retrieving the body, I turned away to think. Normal ice shattered when struck by a bullet, but the ice covering a wendigo's body had a significantly greater tensile strength, thanks to the fur mixed through it. A high-caliber bullet might penetrate, but most of the time, trying to shoot a wendigo would only piss it off.\n\n\"Watch the fence,\" Jeff said as he and Helen pulled the ropes up, hand over hand.\n\n\"Watch yourself, Chihuahua brain,\" Helen snapped.\n\nThe cold had minimized the stench of decay, as well as keeping most of the flies away. I waited for them to peel back the tarp, then walked over to help Nidhi examine the body. Without a word, Nidhi handed me a pair of latex examination gloves.\n\nIn death, the wendigo resembled a pale, gaunt man with wrinkled blue-tinged skin and thin white hair. The limbs were stiff, preserving the doubled-over position in which he had died. Much of the skin had been cut away, and shallow gashes marred what remained. Most of the damage looked like it had been done with a knife, or possibly a sword.\n\nNidhi pointed to a dark hole in the forehead. \"There's the entry wound.\"\n\nIt was smaller than I would have expected. With every muscle frozen, Nidhi had to turn the whole body to examine the back of the head. There was no exit hole.\n\nI swallowed bile. \"They skinned and butchered him like an animal.\"\n\n\"No.\" Nidhi didn't look up. \"You butcher an animal cleanly. Carefully. This kind of overkill comes from rage.\"\n\n\"You think the wendigo killed someone he cared about?\" asked Jeff. \"This might have been about revenge.\"\n\n\"If so, it wasn't recent,\" said Nidhi. \"The stomach isn't distended.\"\n\nMy own stomach tried once again to rebel. I managed to force my lunch back down. \"Most of the damage was done while he was alive.\" I dropped to one knee and pointed to the forehead. \"Look at the ring of dry blood around the wound. Wendigos turn human again when they die, but their entire circulatory system freezes solid.\"\n\nThe wendigo had bled profusely. The blood would have frozen on the surface of the skin, sealing the cuts. Those frozen clots had broken away when the wendigo shrank back to human form, but thin outlines remained, showing where the body had tried to heal itself.\n\n\"He was tortured.\" Lena looked at me, her jaw tight. We had seen this kind of viciousness before, from a madman infested with what Jeneta called devourers.\n\nI peeled off the gloves and flung them away. \"I need to see where he died.\"\n\nJeff stayed with the body, while Helen guided us through the woods. \"You have something in that bag to track whoever did this?\" she asked.\n\n\"It depends on whether or not he left anything behind.\" Muddy ruts and broken ferns marked the path of the killer's four-wheeler. When we came to the top of the hill where the vehicle had stopped, I searched for footprints, but found nothing. The ground up here wasn't damp enough.\n\n\"Down here.\" Helen climbed over a fallen tree and gestured to a patch of pale mushrooms growing in the indentation at the base of a thick birch.\n\nBlack blood spattered the ground and the plants. Broken branches and gouged earth told the story of the wendigo's death. He had fought like an animal. Four parallel claw marks slashed the birch tree at chest height. Crushed ferns showed where he had thrashed back and forth.\n\n\"What are you planning to do?\" Helen asked warily. She had never been as comfortable with Porters as her husband was. Most magical creatures resented the laws Gutenberg had set to restrict their habitats and activities. To many of the nonhuman residents of Tamarack, I was about as welcome as an FBI agent stopping by a militia compound. Helen wasn't as paranoid as some, and she liked me, but that didn't mean she liked what I was or who I worked for.\n\n\"That depends on whether or not I can make this work.\" I set down my satchel and pulled out The Best of Isaac Asimov.\n\nFor five years, I had studied libriomancy with a man named Ray Walker down in East Lansing, learning the full range and limits of my magic. Or so I thought, up until I saw Johannes Gutenberg in action, watched him pull weapons from books without reading them, or steal Smudge's flames to use against an enraged Volkswagen Beetle that had been trying to kill us. That encounter showed that I had barely moved beyond Libriomancy 101.\n\nWhen the amazement passed, anger stepped in. Had Ray known how much more there was to learn? How much had Gutenberg hidden from the rest of us, and why? Was he trying to make sure nobody ever challenged his power? Or, like an overly strict parent, did he simply not trust us?\n\nI had gone back to reread every libriomantic tome I could find, searching not for what the books said, but what they omitted. I looked for the gaps, for the experiments we should have performed, but didn't. For discussions that dismissed certain theories a little too quickly. I pushed myself to move beyond the rules Ray had drilled into me.\n\nAs it turned out, some of those rules were there for very good reasons. In early July, I accidentally conjured up a two-day thunderstorm that knocked out power to most of Copper River and flooded most of Depot Street. Then there was the stray disruptor beam that took out Spencer Mussell's truck. But I had confirmed that certain rules were rather fuzzy around the edges, and I had figured out several new tricks.\n\nI flipped to a story called \"The Dead Past\" and started reading. \"A lot of science fiction authors wrote up toys to let them see the past,\" I said. \"Time portals and chronoscopes and temporal lenses, almost none of which are small enough to pull through the pages.\"\n\n\"Why not make a bigger book?\" she asked.\n\n\"The books need to be physically identical in order to anchor reader belief.\" Though Jeneta's magic threw that rule into doubt. If we built an ereader the size of a parking lot, could she pull a spaceship through? What if we projected an e-book onto an IMAX screen? Maybe I could finally make my own X-wing fighter. I tucked that thought aside for later. \"In order for me to use it, you'd need to distribute thousands of copies of those oversized books.\"\n\n\"Be careful,\" Nidhi said quietly, though I had no doubt Helen heard her warning as clearly as I did.\n\n\"Aren't I always?\" Nidhi had been my therapist for several years, and she knew better than most the trouble I had gotten myself into when I was younger. I turned the pages and skimmed the story. \"You might want to back up a little.\"\n\n\"You do know what you're doing, eh?\" asked Helen.\n\nI gnawed my lower lip. \"Farther than that.\"\n\nUnlike the lifeless screen of an ereader, the pages of Asimov's story welcomed me. From the opening paragraphs, I could hear Arnold Potterley's quiet desperation as he petitioned for permission to use chronoscopy. I felt the resigned bitterness of the man forced to refuse that petition. I flipped ahead, imagining the excitement and anticipation of a working chronoscope\u2014anticipation shared by countless readers over time.\n\nMy fingers sank through the page, sending a thrill through my body. I had performed this same act hundreds of times over the years, and there were days I still fought to keep from giggling like a kid on Christmas morning. No matter what happened, no matter what monsters tried to eat my flesh or steal my thoughts, I could do magic.\n\nI saw the chronoscope in my mind, a template created by the imagination and belief of the readers. Normally, the next step would be to use that template to transform the magical energy into solid form and pull it free.\n\nThe hard part was not doing so. All my training urged me to create, to grasp the chronoscope from Asimov's world, even though I could never bring it into our own.\n\nIn magical terms, I was manipulating a semi-collapsed matrix of potential energy through an open portal maintained by my own belief and will. Practically speaking, it was like carrying a Labrador retriever over a tightrope and having a squirrel race past.\n\nI pulled my hand free while trying to draw that partially formed energy into our world. My connection to the text wiggled away like a fish diving back into the pages. I rubbed my eyes and concentrated on slowing my breathing before trying again.\n\n\"This would be easier if the book wasn't forty years old,\" I muttered. Belief didn't last forever, though it was impossible to calculate the exact rate of decay.\n\n\"Why not use a newer one?\" asked Helen.\n\n\"Because Gutenberg magically locks pretty much everything to do with time travel or spying on the past. Partly because the amount of magical energy it would take to actually travel in time would probably burn you to a crisp, and even if through some miracle you survived, there's too much risk of accidentally stepping on the wrong butterfly and destroying all of humanity.\"\n\n\"What's the harm in just looking?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"If I had to guess, I'd say Gutenberg doesn't want anyone prying into his past.\" I tapped the book. \"Asimov's chronoscope has a limited range. If you try to look more than a hundred and twenty years in the past, you get interference, meaning Gutenberg's early days are safely out of reach.\" I wiped my hand on my shirt and tried again to touch the book's magic.\n\n\"Relax,\" said Lena. \"I might not know as much about libriomancy as you do, but I've seen you do magic, and you don't normally look like a constipated librarian trying to pass a hardcover.\"\n\nI made an obscene gesture in her direction.\n\n\"Maybe later,\" she shot back.\n\nI snorted, but the exchange did help me to relax. I tried again, allowing my eyes to unfocus until the text became a blur of ink on the page. I reread the story in my mind, concentrating not on the specific details, but the emotion, the excitement and wonder, the possibilities blossoming from Asimov's story.\n\nWith this book, you could watch the truth about the JFK assassination or see what really happened right before the Berlin Wall came down. Or if you preferred, you could just hunker down on your couch beneath the blankets and watch the lost episodes of Doctor Who when they first aired.\n\nMore than a century of history at your fingertips. The technology could be abused, as the ending demonstrated, but that was true for most technology, magic or not. And there was so much we could learn.\n\n\"Isaac,\" Lena whispered.\n\nWhen I blinked, static fizzed across my vision. It vanished before I could focus. \"Did you see that?\"\n\n\"Only for a second or two,\" said Nidhi.\n\nI almost had it. I reached deeper into the book until my arm appeared to end just below the elbow. I could feel the fuzz of static electricity, like I was touching an old glass television screen. I imagined the room beyond, the cobbled-together chronoscope of the story flickering to life. The chronoscope was too big for me to bring through, but the images it displayed were nothing but light. I used my other hand to raise the book, and concentrated on pushing those images out into the world.\n\nHelen jumped back as the air between us flickered gray. A rectangular space the size of a suitcase gradually settled into focus, showing a grainy picture of the trees beyond.\n\nManic laughter was generally considered undignified, but when I tried to swallow my triumphant glee, the noise that came out was more like a coughing hiccup. So much for dignity.\n\n\"This will show us what happened?\" asked Helen.\n\n\"Exactly! It will\u2014um.\" Oh, right. I had created the effect, but I hadn't made any of the controls. I tried to will the spell to move backward in time, to show me what had happened roughly eight hours ago. My efforts had absolutely no effect.\n\nNidhi walked toward me and gently grasped my wrist. \"Your respiration and pulse are both too high,\" she warned. \"Don't take too long.\"\n\n\"Got it. Could someone take Smudge?\"\n\nLena gently lifted the spider from my shoulder. I walked toward the vision, half-expecting it to pop like a soap bubble. Instead, images flashed before me. An array of vacuum tubes. A bronze statue of the god Moloch, a furnace glowing in his belly. A child trapped in a house fire.\n\nGrief flowed through the book, so intense it knocked me back a step. Had you asked me in that moment, I would have sworn it was my own child dying in the flames.\n\n\"Why is it showing a fire?\" Helen asked. \"Nothing burned here.\"\n\n\"The magic is 'tuned' to the story. It's showing us the past, but it's the fictional past Asimov created.\" I needed to refocus the spell to this world, and I needed to do it quickly, before the story moved into my thoughts and made itself at home.\n\n\"There are other ways to find whoever did this,\" Nidhi said.\n\n\"Just give me a minute.\" This was a known problem, one that arose with crystal balls, magic mirrors, and other scrying techniques. Time after time, they worked exactly as they had been written: showing images from the fictional world they had come from. Reorienting those toys to the real world was all but impossible.\n\nOr so I had been taught. In the past months, I had jotted down three theories on how to bypass that particular rule. A strong enough libriomancer could break past the confines set by the book, but someone strong enough to do that shouldn't need books to do magic in the first place.\n\nLocking the book should also sever the connection between the book and the created object, giving me a better chance of refocusing the chronoscope to find our killer. Which would have been perfect, if I had the slightest clue how Gutenberg locked his books.\n\nTime to test theory number three. I handed the book to Nidhi. \"There's a lead-lined bag of flower petals in my satchel. Could you please rub the petals over the book and press them between the pages, especially this page?\"\n\nLena looked over Nidhi's shoulder. \"When did you take up flower power?\"\n\n\"I've been experimenting with ways of preserving Moly.\" The flower came from Odysseus, and could be used to nullify magic. I had requested a specially enchanted bag just so I would be able to carry the petals around without canceling out every spell in a five-foot radius. The one time I got careless, Smudge had lost his flame for a day and a half. When he finally recovered, he set my favorite T-shirt on fire. I couldn't prove it, but I was certain he had done it deliberately.\n\nI had soaked this latest batch of flowers in a glycerin solution, removing the moisture while preserving the shape and texture. Tiny lines of brown crisscrossed the petals. They weren't as potent as newly-formed Moly, but they should work.\n\nAs Nidhi pressed the petals into the book, the fictional flames faded, until I saw only a grainy image of the clearing. I reached out with one hand, imagining the resistor dials and adjusting them one by one. The minutes flew backward in my mind. A crow swooped down and vanished again. The scene darkened as the sun dipped beneath the eastern horizon. That put us past the eight-hour window. Were we in the wrong place, or had I misjudged the time of death?\n\nAnd then the wendigo appeared, surrounded by blood and gore. It was twilight from the evening before, putting the time closer to eighteen hours ago. I would need to recheck my figures. Two other people crowded over the wendigo and disappeared, moving far too quickly for me to make out any details. The wendigo vanished a second later.\n\nI adjusted my mental controls again, allowing the scene to play out in normal time. There was no sound. The chronoscope should be capable of reproducing sound as well as light, but I was doing well just to get this aspect working. Lena had taken Nidhi's camera, and was clicking away behind me. I wondered briefly whether a camera would be able to capture these images, but if they could see it, that meant I was manipulating visible light. As long as she didn't use a flash, they should turn out.\n\nThe creature who staggered into the clearing looked nothing like the withered body Lena had retrieved. The blocky pattern of broken ice armoring its body reminded me a little of The Thing from the Fantastic Four. All told, it probably weighed half a ton. It was digging at a wound in its shoulder, black claws the size of my fingers gouging through ice and fur.\n\nThe wendigo jerked, then toppled onto its back. It continued to claw at itself for a time, before curling into a ball. Once it stopped moving, two other figures appeared at the edge of the clearing.\n\n\"They're blurry,\" said Lena. \"Can you zoom in on their faces?\"\n\n\"It's not that simple.\" One of the men moved forward, but his face remained stubbornly out of focus. Other details were horrifyingly clear, like the ice ax he used to hammer away at the wendigo's frozen hide, and the skinning knife he pulled out next.\n\n\"Jumalauta,\" whispered Helen. I heard the meaning in my head, both a curse and a prayer, somewhere between \"God dammit\" and \"God help us.\" Both were appropriate for what followed.\n\n\"Is he wearing metal?\" asked Nidhi.\n\nI had noticed the same thing. The gleam of sunlight on polished metal, pebbled like oversized scales. Armor, maybe? Though it looked nothing like any historical mail I had ever seen.\n\nThe man's companion held back at the edge of the clearing. I studied him instead, trying to determine if he was in charge of this butchery, or merely the guard.\n\nDarkness flowed over both men, as if someone had moved to block our view. I looked more closely, focusing not on the men, but whatever hid them from us. Static danced over the rest of the scene, but the shadow remained. \"Am I crazy, or does that look like a woman?\"\n\n\"I see it, too,\" said Lena. \"Isaac, look at the man in back. His left hand.\"\n\nThe shadow moved to one side as if it had heard, but not before I spied the book the second man clutched in his hands. It was far larger than the paperback I had used.\n\n\"Is that another libriomancer?\" Helen breathed.\n\nThe shadow continued to grow\u2014no, it was moving toward us. \"I think she's reacting to my spell.\"\n\n\"How?\" asked Lena. \"I thought we were looking at the past.\"\n\nNo, we were looking at a magical recreation of the past. The spell itself existed in the present, which suggested that whoever or whatever this woman was, she was here with us now, working within the spell to block my efforts.\n\n\"You need to end this,\" Nidhi said sharply.\n\nI had come to the same conclusion. How long had I been standing here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? My arm was numb, and my eyes were so dry I could barely see anything beyond the chronoscope's window.\n\nA flicker of red light told me Smudge had reacted to the threat in his usual way. Lena had moved him onto the trunk of a tree, presumably to keep him away from the Moly's effects. Hopefully he wouldn't set anything on fire.\n\nI tried to collapse the spell, but whoever or whatever this was, she was fighting me. The images stretched and distorted, and black fingers reached toward us.\n\n\"Move,\" snapped Lena.\n\nI ducked aside as Lena snatched The Best of Isaac Asimov from Nidhi and hurled it directly through the center of the chronoscope's image. A pained scream stabbed my mind, and I stumbled backward. The spell collapsed to a single point of silver light, then disappeared.\n\nLena caught me by the arms. I forgot sometimes how strong she was. I started to pull away, but the world had gotten much more wobbly, and I thought better of it. \"Give me five minutes to rest. I'll be fine.\" Then I could try to figure out what the hell we were up against, and exactly how much trouble we were in. \"Nice throw.\"\n\nLena grimaced. \"Touching that stuff makes me want to vomit. But I figured whatever was trying to come through wouldn't like it any more than I do.\"\n\nNidhi peeled back one of my eyelids, then checked my pulse. She didn't look happy. \"I told you to be careful.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" I sagged against Lena. \"I really need to start listening to you.\"\n\nThe oak is ever divided. Reaching deeper, to the cool waters of Earth's lifeblood. Reaching skyward, to the warm breath of the sun.\n\nWithin this tree waits home.\n\nWithin this tree waits solitude.\n\nShe is my mother. My twin. My center, cleaved in two.\n\nYearning to be one. Yearning to be my own.\n\nI was born into winter. Yearning to sleep through the cold. Yearning for one whose warmth would awaken me.\n\nWithin his need, I found myself.\n\nWithin his desire, I found joy.\n\nHis body takes root within mine.\n\nI reach inward to safety. I reach outward to his need.\n\nI bring my Creator to his knees and receive his prayers.\n\n\u2014In memory of Frank Dearing\n\nI awoke on a low cot, gasping for breath. My feet and legs were tangled in an old wool blanket. The pillow was damp from sweat, as was the side of my face. The lights were out, but the safety-glass window in the door provided a hint of fluorescent illumination from the office outside.\n\n\"You're safe.\" Nidhi had a hand on my shoulder, holding me down with more strength than I would have expected. \"What do you remember?\"\n\nThe flickering magic of the chronoscope. A wendigo twisted in agony. An armored man hidden by the shadow of a woman. I remembered resting while Jeff and Helen discussed what to do with the body. They had decided to bury it in an unmarked grave behind the church. I had stood up too quickly. \"Did Lena\u2026she carried me here, didn't she.\"\n\n\"That's right. We were worried at first, but then you started snoring. Do you know where you are?\"\n\n\"Tamarack. We're inside the school, right?\"\n\n\"What's your name?\" Nidhi asked in that calm, clinical tone I remembered from our sessions. She kept her hands folded over the black leather purse in her lap.\n\n\"Isaac Vainio.\"\n\n\"What's the date?\" She was firing questions faster now, and I found myself responding in kind.\n\n\"August fourth. Unless I was out longer than I thought?\"\n\nShe ignored me. \"What's my name?\"\n\n\"Nidhi Shah.\" I shook my head before she could continue. \"It's me. Just me.\" I closed my eyes, listening for the whispers that were the first sign of possession, but my mind was my own. Whatever other damage I might have done, I hadn't ripped Asimov's story open that badly. Not that I could blame Nidhi for her fears. She had seen libriomantic possession close-up, as well as the damage that kind of madness could cause. \"Where's Lena?\"\n\n\"With the werewolves. I wasn't sure what was going on in your head.\"\n\n\"So you sent her away. Smart.\" I sagged back into the pillow. Lena's personality adjusted to the desires of her lover. Or lovers, as we had discovered earlier this year. The process wasn't supposed to be immediate, but who knew what it would do to her if any fictional characters moved into my brain?\n\nAn orange glow pulled my attention to Smudge, who climbed down the wall and stopped on the metal frame of the cot. The tips of the hairs along his back glowed like embers, and from the way he was watching me, I was the one who had spooked him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a box of Red Hot candies. I shook one into my left hand and held it out.\n\nThe allure of hard cinnamon candy was enough to overcome his nerves. The burning glow had dimmed, but his feet were uncomfortably hot as he crept forward onto my fingers. He hesitated, then snatched the candy. His body cooled as he ate.\n\n\"That can't be healthy for him,\" Nidhi said.\n\n\"I pulled him out of a sword and sorcery novel. Who knows what fictional spiders are supposed to eat? He seems healthy enough to me.\" I waited as Smudge climbed up my arm and settled onto my shoulder. \"You were using him to keep an eye on me. A warning system?\"\n\n\"Isn't that what you use him for?\"\n\n\"That's not fair. I also use him to repel mosquitoes.\" I stretched my arms, grimacing at the tension in my back and shoulders. My jaw ached, too. I must have been clenching it in my sleep. \"How long?\"\n\n\"You've been asleep five hours.\"\n\nThe good news was that I had successfully cast a spell I would have thought was impossible only a few months ago. The bad news was that it had kicked my ass. \"Gutenberg tosses magic like that around all the time.\"\n\n\"Gutenberg has been practicing for more than five hundred years. You've had what, a decade?\"\n\n\"Exactly. I'm young and spry and energetic.\" I winced and rubbed my neck. \"Young and energetic, at least.\"\n\n\"You seem to have survived the experience with your mind intact. Which means you should be able to tell me what the hell you were thinking out there!\"\n\nI could think of a few things more surprising than Nidhi Shah losing her temper and shouting at me. Smudge spontaneously breaking into a tap-dancing routine, for example. Gutenberg giving up magic and devoting himself to competitive macram\u00e9.\n\nI couldn't even remember the last time Nidhi had raised her voice, let alone yelled at anyone. \"I was trying to find out who killed that wendigo.\"\n\n\"By experimenting with magic you couldn't control?\" She started to say more, but caught herself before she could speak. She clasped her hands tightly together, and took three deep breaths. Her body visibly relaxed. \"I'm not your therapist anymore, Isaac. I'm your\u2026I'm trying to be your friend.\"\n\n\"I know that.\" Friend was as good a word as any. The closest term I had come across for \"my girlfriend's other lover\" was \"metamour,\" but the word suggested an uncomfortable level of intimacy between Nidhi and me.\n\nHer lips pursed. \"As your friend, I will call your therapist and have you yanked off this investigation if I think you're endangering yourself or the people around you.\"\n\nEvery Porter was required to see a therapist on a regular basis. It seemed a wise precaution for people who routinely rewrote the laws of existence to suit their whims. \"We just saw a man who might be a libriomancer help slaughter a wendigo. I don't think I'm the one we should be worrying about right now.\"\n\nNidhi didn't even blink. \"The closest Porter therapist would be Doctor Karim. I assume Pallas assigned you to her when I was removed from your case?\"\n\nMy silence was confirmation enough.\n\n\"I've got her on speed dial. I consulted on one of her cases last year, a bakeneko with bipolar disorder who was living as a barn cat in Ohio. In her manic phase, she liked to reanimate dead mice and chase them through the house.\"\n\n\"Wait, how do you treat a shapeshifting cat for bipolar disorder?\"\n\n\"Stress management techniques, a light box for winter, lithium when she's in her human form, and diet control. Particularly the catnip tea. Don't change the subject. I've lost Porters before because they didn't respect their magic. They didn't understand the risks. I'm not going to lose you.\" Her gaze slipped away. \"I won't let Lena lose you.\"\n\nI tightened my fist. \"I understand the risks.\"\n\n\"You understand the dangers,\" she said. \"You don't believe in the risks. Not to you. You think you're too clever, just like every other Porter who ended up destroying themselves.\"\n\n\"Three vampires tried to kill me in my own library earlier this summer. Then a possessed Porter sent an automaton after me. If that wasn't enough, I ended up ripping open a book that almost consumed Lena and me both.\" I stared at the wall, remembering the charred pages of that damaged book ripping free like a dam crumbling from the weight of its magic. Unformed power trying to escape, followed by a presence Gutenberg had described as Hell itself, ripping me into nothingness, devouring my very core.\n\n\"And every time, you survived. You reinforced your own deluded belief that you're immortal, exempt from the dangers. I've seen it before. The things you can do are amazing, but with great power comes great responsibility.\"\n\n\"You did not just quote Spider-Man at me.\"\n\nShe leaned closer, both her words and her demeanor softening. \"What's going on, Isaac? Ever since Detroit, you've been on edge. Angry.\" She looked me up and down. \"You've lost what, five pounds? Ten?\"\n\n\"No.\" It was twelve, according to my last weigh-in at Doctor Karim's office. Magic burned a lot of calories, and overuse sent the sympathetic nervous system into overdrive, effectively destroying your appetite. In the beginning, magic sounded like the ultimate diet plan, up until you ended up hospitalized for dehydration and malnutrition.\n\n\"Lena's noticed it, too,\" she said gently. \"You've spent more and more time locked up with your books. Does this have anything to do with your discomfort about the three of us? Anger and confusion are normal reactions to a kind of relationship you never expected.\"\n\n\"I'm not mad,\" I said, a little too quickly. \"Yeah, it's a little weird, but I'm getting used to it.\"\n\nHer response simmered with skepticism. \"If that's true, then what's driving you, Isaac?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" She nodded.\n\n\"He chose to hide magic from the world. I can understand that.\" I understood, but I didn't always agree. How many diseases could we have eliminated through the open use of magic? How many tragedies could have been averted? Not to mention the potential exploration. Magic could create livable habitats in the deepest crevasses of the ocean, in the hearts of active volcanoes, not to mention outer space. So what if NASA had never given us the moon base we wanted. Science fiction had provided all the tools we needed to build one ourselves.\n\n\"But,\" Nidhi prompted.\n\n\"We both know he's been hiding things. Lying about the rules and limitations of libriomancy.\" Not to mention the devourers.\n\n\"Would you teach a middle school science class how to mix thermite?\" She raised her hands before I could answer. \"I'm not suggesting you're a child. But Gutenberg is more than six hundred years old. To him, we're barely out of infancy.\"\n\n\"If those infants already have the ingredients to make thermite, I'd damn well teach them how to make and handle it safely instead of waiting for them to accidentally burn down the school.\" I stood up and searched the room for my satchel. Nidhi had tucked it beneath the foot of the cot. I yanked out the Asimov collection and opened it to \"The Dead Past.\" Dry petals of Moly fell from the pages. I tried to catch one, and the blackened petal broke apart like ash at my touch.\n\nThe pages looked like someone had lit a fire in the center of the book's spine, blackening all but the outer edges. The damage had rendered the book useless for libriomancy, like a cracked lens in a laser. I would need to update our database. Magical resonance treated identical copies of a book as a single point, which was why we could touch the belief of all readers of a given title. But those same principles meant every copy of Asimov's collection now carried the same magical charring, though only libriomancers would see it. Every copy of this book would be useless for years, even decades. Depending on the severity, the damage could even creep into other editions of the same book.\n\n\"You're angry at Gutenberg for keeping secrets from you.\" Nidhi cocked her head to the side. \"Yet every time Lena or I ask you about your secret research project for the Porters, you change the subject.\"\n\nI drew a tally mark in the air, acknowledging the point. \"You saw what I've been working on,\" I said softly. \"The shadow that tried to claw its way out of my spell.\"\n\n\"The woman?\"\n\n\"Or something like her. Jeneta called them 'devourers.' They've been trying to break through to our world. Gutenberg assigned me to figure out what they were and how to stop them.\"\n\n\"That would explain the stress. How far have you gotten?\"\n\n\"I'm not even close.\" I carefully closed the Asimov book and tucked it back into my bag. I'd need to write up a report for Pallas. She would not be happy. \"I don't even know if what we saw through my spell is the same thing that tried to kill me in Detroit. The manifestation was similar, but not identical.\"\n\n\"Helen believes a libriomancer was behind this,\" Nidhi said. \"She's scared whoever it is will come after the werewolves next.\"\n\n\"What do you think?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Tension lined her eyes and forehead. \"There are libriomancers who enjoy power more than they should, but if anyone were capable of this kind of violence, it should have been caught and dealt with long before reaching this point. As for your devourers, we screen for symptoms of possession.\"\n\n\"You can't screen for what you don't know about,\" I countered. The Porters hadn't yet recovered from the last libriomancer to turn against us. I didn't know how the organization would survive a second betrayal. \"How much trouble are Jeff and Helen going to give us?\"\n\n\"None for now. I convinced them to let us look for the killer on our own.\"\n\nI glanced up. \"How did you manage that?\"\n\n\"I reminded them that the Porters are a pack. If one of us did this, it's our responsibility to stop that person. Just as Jeff and Helen would personally hunt down any of their people who broke pack law.\"\n\n\"Nice.\" I ran my fingers over the rest of my books. \"I'll look up any wendigo encounters from the past decade. Maybe this is a simple revenge thing.\"\n\nNidhi said nothing, but I had worked with her long enough to recognize the tilt of her head and the slight compression of her mouth. She didn't buy that any more than I did.\n\nA knock at the door made me jump so hard Smudge had to grab my ear to keep from being dislodged. I held very, very still until he released me.\n\nLena opened the door and peeked inside.\n\nNidhi jumped to her feet. \"What's wrong?\"\n\nSweat beaded Lena's brow, and her face was pale. The muscles in her neck were taut. She gripped the doorframe so tightly her knuckles were white. \"We have to leave.\"\n\nI started toward her, but Nidhi was faster. She slipped an arm around Lena for support. Lena accepted gratefully, resting her head against Nidhi's.\n\nI waited in awkward silence until Lena kissed Nidhi and pulled away.\n\n\"Are you hurt?\" I asked. \"Did someone\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not me.\" She frowned and shook her head. \"It's not this body, I mean. It's my tree. Something's wrong.\"\n\n\"I'll drive,\" I said. There was no way I was letting her ride a motorcycle on these roads in her condition. I might have burned through a little too much magic today, but I was in far better shape than Lena.\n\n\"I'll be right behind you,\" said Nidhi.\n\nLena didn't protest. She tossed Nidhi the keys to her bike while I shouldered my bag.\n\n\"Isaac.\" Nidhi directed a pointed look toward my bag. \"Be careful.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I said, but I was already thinking beyond the weapons in my book bag. If someone was hurting Lena's oak, I intended to bring my entire library down on their head.\n\nA 1973 Triumph convertible wasn't the most practical choice of car for Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Setting aside Michigan's attitude toward foreign-made cars, the little two-seater was simply too small and unreliable for the no-holds-barred assault winter launched on the U.P. each year. Up here, the ideal winter vehicle was anything you could mount a snowplow to. When I first brought the car up, more than one person had offered wagers on how many times I'd put it into a ditch or get myself stuck at the bottom of an icy hill.\n\nI had pocketed close to four hundred bucks from those bets. This thing was far safer than my old pickup truck. The previous owner had installed a number of magical modifications, including traction spells strong enough for me to do a slalom course at full speed across a frozen lake. Or in this case, to swerve around gravel roads at speeds somewhere between insane and suicidal.\n\nLena's body was rigid, her eyes closed. She kept her hands clamped around her bokken. She gasped occasionally, tight breaths that hissed through her teeth, but otherwise made no sound.\n\nI was fairly certain the loss of her tree wouldn't kill her. Not immediately, at least. She had survived the death of her previous oak earlier in the year by grafting branches from that tree onto the one in my backyard, but it hadn't been an easy transition.\n\nBesides Nidhi and myself, only a handful of people knew the location of Lena's tree. Of those, I couldn't think of anyone with reason to harm her. But the timing couldn't be a coincidence. \"Did anyone else see you this afternoon?\"\n\nLena shook her head. \"Jeff and Helen would have known if we were followed.\"\n\nI turned off the headlights when we reached my street, so as not to alert anyone at the house. The porch and garage lights had come on automatically at sundown. I saw nothing unusual, but as I drove past the driveway to park on the side of the road, Smudge dropped into an alert crouch on the dashboard. Heat rippled over his body.\n\n\"Stay here.\" I grabbed Smudge and my books. Smudge climbed onto the leather strap of the book bag and clung there, all eight eyes watching the house. I leaned over and opened the glove box, using its light to skim a copy of H. Allen Conrad's Time Kings.\n\n\"Like hell.\" Lena pulled herself out of the car, leaning on her bokken for support.\n\nThankfully, she waited for me to finish creating a fully charged and loaded shock-gun. I had been practicing with this particular gun since July, though it wasn't always easy to find a secluded enough space for target practice. The shock-gun was a two-stage weapon. Pulling the trigger fired a tiny, electrically charged pellet at supersonic speed. A split-second later, the gun's power source triggered an electrical discharge that followed the path of ionized air particles.\n\nIn layman's terms, I had a pistol that shot lightning. The charge could be adjusted from \"Low-grade Taser\" to \"Barbeque a Medium-sized Dinosaur,\" and had a range of up to one mile. From a distance, it was designed to look like an ordinary revolver. Best of all, unlike so many fictional ray guns, this one had usable sights.\n\n\"Just don't point that thing at my oak,\" Lena said.\n\nI rotated the cylinder to setting two, which should drop anyone we encountered without killing them. Keeping the gun pointed to the ground, I crept around the garage to the back of the house, Lena pressing close behind. Clouds curtained the moon, making it difficult to see anything beyond the silhouette of her tree, but it appeared undisturbed. I crouched by the corner of the house, searching the yard and the trees beyond, but found nobody.\n\n\"It feels diseased,\" Lena whispered. \"Like rot spreading through my bones.\"\n\n\"Could someone have poisoned it?\"\n\n\"It wouldn't work this quickly, or hurt this much.\"\n\nFrom inside the house came a sharp thud, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Lena pulled me back.\n\n\"Front door,\" I whispered. The sliding door leading in from the deck was locked from the inside, and smashing through glass doors tended to alert whoever you were trying to sneak up on.\n\nWe circled around to the front. The storm door had a hole drilled through the aluminum frame, which was odd, as it hadn't actually been locked. The twenty-year-old wooden door had three holes, as if whoever was trying to break in hadn't been able to figure out how to disable the deadbolt. I readied my weapon, waited for Lena's nod, and turned the knob.\n\nIt didn't budge. Whoever was inside must have gotten the door locked again behind them. I slid the key into the lock, turned until it clicked, and opened the door.\n\nThe hinges creaked faintly. I held my breath, but heard no movement from inside. The brass plate on the doorframe was scraped and bent, like someone had held an oversized drill against it. What kind of incompetent breakin was this?\n\nLena grabbed my arm before I could step inside. \"Look down.\"\n\nThe drill had left sawdust scattered over the tile floor. I stared for several seconds before I realized what had caught her attention. There were no footprints in the sawdust.\n\n\"The hell?\" I mouthed silently.\n\nLena's bokken flattened in her hands, each sword taking on a perfectly honed edge sharp enough to cut through one and a half vampires in a single strike. She slipped past me to check the kitchen. I waited for her signal, then moved into the library.\n\nI had read far too many books about this scenario, not to mention all the monster movies, to be happy poking through a dark house. I gripped the shock-gun in both hands, half expecting a chainsaw-wielding zombie or alien slime-monster to leap out at me as I checked between each of the shelves.\n\nA grinding sound made me whirl. Lena put her back to the counter and gestured toward the hallway. I moved through the kitchen to cover her as she crouched by the hall and stretched her fingers to touch the hardwood floor. She would be able to feel if anyone or anything was crouching around the corner, waiting to pounce. After a moment, she rose and stepped into the hall.\n\nThe noise was coming from my office. From my computer, to be specific. It sounded like the hard drive was trying to spin up, but kept stuttering out. The office itself was empty.\n\n\"I'll check the bedroom,\" Lena whispered.\n\n\"Be careful.\" The prospect of catching whoever had attacked her tree appeared to have given her a second wind, but I didn't know how long that would last.\n\nThe monitor was blank except for a blinking cursor prompt. I switched on the desk lamp. Books were scattered over the floor. My heart thudded against my ribs when I spotted a two-hundred-year-old Spanish diary with a freshly-cracked spine and pages pulled loose. It took all my willpower to keep from switching the shock-gun to setting six. Busting into my house was one thing, but someone would pay for this.\n\nThe framed space shuttle print on my wall had fallen, and triangles of glass littered the floor. Both the commander and the pilot from that mission had autographed the picture for me. That must have been the crash we heard from outside.\n\n\"Nobody's been back here, either,\" Lena called. \"The house is empty.\"\n\nI picked up the diary and carefully placed it on the desk. There was a bookbinder over in Presque Isle who should be able to repair the damage. I found my new e-reader on the floor beneath the chair. Small electronics were some of the most common targets for burglars, but they had destroyed the reader instead of taking it. The screen looked as if it had been shot at close range.\n\nI sat down in front of the computer. Smudge scurried over to perch on a Petoskey stone paperweight I had gotten for my one-year anniversary at the library. He was still antsy, and I moved several books out of reach of his flames.\n\nI wasn't worried about my data. Gutenberg himself would have trouble getting past the safeguards Victor Harrison had installed in our networks, and most of my research was backed up on the Porter network. But why take the time to destroy the computer?\n\nBits of broken plastic peppered the floor. A hole the width of my index finger was bored through the case. I held down the power key, then cycled the computer back on. I wasn't hoping for much, but the screeching clatter from inside made me jump back.\n\nIt wasn't the hard drive this time. A large silver beetle crawled out of the hole. Gleaming wings buzzed, and it zoomed past my ear before vanishing into the hall.\n\n\"What was that?\" Lena asked from the doorway.\n\n\"Some sort of scarab beetle, I think.\" Except that scarab beetles from Michigan would be darker in color, and were unlikely to be nesting in my computer. I crouched on the floor and peeked into the hole, keeping my eye back in case there were more. When nothing attacked my face, I popped the side off of the case to study the machine's guts. Ordinary beetles wouldn't have chewed through both plastic and metal, either. \"Did you see which way it flew?\"\n\nSomething buzzed within the computer. I dropped it and jumped back as a second, smaller beetle crawled out from between the hard drives. This one flew straight for the window, striking hard enough to chip the glass. Smudge raced across the desk in hot pursuit.\n\nBy the time I reached the window, the thing had chewed its way outside, right through the double-paned glass and the metal screen.\n\nLena sagged against the wall. \"I think I know where it's going.\"\n\nI swore as I realized what she meant. If these things had bored through glass and plastic, how much damage could they do to an oak, even a magically strengthened one?\n\nSmudge circled the hole in the window, as if searching for the best way to squeeze through. I tapped the window, trying to get his attention before he decided to melt his way through the glass. A piece of candy brought him scurrying back to my shoulder.\n\nBy the time I flipped on the lights out back, Lena was heading for the garden she had planted two months ago. Rosebushes walled the garden, all save an archway in the front. The branches and thorns were strong enough to repel deer and other creatures. Two varieties were in bloom, one a deep, smoky purple, the other yellow. Most of the flowers were as large as my hand.\n\nIn the very back, protected by climbing rose vines, Lena's oak stood on the boundary between my yard and the woods beyond. The leaves were thicker than any of the surrounding trees, and smaller branches shone with new bark where they had sprouted in the past months. I followed her outside and ducked through the arch of thorns, stepping carefully between the corn and the red peppers.\n\nLena reached for me with her free hand. Taking mine in hers, she pressed my palm to the rough bark, avoiding the rose thorns that could have pierced my hand. Lena's fingertips slipped between mine, sinking into the bark as if it were soft clay. \"What do you feel?\"\n\nMost days, I couldn't distinguish between Lena's tree and any other. My magic simply wasn't strong enough. Few Porters had that kind of power, which was why libriomancy had spread so quickly. Books gave us a crutch, allowing us to draw on the belief and will of others to supplement our own power.\n\nToday was different. I was raw and exposed from my spells in Tamarack. My barriers were down, meaning I was better able to feel and manipulate magic.\n\nI felt her connection to the oak, the sense of stability and timelessness. The roots ran deep, and while the tree might sway with the wind, it was so much stronger than any human. Much like Lena herself.\n\nThis wasn't the first time I had felt the magic of Lena's tree, but never before had I wanted so badly to pull away. An itching sensation spread through my skin, as if something were squirming and burrowing through my muscles. I fought the urge to scratch until I bled. If it was this unpleasant for me, what was Lena feeling?\n\nShe swore and yanked her hand back. Her fingertips were bleeding. I spotted tiny metal pincers snapping from a small hole in the wood, but the insect retreated before I could get a closer look.\n\n\"Whatever they are, they're killing my tree.\"\n\nFrank Dearing was not a good man, but my years with him made me happy.\n\nI loved his fields almost as much as I loved him. I was stronger than his other hands, able to work longer without breaks. I gave strength to the plants that needed it, and I rooted out those dying from rot or insects before they contaminated the rest. Frank's family had lived on this farm for three generations, but I knew the crops in a way he never could.\n\nI seduced him for the first time in early March, a month after I had stumbled onto his farm. Snow melted beneath my bare feet as I hauled bales of hay from the barn. The cold didn't bother me, and I enjoyed the crisp wind on my skin. I had taken to wearing shorts and old T-shirts, hand-me-downs from one of the other hands. They were too small, but I liked the way they hugged my flesh.\n\nWhen I finished spreading the hay, I returned to fetch the ax and hose. The water trough had frozen over again.\n\nI felt Frank watching as I swung the ax through the ice. I glanced over to see him standing on the porch, sipping his coffee. His desire warmed my body in a way sunlight never could. I pretended not to notice, but adjusted my stance to better display the curves of my legs and ass. When I hauled broken chunks of ice from the trough, I allowed the water to drip down my chest. My nipples tightened, blurring the line between pain and pleasure.\n\nI used the hose to rinse away the hay that clung to my skin, then slicked my blonde hair back. I could feel the hem of my shirt stiffening from the cold, which surprised me. With the heat surging through my blood, I half expected to see steam rising from my body.\n\nI smiled at the sound of his boots as they crunched through the snow. I would have known him by his footsteps alone, strong and solid.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing, girl?\" he asked gruffly. \"Get into the barn and change into some dry clothes before you freeze to death.\"\n\n\"But I haven't drained the hose yet,\" I said innocently. A delighted giggle escaped my lips when he blushed beneath his beard. I could feel his desire. It had followed me from the very first time he saw me. Instinctively, I pulled that desire into myself, twined it into my own, and sent it back, strong enough to make him gasp.\n\n\"I'll take care of that. You get yourself inside.\" He slapped my ass to send me on my way, and the pleasure of that sharp blow made me gasp and bite my lip. I blew him a kiss and scurried away.\n\nI stripped off the T-shirt and pulled on a too-large red flannel, shivering as the heavy fabric brushed my skin. I had only fastened the third button when I heard Frank enter the barn behind me. I moistened my lips with my tongue and smiled, but didn't turn around until his arms encircled me, his rough hands tugging the shirt away to grab my breasts. I breathed in the smell of coffee and cigarettes as he kissed my neck.\n\nI was home.\n\nWe were still standing in the garden when I heard Nidhi pull up on the motorcycle. Lena's leather jacket hung loosely on her shoulders as she ran into the backyard to join us. I brought her up to speed while Lena paced circles around her tree.\n\n\"How many of these things are inside of her?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"Twenty-eight.\" Lena shuddered. \"I've tried to crush them, to seal the bark around their bodies, but nothing works. I've hardened the core of the tree the best I can, and they're not strong enough to get there yet, but they burrow through the bark and the outer layers of wood like it's made of balsa. And when I try to enter the tree myself\u2026\" She held up her hands. Blood welled from tiny cuts and gouges on her palm and fingers.\n\n\"That shouldn't even be possible.\" I knew it was a stupid complaint as soon as the words left my mouth. Possible or not, it was happening. But Lena wasn't physically shoving her hands and body into the oak like a butterfly crawling back into a cocoon; she became the tree. Her physical body was something she doffed and donned again as she entered and left her oak. How the hell could these things attack her within her own tree?\n\nUnless it was an attack on the tree itself, one which somehow translated into wounds of the flesh? I didn't understand enough about how Lena's bond with her tree worked. \"If they're mostly hiding below the bark, what if we peeled the bark back to get to them?\"\n\n\"Skin me alive, you mean?\" Lena asked, her tone deceptively mild.\n\nI winced. \"Sorry. I didn't\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all right.\" She moved her hand over the tree. Bits of bark fell away as the insects burrowed through the wood to follow. \"They're too quick anyway. They'd just move to another spot.\"\n\n\"What else have you tried?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"We haven't,\" I admitted. \"Without knowing what they're made of, it's hard to know what weapons would work best. They looked metal, which means there's a chance a magnetic blast might affect them. I could also try to strengthen the tree itself.\"\n\nLena frowned. \"Strengthen it how?\"\n\nI waved a hand toward the house. \"Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series has characters who can empower plants and make them grow at ridiculous speeds. If I can tap into that book like I did with the Asimov story\u2014\"\n\n\"Then you could char another book and knock yourself into a coma,\" Lena finished.\n\n\"Not to mention the question of control.\" Nidhi moved to stand between me and the tree, her arms folded. \"You have no idea what that would do to Lena's oak. To her.\"\n\n\"I could call Nicola Pallas and request an automaton.\" Gutenberg had constructed his magical golems as bodyguards five centuries ago, armoring them in spells and metal keys from his printing press, essentially turning them into living books. Among their various powers, they had the ability to drain magic from others. I was certain they could kill these insects, but I had no idea what such an attack would do to Lena's tree.\n\n\"No automatons,\" Lena said firmly.\n\n\"Why attack Lena's tree like this, and why now?\" Nidhi asked. \"They could have waited in the branches and swarmed down as she approached, or let her enter the tree then burrowed in after her.\"\n\n\"Please don't give the magical dryad-eating bugs any ideas,\" Lena said.\n\nThey hadn't just attacked Lena's tree. After burrowing into my house, they had also attacked my computer, which had layer upon layer of Porter spells protecting it. My ereader probably had a lingering taste of magic as well, thanks to Jeneta using it to pull raisins from a poem. \"They're drawn to magic. Like overgrown, spell-sucking mosquitoes.\" Which meant magic might lure them out of Lena's oak.\n\nI turned toward the house, but Nidhi was faster, stepping into the garden's archway and blocking my path. \"How much magic will it take to draw them to you? What do you intend to do to them once they're out? Lena had to carry you out of the woods earlier today because you burned yourself out with your time-travel spell.\"\n\n\"Time-viewing spell.\"\n\nShe ignored my correction. \"If you blow your mental fuses trying to pull those things from Lena's tree, you'll only make things worse for all of us.\"\n\n\"Stop derailing my plans with logic and reason,\" I snapped. If I could track down a children's book with one of those cartoonishly powerful supermagnets, I might be able to rip the bugs out of Lena's tree, but it would probably tear up the wood in the process. Not to mention I'd need a trip to the library or bookstore. My collection didn't include many books for that age group.\n\nNot many, but there was one that might work. And it had the bonus of being awesome. \"When the Porters need to shut down electronics, they use a book to generate an electromagnetic pulse. You don't have to manipulate the energy like I did with the chronoscope, and energy is actually easier to create than matter.\"\n\n\"We don't know that these things are electronic,\" Nidhi said.\n\n\"Different kind of energy.\" I gave up on trying not to grin. \"We think they're metal, right? Ever see what happens when you put silverware in a microwave?\"\n\nI ran into the house and grabbed Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day. We'd still need to get them to poke their heads out of the tree, but once they did, microwave radiation should be as effective as a bug zapper.\n\nAs I turned to leave, Smudge raced down my arm, every step like a droplet of boiling water on my skin. He jumped onto the side of the shelves and sprinted toward the ceiling. Once there, he clung to the plaster and crept forward, his attention fixed on a pencil-sized hole.\n\n\"Be careful.\" I opened the book and skimmed the section that explained how a metal-rimmed plate could do very bad things to your microwave pizza. If there were stragglers in the roof, this was the perfect opportunity for a test run.\n\nSmudge crawled back and forth, never stepping directly over the opening as he laid down one gossamer strand after another.\n\n\"You were there when those things drilled through metal and glass, right?\" Spider silk was strong, and Smudge was laying it on pretty thick, but\u2014\n\nThree insects shot out of the hole, tearing through the web as if it weren't even there. The first was a ladybug the size of an almond nut, with what looked like brass rivets for spots. It cleared the way for the rest, but at a cost. Webbing tangled its wings, causing it to fly erratically back to the ceiling. Delicate legs gripped the edge of the hole as it scraped its wings together, trying to rid itself of web.\n\nThe second was built like a dragonfly. The third, more waspish in shape, flew for the back door.\n\nI tracked the dragonfly, touched the book's magic, and pointed the pages at the ceiling.\n\nThe magic wasn't as spectacular as I had hoped, but results were what mattered. The insect flashed orange, like a tiny light bulb burning out, then dropped to the floor.\n\nI turned to get the ladybug, but Smudge was too close. He circled the struggling insect, like a predator playing with his meal.\n\nHe struck too quickly for me to see. The web clinging to the ladybug went up like gas-soaked rags. The flame didn't hurt the metal, but whatever the wings were made of, they weren't as strong. One broke away and fluttered, smoldering, to the floor.\n\nThe ladybug charged Smudge, who left a blackened path along my ceiling as he retreated. The insect darted in again and again. I couldn't see what it was doing, but every missed strike caused a thread of white dust to fall from the plaster.\n\nSmudge raised his front four legs, waving them like tiny flaming swords. The ladybug hesitated, then sealed its shell and ran directly into the fire.\n\nSmudge flared blue and fell. I lunged without thinking, catching him in an outstretched hand before he hit the floor.\n\nPain travels quickly along the nerves. I had a moment of clarity as I realized what I had just done, and then I was screaming, \"Stupid, stupid, stupid!\" through my teeth and fighting the urge to fling the burning spider away. I ran to the kitchen and transferred him to the tile floor.\n\nThe ladybug was burrowing back into the hole. Keeping my burnt hand curled against my body, I raised the book with my other hand. But the ladybug disappeared before I could get the shot.\n\nAn angry buzzing sound warned me as the wasp swooped toward my eyes. I dropped to the floor. Forget guns and books, I needed a laser-powered fly swatter. I searched the shelves, trying to see where it had landed. It hadn't followed its buddy into the ceiling, and the room was silent, which meant it was creeping around, waiting for a better chance to attack.\n\nThe back door slid open. Lena gripped one of her bokken with both hands. \"Don't move.\"\n\nShe was staring at a spot on my back. I slowly twisted my head until I spotted the wasp perched on the waist of my jeans. \"Aw, crap.\"\n\nLena's bokken whipped past, close enough to tug my hair in its wake. The insect shattered into fragments, and her weapon embedded itself in the floor. She wrenched it free and leaned against the shelves.\n\n\"There's another one,\" I said. \"It burrowed into the ceiling. I want it in one piece.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"So I can take it apart.\"\n\nI grabbed a metal spatula and used it to carry Smudge to the kitchen sink where I could examine his injuries. Clear fluid that smelled faintly like diesel oozed from cuts on his forelegs. Blue flame danced over the cuts, never actually touching the fluid. Like gasoline, it was probably only flammable when it evaporated. Leaving the book on the counter, I returned to my library.\n\nMy classification was loosely based on the system we used at the Copper River Library, but in addition to sorting books by genre and author, mine were also classified by magic. Healing texts were on the end of the middle shelf, where they would be easy to get to in case of emergency. I picked out a copy of Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm and flipped pages one-handed until I came to \"The Water of Life.\"\n\nMy hand throbbed, the pain growing worse with every beat. My palm was red and blistered, with blood oozing from the edges, but it was the blackened skin in the middle that most worried me. The pain wasn't bad there, which suggested nerve damage.\n\nShock threatened to make me drop the book. I sat on the floor, resting it in my lap. \"It springs from a fountain in the courtyard of an enchanted castle,\" I read softly, imagining the scene in my mind. The prince hurrying to get to the spring before the clock chimed twelve, grasping the cup in one hand, reaching\u2026\n\nThrough the yellowed pages, I touched the hammered metal cup in the prince's hand. I eased the cup from his grip and carefully pulled it free. I spilled half the water onto my shirt. Lena caught my hand, guiding the cup to my lips.\n\nA single swallow of the cool water was enough. The blisters dried, and the charred skin sloughed away from my palm. I used my fingernails to scrape away the worst of the dead skin and dried blood.\n\nMy arm was trembling, and sweat streamed down my face and neck. I pulled myself up and brought the cup to the kitchen. I spilled several drops into the sink where Smudge was resting. He didn't move.\n\n\"Come on, buddy.\" I reached down, but yanked my hand back when his flames flared higher. I grabbed the spatula and tried to nudge him toward the water. He just twitched and curled into a tighter ball.\n\nLena slipped a hand into my pants pocket and pulled out my box of Red Hots. She took one of the candies between her thumb and forefinger, dipped it into the cup, and placed it in the sink in front of Smudge. A single droplet clung to the candy's surface.\n\nSmudge slowly uncurled his legs and crept forward. His two front legs hung like snapped twigs ready to break away. The cuts had stopped burning, leaving only a tarry, blackish scab on each leg. His mandibles closed around the end of the candy.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, surprised at how difficult it was to get the words out past the knot in my throat.\n\nShe kissed my cheek. \"You're welcome.\"\n\nI didn't look away until Smudge began to move his forelegs again. A ripple of red fire spread over his body, vanishing as quickly as it had begun, except for the scabs on his legs. Those continued to burn, smelling like burnt hair and oil, until both legs were clean and whole once more.\n\nI left Smudge in the sink with another piece of candy and picked up Why Sh*t Happens. \"I'd call that a successful proof of concept. Let's go clean up your tree.\"\n\nI circled the oak to make sure stray microwaves wouldn't accidentally fry anything behind the tree. \"Where are they?\"\n\nLena pointed with one of her bokken. \"The lowest is dug in at knee level.\" She tapped the bark with her weapon, marking each of the twenty-eight insects. The highest was a good twelve feet up.\n\n\"This will probably hurt,\" I warned her.\n\nNidhi clasped Lena's hand and said, \"Think of it as radiation treatment to burn away a tumor.\"\n\n\"The dragonfly in the house cooked fast.\" I reread the pages I had used before. \"I'll need you to lure them to the surface.\"\n\nLena nodded and dragged her fingers through the bark. It wasn't long before she jerked her hand away.\n\nI aimed the book at the tiny pincers, which sparked and popped. Lena hissed in pain, but when I pulled the book away, she said, \"Don't stop. It's working.\"\n\nI cooked the insect until Lena confirmed it was dead. I didn't want to linger too long in one spot, as the microwaves could also boil the water in the tree, drying and cracking the wood. Lena touched the tree again, luring a second insect to the surface.\n\n\"They're burrowing,\" Lena said.\n\nI aimed the book skyward while I waited for her to bait the next. \"You said they couldn't get to the heart of the tree.\"\n\n\"They're not going deeper. They're trying to get out.\"\n\nShe pointed to where the first insect was emerging, and I cooked it in place, but they were digging free on all sides. I got two more, and then they were flying toward me. I stumbled back, trying not to trip over the pumpkins. For someone who rarely ate vegetables, she grew an awful lot of produce. I moved the book back and forth, trying to blast insects out of the air. A miniature lightning bolt jumped between two of the bugs, and both fell like tiny burning meteorites.\n\nA beetle landed on my arm. Pincers dug through my shirt and the skin beneath. Another attacked the back of my hand.\n\nLena's bokken hummed through the air. Nidhi tried to grab the bugs off of my skin, but for every one she ripped free, three more found me. Others landed on the book and began chewing through the cover and paper.\n\nI ended the spell and flung the book to the ground. Lena joined Nidhi, and crushed several of the things in her bare hands, but by the time we tugged the last one off of me, the rest had returned to the tree.\n\nThey had bored numerous holes through Why Sh*t Happens. The spine had suffered the most damage. When I picked the book from the dirt, half of the pages tore free.\n\n\"How many?\" I asked.\n\n\"I can feel nineteen crawling around.\"\n\nI picked a metal horsefly from the ground. The microwave had been a little too effective, warping and melting the delicate metal.\n\nI headed back toward the house. \"I need something I can dissect.\"\n\nOnce inside, I pulled The Demon Trapper's Daughter by Jana Oliver off of the shelves. I had cataloged this book for the Porters several years ago, and I knew exactly which scene I wanted.\n\nMy hands tightened around the cover as I recalled the opening pages of the story, in which the protagonist tried to capture a Biblio-Fiend, a small, mischievous demon who liked to urinate on books. No way in hell I was letting that into my living room. But later on, when she faced the larger demons\u2026\n\nI flipped to the chapter I needed, shoved my hand into the story, and pulled out a glass sphere the size of a softball. \"Let's see what happens if we freeze them.\" Looking at the hole where the ladybug had vanished, I added, \"Assuming we can find the damn things.\"\n\n\"They go after magic, right?\" Lena jammed her bokken into the ceiling and gripped the hilt with both hands. Her fingers sank into the wood. Tiny spikes split away from the blade, sprouting buds that uncurled into small, waxy leaves.\n\nI hefted the sphere. I didn't have to wait long.\n\n\"Get ready.\" Lena flinched. \"That stings,\" she muttered, then yanked hard. Chunks of plaster ripped free, exposing broken slats and insulation. The end of Lena's wooden blade had grown like a bonsai tree on superfertilizer. The ladybug was burrowing into the wood, but as I drew back to throw, it took flight, swirling erratically toward the back door.\n\nLena yanked her tree\u2014sword\u2014whatever it was now out of the way, and I hurled the sphere at the fleeing bug. Glass smashed against the doorframe. Magic spread like liquid nitrogen, creating a white cloud. The door frosted over, and a web of cracks spread downward.\n\nLena stepped back and brushed a shard of curved glass off of her arm. Tiny slivers shone in her hair and clothes.\n\n\"Are you\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" she said. She pulled a piece of glass over her hand to demonstrate. The shard dented her skin, but didn't cut her. \"Tough as bark.\"\n\nThe living room felt like a meat locker. I had never used Oliver's books before. Those things were more potent than I had expected. I hurried into the kitchen to check on Smudge, who was huddling protectively over his half-eaten candy, his body burning merrily against the chill. The water pooled in the other dishes was frozen around the edges. Once I knew he was safe, I returned to the library and joined Lena in searching for the ladybug.\n\nGlass crunched underfoot. The ladybug had to have been caught in the cold, but with so much glass and ice scattered across the floor, it was hard to find a little blob of silver metal.\n\n\"Isaac.\" Lena pointed to the door. The ladybug had gotten halfway through the glass when I caught it with the sphere. Before I could figure out the easiest way to work it free, Lena tapped the door with her sword, bringing the whole thing down in a shower of pebbled glass.\n\n\"What happened?\" asked Nidhi, running onto the deck.\n\n\"We're fine.\" Lena's bokken slipped from her hand. Nidhi started toward her, but Lena waved her back. \"I'm all right.\"\n\nI grabbed a pair of pliers from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Already the ladybug was trying to move, legs and wings clicking erratically. I tightened the pliers around the body until I felt the metal shell begin to bend.\n\nI brought it to the office and switched on my lamp. The shell was grooved silver. Two of the six legs had snapped off from the cold. One of the wings beneath had burned away, leaving little more than a stub. I fetched a Q-tip from the bathroom and tried to clean the soot from the other, but I succeeded only in snapping it. Under the light, the broken wing looked like a tissue-thin strip of nacre peeled from the inside of an oyster shell.\n\nBeneath the shell were gears that would have made a Swiss watchmaker weep with envy. The eyes were like droplets of red wine. Garnets, maybe?\n\n\"What is it?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Not a clue.\" Disproportionately large copper mandibles clicked at my fingers. \"What steampunk adventure did you sneak out of? Cherie Priest? Girl Genius? You're gorgeous, whatever you are.\"\n\n\"And in the meantime, its friends are drilling deeper into Lena's oak,\" Nidhi said tightly.\n\nI winced. \"Sorry. I got\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" said Lena. \"We're used to you. 'Look at the shiny magic thing trying to kill us, isn't it awesome?' I'll be happy to admire them with you as soon as we get them out of my tree.\"\n\nI held the tip of a wooden pencil in front of the ladybug's head. It snapped cleanly through both wood and graphite. \"I see several types of metal in there. Copper and silver. Possibly steel.\"\n\n\"Were they created with libriomancy?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"Most likely.\" Only a few people could manipulate raw magic. Far more could use books to help them shape that power. \"I'll check the Porter catalog when I'm done here to see if I can figure out what book they might have come from.\"\n\nI looked around the office. I didn't know where my magnifying glass had gone, but I spotted something else that should work. Holding the pliers tight, I squeezed past Lena to the 10\" telescope tucked into the corner. A built-in rack on the side of the scope held a set of eyepieces. I grabbed one from the middle and returned to the desk.\n\nHolding the two-inch-long metal-and-plastic tube to my right eye, I peered at the insect. I had to look through the wrong end of the eyepiece to bring things into proper focus, but it worked well enough.\n\n\"There are no welds. The shell looks like it's riveted to the body.\" The rivets appeared to be copper, but they were impossibly tiny, as were the hinges and joints below.\n\nThe ladybug snapped at me, the mandibles clicking audibly. The sight of those magnified, serrated pincers reaching for my eye made me jerk back so hard I almost dropped the pliers.\n\nI tested a magnet next, but it had no effect. Whatever metals this was made of, they weren't ferrous. \"I need a better way to hold this thing while I study it.\" Superglue on the joints should effectively paralyze it, though that might obscure the finer details.\n\nBefore I could go digging for the glue, Lena reached past me and stabbed a toothpick through the center of the ladybug's body. She gave the toothpick a vicious twist, eased the pliers from my hand, and set them aside. She raised the still-squirming thing into the air. \"Hold it by this end.\"\n\nI swallowed and took the toothpick. With the eyepiece lens, I could see the tiny white threads growing from the toothpick through the interior workings, like parasites devouring the bug from within. I would have felt bad for it, had its cousins not been doing the same thing to Lena.\n\nA coiled spring down the center of the back appeared to provide movement, but I saw no place for a key, no way of winding that spring once it died. I might be able to wind it with a pair of jewelry pliers, but more likely I'd just break something else. I set down the eyepiece and used a straightened paper clip to fold one of the legs back. A gear the size of a snowflake popped out of place as a result of my clumsy efforts.\n\nI pulled the lamp closer. Mechanically, this made no sense at all. Tiny pistons and gears manipulated the legs, but I saw no way to coordinate or control their movement. \"Let's see if you have some sort of brain in there.\"\n\nI grabbed the pliers, tightened them carefully around the insect's head, and twisted it free of the body.\n\nThe ladybug went dead. The spring jumped free, followed by a sprinkling of gears and rods. No way was this Humpty Dumpty getting put back together again. I set the body on the desk and studied the head through the eyepiece. Inside, tiny silver prongs held an oily sphere in place, like a jewelry setting designed for the world's smallest engagement ring.\n\nI used the paper clip to pop the sphere free. It landed on the desk without bouncing or rolling, despite being perfectly round. I touched it with my finger, and it stuck to my skin, allowing me to study it under the lens. I placed the tip of the paper clip to the sphere, and it clicked onto the metal like a magnet. When I tugged it free and set it on a piece of paper, it clung there just as easily.\n\n\"What is it?\" Normally I would have enjoyed the way Lena's body pressed against mine as she peered over my shoulder, but now I barely noticed.\n\n\"It's called a boson chip.\" From what I remembered, it would stick to just about anything through a kind of subatomic static charge. I felt a sense of magical pressure, like a balloon inflated to the bursting point. \"Harvested from the brain of a fictional silicon-based hive mind. This little thing could store every book in the Copper River Library, and it would still have space for Nicola Pallas' music collection.\"\n\n\"You've seen them before?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"I'm the one who pulled them out of a bad space opera.\" I stared at the chip. \"Victor Harrison had requisitioned a batch for one of his pet projects.\"\n\nVictor was a legend among the Porters. He had the amazing ability to make magic and technology play nicely together, and had built everything from a telepathic coffee maker to a database server that transformed would-be hackers into various reptiles. He had also jinxed my telescope so that every time I looked at Mars, Marvin the Martian popped up and threatened to destroy the Earth with an explosive space-modulator. Victor was more than capable of putting together a set of pseudoliving metal insects.\n\nRather, he would have been capable of doing so, if not for the fact that Victor Harrison had been murdered earlier this year.\n\nFor as long as Frank and I were together, I never questioned my actions. I never asked why Marion Dearing wept when she thought nobody could hear. I gave her husband happiness. How could she object to that if she truly loved him?\n\nI saw nothing wrong in fanning the embers of Frank's lust. He wanted to be seduced, pushed over the edge until nothing existed but desire and satisfaction.\n\nFor myself, I knew only joy. I lived for those moments when my body entwined with his, the urgent grunts of his exertions blending with my quiet moans, but there were other pleasures as well. The burn of my muscles when I was out working the farm. Devouring the meals Marion prepared for us.\n\nIn the beginning, the other farmhands tried to flirt with me. I tolerated their overly familiar comments and \"accidental\" touches. Frank wanted others to appreciate what he had, but he was unwilling to share. So when one man tried to take things further, I broke his arm in two places.\n\nI knew I was stronger than the others, but that was the first time I had used my strength against another person. Through that confrontation, I discovered that violence could be just another source of pleasure.\n\nOnly years later, long after I had buried Frank in the dirt, did I begin to recognize what I had done. What I had become.\n\nOnly then did I begin to understand how dangerous I was.\n\nI spent the next hour on my laptop, lost in Porter databases and old research reports. I rarely used the laptop, which might have been why the insects spared it. Magic provided an amazing connection with the Porter network, but even magic couldn't force the outdated hardware to process information at a faster rate.\n\nIn one window, I scrolled through various weapons we had cataloged over the years, looking for ideas to clear the rest of the bugs from Lena's tree. I found nothing that looked like it would destroy metal while leaving her oak intact. The sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who might have worked, having been canonically established as being ineffective on wood, but nobody had ever figured out how to use the controls on the blasted thing.\n\nI was also reading abstracts of every paper and report Victor Harrison had ever filed. I didn't expect to find a description of a secret self-destruct code that would blow up his six-legged creations, but I had hoped to find something that might help us.\n\n\"You're a librarian. Can't you do some sort of keyword search to speed this up?\" Nidhi stood by the window where she could peer out at Lena's tree in the backyard. Lena had returned to the garden, asking to be left alone.\n\n\"Sure, and that would help if he'd filed his paperwork correctly.\" I fought the urge to throw the laptop against the wall. \"Even if he had, the real problem is figuring out what he didn't document. Half the things Victor built could have gotten him kicked out of the Porters.\" He had won twenty grand one year by betting on the outcome of the Super Bowl, a game he had recorded on his illegally-modified VCR a week before it aired.\n\n\"He was as bad as you are in some ways,\" Nidhi said. \"Rules were never a priority. Once you start playing God, nothing else matters. You're incapable of walking away from an idea, no matter how bad an idea it might be.\"\n\nI glanced away, thinking of certain reports and experiments I had failed to file with the Porters. \"I know, I know. 'If you really want to kill a libriomancer, hook a bomb up to a big red button and tell him not to press it.'\"\n\nFor the first time that night, Nidhi almost smiled. \"That sounds like Doctor Karim.\"\n\n\"She knows her clientele,\" I admitted. Regular appointments with a Porter-approved shrink were one rule you didn't get to break. Even Gutenberg had his own personal therapist, though rumor had it she was a hundred and thirty years old and preserved on a heavily fortified computer system, courtesy of a brain download performed using a Richard Morgan cyberpunk novel. \"Doctor Karim's worried about post-traumatic stress after the mess downstate. I'm pretty sure she's also screening me for signs of bipolar disorder.\"\n\n\"A manic period is normal after magic use.\" She looked pointedly at my legs, and I forced myself to stop drumming my heels on the floor. \"Lena has been worried about you. She says you're not sleeping well, and when you do, you have nightmares.\"\n\nI shoved the laptop away and rubbed my eyes. \"What other things has she shared?\"\n\n\"That Doctor Karim has prescribed stronger pills to help you sleep, and you've gone through two refills already.\" She sighed. \"Are you surprised that Lena and I talk about you, Isaac?\"\n\nI was, a little. My relationship with Lena had brought Nidhi Shah into my life in a new and unexpected way, but I found it easier not to think about that when I was with Lena. \"What else does she say?\"\n\n\"That you've been cutting back on your work at the library, and you spend hours locked away in your office. She says you and Gutenberg haven't had the smoothest time working together. No surprise there. Anyone with his centuries of experience will have trouble making allowances for those of us with mere decades.\"\n\n\"I am but an egg,\" I said ruefully. She just stared at me. \"Don't tell me you've never read Stranger in a Strange Land?\"\n\n\"Heinlein?\" She made a sour face. \"No thank you.\"\n\nI had reread several Heinlein titles earlier this summer, trying to get a better framework for our three-way relationship. Unfortunately, the free love fantasies of Heinlein's work hadn't provided much insight into making such a relationship work in the real world. I had tracked down a few nonfiction titles that were more useful, though my boss had given me a very odd look when she saw my interlibrary loan request go through.\n\n\"Those computer chips have to be important,\" Nidhi said. \"Could you use an EMP to wipe them clean? Even a strong enough magnet\u2014\"\n\n\"Magnets won't touch a boson chip.\" I jumped up and began to pace. \"Those things can survive a nuclear blast at close range. We need to lure the bugs out of the tree and destroy them all at once, and we need to do it quickly. You've known Lena longer than I have. How much time do you think she has before she has to return to her tree?\"\n\n\"When her oak is healthy, she can stay away for up to a week if she absolutely has to. But with these things weakening her, I'm not sure.\"\n\nI glared at the laptop \"Why the hell would Victor make something like this?\"\n\n\"The same reason you keep drawing up plans for magic-based space exploration. Victor loved his toys. He loved to create, but he wasn't always good at thinking through the consequences.\"\n\nI thought back to what we had seen that afternoon. \"The man we saw was wearing metal armor of some sort.\" I picked up the decapitated ladybug. \"Imagine a swarm of these things clinging to you.\"\n\n\"They could serve as armor and weapons both,\" Nidhi said, nodding. \"We thought the wendigo's wounds had been made by bullets, but they were roughly the size of the holes these insects drilled through your door and ceiling.\"\n\nI shivered, remembering the insects landing on my body, biting into my skin. I imagined them burrowing deeper, through flesh and bone. \"He's got to be controlling them. When we showed up in Tamarack and began snooping around, he sent his insects to attack Lena's tree.\"\n\n\"How did he know where to find it?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"One question at a time.\" I steepled my fingers and tapped them against my chin. \"Instead of destroying them, what if we overrode their orders?\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nI grabbed the phone and dialed the line for Jeneta Aboderin's camp. I spent the next five minutes explaining that I was her internship supervisor, and yes, this really was a crisis.\n\nThe counselor on the other end sounded about fifteen. \"It's eleven o'clock. Curfew was an hour ago. Everyone is supposed to stay in their cabins until reveille.\"\n\n\"Dammit, man, this is an emergency. We've got a burst water pipe here, and more than two thousand books that have to be bagged and frozen immediately!\"\n\n\"You're\u2026you want to freeze the books?\"\n\n\"I want to save them. Freezing minimizes the damage while we get them shipped off to be vacuum dried.\" I talked over his protests, channeling a particularly obnoxious and arrogant Art History professor from Michigan State University. \"That's just the first step. If we don't get this place dried out quickly, we'll end up with mold, fungus, and possibly even\u2026\" I lowered my voice to a whisper. \"Silverfish.\"\n\nThe counselor stammered an apology and went to fetch Jeneta. He must have been running, because she picked up only three minutes later.\n\n\"Do you have any poems that could draw insects out of a tree?\" I asked the moment I heard her voice.\n\n\"Seriously? You dragged me out of bed for a termite problem?\"\n\n\"I called because I need your help.\"\n\n\"Oh, really?\" I could hear her grin through the phone. \"Before I agree to anything, does this mean you'll take me with you next time you run off to do something interesting? Because if I'm going to be\u2014\"\n\n\"It's Lena,\" I said. \"It's her tree being attacked.\"\n\nJeneta hesitated. \"How serious is this? If you're calling now instead of waiting until morning\u2026\"\n\n\"They're killing her tree. Killing her.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" In that single syllable, I heard fear evict the excitement and bravado of moments before. \"I'll try, but I've never done anything like this before, Isaac. I'm not sure it will work.\"\n\n\"I've seen what you can do, Jeneta. You can handle this. I'll be there as soon as I can.\" When I hung up, I found Nidhi watching me with a flat, expressionless look I remembered from our sessions together. \"You disapprove.\"\n\n\"She's fourteen years old. What happens if she can't control these things? What if they attack her like they did you?\"\n\n\"Do you have a better suggestion?\"\n\nShe turned away. \"If I did, I'd have stopped you.\"\n\n\"I don't like it either,\" I admitted. \"If you see another one of those things, get the hell out of here. I'll leave Smudge in his travel cage. He should give you enough warning if anything goes wrong. Keep him with you, but don't let him get into another scuffle with the bugs.\"\n\nI looked through the window. Lena sat in the archway of the garden, her back to the house. Even from here, I could see tension and weariness in the set of her shoulders, the slump of her head. \"Call me if anything\u2014\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\nJeneta wore an oversized blue sweatshirt with the moose-and-lake logo of Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe on the front. She spent the drive reading, and the soft light from her ereader cast odd shadows over her face.\n\n\"How do you stand it up here?\" she asked. \"There's only one building at camp with a decent Internet connection. The wireless signal doesn't even reach the cafeteria, and the cell reception sucks.\"\n\n\"It's like working with stone knives and bearskins, I know.\" The Triumph's traction spells kicked in as we rounded a curve. It felt like an invisible lead blanket had settled over my body, stopping me from sliding into the door. \"You'd think they were trying to get you to talk to each other instead of spending all your time checking your phones. Total madness, I know. Someone should file a complaint with protective services.\"\n\n\"Your jokes get worse when you're worried.\" She didn't look up from her screen. \"What happened to that rule about no magic for twenty-four hours?\"\n\n\"Your nightmare was last night. In another ten minutes, it will be midnight, and I'll be able to tell Nicola Pallas that I didn't ask you to do anything magical until the following day.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\" She packed whole paragraphs worth of skepticism into those two syllables, as only a teenager could.\n\n\"I'll be right there with you,\" I said.\n\n\"Will you be in my nightmares if the devourers come back?\" she demanded.\n\n\"You can stay with\u2014\" My brain caught up with my mouth at the last second. My house had been attacked once today, and there was no guarantee it wouldn't happen again. Not to mention the creepiness factor of a grown man inviting a fourteen-year-old girl to spend the night. \"With Doctor Shah. If anything happens, she'll be able to help.\"\n\nBy the time we reached the house, Jeneta had donned a cloak of pure confidence. I all but dragged her through the house to show her the headless ladybug and the other melted insects. \"This is what we're dealing with.\"\n\n\"Cool,\" she said, studying the broken bug. She picked up the head and poked the mandibles with her fingertip. \"Nasty, too.\"\n\n\"Can you get them out of Lena's tree?\"\n\nShe tapped her reader on her palm. \"I've got an Emily Dickinson poem I think should do the trick.\"\n\nI stopped to grab a few more books from the library.\n\n\"Whoa, what happened to your back door?\"\n\n\"I'm remodeling.\" I stepped carefully through the broken doorframe, then crossed the yard to the garden. The roses muted the light from the back porch. Within the garden, we found Lena and Nidhi resting on a hammock made of interwoven grapevines. Smudge's portable cage hung from a higher loop of vine.\n\nNidhi's hair was disheveled, and her clothes appeared rumpled. She was sweating, and her shoes and socks had been tossed in among the pumpkins. I stopped in the archway. Nidhi and Lena had been together for years, but I had never walked in on them during or immediately after the act.\n\nI knew Lena's nature. I knew she drew strength from her lovers. It made perfect sense for her to turn to Nidhi for comfort. It was a smart move. But it still felt like I'd been punched in the esophagus.\n\n\"When did you plant grapevines?\" I asked, stammering slightly.\n\n\"Tuesday morning.\" Lena climbed out of the hammock and grabbed my free hand, pulling me in for a quick kiss. \"I'm glad you're back.\"\n\n\"You're really a dryad?\" Jeneta asked.\n\nLena smiled and picked up her bokken. At her touch, a single green bud sprouted from the wood. \"The tree behind us is as much my body as this flesh. And right now, something's trying very hard to kill it.\"\n\n\"No problem.\" Jeneta sat cross-legged on the ground and switched on her ereader. \"Do you have any clover growing around here? The flowers would be perfect, but even if it's not in bloom, it will help.\"\n\n\"Give me a minute.\" Lena walked from the garden. Nidhi followed, leaving her shoes and socks behind.\n\nJeneta watched them go. \"Were they just\u2026?\"\n\n\"Focus on your magic,\" I said.\n\n\"But I thought you and Lena were\u2014\"\n\n\"We are.\"\n\nI waited for her to digest this, and wondered which reaction it would be. Jeff DeYoung's werewolf-style acceptance of whatever steams your sauna, or the confused condemnation I had received from Pete Malki. Pete lived down the street, and had stopped by a couple of weeks ago to tell me he thought my girlfriend might be making time with that new Indian doctor in town. I guess, \"Yeah. Want a drink?\" hadn't been the response he was expecting.\n\nJeneta landed somewhere in the middle. \"That sounds really complicated.\"\n\n\"It can be challenging,\" I admitted.\n\n\"Does that mean you and Doctor Shah are together, too?\"\n\n\"No.\" How many times was I going to have to answer that question? I was half-tempted to make a brochure I could hand out.\n\n\"There's this kid at camp, Terry, who's always talking about sex. He's been hitting on me and the other girls from day one. Like if he's persistent enough, if he cracks enough jokes or gives me enough compliments about my hair, one of us will let him into our pants.\" She pushed her braids back, then shook her head in annoyance. \"If he keeps it up, I'm gonna make him fall in love with a groundhog.\"\n\nLena and Nidhi returned before I could come up with a response to that. Nidhi carried a handful of purple clover.\n\n\"Perfect,\" said Jeneta. \"Clear a spot by the tree and spread them on the ground.\"\n\nLena examined her garden, no doubt studying both the plants on the surface and the roots of her oak below. She finally uprooted four cornstalks and moved them to the side of the garden. The roots immediately began to burrow back into the earth. Nidhi arranged the clover in a small mound.\n\nJeneta waved us back and began to read.\n\n\"There is a flower that Bees prefer\u2014\n\nAnd Butterflies\u2014desire\u2014\n\n[ To gain the Purple Democrat ]\n\nThe Humming Bird\u2014aspire.\"\n\nIt was as if she had transformed into another person. Her voice was slower, more confident, and the cockiness that normally infused her words disappeared. When I looked at the clover, the flowers seemed brighter. The scent was stronger, overpowering the roses until my eyes watered.\n\n\"And Whatsoever Insect pass\u2014\n\n[ A Honey bear away ]\n\n[ Proportioned to his several dearth ]\n\nAnd her\u2014capacity.\"\n\n\"Whatever you're doing, they're reacting to it.\" Lena swallowed, and I could see her skin twitching. Smudge's cage turned into a miniature lantern as a ripple of flame spread across his back.\n\nI double-checked my book, a novel by David Gerrold that featured a liquid nitrogen weapon. The gun itself was too large to pull through the pages, but I should be able to use the same trick I had tried with the microwave. I skimmed a scene which described the weapon in action. I didn't need the gun, just the stream of liquid nitrogen. Hopefully I could do this without freezing my fingers off.\n\nThe first insect emerged from the tree in a puff of sawdust, about ten feet up. Lena raised her bokken. I took a deep breath and readied my book. This appeared to be a bee or wasp of some sort. It crawled down the tree, glassy wings twitching, then flew toward the clover.\n\n\"Her face be rounder than the Moon\n\nAnd ruddier than the Gown.\"\n\nLena's own rounded features were tight with pain. A second bee flew out of the oak, following the first. Lena gripped her weapon by the blade and smashed the pommel down on the closest bee. She gave it a vicious twist, and when she pulled back, only broken scraps of metal remained.\n\nOther insects were making their way out of the tree now. I stepped back, book ready, but they didn't care about us. They were drawn to the clover, entranced by the power of Jeneta's words.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Lena whispered. She stepped closer to the oak and pressed her face against the wood. Her eyes closed, and her fingertips sank into the tree. Her hair wisped forward, clinging to the bark as if static held it in place.\n\nI waited to make sure no more insects would emerge, then aimed the book at the flowers. I dared to hope this might be as simple as it appeared\u2026thus proving that even after close to a decade with the Porters, I still hadn't learned from experience.\n\nThe instant I touched the book's magic, the bugs went berserk. They rose from the pile of clover as frigid air poured forth, and liquid nitrogen splashed into thick white fog. A brass-and-steel grasshopper leaped out of the cloud, wings a blur as it flew toward Jeneta. Lena spun from her oak and snatched up her bokken. She knocked the grasshopper back like a tiny baseball, but more were emerging from the fog, stunned but not yet dead.\n\nJeneta screamed. A metal earwig had landed on her ereader. She flung it away. More insects clung to the screen, digging through glass and plastic as easily as clay. Nidhi grabbed Jeneta's arm and hauled her out of the garden.\n\n\"Whatever works,\" I muttered, aiming the book at Jeneta's reader. Two more metal bugs had joined the earwig on the screen. When the next stream of nitrogen cleared, they looked like tiny frost sculptures. They shattered beneath my shoe, as did the ereader.\n\nI poured more liquid nitrogen onto the clover, then closed the book while Lena destroyed the rest of the insects. Plants and bugs alike crunched beneath her feet.\n\n\"Is that all of them?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes. Thank you.\" Lena stepped back and sagged against her tree. \"Do you think whoever did this will send more?\"\n\n\"Probably.\"\n\nJeneta was crying like a child half her age. Nidhi sat with her in the grass, whispering and running her hands through Jeneta's hair while they rocked back and forth. Jeneta buried her head in Nidhi's shoulder.\n\n\"What happened?\" I asked. \"Was she hurt?\"\n\nBefore Nidhi could answer, Jeneta jumped to her feet and ran at me. \"Why in the name of ever-loving God would you do that to me?\" Her fists slammed into my chest, hard enough to bruise. \"Was this some kind of messed-up test? Is this why you were asking about my nightmares?\"\n\nI stepped back and did my best to fend off her punches. \"Jeneta, I didn't know they'd come after your ereader.\"\n\nShe wiped her sleeve over her eyes and stared at me. \"You think I'm upset about my reader?\"\n\nI looked past her to Nidhi, but she appeared to be as confused as I was. Nidhi stepped closer, hands out like she was approaching a wild animal, and said, \"Can you tell us what happened to you, Jeneta?\"\n\n\"You said you needed me to help kill magic bugs. You never said they were devourers.\"\n\nIt was like she had turned the liquid nitrogen on me, chilling my body from the inside out. \"What do you mean?\"\n\nShe swallowed. \"You didn't hear them?\"\n\n\"What is it you heard, Jeneta?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"They weren't attacking my reader. They were trying to attack me, through the spell.\" She started to shiver again. \"Dragging me under. Climbing through my bones and chewing me up, and all the while she's laughing\u2014\"\n\n\"She?\" I asked sharply.\n\n\"I heard a girl laughing.\" She stared at me. \"It might have been me. I was losing my mind, Isaac. I could feel myself going mad, losing my grip and slipping away.\"\n\n\"I didn't know. I'm so sorry. I never would have asked you to fight them like that.\" Devourers infesting Victor Harrison's experiment. A butchered wendigo and a man who could hide from my magic. What the hell was going on?\n\nJeneta folded her arms, visibly working to stuff the fear back into its bravado-lined cell. \"You owe me a new ereader. Don't even think about trying to pass off some secondhand clunker from last year. I want the newest model, and I want an orange case to go with it.\"\n\n\"Fair enough.\"\n\nJeneta looked at the fog rising off the crushed bugs and flowers. \"What are they doing here?\"\n\nI didn't have an answer. I didn't even know what they were.\n\n\"Why do they hate us?\" Jeneta asked. \"Not just people in general. You and me. They know us, and they're going to keep coming after us until we're dead.\"\n\n\"If they come after anyone, it should be me. I'm the one who pissed them off earlier this year.\" With Lena's help, I had destroyed their\u2026host, for lack of a better word. If the devourers were capable of remembering, then they had good reason for coming after me or Lena, but why target a teenaged girl who knew next to nothing about magic? \"Nidhi, could you take Jeneta to your place?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nJeneta said nothing, but her body sagged with relief. I doubted any of us would sleep well tonight, but she'd be somewhere safe, with a woman who knew how to deal with magic-induced trauma.\n\n\"I'll watch over Lena's tree,\" I said. \"Could you reschedule any appointments you have tomorrow? We need to take a road trip.\"\n\nNidhi folded her arms. \"Nobody has the energy for dramatic lead-ups tonight, Isaac. Get to the point.\"\n\n\"Sorry. We're going to check out Victor Harrison's old house in Columbus, Ohio. I'll need to call Deb DeGeorge down in Detroit first.\"\n\nJeneta perked up slightly. \"The vampire?\"\n\n\"How did you know that?\" Deb had been a libriomancer, and until recently, a good friend. Three months ago, the vampires in Detroit had turned her, hoping to use her as a spy within the Porters. When Gutenberg caught up with her, I had fully expected him to burn her to ash on the spot. Instead, he had begun using Deb as a liaison between Porters and vampires.\n\n\"The right poem can make people babble about all sorts of things,\" Jeneta said sheepishly. \"It was after the Porters found me. They sent a field agent to give me the Orientation to Magic lecture. I wanted the advanced course, and it's possible I might have 'encouraged' her to talk about more than she was supposed to.\"\n\nI waved a hand. \"Deb's not technically a vampire, but yes. The important thing is that she's scared of Gutenberg. Hopefully scared enough to cooperate with just about anything we ask for.\"\n\n\"And you're planning to ask for\u2026?\" Nidhi said impatiently.\n\n\"I'm hoping they'll be able to help us talk to Victor.\"\n\nThe glares began the day Frank brought me home. The whispered insults followed soon after. Tramp. Bitch. Slut. Freak. Over time, the whispers grew louder. Marion Dearing followed me into the woods one night, but I was faster. I vanished into my oak, laughing at our game as I left her wandering lost among the trees in the cold and the dark.\n\nShe tried to kill me two days after I made love to her husband for the first time. I was working in the chicken coop, an oversized jar of Vaseline in one hand. There was supposed to be a snowstorm that night, and I was coating the combs, feet, and wattles of each bird to help prevent frostbite.\n\nI had heard Marion and Frank yelling after dinner. I had never understood why she hated me. I don't think I even realized she hated me, any more than I realized how much Frank and I had hurt her. We belonged to Frank, and we each worked to make him happy. I smiled, remembering the weight of his body atop mine.\n\n\"What are you?\"\n\nI jumped, dropping the Vaseline. I broke the jar's fall with my foot before it hit the floor. \"Hello, Marion. I didn't hear you.\"\n\nMarion might have been pretty once, a long time ago. She was heavier than I was, with thin gray-brown hair and a perpetual frown. Wrinkles spread like cracks from her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her skin was spotted from age, and she dressed in a way that hid her body, making her look like a misshapen sack. She was strong, though. Those thick hands could kill and dress a chicken or birth a calf.\n\nHer eyes were red. She clutched a thick book in one hand, a Bible with a gold cross embossed on the cover. \"You're not human. Where the hell did you come from?\"\n\n\"I don't remember,\" I said automatically.\n\nShe snorted and stepped closer. \"Wandering naked and lost in the woods, with no memory where you'd been. Did the devil send you to us?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Why would you ask\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what you are. Sent to prey on the weakness of men. To seduce and corrupt them. I won't let you have him.\"\n\n\"But he wants me.\" I was simply being honest. I didn't mean to hurt her, but the truth of my words struck her harder than any physical blow.\n\nShe lunged forward, and her balled fist crashed into my jaw. I staggered against the cages. \"Get out of my home, you whore!\"\n\nThe blows didn't hurt as much as I had expected. I raised my arms to protect my face. The next time she swung, I caught her by the wrist and tossed her away as easily as I flung bales of hay for the cows.\n\nMarion bounced to her feet, the Bible forgotten on the wooden floor. Blood welled from scrapes on her face. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Fear flickered past her anger: a quickening of her breath, a widening of her eyes.\n\nI shivered with anticipation. I was enjoying this, almost as much as I had enjoyed making love to Frank. Her fist cracked against my jaw, and my heart pounded harder. I laughed and slapped her arm aside.\n\nShe stepped back. \"What are you?\"\n\nI was too far gone to answer. I buried the ball of my foot in her stomach, kicking her so hard she retched. She crawled away and seized the hoe we used to clean the bottom of the coop. She thrust the end at my face, then swung the blade down. I twitched my foot out of the way, and the hoe gouged the floor.\n\nShe attacked again, more confident now. I allowed her to drive me back, then sidestepped, snatching the hoe with one hand. As my fingers curled around the old wood, I felt\u2026a memory was the closest word I could find to describe it. An ash tree standing in the sun, roots gripping a grassy hillside. The ash that had been cut down and shaped into this tool.\n\nThe handle of the hoe reacted to my touch. Roots sprouted from the end, twining around Marion's hand. She screamed and pulled away, but the roots bound her fingers.\n\nI imagined Frank standing over us, watching us battle for his affection. Seeing proof of how much we loved him. Joy suffused my blood. My delighted laughter filled the barn, and I twisted the handle until the bones of Marion's hand snapped like old sticks in winter.\n\nOnce Nidhi and Jeneta had left, I returned to the house long enough to change into warmer clothes and fetch my sleeping bag from the closet. Even in August, the U.P. could get chilly at night. I stopped in the kitchen and searched the refrigerator, but nothing looked appetizing. I settled for grabbing a handful of vitamins, which I washed down with a Sprite. Even that was enough to make me queasy, but I clenched my stomach until the surges of nausea passed.\n\nI tacked a makeshift curtain over the broken door, then picked a handful of books from the library and a small reading light, slung my laptop case over my shoulder, and returned to the garden. Attempting more magic so soon would be madness\u2014literally, if I wasn't careful\u2014but I couldn't stop thinking. Our enemy knew Lena's tree, and that meant she was vulnerable. She had survived the loss of her tree before, but while she had never spoken much about the experience, I got the sense it had come closer to killing her than she wanted to admit.\n\nShe had transferred herself into this oak. Perhaps it would be wise to do so again, to find a tree deep in the woods that nobody knew about. But would that be enough? The insects had found her here. If they could sniff out the magic of her tree, what was to stop them from tracking her down no matter where she went?\n\nBetter to defend her tree, strengthen it against attack. There were plenty of books that described magical fertilizers and spells to empower plants. With the right combination, I could grow Lena's oak as tall and strong as Jack's beanstalk. Though given the end of Jack's tale, perhaps that wasn't the best plan.\n\nOr I could grow Lena a new tree. Did she have to live within an oak? I could grow a whomping willow from Harry Potter, giving her tree the ability to defend itself. No, Gutenberg had locked Rowling's work. Perhaps one of the ent knockoffs from various fantasy tales, a tree with the ability to uproot itself and move about.\n\nWhat would happen if I planted Yggdrasil, the world tree from Norse mythology? I doubted such a seed would fit through the pages of a book, but if I could break off even the smallest twig for Lena to graft to her oak\u2026\n\n\"Right,\" I muttered to myself. \"Because nobody would notice an enormous tree growing miles into the sky.\" The roots would probably devour most of Copper River. I tried to imagine how much water a tree like that would consume. It could drain half of the Great Lakes, killing off most of the surrounding vegetation in the process.\n\nI set the book aside, jumped up, and paced the length of the garden, doing my best to avoid stepping on the plants. At the rate the pumpkins were growing, we were going to have some amazing jack o'lanterns for Halloween.\n\nWhat if Lena grafted branches from her oak onto multiple trees? Would spreading herself in such a way help to protect her from attack, or would it splinter her mind?\n\nMy thoughts were scampering about with all the frantic energy of Smudge in a rainstorm. I hadn't even begun to consider what Jeneta had done tonight. Why had my magic set things off like a rock to a wasp nest when hers merely lulled them to the flowers? I had watched her work with e-books and print alike, and as far as I could see, there was nothing unusual about her process.\n\nI stopped in mid-step. I had been assuming it was something she was doing, a technique others could learn and master to take advantage of electronic books. What if, instead, it was something inherent in her? What if she was simply more powerful? True sorcerers could shape magic with their minds alone, and if she did possess that kind of power, it might explain why the devourers were drawn to her.\n\nI forced myself to sit down, but couldn't stop my legs from bouncing to an unheard beat. A bad case of post-magic twitchiness was essentially Restless Leg Syndrome for the whole body. Perhaps pleasure reading wasn't the safest idea tonight. After ripping into so many books today, the barriers between myself and these books was dangerously thin.\n\nDeb DeGeorge liked to describe spellcasting as shooting holes in a beer keg filled with magic. Shoot a single bullet through the keg, and you can fill your cup from a steady stream. Fire a few more, and the magic starts flowing faster than you can keep up with it. Blast the whole thing with a shotgun, and you end up soaked in the stuff.\n\nIt was an elegant trap, one which had claimed the sanity of many libriomancers over the years. As you exhausted yourself physically and mentally, your judgment eroded as well, leading you to make mistakes when you could least afford them.\n\nSleep was the best cure. Naturally, insomnia was a common side effect of magic use. As much as I loved being a libriomancer, sometimes magic was a pain in the ass.\n\nI set my books aside, powered up the laptop, and began filling out a requisition form for my shock-gun. Porters were supposed to avoid carrying magical artifacts around long-term, but I thought the circumstances justified keeping the gun until this was over.\n\nMy cell phone went off before I could finish. I glanced at the screen and swore. A call from Jeff DeYoung at this time of night couldn't mean anything good.\n\nHe wasted no time on niceties, and his terseness confirmed my sick sense of foreboding. \"We've got another dead wendigo. Right around the same area. I think this might have been the first one's mate, come to see what happened. Two weres heard the noise and interrupted the son of a bitch, but it was too late to save the wendigo.\"\n\nI straightened. \"Did they see him? Were they able to track where he went?\"\n\n\"Laci didn't see shit,\" Jeff snapped. \"And Hunter died before we could get him to the hospital.\"\n\n\"I'm\u2014\" I bit back the word \"sorry.\" A werewolf wouldn't appreciate empty words. \"I can drive out with a healing potion.\"\n\n\"Laci's got a thick head. She'll be okay. She and Hunter had snuck off for a late-night romp, and weren't expecting anyone to try to kill them. They found the body, then something attacked them from behind. Whatever it was, he was strong. Tossed Laci into a tree, and clubbed Hunter hard enough to crack the boy's skull.\"\n\nI hadn't seen anything to suggest superhuman strength in either of the two figures who had killed the first wendigo.\n\n\"What the hell is wrong with these kids?\" Jeff continued. \"There's no excuse for letting yourself get caught unaware, I don't care how horny you are.\"\n\n\"Did Laci notice any insects by the body? They would have been metal.\"\n\n\"Not that she mentioned, but I'll check when she wakes up.\" He sighed. \"How are you and Lena doing? Neither one of you looked to be in great shape this evening.\"\n\n\"I think whoever killed those wendigos tried to take out Lena's tree. We dealt with it, but she's pretty wiped.\"\n\n\"Any idea who or what we're looking for?\" There was a hunger to his words, an eagerness that made me nervous.\n\n\"We're working on a few things,\" I said carefully.\n\n\"Bad enough to kill those white-furred cannibals in our territory, but now they've killed one of our pack. That makes it personal. You Porters can do whatever you'd like, so long as you stay the hell out of our way.\"\n\nVigilante werewolves. Just what we needed. \"Jeff, this guy tore up two wendigos, tossed a pair of werewolves around like dolls, and has magic I've never seen before.\" Not to mention the devourers. \"This is a bad idea.\"\n\n\"He jumped a pair of dumb kids who weren't expecting trouble. We've hunted these woods for generations. We'll find the bastards.\"\n\n\"Or they'll find you.\" I had no idea how many insects Victor had made. I imagined metal hives hidden in the trees, a cloud of magical bugs descending upon the werewolves.\n\n\"Let 'em.\"\n\n\"You don't even know what you're hunting.\"\n\n\"What in God's name am I supposed to tell Hunter's family, Isaac? Not only are we burying one of our own, now you want us to lock the doors and sit around with our thumbs up our asses, hoping nobody else gets killed while we wait for you Porters to do your thing? All your magic has done so far is show us a shitty snuff film and knock you on your ass.\"\n\nI hated werewolf-style negotiation. \"First of all, bite me,\" I said. \"Second, this is my investigation. One of your pack is dead, and that gives you the right to be involved, but you work with me. Be here tomorrow at nine A.M. We're driving down to Ohio to investigate a lead.\"\n\n\"What lead?\" Jeff snarled.\n\n\"Do we have a deal?\" When he hesitated, I added, \"If these things are half as dangerous as I think they are, you do not want them coming after Tamarack. I'm going to find whoever did this, Jeff. Either be here tomorrow morning, or else stay the hell out of my way.\"\n\nWhen Jeff finally spoke again, he sounded almost cheerful. \"Nine o'clock, you said?\"\n\n\"See you tomorrow.\"\n\nAs long as I was worked up, I went ahead and called Deb to arrange a deal with the vampires. By the time I got off the phone, it was almost two in the morning. I shut down the laptop and bundled it and the books into a plastic garbage bag for protection, crawled into the sleeping bag, and settled against the base of the oak.\n\nLena retained some awareness of what happened outside her tree, though I wasn't sure how much. But she would know I was here, and that was enough.\n\nI awoke with a stiff neck, sore back, and Lena looking down at me with a crooked smile. She showed no sign of pain or weariness from yesterday. Lucky dryad.\n\n\"I need a shower and a change of clothes,\" she announced, grabbing my hand and hauling me to my feet. \"And so do you.\"\n\nThe shower took a bit longer than usual, but it was certainly rejuvenating. By the time we emerged and dressed, I felt almost human again. I filled her in on the call from Jeff, then checked my messages to make sure everything was set for today.\n\nIn exchange for helping us talk to Victor, the vampires wanted either a Shipstone\u2014a battery from Heinlein's work that would power their underground lighting needs for a century\u2014or an official apology from Gutenberg for the incident in Detroit. A message from Nicola Pallas confirmed that the Shipstone was the more feasible choice, and authorized me to take care of it when we finished in Ohio.\n\nMy biggest concern was that the vampires would try to turn the Shipstone into some kind of weapon, but if they were foolish enough to try, they would most likely just blow themselves up. I had stressed that fact repeatedly to Deb on the phone. Even if they succeeded, Gutenberg's automatons should be able to deal with any magic-fueled weapon.\n\nBoth Jeff and Nidhi arrived as I was restocking my books. In addition to my book bag, I had retrieved a brown leather duster from the hall closet. I had lost my old jacket during the troubles earlier this year, but in at least one respect, the new one was even better. This one was fireproof.\n\n\"How's Jeneta doing this morning?\" I asked as I shoved books into the various pockets sewn into the lining, trying to plan out the tools and toys I might need.\n\n\"Frightened and trying not to let it show. She spent the first hour curled up on the couch, teasing Akha with her braids.\"\n\n\"Sounds like she was in good company.\" If anyone could help Jeneta to relax, it was Nidhi's cat. Akha was, in Lena's words, a total attention-slut. She would curl up in your lap and purr until she drooled.\n\n\"Will she be safe at that camp?\"\n\n\"Safer than she'd be with us. Her e-reader was destroyed, and as long as she doesn't do any more magic, there's nothing to attract attention.\" I tucked my microrecorder into a front pocket to make sure we could review everything we learned. It wouldn't be a bad idea to bring along a few potential weapons that would work against the undead, just in case. \"She has Nicola's number as well as mine.\"\n\nNidhi watched me prepare. \"Jeneta was exhausted, but she looked better than you do.\"\n\n\"Sleeping outside isn't as much fun as it used to be.\" I double-checked the safety on the shock-gun, switched it to setting four, and slid it into an outside pocket. I also grabbed books that would allow us to avoid attention and persuade any bystanders to cooperate. The final pocket got a box of Red Hots for Smudge.\n\nNidhi stepped away to greet Lena, leaving me with Jeff. An old-style Bowie knife was strapped to his belt, and he had holstered a revolver on his opposite hip. I doubted either was legal. Werewolves tended not to worry overmuch about things like laws or permits.\n\n\"Nidhi filled me in on those metal bugs,\" he said bluntly. \"She also tells me we're going to talk to the ghost of the guy who made them.\"\n\n\"That doesn't mean one of us is behind this.\"\n\n\"Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it was your man who put the weapon in their hands.\"\n\nI transferred Smudge into his traveling cage, a thin rectangular box with steel mesh walls, which I clipped to a loop on the outside of my jacket. \"If someone kills you, takes your knife, and stabs the first person they see, who's responsible?\"\n\nJeff tightened a fist, deliberately cracking several knuckles. \"A man chooses to carry a weapon, he'd damn well better be strong enough to stop anyone from taking it away from him.\"\n\nThat was when the curtain I had hung over the back door flew aside, and a rush of air passed between Jeff and myself. Jeff staggered back, and a young man in a black trench coat seemed to materialize out of nothingness, perched on the edge of the kitchen counter like a gargoyle with a predilection for goth fashion. He held Jeff's gun in one hand, the Bowie knife in the other.\n\nJeff's upper lip curled back, and he snarled, an incongruously deep-throated sound for a man his apparent age. Lena pulled both of her bokken and started forward.\n\n\"You must be Moon,\" I said hastily, trying to defuse things before they wrecked my place and each other.\n\n\"Sorry, man. I heard you two talking, and I couldn't resist.\" Moon twirled the knife and grinned, black-lined lips pulling back to reveal perfect teeth.\n\n\"He's the other part of my arrangement with the vampires,\" I explained. \"He's Sanguinarius Meyerii. A sparkler. He'll be guarding the house while we're away.\"\n\n\"Moon?\" Jeff's voice remained an octave lower than usual.\n\nMoon laughed. \"Weird name, I know. My parents were old-fashioned Ann Arbor hippies. You should have met my sister, Starshine.\"\n\n\"The weapons?\" I said.\n\n\"Right.\" He handed the knife and gun back to Jeff, then brushed off his coat. He wore a black kilt and a heavy metal T-shirt underneath. \"No hard feelings, old man?\"\n\n\"This is who they sent? A child half stoned out of his mind?\" Jeff sniffed derisively. \"I can smell the pot on his breath.\"\n\n\"Only because I need ten times as much as I used to,\" he complained. \"Do you have any idea how long it takes to prep that stuff? First I've got to brew it into blood tea just so I can metabolize it, and by then you've boiled off half its potency. Not to mention the work I had to do to find an anticoagulant that didn't taste like filtered diarrhea. And then the stuff barely gives me a buzz. I just drink it to take the edge off the day, you know?\" He winked at Jeff. \"You look like you could use a hit yourself, gramps.\"\n\n\"Not today,\" I said, cutting in before they could go any further. \"Moon, I'm not sure how much they told you downstate, but the people we're hunting killed a werewolf last night and sent another to the hospital.\"\n\n\"Shit.\" Moon sobered at once. \"Sorry, man. I didn't know.\"\n\n\"Just keep an eye on the place. Call me if anything happens.\"\n\nMoon gave me a two-fingered salute. \"Cub Scout's honor.\"\n\nHaving spent six years in scouting as a kid, somehow that didn't make me feel better.\n\nI spent much of the drive asleep in the back of Nidhi's car. I awoke with my mouth dry and my shoulder damp from drool. Wind swirled through Jeff's open window, and a Hindi pop song was playing softly on the satellite radio.\n\nI rubbed my eyes, then wiped my face on my sleeve. It was strange not being able to understand the words of the song. Normally, the telepathic fish in my head, courtesy of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, translated other languages automatically. But there was no mind in this case, no thoughts for the fish to latch onto. Just cold, dead electronics.\n\n\"Where are we?\" I asked.\n\n\"We'll be leaving Michigan in about fifteen minutes,\" said Nidhi.\n\nAccording to the dashboard clock, I had slept well into the afternoon. On the bright side, I had missed crossing the Mackinac Bridge. Strange how that bridge\u2014particularly the fear of plummeting off of that bridge\u2014disturbed me more than the idea of meeting up with vampires to talk to a dead man.\n\nI checked the back window and spotted Lena following on her motorcycle. She could have joined us in the car, but had chosen to let me sprawl out and nap in the back seat. Or maybe she just wanted an excuse to ride the bike. Though the idea of taking that thing over the Bridge would have given me nightmares.\n\nNidhi turned down the volume. \"We picked up lunch for you.\"\n\nWordlessly, Jeff passed a paper sack into the back seat. Neither cold fries nor the greasy burger smelled the least bit appealing, but I managed to force them down without puking, which was a good sign. Between the food and the sleep, by the time we reached Columbus, I felt almost human.\n\nWe made our way around the edge of the city to a street with a row of brown townhouses on one side and a public park on the other. The houses looked identical to me, but Nidhi didn't hesitate. As far as I knew, she had been here only once before, when she was called down to help the Porters examine the scene of Victor's death.\n\nA blue minivan with a dented door sat in the driveway, and a sedan with dark-tinted windows was parked across the street. We pulled in behind the sedan. I heard the growling of Lena's bike as she parked behind us. For one very tense moment, I thought the sound had come from Jeff.\n\nI grabbed Smudge's traveling cage, slipped on my jacket, and waited for Nidhi to pop the trunk so I could fetch my book bag as well. I didn't need a fire-spider to know what was in that sedan. My gut churned with the instinctive need to flee. The smell of death and rot fouled the air as we approached.\n\nDeb DeGeorge was first out of the car. While not a true vampire, she was no longer human, either. She was Muscavore Wallacea, a so-called child of Renfield. Like the character from Stoker's novel, she consumed the lives of smaller creatures, which made her stronger. Faster. Better. A magical six-million-dollar, bug-eating woman.\n\nShe looked like hell.\n\nDeb had lost at least twenty pounds since the last time I saw her, accentuating the bones of her skull and face. Her skin was pale, and her short hair was noticeably thinner. Her bloodshot eyes flitted toward Smudge.\n\nI reached into the pocket with my shock-gun. \"Don't even think about it.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't dream of hurting Smudge!\" she protested, but I could see the hunger in her eyes. She barely noticed my companions. By now, her condition would have stripped her of her own magical abilities, but if she wanted to, she could rip open Smudge's cage and snatch him away before I could move. Which was, no doubt, why red flame had begun to ripple over Smudge's body.\n\nDeb sighed. \"Hon, if the two of you are this jumpy around me, you're really not going to like Nicholas.\"\n\nI retreated a step as she opened the back door of the sedan. Three more vampires emerged. Two guards gripped the arms of the third, a handcuffed figure with a heavy blanket cloaking his head and upper body.\n\nOne guard, a woman built like a snowplow, had a set of sharpened wooden stakes strapped to her thigh. Her choice of weapon meant Nicholas was one of the vampires who could be killed by wooden stakes, and in all likelihood, she wasn't. The second guard was smaller, almost classically nerdy, save for the semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder. His ears were slightly pointed, and the lumpy bone structure of his face made his condition obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. His tortoiseshell glasses perched on a lump at the bridge of his nose.\n\nDeb nodded to both in turn. \"Sarah and Rook have the pleasure of being Nicholas' keepers today.\"\n\nEither of them could probably kill me between one heartbeat and the next, but it was Nicholas who made me want to get back in Nidhi's car and put a few hundred miles between us. Beneath the hood of his blanket, he made Deb look positively healthy. Yellow-and-purple blotches covered his white skin like bruises. His lips made me think of bloated purple leeches, and his limp brown hair hung past his eyes like greasy seaweed.\n\nSmudge was a tiny furnace in his cage, glowing like an eight-legged coal in a barbeque. I saw Lena's grip tighten around her bokken. A low growl emerged from Jeff's throat. I don't know if he was even aware of it.\n\nBlood oozed from cracks in Nicolas' lips as he smiled, revealing incongruously white teeth, clean and straight and perfect. I got the sense that he not only knew exactly how he was making the rest of us feel, he was enjoying it.\n\n\"This is the ghost-talker?\" I asked.\n\n\"Strongest one in the Midwest,\" Deb confirmed. \"They've got a prettier one down in Dallas, but you said you were in a hurry.\"\n\nNicholas stepped toward me, dragging his guards like a dog straining at the leash. Up close, his breath smelled of rotted meat. A silver chain was locked around his neck like a collar, and a smoldering wooden cross hung over his flannel shirt. Both guards clutched him by the arms, their fingers digging deeply enough to make a mortal man scream in pain.\n\nI had been hoping for a nice Sanguinarius Meadus from the Vampire Academy novels. I had no idea what species Nicholas was. Possibly an experiment, fed and transfused with blood from other species, mutated into a tool and a weapon.\n\nOver the centuries, vampires had deliberately worked to preserve as many subspecies as possible. Even the most monstrous and dangerous were kept around, locked away from \"civilized\" vampire society on the off chance their powers might one day be needed. I wondered how long it had been since Nicholas had seen the sun, or been given any kind of freedom.\n\n\"You think we should head inside before someone calls the cops?\" Lena suggested.\n\n\"Nobody will call the police,\" said the woman with the stakes, her voice low and dreamlike. \"The neighbors will pay no attention, and the family inside is sleeping.\"\n\n\"How long have you held them in a trance?\" asked Nidhi. \"Did you check to make sure they were okay?\"\n\nSarah's face crinkled in confusion.\n\n\"They should be fine,\" I said softly. \"I read that research paper, too. 'In the first twenty-four hours, side effects of magically-induced sleep were rare. Of the observed effects, the most common was bedwetting.' Better that the family has to do an extra load of laundry than someone starts taking potshots at us for breaking and entering.\"\n\n\"When did you read that?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"At dinner last week. You were making enchiladas. You had the papers on your coffee table.\" I gave her a halfhearted shrug. The study had been done four years ago by a pair of Porter researchers, a continuation of a project started in Hungary. \"I see words, I read them.\"\n\n\"Then you know one person in that study ended up in a coma for a week.\"\n\n\"And the longer we argue about this, the longer those people stay asleep.\" Deb pulled a tin from her back pocket, popped the lid, and snatched a live snail from inside. She crunched it down, shell and all. When she noticed me staring, she extended the tin and grinned. \"Help yourself.\"\n\nI grimaced, and my stomach threatened to evict my lunch. Deb just laughed and shoved the snails back into her pocket.\n\nShe had been a friend once. I wasn't sure what we were now. Her laugh was sharper, honed by bitterness and cruelty. The last time she was at my house, she tried to kill me with a Tommy gun, but she had the decency to feel bad about it afterward.\n\n\"Do you miss it?\" I asked as we walked up the driveway. \"Being human?\"\n\nShe sighed, knowing exactly what I wasn't asking. Do you miss the magic? \"As long as I stay fed, I feel stronger and healthier than I ever have. Don't let the skin condition fool you. And there are plenty of other advantages.\" She cocked her head and gave me an appraising stare. \"You might even appreciate the lifestyle.\"\n\nGive up magic and start a lifelong diet that would make a Klingon puke? \"I don't think so.\"\n\nShe smiled slightly. \"Isaac, do you remember the moment you first realized you were mortal? That no matter what happened, you would never live long enough to read every book you wanted to read? That you'd die having accomplished only a fraction of your goals?\"\n\nI had been eighteen and fresh out of high school. Ray Walker had taken me to New York to meet with a Porter who worked for one of the big publishers. It was the first time I truly understood just how many books a single publisher put out every year.\n\nI had known intellectually that nobody could ever hope to read or learn everything, but that was the moment I did the math and started to understand how many books there were in the world, and how many more were being written every day. For every book I explored, there were literally hundreds I would never have the chance to know. Likewise, for each bit of magic I mastered, an infinite number of possibilities went unexplored.\n\n\"What would you give for an extra century?\" Deb asked, giving me a knowing look. \"Time to read and learn twice as much as you could in this life?\"\n\nTrade my magic for greater knowledge. \"Is that how they convinced you to let them turn you?\"\n\n\"Let's just say their form of persuasion was more aggressive than mine.\" She chuckled bitterly and climbed the concrete steps to the front door. A wrought-iron railing bordered the small porch, and a sunflower-decorated sign welcomed us to the Sanchez home. Deb tried the doorknob, which was locked. She didn't appear to exert any effort, but the doorframe suddenly splintered inward. \"There are other benefits, too.\"\n\nThe house smelled like dog fur and old Play-Doh. I stepped cautiously onto the brown plush carpet of a cramped family room. A thirty-something Hispanic man was asleep on the couch. A three-legged black Lab sprawled on the floor in front of him. On the TV, two New York cops interrogated a drug addict. A birdcage hung by the window. Inside, a blue-and-white parakeet lay with his head in his seed dish.\n\nIt was creepy.\n\nNicholas doffed his blanket and strode through the room, pulling the rest of us in his wake. He moved so smoothly he appeared to float over the floor. He stopped abruptly, reaching out to touch a patch of wall on the arched entryway that connected the family room to the kitchen. \"Victor Harrison,\" he murmured, as if to himself. \"He was afraid.\"\n\nI bit back an unexpected surge of anger. Victor had been afraid because a gang of vampires had broken into his home to kill him. Fresh paint and new carpeting hid the signs of violence, but they couldn't erase what had happened here. I wondered how much the Sanchez family knew about the former owner. \"Can you talk to him?\"\n\n\"Given time,\" Nicholas said lazily.\n\nOn another day, I would have been fascinated to study a ghost-talker's magic up close. Some of the bitterest feuds among Porter researchers revolved around the matter of ghosts. There was no question that, in certain cases, something lingered on after death\u2026but was it truly the spirit of the departed?\n\nOne school of thought argued that ghosts were nothing but memories given form by survivors. Living humans created ghosts through the mourning process, much as readers provided the belief libriomancers used for our magic. That theory had been mostly debunked, as there were documented cases of ghosts providing information the survivors shouldn't have known.\n\nOthers believed that people with magical powers of their own could leave behind an \"impression\" of themselves, a kind of magical shadow. Unfortunately, the research had never found any statistically significant correlation between reports of ghosts and magical ability.\n\nAnd then there was the theory that so-called mediums actually used a form of temporal projection, mentally reaching backward through time to read the minds of the deceased before they died. Given what I had seen and done yesterday in the woods, this line of thought held possibilities.\n\n\"How much time?\" I asked.\n\nNicholas waved a hand. His skin reminded me of mildew-damaged paper.\n\nJeff's upper lip curled back in distaste. \"This place smells like blood, bleach, dog piss, and too many damn people.\"\n\n\"Do any of those people smell like the man from the woods?\" Nidhi asked. \"If Victor left something behind, anyone from this family might have found it.\"\n\n\"I can't say for sure in this form.\" From the front pocket of his jeans, Jeff tugged out a worn leather pouch. He picked at the knotted cord, then peeled back the pouch to reveal an object wrapped in black velvet. \"Hold this.\"\n\nIt was heavy and oblong, solid as stone beneath the wrap. I started to peek beneath the layers.\n\n\"Not yet, dammit.\" Jeff finished unbuttoning his shirt and tossed it onto the floor. He kicked off his shoes, then unbuckled his belt. \"The youngsters think it's cool to keep their clothes on for the change, to burst through the seams like they do in the movies. The shredded shirt and jeans look is always in style, but then they figure out that not only are their parents going to make them pay for a new wardrobe, but shapeshifting in your clothes hurts. You ever tried to rip a pair of jeans with your bare hands? I've seen kids howling in pain, stuck between forms and desperately chewing at their own crotch, trying to tear out a stuck zipper.\"\n\nAge-spotted skin and tufts of white hair couldn't conceal the lean strength in his chest and arms. And legs, for that matter. He kicked his shoes and jeans aside and dropped to all fours. Blue boxer shorts followed next.\n\n\"You brought me a werewolf strip show?\" Deb smirked. \"But I didn't get you anything.\"\n\n\"Now, if you wouldn't mind,\" said Jeff.\n\nI tugged the wrappings loose. Silver light shone from between the layers. I slid the rest free to reveal a long, gleaming crystal attached to a loop of black leather. \"Jeff, is this what I think it is?\"\n\n\"Yah.\" Black fur poked through Jeff's skin. The sound of popping bones and tearing muscle made me wince. His next words were low and gravelly. \"Kristen Britain, I think.\"\n\n\"Green Rider, or one of the sequels. Dammit, Jeff, do you know how much trouble you could get in for this?\" I was holding a moonstone. A muna'riel, to be precise. Britain's Eletians, essentially an elven race, collected the light of the silver moon in these stones. The purity of the muna'riel made it an exceptional lantern, and the light tended to be off-putting to evil, which might explain why Nicholas was scowling at me. \"I thought these things only worked for Eletians. Though I suppose if you pulled it from a scene in which it was already lit, you might be able to lock it into that state\u2026\"\n\n\"Don't ask me. I never read the book.\"\n\nI could barely understand his words anymore. I didn't ask him which libriomancer had reached into Britain's books to create the stone, nor what Jeff had paid for it. The Porters kept a close eye on black-market magic, but they couldn't catch everything.\n\nJeff snatched the crystal from me and looped it over his head. His fingers were curled and knotted. He was panting hard. Pointed teeth dug into his lip. He grabbed his hand and bent the fingers back with a grunt of pain. The knuckles cracked so loudly I thought he had broken his bones, and he gasped. He did the same to the other hand. His fingers finally shrank into furred, clawed toes.\n\n\"Damned arthritis.\" Whatever else he might have said was lost as he finished his transformation into a lean, black-furred wolf. He lowered his gray-dusted muzzle to the floor and sniffed. His lips peeled back in a low growl.\n\n\"Oh, cool,\" I said.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"I can understand him.\" Jeff wasn't speaking a true language, but the fish in my head could pick up the thoughts behind his vocalizations. \"He doesn't think the family was involved, but whoever killed those wendigos was here. The scent is too faint for it to be someone who lived here.\"\n\nJeff padded into the kitchen. Dirty dishes and pans filled the sink. Others were stacked in a wire rack to one side. A toddler and his mother slept at a round table, a half-eaten jar of applesauce between them. The toddler lay with his head on the tray, black hair full of food. Nidhi stroked the hair back from his face and used a napkin to wipe a chunk of applesauce from the side of his nose.\n\n\"One of ours died here,\" Nicholas said, brushing his fingertips over the edge of the sink. He breathed deeply, like he was sniffing a fine wine. \"She cried out in pain and anger.\"\n\n\"Anyone else find this guy creepy as hell?\" Lena asked in a low voice.\n\nNidhi, Deb, and I raised our hands. I glanced at Nicholas' guards. With a shrug, Sarah raised her hand as well.\n\nI had read the reports of Victor's murder. He hadn't died without a fight. His home was well-protected, and his tricks had taken several of his would-be killers with him. A long footnote on page three had proposed several explanations for the pair of fangs found in the garbage disposal, and recommended destroying the disposal altogether rather than attempting to study its magic. I swallowed and turned away. \"We need to talk to him.\"\n\n\"Patience, Isaac.\" Nicholas closed his eyes and inhaled. His smile grew. \"The instinct to survive is so strong. Stronger than love. Stronger than fear. Threaten a man's life, and you push him to truly live.\"\n\n\"That's why you agreed to do this, isn't it?\" Nidhi asked. \"To remember what life feels like. To touch what you lost.\"\n\nThe skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled, and for a moment his smile flickered. The amusement snapped back into place an instant later, along with a dismissive sneer. \"You expect me to mourn my lost humanity? To weep for the forgotten days when I scurried about as one of you, an insect scavenging in the dirt?\"\n\nDeb cleared her throat. \"Dr. Shah, please don't play mind games with the sociopathic ghost-talker.\"\n\n\"Victor fought well,\" Nicholas said. \"But he soon realized there were too many for him to defeat. That understanding broke his will. It marked the beginning of his death.\"\n\n\"We didn't bring you here to give you a peep show into Victor's last moments,\" I said tightly.\n\n\"No, you brought me because you need my help.\" Nicholas turned. \"There are too many dead. I have to find the moment the life left his body. Only then will he speak to me.\" He scowled and crossed through the family room, then climbed the steps to the second floor. A narrow hallway separated two bedrooms on the left from the stairs and bathroom on the right. The right side of Nicholas' face twitched as he looked about, his eyes tightening as if he could see through the walls. A moment later, he relaxed. \"Ah, yes. Victor retreated to his workshop.\"\n\nNicholas stepped down the hall and opened a door into a pink-painted bedroom. A rainbow-colored ceiling fan spun lazily overhead.\n\n\"Watch your step,\" said Lena.\n\nA young girl had stripped the blankets and pillows from her bed, turning them into a makeshift fort. She lay sleeping, a yellow pony clutched in one hand. From the array of toys spread through the room, it looked like the Jedi and the My Little Ponies had been fighting an army of Barbies and LEGO figures.\n\n\"Victor kills two more vampires here,\" said Nicholas. \"Metal creatures bore through the heart of the first, reducing him to ash, but Victor is injured. The life and will drain from his body with every step. Another vampire follows him into this room.\" Nicholas stepped to the side, as if clearing a path for the phantom assailant. \"Victor snaps his fingers, and the overhead light flickers. The vampire's skin begins to sizzle.\"\n\n\"Ultraviolet bulbs,\" I guessed. They would have burned many species of vampire as effectively as sunlight. \"Tell me about the metal creatures. How was Victor controlling them? Where did they come from, and how many were there?\"\n\nNicholas ignored me. \"Another enters through the window. His skin sparkles in the light. He smashes Victor into the wall. Pain and confusion flood Victor's senses. He is angry. Frightened. He isn't ready for death. There's so much yet to do.\"\n\n\"That sounds like Victor,\" Nidhi said quietly.\n\nNicholas whirled. \"Be silent!\"\n\nNidhi jumped. Both guards moved in, and Jeff's hackles rose, but I didn't think Nicholas was talking to us. His attention was elsewhere, and he sounded genuinely angry.\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Death attracts death. The ghosts are pulled to this place. They clamor like children.\"\n\nI looked to Deb, hoping she would know whether this was normal behavior or a sign that our ghost-talker was about to snap. She spread her hands and shrugged.\n\n\"Victor's thoughts tunnel inward.\" Nicholas' words grew louder. \"Why him? Why now? He doesn't want to die alone.\"\n\n\"Enough ghouling.\" Deb swatted him on the back of the head like he was a misbehaving puppy. \"Can you talk to the dead guy or not?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Nicholas said grudgingly.\n\n\"Ask him about the insects,\" I said.\n\nNicholas mumbled to himself, repeating the questions in another tongue. An old form of French, if I wasn't mistaken. \"He reverse-engineered one of Gutenberg's automatons.\"\n\nDeb was the first to recover her voice. \"He did what?\"\n\n\"It's all about miniaturization and user interface these days,\" Nicholas said. The intonation was Victor's. It was spooky. \"Microscopic spells laser-etched onto the inner workings, telepathic interface, and as much memory and storage as I could give them.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked.\n\n\"To search out lost and forgotten magic. I sent six prototype scouts into the world. One was eaten by a bass. Another was struck by a locomotive. Three survived to report back, sharing their findings with the queen, and through her, with me.\"\n\n\"A bass?\" I thought back to the damage they had done to Lena's tree. \"That shouldn't have stopped these things.\"\n\n\"I could have ordered it to work free, but that would have hurt the fish.\"\n\nIt was such a Victor thing to say, I couldn't help but smile. \"What about the sixth?\"\n\n\"Lost overseas.\" He shuddered, then stared blankly at the empty air where Victor had died.\n\n\"Tell us about the queen,\" I said.\n\nNicholas relayed the question. \"A cicada, three inches long, with carbon fiber wings and a titanium exoskeleton. A redundant twin-chip brain. The eyes were tiny black pearls. She was magnificent, Isaac. I wish I'd been able to show her off. You would have loved her.\"\n\n\"The queen controls the other insects?\" I asked.\n\n\"The song of the cicada can reach 120 decibels. My queen's commands are silent to our ears, but her children can hear her even from the far side of the world.\"\n\n\"What did you tell her as you were dying?\" asked Nidhi.\n\nNicholas stepped back and seemed to come back to himself. \"Victor cupped her in his hands.\" He brought his own hands together, mimicking Victor's final seconds. \"Past and present flooded together as the barriers of memory crumbled. In his mind, he was a child once more. He was in pain, but didn't remember where it had come from. He knew only that he wanted comfort. Like a child, he called out.\"\n\n\"He wanted family,\" Nidhi whispered, her words clipped. Her hands tightened into fists.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Nicholas. \"Victor sent the queen to fetch his father.\"\n\nFrank Dearing died in late autumn, after the trees had shed their leaves, but before the snow arrived to freeze the earth.\n\nI was asleep in my oak when he died. The shock felt as though lightning had split my tree, blackening the exposed heartwood. I ran to the house as quickly as I could, but even before I reached the bedroom, I knew he was gone.\n\nHe looked little like the man I loved. His eyes were open, and his lips were pale and dry. He had been sleeping in red long johns, which smelled of urine. His upper body was bare, and the skin on his chest was unnaturally pale.\n\nI scooped him into my arms. His limbs hung limp. Even his skin sagged loosely, emphasizing the bones beneath.\n\nMy thoughts were clouded as if I had been drinking, though I had spent much of the night in my oak, and time in my tree usually cleansed alcohol and its effects from my body. I didn't know what to do. I had no other friends, nor had I ever wanted or needed any. Frank was my world.\n\nI acted on instinct, carrying him from the house. I wove carefully through the trees, making sure not a single branch snagged my lover's hair or scratched his skin. I hated the coolness of his body against me. My tears dripped onto his chest.\n\nWhen I reached my oak, my first impulse was to bring him into the tree with me and never emerge, but that felt wrong. Disrespectful and wasteful.\n\nI knew human burial customs, but I couldn't let Frank be locked away in a box, buried forever in the earth while the ex-wife who had turned her back on him waited impatiently to scavenge through his belongings.\n\nI rested him gently at the base of my tree and drew a blanket of leaves over his body. Only then did I retreat into my tree, where I could feel his weight pressing down on my roots.\n\nThis was proper. This was love and respect for the dead.\n\nI reached deeper into the wood of my oak. The roots curled inward, digging through the cold, hard dirt to peel open the earth. Other roots eased Frank into the newly dug hole, curling around him like a blanket and sliding him closer to the taproot.\n\nFrank and I had been together for so many years. I couldn't lose him. I wouldn't. His body would sustain my tree, becoming part of me and giving me the strength to survive his loss.\n\nI might have been the only one in the room who understood Nidhi's curses, the Gujarati words she spat so quickly I could barely keep up.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" I said. \"Victor's insects went to find his father. How do we get from that to killing wendigos and attacking Lena's tree?\"\n\nNidhi watched the sleeping girl, her face unreadable. \"Does your family know about your abilities, Isaac?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"My brother walked in on me once while I was practicing pulling coins from Treasure Island, but I don't think he saw anything.\"\n\nDeb's lips pursed like she had eaten something sour. \"My family doesn't, but the Porters cost me a fianc\u00e9 about fifteen years back.\"\n\n\"I didn't know that,\" I said.\n\n\"You don't know everything about me, hon.\"\n\n\"Victor's father is a monster.\" Nidhi turned to face us. \"August Harrison beat his wife for years. That lasted until Victor was eleven years old. Two days after August broke his wife's nose, Victor was watching through the window as his father mowed the lawn. He enchanted the family car, which smashed through the garage door and tore across the yard. August tried to get away, but he wasn't fast enough. The car broke his femur. He spent more than a month in traction.\"\n\nI gave a low, soft whistle. Victor had always seemed so pleasant and easygoing, with half his attention permanently lost in his work. \"And that's the guy he wanted when he was dying?\"\n\n\"Victor's mother died eight years ago,\" said Nidhi. \"He had no siblings, no spouse. August Harrison was the only family he had left. And their relationship was\u2026complex.\"\n\nJeff snarled. \"Doesn't sound complex to me. Rip the bastard's throat out and be done with it.\" I relayed his comment for the others.\n\n\"When August finally returned from the hospital, he acted like he had changed,\" Nidhi continued. \"He apologized to his wife and son, and promised to make things better. Two days later, he took Victor out to dinner, bought him several new toys, and asked Victor to teach him magic.\"\n\n\"Power and control,\" Lena said softly.\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Nidhi. \"August used violence to control his family, but that was only one tactic of many. He threatened Victor's mother to control his son, and threatened the son to control the mother. He kept tight rein over the finances and their social connections, making them dependent upon him for everything. Magic would have been one more weapon in his arsenal. And Victor was a child. He loved his father. For that reason, and because he thought it would appease August's temper, Victor tried to do as his father had asked.\"\n\n\"An eleven-year-old trying to teach a grown man magic?\" That couldn't have ended well. Magical ability almost always manifested during childhood or adolescence. If August had the slightest potential for magic, it would have shown up long before then. Victor had been untrained. He wouldn't have known how he had controlled the car, let alone how to impart that understanding to others.\n\n\"He couldn't do it,\" Nidhi said. \"Every failure enraged August further. He accused Victor of lying, of deliberately keeping his secrets to himself. He never again laid a finger on his wife, but he beat Victor three more times. The third time, Victor fought back.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nHer lips twitched. \"Do you remember Teddy Ruxpin?\"\n\n\"Sure. My grandparents got me one when I was a kid. Stupid thing gave me nightmares.\" I stopped when I realized where she was going with this. \"Victor attacked his father with a talking teddy bear? All it did was move its eyes and mouth while it played cassette tapes.\"\n\n\"Not when Victor was done with it,\" Nidhi said. \"That teddy bear climbed onto the mantel, leaped out, and garroted August with a length of mint dental floss. They left him unconscious on the floor.\"\n\n\"Why would Victor reach out to him?\" Lena shook her head in disbelief.\n\n\"Death is rarely rational,\" Nicholas said absently. He appeared far more interested in the dead than the living.\n\nI couldn't hold Victor's dying mistake against him. I just hoped we would be able to fix that mistake before August Harrison did any further damage. \"Why didn't the Porters wipe August's memories?\"\n\n\"In the beginning, they didn't realize how much he had seen,\" said Nidhi. \"Victor refused to talk about the abuse. His parents told the Porters they thought Victor had been playing in the car, and the whole thing was an unfortunate accident. As far as we knew, neither of them suspected anything magical. We didn't learn the truth until months later, when Victor told us how his father had cowed the family into silence. The Porters visited August Harrison and did their best to erase his knowledge.\"\n\n\"That obviously didn't work,\" I said bitterly.\n\n\"It did for a time.\" Nidhi sighed. \"Victor was never as careful with magic as he should have been. Over the years, August must have seen enough to piece the truth back together.\"\n\nMy parents and I hadn't always gotten along, but I couldn't imagine growing up as Victor had. I knew he had done time as a field agent, but I had never been able to imagine him facing off against monsters or magic-wielders gone bad. Now I understood. Monsters wouldn't scare a man who had grown up with one.\n\n\"If August has no magic, how does he control the insects?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Nicholas\u2014Victor\u2014said something about a telepathic interface.\" August couldn't have built the insects, any more than he could have pulled my shock-gun from its book. But once I made that gun, anyone could point and shoot. Likewise, if the queen was telepathic, August didn't need magic. \"We know he has the queen. Who was the libriomancer with him?\"\n\n\"August Harrison had no friends among the Porters,\" Nidhi said. \"The few people who knew of him felt nothing but contempt.\"\n\n\"What happens if the queen dies?\" asked Deb. \"Do the rest of the bugs drop dead, or do they freak out and go after anything that moves?\" When nobody answered, she punched Nicholas on the shoulder. \"That was your cue to ask the dead guy.\"\n\nNicholas scowled, but turned back toward the place where Victor had died. \"Victor isn't certain what will happen if the queen is killed. Her loss would stop them from breeding or evolving, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Breeding?\" Three of us spoke at once.\n\n\"Victor used a fractal matrix for the core spells, allowing the queen's magic to be passed on.\" His eyes crinkled with amusement. \"The insects aren't the true danger. Victor says you should be more concerned about the knowledge they could hold. They were designed to interface with his personal computer network, to better share their findings.\"\n\nI sat down on the undersized pink desk chair and stared at the wall where Victor's backup server had once sat. He had disguised the machine as a potted cactus. I remembered the first time I sensed the power coming from Victor's system, and his mischievous smile as he watched me try to figure out what I was looking at.\n\nJeff cocked his head and let out a sharp grunt, somewhere between a bark and a growl. Of us all, he was the only one who wouldn't understand the implications.\n\nI had no idea what a fractal matrix was, but that was the least of our problems. \"Victor Harrison designed most of the security for the Porter network.\" Anyone else who tried to hack our database would be lucky to survive in their natural shape, but if Victor had programmed his pets to avoid such traps, and if they had access to his system and software\u2026\n\n\"August Harrison could have everything,\" Nidhi whispered. \"Personnel records. Histories.\"\n\n\"Research reports.\" My reports. \"Oh, God.\"\n\n\"What's wrong?\" Lena asked.\n\nI swallowed to keep from throwing up. In my mind, I was back in the woods, standing over the broken body of the murdered wendigo. My throat felt like it had turned to stone.\n\nLena touched my arm. \"Isaac?\"\n\n\"He wanted their skins,\" I whispered. \"That's why August had to butcher them while they were alive. Wendigos revert to human form when they die, and he needed the monster. He wanted to take their power. Their strength.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Because I wrote the paper explaining how to do it.\"\n\nThey were all staring at me. \"Explain,\" Jeff snarled.\n\nEight years ago, I had never met a nonhuman. Ray had told me stories of vampires and werewolves, but they weren't real. Not yet. \"This was when I first started training with Ray Walker down in East Lansing. We were talking about the nature of magical creatures.\"\n\nI had come dangerously close to failing out of my first semester at MSU. I hadn't cared about my introductory courses. Why waste my time in a lecture hall when I could be studying magic? My textbooks sat unopened while I tore through magical theory and history. I skipped labwork in order to practice using my own powers.\n\n\"Libriomancy is an extrinsic magic. I use books to pull magic into myself before I can manipulate that magic. Werewolves and vampires use intrinsic magic. Your bodies use that energy automatically. You can't control the process any more than I can consciously manufacture white blood cells. We've known for centuries that intrinsic and extrinsic magic couldn't exist in the same person. It's why Deb lost her libriomancy when she changed.\"\n\n\"Get to the point,\" Deb said.\n\n\"Back in the 1920s, a group of Porters were searching for a way to use intrinsic magic without losing their other abilities. They\u2026they started by investigating werewolves.\"\n\nJeff's lips pulled back, and his hackles were up again.\n\n\"Werewolves show up in folktales throughout the world,\" I said. \"Armenian stories talk of God punishing women by wrapping them in cursed wolf pelts. The women are human during the day, but monsters at night, murdering and feasting on their loved ones. Other cultures tell of skin-walkers, humans who take on the power of wolves and other beasts by donning their fur. The \u00dalfhednar of Norway dressed in wolfskins and were said to be all but unstoppable. Countless fairy tales talk of enchanted belts that transform the unsuspecting into monsters.\"\n\nI was stalling, presenting background information instead of jumping to the heart of my confession. Nidhi knew it, too. I could tell from the crease between her eyebrows.\n\n\"They experimented to see if werewolf skins retained their magic, and if that intrinsic magic from\u2026from freshly harvested samples\u2026could be transferred to human beings.\"\n\nJeff lunged at me, but Lena moved just as fast. She kicked him in the side, and his jaws clacked shut, missing me by inches. Jeff's claws scraped the floor, but before he could recover, Lena was kneeling on his neck. She clutched her bokken in both hands, holding it like a quarterstaff, and ready to strike with either end.\n\n\"Their work wasn't sanctioned,\" I said. \"When Gutenberg found out, he put an end to it.\" The researchers had been transferred to other regions. A slap on the wrist, considering what they had done.\n\n\"What did you do?\" Jeff growled.\n\n\"Their experiments failed. The skins didn't preserve the magic long enough to be useful.\" When I read their papers eight years ago, I hadn't thought about werewolves. I had been too busy thinking about the possibilities. What if infusing people with magic could be as easy as applying a nicotine patch?\n\n\"You thought wendigo skins might work better,\" Lena said.\n\n\"Their results suggested a process of rapid magical and biological decay,\" I said miserably. \"I thought the cold might slow or even stop that process.\"\n\nJeff had stopped struggling, but his ears were flat against his head.\n\n\"The Porters have\u2026samples\u2026from various species,\" I said. \"I requisitioned\u2014Ray helped me to order a patch of wendigo hide. About two square inches, packed in dry ice. We used rats from the pet store, shaving their fur and applying a tiny square. Two didn't respond at all, but the third showed increased strength and hostility. The changes lasted for several days.\"\n\n\"How do you collect these samples?\" Jeff snarled.\n\n\"When a werewolf goes feral, the pack hunts him or her down. Other magical creatures aren't as self-regulating, so the Porters have to get involved.\" I stared through the window. \"The bodies are brought back for study and disposal.\"\n\n\"You said wendigos revert to human form when they die,\" Lena said.\n\n\"I know.\" I couldn't look at her. \"I suspect they put the wendigo into some kind of stasis. It wouldn't have felt anything.\"\n\nIt had all been so logical eight years ago. Only a handful of intrinsically magical creatures were sentient. Most were closer to animals. The more we could learn, the better we'd be able to manage them, even protect them when necessary.\n\nHow much of our work had August Harrison been able to access? He must have found Victor's notes, and he had obviously discovered my research papers. Had he been searching specifically for ways to gain power, or had he stumbled onto my reports by accident?\n\n\"Did you or anyone else proceed to human trials with wendigo skins?\" Nidhi asked. Both her words and her expression were professionally neutral.\n\n\"Not that I know of.\" The vampires appeared nonplussed by my revelations, but then, I wasn't telling them anything they didn't know. Deb might not have been familiar with every one of my projects, but she knew the Porters' research practices, just as she knew our history was stained by those who occasionally traded ethics for results. No doubt she had shared everything with her new masters.\n\n\"Beat yourself up later,\" Lena snapped. \"Jeff, I'm going to let you up now. I'd thank you to not rip out my lover's throat. Whatever those Porters did, they died years ago. Should I kill you because some other werewolf murdered innocent people a hundred years ago?\"\n\nShe eased back, and Jeff clambered to his feet. His fur hadn't flattened back out, but he didn't try to kill me.\n\nLena turned to Nicholas. \"Ask Victor if there's another way to stop his creations. A self-destruct phrase, a backup queen, anything.\"\n\nNicholas chuckled as he relayed Lena's question. \"Destroy the queen, and her death might spread through her children.\"\n\nWhich would be perfect, if we had the queen. \"Is there a way to duplicate her song?\"\n\n\"Not by you. Victor took great care to make sure his creations could not be 'hacked.'\" Nicholas frowned at that last word, making me wonder how long he had been locked away from the world. \"He believed that if anything were to happen to his queen, he would simply make another.\"\n\n\"Can he tell us how?\" I asked.\n\nA sudden flare of heat seared my thigh. Banners of flame rippled from Smudge's back as he darted to and fro in his cage. Lena caught my eyes and gestured to the door. I checked the hallway while Lena moved toward the bedroom window.\n\nThe window cracked as if struck by a stone, and Lena jumped back.\n\n\"Ah,\" said Nicholas. \"The ghosts have found us at last, and they've brought Victor's children home.\"\n\nI yanked out my shock-gun. \"What ghosts?\"\n\nTwo metal wasps were attacking the window, while another trio clung to the screen. I crossed the room, held the barrel of my gun six inches from the glass, and pulled the trigger.\n\nI liked to tell myself I had chosen the shock-gun to practice with because it was a practical, multi-purpose weapon. At its highest setting, it could take down a zombified elephant, and at its lowest it would knock a human unconscious with no long-term damage. Nor would it draw undue attention, being designed to mimic an ordinary twenty-first-century handgun.\n\nThose were all good and valid reasons, but the truth was, I picked this one because I got to shoot evil with lightning bolts.\n\nThe discharge etched a jagged line across my vision, and the smell of ozone filled the room. The sound was nowhere near as loud as natural thunder, but it was enough to make my ears ring. The blast shattered the window, leaving blobs of melted glass around the edges of the frame. A single insect glowed orange in the molten glass. I peered outside and spotted two men on the patio below. No, not men.\n\nI jerked back as more wasps flew toward us. I fired again, but this time what emerged was little more than a spark of static electricity. \"Oh, come on,\" I shouted. This gun was supposed to have enough ammo for more than a hundred shots.\n\nThe insects buzzed through the window and converged on Nicholas. He ripped two away even as more began to burrow into his chest. He crushed one between his fingers and tried to dig out the next, but he wasn't fast enough.\n\nHe spasmed as if he was the one who had been hit by lightning. His eyes bulged, and then his features eased into a smile. \"Exquisite,\" he whispered. He took a single step and exploded into dust.\n\nOne of the wasps flew up from the ground, trailing dust like tiny contrails. Deb's hand shot out, trapping the insect between thumb and forefinger. She had it halfway to her mouth before she stopped and seemed to realize what she was doing. She caught me staring and shrugged. \"Instincts.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nShe made a face, popped the bug into her mouth, and chomped. Blood dribbled from her lip, but she kept chewing, and soon spat out bits of broken metal.\n\nLena stomped the other two, grinding them into the carpet with a vicious twist of her heel. Behind her, Nidhi was carefully lifting the girl in her arms.\n\nThe vamp with the glasses, Rook, scaled the wall like a spider, rifle in one hand as he peeked out the upper corner of the window. \"I'm heading for the roof to get a better look\u2014\"\n\nHe squawked in surprise as he lost his grip and fell, landing hard on a LEGO castle and a green pony.\n\nAt the same time, the girl Nidhi was holding squirmed and mumbled, \"Don't wanna get up.\"\n\n\"Focus, Sarah,\" Deb snapped. \"Keep them under.\"\n\nThe vampire stared at the girl. \"I'm trying,\" she said. \"It's not working.\"\n\nLena grabbed Nidhi, dragged her and the girl into the hall, and shoved them in the closet. \"Stay there,\" Lena said, shutting the door.\n\nI heard the girl screaming, \"No! Stranger! Let go of me!\" as Nidhi tried to calm her.\n\nRook remained behind to watch the window while the rest of us made our way downstairs. Deb and Sarah simply vaulted over the railing, landing silently on the carpet below. \"We've got more out front,\" Sarah called.\n\nIn the family room, the three-legged Lab had woken up and started barking. From the kitchen, a woman\u2014presumably the mother\u2014called, \"Estrella?\"\n\nThe baby was crying, too, and I saw the father stirring. I reduced the setting on my shock-gun. Maybe it just needed time to recharge? I hoped I wouldn't have to use it on the family. Or their dog.\n\nThe father jumped to his feet, then froze. He raised his hands and stepped back, round eyes locked on my gun. \"Estrella!\"\n\n\"Daddy!\"\n\n\"Estrella is safe.\" I kept the shock-gun pointed at the floor as I hurried down the steps.\n\n\"Who are you people?\" he demanded in Spanish. \"What did you do to my daughter?\" The three-legged black Lab was doing his best to add to the chaos, barking and jumping and trying to bite Smudge, which put him in the same intellectual league as Nidhi's cat.\n\nJeff stepped past me and snarled. The Lab immediately backed away, tail tucked so far between his legs that when he started peeing on the floor, he managed to soak his tail in the process.\n\n\"Was that really necessary?\" I asked. To the father, I said, \"Est\u00e1 a salvo. She's safe.\"\n\nHe paled. \"Please don't hurt them.\"\n\nSomething slammed through the front door hard enough to send splinters of wood flying into the house. Sarah and Lena caught whatever it was by the arms and hurled it right back out, but a second attacker raced through on all fours and knocked Sarah to the ground. A group of metal insects flew at Lena's face, driving her back.\n\n\"Con permiso, Se\u00f1or Sanchez.\" I shoved the father toward the stairs, ducked behind the couch, and swore. Every once in a while, I really hated being right.\n\nThe man standing over Sarah was naked from the waist up. A fine layer of white fur covered his skin, and an Ace bandage was wrapped around his upper arm. His lips were blue, and his fingers were blackened from frostbite. Sarah had jabbed one of her stakes into his thighs, but it wasn't slowing him down.\n\nThis time when I pulled the trigger, the shock-gun did exactly what it was supposed to. Electricity cracked through the air, enough to put an ordinary human out for a good twenty-four hours. The partially-transformed wendigo roared in pain, then jumped away before I could fire again. I had blackened the fur on his chest and pissed him off, but that was all.\n\nFrom the staircase, Mister Sanchez whispered, \"Who are you people?\"\n\nBefore I could come up with an even halfway convincing lie, Deb emerged from the kitchen cradling the baby in one arm and dragging the woman by the wrist. \"Isaac, would you mind?\"\n\nThe mother had a paring knife, and was stabbing it into Deb's back. I caught her arm, holding her long enough for Deb to grab the knife and snap the blade with one hand. After that demonstration, they allowed Deb to lead them upstairs.\n\n\"What's happening?\" the woman demanded, her voice weak. \"My daughter\u2014\"\n\n\"Nidhi, move them all into the bathroom and lock the damn door,\" Deb shouted. When she returned, she was clutching her shoulder. Her blood flowed more slowly than it would have in a human, but those cuts had to hurt. \"Sarah, whoever's out there, put them down now!\"\n\n\"You think I haven't been trying?\" Sarah shot back.\n\nMy phone buzzed, startling me and setting Smudge off like a tiny hydrogen bomb. The screen said \"Unknown Caller.\"\n\nThe insects fell back to the doorway. Sarah and Lena kept an eye on the door while Deb, Jeff, and I watched the front window. Keeping my gun ready, I brought the phone to my ear. Harrison had hacked my computer and the Porter network. Why wouldn't he have my cell phone number, too? \"Hello, August.\"\n\n\"You want to tell me what the hell you're doing in my son's house?\"\n\nThrough the window, I could see a muscular, blocky-looking man with a cell phone to his ear, standing in front of a silver SUV. He was clean-shaven with close-cut graying hair. His silhouette matched Victor's, from the squat build to the flat ears.\n\nHe wore an unbuttoned black plaid shirt over what looked like old-fashioned Japanese scale armor, except that the metal scales were alive and moving. Loose khaki pants and brown leather shoes completed the look. If not for the insects, he could have been someone's crotchety old grandfather.\n\nI couldn't make out the queen amidst the rest of the insects clinging to his body, but she had to be there. I lowered my gun and turned the chamber to setting five. One shot should be enough to take him down. The man was essentially a walking conductor.\n\n\"How did you know we were here?\" I asked. If my guess was right, neither I nor the vampires were going to like his answer.\n\n\"Your friend Moon,\" he said, confirming my gut feeling. \"He overheard you talking, and we persuaded him to share. If we'd gotten to your house a little faster, we would have caught you before you left and saved everyone time.\"\n\nI studied his companions, trying to figure out how they had overpowered a sparkler. Sanguinarius Meyerii weren't invulnerable, but they were awfully close.\n\nThree more wendigos stood around Harrison. Their features were too distorted to guess what they had originally looked like. Flattened noses sat atop protruding jaws. Their lips were chapped and bloody, stretched between human and animal. They blinked too much, a side effect I remembered from my research. In rats, the fluids of the eyes had never fully adapted to the change.\n\nBehind them stood a man and a woman who appeared fully human. Each one held an oversized book in their hands. Both were Asian, and looked to be roughly my age, or perhaps a little younger. The woman had a single lock of green-dyed hair framing the left side of her face. The man wore an awful sweater with a piano keyboard design, which was utterly insane for this time of year, but made sense if you had been stuck in a car with a wendigo for ten hours.\n\n\"Who are your friends, August?\" I didn't recognize either one, but that meant little. I was familiar with most of the Porters from the Midwest, but Harrison could have recruited help from overseas. But if they were truly libriomancers, why bring only a single book into battle?\n\n\"Why don't you and Lena come out and I'll introduce you? This doesn't have to get bloody. The rest of you are welcome to leave.\"\n\n\"What's he waiting for?\" Deb's voice was strained. She sat on the bottom step; her head drooped over her knees. The knife must have done more damage than I thought. I was strangely relieved. The fact that Deb hadn't broken the woman's neck, despite pain and provocation, meant my friend hadn't been completely lost to the monster.\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" I watched Harrison, trying to read his face. Speaking into the phone again, I said, \"A minute ago, you used one of your son's bionic fruit flies to kill one of our companions. Now we're supposed to just trust you?\"\n\n\"He was dead long before I got here, and you know it.\" Harrison stepped into the middle of the street. \"I know all about you, Isaac. I know you've got a vampire upstairs watching us, and two more with you and Lena. I know you've stuffed the family into the hall closet. And I know that right now you're trying to figure out some clever plan to stop me.\" His voice dropped. \"You're not as smart as you think. Now, you and Lena are going to come with us, unarmed, or my metal friends will kill every family on this street.\"\n\n\"That's a bit dark, even for you. Rationalizing the killing of wendigos is bad enough, but these are human beings. You're an asshole. You're not a murderer.\" I covered the phone. \"Lena, get Nidhi down here.\"\n\n\"There's an elderly couple two houses down,\" Harrison said. \"They were playing cards together when your pet vampire knocked them out. How many people will you make me kill before you take this seriously? Do you think the sensation of steel pincers digging through skin and bone will wake them from their trance?\"\n\nInteresting. The Sanchez family was awake, but if Harrison was telling the truth, Sarah's power over the rest of the street hadn't broken. Assuming it was Harrison's ersatz libriomancers who had broken Sarah's hold, that suggested a limit to their range. Or it might mean they had selective control over the magic they countered, and like us, they preferred not to be interrupted.\n\nLena returned, keeping Nidhi behind her. Assuming Lena had filled her in, I got straight to the point. \"Will he do it?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Nidhi. \"I knew the man only through his son.\"\n\n\"Why does he want the two of us?\" Lena asked.\n\nShe spread her hands in a silent shrug.\n\nHarrison's voice buzzed through the phone. \"Go ahead and shoot, Isaac.\"\n\n\"What?\" He must have spotted the gun through one of his insects. I switched the phone to speaker so everyone could hear.\n\n\"I assume that's what you're discussing?\" said Harrison. \"Whether or not you can take me down before I command my insects to attack? Be my guest. This might be the fastest way for you to learn what you're facing.\"\n\nNobody bothered pointing out that it was a trick. Some things were too obvious for words. On the other hand, he had seen me holding what looked like an ordinary revolver. Maybe he assumed his metal insects would be strong enough to stop a bullet.\n\nI stood up and walked slowly toward the door, trying to project confidence. Harrison didn't move. I raised the shock-gun with both hands. He smiled and spread his arms.\n\nWith a shrug, I pulled the trigger.\n\nOne downside to shooting lightning bolts was that everything happened far too quickly to see. I wasn't terribly surprised to see Harrison still standing. He wasn't smiling, though. It looked like he had jumped back a good three feet, which gave me some satisfaction.\n\nI blinked, trying to see the afterimage to reconstruct why the shock-gun had failed. It looked like the bolt had stopped a short distance in front of Harrison. I frowned and tried again.\n\n\"Look at the ones with the books,\" Nidhi said.\n\nI took a third shot, this time keeping my attention on the woman with the green hair. Before, she and her friend had just been standing there, but now they were chanting. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but their eyes were closed.\n\nIf they were libriomancers, they could\u2014in theory\u2014open up the magic of their own books, then use them to absorb my attack. Any shots striking their books would be dissolved back into magic. But they would have had to move in front of Harrison to intercept my incoming fire, and they would have needed to make sure they held their books in exactly the right spot.\n\n\"Are you satisfied, Isaac?\" Harrison asked. \"I've been more than patient.\"\n\nDeb crawled across the family room floor until she reached the pile of clothes Jeff had discarded when he changed. \"Harrison's friends can mess with people's magic. How nice.\" She dug out Jeff's pistol and pulled herself up onto the couch.\n\nThe crack of gunfire was even louder than my shock-gun, and the metallic scent of gunpowder joined the ozone smell. August Harrison scampered around behind the SUV, but Deb hadn't been aiming for him. She fired again, and this time Rook joined in from upstairs, sending the libriomancers fleeing for cover.\n\n\"What the hell, Deb?\" Three wendigos charged toward the house. Rook dropped one, and I sent a lightning bolt into the next. It crackled over the frost and fur, then arced to his friend.\n\nWasps flew through the hole in the door to swarm over Deb, concentrating on her hands. She shrieked and flung the pistol away, then did her best to crush the bugs drilling into her skin. From the commotion upstairs, they were going after Rook as well.\n\n\"Congratulations, Isaac,\" Harrison shouted. I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. \"You've just killed two innocent people.\"\n\nI shouted into the phone. \"Wait! You win! We're coming out. Everybody stop shooting!\" I glanced at Lena, who nodded.\n\n\"Get your bugs off of the vampires,\" I said.\n\nThe wasps stilled, then retreated to the door. \"Leave your books and other weapons,\" he said. \"That goes for the dryad, too.\"\n\nI slid my arms from my sleeves and set the jacket carefully on the floor. Smudge's cage followed, and then the shock-gun.\n\nLena tossed her bokken onto the floor beside my things. She took my hand in hers and pulled my head down as if to give me a quick kiss. \"What now?\"\n\nI glanced down at my phone and began to tap out a text message. \"Now we take this bastard down.\"\n\nI slept for five days before they found me. At first, I thought the pressure on my roots was a dream, but the pain of the metal ax biting into my roots shocked me awake. I curled my injured root close and flexed the rest, toppling my attacker onto the ground. As my awareness moved closer to the surface, I began to make out their words.\n\n\"Ha! Pay up.\" A man's voice.\n\n\"Okay, you were right,\" said a second man. \"The tree's magic.\"\n\n\"What do you think, Mike?\" asked the first. \"Wizard of Oz?\"\n\n\"Nah. The fighting trees were more willowy. The branches bent down like vines to wrap around the scarecrow, remember. This is oak. Narnia, maybe?\"\n\n\"I don't recall C. S. Lewis' trees killing random farmers and burying their bodies.\"\n\nThey thought I had murdered Frank. I started to withdraw again, retreating deeper into the heart of the wood. It didn't matter what they believed. Frank was gone. Let them cut down my tree.\n\n\"If you ask me, we should be looking into the ex,\" said Mike. \"Maybe she never got over losing Frank. 'If I can't have him, no one can,' and all that. She sounded crazy enough to do it.\"\n\n\"I'm more interested in that girl, Lena. The one Frank was shacking up with. Marion said Lena tried to kill her once. Wouldn't surprise me if she killed him, too. If she was a witch, it would explain the magic we picked up.\"\n\n\"A witch who used her power to ruin Frank Dearing's marriage and trick him into letting her work his farm for no pay, year after year?\"\n\n\"What about Dungeons and Dragons? Don't they have some kind of spell or scroll we could use to figure out what this thing is? The old man locked the main rulebooks, but there's a new supplement out. It might not have been cataloged yet.\"\n\nAs the pain from the ax eased, so did my fear. I could hear the fondness beneath the men's banter. Their presence made me yearn for companionship. My isolation was a physical pain constricting my very core, worse than any ax. In isolation, I had been content to sleep, but now that others had arrived, the loneliness was suffocating. Before I realized what I was doing, I stretched myself from my tree and stepped lightly onto the dirt.\n\nA young man pulled a gold-bladed sword from a scabbard at his side while the other raised a tiny gray-and-black pistol. A nylon backpack sat open on the ground a short distance away. It seemed to be stuffed with books. The ax rested against the base of a tree.\n\n\"Lena Greenwood?\" asked Mike, keeping his sword ready.\n\n\"I didn't kill Frank,\" I said.\n\n\"You did something,\" said the man with the gun. \"Whatever magic you used, the Porters felt it all the way over in Chicago.\"\n\nMike lowered his sword, but I noticed how his friend stepped to one side, keeping a clear line of fire. \"We aren't here to hurt you. We've talked to your neighbors. We know how Frank treated you. If you were acting in self-defense\u2014\"\n\n\"No!\" Why wouldn't they believe me? \"I loved him.\"\n\nThey looked at one another. \"How long did you live with Frank?\" asked Mike.\n\nThe question confused me. \"I've always been with Frank.\"\n\n\"John, why don't you give Doctor Shah a call?\" Mike sheathed his weapon and smiled. While John unclipped a cell phone from his belt, Mike extended a hand. \"Would you mind coming with us to talk to a friend?\"\n\nI didn't have the willpower to refuse.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" John said as he dialed. \"Nidhi's nice. You'll like her.\"\n\nAugust Harrison's friends weren't the only ones who could counter magic. I peeked down at the phone as I typed out the message. Found killer. Hostages. Need distraction and automaton.\n\nMy phone tried to correct the last word to \"airmen.\" I fixed it and hit Send, then brought the phone to my face. \"We're coming out. Call the wasps back.\"\n\nI waited for the insects to retreat from the door. An answering text arrived a few seconds later. Understood.\n\nI stepped onto the porch. \"The wendigos, too.\"\n\n\"In time.\" Harrison sounded every ounce the gentleman now that he believed he was in control. He stood behind the SUV's hood, watching me. \"Your friends will be free to go as soon as you've joined us.\"\n\nAn aborted squeak made me whirl. Deb froze, a guilty expression on her face, then slowly wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She was moving better, and her knife wounds had stopped bleeding. She swallowed, grimaced, and offered me a halfhearted shrug.\n\nI looked past her to the empty birdcage. \"You didn't.\"\n\n\"Hey, if that woman hadn't stabbed me when all I was trying to do was help, maybe\u2014\"\n\n\"What is wrong with you?\" I yelled.\n\n\"Nothing, anymore.\"\n\nI was tempted to shoot her myself. \"When this is over, you're buying this family another bird.\"\n\nMy phone buzzed with another text message. I glanced at the screen. I didn't have time to deal with Deb. With a disgusted glare, I turned back to Harrison. \"Sorry about that. We're coming out.\" A low double-beep signaled another incoming call as I descended the steps. When my foot touched the bottom step, I pretended to stumble. I caught the rail with one hand. With my other, I tapped the phone, bringing Nicola Pallas into a three-way call with August Harrison.\n\nEven with the phone away from my ear, the opening bars of Pallas' song felt like she had plugged an electrical cable directly into my eardrums. I flung the phone into the grass and clung to the rail with both hands while I waited for the world to stop spinning.\n\nAs unpleasant as that tinny melody was for me, how much worse must it have been for August Harrison, who had his phone clamped to his ear. Pallas' bardic magic dropped him with the first notes.\n\n\"Go,\" I yelled.\n\nJeff bounded out the door, knocking me off my feet. Deb and Sarah followed close behind, and I saw Rook flying from the window, swooping into the street like an enormous geeky raven.\n\nLena hauled me inside, then grabbed her weapons. I did the same, scooping up books and my shock-gun, and clipping Smudge's cage to my jacket. Outside, the two libriomancers were doing their thing, presumably trying to suppress the magic coming from Harrison's cell phone. But even if they succeeded, the damage was done. He wouldn't be waking up for a while, and that meant he couldn't command his swarm.\n\n\"Isaac, there were more around back,\" Lena shouted as she followed the others outside. \"Make sure they don't cut through the house.\"\n\nFlames danced through the bars of Smudge's cage. I heard claws scrabbling overhead. \"Watch the roof!\"\n\nLena jumped down to the sidewalk as the first wendigo landed on the porch. She spun, one wooden sword raised high, the other low for stabbing. The wendigo ripped the iron railing from the concrete and hurled it at her. She lunged to the side, using both swords to bat the railing out of the way.\n\n\"Dumbass,\" I muttered, and shot him in the back. I opened the first of my books to a dog-eared page and skimmed the text. As a second attacker bounded around the corner of the house, I finished my spell and flung the book at his chest like a Frisbee. The cover flapped open as it flew, and the dust jacket tore away to flutter to the ground.\n\nThe cover art showed a single bee beneath the title: African Honey Bees in North America.\n\nThe bees emerged en masse and angry. They wouldn't have been a threat to a true wendigo with its thick armor of ice and fur, but this wasn't a full wendigo. He\u2014no wait, this one was female\u2014scrambled backward, swatting furiously.\n\nSarah's scream echoed down the street. I turned to see her falling backward, her extremities dissolving into dust. I couldn't tell what the two wendigos had done to her, but by the time she hit the road, only a skeleton remained. That crumbled away within seconds.\n\nA third libriomancer had joined the other two, and I counted a total of seven wendigos in an all-out brawl with Deb, Jeff, and Rook in the middle of the road.\n\nLena sprinted toward them, and the green-haired girl raised her book like a shield. Lena veered toward her, one sword slashing at the book.\n\nThe sword snapped like a rotted stick. Lena flung the hilt at the girl's face, then dropped low to kick her feet out from beneath her. Before she could follow up, a wendigo leaped onto the top of the SUV and pounced.\n\nI took another shot with my shock-gun, but as before, the lightning failed to reach its target. It looked like they had ended my spell with the killer bees, too.\n\nI ran toward my phone and dialed Pallas' number again. \"It's Isaac. We could really use that automaton right now.\"\n\n\"I'm aware of the disturbance. I'm waiting for approval from Gutenberg.\" She sounded utterly unfazed. I was pretty sure Pallas was incapable of being fazed. \"I thought your plan was to question Victor's ghost.\"\n\n\"August Harrison had his own plan. The ghost-talker is dead, as is one of his escorts. Harrison has his own little army of mutant wendigos, not to mention three wannabe libriomancers doing tricks I've never seen before.\"\n\n\"This shouldn't take long. In the meantime, in case you're killed, what have you learned so far?\"\n\n\"That's cold, Nicola.\" But I couldn't argue with her logic. Outside, another wendigo hurled Deb through the air. She crunched into a tree and didn't get up. I fired again, with no more effect than before. \"August got his hands on Victor's magic bugs and used them to hack our network. He's building himself a little army of wendigos. No idea how he's controlling them.\"\n\n\"We have a team in Switzerland working to lock him out of our computer network.\"\n\nI was only half listening. Each time I pulled the trigger, the point where my shot dissolved moved closer. Whatever barrier they were using, it was creeping toward me. The only effect the lightning had was to interfere with my phone's reception. \"Gotta go, Nicola. If they kill me, just send a ghost-talker to get the rest of my report.\"\n\nI tossed the phone aside, gripped the gun with both hands, and kept shooting. I picked other targets, trying to assess the size of the barrier, but however they were doing this, it was enough to shield a spread of at least ninety degrees.\n\nA flicker of light in the front yard announced the arrival of our reinforcement. The automaton was eight feet tall, armored in small, magically linked blocks of metal. Only the extremities revealed the dark wood Gutenberg had used to craft the body centuries ago. A blank wooden face turned, eyes like oversized black pearls taking in everyone's positions.\n\nEach automaton housed a human spirit, a mind that gave them some freedom to think and act within the boundaries of their magical programming. Every line of text stamped into their wooden bodies was a spell, allowing them to access power far beyond any libriomancer.\n\nI hated the damned things, but at this particular moment, I was ready to jump up and cheer.\n\nThree wendigos peeled away from the fight and charged the automaton. It strode to meet them, arms outstretched. Flame and yellow smoke billowed forth from its hands.\n\n\"Pluit ignem et sulphur de caelo et omnes perdidit,\" I whispered. It rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It was a verse from the Gutenberg Bible, the text of which Gutenberg had somehow transferred to his automatons. The stench of sulfur spread through the air, making me grimace.\n\nAs the rest of the wendigos turned to face the new threat, Lena used the respite to grab Deb and haul her back from the carnage. Jeff tried to get at Harrison, but gunfire drove him away. Rook was fleeing down the street at inhuman speeds, proving him to be the smartest of us all.\n\nAnother wendigo jumped onto the automaton's back, wrapped its arms around the neck, and tried to wrench the wooden head free.\n\nThe automaton reached behind, the shoulder swiveling well beyond what any human joint could manage, and seized the attacker by the arm. With no visible effort, it flung the wendigo into the SUV. Metal crumpled from the impact, and the wendigo didn't get back up.\n\nThe green-haired libriomancer shouted, \"Concentrate on the golem!\" She and her two companions ran forward with their books.\n\nThe automaton stopped moving.\n\n\"How the shit did they do that?\" Deb asked weakly.\n\n\"I don't know, but they look preoccupied.\" I raised my gun, sighted through the doorway at the closest of the libriomancers, and pulled the trigger. He must have seen my movement, because he whirled and raised his book. He took a jolt, but not enough to put him down.\n\nThe automaton shuddered, then stumbled forward. Green shouted another order. Wooden fingers ripped a slab of blacktop from the road and hurled it at the closest book-wielder. He tried to dodge, but he wasn't fast enough. The missile caught his shoulder, spinning him in a full circle and sending the book flying to the side of the road.\n\nAnother burst of flame poured forth, but this time it failed to reach its target. Instead, the fire curved toward the house.\n\n\"Oh, crap.\" I dove into the family room. Lena hurled Deb after me, then rolled out of the way as flame poured through the door. Jeff got a little singed, but the fire wasn't as bad as I feared. Whatever they were doing to turn the automaton's magic against us must have weakened its power.\n\nI snatched up my satchel and pulled out an urban fantasy called Heart of Stone. The pages showed the faintest dusting of char, like someone had rubbed a pencil lead over the inner edges. I had used this book too often in my research, but I needed to understand what was going on out there. I yanked a pair of mirrored sunglasses from the story and slipped them on.\n\nThe enchanted lenses darkened my vision and painted a grid of glowing magical energy over the scene on the street. I could see the patches of wendigo skin, burning a sickly brown color that spread through the bodies of Harrison's pet monsters. White light cocooned the automaton, the strands of Gutenberg's magic encasing it in a dense web of power.\n\nNone of this was particularly unusual, though I rarely had to sort out so much magic all at once. But where I would normally have seen libriomantic magic pouring from the three books, there was only emptiness, like holes in the surrounding magic. Given what had happened to my spell back in the woods, I wasn't entirely surprised that those holes formed the outlines of three people standing before the automaton.\n\nAnother blast of fire poured forth, and two of the figures moved in unison, stepping into the automaton's magic and diverting it once again. The third joined in as the injured man retrieved his book from the street.\n\nThis wasn't libriomancy. The books were\u2026what, exactly? Lamps for magic-eating genies? Charms to allow the ones who carried them to magically project themselves? Were the books simply bodies for a kind of creature we'd never before encountered or cataloged? Or were these the ghosts Nicholas had talked about, the ones who had distracted him from his conversation with Victor?\n\nTwo of the wendigos were dragging August Harrison toward a black pickup down the street. I aimed through the broken window and tried to stop them, but they got Harrison around the far side of the truck before I could fire. I adjusted the setting and sent a bolt of lightning into the truck, and was rewarded with the sight of one wendigo leaping back.\n\nUnfortunately, my attack drew the attention of one of the three ghosts, or whatever they were. \"Incoming!\"\n\nMy warning did little good. Nobody else could see the figure that flew through the doorway, hesitated, then dove through Deb's body. Deb's magic dimmed, and she stumbled backward. The ghost continued to swirl around her, feeding on her power. And I had no idea how to make it stop.\n\nMaybe another target would help. I jumped up and sent a volley of electricity toward the battle. One of the two remaining ghosts intercepted the shots, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Deb fall as her attacker turned to me.\n\nI flung the gun out the window. It followed the weapon, and when it finished, not a trace of magic remained in my shock-gun.\n\nA full-sized van, dark blue with tinted windows, screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. The remnants of Harrison's team crammed inside as the ghosts continued to hold back the automaton. The ghosts vanished a moment later as both the van and the pickup truck sped away.\n\nI ran out the door and waved my arms at the automaton. \"Stop them, you overgrown pile of Lincoln Logs! Get August Harrison!\"\n\nIt stepped after the van, then stopped as if confused. The damn thing reminded me of Nidhi's idiot cat, whom I had once observed chasing a fly across the kitchen, only to stop halfway and look around as if she had completely forgotten why she was in such a hurry.\n\n\"Go!\" I yelled.\n\nThe automaton jolted back to life and began to run. It disappeared in mid-step, reappearing at the intersection in a flash of light. The truck screeched to a halt, but once again the automaton failed to finish the job. It stood dumbly as the van turned left and the truck sped off to the right. It snapped out of its trance again seconds later and resumed its pursuit.\n\n\"Not good.\" I sagged against the wall and turned to look at the damage we had done. Broken glass littered the house. The door was destroyed. The road outside was even worse, from cars that had been ripped apart to the cratered blacktop and smoking yard beyond. Sirens were approaching in the distance. I fetched my phone and hit redial.\n\n\"Nicola? It's Isaac again. I think we're going to need some help cleaning this one up.\"\n\nDeb was in lousy shape, but she appeared to have recovered from whatever it was the ghost had done to her. She limped down the driveway to meet the approaching police cars.\n\nThe cars stopped a short distance from the house. Deb waited with arms spread as uniformed officers exited their cars with guns drawn. They crouched behind the front of the cars, where the engine blocks would provide cover against incoming fire.\n\nI couldn't blame them. Between the damage we had done and the sight of Deb DeGeorge standing there bruised and bloody, her skin making her look partially mummified, I wouldn't have gone near her either.\n\nI could see the moment Deb touched their minds. She might not have been as powerful as Sarah, but she was strong enough to lure her prey into dropping their guard. The police officers lowered their weapons, and by the time they reached Deb, they moved with a slow, relaxed pace that made me think they were sleepwalking. Deb had gotten stronger since the last time I saw her.\n\nAs soon as they were fully distracted, I ran outside to retrieve my shock-gun. It was dead, as I had expected, but that could be fixed. You had to be careful, but it actually took less energy to use a book to re-form an existing magical item than to create it from scratch.\n\nWhen I entered the house again, the crackle of bone and popping joints filled the room. Jeff had managed to tug off the moonstone necklace. It was glowing beneath the couch where he must have kicked it to block the light. When he finished wrenching himself back to human form, he collapsed into an old recliner and started pulling on his underwear and pants.\n\nI grabbed my jacket from the floor, pulled Time Kings from one of my pockets to fix my gun, then froze. Mister Sanchez was staring at us from the hallway. The black Lab cowered behind his legs.\n\nI watched as he gathered his courage. His hands were shaking, but he straightened and stepped closer. \"What are you?\"\n\nNidhi spun. \"I asked you to stay in the bathroom, Laszio.\"\n\nHe stared at the broken window and door, the bloodstained carpet, and the ruins of the yard and street outside. \"This is about the man who used to live here? The one who was murdered.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Nidhi.\n\nHe gave a small nod, looking simultaneously grateful and frightened by her honesty.\n\n\"We'll find a way to cover the damages,\" I said softly. If the Porters wouldn't take care of this, then I would, and to hell with the rules. There were plenty of books I could use to produce everything from gold to gemstones.\n\nHis attention flitted about, stopping briefly with Jeff, then moving to Lena and her broken sword, and finally to me. His gaze dipped to Smudge. \"Your spider. Is it on fire?\"\n\nI looked down. \"A little bit, yeah.\"\n\n\"Laszio, look at me.\" Nidhi moved to impose herself between him and the rest of us. \"We came here because of Victor Harrison, but this fight wasn't about him. It was about us. You and your family will be safe once we're gone.\"\n\nHe managed a nervous smile. \"No offense intended, Doctor Shah, but if that is the case, I hope you'll leave quickly.\"\n\n\"We will,\" Nidhi promised.\n\nAnd once we were gone, Nicola would send someone to alter the family's memories, just as easily as a Hollywood writer reworked a script. Just as Deb was manipulating the minds of the police outside, burying the truth beneath layers of magical falsehoods.\n\n\"He's a fire-spider. His name is Smudge.\" I think the words surprised me as much as anyone else. Nidhi gave me a sharp look, but didn't argue when I lifted Smudge's cage to eye level. With my other hand, I grabbed the Red Hots. \"I created him when I was in high school. He's saved my life several times.\"\n\nI brought a candy to the edge of the cage and waited for Smudge to snatch it up.\n\nLaszio took a half-step closer, the fear in his eyes joined by a glimmer of curiosity. \"He eats junk food?\"\n\n\"Every chance he gets,\" I said. \"He loves chocolate, but that can get messy. He tends to melt it, and you end up with stains all over the carpet.\"\n\nLaszio looked down at the bloody, blackened carpet. \"Yes. We wouldn't want that.\"\n\nHe sounded so serious, and I laughed before I could stop myself. He joined in a moment later, though I think it was more a release of fear and exhaustion than humor.\n\n\"The fire,\" he said. \"It doesn't hurt him?\"\n\n\"It's how he protects himself. How he protects me and helps me to stop people like the ones who attacked your home.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\" Laszio kept watching as Smudge devoured his treat.\n\n\"I know,\" said Nidhi. \"Neither did I, the first time I saw something like this. You're handling it far better than I did.\"\n\nI doubted that, but I didn't say anything. Instead, I returned Smudge's cage to my hip and opened Time Kings. Laszio flinched when I lifted the gun. He looked back to the hall, and I knew he was thinking about his wife and children.\n\n\"It's all right.\" I shoved the gun back into the pages, letting the words and images of the readers transform the weapon from an empty relic back into a fully-charged shock-gun. \"This is what we do.\"\n\n\"Ay dios mio,\" he whispered. Both Nidhi and Lena were watching him very closely now, ready to intervene if he lost it. \"Those creatures outside. What did they want?\"\n\n\"You should see to your family,\" Nidhi interrupted. \"Reassure them. We will be gone very soon, and I promise we'll make sure you're safe.\"\n\nI took that as my cue. \"Lena and Jeff, could you come with me? We need to inspect every house on this street to make sure Harrison's swarm left with him.\"\n\nI pocketed the shock-gun. Deb appeared to have things under control outside. One of the police cars was already pulling away, its sirens dark.\n\n\"Why did you tell him about Smudge?\" Lena asked as we exited the house.\n\n\"Because it didn't matter.\" I was surprised at the anger boiling up inside me. \"Because we're going to rip every memory of today from his head. Not to protect them, but to protect us.\"\n\nThey wouldn't remember what had happened, but we couldn't completely erase the trauma. Even after we stole their memories, they would be exhausted and jumpy for a long time.\n\nLena stopped at the end of the driveway to pick up the broken mailbox. She twisted the post free and turned it in her hands, shaping it into a serviceable club. Then she looked back at the house. She stood there for so long I thought something was wrong. Had she spotted one of Harrison's bugs? But when I touched her shoulder, she merely turned to kiss my cheek. \"I think you're wrong,\" she said softly. \"I think it did matter.\"\n\nNone of the neighbors had emerged to see what was happening. I took that to mean they hadn't yet woken from Sarah's magic slumber. Smudge didn't turn into a fireball when we entered the first house, which was another encouraging sign.\n\n\"Do you think the automaton will be able to stop them?\" Lena asked.\n\nI thought about August Harrison and his swarm, the half-breed wendigos, and the ghosts that had devoured our magic. \"No.\"\n\n[ Report Number: NS-US5-194 ]\n\n[ Submitted by: Nidhi Shah, MD, PhD ]\n\n[ Location: Mason, Michigan ]\n\n[ Subject Name: Lena Greenwood ]\n\nDescription: Ms. Greenwood is a physically healthy Caucasian female, approximately five foot six inches. She appears to be in her late thirties to early forties. She is overweight, but not obese. Her skin lacks any visible blemishes or wrinkles. Based on her account of the work she performed on Frank Dearing's farm, she is significantly stronger than she appears.\n\nMagical Assessment: The two field agents, John Senn and Michael Angell, concur that Lena is a dryad of some sort, though her appearance and abilities differ significantly from the descriptions of known dryads in the Porter database. Lena has demonstrated the ability to manipulate her tree's roots to fight back after being struck by an ax. She showed no sensitivity to cold, despite the low temperatures.\n\nAngell and Senn were able to unearth Frank Dearing's remains after Lena had been removed from the scene. While multiple eyewitness claim that Mr. Dearing was alive one week ago, his body had decomposed to little more than a skeleton. Angell used magic to verify that this was indeed Frank Dearing. It would appear that Lena's tree somehow consumed him.\n\nLena's love for Frank Dearing comes across as genuine. I'm uncertain whether the tree acted independently, or if Lena simply doesn't recognize what she had done to Mr. Dearing.\n\nWhile Lena shows little awareness of the passage of time and even less understanding of the world around her, both her recollections and the information we gathered from Marion Dearing suggest Lena was living with Frank for at least forty years, which would make her a minimum of sixty years old. If so, she has aged extremely well.\n\nPsychological Assessment: Lena Greenwood is in many ways a child, isolated from the world, and knowing little beyond her life with Frank Dearing. Her eagerness for attention and affection make me suspect she may have been badly deprived of both while growing up, though she hasn't yet shared any information about her childhood.\n\nShe spoke freely of her relationship, describing the details of her sexual activities with Dearing as casually as she recounted the last breakfast she prepared for him. I've observed no sign of duplicity. On the contrary, she has been eager to share with me, though she remains wary of other Porters. I would estimate her I.Q. to be significantly below average, perhaps to the point of mild disability, though I'll need to run a number of tests to confirm.\n\nShe talked about the temptation to remain in her tree and \"go deeper.\" Given her grief and obvious fear of life without Frank Dearing, I believe Lena to be a very real suicide risk. I am requesting temporary reassignment to help her acclimate to the larger world.\n\nThreat Risk: I disagree with the report prepared by field agent Angell. I do not believe Lena Greenwood poses a threat to the Porters or to humanity. While she has demonstrated a willingness to use her abilities to protect herself, I believe her essential nature is that of peace.\n\nWe found Harrison's insects in the five houses closest to the Sanchez family. The insects weren't asleep, exactly, and they reacted when we approached, but they were sluggish, refusing to stray very far from their chosen hostages. Lena clubbed most of the insects into scrap. I caught two more with a hammer I picked up from the garage of the second house.\n\nWe got back to find Nidhi hauling the spare tire out of the trunk of her car. The rear tire had been blown apart in the fighting. The driver's side window was broken as well. Nidhi gave me a look, but didn't say anything.\n\nOn the bright side, having a Renfield around made it a lot easier to change a tire. Who needed a jack when Deb could lift the car with her bare hands? Lena helped with the tire while I swept out the pebbles of glass the best I could.\n\nDeb stepped back, brushed her hands on her pants, and folded her arms. \"The head bloodsuckers in Detroit aren't going to be happy about losing Nicholas and Sarah.\"\n\n\"I'm not thrilled either.\" I didn't remind her that Harrison had killed Moon as well. Or maybe she remembered, and the vampires simply didn't mind losing that particular sparkler.\n\nI grabbed Heinlein's Friday from my jacket. The vampires had taken care of their side of the bargain, after all. The Shipstone battery I created was no larger than my wallet. It could light the entire vampire city, deep in the underground salt mines, but it might not be enough to make up for the death of three of their number. \"Be careful.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about me, hon. Anyone asks, I'm putting all the blame on you.\" Deb shoved the Shipstone into her pants pocket. \"Watch your back. And give me a call if you change your mind about wanting a few extra years of reading and study.\"\n\nWe waited for the first of the Porters' clean-up crew to arrive. A pair of fresh-faced field agents nodded a greeting, then set about erasing our mess. One strode into the Sanchez house as if he owned it, while the other used some kind of purple crystal to search for fragments of magic, like the expended pellets from my shock-gun.\n\nOnce we were back on the road, I examined a handful of fragmented insect parts: wings and shells, mostly, along with a few gears, a bit of wire that might have been an antenna, and a pair of oversized grasshopper legs. I squinted through my enchanted sunglasses, but the scraps were magically dead.\n\nWe knew where the bugs had come from, but where had Harrison found his accomplices? How had he persuaded them to help him butcher wendigos? More importantly, what did they all want? Harrison was motivated by power, but what did he hope to do with his magically-boosted brute squad?\n\nAnd why come after me? If he had gotten into Victor's system, he could have tracked down any Porter he wanted, but I hadn't heard of any other breakins. Harrison had come to the U.P. and hacked my computer. I looked out the rear window toward Lena, thinking of my private notes. There were things I had learned about her that I refused to share even with the Porters.\n\nIf August Harrison had found those files, it would take time to decrypt them, but if he was even half as smart as his son had been, he would get there eventually. Whether or not he could do anything with that information was another question. He had no direct magical ability. I had no idea what else his would-be libriomancers could do.\n\nI called Nicola Pallas. \"The serenade worked beautifully, thank you. Please tell me the automaton has Harrison and his friends.\"\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\n\"Dammit.\"\n\nJeff turned in his seat. \"What's taking so long? I thought those things were supposed to be unstoppable.\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" Nidhi said mildly. \"Isaac destroyed four earlier this year.\"\n\nJeff cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. \"Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that?\"\n\n\"You have to know how they think.\" Which August might also know, depending on what he had gotten out of my computer. This just got better and better. To Nicola, I said, \"Why doesn't it materialize in front of their truck, punch out the engine, and be done with it?\"\n\n\"As far as we've been able to determine, the automaton is having trouble seeing them.\"\n\nPerfect. \"I need to talk to Gutenberg. The people August had with him were using magic I'd never seen or read about before.\"\n\n\"Hold on.\"\n\nI'll say this much about Nicola: she was efficient. It couldn't have been more than five seconds before my phone beeped.\n\n\"What have you learned?\" asked Johannes Gutenberg. It was his customary greeting. Never \"Hello, Isaac,\" or \"Great job cleaning up that will-o'-the-wisp situation at the strip club last month, Isaac.\" All he cared about was whatever new knowledge I had uncovered, whether it was the innermost secrets of a forgotten branch of Egyptian magic or the extra ingredient Loretta Trembath used for her spicy Cudighi.\n\nI had never been able to describe Gutenberg's accent. I would have expected his words to be colored by his upbringing, but I heard no trace of Germanic when he spoke. Instead, his voice was simply\u2026precise. Every word, every syllable was carefully chosen and articulated. It made sense when I thought about it. How many languages had he learned and relearned over his lifetime?\n\n\"August Harrison has help,\" I said. \"Three people, all young and Asian in appearance. They used books to absorb or dissipate magic. I think the books held some kind of ghost that diluted or consumed whatever we threw at them.\"\n\n\"Describe these ghosts,\" Gutenberg said sharply.\n\nI did the best I could, beginning with Nicholas' complaints about other ghosts. Nidhi and Jeff chipped in additional details. \"Who the hell are these people? You said you sent me the full, uncensored history of the Porters for\u2014 For my research project. There was nothing about this style of magic.\"\n\n\"Tell me about the books.\"\n\nI closed my eyes. \"They were hardcovers. Larger than most modern books. Quartos, maybe, bound in red cloth or leather. They looked like something you'd keep in the rare books section of a library.\" But such uncommon or one-of-a-kind editions shouldn't work for libriomancy. Books had to be mass-produced to build up the cumulative belief and power you needed for magic. \"I didn't see any embossing on the cover. The pages looked yellowed.\"\n\n\"Did you see what language the books were written in?\"\n\nWas I imagining the urgency in his words? \"I didn't get close enough.\"\n\n\"It's not libriomancy,\" Gutenberg said quietly.\n\nI waited for him to explain. Eventually, I started to realize I could be waiting a very long time. \"Then what is it?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\"\n\nI didn't buy it. He might not know for certain, but he wouldn't be this pensive if he didn't have suspicions. \"So guess, dammit.\"\n\nThe silence that followed gave me time to realize I was barking orders at the founder of the Porters, a man with five hundred years of magical experience who could probably fry me through this phone without a second thought. I saw Nidhi's hands tense on the wheel, and even Jeff gave me a small shake of his head.\n\n\"I won't know anything for certain until you bring me back their books.\"\n\nI forced myself to count to ten, in Latin, before responding. I should have gone to at least thirty. \"You remember I'm a researcher now, not a field agent, right?\"\n\n\"You are whatever I order you to be, Isaac Vainio. The Porters are not your personal social club. We are a guild, bound to a purpose, and I am master of that guild. I've given you a great deal of leeway, due to your contributions and potential. But there are limits to my patience.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" The words slipped out automatically in response to his unspoken threat. \"But can't the automaton bring back whatever you need?\"\n\n\"Normally, yes.\" His anger shifted into frustration. \"However, as near as I can determine, my automaton is stuck. I'll send you the location.\"\n\n\"Stuck?\"\n\n\"Locked up. Paralyzed. Bluescreened. Frozen.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Presumably your friends with their book-ghosts have found a way to throw a wrench into my magic.\"\n\n\"Are you serious?\" The words slipped out before I could stop them. \"If these people can overpower your spells, what exactly do you expect me to do?\"\n\n\"Improvise. As you did before.\"\n\nTake control of the automaton. I shook my head. \"Lena and I both could have died last time.\"\n\n\"Then find a better tactic. Our enemies have shown themselves to be exceptionally good at avoiding detection. We may not have another opportunity. If you strike now, while their efforts are concentrated on containing and depowering the automaton, you may not need such extreme measures.\"\n\n\"All right.\" I took a deep breath. \"Any other advice?\"\n\n\"Yes, in fact. If I'm not mistaken, Mister Harrison has awakened. He's sending his creatures after you. Use them to weaken him before you attack.\"\n\n\"How the hell do I do that?\"\n\nNobody I knew could pack as much weariness into a single sigh as Johannes Gutenberg. \"Think, Isaac. How does August Harrison control so many creatures?\"\n\n\"Through the queen. Victor built a telepathic interface.\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"Feedback,\" I said, feeling like an exceptionally slow student struggling to keep up. \"That's why he didn't come after us last night when we destroyed the insects in Lena's tree. He felt it. If we kill enough of his pets, we can take him out right now.\"\n\nMy phone went dead. A second later, the screen lit up with a new text message: Automaton is approximately 10 miles north of your location, at the intersection of Wilcox Rd. and Allegan St.\n\n\"What did he ask you to do?\" Nidhi asked tightly.\n\n\"Stop Harrison.\" I handed the phone up to Jeff, who nodded and typed the location into Nidhi's GPS. \"He also warned me we're about to have company.\"\n\nI dug through my satchel, looking for a book I wasn't entirely sure I could use. But if this worked, I should be able to knock August Harrison on his ass.\n\nThe roof of the car began to ring like it was raining gravel. A beetle hit the windshield hard enough to chip the glass. It clung there, boring deeper into the tiny crater.\n\nNidhi flipped on the windshield wipers. The beetle held tight, and the wiper blade slid over it with a thumping sound. She switched on the washer fluid next. That was enough to dislodge the beetle, but more bugs were rattling down on us.\n\n\"Speed up,\" I yelled. The faster we went, the harder it should be for the insects to hold on. I tried to ignore the clatter of bugs, concentrating instead on the pages of a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Gutenberg locked most role-playing manuals, but there were plenty of tie-in novels out there.\n\nThe page I had bookmarked described an enormous warrior cowering in the back of a cave as a creature that looked like a super-sized cross between an armadillo and a cockroach waddled closer.\n\nI couldn't blame the fighter for his fear. When I was a kid, my paladin had lost a +3 bastard sword and a full suit of enchanted plate mail to this particular monster, leaving me all but defenseless against the goblin ambush in the next tunnel.\n\nI immersed myself in the scene, imagining the mage's laughter as he watched the burly fighter shout in fear. Even the normally-stoic cleric chuckled before raising his wooden cudgel to strike. The creature dodged the first attack. With surprising speed, it scrambled between them, oblivious to anything save the glorious feast of steel laid out before it. Twin antennae whipped out to strike the warrior's breastplate.\n\nInstantly, the steel armor lost its sheen. The priest knocked the monster away, but it was too late. A dark stain of pitted rust spread across the armor, and bits of brown metal fell to the floor.\n\nI seized that moment in my mind and reached through the book, grasping one of the antennae in my hand. It felt like a dry, armor-plated snake.\n\nThe beast wouldn't fit through the pages, and even if it did, I had no idea how to control it. Nor was I certain I could rip an antenna off and use it effectively. But if I could channel its power\u2014\n\nWhat looked like a bumblebee built from scrap metal and a broken sparkplug punched through the windshield and flew toward my face. Without thinking, I yanked my hand from the book to swat it away.\n\nThe bee bounced against the door and dropped onto the seat. The wings buzzed, but the sound had changed. The pitch grew higher, like a tiny electrical motor burning itself out. Brown fog spread in a tiny cloud as the remnants of the wings rusted away. The body corroded next. A leg broke free. The bee collapsed onto its side, remaining legs curled inward, until nothing remained but an orange-brown smear of rust.\n\n\"That's a new trick,\" Jeff commented, staring at my hand. \"Did you mean to do that?\"\n\n\"Not exactly, no.\" Leathery brown plates gloved my hand, stopping at the wrist. I curled my fingers, feeling the plates grind together like stones. There was very little sensation. I tugged at the wrist where armor met flesh, hoping I could peel it free, but this was my skin now.\n\nI didn't know what I had done, if it was permanent, or what it would do to me in the long run, and I had no doubt I would begin freaking the hell out very soon, but for the moment, there were bugs to kill.\n\nA wasp burrowed through the hole the bumblebee had left and landed in Jeff's hair. I plucked it away with my thumb and forefinger. It tried to sting me with an inch-long needle that looked thick enough to penetrate bone, but the tip rusted away as soon as it hit my hand.\n\nI used my left hand to unbuckle my seat belt, then rolled down the window. I pulled the upper part of my body out until I could see the roof. I squinted against the wind and stretched out very carefully to flick away a cockroach. A ladybug crept toward me, and I reached over\u2014\n\nA passing truck honked. I jumped, and my hand slammed down on the ladybug. I yanked it back, but it was too late. The bug rusted away, as did an oversized handprint in the roof of Nidhi's car.\n\n\"What did you do?\" yelled Nidhi.\n\n\"Nothing!\" I twisted around, trying to reach the ones on the rear windshield. The magic of this particular monster affected all metals, regardless of whether they were ferrous or not. But as long as I didn't hit hard enough to crack the glass, the windshield should be fine.\n\nLena was pulling closer. I waved her back, then pointed to the insects. The last thing I wanted was to knock them off Nidhi's car and onto Lena or her motorcycle.\n\nLena pointed right back, not at me, but at the tires.\n\n\"Oh, crap.\" I ducked back into the car and grabbed my seat belt, only to have the buckle crumble like thin Styrofoam in my hand. \"Nidhi, we're about to lose the tires.\"\n\nI slid into the middle seat, trying to work the belt left-handed. I bumped Smudge's cage in the process, and the thin bars melted away. I got the buckle clicked into place and scooped Smudge into my hand. The armor protected me from his nervous flames.\n\nNidhi had slowed down to about forty when the first tire blew out. Other cars honked and swerved around us as she fought for control. Her arms and hands tightened as the second tire followed the first, and the car lurched hard to the right. The front wheels hit dirt, and then we were spinning around, and centrifugal force pinned me to my seat.\n\nBy the time we jolted to a stop, we were in a ditch staring up at oncoming traffic. I set Smudge down and fumbled with the buckle. The airbags had gone off, body-slamming Jeff and Nidhi into their seats. They were both alive, and I didn't see blood. As for me, I had a twinge in my neck that would no doubt evolve into something much worse, but I was pretty sure nothing was broken.\n\nI opened the door and stumbled out of the car. Most of the swarm was flying away like silver sparks in the sun. I swatted the few that remained, hoping August Harrison felt every one.\n\nLena pulled off the road a short distance ahead. She jumped from the bike and sprinted toward us, bokken in hand. \"Is everyone all right? Isaac, your hand\u2014\"\n\n\"Yah, that didn't go quite the way I had hoped.\" I walked around the car to check the damage. Both tires were shredded. We had driven on the rims for those last forty feet or so. This thing wasn't going anywhere without major work.\n\n\"Whatever hand sanitizer you've been using, I'm staying the hell away from it,\" said Jeff as he climbed out.\n\n\"Is it permanent?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"I'm not even sure what I did.\" I suspected it was similar to the way people could reach into books and infect themselves with various strains of vampirism. They weren't being bitten by literal vampires; they were simply remaking their bodies through magic.\n\nWhat worried me was the fact that such magic was intrinsic, robbing the person of their ability to use extrinsic magic. If this was permanent, or worse yet, if it began to spread\u2026\"I'll be fine. I just need something to wrap around my hand so I don't keep breaking everything I touch.\"\n\nNidhi popped the trunk and pulled out an old blanket. Lena ran her index finger over the length of her bokken, restoring the wood's edge, then handed the weapon to Nidhi. With a nod of thanks, Nidhi began cutting.\n\n\"I saw the things that took out the tires, and they were bigger,\" said Lena. \"More like birds than insects. I couldn't tell if they got away, or if they were destroyed when you spun out.\"\n\n\"Nicholas\u2014Victor\u2014said something about the insects breeding and evolving.\"\n\nAnother car slowed, but Lena waved them on. We circled the car, searching from top to bottom for any stragglers, but the insects were gone.\n\n\"Next time, we're taking your car,\" Nidhi said.\n\nI started to answer, but my phone buzzed in my pocket. I set Smudge on my shoulder and reached for it, then caught myself. The case was mostly plastic and glass, but there was enough metal trim that a single touch could turn the thing into a useless brick.\n\n\"Allow me.\" Lena grinned and slipped a hand into my pocket. For several seconds, I forgot about August Harrison, mutant wendigos, and my messed-up hand. She planted a quick kiss on my neck that sent goose bumps down my spine, then pulled out the phone.\n\nI blinked and concentrated on the message from Gutenberg. The automaton was dying, which meant we were running out of time. \"Harrison is close by. If Lena and I ride together, we can still catch him.\"\n\nNidhi's face was expressionless. She tossed the wadded-up length of blanket to me and climbed back into the car without a word to get the GPS. Nidhi had told me she was struggling to adjust to our new relationship, but this was the first time I had seen that struggle.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Lena said quietly, watching Nidhi. \"That was stupid. I was worried about you. I saw you fighting off those insects, and then you were moving around in the back seat and the car was out of control. You scared me. You both did.\"\n\nI grabbed the end of the blanket and began wrapping the rest around my fist. \"So go tell her.\"\n\nLena studied my eyes, like she was searching to see if I meant it.\n\n\"Your girlfriend was just in an accident, and the first thing she saw was you hugging and getting friendly with me.\"\n\nShe stared at me, then smiled. \"I chose better than I realized.\"\n\n\"I'll meet you at your bike.\"\n\nIntellectually, I had more-or-less come to terms with our relationship weeks ago. But this was the first time I had been able to walk away from the two of them without feeling those barbs of jealousy and insecurity. I didn't turn around to watch Lena's good-bye\u2014I wasn't certain how stable this newfound peace was\u2014but it was a start.\n\n\u2003Winter whispers his song.\n\n\u2003Strips her branches,\n\n\u2003Abandons her naked before the heavens\n\n\u2003As souls slumber beneath,\n\n\u2003And dirt becomes stone.\n\n\u2003Spring celebrates the tandava,\n\n\u2003And the newborn feels only the\n\n\u2003Heartbeat of the dance,\n\n\u2003Sings only her love\n\n\u2003Of an undiscovered verdant world.\n\n\u2003Under a moonless night,\n\n\u2003She remembers the cold.\n\n\u2003Her song warms the earth,\n\n\u2003And her dance begins anew,\n\n\u2003Celebrating the return.\n\n\u2003But none shall ever sing so purely\n\n\u2003As the newborn spring.\n\n\u2003Forever after, her dance is tempered\n\n\u2003By foreknowledge of winter's return.\n\nI left smudge behind with Jeff and Nidhi. Without his cage, I didn't trust him on the back of a motorcycle. I waited while Lena strapped her spare helmet over my head, then climbed onto the back of the bike. I tucked the bottom of my jacket between us to keep it from getting caught in the wheels.\n\n\"Hold tight,\" she said, and then we were darting onto the road.\n\nI felt her laughter as she wove through traffic. On another day, I might have shared it. Lena had the irrepressible ability to not only find joy in life, but to express it without fear or self-consciousness. She loved without fear. It was one of the things that made me crazy about her.\n\nBut even as I clung to her waist, feeling her body pressed against mine, breathing in the woodsy smell of her hair, I couldn't stop thinking about August Harrison. About how casually he had threatened to murder innocent people. About the anger I had seen when he murdered that wendigo in Tamarack. About his willingness to transform human beings into monsters, using techniques I had developed.\n\nWhere had he found his would-be wendigos? Were these allies who had volunteered to be transformed, or were they more victims? They had dragged the unconscious bodies away, leaving nobody who could answer those questions.\n\nThe magic in Harrison's two pelts wouldn't last forever. The rat had reverted to normal after three days, though that had been a smaller sample of skin, one which had been preserved for years before use. We didn't know how long the magic of a fresh skin might endure.\n\nI kept an eye out for insects, but either Harrison hadn't noticed Lena's bike, or else I had stung him too badly when I swatted his last batch.\n\nAnother possibility taunted me. Maybe this was what Harrison wanted. He had tried to get the two of us to surrender back in Columbus, and here we were, speeding down the highway to find him. Victor had been a genius. I couldn't afford to underestimate his father.\n\nThe GPS led us to a small Baptist church. Scorch marks covered the parking lot. Streaks of black rubber showed where someone had swerved around a car parked by the main entrance. The van was here, having smashed into a basketball hoop on the far side of the lot. Tire tracks on the grass suggested the truck had kept going into the field behind the church, where a row of pine trees stood like a living fence.\n\nLena parked her bike on the side of the road. I tugged my helmet off with one hand and clipped it to her bike. As we approached, I heard shouts from the field.\n\n\"Oh, shit.\" Lena took off running toward the front door. A body lay slumped against the brick wall, half hidden by the bushes alongside the walk. Lena pushed the bushes aside, and from the way the urgency drained from her movements, I knew we were too late.\n\nSharp claws had opened the woman's throat and shoulder. Her eyes were wide. Blood dribbled from the wounds, soaking into the gravel. Whoever she was, she didn't look like she could have presented a threat. Thick glasses, a close-permed frizz of brown hair, and a round face gave her a vaguely jovial appearance, even in death. She had died clutching her purse to her chest. I knelt and opened her purse.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Lena whispered.\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" I just wanted to know her name. This murder struck harder than the others. Maybe the still-warm body just felt more real than vampires who turned to dust or ash, or the wendigos who had been hacked apart until they were nothing but meat. Or maybe it was my own human prejudices, the idea that a human death meant more than the others. After all, wasn't I the one who had experimented with old wendigo hide like it was nothing more than a toy?\n\nI pulled out a leather wallet. The driver's license identified her as Christina Quinney, age fifty-three. Killed by monsters because she was in the way. I returned the wallet and closed her eyes. As I stood, I ripped the blanket away from my hand and stretched the armored fingers, then donned my enchanted sunglasses. \"Come on.\"\n\nLena tested the edges of her bokken, then nodded. I debated preparing an additional weapon or two of my own, but I didn't want to push it. Not yet. Smarter to wait until I knew exactly what would be most effective at ending August Harrison.\n\nWe made our way around the back of the church, keeping close to the wall. The pickup had driven through a small flower garden, overturning a bench and smashing a birdbath before coming to a stop by the trees. A starburst of blackened grass and the smell of sulfur showed where the automaton had taken another shot at the truck. Through my glasses, the charred grass shimmered as if someone had spilled gold glitter: the remnants of the automaton's magic.\n\nThe battle had moved to the edge of the woods, where three people stood around the automaton. Insects lay dead and scattered, like flickering embers. Harrison and his wendigos formed a second ring, but only those inner three were actually fighting. Each held a book, and with the sunglasses, I could see three ghosts circling the automaton, draining the life from its body.\n\nWhat the hell were they? I had seen possession before, where fictional characters crept into the mind of a careless libriomancer. If I kept pushing things, I'd see it a lot closer. But that was a known and somewhat understood magical phenomenon. Like possession, these beings appeared to come from books, but they behaved like the absence of magic.\n\n\"How long do you think we have before the police show up?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"They won't. Not until this is over. Automatons can become invisible when necessary, but they also divert the attention of anyone who doesn't know what they are. Call it an apathy field, for lack of a better term.\" The automaton stumbled. A patch of metal fell away from its wooden body, and three of the spells woven into its shell went dark. \"Anything magic I throw their way, they can intercept.\"\n\nLena stepped away, returning a short time later with several chunks of broken blacktop. \"So we hit them hobbit style. Nothing magical about a flying rock.\"\n\n\"I don't know what's sexier,\" I said. \"Watching you prepare to take on bad guys, or the fact that you're making Lord of the Rings references as you do it.\" I pulled out a copy of The Marvelous Land of Oz. \"If we hit them from two directions, we should be able to draw off their attack enough for the automaton to start smacking heads.\"\n\nThe automaton staggered, and the others closed in. More of its armor dropped into the grass. Two more insects flew in and burrowed into the exposed wood.\n\nI set the Oz book aside and grabbed Plato's The Republic. Reading was tricky with only one working hand, but I soon held the Ring of Gyges. I had done an honors paper as an undergraduate, arguing the similarity between Plato's tale and Tolkien's One Ring. I shoved The Republic back into my pocket and started in on The Marvelous Land of Oz.\n\n\"Dare I ask what you're planning to do with a ring and an old pepperbox?\" Lena asked when I was done.\n\nI beamed. \"It's a surprise. Give me two minutes to get ready.\"\n\nI slipped the ring onto my finger and vanished. In theory, true invisibility should have left me blind. Vision relied on the interaction between light and the cells at the back of the eye, but thanks to the ring, the light passed through me as if I wasn't here.\n\nFortunately, libriomancy obeyed belief over physics, and few modern-day readers thought about invisibility on a cellular level. I ran back to Christina Quinney and took a lipstick from her purse, then hurried toward the garden. Once there, I dropped behind the overturned bench.\n\nThe seat and back were slabs of polished black granite. The engraving along the back read, In memory of Annette Butler. Had the truck hit this thing head-on, it probably would have broken both the bench and the truck, but it looked like they had struck it at an angle.\n\n\"I'm sorry about this, Annette.\" I uncapped the lipstick and drew two red eyes and a large mouth. I wasn't much of an artist, especially since the lipstick had turned invisible when I picked it up, but it left visible, waxy lines on the granite. I added a pair of angry eyebrows as well, along with uneven ears to either side.\n\nI put the lipstick away and pulled out the pepperbox. Creating the powder of life from The Marvelous Land of Oz had been the easy part. The challenge was getting through the ritual to use it. I opened the box and sprinkled the powder over the bench, then raised my left pinky and said, \"Weaugh.\" Next was the right thumb. \"Teaugh.\" Finally, I raised both arms and waved them like a dancer doing jazz hands. \"Peaugh.\"\n\nL. Frank Baum wrote some weird magic. I just hoped I had pronounced it correctly.\n\nThrough my glasses, the powder looked like white sparks melting into the metal and granite. The whole contraption gave a shiver. Lipstick eyes blinked, and the ears perked up.\n\n\"Hello there,\" I said. \"I need you to do me a favor\u2026\"\n\nA wendigo was the first one to spot the bench bounding toward them. With a snarl, it broke away from the circle to meet this new threat.\n\nThe bench didn't even slow down. It charged with a straight-on waddle, as if it wanted nothing more than for that wendigo to plop down and enjoy a nice, comfy seat. Instead, the wendigo grabbed the bench and lifted one end into the air.\n\nIt was an impressive display of strength, one which did the wendigo no good whatsoever as the seat and back clapped together like enormous granite jaws. The wendigo let out a high-pitched yowl of pain.\n\nLena used the distraction to sprint toward the trees. Two of the wendigos spotted her, but a chunk of brick downed one before it could react. A lucky shot with my shock-gun took care of the second. I was a lousy shot with my left hand, but the nice thing about the shock-gun was that even grazing the target was enough to drop it.\n\nHarrison whirled, but thanks to the Ring of Gyges on my hand, he stared right through me.\n\nHe recovered quickly, ordering the wendigos back. A ghost flew from the automaton and swooped through the bench, weakening my spell.\n\nMy gun spat lightning at the three mages, but it fizzled into nothingness without reaching them. With everyone worrying about me and the bench, Lena was able to race out from between the trees, slip an arm around a wendigo's throat, and haul it backward.\n\nThe wendigo's choked cry was enough to attract attention. Two more wendigos bounded after Lena. I almost felt bad for them. Attacking Lena among the trees was a particularly bad idea.\n\nI moved to the corner of the church and braced my arm against the bricks, sighting in on August Harrison, but one of the ghosts swooped into my line of fire. It could see me, even if Harrison couldn't.\n\nIn the field, the bench staggered as another ghost continued to siphon its magic. Cartoonish eyes drooped, and its movements turned sluggish. But when another wendigo approached, the bench valiantly reared up and kicked it in the chest.\n\nThe ghost in front of me closed in. I pointed over its shoulder, uncertain whether it would see or understand the gesture. \"Too late,\" I said, grinning.\n\nWith two of the three ghosts focused on us while Harrison and the wendigos chased after Lena, the remaining book-mage was left alone to try to contain the automaton. It wasn't enough. Wooden hands creaked, and a blast of hellfire shot outward. The woman with the green hair tried to jump out of the way, but the flames caught her in the side. She spun away, protecting her book even as she screamed in pain.\n\nShe tried to run, but the automaton struck a wendigo hard enough to knock its body into her. They both went down, and her book flew into the grass. The ghost in front of me peeled away, streaking back toward the automaton.\n\nI didn't stop to think. I simply ran. I held my shock-gun ready, but my attention was on that book. The wendigo who had been hit was very dead, but Green was groaning and trying to pull herself free from beneath the body. She was reaching for her book.\n\nI got there first. The book disappeared when I snatched it up with my armored hand. The woman screamed again, fury overpowering pain as she struggled to follow.\n\nI retreated to the church to study my prize. It became visible again as soon as I set it down. White silk cords bound wooden boards covered in red cloth. I opened the cover, then pulled my hand back. \"Rice paper,\" I whispered.\n\nStrong and smooth, the paper held the ink far better than most modern paper. The columns of brown Chinese characters were as clear and sharp as the day they had been drawn. The pages were folded and pasted together, like a long scroll flattened accordion-style and bound into a single book. There were illustrations, but no color.\n\nBased on what I had seen, this book was more than seven hundred years old. Give or take a century. That made it significantly older than Gutenberg himself. Of course, I was no expert, and I couldn't know anything for certain without further research.\n\nI turned carefully to the front pages and frowned. The first few pages were printed, either woodblock or movable type. But the inner pages appeared to have been written by hand.\n\nI moved the book out of sight behind me and returned my attention to the fighting. Only two of the ghosts remained, and all but three wendigos were unconscious or too injured to make a difference. Harrison was red-faced, his angry shouts growing shrill with panic. My animated bench was limping and the automaton was in bad shape, but we were winning. Harrison launched another small swarm at the automaton, only to have their magic sucked away before they reached their target. Harrison cried out again, this time in pain. I grinned and started shooting, and he dove for cover behind the truck.\n\n\"Guan Feng?\"\n\nThe voice belonged to a woman, and it had come from the book. I had heard whispers from books before, but this was different. It didn't feel like misplaced snippets of dialogue sneaking into my thoughts. Whoever had spoken sounded more aware, more here.\n\nAt the tree line, roots broke through the earth to twine around a wendigo's ankles. I aimed at the two remaining book-mages and pulled the trigger.\n\nThe book behind me screamed. The words were in another tongue\u2014one of the Chinese languages, I thought\u2026possibly Mandarin\u2014but I understood them perfectly as they tore through my skull.\n\n\"Begone, Porter!\"\n\nIn order for my magic to translate her words, those words had to be spoken by a living mind. This was no character brought to pseudolife to fight for August Harrison. Not only was this a real person, she knew what I was. And she was terrified.\n\n\"Bi Wei!\" The woman with the green hair dragged herself free and began hobbling toward us. Harrison shouted an order, but she ignored him. I heard the book calling out to her, to Guan Feng, pleading for help.\n\nI raised my shock-gun. I had endless questions, but we could sort things out as soon as everyone stopped trying to kill me.\n\nThe book screamed a second time. Magic poured forth, and I watched the gun dissolve in my hand.\n\nThe fact that I could see my hand meant the Ring of Gyges was fading as well. I scooted backward, but Guan Feng had spotted me. The book continued to scream, and a shadow darkened my vision. The sunglasses fell apart and dropped to the ground, leaving me blind to the magic swirling around and through me.\n\nI couldn't see what she was doing, but I could feel it. The armor on my right hand broke away like oversized scabs. I supposed I should have been grateful for that small blessing, but it didn't stop.\n\nAs the ghost tore through me, my mind flashed back to the attack in Detroit. The devourer had seized me from the inside out, claws unraveling my memories and my thoughts. I had come so close to drowning in its hunger and rage. It had been an incoherent, instinctive attack. The devourer had no understanding or awareness of what I was, or of anything save the need to destroy me. This was different. Instead of incoherent fury, I sensed both fear and determination. Her attack was similar, but more controlled.\n\nShe was also stronger. These books, and whoever or whatever was acting through them, had been holding back.\n\nI felt her attention splinter. She lashed out to slap the bench, which broke in two and stopped moving. Another strike knocked the automaton to the ground. She had plunged us all into a whirlpool of naked power. Even Guan Feng looked afraid as she limped toward us.\n\nWhere had they come from, and why would they follow a man like Harrison? Their power dwarfed whatever magic he had managed to steal from the Porters.\n\n\"Lena, get out of here!\" I crawled away from the book and used the wall to push myself upright. A wendigo was bounding toward me on all fours. \"Tell them we've been chasing Saruman.\"\n\nI hoped she would understand. Saruman was a dangerous villain in Lord of the Rings, but he hadn't been the true threat. If whoever or whatever was trapped in these books got loose, they would make Gutenberg look like an amateur stage magician fumbling his way through cheap card tricks.\n\nSeveral hundred pounds of wendigo slammed into me like a wrecking ball. My head bounced against the ground, and I rolled several times before coming to rest. As my vision gradually came back into focus, I found myself looking up at a snarling, frostbitten face that retained just enough humanity to be truly monstrous.\n\n\"I think you and I both know Lena's not going to leave you alone.\" August Harrison strode toward us, one thumb hooked through his belt loop. Metal creatures crawled over his chest and shoulders, like piglets fighting for their mother's teat. Many were larger than the insects we had seen before, more like those Madagascar hissing cockroaches some people kept as pets. I searched for the queen, the cicada Nicholas had described, but couldn't find it.\n\nHarrison pulled an old paperback from his back pocket and fanned through the pages. I swore when I spotted the cover art. A yellow-and-red border framed an image of two scantily clad warrior women fighting over a well-muscled man chained to an oak tree. Harrison had tracked down a copy of Nymphs of Neptune.\n\n\"You write well, Isaac. Such detailed reports. I can't begin to tell you how helpful you've been to my little army.\" He tugged a rusted metal millipede off of his shirt and held it out for me to see. \"I might not have Victor's gifts, but I know my way around a machine shop. If he had shared these secrets with me, let me help him build sturdier, stronger creatures, he might have survived that attack.\"\n\nI heard genuine regret, even grief in his words as he stared past me. Despite everything he had done, Victor had been a part of his life for years. What must it have been like when the cicada arrived? If it was telepathic, did that mean it had shared Victor's final, agonized moments with August Harrison?\n\nHarrison brought the millipede closer, and any sympathy I had disappeared. Pointed iron legs clicked together. A series of overlapping brackets formed the segmented shell. Instead of antennae, a single slender blade protruded from the center of the millipede's face, like some kind of stiletto-headed unicorn bug. The millipede was long enough to circle Harrison's wrist with several inches to spare.\n\nHe dropped it onto my chest. I tried to fling it away, only to have the wendigo stomp on my arm. If I had been on pavement instead of grass, he would have shattered bone. I lay perfectly still as the millipede crawled higher and circled my neck.\n\nHarrison turned to shout. \"Miss Greenwood, I'm tired of games. I'll give you thirty seconds, and then I'm going to let one of my pets bore a hole through your lover's skull.\"\n\nHe was sweating beneath that coat of bugs. I could see the dampness as they moved. His face was red, and he was out of breath.\n\nGuan Feng approached, hugging her book to her body. She scowled at me like I was the genetically engineered offspring of Adolf Hitler and Jack the Ripper.\n\n\"Perhaps she needs more encouragement.\" Harrison turned to the trees again. \"You've lost one oak this year. Are you strong enough to survive the death of another?\"\n\n\"Going after Lena's tree didn't work out too well for you last time,\" I said. \"How many more of your son's toys can you afford to lose?\"\n\nHe waved a hand, and the millipede's grip tightened with a metallic click.\n\n\"You have no idea what you've allied yourself with, do you?\" I asked. I didn't bother hiding my smirk. If he was going to kill me, the least I could do was piss him off before I died. \"You're nothing but a parasite. I don't know what they need you for, but as soon as they get it\u2014\"\n\n\"August.\" Lena emerged from the trees carrying a long wooden spear. One of the wendigos jumped in front of Harrison to shield him, but Lena only laughed and hefted the spear over one shoulder. \"You think I can't put this thing through both of you?\"\n\nThe millipede raced onto my face. It was heavier than I had expected, and its legs stung like thorns. I heard a whirring sound, and pain pierced the center of my forehead.\n\nHarrison raised his book. \"Even if that were true, killing me would guarantee Isaac's death, and we both know you can't do that.\"\n\nBlood dripped down the side of my head. I turned my head to keep the blood from running into my ear, which brought Guan Feng into the center of my vision. She was staring at Lena, and her eyes had filled with tears. She didn't seem to be afraid. Not of Lena, at any rate. If anything, she looked like she was afraid to trust what she was seeing, like she wanted to touch Lena to confirm that she was real. She noticed me watching, and her expression turned to stone.\n\nLena stabbed her spear into the earth. The millipede pulled back, obeying Harrison's unspoken command. My jaw unclenched, and I forced myself to breathe normally.\n\n\"Search her,\" Harrison barked at Guan Feng. \"Strip her of any magic, and don't let her have any wood. Not even a toothpick.\"\n\nLena smiled and spread her arms, never taking her eyes from August Harrison. Her unwavering attention even made me nervous. \"If you hurt Isaac, I will shove an acorn down your throat and force it to take root in your gut. Care to guess how tall it will grow before you finally die?\"\n\nHarrison stepped forward and backhanded her. I pushed myself up, but the wendigo gave me an almost absentminded kick in the head.\n\nLena never even blinked. \"Is your hand okay?\"\n\nHarrison grimaced and rubbed his knuckles. \"It doesn't matter. As long as I have him, you're mine. And once you've spent enough time in my company, you'll kill him yourself.\"\n\nLena's gaze dropped to me, and for the first time, her confidence cracked. As strong as she was, we both knew Harrison was right.\n\nI understand humans are unable to remember their first years of life. Their bodies and minds develop so much, and so quickly during that time. Perhaps that's why I remember so little of those early sessions with Nidhi Shah. I've read her case notes, but much of the person she describes is a stranger.\n\nOnly two thoughts etched themselves into my memory during that first meeting. The first was Nidhi's smile, beautiful and warm and reassuring. The second was my realization toward the end of the day that I was completely in love with her.\n\nI learned so much from her. Nidhi said one way Frank controlled me was to make sure I never acquired the skills to be independent. Because it made her happy, I threw myself into study.\n\nI mastered reading in three weeks. We began with children's stories, like Doctor Seuss and the Berenstain Bears. (I learned later that she had deliberately avoided giving me a copy of The Giving Tree.) Once I could make it through those, she brought me a handful of comic books.\n\nI devoured them. Tank Girl and Wonder Woman, She-Hulk and Batman, Catwoman and Katana. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to be them. I shaped my first wooden sword from my oak tree, mimicking the exaggerated, thick-bladed weapon from Katana's appearance in an early Outsiders comic.\n\nI was catching up on Black Widow one evening when I felt Nidhi watching me. I continued reading, enjoying her attention. I knew she was attracted to me. I could feel her fighting it every time we spoke, every time I hugged her or sat beside her on the couch. She had brought me into her home because I had no place to go. Now I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.\n\n\"You've changed your hair,\" she said.\n\nI pulled my fingers through the black locks. I had done nothing. I hadn't even noticed the darkening color until a week ago. My skin had turned a deeper brown as well, far more than it ever had before, even when I was working day in and day out beneath the sun. \"Do you like it?\"\n\nShe didn't answer, but instead walked over to see what I was reading. \"I loved that issue.\"\n\n\"Me, too.\"\n\nI could have seduced her as I had done with Frank Dearing, could have taken her desire and grown it like a new-budded flower. But I refrained. Whatever happened, it was important that it be her choice. I wanted her to love me on her own terms.\n\nShe sat down, not on the couch beside me, but in the rocking chair at the end of the coffee table. \"You've grown so much since you lost Frank. The Porters are asking for my evaluation. I believe you're ready to live on your own.\"\n\nI jumped to my feet, heart pounding. \"I'm not. I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't need a counselor anymore,\" Nidhi said. \"You've adjusted to everything so easily. You're far stronger than any of us imagined.\"\n\nIt was the way she lowered her eyelids that did it, shielding her eyes while staring at me through her lashes. A month ago she had been a stranger, and now I could read her simply by watching those long, expressive lashes. \"You're right,\" I said. \"I don't need a counselor anymore.\"\n\nI saw her swallow, saw the skin of her neck and face darken slightly. \"Lena, it's normal for a patient to develop feelings for her therapist\u2026\"\n\n\"What about the therapist's feelings for her patient?\"\n\n\"I care about you. I hope you haven't misunderstood\u2014\"\n\n\"I haven't misunderstood anything.\" I smiled, trying to show her that it was okay. \"I know what you want. I can feel it.\"\n\nTo her credit, she didn't try to lie. Her forehead crinkled. \"You can sense emotions?\"\n\n\"Only that emotion.\" I laughed, delighted to see her blush deepen. \"I didn't say anything because I thought it would make you uncomfortable.\"\n\n\"It would be inappropriate,\" Nidhi said, but I could feel her resolve melting.\n\nI leaned back in the couch, my skin tingling with the anticipation of her touch. \"I certainly hope so.\"\n\nShe blinked once, then started to laugh. I had heard her laughter before, but never like this. Loud, joyful, and utterly unrestrained, her delight called to my own, until I was laughing with her.\n\nShe joined me on the couch and placed a hand on my thigh, and soon laughter gave way to other sounds.\n\nA pair of Harrison's wendigos shoved us into the back of the pickup truck. It was like being manhandled by Frosty the Snowman, only Frosty's breath probably hadn't smelled of raw hamburger, nor would his claws have drawn blood. The millipede circled my neck like a grotesque choker, the tip of the blade resting against the base of my skull.\n\nA metal cat jumped awkwardly onto the tailgate behind us. It appeared to have been pieced together with scraps from a wrecked car. This was a cruder creation than the others I had seen. The head looked like a rotor assembly from the alternator, and the major joints were exposed wheels and belts, as if someone had simply smashed the engine into a new form. Smaller insects were crawling through its innards.\n\n\"That's disturbing.\" I tucked my feet in close, out of reach. \"What's your name?\"\n\nThe cat arched its back and made a sound like the grinding of worn-out brake pads. Its teeth were mismatched slivers of fiberglass, and the claws were black metal screws. Various rods and springs acted as tendon and muscle.\n\nAugust shut the tailgate and the truck cap, locking us in. He climbed into the back seat of the pickup and slid open the rear window so he could talk to us. His smugness had returned in force, perhaps compensating for his earlier fear.\n\n\"Give me your hands, Vainio.\" He used a thick plastic zip tie to bind my wrists together. \"The cat will look better once he's finished.\"\n\n\"How does it work, exactly?\" I asked. \"You come up with the idea, and Victor's insects bring it to life?\"\n\n\"Don't be na\u00efve. That thing's no more alive than this truck.\" He shouted out the door for everyone to hurry up, then turned back to me. \"I spent twenty years working as an electrical engineer for the power company. Last year, we lost another line worker after a storm. Damn fool had been working overtime, and wasn't paying attention. Tell me, Isaac, why did that man have to die when something like Victor's bugs could have made the repairs faster and more safely?\"\n\n\"You're saying you want to fix things? Because so far, all you seem to have used them for is killing people.\"\n\n\"You and I have very different definitions of people.\" He didn't bother to tie Lena's wrists. He simply pointed to the cat, then to the millipede around my neck. \"We'll be watching.\"\n\nGuan Feng climbed into the seat opposite Harrison. One of the wendigos took the front passenger seat, which would have been amusing to watch from a safer distance. First he caught his fur in the door, and then he fumbled with the seat belt for a good minute before giving up. I felt a little sorry for him.\n\nAnother of the book-mages drove, which surprised me. Harrison didn't strike me as the kind of guy to let someone else take the wheel. Maybe the battle had taken more out of him than I thought.\n\n\"I was able to call Nidhi and tell her what was happening,\" Lena said.\n\nI grinned, then nodded to show I understood. Harrison could listen in all he wanted, but I doubted he was fluent in Gujarati. I might not be able to respond in kind, but half a conversation was better than none. Better yet, this meant the translation spell in my brain was working again. Whatever Guan Feng's book had done to me, the effects were already fading.\n\nI checked out our mobile prison, doing my best to avoid any sudden motion that might spook the cat. The truck cap was old, made of fiberglass and plastic on an aluminum frame. The tinted plastic would hide us from view, but Lena could rip this thing apart without breaking a sweat. And Harrison would kill me the instant she tried.\n\nShe sighed and leaned against me. Between the sounds from outside and the changing speed, I was able to tell when we reached the highway. The sunlight filtering through the window meant we were heading roughly north. Back to Michigan, then.\n\nI watched the insects crawling in and out of the metal cat like shiny maggots on a corpse as I tried to fit the missing pieces into place. The magic in Guan Feng's book was strong enough to stop any libriomancer. Why hadn't they killed Lena's tree? Why had they held back at Victor's house? I doubted all of us together would have been a match for what I had just seen and felt. Or maybe the question was what had been holding them back?\n\nI looked through the window at Guan Feng. It was only after I had taken her book that everything went to hell. She wasn't a libriomancer, but what if she was the book's keeper? Though the relationship was deeper than that. The voice I heard had been terrified for Guan Feng. And terrified of me.\n\n\"I won't let him turn me against you,\" Lena said quietly.\n\n\"I know.\" We both knew what Harrison would turn her into. Just as we knew she would choose to die before she let him take that choice away. \"You should have run.\"\n\n\"I couldn't.\" She didn't try to hide her frustration. \"Isaac, where did these people come from?\"\n\nHarrison slid open the window. \"Speak English, or shut the hell up.\"\n\nShe put a hand on the aluminum frame, blocking him from shutting the window. \"Don't the bugs creep you out?\"\n\n\"They're tools. Solid and reliable.\" He plucked a silver dot the size of a ladybug from his sleeve and watched it crawl over his fingers. \"Victor was always better with machines than he was with people. Caused him no end of grief in school. I tried to help, to teach him to stand up for himself, but his mother insisted on coddling him.\"\n\nI fought the urge to reach through the window and throttle him, but Lena simply nodded. Her quiet anger from moments before had vanished, and she listened raptly to Harrison's every word. \"You wanted him to be strong.\"\n\n\"That's right.\" He glanced at me. \"I didn't want my son to grow up to be the kind of man who let his girlfriend fight his battles for him.\"\n\nLena cut me off before I could respond. \"He didn't. He was outnumbered, but he killed several vampires and injured more.\"\n\n\"It wasn't enough, though, was it?\"\n\n\"I guess not.\"\n\nI stared. He couldn't possibly be buying into Lena's submissive act\u2026or maybe he could. This was a man who had treated both his wife and son as mere possessions. Why wouldn't he look at Lena in the same way? He might see Lena's passiveness not as a front, but as her right and natural state. Especially if he had read Nymphs of Neptune.\n\nAnd Lena knew it.\n\n\"Isaac killed the man who was responsible for Victor's death,\" Lena said softly.\n\n\"I know. I read about what happened.\" Harrison turned away.\n\n\"Who are your friends?\"\n\n\"They call themselves Bi Sheng de du zhe.\"\n\nNormally, I would have heard the words in English as well as Mandarin, but that only worked if the speaker knew what his words meant. Fortunately, Guan Feng turned and repeated the phrase, correcting Harrison's pronunciation without bothering to disguise her annoyance. \"B\u00ec de d\u00fa.\"\n\nI stared at Guan Feng, wondering if I had heard correctly. The students of Bi Sheng. The actual meaning blurred the line between \"students\" and \"readers.\"\n\nBi Sheng had begun experimenting with movable type during China's Song Dynasty, centuries before Gutenberg invented his press. But Bi Sheng's porcelain letters had been too fragile for large-scale printing.\n\n\"I don't understand.\" I ignored Harrison and spoke directly to Guan Feng. \"Bi Sheng's press couldn't produce books in large enough numbers for magic.\"\n\nShe glared. \"The Porters' flaw has always been arrogance.\"\n\n\"That's not\u2014okay, yeah, you're probably right.\" I started to say more, but the millipede's legs pinched my neck.\n\nHarrison dragged the backs of his fingers down over the metal shells covering his chest, making an irregular clinking sound. \"I could force that millipede to crawl into your mouth,\" he said lightly. \"To clamp its legs into your tongue and dig its sting into the back of your throat.\"\n\n\"How did you find them?\" Lena asked. \"The Porters don't even know they exist.\"\n\nI thought back to Gutenberg's reaction when I described our attackers. One Porter had known, or at least suspected.\n\n\"Victor built his pets to seek out magic.\" Harrison clearly enjoyed being in a position of power, doling out knowledge like an animal trainer tossing scraps to a performing monkey. \"Feng and her fellow caretakers have hidden for centuries, but they couldn't hide from me.\"\n\n\"Hidden from what?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"From us.\" I braced myself, but Harrison let my guess pass without punishment. He even smiled, like his pet had mastered a new trick.\n\n\"Would you like to learn the true history of libriomancy, Isaac?\"\n\nI knew he was taunting me, but dammit, he had also discovered a branch of magic I had never heard of. If Victor's bugs were as good as I suspected, he had probably gotten into areas of our network I had never seen, too. I tried not to let too much of my annoyance show. \"Sure, I love a good story.\"\n\n\"I suppose Gutenberg told you he invented libriomancy?\" Harrison rested his elbow through the window.\n\n\"You've got a better theory?\"\n\nIt was Guan Feng who answered. \"Bi Sheng and his students were exploring the magical potential of books centuries before Gutenberg. Gutenberg discovered our art and stole what secrets he could. He spent years trying to duplicate Bi Sheng's magic.\"\n\n\"He never\u2014\" I stopped myself. Who was I to say what was or wasn't true? More than a decade of Gutenberg's early life was a mystery. Not even Porter historians knew what he had been up to during the 1420s, though there were plenty of theories.\n\n\"Gutenberg was afraid of competition,\" Guan Feng continued. \"Afraid to let anyone else have power. So he created his automatons and sent them to wipe us out.\"\n\nGutenberg's invention had spawned upheavals that spread throughout the world. The printing press had spread chaos on every level imaginable: political, religious, and even magical. In a single generation, he upended a magical balance of power that had existed for millennia. While Gutenberg and his growing guild of libriomancers lacked the raw might of the old sorcerers, they made up for it in numbers.\n\nAccording to the histories I had read, other practitioners had been jealous of Gutenberg, afraid of the following he was amassing. They sought to destroy him, and he created his automatons out of self-defense. Gutenberg had eventually used the automatons to help establish the Porters. Together, they united the world's magic-users and laid out the laws to put an end to such conflicts.\n\nI knew those histories were incomplete. They made no reference to the other mission of those original twelve Porters. Even then, Gutenberg had been aware of the devourers, and his Porters had worked to keep them from entering our world.\n\nWhat else had Gutenberg omitted? History was written by the survivors and reshaped by those with power. Few people had ever gained as much power as Johannes Gutenberg. He portrayed himself as a man forced to make ugly choices for a greater purpose. But he had enslaved the souls of his enemies to create the automatons and enforce peace. He manipulated the minds of his own Porters to keep them from abusing their power.\n\nIf he had seen the students of Bi Sheng as a threat, he would have acted without hesitation.\n\n\"Gutenberg is a tyrant,\" Harrison said. \"His army has manipulated this world from the shadows for centuries.\"\n\n\"If we ruled the world, I guarantee you they never would have cancelled Firefly,\" I countered.\n\nHe sighed. \"Make your jokes while you can. Thanks to you, Gutenberg's army will soon fall.\"\n\nI was no longer listening. I stared at the book in Guan Feng's lap as I made the connection. I forgot about Harrison, the metal millipede around my neck, everything except that ancient text and what it represented. \"When I grabbed that book, you shouted a name. Bi Wei.\"\n\nGuan Feng's eyes widened, and she tightened her grip on the book as if I would somehow snap through my bonds, rip it from her grasp, and plunge my hand into the pages to seize its magic.\n\n\"Holy shit,\" I breathed. \"That's where they went, isn't it? When Gutenberg's automatons attacked, they preserved themselves in their books.\"\n\nAutomatons worked similarly, trapping ghosts\u2026souls\u2026whatever you wanted to call them. A single phrase etched in metal bound the mind to the wooden body. But I had entered an automaton and touched the mind trapped inside. There had been precious little left of her humanity.\n\nThe books were different. I had guessed Guan Feng's book to be several hundred years older than Gutenberg. \"The books had to have been prepared long before the attack. Passed down and guarded for emergencies, like magical escape pods. They fled into those books, and you've protected them ever since.\"\n\n\"Gutenberg wanted to destroy us,\" Guan Feng said. \"He failed.\"\n\nHow long could you survive like that before the madness took you? Before despair turned to hunger, to resentment and hatred toward everything you had lost. Until all that remained was the need to devour whatever you touched.\n\n\"You couldn't save all of the books, could you?\" I asked. Her silence was answer enough. I turned to Harrison. Despite the summer heat, I suddenly felt cold. \"You said you found them. Are you sure?\"\n\nHe frowned. \"What are you talking about?\"\n\nI thought back to what Jeneta had said about the insects, about the devourers who had attacked her thoughts. The queen was telepathic, and telepathy went in two directions. \"How do you know they didn't find you?\"\n\n\"You know what's worse than going over the Mackinac Bridge in my little convertible?\" I spoke softly, with as little movement of the neck or mouth as possible. Harrison hadn't been pleased about losing control of our earlier conversation, and he had expressed his annoyance by perforating the skin beneath my jawbone.\n\n\"Going over the bridge in the back of a pickup?\" Lena guessed.\n\nI closed my eyes as we moved onto the metal grating in the center lanes, where wind rushed up from below and the only thing keeping us from plunging into the Great Lakes was a stretch of glorified screens.\n\nI understood the engineering well enough to recognize that we were perfectly safe. Unfortunately, intellect had a hard time making itself heard over my gut, which was currently insisting we were all about to plunge to our deaths.\n\nShe twined her fingers with mine. \"Captured by a murderer with a metal worm around your neck, and you're worried about heights.\"\n\n\"Did you know the middle of this bridge can sway more than thirty feet in high winds?\" In truth, I was almost grateful for the distraction. I had spent the past hours thinking about Guan Feng's book and the devourers, trying to understand our true enemy. There were too many gaps, too much I didn't know.\n\nThe first pages of her book were block printed. In theory, if enough copies of the text had been made, that could create the magical resonance you needed for libriomancy. But the rest of the book had been copied by hand.\n\nWas this an unfinished work? If the original wood blocks had been lost, someone might have tried to finish it manually, but not even the most careful scribe could have achieved the perfection of the printing press.\n\nAsk yourself the real question, coward. If the students of Bi Sheng fled into their books, and some of them were lost to madness, does that mean the Porters created the devourers?\n\nThe timeline didn't fit. Gutenberg had shared documented encounters with the devourers from centuries before his time, meaning they had come into existence before Gutenberg was ever born. I supposed those documents could have been faked, but why?\n\nThe voice I heard at the church\u2014Bi Wei's voice\u2014hadn't been a devourer. She was frightened and angry, not crazed. Her power had sapped our magic. She hadn't destroyed us.\n\nI banged my head against the side of the truck, then twisted to watch Guan Feng, who had been reading for at least two hours. Was that how she communicated with Bi Wei? Her eyes scanned slowly up and down the text, completely focused.\n\n\"Libriomancy only works if thousands of people have read the same book,\" I said quietly.\n\nLena shifted her weight, resting her head on my shoulder. \"So I've heard.\"\n\n\"What happens if one person reads the same book thousands of times?\"\n\n\"I imagine they'd get extremely bored.\"\n\n\"Depends on the book. Remind me to give you a copy of Good Omens when we get home.\"\n\nBack in the sixties, a libriomancer named Ghalib al-Mun'im had collaborated with the Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France to develop a list of the most commonly reread titles, books that were checked out again and again by the same patrons. The Porters had learned to estimate the strength of a book's potential magic based on the number of readers. Al-Mun'im wanted to build on their work to measure the impact of rereading.\n\nAccording to his findings, those frequently reread books were less powerful than books read an equal number of times by unique individuals. I remembered his math being rather fuzzy in several spots, but he had suggested that if the Porters wanted to increase the power of books, encouraging more people to read a wider variety would be roughly five times as effective as pushing them to reread their favorites.\n\nBut what if you didn't have a large pool of potential readers? What if you had only a few copies of the books in question and couldn't risk printing more, for fear that your enemies would find out?\n\nHow many times had that book been read and reread through the centuries? How many times had it been repaired to survive, or did Bi Wei somehow strengthen the physical book?\n\nI squinted out the window, trying to guess where we were going. I was almost certain we had taken 28 after the bridge. We stopped for gas a short time later, but the sign outside told me nothing beyond the cost of cigarettes and unleaded gas.\n\nThe sun was setting when we finally left the highway. I had started to drift to sleep. The change of speed jolted me from a Wonderland-style nightmare in which I fled through an endless library, my footsteps echoing on the marble floor, trying to escape from invisible pursuers. I was relieved to be free of my dream, up until I remembered where I really was.\n\nWe drove into a hilly, wooded area. I felt the road turn to gravel, and the truck's jostling made the millipede around my neck twitch and dig in tighter.\n\n\"Let Harrison feel like he's in control,\" Lena whispered in Gujarati.\n\n\"He pretty much is.\"\n\nShe swung a leg over my lap to straddle me. She kissed my ear, then brought my bound hands toward her. She pressed my fingers against a hard lump beneath the skin of her forearm, like a dislocated bone. Before I could ask what it was, she tensed her arm, and a sliver of wood poked through the skin to jab my fingers. \"Take it,\" she whispered.\n\nI took the tip of wood and pulled. Lena gasped, but with her body blocking the mechanical cat's view, Harrison would hopefully take that as a sound of passion rather than pain. I slid a thin wooden stiletto about eight inches long from her skin.\n\n\"How?\" I asked.\n\n\"Flesh. Blood. Wood. They're all a part of my body.\" She kissed me again. \"August Harrison is as arrogant as any Porter, and it's going to cost him dearly.\"\n\nHarrison pounded a fist on the window. \"I said knock it off with that foreign talk.\"\n\nLena winked at me, then helped me to tuck the knife into my sock. I can only imagine what Harrison thought we were doing.\n\nThe truck stopped, and a man I hadn't seen before unlocked the back. Lena exited first, then offered me a hand as I climbed down from the tailgate. I leaned against the truck and tried to rub the stiffness from my thighs. I smelled water, though I couldn't see the lake. The cold, fresh air tasted like home.\n\nWe were in a parking lot edged with wooden posts. Seven small brown cabins were spread out before us, identical in shape and size. Maple and spruce trees shaded most of the lot.\n\nA pair of metal rats perched like gargoyles atop an old freezer humming outside the closest cabin. The freezer's curved lines and heavy steel handle, along with the orange rust along the bottom, suggested the thing was probably as old as I was. Such freezers could store enough venison to feed a small family for months. Or preserve the hides of murdered wendigos.\n\n\"More friends of yours?\" I asked, nodding toward the other cars.\n\n\"The followers of Bi Sheng bought this place two months ago,\" announced Harrison. The cat bounded down and waddled along behind him like a bad-tempered and extremely pointy duckling.\n\nA path beyond the cabins led down to what appeared to be sand dunes. The U.P. was full of these small lakeside hotels and campsites. The building marked as the office had a \"Closed\" sign, and the windows were dark. But people were emerging from the other cabins. I spotted two more carrying the oversized books. Others held rifles pointed in my direction. I got the impression that they knew exactly who and what I was, and that any one of them would be happy for an excuse to pull the trigger.\n\n\"Is this the dryad?\" asked one of the men.\n\n\"I told you I'd bring her, didn't I?\" Harrison snapped.\n\n\"You also told us the libriomancer was no threat, that you'd have them both long before they discovered you and your stolen magic.\"\n\nHarrison sniffed and turned to address the group as a whole. \"I brought the dryad. Let's get on with it.\"\n\n\"Where are the others?\" someone else asked in Mandarin.\n\n\"They're safe,\" Guan Feng answered in the same language. \"The van was destroyed. They're making their way back. The Porter and his friends were stronger than Harrison anticipated.\" She checked Harrison, as if making sure he wasn't paying attention. \"They were able to report back to Gutenberg. He sent one of his automatons.\"\n\nThe man with the rifle swore. \"How much do they know?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I was too busy saving this b\u00e8n d\u00e0n.\" She gestured toward Harrison.\n\nI bit my lip to keep from smirking as I made a mental note of that one. If I survived, I could teach Deb how to call someone a dumbass in Mandarin.\n\n\"All right, you've busted your asses to catch us,\" I said. \"What happens next?\"\n\nGuan Feng looked down at her book. When she spoke, her words were soft and reverent. \"Now the dryad will help us to restore the B\u00ec de d\u00fa.\"\n\nEight months into our relationship, I returned home to find Nidhi sitting on the couch, her hands folded over a book in her lap.\n\nWhen I sat down, she stiffened like she was fighting the urge to pull away. \"I'm sorry I was late.\" I had been volunteering with the local food bank, encouraging the fruitfulness of their gardens. I thought I had told her we were picking and packing today, but maybe I'd forgotten. \"Nidhi, what's wrong?\"\n\n\"It's not you. Not anything you've done.\" She shifted to face me, putting more distance between us in the process. It felt like she had physically struck me. \"The Porters have encountered a handful of dryads over the centuries, but the things you can do don't match their accounts. I've been reading about dryads ever since we found you.\"\n\nShe set the book on the coffee table and slid it toward me. It was an old library book, the spine heavily creased. She had tucked an origami butterfly into the pages to mark her place.\n\n\"Nymphs of Neptune?\" The hairs on my neck and arms rose when I touched the book, like I had entered a haunted graveyard. I had to force myself to read the opening pages.\n\nThe words made me ill. I could get through brief passages, but the longer, descriptive sections left me dizzy and confused. I struggled to focus as the words blurred and doubled, and when I looked up, it felt like the house was tumbling around me. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the effects to pass. \"What is this?\"\n\n\"The Porters who found you believed your tree was magical, created through libriomancy. I think they might have been right.\"\n\nI closed the book and read the back cover. The summary text didn't hit me as hard as the story had, at least not physically. \"You think I'm a character from this book? A slave?\" I whispered.\n\n\"A fantasy.\" She answered so quietly I barely heard.\n\nI wanted to destroy the book, to rip it apart and burn the pieces. Instead, I carefully set it back down and tried to absorb what I had read. If I was one of these nymphs\u2014and both my reaction to the story and the description of the nymphs' powers suggested I was\u2014then Nidhi hadn't been helping me. She had been molding me, transforming me into her perfect lover. I dug my fingers into the cushions, feeling the rage expand in my chest, a scream demanding release.\n\nI had never experienced anger like this when I was with Frank Dearing. He had wanted an obedient, compliant companion, and so he had denied me my anger. He couldn't have known. He hadn't noticed or cared that I was\u2026incomplete. What else had he taken?\n\nAnd what had Nidhi kept from me?\n\n\"Why?\" Humans asked the same questions. Why am I here? What's my purpose? But my question could be answered. James Wright had deliberately written these nymphs into his book, describing every curve in meticulous detail.\n\nI was here to fulfill the needs and desires of my lovers.\n\n\"We think someone pulled an acorn or sapling from the book,\" Nidhi said. \"I doubt they even realized what they had done. If it was a fluke, an untrained accident, they probably scared themselves and ran away, leaving you to grow in this world.\"\n\nThat's why I had been alone when I awoke.\n\n\"I'm so sorry, Lena.\" This angered her, too. I could see it in the tightness of her body.\n\nI refused to cry. \"What will you do now that you know what I am?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. Nobody has the right to\u2026to control another person like this.\"\n\n\"But I'm not really a person, am I?\" My hair, my skin, my favorite flavor of ice cream, everything about me was a reflection of her. I was a fantasy. I had more in common with the airbrushed centerfold of a men's magazine than I did with a real human being.\n\nI stormed away to our bedroom and slammed the door. I could hear Nidhi crying, and part of me longed to comfort her. Instead, I clung to the anger, nurturing it like a sapling. What if she sent me away? My next lover could be someone like Frank. I might never experience this kind of hurt and anger again.\n\nWhen Nidhi joined me, hours later, I was sitting amidst a circle of her comic books. Ridiculously clothed women stared up at me from the pages, bodies contorted into bone-bending poses that better displayed their exaggerated curves.\n\n\"If you leave me, what then?\" I reached out to turn the page of a recent issue of Catwoman. In one panel, the breasts straining to burst from her leather bodysuit were larger than her head, and her waist was thinner than her neck. \"Who will I be passed to next, and what will I become?\"\n\nNidhi didn't answer. She didn't have to. My anger was nothing but a reflection of her own conflict, meaning she hated this just as much as I did. And dammit all to hell if that didn't make me love her more.\n\nShe sat down beside me, kissed my hair, and whispered, \"Huun tane prem karuu chuun.\"\n\n\"I love you, too,\" I said automatically. Whatever I was, those feelings were real to me. \"When I was born, I looked for the other dryads of my grove. For my sisters.\" I picked up a Red Sonja comic. \"I've finally found them.\"\n\nThe others fell in behind us as we walked deeper into the woods. I counted eleven wendigos and twenty-three humans, not including August Harrison. Far too many to fight, even if Harrison hadn't swiped my books.\n\nHow many ghosts walked with us? At least ten of my captors carried books. I thought of Bi Wei's magic ripping through me. She had been alone, trapped within her book. What might they do together if they were freed?\n\n\"Who were they?\" Lena asked, pointing toward the wendigos.\n\n\"Some are volunteers,\" said Harrison. \"The students of Bi Sheng assign one reader to each book. The readers' magic is too weak for the Porters to notice or care about, but they're trained to use that magic to maintain the life of their books. Often, their friends and family are recruited to serve as protectors. I just made those protectors stronger.\"\n\nHe brought us to a small, circular clearing. Fresh stumps marked where other trees had been cut down to create space around the oak in the center. How long had they been preparing for this?\n\n\"You remind me of my son.\" Harrison pulled my ratty old copy of Star Wars from his back pocket. He must have grabbed it from my jacket. \"Always certain you're smarter than everyone else, that only you have the answers.\"\n\nHe ripped the book in half, then flung it into a puddle. Insects flowed down his leg to chew the pages into pulp.\n\nI had owned that book for seventeen years. I couldn't remember how many times I had read it; I had stopped counting after forty-three.\n\n\"Easy,\" Lena whispered. She slipped an arm through mine to stop me from doing anything stupid.\n\nI nodded slightly. This was what he wanted. To prove his power over me. There was no other reason to destroy my books. Even if I managed to get my hands on one, his millipede would stab its blade through my spine before I read a single sentence.\n\nAs my initial anger passed, I noticed something interesting: I wasn't the only one glaring at Harrison. Several of his companions were frowning, including Guan Feng. One man turned away in disgust.\n\n\"Bi Wei is waiting.\" Guan Feng walked toward the tree, turning her back on Harrison, so she missed the way his jaw tightened at being upstaged. She crouched at the base of the tree and carefully set her book into a depression among the roots.\n\n\"What exactly are you expecting me to do?\" asked Lena.\n\nHarrison straightened, visibly regaining his composure. \"Two months ago, Isaac lost his physical body. He entered an automaton, transforming himself from flesh and blood to magic, just as the survivors of Gutenberg's attack did so many years ago. And then you accomplished something none of the students of Bi Sheng have been able to do, though they've tried for more than five hundred years. You pulled him back. You recreated his body.\" He waved at the tree. \"Feng will guide Bi Wei's ghost into the tree. You will make her human again.\"\n\nLena approached the tree. Four rifles snapped up to point at her, and the wendigos snarled. The millipede tightened around my throat. Lena simply shook her head. \"I saved the life of my lover, and it almost killed me. What makes you think I can restore a stranger from a book I've never read?\"\n\n\"The magic is the same,\" Guan Feng said. \"You recreate your human body each time you emerge from your tree. The tree holds the pattern of your human form, just as this book does for Bi Wei.\"\n\nShe was paraphrasing my own reports about Lena. Harrison must have shared my private files with them all. \"What do you get out of this?\" I asked him.\n\n\"That's none of your concern,\" he snapped.\n\n\"Maybe I'll offer your friends a better deal,\" Lena said lightly. \"Isaac and I will do everything in our power to restore Bi Wei, and in return, they'll stay out of the way while I kick your ass.\"\n\n\"After so many centuries, do you think they're going to trust a Porter and his slave?\" Harrison asked. \"They need me. I can give them the location of every Porter archive and network server. I can provide personnel files on the Regional Masters, or the psychological assessments suggesting who in Gutenberg's organization could most easily be turned against him.\"\n\n\"None of which will bring back their dead,\" Lena pointed out. \"If they want me to try to help them\u2014\"\n\n\"This isn't a negotiation.\" A portion of his magical hive poured off of his body and flew onto mine. Metal feet poked through my clothes, and tiny barbs tugged my skin. \"The only question is how much pain you'll put your lover through before you cooperate.\"\n\nLena stepped toward Harrison, and suddenly a hundred metal stingers were stabbing my body.\n\nI've read a lot of books where people get tortured. Conan the Cimmerian was unbreakable, enduring whatever his captors inflicted through sheer, testosterone-fueled barbarian rage. The Jedi from Star Wars could separate their minds from their bodies, surviving torture through mental discipline. In Feist's Riftwar books, torture led the character of Pug to a magical breakthrough, making him more powerful than ever.\n\nWhat few of those books ever bothered to truly explain was how much torture hurts! I tried and failed to keep from screaming. My muscles were rigid. I tried to physically pull the bugs away, tearing cloth and skin, only to have their hinged legs reverse and dig into the meat of my fingers. I clenched my fists, but that only drove their stingers deeper.\n\nI tried to stand, though there was nowhere I could run to escape. Even as I pushed myself upright, they crawled into my shoe and stung the bottom of my foot, making me stumble. Others crawled up my pants legs to attack the skin behind my knees.\n\nI had no books, nor could I have concentrated long enough to use them if I did. I could hardly breathe, let alone read. The knife Lena had given me wouldn't do anything against these bugs. I did manage to scoop a rock from the dirt and hurl it at August Harrison's head between spasms. I missed, but the gesture made me feel a tiny bit better.\n\nMy muscles began to give out, and I curled into a ball, covering my face with my hands and praying they wouldn't crawl into my ears or\u2026into anything else. As the assault dragged on for what felt like hours, I thought about the wendigo outside of Tamarack. He had fallen into the same agonized position right before he died.\n\n\"Enough,\" said Harrison.\n\nThe insects stopped moving, but it still felt like the barbed slivers of metal were thrusting obscenely into my skin, an echo of pain that refused to end. I gasped and blinked tears from my eyes. Lena was walking toward the tree, escorted by two wendigos. Her fingers sank into the tree. The roots curled around the book.\n\nGuan Feng started forward, but an older woman caught her by the shoulder. Neither spoke, but the subtext was easy enough to read. Guan Feng was terrified. She brought her hands together, fingertips touching her chin, as if in prayer or meditation. She paced slowly, each step careful and deliberate, but it didn't ease the tension in her body. She never took her eyes from her book.\n\nLena reached deeper, stepping into a parody of an embrace with the tree.\n\nThis was my fault. I looked at Harrison, at the hybrid wendigos he had created with frozen chunks of skin, and fought to keep from throwing up. Whoever Lena helped them create, whatever Bi Wei and the others did once they were restored to this world, I was the one who had given them the key.\n\nI started to push myself to my hands and knees, but a series of warning stings killed that idea. Instead, I curled tighter and slipped the wooden knife from my sock, transferring it to my sleeve.\n\nAs Lena stepped into the tree, a handful of insects rose from Harrison's body and flew toward her. They landed on her back, and then she was gone, taking the insects with her.\n\nGuan Feng whirled. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"You know what she is,\" Harrison shot back. \"What she could do to us from within that tree. I'm protecting us all.\"\n\nGreen leaves sprinkled down. A branch as thick as my arm fell to the earth, barely missing Guan Feng. The wendigos backed away, but she remained at the base of the tree, crouched protectively over her book.\n\n\"What's happening?\" asked the woman who had stopped Guan Feng.\n\n\"All magic has a cost,\" I said before Harrison could answer. I remembered how much it had taken for Lena to pull me back from the automaton, and I was someone she had known and loved. How much harder would it be to restore a stranger, one who had been gone for so many years? \"You can't create life from nothing. That life comes from the tree.\"\n\nAnd from Lena herself.\n\nThe roots shifted, and the book sank deeper into the earth.\n\n\"Bi Wei!\" Guan Feng grabbed the book, but it slid inexorably downward.\n\n\"How long does this take?\" Harrison asked. \"You, drag Isaac over here. Perhaps when her roots taste his blood, she'll try to speed things up.\"\n\nA wendigo yanked me upright. Cold, foul breath puffed against the back of my head as she hurled me forward. My foot caught in the roots, and I fell hard on my side. Dozens of metal legs pierced my skin, driven deeper by the impact.\n\nI looked like a victim from a bad horror movie. My shirt was red with blood, and my skin was swelling, making my movements stiff. Individually, the stings I had suffered were relatively minor, but there were so many. One bee sting was an annoyance, assuming you weren't allergic. A thousand could kill a full-grown man.\n\nI had landed less than a foot from Guan Feng. My fingers tightened on the knife beneath my sleeve. I was close enough to stab her before anyone reacted, but what good would it do?\n\nLooking up at her, I wasn't sure I could have done it. She had released the book, and now twisted her fingers into her shirt. Her lower lip was trembling. She reminded me of a frightened child.\n\n\"They'll be all right.\" I placed my hand on the base of the tree. \"She knows we're here.\"\n\nThe look Guan Feng gave me suggested she would happily take over for Harrison's insects and finish skinning me herself, but after a moment, she reached out and touched the roots closest to the book.\n\n\"We're waiting,\" Harrison said.\n\n\"B\u00e8n d\u00e0n, indeed,\" I muttered.\n\nA flash of emotion\u2014amusement, maybe\u2014passed over Guan Feng's features. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared.\n\nLena's hand pushed out through the bark, knocking chunks of dry, dead wood onto the two of us. Her arm muscles strained as if she were trying to scale a cliff. I reached up to take her hand, but the insects stabbed my wrist and elbow, killing that plan.\n\nSlowly, Lena emerged from the tree. Normally, the bark would have re-formed behind her, but not this time. Branches broke away with every movement, and the entire tree creaked, drawing nervous whispers from around us. Neither Guan Feng nor I budged.\n\nLena gasped for air and stopped, one leg and arm still trapped within the wood. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me. \"Get those damned things off of him.\"\n\nMy head sagged. \"I love you, beautiful.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"You have Bi Wei?\" asked Harrison.\n\nLena wrenched her other arm free. A slender bronze-skinned hand clasped hers.\n\nMetal wings vibrated against my wounds, and then they were gone, returning to their master.\n\nLena braced her other hand against the tree and pulled, like she was hauling Bi Wei out of a pit. The woman she dragged forth was naked, roughly Lena's height, but emaciated. Her skin hugged her ribs and hipbones. Atrophied legs collapsed, and she clung to Lena's arm to keep from falling.\n\n\"Bi.\" Tears spilled down Guan Feng's cheeks.\n\nAnother woman stepped forward holding a heavy robe of deep maroon silk, trimmed in gold. Before she could reach them, Lena's fingers sank back into the tree and pried loose a two-foot length of pale wood, which shifted into a long, curved dagger. She curled her arm around Bi Wei's throat, placing the tip of her newly created weapon under her chin.\n\nGuan Feng screamed. \"Stop! Wei has done nothing to you!\"\n\nHarrison simply smiled. \"You have no power here, dryad. My pets will strip the skin from your lover's body, a millimeter at a time.\"\n\nLena matched his smile. \"You think you know me because you read an old book? That's cute.\" She shifted her stance, and a wooden tendril punched out of the dirt and circled his ankle.\n\nHe snarled and grabbed the root with his hands, trying to rip it loose. Bad idea. More roots moved like serpents, twining around his wrists. I could see smaller tendrils stabbing into his skin, poetic justice for what he had done to me.\n\n\"I've read Isaac's reports,\" he snarled. \"Bi Wei is an innocent woman. You won't kill her. But you know I won't hesitate to end him.\"\n\n\"You know what Isaac wrote about me. You don't know me.\" Lena's words grew softer. \"Isaac Vainio is one of the smartest people I've ever met, but he makes mistakes. A surprising number, actually.\"\n\n\"Thanks a lot.\" To Harrison, I said, \"What do you think Lena will be doing to you while your bugs kill me? I've watched this woman go toe-to-toe with an automaton and win. And believe me, you've pissed her off far more than that automaton ever did.\"\n\nBehind Harrison, the cat crouched, metal tail lashing through the dirt. I wasn't the only one to call out a warning. Guan Feng and one of her friends shouted at Harrison to stop, but the cat was too quick. It bounded toward Lena and leaped for her face.\n\nLena's toes curled into the roots as her left hand shot out to catch the cat by the throat. Lena grimaced, but kept her knife to Bi Wei's throat while the cat dug steel claws into her wrist and tried to rake her arm. Lena stepped to the side, dragging her prisoner along with her, then swung the cat in an arc, smashing it against the oak tree like she was beating dirt from a rug.\n\nShe tossed the remains of the metal cat at Harrison's feet. It looked like someone had run over a garbage disposal. Broken legs twitched, and with every movement, small gears and scraps of metal popped free. \"Don't do that again.\"\n\nHarrison snarled, and the insects on his body began to buzz. Two wendigos started toward Lena. She spun, keeping Bi Wei between herself and the closer of the wendigos. I lunged forward and stabbed my knife into the other's thigh. It wouldn't have worked on a full wendigo, but this one's armor was weak. The blade slid through the cracks in the ice, into the flesh beneath. It backhanded me to the ground, then howled and clutched its leg, where the knife appeared to have taken root.\n\nA cloud of insects rose from Harrison's body, but as one, their bodies locked up and they fell into the dirt. The roots twined around Harrison's limbs stopped moving. Lena's forehead furrowed, but the roots no longer responded to her will.\n\nFour students of Bi Sheng stood with their books open, whispering to whatever presences lived within those pages. Had I been able to see their magic, I knew I would have seen four ghosts suppressing both Harrison's magic and Lena's.\n\nHarrison tore the roots from his limbs and started toward Lena. Bloody welts marked his forearms, and his pants were shredded.\n\nGuan Feng jumped to stand between him and Lena. \"Everyone stand back.\"\n\nLena's knife never wavered. They might be able to stop her from reshaping the wood, but I doubted they could prevent her from stabbing the blade through flesh.\n\nMy hands shook as I ripped the lifeless millipede from my throat, prying one segment free at a time. Blood made the metal slippery, and the damn thing had dug in pretty good, but I finally got it free. I flung it onto the ground, and Lena smashed it with her heel.\n\nLena kept her attention on Harrison. Bi Wei was breathing so fast I thought she might hyperventilate or pass out. She had one hand on Lena's arm, but lacked the strength to pull the knife away from her neck. Her head moved in frightened twitches, like a rabbit trapped by wolves.\n\n\"Do you remember your name?\" I asked. She stared blankly. I mentally kicked myself. Torture had apparently messed with my faculties. Of course she wouldn't recognize twenty-first century English, and my knowledge of Mandarin was limited to a few simple phrases from a trip six years ago. \"Ni jao\u2026shen ma ming zao. No, wait. Ming zi?\" Dammit, where were my books? I needed a universal translator.\n\n\"Isaac Vainio?\"\n\nThe hairs on my arm stood straight up when she spoke my name. There was no recognition in her eyes, but for an instant, contempt edged her voice. Not only did something within her know me, it hated me. What the hell had Lena brought back? I reached out and touched her arm, and a dozen weapons jerked toward me.\n\nI pulled away. That one touch had confirmed my hunch. The power flowing beneath Bi Wei's skin was like the pages of a magically active book.\n\nShe spoke again, but I understood nothing. Whatever her friends had done, it had suppressed my ability to understand other tongues. Guan Feng answered in the same language.\n\nIf they had blacked out my magic, what had they done to Lena? \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"It's not pleasant,\" she said tightly, \"but I'll survive.\"\n\n\"What now, Porter?\" asked one of the men in accented English. \"Will you kill her and finish what Gutenberg began?\"\n\n\"No.\" Kill her? I wanted to talk to her. Lena had just restored a woman centuries old, one who had vanished into magic and somehow survived. I had a thousand questions. How had she held on to who she was? Had she been aware of the passage of time, able to observe the world? I wanted to ask about her magic, the students of Bi Sheng, her conflict with Gutenberg. I would have been utterly content to spend the next year learning from her.\n\nLena snorted.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nIn a low voice, she said, \"You've just been tortured, you're surrounded by people who wouldn't hesitate to kill you, and to top it off, you're standing in front of a naked woman. If I'm not mistaken, all you can think about is the history lessons you could learn.\"\n\nI flushed, then gestured to the woman with the robe. She stepped forward, her every movement as slow and careful as a surgeon's. Lena kept her knife in place while Bi Wei slipped her arms through the sleeves and hugged the robe shut.\n\n\"Isaac isn't the only one who will pay for your choices today.\" Harrison had regained some of his composure, but his face and neck were red with barely restrained rage. \"Doctor Nidhi Shah lives at 189 Depot Street, yes? Apartment C, according to the Porters' records.\"\n\nLena went utterly still. \"Sooner or later, one of the people you've crossed is going to catch up with you. You should pray very hard that it's not me.\"\n\nThe woman who had carried Bi Wei's robe hissed in frustration. \"Enough, all of you!\"\n\nHarrison whirled. \"Have you forgotten what the Porters did to your ancestors, Crystal?\"\n\nCrystal stood like a statue. \"Never.\"\n\nI would have been thrilled to see this kind of split within Harrison's ranks under other circumstances, pretty much any circumstance that didn't have Lena and me in the middle of that conflict.\n\nDespite what Lena had said, I doubted she would kill Bi Wei. Lena was exceptionally protective of those she saw as victims, and Bi Wei had nothing to do with our current situation.\n\n\"Toss me the keys to the truck,\" I said. Every second we stood here was another chance for the situation to explode. \"I want my books back, too.\"\n\nA man tossed a set of keys on a Rubik's Cube keychain into the dirt in front of me. \"Your belongings are in the back seat.\"\n\n\"Tell Bi Wei to cooperate, and we'll let her go,\" said Lena.\n\nGuan Feng did so. At least, I assume she did. I hated being unable to understand what people were saying. August Harrison simply stared as if imagining the many inventive ways he could kill me.\n\nLena moved toward the trail, the knife never wavering. The circle parted to let her pass.\n\n\"Wait.\" I shoved the keys into my pocket, then dug in the dirt at the base of the tree. The roots were dry and crumbled like cork. Lena had killed this tree in the process of restoring Bi Wei. One strong wind, and it would come toppling down. I just hoped it would wait until Lena and I were out of reach.\n\nI brushed the dirt away from Bi Wei's book. Roots passed through the cover and pages like giant worms. I grabbed the broken millipede from the ground and used the blade to saw through the roots, trying to cut the book loose without ripping or damaging anything.\n\n\"Please don't,\" Guan Feng called. Despite everything, the anguish in her words made me hesitate.\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" I severed the last of the roots, jammed the millipede into the dirt, and pulled the book free. If she hadn't hated me before, she certainly did now. But I needed time to study and better understand what we were dealing with.\n\nBi Wei was remarkably calm as we retreated to the parking lot, especially for someone who had been reborn only minutes before. Though who knew what she and Lena had shared during that process? If it had been anything like Lena's restoration of me, Bi Wei would have had a nice little mind meld. She would know Lena was unlikely to harm her unless absolutely necessary.\n\nWhen we reached the lot, I carefully set the book into the back seat of the truck. Harrison and the others stopped at the end of the trail. Pretty much every gun was pointed my way, and I was certain their magic was prepped to take us down if we gave them the slightest opening.\n\nI pointed to an older woman with a black handgun. \"Do me a favor and shoot out the tires on the rest of these cars. It's nothing personal, but I really don't want you all following us.\"\n\nIt took a frustratingly long time, and we had to wait for her to reload twice, but eventually she put a bullet through the last tire. I opened the truck's tailgate and kept an eye Harrison and the rest while Lena and Bi Wei climbed into the back.\n\n\"You promised you'd let her go,\" Guan Feng said.\n\n\"And we will, just as soon as we get a mile down the road. Assuming nobody and nothing tries to follow us.\" I climbed into the truck, started the engine, and opened the window to the back. \"Ready?\"\n\n\"Don't drive too fast,\" Lena said. \"Potholes and knives don't mix.\"\n\nI toyed with the idea of trying to take Bi Wei with us. It wouldn't be the most honorable move, but she was dangerous. She might have the shape of a woman who disappeared five hundred years ago, but she carried something else inside. She had become the embodiment of everything I had learned to fear these past months. Of everything Gutenberg had feared since the founding of the Porters.\n\nBut she was also a refugee from a magical war that had been erased from our history. She hadn't asked for any of this. She hadn't known what she would bring back. More practically, I didn't have a clue how we'd be able to hold her. Lena couldn't keep a knife to her throat forever, and Bi Wei's magic could flatten any spell of mine.\n\nWe pulled away at a leisurely pace. I split my attention between the road and the mirrors, watching for any of Harrison's metal pets.\n\nAfter five minutes, I stopped long enough for Lena and Bi Wei to get out. Lena walked Bi Wei to a birch tree at the side of the road. She twined the branches and roots around Bi Wei's wrists and feet, and molded a wooden blindfold as well. Another branch held the knife to Bi Wei's throat.\n\nI slammed the gas pedal to the floor the instant Lena was inside. The rear tires spun out, raising a cloud of dirt as we tore down the road. I didn't know what Bi Wei could do, but I didn't expect Lena's precautions to hold her for long.\n\nI watched the rearview mirror, but nobody appeared to be following us. Not yet. But they would. And next time, they would have all of Bi Wei's power to back them up.\n\nI pushed open the door of the Dearborn Martial Arts Academy. A bell jingled overhead, the sound a gentle contrast to the sharp yells of the people within.\n\nThe floor was pale, waxed wood. Strips of cypress segmented the white walls. Black-and-white photos of Japanese men with swords hung by the front window. Red-and-gold banners decorated the far wall, along with the flags of Japan and the United States.\n\nThe students were moving back and forth in pairs, swinging bamboo swords at one another. They wore metal masks and heavy padding to protect their necks, shoulders, and chests.\n\nA man in a loose black uniform stepped away from the two women he had been helping and approached me, his smile warm and welcoming. \"Can I help you?\"\n\nI dug a crumpled coupon from my pocket and showed it to him like it was a permission slip. \"I'd like to learn to fight. Your advertisement said I could get a free lesson.\"\n\nHe barely glanced at the coupon. \"Why?\"\n\nA thousand answers danced through my thoughts. Because it would make me more attractive to Nidhi. Because according to Nymphs of Neptune, fighting was part of who I was. Because physical exertion made me feel good, whether it was working in the garden or making love to my partner. Because I could, and because there were so many people who couldn't. My forehead wrinkled as I sorted my reactions, searching for the words.\n\n\"There's no wrong answer,\" he said. \"But if you or someone else is in trouble, we should talk about that right now.\"\n\n\"Someone's always in trouble,\" I said without thinking.\n\nHe studied me, then chuckled. \"That's true enough. Were you hoping to study kendo?\" He gestured behind him. \"We also offer classes in aikido and women's self-defense.\"\n\nI nodded eagerly. \"Yes, please. All of them. I have money.\"\n\nI cringed inside. It was money Nidhi had given me. I didn't want to keep taking money from her. Not for this. I would have to look into finding work.\n\nHe continued to frown, and I braced myself for rejection. Instead, he took the coupon and said, \"Remove your shoes and socks, and place them beneath one of the chairs by the wall.\"\n\nWhile I hurried to obey, he turned and barked, \"Ryan!\"\n\nA lanky boy with blond hair backed away from his partner, bowed, and ran toward us. He bowed again. \"Yes, sensei.\"\n\n\"Take our new student\u2026\" He paused.\n\n\"Lena.\"\n\n\"Please take Lena through the basics of etiquette and stance.\"\n\n\"Stance?\" I asked.\n\n\"Everything begins with stance. Power, balance, movement. All the strength in the world is little use without stance. Once you learn to take root, you'll be able to apply your full power to every strike.\"\n\nI curled my toes, feeling the dry strength of the wooden floor, and smiled. \"I can do that.\"\n\nIt took me ten minutes to make my way from the back roads to Highway 28. I called Nicola Pallas the moment I figured out exactly where we were. I gave her a mostly complete account of what we had learned, including the location of Harrison's camp. \"I don't know how much magical whoopass you have on call, but I recommend sending all of it.\"\n\nI was unsurprised when Pallas called back a short time later to tell me the camp was abandoned. Harrison and his followers had known their cover was blown the second I escaped. They hadn't been able to take their vehicles, and they had left the majority of their supplies in their cabins, which I took as a consolation prize. The inconvenience didn't make up for what they had done to Lena and me, but it was a start.\n\nLena called Nidhi next, and put her on speaker. The second Nidhi answered, Lena said, \"You've got to stay away from the apartment. Harrison knows where you live. You can't go back there.\"\n\n\"But Akha\u2014\"\n\n\"The cat will be fine. She'll scamper off and cower behind the couch like she does every time someone knocks on your door. Or the TV switches on. Or she decides the curtains are evil monsters trying to eat her soul.\"\n\n\"Where are you and Jeff now?\" I asked.\n\n\"Lower Michigan. About twenty miles south of Flint.\"\n\nThey were hours away, which meant they were probably safer than the two of us. I concentrated on driving while Lena filled Nidhi in on the students of Bi Sheng. I was having a hard time staying focused. My adrenaline rush had worn off, and the abuses Harrison had inflicted were catching up with me.\n\nHighway 28 hugged the shoreline of Lake Superior, with stretches of dunes on both sides. I pulled off the road and parked our stolen truck behind a station wagon. Down by the water, a family was splashing in the water.\n\n\"Hold on, Nidhi,\" said Lena. \"What's wrong?\"\n\n\"Shock.\" I fumbled through my books until I found Roc and a Hard Place by Piers Anthony. I flipped to the dog-eared page where the heroine found a healing spring, and reached into the pages. The book resisted at first, but whatever the students of Bi Sheng had done to suppress my magic was wearing off. Once I touched the spring's magic, I tilted the corner of the book to my lips. Water spilled over the yellowed paper, and a thousand stinging cuts gradually cooled. I passed the book to Lena. I still looked like a butcher's shop had thrown up on me, but the redness and swelling had faded, and I could move without pain.\n\nWhile Lena drank, I told Nidhi about Bi Wei. \"I don't know what she was before. If Bi Sheng's followers had been this powerful when the Porters attacked, they would have crushed Gutenberg and his automatons.\" I thought back to what I had seen, watching in my mind as Lena entered the tree. \"Several of Harrison's bugs snuck in with Lena. I never saw them come out. I'm guessing they infected Bi Wei with whatever devourer magic they were carrying.\"\n\n\"You think the devourers are what make her so powerful?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" I thought back to what I had sensed. \"Her magic wasn't like the devourer that attacked me in Detroit. I know this sounds crazy, but she felt like a book. When I read a book, it becomes a doorway to magic. In her case, the book is a part of her, and the doorway is always open.\"\n\n\"Have you reported this yet?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"I wanted to talk to you first.\" Nidhi was no longer my therapist, but she was damn good at helping me sort out my own conflicts. \"Bi Wei scares the hell out of me, but none of this was her fault. When Gutenberg finds out, he'll do whatever it takes to destroy these people. Harrison can go light a match and stand behind a flatulent dragon for all I care, but what about Bi Wei and the rest?\"\n\n\"We don't know exactly what happened,\" Nidhi pointed out. \"We don't know if their version of events is any more or less reliable than Gutenberg's.\"\n\n\"Yes, we do.\" Lena closed the book and returned it to me, so I could end its spell. \"Wei and I were together in that tree. I saw her. She knows time has passed, but doesn't remember the passage itself, beyond fragmented dreams and nightmares. She's terrified of Isaac and the Porters, and I can't blame her. I saw her last memories.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to like this, am I?\" I asked.\n\n\"Wei was running, along with her fellow students. Three automatons were destroying their temple, ripping the walls down and collapsing the building on top of them. She fled to an underground library where a man was waiting for her. Her brother, I think. She didn't want to leave him, but there was no time. They hadn't expected Gutenberg to strike so soon. Her brother stood with her as she read.\" Tears dripped down Lena's cheeks. \"His last words to her were a promise to hide her book so she would be safe. He knew he would never escape the temple.\"\n\nHow many had died to keep those books from Gutenberg, and to get them into the hands of people who could protect them? \"Could Bi Wei communicate with the others in their books?\"\n\n\"She was alone,\" Lena said flatly. \"She remembers that much. Her readers were her only link to the world. Nothing else existed. The first time she knew anyone else had survived was when we were in the tree together. I felt her grief for how few remained.\"\n\nI picked up the book I had taken. That I had stolen. Broken roots appeared to impale the cover and the pages within. \"I think the devourers were like Bi Wei. People who somehow fled into magic, but lost themselves in the process.\"\n\n\"How did Bi Wei survive?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Because she had people to help her.\"\n\nLena took the book and carefully tugged the thickest of the roots free. It left no hole, nothing but a smear of dirt on the cover.\n\n\"You're not responsible for Gutenberg's actions,\" Nidhi said. \"Whatever happened five hundred years ago, our focus has to be the present. Harrison has Bi Wei. What will they do next?\"\n\n\"If they fled the camp, it means they don't feel strong enough to face the Porters yet,\" I said. \"He's not stupid. Eventually he'll come after Lena again, but first he'll want to assess Bi Wei's power and build up his army.\"\n\n\"Wendigos are supposed to be wild, foul-tempered creatures. How is he controlling them?\"\n\n\"Probably the same way he controlled me.\" I tugged at my shirt to unstick the blood from my skin. \"He's the alpha male.\" Transforming innocent people into monsters was only the first step. They also needed to be taught their place.\n\n\"Harrison didn't force the students of Bi Sheng to help him,\" Nidhi said. \"They've been willing partners. As for Bi Wei, whatever she once was, she's been corrupted.\"\n\n\"We don't know that,\" said Lena. \"She might be able to control whatever is inside her.\"\n\n\"She might, yes,\" said Nidhi. \"Or she might not. But even if she retains control, her last memories were of death and war. What makes you think she'll stop fighting that war now?\"\n\nNeither Lena nor I had an answer for that.\n\n\"Where are you going next?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"Home.\" I started the engine and pulled back onto the road. \"I need more books, and we have to do something to protect Lena's tree.\"\n\n\"You can't exactly relocate her oak,\" Nidhi said.\n\nI could, but it would be tricky. Maybe a shrink ray to make it portable? If I zapped Lena's tree, would it have any effect on her human body? Probably not. The tree had grown taller and thicker in the past two months, with no corresponding change in Lena's height or weight.\n\nI hesitated, then said, \"Nidhi, you know Gutenberg's mind better than I do.\"\n\n\"As much as anyone can understand that man's mind. There hasn't exactly been a lot of research on immortal wizards.\"\n\n\"Bi Sheng was working with movable type long before Gutenberg was born. He and his followers developed their own form of book magic. Do you think Gutenberg could have stolen those ideas? Then tried to wipe out Bi Sheng's students to make sure no one found out?\"\n\nNidhi didn't answer right away, and when she did speak, her words were slow and careful. \"I don't know. He's not the same man he was. How much have you changed in your lifetime, Isaac? Your beliefs, your values, your knowledge, they all evolve with time and experience. Gutenberg has been evolving for five centuries.\" She paused, then added, \"Besides, you don't really want to know what I think. You've already come to your own conclusion. You just want me to talk you out of it.\"\n\nI had forgotten how annoying Nidhi could be when she was right.\n\n\"Thanks. We'll check in again soon.\" I hung up and tried to concentrate on the road.\n\nInvention always built on the shoulders of those who came before. Would Gutenberg have been able to develop his machine if he had never seen a wine press, or if others hadn't developed wood-block printing and engraving plates? If not for the metallurgists, the coin-stampers, and more? Not to mention the foundations of magic, work and research going back thousands of years.\n\nBut the Porters' records had no information about Bi Sheng. Gutenberg had obviously known of them, which meant he had deliberately omitted that information from our archives.\n\nA year ago, I would have taken on faith that Gutenberg had a good reason for his actions. Maybe Bi Sheng had discovered magic strong enough to turn all of humanity into sentient custard, or summon Cthulhu to devour Australia. Maybe Gutenberg was trying to make sure nobody ever recreated and used those spells.\n\nOr maybe he was simply hiding evidence of his own crimes.\n\nBi Wei and Guan Feng had seen the Porters as monsters. I was starting to fear they might be right.\n\nMy house appeared to be undisturbed. I waited while Lena circled around to the backyard. A minute later, the lights came on inside the house. She opened the front door to wave me in.\n\n\"I half expected to find the house burned to the ground,\" I said.\n\n\"Are you complaining?\" Lena shot back.\n\n\"It makes me nervous. Harrison knows where we live. How hard would it be to send a few bugs to short out the fuse box? What are they up to that he didn't have time for a little petty revenge?\" I shook my head. \"The man was pissed. Sooner or later, he's going to want payback.\"\n\n\"He's not the only one,\" said Lena.\n\nI hurried to the office to grab my laptop and the July issue of the New York Library Bulletin. A paper clip on page forty-six marked an article I had originally wanted to use to try to decipher the Voynich manuscript, a fifteenth century tome currently housed at Yale.\n\nI stuffed the magazine into my bag and hurried to the living room. Lena stood at the back door, looking at her oak. \"I hate moving,\" she said quietly.\n\n\"I could rig up a force field to protect the garden.\"\n\n\"And any one of the students of Bi Sheng could use their books to rip it down. Anything you do to protect my tree, they can counter.\"\n\n\"So you find another oak,\" I said.\n\n\"They sniffed me out once. What's to stop them from doing it again?\"\n\nI had circled through the same arguments in my head as we drove. I hadn't yet found an answer. How did you fight people who could both sense and consume magic? Maybe shrinking her tree really was the best option. But then she'd be unable to enter it. Like libriomancy with books, Lena's tree needed to be large enough to physically hold her.\n\nShe left the house, heading toward the garden. I started to follow, but she stopped in mid-step.\n\n\"I'd prefer to be alone for this,\" she said without turning around.\n\nHer answer surprised me. Lena was pretty much the opposite of shy. \"Let me know when you're ready.\"\n\nWhile I waited, I tossed my ruined outfit in the garbage and grabbed an old pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt Deb had sent me as a present back when I started working at the Copper River Library. Not that I could wear a shirt that said \"Librarians: Kicking Ignorance in the Balls for Over 4000 Years\" on the job.\n\nI returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table with the New York Library Bulletin. It had been ages since I tried to use a magazine for libriomancy. In theory, magazines worked precisely the same as books, but there were several complicating factors. Magazine circulation had been declining for years, resulting in fewer readers and less cumulative belief for us to tap into. The fact that more people tended to skim articles or skip some altogether didn't help either. Then there was the impermanence of the format. How many magazines ended up in the recycling bin within a month? The power attached to magazines faded far more quickly than with books.\n\nThese days, print publications had to compete with the Internet, and the NYLB hadn't had a huge readership to begin with. I wouldn't have been surprised to see it go fully digital within the next few years.\n\nI wondered if Jeneta Aboderin's magic would work with Web sites. If she could use e-books, why not online content? That opened up a tremendous number of possibilities, some more disturbing than others. She could flood the entire planet with kittens and porn, not to mention certain categories of fanfiction\u2026\n\nI read the article again, concentrating on the paragraphs that described research into smart glasses that could scan and translate text as you read. My fingers moved over the glossy print, trying to reach beyond.\n\nNonfiction was a different beast than fiction, but the emotions were the same. I touched eagerness and excitement, imagination and possibility. I pressed until my fingernails whitened, and then I was through. My fingers closed around thick-framed glasses, which I pulled carefully from the pages. I swore as my palm snagged on a staple. Yet another downside of magazine-based libriomancy.\n\n\"Those are\u2026not stylish,\" Lena said from the doorway. In her hands, she held a single branch from her oak, roughly four feet long. It looked like she had filled a small plastic bag with damp soil and tied it around one end of the branch. Leaves on the opposite end rustled gently as she shifted on her feet.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" I asked.\n\n\"I feel broken.\" She managed a pale smile. \"What's up with the geek specs?\"\n\nBlack earbuds dangled from the hinges. The single-piece lens was dark glass, and might have looked awesome if not for the bulky gray frames and the red-ringed camera that stuck out from the nosepiece like a high-tech zit. \"These are going to help me read Bi Wei's story.\"\n\nWe drove to Tori's Pub, one of the oldest businesses in town. People said the first miner came to Copper River on a Tuesday, and by that Thursday, Tori's bar was fully stocked and ready to go.\n\nThe smell of peanuts, pizza, and stale beer poured over us as I opened the door. Old logs paneled the walls, giving the place a woodsy cabin feel. Framed newspaper articles from the local paper hung on the wall closest to the bar, along with color photos of high school football teams going back to my parents' time. Sheets of acrylic plastic covered the tables, preserving graffiti carved into the wood more than a hundred years ago.\n\nA handful of people called out greetings. I waved and forced a smile, then hurried to snag a small booth where we would be able to keep an eye on anyone coming in.\n\nI brought out Bi Wei's book while Lena ordered a late dinner of pizza, chocolate ice cream, and a Long Island Iced Tea. \"And Isaac will have a pasty. With extra rutabaga.\"\n\n\"I'm not hungry,\" I protested.\n\n\"I don't care.\" Her eyes dared me to argue.\n\nI surrendered as gracefully as I could. After double-checking the instructions in the New York Library Bulletin, I donned the glasses and pressed a small button on the right side of the frame. A cheerful ding rang through the earbuds.\n\n\"Translation on,\" said a pleasant but stiff female voice. I opened the book and studied the vertical characters on the first page. My vision flickered, and the image froze for a quarter second. A second picture appeared over the first. The new layer was semi-transparent, but easy enough to read. The [UNTRANSLATABLE] of Bi Wei.\n\n\"Sweet!\" I turned the page and waited while the glasses translated the text.\n\n\"How do they work?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Optical character recognition networked to the world's largest translation engine. At least, that's the theory. The translation database doesn't exist in the real world yet. So far, the company's prototypes only do very basic word-and phrase-level translations, and their software is limited to English, Spanish, and French. But by the end of the decade, they're hoping to create and market a set of glasses that will translate any language pretty much instantly. That's what I used for the spell.\"\n\nI tapped the hinges of the glasses and read aloud. \"'The palace lady takes no delight in idleness, but devotes her mind to the latest verse. For poetry can be a substitute for the flowers of oblivion.' Remind me to have Jeneta look through this thing.\"\n\nI flipped ahead to the handwritten portion of the book and continued reading.\n\nAt thirteen I raised my gaze from the moss-covered paths to the angler with his brush and ink. As the slivered moon smiled down, he gathered me to his net of words. My grandfather's tears shone from Heaven, and his pride opened the waters of the world.\n\nThe glasses converted everything into a simplistic computerized font, but I could also see the characters Bi Wei had brushed onto the page, the precision and the artistry with which she wrote.\n\n\"The angler could be Bi Sheng,\" said Lena.\n\n\"Or another of his followers or descendants. Bi Sheng died centuries before Gutenberg's time. Bi Wei wouldn't have known him.\" Or maybe we were reading too much into it, and Bi Wei just liked fishing a lot. Poetry wasn't my strong suit. \"She really did it. She wrote herself into the book.\"\n\nHow many weeks had she spent preparing? How desperate must they have been to believe such precautions were necessary?\n\nWords alone couldn't create a complete mind. No author could. The amount of text it would take to capture a fraction of the complexities and memories of a human being would make Jordan's Wheel of Time series look like a child's board book. That was part of the reason intelligent characters went mad when they interacted with the real world. There simply wasn't enough to them.\n\nI thought about Smudge, remembering the damage he had done when I first created him. He was smart for a spider, but not intelligent or sentient enough to lose his mind. Not completely. Even so, he had been terrified, and nearly burned down my high school library before I managed to calm him enough to get him out of there. I had taken him to one of the old mine sites by Tamarack and let him scurry about in an empty cave for hours until he finally began to trust me.\n\nFrom that standpoint, what Bi Wei had done should have been impossible. But maybe you didn't have to perfectly transcribe the entirety of someone's experiences. Nobody remembered every second of their life, right? I had a near-eidetic memory, but I couldn't have said what shirt I wore two months ago, or what presents I got on my third birthday, or what color our first dog's eyes had been.\n\nWas it the total of all of our experiences that defined us, or was it the key moments and choices that truly mattered? How much of who I was today stemmed from the day I discovered magic? From my first kiss with Jenny Abrams in seventh grade? From the road trip I took out west after high school, and seeing mountains for the first time?\n\nIf I could capture those moments in text and somehow imbue them with magic as Bi Wei had done, would that be enough, not to create a new me, but to anchor myself to this world after my body was gone?\n\nBi Wei had preserved herself for centuries. How long could such magic last? How far into the future could you travel? Assuming someone was waiting to pull me back out, I could watch the evolution of mankind. I could see rocket cars, colonies in space, everything I ever dreamed of and so much more that I couldn't possibly imagine.\n\n\"You know it's a one-way trip, right?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Since when can dryads read minds?\" I said grumpily. Mostly because she was right. I would lose my family and friends. I would almost certainly lose Lena as well. But the chance to glimpse the future, to see what we would learn and discover and become\u2026I would pay an awful lot for that chance.\n\nI set up my laptop, waited for our waiter to finish putting down our food, then logged into the Porter database. Magical Internet access: one more gift from Victor Harrison.\n\nI began with the poem from the first page of Bi Wei's book. The vagaries of translation complicated things, but by plugging different phrases into the search engine, I eventually identified it as a snippet from New Songs from a Jade Terrace, a collection of Chinese poetry published almost fifteen hundred years ago by X\u00fa L\u00edng. I e-mailed a copy of the text to myself to study later.\n\nI had less luck finding information on Bi Sheng. The earliest reference to his work was a book written by Ku\u00f2, decades after Bi Sheng's death. I did manage to dig up some basic biographical information. Bi Sheng was a commoner, born in 990 AD during the Song Dynasty. He died in 1051, only a few years after developing the first known system of movable type. I sent myself a copy of Dream Pool Essays, Ku\u00f2's book, and kept reading.\n\n\"Did you know there was a crater on the moon named after this guy?\" I had spent many nights examining the lunar landscape, but Bi Sheng's crater was on the dark side. Much like the man himself, who seemed to be little more than a historical shadow. Johannes Gutenberg's life had been endlessly detailed and distorted with a combination of historical records and random speculation, not to mention deliberate inaccuracies spread by the man himself, like his alleged burial site, which just happened to have been destroyed during the Napoleonic War. Bi Sheng, on the other hand, appeared to have been all but forgotten. For all I knew, it could have been Gutenberg himself who had erased Bi Sheng from the history books.\n\nI shut the laptop and forced myself to eat a few bites, though my stomach grumbled in protest. Next, I turned my attention to Bi Wei's book. I skimmed one page after another, searching for anything that would tell us more about how she had grown so powerful and what the limits of her power might be. I found nothing but a brief prayer that she would never have to use the book's magic. I yanked off the glasses and rubbed my eyes. \"This isn't working.\"\n\n\"You need sleep.\" Lena licked the last of the ice cream from her spoon. \"Magical healing fixed the cuts to your body, but your mind is exhausted.\"\n\n\"I need better information.\" I traced my fingers over the carefully brushed characters. Five centuries of readers had imbued these pages with magic, preserving Bi Wei's life and experiences.\n\n\"The last time I saw that look, I ended up driving you to Chicago so Nicola Pallas could try to put your mind back in one piece.\"\n\n\"This book anchored Bi Wei for all those years,\" I said. \"That connection wouldn't just disappear when you restored her body, any more than your connection to your tree does. Which means I might be able to use the book to touch her thoughts.\"\n\nShe was shaking her head before I finished talking. \"Wei is terrified of you, and of Porters in general. If she catches you breaking into her thoughts and memories\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not planning to go as deep as I did in Detroit. I don't want to seize control of her body or climb into her mind. I just want to listen in.\"\n\nShe sat back and folded her arms, her silence saying better than words what she thought of this plan.\n\n\"I promise I'll be careful.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" she said. \"You're not trying this until you've slept.\"\n\n\"But the longer we wait\u2014\"\n\nHer hand came down on the book, and I felt a stirring of magic from the wooden table as it responded to her anger.\n\n\"Right. Tomorrow it is.\"\n\nI held the cat carrier in one hand while an aging Siamese cat yowled in protest. Melinda Hill was strapping her one-year-old son into the car seat in the old minivan, while Hailey, the volunteer from the Dearborn domestic violence shelter, stuffed a hastily-packed bag of clothes, diapers, and formula into the back. Hailey and I had arrived ten minutes before, and Melinda hadn't stopped shaking that entire time, but she didn't let that stop her. She clicked the last buckle into place and stepped back.\n\nBy contrast, Hailey was completely calm. Her every movement was careful and deliberate. She took the cat carrier from me and set it into the back seat beside the boy.\n\nMelinda jumped every time someone drove up the street. Thankfully, midmorning traffic had been relatively light. I heard another car approaching and offered her a reassuring smile.\n\nMelinda stiffened, and then every muscle in her body seemed to turn to mud. I turned to see a red Jeep speeding down the block. Only a madman would do forty down a residential street. A madman or a pissed-off husband. He wasn't slowing down, and I reached for Hailey, preparing to fling her onto the grass if the driver tried to ram us. He slammed on the brakes at the last minute, tires screeching against the pavement.\n\n\"Shit.\" Hailey stepped in front of me. This was only the third time I had helped to escort a client. I was technically still a trainee and Hailey's responsibility. \"Get in the van with Melinda, lock the doors, and call 911.\"\n\nMelinda was whispering, \"I'm sorry,\" over and over. Her eyes were dry. It frightened me how quickly and thoroughly she had faded when her husband appeared, becoming a ghost of who she was.\n\nI helped her into the van, then retrieved the oak cane I had tucked beneath the seat. \"You're going to be all right.\"\n\nI couldn't tell if she heard me or not. By now, Hailey had pulled out a handheld radio and was holding it like a beacon. \"Mister Hill, the PPO says you're not allowed to be within one hundred yards of your wife. This conversation is being recorded. I know you're angry, but please get back in your car and contact Mrs. Hill's lawyer to resolve this.\"\n\nChristopher Hill didn't look like an evil man, nor was he particularly imposing. He was in his mid-twenties, dressed in a bland gray shirt and paisley tie. It was his shoes that caught my eye, black and polished like glass. Perfectly clean, just as the house had been.\n\nThis wasn't how I had imagined the man who had broken three of his wife's ribs and cracked her left eye socket.\n\nHe didn't say a word, probably hoping that would prevent the recording from being used against him. He strode toward Hailey and reached for the radio. I stepped between them.\n\n\"Dammit, Lena,\" said Hailey. \"I told you\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm all right.\" I rested both hands on the cane. \"Mister Hill, you need to leave.\"\n\nHis mouth opened, and then his eyes twitched toward the radio. With a grimace, he reached out to shove me aside.\n\nI bent my knees, rooting myself to the pavement, and smiled. He pushed harder.\n\nHailey's composure was slipping. \"Mister Hill, you're committing an act of battery against Lena Greenwood. You need to return to your car.\"\n\nHe scowled and tried again to shove past us. I moved with him, keeping my body interposed.\n\n\"This is my house,\" he hissed in a low voice. \"That's my son. My wife.\"\n\nMy smile grew. \"Not for much longer, I think.\"\n\nHis first punch was, frankly, disappointing. I don't think he expected much from a heavyset Indian girl leaning on a cane. I shifted my stance and swung the cane with both hands to intercept his blow. Wood cracked against the bone of his forearm.\n\n\"Son of a bitch!\" He jumped back, clutching his arm.\n\n\"Lena, don't,\" Hailey warned.\n\nI was doing exactly what I had been trained not to do. We were supposed to deescalate conflict whenever possible, and to get away and call the police if we were in danger. But those rules had been written for human volunteers.\n\nHe rushed me again, and I struck his knee, dropping him to the road. I switched to a one-handed grip on the cane and reached down to twist my fingers into his shirt. I had never felt so strong, so powerful. I flung him onto the grass. He scrambled to his feet, but I rapped him on the side of the head with the end of the cane.\n\n\"Stop it!\"\n\nThe shout had come from Melinda. She was crying. Hailey was holding her back, but she twisted free as I watched. She ran past me, interposing herself between me and her husband just as I had done seconds before when I tried to protect her.\n\nI lowered the cane. \"I don't understand. He\u2014\"\n\n\"Get in the van, Lena.\" Hailey's face was red. She clipped the radio back to her belt. \"Shut up and get in the goddamned van.\"\n\nI looked past her to Christopher Hill, silently daring him to get up. He groaned and sagged into the grass. Then I turned my attention to Melinda, who stood over her husband, ready to fight off anyone who tried to hurt him.\n\nI hadn't understood until then. Christopher Hill had bound his wife to him. He had twisted who she was, making himself the core of her being. She couldn't leave him. Not without first freeing herself from his power.\n\nShe was like me.\n\nWithout another word, I retreated into the van.\n\nBoth my place and Nidhi's were on Harrison's hit list. After a brief debate, I drove to the library instead. It was as secure a location as any to spend the night, and if Harrison did come after us, I'd have plenty of books on hand.\n\nI parked around back, out of sight from the street. I checked through the windows, then unlocked the back door. The alarm system beeped at me until I punched in the six-digit code to deactivate it.\n\nLena walked through the darkened library, bokken in one hand, the branch from her oak in the other. I set my books down, then returned to the car to fetch an old blanket from the trunk. I rearmed the alarm as soon as I was back inside. It wouldn't do much against a pack of wendigos or whatever constructs Harrison sent after us next, but maybe it would give us a few seconds' warning.\n\nShe set the branch in a corner. \"Do you have anything to drink here? I get dehydrated when I'm away from my tree.\"\n\n\"There's water in the break room, and we might have some juice boxes left from the picnic last week.\"\n\nBy the time Lena returned, I had cleared floor space in the children's section and dragged three battered beanbag chairs together to serve as pillows. The lights from the street filtered through the windows to silhouette the curves of her body. She stood there, sipping juice through a too-small straw and watching me.\n\n\"I never used to understand what you loved about libraries.\" She crumpled the box and tossed it in the trash. She disappeared between the shelves, and I heard her fingers passing over the plastic dust jacket protectors. When she emerged again, she leaned against the shelves, clasped her hands over her head, and stretched, the movement slow and luxurious. Cats throughout the world could have taken lessons.\n\nI settled into the beanbags. \"And now?\"\n\n\"The doors are locked, everything's powered down for the night. This place should feel empty, but it doesn't. That's what you found here, isn't it?\" She spun on one foot like a ballerina. \"Libraries kept you from being alone.\"\n\n\"I wasn't\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't.\" I could hear her smiling. \"Books were your friends growing up. Your companions, your teachers.\"\n\n\"I had friends.\" I tried not to sound too defensive.\n\n\"How many of those friends understood you as well as the books did?\" she teased. \"Every book opened your mind, showed you the infinite paths that lay before you. Each one connected you to another soul.\"\n\n\"When did you get so poetic?\"\n\n\"Tell me I'm wrong.\" She stepped closer. \"I dare you.\"\n\n\"You're not wrong.\" I breathed in the familiar smells of the library. Paper and ink, cloth-bound books and binding glue, magazines and old newspapers. A faint scent of coffee. Even steam cleaning had failed to completely remove that stain after Jenn accidentally knocked her travel mug off of the desk. Then there was the underlying smell of the hundreds of people who passed through the library every month.\n\n\"Thank you for sharing this with me, Isaac.\" She leaned down, and her lips brushed mine. Then, with a mischievous smile, she straightened and backed away until the soft light from the exit sign painted her a deep red.\n\nMoving with exquisite slowness, she peeled off her shirt and tossed it onto a nearby table. She pulled off her shoes and socks next, then slid her jeans down over her hips and kicked them aside.\n\nThe lines of her body flowed so beautifully, one curve leading to the next. My eyes traced her neck and shoulders, then moved inward to the swell of her breasts, straining slightly against the confines of her bra. From there to her stomach, where softness concealed the steel beneath, and down to the muscular curves of her hips and thighs.\n\nShe stood there a moment longer, then picked up her bokken and grinned. \"All right, now that I'm comfortable, why don't you go ahead and get some sleep while I keep guard?\"\n\nI groaned and thumped my head into the beanbag. \"The alarm is on. I think we're safe.\"\n\n\"Are you sure? I wouldn't want to take any chances.\" She twirled her bokken, then settled into a low stance, weapon ready.\n\n\"If you're trying to get comfortable, why not go all the way?\" I said. \"Or are you afraid to fight evil naked?\"\n\n\"When you're built like me, a good-fitting sports bra is non-optional for battling wendigos and other nasties.\" She tilted her head, and her tone turned serious. \"What is it? What's that look for?\"\n\n\"You.\" I couldn't stop staring. She shifted her weight and rested the sword on her shoulder, simultaneously strong and sexy and dangerous and so damned beautiful it hurt. I imagined my fingers stroking the outer curve of her leg, then tracing up the softer skin of her inner thigh. Her toes curled, as if even the feel of the old carpet beneath her bare feet was a source of pleasure.\n\nShe laughed. \"That's all you have to say? Are you just going to lie there and stare at me all night?\"\n\n\"Works for me.\"\n\n\"Mm. But then you wouldn't get any sleep,\" she teased.\n\n\"I'm willing to accept the consequences of my choice.\"\n\n\"Are you, now?\" she whispered. Placing her hands on her hips, she surveyed me and made a disapproving tsk sound. \"My dear Isaac, I do believe you're overdressed.\"\n\nBy the time I tugged off my T-shirt, Lena had set her bokken on the floor and joined me in the beanbags. She brushed her fingernails down my chest and stomach, then lower.\n\nI slid a hand through her hair. The other cupped her breast, my thumb teasing her nipple through the spandex. Her hips pressed into me as I slipped my fingers beneath the elastic and slowly pulled off her bra.\n\n\"What is it about libraries?\" she whispered, her breath tickling my ear. She took the lobe gently in her teeth. \"You used to work at the MSU library. Did you have many students sneaking into the stacks to study biology?\"\n\n\"A few. I think it was the excitement. The fear of getting caught.\"\n\n\"I can understand that.\" She grinned and rolled on top of me, and I pulled her mouth to mine. Lena might be a dryad, but tonight my hunger matched hers. We rolled across the floor until we bumped into a shelf.\n\nShe broke away, laughing. Before I could draw her back, she jumped to her feet and stripped off her underwear. Then she walked toward the front of the library. At first, I was content to simply watch, but she wasn't stopping.\n\nI followed her into the front room. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Do you ever get tired of hiding, Isaac?\" She stood three feet from the main window, hands on her hips, looking out at the street. Gods, she was gorgeous.\n\nI hurried and grabbed her hand, trying to pull her back to the relative seclusion of the children's section. Instead, she spun around and kissed me. Her fingers clamped my head like iron, and her tongue danced with mine. One of her hands undid the button of my jeans, then tugged the zipper down.\n\nHeadlights played through the library, and I swore. This time, she let me pull her down, out of view. We didn't move until the car had passed.\n\nLena covered her mouth with one hand, but it wasn't enough to hide her laughter. Laughter which proved to be highly contagious. The fear and pain and dread of the past two days gradually poured out as we collapsed on the carpet. I could feel her body shaking beside mine. I rolled on top of her and kissed her neck, right beneath the jawbone.\n\nSlowly, her laughter changed to moans of pleasure. \"I love you, Isaac Vainio.\"\n\n\"I love you, too.\"\n\n\"Good.\" She broke away and grinned. \"Because there's something I've wanted to do since the first time I came to Copper River, and it involves you, me, and that circulation desk.\"\n\nLena and I had been together since the start of summer, but we had never truly slept together.\n\nWe had done plenty of not-sleeping together, but when it was time to retire for the night, she always returned to her tree. On the nights she spent with Nidhi, I'd hear the growl of her motorcycle around midnight as she returned home, not to my house, but to the oak tree out back.\n\nTonight was different. We lay naked on the blanket, nested among the beanbags. Her thigh rested atop mine, and her body pressed against my chest. The warmth of her skin was a comfortable contrast to the cool air.\n\nDespite my exhaustion, both magical and physical, it took me a long time to drift off to sleep. Once I did, my dreams jerked me awake throughout the night. The third time, I rolled over to find myself alone.\n\nLena had moved to the corner of the room, where she lay curled around the branch from her oak Her fingertips disappeared into the wood. \"It's four in the morning,\" she murmured. \"Go back to sleep.\"\n\nIt was good advice, and I tried to follow it, but my body was abuzz like I had mainlined an entire pot of coffee. After tossing fitfully for another fifteen minutes, I gave up and pulled on my pants. I walked to the break room and grabbed a granola bar from the cabinet. I had no appetite, but forced it down anyway. I picked up Bi Wei's book on the way back, along with a portable reading light from my bag.\n\nThe light was designed to clip directly to a book, but I didn't want to risk damaging the cover. I settled for clipping it to my jeans pocket.\n\nAs I opened the book, I found myself missing Smudge, who would have been trying valiantly to blister my skin and warn me away. But we needed information, and I couldn't think of another way to get it.\n\nI switched on my glasses and skimmed from one section to the next, trying to decide where to start. A description of Bi Wei's first encounter with magic caught my attention, and I flipped to the beginning of the story. It was her great-grandaunt who introduced her to Bi Sheng's teachings. They had spent most of the day hiking to the top of a rocky hill outside of their village. Bi Wei could have made the walk in half the time had she been alone, but she was happy to match her great-grandaunt's pace, and wouldn't have dreamed of complaining.\n\nThey talked of trivial things along the way, but Bi Wei knew this was no ordinary outing. She longed to ask what awaited them and why her parents had been so somber the night before, but she suppressed her curiosity.\n\nThe clouds blazed that evening. A glowworm clung like a beacon to a stalk of grass, bobbing in the warm breeze. Great-Grandaunt unrolled a reed mat on the grass. Atop the mat, she opened an atlas of star charts. Times and seasons were written into the margins, while pictures of familiar stars spread across the rest of the page.\n\n\"Find them,\" she said.\n\nI looked skyward. Clouds and splintered sunlight hid the night sky from view. The stars wouldn't be visible for some time yet. \"How?\"\n\n\"Read with me.\" She turned the page, and we read a description of the northern stars. The author had written both of the stars' usefulness in navigation and of their beauty, for shouldn't the most useful things be also pleasing to behold?\n\nAs we read, it was as though the starlight he had looked upon\u2014and I somehow knew both that he had watched the stars as he wrote, and that the writer was a man\u2014it was as if that same light brightened within me. Shock tore my manners asunder, and I cried out.\n\nGreat-Grandaunt was not angry. Instead, she smiled and turned back to the star map. \"Find them,\" she repeated.\n\nThis time, when I looked to the clouds, I could see the stars burning beyond. \"The Celestial Spear.\" Despite the sunlight, I saw the constellation more clearly than ever I had before. I felt as though I could touch them, gather them to my breast like jewels. \"How?\"\n\n\"Through the [UNTRANSLATABLE] of your ancestor, Bi Sheng. This book was printed a hundred years ago. It and its sisters were shared and read by those with spiritual and magical strength. As each of Bi Sheng's [UNTRANSLATABLE. SUGGESTIONS: DESCENDANTS, APPRENTICES] read the book, the words grew stronger. We read each book again and again, refilling the cup of its magic.\"\n\nJust as Guan Feng had done for Bi Wei. How many times had someone read this book over the years to sustain her? Thousands? How many hours did the students of Bi Sheng spend with these texts, fighting to keep their ancestors alive?\n\nI laughed with delight, an outburst that would have earned disapproval from others, but Great-Grandaunt understood. This book had brought the night to life. I saw not just pinpoints of light, but the Emperor of Heaven, the Celestial Kitchen, the First Great One\u2026I saw what they represented, the meaning we had painted on the sky throughout the ages.\n\n\"Why me?\" I asked, not daring to hope that there might be more.\n\n\"Because you see beyond the words. They open your eyes to the world, and you give them power, just as Bi Sheng did. Just as I did. And it is time you learn to use those gifts.\"\n\nIt was a connection I had felt with few others: the excitement of libriomancy, of magic. None but another libriomancer could understand the wonder and amazement of that discovery, the thrill of our first forays into magic. With Bi Wei, I relived that delight through the prism of her life. If anything, her joy had been even stronger than my own.\n\nIn that moment, I touched her mind.\n\nJoy vanished, replaced by pain and confusion. Everything about this place and time was strange. The only constant was the violence and war that had followed her. She had fled the Porters centuries before, and had awakened to find herself threatened by them once again.\n\nOr had she awakened at all? Was this the madness that had claimed the Lost Ones? Power clawed like a beast trapped within her chest, fighting to tear free. Even as she struggled to contain the beast, it slithered through her fingers, seducing her with the promise of magic. It had been so simple to use that power to grasp the words of those around her, the angry orders of the one called August Harrison, the broken-but-familiar words of the B\u00ec de d\u00fa.\n\nHer own descendants practically worshipped her. Whereas August Harrison treated her with derision, as if she were nothing but a Mi\u00e1o slave. Guan Feng often cursed him under her breath, but she obeyed his wishes out of gratitude and respect. He had been the one to restore Bi Wei.\n\nHe was the one who could bring back Wei's friends.\n\nFeng held her hand as they walked alongside a palisade of sharpened poles that led to a square watchtower. The ground was hard-packed earth, bordered by old wood and stone buildings. Fireflies crawled over the walls\u2014no, not fireflies. Those were Harrison's insects. Bi Wei was seeing the magic in each one.\n\nWherever they were, Harrison was taking no risks. He had ordered everyone along this time: twenty-four of the twisted monsters he called wendigos, sixteen readers, and another twenty guardians, not counting Bi Wei and Guan Feng. Roughly half of the humans carried firearms. The handheld cannons were as frightening and disorienting as the metal cars they had stolen to get to this place, traveling at unimaginable speeds.\n\n\"The north wall,\" said Harrison.\n\nBi Wei didn't move.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Feng.\n\nShe looked around, searching. \"We're being watched.\"\n\nI slammed the book shut.\n\n\"What happened?\" Lena asked, fully awake and alert.\n\n\"It worked.\" I studied Lena more closely. Her eyes were red and shadowed, her hair a disheveled mess. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"I essentially tried to switch from sleeping on a king-sized bed to a little throw pillow.\" She managed a pale smile. \"I'm fine. This isn't the first night I've spent away from my oak. What did you learn?\"\n\n\"Not as much as I wanted. I think Bi Wei might have seen me. She's disoriented, but determined to save the rest of her people. There are at least sixteen more of these books, and a bunch of people she called guardians. They must have had a second camp or base somewhere.\"\n\n\"Did you see where they were? How close are they to finding us?\"\n\n\"Harrison isn't after us. They're looking for something else. Something magical, I think.\" I stared at the book, reconstructing what I had seen. That palisade was familiar. \"Oh, shit.\"\n\nI grabbed my phone and called Nicola Pallas. The instant she answered, I said, \"Harrison's going after the archive at Fort Michilimackinac.\"\n\n\"How long would it take you to get there?\" Pallas asked calmly.\n\n\"Too long. He's there now, and he knows where the archive is.\"\n\nTo Pallas' credit, she didn't ask me how I knew. \"Do you know what he wants?\"\n\n\"Let me pull up the catalog.\" I hurried toward the front desk and powered up the computer. I could connect to the Porter network and see what books and other toys were stored at the old fort. Hopefully something would jump out\u2014 \"Wait. Nicola, did the Porters transfer everything from MSU to Michilimackinac?\"\n\n\"Everything save a handful of books and artifacts that were destroyed when the building collapsed.\"\n\nI remembered the Michigan State University library, both as a student and as a field agent investigating the attack that crushed the entire building. I had cataloged some of the locked books the Porters used to store in the library's secret subbasement. Of all the titles we had kept there, one would hold particular interest for August Harrison. \"He's going after Nymphs of Neptune.\"\n\nLena had been discovered in lower Michigan. Until Lena, the Porters had thought it impossible to pull intelligent beings from books. You could infect humans from our world with vampirism and other afflictions. You could even yank something like Pixel the cat out of Heinlein. But a fully sentient mind? Impossible. Until it happened. Until an acorn from that book grew into a dryad's oak, giving birth to Lena Greenwood.\n\nNidhi was the one who had discovered Lena's origins in a secondhand copy of Nymphs of Neptune. Gutenberg had locked that book the very next day. I didn't know how he did it, though I had heard whispers of an invisible inscription, a spell that spread out to affect every copy of a book. The locked book with Gutenberg's enchantment had been moved to our archive in East Lansing for safekeeping.\n\n\"I can't send another automaton,\" Pallas said. \"Gutenberg is still trying to repair the last one. Do you think Harrison has the ability to unlock books?\"\n\nI didn't know how strong Bi Wei had become, but Harrison wouldn't try to steal that book unless he thought he could use it, and that meant ripping open Gutenberg's spell. \"Probably. What about using an automaton to teleport someone else in?\"\n\n\"The archive is magically shielded, remember?\"\n\n\"How could I forget?\" The Porters had chosen Michilimackinac because of its latent magical wards, spells placed more than three hundred years ago by French traders. Gutenberg had worked with Jane Oshogay, a historian and retired libriomancer who had moved here from Minnesota, to strengthen and build upon those wards. Wards I had foolishly volunteered to help test.\n\nIt had taken a day and a half for our healers to reverse the various curses, and another two weeks for my hair to finally start growing back.\n\n\"I'll see what else I can do,\" said Pallas. \"And remember, I need your report on the Columbus incident.\" She hung up without saying good-bye, which wasn't unusual for her.\n\n\"He wants his own dryad,\" Lena said tightly.\n\n\"It's worse than that.\" One dryad would allow him to restore the other students of Bi Sheng, but it would take time, and Harrison didn't strike me as a patient man. \"Why stop at one? He's going to create an entire legion of dryad slaves.\"\n\nMy mistake cost me my position with the shelter, though a number of the other volunteers privately thanked me for living out their fantasy, and several stayed in touch for a while. And then Hailey called two months later to tell me Christopher Hill had shot Melinda four times before putting the gun beneath his own chin and pulling the trigger. She said she thought it was better if I heard the news from a friend.\n\nNidhi found me curled at the base of my tree, crying. I recognized her by her footfalls on my roots. \"I should have killed him.\"\n\nShe knew without asking what had happened. Maybe she had already heard the details from a colleague, or on the radio. \"You can't save everyone, Lena.\"\n\n\"I could have saved her.\" I dug my fingers into the earth, seeking the strength of my tree. I wouldn't give up what Nidhi and I had for anything, but for the first time, I found myself missing the simplicity of my life with Frank.\n\n\"You tried to give her a choice.\"\n\n\"She made the wrong one.\"\n\nShe sat down beside me and hooked her arm through mine. \"So you should have taken that choice away from her?\"\n\n\"What about her son's choice?\" I asked. \"His parents are both dead. I wanted\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what you wanted,\" Nidhi said softly. \"You think I haven't imagined similar things? Protecting the helpless, saving those who have been hurt.\"\n\n\"You do something better. You help them to protect themselves.\"\n\n\"Sometimes.\" She rested against my shoulder.\n\n\"What would have happened if I hadn't been there?\" Perhaps his showing up to confront her would have hardened Melinda's resolve to leave. Hailey had been trained for this. She could have helped Melinda to make the right choice. Instead, by attacking Melinda's husband, I had driven her back to him.\n\n\"You didn't kill that woman, Lena. He made the choice to pull the trigger, not you. Don't you dare take that responsibility away from him.\" We sat in silence as the sun drifted lower. \"I spoke with the Regional Master of the Porters this morning about the possibility of you becoming a field agent.\"\n\nShe raised a hand before I could give words to the burst of hope in my chest. \"Pallas said no. Gutenberg doesn't allow nonhumans in the Porters.\"\n\n\"Can you blame him?\" I sank back against the tree.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said evenly. \"But there may be another option. So far, my only magical clients have been human, all classified as low-risk. Field agents mostly, with the occasional researcher. But there are others who need help. Displaced nonhumans. Recently-turned vampires, werewolves, and others, trying to come to terms with their new existence. People considered too unstable and dangerous for a mundane psychiatrist to help.\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"I've asked that my client list be expanded to level two and three patients,\" Nidhi said. \"If they approve my request, it would mean more travel, and I'd need someone along for my protection. That person doesn't have to be a Porter.\"\n\nI swallowed, torn between hope and fear as I realized what she was offering. \"What if I screw up again?\" I whispered. \"If I lost you\u2014\"\n\n\"I trust you,\" she whispered.\n\nThe book I needed wasn't on the shelf. I ran back to the computer and pulled up our circulation database, drumming my fingers on the desk as I waited for the program to open.\n\n\"Even if he can unlock the book, he can't create a fully-formed dryad.\" Uncertainty turned Lena's words into a question, a plea for confirmation. \"It took time for my tree to grow. Years, probably.\"\n\n\"Your tree grew naturally. Harrison isn't going to wait.\" I waved impatiently at the science fiction and fantasy section of the library. \"Belgarath, from David Eddings' Belgariad. Irene in Piers Anthony's Xanth books. The water of life from L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Regained. The magic of those books could grow an acorn into a fully grown oak within hours, and Bi Wei knows enough of libriomancy to make it happen.\"\n\n\"What about the other books at the archive?\" Lena asked. \"If she can unlock one, why not others? There are weapons in those books that could wipe out all of Michigan.\"\n\n\"Bi wouldn't do that,\" I said. \"She wants to restore her friends, but she won't give those books to a madman.\"\n\n\"Bi?\" Lena's brows rose.\n\n\"Bi Wei.\" I had used the familiar term instinctively. It was hard to think of someone as a stranger after touching their memories and sharing one of the happiest moments of their existence. \"She doesn't want to fight a war.\"\n\nLena's fist cracked the desk. \"Do you think August Harrison cares what she wants?\" she shouted.\n\nShock robbed me of words.\n\n\"She's going to give Harrison an army of dryads. You can't\u2014\" Her voice broke. \"You don't know what they're capable of. What I'm capable of.\"\n\n\"I've read your book,\" I said, trying to reassure her. Where was Nidhi when I needed her? \"I've seen what you can do. You're amazing, but you're not omnipotent, and you're not a monster.\"\n\n\"You haven't seen everything.\" She moistened her lips and moved her hands over the front of her body.\n\nBetween one breath and the next, I forgot all about August Harrison or Nymphs of Neptune. Blood pounded hot through my body, as if she had stripped away all traces of civilization, leaving only raw, primitive lust. I wanted to tear her clothes away, to take her right here. My chair clattered backward. I took her by the arms and pressed her against the shelves, hard enough that several books fell around us.\n\nI didn't care. My pelvis ground against hers as I yanked her shirt roughly over her head and flung it aside. I thrust my hand down the front of her pants, and she writhed with pleasure.\n\n\"Stop.\" She pushed me away and held me at arm's length. I tried to twist free, but her grip was unbreakable. Slowly, my arousal faded to more human levels, though my jeans still felt painfully constrictive. From the tightness of her nipples and the quickness of her breath, Lena was having similar struggles. \"All right,\" she gasped. \"Maybe that wasn't the best demonstration.\"\n\nI swallowed and backed away. \"What did you do to me?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" She turned away. \"I told you once that I could feel lust in others. I never told you I could manipulate that lust.\"\n\n\"Chapter four,\" I whispered. The fourth chapter of Nymphs of Neptune put protagonist John Rule in the middle of a territorial conflict between a river nymph and a dryad. It was yet another layer of the author's wish fulfillment fantasy, with both nymphs battling first over their borders, then over Rule himself, each stoking his desire until he was little more than an animal. He wound up bedding them both, naturally. \"Before you and I got together\u2026\" I trailed off, uncertain how to finish the question.\n\n\"Never,\" Lena said firmly. \"Not since before I met Nidhi. Sometimes I have to work to stop myself, but I wouldn't do that to you, or to her.\"\n\nA part of me was angry at the loss of control. Another part wanted desperately for her to do it again.\n\n\"Imagine what I could make you do. What I could make men do. Many women as well.\" She folded her arms over her breasts. \"I used to seduce Frank when I wanted him. Or when I wanted to punish his wife.\"\n\nI bit the inside of my lip. The pain helped me to focus.\n\n\"I fought her once,\" Lena continued. \"She couldn't take it anymore, so she attacked me. I broke her hand.\"\n\n\"You were protecting yourself,\" I said.\n\n\"Marion was never a real threat. I hurt her because I wanted to. Because I enjoyed it. I liked fighting for Frank. I liked the power I had over her, and the sound of her crying.\" She bent to retrieve her shirt. \"The dryads Harrison creates will be worse.\"\n\nI nodded and returned to the computer. \"Then let's find a way to stop him.\"\n\nAccording to our system, Robin McKinley's Beauty was on the reserved shelf. Thankfully, the person who had placed a hold on the book hadn't yet been by to pick it up.\n\nThe Copper River Library might not have Nymphs of Neptune, but the Beast's magical library in Beauty held a copy of every book ever written. As I reached into the story, I found myself wondering at the implications of such a library. Did the Beast sit around reading fairy-tale retellings? What would he make of modern erotic fiction like 50 Shades of Grey? Had he discovered his own book, and what kind of magical paradox might I create if I used this book to create a new copy of Beauty?\n\nThis wasn't the time for experiments, dammit. I focused on the book I needed, and pulled Nymphs of Neptune through the pages.\n\n\"Can you lock it?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"I don't know how.\" I opened the book and swore. Both times I had read Nymphs of Neptune, it had felt empty: a void whose life was locked away by Gutenberg's magic. As I skimmed the opening pages now, I could feel the book's magic waiting just beneath the page. I ran my fingers over the rough, yellowed paper. \"They've got it.\"\n\n\"If we call Gutenberg\u2014\"\n\n\"Do it, but I'm not sure it will work. Bi Wei might be too strong.\"\n\nThose words broke something within Lena. She tried not to let it show, but her entire bearing changed. She closed her eyes, and the energy and alertness that always reminded me of a pacing cat drained from her body. When she spoke, her words were listless. \"Can you stop them from using it?\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\nWhile she dialed the phone, I reached into the pages and allowed the icy air of Neptune to flow into the library. If there were a way to fine-tune the flow of this book's magic, I might never need to pay for air conditioning again.\n\n\"Nobody's answering,\" she whispered. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Breaking one of the cardinal rules of libriomancy,\" I said. \"I'm going to deliberately char the everliving hell out of this book.\"\n\nI reached deeper until my fingers touched frigid snow.\n\nLena dialed another number. \"Exactly how dangerous is this plan?\"\n\n\"Calling it a 'plan' might be a bit of an overstatement.\"\n\nShe turned away, and I heard her filling someone in on what was happening. Hopefully Gutenberg could fix this, but I couldn't afford to concentrate on that conversation.\n\nJohn Rule had been transported from Earth to the underground world of Neptune. According to the author's ridiculous pseudoscience, the ice of the frozen surface somehow focused the rays of the sun like a giant magnifying lens, providing light and just enough warmth to the inhabitants below.\n\nI pulled that environment into our world, channeling the book until my breath began to fog and frost crept across the floor.\n\nI heard the characters calling to me. Whispering seductively, giggling as they invited me back to lavish bedchambers furnished in the thick furs of ferocious alien beasts. I heard their grunts and cries as they fought each other for the entertainment of their Neptunian lords. Just as Lena had fought Frank Dearing's wife.\n\nThis was the book that had birthed Lena Greenwood. One of the strongest women I knew, and she had been written as a sexual plaything. I wanted to bring the author back from the grave purely so Lena, Nidhi, and I could take turns punching him in the face. And yet, without his trash, Lena would have never been a part of my life.\n\n\"He's trying, but Bi Wei is holding the book open somehow.\" Lena covered the phone. \"Isaac, your arm.\"\n\nI glanced down. The skin of my wrist and forearm had taken on a faint bluish tinge, and I couldn't feel anything from the elbow down. I wrenched my hand free of the book. Pain hit a moment later as blood flow returned to my numb fingers. I clamped my jaw to keep from shouting.\n\nCold continued to flow from the book. \"I probably should have done this out back,\" I said through clenched teeth.\n\nThe voices were growing louder. John Rule shouted defiantly at the Prince of Harku'unn, the northernmost kingdom of Neptune. I tightened my fist, feeling the weight of his stone-bladed sword, and his need to act. I would strike down the tyrant who would torture and enslave the free people of Harku'unn, including the exiled nymph who had saved my life.\n\n\"Isaac!\"\n\nOne of the prince's dryads stepped closer, her barbarian weapon held in a defensive position. I raised my own sword.\n\n\"Oh, hell.\" The dryad parried my thrust and stepped inside my guard. Her other hand caught my chin and lifted, twisting my spine and forcing me off balance. She kicked my front leg out from under me before I could recover.\n\nI landed hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. My sword fell, and my shield fluttered to the ground.\n\nI blinked. I was reasonably certain shields weren't supposed to flutter.\n\n\"Concentrate on my voice,\" said the dryad. \"You're Isaac Vainio. You're in Copper River, Michigan, and we don't have time for this!\"\n\nSnow gusted through the cave. A stone sword with a blade like chipped blue glass lay beside me. I rubbed my face and tried to focus.\n\n\"Don't move.\" She left me shivering on the floor, but returned seconds later, ripping open a cellophane package. \"Eat this.\"\n\nStrong fingers shoved something spongy and chocolate into my mouth. I chewed without thinking. \"You raided my Tastykake supply?\"\n\n\"Tastes and smells are powerful triggers. They can help to anchor you in the real world.\" Lena crammed another bite past my lips. \"You once told me how your parents used to bring them back from trips out East, remember?\"\n\nI stared at the book on the floor beside me. The pages were blackened, charred by the amount of magic pouring through. No sane libriomancer would use a book so badly damaged, not if they wanted to hold on to that sanity. Like Gutenberg's lock, that damage would flow through other copies of the book, and only time would heal it.\n\nI placed both hands over the book and wrenched my spell closed, then took the second cupcake from Lena, trying to keep from trembling. Color had begun to return to my skin, but I could also see the faint overlay of char, like a layer of ash just beneath the surface. I had done this to myself once before at Mackinac Island, after channeling a Martian death ray through my own flesh to fight off a group of undead horses.\n\nI had a peculiar life.\n\nTo my surprise, the cupcakes helped. The voices pressing into my head were still there, but no longer threatened to drown me. I scraped the last bit of chocolate frosting from the wrapper with my finger. \"I'm sorry,\" I said as I realized what I had done. \"Did I hurt you?\"\n\nA single elevated eyebrow and an amused smile was all the answer that question needed.\n\nThe taste of chocolate didn't block out the faint scent of methane and ammonia. Cleaning this mess would take hours. Jenn was going to kill me. Not to mention the damage the moisture would do to the books. I needed to get to the basement and bring up the portable dehumidifiers.\n\nAs my mind continued to clear, I noticed Lena was shivering. Charring her book shouldn't have hurt her. Unlike my time-viewing spell back in Tamarack, Lena was a fully formed magical creation. Her connection with her book had ended the moment someone pulled her acorn from the pages. \"What's wrong?\"\n\n\"The smell.\" She scooped a handful of snow from the floor and stared at it, entranced. \"I remember this, even though I know it's not real. I've never touched snow like this before, but my body recognizes it, and suddenly everything else seems wrong. You, the library, even these clothes.\"\n\nI jumped to my feet, grabbed her elbow, and dragged her back to the children's section. Lena stumbled drunkenly along. I snatched her branch and pressed it into her hands. She gripped it like a lifeline.\n\n\"Stay with me, Lena.\" I punched in the alarm code and propped open the back door, then pulled her into the fresh air.\n\nShe stood like a statue, holding the branch from her tree and staring into the distance. Eventually, she reached over with one hand and tugged me to her. She kissed me fiercely at first, and then I felt her body begin to relax. She broke away and rested her head on my shoulder.\n\n\"Thank you,\" she whispered.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said at the same time.\n\n\"What for?\"\n\nI tucked her hair back over her ear, then traced the edge of her ear down to the curve of her neck. \"I'm an idiot. I should have known better.\"\n\nNidhi would have caught my mistake. She would have made certain Lena was safely out of range before I opened up a portal to the fictional world that had birthed her. I could think of no better way to induce a schizophrenic break than blurring the lines of Lena's two realities.\n\n\"Did it work?\" she asked.\n\n\"I think so.\" It was five in the morning. I had held that book open for more than a half hour. I smiled wearily. \"August Harrison is going to be pissed.\"\n\nThe mess inside made me sympathize with the Sorcerer's Apprentice. If I had the slightest idea how to enchant the mops and brooms to clean up the library, I'd be tempted too.\n\nI ended up using a push broom to sweep most of the snow out the front door, then brought the dehumidifiers up. After an hour, the smell had dispersed enough for Lena to come back inside with no apparent ill effects.\n\nBy the time Jenn arrived, I had propped open the doors for airflow, returned the beanbags to their proper place, and wiped down the circulation desk. Jenn stopped in the doorway, sniffed the air, looked from me to the dehumidifiers, and sighed. \"I don't want to know, do I?\"\n\n\"A friend called me around four in the morning. Said he saw a couple of kids snooping around in here. They had gotten the chemistry books out, and as far as I can tell, I think they were trying to make their own little drug lab.\"\n\nJennifer Latona had about twenty years on me. I fought to keep a neutral expression as she gave me a you-expect-me-to-believe-that look that was eerily reminiscent of my mother. \"How did they break in?\"\n\n\"The alarm was armed, so if I had to guess, I'd say they came in during the day, snuck into the basement, and hid out until everyone left.\"\n\n\"Did you catch them?\"\n\n\"They must have ducked out of sight when we pulled up. Lena and I started cleaning up the mess, and they took off through the back door.\"\n\nShe set her briefcase on the desk and rubbed her temples. \"You cleaned up the evidence? Did it ever occur to you to call the police? Or to call me?\"\n\n\"I can honestly say it didn't.\" I gave her an apologetic shrug. \"I was just trying to save the books. Can you imagine the damage if this stuff seeped under the shelves? We did the best we could, but we need to get steam vacs in here if we want to avoid a major mold problem. Not to mention the bugs.\"\n\n\"I'm supposed to have a children's story group in here at eight-thirty.\" She popped open her suitcase, grabbed a pair of old socks, and waved them under my nose. \"I brought sock puppets! I can't have kids sitting around in a library that smells like a chem lab.\"\n\nI peeked outside. \"The sky looks pretty clear. Why not do puppets in the park?\"\n\n\"I never had this kind of trouble when I was working down in Lansing.\" Before I could answer, she raised a hand and said, \"Just get someone in here to do the carpets.\"\n\nI gave her a quick salute, then sat down to call Cody Terzaghi about renting his steam cleaners. Nicola called back on my own phone as I was wrapping things up with Cody.\n\n\"Harrison got the book,\" she said without greeting or preamble. \"Jane Oshogay is dead.\"\n\nI slumped lower in the chair. \"How?\"\n\n\"Jane was first on the scene, and arrived as Harrison and the others were leaving. Her orders were to wait, but you know libriomancers and their books. From the look of things, she put up a good fight.\"\n\n\"Damn.\" I hesitated. After reading Bi Wei's book and touching her mind, some part of me had hoped she would object to Harrison's rampage, that she would stop him from hurting anyone else. \"I, um, kind of charred Nymphs of Neptune last night. I don't think they'll be able to use it, but we should make a note in the catalog.\"\n\n\"Good. I need you to stay where you are. Once we're done cleaning up at the fort, we'll join you at the library.\"\n\n\"We?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg, myself, and every other Porter within traveling distance. It's time to put an end to this.\"\n\n\"Past time.\" Relief hit first, followed closely by fear. Gutenberg had tried to destroy the students of Bi Sheng once before. I had no reason to believe he wouldn't attempt the same thing. But Bi Wei might be a match even for Gutenberg. Regardless of who won, the collateral damage would be ugly.\n\nCopper River was about to become ground zero in a magical war the likes of which the world hadn't seen in more than five hundred years.\n\nEven deep within the slumber of my oak, Nidhi's scream cut through me like the freshly sharpened blade of an ax.\n\nI leaped from my tree, one of six oaks planted in a row on the northern side of Nidhi's small yard. My feet hadn't even touched the grass when a man slammed into me like a rhino. We crashed together into the tree.\n\n\"Not smart.\" I spat blood, twisted a branch from the tree, and clubbed my attacker in the side of the head.\n\nIn my hands, the branch grew into a short spear. Whatever he was\u2014I suspected a vampire, given his strength and speed\u2014he didn't seem surprised. My toes gripped the roots for balance as I stepped toward him. My next strike knocked him into the yard.\n\nHe had destroyed my garden, uprooting every plant, from the grapevines to the tomatoes. My roses were torn to mulch. One way or another, this bastard was going down.\n\nHe came at me again, and the roots wrinkled like inchworms. His speed worked against him now. The roots looped up to catch his ankle and hardened like steel. The end result was a vampire face-first at my feet, screaming in pain as he tried to free his dislocated ankle.\n\nI jammed my spear through his shoulder to pin him in place. \"How many?\"\n\nHe hissed and reached for my wrist, so I twisted hard.\n\n\"Three more,\" he cried. \"Inside the house.\"\n\nI didn't want to kill him. Most vampires had no more choice or control over what they became than I did. Their condition rarely involved truly informed consent. I let the spear take root, which should have been enough to keep him from causing further trouble. But he was stronger than I realized. He snarled and reached behind him, crushing the wood with one hand. He pushed himself up off of the broken spear, and his ankle popped into place with a sound like cracking stone.\n\nI kicked him in the chest, then pulled the broken spear free. When he came at me again, I sidestepped and swung two-handed, forming an edge even as the wood hummed through the air. The newly-made blade cut cleanly through his neck. I was inside the house before he had finished dissolving into ash.\n\nI ran through the living room and vaulted the couch. Two figures were dragging Nidhi toward the front door.\n\nI ran one through and used my weapon as a lever to fling him back. The second threw Nidhi against the wall and flew at me. Literally. She seized my neck and slammed me into the brick fireplace.\n\nI dug my fingers into her hands. I might not be human, but I still needed oxygen, and my brain liked its blood flow. I managed to break her left thumb, but that only pissed her off.\n\nAnd then I heard the chainsaw snarl to life in the backyard. Metal teeth bit into my oak, and I screamed. The saw felt like it was cutting through my bones, and while the oak was strong, every second chewed through bark and wood. I tried to strengthen the tree, but I needed to free myself first.\n\nInstead of fighting the vampire's hold, I jabbed my fingers at her eyes. Either the eyes were vulnerable, or she hadn't been dead long enough to outgrow her human reflexes. She flinched back, one hand coming up to protect her face.\n\nI punched her in the throat, grabbed her hair, and flung her over me and into the fireplace. If we had kept it burning, we could have had a proper fairy-tale ending. I settled for grabbing an iron poker and running her through.\n\nI staggered to my feet. Ash stung my eyes, but I spotted Nidhi on the floor. She was still breathing. I started toward her, but the vampire was back on her feet, the poker protruding from her chest.\n\nI felt the moment the oak's strength failed, when the weight of the tree overwhelmed the wood that remained. Fibers snapped and popped, and the world swayed around me. The vampire punched me in the side, cracking two ribs, but I barely felt it. My senses were imprisoned by the slow fall of my tree.\n\n\"Run,\" said Nidhi.\n\nThe oak slammed into the earth hard enough to shake the house. I screamed from pain and grief, forgetting vampires, forgetting even Nidhi as a part of me died.\n\nThen I was ducking and falling back by reflex as the vampire attacked. I made it to the backyard, where her partner came at me with the chainsaw. Had I been stronger, I would have wrested it from his grip and cut him down, just as he had done to me. But the oak was my strength, and it lay on the ground, branches smashed through the fence. Leaves and broken sticks littered the yard.\n\nI jumped onto the trunk and ran through the branches. My oak protected me one last time as the life leaked from the wood. The branches let me pass while snatching my pursuers like barbed wire.\n\nSeconds later, I was alone.\n\nJeff and Nidhi got to the library around nine in the morning. Jeff stopped in the doorway, wrinkled his nose, and announced, \"I'll be out by the car, where it doesn't smell like I've fallen into a chemical toilet.\"\n\nLena got up to greet Nidhi, leaving me to pore over a chart I had begun working on more than a month ago. They kept their reunion low-key. The library was mostly empty, save for Alex at the main desk, and Dustin LaJoie, who was checking out a stack of Curious George books for his two-year-old daughter.\n\nLena had created a second bokken from a tree down the street, and had reshaped them both into a spiral cane. It thumped against the floor as she and Nidhi walked over to join me at the public computer terminal.\n\n\"Do you have Smudge?\" I asked.\n\nNidhi checked to make sure Alex wasn't watching, then pulled a translucent yellow hamster ball from her purse.\n\n\"You put him in plastic?\" I opened the lid, and Smudge darted up my arm. His feet dug into my sleeve as he crouched protectively on my shoulder. Jennifer would have yelled at me had she been here, but Alex thought the spider was, in his words, \"freakishly awesome.\"\n\n\"It's the first thing I could find at the pet store,\" Nidhi said. \"If Harrison came after us, melted plastic was going to be the least of our worries.\"\n\n\"Hey, buddy.\" I pulled a jellybean from my candy pocket and handed it to him. Lena made puppy-dog eyes, so I tossed one to her as well.\n\n\"What's this?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"A chart of all recorded encounters with the devourers.\" I traced the curve of the two-axis graph. The horizontal was labeled Year, while the vertical tracked the decreasing interval between incidents. \"Gutenberg first touched these things in 1488, though he believes there are references going back at least a thousand years. For the next few centuries, there were only four recorded times when they reached through to touch our world.\"\n\nI pointed to different points along the graph. 1523. 1601. 1699. 1743. As I moved closer to the present, the frequency began to increase. Several were flagged and linked to names in red, beginning with G\u00e9za Cs\u00e1th in 1919 and running through Fran\u00e7ois Robin in 2008.\n\n\"Who were they?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Writers. Specifically, writers who committed suicide. When Gutenberg examined their published writing, he found traces of devourer magic. He believes they may have had minor magical abilities, enough to call to the devourers through their work. He locked them all as a precaution.\" H. P. Lovecraft was noted in yellow with a question mark. He hadn't killed himself, but having read his work, the man hadn't been entirely right in the head, either.\n\nA click of the mouse added a vertical dotted line. \"This is the point where the interval is projected to become zero, and for all practical purposes, the devourers fully enter our world.\"\n\nA point both Gutenberg and I had estimated to be within the next ten years, tops.\n\nI pointed to the start of the sixteenth century. \"Correlation doesn't prove cause, but the increase began right around the time Gutenberg founded the Porters. I thought it might be something we were doing. Libriomancy meant far more people could perform magic. Maybe that was weakening the barriers between magic and the real world. Or maybe magic simply called to them. They might see magic as anything from a challenge to a mating call for all we knew. But the timing also coincides with Gutenberg's assault on the students of Bi Sheng.\"\n\nI had spent the past hour scribbling notes on colored flyers from last year's library sale. I spread them over the table and pointed to the lime-green one. \"Normally, when a libriomancer returns an object to a book, it dissolves into undifferentiated magical energy. If you tried to put Smudge back in his book\u2014well, he'd just set it on fire. But if you found a way, he'd be gone. You could create another Smudge, but it wouldn't know us. It wouldn't have his memories or experiences.\"\n\nBecause it helped me to think more clearly, I had sketched out the equations for converting magic into real-world matter and energy, and vice versa. We had never been able to fully work out the formulas, but we could do a rough approximation for certain basic feats of magic.\n\nBecause I was overtired, I had then illustrated the equations with a doodle of Smudge looking unhappy and setting things on fire.\n\n\"Bi Wei endured because of her connection to her book, a book which was read countless times through the centuries.\" Those readings would have become ritualized, almost religious in nature. A prayer connecting Bi Wei and her readers. \"There was no physical dissolution. Nobody cut off her head and stuffed her brain into the book. Instead, the book became the backbone for an unbroken chain of belief linking Bi Wei's last moments in the temple to the oak tree where Lena brought her back.\"\n\nI pointed to another flyer. \"What happens when that chain breaks?\"\n\n\"You get a devourer?\" Nidhi guessed.\n\n\"But if they lost that magical template of belief and they have no physical bodies or anchors in the real world, they should have dissolved into nothingness.\" I had illustrated the devourers as a series of swirls that looked like badly-drawn tumbleweeds. \"So what keeps the devourers alive?\"\n\nNidhi pointed to the computer. \"Could they be using the authors and libriomancers they possessed? Traveling from one mind to another?\"\n\n\"There are too many gaps,\" I said excitedly. \"Only one incident in the sixteenth century? What happened to them for the next seventy-eight years?\"\n\n\"You think they have another anchor,\" said Lena.\n\nI snatched another set of equations. \"It's only a theory. I don't know if it's more books or another kind of magical artifact, or something else we've never considered, but the simplest explanation is that something or someone is preserving them, just like the students of Bi Sheng did for Bi Wei.\"\n\nShouts from outside made me jump. Smudge spun to face the front of the library, but he wasn't burning. Lena snatched her cane and headed for the door.\n\nI opted for the window. Outside, Jeff was holding the arms of a woman with bright green hair. \"It's all right,\" I assured Alex.\n\n\"How exactly is this all right?\" asked Nidhi. \"If she knows where we are, we should either be fighting or running.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" But Smudge wasn't worried, and when I listened to Guan Feng arguing with Jeff, I didn't hear a threat. Only fear and desperation. \"Lena, would you please ask Jeff to bring her inside?\"\n\nGuan Feng sat down between us. Her foot tapped nervously against the floor. Jeff had taken the seat behind her, while Lena sat with me, not-so-subtly surrounding her.\n\nAll that remained was to get Alex to stop staring. I thought at first that he had noticed one of us doing something magical, but it wasn't us he was watching. His interests were more natural than supernatural.\n\nHe gathered his courage and walked around the desk. When he saw me looking, he veered away and pretended to reshelf a book. One casual step at a time, he made his way toward Guan Feng. \"Hey, are you okay? You look pretty shaken up.\" The rest of us were effectively invisible. \"I could get you a pop from the break room if you'd like, or maybe some tea?\"\n\n\"Feng's an English major at NMU,\" I said. \"She's looking for summer work, and stopped by to ask about the library.\"\n\nAlex lit up. \"You'd love working here. Do you need me to show you around?\"\n\n\"She has a boyfriend,\" I added.\n\nAlex blushed so hard I couldn't help but feel bad for him. \"Oh. I mean, that's all right. It's still a great place to work.\" He retreated far more hastily than he had approached, and busied himself sorting through the returned books.\n\n\"How did you find us?\" I asked Guan Feng.\n\nShe gave the answer I had expected. \"Bi Wei.\"\n\n\"Does Harrison know?\"\n\nShe shook her head, and her eyes turned glassy. I wasn't happy about how easily she had tracked us down, but Smudge remained calm. If this was a trap, or if she had brought one of Harrison's bugs, even unknowingly, he'd have set something on fire by now.\n\n\"What happened?\" Nidhi asked gently.\n\n\"He put one of those things around her neck while she slept.\" She had an accent, but spoke with the confidence of long practice. \"Like he did with you. But it wasn't enough. He built three metal snakes, only a few inches long. The millipede held its blade to her neck while they burrowed into the skin of her chest. He says they're coiled around the aorta.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I whispered.\n\nIt was Lena who answered. \"To control her.\"\n\nTears spilled down Guan Feng's cheeks. \"For six years, ever since my father died, I've been her reader. I was only thirteen years old, one of the youngest to be given such an honor. To become a reader, let alone a reader for a direct descendant of Bi Sheng\u2026It was my responsibility to sustain and protect her. And if we could find a way, to restore her.\" She raised her chin. \"I would rather see my ancestors sleep another five hundred years than let Harrison chain them as he did Bi Wei.\"\n\n\"He sent his insects into the tree when I brought Wei back,\" said Lena. \"Why did he need more?\"\n\n\"He lost his connection to them, and believes they were destroyed,\" Guan Feng said furiously. \"He doesn't understand the truth. They became a part of her, a tumor spreading through her spirit.\"\n\nI leaned closer. \"Does Bi Wei know?\"\n\n\"Yes. She recognized the touch of the du\u00ec, the Ghost Army.\"\n\n\"Wait, you know what they are?\" For two months I had pored over old manuscripts and reports, trying to piece together fragments of information and rumors going back five centuries. Meanwhile, Guan Feng knew our enemy by name.\n\n\"Some are students of Bi Sheng who lost their way. Their books were destroyed, or their readers neglected their duties. Others\u2026we don't know. The ghosts existed before Bi Sheng's time. Throughout the years, there have been attempts to control them and the power they command.\"\n\nShe turned to the computer and attacked the keyboard with two fingers. A short time later, she opened up a translated Tang Dynasty poem by D\u00f9 H\u00e0or\u00e1n titled \"Waiting for my Teacher to Return From the Land of Midday Dreams.\" She scooted to the side so I could read.\n\n\"'Dark clouds grow thin, and the song shall summon the dead to war.'\" The poem described a sorcerer named Yuan Jiao and her battle against a man who had drowned in the river of magic. The man's ghost had returned, far more powerful than before. He sought to drag others down. Yuan Jiao set forth into the Land of Midday Dreams, where she battled the ghost for seven days. But the more she fought, the stronger he became.\n\nI thought about my hallucinations earlier this morning, how I had attacked Lena without recognizing her. Midday Dreams, indeed. I had come close to losing myself in Detroit, drowning in my own magic. That was when the devourer had struck.\n\n\"What will happen to Bi Wei?\" I asked.\n\n\"She spent five hundred years adrift in the river of magic. That river flows through her now. It gives her tremendous power, but the first time she loses control, the ghosts will pull her down.\" She stomped one foot on the floor. \"August Harrison dismissed the dangers as 'ignorant fears born of Oriental folklore and superstition.' He and his dryad will turn our ancestors into vessels for the Army of Ghosts.\"\n\nLena went rigid. \"His dryad?\"\n\n\"Wei pulled a single acorn from the book before Isaac destroyed it.\" Guan Feng's mouth tugged into a grim smile. \"August was furious when Wei told him what you had done. He started swearing and talking about what he planned to do to punish you. But he had the acorn, and Bi Wei helped it to grow. The dryad was born hours after the attack on your archive, near St. Ignace. He named her Deifilia.\"\n\nDeifilia, meaning daughter of God. How egotistical could Harrison get?\n\nNidhi took Lena's hand. \"Do the others know what Harrison and the Army of Ghosts have done to Bi Wei?\"\n\n\"They know, but they don't believe. Some agree with Harrison.\" Her nose wrinkled and her lips tightened, as if the words soured her mouth. \"The Army of Ghosts is little more than a legend, but Gutenberg and the Porters are real. We remember what the Porters did to our ancestors. Every time we read their books, we relive their fear as they watched Gutenberg's ambition grow. They see Bi Wei's power. She lived for years as a woman, but spent five centuries as a creature of magic. Her rebirth blended both lives. The others believe Harrison has given us the chance to not only restore our ancestors, but to fight back against the Porters.\"\n\n\"What does August get in return?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"His son. He believes Victor can be restored as Bi Wei was.\"\n\nFrom the way Nidhi stared, she obviously hadn't expected that answer any more than I had.\n\nJeff was the first to speak. \"How's he expect to pull that off? Victor didn't have one of those old books.\"\n\n\"He hacked our network.\" I spoke slowly, giving myself a chance to piece together what we knew. \"He has Victor's notes and reports. Magic was Victor's life.\"\n\n\"Would that be enough to bring him back?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Not by any magic we understand,\" said Guan Feng. \"The books must be printed and bound using the same materials, the same techniques. The individual's words are encased by Bi Sheng's magic. Computer files would not work. We've explained this to him, but he refuses to accept that his son is gone.\" She looked at the floor. \"And\u2026we allowed him to hold on to that hope.\"\n\n\"If he thinks there's a chance, he'll keep helping you,\" Nidhi said.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I don't get it,\" I said. \"August and Victor hated each other.\"\n\n\"The dynamics of abuse are complicated and ugly.\" Nidhi paced behind us. \"August Harrison did unforgivable things to his wife and son, but there were moments of kindness as well. He taught Victor how to work with machines, how to build and repair circuit boards. Victor described moments of pride, even warmth and love. I imagine those were the moments Victor clung to when he sent the cicada to his father. But by the time August arrived, he was too late to save his son. He might see that as his ultimate failure as a father.\"\n\nWhat would happen when he realized he couldn't restore his son, that Bi Sheng's magic couldn't affect a collection of computer files any more than I could reach into\u2026\n\n\"What?\" asked Jeff.\n\nI was already making a phone call. I browbeat the boy who answered into running out to make sure Jeneta was okay. If August Harrison had read my work, he knew Jeneta was his best option at turning electronic files into magic. I twitched impatiently until the boy confirmed Jeneta was out canoeing with the rest of the girls from her cabin.\n\n\"Great,\" I said. \"Tell her\u2014\" Dammit, her e-reader was destroyed, and I hadn't had time to get her a new one. But she could work magic with her phone, too. \"Tell her that poems can protect you from nightmares, and to make sure she has some ready.\"\n\n\"You want me to give her a message about poetry?\"\n\n\"It's a librarian thing. She'll understand.\" I hung up and called Nicola Pallas next. \"We need a Porter at Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe. August might be going after Jeneta next.\"\n\nPallas rarely wasted time on idle chitchat or pointless questions. \"I can have a field agent there in twenty minutes. I believe Myron Worster is closest.\"\n\n\"Thank you. If anything happens, have Myron get her out of there. Don't try to fight.\" I covered the mouthpiece and asked Guan Feng, \"Are they still in St. Ignace?\"\n\n\"We left the fort as soon as you destroyed the dryad's book. I snuck away after we stopped for the night. I don't know where Harrison meant to take Deifilia.\"\n\nI relayed that to Pallas, and promised to fill her in on the rest when she and Gutenberg arrived.\n\nGuan Feng was twisting her hands into her pants. \"I'll tell you anything you want, but please give me back Bi Wei's book. She struggles to hold on. Let me help her.\"\n\n\"We will.\" I rummaged through my own books. \"Has Harrison been creating more wendigos?\"\n\n\"Yes. He took two people from the fort yesterday, and talked of collecting others.\"\n\n\"He killed a Porter,\" I said. \"He knows Gutenberg will be coming in force.\" I donned my jacket and pulled another shock-gun from Time Kings. I shouldn't have been doing magic so soon after ripping holes in Nymphs of Neptune, but sometimes the universe didn't wait around for you to rest up. I knew the gun would take a wendigo down or cook one of his metal bugs. I was more worried about how to counter Bi Wei's power.\n\nThe smell of burning dust rose from my shoulder. Smudge was watching the door, and waves of orange rippled over his thorax, dangerously close to my hair.\n\nNidhi saw it too. \"Feng, is there any way you could have been followed?\"\n\nComprehension and fear widened Guan Feng's eyes, and she jumped to her feet. \"I was careful. I didn't tell anyone where I was going. I swear on my father's grave.\"\n\n\"He probably forced Bi Wei to tell him where you were.\" I shoved the gun into my pocket, pulled on my jacket, and grabbed the rest of my books. \"It's all right. He would have found us anyway. I'm a little surprised the destruction of Nymphs of Neptune didn't attract his swarm, but it sounds like he was busy practicing horticulture.\"\n\nLena untwisted her cane into two sharpened swords and strode toward the door.\n\n\"How many?\"\n\n\"Only one. But you might want to make sure you've got a change of underwear before you see this thing.\"\n\nAlex came around the desk to intercept me. \"Isaac, tell your girlfriend she can't bring weapons into holy-shit-your-spider's-on-fire!\"\n\nI clapped him on the shoulder. \"Alex, this would be a very good time for you to go on break. Somewhere else.\"\n\nJeff had joined Lena by the door. Neither one of them moved. Not a good sign.\n\nThe scream of tearing metal filled the street, followed by silence. I shoved past Alex toward the back and hurried to see what we were up against.\n\n\"All right,\" I whispered. \"I admit it. I'm impressed.\"\n\nI had been expecting to see Harrison, Bi Wei, and the dryad at a minimum, along with his insects. Possibly wendigos as well, depending on whether or not he was ready to announce his presence to the world.\n\nI hadn't expected a six-legged dragon made of old mining and construction equipment.\n\nThe thing was roughly the size of a bus. The yellow legs looked like they had come from mismatched backhoes. The mouth was a pair of toothed bulldozer blades. Heavy steel wings folded over the body to form an additional layer of armor.\n\nThe tail was perhaps the most terrifying. Imagine Paul Bunyan's chainsaw. Disengage the chain and make it prehensile, then start whipping it through the streets of Copper River. As I watched, it peeled the roof from a parked car and gouged brick from the building beyond.\n\n\"Go on break,\" whispered Alex. \"Right.\"\n\n\"I promise I'll explain later.\" Not that it would matter. If this thing didn't kill us all, the Porters would be by to erase Alex's memories, along with everyone else in town. So far, people were keeping off the street, but I saw faces pressed against windows, and at least two phones filming the carnage.\n\nA gun went off from across the road, but the dragon didn't appear to notice. Standing in the doorway of the barbershop, Lizzie Pascoe raised her hunting rifle to her shoulder and squeezed off another shot.\n\nThe dragon was more interested in the library. Thick steel cables flexed and tightened within its body as it charged.\n\nThe entire building shook, and a good chunk of the front wall crumbled away. I yanked out my shock-gun, switched it to maximum, and sent lightning crackling into the dragon's mouth. The attack left a glowing orange patch of metal the size of a dinner plate, but the dragon didn't even slow down. The tail swiped through the wall, destroying windows, books, and the Back-to-School book display I had spent two hours putting together. Books and debris battered us all, and the shock-gun fell from my hand.\n\nLena hauled me toward the back of the library. Once there, I snatched The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells from my jacket and turned to \"The New Accelerator.\" I had been meaning to try this story for a while.\n\nI struggled to focus on the words as enormous jaws ripped away part of the roof like it was made of cardboard. I kept remembering the ruins of the MSU library, reduced to a heap of crumbled brick and twisted metal. I was not going to let Harrison's latest pet do that to my library. I reached into the story and pulled out a small, green phial of thick liquid.\n\n\"If Bi Wei and the others are here, they'll be able to counter any magic you use,\" Guan Feng warned.\n\n\"Sure,\" I said. \"If they're fast enough.\"\n\nI transferred Smudge to the drinking fountain where he'd be less likely to set anything alight, then downed the potion and closed my eyes while I waited for the magic to take effect.\n\nThe sounds of battle slowed, then died completely. I opened my eyes again and strode carefully past my seemingly-motionless companions, releasing the phial over the trash can on my way out. It hovered in the air, its downward motion invisible to my hyperaccelerated eye.\n\nBeneath the anger and, if I were honest, the overwhelming terror, a part of me was looking forward to this. It was the same part that cheered for every David-and-Goliath tale of underdogs triumphing over impossible odds and unbeatable foes.\n\nIt was time to slay a dragon.\n\nPlato once said that human beings were created with two heads, four arms, and four legs, until Zeus split them in half. Ever since, humans have spent their lives searching for their other half, the one person who could complete them.\n\nWhat a narrow-minded, messed-up, asinine system.\n\nDo the math. There are more than seven billion people on this planet. Say you do a lot of traveling, and manage to meet a million of those people in your lifetime. That gives you a mere 1 in 7000 chance of finding \"the one.\"\n\nMaybe that's why they created me. To be their other half, the answer to the myth. Easier than scouring the planet for an impossible dream. Easier, too, than learning to set aside the dream and embrace a human being who is as flawed and imperfect as you.\n\nHumans are so obsessed with true love, the perfect relationship. They imagine that one elusive person who fits their quirks and foibles and desires like a puzzle piece. And of course, when a potential mate falls short of that perfection, they reject them. They were too old, too young, too silly, too serious, too fat, too thin. They liked the wrong TV shows. They hated chocolate. They voted for the other guy. They didn't put the toilet seat down.\n\nThey invent a million excuses for rejection, a million ways to find others unattractive. Their skill at seeing ugliness in others is matched only by their ability to see it in the mirror, to punish themselves for every imagined flaw. No matter who I've become, I never understood that facet of humanity.\n\nI remember when Isaac introduced me to Doctor Who. In one episode, the Doctor met a man who said he wasn't important. The Doctor replied, \"I've never met anyone who wasn't important before.\"\n\nI've never met anyone who wasn't beautiful. People have simply forgotten how to see.\n\nFrank Dearing was a selfish, petty, controlling bastard, but when he was working in the field, the hard muscles of his body shining with sweat as he coaxed life from the dirt\u2026the man was an asshole, but he was a hot asshole.\n\nNidhi Shah was softer. She dressed to minimize the physical. Age and stress had mapped faint lines onto her face. And she was gorgeous. Even before you stripped off her clothes and kissed your way down her neck\u2026\n\nThen there was Isaac Vainio, a skinny geek of a man who lugged his pet spider around everywhere he went. But he had such passion, such raw joy and excitement. That passion transformed him into something sexier than any rock star.\n\nThe more we narrow the definition of beauty, the more beauty we shut out of our lives.\n\nIt was as if I had put the entire universe on pause. Time hadn't stopped; I had simply sped myself up by a factor of a hundred thousand or so. If all went well, I'd have taken care of the dragon before the phial had fallen more than an inch.\n\nI wanted to run, but even my cautious, steady pace warmed my skin and clothes, courtesy of friction and compression of the air. Relatively speaking, I was a meteorite streaking through the atmosphere, and it would be all too easy to burn myself to a crisp.\n\n\"Why doesn't the Flash ever have to worry about this?\" I sank slowly to the floor to retrieve my shock-gun. Weapon in hand, I began climbing over the crumbled remains of our front wall.\n\nSomething stung the side of my face. I thought at first that Harrison's insects had found a way to get at me, but when I looked, I saw a triangle of broken glass hovering in the air. Other shards sparkled like ice, frozen in time and sharp enough to do all kinds of damage if I wasn't more careful.\n\nI grabbed a broken section of shelving and moved it to and fro like a broom, pushing the glass shards out of the way. Even a relatively slow impact shattered the shards into smaller fragments. I was tempted to try to calculate the amount of kinetic energy in each swing, but Wells' magic formula had a limited duration. I could play with the math later.\n\nOnce I had cleared a path, I ducked outside and made my way down the steps onto the sidewalk. An overturned Chevy Cavalier had smashed into the front wall. I couldn't see whether there was anyone inside. The dragon's tail was curved back like a bullwhip, ready to rip through the library a second time.\n\n\"My name is Isaac Vainio,\" I said. \"You smashed my library. Prepare to die.\"\n\nEverything went better with Princess Bride references. I aimed at the base of the tail and squeezed the trigger.\n\nThere was an interminable wait while the ionized pellet crawled toward the dragon. It took what felt like five seconds just to travel the six feet between me and my target. I watched, fascinated, as the pellet deformed and broke apart.\n\nI braced the gun with both hands, waiting for the lightning and rethinking my plan. In real time, the lightning followed within a fraction of a second, meaning the barrel of the gun was still aligned with the path laid out by the tracer pellet.\n\nWhat happened if the gun moved? Would the lightning make a new path? My arms were starting to tire.\n\nFive seconds to travel six feet. The gun was supposed to have an effective range of almost a mile. Call it six thousand feet for easy math, and assume the speed of light to be more or less instantaneous, which meant the lightning couldn't start until the pellet had time to travel the full mile. In real time, it all happened too quickly for human senses to follow. At my relative speed, I'd be waiting more than an hour.\n\nScrew it. I let go, and the gun began to accelerate downward at 9.8 meters per second squared. It should fire long before it had descended the first inch.\n\nI returned to the library and removed a hardcover of John Scalzi's Old Man's War from the shelves. Reading without utterly destroying the book was harder than I had expected. After accidentally tearing the binding and four separate pages, I was ready to toss the book aside and attack the dragon bare-handed.\n\nInstead, I released the book and used both hands to slowly and carefully search for the chapter I needed.\n\nThe all-in-one superweapons from Scalzi's novel were much too large to fit through the book. Even if I could create them, I wouldn't be able to fire the CDF standard-issue MP-35 Infantry Rifle without some extra hardware in my brain.\n\nThe projectiles, on the other hand, I could create. Specifically, projectiles that had just left the gun.\n\nThe MP-35 had six modes. The only question was whether to use the rockets or the grenades\u2026\n\nI was dragging Lizzie Pascoe back into the barbershop when the shock-gun discharged a bolt of lightning into the dragon's tail. I set Lizzie down behind the counter, away from the windows. I did the same with her husband and their single customer. I checked the post office across the street next. One by one, I dragged everyone into the back, laying them out like firewood. The antiques store was a lost cause, full of ceramics and glass. I ended up hauling the occupants over to the barbershop instead.\n\nThe shock-gun shouldn't have gone off yet. Either my math was off, or the time-dilating effect of Wells' story was beginning to wear off. By the time I finished getting everyone behind cover, I was confident my math was correct. I couldn't hear the thunder from my gun, but I could feel it, like a subsonic massage to my skeletal system.\n\nI grabbed my gun out of the air and double-checked to make sure the street was empty. As I hurried back to the library, I could see the three small projectiles inching their way into the beast's open maw.\n\nMy exposed skin felt like I was rubbing it with sandpaper. When I got inside, I brought Lena, Nidhi, Jeff, and Feng to the break room. After one last trip to grab Smudge, I hunkered down with them to wait.\n\nBy the time the explosion went off, the spell had pretty much ended. I heard glass shatter, and the shock wave shook the entire building.\n\n\"How did we get\u2014Isaac, what did you do?\" Nidhi shouted. I could barely hear her over the echoes of the explosion, and her voice was far deeper than normal, presumably due to a kind of temporal Doppler effect.\n\nI crept out of the break room. The explosion had taken out every remaining window in the library. Books and papers were everywhere, and shrapnel had torn through the walls.\n\nOutside, the dragon's head lay in three pieces on the ground. The tail had snapped free, and spasmed like the death throes of a decapitated snake. The rest of the body simply stood there. \"Maybe I only needed two grenades.\"\n\nWe knew the destruction of Harrison's insects pained him. I hoped that pain scaled with mass, and that I had just handed him the mother of all migraines.\n\nI retrieved Smudge, who scrambled up to my shoulder and clung there, but he wasn't\u2014quite\u2014hot enough to burn me, which I took as a good sign. Lena was already checking on Alex out back.\n\nI sagged against the wall. The worst part was knowing every building on the block had been hit by the same shock wave. I had wrecked buildings and businesses that had stood here for more than a hundred years.\n\nI couldn't possibly come up with a story to bury this. Copper River was a small, tightly knit town. If gossip was a competitive sport, we'd have been sending teams to the Olympics and bringing back gold. There must have been at least fifty witnesses to what just happened, not to mention the dead metal dragon blocking the road. \"I am so screwed.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised how much humanity will ignore when it falls outside of their beliefs.\"\n\nThe calm words were an electrical shock through my spine. I straightened like a cadet coming to attention before an officer. Johannes Gutenberg stood by the crumpled book return bin, an oversized red book tucked beneath his arm.\n\n\"You couldn't have gotten here five minutes sooner?\" I asked.\n\nFor all his power, Gutenberg was a physically unimposing man. Short and slender, he looked to be in his mid-thirties. A thick black beard and mustache couldn't conceal the narrowness of his face, especially the nose. A fringe of hair poked out from beneath a black small-brim fedora. He wore a brown vest and scarf over a white shirt, with matching white pants.\n\n\"We arrived ten minutes ago, in fact. Time enough to take care of the dragon's keeper before he could counter your magic.\" He bent over to pick up the H. G. Wells collection. \"Temporal acceleration. That would explain your windburned complexion.\"\n\n\"We?\" asked Jeff.\n\n\"I have eleven field agents setting up a perimeter around the library. Two others will be going door-to-door. Jeneta Aboderin is safe, by the way. Myron Worster is keeping an eye on her.\" Outside, the lightning-flash of automatons announced the arrival of more reinforcements.\n\nReinforcements who would be working their magic on my neighbors, editing the memories of people I called friends. Lizzie Pascoe had tried to help against an enemy she couldn't have understood. She had stepped forward despite her fear. In return, I had blown out every window in her shop, and now her very thoughts would be violated and rewritten.\n\n\"You certainly seem to have gotten Mister Harrison's attention.\" Gutenberg rapped a knuckle against the book he carried. \"Fascinating spellcraft. Far more stable than I would have guessed, to last for so many years with so little corruption. The fellow imprisoned in these pages was able to contain our magic long enough for his master to escape. Fortunately, I believe I can eliminate that threat.\"\n\nHe plucked a gold fountain pen from his breast pocket and opened the book.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Guan Feng shoved past me. \"Stop!\"\n\nGutenberg tilted his head, the nib of the pen hovering over the rice paper. \"You must be one of the B\u00ec de d\u00fa .\" His expression didn't change, but the air inside the library seemed to drop twenty degrees. \"You neglected to mention a prisoner in your phone call to Nicola, Isaac.\"\n\n\"She came to ask for our help,\" I said. \"Harrison was able to create his own dryad. He's going to use her to restore the rest of Bi Sheng's students from their books, and to enslave them.\"\n\n\"His friends have done an excellent job of hiding him. But all magic has limits.\" He touched pen to paper and began to write.\n\nGuan Feng lunged for the book, but Lena caught her in a bear hug and held her back. I stepped closer, trying to see what Gutenberg was doing. The pen left no visible mark on the paper, but I could feel the book reacting to the words.\n\nI shouldn't have been able to feel it at all. I was too raw and exposed from the past few days. \"You're hurting him.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" he said without looking up. \"It will be over soon enough.\"\n\nSmudge crawled around to the back of my head, tickling my neck. I half expected him to set my hair alight, but he was unnaturally cool to the touch. Whoever was bound to that book, he was lashing out, trying to counter Gutenberg's magic. Invisible fingers curled through my body, searching for purchase. Gutenberg merely clucked his tongue and continued to write.\n\n\"Please.\" Guan Feng's face was wet. She had stopped struggling against Lena. \"He'll die.\"\n\n\"He died five hundred years ago,\" Gutenberg said. \"This was a collection of memories, nothing more.\"\n\n\"You're locking the book.\" More than anything, I felt disoriented. Off balance, as if I was falling in every direction. Desperation built like steam\u2014desperation that belonged not to me, but to the man bound to that book. I heard a whisper in my head, but I didn't understand the words. And then the struggle simply stopped, replaced by resignation and a sense of acceptance.\n\nA second later, there was nothing.\n\n\"Very good.\" Gutenberg capped his pen and returned it to his pocket.\n\nI reached over to touch the book. Magically, it was cold and dead. \"He's gone.\"\n\nGuan Feng wiped her face, the movement violent. \"His name was Lan Qihao. He was a poet. He was seventeen years old the day your automatons attacked. His parents were farmers. He lost his sister at the age of twelve, during a flood.\"\n\nShe stared at the book, her eyes unfocussed. \"He was in love with another student, a girl of nineteen, from Hopei. She was from a riverboat family. They spoke of running away together, but neither would dishonor their studies. When shelved, their books were always placed next to each other.\"\n\n\"A touching story,\" Gutenberg said. He drew a thin paperback from within his vest and turned in a slow circle.\n\n\"What's that?\" I asked.\n\n\"I want to be certain Harrison hasn't left any of his pets behind to eavesdrop.\" He clapped the book shut. \"Isaac, I'm told you had acquired one of these books when you and Lena escaped from August Harrison.\"\n\nWith his attention on me, he didn't see the sudden panic on Guan Feng's face, nor the desperate pleading in her eyes.\n\n\"It was stolen during the fight,\" said Nidhi. \"While the dragon distracted Isaac and Lena, a second creature entered the library. A metal dog or wolf. It snatched the book and tried to attack Guan Feng. Lena was able to fend it off.\"\n\nI had never been a good liar, but Nidhi was amazing. Perhaps a second and a half of real time had passed while I battled the dragon and moved people to safety. There was no way Lena had fought anything during that time. Yet as I listened to Nidhi, I almost believed her.\n\n\"I see.\" Gutenberg somehow managed to shove the oversized book into the back pocket of his trousers. Another trick I would love to learn one of these days.\n\n\"Harrison and Bi Sheng's students aren't the only threat.\" I told him about the Army of Ghosts. \"They've infested Harrison's insects, and they did the same to Bi Wei when Lena restored her. We've got to assume everyone he and his dryad restores will be similarly infected.\"\n\nGutenberg frowned. \"Victor didn't create his insects to house such things. Every documented encounter has involved human beings.\"\n\n\"He did make them telepathic, though,\" I said. \"When we spoke to Victor's ghost, he said at least one insect had gone missing overseas. It was supposed to be seeking out magic.\"\n\n\"We'll have to see about finding that lost insect,\" said Gutenberg. \"In the meantime, our priority is August Harrison. The Ghost Army is using him. They helped him learn how to build monsters for his protection, and how to restore the students of Bi Sheng, all as a way to provide vessels for their own return.\"\n\n\"Harrison knows where I live,\" I said. \"Nidhi, too.\"\n\n\"We have both places under observation. For now though, we'll remain here.\"\n\n\"Here?\" I stared. \"But he's already attacked the library once. If they return\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop thinking so defensively, Isaac. Small and damaged though it may be, this library is our strongest fortress.\"\n\n\"Small?\" I bristled, but held my tongue before I could say things I would regret. On a per capita basis, the Copper River Library had more books than just about any other library in the country. I watched in silence as he browsed the broken shelves, selecting a book seemingly at random. He fanned the pages, and Guan Feng dropped to the floor unconscious. Nidhi crouched to touch the girl's neck.\n\n\"She's alive,\" Gutenberg said, pulling out his gold pen once more. As he moved toward Guan Feng, understanding twisted my stomach.\n\nAll libriomancers knew Gutenberg could lock books, sealing away the most dangerous magic. Only a few of us knew he could do the same to people, suppressing any magic they might possess. He had even been known to wipe people's memories of magic, and to erase them from the memories of others. Gutenberg argued that it was the most humane way to deal with magical criminals, and he wasn't entirely wrong. You couldn't exactly send them off to a mundane prison, which meant the only other alternative would be to kill them.\n\nTo most of us, death would be preferable. \"She doesn't have any magic.\"\n\n\"Are you certain?\" asked Gutenberg.\n\n\"What she does have is a connection to Bi Wei,\" I continued. \"A connection we don't understand. Bi Wei appeared sane when we escaped. For all we know, Guan Feng is the one helping her to hold on to that sanity, and to resist the influence of the Ghost Army. Do you know what severing that bond might do?\"\n\nHe pursed his lips. \"When did you learn such caution, Isaac?\"\n\n\"About the fourth time I nearly eradicated myself from existence.\" I watched his pen as if it were a loaded gun. \"Why did you try to wipe out the students of Bi Sheng?\"\n\nGutenberg slid the pen back into his pocket. \"Do you think I was the first to attempt to build an organization like Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re? There were many guilds and circles of magic-users throughout the world. Some were only too happy to join with me. Others viewed the Porters as a group of impertinent upstarts with no respect for the laws of magic who threatened the proper order.\"\n\n\"It sounds like you threatened more than 'the proper order.'\" My throat was dry. Provoking Gutenberg was near the top of my list of stupid ideas, just below throwing snowballs at a wendigo.\n\n\"The Archbishop Adolph von Nassau was the first to challenge me. He sent his soldiers to burn my press when he learned what I could do. Two of my apprentices died in the blaze. I would have been killed as well if not for the protection I gained from the grail. This was no ordinary fire, Isaac. The flames were alive, sent by magic. After five hundred years, I can still see the smoke pouring forth, like the black breath of hell itself.\" He shrank inward. \"I pulled Peter from the fire, but I was unable to save him.\"\n\nHe brushed his sleeves, visibly regaining his composure. \"That was the first of many such attacks. We were at war. My discovery meant the mastery of magic was no longer limited to a handful of individuals. Hundreds, even thousands now had the potential to use such power, and to challenge those who once thought themselves untouchable.\" He pursed his lips in amusement. \"The great conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon took particular offense at my presumption, at least in the beginning.\"\n\n\"Your discovery?\" I pressed.\n\nHe inclined his head in acknowledgment. \"Bi Sheng crafted a primitive form of book magic. I took libriomancy to its full potential.\"\n\n\"Bi Sheng's 'primitive' magic preserved his followers for five hundred years,\" Lena pointed out.\n\nHe waved her comment off with a sharp gesture. \"The original twelve Porters were under constant assault. Some campaigns were waged through rumor and gossip, seeking to destroy our reputations in both the magical and the mundane worlds. Other practitioners arrived to challenge us directly. The only way to prove the legitimacy of my art was to accept and defeat all such challenges.\"\n\n\"Bi Wei never challenged you,\" I said quietly. \"She knew nothing of Porters or European libriomancy. Her ancestor's magic showed her the stars, and you sent your automatons to kill her.\"\n\n\"Did she tell you about the...?\"\n\nThe words translated to \"dark afflictions.\" I shook my head.\n\n\"They were similar to Victor's insects in some respects. The are small creatures of folded paper, made from the pages of books penned by Bi Sheng's students. They stowed away on Portuguese trading vessels and eventually made their way to Germany. They came during the night, cutting flesh so cleanly their victims never even stirred. The wounds resisted magical healing. I watched five of my students suffer for weeks, their wounds turning septic.\" He unbuttoned his vest and the top of his shirt, then pulled back the collar to display a thin purple scar over his shoulder. \"Even I never fully healed.\"\n\n\"Earlier this year, a former Porter enslaved and destroyed vampires. Should the rest of the vampires retaliate against all Porters, like you did with Bi Sheng's followers?\"\n\n\"It's easy to stand in judgment,\" Gutenberg said softly, \"from the luxury of the magical peace and security I provided. And perhaps you're right. Ponce de Leon thought as you did, and it's true I've made mistakes. But while you stand there self-righteously condemning my choices and actions from five hundred years ago, August Harrison and his followers prepare for war. I suggest you reconsider your priorities, Isaac.\"\n\nHe righted a table and began gathering books. I waited without speaking until he vanished into the history section, then hurried to grab my things from behind the desk. I pulled Bi Wei's book out of my bag and shoved it into a file drawer, behind a bulging folder of old library card applications.\n\nBy the time Gutenberg returned with more books, I was standing at the front of the library looking through the ragged opening at the Porters talking to Lizzie Pascoe. As I watched, she smiled and invited them into the barbershop.\n\n\"Whatever remains of Bi Wei's mind now shares a body with the devil itself.\" Gutenberg sighed, and for a moment, I saw not the most powerful libriomancer in the world, but an old man, exhausted from burdens he had carried for centuries. \"This isn't a war between Porters and Bi Sheng's descendants, Isaac. Do you think the Ghost Army will stop with the Porters? You've felt their hunger. They will devour everything.\" He pointed outside to the broken dragon. \"And they will begin with Copper River.\"\n\nEvery religion I've studied has laws or commandments against killing.\n\nHistorically, humanity has shown tremendous creativity in finding every possible loophole, rationalization, and justification to ignore those commandments.\n\nAnimals kill for food, and to protect their territory, which suggests killing can be a normal, natural part of life. But humans are civilized. They've supposedly moved beyond mere instinct. Yes, animals kill. They also eat their young, but if you suggest a human mother do the same, people tend to react poorly. Animals will happily interbreed with their siblings as well, but that's frowned upon among humans. (Though some of them do it anyway, and many others fantasize about it.) The behavior of animals does not provide moral justification for human beings to do the same.\n\nIs killing ever a moral choice? What if the personal decision to avoid inflicting harm leads to a greater evil? Countless writers have penned tales of traveling back in time to kill Hitler. Would such a murder be right if it prevented millions of other deaths?\n\nIsn't doing nothing while a vampire attacks my loved one a greater crime than destroying the vampire? Both choices lead to death. One choice stops a killer.\n\nIn The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf praised the pity of Bilbo Baggins in sparing Gollum, despite Gollum's evil nature. As it turned out, that choice saved all of Middle Earth in the end. But then, it's easy to present simple answers to ethical questions when you're the one shaping the story. What of those times when Gandalf rode his moral high horse into battle, helping to kill countless orcs and goblins?\n\nGollum was a victim of the ring, corrupted and twisted. The vampire is diseased, driven by maddening thirst and inhuman urges. And I\u2026given a cruel enough lover, I could become a creature much worse than any of them. Can I judge and kill others for acts I have the same potential to commit?\n\nI've killed before. To defend myself and those I love. Was that the right choice, or simply the easy one?\n\nThe day Kawaljeet Sarna began teaching me Indian stick fighting, he began with a simple lesson: Prevent, Practice, Protect.\n\nPrevent conflict when you can. Avoid the enemy. Diffuse their anger. Take their mental balance, and search for peaceful resolution.\n\nPractice confrontation. Learn to deescalate the conflict, to dampen the flames instead of adding fuel. Seek peace, even in battle.\n\nProtect yourself and those unable to defend themselves. When possible, protect your opponent as well. Protect your physical self, but also your mental and emotional selves.\n\nIf any of the words I've written here have the power to shape who I am, let it be these. If I'm unable to hold to these rules, if I become a monster like those I've fought, then I ask only that others not hesitate to end me.\n\nThe first porter to join us in the library was Antonia Warwick, who greeted us each in turn. She whistled softly as she surveyed the damage. \"I've heard of giving an old building a facelift, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what they meant.\"\n\nLike Nicola Pallas, Toni was one of the handful of Porters who wasn't a libriomancer. She performed sympathetic magic, manipulating small objects to create larger effects. I had once seen her summon a nasty ice storm with nothing but an old Snoopy Snow Cone maker. She lived in Winnipeg, but her talents were always in demand, meaning she traveled more than most field agents.\n\nShe was in her early forties, with faint wrinkles by the eyes and a crooked nose. Dreadlocks hung just past her shoulders. She wore a black tank top, exposing well-muscled arms. Around her waist was what appeared to be the result of a one-night stand between a handyman's leather tool belt and Batman's utility belt. Gleaming silver studs decorated the black leather belt, which was weighed down by an array of pouches and tools of every shape and size. Additional straps rose over her shoulders for support.\n\nShe had a mug of pop as big as her head, and sucked absently at the straw as she studied me more closely. \"What the hell have you been doing to yourself, Vainio?\"\n\n\"The usual.\"\n\n\"That would explain it.\" She climbed onto the desk and studied the broken ceiling beams. \"Lena, you're good with wood, right? How about you get up here and let's see if we can keep this place from caving in any more.\"\n\nNormally, I would have been fascinated by the way they worked together. Lena strengthened one of the cracked beams, giving it life enough to grow and heal. Toni spread that strength to the rest. The ceiling groaned, and we backed away as plaster and insulation snowed down, but by the time they finished, the exposed beams were visibly stronger.\n\nI watched the entire process, but my thoughts were elsewhere. \"How much worse is this going to get?\"\n\n\"That depends on how swiftly we can find and stop August Harrison,\" said Gutenberg.\n\nI had lost control of the situation the instant Gutenberg arrived. Not that I ever really had control. Harrison and his wendigos I could have dealt with, but the students of Bi Sheng and an Army of Ghosts? I needed help.\n\nI just wished I knew what the cost of that help would be. How much of Copper River would be left when this was over?\n\nOne by one, the rest of the Porters gathered in my library. Most I had met, at least in passing. All were field agents, with the exception of Nicola Pallas and Gutenberg himself. The amount of active magic in the air tickled my skin. I dug my nails into my palms to keep from scratching.\n\nEvery libriomancer carried his or her own arsenal of books. Some wore backpacks or messenger bags. Whitney Spotts had fashioned what looked like a makeshift skirt of books, each one clipped to a thick leather belt by a light cha in. John Wenger's books simply followed him through the door in a self-propelled red wagon. I had no idea how it had navigated the broken steps.\n\nThen there were the weapons. I saw two different Excaliburs, a monofilament whip, some sort of electrified jumpsuit (in neon pink), a steampunk-style short rifle, and a pair of six-shooters that could have come straight from Billy the Kid's holsters. Toni was one of the few who appeared unarmed, but in her hands, just about anything was a potential weapon.\n\n\"Is the town contained?\" Pallas asked.\n\nMaryelizabeth, a libriomancer from New York who worked for one of the major publishing houses, tugged a small black gas mask from her face. \"Diluted spray of Lethe-water took care of most of the bystanders.\"\n\n\"Electronics are covered,\" said John, waving a trade paperback. \"Broad-field magnetic blaster. Anyone who tried to record this on their phones will have a very bad day. A few shots probably leaked onto the Internet, but we can track those down and discredit them later.\"\n\n\"I intercepted the cops,\" said Whitney. \"They're back at the police department, writing the whole thing up as a nasty traffic accident.\"\n\nOne by one Pallas took their reports. In less than a half hour, the Porters had swept through the streets of Copper River and erased most of the evidence of our battle with the dragon. Even the dragon itself was no longer recognizable, having been carved into scrap. I didn't know how the Porters meant to pass off the huge pile of metal in the road as a traffic accident, but I had no doubt they would find a way.\n\n\"Good.\" Pallas was rocking back and forth, snapping her fingers to a rhythm nobody else could hear. She was even less comfortable with noise and crowds than I was, and music was one of the ways she coped. I wondered if it would work for Jeff DeYoung, who was looking from one person to the next, trying to watch everyone at once. He knew and liked me, but he was a werewolf, and part of his brain instinctively classified the Porters as potential predators.\n\nGiven what I had learned, I couldn't entirely disagree with that assessment.\n\nPallas turned to Gutenberg. \"We have between 90 and 95 percent containment. We can finish cleaning up later. Dream-manipulation should help take care of any lingering memories.\"\n\nWithout preamble, Gutenberg set the last of his books atop the pile and said, \"As some of you know, when Victor Harrison died earlier this year, we were unable to control the scene before the police arrived. As a result, August Harrison was able to gain access to his son's work, including a swarm of mechanical insects. He used those insects to break into the Porter network, as well as to access Isaac Vainio's private research notes. He also discovered a cult called the B\u00ec de d\u00fa ;, the students of Bi Sheng.\n\n\"Harrison then tracked and killed a pair of wendigos near Tamarack, Michigan. Using the magic preserved in their skins, he attempted to create monsters of his own, soldiers who would be stronger and deadlier.\"\n\n\"How many?\" asked Whitney.\n\n\"At least twenty-four,\" I said. \"They're not true wendigos, but they have most of the strength and temper. Depending on the amount of skin he used, the transformation might not be permanent.\"\n\n\"The wendigos are the least of our concerns. Harrison has also created his own dryad.\" Gutenberg extended his arm toward Lena like a museum curator showing off an exhibit. \"Unlike Ms. Greenwood, this dryad is new and untrained. However, she possesses the same strengths and weaknesses.\"\n\n\"What weaknesses?\"\n\nI didn't see who asked the question, but I cringed as Gutenberg began detailing how the loss of Lena's tree could cripple her, how her skin would resist normal weapons, but not magical ones. She stood like a statue, her eyes fixed on the wall as Gutenberg verbally dissected her. I took her hand, offering what comfort I could. Nidhi squeezed her other hand.\n\n\"Why go to the trouble of breaking into our archives and making a dryad if he already had wendigos?\" That was Whitney again.\n\nGutenberg nodded at me. I grimaced and stepped into the center of the ring of libriomancers. \"Five hundred years ago, some of the students of Bi Sheng were able to preserve their thoughts and memories in books. Their descendants have spent centuries protecting those books, and searching for a way to restore them. When Harrison hacked into my private notes, he found the answer. Not only does Lena recreate her physical body each time she leaves her tree, but earlier this year, we discovered she can do the same for another person.\"\n\nEveryone began talking at once. New comments and questions poured forth, one atop the next.\n\n\"That's a hell of a magical kluge.\"\n\n\"Can you change the body you create? Make it younger or thinner?\"\n\n\"Or better looking? Especially for Bobby over there.\"\n\n\"Bite me. What about cloning? If you had access to the mind, how many copies could you make?\"\n\n\"Have you examined the body at the genetic level? Are they affected at all by their dryadic birth?\"\n\n\"Do they have belly buttons?\"\n\nLena turned to me and mouthed the word \"libriomancers\" while rolling her eyes. I gave her a sympathetic smile.\n\nGutenberg clapped his hands once. \"August Harrison forced Ms. Greenwood to restore a woman named Bi Wei. In her time, Bi Wei would have been a rudimentary libriomancer of limited ability, but time in her book gave her a more direct connection to magic. She was a part of magic, able to manipulate it without books or other tools. While she appears to have retained this power, the greater danger is what else Lena brought forth. Bi Wei had been touched by what the followers of Bi Sheng call du\u00ec. The Ghost Army.\"\n\nMaryelizabeth snorted. \"Wendigos, insects, dead libriomancers\u2026how many armies does this dude need?\"\n\n\"Harrison doesn't know about the Ghost Army,\" I said. \"They're using him, not the other way around.\"\n\n\"Why haven't we heard any of this before?\" asked John. The handle of his book wagon wagged back and forth like a scolding finger.\n\n\"Because libriomancers are utterly incapable of letting sleeping dragons lie,\" Gutenberg said calmly. \"The Ghost Army slumbered for centuries. I was aware of something that occasionally reached through to corrupt and consume whoever it touched, but such contacts were rare. I feared that too much poking and prodding would rouse it, so research into the Ghost Army has been restricted and carefully monitored.\"\n\n\"Carefully?\" Lena asked. \"You assigned Isaac to study this thing.\"\n\n\"Only when we realized it had begun to stir,\" Gutenberg said sternly. \"Isaac survived an encounter with these ghosts, an accomplishment limited to only a handful of Porters throughout the years.\"\n\nHe raised his hands, forestalling further questions. \"Isaac was attacked when he channeled more magic than he could control. These ghosts strike when our barriers are weakest. They are awake, and they are watching. Use precision over power. Do not overextend yourselves.\"\n\n\"How do we find them?\" asked Whitney.\n\n\"Originally, I intended to use Ms. Warwick.\" Gutenberg waved Toni forward.\n\n\"Worst assignment in years.\" Toni grimaced. \"If I can touch the corpses of the wendigos Harrison butchered, I'm pretty sure I can find him, or at least his pets.\"\n\n\"And what do you intend to do about the war you'll be starting with every werewolf in Michigan?\" Jeff asked, his words a full octave lower than normal.\n\nToni looked from Gutenberg to Jeff. She was a good field agent, but occasionally neglected the research side of things. She clearly had no idea how close she was to starting a brawl in the middle of my library.\n\n\"Werewolves were originally scavengers,\" I said. \"They dug up graves to feed on corpses. They've spent centuries trying to distance themselves from that piece of their past, to the point where they'll circle a half mile out of their way simply to avoid the smell of road kill. It's almost a religious taboo. The wendigos are buried in a werewolf cemetery. Messing with their burial sites is a good way to get yourself torn apart.\"\n\n\"But wendigos aren't werewolves,\" Toni protested.\n\n\"Which is why Jeff hasn't tried to kill anyone yet,\" Nidhi said.\n\nToni folded her arms and turned to Gutenberg. \"You never mentioned that.\" She sounded like a pissed-off parent.\n\nGutenberg studied Jeff, giving everyone just enough time to imagine how such a confrontation would play out. \"Fortunately, we have a simpler option.\" He took an old pulp novel by A. E. van Vogt from the closest stack of books. \"Even unconscious, Guan Feng's memories should guide us.\"\n\n\"She doesn't know where Harrison was going,\" I protested.\n\n\"She said she didn't know. Even if she told you the truth, the brain retains much more information than it can consciously process or remember.\" He skimmed the book and strode toward Guan Feng. As he bent over, golden tendrils flickered from his scalp, like an afterimage that faded when you tried to look at it directly.\n\nI hadn't read Slan since I was in middle school, so the details of the story and its rules for mind reading were vague. Gutenberg would be able to read Feng's thoughts, but I didn't think the process would hurt her.\n\n\"Feng flew to the U.S. six weeks ago,\" Gutenberg said slowly. \"The students of Bi Sheng are spread throughout the world. We face fewer than half of their total number.\" He grabbed his gold pen and appeared to scribble a series of notes in the air. Magical note-taking so he would remember the locations of the rest?\n\n\"In the beginning, Harrison's hope was infectious,\" he continued. \"He saw himself as a savior, and when he showed them a selection of documents he had taken from our computers, they saw salvation. As the weeks passed, he spent more and more time alone. When not locked in his cabin, he sent his insects to spy on Lena, watching through their eyes.\n\n\"Two weeks ago, Harrison left the camp. When he returned, he was quite drunk. He said the time for planning was past. In order to overpower Lena, he needed soldiers. If they wouldn't help him to capture a wendigo, he would do it alone.\"\n\n\"Two weeks?\" Nidhi asked sharply. \"Was this the twentieth?\"\n\nGutenberg nodded.\n\n\"What happened July twentieth?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"That was Victor Harrison's birthday.\"\n\n\"They tracked and killed the first wendigo the following morning,\" Gutenberg said. \"The body you investigated in Tamarack was the second murder.\"\n\n\"Where did they go after they attacked Michilimackinac?\" Toni's impatience was palpable.\n\nHe raised a hand and stared at Guan Feng, as if he could dig out the truth with his eyes alone. \"The tree he prepared for Lena didn't survive the restoration of Bi Wei. He needed a stronger oak for his new dryad, as well as additional soldiers to defend her.\"\n\n\"Between Bi Wei and Deifilia, they could grow a new oak anywhere,\" said Lena.\n\n\"But it was to be hidden. Protected.\" Gutenberg blinked. \"Harrison asked Deifilia whether her oak could survive underground.\"\n\nWithout the sun\u2026but how difficult would it be to conjure sunlight? Jeff carried the moon's rays around in a rock. Bi Wei could provide whatever Deifilia's tree needed. \"They're at the mine.\"\n\nGutenberg nodded, the transparent tendrils on his scalp making him look like Medusa. \"Isaac is correct.\"\n\nThat would explain where the dragon had come from, and the mine employed more than enough healthy, strong people to build Harrison's wendigo army.\n\n\"Find them.\"\n\nI turned to Lena. \"Find what?\"\n\n\"I didn't say anything.\"\n\n\"Nidhi?\"\n\nNidhi's brow creased. \"What did you hear, Isaac?\"\n\nThe room grew silent. My neck and cheeks warmed as I realized everyone had stopped to look at me. \"I'm not sure.\"\n\n\"Find.\"\n\nSlowly, I stepped toward the edge of the library to look out at the sky. Despite the rising sun, stars burned clearly in the sky, stars which were completely wrong for this time of year. I searched until I spotted the constellation known as the Phoenix. \"Oh, damn.\"\n\nNot too long ago, I would have tried to cover up what was happening. I would have blamed my confusion on the ringing in my ears from the explosion. But if I was seeing nonexistent stars, I was far too vulnerable. That didn't make my next words any easier. \"I need to stay behind.\"\n\nI tried to tell myself I wasn't betraying Lena, Jeff\u2026all of Copper River, really. If I was hearing voices, then the next spell I cast could be enough to let the Army of Ghosts into my head. Trying to help could get everyone killed.\n\n\"Are you armed?\" asked Pallas.\n\nI showed her the shock-gun.\n\n\"Isaac.\"\n\nI clenched my fists and focused on my surroundings.\n\n\"Lena will remain here as well,\" Gutenberg said.\n\n\"No, she won't,\" Lena shot back. \"Nobody knows what Deifilia can do better than me.\"\n\n\"Nor do we know what will happen if the two of you face one another.\" He sounded deceptively calm. He reached out, fingers coming together as if he were snatching an invisible thread. As he did so, printed type seemed to crawl over his tan skin, the characters burrowing into his body too quickly for me to read.\n\nLena's knees gave out.\n\nNidhi jumped to catch her. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"Lena is book-born.\" Gutenberg released his hold, and the color slowly returned to Lena's face. \"If I can take her power, what do you think Bi Wei might do? What if she does worse? She could rewrite Lena, transform her into an enemy.\"\n\n\"Can you do that?\" I asked sharply. \"Rewrite her?\"\n\nGutenberg's mouth tightened ever so slightly. \"I cannot, no. But while Bi Sheng's magic is similar to ours, we do not know all his secrets. Lena stays here.\"\n\nHe neither raised his voice nor changed his expression, but everyone in the library recognized the discussion was over. Almost everyone.\n\n\"She's my responsibility,\" Lena pressed.\n\n\"In what way?\" asked Gutenberg. \"Did you create her? Did you write the book from which she sprang? Was it your stolen research that allowed our enemies to discover what she could do? Did your defenses fail to protect our archive? In what way are you responsible, Lena Greenwood?\"\n\n\"Because she's family.\"\n\n\"That's one more reason you will not be accompanying us.\" He raised his voice. \"I will lead a team to the mine. Nicola will command the others in Copper River.\"\n\n\"We're splitting our forces?\" asked John.\n\nToni snorted. \"You think they're just waiting around for us to visit? They know Guan Feng has been spilling her guts to the Porters, they know Isaac blew their toy dragon all to shit, and they know he has reinforcements.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Gutenberg. \"They will attack Copper River for all those reasons, and to attempt to keep us from finding the mine. The longer they hold us off, the more of Bi Sheng's students they can restore, and the stronger their power grows.\"\n\nToni Warwick pulled a small roll of purple duct tape from her belt. She used utility scissors to snip the end from one of her dreadlocks, and sprinkled a few strands of hair onto the sticky side of a square of tape. She slapped the tape onto John Wenger's shoulder. \"This should let me track you, and give us limited communications. Please don't scream into the duct tape.\"\n\nOne by one, she did the same for the rest of the Porters. I was the last to receive my duct tape communicator, which she pressed onto my shirt with a whispered, \"Sorry, man. For what it's worth, I'm jealous as hell that you got to fight the dragon.\"\n\nGutenberg wasted no more time in assigning a small group to protect Copper River, then led the rest out of the library. A single automaton waited like a statue in the middle of the road.\n\nPallas was snapping her fingers again. \"Isaac, I could use your help deciding where to position people. You know the town better than anyone here.\"\n\n\"Some of us were living in these parts before Isaac's parents were born,\" Jeff muttered.\n\nI trudged toward the ruins of the entryway and dug out one of the brochures that described all the exciting things to do in Copper River, Michigan. It was a relatively short brochure. However, it included a decent enough map on the back.\n\nI pointed to various locations that would give us\u2014that would give them\u2014a better vantage point against incoming forces. \"The water tower. The clock tower at City Hall. The mine's north of here, so I'd suggest putting people at the railroad bridge here. It has a good view of the river.\"\n\nIn twos and threes, the Porters set out with their books and weapons. Toni and Nicola were the last to go, leaving me, Lena, Nidhi, and Jeff alone with the unconscious body of Guan Feng.\n\n\"I don't care what anyone says,\" Jeff announced once they were gone. \"That man is a douchebag.\"\n\n\"Isaac, please.\"\n\nI made my way around the front desk and retrieved Bi Wei's book from the drawer. The whispers in my head grew louder when I touched the cover.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Nidhi asked warily.\n\n\"I can hear her.\" I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages.\n\n\"Isn't that a good reason to not read the book?\" Jeff asked.\n\nEven without donning my translation glasses, I could almost understand the words. \"I'm not going to try magic. I promise. I just\u2026I don't think this is possession. She's asking me for help.\"\n\nLena leaned over my shoulder. \"Do you trust her?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" I could barely hear her, as if she were shouting from a great distance. I made out August Harrison's name, and something about ghosts, but we needed a stronger connection. I sagged back in the chair. \"The Porters tried to kill her five hundred years ago. Now we\u2014I\u2014gave Harrison the tools to bring her back, and to let the Army of Ghosts into her mind. She's fighting for her sanity. She's a victim. Our victim.\"\n\n\"Or she's trying to get her hooks into your head so she can find out what the Porters are up to,\" Jeff said.\n\n\"I don't think so.\" I pulled the glasses from my jacket, unfolded the earpieces, and slipped them on. Text flickered to life. I started to read, then hesitated. \"But if I start spewing pea soup or anything, I'd appreciate it if you got me the hell away from this book.\"\n\nI chose a page at random and began reading about Bi Wei's first attempt at magic, the continuation of a project her great-grandaunt had begun years before her birth. They had hoped to create a book in which writing on one of the blank pages would cause the same message to appear on other copies. The goal was to find a replacement for the signal beacons on the Great Wall.\n\nUsing blocks of movable type painstakingly carved from wood, they created identical books using a technique known as butterfly binding. Printed pages were folded in the middle and stitched together, leaving the reverse sides blank. The text included everything from poetry to military strategy, with one thing in common: thematically, every piece emphasized the importance of communication.\n\nImagining Bi Wei poring over her copy of the book, reading and rereading as she attempted to imbue its pages with magic, made me feel ashamed. My own early magic had been entirely selfish, limited to pulling toys and trinkets from one book after another.\n\nHow open had the practice of magic been in China during the Ming Dynasty? Had the Emperor been aware of Bi Sheng's students? What of the common people?\n\n\"Isaac.\"\n\nI jumped. \" Bi?\"\n\n\"Where is Guan Feng? Is she\u2014\"\n\n\"She's alive. Gutenberg put her to sleep.\"\n\nHer words seemed to come from the book itself. \"You heard me.\" I sensed the quiet laughter she wouldn't let reach her lips. \"It worked.\"\n\nI found myself smiling in return. I had theorized that something like this might be possible, but the last time I had tried, a ghost had attempted to eat my soul. \"Are you thinking in English or Mandarin?\"\n\n\"Mandarin, which is how I hear your words. You hear English?\"\n\n\"That's right.\" I wanted to warn her to get as far from the mine as possible. Instead, I simply asked, \"Wei, what's happening?\"\n\n\"August Harrison collapsed a short time ago, and hasn't awakened.\"\n\n\"That was probably my doing,\" I said smugly. Blowing up the dragon had hit him harder than I could have hoped.\n\n\"Then you may have destroyed us all. Deifilia has bound him in ropes of living oak. She brought two of my fellow refugees from their books, and she now commands Harrison's metal creatures.\"\n\n\"Deifilia's in charge of the magic bugs?\" I blinked and looked to Nidhi, trying to split my focus between the book and the real world. \"That doesn't make sense.\"\n\nNidhi was shaking her head. \"August Harrison would never surrender his power to Deifilia, nor would he want a lover who desired his power. It shouldn't be possible for her to take control of his weapons. She can't act against his wishes.\"\n\nShe brought her fingers to cover her mouth. From the shock in her eyes, she had made the same leap I had. There was at least one way for a dryad to grow beyond the desires of her mate.\n\n\"She has another lover,\" Lena whispered.\n\n\"She's existed for less than twenty-four hours.\" It had taken days for Lena to begin to bond with me, for my desires to come into conflict with Nidhi's.\n\nThat conflict was the key. The tension between our desires gave Lena a degree of freedom. Every time she argued with one of us, whether it was about the ethics of killing in self-defense or whether Douglas Adams should have stopped his trilogy after the fourth book, she lit up inside. It was hard to stay angry with someone who took such obvious joy in being able to disagree.\n\n\"I would love to see Harrison's face when he finds out.\" My moment of schadenfreude passed quickly. How could this have happened? Given Harrison's possessiveness, Deifilia wouldn't have sought another lover on her own. At least not deliberately\u2026\"Lena, your personality began to change even before we\u2014\"\n\n\"I prefer 'evolved,'\" Lena said. \"But you're right. Sex isn't the key. Frank Dearing owned me long after his body lost its potency.\"\n\n\"Wei, when Harrison collapsed, did Deifilia take a large insect from his body? A cicada?\"\n\n\"She wanted to protect him, and to keep anyone from taking control of his weapons.\"\n\nThe cicada which was telepathically connected to the Army of Ghosts. Lena had created a degree of freedom for herself by taking another lover. Deifilia had found an entire army. An army that wanted only two things: to live, and to destroy.\n\nNidhi summed it up with surprising succinctness. \"Oh, shit.\"\n\nThe automaton was centuries old, charred and cracked from the unimaginable heat of Isaac's battle. Fingers of carved walnut hung limp, hinged with pegs fitted so precisely they were invisible. The body and limbs were oak, taken from a tree that had stood for more than a hundred years before falling to the bite of the ax.\n\nThe jaw creaked open, shedding chips of black-and-gray carbon. \"You'd be risking your life,\" said Isaac Vainio.\n\nHe didn't understand. How could he? He was human. Had been human, rather. Before he pulled his dying flesh into the body of a wood-and-metal monster, a golem built by one of the most powerful magicians in history, all to stop a madman.\n\nI could feel the life slipping from the wood, like water leached away by too much sunlight. The automaton was dying, and Isaac with it. Had it been a tree, the leaves would be brown, and the branches would have snapped in the slightest wind.\n\nGutenberg had known. He understood my nature far better than Isaac. Better than Nidhi. Perhaps even better than me. I loved Isaac Vainio. Loved him as much as Nidhi, though in different ways and for different reasons. I couldn't let him go.\n\nMy fingers tightened around the burnt limb. With my other hand, I pulled myself up to touch the carved, featureless face.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm not sure.\"\n\nI reached for the memory of oak, and the feel of Isaac's arms around my body, my mouth on his. He had tasted like coffee with not enough cream, just as I had doubtless tasted of waffles and strawberries, but neither one of us had been willing to break off that first frantic kiss.\n\nMy fingers sank into the automaton, and I felt my own life fighting to inhabit the dead wood. Cells long-since dried and broken struggled to heal, and then to grow as I forced myself deeper into the broken body of my lover.\n\nAnd then we were one. The libriomancer and the dryad, joined in a way I had never known, not with Nidhi, nor with Frank.\n\nNidhi's love had given me strength and power. Now Isaac's love gave me the strength to use that power in a way I had never imagined.\n\nIf you ask Isaac when we first made love, he'll say it was two days later, in the damp grass of his backyard. Which isn't as romantic as you'd think, given the mosquito population here in the U.P. They didn't bother me, but he kept squirming and slapping until I laughed and rolled us over, climbing on top of him and driving all other distractions from his mind.\n\nBut what we did beneath the cloudy sky that night was merely the completion of what we began in that dying wooden body.\n\n\"Call Gutenberg,\" I said. \"Tell him what he's facing.\"\n\n\"What is he facing?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Hell if I know.\" The Ghost Army wouldn't care about restoring Victor Harrison, which meant Jeneta should be safe. They cared only about their own return. \"Bi Wei, when Deifilia restored your two companions, what did she do to their books and their readers?\"\n\nHer grief surged through me, confirming my guess. \"How did you know?\"\n\n\"We're very clever. She destroyed them, didn't she?\"\n\n\"Chu Zao was the first to be brought back. No sooner had Deifilia drawn him forth than she used the insects to destroy the book. His reader was taken away to become another wendigo. What remained of Chu Zao\u2026his body lives, but my friend is gone. I tried to stop Deifilia, and her insects almost killed me. By the time I awoke, she had done the same to another of us.\"\n\n\"They've tried to possess Porters through the years, but even when it worked, they were trapped in a damaged body with an even more damaged mind. They tried to take you, but you fought back.\"\n\n\"It appears I owe you thanks,\" Bi Wei said. \"Deifilia would have torn my own book to pulp if you hadn't taken it, and I would be dead.\"\n\n\"Wei, are the other books the same as your own? The same appearance, the same format and title?\"\n\n\"The Yang/Soul/Story, yes.\"\n\nThere was no equivalent English word, but I saw in her thoughts the untranslatable characters from the cover of her own book. The Yang/Soul/Story of Bi Wei, safeguarding her spiritual soul. \"I have an idea, but I'll need names.\"\n\nShe saw what I had in mind, and gratitude flooded through our shared connection. In that instant, I knew the names of her fellow students as well as she did.\n\nRaw fury followed a moment later, so sudden I cried out. Lena yanked me away, and Nidhi slammed the book shut. A part of me cringed to see such an old book handled so roughly, but it worked. My connection to Bi Wei weakened, though I could feel her horror and guilt as she realized what had happened.\n\nThe Army of Ghosts was still inside her. I hadn't sensed them through our connection, but they had been listening from the shadows of her mind. \"I need McKinley's Beauty, and we're about to have visitors.\"\n\n\"No more magic,\" Nidhi insisted. Lena moved to stand beside her, their shoulders touching. Jeff simply looked puzzled.\n\n\"Deifilia restored two more of the students of Bi Sheng. And then she destroyed their books. It ripped their minds and souls apart, leaving the bodies as vessels for the Army of Ghosts. She's going to do the same to the rest.\"\n\n\"The ghosts\u2014the devourers\u2014were deranged,\" said Lena. \"How is Deifilia controlling them?\"\n\nThat made me pause. \"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"Call another libriomancer,\" Nidhi insisted. \"Let them do the spell.\"\n\n\"They don't know the books we need.\" I could see the titles in my mind, but I lacked the words to explain them, even to a fellow libriomancer.\n\nI touched the duct tape square on my shirt. \"Toni, how much of this did you hear?\"\n\n\"Enough.\" Strange to feel her voice buzzing against my chest. \"Gutenberg's team is at the mine, but it will take time to work their way through the tunnels. The ghosts are already weakening their magic. Isaac, we've got incoming, and they're playing dirty.\"\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\n\"Most of them are flying high and fast. Aimee says they took some of 'em out at the bridge, but the damn things didn't even slow down. Looks like they're heading your way.\"\n\n\"Understood.\" Where was the book? I had returned it to the reserves shelf, which had fallen when the dragon attacked.\n\n\"I'm going up to intercept them. Let's see these fuckers try to ignore me.\"\n\n\"Be careful.\" There, beneath an overturned filing cabinet. The spine was ripped, and the pages were beginning to tear free. This needed professional repair. I couldn't do anything but press the pages carefully back into place and hope for the best. As I finished gathering my things, fire bathed Smudge's body. He crouched low, watching the sky. \"I think we're out of time.\"\n\nJeff ripped a leg off of a table. \"Get out of here. I'll watch over Guan Feng and give you as much time as I can.\"\n\nThree metal falcons streaked into the library. Lena stepped past me, and her bokken whipped through the air to rip the wing off the first. Two more went after Jeff.\n\nTrue falcons shouldn't have been able to hover and dart about like hummingbirds. Within seconds, Jeff's hands were bleeding where they had cut him with their knifelike beaks. Screams in the distance meant the rest of Deifilia's forces were closing in fast.\n\nI pulled out my shock-gun, dropped to one knee, and braced my arm against the shelves. My first shot missed, but my second sent a falcon into a tailspin. Jeff smashed it, then took out the third falcon on the backswing.\n\n\"Go,\" said Jeff. \"I'm gonna call in a few friends, see if we can't teach you Porters how to fight.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" I handed Nidhi my keys. These things would shred her rental car like tinfoil. \"Please tell me you know how to drive a stick.\"\n\nOily black smoke streaked the windshield over Smudge. He was keeping an eye\u2014all eight of them, actually\u2014on the metal mob chasing us down the road. He would have melted right through the dashboard by now if not for the trivet secured to the plastic.\n\nWe drove with the top down so Lena could protect us from aerial assaults. She sat in my lap, one knee in the seat. In her left hand, she swung her bokken at anything that came within range. With her right, she fired lightning bolts into the sky.\n\nI did my best to ignore the thunderclaps going off two feet from my head and read. I couldn't save the two books Deifilia had already destroyed, but if I could concentrate, I might be able to create backups of the rest.\n\nFrom the moment I touched the pages, I felt the characters trying to reach into my head. The conflict of the title character Honour, who preferred to be called Beauty. Her brother-in-law's fearful warnings about the woods. Her father's shame as Beauty chose to give herself to the Beast to save his life. The one thing the characters shared was the need to escape, whether it was the hardship of their new lives in Blue Hill, the father's guilt, or the Beast's castle. And my mind would provide them that escape if I wasn't careful.\n\nI didn't have time for careful. I grabbed another book and turned it diagonally, trying to pull it free without destroying both books in the process. Beauty was a hardcover, but the books I needed were larger, and if the binding completely failed, the book would fall apart in my hands. I slid the book out and tucked it behind the seat.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"Water tower,\" I said. \"Toni's team ought to be able to help us out, and the tower's built on a hill, so it should be more defensible.\"\n\nLena shifted her weight and smashed a beetle that had landed on the trunk.\n\n\"Watch it,\" I protested.\n\nNidhi yanked the wheel, swerving around an overturned truck. A wendigo was clawing at the truck's door, and I heard screams from inside. Nidhi slowed long enough for Lena to shoot both the wendigo and the truck. Hopefully the rubber tires had insulated the driver.\n\n\"Hold on.\" Nidhi lurched over the curb and into a parking lot. We wove between cars, barely missing the cart corral in front of the grocery store.\n\n\"Where did you learn to drive?\" Lena demanded as we zoomed around the back of the store and down the grassy hill beyond.\n\n\"Isaac's always bragging about what this car can do,\" she said tightly. \"I wanted to see if he was exaggerating.\"\n\nI could feel the Triumph's traction spells kicking in, fighting to cling to the wet grass and mud. Even as the magic won out and we climbed onto the road, the book distorted my perceptions, turning black steel into exhausted horses, their coats streaked with sweaty froth.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Lena fired at another falcon, set her bokken down, and squeezed my shoulder. \"Stay with us.\"\n\nThere were too many books to create. The longer I held Beauty open, the stronger the voices grew. If the ghosts got hold of me now, I doubted I'd be able to resist them. I needed to end this.\n\nI spread the book on my lap. Given the battering it had taken, the hardest part was overcoming my own revulsion at what I was about to do. I gripped half the pages in each hand, prayed for forgiveness from whoever might be listening, and finished cracking the book's spine. I tugged the covers until the endpaper began to tear free, then plunged my hand back into the Beast's library.\n\nMy vandalism allowed me to stretch the pages an extra three quarters of an inch. It wasn't much, but it was enough to speed the process along. The crack of thunder faded. Nothing mattered but the next book.\n\n\"Isaac\u2026\" Lena grabbed my hand, then pointed up the road as we crossed the railroad tracks and saw the war waging in front of us.\n\n\"Oh, my God.\"\n\nThe water tower had fallen onto the road. It looked like a giant jellyfish, the body partially crushed under its own weight, the metal tentacles bent and stiff. One of the legs had smashed a minivan, nearly cutting it in half. The water had flooded the parking lot of the restaurant on the opposite side of the road, pushing two cars into the front wall.\n\nToni Warwick stood uphill on the broken concrete foundation of the water tower. She appeared to be holding off a small swarm of bugs with a drinking straw and a yo-yo. A team of libriomancers flanked her, fighting a small herd of rusty metal beasts. Lawrence Hume held a bulky rifle of a design I didn't recognize, while Whitney lay on the ground flinging pennies at their attackers. Even from here, I could see that her leg was broken.\n\nOne of her coins bounced off the head of a wolf, who slipped and rolled into the path of a charging moose.\n\n\"Unlucky pennies,\" I guessed. The moose trampled the wolf, which didn't get back up. \"Nice.\"\n\nNidhi pulled off the road and killed the engine. I scooped Smudge onto my shoulder, grabbed the books, and snatched the keys from the ignition. I hurried to the back and popped the trunk. The Triumph had better protective spells than any of us. I shoved the books inside and slammed the trunk.\n\nLena handed me the shock-gun. \"How many were you able to get?\"\n\n\"Ten, including Bi Wei's.\" Beauty had fallen apart when I tried to pull out the eleventh book. It wasn't enough.\n\nI counted five fallen beasts, but others were circling the three Porters, trying to get up the hill to surround them. In addition to the wolf and the moose, there were several deer, two dogs, what looked like a fox, and a handful of rats. Sparkles on the ground showed where Toni had taken out many of the bugs.\n\nI stopped to shoot at a metal snake which was trying to circle around to flank them. My third shot took it down, but attracted the attention of its friends, and the metal mob that had pursued us from the library was closing in fast.\n\n\"I hope you have a plan, Vainio!\" Toni shouted.\n\nLawrence used the confusion caused by our arrival to fire at another wolf. The metal body began to hum like a tuning fork, the sound rising in pitch until my eardrums threatened to rupture. Then the wolf simply blew apart. Shrapnel dented a deer, but it regained its balance and kept coming.\n\n\"I need a hand. 'Eat me.' End of chapter one.\" I yanked Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from my jacket and flung it toward Whitney. I gave Nidhi a boost up the hill and started to follow, but the moose had recovered from its collision with the wolf and was charging toward me.\n\n\"Mine.\" Lena sprinted past, swords raised. Just before she collided with the moose, she jumped to the right and stabbed one of her swords into the joint where the front leg met the torso. The move took her off balance, but she turned her fall into a roll and bounced to her feet, gripping her remaining weapon in both hands and knocking a rusty dog aside.\n\nThe moose staggered. Sprigs of green sprouted from the shaft of the sword. It was the same trick she had used with the toothpick and the metal beetle back in my office. Her bokken grew through the moose, entangling and paralyzing the inner workings before it could reach me.\n\n\"Incoming,\" Whitney yelled, pointing toward the swarm of birds and bugs flying up the road. She turned her attention to my book, reached inside, and yanked out a small glass box.\n\nI scrambled up the hill to snatch it from her hand. Inside was a small cake. Currants spelled out the words \"EAT ME.\" I collapsed on the dirt, opened the box, and set both it and Smudge on the ground. \"Time for lunch, buddy.\"\n\nA swarm of rats had cut Lena off from the rest of us. I readied my gun, but before I could aim, Lawrence shouted, \"Watch the trees!\"\n\nA pair of wendigos bounded toward us. I rolled and hit one in the leg. Lawrence shot the other, causing the ice that armored its skin to shatter. I didn't know what kind of weapon he was using or where he had gotten it, but next chance I got, I was definitely looking that sucker up in the Porter database.\n\nOn the road, Lena jumped onto the back of the dying moose and smashed a rat off of her leg. Another sank metal teeth through her shoe. She cried out, then kicked off the shoe and rat both. More rats climbed up the moose. I grabbed another book, hoping Whitney or Lawrence could control the rust magic better than I had.\n\nI didn't get the chance to find out. With crumbs of magic cake stuck to his mandibles, Smudge charged into the fray.\n\nI had cared for that spider since high school, and he had saved my life more than once. He was more than a partner. He was family. And despite all we had been through, the primitive, reptilian part of my brain wanted only to get as far as I could from the flaming spider I had magically enlarged to the size of a station wagon.\n\nApparently magic rats felt the same way. They jumped off of the moose and backed away.\n\nThey weren't fast enough. Smudge snatched the first one up without breaking stride. His mandibles punched through the metal body like an old-fashioned can opener, and then he was moving toward the next.\n\nExhaustion and triumph made me giddy. I pumped my fist in the air and whooped like a hockey fan at the bar during playoffs. Smudge grabbed a possum-looking creature and bit into it. Two rats tried to climb his leg, but his flames deepened from red to purple, and they fell back.\n\nThere was little question that Smudge remembered what these things had done to him back at the house. Nor was there any doubt in my mind that he was enjoying his payback.\n\nI began firing into the second wave, trying to slow their approach. Once Smudge cleared most of the smaller creatures away from Lena, he charged toward the swarm Toni had been holding off. As he neared, fire rolled off his body and legs. Glowing bugs fell like rain.\n\nToni shouted and dropped to the ground. She slapped frantically at her dreadlocks, swearing up a storm. Smudge's enthusiasm had burned through her yo-yo string as well.\n\n\"Easy, buddy!\" I shouted. \"She's on our side!\"\n\nWith everything I had seen today, the sight of a giant flaming spider slinking sheepishly back to the road barely warranted a second glance. Whatever guilt he felt didn't last long. He skittered toward the railroad tracks and reared up on his back four legs to snatch an oversized batlike thing from the air. The rest of us took up positions around Nidhi.\n\n\"Whitney, get your Pratchett ready.\" Toni jammed her straw through her belt and pulled out a portable fan, roughly the size of a small digital camera. \"The rest of you, cover us.\"\n\nLawrence and I shot at anything shiny that got too close, while Whitney switched books and started reading. Lena moved toward the trees to intercept another wendigo.\n\nWhitney hobbled over to join Toni. Her face was white with pain, but she made it. She clutched Toni's shoulder for support, then opened another book with her free hand. \"Isaac, get your spider out of there.\"\n\nI switched my gun to my left hand and grabbed a laser pointer from another pocket. I had to shine the dot directly over Smudge's face to get his attention, but once I did, he was all over it. I played the laser over a metal coyote, which Smudge happily trampled as he pursued the elusive red dot uphill.\n\n\"Man, you have the weirdest pet,\" Toni said. The plastic blades of her fan whirred to life. \"Brace yourselves!\"\n\nIt was as if she had uncorked a portable hurricane. The wind blew insects and birds back, and even the larger creatures had to dig their claws into the pavement to hold on.\n\nWe were out of the wind's direct path, but the negative pressure yanked my coat like a cape, the weight of my books threatening to drag me away. I pocketed my gun and grabbed the broken concrete foundation of the water tower. Lena stabbed her bokken into the ground and clutched it with one hand. Her other was locked around Nidhi's wrist.\n\n\"How are we supposed to shoot these things if we can't even stand?\" I yelled.\n\n\"It's a two-part plan. That was part one.\" Toni and Whitney stood together in the eye of the storm, seemingly untouched. Whitney maneuvered her open book like a tray full of fine china, raising it above and slightly in front of the fan. Then she tilted the book forward.\n\nLiquid spilled from the pages and sprayed forth like mist. Toni and Whitney turned together, moving to and fro like firefighters attacking a blaze.\n\n\"Welcome to part two,\" Whitney crowed.\n\nWhatever the stuff was, it hit the metal creatures like a blowtorch to an igloo. By the time Toni switched off the fan, the moose had fallen backward in a frothing, bubbling mass. The crumpled water tower had begun to dissolve as well. The pools of water in the parking lot bubbled and steamed like a Halloween cauldron.\n\nWhitney closed her book, clipped it back onto her belt, and collapsed to the ground.\n\n\"What book was that, exactly?\" Lawrence asked.\n\nWhitney managed a grin. \"Mort, by Terry Pratchett. That was pure scrumble. One of the most potent drinks in all of Discworld. You should try it. That shit makes the best tequila taste like distilled water. Now shut up and let me do something with this leg.\"\n\nIf she had tasted the stuff and survived, then presumably it wouldn't do to flesh what it had done to metal. I made my way down to the road, gun ready in case any stragglers had survived. \"If you messed up my car with that crap, I\u2026oh, no.\"\n\nI sprinted across the road. On the far side of the water tower, partly hidden by the wreckage, was the flattened remnant of an old SUV. The metal continued to dissolve, courtesy of Whitney's aerosolized scrumble. Though the shattered windshield obscured the details, I recognized Loretta Trembath in the driver's seat. She was a regular at the library, always coming in to e-mail her grandchildren.\n\nI reached instinctively for a book from one of my front pockets, but it was too late for magic to make any difference. From the look of things, Mrs. Trembath had died instantly.\n\nI made my way to the restaurant next. It had begun its life as a residential home back in the early 1900s. From a distance, it seemed to have escaped more or less unscathed. Not so the people inside.\n\nThe doorframe was splintered inward. Blood mixed with the water pooled on the floor. Metal claws had gouged deep lines in the walls.\n\nI spotted three bodies in the dining area. I knew them all. Andy Marana fixed computers for the mine and sold racy pinup-style oil paintings on the side. I had gone to high school with Peg Niemi's little sister. Joe Malki had just started up a landscaping business this summer.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Isaac,\" Lena said quietly.\n\nI moved toward the kitchen. \"Is anyone there?\"\n\nThe restaurant was silent. I found Steve Guckenberg in the back, along with a metal beast that looked like a housecat with six-inch blades for fur. I switched the shock-gun to setting six and melted a hole through the damned thing.\n\nHow many more bodies lay broken and dead throughout Copper River? No magic, at least none the Porters knew of, could truly restore the dead. The few recorded attempts to do so had ended badly. \"August Harrison came here because of me.\"\n\n\"This isn't your fault,\" Lena snapped. \"If not you, then he would have gone after some other Porter. It would have happened anyway.\"\n\n\"It happened here.\" I knew this place, these people. Peg walked her hyperactive border collie past the library every morning, rain or shine. I always thought the crazy thing was going to yank her arm out of the socket. Joe had mowed my parents' lawn after I went downstate for college.\n\nI walked outside, stopping at the remains of the metal moose. It lay on its side, broken and pinned by the wooden sword that continued to grow through its body. Roots dug into broken concrete, and bright green leaves had begun to uncurl from new-formed branches.\n\nThe smallest bolt was thicker than my thumb. The cables inside were too big to flex. They might as well have been steel rods.\n\n\"More mining equipment?\" Lena guessed.\n\nI nodded. \"The rear legs look like rock drills.\" Normally, the drills could punch deep holes into solid rock, but they had been magically warped to fit the shape of the moose. A few kicks from those could easily have brought down the water tower.\n\nToni was walking down to join us. She held a slightly-charred wooden yo-yo in one hand, and was replacing the string. A corroded beetle was stuck to one side of the yo-yo. That must have been how she had held off the rest of the bugs, by whipping this one in a whirling pattern and imparting the same motion to its friends. \"The moose charged the tower before we could stop it. Lawrence barely had time to jump free.\"\n\nSweat sparkled on her forehead, and she was on the verge of hyperventilating. \"No more magic,\" I said, tugging the yo-yo from her hand. \"You need a break.\"\n\n\"We all do.\" She coiled one of her dreadlocks around her hand and closed her eyes. \"The other teams around town report that they're in a little better shape. We've got three injured and one dead. Damn.\" She blinked and stared at me. \"Apparently a trio of shotgun-wielding werewolves in a pickup truck just ran down a wendigo. Your doing?\"\n\n\"Jeff's,\" I said gratefully.\n\n\"Nice.\"\n\n\"Remind them that the wendigos are victims,\" Lena said. \"Harrison did this against their will.\"\n\n\"Will do.\" Toni tucked her chin into her shoulder, relaying the reminder through her own hair. \"Nicola, what's happening with Bookmaster G?\"\n\nWhile Toni communed with Nicola, I turned to Lena and Nidhi. \"How many ghosts do you think there are? How many broken minds trying to dig and claw their way back into the world?\"\n\n\"Too many,\" said Lena. \"Thus the word 'Army.'\"\n\n\"They've found the tree,\" Toni said before I could respond. Her next words turned relief to dread. \"The mine was abandoned. There were a few ambushes and some partially-constructed metal nasties, but no wendigos, no resurrected cultists, and no dryad.\"\n\n\"They knew we were coming.\" I could use Bi Wei's book to find them again, but not without Deifilia and the Ghost Army being aware.\n\nCould she have gone after Jeneta after all? I grabbed my phone to call the camp, but before I could dial, Lena's fingers clamped around my wrist.\n\n\"I know where they went,\" she whispered, her face pale.\n\n\"How\u2014\" Understanding sank its fist into my gut. \"Your tree.\"\n\n\"She's inside me. I can hear her.\"\n\nNidhi took Lena's elbow, and we lowered her carefully to the ground.\n\n\"What's going on?\" Toni asked.\n\nLena could barely stand. I had a shock-gun, a giant spider, and a collection of books that would probably cost me my sanity if I tried to use them at this point. There was no way we could take on Deifilia by ourselves, let alone the ghost wizards she had resurrected.\n\nGutenberg might have a chance if they struck fast enough, hitting Deifilia with everything they had.\n\n\"What about the graft from your tree?\"\n\nShe glanced at Toni, then switched to Gujarati. \"If I hadn't taken that graft, I'd be comatose right now. You don't understand. She's inside me. I can't separate myself.\"\n\nMeaning if Gutenberg dropped a magical nuke on Deifilia, it would kill Lena as well.\n\nLena grimaced. \"She's offering a trade. The books\u2026\"\n\nI nodded to show I understood. The books for Lena's life. I took out my car keys. \"Toni, I need you to hide something for me.\"\n\n\"Oh, hell, Isaac. What are you planning?\"\n\nI peeled the square of tape from my shirt. To Nidhi, I said, \"If you don't hear from us in thirty minutes, tell them.\"\n\nNidhi nodded. Together, we helped Lena to her feet. Her body was trembling. She rested against me and whispered, \"My oak is just the start. If you don't give her those books, she'll destroy Copper River and everyone in it.\"\n\nI often wonder what became of my first oak, whether it yet survives in the woods outside of Mason, or if it succumbed to old age or one of the winter ice storms. Or those woods might have been bulldozed years ago, paved and transformed into another subdivision with spindly maples and anorexic pines in place of the majestic trees that once grew there.\n\nI've never had any desire to revisit that part of my past. It feels morbid, like visiting your own grave.\n\nI know my fallen oak at Nidhi's house was taken by a lumber company, but I never learned what they did with it. Perhaps it was mulched for wood chips to spread beneath playground equipment or to landscape someone's yard. I prefer to believe it was dissected into usable timber, that my tree went on to become something beautiful. Bookshelves, perhaps. A comfortable chair. A bedframe.\n\nIn C. S. Lewis' book The Magician's Nephew, Digory planted the core of a magical apple from Narnia, and the seeds grew into a wondrous tree. When the tree blew down in a storm years later, he had its wood fashioned into a wardrobe, the same wardrobe that transported four children to a magical world a generation later.\n\nWhat power might my trees possess once I leave them behind? What magic could one pull from shelves made of my oak? Where might a door built of my former body lead?\n\nNone of my acorns ever gave birth to another dryad. I don't know why. It was an acorn from my own book that created me. Most of the time, I consider this sterility a blessing. The last thing I wanted was to bring forth an entire race of slaves. Fortunately, by the time I was aware enough to worry about such a possibility, it had become clear that my own seeds could produce nothing but ordinary saplings.\n\nBut what about my human body? Could this flesh become pregnant? I never had with Frank, and with Nidhi, it hadn't been an issue. But if my lover wanted a child, and my body responded to his desires\u2026\n\nWhat would a human/dryad baby become? Strong and powerful? Beautiful and pliant?\n\nWould she be free?\n\nI often wonder.\n\nQuestions and half-formed plans clamored in my head like a basket of hyperactive puppies. How had Deifilia and her followers escaped the mine without Gutenberg noticing? How many more of Bi Sheng's students had she created, and were they protected by the books I had made? How had they entered Copper River unseen?\n\nThere were countless weapons we could use. I could fly in and drop a fairy bio-bomb from Artemis Fowl. Or let Gutenberg unlock the D&D handbook, and see how Deifilia liked playing catch with a sphere of annihilation. Assuming they didn't simply absorb the magic of our attack and dissolve our weapons into nothingness.\n\n\"Lawrence, Whitney, what books do you have?\" I hadn't stocked up for a direct assault on Deifilia.\n\n\"Isaac\u2026\" Toni began.\n\n\"Thirty minutes,\" I promised. \"One way or another, you'll know.\"\n\nIt was an older fairy-tale-style romance that offered what I thought was my best chance at walking away from a confrontation with Deifilia. When I told Lawrence what I wanted, he looked past me to Toni, as if asking for permission.\n\n\"You're sure about this?\" Toni asked.\n\n\"Not in the slightest. But people are dying.\" I waited for Lawrence to reach into the book. \"Tell Pallas to evacuate the town.\"\n\nToni folded her arms. \"She'll want to know why.\"\n\n\"I know. Tell her I'm doing something stupid again.\" I returned to the car and waited while Lena and Nidhi said their good-byes.\n\n\"What about megaspider over there?\" Whitney asked.\n\nSmudge scurried toward us. Whitney, Lawrence, and Toni jumped back as he placed his front legs on the bumper, as if he wanted nothing more than to climb up onto the Triumph and become the world's first road-surfing spider.\n\n\"I don't think so, partner,\" I said. \"Would one of you mind pulling the White Rabbit's fan out of Wonderland and shrinking him back down to his travel-size?\"\n\nOnce Smudge was back to normal and sitting\u2014rather sullenly, if you asked me\u2014on the dashboard, Nidhi and Lena ended their kiss. Nidhi stepped back.\n\n\"Isaac\u2026\"\n\n\"I know.\" I glanced at Lena, who was slumped in the seat, her eyes closed. She held the branch from her tree across her chest. \"I'll keep her safe.\"\n\nBefore, I had been too intent on staying ahead of our pursuers to truly see the damage Deifilia's creatures had done. Driving back through town, I noticed everything. The playground behind the tennis court looked like a tornado had touched down. Whatever had come through here had ripped chain-link fence like cobwebs.\n\nSirens wailed from every direction. Twice we had to backtrack because police cars blocked the roads. Dogs were howling from their yards. Others sprinted through the streets in a panic. We passed a pair of EMTs assisting a man covered in blood. A half mile farther on, the mining museum was on fire. I slowed the car.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking,\" said Lena. \"You're in no shape to help.\"\n\n\"I've got two books in this car that could give me enough elemental control to\u2014\"\n\n\"They've got a fully equipped fire engine. Let them do their job. If you overdo it, you're likely to make things worse.\"\n\nI tightened my fingers on the wheel and kept driving.\n\n\"What's in that vial Lawrence made for you?\"\n\nI started to answer, then hit the brakes as a wendigo staggered out of McDonald's. Its stomach bulged like an overstuffed sack. Before I could grab my shock-gun, a blue Harley-Davidson sped at the wendigo from the opposite direction. The driver appeared human, but the woman in the sidecar was in the hybrid form some weres could take, all muscle and fur and teeth, but still humanoid. She jumped out of the sidecar and tackled the wendigo while the driver pulled onto the sidewalk and grabbed an aluminum bat.\n\n\"Don't kill it,\" I shouted.\n\n\"Easy for you to say.\"\n\nIt was anything but easy. The wendigo had fed recently. I suppose it could have stuffed itself on Big Macs and fries, but I doubted it.\n\n\"The vial?\" Lena asked again as I turned into the drive-through to get past the fight. Wendigos were slower when sated, and the werewolves appeared to have things under control.\n\n\"The Porter database catalogs it as Love Potion 163-F. It's fast-acting, works on contact, and lasts for up to ten years.\"\n\nShe pushed herself up in her seat. When she spoke, she didn't bother to disguise her anger. \"One dryad isn't enough for you?\"\n\n\"You know I don't want Deifilia for myself. I want to stop her. If we fight her head-on, she'll crush us. But if I can create more of a conflict inside her, split her loyalty long enough for Bi Wei and the others to act, we might have a chance. We might even be able to save her.\"\n\n\"Save her?\" Lena repeated softly. \"With the magical equivalent of a date rape drug?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. That doesn't make it right.\"\n\nI couldn't argue. I had racked my brain for another way to stop Deifilia and resolve this mess. But even if I could have risked using my own magic, it never would have worked. Lena and I would have to fight through wendigos and metal beasts while the students of Bi Sheng countered my every spell.\n\n\"163-F has an antidote. If we can capture her alive, we can reverse its effects. I'm open to other suggestions, but people are dying, Lena.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she said again.\n\n\"The trick is getting it to her. She's going to make sure we leave any potential weapons behind. No books, no swords, and nothing magical. But she's new to our world, and there are things she might not recognize as weapons. One of those old prank calculators that's actually a squirt gun, or maybe\u2014\"\n\n\"You think your love will be enough to overpower the Ghost Army's wishes?\"\n\n\"I only have to distract her, to create enough of a conflict for us to act.\"\n\nShe took the test tube from my hand and carefully locked it away in the glove box. \"I'll do it.\"\n\n\"You'll do what?\"\n\n\"The same thing I did to you in the library,\" she whispered.\n\n\"How is that better than my so-called magic date rape drug?\"\n\n\"It's not.\" She straightened. \"But Deifilia is family. A sister. She's my responsibility. If anyone does this to her, it will be me. Not a human.\"\n\n\"And what if she turns that power back on you?\"\n\nLena managed a smile. \"One way or another, you'll have your distraction.\"\n\nI hadn't liked my original plan. I liked this one even less. It was one thing for me to try to enchant Deifilia, and to risk whatever backlash might come if my plan failed. It was my research that had started all of this, after all. But if Lena failed, she would take the brunt of Deifilia's punishment.\n\nI turned onto my street, and a metal eagle swooped down to land on the top of the windshield, talons grating against the crystal. I slammed the brakes, stalling out the engine. Smudge lit up like a flare.\n\n\"That's why you didn't get to stay supersized,\" I said as I waited for my heart to recover. \"You'd have set the whole car on fire.\" I nodded to the eagle. \"We're alone.\"\n\nThe eagle spread rust-edged wings and gave an ear-stabbing shriek. Tiny, layered scales of sheet metal served as feathers. The edges were irregularly cut.\n\n\"I have the books.\" I restarted the engine and edged the car forward. The eagle didn't appear to object, though it watched me closely with eyes made of iron pellets. I was more fixated on the damage Deifilia had done.\n\nI lived on the edge of Copper River, in a moderately wooded area. Deifilia had turned the trees against my neighbors. Using oak and maple as giant clubs, she had smashed rooftops and fences, flattened cars, and ripped through power lines. My house was the only one undisturbed. Deifilia had put the trees behind my house to another use.\n\nI couldn't decide whether to call it a grove or a fortress. Oak trees had sprung up in a rough circle throughout the backyard. Branches wove together to create a fence of living wood. The trees were a good forty feet higher than any others, and the smallest was three feet in diameter.\n\nWendigos watched us from the upper branches. Metal glinted among the bark and leaves. I saw no sign of Deifilia or her human followers. Presumably they were inside the grove.\n\n\"That's impressive,\" I said. \"Terrifying, but impressive. Of course, now all the neighbors are going to want one.\"\n\nWe stopped in the driveway and climbed slowly from the car. The moment Lena's foot touched the grass, she froze. \"It's all one tree. Isaac, this is my oak, and Deifilia is inside of it.\"\n\nOn another day, I would have come up with something better to say than, \"Wow.\" Not only had Deifilia created a grove of cloned oak trees, she had done it in less than an hour.\n\n\"Be careful,\" said Lena. \"Anywhere the roots or branches touch, she can strike. The roots will encircle and break your legs, or drag you into the ground until you suffocate. Or maybe they'll just sprout spikes and impale you.\"\n\n\"Making Deifilia into Sleeping Beauty and the enchanted hedge all in one. Perfect.\"\n\nA slender figure stepped out from between the trees, the branches bending aside to let her pass. Bi Wei gave no outward sign that she knew me, though we both knew Deifilia was aware of our earlier contact. \"Leave the car and any weapons. Including your books.\"\n\nI stripped off my jacket, tucked my pistol into an inner pocket, and set it inside the car. Lena did the same with her bokken, but she kept the graft from her tree. She rested one end on the ground and leaned on it like a crutch. At this point, the branch was probably the only thing keeping her upright.\n\nBi Wei studied us both. A pair of metal grasshoppers nested in her hair. They could have been decorative, save for the way they rubbed their forelegs together as they watched us. Harrison's millipede circled her throat. \"You carry spells,\" she said, stepping closer. Her fingers touched my temple. \"Here. And another, deeper within.\"\n\nI tapped my head. \"I have a fish in my brain. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It translates languages for me. Slimy and a bit gross putting it in, but it works well.\"\n\nFor an instant, I saw amusement in her eyes, and something more: a libriomancer's delight at discovering a new trick. But the emotions didn't reach her voice. \"What of the other spell?\"\n\nI had left the potion in the glove box, and I wasn't carrying any other magic. Everything was locked in the car, my books, my jacket, even\u2014 \"Smudge. I created him, and it's my magic that helps to sustain him. He's staying with the car.\"\n\nBi Wei tilted her head, listening to sounds I couldn't hear. \"You've brought our books?\"\n\nIf I said yes, they could kill us and rip the car apart to find them. They'd be pissed to discover the books weren't there, but that would be little comfort, what with me being dead and all. \"First I need to talk to Deifilia. She needs to leave Lena and Copper River in peace.\"\n\nShe bowed slightly, then beckoned for us to follow.\n\n\"I like her,\" Lena said. \"She's cute for her age.\"\n\nEach step we took whittled away at my confidence, and I hadn't been terribly confident to begin with. Partly it was a matter of scale. From the street, the trees looked enormous. Here in their shade, with the roots turning the ground to hard lumps and coils of wood, it was like crossing into another world, a world in which Deifilia was creator and goddess. The trees muffled the sounds from outside. The canopy turned the sky green. Leaves swirled through the air, a gentle and deceptively peaceful effect.\n\nWendigos climbed lower, preparing to pounce. I tensed, but Bi Wei never slowed. These wendigos were fully transformed. The students of Bi Sheng must have found a way to complete the process. Flakes of ice drifted from their bodies like snow as they moved about.\n\nThe branches parted, and Bi Wei escorted us inside.\n\nNothing remained of Lena's garden. Her oak stood in the center of a swamp of tree roots and fallen leaves, without a single flower or blade of grass to be seen. Lena's central tree was unchanged, but dwarfed by the surrounding oaks.\n\nA man and a woman stood in front of the central oak. I could feel the magic wafting from them, like heat rolling from an open furnace. Both wore loose silk tunics, but the embroidery didn't appear to be Chinese. The necks were cut in a low V, revealing white undershirts. The man wore blue leather boots that rose just past the ankle. I'd have to check my books, but the fashion looked European. Not the wardrobe I would have expected from Bi Sheng's followers.\n\nNeither one showed any hint of sanity. They didn't move at all. I didn't think they were even breathing, and if they blinked, it was too quick for me to see. Their eyes were wide, their mouths parted as if to speak, though they never did.\n\n\"Their books were destroyed?\" I guessed.\n\nBi Wei said nothing, but her back tightened.\n\nThe others Deifilia had restored were trapped within the roots, bound so tightly they could move only a finger here, a toe there. She hadn't bothered to provide clothing, though little flesh could be seen through the gaps. I counted four more.\n\nAugust Harrison was here as well, and he was awake. He sat, shirtless, at the base of Lena's oak. A single root circled his neck. Judging from the bruises around his arms, he had been bound more tightly until recently.\n\nHad I been a more petty man, I might have gloated. This was the man who had broken into my house, stolen my research, and used it to attack my town and the woman I loved.\n\nOn second thought, I had time for a little pettiness. \"You see what happens when we steal other people's magic toys and try to use them without knowing what we're doing?\"\n\nHe watched in silence as Lena and I stepped carefully over the outer edges of the roots. I stepped carefully, at any rate. Lena was barefoot, and strode as easily as a cat. Being here seemed to have restored some of her strength, though she still leaned on her branch for support, her fingers lost in the budding leaves.\n\n\"This is your doing,\" Harrison said. \"Victor's death at the hands of creatures the Porters hid from the rest of us. The students of Bi Sheng, victims of Gutenberg's war.\"\n\n\"And this is your plan to make it better, eh?\" I pretended to look around. \"How's that working for you?\"\n\nHis face reddened, but before he could respond, the root around his neck pulsed. His fingers went to his throat, and then he settled back. He glared hatefully, not at us, but at the trunk of the oak, where Deifilia was emerging from the wood.\n\nHarrison's dryad had auburn hair, and her skin was a lighter tan than Lena's, but she had come from the same mold. She was eerily familiar: short and plump and delightfully curved, like an assembly line doll painted by a different artist.\n\nA sleeveless gown made of interwoven leaves clung to her skin like scales. Her legs were bare from the knees down. A wooden sword hung from her hip, though I saw nothing holding it in place. It could have been a part of that living dress. A smaller wooden knife clung to her opposite hip. Both had straight double-edged blades and heavy pommels.\n\nShe stepped toward Harrison and stroked her fingers through his hair. To Lena, she said, \"You have something for me, sister?\"\n\n\"I thought you loved him,\" I said, nodding toward Harrison.\n\nShe smiled. \"He's a beautiful man. I owe him my existence.\"\n\n\"What do your other lovers think of him?\" Lena asked.\n\nHer loving expression never changed. \"She sees a pathetic, magically worthless worm of a man.\"\n\n\"She?\" I repeated. Jeneta had referred to a \"she\" when talking about the devourers in her dreams. \"Does this other woman have a name?\"\n\n\"You'll learn her name soon enough,\" she said lightly.\n\n\"How did you get out of the mine without Gutenberg seeing you?\"\n\n\"You don't understand.\" She gestured to the two people standing like zombies. \"Your Porters study magic, but they are magic. We flew through earth and stone as easily as air.\"\n\n\"Cool.\"\n\nLena's toes dug into the roots. \"It must be difficult, loving someone you can never touch.\"\n\nI searched for the glint of metal among the green of Deifilia's dress. The leaves clung like a second skin. The cicada had to be on her, but where?\n\n\"She's waited more than a thousand years,\" said Deifilia. \"I can wait, too.\"\n\n\"You long for her, don't you?\" Lena stepped closer. \"You hear her whispering to you, but a ghost isn't enough. You want to feel her legs curling with yours, the sweat as your bodies tighten against each other.\"\n\nDeifilia didn't answer, but I saw goose bumps on her skin.\n\nI caught Bi Wei's attention, wishing there were a way to communicate without Deifilia overhearing. She inclined her head ever so slightly. Doubtless she could feel Lena's magic. I turned toward Deifilia's two mindless guardians, both of whom were now watching Lena.\n\n\"I know what it's like to feel alone.\" Lena pointed to Harrison, then to me. \"They would have us kill one another, the only other person who understands what it's like. Who knows the strength and passion of the oak.\"\n\n\"His wishes no longer matter,\" Deifilia said.\n\n\"Can you imagine the things we could do together?\" Lena whispered.\n\nThere was a question with more layers than I could count. Yet, on some level, I think she meant it. The longing in Lena's words wasn't sexual. Not just sexual, at least. She reminded me of myself years ago; the first time I met other Porters. The first time I truly understood that I wasn't alone.\n\nDeifilia's answering desire was enough to flatten me. She spoke, but the drumbeat of my blood deafened me to her words. All I could see was the longing in her eyes.\n\nLena's hand snapped out, catching my arm and stopping me from walking toward her, from pulling those leaves away one by one.\n\nThe touch of Lena's hand both helped and made things worse. I clasped my fingers over hers, my mind careening into a new and utterly inappropriate fantasy involving my lover and the woman who would happily destroy everyone and everything I knew.\n\nLena bent my arm, wrenching me around behind her without ever breaking eye contact with Deifilia. With her free hand, she reached for the other dryad.\n\nJust before Lena made contact, Deifilia realized what was happening. Her arm snapped up, striking Lena's hand away. Lena spun with the impact and whirled around like a dancer to slam the back of her fist into Deifilia's cheek.\n\n\"Oh, hell,\" I muttered to myself. \"All right, time for plan B.\"\n\nI don't believe in immortality. Which is odd, considering I've met Juan Ponce de Leon and Johannes Gutenberg, both of whom are effectively ageless. Not to mention vampires who have survived unchanged for centuries.\n\nI've killed some of those vampires. Ageless doesn't mean immortal, and there's always something capable of taking you out. Even if that something is simple entropy.\n\nGutenberg relies on the magic of the grail, which he created using his first mass-printed Bible. It's kept him alive for five hundred years, but that's nothing in the larger scheme of the world. Christianity is only 2000 years old. Who's to say his religion will last another millennium, and what happens to the power of the grail when all those who believe in it are gone?\n\nOr maybe he'll go on indefinitely, until the sun falls into its death throes, cooking all life from this planet. Hopefully, humanity will have moved on by then, but even the universe will end someday. Unlike the heat-death of Earth, the universe will die in cold silence, taking even the so-called immortals with it.\n\nPerhaps science or magic will offer a way to outlive the universe. I have a hard time proclaiming anything impossible these days. But by any reasonable standard, death is a certainty.\n\nI blame Isaac for this train of thought, for the endless \"What ifs?\" I've found myself asking lately. For the nights spent dreaming in my oak, imagining not only the coming years, but the centuries.\n\nI've survived the death of my tree. My human body appears not to age, save for cosmetic changes dictated by the unconscious desires of my lovers. I don't know what would happen if this body were killed but my tree survived. Nor do I have any interest in finding out.\n\n(All right, fine. Maybe there's a small, nagging streak of curiosity, which I again blame entirely on Isaac.)\n\nThe point is, if I'm both careful and lucky, I could survive longer than any ordinary human being. Perhaps even longer than Gutenberg.\n\nAt the same time, I've already died more than any of them, and my deaths are potentially as limitless as the stars. Even if my body survives, my lovers pass. Each time that happens, the person I was dies with them.\n\nMetal rodents swarmed down the side of the tree, and the buzz of insects grew deafening. Birds swooped from the branches, and wendigos leaped to the ground.\n\nI spun, only to have bark shear away from the undulating roots beneath me. My foot slipped, and roots the size of my thighs pinched my ankle in place. Something popped in my knee, and pain exploded through my leg.\n\nThe problem with plan B was that it required a great deal of concentration on my part. Between the pain and the fact that the world's largest and grumpiest oak grove was trying to smother me, this was going to be difficult.\n\nDeifilia ripped her weapons from her side. Lena raised her branch to parry. Deifilia's first overhead blow dropped her to one knee. I saw the roots of Lena's grafted branch twining around her fingers, sinking into her skin, until the weapon was a literal extension of her arm. The wood flattened, and the buds and twigs ripped away with Lena's counterattack.\n\nBoth dryads moved too quickly for me to follow. Within seconds, Deifilia was bleeding from cuts on her arm and thigh. The right side of Lena's face was bloody as well.\n\nLena dodged past Deifilia and scrambled up the tree like Spider-Man. Her hand and feet sank into the wood, giving her just enough traction to climb out of reach of the roots.\n\nI didn't know much about Lena's study, but I was certain no sensei had ever taught the stance she adopted next. She turned to face Deifilia. Her left leg was stretched up over her head, anchored to the wood, while her right braced her full weight. Her leg muscles shook as she swung her sword two-handed, knocking Deifilia's sword from her hand.\n\nLena's training and experience gave her an edge over Deifilia, but it wasn't enough. A rat dropped onto Lena's back and sank metal teeth into the flesh between her shoulder blades. She jumped down, smashed her back against the tree, then spun to cut the arm from a wendigo sneaking up behind her. In that time, Deifilia scooped up her sword and lunged. Lena parried, but the blade sliced the skin over her ribs.\n\nI tried to concentrate on Deifilia. Gutenberg had demonstrated how easily he could rob Lena of her power. I had seen him perform the same trick two months before, pulling Smudge's magic into himself and flinging fire against an enchanted car. Smudge hadn't liked that one bit, so I had excused him from guinea pig duty, but I had tried time and again to duplicate Gutenberg's feat. For the most part, I had failed utterly.\n\nBut I had been relatively stable those times. Given how magically raw and exposed I was now, I should be able to tap into any book-related magic I touched. The real trick would be holding on to my sanity long enough to use it.\n\nA root shot upward, shaping itself into a spear. Deifilia dropped her dagger, snatched the spear, and thrust the point at Lena's chest. Lena twisted and stepped inward. She caught Deifilia's other wrist, blocking a sword thrust, and smashed her forehead onto Deifilia's nose.\n\nUntil now, the two empty shells who had once been students of Bi Sheng had been content to watch. Maybe Deifilia was enjoying the fight, or maybe the Army of Ghosts needed time to adjust to their human bodies. Whatever the reason, they acted now.\n\nI saw them move toward Lena, and then my vision flickered, and there was only magic pouring forth to tear her from existence. It was like staring at an optical illusion, a landscape that suddenly resolves into the face of a man, or a goblet that becomes the silhouette of two faces. They weren't casting a spell; they were the spell. They reached out, flesh and magic stretching to touch Lena's arm, to unravel the cells of her body one by one.\n\nI couldn't read the expression on Lena's face as she collapsed. Fear? Sadness? She didn't appear to be in pain, for which I was grateful.\n\n\"Wait!\" I could bargain for her life, trade the books for Lena. Trade myself, if that was what Deifilia wanted.\n\nDeifilia stepped back and watched, completely entranced by Lena's pain. She seemed not to hear me at all.\n\nNor did she see as Bi Wei reached skyward and pulled down the stars' fire upon the two magical ghosts.\n\nThey should have died instantly, but I could see them moving within the twin pillars of white flame, pulling Bi Wei's attack into themselves, trying to reshape her magic.\n\nBi Wei's eyes bulged. Blood trickled from her neck as the millipede clamped tighter, cutting off her breath and the circulation to her brain. Inside her body, tiny metal serpents seemed to be finishing the job. She would be dead in seconds, as would Lena.\n\nI studied Deifilia, trying to see not the physical form, but the words that had brought her to life. I didn't have her book with me, but the text was seared into my memory. I focused on the final battle when the nymphs and the commoners rallied together behind John Rule to overthrow a false ruler. I knew this book, knew the snippets of text that defined her powers.\n\nHer hand glided over the shaft of her spear. The wood thickened in response to her gentle touch.\n\nCorrection: I knew the snippets of really bad text that defined her powers.\n\nBranches swung low, weaving together to form nets, ripping soldiers from their footing and dangling them in the air like freshly killed smeerp.\n\nHer fingers sank into the crevasses of the bark, touching the hot wood beneath.\n\nWhy would the wood be hot? Neptune was a cold planet, even with\u2014 I stopped myself. Following that trail of thought would only lead to distraction and frustration.\n\nUnder ordinary circumstances, the nymphs were no match for the Lords of Neptune, but here in her grove, the strength of her oak pumped through her veins like fire.\n\nI could imagine my fingers sinking into the text, but the wood of the tree remained stubbornly solid. How had Gutenberg done it? He hadn't touched Smudge to take his magic. He had simply reached out and drawn it from the air between them.\n\nI stretched my arm toward Deifilia. The movement sent new pain tearing through my leg.\n\nBi Wei collapsed. Blood dripped from her mouth and nose. The starfire was fading, leaving behind a smell like an arc welder. The two ghosts remained standing, but they were in bad shape.\n\nI wasn't strong enough. Not without my books. I could see the words, but I couldn't touch their magic. I wasn't Gutenberg. This was my plan, and it was going to fail, and I was going to have to watch Lena die in front of me.\n\nEven Gutenberg used books for magic, though he was a lot cooler about it than I was. But he hadn't had Smudge's book, and I doubted he had bothered to read it before that encounter. He had never struck me as a fan of lowbrow sword and sorcery. How did you tap into the magic of a book you didn't have and had never read?\n\nBut he had read it. During that battle two months ago and again at the library, I had seen words inked beneath Gutenberg's skin. And he had referred to spells written on my being.\n\nI needed to stop thinking of the book as separate. The text was a part of Deifilia. Her core. Her soul.\n\nI imagined the overlapping blocks of printed text swirling through Deifilia's center. I had done this before. I had glimpsed Gutenberg's spells. I had read the words printed into the automatons. As I stared at Deifilia, I saw the magic sparking within her. I saw it in Lena, too, though the words were blurring.\n\nDeifilia pressed a hand to the trunk of the tree. Bark pulled free in a long, thick strip, which lengthened into a dagger.\n\nI concentrated on the words I had seen in that moment. Gutenberg had made this look so easy, dammit. I didn't even have to cast a spell. That work had already been done. I just needed to borrow it for a minute. But without that physical connection, I couldn't\u2014\n\n\"Idiot!\" I had a physical connection. This was Deifilia's grove now. She had raised these trees, and she had all but taken Lena's oak for herself.\n\nHow many times had Lena explained that the tree was as much her body as her human form?\n\nI reached into the tree, read the magic there, and pulled it into myself.\n\nI had to close my eyes to keep from passing out. I could feel my roots sinking deep into the earth, the dry taste of the soil and the moisture trapped far below. The trees swayed with every breeze, the leaves catching the wind like tiny sails. I felt every one of the metal insects and rats and squirrels scrabbling over my bark. I felt each restricted breath of the prisoners trapped in the roots, the heat of their bodies, the feeble strain of muscle against wood.\n\nI felt Lena struggling to rise, tasted her blood and sweat. With a movement as natural as shrugging a shoulder, I twisted the roots beneath Deifilia. She stumbled, but it wasn't enough to stop her from thrusting her dagger.\n\nThe wood was mine now. It shattered like balsa when it struck Lena's chest.\n\nI freed the students of Bi Sheng next, but the tree wasn't the only thing holding them prisoner. Deifilia had sent her insects into their bodies as well. They doubled over in pain as magical parasites bored through their insides.\n\nI pinned Deifilia's leg and grew shoots of wood through her foot, trapping her in place. The ghosts were next. I opened the roots, pulling them deeper. Wood coiled round their bodies and through their flesh. Bi Wei had weakened them, and the oak\u2014my oak\u2014finished them off.\n\nLena snatched her fallen weapon, spun, and thrust.\n\nThe sword pierced Deifilia's chest and struck the oak behind her. I could feel the wood sending threads into the rest of the tree. The bark swelled outward to engulf the tip of the sword. Blood dripped from Deifilia's human body, and the graft dragged her toward the oak.\n\n\"The queen,\" I said.\n\nLena put her hand on Deifilia's left shoulder. Her fingers curled through the leaves, and she ripped a gleaming cicada from Deifilia's skin. She clutched the metal body in one hand, gripped the head in her other, and twisted.\n\nThe end of Victor Harrison's enchantment spread like a shock wave. Metal rained from the branches. A clockwork squirrel hit August Harrison on the back of the head. Even the insects felt like stones pounding down. I twisted to avoid a falling rat that smashed into the roots beside me.\n\nThe students of Bi Sheng were using magic to heal the damage the insects had done. I watched them reach into one another's bodies, dissolving metal into dust, sealing pierced organs and arteries. All save Bi Wei.\n\n\"Can you help her?\" I asked.\n\nI don't know if they understood me. I could hardly see them anymore through all of the magic.\n\nLena eased Deifilia's body back against the oak, even as the branch protruding from the other dryad's chest continued to grow. I couldn't make out what they were saying. Lena whirled around as a wendigo landed behind her, but the creature was only interested in fleeing. It smashed through the branches and disappeared.\n\nLena was walking over to August Harrison. She tugged at the roots holding him in place. \"Isaac, it's all right. I've got him. Please let me bring him to Deifilia. She wants to say good-bye.\"\n\nI tried to relax, to cede control of the oak back to Lena. I pulled my hands from the wood and clenched them against my body. It seemed to be enough. Lena tugged Harrison free and led him to his dryad lover. Lena whispered something in Harrison's ear, and he nodded. Deifilia took his hand. She was crying.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Lena dropped to one knee in front of me. \"Can you hear me?\"\n\nHer right eye was bruised and swollen, and a cut traced a line down her cheek and jaw. Her knuckles were cracked and bloody, and her upper sleeve was a shredded mess, as was the skin beneath. She had left sticky footprints on the roots where blood had trickled down her leg.\n\n\"Isaac, look at me.\"\n\nI tried to focus, but broken lines of text floated through my vision. \"I am yours now, John Rule of Earth.\" She knelt on the ice, head bowed, blonde hair flowing like a golden river over the voluptuous curves of her body.\n\nStrong hands lowered me to the ground.\n\n\"He is lost. Soon, the Ghosts will find him.\"\n\nThat voice was unfamiliar. He spoke in another language, but I understood. My hands were shaking from the ice. No, the ice wasn't real. I was in the grove. Lena's grove. For a moment, I saw one of the students of Bi Sheng looking down at me.\n\n\"He knows us. Knows our books.\"\n\n\"None shall harm him while I live.\" Lena's words, or her book? I couldn't tell anymore. \"I am his, and I shall slay any who try to hurt him.\"\n\nIt had to be the book. Lena would have skipped the posturing and punched the man in the throat.\n\n\"He saved your lives.\"\n\n\"He serves Gutenberg.\"\n\nHow was Lena able to understand them? Were they speaking English now? I couldn't even tell.\n\n\"If he served Gutenberg, we would all be dead now. I brought Bi Wei into this world. Bring Isaac back for me.\"\n\nBi Wei. Had they been able to save her?\n\n\"How didst thou come here?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" I remembered the ice giving way. I had fallen deep into the blue glacier, my ice ax ripped from my gloved hands. I remembered the shouts from my team, and then a web of golden light.\n\n\"We cannot help you, Isaac Vainio of Earth. There is no returning from this place. If you would stay, you must earn your place among the People. You must fight.\"\n\n\"Stay with me.\" One of the nymphs cradled me against her. My knee throbbed. I must have twisted it in the fall.\n\n\"What happened?\" Gutenberg's voice.\n\nWhy had the warriors of Harku'unn taken me to this cave? How could I pass their trials with no food or water, no weapons of any sort? The Ghosts of Neptune circled like the vultures of Earth, waiting for their prey to die. Each time I drifted off, their talons raked my skin, and their beaks tore flesh. They wouldn't wait for me to die. They would devour me alive.\n\n\"You let them escape? Freed them from their bonds, and did nothing?\" Gutenberg shouted.\n\nAnother presence approached through the darkness. The strongest of the spirits cupped my face in her claws and opened my mind like a tin can. Her fingers stirred my thoughts.\n\n\"Even if I wanted to help the man who betrayed the Porters, he's too far gone.\"\n\nEmpty syllables. The spirits pulled me deeper, and a woman laughed from the shadows.\n\n\"Two months ago, Isaac Vainio saved your life. You will help him, damn you.\" The words jolted me awake. Lena's voice, furious and determined. The magic of her tree surged to life, even as the spirits tightened their grip.\n\n\"Who are you?\" I demanded.\n\nLaughter. \"Would you like me to show you, Isaac?\"\n\n\"Look at him, Lena. His skin charred by magic, power tearing through him from within. I know of only one way to stop that power from destroying him.\"\n\nI could see her now. A small woman emerging from the darkness, clad in bronze armor. She smiled at me, but her eyes were empty holes into nothingness.\n\n\"What's your name?\"\n\nThe world jerked into focus, and I saw Johannes Gutenberg standing over me, a gold pen in his hand. I tried to pull away, but I could no longer feel my body. The cold had frozen my blood, turning me to a statue. I would die here, trapped beneath the surface of an alien world.\n\nThe bronze woman stretched out a hand and whispered a single word. \"Meridiana.\"\n\nAnd then the world shattered.\n\nThank you, Nidhi Shah.\n\nThank you for compassion. For strength and intellect.\n\nThank you for helping and protecting those who need it. For acceptance and ambition in balance, and pleasure free of guilt.\n\nFor juice from the grapes we planted and harvested together.\n\nFor the magic of scent, of herbs and candles and food simmering for hours in the kitchen, the aroma seeping into every corner.\n\nThank you for the ability to stand among giants and not feel small.\n\nThank you, Isaac Vainio.\n\nThank you for wonder, and for curiosity.\n\nFor the beauty of Saturn's rings and the Northern Lights off the shore of Lake Superior, waves of green reflected in the water.\n\nThank you for the joy and loyalty to be found from a simple spider.\n\nFor the love of books and stories that never stop imagining what might be possible.\n\nMost of all, thank you for your stubborn faith that there is always a solution.\n\nThere is always hope.\n\nSleep would have been a kindness. My body needed all the rest it could get, and my mind yearned to escape the real world. But even more than dreams, I wanted that brief period of awakening when dreams and denial blurred together to soften the impact of the real world. Let me blanket myself in delusion and hide from my loss for a few moments longer.\n\nThe universe had been rather short on kindness lately.\n\n\"Isaac, look at me.\"\n\nSunlight turned the leaves overhead to green glass. I squinted and shielded my eyes until they adjusted enough to focus on Nidhi Shah sitting cross-legged beside me. Lena stood behind her.\n\nThe grove was still crowded, but now it was the Porters who had gathered here, and most of them were staring at me. Pallas and Gutenberg stood at my feet. I spotted Whitney and John, but not Toni. Maryelizabeth's arm was in a sling. A woman I didn't recognize was leaning against a tree while another libriomancer regrew her leg.\n\n\"Lena\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm all right.\" The exhaustion in her eyes suggested otherwise, but at least she was alive.\n\nNidhi touched my wrist, feeling for my pulse. \"What do you remember?\"\n\nI had been Nidhi's client, and I knew her therapeutic voice. This was something else. Calm, but she wasn't trying to hide her grief.\n\n\"Enough.\" There was a woman in bronze, and a name, but when I tried to remember, the syllables slipped from my memory. I brought my fingers to my head, touching the skin where Gutenberg's pen had traced his spell.\n\nHot pinpricks scampered up my ribs. I looked down to see Smudge crouched on my chest. \"Hi, buddy.\" I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked at Pallas. \"How are things in Copper River?\"\n\n\"Contained, but not controlled. We've cut off communications with the outside world while we work on damage control.\"\n\nI nodded. \"How many casualties?\"\n\n\"We won't know for at least a day,\" said Gutenberg. He picked up a lifeless metal grasshopper and held it to the light. Rainbows shimmered along the edges of the iridescent wings. He touched one wing, which was sharp enough to draw blood, though the cut healed quickly. \"What happened to the students of Bi Sheng?\"\n\n\"I honestly don't know.\"\n\nHe pulled a book out of his pocket, and it was all I could do to keep from swearing. It was the same A. E. van Vogt book he had used at the library to read Guan Feng's mind. \"Is Feng\u2014\"\n\n\"Gone,\" said Pallas. \"Jeff was found unconscious in the library. He hasn't woken up yet, but I'm told he will recover.\"\n\nGutenberg tapped the cover, and golden tendrils grew from his scalp, reaching toward Lena and myself. I watched it all happen again in my mind. Deifilia battled Lena. The two ghosts attacked. Bi Wei stopped them from killing Lena, then fell.\n\nI remembered seizing control of the tree and turning it against Deifilia. What happened after was unfamiliar.\n\nI saw through Lena's eyes how she had locked Harrison in place, twisting the branch around his neck and trapping him with his dying dryad. Then she ran to me. She argued with the students of Bi Sheng, while to the side, another man worked over Bi Wei's body. A woman knelt to touch my face. The last of the wendigos dropped to the ground and fled.\n\n\"The two of you let them go,\" Gutenberg said, enunciating every word.\n\n\"They helped us to stop Deifilia and the Army of Ghosts.\"\n\n\"Despite the sayings people repeat unthinkingly, the enemy of my enemy may not in fact be my friend.\" He waved a hand, and the tendrils faded away. \"You've freed an enemy we cannot see. They carry madness within them, Isaac. What happens when the first of their number loses their battle against the ghosts?\"\n\nI looked at Nidhi. \"I could refer them to a good therapist.\"\n\nSeveral of the Porters cringed. I couldn't blame them. Sassing Gutenberg wasn't a wise life choice. But he had taken my magic, and I found it hard to care what else he did to me.\n\n\"Toni Warwick was found unconscious at the edge of town,\" Gutenberg said. \"She told us what you had given her, but she was unable to guard them from Bi Wei and her companions.\"\n\nBi Wei had survived. I wondered if he could see my relief. \"Will Toni be all right?\"\n\n\"Eventually.\" He leaned closer. His breath smelled of peppermint. \"What was done once can be done again. Tell me of the books, their titles and content.\"\n\nI frowned. I could see myself pulling the books from Beauty as we drove through Copper River, but I couldn't remember the titles. Nor could I recall the names of Bi Wei's companions. Even the content of Bi Wei's book eluded me, though I had a vague memory of poetry\u2026\"I don't remember.\"\n\nPallas stepped forward. \"Sir, it was through Isaac's relationship with Jeff DeYoung that the werewolves came to assist us. Without his help\u2014\"\n\n\"I know.\" Gutenberg raised a hand. \"He stopped Deifilia. He captured August Harrison. He ended the attack on Copper River, and no doubt saved many lives, including some of our own. But he risked much more. Had he contacted me when he learned of Deifilia's assault on Lena's tree, we could have contained the situation.\"\n\n\"Bi Wei and Guan Feng trust me,\" I said. \"I can try to reach out to them, negotiate a truce.\"\n\n\"You will do nothing of the sort,\" said Gutenberg. \"This is a Porter matter.\"\n\nIt took me a moment to realize what he was saying. When understanding hit, I felt like he had transformed me to stone, starting from my stomach and working outward.\n\nNidhi put a hand on my shoulder, as if to restrain me. \"Independence\u2014impulsiveness, really\u2014is one of the qualities shared by many of your best libriomancers.\"\n\n\"It's also a quality shared by most of our fatalities,\" Gutenberg snapped. For the first time, he sounded truly angry. \"Bi Wei and her four companions have escaped, and the Army of Ghosts is awakening. Tell me, Doctor Shah, will you continue to defend him if it turns out he saved this town only to damn the entire world?\"\n\nI tugged free of Nidhi's grip and stood. \"The day I joined Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re, you made me swear to protect this world, to help us expand our knowledge, and to preserve the secrecy of magic.\" I gestured at the oak trees towering over us. \"I think that third part is pretty well screwed, but what about the rest? Bi Wei and the others knew about the Army of Ghosts, the danger you've feared for five hundred years. You tried to murder the only people who could have helped you fight them.\"\n\nI was yelling at Johannes Gutenberg. Oh, God, I was so dead. \"How much knowledge have you burned because you were afraid it might be used against you? How many people have you killed because you were afraid?\"\n\nI swallowed and waited for him to transform me into a cockroach and feed me to Smudge. Instead, he simply sighed.\n\n\"I was young, and the world was different. Though people remain much the same. They say you learn from your mistakes. I've learned more than anyone else in recorded history. But the mistakes of the past do not excuse the mistakes of the present. Nor do they protect us from the consequences of those mistakes.\"\n\nI really didn't like the emphasis on the word consequences. Neither did Lena, judging by the way she edged closer and shifted her stance.\n\n\"Isaac could still help us,\" Pallas pointed out. \"Even without magic.\"\n\nGutenberg tilted his head in acknowledgment. \"You assume it was my choice to dismiss him from the Porters, but Isaac made that choice before we arrived. Didn't you?\"\n\nI straightened, determined to face this head-on. Locking my magic had been the first step, and it had saved me from madness. But Gutenberg wouldn't stop there. Having determined that my memories were of no use to the Porters, he would take them from me as well. I would be erased from the Porter archives, and from the minds of my peers. No wonder he hadn't worried about holding this conversation in public; when he was finished, nobody else would remember it.\n\nLena stepped in front of me and kicked at Gutenberg's hand. He dodged and stepped back. Before Lena could follow up, I grabbed her in a bear hug from behind.\n\n\"Are you insane?\" I whispered. She could have broken free with ease, but she held back, presumably to keep from hurting me.\n\nShe turned in my arms to face me. \"He's going to take your memories.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"No, you don't.\" Lena was crying now. \"Think, Isaac. None of the Porters will even remember your name. I won't remember you.\"\n\nI hadn't realized until now what that meant. Whatever independence or freedom she had gained from being pulled between Nidhi's desires and my own would be lost. \"I'm so sorry, Lena.\"\n\nThe other Porters were shifting and muttering uneasily, all save Nicola. They didn't understand. Few among us knew the truth about how Gutenberg dealt with those he considered criminals.\n\nGutenberg sighed. \"I don't do this to be cruel, Isaac. You acted to protect your home, using the best judgment you could. I understand that. I hope you'll understand I'm doing the same.\"\n\nI kissed Lena, then pushed her toward Nidhi. I watched Gutenberg raise his pen and approach once again. If he was going to rob me of everything I loved, he could damn well look me in the eye when he did it.\n\nThe touch of the pen was like a syringe jabbing through my skin. Cold tingled over my body. Every muscle clenched painfully tight.\n\nGutenberg jumped back, and for a second, I thought I saw the shadow of Bi Wei standing between us. He flung the pen to the ground as if it were on fire.\n\nHe studied me, eyes flitting side to side as if I were an enormous newspaper. \"It would appear you've made a friend.\"\n\nI sagged in relief, and might have fallen if Lena hadn't caught me.\n\n\"Very well.\" Gutenberg retrieved his pen and tucked it back into his pocket. \"Perhaps as you see the damage caused by the forces you've allowed to escape, you'll change your mind about aiding us. In the meantime, we will be watching you, Isaac Vainio.\" He turned to Pallas. \"I've given the other Regional Masters a summary of what we're facing, but we'll need to gather and share as much information as possible. First, we need to make sure this site is fully neutralized, then do what we can to control the rumors.\"\n\n\"Why bother?\" Knowing Gutenberg couldn't take my memories had made me bold. Or stupid. Probably both. \"The students of Bi Sheng are free. You think they're going to worry about keeping your precious secrets?\"\n\n\"What do you suggest?\" Gutenberg asked, his words deceptively mild.\n\n\"I lost friends today. Their families deserve to know why. They deserve the truth.\"\n\n\"You don't know what the truth would do,\" he said softly. \"I've seen how they respond to truth. I've lived through the Inquisition and the witch hunts. I've watched my loved ones burn.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Pallas said, \"whatever we do, we should act soon. I've called for healers, and can split the rest of our forces into teams.\"\n\nGutenberg nodded and stepped toward the edge of the grove. He turned around to look at me, his expression unreadable. \"Farewell, Isaac Vainio.\"\n\nThe Porters did their best, but they couldn't manipulate the minds of an entire town, let alone everyone who had seen or read about the story online. A photo of the dragon smashing its way into town had gone viral, and a six-second video of a wendigo at the ice cream shop kept popping up on various social media sites no matter how many times the Porters tried to take it offline.\n\nNor could they find and destroy the remains of every one of the hundreds of metal insects and other creatures Harrison and Deifilia had sent to attack us. They did their best to track down the wendigos, but I had no doubt we'd be seeing more \"Bigfoot sightings\" for months to come.\n\nThe Porters had trapped a fair number of wendigos, but they hadn't found them all. Nor were any of the people they restored to human form associated with the students of Bi Sheng. I knew Harrison had transformed some of his own people, but Bi Wei and her friends must have hunted them down, saving their own and making sure they couldn't be captured and used by the Porters.\n\nNone of which was my concern anymore.\n\nI sat in the grass, my back against one of the outer oaks of Lena's grove, and tried to read. I had picked up Gaiman's latest, but I hadn't managed to get past the first two pages. Not because of any problem with the writing, but because when I read his words, I felt nothing.\n\nI knew there was magic here. Given Gaiman's fanbase, I should have been able to touch this book's magic in my sleep.\n\nI sighed and set the book aside. Maybe I would be better off rereading an old favorite. Preferably something light. Pratchett's Discworld series would keep me busy for a while.\n\nLena had somehow shrunk the surrounding oaks of her grove to a more reasonable height, and was currently clearing a section of the canopy, folding the branches back to allow us a better view of the stars and a distant comet that should be visible through the telescope later tonight. I had a new eyepiece for the scope that I'd been wanting to try.\n\nI pulled a crumpled piece of green paper from the pocket of my jeans. The front was an advertisement for a book club that had met at the library over the summer. On the back, I had done my best to recreate the lines Gutenberg had engraved into my skull.\n\nSileo. Latin for I am silent.\n\n\"Any progress?\" Lena asked as she emerged from the grove.\n\nI shook my head. \"It's not a form of libriomancy I understand. If he had written a longer phrase, I might be able to find a source, but this is just a single word. It could refer to anything. I suspect the pen is as much a part of the magic as the writing. I'd give half my books to get my hands on it.\"\n\nI didn't tell her about the e-mail I had received from Nicola Pallas yesterday. I hadn't told anyone, though I had reread it until I memorized every word. I was certain Nicola had broken some rule or another in sending it, which was amazing all by itself. Or maybe there were simply no rules for a situation like mine, and she had taken advantage of that omission.\n\nThe e-mail had been short and businesslike. Pallas began by reminding me that I was no longer a Porter, and that any attempt to access Porter resources or data would be ill-advised. Because of my service to the organization, she thought it only fair that I receive my final paycheck. It would be deposited into my savings account at the end of the month, and that would be the last time they contacted me.\n\nThen, at the very end of her message, she warned me against trying to undo Gutenberg's spell, explaining that historically, almost all such attempts had ended badly.\n\nI knew Nicola Pallas. She was far too careful in her writing to have used the word \"almost\" by accident. Just as importantly, she knew me well enough to know I would pounce on that word as proof that it could be done.\n\nShe had given me hope.\n\n\"I heard on the radio that a sparkler photobombed a live news broadcast down in Detroit,\" Lena commented.\n\nMy lips quirked. For the past two days since the attack, I had been inseparable from my computer, reading every article and blog post I could find about the attack on Copper River, Michigan. Theories ranged from the outlandish to the mundanely predictable: mass hallucinations, government experiments gone wrong, aliens, and more.\n\nThe physical repairs to the town had undermined many of the stories. I had driven past the water tower, standing tall once again. I couldn't find a single weld to show where the legs had broken. The restaurant remained closed, but the door and windows had been fixed.\n\nIt was the same throughout town, and the reporters who arrived in search of a story met with confusion and conjecture from people who remembered nothing of the past days. On the other hand, there were always people eager for attention who were happy to confirm whatever explanation the reporters wanted, so long as it gave them their fifteen minutes of fame.\n\nThe last article I read had taken the government conspiracy approach, claiming that Copper River was a test site for hallucinogenic weapons, and everyone who stayed would be dying of cancer over the next decade.\n\nI told myself I wasn't obsessing. I was trying to read past the stories, to find out what the Porters had been up to, and whether they had been able to track down Bi Wei and the others. With no access to the Porter database and no magic of my own, this was my best chance to reconstruct their movements.\n\nI watched Smudge climb slowly up one of the oaks, stalking a firefly. I hadn't been certain what would happen to him with my magic gone. How much did Smudge exist independently of me, and how much was his magic bound to my own? The first time I watched him toast a cricket, my relief had been overwhelming.\n\nAs had the envy that followed.\n\nLena slid down beside me. \"What happens now?\"\n\nI pointed to the sky. \"Later tonight, between Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia, we should be able to see\u2014\"\n\n\"Dork.\" She kissed my ear. \"You know what I mean.\"\n\n\"I've still got the library job. I asked Jennifer to move me back to full time.\" No matter what else the Porters had done to me, at least they had repaired my library. I had been going there since I was three years old. I blinked hard and waited for the tightness in my throat to ease.\n\nI could feel the depression trying to pull me down and smother me, as it had done at random times for the past two days. Nidhi was ready to start slipping Zoloft into my drinks. She would have been happier if I was talking to someone, but I couldn't exactly go to a normal therapist with my problems, and Doctor Karim wasn't allowed to meet with me anymore, since I was no longer a Porter.\n\nI had also been volunteering around town, trying to pitch in wherever I could. I had donated blood, run an impromptu story time for kids, helped out with a charity fundraiser for the \"unexplained\" deaths that had taken at least twenty-one people\u2026anything to be useful. Anything to keep from feeling powerless.\n\nWhen I walked past the cemetery and saw the freshly dug graves, nothing seemed like enough.\n\n\"I've got something I want to show you.\" Lena sounded uncharacteristically shy. \"Nidhi, too. A project I'll need both of you to help with.\"\n\nBefore she could say more, Nidhi emerged from the back of the house with Jeff and Helen DeYoung in tow. I was starting to get used to having an extra houseguest in Nidhi. I knew perfectly well she was staying because she was worried about me, and wanted to make sure I wasn't suicidal. It wasn't an unreasonable fear, but after coming so close to so many different flavors of death, I had no desire at all to go there again.\n\n\"Later,\" Lena whispered.\n\nJeff and Nidhi waited while Helen navigated the deck with her crutches. She had taken on a pair of wendigos on the south part of town. I hadn't been able to pry anything out of her, beyond, \"You should see the other guys, eh?\"\n\nJeff was in slightly better shape. The first time I saw him, he had looked half-mummified in bandages from the cuts he had suffered, but the worst of his wounds had scabbed over and were beginning to heal. By the time the next full moon rolled around, he should be good as new.\n\nGuan Feng had slept undisturbed through the attack, and most of the creatures had abandoned the library to come after me. I had gotten the rest of the story from Helen, how the students of Bi Sheng knocked Jeff unconscious with a flick of their fingers, until one of the rescue workers found him curled up and snoring in the library the next afternoon.\n\n\"We brought cedar-smoked salmon,\" Helen announced. She had become far friendlier when she learned I was no longer welcome among the Porters.\n\n\"And a thank you from Laci's and Hunter's families.\" Jeff dug a pair of knitted mittens and matching hat from the pocket of his sweatshirt and tossed them to me. \"For taking care of the bastard who attacked their kids.\"\n\nThey were surprisingly soft, gray with a dappling of black spun through the wool. \"Thank them for me.\"\n\n\"They'd been saving the yarn,\" Helen said. \"Spun it themselves.\"\n\nI hesitated. \"What exactly am I holding here?\"\n\nJeff chuckled. \"Nothing too weird. They brushed it from Laci and Hunter the first year they went through the change. It's tradition, at least in these parts. You spin the fur into wool and use it for something special. Wear those, and any werewolf will know from the scent to treat you like family.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I repeated, humbled.\n\n\"Won't be long until word gets out about us,\" Helen said. \"The Porters are trying to cover things up, but it's like trying to put the egg back into the shell. There have always been rumors about Tamarack, but now folks will start putting the pieces together. Two families have left town already. The rest are stocking up on weapons and ammunition.\"\n\n\"If the Porters can't stop the signal, they'll do their best to control it,\" Lena said.\n\n\"Has anyone in Copper River figured out what you do\u2014what you used to do, I mean\u2014on the side?\" Helen asked.\n\n\"Not yet.\" Earlier today, after attending the first of what would be many funerals to come, Pete Malki had asked about the additional trees in my backyard. Several of my neighbors wanted to know how my home had survived the destruction that had taken out the rest of the street. Thus far, they'd all been willing to take my word that I was as baffled as the rest of them. \"I'm sorry I can't do anything for your leg.\"\n\nShe waved off my concern. \"I've had worse. Did I ever tell you about the time I was out hunting, and a black bear managed to creep up behind me? She was downwind, and I was recovering from a cold, so by the time I sniffed her, it was too late to run.\"\n\nI settled back to listen, though I wasn't sure how much of her story to believe. I certainly didn't buy the one Jeff told next, which started with a home-brewing project and ended with Jeff punching a moose.\n\nNidhi brought chairs out from the house, and Jeff eventually retreated to the kitchen to heat up dinner. Lena grabbed a six-pack of beer a short time later, along with a two-liter bottle of Cherry Coke for herself.\n\nBy the time the sky grew dark, I had been thoroughly briefed on gossip about half the werewolves in Tamarack. I had shared a bit of salmon with Smudge, who apparently felt it was horribly undercooked, but otherwise approved. I thought it was delicious, and even went back for a second helping. It was the first real meal I had eaten since losing my magic.\n\nEventually, Helen tapped her husband on the shoulder, interrupting his tale about a rather acrobatic foursome he and Helen had participated in when they were younger. I had no idea whether or not they were embellishing or making the whole thing up. I was fairly certain the bit about the hammock was a lie, based on simple physics. Either way, it was definitely making me blush. Meanwhile, I could see Lena taking detailed mental notes.\n\n\"We need to start heading back,\" said Helen. \"Now you call us if there's anything you need, understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" I said, climbing to my feet. \"And thank you.\"\n\nThey both seemed to understand that I wasn't talking about the food. Each of them hugged me in turn, then did the same with Nidhi and Lena.\n\n\"Try to stay out of trouble for a while, eh?\" Jeff said as he left.\n\n\"Not really part of my skill set,\" I called back, earning a laugh from them both.\n\nNidhi stood with her arms folded, studying me. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she turned to go back inside.\n\n\"Wait.\" Lena jumped to her feet and ducked into the grove, to her oak. She crouched at the base of the tree, reached into the roots, and pulled something from the dirt.\n\nWhen I saw what she carried, I backed away. \"Is that what I think it is?\"\n\n\"Yes and no.\" She extended the book to me.\n\nI thought at first that Bi Wei had left her book behind, but I couldn't imagine her taking such a risk. When I took the cloth-bound tome, I saw that the cover text was slightly different, though I couldn't read it.\n\nThe writing inside was identical to that in Bi Wei's book, at least the beginning. I turned to the middle, where carefully formed Chinese characters were replaced by English. \"This is your handwriting.\"\n\n\"I found it in the roots of my tree,\" Lena said. \"They made it for me. I think it was a gift from Bi Wei. When I pulled her from her book, she must have seen more of my thoughts than I realized.\"\n\nNidhi pressed close, reading over my shoulder. I turned the page and read, \"The oak is ever divided\u2026\"\n\nLena stared at the ground. \"I'm not saying it's good. I never claimed to be a poet.\"\n\n\"It's beautiful,\" I said. \"Jeneta would\u2014\" Only I was forbidden from talking with her.\n\n\"They used these books as an escape,\" Nidhi said. \"A way to survive in a time of war.\"\n\n\"I want the same thing,\" Lena said. \"To survive.\" She took the book back and held it almost reverently. \"I'm not done with it yet, and I don't know if it will work, but I want to try.\"\n\nLena's nature couldn't be rewritten. Gutenberg had said so himself. Then again, Gutenberg had said a lot of things that turned out to be untrue or incomplete. If these books could sustain the students of Bi Sheng for so many years\u2014if they could give them a foundation even now to stave off the madness of the Army of Ghosts\u2014who was to say it couldn't do the same for Lena?\n\n\"I'll need you both to read it,\" Lena continued. \"Each day, if you can.\"\n\n\"Of course, love,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"Twice a day on weekends,\" I promised.\n\n\"Thank you.\" She kissed each of us, then returned the book to the safety of her tree. When she returned, her eyes were somber. \"When do you think the Army of Ghosts will return?\"\n\nNot if, but when. \"They're awake now, and they've planted their seeds in Bi Wei and the others. If the ghosts can't take control of them, they'll look for another way into our world.\"\n\nAnd when they got here, they would certainly remember who had derailed their plans. Twice.\n\nI thought of the armored woman I had seen in my madness, and my hand went to the shock-gun in my pocket. Technically, I should have turned that in when they kicked me out of the Porters.\n\nOn the other hand, screw them.\n\n\"This isn't over, is it?\" asked Nidhi.\n\nI peered through the telescope and adjusted the knob until the stars came into sharp focus. \"The world is about to discover magic. This is only the beginning.\"\n\nJeneta dreamed she was back in the car with Myron Worster, a white-haired Porter in a suit and tie, with sharp wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. For a glorified magical babysitter, he was nice enough, if you could get past his penchant for show tunes and the perpetual smell of pipe tobacco.\n\n\"Are you sure we don't have time to see Isaac?\" Jeneta asked. \"Just to say good-bye, and to thank him.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. Pallas' orders.\"\n\nShe could have used magic to influence him, but it wasn't worth the risk. He had demonstrated his magic in her cabin at Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe, pulling various potions and magical ointments from the books in his suitcase. He explained in excruciating detail how he had spent fifty years studying the effects of different potions, learning how to combine them for maximum potency, from flight and invisibility to speed and strength. Given a few minutes to mix his magical cocktails, he was all but unbeatable.\n\nHe had spent several days watching over her, his senses and reflexes magically enhanced. As far as Jeneta knew, he hadn't slept once, nor would he until she was safely on the plane home.\n\nOnly he hadn't kept her safe. She remembered finding a dead butterfly in her cabin, the body the size and shape of a bullet, with wings of milky glass. Worster reassured her that August Harrison's insects had all died with the destruction of the queen, but he had destroyed the butterfly to be safe. He snapped the wings and broke the body in half.\n\nOnly after he left to dispose of the remains did Jeneta notice the tiny bead it had left behind, like a dull metal egg. The bead clung to her finger when she touched it.\n\nShe recalled the pinprick of legs crawling through her thoughts. They chipped at her mind, consuming her memories one by one, and the more she tried to protect herself with magic, the quicker they fed.\n\n\"Sleep, girl.\"\n\nThe voice in her head was her own, but she hadn't spoken. She fought the compulsion to obey, to sink deeper into dreams and nightmares. Terror helped her to kick toward the surface long enough to glimpse her surroundings.\n\nShe was on a moving sidewalk, striding through a tunnel with curved walls. Colored light rippled along the wall in time to music. At the end of the walkway, the crowd split apart, following overhead signs directing passengers to the proper terminals. This was an airport. How had she gotten here?\n\n\"The B\u00ec de d\u00fa demonstrated you could survive death in a book,\" said the other voice. \"Even one so small as a computer chip. Assuming you found someone who could touch its magic.\"\n\n\"I know you,\" said Jeneta. The devourers had found her first through her nightmares, and then through the insects in Lena's tree. She had known they wouldn't stop.\n\nThe scent of cinnamon rolls attracted her attention, and she paused in front of a small shop. Her lips curved upward. She pulled out her phone and brought up Maya Angelou's \"Amazing Peace.\" Seconds later, the customers and staff sat entranced, utterly at peace. No one even noticed as Jeneta reached around the counter, grabbed a roll, and walked off.\n\n\"Such an efficient little spellbook.\"\n\nShe strode toward the gate, ending her spell with a mere thought. She sat in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs by the window and looked out at the planes rolling to and fro along the runway.\n\nShe remembered Worster escorting her into the airport. Once inside, she had used her magic to reassure him and send him on his way. After that, it was a simple enough matter to confuse the necessary people and change her flight plans.\n\n\"Is this your first trip to Beijing?\" asked a man sitting two chairs over.\n\nJeneta fought to scream, or to beg the man for help, but like a dream, she had no control of her words or body. \"Not exactly.\"\n\n\"You look a little young to be flying to another country by yourself.\"\n\n\"I'm older than I look.\" She licked frosting from her fingertips. \"Enough. Back to sleep with you.\"\n\nJeneta could no more resist that command than she could stop the night from falling. Darkness consumed her, and sounds grew distant.\n\n\"Vacationing?\" asked the stranger.\n\n\"Retrieving an\u2026inheritance.\"\n\nAs Jeneta sank back into nightmare, memories of a face cast or carved from brass flowed through her mind. The features were exaggerated: an elongated nose, and full lips. An overly high brow, creased in thought. Her hair was plaited, interwoven with tiny clumps of gold, five-petaled flowers.\n\nAnd beyond that mask, a legion of the dead, waiting to follow."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Snake Studies",
        "author": "jedipati",
        "genres": [
            "Good Omens",
            "fanfic"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Megan Smith smiled as she looked at the old bookshop. A.Z. Fell and Co was becoming famous, but not for books.\n\nNo, it was the snake that had taken to inhabiting the bookstore. Mr. Fell, the owner, was either clueless on what type of snake he had, or he didn't want to tell anyone.\n\nIt didn't help that people kept saying the snake was different sizes. Megan had heard people mention sizes from a foot long to nearly ten feet, and everything in between. And yet, every single snake was black, with the same red stripes on the side and bright yellow eyes.\n\nNo one was sure what type of snake it was, or even if it was one snake or if Fell just liked snakes and had several pets.\n\nMegan was determined to find out. She was studying herpetology and wanted to work for a zoo in the reptile department. She loved snakes, and everything she heard about this one or ones told her she'd love them.\n\nMegan took a deep breath and entered the store. She'd been hearing stories for months, she wanted to know if they were real.\n\n\"Hello,\" the man behind the counter said warily as the bells on the door jingled. He didn't look like the kind of man to own (possibly multiple) black snakes, but looks were deceiving.\n\nMegan smiled at him. \"Mr. Fell?\" she asked.\n\nHe nodded. \"I am indeed. What can I help you with, my dear?\"\n\nMegan paused. \"I\u2026 Um\u2026\"\n\nThe man smiled suddenly. \"Is this about the snake?\" he asked. \"Everyone who wants to see him acts like this,\" he added at her surprise.\n\n\"Oh. Well, yes,\" Megan said. \"I'm a student and I want to work with snakes in a zoo someday, and I heard about your snake- or snakes- and I'd love to see one of them- or him, I suppose, if it's just one.\"\n\nMr. Fell chuckled. \"I'm not sure where he is right now,\" he said. \"But I'm sure there's a snake around here somewhere.\" That really didn't answer the question on if there was more than one. \"You're free to look around, just be careful of the books.\"\n\nMegan smiled. \"I will, Mr. Fell,\" she promised. She'd heard stories about how Mr. Fell felt about anyone who mistreated his books, but also that he didn't mind people coming in to admire his snake(s).\n\nMegan began to look around. It was a wonderful bookstore, and it felt like she imagined a portal to another world might feel like. It felt like home should feel like, she thought. She banished that thought. Time to go snake hunting.\n\nIt was warm enough in the shop that any snake would be comfortable. Perhaps most snakes (except desert snakes) would like more humidity but that would be bad for the books. Megan frowned. Perhaps that meant this snake was a desert snake?\n\nShe turned down one aisle and stopped. A snake- a beautiful black snake- was all coiled up on an empty shelf. \"Hello Beautiful,\" she whispered. At her words, the snake poked it's head up and sampled the air with its tongue.\n\nShe smiled at it. Black, with red stripes, and the bright yellow eyes\u2026 she'd found it. She couldn't tell how big it was, since it was coiled up, but this was the snake.\n\nIt was such a pretty snake. Megan took the time to admire the snake for a while before she took a deep breath. Time to get a good look at it. And take several photos, too.\n\nIt looked like it might be a red-bellied black snake, almost, but the head was wrong. And surely Mr. Fell knew better than to let a venomous snake roam free. Even if it was a venomous snake that had never actually killed anyone.\n\nNo, it wasn't a red-bellied black. But she had no idea what it could be.\n\nThe snake took that moment to begin uncoiling and moving down the bookshelf. She watched as it slithered away and decided that it was probably about five feet long. That was just slightly too long to be a red-bellied black, too. So it wasn't that.\n\nWhat other snakes species were black with the red stripe and belly?\n\nMegan would need to study.\n\nShe headed out, after saying goodbye to Mr. Fell.\n\nOnce she got home, she wasn't happy that all the pictures she'd taken of the snake were missing from her phone, but she could still look things up from memory at least."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Aziraphale sighed as he flipped the sign to closed after another busy day and sat down on his couch. He felt something slitter up his leg but didn't move. \"This is your fault, you know,\" he said as the something settled down on the couch beside him.\n\nThe not terribly large snake that Crowley currently was somehow managed to convey innocence, even though Aziraphale had never known him to actually be innocent. Perhaps he had been before the Fall, but Aziraphale had never been able to even imagine Crowley as anything other than the Demon he was.\n\n\"You don't fool me,\" Aziraphale said. \"You're having fun with them.\"\n\nThe snake reared up and a second later was replaced with a man. \"Can you blame me, Angel?\"\n\nAziraphale didn't say anything to that. No, he didn't. It was honestly fun for him, too.\n\n\"And thankssss,\" Crowley added. \"For not ruining the mystery for them.\"\n\nAziraphale just smiled and handed him a mug of cocoa."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens",
        "author": "Brandon Sanderson",
        "genres": [
            "comedy",
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "young adult",
            "humor",
            "Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "I AM AN IDIOT.\n\nYOU SHOULD KNOW THIS ALREADY, IF YOU'VE READ THE PREVIOUS THREE VOLUMES OF MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. IF, BY CHANCE, YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM, THEN DON'T WORRY. YOU'LL GET THE IDEA. AFTER ALL, NOTHING IN THIS BOOK WILL MAKE ANY KIND OF SENSE TO YOU. YOU'LL BE CONFUSED AT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FREE KINGDOMS AND THE HUSHLANDS. YOU'LL WONDER WHY I KEEP PRETENDING THAT MY GLASSES ARE MAGICAL. YOU'LL BE BAFFLED BY ALL THESE INSANE CHARACTERS.\n\n(ACTUALLY, YOU'LL PROBABLY WONDER ALL OF THOSE SAME THINGS IF YOU START FROM THE BEGINNING TOO. THESE BOOKS DON'T REALLY MAKE A LOT OF SENSE, YOU SEE. TRY LIVING THROUGH ONE OF THEM SOMETIME. THEN YOU'LL KNOW WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO BE CONFUSED.)\n\nANYWAY, AS I WAS SAYING, IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE OTHER THREE BOOKS, THEN DON'T BOTHER. THAT WILL MAKE THIS BOOK EVEN MORE CONFUSING TO YOU, AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WANT. BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION, JUST LET ME SAY THIS: MY NAME IS ALCATRAZ SMEDRY, MY TALENT IS BREAKING THINGS, AND I'M STOOPID. REALLY, REALLY STOOPID. SO STOOPID, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPELL THE WORD STUPID.\n\nTHIS IS MY STORY. OR, WELL, PART FOUR OF IT. OTHERWISE KNOWN AS \"THE PART WHERE EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, AND THEN ALCATRAZ HAS A CHEESE SANDWICH.\"\n\nENJOY."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "So there I was, holding a pink teddy bear in my hand. It had a red bow and an inviting, cute, bearlike smile. Also, it was ticking.\n\n\"Now what?\" I asked.\n\n\"Now you throw it, idiot!\" Bastille said urgently.\n\nI frowned, then tossed the bear to the side, through the open window, into the small room filled with sand. A second later, and explosion blasted back through the window and tossed me into the air. I was propelled backward, then slammed into the far wall.\n\nWith an urk of pain, I slid down and fell onto my back. I blinked, my vision fuzzy. Little flakes of plaster \u2013 the kind the put on ceilings just so they can break off and fall to the ground dramatically in an explosion \u2013 broke off the ceiling and fell dramatically to the ground. One hit me on the forehead.\n\n\"Ow,\" I said. I lay there, staring upward, breathing in and out. \"Bastille, did that teddy bear just explode?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, walking over and looking down at me. She had on a gray-blue militaristic uniform, and wore her straight, silver hair long. On her belt was a small sheath that had a large hilt sticking out of it. That hid her Crystin blade; though the sheath was only about a foot long, if she drew the weapon out it would be the length of a regular sword.\n\n\"Okay. Right. Why did that teddy bear just explode?\"\n\n\"Because you pulled out the pin, stupid. What else did you expect it to do?\"\n\nI groaned, sitting up. The room around us - inside the Nalhallan Royal Weapons Testing Facility - was white and featureless. The wall where we'd been standing had an open window looking into the blast range, which was filled with sand. There were no other windows or furniture, save for a set of cabinets on our right.\n\n\"What did I expect it to do?\" I said. \"Maybe play some music? Say 'mama'? Where I come from, exploding is not a normal bear habit.\"\n\n\"Where you come from, a lot of things are backward,\" Bastille said. \"I'll bet your poodles don't explode either.\"\n\n\"No, they don't.\"\n\n\"Pity.\"\n\n\"Actually, exploding poodles would be awesome. But exploding teddy bears? That's dangerous!\"\n\n\"Duh.\"\n\n\"But Bastille, they're for children!\"\n\n\"Exactly. So that they can defend themselves, obviously.\" She rolled her eyes and walked back over to the window that looked into the sand-filled room. She didn't ask if I was hurt. She could see that I was still breathing, and that was generally good enough for her.\n\nAlso, you may have noticed that this is Chapter Two. You may be wondering where chapter one went. It turns out that I - being stoopid - lost it. Don't worry, it was kind of boring anyway. Well, except for the talking llamas.\n\nI climbed to my feet. \"In case you were wondering -\"\n\n\"I wasn't.\"\n\n\"- I'm fine.\"\n\n\"Great.\"\n\nI frowned, walking up to Bastille. \"Is something bothering you, Bastille?\"\n\n\"Other than you?\"\n\n\"I always bother you,\" I said. \"And you're always a little grouchy. But today you've been downright mean.\"\n\nShe glanced at me, arms folded. Then I saw her expression soften faintly. \"Yeah.\"\n\nI raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"I just don't like losing.\"\n\n\"Losing?\" I said. \"Bastille, you recovered your place in the knights, exposed - and defeated traitor to your order, and stopped the Librarians from kidnapping or killing the Council of Kings. If that's 'losing,' you've got a really funny definition of the word.\"\n\n\"Funnier than your face?\"\n\n\"Bastille,\" I said firmly.\n\nShe sighed, leaning down, crossing her arms on the windowsill. \"She Who Cannot Be Named got away, your mother escaped with a pair of Translator's Lenses, and - now that they're not hiding behind the ruse of a treaty \u2013 the Librarians are throwing everything they've got at Mokia.\"\n\n\"You've done what you could. I've done what I could. It's time to let others handle things.\"\n\nShe didn't look happy about that. \"Fine. Let's get back to your explosives training.\" She wanted me well prepared in case the war came to Nalhalla. It wasn't likely to happen, but my ignorance of proper things - like exploding teddy bears - has always been a point of frustration to Bastille.\n\nNow, I realize that many of you are just as ignorant as I am. That's why I prepared a handy guide that explains everything you need to know and remember about my autobiography in order to not be confused by this book. I put the guide back in chapter one. If you ever have trouble, you can reference it. I'm such a nice guy. Dumb, but nice.\n\nBastille opened one of the cabinets on the side wall and pulled out another small, pink teddy bear. She handed it to me as I walked up to her. It had a little tag on the side that said Pull me! in adorable lettering.\n\nI took it nervously. \"Tell me honestly. Why do you build grenades that look like teddy bears? It's not about protecting children.\"\n\n\"Well, how do you feel when you look at that?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"It's cute. In a deadly, destructive way.\" Kind of like Bastille, actually, I thought. \"It makes me want to smile. Then it makes me want to run away screaming, since I know it's really a grenade!\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" Bastille said, taking the bear from me and pulling the tag - the pin - out. She tossed it out the window. \"If you build weapons that look like weapons, then everyone will know to run away from them! This way, the Librarians are confused.\"\n\n\"That's sick,\" I said. \"Shouldn't I be ducking or something?\"\n\n\"You'll be fine,\" she said.\n\nAh, I thought. This one must be some kind of dud or fake. At that second, the grenade outside the window exploded. Another blast threw me backward. I hit the wall with a grunt, and another piece of plaster fell on my head. This time, though, I managed to land on my knees.\n\nOddly I felt remarkably unharmed, considering I'd just been blown backward by the explosion. In fact, neither explosion seemed to have hurt me very badly at all.\n\n\"The pink ones,\" Bastille said, \"are blast-wave grenades. They throw people and things away from them, but they don't actually hurt anyone.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I said, walking up to her. \"How does that work?\"\n\n\"Do I look like an explosives expert?\"\n\nI hesitated. With those fiery eyes and dangerous expression\u2026\n\n\"The answer is no, Smedry,\" she said flatly, folding her arms. \"I don't know how these things work. I'm just a soldier.\"\n\nShe picked up a blue teddy bear and pulled the tag off, then tossed it out the window. I braced myself, grabbing the windowsill, preparing for a blast. This time, however, the bear grenade made a muted thumping sound. The sand in the next room began to pile up in a strange way, and I was suddenly yanked through the window into the next room.\n\nI yelped, tumbling through the air then hit the mound of sand face-first.\n\n\"That,\" Bastille said from behind, \"is a suction-wave grenade. It explodes in reverse, pulling everything toward it instead of pushing it away.\"\n\n\"Mur murr mur murr murrr,\" I said, since my head was buried in the sand. Sand, it should be noted, does not taste very good. Even with ketchup.\n\nI pulled my head free, leaning back against the pile of sand, straightening my Oculator's Lenses and looking back at the window, where Bastille was leaning with arms crossed, smiling faintly. There's nothing like seeing a Smedry get sucked through a window to improve her mood.\n\n\"That should be impossible!\" I protested. \"A grenade that explodes backward?\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes again. \"You've been in Nalhalla for months now, Smedry. Isn't it time to stop pretending that everything shocks or confuses you?\"\n\n\"I\u2026 er\u2026\" I wasn't pretending. I'd been raised in the Hushlands, trained by Librarians to reject things that seemed too\u2026 well, too strange. But Nalhalla - city of castles - was nothing but strangeness. It was hard not to get overwhelmed by it all.\n\n\"I still think a grenade shouldn't be able to explode inward,\" I said, shaking sand off my clothing as I walked up to the window. \"I mean, how would you even make that work?\"\n\n\"Maybe you take the same stuff you put in a regular grenade, then put it in backward?\"\n\n\"I\u2026 don't think it works that way, Bastille.\"\n\nShe shrugged, getting out another bear. This one was purple. She moved to pull the tag.\n\n\"Wait!\" I said, scrambling through the window. I took the bear grenade from her. \"This time you're going to tell me what it does first.\"\n\n\"That's no fun.\"\n\nI raised a skeptical eyebrow at her.\n\n\"This one is harmless,\" she said. \"A stuff-eater grenade. It vaporizes everything nearby that isn't alive. Rocks, dead wood, fibers, glass, metal. All gone. But living plants, animals, people - perfectly safe. Works wonders against Alivened.\"\n\nI looked down at the little purple bear. Alivened were objects brought to life through Dark Oculatory magic. I'd once fought some created from romance novels. \"This could be useful.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" she said. \"Works well against Librarians too. If a group is charging at you with those guns of theirs, you can vaporize the weapons but leave the Librarians unharmed.\"\n\n\"And their clothing?\" I asked.\n\n\"Gone.\"\n\nI hefted the beat contemplating a little payback for being sucked through the window. \"So you're saying that if I threw this at you, and it went off, you'd be left -\"\n\n\"Kicking you in the face?\" Bastille asked coolly. \"Yes. Then I'd staple you to the outside of a tall castle and paint 'dragon food' over your head.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"Er\u2026 why don't we just put this one away?\"\n\n\"Yeah, good idea.\" she took it from me and stuffed it back into the cabinet.\n\n\"So\u2026 I noticed that none of those grenades are, well, actually deadly.\"\n\n\"Of course they aren't,\" Bastille said. \"What do you take us for? Barbarians?\"\n\n\"Of course not. But you are at war.\"\n\n\"War's no excuse for hurting people.\"\n\nI scratched my head. \"I thought war was all about hurting people.\"\n\n\"That's Librarian thinking,\" Bastille said, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes. \"Uncivilized.\" She hesitated. \"Well, actually, even the Librarians use many nonlethal weapons in war these days. You'll see, if the war ever comes here.\"\n\n\"All right\u2026 but you don't have any objections to hurting me on occasion.\"\n\n\"You're a Smedry,\" she said. \"That's different. Now do you want to learn the rest of these grenades or not?\"\n\n\"That depends. What are they going to do to me?\"\n\nShe eyed me, then grumbled something and turned away.\n\nI blinked. I'd gotten used to Bastille's moods by now, but this seemed irregular even for her. \"Bastille?\"\n\nShe walked over to the far side of the room, tapping a section of glass, making the wall turn translucent. The Royal Weapons Testing Facility was a tall, multitowered castle on the far side of Nalhalla City. Our vantage point gave us a great view of the capital.\n\n\"Bastille?\" I asked again, walking up to her.\n\nShe said, arms folded, \"I shouldn't be berating you like this.\"\n\n\"How should you be berating me, then?\"\n\n\"Not at all. I'm sorry, Alcatraz.\"\n\nI blinked. An apology. From Bastille? \"The war really is bothering you, isn't it? Mokia?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I just wish there were more to do. More that we could do.\"\n\nI nodded, understanding. My escape from the Hushlands had snowballed into the rescue of my father from the Library of Alexandria, and following that we'd gotten sucked into stopping Nalhalla from signing a treaty with the Librarians. Now, finally, things had settled down. And not surprisingly, other people - people with more experience than Bastille and me - had taken over doing the most important tasks. I was a Smedry and she a full Knight of Crystallia, but we were both only thirteen. Even in the Free Kingdoms - where people didn't pay as much attention to age - that meant something.\n\nBastille had been rushed through training during her childhood and had obtained knighthood at a very young age. The others of her order expected her to do a lot of practice and training to make up for earlier lapses. She spent half of every day seeing to her duties in Crystallia.\n\nGenerally, I spent my days in Nalhalla learning. Fortunately, this was a whole lot more interesting than school had been back home. I was trained in things like using Oculatory Lenses, conducting negotiations, and using Free Kingdomer weapons. Being a Smedry - I was coming to learn - was like being a mix of secret agent, special forces commando, diplomat, general, and cheese taster.\n\nI won't lie. It was shatteringly cool. Instead of sitting around all day writing biology papers or listening to Mr. Layton from algebra class extol the virtues of complex factoring, I got to throw teddy bear grenades and jump off buildings. It was really fun at the start.\n\nOkay, it was really fun the WHOLE TIME.\n\nBut there was something missing. Before, though I'd been stumbling along without knowing what I was doing, we'd been involved in important events. Now we were just\u2026 well, kids. And that was annoying.\n\n\"Something needs to happen,\" I said. \"Something exciting.\" We looked out the window expectantly.\n\nA bluebird flew by. It didn't, however, explode. Nor did it turn out to be a secret Librarian ninja bird. In fact, despite my dramatic proclamation, nothing at all interesting happened. And nothing interesting will happen for the next three chapters.\n\nSorry. I'm afraid this is going to be a rather boring book. Take a deep breath. The worst part is coming next."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Whew! Those were some boring chapters, weren't they? I know you really didn't want to hear - in intricate detail - about the workings of the Nalhallan sewer systems. Nor did you care to get a scholarly explanation of the original Nalhallan alphabet and how the letters are based on logographic representations of ancient Cabafloo. And, of course, that vibrant, excruciatingly specific description of what it's like to get your stomach pumped probably made you feel sick.\n\nDon't worry, though. These scenes are extremely important to Chapter Thirty-Seven of the novel. Without Chapters Three, Four, and Five, you would be completely lost when we get to a later point in the book. It's for your own good that I included them. You'll thank me later.\n\n\"Wait,\" I said, pointing out through the clear glass wall of the grenade testing room. \"I recognize that bird.\"\n\nNot the bluebird. The giant glass bird rising from the city a short distance away. It was called the Hawkwind, and it had carried me on my first trip to Nalhalla. It was about the size of a small airplane and was constructed completely of beautiful translucent glass.\n\nNow, some of you Hushlanders might wonder how I could recognize that particular vessel among all of those that were flying in and out of Nalhalla. That's because in the Hushlands, the Librarians make sure all vehicles look the same. All airplanes of a certain size look identical. Most cars pretty much look the same: trucks look like every other truck, sedans look like every other sedan. They let you change the color. Whoopee.\n\nThe Librarians claim it has to be this way, giving some gobbledygook about manufacturing costs or assembly lines. Those, of course, are lies. The real reason everything looks the same has to do with one simple concept: underpants.\n\nI'll explain later.\n\nThe Free Kingdoms don't follow Hushlander ways of thinking. When they build something, they like to make it distinctive and original. Even an idiot, like me, could tell the difference between any two vehicles from a distance.\n\n\"The Hawkwind,\" Bastille said, nodding as the glass bird flapped its way into the sky, turning westward. \"Isn't that the ship your father was outfitting for his secret mission?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\n\"Do you think\u2026\"\n\n\"He just left without saying good-bye?\" I watched the Hawkwind streak away into the distance. \"Yes.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "\"To my father and son,\" Grandpa Smedry read, adjusting his Oculator's Lenses as he examined the note. \"I am bad at saying good-bye. Good-bye.\" He lowered the paper, shrugging.\n\n\"That's it?\" Bastille exclaimed. \"That's all he left?\"\n\n\"Er, yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said, holding up two small orange pieces of paper. \"That and what appears to be two coupons for half off a scoop of koala-flavored ice cream.\"\n\n\"That's terrible!\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Actually it's my favorite flavor,\" Grandpa replied, tucking the coupons away. \"Quite considerate of him.\"\n\n\"I meant the note,\" she said, standing with arms folded. We were back in Keep Smedry, an enormous black stone castle nestled on the far south side of Nalhalla City. Fireglass crackled on a hearth at the side of the room. Yes, in the Free Kingdoms there is a kind of glass that can burn. Don't ask.\n\n\"Ah yes,\" Grandpa said, rereading the note. \"Yes, yes, yes. You have to admit, though, he is very bad at good-byes. This note makes a very good argument for that. I mean, he even spelled good-bye wrong. Bad at it indeed!\"\n\nI sat in an overstuffed red chair beside the hearth. It was the chair on which we'd found the note. Apparently my father hadn't told anyone outside his inner circle that he was leaving. He'd gathered his group of soldiers, assistants, and explorers and then taken off.\n\nWe were the only three in the black-walled room. Bastille eyed me. \"I'm sorry, Alcatraz,\" she said. \"This has to be the worst thing he could have done to you.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Grandpa said. \"The coupons could have been for Rocky Road instead.\" He cringed. \"Dreadful stuff. Who puts a road in ice cream? I mean really.\"\n\nBastille regarded him evenly. \"You're not helping.\"\n\n\"I wasn't really trying to,\" Grandpa said, scratching his head. He was bald save for a tuft of white hair running around the back of his head and sticking out behind his ears - like someone had stapled a cloud to his scalp - and he had a large white mustache. \"But I suppose I should. Ragged Resnicks, lad! Don't look so glum. He's a horrible father anyway, right? At least he's gone now!\"\n\n\"You're terrible at this,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Well, at least I didn't spell anything wrong.\"\n\nI smirked. I could see a twinkle in my grandfather's eyes. He was just trying to cheer me up. He walked over, sitting down on the chair beside me. \"Your father doesn't know what to make of you, lad. He didn't have a chance to grow into being a parent. I think he's scared of you.\"\n\nBastille sniffed in distain. \"So Alcatraz is just supposed to sit here in Nalhalla waiting for him to come back? Last time Attica Smedry vanished, it took him thirteen years to reappear. Who knows what he's even planning to do!\"\n\n\"He's going after my mother,\" I said softly.\n\nBastille turned toward me, frowning.\n\n\"She has the book he wants,\" I said. \"The one that has secrets on how to give everyone Smedry Talents.\"\n\n\"That's a specter your father has been chasing for many, many years, Alcatraz,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Giving everyone Smedry Talents? I don't think it's possible.\"\n\n\"People said that about finding the Translator's Lenses too,\" Kaz noted. \"But Attica managed that.\"\n\n\"True, true,\" Grandpa said. \"But this is different.\"\n\n\"I guess,\" I said. \"But \u2013\"\n\nI froze, then turned to the side. My uncle, Kazan Smedry, sat in the third chair beside the fireplace. He was about four feet tall and, like most little people, hated being called a midget. He wore sunglasses, a brown leather jacket, and a tunic underneath that he tucked into a pair of rugged trousers. He was covered in a black, sootlike dust.\n\n\"Kaz!\" I exclaimed. \"You're back!\"\n\n\"Finally!\" he said, coughing.\n\n\"What\u2026\" I asked, indicating the soot.\n\n\"Got lost in the fireplace,\" Kaz said, shrugging. \"Been in the blasted thing for a good two weeks now.\"\n\nEvery Smedry has a Talent. The Talent can be powerful, it can be unpredictable, and it can be disastrous. But it's always interesting. You could get one by being born a Smedry or by marrying a Smedry. My father wanted everyone to get a Talent.\n\nAnd I was beginning to suspect that this is what my mother had been seeking all along. The Sands of Rashid, the years of searching, the theft from the Royal Archives (not a library) in Nalhalla - all of this was focused on finding a way to bestow Smedry Talents on people who didn't normally have them. I suspected that my father did it because he wanted to share our powers with everyone. I suspected that my mother, however, wanted to create an invincible, Talent-wielding Librarian army.\n\nNow, I'm not too bright, but I figured that this was a bad thing. I mean, if Librarians had my Talent \u2013 breaking things? Here's a handy list of things I figure they'd probably break if they could:\n\n1) Your lunch. Every day, when you'd open your lunch - no matter what you brought \u2013 you'd find it had been changed into a pickle-and-orange-slug sandwich. And there would be NO SALT.\n\n2) Dance. You don't want to see any break-dancing Librarians. Really. Trust me.\n\n3) Recess. That's right. They'd break recess and turn it into a session of advanced algebra instead. (Note: The same thing happens when you go to middle school or junior high. Sorry.)\n\n4) Wind. No explanation needed.\n\nAs you can see, it would be a disaster.\n\n\"Kazan!\" Grandpa said, smiling toward his son.\n\n\"Hay, Pop.\"\n\n\"Still getting in trouble, I presume?\"\n\n\"Always.\"\n\n\"Good lad. Trained you well!\"\n\n\"Kaz,\" I said. \"It's been months! What took you so long?\"\n\nKaz grimaced. \"The Talent.\"\n\nIn case you've forgotten, my grandfather had the Talent of arriving late to things, while Kaz had the Talent to get lost in rather amazing ways. (I don't know why I'm repeating this, since I clearly explained it all in Chapter One. Ah well.)\n\n\"Isn't that a long time to get lost, even for you?\" Bastille asked, frowning.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Kaz said. \"I haven't been this lost for years.\"\n\n\"Ah yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Why, I remember your mother and I once spending upward of two months frantically searching for you when you were two, only to have you appear back in your crib one night!\"\n\nKaz looked wistful. \"I was an\u2026 interesting child to raise.\"\n\n\"All Smedrys are,\" Grandpa added.\n\n\"Oh?\" Bastille said, finally sitting down in the fourth and final chair beside the hearth. \"You mean there are Smedrys who eventually grow up? Can I get assigned to one of them sometime? It would be a nice change.\"\n\nI chuckled, but Kaz just shook his head, looking distracted by something. \"I've got my Talent under control again,\" he said. \"Finally. But it took far too long. It's like\u2026 the Talent went haywire for a while. I haven't had to wrestle with it like this for years.\" He scratched his chin. \"I'll have to write a paper about it.\"\n\nMost members of my family, it should be noted, are some kind of professor, teacher, or researcher. It may seem odd to you that a bunch of dedicated miscreants like us are also a bunch of scholars. If you think that, it means you haven't known enough professors in your time. What better way is there to avoid growing up for the rest of your life than to spend it perpetually in school?\n\n\"Pelicans!\" Kaz swore suddenly standing up. \"I don't have time for a paper right now! I nearly forgot. Pop, while I was wandering around lost, I passed through Mokia. Tuki Tuki itself is besieged!\"\n\n\"We know,\" Bastille said, her arms folded.\n\n\"We do?\" Kaz said, scratching at his head.\n\n\"We've sent troops to help Mokia,\" Bastille said. \"But the Librarians have begun to raid our nearby coasts. We can't give any more support to Mokia without leaving Nalhalla undefended.\"\n\n\"It's more than that, I'm afraid,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"There are\u2026 elements in the Council of Kings who are dragging their feet.\"\n\n\"What?\" Kaz exclaimed.\n\n\"You missed the whole thing with the treaty, son,\" Grandpa said. \"I fear some of the kings have made alliances with the Librarians. They nearly got a motion through the Council to abandon Mokia entirely. That was defeated, but only by one vote. Those who were in favor of the motion are still working to deny support to Mokia. They have a lot of influence in the Council.\"\n\n\"But the Librarians tried to kill them!\" I exclaimed. \"What about the assassination attempt?\"\n\nAs a side note, I hate assassination. It looks way too much like a dirty word. Either that or the name of a country populated entirely by two donkeys.\n\nGrandpa just shrugged. \"Bureaucrats, lad! They can be denser than your uncle Kaz's bean soup.\"\n\n\"Hey!\" Kaz said. \"I like that soup!\"\n\n\"I do too,\" Grandpa said. \"Makes wonderful glue.\"\n\n\"We need to do something,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"I'm trying to,\" Grandpa said. \"You should hear the speeches I'm giving!\"\n\n\"Talk,\" Kaz said. \"Tuki Tuki is close to falling, Pop! If the capital falls, the kingdom will fall with it.\"\n\n\"What about the knights?\" I said. \"Bastille, didn't you say most of the Knights of Crystallia are still here, in the city? Why aren't they on the battlefield?\"\n\n\"The Crystin can't be used for that kind of purpose, lad,\" Grandpa said, shaking his head. \"They're forbidden from taking sides in political conflicts.\"\n\n\"But this isn't a political conflict!\" I said. \"This is against the Librarians. They infiltrated the Crystin; they corrupted the Mindstone! If they win, they'll undoubtedly disband the knights anyway!\"\n\nBastille grimaced. \"You see why I'm on edge? We know all of this, but our oaths forbid us from taking part unless we're defending a Smedry or one of the kings.\"\n\n\"Well, one of the kings is in danger,\" I said. \"Kaz just said so!\"\n\n\"King Talakimallo isn't in the palace at Tuki Tuki,\" Grandpa said, shaking his head. \"The knights got him away to a safe location soon after the palace came under siege. The queen is leading the defense.\"\n\n\"The queen of Mokia\u2026\" I said. \"Bastille, isn't that\u2026\"\n\n\"My sister,\" she said, nodding. \"Angola Dartmoor.\"\n\n\"The knights won't protect her?\" I asked.\n\n\"She's not heir to a line,\" Bastille said, shaking her head. \"They probably left one guard to protect her, but maybe not. The knights in the area probably all went with the king or with the heir, Princess Kamali.\"\n\n\"Tuki Tuki is a hugely important tactical position,\" Kaz said. \"We can't lose it!\"\n\n\"The knights want to help, but we can't,\" Bastille complained. \"It's forbidden. Besides, most of us have to be here in Nalhalla City to defend the Council of Kings and the Smedrys.\"\n\n\"Though the Council no longer trusts the Crystin like they once did,\" Grandpa added, shaking his head. \"And they forbid the knights' entrance to most important meetings.\"\n\n\"So we just end up sitting around,\" Bastille said, frustratedly knocking her head back against the backrest of her chair, \"going through endless training sessions and throwing the occasional grenade at someone who deserves it.\" She eyed me.\n\n\"Baking Browns, what a mess!\" Grandpa said. \"Maybe we need some snacks. I work better with a good broccoli yogurt pop to chew on.\"\n\n\"First,\" I said, \"ew. Grandpa, that's almost crapaflapnasti. Second\u2026\" I hesitated for a moment, an idea occurring to me. \"You're saying the knights have to protect important people.\"\n\nBastille gave me one of her trademarked \"well, duh, Alcatraz, you idiot\"TM looks. I ignored it.\n\n\"And the Mokian palace is besieged, about to fall?\" I continued.\n\n\"That's what it looked like to me,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"So what if we sent someone really important off to Mokia?\" I asked. \"The knights would have to follow, right? And if we had that someone take up residence in the Mokian palace, then the knights would have to defend the place, right?\"\n\nAt that moment, something incredible happened. Something amazing, something incredible, something unbelievable.\n\nBastille smiled.\n\nIt was a deep, knowing smile. An eager smile. Almost a wicked smile. Like the smile on a jack-o'-lantern carved by a psychopathic kitten. (Oh, wait. All kittens are psychopathic. If you've forgotten, read book one again. In fact, read book one again either way. Someone told me once that it was really funny. What? You believed me in the foreword when I told you not to read them? What, you think you can trust me?)\n\nBastille's smile shocked me, pleased me, and made me nervous at the same time. \"I think,\" she said, \"that is just about the most brilliant thing you've ever said, Alcatraz.\"\n\nGranted, the statement didn't have much competition for the title.\n\n\"It's certainly bold,\" Grandpa said. \"Smedry-like for certain!\"\n\n\"Who would we send?\" Kaz said, growing eager. \"Could you go, Pop? They'd be certain to send knights to defend you.\"\n\nGrandpa hesitated, then shook his head. \"If I did that, I'd leave the king without an ally on the Council of Kings. He needs my vote.\"\n\n\"But we'd need a direct heir,\" Kaz said. \"I could go \u2013 I will go - but I've never been important enough to warrant more than a single knight. I'm not the direct heir. We could send Attica.\"\n\n\"He's gone,\" Bastille said. \"Fled the city. It's what we were talking about when you arrived.\"\n\nGrandpa nodded. \"We'd need to put someone in danger who is so valuable the knights have to respond. But this person also has to be uncompromisingly stoopid. It's idiocy on a grand scale to send oneself directly to a palace on the brink of destruction, surrounded by Librarians, in a doomed kingdom! Why, they'd have to be stoopid on a colossal degree. Of the likes previously unseen to all of humankind!\"\n\nAnd suddenly, for some reason, all eyes in the room turned toward me."
            },
            {
                "title": "CHAPTER \u03c0",
                "text": "0kay, so maybe I exaggerated that last conversation just a little bit. Grandpa might have actually said something along the lines of \"We'd need someone really, really brave.\" I felt that it's all right to make this swap, however, since bravery and stoopidity are practically one and the same.\n\nActually, there's a mathematical formula for it: STU > BVE. That reads, quite simply, \"A person's stoopidity is greater than or equal to their bravery.\" Simple, eh?\n\nOh, you want proof? You actually expect me to justify my ridiculous assertions? Well, all right. Just this once.\n\nLook at it this way. If a man stumbled accidentally into a trap set by a group of Librarian agents, we'd think him stoopid. Right? However, if he charges valiantly into that same trap knowing it's there, he'd be called brave. Think about that for a moment. Which sounds dumber? Accidentally falling into the trap or choosing to fall into it?\n\nThere are plenty of ways to be stoopid that don't involve being brave. However, bravery is - by definition \u2013 always stoopid. Therefore, your stoopidity is at least equal to your level of bravery. Probably greater.\n\nAfter all, reading that ridiculous explanation probably made you feel dumber just by association. (Reading this book sure is brave of you.)\n\nI burst into the small meeting chamber. The monarchs sat in thrones arranged in a half circle, listening to one of their members - in this case, a woman in an ancient-looking suit of bamboo armor - stand before them and argue her point. The walls depicted murals of beautiful mountain scenes, and a little indoor stream gurgled its way along the far wall.\n\nAll of the monarchs turned toward me, eyes aghast at being interrupted. \"Ah, young Smedry!\" said one of them, a regal-looking man with a square red beard and a set of kingly robes to match it. Brig Dartmoor, Bastille's father, was king of Nalhalla and generally considered foremost among the monarchs. He stood up from his chair. \"How\u2026 unusual to see you.\"\n\nThe others looked panicked. I realized that the last time I'd barged in on them like this, I'd come to warn them about a Librarian plot and had ended up nearly getting them all assassinated. (The non-donkey kind.)\n\nI took a deep breath. \"I can't take it any longer!\" I exclaimed. \"I hate being cooped up in this city! I need a vacation!\"\n\nThe monarchs glanced at one another, relaxing slightly. I hadn't come to warn them of impending disaster; this was just the usual Smedry drama.\n\n\"Well, that's fine, I guess.\u2026\" King Dartmoor said. Anyone else would probably have demanded to know why this \"vacation\" was so important as to interrupt the Council of Kings. But Dartmoor was quite accustomed to handling Smedrys. I was only just beginning to understand what a reputation for oddness my family had - and this was compared with everyone around them, who lived in a city filled with castles, dragons that climbed on walls, grenades that look like teddy bears, and the occasional talking dinosaur in a vest. Being odd compared with all of them took quite a bit of effort. (My family is a bunch of overachievers when it comes to freakish behavior.)\n\n\"Perhaps you'd like to visit the countryside,\" said one of the kings. \"The firelizard trees are in bloom.\"\n\n\"I hear the lightning caverns are electrifying this time of year,\" another added.\n\n\"You could always try skydiving off the Worldspire,\" said the woman in the Asian-style bamboo armor. \"Drop through the Bottomless Chasm for a few hours? It's rather relaxing, with a waterfall on all sides, falling through the air.\"\n\n\"Wow,\" I said, losing a bit of my momentum. \"Those do sound interesting. Maybe I -\" Bastille elbowed me from behind at that point, making me exclaim a surprised \"Gak!\"\n\n\"Protect your straw!\" one of the monarchs cried, taking off his large straw hat. He looked around urgently. \"Oh, false alarm.\"\n\nI cleared my throat, glancing over my shoulder. Bastille and Grandpa Smedry had entered the room after me but had left the door open so that the knights guarding outside could hear what I was saying. Bastille's stern mother, Draulin, stood with folded arms, eyeing us suspiciously. She obviously expected some kind of shenanigan.\n\nVery clever of her.\n\n\"No!\" I declared to the kings. \"None of that will do. They're not exciting enough.\" I held up my finger. \"I'm going to Tuki Tuki. I hear that the royal mud baths there are extremely intense.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" King Dartmoor said. \"You think skydiving through a bottomless pit in the ocean isn't exciting enough, so instead you want to go visit the Mokian palace spa?\"\n\n\"Er, yes,\" I said. \"I have a fondness for mud baths. Exfoliating my homeopathic algotherapy and all that.\"\n\nThe monarchs glanced at one another.\n\n\"But,\" one of them said, \"the palace is kind of besieged right now, and -\"\n\n\"I will not be dissuaded!\" I exclaimed with forced bravado. \"I am a Smedry, and we do ridiculous, unexpected, eccentric things like this all the time! Ha-ha!\"\n\n\"Oh dear,\" Grandpa Smedry said in an exaggerated voice. \"He really does seem determined. My poor grandson will be killed because of his awesome, Smedry-like impulsiveness. If only there were a group of people dedicated to protecting him!\"\n\nWith that, we turned and dashed away from the chamber, leaving the kings and knights dumbfounded. Bastille, Grandpa, and I entered the main palace hallway, which was lined with frames containing rare and exotic types of glass. They glowed faintly to my eyes, as I was still wearing my Oculator's Lenses.\n\n\"Do you think they'll buy it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Wait,\" Bastille said, frowning. \"Buy it? Did you try to sell them something?\"\n\n\"Er, no. It's a figure of speech.\"\n\n\"The figure giving a speech?\" Bastille said. \"If you're that interested in her figure, you should be ashamed. Queen Kamiko is a married woman and at least forty years older than you are!\"\n\nI sighed. \"Do you think,\" I rephrased, \"they'll believe the act? It seemed a little exaggerated to me.\"\n\n\"Exaggerated?\" Bastille said. \"What part?\"\n\n\"The part about me going to Mokia - into a war zone - just to take a vacation. It's kind of ridiculous.\"\n\n\"Sounds like a Smedry activity to me,\" Bastille grumbled.\n\n\"They'll buy it, lad,\" Grandpa said, jogging along beside us. \"The knights in particular tend to be very\u2026 literal people. They'll assume the worst, and that worst - in this case - is that you are going to blunder off into a war zone because you feel that your pores are clogged. I don't think we'll have any trouble getting them to \u2013\"\n\nA clanking sound came from behind us. I glanced over my shoulder.\n\nNo fewer than fifty Knights of Crystallia were rushing down the hallway in our direction.\n\n\"Gak!\" I cried.\n\n\"Alcatraz, would you stop saying -\" Bastille looked over her shoulder. \"GAK!\"\n\n\"Scribbling Scalzis!\" Grandpa exclaimed, noticing the fleet of knights charging in our direction. Most wore full plate, the silvery metal clanking as their armored feet hit the floor. It sounded like someone had opened a closet filled with pots and then dumped them all onto the ground at once.\n\nWe redoubled our efforts, running in front of the storm of knights with all we had. But they were faster. They had Warrior's Lenses, not to mention Crystin enhancements. They'd catch us for sure.\n\n\"Alcatraz, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said in a confiding tone as we ran down the wide hallway. \"I believe I may have discovered a slight flaw in your clever plan.\"\n\n\"You think?\"\n\n\"I knew this would happen!\" Bastille said from my other side. \"I'm such an idiot. Alcatraz, if they can catch you before you leave, they can take you into protective care for your own good!\"\n\n\"Protective care?\" I asked.\n\n\"Usually involves a locked door,\" Grandpa said. \"Padded cell. Bread and water. Oh, and a jail. Can't forget that.\"\n\n\"They'll throw us in jail?\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"Hmm, yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"The knights are bodyguards, lad. They have the right to determine when someone under their charge is going to be put into too much danger. They only have power to do it while we're inside Nalhalla.\" He smiled. \"They rarely invoke the privilege. We must really have them worried! Good job, lad! You should feel proud.\"\n\nThis is a very exciting scene, isn't it? You're not too tired, are you? From all that exciting running?\n\nWait, you're not running? Why am I doing all the work? Don't you realize that you're supposed to be acting out these scenes as I describe them? Don't you know how to read books? I mean honestly, what are the Librarians teaching people these days?\n\nLet me explain it to you. Everyone always talks about the magic of books being able to take you to other places, to let you see exotic worlds, to make you experience new and interesting things. Well, do you think words alone can do this? Of course not!\n\nIf you've ever thought that books are boring, it's because you don't know how to read them correctly. From now on when you read a book, I want you to scream the words of the novel out loud while reading them, then do exactly what the characters are doing in the story.\n\nTrust me, it will make books way more exciting. Even dictionaries. Particularly dictionaries. So go ahead and try it out with this next part of this book. If you do it right, you'll win the bonus prize.\n\n\"Come on!\" I yelled, ducking into a side room. I figured that the knights would have trouble following through smaller chambers, since there were so many of them. The room was filled with furniture, however, and I was forced to leap up on top of a couch and hurl myself behind it.\n\n\"What do we do?\" Bastille asked, looking over her shoulder. The knights were rushing into the room behind us.\n\n\"I'm not sure!\" I said, picking my nose.\n\nWe burst out of the room into a hallway, where I hopped up and down on one foot three times, then punched myself (softly) in the forehead. After that, we pranced down the hallway flapping our arms like chickens. Then we twirled around, smacking our brother if he happened to be near. Then we stuck our feet in our mouths before dumping pudding on our heads while singing \"Hambo the Great\" in Dutch.\n\nNow see, didn't I tell you it would be more exciting this way? You should act out all books you read. (And by the way the bonus prize is getting to smack your brother and blame it on me.)\n\n\"Why are we doing this?\" Bastille cried.\n\n\"It's not really helping, is it?\" I replied.\n\n\"I don't mean to be depressing,\" Grandpa noted, \"but I do think they're gaining on us.\"\n\nIt was an understatement. They were right behind us. I yelped, bolting down a side hallway, Bastille easily keeping up. She had Warrior's Lenses on and could outrun Grandpa and me, but she hung back.\n\n\"Only one thing for me to do!\" Grandpa Smedry said, raising a finger.\n\n\"What's that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Switch sides!\" he replied. And then he stopped running, letting the knights catch up to him. \"Come on, let's get him!\" Grandpa cried, pointing at me.\n\nI froze, looking at him, shocked. Bastille tugged me forward, and I stumbled into motion, running again. The knights didn't take Grandpa into protective care. One did pick him up and carry him, however, so he didn't slow them down. In seconds, we were being chased not only by an entire force of Knights of Crystallia but my mustachioed grandfather as well.\n\n\"What's he doing?\" I demanded.\n\n\"Burn him at the stake!\" Grandpa yelled from just behind.\n\n\"Well,\" Bastille said, \"he never was going to go with us. Remember? When we acted in front of the kings, his part was to claim that he didn't want you to go and couldn't stop you.\"\n\n\"Dice him up and feed him to the fishes!\" Grandpa yelled, voice softer.\n\n\"Why did we decide that again?\" I sputtered.\n\n\"Pull his insides out through his nose and paint him with eyeliner!\" Grandpa Smedry yelled distantly.\n\n\"Because we didn't want him to get into trouble for what you're doing!\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Make him watch old Little House on the Prairie reruns!\" Grandpa Smedry bellowed, voice dwindling.\n\n\"Well, does he have to get into the part so enthusiastically?\" I said. \"He's making me\u2026 Wait, voice dwindling?\" I glanced over my shoulder.\n\nThe knights and my grandfather had fallen back. I frowned, confused. The knights seemed to be running as hard as ever. In fact, they seemed to be running even harder than before. And yet they were still losing ground.\n\n\"What?\" I said.\n\n\"He's making them late!\" Bastille said. \"Using his Talent! By joining their side, then trying to chase after us, he's making them all too slow to catch us!\"\n\nI gawked, amazed. My grandfather's skill with using his Talent was incredible. I wondered, not for the first time, what I could manage with my own Talent if I were as trained as he was. Mostly, these last few months in Nalhalla, I'd spent my time learning to avoid using my Talent. I had it almost completely under control. I hadn't broken anything unexpected in weeks.\n\nI was beginning to think that I might be able to live a normal life. But sometimes, when my grandfather did incredible things with his Talent, it made me envious.\n\nThat was stoopid. (And trust me, I'm an expert on stoopid.) I'd spent my entire childhood ruled and dominated by my Talent. Accomplishing something like Grandpa just did was incredible, but also unpredictable. Even the best of Smedrys couldn't make events like this work all the time.\n\nI wanted to be rid of my Talent. Free. Didn't I?\n\n\"Gee, what a nice moment of reflection,\" Bastille said, stepping up to me.\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said, watching the troop of frustrated knights, who seemed to be all but running in place, barely inching forward.\n\n\"Do you want another moment or two to, you know, be all philosophical and crud? Or do you want to get your shattering legs moving so we can escape!\"\n\n\"Oh, right,\" I said. Grandpa wouldn't be able to hold them back forever. In fact, they already looked like they were moving more quickly, regaining some momentum.\n\nI turned with Bastille and continued running. We needed to get out of the city, and fast."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "It's undoubtedly becoming obvious to you that my stoopidity in this book is pretty shatteringly spectacular. Not only am I planning to charge off into a war zone with nothing to protect me but a couple of bits of glass but I just managed to alienate and anger an entire order of knights in the process. I just spent the three previous volumes of my autobiography trying to escape the Librarians. Now that I had finally found peace and safety in Nalhalla, I'd decided to run off and put myself into the middle of the war?\n\nStoopid.\n\nActually, no, it's not stoopid. Stoopid just isn't specific enough. Fortunately, since I'm an expert on stoopidity - and an expert on making up stuff - I'm going to give you a set of new definitions to use for things that are really stoopid. For example, what I was about to go do can be referred to as stoopidalicious, which is defined as \"about as stoopid as a porcupine-catching contest during a swimsuit competition.\"\n\nBastille and I dashed up a set of stairs onto the upper level of the palace. Once there, I slammed a hand down on the top step and engaged my Talent. A shock of power ran down my arm, hitting the stairs and making them crumble away behind us. Stone blocks crashed to the ground and the banister fell sideways. An enormous puff of dust erupted into the air, like the noxious breath of a belching giant. As it cleared, I could see a group of annoyed knights standing below. They'd finally gotten smart and broken into two groups. Grandpa Smedry could keep only one group late, so the other group was free to chase Bastille and me.\n\nNow they were trapped below. But there were other ways up to our floor. \"I don't think we can keep staying ahead of them like this,\" I said. \"We need to get out of the city.\"\n\n\"You just said that at the end of the last chapter!\" Bastille complained.\n\n\"Well, it's still true!\" I snapped. Below, the knights split again, some running off to find another way up. A few remained behind and began giving one another leg-ups or jumping. They got surprisingly close to reaching the upper floor.\n\nI yelped and hurried away from the hole, Bastille following.\n\n\"Sorry about the stairs,\" I said. \"Your father won't be mad at me for that, will he?\"\n\n\"We have Smedrys over to the palace for dinner frequently,\" she said. \"Things like broken staircases are routine for us. However, I will point out that you just trapped us on the upper floor of the palace. I'll bet my mother and the other knights will have the stairwells all blocked off shortly.\"\n\n\"Do you have a Transporter's Glass station?\"\n\n\"Yeah. In the basement.\"\n\n\"It's guarded anyway,\" Kaz added.\n\nI cursed. \"You've got to have some kind of secret exit from the building, right, Bastille? Tunnels? Passages hidden in the walls? A fireplace that rotates around and reveals your secret crime-fighting lair?\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Kaz said.\n\nBastille nodded. \"My father feels that sort of thing is too easy for enemies to use against him.\"\n\n\"No secret passages at all?\" I exclaimed. \"What kind of castle is this?\"\n\n\"The non-stoopidalicious kind!\" Bastille said. \"Who puts passages inside the walls? Isn't that a little ridiculous?\"\n\n\"Not when you need to sneak out!\"\n\n\"Why would I need to sneak out of my own home?\"\n\n\"Because Knights of Crystallia are chasing you!\"\n\n\"This sort of thing doesn't happen to me very often!\" Bastille snapped. \"In fact, it only seems to happen when you're involved!\"\n\n\"I can't help the fact that people like to chase me. We need to -\"\n\nI froze in the middle of the hallway. \"Kaz!\" I exclaimed, pointing at him.\n\n\"Me!\" he exclaimed back.\n\n\"Idiots!\" Bastille said, pointing at both of us.\n\n\"When did you get here?\" I demanded of my short uncle.\n\n\"A few moments ago,\" he said. \"Everything's packed back at Keep Smedry, ready for takeoff. I borrowed a vehicle from the Mokian embassy, as I didn't want to alert the king of what we were doing.\"\n\n\"We have a pilot?\" I asked.\n\n\"Sure do,\" he replied. \"Aydee Ecks.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Your cousin,\" he said. \"Sister to Sing and Australia. She was delivering a message to the embassy from Mokia.\"\n\n\"Sounds good,\" I said. It was always nice to have another Smedry along on a mission. Well, nice and catastrophic at the same time. But when you're a Smedry, you learn to make the catastrophes work for you.\n\nA distant clanking preceded a group of knights, who stormed out of a side hallway a moment later. They spotted us and began running in our direction.\n\n\"Kaz!\" I said. \"Get us out of here!\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" he said. \"My Talent has been -\"\n\n\"Now, Kaz!\" I said.\n\n\"All right,\" he said with a sigh, walking over and pulling open a door. We'd used Kaz's Talent of getting lost to transport us before. Like all Smedry Talents, it was unpredictable - but it was fairly safe to use across short distances.\n\nBesides, we didn't have time to try anything else. I raced through the doorway, Bastille behind me. Kaz pulled the door closed behind us.\n\nThe room smelled musty and wet inside, like mold or fungus, but it was too dark to see anything.\n\n\"Activate your Talent!\" I told Kaz.\n\n\"I already did,\" he replied.\n\nThere was a scraping noise. Like something very large being pulled across the stone floor. I blinked as Bastille unsheathed her sword, the crystalline weapon shedding a cool, blue light across our surroundings. We were in a cave. And standing before us, looking very confused, was an enormous black dragon. It cocked its head at us, smoke trailing from its nostrils.\n\n\"Well,\" I said, relieved. \"It's just a dragon. For a moment, I was frightened!\" We'd met a dragon before, and it had quite nicely not eaten us. In fact, it had carried us on its back.\n\nThe dragon inhaled deeply.\n\n\"Kaz!\" Bastille said, panicked.\n\n\"Put away that light!\" he said. \"It's hard to get lost if I can see where I'm going!\"\n\nI frowned at the others. \"It's just a dragon.\"\n\n\"Just a free baledragon,\" Bastille said with alarm, \"who - unlike Tzoctinatin - is not serving a prison sentence, and who is perfectly free to roast us because we're invading his den and violating the draco-human treaty!\" She slammed her sword back in its sheath, plunging us into darkness.\n\n\"Oh,\" I said.\n\nA light appeared in front of us, illuminating the inside of the dragon's mouth as fire gathered in its throat and began to blast toward us.\n\n\"Reason number two hundred and fifty-seven why it's better to be a short person than a tall person!\" Kaz exclaimed. \"Standing next to a tall person gives you a really great shield for dragon's breath!\"\n\nBastille grabbed me by the collar and yanked me hard after her, and everything spun. I felt a strange force around me, a lurching feeling as Kaz activated his Talent, getting us lost. The dragon's flames vanished.\n\nI recognized that force - the force of the Talent - immediately, though I'd never experienced it before when Kaz had used his Talent. It was hard to explain. It felt like I could see the warping of the air, could tell what was going on as Kaz saved us.\n\nIt almost seemed familiar. Like Kaz wasn't just getting us lost, like he was\u2026 well, like he was breaking the way that motion worked. Deconstructing the natural, linear progression of the world and rebuilding it so that we could move in directions we shouldn't have been able to.\n\nIn that moment, I thought I saw something. An enormous, magnificent stone disk, full of carvings and etchings, divided into four different quadrants. And at the very center, a patch of black rock. There was something crouching there in the center, invisible because of how dark it was. A patch of midnight itself. And it reached tentacles out to the other quadrants, like black vines growing over a wall.\n\nThe Bane of Incarna. That which twists\u2026 that which corrupts... that which destroys...\n\nThe Dark Talent. Of which all others are shadows.\n\nThe vision vanished, gone so quickly that I wasn't certain I'd even seen it. Everything was dark again, and I stumbled, tripping. When I hit the ground, I hit something wet, soft, and squishy.\n\n\"Ew!\" I said, trying to push myself to my feet. The floor undulated beneath me, pulsing, quivering. It was like I'd fallen onto a massive trampoline covered with slick grease. And the stench was terrible. Like someone had pelted a skunk with rotten eggs.\n\nBastille made a gagging noise, pulling her sword from its sheath to give us light. The three of us were crowded together inside of a pink room, the walls and ceiling all made of the same soft, quivering material. It was like we were trapped in some kind of sack. There wasn't even room enough to sit up, and we were coated with a slick, goolike substance.\n\n\"Aw, sparrows,\" Kaz swore.\n\n\"I think I'm going to be sick!\" Bastille said. \"Are we...?\"\n\n\"My Talent transported us into the dragon's stomach, it appears,\" Kaz said, scratching his head, trying to stand up on the fleshy surface. \"Whoops.\"\n\n\"Whoops?\" I cried, realizing that the liquidy stuff had to be some kind of bile or phlegm. \"That's all you can say? Whoops?\"\n\n\"Ew!\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Well, if we're going to be eaten by a dragon,\" he noted, \"this is the way to do it. Bypassing the teeth and all.\"\n\n\"I'd rather not be eaten at all!\"\n\n\"Ew!\" Bastille repeated.\n\n\"Hide the sword,\" Kaz said, finally getting to his feet. He was short enough to stand upright. \"I'll get us out of here.\"\n\n\"Great,\" I said, the light winking out. \"Maybe you could get us a bath too, and - gruble-garb-burgle!\"\n\nI was suddenly underwater.\n\nI thrashed about in the dark, terrified, suffocating. The water was horribly cold, and my skin grew numb in a few heartbeats. I opened my mouth to cry out -\n\nWhich, mind you, was a pretty stoopidalicious thing to do.\n\nAnd then I washed out into open air, water rushing around me as I fell through an open doorway. Kaz stood to the side, gasping, holding the door open. He'd managed to get us to Keep Smedry; a familiar black stone hallway led in either direction.\n\nI sat up, holding my head, my clothing wet. We appeared to have fallen out of the cleaning closet, and the floor of the hallway was now soaked with salty seawater. A few small, white-eyed fish flopped around on the stones. Bastille lay in front of me, hair a soggy silver mass. She groaned and sat up, flipping her hair back.\n\n\"Where were we?\" I asked.\n\n\"Bottom of the ocean,\" Kaz said, taking off his soaked leather jacket and eyeing it appraisingly.\n\n\"The pressure should have killed us!\"\n\n\"Nah,\" Kaz said, wringing out his jacket, \"we surprised her. We were gone before she realized we were there.\"\n\n\"Her?\" I asked.\n\n\"The ocean,\" Kaz said. \"She never expects Smedry Talents.\"\n\n\"Who does?\" Bastille said, her voice flat.\n\n\"Well, you did say you wanted a bath,\" Kaz said. \"Come on. We should get moving before those knights think to send someone to Keep Smedry.\"\n\nI sighed, climbing to my feet, and the three of us jogged down the hallway - our clothing making squishing noises - and entered a stairwell. We climbed to the top of one of the keep's towers and ran out onto the landing pad. There we found an enormous glass butterfly lethargically flapping its wings. It reflected the sunlight, throwing out colorful sparkles of light in all directions.\n\nI froze. \"Wait. This is our escape vehicle?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Kaz said. \"The Colorfly. Something wrong?\"\n\n\"Well, it's not particularly\u2026 manly.\"\n\n\"So?\" Bastille said, hands on hips.\n\n\"Er\u2026 I mean\u2026 well, I was hoping to be able to escape in something a little more impressive.\"\n\n\"So if it's not manly, it's not impressive?\" Bastille said, folding her arms.\n\n\"I\u2026 er\u2026\"\n\n\"Now would be a good time to shut up, Al,\" Kaz said, chuckling. \"You see, if your mouth is closed, that will prevent you from saying anything else. And that will prevent you from getting a foot in your mouth - either yours placed there or hers kicking you.\"\n\nIt seemed like good advice. I shut my mouth and trotted after Kaz, making my way to the gangplank up to the glass butterfly.\n\nTo this day, however, I'm bothered by that departure. I was going on what was, in many ways, my first real mission. Before, I'd stumbled into things accidentally. But now I'd actively decided to go out and help.\n\nIt seemed that I should be able to make my triumphant departure inside something cooler than a butterfly. In heroic journey terms, that's like being sent to college driving a pale yellow '76 Pacer. (Ask your parents.) But, as I believe I've proven to you in the past, life is not fair. If life were fair, ice cream would be calorie free, kittens would come with warning labels stamped on their foreheads, and James Joyce's \"The Dead\" would totally be about zombies. (And don't get me started on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.) \"Hey, cousin!\" a voice exclaimed. A head popped out of the bottom of the butterfly. It had short, black hair with dark tan skin. A hand followed, waving at me. Both belonged to a young Mokian girl. If she were from the Hushlands, she'd have been described as Hawaiian or Samoan. She was wearing a colorful red-and-blue sarong and had a flower pinned in her hair.\n\n\"Who are you?\" I asked, walking under the glass vehicle.\n\n\"I'm your cousin Aydee! Kaz says you need me to fly you to Mokia.\" There was an exuberance about her that reminded me of her sister, Australia. Only Australia was much older. This girl couldn't be more than eight years old.\n\n\"You're our pilot? But you're just a kid!\"\n\n\"I know! Ain't it great?\" She smirked, then pulled back into the butterfly, a glass plate sliding into place where she'd been hanging.\n\n\"Best not to challenge her, Al,\" Kaz said, walking up and laying a hand on my arm.\n\n\"But we're going into a war zone!\" I said, looking at Kaz.\n\n\"We shouldn't bring a kid into that.\"\n\n\"Oh, so perhaps I should leave you behind?\" Kaz said.\n\n\"The Hushlanders would call you a kid too.\"\n\n\"That's different,\" I said lamely.\n\n\"Her homeland is being attacked,\" Bastille said, climbing up the gangplank. \"She has a right to help. Nobody sends children into battle, but they can help in other ways. Like flying us to Mokia. Come on! Have you forgotten that we're being chased?\"\n\n\"It seems like I'm always being chased,\" I said, climbing up the gangplank. \"Come on. Let's get going.\"\n\nKaz followed me up: and the gangplank swung closed. The butterfly lurched into the air and swooped\u2014\n\n...well, fluttered\u2026\n\n\u2014away from the city in a dramatic\u2014\n\n...well, leisurely\u2026\n\n\u2014flight toward Mokia, with a dangerous\u2014\n\n...well, mostly just a cute\u2026\n\n\u2014determination to see the kingdom protected and defended!\n\nEither that or we'd just spend our time drinking nectar from flowers. You know, whatever ended up working."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Change.\n\nIt's important to change. I, for instance, change my underwear every day. Hopefully you do too. If you don't, please stay downwind.\n\nChange is frightening. Few of us ever want things to change. (Well, things other than underwear.) But change is also fascinating - in fact, it's necessary. Just ask Heraclitus.\n\nHeraclitus was a funny little Greek man best known for letting his brother do all of the hard work, for calling people odd names, and for writing lyrics for Disney songs about two thousand years too early for them to be sung. He was quite an expert on change, even going so far as to change from alive to dead after smearing cow dung on his face. (Er, yes, that last part is true, I'm afraid.) Heraclitus is the first person we know of to ever gripe about how often things change. In fact, he went so far as to guess that you can never touch the same object twice - because everything and everybody changes so quickly, any object you touch will change into something else before you touch it again.\n\nI suppose that this is true. We're all made of cells, and those are bouncing around, breaking off, dying, changing. If nothing could change, then we wouldn't be able to think, grow, or even breathe. What would be the point? We'd all be about as dynamic as a pile of rocks. (Though, as I think about it, even that pile of rocks is changing moment by moment, as the winds blow and break off atoms.) So\u2026 I guess what Heraclitus was saying is that your underpants are always changing, and technically you now have on a different pair than you did when you began reading this chapter. So I guess you don't have to change them every day.\n\nSweet! Thanks, philosophy!\n\nI whistled in amazement, hanging upside down from the tree. \"Wow! That was quite the trip! Aydee, you're a fantastic pilot.\"\n\n\"Thanks!\" Aydee said, hanging nearby.\n\n\"I mean, I thought thirty-seven chapters' worth of flying would be boring,\" I said. \"But that was probably the most exciting thing I've been a part of since Grandpa showed up on my doorstep six months ago!\"\n\n\"I particularly enjoyed the fight with the giant half squid, half wombat,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"You really showed him something!\" I said.\n\n\"Thanks! I didn't realize he'd be so interested in my stamp collection.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I didn't realize you'd taken so many pictures of people's faces you'd stamped on!\"\n\n\"Personally,\" Kaz said, untangling himself from the bushes below, \"I preferred the part where we flew up into space.\"\n\n\"We should have done that in book two,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Then that cover would have made sense.\"\n\n\"There were so many exciting things on this trip,\" I said, still swinging in the vines. \"It's tough to pick just one as my favorite.\"\n\nKaz dusted himself off looking up at me. \"Reason number eighty-two why it's better to be a short person: when you plummet to your doom, you don't fall as far as tall people.\"\n\n\"What?\" I said. \"Of course you do!\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" Kaz said. \"Maybe our feet fall as far as yours, but our heads have less distance to fall. So it's less dangerous for us on average.\"\n\n\"I don't think it works that way,\" Bastille said.\n\nKaz shrugged. \"Anyway, Al, if you ever write your autobiography you're going to have a real tough time writing out that trip here. I mean\u2026 words just won't be able to describe how perfectly awesome it was.\"\n\n\"I'm sure I'll think of something,\" I said, letting Bastille help me untangle myself from the vines. I dropped awkwardly to the ground beside Kaz, and then Bastille went to help Aydee get down.\n\n\"Where are we?\" I asked.\n\n\"Just outside of Tuki Tuki, by my guess,\" Kaz said. \"I'm certain that rock that knocked down the Colorfly was thrown by a Librarian machine. I'll go scout for a moment. Wait here.\"\n\nKaz moved off into the bushes, pulling out his machete. He didn't - thankfully - engage his Talent. I made sure to keep an eye on him as he walked out toward the sunlit ridge in the near distance. We were in a dense, tropical jungle arrayed with a large number of flowers hanging from vines, sprouting from trees, and blooming at our feet. Insects buzzed around, moving from flower to flower, and didn't seem to have any interest in me or the others.\n\nThe flight had taken a long time, but it had seemed to pass remarkably quickly, considering how busy we'd been with wombats, outer space, and stamp collections. It seemed like just a few moments ago that we'd left Nalhalla, yet now here we were, hours of flying later, in Mokia. In fact, those chapters were so fast, so quick, so exciting, it almost feels like I skipped writing them.\n\nGood thing I didn't, though. That would have been pretty stoopid of me, eh?\n\nAydee sighed as Bastille helped her down. \"I'm going to miss that ship.\"\n\n\"You know,\" I said, \"that's the third time I've been up in one of those glass ships, and it's also the third time I've crash-landed. I'm beginning to think that they aren't very safe.\"\n\n\"Of course there couldn't be another explanation,\" Bastille said dryly.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I've flown in them hundreds of times,\" Bastille said. \"And the only three times I've crash-landed, I've been flying with you.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, scratching my head.\n\n\"I'm going to have to travel with you more often, cousin!\" Aydee said. \"I never get shot down when I fly on my own!\"\n\nIt appeared that Aydee had inherited the characteristic Smedry sense of adventure. I eyed my diminutive cousin. We hadn't had much of a chance to talk, despite the lengthy flight - we'd had to spend too much time dodging war koalas while building a new lighthouse for underprivileged children. (You might want to reread Chapters Five through Forty-One to relive the adventure of it all.) I reached out to her. \"I don't believe I've properly introduced myself. I'm Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"Aydee Ecks,\" she said energetically. \"Is it true you have the Breaking Talent?\"\n\n\"The one and only,\" I said. \"It's not everything it's cracked up to be.\"\n\n\"No,\" Bastille added, \"everything else is what it cracks up.\"\n\n\"What's your Talent?\" I asked Aydee, shooting a dry look at Bastille.\n\n\"I'm really bad at math!\" she proclaimed.\n\nBy now I was getting used to Smedry Talents. I'd met family members who were magically bad at dancing, others who were great at looking ugly in the morning. Being bad at math\u2026 well, that just seemed to fit right in. \"Congratulations,\" I said. \"That sounds useful.\"\n\nAydee beamed.\n\nKaz came traipsing back a few moments later, his pack slung on his shoulder. \"Yup,\" he said, \"we're here. The capital city is just a short hike down that direction, but there's a full Librarian blockade set up around the place.\"\n\n\"Great,\" I said.\n\nThe others looked to me, expecting me to take the lead. Partially because of my lineage, but also because I'd organized this trip. It was still odd to be in charge, but I'd taken the lead a number of times now. Though it had originally bothered me, I was getting used to it. (Kind of how listening to really loud music a lot will slowly make your hearing worse.) \"All right,\" I said, kneeling down. \"Let's go over our resources. Bastille, what do you have?\"\n\n\"Sword,\" she said, patting the sheath at her side. \"Dagger. Warrior's Lenses. Glassweave outfit.\" Her militaristic trousers and jacket were made of a special kind of defensive glass; they could take a pounding and leave her unharmed.\n\nShe pulled her stylish sunglasses out of her pocket and put them on. They'd enhance her physical abilities.\n\n\"Kaz?\"\n\n\"I've got a pair of Warrior's Lenses too,\" he said. He patted his pack. \"I've got my sling to throw rocks, and some standard gear. Rope, a couple of throwing knives, a grappling hook, flares, and snacks.\"\n\n\"Snacks?\"\n\n\"Pop taught me never to rescue a near-doomed allied kingdom on an empty stomach.\"\n\n\"Wise man, my grandfather,\" I said. \"Aydee, what do you have?\"\n\n\"A bubbly, infectious personality!\" she said. \"And a cute flower in my hair.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" I fished around in my pocket. \"I've got my standard Oculator's Lenses,\" I said, \"along with my Translator's Lenses and one Truthfinder's Lens.\" The former had been given to me by my father; the latter I'd discovered in the tomb of Alcatraz the First. Neither were very powerful in battle, but they could be useful in other ways.\n\nAs I fished in the pockets of my jacket, I was shocked to discover something else. A pouch that hadn't been there before, at least not in the morning when I'd gotten dressed. I pulled it out, frowning, then undid the laces at the top.\n\nInside were two pairs of Lenses. They glowed powerfully to my eyes, as I was wearing my Oculator's Lenses.\n\nI took the new Lenses out. One had a baby blue tint to them. I'd used these before; they were called Courier's Lenses. The other Lenses had a green-and-purple tint.\n\n\"Wow,\" Bastille said, snatching the second pair from my hand, holding them up. \"Alcatraz, where did you get these?\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" I said, looking inside the pouch. There appeared to be a little note tucked into it. \"What are they?\"\n\n\"Bestower's Lenses,\" she said, sounding just a bit awed. \"They're very powerful.\"\n\nI got the note out, unfolding it. You called me once with a set of Courier's Lenses when you weren't supposed to be able to, the note said. Give it a try again.\n\nIt was signed Grandpa Smedry.\n\nI hesitated, then pulled off my Oculator's Lenses and put on the Courier's Lenses. They were supposed to be able to work over only short distances, but I was discovering that there were a lot of things about Lenses and silimatic glass that didn't work the way everyone said they did.\n\nI concentrated, doing something I'd only recently learned to do, giving extra power to the Lenses. Static fuzzed in my ears. And then, an image of Grandpa Smedry's face appeared in front of me, hovering in the air. It was faintly translucent.\n\nHa! Grandpa's voice said in my ears. Alcatraz, my boy, you really can do it!\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said. The others gave me odd looks, but I tapped the glasses.\n\nYou found the Lenses, I presume? Grandpa asked.\n\n\"I did,\" I replied. \"How'd you get them into my pocket?\"\n\nOh, I've been known to practice a little sleight of hand in my day, my boy, he said. I'd been meaning to give you those Lenses for some time. Make good use of them. I'm sure dear Bastille can tell you how to use them. Ha! The lass seems to know more about my Lenses sometimes than I do! Are you in Mokia yet?\n\n\"We've arrived at Tuki Tuki,\" I said. \"I've got Kaz with me, and my cousin Aydee.\"\n\nExcellent, lad, excellent. I'm working on the knights. I've almost got them in agreement to come with me to \"rescue\" you. But they're not convinced that you're in danger. They think that you tricked them and didn't really fly to Moki - you just acted like it to try to get them to go join the war.\n\n\"Wow,\" I said. \"As I think about it, that might have been a pretty good idea.\"\n\nExcept for the fact that we'll need to prove to them where you are, Grandpa said. Your cousin Aydee was in town dropping off a bit of Communicator's Glass. The other piece is in the palace, with Bastille's sister, the queen. If you can contact the Mokian embassy in Nalhalla through it, that will prove that you're there in Mokia. They won't take my word on it with the Courier's Lenses, but if you contact the embassy, the knights will have no choice but to come defend you.\n\n\"All right,\" I said.\n\nThis will be dangerous, lad, Grandpa said. I don't want you getting hurt.\n\n\"But that's the Smedry way!\" I said, imitating him.\n\nHa! Well, so it is. But surviving is also the Smedry way. Get in, contact the embassy, and then lay low. Don't go fight on the battlefield yourself. Understand?\n\n\"Clear as glass,\" I said.\n\nWhat kind of glass? Grandpa asked.\n\n\"The transparent kind,\" I said. \"I'll let you know once we're inside.\"\n\nGood lad.\n\nHis face vanished, and I felt an overwhelming fatigue. I stumbled over to a moss-covered stone and sat down, exhausted.\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Bastille said, \"was your grandfather still in Nalhalla?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"But\u2026 you shouldn't be able to\u2026\"\n\n\"I know, Bastille,\" I said. \"That's probably why I'm so tired. Impossible things are really rough to do, you know.\"\n\nShe looked troubled.\n\n\"Hey!\" Kaz exclaimed suddenly, looking through his pack. \"I forgot that I stuffed these in here.\" He pulled out some colored teddy bears.\n\n\"Oh!\" Aydee said, squealing and running over to snatch them up.\n\n\"Aydee!\" I said, standing. \"Wait! Those are grenades!\"\n\n\"I know,\" she said enthusiastically. \"I love grenades!\"\n\nYes, she's a Smedry all right.\n\n\"How many do you have?\" I asked.\n\n\"One of each of the main three kinds,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"So, six?\" Aydee said.\n\n\"Uh,\" I said. \"Actually, one plus one plus one is\u2026\" I trailed off as, suddenly, Aydee was holding not three, but six bears.\n\n\"One plus one plus one,\" she proclaimed. \"Six, right?\"\n\nI blinked. She's bad at math.... Her Talent, it appears, had forced the world to match her powers of addition.\n\n\"Don't correct her, Al,\" Kaz said, chuckling. \"At least not when her bad math is in our favor. Nice work, Aydee.\"\n\n\"But what did I do?\" she said, confused, handing back the exploding bears.\n\n\"Nothing,\" Kaz said, tucking the bears in his pack.\n\nAydee was young enough that she hadn't learned to control her Talent yet - and I couldn't really blame her for that, since I barely had mine under control myself. Her Talent would be hard to control anyway, since she could only make mathematical miracles when she legitimately calculated wrong in her head.\n\n\"Alcatraz, are you all right?\" Bastille asked.\n\nI nodded, still feeling tired but forcing myself to my feet. \"Come on. I want to see what we're up against.\"\n\nKaz led the way over to the ridge. We walked up to it, looking out of the jungle over a daunting sight.\n\nBeneath us, the forest had been trampled to the ground. The black tents of an enormous army were pitched amid the stumps of trees, and the smoke of a hundred fires rose into the sky. The army encircled a small hilltop city made entirely of wooden huts, with a wooden-stake wall around the outside. It looked small and fragile, but it had some kind of shield around it - a bubble of glass, like a translucent dome. That glass was cracked and broken in several places.\n\nThe army was bad enough. However, the things that stood behind it were even more daunting - three enormous robots dressed like Librarians, holding enormous swords on their shoulders.\n\n\"Giant robots,\" I said. \"They have giant robots.\"\n\n\"Er, yes,\" Kaz said. \"That's what threw the rock at us.\"\n\n\"Why didn't anyone shattering tell me they had giant robots!\"\n\nThe others shrugged.\n\n\"Maybe we're fighting for the wrong side,\" I said.\n\n\"We're fighting for what is right,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"Yeah, without giant robots.\"\n\n\"They're not so tough,\" Bastille said, eyes narrowed. \"They're nearly useless in battle. Always tripping over things.\"\n\n\"But they're great at throwing rocks,\" Kaz added.\n\n\"All right,\" I said, taking a deep breath. \"Grandpa needs us to sneak into the palace and call from inside, using the queen's Communicator's Glass. Any ideas?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Kaz said, \"I could use my Talent to -\"\n\n\"No!\" Bastille and I both said at the same time. I still hadn't gotten all of the dragon stomach snot out of my hair.\n\n\"You tall people,\" Kaz said with a sigh. \"Always so paranoid.\"\n\n\"We could steal one of those six robots,\" Aydee said, thoughtful. \"I might be able to pilot one. My training includes Librarian technology.\"\n\n\"That's an idea,\" I said. \"Maybe\u2026 Wait, six robots?\"\n\nI looked again, and indeed, where three of the enormous machines had stood, there were now six. A group of Librarians stood around the robots' feet, looking up, seeming confused at where the extra three had come from.\n\nAydee's Talent, it appeared, could be a hindrance.\n\n\"Great,\" I said flatly. \"Let's ignore the robots for now.\"\n\n\"How are we going to get in, then?\" Kaz asked.\n\nI bit my lip in thought. At that point, something deeply profound occurred to me. A majestic plan of beauty and power, a plan that would save us all and Mokia as well.\n\nBut, being stoopid, I forgot it immediately. So we did something ridiculous instead."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "For my plan to work, we had to wait until it grew dark. It was a cold night, chill, and I stood, a lone sentry atop a stone shelf, lost inside my mind. The ghosts of my past seemed, in that caliginous night, to crawl up from the bowels of the earth and whisper to me. At their forefront was the image that I'd once had of my father, my dreams of what he would be when I finally discovered him. A brave man, a man forced to abandon me because of circumstances, not lack of affection. A person I'd be proud to have as my sire.\n\nThat man was just illusion. Dead. Killed by the truth that was Attica Smedry. But the ghost whispered at me for vengeance. Whispered at me to\u2026\n\n...stop being so pretentious.\n\nThe above paragraphs are what we authors like to call literary allusion. That's what we do when we don't know what else to write, so we go and read some other story, looking for great ideas we can steal. However, to avoid looking like we're stealing, we leave just enough clues so that someone who is curious can discover the original source. That way, instead of looking like thieves, we instead appear very clever because of the secret meaning we've hidden in our text.\n\nAuthors are the only people who get in trouble if they steal from others and try to hide it but get praised for stealing when they do it in the open. Remember that. It'll help you a lot in college.\n\nSo, to repeat the previous phrase without the literary allusion: I sat on a rock, waiting for it to get dark, thinking about my stoopid father and how he didn't live up to my expectations. It wasn't actually cold out - Mokia is in the tropics, unlike Denmark. My stomach rumbled; the others were eating some bread and cheese that Kaz had brought, but I didn't feel like eating.\n\nA rustling sound came from behind, and Bastille walked up to my rock, Warrior's Lenses tucked into her jacket pocket. Below, the besieging army was getting ready to camp for the night. I was wearing my Oculator's Lenses - which were also called \"Primary Lenses,\" I'd come to learn.\n\nThey had a reddish tint, and allowed an Oculator to do some very basic things: see auras around types of glass and fight off other Oculators. Sometimes they let you see other kinds of auras as well, little hints about the world. I wasn't good at using them for that sort of thing yet, though.\n\nRight now, they showed me that the dome around Tuki Tuki was made of a very powerful type of glass. It was in even worse shape than it looked; my Lenses let me see that the aura was wavering. It pulsed with an almost sickly glow. Whatever the Librarians were doing to break down the dome, it was working.\n\n\"Hey,\" Bastille said, sitting down. \"What's reflecting?\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"Free Kingdoms phrase,\" Bastille said. \"It just means 'What are you thinking about?'\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"It's your parents, isn't it?\" Bastille asked. You always get the same look in your eyes when you think about them.\"\n\nI shrugged again.\n\n\"You're wondering what the point was in rescuing your father, since he didn't end up spending any time with you.\"\n\nI shrugged, my stomach rumbling again.\n\nBastille hesitated. \"I'm not sure I understood that one. My shrug-ese is kind of rusty.\"\n\n\"I don't know, Bastille,\" I said, still looking at the city. \"It's just that\u2026 well, I've lost them both again. For a few moments, we were all there, in the same city. And now I'm alone again.\"\n\n\"You're not alone,\" she said, sitting down on the rock next to me.\n\n\"Even when I was with my father, I wasn't with him,\" I said. \"He practically ignored me. Every time I tried to talk to him, he acted like I was a bother. He kept sending me off to enjoy myself, offering to give me money, as if the only thing he had to do as a father was provide for me.\n\n\"And now, they're both gone. And I don't know what any of it was about. They were in love once. When we were captured a few months ago, I watched my mother talk about me to the other Librarians. She said she didn't care about me, but the Truthfinder's Lens said that she was lying.\"\n\n\"Huh,\" Bastille said. \"Well, that's good, right? It means she cares.\"\n\n\"It's not good,\" I said. \"It's confusing. It would be so much easier if I could just believe that she hates me. Why did they break up? Why did they think a Librarian and a Smedry could marry in the first place? And what made them change their minds? Whose fault was it? They were together until I was born.\u2026\"\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Bastille said. \"It's not your fault.\"\n\nI didn't respond.\n\n\"Alcatraz\u2026\"\n\n\"I know it's not,\" I said, mostly to get her to stop prodding me. Bastille fell silent, though I could tell she didn't believe me. She shouldn't have.\n\nI continued staring out into the night. What is it you're really after, Mother? I thought. What is in that book you stole? And why did you lie to the other Librarians about me?\n\nI'm sorry. Did that last part make you a little depressed? Someone needs to say something funny. How about this: By the end of this book, you'll see me realize that everything I thought I knew about my life was a lie, and I'll be left even more alone than before.\n\nOh? That wasn't very funny, you say? That's because you didn't hear the joke. I hid it in the sentence, but you have to read it backward to get it.\n\nDid you get it? You might have to read it out loud to sound it out right, if you want to see the joke. Give it a try. Sound out every word.\n\nHow was that? What? Oh, that wasn't supposed to make you laugh - it was supposed to make everyone around you laugh at how silly you sounded. Did it work? (If you'll look above, I said, \"Someone needs to say something funny,\" but I didn't say it would be me.\u2026)\n\n\"So,\" Bastille said. \"Do you want to know about those Lenses your grandfather gave you?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I said, glad for the change in topic. I pulled out the pair of Bestower's Lenses, with their purple-and-green tint. When I wore my Primary Oculator's Lenses, the ones in my hand glowed with a strong aura; they were very powerful.\n\n\"These are supposed to be tough to use,\" Bastille said, taking the Bestower's Lenses and inspecting them. \"Essentially, they let you give something of yourself to someone else.\"\n\n\"Something?\" I asked. \"What something?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"It depends. Like I said, they're hard to use, and nobody seems to understand them perfectly. You put them on, you look at someone and focus on them, then you send them something. Some of your strength, something you're feeling, something you can do that they can't.\n\nThere are reports of some strange events tied to this kind of Lens. An Oculator who had hives from a troll allergy once took a set of these and gave the hives to his political opponent when she was giving a speech.\"\n\n\"Huh,\" I said, taking the Lenses back, looking them over.\n\n\"Yeah, and since his opponent was a troll herself, it was kind of weird. Anyway, the Lenses are powerful - and dangerous. I'm kind of surprised that your grandfather gave them to you.\"\n\n\"He trusts me more than he should,\" I said, slipping off my Primary Lenses and putting on the Bestower's Lenses.\n\nAs always, the tint to the glass was invisible to me once I put the Lenses on.\n\nBastille jumped as I turned toward her. \"Don't point those at me, Smedry!\"\n\n\"I haven't activated them,\" I said, stomach rumbling. I'd need to eat before -\n\nSuddenly, I felt full. I cocked my head as Bastille's stomach rumbled.\n\n\"Great,\" she said. \"You gave me your hunger. Thanks a lot, Smedry. And I just ate.\"\n\nI felt embarrassed, but Bastille was the one who blushed.\n\nI'd given her my embarrassment.\n\nHurriedly, I pulled the Lenses off. Immediately, the effect wore off - I was hungry and embarrassed again. \"Wow.\"\n\n\"I warned you,\" Bastille said. \"Shattering Glass! You Smedrys never listen.\" She stormed off, leaving me to sheepishly tuck the Lenses back into my pocket.\n\nStill, they did seem like they would be very useful.\n\nI joined the others at our impromptu camp set back from the ridge. \"All right,\" I said, squatting down beside them. \"I think it's dark enough. Let's go.\"\n\n\"Sounds good,\" Kaz said. \"What does this plan of yours entail?\"\n\n\"It's dark,\" I said.\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"And so we sneak past the guards and run to the city,\" I said.\n\nThe other three blinked at me. \"That's your plan?\" Kaz said.\n\n\"Sure,\" I replied. \"What did you think it was?\"\n\n\"Something not lame,\" Aydee said with a frown.\n\nKaz nodded. \"You said you had a plan, and then told us to wait for dark. I figured\u2026 well, that you'd have something a little more original.\"\n\n\"We could try knocking out guards,\" I said, \"and taking their uniforms.\"\n\n\"I said more original,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"What does originality have to do with it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Everything!\" Kaz said, glancing at Aydee, who nodded vigorously. \"We're Smedrys! We can't do things the way everyone else does.\"\n\n\"Okay then\u2026\" I said slowly. \"We'll sneak past the guards in the dark, and we'll do it while quoting Hamlet.\"\n\n\"Now that's more like it!\" Kaz said.\n\n\"Never seen anything like it,\" Aydee added. \"It just might be crazy enough to work.\" she paused. \"What's a hamlet?\"\n\n\"It's a small village,\" Kaz said.\n\nBastille rolled her eyes. \"I'll go first,\" she said, slipping on her warrior's Lenses despite the dark night. \"Follow me to the rim of the camp, but don't come any closer until I give the signal.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"What's the signal?\"\n\n\"A quote from a hamlet,\" Kaz said. \"Obviously.\"\n\n\"Are you sure a hamlet isn't a very small pig?\" Aydee said.\n\n\"Nah,\" Kaz said. \"That's a hammer.\"\n\nBastille sighed, then hurried off, her dark uniform making her blend into the night. The rest of us followed more slowly, Kaz putting on a pair of rugged, aviator-style sunglasses that were obviously Warrior's Lenses. Aydee got out her own, though hers had yellow rims with flowers painted on them. Uncertain what else to do, I put the Bestower's Lenses back on, though I made certain not to look directly at Kaz or Aydee.\n\nWe climbed down from the rim, moving along a game trail through the dense jungle. The Librarian army didn't seem to be anticipating any danger from outside, and most of their attention was focused on Tuki Tuki. Still, guard posts were spaced around the perimeter, each lit by a bonfire. We followed Bastille - who was amazingly quiet as she moved through the underbrush - as she rounded the camp, obviously looking for a place that we could sneak through without causing too much of a disturbance.\n\nShe eventually stopped, hiding in the shadows just outside the camp near a watch fire that had been allowed to burn low. It was mostly just coals now, a couple of tired-looking Librarian guards standing watch. They were beefy men, the type with square jaws and stoopid names like \"Biff,\" \"Chad\"' or \"Brandon.\" They had on white shirts with pocket protectors and pink bow ties but had enormously strong bodies. Like someone had combined a math nerd and a football player into one unholy hybrid.\n\nBastille took a deep breath, then dashed across the trampled ground with blurring speed. The Librarians barely had time to stand up straight, squinting into the darkness before she was upon them.\n\nNow, in case you somehow slept through the other three books, let me explain something. Bastille is fast. Like, cheetah on a sugar buzz fast. She not only has those Warrior's Lenses but she's also a Crystin. Every Knight of Crystallia has a little crystal grown into the skin at the back of their neck - that crystal comes from the Worldspire itself and connects every Crystin to all of the others. They all share a little of their skills and abilities with the other knights. This, in turn, turns every shattering one of them into crazy insane supersoldiers, even the thirteen-year-old girls. Especially the thirteen-year-old girls. (Every teenage girl has a crazy insane supersoldier inside of them, waiting to get out. If you don't believe me, it probably means you don't have any teenage sisters. Particularly not two who both want to wear the same necklace to the prom.)\n\nBastille didn't even need to get out her sword. She made the first guard double over with a punch to the stomach, then grabbed his shoulder and used it to steady herself as she spun, kicking the other guard in the neck, dropping him to the ground. She followed this by punching the first guard square in the forehead.\n\nBoth men fell to the ground, silent. Bastille glanced back toward where we were hiding. \"I think we ought to get our roads cobbled!\" she whispered. Then - I could see her sighing visibly - she added, \"Oink oink oink.\"\n\nI smiled as the three of us trotted up to the watch fire. Kaz had out his sling, but hadn't needed it. The two guards were out cold. Bastille waited, tense, glancing toward the two nearest watch fires - one in the distance to either side of us. The guards at them didn't seem to have noticed us.\n\n\"Nice work, Bastille,\" Kaz said, inspecting the guards, setting aside their futuristic rifles. Like most Free Kingdomers, he didn't find guns and other \"primitive\" weapons to be very useful.\n\nI, on the other hand, had watched enough action movies to know that if you're going to sneak through the middle of an enemy army, a gun can be a pretty cool thing to have. So I reached down and picked up one of the rifles.\n\n\"Alcatraz!\" Bastille said. \"Put that down! Your Talent!\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" I said. \"I've learned to control it. Look, the gun isn't even falling apart.\"\n\nIndeed, it remained in one perfect piece. Bastille relaxed as I lifted the gun, placing it against my shoulder, barrel toward the air.\n\nAnd - as if to prove me wrong - I felt a little jolt as my Talent was engaged. The gun didn't fall apart, however.\n\nIt just fired. Shooting directly into the air with an extremely loud cracking noise, blasting a glowing ball of light into the sky.\n\nShocked, I dropped the gun. It hit the ground, going off again, shooting another glowing ball out into the forest.\n\nThe black night was completely still for a moment. And then, a loud blaring alarm noise began to echo through the camp.\n\n\"Frailty,\" Bastille said with a sigh, \"thy name is Alcatraz.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "ACT V, SCENE III",
                "text": "The following chapter introduction is an excerpt from Alcatraz Smedry's bestselling book, How to Sound Really Smart in Three Easy Steps.\n\nSTEP ONE: Find an old book that everyone has heard of but nobody has read.\n\nThe clever writers know that literary allusions are useful for lots of reasons other than giving you stuff to write when you run out of ideas. They can also make you look way more important. What better way to seem intelligent than to include an obscure phrase in your story? It screams, \"Look how smart I am. I've read lots of old books.\"\n\nSTEP TWO: Skim through that old play or document until you find a section that makes no sense whatsoever.\n\nShakespeare is great for this for one simple reason: None of what he wrote makes any sense at all. Using confusing old phrases is important because it makes you look mysterious. Plus, if nobody knows what the original author meant, then they can't complain that you used the phrase wrong. (Shakespeare, it should be noted, was paid by other authors to write gibberish. That way, when they wanted to quote something that didn't make sense, they just had to reach for one of his plays.)\n\nSTEP THREE: Include a quote from that play or old document in an obvious place, where people will think they're smart for spotting it.\n\nNote that you get bonus points for changing a few of the words to make a clich\u00e9d turn of phrase, as it will stick in people's minds that way. Reference the last sentence of the previous chapter for an example.\n\nNote that if you aren't familiar with Shakespeare, you can always use Greek philosophers instead. Nobody knows what the heck they were talking about, so talking about them in your books is a great way to pretend to be smart.\n\nEverybody wins!\n\n\"O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!\" Kaz cried as the alarm went off.\n\n\"Why,\" Aydee said. \"What should be thy fear?\"\n\n\"More matter,\" Bastille said, pointing at the glass dome of the city, then pulling out her sword. \"With less art.\"\n\n\"Bid the players make haste!\" I cried, dashing away from the fallen gun. We took off at a run toward Tuki Tuki.\n\nAll around us, the camp was coming alert. Fortunately, they didn't know what the disturbance was or what had caused it. Many of the Librarians seemed to assume that the shot had come from the besieged city, and they were forming up battle lines facing the dome. Others were running toward the place where the shot I'd fired had entered the jungle.\n\n\"If there be any good thing to be done\u2026\" Bastille said, looking about, worried.\n\nThe scrambling soldiers gave me an idea. Up ahead, I saw a gun rack where a bunch of rifles leaned, waiting to be picked up by Librarians for battle. I waved to the others, racing toward the rack. I ran past it, fingers brushing the weapons and engaging my Talent. They all fired, shooting glowing shots up into the air, arcing over the camp and furthering the chaos.\n\n\"What a piece of work is a man!\" Kaz called, giving me a thumbs-up.\n\nLibrarian soldiers ran this way and that, confused. Amid them were men and women dressed in all black \u2013 stark black uniforms for the men, with black shirts and ties, and black skirts with black blouses for the women. Some of these noticed my group running through camp and began to cry out, pointing at us.\n\nAydee yelped suddenly, pointing ahead of us. \"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!\"\n\nIndeed, a group of soldiers had noticed us and - spurred by the Librarians in black - was sprinting for us.\n\nThere wasn't much time to think. Bastille charged them at the head, of course. She wouldn't be able to take them all, though. There were too many.\n\nKaz raised his sling, whipping a rock at a Librarian. The man dropped like Polonius in Act III, Scene iv, but there were still a good ten Librarians to fight. Kaz kept slinging rocks as Bastille surged into the middle of them, sword out and raised before her. Aydee hid behind some barrels at a command from Kaz.\n\nAnd me. What could I do? I stood there in the chaotic night, trying to decide. I was the leader of this expedition. I needed to help somehow!\n\nA Librarian soldier came rushing at me, crying, \"Let me be cruel, not unnatural!\" He carried a sword; obviously, these men were ready to deal with Smedrys, just in case. A gun would have been useless against my Talent.\n\nI stepped back nervously. What could I do? Break the ground beneath him? That might as easily toss me into the hole, as well as the others. I couldn't hurt myself in order to\u2026\n\nSomething occurred to me.\n\nWithout bothering to think if it were a good idea, I focused on the man, activating my Lenses. Then, I punched myself in the head.\n\nNow, under normal circumstances, this kind of activity should be frowned upon. In fact, punching yourself in the head is most definitely what we call stoopiderific (defined as \"the level of stoopidity required to go slip-'n'-sliding at the Grand Canyon\"). However, in this case, it was slightly less stoopiderific.\n\nThe Bestower's Lenses transferred the punch from me to the Librarian. He was suddenly knocked sideways, looking more shocked than hurt.\n\nHe stumbled to his feet. \"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.\"\n\n\"There is nothing either good or bad,\" I noted, smiling. \"But thinking makes it so.\" I punched myself in the stomach as hard as I could.\n\nThe Librarian grunted, stumbling again. I went at it over and over, until he was groaning and in no shape to get back up. I looked up, scanning the chaotic grounds of the fight. People were running everywhere. Kaz was standing atop the barrels that Aydee was hiding behind, and she'd pulled out a few of the teddy bear grenades. I just managed to dodge to the side as she pulled the tag on a blue one and tossed it at some nearby Librarians, causing them to reverse explode toward each other in a lump.\n\nI picked another Librarian running by and began to pound on him by pounding on myself. However, I wasn't avoiding damage entirely. In fact, when I stopped focusing on Librarians I'd pummeled, the pains started to come back to me. I needed a different method.\n\n\"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!\" a Librarian cried, dashing toward me.\n\nI spun, focusing on him, and did the first thing I could think of. I pretended that I was crazy. I'm insane, I'm insane, I'm insane! I thought.\n\nThe man hesitated, lowering his sword. He cocked his head, then wandered away. \"Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?\" he asked, glancing at the sky.\n\nBastille was in the center of a furious battle. She tried not to hurt people too much, but there was no helping it here. She'd had to stab several of the Librarians, and they lay on the ground holding leg wounds or arm wounds. One man, shockingly, had been stabbed in the mouth. He clutched something in his hand, and as I ran past him, he mumbled, \"But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.\u2026\"\n\n\"O, woe is me,\" I said, squeezing my eyes shut, \"to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!\"\n\nI couldn't leave my eyes closed for long, though. I opened them, trying to get close to Bastille to help. She seemed to be holding out well. One Librarian came up behind her, trying to attack her from the side. He jumped at her, joined by a group of friends, grabbing her arm and knocking her large, crystal sword out of her hand.\n\n\"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!\" I yelled, pointing.\n\nKaz glanced toward us and nodded, grabbing a pink bear from Aydee and tossing it in our direction. It hit, blowing all of us backward. I hit the ground in a roll, but like before, the grenade didn't actually hurt any of us.\n\nThat explosion was enough to get Bastille free from her grapplers, but her sword had been knocked far away. I scrambled to get it for her as she pulled her dagger free from her belt, facing down a Librarian.\n\n\"Is this a dagger which I see before me?\" the Librarian said, holding up a larger, much more imposing sword. He swung.\n\nBastille just smiled, blocking his sword with her dagger, then stepping unexpectedly forward and kicking him in the crotch with a booted foot.\n\n\"Get thee to a nunnery,\" she said as he squeaked and fell to the ground.\n\nBastille hates it when people quote from the wrong play.\n\nI grabbed Bastille's sword, then dashed toward her, tossing it into her hands as I passed. \"Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend.\"\n\n\"Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks,\" she said with an appreciative nod.\n\nI looked about for more enemies. Shockingly, most of the Librarians in this group were down.\n\n\"Will you two help to hasten them?\" Kaz yelled, running past us, Aydee at his side. \"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind!\"\n\nI nodded in agreement, bolting toward the far side of the camp. Oddly, as we ran, we passed heaped-up piles of what appeared to be glass. Cups, mirrors, windows \u2013 all broken, many broken so badly that they were nearly unrecognizable. I didn't have much energy to ponder on the oddity, though. Using the Bestower's Lenses had taken a lot out of me - my stomach hurt from being punched so often, and the Lenses had sapped away a lot of my strength.\n\nFortunately, the Librarians were confused enough by the nighttime attack that we were able to run the rest of the distance without being stopped again. We burst out of the camp and ran up the hillside toward the glass-domed city above. Behind, Librarians shouted, some pointing at us. A rank of riflemen set up to shoot us down, but they made the mistake of pointing at not one but three Smedrys.\n\nThree of the riflemen got lost while trying to raise their guns, five miscounted and didn't put any bullets in their guns, and the rest of the weapons fell apart as their owners tried to use them.\n\nSometimes it's good to have a Talent.\n\nUnfortunately, I hadn't considered how we were going to get into the city once we reached it. The glass dome ran all the way down to the ground, and although there appeared to be a place where hinges made a glass door, that was guarded by a group of Mokian soldiers. The stout, well-muscled men were bare-chested, their faces painted with black swirling lines and patterns like Maori war paint. They carried spears made from a black wood, and some of the spearheads were on fire.\n\nDespite the fearsome display, the soldiers themselves looked like they'd had a hard time of it in the fighting. Most of them wore bandages or slings, and they looked at me and my group with suspicion.\n\n\"Our purpose may hold there!\" one of the men said through a small slit in the glass. \"Who comes here?\" They didn't open the door for us.\n\nI stepped forward. \"Sir, my good friend. I do commend me to you.\"\n\nBastille stepped forward, showing her Crystin blade, the symbol of a Knight of Crystallia. \"Swear by my sword,\" she proclaimed.\n\nA Crystin seemed enough proof for the Mokians that we were good guys. They opened the small glass doorway, waving us in. we let Kaz and Aydee go first while I looked back at the camp. We'd done it! I puffed in fatigue, but smiled at our victory.\n\nBeside me, Bastille seemed less enthusiastic.\n\n\"How is it that the clouds still hang on you?\" I asked her.\n\nShe shrugged, regarding the chaotic Librarian ranks, particularly the place where we'd been forced to fight. \"My soul is full of discord and dismay.\"\n\n\"The lady doth protest too much, methinks.\"\n\nBastille looked at me. I could tell from her expression that she blamed me for upsetting everything. That was probably fair, since I'd not only been the one to suggest the plan but the one to ruin it by picking up the Librarian's gun.\n\n\"How absolute the knave is,\" Bastille said, tapping me on the chest.\n\n\"This above all,\" I said, shrugging and smiling wryly, \"to thine own self be true.\"\n\nAnd with that, we entered Tuki Tuki."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!\n\nThe Mokian soldiers ushered us through the glass doorway, several of them keeping watchful guard at the army behind. Inside the glass shield, a ten-foot-high wooden wall surrounded the city. The wall was battered and broken, burned in places, and looked like it had seen a lot of fighting before the glass shell had been put in place.\n\nAs soon as we were through the door, several soldiers slammed it shut. One of the soldiers called up toward the wall. \"Smedrys have arrived! A Crystin is with them! Lady Aydee has returned!\"\n\nOthers picked up the shouts, passing them along the line of ragged defenders standing atop the wall. The men around me lost their suspicion and began to look hopeful.\n\n\"Lord Smedry,\" one of them said. \"You are an advance force? How many troops is Nalhalla sending us?\"\n\n\"Are there any others with you?\" another asked hopefully.\n\n\"Are the Knights of Crystallia mobilized?\" yet another asked. \"When will they arrive?\"\n\n\"Er,\" I said, taking off my Bestower's Lenses as more questions swarmed me.\n\n\"We're alone,\" Bastille said curtly. \"We didn't bring any more help, the knights aren't mobilized, and we really don't have time to talk about it.\"\n\nEveryone fell silent. Bastille has a talent for killing conversations. Basically, Bastille has a talent for killing anything.\n\n\"What she means,\" I said, shooting a glare her direction, \"is that we're here to help, and we hope more will follow. But we're it for now.\"\n\nThe soldiers seemed crestfallen.\n\n\"I'm sorry we didn't let you in more quickly, Lord Smedry,\" said one of the men. \"It seemed like you had young Aydee captive there, and we weren't sure what was going on.\"\n\nOh, right, I thought. It probably would have made sense to have her approach first, since she's from the city. Ah well. You can't expect me to think of everything, particularly considering how stoopid I am.\n\nYou haven't forgotten that, have you? Don't make me start spelling things wrong to prove it to you.\n\nIn the distance, a gate opened in the wooden wall and a contingent of Mokians came out carrying spears that were alight with fire in the night. The soldiers around us made way for the newcomers, and I could tell they respected the man at their lead. He was tall, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail and tied with a beaded string. His face was painted with black lines. He had a powerful, muscular chest and - like most of the other Mokians - wore a simple wrap around his waist, colored red and blue. For some reason, he looked vaguely familiar to me.\n\n\"So it is true,\" he said, stopping before us, burning spear held to the side. \"Welcome, Lord Alcatraz Smedry, to our doomed city. You have picked an interesting time to visit us. Lady Bastille, your sister will be pleased to see you, though I doubt the circumstances will make her happy. Lord Kazan, you are welcome - as always \u2013 in Tuki Tuki.\"\n\n\"Do I know you?\" Kaz said, narrowing his eyes.\n\n\"I'm general of the city guard in Tuki Tuki,\" the man said. He had a commanding, deep voice. \"I have seen you many times, though I doubt I was worth your notice. Likely, you have seen my face, but we have never been introduced.\" He looked to Aydee and nodded to her. \"Child, your brave mission does you honor. We are already in communication with the embassy in Nalhalla.\"\n\nAydee blushed. \"Thank you, Your\u2026 er\u2026 General Mallo.\"\n\n\"We had not expected you to return, however,\" he said sternly. \"You should have remained in Nalhalla, where it is safe.\"\n\nHer blush deepened. \"But my cousin needed a pilot! He had to come to Mokia!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Mallo said flatly. \"I've received a report from the embassy regarding the urgent departure. A vacation to visit the mud baths? That is ridiculous, even for a Smedry.\"\n\nNow it was my turn to blush. \"General,\" I said, \"there are other reasons for our visit. I need to speak to the queen as soon as possible - and after that, I'll need a little time with your Communicator's Glass. I might be able to get you some help for this siege.\"\n\nThe soldiers nearby perked up, and the general gave me an appraising look. \"Very well. The Smedry clan has long been friends, and sometimes family, of the Mokian royalty. You are always welcome.\" He gathered some soldiers, then led us to the city gate.\n\n\"I feel I should give you some kind of grand introduction, Lord Smedry,\" General Mallo said as we entered Tuki Tuki. \"But these are not days for joyful tours. So instead, just let me say this. Welcome to the City of Flowers.\" He raised a hand as I stepped through the gate.\n\nWe were at the bottom of the gentle hillside. I looked up along the main road that ran all the way to the palace. Flowers grew on virtually everything. The hutlike buildings were overgrown with vines that intertwined with the reeds that made up their walls, and these sprouted colorful, hibiscuslike blossoms. Flower beds ran alongside the road, with exotic bird-of-paradise blooms perching atop them. A line of enormous trees ran behind the buildings, their limbs extending out over the rooftops. These grew heaps of purple flowers that hung down over the road, collected in batches like bunches of grapes. It was gorgeous.\n\n\"Wow,\" I said. \"Glad I'm not allergic!\"\n\nGeneral Mallo grunted, gesturing with his flaming spear, leading us forward. Carrying that spear around struck me as a little bit dangerous, but who was I to speak? After all, I was the one walking around with a weapons-grade Smedry Talent stuffed inside me.\n\n\"Fortunately, Lord Smedry,\" Mallo said as we walked, \"our flowers are all nonallergenic.\"\n\n\"How did you get them that way?\" I asked.\n\n\"We asked them very nicely,\" Mallo said.\n\n\"Er, okay.\"\n\n\"It was much more difficult than it sounds, Alcatraz,\" Aydee added. \"Do you know how many different species of flower there are in the city? Six thousand! Our floralinguists had to learn each and every language.\"\n\n\"Floralinguists?\" I said.\n\n\"They talk to flowers!\" Aydee said excitedly.\n\n\"I kind of figured that,\" I said. \"What kinds of things do they say?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Mallo said, \"they tend to ramble a lot and use big words, but there isn't often much substance to what they say, despite the beauty and ornamentation of the language.\"\n\n\"So.... er\u2026\" I said.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Mallo said. \"Their speech is quite flowery.\"\n\nI walked right into that one like a bird hitting a glass sliding door at seventy miles an hour. Beside me, Bastille rolled her eyes.\n\nKaz whistled, watching the city. \"There are more things in heaven and earth\u2026 er, sorry. I'm having trouble getting over that last chapter. Anyway, I've always loved visiting Tuki Tuki. There's no place like it; I always forget how beautiful it is.\"\n\n\"Perhaps it was a pleasure to visit in the past,\" Mallo said, his face growing even more solemn, \"but the siege has been difficult for all of us. See how our regal daftdonias droop? The Shielder's Glass lets in light, but the plants can feel that they are enclosed. The entire city wilts beneath the Librarian oppression.\"\n\nIndeed, many of the flowers lining the street did seem to be drooping. As the wonder of my first sight of Tuki Tuki began to wear off, I saw many other signs of the siege. Open yards where people were up despite the late hour, cutting bandages and boiling them in enormous vats. The sounds of blacksmiths working on weapons rang in the air. Most of the men we passed - and even many of the women - wore bandages and carried weapons. Spears with long, shark-tooth-like ridges down the sides, or swords and axes of wood, also made with shark-tooth sides.\n\nIf you're wondering where the Mokians get all of those shark teeth, by the way, it involves using children as bait - specifically children who skip to the ends of books to read the last page first. I'm sure that you would never do something like that. That would be downright stoopiderific.\n\nMany of those passing waved hello to Aydee, and she waved back. Her family, the Mokian Smedrys, were well known. Eventually we approached the palace. It looked like a very large hut, constructed using thick reeds for the walls. It had a crown of red flowers blanketing its thatch roof.\n\nNow you're probably thinking what I am. Huts? Aren't the Mokians supposed to be one of the most learned, scientifically minded people in the Free Kingdoms? What were they doing living in huts?\n\nI assumed that, obviously, there was a good explanation. \"So, these buildings,\" I said. \"They're made of special, reinforced magical reeds, I assume. They look like huts, but they're as strong as castles, right?\"\n\n\"No,\" Mallo said. \"They're just huts.\"\n\n\"Oh. But they've got Expander's Glass inside of them, right? They look small from the outside, but they're enormous on the inside?\"\n\n\"No. They're just huts.\"\n\nI frowned.\n\n\"We like huts,\" Mallo said, shrugging. \"Sure, we could build skyscrapers or castles. But why? To cut ourselves off from the sky with walls of stone and steel?\"\n\n\"It makes sense,\" Bastille added. \"Huts are more advanced than the buildings you have in the Hushlands, Smedry. Automatic air-conditioning, for one thing, and \u2013\"\n\n\"No,\" Mallo said. \"With all respect, young knight, we must learn to stop saying things like this. We like to pretend that what we have is better than what the Librarians have. But comparisons like those, and the jealousy they inspire, began this war in the first place.\"\n\nHe looked forward, toward the palace. \"We choose this life in Mokia. Not because it is 'primitive' or 'advanced,' but because it is what we like. The more complex the things surrounding your life become - the homes, the vehicles, the things you put in your homes and your vehicles \u2013 the more time you must spend on them. And the less time you have for thought and study.\"\n\nI blinked, shocked to hear those words coming from the mouth of the enormous, spear-wielding, war-painted Mokian. To the side, Bastille folded her arms, brooding. Her assertions that everything in the Free Kingdoms was better than things in the Hushlands had shocked me the first day we met. I had assumed that that was the way that all Free Kingdomers thought, but I was coming to realize that Bastille just has a\u2026 particular way of seeing the world.\n\n(That means that she's bonkers. But I can't write that she's bonkers, because if I do, she'll punch me. So, uh, perhaps we should forget I wrote this part, eh?)\n\nWe reached the steps up to the palace, where a woman waited for us. She looked familiar too, though this time I could pinpoint why. She looked a lot like her sister, Bastille. Tall and slender, Angola Dartmoor was about ten years older than Bastille and wore a Mokian wrap of yellow and black with a matching flower in her hair. She carried a royal scepter of ornately carved wood.\n\nShe was absolutely beautiful. She had long blond hair, kind of the shade of a bowl of mac and cheese. She was smiling a wide, genuine smile - which was rather the shape of a macaroni and cheese noodle. She seemed to radiate light, much like a bowl of mac and cheese might if you stuffed a lightbulb into it. Her skin was soft and squishy, like \u2013\n\nOkay. Maybe I'm too hungry to be writing right now. Either way, though, Angola was gorgeous. Definitely one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen.\n\nBastille stepped on my foot.\n\n\"Ow!\" I complained. \"What was that for?\"\n\n\"Stop gawking at my sister,\" Bastille grumbled.\n\n\"I wasn't gawking! I was appreciating!\"\n\n\"Well, appreciate her a little less, then. And drooling.\"\n\n\"I'm not -\" I cut off as Angola breezed down the steps gracefully, coming up to us. \"I'm not drooling,\" I hissed more softly, then bowed. \"Your Majesty.\"\n\n\"Lord Smedry!\" she said. \"I've heard so much about you!\"\n\n\"Er\u2026 you have?\"\n\nShe didn't reply, instead laying her hands gracefully on her sister's shoulders. \"And Bastille. After all these months of writing you and asking you to come visit, now you finally come? During a siege? I should have known that only danger would lure you. Sometimes, I wonder if you're not as attracted to it as those you protect!\"\n\nBastille blushed.\n\n\"Come,\" Angola said. \"You are welcome to what comforts Mokia can provide you. We will take morning repast and discuss the news you bring. The Aumakua bless that it be of good report, as we have seen too little of that as of late.\"\n\nNow, as an aside, you might be shocked to hear such a distinct reference to religion from Angola. After all, I haven't talked much about religion in these books.\n\nThis is intentional, mostly from a self-preservation standpoint. I've discovered that talking about religion has a lot in common with wearing a catcher's mask: Both give people liberty to throw things at you. (And in the case of religion, sometimes the \"things\" are lightning bolts.)\n\nUnfortunately, in the later years of my life I've developed a very rare affliction known as chronic smart-aleckiness. (It's kind of like dyslexia, only easier to spell. Particularly if you don't have dyslexia.) Because of this tragic, terminal disease, I'm unable to read or write about things without making stoopid wisecracks about them.\n\nDue to my affliction, I've wisely left the topic of religion alone - because if I were to talk about it, I'd have to make fun of it. And that might be offensive, as people take their religions very seriously. Better not to talk about it at all.\n\nTherefore, I will most certainly not tell you what religion has in common with explosive vomiting. (Whew. Glad I didn't say anything like that. It could have been really offensive.)\n\nAngola nodded to Kaz and Aydee in welcome, giving each a smile, then glided back up the steps, expecting us to follow her in.\n\n\"Wow,\" I said. \"Is she always so\u2026\"\n\n\"Nauseatingly regal?\" Bastille asked softly. \"Yeah, even before she was married.\"\n\n\"Well, I can see why the king married her. Too bad I won't be able to meet him.\"\n\nBastille's eyes flickered toward Mallo. It was only for a moment, but I caught it. Frowning, I turned to study the general, trying to find out what had drawn Bastille's attention. Once again, he looked familiar to me. In fact\u2026\n\n\"You're the king!\" I exclaimed, pointing at him.\n\n\"What?\" Mallo said, voice stiff. \"No I'm not. The king was taken to safety by the Knights of Crystallia weeks ago.\"\n\nHe was a terrible liar.\n\n\"Hey,\" Kaz said. \"Yeah, I thought I recognized you. Your Majesty! We had dinner once a few years back. Remember? My father spilled cranberry juice on your tapa.\"\n\nThe man looked embarrassed. \"Perhaps we should go inside,\" he said. \"I see there are some things I need to explain.\"\n\n(Also, if you're wondering, it's because both often make you fall to your knees.)"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "I try very hard to be deep, poignant, and meaningful at the beginning of each chapter. Most of the content of these books is basically silliness. (Granted, these events are real silliness that actually happened to me, but that doesn't stop them from being silly.) In the introductions, therefore, I feel it's important to explain meaningful and important concepts so that your time reading won't be completely wasted.\n\nI suggest you scrutinize these introductions, searching for their hidden meanings. My thoughts will bring you enlightenment and wisdom. If you are confused by something I say, rest assured that I'll eventually explain myself.\n\nFor instance, in reading the introduction to the previous chapter you might have understood my screams to be an expression of the existential angst felt by modern teens when thrust into a world they were ill-prepared to receive - a world that has changed so drastically from the one their parents knew (thanks for nothing, Heraclitus!). Or you might have seen it as the scream of one realizing that nobody can offer him help or succor.\n\n(Actually, I wrote that introduction to express the existential crisis I felt when an enormous spider crawled up my leg while I was typing. But you get the idea.)\n\nWe stepped into the palace. It smelled of reeds and thatch, and the wide, open windows let in a cool breeze. The rug was made of long, woven leaves, and the furniture constructed of tied bundles of reeds. Quite cozy, assuming you weren't enraged, confused, and feeling betrayed like I was.\n\n\"You knew\" I said, pointing at Bastille.\n\n\"I recognized His Majesty immediately,\" she admitted. \"But he seemed to want to keep his identity secret. So I played along.\"\n\n\"I did too,\" Aydee said. \"I\u2026 er, just didn't do a very good job of it. Sorry.\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" said Mallo, also known as King Talakimallo of Mokia. His wife stepped up beside him, and the guards watched the doorway into the palace.\n\n\"But why hide from me?\" I asked.\n\n\"And me!\" Kaz said, folding his arms, stepping up beside me.\n\n\"It wasn't just from you,\" the king said. \"It was from all outsiders. You see, we sort of\u2026 well, tricked the knights.\"\n\nBastille raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"They insisted that I be protected,\" Mallo said, voice fervent. \"They would not stop pestering me. I worried they'd kidnap me and take me from the city for my own good.\"\n\n\"The city is close to falling, Your Majesty,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Mokia can't afford for the entire royal family to be taken by the Librarians. What of the rest of the kingdom? It will need leadership.\"\n\n\"There is no 'rest of the kingdom,' child,\" Mallo said.\n\n\"Mokia stands here. We've been beaten down by Librarian forces for decades now; if Tuki Tuki falls, it will spell the end for my people. We will become just another Librarian province, slowly assimilated into the Hushlands, our people brainwashed until we forget our past.\"\n\nThe queen laid a hand on her husband's arm. \"We are not ignorant of the importance of preserving the royal lineage, fair sister - if only so that a proper resistance can be mounted to reclaim Mokia, should that become our fate.\"\n\nBefore you ask, yes, she actually talks like that. I once asked her to pass the butter and she said, \"It pleases me to bequeath this condiment unto you, young Alcatraz.\" Really. No kidding.\n\n\"But wait,\" I said, scratching my head. Being stoopid, I do that a lot. \"You're here, but the knights think that you're safe somewhere else?\"\n\n\"Our daughter imitated me,\" Mallo said. \"She is an Oculator and has a pair of Disguiser's Lenses. The knights shepherded her away to a hidden location while she used her Lenses to appear as if she were me.\"\n\n\"The lineage is safe,\" Angola said.\n\n\"And I can stay to fight with my people, as is right.\"\n\nMallo looked grim. \"Rather, I can fall with my people. I'm afraid that several Smedrys and a single knight will not be enough to win this siege. Our Defender's Glass is nearly broken, and most of my warriors have fallen to comas in battle. Those who remain have taken many wounds. My silimatic scientists think that one more day of fighting will shatter the dome. We are faced by superior numbers and superior firepower. In the moments before you arrived, I had made the difficult decision to surrender. I was on my way to the wall to announce it to the Librarians.\"\n\nThe words hung in the air like a foul stench - the kind that everyone notices but doesn't want to point out, for fear of being named the one who caused it.\n\nWell, guess we came here for nothing, I thought. We should probably turn around and get out of here.\n\n\"I'm here to help, your Majesty,\" I said instead. \"And I can bring others. If you will resist a little longer, I will not let Mokia fall.\"\n\nI'm not sure where the brave words came from. Perhaps a smarter man would have known not to say them. Even as they came out of my mouth, I was shocked by my stoopidity. Remember what I said about bravery?\n\nRidiculous though the proclamation was, the king did not laugh. \"I have found that the word of a Smedry is like gold, young Alcatraz,\" King Mallo said appraisingly. \"Of great value, but sometimes easy to bend. Are you certain you can bring aid to my people?\"\n\nNo.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\nThe king studied me, then glanced at his wife. \"If we surrender, our people retain their lives,\" Angola said, \"but lose their selves. If there remains but a slim chance\u2026\"\n\nHe nodded in agreement. \"You said you needed to use our Communicator's Glass, Alcatraz. Let us see what you can do with it, and then I will judge.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "\"Are you certain this is the right thing to do?\" Bastille hissed to me.\n\nWe sat on a wicker bench, waiting as the king and his wife fetched the Communicator's Glass. Aydee was talking to one of the soldiers, getting news about her family. (Sing, Australia, and their parents had been sent to provide leadership at the other main battlefront in the Mokian war - though I suspect that the king really sent them away to prevent them from being captured when the city fell.) Kaz stood nearby, arms folded as he leaned against the wall, wearing his brown leather jacket and aviator sunglasses.\n\n\"I don't know if this is right,\" I admitted to Bastille. \"But we can't just let them give up.\"\n\n\"If they fight, people will get hurt,\" Bastille said, leaning in close to me. \"Can we really offer them enough hope to justify that? Now that I've seen how bad it is, I don't even know if the full force of the Knights of Crystallia would be enough to turn this war around.\"\n\n\"I\u2026\" I trailed off, growing befuddled. I did that frequently when Bastille sat really close to me, particularly when I could smell the scent of the shampoo in her hair. Shouldn't girls smell like flowers or something like that? Bastille just smelled like soap.\n\nIt was strangely intoxicating anyway. Obviously she gives off some kind of brain-clouding radiation. That's the only explanation.\n\n\"Shattering Glass, what am I saying?\" she said, pulling back. \"Of course it's better for them to fight! I'm sorry. I've just grown so used to contradicting you on principle that I'm shocked when you do something smart.\"\n\n\"Duurrr\u2026\" I said.\n\nShe narrowed her eyes at me. \"You aren't still mooning over my sister, are you?\" Her voice was quite threatening.\n\nI shook out of my stupor. \"What? No. Don't be stoopid.\"\n\n\"Did you just call me stoopid?\"\n\n\"No, I told you not to be stoopid. What is it with you and your sister anyway?\"\n\n\"Nothing! I love my sister. We're like two shattering flowers in a field of shattering daisies.\"\n\n\"What does that even mean?\"\n\n\"I don't know! It was supposed to sound sisterly or something.\"\n\nI snorted in derision.\n\n\"So what's that supposed to mean?\" Bastille demanded. \"I'm very affectionate with my sister!\"\n\n\"So much so that you've never visited her in Mokia?\"\n\n\"It's a long way away, and I was busy training to become a knight. So that I could keep idiots like you out of trouble!\"\n\n\"Wait. You get mad when I imply that you might be stoopid, but it's all right for you to call me an idiot?\"\n\n\"Because you're a Smedry!\"\n\n\"That's always your excuse,\" I said. \"I don't buy it. Besides, this time you said you agreed with what I was doing!\"\n\n\"So!\"\n\n\"So!\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"So maybe we should, like, go catch a movie together or something,\" I said, standing up. \"Sometime when we're not being chased by Librarians or being eaten by dragons or things like that!\"\n\nBastille paused, cocking her head, frowning. \"Wait. What?\"\n\nI found myself blushing. Why had I said that? I mean, I'd been thinking about it for a while, but\u2026\n\nBrain-clouding radiation. Obviously.\n\n\"It was nothing,\" I said, panicking. \"I just, uh, got confused, and -\"\n\n\"What's a 'movie'?\" she asked. .And why would we need to catch it? Did one escape?\"\n\n\"Er, yes. They're these big, monstrous creatures that the Librarians let loose in the Hushlands. To terrorize people\u2026 and, you know, and steal their time, and make them cringe at bad acting, and then make them sit through long boring award shows that give statues of little gold men to people you've never heard of.\"\n\nShe frowned even further. \"You're an idiot sometimes, Smedry,\" she said, then glanced at Kaz, as if asking for an explanation from him.\n\n\"I'm not touching this one,\" he said, smiling. \"In fact, I'm staying so far away from it, I might as well be in the next kingdom over!\"\n\n\"Whatever,\" Bastille said, turning her narrowed eyes back on me - as if she suspected that I was making fun of her in some way she couldn't figure out. I just continued to blush, right up until the point where Mallo and Angora returned. The queen carried a small hand mirror. She crossed the woven rug and handed it to me.\n\nI hesitated, looking down at the mirror. Half of the glass was missing. \"This is it?\"\n\n\"Communicator's Glass is best if portable,\" Mallo said.\n\n\"We broke this piece in half and sent it to Nalhalla; it will allow us to communicate for some weeks through the two pieces, until the power fades. Then the glass must be reforged and broken again. It's not the easiest way to talk across a distance, but we were desperate, particularly after sending away our last Oculator to maintain my disguise.\"\n\n\"Librarian agents destroyed our other means of communication,\" one of the soldiers added. \"The Transporter's Glass station, the soundrunners, even the city's stockpile of Messenger's Glass.\"\n\nI frowned. \"How'd they do that?\"\n\n\"They continue to dig tunnels into the city,\" Mallo said with a sigh. \"And send strike teams up to harry us. We just caught one earlier today. We captured them before they could do any permanent damage, then collapsed the tunnel. There will be more, however.\"\n\nI nodded, raising the hand mirror. They all looked at me expectantly, as if they figured that - being an Oculator - I'd immediately know how to use the glass. \"Um,\" I said, turning it sideways. \"Er. Mirror, mirror, in my hand, my food is tasty, but often bland.\"\n\n\"Alcatraz?\" Kaz asked. \"What are you doing? You just have to touch the glass to make it work.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, tapping the mirror. It shimmered, like I'd disturbed the surface of a crystal-clear pool of water. A moment later, the image changed from a reflection of my face to show an image of a stone room. One of the castles in Nalhalla.\n\nA small Mokian boy sat in front of the mirror. He grew alert the moment the image changed, then ran off, yelling. \"Lord Smedry, Lord Smedry!\"\n\nWithin seconds, my grandfather was there. He looked somewhat frazzled, his hair sticking out at odd angles, his bow tie on sideways. \"Ah, Alcatraz, my lad! You did it!\"\n\n\"I'm here, Grandpa,\" I said, nodding. \"Inside Tuki Tuki. But things are bad here.\"\n\n\"Of course they are!\" Grandpa said. \"That's why we sent you in the first place, eh? Stay there for a moment. I need to get some knights!\"\n\nHe rushed away. It looked like their half of the mirror had been hung on the wall in some kind of entryway or foyer.\n\nI stood awkwardly for some time. The others crowded around me, looking through the mirror, waiting. Finally, Grandpa returned with several people dressed in full plate armor. One was Draulin, Bastille's mother. The other two were older-looking men.\n\n\"Alcatraz, tell them where you are,\" Grandpa Smedry said from somewhere to the side.\n\n\"I'm in Tuki Tuki,\" I said.\n\n\"You should leave there immediately,\" Draulin said sternly. \"It is not safe, Lord Smedry.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know\" I said. \"But you know us Smedrys. Crazy, without any regard for our own safety!\"\n\nOne of the knights frowned. \"This does indeed offer the proof the elder Lord Smedry promised,\" he said.\n\n\"I sense we are being manipulated,\" the other said, shaking his head. \"I do not like the feel of it.\"\n\nDraulin remained quiet during the conversation. She seemed to be studying me carefully with those dark eyes of hers.\n\nA thought occurred to me. They needed motivation to come help. Making a snap judgment, I turned the hand mirror around, shining it on Mallo. \"Guess who's here with me?\" I said to the knights.\n\nMallo looked shocked. \"Alcatraz! What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Trust me,\" I said.\n\n\"It's a Mokian warrior,\" one of the knights said. \"I feel for his plight, but the rules of our order are -\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Draulin's' voice said suddenly. There was a silence, followed by her saying, \"Your\u2026 Majesty?\"\n\nMallo sighed visibly, shooting me a glare. \"Yes, it is I.\"\n\n\"You are supposed to be safe!\"\n\n\"I will not abandon my people,\" Mallo said.\n\nI spun the mirror around. \"So, it's not just a couple of foolish Smedrys, but the Mokian royal line who are in danger here. You should\u2026\"\n\nThe image of the glass started to grow turbulent, ripples moving through it. I frowned, shaking the mirror.\n\n\"...can't\u2026 what\u2026 doing\u2026\" Draulin's voice said. \"What\u2026?\"\n\n\"I can't see you either,\" I said to them.\n\nThe others in the room crowded around. I lowered the mirror so all could see.\n\n\"That doesn't look good,\" Kaz said, rubbing his chin.\n\n\"This was supposed to last at least twenty days,\" Mallo said. \"We \u2013\"\n\n\"General Mallo!\" a voice cried. We turned as a young Mokian girl ran up the front steps to the palace and entered the main chamber.\n\n\"What is it?\" Mallo asked, turning sharply.\n\n\"The Librarian army,\" the girl said. \"They're doing something, something big. You should come see.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "0kay, I can't help myself. I've written three and a half books. I held my tongue. (Figuratively, unlike that guy back in Act V.) But I'm about to burst.\n\nIt is time to talk about religion in the Hushlands. You Free Kingdomers may be confused by Hushlander religions. After all, they are all so very different, and their followers are all so very good at yelling at one another loudly that it's hard to tell what any of them are saying. However, should you infiltrate Librarian nations and need to imitate a Hushlander, you'll probably need to join one of their religions to blend in. Therefore, I've prepared this handy guide.\n\nReligions, in the Hushlands, are basically about food.\n\nThat's right, food. In following one religion or another, you end up boycotting certain foods. If you become Hindu, for instance, you give up beef. Mormons give up alcohol and coffee. Catholics can eat pretty much whatever they want, but have to give up the stuff they like the most for one month a year, while Muslims give up all food during the daytime hours of Ramadan.\n\nSo which religion is the best? Well, it depends. In my cultivated opinion, I'd suggest Judaism.\n\nBut that's because I prefer the path of yeast resistance.\n\nWe stood atop the wooden palisade wall of Tuki Tuki watching the gigantic Librarian robots drive large, glowing rods into the ground. They shone blue in the night and were as tall as buildings. They illuminated the Librarian war camp, which was far more active now. Men and women had been awakened and were collecting their weapons and forming up battle lines.\n\n\"What are they?\" Angola asked.\n\n\"They look like some kind of glass device,\" Aydee said.\n\n\"No,\" Kaz said. He stood atop a step stool and looked out at the Librarian camp, rubbing his chin. \"This war is being led by the Order of the Shattered Lens.\"\n\n\"Who?\" I asked.\n\nBastille rolled her eyes at my ignorance.\n\n\"The Shattered Lens is a Librarian sect, Al,\" Kaz said. He was a scholar of Talents, Oculatory Distortions, and \u2013 by extension - Librarians. \"You've met the Dark Oculators, the Scrivener's Bones, and the Wardens of the Standard. Well, the shattered Lens is the last of them. And probably the largest. The other orders accept, even use, silimatic technology and Oculatory Lenses. These guys, though\u2026\"\n\n\"They don't?\" I asked.\n\n\"They hate all forms of glass,\" Kaz said. \"They take Biblioden's teachings very literally. He didn't like anything 'strange' like magic or silimatics. Most of the orders interpret his teachings as meaning 'Lenses and glasses need to be controlled very carefully, so only the important can use them.' Those Librarians hide the truth from most Hushlanders, but have no qualms about using Free Kingdomer technology and ideas when they can benefit from them.\n\n\"The order of the Shattered Lens is different. Very different. They feel that Lenses and silimatic glasses should never be used, not even by Librarians. They think Free Kingdom technology is evil and disgusting.\"\n\nI nodded slowly. \"So those piles of glass we passed while running into the city?\"\n\n\"They hold glass-breakings,\" Angola said softly. \"They gather together in groups and smash pieces of glass. Even regular glass, with no kind of Oculatory or silimatic abilities. It's symbolic to them.\"\n\n\"The other Librarians let them run the wars,\" Kaz added.\n\n\"Partially, I suspect, to keep them away. There will be trouble within the Librarian ranks if the Free Kingdoms ever do fall. The Order of the Shattered Lens works with the Dark Oculators and the Scrivener's Bones for now. There's a bigger enemy to fight. But once we're gone, there will likely be civil war as the orders struggle for dominance.\"\n\n\"Civil war across the entire world,\" Bastille said softly, nodding. \"The four Librarian sects using people as their pawns. The Shattered Lens trying to hunt down and kill Dark Oculators, the Wardens of the Standard trying to manipulate things with cool-headed politics, the Scrivener's Bones working for whomever will pay them the most\u2026\"\n\nWe fell silent. That army outside was large; I glanced back at the city. There didn't seem to be many Mokian soldiers. Perhaps five or six thousand, both men and women. The Librarians had easily four times that number, and they were armed with futuristic guns. The enormous robots continued their work, planting the rods in the ground. They were making a ring of them, encircling the city.\n\nFaced by such daunting numbers, I finally began to realize what I'd gotten myself into. And that's when I invented the term stoopidanated, meaning \"about as stoopid as Alcatraz Smedry the day he snuck into Tuki Tuki just in time to be there when it got overwhelmed by Librarians.\"\n\nIt's a very specific word, I know. Odd how many times I've been able to use it in my life.\n\n\"So the rods aren't glass,\" I said. \"What are they, then?\"\n\n\"Plastic,\" Bastille guessed. \"Some sort of glassdisrupting technology? That might be what's making the Communicator's Glass stop working.\"\n\n\"Might just be for light, though,\" Aydee said. \"Look. Those rods are bright enough that the Librarians can move about as if it were day. They look like they're getting ready to attack.\" She shrank down a little bit on her stool, as if to hide behind the wall.\n\nSomething occurred to me. I pulled the Courier's Lenses out of my pocket and slid them on.\n\nNow, it might seem odd to you Hushlanders that we had so many different ways of talking to one another over a distance. But if you think about it, this makes sense. How many different ways do we have in the Hushlands? Telephone, fax, telegraph, VoIP, e-mail, regular mail, radio, shouting really loud, bottles with notes in them, texting, blimps with advertisements on them, skywriting, voodoo boards, smoke signals, etc.\n\nCommunicating with one another is a basic human need. And communicating with people far away is an even more basic human need, because that way we can make fun of people and they can't kick us in the face.\n\nBy the way, have I mentioned how ugly that shirt is? Yeah. Next time, please try to dress up a little bit when you read my books. Someone might see you and I have a reputation to maintain.\n\nI concentrated, feeding power into my Lenses, questing out for my grandfather. His face appeared in front of me, but it was fuzzy and indistinct.\n\nAlcatraz, lad! Grandpa said. I was hoping you'd use the Courier's Lenses. What's happening? Why doesn't the Communicator's Glass work?\n\n\"I don't know,\" I replied. \"The Librarians are doing something outside the city - planting these glowing rods in the ground. That might have something to do with it.\"\n\nEven as I spoke, one of the robots placed another of the rods. When it did, my grandfather's form fuzzed even more.\n\n\"Grandpa,\" I said urgently. \"Did we convince the knights?\"\n\nThink... enough... help... Grandpa said, his voice cutting in and out. They know\u2026 king still\u2026 save His Majesty\u2026\n\n\"I can't understand you!\" I said. Another robot raised a rod into the air, preparing to place it.\n\nI raised my hands to the side of the glasses, focusing everything I had into the Lenses. I strained, teeth gritted. Shockingly, the glass started to glow, forcing me to close my eyes as they blazed alight. My grandfather's voice, once weak, surged back, audible again.\n\n...Luring Lovecrafts, what a mess! I said I've nearly got them persuaded. I'll bring them, lad, and anyone else I can get to come. We'll be there. Hold out until morning! Can you hear me, Alcatraz? Morning's first light. Er. Well, no, I'll be late. And that's been done before. But morning's second light, for certain. By third light at the latest. I promise!\n\nThe robot planted the rod. My grandfather's voice fuzzed again, and I tried another surge of power, but I'd pushed it too far. My Talent slipped through, mixing with my Oculatory power. I had trouble keeping the two separate; they were like two brightly different colors of paint, mixing and churning inside of me. Use one, and some of the other always wanted to come along.\n\nThe Talent surged through my hands before I realized what I was doing, and the frames of the Lenses shattered, dropping the bits of glass off my eyes. I caught them clumsily. Unfortunately, after feeling that resistance, I knew that they wouldn't work again - not as long as those Librarian rods were interfering. I reluctantly slipped the Lenses back in my pocket.\n\n\"What did he say?\" Aydee asked, anxious.\n\n\"He's coming,\" I replied. \"With the Knights of Crystallia.\"\n\n\"When?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"Well\u2026 he wasn't really that specific.\u2026\" I grimaced. \"He said dawn. Probably.\"\n\n\"Probably?\" Mallo said. \"Young Smedry, I'm not certain I can stake the lives of my people on a 'probably.'\"\n\n\"My grandfather is reliable,\" I said. \"He's never let me down.\"\n\n\"Except when he arrived too late to get the Sands of Rashid before the Librarians,\" Bastille added. \"Or\u2026 well, when he arrived too late to stop your mother from stealing the Translator's Lenses from the Library of Alexandria. Or when he was too late to \u2013\"\n\n\"Thanks, Bastille,\" I said flatly. \"Real helpful.\"\n\n\"I think we're all aware of my father's Talent,\" Kaz said, stepping up beside me. \"But I know Leavenworth Smedry better than anyone else, now that Mom's dead. If my pop says he'll be here with help, you can count on him. He might be a tad late, but he'll make up for it with style.\"\n\n\"Style will not protect my people from Librarian weapons,\" Mallo said, shaking his head. \"Your help is appreciated, but your promises are flimsy.\"\n\n\"Please,\" I said. \"Your Majesty, you've got to give us a chance. At least give it until morning. What do you have to lose by sleeping on it?\"\n\n\"There will be no sleeping,\" Mallo said, nodding. \"Look.\"\n\nI followed the gesture. Outside the walls, the large robots had finished planting the rods into the ground. Now they were walking over to a large pile of boulders that sat just outside of the camp.\n\n\"Our period of rest has ended,\" Mallo said grimly. \"They demanded our surrender, and since I've sent back no word, it seems they are going to resume their assaults. I had assumed they would wait until it was light to do so, but you know what they say about assumptions.\"\n\n\"If you're going to make a donkey joke,\" I noted, \"I did that already.\"\n\nMallo frowned at me. \"No, I was going to quote an ancient Mokian proverb, revered and honored by our people over six centuries of use.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, embarrassed. \"I'm, sorry. How does it go?\"\n\n\"'Don't make assumptions, idiot,'\" Mallo quoted with a reverent voice.\n\n\"Nice proverb.\"\n\n\"Mokian philosophers like to get to the point,\" Mallo said.\n\n\"Either way, if we are going to surrender, we need to do it now. Those terrible machines of theirs will begin throwing rocks soon, and the Defender's Glass will not last much longer against the assault.\"\n\n\"If you give up,\" Bastille said, \"that is the end of Mokia.\"\n\n\"Please,\" I said. \"Give us more time. Wait just a little longer!\"\n\n\"Husband,\" Angola said, laying a hand on his arm, \"most of our people would rather die than be taken by the Librarians.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Mallo said, \"but sometimes you need to protect people even when they do not wish it. Our warriors think only of honor. But I must consider the future, and what is best for all of our people.\"\n\nKing Mallo's face adopted a thoughtful expression. He folded a pair of beefy arms, one of his soldiers holding his spear for him. He stared out over the top of the wooden wall, looking at the Librarian forces.\n\nNow, perhaps some of you reading might be thinking of Mallo as a coward for even considering surrender. That's great. Next time you're in charge of the lives of thousands of people, you can make decisions quickly if you want. But Mallo wanted to think.\n\nIt all comes back to change. Nothing stays the same, not even kingdoms. Sometimes you have to accept that.\n\nSometimes, though, things change too quickly for you to even think about it. What happened next is still a blur in my mind. We were standing on the wall, waiting for Mallo to make his decision. And then Librarians were there.\n\nApparently, they came up through a tunnel they dug that opened just inside the wall. I didn't see that. I just saw a group of bow-tied figures, charging at us along the wall, wielding guns that shot balls of light.\n\nKaz vanished, his Talent making him get lost.\n\nIn the blink of an eye, three Mokian soldiers were standing in front of Aydee where there had been only two, her Talent instantly bringing a man from across the wall forward to defend her.\n\nMy Talent broke a few guns, though several of the Librarians had bows, and they fired those. Bastille, moving in a blur, had her sword out in a heartbeat and was cutting arrows from the air.\n\nSeriously. She cut them out of the air. Never play baseball against a Crystin.\n\nThe Mokian soldiers began to fight, leveling their spears, which also shot out glowing bursts of light.\n\nIt was all over in a few seconds. I was the only one who didn't move. I had no training with real combat or war \u2013 I was just a stoopid kid who had gotten himself in over his head. By the time I thought to yelp in fear and duck, the skirmish was over, the assassins defeated.\n\nSmoke rose in the air. Men fell still.\n\nI glanced down, checking to make certain all of my important limbs were still attached. \"Wow,\" I said.\n\nBastille stood in front of me, sword out, eyes narrow. She'd probably just saved my life.\n\n\"You see, Your Majesty,\" I said. \"You can't trust the Librarians! If you give up, they will just\u2026\"\n\nI trailed off only then noticing something. Mallo wasn't standing beside me, where he had been before. I searched around desperately, and found the king lying on the wall, his body covering that of his wife, whom he'd jumped to protect. Neither of them was moving.\n\nWarriors called out in shock, moving to their king and queen. Others called for help. In a daze, I turned, seeing the bodies of the Librarian assassins.\n\nThis was actually war. People were actually dying. Suddenly all of this didn't seem very funny any longer. Unfortunately, fate had a pretty good joke waiting for me in the very near future.\n\n\"They're alive,\" Bastille said, kneeling with the soldiers beside the king and queen. \"They're still breathing. They don't look to have been hurt, even.\"\n\n\"The Librarian weapons,\" one of the Mokians said, \"will often knock people unconscious. They're trying to conquer Mokia but don't want to exterminate us. They want to rule over us. So they use guns that put us into comas.\"\n\nAnother of the men nodded. \"We know of no cure - our stunner blasts work differently and have their own antidote. Those wounded can only be awakened by the Librarians, once the war is over. They'll wake us up in small, controllable batches, and brainwash us to forget our freedom.\"\n\n\"I've heard of this,\" Kaz said, kneeling down beside the king. When had Kaz come back? \"They did it when conquering other kingdoms too. Brutally effective tactic \u2013 if they knock us into comas, we still have to feed and care for those wounded, which drains our resources. Makes it easier to crack us. Far more effective than just killing.\"\n\nOne of the soldiers nodded. \"We have thousands of wounded who are sleeping like this. Of course, many of the Librarians lie comatose from our stun-spears as well. The antidote for one does not work on victims of the other.\"\n\nWe stood back as a Mokian doctor approached. Surprisingly, he was dressed in a white lab coat and spectacles. He carried a large piece of glass, which he held up, using it to inspect the king and queen. \"No internal wounds. Just Librarian Sleep.\"\n\n\"I would have expected a witch doctor,\" I said quietly to Kaz.\n\n\"Why?\" Kaz said. \"The king's not a witch, and neither's the queen.\"\n\n\"Take them to their chambers,\" the doctor said, standing. \"And place double guards on them! If the Librarians know they're down, they'll want to kidnap them.\"\n\nSeveral soldiers nodded. Others, however, stood up, looking around with confusion. Outside, the Librarian robots began to hurl their boulders. One smashed against the glass covering, making the entire city seem to shake.\n\n\"Who is in charge now?\" I asked, looking around.\n\n\"The captain of the watch fell earlier today,\" one of the soldiers said. \"And the last remaining field general before him.\"\n\n\"The princess rules,\" another said.\n\n\"But she's outside the city.\"\n\n\"The council of Kings will need to ratify a succession,\" another said. \"There's no official king until then. Acting king would be the highest person of peerage in the city.\"\n\nThe group fell silent.\n\n\"Which means?\" I asked.\n\n\"By the spire itself,\" Bastille whispered, eyes opening wide. \"It can't be. No\u2026\"\n\nAll eyes turned toward me.\n\n\"Wait,\" I said, nervous. \"What?\"\n\n\"The Smedry Clan is peerage,\" Bastille said, \"accepted as lords and ladies in all nations belonging to the Council of Kings. Your family gained that right when they abdicated; all recognized that the Smedry Talents could have led you to conquer the Free Kingdoms. But because of that, a direct heir to the Smedry line ranks equal with a duke in most kingdoms. Including Nalhalla and Mokia.\"\n\n\"And a duke is\u2026?\" I asked.\n\n\"Just under a prince,\" Aydee said.\n\nThe warriors all fell to one knee before me. \"What are your wishes, Your Majesty?\" one of them said.\n\n\"Aw, pelicans,\" Kaz swore."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "Many of you in the Free Kingdoms have heard about the day I was crowned king of Mokia. It's become quite the legend. And legends have a habit of being exaggerated.\n\nIn a waft a legend is like an organism - a virus or a bacteria. It begins as a fledgling story, incubating in just a couple of people. It grows as it is passed to others, and they give it strength. Mutating it. Enlarging it. It grows grander and grander, infecting more and more of the population, until it becomes an epidemic.\n\nThe only cure for a legend is pure, antiseptic truth. That's partially why I began writing these books. How did I end up leading Mokia? Well, I was never really king \u2013 just \"acting monarch\" as they put it. I was the highest-ranked person in the town, but only because most everyone else had either fallen or been sent away.\n\nSo no, I didn't heroically take up the king's sword in the middle of battle, as the legend says. My ascent to the throne was not announced by angelic voices. Very little heroism was involved.\n\nBut there was a whole lot of confusion.\n\n\"What?\" I demanded. \"I can't be king! I'm only thirteen years old!\"\n\n\"You're not our king, my lord,\" one of the Mokians said. \"Just our acting monarch.\"\n\nAnother rock boomed against the city's dome. Spiderweb cracks formed up the side of the glass.\n\n\"Well, what do I do?\" I asked, glancing at Kaz, Aydee, and Bastille for support.\n\n\"Someone has to make the decision for us, my lord,\" said one of the Mokian soldiers. \"The king was about to surrender. Do we go through with it, or do we fight?\"\n\n\"You're going to make me decide?\"\n\nThey just kept kneeling around me, waiting.\n\nI looked over my shoulder, toward the Librarian camp. The sky was black, but the area around the city was lit as if by floodlights. I could see several places where the Librarians were digging tunnels, using some kind of strange, rodlike devices that appeared to vibrate the dirt and make it move away. The robots kept throwing rocks against the dome.\n\nBOOM! BOOM! BOOM!\n\nJust moments before, I'd been incredulous that the king would even consider surrender. But now the same question fell on me, and it terrified me. I had just seen people die. Librarian soldiers who had come to kill - or at least incapacitate - the king. Could I send the Mokian warriors to perhaps suffer the same fate?\n\nTalk of bravery and freedom was one thing. But it felt different to actually be the one who made the decision. If I gave the order, the men and women who got hurt, killed, or knocked out would be my responsibility. That was a lot to heap on the shoulders of a thirteen-year-old kid who hadn't even known about Mokia six months ago. And people wonder why I'm so screwed up.\n\n\"We fight,\" I said quietly.\n\nThis seemed to be the answer the soldiers were waiting for. They yelped in excitement, raising their spears - which, as I'd just learned, doubled as flamethrowers and could also shoot a stunning blast like the Librarian guns.\n\n\"You,\" I said, picking the Mokian who'd been doing the talking. He was a lanky fellow with a lot of war paint and his black hair in a buzz cut. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Aluki,\" he said proudly. \"Sergeant of the wall guard.\"\n\n\"Well, you're now acting as my second in command.\" I glanced at the sky, cringing as another rock hit the dome. Above, the moon shone full and bright. The same moon that shone on the Hushlands. \"What time is it? How long until dawn?\"\n\n\"It's not even eleven yet,\" Kaz said, checking his pocket watch. \"Seven hours, maybe?\"\n\n\"Spread the word,\" I said to the soldiers on the wall around me. \"We have to survive for only seven hours. Help will come after that.\"\n\nThey nodded, running off to pass the word. Aluki stayed with me. I turned to the side; Bastille was regarding me with folded arms. I cringed, waiting for her to scour me with condemnations for being so arrogant as to let the Mokians make me king.\n\n\"We'll need to do something about those tunnels,\" she said. \"We won't hold out for long if teams keep slipping into the city like that.\"\n\n\"Huh?\" I asked.\n\n\"Don't forget the robots,\" Kaz said as a rock hit above. \"Woodpeckers! That glass is close to cracking. If the dome falls, the tunnels will be our last concern.\"\n\n\"True,\" Bastille said. \"Maybe we could do something about the fallen troops, the ones in comas. If we could get them to wake up somehow...\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I said, looking back and forth between the two.\n\n\"Aren't you going to state the obvious?\"\n\n\"What?\" Bastille said. \"That the Shattered Lens has far better technology than we thought?\" She narrowed her eyes in a very Bastille-like way, glancing at the enormous machines that were tossing rocks toward the city. She seemed to have a particular dislike for them, along the lines of her hatred of walls. (Read book one.)\n\n\"No,\" I said, exasperated. \"That I have no business being king! I can barely lead myself to the bathroom in the morning, let alone command an entire army.\"\n\n\"Too late to change that now, Al,\" Kaz said with a shrug.\n\n\"I think you'll do a great job,\" Aydee added. \"Being king isn't that tough, from what I hear. Use a lot of phrases like 'you please the crown' or 'we are not amused' and occasionally make up a holiday.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said flatly. \"Sounds as easy as one plus one.\"\n\n\"Seven?\" Aydee asked, cocking her head.\n\nI looked at Bastille. She still had her arms folded. \"Kaz, Aydee,\" she said, \"why don't you go get a count and see how many troops we have? Also, Alcatraz will need to know what kind of shape the command structure is in.\"\n\nThe two Smedrys nodded, hurrying off to do as requested.\n\n\"Wait!\" Bastille said, turning with a sudden shock. \"Kaz, you do the counting. Aydee, you stay away from anything of the sort.\"\n\n\"Good call,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"Right!\" Aydee called. \"I'll give moral support.\"\n\nAnd they left. That, unfortunately, left me alone on the wall with Bastille. I gulped, backing away as she walked toward me. My back eventually hit the wall behind; if I backed up any farther, I'd topple over and fall to my death on the ground outside the city.\n\nI considered it anyway.\n\nBastille reached me, placing a finger against my chest. \"You,\" she said, \"are not going to fail these people.\"\n\n\"But \u2013\"\n\n\"I'm tired of you wavering back and forth, Alcatraz,\" she said. \"Shattering Glass! Half the time, you act like you're panicked by the idea of being in charge, then the other half the time you just take control!\"\n\n\"I\u2026 er\u2026 well\u2026\"\n\n\"And the other half the time you babble incoherently!\"\n\n\"I like babbling!\" I exclaimed. (I'm not sure why.)\n\n\"Besides, that sounds like some Aydee math. Three halves?\"\n\nShe eyed me.\n\n\"Yes, you're right about me,\" I said. \"Sometimes, this all feels like a game. It twists my head in knots to think of the things I've been through, the things that have become part of my life. I get carried away with it all, with what everyone expects of me just because of my name.\n\n\"But I've already decided I want to lead. I decided it months ago. I want to be a hero; I want to be a leader. But that doesn't mean I want to be a king! When I actually stop to think about it, I realize how insane it is.\"\n\n\"Then don't stop to think,\" Bastille said. \"I don't see why it should be so hard. Not thinking seems to be one of your specialties.\"\n\nI grimaced. \"The things you say to me don't help either, Bastille. Every time I think that I'm starting to do well, I get a faceful of insults from you. And I can never tell if I deserve them or not!\"\n\nShe narrowed her eyes further, finger pressed my sternum. I cringed, preparing for the storm.\n\n\"I like you,\" she said.\n\nI blinked, righting myself. \"What?\"\n\n\"I. Like. You. So I insult you.\"\n\nI scratched at my head. \".drawkcab ecnetnes a epyt ot dluow ti sa esnes hcum sa tuoba sekam taht ,ellitsaB\"\n\nShe scowled at me, lowering her hand. \"If you don't understand, I'm not going to explain it to you.\"\n\nBoys, welcome to the wonderful world of talking to women about their feelings. As a handy primer, here are a few things you should know:\n\n1) Women have feelings.\n\n2) You will spend the next seventy years or so trying to guess what they're feeling and why.\n\n3) You will be wrong most of the time.\n\n4) I like French fries.\n\nThat's about all the help I can give you, I'm afraid. If it's any consolation, at least the women in your life don't have anger-management issues and a tendency to carry around five-foot-long magical swords.\n\n\"Look,\" Bastille said. \"It's not important. What's important is saving Mokia. If you didn't notice, that was my sister who just got towed away unconscious. I'm not going to let the kingdom fall while she's out.\"\n\n\"But shouldn't a Mokian be king?\"\n\n\"You are Mokian,\" Bastille said. \"And Nalhallan, and Fracois, and Unkulu. You're a Smedry - you're considered a citizen of all kingdoms. Besides, you do have Mokian blood in you. The Smedry line and the Mokian royal line has often intermixed. It wasn't odd for your uncle Millhaven to marry a Mokian. His wife is a third cousin of Mallo's, and your great-great-grandfather was the son of a Mokian prince.\"\n\nI blinked. Bastille, it should be noted, rarely shows her princessly nature. She has a tendency to rip up anything pink, her singing sounds remarkably like the sound produced when you drop a rock on the tail of a wildebeest, and the last time a sweet flock of forest animals showed up and tried to help her clean, she chased them for the better part of an hour swinging her sword and cursing like a sailor.\n\nBut she does think like a king's daughter sometimes. And she was force-fed all kinds of princessly information as a child, including long, boring lists of royal family trees. She knows which prince married which hypercountess and which superduke is cousins with which earl.\n\nYes. In the Free Kingdoms, we have royal titles like superdukes and hypercountesses. It's complicated.\n\n\"So\u2026 I really am in the royal line,\" I said, shocked.\n\n\"Of course you are. You're a Smedry - you're related to three quarters of the kings and queens out there.\"\n\n\"But not you, right?\"\n\n\"What? No. Not in any important way. We might be fourteenth, upside-down \u00fcbercousins or something.\"\n\nI eyed her, trying to figure out what the gak an \"upside-down \u00fcbercousin\" was. Sounded like the kind of drink a kid my age wasn't allowed to order.\n\nIt should be stressed that Bastille and I are certainly not directly related. At least, we weren't at that point.\n\n\"All right,\" I said. \"But I don't know anything about running a war.\"\n\n\"Fortunately, I do. Troop morale and logistics were part of my training as a princess, and I have practice with battlefield tactics as part of my Crystin training.\"\n\n\"Great! You can take over for me, then!\"\n\nShe shook her head, eyes going wide, face getting a little white. \"Don't be stoopid.\"\n\n\"Er, why not?\"\n\nAs I think about it, that was kind of a stoopid answer, which was fitting, if you think about it. Me, I try not to think about anything. Oooh\u2026 shiny\u2026\n\nBastille grimaced. \"You need to ask? I'm not what this people need. I'm not inspiring. You are. You're a king. I'm a general. They're different, different sets of skills.\" She nodded toward the Mokian soldiers standing atop the walls. A lot of them didn't look much like warriors. Oh, they had war paint and spears. But not many of them were muscular.\n\n\"Mokia is a kingdom of scholars and craftspeople, Alcatraz,\" Bastille said softly. \"Why do you think the Librarians attacked here first? They've been besieged for months now, their country at war for years. Many of the trained soldiers have already been knocked unconscious or killed. Do you have any idea what the loss of both the king and queen could mean? They're demoralized, wounded, and beaten down.\"\n\nShe lifted her finger, tapping me in the chest again. \"They need someone to lead them. They need someone spectacular, someone miraculous. Someone who can keep them fighting for just a little longer, until your grandfather arrives with help.\"\n\n\"And, uh, that someone is me?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, almost grudgingly. \"I told you a few months back that I believed in you. Well, I do. I believe in what you can be when you're confident. Not when you're arrogant, but when you're confident. When you decide to do something, really decide, you do amazing things. I wish you could be that person a little more often.\"\n\nI scratched my head. \"I think that person is a lie, Bastille. I'm not confident. I just get lucky.\"\n\n\"You get lucky a lot. Particularly when we really need it. You saved your father, you got the Sands back, you rescued the kings.\"\n\n\"That last one was mostly you,\" I said with a grimace.\n\n\"The idea that got us free was yours,\" she said, \"and you spotted Archedis.\"\n\nI shrugged. \"It seems that when I get desperate, my mind works better. I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of or not.\"\n\n\"Well, it's what we've got,\" Bastille said, \"so we're going to work with it. I'll organize the troops. You be confident, give the Mokians the sense that someone's in charge. Together, we'll hold this city together until the old Smedry gets here.\"\n\n\"He'll probably be late, you know.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm certain he will be,\" Bastille said...The question isn't, 'Will he be late?' The question is, 'How late is he going to be?'\"\n\nI nodded grimly.\n\n\"You ready to be a king?\" she asked.\n\nI hesitated just briefly. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Good,\" she said, spinning as screams erupted from the center of the city. \"Because I think another group of Librarians just tunneled in.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "Don't yawn.\n\nI shouldn't have agreed to be king. If you've been following these books, you know that my early experiences set me up to fail. Being a celebrity made me think that I was much more important than I really was, and success led me to take more responsibility than I should have. That all meant I fell really far when I did fall.\n\nYou yawing yet? No? Good. You most definitely don't want to part your lips, suck in that sweet air, and feel the relaxing release as you stretch and let your mouth open wide. You itch to do it; you've been reading for a while now, and you're getting a little groggy. But don't yawn. Really, don't do it.\n\nAccepting the crown of Mokia, if even for a short time, was the culminating peak of my spiral to fame. The events of this siege became infamous. In fact, I didn't realize what I'd done until long afterward. (After leaving Mokia, after all, I returned to the Hushlands.)\n\nSome Hushlanders think we yawn to increase oxygen to the brain, but researchers have recently discounted this theory. In this case, they're right. In the Free Kingdoms, it's been known for a long time that yawns frighten away bloogynaughts. You know what bloogynaughts are, don't you? They're those things that sneak up on people while they're reading books, lurking just behind them, watching them, edging closer and closer until they're right there. Behind you. Breathing on your neck. About ready to grab you. A yawn would scare it away. If only you could yawn\u2026\n\nWhy did I agree to be king? I should have said no. And yet I didn't. I let them make me king. I let Bastille persuade me. I let them set me up high.\n\nWhy? Well, perhaps for the same reason that \u2013 when reading the paragraphs above - you had a powerful urge to yawn or even glance over your shoulder. Talk about something long enough, and people will start thinking about it. It's kind of like a twisted, funky kind of mind control. Bastille was a princess, my family had once held thrones, and I was related distantly to pretty much every monarch in the Free Kingdoms. I guess I wanted to feel what it was like to be king.\n\n(In the end, I discovered that being a king feels pretty much like being a regular person, only people shoot at you more often.)\n\nBastille and I charged through the city, racing toward the screams. Mokian men and women threw down the things they had been working on and rallied to the breach. Bastille slipped her sunglasses on, and I nodded to her. She took off at a much faster speed, leaving me behind as she used her enhanced Crystin speed to dart toward the disturbance.\n\nI ran much more slowly, but I made a fair showing of it. The last half a year or so had been very good for my constitution. If you want to practice for a footrace, I'd highly recommend the Alcatraz Smedry training regimen. It involves being chased by Librarians, half-metal monsters, evil apparitions, sentient romance novels, fallen Knights of Crystallia, and the occasional evil chicken named Moe. Our success rate in training footrace winners is 95 percent. Unfortunately, our survival rate is about 5 percent, so it kind of balances everything out.\n\nA group of Mokians filled in around me, running at my same speed. At first I thought they were joining me to rush to the scene of the disturbance. However, they were keeping too close. I realized with shock that they were an honor guard, of the type that run around protecting kings and saying, \"Who dares disturb the king?\" and stuff like that. That made me feel important.\n\nEven running as fast as we could, we arrived too late to help with the fighting. The Librarians had come out of a large, gopher-hole-like pit in the ground of a large green field near what I'd later learn was Mokian Royal University. Some bodies lay on the ground, and it made my stomach twist to see how many were Mokian. At least they weren't dead. Of course, being in a coma was even worse, in many ways.\n\nYou may be shocked at how \"civilized\" war is out in the Free Kingdoms. However, realize that they do what they do for a reason. If the Librarians could capture Tuki Tuki, they could get the antidote for the sleeping sickness \u2013 and they'd get nearly their entire army back to keep fighting, moving inward, to conquer more of the Free Kingdoms. It made sense for the Librarians to encourage the use of the coma-guns and coma-spears.\n\nThis latest group of Librarian infiltrators, strangely, looked like they'd surrendered soon after climbing out of the hole. Why hadn't they fought longer? They stood with their hands up, surrounded by ragged Mokian fighters. Bastille watched nearby, arms folded, looking dissatisfied. Likely because she hadn't gotten a chance to stab anyone.\n\nThe Mokians should have been happy to have won the skirmish so easily. But most of them just looked exhausted. The field was lit by torches on long poles rammed into the ground, and boulders still struck the dome protecting the city. Each one seemed to crack it a little bit more.\n\n\"We can't hold out!\" said one of the spear-wielding Mokians. \"Look! They know they can surrender if we rally to fight them. There are so many of them that they're content to lose an entire team to knock out a few of us.\"\n\n\"It's probably a distraction,\" another soldier said. \"They're digging in other places too.\"\n\n\"They're going to overrun us.\"\n\n\"We've lost.\"\n\n\"We -\"\n\n\"Stop!\" Bastille bellowed, waving her arms and getting their attention. \"Stop being stupid!\" She folded her arms, as if that was all she intended to say. Which, knowing Bastille, might just be the case.\n\n\"We haven't lost,\" I said, stepping forward. \"We can win. We just need to hold out a little longer.\"\n\n\"We can't!\" one of the soldiers said. \"There are only a few thousand of us left. There aren't enough people to patrol the streets to look for tunnelers. Most of us have been awake for three days straight!\"\n\n\"And so you'd give up?\" I demanded, looking at them. \"That's how they win. By making us give up. I've lived in Librarian lands. They don't win because they conquer, they win because they make people stop caring, stop wondering. They'll tire you out, then feed you lies until you start repeating them, if only because it's too hard to keep arguing.\"\n\nI looked around at the men and women in their islander wraps, holding spears that burned. They seemed ashamed. The field was shockingly quiet; even the captive Librarians didn't say anything.\n\n\"This is how they win,\" I repeated. ..They need you to give in. They have to make you stop fighting. They don't rule the Hushlands with chains, fire, and oppression. They rule it with comfort, leisure, and easy lies. It's easy to accept the normal and avoid thinking about the difficult and the strange. Life can be so much simpler if you stop dreaming.\n\n\"But that is how we defeat them. They can never win, so long as we refuse to believe in their lies. Even if they take Tuki Tuki, even if Mokia falls, even if all of the Free Kingdoms become theirs. They will never win so long as we refuse to believe. Don't give up, and you will not lose. I promise you that.\"\n\nAround me, the Mokians began to nod. Several even smiled, holding their spears more certainly.\n\n\"But what will we do?\" a female warrior asked. \"How will we survive?\"\n\n\"My grandfather is coming,\" I said. \"We just have to last a little longer. I'll talk to my counselors\u2026\" I hesitated. \"Er, I have counselors, don't I?\"\n\n\"We're right here, Your Majesty,\" a voice said. I glanced backward, to where three Mokians stood in official-looking wraps, wearing small, colorful caps on their heads. I vaguely remembered them joining me as I ran for the disturbance.\n\n\"Great,\" I said. \"I'll talk to my counselors, and we'll figure something out. You soldiers, your job is to keep hoping. Don't give up. Don't let them win your hearts, even if they look like they'll win the city.\"\n\nLooking back on that speech, it seems incredibly stoopidalicious. Their kingdom was about to fall, their king and queen were casualties, and what was I telling them? \"Just keep believing!\" Sounds like the title of a cheesy eighties rock ballad.\n\nPeople believe in themselves all the time yet still fail. Wanting something badly enough doesn't really change anything, otherwise I'd be a popsicle. (Read book one.)\n\nYet in this case, my advice was oddly accurate. The Librarians have always preferred to rule in secret. Biblioden himself taught that to enslave someone, you were best off making them comfortable. Mokia couldn't fall, not completely, unless the Mokians allowed themselves to be turned into Hushlanders.\n\nSounds impossible, right? Who would let themselves be turned into Hushlanders? Well, you didn't see how tired the Mokians were, how much the extended war had beaten them down. It occurred to me at that moment that maybe the Librarians could have won months ago. They'd kept on fighting precisely because they knew they didn't just have to win, they had to overwhelm. Kind of how you might keep playing a video game against your little brother, even though you know you can win at any moment, because you're planning the biggest, most awesome, most crushing combo move ever.\n\nExcept the Librarians were doing it with the hearts of the people of Mokia. And that made me angry.\n\nThe soldiers rushed off to get back to their other duties. I eyed the Librarian captives. Had they surrendered too easily? The Mokians didn't seem terribly threatening. Perhaps Bastille had surprised them; facing a bunch of soldiers who hadn't slept in days was one thing, but a fully trained Crystin was another.\n\nI turned to my advisers. There were three of them, two men and a woman. The first man was tall and thin, with a long neck and spindly arms. He was kind of shaped like a soda bottle. The woman next to him was shorter and had a compact look to her, arms pulled in at her sides, hunched over, chin nestled down level with her shoulders. She looked kind of like a can of soda. The final man was large, wide, and thick-bodied. He was husky, with a small head, and kind of looked like\u2026 well, a large two-liter soda bottle.\n\n\"Someone get me something to drink,\" I barked to my honor guard, then walked up to the soda-pop triplets. \"You're my advisers?\"\n\n\"We are,\" said soda-can woman. \"I'm Mink, the large fellow to my right is Dink, and the man to my left is Wink.\"\n\n\"Mink, Dink, and wink,\" I said, voice flat. (Like soda that's been left out too long.)\n\n\"No relation,\" Dink added.\n\n\"Thanks for clearing that up,\" I said. \"All right, advise me.\"\n\n\"We should give up,\" Dink said.\n\n\"Good speech,\" Mink added, \"but it sounded too much like a rock ballad.\"\n\n\"That jacket looks good on you,\" Wink said.\n\n\"Er, thank you, Wink,\" I said, confused.\n\n\"Oh, Wink got caught in an unfortunate Librarian disharmony grenade,\" Mink added. \"Messed up his brain a little bit. He gives great advice\u2026 it's just not always on the topic you want at the moment.\"\n\n\"Never get involved in a land war in Asia,\" Wink added.\n\n\"Great,\" I said. \"So you think there's no way out of this?\"\n\n\"The dome is going to crack soon,\" Dink said, shaking his head.\n\n\"These burrows are coming more frequently,\" Mink said. \"They'll keep digging into our city, knocking more and more people into comas until there's nobody left to fight back.\"\n\n\"Always wear a hat when feeding pigeons,\" Wink added.\n\nAll three of us looked at him. Wink shrugged. \"Think about it for a moment. You'll figure out why.\"\n\n\"So,\" Bastille said, walking up, arms folded, \"you're saying that if we can keep the dome from falling and protect against the people digging in, we can hold out.\"\n\nThe three advisers looked at one another. \"I guess,\" Mink said. \"But how are you going to do that?\"\n\n\"Alcatraz will figure something out,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"I will?\"\n\n\"You'd better.\"\n\n\"Never trust a three-fingered lion tamer.\"\n\n\"Why are you so sure I'll figure something out?\"\n\n\"Because that's what you do!\"\n\n\"And if I can't this time?\"\n\n\"If you run out of toothpaste, you can make your own by mixing two parts baking soda with one part salt and some water.\"\n\n\"I just said that you would.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll bet it would help if we could destroy those robots.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"An onion a day keeps everyone away.\"\n\n\"Teddy bears! We could use those purple bear grenades, the type that destroy nonliving things.\"\n\n\"We don't have enough of them.\"\n\n\"Don't the Mokians have any?\"\n\n\"I checked. They used all of theirs.\"\n\n\"Always throw paper first.\"\n\n\"Hey, guys! What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Aydee, Alcatraz is going to come up with a brilliant plan to stop the robots.\"\n\n\"Cool!\"\n\n\"You're always so bubbly.\"\n\n\"Kind of like soda pop.\"\n\n\"Someone needs to get you a drink, Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"I know.'\n\n\"Boom!\"\n\n\"Did you just say, 'Boom,' Alcatraz?\"\n\n\"No, that was the rock hitting the ceiling. We really need to stop those!\"\n\n\"Arr!\"\n\n\"Wait, what?\"\n\n\"It's me, Kaz. I was going to say, 'Are you guys done jabbering yet?' But I stubbed my toe.\"\n\n\"Arr!\"\n\n\"Kaz!\"\n\n\"That time it wasn't me. It was Sexybeard the pirate'\"\n\n\"Hey, guys. Arr.\"\n\n\"Whatever.\"\n\n\"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and I'll hire you as my lawyer.\"\n\n\"Wait, I'm lost.\"\n\n\"That's not surprising for you, Kaz.\"\n\n\"Who's talking?\"\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Aluki.\"\n\n\"When did you get here?\"\n\n\"Oh, a page back or so. Looked like a real dangerous conversation to get into.\"\n\n\"Alcatraz, the rocks! We have to stop them'\"\n\n\"We need more teddy bears. Wow. Never thought I'd ever use that sentence.\"\n\n\"Nobody has more bears.\"\n\n\"Yes\u2026 but I just thought of something to fix that.\"\n\n\"Should I be scared?\"\n\n\"Probably.\"\n\n\"Always remember, foursight is what Oculators have when wearing their lenses.\"\n\n\"Shiver me timbers!\"\n\n\"All right, Aydee. I've got a question for you. It's going to be a hard one. The hardest math problem you've ever seen.\"\n\n\"Er\u2026 I don't know\u2026\"\n\n\"Alcatraz, are you sure you want to do this?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Great. That's comforting.\"\n\n\"It's the best thing I've got right now. Aydee, I'm going to ask you a math question, and I want you to keep the number in your head. Only spit it out when we get done, all right?\"\n\n\"Okay\u2026\"\n\n\"Take one and fourteen.\"\n\n\"Er\u2026\"\n\n\"Then take away nine.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"Then multiply by seventy-four.\"\n\n\"Um\u2026\"\n\n\"Then subtract three.\"\n\n\"Well...\"\n\n\"Then take the square root of that.\"\n\n\"What's a square root?\"\n\n\"Then take one third of that.\"\n\n\"Got it.\"\n\n\"Then multiply by negative one.\"\n\n\"Okay\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Hush, Bastille. Then add the number of inches in a foot.\"\n\n\"That's easy.\"\n\n\"It is? I'm lost.\"\n\n\"Quiet, Kaz. Then add eleven billion.\"\n\n\"Okay\u2026\"\n\n\"Then subtract eleven and one billion.\"\n\n\"This is getting hard.\"\n\n\"Then take the square root of that.\"\n\n\"Oh, I remember! A square root is a carrot that doesn't know how to dance, right?\"\n\n\"Batten down the hatches!\"\n\n\"Then subtract one. That's exactly the number of purple bear grenades we have left. How many have we got, Aydee?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026 er\u2026 um\u2026\"\n\n\"I think her brain is going to explode, Al.\"\n\n\"Hush. You can do it, Aydee. I know you can.\"\n\n\"I\u2026 carry the one\u2026 multiply by i. Take the complex derivative of Avogadro's number\u2026 I've got it, Alcatraz! Five thousand, three hundred and fifty-seven. Wow! I didn't know we had that many bears!\"\n\nKaz, Bastille, and I glanced at one another. Then we looked at Kaz's pack, which held the bears. He took it off in a flash, throwing it away.\n\nHe was just fast enough. The pack ripped apart and a mountain of teddy bears burst free - 5,357 of them, to be precise. They flooded out, piling on top of one another, making a mountain of purple exploding teddy bears as large as a building.\n\n\"Aydee, you're amazing,\" I said.\n\n\"Thanks! I think I'm getting better at math. I hope it doesn't ruin my Talent.\"\n\n\"I think you're fine,\" Bastille said dryly, picking herself up off the ground from where she'd ducked, anticipating the explosion of teddy bears.\n\n\"That's a big ol' mound of bears,\" Kaz said, folding his arms. \"I think it's time to hunt us some robots.\"\n\n\"Be careful, Your Majesty,\" Wink warned. \"Some robots are unbearable.\"\n\n\"Your Majesty,\" Mink said, brushing off her wrap.\n\n\"Perhaps you should decide what to do with the prisoners first.\"\n\nI glanced to the side. The guards were still standing there, watching over the group of suit-, skirt-, and bow-tie-wearing Librarians. The Mokians looked very anxious. The Librarians seemed bored.\n\n\"Do we have a dungeon or something?\" I asked. \"We should\u2026\" I trailed off, noticing something odd. Frowning, I stepped forward. One of the captive Librarians, huddled near the middle, was hiding her face, looking pointedly away from me. She had blond hair and an angular face. As she tried to keep hidden, I caught her eyes and recognized them for certain.\n\n\"Mother?\" I asked, shocked."
            },
            {
                "title": "CHAPTER 6.02214179 x 1023",
                "text": "Are you surprised? My mother showed up completely unexpectedly in Tuki Tuki when I just happened to be there fighting? How unforeseeable!\n\nWhat? You're not surprised? Why not? Is it because my mother has unexpectedly shown up in every single one of these books so far? (It's a mathematical law: one point is a point, two points a line, three points a plane, four points a clich\u00e9. I think Archimedes discovered it first.)\n\nThis plays into one of the big problems for writers. You see, we tend to skip the boring parts. If we didn't, our novels would be filled of sections like this one:\n\nI got up in the morning and brushed my teeth, then went to the bathroom and took a shower. Nothing exciting happened. I ate breakfast. Nothing exciting happened. I went out to get the newspaper. I saw a squirrel. It wasn't very exciting. Then I came in and watched cartoons. They were boring. I scratched my armpit. Then I went to the bathroom again. Then I took a nap. My evil Librarian mother did not show up and harass me. That evening, I clipped my toenails. Yippee.\n\nSee? You're asleep now, aren't you? That was mind-numbingly, excruciatingly boring. In fact, you're not even reading this, are you? You're dozing. I could make fun of your stoopid ears and you would never know.\n\nHEY, YOU! WAKE UP!\n\nThere. You back? Good. Anyway, we don't include all of that stuff because it tends to put people to sleep. I spent months in between books two and three doing pretty much nothing other than going to the bathroom and scratching my armpits.\n\nI tend to write about the exciting stuff. (This introduction excepted. Sorry.) And that's the stuff that my mother tends to be part of. So it's hard to keep it surprising when she shows up, since every section I write about tends to be one where she gets involved.\n\nSo let's start this again. This time, do me the favor of at least pretending to be surprised. Maybe hit yourself on the head with the book a few times to daze yourself. That'll make it easier for you to exclaim in surprise when she shows up. (Remember, you should be acting this all out.)\n\nAhem.\n\n\"Mother?\" I asked, shocked.\n\n\"Hello, Alcatraz,\" the woman said, sighing. Shasta Smedry - also known as \"Ms. Fletcher\" or many other aliases - wore a sharp black business suit and had her hair in a bun. She wore thin, horn-rimmed spectacles, though she wasn't an Oculator. Her face had a kind of pinched look to it, as if she were perpetually smelling something unpleasant.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" I demanded, stepping up to the Mokian guards, who stood in a ring around the Librarians. I didn't get too close. My mother isn't the safest person to be around.\n\n\"Really, Alcatraz, I would have thought you'd be more observant. What am I doing? Obviously, I'm helping to conquer this meaningless, insignificant city.\"\n\nI eyed her, and her image wavered slightly. I was shocked by that, but I was currently wearing my Oculator's Lenses. They read auras of things with Oculatory power, but they could do other, strange things. Things like give me a nudge to notice something I should have seen.\n\nIn this case, I realized what I should do. I took the Oculator's Lenses off and tucked them away. Then I got out my single Truthfinder's Lens, which was suspended in a set of spectacles that was missing the other Lens. I slipped this on, smiling at my mother.\n\nShe shut her mouth, looking dissatisfied. She knew what that Lens was. She wouldn't be able to lie, at least not without me spotting it.\n\n\"Let me repeat the question,\" I said. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\nMy mother folded her arms. Unfortunately, there was an easy way to defeat the Truthfinder's Lens: by not talking. But fortunately, keeping my mother from saying snide remarks is like keeping me from saying stoopid ones: theoretically possible, but never observed in the wild.\n\n\"You're a fool,\" Shasta finally said. Puffs of white smoke came from her mouth, visible only to my single Truthfinder-covered eye. She was telling the truth - or, at least, what she saw as the truth. \"This city is doomed.\" More white. \"Why did you come here, Alcatraz? You should have stayed safe in Nalhalla.\"\n\n\"Safe? In a city where you kidnapped me and nearly let your Librarian allies slaughter my friends?\"\n\n\"That was unfortunate,\" Shasta said. \"I didn't wish for it to happen.\" All true, surprisingly.\n\n\"You let it happen anyway. And now you've followed me here. Why?\"\n\n\"I didn't follow you here,\" she snapped. \"I \u2013\" She cut off, as if realizing she'd said too much.\n\nShe stopped as I smiled. The first statement had been true. She wasn't there because of me. She'd come for other reasons. But why? I doubted it was because she simply wanted to see Tuki Tuki captured. When my mother was involved, things were always a whole lot deeper than they seemed.\n\n\"Have you seen my father?\" I asked.\n\nShe looked away, obviously determined not to say anything. Above, the rocks kept beating against the dome. A chunk of glass broke free, tumbling down to the city a short distance away. I could hear it shatter, like a thousand icicles falling off a rooftop at once.\n\nThere wasn't time to chat with my mother right now. \"Throw them in my dungeons,\" I said to Aruki. \"I\u2026 er, I do have dungeons, don't I?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" Aluki said. \"We've been keeping prisoners in the university catacombs. They have Expander's Glass reinforcing the walls, which would make it almost impossible for the Librarians to tunnel in and rescue them.\"\n\n\"Very well. Throw them in the university basement and lock them away.\" I said. I pointed at my mother. \"Except her. Lock her someplace extra safe. And search her. She stole a book from Nalhalla that we will want to recover.\"\n\n\"I don't have that anymore,\" Shasta said. Unfortunately, the Lens said she was telling the truth. She was also smiling slyly, as if she knew something important.\n\nShe couldn't have read it, I thought. Not without a pair of Translator's Lenses. And she didn't come here to get my pair; she didn't know I would be here.\n\nThe soldiers led Shasta and the other Librarians away. As they did, I noticed one of them watching me. He was an older man and didn't look anything like a soldier. He wore a tuxedolike suit with a cravat at the neck, and he had a short, graying beard flecked with black. He had keen, sagacious eyes.\n\n\"Search that one too,\" I said, grabbing Aluki's arm and pointing the man out. \"I don't like how he looks at me.\"\n\n\"Yes, Your Majesty,\" Aluki said.\n\n\"You don't like how he 'looked' at you?\" Bastille asked, walking up to me.\n\n\"There's something about him,\" I said. \"He's odd. I mean, the only reason to wear a cravat is to look distinguished and intriguing. It's kind of like using sagacious in a sentence; it's less about what it actually means, and more about making you look smart.\"\n\nBastille frowned, but Kaz nodded, as if understanding. Aydee had run over to the bears and was gleefully counting them out into piles of ten. She gave each one a hug and a name before setting it aside. It was kind of cute, if you ignored the fact that each and every one of those bears was a live grenade.\n\nMy three counselors stood, speaking quietly next to the large pile of bears.\n\nBastille followed my gaze. \"That was dangerous, what you did, Smedry.\"\n\n\"What? Multiplying the bears?\" I shrugged. \"It could have gone the other direction, I suppose, and Aydee's Talent could have made our stock vanish. But I figured that we only had a few bears left, and that wasn't enough to do what we needed to. So what did we have to lose?\"\n\n\"I'm not worried about what we could have lost,\" Bastille said. \"I'm worried about what we could have gained.\"\n\n\"Wait? Huh?\" (You say stuff like that a lot when you're as dumb as I am.)\n\n\"Shattering Glass, Smedry! What would have happened if Aydee had said we had fifty thousand bears? What if she'd said four or five million bears! We'd have been buried in them. You could have destroyed the city, smothering everyone inside of it.\"\n\nI cringed, an image popping into my head of purple teddy bears washing over the city. Of the Mokians being crushed beneath the weight of a sea of pleasant plushness. A tsunami of teddies doing the Librarians' work for them. A blitzkrieg of bears, a torrent of toys, an\u2026 um\u2026 upheaval of ursines.\n\nOr, in simpler terms, a shattering lot of bears.\n\n\"Gak!\" I said.\n\n\"That's right,\" Bastille said. She wagged a finger at me. \"Smedry Talents are dangerous, particularly in the young. I'd have thought that you - of all people - would realize this.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't be such a bubble in the glass, Bastille,\" Kaz said, smacking me on the arm. \"You did great, kid. That kind of bear firepower is just the kind of thing Tuki Tuki needed.\"\n\n\"It was risky,\" Bastille said, folding her arms.\n\n\"Yeah, but I don't think it was as dangerous as you say. Aydee's got one of the most powerful prime Talents around, but I doubt she'd have been able to make millions of bears. Likely, she couldn't have destroyed the city - at best, she'd have just crushed those of us here in this field.\"\n\n\"Very comforting,\" Bastille said dryly.\n\n\"Well, you know what my pop says. 'Danger, risks, and lots of fun. The Smedry way!'\"\n\nKaz, as I've mentioned, is a scholar of magical forces. He knew more about Talents than anyone else alive. In fact, that's probably what he'd been doing here when he'd visited Tuki Tuki originally - studying at the university.\n\n\"My lord,\" Mink - the soda-can counselor - said, approaching. \"This boon of bears is quite timely, but how are we going to use it to destroy those robots? They're protected by the Librarian army!\"\n\n\"And don't forget the tunnels,\" Dink said.\n\n\"And always wash behind your ears,\" Wink added.\n\n\"I need three things from you,\" I said, thinking quickly. \"Some backpacks that will hold several of those bears, six of your fastest warriors, and some really long stilts.\"\n\nThe counselors looked at one another.\n\n\"Go!\" I said, waving. \"That dome is about to fall!\"\n\nThe three scattered, scrambling to do as I asked.\n\nBastille suddenly turned eastward, toward the ocean. Toward Nalhalla. Her eyes opened. \"Alcatraz, I think the knights are actually coming.\"\n\n\"What? You can see them?\" I looked eagerly.\n\n\"I can't see them,\" Bastille said. \"I can feel them.\" She tapped the back of her neck, where the Fleshstone was set into her skin, hidden by her silvery hair. It connected her to the Crystin Mindstone, which then connected her to all of the other Knights of Crystallia.\n\nI didn't see why they were so keen on the thing. I mean, it was because of that very connection that the Knights had all fallen to Archedis's tricks back in Nalhalla. He'd done something to the Mindstone, and it - connected to all of the Crystin - had knocked them out. Seemed like a liability to me.\n\nOf course, that connection also had the ability to turn thirteen-year-old girls into superknight kung-fu killing machines. So it wasn't all bad.\n\n\"You can sense the other knights?\" I said, frowning.\n\n\"Only in the most general of terms,\" she said. 'We\u2026 well, we don't talk about it. If a lot of them feel the same thing at once, I will notice it. And if a lot of them start moving at once, I can feel it. A large number of knights just left Nalhalla.\"\n\n\"They just left Nalhalla,\" I said, groaning inside. \"The trip here will take hours and hours.\"\n\n\"We have to hold out,\" Bastille said fervently. \"Alcatraz, your plan is working! For once.\"\n\n\"Assuming we can survive for a few more hours,\" Kaz said. \"You have a plan about that, kid?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said. \"Kind of. Bastille, how good are you with stilts?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026 okay I guess.\" she hesitated. \"I should be worried, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\"Probably.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"Ah well. It can't possibly be worse than death by teddy-bear avalanche.\" She hesitated. \"Can it?\"\n\nI just smiled."
            },
            {
                "title": "CHAPTER FOUR TEENS AND A PICKLE",
                "text": "In March 1225, two years before his death, Genghis Khan sat down to breakfast to dine on a bowl of warm hearts cut from the chests of his enemies. At that time, he was ruler of the largest empire in the history of the world. He reached up, scratched his nose, and said something extremely profound.\n\n\"Zaremdaa, en ajil shall mea baina.\"\n\nHe knew what he was talking about. As do I. Trust me, I've been a king before. (No, really, I have. Sometime, check out volume four of my autobiography, page 139.)\n\nI was only king of one city, really, and only for a short time. But it was ridiculously, insanely, bombastically tough to do the job right. Tougher than trying to get hit in the head with a baseball shot out of a cannon. Tougher than trying to climb a hundred-foot cliff using a rope made of used dental floss. Tougher, even, than trying to figure out where my stoopid metaphors come from.\n\nI've never understood one thing: why do all of these megalomaniac dictators, secret societies, mad scientists, and totalitarian aliens want to rule the world? I mean really? Don't they know what a pain in the neck it is to be in charge? People are always making unreasonable demands of kings. \"Please save us from the invading vandal hoards! Please make sure we have proper sanitation to prevent the spread of disease! Please stop beheading your wives so often; it's ruining the rugs!\"\n\nBeing a king is like getting your driver's license. It sounds really cool, but when you finally get your license, you realize that all it really means is that your parents can now make you drive your brothers and sisters to soccer practice.\n\nLike Genghis Khan said, \"Zaremdaa, en ajil shall mea baina.\" or, translated, \"Sometimes, this job sucks.\" But really, hasn't everyone said that at some point?\n\n\"Zaremdaa, en ajil shall mea baina!\" Bastille said from way up high.\n\n\"What was that?\" I called up. \"I don't speak Mongolian.\"\n\n\"I said, sometimes my job really sucks!\"\n\n\"You're doing great!\"\n\n\"That doesn't mean that this doesn't suck!\" Bastille called.\n\nYou see, at this point, Bastille was balanced atop a set of stilts, which were in turn taped to another set of stilts, which were in turn taped to another set of stilts. Those were on top of a chair, which was on top of a table. And all of that was balanced on top of the Mokian University's science building. (It was a large, island-bungalow-style structure. You know, the kind of place you'd expect to find Jimmy Buffett singing, Warren Buffett vacationing, or a pulled-pork buffet being served.)\n\n\"Do you see anything?\" I called up to her.\n\n\"My entire life flashing before my eyes?\"\n\n\"Besides that.\"\n\n\"It's really easy to see who's balding from up here.\"\n\n\"Bastille!\" I said, annoyed.\n\n\"Sorry,\" she called down. \"I'm just trying to distract myself from my impending death.\"\n\n\"You weren't so nervous when I suggested this!\"\n\n\"I was on the ground then!\"\n\nI raised an eyebrow. I hadn't realized that Bastille was scared of heights. She hadn't acted like this before. Of course, other times she'd been up high, she'd been in a flying vehicle. Not strapped to three sets of stilts and balancing high in the air.\n\nFor all her complaining, she was doing a remarkable job, and she had been the one to suggest taping the stilts together to get her up higher. Besides, she was wearing her glassweave jacket, which would save her if she did fall. Her Crystin abilities allowed her to keep her balance, despite the height and the instability of her position. It was rather remarkable.\n\nOf course, that didn't stop me from wanting to tease her. \"You aren't feeling dizzy, are you?\"\n\n\"You aren't helping.\"\n\n\"Man, I think the breeze is picking up.\u2026\"\n\n\"Shut up!\"\n\n\"Is that an earthquake?\"\n\n\"I'm going to kill you slowly when I get down from here. I'll do it with a hairpin. I'll go for your heart, by way of your foot.\"\n\nI smiled. I shouldn't have taunted her. The situation was dire, and there was little cause for laughter in Tuki Tuki. The dome was cracking even further, and my counselors - the two kind of useful ones, at least - said they thought it would last only another fifteen minutes or so.\n\nBut seeing Bastille in a situation like she was \u2013 where she was uncomfortable and nervous - was very rare. I just\u2026 well, I had to do it. And that, by the way, is the definition of stoopiderlifluous: being so stoopid as to taunt Bastille while she's out of arm's reach, assuming she won't get revenge very soon after.\n\nAs I smirked, Kaz rounded the building and trotted up to me, wearing his dark Warrior's Lenses. He'd gotten two small pistols somewhere and wore them strapped to his chest. They looked like flint-and-powder models, perhaps taken from the Mokian stores.\n\n\"Everything's ready,\" he said. \"Mokians all over the city are climbing atop buildings, looking for the first sign of Librarian holes opening.\" He glanced up at Bastille. \"I see you found a way to get even higher,\" he called at her. \"Reason number fifty-six and a half: Short people know when to stay on the ground. We're closer to it, we appreciate it more. What is it with you tall people and extreme heights?\"\n\n\"Kaz, I'm a thirteen-year-old girl,\" Bastille called down. \"I'm only, like, a couple of inches taller than you are.\"\n\n\"It's the principle of the thing,\" he called back. Then he looked to me. \"So, are you going to explain this plan of yours, kid?\"\n\n\"Well, we've got two problems. The rocks hitting the shield and the tunnels digging up. We can't stop the rocks because there's an army between us and the robots. But the Librarians are conveniently digging tunnels from their back lines up into our city. So one of the problems presents a solution to the other.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Kaz said thoughtfully. \"So those fellows\u2026\" He nodded to the six Mokian runners Aluki had gotten for me. They stood in a line, ready to dash away, bearing backpacks filled with stuffed bears.\n\nI nodded. \"Usually, after the Librarians are fought off from the hole they dig, the Mokians collapse the tunnel. But this time, as soon as the hole is spotted, we'll move everyone out of the area. The emptiness will make the Librarians think that they haven't been spotted, and they'll rush out to cause mayhem. These six men will then sneak down the tunnel and run out behind Mokian lines, then take down the robots. A single one of these bears to the leg should make the robot collapse.\"\n\n\"Wow,\" Kaz said. \"That's actually a good plan.\"\n\n\"You sound surprised.\"\n\nKaz shrugged. \"You're a Smedry kid. Half our ideas are insane. The other half are insane but brilliant at the same time. Deciding which is which can be trouble sometimes.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you how to decide,\" Bastille called down. \"Look and see which one involves me having to climb up a hundred feet in the air and balance on stilts. Shattering Smedrys!\"\n\n\"How can she even hear us from up there?\" Kaz muttered.\n\n\"I have very good ears!\" Bastille called.\n\n\"Here,\" I said, picking up a backpack. \"I made one of these for each of us too. There are two of each kind of bear in there. I figured we should all have some, just in case.\"\n\nKaz nodded, throwing on his backpack. I shrugged mine on as well.\n\n\"You realize,\" Kaz said softly, \"that the soldiers you send out to stop those robots won't be coming back.\"\n\n\"What? They could run back in the tunnel, and\u2026\"\n\nAnd I trailed off, realizing how stoopid it sounded. The Librarians might get surprised by my tricky plan - might - but they'd never let the Mokian soldiers escape back into the tunnel after destroying the robots. Even if all of this worked out exactly as I wanted, those six men and women weren't returning. At best, they'd get captured. Maybe knocked out by Librarian coma-bullets.\n\nI hadn't even considered this. Perhaps because I didn't want to. Go back and read the beginning of this chapter. Maybe now you'll start to understand what I was saying.\n\nI glanced at the six soldiers. Their faces were grim but determined. They carried their backpacks over their shoulders, and each held a spear. They were younger soldiers, four men and two women, who Aluki had said were their fastest runners. I could see from their eyes that they understood. As I regarded them, they nodded to me one at a time. They were ready to sacrifice for Mokia.\n\nThey had seen what my request would demand of them, even if I hadn't. Suddenly, I felt very stoopiderlifluous.\n\n\"I should cancel the plan,\" I said suddenly. \"We can think of something else.\"\n\n\"Something that doesn't risk the lives of your soldiers?\" Kaz said. \"Kid, we're at war.\"\n\n\"I just\u2026\" I didn't want to be the one responsible for them going into danger. But there was nothing to be done about it. I sighed, sitting down.\n\nKaz joined me. \"So now\u2026\" he said.\n\n\"Now we wait, I guess.\" I glanced upward nervously. The rocks continued to fall; the glass's cracks glowed faintly, making the dark night sky look like it was alight with lightning. Fifteen minutes. If the Librarians didn't burrow in during the next fifteen minutes, the dome would shatter and the Librarian armies would rush in. Most of the Mokians - the ones I didn't have watching for tunnels - were already gathered on the wall, anticipating the attack.\n\nI blinked, realizing for the first time how tired I was. It was well after eleven at this point, and the excitement of everything had kept me going. Now I just had to wait. In many ways, that seemed like the worst thing imaginable. Waiting, thinking, worrying.\n\nIsn't it odd, how waiting can be both boring and nerve-wracking at the same time? Must have something to do with quantum physics.\n\nA question occurred to me, something I'd been wondering for a while. Kaz seemed the perfect person to ask. I shook off some of my tiredness. \"Kaz,\" I said, \"has any of the research you've done indicated that the Talents might be\u2026 alive?\"\n\n\"What?\" Kaz said, surprised.\n\nI wasn't sure how to explain. Back in Nalhalla \u2013 when we'd been in the Royal Archives (not a library) - my Talent had done some odd things. At one point, it had seemed to reach out of me. Like it was alive. It had stopped my cousin Folsom from accidentally using his own Talent against me.\n\n\"I'm not sure what I mean,\" I said lamely.\n\n\"We've done a lot of research on Talents,\" Kaz said, drawing his little circle diagram in the dirt, the one that divided up different Talents into types and power ranges. \"But we don't really know much.\"\n\n\"The Smedry line is the royal line of Incarna,\" I said. \"An ancient race of people who mysteriously vanished.\"\n\n\"They didn't vanish,\" Kaz said. \"They destroyed themselves, somehow, until only our line remained. We lost the ability to read their language.\"\n\n\"The Forgotten Language,\" I said. \"We didn't forget it. Alcatraz the First broke it. The entire language. So that people couldn't read it. Why?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Kaz said. \"The Incarna were the first to get Talents.\"\n\n\"They brought them down into themselves, somehow,\" I said, thinking back to the words of Alcatraz the First, which I'd discovered in his tomb in the Library of Alexandria. \"It was like\u2026 Kaz, I think what they were trying to do was create people who could mimic the power of Oculatory Lenses. Only without having to use the Lenses.\"\n\nKaz frowned. \"What makes you say that?\"\n\n\"My tongue moving while breath moves out of my lungs and through my throat, vibrating my vocal cords and -\"\n\n\"I meant,\" Kaz said. \"Why do you think that the Talents are like Lenses?\"\n\n\"Oh. Right. Well, a lot of the Talents do similar things to Lenses. Like Australia's Talent and Disguiser's Lenses. I did some reading on it while I was in Nalhalla. There are a lot of similarities. Shatterer's Lenses can break other glass if you look at it; that's kind of like my Talent. And then there are Traveler's Lenses, which can push a person from one point to another and ignore obstructions in between. That's kind of like what you do. I wonder if there are Lenses that work like Grandpa's power, slowing things or making them late.\"\n\n\"There are,\" Kaz said thoughtfully. \"Educator's Lenses. When you put them on, it slows time.\"\n\n\"That's an odd name.\"\n\n\"Not really. Have you ever known anything that can slow down time like a boring class at school?\"\n\n\"Good point,\" I said.\n\nAll in all, there were thousands of different kinds of glass that had been identified. A lot of them - like the Traveler's Lenses - were impractical to use. They were either too dangerous, took too much energy to work, or were so rare that complete Lenses of them were nearly impossible to forge.\n\n\"Some glass is called technology,\" I said, \"but that's just because it can be powered by brightsand. But all glass can be powered by Oculators. I've done it before.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Kaz said. \"The boots. You said you were able to give them an extra jolt of power.\"\n\n\"I did it again,\" I said. \"With Transporter's Glass in Nalhalla.\"\n\n\"Curious,\" Kaz said. \"But Al, nobody else can do that. What makes you think this involves the Incarna?\"\n\n\"Well, neurons in my brain transmit an electrochemical signal to one another and -\"\n\n\"I mean,\" Kaz interrupted. \"Why do you think this has something to do with the Incarna?\"\n\n\"Because,\" I said. \"I just have a feeling about it. Partially Alcatraz the First's writings, partially instinct. The Incarna knew about all these kinds of glass, but they wanted more. They wanted to have these powers innate inside of people. And so somehow, they made it happen - they gave us Talents. They turned us into Lenses, kind of.\"\n\nI frowned. \"Maybe it's not the fact that I'm an Oculator that lets me power glass. Maybe it's the fact that I'm an Oculator and a Smedry. That's much rarer, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I only know of four who are both,\" Kaz said. \"You, Pop, your father, and Australia.\"\n\n\"Has any research been done into people like us powering glass?\"\n\n\"Not that I know of,\" he confessed.\n\n\"I'm right, Kaz,\" I said. \"I can feel it. The Incarna did something to themselves, something that ended with the creation of the Smedry Talents.\"\n\nKaz nodded slowly.\n\n\"Aren't you going to ask what makes me feel this way?\"\n\n\"Wasn't planning on it.\"\n\n\"'Cuz I've got this really great comment prepared on unconscious mind interacting with the conscious mind and releasing chemical indicators in the form of hormones that influence an emotional response.\"\n\n\"Glad I didn't ask, then,\" Kaz noted.\n\n\"Ah well.\"\n\nNow, it may seem odd to you that I - a boy of merely thirteen years - figured out all that stuff about the Incarna, when scholars had been trying for centuries to discover it. I had some advantages, though. First, I had the unusual position of being a Smedry, an Oculator, and a holder of the Breaking Talent. From what I can determine, there hadn't been someone who had possessed all three for thousands of years. I might have been the only one other than Alcatraz the First.\n\nBecause of that unusual combination, I'd done some strange things. (You've seen me do some of them in these books.) I'd seen things others hadn't, and that had led me to conclusions they couldn't have made. Beyond that, Id read what many of the other scholars - like Kaz \u2013 had written. That's part of what I'd spent my time doing in Nalhalla while I waited for the fourth book to start.\n\nThere's a saying in the Hushlands: \"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.\" Newton said it first. I'm not sure how he got hit on the head with an apple while standing up so high in the air but the quote is quite good.\n\nI had all of their research. I had my own knowledge. Between it all, I happened to figure out the right answer.\n\nKaz nodded to himself, slowly. \"I think you might be on to something, kid. Some scholars have noticed the connection between types of Smedry Talents and types of glass. They've even tried to put the glasses onto the Incarnate Wheel. But your explanation goes a step further.\"\n\nHe tapped the diagram he'd drawn on the floor. \"I like it. Things tend to make sense once you figure out all of the pieces. We call Smedry Talents 'magic.' But I've never liked that word. They work according to their own rules. Take Aydee's power, for instance.\"\n\n\"It seems pretty magical,\" I admitted. \"Creating five thousand bears out of thin air?\"\n\n\"She didn't create them out of nothing,\" Kaz said. \"She's got a spatial Talent, one that changes how things are in space with relation to other things. Like my Talent. I get lost. This moves me from one place to another. Your father loses things, not himself. He can tuck something into his pocket, and it will be gone the next moment. But when he really needs it, he'll 'find' it in the pocket of a completely different outfit.\n\n\"Aydee's Talent is actually very similar to these. Those bears, they didn't come from nowhere. She moved them from someplace. Out of a storehouse or factory; perhaps she drained the armory back in Nalhalla. That's how it always works. She's not magically making them appear; she's moving them here, and she's putting something back in their place - usually just empty air.\"\n\n\"Like Transporter's Glass,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, actually,\" Kaz said. \"Now that you mention it, that is very similar.\" He tapped the ground again. \"So, if I get you right, you're saying that the Incarna turned people into Lenses. But something went wrong.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"That's why the Talents are hard to control, why they do such odd things some of the time.\"\n\n\"And that's what your father is chasing, I warrant,\" Kaz said. \"Didn't he say he wanted to give every person Smedry Talents?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said. \"He announced it in a big press conference, to all of Nalhalla.\"\n\n\"He wants the secret,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"And my mother does too,\" I guessed. \"It's hidden in the Forgotten Language. The trick, the method the Incarna used to turn people into Lenses. Kind of.\"\n\n\"And this whole issue with the Translator's Glass was based on that,\" Kaz said, growing excited. \"Your mother and he were searching for this same secret, and they knew they needed to be able to read the Forgotten Language to find it. So they searched out the Sands of Rashid\u2026\"\n\n\"And broke up because of differences in how they'd use the abilities once they found them,\" I said, glancing toward the university building proper. Where my mother was locked up. \"I have to talk to her, interrogate her. Maybe I can figure out if this is all correct.\"\n\nAbove us, Bastille began to swear.\n\nI looked up; Bastille was pointing urgently. \"Alcatraz! The earth is moving in a yard three streets over! I think Librarians are tunneling in over there!\"\n\nKaz leaped to his feet, and the six Mokian runners came alert. I glanced at the university, the place of my mother's impromptu prison. An interrogation would have to wait.\n\n\"Let's go!\" I said, dashing in the direction Bastille had pointed."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "By now, you're probably confused at what chapter this is. Some people I let read the book early were a little confused by the chapter numbers. (Wimps.)\n\nI did this intentionally. See, I knew it would drive Librarians crazy. Despite our many efforts to hide these books as innocent \"fantasy\" novels in the bookstores and libraries, the Librarians have proven too clever (or at least too meticulous) for us. They are reading my biographies, and perhaps learning too much about me. So it was time to employ some careful misdirection.\n\nI considered writing the whole book in l33t, but felt that would give me too much m4d ski11z. So it came to the chapter numbers. As you have probably noticed, Librarians don't conform to most people's stereotypes. Most of them don't even have stereos. Beyond that, they're not sweet, book-loving scholars; they're maniacal cultists bent on ruling the world. They don't like to shush people. (Unless it means quieting them permanently by sinking them in the bay with their feet tied to an iron shelving cart.) In fact, most Librarians I've seen are quite fond of loud explosions, particularly the types that involve a Smedry at the center.\n\nPeople don't become Librarians because they want to force people to be quiet, or because they love books, or because they want to help people. No, people become Librarians for only one reason: They like to put things in order. Librarians are always organizing stuff. They can't help it. You'll see them for hours and hours sitting on little stools in libraries, going over each and every book on their shelf, trying to decide if it should be moved over one or two slots. It drives them crazy when we normal people wander into their libraries and mess stuff up.\n\nAnd so, I present to you the perfect Librarian trap. They'll come along, pick up this book, and start to read it, thinking they're so smart for discovering my autobiography. The chapter titles will be completely messed up. That, of course, will make their brains explode. So if you have to wipe some gray stuff off the book, you know who read it before you.\n\nSorry about that.\n\nOnce again, I charged through the city, small retinue in tow. Being king sure seemed to involve running around in the dark a lot.\n\n\"Kid,\" Kaz said, jogging beside me, \"I should be on the strike team to attack the robots.\"\n\n\"What?\" I exclaimed. \"No, Kaz. I need you here.\"\n\n\"No, you don't. You're doing just fine on your own.\"\n\n\"But \u2013\"\n\n\"Kid, with these Warrior's Lenses on, I can run faster than any of those Mokian soldiers.\"\n\nThat was true; Warrior's Lenses augmented a person's physical abilities. Kaz had no trouble keeping up with the rest of us, despite his shorter legs.\n\nWarrior's Lenses were one of the few types that could be used by anyone, not just Oculators. It's proof that the world is so unfair that I, to this day, have never had a chance to use Warrior's Lenses. (Well, except that once, but we won't talk about that.) They're supposedly beneath Oculators, or something like that.\n\n\"So give the Lenses to someone else,\" I said stubbornly.\n\n\"Wouldn't work,\" he replied. \"They take a lot of training to learn to use. I'll bet there aren't more than a few dozen Mokian soldiers who can use them. Otherwise, the entire army would be wearing them.\"\n\nOh. Well, that made sense. Unfortunately.\n\n\"Besides, kid,\" Kaz said, \"I can use my Talent to escape from behind the Librarian lines. I might even be able to pull a few of the other runners with me. If you send me, it'll save lives.\"\n\nNow that was a good argument. If Kaz could get some of the runners out, then that would alleviate my conscience big time.\n\n\"Are you sure you can get out?\" I said softly as we ran. \"Your Talent has been unpredictable lately.\u2026\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll be able to get out,\" Kaz said. \"I just can't promise when I'll get back. The Talents\u2026 seem like they've all been acting up lately. Aydee's goes off at the mere mention of a number, and from what Bastille tells me, your father is losing things more and more often. Something's up.\"\n\nI nodded, thinking again of how my Talent had seemed to snap out of my body at Folsom.\n\n\"All right, you're on the team,\" I said. Something occurred to me at that moment. \"But after you get lost, don't try to come back here. Go to Grandpa Smedry instead. I want you to deliver a message for me.\"\n\n\"Sure thing,\" Kaz said.\n\n\"Tell him that we really, really need him here by midnight. If he doesn't arrive by then, we're doomed.\"\n\n\"Midnight?\" Kaz said. \"That's only a few minutes away.\"\n\n\"Just do it.\"\n\nKaz shrugged. \"Okay.\"\n\nWe reached an intersection between two rows of pastoral homes and hesitated. Which way to go? Only Bastille knew. A second later, she raced by, leading the way to the right. We followed her; it certainly hadn't taken her long to get down from the stilts and catch up.\n\nAt the end of a row of houses, she slowed and raised a hand. We bunched up behind her, and Kaz quietly informed the youngest - and most nervous-looking \u2013 of the Mokian runners that he'd been booted from the strike team. The youth looked very relieved.\n\n\"There,\" Bastille hissed, pointing at a section of ground several houses down. We peeked around the corner, watching as some shovels broke up out of the ground. The grass lowered, and a few moments later, a few Librarians' heads peeked out.\n\n\"Go get Aluki and his soldiers,\" I whispered to the young runner that Kaz had relieved. \"Warn him about these infiltrators; he'll need to take care of them once the strike team has sneaked into the tunnel.\"\n\nThe runner nodded, dashing off. I peeked back around the corner. The Librarians were timidly glancing about, as if surprised to find no resistance. Several of them climbed out of the hole, slinking to the wall of the nearest hutlike house. They waved for the others, and soon the entire group had exited the hole. They ran off down a side street, carrying their rifles and looking for mayhem. In a lot of ways, these Librarian infiltration groups were suicide missions, just like my strike team. The difference being that the Librarians anticipated taking the city very soon, and finding the Mokian coma antidote.\n\n\"All right,\" I said, waving. \"Go!\"\n\nKaz and the five runners charged around the side of the building, running toward the hole. I waited anxiously. Were the Librarians far enough away? Would they notice what we were doing?\n\nBastille waited beside me, though I could tell she itched to leap forward and join the strike team. Fortunately her primary duty was to protect me, so she restrained herself.\n\nThe strike team reached the hole and Kaz waved the runners to jump in. suddenly, something flashed in the hole.\n\n\"Rifle fire!\" Bastille said.\n\nShe was moving a moment later, bolting down the hole. One of our runners collapsed backward, twitching. The others leaped for the ground, taking cover, and two Librarians peeked out of the hole, holding rifles.\n\nKaz whipped out a pistol and shot one in the face \u2013 it let out a blast of light, knocking the Librarian unconscious. Bastille - running inhumanly fast - arrived and kicked the other Librarian in the face.\n\nI blinked. Things happened so quickly in battle. By the time I thought to jog out, the two Librarian guards had been disabled. Unfortunately, one of our runners was down.\n\n\"Woodpeckers!\" Kaz cursed. \"We should have known they'd be smart enough to leave a rear guard.\" He checked on the runner who'd been shot. He was unconscious. We'd need the antidote to awaken him.\n\n\"There will probably be guards at the end of the tunnel as well,\" one of the Mokians said. \"And while we're fast, we're not the best soldiers in the army.\"\n\nKaz nodded. \"If you fight and make a disturbance, the Librarians will cut off our exit out of the tunnel. Sparrows!\"\n\n\"Kaz, where did you pick up all that fowl language?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"Sorry. Spent two weeks trapped in an ornithologist's convention during my last time lost.\"\n\nAnd that is a story all unto itself.\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"we'll just have to hope that\u2026\" I trailed off as I noticed Bastille and Kaz sharing a look. Then, shockingly, Bastille pulled the bear-containing backpack off of the unconscious runner. She slung it over her shoulder, then looked at me.\n\n\"Stay here,\" she said.\n\n\"Bastille, no! You can't go.\"\n\n\"I have the best chance at knocking out guards at the exit of the tunnel quietly. My speed and strength will let me get to those robots faster than the others. I need to go.\"\n\n\"But you're supposed to protect me!\"\n\nShe pointed upward, at the glass dome. \"It's only minutes away from breaking. This is the best way to protect you.\"\n\nShe secured her Warrior's Lenses. \"Take care of yourself,\" she said. \"You'd better not die. I'm getting a little fond of you. Besides, if I fall, you'll need to get me the antidote.\"\n\nWith that, she jumped down into the hole. I scrambled up to the edge, looking down. The drop wasn't a deep one; it quickly turned to the side as the tunnel pointed out toward the Librarian army. The runners jumped in after her. Kaz patted my arm. \"I'll try to get her out, kid,\" he said.\n\nHe followed the others down into the hole, backpack carried over one arm, a pistol carried warily in the other hand. He disappeared into the darkness.\n\nI stared after them for several heartbeats, trying to sort through my emotions. I had sent a team out on a suicide mission. Me. They were following my orders. And Kaz and Bastille were with them.\n\nWas this what it was to be a king? This terrible guilt?\n\nIt felt like someone had slathered all of my internal organs with honey, then let a jar full of ants loose inside there.\n\nIt felt like someone had shoved firecrackers up my nose, then set them off with a flamethrower.\n\nIt felt like being forced to eat a hundred rotting fish sticks.\n\nIn other words, it didn't feel so good.\n\nI turned and took off at a dash, running as quickly as I could. I passed Aluki and his soldiers fighting a pitched battle with the Librarians who'd left the tunnel. Running with all I had, I eventually reached the steps to the top of the wooden wall. I leaped up them. Then, out of breath, puffing, I slammed up against the front of the wall, looking out.\n\nI arrived just in time to see the strike team erupt out of the other side of the tunnel. Bastille had dealt with the Librarian guards in her characteristically efficient way, and the soldiers outside of the tunnel didn't hear anything. They stood by stoopidly as the team of six runners poured out of the tunnel and scattered in different directions.\n\nA boulder crashed against the dome. Another chunk of glass broke free and fell inward, crushing a nearby home.\n\nCome on, I thought anxiously, watching the runners. Mokians gathered around me, cheering on the runners. I noticed absently that my three \"advisers\" were among them.\n\nThe six runners seemed so insignificant compared with the Librarian army. I found myself holding my breath, wishing there was something - anything - I could do to help. But I was inside the dome, and they far outside of it, an army between us. I could barely see them\u2026\n\nSee them.\n\nYou're an Oculator, stoopid! Bastille's voice seemed to scream into my mind. I cursed to myself, fumbling in the pocket of my jacket, pulling out a set of glasses with a purple-and- green tint.\n\nMy Bestower's Lenses. Hurriedly, I pulled off my Oculator's Lenses and shoved on the Bestower's Lenses instead. Bastille had said, \"They let you give something of yourself to someone else.\"\n\nLet's see what these babies can do, I thought with determination.\n\nThe strike team spread out, one heading for each of the robots. Those robots were distant enough from one another that each runner had to pick one robot and make for it. Fortunately, that put them running away from the bulk of the army, so they had to contend with only the small number of Librarians who were walking about near the back lines.\n\nThat was still a lot of Librarians. Hundreds. Bastille shoved one aside as he tried to attack her, then swung her sword into the stomach of a second.\n\nThe sword, it should be noted, did not have a magical \"stunning\" setting like the spears did. Ew.\n\nBastille continued on, but one of the Mokian runners was quickly getting surrounded. He looked kind of like a running back from American football, galloping down the field with a group of Librarian thugs trying to tackle him, a teddy bear held protectively in the crook of his arm.\n\nI focused on him, channeling strength through my Bestower's Lenses. I suddenly felt weak, and my legs started quivering. But I remained focused, and the Mokian took off in a burst of speed, getting ahead of the Librarians, who stumbled and tripped into a mess of arms and legs.\n\nI quickly sought out the other runners. Kaz dodged to the side of a group of Librarians, neatly using his pistol to pick off the one running at him from the front. But one of the other Mokians had gotten herself into a predicament. A crowd of Librarians was in front of her, shoulder to shoulder. They seemed intent on capturing her, rather than shooting her down, which was good.\n\nShe looked desperate, and she crouched down to try a final leap before crashing into the Librarians. I focused on her, then jumped into the air, channeling the leap through my Bestower's Lenses into her. She jumped, and my jump added to hers. She bounded into the air, narrowly leaping over the shocked Librarians' heads, while I jumped only an inch or so.\n\nI hit the ground, smiling. Another of the runners was slamming into a group of Librarians blocking him; with my help, he pushed straight through, knocking them to the ground.\n\nI've been told that I shouldn't have been able to accomplish what I did with those Lenses. Theoretically, I would have added only a little bit of strength - as much as a thirteen-year-old boy could - to the Mokians. My strength added to that of the willowy runner shouldn't have let him knock down three toughened Librarian thugs.\n\nBut it did. This time, for once in my narrative, I'm not lying. However, that bit about the giant, enchanted ninja wombat was totally made up.\n\nMy heart thumped; I felt like I was down there, running for my life. I jumped back and forth between the six runners, eyes flicking here, then there, granting them whatever I could. At one point, one of the runners was confronted by a group of Librarians leveling guns.\n\nYou can do it! I thought at the runner, sending all of the courage I could muster.\n\nThe runner suddenly looked ten times more confident. He stared down the guns and managed to dodge between them as I granted him extra dexterity, leeching it from myself. He got to the Librarian gunners and leaped over their heads as I enhanced his ability to jump.\n\nThe rest of the Librarian armies had noticed what was happening. Hundreds of soldiers charged away from the front lines, yelling. But most were too far away.\n\nBastille reached her robot. I held my breath as she tossed her grenade bear.\n\nIt hit.\n\nI couldn't hear the explosion, but it vaporized the entire section of metal beneath the robot's knee. The robot teetered, holding a rock that it had been about to throw. Then it toppled backward.\n\nEven inside of Tuki Tuki, we felt the vibrations of it hitting the ground. A monstrous, powerful thump. To me, it felt like the fall of Goliath himself. (If Goliath had been felled by a purple teddy bear.)\n\nThe Mokians on the wall around me let out a loud cheer of victory. On the far side of the Librarian field, Kaz reached his robot. Though he and Bastille had taken the two robots farthest away on either side, their Warrior's Lenses had let them arrive first.\n\nKaz tossed his bear into the robot's call then hurried away in a dash as the monstrous creation fell to the ground, crushing trees beneath it with an awful sound. Kaz jumped into the air in pleasure, probably letting out a whoop of joy at felling the biggest big person of them all. I could almost hear him scream out: \"Reason number three thousand forty-seven! Little people don't feel the need to build their robots as tall as buildings! Ha!\"\n\nHe took off at a gallop toward the other runners. I smiled broadly, checking on the others.\n\nAnd that was when the first Mokian I had helped got shot in the back."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "Stoopid, elegant, skinny, odd, extravagant.\n\nThese words all share something, something you're not expecting. If you can figure it out, I'll give you a cookie. (Answer is at the beginning of the next chapter.)\n\nI'll give you a hint: It has to do with the meaning of the word awful.\n\n\"No!\" I said, watching as the Mokian tumbled to the ground, dropping his bear and rolling to a stop. The Librarians rushed up behind him, surrounding him then prodding him with their rifles. He was out cold.\n\nJust like that, the plan fell apart. Another robot dropped as one of the three remaining runners hit their target. Another soon followed, leaving only two robots up. But that was enough. Another rock fell, and a chunk of glass nearby cracked free.\n\nI looked up. There were so many cracks in the dome that I could barely see the sky.\n\n\"I'd guess one more rock will drop it,\" Mink the adviser said from beside me. \"Two at the most.\"\n\n\"We can't let that happen!\" I said. The two remaining robots were lifting arms to throw. Another of the runners fell - one that had already destroyed her robot \u2013 blasted in the side by Librarians.\n\nGuns were firing all over now, flashing in the night like the lights of some insane disco. I guess the Librarians finally realized what we were doing - at first, they likely thought we were just trying to get messengers out.\n\nA Mokian still ran for one of the remaining robots. Gun blasts fell around him. \"Run!\" I said, focusing on him. Giving him strength, speed, jumping ability, everything I could leech out of myself. He dodged about on fleet feet, inhumanly fast. But a contingent of Librarian riflemen set up just beside him.\n\n\"NO!\" I screamed even louder, letting out a jolt of something through my Lenses. I could almost see it. A black arrow that streaked through the air, striking the Mokian.\n\nThe Librarians pulled triggers. And their guns exploded.\n\nI froze, shocked, as the Mokian runner leaped one final bound over a fallen log then threw his bear. It smacked into the robot's leg, exploding. The robot tried to throw its boulder, but didn't have the leverage, and the stone fell to the ground out of its grasp. The robot followed, crashing to the ground.\n\nThe Mokian skidded to the ground, and a Librarian shot him a moment later, knocking him out.\n\nThat was my Talent, I realized. For a brief moment, I used the Lenses to grant that runner my Talent. It broke the guns when they tried to fire on him.\n\nThe last remaining robot tossed its boulder. We all held our breath as it flew, then smashed into the dome crashing through it completely and falling into the city. Shards of glass rained down on us. It left a gaping hole in the roof.\n\nOutside, the Librarians cheered. Behind them, I noticed three scrambling forms congregating. Kaz had met up with the two remaining Mokian runners. Kaz hesitated just briefly, but obviously realized that he couldn't wait any longer. A Librarian's rifle shot hit the ground next to them spraying up dirt and smoke, giving Kaz the moment of disorientation he needed to engage his Talent. As the smoke passed, the three of them were gone, carried to safety.\n\nThe last robot leaned down to get another boulder. The hole in the ceiling was bad enough; this final boulder would shatter the dome entirely. Around me, the Mokians hushed as the final robot raised the enormous rock. The Librarians below lined up' moving back into their attack lines, preparing to assault Tuki Tuki.\n\nMy eyes caught something. Motion. There, rushing across the ground behind the Librarian lines, was a small determined figure with silver hair. Bastille.\n\nThere was still hope.\n\nThe Mokians noticed her, pointing. Bastille \u2013 belligerent Bastille - had ignored safety, choosing to run for that last robot instead of trying to get to Kaz. She charged with sword strapped to her back, Warrior's Lenses on, dashing with Crystin speed through, around, and sometimes over confused Librarian soldiers.\n\n\"She's not going to make it,\" Aluki said softly. The robot raised its boulder. \"It's too late.\u2026\"\n\nHe was right. That robot would throw before Bastille arrived. \"She needs more time. I need to get down there.\" My heart beating quickly, I moved by instinct, shoving my way through the Mokians and rushing down the steps to the ground. I ran up to the gate out of the city.\n\n\"Open the gate!\" I cried.\n\nThe guards looked at me, dumbfounded. I didn't have time to argue, so I brushed past them and slammed my hands against the gate, sending my Talent into it. The bar holding the gate closed shattered into about a billion splinters, the force of the explosion sending the gate swinging open.\n\nI rushed out the door and realized something important. Something life changing. Something amazing.\n\nI needed a battle cry.\n\n\"Rutabaga!\" I screamed.\n\nIt's the first thing that came to mind, I'm afraid. Anyway, I dashed out across the grassy ground, running to the edge of the glass dome. Outside, the robot snapped its massive arms forward, launching the boulder.\n\nI came right up to the glass of the protective shield. Taking a deep breath, I placed my hands against it and sent a surge of power into it.\n\nThe dome in front of me let out a wave of light, a ripple of energy. I closed my eyes, holding my hands to the smooth surface, power surging through me like luminescent blood pumping into the glass.\n\nFor a moment, I felt like I was the glass dome protecting the city. I strengthened the dome, giving it an extra boost, like I'd done with the Transporter's Glass months before.\n\nThe rock hit.\n\nAnd it bounced off, the dome unharmed. I opened my eyes to find the entire thing glowing with a brilliant, beautiful light.\n\nPower was flowing through me at an alarming rate. It seemed to be towing bits of me along with it, my strength, my soul even. I could feel the Talent coiled inside, wanting to snap forth and destroy the very thing I was trying to protect. I had to forcibly hold it back.\n\nAt no point in my life up to this moment had my dual nature - Oculator and Smedry - been so pointedly manifest to me. In one hand I held the power to save Mokia, and in the other hand the power to destroy it.\n\nI forced myself to release the glass, stumbling backward, exhausted and drained. I felt like I'd just run a marathon while carrying Atlas on my shoulders. And boy, that guy's gained weight over the years. (Due to all those new stars we've discovered in the sky you see.)\n\nI fell backward to the ground, exhausted, Mokians swarming around me. I waved them away, letting Aluki help me back to my feet. The robot was getting another boulder. Where was Bastille?\n\nShe'd been caught by a large group of Librarians. She fought desperately, waving her sword around her, fending off the soldiers. She seemed to glance in our direction, then she turned, pulling a bear from her backpack and snapping it into the air.\n\nThe maneuver exposed her back to the Librarians.\n\n\"Bastille\u2026\" I said, raising a hand. I tried to send her strength through the Bestower's Lenses, but I was too weak. A dozen different shots from Librarian guns hit her at once.\n\nBastille dropped.\n\nThe bear soared.\n\nI held my breath as the robot raised its rock. I didn't have the strength to protect the city again.\n\nAnd\u2026...\n\nAnd\u2026.\n\nAnd\u2026\n\nAnd...\n\nAnd.\n\nAnd...\n\nAnd\u2026\n\nAnd\u2026.\n\nAnd\u2026...\n\nThe bear hit dead-on. A large section of the robot's leg vaporized and it teetered, then toppled to the side, dropping its rock.\n\nAround me, the Mokians let out relieved breaths. I wasn't paying attention. I was just looking at Bastille, lying unconscious on the ground. The Librarians were raising their guns in excitement, as if they'd just felled some fearsome beast. Which I guess they had.\n\nThe Librarians pulled Bastille's jacket off of her and began shooting it over and over with their guns. That confused me until I realized they must have recognized it as glassweave. These soldiers belonged to the order of the Shattered Lens, and they hated glass of all types. They took off her Lenses and shot those a few times too.\n\nOf course, their hatred of glass didn't explain why they felt the need to start kicking Bastille in the stomach as she lay there unconscious. I watched, teeth clenched tightly, seething hatred and anger as they beat on Bastille for a few minutes. I almost ran right out there to go for her but Aluki caught my arm. We both knew that there was no good in it. I'd just get myself captured too.\n\nThe Librarians then picked her up and hauled her away as a prize of war. It was a special victory for them, catching a Knight of Crystallia. They took her to a tent at the back of the battlefield, where they stored all of the important captives they'd put into comas. I felt a coward for having let her go out there without me, and for not going to get her back when she fell.\n\n\"Your Majesty?\" Aluki said to me. The Mokians around me had grown quiet. They seemed to be able to sense my mood. Perhaps it was because I was unconsciously causing the ground around me to crack and break.\n\nI was alone. No Grandpa, no Bastille, no Kaz. Sure, I had Aluki and his soldiers, not to mention Aydee back in the city. But for the first time in a long while, I felt alone, without guidance.\n\nAt this point, you're probably expecting me to say something bitter. Something like, \"I never should have become so dependent on others. That only set me up to fail.\"\n\nOr maybe, \"Losing Bastille was inevitable, after I was put in charge. I should never have taken the kingship.\"\n\nOr maybe you want me to say, \"Help, there is a snake eating my toes and I forgot to take the jelly out of the oven.\" (If so, I can't believe you wanted me to say that. You're a sick, sick person. I mean, what does that even mean? Weirdo.)\n\nAnyway, I will say none of those things here. The fact that you were expecting them means I've trained you well enough.\n\nNow excuse me while I fetch my snake repellant.\n\n\"Are you all right, Your Majesty?\" Aluki asked again, timid.\n\n\"We will win this battle,\" I said. I felt a strange sense of determination shoving away my feelings of shame and loss. \"And we will get the antidote. We no longer have an option in this regard.\" I turned to regard the soldiers. \"We will find a way to get Bastille out, and then wake her up. I am not going to fail her.\"\n\nSolemnly, the soldiers nodded. Oddly, in that moment, I finally felt like a Smedry, maybe even a king, for the first time.\n\n\"The city is protected for the time being,\" I said. \"Though we still have to worry about the tunnels. I want people back to their posts watching the city for Librarian incursions. We're going to last. We're going to win. I vow it.\"\n\n\"Your Majesty,\" Aluki said, nodding upward. \"They knocked a hole in the dome. They'll find a way to exploit that.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I said. \"We'll deal with that when it happens. Have someone watch to see what the Librarians do next. Ask my advisers if they can think of any way to patch that hole.\"\n\n\"Yes, Your Majesty,\" Aluki said. \"Er\u2026 what will you be doing?\"\n\nI took a deep breath. \"It's time to confront my mother.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "In the year 1288, if you were to pass by an old acquaintance on the way to Ye Olde Chain Mail Shoppe and call him \"nice,\" you'd actually be calling him an idiot.\n\nIf it were the year 1322 instead - and you were on your way to the bookshop to pick up the new wacky comedy by a guy named Dante - when you called someone \"nice\" you would be saying that they were timid.\n\nIn 1380, if you called someone \"nice,\" you'd be saying they were fussy.\n\nIn 1405, you'd be calling them dainty.\n\nIn 1500, you'd be calling them careful.\n\nBy the 1700s - when you were off to do some crowd surfing at the new Mozart concert \u2013 you'd be using the word nice to mean \"agreeable.\"\n\nSometimes, it's difficult to understand how much change there is all around us. Even language changes, and the same word can mean different things depending on how, where, and when it was said. The word awful used to mean \"deserving of awe\" - full of awe. The same as awesome. Once, the word brave meant \"cowardly.\" The word girl meant a child of either gender.\n\n(So next time you're with a mixed group of friends, you should call them \"girls\" instead of \"guys.\" Assuming you're not too brave, nice, nice, nice, or nice.)\n\nPeople change too. In fact, they're always changing. We like to pretend that the people we know stay the same, but they change moment by moment as they come to new conclusions, experience new things, think new thoughts. Perhaps, as Heraclitus said, you can never step in the same river twice\u2026 but I think a more powerful metaphor would have been this: You can never meet the same person twice.\n\nThe Mokians hadn't actually put my mother in the university with the other prisoners. I'd told them to put her in a place that was very secure, and they didn't have a prison. (It may surprise you to learn this. Mokia is exactly the sort of place the Librarians don't want you to believe in. A paradise where people are learned, where arguments don't turn into fistfights, but instead debates over warm tea and grapes.)\n\nNo, the Mokians didn't have a prison. But they did have a zoo.\n\nIt was actually more of a research farm, a place where exotic animals could be kept and studied in the name of science. My mother, Shasta Smedry, was confined in a large cage with thick bars that looked like it had once been used to house a tiger or other large cat. It had a little pool for water, a tree to climb in, and several large rock formations.\n\nUnfortunately, the Mokians had removed the tiger before locking my mother in. That was probably for the tiger's safety.\n\nI walked up to the cage, two Mokian guards at my side. Shasta sat inside on a small rock, legs crossed primly, wearing her Librarian business suit with the ankle-length gray skirt and high-necked white blouse. She had on horn-rimmed glasses. They weren't magical, according to my Oculator's Lenses. I checked just to be certain.\n\n\"Mother,\" I said flatly, stepping up to the cage.\n\n\"Son,\" she replied.\n\nI should note that this felt very, very odd. I'd once confronted my mother in a situation almost exactly like this, during my very first Library infiltration. Except then, my mother had been the one outside the bars, and I had been the one behind them.\n\nI didn't feel any safer having it this way.\n\n\"I need to know the formula for the antidote.\" I told her. \"The one that wilt overcome the effects of the Librarian coma-guns.\"\n\n\"It's a pity, then,\" she said, \"that I don't have it.\"\n\nI narrowed my eyes. \"I don't believe you.\"\n\n\"Hmm\u2026 If only there were a way for you to tell if I were speaking lies or not.\"\n\nI blushed, then dug out my Truthfinder's Lens. I looked through it.\n\nShe spoke directly at me. \"I don't know the antidote.\"\n\nThe words puffed from her mouth like white clouds. She was telling the truth. I felt a sinking feeling.\n\n\"I'm not from the Order of the Shattered Lens,\" my mother continued. \"They wouldn't entrust one such as me with something that important - they wouldn't let any foot soldier know it. That secret will be very carefully guarded, as will the secret of the antidote to the Mokian stun-spears.\"\n\nI looked at my guards. Aluki nodded. \"Very few know our formula, your Majesty. One was the queen, and the other is the -\"\n\n\"Don't say it,\" I said, eyeing my mother.\n\nShe just rolled her eyes. \"You think I care about this little dispute, Alcatraz? I haven't the faintest interest in the outcome of this siege.\"\n\nIt was the truth.\n\nI gritted my teeth in annoyance. \"Then why did you sneak in?\"\n\nShe just smiled at me. An insufferable, knowing smile. She'd been the one to suggest I get out my Truthfinder's Lens. She wasn't going to be tricked into saying anything condemning. At least, not unless I shocked her or distracted her.\n\n\"I know what you and Father are doing,\" I said.\n\n\"The Sands of Rashid, the book you both wanted from Nalhalla.\"\n\n\"You don't know anything.\"\n\n\"I know that you're seeking the secret of Smedry Talents,\" I said. \"You married my father to get access to a Talent, to study them, and perhaps to get close to the whole family. It was always about the Talents. And now you are looking to discover the way that the Incarna people got their Talents in the first place.\"\n\nShe studied me. Something I'd said actually seemed to make her hesitate, look at me in a new way. \"You've changed, Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I put a new pair on this morning.\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes again, then stood up. \"Put away that Lens, leave your guards behind, and let's have a chat.\"\n\n\"What? Why would I do that!\"\n\n\"Because you should obey your mother.\"\n\n\"My mother is a ruthless, malevolent, egocentric Librarian bent on controlling the world!\"\n\n\"We all have our faults,\" she said, strolling away from me, following the line of bars to the right. \"Do as I request, or I'll remain silent. The choice is yours.\"\n\nI ground my teeth, but there didn't seem to be any other choice. Reluctantly, I put the Truthfinder's Lens away and waved the guards to remain behind as I hurried after Shasta.\n\nI wouldn't be able to tell if she was lying or not, at least not for certain. But hopefully I could still learn something from her. Why had she joined the group infiltrating Tuki Tuki? Perhaps she knew something, some way to save us.\n\nAs I moved to join het an alarm rang through the city - one of the scouts we'd posted had seen a tunnel opening. Hopefully, the soldiers would be able to deal with it. I walked up to where Shasta stood, far enough from Aluki and the other guard to be out of earshot. I suspected that she wanted me away from the other two so she could manipulate me into letting her go free.\n\nThat wasn't going to happen. I hadn't forgotten how she'd given Himalaya up to be executed, nor how she'd sold me - her own son - to Blackburn, the one-eyed Dark Oculator. Or how she killed Asmodean. (Okay, so she didn't really do that last one, but I wouldn't put it past her.)\n\n\"What is it you think you know about the Smedry Talents?\" she said to me, arms folded. Her smirk was gone; she looked serious now, perhaps somewhat ominous. The effect was spoiled by the giant tiger chew toy in the grass beside her.\n\n\"Kaz and I talked it through,\" I said. \"The Incarna wanted to turn people into Lenses.\"\n\nShe sniffed. \"A crude way of putting it. They discovered the source of magical Lenses. Every person's soul has a power to it, an energy. Lenses don't actually have any inherent energy; what they do is focus the energy of the Oculator, distort it, change it into something useful. Like a prism refracting light.\"\n\nShe looked at me. \"The eyes are the key,\" she said. \"Poets have called them windows to the soul. Well, windows go both directions - someone can look into your eyes and see your soul, but when you look at someone, the energy of your soul shines forth. If there are Lenses in front of that energy, it distorts into something else. In some cases, it changes what is going in to your eyes, letting you see things you couldn't normally. In other cases, it changes what comes out, creating bursts of fire or wind.\"\n\n\"That's nonsense,\" I said. \"I've had Lenses that worked even after I took them off.\"\n\n\"Your soul was still feeding them,\" she said. \"For some kinds of glass, looking through them is important. For others, being near your soul alone is enough, and merely touching them can activate them.\"\n\n\"Why are you telling me this?\"\n\n\"You will see,\" she said cryptically.\n\nI didn't trust her. I don't think anyone with half a brain would trust Shasta Smedry.\n\n\"So what of the Incarna?\" I asked.\n\n\"They wanted to harness this energy of the soul,\" she said. \"Every person's soul vibrates with a distinctive tone, just like pure crystal will create a tone if rubbed the right way. The Incarna felt they could change the soul's vibration to manifest its energy. Men would not 'become Lenses,' as you put it. Instead, they'd be able to use the power of their soul vibrations.\"\n\nThe power of their soul vibrations? That sounds like a seventies disco song, doesn't it? I really need to start a band or something to play all of these hits.\n\n\"All right,\" I said. \"But something went wrong, didn't it? The Talents were flawed. Instead of getting the powers the Incarna anticipated, they ended up with a bunch of people who could barely control their abilities.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, looking at me, thoughtful. \"You've considered this a great deal.\"\n\nI felt a surge of rebellious pride. My mother \u2013 known as Ms. Fletcher during my childhood - had very rarely given me anything resembling a compliment.\n\n\"You want the Talents for yourself,\" I said, forcing myself to keep focused. \"You want to use them to give the Librarian armies extra abilities.\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes.\n\n\"Don't try to claim otherwise,\" I said. \"You want to keep the Talents for yourself; my father wants to give them to everyone. That's what you and he argued about, isn't it? When you discovered the way to collect the Sands of Rashid, you disagreed on how the Talents were to be used.\"\n\n\"You could say that,\" she said.\n\n\"My father wanted to bless people with them; you wanted to keep them for the Librarians.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said frankly.\n\nI froze, blinking. I hadn't expected her to actually answer me on that. \"Oh. Er. Well. Hmm.\" Maybe I should have paid more attention to the \"ruthless, malevolent, egocentric Librarian bent on controlling the world\" part of her description.\n\n\"Now that we're past the obvious part,\" Shasta said dryly, \"shall we continue with our conversation about the Incarna?\"\n\n\"All right,\" I said. \"So what went wrong? Why are the Talents so hard to control?\"\n\n\"We don't actually know,\" she said. \"The sources \u2013 the few I've had read to me with the Translator's Lenses \u2013 are contradictory. It seems that some thing became tied up in the Talents, some source of energy or power that the Incarna were using to change their soul vibrations. It tainted the Talents, made them work in a way that was more destructive and more unpredictable.\"\n\nThe Dark Talent\u2026 I thought, again remembering those haunting words I'd read in the tomb of Alcatraz the First.\n\n\"You asked why I tell you this,\" Shasta said, studying me looking through the bars. \"Well, you have proven very\u2026 persistent in interfering with my activities. Your presence here in Tuki Tuki means I cannot afford to discount you any longer. It is time for an alliance.\"\n\nI blinked in shock. \"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"An alliance. Between you and me, to serve the greater good.\"\n\n\"And by serving the greater good, you mean serving yourself.\"\n\nShe raised an eyebrow at me. \"Don't tell me you haven't figured it out yet. I thought you were clever.\"\n\n\"Pretend I'm stoopiderifous instead,\" I said.\n\n\"What happened to the Incarna?\"\n\n\"They fell,\" I said. \"The culture was destroyed.\"\n\n\"By what?\"\n\n\"We don't know. It must have been something incredible, something sweeping, something\u2026\"\n\nAnd I got it. Finally. I should have seen it much earlier; you probably did. Well, you're smarter than I am.\n\nI suspected something might be wrong during my father's speech in Nalhalla, when he announced that he wanted to give everyone a Talent. But I hadn't realized the full scope of it, the full danger of it.\n\n\"Something destroyed the Incarna,\" I found myself saying. \"Something so fearsome that my ancestor Alcatraz the First broke his own language to keep anyone from repeating it\u2026\"\n\n\"It was this,\" Shasta said softly, intensely. \"The secret of the Talents. Think of what it would be like. Every person with a Talent? The Smedry clan alone has a terrible reputation for destruction, accidents, and insanity. Philosophers have guessed that the Talents - the wild nature of them, the unpredictability of your lives when you are young \u2013 is what makes you all so reckless.\"\n\n\"And if everyone had them\u2026\" I said. \"It would be chaos. Everyone would be getting lost, multiplying bears, breaking things.\u2026\"\n\n\"It destroyed the Incarna,\" Shasta said. \"Attica refused to believe my warnings. He insists that the information must be given to all, that it's a 'Librarian' ideal to withhold it from the world. But sometimes, complete freedom of information isn't a good thing. What if every person on the planet had the ability, resources, and knowledge to make a nuclear weapon? Would that be a good thing? Sometimes, secrets are important.\"\n\nI wasn't sure I agreed with that\u2026 but she made a compelling argument. I looked at her, and realized that she sounded - for once in her life - completely honest. She had her arms folded, and seemed distraught.\n\nI suspected that she still loved my father. The Truthfinder's Lens had given me a hint of that months before. But she worked hard to stop him, to steal the Translator's Lenses, to keep the Sands of Rashid from him. Even going so far as to use her own son as a decoy and trap to catch those Sands.\n\nHesitantly, I pulled out the Truthfinder's Lens. She wasn't looking at me, she was staring off. \"This information is too dangerous,\" she said, and the words were true \u2013 at least, she believed they were.\n\n\"If I could stop anyone from getting the knowledge, I would,\" she continued. She seemed to have forgotten for the moment that I was even there. \"The book we found in Nalhalla? I burned it. Gone forever. But that's not going to stop Attica. He'll find a way unless I stop him somehow. Biblioden was right. This must be contained. For the good of everyone. For the good of my son. For the good of Attica himself\u2026\"\n\nMy Lens showed that it was all truth. I lowered it, and in a moment of terrible realization, I understood something.\n\nMy mother wasn't the bad guy in all of this.\n\nMy father was.\n\nWas it possible that the Librarians might actually be right?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "Standing there in that abandoned zoo, I had a moment of understanding. A terrible one that was both awesome and awful, regardless of the definitions you use.\n\nIt was much like the moment I'd had when I first saw the map of the world, hanging in that library in my hometown. It had shown continents I didn't expect to see. Confronting it had forced my mind to expand, to reach, to stretch and grab hold of space it hadn't known about previously.\n\nAfter spending so much time with Grandpa Smedry and the others, I had understandably come to see things as they did. The Smedry way was to be bold almost to the point of irresponsibility. We were an untamed bunch, meddling in important events, taking huge risks. We did a lot of good, but that was because we were carefully channeled by the Knights of Crystallia and our own sense of honor.\n\nBut what if everyone acted like that? My mother's analogy was a good one. If every person was given a bomb big enough to destroy a city, most would probably be responsible with it. But it took only one mistake to ruin everything.\n\nWere the Librarians right to want to contain some information?\n\nI thought they might have been. But, of course, they were wrong about a lot of other things. They controlled too much, and they sought to enforce their way by conquering people. They lied, they distorted, and they suppressed.\n\nBut it was still possible for them to be right on occasion, when members of my family were wrong. And it was very possible that my mother - arrogant, conniving, and dismissive as she was - was doing something noble, while my father was being reckless.\n\nIf he got what he wanted, it could destroy the world.\n\nStanding there, thinking about it, everything changed. Or perhaps I changed, and the world stayed the same. Or maybe we both changed.\n\nSometimes, I wished that darn river of Heraclitus's would just stay still. So long as it wasn't moving, it was easy to figure it out, get a perspective on it.\n\nBut that's not how life is. And sometimes, the people who used to be your enemies become your allies instead.\n\n\"I see that you understand,\" Shasta said.\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Then do we have a truce?\" she asked. \"You and I will work together to stop him?\"\n\n\"I have to think about it first.\"\n\n\"Don't take too long,\" she said, glancing upward. \"Tuki Tuki is doomed. We'll need to get to the catacombs and do our business there quickly, then escape before the city falls.\"\n\n\"I'm not abandoning Tuki Tuki!\" I snapped.\n\n\"There's no use fighting now,\" she said, pointing upward.\n\n\"Not with that hole in the dome. The order of the shattered Lens has ro-bats. They'll be flying through there to drop on the city in moments.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" I said. \"Ro-bats. Are those, by chance, giant robotic bats?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"That's the most stoopiderific thing I've ever heard of.\"\n\n\"Oh, and what would you call them?\"\n\n\"Woe-bots, of course,\" I said. \"Since they bring woe and destruction. Duh.\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes.\n\n\"Either way, I'm not going to leave. The Mokians are depending on me. They need me.\"\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" she said, folding her arms. \"We are working for the preservation of humankind itself. Compared to that, one city is unimportant. Do you think it was easy for me to treat you like I did, all those years? It was because I knew that something more important was at stake!\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said, walking away. \"You should win an award for your downright wonderful mothering instincts, Shasta.\"\n\n\"Alcatraz!\"\n\nI walked away. Too many things didn't make sense; I had to sort through them. As I walked, Aydee Ecks and Aluki ran up to me, she with her backpack full of bears on her shoulder, him holding his flaming spear.\n\n\"Your Majesty,\" Aluki said urgently. \"Lady Aydee just brought us word. The scouts have spotted something outside the city. We're in trouble.\"\n\n\"Giant robotic bats?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How many?\"\n\n\"Hundreds, Alcatraz!\" Aydee said. \"I started to do the math but Aluki stopped me.\u2026\"\n\n\"Probably for the best,\" I said.\n\n\"They must have been waiting until the dome broke open to surprise us,\" Aluki said. \"Your Majesty, they'll be able to drop thousands of troops through that hole! We have no kind of air force. We'll be destroyed in minutes!\"\n\n\"I\u2026\"\n\nAluki and Aydee looked at me, eyes urgent. Needful. \"I don't know what to do,\" I whispered, hand to my head.\n\n\"You have to know what to do,\" Aluki said. \"You're king!\"\n\n\"That doesn't mean I have all of the answers!\" I said. My mother's revelation had shocked me, unhinged me.\n\nChange. A man can be confident one moment \u2013 and then, with one discovery, be shocked to the point that he's completely uncertain. If my mother was working for what was right, and my father was the one trying to destroy the world...\n\nI'd saved him. If everything went wrong, it would be my fault. What else had I been horribly wrong about?\n\nBut could I trust what my mother had said?\n\nShe's right, I thought, with a growing feeling of horror. The words she'd said when I watched her with the Truthfinder's Lens\u2026 the things my father had said\u2026 what I'd read\u2026 my own feelings and experiences with the Dark Talent. All of these things mixed and churned together in me, blended like some nefarious smoothie from a gym counter in Hades.\n\nThe Dark Talent, my Talent, wanted everyone to be like the Smedrys. Somehow, I knew that Alcatraz the First had contained it within our family, limiting its damage and power. He was the reason why if someone became a Smedry they got a Talent - but once one became too distant from the family line, children stopped being born with Talents. You only got to be a Smedry if you were cousins to the main line that ran from my grandfather to my father, to me.\n\nIt was contained, but my father wanted to let it out. In the face of that, I felt so insignificant. So flawed.\n\n\"Alcatraz\u2026\" Aydee said hopefully. \"We need a plan.\"\n\n\"I don't have a plan!\" I said, perhaps more loudly than I should have. \"Leave me alone. I just\u2026 I need to think!\"\n\nI rushed away, my pack of bears over my shoulder, leaving them standing there stunned. Yes, it was a bitter and childish reaction. But keep in mind that I was a child. The Free Kingdomers treat people like they act, regardless of their age, but I was still a thirteen-year-old boy. It was easy to get overwhelmed. Particularly when you learn you may have accidentally doomed the entire world to destruction.\n\nIt sounds a little odd when you say it, doesn't it? A kid like me, destroying the world? It makes for a ridiculous image.\n\n(How ridiculous? Well, I'd say about as ridiculous as the image of a bunch of Canadian Mounties sitting on the backs of lizards while throwing cheese at one another. But that's kind of a tangent. Besides, that part isn't even in this book.)\n\nEverything was twisted on its head. I should have surrendered Tuki Tuki. I should have\u2026 I didn't know what I should have done. Stayed in the Hushlands, with my blankets pulled over my head, and never gone with Grandpa Smedry.\n\nI'd probably have ended up shot for that, but at least I wouldn't have put the whole world in danger.\n\nI looked up. Gigantic steel bats were flying through the night sky toward the hole in Tuki Tuki's dome. Each carried some fifty Librarians on their backs.\n\nBut what could I do about that?\n\nI turned a corner, walking down a grassy path between two zoo buildings, leaving so that Aluki and Aydee couldn't stare at me with those disappointed eyes. Overhead, terrible screeches began to sound in the air.\n\nAt that moment, the ground shook beneath my feet. I looked around, anxious, worrying that the Librarians had found more robots to toss boulders at the city. However, I quickly realized that the entire city wasn't shaking, just the patch of ground directly beneath me. A hole opened up under my feet. I yelped, tumbling down into a hole dug by another Librarian infiltration team.\n\nThey'd just happened to come up right where I was standing."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "I'm afraid it's time to contradict myself. I know, this is very surprising. After all, I'm never inconsistent in these books. But it's time to make an exception. Just this once. Please forgive me.\n\nDon't act this chapter out.\n\nI know you've been following along since I told you to, acting out every single event in this book. When I saved the city by powering the dome, you were there, face pressed up against the window of your room. When I had my conversation with my mother, you were repeating the same words to your mother. (She was pretty confused, eh?) When Bastille and the crew were throwing teddy bears at robots, I presume that you ran through your house with stuffed bears, throwing them at anything that moved. And when I got out all of the boxes of macaroni and cheese in my house and mailed them to myself, you did the same thing, sending it all to me care of my publisher.\n\nOh. You didn't read that part? It happened between Chapters 24601 and 070706. Really, I promise. You should go act it out right now. I can wait.\n\nAnyway, do not act out this chapter. You'll see why.\n\nMy fall ended abruptly as I crashed into a bunch of surprised Librarians. I struggled, cursing. Everything was jumbled together in the dark, dirty tunnel. There were limbs all over the place; it was like I'd fallen into a bin filled with mannequin arms.\n\nSomething looped around me, something made of wire and rope, and as I tried to scream out, something else got stuffed in my mouth.\n\nAbout thirty seconds later, the group of Librarian soldiers slung me out of their hole, bound up in a net, a gag around my mouth. It had happened so quickly that I was still dazed.\n\nThe Librarians were wearing the standard bow ties and business suits - the men extraordinarily muscular, the women looking lean and dangerous - but their suits were camouflaged. They carried guns and moved with a sleek, threatening air. This was a particularly dangerous group of infiltrators - though, oddly, they didn't wear Warrior's Lenses.\n\nI tried to scream out and give warning to Aluki and Aydee, who were waiting just around the corner. But the gag was firmly in place. The Librarians began to chat tersely with one another, speaking a language I didn't recognize. That surprised me, but it really shouldn't have. Not all Librarians in the Hushlands are from English-speaking countries.\n\nI calmed myself, breathing in and out. My Talent would get me out of a stoopid net, no problem. I just had to do it at the right time, when they weren't looking.\n\nSeveral of the Librarians scouted around the sides of the alleyway, peeking out, while two others - a brutish man and a woman with red hair - knelt down and began to go through my pockets. The woman pulled off my backpack, yanking it out through a hole in the net, while the man held my hands together and wrapped them with a tight string.\n\nThe woman pulled open the backpack, rifling through it. She raised an eyebrow at the bears, but stuffed them back inside. Next she began searching through the pockets of my jacket.\n\nThat's when I got nervous. If they found my Lenses\u2026 It was time to escape. My Talent would probably surprise them, give me a chance to run. I took a deep breath through the gag and activated the Breaking Talent. Nothing happened.\n\nWell, okay. That was kind of a lie. Lots of things happened. Some birds flew by, a beetle crawled past, the grass converted carbon dioxide into sugar by means of the sun's energy. My heart beat (very quickly), the Librarians chatted (very quietly), and the Earth rotated (very unnoticeably).\n\nI guess what I meant, then, is this: As far as my Talent was concerned, nothing happened.\n\nIt didn't engage. Nothing broke. I felt a moment of desperation and tried again. The Talent refused. It was like I could\u2026 feel it in there, seething, angry at me. Almost like it was offended by the things I'd talked about with my mother.\n\nIt had been a long time since I'd had trouble getting my Talent to do what I wanted it to. I had flashbacks to earlier years in my life, when it ran rampant, breaking everything I didn't want to but unable to break things I did want to.\n\nI squirmed in my bindings, and the beefy Librarian pushed me down harder. He had a cruel, twisted face.\n\nThe woman said something, sounding surprised as she pulled my pair of Oculator's Lenses out of my pocket. I hadn't put them back on after using my Truthfinder's Lens on my mother.\n\nThe Librarians nearby all got dark expressions on their faces. The woman pulled something from her pocket \u2013 a kind of small gun. She pointed it at the Lenses in her hand.\n\nThey vaporized, turning to dust, then even that dust seemed to burn away. She shook the frames - which were intact - and inspected them, then tossed them aside.\n\nThat's right! I thought. The order of the shattered Lens has the army. They hate all kinds of glass. That made me even more frantic. I squirmed enough that the big guy holding me down grumbled, and pulled something out of his pocket. Another type of gun.\n\nMy eyes opened wide, and I froze as he pointed it down and pulled the trigger.\n\nAnd then I died.\n\nNo, really. I died. Dead, dead, dead.\n\nWhat's that, you say? How could I be dead? I survived long enough to write this book, you claim?\n\nWell\u2026 um\u2026 I could be writing it as a ghost. So there.\n\nBOO!\n\nAnyway, you're right. The gun didn't kill me. It fired some kind of dart into the ground next to me, attached by a rope. He fired another dart on the other side, and the rope tightened, holding the net - and therefore me - to the ground. The woman got out a knife and cut my jacket off of me.\n\nThat's right. My favorite green jacket, the one I'd been wearing since I'd left the Hushlands.\n\nThis, I thought with sudden fierceness, means war!\n\n(And please don't tell Bastille that I was nearly as broken up about losing my jacket as I was when she got knocked unconscious.)\n\nThe two Librarians retreated, one carrying the remnants of my jacket. They left me squirming on the ground, pinned against the grass, gagged. I was desperate by this point. Up above, the flying bats were descending into the city, bearing Librarian soldiers. People screamed throughout the city, yelling, a sense of panic to their voices.\n\nThis is the point where, usually, I come up with some brilliant plan to save everyone. I tried hard, searching through my options. But nothing occurred to me. I was pinned down, my Talent refused to work, and I had no Lenses. About a billion Librarian soldiers were descending on Tuki Tuki, and dawn was still hours away.\n\nWhy is it I always ended up in these kinds of scrapes? My life over the past six months seemed to me like one bumbling disaster after another. I wasn't any good at fighting the Librarians, I was just good at getting kidnapped, locked up, knocked out, and covered in tar.\n\nJust like my Talent, my wits failed me. It happens, sometimes, particularly when your victories seem so accidental, like mine often do. Besides, even if I could somehow escape the net, Tuki Tuki was still doomed. I couldn't stop thousands of Librarian soldiers.\n\nIt was hopeless.\n\nTo the side, the Librarians emptied my jacket pockets. They lifted up the Translator's Lenses.\n\nAnd, with a flash, destroyed them.\n\nMy inheritance was gone. One of the most powerful sets of Lenses ever created, something my father had searched for more than a decade to gather. And these Librarians had destroyed them without ever knowing what they meant.\n\nWell, so be it.\n\nNow, at this point, you're probably pretty frustrated with me. \"Alcatraz,\" you're probably screaming, \"you can do it, little guy!\" Or maybe you're screaming, \"Hey, Bozo, stop being so depressed and do something!\"\n\nIf you're yelling either of those things, might I remind you that you're talking to a book? It can't really respond to you. Do you talk to inanimate things often? (Man, you really are a weirdo.)\n\nAnyway, whenever I'd been put in a situation like this before, I'd thought of some kind of brilliant plan at the last moment. However, it's really tough to be brilliant on command. Sometimes, you get trapped, and there just isn't any way out.\n\nI lay, pinned down, staring up at the sky. What had I really accomplished since I'd met my grandfather? I'd rescued my father, and in doing so had unwittingly helped him in his crazy quest to give everyone Smedry Talents. In Nalhalla, I'd gotten back my father's Translator's Lenses for him. Another step toward helping him destroy the world.\n\nAnd now here I was in Mokia. I'd accepted the throne, becoming king. For what? So I could convince them to keep on fighting when they should have surrendered? So I could make Bastille fall in combat?\n\nThe Librarians vaporized my Courier's Lenses next. Then they got out my Bestower's Lenses and my single Truthfinder's Lens. The Librarians vaporized one of the Bestower's Lenses.\n\nThere, I thought. I've finally done it. I've failed.\n\nAbove, in the air, Librarians dove into the city on the backs of their robotic bats.\n\nAnd behind them, something appeared from the darkness.\n\nTiny at first, but growing larger. Shadowy vehicles, flying through the night.\n\nMore Librarians, I thought. That's obviously what that is. More Librarians, flying in gigantic glass birds. That makes perfect sense. My, those Librarians look awfully strange, wearing armor and carrying swords like that. One might even think that they're actually\u2026\n\nI sat upright, shocked. Or, well, I would have sat upright, save for that whole pinned-to-the-ground-and-tied-up thing. So, anyway, I lay pinned to the ground, tied up, but I did it feeling completely shocked.\n\nThere, swooping down out of the darkness, was a fleet of twenty glass vehicles with Knights of Crystallia riding on their backs. They dove behind the bats, dropping into the city. The sounds of yelling, fighting, and cheers of war rose in the air.\n\nIt had worked. My stoopid plan had worked.\n\nPerhaps I should explain. Do you remember back right before Kaz ran off to attack the robots? You should, it was only, like, two chapters ago. (Too busy talking to books to pay attention to reading them, eh?) Anyway, I sent him with a message for my grandfather. \"Tell him that we really, really need him here by midnight. If he doesn't arrive by then, we're doomed!\"\n\nYou might have ignored the message. Of course we wanted my grandfather to arrive immediately; it was obvious.\n\nBut Kaz's explanation of Talents had changed my perception of them. The way we, as Smedrys, see the world affects how the Talents work. Like Aydee - if she thinks there are thousands of teddy bears, then there are. Reality doesn't matter as much as the Smedry's view of reality.\n\nAydee's and Grandpa's Talents are very similar. She moves things through space and puts them where she thinks they should be. Grandpa moves things through time, putting them when he thinks they should be - so long as that when is something he perceives as being late.\n\nDoes your brain hurt yet? 'Cuz if it does, try being me. Anyway, here's the short of it: You might think Grandpa's Talent works only when he's late. But that's not true. It works when he thinks he's late.\n\nThere was no way he was going to get the knights to Tuki Tuki on time. His Talent wouldn't let it happen. But if he thought that he was already late\u2026 If I could persuade him that he needed to be there at midnight\u2026\n\nThen he might just arrive at twelve thirty instead.\n\nIn the sky above, a bird flew by with a distinctive, white-haired man in a tuxedo riding on the back, waving a sword wildly like he was a conductor leading an orchestra. I smiled despite myself. I'd gotten my grandfather to arrive early - all by tricking him into thinking he was late.\n\nBut I was still captured. None of the knights came near to where I was laying. The Librarians around me looked to the sky with shock, guns out. The one holding my Lenses - the single remaining Bestower's Lens and my one Truthfinder's Lens - dropped them for the moment.\n\nThe fighting in the city grew louder.\n\nThis left me feeling very odd. I'd been convinced I couldn't save Tuki Tuki. But I had saved it. Or, at least, I'd taken a large step toward doing so. I hadn't failed them as king.\n\nThe me from the past had been clever enough to come up with a plan, even if the me from the future hadn't been able to. (Not me from the far future, that's the one writing these books, I mean the me from the slight future, the me tied up, which is actually the me from the past, as the me from right now is the one writing. Actually, that me is the past me too, by the time you read this. And actually -)\n\n\"Shut up!\" I said to myself. Or, at least, I tried to. Being still gagged, it came out as \"Shusmalgul pulup!\"\n\nThere wasn't time to think about my failures, my past, or my future. Because my Librarian captors were focused on me again. One lowered a gun, pointing at my head.\n\nI felt a moment of panic. These were Librarians of the Shattered Lens. They were the most devoted, the most fanatical of all Librarians. And they hated Oculators passionately.\n\nThey knew what I was, and they weren't about to let me get rescued. The lead Librarian cocked his pistol. It didn't look like one of the fancy, laser pistols used in the war. Just an old-fashioned Hushlander pistol, the kind that shot out a bullet and made you very, very dead.\n\nI tried my Talent. Nothing. I struggled but was pinned tight. I could wiggle my right hand, but that was it.\n\nOne of the Librarians said something, as if objecting to the murder of a tied-up kid.\n\nThe Librarian with the gun barked something back, quieting the opposition. He looked at me, eyes grim.\n\nI panicked. I couldn't fail now! Not when everything was confused. I needed to know. Was my father right, or was my mother? What was this all about? I'd gotten the knights to Tuki Tuki. I couldn't die now! I couldn't! I -\n\nThe Librarians had dropped my backpack right beside me.\n\nI blinked, realizing for the first time that a string was peeking out through the back zipper. One of the pull-tag pins for the bears tucked inside; I could see a bit of purple fur peeking out behind the tag.\n\nFrantic, I strained my fingers out and pulled the tag, yanking it. The backpack lurched up against me, but the tag pulled free.\n\nThe Librarian pulled the trigger.\n\nThere was a crack in the air as the gun fired.\n\nSomething flashed in my eyes, the backpack exploding, vaporizing, the bullet vanishing in the air. The explosion washed over me, and - as I'd planned - it destroyed the net, the tag, and everything tying me down.\n\nOf course, it also vaporized my clothing."
            },
            {
                "title": "CHAPTER \u221e",
                "text": "Now, perhaps, you can see why I asked you not to act out that last chapter. If you decided not to take my advice, then I really can't be blamed if you get in trouble for tying yourself to the ground and running around naked for the rest of the afternoon.\n\nAnyway, what just happened is something we call a teddy bear on the mantle. This is an ancient storytelling rule that says, \"If there's an exploding teddy bear that can destroy people's clothing in a given book, that teddy bear must be used to destroy someone's clothing by the end of the book.\" Coincidentally, this is actually the only time a book has included a teddy bear that can destroy people's clothing, and hence is the first, last, and only application of this literary law.\n\nThe blast radius of the bear grenade wasn't large enough to hit the Librarians. (Pity.) However, it was just large enough to vaporize the ends of their guns. It also dropped me into a crater in the ground that was some five feet deep. I could see the Librarians above, standing, dumbfounded by what had happened.\n\nI felt a surge of adrenaline. Not because I was still in danger, but because I was now lying stark naked in the middle of a war zone. And though the weather was tropical, the night air still felt rather chilly on my skin.\n\nI scrambled free of the hole, blushing furiously, dashing past the Librarians. I stopped only long enough to scoop up my jacket - with the Bestower's Lens and the Truthfinder's Lens lying on top of it.\n\nThe Librarians finally began shouting and giving chase. The explosion had shocked them, but a naked Smedry seemed to have shocked them even further. I tried holding my jacket down to obscure the most delicate parts of my anatomy, but that made it really awkward to run. Keeping my skin intact was more important than keeping it covered, and I started running through the zoo as quickly as I could, holding the jacket and Lenses in my right hand.\n\nSo it was that I tore around a corner, completely in the buff, and ran smack-dab into the middle of Aluki, Aydee, twenty Mokian soldiers of both genders, and Draulin, Bastille's mother.\n\nIt was not my finest moment.\n\n\"Librarian commando superspy assassins!\" I cried out, hiding behind Draulin, who wore her full Crystin plate armor and helm. \"Following me! Gak!\"\n\nThe group turned to look in the direction I'd come from. No Librarians followed. We all waited for a few tense moments, then finally Draulin looked back at me. \"Er, Lord Smedry? Are you all right?\"\n\n\"Do I look all right?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, you look naked,\" Aydee said.\n\n\"Gak!\" I said, quickly covering myself with my jacket, tying the sleeves around my waist. It had been cut off of me, though, so it didn't stay on real well.\n\n\"Ah,\" Aluki said, nodding. \"I know this story. His Majesty is pretending to wear invisible clothing to show how stoopid we all are.\"\n\n\"I don't think that's how the story goes,\" Draulin said, eyeing me appraisingly, \"nor do I believe that Lord Smedry is taking part in such an elaborate scheme. Those are grenade powder marks on his arms.\"\n\nI looked down, noticing that the explosion had dusted my arms with a bit of burned gunpowder. \"Er, yes,\" I said, holding the jacket in place. \"And I was being chased by Librarians.\"\n\n\"It is well that we came, then,\" Draulin said. \"Come with me, Lord Smedry. Aluki, you should take your soldiers and warn the perimeter guard that a group of Librarian infiltrators are haunting the zoo. They likely saw us up here and decided not to confront us directly.\"\n\nThe Mokian saluted, taking his soldiers and rushing away. Draulin steered me and Aydee toward a field behind us, where a glass bird was waiting, this one shaped like an owl. I hurried forward eagerly, hoping to find some kind of clothing inside. We found Kaz waiting for us, a big grin on his face.\n\nI hurried op to him. \"Kaz! You did it! You got the message to your father!\"\n\nHe shrugged modestly. \"I should have realized why you chose the words you did, kid. The moment I spoke them to him, the ships all seemed to speed up, instantly.\" He eyed me. \"You may have just revolutionized the way we think of Talents. If my pop's Talent can be tricked into making him early\u2026 Well, it will change everything.\"\n\n\"It's what we were already doing with Aydee,\" I said as Draulin and Aydee herself climbed into the glass ship. We stood in a kind of cargo bay at the base of the owl. \"She's the one who sparked the idea in my head, actually.\"\n\nThe girl smiled pleasantly at that, though she obviously had no idea what I was talking about. It was her ability to keep getting fooled that made her Talent work.\n\nThough\u2026 as Draulin sent Aydee off to the head of the owl to help pilot, I thought I saw a twinkle of understanding in the girl's eyes. Could she understand? Did she know exactly what was happening when we tricked her into adding things wrong? Sometimes, living with a Smedry Talent requires a person to develop in very odd ways. As a child, I'd learned that everyone would hate me for breaking things and had compensated by pushing people away.\n\nCould Aydee have learned to trick herself into ignoring numbers and speaking randomly, off the top of her head, when asked to add something?\n\nPerhaps I was reading too much into that simple glance. I didn't really know what she was thinking, all those years ago. Here, wait a second. I'll go talk to her.\n\n...\n\nOkay, I asked her and she says yup, that's exactly what she does. Also, she said, \"If you're writing about the fall of Tuki Tuki, you'd better make certain to include that part where we caught you frolicking in the zoo naked. I think you were seriously going crazy there, cousin.\"\n\nAhem. Let it be known that I was not frolicking. And the naked part ended the moment a Mokian woman in the glass owl brought me one of those colorful islander wraps they wear, and so I tied it on. There is NO MORE NUDITY. You can proceed with acting out the rest of this, if you want.\n\nI stood on my head while singing \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" and juggling seventeen live trout with my feet.\n\nOh, wait. I hope you weren't wearing only a Mokian wrap like me. Sorry about that.\n\nAluki rushed up the gangplank a moment later, holding his spear. \"The Librarians have liberated the captives in the zoo and the university! That's what they must have gone to do after letting you go, Your Majesty.\"\n\n\"Shattering Glass!\" I said. My mother was free now. Her captivity hadn't lasted long.\n\nAnd I still didn't know what I believed and what I didn't. However, as I looked out of the cargo bay of the Owlport, I saw several Librarians fly their mechanical bats right into the walls of the glass dome. It shattered finally, falling in. The larger forces of Librarians outside the city surged into Tuki Tuki.\n\nThe city was burning. Huts aflame. People fought and warred in the night. Screams rang in the air. Shadowy groups moved against one another, struggling. In the background, an enormous force of Librarians - with hulking battle robots and wicked rifles - marched in through the open gap.\n\nAt that moment, I understood what it was to be in the middle of a war. And I came to a horrifying revelation.\n\nThe Knights of Crystallia were no cavalry come to rescue. Two hundred people, no matter how skilled, could not turn the tide of this entire war.\n\nTuki Tuki was going to fall anyway.\n\n\"Let us be going,\" Draulin said, waving to a Mokian who was in contact with the flight deck.\n\n\"Going?\" Kaz said as the gangplank was raised.\n\n\"Back to Nalhalla,\" Draulin said, folding her armored arms. \"We came here to get Alcatraz, after all. Now we can go back.\"\n\n\"What? No!\" Kaz said. \"We have to fight! That's why we brought you here, Draulin! Lower that gangplank!\"\n\nI simply stared out at the horrific scene.\n\nDraulin stepped up beside me. \"I'm not certain if I should curse you for forcing us into this nightmare,\" she said to me, \"or if I should bless you for giving us the excuse to come and fight. Many of us wanted to, even though we knew it was hopeless. To fight in one great battle against the Librarians, rather than suffering as they slice us apart kingdom by kingdom.\"\n\n\"Draulin?\" Kaz said. \"Blasted woman. You knights are all -\"\n\n\"She's right,\" I said as the owl began to lift off. \"I can see it. Even with the knights, Mokia can't win. If you'd thought you could make a difference, you would have come and helped, wouldn't you?\"\n\n\"It was a difficult decision to make,\" Draulin said, and I could see that her eyes were solemn. Agonized. \"It was the decision of a surgeon with two patients, one less wounded than the other. Do you abandon the more wounded, let them die while helping the one you can save? Or do you try to help the more wounded, and risk losing them both? We thought Tuki Tuki beyond help. Many of us still wanted to come help.\"\n\n\"So you're just giving up?\" Kaz demanded.\n\n\"Of course not,\" Draulin said. \"Now that we're here, we will fight. And die. But my duty is to get Alcatraz \u2013 and you other two - to safety. My brothers and sisters will fight.\"\n\nAnd fail. The owl got higher, and I could see just how big the Librarian army was.\n\nI'd done it again. I'd thought I was saving Tuki Tuki, but I hadn't. Just like helping my father had been turned against me, I found my efforts here twisted on their heads. Not only would Tuki Tuki fall, but the majority of the Knights of Crystallia would be destroyed as well.\n\nI'd accomplished nothing.\n\nWhen I was young, trying not to break things had only made it worse. Fix Joan and Roy dinner, but burn down their kitchen. Polish my foster father's car, but break it apart instead. It was all coming back to me, the times when the Talent dominated my life.\n\nThings change. Perspectives change. The knights hadn't been cowards for refusing to help Tuki Tuki. They'd made a difficult decision, the right decision. But I'd forced them to come anyway, turning a huge disaster into a colossal one.\n\n\"We're just going to\u2026 leave them?\" Kaz said.\n\n\"This ship has the king and queen on board,\" Draulin said. \"There's a chance that we might be able to bring them out of their coma in Nalhalla.\" She didn't sound like she believed it was very likely. \"You've accomplished what you wished. Now, at the very least, allow me to salvage something from the fall of this city.\"\n\nMy heart was a tempest of emotions, my mind a tempest of thoughts. I didn't know what to feel or think. How could everything have turned upside down so quickly? The arrival of the Knights of Crystallia was supposed to save things, not make it worse.\n\n\"What of my father?\" Kaz said.\n\n\"Lord Smedry is leading the evacuation of the children and the wounded,\" Draulin said. \"He will leave with them.\"\n\nIn the midst of my heart arguing with my mind arguing with my soul, one single thought pressed through the others. Something I could grab on to, something I could hold on to, something real.\n\nBastille was still down there. And she needed me.\n\nI ran through the Owlport, leaving Draulin and Kaz behind. The ship rose high, passing through the hole in the dome - the one atop the city, not the one that had been broken in the side. Glass rooms passed beneath my feet and to my sides, but most of these Nalhallan vehicles were constructed with the same general layout. I burst into the flight deck a moment later, Draulin and Kaz chasing behind me, calling out, sounding confused.\n\nAydee and a Nalhallan man I didn't recognize were in the piloting seats. \"My name is Alcatraz Smedry,\" I said loudly, \"and I'm taking command of this vessel.\"\n\nThe man blinked at me in shock, but Aydee just shrugged. \"Okay, I guess.\"\n\n\"Fly us down there,\" I said, pointing at the Librarian army camp outside the city. I could see the place where they'd taken Bastille.\n\n\"Lord Smedry,\" Draulin said, voice disapproving. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Saving your daughter.\"\n\nDraulin showed a moment of indecision. \"She'd want you safe, she is a knight and -\"\n\n\"Tough,\" I said. \"Aydee, take us down.\"\n\n\"All right\u2026\" Aydee said, steering the Owlport. The vehicle wasn't terribly maneuverable - it was meant as a troop transport - and kind of lumbered through the air as Aydee flew it down toward the Librarian camp.\n\nMost of the Librarians were invading Tuki Tuki, and the Librarian camp itself was relatively quiet. There were some guard posts and a couple of thousand Librarians as a reserve force. The prisoner tent was at the back portion of the camp, and the flaps began to blow as the Owlport flew down low.\n\nA dozen or so guards raced out of the building. \"Hey, Aydee,\" I said. \"If we've got six plus six guards, how many is that?\"\n\n\"Er...four?\"\n\n\"Good enough,\" I said, and suddenly there were only four guards, the other eight having been sent away somewhere by Aydee's Talent. Hopefully they wouldn't cause too much trouble there. \"Draulin, Kaz, four guards for you.\"\n\n\"Sounds good to me,\" Kaz said, Warrior's Lenses in place. He raised his pistols as the Owlport settled down, face forward, resting on its belly.\n\nDraulin gave me a suffering look, but opened a side door with steps down to the ground, and then followed Kaz out. They charged to engage the Librarian guards.\n\nThat was mostly a distraction. I took the other door out and slid down the wing. The floor of the camp was made up of packed-down jungle leaves and fronds, trampled flat by Librarian feet during the months of their siege. They rustled as I ran around to the back of the tent and slipped in.\n\nThe Librarians had left their captives lying in rows. I found Bastille near the center of the row, lying asleep in her tight white shirt and uniform pants. There were several dozen others in the tent, all Mokians. Officers or generals who the Librarians had considered valuable as prisoners.\n\nI felt horrible for leaving them behind, but there wasn't much I could do. It was foolish of me to come even for Bastille, since we probably wouldn't be able to wake her up. But with Tuki Tuki falling, with all of the mistakes I'd made, I had to try to do something.\n\nI slung Bastille over my shoulder and - teetering (she's kind of heavy, but don't tell her I said that) - I jogged back out the way I had come. Draulin was dusting off her hands, Kaz holstering his pistols, the four Librarian guards unconscious on the ground before them.\n\nAnd then a cannonball crashed through the Owlport, smashing in the side, blowing off one of the wings.\n\nI stumbled to a halt. Another cannonball followed, smashing off the owl's feet and toppling the massive vehicle to its side. I could hear Aydee inside crying out as it fell. A Librarian cannon team had set up nearby. The reserve force of Librarian soldiers was running out in front of it.\n\n\"No!\" I cried.\n\nDraulin shot me a withering gaze, something that said, \"This is your fault, Smedry.\" Then she pulled out her sword and rushed at the Librarians. \"Run!\" she yelled at me. \"Lose yourself in the forest!\"\n\nI just stood there. I couldn't carry Bastille with me, and I wouldn't leave her.\n\nDraulin charged against an army of several hundred. That seemed a metaphor for everything that had gone wrong in this whole siege. But instead of making me feel sick or depressed like it had earlier, this just made me feel angry.\n\n\"Go away!\" I screamed at the advancing Librarians. \"Leave us alone!\"\n\nSomething stirred inside of me, something that felt immense. Like an enormous serpent, shifting, moving, awakening.\n\n\"I want everything to make sense again!\" I screamed. Saving Bastille had turned out like everything else. Draulin and Aydee would get captured because of me, and Bastille would remain in a coma.\n\nI'd failed Bastille.\n\nI'd failed the Mokians.\n\nI'd failed the entirety of the Free Kingdoms.\n\nIt was too much. It seemed to well up inside of me. Rocks around me began to shatter, popping like popcorn. The tent behind me frayed, the bits of threads that made it coming undone and falling apart.\n\nThere had been a time when I hadn't known how to control my Talent. When I hadn't tried to. I went back to that time.\n\nAlcatraz the First had named the Breaking Talent the \"Dark Talent.\" Well, sometimes darkness can serve us, work for us. It welled up inside me, bursting free, rising above me like an enormous and terrible cloud.\n\nReports of that day are conflicting. Some people say they could see the Talent take shape, like an enormous serpent with burning eyes, insubstantial and incorporeal. Others only felt the massive earthquake I caused, shaking the ground all around, breaking enormous rifts around Tuki Tuki.\n\nI didn't notice any of that. I was in the middle of what felt like an intense storm, spinning around me like a cyclone. It tried to get free, tried to rip completely out of me, and I held to it, clinging, trying to force it back inside.\n\nReports say it lasted only for the length of two heartbeats. It felt like hours to me as I struggled, both terrified and in awe of the thing I'd let loose. With a heave of strength, I pulled it back into me. In a second, it was contained.\n\nI blinked, standing in the night. There were a dozen enormous cracks in the ground around me. The Librarians who had been running for me had been knocked to the ground.\n\nUnfortunately, the fighting in Tuki Tuki was still going on, however. I wasn't done. I took the thing inside of me and suddenly knew what to do with it. I reached down, pulling the single remaining Bestower's Lens from the pouch at my pocket. I knelt beside Bastille, who lay on the ground beside me. I brushed back her hair and exposed her Fleshstone. It was crystalline and pure, translucent, like an enormous diamond set into the skin of her neck.\n\nThat stone connected all of the Knights of Crystallia together. I raised the Bestower's Lens and looked into the Fleshstone, willing my Talent to pass into the stone.\n\nIt refused to move. It seethed within me, angry that I had stopped it from destroying. I gritted my teeth, angry but I was feeling exhausted from all that had happened. I couldn't force it.\n\nSo I tried a different tactic. I need to trick it, I thought. Grandpa had to be tricked into thinking he was late so that he could arrive early. Aydee had to be confused by numbers so that she could add wrong.\n\nWhat did I need to make my Talent work? I need to think it's breaking something important, I realized. Always, during my childhood, the Talent had acted to shatter, destroy, or break things that were very important to me or to those who cared for me. As I realized this, I found myself hating it again. But there was no time for that.\n\nI focused on the Fleshstone, and I thought about how much I cared for Bastille. How important she'd become to me recently, and how if that stone broke, she'd die. The Talent - gleeful for something to destroy - snapped from me, but I raised the Bestower's Lens and channeled it, sending the Talent into Bastille's Fleshstone.\n\nI felt an immediate draining within me as something very powerful was pulled through that Lens and sent into the stone on Bastille's neck.\n\nIt sapped me, sucked away what strength I had left. Everything went dark, and I collapsed."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "Three hours later, the sun rose over a broken city.\n\nI sat up in my bed, looking out the window. Tuki Tuki was in shambles; many of the huts had collapsed. Broken spears, bits of metal, and shards of glass lay peppering the lawns of fallen homes. Bits of trash blew in the wind.\n\nThere were no bodies, but I could see blood. The bodies had been removed.\n\n\"Ah, lad, you're awake.\"\n\nI turned to find my grandfather sitting in the chair beside my bed. I was in the palace, one of the few buildings that hadn't fallen during the earthquake.\n\n\"What happened?\" I asked softly, raising a hand to my head. It throbbed.\n\n\"You saved us,\" he said. He seemed\u2026 oddly subdued. For my grandfather at least. \"My, my, lad,\" he said. \"That was something incredible you did! I'm\u2026 not even sure what it was, but it was something incredible indeed!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I asked.\n\n\"The Librarian weapons fell apart,\" Grandpa said. \"In the middle of the battle. Every gun, grenade, cannon, robot, everything they had. It all just\u2026 well, lad, it broke.\"\n\nI could hear drums. The Mokians were having a celebration. How could they celebrate when their city was in shambles?\n\nBecause they still have a city, I thought. Broken though it is.\n\n\"How are you feeling, lad?\" Grandpa asked, scooting his chair closer to me.\n\n\"Fine, actually,\" I replied. \"Tired. No, exhausted. But remarkably good.\"\n\n\"Well, that's great. Fantastic, in fact! Excellent to hear.\" He seemed hesitant about something. \"I don't want to push, lad, but\u2026 do you mind me asking what you did?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"I knew that the Fleshstones on the necks of the Crystin are all connected. And once, when using the Bestower's Lenses you gave me, I loaned someone else my Talent. So I figured\u2026 well, if I gave my Talent to all of the Knights at once, while they were fighting, it would work for them like it did for me. It would destroy the weapons of the Librarians when they tried to fire.\"\n\nMy grandfather seemed disturbed. \"Ah\u2026\" he said. \"Yes, very clever, very clever.\"\n\n\"It wasn't supposed to be clever,\" I said, grimacing. \"It just kind of\u2026 happened. But it looks like it worked.\"\n\n\"Oh, it worked,\" Grandpa said. \"Maybe better than you thought\u2026\"\n\n\"What?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, lad, here's the thing. You didn't just break the weapons of the Librarians who were fighting here. You broke them all, every weapon being wielded by a Librarian anywhere in Mokia. In one moment, they all shattered, broke, fell apart.\" Grandpa raised a hand to his head, scratching at the fluffy white hair there. \"They've retreated, called off the war, and gone back to the Hushlands. The Mokians have named you a national hero.\"\n\nI sat back, stunned.\n\n\"Already the news is spreading through the Free Kingdoms,\" Grandpa said. \"This is the first time the Librarians have been turned back from taking a kingdom they were besieging. It's being called a miracle. You're a hero, lad. Everyone is talking about it.\"\n\n\"I\u2026\" I felt odd. I should have felt like celebrating, jumping up and screaming for joy. But I still felt troubled and worried. Something inside of me had changed. Being forced to confront my conceptions of what was right and what was wrong, who was good and who was evil, had changed me.\n\nI didn't want to celebrate, I wanted to hide. The world was a scary place. My Talent terrified me suddenly, even after I'd used it to save so many.\n\n\"Lad,\" Grandpa said. \"Do you know when the Talents\u2026 might come back?\"\n\nI felt a chill. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"None of them work anymore,\" Grandpa said. \"Me, Kaz, Aydee\u2026 no more Talents. They're gone.\"\n\nHesitantly, I reached out and touched the bed frame, engaging my Talent. But nothing happened. It wasn't like before, when I felt reluctance within me. Now there was just a void, an emptiness where my Talent had once been.\n\nI let it out, I thought. It can't be! I contained it, kept it from destroying! I pulled it back in!\n\nBut I'd done something else. I'd\u2026 well, somehow, I'd broken the Smedry Talents.\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said. \"I don't know anything.\"\n\n\"Ah. Well, then, lad, you should rest. Rest indeed\u2026\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "When I next awoke, I had a stream of visitors. Aluki, Aydee, Kaz, then countless Mokians wishing to show their appreciation for me saving their city.\n\nI tried to explain that I'd destroyed their city, but they weren't listening. The Librarians had retreated; Mokia was safe. What was left of it, at least.\n\nI kept waiting to see if Bastille, the king, or the queen would come to see me. None of them did, though someone did bring me a cheese sandwich and insist that I eat it, thereby fulfilling the holy prophecy of the Author's Foreword, as was spoken by Alcatraz Smedry.\n\nFinally, I asked the question I'd been dreading and got the answer I'd feared. Those who'd been knocked unconscious during the war were still in comas. The Librarians had fled, taking the antidote with them.\n\nMokian scientists were confident they could find a cure, given enough time. But in the end, I had failed Bastille after all. And Mokia too - more than half of their population was still unconscious.\n\nI didn't say this to the Mokians. Instead, I nodded and accepted thanks. I couldn't really explain how I felt. I wasn't the same person anymore. Too much had happened. Too much had changed.\n\nI was finally free of the Talent, and that terrified me. Where was it? What had I done?\n\nWhen I remembered that I'd lost my Translator's Lenses, that only made me feel sicker.\n\nMy final visitor of the day was a very unexpected one. She sauntered in, accompanied by my grandfather and two guards. Shasta Smedry, my mother. She still wore her Librarian business suit and skirt. Her blond hair was down, and they'd taken her glasses as a precaution. My mother could have been a pretty woman if she'd wanted to be. That had never seemed to matter to her.\n\n\"Lad,\" Grandpa said, \"she insisted that we bring her to you. I'm not sure if it was a good idea.\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" I said, focusing on Shasta. \"You should be gone. The Librarians who kidnapped me went back and freed all of you.\"\n\n\"Yes, they did,\" she said. \"And I waited behind to get captured again.\"\n\nI frowned.\n\n\"I think your father is going to come here,\" Shasta said, eyeing her guards with a raised eyebrow. \"The catacombs of the Mokian Royal University are said to have walls that are inscribed with the Forgotten Tongue. I thought Attica would try to get to them before the city fell. Alcatraz the First was said to have spent much time in this area, and so there's a high probability that the writings were his.\"\n\n\"Well, that's not an issue any longer,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"The Mokian University is no more. The entire thing was swallowed up in the earthquake, crushed flat, the catacombs pulverized.\"\n\n\"Is that so?\" Shasta said flatly.\n\n\"Indeed,\" Grandpa said, meeting her stare. There didn't seem to be much affection between them. Of course, they were in-laws, so what did you expect?\n\n\"Where will he go next?\" I asked.\n\nShasta turned to me. She drew her lips into a line.\n\n\"I'll go with you,\" I found myself saying.\n\n\"What!\" Grandpa said. \"Trembling Taylers, Lad! What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"We need to find my father,\" I said firmly. \"I think he's going to try something stoopid. Something very, very stoopid.\"\n\n\"But \u2013\"\n\n\"You,\" I said to Shasta, \"me, and my grandfather. Just the three of us, and anyone else you approve. You have my word.\"\n\nShe seemed amused at that. \"Very well. There are rumors of an enclave of Forgotten Language texts in the heart of Librarian power. I suspect we'll find your father there. The place is carefully guarded, however, and even one such as I will have difficulty sneaking in.\"\n\n\"Lad, I don't know about this,\" Grandpa said.\n\n\"The heart of Librarian power?\" I asked, ignoring him. \"Where is that?\"\n\n\"They call it the Library of Congress,\" Shasta said. \"But it's really something far grander. The Highbrary, a bunker the size of a city, hidden underneath Washington, D.C., in the United States, deep within the Hushlands.\"\n\nThat got my grandfather's attention. \"The Highbrary?\" he asked. He got an almost dreamy look in his eyes. \"My, my,\" he said. \"I've always wanted to infiltrate that place.\u2026\"\n\nThat's my grandfather for you. He might have lost his Talent, but he was still a Smedry.\n\n\"The Highbrary will contain the formulas for all Librarian weapon antidotes,\" Shasta said, almost teasingly. \"If you want to cure your friends, it is the place to go.\"\n\nGrandpa looked even more eager, but he held himself back. \"The lad and I will discuss it, Shasta. If we agree to this little endeavor, then you'll be coming as a prisoner, carefully watched over. That's the only way I'd agree to it.\"\n\nShasta smiled again, glancing at me. \"Very well,\" she said, then waved to her guards - as if they were attendants - and had them lead her from the room.\n\nMy grandfather looked shaken. He sat down on the stool beside my bed again. \"That woman\u2026\"\n\n\"We need to go with her,\" I said. \"My father can't be allowed to try to give everyone Smedry Talents. Grandpa, I think that the Talents might be what destroyed the Incarna! I think -\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa said. \"Yes, you're probably right.\"\n\n\"What? You know already?\"\n\n\"I've guessed it, lad,\" Grandpa said. \"And feared it, after you told me what you found in the tomb of Alcatraz the First.\"\n\n\"Do you think my father can really do it?\" I asked.\n\n\"If it were anyone else,\" Grandpa said, \"I'd say no. But your father\u2026 well, he's a special man, capable of extraordinary things. Yes, I think he might just be able to do it, if he wants to.\"\n\n\"He's got the only remaining pair of Translator's Lenses,\" I said. \"Mine were destroyed.\"\n\n\"Ah. I wondered why we didn't find them on you.\"\n\n\"He's going to the Highbrary. You know what we have to do, Grandfather.\"\n\nHe looked at me, then nodded. \"Yes. But let's at least sleep on it a day and then decide.\"\n\nI nodded back to him, and he stood, withdrawing, leaving me to listen to the sounds of the Mokian drums outside. They'd celebrate all day, as per their tradition.\n\nAnd then, on the morrow they'd mourn for those who were dead. Celebrations first, sorrows second.\n\nI didn't have time for either one. Mokia had been a diversion, a distraction, both for myself and my mother. My father, Attica Smedry, had a huge head start, and what he was planning could destroy us all.\n\nThe Dark Talent was free, and the entire Smedry clan had lost their powers. An enormous fleet of Librarian soldiers was returning to the Hushlands with tales of what the Talents could do.\n\nI think this is a good place to end, don't you?"
            },
            {
                "title": "AUTHOR'S AFTERWORD",
                "text": "NOW YOU KNOW THE TRUTH OF WHY I'M LAUDED AS A HERO.\n\nSURE, THE THINGS I DID IN PREVIOUS VOLUMES OF MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY HELPED MY REPUTATION. BUT THIS WAS THE EVENT THAT EVERYONE STILL TALKS ABOUT, THE LIBERATION OF MOKIA, THE SINGLE-HANDED DEFEAT OF DOZENS OF LIBRARIAN ARMIES SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE FREE KINGDOMS.\n\nMY REPUTATION WAS SECURE. I'D GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE TO EVER LIVE, AND I'D BE REMEMBERED AS ONE OF THE GREATEST MOKIAN KINGS OF ALL TIME. (IF ONE OF THE SHORTEST TO RULE \u2013 I WAS ABLE TO GIVE UP THE THRONE TO PRINCESS KAMALI THE NEXT DAY, WHEN SHE CAME BACK TO TAKE OVER FOR ME.) SURE, BASTILLE WAS IN TROUBLE \u2013 BUT YOU KNOW THAT EVERYTHING TURNS OUT ALL RIGHT WITH HER IN THE END. AFTER ALL, I'VE MENTIONED SEVERAL TIMES THAT SHE'S OFTEN STANDING HERE IN OUR HOUSE, READING OVER MY SHOULDER AS I WRITE THESE THINGS. ALL IN ALL, I SAVED THE DAY, DEFEATED THE LIBRARIAN ARMIES, AND PERMANENTLY TURNED THE TIDE OF THE WAR.\n\nTHE FUNNY THING IS, IN DOING ALL THESE MARVELOUS THINGS, I'D CHANGED INTO A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. YOUR HERO IS NO LONGER WITH US. THE VERY ACT OF HEROISM CHANGED HIM. I'D WALKED INTO MOKIA AS ONE PERSON, AND I WALKED OUT OF IT AS A VASTLY DIFFERENT ONE. THAT'S NOTHING SURPRISING; ALL PEOPLE CHANGE.\n\nSOME CHANGES HAPPEN SLOWLY, LIKE A ROCK BEING WEATHERED AWAY BY THE RAIN. OTHERS HAPPEN QUICKLY, SUDDENLY. AN EARTHQUAKE SHAKES A CITY. A HEART STOPS BEATING. A DISCOVERY IS MODE, AND A LIGHTBULB TURNS ON FOR THE FIRST TIME.\n\nTHE LIBRARIANS\u2026 THEY TRY TO KEEP US FROM CHANGING. THEY WANT EVERYTHING TO REMAIN THE SAME INSIDE THE HUSHLANDS. YOU REMEMBER WHEN I TALKED ABOUT HOW THEY MAKE ALL CARS AND PLANES LOOK THE SAME? WELL, THEY DO THAT WITH EVERYTHING.\n\nIN THIS CASE, IT'S NOT BECAUSE THEY'RE OPPRESSIVE. IT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE AFRAID. CHANGE FRIGHTENS THEM. IT'S UNKNOWN, UNCERTAIN, LIKE SMEDRYS AND MAGIC. THEY WANT EVERYONE TO ASSUME THAT THINGS CAN'T CHANGE.\n\nBUT THEY CAN. I DID. ALCATRAZ THE HERO WAS NO MORE. IF HE EVER WAS A HERO IN THE FIRST PLACE. YOU'VE SEEN THAT MOST OF WHAT I ACCOMPLISHED HAPPENED BY ACCIDENT, LUCK, AND A FEW RANDOM IDEAS THAT TURNED OUT TO WORK. BUT EVEN IF YOU THOUGHT THAT SORT OF THING MADE HM A HERO, YOU NEED TO REALIZE THAT THE PERSON YOU WORSHIP IS GONE.\n\nTHESE FOUR BOOKS ARE THE PARTS EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT. BUT THE LAST VOLUME, THAT'S THE PART NOBODY UNDERSTANDS. NOBODY THINKS TO ASK, \"WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM AFTER HE SAVED US FROM THE LIBRARIANS?\"\n\nI'LL SHOW YOU. FINALLY, YOU'LL SEE. IT WILL BE AMAZING, EYE-OPENING, AWFUL, AWESOME, STOOPIDERIFIC, STOOPIDALICIOUS, STOOPIDERLIFLUOUS, STOOPIDANATED, AND CRAPAFLAPNASTI ALL AT THE SAME TIME. IT INVOLVES AN ALTAR. YES, THAT REALLY DID HAPPEN. I DIDN'T JUST MAKE IT UP. THAT ALTAR SCENE IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS IN MY LIFE. IT HAPPENS IN THE NEXT BOOK, I PROMISE, NO LIES THIS TIME.\n\nMAYBE SOMEDAY I'LL ACTUALLY WRITE THAT BOOK.\n\n\"I will not read the last page of novels first,\" I said, and then punched myself in the face.\n\n\"I promise, I'll never again read the last page of novels first,\" I said, then smacked myself on the head with a book.\n\n\"I really, really, really regret reading the last page of this novel first!\" I said, then let my sibling, cousin, or best friend (take your pick) give me a wedgie.\n\n(This page is, of course, here for those of you who skip to the end of the book and read it first. Naughty, naughty!\n\nFortunately, you're acting out the book like you're supposed to, right? Well, let that be a lesson to you.)"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Eyre Affaire, Lost In a Good Book, Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels",
        "author": "Jasper Fforde",
        "genres": [
            "comedy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "humor",
            "books",
            "library",
            "Thursday Next"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "A Woman Named Thursday Next",
                "text": "\u2002...The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. \"If you want to be a SpecOp,\" the saying goes, \"act kinda weird...\"\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, A Short History of the Special Operations Network\n\nMy father had a face that could stop a clock. I don't mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultraslow trickle. Dad had been a colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn't know he had gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication order open-dated at both ends and demanding to know where and when he was. Dad had remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as \"morally and historically corrupt\" and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Temporal Stability. I didn't know what he meant by that and still don't; I just hoped he knew what he was doing and didn't come to any harm doing it. His skills at stopping the clock were hard-earned and irreversible: He was now a lonely itinerant in time, belonging to not one age but to all of them and having no home other than the chronoclastic ether.\n\nI wasn't a member of the ChronoGuard. I never wanted to be. By all accounts it's not a huge barrel of laughs, although the pay is good and the service boasts a retirement plan that is second to none: a one-way ticket to anywhere and anywhen you want. No, that wasn't for me. I was what we called an \"operative grade I\" for SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It's way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with. I worked under Area Chief Boswell, a small, puffy man who looked like a bag of flour with arms and legs. He lived and breathed the job; words were his life and his love\u2014he never seemed happier than when he was on the trail of a counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding. It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly unrealistic version of Shakespeare's lost work, Cardenio. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-27: We spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders, copyright infringements and fraud.\n\nI had been with Boswell and SO-27 for eight years, living in a Maida Vale apartment with Pickwick, a regenerated pet dodo left over from the days when reverse extinction was all the rage and you could buy home cloning kits over the counter. I was keen\u2014no, I was desperate\u2014to get away from the Litera Tecs but transfers were unheard of and promotion a nonstarter. The only way I was going to make full inspector was if my immediate superior moved on or out. But it never happened; Inspector Turner's hope to marry a wealthy Mr. Right and leave the service stayed just that\u2014a hope\u2014as so often Mr. Right turned out to be either Mr. Liar, Mr. Drunk or Mr. Already Married.\n\nAs I said earlier, my father had a face that could stop a clock; and that's exactly what happened one spring morning as I was having a sandwich in a small caf\u00e9 not far from work. The world flickered, shuddered and stopped. The proprietor of the caf\u00e9 froze in midsentence and the picture on the television stopped dead. Outside, birds hung motionless in the sky. Cars and trams halted in the streets and a cyclist involved in an accident stopped in midair, the look of fear frozen on his face as he paused two feet from the hard asphalt. The sound halted too, replaced by a dull snapshot of a hum, the world's noise at that moment in time paused indefinitely at the same pitch and volume.\n\n\"How's my gorgeous daughter?\"\n\nI turned. My father was sitting at a table and rose to hug me affectionately.\n\n\"I'm good,\" I replied, returning his hug tightly. \"How's my favorite father?\"\n\n\"Can't complain. Time is a fine physician.\"\n\nI stared at him for a moment.\n\n\"Y'know,\" I muttered, \"I think you're looking younger every time I see you.\"\n\n\"I am. Any grandchildren in the offing?\"\n\n\"The way I'm going? Not ever.\"\n\nMy father smiled and raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"I wouldn't say that quite yet.\"\n\nHe handed me a Woolworths bag.\n\n\"I was in '78 recently,\" he announced. \"I brought you this.\"\n\nHe handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title.\n\n\"Didn't they split in '70?\"\n\n\"Not always. How are things?\"\n\n\"Same as ever. Authentications, copyright, theft\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014same old shit?\"\n\n\"Yup.\" I nodded. \"Same old shit. What brings you here?\"\n\n\"I went to see your mother three weeks ahead your time,\" he answered, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist. \"Just the usual\u2014ahem\u2014reason. She's going to paint the bedroom mauve in a week's time\u2014will you have a word and dissuade her? It doesn't match the curtains.\"\n\n\"How is she?\"\n\nHe sighed deeply.\n\n\"Radiant, as always. Mycroft and Polly would like to be remembered too.\"\n\nThey were my aunt and uncle; I loved them deeply, although both were mad as pants. I regretted not seeing Mycroft most of all. I hadn't returned to my hometown for many years and I didn't see my family as often as I should.\n\n\"Your mother and I think it might be a good idea for you to come home for a bit. She thinks you take work a little too seriously.\"\n\n\"That's a bit rich, Dad, coming from you.\"\n\n\"Ouch-that-hurt. How's your history?\"\n\n\"Not bad.\"\n\n\"Do you know how the Duke of Wellington died?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I answered. \"He was shot by a French sniper during the opening stages of the Battle of Waterloo. Why?\"\n\n\"Oh, no reason,\" muttered my father with feigned innocence, scribbling in a small notebook. He paused for a moment.\n\n\"So Napoleon won at Waterloo, did he?\" he asked slowly and with great intensity.\n\n\"Of course not,\" I replied. \"Field Marshal Bl\u00fccher's timely intervention saved the day.\"\n\nI narrowed my eyes.\n\n\"This is all O-level history, Dad. What are you up to?\"\n\n\"Well, it's a bit of a coincidence, wouldn't you say?\"\n\n\"What is?\"\n\n\"Nelson and Wellington, two great English national heroes both being shot early on during their most important and decisive battles.\"\n\n\"What are you suggesting?\"\n\n\"That French revisionists might be involved.\"\n\n\"But it didn't affect the outcome of either battle,\" I asserted. \"We still won on both occasions!\"\n\n\"I never said they were good at it.\"\n\n\"That's ludicrous!\" I scoffed. \"I suppose you think the same revisionists had King Harold killed in 1066 to assist the Norman invasion!\"\n\nBut Dad wasn't laughing. He replied with some surprise:\n\n\"Harold? Killed? How?\"\n\n\"An arrow, Dad. In his eye.\"\n\n\"English or French?\"\n\n\"History doesn't relate,\" I replied, annoyed at his bizarre line of questioning.\n\n\"In his eye, you say?\u2014 Time is out of joint,\" he muttered, scribbling another note.\n\n\"What's out of joint?\" I asked, not quite hearing him.\n\n\"Nothing, nothing. Good job I was born to set it right\u2014\"\n\n\"Hamlet?\" I asked, recognizing the quotation.\n\nHe ignored me, finished writing and snapped the notebook shut, then placed his fingertips on his temples and rubbed them absently for a moment. The world joggled forward a second and refroze as he did so. He looked about nervously.\n\n\"They're onto me. Thanks for your help, Sweetpea. When you see your mother, tell her she makes the torches burn brighter\u2014and don't forget to try and dissuade her from painting the bedroom.\"\n\n\"Any color but mauve, right?\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\nHe smiled at me and touched my face. I felt my eyes moisten; these visits were all too short. He sensed my sadness and smiled the sort of smile any child would want to receive from their father. Then he spoke:\n\n\"For I dipped into the past, far as SpecOps-12 could see\u2014\"\n\nHe paused and I finished the quote, part of an old ChronoGuard song Dad used to sing to me when I was a child.\n\n\"\u2014saw a vision of the world and all the options there could be!\"\n\nAnd then he was gone. The world rippled as the clock started again. The barman finished his sentence, the birds flew onto their nests, the television came back on with a nauseating ad for SmileyBurgers, and over the road the cyclist met the asphalt with a thud.\n\nEverything carried on as normal. No one except myself had seen Dad come or go.\n\nI ordered a crab sandwich and munched on it absently while sipping from a mocha that seemed to be taking an age to cool down. There weren't a lot of customers and Stanford, the owner, was busy washing up some cups. I put down my paper to watch the TV when the Toad News Network logo came up.\n\nToad News was the biggest news network in Europe. Run by the Goliath Corporation, it was a twenty-four-hour service with up-to-date reports that the national news services couldn't possibly hope to match. Goliath gave it finance and stability, but also a slightly suspicious air. No one liked the Corporation's pernicious hold on the nation, and the Toad News Network received more than its fair share of criticism, despite repeated denials that the parent company called the shots.\n\n\"This,\" boomed the announcer above the swirling music, \"is the Toad News Network. The Toad, bringing you News Global, News Updates, News NOW!\"\n\nThe lights came up on the anchorwoman, who smiled into the camera.\n\n\"This is the midday news on Monday, May 6, 1985, and this is Alexandria Belfridge reading it. The Crimean Peninsula,\" she announced, \"has again come under scrutiny this week as the United Nations passed resolution PN17296, insisting that England and the Imperial Russian Government open negotiations concerning sovereignty. As the Crimean War enters its one hundred and thirty-first year, pressure groups both at home and abroad are pushing for a peaceful end to hostilities.\"\n\nI closed my eyes and groaned quietly to myself. I had been out there doing my patriotic duty in '73 and had seen the truth of warfare beyond the pomp and glory for myself. The heat, the cold, the fear, the death. The announcer spoke on, her voice edged with jingoism.\n\n\"When the English forces ejected the Russians from their last toehold on the peninsula in 1975, it was seen as a major triumph against overwhelming odds. However, a state of deadlock has been maintained since those days and the country's mood was summed up last week by Sir Gordon Duff-Rolecks at an antiwar rally in Trafalgar Square.\"\n\nThe program cut to some footage of a large and mainly peaceful demonstration in central London. Duff-Rolecks was standing on a podium and giving a speech in front of a large and untidy nest of microphones.\n\n\"What began as an excuse to curb Russia's expansionism in 1854,\" intoned the MP, \"has collapsed over the years into nothing more than an exercise to maintain the nation's pride...\"\n\nBut I wasn't listening. I'd heard it all before a zillion times. I took another sip of coffee as sweat prickled my scalp. The TV showed stock footage of the peninsula as Duff-Rolecks spoke: Sebastopol, a heavily fortified English garrison town with little remaining of its architectural and historical heritage. Whenever I saw these pictures the smell of cordite and the crack of exploding shells filled my head. I instinctively stroked the only outward mark from the campaign I had\u2014a small raised scar on my chin. Others had not been so lucky. Nothing had changed. The war had ground on.\n\n\"It's all bullshit, Thursday,\" said a gravelly voice close at hand.\n\nIt was Stanford, the caf\u00e9 owner. Like me he was a veteran of the Crimea, but from an earlier campaign. Unlike me he had lost more than just his innocence and some good friends; he lumbered around on two tin legs and still had enough shrapnel in his body to make half a dozen baked bean tins.\n\n\"The Crimea has got sod all to do with the United Nations.\"\n\nHe liked to talk about the Crimea with me despite our opposing views. No one else really wanted to. Soldiers involved in the ongoing dispute with Wales had more kudos; Crimean personnel on leave usually left their uniforms in the wardrobe.\n\n\"I suppose not,\" I replied noncommittally, staring out of the window to where I could see a Crimean veteran begging at a street corner, reciting Longfellow from memory for a couple of pennies.\n\n\"Makes all those lives seem wasted if we give it back now,\" added Stanford gruffly. \"We've been there since 1854. It belongs to us. You might as well say we should give the Isle of Wight back to the French.\"\n\n\"We did give the Isle of Wight back to the French,\" I replied patiently; Stanford's grasp of current affairs was generally confined to first division croquet and the love life of actress Lola Vavoom.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he muttered, brow knitted. \"We did, didn't we? Well, we shouldn't have. And who do the UN think they are?\"\n\n\"I don't know but if the killing stops they've got my vote, Stan.\"\n\nThe barkeeper shook his head sadly as Duff-Rolecks concluded his speech:\n\n\"...there can be little doubt that the Czar Romanov Alexei IV does have overwhelming rights to sovereignty of the peninsula and I for one look forward to the day when we can withdraw our troops from what can only be described as an incalculable waste of human life and resources.\"\n\nThe Toad News anchorwoman came back on and moved to another item\u2014the government was to raise the duty on cheese to 83 percent, an unpopular move that would doubtless have the more militant citizens picketing cheese shops.\n\n\"The Ruskies could stop it tomorrow if they pulled out!\" said Stanford belligerently.\n\nIt wasn't an argument and he and I both knew it. There was nothing left of the peninsula that would be worth owning whoever won. The only stretch of land that hadn't been churned to a pulp by artillery bombardment was heavily mined. Historically and morally the Crimea belonged to Imperial Russia; that was all there was to it.\n\nThe next news item was about a border skirmish with the People's Republic of Wales; no one hurt, just a few shots exchanged across the River Wye near Hay. Typically rambunctious, the youthful president-for-life Owain Glyndwr VII had blamed England's imperialist yearnings for a unified Britain; equally typically, Parliament had not so much as even made a statement about the incident. The news ground on, but I wasn't really paying attention. A new fusion plant had opened in Dungeness and the president had been there to open it. He grinned dutifully as the flashbulbs went off. I returned to my paper and read a story about a parliamentary bill to remove the dodo's protected species status after their staggering increase in numbers; but I couldn't concentrate. The Crimea had filled my mind with its unwelcome memories. It was lucky for me that my pager bleeped and brought with it a much-needed reality check. I tossed a few notes on the counter and sprinted out of the door as the Toad News anchorwoman somberly announced that a young surrealist had been killed\u2014stabbed to death by a gang adhering to a radical school of French impressionists."
            },
            {
                "title": "Gad's Hill",
                "text": "\u2002...There are two schools of thought about the resilience of time. The first is that time is highly volatile, with every small event altering the possible outcome of the earth's future. The other view is that time is rigid, and no matter how hard you try, it will always spring back toward a determined present. Myself, I do not worry about such trivialities. I simply sell ties to anyone who wants to buy one...\n\n\u2014Tie seller in Victoria, June 1983\n\nMY PAGER had delivered a disconcerting message; the unstealable had just been stolen. It was not the first time the Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript had been purloined. Two years before it had been removed from its case by a security man who wanted nothing more than to read the book in its pure and unsullied state. Unable to live with himself or decipher Dickens's handwriting past the third page, he eventually confessed and the manuscript was recovered. He spent five years sweating over lime kilns on the edge of Dartmoor.\n\nGad's Hill Palace was where Charles Dickens lived at the end of his life, but not where he wrote Chuzzlewit. That was at Devonshire Terrace, when he still lived with his first wife, in 1843. Gad's Hill is a large Victorian building near Rochester which had fine views of the Medway when Dickens bought it. If you screw up your eyes and ignore the oil refinery, heavy water plant and the ExcoMat containment facility, it's not too hard to see what drew him to this part of England. Several thousand visitors pass through Gad's Hill every day, making it the third-most popular area of literary pilgrimage after Anne Hathaway's cottage and the Bront\u00ebs' Haworth House. Such huge numbers of people had created enormous security problems; no one was taking any chances since a deranged individual had broken into Chawton, threatening to destroy all Jane Austen's letters unless his frankly dull and uneven Austen biography was published. On that occasion no damage had been done, but it was a grim portent of things to come. In Dublin the following year an organized gang attempted to hold Jonathan Swift's papers to ransom. A protracted siege developed that ended with two of the extortionists shot dead and the destruction of several original political pamphlets and an early draft of Gulliver's Travels. The inevitable had to happen. Literary relics were placed under bulletproof glass and guarded by electronic surveillance and armed officers. It was not the way anyone wanted it, but it seemed the only answer. Since those days there had been few major problems, which made the theft of Chuzzlewit all the more remarkable.\n\nI parked my car, clipped my SO-27 badge into my top pocket and pushed my way through the crowds of pressmen and gawkers. I saw Boswell from a distance and ducked under a police line to reach him.\n\n\"Good morning, sir,\" I muttered. \"I came as soon as I heard.\"\n\nHe put a finger to his lips and whispered in my ear:\n\n\"Ground-floor window. Took less than ten minutes. Nothing else.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nThen I saw. Toad News Network's star reporter Lydia Startright was about to do an interview. The finely coiffured TV journalist finished her introduction and turned to us both. Boswell employed a neat sidestep, jabbed me playfully in the ribs and left me alone under the full glare of the news cameras.\n\n\"\u2014of Martin Chuzzlewit, stolen from the Dickens Museum at Gad's Hill. I have with me Literary Detective Thursday Next. Tell me, Officer, how it was possible for thieves to break in and steal one of literature's greatest treasures?\"\n\nI murmured \"bastard!\" under my breath to Boswell, who slunk off shaking with mirth. I shifted my weight uneasily. With the enthusiasm for art and literature in the population undiminished, the LiteraTec's job was becoming increasingly difficult, made worse by a very limited budget.\n\n\"The thieves gained entrance through a window on the ground floor and went straight to the manuscript,\" I said in my best TV voice. \"They were in and out within ten minutes.\"\n\n\"I understand the museum was monitored by closed-circuit television,\" continued Lydia. \"Did you capture the thieves on video?\"\n\n\"Our inquiries are proceeding,\" I replied. \"You understand that some details must be kept secret for operational purposes.\"\n\nLydia lowered her microphone and cut the camera.\n\n\"Do you have anything to give me, Thursday?\" she asked. \"The parrot stuff I can get from anyone.\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"I've only just got here, Lyds. Try me again in a week.\"\n\n\"Thursday, in a week this will be archive footage. Okay, roll VT.\"\n\nThe cameraman reshouldered his camera and Lydia resumed her report.\n\n\"Do you have any leads?\"\n\n\"There are several avenues that we are pursuing. We are confident that we can return the manuscript to the museum and arrest the individuals concerned.\"\n\nI wished I could share my own optimism. I had spent a lot of time at Gad's Hill overseeing security arrangements, and I knew it was like the Bank of England. The people who did this were good. Really good. It also made it kind of personal. The interview ended and I ducked under a SpecOps DO NOT CROSS tape to where Boswell was waiting to meet me.\n\n\"This is one hell of a mess, Thursday. Turner, fill her in.\"\n\nBoswell left us to it and went off to find something to eat.\n\n\"If you can see how they pulled this one off,\" murmured Paige who was a slightly older and female version of Boswell, \"I'll eat my boots, buckles and all.\"\n\nBoth Turner and Boswell had been at the Litera Tec department when I turned up there, fresh from the military and a short career at the Swindon Police Department. Few people ever left the Litera Tec division; when you were in London you had pretty much reached the top of your profession. Promotion or death were the usual ways out; the saying was that a LiteraTec job wasn't for Christmas\u2014it was for life.\n\n\"Boswell likes you, Thursday.\"\n\n\"In what sort of way?\" I asked suspiciously.\n\n\"In the sort of way that he wants you in my shoes when I leave\u2014I became engaged to a rather nice fellow from SO-3 at the weekend.\"\n\nI should have been more enthusiastic, but Turner had been engaged so many times she could have filled every finger and toe\u2014twice.\n\n\"SO-3?\" I queried, somewhat inquisitively. Being in SpecOps was no guarantee you would know which departments did what\u2014Joe Public were probably better informed. The only SpecOps divisions I knew about for sure below SO-12 were SO-9, who were Antiterrorist, and SO-1, who were Internal Affairs\u2014the SpecOps police; the people who made sure we didn't step out of line.\n\n\"SO-3?\" I repeated. \"What do they do?\"\n\n\"Weird Stuff.\"\n\n\"I thought SO-2 did Weird Stuff?\"\n\n\"SO-2 do Weirder Stuff. I asked him but he never got around to answering\u2014we were kind of busy. Look at this.\"\n\nTurner had led me into the manuscript room. The glass case that had held the leatherbound manuscript was empty.\n\n\"Anything?\" Paige asked one of the scene-of-crime officers.\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Gloves?\" I asked.\n\nThe SOCO stood up and stretched her back; she hadn't discovered a single print of any sort.\n\n\"No; and that's what's so bizarre. It doesn't look like they touched the box at all; not with gloves, not a cloth\u2014nothing. According to me this box hasn't been opened and the manuscript is still inside!\"\n\nI looked at the glass case. It was still locked tight and none of the other exhibits had been touched. The keys were kept separately and were at this moment on their way from London.\n\n\"Hello, that's odd\u2014\" I muttered, leaning closer.\n\n\"What do you see?\" asked Paige anxiously.\n\nI pointed to an area of glass on one of the side panels that undulated slightly. The area was roughly the size of the manuscript.\n\n\"I noticed that,\" said Paige. \"I thought it was a flaw in the glass.\"\n\n\"Toughened bulletproof glass?\" I asked her. \"No chance. And it wasn't like this when I supervised the fitting, I can assure you of that.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\nI stroked the hard glass and felt the shiny surface ripple beneath my fingertips. A shiver ran up my back and I felt a curious sense of uncomfortable familiarity, the feeling you might get when a long-forgotten school bully hails you as an old friend.\n\n\"The work feels familiar, Paige. When I find the perpetrator, it'll be someone I know.\"\n\n\"You've been a Litera Tec for seven years, Thursday.\"\n\nI saw what she meant.\n\n\"Eight years, and you're right\u2014you'll probably know them too. Could Lamber Thwalts have done this?\"\n\n\"He could have, if he wasn't still in the hokey\u2014four years still to go over that Love's Labor's Won scam.\"\n\n\"What about Keens? He could handle something as big as this.\"\n\n\"Milton's no longer with us. Caught analepsy in the library at Parkhurst. Stone-cold dead in a fortnight.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\"\n\nI pointed at the two video cameras.\n\n\"Who did they see?\"\n\n\"No one,\" replied Turner. \"Not a dicky bird. I can play you the tapes but you'll be none the wiser.\"\n\nShe showed me what they had. The guard on duty was being interviewed back at the station. They were hoping it was an inside job but it didn't look like it; the guard had been as devastated as any of them.\n\nTurner shuttled the video back and pressed the play button.\n\n\"Watch carefully. The recorder rotates the five cameras and films five seconds of each.\"\n\n\"So the longest gap between cameras is twenty seconds?\"\n\n\"Got it. You watching? Okay, there's the manuscript\u2014\" She pointed at the book, clearly visible in the frame as the VCR flicked to the camera at the front door. There was no movement. Then the inside door through which any burglar would have to come; all the other entrances were barred. Then came the corridor; then the lobby; then the machine flicked back to the manuscript room. Turner punched the pause button and I leaned closer. The manuscript was gone.\n\n\"Twenty seconds to get in, open the box, take Chuzzlewit and then leg it? It's not possible.\"\n\n\"Believe you me, Thursday\u2014it happened.\"\n\nThe last remark came from Boswell, who had been looking over my shoulder.\n\n\"I don't know how they did it, but they did. I've had a call from Supreme Commander Gale on this one and he's being leaned on by the prime minister. Questions have already been asked in the House and someone's head is going to roll. Not mine, I assure you.\"\n\nHe looked at us both rather pointedly, which made me feel especially ill at ease\u2014I was the one who had advised the museum on its security arrangements.\n\n\"We'll be onto it straight away, sir,\" I replied, punching the pause button and letting the video run on. The views of the building changed rhythmically, revealing nothing. I pulled up a chair, rewound the tape and looked again.\n\n\"What are you hoping to find?\" asked Paige.\n\n\"Anything.\"\n\nI didn't find it."
            },
            {
                "title": "Back at My Desk",
                "text": "\u2002Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, A Short History of the Special Operations Network\n\nTwo days of fruitless hunting for Chuzzlewit had passed without even the slightest clue as to where it might be. There had been whispers of reprimands, but only if we could figure out how the manuscript was taken. It would seem a bit ludicrous to be chastised for leaving a loophole in the security arrangements but not know what it was. Now slightly despondent, I was sitting at my desk back at the station. Recalling my conversation with Dad, I phoned my mother to ask her not to paint the bedroom mauve. The call backfired slightly as she thought this a grand idea and hung up before I could argue. I sighed and flipped through the telephone messages that had accumulated over the past two days. They were mostly from informers and concerned citizens who had been robbed or cheated and wanted to know if we had made any headway. It was all small beer compared to Chuzzlewit\u2014there were a lot of gullible people out there buying first editions of Byronic verse at knockdown prices, then complaining bitterly when they found out they were fakes. Like most of the other operatives, I had a pretty good idea who was behind all of this, but we never caught the big fish\u2014just the \"utterers,\" the dealers who sold it all on. It smacked of corruption in high places but we never had any proof. Usually I read my messages with interest, but today none of it seemed terribly important. After all, the verses of Byron, Keats or Poe are real whether they are in bootleg form or not. You can still read them for the same effect.\n\nI opened the drawer of my desk and pulled out a small mirror. A woman with somewhat ordinary features stared back at me. Her hair was a plain mousy color and of medium length, tied up rather hastily in a ponytail at the back. She had no cheekbones to speak of and her face, I noticed, had just started to show some rather obvious lines. I thought of my mother, who had looked as wrinkled as a walnut by the time she was forty-five. I shuddered, placed the mirror back in the drawer and took out a faded and slightly dog-eared photograph. It was a photo of myself with a group of friends taken in the Crimea when I had been simply Corporal T. E. Next, 33550336, Driver: APC, Light Armored Brigade. I had served my country diligently, been involved in a military disaster and then honorably discharged with a gong to prove it. They had expected me to give talks about recruitment and valor but I had disappointed them. I attended one regimental reunion but that was it; I had found myself looking for the faces that I knew weren't there.\n\nIn the photo Landen was standing on my left, his arm around me and another soldier, my brother, his best mate. Landen lost a leg, but he came home. My brother was still out there.\n\n\"Who's that?\" asked Paige, who had been looking over my shoulder.\n\n\"Whoa!\" I yelped. \"You just scared the crap out of me!\"\n\n\"Sorry! Crimea?\"\n\nI handed her the photo and she looked at it intently.\n\n\"That must be your brother\u2014you have the same nose.\"\n\n\"I know, we used to share it on a rota. I had it Mondays, Wednesd\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014then the other man must be Landen.\"\n\nI frowned and turned to face her. I never mentioned Landen to anyone. It was personal. I felt kind of betrayed that she might have been prying behind my back.\n\n\"How do you know about Landen?\"\n\nShe sensed the anger in my voice, smiled and raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"You told me about him.\"\n\n\"I did?\"\n\n\"Sure. The speech was slurred and for the most part it was garbage, but he was certainly on your mind.\"\n\nI winced.\n\n\"Last year's Christmas bash?\"\n\n\"Or the year before. You weren't the only one talking garbage with slurred speech.\"\n\nI looked at the photo again.\n\n\"We were engaged.\"\n\nPaige suddenly looked uneasy. Crimean fianc\u00e9s could be seriously bad conversation topics.\n\n\"Did he... ah... come back?\"\n\n\"Most of him. He left a leg behind. We don't speak too much these days.\"\n\n\"What's his full name?\" asked Paige, interested in finally getting something out of my past.\n\n\"It's Parke-Laine. Landen Parke-Laine.\" It was the first time I had said his name out loud for almost longer than I could remember.\n\n\"Parke-Laine the writer?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Good-looking bloke.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I replied, not quite knowing what I was thanking her for. I put the photograph back in my drawer and Paige clicked her fingers.\n\n\"Boswell wants to see you,\" she announced, finally remembering what she had come over to say.\n\nBoswell was not alone. A man in his forties was waiting for me and rose as I entered. He didn't blink very much and had a large scar down one side of his face. Boswell hummed and hawed for a moment, coughed, looked at his watch and then said something about leaving us to it.\n\n\"Police?\" I asked as soon as we were alone. \"Has a relative died or something?\"\n\nThe man closed the Venetian blinds to give us more privacy.\n\n\"Not that I heard about.\"\n\n\"SO-1?\" I asked, expecting a possible reprimand.\n\n\"Me?\" replied the man with genuine surprise. \"No.\"\n\n\"Litera Tec?\"\n\n\"Why don't you sit down?\"\n\nHe offered me a seat and then sat down in Boswell's large oak swivel chair. He had a buff file with my name on the cover which he flopped on the desk in front of him. I was amazed by how thick the file was.\n\n\"Is that all about me?\"\n\nHe ignored me. Instead of opening my file, he leaned forward and gazed at me with his unblinking eyes.\n\n\"How do you rate the Chuzzlewit case?\"\n\nI found myself staring at his scar. It ran from his forehead down to his chin and had all the size and subtlety of a shipbuilder's weld. It pulled his lip up, but apart from that his face was pleasant enough; without the scar he might have been handsome. I was being unsubtle. He instinctively brought up a hand to cover it.\n\n\"Finest Cossack,\" he murmured, making light of it.\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Don't be. It's hard not to gawp.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment.\n\n\"I work for SpecOps-5,\" he announced slowly, showing me a shiny badge.\n\n\"SO-5?\" I gasped, failing to hide the surprise in my voice. \"What do you lot do?\"\n\n\"That's restricted, Miss Next. I showed you the badge so you could talk to me without worrying about security clearances. I can okay that with Boswell if you'd prefer?\u2014\"\n\nMy heart was beating faster. Interviews with SpecOps operatives farther up the ladder sometimes led to transfers\u2014\n\n\"So, Miss Next, what do you think about Chuzzlewit?\"\n\n\"You want my opinion or the official version?\"\n\n\"Your opinion. Official versions I get from Boswell.\"\n\n\"I think it's too early to tell. If ransom is the motive then we can assume the manuscript is still in one piece. If it's stolen to sell or barter we can also consider it in one piece. If terrorism is the game then we might have to be worried. In scenarios one and three the Litera Tecs have sod all to do with it. SO-9 get involved and we're kind of out of the picture.\"\n\nThe man looked at me intently and nodded his head.\n\n\"You don't like it here, do you?\"\n\n\"I've had enough, put it that way,\" I responded, slightly less guardedly than I should. \"Who are you, anyway?\"\n\nThe man laughed.\n\n\"Sorry. Very bad manners; I didn't mean all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. The name's Tamworth, head field operative at SO-5. Actually,\" he added, \"that doesn't mean so much. At present there are just me and two others.\"\n\nI shook his outstretched hand.\n\n\"Three people in a SpecOps division?\" I asked curiously. \"Isn't that kind of mean?\"\n\n\"I lost some guys yesterday.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Not that way. We just made a bit of headway and that's not always good news. Some people research well in SO-5 but don't like the fieldwork. They have kids. I don't. But I understand.\"\n\nI nodded. I understood too.\n\n\"Why are you talking to me?\" I asked almost casually. \"I'm SO-27; as the SpecOps transfer board so kindly keeps telling me, my talents lie either in front of a Litera Tec desk or a kitchen stove.\"\n\nTamworth smiled. He patted the file in front of him.\n\n\"I know all about that. SpecOps Central Recruiting don't really have a good word for 'No,' they just fob. It's what they're best at. On the contrary, they are fully aware of your potential. I spoke to Boswell just now and he thinks he can just about let you go if you want to help us over at SO-5.\"\n\n\"If you're SO-5 he doesn't have much choice, does he?\"\n\nTamworth laughed.\n\n\"That's true. But you do. I'd never recruit anyone who didn't want to join me.\"\n\nI looked at him. He meant it.\n\n\"Is this a transfer?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Tamworth, \"it isn't. I just need you because you have information that is of use to us. You'll be an observer; nothing more. Once you understand what we're up against you'll be very glad to be just that.\"\n\n\"So when this is over I just get thrown back here?\"\n\nHe paused and looked at me for a moment, trying to give the best assurance that he could without lying. I liked him for it.\n\n\"I make no guarantees, Miss Next, but anyone who has been on an SO-5 assignment can be pretty confident that they won't be SO-27 forever.\"\n\n\"What is it you want me to do?\"\n\nTamworth pulled a form from his case and pushed it across the table to me. It was a standard security clearance and, once signed, gave SpecOps the right to almost everything I possessed and a lot more besides if I so much as breathed a word to someone with a lesser clearance. I signed it dutifully and handed it back. In exchange he gave me a shiny SO-5 badge with my name already in place. Tamworth knew me better than I thought. This done, he lowered his voice and began:\n\n\"SO-5 is basically a Search & Containment facility. We are posted with a man to track until found and contained, then we get another. SO-4 is pretty much the same; they are just after a different thing. Person. You know. Anyway, I was down at Gad's Hill this morning, Thursday\u2014can I call you Thursday?\u2014and I had a good look at the crime scene at first hand. Whoever took the manuscript of Chuzzlewit left no fingerprints, no sign of entry and nothing on any of the cameras.\"\n\n\"Not a lot to go on, was there?\"\n\n\"On the contrary. It was just the break I've been waiting for.\"\n\n\"Did you share this with Boswell?\" I asked.\n\n\"Of course not. We're not interested in the manuscript; we're interested in the man who stole it.\"\n\n\"And who's that?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you his name but I can write it.\"\n\nHe took out a felt tip and wrote \"Acheron Hades\" on a notepad and held it up for me to read.\n\n\"Look familiar?\"\n\n\"Very familiar. There can't be many people who haven't heard about him.\"\n\n\"I know. But you've met him, haven't you?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" I replied. \"He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in '68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a lech. He made one of the students pregnant.\"\n\n\"Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?\"\n\n\"He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.\"\n\n\"Did you sleep with him?\"\n\n\"No; I didn't figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant\u2014but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster's The White Devil. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.\"\n\n\"He asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.\"\n\n\"Your information is good, Mr. Tamworth.\"\n\nTamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.\n\n\"But the important thing is: You know what he looks like?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I replied, \"but you're wasting your time. He died in Venezuela in '82.\"\n\n\"No; he just made us think he had. We exhumed the grave the following year. It wasn't him at all. He feigned death so well that he fooled the doctors; they buried a weighted coffin. He has powers that are slightly baffling. That's why we can't say his name. I call it Rule Number One.\"\n\n\"His name? Why not?\"\n\n\"Because he can hear his own name\u2014even whispered\u2014over a thousand-yard radius, perhaps more. He uses it to sense our presence.\"\n\n\"And why do you suppose he stole Chuzzlewit?\"\n\nTamworth reached into his case and pulled out a file. It was marked \"Most Secret\u2014SpecOps-5 clearance only.\" The slot in the front, usually reserved for a mugshot, was empty.\n\n\"We don't have a picture of him,\" said Tamworth as I opened the file. \"He doesn't resolve on film or video and has never been in custody long enough to be sketched. Remember the cameras at Gad's Hill?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"They didn't pick anyone up. I went through the tapes very carefully. The camera angle changed every five seconds yet there would be no way anyone could dodge all of them during the time they were in the building. Do you see what I mean?\"\n\nI nodded slowly and flicked through the pages of Acheron's file. Tamworth continued:\n\n\"I've been after him for five years. He has seven outstanding warrants for murder in England, eighteen in America. Extortion, theft and kidnapping. He's cold, calculating and quite ruthless. Thirty-six of his forty-two known victims were either SpecOps or police officers.\"\n\n\"Hartlepool in '75?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Tamworth slowly. \"You heard about it?\"\n\nI had. Most people had. Hades had been cornered in the basement of a multistory car park after a botched robbery. One of his associates lay dead in a bank nearby; Acheron had killed the wounded man to stop him talking. In the basement, he persuaded an officer into giving him his gun, killing six others as he walked out. The only officer who survived was the one whose gun he had used. That was Acheron's idea of a joke. The officer in question never gave a satisfactory explanation as to why he had given up his firearm. He had taken early retirement and gassed himself in his car six years later after a short history of alcoholism and petty theft. He came to be known as the seventh victim.\n\n\"I interviewed the Hartlepool survivor before he took his own life,\" Tamworth went on, \"after I was instructed to find... him at any cost. My findings led us to formulate Rule Number Two: If you ever have the misfortune to face him in person, believe nothing that he says or does. He can lie in thought, deed, action and appearance. He has amazing persuasive powers over those of weak mind. Did I tell you that we have been authorized to use maximum force?\"\n\n\"No, but I guessed.\"\n\n\"SO-5 has a shoot-to-kill policy concerning our friend\u2014\"\n\n\"Whoa, whoa, wait a sec. You have the power to eliminate without trial?\"\n\n\"Welcome to SpecOps-5, Thursday\u2014what did you think containment meant?\"\n\nHe laughed a laugh that was slightly disturbing.\n\n\"As the saying goes: If you want to get into SpecOps, act kinda weird. We don't tend to pussyfoot around.\"\n\n\"Is it legal?\"\n\n\"Not in the least. It's Blind Eye Grand Central below SpecOps-8. We have a saying: Below the eight, above the law. Ever hear it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You'll hear it a lot. In any event we make it our Rule Number Three: Apprehension is of minimal importance. What gun do you carry?\"\n\nI told him and he scribbled a note.\n\n\"I'll get some fluted expansion slugs for you.\"\n\n\"There'll be hell to pay if we get caught with those.\"\n\n\"Self-defense only,\" explained Tamworth quickly. \"You won't be dealing with this man; I just want you to ID him if he shows. But listen: If the shit hits the fan I don't want any of my people left with bows and arrows against the lightning. And anything less than an expanding slug is about as much good as using wet cardboard as a flak jacket. We know almost nothing about him. No birth certificate, not even a reliable age or even who his parents were. He just appeared on the scene in '54 as a petty criminal with a literary edge and has worked his way steadily upward to being number three on the planet's most-wanted list.\"\n\n\"Who're number one and two?\"\n\n\"I don't know and I have been reliably informed that it's far better not to know.\"\n\n\"So where do we go from here?\"\n\n\"I'll call you. Stay alert and keep your pager with you at all times. You're on leave as of now from SO-27, so just enjoy the time off. I'll be seeing you!\"\n\nHe was gone in an instant, leaving me with the SO-5 badge and a thumping heart. Boswell returned, followed by a curious Paige. I showed them both the badge.\n\n\"Way to go!\" said Paige, giving me a hug, but Boswell seemed less happy. After all, he did have his own department to think about.\n\n\"They can play very rough at SO-5, Next,\" said Boswell in a fatherly tone. \"I want you to go back to your desk and have a long calm think about this. Have a cup of coffee and a bun. No, have two buns. Don't make any rash decisions, and just run through all the pros and cons of the argument. When you've done that I would be happy to adjudicate. Do you understand?\"\n\nI understood. In my hurry to leave the office I almost forgot the picture of Landen."
            },
            {
                "title": "Acheron Hades",
                "text": "\u2002...The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts\u2014and let's face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field\u2014is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good\u2014and we all know how rare that is...\n\n\u2014ACHERON HADES, Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit\n\nTamworth didn't call that week, nor the week after. I tried to call him at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed. I used the time to get up-to-date with some reading, filing, mending the car and also\u2014because of the new legislation\u2014to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn't fancy the vet much.\n\n\"Plock-plock,\" said Pickwick nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.\n\n\"No wings?\" asked the official curiously, staring at Pickwick's slightly odd shape.\n\n\"He's a Version 1.2,\" I explained. \"One of the first. They didn't get the sequence complete until 1.7.\"\n\n\"Must be pretty old.\"\n\n\"Twelve years this October.\"\n\n\"I had one of the early Thylacines,\" said the official glumly. \"A Version 2.1. When we decanted him he had no ears. Stone deaf. No warranty or anything. Bloody liberty, I call it. Do you read New Splicer?\"\n\nI had to admit that I didn't.\n\n\"They sequenced a Steller's sea cow last week. How do I even get one of those through the door?\"\n\n\"Grease its sides?\" I suggested. \"And show it a plate of kelp?\"\n\nBut the official wasn't listening; he had turned his attention to the next dodo, a pinkish creature with a long neck. The owner caught my eye and smiled sheepishly.\n\n\"Redundant strands filled in with flamingo,\" he explained. \"I should have used dove.\"\n\n\"Version 2.9?\"\n\n\"2.9.1, actually. A bit of a hotchpotch but to us he's simply Chester. We wouldn't swap him for anything.\"\n\nThe inspector had been studying Chester's registration documents.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said at last. \"2.9.1s come under the new Chimera category.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Not enough dodo to be dodo. Room seven down the corridor. Follow the owner of the pukey, but be careful; I sent a quarkbeast down there this morning.\"\n\nI left Chester's owner and the official arguing together and took Pickwick for a waddle in the park. I let him off the leash and he chased a few pigeons before fraternizing with some feral dodos who were cooling their feet in the pond. They splashed excitedly and made quiet plock plock noises to one another until it was time to go home.\n\nTwo days after that I had run out of ways to rearrange the furniture, so it was lucky that Tamworth called me. He told me he was on a stakeout and that I needed to join him. I hastily scribbled down the address and was in the East End in under forty minutes. The stakeout was in a shabby street of converted warehouses that had been due for demolition two decades before. I doused the lights and got out, hid anything of value and locked the car carefully. The battered Pontiac was old and grotty enough not to arouse suspicion in the grimy surroundings. I glanced around. The brickwork was crumbling and heavy smears of green algae streaked the walls where the down pipes had once been. The windows were cracked and dirty and the brick wall at ground level was stained alternately with graffiti or the sooty blackness of a recent fire. A rusty fire escape zigzagged up the dark building and cast a staccato shadow on the potholed road and several burned-out cars. I made my way to a side door according to Tamworth's instructions. Inside, large cracks had opened up in the walls and the damp and decay had mixed with the smell of Jeyes fluid and a curry shop on the ground floor. A neon light flashed on and off regularly, and I saw several women in tight skirts hovering in the dark doorways. The citizens who lived in the area were a curious mix; the lack of cheap housing in and around London attracted a cross section of people, from locals to down-and-outs to professionals. It wasn't great from a law-and-order point of view, but it did allow SpecOps agents to move around without raising suspicion.\n\nI reached the seventh floor, where a couple of young Henry Fielding fanatics were busy swapping bubble-gum cards.\n\n\"I'll swap you one Sophia for an Amelia.\"\n\n\"Piss off!\" replied his friend indignantly. \"If you want Sophia you're going to have to give me an Allworthy plus a Tom Jones, as well as the Amelia!\"\n\nHis friend, realizing the rarity of a Sophia, reluctantly agreed. The deal was done and they ran off downstairs to look for hubcaps. I compared a number with the address that Tamworth had given me and rapped on a door covered with peeling peach-colored paint. It was opened cautiously by a man somewhere in his eighties. He half-hid his face from me with a wrinkled hand, and I showed him my badge.\n\n\"You must be Next,\" he said in a voice that was really quite sprightly for his age. I ignored the old joke and went in. Tamworth was peering through some binoculars at a room in the building opposite and waved a greeting without looking up. I looked at the old man again and smiled.\n\n\"Call me Thursday.\"\n\nHe seemed gratified at this and shook my hand.\n\n\"The name's Snood; you can call me Junior.\"\n\n\"Snood?\" I echoed. \"Any relation to Filbert?\"\n\nThe old man nodded.\n\n\"Filbert, ah yes!\" he murmured. \"A good lad and a fine son to his father!\"\n\nFilbert Snood was the only man who had even remotely interested me since I left Landen ten years ago. Snood had been in the ChronoGuard; he went away on assignment to Tewkesbury and never came back. I had a call from his commanding officer explaining that he had been unavoidably detained. I took that to mean another girl. It hurt at the time but I hadn't been in love with Filbert. I was certain of that because I had been in love with Landen. When you've been there you know it, like seeing a Turner or going for a walk on the west coast of Ireland.\n\n\"So you're his father?\"\n\nSnood walked through to the kitchen but I wasn't going to let it go.\n\n\"So how is he? Where's he living these days?\"\n\nThe old man fumbled with the kettle.\n\n\"I find it hard to talk about Filbert,\" he announced at length, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. \"It was so long ago!\"\n\n\"He's dead?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh no,\" murmured the old man. \"He's not dead; I think you were told he was unavoidably detained, yes?\"\n\n\"Yes. I thought he had found someone else or something.\"\n\n\"We thought you would understand; your father was or is, I suppose, in the ChronoGuard and we use certain\u2014let me see\u2014euphemisms.\"\n\nHe looked at me intently with clear blue eyes staring through heavy lids. My heart thumped heavily.\n\n\"What are you saying?\" I asked him.\n\nThe old man thought about saying something else but then lapsed into silence, paused for a moment and then shuffled back to the main room to mark up videotape labels. There was obviously more to it than just a girl in Tewkesbury, but time was on my side. I let the matter drop.\n\nIt gave me a chance to look around the room. A trestle table against one damp wall was stacked with surveillance equipment. A Revox spool-to-spool tape recorder slowly revolved next to a mixing box that placed all seven bugs in the room opposite and the phone line onto eight different tracks of the tape. Set back from the windows were two binoculars, a camera with a powerful telephoto lens, and next to this a video camera recording at slow speed onto a ten-hour tape.\n\nTamworth looked up from the binoculars.\n\n\"Welcome, Thursday. Come and have a look!\"\n\nI looked through the binoculars. In the flat opposite, not thirty yards distant, I could see a well-dressed man aged perhaps fifty with a pinched face and a concerned expression. He seemed to be on the phone.\n\n\"That's not him.\"\n\nTamworth smiled.\n\n\"I know. This is his brother, Styx. We found out about him this morning. SO-14 were going to pick him up but our man is a much bigger fish; I called SO-1, who intervened on our behalf; Styx is our responsibility at the moment. Have a listen.\"\n\nHe handed me some earphones and I looked through the binoculars again. Hades' brother was sitting at a large walnut desk flicking through a copy of the London and District Car Trader. As I watched, he stopped, picked up the phone and dialed a number.\n\n\"Hello?\" said Styx into the phone.\n\n\"Hello?\" replied a middle-aged woman, the recipient of the call.\n\n\"Do you have a 1976 Chevrolet for sale?\"\n\n\"Buying a car?\" I asked Tamworth.\n\n\"Keep listening. Same time every week, apparently. Regular as clockwork.\"\n\n\"It's only got eighty-two thousand miles on the clock,\" continued the lady, \"and runs really well. MOT and tax paid 'til year's end too.\"\n\n\"It sounds perfect,\" replied Styx. \"I'll be willing to pay cash. Will you hold it for me? I'll be about an hour. You're in Clapham, yes?\"\n\nThe woman agreed, and she read over an address that Styx didn't bother writing down. He reaffirmed his interest and then hung up, only to call a different number about another car in Hounslow. I took off the headphones and pulled out the headset jack so we could hear Styx's nasal rasp over the loudspeakers.\n\n\"How long does he do this for?\"\n\n\"From SO-14 records, until he gets bored. Six hours, sometimes eight. He's not the only one either. Anyone who has ever sold a car gets someone like Styx on the phone at least once. Here, these are for you.\"\n\nHe handed me a box of ammunition with expanding slugs developed for maximum internal damage.\n\n\"What is he? A buffalo?\"\n\nBut Tamworth wasn't amused.\n\n\"We're up against something quite different here, Thursday. Pray to the GSD you never have to use them, but if you do, don't hesitate. Our man doesn't give second chances.\"\n\nI took the clip out of my automatic and reloaded it and the spare I carried with me, leaving a standard slug on top in case of an SO-1 spot check. Over in the flat, Styx had dialed another number in Ruislip.\n\n\"Hello?\" replied the unfortunate car owner on the other end of the line.\n\n\"Yes, I saw your advert for a Ford Granada in today's Trader,\" continued Styx. \"Is it still for sale?\"\n\nStyx got the address out of the car owner, promised to be around in ten minutes, put the phone down and then rubbed his hands with glee, laughing childishly. He put a line through the advert and then went onto the next.\n\n\"Doesn't even have a license,\" said Tamworth from the other side of the room. \"He spends the rest of his time stealing ballpoints, causing electrical goods to fail after the guarantee has expired and scratching records in record shops.\"\n\n\"A bit childish, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I'd say,\" replied Tamworth. \"He's possessed of a certain amount of wickedness, but nothing like his brother.\"\n\n\"So what's the connection between Styx and the Chuzzlewit manuscript?\"\n\n\"We suspect that he may have it. According to SO-14's surveillance records he brought in a package the evening of the breakin at Gad's Hill. I'm the first to admit that this is a long shot but it's the best evidence of his whereabouts these past three years. It's about time he broke cover.\"\n\n\"Has he demanded a ransom for the manuscript?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, but it's early days. It might not be as simple as we think. Our man has an estimated IQ of one eighty, so simple extortion might be too easy for him.\"\n\nSnood came in and sat down slightly shakily at the binoculars, put on the headphones and plugged in the jack. Tamworth picked up his keys and handed me a book.\n\n\"I have to meet up with my opposite number at SO-4. I'll be about an hour. If anything happens, just page me. My number is on redial one. Have a read of this if you get bored.\"\n\nI looked at the small book he had given me. It was Charlotte Bront\u00eb's Jane Eyre bound in thick red leather.\n\n\"Who told you?\" I asked sharply.\n\n\"Who told me what?\" replied Tamworth, genuinely surprised.\n\n\"It's just... I've read this book a lot. When I was younger. I know it very well.\"\n\n\"And you like the ending?\"\n\nI thought for a moment. The rather flawed climax of the book was a cause of considerable bitterness within Bront\u00eb circles. It was generally agreed that if Jane had returned to Thornfield Hall and married Rochester, the book might have been a lot better than it was.\n\n\"No one likes the ending, Tamworth. But there's more than enough in it regardless of that.\"\n\n\"Then a reread will be especially instructive, won't it?\"\n\nThere was a knock at the door. Tamworth answered it and a man who was all shoulders and no neck entered.\n\n\"Just in time!\" said Tamworth, looking at his watch. \"Thursday Next, this is Buckett. He's temporary until I get a replacement.\"\n\nHe smiled and was gone.\n\nBuckett and I shook hands. He smiled wanly as though this sort of job was not something he relished. He told me that he was pleased to meet me, then went to speak to Snood about the results of a horse race.\n\nI tapped my fingertips on the copy of Jane Eyre that Tamworth had given me and placed it in my breast pocket. I rounded up the coffee cups and took them next door to the cracked enamel sink. Buckett appeared at the doorway.\n\n\"Tamworth said you were a Litera Tec.\"\n\n\"Tamworth was correct.\"\n\n\"I wanted to be a Litera Tec.\"\n\n\"You did?\" I replied, seeing if there was anything in the fridge that wasn't a year past its sell-by date.\n\n\"Yeah. But they said you had to read a book or two.\"\n\n\"It helps.\"\n\nThere was a knock at the door and Buckett instinctively reached for his handgun. He was more on edge than I had thought.\n\n\"Easy, Buckett. I'll get it.\"\n\nHe joined me at the door and released the safety from his pistol. I looked at him and he nodded back in reply.\n\n\"Who's there?\" I said without opening the door.\n\n\"Hello!\" replied a voice. \"My name's Edmund Capillary. Have you ever stopped to wonder whether it was really William Shakespeare who penned all those wonderful plays?\"\n\nWe both breathed a sigh of relief and Buckett put the safety back on his automatic, muttering under his breath:\n\n\"Bloody Baconians!\"\n\n\"Steady,\" I replied, \"it's not illegal.\"\n\n\"More's the pity.\"\n\n\"Shh.\"\n\nI opened the door on the security chain and found a small man in a lumpy corduroy suit. He was holding a dog-eared ID for me to see and politely raised his hat with a nervous smile. The Baconians were quite mad but for the most part harmless. Their purpose in life was to prove that Francis Bacon and not Will Shakespeare had penned the greatest plays in the English language. Bacon, they believed, had not been given the recognition that he rightfully deserved and they campaigned tirelessly to redress this supposed injustice.\n\n\"Hello!\" said the Baconian brightly. \"Can I take a moment of your time?\"\n\nI answered slowly:\n\n\"If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.\"\n\nThe Baconian was not to be put off. He obviously liked fighting a poor argument; in real life he was most likely a personal accident barrister.\n\n\"Not as daft as supposing that a Warwickshire schoolboy with almost no education could write works that were not for an age but for all time.\"\n\n\"There is no evidence that he was without formal education,\" I returned evenly, suddenly enjoying myself. Buckett wanted me to get rid of him but I ignored his gesticulations.\n\n\"Agreed,\" continued the Baconian, \"but I would argue that the Shakespeare in Stratford was not the same man as the Shakespeare in London.\"\n\nIt was an interesting approach. I paused and Edmund Capillary took the opportunity to pounce. He launched into his well-rehearsed patter almost automatically:\n\n\"The Shakespeare in Stratford was a wealthy grain trader and buying houses when the Shakespeare in London was being pursued by tax collectors for petty sums. The collectors traced him to Sussex on one occasion in 1600; yet why not take action against him in Stratford?\"\n\n\"Search me.\"\n\nHe was on a roll now.\n\n\"No one is recorded in Stratford as having any idea of his literary success. He was never known to have bought a book, written a letter or indeed done anything apart from being a purveyor of bagged commodities, grain and malt and so forth.\"\n\nThe small man looked triumphant.\n\n\"So where does Bacon fit into all this?\" I asked him.\n\n\"Francis Bacon was an Elizabethan writer who had been forced into becoming a lawyer and politician by his family. Since being associated with something like the theater would have been frowned upon, Bacon had to enlist the help of a poor actor named Shakespeare to act as his front man\u2014history has mistakenly linked the two Shakespeares to give added validity to a story that otherwise has little substance.\"\n\n\"And the proof?\"\n\n\"Hall and Marston\u2014both Elizabethan satirists\u2014were firmly of the belief that Bacon was the true author of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. I have a pamphlet here which goes into the matter further. More details are available at our monthly gatherings; we used to meet at the town hall but the radical wing of the New Marlovians fire-bombed us last week. I don't know where we will meet next. But if I can take your name and number, we can be in touch.\"\n\nHis face was earnest and smug; he thought he had me. I decided to play my trump card.\n\n\"What about the will?\"\n\n\"The will?\" he echoed, slightly nervously. He was obviously hoping I wasn't going to mention it.\n\n\"Yes,\" I continued. \"If Shakespeare were truly two people, then why would the Shakespeare in Stratford mention the London Shakespeare's theater colleagues Condell, Heming and Burbage in his will?\"\n\nThe Baconian's face fell.\n\n\"I was hoping you wouldn't ask.\" He sighed. \"I'm wasting my time, aren't I?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you are.\"\n\nHe muttered something under his breath and moved on. As I threw the bolt I could hear the Baconian knocking at the next door to ours. Perhaps he'd have better luck down the corridor.\n\n\"What is a Litera Tec doing here anyway, Next?\" asked Buckett as we returned to the kitchen.\n\n\"I'm here,\" I answered slowly, \"because I know what he looks like; I'm not permanent in the least. As soon as I've fingered his man, Tamworth will transfer me back again.\"\n\nI poured some yogurty milk down the sink and rinsed out the container.\n\n\"Might be a blessing.\"\n\n\"I don't see it that way. What about you? How did you get in with Tamworth?\"\n\n\"I'm antiterrorist usually. SO-9. But Tamworth has trouble with recruitment. He took a cavalry saber for me. I owe him.\"\n\nHe dropped his eyes and fiddled with his tie for a moment. I peered cautiously into a cupboard for a dishcloth, discovered something nasty and then closed it quickly.\n\nBuckett took out his wallet and showed me a picture of a dribbling infant that looked like every other dribbling infant I had ever seen.\n\n\"I'm married now so Tamworth knows I can't stay; one's needs change, you know.\"\n\n\"Good-looking kid.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" He put the picture away. \"You married?\"\n\n\"Not for want of trying,\" I replied as I filled the kettle. Buckett nodded and brought out a copy of Fast Horse.\n\n\"Do you ever flutter on the gee-gees? I've had an unusual tip on Malabar.\"\n\n\"I don't. Sorry.\"\n\nBuckett nodded. His conversation had pretty much dried up.\n\nI brought in some coffee a few minutes later. Snood and Buckett were discussing the outcome of the Cheltenham Gold Stakes Handicap.\n\n\"So you know what he looks like, Miss Next?\" asked the ancient Snood without looking up from the binoculars.\n\n\"He was a lecturer of mine when I was at college. He's tricky to describe, though.\"\n\n\"Average build?\"\n\n\"When I last saw him.\"\n\n\"Tall?\"\n\n\"At least six-six.\"\n\n\"Black hair worn swept back and graying at the temples?\"\n\nBuckett and I looked at one another.\n\n\"Yes?\u2014\"\n\n\"I think he's over there, Thursday.\"\n\nI jerked the headphone jack out.\n\n\"\u2014Acheron!!\" came Styx's voice over the loudspeaker. \"Dear brother, what a pleasant surprise!\"\n\nI looked through the binoculars and could see Acheron in the flat with Styx. He was dressed in a large gray duster jacket and was exactly how I remembered him from all those years ago. It didn't seem as though he had aged even one day. I shivered involuntarily.\n\n\"Shit,\" I muttered. Snood had already dialed the pager number to alert Tamworth.\n\n\"Mosquitoes have stung the blue goat,\" he muttered down the phone. \"Thank you. Can you repeat that back and send it twice?\"\n\nMy heart beat faster. Acheron might not stay long and I was in a position for advancement beyond the LiteraTecs for good. Capturing Hades would be something no one could ever ignore.\n\n\"I'm going over there,\" I said almost casually.\n\n\"What?!\"\n\n\"You heard. Stay here and call SO-14 for armed backup, silent approach. Tell them we have gone in and to surround the building. Suspect will be armed and highly dangerous. Got it?\"\n\nSnood smiled in the manner that I had so liked in his son and reached for the telephone. I turned to Buckett.\n\n\"You with me?\"\n\nBuckett had turned a little pale.\n\n\"I'm... ah... with you,\" he replied slightly shakily.\n\nI flew out of the door, down the stairs and into the lobby.\n\n\"Next!\u2014\"\n\nIt was Buckett. He had stopped and was visibly shaking.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"I... I... can't do this,\" he announced, loosening his tie and rubbing the back of his neck. \"I have the kid!\u2014You don't know what he can do. I'm a betting man, Next. I love long odds. But we try and take him and we're both dead. I beg you, wait for SO-14!\"\n\n\"He could be long gone by then. All we have to do is detain him.\"\n\nBuckett bit his lip, but the man was terrified. He shook his head and beat a hasty retreat without another word. It was unnerving to say the least. I thought of shouting after him but remembered the picture of the dribbling kid. I pulled out my automatic, pushed open the door to the street and walked slowly across the road to the building opposite. As I did so Tamworth drew up in his car. He didn't look very happy.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing?\"\n\n\"Pursuing the suspect.\"\n\n\"No you're not. Where's Buckett?\"\n\n\"On his way home.\"\n\n\"I don't blame him. SO-14 on their way?\"\n\nI nodded. He paused, looked up at the dark building and then at me.\n\n\"Shit. Okay, stay behind and stay sharp. Shoot first, then question. Below the eight\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014above the law. I remember.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nTamworth pulled out his gun and we stepped cautiously into the lobby of the converted warehouse. Styx's flat was on the seventh floor. Surprise, hopefully, would be on our side."
            },
            {
                "title": "Search for the Guilty, Punish the Innocent",
                "text": "\u2002...Perhaps it was as well that she had been unconscious for four weeks. She had missed the aftermath, the SO-1 reports, the recriminations, Snood and Tamworth's funerals. She missed everything... except the blame. It was waiting for her when she awoke...\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Thursday Next\u2014A Biography\n\nI tried to focus on the striplight above me. I knew that something had happened but the night when Tamworth and I tackled Acheron Hades had, for the moment at least, been erased from my mind. I frowned, but only fractured images paraded themselves in my consciousness. I remembered shooting a little old lady three times and running down a fire escape. I had a dim recollection of blasting away at my own car and being shot in the arm. I looked at my arm and it was, indeed, tightly bound with a white bandage. Then I remembered being shot again\u2014in the chest. I breathed in and out a couple of times and was relieved that no crackly rasp reached my ears. There was a nurse in the room who said a few words I couldn't decipher and smiled. I thought it odd and then lapsed once again into grateful slumber.\n\nThe next time I awoke it was evening and the room seemed colder. I was alone in a single hospital ward with seven empty beds. Just outside the door I could see an armed police officer on guard duty, while inside a vast quantity of flowers and cards vied for space. As I lay in bed the memories of the evening returned and tumbled out of my subconscious. I resisted them as long as I could but it was like holding back a flood. Everything that had happened that night came back in an instant. And as I remembered, I wept.\n\nWithin a week I was strong enough to get out of bed. Paige and Boswell had both dropped by, and even my mother had made the trip up from Swindon to see me. She told me she had painted the bedroom mauve, much to Dad's disappointment\u2014 and it was my fault for suggesting it. I didn't think I'd bother trying to explain. I was glad of any sympathy, of course, but my mind was elsewhere: there had been a monumental fiasco and someone was going to be responsible; and as the sole survivor of that disastrous evening, I was the strongest and only candidate. A small office was procured in the hospital and into it came Tamworth's old divisional commander, a man whom I had never met named Flanker, who seemed utterly devoid of humor and warmth. He brought with him a twin-cassette tape deck and several SO-1 senior operatives, who declined to give their names. I gave my testimony slowly and frankly, without emotion and as accurately as possible. Acheron's strange powers had been hinted at before, but even so Flanker was having trouble believing it.\n\n\"I've read Tamworth's file on Hades and it makes pretty weird reading, Miss Next,\" he said. \"Tamworth was a bit of a loose cannon. SO-5 was his and his alone; Hades was more of an obsession than a job. From our initial inquiries it seems that he has been flaunting basic SpecOps guidelines. Contrary to popular belief, we are accountable to Parliament, albeit on a very discreet basis.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment and consulted his notes. He looked at me and switched on the tape recorder. He identified the tape with the date, his name and mine, but only referred to the other operatives by numbers. That done, he drew up a chair and sat down.\n\n\"So what happened?\"\n\nI paused for a moment and then began, giving the story of my meeting with Tamworth right up until Buckett's hasty departure.\n\n\"I'm glad that someone seemed to have some sense,\" murmured one of the SO-1 agents. I ignored him.\n\n\"Tamworth and I entered the lobby of Styx's property,\" I told them. \"We took the stairs and on the sixth floor we heard the shot. We stopped and listened but there was complete silence. Tamworth thought we had been rumbled.\"\n\n\"You had been rumbled,\" announced Flanker. \"From the transcript of the tape we know that Snood spoke Hades' name out loud. Hades picked it up and reacted badly; he accused Styx of betraying him, retrieved the package and then killed his brother. Your surprise attack was no surprise. He knew you were both there.\"\n\nI took a sip of water. If we had known, would we have retreated? I doubted it.\n\n\"Who was in front?\"\n\n\"Tamworth. We edged slowly around the stairwell and looked onto the seventh-floor landing. It was empty apart from a little old lady who was facing the lift doors and muttering angrily to herself. Tamworth and I edged closer to Styx's open door and peered in. Styx was lying on the floor and we quickly searched the small apartment.\"\n\n\"We saw you on the surveillance video, Next,\" said one of the nameless operatives. \"Your search was conducted well.\"\n\n\"Did you see Hades on the video?\"\n\nThe same man coughed. They had been having trouble coming to terms with Tamworth's report, but the video was unequivocal. Hades' likeness had not shown up on it at all\u2014just his voice.\n\n\"No,\" he said finally. \"No, we did not.\"\n\n\"Tamworth cursed and walked back to the door,\" I continued. \"It was then that I heard another shot.\"\n\nI stopped for a moment, remembering the event carefully, yet not fully understanding what I had seen and felt. I remembered that my heart rate had dropped; everything had suddenly become crystal clear. I had felt no panic, just an overwhelming desire to see the job completed. I had seen Tamworth die but had felt no emotion; that was to come later.\n\n\"Miss Next?\" asked Flanker, interrupting my thoughts.\n\n\"What? Sorry. Tamworth was hit. I walked over but a quick glance confirmed that the wound was incompatible with survival. I had to assume Hades was on the landing, so I took a deep breath and glanced out.\"\n\n\"What did you see?\"\n\n\"I saw the little old lady, standing by the lift. I had heard no one run off downstairs, so assumed Hades was on the roof. I glanced out again. The old lady gave up waiting and walked past me on her way to the stairs, splashing through a puddle of water on the way. She tuttutted as she passed Tamworth's body. I switched my attention back to the landing and to the stairwell that led to the roof. As I walked slowly toward the roof access, a doubt crept into my mind. I turned back to look at the little old lady, who had started off down the stairs and was grumbling about the infrequency of trams. Her footprints from the water caught my eye. Despite her small feet, the wet footprints were made by a man's-size shoe. I required no more proof. It was Rule Number Two: Acheron could lie in thought, deed, action and appearance. For the first time ever, I fired a gun in anger.\"\n\nThere was silence, so I continued.\n\n\"I saw at least three of the four shots hit the lumbering figure on the stairs. The old lady\u2014or, at the very least, her image\u2014tumbled out of sight and I walked cautiously up to the head of the stairwell. Her belongings were strewn all the way down the concrete steps with her shopping trolley on the landing below. Her groceries had spilled out and several cans of cat food were rolling slowly down the steps.\"\n\n\"So you hit her?\"\n\n\"Definitely.\"\n\nFlanker dug a small evidence bag out of his pocket and showed it to me. It contained three of my slugs, flattened as though they had been fired into the side of a tank.\n\nWhen Flanker spoke again his voice was edged with disbelief.\n\n\"You say that Acheron disguised himself as an old lady?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" I replied, looking straight ahead.\n\n\"How did he do that?\"\n\n\"I don't know, sir.\"\n\n\"How could a man over six foot six dress in a small woman's clothes?\"\n\n\"I don't think he did it physically; I think he just projected what he wanted me to see.\"\n\n\"That sounds crazy.\"\n\n\"There's a lot we don't know about Hades.\"\n\n\"That I can agree with. The old lady's name was Mrs. Grimswold; we found her wedged up the chimney in Styx's apartment. It took three men to pull her out.\"\n\nFlanker thought for a moment and let one of the other men ask a question.\n\n\"I'm interested to know why you were both armed with expanding ammunition,\" said one of the other officers, not looking at me but at the wall. He was short and dark and had an annoying twitch in his left eye. \"Fluted hollow points and high-power loads. What were you planning to shoot? Buffalo?\"\n\nI took a deep breath.\n\n\"Hades was shot six times without any ill effects in '77, sir. Tamworth gave us expanded ammunition to use against him. He said he had SO-1 approval.\"\n\n\"Well, he didn't. If the papers get hold of this there will be hell to pay. SpecOps doesn't have a good relationship with the press, Miss Next. The Mole keeps on wanting access for one of its journalists. In this climate of accountability the politicians are leaning on us more and more. Expanding ammunition!\u2014 Shit, not even the Special Cavalry use those on Russians.\"\n\n\"That's what I said,\" I countered, \"but having seen the state of these\"\u2014I shook the bag of flattened slugs\u2014\"I can see that Tamworth showed considerable restraint. We should have been carrying armor-piercing.\"\n\n\"Don't even think about it.\"\n\nWe had a break then. Flanker and the others vanished into the next room to argue while a nurse changed the dressing on my arm. I had been lucky; there had been no infection. I was thinking about Snood when they returned to resume the interview.\n\n\"As I walked carefully down the stairwell it was apparent that Acheron was now unarmed,\" I continued. \"A nine-millimeter Beretta lay on the concrete steps next to a tin of custard powder. Of Acheron and the little old lady, there was no sign. On the landing I found a door to an apartment that had been pushed open with great force, shearing both hinge pins and the Chubb door bolt. I quickly questioned the occupants of the apartment but they were both insensible with laughter; it seemed Acheron had told them some sort of a joke about three anteaters in a pub, and I got no sense out of either of them.\"\n\nOne of the operatives was slowly shaking her head.\n\n\"What is it now?\" I asked indignantly.\n\n\"Neither of the two people you describe remember you or Hades coming through their apartment. All they recall is the door bursting open for no apparent reason. How do you account for this?\"\n\nI thought for a moment.\n\n\"Obviously, I can't. Perhaps he has control over the weak-minded. We still only have a small idea of this man's powers.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" replied the operative thoughtfully. \"To tell the truth, the couple did try to tell us the joke about the anteaters. We wondered about that.\"\n\n\"It wasn't funny, was it?\"\n\n\"Not at all. But they seemed to think it was.\"\n\nI was beginning to feel angry and didn't like the way the interview was going. I collected my thoughts and continued, arguing to myself that the sooner this was over, the better.\n\n\"I looked slowly around the apartment and found an open window in the bedroom. It led out onto the fire escape, and as I peered out I could see Acheron's form running down the rusty steps four floors below. I knew I couldn't catch him, and it was then that I saw Snood. He stumbled out from behind a parked car and pointed his revolver at Hades as he dropped to the ground. At the time, I didn't understand what he was doing there.\"\n\n\"But you know now?\"\n\nMy heart sank.\n\n\"He was there for me.\"\n\nI felt tears well up and then fought them down. I was damned if I was going to start crying like a baby in front of this bunch, so I expertly turned the sniff into a cough.\n\n\"He was there because he knew what he had done,\" said Flanker. \"He knew that by speaking Hades' name out loud he had compromised you and Tamworth. We believe he was trying to make amends. At eighty-nine years of age, he was attempting to take on a man of superior strength, resolve and intellect. He was brave. He was stupid. Did you hear anything they said?\"\n\n\"Not at first. I proceeded down the fire escape and heard Snood yell out 'Armed Police!' and 'On the ground!' By the time I reached the second floor, Hades had convinced Snood to give up his weapon and had shot him. I fired twice from where I was; Hades stumbled slightly but he soon recovered and sprinted for the nearest car. My car.\"\n\n\"What happened then?\"\n\n\"I clambered down the ladder and dropped to the ground, landing badly on some trash and twisting my ankle. I looked up and saw Acheron punch in the window of my car and open the door. It didn't take him much more than a couple of seconds to tear off the steering lock and start the engine. The street was, I knew, a cul-de-sac. If Acheron wanted to escape it would have to be through me. I hobbled out into the middle of the road and waited. I started firing as soon as he pulled away from the curb. All my shots hit their mark. Two in the windscreen and one in the radiator grille. The car kept accelerating and I kept firing. A wing mirror and the other headlamp shattered. The car would hit me if it carried on as it was, but I didn't really care anymore. The operation was a mess. Acheron had killed Tamworth and Snood. He'd kill countless others if I didn't give it my all. With my last shot I hit his offside front tire and Acheron finally lost control. The car hit a parked Studebaker and turned over, bounced along on its roof and finally teetered to a stop barely three feet from where I stood. It rocked unsteadily for a moment and then was still, the water from the radiator mixing with the petrol that leaked onto the road.\"\n\nI took another sip of water and looked at the assembled faces. They were following my every word, but the hardest part of it was yet to come.\n\n\"I reloaded, then pulled open the driver's door of the upturned car. I had expected Acheron to tumble out in a heap, but Hades, not for the first time that night, had failed to live up to expectations. The car was empty.\"\n\n\"Did you see him escape?\"\n\n\"No. I was just pondering this when I heard a familiar voice behind me. It was Buckett. He had returned.\n\n\"'Where is he?' \" Buckett yelled.\n\n\"'I don't know,' I stammered in reply, checking the back of the car. 'He was here!\u2014'\n\n\"'Stay here!' shouted Buckett. 'I'm going to check around the front!'\n\n\"I was glad to be given orders and spared the burden of initiative. But as Buckett turned to leave he shimmered slightly and I knew something was wrong. Without hesitating, I shot Buckett in the back three times. He collapsed in a heap\u2014\"\n\n\"You shot another operative?\" said one of the SO-1 crowd with an incredulous tone. \"In the back?\" I ignored her.\n\n\"\u2014only it wasn't Buckett, of course. The figure that picked itself up from the road to face me was Acheron. He rubbed his back where I had hit him and smiled benignly.\n\n\"'That wasn't very sporting!' he said with a smile.\n\n\"'I'm not here for the sport,' I assured him.\"\n\nOne of the SO-1 officers interrupted me.\n\n\"You seem to shoot a lot of people in the back, Next. Point-blank range with fluted slugs and he survived? I'm sorry, this is quite impossible!\"\n\n\"It happened.\"\n\n\"She's lying!\u2014\" he said indignantly. \"I've had just about enough of this!\u2014\"\n\nBut Flanker laid a hand on his arm to quieten him.\n\n\"Carry on, Miss Next.\"\n\nI did.\n\n\"'Hello, Thursday,' Hades said.\n\n\"'Acheron,' I replied.\n\n\"He smiled.\n\n\"'Tamworth's blood is getting cold on the concrete upstairs and it's all your fault. Just give me your gun and we can finish this all up and go home.'\n\n\"Hades reached out his hand and I felt a strong impulse to give him my weapon. But I had turned him down before when he was using more persuasive methods\u2014when I was a student and he was a lecturer. Perhaps Tamworth knew I was strong enough to resist him; perhaps this was another reason he wanted me on his team. I don't know. Hades realized this and said instead in a genial manner:\n\n\"'It's been a long time. Fifteen years, isn't it?'\n\n\"'Summer of '69,' I replied grimly. I had little time for his games.\n\n\"'Sixty-nine?' he asked, having thought about it for a moment. 'Sixteen years, then. I seem to remember we were quite chummy.'\n\n\"'You were a brilliant teacher, Acheron. I've not met an intellect to compare with yours. Why all this?'\n\n\"'I could say the same about you,' returned Acheron with a smile. 'You were the only student of mine whom I could ever describe as brilliant, yet here you are, working as a glorified plod; a LiteraTec; a lackey for the Network. What brought you to SO-5?'\n\n\"'Fate.'\n\n\"There was a pause. Acheron smiled.\n\n\"'I always liked you, Thursday. You turned me down and, as we all know, there is nothing more seductive than resistance. I often wondered what I'd do if we met again. My star pupil, my prot\u00e9g\u00e9e. We were nearly lovers.'\n\n\"'I was never your prot\u00e9g\u00e9e, Hades.'\n\n\"He smiled again.\n\n\"'Have you ever wanted a new car?' he asked me quite suddenly.\n\n\"I did, of course, and said so.\n\n\"'How about a large house? How about two large houses? In the country. With grounds. And a Rembrandt.'\n\n\"I saw what he was up to.\n\n\"'If you want to buy my compliance, Acheron, you have to choose the right currency.'\n\n\"Acheron's face fell.\n\n\"'You are strong, Thursday. Avarice works on most people.'\n\n\"I was angry now.\n\n\"'What do you want with the Chuzzlewit manuscript, Acheron? To sell it?'\n\n\"'Stealing and selling? How common,' he sneered. 'I'm sorry about your two friends. Hollow-points make quite a mess, don't they?'\n\n\"We stood there facing one another. It wouldn't be long before SO-14 were on the scene.\n\n\"'On the ground,' I ordered him, 'or I swear I'll fire.'\n\n\"Hades was suddenly a blur of movement. There was a sharp crack and I felt something pluck at my upper arm. There was a sensation of warmth and I realized with a certain detached interest that I had been shot.\n\n\"'Good try, Thursday. How about with the other arm?'\n\n\"Without knowing it, I had loosed off a shot in his direction. It was this that he was congratulating me on. I knew that I had thirty seconds at best before the loss of blood started to make me woozy. I transferred the automatic to my left hand and started to raise it again.\n\n\"Acheron smiled admiringly. He would have continued his brutal game for as long as he could but the distant wail of police sirens hastened him into action. He shot me once in the chest and left me for dead.\"\n\nThe SO-1 officials shuffled slightly as I concluded my story. They swapped looks, but I had no interest in whether they believed me or not. Hades had left me for dead but my time wasn't yet up. The copy of Jane Eyre that Tamworth had given me had saved my life. I had placed it in my breast pocket; Hades' slug had penetrated to the back cover but had not gone through. Broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a bruise to die for\u2014but I had survived. It was luck, or fate, or whatever the hell you want to make of it.\n\n\"That's it?\" asked Flanker.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"That's it.\"\n\nIt wasn't it, of course, there was a lot more, but none of it was relevant to them. I hadn't told them how Hades had used Filbert Snood's death to grind me down emotionally; that was how he managed to get the first shot in.\n\n\"That's about all we need to know, Miss Next. You can return to SO-27 as soon as you are able. I would remind you that you are bound by the confidentiality clause you signed. A misplaced word could have very poor consequences. Is there anything you would like to add yourself?\"\n\nI took a deep breath.\n\n\"I know a lot of this sounds far-fetched, but it is the truth. I am the first witness who has seen what Hades will do to survive. Whoever pursues him in the future must be fully aware of what he is capable of.'\n\nFlanker leaned back in his chair. He looked at the man with the twitch, who nodded in return.\n\n\"Academic, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Hades is dead. SO-14 are not complete losers despite a certain trigger-happiness. They pursued him up the M4 that night until he crashed his car by junction twelve. It rolled down an embankment and burst into flames. We didn't want to tell you until we'd heard your evidence.\"\n\nThe news hit me squarely and hard. Revenge had been a prime emotion keeping me together over the past two weeks. Without a burning desire to see Hades punished, I might not even have made it at all. Without Acheron all my testimony would be left unproven. I hadn't expected it all to be believed, but at least I could look forward to being vindicated when others came across him.\n\n\"Sorry?\" I asked suddenly.\n\n\"I said that Hades was dead.\"\n\n\"No he isn't,\" I said without thinking.\n\nFlanker supposed that my reaction was the effect of traumatic shock.\n\n\"It might be difficult to come to terms with, but he is. Burned almost beyond recognition. We had to identify him by dental records. He still had Snood's pistol with him.\"\n\n\"The Chuzzlewit manuscript?\"\n\n\"No sign\u2014we think destroyed as well.\"\n\nI looked down. The whole operation had been a fiasco.\n\n\"Miss Next,\" said Flanker, standing up and laying a hand on my shoulder, \"you will be pleased to hear that none of this will be published below SO-8. You can return to your unit without a blemish on your record. There were errors, but none of us have any idea how anything might have turned out given a different set of circumstances. As for us, you won't be seeing us again.'\n\nHe turned off the cassette recorder, wished me good health and walked out of the room. The other officers joined him, except for the man with the twitch. He waited until his colleagues were out of earshot then whispered to me:\n\n\"I think your testimony is bullshit, Miss Next. The service can ill afford to lose the likes of Fillip Tamworth.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"For telling me his first name.\"\n\nThe man moved to say something, thought the better of it and then left.\n\nI got up from the table in the impromptu interview room and stared out of the window. It was warm and sunny outside and the trees swayed gently in the breeze; the world looked as though it had little room for people like Hades. I allowed the thoughts of the night to come back again. The part I hadn't told them was about Snood. Acheron had talked some more that night. He had indicated the tired and worn body of Snood and said:\n\n\"Filbert asked me to say he was sorry.\"\n\n\"That's Filbert's father!\u2014\" I corrected him.\n\n\"No,\" he chuckled. \"That was Filbert.\"\n\nI looked at Snood again. He was lying on his back with his eyes open and the likeness was unmistakable, despite the sixty-year age gap.\n\n\"Oh my God, no! Filbert? Was that him?\"\n\nAcheron seemed to be enjoying himself.\n\n\"'Unavoidably detained' is a ChronoGuard euphemism for a time aggregation, Thursday. I'm surprised you didn't know that. Caught outside the herenow. Sixty years piled onto him in less than a minute. It's little surprise he didn't want you to see him.\"\n\nThere hadn't been any girl in Tewkesbury after all. I had heard about time dilations and temporal instabilities from my father. In the world of the Event, the Cone and the Horizon, Filbert Snood had been unavoidably detained. The tragedy of it was, he never felt he could tell me. It was then, as I hit my lowest, that Acheron had turned and fired. It was as he had planned it.\n\nI walked slowly back to my room and sat on the bed feeling utterly dejected. Tears come easily to me when no one is about. I wept copiously for about five minutes and felt a great deal better, blew my nose noisily then switched on the television as a distraction. I rattled through the channels until I chanced across the Toad News Network. It was more about the Crimea, of course.\n\n\"Still on the subject of the Crimea,\" announced the anchorwoman, \"the Goliath Corporation Special Weapons Division has unveiled the latest weapon in the struggle against the Russian aggressors. It is hoped that the new Ballistic Plasma Energy Rifle\u2014code-named 'Stonk'\u2014will be the decisive weapon to change the tide of the war. Our defense correspondent James Backbiter takes us through it.\"\n\nThe scene changed to a close-up of an exotic-looking weapon handled by a soldier in military SpecOps uniform.\n\n\"This is the new Stonk plasma rifle, unveiled today by the Goliath Special Weapons Division,\" announced Backbiter, standing next to the soldier on what was obviously a test range. \"We can't tell you very much about it for obvious reasons, but we can show its effectiveness and report that it uses a bolt of concentrated energy to destroy armor and personnel up to a mile away.\"\n\nI watched in horror as the soldier demonstrated the new weapon. Invisible bolts of energy tore into the target tank with the power of ten of our howitzers. It was like an artillery piece in the palm of your hand. The barrage ended and Backbiter asked a colonel a couple of obviously posed questions as soldiers paraded with the new weapon in the background.\n\n\"When do you suppose the frontline troops will be issued with Stonk?\"\n\n\"The first weapons are being shipped now. The rest will be supplied just as soon as we can set up the necessary factories.\"\n\n\"And finally, its effect on the conflict?\"\n\nA small amount of emotion flickered on the colonel's face.\n\n\"I predict Stonk will have the Russians suing for peace within a month.\"\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" I murmured out loud. I'd heard this particular phrase many times during my time in the military. It had supplanted the hoary old \"over by Christmas\" for sheer fatuousness. It had always, without exception, been followed by an appalling loss of life.\n\nEven before the first deployment of the new weapon, its mere existence had upset the balance of power in the Crimea. No longer keen on a withdrawal, the English government was trying to negotiate a surrender of all Russian troops. The Russians were having none of it. The UN had demanded that both sides return to the talks in Budapest, but it had all stalled; the Imperial Russian Army had dug themselves in against the expected onslaught. Earlier in the day the Goliath Special Weapons spokesman had been instructed to appear before Parliament to explain the delay of the new weapons, as they were now a month behind schedule.\n\nA screech of tires roused me from my thoughts. I looked up. In the middle of the hospital room was a brightly painted sports car. I blinked twice but it didn't vanish. There was no earthly reason why it should be in the room or even any evidence as to how it got there, the door being only wide enough for a bed, but there it was. I could smell the exhaust and hear the engine ticking over, but for some reason I did not find it at all unusual. The occupants were staring at me. The driver was a woman in her midthirties who looked sort of familiar.\n\n\"Thursday!\u2014\" cried the driver with a sense of urgency in her voice.\n\nI frowned. It all looked real and I was definitely sure I had seen the driver somewhere before. The passenger, a young man in a suit whom I didn't know, waved cheerily.\n\n\"He didn't die!\" said the woman, as though she wouldn't have long to speak. \"The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don't die that easily! Take the Litera Tec job in Swindon!\"\n\n\"Swindon?\u2014\" I echoed. I thought I had escaped that town\u2014it afforded me a few too many painful memories.\n\nI opened my mouth to speak but there was another screech of rubber and the car departed, folding up rather than fading out until there was nothing left but the echo of the tires and the faint smell of exhaust. Pretty soon that had gone too, leaving no clue as to its strange appearance. I held my head in my hands. The driver had been very familiar. It had been me.\n\nMy arm was almost healed by the time the internal inquiry circulated its findings. I wasn't permitted to read it but I wasn't bothered. If I had known what was in it, I would probably only have been more dissatisfied and annoyed than I was already. Boswell had visited me again to tell me I had been awarded six months' sick leave before returning, but it didn't help. I didn't want to return to the Litera Tec's office; at least, not in London.\n\n\"What are you going to do?\" asked Paige. She had turned up to help me pack before I was discharged from the hospital.\n\n\"Six months' leave can be a long time if you've got no hobbies or family or boyfriend,\" she went on. She could be very direct at times.\n\n\"I have lots of hobbies.\"\n\n\"Name one.\"\n\n\"Painting.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, really. I'm currently painting a seascape.\"\n\n\"How long has it taken you so far?\"\n\n\"About seven years.\"\n\n\"It must be very good.\"\n\n\"It's a piece of crap.\"\n\n\"Seriously, though,\" said Turner, who had become closer to me in these past few weeks than during the entire time we had known each other, \"what are you going to do?\"\n\nI handed her the SpecOps 27 gazette; it outlined postings around the country. Paige looked at the entry that I had circled in red ink.\n\n\"Swindon?\"\n\n\"Why not? It's home.\"\n\n\"Home it might be,\" replied Turner, \"but weird it definitely is.\" She tapped the job description. \"It's only for an operative\u2014 you've been acting inspector for over three years!\"\n\n\"Three and a half. It doesn't matter. I'm going.\"\n\nI didn't tell Paige the real reason. It could have been a coincidence, of course, but the advice from the driver of the car had been most specific: Take the LiteraTec job in Swindon! Perhaps the vision had been real after all; the gazette with the job offer had arrived after the visitation by the car. If it had been right about the job in Swindon, it stood to reason that perhaps the news about Hades was also correct. Without any further thought, I had applied. I couldn't tell Paige about the car; if she had known, friendship notwithstanding, she would have reported me to Boswell. Boswell would have spoken to Flanker and all sorts of unpleasantness might have happened. I was getting quite good at concealing the truth, and I felt happier now than I had for months.\n\n\"We'll miss you in the department, Thursday.\"\n\n\"It'll pass.\"\n\n\"I'll miss you.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Paige, I appreciate it. I'll miss you too.\"\n\nWe hugged, she told me to keep in touch, and left the room, pager bleeping.\n\nI finished packing and thanked the nursing staff, who gave me a brown paper parcel as I was about to leave.\n\n\"What's this?\" I asked.\n\n\"It belonged to whoever saved your life that night.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"A passerby attended to you before the medics arrived; the wound in your arm was plugged and they wrapped you in their coat to keep you warm. Without their intervention you might well have bled to death.\"\n\nIntrigued, I opened the package. Firstly, there was a handkerchief that despite several washings still bore the stains of my own blood. There was an embroidered monogram in the corner that read EFR. Secondly the parcel contained a jacket, a sort of casual evening coat that might have been very popular in the middle of the last century. I searched the pockets and found a bill from a milliner. It was made out to one Edward Fairfax Rochester, Esq., and was dated 1833. I sat down heavily on the bed and stared at the two articles of clothing and the bill. Ordinarily I would not have believed that Rochester could have torn himself from the pages of Jane Eyre and come to my aid that night; such a thing is, of course, quite impossible. I might have dismissed the whole thing as a ludicrously complicated prank had it not been for one thing: Edward Rochester and I had met once before..."
            },
            {
                "title": "Jane Eyre: A Short Excursion into the Novel",
                "text": "\u2002Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, nor would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey\u2014and returned.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nIt was 1958. My uncle and aunt\u2014who even then seemed old\u2014had taken me up to Haworth House, the old Bront\u00eb residence, for a visit. I had been learning about William Thackeray at school, and since the Bront\u00ebs were contemporaries of his it seemed a good opportunity to further my interest in these matters. My Uncle Mycroft was giving a lecture at Bradford University on his remarkable mathematical work regarding game theory, the most practical side of which allowed one to win at Snakes and Ladders every time. Bradford was near to Haworth, so a combined visit seemed a good idea.\n\nWe were led around by the guide, a fluffy woman in her sixties with steel-rimmed spectacles and an angora cardigan who steered the tourists around the rooms with an abrupt manner, as though she felt that none of them could possibly know as much as she did, but would grudgingly assist to lift them from the depths of their own ignorance. Near the end of the tour, when thoughts had turned to picture postcards and ice cream, the prize exhibit in the form of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre greeted the tired museum-goers.\n\nAlthough the pages had browned with age and the black ink faded to a light brown, the writing could still be read by the practiced eye, the fine spidery longhand flowing across the page in a steady stream of inventive prose. A page was turned every two days, allowing the more regular and fanatical Bront\u00eb followers to read the novel as originally drafted.\n\nThe day that I came to the Bront\u00eb museum the manuscript was open at the point where Jane and Rochester first meet; a chance encounter by a stile.\n\n\"\u2014which makes it one of the greatest romantic novels ever written,\" continued the fluffy yet lofty guide in her oft-repeated monologue, ignoring several hands that had been raised to ask pertinent questions.\n\n\"The character of Jane Eyre, a tough and resilient heroine, drew her apart from the usual heroines of the time, and Rochester, a forbidding yet basically good man, also broke the mold with his flawed character's dour humor. Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Bront\u00eb in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Thackeray described it as 'the master work of a great genius.' We continue on now to the shop where you may purchase picture postcards, commemorative plates, small plastic imitation Heathcliffs and other mementos of your visit. Thank you for\u2014\"\n\nOne of the group had their hand up and was determined to have his say.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" began the young man in an American accent. A muscle in the tour guide's cheek momentarily twitched as she forced herself to listen to someone else's opinion.\n\n\"Yes?\" she inquired with icy politeness.\n\n\"Well,\" continued the young man, \"I'm kinda new to this whole Bront\u00eb thing, but I had trouble with the end of Jane Eyre.\"\n\n\"Trouble?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Like Jane leaves Thornfield Hall and hitches up with her cousins, the Riverses.\"\n\n\"I know who her cousins are, young man.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, she agrees to go with this drippy St. John Rivers guy but not to marry him, they depart for India and that's the end of the book? Hello? What about a happy ending? What happens to Rochester and his nutty wife?\"\n\nThe guide glowered.\n\n\"And what would you prefer? The forces of good and evil fighting to the death in the corridors of Thornfield Hall?\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant,\" continued the young man, beginning to get slightly annoyed. \"It's just that the book cries out for a strong resolution, to tie up the narrative and finish the tale. I get the feeling from what she wrote that she just kinda pooped out.\"\n\nThe guide stared at him for a moment through her steel-rimmed glasses and wondered why the visitors couldn't behave just that little bit more like sheep. Sadly, his point was a valid one; she herself had often pondered the diluted ending, wishing, like millions of others, that circumstances had allowed Jane and Rochester to marry after all.\n\n\"Some things will never be known,\" she replied noncommittally. Charlotte is no longer with us so the question is abstract. What we have to study and enjoy is what she has left us. The sheer exuberance of the writing easily outweighs any of its small shortcomings.\"\n\nThe young American nodded and the small crowd moved on, my aunt and uncle among them. I hung back until only I and a single Japanese tourist were left in the room; I then tried to look at the original manuscript on tiptoe. It was tricky, as I was small for my age.\n\n\"Would you like me to read it for you?\" said a kindly voice close at hand. It was the Japanese tourist. She smiled at me and I thanked her for her trouble.\n\nShe checked that no one was around, unfolded her reading glasses and started to speak. She spoke excellent English and had a fine reading voice; the words peeled off the page into my imagination as she spoke.\n\n...In those days I was young and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind; the memories of nursery stories were there among other rubbish; and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigor and vividness beyond what childhood could give...\n\nI closed my eyes and a thin chill suddenly filled the air around me. The tourist's voice was clear now, as though speaking in the open air, and when I opened my eyes the museum had gone. In its place was a country lane of another place entirely. It was a fine winter's evening and the sun was just dipping below the horizon. The air was perfectly still, the color washed from the scene. Apart from a few birds that stirred occasionally in the hedge, no movement punctuated the starkly beautiful landscape. I shivered as I saw my own breath in the crisp air, zipped up my jacket and regretted that I had left my hat and mittens on the peg downstairs. As I looked about I could see that I was not alone. Barely ten feet away a young woman, dressed in a cloak and bonnet, was sitting on a stile watching the moon that had just risen behind us. When she turned I could see that her face was plain and outwardly unremarkable, yet possessed of a bearing that showed inner strength and resolve. I stared at her intently with a mixture of feelings. I had realized not long ago that I myself was no beauty, and even at the age of nine had seen how the more attractive children gained favor more easily. But here in that young woman I could see how those principles could be inverted. I felt myself stand more upright and clench my jaw in subconscious mimicry of her pose.\n\nI was just thinking about asking her where the museum had gone when a sound in the lane made us both turn. It was an approaching horse, and the young woman seemed startled for a moment. The lane was narrow, and I stepped back to give the horse room to pass. As I waited, a large black-and-white dog rushed along the hedge, nosing the ground for anything of interest. The dog ignored the figure on the stile but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. His tail wagged enthusiastically and he bounded over, sniffing me inquisitively, his hot breath covering me in a warm cloak and his whiskers tickling my cheek. I giggled and the dog wagged his tail even harder. He had sniffed along this hedge during every single reading of the book for over 130 years, but had never come across anything that smelled so, well... real. He licked me several times with great affection. I giggled again and pushed him away, so he ran off to find a stick.\n\nFrom subsequent readings of the book I was later to realize that the dog Pilot had never had the opportunity to fetch a stick, his appearances in the book being all too few, so he was obviously keen to take the opportunity when it presented itself. He must have known, almost instinctively, that the little girl who had momentarily appeared at the bottom of page eighty-one was unfettered by the rigidity of the narrative. He knew that he could stretch the boundaries of the story a small amount, sniffing along one side of the lane or the other since it wasn't specified; but if the text stated that he had to bark or run around or jump up, then he was obliged to comply. It was a long and repetitive existence, which made the rare appearances of people like me that much more enjoyable.\n\nI looked up and noticed that the horse and rider had just passed the young woman. The rider was a tall man with distinguished features and a careworn face, bent into a frown by some musings that seemed to envelop him in thoughtful detachment. He had not seen my small form and the safe route down the lane led right through where I was standing; opposite me was a treacherous slab of ice. Within a few moments the horse was upon me, the heavy hooves thumping the hard ground, the hot breath from its velvety nose blowing on my face. Suddenly, the rider, perceiving the small girl in his path for the first time, uttered: \"What the deuce\u2014\" and reined his horse rapidly to the left, away from me but onto the slippery ice. The horse lost its footing and went crashing to the ground. I took a step back, mortified at the accident I had caused. The horse struggled to gain a footing and the dog, hearing the commotion, returned to the scene, presented me with a stick and then barked at the fallen group excitedly, his deep growl echoing in the still evening. The young woman approached the fallen man with grave concern on her face. She was eager to be of assistance and spoke for the first time.\n\n\"Are you injured, sir?\"\n\nThe rider muttered something incomprehensible and ignored her completely.\n\n\"Can I do anything?\" she asked again.\n\n\"You must just stand on one side,\" answered the rider in a gruff tone as he rose shakily to his feet. The young woman stepped back as the rider helped his horse recover with a clattering and stamping of hooves. He silenced the dog with a shout and then stopped to feel his leg; it was obvious that he had hurt it quite badly. I felt sure that a man of such dour demeanor must surely be very angry with me, yet when he espied me again he smiled kindly and gave me a broad wink, placing a finger to his lips to ensure my silence. I smiled back, and the rider turned to face the young woman, his brow furrowing once more into a grimace as he fell back into character.\n\nHigh in the evening sky I could hear a distant voice calling my name. The voice grew louder and the sky darkened. The cold air warmed on my face as the lane evaporated, the horse, rider, young woman and the dog returning to the pages of the book whence they had sprung. The room in the museum faded in about me and the images and smells transformed back into the spoken word as the woman finished the sentence.\n\n...for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen and sat down...\n\n\"Thursday!\" cried my Aunt Polly crossly. \"Do try to keep up. I'll be asking questions later!\"\n\nShe took me by the hand and led me away. I turned and waved my thanks to the Japanese tourist, who smiled genially back at me.\n\nI returned to the museum a few times after that but the magic never worked again. My mind had closed too much by the time I was twelve, already a young woman. I only ever spoke of it to my uncle, who nodded sagely and believed every word. I never told anyone else. Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.\n\nAs I got older I started to doubt the validity of my own memory, until by my eighteenth birthday I had written it off as the product of an overactive imagination. Rochester's reappearance outside Styx's apartment that night served only to confuse. Reality, to be sure, was beginning to bend."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Goliath Corporation",
                "text": "\u2002...No one would argue that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Goliath Corporation. They helped us to rebuild after the Second War and it should not be forgotten. Of late, however, it seems as though the Goliath Corporation is falling far short of its promises of fairness and altruism. We are finding ourselves now in the unfortunate position of continuing to pay back a debt that has long since been paid\u2014with interest...\n\n\u2014Speech to Parliament by English Goliathsceptic SAMUEL PRING\n\nI was in the SpecOps Memorial Cemetery in Highgate looking at Snood's headstone. It read:\n\n\u2002Filbert R. Snood\n\n\u2002A fine operative who gave his\n\n\u2002years in the line of duty.\n\n\u2002Time waits for no man\n\n\u2002SO-12 & SO-5\n\n\u20021953\u20131985\n\nThey say the job ages you\u2014and it had aged Filbert a lot. Perhaps it had been for the best when he didn't call after the accident. It couldn't have worked and the breakup when it came\u2014as it surely would\u2014might have been too painful. I placed a small stone atop his headstone and bid him adieu.\n\n\"You were lucky,\" said a voice. I turned and saw a short man in an expensive suit sitting on the bench opposite.\n\n\"I'm sorry?\" I asked, taken aback by the intrusion into my thoughts. The small man smiled and stared at me intently.\n\n\"I'd like to speak to you about Acheron, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"It's one of the rivers that flow to the underworld,\" I told him. \"Try the local library under Greek mythology.\"\n\n\"I was referring to the person.\"\n\nI stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out who he was. He wore a small porkpie hat balanced on top of a rounded head that had been crew cut like a tennis ball. His features were sharp, his lips thin, and he was not what you'd call an attractive-looking human being. He sported heavy gold jewelery and a diamond tiepin that twinkled like a star. His patent-leather brogues were covered in white spats and a gold watch chain dangled from his waistcoat pocket. He was not alone. A young man also in a dark suit with a bulge where a pistol should be was standing next to him. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts I hadn't noticed them approach. I figured they were SpecOps Internal Affairs or something; I guessed that Flanker and Co. weren't finished with me yet.\n\n\"Hades is dead,\" I replied simply, unwilling to get embroiled.\n\n\"You don't seem to think so.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, I've been given six months off due to work-related stress. The shrink reckons I'm suffering from false memory syndrome and hallucinations. I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you\u2014and that includes what I just told you.\"\n\nThe small man smiled again, displaying a large gold tooth.\n\n\"I don't believe you're suffering from stress at all, Miss Next. I think you're as sane as I am. If someone who survived the Crimea, the police and then eight years of tricky LiteraTec work came to me and told me that Hades was still alive, I'd listen to them.\"\n\n\"And who might you be?\"\n\nHe handed me a gold-edged card with the dark blue Goliath Corporation logo embossed on it.\n\n\"The name's Schitt,\" he replied. \"Jack Schitt.\"\n\nI shrugged. The card told me he was head of Goliath's internal security service, a shadowy organization that was well outside government; by constitutional decree they were answerable to no one. The Goliath Corporation had honorary members in both houses and financial advisers at the Treasury. The judiciary was well represented with Goliath people on the selection panel for High Court judges, and most major universities had a Goliath overseer living within the faculty. No one ever noticed how much they influenced the running of the country, which perhaps shows how good at it they were. Yet, for all Goliath's outward benevolence, there were murmurs of dissent over the Corporation's continued privilege. Their public servants were unelected by the people or the government and their activities enshrined in statute. It was a brave politician who dared to voice disquiet.\n\nI sat next to him on the bench. He dismissed his henchman.\n\n\"So what's your interest in Hades, Mr. Schitt?\"\n\n\"I want to know if he's alive or dead.\"\n\n\"You read the coroner's report, didn't you?\"\n\n\"It only told me that a man of Hades' height, stature and teeth was incinerated in a car. Hades has got out of worse scrapes than that. I read your report; much more interesting. Quite why those clowns in SO-1 dismissed it out of hand I have no idea. With Tamworth dead you're the only operative who knows anything about him. I'm not really concerned about whose fault it was that night. What I want to know is this: What was Acheron going to do with the manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit?\"\n\n\"Extortion, perhaps?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Possibly. Where is it now?\"\n\n\"Wasn't it with him?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Schitt evenly. \"In your testimony you said he took it with him in a leather case. No trace was found of it in the burned-out car. If he did survive, so did the manuscript.\"\n\nI looked at him blankly, wondering where all this was going.\n\n\"He must have passed it to an accomplice, then.\"\n\n\"Possibly. The manuscript could be worth up to five million on the black market, Miss Next. A lot of money, don't you think?\"\n\n\"What are you suggesting?\" I asked sharply, my temper rising.\n\n\"Nothing at all; but your testimony and Acheron's corpse don't really add up, do they? You said that you shot him after he killed the young officer.\"\n\n\"His name was Snood,\" I said pointedly.\n\n\"Whoever. But the burned corpse had no gunshot wounds despite the many times you shot him when he was disguised as Buckett or the old woman.\"\n\n\"Her name was Mrs. Grimswold.\"\n\nI stared at him. Schitt continued.\n\n\"I saw the flattened slugs. You would have got the same effect if you had fired them into a wall.\"\n\n\"If you have a point, why don't you get to it?\"\n\nSchitt unscrewed the cap of a Thermos flask and offered it to me. I refused; he poured himself a drink and continued:\n\n\"I think you know more than you say you do. We only have your word for the events of that night. Tell me, Miss Next, what was Hades planning to use the manuscript for?\"\n\n\"I told you: I have no idea.\"\n\n\"Then why are you going to work as a Litera Tec in Swindon?\"\n\n\"It was all I could get.\"\n\n\"That's not true. Your work has been consistently assessed above average and your record states that you haven't been back to Swindon in ten years despite your family living there. A note appended to your file speaks of 'romantic tensions'. Man trouble in Swindon?\"\n\n\"None of your business.\"\n\n\"In my line of work I find there is very little that isn't my business. There are a host of other things a woman with your talents could do, but to go back to Swindon? Something tells me you have another motive.\"\n\n\"Does it really say all that in my file?\"\n\n\"It does.\"\n\n\"What color are my eyes?\"\n\nSchitt ignored me and took a sip of coffee.\n\n\"Colombian. The best. You think Hades is alive, Next. I think you have an idea where he is and I'm willing to guess that he is in Swindon and that's why you're going there. Am I correct?\"\n\nI looked him straight in the eye.\n\n\"No. I'm just going home to sort myself out.\"\n\nJack Schitt remained unconvinced.\n\n\"I don't believe there is such a thing as stress, Next. Just weak people and strong people. Only strong people survive men like Hades. You're a strong person.\"\n\nHe paused.\n\n\"If you change your mind, you can call me. But be warned. I'll be keeping a close eye on you.\"\n\n\"Do as you will, Mr. Schitt, but I've got a question for you.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"What's your interest in Hades?\"\n\nJack Schitt smiled again.\n\n\"I'm afraid that's classified, Miss Next. Good-day.\"\n\nHe tipped his hat, rose and left. A black Ford with smoked-glass windows pulled up outside the cemetery and drove him quickly away.\n\nI sat and thought. I had lied to the police psychiatrist in saying I was fit for work and lied to Jack Schitt in saying that I wasn't. If Goliath was interested in Hades and the Chuzzlewit manuscript, it could only be for financial gain. The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings. Money came first to Goliath and nobody trusted them farther than they could throw them. They may have rebuilt England after the Second War, they may have reestablished the economy. But sooner or later the renewed nation had to stand on its own and Goliath was seen now as less of a benevolent uncle than a despotic stepfather."
            },
            {
                "title": "Airship to Swindon",
                "text": "\u2002...There is no point in expending good money on the pursuit of an engine that can power aircraft without propellers. What is wrong with airships anyway? They have borne mankind aloft for over a hundred relatively accident-free years and I see no reason to impugn their popularity...\n\n\u2014Congresswoman Kelly, arguing against parliamentary funds for the development of a new form of propulsion, August 1972\n\nI took a small twenty-seater airship to Swindon. It was only half-full and a brisk tailwind allowed us to make good time. The train would have been cheaper, but like many people I love to fly by gasbag. I had, when I was a little girl, been taken on an immense clipper-class airship to Africa by my parents. We had flown slowly across France, over the Eiffel Tower, past Lyon, stopped at Nice, then traveled across the sparkling Mediterranean, waving at fishermen and passengers in ocean liners who waved back. We had stopped at Cairo after circling the Pyramids with infinite grace, the captain expertly maneuvering the leviathan with the skillful use of the twelve fully orientable propellers. We had continued up the Nile three days later to Luxor, where we joined a cruise ship for the return to the coast. Here we boarded the Ruritania for the return to England, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay. Little wonder that I tried to return to the fond memories of my childhood as often as I could.\n\n\"Magazine, ma'am?\" asked a steward.\n\nI declined. In-flight airship magazines were always dull, and I was quite happy just to watch the English landscape slide past beneath me. It was a glorious sunny day, and the airship droned past the small puffy clouds that punctuated the sky like a flock of aerial sheep. The Chilterns had risen to meet us and then dropped away as we swept past Wallingford, Didcot and Wantage. The Uffington White Horse drifted below me, bringing back memories of picnics and courting. Landen and I had often been there.\n\n\"Corporal Next?\u2014\" inquired a familiar voice. I turned to find a middle-aged man standing in the aisle, a half-smile on his face. I knew instantly who it was, even though we had not met for twelve years.\n\n\"Major!\u2014\" I responded, stiffening slightly in the presence of someone who had once been my superior officer. His name was Phelps, and I had been under his command the day the Light Armored Brigade had advanced into the Russian guns in error as they sought to repulse an attack on Balaclava. I had been the driver of the armored personnel carrier under Phelps; it had not been a happy time.\n\nThe airship started the slow descent into Swindon.\n\n\"How have you been, Next?\" he asked, our past association dictating the way in which we spoke to one another.\n\n\"I've been well, sir. Yourself?\"\n\n\"Can't complain.\" He laughed. \"Well, I could, but it wouldn't do any good. The damn fools made me a colonel, dontcha know it.\"\n\n\"Congratulations,\" I said, slightly uneasily.\n\nThe steward asked us to fasten our seat belts and Phelps sat down next to me and snapped on the buckle. He carried on talking in a slightly lower voice.\n\n\"I'm a bit concerned about the Crimea.\"\n\n\"Who isn't?\" I countered, wondering if Phelps had changed his politics since the last time we had met.\n\n\"Quite. It's these UN johnnies poking their noses where they're not welcome. Makes all those lives seem wasted if we give it back now.\"\n\nI sighed. His politics hadn't changed and I didn't want an argument. I had wanted the war finished almost as soon as I got out there. It didn't fit into my idea of what a just war should be. Pushing Nazis out of Europe had been just. The fight over the Crimean Peninsula was nothing but xenophobic pride and misguided patriotism.\n\n\"How's the hand?\" I asked.\n\nPhelps showed me a lifelike left hand. He rotated the wrist and then wiggled the fingers. I was impressed.\n\n\"Remarkable, isn't it?\" he said. \"They take the impulses from a sensor thingummy strapped to the muscles in the upper arm. If I'd lost the blasted thing above the elbow I'd have looked a proper Charlie.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment and returned to his first subject.\n\n\"I'm a bit concerned that public pressure might have the government pulling the plug before the offensive.\"\n\n\"Offensive?\"\n\nColonel Phelps smiled.\n\n\"Of course. I have friends higher up who tell me it's only a matter of days before the first shipment of the new plasma rifles arrives. Do you think the Russians will be able to defend themselves against Stonk?\"\n\n\"Frankly, no; that is unless they have their own version.\"\n\n\"Not a chance. Goliath is the most advanced weapons company in the world. Believe me, I'm hoping as much as the next man that we never have to use it, but Stonk is the high ground this conflict has been waiting for.\"\n\nHe rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out a leaflet.\n\n\"I'm touring England giving pro-Crimea talks. I'd like you to come along.\"\n\n\"I don't really think\u2014\" I began, taking the leaflet anyway.\n\n\"Nonsense!\" replied Colonel Phelps. \"As a healthy and successful veteran of the campaign it is your duty to give voice to those that made the ultimate sacrifice. If we give the peninsula back, every single one of those lives will have been lost in vain.\"\n\n\"I think, sir, that those lives have already been lost and no decision we can make in any direction can change that.\"\n\nHe pretended not to hear and I lapsed into silence. Colonel Phelps's rabid support of the conflict had been his way of dealing with the disaster. The order was given to charge against what we were told would be a \"token resistance\" but turned out to be massed Russian field artillery. Phelps had ridden the APC on the outside until the Russians opened up with everything they had; a shell-burst had taken his lower arm off and peppered his back with shrapnel. We had loaded him up with as many other soldiers as we could, driving back to the English lines with the carrier a mound of groaning humanity. I had gone back into the carnage against orders, driving among the shattered armor looking for survivors. Of the seventy-six APCs and light tanks that advanced into the Russian guns, only two vehicles returned. Out of the 534 soldiers involved, 51 survived, only 8 of them completely uninjured. One of the dead had been Anton Next, my brother. Disaster doesn't even begin to describe it.\n\nFortunately for me the airship docked soon after and I was able to avoid Colonel Phelps in the airfield lounge. I picked up my case from baggage retrieval and stayed locked in the ladies' until I thought he had gone. I tore his leaflet into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. The airfield lounge was empty when I came out. It was bigger than was required for the amount of traffic that came to town; an off-white elephant that reflected the dashed hopes of Swindon's town planners. The concourse outside was similarly deserted except for two students holding an anti-Crimea war banner. They had heard of Phelps's arrival and hoped that they could turn him from his prowar campaigning. They had two chances: fat and slim.\n\nThey looked at me and I turned quickly away. If they knew who Phelps was, they might quite conceivably know who I was as well. I looked around the empty pickup point. I had spoken on the phone to Victor Analogy\u2014the head of the Swindon LiteraTecs\u2014and he had offered to send a car to pick me up. It hadn't arrived. It was hot, so I removed my jacket. A looped recording came over the Tannoy exhorting nonexistent drivers not to park in the deserted white zone, and a bored-looking worker came by and returned a few trolleys. I sat down next to a WillSpeak machine at the far end of the concourse. The last time I was in Swindon the airship park had been simply a grass field with a rusty mast. I guessed that much else had changed too.\n\nI waited five minutes, then stood and paced impatiently up and down. The WillSpeak machine\u2014officially known as a Shakespeare Soliloquy Vending Automaton\u2014was of Richard III. It was a simple box, with the top half glazed and inside a realistic mannequin visible from the waist up in suitable attire. The machine would dispense a short snippet of Shakespeare for ten pence. They hadn't been manufactured since the thirties and were now something of a rarity; Baconic vandalism and a lack of trained maintenance were together hastening their demise.\n\nI dug out a ten-pence piece and inserted it. There was a gentle whirring and clicking from within as the machine wound itself up to speed. There had been a Hamlet version on the corner of Commercial Road when I was small. My brother and I had pestered our mother for loose change and listened to the mannequin refer to things we couldn't really understand. It told us of \"the undiscovered country.\" My brother, in his childish na\u00e9\u00afvet\u00e9, had said he wanted to visit such a place, and he did, seventeen years later, in a mad dash sixteen hundred miles from home, the only sound the roar of engines and the crump-crump-crump of the Russian guns.\n\nWas ever woman in this humor wooed? asked the mannequin, rolling its eyes crazily as it stuck one finger in the air and lurched from side to side.\n\nWas ever woman in this humor won?\n\nIt paused for effect.\n\nI'll have her, but I'll not keep her long...\n\n\"Excuse me?\u2014\"\n\nI looked up. One of the students had walked up and touched me on the arm. He wore a peace button in his lapel and had a pair of pince-nez glasses perched precariously on his large nose.\n\n\"You're Next, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Next for what?\"\n\n\"Corporal Next, Light Armored Brigade.\"\n\nI rubbed my brow.\n\n\"I'm not here with the colonel. It was a coincidence.\"\n\n\"I don't believe in coincidences.\"\n\n\"Neither do I. That's a coincidence, isn't it?\"\n\nThe student looked at me oddly as his girlfriend joined him. He told her who I was.\n\n\"You were the one who went back,\" she marveled, as though I were a rare stuffed parakeet. \"It was against a direct order. They were going to court-martial you.\"\n\n\"Well, they didn't, did they?\"\n\n\"Not when The Owl on Sunday got wind of your story. I've read your testimony at the inquiry. You're antiwar.\"\n\nThe two students looked at one another as if they couldn't believe their good fortune.\n\n\"We need someone to talk at Colonel Phelps's rally,\" said the young man with the big nose. \"Someone from the other side. Someone who has been there. Someone with clout. Would you do that for us?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\nI looked around to see if, by a miracle, my lift had arrived. It hadn't.\n\n...Whom I, continued the mannequin, some three months hence, stabbed in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?\n\n\"Listen, guys, I'd love to help you, but I can't. I've spent twelve years trying to forget. Speak to some other vet. There are thousands of us.\"\n\n\"Not like you, Miss Next. You survived the charge. You went back to get your fallen comrades out. One of the fifty-one. It's your duty to speak on behalf of those that didn't make it.\"\n\n\"Bullshit. My duty is to myself. I survived the charge and have lived with it every single day since. Every night I ask myself: Why me? Why did I live and the others, my brother even, die? There is no answer to that question and that's only just where the pain starts. I can't help you.\"\n\n\"You don't have to speak,\" said the girl persistently, \"but better for one old wound to open than a thousand new ones, eh?\"\n\n\"Don't teach me morality, you little shit,\" I said, my voice rising.\n\nIt had the desired effect. She handed me a leaflet, took her boyfriend by the arm, and departed.\n\nI closed my eyes. My heart was beating like the crump-crump-crump of the Russian field artillery. I didn't hear the squad car pull up beside me.\n\n\"Officer Next?\u2014\" asked a cheery voice.\n\nI turned and nodded gratefully, picked up my case and walked over. The officer in the car smiled at me. He had long dreadlocked hair and a pair of overly large dark glasses. His uniform was open at the collar in an uncharacteristically casual way for a SpecOps officer, and he wore a goodly amount of jewelry, also strictly against SpecOps guidelines.\n\n\"Welcome to Swindon, Officer! The town where anything can happen and probably will!\"\n\nHe smiled broadly and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the car.\n\n\"Trunk's open.\"\n\nThe boot contained a lot of iron stakes, several mallets, a large crucifix and a pick and shovel. There was also a musty smell, the smell of mold and the long dead\u2014I hurriedly threw in my bag and slammed the boot lid down. I walked around to the passenger door and got in.\n\n\"Shit!\u2014\" I cried out, suddenly noticing that in the back, pacing the rear seats behind a strong mesh screen, was a large Siberian wolf. The officer laughed loudly.\n\n\"Take no notice of the pup, ma'am! Officer Next, I'd like you to meet Mr. Meakle. Mr. Meakle, this is Officer Next.\"\n\nHe was talking about the wolf. I stared at the wolf, which stared back at me with an intensity that I found disconcerting. The officer laughed like a drain and pulled away with a lurch and a squeal of tires. I had forgotten just how weird Swindon could be.\n\nAs we drove off, the WillSpeak machine came to an end, reciting the last part of its soliloquy to itself:\n\n...Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, that I might see my shadow, as I pass.\n\nThere was a clicking and whirring and then the mannequin stopped abruptly, lifeless again until the next coin.\n\n\"Beautiful day,\" I commented once we were under way.\n\n\"Every day is a beautiful day, Miss Next. The name's Stoker\u2014\"\n\nHe pulled out onto the Stratton bypass.\n\n\"\u2014SpecOps-17: Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operations. Suckers and biters, they call us. My friends call me Spike. You,\" he added with a broad grin, \"can call me Spike.\"\n\nBy way of explanation he tapped a mallet and stake that were clipped to the mesh partition.\n\n\"What do they call you, Miss Next?\"\n\n\"Thursday.\"\n\n\"Pleased to meet you, Thursday.\"\n\nHe proffered a huge hand that I shook gratefully. I liked him immediately. He leaned against the door pillar to get the best out of the cooling breeze and tapped a beat out on the steering wheel. A recent scratch on his neck oozed a small amount of blood.\n\n\"You're bleeding,\" I observed.\n\nSpike wiped it away with his hand.\n\n\"It's nothing. He gave me a bit of a struggle!\u2014\"\n\nI looked in the back seat again. The wolf was sitting down, scratching its ear with a hind leg.\n\n\"\u2014but I'm immunized against lycanthropy. Mr. Meakle just won't take his medication. Will you, Mr. Meakle?\"\n\nThe wolf pricked up its ears as the last vestige of the human within him remembered his name. He started to pant in the heat. Spike went on:\n\n\"His neighbors called. All the cats in the neighborhood had gone missing; I found him rummaging in the bins behind SmileyBurger. He'll be in for treatment, morph back and be on the streets again by Friday. He has rights, they tell me. What's your posting?\"\n\n\"I'm... ah... joining SpecOps-27.\"\n\nSpike laughed loudly again.\n\n\"A LiteraTec!? Always nice to meet someone as underfunded as I am. Some good faces in that office. Your chief is Victor Analogy. Don't be fooled by the gray hairs\u2014he's as sharp as a knife. The others are all A-one Ops. A bit shiny-arsed and a mite too smart for me, but there you go. Where am I taking you?\"\n\n\"The Finis Hotel.\"\n\n\"First time in Swindon?\"\n\n\"Sadly, no,\" I replied. \"It's my hometown. I was in the regular force here until '75. You?\"\n\n\"Welsh Border guard for ten years. I got into some darkness at Oswestry in '79 and discovered I had a talent for this kind of shit. I trannied here from Oxford when the two depots merged. You're looking at the only Staker south of Leeds. I run my own office but it's mighty lonesome. If you know anyone handy with a mallet?\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I don't,\" I replied, wondering why anyone would consciously wish to fight the supreme powers of darkness for a basic SpecOps salary, \"but if I come across anyone, I'll let you know. What happened to Chesney? He ran the department when I was here last.\"\n\nA cloud crossed Spike's usually bright features and he sighed deeply.\n\n\"He was a good friend but he fell into shadows. Became a servant of the dark one. I had to hunt him down myself. The spike 'n' decap was the easy part. The tricky bit was having to tell his wife\u2014she wasn't exactly overjoyed.\"\n\n\"I guess I'd be a bit pissed off too.\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" continued Spike, cheering up almost immediately, \"you don't have to tell me shit, but what is a good-looking SpecOps doing joining the Swindon Litera Tecs?\"\n\n\"I had a spot of bother in London.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" replied Spike knowingly.\n\n\"I'm also looking for someone.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nI looked over at him and made an instant judgment call. If I could trust anyone, I could trust Spike.\n\n\"Hades.\"\n\n\"Acheron? Flatline, sister. The man's toast. Crashed and burned at J-twelve on the four.\"\n\n\"So we're led to believe. If you hear anything?\u2014\"\n\n\"No problem, Thursday.\"\n\n\"And we can keep this between ourselves?\"\n\nHe smiled.\n\n\"After staking, secrets is what I do best.\"\n\n\"Hang on\u2014\"\n\nI had caught sight of a brightly colored sports car in a secondhand car lot on the other side of the road. Spike slowed down.\n\n\"What's up?\"\n\n\"I... er... need a car. Can you drop me over there?\"\n\nSpike executed an illegal U-turn, causing the following car to brake violently and slew across the road. The driver started to hurl abuse until he saw that it was a SpecOps black and white, then wisely kept quiet and drove on. I retrieved my bag.\n\n\"Thanks for the lift. I'll see you about.\"\n\n\"Not if I see you first!\" said Spike. \"I'll see what I can dig up on your missing friend.\"\n\n\"I'd appreciate it. Thanks.\"\n\n\"Goodbye.\"\n\n\"So long.\"\n\n\"Cheerio,\" said a timid-sounding voice from the back. We both turned and looked into the rear of the car. Mr. Meakle had changed back. A thin, rather pathetic-looking man was sitting in the back seat, completely naked and very muddy. His hands were clasped modestly over his genitals.\n\n\"Mr. Meakle! Welcome back!\" said Spike, grinning broadly as he added in a scolding tone: \"You didn't take your tablets, did you?\"\n\nMr. Meakle shook his head miserably.\n\nI thanked Spike again. As he drove off I could see Mr. Meakle waving to me a bit stupidly through the rear window. Spike did another U-turn, causing a second car to brake hard, and was gone.\n\nI stared at the sports car on the front row of the lot under a banner marked BARGAIN. There could be no mistake. The car was definitely the one that had appeared before me in my hospital room. And I had been driving it. It was me who had told me to come to Swindon. It was me who had told me that Acheron wasn't dead. If I hadn't come to Swindon then I wouldn't have seen the car and wouldn't have been able to buy it. It didn't make a great deal of sense, but what little I did know was that I had to have it.\n\n\"Can I help you, madam?\" asked an oily salesman who had appeared almost from nowhere, rubbing his hands nervously and sweating profusely in the heat.\n\n\"This car. How long have you had it?\"\n\n\"The 356 Speedster? About six months.\"\n\n\"Has it ever been up to London in that time?\"\n\n\"London?\" repeated the salesman, slightly puzzled. \"Not at all. Why?\"\n\n\"No reason. I'll take it.\"\n\nThe salesman looked slightly shocked.\n\n\"Are you sure? Wouldn't you like something a little more practical? I have a good selection of Buicks which have just come in. Ex-Goliath but with low mileage, you know\u2014\"\n\n\"This one,\" I said firmly.\n\nThe salesman smiled uneasily. The car was obviously at a giveaway price and they didn't stand to make a bean on it. He muttered something feeble and hurried off to get the keys.\n\nI sat inside. The interior was spartan in the extreme. I had never thought myself very interested in cars, but this one was different. It was outrageously conspicuous with curious paintwork in red, blue and green, but I liked it immediately. The salesman returned with the keys and it started on the second turn. He did the necessary paperwork and half an hour later I drove out of the lot into the road. The car accelerated rapidly with a rasping note from the tailpipe. Within a couple of hundred yards the two of us were inseparable."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Next Family",
                "text": "\u2002...I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton\u2014go figure. My mother was called Wednesday but was born on a Sunday\u2014I don't know why\u2014and my father had no name at all\u2014his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me...\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nI took my new car for a drive in the countryside with the top down; the rushing air was a cool respite from the summer heat. The familiar landscape had not changed much; it was still as beautiful as I remembered. Swindon, on the other hand, had changed a great deal. The town had spread outward and up. Light industry went outward, financial glassy towers in the center went up. The residential area had expanded accordingly; the countryside was just that much farther from the center of town.\n\nIt was evening when I pulled up in front of a plain semidetached house in a street that contained forty or fifty just like it. I flipped up the hood and locked the car. This was where I had grown up; my bedroom was the window above the front door. The house had aged. The painted window frames had faded and the pebbledash facing seemed to be coming away from the wall in several areas. I pushed open the front gate with some difficulty as there was a good deal of resistance behind it, and then closed it again with a similar amount of heaving and sweating\u2014 a task made more difficult by the assortment of dodos who had gathered eagerly around to see who it was and then plocked excitedly when they realized it was someone vaguely familiar.\n\n\"Hello, Mordacai!\" I said to the oldest, who dipped and bobbed in greeting. They all wanted to be made a fuss of after that, so I stayed awhile and tickled them under their chins as they searched my pockets inquisitively for any sign of marshmallows, something that dodos find particularly irresistible.\n\nMy mother opened the door to see what the fuss was about and ran up the path to meet me. The dodos wisely scattered, as my mother can be dangerous at anything more than a fast walk. She gave me a long hug. I returned it gratefully.\n\n\"Thursday!\u2014\" she said, her eyes glistening. \"Why didn't you tell us you were coming?\"\n\n\"It was a surprise, Mum. I've got a posting in town.\"\n\nShe had visited me in hospital several times and bored me in a delightfully distracting manner with all the minutiae of Margot Vishler's hysterectomy and the Women's Federation gossip.\n\n\"How's the arm?\"\n\n\"It can be a bit stiff sometimes and when I sleep on it, it goes completely numb. Garden's looking nice. Can I come in?\"\n\nMy mother apologized and ushered me through the door, taking my jacket and hanging it up in the cloakroom. She looked awkwardly at the automatic in my shoulder holster so I stuffed it in my case. The house, I soon noticed, was exactly the same: the same mess, the same furniture, the same smell. I paused to look around, to take it all in and bathe in the security of fond memories. The last time I had been truly happy was in Swindon, and this house had been the hub of my life for twenty years. A creeping doubt entered my mind about the wisdom of leaving the town in the first place.\n\nWe walked through to the lounge, still poorly decorated in browns and greens and looking like a museum of velour. The photo of my passing-out parade at the police training college was on the mantelpiece, along with another of Anton and myself in military fatigues smiling under the harsh sun of the Crimean summer. Sitting on the sofa were an aged couple who were busy watching TV.\n\n\"Polly!\u2014Mycroft!\u2014Look who it is!\"\n\nMy aunt reacted favorably by rising to meet me, but Mycroft was more interested in watching Name That Fruit! on the television. He laughed a silly snorting laugh at a poor joke and waved a greeting in my direction without looking up.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday, darling,\" said my aunt. \"Careful, I'm all made up.\"\n\nWe pointed cheeks at each other and made mmuuah noises. My aunt smelled strongly of lavender and had so much makeup on that even good Queen Bess would have been shocked.\n\n\"You well, Aunty?\"\n\n\"Couldn't be better.\" She kicked her husband painfully on the ankle. \"Mycroft, it's your niece.\"\n\n\"Hello, pet,\" he said without looking up, rubbing his foot. Polly lowered her voice.\n\n\"It's such a worry. All he does is watch TV and tinker in his workshop. Sometimes I think there's no one at home at all.\"\n\nShe glared hard at the back of his head before returning her attention to me.\n\n\"Staying for long?\"\n\n\"She's been posted here,\" put in my mother.\n\n\"Have you lost weight?\"\n\n\"I work out.\"\n\n\"Do you have a boyfriend?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied. They would ask me about Landen next.\n\n\"Have you called Landen?\"\n\n\"No, I haven't. And I don't want you to either.\"\n\n\"Such a nice lad. The Toad did a fantastic review of his last book: Once Were Scoundrels. Have you read it?\"\n\nI ignored her.\n\n\"Any news from Father?\u2014\" I asked.\n\n\"He didn't like the mauve paint in the bedroom,\" said my mother. \"I can't think why you suggested it!\"\n\nAunt Polly beckoned me closer and hissed unsubtly and very loudly in my ear:\n\n\"You'll have to excuse your mother; she thinks your dad is mixed up with another woman!\"\n\nMother excused herself on a lame pretext and hurriedly left the room.\n\nI frowned.\n\n\"What kind of woman?\"\n\n\"Someone he met at work\u2014Lady Emma someone-or-other.\"\n\nI remembered the last conversation with Dad; the stuff about Nelson and the French revisionists.\n\n\"Emma Hamilton?\"\n\nMy mother popped her head around the door from the kitchen.\n\n\"You know her?\" she asked in an aggrieved tone.\n\n\"Not personally. I think she died in the mid-nineteenth century.\"\n\nMy mother narrowed her eyes.\n\n\"That old ruse.\"\n\nShe steeled herself and managed a bright smile.\n\n\"Will you stay for supper?\"\n\nI agreed, and she went to find a chicken that she could boil all the taste out of, her anger at Dad for the moment forgotten. Mycroft, the gameshow ended, shuffled into the kitchen wearing a gray zip-up cardigan and holding a copy of New Splicer magazine.\n\n\"What's for dinner?\" he asked, getting in the way. Aunt Polly looked at him as you might a spoiled child.\n\n\"Mycroft, instead of wandering around wasting your time, why don't you waste Thursday's and show her what you've been up to in your workshop?\"\n\nMycroft looked at us both with a vacant expression. He shrugged and beckoned me toward the back door, changing his slippers for a pair of gumboots and his cardigan for a truly dreadful plaid jacket.\n\n\"C'mon then, m'girl,\" he muttered, shooing the dodos from around the back door where they had been mustering in hope of a snack, and strode toward his workshop.\n\n\"You might repair that garden gate, Uncle\u2014it's worse than ever!\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" he replied with a wink. \"Every time someone goes in or out they generate enough power to run the telly for an hour. I haven't seen you about recently. Have you been away?\"\n\n\"Well, yes; ten years.\"\n\nHe looked over his spectacles at me with some surprise.\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes. Is Owens still with you?\"\n\nOwens was Mycroft's assistant. He was an old boy who had been with Rutherford when he split the atom; Mycroft and he had been at school together.\n\n\"A bit tragic, Thursday. We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired. Polly helps me now.\"\n\nWe had arrived at his workshop. A log with an ax stuck in it was all that was keeping the door shut. Mycroft fumbled for the switch and the striplights flickered on, filling the workshop with a harsh fluorescent glow. The laboratory looked similar to the last time I had seen it in terms of untidiness and the general bric-\u00e0-brac, but the contraptions were different. I had learned from my mother's many letters that Mycroft had invented a method for sending pizzas by fax and a 2B pencil with a built-in spellchecker, but what he was currently working on, I had no idea.\n\n\"Did the memory erasure device work, Uncle?\"\n\n\"The what?\"\n\n\"The memory erasure device. You were testing it when I last saw you.\"\n\n\"Don't know what you're talking about, dear girl. What do you make of this?\"\n\nA large white Rolls-Royce was sitting in the center of the room. I walked over to the vehicle as Mycroft tapped a fluorescent tube to stop it flickering.\n\n\"New car, Uncle?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said Mycroft hurriedly. \"I don't drive. A friend of mine who hires these out was lamenting about the cost of keeping two, one black for funerals and the other white for weddings\u2014so I came up with this.\"\n\nHe reached in and turned a large knob on the dashboard. There was a low hum and the car turned slowly off-white, gray, dark gray and then finally to black.\n\n\"That's very impressive, Uncle.\"\n\n\"Do you think so? It uses liquid crystal technology. But I took the idea one step farther. Watch.\"\n\nHe turned the dial several more notches to the right and the car changed to blue, then mauve, and finally green with yellow dots.\n\n\"One-color cars a thing of the past! But that's not all. If I switch on the car's Pigmentizer like so, the car should... yes, yes, look at that!\"\n\nI watched with growing astonishment as the car started to fade in front of my eyes; the liquid crystal coating was emulating the background grays and browns of Mycroft's workshop. Within a few seconds the car had blended itself perfectly into the background. I thought of the fun you could have with traffic wardens.\n\n\"I call it the ChameleoCar; quite fun, don't you think?\"\n\n\"Very.\"\n\nI put out my hand and touched the warm surface of the camouflaged Rolls-Royce. I was going to ask Mycroft if I could have the cloaking device fitted to my Speedster but I was too late; enthused by my interest he had trotted off to a large rolltop bureau and was beckoning me over excitedly.\n\n\"Translating carbon paper,\" he announced breathlessly, pointing to several piles of brightly colored metallic film. \"I call it Rosettionery. Allow me to demonstrate. We'll start with a plain piece of paper, then put in a Spanish carbon, a second slip of paper\u2014must get them the right way up!\u2014then a Polish carbon, more paper, German and another sheet and finally French and the last sheet... there.\"\n\nHe shuffled the bundle and laid it on the desk as I pulled up a chair.\n\n\"Write something on the first sheet. Anything you want.\"\n\n\"Anything?\"\n\nMycroft nodded so I wrote: Have you seen my dodo?\n\n\"Now what?\"\n\nMycroft looked triumphant.\n\n\"Have a look, dear girl.\"\n\nI lifted off the top carbon and there, written in my own handwriting, were the words: \u00bfHa visto mi dodo?\n\n\"But that's amazing!\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" replied my Uncle. \"Have a look at the next!\"\n\nI did. Beneath the Polish carbon was written: Gdzie jest moje dodo?\n\n\"I'm working on hieroglyphics and demotic,\" Mycroft explained as I peeled off the German translation to read: Haben Sie mein Dodo gesehen? \"The Mayan Codex version was trickier but I can't manage Esperanto at all. Can't think why.\"\n\n\"This will have dozens of applications!\" I exclaimed as I pulled off the last sheet to read, slightly disappointingly: Mon aardvark n'a pas de nez.\n\n\"Wait a moment, Uncle. My aardvark has no nose?\"\n\nMycroft looked over my shoulder and grunted.\n\n\"You probably weren't pressing hard enough. You're police, aren't you?\"\n\n\"SpecOps, really.\"\n\n\"Then this might interest you,\" he announced, leading me off past more wondrous gadgets, the use of which I could only guess at. \"I'm demonstrating this particular machine to the police technical advancement committee on Wednesday.\"\n\nHe stopped next to a device that had a huge horn on it like an old gramophone. He cleared his throat.\n\n\"I call it my Olfactograph. It's very simple. Since any bloodhound worth its salt will tell you that each person's smell is unique like a thumbprint, then it follows that a machine that can recognize a felon's individual smell must be of use where other forms of identification fail. A thief may wear gloves and a mask, but he can't hide his scent.\"\n\nHe pointed at the horn.\n\n\"The odors are sucked up here and split into their individual parts using an Olfactroscope of my own invention. The component parts are then analyzed to give a 'pongprint' of the criminal. It can separate out ten different people's odors in a single room and isolate the newest or the oldest. It can detect burned toast up to six months after the event and differentiate between thirty different brands of cigar.\"\n\n\"Could be handy,\" I said, slightly doubtfully. \"What's this over here?\"\n\nI was pointing to what looked like a trilby hat made from brass and covered in wires and lights.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" said my uncle, \"this I think you will like.\"\n\nHe placed the brass hat on my head and flicked a large switch. There was a humming noise.\n\n\"Is something meant to happen?\" I asked.\n\n\"Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Try to empty your mind of any thoughts.\"\n\nI closed my eyes and waited patiently.\n\n\"Is it working?\" asked Mycroft.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, then added: \"Wait!\" as a stickleback swam past. \"I can see a fish. Here, in front of my eyes. Wait, there's another!\"\n\nAnd so there was. Pretty soon I was staring at a whole host of brightly colored fish all swimming in front of my closed eyes. They were on about a five-second loop; every now and then they jumped back to the starting place and repeated their action.\n\n\"Remarkable!\"\n\n\"Stay relaxed or it will go,\" said Mycroft in a soothing voice. \"Try this one.\"\n\nThere was a blur of movement and the scene shifted to an inky-black starfield; it seemed as though I were traveling through space.\n\n\"Or how about this?\" asked Mycroft, changing the scene to a parade of flying toasters. I opened my eyes and the image evaporated. Mycroft was looking at me earnestly.\n\n\"Any good?\" he asked.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"I call it a Retinal Screen-Saver. Very useful for boring jobs; instead of gazing absently out of the window you can transform your surroundings to any number of soothing images. As soon as the phone goes or your boss walks in you blink and bingo!\u2014 you're back in the real world again.\"\n\nI handed back the hat.\n\n\"Should sell well at SmileyBurger. When do you hope to market it?\"\n\n\"It's not really ready yet; there are a few problems I haven't quite fixed.\"\n\n\"Such as what?\" I asked, slightly suspiciously.\n\n\"Close your eyes and you'll see.\"\n\nI did as he asked and a fish swam by. I blinked again and could see a toaster. Clearly, this needed some work.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" he assured me. \"They will have gone in a few hours.\"\n\n\"I preferred the Olfactroscope.\"\n\n\"You haven't seen anything yet!\" said Mycroft, skipping nimbly up to a large work desk covered by tools and bits of machinery. \"This device is probably my most amazing discovery ever. It is the culmination of thirty years' work and incorporates biotechnology at the very cutting edge of science. When you find out what this is, I promise you, you'll flip!\"\n\nHe pulled a tea towel off a goldfish bowl with a flourish and showed me what appeared to be a large quantity of fruitfly larvae.\n\n\"Maggots?\"\n\nMycroft smiled.\n\n\"Not maggots, Thursday, bookworms!\"\n\nHe said the word with such a bold and proud flourish that I thought I must have missed something.\n\n\"Is that good?\"\n\n\"It's very good, Thursday. These worms might look like a tempting snack for Mr. Trout, but each one of these little fellows has enough new genetic sequencing to make the code embedded in your pet dodo look like a note to the milkman!\"\n\n\"Hold on a sec, Uncle,\" I said. \"Didn't you have your Splicense revoked after that incident with the prawns?\"\n\n\"A small misunderstanding,\" he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. \"Those fools at SpecOps-13 have no idea of the value of my work.\"\n\n\"Which is?\u2014\" I asked, ever curious.\n\n\"Ever smaller methods of storing information. I collected all the finest dictionaries, thesauri and lexicons, as well as grammatical, morphological and etymological studies of the English language, and encoded them all within the DNA of the worm's small body. I call them HyperBookworms. I think you'll agree that it's a remarkable achievement.\"\n\n\"I agree. But how would you access this information?\"\n\nMycroft's face fell.\n\n\"As I said, a remarkable achievement with one small drawback. However, events ran ahead of themselves; some of my worms escaped and bred with others that had been encoded with a complete set of encyclopedic, historical and biographical reference manuals; the result was a new strain I named HyperBookwormDoublePlusGood. These chaps are the real stars of the show.\"\n\nHe pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer, tore off a corner and wrote the word \"remarkable\" on the small scrap.\n\n\"This is just to give you a taste of what these creatures can do.\"\n\nSo saying, he dropped the piece of paper into the goldfish bowl. The worms wasted no time and quickly surrounded the small scrap. But instead of eating it they merely conglomerated around it, squirmed excitedly and explored the interloper with apparent great interest.\n\n\"I had a wormery back in London, Uncle, and they didn't like paper either\u2014\"\n\n\"Shh!\" murmured my uncle, and beckoned me closer to the worms.\n\nAmazing!\n\n\"What is?\" I asked, somewhat perplexed; but as soon as I looked at Mycroft's smiling face I realized it wasn't him speaking.\n\nAstonishing! said the voice again in a low murmur. Incredible! Astounding! Stunning!\n\nI frowned and looked at the worms, which had gathered themselves into a small ball around the scrap of paper and were pulsating gently.\n\nWonderful! mumbled the bookworms. Extraordinary! Fantastic!\n\n\"What do you think?\" asked Mycroft.\n\n\"Thesaurean maggots\u2014Uncle, you never cease to amaze me!\"\n\nBut Mycroft was suddenly a lot more serious.\n\n\"It's more than just a bio-thesaurus, Thursday. These little chaps can do things that you will scarce believe.\"\n\nHe opened a cupboard and pulled out a large leather book with PP embossed on the spine in gold letters. The casing was richly decorated and featured heavy brass securing straps. On the front were several dials and knobs, valves and knife switches. It certainly looked impressive, but not all Mycroft's devices had a usefulness mutually compatible with their looks. In the early seventies he had developed an extraordinarily beautiful machine that did nothing more exciting than predict with staggering accuracy the number of pips in an unopened orange.\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked.\n\n\"This,\" began Mycroft, smiling all over and puffing out his chest with pride, \"is a\u2014\"\n\nBut he never got to finish. At that precise moment Polly announced \"Supper!\" from the door and Mycroft quickly ran out, muttering something about how he hoped it was snorkers and telling me to switch off the lights on my way out. I was left alone in his empty workshop. Truly, Mycroft had surpassed himself.\n\nDazzling! agreed the bookworms.\n\nSupper was a friendly affair. We all had a lot of catching up to do, and my mother had a great deal to tell me about the Women's Federation.\n\n\"We raised almost seven thousand pounds last year for ChronoGuard orphans,\" she said.\n\n\"That's very good,\" I replied. \"SpecOps is always grateful for the contributions, although to be fair there are other divisions worse off than the ChronoGuard.\"\n\n\"Well, I know,\" replied my mother, \"but it's all so secret. What do all of them do?\"\n\n\"Believe me, I have no more idea than you. Can you pass the fish?\"\n\n\"There isn't any fish,\" observed my aunt. \"You haven't been using your niece as a guinea pig have you, Crofty?\"\n\nMy uncle pretended not to hear; I blinked and the fish vanished.\n\n\"The only other one I know under SO-20 is SO-6,\" added Polly. \"That was National Security. We only know that because they all looked after Mycroft so well.\"\n\nShe nudged him in the ribs but he didn't notice; he was busy figuring out a recipe for unscrambled eggs on a napkin.\n\n\"I don't suppose a week went by in the sixties when he wasn't being kidnapped by one foreign power or another,\" she sighed wistfully, thinking of the exciting old days with a whiff of nostalgia.\n\n\"Some things have to be kept secret for operational purposes,\" I recited parrot fashion. \"Secrecy is our biggest weapon.\"\n\n\"I read in The Mole that SpecOps is riddled with secret societies. The Wombats in particular,\" murmured Mycroft, placing his completed equation in his jacket pocket. \"Is this true?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"No more than in any other walk of life, I suppose. I've not noticed it myself, but then as a woman I wouldn't be approached by the Wombats anyway.\"\n\n\"Seems a bit unfair to me,\" said Polly in a tuttutting voice. \"I'm fully in support of secret societies\u2014the more the better\u2014 but I think they should be open to everyone, men and women.\"\n\n\"Men are welcome to it,\" I replied. \"It means that at least half the population won't have to make complete idiots of themselves. It surprises me that you haven't been approached to join, Uncle.\"\n\nMycroft grunted.\n\n\"I used to be one at Oxford many years ago. Waste of time. It was all a bit silly; the pouch used to chafe something awful and all that gnawing played hell with my overbite.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Major Phelps is in town,\" I said, changing the subject. \"I met him on the airship. He's a colonel now but is still blasting the same old line.\"\n\nBy an unwritten rule, no one ever spoke of the Crimea or Anton in the house. There was an icy hush.\n\n\"Really?\" replied my mother with seemingly no emotion.\n\n\"Joffy has a parish up at Wanborough these days,\" announced Polly, hoping to change the subject. \"He's opened the first GSD church in Wessex. I spoke to him last week; he says that it has been quite popular.\"\n\nJoffy was my other brother. He had taken to the faith at an early age and tried all sorts of religions before settling for the GSD.\n\n\"Gsd?\" murmured Mycroft. \"What in heaven's name is that?\"\n\n\"Global Standard Deity,\" answered Polly. \"It's a mixture of all the religions. I think it's meant to stop religious wars.\"\n\nMycroft grunted again.\n\n\"Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse. What's the melting point of beryllium?\"\n\n\"180.57 degrees centigrade,\" murmured Polly without even thinking. \"I think Joffy is doing a grand job. You should call him, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\nJoffy and I had never been close. He had called me Doofus and smacked me on the back of my head every day for fifteen years. I had to break his nose to make him stop.\n\n\"If you are calling people why don't you call\u2014\"\n\n\"Mother!\"\n\n\"He's quite successful now, I understand, Thursday. It might be good for you to see him again.\"\n\n\"Landen and I are finished, Mum. Besides, I have a boyfriend.\"\n\nThis, to my mother, was extremely good news. It had been of considerable anguish to her that I wasn't spending more time with swollen ankles, hemorrhoids and a bad back, popping out grandchildren and naming them after obscure relatives. Joffy wasn't the sort of person who had children, which kind of left it up to me. In all honesty I wasn't against the idea of kids, it was just that I wasn't going to have them on my own. And Landen had been the last man to have remotely interested me as a possible life partner.\n\n\"A boyfriend? What's his name?\"\n\nI said the first name that popped into my head.\n\n\"Snood. Filbert Snood.\"\n\n\"Nice name.\" My mother smiled.\n\n\"Daft name,\" grumbled Mycroft. \"Like Landen Parke-Laine, come to that. Can I get down? It's time for Jack Spratt's Casebook.\"\n\nPolly and Mycroft both got up and left us. Landen's name didn't come up again and neither did Anton's. Mum offered me my old room back but I quickly declined. We had argued ferociously when I had lived at home. Besides, I was almost thirty-six. I finished my coffee and walked with my mother to the front door.\n\n\"Let me know if you change your mind, darling,\" she said. \"Your room is the same as it always was.\"\n\nIf that were true the dreadful posters of my late teenage crushes would still be up on the wall. It was a thought too hideous to contemplate."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Finis Hotel, Swindon",
                "text": "\u2002Miltons were, on the whole, the most enthusiastic poet followers. A flick through the London telephone directory would yield about four thousand John Miltons, two thousand William Blakes, a thousand or so Samuel Coleridges, five hundred Percy Shelleys, the same of Wordsworth and Keats, and a handful of Drydens. Such mass name-changing could have problems in law enforcement. Following an incident in a pub where the assailant, victim, witness, landlord, arresting officer and judge had all been called Alfred Tennyson, a law had been passed compelling each namesake to carry a registration number tattooed behind the ear. It hadn't been well received\u2014few really practical law-enforcement measures ever are.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, A Short History of the Special Operations Network\n\nI pulled into a parking place in front of the large floodlit building and locked the car. The hotel seemed to be quite busy, and as soon as I walked into the lobby I could see why. At least two dozen men and women were milling about dressed in large white baggy shirts and breeches. My heart sank. A large notice near reception welcomed all comers to the 112th Annual John Milton Convention. I took a deep breath and fought my way to the reception desk. A middle-aged receptionist with oversize earrings gave me her best welcoming smile.\n\n\"Good evening, madam, welcome to the Finis, the last word in comfort and style. We are a four-star hotel with many modern features and services. Our sincere wish is to make your stay a happy one!\"\n\nShe recited it like a mantra. I could see her working at SmileyBurger just as easily.\n\n\"The name's Next. I have a reservation.\"\n\nThe receptionist nodded and flicked through the reservation cards.\n\n\"Let's see. Milton, Milton, Milton, Milton, Milton, Next, Milton, Milton, Milton, Milton, Milton, Milton. No, sorry. It doesn't look like we have a booking for you.\"\n\n\"Could you check again?\"\n\nShe looked again and found it.\n\n\"Here it is. Someone had put it with the Miltons by accident. I'll need an imprint of a major credit card. We take: Babbage, Goliath, Newton, Pascal, Breakfast Club and Jam Roly-Poly.\"\n\n\"Jam Roly-Poly?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" she said sheepishly, \"wrong list. That's the choice of puddings tonight.\" She smiled again as I passed over my Babbage charge card.\n\n\"You're in room 8128,\" she said, handing me my key attached to a key ring so large I could barely lift it. \"All our rooms are fully air-conditioned and are equipped with minibar and tea-making equipment. Did you park your car in our spacious three-hundred-place self-draining car park?\"\n\nI hid a smile.\n\n\"Thank you, I did. Do you have any pet facilities?\"\n\n\"Of course. All Finis hotels have full kennel facilities. What sort of pet?\"\n\n\"A dodo.\"\n\n\"How sweet! My cousin Arnold had a great auk once called Beany\u2014he was Version 1.4 so didn't live long. I understand they're a lot better these days. I'll reserve your little friend a place. Enjoy your stay. I hope you have an interest in seventeenth-century lyrical poets.\"\n\n\"Only professionally.\"\n\n\"Lecturer?\"\n\n\"Litera Tec.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\nThe receptionist leaned closer and lowered her voice.\n\n\"To tell you the truth, Miss Next, I hate Milton. His early stuff is okay, I suppose, but he disappeared up his own arse after Charlie got his head lopped off. Goes to show what too much republicanism does for you.\"\n\n\"Quite.\"\n\n\"I almost forgot. These are for you.\"\n\nShe produced a bunch of flowers from under the desk as if in a conjuring trick.\n\n\"From a Mr. Landen Parke-Laine\u2014\"\n\nBlast. Rumbled.\n\n\"\u2014and there are two gentlemen waiting in the Cheshire Cat for you.\"\n\n\"The Cheshire Cat?\"\n\n\"It's our fully stocked and lively bar. Tended to by professional and helpful bar staff, it is a warm and welcoming area in which to relax.\"\n\n\"Who are they?\"\n\n\"The bar staff?\"\n\n\"No, the two gentlemen.\"\n\n\"They didn't give any names.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss?\u2014\"\n\n\"Barrett-Browning,\" said the receptionist, \"Liz Barrett-Browning.\"\n\n\"Well, Liz, keep the flowers. Make your boyfriend jealous. If Mr. Parke-Laine calls again, tell him I died of hemorrhagic fever or something.\"\n\nI pushed my way through the throng of Miltons and onto the Cheshire Cat. It was easy to find. Above the door was a large red neon cat on a green neon tree. Every couple of minutes the red neon flickered and went out, leaving the cat's grin on its own in the tree. The sound of a jazz band reached my ears from the bar as I walked across the lobby, and a smile crossed my lips as I heard the unmistakable piano of Holroyd Wilson. He was a Swindon man, born and bred. He could have played any bar in Europe with one phone call, but he had chosen to remain in Swindon. The bar was busy but not packed, the clientele mostly Miltons, who were sitting around drinking and joking, lamenting the Restoration and referring to each other as John.\n\nI went up to the bar. It was happy hour in the Cheshire Cat, any drink for 52.5 p.\n\n\"Good evening,\" said the barman. \"Why is a raven like a writing desk?\"\n\n\"Because Poe wrote on both?\"\n\n\"Very good.\" He laughed. \"What's it to be?\"\n\n\"A half of Vorpal's special, please. The name's Next. Anyone waiting for me?\"\n\nThe barman, who was dressed like a hatter, indicated a booth on the other side of the room in which two men were sitting, partially obscured by shadows. I took my drink and walked over. The room was too full for anyone to start any trouble. As I drew closer I could see the two men more clearly.\n\nThe elder of the two was a gray-haired gentleman in his mid-seventies. He had large muttonchop sideburns and was dressed in a neat tweed suit with a silk bow tie. His hands were holding a pair of brown gloves on top of his walking stick and I could see a deerstalker hat on the seat next to him. His face had a ruddy appearance, and as I approached he threw back his head and laughed like a seal at something the younger man had said.\n\nThe man opposite him was aged about thirty. He sat on the front of his seat in a slightly nervous manner. He sipped at a tonic water and wore a pinstripe suit that was expensive but had seen better days. I knew I had seen him before somewhere but couldn't think where.\n\n\"You gentlemen looking for me?\"\n\nThey both got up together. The elder of the two spoke first.\n\n\"Miss Next? Delighted to make your acquaintance. The name's Analogy. Victor Analogy. Head of Swindon LiteraTecs. We spoke on the phone.\"\n\nHe offered his hand and I shook it.\n\n\"Pleased to meet you, sir.\"\n\n\"This is Operative Bowden Cable. You'll be working together.\"\n\n\"I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, madam,\" said Bowden quite grandly, slightly awkwardly and very stiffly.\n\n\"Have we met before?\" I asked, shaking his outstretched hand.\n\n\"No,\" said Bowden firmly. \"I would have remembered.\"\n\nVictor offered me a seat next to Bowden, who shuffled up making polite noises. I took a sip of my drink. It tasted like old horse blankets soaked in urine. I coughed explosively. Bowden offered me his handkerchief.\n\n\"Vorpal's special?\" said Victor, raising an eyebrow. \"Brave girl.\"\n\n\"Th-thank you.\"\n\n\"Welcome to Swindon,\" continued Victor. \"First of all I'd like to say how sorry we were to hear about your little incident. By all accounts Hades was a monster. I'm not sorry he died. I hope you are quite recovered?\"\n\n\"I am, but others were not so fortunate.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that, but you are very welcome here. No one of your caliber has ever bothered to join us in this backwater before.\"\n\nI looked at Analogy and was slightly puzzled.\n\n\"I'm not sure I understand what you're driving at.\"\n\n\"What I mean\u2014not to put too fine a point on it\u2014is all of us in the office are more academics than typical SpecOp agents. Your post was held by Jim Crometty. He was shot dead in the old town during a bookbuy that went wrong. He was Bowden's partner. Jim was a very special friend to us all; he had a wife, three kids. I want... no, I want very badly the person who took Crometty from us.\"\n\nI stared at their earnest faces with some confusion until the penny dropped. They thought I was a full and pukka SO-5 operative on a rest-and-recuperation assignment. It wasn't unusual. Back at SO-27 we used to get worn-out characters from SO-9 and SO-7 all the time. Without exception they had all been mad as pants.\n\n\"You've read my file?\" I asked slowly.\n\n\"They wouldn't release it,\" replied Analogy. \"It's not often we get an operative moving to our little band from the dizzy heights of SpecOps-5. We needed a replacement with good field experience but also someone who can... well, how shall I put it?\u2014\"\n\nAnalogy paused, apparently at a loss for words. Bowden answered for him.\n\n\"We need someone who isn't frightened to use extreme force if deemed necessary.\"\n\nI looked at them both, wondering whether it would be better to come clean; after all, the only thing I had shot recently was my own car and a seemingly bulletproof master criminal. I was officially SO-27, not SO-5. But with the strong possibility of Acheron still being around, and revenge still high on my agenda, perhaps it would be better to play along.\n\nAnalogy shuffled nervously.\n\n\"Crometty's murder is being looked after by Homicide, of course. Unofficially we can't do a great deal, but SpecOps has always prided itself on a certain independence. If we uncovered any evidence in the pursuit of other inquiries, it would not be frowned upon. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Sure. Do you have any idea who killed Crometty?\"\n\n\"Someone said that they had something for him to see, to buy. A rare Dickens manuscript. He went to see it and... well, he wasn't armed, you know.\"\n\n\"Few LiteraTecs in Swindon even know how to use a firearm,\" added Bowden, \"and training for many of them is out of the question. Literary detection and firearms don't really go hand in hand; pen mightier than the sword and so forth.\"\n\n\"Words are all very well,\" I replied coolly, suddenly enjoying the SO-5 woman-of-mystery stuff, \"but a nine-millimeter really gets to the root of the problem.\"\n\nThey stared at me in silence for a second or two. Victor drew out a photograph from a buff envelope and placed it on the table in front of me.\n\n\"We'd like your opinion on this. It was taken yesterday.\"\n\nI looked at the photo. I knew the face well enough.\n\n\"Jack Schitt.\"\n\n\"And what do you know about him?\"\n\n\"Not much. He's head of Goliath's Internal Security Service. He wanted to know what Hades had planned to do with the Chuzzlewit manuscript.\"\n\n\"I'll let you into a secret. You're right that Schitt's Goliath but he's not Internal Security.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"Advanced Weapons Division. Eight billion annual budget and it all goes through him.\"\n\n\"Eight billion?\"\n\n\"And loose change. Rumor has it they even went over that budget to develop the plasma rifle. He's intelligent, ambitious and quite inflexible. He came here two weeks ago. He wouldn't be in Swindon at all unless there was something here that Goliath found of great interest; we think Crometty went to see the original manuscript of Chuzzlewit and if that is so\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014Schitt is here because I am,\" I announced suddenly. \"He thought it suspicious that I should want an SO-27 job in Swindon of all places\u2014no offense meant.\"\n\n\"None taken,\" replied Analogy. \"But Schitt being here makes me think that Hades is still about\u2014or at the very least Goliath think so.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I replied. \"Worrying, isn't it?\"\n\nAnalogy and Cable looked at one another. They had made the points they wanted to make: I was welcome here, they were keen to avenge Crometty's death and they didn't like Jack Schitt. They wished me a pleasant evening, donned their hats and coats and were gone.\n\nThe jazz number came to an end. I joined in the applause as Holroyd got shakily to his feet and waved at the crowd before leaving. The bar thinned out rapidly once the music had finished, leaving me almost alone. I looked to my right, where two Miltons were busy making eyes at one another, and then at the bar, where several suited business reps were drinking as much as they could on their overnight allowance. I walked over to the piano and sat down. I struck a few chords, testing my arm at first, then becoming more adventurous as I played the lower half of a duet I remembered. I looked at the barman to order another drink but he was busy drying a glass. As the intro for the top part of the duet came around for the third time, a man's hand reached in and played the first note of the upper part exactly on time. I closed my eyes; I knew who it was instantly, but I wasn't going to look up. I could smell his aftershave and noticed the scar on his left hand. The hair on the back of my neck bristled slightly and I felt a flush rise within me. I instinctively moved to the left and let him sit down. His fingers drifted across the keys with mine, the two of us playing together almost flawlessly. The barman looked on approvingly, and even the suited salesmen stopped talking and looked around to see who was playing. Still I did not look up. As my hands grew more accustomed to that long-unplayed tune I grew confident and played faster. My unwatched partner kept up the tempo to match me.\n\nWe played like this for perhaps ten minutes, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him. I knew that if I did I would smile and I didn't want to do that. I wanted him to know I was still pissed off. Then he could charm me. When the piece finally came to an end I continued to stare ahead. The man next to me didn't move.\n\n\"Hello, Landen,\" I said finally.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday.\"\n\nI played a couple of notes absently but still didn't look up.\n\n\"It's been a long time,\" I said.\n\n\"A lot of water under the bridge,\" he replied. \"Ten years' worth.\"\n\nHis voice sounded the same. The warmth and sensitivity I had once known so well were still there. I looked up at him, caught his gaze and looked away quickly. I had felt my eyes moisten. I was embarrassed by my feelings and scratched my nose nervously. He had gone slightly gray but he wore his hair in much the same manner. There were slight wrinkles around his eyes, but they might just as easily have been from laughing as from age. He was thirty when I walked out; I had been twenty-six. I wondered whether I had aged as well as he had. Was I too old to still hold a grudge? After all, getting into a strop with Landen wasn't going to bring Anton back. I felt an urge to ask him if it was too late to try again, but as I opened my mouth the world juddered to a halt. The D sharp I had just pressed kept on sounding and Landen stared at me, his eyes frozen in midblink. Dad's timing could not have been worse.\n\n\"Hello, Sweetpea!\" he said, walking up to me out of the shadows. \"Am I disturbing anything?\"\n\n\"Most definitely\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"I won't be long, then. What do you make of this?\"\n\nHe handed me a yellow curved thing about the size of a large carrot.\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked, smelling it cautiously.\n\n\"It's the fruit of a new plant designed completely from scratch seventy years from now. Look\u2014\"\n\nHe peeled the skin off and let me taste it.\n\n\"Good, eh? You can pick it well before ripe, transport it thousands of miles if necessary and it will keep fresh in its own hermetically sealed biodegradable packaging. Nutritious and tasty, too. It was sequenced by a brilliant engineer named Anna Bannon. We're a bit lost as to what to call it. Any ideas?\"\n\n\"I'm sure you'll think of something. What are you going to do with it?\"\n\n\"I thought I'd introduce it somewhere in the tenth millennium before the present one and see how it goes\u2014food for mankind, that sort of thing. Well, time waits for no man, as we say. I'll let you get back to Landen.\"\n\nThe world flickered and started up again. Landen opened his eyes and stared at me.\n\n\"Banana,\" I said, suddenly realizing what it was that my father had shown me.\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"Banana. They named it after the designer.\"\n\n\"Thursday, you're making no sense at all,\" said Landen with a bemused grin.\n\n\"My dad was just here.\"\n\n\"Ah. Is he still of all time?\"\n\n\"Still the same. Listen, I'm sorry about what happened.\"\n\n\"Me too,\" replied Landen, then lapsed into silence. I wanted to touch his face but instead I said:\n\n\"I missed you.\"\n\nIt was the wrong thing to say and I cursed myself; too much, too soon. Landen shuffled uneasily.\n\n\"You should take aim more carefully. I missed you a lot too. The first year was the worst.\"\n\nLanden paused for a moment. He played a few notes on the piano and then said:\n\n\"I have a life and I like it here. Sometimes I think that Thursday Next was just a character from one of my novels, someone I made up in the image of the woman I wanted to love. Now... well, I'm over it.\"\n\nIt wasn't really what I was hoping to hear, but after all that had happened I couldn't blame him.\n\n\"But you came to find me.\"\n\nLanden smiled at me.\n\n\"You're in my town, Thurs. When a friend comes in from out of town, you look them up. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?\"\n\n\"And you buy them flowers? Does Colonel Phelps get roses too?\"\n\n\"No, he gets lilies. Old habits die hard.\"\n\n\"I see. You've been doing well for yourself.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" he replied. \"You never answered my letters.\"\n\n\"I never read your letters.\"\n\n\"Are you married?\"\n\n\"I can't see that's any of your business.\"\n\n\"I'll take that as a no.\"\n\nThe conversation had taken a turn for the worse. It was time to bale out.\n\n\"Listen, I'm bushed, Landen. I have a very big day ahead of me.\"\n\nI got up. Landen limped after me. He had lost a leg in the Crimea but he was well used to it by now. He caught up with me at the bar.\n\n\"Dinner one night?\"\n\nI turned to face him.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Tuesday?\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Good,\" said Landen, rubbing his hands. \"We could get the old unit back together\u2014\"\n\nThis wasn't what I had in mind.\n\n\"Hang on. Tuesday's not very good after all.\"\n\n\"Why not? It was fine three seconds ago. Has your dad been around again?\"\n\n\"No, I just have a lot of things that I have to do and Pickwick needs kenneling and I have to pick him up at the station as airships make him nervous. You remember the time we took him up to Mull and he vomited all over the steward?\"\n\nI checked myself. I was starting to blabber like an idiot.\n\n\"And don't tell me,\" added Landen, \"you have to wash your hair?\"\n\n\"Very funny.\"\n\n\"What work are you doing in Swindon anyway?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"I wash up at SmileyBurger.\"\n\n\"Sure you do. SpecOps?\"\n\nI nodded my head.\n\n\"I joined Swindon's Litera Tec unit.\"\n\n\"Permanently?\" he asked. \"I mean, you've come back to Swindon for good?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nI placed my hand on his. I wanted to hug him and burst into tears and tell him I loved him and would always love him like some huge emotional dumb girlie, but time wasn't quite right, as my father would say. I decided to get on the question offensive instead so I asked:\n\n\"Are you married?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Never thought about it?\"\n\n\"I thought about it a lot.\"\n\nWe both lapsed into silence. There was so much to say that neither of us could think of any way to start. Landen opened a second front:\n\n\"Want to see Richard III?\"\n\n\"Is it still running?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"I'm tempted but the fact remains I don't know when I will be free. Things are... volatile at present.\"\n\nI could see he didn't believe me. I couldn't really tell him I was on the trail of a master criminal who could steal thoughts and project images at will; who was invisible on film and could murder and laugh as he did so. Landen sighed, dug out a calling card and placed it on the counter.\n\n\"Call me. Whenever you're free. Promise?\"\n\n\"Promise.\"\n\nHe kissed me on the cheek, finished his drink, looked at me again and limped out of the bar. I was left looking at his calling card. I didn't pick it up. I didn't need to. The number was the one I remembered.\n\nMy room was exactly like all the other rooms in the hotel. The pictures were screwed to the walls and the drinks in the minibar had been opened, drunk, then resealed with water or cold tea by traveling reps too mean to pay for them. The room faced north; I could just see the airship field. A large forty-seater was moored on the mast, its silver flanks floodlit in the dark night. The small dirigible that had brought me in had continued onto Salisbury; I briefly thought about catching it again when it called on its return the day after tomorrow. I turned on the television just in time to catch Today in Parliament. The Crimean debate had been raging all day and wasn't over yet. I emptied my pockets of loose change, took my automatic out of its shoulder holster and opened the bedside drawer. It was full. Apart from the Gideon's Bible there were the teachings of Buddha and an English copy of the Koran. There was also a GSD volume of prayer and a Wesleyian pamphlet, two amulets from the Society for Christian Awareness, the thoughts of St. Zvlkx and the now mandatory Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I removed all the books, stuffed them in the cupboard and placed my automatic in the drawer instead. I unzipped my case and started to organize my room. I hadn't rented out my apartment in London; I didn't know if I was staying here or not. Oddly, the town had started to feel very comfortable and I wasn't sure whether I liked that or not. I laid everything on my bed and then put it all carefully away. I placed a few books on the desk and the life-saving copy of Jane Eyre onto the bedside table. I picked up Landen's photo and walked over to the bureau, thought for a moment and then placed it upside down in my knicker drawer. With the real thing around I had no need for an image. The TV droned on:\n\n\"...despite intervention by the French and a Russian guarantee of safe habitation for English settlers, it looks as though the English government will not be resuming its place around the table at Budapest. With England still adamant about an offensive using the new so-called Stonk plasma rifle, peace will not be descending on the Black Sea peninsula...\"\n\nThe anchorman shuffled some papers.\n\n\"Home news now, and violence flared again in Chichester as a group of neosurrealists gathered to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the legalization of surrealism. On the spot for Toad News Network is Henry Grubb. Henry, how are things down there?\"\n\nA shaky live picture came onto the screen, and I stopped for a moment to watch. Behind Grubb was a car that had been overturned and set on fire, and several officers were in riot gear. Henry Grubb, who was in training for the job of Crimean correspondent and secretly hoped that the war wouldn't end until he had had a chance to get out there, wore a navy blue flak jacket and spoke with the urgent, halting speech of a correspondent in a war zone.\n\n\"Things are a bit hot down here, Brian. I'm a hundred yards from the riot zone and I can see several cars overturned and on fire. The police have been trying to keep the factions apart all day, but the sheer weight of numbers has been against them. This evening several hundred Raphaelites surrounded the N'est pas une pipe public house where a hundred neosurrealists have barricaded themselves in. The demonstrators outside chanted Italian Renaissance slogans and then stones and missiles were thrown. The neosurrealists responded by charging the lines protected by large soft watches and seemed to be winning until the police moved in. Wait, I can just see a man arrested by the police. I'll try and get an interview.\"\n\nI shook my head sadly and put some shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. There was violence when surrealism was banned and there was violence as the same ban was lifted. Grubb continued his broadcast as he intercepted a policeman marching away a youth dressed in sixteenth-century garb with a faithful reproduction of the \"Hand of God\" from the Sistine chapel tattooed on his face.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir, how would you counter the criticism that you are an intolerant bunch with little respect for the value of change and experimentation in all aspects of art?\"\n\nThe Renaissancite glanced at the camera with an angry scowl.\n\n\"People say we're just Renaissancites causing trouble, but I've seen Baroque kids, Raphaelites, Romantics and Mannerists here tonight. It's a massive show of classical artistic unity against these frivolous bastards who cower beneath the safety of the word 'progress.' It's not just\u2014\"\n\nThe police officer intervened and dragged him away. Grubb ducked a flying brick and then wound up his report.\n\n\"This is Henry Grubb, reporting for Toad News Network, live from Chichester.\"\n\nI turned off the television with a remote that was chained to the bedside table. I sat on the bed and pulled out my hair tie, let my hair down and rubbed my scalp. I sniffed dubiously at my hair and decided against a shower. I had been harder than I intended with Landen. Even with our differences we still had more than enough in common to be good friends."
            },
            {
                "title": "Polly Flashes Upon the Inward Eye",
                "text": "\u2002I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can't be usual to go to your favorite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.\n\n\u2014POLLY NEXT, interviewed exclusively for The Owl on Sunday\n\nAs I was dealing with Landen in my own clumsy way, my uncle and aunt were hard at work in Mycroft's workshop. As I was to learn later, things seemed to be going quite well. To begin with, at any rate.\n\nMycroft was feeding his bookworms in the workshop when Polly entered; she had just completed some mathematical calculations of almost incomprehensible complexity for him.\n\n\"I have the answer you wanted, Crofty, my love,\" she said, sucking the end of a well-worn pencil.\n\n\"And that is?\" asked Mycroft, busily pouring prepositions onto the bookworms, who devoured the abstract food greedily.\n\n\"Nine.\"\n\nMycroft mumbled something and jotted the figure down on a pad. He opened the large brass-reinforced book that I had not quite been introduced to the night before to reveal a cavity into which he placed a large-print copy of Wordsworth's poem \"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.\" To this he added the bookworms, who busily got to work. They slithered over the text, their small bodies and unfathomable collective id unconsciously examining every sentence, word, vowel sound and syllable. They probed deeply into the historical, biographical and geographical allusions, then they explored the inner meanings hidden within the meter and rhythm and juggled ingeniously with subtext, content and inflection. After that they made up a few verses of their own and converted the result into binary.\n\nLakes! Daffodils! Solitude! Memory! whispered the worms excitedly as Mycroft carefully closed the book and locked it. He connected up the heavy mains feed to the back of the book and switched the power switch to \"on\"; he then started work on the myriad of knobs and dials that covered the front of the heavy volume. Despite the Prose Portal being essentially a bio-mechanism, there were still many delicate procedures that had to be set before the device would work; and since the portal was of an absurd complexity, Mycroft was forced to write up the precise sequence of start-up events and combinations in a small child's exercise book of which\u2014ever wary of foreign spies\u2014he held the only copy. He studied the small book for several moments before twisting dials, setting switches and gently increasing the power, all the while muttering to himself and Polly:\n\n\"Binametrics, spherics, numerics. I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"On?\"\n\n\"Off!\" replied Mycroft sadly. \"No, wait... There!\"\n\nHe smiled happily as the last of the warning lights extinguished. He took his wife's hand and squeezed it affectionately.\n\n\"Would you care to have the honor?\" he asked. \"The first human being to step inside a Wordsworth poem?\"\n\nPolly looked at him uneasily.\n\n\"Are you sure it's safe?\"\n\n\"As safe as houses,\" he assured her. \"I went into 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' an hour ago.\"\n\n\"Really? What was it like?\"\n\n\"Wet\u2014and I think I left my jacket behind.\"\n\n\"The one I gave you for Christmas?\"\n\n\"No; the other one. The blue one with large checks.\"\n\n\"That's the one I did give you for Christmas,\" she scolded. \"I wish you would be more careful. What was it you wanted me to do?\"\n\n\"Just stand here. If all goes well, as soon as I press this large green button the worms will open a door to the daffodils that William Wordsworth knew and loved.\"\n\n\"And if all doesn't go well?\" asked Polly slightly nervously. Owens' demise inside a giant meringue never failed to impinge on her thoughts whenever she guinea-pigged one of her husband's machines, but apart from some slight singeing while testing a one-man butane-powered pantomime horse, none of Mycroft's devices had ever harmed her at all.\n\n\"Hmm,\" said Mycroft thoughtfully, \"it is possible although highly unlikely that I could start a chain reaction that will fuse matter and annihilate the known universe.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"No, not really at all. My little joke. Are you ready?\"\n\nPolly smiled.\n\n\"Ready.\"\n\nMycroft pressed the large green button and there was a low hum from the book. The streetlights flickered and dimmed outside as the machine drew a huge quantity of power to convert the bookworm's binametric information. As they both watched, a thin shaft of light appeared in the workshop, as though a door had been opened from a winter's day into summer. Dust glistened in the beam of light, which gradually grew broader until it was large enough to enter.\n\n\"All you have to do is step through!\" yelled Mycroft above the noise of the machine. \"To open the door requires a lot of power; you have to hurry!\"\n\nThe high voltage was making the air heavy; metallic objects close by were starting to dance and crackle with static.\n\nPolly stepped closer to the door and smiled nervously at her husband. The shimmering expanse of white light rippled as she put her hand up to touch it. She took a deep breath and stepped through the portal. There was a bright flash and a burst of heavy electrical discharge; two small balls of highly charged gas plasma formed spontaneously near the machine and barreled out in two directions; Mycroft had to duck as one sailed past him and burst harmlessly on the Rolls-Royce; the other exploded on the Olfactograph and started a small fire. Just as quickly the light and sound died away, the doorway closed and the streetlights outside flickered up to full brightness again.\n\nClouds! Jocund company! Sprightly dance! chattered the worms contentedly as the needles flicked and rocked on the cover of the book, the two-minute countdown to the reopening of the portal already in progress. Mycroft smiled happily and patted his pockets for his pipe until he realized with dismay that it too was inside Hesperus, so instead he sat down on the prototype of a sarcasm early-warning device and waited. Everything, so far, was working extremely well.\n\nOn the other side of the Prose Portal, Polly stood on the grassy bank of a large lake where the water gently lapped against the shore. The sun was shining brightly and small puffy clouds floated lazily across the azure sky. Along the edges of the bay she could see thousands upon thousands of vibrant yellow daffodils, all growing in the dappled shade of a birch grove. A breeze, carrying with it the fresh scent of spring, caused the flowers to flutter and dance. All about her a feeling of peace and tranquillity ruled. The world she stood in now was unsullied by man's evil or malice. Here, indeed, was paradise.\n\n\"It's beautiful!\" she said at last, her thoughts finally giving birth to her words. \"The flowers, the colors, the scent\u2014it's like breathing champagne!\"\n\n\"You like it, madam?\"\n\nA man aged about eighty was facing her. He was dressed in a black cloak and wore a half-smile upon his weathered features. He gazed across at the flowers.\n\n\"I often come here,\" he said. \"Whenever the doldrums of depression fall heavy on my countenance.\"\n\n\"You're very lucky,\" said Polly. \"We have to rely on Name That Fruit!!\"\n\n\"Name That Fruit?\"\n\n\"It's a quiz show. You know. On the telly.\"\n\n\"Telly?\"\n\n\"Yes, it's like the movies but with commercials.\"\n\nHe frowned at her without comprehension and looked at the lake again.\n\n\"I often come here,\" he said again. \"Whenever the doldrums of depression fall heavy on my countenance.\"\n\n\"You said that already.\"\n\nThe old man looked as though he were awakening from a deep sleep.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"My husband sent me. My name is Polly Next.\"\n\n\"I come here when in vacant or pensive mood, you know.\"\n\nHe waved a hand in the direction of the flowers.\n\n\"The daffodils, you understand.\"\n\nPolly looked across at the bright yellow flowers, which rustled back at her in the warm breeze.\n\n\"I wish my memory was this good,\" she murmured.\n\nThe figure in black smiled at her.\n\n\"The inward eye is all I have left,\" he said wistfully, the smile leaving his stern features. \"Everything that I once was is now here; my life is contained in my works. A life in volumes of words; it is poetic.\"\n\nHe sighed deeply and added:\n\n\"But solitude isn't always blissful, you know.\"\n\nHe stared into the middle distance, the sun sparkling on the waters of the lake.\n\n\"How long since I died?\" he asked abruptly.\n\n\"Over a hundred and fifty years.\"\n\n\"Really? Tell me, how did the revolution in France turn out?\"\n\n\"It's a little early to tell.\"\n\nWordsworth frowned as the sun went in.\n\n\"Hello,\" he muttered, \"I don't remember writing that\u2014\"\n\nPolly looked. A large and very dark rain cloud had blotted out the sun.\n\n\"What do you\u2014?\" she began, but when she looked around Wordsworth had gone. The sky grew darker and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. A strong wind sprang up and the lake seemed to freeze over and lose all depth as the daffodils stopped moving and became a solid mass of yellow and green. She cried out in fear as the sky and the lake met; the daffodils, trees and clouds returning to their place in the poem, individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our own imagination can clothe them. She let out one last terrified scream as the darkness swept on and the poem closed on top of her."
            },
            {
                "title": "SpecOps-27: The Literary Detectives",
                "text": "...This morning Thursday Next joined the Litera Tec office in place of Crometty. I cannot help thinking that she is particularly unsuited to this area of work and I have my doubts as to whether she is as sane as she thinks she is. She has many demons, old and new, and I wonder whether Swindon is quite the right place to try and exorcise them...\n\n[ From Bowden Cable's diary ]\n\nTHE SWINDON SpecOps headquarters were shared with the local police; the typically brusque and no-nonsense Germanic design had been built during the Occupation as a law court. It was big too, which was just as well. The way into the building was protected by metal detectors, and once I had shown my ID I walked into the large entrance hall. Officers and civilians with identity tags walked briskly amid the loud hubbub of the station. I was jostled once or twice in the throng and made a few greetings to old faces before fighting my way to the front desk. When I got there, I found a man in a white baggy shirt and breeches remonstrating with the sergeant. The officer just stared at him. He'd heard it all before.\n\n\"Name?\" asked the desk sergeant wearily.\n\n\"John Milton.\"\n\n\"Which John Milton?\"\n\nJohn Milton sighed.\n\n\"Four hundred and ninety-six.\"\n\nThe sergeant made a note in his book.\n\n\"How much did they take?\"\n\n\"Two hundred in cash and all my credit cards.\"\n\n\"Have you notified your bank?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"And you think your assailant was a Percy Shelley?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied the Milton. \"He handed me this pamphlet on rejecting current religious dogma before he ran off.\"\n\n\"Hello, Ross,\" I said.\n\nThe sergeant looked at me, paused for a moment and then broke into a huge grin.\n\n\"Thursday! They told me you'd be coming back! Told me you made it all the way to SO-5 too.\"\n\nI returned his smile. Ross had been the desk sergeant when I had first joined the Swindon police.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" he asked. \"Starting up a regional office? SO-9 or something? Add a touch of spice to tired old Swindon?\"\n\n\"Not exactly. I've transferred into the Litera Tec office.\"\n\nA look of doubt crossed Ross's face but he quickly hid it.\n\n\"Great!\" he enthused, slightly uneasily. \"Drink later?\"\n\nI agreed happily, and after getting directions to the Litera Tec office, left Ross arguing with Milton 496.\n\nI took the winding stair to the upper floor and then followed directions to the far end of the building. The entire west wing was filled with SpecOps or their regional departments. The Environmental SpecOps had an office here, as did Art Theft and the ChronoGuard. Even Spike had an office up here, although he was rarely seen in it; he preferred a dark and rather fetid lockup in the basement car park. The corridor was packed with bookcases and filing cabinets; the old carpet had almost worn through in the center. It was a far cry from the LiteraTec office in London, where we had enjoyed the most up-to-date information retrieval systems. At length I reached the correct door and knocked. I didn't receive an answer so I walked straight in.\n\nThe room was like a library from a country home somewhere. It was two stories high, with shelves crammed full of books covering every square inch of wall space. A spiral staircase led to a catwalk which ran around the wall, enabling access to the upper shelves. The middle of the room was open plan with desks laid out much like a library's reading room. Every possible surface and all the floor space were piled high with more books and papers, and I wondered how they managed to get anything done at all. About five officers were at work, but they didn't seem to notice me come in. A phone rang and a young man picked it up.\n\n\"Litera Tec office,\" he said in a polite voice. He winced as a tirade came down the phone line to him.\n\n\"I'm very sorry if you didn't like Titus Andronicus, madam,\" he said at last, \"but I'm afraid it's got nothing to do with us\u2014 perhaps you should stick to the comedies in future.\"\n\nI could see Victor Analogy looking through a file with another officer. I walked to where he could see me and waited for him to finish.\n\n\"Ah, Next! Welcome to the office. Give me a moment, will you?\"\n\nI nodded and Victor carried on.\n\n\"...I think Keats would have used less flowery prose than this and the third stanza is slightly clumsy in its construction. My feeling is that it's a clever fake, but check it against the Verse Meter Analyzer.\"\n\nThe officer nodded and walked off. Victor smiled at me and shook my hand.\n\n\"That was Finisterre. He looks after poetry forgery of the nineteenth century. Let me show you around.\"\n\nHe waved a hand in the direction of the bookshelves.\n\n\"Words are like leaves, Thursday. Like people really, fond of their own society.\"\n\nHe smiled.\n\n\"We have over a billion words here. Reference mainly. A good collection of major works and some minor ones that you won't even find in the Bodleian. We've got a storage facility in the basement. That's full as well. We need new premises but the Litera Tecs are a bit underfunded, to say the least.\"\n\nHe led me around one of the desks to where Bowden was sitting bolt upright, his jacket carefully folded across the back of his chair and his desk so neat as to be positively obscene.\n\n\"Bowden you've met. Fine fellow. He's been with us for twelve years and concentrates on nineteenth-century prose. He'll be showing you the ropes. That's your desk over there.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment, staring at the cleared desk. I was not supernumerary. One of their number had died recently and I was replacing him. Filling a dead man's shoes, sitting in a dead man's chair. Beyond the desk sat another officer, who was looking at me curiously.\n\n\"That's Fisher. He'll help you out with anything you want to know about legal copyright and contemporary fiction.\"\n\nFisher was a stocky man with an odd squint who appeared to be wider than he was tall. He looked up at me and grinned, revealing something left over from breakfast stuck between his teeth.\n\nVictor carried on walking to the next desk.\n\n\"Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century prose and poetry are looked after by Helmut Bight, kindly lent to us by our opposite number across the water. He came here to sort out a problem with some poorly translated Goethe and became embroiled with a neo-Nazi movement attempting to set Friedrich Nietzsche up as a fascist saint.\"\n\nHerr Bight was about fifty and looked at me suspiciously. He wore a suit but had removed his tie in the heat.\n\n\"SO-5, eh?\" asked Herr Bight, as though it were a form of venereal disease.\n\n\"I'm SO-27 just like you,\" I replied quite truthfully. \"Eight years in the London office under Boswell.\"\n\nBight picked up an ancient-looking volume in a faded pigskin binding and passed it across to me.\n\n\"What do you make of this?\"\n\nI took the dusty tome in my hand and looked at the spine.\n\n\"The Vanity of Human Wishes,\" I read. \"Written by Samuel Johnson and published in 1749, the first work to appear in his own name.\"\n\nI opened the book and flicked through the yellowed pages. \"First edition. It would be very valuable, if\u2014\"\n\n\"If?\u2014\" repeated Bight.\n\nI sniffed the paper and ran a finger across the page and then tasted it. I looked along the spine and tapped the cover, finally dropping the heavy volume on the desk with a thump.\n\n\"\u2014if it were real.\"\n\n\"I'm impressed, Miss Next,\" admitted Herr Bight. \"You and I must discuss Johnson some time.\"\n\n\"It wasn't as difficult as it looked,\" I had to admit. \"Back in London we've got two pallet-loads of forged Johnsonia like this with a street value of over three hundred thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"London too?\" exclaimed Bight in surprise. \"We've been after this gang for six months; we thought they were local.\"\n\n\"Call Boswell at the London office; he'll help in any way he can. Just mention my name.\"\n\nHerr Bight picked up the phone and asked the operator for a number. Victor guided me over to one of the many frosted-glass doors leading off the main chamber into side offices. He opened the door a crack to reveal two officers in shirtsleeves who were interviewing a man dressed in tights and an embroidered jacket.\n\n\"Malin and Sole look after all crimes regarding Shakespeare.\"\n\nHe shut the door.\n\n\"They keep an eye on forgery, illegal dealing and overtly free thespian interpretations. The actor in with them was Graham Huxtable. He was putting on a felonious one-man performance of Twelfth Night. Persistent offender. He'll be fined and bound over. His Malvolio is truly frightful.\"\n\nHe opened the door to another side office. A pair of identical twins were operating a large computing engine. The room was uncomfortably hot from the thousands of valves, and the clicking of relays was almost deafening. This was the only piece of modern technology that I had seen so far in the office.\n\n\"These are the Forty brothers, Jeff and Geoff. The Fortys operate the Verse Meter Analyzer. It breaks down any prose or poem into its components\u2014words, punctuation, grammar and so forth\u2014then compares that literary signature with a specimen of the target writer in its own memory. Eighty-nine percent accuracy. Very useful for spotting forgeries. We had what purported to be a page of an early draft of Antony and Cleopatra. It was rejected on the grounds that it had too many verbs per unit paragraph.\"\n\nHe closed the door.\n\n\"That's all of us. The man in overall charge of Swindon SpecOps is Commander Braxton Hicks. He's answerable to the Regional Commander based in Salisbury. He leaves us alone most of the time, which is the way we like it. He also likes to see any new operatives the morning they arrive, so I suggest you go and have a word. He's in room twenty-eight down the corridor.\"\n\nWe retraced our steps back to my desk. Victor wished me well again and then disappeared to consult with Helmut about some pirate copies of Doctor Faustus that had appeared on the market with the endings rewritten to be happy.\n\nI sat down in my chair and opened the desk drawer. There was nothing in it; not so much as a pencil shaving. Bowden was watching me.\n\n\"Victor emptied it the morning after Crometty's murder.\"\n\n\"James Crometty,\" I murmured. \"Suppose you tell me about him?\"\n\nBowden picked up a pencil and tried to balance it on its sharp end.\n\n\"Crometty worked mainly in nineteenth-century prose and poetry. He was an excellent officer but excitable. He had little time for procedure. He vanished one evening when he said he had a tip-off about a rare manuscript. We found him a week later in the abandoned Raven public house on Morgue Road. They had shot him six times in the face.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\"I've lost friends before,\" said Bowden, his voice never wavering from the measured pace of speech he used, \"but he was a close friend and colleague and I would gladly have taken his place.\"\n\nHe rubbed his nose slightly; it was the only sign of outward emotion that he had shown.\n\n\"I consider myself a spiritual man, Miss Next, although I am not religious. By spiritual I merely mean that I feel I have good in my soul and am inclined to follow the correct course of action given a prescribed set of circumstances. Do you understand?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Having said that, I would still be very keen to end the life of the person who did this foul deed. I have been practicing on the range and now carry a pistol full time; look\u2014\"\n\n\"Show me later, Mr. Cable. Do you have any leads?\"\n\n\"None. Nothing at all. We don't know who he was seeing or why. I have contacts over at Homicide; they have nothing either.\"\n\n\"Being shot six times in the face is the mark of a person with a gleeful passion for the undertaking of their duties,\" I told him. \"Even if Crometty had been carrying a gun I don't think it would have made much difference.\"\n\n\"You could be right,\" sighed Bowden. \"I can't think of a single time that a pistol has been drawn on a Litera Tec investigation.\"\n\nI agreed. Ten years ago in London it had been the same. But big business and the huge amounts of cash in the sale and distribution of literary works had attracted a bigger criminal element. I knew of at least four London Litera Tecs who had died in the line of duty.\n\n\"It's becoming more violent out there. It's not like it is in the movies. Did you hear about the surrealist riot in Chichester last night?\"\n\n\"I certainly did,\" he replied. \"I can see Swindon involved in similar disturbances before too long. The art college nearly had a riot on its hands last year when the governors dismissed a lecturer who had been secretly encouraging students to embrace abstract expressionism. They wanted him charged under the Interpretation of the Visual Medium Act. He fled to Russia, I think.\"\n\nI looked at my watch.\n\n\"I have to go and see the SpecOps commander.\"\n\nBowden allowed a rare smile to creep upon his serious features.\n\n\"I bid you good luck. If you would permit me to offer you some advice, keep your automatic out of sight. Despite James's untimely death, Commander Hicks doesn't want to see the Litera Tecs permanently armed. He believes that our place is firmly at a desk.\"\n\nI thanked him, left my automatic in the desk drawer and walked down the corridor. I knocked twice and was invited into the outer office by a young clerk. I told him my name and he asked me to wait.\n\n\"The Commander won't be long. Fancy a cup of coffee?\"\n\n\"No thanks.\"\n\nThe clerk looked at me curiously.\n\n\"They say you've come from London to avenge Jim Crometty's death. They say you killed two men. They say your father's face can stop a clock. Is this true?\"\n\n\"It depends on how you look at it. Office rumors are pretty quick to get started, aren't they?\"\n\nBraxton Hicks opened the door to his office and beckoned me in. He was a tall, thin man with a large mustache and a gray complexion. He had bags under his eyes; it didn't look as though he slept much. The room was far more austere than any commander's office I had ever seen. Several golf bags were leaning against the wall, and I could see that a carpet putter had been hastily pushed to one side.\n\nHe smiled genially and offered me a seat before sitting himself.\n\n\"Cigarette?\"\n\n\"I don't, thank you.\"\n\n\"Neither do I.\"\n\nHe stared at me for a moment and drummed his long fingers on the immaculately clear desk. He opened a folder in front of him and read in silence for a moment. He was reading my SO-5 file; obviously he and Analogy didn't get on well enough to swap information between clearances.\n\n\"Operative Thursday Next, eh?\" His eyes flicked across the pertinent points of my career. \"Quite a record. Police, Crimea, rejoined the police, then moved to London in '75. Why was that?\"\n\n\"Advancement, sir.\"\n\nBraxton Hicks grunted and continued reading.\n\n\"SpecOps for eight years, twice commended. Recently loaned to SO-5. Your stay with the latter has been heavily censored, yet it says here you were wounded in action.\"\n\nHe looked over his spectacles at me.\n\n\"Did you return fire?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"I fired first.\"\n\n\"Not so good.\"\n\nBraxton stroked his mustache thoughtfully.\n\n\"You were operative grade one in the London office working on Shakespeare, no less. Very prestigious. Yet you swap that for a grade three operative assignment in a backwater like this. Why?\"\n\n\"Times change and we change with them, sir.\"\n\nBraxton grunted and closed the file.\n\n\"Here at SpecOps my responsibility is not only with the LiteraTecs, but also Art Theft, Vampirism & Lycanthropy, the ChronoGuard, Antiterrorism, Civil Order and the dog pound. Do you play golf?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Shame, shame. Where was I? Oh yes. Out of all those departments, do you know which I fear most?\"\n\n\"I've no idea, sir.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you. None of them. The thing I fear most is SpecOps regional budget meetings. Do you realize what that means, Next?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"It means that every time one of you puts in for extra overtime or a special request, I go over budget and it makes my head hurt right here.\"\n\nHe pointed to his left temple.\n\n\"And I don't like that. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nHe picked up my file again and waved it at me.\n\n\"I heard you had a spot of bother in the big city. Other operatives getting killed. It's a whole new different alternative kettle of fish here, y'know. We crunch data for a living. If you want to arrest someone then have uniform do it. No running about shooting up bad guys, no overtime and definitely no twenty-four-hour surveillance operations. Understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Now, about Hades.\"\n\nMy heart leaped; I had thought that would have been censored, if anything.\n\n\"I understand you think he is still alive?\"\n\nI thought for a moment. My eyes flicked to the file Hicks was holding. He divined my thoughts.\n\n\"Oh, that's not in here, my dear girl. I may be a hick commander in the boonies, but I do have my sources. You think he is still alive?\"\n\nI knew I could trust Victor and Bowden, but about Hicks I was not so sure. I didn't think I would risk it.\n\n\"A symptom of stress, sir. Hades is dead.\"\n\nHe plonked my file in the out-tray, leaned back in his chair and stroked his mustache, something he obviously enjoyed.\n\n\"So you're not here to try and find him?\"\n\n\"Why would Hades be in Swindon if he were alive, sir?\"\n\nBraxton looked uneasy for a moment.\n\n\"Quite, quite.\"\n\nHe smiled and stood up, indicating that the interview was at an end.\n\n\"Good, well, run along. One piece of advice. Learn to play golf; you'll find it a very rewarding and relaxing game. This is a copy of the department's budget account and this is a list of all the local golf courses. Study them well. Good luck.\"\n\nI went out and closed the door after me.\n\nThe clerk looked up.\n\n\"Did he mention the budget?\"\n\n\"I don't think he mentioned anything else. Do you have a waste bin?\"\n\nThe clerk smiled and pushed it out with his foot. I dumped the heavy document in it unceremoniously.\n\n\"Bravo,\" he said.\n\nAs I was about to open the door to leave a short man in a blue suit came powering through without looking. He was reading a fax and knocked against me as he went straight through to Braxton's office without a word. The clerk was watching me for my reaction.\n\n\"Well, well,\" I murmured, \"Jack Schitt.\"\n\n\"You know him?\"\n\n\"Not socially.\"\n\n\"As much charm as an open grave,\" said the clerk, who had obviously warmed to me since I binned the budget. \"Steer clear of him. Goliath, you know.\"\n\nI looked at the closed door to Braxton's office.\n\n\"What's he here for?\"\n\nThe secretary shrugged, gave me a conspiratorial wink and said very pointedly and slowly:\n\n\"I'll get that coffee you wanted and it was two sugars, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"No thanks, not for me.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" he replied. \"Two sugars, TWO sugars.\"\n\nHe was pointing at the intercom on his desk.\n\n\"Heavens above!\" he exploded. \"Do I have to spell it out?\"\n\nThe penny dropped. The clerk gave a wan smile and scurried out of the door. I quickly sat down, flipped up the lever marked \"two\" on the intercom and leaned closer to listen.\n\n\"I don't like it when you don't knock, Mr. Schitt.\"\n\n\"I'm devastated, Braxton. Does she know anything about Hades?\"\n\n\"She says not.\"\n\n\"She's lying. She's here for a purpose. If I find Hades first we can get rid of her.\"\n\n\"Less of the we, Jack,\" said Braxton testily. \"Please remember that I have given Goliath my full cooperation, but you are working under my jurisdiction and have only the powers that I bestow upon you. Powers that I can revoke at any time. We do this my way or not at all. Do you understand?\"\n\nSchitt was unperturbed. He replied in a condescending manner:\n\n\"Of course, Braxton, as long as you understand that if this thing blows up in your face the Goliath Corporation will hold you personally responsible.\"\n\nI sat down at my empty desk again. There seemed to be a lot going on in the office that I wasn't a part of. Bowden laid his hand on my shoulder and made me jump.\n\n\"I'm sorry, I didn't wish to startle you. Did you get the commander's budget speech?\"\n\n\"And more. Jack Schitt went into his office as though he owned the place.\"\n\nBowden shrugged.\n\n\"Since he's Goliath, then the chances are he does.\"\n\nBowden picked his jacket up from the back of his chair and folded it neatly across his arm.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" I asked.\n\n\"Lunch, then a lead in the Chuzzlewit theft. I'll explain on the way. Do you have a car?\"\n\nBowden wasn't too impressed when he saw the multicolored Porsche.\n\n\"This is hardly what one might refer to as low profile.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" I replied, \"who would have thought a Litera Tec would drive a car like this? Besides, I have to drive it.\"\n\nHe got in the passenger seat and looked around slightly disdainfully at the spartan interior.\n\n\"Is there a problem, Miss Next? You're staring.\"\n\nNow that Bowden was in the passenger seat I had suddenly realized where I had seen him before. He had been the passenger when the car had appeared in front of me at the hospital. Events had indeed started to fall into place."
            },
            {
                "title": "Lunch with Bowden",
                "text": "\u2002Bowden Cable is the sort of honest and dependable operative that is the backbone of SpecOps. They never win commendations or medals and the public has no knowledge of them at all. They are all worth ten of people like me.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nBowden guided me to a transport caf\u00e9 on the old Oxford road. I thought it was an odd choice for lunch; the seats were hard orange plastic and the yellowing Formica-covered tabletops had started to lift at the edges. The windows were almost opaque with dirt and the nylon net curtains hung heavily with deposits of grease. Several flypapers dangled from the ceiling, their potency long worn off, the flies stuck to them long since desiccated to dust. Somebody had made an effort to make the interior slightly more cheery by sticking up a few pictures hastily cut from old calendars; a signed photo of the 1978 England soccer team was hung above a fireplace that had been filled in and then decorated with a vase full of plastic flowers.\n\n\"Are you sure?\" I asked, sitting gingerly at a table near the window.\n\n\"The food's good,\" responded Bowden, as though that was all that mattered.\n\nA gum-chewing waitress came up to the table and put some bent cutlery in front of us. She was about fifty and was wearing a uniform that might have been her mother's.\n\n\"Hello, Mr. Cable,\" she said in a flat tone with only a sliver of interest in her voice, \"all well?\"\n\n\"Very well, thank you. Lottie, I'd like you to meet my new partner, Thursday Next.\"\n\nLottie looked at me oddly.\n\n\"Any relation to Captain Next?\"\n\n\"He was my brother,\" I said loudly, as if wanting Lottie to know that I wasn't ashamed of the connection, \"and he didn't do what they said he did.\"\n\nThe waitress stared at me for a moment, as if wanting to say something but not daring.\n\n\"What will you lot have, then?\" she asked instead with forced cheerfulness. She had lost someone in the charge; I could sense it.\n\n\"What's the special?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Soupe d'Auvergne au fromage,\" replied Lottie, \"followed by rojoes cominho.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" I asked.\n\n\"It's braised pork with cumin, coriander and lemon,\" replied Bowden.\n\n\"Sounds great.\"\n\n\"Two specials please and a carafe of mineral water.\"\n\nShe nodded, scribbled a note and gave me a sad smile before departing.\n\nBowden looked at me with interest. He would have guessed eventually that I was ex-military. I wore it badly.\n\n\"Crimea veteran, eh? Did you know Colonel Phelps was in town?\"\n\n\"I bumped into him on the airship yesterday. He wanted me to go to one of his rallies.\"\n\n\"Will you?\"\n\n\"You must be kidding. His idea of the perfect end to the Crimean conflict is for us to fight and fight until there is no one left alive and the peninsula's a poisoned and mined land no good for anything. I'm hoping that the UN can bring both governments to their senses.\"\n\n\"I was called up in '78,\" said Bowden. \"Even got past basic training. Fortunately it was the same year the czar died and the crown prince took over. There were more pressing demands on the young emperor's time, so the Russians withdrew. I was never needed.\"\n\n\"I was reading somewhere that since the war started, only seven years of the one hundred and thirty-one have actually been spent fighting.\"\n\n\"But when they do,\" added Bowden, \"they certainly make up for it.\"\n\nI looked at him. He had taken a sip of water after offering the carafe to me first.\n\n\"Married? Kids?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Bowden. \"I haven't really had time to find myself a wife, although I am not against the idea in principle. It's just that SpecOps is not really a great place for meeting people and I'm not, I confess, a great socializer. I've been shortlisted for a post opening the equivalent of a Litera Tec office in Ohio; it seems to me the perfect opportunity to take a wife.\"\n\n\"The money's good over there and the facilities are excellent. I'd consider it myself given the opportunity,\" I replied. I meant it too.\n\n\"Would you? Would you really?\" asked Bowden with a flush of excitement that was curiously at odds with his slightly cold demeanor.\n\n\"Sure. Change of scenery,\" I stammered, wanting to change the subject in case Bowden got the wrong idea. \"Have you... ah... been a Litera Tec long?\"\n\nBowden thought for a moment.\n\n\"Ten years. I came from Cambridge with a degree in nineteenth-century literature and joined the LiteraTecs straight away. Jim Crometty looked after me from the moment I started.\"\n\nHe stared out of the window wistfully.\n\n\"Perhaps if I'd been there\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014then you'd both be dead. Anyone who shoots a man six times in the face doesn't go to Sunday school. He'd have killed you and not even thought about it. There's little to be gained in what ifs; believe me, I know. I lost two fellow officers to Hades. I've been over it all a hundred times, yet it would probably happen exactly the same way if I had another chance.\"\n\nLottie placed the soup in front of us with a basket of freshly baked bread.\n\n\"Enjoy,\" said Lottie, \"it's on the house.\"\n\n\"But!\u2014\" I began. Lottie silenced me.\n\n\"Save your breath,\" she said impassively. \"After the charge. After the shit hit the fan. After the first wave of death\u2014you went back to do what you could. You went back. I value that.\" She turned and left.\n\nThe soup was good; the rojoes cominho even better.\n\n\"Victor told me you worked on Shakespeare up in London,\" said Bowden.\n\nIt was the most prestigious area in which to work in the LiteraTec office. Lake poetry was a close second and Restoration comedy after that. Even in the most egalitarian of offices, a pecking order always established itself.\n\n\"There was very little room for promotion in the London office so after a couple of years I was given the Shakespeare work,\" I replied, tearing at a piece of bread. \"We get a lot of trouble from Baconians in London.\"\n\nBowden looked up.\n\n\"How do you rate the Baconian theory?\"\n\n\"Not much. Like many people I'm pretty sure there is more to Shakespeare than just Shakespeare. But Sir Francis Bacon using a little-known actor as a front? I just don't buy it.\"\n\n\"He was a trained lawyer,\" asserted Bowden. \"Many of the plays have legal parlance to them.\"\n\n\"It means nothing,\" I replied, \"Greene, Nashe and especially Ben Jonson use legal phraseology; none of them had legal training. And don't even get me started on the so-called codes.\"\n\n\"No need to worry about that,\" replied Bowden. \"I won't. I'm no Baconian either. He didn't write them.\"\n\n\"And what would make you so sure?\"\n\n\"If you read his De Augmentis Scientarium you'll find Bacon actually criticizing popular drama. Furthermore, when the troupe Shakespeare belonged to applied to the king to form a theater, they were referred to the commissioner for suits. Guess who was on that panel and most vociferously opposed the application?\"\n\n\"Francis Bacon?\" I asked.\n\n\"Exactly. Whoever wrote the plays, it wasn't Bacon. I've formulated a few theories of my own over the years. Have you ever heard of Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford?\"\n\n\"Vaguely.\"\n\n\"There is some proof that, unlike Bacon, he could actually write and write quite well\u2014hang on.\"\n\nLottie had brought a phone to the table. It was for Bowden. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nHe looked up at me.\n\n\"Yes, she is. We'll be right over. Thanks.\"\n\n\"Problems?\"\n\n\"It's your aunt and uncle. I don't know how to say this but... they've been kidnapped!\"\n\nThere were several police and SpecOps cars clustered around the entrance to my mother's house when we pulled up. A small crowd had assembled and was peering over the fence. The dodos had gathered on the other side and were staring back, wondering what the fuss was all about. I showed my badge to the officer on duty.\n\n\"Litera Tec?\" he said scornfully. \"Can't let you in, ma'am. Police and SpecOps-9 only.\"\n\n\"He's my uncle!\u2014\" I said angrily, and the officer reluctantly let me through. Swindon was the same as London: A Litera Tec's badge held about as much authority as a bus pass. I found my mother in the living room surrounded by damp Kleenex. I sat beside her and asked her what had happened.\n\nShe blew her nose noisily.\n\n\"I called them in for dinner at one. It was snorkers, Mycroft's favorite. There was no answer so I went down to his workshop. They were both gone and the double doors wide open. Mycroft wouldn't have gone out without saying anything.\"\n\nThis was true. Mycroft never left the house unless it was absolutely necessary; since Owens had been meringued Polly did all his running around.\n\n\"Anything stolen?\" I asked a SpecOps-9 operative who stared at me coldly. He didn't relish being asked questions by a Litera Tec.\n\n\"Who knows?\" he replied with little emotion. \"I understand you'd been in his workshop recently?\"\n\n\"Yesterday evening.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps you can have a look around and tell us if there is anything missing?\"\n\nI was escorted to Mycroft's workshop. The rear doors had been forced and I looked around carefully. The table where Mycroft had kept all his bookworms had been cleared; all I could see was the massive two-pronged power lead that would have slotted into the back of the Prose Portal.\n\n\"There was something right here. Several goldfish bowls full up with small worms and a large book a bit like a medieval church Bible\u2014\"\n\n\"Can you draw it?\" asked a familiar voice. I turned to see Jack Schitt lurking in the shadows, smoking a small cigarette and overseeing a Goliath technician who was passing a humming sensor over the ground.\n\n\"Well, well,\" I said. \"If it isn't Jack Schitt. What's Goliath's interest in my uncle?\"\n\n\"Can you draw it?\" he repeated.\n\nI nodded, and one of the Goliath men gave me a pencil and paper. I sketched out what I had seen, the intricate combination of dials and knobs on the front of the book and the heavy brass straps. Jack Schitt took it from me and studied it with great interest as another Goliath technician walked in from outside.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Schitt.\n\nThe agent saluted neatly and showed Schitt a pair of large and slightly molten G-clamps.\n\n\"Professor Next had jury-rigged his own set of cables to the electrical substation just next door. I spoke to the electricity board. They said they had three unexplained power drains of about one point eight megawatts each late last night.\"\n\nJack Schitt turned to me.\n\n\"You better leave this to us, Next,\" he said. \"Kidnapping and theft are not part of the Litera Tec's responsibility.\"\n\n\"Who did this?\" I demanded, but Schitt didn't take crap from anyone\u2014least of all me. He wagged a finger in my direction.\n\n\"This investigation is nothing to do with you; we'll keep you informed of any developments. Or not. As I see fit.\"\n\nHe turned and walked away.\n\n\"It was Acheron, wasn't it?\" I said, slowly and deliberately. Schitt stopped in midstride, and turned to face me.\n\n\"Acheron is dead, Next. Burned to a crisp at junction twelve. Don't spread your theories around town, girl. It might make you seem more unstable than you actually are.\"\n\nHe smiled without the least vestige of kindness and walked out of the workshop to his waiting car."
            },
            {
                "title": "Hello & Goodbye, Mr. Quaverley",
                "text": "\u2002Few people remember Mr. Quaverley anymore. If you had read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985 you would have come across a minor character who lived in Mrs. Todger's boarding house. He discoursed freely with the Pecksniffs on the subject of butterflies, of which he knew almost nothing. Sadly, he is no longer there. His hat is hanging on the hat rack at the bottom of page 235, but that is all that remains...\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Thursday Next Casebook, Volume 6\n\n\"Astounding!\" Said Acheron quietly as he surveyed Mycroft's Prose Portal. \"Truly astounding!\"\n\nMycroft said nothing. He had been too busy wondering whether Polly was still alive and well since the poem closed on her. Against his protestations they had pulled the plug before the portal had reopened; he didn't know if any human could survive in such an environment. They had blindfolded him during the journey and he was now standing in the smoking lounge of what had once been a large and luxurious hotel. Although still grand, the d\u00e9cor was tatty and worn. The pearl-inlaid grand piano didn't look as though it had been tuned for years, and the mirror-backed bar was sadly devoid of any refreshment. Mycroft looked out of the window for a clue as to where he was being held. It wasn't hard to guess. The large quantity of drab-colored Griffin motorcars and the absence of any advertising hoardings told Mycroft all he needed to know; he was in the People's Republic of Wales, somewhere well out of reach of the conventional law enforcement agencies. The possibility of escape was slim, and if he could get away, what then? Even if there was a chance he could make it back across the border, he would never be able to leave without Polly\u2014she was still imprisoned in the poem, itself now little more than printed words on a scrap of paper that Hades had placed in his breast pocket. There seemed to be little chance of regaining the poem without a fearsome struggle, and besides, without the bookworms and the Prose Portal, Polly would stay in her Wordsworthian prison forever. Mycroft bit his lip nervously and turned his attention to the other people in the room. Besides himself and Hades there were four others\u2014and two of them held guns.\n\n\"Welcome, Professor Next,\" said Hades as he grinned broadly, \"from one genius to another!\"\n\nHe gazed fondly at the machine. He ran a finger along the rim of one of the goldfish bowls. The worms were busy reading a copy of Mansfield Park and were discussing where Sir Thomas got his money from.\n\n\"I can't do this alone, you know,\" said Hades without looking up. One of the other men shuffled to get more comfortable on one of the few original upholstered armchairs.\n\n\"The next step for me is to gain your full support.\" He looked at Mycroft with a serious expression. \"You will help me, won't you?\"\n\n\"I would sooner die!\" replied Mycroft coldly.\n\nAcheron looked at him, then broke into another broad grin.\n\n\"I don't doubt it for one moment, but I'm being rude! I have abducted you and stolen your life's work and haven't even introduced myself!\" He walked up to Mycroft and shook him warmly by the hand, a gesture that Mycroft didn't return.\n\n\"My name is Hades, Acheron Hades. Perhaps you've heard of me?\"\n\n\"Acheron the extortionist?\" asked Mycroft slowly. \"Acheron the kidnapper and the blackmailer?\"\n\nAcheron's smile didn't leave his lips.\n\n\"Yes, yes and yes. But you forgot murderer. Forty-two times a murderer, my friend. The first one is always the hardest. After that it doesn't really matter, they can only hang you once. It's a bit like eating a packet of shortbread; you can never just have one piece.\" He laughed again. \"I had a run-in with your niece, you know. She survived, although,\" he added, in case Mycroft erroneously believed there was a vestige of goodness in his dark soul, \"that wasn't the way I had planned it.\"\n\n\"Why are you doing this?\" asked Mycroft.\n\n\"Why?\" repeated Acheron. \"Why? Why, for fame, of course!\" he boomed. \"You see, gentlemen?\u2014\" The others nodded obediently. \"Fame!\" he repeated. \"And you can share that fame!\u2014\"\n\nHe ushered Mycroft over to his desk and dug out a file of press clippings.\n\n\"Look what the papers say about me!\"\n\nHe held up a cutting proudly.\n\n\u2002HADES 74 WEEKS AT TOP OF\n\n\u2002\"MOST-WANTED\" LIST\n\n\"Impressive, eh?\" he said proudly. \"How about this one?\"\n\n\u2002TOAD READERS VOTE HADES\n\n\u2002\"LEAST FAVORITE PERSON\"\n\n\"The Owl said that execution was too good for me and The Mole wanted Parliament to reintroduce breaking on the wheel.\"\n\nHe showed the snippet to Mycroft.\n\n\"What do you think?\"\n\n\"I think,\" began Mycroft, \"that you could have used your vast intellect far more usefully by serving mankind instead of stealing from it.\"\n\nAcheron looked hurt.\n\n\"Where's the fun in that? Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts\u2014and let's face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field\u2014is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good\u2014\"\n\n\"I'd like to go home.\"\n\n\"Of course!\" said Acheron, smiling. \"Hobbes, open the door.\"\n\nThe man nearest the door opened it and stepped aside. The large door led to the lobby of the old hotel.\n\n\"I don't speak Welsh,\" murmured Mycroft.\n\nHobbes shut the door and rebolted it.\n\n\"Bit of a drawback in Merthyr, old boy,\" said Acheron, smiling. \"You'd not get far without it.\"\n\nMycroft looked at Hades uneasily.\n\n\"But Polly!\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah, yes!\" replied Hades. \"Your delightful wife.\" He pulled out the copy of \"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud\" and produced a large gold lighter, which he ignited with a flourish.\n\n\"No!\u2014\" cried Mycroft, taking several steps forward. Acheron arched an eyebrow, the flame nearly touching the paper.\n\n\"I'll stay and help you,\" said Mycroft wearily.\n\nA broad grin broke out on Hades's features. He put the poem back in his pocket.\n\n\"Stout fellow! You won't regret this.\"\n\nHe thought for a moment.\n\n\"Actually, you probably will.\"\n\nMycroft sat unsteadily on a handy chair.\n\n\"By the by,\" went on Hades, \"have I introduced you to all my fiendish compatriots?\"\n\nMycroft shook his head sadly.\n\n\"No? Most remiss. The man with the gun over there is Mr. Delamare. His obedience is matched only by his stupidity. He does everything I say and would die for me if necessary. A sort of human red setter, if you will. He has an IQ below that of a Neanderthal and believes only what he reads in The Gad-fly. Mr. Delamare, my friend, have you committed your wicked act today?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Hades. I drove at seventy-three miles per hour.\"\n\nHades frowned.\n\n\"That doesn't sound very wicked.\"\n\nDelamare chuckled.\n\n\"Through the mall?\"\n\nHades wagged an approving finger and smiled a wicked smile.\n\n\"Very good.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Hades.\"\n\n\"Over there is Mr. Hobbes. He is an actor of some distinction whose talents the English Shakespeare Company foolishly decides to ignore. We will try and rectify that fault; is that not so, Mr. Hobbes?\"\n\n\"It is, sire,\" responded Mr. Hobbes, bowing low with a flourish. He was dressed in tights, a leather jerkin and codpiece. He had been passed over for every major part with the ESC for ten years, relegated to walk-ons and understudying. He had become so dangerously unstable that even the other actors noticed. He had joined up with Acheron shortly after his escape from a lengthy prison sentence; pushing thespian interpretation to the limits, he had killed Laertes for real while playing Hamlet.\n\n\"The third man over there is M\u00fcller, a doctor whom I befriended after he was struck off. The particulars are a bit sordid. We'll talk about it over dinner some time, as long as we're not eating steak tartar. The fourth man is Felix7, who is one of my most trusted companions. He can remember no farther than a week in the past and has no aspirations for the future. He thinks only of the work he has been assigned to carry out. He is without conscience, mercy or pity. A fine man. We should have more like him.\"\n\nHades clapped his hands together happily.\n\n\"Shall we get to work? I haven't committed a singularly debauched act for almost an hour.\"\n\nMycroft reluctantly walked over to the Prose Portal and started to ready it. The bookworms were fed, watered and cleaned, power supplies were laid on and all the details in the child's exercise book neatly followed. As Mycroft worked, Acheron sat down and flicked through an old manuscript filled with spidery writing, replete with scribbled corrections and bound up with faded red ribbon. He skipped through various sections until he found what he was looking for.\n\n\"Perfect!\" he chortled.\n\nMycroft finished the testing procedure and stepped back.\n\n\"It's ready,\" he sighed.\n\n\"Excellent!\" Acheron beamed as he handed over the aged manuscript.\n\n\"Open the portal just here.\"\n\nHe tapped the page and smiled. Mycroft slowly took the manuscript and looked at the title.\n\n\"Martin Chuzzlewit! Fiend!\"\n\n\"Flattery will get you nowhere, my dear professor.\"\n\n\"But,\" continued Mycroft, \"if you alter anything in the original manuscript!\u2014\"\n\n\"But that's the point, isn't it, my dear Mycroft,\" said Hades, clasping one of Mycroft's cheeks between finger and thumb and shaking gently. \"That's... the... point. What good is extortion unless you show everyone what massive damage you could do if you wanted? And anyway, where's the fun in robbing banks? Bang, bang, give me the money? Besides, killing civilians is never any real fun. It's a bit like shooting rabbits that have been pegged to the ground. Give me a SWAT platoon to deal with any day.\"\n\n\"But the damage!\u2014\" continued Mycroft. \"Are you mad!?\"\n\nAcheron's eyes flashed angrily as he grasped Mycroft tightly by the throat.\n\n\"What? What did you say? Mad, did you say? Hmm? Eh? What? What?\"\n\nHis fingers tightened on Mycroft's windpipe; the professor could feel himself start to sweat in the cold panic of suffocation. Acheron was waiting for an answer that Mycroft was unable to utter.\n\n\"What? What did you say?\"\n\nAcheron's pupils started to dilate as Mycroft felt a dark veil fall over his mind.\n\n\"Think it's fun being christened with a name like mine? Having to live up to what is expected of one? Born with an intellect so vast that all other humans are cretins by comparison?\"\n\nMycroft managed to give out a choke and Acheron slackened his grip. Mycroft fell to the floor, gulping for breath. Acheron stood over him and wagged a reproachful finger.\n\n\"Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad, I'm just... well, differently moraled, that's all.\"\n\nHades handed him Chuzzlewit again and Mycroft needed no second bidding. He placed the worms with the manuscript inside the heavy old book; within half an hour of feverish activity the device was primed and set.\n\n\"It is ready,\" announced Mycroft miserably. \"I have only to press this button and the door will open. It will stay open for ten seconds at most.\"\n\nHe sighed deeply and shook his head.\n\n\"May God forgive me!\u2014\"\n\n\"I forgive you,\" replied Acheron. \"It's the closest you'll get!\"\n\nHades walked across to Hobbes, who was now dressed in black combat gear. He wore a webbing harness around his waist upon which hung all sorts of items that might be of use on an unplanned armed robbery\u2014a large torch, bolt cutters, rope, handcuffs and an automatic.\n\n\"You know who it is you are after?\"\n\n\"Mr. Quaverley, sir.\"\n\n\"Splendid. I feel a speech coming on.\"\n\nHe climbed onto a carved oak table.\n\n\"My friends!\" he began. \"This is a very great day for science and a very bad one for Dickensian literature.\"\n\nHe paused for dramatic effect.\n\n\"Comrades, we stand on the very brink of an act of artistic barbarism so monstrous that I am almost ashamed of it myself. All of you have been my faithful servants for many years, and although none of you possesses a soul quite as squalid as mine, and the faces I see before me are both stupid and unappealing, I regard you all with no small measure of fondness.\"\n\nHis four comrades mumbled their thanks.\n\n\"Silence! I think it is fair to say that I am the most debased individual on this planet and quite the most brilliant criminal mind this century. The plan that we embark upon now is easily the most diabolical ever devised by man, and will not only take you to the top of everyone's most-wanted list but will also make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams of avarice.\" He clapped his hands together. \"So let the adventure begin, and here's to the success of our finest criminal endeavor!\"\n\n\"Sir?\"\n\n\"What is it, Dr. M\u00fcller?\"\n\n\"All that money. I'm not so sure. I'd settle for a Gainsborough. You know\u2014that one of the kid in the blue suit.\"\n\nAcheron stared at him for a moment, a smile slowly breaking across his features.\n\n\"Why not? Odious and art-loving! What a divine dichotomy! You shall have your Gainsborough! And now, let us\u2014What is it, Hobbes?\"\n\n\"You won't forget to make the ESC put on my improved version of the Scottish play\u2014Macbeth: No More 'Mr. Nice Guy'?\"\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\n\"A full eight-week run?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, and Midsummer Night's Dream with chainsaws. Mr. Delamare, is there anything that you require?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the man with the brain of a dog, rubbing the back of his head thoughtfully, \"could I have a motorway services named after my mum?\"\n\n\"Insufferably obtuse,\" remarked Acheron. \"I don't think that should be too difficult. Felix7?\"\n\n\"I require no payment,\" said Felix7 stoically. \"I am merely your willing servant. To serve a good and wise master is the best that can be expected of any sentient being.\"\n\n\"I love that man!\" said Hades to the others. He chuckled to himself and then turned back to Hobbes, who was waiting to make the jump.\n\n\"So you understand what it is you have to do?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.\"\n\n\"Then, Mycroft, open the portal and my dear Hobbes: Godspeed!\"\n\nMycroft pressed the green \"open\" button and there was a bright flash and a strong electromagnetic pulse that had every compass for miles around spinning wildly. The portal opened rapidly and Hobbes took a deep breath and stepped through; as he did, Mycroft pressed the red \"close\" button, the portal slid shut and a hush descended on the room. Acheron looked at Mycroft, who stared at the timer on the large book. Dr. M\u00fcller read a paperback of Martin Chuzzlewit to check Hobbes's progress, Felix7 kept an eye on Mycroft, and Delamare looked at something sticky he had found inside his ear.\n\nTwo minutes later Mycroft pressed the green \"open\" button once more and Hobbes came back through, dragging a middle-aged man dressed in a badly fitting suit with high collar and necktie. Hobbes was quite out of breath and sat on a nearby chair, panting. The middle-aged man looked around him in mystification.\n\n\"My friends,\" he began, looking at their curious faces, \"you find me in a disadvantaged state. Pray explain the meaning of what I can only describe as a bewildering predicament\u2014\"\n\nAcheron walked up to him and placed a friendly arm around his shoulders.\n\n\"Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of success. Welcome to the twentieth century and reality. My name is Hades.\"\n\nAcheron extended a hand. The man bowed and shook it gratefully, mistakenly believing he had fallen among friends.\n\n\"Your servant, Mr. Hades. My name is Mr. Quaverley, resident of Mrs. Todger's and a proctor by trade. I have to confess that I have no small notion of the large wonder that has been subjected to me, but pray tell me, since I see you are the master of this paradox, what has happened and how I can be of assistance.\"\n\nAcheron smiled and patted Mr. Quaverley's shoulder affectionately.\n\n\"My dear Mr. Quaverley! I could spend many happy hours in discussion with you about the essence of Dickensian narrative, but it would really be a waste of my precious time. Felix7, return to Swindon and leave Mr. Quaverley's body where it will be found in the morning.\"\n\nFelix7 took Mr. Quaverley firmly by the arm.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Oh, and Felix7\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"While you're out, why don't you quiet down that Sturmey Archer fellow? He's of no earthly use to us anymore.\"\n\nFelix7 dragged Mr. Quaverley out of the door. Mycroft was weeping."
            },
            {
                "title": "Sturmey Archer & Felix",
                "text": "\u2002...The finest criminal mind requires the finest accomplices to accompany him. Otherwise, what's the point? I always found that I could never apply my most deranged plans without someone to share and appreciate them. I'm like that. Very generous...\n\n\u2014ACHERON HADES, Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit\n\nSo who is this guy we're going to see?\"\n\n\"Fellow named Sturmey Archer,\" replied Bowden as I pulled my car into the curb. We found ourselves opposite a small factory unit that had a gentle glow of light showing through the windows.\n\n\"A few years ago Crometty and myself had the extreme good fortune to arrest several members of a gang which had been attempting to peddle a rather poorly forged sequel to Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' It was entitled 'Rime II\u2014The Mariner Returneth' but no one had been fooled. Sturmey avoided jail by turning state's evidence. I've got some dirt on him about a Cardenio scam. I don't want to use it, but I will if I have to.\"\n\n\"What makes you think he has anything to do with Crometty's death?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" said Bowden simply. \"He's just next on the list.\"\n\nWe walked across in the gathering dusk. The streetlights were flickering on and the stars were beginning to appear in the twilit sky. In another half hour it would be night.\n\nBowden thought about knocking but didn't bother. He opened the door noiselessly and we crept in.\n\nSturmey Archer was a feeble-looking character who had spent too many years in institutions to be able to look after himself properly. Without designated bathtimes he didn't wash and without fixed mealtimes he went hungry. He wore thick glasses and mismatched clothes and his face was a moonscape of healed acne. He made part of his living these days by casting busts of famous writers in plaster of paris, but he had too much bad history to be kept on the straight. Other criminals blackmailed him into helping them and Sturmey, already a weak man, could do little to resist. It wasn't surprising that, out of his forty-six years, only twenty had been spent at liberty.\n\nInside the workshop we came across a large workbench on which were placed about five hundred foot-high busts of Will Shakespeare, all of them in various states of completion. A large vat of plaster of paris lay empty next to a rack containing twenty rubber casts; it seemed Sturmey had a big order on.\n\nArcher himself was at the back of the shop indulging in his second profession, repairing WillSpeak machines. He had his hand up the back of an Othello as we crept up behind him.\n\nThe mannequin's crude voice-box crackled as Sturmey made some trifling adjustments:\n\nIt is the cause, it is the cause, (click) yet I'll not shed a drop of her blood, (click) nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow...\n\n\"Hello, Sturmey,\" said Bowden.\n\nSturmey jumped and shorted out the Othello's controls. The dummy opened its eyes wide and gave out a terrified cry of MONUMENTAL ALABASTER! before falling limp. Sturmey glared at Bowden.\n\n\"Creeping around at night, Mr. Cable? Hardly like a LiteraTec, is it?\"\n\nBowden smiled.\n\n\"Let's just say I'm rediscovering the joys of fieldwork. This is my new partner, Thursday Next.\"\n\nArcher nodded at me suspiciously. Bowden continued:\n\n\"You heard about Jim Crometty, Sturmey?\"\n\n\"I heard,\" replied Archer with feigned sadness.\n\n\"I wondered if you had any information you might want to impart?\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\nHe pointed at the plaster busts of Will Shakespeare.\n\n\"Look at those. A fiver each wholesale to a Jap company that wants ten thou. The Japanese have built a seven-eighths-scale replica of Stratford-upon-Avon near Yokohama and love all this crap. Fifty grand, Cable, that's literature I can relate to.\"\n\n\"And the Chuzzlewit manuscript?\" I asked. \"How do you relate to that?\"\n\nHe jumped visibly as I spoke.\n\n\"I don't,\" shrugged Sturmey in an unconvincing manner.\n\n\"Listen, Sturmey,\" said Bowden, who had picked up on Archer's nervousness, \"I'd be really, really sorry to have to pull you in for questioning about that Cardenio scam.\"\n\nArcher's lower lip trembled; his eyes darted between the two of us anxiously.\n\n\"I don't know anything, Mr. Cable,\" he whined. \"Besides, you don't know what he would do.\"\n\n\"Who would do what, Sturmey?\"\n\nThen I heard it. A slight click behind us. I pushed Bowden in front of me; he tripped and collapsed on top of Sturmey, who gave a small cry that was drowned out by the loud concussion of a shotgun going off at close quarters. We were lucky; the blast hit the wall where we had been standing. I told Bowden to stay down and dashed low behind the workbench, trying to put some distance between myself and our assailant. When I reached the other side of the room I looked up and saw a man dressed in a black greatcoat holding a pump-action shotgun. He spotted me and I ducked as a blast from the shotgun scattered plaster fragments of Shakespeare all over me. The concussion of the shot had started up a mannequin of Romeo, who intoned pleadingly: He jests at scars, that never felt a wound. But soft! What light through yonder... until a second shot from the shotgun silenced him. I looked across at Bowden, who shook the plaster out of his hair and drew his revolver. I ran across to the far wall, ducking as our assailant fired again, once more shattering Archer's carefully painted plaster statues. I heard Bowden's revolver crack twice. I stood up and fired at our attacker, who had secreted himself in an office; my shots did nothing except splinter the wood on the door frame. Bowden fired again and his shot ricocheted off a cast-iron spiral staircase and hit a WillSpeak machine of Lord and Lady Macbeth; they started whispering to one another about the wisdom of murdering the king. I caught a glimpse of the man running across the room to outflank us. I had a clear view of him when he stopped, but as he did so Sturmey Archer stood up between us, blocking my shot. I couldn't believe it.\n\n\"Felix7!\" cried Archer desperately. \"You must help me! Dr. M\u00fcller said\u2014\"\n\nArcher, sadly, had mistaken Felix7's intentions but had little time to regret them as our assailant dispatched him swiftly at close range, then turned to make his escape. Bowden and I must have opened fire at once; Felix7 managed three paces before stumbling under the shots and falling heavily against some packing cases.\n\n\"Bowden!\" I yelled. \"You okay?\"\n\nHe answered slightly unsteadily but in the affirmative. I advanced slowly on the fallen figure, who was breathing in short gasps, all the time watching me with a disconcertingly calm face. I kicked away the shotgun then ran a hand down his coat while holding my gun a few inches from his head. I found an automatic in a shoulder holster and a Walther PPK in an inside pocket. There was a twelve-inch knife and a baby Derringer in his other pockets. Bowden arrived at my side.\n\n\"Archer?\" I asked.\n\n\"Finished.\"\n\n\"He knew this clown. He called him Felix7. Mentioned something about a Dr. M\u00fcller, too.\"\n\nFelix7 smiled up at me as I took out his wallet.\n\n\"James Crometty!\" demanded Bowden. \"Did you kill him?\"\n\n\"I kill a lot of people,\" whispered Felix7. \"I don't remember names.\"\n\n\"You shot him six times in the face.\"\n\nThe dying killer smiled.\n\n\"That I remember.\"\n\n\"Six times! Why?\"\n\nFelix7 frowned and started to shiver.\n\n\"Six was all I had,\" he answered simply.\n\nBowden pulled the trigger of his revolver two inches from Felix7's face. It was lucky for Bowden that the hammer fell harmlessly on the back of a spent cartridge. He threw the gun aside, picked up the dying man by the lapels and shook him.\n\n\"WHO ARE YOU?\" he demanded.\n\n\"I don't even know myself,\" said Felix7 placidly. \"I was married once, I think; and I had a blue car. There was an apple tree in the house where I grew up and I think I had a brother named Tom. The memories are vague and indistinct. I fear nothing because I value nothing. Archer is dead. My job is done. I have served my master; nothing else is of any consequence.\"\n\nHe managed a wan smile.\n\n\"Hades was right.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\n\"About you, Miss Next. You're a worthy adversary.\"\n\n\"Die easy,\" I told him. \"Where is Hades?\"\n\nHe smiled for the last time and shook his head slowly. I had been trying to plug his wounds as he lay dying, but it was no good. His breathing became more labored and finally stopped altogether.\n\n\"Shit!\"\n\n\"That's Mr. Schitt to you, Next!\" said a voice behind us. We turned to see my second-least favorite person and two of his minders. He didn't look in a terribly good mood. I surreptitiously pushed Felix7's wallet under a workbench with my foot and stood up.\n\n\"Move to the side.\"\n\nWe did as we were told. One of Schitt's men reached down and felt Felix7's pulse. He looked up at Schitt and shook his head.\n\n\"Any ID?\"\n\nThe minder started to search him.\n\n\"You've really screwed things up here, Next,\" said Schitt with barely concealed fury. \"The only lead I've got is flatline. When I've finished with you, you'll be lucky to get a job setting cones on the M4.\"\n\nI put two and two together.\n\n\"You knew we were in here, didn't you?\"\n\nHe glared at me.\n\n\"That man could have taken us to the ringleader and he has something that we want,\" asserted Schitt.\n\n\"Hades?\"\n\n\"Hades is dead, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"Horseshit, Schitt. You know as well as I do that Hades is alive and well. What Hades has belongs to my uncle. And if I know my uncle, he would sooner destroy it forever than sell out to Goliath.\"\n\n\"Goliath doesn't buy, Next. They appropriate. If your uncle has developed a machine that can help in the defense of his country, then it is his duty to share it.\"\n\n\"Is it worth the life of two officers?\"\n\n\"Most certainly. SpecOps officers die pointlessly every day. If we can, we should try our best to make those deaths worthwhile.\"\n\n\"If Mycroft dies through your negligence, I swear to God!\u2014\"\n\nJack Schitt was unimpressed.\n\n\"You really have no idea who you are talking to, do you, Next?\"\n\n\"I'm talking to someone whose ambition has throttled his morality.\"\n\n\"Wrong. You're talking to Goliath, a company that has the welfare of England foremost in its heart; everything that you see about you has been given to this country by the benevolence of Goliath. Is it little wonder that the Corporation should expect a small amount of gratitude in return?\"\n\n\"If Goliath is as selfless as you suggest, Mr. Schitt, then they should expect nothing in return.\"\n\n\"Fine words, Miss Next, but cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.\"\n\nI could hear sirens approaching. Schitt and his two minders made a quick exit, leaving us with Felix7 and Archer's bodies. Bowden turned to me.\n\n\"I'm glad that he's dead and I'm glad that I'm the one that pulled the trigger. I thought it might be hard but I did not have the slightest hesitation.\"\n\nHe said it as though it were an interesting experience, nothing less; as though he had just been on the roller-coaster at Alton Towers and was describing the experience to a friend.\n\n\"Does that sound wrong?\" he added.\n\n\"No,\" I assured him. \"Not at all. He would have killed until someone stopped him. Don't even think about it.\"\n\nI reached down and picked up Felix7's wallet. We examined the contents. It contained everything you might expect to find, such as banknotes, stamps, receipts and credit cards\u2014but they were all just plain white paper; the credit cards were simply white plastic with a row of zeros where the numbers usually were.\n\n\"Hades has a sense of humor.\"\n\n\"Look at this,\" said Bowden, pointing at Felix7's fingertips. \"Wiped clean by acid. And see here, this scar running down behind the scalp line.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I agreed, \"it might not even be his face.\"\n\nThere was a screech of tires from downstairs. We put down our weapons and held our badges in the air to avoid any misunderstandings. The officer in charge was a humorless man named Franklin who had heard slightly garbled stories in the canteen about the new Litera Tec.\n\n\"You must be Thursday Next. Heard about you. Litera Tec, eh? Kind of a drop from SO-5?\"\n\n\"At least I made it up there in the first place.\"\n\nFranklin grunted and looked at the two bodies.\n\n\"Dead?\"\n\n\"Very.\"\n\n\"You lot are becoming quite action-packed. I can't remember the last time a shot was fired in anger by a Litera Tec. Let's not make it a habit, eh? We don't want Swindon turning into a killing field. And if you want a piece of advice, go easy with Jack Schitt. We hear the man's a psychopath.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the tip, Franklin,\" I said. \"I'd never have noticed.\"\n\nIt was after nine when we were finally allowed to leave. Victor had turned up to ask us a few questions out of earshot of the police.\n\n\"What the deuce is going on?\" he asked. \"I've had Braxton yelling on the phone for half an hour; it takes something serious to get him away from his golf club AGM. He wants a full report on the incident on his desk first thing tomorrow morning.\"\n\n\"It was Hades,\" I said. \"Jack Schitt was here with the intention of following one of Acheron's killers after he'd dispatched us both.\"\n\nVictor looked at me for a moment and was about to comment further when a call came over the wireless from an officer in need of assistance. It was the unmistakable voice of Spike. I went to pick up the microphone but Victor grabbed me by the wrist with a surprising turn of speed. He looked at me grimly.\n\n\"No, Thursday. Not with Spike.\"\n\n\"But an officer in need of assistance?\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't get involved. Spike is on his own and it's best that way.\"\n\nI looked at Bowden, who nodded agreement and said:\n\n\"The powers of darkness are not for everyone, Miss Next. I think Spike understands that. We hear his calls from time to time but I see him in the canteen the following morning, as regular as clockwork. He knows what he's doing.\"\n\nThe wireless was silent; the channel was an open one and perhaps upward of sixty or seventy officers had heard the call. No one had answered.\n\nSpike's voice came over the airwaves again:\n\n\"For God's sake, guys!\u2014\"\n\nBowden moved to switch the wireless off but I stopped him. I got into my car and keyed the mike.\n\n\"Spike, this is Thursday. Where are you?\"\n\nVictor shook his head.\n\n\"It was nice knowing you, Miss Next.\"\n\nI glared at them both and drove off into the night.\n\nBowden moved across to where Victor was standing.\n\n\"Quite a girl,\" murmured Victor.\n\n\"We're going to be married,\" answered Bowden matter-of-factly.\n\nVictor frowned and looked at him.\n\n\"Love is like oxygen, Bowden. When's the happy day?\"\n\n\"Oh, she doesn't know yet,\" replied Bowden, sighing. \"She is everything a woman should be. Strong and resourceful, loyal and intelligent.\"\n\nVictor raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"When do you suppose you'll ask her?\"\n\nBowden was staring after the taillights of the car.\n\n\"I don't know. If Spike is in the sort of trouble that I think he is, perhaps never.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "SpecOps-17: Suckers & Biters",
                "text": "\u2002...I made the assistance calls as a matter of course; had done since Chesney was pulled to the shadows. Never expected anyone to come; was just my way of saying \"Ho, guys! I'm still out here!\" Nope, never expected it. Never expected it at all...\n\n\u2014OFFICER \"SPIKE\" STOKER, interview in Van Helsing's Gazette\n\n\"Where are you, Spike?\"\n\nThere was a pause and then:\n\n\"Thursday, think hard before you do this\u2014\"\n\n\"I have, Spike. Give me your location.\"\n\nHe told me and after a quarter of an hour I pulled up outside the senior school at Haydon.\n\n\"I'm here, Spike. What do you need?\"\n\nHis voice came back on the wireless, but this time slightly strained.\n\n\"Lecture room four, and hurry; in the glove box of my black & white you'll find a medical kit\u2014\"\n\nThere was a yell and he stopped transmitting.\n\nI ran across to where Spike's squad car stood in the dark entrance of the old college. The moon passed behind a cloud and blackness descended; I felt an oppressive hand fall across my heart. I opened the car door and rummaged in the glove box. I found what I was looking for: a small zippered leather case with STOKER embossed on the front in faded gold lettering. I grabbed it and ran up the front steps of the old school. The interior was gloomily lit by emergency lighting; I flicked a panel of switches but the power was out. In the meager light I found a signboard and followed the arrows toward lecture room four. As I ran down the corridor I was aware of a strong odor; it matched the sullen smell of death I had detected in the boot of Spike's car when we had first met. I stopped suddenly, the nape of my neck twitching as a gust of cold wind caught me. I turned around abruptly and froze as I noticed the figure of a man silhouetted against the dim glow of an exit light.\n\n\"Spike?\" I murmured, my throat dry and my voice cracking.\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" said the figure, walking softly toward me and playing a torch on my face. \"It's Frampton; I'm the janitor. What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next, SpecOps. There's an officer in need of assistance in lecture room four.\"\n\n\"Really?\" said the janitor. \"Probably followed some kids in. Well, you'd better come with me.\"\n\nI looked at him carefully; a glint from one of the exit lights caught the metallic gold of a crucifix around his throat. I breathed a sigh of relief.\n\nHe walked swiftly down the corridor; I followed closely.\n\n\"This place is so old it's embarrassing,\" muttered Frampton, leading me down a second corridor off the first. \"Who did you say you were looking for?\"\n\n\"An officer named Stoker.\"\n\n\"What does he do?\"\n\n\"He looks for vampires.\"\n\n\"Really? Last infestation we had was in '78. Student by the name of Parkes. Went backpacking in the Forest of Dean and came back a changed man.\"\n\n\"Backpacking in the Forest of Dean?\" I repeated incredulously, \"Whatever possessed him to do that?\"\n\nThe janitor laughed. \"Good choice of words. Symonds Yat wasn't as secure then as it is now; we've taken precautions too. The whole college was consecrated as a church.\"\n\nHe flashed his torch at a large crucifix on the wall.\n\n\"We won't have that sort of problem here again. This is it, lecture room four.\"\n\nHe pushed open the door and we entered the large room. Frampton's torch flicked across the oak-paneled walls but a quick search revealed nothing of Spike.\n\n\"Are you sure he said number four?\"\n\n\"Certain,\" I replied. \"He\u2014\"\n\nThere was a sound of breaking glass and a muffled curse a small way distant.\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"Probably rats,\" said Frampton.\n\n\"And the swearing?\"\n\n\"Uncultured rats. Come, let's\u2014\"\n\nBut I had moved off to a doorway beyond the lecture room, taking Frampton's torch with me. I pushed the door open wide and an appalling stench of formaldehyde greeted me. The room was an anatomy lab, dark except for the moonlight coming in through the window. Against the wall were rack upon rack of pickled specimens: mostly animal parts, but a few human parts too, things for the boys to frighten the girls with during sixth-form biology lessons. There was the sound of a jar smashing, and I flicked the torch across to the other side of the room. My heart froze. Spike, his self-control having apparently abandoned him, had just thrown a specimen jar to the floor and was now scrabbling in the mess. Around his feet were the smashed remnants of many jars; it had obviously been quite a feast.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" I asked, the revulsion rising in my throat.\n\nSpike turned to me, his eyes gaping, his mouth cut from the glass, a look of horror and fear in his eyes.\n\n\"I was hungry!\" he howled. \"And I couldn't find any mice!\u2014\"\n\nHe closed his eyes for a moment, gathered his thoughts with a Herculean effort, then stammered:\n\n\"My medication!\u2014\"\n\nI forced down a foul gagging sensation and opened the medical kit to reveal a retractable penlike syringe. I unclipped the pen and moved toward Spike, who had collapsed in a heap and was sobbing silently. There was a hand on my shoulder, and I whirled round. It was Frampton, and he had an unpleasant smile on his lips.\n\n\"Let him carry on. He's happier this way, believe me.\"\n\nI pushed his hand off my shoulder and for an instant my flesh touched his. It was icy cold and I felt a shiver run through me. I backed away hastily and tripped over a stool, falling heavily and dropping Spike's injector. I drew my gun and pointed it at Frampton, who seemed to be gliding toward me without walking. I didn't shout a warning; I just pulled the trigger and a bright flash illuminated the lab. Frampton was catapulted across the floor toward the blackboard and fell in a heap. I scrabbled around for the injector, found it and ran toward Spike, who had picked up a particularly large jar with a very recognizable and unspeakably unpleasant specimen in it. I flashed the torch into his frightened eyes and he mumbled:\n\n\"Help me!\"\n\nI pulled the cap off the injector and jabbed it in his leg, giving him two clicks. I took the jar from him and he sat down looking confused.\n\n\"Spike? Say something.\"\n\n\"That really hurt.\"\n\nBut it wasn't Spike talking. It was Frampton. He had picked himself up from the floor and was tying what looked like a lobster bib around his neck.\n\n\"Time for dinner, Miss Next. I won't trouble you with the menu because... well, you're it!\"\n\nThe door of the biology lab slammed shut and I looked at my gun; it was now about as much use as a water pistol.\n\nI got up and backed away from Frampton, who once more seemed to glide toward me. I fired again but Frampton was ready for it; he simply winced and continued.\n\n\"But the crucifix!\u2014\" I shouted, backing toward the wall. \"And this college\u2014it's a church!\"\n\n\"Little fool!\" replied Frampton. \"Do you really suppose that Christianity has a monopoly on people like me?\"\n\nI looked around desperately for some kind of weapon, but apart from a chair\u2014which drew out of my grasp as I reached for it\u2014there was nothing.\n\n\"Thoon be over.\" Frampton grinned. He had sprouted an inordinately long single front tooth which grew over his bottom lip and gave him a lisp.\n\n\"Thoon you will be joining Thpike for a little thnack. After I have finithed!\"\n\nHe smiled and opened his mouth wider; impossibly so\u2014it seemed almost to fill the room. Quite suddenly Frampton stopped, looked confused and rolled his eyes up into his sockets. He grew gray, then black, then seemed to slough away like burned pages in a book. There was a musty smell of decay that almost blotted out the reek of formaldehyde, and soon there was nothing at all except Spike, who was still holding the sharpened stake that had so quickly destroyed the abomination that had been Frampton.\n\n\"You okay?\" he asked with a triumphant look on his face.\n\n\"I'm good,\" I replied shakily. \"Yuh, I feel okay. Well, now I do, anyway.\"\n\nHe lowered the stake and drew me up a chair as the lights flickered back on.\n\n\"Thanks for that,\" I murmured. \"My blood is my own and I aim to keep it that way. I guess I owe you.\"\n\n\"No way, Thursday. I owe you. No one's ever answered a call of mine before. The symptoms came on as I was sniffing out Fang here. Couldn't get to my injector in time...\"\n\nHis voice trailed off as he looked forlornly at the broken glass and spilled formaldehyde.\n\n\"They'll not believe this report,\" I murmured.\n\n\"They don't even read my reports, Thursday. Last person who did is now in therapy. So they just file 'em and forget 'em. Like me, I guess. It's a lonely life.\"\n\nI hugged him on an impulse. It seemed the right thing to do. He returned it gratefully; I didn't expect that he had touched another human for a while. He had a musty smell about him\u2014 but it wasn't unpleasant; it was like damp earth after a spring rain shower. He was muscular and at least a foot taller than me, and as we stood in each other's arms I suddenly felt as though I really wouldn't mind if he made a move on me. Perhaps it was the closeness of the experience that we had just shared; I don't know\u2014I don't usually act in this manner. I moved my hand up his back and onto his neck, but I had misjudged the man and the occasion. He slowly let me go and smiled, shaking his head softly. The moment had passed.\n\nI paused for a second and then holstered my automatic carefully.\n\n\"What about Frampton?\"\n\n\"He was good,\" admitted Spike, \"real good. Didn't feed on his own turf and was never greedy; just enough to sate his thirst.\"\n\nWe walked out of the lab and back down the corridor.\n\n\"So how did you get onto him?\" I asked.\n\n\"Luck. He was behind me in his motor at the lights. Looked in the rearview mirror\u2014empty car. Followed him and pow; I knew he was a sucker soon as he spoke. I would have staked him earlier 'cept for my trouble.\"\n\nWe stopped at his squad car.\n\n\"And what about you? Any chance of a cure?\"\n\n\"Top virologists are doing their stuff but for the moment I just keep my injector handy and stay out of the sunlight.\"\n\nHe stopped, took out his automatic and pulled the slide back, ejecting a single shiny bullet.\n\n\"Silver,\" he explained as he gave it to me. \"I never use anything else.\" He looked up at the clouds. They were colored orange by the street lamps and moved rapidly across the sky. \"There's weird shit about; take it for luck.\"\n\n\"I'm beginning to think there's no such thing.\"\n\n\"My point precisely. God keep you, Thursday, and thanks once again.\"\n\nI took the shiny bullet and started to say something but he was gone already, rummaging in the boot of his squad car for a vacuum cleaner and a bin-liner. For him, the night was far from over."
            },
            {
                "title": "Landen Again",
                "text": "\u2002When I first heard that Thursday was back in Swindon I was delighted. I never fully believed that she had gone for good. I had heard of her problems in London and I also knew how she reacted to stress. All of us who returned from the peninsula were to become experts on the subject whether we liked it or not...\n\n\u2014LANDEN PARKE-LAINE, Memoirs of a Crimean Veteran\n\nI told Mr. Parke-Laine that you had hemorrhagic fever but he didn't believe me,\" said Liz on reception at the Finis.\n\n\"The flu would have been more believable.\"\n\nLiz was unrepentant.\n\n\"He sent you this.\"\n\nShe passed across an envelope. I was tempted just to throw it in the bin, but I felt slightly guilty about giving him a hard time when we had met the previous night. The envelope contained a numbered ticket for Richard III which played every Friday evening at the Ritz Theater. We used to attend almost every week when we were going out together. It was a good show; the audience made it even better.\n\n\"When did you last go out with him?\" asked Liz, sensing my indecision.\n\nI looked up.\n\n\"Ten years ago.\"\n\n\"Ten years? Go, darling. Most of my boyfriends would have trouble even remembering that long.\"\n\nI looked at the ticket again. The show began in an hour.\n\n\"Is that why you left Swindon?\" asked Liz, keen to be of some help.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"And did you keep a photo of him all those years?\"\n\nI nodded again.\n\n\"I see,\" replied Liz thoughtfully. \"I'll call a cab while you go and change.\"\n\nIt was good advice, and I trotted off to my room, had a quick shower and tried on almost everything in my wardrobe. I put my hair up, then down again, then up once more, muttered \"Too boyish\" at a pair of trousers and slipped into a dress. I selected some earrings that Landen had given me and locked my automatic in the room safe. I just had time to put on a small amount of eyeliner before I was whisked through the streets of Swindon by a taxi driver, an ex-Marine involved in the retaking of Balaclava in '61. We chatted about the Crimea. He didn't know where Colonel Phelps was going to talk either, but when he found out, he said, he would heckle for all his worth.\n\nThe Ritz looked a good deal shabbier. I doubted whether it had been repainted at all since we were last here. The gold-painted plaster moldings around the stage were dusty and unwashed, the curtain stained with the rainwater that had leaked in. No other play but Richard III had been performed here for over fifteen years, and the theater itself had no company to speak of, just a backstage crew and a prompter. All the actors were pulled from an audience who had been to the play so many times they knew it back to front. Casting was usually done only half an hour before curtain-up.\n\nOccasionally seasoned actors and actresses would make guest appearances, although never by advance booking. If they were at a loose end late Friday night, perhaps after their performance at one of Swindon's three other theaters, they might come along and be selected by the manager as an impromptu treat for audience and cast. Just the week before, a local Richard III had found himself playing opposite Lola Vavoom, currently starring in the musical stage version of Fancy-free in Ludlow at the Swindon Crucible. It had been something of a treat for him; he didn't need to buy dinner for a month.\n\nLanden was waiting for me outside the theater. It was five minutes to curtain-up and the actors had already been chosen by the manager, plus one in reserve in case anybody had a bad attack of the nerves and started chucking up in the bathroom.\n\n\"Thanks for coming,\" said Landen.\n\n\"Yeah,\" I replied, kissing him on the cheek and taking a deep breath of his aftershave. It was Bodmin; I recognized the earthy scent.\n\n\"How was your first day?\" he asked.\n\n\"Kidnappings, vampires, shot dead a suspect, lost a witness to a gunman, Goliath tried to have me killed, puncture on the car. Usual shit.\"\n\n\"A puncture? Really?\"\n\n\"Not really. I made that bit up. Listen, I'm sorry about yesterday. I think I'm taking my work a bit too seriously.\"\n\n\"If you weren't,\" agreed Landen with an understanding smile, \"I'd really start worrying. Come on, it's nearly curtain-up.\"\n\nHe took my arm in a familiar gesture that I liked and led me inside. The theatergoers were chattering noisily, the brightly colored costumes of the unchosen actors in the audience giving a gala flavor to the occasion. I felt the electricity in the air and realized how much I had missed it. We found our seats.\n\n\"When was the last time you were here?\" I asked when we were comfortable.\n\n\"With you,\" replied Landen, standing up and applauding wildly as the curtain opened to a wheezing alarm. I did the same.\n\nA comp\u00e9\u00a8re in a black cloak with red lining swept onto the stage.\n\n\"Welcome, all you Will-loving R3 fans, to the Ritz at Swindon, where tonight (drum roll), for your DELECTATION, for your GRATIFICATION, for your EDIFICATION, for your JOLLIFICATION, for your SHAKESPEARIFICATION, we will perform Will's Richard III, for the audience, to the audience, BY THE AUDIENCE!\"\n\nThe crowd cheered and he held up his hands to quieten them.\n\n\"But before we start!\u2014Let's give a big hand to Ralph and Thea Swanavon who are attending for their two hundredth time!!\"\n\nThe crowd applauded wildly as Ralph and Thea walked on. They were dressed as Richard and Lady Anne and bowed and curtsied to the audience, who threw flowers onto the stage.\n\n\"Ralph has played Dick the shit twenty-seven times and Creepy Clarence twelve times; Thea has been Lady Anne thirty-one times and Margaret eight times!\"\n\nThe audience stamped their feet and whistled.\n\n\"So to commemorate their bicentennial, they will be playing opposite each other for the first time!\"\n\nThey respectively bowed and curtsied once more as the audience applauded and the curtains closed, jammed, opened slightly and closed again.\n\nThere was a moment's pause and then the curtains reopened, revealing Richard at the side of the stage. He limped up and down the boards, eyeing the audience malevolently past a particularly ugly prosthetic nose.\n\n\"Ham!\" yelled someone at the back.\n\nRichard opened his mouth to speak and the whole audience erupted in unison:\n\n\"When is the winter of our discontent?\"\n\n\"Now,\" replied Richard with a cruel smile, \"is the winter of our discontent...\"\n\nA cheer went up to the chandeliers high in the ceiling. The play had begun. Landen and I cheered with them. Richard III was one of those plays that could repeal the law of diminishing returns; it could be enjoyed over and over again.\n\n\"...made glorious summer by this son of York,\" continued Richard, limping to the side of the stage. On the word \" summer\" six hundred people placed sunglasses on and looked up at an imaginary sun.\n\n\"...and all the clouds that lower'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean, buried...\"\n\n\"When were our brows bound?\" yelled the audience.\n\n\"Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,\" continued Richard, ignoring them completely. We must have been to this show thirty times and even now I could feel myself mouthing the words with the actor on the stage.\n\n\"...to the lascivious pleasing of a lute...\" continued Richard, saying \"lute\" loudly as several other members of the audience gave alternative suggestions.\n\n\"Piano!\" shouted out one person near us. \"Bagpipes!\" said another. Someone at the back, missing the cue entirely, shouted in a high voice \"Euphonium!\" halfway through the next line and was drowned out when the audience yelled: \"Pick a card!\" as Richard told them that he \"was not shaped for sportive tricks...\"\n\nLanden looked across at me and smiled. I returned the smile instinctively; I was enjoying myself.\n\n\"I that am rudely stamp'd...\" muttered Richard, as the audience took its cue and stamped the ground with a crash that reverberated around the auditorium.\n\nLanden and I had never wanted to tread the boards ourselves and had never troubled to dress up. The production was the only show at the Ritz; it was empty the rest of the week. Keen amateur thespians and Shakespeare fans would drive from all over the country to participate, and it was never anything but a full house. A few years back a French troupe performed the play in French to rapturous applause; a troupe went to Sauvignon a few months later to repay the gesture.\n\n\"...and that so lamely and unfashionable, that dogs bark at me...\"\n\nThe audience barked loudly, making a noise like feeding time at the dogs' home. Outside in the alley several cats new to the vicinity momentarily flinched, while more seasoned moggies looked at each other with a knowing smile.\n\nThe play went on, the actors doing sterling work and the audience parrying with quips that ranged from the intelligent to the obscure to the downright vulgar. When Clarence explained that the king was convinced that \"...by the letter 'G' his issue disinherited shall be...\" the audience yelled out:\n\n\"Gloucester begins with G, dummy!\"\n\nAnd when the Lady Anne had Richard on his knees in front of her with his sword at his throat, the audience encouraged her to run him through; and just before one of Richard's nephews, the young Duke of York, alluded to Richard's hump: \"Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me; because that I am little, like an ape, he thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders\u2014!!!\" the audience yelled out: \"Don't mention the hump, kid!,\" and after he did: \"The Tower! The Tower!\"\n\nThe play was the Garrick cut and lasted only about two and a half hours; at Bosworth field most of the audience ended up on the stage as they helped reenact the battle. Richard, Catesby and Richmond had to finish the play in the aisle as the battle raged about them. A pink pantomime horse appeared on cue when Richard offered to swap his kingdom for just such a beast, and the battle finally ended in the foyer. Richmond then took one of the girls from behind the ice-cream counter as his Elizabeth and continued his final speech from the balcony with the audience below hailing him as the new king of England, the soldiers who had fought on Richard's side proclaiming their new allegiance. The play ended with Richmond saying: \"God say Amen!\"\n\n\"Amen!\" said the crowd, amid happy applause. It had been a good show. The cast had done a fine job and fortunately this time no one had been seriously injured during Bosworth. Landen and I filed out quickly and found a table in a caf\u00e9 across the road. Landen ordered two coffees and we looked at one another.\n\n\"You're looking good, Thursday. You've aged better than me.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" I replied. \"Look at these lines!\u2014\"\n\n\"Laughter lines,\" asserted Landen.\n\n\"Nothing's that funny.\"\n\n\"Are you here for good?\" he asked suddenly.\n\n\"I don't know,\" I answered. I dropped my gaze. I had promised myself I wouldn't feel guilty about leaving, but\u2014\n\n\"It depends.\"\n\n\"On?\u2014\"\n\nI looked at him and raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"\u2014on SpecOps.\"\n\nThe coffee arrived at that point and I smiled brightly.\n\n\"So, how have you been?\"\n\n\"I've been good,\" he said, then added in a lower tone, \"I've been lonely too. Very lonely. I'm not getting any younger, either. How have you been?\"\n\nI wanted to tell him that I'd been lonely too, but some things can't easily be said. I wanted him to know that I still wasn't happy with what he had done. Forgive and forget is all very well, but no one was going to forgive and forget my brother. Anton's dead name was mud and that was solely down to Landen.\n\n\"I've been fine.\" I thought about it. \"I haven't, actually.\"\n\n\"I'm listening.\"\n\n\"I'm having a shitty time right now. I lost two colleagues in London. I'm chasing after a lunatic who most people think is dead, Mycroft and Polly have been kidnapped, Goliath is breathing down my neck and the regional commander at SpecOps might just have my badge. As you can see, things are just peachy.\"\n\n\"Compared to the Crimea, this is small beer, Thursday. You're stronger than all this crap.\"\n\nLanden stirred three sugars into his coffee and I looked at him again.\n\n\"Are you hoping for us to get back together?\"\n\nHe was taken aback by the directness of my question. He shrugged.\n\n\"I don't think we were ever truly apart.\"\n\nI knew exactly what he meant. Spiritually, we never were.\n\n\"I can't apologize anymore, Thursday. You lost a brother, I lost some good friends, my whole platoon and a leg. I know what Anton means to you but I saw him pointing up the wrong valley to Colonel Frobisher just before the armored column moved off. It was a crazy day and crazy circumstances, but it happened and I had to say what I saw!\u2014\"\n\nI looked him squarely in the eye.\n\n\"Before going to the Crimea I thought that death was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. I soon realized it was only for starters. Anton died; I can accept that. People get killed in war; it's inevitable. Okay, so it was a military debacle of staggering proportions. They also happen from time to time. It's happened many times before in the Crimea.\"\n\n\"Thursday!\" implored Landen. \"What I said. It was the truth!\"\n\nI rounded on him angrily.\n\n\"Who can say what the truth was? The truth is whatever we are most comfortable with. The dust, the heat, the noise! Whatever happened that day, the truth is now what everyone reads in the history books. What you told the military inquiry! Anton may have made a mistake, but he wasn't the only one that day.\"\n\n\"I saw him point down the wrong valley, Thursday.\"\n\n\"He would never have made that mistake!\"\n\nI felt an anger I hadn't felt for ten years. Anton had been blamed for the charge, it was as simple as that. The military leaders managed to squirm out of their responsibilities once again and my brother's name had entered the national memory and the history books as that of the man who lost the Light Armored Brigade. The commanding officer and Anton had both died in the charge. It had been up to Landen to tell the story.\n\nI got up.\n\n\"Walking out again, Thursday?\" said Landen sardonically. \"Is this how it will always be? I was hoping you would have mellowed, that we could have made something out of this mess, that there was still enough love in us to make it work.\"\n\nI shot a furious look at him.\n\n\"What about loyalty, Landen? He was your greatest friend!\"\n\n\"And I still said what I said,\" sighed Landen. \"One day you'll have to come to terms with the fact that Anton fucked up. It happens, Thursday. It happens.\"\n\nI stared at him and he stared back.\n\n\"Can we ever get over this, Thursday? I need to know as a matter of some urgency.\"\n\n\"Urgency? What urgency? No,\" I replied, \"no, no, we can't. I'm sorry to have wasted your fucking precious time!\"\n\nI ran out of the caf\u00e9, eyes streaming and angry with myself, angry with Landen and angry with Anton. I thought about Snood and Tamworth. We should all have waited for backup; Tamworth and I fucked up by going in and Snood fucked up by taking on an enemy which he knew he was not physically or mentally prepared to face. We had all been flushed with excitement by the chase; it was the sort of impetuous action that Anton would have taken. I had felt it once before in the Crimea and I had hated myself for it then too.\n\nI got back to the Finis at about one in the morning. The John Milton weekend was ending with a disco. I took the lift up to my room, the distorted beat of the music softening to a dull thud as I was transported upward. I leaned against the mirror in the lift and took solace in the coolness of the glass. I should never have come back to Swindon, that much was obvious. I would speak to Victor in the morning and transfer out as soon as possible.\n\nI opened my room door and kicked off my shoes, lay on the bed and stared at the polystyrene ceiling tiles, trying to come to terms with what I had always suspected but never wanted to face. My brother had fucked up. Nobody had bothered to put it so simply before; the military tribunal spoke of \"tactical errors in the heat of the battle\" and \"gross incompetence.\" Somehow \"fucked up\" made it seem more believable; we all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice. If Anton had been a baker and forgotten the yeast, nothing would have been made of it, but he would have fucked up just the same.\n\nAs I lay there thinking I slowly drifted into sleep and with sleep came troubled dreams. I was back at Styx's apartment block, only this time I was standing outside the back entrance with the upturned car, Commander Flanker and the rest of the SO-1 interview panel. Snood was there too. He had an ugly hole in his wrinkled forehead and was standing, arms crossed and looking at me as if I had taken his football and he had sought out Flanker for some kind of redress.\n\n\"Are you sure you didn't tell Snood to go and cover the back?\" asked Flanker.\n\n\"Positive,\" I said, looking at them both in turn.\n\n\"She did, you know,\" said Acheron as he walked past. \"I heard her.\"\n\nFlanker stopped him.\n\n\"Did you? What exactly did she say?\"\n\nAcheron smiled at me and then nodded at Snood, who returned his greeting.\n\n\"Wait!\" I interrupted. \"How can you believe what he says? The man's a liar!\"\n\nAcheron looked offended and Flanker turned to me with a steely gaze.\n\n\"We only have your word for that, Next.\"\n\nI could feel myself boil with inner rage at the unfairness of it all. I was just about to cry out and wake up when I felt a tap on my arm. It was a man dressed in a dark coat. He had heavy black hair that fell over his dour, strong features. I knew immediately who he was.\n\n\"Mr. Rochester?\"\n\nHe nodded in return. But now we were no longer outside the warehouses in the East End; we were in a well-furnished hall, lit by the dim glow of oil lamps and the flickering light from a fire in the large hearth.\n\n\"Is your arm well, Miss Next?\" he asked.\n\n\"Very well, thanks,\" I said, moving my hand and wrist to demonstrate.\n\n\"I should not trouble yourself with them,\" he added, indicating Flanker, Acheron and Snood, who had started to argue in the corner of the room near the bookcase. \"They are merely in your dream and thus, being illusory, are of no consequence.\"\n\n\"And what about you?\"\n\nRochester smiled, a forced, gruff smile. He was leaning on the mantelpiece and looked into his glass, swirling his Madeira delicately.\n\n\"I was never real to begin with.\"\n\nHe placed the glass on the marble mantel and flipped out a large silver hunter, popped it open, read the time and returned it to his waistcoat pocket in one smooth easy movement.\n\n\"Things are becoming more urgent, I can feel it. I trust I can count on your fortitude when the time comes?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I can't explain. I don't know how I managed to get here or even how you managed to get to me. You remember when you were a little girl? When you chanced upon us both that chill winter's evening?\"\n\nI thought about the incident at Haworth all those years ago when I entered the book of Jane Eyre and caused Rochester's horse to slip.\n\n\"It was a long time ago.\"\n\n\"Not to me. You remember?\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\n\"Your intervention improved the narrative.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Before, I simply bumped into my Jane and we spoke briefly. If you had read the book prior to your visit you would have noticed. When the horse slipped to avoid you it made the meeting more dramatic, wouldn't you agree?\"\n\n\"But hadn't that happened already?\"\n\nRochester smiled.\n\n\"Not at all. But you weren't the first visitor we have had. And you won't be the last, if I'm correct.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nHe picked up his drink again.\n\n\"You are about to rouse from your sleep, Miss Next, so I shall bid you adieu. Again: I can trust in your fortitude when the time comes?\"\n\nI didn't have time to answer or question him further. I was woken by my early morning call. I was in my clothes from the previous evening, the light and the television still on."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Very Irrev. Joffy Next",
                "text": "Dearest Mum,\n\nLife here in theDELETED BY CENSORScamp is great fun. The weather is good, the food average, the company AOK. ColonelDELETED BY CENSORSis our CO; he is a cracking fellow. I see Thurs quite often & although you told me to look after her I think she can look after herself. She won the battalion ladies' boxing tournament. We move up toDELETED BY CENSORSnext week, I will write again when I have more news.\n\n[ Your son, Anton ]\n\n[ Letter from Anton Next sent two weeks before he died ]\n\nAPART FROM one other person I had the breakfast room all to myself. As fate would have it, that one other person was Colonel Phelps.\n\n\"Good morning, Corporal!\" he said cheerfully as he spotted me trying to hide behind a copy of The Owl.\n\n\"Colonel.\"\n\nHe sat down opposite me without asking.\n\n\"Good response to my presence here so far, y'know,\" he said genially, taking some toast and waving a spoon at the waiter. \"You there, sir, more coffee. We're having the talk next Sunday; you are still coming, I trust?\"\n\n\"I just might be there,\" I responded, quite truthfully.\n\n\"Splendid!\" he gushed. \"I must confess I thought you'd stumbled off the path when we spoke on the gasbag.\"\n\n\"Where is it being held?\"\n\n\"A bit hush-hush, old girl. Walls have ears, careless talk, all that rot. I'll send a car for you. Seen this?\"\n\nHe showed me the front page of The Mole. It was, like all the papers, almost exclusively devoted to the upcoming offensive that everyone thought was so likely there didn't seem even the slightest hope that it wouldn't happen. The last major battle had been in '75 and the memories and lessons of that particular mistake didn't seem to have sunk in.\n\n\"More coffee I said, sir!\" roared Phelps to the waiter, who had given him tea by mistake. \"This new plasma rifle is going to clinch it, y'know. I've even thought of modifying my talk to include a request for anyone wanting a new life on the peninsula to start filing claims now. I understand from the foreign secretary's office that we will need settlers to move in as soon as the Russians are evicted for good.\"\n\n\"Don't you understand?\" I asked in an exasperated tone. \"There won't be an end. Not while we have troops on Russian soil.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" murmured Phelps. \"Mmm? Eh?\"\n\nHe fiddled with his hearing aid and cocked his head to one side like a parakeet. I made a noncommittal noise and left as soon as I could.\n\nIt was early; the sun had risen but it was still cold. It had rained during the night and the air was heavy with water. I put the roof of the car down in an attempt to blow away the memories of the night before, the anger that had erupted when I realized that I couldn't forgive Landen. It was the dismay that I would always feel the same rather than the dismay over the unpleasant ending to the evening which upset me most. I was thirty-six, and apart from ten months with Filbert I had been alone for the past decade, give or take a drunken tussle or two. Another five years of this and I knew that I would be destined not to share my life with anyone.\n\nThe wind tugged at my hair as I drove rapidly along the sweeping roads. There was no traffic to speak of and the car was humming sweetly. Small pockets of fog had formed as the sun rose, and I drove through them as an airship flies through cloud. My foot rolled off the throttle as I entered the small parcels of gloom, then gently pressed down again as I burst free into the morning sun once more.\n\nThe village of Wanborough was not more than ten minutes' drive from the Finis Hotel. I parked outside the GSD temple\u2014 once a C of E church\u2014and turned off the engine, the silence of the country a welcome break. In the distance I could hear some farm machinery but it was barely a rhythmical hum; I had never appreciated the peace of the country until I had moved to the city. I opened the gate and entered the well-kept graveyard. I paused for a moment, then ambled at a slow respectful pace past the rows of well-tended graves. I hadn't visited Anton's memorial since the day I left for London, but I knew that he wouldn't have minded. Much that we had appreciated about one another had been left unsaid. In humor, in life and in love, we had understood. When I arrived in Sebastopol to join the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armored Brigade, Landen and Anton were already good friends. Anton was attached to the brigade as signals captain; Landen was a lieutenant. Anton had introduced us; against strict orders we had fallen in love. I had felt like a schoolgirl, sneaking around the camp for forbidden trysts. In the beginning the Crimea just seemed like a whole barrel of fun.\n\nNone of the bodies came home. It was a policy decision. But many had private memorials. Anton's was near the end of the row, underneath the protective bough of an old yew and sandwiched between two other Crimean memorials. It was well kept up, obviously weeded regularly, and fresh flowers had recently been placed there. I stood by the unsophisticated gray limestone tablet and read the inscription. Simple and neat. His name, rank and the date of the charge. There was another stone not unlike this one sixteen hundred miles away marking his grave on the peninsula. Others hadn't fared so well. Fourteen of my colleagues on the charge that day were still \"unaccounted for.\" It was military jargon for \"not enough bits to identify.\"\n\nQuite suddenly I felt someone slap me on the back of my head. It wasn't hard but enough to make me jump. I turned to find the GSD priest looking at me with a silly grin on his face.\n\n\"Wotcha, Doofus!\" he bellowed.\n\n\"Hello, Joffy,\" I replied, only slightly bemused. \"Want me to break your nose again?\"\n\n\"I'm cloth now, Sis!\" he exclaimed. \"You can't go around bashing the clergy!\"\n\nI stared at him for a moment.\n\n\"Well, if I can't bash you,\" I told him, \"what can I do?\"\n\n\"We at the GSD are very big on hugs, Sis.\"\n\nSo we hugged, there in front of Anton's memorial, me and my loopy brother Joffy, whom I had never hugged in my life.\n\n\"Any news on Brainbox and the Fatarse?\" he asked.\n\n\"If you mean Mycroft and Polly, no.\"\n\n\"Loosen up, Sis. Mycroft is a Brainbox and Polly, well, she does have a fat arse.\"\n\n\"The answer's still no. Mind you, she and Mum have put on a bit of weight, haven't they?\"\n\n\"A bit? I should say. Tesco's should open a superstore just for the pair of them.\"\n\n\"Does the GSD encourage such blatant personal attacks?\" I asked.\n\nJoffy shrugged.\n\n\"Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't,\" he answered. \"That's the beauty of the Global Standard Deity\u2014it's whatever you want it to be. And besides, you're family so it doesn't count.\"\n\nI looked around at the well-kept building and graveyard.\n\n\"How's it all going?\"\n\n\"Pretty well, thanks. Good cross section of religions and even a few Neanderthals, which is quite a coup. Mind you, attendances have almost tripled since I converted the vestry into a casino and introduced naked greasy-pole dancing on Tuesdays.\"\n\n\"You're joking!\"\n\n\"Yes, of course I am, Doofus.\"\n\n\"You little shit!\" I laughed. \"I am going to break your nose again!\"\n\n\"Before you do, do you want a cup of tea?\"\n\nI thanked him and we walked toward the vicarage.\n\n\"How's your arm?\" he asked.\n\n\"It's okay,\" I replied. Then, since I was eager to try to keep up with his irreverence, I added: \"I played this joke on the doctor in London. I said to him when he rebuilt the muscles in my arm, 'Do you think I'll be able to play the violin?' and he said: 'Of course!' and then I said: 'That's good, I couldn't before!'\"\n\nJoffy stared at me blank-faced.\n\n\"SpecOps Christmas parties must be a riot, Sis. You should get out more. That's probably the worst joke I've ever heard.\"\n\nJoffy could be infuriating at times, but he probably had a point\u2014although I wasn't going to let him know it. So I said instead:\n\n\"Bollocks to you, then.\"\n\nThat did make him laugh.\n\n\"You were always so serious, Sis. Ever since you were a little girl. I remember you sitting in the living room staring at the News at Ten, soaking in every fact and asking Dad and the Brainbox a million questions\u2014Hello, Mrs. Higgins!\"\n\nWe had just met an old lady coming through the lichgate carrying a bunch of flowers.\n\n\"Hello, Irreverend!\" she replied jovially, then looked at me and said in a hoarse whisper: \"Is this your girlfriend?\"\n\n\"No, Gladys\u2014this is my sister, Thursday. She's SpecOps and consequently doesn't have a sense of humor, a boyfriend or a life.\"\n\n\"That's nice, dear,\" said Mrs. Higgins, who was clearly quite deaf, despite her large ears.\n\n\"Hello, Gladys,\" I said, shaking her by the hand. \"Joffy here used to bash the bishop so much when he was a boy we all thought he would go blind.\"\n\n\"Good, good,\" she muttered.\n\nJoffy, not to be outdone, added: \"And little Thursday here made so much noise during sex that we had to put her in the garden shed whenever her boyfriends stayed the night.\"\n\nI elbowed him in the ribs but Mrs. Higgins didn't notice; she smiled benignly, wished us both a pleasant day, and teetered off into the churchyard. We watched her go.\n\n\"A hundred and four next March,\" murmured Joffy. \" Amazing, isn't she? When she goes I'm thinking of having her stuffed and placed in the porch as a hat stand.\"\n\n\"Now I know you're joking.\"\n\nHe smiled.\n\n\"I don't have a serious bone in my body, Sis. Come on, I'll make you that tea.\"\n\nThe vicarage was huge. Legend had it that the church's spire would have been ten feet taller had the incumbent vicar not taken a liking to the stone and diverted it to his own residence. An unholy row broke out with the bishop and the vicar was relieved of his duties. The larger-than-usual vicarage, however, remained.\n\nJoffy poured some strong tea out of a Clarice Cliff teapot into a matching cup and saucer. He wasn't trying to impress; the GSD had almost no money and he couldn't afford to use anything other than what came with the vicarage.\n\n\"So,\" said Joffy, placing a teacup in front of me and sitting down on the sofa, \"do you think Dad's boffing Emma Hamilton?\"\n\n\"He never mentioned it. Mind you, if you were having an affair with someone who died over a hundred years ago, would you tell your wife?\"\n\n\"How about me?\"\n\n\"How about you what?\"\n\n\"Does he ever mention me?\"\n\nI shook my head and Joffy was silent in thought for a moment, which is unusual for him.\n\n\"I think he wanted me to be in that charge in Ant's place, Sis. Ant was always the favored son.\"\n\n\"That's stupid, Joffy. And even if it were true\u2014which it isn't\u2014there's nothing anyone can do about it. Ant is gone, finished, dead. Even if you had stayed out there, let's face it, army chaplains don't exactly dictate military policy.\"\n\n\"Then why doesn't Dad ever come and see me?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"I don't know. Perhaps it's a ChronoGuard thing. He rarely visits me unless on business\u2014and never for more than a couple of minutes.\"\n\nJoffy nodded then asked:\n\n\"Have you been attending church in London, Sis?\"\n\n\"I don't really have the time, Joff.\"\n\n\"We make time, Sis.\"\n\nI sighed. He was right.\n\n\"After the charge I kind of lost my faith. SpecOps have chaplains of their own but I just never felt the same about anything.\"\n\n\"The Crimea took a lot away from all of us,\" said Joffy quietly. \"Perhaps that is why we have to work twice as hard to hang onto what we have left. Even I was not immune to the passion of the battle. When I first went to the peninsula I was excited by the war\u2014I could feel the insidious hand of nationalism holding me upright and smothering my reason. When I was out there I wanted us to win, to kill the foe. I reveled in the glory of battle and the camaraderie that only conflict can create. No bond is stronger than that welded in conflict; no greater friend is there than the one who stood next to you as you fought.\"\n\nJoffy suddenly seemed that much more human; I presumed this was the side of him his parishioners saw.\n\n\"It was only afterward that I realized the error of what we were doing. Pretty soon I could see no difference between Russian and English, French or Turk. I spoke out and was banned from the frontline in case I sowed disharmony. My bishop told me that it was not my place to judge the errors of the conflict, but to look after the spiritual well-being of the men and women.\"\n\n\"So that's why you returned to England?\"\n\n\"That's why I returned to England.\"\n\n\"You're wrong, you know,\" I told him.\n\n\"About what?\"\n\n\"About not having a serious bone in your body. Did you know Colonel Phelps was in town?\"\n\n\"I did. What an arse. Someone should poison him. I'm speaking opposite him as 'the voice of moderation.' Will you join me at the podium?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Joff, really I don't.\"\n\nI stared at my tea and refused a chocolate biscuit that he offered me.\n\n\"Mum keeps the memorial well, doesn't she?\" I said, desperate to change the subject.\n\n\"Oh, it's not her, Doofus. She couldn't bear to even walk past the stone\u2014even if she did slim down enough to get through the lichgate.\"\n\n\"Who, then?\"\n\n\"Why, Landen, of course. Did he not tell you?\"\n\nI sat up.\n\n\"No. No, he didn't.\"\n\n\"He might write crap books and be a bit of a dork, but he was a good friend to Anton.\"\n\n\"But his testimony damned him forever!\u2014\"\n\nJoffy put his tea down and leaned forward, lowered his voice to a whisper and placed his hand on mine.\n\n\"Sister dearest, I know this is an old clich\u00e9 but it's true: The first casualty of war is always truth. Landen was trying to redress that. Don't think that he didn't agonize long and hard over it\u2014 it would have been easier to lie and clear Ant's name. But a small lie always breeds a bigger one. The military can ill afford more than it has already. Landen knew that and so too, I think, did our Anton.\"\n\nI looked up at him thoughtfully. I wasn't sure what I was going to say to Landen but I hoped I would think of something. He had asked me to marry him ten years ago, just before his evidence at the tribunal. I had accused him of attempting to gain my hand by stealth, knowing what my reaction would be following the hearing. I had left for London within the week.\n\n\"I think I'd better call him.\"\n\nJoffy smiled.\n\n\"Yes, perhaps you'd better\u2014Doofus.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Dr. Runcible Spoon",
                "text": "\u2002...Several people have asked me where I find the large quantity of prepositions that I need to keep my Bookworms fit and well. The answer is, of course, that I use omitted prepositions, of which, when mixed with dropped definite articles, make a nourishing food. There are a superabundance of these in the English language. Journey's end, for instance, has one omitted preposition and two definite articles: theendof thejourney. There are many other examples, too, such as bedside (thesideof thebed) and streetcorner (thecornerof thestreet), and so forth. If I run short I head to my local newspapers, where omitted prepositions can be found in The Toad's headlines every day. As for the worm's waste products, these are chiefly composed of apostrophes\u2014something that is becoming a problem\u2014I saw a notice yesterday that read: Cauliflower's, three shilling's each...\n\n\u2014MYCROFT NEXT, writing in the \"Any Questions?\" page of New Splicer magazine\n\nBowden and Victor were out when I arrived at the office; I poured myself some coffee and sat down at my desk. I called Landen's number but it was engaged; I tried a few minutes later but without any luck. Sergeant Ross called from the front desk and said that he was sending someone up who wanted to see a Litera Tec. I twiddled my thumbs for a bit, and had failed to reach Landen a third time when a small, academic-looking man with an overpowering aura of untidiness shambled into the office. He wore a small bowler hat and a herringbone-pattern shooting jacket pulled hastily over what looked like his pajama top. His briefcase had papers protruding from where he had caught them in the lid and the laces of both his shoes were tied in reef knots. He stared up at me. It was a two-minute walk from the front desk and he was still fumbling with his visitor's pass.\n\n\"Allow me,\" I said.\n\nThe academic stood impassively as I clipped his pass on and then thanked me absently, looking around as he tried to determine where he was.\n\n\"You're looking for me and you're on the right floor,\" I said, glad that I had had plenty of experience of academics in the past.\n\n\"I am?\" he said with great surprise, as though he had long ago accepted that he would always end up in the wrong place.\n\n\"Special Operative Thursday Next,\" I said, holding out a hand for him to shake. He shook it weakly and tried to raise his hat with the hand that was holding the briefcase. He gave up and tipped his head instead.\n\n\"Er... thank you, Miss Next. My name is Dr. Runcible Spoon, Professor of English Literature at Swindon University. I expect you've heard of me?\"\n\n\"I'm sure it was only a matter of time, Dr. Spoon. Would you care to sit down?\"\n\nDr. Spoon thanked me and followed me across to my desk, pausing every now and then as a rare book caught his eye. I had to stop and wait a number of times before I had him safely ensconced in Bowden's chair. I fetched him a cup of coffee.\n\n\"So, how can I be of assistance, Dr. Spoon?\"\n\n\"Perhaps I should show you, Miss Next.\"\n\nSpoon rummaged through his case for a minute, taking out some unmarked students' work and a paisley-patterned sock before finally finding and handing me a heavy blue-bound volume.\n\n\"Martin Chuzzlewit,\" explained Dr. Spoon, pushing all the papers back into his case and wondering why they had expanded since he took them out.\n\n\"Chapter nine, page one eighty-seven. It is marked.\"\n\nI turned to where Spoon had left his bus pass and scanned the page.\n\n\"See what I mean?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Dr. Spoon. I haven't read Chuzzlewit since I was in my teens. You're going to have to enlighten me.\"\n\nSpoon looked at me suspiciously, wondering if I was, perhaps, an impostor.\n\n\"A student pointed it out to me early this morning. I came out as quickly as I could. On the bottom of page one eighty-seven there was a short paragraph outlining one of the curious characters who frequent Todger's, the boarding house. A certain Mr. Quaverley by name. He is an amusing character who only converses on subjects that he knows nothing about. If you scan the lines I think you will agree with me that he has vanished.\"\n\nI read the page with growing consternation. The name of Quaverley did ring a bell, but of his short paragraph there appeared to be no sign.\n\n\"He doesn't appear later?\"\n\n\"No, Officer. My student and I have been through it several times. There is no doubt about it. Mr. Quaverley has inexplicably been excised from the book. It is as if he had never been written.\"\n\n\"Could it be a printing error?\" I asked with a growing sense of unease.\n\n\"On the contrary. I have checked seven different copies and they all read exactly the same. Mr. Quaverley is no longer with us.\"\n\n\"It doesn't seem possible,\" I murmured.\n\n\"I agree.\"\n\nI felt uneasy about the whole thing, and several links between Hades, Jack Schitt and the Chuzzlewit manuscript started to form in unpleasant ways in my mind.\n\nThe phone rang. It was Victor. He was at the morgue and requested me to come over straight away; they had discovered a body.\n\n\"What's this to do with me?\" I asked him.\n\nAs Victor spoke I looked over at Dr. Spoon, who was staring at a food stain he had discovered on his tie.\n\n\"No, on the contrary,\" I replied slowly, \"considering what has just happened here I don't think that sounds odd at all.\"\n\nThe morgue was an old Victorian building that was badly in need of refurbishment. The interior was musty and smelled of formaldehyde and damp. The employees looked unhealthy and shuffled around the confines of the small building in a funereal manner. The standard joke about Swindon's morgue was that the corpses were the ones with all the charisma. This rule was especially correct when it came to Mr. Rumplunkett, the head pathologist. He was a lugubrious-looking man with heavy jowls and eyebrows like thatch. I found him and Victor in the pathology lab.\n\nMr. Rumplunkett didn't acknowledge my entrance, but just continued to speak into a microphone hanging from the ceiling, his monotonous voice sounding like a low hum in the tiled room. He had been known to send his transcribers to sleep on quite a few occasions; he even had difficulty staying awake himself when practicing speeches to the forensic pathologists' annual dinner dance.\n\n\"I have in front of me a male European aged about forty with gray hair and poor dentition. He is approximately five foot eight inches tall and dressed in an outfit that I would describe as Victorian...\"\n\nAs well as Bowden and Victor there were two homicide detectives present, the ones who had interviewed us the night before. They looked surly and bored and glared at the LiteraTec contingent suspiciously.\n\n\"Morning, Thursday,\" said Victor cheerfully. \"Remember the Studebaker belonging to Archer's killer?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Well, our friends in Homicide found this body in the trunk.\"\n\n\"Do we have an ID?\"\n\n\"Not so far. Have a look at this.\"\n\nHe pointed to a stainless-steel tray containing the corpse's possessions. I sorted through the small collection. There was half a pencil, an unpaid bill for starching collars and a letter from his mother dated June 5, 1843.\n\n\"Can we speak in private?\" I said.\n\nVictor led me into the corridor.\n\n\"It's Mr. Quaverley,\" I explained.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nI repeated what Dr. Spoon had told me. Victor did not seem surprised in the least.\n\n\"I thought he looked like a book person,\" he said at length.\n\n\"You mean this has happened before?\"\n\n\"Did you ever read The Taming of the Shrew?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Well, you know the drunken tinker in the introduction who is made to think he is a lord, and whom they put the play on for?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I replied. \"His name was Christopher Sly. He has a few lines at the end of act one and that is the last we hear of him...\"\n\nMy voice trailed off.\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Victor. \"Six years ago an uneducated drunk who spoke only Elizabethan English was found wandering in a confused state just outside Warwick. He said that his name was Christopher Sly, demanded a drink and was very keen to see how the play turned out. I managed to question him for half an hour, and in that time he convinced me that he was the genuine article\u2014yet he never came to the realization that he was no longer in his own play.\"\n\n\"Where is he now?\"\n\n\"Nobody knows. He was taken for questioning by two unspecified SpecOps agents soon after I spoke to him. I tried to find out what happened but you know how secretive SpecOps can be.\"\n\nI thought about my time up at Haworth when I was a small girl.\n\n\"What about the other way?\"\n\nVictor looked at me sharply.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Have you ever heard of anyone jumping in the other direction?\"\n\nVictor looked at the floor and rubbed his nose. \"That's pretty radical, Thursday.\"\n\n\"But do you think it's possible?\"\n\n\"Keep this under your hat, Thursday, but I'm beginning to think that it is. The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning. Have you read Dickens's Dombey and Son?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Remember Mr. Glubb?\"\n\n\"The Brighton fisherman?\"\n\n\"Correct. Dombey was finished in 1848 and was reviewed extensively with a list of characters in 1851. In that review Mr. Glubb was not mentioned.\"\n\n\"An oversight?\"\n\n\"Perhaps. In 1926 a collector of antiquarian books named Redmond Bulge vanished while reading Dombey and Son. The incident was widely reported in the press owing to the fact that his assistant had been convinced he saw Bulge 'melt into smoke.'\"\n\n\"And Bulge fits Glubb's description?\"\n\n\"Almost exactly. Bulge specialized in collecting stories about the sea and Glubb specializes in telling tales of precisely that. Even Bulge's name spelled backward reads \"'Eglub,' a close enough approximation to Glubb to make us think he made it up himself.\" He sighed. \"I suppose you think that's incredible?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I replied, thinking of my own experiences with Rochester, \"but are you absolutely sure he fell into Dombey and Son?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"He could have made the jump by choice. He might have preferred it\u2014and stayed.\"\n\nVictor looked at me strangely. He hadn't dared tell anyone about his theories for fear of being ostracized, but here was a respected London Litera Tec nearly half his age going farther than even he had imagined. A thought crossed his mind.\n\n\"You've done it, haven't you?\"\n\nI looked him straight in the eye. For this we could both be pensioned off.\n\n\"Once,\" I whispered. \"When I was a very young girl. I don't think I could do it again. For many years I thought even that was a hallucination.\"\n\nI was going to go farther and tell him about Rochester jumping back after the shooting at Styx's apartment, but at that moment Bowden put his head into the corridor and asked us to come in.\n\nMr. Rumplunkett had finished his initial examination.\n\n\"One shot through the heart, very clean, very professional. Everything about the body otherwise normal except evidence of rickets in childhood. It's quite rare these days so it shouldn't be difficult to trace, unless of course he spent his youth in another country. Very poor dental work and lice. It's probable he hasn't had a bath for at least a month. There is not a lot I can tell you except his last meal was suet, mutton and ale. There'll be more when the tissue samples come back from the lab.\"\n\nVictor and I exchanged looks. I was correct. The corpse had to be Mr. Quaverley's. We all left hurriedly; I explained to Bowden who Quaverley was and where he came from.\n\n\"I don't get it,\" said Bowden as we walked toward the car. \"How did Hades take Mr. Quaverley out of every copy of Chuzzlewit?\"\n\n\"Because he went for the original manuscript,\" I answered, \"for the maximum disruption. All copies anywhere on the planet, in whatever form, originate from that first act of creation. When the original changes, all the others have to change too. If you could go back a hundred million years and change the genetic code of the first mammal, every one of us would be completely different. It amounts to the same thing.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Bowden slowly, \"but why is Hades doing this? If it was extortion, why kill Quaverley?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Perhaps it was a warning. Perhaps he has other plans. There are far bigger fish than Mr. Quaverley in Martin Chuzzlewit.\"\n\n\"Then why isn't he telling us?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Hades & Goliath",
                "text": "\u2002All my life I have felt destiny tugging at my sleeve. Few of us have any real idea what it is we are here to do and when it is that we are to do it. Every small act has a knock-on consequence that goes onto affect those about us in unseen ways. I was lucky that I had so clear a purpose.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nBut he was. When we got back a letter was waiting for me at the station. I had hoped it was from Landen but it wasn't. It bore no stamp and had been left on the desk that morning. No one had seen who delivered it.\n\nI called Victor over as soon as I had read it, laying the sheet of paper on my desk to avoid touching it any more than I had to. Victor put his spectacles on and read the note aloud.\n\nDear Thursday,\n\nWhen I heard you had joined the LiteraTec staff I almost believed in divine intervention. It seems that we will at last be able to sort out our differences. Mr. Quaverley was just for starters. Martin Chuzzlewit himself is next for the ax unless I get the following: \u00a310 million in used notes, a Gainsborough, preferably the one with the boy in blue, an eight-week run of Macbeth for my friend Thomas Hobbes at the Old Vic, and I want you to rename a motorway services \"LeighDelamare\" after the mother of an associate. Signal your readiness by a small ad in the Wednesday edition of the Swindon Globe announcing Angora rabbits for sale and I will give you further instructions.\n\nVictor sat down.\n\n\"It's signed Acheron. Imagine Martin Chuzzlewit without Chuzzlewit!\" he exclaimed earnestly, running through all the possibilities. \"The book would end within a chapter. Can you imagine the other characters sitting around, waiting for a lead character who never appears? It would be like trying to stage Hamlet without the prince!\"\n\n\"So what do we do?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Unless you have a Gainsborough you don't want and ten million in loose change, we take this to Braxton.\"\n\nJack Schitt was in Braxton Hicks's office when we entered. He didn't offer to leave when we told Hicks it was important and Hicks didn't ask him to.\n\n\"So what's up?\" asked Braxton, glancing at Schitt, who was practicing his putting on the carpet.\n\n\"Hades is alive,\" I told him, staring at Jack Schitt, who raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"Goodness!\" muttered Schitt in an unconvincing tone. \"That is a surprise.\"\n\nWe ignored him.\n\n\"Read this,\" said Victor, handing across Acheron's note in a cellophane wrapper. Braxton read it before passing it to Schitt.\n\n\"Place the ad, Officer Next,\" said Braxton loftily. \"You seem to have impressed Acheron enough for him to trust you. I'll speak to my superiors about his demands and you can inform me when he contacts you again.\"\n\nHe stood up to let us know that the interview had ended but I stayed seated.\n\n\"What's going on, sir?\"\n\n\"Classified, Next. We'd like you to make the drop for us but that's the only way you can be involved in the operation. Mr. Schitt has an extremely well-trained squad behind him who will take care of Hades's capture. Good-day.\"\n\nStill I didn't rise.\n\n\"You're going to have to tell me more, sir. My uncle is involved, and if you want me to play ball I'm going to have to know what's happening.\"\n\nBraxton Hicks looked at me and narrowed his eyes.\n\n\"I'm afraid\u2014\"\n\n\"What the hell,\" interjected Schitt. \"Tell 'em.\"\n\nBraxton looked at Schitt, who continued to practice his putting.\n\n\"You may have the honor, Schitt,\" said Braxton angrily. \"It's your show after all.\"\n\nSchitt shrugged and finished the putt. The ball hit its mark and he smiled.\n\n\"Over the last hundred years there has been an inexplicable cross-fertilization between works of fiction and reality. We know that Mr. Analogy has been investigating the phenomenon for some time, and we know about Mr. Glubb and several other characters who have crossed into books. We knew of no one to have returned so we considered it a one-way journey. Christopher Sly changed all that for us.\"\n\n\"You have him?\" asked Victor.\n\n\"No; he went back. Quite of his own accord, although unfortunately because he was so drunk he went back not to Will's version of The Taming of the Shrew, but to an uneven rendition in one of the Bad Quartos. Melted into thin air one day while under observation.\"\n\nHe paused for effect and polished his putter with a large red-spotted handkerchief.\n\n\"For some time now, the Goliath Advanced Weapons Division has been working on a device that will open a door into a work of fiction. After thirty years of research and untold expenditure, all we have managed to do is synthesize a poor-quality cheddar from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese. We knew that Hades was interested, and there was talk of clandestine experiments here in England. When the Chuzzlewit manuscript was stolen and we found that Hades had it, I knew we were on the right track. Your uncle's kidnapping suggested that he had perfected the machine and the Quaverley extraction proved it. We'll get Hades, although it's the machine that we really want.\"\n\n\"You forget,\" I said slowly, \"that the machine does not belong to you; knowing my uncle he'd destroy the idea forever rather than sell out to the military.\"\n\n\"We know all about Mycroft, Miss Next. He will learn that such a quantum leap in scientific thought should not be the property of a man who is incapable of understanding the true potential of his device. The technology belongs to the nation.\"\n\n\"You're wrong,\" I said obstinately, getting up to leave. \"About as wrong as you can possibly be. Mycroft destroys any machine that he believes might have devastating military potential; if only scientists stopped to think about the possible effects of their discoveries, the planet would be a much safer place for all of us.\"\n\nSchitt clapped his hands slowly.\n\n\"Brave speech but spare me the moralizing, Next. If you want your fridge-freezer and your car and a nice house and asphalt on the roads and a health service, then thank the weapons business. Thank the war economy that drives us to this and thank Goliath. The Crimea is good, Thursday\u2014good for England and especially good for the economy. You deride the weapons business but without it we'd be a tenth-rate country struggling to maintain a standard of living anywhere near that of our European neighbors. Would you prefer that?\"\n\n\"At least our conscience would be clear.\"\n\n\"Naive, Next, very naive.\"\n\nSchitt returned to his golf and Braxton took up the explanation:\n\n\"Officer Next, we are extending all possible support to the Goliath Corporation in these matters. We want you to help us capture Hades. You know him from your college days and he addressed this to you. We'll agree to his demands and arrange a drop. Then we tail him and arrest him. Simple. Goliath gets the Prose Portal, we get the manuscript, your uncle and aunt are freed, and SpecOps-5 gets Hades. Everyone gets something so everyone is happy. So for now, we sit tight and wait for news of the drop.\"\n\n\"I know the rules on giving in to extortionists as well as you do, sir. Hades is not one to try and fool.\"\n\n\"It won't come to that,\" replied Hicks. \"We'll give him the money and nab him long before he gets away. I have complete confidence in Schitt's operatives.\"\n\n\"With every respect, sir, Acheron is smarter and tougher than you can possibly imagine. We should do this on our own. We don't need Schitt's hired guns blasting off in all directions.\"\n\n\"Permission denied, Next. You'll do as I tell you, or you'll do nothing. I think that's all.\"\n\nI should have been more angry but I wasn't. There had been no surprises\u2014Goliath never compromised. And when there are no surprises, it's harder to get riled. We would have to work with what we were given.\n\nWhen we got back to the office I called Landen again. This time a woman answered; I asked to speak to him.\n\n\"He's asleep,\" she said shortly.\n\n\"Can you wake him?\" I asked. \"It's kind of important.\"\n\n\"No, I can't. Who are you?\"\n\n\"It's Thursday Next.\"\n\nThe woman gave a small snigger that I didn't like.\n\n\"He told me all about you, Thursday.\"\n\nShe said it disdainfully; I took an instant dislike to her.\n\n\"Who is this?\"\n\n\"This is Daisy Mutlar, darling, Landy's fianc\u00e9e.\"\n\nI leaned back in my chair slowly and closed my eyes. This couldn't be happening. No wonder Landen asked me as a matter of some urgency if I was going to forgive him.\n\n\"Changed your mind, have you, sweetheart?\" asked Daisy in a mocking tone. \"Landen's a good man. He waited nearly ten years for you but I'm afraid now he's in love with me. Perhaps if you're lucky we'll send you some cake, and if you want to send a present, the wedding list is down at Camp Hopson.\"\n\nI forced down a lump in my throat.\n\n\"When's the happy day?\"\n\n\"For you or for me?\" Daisy laughed. \"For you, who knows? As for me, darling Landy and I are going to be Mr. and Mrs. Parke-Laine two weeks on Saturday.\"\n\n\"Let me speak to him,\" I demanded, my voice rising.\n\n\"I might tell him you called when he wakes up.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to come around and bang on the door?\" I asked, my voice rising further. Bowden looked at me from the other side of the desk with an arched eyebrow.\n\n\"Listen here, you stupid bitch,\" said Daisy in a hushed tone in case Landen heard, \"you could have married Landen and you blew it. It's all over. Go and find some geeky Litera Tec or something\u2014from what I've seen all you SpecOps clowns are a bunch of weirdos.\"\n\n\"Now just you listen to\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" snapped Daisy. \"You listen. If you try anything at all to interfere with my happiness I'll wring your stupid little neck!\"\n\nThe phone went dead. I quietly returned the receiver to its cradle and took my coat from the back of the chair.\n\n\"Where are you going?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"The shooting range,\" I replied, \"and I may be some time.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Waiting Game",
                "text": "\u2002To Hades, the loss of every Felix brought back the sadness of the first Felix's death. On that occasion it had been a terrible blow; not only the loss of a trusted friend and colleague in crime, but also the terrible realization that the alien emotions of loss he had felt betrayed his half-human ancestry, something he abhorred. It was little wonder that he and the first Felix had got on so well. Like Hades, Felix was truly debased and amoral. Sadly for Felix, he did not share any of Hades' more demonic attributes and had stopped a bullet in the stomach the day that he and Hades attempted to rob the Goliath Bank at Hartlepool in 1975. Felix accepted his death stoically, urging his friend to \"carry on the good work\" before Hades quietly put him out of his pain. Out of respect for his friend's memory he removed Felix's face and carried it with him away from the crime scene. Every servant expropriated from the public since then had been given the dubious honor not only of being named after Acheron's one true friend, but also of wearing his features.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Life after Death for Felix Tabularasa\n\nBowden placed the ad in the Swindon Globe. It was two days before we all sat down in Victor's office to compare notes.\n\n\"We've had seventy-two calls,\" announced Victor. \"Sadly, all inquiries about rabbits.\"\n\n\"You did price them kind of low, Bowden,\" I put in playfully.\n\n\"I am not very conversant in matters concerning rabbits,\" asserted Bowden loftily. \"It seemed a fair price to me.\"\n\nVictor placed a file on the table. \"The police finally got an ID on that guy you shot over at Sturmey Archer's. He had no fingerprints and you were right about his face, Thursday\u2014it wasn't his own.\"\n\n\"So who was he?\"\n\nVictor opened the file.\n\n\"He was an accountant from Newbury named Adrian Smarts. Went missing two years ago. No criminal record; not so much as a speeding fine. He was a good person. Family man, churchgoer and enthusiastic charity worker.\"\n\n\"Hades stole his will,\" I muttered. \"The cleanest souls are the easiest to soil. There wasn't much left of Smarts by the time we shot him. What about the face?\"\n\n\"They're still working on that. It might be harder to identify. According to forensic reports Smarts wasn't the only person to wear that face.\"\n\nI started.\n\n\"So who's to say he'll be the last?\"\n\nVictor guessed my concern, picked up the phone and called Hicks. Within twenty minutes an SO-14 squad had surrounded the funeral parlor where Smarts's body had been released to his family. They were too late. The face that Smarts had been wearing for the past two years had been stolen. Security cameras, unsurprisingly, had seen nothing.\n\nThe news of Landen's upcoming wedding had hit me pretty badly. I found out later that Daisy Mutlar was someone he met at a book signing over a year earlier. She was pretty and beguiling, apparently, but a bit overweight, I thought. She had no great mind either, or at least, that's what I told myself. Landen had said he wanted a family and I guessed he deserved one. In coming to terms with this I had even begun reacting positively to Bowden's sorry attempts to ask me out to dinner. We didn't have much in common, except for an interest in who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. I stared across the desk at him as he studied a small scrap of paper with a disputed signature scrawled upon it. The paper was original and so was the ink. The writing, sadly, was not.\n\n\"Go on, then,\" I said, recalling our last conversation when we were having lunch together, \"tell me about Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford.\"\n\nBowden looked thoughtful for a moment.\n\n\"The Earl of Oxford was a writer, we can be sure of that. Meres, a critic of the time, mentioned as much in his Palladis Tamia of 1598.\"\n\n\"Could he have written the plays?\" I asked.\n\n\"He could have,\" replied Bowden. \"The trouble is, Meres also goes onto list many of Shakespeare's plays and credits Shakespeare with them. Sadly that places Oxford, like Derby and Bacon, into the front-man theory, according to which we have to believe that Will was just the beard for greater geniuses now hidden from history.\"\n\n\"Is that hard to believe?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not. The White Queen used to believe six impossible things before breakfast and it didn't seem to do her any harm. The front-man theory is possible, but there're a few more things in favor of Oxford as Shakespeare.\"\n\nThere was a pause. The authorship of the plays was something that a lot of people took very seriously, and many fine minds had spent lifetimes on the subject.\n\n\"The theory goes that Oxford and a group of courtiers were employed by the court of Queen Elizabeth to produce plays in support of the government. In this there seems some truth.\"\n\nHe opened a book and read from an underlined passage.\n\n\"'A crew of courtly makers, noblemen and Gentlemen, who have written excellently well, as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman, the Earl of Oxford.'\"\n\nHe snapped the book shut.\n\n\"Puttenham in 1598. Oxford was given an annual grant of a thousand pounds for just such a purpose, although whether this was for writing the plays or another quite different project it is impossible to tell. There is no positive evidence that it was he who actually penned the plays. A few lines of poetry similar to Shakespeare's do survive, but it's not conclusive; neither is the lion shaking a spear on Oxford's coat of arms.\"\n\n\"And he died in 1604,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, there is that. Front-man theories just don't seem to work. If you think Shakespeare might have been a nobleman anxious to remain anonymous, I should forget it. If someone else did write the plays I should be looking at another Elizabethan commoner, a man of quite staggering intellect, daring and charisma.\"\n\n\"Kit Marlowe?\" I asked.\n\n\"The same.\"\n\nThere was a commotion on the other side of the office. Victor slammed down the phone and beckoned us over.\n\n\"That was Schitt; Hades has been in touch. He wants us in Hicks's office in half an hour.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Drop",
                "text": "\u2002I was to make the drop. I'd never held a case containing \u00a310 million before. In fact, I wasn't then and never have. Jack Schitt, in his arrogance, had assumed he would capture Hades long before he got to look at the money. What a sap. The Gainsborough's paint was barely dry and the English Shakespeare Company weren't playing ball. The only part of Acheron's deal that had been honored was the changing of the motorway services' name. Kington St. Michael was now Leigh Delamare.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nBraxton Hicks outlined the plan to us soon after\u2014there was an hour to go until the drop. This was Jack Schitt's way of ensuring that none of us tried to make our own plans. In every way this was a Goliath operation\u2014myself, Bowden and Victor were only there to add credibility in case Hades was watching. The drop was at a redundant railway bridge; the only ways in were by two roads and the disused railway line, which was only passable in a four-by-four. Goliath men were to cover both roads and the railway track. They were ordered to let him in, but not out. It all seemed pretty straightforward\u2014on paper.\n\nThe ride out to the disused railway line was uneventful, although the phony Gainsborough took up more room in the Speedster than I had imagined. Schitt's men were well hidden; Bowden and I didn't see a single soul as we drove to the deserted spot.\n\nThe bridge was still in good condition, even though it had long since ceased to function. I parked the car a little way off and walked alone to the bridge. The day was fine, and there was barely a sound in the air. I looked over the parapet but couldn't see anything remiss, just the large aggregate bed, slightly undulated where the sleepers had been pulled up all those years ago. Small shrubs grew among the stones, and next to the track was a deserted signal box from where I could just see the top half of a periscope watching me. I assumed it to be one of Schitt's men and looked at my watch. It was time.\n\nThe muffled sound of a wireless beeping caught my attention. I cocked my head and tried to figure out where it was coming from.\n\n\"I can hear a wireless beeping,\" I said into my walkie-talkie.\n\n\"It's not one of ours,\" responded Schitt from the control base in a deserted farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. \"I suggest you find it.\"\n\nThe wireless was wrapped in plastic and stashed in the branches of a tree on the other side of the road. It was Hades and it was a bad line\u2014it sounded as though he was in a car somewhere.\n\n\"Thursday?\"\n\n\"Here.\"\n\n\"Alone?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How are you? I'm sorry I had to do what I did but you know how desperate we psychopaths get.\"\n\n\"Is my uncle okay?\"\n\n\"In the pink, dear girl. Enjoying himself tremendously; such an intellect, you know, but so very vague. With his mind and my drive I could rule the globe instead of resorting to all this banal extortion.\"\n\n\"You can finish it now,\" I told him. Hades ignored me and carried on:\n\n\"Don't try anything heroic, Thursday. As you must have guessed, I have the Chuzzlewit manuscript and I'm not afraid to disrupt it.\"\n\n\"Where are you?\"\n\n\"Tut, tut, Thursday, who do you think you're talking to? We'll discuss terms for your uncle's release just as soon as I have my money. You'll see on the parapet a karabiner attached to a length of wire. Place the money and the Gainsborough on the parapet and clip them on. Once that's done I'll come and pick them up. Until we meet again, Miss Thursday Next!\"\n\nI repeated to the others what he had said. They told me to do as I was told.\n\nI placed the Gladstone with the money on the parapet and attached it to the Gainsborough. I walked back to the car, sat on the bonnet and watched Hades' booty intently. Ten minutes went by, then half an hour. I asked Victor for advice but he just told me to stay where I was.\n\nThe sun became hotter and the flies buzzed merrily around the hedgerows. I could smell the faint odor of freshly turned hay and hear far off the gentle thrum of traffic. It looked as though Hades was just testing us, a not unusual occurrence in the delicate task of paying ransoms. When the poet writer general was kidnapped five years previously it had taken nine attempts before the ransom was successfully delivered. In the event the PWG was returned unharmed; it turned out that he had engineered the whole thing himself to boost flagging sales of his decidedly lame autobiography.\n\nI got bored and walked up to the parapet again, ignoring Schitt's request to back off. I toyed with the karabiner and absently followed the thin high-tensile cable that had been hidden in the brickwork. I traced its course to the loose soil at the base of the parapet, where it led off the bridge. I pulled it up slowly and found it attached to a bungee cord, coiled like a snake beneath some dried grass. Intrigued, I traced the bungee back to another length of high-tensile braided cable. This was taped carefully to a telegraph pole and then stretched ten feet above my head in a large double loop to another pole at the far end of the bridge. I frowned as the low growl of an engine made me turn. I couldn't see anything but the engine was definitely coming toward me, and quite quickly. I looked along the gravel bed of the old railway, expecting to see a four-wheel-drive, but there was nothing. The noise of the approaching engine increased dramatically as a light aircraft appeared from behind an embankment, where it had obviously flown in low to avoid detection.\n\n\"Plane!\" I shouted into my walkie-talkie. \"They've got a plane!\"\n\nThen the firing began. It was impossible to say who started it, or even where it came from, but in an instant the quiet countryside was filled with the sharp, directionless crackle of small-arms fire. I ducked instinctively as several rounds hit the parapet, throwing up a shower of red brick dust. I pulled out my automatic and released the safety as the plane passed overhead. I recognized it as the sort of highwing observation plane they used in the Crimea for artillery spotting; the side door had been removed and sitting half out of the plane with one foot on the wing strut was Acheron. He was holding a light machine-gun and was blazing away quite happily at everything he could see. He peppered the dilapidated signal box and the Goliath men returned fire with equal enthusiasm; I could already see several holes open up in the plane's fabric. Behind the plane, swinging in the slipstream, trailed a grapnel hook. As it passed over, the hook caught the wire strung between the telegraph poles and whisked off the Gladstone bag and the painting, the bungee cord taking the initial strain out of the pickup. I jumped up and started to fire at the retreating plane, but it banked steeply away and dived behind the embankment, the bag and the Gainsborough flapping dangerously on the end of the rope. To delay now would definitely mean losing them and maybe the last real chance to catch Hades, so I sprinted to the car and reversed out in a shower of earth and small stones. Bowden clung on grimly and reached for his seat belt.\n\nBut the airplane had not quite finished with us. The small craft went into a shallow dive to gain more airspeed then pulled up into a near vertical left bank, the port wingtip scraping through the top of a large beech as the pilot turned back toward us. A Studebaker full of Goliath men had set off after the aircraft but braked violently as the airplane came skidding toward them, the pilot booting full left rudder to allow Acheron a better view of his target. The black car was soon a mass of small bullet holes and it swung into a ditch. I stamped on the brakes as another Studebaker pulled in front of me. It too was peppered by Acheron and careered into a low wall approaching the bridge. The aircraft flew on over me, the Gainsborough now so low that it banged on the bonnet of my car, the rattle of gunfire now only weakly returned by Schitt's men.\n\nI pressed hard on the accelerator and drove off in pursuit of the aircraft, past the two shattered cars and over the bridge. There was a straight road ahead of us and Hades' plane was laboring against a slight headwind; with a bit of luck we might catch them. At the end of the straight there was a fork and a gated entry to a field straight on. The plane carried straight on. Bowden looked at me nervously.\n\n\"Which way?\" he yelled.\n\nIn answer I pulled out my automatic, aimed it at the gate and fired. The first two shots missed but the next three hit their mark; the hinges shattered and the gate collapsed as I bounced into the field, which happened to be populated by a herd of bemused cows. The plane droned on, and while not exactly gaining on it we did at least seem to be keeping up.\n\n\"In pursuit of suspects in airplane heading, er, east, I think,\" yelled Bowden into the police wireless. An aircraft was the one thing none of us had thought of. Although a police airship was in the area it would be too slow to be able to cut off the plane's escape.\n\nWe carried on down a shallow slope, dodging heifers and making for the far end of the field, where a farmer in his Land Rover was just closing the gate. He looked perplexed as he saw the mud-spattered sports car fast approaching him but opened the gate anyway. I yanked the wheel hard over, turned right and slewed broadside down the road with one rear wheel in the ditch before I recovered and accelerated rapidly, now at right angles to where we wanted to go. The next turning on the left was into a farm, so in we went, scattering frightened chickens in all directions as we searched for a way out into the fields beyond. The aircraft was still visible, but detours like this only increased the distance between us.\n\n\"Hollycroft farm!\" Bowden shouted into the wireless as he tried to keep anyone who might be interested informed of our progress. I found my way past the farmyard and out through the orchard by way of a barbed-wire fence that put five deep horizontal scratches along the paintwork of the car. We drove faster across the grass, bumping heavily over hardened ruts made the previous winter. Twice the car bottomed out, but at last we were making headway. As we pulled up beneath the plane, it abruptly banked left. I did likewise and entered a forest on a logging track. We could just see the aircraft above us through the foliage that flicked and rushed above our heads.\n\n\"Thursday!\u2014\"shouted Bowden against the rasp of the engine.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Road.\"\n\n\"Road?\"\n\n\"Road.\"\n\nWe hit the road at full speed and were lifted off the ground by the camber. The car flew through the air, landed slightly askew and skidded sideways into a bramble thicket. The engine stalled but I quickly restarted it and headed off in the direction taken by the airplane. I accelerated up the road and emerged clear of the forest; the aircraft was ahead of us by only a hundred yards. I pressed the accelerator again and the car surged forward. We turned right into another field and tore across the grass, gaining on the plane, which was still flying into the headwind.\n\n\"Thursday!\"\n\n\"What is it now?\"\n\n\"We're coming to a river!\"\n\nIt was true. To left and right of us and not more than half a mile distant, the broad expanse of the Severn blocked our route. Acheron was heading off to Wales and the Marches and there didn't seem to be anything we could do about it.\n\n\"Hold the wheel!\" I yelled as we drew closer behind and beneath the aircraft. Bowden eyed the approaching riverbank nervously. We were doing almost seventy across the flat grassland, and it wouldn't be long before we passed the point of no return. I took careful aim with both hands and fired into the airplane. It jinked and banked violently. For a moment I thought I had hit the pilot but the plane quickly changed direction; it had merely gone into a dive to gain speed.\n\nI swore, stamped on the brake and pulled the wheel around. The car skittered on the grass and drifted sideways through another fence before sliding down a bank and coming to rest at the water's edge with a front wheel in the river. I jumped out and fired at the retreating aircraft in a futile gesture until my gun was empty, half expecting Acheron to turn about and make a low pass, but he never did. The aircraft, with Hades, a forged Gainsborough and ten million pounds in dud notes, droned away into the distance.\n\nWe got out and looked at the damaged car.\n\n\"A write-off,\" murmured Bowden after making a last position report over the wireless. \"It won't be long before Hades realizes that the money we have given him is not of the highest quality.\"\n\nI stared at the aircraft, which was now a small dot on the horizon.\n\n\"Heading into the Republic?\" suggested Bowden.\n\n\"Could be,\" I replied, wondering how we should ever get to him if he took refuge in Wales. Extradition agreements did exist but Anglo-Welsh relations were not good and the Politburo tended to regard any enemy of the English as a friend.\n\n\"What now?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" I replied slowly, \"but I think that if you've never read Martin Chuzzlewit you should do so as soon as possible. I've a feeling that as soon as Acheron finds he's been hoodwinked Martin will be the first for the chop.\"\n\nHades' plane vanished into the distance. All was quiet except for the gentle lap of the river. I lay down on the grass and closed my eyes, attempting to get a few moments of peace before we were thrown back into the maelstrom of Goliath, Hades, Chuzzlewit and all the rest. It was a calm moment\u2014the eye of the hurricane. But I wasn't thinking about any of them. I was still thinking about Daisy Mutlar. The news about her and Landen was both expected and unexpected at the same time; he might have mentioned it, of course, but then, after a ten-year absence, he was under no obligation to do so. I found myself wondering what it would be like to have children and then wondering what it would be like never to know.\n\nBowden joined me on the grass. He took a shoe off and emptied out some gravel.\n\n\"That post I was talking about in Ohio, you remember?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"They confirmed the appointment this morning.\"\n\n\"Terrific! When do you start?\"\n\nBowden looked down.\n\n\"I haven't agreed to it yet.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Have you ever... um... been to Ohio?\" he asked in an innocent tone of voice.\n\n\"No; I've been to New York several times, though.\"\n\n\"It's very beautiful, I am told.\"\n\n\"A lot of America is.\"\n\n\"They are offering me twice Victor's pay.\"\n\n\"Good deal.\"\n\n\"And they said I could bring someone with me.\"\n\n\"Who do you have in mind?\"\n\n\"You.\"\n\nI looked at him, and his urgent and hopeful expression said it all. I hadn't thought of him as a permanent boss or partner. I supposed that working with him might be like working under Boswell again. A workaholic who expected much the same from his charges.\n\n\"That's a very generous offer, Bowden.\"\n\n\"Then you'll consider it?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"I can't think of anything beyond Hades. After living with him all day I had hoped that I would be spared his presence at night, but he is there too, leering at me in my dreams.\"\n\nBowden had had no such dreams, but then he hadn't seen as much of Hades as I had. We both lapsed into silence and stayed that way for an hour, watching the river flow languidly past until the tow truck arrived.\n\nI stretched out in my mother's huge iron bathtub and took a swig from the large G&T I had smuggled in with me. The garage had said they would have been happier to scrap the Speedster, but I told them to get it back on the road no matter what, as it still had important work to do. As I was drifting off to sleep in the warm pine-smelling waters there was a knock at the door. It was Landen.\n\n\"Holy shit, Landen! Can't a girl have a bath in peace?\"\n\n\"Sorry, Thurs.\"\n\n\"How did you get into the house?\"\n\n\"Your mother let me in.\"\n\n\"Did she now. What do you want?\"\n\n\"Can I come in?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You spoke to Daisy.\"\n\n\"Yes I did. Are you really going to marry that cow?\"\n\n\"I understand you're angry, Thursday. I didn't want you to find out this way. I was going to tell you myself but you kind of dashed off the last time we were together.\"\n\nThere was an awkward silence. I stared at the taps.\n\n\"I'm getting on,\" said Landen finally. \"I'll be forty-one next June and I want a family.\"\n\n\"And Daisy will give you that?\"\n\n\"Sure; she's a great girl, Thursday. She's not you, of course, but she's a great girl; very...\"\n\n\"Dependable?\"\n\n\"Solid, perhaps. Not exciting, but reliable.\"\n\n\"Do you love her?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Then there seems little to talk about. What do you want from me?\"\n\nLanden hesitated.\n\n\"I just wanted to know that I was making the right decision.\"\n\n\"You said you loved her.\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"And she will give you the children you want.\"\n\n\"That too.\"\n\n\"Then I think you should marry her.\"\n\nLanden hesitated slightly.\n\n\"So that's okay with you?\"\n\n\"You don't need my permission.\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant. I just wanted to ask if you think this could all have had some other outcome?\"\n\nI placed a flannel over my face and groaned silently. It wasn't something I wanted to deal with right now.\n\n\"No. Landen, you must marry her. You promised her and besides\u2014\" I thought quickly. \"\u2014I have a job in Ohio.\"\n\n\"Ohio?\"\n\n\"As a LiteraTec. One of my colleagues at work offered it to me.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"A guy named Cable. Great fellow he is too.\"\n\nLanden gave up, sighed, thanked me and promised to send me an invitation. He left the house quietly\u2014when I came downstairs ten minutes later, my mother was still wearing a forlorn \"I wish he were my son-in-law\" sort of look."
            },
            {
                "title": "Martin Chuzzlewit Is Reprieved",
                "text": "My chief interest in all the work that I have conducted over the past forty or so years has been concerned with the elasticity of bodies. One tends to think only of substances such as rubber in this category but almost everything one can think of can be bent and stretched. I include, of course, space, time, distance and reality..."
            },
            {
                "title": "PROFESSOR MYCROFT NEXT",
                "text": "CROFTY!\u2014\"\n\n\"Polly!\u2014\"\n\nThey met at the shores of the lake, next to the swath of daffodils that rocked gently in the warm breeze. The sun shone brightly, throwing a dappled light upon the grassy bank on which they found themselves. All about them the fresh smell of spring lay upon the land, bringing with it a feeling of calm and serenity that hushed the senses and relaxed the soul. A little way down the water's edge an old man in a black cape was seated upon a stone, idly throwing pebbles into the crystal water. It might have been almost perfect, in fact, apart from the presence of Felix8, his face not yet healed, standing on the daffodils and keeping a careful eye on his charges. Worried about Mycroft's commitment to his plan, Acheron had allowed him back into \"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud\" to see his wife.\n\n\"Have you been well, my love?\" asked Mycroft.\n\nShe pointed surreptitiously in the direction of the caped figure.\n\n\"I've been fine, although Mr. W over there seems to think that he's God's gift to women. He invited me to join him in a few unpublished works. A few flowery phrases and he thinks I'm his.\"\n\n\"The cad!\" exclaimed Mycroft, getting up. \"I think I might just punch him on the nose!\"\n\nPolly pulled his sleeve and made him sit down. She was flushed and excited at the idea of her septuagenarian husband and Wordsworth getting into a fight over her\u2014it would have been quite a boast at the Women's Federation meeting.\n\n\"Well, really!\u2014\" said Mycroft. \"These poets are terrible philanderers.\" He paused. \"You said no, of course?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, naturally.\"\n\nShe looked at Mycroft with her sweetest smile, but he had moved on.\n\n\"Don't leave 'Daffodils' otherwise I won't know where to find you.\"\n\nHe held her hand and together they looked out across the lake. There was no opposite shore, and the pebbles that Wordsworth flicked into the water popped back out after a moment or two and landed back on the foreshore. Aside from that, the countryside was indistinguishable from reality.\n\n\"I did something a bit silly,\" announced Mycroft quite suddenly, looking down and smoothing the soft grass with his palm.\n\n\"How silly?\" asked Polly, mindful of the precariousness of the situation.\n\n\"I burned the Chuzzlewit manuscript.\"\n\n\"You did what?\"\n\n\"I said\u2014\"\n\n\"I heard. Such an original manuscript is almost beyond value. Whatever made you do a thing like that?\"\n\nMycroft sighed. It was not an action he had taken upon himself lightly.\n\n\"Without the original manuscript,\" he explained, \"major disruption of the work is impossible. I told you that maniac removed Mr. Quaverley and had him killed. I didn't think he'd stop there. Who would be next? Mrs. Gamp? Mr. Pecksniff? Martin Chuzzlewit himself? I rather think I might have been doing the world a favor.\"\n\n\"And destroying the manuscript stops this, does it?\"\n\n\"Of course; no original manuscript, no mass disruption.\"\n\nShe held his hand tightly as a shadow fell across them both.\n\n\"Time's up,\" said Felix8.\n\nI had been right and wrong over my predictions regarding Acheron's actions. As Mycroft told me later, Hades had been furious when he discovered that no one had taken him seriously, but Mycroft's action in destroying Chuzzlewit simply made him laugh. For a man unused to being hoodwinked, he enjoyed the experience. Instead of tearing him limb from limb as Mycroft had suspected, he merely shook him by the hand.\n\n\"Congratulations, Mr. Next.\" He smiled. \"Your act was brave and ingenious. Brave, ingenious but sadly self-defeating. I didn't choose Chuzzlewit by chance, you know.\"\n\n\"No?\" retorted Mycroft.\n\n\"No. I was made to study the book at O-level and really got to hate the smug little shit. All that moralizing and endless harking on about the theme of selfishness. I find Chuzzlewit only marginally less tedious than Our Mutual Friend. Even if they had paid the ransom I would have killed him anyway and enjoyed the experience tremendously.\"\n\nHe stopped talking, smiled at Mycroft and continued:\n\n\"Your intervention has allowed Martin Chuzzlewit to continue his adventures. Todger's boarding house will not be torched and they can continue their unamusing little lives unperturbed.\"\n\n\"I am glad of that,\" replied Mycroft.\n\n\"Save your sentiments, Mr. Next, I haven't finished. In view of your actions I will have to find an alternative. A book that unlike Chuzzlewit has genuine literary merits.\"\n\n\"Not Great Expectations?\"\n\nAcheron looked at him sadly.\n\n\"We're beyond Dickens now, Mr. Next. I would have liked to have gone into Hamlet and throttled that insufferably gloomy Dane, or even skipped into Romeo and Juliet and snuffed out that little twerp Romeo.\" He sighed before continuing. \"Sadly, none of the Bard's original manuscripts survive.\" He thought for a moment. \"Perhaps the Bennett family could do with some thinning...\"\n\n\"Pride and Prejudice!?\" yelled Mycroft. \"You heartless monster!\"\n\n\"Flattery will not help you now, Mycroft. Pride and Prejudice without Elizabeth or Darcy would be a trifle lame, don't you think? But perhaps not Austen. Why not Trollope? A well-placed nail-bomb in Barchester might be an amusing distraction. I'm sure the loss of Mr. Crawley would cause a few feathers to fly. So you see, my dear Mycroft, saving Mr. Chuzzlewit might have been a very foolish act indeed.\"\n\nHe smiled again and spoke to Felix8.\n\n\"My friend, why don't you make some enquiries and find out the extent of original manuscripts and their whereabouts?\"\n\nFelix8 looked at Acheron coldly.\n\n\"I'm not a clerk, sir. I think Mr. Hobbes would be eminently more suitable for that task.\"\n\nAcheron frowned. Of all the Felixes only Felix3 had ever contradicted a direct order. The hapless Felix3 was liquidated following a very disappointing performance when he hesitated during a robbery. It had been Acheron's own fault, of course; he had tried to endow Felix3 with slightly more personality at the expense of allowing him a pinch of morality. Ever since then he had given up on the Felixes as anything but loyal servants; Hobbes and Dr. M\u00fcller had to be his company these days.\n\n\"Hobbes!\" shouted Hades at the top of his voice. The unemployed actor scuttled in from the direction of the kitchens holding a large wooden spoon.\n\n\"Yes, sire?\"\n\nAcheron repeated the order to Hobbes, who bowed and withdrew.\n\n\"Felix8!\"\n\n\"Sir?\"\n\n\"If it's not too much trouble, lock Mycroft in his room. I dare say we will have no need of him for a couple of weeks. Give him no water for two days and no food for five. That should be punishment enough for disposing of the manuscript.\"\n\nFelix8 nodded and removed Mycroft from the hotel's old lounge. He took him out into the lobby and up the broad marble staircase. They were the only ones in the moldering hotel; the large front door was locked and bolted.\n\nMycroft stopped by the window and looked out. He had once visited the Welsh capital as a guest of the Republic to give a talk on synthesizing oil from coal. He had been put up in this very hotel, met anyone who was anyone and even had a rare audience with the highly revered Brawd Ulyanov, octogenarian leader of the modern Welsh Republic. It would have been nearly thirty years ago, and the lowlying city had not changed much. The signs of heavy industry still dominated the landscape and the odor of ironworks hung in the air. Although many of the mines had closed in recent years, the winding gears had not been removed; they punctuated the landscape like sentinels, rising darkly above the squat slate-roofed houses. Above the city on Morlais Hill the massive limestone statue of John Frost looked down upon the Republic he had founded; there had been talk of moving the capital away from the industrialized South but Merthyr was as much a spiritual center as anything else.\n\nThey walked on and presently came to Mycroft's cell, a windowless room with only the barest furniture. As he was locked in and left alone, Mycroft's thoughts turned to that which troubled him most: Polly. He had always thought she was a bit of a flirt but nothing more; and Mr. Wordsworth's continued interest in her caused him no small amount of jealous anxiety."
            },
            {
                "title": "Time Enough for Contemplation",
                "text": "\u2002I hadn't thought that Chuzzlewit was a popular book, but I was wrong. Not one of us expected the public outcry and media attention that his murder provoked. Mr. Quaverley's autopsy was a matter of public record; his burial was attended by 150,000 Dickens fans from around the globe. Braxton Hicks told us to say nothing about the Litera Tec involvement, but news soon leaked out.\n\n\u2014BOWDEN CABLE, speaking to The Owl newspaper\n\nCommander Braxton Hicks threw the newspaper on the desk in front of us. He paced around for a bit before collapsing heavily into his chair.\n\n\"I want to know who told the press,\" he announced. Jack Schitt was leaning on the window frame and watching us all while smoking a rather small and foul-smelling Turkish cigarette. The headline was unequivocal:\n\n\u2002CHUZZLEWIT DEATH: SPECOPS BLAMED\n\nIt went onto outline specifically how \"unnamed sources\" within Swindon SpecOps had intimated that a botched ransom payment had been the cause of Quaverley's death. It was arse about face but the basic facts were correct. It had placed Hicks under a lot of pressure and caused him to overspend his precious budget by a phenomenal amount to try to discover Hades' whereabouts. The spotter plane that Bowden and I had pursued had been found a burned-out wreck in a field on the English side of Hay-on-Wye. The Gladstone full of the counterfeit money was close by along with the ersatz Gainsborough. It hadn't fooled Acheron for one second. We were all convinced that Hades was in Wales but even political intervention at the highest level had drawn a blank\u2014the Welsh Home Secretary himself had sworn that they would not knowingly stoop to harbor such a notorious criminal. With no jurisdiction on the Welsh side of the border, our searches had centered around the marches\u2014to no avail.\n\n\"If the press found out, it wasn't from us,\" said Victor. \"We have nothing to gain from press coverage and everything to lose.\" He glanced over at Jack Schitt, who shrugged.\n\n\"Don't look at me,\" said Schitt noncommittally, \"I'm just an observer, here at the behest of Goliath.\"\n\nBraxton got up and paced the room. Bowden, Victor and I watched him in silence. We felt sorry for him; he wasn't a bad man, just weak. The whole affair was a poisoned chalice, and if he wasn't removed by the regional SpecOps commander, Goliath would as likely as not do the job themselves.\n\n\"Does anyone have any ideas?\"\n\nWe all looked at him. We had a few ideas, but nothing that could be said in front of Schitt; since he was so willing to let us be killed that evening at Archer's place, not one of us would have given Goliath so much as the time of day.\n\n\"Has Mrs. Delamare been traced?\"\n\n\"We found her okay,\" I replied. \"She was delighted to discover that she had a motorway services named after her. She hasn't seen her son for five years but is under surveillance in case he tries to make contact.\"\n\n\"Good,\" murmured Braxton. \"What else?\"\n\nVictor spoke.\n\n\"We understand Felix7 has been replaced. A young man named Danny Chance went missing from Reading; his face was found in a waste basket on the third floor of the multistory. We've distributed the morgue photos of Felix7; they should match the new Felix.\"\n\n\"Are you sure Archer didn't say anything but 'Felix7' before you killed him?\" asked Hicks.\n\n\"Positive,\" assured Bowden in his best lying voice.\n\nWe returned to the LiteraTec office in a glum mood. Braxton's removal might provoke a dangerous shake-up in the department, and I had Mycroft and Polly to think of. Victor hung up his coat and called across to Finisterre, asking him if there had been any change. Finisterre looked up from a much-thumbed copy of Chuzzlewit. He, Bailey and Herr Bight had been rereading it on a twenty-four-hour relay basis since Acheron's escape. Nothing seemed to have changed. It was slightly perplexing. The Forty brothers had been working on the only piece of information we had that SO-5 or Goliath didn't. Sturmey Archer had made a reference to a Dr. M\u00fcller before expiring and that had been the subject of a rigorous search on SpecOps and police databases. A rigorous yet secretive search; that was what had taken the time.\n\n\"Anything, Jeff?\" asked Victor, rolling up his shirtsleeves.\n\nJeff coughed.\n\n\"There are no Dr. M\u00fcllers registered in England or on the continent, either in medicine or philosophy\u2014\"\n\n\"So it's a false name.\"\n\n\"\u2014who are alive.\" Jeff smiled. \"However, there was a Dr. M\u00fcller in attendance at Parkhurst prison in 1972.\"\n\n\"I'm listening.\"\n\n\"It was at the same time that Delamare was banged up for fraud.\"\n\n\"This is getting better.\"\n\n\"And Delamare had a cellmate named Felix Tabularasa.\"\n\n\"There's a face that fits,\" murmured Bowden.\n\n\"Right. Dr. M\u00fcller was already under investigation for selling donor kidneys. He committed suicide in '74 shortly before the hearing. Swam into the sea after leaving a note. His body was never recovered.\"\n\nVictor rubbed his hands together happily.\n\n\"Sounds like a faked death. How do we go about hunting down a dead man?\"\n\nJeff held up a fax.\n\n\"I've had to use up a lot of favors at the English Medical Council; they don't like giving out personal files whether the subject is alive or dead, but here it is.\"\n\nVictor took the fax and read out the pertinent points.\n\n\"Theodore M\u00fcller. Majored in physics before pursuing a career in medicine. Struck off in '74 for gross professional misconduct. He was a fine tenor, a good Hamlet at Cambridge, Brother of the Most Worshipful Order of the Wombat, keen train-spotter and a founding member of the Earthcrossers.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" I murmured. \"It's a good bet that he might continue to indulge himself in old hobbies even if he was living under an assumed name.\"\n\n\"What do you suggest?\" asked Victor. \"Wait until the next steam train extravaganza? I understand the Mallard is defending her speed record next month.\"\n\n\"Not soon enough.\"\n\n\"The Wombats never disclose membership,\" observed Bowden.\n\nVictor nodded. \"Well, that's that, then.\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" I said slowly.\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"I was thinking more about someone infiltrating the next Earthcrossers meeting.\"\n\n\"Earthcrossers?\" said Victor with more than his fair share of incredulity. \"You've got no chance, Thursday. Weird lunatics doing strange things privately on deserted hillsides? Do you know what you have to go through to be admitted to their exclusive club?\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"It's mostly distinguished and respected professional people of mature years.\"\n\nVictor looked at Bowden and me in turn.\n\n\"I don't like that look you're giving me.\"\n\nBowden quickly scoured a copy of the current Astronomer's Almanac.\n\n\"Bingo. It says here that they meet on Liddington Hill at two P.M. the day after tomorrow. That gives us fifty-five hours to prepare.\"\n\n\"No way,\" said Victor indignantly. \"There is no way, I repeat, no way on God's own earth that you are going to get me to pose as an Earthcrosser.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Earthcrossers",
                "text": "\u2002An asteroid can be any size from a man's fist to a mountain. They are the detritus of the solar system, the rubbish left over after the workmen have been and gone. Most of the asteroids around today occupy a space between Mars and Jupiter. There are millions of them, yet their combined mass is a fraction of the Earth's. Every now and then an asteroid's orbit coincides with that of Earth. An Earthcrosser. To the Earthcrossers Society the arrival of an asteroid at a planet is the return of a lost orphan, a prodigal son. It is a matter of some consequence.\n\n\u2014MR.S.A.ORBITER, The Earthcrossers\n\nLiddington Hill overlooks the RAF and later Luftwaffe airfield of Wroughton. The low hill is also home to an Iron Age fort, one of several that ring the Marlborough and Lambourn downs. The antiquity of the site, however, was not what attracted the Earthcrossers. They had gathered in almost every country of the globe, following the peculiar predictions of their calling in an apparently random fashion. They always observed the same routine: name the site, do a very good deal with the owners for exclusivity, then move in the month before using either local security or more junior members of the group to ensure that no infiltrators find their way in. It was perhaps due to this extreme secrecy that the militant astronomical group managed to keep what they did absolutely quiet. It seemed an almost perfect hiding place for Dr. M\u00fcller, who co-devised the society in the early fifties with Samuel Orbiter, a notable television astronomer of the time.\n\nVictor parked his car and walked nonchalantly up to two huge gorilla-sized men who were standing next to a Land Rover. Victor looked to the left and right. Every three hundred yards was a group of armed security men with walkie-talkies and dogs, keeping an eye out for trespassers. There was no way on earth that anyone could slip by unseen. The best means of entering anywhere you aren't allowed to go is to walk in the front door as though you own the place.\n\n\"Afternoon,\" said Victor, attempting to walk past. One of the gorillas stepped into his way and put a huge hand on his shoulder.\n\n\"Good afternoon, sir. Fine day. May I see your pass?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Victor, fumbling in his pocket. He produced the pass inserted behind the worn plastic window of his wallet. If the gorillas took it out and saw that it was a photocopy, then all would be lost.\n\n\"I haven't seen you around before, sir,\" said one of the men suspiciously.\n\n\"No,\" replied Victor evenly, \"you'll see from my card that I belong to the Berwick-upon-Tweed spiral arm.\"\n\nThe first man passed the wallet to his comrade.\n\n\"We've been having problems with infiltrators, isn't that so, Mr. Europa?\"\n\nThe second man grunted and passed the wallet back to Victor.\n\n\"Name?\" asked the first, holding up a clipboard.\n\n\"I probably won't be on the list,\" said Victor slowly. \"I'm a latecomer. I called Dr. M\u00fcller last night.\"\n\n\"I don't know of any Dr. M\u00fcller,\" said the first, sucking in air through his teeth as he looked at Victor with narrowed eyes, \"but if you are an Earthcrosser you will have no problem telling me which of the planets has the highest density.\"\n\nVictor looked from one to the other and laughed. They laughed with him.\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\nHe took a step forward but the smile on the men's faces dropped. One of them put out another massive hand to stop him.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"This is preposterous,\" said Victor indignantly. \"I've been an Earthcrosser for thirty years and I've never had this sort of treatment before.\"\n\n\"We don't like infiltrators,\" said the first man again. \"They try to give us a bad name. Do you want to know what we do to bogus members? Now. Again. Which of the planets has the highest density?\"\n\nVictor looked at the two men, who looked back at him menacingly.\n\n\"It's Earth. The lowest is Pluto, okay?\"\n\nThe two security men were not yet convinced.\n\n\"Kindergarten stuff, mister. How long is a weekend on Saturn?\"\n\nTwo miles away in Bowden's car, Bowden and I were frantically calculating the answer and transmitting it down the line to the earpiece that Victor was wearing. The car was stuffed with all sorts of reference books on astronomy; all that we could hope was that none of the questions would be too obscure.\n\n\"Twenty hours,\" said Bowden down the line to Victor.\n\n\"About twenty hours,\" said Victor to the two men.\n\n\"Orbital velocity of Mercury?\"\n\n\"Would that be aphelion or perihelion?\"\n\n\"Don't get smart, pal. Average will do.\"\n\n\"Let me see now. Add the two together and\u2014ah, good Lord, is that a ringed chaffinch?\"\n\nThe two men didn't turn to look.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"It's, um, one hundred and six thousand miles per hour.\"\n\n\"Uranus' moons?\"\n\n\"Uranus?\" replied Victor, stalling for time. \"Don't you think it's amusing that they changed the pronunciation?\"\n\n\"The moons, sir.\"\n\n\"Of course. Oberon, Titania, Umb\u2014\"\n\n\"Hold it! A real Earthcrosser would have logged the closest first!\"\n\nVictor sighed as Bowden reversed the order over the airwaves.\n\n\"Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.\"\n\nThe two men looked at Victor, nodded and then stepped back to let him pass, their manner changed abruptly to acute politeness.\n\n\"Thank you, sir. Sorry about that but, as I'm sure you realize, there are very many people who would like to see us stopped. I'm sure you understand.\"\n\n\"Of course, and may I congratulate you on your thoroughness, gentlemen. Good-day.\"\n\nAs Victor walked by they stopped him again.\n\n\"Aren't you forgetting something, sir?\"\n\nVictor turned. I had wondered about some sort of password, and if that was what they wanted now we were sunk. He decided to let them lead the situation.\n\n\"Leave it in the car, sir?\" asked the first man after a pause. \"Here, borrow mine.\"\n\nThe security man reached inside his jacket and pulled out, not a gun as Victor expected, but a baseball catcher's glove. He smiled and handed it over.\n\n\"I dare say I won't make it up there today.\"\n\nVictor slapped his own forehead with the ball of his hand.\n\n\"Mind like a string bag. I must have left it at home. Imagine, coming to an Earthcrossers meet and forgetting my catcher's glove!\"\n\nThey all laughed with him dutifully; the first guard said:\n\n\"Have a good time, sir. Earthstrike is at 14:32.\"\n\nHe thanked them both and hopped into the waiting Land Rover before they changed their minds. He looked at the catcher's glove uneasily. What on earth were they up to?\n\nThe Land Rover dropped him at the east entrance to the hill-fort. He could see about fifty people milling around, all wearing steel helmets. A large tent had been set up in the center of the fort and it bristled with aerials and a large satellite dish. Farther up the hill was a radar scanner that revolved slowly. He had expected to see a large telescope or something, but no such apparatus seemed to have been set up.\n\n\"Name?\"\n\nVictor turned to see a small man staring up at him. He was holding a clipboard and wearing a steel helmet and seemed to be taking full advantage of his limited authority.\n\nVictor attempted a bluff.\n\n\"That's me there,\" he said, pointing at a name at the bottom of the list.\n\n\"Mr. Continued Overleaf, are you?\"\n\n\"Above that,\" Victor countered hurriedly.\n\n\"Mrs. Trotswell?\"\n\n\"Oh, er, no. Ceres. Augustus Ceres.\"\n\nThe small man consulted his list carefully, running a steel ballpoint pen down the row of names.\n\n\"No one of that name here,\" he said slowly, looking at Victor suspiciously.\n\n\"I'm from Berwick-upon-Tweed,\" explained Victor. \"Late entry. I don't suppose the news filtered through. Dr. M\u00fcller said I could drop in any time.\"\n\nThe small man jumped.\n\n\"M\u00fcller? There's no one here of that name. You must mean Dr. Cassiopeia.\" He winked and smiled broadly. \"Okay. Now,\" he added, consulting his list and looking around the fort, \"we're a bit thin on the outer perimeter. You can take station B3. Do you have a glove? Good. What about a helmet? Never mind. Here, take mine; I'll get another from stores. Earthstrike at 14:32. Good-day.\"\n\nVictor took the helmet and wandered off in the direction that the small man had indicated.\n\n\"Hear that, Thursday?\" he hissed. \"Dr. Cassiopeia.\"\n\n\"I heard it,\" I replied. \"We're seeing what we've got on him.\"\n\nBowden was already contacting Finisterre, who was waiting back at the Litera Tec office for just such a call.\n\nVictor filled his briar pipe and was walking toward station B3 when a man in a Barbour jacket nearly marched straight into him. He recognized Dr. M\u00fcller's face from the mugshot immediately. Victor raised his hat, apologized and walked on.\n\n\"Wait!\" yelled M\u00fcller. Victor turned. M\u00fcller raised an eyebrow and stared at him.\n\n\"Haven't I seen your face somewhere else?\"\n\n\"No, it's always been right here on the front of my head,\" replied Victor, attempting to make light of the situation. M\u00fcller simply stared at him with a blank expression as Victor carried on filling his pipe.\n\n\"I've seen you somewhere before,\" continued M\u00fcller, but Victor was not so easily shaken.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" he announced, offering his hand. \"Ceres,\" he added. \"Berwick-upon-Tweed spiral arm.\"\n\n\"Berwick-upon-Tweed, eh?\" said M\u00fcller. \"Then you know my good friend and colleague Professor Barnes?\"\n\n\"Never heard of him,\" announced Victor, guessing that M\u00fcller was suspicious. M\u00fcller smiled and looked at his watch. \"Earthstrike in seven minutes, Mr. Ceres. Perhaps you'd better take your station.\"\n\nVictor lit his pipe, smiled and walked off in the direction he had been given earlier. There was a stake in the ground marked B3, and he stood around feeling slightly stupid. All the other Earthcrossers had donned their helmets and were scanning the sky to the west. Victor looked around and caught the eye of an attractive woman of about his own age a half-dozen paces away at B2.\n\n\"Hello!\" he said cheerfully, tipping his helmet.\n\nThe woman fluttered her eyelashes demurely.\n\n\"All well?\" she asked.\n\n\"Top hole!\" returned Victor elegantly, then added quickly: \"Actually, not. This is my first time.\"\n\nThe lady smiled at him and waved her catcher's glove.\n\n\"Nothing to it. Catch away from the body and keep your eyes sharp. We may get a lot or none at all, and if you do catch one, be sure to put it down on the grass straight away. After deaccelerating through the Earth's atmosphere, they tend to be a trifle hot.\"\n\nVictor stared at her.\n\n\"You mean, we aim to catch meteors?\"\n\nThe lady laughed a delicious laugh.\n\n\"No, no, silly!\u2014They're called meteorites. Meteors are things that burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. I've been to seventeen of these suspected Earthstrikes since '64. I once nearly caught one in Tierra del Fuego in '71. Of course,\" she added more slowly, \"that was when dear George was still alive...\"\n\nShe caught his eye and smiled. Victor smiled back. She carried on:\n\n\"If we witness an Earthstrike today, it will be the first predicted strike in Europe to be successful. Imagine catching a meteorite! The rubble made during the creation of the universe over four and a half billion years ago! It's like an orphan finally coming home!\"\n\n\"Very... poetic,\" responded Victor slowly as I started talking in his ear by way of the wire.\n\n\"There's no one listed anywhere by the name of Dr. Cassiopeia,\" I told him. \"For goodness' sake don't let him out of your sight!\"\n\n\"I won't,\" replied Victor, looking around for M\u00fcller.\n\n\"Pardon?\" asked the lady at B2, who had being eyeing him up and not staring at the sky at all.\n\n\"I won't, er, drop one if I catch one,\" he replied hurriedly.\n\nThe Tannoy announced the Earthstrike in two minutes. There was a murmur from the expectant crowd.\n\n\"Good luck!\" said the lady, giving him a broad wink and staring up into the cloudless sky.\n\nThere was a voice from close behind Victor.\n\n\"I do remember you.\"\n\nHe turned to see the very unwelcome face of Dr. M\u00fcller staring at him. A little farther on stood a burly security guard, hand at the ready in his breast pocket.\n\n\"You're SpecOps. Litera Tec. Victor Analogy, isn't it?\"\n\n\"No, the name's Dr. Augustus Ceres, Berwick-upon-Tweed.\" Victor laughed nervously and added: \"What sort of a name is Victor Analogy?\"\n\nM\u00fcller beckoned to the henchman, who advanced on Victor drawing his automatic. He looked like the sort of person who was itching to use it.\n\n\"I'm sorry, my friend,\" said M\u00fcller kindly, \"but that's not really good enough. If you are Analogy, you're clearly meddling. If, however, you turn out to be Dr. Ceres from Berwick-upon-Tweed, then you have my sincerest apologies.\"\n\n\"Now wait a moment\u2014\" began Victor, but M\u00fcller interrupted.\n\n\"I'll let your family know where to find the body,\" he said magnanimously.\n\nVictor glanced around for possible help but all the other Earthcrossers were staring at the sky.\n\n\"Shoot him.\"\n\nThe henchman smiled, his finger tightening on the trigger. Victor winced as a high-pitched scream filled the air and a fortuitous incoming meteorite shattered on the henchman's helmet. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes. The gun went off and put a neat hole in Victor's baseball glove. Suddenly, the air was full of red-hot meteorites screaming to earth in a localized shower. The assembled Earthcrossers were thrown into confusion by the sudden violence and couldn't quite make up their minds whether to avoid the meteorites or try to catch them. M\u00fcller fumbled in his jacket pocket for his own pistol as someone yelled \"Yours!\" close at hand. They both turned, but it was Victor who caught the small meteorite. It was about the size of a cricket ball and was still glowing red hot; he tossed it to M\u00fcller, who instinctively caught it. Sadly, he did not have a catcher's glove. There was a hiss and a yelp as he dropped it, then a cry of pain as Victor took the opportunity to thump him on the jaw with a speed that belied his seventy-five years. M\u00fcller went down like a ninepin and Victor leaped on the dropped gun. He thrust it against M\u00fcller's neck, dragged him to his feet and started to march him out of the hill-fort. The meteorite shower was easing up as he backed out, my voice in his earpiece telling him to go easy.\n\n\"It is Analogy, isn't it?\" said M\u00fcller.\n\n\"It is. SpecOps-27 and you're under arrest.\"\n\nVictor, Bowden and I had got M\u00fcller as far as interview room 3 before Braxton and Schitt realized who we had captured. Victor had barely asked M\u00fcller to confirm his name before the interview room door burst open. It was Schitt flanked by two SO-9 operatives. None of them looked like they had a sense of humor.\n\n\"My prisoner, Analogy.\"\n\n\"My prisoner, Mr. Schitt, I think,\" replied Victor firmly. \"My collar, my jurisdiction; I am interviewing Dr. M\u00fcller about the Chuzzlewit theft.\"\n\nJack Schitt looked at Commander Hicks, who was standing behind him. The commander sighed and cleared his throat.\n\n\"I'm sorry to say this, Victor, but the Goliath Corporation and their representative have been granted jurisdiction over SO-27 and SO-9 in Swindon. Withholding material from Acting SpecOps Commander Schitt may result in criminal proceedings for concealment of vital information pertinent to an ongoing inquiry. Do you understand what this means?\"\n\n\"It means Schitt does what he pleases,\" returned Victor.\n\n\"Relinquish your prisoner, Victor. The Goliath Corporation takes precedence.\"\n\nVictor stared at him hotly, then pushed his way out of the interview room.\n\n\"I'd like to stay,\" I requested.\n\n\"No chance,\" said Schitt. \"An SO-27 security clearance is not permissible.\"\n\n\"It's as well, then,\" I replied, \"that I still hold an SO-5 badge.\"\n\nJack Schitt cursed but said nothing more. Bowden was ordered out and the two SO-9 operatives stood either side of the door; Schitt and Hicks sat down at the table behind which M\u00fcller nonchalantly smoked a cigarette. I leaned against the wall and impassively watched the proceedings.\n\n\"He'll get me out, you know,\" M\u00fcller said slowly as he smiled a rare smile.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" remarked Schitt. \"Swindon SpecOps is currently surrounded by more SO-9 operatives and SWAT men than you can count in a month. Not even that madman Hades would try and get in here.\"\n\nThe smile dropped from M\u00fcller's lips.\n\n\"SO-9 is the finest antiterrorist squad on the planet,\" continued Schitt. \"We'll get him, you know. It's only a question of when. And if you help us, things might not look so bad in court for you.\"\n\nM\u00fcller wasn't impressed.\n\n\"If your SO-9 operatives are the best on the planet, how come it takes a seventy-five-year-old Litera Tec to arrest me?\"\n\nJack Schitt couldn't think of an answer to this. M\u00fcller turned to me.\n\n\"And if SO-9 are so shit hot, why does this young lady have the best luck cornering Hades?\"\n\n\"I got lucky,\" I replied, adding: \"Why hasn't Martin Chuzzlewit been killed? It's not like Acheron to make idle threats.\"\n\n\"No indeed,\" replied M\u00fcller. \"No indeed.\"\n\n\"Answer the question, M\u00fcller,\" said Schitt pointedly. \"I can make things very uncomfortable for you.\"\n\nM\u00fcller smiled at him.\n\n\"Not half as uncomfortable as Acheron could. He lists slow murder, torture and flower arranging as his hobbies in Which Criminal.\"\n\n\"So you want to do some serious time?\" asked Hicks, who wasn't going to be left out of the interview. \"The way I see it you're looking at quintuple life. Or you could walk free in a couple of minutes. What's it to be?\"\n\n\"Do as you will, officers. You'll get nothing out of me. No matter what, Hades will get me out.\"\n\nM\u00fcller folded his arms and leaned back in the chair. There was a pause. Schitt bent forward and switched off the tape recorder. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and draped it across the video camera in the corner of the interview room. Hicks and I looked at one another nervously. M\u00fcller watched the proceedings but didn't seem unduly alarmed.\n\n\"Let's try it again,\" said Schitt, pulling out his automatic and pointing it at M\u00fcller's shoulder. \"Where is Hades?\"\n\nM\u00fcller looked at him.\n\n\"You can kill me now or Hades kills me later when he finds I've talked. I'm dead either way and your death is probably a great deal less painful than Acheron's. I've seen him at work. You wouldn't believe what he is capable of.\"\n\n\"I would,\" I said slowly.\n\nSchitt released the safety on his automatic. \"I'll count to three.\"\n\n\"I can't tell you!\u2014\"\n\n\"One.\"\n\n\"He'd kill me.\"\n\n\"Two.\"\n\nI took my cue. \"We can offer you protective custody.\"\n\n\"From him?\" demanded M\u00fcller. \"Are you completely nuts?\"\n\n\"Three!\"\n\nM\u00fcller closed his eyes and started to shake. Schitt put the gun down. This wasn't going to work. Suddenly, I had a thought.\n\n\"He doesn't have the manuscript anymore, does he?\"\n\nM\u00fcller opened an eye and looked at me. It was the sign I'd been looking for.\n\n\"Mycroft destroyed it, didn't he?\" I continued, reasoning as my uncle might have\u2014and did.\n\n\"Is that what happened?\" asked Jack Schitt. M\u00fcller said nothing.\n\n\"He'll be wanting to find an alternative,\" observed Hicks.\n\n\"There must be thousands of original manuscripts out there,\" murmured Schitt. \"We can't cover them all. Which one is he after?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you,\" stuttered M\u00fcller, his resolve beginning to leave him. \"He'd kill me.\"\n\n\"He'll kill you when he finds out you told us that Mycroft destroyed the Chuzzlewit manuscript,\" I responded evenly.\n\n\"But I didn't!\u2014\"\n\n\"He's not to know. We can protect you, M\u00fcller, but we need to capture Hades. Where is he?\"\n\nM\u00fcller looked at us one by one.\n\n\"Protective custody?\" he stammered. \"It'll need a small army.\"\n\n\"I can supply that,\" asserted Schitt, using the truth with an economy for which he had become famous. \"The Goliath Corporation is prepared to be generous in this matter.\"\n\n\"Okay... I'll tell you.\"\n\nHe looked at us all and wiped his brow, which had suddenly started to glisten.\n\n\"Isn't it a bit hot in here?\" he asked.\n\n\"No,\" replied Schitt. \"Where's Hades?\"\n\n\"Well, he's at... the\u2014\"\n\nHe suddenly stopped talking. His face contorted with fear as a violent spasm of pain hit his lower back and he cried out in agony.\n\n\"Tell us quick!\" shouted Schitt, leaping to his feet and grabbing the stricken man's lapels.\n\n\"Penderyn!\u2014\" he screamed. \"He's at!\u2014\"\n\n\"Tell us more!\" roared Schitt. \"There must be a thousand Penderyns!\"\n\n\"Guess!\" screamed M\u00fcller. \"G-weuess... ahhh!\"\n\n\"I'll not play your games!\" yelled Schitt, shaking the man vigorously. \"Tell me or I'll kill you with my bare hands right now!\"\n\nBut M\u00fcller was now beyond rational thought or Schitt's threats. He squirmed and fell to the floor, writhing in agony.\n\n\"Medic!\" I screamed, dropping to the floor next to the convulsing M\u00fcller, whose open mouth screamed a silent scream as his eyes rolled up into his head. The smell of scorched clothes reached my nostrils. I leaped back as a bright orange flame shot out of M\u00fcller's back. It ignited the rest of him and we all had to beat a hasty retreat as the intense heat reduced M\u00fcller to ash in under ten minutes.\n\n\"Damn!\" muttered Schitt when the acrid smoke had cleared. M\u00fcller was a heap of cinders on the floor. There wouldn't even be enough to identify him.\n\n\"Hades,\" I murmured. \"Some sort of built-in safety device. As soon as M\u00fcller starts to blab... up he goes. Very neat.\"\n\n\"You sound as if you almost respect him, Miss Next,\" observed Schitt.\n\n\"I can't help it.\" I shrugged. \"Like the shark, Acheron has evolved into the almost perfect predator. I've never hunted big game and never would, but I can understand the appeal. The first thing,\" I went on, ignoring the smoking pile of ash that had recently been M\u00fcller, \"is to treble the guards on any places where original manuscripts are held. After that we want to start looking at anywhere called Penderyn.\"\n\n\"I'll get onto it,\" said Hicks, who had been looking for a reason to go for some time.\n\nSchitt and I were left looking at one another.\n\n\"Looks like we're on the same side, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"Sadly,\" I replied disdainfully. \"You want the Prose Portal. I want my uncle back. Acheron has to be destroyed before either of us gets what we want. Until then we'll work together.\"\n\n\"A useful and happy union,\" replied Schitt with anything but happiness on his mind.\n\nI pressed a finger to his tie.\n\n\"Understand this, Mr. Schitt. You may have might in your back pocket but I have right in mine. Believe me when I say I will do anything to protect my family. Do you understand?\"\n\nSchitt looked at me coldly.\n\n\"Don't try to threaten me, Miss Next. I could have you posted to the Lerwick Litera Tec office quicker than you can say 'Swift.' Remember that. You're here because you're good at what you do. Same reason as me. We are more alike than you think. Good-day, Miss Next.\"\n\nA quick search revealed eighty-four towns and villages in Wales named Penderyn. There were twice as many streets and the same number again of pubs, clubs and associations. It wasn't surprising there were so many; Dic Penderyn had been executed in 1831 for wounding a soldier during the Merthyr riots\u2014he was innocent and so became the first martyr of the Welsh rising and something of a figurehead for the republican struggle. Even if Goliath could infiltrate Wales, they wouldn't know which Penderyn to start with. Clearly, this was going to take some time.\n\nTired, I left to go home. I picked up my car from the garage, where they had managed to replace the front axle, shoehorn in a new engine and repair the bullet holes, some of which had come perilously close. I rolled up at the Finis Hotel as a clipper-class airship droned slowly overhead. Dusk was just settling and the navigation lights on either side of the huge airship blinked languidly in the evening sky. It was an elegant sight, the ten propellers beating the air with a rhythmic hum; during the day an airship could eclipse the sun. I stepped inside the hotel. The Milton conference was over and Liz welcomed me now as a friend rather than as a guest.\n\n\"Good evening, Miss Next. All well?\"\n\n\"Not really.\" I smiled. \"But thanks for asking.\"\n\n\"Your dodo arrived this evening,\" announced Liz. \"He's in kennel five. News travels fast; the Swindon Dodo Fanciers have been up already. They said he was a very rare Version one or something\u2014they want you to call them.\"\n\n\"He's a 1.2,\" I murmured absently. Dodos weren't high on my list of priorities right now. I paused for a moment. Liz sensed my indecision.\n\n\"Can I get you anything?\"\n\n\"Has, er, Mr. Parke-Laine called?\"\n\n\"No. Were you expecting him to?\"\n\n\"No\u2014not really. If he calls, I'm in the Cheshire Cat if not my room. If you can't find me, can you ask him to call again in half an hour?\"\n\n\"Why don't I just send a car to fetch him?\"\n\n\"Oh God, is it that obvious?\"\n\nLiz nodded her head.\n\n\"He's getting married.\"\n\n\"But not to you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\"Me too. Has anyone ever asked you to marry them?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"I said: 'Ask me again when you get out.'\"\n\n\"Did he?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nI checked in with Pickwick, who seemed to have settled in well. He made excited plock plock noises when he saw me. Contradicting the theories of experts, dodos had turned out to be surprisingly intelligent and quite agile\u2014the ungainly bird of common legend was quite wrong. I gave him some peanuts and smuggled him up to my room under a coat. It wasn't that the kennels were dirty or anything; I just didn't want him to be alone. I put his favorite rug in the bath to give him somewhere to roost and laid out some paper. I told him I'd move him to my mother's the following day, then left him staring out of the window at the cars in the car park.\n\n\"Good evening, miss,\" said the barman in the Cheshire Cat. \"Why is a raven like a writing desk?\"\n\n\"Because there is a 'B' in 'both'?\"\n\n\"Very good. Half of Vorpal's special, was it?\"\n\n\"You must be kidding. Gin and tonic. A double.\"\n\nHe smiled and turned to the optics.\n\n\"Police?\"\n\n\"SpecOps.\"\n\n\"Litera Tec?\"\n\n\"Yup.\"\n\nI took my drink.\n\n\"I trained to be a LiteraTec,\" he said wistfully. \"Made it to cadetship.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"My girlfriend was a militant Marlovian. She converted some WillSpeak machines to quote from Tamburlaine and I was implicated when she was nabbed. And that was that. Not even the military would take me.\"\n\n\"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Chris.\"\n\n\"Thursday.\"\n\nWe shook hands.\n\n\"I can only speak from experience, Chris, but I've been in the military and SpecOps and you should be thanking your girlfriend.\"\n\n\"I do,\" hastened Chris. \"Every day. We're married now and have two kids. I do this bar job in the evenings and run the Swindon branch of the Kit Marlowe Society during the day. We have almost four thousand members. Not bad for an Elizabethan forger, murderer, gambler and atheist.\"\n\n\"There are some who say he might have written the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare.\"\n\nChris was taken aback. He was suspicious too.\n\n\"I'm not sure I should be discussing this with a Litera Tec.\"\n\n\"There's no law against discussion, Chris. Who do you think we are, the thought police?\"\n\n\"No, that's SO-2 isn't it?\"\n\n\"But about Marlowe\u2014?\"\n\nChris lowered his voice.\n\n\"Okay. I think Marlowe might have written the plays. He was undoubtedly a brilliant playwright, as Faust, Tamburlaine and Edward II would attest. He was the only person of his age who could have actually done it. Forget Bacon and Oxford; Marlowe has to be the odds-on favorite.\"\n\n\"But Marlowe was murdered in 1593,\" I replied slowly. \"Most of the plays were written after that.\"\n\nChris looked at me and lowered his voice.\n\n\"Sure. If he died in the bar fight that day.\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"It's possible his death was faked.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nChris took a deep breath. This was a subject he knew something about.\n\n\"Remember that Elizabeth was a Protestant queen. Anything like atheism or papism would deny the authority of the Protestant Church and the queen as the head.\"\n\n\"Treason,\" I murmured. \"A capital offense.\"\n\n\"Exactly. In April 1593 the Privy Council arrested one Thomas Kyd in connection with some antigovernment pamphleteering. When his rooms were searched they revealed some atheistic writings.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"Kyd fingered Marlowe. Said Marlowe had written them two years ago when they were rooming together. Marlowe was arrested and questioned on May 18, 1593; he was freed on bail so presumably there wasn't enough evidence to commit him for trial.\"\n\n\"What about his friendship with Walsingham?\" I asked.\n\n\"I was coming to that. Walsingham had an influential position within the secret service; they had known each other for a number of years. With more evidence arriving daily against Marlowe, his arrest seemed inevitable. But on the morning of May 30, Marlowe is killed in a bar brawl, apparently over an unpaid bill.\"\n\n\"Very convenient.\"\n\n\"Very. It's my belief that Walsingham faked his friend's death. The three men in the tavern were all in his pay. He bribed the coroner and Marlowe set up Shakespeare as the front man. Will, an impoverished actor who knew Marlowe from his days at the Shoreditch Theater, probably leaped at the chance to make some money; his career seems to have taken off as Marlowe's ended.\"\n\n\"It's an interesting theory. But wasn't Venus and Adonis published a couple of months before Marlowe's death? Earlier even than Kyd's arrest?\"\n\nChris coughed.\n\n\"Good point. All I can say is that the plot must have been hatched somewhat ahead of time, or that records have been muddled.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment, looked about and lowered his voice further.\n\n\"Don't tell the other Marlovians, but there is something else that points away from a faked death.\"\n\n\"I'm all ears.\"\n\n\"Marlowe was killed within the jurisdiction of the queen's coroner. There were sixteen jurors to view the supposedly switched body, and it is unlikely that the coroner could have been bribed. If I had been Walsingham I would have had Marlowe's death faked in the boonies where coroners were more easily bought. He could have gone farther and had the body disfigured in some way to make identification impossible.\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"That an equally probable theory is that Walsingham himself had Marlowe killed to stop him talking. Men say anything when tortured, and it's likely that Marlowe had all kinds of dirt on Walsingham.\"\n\n\"What then?\" I asked. \"How would you account for the lack of any firm evidence regarding Shakespeare's life, his curious double existence, the fact that no one seemed to know about his literary work in Stratford?\"\n\nChris shrugged.\n\n\"I don't know, Thursday. Without Marlowe there is no one else in Elizabethan London even able to write the plays.\"\n\n\"Any theories?\"\n\n\"None at all. But the Elizabethans were a funny bunch. Court intrigue, the secret service...\"\n\n\"The more things change\u2014\"\n\n\"My point entirely. Cheers.\"\n\nWe clinked glasses and Chris wandered off to serve another customer. I played the piano for half an hour before retiring to bed. I checked with Liz but Landen hadn't called."
            },
            {
                "title": "Hades Finds Another Manuscript",
                "text": "\u2002I had hoped that I would find a manuscript by Austen or Trollope, Thackeray, Fielding or Swift. Maybe Johnson, Wells or Conan Doyle. Defoe would have been fun. Imagine my delight when I discovered that Charlotte Bront\u00eb's masterpiece Jane Eyre was on show at her old home. How can fate be more fortuitous?...\n\n\u2014ACHERON HADES, Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit\n\nOur safety recommendations had been passed to the Bront\u00eb museum and there were five armed security guards on duty that night. They were all burly Yorkshiremen, specially chosen for this most august of duties because of their strong sense of literary pride. One stayed in the room with the manuscript, another was on guard within the building, two patrolled outside, and the fifth was in a little room with six TV screens. The guard in front of the monitors ate an egg-and-onion sandwich and kept a diligent eye on the screens. He didn't see anything remiss on the monitors, but then Acheron's curious powers had never been declassified below SO-9.\n\nIt was easy for Hades to gain entry; he just slipped in through the kitchen door after forcing the lock with a crowbar. The guard patrolling inside didn't hear Acheron approach. His lifeless body was later found wedged beneath the Belfast sink. Acheron carefully mounted the stairs, trying not to make any noise. In reality he could have made as much noise as he liked. He knew the guards' .38s couldn't harm him, but what was the fun of just walking in and helping himself? He padded slowly up the corridor to the room where the manuscript was displayed and peered in. The room was empty. For some reason the guard was not in attendance. He walked up to the armored glass case and placed his hand just above the book. The glass beneath his flattened palm started to ripple and soften; pretty soon it was pliable enough for Hades to push his fingers through and grasp the manuscript. The destabilized glass twisted and stretched like rubber as the book was pulled clear and then rapidly reformed itself back into solid glass; the only evidence that its molecules had been rearranged was a slight mottling on the surface. Hades smiled triumphantly as he read the front page:\n\n\u2002Jane Eyre\n\n\u2002An autobiography by CURRER BELL\n\n\u2002October 1847\n\nAcheron meant to take the book straight away, but he had always liked the story. Succumbing to temptation, he started to read.\n\nIt was open at the section where Jane Eyre is in bed and hears a low cackle of demonic laughter outside her room. Glad that the laughter is not coming from within her room, she arises and throws the bolt on the door, crying out:\n\n\"Who is there?\"\n\nBy way of an answer there is only a low gurgle and a moan, the sound of steps retreating and then the shutting of a door. Jane wraps a shawl around her shoulders and slowly pulls back the bolt, opening the door a crack and peering cautiously outside. Upon the matting she espies a single candle and also notices that the corridor is full of smoke. The creak of Rochester's half-open door catches her attention, and then she notices the dim flicker of a fire within. Jane springs into action, forsaking all thoughts as she runs into Rochester's burning chamber and attempts to rouse the sleeping figure with the words:\n\n\"Wake! Wake!\"\n\nRochester does not stir and Jane notices with growing alarm that the sheets of the bed are starting to turn brown and catch fire. She grasps the basin and ewer and throws water over him, running to her bedroom to fetch more to douse the curtains. After a struggle she extinguishes the fire and Rochester, cursing at finding himself waking in a pool of water, says to Jane:\n\n\"Is there a flood?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" she replies, \"but there has been a fire. Get up, do; you are quenched now. I will fetch you a candle.\"\n\nRochester is not fully aware of what has happened.\n\n\"In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?\" he demands. \"What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?\"\n\n\"Turn around really slowly.\"\n\nThe last line belonged to the guard, whose own demand broke into Acheron's reading.\n\n\"I hate it when that happens!\" he lamented, turning to face the officer, who had his gun trained on him. \"Just when you get to a good bit!\"\n\n\"Don't move and put the manuscript down.\"\n\nAcheron did as he was told. The guard unclipped his walkie-talkie and brought it up to his mouth.\n\n\"I shouldn't do that,\" said Acheron softly.\n\n\"Oh yes?\" retorted the guard confidently. \"And why the hell not?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said Acheron slowly, catching the guard's eye and looking deep inside him, \"you will never find out why your wife left you.\"\n\nThe guard lowered his walkie-talkie.\n\n\"What do you know about Denise?\"\n\nI was dreaming fitfully. It was the Crimea again; the crump-crump-crump of the guns and the metallic scream that an armored personnel carrier makes when hit. I could even taste the dust, the cordite and the amatol in the air, the muffled cries of my comrades, the directionless sound of the gunfire. The eighty-eight-caliber guns were so close they didn't need a trajectory. You never heard the one that hit you. I was back in the APC, returning to the fray despite orders to the contrary. I was driving across the grassland, past wreckage from previous battles. I felt something large pluck at my vehicle and the roof opened up, revealing a shaft of sunlight in the dust that was curiously beautiful. The same unseen hand picked up the carrier and threw it in the air. It ran along on one track for a few yards and then fell back upright. The engine was still functioning, the controls still felt right; I carried on, oblivious to the damage. It was only when I reached up for the wireless switch that I realized the roof had been blown off. It was a sobering discovery, but I had little time to muse. Ahead of me was the smoking wreckage of the pride of the Wessex Tank: the Light Armored Brigade. The Russian eighty-eights had fallen silent; the sound was now of small arms as the Russians and my comrades exchanged fire. I drove to the closest group of walking wounded and released the rear door. It was jammed but it didn't matter; the side door had vanished with the roof and I rapidly packed twenty-two wounded and dying soldiers into an APC designed to carry eight. Punctuating all this was the incessant ringing of a telephone. My brother, minus his helmet and with his face bloodied, was dealing with the wounded. He told me to come back for him. As I drove off the spang of rifle fire ricocheted off the armor; the Russian infantry were approaching. The phone was still ringing. I fumbled in the darkness for the handset, dropped it and scrabbled on the floor, swearing as I did so. It was Bowden.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he asked, sensing something was not quite right.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" I replied, by now well used to making everything appear normal. \"What's the problem?\" I looked across at my clock. It was 3 A.M. I groaned.\n\n\"Another manuscript has been stolen. I just got it over the wire. Same MO as Chuzzlewit. They just walked in and took it. Two guards dead. One by his own gun.\"\n\n\"Jane Eyre?\"\n\n\"How the dickens did you know that?\"\n\n\"Rochester told me.\"\n\n\"What?\u2014\"\n\n\"Never mind. Haworth House?\"\n\n\"An hour ago.\"\n\n\"I'll pick you up in twenty minutes.\"\n\nWithin the hour we were driving north to join the M1 at Rugby. The night was clear and cool, the roads almost deserted. The roof was up and the heating full on, but even so it was drafty as the gale outside tried to find a toehold in the hood. I shuddered to think what it might be like driving the car in winter. By 5 A.M. we would make Rugby and it would be easier from there.\n\n\"I hope I shan't regret this,\" murmured Bowden. \"Braxton won't be terribly happy when he finds out.\"\n\n\"Whenever people say: 'I hope I won't regret this,' they do. So if you want me to let you out, I will. Stuff Braxton. Stuff Goliath and stuff Jack Schitt. Some things are more important than rules and regulations. Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time. I would give everything to ensure the novel's survival.\"\n\nBowden said nothing. Working with me, I suspected, was the first time he had really started to enjoy being in SpecOps. I shifted down a gear to overtake a slow-moving lorry and then accelerated away.\n\n\"How did you know it was Jane Eyre when I rang?\"\n\nI thought for a minute. If I couldn't tell Bowden, I couldn't tell anyone. I pulled Rochester's handkerchief out of my pocket.\n\n\"Look at the monogram.\"\n\n\"EFR?\"\n\n\"It belongs to Edward Fairfax Rochester.\"\n\nBowden looked at me doubtfully.\n\n\"Careful, Thursday. While I fully admit that I might not be the best Bront\u00eb scholar, even I know that these people aren't actually real.\"\n\n\"Real or not, I've met him several times. I have his coat too.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014I understand about Quaverley's extraction but what are you saying? That characters can jump spontaneously from the pages of novels?\"\n\n\"I heartily agree that something odd is going on; something I can't possibly explain. The barrier between myself and Rochester has softened. It's not just him making the jump either; I once entered the book myself when I was a little girl. I arrived at the moment they met. Do you remember it?\"\n\nBowden looked sheepish and stared out of the sidescreen at a passing petrol station.\n\n\"That's very cheap for unleaded.\"\n\nI guessed the reason.\n\n\"You've never read it, have you?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\" he stammered. \"It's just that, er\u2014\"\n\nI laughed.\n\n\"Well, well, a Litera Tec who hasn't read Jane Eyre?\"\n\n\"Okay, okay, don't rub it in. I studied Wuthering Heights and Villette instead. I meant to give it my fullest attention but like many things it must have slipped my mind.\"\n\n\"I had better run it by you.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you should,\" agreed Bowden grumpily.\n\nI told him the story of Jane Eyre over the next hour, starting with the young orphan Jane, her childhood with Mrs. Reed and her cousins, her time at Lowood, a frightful charity school run by a cruel and hypocritical evangelist; then the outbreak of typhus and the death of her good friend Helen Burns; after that of how Jane rises to become a model pupil and eventually student teacher under the principal, Miss Temple.\n\n\"Jane leaves Lowood and moves to Thornfield, where she has one charge, Rochester's ward, Adele.\"\n\n\"Ward?\" asked Bowden. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I replied, \"I guess it's a polite way of saying that she is the product of a previous liaison. If Rochester lived today Adele would be splashed all over the front page of The Toad as a 'love child.'\"\n\n\"But he did the decent thing?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. Anyhow, Thornfield is a pleasant place to live, if not slightly strange\u2014Jane has the idea that there is something going on that no one is talking about. Rochester returns home after an absence of three months and turns out to be a sullen, dominating personality, but he is impressed by Jane's fortitude when she saves him from being burned by a mysterious fire in his bedroom. Jane falls in love with Rochester but has to witness his courtship of Blanche Ingram, a sort of nineteenth-century bimbo. Jane leaves to attend to Mrs. Reed, who is dying and when she returns, Rochester asks her to marry him; he has realized in her absence that the qualities of Jane's character far outweigh those of Miss Ingram, despite the difference in their social status.\"\n\n\"So far so good.\"\n\n\"Don't count your chickens. A month later the wedding ceremony is interrupted by a lawyer who claims that Rochester is already married and his first wife\u2014Bertha\u2014is still living. He accuses Rochester of bigamy, which is found to be true. The mad Bertha Rochester lives in a room on the upper floor of Thornfield, attended to by the strange Grace Poole. It was she who had attempted to set fire to Rochester in his bed all those months ago. Jane is deeply shocked\u2014as you can imagine\u2014and Rochester tries to excuse his conduct, claiming that his love for her was real. He asks her to go away with him as his mistress, but she refuses. Still in love with him, Jane runs away and finds herself in the home of the Rivers, two sisters and a brother who turn out to be her first cousins.\"\n\n\"Isn't that a bit unlikely?\"\n\n\"Shh. Jane's uncle, who is also their uncle, has just died and leaves her all his money. She divides it among them all and settles down to an independent existence. The brother, St. John Rivers, decides to go to India as a missionary and wants Jane to marry him and serve the church. Jane is quite happy to serve him, but not to marry him. She believes that marriage is a union of love and mutual respect, not something that should be a duty. There is a long battle of wills and finally she agrees to go with him to India as his assistant. It is in India, with Jane building a new life, that the book ends.\"\n\n\"And that's it?\" asked Bowden in surprise.\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"Well, the ending does sound a bit of an anticlimax. We try to make art perfect because we never manage it in real life and here is Charlotte Bront\u00eb concluding her novel\u2014presumably something which has a sense of autobiographical wishful thinking about it\u2014in a manner that reflects her own disappointed love life. If I had been Charlotte I would have made certain that Rochester and Jane were reunited\u2014married, if possible.\"\n\n\"Don't ask me,\" I said, \"I didn't write it.\" I paused. \"You're right, of course,\" I murmured. \"It is a crap ending. Why, when all was going so well, does the ending just cop out on the reader? Even the Jane Eyre purists agree that it would have been far better for them to have tied the knot.\"\n\n\"How, with Bertha still around?\"\n\n\"I don't know; she could die or something. It is a problem, isn't it?\"\n\n\"How do you know it so well?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"It's always been a favorite of mine. I had a copy of it in my jacket pocket when I was shot. It stopped the bullet. Rochester appeared soon after and kept pressure on my arm wound until the medics arrived. He and the book saved my life.\"\n\nBowden looked at his watch.\n\n\"Yorkshire is still many miles away. We shan't get their until\u2014 Hello, what's this?\"\n\nThere appeared to be an accident on the motorway ahead. Two dozen or so cars had stopped in front of us and when nothing moved for a couple of minutes I pulled onto the hard shoulder and drove slowly to the front of the queue. A traffic cop hailed us to stop, looked doubtfully at the bullet holes in the paintwork of my car and then said:\n\n\"Sorry, ma'am. Can't let you through\u2014\"\n\nI held up my old SpecOps-5 badge and his manner changed.\n\n\"Sorry, ma'am. There's something unusual ahead.\"\n\nBowden and I exchanged looks and got out of the car. Behind us a crowd of curious onlookers was being held back by a POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape. They stood in silence to watch the spectacle unfold in front of their eyes. Three squad cars and an ambulance were on the scene already; two paramedics were attending to a newborn infant who was wrapped up in a blanket and howling plaintively. The officers were all relieved that I had arrived\u2014the highest rank there was sergeant and they were glad to be able to foist the responsibility onto someone else, and someone from SO-5 was as high an operative as any of them had even seen.\n\nI borrowed a pair of binoculars and looked up the empty motorway. About five hundred yards away the road and starry night sky had spiraled into the shape of a whirlpool, a funnel that was crushing and distorting the light that managed to penetrate the vortex. I sighed. My father had told me about temporal distortions but I had never seen one. In the center of the whirlpool, where the refracted light had been whipped up into a jumbled pattern, there was an inky black hole, which seemed to have neither depth nor color, just shape: a perfect circle the size of a grapefruit. Traffic on the opposite motorway had also been stopped by the police, the flashing blue lights slowing to red as they shone through the fringes of the black mass, distorting the image of the road beyond like the refraction on the edge of a jam jar. In front of the vortex was a blue Datsun, the bonnet already starting to stretch as it approached the distortion. Behind that was a motorcycle, and behind this and closest to us was a green family sedan. I watched for a minute or so, but all the vehicles appeared motionless on the tarmac. The rider, his motorcycle and all the occupants of the cars seemed to be frozen like statues.\n\n\"Blast!\" I muttered under my breath as I glanced at my watch. \"How long since it opened up?\"\n\n\"About an hour,\" answered the sergeant. \"There was some kind of accident involving an ExcoMat containment vehicle. Couldn't have happened at a worse time; I was about to come off shift.\"\n\nHe jerked a thumb in the direction of the baby on the stretcher, who had put his fingers in his mouth and stopped yelling. \"That was the driver. Before the accident he was thirty-one. By the time we got here he was eight\u2014in a few minutes he'll be nothing more than a damp patch on the blanket.\"\n\n\"Have you called the ChronoGuard?\"\n\n\"I called 'em,\" he answered resignedly. \"But a patch of bad time opened up near Tesco's in Wareham. They can't be here for at least four hours.\"\n\nI thought quickly.\n\n\"How many people have been lost so far?\"\n\n\"Sir,\" said an officer, pointing up the road, \"I think you had better see this!\"\n\nWe all watched as the blue Datsun started to contort and stretch, fold and shrink as it was sucked through the hole. Within a few seconds it had disappeared completely, compressed to a billionth of its size and catapulted to Elsewhere.\n\nThe sergeant pushed his cap to the back of his head and sighed. There was nothing he could do.\n\nI repeated my question.\n\n\"How many?\"\n\n\"Oh, the truck has gone, an entire mobile library, twelve cars and a motorcycle. Maybe twenty people.\"\n\n\"That's a lot of matter,\" I said grimly. \"The distortion could grow to the size of a football field by the time the ChronoGuard get here.\"\n\nThe sergeant shrugged. He had never been briefed on what to do with temporal instabilities. I turned to Bowden.\n\n\"Come on.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"We've a little job to do.\"\n\n\"You're crazy!\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"Can't we wait for the ChronoGuard?\"\n\n\"They'd never get here in time. It's easy. A lobotomized monkey could do it.\"\n\n\"And where are we going to find a lobotomized monkey at this time of night?\"\n\n\"You're being windy, Bowden.\"\n\n\"True. Do you know what will happen if we fail?\"\n\n\"We won't. It's a doddle. Dad was in the ChronoGuard; he told me all about this sort of thing. The secret is in the spheres. In four hours we could be seeing a major global disaster occurring right in front of our eyes. A rent in time so large we won't know for sure that the here-and-now isn't the there-and-then. The rout of civilization, panic in the streets, the end of the world as we know it. Hey, kid!\u2014\"\n\nI had seen a young lad bouncing a basketball on the road. The boy reluctantly gave it to me and I returned to Bowden, who was waiting uneasily by the car. We put the hood down and Bowden sat in the passenger seat, clutching the basketball grimly.\n\n\"A basketball?\"\n\n\"It's a sphere, isn't it?\" I replied, remembering Dad's advice all those years ago. \"Are you ready?\"\n\n\"Ready,\" replied Bowden in a slightly shaky voice.\n\nI started the car and rolled slowly up to where the traffic police stood in shocked amazement.\n\n\"Are you sure you know what you're doing?\" asked the young officer.\n\n\"Sort of,\" I replied, truthfully enough. \"Does anyone have a watch with a second hand?\"\n\nThe youngest traffic cop took his watch off and handed it over. I noted the real time\u20145:30 A.M.\u2014and then reset the hands to twelve o'clock. I strapped the watch onto the rearview mirror.\n\nThe sergeant wished us good luck as we drove off, yet his thoughts were more along the lines of \"sooner you than me.\"\n\nAround us the sky was lightening into dawn, yet the area around the vehicles was still night. Time for the trapped cars had stood still, but only to observers from the outside. To the occupants, everything was happening as normal, except that if they looked behind them they would witness the dawn breaking rapidly.\n\nThe first fifty yards seemed plain enough to Bowden and me, but as we drove closer the car and bike seemed to speed up and by the time we had drawn level with the green car we were both moving at about sixty miles per hour. I glanced at the watch on the rearview mirror and noted that precisely three minutes had elapsed.\n\nBowden had been watching what was going on behind us. As he and I drove toward the instability the officers' movements seemed to accelerate until they were just a blur. The cars that had been blocking the carriageway were turned around and directed swiftly back down the hard shoulder at a furious rate. Bowden also noticed the sun rising rapidly behind us and wondered quite what he had let himself in for.\n\nThe green sedan had two occupants; a man and a woman. The woman was asleep and the driver was looking at the dark hole that had opened up in front of them. I shouted to him to stop. He wound down his window and I repeated myself, added \"SpecOps!\" and waved my ID. He dutifully applied his brakes and his stoplights came on, puncturing the darkness. Three minutes and twenty-six seconds had elapsed since we had begun our journey.\n\n[ From where the ChronoGuard were standing, they could just see the brake lights on the green sedan come languidly on in the funnel of darkness that was the event's influence. They watched the progress of the green sedan over the next ten minutes as it made an almost imperceptible turn toward the hard shoulder. It was nearly 10 A.M. and an advance ChronoGuard outfit had arrived direct from Wareham. Their equipment and operatives were being airlifted in an SO-12 Chinook helicopter, and Colonel Rutter had flown ahead to see what needed to be done. He had been surprised that two ordinary officers had volunteered for this hazardous duty, especially as nobody could tell him who we were. Even a check of my car registration didn't help, as it was still listed as belonging to the garage I had bought it from. The only positive thing about the whole damn mess, he noted, was the fact that the passenger seemed to be holding a sphere of some sort. If the hole grew any bigger and time slowed down even more it might take them several months to reach us, even in the fastest vehicle they had. He lowered the binoculars and sighed. It was a stinking, lousy, lonely job. He had been working in the ChronoGuard for almost forty years, Standard Earth Time. In logged work time he was 209. In his own personal physiological time he was barely ]\n\n28. His children were older than him and his wife was in a nursing home. He had thought the higher rates of pay would compensate him for any problems, but they didn't.\n\nAs the green sedan fell quickly away behind us, Bowden again looked back and saw the sun rising faster and higher. A helicopter arrived in a flash with the distinctive \"CG\" motif of the ChronoGuard. Ahead of us now there was only the motorcyclist, who seemed to be perilously close to the dark, swirling hole. He wore red leathers and was driving a top-of-the-range Triumph motorcycle, ironically enough about the only bike capable of escape from the vortex if he had known what the problem was. We had taken another six minutes to catch up with him and as we approached a roaring sound started to rise above the wind noise; the sort of scream a typhoon might make as it passed over the top of you. We were still about twelve feet behind and finding it difficult to keep up. The speedometer needle on the Porsche touched ninety as we roared along together. I blew my horn but the screaming drowned it out.\n\n\"Get ready!\" I shouted to Bowden as the wind whipped our hair and the air tugged at our clothes. I flashed my lights at the bike again and at last he saw us. He turned around and waved, mistook our intent for a desire to initiate a race, kicked down a gear and accelerated away. The vortex caught him in an instant and he seemed to stretch out and around and inside out as he flowed rapidly into the instability; within what appeared to be a second he had gone. As soon as I thought we could get no closer I stamped on the brakes and yelled:\n\n\"Now!\"\n\nSmoke poured off the tires as we careened across the tarmac; Bowden threw the basketball, which seemed to swell in size with the hole, the ball flattening to a disc and the hole stretching out to a line. We saw the basketball hit the hole, bounce once and let us through. I glanced at the watch as we tipped through into the abyss, the basketball shutting out the last glimpse of the world we had left behind as we dropped through to Elsewhere. Up until the point we passed the event, twelve minutes and forty-one seconds had elapsed. Outside it had been closer to seven hours.\n\n\"Motorcycle's gone,\" remarked Colonel Rutter. His second-in-command grunted in reply. He didn't approve of non-Chronos attempting his work. They had managed to maintain the job's mysticism for over five decades with the wages to suit; have-a-go heroes could only serve to weaken people's undying trust in what they did. It wasn't a difficult job; it just took a long time. He had mended a similar rent in spacetime that had opened up in Weybridge's municipal park just between the floral clock and the bandstand. The job itself had taken ten minutes; he had simply walked in and stuck a tennis ball across the hole while outside seven months flashed by\u2014seven months on double pay plus privileges, thank you very much.\n\nThe ChronoGuard operatives set up a large clock facing inward so any operatives within the field's influence would know what was happening. A similar clock on the back of the helicopter gave the officers outside a good idea of how slow time was running within.\n\nAfter the motorcycle disappeared they waited another half-an-hour to see what would happen. They watched Bowden slowly rise and throw what appeared to be a basketball.\n\n\"Too late,\" murmured Rutter, having seen this sort of thing before. He ordered his men into action, and they were just starting to crank up the rotors of the helicopter when the darkness around the hole evaporated. The night slid back and a clear road confronted them. They could see the people in the green sedan get out and look around in amazement at the sudden day. A hundred yards farther on, the basketball had neatly blocked the tear and now stood trembling slightly in midair as the vortex behind the rip sucked at the ball. Within a minute the tear healed and the basketball dropped harmlessly to the asphalt, bouncing a few times before rolling to the side of the road. The sky was clear and there was no evidence that time wasn't the same as it had always been. But of the Datsun, the motorcyclist and the brightly painted sports car, there was no trace at all.\n\nMy car slid on and on. The motorway had been replaced by a swirling mass of light and color that had no meaning to either of us. Occasionally a coherent image would emerge from the murk and on several occasions we thought we had arrived back in a stable time, but were soon whisked back into the vortex, the typhoon raging in our ears. The first occasion was on a road somewhere in the Home Counties. It looked like winter, and ahead of us a lime-green Austin Allegro estate pulled out from a slip road. I swerved and drove past at great speed, sounding my horn angrily. That image collapsed abruptly and fragmented itself into the dirty hold of a ship. The car was wedged between two packing cases, the closest of which was bound for Shanghai. The howl of the vortex had diminished, but we could hear a new roar, the roar of a storm at sea. The ship wallowed and Bowden and I looked at one another, unsure as to whether this was the end of the journey or not. The roaring sound grew as the dank hold folded back into itself and vanished, only to be replaced by a white hospital ward. The tempest subsided, the car's engine ticking over happily. In the only occupied bed there was a drowsy and confused woman with her arm in a sling. I knew what I had to say.\n\n\"Thursday\u2014!\" I shouted excitedly.\n\nThe woman in the bed frowned. She looked across at Bowden, who waved back cheerily.\n\n\"He didn't die!\" I continued, saying now what I knew to be the truth. I could hear the tempest starting to howl again. It wouldn't be long before we were taken away.\n\n\"The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don't die that easily! Take the Litera Tec job in Swindon!\"\n\nThe woman in the bed just had time to repeat my last word before the ceiling and floor opened up and we plummeted back into the maelstrom. After a dazzling display of colorful noise and loud light, the vortex slid back to be replaced by the parking lot of a motorway services somewhere. The tempest slowed and stopped.\n\n\"Is this it?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nIt was night and the streetlamps cast an orange glow over the parking lot, the roadway shiny from recent rain. A car pulled in next to us; it was a large Pontiac containing a family. The wife was berating her husband for falling asleep at the wheel and the children were crying. It looked like it had been a near-miss.\n\n\"Excuse me!\" I yelled. The man wound down his window.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"What's the date?\"\n\n\"The date?\"\n\n\"It's July 8,\" replied the man's wife, shooting him and me an annoyed glance.\n\nI thanked her and turned back to Bowden.\n\n\"We're three weeks in the past?\" he queried.\n\n\"Or fifty-six weeks into the future.\"\n\n\"Or one hundred and eight.\"\n\n\"I'm going to find out where we are.\"\n\nI turned off the ignition and got out. Bowden joined me as we walked toward the cafeteria. Beyond the building we could see the motorway, and beyond that the connecting bridge to the services on the opposite motorway.\n\nSeveral tow trucks drove past us with empty cars hitched to the back of them.\n\n\"Something's not right.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" replied Bowden. \"But what?\"\n\nSuddenly, the doors to the cafeteria burst open and a woman pushed her way out. She was carrying a gun and pushing a man in front of her, who stumbled as they hurried out. Bowden pulled me behind a parked van. We peered cautiously out and saw that the woman had unwelcome company; several men had appeared seemingly from nowhere and all of them were armed.\n\n\"What the?\u2014\" I whispered, suddenly realizing what was happening. \"That's me!\"\n\nAnd so it was. I looked slightly older but it was definitely me. Bowden had noticed too.\n\n\"I'm not sure I like what you've done with your hair.\"\n\n\"You prefer it long?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nWe watched as one of the three men told the other me to drop her gun. I-me-she said something we couldn't hear and then put her gun down, releasing her hold on the man, who was then grabbed roughly by one of the other men.\n\n\"What's going on?\" I asked, thoroughly confused.\n\n\"We've got to go!\" replied Bowden.\n\n\"And leave me like this?\"\n\n\"Look.\"\n\nHe pointed at the car. It was shaking slightly as a localized gust of wind seemed to batter it.\n\n\"I can't leave her\u2014me\u2014in this predicament!\"\n\nBut Bowden was pulling me toward the car, which was rocking more violently and starting to fade.\n\n\"Wait!\"\n\nI struggled free, pulled out my automatic and hid it behind one of the wheels of the nearest car, then ran after Bowden and leaped into the back of the Speedster. I was just in time. There was a bright flash and a peal of thunder and then silence. I opened an eye. It was daylight. I looked at Bowden, who had made it into the driver's seat. The motorway services car park had vanished and in its place was a quiet country lane. The journey was over.\n\n\"You all right?\" I asked.\n\nBowden felt the three-day stubble that had inexplicably grown on his chin.\n\n\"I think so. How about you?\"\n\n\"As well as can be expected.\"\n\nI checked my shoulder holster. It was empty.\n\n\"I'm bursting for a pee, though. I feel like I haven't gone for a week.\"\n\nBowden made a pained expression and nodded.\n\n\"I think I could say the same.\"\n\nI nipped behind a wall. Bowden walked stiffly across to the other side of the road and relieved himself in the hedge.\n\n\"Where do you suppose we are?\" I shouted to Bowden from behind the wall. \"Or more to the point, when?\"\n\n\"Car twenty-eight,\" crackled the wireless, \"come in please.\"\n\n\"Who knows?\" called out Bowden over his shoulder. \"But if you want to try that again you can do it with someone else.\"\n\nMuch relieved, we reconvened at the car. It was a beautiful day, dry and quite warm. The smell of haymaking was in the air, and in the distance we could hear a tractor lumbering across a field.\n\n\"What was all that motorway services thing about?\" asked Bowden. \"Last Thursday or next Thursday?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Don't ask me to explain. I just hope I got out of that jam. Those guys didn't look as though they were out collecting for the church fund.\"\n\n\"You'll find out.\"\n\n\"I guess. I wonder who that man was I was trying to protect?\"\n\n\"Search me.\"\n\nI sat on the hood and donned a pair of dark glasses. Bowden walked to a gate and looked over. In a dip in the valley was a village built of gray stone, and in the field a herd of cows was grazing peacefully.\n\nBowden pointed to a milestone he had found.\n\n\"That's a spot of luck.\"\n\nThe milestone told him we were six miles from Haworth.\n\nI wasn't listening to him. I was now puzzling over seeing myself in the hospital bed. If I hadn't seen myself I wouldn't have gone to Swindon and if I hadn't gone to Swindon I wouldn't have been able to warn myself to go there. Doubtless it would make complete sense to my father, but I might well go nuts trying to figure it out.\n\n\"Car twenty-eight,\" said the wireless, \"come in please.\"\n\nI stopped thinking about it and checked the position of the sun.\n\n\"It's about midday, I'd say.\"\n\nBowden nodded agreement.\n\n\"Aren't we car twenty-eight?\" he asked, frowning slightly. I picked up the mike.\n\n\"Car twenty-eight, go ahead.\"\n\n\"At last!\" sounded a relieved voice over the speaker. \"I have Colonel Rutter of the ChronoGuard who wants to speak to you.\"\n\nBowden walked over so he could hear better. We looked at each other, unsure of what was going to happen next; a chastisement or a heap of congratulations, or, as it turned out, both.\n\n\"Officers Next and Cable. Can you hear me?\" said a deep voice over the wireless.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Good. Where are you?\"\n\n\"About six miles from Haworth.\"\n\n\"All the way up there, eh?\" he guffawed. \"Jolly good.\" He cleared his throat. We could sense it coming.\n\n\"Unofficially, that was one of the bravest acts I've ever seen. You saved a great number of lives and stopped the event from becoming a matter of some consequence. You can both be very proud of your actions and I would be honored to have two fine officers like you serving under me.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir, I\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm still talking!\" he snapped, causing us both to jump. \"Officially, though, you broke every rule in the book. And I should have both your butts nailed to the wall for not following procedure. If you ever try anything like this again, I most certainly will. Understand?\"\n\n\"Understood, sir.\"\n\nI looked at Bowden. There was only one question we wanted to ask.\n\n\"How long have we been gone?\"\n\n\"The year is now 2016,\" said Rutter. \"You've been gone thirty-one years!!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Haworth House",
                "text": "\u2002Some would say the ChronoGuard have a terrific sense of humor. I would say they were just plain annoying. I had heard that they used to bundle up new recruits in gravity suits and pop them a week into the future just for fun. The game was banned when one recruit vanished outside the cone. Theoretically he is still there, just outside our time, unable to return and unable to communicate. It is calculated we will catch up with him about fourteen thousand years from now\u2014sadly, he will have aged only twelve minutes. Some joke.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nWe were both victims of the ChronoGuard's bizarre sense of humor. It was just past noon the following day. We had been gone only seven hours. We both reset our watches and drove slowly into Haworth, each sobered by the experience.\n\nAt Haworth House a full media circus was in progress. I had hoped to arrive before this sort of thing really gained a toehold, but the hole in the M1 had put paid to that. Lydia Startright from the Toad News Network had arrived and was recording for the lunchtime bulletin. She stood outside the steps of Haworth House with a microphone and composed herself before beginning. She signaled to her cameraman to roll, adopted one of her most serious expressions, and began.\n\n\"...As the sun rose over Haworth House this morning the police began to investigate a bold theft and double murder. Some time last night a security guard was shot dead by an unknown assailant as he attempted to stop him stealing the original manuscript of Jane Eyre. Police have been at the crime scene since early morning and have as yet given no comment. It is fairly certain that parallels must be drawn with the theft of the Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript, which, despite continued police and SpecOps efforts, has so far not come to light. Following Mr. Quaverley's extraction and murder, it can only be surmised that a similar fate is in store for Rochester or Jane. The Goliath Corporation, whose presence this morning was an unusual development, have no comment to make\u2014as usual.\"\n\n\"And\u2014cut! That was very good, darling,\" declared Lydia's producer. \"Can we do it once more without the reference to Goliath? You know they'll only cut it out!\"\n\n\"Then let them.\"\n\n\"Lyds, baby\u2014! Who pays the bills? I like free speech as much as the next man, but on someone else's airtime, hmm?\"\n\nShe ignored him and looked around as a car arrived. Her face lit up and she walked briskly across, gesturing for her cameraman to follow.\n\nA lean officer of about forty with silver hair and bags under his eyes looked to heaven as she approached, cracking his unfriendly face into a smile. He waited patiently for her to make a brief introduction.\n\n\"I have with me Detective Inspector Oswald Mandias, Yorkshire CID. Tell me, Inspector, do you think this crime is in any way connected to the Chuzzlewit theft?\"\n\nHe smiled benignly, fully aware that he would be on thirty million television screens by the evening.\n\n\"It's far too early to say anything; a full press release will be issued in due course.\"\n\n\"Isn't this a case for the Yorkshire Litera Tecs, sir? Jane Eyre is one of this county's most valued treasures.\"\n\nMandias stopped to face her.\n\n\"Unlike other SpecOps departments, the Yorkshire LiteraTecs rely on evidence supplied by the regular police. Litera Tecs are not police and have no place in a police environment.\"\n\n\"Why do you suppose the Goliath Corporation made an appearance this morning?\"\n\n\"No more questions!\" called out Mandias's deputy as a throng of other news crews started to converge. Goliath had been and gone but no one was going to learn anymore about it. The police pushed their way past and Lydia stopped to have a snack; she had been reporting live since before breakfast. A few minutes later Bowden and I drove up in the Speedster.\n\n\"Well, well,\" I muttered as I got out of the car, \"Startright keeps herself busy. Morning, Lyds!\"\n\nLydia almost choked on her SmileyBurger and quickly threw it aside. She picked up her microphone and chased after me.\n\n\"Although the Yorkshire Litera Tecs and Goliath are claimed not to be present,\" muttered Lydia as she tried to keep up, \"events have taken an interesting turn with the arrival of Thursday Next of SO-27. In a departure from normal procedure, the Litera Tecs have come out from behind their desks and are visiting the crime scene in person.\"\n\nI stopped to have some fun. Lydia composed herself and started the interview.\n\n\"Miss Next, tell me, what are you doing so far out of your jurisdiction?\"\n\n\"Hi, Lydia. You have mayonnaise on your upper lip from that SmileyBurger. It has a lot of salt in it and you really shouldn't eat them. As for the case, I'm afraid it's the same old shit: 'You will understand that anything we may discover will have to remain a blah-de-blah-de-blah.' How's that?\"\n\nLydia hid a smile.\n\n\"Do you think the two thefts are linked?\"\n\n\"My brother Joffy is a big fan of yours, Lyds; can you let me have a signed picture? 'Joffy' with two Fs. Excuse me.\"\n\n\"Thanks for nothing, Thursday!\" called out Startright. \"I'll be seeing you!\"\n\nWe walked up to the police line and showed our IDs to the constable on duty. He looked at the badges, then at the two of us. We could see he was not impressed. He spoke to Mandias.\n\n\"Sir, these two Wessex LiteraTecs want to get at the crime scene.\"\n\nMandias ambled over painfully slowly. He looked us both up and down and chose his words with care.\n\n\"Here in Yorkshire Litera Tecs don't leave their desks.\"\n\n\"I've read the arrest reports. It shows,\" I replied coldly.\n\nMandias sighed. Keeping what he described as eggheads in check, especially those from another SpecOps region, was obviously not something he was keen to do.\n\n\"I have two murders on my hands here and I don't want the crime scene disturbed. Why don't you wait until you get the report and then take your investigation from there?\"\n\n\"The murders are tragic, obviously,\" I replied, \"but Jane Eyre is the thing here. It is imperative that we get to see the crime scene. Jane Eyre is bigger than me and bigger than you. If you refuse I'll send a report to your superior officer complaining of your conduct.\"\n\nBut Mandias was not a man to listen to threats, idle or otherwise. This was Yorkshire, after all. He stared at me and said softly:\n\n\"Do your worst, pen-pusher.\"\n\nI took a step forward and he bridled slightly; he wasn't going to give way. A nearby officer moved in behind him to give assistance if needed.\n\nI was about to lose my temper when Bowden spoke up.\n\n\"Sir,\" he began, \"if we could move slowly toward a goal we might be able to burrow our way out of the predicament we find ourselves shuffling into.\"\n\nMandias's attitude abruptly changed and he smiled solemnly.\n\n\"If that is the case, I am sure we could manage a quick look for you\u2014as long as you promise not to touch anything.\"\n\n\"On my word,\" replied Bowden pointedly, patting his stomach. The two of them shook hands and winked and we were soon escorted into the museum.\n\n\"How the hell did you do that?\" I hissed.\n\n\"Look at his ring.\"\n\nI looked. He had a large ring on his middle finger with a curious and distinctive pattern on it.\n\n\"What of it?\"\n\n\"The Most Worshipful Brotherhood of the Wombat.\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"So what have we got?\" I asked. \"A double murder and a missing script? They just took the manuscript, right? Nothing else?\"\n\n\"Right,\" replied Mandias.\n\n\"And the guard was shot with his own gun?\"\n\nMandias stopped and looked sternly at me.\n\n\"How did you know that?\"\n\n\"A lucky guess,\" I replied evenly. \"What about the videotapes?\"\n\n\"We're studying them at the moment.\"\n\n\"There's no one on them, is there?\"\n\nMandias looked at me curiously.\n\n\"Do you know who did this?\"\n\nI followed him into the room that once held the manuscript. The untouched glass case was sitting forlornly in the middle of the floor. I ran my fingertips across a mottled and uneven patch on the glass.\n\n\"Thanks, Mandias, you're a star,\" I said, walking back out. Bowden and Mandias looked at one another and hastened after me.\n\n\"That's it?\" said Mandias. \"That's your investigation?\"\n\n\"I've seen all I need to see.\"\n\n\"Can you give me anything?\" asked Mandias, trotting to keep up. He looked at Bowden. \"Brother, you can tell me.\"\n\n\"We should tell the DI what we know, Thursday. We owe him for allowing us in.\"\n\nI stopped so suddenly Mandias almost bumped into me.\n\n\"Ever hear of a man named Hades?\"\n\nMandias went visibly pale and looked around nervously.\n\n\"Don't worry; he's long gone.\"\n\n\"They say he died in Venezuela.\"\n\n\"They say he can walk through walls,\" I countered. \"They also say he gives off colors when he moves. Hades is alive and well and I have to find him before he starts to make use of the manuscript.\"\n\nMandias seemed to have undergone a humbling change as soon as he realized who was behind it all.\n\n\"Anything I can do?\"\n\nI paused for a moment.\n\n\"Pray you never meet him.\"\n\nThe drive back to Swindon was uneventful, the area on the M1 where all the trouble had been now back to normal. Victor was waiting for us in the office; he seemed slightly agitated.\n\n\"I've had Braxton on the phone all morning bleating on about insurance cover being inoperative if his officers act outside their jurisdiction.\"\n\n\"Same old shit.\"\n\n\"That's what I told him. I've got most of the office reading Jane Eyre at the moment in case anything unusual happens\u2014all quiet so far.\"\n\n\"It's only a matter of time.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\"\n\n\"M\u00fcller mentioned Hades being at Penderyn somewhere,\" I said to Victor. \"Anything come of that?\"\n\n\"Nothing that I know of. Schitt said he had looked into it and drawn a blank\u2014there are over three hundred possible Penderyns that M\u00fcller might have meant. More worrying, have you seen this morning's paper?\"\n\nI hadn't. He showed me the inside front page of The Mole. It read:"
            },
            {
                "title": "TROOP MOVEMENTS NEAR WELSH BORDER",
                "text": "I read on with some alarm. Apparently there had been troop movements near Hereford, Chepstow and the disputed border town of Oswestry. A military spokesman had dismissed the maneuvers as simple \"exercises,\" but it didn't sound good at all. Not at all. I turned to Victor.\n\n\"Jack Schitt? Do you think he wants the Prose Portal badly enough to go to war with Wales?\"\n\n\"Who knows what power the Goliath Corporation wields. He might not be behind this at all. It could be coincidence or just saber-rattling; but in any event I don't think we can ignore it.\"\n\n\"Then we need to steal a march. Any ideas?\"\n\n\"What did M\u00fcller say again?\" asked Finisterre.\n\nI sat down.\n\n\"He screamed: 'He's at Penderyn'; nothing else.\"\n\n\"Nothing else?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"No; when Schitt asked him which Penderyn he meant, as there must be hundreds, M\u00fcller told him to guess.\"\n\nBowden spoke up.\n\n\"What were his precise words?\"\n\n\"He said 'Guess,' then repeated it but it turned into a yell\u2014 he was in grave pain at the time. The conversation was recorded but there is about as much chance as getting hold of that as\u2014\"\n\n\"Maybe he meant something else.\"\n\n\"Like what, Bowden?\"\n\n\"I really only speak tourist Welsh but 'Gwesty' means hotel.\"\n\n\"Oh my God,\" said Victor.\n\n\"Victor?\" I queried, but he was busy rummaging in a large pile of maps we had accumulated; each of them had a Penderyn of some sort marked on it. He spread a large street plan of Merthyr Tydfil out on the table and pointed at a place just between the Palace of justice and Government House. We craned to see where his finger was pointing but the location was unmarked.\n\n\"The Penderyn Hotel,\" announced Victor grimly. \"I spent my honeymoon there. Once the equal of the Adelphi or Raffles, it's been empty since the sixties. If I wanted a safe haven\u2014\"\n\n\"He's there,\" I announced, looking at the map of the Welsh capital city uneasily. \"That's where we'll find him.\"\n\n\"And how do you suppose we'll manage to enter Wales undetected, make our way into a heavily guarded area, snatch Mycroft and the manuscript and get out in one piece?\" asked Bowden. \"It takes a month to even get a visa!\"\n\n\"We'll find a way in,\" I said slowly.\n\n\"You're crazy!\" said Victor. \"Braxton would never allow it!\"\n\n\"That's where you come in.\"\n\n\"Me? Braxton doesn't listen to me.\"\n\n\"I think he's about to start.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Jane Eyre",
                "text": "\u2002Jane Eyre was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, a suitably neuter name that disguised Charlotte Bront\u00eb's sex. It was a great success; William Thackeray described the novel as \"The master work of a great genius.\" Not that the book was without its critics: G. H. Lewes suggested that Charlotte should study Austen's work and \"correct her shortcomings in the light of that great artist's practice.\" Charlotte replied that Miss Austen's work was barely\u2014in the light of what she wanted to do\u2014a novel at all. She referred to it as \"a highly cultivated garden with no open country.\" The jury is still out.\n\n\u2014W.H.H.F.RENOUF, The Bront\u00ebs\n\nHobbes shook his head in the relative unfamiliarity of the corridors of Rochester's home, Thornfield Hall. It was night and a deathly hush had descended on the house. The corridor was dark and he fumbled for his torch. A glimmer of orange light stabbed the darkness as he walked slowly along the upstairs hall. Ahead of him he could see a door which was slightly ajar, through which showed a thin glimmer of candlelight. He paused by the door and peered around the corner. Within he could see a woman dressed in tatters and with wild unkempt hair pouring oil from a lantern onto the covers under which Rochester lay asleep. Hobbes got his bearings; he knew that Jane would soon be in to put out the fire, but from which door he had no way of knowing. He turned back into the corridor and nearly leaped out of his skin as he came face to face with a large, florid-looking woman. She smelled strongly of drink, had an aggressive countenance and glared at him with thinly disguised contempt. They stood staring at each other for some moments, Hobbes wondering what to do and the woman wavering slightly, her eyes never leaving his. Hobbes panicked and went for his gun, but with wholly unlikely speed the woman caught his arm and held it pinched so tightly that it was all he could do to stop yelling out in pain.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" she hissed, one eyebrow twitching.\n\n\"Who in Christ's name are you?\" asked Hobbes.\n\nShe smacked him hard across the face; he staggered before recovering.\n\n\"My name is Grace Poole,\" said Grace Poole. \"In service I might be, but you have no right to utter the Lord's name in vain. I can see by your attire that you do not belong here. What do you want?\"\n\n\"I'm, um, with Mr. Mason,\" he stammered.\n\n\"Rubbish,\" she replied, staring at him dangerously.\n\n\"I want Jane Eyre,\" he stammered.\n\n\"So does Mr. Rochester,\" she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. \"But he doesn't even kiss her until page one hundred and eighty-one.\"\n\nHobbes glanced inside the room. The madwoman was now dancing around, smiling and cackling as the flames grew higher on Rochester's bed.\n\n\"If she doesn't arrive soon, there won't be a page one hundred and eighty-one.\"\n\nGrace Poole caught his eye again and fixed him with a baleful glare.\n\n\"She will save him as she has before thousands of times, as she will again thousands of times. It is the way of things here.\"\n\n\"Yeah?\" replied Hobbes. \"Well, things just might change.\"\n\nAt that moment the madwoman rushed out of the room and into Hobbes with her fingernails outstretched. With a maniacal laugh that made his ears pop she lunged at him and pressed her uncut and ragged nails into both his cheeks. He yelled out in pain as Grace Poole wrestled Mrs. Rochester into a half nelson and frogmarched her to the attic. As Grace got to the door she turned to Hobbes and spoke again.\n\n\"Just remember: It is the way of things here.\"\n\n\"Aren't you going to try and stop me?\" asked Hobbes in a puzzled tone.\n\n\"I take poor Mrs. Rochester upstairs now,\" she replied. \"It is written.\"\n\nThe door closed behind her as a voice shouting \"Wake, wake!\" brought Hobbes's attention back to the blazing room. Within he could see the night-robed Jane throwing a jug of water over the recumbent form of Rochester. Hobbes waited until the fire was out before stepping into the room, drawing his gun as he did so. They both looked up, the \"elves of Christendom\" line dying on Rochester's lips.\n\n\"Who are you?\" they asked, together.\n\n\"Believe me, you couldn't possibly begin to understand.\"\n\nHobbes took Jane by the arm and dragged her back toward the corridor.\n\n\"Edward! My Edward!\" implored Jane, her arms outstretched to Rochester. \"I won't leave you, my love!\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" said Hobbes, still backing away, \"you guys haven't fallen in love yet!\"\n\n\"In that you would be mistaken,\" murmured Rochester, pulling out a percussion pistol from beneath his pillow. \"I have suspected something like this might happen for some time.\" He aimed at Hobbes and fired in a single quick movement. He missed, the large lead ball burying itself in the door frame. Hobbes fired back a warning shot; Hades had expressly forbidden anyone in the novel to be hurt. Rochester pulled a second pistol after the first and cocked it.\n\n\"Let her go,\" he announced, his jaw set, his dark hair falling into his eyes.\n\nHobbes pulled Jane in front of him.\n\n\"Don't be a fool, Rochester! If all goes well Jane will be returned to you forthwith; you won't even know she has gone!\"\n\nHobbes backed down the hall toward where the portal was due to open as he spoke. Rochester followed, gun outstretched, his heart heavy as his one and only true love was dragged unceremoniously from the novel to that place, that other place, where he and Jane could never enjoy the life they enjoyed at Thornfield. Hobbes and Jane vanished back through the portal, which closed abruptly after them. Rochester put up his gun and glowered.\n\nA few moments later Hobbes and a very confused Jane Eyre had fallen back through the Prose Portal and into the dilapidated smoking lounge of the old Penderyn Hotel.\n\nAcheron stepped forward and helped Jane up. He offered her his coat to warm herself. After Thornfield Hall the hotel was decidedly drafty.\n\n\"Miss Eyre!\u2014\" announced Hades kindly. \"My name is Hades, Acheron Hades. You are my respected guest; please take a seat and compose yourself.\"\n\n\"Edward?\u2014\"\n\n\"Quite well, my young friend. Come, let me take you to a warmer part of the hotel.\"\n\n\"Will I see my Edward again?\"\n\nHades smiled.\n\n\"It rather depends on how valuable people think you are.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "A Groundswell of Popular Feeling",
                "text": "\u2002Until Jane Eyre was kidnapped I don't think anyone\u2014 least of all Hades\u2014realized quite how popular she was. It was as if a living national embodiment of England's literary heritage had been torn from the masses. It was the best piece of news we could have hoped for.\n\n\u2014BOWDEN CABLE, Journal of a Litera Tec\n\nWithin twenty seconds of Jane's kidnapping, the first worried member of the public had noticed strange goings-on around the area of page 107 of their deluxe hidebound edition of Jane Eyre. Within thirty minutes all the lines into the English Museum library were jammed. Within two hours every LiteraTec department was besieged by calls from worried Bront\u00eb readers. Within four hours the president of the Bront\u00eb Federation had seen the prime minister. By suppertime the prime minister's personal secretary had called the head of SpecOps. By nine o'clock the head of SpecOps had batted it down the line to a miserable Braxton Hicks. By ten he had been called personally by the prime minister, who asked him what the hell he was going to do about it. He stammered down the line and said something wholly unhelpful. Meanwhile, the news was leaked to the press that Swindon was the center of the Jane Eyre investigation, and by midnight the SpecOps building was encircled by concerned readers, journalists and news network trucks.\n\nBraxton was not in a good mood. He had started to chain-smoke and locked himself in his office for hours at a time. Not even putting practice managed to soothe his ruffled nerves, and shortly after the prime minister's call he summoned Victor and me for a meeting on the roof, away from the prying eyes of the press, the Goliath representatives and especially from Jack Schitt.\n\n\"Sir?\" said Victor as we approached Braxton, who was leaning against a smokestack that squeaked as it turned. Hicks was staring out at the lights of Swindon with a detachment that made me worried. The parapet was barely two yards away, and for an awful moment I thought perhaps he was going to end it all.\n\n\"Look at them,\" he murmured.\n\nWe both relaxed as we realized that Braxton was on the roof so he could see the public that his department had pledged to help. There were thousands of them, encircling the station behind crowd barriers, silently holding candles and clutching their copies of Jane Eyre, now seriously disrupted, the narrative stopping abruptly halfway down page 107 after a mysterious \"Agent in black\" enters Rochester's room following the fire.\n\nBraxton waved his own copy of Jane Eyre at us.\n\n\"You've read it, of course?\"\n\n\"There isn't much to read,\" Victor replied. \"Eyre was written in the first person; as soon as the protagonist has gone, it's anyone's guess as to what happens next. My theory is that Rochester becomes even more broody, packs Adele off to boarding school, and shuts up the house.\"\n\nBraxton looked at him pointedly.\n\n\"That's conjecture, Analogy.\"\n\n\"It's what we're best at.\"\n\nBraxton sighed.\n\n\"They want me to bring her back and I don't even know where she is! Before all this happened, did you have any idea how popular Jane Eyre was?\"\n\nWe looked at the crowd below.\n\n\"To be truthful, no.\"\n\nBraxton's reserve was all gone. He wiped his brow; his hand was visibly shaking.\n\n\"What am I going to do? This is off the record but Jack Schitt takes over in a week if this whole stinking matter hasn't made any favorable headway.\"\n\n\"Schitt isn't interested in Jane,\" I said, following Braxton's gaze over the mass of Bront\u00eb fans. \"All he wants is the Prose Portal.\"\n\n\"Tell me about it, Next. I've got seven days to obscurity and historical and literary damnation. I know we've all had our differences in the past, but I want to give you the freedom to do what you need to do. And,\" he added magnanimously, \"this is irrespective of cost.\" He checked himself and added: \"But having said that, of course, don't just spend money like water, okay?\"\n\nHe looked at the lights of Swindon again.\n\n\"I'm as big a fan of the Bront\u00ebs as the next man, Victor. What will you have me do?\"\n\n\"Agree to his terms whatever they are; keep our movements completely and utterly secret from Goliath; and I need a manuscript.\"\n\nBraxton narrowed his eyes.\n\n\"What sort of manuscript?\"\n\nVictor handed him a scrap of paper. Braxton read it and raised his eyebrows.\n\n\"I'll get it,\" he said slowly, \"even if I have to steal it myself!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The People's Republic of Wales",
                "text": "Ironically, without the efficient and violent crushing of the simultaneous Pontypool, Cardiff and Newport risings in 1839, Wales might never have been a republic at all. Under pressure from landowners and a public outcry at the killing of 236 unarmed Welsh men and women, the Chartists managed to push the government to early reform of the parliamentary system. Buoyed by success and well represented in the house, they succeeded in securing Welsh home rule following the eight-month \"Great Strike\" of 1847. In 1854, under the leadership of John Frost, Wales declared its independence. England, weighed down with troubles in the Crimea and Ireland, saw no good reason to argue with a belligerent and committed Welsh assembly. Trade links were good and devolution, coupled with an Anglo-Welsh nonaggression treaty, was passed the following year."
            },
            {
                "title": "FROMZEPHANIAJONES'S",
                "text": "[ Wales\u2014Birth of a Republic ]\n\nWHEN THE Anglo-Welsh border was closed in 1965, the A4 from Chepstow to Abertawe became an access corridor through which only businessmen or truck drivers were allowed to pass, either to conduct trade in the city or to pick up goods from the docks. On either side of the Welsh A4 there were razor-wire fences to remind visitors that straying from the designated route was not permitted.\n\nAbertawe was considered an open city\u2014a \"free trade zone.\" Tax was low and trade tariffs almost nonexistent. Bowden and I drove slowly into the city, the glassy towers and global banking institutions that lined the coast obvious testament to a free trade philosophy that, while profitable, was not enthusiastically promoted by all the Welsh people. The rest of the Republic was much more reserved and traditional; in places the small nation had hardly changed at all over the past hundred years.\n\n\"What now?\" asked Bowden as we parked in front of the Goliath First National Bank. I patted the briefcase Braxton had given me the night before. He had told me to use the contents wisely; the way things were going this was about the last chance we had before Goliath stepped in.\n\n\"We get a lift into Merthyr.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't suggest it unless you had a plan.\"\n\n\"I wasn't wasting my time when I was in London, Bowden. I've got a few favors up my sleeve. This way.\"\n\nWe walked up the road, past the bank and into a side street that was lined with shops dealing in banknotes, medals, coins, gold\u2014and books. We squeezed past the traders, who conversed mostly in Welsh, and stopped outside a small antiquarian bookshop whose window was piled high with ancient volumes of forgotten lore. Bowden and I shared an anxious look and, taking a deep breath, I opened the door and we entered.\n\nA small bell tinkled at the back of the shop and a tall man with a stoop came out to greet us. He looked at us suspiciously from between a shock of gray hair and a pair of half-moon spectacles, but the suspicion turned to a smile when he recognized me.\n\n\"Thursday, bach!\" he murmured, hugging me affectionately. \"What brings you out this way? Not all the way to Abertawe to see an old man, surely?\"\n\n\"I need your help, Dai,\" I said softly. \"Help like I've never needed before.\"\n\nHe must have been following the news broadcasts because he fell silent. He gently took an early volume of R. S. Thomas out of the hands of a prospective customer, told him it was closing time and ushered him out of the bookshop before he had time to complain.\n\n\"This is Bowden Cable,\" I explained as the bookseller bolted the door. \"He's my partner; if you can trust me you can trust him. Bowden, this is Jones the Manuscript, my Welsh contact.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the bookseller, shaking Bowden's hand warmly. \"Any friend of Thursday's is a friend of mine. This is Haelwyn the Book,\" he added, introducing us to his assistant, who smiled shyly. \"Now, young Thursday, what can I do for you?\"\n\nI paused.\n\n\"We need to get to Merthyr Tydfil\u2014\"\n\nThe bookseller laughed explosively.\n\n\"\u2014tonight,\" I added.\n\nHe stopped laughing and walked behind the counter, tidying absently as he went.\n\n\"Your reputation precedes you, Thursday. They tell me you seek Jane Eyre. They say you have a good heart\u2014and have faced wickedness and lived.\"\n\n\"What else do people say?\"\n\n\"That Darkness walks in the valleys,\" interrupted Haelwyn with a good deal of doom in her voice.\n\n\"Thank you, Haelwyn,\" said Jones. \"The man you seek\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014and the Rhondda has lain in shadow these past few weeks,\" continued Haelwyn, who obviously hadn't finished yet.\n\n\"That's enough, Haelwyn,\" said Jones more sternly. \"There are some new copies of Cold Comfort Farm that need to be dispatched to Llan-dod, hmm?\"\n\nHaelwyn walked off with a pained expression.\n\n\"What about\u2014\" I began.\n\n\"\u2014and the milk is delivered sour from the cows' udders!\" called Haelwyn from behind a bookshelf. \"And the compasses in Merthyr have all gone mad these past few days!\"\n\n\"Take no heed of her,\" explained Jones apologetically. \"She reads a lot of books. But how can I help you? Me, an old bookseller with no connections?\"\n\n\"An old bookseller with Welsh citizenship and free access across the border doesn't need connections to get to where he wants to go.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment, Thursday, bach; you want me to take you to Merthyr?\"\n\nI nodded. Jones was the best and last chance I had, all rolled into one. But he wasn't as happy with the plan as I thought he might be.\n\n\"And why would I want to do that?\" he asked sharply. \"You know the punishment for smuggling? Want to see an old man like me end my days in a cell on Skokholm? You ask too much. I'm a crazy old man\u2014not a stupid one.\"\n\nI had thought he might say this.\n\n\"If you'll help us,\" I began, reaching into my briefcase, \"I can let you have... this.\"\n\nI placed the single sheet of paper on the counter in front of him; Jones gave a sharp intake of breath and sat heavily on a chair. He knew what it was without close examination.\n\n\"How... how did you get this?\" he asked me suspiciously.\n\n\"The English government rates the return of Jane Eyre very highly\u2014high enough to wish to trade.\"\n\nHe leaned forward and picked up the sheet. There, in all its glory, was an early handwritten draft of \"I See the Boys of Summer,\" the opening poem in the anthology that would later become 18 Poems, the first published work of Dylan Thomas; Wales had been demanding its return for some time.\n\n\"This belongs not to one man but to the Republic,\" announced the bookseller slowly. \"It is the heritage.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" I replied. \"You can do with the manuscript what you will.\"\n\nBut Jones the Manuscript was not going to be swayed. I could have brought him Under Milk Wood and Richard Burton to read it and he still wouldn't have taken us to Merthyr.\n\n\"Thursday, you ask too much!\" he wailed. \"The laws here are very strict! The HeddluCyfrinach have eyes and ears everywhere!\u2014\"\n\nMy heart sank.\n\n\"I understand, Jones\u2014and thanks.\"\n\n\"I'll take you to Merthyr, Miss Next,\" interrupted Haelwyn, fixing me with a half-smile.\n\n\"It is too dangerous,\" muttered Jones. \"I forbid it!\"\n\n\"Hush!\" replied Haelwyn. \"Enough of that talk from you. I read adventures every day\u2014now I can be in one. Besides\u2014the streetlights dimmed last night; it was a sign!\"\n\nWe sat in Jones's parlor until it was dark, then spent a noisy and uncomfortable hour in the trunk of Haelwyn the Book's Griffin-12 motorcar. We heard the murmur of Welsh voices as she took us across the border and we were pummeled mercilessly by the potholed road on the trip into Merthyr. There was a second checkpoint just outside the capital, which was unusual; it seemed that English troop movements had made the military edgy. A few minutes later the car stopped and the trunk creaked open. Haelwyn bade us jump out and we stretched painfully after the cramped journey. She pointed the way to the Penderyn Hotel and I told her that if we weren't back by daybreak we wouldn't be coming. She smiled and shook our hands, wished us good luck and headed off to visit her aunt.\n\nHades was in the Penderyn Hotel's abandoned bar at that time, smoking a pipe and contemplating the view from the large windows. Beyond the beautifully lit Palace of Justice the full moon had risen and cast a cool glow upon the old city, which was alive with lights and movement. Beyond the buildings were the mountains, their summits hidden in cloud. Jane was on the other side of the room, sitting on the edge of her seat, angrily glaring at Hades.\n\n\"Pleasant view, wouldn't you say, Miss Eyre?\"\n\n\"It pales when compared to my window at Thornfield, Mr. Hades,\" replied Jane in a restrained tone. \"While not the finest view I had learned to love it as an old friend, dependable and unchanging. I demand that you return me there forthwith.\"\n\n\"All in good time, dear girl, all in good time. I mean you no harm. I just want to make a lot of money, then you can return to your Edward.\"\n\n\"Greed will get the better of you, I think, sir,\" responded Jane evenly. \"You may think it will bring you happiness, but it will not. Happiness is fed by the food of love, not by the stodgy diet of money. The love of money is the root of all evil!\"\n\nAcheron smiled.\n\n\"You are so dull, you know, Jane, with that puritanical streak. You should have gone with Rochester when you had the chance instead of wasting yourself with that drip St. John Rivers.\"\n\n\"Rivers is a fine man!\" declared Jane angrily. \"He has more goodness than you will ever know!\"\n\nThe telephone rang and Acheron interrupted her with a wave of his hand. It was Delamare, speaking from a phone box in Swindon. He was reading from The Mole's classified section.\n\n\"Lop-eared rabbits will be available soon to good homes,\" he quoted down the line. Hades smiled and replaced the receiver. The authorities, he thought, were playing ball after all. He motioned to Felix8, who followed him out of the room, dragging a recalcitrant Jane with him.\n\nBowden and I had forced a window in the dark bowels of the hotel and found ourselves in the old kitchen: a damp and dilapidated room packed with large food preparation equipment.\n\n\"Where now?\" hissed Bowden.\n\n\"Upstairs\u2014I would expect them to be in a ballroom or something.\"\n\nI snapped on a flashlight and looked at the hastily sketched plans. Searching for the real blueprints would have been too risky with Goliath watching our every move, so Victor had drawn the basic layout of the building from memory. I pushed open a swing door and we found ourselves on the lower ground floor. Above us was the entrance lobby. By the glimmer of the streetlights that shone through the dirty windows we made our way carefully up the water-stained marble staircase. We were close; I could sense it. I pulled out my automatic and Bowden did the same. I looked up into the lobby. A brass bust of Y Brawd Ulyanov sat in pride of place in the large entrance hall opposite the sealed main doors. To the left was the entrance to the bar and restaurant, and to the right was the old reception desk; above us the grand staircase swept upstairs to the two ballrooms. Bowden tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. The doors to the main lounge were ajar, and a thin sliver of orange light shone from within. We were about to make a move when we heard footsteps from above. We pushed ourselves into the shadows and waited, breath bated. From the upstairs floor a small procession of people walked down the broad marble staircase. Leading the way was a man I recognized as Felix8; he held a candelabra aloft with one hand and clasped a small woman by the wrist with the other. She was dressed in Victorian night-clothes and had a greatcoat draped across her shoulders. Her face, although resolute, also spoke of despair and hopelessness. Behind her was a man who cast no shadows in the flickering light of the candles\u2014Hades.\n\nWe watched as they entered the smoking lounge. We quickly tiptoed across the hall floor and found ourselves at the ornate door. I counted to three and we burst in.\n\n\"Thursday! My dear girl, how predictable!\"\n\nI stared. Hades was sitting in a large armchair, smiling at us. Mycroft and Jane were looking dejected on a chaise longue with Felix8 behind them holding two machine pistols trained on Bowden and me. In front of them all was the Prose Portal. I cursed myself for being so stupid. I could sense Hades was here; did I suppose he could not do the same with me?\n\n\"Drop your weapons, please,\" said Felix8. He was too close to Mycroft and Jane to risk a shot; the last time we met he had died as I watched. I said the first thing that popped into my head.\n\n\"Haven't I seen your face somewhere before?\"\n\nHe ignored me.\n\n\"Your guns, please.\"\n\n\"And let you shoot us like dodos? No way. We're keeping them.\"\n\nFelix8 didn't move. Our weapons were by our side and his were pointing straight at us. It wouldn't be much of a contest.\n\n\"You seem surprised that I was expecting you,\" said Hades with a slight smile.\n\n\"You could say that.\"\n\n\"The stakes have changed, Miss Next. I thought my ten million ransom was a lot of money but I was approached by someone who would give me ten times that for your uncle's machine alone.\"\n\nMycroft shuffled unhappily. He had long ago ceased to complain, knowing it to be useless. He now looked forward only to the short visits he was permitted to Polly.\n\n\"If that is the case,\" I said slowly, \"then you can return Jane to the book.\"\n\nHades thought for a minute.\n\n\"Why not? But first, I want you to meet someone.\"\n\nA door opened to the left of us and Jack Schitt walked in. He was flanked by three of his men and they were all carrying plasma rifles. The situation, I noted, was on the whole less than favorable. I muttered an apology to Bowden then said:\n\n\"Goliath? Here, in Wales?\"\n\n\"No doors are closed to the Corporation, Miss Next. We come and go as we please.\"\n\nSchitt sat down on a faded red upholstered chair and pulled out a cigar.\n\n\"Siding with criminals, Mr. Schitt? Is that what Goliath does these days?\"\n\n\"It's a relativist argument, Miss Next\u2014desperate situations require desperate measures. I wouldn't expect you to understand. But listen, we have a great deal of money at our disposal and Acheron is willing to be generous in the use of Mr. Next's notable invention.\"\n\n\"And that is?\"\n\n\"Ever seen one of these?\" asked Schitt, waving the stubby weapon he held at us both.\n\n\"It's a plasma rifle.\"\n\n\"Correct. A one-man portable piece of field artillery, firing supercharged quanta of pure energy. It will cut through a foot of armor plate at a hundred yards; I think you will agree it is the high ground for land forces anywhere.\"\n\n\"If Goliath can deliver\u2014\" put in Bowden.\n\n\"It's a mite more complicated than that, Officer Cable,\" replied Schitt. \"You see\u2014it doesn't work. Almost a billion dollars of funding and the bloody thing doesn't work. Worse than that, it has recently been proved that it will never work; this sort of technology is quite impossible.\"\n\n\"But the Crimea is on the brink of war!\" I exclaimed angrily. \"What happens when the Russians realize that the new technology is all bluff?\"\n\n\"But they won't,\" replied Schitt. \"The technology might be impossible out here but it isn't impossible in there.\"\n\nHe patted the large book that was the Prose Portal and looked at Mycroft's genetically engineered bookworms. They were on rest & recuperation at present in their goldfish bowl; they had just digested a recent meal of prepositions and were happily farting out apostrophes and ampersands; the air was heav'y with th'em&. Schitt held up a book whose title was clearly visible. It read: The Plasma Rifle in War. I looked at Mycroft, who nodded miserably.\n\n\"That's right, Mis's Next.\"\n\nSchitt smiled & tapped the cover with the back of his hand.\n\n\"In he're the Pla'sma Rifle work's perf&ectly. All we ha've to do is open' the book with the Pros'e Portal, bring out the we'apons & is'sue them. It' \"s the ultimate weapon, Mis's' Next.\"\n\nBut he wasn't referring to the plasma rifle. He was pointing to the Prose Portal. The bookworms responded by belching out large quantities of unnecessary capitalizations.\n\n\"Any'thing That The Hu'man Imag'ination Can Think Up, We Can Reproduce. I Look At The Port'al as Les's Of A Gateway To A Million World's, But More Like A Three Dim'ensional P'hotocopier. With It We Can Ma'ke Anything We Want; Even Another Portal\u2014a H&held Version. Chri'stmas Every Day, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"More Death In The Cr'imea; I Ho'pe You Can Sleep W'ell At Night, Schitt.\"\n\n\"On The Co'ntrary, Miss' Next. Russia Will Roll Over & Piss' Over Itself When It Witnesse's The Power Of Stonk. The Czar Will Permanently Cede The Peninsula To England; a New Riviera, Won't That be nice?\"\n\n\"Nice? Sun Lounger's & High-Rise Hotel's? Built On L& That Will Be Dem&ed Back Half a Century From Now? You're Not S'olving Anything, Schitt, Merely Delaying It. When The Russian's Have a Plasma Rifle Of Their Own, Then What?\"\n\nJack Schitt was unrepentant.\n\n\"Oh, Don't Worry About That, Miss Next, I'll Charge The'm Twice What I'll Charge The Eng'lish Gov'ernment!\"\n\n\"Hear, Hear!\" put in Hades, who was deeply impressed by Schitt's total absence of scruples so far.\n\n\"A Hundred Million' Dollars Fo'r The Portal, Thursday,\" added Hades excitedly, \"& a 50% Cut On Every'thing That' Comes Out Of It!\"\n\n\"A Lackey For The Goliath Corpor'ation, Acheron? That Doesn't Sound Like You At All.\"\n\nHades' cheek quivered but he fought it, answering:\n\n\"Out Of Small Acorn's, Thur'sday...\"\n\nSchitt looked at him suspiciously. He nodded to one of his men, who levelled a small anti-tank gun at Hades.\n\n\"Hade's, The Instructio'n Manual.\"\n\n\"Please!\" pleaded Mycroft. \"You're Upsetting The Wor'ms! They're Starting to hy-phe-nate!\"\n\n\"Shut-up, Mycroft,\" snapped Schitt. \"Ha-de's, please, The InStruc-tion Man-ual.\"\n\n\"Man-ual, My De'ar Chap?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Hade's. Ev-en You Will Not be Im-Pervious To My Associate's Small Artillery Piece. You Have Mycroft's Manual For The Por-tal & The Po-em In Which You Have Im-pris-oned Mrs. Next. Give-Them-To-Me.\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Schitt. Give Me The Gun\u2014\"\n\nBut Schitt didn't flicker; the power that had stolen Snood and countless other people's reason had no effect on Schitt's dark soul. Hades' face fell. He had not come across someone like Schitt before; not since the first Felix, anyhow. He laughed.\n\n\"You Dare To Dou-ble\u2014Cross-Me?\"\n\n\"Sure I Do. If I Did-n't You'd Have No Res'-pect From Me & That's No Basis' For A Workable Partner-ship.\"\n\nHades dodged in front of the Prose Portal.\n\n\"& To Think We Were All Get-ti'ng A-long So Well, Too\u2014!\" he exclaimed, placing the original manuscript of Jane Eyre back into the machine and adding the bookworms, who settled down, stopped farting, belching and hyphenating and got to work.\n\n\"Really!\" continued Hades. \"I expected better from you, I must say. I almost thought I had found someone who could be a partner.\"\n\n\"But you'd want it all, Hades,\" replied Schitt. \"Sooner or later and most probably sooner.\"\n\n\"True, very true.\"\n\nHades nodded to Felix8 who immediately started shooting. Bowden and I were directly in his line of fire; there was no way he could miss. My heart leaped but strangely the first bullet slowed and stopped in midair three inches from my chest. It was the initial volley of a deadly procession that snaked lazily all the way back to Felix8's weapon, its muzzle now a frozen chrysanthemum of fire. I looked across at Bowden, who was also in line for a slug; the shiny bullet had stopped a foot from his head. But he was not stirring. Indeed, the whole room was not stirring. My father, for once, had arrived at precisely the right moment.\n\n\"Have I come at a bad time?\" asked Dad, looking up from where he was sitting at the dusty grand piano. \"I can go away again if you want.\"\n\n\"N-no, Dad, this is good, real good,\" I muttered.\n\nI looked around the room. My father never stayed for longer than five minutes, and when he left the bullets would almost certainly carry onto their intended victim. My eyes alighted on a heavy table and I upended it, sending dust, debris and empty Leek-U-Like containers to the floor.\n\n\"Have you ever heard of someone named Winston Churchill?\" asked my father.\n\n\"No; who's he?\" I gasped as I heaved the heavy oak table in front of Bowden.\n\n\"Ah!\" said my father, making a note in a small book. \"Well, he was meant to lead England in the last war but I think he was killed in a fall as a teenager. It's most awkward.\"\n\n\"Another victim of the French revisionists?\"\n\nMy father didn't answer. His attention had switched to the middle of the room, where Hades was working on the Prose Portal. Time, for men like Hades, rarely stood still.\n\n\"Oh, don't mind me!\" said Hades as a shaft of light opened up in the gloom. \"I'm just going to step inside until all this unpleasantness is over. I have the instruction manual and Polly, so we can still bargain.\"\n\n\"Who's that?\" asked my father.\n\n\"Acheron Hades.\"\n\n\"Is it? I expected someone shorter.\"\n\nBut Hades had gone; the Prose Portal buzzed slightly and then closed after him.\n\n\"I've got some repairs to do,\" announced my father, getting up and closing his notebook. \"Time waits for no man, as we say.\"\n\nI just had time to duck behind a large bureau as the world started up again. The hail of lead from Felix8 struck the heavy oak table I had maneuvered in front of Bowden, and the bullets that had been destined for me thudded into the wooden door behind where I had been standing. Within the space of two seconds the room was full of gunfire as the Goliath operatives joined in, covering Jack Schitt, who, perplexed that Hades had vanished in midsentence, was now beating a retreat to the door leading to the old Atlantic Grill. Mycroft threw himself to the floor followed closely by Jane as dust and debris were scattered about the room. I bellowed into Jane's ear to stay where she was as a shot came perilously close to our heads, knocking some molding off the furniture and showering us with dust. I crawled around to where I could see Bowden exchanging shots with Felix8, who was now trapped behind an upended mock-Georgian table next to the entrance of the Palm Court Tea Rooms. I had just loosed off a few shots at Goliath's men, who had rapidly dragged Schitt from the room, when the firing stopped as quickly as it had begun. I reloaded.\n\n\"Felix8!\" I shouted. \"You can still surrender! Your real name is Danny Chance. I promise you we will do all we can to\u2014\"\n\nThere was a strange gurgling noise and I peeked around the back of the sofa. I thought Felix8 had been wounded but he hadn't. He was laughing. His usually expressionless face was convulsed with mirth. Bowden and I exchanged quizzical looks\u2014but we stayed hidden.\n\n\"What's so funny?\" I yelled.\n\n\"Haven't I seen your face somewhere before!\" he giggled. \"I get it now!\"\n\nHe raised his gun and fired repeatedly at us as he backed out of the lounge doors and into the darkness of the lobby outside. He had sensed his master's escape and had no more work to do here.\n\n\"Where's Hades?\" said Bowden.\n\n\"In Jane Eyre,\" I replied, standing up. \"Cover the portal\u2014 and if he returns, use this.\"\n\nI handed him the anti-tank weapon as Schitt, alerted to the end of the gunfire, returned. He appeared at the door to the bar.\n\n\"Hades?\"\n\n\"In Jane Eyre with the instruction manual.\"\n\nSchitt told me to surrender the Prose Portal to him.\n\n\"Without the instruction manual you've got nothing,\" I said. \"Once I have Hades out of Thornfield and have returned my aunt to Mycroft you can have the manual. There is no other deal; that's it. I'm taking Jane back with me now.\"\n\nI turned to my uncle.\n\n\"Mycroft, send us back to just before Jane comes out of her room to put out the fire in Rochester's bedroom. It will be as if she had never left. When I want to come back I'll send a signal. Can you do that?\"\n\nSchitt threw up his arms. \"What sweet madness is this?\" he cried.\n\n\"That's the signal,\" I said, \"the words 'sweet madness.' As soon as you hear them, open the door immediately.\"\n\n\"Are you sure you know what you're doing?\" asked Bowden as I helped Jane to her feet.\n\n\"Never been more certain. Just don't turn the machine off; much as I enjoy the book I've no desire to stay there forever.\"\n\nSchitt bit his lip. He had been outmaneuvered. His hand, such as it was, would have to be played upon my return.\n\nI checked that my gun was still loaded, took a deep breath and nodded to Jane, who smiled back eagerly. We grasped each other's hands tightly and stepped through the doorway."
            },
            {
                "title": "Thornfield Hall",
                "text": "\u2002It wasn't how I imagined it. I thought Thornfield Hall would be bigger and more luxuriously furnished. There was a strong smell of polish and the air was chill in the upstairs corridor. There was barely any light in the house and the corridors seemed to stretch away into inky blackness. It was dour and unappealing. I noticed all this but most of all I noticed the quiet; the quiet of a world free from flying machines, traffic and large cities. The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nI staggered slightly as we made the jump; there had been a bright flash of light and a short blast of static. I found myself in the master bedroom corridor, a few lines above where Hobbes had taken Jane out. The fire was ablaze and Jane took her cue instinctively, opening the door and leaping into Rochester's room to pour a ewer full of water over the burning covers. I looked quickly around the dark corridor but of Hades there was no sign; at the far end I could just see Grace Poole escorting Bertha to her attic room. The madwoman looked back over her shoulder and smiled crazily. Grace Poole followed her gaze and glared disapprovingly at me. I suddenly felt very alien; this world was not mine and I didn't belong here. I stepped back as Jane rushed out of Rochester's room to fetch some more water; upon her face, I noted, was a look of great relief. I smiled and permitted myself a peek inside the bedroom. Jane had managed to extinguish the fire and Rochester was swearing at finding himself in a pool of water.\n\n\"Is there a flood?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, sir,\" she replied, \"but there has been a fire. Get up, do; you are quenched now. I will fetch you a candle.\"\n\nRochester caught sight of me at the door and winked before rapidly returning his features to a look of consternation.\n\n\"In the name of all the elves in Christendom,\" he asked, his eyes glistening at her return, \"is that Jane Eyre? What have you done with me...\"\n\nI stepped outside the door, confident in the knowledge that back home the book would be starting to rewrite itself across the page. The reference to the \"agent in black\" would be overwritten and with luck, and Hades willing, things could get back to normal. I picked up the candle that had been left on the mat and relit it as Jane came out, smiled her thanks, took it from me and returned to the bedroom. I walked down the corridor, looked at a particularly fine Landseer painting and sat down upon a Regency chair, one of a pair. Although the house was not big, it afforded all sorts of hiding places for Acheron. I spoke his name to let him know I was about and heard a door slam somewhere in the house. I pulled open a shutter and saw the unmistakable figure of Hades walking rapidly across the lawn by the light of the moon. I watched his form fade into the shadows. He would be as good as safe in the countryside but I still had the upper hand. I knew how to reopen the door and he didn't; I thought it unlikely he would harm me. I sat down again and was just thinking about Daisy Mutlar and Landen when I drifted off to sleep. I was jolted awake as the door to Rochester's bedroom opened and the figure of Edward emerged. He was holding a candle and spoke to Jane at the door.\n\n\"...I must pay a visit to the third story. Don't move, remember, or call anyone.\"\n\nHe padded softly down the corridor and hissed: \"Miss Next, are you there?\"\n\nI stood up.\n\n\"Here, sir.\"\n\nRochester took me by the arm and led me along the gallery and onto the landing above the stairs. He stopped, placed the candle on a low table and clasped both my hands in his.\n\n\"I thank you, Miss Next, from the bottom of my heart! It has been a living hell of torment; not knowing when or even if my beloved Jane would return!\"\n\nHe spoke with keen and very real passion; I wondered if Landen had ever loved me as much as Rochester loved Jane.\n\n\"It was the least I could do, Mr. Rochester,\" I responded happily, \"after your kind attention to my wounds that night outside the warehouse.\"\n\nHe dismissed my words with a wave of his hand.\n\n\"You are returning straight away?\"\n\nI looked down.\n\n\"It's not quite as easy as that, sir. There is another interloper in this book aside from me.\"\n\nRochester strode to the balustrade. He spoke without turning around.\n\n\"It's him, isn't it?\"\n\n\"You have met him?\" I asked, surprised.\n\n\"He has several names. You have a plan?\"\n\nI explained the use of a signal and made it clear that it would be safer for me to remain at Thornfield until the book had run its course. Then I would take Hades with me\u2014somehow.\n\n\"The end of the book,\" murmured Rochester unhappily. \"How I hate the ending. The thought of my sweet Jane traveling to India with that poltroon St. John Rivers makes my blood turn to ice.\" He bolstered himself. \"But I have at least a few months of real happiness before that time. Come, you must be hungry.\" He walked off down the corridor and beckoned me to follow, talking as he went.\n\n\"I suggest we try and trap him when Jane has left after\u2014\" he shivered slightly at the thought of it. \"\u2014the wedding. We will be quite alone as Jane takes the narrative with her to Moor House and those fatuous cousins. I am not featured again in the book, so we may do as we please, and I am best disposed to be of assistance. However, as you have guessed, you must do nothing that might disturb Jane; this novel is written in the first person. I can get away to speak with you when I am, to all intents and purposes, out of the story. But you must promise me that you will stay out of Jane's way. I will speak to Mrs. Fairfax and Adele privately; they will understand. The servants Mary and John will do whatever I tell them.\"\n\nWe had arrived at a door and Rochester knocked impatiently. There was a groaning and a thump and presently a very disheveled character appeared at the door.\n\n\"Mrs. Fairfax,\" said Rochester, \"this is Miss Next. She will be staying with us for a month or two. I want you to fetch her some food and have a bed made ready; she has traveled far to be here and I think she needs sustenance and rest. It would please me if you were not to discuss her presence with anyone, and I would be grateful if you could engineer that Miss Next and Miss Eyre do not meet. I hardly need to stress the importance of this to you.\"\n\nMrs. Fairfax looked me up and down, was particularly intrigued and shocked at the same time by my ponytail and jeans, and then nodded and led me off toward the dining room.\n\n\"We will speak again tomorrow, Miss Next,\" said Rochester, a smile breaking out on his troubled face. \"And I thank you once again.\"\n\nHe turned and left me to Mrs. Fairfax, who bustled downstairs. The housekeeper told me to wait in the dining room while she brought me something to eat. She returned shortly with some cold cuts of meat and some bread. I ate hungrily as Pilot\u2014who I thought had been let in when Hades went out\u2014 sniffed at my trouser leg and wagged his tail excitedly.\n\n\"He remembers you,\" remarked Mrs. Fairfax slowly, \"yet I have been working here for many years and I do not recall having laid eyes upon you before.\"\n\nI tickled Pilot's ear.\n\n\"I threw a stick for him once. When he was out with his master.\"\n\n\"I see,\" replied Mrs. Fairfax, suspiciously. \"And how do you know Mr. Rochester?\"\n\n\"I, ah, met the Rochesters in Madeira. I knew his brother.\"\n\n\"I see. Very tragic.\" Her eyes narrowed. \"Then you know the Masons?\"\n\n\"Not well.\"\n\nShe had been eyeing my jeans again.\n\n\"Women wear breeches where you come from?\"\n\n\"Often, Mrs. Fairfax.\"\n\n\"And where is it that you come from? London?\"\n\n\"Farther than that.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Mrs. Fairfax with a knowing smile. \"Osaka!\"\n\nShe bustled out, leaving me alone with Pilot, having made me promise that I would not feed him from the table. She returned ten minutes later with a tray of tea things, then left me for another half hour to make up a room. She led me up to a second-story chamber with a fine view out of the front of the house. I had insisted that Pilot stay with me, and he slept against the locked door, somehow sensing the possible danger that his new mistress might be in. I slept fitfully and dreamed of Hades laughing at me.\n\nAs I slept, Victor and the others back at the Swindon Litera Tec office had been celebrating the return of the narrative to the novel. Apart from a brief mention of Mrs. Fairfax making noises on the night of the bedroom fire, it was all pretty much as anyone remembered it. A member of the Bront\u00eb Federation had been called in to examine the text as it wrote itself across the last two hundred pages, which up until this moment had been blank. The Bront\u00eb scholar knew the book by heart and his pleased expression gave them no cause for complaint.\n\nI woke to the sound of Pilot scratching on the door to be let out. I quietly unlocked it and peeped out. I could see Jane bustling down the corridor and quickly shut the door and looked at my watch. It was barely 6 A.M. and only a few of the domestic staff were awake. I waited a couple of minutes, let Pilot out and then followed, cautious lest I bumped into Jane. The morning was spent with almost everyone in the house setting Rochester's room to rights, so after breakfast I was about to make my way out of the house when Mrs. Fairfax stopped me.\n\n\"Miss Next,\" announced the housekeeper, \"Mr. Rochester has explained to me about the events of the past week and I wanted to add my thanks to his.\"\n\nShe said it without emotion but I was in no doubt that she meant it. She added:\n\n\"He has instructed me to have the house guarded against agents who would wish Miss Eyre harm.\"\n\nI looked out of the window; from where we stood I could see an estate worker standing on sentry duty with a large pickax handle. As we watched he glanced into the house and scurried out of sight. A few moments later Jane herself walked out of the door, looked about her, took a deep breath in the crisp morning air, and then went back inside. After a few moments the estate worker reappeared and took up his post once more.\n\n\"Miss Eyre must never know we are watching and guarding her,\" said Mrs. Fairfax severely.\n\n\"I understand.\"\n\nMrs. Fairfax nodded and looked at me critically.\n\n\"Do women go about with their heads uncovered where you come from?\"\n\n\"Frequently.\"\n\n\"It isn't the accepted thing here,\" she said reproachfully. \"Come with me and I shall make you presentable.\"\n\nMrs. Fairfax took me to her own room and gave me a bonnet to wear along with a thick black cloak that covered me to my feet. I thanked her and Mrs. Fairfax bobbed courteously.\n\n\"Is Mr. Rochester at home today?\" I asked.\n\n\"He has gone to make arrangements. I understand he went to Mr. Eshton's place; there is quite a party going on. Colonel Dent will be there as well as Lord Ingram. I don't expect him back for a week.\"\n\n\"With all that is going on here, do you think it is wise?\"\n\nMrs. Fairfax looked at me as though I were an infant.\n\n\"You don't understand, do you? After the fire Mr. Rochester goes away for a week. That's how it happens.\"\n\nI wanted to ask more but the housekeeper excused herself and I was left alone. I collected my thoughts, smoothed the cloak and went outside to walk around the house, checking that everything was secure. All the estate workers nodded to me respectfully as I passed, each of them armed with a weapon of some sort. Hoping that none of them would have to face him, I walked across the lawn in the direction that Hades had taken the previous night. I was just passing the large beeches near the ha-ha when a familiar voice made me turn.\n\n\"Do we stand a chance against him?\"\n\nIt was Rochester. He was standing behind one of the large tree trunks, looking at me with grave concern etched upon his face.\n\n\"Every chance, sir,\" I responded. \"Without me he is trapped here; if he wants to return he has to negotiate.\"\n\n\"And where is he?\"\n\n\"I was going to try the town. Aren't you meant to be at Mr. Eshton's?\"\n\n\"I wanted to speak to you before I left. You will do all you can, won't you?\"\n\nI assured him that I would do everything in my power and then set off for the town.\n\nMillcote was a good-sized town. I made my way to the center, where I found a church, a stagecoach stop, three inns, a bank, two draper's, a bagged-goods merchant and assorted other trades. It was market day and the town was busy. No one gave me a second glance as I walked through the stalls, which were piled high with winter produce and game. Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real. The first hostelry I chanced across was The George. Since it was actually named in the book I supposed it might offer the best chance.\n\nI entered and asked the innkeeper whether a man of large stature had taken a room at the inn that morning. The landlord proclaimed that he had not but added that his was not the only inn in the town. I thanked him and walked to the door, but was arrested by the incongruous sound of a camera shutter. I slowly turned around. Behind me was a Japanese couple, dressed in period costume but with one of them holding a large Nikon camera. The woman hastily tried to conceal the blatant anachronism and started to drag the man out of the door.\n\n\"Wait!\"\n\nThey stopped and looked nervously at one other.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" I asked incredulously.\n\n\"Visiting from Osaka,\" affirmed the woman, at which the man\u2014he seemed not to speak English\u2014nodded his head vigorously and started to consult a Bront\u00eb guidebook written in Japanese.\n\n\"How?\u2014\"\n\n\"My name is Mrs. Nakijima,\" announced the woman, \"and this is Mr. Suzuki.\"\n\nThe man grinned at me and shook my hand excitedly.\n\n\"This is crazy!\" I said angrily. \"Are you trying to tell me that you two are tourists?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" admitted Mrs. Nakijima, \"I make the jump once a year and bring a visitor with me. We touch nothing and never speak to Miss Eyre. As you can see, we are dressed fittingly.\"\n\n\"Japanese? In mid-nineteenth-century England?\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\nWhy not indeed.\n\n\"How do you manage it?\"\n\nThe woman shrugged.\n\n\"I just can,\" she answered simply. \"I think hard, speak the lines and, well, here I am.\"\n\nI didn't have time for this at all.\n\n\"Listen to me. My name is Thursday Next. I work with Victor Analogy at the Litera Tec office in Swindon. You heard about the theft of the manuscript?\"\n\nShe nodded her head.\n\n\"There is a dark presence in this book but my plan to extract him is dependent on there being only one way in and one way out. He will stop at nothing to use you to get out if he can. I implore you to jump back home while you still can.\"\n\nMrs. Nakijima consulted for some time with her client. She explained that Mr. Suzuki was hoping to see Jane if possible, but that if he were taken back now he would want a refund. I reiterated my position on the matter and they eventually agreed. I followed them to their room upstairs and waited while they packed. Mrs. Nakijima and Mr. Suzuki both shook me by the hand, held onto each other and evaporated. I shook my head sadly. It seemed there were very few places that the tourist business hadn't touched.\n\nI left the warmth of the inn for the chill exterior and made my way past a stall selling late root vegetables and onto The Millcote, where I inquired about any new guests.\n\n\"And who would be wanting to see Mr. Hedge?\" inquired the innkeeper, spitting into and then polishing a crude beer mug.\n\n\"Tell him Miss Next is here to see him.\"\n\nThe innkeeper vanished upstairs and returned presently.\n\n\"Room seven,\" he replied shortly, and returned to his duties.\n\nAcheron was sitting by the window, his back to the door. He didn't move when I entered.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Mr. Hedge?\"\n\n\"Locals in mid-nineteenth-century England are a superstitious lot. I thought Hades might seem a little strong for them.\"\n\nHe turned to face me, his piercing blue eyes seeming to look straight into me. But his power over me had waned; he could not read me as he had others. He sensed this immediately, gave a half-smile and resumed staring out of the window.\n\n\"You grow strong, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"I thrive on adversity.\"\n\nHe gave a short laugh.\n\n\"I should have made quite sure of you back at Styx's apartment.\"\n\n\"And spoiled all the fun? Your life would be considerably more dull without me and the rest of SpecOps to louse it up.\"\n\nHe ignored me and changed the subject.\n\n\"Someone as resourceful as you would never have come in here without a way out. What is it, Thursday? A prearranged code to let Mycroft know when to open the door?\"\n\n\"Something like that. If you give me the instruction manual and Polly I promise you shall have a fair trial.\"\n\nHades laughed.\n\n\"I think I am way beyond a fair trial, Thursday. I could kill you now and I feel a strong urge to do precisely that, but the prospect of being trapped in this narrative for all time bars me from that action. I tried to get to London but it's impossible; the only towns that exist in this world are the places that Charlotte Bront\u00eb wrote about and which feature in the narrative. Gateshead, Lowood\u2014I'm surprised that there is even as much of this town. Give me the code word to get out and you can have the manual and Polly.\"\n\n\"No. You give me the manual and my aunt first.\"\n\n\"You see? Impasse. You'll want to wait until the book is written again, though, won't you?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Then you will expect no trouble from me until such time as Jane leaves Thornfield for good. After that, we negotiate.\"\n\n\"I won't negotiate, Hades.\"\n\nHades shook his head slowly.\n\n\"You'll negotiate, Miss Next. You may be disgustingly righteous but even you will balk at spending the rest of your life in here. You're an intelligent woman; I'm sure you'll think of something.\"\n\nI sighed and walked back outside, where the bustle of the shoppers and traders was a welcome break from the dark soul of Hades."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Book Is Written",
                "text": "From our position in the lounge of the Penderyn Hotel we could see Thursday's good work. The narrative continued rapidly; weeks passed in the space of a few lines. As the words wrote themselves back across the page they were read aloud by Mycroft or myself. We were all waiting for the phrase \"sweet madness\" to appear in the text, but it didn't. We prepared ourselves to assume the worst; that Hades was not caught and might never be. That Thursday might stay in the book as some sort of permanent caretaker.\n\n[ From Bowden Cable's journal ]\n\nTHE WEEKS passed rapidly at Thornfield and I busied myself with the task of making Jane secure without her ever knowing it. I had a young lad positioned at the Millcote to warn of Hades' movements, but he seemed quite happy just to go out walking every morning, borrow books from the local doctor, and spend his time at the inn. His inaction was a cause of some worry, but I was glad it was merely that for the time being.\n\nRochester had sent a note advising of his return and a party was arranged for local friends of his. Jane seemed to be severely agitated by the arrival of the airhead Blanche Ingram, but I gave it little heed. I was busy trying to arrange security with John, the cook's husband, who was a resourceful and intelligent man. I had taught him to shoot with Rochester's pistols and he was, I was delighted to find out, an excellent shot. I had thought that Hades might make an appearance with one of the guests but, apart from the arrival of Mr. Mason from the West Indies, nothing out of the ordinary occurred.\n\nThe weeks turned into months and I saw little of Jane\u2014on purpose, of course\u2014but kept in contact with the household and Mr. Rochester to make sure that all was going well. And it appeared that all was going well. As usual, Mr. Mason was bitten by his mad sister in the upper room; I was standing outside the locked door when Rochester went for the doctor and Jane tended to Mason's wounds. When the doctor arrived I kept watch in the arbor outside, where I knew Jane and Rochester would meet. And so it went on until a brief respite when Jane went away to visit her dying aunt in Gateshead. Rochester had decided to marry Blanche Ingram by this time and things had been slightly tense between him and Jane. I felt some relief that she was away; I could relax and talk to Rochester quite easily without Jane suspecting anything.\n\n\"You aren't sleeping,\" observed Rochester as we walked together on the front lawn. \"Look how your eyes are dark-rimmed and languorous.\"\n\n\"I don't sleep well here, not while Hades is barely five miles distant.\"\n\n\"Your spies, surely, would alert you to any movement of his?\"\n\nIt was true; the network worked well, although not without some considerable expenditure on Rochester's part. If Hades set off anywhere I knew about it within two minutes from a rider who stood by for just such an occasion. It was in this manner that I was able to find him when he was out, either walking or reading or beating peasants with his stick. He had never come within a mile of the house, and I was happy to keep it that way.\n\n\"My spies afford me peace of mind, but I still can't believe that Hades could be so passive. It chills and worries me.\"\n\nWe walked on for a while, Rochester pointing out places of interest to me around the grounds. But I was not listening.\n\n\"How did you come to me, that night outside the warehouse, when I was shot?\"\n\nRochester stopped and looked at me.\n\n\"It just happened, Miss Next. I can't explain it anymore than you can explain arriving here when you were a little girl. Apart from Mrs. Nakijima and a traveler named Foyle, I don't know of anyone else who has done it.\"\n\nI was surprised at this.\n\n\"You have met Mrs. Nakijima, then?\"\n\n\"Of course. I usually do tours of Thornfield for her guests when Jane is up at Gateshead. It carries no risk and is extremely lucrative. Country houses are not cheap to run, Miss Next, even in this century.\"\n\nI allowed myself a smile. I thought that Mrs. Nakijima must be making a very sizeable profit; it was, after all, the ultimate trip for a Bront\u00eb fan, and there were plenty of those in Japan.\n\n\"What will you do after this?\" asked Rochester, pointing out a rabbit to Pilot, who barked and ran off.\n\n\"Back to SpecOps work, I guess,\" I replied. \"What about you?\"\n\nRochester looked at me broodingly, his eyebrows furrowed and a look of anger rising across his features.\n\n\"There is nothing for me after Jane leaves with that slimy and pathetic excuse for a vertebrate, St. John Rivers.\"\n\n\"So what will you do?\"\n\n\"Do? I won't do anything. Existence pretty much ceases for me about then.\"\n\n\"Death?\"\n\n\"Not as such,\" replied Rochester, choosing his words carefully. \"Where you come from you are born, you live and then you die. Am I correct?\"\n\n\"More or less.\"\n\n\"A pretty poor way of living, I should imagine!\" laughed Rochester. \"And you rely upon that inward eye we call a memory to sustain yourself in times of depression, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Most of the time,\" I replied, \"although memory is but one hundredth of the strength of currently felt emotions.\"\n\n\"I concur. Here, I neither am born, nor die. I come into being at the age of thirty-eight and wink out again soon after, having fallen in love for the first time in my life and then lost the object of my adoration, my being!...\"\n\nHe stopped and picked up the stick that Pilot had considerately brought him in place of the rabbit he couldn't catch.\n\n\"You see, I can move myself to anywhere in the book I wish at a moment's notice and back again at will; the greatest parts of my life lie between the time I profess my true love to that fine, impish girl and the moment the lawyer and that fool Mason turn up to spoil my wedding and reveal the madwoman in the attic. Those are the weeks to which I return most often, but I go to the bad times too\u2014for without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted. Sometimes I muse that I might have John stop them at the church gate and stall them until the wedding is over, but it is against the way of things.\"\n\n\"So while I am talking to you here\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014I am also meeting Jane for the first time, wooing her, then losing her forever. I can even see you now, as a small child, your expression of fear under the hooves of my horse\u2014\"\n\nHe felt his elbow.\n\n\"And feel the pain of the fall, too. So you see, my existence, although limited, is not without benefits.\"\n\nI sighed. If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad\u2014\n\n\"You have a man you love?\" asked Rochester suddenly.\n\n\"Yes; but there is much bad air between us. He accused my brother of a crime that I thought unfair to lay upon the shoulders of a dead man; my brother never had a chance to defend himself and the evidence was not strong. I find it hard to forgive.\"\n\n\"What is there to forgive?\" demanded Rochester. \"Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.\"\n\n\"Alas!\" I countered. \"He is engaged to be married!\"\n\n\"And what of that?\" scoffed Rochester. \"Probably to someone as unsuitable for him as Blanche Ingram is for me!\"\n\nI thought about Daisy Mutlar and there did, indeed, seem to be a strong similarity.\n\nWe walked along together in silence until Rochester pulled out a pocket watch and consulted it.\n\n\"My Jane is returning from Gateshead as we speak. Where is my pencil and notebook?\"\n\nHe rummaged within his jacket and produced a bound drawing-book and a pencil.\n\n\"I am to meet her as if by accident; she walks across the fields shortly in this direction. How do I look?\"\n\nI straightened his necktie and nodded my satisfaction.\n\n\"Do you think me handsome, Miss Next?\" he asked quite suddenly.\n\n\"No,\" I answered truthfully.\n\n\"Bah!\" exclaimed Rochester. \"Pixies both! Begone with you; we will talk later!\"\n\nI left them to it and walked back to the house by way of the lake, deep in thought.\n\nAnd so the weeks wore on, the air becoming warmer and the buds starting to shoot on the trees. I hardly saw anything of Rochester or Jane, as they had eyes only for each other. Mrs. Fairfax was not highly impressed by the union but I told her not to be so unreasonable. She flustered like an old hen at this remark and went about her business. The routine of Thornfield didn't waver from normalcy for the next few months; the season moved into summer and I was there on the day of the wedding, invited specifically by Rochester and hidden in the vestry. I saw the clergyman, a large man named Mr. Wood, ask whether anyone knew of an impediment that might prevent the wedding being lawful or joined by God. I heard the solicitor call out his terrible secret. Rochester, I could see, was beside himself with rage as Briggs read out the affidavit from Mason to declare that the madwoman was Bertha Rochester, Mason's sister and Rochester's legal wife. I remained in hiding as the argument ensued, emerging only when the small group was led over to the house by Rochester to meet his mad wife. I didn't follow; I went for a walk, breathing in the fresh air and avoiding the sadness and anguish in the house as Rochester and Jane realized they could not marry.\n\nBy the following day Jane was gone. I followed at a safe distance to see her take the road to Whitcross, looking like a small stray searching for a better life elsewhere. I watched her until she was out of sight and then walked into Millcote for lunch. Once I had finished my meal at The George I played cards with three traveling gamblers; by suppertime I had taken six guineas off them. As I played, a small boy appeared at our table.\n\n\"Hello, William!\" I said. \"What news?\"\n\nI bent down to the height of the waif, who was dressed in adult-sized hand-me-downs that had been sewn up to fit.\n\n\"Begging your pardon, Miss Next, but Mr. Hedge has vanished.\"\n\nI leaped up in some alarm, broke into a run and didn't stop until I arrived at The Millcote. I flew upstairs to the landing, where one of my most trusted spies was tugging at his flat cap nervously. Hades' room was empty.\n\n\"I'm sorry, miss. I was in the bar downstairs, not drinking, mind; I swear to it. He must have slipped past me\u2014\"\n\n\"Did anyone else come down the stairs, Daniel? Tell me quick!\"\n\n\"No one. No one save the old lady...\"\n\nI took the horse from one of my riders and was at Thornfield in double-quick time. Neither of the guards at the doors had seen anything of Hades. I entered and found Edward in the morning room, toasting himself from a bottle of brandy. He raised his glass as I entered.\n\n\"She's gone, hasn't she?\" he asked.\n\n\"She has.\"\n\n\"Damnation! Curse the circumstances that allowed me to be trapped into the wedding with that half-wit and curse my brother and father for entreating such a union!\"\n\nHe fell into a chair and stared at the floor.\n\n\"Your work is done here?\" he asked me resignedly.\n\n\"I think so, yes. I have only to find Hades and I can be off.\"\n\n\"Is he not at The Millcote?\"\n\n\"Not any longer.\"\n\n\"But you expect to capture him?\"\n\n\"I do; he seems weakened here.\"\n\n\"Then you had better tell me your password. Time may not be on our side when the moment comes. Forewarned is forearmed.\"\n\n\"True,\" I conceded. \"To open the portal, you have to say\u2014\"\n\nBut at that moment the front door slammed, a gust of wind disturbed some papers, and a familiar footfall rang out on the tiles in the hall. I froze and looked across at Rochester who was staring into his glass.\n\n\"The code word?\u2014\"\n\nI heard a voice calling to Pilot. It had the deep bass resonance of the master of the house.\n\n\"Blast!\" murmured Hades as he melted from his disguise as Rochester and leaped at the wall in a flash, bursting through the lath and plaster as though it were rice paper. By the time I had made my way to the hallway outside he had gone; vanished somewhere deep into the house. Rochester joined me as I listened intently up the stairs, but no sound reached us. Edward guessed what had happened and quickly mustered his estate workers. Within twenty minutes he had them guarding the outside of the house, under strict orders to fire upon anyone who tried to escape without giving a prearranged password. This done, we returned to the library and Rochester drew out a set of pistols and loaded each carefully. He looked uneasily at my Browning automatic as he placed two percussion caps atop the nipples of the pistols and replaced the hammers.\n\n\"Bullets just make him mad,\" I told him.\n\n\"You have a better idea?\"\n\nI said nothing.\n\n\"Then you had better follow me. The sooner this menace is out of my book the better!\"\n\nAll except Grace Poole and the madwoman had been removed from the house, and Mrs. Poole had been entreated not to open the door to anyone until the morning on any account, not even to Mr. Rochester. Rochester and I started at the library and moved through to the dining room and then the afternoon reception room. After this we searched the morning reception room and then the ballroom. All were empty. We returned to the staircase where we had placed John and Mathew, who both swore no one had passed them. Night had descended by this time; the men who stood guard had been given torches and their meager light flickered in the hall. The stairs and paneling of the house were of a dark wood which reflected light poorly; the belly of a whale would have been brighter. We reached the top of the stairs and looked left and right, but the house was dark and I cursed myself for not bringing a good flashlight. As if in answer to my thoughts a gust of wind blew out the candles and somewhere ahead a door banged. My heart missed a beat and Rochester muttered an oath as he stumbled into an oak chest. I quickly relit the candelabrum. In the warm glow we could see each other's timorous faces, and Rochester, realizing that my face was a reflection of his own, steeled himself to the task ahead and shouted:\n\n\"Coward! Show yourself!\"\n\nThere was a loud concussion and a bright orange flash as Rochester fired off a shot in the direction of the staircase leading to the upper rooms.\n\n\"There! There he goes, like a rabbit; I fancy I winged him too!\"\n\nWe hurried to the spot but there was no blood; merely the heavy lead ball embedded in the banister rail.\n\n\"We have him!\" exclaimed Rochester. \"There is no escape from up here except the roof and no way down without risking his neck on the guttering!\"\n\nWe climbed the stairs and found ourselves in the upper corridor. The windows were larger up here but even so the interior was still insufferably gloomy. We stopped abruptly. Halfway down the corridor, standing in the shadows and with his face lit by the light of a single candle, was Hades. Running and hiding were not his style at all. He was holding the lighted candle close to a rolled-up piece of paper that I knew could only be the Wordsworth poem in which my aunt was imprisoned.\n\n\"The code word, if you will, Miss Next!\"\n\n\"Never!\"\n\nHe placed the candle closer to the paper and smiled at me.\n\n\"The code word, please!\"\n\nBut his smile became an expression of agony; he let out a wild cry and the candle and poem fell to the ground. He turned slowly to reveal the cause of his pain. There, on his back and clinging on with grim determination, was Mrs. Rochester, the madwoman from Jamaica. She cackled maniacally and twisted a pair of scissors that she had buried between Hades' shoulder blades. He cried out once again and fell to his knees as the flame from the lit candle set fire to the layers of wax polish that had built up on a bureau. The flames greedily enveloped the piece of furniture and Rochester pulled some curtains down in order to smother them. But Hades was up again, his strength renewed: The scissors had been withdrawn. He swiped at Rochester and caught him on the chin; Edward reeled and fell heavily to the floor. A manic glee seemed to overcome Acheron as he took a spirit lamp from the sideboard and hurled it to the end of the corridor; it burst into flames and ignited some wall hangings. He turned on the madwoman, who went for him in a blur of flailing limbs. She deftly whipped Mycroft's battered instruction booklet from Hades' pocket, gave a demonic and triumphant cry and then ran off.\n\n\"Yield, Hades!\" I yelled, firing off two shots. Acheron staggered with the force of the slugs but recovered quickly and ran after Bertha and the book. I picked up the precious poem and coughed in the thick smoke that had started to fill the corridor. The drapes were now well alight. I dragged Rochester to his feet. We ran after Hades, noticing as we did so that other fires had been started by Acheron in his pursuit of the instruction manual and the insane Creole. We caught up with them in a large back bedroom. It seemed as good a moment as any to open the portal; already the bed was ablaze and Hades and Bertha were playing a bizarre game of cat-and-mouse with her holding the booklet and brandishing the scissors at him, something he seemed to be genuinely fearful of.\n\n\"Say the words!\" I said to Rochester.\n\n\"And they are?\"\n\n\"Sweet madness!\"\n\nRochester yelled them. Nothing. He yelled them even louder. Still nothing. I had made a mistake. Jane Eyre was written in the first-person narrative. Whatever was being read by Bowden and Mycroft back home was what Jane was experiencing\u2014anything that happened to us didn't appear in the book and never would. I hadn't thought of this.\n\n\"Now what?\" asked Rochester.\n\n\"I don't know. Look out!!\"\n\nBertha made a wild lunge at us both and ran out of the door, swiftly followed by Hades, who was so intent on regaining the instruction manual that the two of us seemed of secondary importance. We followed them down the corridor, but the stairwell was now a wall of flame and the heat and smoke pushed us back. Coughing and with eyes streaming, Bertha escaped onto the roof with Hades, myself and Rochester not far behind. The cool air was welcome after the smoky interior of Thornfield. Bertha led us all down onto the lead roof of the ballroom. We could see that the fire had spread downstairs, the heavily polished furniture and floors giving the hungry flames plenty of nourishment; within a few minutes the large and tinder-dry house would be an inferno.\n\nThe madwoman was dancing a languid dance in her night-clothes; a dim memory, perhaps, from the time when she was a lady, and a far cry from the sad and pathetic existence she now endured. She growled like a caged animal and threatened Hades with the scissors as he cursed and entreated the return of the booklet, which she waved at him in a mocking fashion. Rochester and I watched, the shattering of windows and the crackle of the fire punctuating the silence of the night.\n\nRochester, annoyed at having nothing to do and tiring of watching his wife and Hades dance the danse macabre, loosed off the second pistol and hit Hades in the small of the back. Hades turned, unhurt but enraged. He drew his own gun and fired several shots in return as Rochester and I leaped behind a chimney stack. Bertha took full advantage of the opportunity and plunged the scissors deep into Hades' arm. He yelled in pain and terror and dropped his gun. Bertha danced happily around him, cackling wildly, as Hades fell to his knees.\n\nA groan made me turn. One of Acheron's shots had passed straight through Rochester's palm. He pulled out his handkerchief and I helped him wrap it around his shattered hand.\n\nI looked up again as Hades knocked the scissors from his arm; they flew through the air and landed close by. Powerful again and as angry as a lion, he leaped upon Bertha, held her tightly by the throat and retrieved the booklet. He then picked her up and held her high above his head, she all the while uttering a demented yell that managed to drown out the sound of the fire. For a moment they were silhouetted against the flames that even now licked up against the night sky, then Hades took two quick steps to the parapet and threw Bertha over, her yell only silenced by the dull thud as she hit the ground three stories below. He stepped back from the parapet and turned to us with eyes blazing.\n\n\"Sweet madness, eh?\" He laughed. \"Jane is with her cousins; the narrative is with her. And I have the manual!\"\n\nHe waved it at me, deposited it in his pocket and picked up his gun.\n\n\"Who's first?\"\n\nI fired but Hades clapped his open hand on the approaching bullet. He opened his fist; the slug was flattened into a small lead disc. He smiled and a shower of sparks flew up behind him. I fired again and he caught the slug once more. The slide on my automatic parked itself in the rearward position, empty and ready for the next clip. I had one but I didn't think it would make much difference. The inevitable presented itself: I'd had a good run, survived him more than any other living person and done all that was humanly possible. But luck doesn't always walk in your favor\u2014mine had just run out.\n\nHades smiled at me.\n\n\"Timing is everything, Miss Next. I have the password, the manual, and the upper hand. The waiting game, as you can see, paid off.\"\n\nHe looked at me with a triumphant expression.\n\n\"It may come as some consolation that I planned to bestow upon you the honor of being Felix9. I will remember you always as my greatest adversary; I salute you for it. And you were right\u2014you never did negotiate.\"\n\nI wasn't listening. I was thinking about Tamworth, Snood and the rest of Hades' victims. I looked across at Rochester, who was cradling his blood-soaked hand; the fight had gone out of him.\n\n\"The Crimea will make us a fortune,\" went on Hades. \"How much profit can we make on each plasma rifle? Five hundred pounds? A thousand? Ten thousand?\"\n\nI thought of my brother in the Crimea. He had called for me to come back for him, but I never did. My APC was hit by an artillery shell as I returned. I had to be forcibly restrained from taking another vehicle and returning to the battlefield. I never saw him again. I had never forgiven myself for leaving him.\n\nHades was still rambling, and I found myself almost wishing that he'd get on with it. Death, after all I had been through, suddenly seemed like a very comfortable option. At the height of any battle some say that there is a quietness where one can think calmly and easily, the trauma of the surroundings screened off by the heavy curtain of shock. I was about to die, and only one seemingly banal question came to mind: Why on earth did Bertha's scissors have such a detrimental effect on Hades? I looked up at Acheron, who was mouthing words that I could not hear. I stood up and he fired. He was merely playing with me and the bullet flew wide\u2014I didn't even blink. The scissors were the key; they had been made of silver. I reached into my trouser pocket for the silver bullet that Spike had given me. Acheron, vain and arrogant, was wasting time with pompous self-congratulation. He would pay dearly for the error. I slipped the shiny slug into my automatic and released the slide. It chambered the around smoothly, I aimed, pulled the trigger and saw something pluck at his chest. For a moment nothing happened. Then Acheron stopped talking and put his hand to where the round had hit home. He brought his fingers up to his face and looked at them with shocked surprise; he was used to having blood on his hands\u2014but never his own. He turned to me, started to say something but then staggered for a moment before pitching heavily forward onto his face and moving no more. Acheron Hades, third-most evil man on the planet, was finally dead, killed on the roof of Thornfield Hall and mourned by no one.\n\nThere was little time to ponder Hades' demise; the flames were growing higher. I took Mycroft's manual and then pulled Rochester to his feet. We made our way to the parapet; the roof had grown hot and we could feel the beams beneath our feet starting to flex and buckle, causing the lead roof to ripple as though it were alive. We looked over but there was no way down. Rochester grasped my hand and ran along the roof to another window. He smashed it open and a blast of hot air made us duck.\n\n\"Servants' staircase!\" he coughed. \"This way!\"\n\nRochester knew the way through the dark and smoky corridor by feel, and I followed him obediently, clutching his jacket tails to stop myself getting lost. We arrived at the top of the servants' staircase; the fire didn't seem to be as strong here and Rochester led me down the steps. We were halfway down when a fireball flared up in the kitchen and sent a mass of fire and hot gases through the corridor and up the staircase. I saw a huge red glow erupt in front of me as the stairway gave way beneath us. After that, blackness."
            },
            {
                "title": "Nearly the End of Their Book",
                "text": "We waited for Thursday's call, the code word, but it didn't come. I read the narrative carefully, looking for some clue as to what had happened to her. I had suspected that Thursday might decide to stay if it was impossible to capture Hades. The denouement was drawing near; Jane would go to India and the book would end. Once that had happened we could switch the machine off. Thursday and Polly would be lost forever.\n\n[ From Bowden Cable's journal ]\n\nIOPENED my eyes, frowned, and looked around. I was in a small yet well-furnished room quite close to a half-open window. Across the lawn some tall poplars swayed in the breeze, but I didn't recognize the view; this was not Thornfield. The door opened and Mary walked in.\n\n\"Miss Next!\" she said kindly. \"What a fright you gave us!\"\n\n\"Have I been unconscious long?\"\n\n\"Three days. A very bad concussion, Dr. Carter said.\"\n\n\"Where?\u2014\"\n\n\"You're at Ferndean, Miss Next,\" replied Mary soothingly, \"one of Mr. Rochester's other properties. You will be weak; I'll bring some broth.\"\n\nI grabbed her arm.\n\n\"And Mr. Rochester?\"\n\nShe paused and smiled at me, patted my hand and said she would fetch the broth.\n\nI lay back, thinking about the night Thornfield burned. Poor Bertha Rochester. Had she realized that she had saved our lives by her fortuitous choice of weapons? Perhaps, somewhere in her addled mind, she was in tune with the abomination that had been Hades. I would never know, but I thanked her anyway.\n\nWithin a week I was able to get up and move about, although I still suffered badly from headaches and dizziness. I learned that after the servants' staircase had collapsed I had been knocked unconscious. Rochester, in great pain himself, had wrapped me in a curtain and dashed with me from the burning house. He had been hit by a falling beam in the attempt and was blinded; the hand shattered by Acheron's bullet had been amputated the morning following the fire. I met with him in the darkness of the dining room.\n\n\"Are you in much pain, sir?\" I asked, looking at the bedraggled figure; he still had bandaged eyes.\n\n\"Luckily, no,\" he lied, wincing as he moved.\n\n\"Thank you; you have saved my life for a second time.\"\n\nHe gave a wan smile.\n\n\"You returned my Jane to me. For those few months of happiness, I would suffer twice these wounds. But let us not speak of my wretched state. You are well?\"\n\n\"Thanks to you.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, but how will you return? I expect Jane is already in India by now with that gutless pantaloon Rivers; and with her goes the narrative. I don't see your friends being able to rescue you.\"\n\n\"I will think of something,\" I said, patting him on the sleeve. \"You never know what the future will bring.\"\n\nIt was the morning of the following day; my months in the book had passed in as much time as it takes to read them. The Welsh Politburo, alerted to the wrongdoings on their doorstep, had given Victor, Finisterre and a member of the Bront\u00eb Federation a safe conduct to the moldering Penderyn Hotel, where they now stood with Bowden, Mycroft and an increasingly nervous Jack Schitt. The representative of the Bront\u00eb Federation was reading the words as they appeared on the yellowed manuscript in front of him. Aside from a few minor changes, the book was traveling the same course it always did; it had been word perfect for the past two hours. Jane was being proposed to by St. John Rivers, who wanted her to go with him to India as his wife, and she was about to make up her mind.\n\nMycroft drummed his fingers on the desk and glanced at the rows of flicking dials on his contraption; all he needed was somewhere to open the door. Trouble was, they were fast running out of pages.\n\nThen, the miraculous happened. The Bront\u00eb Federation expert, a small, usually unexcitable man named Plink, was suddenly ignited by shock.\n\n\"Wait a minute; this is new! This didn't happen!\"\n\n\"What?\" cried Victor, rapidly flicking to his own copy. Indeed, Mr. Plink was correct. There, as the words etched themselves across the paper, was a new development in the narrative. After Jane promised St. John Rivers that if it was God's will that they should be married, then they would, there was a voice\u2014a new voice, Rochester's voice, calling to her across the ether. But from where? It was a question that was being asked simultaneously by nearly eighty million people worldwide, all following the new story unfolding in front of their eyes.\n\n\"What does it mean?\" asked Victor.\n\n\"I don't know,\" replied Plink. \"It's pure Charlotte Bront\u00eb but it definitely wasn't there before!\"\n\n\"Thursday,\" murmured Victor. \"It has to be. Mycroft, stay on your toes!\"\n\nThey read delightedly as Jane changed her mind about India and St. John Rivers and decided to return to Thornfield.\n\nI made it back to Ferndean and Rochester just before Jane did. I met Rochester in the dining room and told him the news; how I had found her at the Riverses' house, gone to her window and barked: \"Jane, Jane, Jane!\" in a hoarse whisper the way that Rochester did. It wasn't a good impersonation but it did the trick. I saw Jane start to fluster and pack almost immediately. Rochester seemed less than excited about the news.\n\n\"I don't know whether I should thank you or curse you, Miss Next. To think that I should be seen like this, a blind man with one good arm. And Thornfield a ruin! She shall hate me, I know it!\"\n\n\"You are wrong, Mr. Rochester. And if you know Jane as well as I think you do, you would not even begin to entertain such thoughts!\"\n\nThere was a rap at the door. It was Mary. She announced that Rochester had a visitor but that they would not give their name.\n\n\"Oh Lord!\" exclaimed Rochester. \"It's her! Tell me, Miss Next, could she love me? Like this, I mean?\"\n\nI leaned across and kissed his forehead.\n\n\"Of course she could. Anyone could. Mary, refuse her entry; if I know her she will enter anyway. Goodbye, Mr. Rochester. I can think of no way to thank you, so I shall just say that you and Jane will be in my thoughts always.\"\n\nRochester moved his head, trying to gauge where I was by sound alone. He put out his hand and held mine tightly. He was warm to the touch, yet soft. Thoughts of Landen entered my mind.\n\n\"Farewell, Miss Next! You have a great heart; do not let it go to waste. You have one who loves you and whom you love yourself. Choose happiness!\"\n\nI slipped quickly out into the adjoining room as Jane entered. I quietly latched the door as Rochester did a fine job of pretending that he didn't know who she was.\n\n\"Give me the water, Mary,\" I heard him say. There was a rustle and then I heard Pilot padding about.\n\n\"What is the matter?\" asked Rochester in his most annoyed and gruff expression. I stifled a giggle.\n\n\"Down, Pilot!\" said Jane. The dog was quiet and there was a pause.\n\n\"This is you, Mary, is it not?\" asked Rochester.\n\n\"Mary is in the kitchen,\" replied Jane.\n\nI pulled the now battered manual out of my pocket with the slightly charred poem. I still had Jack Schitt to contend with, but that would have to wait. I sat down on a chair as an exclamation from Rochester made its way through the door:\n\n\"Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?\"\n\nI strained to hear the conversation.\n\n\"Pilot knows me,\" returned Jane happily, \"and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this afternoon!\"\n\n\"Great God!\" exclaimed Rochester. \"What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?\"\n\nI whispered: \"Thank you, Edward,\" as the portal opened in the corner of the room. I took one last look around at a place to which I would never return, and stepped through.\n\nThere was a flash and a blast of static, Ferndean Manor was gone, and in its place I saw the familiar surroundings of the shabby lounge of the Penderyn Hotel. Bowden, Mycroft and Victor all rushed forward to greet me. I handed the manual and poem to Mycroft, who swiftly set about opening the door to \"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.\"\n\n\"Hades?\" asked Victor.\n\n\"Dead.\"\n\n\"Completely?\"\n\n\"Utterly.\"\n\nIn a few moments the Prose Portal reopened and Mycroft rushed inside, returning shortly afterward clutching Polly by the hand; she was holding a bunch of daffodils and trying to explain something.\n\n\"We were just talking, Crofty, my love! You don't think I would be interested in a dead poet, do you?\"\n\n\"My turn,\" said Jack Schitt excitedly, waving his copy of The Plasma Rifle in War. He placed it with the bookworms and signaled to Mycroft to open the portal. As soon as the worms had done their work Mycroft did as he was bid. Schitt grinned and reached through the shimmering white doorway, feeling around for one of the plasma rifles that had been so well described in the book. Bowden had other ideas. He gave him a small shove and Jack Schitt disappeared through the doorway with a yell. Bowden nodded at Mycroft, who pulled the plug; the machine fell silent, the gateway to the book severed. It was bad timing on Jack Schitt's part. In his eagerness to get his hands on the rifle he had not made sure his Goliath officers were with him. By the time the two guards had returned, Bowden was assisting Mycroft in smashing the Prose Portal after carefully transferring the bookworms and returning the original manuscript of Jane Eyre\u2014the ending now slightly altered\u2014 to the Bront\u00eb Federation.\n\n\"Where's Colonel Schitt?\" asked the first officer.\n\nVictor shrugged.\n\n\"He went away. Something to do with plasma rifles.\"\n\nThe Goliath officers would have asked more questions but the Welsh foreign secretary himself had arrived and announced that since the matter was now resolved we would be escorted from the Republic. The Goliath operatives started to argue but were soon ushered from the room by several members of the Welsh Republican Army, who were definitely not impressed by their threats.\n\nWe were driven in the presidential limousine out of Merthyr and dropped in Abertawe. The Bront\u00eb Federation representative was icily quiet during the entire trip\u2014I sensed he wasn't that happy about the new ending. When we got to the town I gave them the slip, ran to my car and hastily drove back to Swindon, Rochester's words ringing in my ears. Landen's marriage to Daisy was happening at three that afternoon and I was sure as hell going to be there."
            },
            {
                "title": "Nearly the End of OurBook",
                "text": "\u2002I had disrupted Jane Eyre quite considerably; my cry of \"Jane, Jane, Jane!\" at her window had altered the book for good. It was against my training, against everything that I had sworn to uphold. I didn't see it as anything more than a simple act of contrition for what I felt was my responsibility over Rochester's wounds and the burning of Thornfield. I had acted out of compassion, not duty, and sometimes that is no bad thing.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, private diaries\n\nAt five past three I screeched to a halt outside the Church of Our Blessed Lady of the Lobsters, much to the surprise of the photographer and the driver of a large Hispano-Suiza that was parked in readiness for the happy couple. I took a deep breath, paused to gather my thoughts and, shaking slightly, walked up the steps to the main doors. The organ music was playing loudly and my pace, which up to that point had been a run, suddenly slowed as my nerve abandoned me. What the hell was I playing at? Did I think I had any real chance of appearing from nowhere after a ten-year absence and then expecting the man I was once in love with just to drop everything and marry me?\n\n\"Oh yes,\" said a woman to her companion as they walked past me, \"Landen and Daisy are so much in love!\"\n\nMy walk slowed to a snail's pace as I found myself hoping to be too late and have the burden of decision taken from me. The church was full, and I slid unnoticed into the back, just next to the lobster-shaped font. I could see Landen and Daisy at the front, attended to by a small bevy of pages and bridesmaids. There were many uniformed guests in the small church, friends of Landen's from the Crimea. I could see someone whom I took to be Daisy's mother sniveling into her handkerchief and her father looking impatiently at his watch. On Landen's side his mother was on her own.\n\n\"I require and charge you both,\" the clergyman was saying, \"that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.\"\n\nHe paused, and several guests shuffled. Mr. Mutlar, whose lack of chin had been amply compensated by increased girth in his neck, seemed ill at ease and looked about the church nervously. The clergyman turned to Landen and opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so there came a loud, clear voice from the back of the church:\n\n\"The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment!\"\n\nOne hundred and fifty heads turned to see who the speaker was. One of Landen's friends laughed out loud; he obviously thought it was a joke. The speaker's countenance did not, however, look as though any humor was intended. Daisy's father was having none of it. Landen was a good catch for his daughter and a small and tasteless joke was not going to delay her wedding.\n\n\"Proceed!\" he said, his face like thunder.\n\nThe clergyman looked at the speaker, then at Daisy and Landen, and finally at Mr. Mutlar.\n\n\"I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted and evidence of its truth or falsehood,\" he said with a pained expression; nothing like this had ever happened to him before.\n\nMr. Mutlar had turned an unhealthy shade of crimson and might have struck the speaker had he been close enough.\n\n\"What is this nonsense?\" he shouted instead, setting the room buzzing.\n\n\"Not nonsense, sir,\" replied the speaker in a clear voice. \"Bigamy is hardly nonsense, I think, sir.\"\n\nI stared at Landen, who looked confused at the turn of events. Was he married already? I couldn't believe it. I looked back at the speaker and my heart missed a beat. It was Mr. Briggs, the solicitor I had last seen in the church at Thornfield! There was a rustle close by and I turned to find Mrs. Nakijima standing next to me. She smiled and raised a finger to her lips. I frowned, and the clergyman spoke again.\n\n\"What is the nature of this impediment? Perhaps it may be got over\u2014explained away?\"\n\n\"Hardly,\" was the answer. \"I have called it insuperable and I speak advisedly. It consists simply of a previous marriage.\"\n\nLanden and Daisy looked at one another sharply.\n\n\"Who the hell are you?\" asked Mr. Mutlar, who seemed to be the only person galvanized into action.\n\n\"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of Dash Street, London.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Briggs, perhaps you would be good enough to explain the previous marriage of Mr. Parke-Laine so we may all know the extent of this man's cowardly action.\"\n\nBriggs looked at Mr. Mutlar and then at the couple at the altar.\n\n\"My information does not concern Mr. Parke-Laine; I am speaking of Miss Mutlar, or, to give her her married name, Mrs. Daisy Posh!\"\n\nThere was a gasp from the congregation. Landen looked at Daisy, who threw her garland on the floor. One of the bridesmaids started to cry, and Mr. Mutlar strode forward and took Daisy's arm.\n\n\"Miss Mutlar married Mr. Murray Posh on October 20, 1981,\" yelled Mr. Briggs above the uproar. \"The service was held at Southwark. There was no divorce petition filed.\"\n\nIt was enough for everyone. A clamor started up as the Mutlar family beat a hasty retreat. The vicar offered an unheard-of prayer to no one in particular as Landen took a much needed seat on the pew that the Mutlar family had just vacated. Someone yelled \"gold digger!\" from the back, and the Mutlar family quickened their pace at the abuse that followed, much of which shouldn't have been heard in church. One of the pages tried to kiss a bridesmaid in the confusion and was slapped for his trouble. I leaned against the cool stone of the church and wiped the tears from my eyes. I know it was wrong of me, but I was laughing. Briggs stepped through the arguing guests and joined us, tipping his hat respectfully.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"A very good afternoon, Mr. Briggs! What on earth are you doing here?\"\n\n\"The Rochesters sent me.\"\n\n\"But I only left the book three hours ago!\"\n\nMrs. Nakijima interrupted.\n\n\"You left it barely twelve pages from the end. In that time over ten years have elapsed at Thornfield; time enough for much planning!\"\n\n\"Thornfield?\"\n\n\"Rebuilt, yes. My husband retired and he and I manage the house these days. None of us is mentioned in the book and Mrs. Rochester aims to keep it that way; much more pleasant than Osaka and certainly more rewarding than the tourist business.\"\n\nThere didn't seem much I could say.\n\n\"Mrs. Jane Rochester asked Mrs. Nakijima to bring me here to assist,\" said Mr. Briggs simply. \"She and Mr. Rochester were eager to help you as you helped them. They wish you all happiness and health for the future and thank you for your timely intervention.\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"How are they?\"\n\n\"Oh, they're fine, miss,\" replied Briggs happily. \"Their firstborn is now five; a fine healthy boy, the image of his father. Jane produced a beautiful daughter this spring gone past. They have named her Helen Thursday Rochester.\"\n\nI looked across at Landen, who was standing at the entrance to the church and trying to explain to his Aunt Ethel what was going on.\n\n\"I must speak to him.\"\n\nBut I was talking to myself. Mrs. Nakijima and the solicitor had gone; melted back to Thornfield to report to Jane and Edward on a job well done.\n\nAs I approached, Landen sat on the church steps, took out his carnation and sniffed at it absently.\n\n\"Hello, Landen.\"\n\nLanden looked up and blinked.\n\n\"Ah,\" he said, \"Thursday. I might have known.\"\n\n\"May I join you?\"\n\n\"Be my guest.\"\n\nI sat down next to him on the warm limestone steps. He stared straight ahead.\n\n\"Was this your doing?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"No, indeed,\" I replied. \"I confess I came here to interrupt the wedding but my nerve failed me.\"\n\nHe looked at me.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Why? Well, because... because I thought I'd make a better Mrs. Parke-Laine than Daisy, I suppose.\"\n\n\"I know that,\" exclaimed Landen, \"and agree wholeheartedly. What I wanted to know is why your nerve failed you. After all, you chase after master criminals, indulge in high-risk SpecOps work, will quite happily go against orders to rescue comrades under an intense artillery barrage, yet\u2014\"\n\n\"I get the point. I don't know. Maybe those sorts of yes-or-no life-and-death decisions are easier to make because they are so black and white. I can cope with them because it's easier. Human emotions, well... they're just a fathomless collection of grays and I don't do so well on the midtones.\"\n\n\"Midtones is where I've lived for the past ten years, Thursday.\"\n\n\"I know and I'm sorry. I had a lot of trouble reconciling what I felt for you and what I saw as your betrayal of Anton. It was an emotional tug-of-war and I was the little pocket handkerchief in the middle, tied to the rope, not moving.\"\n\n\"I loved him too, Thursday. He was the closest thing to a brother that I ever had. But I couldn't hang onto my end of the rope forever.\"\n\n\"I left something behind in the Crimea,\" I murmured, \"but I think I've found it again. Is there time to try and make it all work?\"\n\n\"Bit eleventh-hour, isn't it?\" he said with a grin.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"more like three seconds to midnight!\"\n\nHe kissed me gently on the lips. It felt warm and satisfying, like coming home to a roaring log fire after a long walk in the rain. My eyes welled up and I sobbed quietly into his collar as he held me tightly.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said the vicar, who had been lurking close by. \"I'm sorry to have to interrupt, but I have another wedding to perform at three-thirty.\"\n\nWe muttered our apologies and stood up. The wedding guests were still waiting for some sort of decision. Nearly all of them knew about Landen and me and few, if any, thought Daisy a better match.\n\n\"Will you?\" asked Landen in my ear.\n\n\"Will I what?\" I asked, stifling a giggle.\n\n\"Fool! Will you marry me?\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" I replied, heart thumping like the artillery in the Crimea. \"I'll have to think about it!\u2014\"\n\nLanden raised a quizzical eyebrow.\n\n\"Yes! Yes, yes! I will, I will, with all my heart!\"\n\n\"At last!\" said Landen with a sigh. \"The lengths I have to go to to get the woman I love!...\"\n\nWe kissed again but for longer this time; so long in fact that the vicar, still staring at his watch, had to tap Landen on the shoulder.\n\n\"Thank you for the rehearsal,\" said Landen, shaking the vicar vigorously by the hand. \"We'll be back in a month's time for the real thing!\"\n\nThe vicar shrugged. This was fast becoming the most ludicrous wedding of his career.\n\n\"Friends,\" announced Landen to the remaining guests, \"I would like to announce the engagement of myself to this lovely SpecOps agent named Thursday Next. As you know, she and I have had our differences in the past but they are now quite forgotten. There is a marquee at my house stuffed with food and drink and I understand Holroyd Wilson will be playing from six o'clock onward. It would be a crime to waste it all so I suggest we just change the reason!\"\n\nThere was an excited yell from the guests as they started to organize transport for themselves. Landen and I went in my car but we drove the long way round. We had plenty to talk about and the party... well, it could continue without us for a while.\n\nThe celebrations didn't finish until 4 A.M. I drank too much and took a cab back to the hotel. Landen was all for me staying the night, but I told him slightly coquettishly that he could wait until after the wedding. I vaguely remember getting back to my hotel room but nothing else; it was blackness until the phone rang at nine the following morning. I was half dressed, Pickwick was watching breakfast TV, and my head ached like it was fit to burst.\n\nIt was Victor. He didn't sound in a terribly good mood but politeness was one of his stronger points. He asked me how I was.\n\nI looked at the alarm clock as a hammer banged inside my head.\n\n\"I've been better. How are things at work?\"\n\n\"Not brilliant,\" replied Victor with a certain reserve in his voice. \"The Goliath Corporation want to speak to you about Jack Schitt and the Bront\u00eb Federation are hopping mad over the damage to the book. Was it absolutely necessary to burn Thornfield to the ground?\"\n\n\"That was Hades\u2014\"\n\n\"And Rochester? Blinded and with a shattered hand? I suppose that was Hades too?\"\n\n\"Well, yes.\"\n\n\"This is the mother of all balls-ups, Thursday. You'd better come in and explain yourself to these Bront\u00eb people. I've got their Special Executive Committee with me and they are not here to pin a medal on your chest.\"\n\nThere was a knock at the door. I told Victor I would be in directly and got unsteadily to my feet.\n\n\"Hello?\" I called out.\n\n\"Room service!\" replied a voice outside the door. \"A Mr. Parke-Laine rang in some coffee for you!\"\n\n\"Hang on!\" I said as I tried to shoo Pickwick back into the bathroom; the hotel had strict rules about pets. Unusually for him he seemed slightly aggressive; if he had possessed any wings he would probably have flapped them angrily.\n\n\"This...is...no...time...to...be...a...pest!\" I grunted as I pushed the recalcitrant bird into the bathroom and locked the door.\n\nI held my head for a moment as it thumped painfully, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and opened the door. Big mistake. There was a waiter there but he wasn't alone. As soon as the door was fully open two other men in dark suits entered and pressed me against the wall with a gun to my head.\n\n\"You're going to need another two cups if you want to join me for coffee,\" I groaned.\n\n\"Very funny,\" said the man dressed as the waiter.\n\n\"Goliath?\"\n\n\"In one.\"\n\nHe pulled back the hammer on the revolver.\n\n\"Gloves are off, Next. Schitt is an important man and we need to know where he is. National security and the Crimea depend upon it and one lousy officer's life isn't worth diddly shit when you look at the big picture.\"\n\n\"I'll take you to him,\" I gasped, trying to give myself some breathing space. \"It's a little way out of town.\"\n\nThe Goliath agent relaxed his grip and told me to get dressed. A few minutes later we were walking out of the hotel. My head was still sore and a dull pain thumped in my temples, but at least I was thinking more clearly. There was a small crowd ahead of me, and I was delighted to see it was the Mutlar family preparing to return to London. Daisy was arguing with her father and Mrs. Mutlar was shaking her head wearily.\n\n\"Gold digger!\" I yelled.\n\nDaisy and her father stopped arguing and looked at me as the Goliath men tried to steer me past.\n\n\"What did you say!?\"\n\n\"You heard. I can't think who the bigger tart is, your daughter or your wife.\"\n\nIt had the desired effect. Mr. Mutlar turned an odd shade of crimson and threw a fist in my direction. I ducked and the blow struck one of the Goliath men fairly and squarely on the jaw. I bolted for the car park. A shot whistled over my shoulder; I jinked and stepped into the road as a big black military-style Ford motor car screeched to a halt.\n\n\"Get in!\" shouted the driver. I didn't need to be asked twice. I jumped in and the Ford sped off as two bullet holes appeared in the rear windshield. The car screeched around the corner and was soon out of range.\n\n\"Thanks,\" I murmured. \"Any later and I might have been worm food. Can you drop me at SpecOps HQ?\"\n\nThe driver didn't say anything; there was a glass partition between me and him and all of a sudden I had that out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire feeling.\n\n\"You can drop me anywhere,\" I said. He didn't answer. I tried the door handles but they were locked. I thumped on the glass but he ignored me; we drove past the SpecOps building and headed off to the old town. He was driving fast too. Twice he went through a red light and once he cut up a bus; I was thrown against the door as he flew around a corner, just missing a brewer's dray.\n\n\"Here, stop this car!\" I shouted, banging again on the glass partition. The driver simply accelerated, clipping another car as he took a corner a little too fast.\n\nI pulled hard at the door handles and was about to use my heels against the window when the car abruptly screeched to a halt; I slid off the seat and collapsed in a heap in the footwell. The driver got out, opened the door for me and said:\n\n\"There you go, missy, didn't want you to be late. Colonel Phelps's orders.\"\n\n\"Colonel Phelps?\" I stammered. The driver smiled and saluted briskly as the penny dropped. Phelps had said he would send a car for me to appear at his talk, and he had.\n\nI looked out of the door. We had pulled up outside Swindon Town Hall, and a vast crowd of people were staring at me.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday!\" said a familiar voice.\n\n\"Lydia?\" I asked, caught off guard by the sudden change of events.\n\nAnd so it was. But she wasn't the only TV news reporter; there were six or seven of them with their cameras trained on me as I sat sprawled inelegantly in the footwell. I struggled to get out of the car.\n\n\"This is Lydia Startright of the Toad News Network,\" said Lydia in her best reporter's voice, \"here with Thursday Next, the SpecOps agent responsible for saving Jane Eyre. First let me congratulate you, Miss Next, on your successful reconstruction of the novel!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I responded. \"I loused it all up! I burned Thornfield to the ground and half-maimed poor Mr. Rochester!\"\n\nMiss Startright laughed.\n\n\"In a recent survey ninety-nine out of a hundred readers who expressed a preference said they were delighted with the new ending. Jane and Rochester married! Isn't that wonderful?\"\n\n\"But the Bront\u00eb Federation\u2014?\"\n\n\"Charlotte didn't leave the book to them, Miss Next,\" said a man dressed in a linen suit who had a large blue Charlotte Bront\u00eb rosette stuck incongruously to his lapel.\n\n\"The federation are a bunch of stuffed shirts. Allow me to introduce myself. Walter Branwell, chairman of the federation splinter group 'Bront\u00eb for the People.'\"\n\nHe thrust out a hand for me to shake and grinned wildly as several people near by applauded. A battery of flashguns went off as a small girl handed me a bunch of flowers and another journalist asked me what sort of a person Rochester really was. The driver took my arm and guided me into the building.\n\n\"Colonel Phelps is waiting for you, Miss Next,\" murmured the man in an affable tone. The crowds parted as I was led into a large hall that was filled to capacity. I blinked stupidly and looked around. There was an excited buzz, and as I walked down the main aisle I could hear people whispering my name. There was an improvised press box in the old orchestra pit in which a sea of pressmen from all the major networks were seated. The meeting at Swindon had become the focus of the grassroots feeling about the war; what was said here would be highly significant. I made my way to the stage, where two tables had been set up. The two sides to the argument were clearly delineated. Colonel Phelps was sitting beneath a large English flag; his table was heavily festooned with bunting and several pot plants, flip-over pads and stacks of leaflets for ready distribution. With him were mostly uniformed members of the armed forces who had seen service on the peninsula. All of them were willing to speak vociferously about the importance of the Crimea. One of the soldiers was even carrying the new plasma rifle.\n\nAt the other end of the stage was the \"anti\" table. This too was liberally populated by veterans, but none of them wore uniforms. I recognized the two students from the airship park and my brother Joffy, who smiled and mouthed \"Wotcha, Doofus!\" at me. The crowd hushed; they had heard I was going to attend and had been awaiting my arrival.\n\nThe cameras followed me as I approached the steps to the stage and walked calmly up. Phelps rose to meet me, but I walked on and sat down at the \"anti\" table, taking the seat that one of the students had given up for me. Phelps was appalled; he went bright red, but checked himself when he saw that the cameras were watching his every move.\n\nLydia Startright had followed me onto the stage. She was there to adjudicate the meeting; it was she and Colonel Phelps who had insisted on waiting for me. Startright was glad they had; Phelps was not.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen,\" announced Lydia grandly, \"the negotiating table is empty at Budapest and the offensive lies waiting to happen. As a million troops face each other across no-man's-land, we ask the question: What price the Crimea?\"\n\nPhelps got up to speak but I beat him to it.\n\n\"I know it's an old joke,\" I began, \"but a simple anagram of 'Crimea' is 'A Crime.'\" I paused. \"That's the way I see it and I would defy anyone to say that it isn't. Even Colonel Phelps over there would agree with me that it's high time the Crimea was put to bed permanently.\"\n\nColonel Phelps nodded.\n\n\"Where the Colonel and I differ is my belief that Russia has the better claim to the territory.\"\n\nIt was a controversial remark; Phelps's supporters were well primed, and it took ten minutes to restore order. Startright quieted them all down and finally managed to get me to finish my point.\n\n\"There was a good chance for all this nonsense to end barely two months ago. England and Russia were around the table, discussing terms for a complete withdrawal of all English troops.\"\n\nThere was a hush. Phelps had leaned back in his chair and was watching me carefully.\n\n\"But then along came the plasma rifle. Code name: Stonk.\"\n\nI looked down for a moment.\n\n\"This Stonk was the key, the secret to a new offensive and the possible restart of the war that has\u2014thank God\u2014been relatively free of actual fighting these past eight years. But there's a problem. The offensive has been built on air; despite all that has been said and done, the plasma rifle is a phony\u2014Stonk does not work!\"\n\nThere was an excited murmuring in the chamber. Phelps stared at me sullenly, eyebrow twitching. He whispered something to a brigadier who was sitting next to him.\n\n\"The English troops are waiting for a new weapon that will not turn up. The Goliath Corporation have been playing the English government for a bunch of fools; despite a billion-pound investment, the plasma rifle is about as much use in the Crimea as a broom handle.\"\n\nI sat down. The significance of this was not lost on anyone either there or watching the program live; the English minister for war was at that moment reaching for his phone. He wanted to speak to the Russians before they did anything rash\u2014like attack.\n\nBack at the hall in Swindon, Colonel Phelps had stood up.\n\n\"Large claims from someone who is tragically ill informed,\" he intoned patronizingly. \"We have all seen the destructive power of Stonk and its effectiveness is hardly the reason for this talk.\"\n\n\"Prove it,\" I responded. \"I see you have a plasma rifle with you. Lead us outside to the park and show us. You can try it on me, if you so wish.\"\n\nPhelps paused, and in that pause he lost the argument\u2014and the war. He looked at the soldier carrying the weapon, who looked back at him nervously.\n\nPhelps and his people left the stage to barracking from the crowd. He had been hoping to give his carefully rehearsed hour-long lecture over the memory of the lost brethren and the value of comradeship; he never spoke in public again.\n\nWithin four hours a ceasefire had been called for the first time in 131 years. Within four weeks the politicians were around the table in Budapest. Within four months every single English soldier was out of the peninsula. As for the Goliath Corporation, they were soon called to account over their deceit. They expressed wholly unconvincing ignorance of the whole affair and laid the blame entirely on Jack Schitt. I had hoped the Corporation would be chastized further, but at least it got Goliath off my back."
            },
            {
                "title": "Married",
                "text": "\u2002Landen and I were married the same day as peace was declared in the Crimea. Landen told me it was to save on the fee for bell-ringers. I looked around nervously when the vicar got to the bit about \"Speak now or forever hold their peace\" but there was no one there. I met with the Bront\u00eb Federation and they soon got used to the idea of the new ending, especially when they realized that they were the only people who objected. I was sorry about Rochester's wounds and the burning down of his house, but I was very glad that he and Jane, after over a hundred years of dissatisfaction, finally found the true peace and happiness that they both so richly deserved.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nThe reception turned out to be bigger than we thought and by ten o'clock it had spilled out into Landen's garden. Boswell had got a little drunk so I popped him in a cab and sent him to the Finis. Paige Turner had been getting along well with the saxophonist\u2014no one had seen either of them for at least an hour. Landen and I were enjoying a quiet moment to ourselves. I squeezed his hand, and asked:\n\n\"Would you really have married Daisy if Briggs hadn't intervened?\"\n\n\"I've got those answers you wanted, Sweetpea!\"\n\n\"Dad?\"\n\nHe was attired in the full dress uniform of a colonel in the ChronoGuard.\n\n\"I've been thinking about what you said and I made a few enquiries.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Dad, I've got no idea what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"You remember, we spoke about two minutes ago?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nHe frowned and looked at us both in turn, then at his watch.\n\n\"Great Scott!\" he exclaimed. \"I must be early. Damn these chronographs!\"\n\nHe tapped the dial and left quickly without saying another word.\n\n\"Your father?\" asked Landen. \"I thought you said he was on the run?\"\n\n\"He was. He is. He will be. You know.\"\n\n\"Sweetpea!\" said my father again. \"Surprised to see me?\"\n\n\"In a manner of speaking.\"\n\n\"Congratulations to the two of you!\"\n\nI glanced around at the party still in full swing. Time was not standing still. It wouldn't be long before the ChronoGuard tracked him down.\n\n\"To hell with SO-12, Thursday!\" said he, divining my thoughts and taking a glass from a passing waiter. \"I wanted to meet my son-in-law.\"\n\nHe turned to Landen, grasped his hand and sized him up carefully.\n\n\"How are you, my boy? Have you had a vasectomy?\"\n\n\"Well, no,\" replied Landen, vaguely embarrassed.\n\n\"How about a heavy tackle playing rugby?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Kick from a horse in the nether regions?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What about a cricket ball in the goolies?\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"Good. Then we might get some grandchildren out of this fiasco. It's high time little Thursday here was popping out some sprogs instead of dashing around like some wild mountain piglet\u2014\" He paused. \"You're both looking at me very oddly.\"\n\n\"You were here not a minute ago.\"\n\nHe frowned, raised an eyebrow and looked about furtively.\n\n\"If it was me, and if I know me, I'd be hiding somewhere close by. Oh yes, look! Look there!\"\n\nHe pointed to a corner of the garden where a figure was hiding in the shadows behind the potting shed. He narrowed his eyes and thought through the most logical train of events.\n\n\"Let's see. I must have offered to do you a favor, done it and come back but a little out of time; not uncommon in my line of work.\"\n\n\"What favor would I have asked you to do?\" I ventured, still confused but more than willing to play along.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said my father. \"A burning question that has been much discussed over the years but has, so far, remained unanswered.\"\n\nI thought for a moment.\n\n\"How about the authorship of the Shakespeare plays?\"\n\nHe smiled. \"Good point. I'll see what I can do.\"\n\nHe finished his drink.\n\n\"Well, congratulations again to the two of you; I must be off. Time waits for no man, as we say.\"\n\nHe smiled, wished us every happiness for the future, and departed.\n\n\"Can you explain just what is going on?\" asked Landen, thoroughly confused, not so much by the events themselves as by the order in which they were happening.\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"Have I gone, Sweetpea?\" asked my father, who had returned from his hiding place behind the shed.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Good. Well, I found out what you wanted to know. I went to London in 1610 and found that Shakespeare was only an actor with a potentially embarrassing sideline as a purveyor of bagged commodities in Stratford. No wonder he kept it quiet\u2014 wouldn't you?\"\n\nThis was interesting indeed.\n\n\"So who wrote them? Marlowe? Bacon?\"\n\n\"No; there was a bit of a problem. You see, no one had even heard of the plays, much less written them.\"\n\nI didn't understand.\n\n\"What are you saying? There aren't any?\"\n\n\"That's exactly what I'm saying. They don't exist. They were never written. Not by him, not by anyone.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Landen, unwilling to take much more of this, \"but we saw Richard III only six weeks ago.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said my father. \"Time is out of joint big time. Obviously something had to be done. I took a copy of the complete works back with me and gave them to the actor Shakespeare in 1592 to distribute on a given timetable. Does that answer your question?\"\n\nI was still confused.\n\n\"So it wasn't Shakespeare who wrote the plays.\"\n\n\"Decidedly not!\" he agreed. \"Nor Marlowe, Oxford, De Vere, Bacon or any of the others.\"\n\n\"But that's not possible!\" exclaimed Landen.\n\n\"On the contrary,\" replied my father. \"Given the huge timescale of the cosmos, impossible things are commonplace. When you've lived as long as I have you'll know that absolutely anything is possible. Time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!\"\n\n\"You put that in?\" I asked, always assuming he was quoting from Hamlet and not the other way round.\n\nHe smiled.\n\n\"A small personal vanity that I'm sure will be forgiven, Thursday. Besides: Who's to know?\"\n\nMy father stared at his empty glass, looked around in vain for a waiter, then said:\n\n\"Lavoisier will have locked onto me by now. He swore he'd catch me and he's good. He should be; we were partners for almost seven centuries. Just one more thing: how did the Duke of Wellington die?\"\n\nI remembered he had asked me this once before.\n\n\"As I said, Dad, he died in his bed in 1852.\"\n\nFather smiled and rubbed his hands.\n\n\"That's excellent news indeed! How about Nelson?\"\n\n\"Shot by a French sniper at Trafalgar.\"\n\n\"Really? Well, some you win. Listen: good luck, the pair of you. A boy or a girl would be fine; one of each would be better.\"\n\nHe leaned closer and lowered his voice.\n\n\"I don't know when I am going to be back, so listen carefully. Never buy a blue car or a paddling pool, stay away from oysters and circular saws, and don't be near Oxford in June 2016. Got it?\"\n\n\"Yes, but!\u2014\"\n\n\"Well, pip pip, time waits for no man!\"\n\nHe hugged me again, shook Landen's hand and then disappeared into the crowd before we could ask him anything more.\n\n\"Don't even try to figure it out,\" I said to Landen, placing a finger to his lips. \"This is one area of SpecOps that it's really better not to think about.\"\n\n\"But if!\u2014\"\n\n\"Landen!\u2014\" I said more severely. \"No!\u2014\"\n\nBowden and Victor were at the party too. Bowden was happy for me and had come easily to the realization that I wouldn't be joining him in Ohio, as either wife or assistant. He had been offered the job officially but had turned it down; he said there was too much fun to be had at the Swindon Litera Tecs and he would reconsider it in the spring; Finisterre had taken his place. But at present, something else was preying on his mind. Helping himself to a stiff drink, he approached Victor, who was talking animatedly to an elderly woman he had befriended.\n\n\"What ho, Cable!\" Victor murmured, introducing his newfound friend before agreeing to have a quiet word with him.\n\n\"Good result, eh? Balls to the Bront\u00eb Federation; I'm with Thursday. I think the new ending is a wiz!\" He paused and looked at Bowden. \"You've got a face longer than a Dickens novel. What's the problem? Worried about Felix8?\"\n\n\"No, sir; I know they'll find him eventually. It's just that I accidentally mixed up the dust covers on the book that Jack Schitt went into.\"\n\n\"You mean he's not with his beloved rifles?\"\n\n\"No, sir. I took the liberty of slipping this book into the dust cover of The Plasma Rifle in War.\"\n\nHe handed over the book that had made its way into the Prose Portal. Victor looked at the spine and laughed. It was a copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.\n\n\"Have a look at page twenty-six,\" said Bowden. \"There's something funny going on in 'The Raven.'\"\n\nVictor opened the book and scanned the page. He read the first verse out loud:\n\nOnce upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,\n\no'er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next\u2014\n\nThis Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising,\n\nHere I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text.\n\n\"Get me out!\" I said, advising, \"Pluck me from this jail of text\u2014\n\nor I swear I'll wring your neck!\"\n\nVictor shut the book with a snap.\n\n\"The last line doesn't rhyme very well, does it?\"\n\n\"What do you expect?\" replied Bowden. \"He's Goliath, not a poet.\"\n\n\"But I read 'The Raven' only yesterday,\" added Victor in a confused tone. \"It wasn't like this then!\"\n\n\"No, no,\" explained Bowden. \"Jack Schitt is only in this copy\u2014if we had put him in an original manuscript then who knows what he might have done.\"\n\n\"Con-g'rat-ula'tions!\" exclaimed Mycroft as he walked up to us. Polly was with him and looked radiant in a new hat.\n\n\"We're Bo'th Very Hap-py For You!\" added Polly.\n\n\"Have you been working on the bookworms again?\" I asked.\n\n\"Doe's It Sh'ow?\" asked Mycroft. \"Mu'st Dash!\"\n\nAnd they were off.\n\n\"Bookworms?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"It's not what you think.\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle Next?\"\n\nThere were two of them. They were dressed in sharp suits and displayed SpecOps-12 badges that I hadn't seen before.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Pr\u00e9fet Lavoisier, ChronoGendarmerie. O\u00e9 est votre p\u00e9\u00a8re?\"\n\n\"You've just missed him.\"\n\nHe cursed out loud.\n\n\"Colonel Next est un homme tr\u00e9\u00a8s dangereux, mademoiselle. Il est important de lui parler concernant ses activit\u00e9s de trafic de temps.\"\n\n\"He's my father, Lavoisier.\"\n\nLavoisier stared at me, trying to figure out whether anything he could say or do would make me help him. He sighed and gave up.\n\n\"Si vous changez votre avis, contactez-moi par les petites annonces du Grenouille. Je lis toujours les archives.\"\n\n\"I shouldn't count on it, Lavoisier.\"\n\nHe mulled this over for a moment, thought of something to say, decided against it and smiled instead. He saluted briskly, told me in perfect English to enjoy my day, and walked away. But his younger partner also had something to say:\n\n\"A piece of advice to you,\" he muttered slightly self-consciously. \"If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try and dissuade him.\"\n\nHe smiled and followed his partner in their quest for my father.\n\n\"What was that son thing about?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"I don't know. He looked kind of familiar, though, didn't he?\"\n\n\"Kinda.\"\n\n\"Where were we?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Parke-Laine?\" asked a very stocky individual, who stared at me earnestly from two deep-set brown eyes.\n\n\"SO-12?\" I asked, wondering quite where the little beetle-browed man had sprung from.\n\n\"No, ma'am,\" he replied, seizing a plum from a passing waiter and sniffing at it carefully before eating it, stone and all. \"My name Bartholomew Stiggins; with SO-13.\"\n\n\"What do they do?\"\n\n\"Not at liberty to discuss,\" he replied shortly, \"but we may have need your skills and talents.\"\n\n\"What kind of\u2014\"\n\nBut Mr. Stiggins was no longer listening to me. Instead, he was staring at a small beetle he had found on a flowerpot. With great care and a dexterity that belied his large and clumsy-looking hands, he picked the small bug up and popped it in his mouth. I looked at Landen, who winced.\n\n\"Sorry,\" said Stiggins, as though he had just been caught picking his nose in public. \"What the expression? Old habits die hard?\"\n\n\"There's more in the compost heap,\" said Landen helpfully.\n\nThe little man grinned very softly through his eyes; I didn't suppose he showed much emotion.\n\n\"If interested, I'll be in touch.\"\n\n\"Be in touch,\" I told him.\n\nHe grunted, replaced his hat, bid us both a happy day, inquired about the whereabouts of the compost heap and was gone.\n\n\"I've never seen a Neanderthal in a suit before,\" observed Landen.\n\n\"Never mind about Mr. Stiggins,\" I said, reaching up to kiss him.\n\n\"I thought you'd finished with SpecOps?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied with a smile. \"In fact, I think I'm only just beginning!...\"\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ Lost in a Good Book ]\n\nIDIDN'T ASK to be a celebrity. I never wanted to appear on The Adrian Lush Show. And let's get one thing straight right now\u2014the world would have to be hurtling toward imminent destruction before I'd agree to anything as dopey as The Thursday Next Workout Video.\n\nThe publicity surrounding the successful rebookment of Jane Eyre was fun to begin with but rapidly grew wearisome. I happily posed for photocalls, agreed to newspaper interviews, hesitantly appeared on Desert Island Smells and was thankfully excused the embarrassment of Celebrity Name That Fruit. The public, ever fascinated by celebrity, had wanted to know everything about me following my excursion within the pages of Jane Eyre, and since the Special Operations Network have a PR record on par with that of Vlad the Impaler, the Top Brass thought it would be a good wheeze to use me to boost their flagging popularity. I dutifully toured all points of the globe doing signings, library openings, talks and interviews. The same questions, the same SpecOps-approved answers. Supermarket openings, literary dinners, offers of book deals. I even met the actress Lola Vavoom, who said that she would simply adore to play me if there was a film. It was tiring, but more than that\u2014itwas dull. For the first time in my career at the Literary Detectives I actually missed authenticating Milton.\n\nI'd taken a week's leave as soon my tour ended so Landen and I could devote some time to married life. I moved all my stuff to his house, rearranged his furniture, added my books to his and introduced my dodo, Pickwick, to his new home. Landen and I ceremoniously partitioned the bedroom closet space, decided to share the sock drawer, then had an argument over who was to sleep on the wall side of the bed. We had long and wonderfully pointless conversations about nothing in particular, walked Pickwick in the park, went out to dinner, stayed in for dinner, stared at each other a lot and slept in late every morning. It was wonderful.\n\nOn the fourth day of my leave, just between lunch with Landen's mum and Pickwick's notable first fight with the neighbor's cat, I got a call from Cordelia Flakk. She was the senior SpecOps PR agent here in Swindon and she told me that Adrian Lush wanted me on his show. I wasn't mad keen on the idea\u2014or the show. But there was an upside. The Adrian Lush Show went out live, and Flakk assured me that this would be a \"no holds barred\" interview, something that held a great deal of appeal. Despite my many appearances, the true story about JaneEyre was yet to be told\u2014and I had been wanting to drop the Goliath Corporation in it for quite a while. Flakk's assurance that this would finally be the end of the press junket clinched my decision. Adrian Lush it would be.\n\nI traveled up to the Network Toad studios a few days later on my own; Landen had a deadline looming and needed to get his head down. But I wasn't alone for long. As soon as I stepped into the large entrance lobby a milk-curdling shade of green strode purposefully towards me.\n\n\"Thursday, darling!\" cried Cordelia, beads rattling. \"So glad you could make it!\"\n\nThe SpecOps dress code stated that our apparel should be \"dignified,\" but in Cordelia's case they had obviously stretched a point. She looked about as far from a serving officer as one could get. Looks, in her case, were highly deceptive. She was SpecOps all the way from her high heels to the pink-and-yellow scarf tied in her hair.\n\nShe air-kissed me affectionately. \"How's married life treating you?\"\n\n\"Very well.\"\n\n\"Excellent, my dear, I wish you and... er...\"\n\n\"Landen?\"\n\n\"Yes; I wish you and Landen both the best. Love what you've done with your hair!\"\n\n\"My hair? I haven't done anything with my hair!\"\n\n\"Exactly!\" replied Flakk quickly. \"It's so incredibly you. What do you think of the outfit?\"\n\n\"One's attention is drawn straight to it,\" I replied ambiguously.\n\n\"This is 1985,\" she explained. \"Bright colors are the future. See this top? Half price in the sales. I'll let you loose in my wardrobe one day.\"\n\n\"I think I've got some pink socks of my own somewhere.\"\n\nShe smiled.\n\n\"It's a start, my dear. Listen, you've been a shining star about all this publicity work; I'm very grateful\u2014and so is SpecOps.\"\n\n\"Grateful enough to post me somewhere other than the Literary Detectives?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\"Well,\" murmured Cordelia reflectively, \"first things first. As soon as you've done the Lush interview your transfer application will be aggressively considered, you have my word on that.\"\n\nI sighed. \"Aggressively considered\" had the ring of \" definitely perhaps\" about it and wasn't as promising as I could have wished. Despite the successes at work, I still wanted to move up within the Network. Cordelia, reading my disappointment, took my arm in a friendly gesture and steered me towards the waiting area.\n\n\"Coffee?\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Spot of bother in Auckland?\"\n\n\"Bront\u00eb Federation offshoot caused a bit of trouble,\" I explained. \"They didn't like the new ending of Jane Eyre.\"\n\n\"There'll always be a few malcontents,\" observed Flakk with a smile. \"Milk?\"\n\n\"Just a tad.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she said, staring at the milk jug, \"this milk's off. No matter. Listen,\" she said quietly, \"I'd love to stay and watch, but some SpecOps-17 clot in Penzance staked a Goth by mistake; it's going to be PR hell on earth down there.\"\n\nSO-17 were the Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operation. Despite a new three-point confirmation procedure, a jumpy cadet with a sharpened stake could still spell big trouble.\n\n\"Everything is all absolutely hunky-dory here. I've spoken to Adrian Lush and the others so there won't be any embarrassments.\"\n\n\"No holds barred, eh?\" I grimaced, but Flakk was unapologetic.\n\n\"Needs must, Thursday. SpecOps requires your support in these difficult times. President Formby himself has called for an inquiry into whether SpecOps are value-for-money\u2014or even necessary at all.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I agreed, quite against my better judgment, \"but this is the very last interview, yes?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" agreed Flakk hastily, then added in an overdramatic manner: \"Oh my goodness is that the time? I have to catch the airship to Barnstaple in an hour. This is Adie; she'll be looking after you and... and\u2014\" here Cordelia leaned just a little bit closer\u2014\"remember you're SpecOps, darling!\"\n\nShe air-kissed me again, glanced at her watch and took to her heels in a cloud of expensive scent.\n\n\"How could I forget?\" I muttered as a bouncy girl clutching a clipboard appeared from where she had been waiting respectfully out of earshot.\n\n\"Hi!\" squeaked the girl. \"I'm Adie. I'm so pleased to meet you!\"\n\nShe grasped my hand and told me repeatedly what a fantastic honor it was.\n\n\"I don't want to bug you or anything,\" she asked shyly, \"but was Edward Rochester really drop-dead-gorgeous-to-die-for?\"\n\n\"Not handsome,\" I answered as I watched Flakk slink off down the corridor, \"but certainly attractive. Tall, deep voice and glowering looks, if you know the type.\"\n\nAdie turned a deep shade of pink.\n\n\"Gosh!\"\n\nI was taken into makeup, where I was puffed and primped, talked at mercilessly and made to sign copies of the FeMole I had appeared in. I was very relieved when Adie came to rescue me thirty minutes later. She announced into her wireless that we were \"walking\" and then, after leading me down a corridor and through some swing doors, asked:\n\n\"What's it like working in SpecOps? Do you chase bad guys, clamber around on the outside of airships, defuse bombs with three seconds to go, that sort of stuff?\"\n\n\"I wish I did,\" I replied good-humoredly, \"but in truth it's 70% form filling, 27% mind-numbing tedium and 2% sheer terror.\"\n\n\"And the remaining 1%?\"\n\nI smiled. \"That's what keeps us going.\"\n\nWe walked the seemingly endless corridors, past large grinning photographs of Adrian Lush and assorted other Network-Toad celebrities.\n\n\"You'll like Adrian,\" she told me happily, \"and he'll like you. Just don't try to be funnier than him; it doesn't suit the format of the show.\"\n\n\"What does that mean?\"\n\nShe shrugged.\n\n\"I don't know. I'm meant to tell all his guests that.\"\n\n\"Even the comedians?\"\n\n\"Especially the comedians.\"\n\nI assured her being funny was furthest from my mind, and pretty soon she directed me onto the studio floor. Feeling unusually nervous and wishing that Landen was with me, I walked across the familiar front-room set of The Adrian Lush Show. But Mr. Lush was nowhere to be seen\u2014and neither were the \"Live Studio Audience\" a Lush show usually boasted. Instead, a small group of officials were waiting\u2014the \"others\" Flakk had told me about. My heart fell when I saw who they were.\n\n\"Ah, there you are, Next!\" boomed Commander Braxton Hicks with forced bonhomie. \"You're looking well, healthy, and, er, vigorous.\" He was my divisional chief back at Swindon, and despite being head of the Literary Detectives, was not that good with words.\n\n\"What are you doing here, sir?\" I asked him, straining not to show my disappointment. \"Cordelia told me the Lush interview would be uncensored in every way.\"\n\n\"Oh it is, dear girl\u2014up to a point,\" he said, stroking his large mustache. \"Without benign intervention things can get very confused in the public mind. We thought we would listen to the interview and perhaps\u2014if the need arose\u2014offer practical advice as to how the proceedings should\u2014er\u2014proceed.\"\n\nI sighed. My untold story looked set to remain exactly that. Adrian Lush, supposed champion of free speech, the man who had dared to air the grievances felt by the neanderthal, the first to suggest publicly that the Goliath Corporation \"had shortcomings,\" was about to have his nails well and truly clipped.\n\n\"Colonel Flanker you've already met,\" went on Braxton without drawing breath.\n\nI eyed the man suspiciously. I knew him well enough. He was at SpecOps-1, the division that polices SpecOps itself. He had interviewed me about the night I had first tried to tackle master criminal Acheron Hades\u2014the night Snood and Tamworth died. He tried to smile several times but eventually gave up and offered his hand for me to shake instead.\n\n\"This is Colonel Rabone,\" carried on Braxton. \"She is head of Combined Forces Liaison.\" I shook hands with the colonel.\n\n\"Always honored to meet a holder of the Crimean Cross,\" she said, smiling.\n\n\"And over here,\" continued Braxton in a jocular tone that was obviously designed to put me at ease\u2014a ploy that failed spectacularly\u2014\"is Mr. Schitt-Hawse of the Goliath Corporation.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse was a tall, thin man whose pinched features seemed to compete for position in the center of his face. His head tilted to the left in a manner that reminded me of an inquisitive budgerigar, and his dark hair was fastidiously combed back from his forehead. He put out his hand.\n\n\"Would it upset you if I didn't shake it?\" I asked him.\n\n\"Well, yes,\" he replied, trying to be affable.\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nThe Goliath Corporation's pernicious hold over the nation was not universally appreciated, and I had a far greater reason to dislike them\u2014the last Goliath employee I had dealt with was an odious character by the name of Jack Schitt. We had tricked him into a copy of Edgar Allan Poe's \"The Raven,\" a place in which I hoped he could do no harm.\n\n\"Schitt-Hawse, eh?\" I said. \"Any relation to Jack?\"\n\n\"He was\u2014is\u2014my half brother,\" said Schitt-Hawse slowly, \"and believe me, Ms. Next, he wasn't working for us when he planned to prolong the Crimean War in order to create demand for Goliath weaponry.\"\n\n\"And you never knew he had sided with Hades either, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Of course not!\" replied Schitt-Hawse in an offended tone.\n\n\"If you had known, would you admit it?\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse scowled and said nothing. Braxton coughed politely and continued:\n\n\"And this is Mr. Chesterman of the Bront\u00eb Federation.\"\n\nChesterman blinked at me uncertainly. The changes I had wrought upon Jane Eyre had split the federation. I hoped he was one of the ones who preferred the happier ending.\n\n\"Back there is Captain Marat of the ChronoGuard,\" continued Braxton. Marat, at this moment in his time, was a schoolboy of about twelve. He looked at me with interest. The ChronoGuard were the SpecOps division that took care of Anomalous Time Ripplation\u2014my father had been one or was one or would be one, depending on how you looked at it.\n\n\"Have we met before?\" I asked him.\n\n\"Not yet,\" he replied cheerfully, returning to his copy of The Beano.\n\n\"Well!\" said Braxton, clapping his hands together. \"I think that's everyone. Next, I want you to pretend we're just not here.\"\n\n\"Observers, yes?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. I\u2014\"\n\nBraxton was interrupted by a slight disturbance offstage.\n\n\"The bastards!\" yelled a high voice. \"If the network dares to replace my Monday slot with reruns of Bonzo the Wonder Hound I'll sue them for every penny they have!\"\n\nA tall man of perhaps fifty-five had walked into the studio accompanied by a small group of assistants. He had handsome chiseled features and a luxuriant swirl of white hair that looked as though it had been carved from polystyrene. He wore an immaculately tailored suit and his fingers were heavily weighed down with gold jewelry. He stopped short when he saw us.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Adrian Lush disdainfully. \"SpecOps!\"\n\nHis entourage flustered around him with lots of energy but very little purpose. They seemed to hang on his every word and action, and I suddenly felt a great sense of relief that I wasn't in the entertainments business.\n\n\"I've had a lot to do with you people in the past,\" explained Lush as he made himself comfortable on his trademark green sofa, something he clearly regarded as a territorial safe retreat. \"It was I that coined the phrase 'SpecOops' whenever you make a mistake\u2014sorry, 'Operational unexpectation'\u2014isn't that what you like to call them?\"\n\nBut Hicks ignored Lush's inquiries and introduced me as though I were his only daughter being offered up for marriage.\n\n\"Mr. Lush, this is Special Operative Thursday Next.\"\n\nLush jumped up and bounded over to shake me by the hand in an effusive and energetic manner. Flanker and the others sat down; they looked very small in the middle of the empty studio. They weren't going to leave and Lush wasn't going to ask them to\u2014I knew that Goliath owned Network Toad and was beginning to doubt whether Lush had any control over this interview at all.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday!\" said Lush excitedly. \"Welcome to my Monday show. It's the second-highest-rated show in England\u2014 my Wednesday show is the first!\"\n\nHe laughed infectiously and I smiled uneasily.\n\n\"Then this will be your Thursday show,\" I replied, eager to lighten the situation.\n\nThere was dead silence.\n\n\"Will you be doing that a lot?\" asked Lush in a subdued tone.\n\n\"Doing what?\"\n\n\"Making jokes. You see... have a seat, darling. You see, I generally make the jokes on this show and although it's perfectly okay for you to make jokes, then I'm going to have to pay someone to write funnier ones, and our budget, like Goliath's scruples, is on the small side of Leptonic.\"\n\n\"Can I say something?\" said a voice from the small audience. It was Flanker, who carried on talking without waiting for a reply. \"SpecOps is a serious business and should be reflected so in your interview. Next, I think you should let Mr. Lush tell the jokes.\"\n\n\"Is that all right?\" asked Lush, beaming.\n\n\"Sure,\" I replied. \"Is there anything else I shouldn't do?\"\n\nLush looked at me and then looked at the panel in the front row.\n\n\"Is there?\"\n\nThey all mumbled among themselves for a few seconds.\n\n\"I think,\" said Flanker again, \"that we\u2014sorry, you\u2014should just do the interview and then we can discuss it later. Miss Next can say whatever she wants as long as it doesn't contravene any SpecOps or Goliath Corporate guidelines.\"\n\n\"\u2014or military,\" added Colonel Rabone, anxious not to be left out.\n\n\"Is that okay?\" asked Lush.\n\n\"Whatever,\" I returned, eager to get on with it.\n\n\"Excellent! I'll do your intro, although you'll be off camera for that. The floor manager will cue you and you'll enter. Wave to where the audience might have been and when you are comfy, I'll ask you some questions. I may offer you some toast at some point as our sponsors, the Toast Marketing Board, like to get a plug in now and again. Is there any part of that you don't understand?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Good. Here we go.\"\n\nThere was a flurry of activity as Lush had his hair adjusted, his makeup checked and his costume tweaked. After a cursory glance at me I was ushered offstage and after what seemed like an epoch of inaction, Lush was counted in by a floor manager. On cue he turned to camera one and switched on his best and brightest smile.\n\n\"Tonight is a very special occasion with a very special guest. She is a decorated war heroine, a literary detective whose personal intervention not only restored the novel of Jane Eyre but actually improved the ending. She single-handedly defeated Acheron Hades, ended the Crimean War and boldly hoodwinked the Goliath Corporation. Ladies and gentlemen, in an unprecedented interview from a serving SpecOps officer, please give a warm welcome to Thursday Next of the Swindon Literary Detective office!\"\n\nA bright light swung onto my entrance doorway, and Adie smiled and tapped my arm. I walked out to meet Lush, who rose to greet me enthusiastically.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" came a voice from the small group sitting in the front row of the empty auditorium. It was Schitt-Hawse, the Goliath representative.\n\n\"Yes?\" asked Lush in an icy tone.\n\n\"You're going to have to drop the reference to the Goliath Corporation,\" said Schitt-Hawse in the sort of tone that brooks no argument. \"It serves no purpose other than to needlessly embarrass a large company that is doing its very best to improve everyone's lives.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" said Flanker. \"And all references to Hades will have to be avoided. He is still listed as 'Missing, fervently hoped dead,' so any unauthorized speculation might have dangerous consequences.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" murmured Lush, scribbling a note. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Any reference to the Crimean War and the Plasma Rifle,\" said the colonel, \"might be considered inappropriate. The peace talks at Budapest are still at a delicate stage; the Russians will make any excuse to leave the table. We know that your show is very popular in Moscow.\"\n\n\"The Bront\u00eb Federation is not keen for you to say the new ending is improved,\" put in the small and bespectacled Chesterman, \"and talking about any of the characters you met within Jane Eyre might cause some viewers to suffer Xplkqulkiccasia.\"\n\nThe condition was unknown before my jump into Eyre. It was so serious that the Medical Council were compelled to make up an especially unpronounceable word to describe it.\n\nLush looked at them, looked at me and then looked at his script.\n\n\"How about if I just said her name?\"\n\n\"That would be admirable,\" intoned Flanker, \"except you might also want to assure the viewers that this interview is uncensored. Everyone else agree?\"\n\nThey all enthusiastically added their assent to Flanker's suggestion. I could see this was going to be a very long and tedious afternoon.\n\nLush's entourage came back on and made the tiniest adjustments, I was repositioned, and after waiting what seemed like another decade, Lush began again.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, in a frank and open interview tonight, Thursday Next talks unhindered about her work at SpecOps.\"\n\nNo one said anything, so I entered, shook Lush's hand and took a seat on his sofa.\n\n\"Welcome to the show, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"We'll get on to your career in the Crimea in a moment, but I'd like to kick off by asking\u2014\"\n\nWith a magician's flourish he pulled a serviette off the table in front of us, revealing a platter of toast with assorted toppings.\n\n\"\u2014if you would care for some toast?\"\n\n\"No, thanks.\"\n\n\"Tasty and nutritious!\" He smiled, facing the camera. \"Perfect as a snack or even a light meal\u2014good with eggs, sardines or even\u2014\"\n\n\"No, thank you.\"\n\nLush's smile froze on his face as he muttered through clenched teeth:\n\n\"Have... some... toast.\"\n\nBut it was too late. The floor manager came on the set and announced that the unseen director of the show had called cut. Lush's face dropped its permanent smile and his small army of beauticians came on and fussed over him once more. The floor manager had a one-way conversation into his headphones before turning to me with a concerned expression on his face.\n\n\"The Director of Placements wants to know if you would take a small bite of toast when offered.\"\n\n\"I've eaten already.\"\n\nThe floor manager turned and spoke into his headphones again.\n\n\"She says she's eaten already!... I know.... Yes.... What if... Yes.... Ah-ha.... What do you want me to do? Sit on her and force it down her throat!?!... Yesss.... Ah-ha.... I know.... Yes.... Yes.... Okay.\"\n\nHe turned back to me.\n\n\"How about jam instead of marmalade?\"\n\n\"I don't really like toast,\" I told him\u2014which was partly true, although to be honest I think I was just feeling a bit troublesome because of Braxton and his entourage.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I said I don't\u2014\"\n\n\"She says she doesn't like toast!\" said the floor manager in an exasperated tone. \"What in hell's name are we going to do!?!\"\n\nFlanker stood up.\n\n\"Next, eat the sodding toast will you? I've got a meeting in two hours.\"\n\n\"And I've a golf tournament,\" added Braxton.\n\nI sighed. I thought perhaps I had a small amount of control on the show, but even that had vanished.\n\n\"Does marmalade fit in with your plans, sir?\" I asked Braxton, who grunted in the affirmative and sat down again.\n\n\"Okay. Make it granary with marmalade, go easy on the butter.\"\n\nThe floor manager smiled as though I had just saved his job\u2014which I probably had\u2014and everything started over once again.\n\n\"Would you like some toast?\" asked Lush.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nI took a small bite. Everyone was watching me, so I decided to make it easy for them.\n\n\"Very good indeed.\"\n\nI saw the floor manager giving me an enthusiastic thumbs-up as he dabbed his brow with a handkerchief.\n\n\"Right,\" sighed Lush. \"Let's get on with it. First I would like to ask the question that everyone wants to know: How did you actually get into the book of Jane Eyre in the first place?\"\n\n\"That's easily explained,\" I began. \"You see, my uncle Mycroft invented a device called a Prose Portal\u2014\"\n\nFlanker coughed. I could sense what he was going to say and I cursed myself for being so foolish as to believe The Adrian Lush Show would be uncensored. I was SpecOps, after all.\n\n\"Ms. Next,\" began Flanker, \"perhaps you don't know it but your uncle is still the subject of a secrecy certificate dating back to 1934. It might be prudent if you didn't mention him\u2014or the Prose Portal.\"\n\nThe floor manager yelled, \"We've cut!\" again and Lush thought for a moment.\n\n\"Can we talk about how Hades stole the manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit?\"\n\n\"Let me think,\" replied Flanker, then after a tiny pause, said: \"No.\"\n\n\"It's not something we want the citizenry to think is\u2014\" said Marat so suddenly that quite a few people jumped. Up until that moment he hadn't said a word.\n\n\"Sorry?\" asked Flanker.\n\n\"Nothing,\" said the ChronoGuard operative, who was now in his mid-sixties. \"I'm just getting a touch proleptic in my old age.\"\n\n\"Can we talk about the successful return of Jane to her book?\" I asked wearily.\n\n\"I refer you to my previous answer,\" growled Flanker.\n\n\"How about the time my partner Bowden and I drove through a patch of bad time on the motorway?\"\n\n\"It's not something we want the citizenry to think is easy,\" said Marat\u2014who was now in his early twenties\u2014with renewed enthusiasm. \"If the public think that ChronoGuard work is straightforward, confidence might well be shaken.\"\n\n\"Quite correct,\" asserted Flanker.\n\n\"Perhaps you'd like to do this interview?\" I asked him.\n\n\"Hey!\" said Flanker, standing up and jabbing a finger in my direction. \"There's no need to get snippy with us, Next. You're here to do a job in your capacity as a serving SpecOps officer. You are not here to tell the truth as you see it!\"\n\nLush looked uneasily at me; I raised my eyebrows and shrugged.\n\n\"Now look here,\" said Lush in a strident tone, \"if I'm going to interview Ms. Next I must ask questions that the public want to hear!\"\n\n\"Oh, you can!\" said Flanker agreeably. \"You can ask whatever you want. Free speech is enshrined in statute, and neither SpecOps nor Goliath have any business to coerce you in any way. We are just here to observe, comment, and enlighten.\"\n\nLush knew what Flanker meant and Flanker knew that Lush knew. I knew that Flanker and Lush knew it and they both knew I knew it too. Lush looked nervous and fidgeted slightly. Flanker's assertion of Lush's independence was anything but. A word To Network Toad from Goliath and Lush would end up presenting Sheep World on Lerwick TV, and he didn't want that. Not one little bit.\n\nWe fell silent for a moment as Lush and I tried to figure out a topic that was outside their broad parameters.\n\n\"How about commenting on the ludicrously high tax on cheese?\" I asked. It was a joke, but Flanker and Co. weren't terribly expert when it came to jokes.\n\n\"I have no objection,\" murmured Flanker. \"Anyone else?\"\n\n\"Not me,\" said Schitt-Hawse.\n\n\"Or me,\" added Rabone.\n\n\"I have an objection,\" said a woman who had been sitting quietly at the side of the studio. She spoke with a clipped home counties accent and was dressed in a tweed skirt, twinset and pearls.\n\n\"Allow me to introduce myself,\" she said in a loud and strident voice. \"Mrs. Jolly Hilly, Governmental Representative to the Television Networks.\" She took a deep breath and carried on: \"The so-called 'unfair cheese duty burden' is a very contentious subject at present. Any reference to it might be construed as an inflammatory act.\"\n\n\"587% duty on hard cheeses and 620% on smelly?\" I asked. \"Cheddar Classic Gold Original at \u00a39.32 a pound\u2014Bodmin Molecular Unstable Brie at almost \u00a310! What's going on?\"\n\nThe others, suddenly interested, all looked to Mrs. Hilly for an explanation. For a brief moment and probably the only moment ever, we were in agreement.\n\n\"I understand your concern,\" replied the trained apologist, \"but I think you'll find that the price of cheese has, once adjusted for positive spin, actually gone down measured against the retail price index in recent years. Here, have a look at this.\"\n\nShe passed me a picture of a sweet little old lady on crutches.\n\n\"Old ladies who are not dissimilar to the actress in this picture will have to go without their hip replacements and suffer crippling pain if you selfishly demand cut-price cheese.\"\n\nShe paused to let this sink in.\n\n\"The Master of the Sums feels that it is not for the public to dictate economic policy, but he is willing to make concessions for those who suffer particular hardship in the form of area-tactical needs-related cheese coupons.\"\n\n\"So,\" said Lush with a smile, \"wheyving cheese tax is out of the question?\"\n\n\"Or he could raise the custard duty,\" added Mrs. Hilly, missing the pun. \"The pudding lobby is less\u2014well\u2014how should I put it\u2014militant.\"\n\n\"Wheyving,\" said Lush again, for the benefit of anyone who had missed it. \"Wheyve\u2014oh, never mind. I've never heard a bigger load of crap in all my life. I aim to make the ludicrous price of cheese the subject of an Adrian Lush Special Report.\"\n\nMrs. Hilly flushed slightly and chose her words carefully.\n\n\"If there were another cheese riot following your Special Report we might look very carefully as to where to place responsibility.\"\n\nShe looked at the Goliath representative as she said this. The implication wasn't lost on Schitt-Hawse or Lush. I had heard enough.\n\n\"So I won't talk about cheese either,\" I sighed. \"What can I talk about?\"\n\nThe small group all looked at one another with perplexed expressions. Flanker clicked his fingers as an idea struck him.\n\n\"Don't you own a dodo?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Special Operations Network",
                "text": "\u2002The Special Operations Network was initiated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty-two departments in all, starting at the more mundane Horticultural Enforcement Agency (SO-32) and going on to Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Transport Authority (SO-21). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard were SO-12 and SO-1 were the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police. Operatives rarely leave the service after the probationary period has ended. There is a saying: \"A SpecOps job isn't for probation\u2014it's for life.\"\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, A Short History of the Special Operations Network (revised)\n\nIt was the morning after the transmission of The Adrian Lush Show. I had watched for five minutes, cringed, then fled upstairs to rearrange our sock drawer. I managed to file all the socks by color, shape and how much I liked them before Landen told me it was all over and I could come back downstairs. It was the last public interview I'd agreed to give, but Cordelia didn't seem to remember this part of our conversation. She had continued to besiege me with requests to speak at literary festivals, appear as a guest on 65 Walrus Street and even attend one of President Formby's informal song-and-ukulele evenings. Job offers arrived daily. Numerous libraries and private security firms asked for my services as either \"Active Associate\" or \"Security Consultant.\" The sweetest letter I got was from the local library asking me to come in and read to the elderly\u2014something I delighted in doing. But SpecOps itself, the body to which I had committed much of my adult life, energy and resources, hadn't even spoken to me about advancement. As far as they were concerned I was SO-27 and would remain so until they decided otherwise.\n\n\"Mail for you!\" announced Landen, dumping a large pile of post onto the kitchen table. Most of my mail these days was fan mail\u2014and pretty strange it was, too. I opened an envelope at random.\n\n\"Anyone I should be jealous of?\" he asked.\n\n\"I should keep the divorce lawyer on hold for a few more minutes\u2014it's another request for underwear.\"\n\n\"I'll send him a pair of mine,\" grinned Landen.\n\n\"What's in the parcel?\"\n\n\"Late wedding present. It's a\u2014\"\n\nHe looked at the strange knitted object curiously.\n\n\"It's a... thing.\"\n\n\"Good,\" I replied, \"I always wanted one of those. What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I'm trying to teach Pickwick to stand on one leg.\"\n\n\"Dodos don't do tricks,\" I told him.\n\n\"For a marshmallow I think I can make him do anything. Up, Pickwick, come on, one leg, up!\"\n\nLanden was a writer. We first met when he, my brother Anton and I fought in the Crimea. Landen came home minus a leg but alive\u2014my brother was still out there, making his way through eternity from the comfort of a military cemetery near Sevastopol. I opened another letter and read aloud:\n\n\"Dear Miss Next, I am one of your biggest fans. I thought you should know that I believe David Copperfield, far from being the doe-eyed innocent, actually murdered his first wife, Dora Spenlow, in order to marry Agnes Wickfield. I suggest an exhumation of Miss Spenlow's remains and a test for botulism and/or arsenic. While we are on the subject, have you ever stopped to wonder why Homer changed his mind about dogs somewhere between the Iliad and the Odyssey? Was he, perhaps, given a puppy between the two? Another thing: Do you find Joyce's Ulysses as boring and as unintelligible as I do? And why don't Hemingway's works have any smells in them?\"\n\n\"Seems everyone wants you to investigate their favorite book,\" observed Landen, sliding his arms around my neck and looking over my shoulder so closely our cheeks touched and I shivered. He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered:\n\n\"While you're about it can you try and get Tess acquitted and Max de Winter convicted?\"\n\n\"Not you as well!\"\n\nI took the marshmallow from his hand and ate it, much to Pickwick's shock and dismay. Landen took another marshmallow from the jar and tried again.\n\n\"Up, Pickwick, come on, up, up, one leg!\"\n\nPickwick stared at Landen blankly, eyes fixed on the marshmallow and not at all interested in learning tricks.\n\n\"You'll need a truckload of them, Land.\"\n\nI refolded the letter, finished my coffee, got up and put on my jacket.\n\n\"Have a good day,\" said Landen, seeing me to the door. \"Be nice to the other children. No scratching or biting.\"\n\n\"I'll behave myself. I promise.\"\n\nI wrapped my arms round his neck and kissed him.\n\n\"Mmm,\" I whispered softly. \"That was nice.\"\n\n\"I've been practicing,\" he told me, \"on that pretty young thing at number 56. You don't mind, do you?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I replied, kissing him again, \"so long as you want to keep your other leg.\"\n\n\"O-kay. I think I'll stick to you for practice from now on.\"\n\n\"I'm depending on it. Oh, and Land?\"\n\n\"Yuh?\"\n\n\"Don't forget it's Mycroft's retirement party this evening.\"\n\n\"I won't.\"\n\nWe bade each other goodbye and I walked down the garden path, shouting a greeting to Mrs. Arturo, who had been watching us.\n\nIt was late autumn or early winter\u2014I wasn't sure which. It had been mild and windless; the leaves were still brown on the trees and on some days it was hardly cold at all. It had to really get chilly to put the top up on my Speedster, so I drove into the SpecOps divisional HQ with the wind in my hair and WESSEX-FM blaring on the wireless. The upcoming election was the talk of the airwaves; the controversial cheese duty had suddenly become an issue in the way things do just before an election. There was a snippet about Goliath declaring themselves to be \"the world's favorite conglomerate\" for the tenth year running whilst in the Crimean peace talks Russia had demanded Kent County as war reparations. In sport, Aubrey Jambe had led the Swindon Mallets croquet team into SuperHoop '85 by thrashing the Reading Whackers.\n\nI drove through the morning traffic in Swindon and parked the Speedster at the rear of the SpecOps HQ. The building was of a brusque no-nonsense Germanic design; hastily erected during the occupation, the facade still bore battle scars from Swindon's liberation in 1949. It housed most of the SpecOps divisions but not all. Our Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operation also encompassed Reading and Salisbury, and in return Salisbury's Art Theft division looked after our area as well. It all seemed to work quite well.\n\n\"Hullo!\" I said to a young man who was taking a cardboard box out of the boot of his car. \"New SpecOps?\"\n\n\"Er, yes,\" he replied, putting down his box for a moment to offer me his hand.\n\n\"John Smith\u2014Weeds & Seeds.\"\n\n\"Unusual name,\" I said, shaking his hand, \"I'm Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" he said, looking at me with interest. Sadly my anonymity had, it seemed, departed for good.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, picking up several large box files for him, \"that Thursday Next. Weeds & Seeds?\"\n\n\"Domestic Horticulture Enforcement Agency,\" explained John as we walked towards the SpecOps building. \"SO-32. I'm starting an office here. There's been a rise in the number of hackers just recently. The Pampas Grass Vigilante Squad are becoming more brazen in their activities; pampas grass might well be an eyesore, but there's nothing illegal in it.\"\n\nWe showed our ID cards to the desk sergeant and walked up the stairs to the second floor.\n\n\"I heard something about that,\" I murmured. \"Any links to the Anti-Leylandii Association?\"\n\n\"Nothing positive,\" replied Smith, \"but I'm following all leads.\"\n\n\"How many in your squad?\"\n\n\"Including me, one,\" grinned Smith. \"Thought you were the most underfunded department in SpecOps? Think again. I've got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable plural form of narcissus.\"\n\nWe reached the upstairs corridor and a small office that had once been home to SO-31, the Good Taste Education Authority. The division had been disbanded a month ago when the proposed legislation against stone cladding, pictures of crying clowns, and floral-patterned carpets failed in the upper house. I placed the box files on the table, told him narcissi was my favorite, wished him well and left him to unpack.\n\nI was just walking past the office of SO-14 when I heard a shrill voice.\n\n\"Thursday! Thursday, yoo-hoo! Over here!\"\n\nI sighed. It was Cordelia Flakk. She quickly caught up with me and gave me an affectionate hug.\n\n\"The Lush show was a disaster!\" I told her. \"You said it was no-holds-barred! I ended up talking about dodos, my car and anything but Jane Eyre!\"\n\n\"You were terrific!\" she enthused. \"I've got you lined up for another set of interviews the day after tomorrow.\"\n\n\"No more, Cordelia.\"\n\nShe looked crestfallen.\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"What part of no more don't you understand?\"\n\n\"Don't be like that, Thursday,\" she replied, smiling broadly. \"You're good PR, and believe me, in an institution that routinely leaves the public perforated, confused, old before their time or, if they're lucky, dead, we need every bit of good PR we can muster.\"\n\n\"Do we do that much damage to the public?\" I asked.\n\nFlakk smiled modestly.\n\n\"Perhaps my PR is not so bad after all,\" she conceded, then added quickly: \"But every Joe that gets trounced in a crossfire is one too many.\"\n\n\"That's as may be,\" I retorted, \"but the fact remains you told me the Lush show would be the last.\"\n\n\"Ah! But I also told you the Lush show would be no-holds-barred, didn't I?\" observed Cordelia brightly, displaying staggering reverse logic.\n\n\"However you want to spin it, Cordelia, the answer is still no.\"\n\nAs I watched with a certain detached amusement, Flakk went through a bizarre routine that included hopping up and down for a bit, pulling pleading expressions, wringing her hands, puffing out her cheeks and staring at the ceiling.\n\n\"Okay,\" I sighed, \"you've got my attention. What do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Cordelia excitedly, \"we ran a competition!\"\n\n\"Oh yes?\" I asked suspiciously, wondering whether it could be any more daft than her \"win a mammoth\" idea the week before. \"What sort of competition?\"\n\n\"Well, we thought it would be a good idea if you met a few members of the public on a one-to-one basis.\"\n\n\"Did we? Now listen, Cordelia\u2014\"\n\n\"Dilly, Thursday, since we're pals.\"\n\nShe sensed my reticence and added:\n\n\"Cords, then. Or Delia. How about Flakky? I used to be called Flik-flak at school. Can I call you Thurs?\"\n\n\"Cordelia!\" I said in a harsher tone, before she ingratiated herself to death. \"I'm not going to do this! You said the Lush interview would be the last, and it is.\"\n\nI started to walk away, but when God was handing out insistence, Cordelia Flakk was right at the front of the queue.\n\n\"Thursday, this hurts me really personally when you're like this. It attacks me right\u2014right\u2014er\u2014here.\"\n\nShe made a wild guess at where her heart might be and looked at me with a pained expression that she probably learnt off a springer spaniel.\n\n\"I've got them waiting right here, now, in the canteen. It won't take a moment, ten minutes tops. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. I've only asked two dozen journalists and news crews\u2014the room will be practically empty.\"\n\nI looked at my watch.\n\n\"Ten minutes,1 whoa!\u2014Who's that?\"\n\n\"Who's what?\"\n\n\"Someone calling my name. Didn't you hear it?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Cordelia, looking at me oddly.\n\nI tapped my ears and looked around to see if there was anyone close by. Apart from Cordelia, we were alone in the corridor. It had sounded so real it was disconcerting.\n\n\"There it goes again!\"\n\n\"There goes what again?\"\n\n\"A man's voice! Speaking here inside my head!\"\n\nI pointed to my temple to demonstrate. Cordelia took a step backwards, her look turning to one of consternation.\n\n\"Are you okay, Thursday? Can I call someone?\"\n\n\"Oh. No no, I'm fine. I just realized I\u2014ah\u2014left a receiver in my ear. It must be my partner; there's a 12-14 or a 10-30 or... something numerological in progress. Tell your competition winners another time. Goodbye!\"\n\nI dashed off down the corridor toward the Literary Detectives offices. There wasn't a receiver, of course, but I wasn't having Flakk tell the quacks I was hearing voices.3 I stopped and looked around. The corridor was empty.\n\n\"I can hear you,\" I said, \"but where are you?\"\n\n\"Her name's Flakk. Works over at SpecOps PR.\"\n\n\"What is this? SpecOps Blind Date? What's going on?\"\n\n\"Case? What case? I haven't done anything!\"\n\nMy indignation was real. For someone who had spent her life enforcing law and order, it seemed a grave injustice that I should be accused of something\u2014especially something I knew nothing about.\n\n\"For God's sake, Snell, what is the charge?\"\n\n\"Are you okay, Next?\"\n\nIt was Commander Braxton Hicks. He had just turned the corner and was staring at me with curiosity.\n\n\"Nothing, sir,\" I said, thinking fast. \"The SpecOps tensionologist said I should vocalize any stress regarding past experiences. Listen: 'Get away from me, Hades, go!' See? I feel better already.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Hicks doubtfully. \"Well, the quacks know best, I suppose. That Lush fellow's interview was a cracker, don't you think?\"\n\nThankfully he didn't give me time to answer and carried on talking.\n\n\"Listen here, Next, did you sign that picture for my godson Max?\"\n\n\"On your desk, sir.\"\n\n\"Really? Jolly good. What else? Oh yes. That PR girlie\u2014\"\n\n\"Miss Flakk?\"\n\n\"That's the chap. She ran a competition or something. Would you liaise with her over it?\"\n\n\"I'll make it my top priority, sir.\"\n\n\"Good. Well, carry on vocalizing then.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\nBut he didn't leave. He just stood there, watching me.\n\n\"Sir?\"\n\n\"Don't mind me,\" replied Hicks, \"I just want to see how this stress vocalizing works. My tensionologist told me to arrange pebbles as a hobby\u2014or count blue cars.\"\n\nSo I vocalized my stress there in the corridor for five minutes, reciting every Shakespearean insult I could think of while my boss watched me. I felt a complete twit but rather that than the quacks, I suppose.\n\n\"Jolly good,\" he said finally and walked off.\n\nAfter checking I was alone in the corridor I spoke out loud:\n\n\"Snell!\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"Mr. Snell, can you hear me?\"\n\nMore silence.\n\nI sat down on a convenient bench and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and hot; both the SpecOps resident tensionologist and stresspert had said I might have some sort of traumatic aftershock from tackling Acheron Hades, but I hadn't expected anything so vivid as voices in my head. I waited until my head cleared and then made my way not towards Flakk and her competition winners but towards Bowden and the Litera Tec's office.\n\nI stopped.\n\n\"Prepared for what? I haven't done anything!\"\n\n\"No, no!\" I exclaimed. \"I really don't know what I've done. Where are you!?!\"\n\n\"Wait! Shouldn't I see you before the hearing?\"\n\nThere was no answer. I was about to yell again, but several people came out of the elevator, so I kept quiet. I waited for a moment but Mr. Snell didn't seem to have anything more to add, so I made my way into the Litera Tec office, which closely resembled a large library in a country home somewhere. There weren't many books we didn't have\u2014the result of bootleg seizures of literary works collected over the years. My partner, Bowden Cable, was already at his desk, which was as fastidiously neat as ever. He was dressed conservatively and was a few years younger than me although he had been in SpecOps a lot longer. Officially he was a higher rank, but we never let it get in the way\u2014we worked as equals but in different ways: Bowden's quiet and studious approach contrasted strongly with my own directness. It seemed to work well.\n\n\"Morning, Bowden.\"\n\n\"Hello Thursday. Saw you on the telly last night.\"\n\nI took off my coat, sat down and started to rummage through telephone messages.\n\n\"How did I look?\"\n\n\"Fine. They didn't let you talk about Jane Eyre much, did they?\"\n\n\"Press freedom was on holiday that day.\"\n\nHe understood and smiled softly.\n\n\"Never fear\u2014someday the full story will be told. Are you okay? You look a little flushed.\"\n\n\"I'm okay,\" I told him, giving up on the telephone messages. \"Actually, I'm not. I've been hearing voices.\"\n\n\"Stress, Thursday. It's not unusual. Anyone specific?\"\n\nI got up to fetch some coffee, and Bowden followed me.\n\n\"A lawyer named Akrid Snell. Said he was representing me. Refill?\"\n\n\"No, thanks. On what charge?\"\n\n\"He wouldn't say.\"\n\nI poured myself a large coffee as Bowden thought for a moment.\n\n\"Sounds like an inner guilt conflict, Thursday. In policing we have to sometimes\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped as two other LiteraTec agents walked close by, discussing the merits of a recently discovered seventy-eight-word palindrome that made sense. We waited until they were out of earshot before continuing:\n\n\"\u2014we have to sometimes close off our emotions. Could you have killed Hades if you were thinking clearly?\"\n\n\"I don't think I would have been able to kill him if I wasn't,\" I replied, sniffing at the milk. \"I've not lost a single night's sleep over Hades, but poor Bertha Rochester bothers me a bit.\"\n\nWe went and sat down at our desks.\n\n\"Maybe that's it,\" replied Bowden, idly filling in the Owl crossword. \"Perhaps you secretly want to be held accountable for her death. I heard Crometty talking to me for weeks after his murder\u2014I thought I should have been there to back him up\u2014 but I wasn't.\"\n\n\"How are you getting along with the crossword?\"\n\nHe passed it over and I scanned the answers.\n\n\"What's a 'RILK'?\" I asked him.\n\n\"It's a\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah, there you are!\" said a booming voice. We turned to see Victor Analogy striding across from his office. Head of the Swindon Litera Tecs since who knows when, he was a sprightly seventy-something with a receding hairline and a figure that guaranteed the part of Santa Claus at the SpecOps Christmas party. Despite his jocular nature he could be as hard as nails on occasion and was a good buffer between SO-27 and Braxton Hicks, who was strictly a company man. Analogy guarded our independence closely and regarded all his staff as family, and we thought the world of him. We all said our good mornings and Victor sat on my desk.\n\n\"How's the PR stuff going, Thursday?\"\n\n\"More tedious than Spenser, sir.\"\n\n\"That bad, eh? Saw you on the telly last night. Rigged, was it?\"\n\n\"Just a little.\"\n\n\"I hate to be a bore, but it's all important stuff. Have a look at this fax.\"\n\nHe handed me a sheet of paper, and Bowden read over my shoulder.\n\n\"Ludicrous,\" I said, handing the fax back. \"What possible benefit could the Toast Marketing Board get from sponsoring us?\"\n\nVictor shrugged.\n\n\"Not a clue. But if they have cash to give away we could certainly do with some of it.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do?\"\n\n\"Braxton's speaking to them this afternoon. He's very big on the idea.\"\n\n\"I bet he is.\"\n\nBraxton Hicks's life revolved around his precious SpecOps budget. If any of us even thought of doing any sort of overtime, you could bet that Braxton would have something to say about it\u2014and something in his case meant \"no.\" Rumor had it that he had spoken to the canteen about giving out smaller helpings for dinner. He had been known as \"Small Portions\" in the office ever since\u2014but never to his face.\n\n\"Did you find out who's been forging and trying to sell the missing ending to Byron's Don Juan?\" asked Victor.\n\nBowden showed him a black-and-white photo of a dashing figure climbing into a parked car somewhere near the airship field. He was extravagantly dressed according to \"the Byron Look\"\u2014it was quite popular, even amongst non-Byrons.\n\n\"Our prime suspect is a fellow named Byron2.\"\n\nVictor looked at the picture carefully, first through his spectacles, then over the top of them.\n\n\"Byron number two, eh? How many Byrons are there now?\"\n\n\"Byron2620 was registered last week,\" I told him. \"We've been following Byron2 for a month, but he's smart. None of the forged scraps of Heaven and Earth can be traced back to him.\"\n\n\"Wiretap?\"\n\n\"We tried, but the judge said that even though Byron2's surgery to make his foot clubbed in an attempt to emulate his hero was undeniably strange, and then getting his half sister pregnant was plainly disgusting, those acts only showed a fevered Byronic mind, and not necessarily one of intent to forge. We have to catch him inky-fingered, but at the moment he's off on a tour of the Mediterranean. We're going to attempt to get a search warrant while he's away.\"\n\n\"So you're not that busy, then?\"\n\n\"What had you in mind?\"\n\n\"Well,\" began Victor, \"it seems there have been a couple more attempts to forge Cardenio. I know it's small beer for you two but it helps Braxton with his damnable statistics. Would you go and have a look?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" replied Bowden, knowing full well I would concur. \"Got the addresses?\"\n\nHe handed over a sheet of paper and bade us luck. We rose to leave, Bowden studying the list carefully.\n\n\"We'll go to Roseberry Street first,\" he muttered. \"It's closer.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Cardenio Unbound",
                "text": "\u2002Cardenio was performed at court in 1613. It was entered in the stationer's register in 1653 as \"by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare\" and in 1728 Theobald Lewis published his play Double Falsehood, which he claimed to have written using an old prompt copy of Cardenio. Given the uneven Shakespearean value of his play and his refusal to produce the original manuscript, this claim seems doubtful. Cardenio was the name of the Ragged Knight in Cervantes' Don Quixote who falls in love with Lucinda, and it is assumed Shakespeare's play followed the same story. But we will never know. Not one single scrap of the play has survived.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, \"Cardenio\": Easy Come, Easy Go\n\nA few minutes later we were turning into a street of terraced houses close by the new thirty-thousand-seat croquet stadium. Cardenio scams were the three-card trick of the literary world; the bread and butter for literary lowlife. Since there were only five signatures, three pages of revisions to Sir Thomas More and a fragment of King Lear, anything that might conceivably have been near Shakespeare in his lifetime had big money attached to it. The rediscovery of Cardenio was the Holy Grail of the small-time antiquarians, the greatest lottery win there might ever be.\n\nWe rang on the doorbell of number 216. After a few moments a large middle-aged woman of ruddy complexion opened the door. Her hair looked newly coiffured and she was dressed in a lurid Prospero-patterned dress that might have been her Sunday best, but not anyone else's.\n\n\"Mrs. Hathaway34?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nWe held up our badges.\n\n\"Cable and Next, Swindon Literary Detectives. You called the office this morning?\"\n\nMrs. Hathaway34 beamed and ushered us in enthusiastically. As we stepped in we noticed that on every available wall space were hung pictures of Shakespeare, framed playbills, engravings and commemorative plates. The bookshelves were packed with numerous Shakespeare studies and volumes, the coffee table was carefully arrayed with rare back issues of the Shakespeare Federation's weekly magazine, We Love Willy, and in the corner of the room was a beautifully restored WillSpeak machine from the thirties. It was clear she was a serious fan. Not quite rabid enough to speak only in lines from the plays, but close enough.\n\n\"Would you like a cup of tea?\" asked Hathaway34, proudly putting on an ancient 78 of Sir Henry Irving playing Hamlet that was so bad it sounded as if he had recited it with a sock in his mouth.\n\n\"No, thank you, ma'am. You said you had a copy of Cardenio?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" she enthused, then added with a wink: \"Will's lost play popping up like a jack-in-a-box must come as quite a surprise to you, I imagine?\"\n\nI didn't tell her that a Cardenio scam was almost a weekly event.\n\n\"We spend our days surprised, Mrs. Hathaway34.\"\n\n\"Call me Anne34!\" she said as she opened a desk and gently withdrew a book wrapped in pink tissue paper. She placed it in front of us with great reverence.\n\n\"I bought it in a garage sale last week,\" she confided. \"I don't think the owner knew that he had a copy of a long-lost Shakespeare play in amongst unread Daphne Farquitt novels and back issues of Vintage Toaster Monthly.\"\n\nShe leaned forward.\n\n\"I bought it for a song, you know.\"\n\nAnd she giggled.\n\n\"I think this is the most important find since the King Lear fragment,\" she went on happily, clasping her hands to her bosom and staring adoringly at the engraving of the Bard above the mantelpiece. \"That fragment was in Will's hand and covers only two lines of dialogue between Lear and Cordelia. It sold at auction for one point eight million! Just think how much Cardenio would be worth!\"\n\n\"A genuine Cardenio would be almost priceless, ma'am,\" said Bowden politely, emphasizing the \"genuine.\"\n\nI closed the cover. I had read enough.\n\n\"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Hathaway34\u2014\"\n\n\"Anne34. Call me Anne34.\"\n\n\"\u2014Anne34. I'm afraid to say I believe this to be a forgery.\"\n\nShe didn't seem very put out.\n\n\"Are you sure, my dear? You didn't read very much of it.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so. The rhyme, meter and grammar don't really match any of Shakespeare's known works.\"\n\nThere was silence for a moment as Hathaway34 digested my words, frowned to herself and bit her lip. I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does, and she retorted belligerently:\n\n\"Will was adaptable to the nth degree, Miss Next\u2014I hardly think that any slight deviation from the norm is of any great relevance!\"\n\n\"You misunderstand me,\" I replied, trying to be as tactful as possible. \"It's not even a good forgery.\"\n\n\"Well!\" said Anne, putting on an air of aggrieved indignation and switching off Henry Irving as though to somehow punish us. \"Such authentication is notoriously difficult. I may have to seek a second opinion!\"\n\n\"You are more than welcome to do that, ma'am,\" I replied slowly, \"but they will say the same as I. It's not just the text. You see, Shakespeare never wrote on lined paper with a ballpoint, and even if he did, I doubt he would have had Cardenio seeking Lucinda in the Sierra Morena mountains driving an open-top Range Rover whilst playing 'It's the Same Old Song' by the Four Tops.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" said Bowden, amazed by the effrontery of the forger. \"Is that what it says?\"\n\nI passed him the manuscript to have a look at, and he chuckled to himself. But Hathaway34 was having none of it.\n\n\"And what of that?\" returned Hathaway34 angrily. \"In Julius Caesar there are plenty of clocks striking the hour, yet they weren't invented until much later. I think Shakespeare introduced the Range Rover in much the same way; a literary anachronism, that's all!\"\n\nI smiled agreeably and backed towards the door.\n\n\"We'd like you to come in and file a report. Let you look at some mug shots; see if we can find out who pulled this.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" said the woman loftily. \"I will seek a second opinion, and if necessary, a third and a fourth\u2014or as many as it takes. Good day, officers!\"\n\nAnd she opened the door, shooed us out and slammed it behind us.\n\n\"One born every minute,\" muttered Bowden as we walked to the car.\n\n\"I'd say. Well\u2014that's interesting.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Don't look now, but up the road there is a black Pontiac. It was parked outside the SpecOps building when we left.\"\n\nBowden had a quick glance in their direction as we got into the car.\n\n\"What do you think?\" I asked when we were inside.\n\n\"Goliath?\"\n\n\"Could be. They're probably still pissed off about losing Jack Schitt into 'The Raven.'\"\n\n\"I refuse to lose any sleep over him,\" replied Bowden, pulling into the main road.\n\n\"Me too.\"\n\nI looked in the vanity mirror at the black automobile four vehicles behind.\n\n\"Still with us?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Yup. Let's find out what they want. Take a left here, then left again and drop me off. Carry on for a hundred yards and then pull up.\"\n\nBowden turned off the main road and into another narrow residential road, dropped me off as instructed, sped on past the next corner and stopped, blocking the street. I ducked behind a parked car, and sure enough, the large black Pontiac swept past me. It drove round the next corner and stopped abruptly when it saw Bowden and started to reverse. I tapped on the smoked glass window and waved my badge. The driver stopped and wound down the window.\n\n\"Thursday Next, SO-27. Why are you following us?\" I demanded.\n\nThe driver and passenger were both dressed in dark suits and were clean-shaven. Only Goliath looked like this. Goliath\u2014 or SpecOps. The driver looked blankly at me for a moment and then launched into a well-practiced excuse.\n\n\"We seem to have taken a wrong turning, miss. Can you tell us the way to Pete and Dave's Dodo Emporium?\"\n\nI was unimpressed by their drab cover story, but I smiled anyway. They were SpecOps as much as I was.\n\n\"Why don't you just tell me who you are? We'll all get along a lot better, believe me.\"\n\nThe two men looked at one another, sighed resignedly and then held up their badges for me to see. They were SO-5, the same search & containment that hunted down Hades.\n\n\"SO-5?\" I queried. \"Tamworth's old outfit?\"\n\n\"I'm Phodder,\" said the driver. \"My associate here is Kannon. SpecOps-5 has been reassigned.\"\n\n\"Reassigned? Does that mean Acheron Hades is officially dead?\"\n\n\"No SO-5 case is ever completely closed. Acheron was only the third most evil criminal mind on the planet, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"Then who\u2014or what\u2014are you after this time?\"\n\nIt seemed that they preferred asking questions to answering them.\n\n\"Your name came up in preliminary inquiries. Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?\"\n\n\"What do you mean, odd?\"\n\n\"Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.\"\n\nI thought for a moment.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Well,\" announced Phodder with an air of finality, \"if it does, would you call me at this number?\"\n\nI took the card, bade them goodbye and returned to Bowden.\n\nWe were soon heading north on the Cirencester road, the Pontiac nowhere in sight. I explained who they were to Bowden, who raised his eyebrows and said:\n\n\"Sounds ominous. Someone worse than Hades? That'll take some doing.\"\n\n\"Hard to believe, isn't it? Where are we heading now?\"\n\n\"Vole Towers.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I replied in some surprise. \"Why would someone as eminent and respectable as Lord Volescamper get embroiled in a Cardenio scam?\"\n\n\"Search me. He's a golfing buddy of Braxton's, so this could be political. Better not dismiss it out of hand and make him look an idiot\u2014we'll only be clobbered by the chief.\"\n\nWe swung in through the battered and rusty gates of Vole Towers and motored up the long drive, which was more weed than gravel. We pulled up outside the imposing Gothic Revival house that was clearly in need of repair, and Lord Volescamper came out to meet us. Volescamper was a tall thin man with gray hair and a ponderous air. He was wearing an old pair of herringbone tweeds and brandished a pair of secateurs like a cavalry saber.\n\n\"Blasted brambles!\" he muttered as he shook our hands. \"Look here, they can grow two inches a day, you know; inexorable little blighters that threaten to engulf all that we know and love\u2014a bit like anarchists, really. You're that Next girl, aren't you? I think we met at my niece Gloria's wedding\u2014who did she marry again?\"\n\n\"My cousin Wilbur.\"\n\n\"Now I remember. Who was that sad old fart who made a nuisance of himself on the dance floor?\"\n\n\"I think that was you, sir.\"\n\nLord Volescamper thought for a moment and stared at his feet.\n\n\"Goodness. It was, wasn't it? Saw you on the telly last night. Look here, it was a rum business about that Bront\u00eb book, eh?\"\n\n\"Very rum,\" I assured him. \"This is Bowden Cable, my partner.\"\n\n\"How do you do, Mr. Cable? Bought one of the new Griffin Sportinas, I see. How do you find it?\"\n\n\"Usually where I left it, sir.\"\n\n\"Indeed? You must come inside. Victor sent you, yes?\"\n\nWe followed Volescamper as he shambled into the decrepit mansion. We passed into the main hall, which was heavily decorated with the heads of various antelope, stuffed and placed on wooden shields.\n\n\"In years gone by the family were prodigious hunters,\" explained Volescamper. \"But look here, I don't carry on that way myself. Father was heavily into killing and stuffing things. When he died he insisted on being stuffed himself. That's him over there.\"\n\nWe stopped on the landing and Bowden and I looked at the deceased earl with interest. With his favorite gun in the crook of his arm and his faithful dog at his feet, he stared blankly out of the glass case. I thought perhaps his head and shoulders should also be mounted on a wooden shield but I didn't think it would be polite to say so. Instead I said:\n\n\"He looks very young.\"\n\n\"But look here, he was. Forty-three and eight days. Trampled to death by antelope.\"\n\n\"In Africa?\"\n\n\"No,\" sighed Volescamper wistfully, \"on the A30 near Chard one night in '34. He stopped the car because there was a stag with the most magnificent antlers lying in the road. Father got out to have a peek and, well look here, he didn't stand a chance. The herd came from nowhere.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Sort of ironic, really,\" he rambled on as Bowden looked at his watch, \"but do you know the really odd thing was, when the herd of antelope ran off, the magnificent stag had also gone.\"\n\n\"It must have just been stunned,\" suggested Bowden.\n\n\"Yes, yes, I suppose so,\" replied Volescamper absently, \"I suppose so. But look here, you don't want to know about Father. Come on!\"\n\nAnd so saying he strutted off down the corridor that led to the library. We had to trot to catch up with him and soon arrived at a pair of steel vault doors\u2014clearly, Volescamper had no doubts as to the value of his collection. I touched the blued steel of the doors thoughtfully.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" said Volescamper, divining my thoughts, \"look here, the old library is worth quite a few pennies\u2014I like to take precautions; don't be fooled by the oak paneling inside\u2014the library is essentially a vast steel safe.\"\n\nIt wasn't unusual. The Bodleian these days was like Fort Knox\u2014and Fort Knox itself had been converted to take the Library of Congress's more valuable works. We entered, and if I was prepared to see an immaculate collection, I was to be disappointed\u2014the library looked more like a box room than a depository of knowledge; the books were piled up on tables, in boxes, arranged haphazardly and in many cases just stacked on the floor ten or twelve high. But what books! I picked up a volume at random which turned out to be a second-impression copy of Gulliver's Travels. I showed it to Bowden, who responded by holding up a signed first edition of Decline and Fall.\n\n\"You didn't just buy Cardenio recently or something, then?\" I asked, suddenly feeling that perhaps my early dismissal of the find might have been too hasty.\n\n\"Goodness me, no. Look here, we found it only the other day when we were cataloguing part of my great-grandfather Bartholomew Volescamper's private library. Didn't even know I had it. Ah!\u2014this is Mr. Swaike, my security consultant.\"\n\nA thickset man with a humorless look and jowls like bananas had entered the library. He eyed us suspiciously as Volescamper made the introductions, then laid a sheaf of roughly cut pages bound into a leather book on the table.\n\n\"What sort of security matters do you consult on, Mr. Swaike?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Personal and insurance, Mr. Cable,\" replied Swaike in a drab monotone. \"This library is uncatalogued and uninsured; criminal gangs would regard it as a valuable target, despite the security arrangements. Cardenio is only one of a dozen books I am currently keeping in a secure safe within the locked library.\"\n\n\"I can't fault you there, Mr. Swaike,\" replied Bowden.\n\nI looked at the manuscript. At first glance, things looked good, so I quickly donned a pair of cotton gloves, something I hadn't even considered with Mrs. Hathaway34's Cardenio. I pulled up a chair and studied the first page. The handwriting was very similar to Shakespeare's with loops at the top of the L's and W's and spirited backward-facing extensions to the top of the D's; and the spelling was erratic, too\u2014always a good sign. It all looked real, but I had seen some good copies in my time. There were a lot of scholars who were versed well enough in Shakespeare, Elizabethan history, grammar and spelling to attempt a forgery but none of them ever had the wit and charm of the Bard himself. Victor used to say that Shakespeare forgery was inherently impossible because the act of copying overrode the act of inspired creation\u2014the heart being squeezed out by the mind, so to speak. But as I turned the first page and read the dramatis personae, butterflies stirred within me. I'd read fifty or sixty Cardenios before, but\u2014I turned the page and read Cardenio's opening soliloquy:\n\n\"Know'st thou, O love, the pangs which I sustain\u2014\"\n\n\"It's a sort of Spanish thirty-something Romeo and Juliet but with a few laughs and a happy ending,\" explained Volescamper helpfully. \"Look here, would you care for some tea?\"\n\n\"What? Yes\u2014thank you.\"\n\nVolescamper told us that he would lock us in for security reasons but we could press the bell if we needed anything.\n\nThe steel door clanged shut and we read with increased interest as the knight Cardenio told the audience of his lost love Lucinda and how he had fled to the mountains after her marriage to the deceitful Ferdinand and become a ragged, destitute wretch.\n\n\"Good Lord,\" murmured Bowden over my shoulder, a sentiment that I agreed with wholeheartedly. The play, forgery or not, was excellent. After the opening soliloquy we soon went into a flashback where Cardenio and Lucinda write a series of passionate love letters in an Elizabethan version of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day split screen, Lucinda on one side reacting to Cardenio writing them on the other and then vice versa. It was funny, too. We read on and learned of Cardenio's plans to marry Lucinda, then the Duke's demand for him to be a companion to his son Ferdinand, Ferdinand's hopeless infatuation for Dorothea, the trip to Lucinda's town, how Ferdinand's love transfers to Lucinda\u2014\n\n\"What do you think?\" I asked Bowden as we reached the end of the second act.\n\n\"Amazing! I've not seen anything like this, ever.\"\n\n\"Real?\"\n\n\"I think so\u2014but mistakes have been made before. I'll copy out the passage where Cardenio finds he has been duped and Ferdinand is planning to wed Lucinda. We can run it through the Verse Meter Analyzer back at the office.\"\n\nWe eagerly read on. The sentences, the meter, the style\u2014it was all pure Shakespeare. Cardenio had been missing for over four hundred years, but for it to surface now and quite out of the blue gave me mixed feelings. Yes, it would throw the literary world off kilter and send every single Shakespeare fan and scholar into paroxysms of litjoy, but on the other hand it worried me, too. My father always used to say that whenever something is too fantastic to be true, it generally is. I voiced my concerns to Bowden, who pointed out less pessimistically that the original manuscript of Marlowe's Edward II surfaced only in the thirties. So unearthing new plays wasn't unprecedented\u2014 but I still felt uneasy.\n\nThe tea was apparently forgotten, and while Bowden copied out the five-page scene for the VMA I looked around the library, wondering just what other treasures might be hidden here. The large safe-within-a-safe stood at the side of the room and contained, Swaike had said, another dozen or so rare books. I tried the safe door but it was locked, so I made a few notes for Victor in case he thought we should apply for a Compulsory Literary Disclosure Order. I then ambled round the old library, looking at books that caught my eye. I was thumbing through a collection of first-edition Evelyn Waugh novels when a key turned in the heavy steel door. I hurriedly replaced the volume as Lord Volescamper popped his head in and announced in an excited manner that due to \"prior engagements\" we would have to resume our work the following day. Swaike walked in to lock Cardenio back in the safe, and we followed Volescamper out through the shabby building to the entrance, just as a pair of large Bentley limousines rolled up. Volescamper bade us a hasty goodbye before striding forward to greet the passenger in the first car.\n\n\"Well well,\" said Bowden. \"Look who it is.\"\n\nA young man flanked by two large bodyguards got out and shook hands with the enthusiastic Volescamper. I recognized him from his numerous TV appearances. It was Yorrick Kaine, the charismatic young leader of the marginal Whig party. He and Volescamper walked up the steps talking animatedly and then vanished inside Vole Towers.\n\nWe drove away from the moldering house with mixed feelings about the treasure we had been studying.\n\n\"What do you think?\"\n\n\"Fishy,\" said Bowden. \"Very fishy. How could something like Cardenio turn up out of the blue?\"\n\n\"How fishy on the fishiness scale?\" I asked him. \"Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.\"\n\n\"A whale isn't a fish, Thursday.\"\n\n\"A whale shark is\u2014sort of.\"\n\n\"All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish.\"\n\n\"A crayfish isn't a fish,\" I told him.\n\n\"A starfish, then.\"\n\n\"Still not a fish.\"\n\n\"A silverfish?\"\n\n\"Try again.\"\n\n\"This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.\"\n\n\"I'm pulling your leg, Bowden.\"\n\n\"Oh I see,\" he replied as the penny dropped. \"Tomfoolery.\"\n\nBowden's lack of humor wasn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, none of us really had much of a sense of humor in SpecOps. But he thought it socially desirable to have one, so I did what I could to help. The trouble was, he could read Three Men in a Boat without a single smirk and viewed P. G. Wodehouse as \" infantile,\" so I had a suspicion the affliction was long-lasting and permanent.\n\n\"My tensionologist suggested I should try stand-up comedy,\" said Bowden, watching me closely for my reaction.\n\n\"Well, 'How do you find the Sportina? / Where I left it' was a good start,\" I told him.\n\nHe stared at me blankly. It hadn't been a joke.\n\n\"I've booked myself in at the Happy Squid talent night on Monday. Do you want to hear my routine?\"\n\n\"I'm all ears.\"\n\nHe cleared his throat.\n\n\"There are these three anteaters, see, and they go into a\u2014\"\n\nThere was a sharp crack, the car swerved, and we heard a fast flapping noise. I tensed as we fishtailed for a moment before Bowden brought the car under control.\n\n\"Damn!\" he muttered. \"Blowout.\"\n\nThere was another concussion like the first, but we weren't going so fast by now and Bowden eased the car in towards the car park at the South Cerney stop of the Skyrail.\n\n\"Two blowouts?\" muttered Bowden as we got out. We looked at the remnants of the car tire still on the rim, then at each other\u2014and then at the busy road to see if anyone else was having problems. They weren't. The traffic zoomed up and down the road quite happily.\n\n\"How is it possible for both tires to go within ten seconds of each other?\"\n\nI shrugged. I didn't have an answer for this. It was a new car, after all, and I'd been driving all my life and never had a single blowout, much less two. With only one spare wheel we were stuck here for a while. I suggested he call SpecOps and get them to send a tow truck.\n\n\"Wireless seems to be dead,\" he announced, keying the mike and turning the knob. \"That's odd.\"\n\nSomething, I felt, wasn't quite right.\n\n\"No more odd than a double blowout,\" I told him, walking a few paces to a handy phone booth. I lifted the receiver and said: \"Do you have any change\u2014\"\n\nI stopped because I'd just noticed a ticket on top of the phone. As I picked it up a Skyrail shuttle approached high up on the steel tracks, as if on cue.\n\n\"What have you found?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"A Skyrail day pass,\" I replied slowly, replacing the receiver. Broken images of something half forgotten or not yet remembered started to form in my head. It was confusing, but I knew what I had to do. \"I'm going to take the Skyrail and see what happens.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"There's a neanderthal in trouble.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\nI frowned, trying to make sense of what I was feeling.\n\n\"I'm not sure. What's the opposite of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, when you see something that hasn't happened yet?\"\n\n\"I don't know\u2014avant verrais?\"\n\n\"That's it. Something's going to happen\u2014and I'm part of it.\"\n\n\"I'll come with you.\"\n\n\"No, Bowden; if you were meant to come I would have found two tickets.\"\n\nI left my partner looking confused and walked briskly up to the station, showed my ticket to the inspector and climbed the steel steps to the platform fifty feet above ground. I was alone apart from a young woman sitting by herself on a bench, checking her makeup in a mirror. She looked up at me for a moment before the doors of the shuttle hissed open and I stepped inside, wondering what events were about to unfold."
            },
            {
                "title": "Five Coincidences, Seven Irma Cohens and One Confused Neanderthal",
                "text": "\u2002The neanderthal experiment was conceived in order to create the euphemistically entitled \"medical test vessels,\" living creatures that were as close as possible to humans without actually being human within the context of the law. Using cells reengineered from DNA discovered in a Homo Llysternef forearm preserved in a peat bog near Llysternef in Wales, the experiment was an unparalleled success. Sadly for Goliath, even the hardiest of medical technicians balked at experiments conducted upon intelligent and speaking entities, so the first batch of neanderthals were trained instead as \"expendable combat units,\" a project that was shelved as soon as the lack of aggressive instincts in the neanderthal was noted. They were subsequently released into the community as cheap labor and became a celebrated tax write-off. Infertile males and an expected life span of fifty years meant they would soon be relegated to the reengineerment industries' ever-growing list of \"failures.\"\n\n\u2014GERHARD VON SQUID, Neanderthals: Back After a Short Absence\n\nCoincidences are strange things. I like the one about Sir Edmund Godfrey, who was found murdered in 1678 and left in a ditch on Greenberry Hill in London. Three men were arrested and hanged for the crime\u2014Mr. Green, Mr. Berry and Mr. Hill. My father told me that for the most part coincidences could be safely ignored: They were merely the chance discovery of one pertinent fact from a million or so possible daily interconnections. \"Stop a stranger in the street,\" he would say, \"and delve into each other's past. Pretty soon an astounding-too-amazing-to-be-chance coincidence will appear.\"\n\nI suppose he's right, but that didn't explain how a twin puncture outside the station, a broken wireless which led directly to the discovery of a valid Skyrail ticket and the Skyrail itself approaching at that precise moment can all happen out of the blue. Some things happen for a reason, and I was inclined to think that this was one of those times.\n\nI stepped into the single Skyrail car, which was the same as every other I had been in. It was clean, had about forty seats and room for standing if required. I took a seat at the front as the doors sighed shut and, accompanied by the hum of electric motors, we were soon gliding effortlessly above the Cerney lakes. Since I was here for a purpose, I looked around carefully to see what that might be. The Skyrail operator was neanderthal; he had his hand on the throttle and gazed absently at the view. His eyebrows twitched and he sniffed the air occasionally. The car was almost empty; seven people, all of them women and no one familiar.\n\n\"Three down,\" exclaimed a squat woman who was staring at a folded-up newspaper, half to herself and half to the rest of us. \"Well decorated for prying, perhaps? Ten letters.\"\n\nNo one answered as we sailed past Cricklade Station without stopping, much to the annoyance of a large, expensively dressed lady who huffed loudly and pointed at the operator with her umbrella.\n\n\"You there!\" she boomed like a captain before the storm. \"What are you doing? I wanted to get off at Cricklade, damn you!\"\n\nThe operator seemed unperturbed at the insult and muttered an apology. This obviously wasn't good enough for the loud and objectionable woman, who jabbed the small neanderthal violently in the ribs with her umbrella. He didn't yell out in pain, he just flinched, pulled the driver's door closed behind him and locked it. I stood up and snatched the umbrella from the woman.\n\n\"What the\u2014!\" she said indignantly.\n\n\"Don't do that,\" I told her. \"It's not nice.\"\n\n\"Poppycock!\" she guffawed loudly. \"Why, he's only neanderthal!\"\n\n\"Meddlesome,\" said one of the other passengers sitting near the back with an air of finality, staring at an advert for the Gravitube.\n\nThe objectionable lady and I stared at her, wondering who she was referring to. She looked at us both, flushed, and said:\n\n\"No, no. Ten letters, three down. Well decorated for prying. Meddlesome.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" muttered the lady with the crossword as she scribbled in the answer.\n\nI handed the umbrella back to the well-heeled woman, who eyed me malevolently; we were barely two feet apart but she wasn't going to sit down first, and neither was I.\n\n\"Jab the neanderthal again and I'll arrest you for assault,\" I told her.\n\n\"I happen to know,\" announced the woman tartly, \"that neanderthals are legally classed as animals. You cannot assault a neanderthal any more than you can a mouse!\"\n\nMy temper began to rise\u2014always a bad sign. I would probably end up doing something stupid.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I replied, \"but I can arrest you for cruelty, bruising the calm and anything else I can think of.\"\n\nBut the woman wasn't the least bit intimidated.\n\n\"My husband is a justice of the peace,\" she announced like a hidden trump. \"I can make things very tricky for you. What is your name?\"\n\n\"Next,\" I told her without hesitation. \"Thursday Next. SO-27.\"\n\nHer eyelids flickered slightly and she stopped rummaging in her bag for a pencil and paper.\n\n\"The Jane Eyre Thursday Next?\" she asked, her mood changing abruptly.\n\n\"I saw you on the telly,\" chirped the woman with the crossword. \"You seem a bit obsessed with your dodo, I must say. Why couldn't you talk about Jane Eyre, Goliath, or ending the Crimean War?\"\n\n\"Believe me, I tried.\"\n\nThe well-heeled woman decided that this was a good moment to withdraw, so she sat back in her seat two rows behind me and stared out of the window as the Skyrail swept on past Broad Blunsdon Station; the passengers variously sighed, made tut-tut noises and shrugged to one another.\n\n\"I am going to complain to the Skyrail management about this,\" said a heavyset woman with makeup like builder's plaster. She carried a disgruntled-looking Pekinese. \"A good cure for insubordination is\u2014\"\n\nHer speech came to an abrupt end as the neanderthal suddenly increased the speed of the car.\n\nI knocked on the acrylic door and said: \"What's going on, pal?\"\n\nThe neanderthal had taken about as much umbrella jabbing as he could that day, or any day, come to that.\n\n\"We are going home now,\" he said simply, staring straight ahead.\n\n\"We?\" echoed the woman with the umbrella. \"No, we're not. I live at Cricklade\u2014\"\n\n\"He means I,\" I told her. \"Neanderthals don't use the personal pronoun.\"\n\n\"Damn stupid!\" she replied. I glared at her and she got the message and lapsed into sulky silence. I leaned closer to the driver.\n\n\"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Kaylieu,\" he replied.\n\n\"Good. Now Kaylieu, I want you to tell me what the problem is.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment as the Swindon Airship stop came and went. I saw another shuttle that had been diverted to a siding and several Skyrail officials waving at us, so it was only a matter of time before the authorities knew what was going on.\n\n\"We want to be real.\"\n\n\"Day's hurt?\" murmured the squat woman at the back, sucking the end of her pencil and staring at the crossword.\n\n\"What did you say?\" I said.\n\n\"Day's hurt?\" she repeated, oblivious to the situation. \"Nine down; eight letters\u2014I think it's an anagram.\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" I replied before returning my attention to Kaylieu. \"What do you mean, real?\"\n\n\"We are not animals,\" announced the once extinct cousin of mankind. \"We want to be a protected species\u2014like dodo, mammoth\u2014and you. We want to speak to head man at Goliath and someone from Toad News.\"\n\n\"I'll see what I can do.\"\n\nI walked to the back of the shuttle and picked up the emergency phone.\n\n\"Hello?\" I said to the operator. \"This is Thursday Next, SO-27. We have a situation in shuttle number\u2014ah\u20146174.\"\n\nWhen I told the operator what was going on she took a sharp intake of breath and asked how many people were with me and whether anyone was hurt.\n\n\"Seven females, myself and the driver; we are all fine.\"\n\n\"Don't forget Pixie Frou-Frou,\" said the large woman with the overdone makeup.\n\n\"And one Pekinese.\"\n\nThe operator told me they were clearing all the tracks ahead, we would have to keep calm and she would call back. I tried to tell her that it wasn't a bad situation, but she had rung off.\n\nI sat down close to the neanderthal again. Jaw fixed, he was staring intently ahead, knuckles white on the throttle lever. We approached the Wanborough junction, crossed the M4 and were diverted west. The passenger directly behind me, a shy-looking girl in her late teens and dressed in a De La Mare label sweatshirt, caught my eye; she looked frightened.\n\nI smiled to try to put her at ease.\n\n\"What's your name?\" I asked her.\n\n\"Irma,\" she replied in a small voice. \"Irma Cohen.\"\n\n\"Poppycock!\" said the umbrella woman. \"I'm Irma Cohen!\"\n\n\"So am I,\" said the woman with the Peke.\n\n\"And me!\" exclaimed the thin woman at the back. It seemed after a short period of frenzied cries of \"Ooh fancy that!\" and \"Well I never!\" that everyone in the Skyrail except me and Kaylieu and Pixie Frou-Frou was called Irma Cohen. Some of them were even vaguely related. It was an unnerving coincidence\u2014for today, the best yet.\n\n\"Thursday,\" announced the squat woman.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nBut she wasn't talking to me; she was writing in the answer: Day's hurt\u2014Thursday\u2014it was an anagram.\n\nThe emergency phone rang.\n\n\"This is Diana Thuntress, trained negotiator for SpecOps-9,\" said a businesslike voice. \"Who is this?\"\n\n\"Di, it's me, Thursday.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Hello Thursday. Saw you on the telly last night. Trouble seems to follow you around, doesn't it? What's it like in there?\"\n\nI looked at the small and unconcerned crowd of commuters who were showing each other pictures of their children. Pixie Frou-Frou had fallen asleep and the Irma Cohen with the crossword had announced the clue for six across: \"The parting bargain?\"\n\n\"They're fine. A little bored, but not hurt.\"\n\n\"What does the perp want?\"\n\n\"He wants to talk to someone at Goliath about species self-ownership.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014he's neanderthal?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It's not possible! A neanderthal being violent?\"\n\n\"There's no violence up here, Di\u2014just desperation.\"\n\n\"Shit,\" muttered Thuntress. \"What do I know about dealing with thals? We'll have to get one of the SpecOps neanderthals in.\"\n\n\"He also wants to see a reporter from Toad News.\"\n\nThere was silence on the other end of the phone.\n\n\"Di?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"What can I tell Kaylieu?\"\n\n\"Tell him that\u2014er\u2014Toad News are supplying a car to take him to the Goliath Genetic Labs in the Preselli Mountains where Goliath's governor, chief geneticist and a team of lawyers will be waiting to agree to terms.\"\n\nAs lies go, it was a real corker.\n\n\"But is that right?\" I asked.\n\n\"There is no 'right,' Thursday,\" snapped Diana, \"not since he took control of the Skyrail. There are eight lives in there. It doesn't take the winner of Name That Fruit! to figure out what we have to do. Pacifist neanderthal or not, there is a chance he could harm the passengers.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous! No neanderthal has ever harmed anyone. What is this,\" I added, outraged by the crude approach, \"staff training day for the trigger-happy clots at SO-14?\"\n\n\"It's not unusual for hostages to start to empathize with their captors, Thursday. Let us handle this.\"\n\n\"Di,\" I said in a clear voice, \"listen to me: No one is either threatened or in danger!\"\n\n\"Yet, Thursday. Yet. Listen, we're not going to take that risk. This is how it's going to be: We're going to divert you back up along the Cirencester line. We'll have SO-14 agents in position at Cricklade. As soon as he stops I'm afraid we will have no alternative but to take him out. I want you to make sure the passengers are all in the back of the car.\"\n\n\"Diana, that's crazy! You'd kill him because he took a few lamebrained commuters for a merry trip round the Swindon loop?\"\n\n\"You don't kill neanderthals; they are destroyed. There's a big difference\u2014and besides, the law is very strict on hijackers.\"\n\n\"He's nothing of the sort, Di. He's just a confused extinctee!\"\n\n\"Sorry, Thursday\u2014this is out of my hands.\"\n\nI hung up the phone angrily as the shuttle was diverted back up towards Cirencester. We flew through Shaw Station, much to the surprise of the waiting commuters, and were soon heading north again. I returned to the driver.\n\n\"Kaylieu, you must stop at Purton.\"\n\nHe grunted in reply but showed little sign of being happy or sad\u2014the subtleties of neanderthal facial expressions were mostly lost on us. He stared at me for a moment and then asked:\n\n\"You have childer?\"\n\nI hastily changed the subject. Being sequenced infertile was the neanderthals' biggest cause of complaint against their sapien masters. Within thirty years or so the last of the experimental neanderthals would die of old age. Unless Goliath sequenced some more, that would be it. Extinct again\u2014it was unlikely even we would manage that.\n\n\"No, no, I don't,\" I replied hastily.\n\n\"Nor us,\" returned Kaylieu, \"but you have a choice. We don't. We should never have been brought back. Not to this. Not to carry bags for sapien, no childer and umbrellas jab-jab.\"\n\nHe stared bleakly into the middle distance\u2014perhaps to a better life thirty thousand years ago when he was free to hunt large herbivores from the relative safety of a drafty cave. Home for Kaylieu was extinction again\u2014at least for him. He didn't want to hurt any of us and would never do so. He couldn't hurt himself either, so he would rely on SpecOps to do the job for him.\n\n\"Goodbye.\"\n\nI jumped at the finality of the pronouncement but upon turning found that it was merely the crossword Mrs. Cohen filling in the last clue.\n\n\"The parting bargain,\" she muttered happily. \"Good buy. Goodbye. Finished!\"\n\nI didn't like this; not at all. The three clues of the crossword had been \"Meddlesome,\" \"Thursday\" and \"Goodbye.\" More coincidences. Without the dual blowout and the fortuitous day ticket, I wouldn't be here at all. Everyone was called Cohen and now the crossword. But goodbye? If all went according to SpecOps, the only person worthy of that interjection would be Kaylieu. Still, I had other things to worry about as we passed Purton without stopping. I asked everyone to move to the back of the car and once done, joined Kaylieu at the front.\n\n\"Listen to me, Kaylieu. If you don't make any threatening movements they may not open fire.\"\n\n\"We thought of that,\" said the neanderthal as he pulled an imitation automatic from his tunic.\n\n\"They will fire,\" he said as Cricklade Station hove into view a half mile up the line. \"We carved it from soap\u2014Dove soap,\" he added. \"We thought it ironic.\"\n\nWe approached Cricklade at full speed; I could see SpecOps-14 vehicles parked on the road and black uniformed SWAT teams waiting on the platform. With a hundred yards to run, the power to the Skyrail abruptly cut out and the shuttle skidded, power off, towards the station. The door to the driver's compartment swung open and I squeezed in. I grabbed his soapy gun and threw it to the floor. Kaylieu wasn't going to die, at least not if I could help it. We rumbled into the station. The doors were opened by SO-14 operatives and all the Irma Cohens rapidly evacuated. I put my arm round Kaylieu. It was the first time I had done so to any neanderthal and I was surprised by how hard the muscles were\u2014and how warm to the touch.\n\n\"Move away from the thal!\" said a voice from a bullhorn.\n\n\"So you can shoot him?\" I yelled back.\n\n\"He threatened the lives of commuters, Next. He is a danger to civilized society!\"\n\n\"Civilized?\" I shouted angrily. \"Look at you!\"\n\n\"Next!\" said the voice. \"Move aside. That is a direct order!\"\n\n\"You must do as they say,\" said the neanderthal.\n\n\"Over my dead body.\"\n\nAs if in reply there was a gentle POK sound and a single bullet hole appeared in the windshield of the shuttle. Someone had decided he could take out Kaylieu anyway. My temper flared and I tried to yell out in anger but no sound came from my lips. My legs felt weak and I fell to the floor in a heap, the world turning gray about me. I couldn't even feel my legs. I heard someone yell: Medic! and the last thing I saw before the darkness overtook me was Kaylieu's broad face looking down at me. He had tears in his eyes and was mouthing the words We're so sorry. So very, very, sorry."
            },
            {
                "title": "Vanishing Hitchhikers",
                "text": "\u2002Urban legends are older than congress gaiters but far more interesting. I'd heard most of them, from the dog in the microwave to ball lightning chasing a housewife in Preston, to the fried dodo leg found in a Smiley Fried Chicken, to the carnivorous Diatryma supposedly reengineered and now living in the New Forest. I'd read all about the alien spaceship that crash-landed near Lambourn in 1952, the story that Charles Dickens was a woman and that the president of the Goliath Corporation was actually a 142-year-old man kept alive in a bottle by medical science. Stories about SpecOps abound, the favorite at present relating to \" something odd\" dug up in the Quantock Hills. Yes, I'd heard them all. Never believed any of them. Then one day, I was one....\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nI opened one eye, then the other. It was a warm summer's day on the Marlborough downs. A light zephyr brought with it the delicate scent of honeysuckle and wild thyme. The air was warm and small puffy clouds were tinged red from the setting sun. I was standing by the side of a road in open country. In one direction I could just see a lone cyclist moving towards where I stood and in the other the road wound away into the distance past fields in which sheep grazed peacefully. If this was life after death, then a lot of people had not much to worry about and the Church had delivered the goods after all.\n\n\"Psssst!\" hissed a voice close at hand. I turned to see a figure crouched behind a large Goliath Corporation billboard advertising buy-two-get-one-free grand pianos.\n\n\"Dad\u2014?\"\n\nHe pulled me behind the billboard with him.\n\n\"Don't stand there like a tourist, Thursday!\" he snapped crossly. \"Anyone would think you wanted to be seen!\"\n\n\"Hi, Dad!\" I said fondly, giving him a hug.\n\n\"Hello, hello,\" he said absently, glancing up and down the road and consulting the chronograph on his wrist and muttering: \"fundamental things apply as time goes by....\"\n\nI regarded my father as a sort of time-traveling knight errant, but to the ChronoGuard he was nothing less than a criminal. He threw in his badge and went rogue seventeen years ago when his \"historical and moral\" differences brought him into conflict with the ChronoGuard High Chamber. The downside of this was that he didn't really exist at all in any accepted terms of the definition; the ChronoGuard had interrupted his conception in 1917 by a well-timed knock on his parents' front door. But despite all this Dad was still around and I and my brothers had been born. \"Things,\" Dad used to say, \"are a whole lot weirder than we can know.\"\n\nHe thought for a moment and made a few notes on the back of an envelope with a pencil stub.\n\n\"How are you, by the way?\" he asked.\n\n\"I think I was just accidentally shot dead by a SpecOps marksman.\"\n\nHe burst out laughing but suddenly stopped when he saw I was serious.\n\n\"Goodness!\" he said. \"You do live an exciting life. But never fear. You can't die until you've lived, and you've barely started that at all. What's the news from home?\"\n\n\"A ChronoGuard officer turned up at my wedding bash wanting to know where you were.\"\n\n\"Lavoisier?\"\n\n\"Yes; do you know him?\"\n\n\"I should think so,\" sighed my father. \"We were partners for nearly seven centuries.\"\n\n\"He said you were very dangerous.\"\n\n\"No more dangerous than anyone else who dares speak the truth. How's your mother?\"\n\n\"She's fine, although you might try and clear up that misunderstanding about Emma Hamilton.\"\n\n\"Emma and I\u2014I mean Lady Hamilton and I\u2014are simply 'good friends.' There's nothing to it, I swear.\"\n\n\"Tell her that.\"\n\n\"I try, but you know what a temper she has. I only have to mention I've been anywhere near the turn of the nineteenth century and she gets in a frightful strop.\"\n\nI looked around.\n\n\"Where are we?\"\n\n\"Summer of '72,\" he replied. \"All well at work?\"\n\n\"We found a thirty-third play by Shakespeare.\"\n\n\"Thirty-three?\" echoed my father. \"That's odd. When I took the entire works back to the actor Shakespeare to distribute there were only eighteen.\"\n\n\"Perhaps the actor Shakespeare started writing them himself?\" I suggested.\n\n\"By thunder you could be right!\" he exclaimed. \"He looked a bright spark. Tell me, how many comedies are there now?\"\n\n\"Fifteen.\"\n\n\"But I only gave him three. They must have been so popular he started writing new ones himself!\"\n\n\"It would explain why all the comedies are pretty much the same,\" I added. \"Spells, identical twins, shipwrecks\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014usurped Dukes, men dressed as women,\" continued my father. \"You could be right.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment\u2014!\" I began. But my father, sensing my disquiet over the many seemingly impossible paradoxes in his work in the timestream, silenced me with his hand.\n\n\"One day you'll understand and everything will be more different than you can, at present, possibly hope to imagine.\"\n\nI must have looked blank, for he checked the road again, leaned against the back of the billboard and continued:\n\n\"Remember, Thursday, that scientific thought, indeed, any mode of thought whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else, is just like the fashions that we wear\u2014only much longer-lived. It's a little like a boy band.\"\n\n\"Scientific thought a boy band? How do you figure that?\"\n\n\"Well, every now and then a boy band comes along. We like it, buy the records, posters, parade them on TV, idolize them right up until\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014the next boy band?\" I suggested.\n\n\"Precisely. Aristotle was a boy band. A very good one, but only number six or seven. He was the best boy band until Isaac Newton, but even Newton was transplanted by an even newer boy band. Same haircuts\u2014but different moves.\"\n\n\"Einstein, right?\"\n\n\"Right. Do you see what I'm saying?\"\n\n\"That the way we think is nothing more than a passing fad?\"\n\n\"Exactly. Hard to visualize a new way of thinking? Try this. Go thirty or forty boy bands past Einstein. Where we would regard Einstein as someone who glimpsed a truth, played one good chord in seven forgettable albums.\"\n\n\"Where is this going, Dad?\"\n\n\"I'm nearly there. Imagine a boy band so good that you never needed another boy band ever again\u2014or even any more music. Can you imagine that?\"\n\n\"It's hard. But yes, okay.\"\n\nHe let this sink in for a moment.\n\n\"When we reach that boy band, my dear, everything we have ever puzzled about becomes crystal clear\u2014and we will kick ourselves that we hadn't thought of it earlier!\"\n\n\"We will?\"\n\n\"Sure. And you know the best thing about it? It's so devilishly simple.\"\n\n\"I see,\" I replied, slightly dubiously. \"And when is this amazing Boy Band discovered?\"\n\nDad suddenly turned serious.\n\n\"That's why I'm here. Perhaps never\u2014which would be frightfully awkward in the grand scheme of things, believe me. Did you see a cyclist on the road?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist, \"in ten seconds that cyclist will be knocked over and killed.\"\n\n\"And\u2014?\" I asked, sensing that I was missing something.\n\nHe looked around furtively and lowered his voice.\n\n\"Well, it seems that right here and now is the key event whereby we can avert whatever it is that destroys every single speck of life on this planet!\"\n\nI looked into his earnest eyes.\n\n\"You're not kidding, are you?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"In December 1985, your 1985, for some unaccountable reason, all the planet's organic matter turns to... this.\"\n\nHe withdrew a plastic specimen bag from his pocket. It contained a thick pinkish opaque slime. I took the bag and shook it curiously as we heard a loud screech of tires and a sickly thud. A moment later a broken body and twisted bicycle landed close by.\n\n\"On the 12th December at 20:23, give or take a second or two, all organic material\u2014every plant, insect, fish, bird, mammal and the three billion human inhabitants of this planet\u2014will start turning to that. End of all of us. End of Life\u2014and there won't be that boy band I was telling you about. The problem is\u2014\" he went on as a car door slammed and we heard feet running towards us\u2014\"that we don't know why. The ChronoGuard are not doing any upstreaming work at present.\"\n\n\"Why is that?\"\n\n\"Labor dispute. They're on strike for shorter hours. Not actually less hours, you understand, just the hours that they do work they want to be\u2014er\u2014shorter.\"\n\n\"So while the upstreamers are on strike the world could end and everyone will die, including them? But that's crazy!\"\n\n\"From an industrial action viewpoint,\" said my father, furrowing his brow and going silent for a moment, \"I think it's a very good strategy indeed. I hope they can thrash out a new agreement in time.\"\n\n\"And we'll know if they don't because the world ends?\" I remarked sarcastically.\n\n\"Oh, they'll come to some arrangement,\" explained my father, smiling. \"The dispute regarding undertime rates lasted almost two decades\u2014time's easy to waste when you've got lots of it.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I sighed, unwilling to get too embroiled in SO-12 labor disputes, \"what can we do about averting this crisis?\"\n\n\"Global disasters are like ripples in a pond, Sweetpea. There is always an epicenter\u2014a place in time and space where it all begins, however innocuously.\"\n\nI began to understand. I looked around at the summer's evening. The birds were twittering happily and barely a soul could be seen in any direction.\n\n\"This is the epicenter?\"\n\n\"Exactly so. Doesn't look like much, does it? I've run trillions of timestream models and the outcome is the same\u2014whatever happens here and now somehow relates to the averting of the crisis. And since the cyclist's death is the only event of any significance for hours in either direction, it has to be the key event. The cyclist must live to ensure the continued health of the planet!\"\n\nWe stepped out from behind the billboard to confront the driver, a youngish man who was dressed in flares and black leather jacket. He was visibly panicking.\n\n\"Oh my God!\" he said as he stared at the broken body at our feet. \"Oh my God! Is he\u2014?\"\n\n\"At the moment, yes,\" replied my father in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he filled his pipe.\n\n\"I must call an ambulance!\" stammered the man. \"He could still be alive!\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" continued my father, ignoring the motorist completely, \"the cyclist obviously does something or doesn't do something, and that's the key to this whole stupid mess.\"\n\n\"I wasn't speeding, you know,\" said the motorist quickly. \"The engine might have been revving, but it was stuck in second...\"\n\n\"Hang on!\" I said, slightly confused. \"You've been beyond 1985, Dad\u2014you told me so yourself!\"\n\n\"I know that,\" replied my father grimly, \"so we'd better get this absolutely right.\"\n\n\"There was a low sun,\" continued the driver as he thought hard, \"and he swerved in front of me!\"\n\n\"Male guilt avoidance syndrome,\" explained my father. \"It's a recognized medical condition by 2054.\"\n\nDad held me by the arm and there was a series of rapid flashes and an intense burst of noise, and we were about a half mile and five minutes in the direction the cyclist had come. He rode past and waved cheerily.\n\nWe returned the wave and watched him pedal off.\n\n\"Don't you stop him?\"\n\n\"Tried. Doesn't work. Stole his bike\u2014he borrowed a friend's. Diversion signs he ignored and the pools win didn't stop him either. I've tried everything. Time is the glue of the cosmos, Thursday, and it has to be eased apart\u2014try to force events and they end up whacking you on the frontal lobes like a cabbage from six paces. I thought you might have better luck. Lavoisier will have locked on to me by now. The car is due in thirty-eight seconds. Hitch a ride and do your best.\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I said. \"What about me?\"\n\n\"I'll take you out again after the cyclist is safe.\"\n\n\"Back to where?\" I asked suddenly. I had no desire to return the moment I'd left. \"The SpecOps marksman, Dad, remember? Can't you put me back, say, thirty minutes earlier?\"\n\nHe smiled and gave me a wink.\n\n\"Give my love to your mother. Thanks for helping out. Well, Time waits for no man, as we\u2014\"\n\nBut he was gone, melted into the air about me. I paused for a moment and put out a thumb to hail the approaching Jaguar. The car slowed and stopped and the motorist, oblivious to the impending accident, smiled and asked me to hop aboard.\n\nI said nothing, jumped in, and we roared off.\n\n\"Just picked the old girl up this morning,\" mused the driver, more to himself than me. \"Three point eight liters with triple DCOE Webers. Six cylinders of big cat\u2014lovely!\"\n\n\"Mind the cyclist,\" I said as we rounded the corner. The driver stamped on the brake and swerved past the man on the bike.\n\n\"Bloody cyclists!\" he exclaimed. \"A danger to themselves and everyone else. Where are you bound, little lady?\"\n\n\"I'm, ah... visiting my father,\" I explained, truthfully enough.\n\n\"Where does he live?\"\n\n\"Everywhere,\" I replied\u2014\n\n\"Wireless seems to be dead,\" Bowden announced, keying the mike and turning the knob. \"That's odd.\"\n\n\"No more odd than a double blowout,\" I told him, walking a few paces to the handy phone booth and picking up the Skyrail ticket.\n\n\"What have you found?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"A Skyrail day pass,\" I replied slowly, the broken images in my head that much clearer. \"I'm going to take the Skyrail\u2014 there's a neanderthal in trouble.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Call it d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu this time. Something's going to happen\u2014and I'm part of it.\"\n\nI left my partner and walked briskly up to the station, showed my ticket to the inspector and climbed the steel steps to the platform. The doors of the shuttle hissed open and I stepped inside, this time knowing exactly what I had to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Five Coincidences, Seven Irma Cohens and One Confused Thursday Next",
                "text": "\u2002The neanderthal experiment was simultaneously the high and low point of the genetic revolution. Successful in that a long-dead cousin of Homo sapien was brought back from extinction, yet a failure in that the scientists, so happy to gaze upon their experiments from their ever lofty ivory towers, had not seen so far as to consider the social implications that a new species of man might command in a world unvisited by their like for over thirty millennia. It was little surprise that so many neanderthals felt confused and unprepared for the pressures of modern life. It was Homo sapien at his least sapient.\n\n\u2014GERHARD VON SQUID, Neanderthals: Back After a Short Absence\n\nCoincidences are strange things. I like the one about the poker player named Fallon, shot dead for cheating in San Francisco in 1858. It was considered unlucky to split the dead man's $600 winnings, so they gave the money to a passerby, hoping to win it back. The stranger converted the $600 to $2,200 and when the police arrived, was asked to hand over the original $600, as it was to be given to the dead gambler's next of kin. After a brief investigation, the money was returned to the passerby, as he turned out to be Fallon's son, who hadn't seen his father for seven years.\n\nMy father told me that for the most part coincidences could be safely ignored. \"It would be much more remarkable,\" he would say, \"if there weren't any coincidences.\"\n\nI stepped into the Skyrail car and pulled the emergency lever. The neanderthal operator looked at me curiously as I jammed a foot in the open door of his driver's cubicle. I hauled him out and thumped him on the jaw before handcuffing him. A few days in the cooler and he would be back to Mrs. Kaylieu. The group of women in the Skyrail sat silent and shocked as I searched him and found\u2014nothing. I looked in the cab and his sandwich box but the carved-soap gun wasn't there either.\n\nThe well-heeled woman who had earlier been so keen to jab the driver with her umbrella was now full of self-righteous indignation:\n\n\"Disgraceful! Attacking a poor defenseless neanderthal in this manner! I shall speak to my husband about this!\"\n\nOne of the other women had called SpecOps-21 and a third had given the neanderthal a handkerchief to dab his bleeding mouth. I uncuffed Kaylieu and apologized, then sat down and put my head in my hands, wondering what had gone wrong. All the women were called Irma Cohen, but none of them would ever know it; Dad said this sort of thing happens all the time.\n\n\"You did what?\" asked Victor, a few hours later at the Litera Tec office.\n\n\"I punched a neanderthal.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I thought he had a gun on him.\"\n\n\"A neanderthal? With a gun? Don't be ridiculous!\"\n\nI was in Victor's office with the door closed\u2014a rarity for him. I had been arrested, charged, processed\u2014and delivered under guard to Victor, who vouched for me before I was released. I would have been indignant had I not been so confused. And I was sorry for Kaylieu, too\u2014I had knocked out one of his teeth.\n\n\"If the gun had been there it would have been carved from soap,\" I continued. \"He wanted SO-14 to kill him. But that's not the half of it. The intended victim was me. If I had journeyed on the Skyrail it would have been Thursday in the body bag, not Kaylieu. I was set up, Victor. Someone manipulated events to try and bump me off with a stray SpecOps bullet\u2014maybe that was their idea of a joke. If it hadn't been for Dad taking me out I'd be playing a harp by now.\"\n\nVictor had been staring out of the window, his back to me.\n\n\"And there were the crossword clues\u2014!\"\n\nVictor turned and walked back to his desk, picked up the paper and read the answers outlined in green.\n\n\"Meddlesome, Thursday, Goodbye.\"\n\nHe shrugged.\n\n\"Coincidence. I could make any sentence I wanted from any other clues just as easily. Look here.\"\n\nHe scanned the answers for a moment.\n\n\"Planet, Destroyed, Soonest. What does that mean? The world's about to end?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\nHe dumped my arrest report in his out tray and sat down.\n\n\"Thursday,\" he said quietly, staring at me soberly, \"I've been in law enforcement for most of my life and I will tell you right now there is no such offense as 'attempted murder by coincidence in an alternative future by person or persons unknown.'\"\n\nI sighed and rubbed my face with my hands. He was right, of course.\n\n\"O-kay,\" he sighed. \"Take my advice, Thursday. Tell them you thought the neanderthal was a felon, that he reminded you of the bogeyman\u2014anything. Mention any unauthorized ChronoGuard shenanigans and Flanker will have your badge as a paperweight. I'll write a good report to SO-1 about your work and conduct so far. With a bit of luck and some serious lying on your behalf, maybe you can get away with a reprimand. For goodness sake, didn't you learn anything from that bad time junket on the M1?\"\n\nHe got up and rubbed his legs. His body was failing him. The hip he'd had replaced four years ago needed to be replaced. Bowden joined us from where he had been running the copied pages of Cardenio through the Verse Meter Analyzer. Unusually for him he seemed to be showing some form of outward excitement. Bouncing, almost.\n\n\"How does it look?\" I asked.\n\n\"Astounding!\" replied Bowden as he waved a printed report. \"94% probability of Will being the author\u2014not even the best fake Cardenio managed higher than a 76. The VMA detected slight traces of collaboration, too.\"\n\n\"Did it say who?\"\n\n\"73% likelihood of Fletcher\u2014something that would seem to bear out against historical evidence. Forging Shakespeare is one thing, forging a collaborated work is quite another.\"\n\nWe all fell silent. Victor rubbed his forehead in contemplation and chose his words carefully.\n\n\"Okay, strange and impossible as it might seem, we may have to accept that this is the real thing. This could turn out to be the biggest literary event in history, ever. We keep this quiet and I'll get Professor Spoon to look it over. We will have to be 100% sure. I'm not going to suffer the same embarrassment we had over that Tempest fiasco.\"\n\n\"Since it isn't in the public domain,\" observed Bowden, \"Volescamper will have the sole copyright for the next seventy-six years.\"\n\n\"Every playhouse on the planet will want to put it on,\" I added. \"And think of the movie rights.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" replied Victor. \"He's sitting on not only the most fantastic literary discovery for three centuries but also a keg of purest gold. The question is, how did it languish in his library undiscovered all this time? Scholars have studied there since 1709. How on earth was it overlooked? Ideas, anyone?\"\n\n\"Retrosnatch?\" I suggested. \"If a rogue ChronoGuard operative decided to go back to 1613 and steal a copy he could have a tidy little nest egg on his hands.\"\n\n\"SO-12 take retrosnatch very seriously and they assure me that it is always detected, sooner or later or both\u2014and dealt with severely. But it's possible. Bowden, give SO-12 a call, will you?\"\n\nBowden put out his hand to pick up the phone just as it started to ring.\n\n\"Hello?... It's not, you say? Okay, thanks.\"\n\nHe put the phone down.\n\n\"The ChronoGuard say not.\"\n\n\"How much do you think it's worth?\" I asked.\n\n\"Hundred million,\" replied Victor. \"Two hundred. Who knows. I'll call Volescamper and tell him to keep quiet about it. People would kill to even read it. No one else is to know about it, do you hear?\"\n\nWe nodded our agreement.\n\n\"Good. Thursday, the network takes internal affairs very seriously. SO-1 will want to speak to you here tomorrow at four about the Skyrail thing. They asked me to suspend you, but I told them bollocks. Just take some leave until tomorrow. Good work, the two of you. Remember, not a word to anyone!\"\n\nWe thanked him and he left. Bowden stared at the wall for a moment before saying: \"The crossword clues bother me, though. If I wasn't of the opinion that coincidences are merely chance or an overused Dickensian plot device, I might conclude that an old enemy of yours wants to get even.\"\n\n\"One with a sense of humor, obviously,\" I murmured in agreement.\n\n\"That rules out Goliath, I suppose,\" mused Bowden. \"Who are you calling?\"\n\n\"SO-5.\"\n\nI dug Agent Phodder's card out of my pocket and rang the number. He had told me to call him if \"an occurrence of unprecedented weird\" took place, so I was doing precisely that.\n\n\"Hello?\" said a brusque voice after the telephone had rung for a long time.\n\n\"Thursday Next, SO-27,\" I announced. \"I have some information for Agent Phodder.\"\n\nThere was a long pause.\n\n\"Agent Phodder has been reassigned.\"\n\n\"Agent Kannon, then.\"\n\n\"Both Phodder and Kannon have been reassigned,\" replied the man sharply. \"Freak accident laying linoleum. The funeral's on Friday.\"\n\nThis was unexpected news. I couldn't think of anything intelligent to say, so I mumbled: \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\"Quite,\" said the brusque man, and put the phone down.\n\n\"What happened?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Both dead,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"Hades?\"\n\n\"Linoleum.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for a moment, unnerved by the news.\n\n\"Does Hades have the sort of powers that might be necessary to manipulate coincidences?\" asked Bowden.\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Bowden thoughtfully, \"it was a coincidence after all.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said, wishing I could believe it. \"Oh\u2014I almost forgot. The world's going to end on the 12th December at 20:23.\"\n\n\"Really?\" replied Bowden in a disinterested tone. Apocalyptic pronouncements were nothing new to any of us. The world had been predicted as about to be destroyed almost every year since the dawn of man.\n\n\"Which one is it this time?\" asked Bowden. \"Plague of mice or the wrath of God?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. I've got to be somewhere at five. Do us a favor, would you?\"\n\nI reached into my pocket and retrieved the small evidence bag my father had given to me. Bowden took the bag from my outstretched arm and looked at it curiously.\n\nI checked the time and rose to leave.\n\n\"What is it?\" he asked, staring at the pink goo.\n\n\"That's what I need to know. Will you have the labs analyze it?\"\n\nWe bade each other goodbye and I trotted out of the building, bumping into John Smith, who was maneuvering a wheelbarrow with a carrot the size of a vacuum cleaner in it. There was a big label attached to the oversized vegetable that read evidence, and I held the door open for him.\n\n\"Thanks,\" he panted.\n\nI jumped in my car and pulled out of the car park. My appointment at five was at the doctor's, and I wasn't going to miss it for anything."
            },
            {
                "title": "Family",
                "text": "\u2002Landen Parke-Laine had been with me in the Crimea in '72. He lost a leg to a land mine and his best friend to a military blunder. His best friend was my brother, Anton\u2014and Landen testified against him at the hearing that followed the disastrous \"charge of the light armored brigade.\" My brother was blamed for the debacle, Landen was honorably discharged, I was awarded the Crimea Star for gallantry, I didn't speak to him for ten years and now we're married. It's funny how things turn out.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, Crimean Reminiscences\n\n\"Honey, I'm home!\" I yelled out. There was a scrabbling noise from the kitchen as Pickwick's feet struggled to get a purchase on the tiles in his eagerness to greet me. I had engineered him myself when you could still buy home cloning kits over the counter. He was an early version 1.2, which explained his lack of wings\u2014they didn't complete the sequence for two more years. He made excited plock plock noises and bobbed his head in greeting, rummaged in the wastebasket for a gift and eventually brought me a discarded junk mail flyer for Lorna Doone merchandising. I tickled him under the chin, and he ran to the kitchen, stopped, looked at me and bobbed his head some more.\n\n\"Hellooo!\" yelled Landen from his study. \"Do you like surprises?\"\n\n\"When they're nice ones!\" I yelled back.\n\nPickwick returned to my side, plock-plocked some more and tugged the leg of my jeans. He scuttled off into the kitchen again and waited for me at his basket. Intrigued, I followed. I could see the reason for his excitement. In the middle of the basket, amongst a large heap of shredded paper, was an egg.\n\n\"Pickwick!\" I cried excitedly. \"You're a girl!\"\n\nPickwick bobbed some more and nuzzled me affectionately. After a while she stopped and delicately stepped into her basket, ruffled her feathers, tapped the egg with her beak and then walked round it several times before gently placing herself over it. A hand rested on my shoulder. I touched Landen's fingers and stood up. He kissed me on the neck and I wrapped my arms round his chest.\n\n\"I thought Pickwick was a boy?\" he asked.\n\n\"So did I.\"\n\n\"Is it a sign?\"\n\n\"Pickers laying an egg and turning out to be a girl?\" I replied. \"What do you mean\u2014you're going to have a baby, Land?\"\n\n\"No, silly, you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"I do?\" I asked, looking up at him with carefully engineered innocence.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Well what?\" I stared into his bright concerned face with what I thought was a blank expression. But I couldn't hold it for long and was soon a bundle of girlish giggles and salty tears. He hugged me tightly and placed his hand gently on my tum.\n\n\"In there? A baby?\"\n\n\"Yes. Small pink thing that makes a noise. Seven weeks. Probably appear July-ish.\"\n\n\"How are you feeling?\"\n\n\"All right,\" I told him. \"I felt a bit sick yesterday, but that might have had nothing to do with it. I'll work until I start waddling and then take leave. How are you feeling?\"\n\n\"Odd,\" said Landen, hugging me again, \"in a very nice kind of elated sort of way.... Who can I tell?\"\n\n\"No one quite yet. Probably just as well\u2014your mum would knit herself to death!\"\n\n\"And what's wrong with my mother's knitting?\" asked Landen, feigning indignation.\n\n\"Nothing,\" I giggled, \"but there is a limit to storage space.\"\n\n\"At least the things she knits are recognizable,\" he replied. \"That jumper your mum gave me for my birthday\u2014what does she think I am, a squid?\"\n\nI buried my face in his collar and held him close. He rubbed my back gently and we stood together for several minutes without talking.\n\n\"Did you have a good day?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"Well,\" I began, \"we found Cardenio, I was shot dead by an SO-14 marksman, became a vanishing hitchhiker, saw Yorrick Kaine, suffered a few too many coincidences and knocked a neanderthal unconscious.\"\n\n\"No puncture this time?\"\n\n\"Two, actually\u2014at the same time.\"\n\n\"What was Kaine like?\"\n\n\"Difficult to say. He arrived at Volescamper's as we were leaving. Aren't you even curious about the marksman?\"\n\n\"Yorrick Kaine is giving a talk tonight about the economical realities of a Welsh free trade agreement\u2014\"\n\n\"Landen,\" I said, \"it's my uncle's party tonight. I promised Mum we'd be there.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know.\"\n\n\"All right,\" sighed Landen. \"What was it like?\"\n\n\"Don't ask.\"\n\n\"Are you going to ask me about the incident with SO-14 now?\" My uncle Mycroft had announced his retirement. He was seventy-seven, and following the events of the Prose Portal and Polly's imprisonment in \"I wandered lonely as a cloud,\" they had both decided that enough was enough. The Goliath Corporation had been offering Mycroft not one but two blank checks for him to resume work on a new Prose Portal, but Mycroft had steadfastly refused, maintaining that the Portal could not be replicated even if he had wanted to. We took my car up to Mum's house and parked a little way up the road.\n\n\"I never thought of Mycroft retiring,\" I said as we walked down the street.\n\n\"Me neither,\" he replied. \"What do you suppose he'll do?\"\n\n\"Watch Name That Fruit! most likely. He says that soaps and quiz shows are the ideal way to fade out.\"\n\n\"He's not far wrong,\" added Landen. \"After a few years of 65 Walrus Street, death might become something of a welcome distraction.\"\n\nWe heaved open the garden gate and greeted the dodos, who all had a bright pink ribbon tied round their necks for the occasion. I offered them a few marshmallows and they pecked and plocked greedily at the proffered gifts. The front door was opened by Wilbur, who was one of Mycroft's sons and had reached middle age well before his time. Landen thought he did it on purpose, as though he could somehow accelerate through the days of work and get to retirement and golf just that little bit sooner.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday!\" he enthused, ushering us inside.\n\n\"Hi, Wilbers. All well?\"\n\n\"I'm very well,\" replied Wilbur, smiling benignly. \"Hello, Landen\u2014I read your latest book. It was a big improvement on the last one, I must say.\"\n\n\"You're very kind,\" replied Landen dryly.\n\n\"Drink?\"\n\nHe offered us both a glass, and I took mine eagerly. I had just got it to my lips when Landen took it out of my hands. I looked at him and he mouthed, \"Baby.\" Blast. Hadn't thought of that.\n\n\"I was promoted, you know,\" continued Wilbur, walking through the hall and towards the living room.\n\nHe paused to allow us to murmur a congratulatory sound before continuing: \"Consolidated Useful Stuff always promote those within the company that show particular promise, and after ten years in pension fund management ConStuff felt I was ready to branch into something new and dynamic. I'm now Services Director at a subsidiary of theirs named MycroTech Developments.\"\n\n\"But my goodness what a coincidence!\" said Landen sarcastically. \"Isn't that Mycroft's company?\"\n\n\"Coincidental,\" replied Wilbur forcefully, \"as you say. Mr. Perkup\u2014the CEO of Mycro Tech\u2014told me it was solely due to my diligence; I\u2014\"\n\n\"Thursday, darling!\" interrupted Gloria, Wilbur's wife. Formerly a Volescamper, she had married Wilbur under the accidental misapprehension that A: he would be coming into a fortune and B: he was as intelligent as his father. She had been wrong\u2014in a spectacular fashion\u2014on both counts.\n\n\"Darling, you are looking simply divine\u2014have you lost weight?\"\n\n\"I have no idea, Gloria, but... you're looking different.\"\n\nAnd she was. Habitually dressed to the nines in expensive clothes, hats, makeup and lashings of what-have-you, tonight Gloria was dressed in chinos and a shirt. She hardly wore any makeup and her hair, usually perfectly coiffured, was tied up in a ponytail with a black scrunchie.\n\n\"What do you think?\" she asked, doing a twirl for us both.\n\n\"What happened to the \u00a3500 dresses?\" asked Landen. \"Bailiffs been in?\"\n\n\"No, this is all the rage\u2014and you should know, Thursday. FeMole is promoting the Thursday Next look. This is very much 'in' at present.\"\n\n\"Ridiculous,\" I told her, wondering if there was an end to the ludicrous media spin-offs from the whole Eyre thing. Cordelia had gone so far as to license jigsaw puzzles and action figures before I had a chance to stop her. I wondered if she'd had a hand in this, too.\n\n\"If Bonzo the Wonder Hound had rescued Jane Eyre,\" I asked, trying to keep a straight face, \"would you all be wearing studded collars and smelling each other's bottoms?\"\n\n\"There is no need to be offensive,\" replied Gloria haughtily as she looked me up and down. \"You should be honored. Mind you, the December issue of FeMole thinks that a brown leather flier's jacket is more in keeping with 'the look.' Your black leather is a little bit pass\u00e9, I'm afraid. And those shoes\u2014hell's teeth!\"\n\n\"Wait a moment!\" I returned. \"How can you tell me that I don't have the Thursday Next look? I am Thursday Next!\"\n\n\"Fashions evolve, Thursday\u2014I've heard that next month's fashions will be marine invertebrates. You should enjoy it while you can.\"\n\n\"Marine invertebrates?\" echoed Landen. \"What happened to that squidlike jumper of your mum's? We could be sitting on a fortune!\"\n\n\"Can neither of you be serious?\" asked Gloria disdainfully. \"If you're not in you're out, and where would you be then?\"\n\n\"Out, I guess,\" I replied. \"Land, what do you think?\"\n\n\"Totally out, Thurs.\"\n\nWe stared at her half smiling, and she laughed. Gloria was a good sort once you broke down the barriers. Wilbur, seizing the chance to tell us more about his fascinating new job, carried on as soon as his wife stopped talking.\n\n\"I'm now on \u00a320K plus car and a good pension package. I could take voluntary retirement at fifty-five and still draw two-thirds of my wage. What is the SpecOps retirement fund like?\"\n\n\"Crap, Wilbur\u2014but you know that.\"\n\nA slightly smaller and more follicularly challenged version of Wilbur walked up.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Hello, Orville. How's the ear?\"\n\n\"Just the same. What was that you were saying about retiring at fifty-five, Will?\"\n\nIn all the excitement of pension plans I was forgotten. Charlotte, who was Orville's wife, also had the Thursday Next look; she and Gloria fell eagerly into untaxing conversation about whether leather shoes in \"the look\" should be worn above or below the ankle and whether a small amount of eyeliner was acceptable. As usual, Charlotte tended to agree with Gloria; in fact, she tended to agree with everybody about everything. She was as hospitable as the day was long; just don't get caught in an elevator with her\u2014she could agree you to death.\n\nWe left them to their conversation, and I walked into the living room, deftly catching the wrist of my elder brother Joffy, who had been hoping to give me a resounding slap on the back of my head as was his thirty-five-year-old custom. I twisted his arm into a half nelson and had his face pressed against the door before he knew what had happened.\n\n\"Hello, Joff,\" I said. \"Slowing up in your old age?\"\n\nI let him go, he laughed energetically, straightened his jaw and dog collar and hugged me tightly while proffering a hand for Landen to shake. Landen, after checking for the almost mandatory hand buzzer, shook it heartily.\n\n\"How's Mr. and Mrs. Doofus, then?\"\n\n\"We're fine, Joff. You?\"\n\n\"Not that good, Thurs. The Church of the Global Standard Deity has undergone a split.\"\n\n\"No!\" I said with as much surprise and concern in my voice as I could muster.\n\n\"I'm afraid so. The new Global Standard Clockwise Deity have broken away due to unresolvable differences over the direction in which the collection plate is passed round.\"\n\n\"Another split? That's the third this week!\"\n\n\"Fourth,\" replied Joffy dourly, \"and it's only Tuesday. The Standardized pro-Baptist conjoined Methodarian-Lutherian sisters of something-or-other split into two subgroups yesterday. Soon,\" he added grimly, \"there won't be enough ministers to man the splits. As it is I have to attend two dozen different breakaway church groups every week. I often forget which one I'm at, and as you can imagine, preaching to the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx the Consumer the sermon that I should have been reading to the Church of the Misrepresented Promise of Eternal Life can be highly embarrassing. Mum's in the kitchen. Do you think Dad will turn up?\"\n\nI didn't know and told him so. He looked crestfallen for a moment and then said: \"Will you come and do a professional mingle at my Les Artes Modernes de Swindon show next week?\"\n\n\"Why me?\"\n\n\"Because you're vaguely famous and you're my sister. Yes?\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nHe tugged my ear affectionately and we walked into the kitchen.\n\n\"Hello, Mum!\"\n\nMy mother was bustling around some chicken vol-au-vent. By some bizarre twist of fate the pastry had turned out not at all burned and actually quite tasty\u2014it had thrown her into a bit of a panic. Most of her cooking ended up as the culinary equivalent of the Tunguska event.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday, hello, Landen, can you pass me that bowl, please?\"\n\nLanden passed it over, trying to guess the contents.\n\n\"Hello, Mrs. Next,\" said Landen.\n\n\"Call me Wednesday, Landen\u2014you're family now, you know.\" She smiled and giggled to herself.\n\n\"Dad said to say hello,\" I put in quickly before Mum cooed herself into a frenzy. \"I saw him today.\"\n\nMy mother stopped her random method of cooking and recalled for a moment, I imagine, fond embraces with her eradicated husband. It must have been quite a shock, waking up one morning and finding your husband never existed. Then, quite out of the blue, she yelled: \"DH-82, down!\"\n\nHer anger was directed at a small Tasmanian tiger that had been nosing the remains of some chicken on the table edge.\n\n\"Bad boy!\" she added in a scolding tone. The Tastiger looked crestfallen, sat on its blanket by the Aga and stared down at its paws.\n\n\"Rescue Thylacine,\" explained my mother. \"Used to be a lab animal. He smoked forty a day until his escape. It's costing me a fortune in nicotine patches. Isn't it, DH-82?\"\n\nThe small reengineered native of Tasmania looked up and shook his head. Despite being vaguely dog-shaped, this species was more closely related to a kangaroo than a Labrador. You always expected one to wag its tail, bark or fetch a stick, but they never did. The closest behavioral similarities were a propensity to steal food and an almost fanatical devotion to tail chasing.\n\n\"I miss your dad a lot, you know,\" said my mother wistfully. \"How\u2014\"\n\nThere was a loud explosion, the lights flickered, and something shot past the kitchen window.\n\n\"What was that?\" said my mother.\n\n\"I think,\" replied Landen soberly, \"it was Aunt Polly.\"\n\nWe found her in the vegetable patch dressed in a deflating rubber suit that was meant to break her fall but obviously hadn't\u2014she was holding a handkerchief to a bloodied nose.\n\n\"My goodness!\" exclaimed my mother. \"Are you okay?\"\n\n\"Never been better!\" she replied, looking at a stake in the ground and then yelling: \"Seventy-five yards!\"\n\n\"Righty-oh!\" said a distant voice from the other end of the garden. We turned to see Uncle Mycroft, who was consulting a clipboard next to a smoking Volkswagen convertible.\n\n\"Car seat ejection devices in case of road accidents,\" explained Polly, \"with a self-inflating rubber suit to cushion the fall. Pull on a toggle and bang\u2014out you go. Prototype, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nWe helped her to her feet and she trotted off, seemingly none the worse for her experience.\n\n\"Mycroft still inventing, then?\" I said as we walked back inside to discover that DH-82 had eaten all the vol-au-vent, main course and the trifle for pudding.\n\n\"DH!\" she said crossly to the guilty-looking and very bloated Tastiger. \"That was very bad! What am I going to feed everybody on now?\"\n\n\"How about thylacine cutlets?\" suggested Landen.\n\nI elbowed him in the ribs and Mum pretended not to hear.\n\nLanden rolled up his sleeves and searched through the kitchen for something he could cook quickly and easily. It was going to be hard\u2014all of the cupboards were full of tinned pears.\n\n\"Have you anything apart from canned fruit, Mrs.\u2014I mean, Wednesday?\"\n\nMum stopped trying to chastise DH-82, who, soporific through gluttony, had settled down for a long nap.\n\n\"No,\" she admitted. \"The man in the shop said there would be a shortage, so I bought his entire stock.\"\n\nI walked down to Mycroft's laboratory, knocked and, when there was no reply, entered. Usually, the lab presented an Aladdin's cave of inventive genius, the haphazard and eclectic mix of machines, papers, blackboards and bubbling retorts a shrine to disarray; an antidote to order. But today it was different: All his machines had been dismantled and now lay about the room, tagged and carefully stacked. Mycroft himself, having obviously finished testing the ejection system, was now tweaking a small bronze object. He was startled when I spoke his name but relaxed as soon as he saw it was me.\n\n\"Hello, love!\" he said kindly.\n\n\"Hello, Uncle. How have you been?\"\n\n\"Good. I'm off on retirement in\u2014don't touch that!\u2014in one hour and nine minutes. You looked good on the telly last night.\"\n\n\"Thank you. What are you up to, Uncle?\"\n\nHe handed me a large book.\n\n\"Enhanced indexing. In a Nextian dictionary, godliness can be next to cleanliness\u2014or anything else for that matter.\"\n\nI opened the book to look up \"trout\" and found it on the first page I opened.\n\n\"Saves time, eh?\"\n\n\"Yes; but\u2014\"\n\nMycroft had moved on.\n\n\"Over here is a Lego filter for vacuum cleaners. Did you know that over a million pounds' worth of Lego is hoovered up every year, and a total of ten thousand man-hours are wasted sorting through the dust bags?\"\n\n\"I didn't know that, no.\"\n\n\"This device will sort any sucked-up bits of Lego into colors or shapes, according to how you set this knob here.\"\n\n\"Very impressive.\"\n\n\"This is just hobby stuff. Come and look at some real innovation.\"\n\nHe beckoned me across to a blackboard, the surface covered with a jumbled mass of complicated algebraic functions.\n\n\"This is Polly's hobby, really. It's a new form of mathematical theory that makes Euclid's work seem like little more than long division. We have called it Nextian geometry. I won't bother you with the details, but watch this.\"\n\nMycroft rolled up his shirtsleeves and placed a large ball of dough on the workbench and rolled it out into a flat ovoid with a rolling pin.\n\n\"Scone dough,\" he explained. \"I've left out the raisins for purposes of clarity. Using conventional geometry, a round scone cutter always leaves waste behind, agreed?\"\n\n\"Agreed.\"\n\n\"Not with Nextian geometry! You see this pastry cutter? Circular, wouldn't you say?\"\n\n\"Perfectly circular, yes.\"\n\n\"Well,\" carried on Mycroft in an excited voice, \"it isn't. It appears circular but actually it's a square. A Nextian square. Watch.\"\n\nAnd so saying he deftly cut the dough into twelve perfectly circular shapes with no waste. I frowned and stared at the small pile of disks, not quite believing what I had just seen.\n\n\"How\u2014?\"\n\n\"Clever, isn't it?\" he chuckled. \"Admittedly it only works with Nextian dough, which doesn't rise so well and tastes like denture paste, but we're working on that.\"\n\n\"It seems impossible, Uncle.\"\n\n\"We didn't know the nature of lightning or rainbows for three and a half million years, pet. Don't reject it just because it seems impossible. If we closed our minds, there would never be the Gravitube, antimatter, Prose Portals, thermos flasks\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I interrupted. \"How does a thermos fit in with that little lot?\"\n\n\"Because, my dear girl,\" replied Mycroft, cleaning the blackboard and drawing a crude picture of a thermos with a question mark, \"no one has the least idea why they work.\" He stared at me for a moment and continued: \"You will agree that a vacuum flask keeps hot things hot in the winter and cold things cold in the summer?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014?\"\n\n\"Well, how does it know? I've studied vacuum flasks for many years and not one of them gave any clues as to their inherent seasonal cognitive ability. It's a mystery to me, I can tell you.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay, Uncle\u2014how about applications for Nextian geometry?\"\n\n\"Hundreds. Packaging and space management will be revolutionized overnight. I can pack Ping-Pong balls in a cardboard box without any gaps, punch steel bottle tops with no waste, drill a square hole, tunnel to the moon, divide cake more efficiently and also\u2014and this is the most exciting part\u2014collapse matter.\"\n\n\"Isn't that dangerous?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" replied Mycroft airily. \"You accept that all matter is mostly empty space? The gaps between the nucleus and the electrons? Well, by applying Nextian geometry to the subatomic level I can collapse matter to a fraction of its former size. I will be able to reduce almost anything to the microscopic!\"\n\nHe stopped for a moment and regathered his thoughts.\n\n\"Miniaturization is a technology that needs to be utilized,\" explained Mycroft. \"Can you imagine tiny nanomachines barely bigger than a cell, building, say, food protein out of nothing more than garbage? Banoffee pie from landfills, ships from scrap iron\u2014! It's a fantastic notion. Consolidated Useful Stuff are financing some R&D with me as we speak.\"\n\n\"At Mycro Tech Developments?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said sharply. \"How did you know?\"\n\n\"Wilbur said he had got a job there\u2014by coincidence, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" affirmed Mycroft, who never supported, or admitted to, any sort of nepotism.\n\n\"On the subject of coincidences, Uncle, any thoughts on what they are and how they come about?\"\n\nMycroft fell silent for a moment as his huge brain clicked over the facts as he understood them.\n\n\"Well,\" he said thoughtfully, \"it is my considered opinion that most coincidences are simply quirks of chance\u2014if you extrapolate the bell curve of probability you will find statistical abnormalities that seem unusual but are, in actual fact, quite likely, given the amount of people on the planet and the amount of different things we do in our lives.\"\n\n\"I see,\" I replied slowly. \"That explains things on a minor coincidental level, but what about the bigger coincidences? How high would you rate seven people in a Skyrail shuttle all called Irma Cohen and the clues of a crossword reading out ' Meddlesome Thursday goodbye' just before someone tried to kill me?\"\n\nMycroft raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"That's quite a coincidence. More than a coincidence, I think.\" He took a deep breath. \"Thursday, think for a moment about the fact that the universe always moves from an ordered state to a disordered one; that a glass may fall to the ground and shatter yet you never see a broken glass reassemble itself and then jump back onto the table.\"\n\n\"I accept that.\"\n\n\"But why doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Search me.\"\n\n\"Every atom of the glass that shattered would contravene no laws of physics if it were to rejoin\u2014on a subatomic level all particle interactions are reversible. Down there we can't tell which event precedes which. It's only out here that we can see things age and define a strict direction in which time travels.\"\n\n\"So what are you saying, Uncle?\"\n\n\"That these things don't happen is because of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that disorder in the universe always increases; the amount of this disorder is a quantity known as entropy.\"\n\n\"So how does this relate to coincidences?\"\n\n\"I'm getting to that,\" muttered Mycroft, gradually warming up to his explanation and becoming more and more animated each second. \"Imagine a box with a partition\u2014the left side is filled with gas, the right a vacuum. Remove the partition and the gas will expand into the other side of the box\u2014yes?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"And you wouldn't expect the gas to cramp itself up in the left-hand side again, would you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Mycroft with a knowing smile. \"Not quite right. You see, since every interaction of gas atom is reversible, sometime, sooner or later, the gas must cramp itself back into the left-hand side!\"\n\n\"It must?\"\n\n\"Yes; the key here is how much later. Since even a small box of gas might contain 1020 atoms, the time taken for them to try all possible combinations would take far longer than the age of the universe; a decrease in entropy strong enough to allow gas to separate, a shattered glass to re-form or the statue of St. Zvlkx outside to get down and walk to the pub is not, I think, against any physical laws but just fantastically unlikely.\"\n\n\"So,\" I said slowly, \"what you are saying is that really really weird coincidences are caused by a drop in entropy?\"\n\n\"Exactly so. But it's only a theory. As to why entropy might spontaneously decrease and how one might conduct experiments into localized entropic field decreasement, I have only a few untried notions that I won't trouble you with here, but look, take this\u2014it could save your life.\"\n\nHe picked up a jam jar from one of the many worktops and passed it to me. It seemed the contents were half rice and half lentils.\n\n\"I'm not hungry, thanks,\" I told him.\n\n\"No, no. I call this device an entroposcope. Shake it for me.\"\n\nI shook the jam jar and the rice and lentils settled together in that sort of random clumping way that chance usually dictates.\n\n\"So?\" I asked.\n\n\"Entirely usual,\" replied Mycroft. \"Standard clumping, entropy levels normal. Shake it every now and then. You'll know when a decrease in entropy occurs as the rice and lentils will separate out into more ordered patterns\u2014and that's the time to watch out for ludicrously unlikely coincidences.\"\n\nPolly entered the workshop and gave her husband a hug.\n\n\"Hello, you two,\" she said. \"Having fun?\"\n\n\"I'm showing Thursday what I've been up to, my dear,\" replied Mycroft graciously.\n\n\"Did you show her your memory erasure device, Crofty?\"\n\n\"No, he didn't,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, I did,\" replied Mycroft with a smile, adding: \"You're going to have to leave me, pet\u2014I've work to do. I retire in fifty-six minutes precisely.\"\n\nMy father didn't turn up that evening, much to my mother's disappointment. At five minutes to ten, Mycroft, true to his word and with Polly behind him, emerged from his laboratory to join us for dinner.\n\nNext family dinners are always noisy affairs, and tonight was no different. Landen sat next to Orville and did a very good impression of someone who was trying not to be bored. Joffy, who was next to Wilbur, thought his new job was utter crap, and Wilbur, who had been needled by Joffy for at least three decades, replied that he thought the Global Standard Deity Faith was the biggest load of phony codswallop he had ever come across.\n\n\"Ah,\" replied Joffy loftily, \"wait until you meet the Brotherhood of Unconstrained Verbosity.\"\n\nGloria and Charlotte always sat next to each other, Gloria to talk about something trivial\u2014such as buttons\u2014and Charlotte to agree with her. Mum and Polly talked about the Women's Federation and I sat next to Mycroft.\n\n\"What will you do in your retirement, Uncle?\"\n\n\"I don't know, pet. I have some books I've been wanting to write for some time.\"\n\n\"About your work?\"\n\n\"Much too dull. Can I try an idea out on you?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nHe smiled, looked around, lowered his voice and leaned closer.\n\n\"Okay, here it is. Brilliant young surgeon Dexter Colt starts work at the highly efficient yet underfunded children's hospital doing pioneering work on relieving the suffering of orphaned amputees. The chief nurse is the headstrong yet beautiful Tiffany Lampe. Tiffany has only recently recovered from her shattered love affair with anesthetist Dr. Burns, and\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014they fall in love?\" I ventured.\n\nMycroft's face fell.\n\n\"You've heard it then?\"\n\n\"The bit about the orphaned amputees is good,\" I said, trying not to dishearten him. \"What are you going to call it?\"\n\n\"I thought of Love Among the Orphans. What do you think?\"\n\nBy the end of the meal Mycroft had outlined several of his books to me, each one with a plot more lurid than the last. At the same time Joffy and Wilbur had come to blows in the garden, discussing the sanctity of peace and forgiveness amidst the thud of fists and the crunch of broken noses.\n\nAt midnight Mycroft took Polly in his arms and thanked us all for coming.\n\n\"I have spent my entire life in pursuit of scientific truth and enlightenment,\" he announced grandly, \"of answers to conundrums and unifying theories of everything. Perhaps I should have spent the time going out more. In fifty-four years neither Polly nor I have ever taken a holiday, so that is where we're off to now.\"\n\nWe walked into the garden, the family wishing Mycroft and Polly well on their travels. Outside the door of the workshop they stopped and looked at each other, then at all of us.\n\n\"Well, thanks for the party,\" said Mycroft. \"Pear soup followed by pear stew with pear sauce and finishing with bombe surprise\u2014which was pear\u2014was quite a treat. Unusual, but quite a treat. Look after MycroTech while I'm away, Wilbur, and thanks for all the meals, Wednesday. Right, that's it,\" concluded Mycroft. \"We're off. Toodle-oo.\"\n\n\"Enjoy yourselves,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh, we will!\" he said, bidding us all goodbye again and disappearing into the workshop. Polly kissed us all, waved farewell and followed him, closing the door behind her.\n\n\"It won't be the same without him and his daft projects, will it?\" said Landen.\n\n\"No,\" I replied. \"It's\u2014\"\n\nThere was a tingling sensation like an electrical storm in summer as a noiseless white light erupted from within the workshop and shone in pencil-thin beams from every crack and rivet hole, each speck of grime showing up on the dirty windows, every crack in the glass suddenly alive with a rainbow of colors. We winced and shielded our eyes, but no sooner had the light started than it had gone again, faded to nothing in a crackle of electricity. Landen and I exchanged looks and stepped forward. The door opened easily and we stood there, staring into the large and now very empty workshop. Every single piece of equipment had gone. Not a screw, not a bolt, not a washer.\n\n\"He isn't just going to write romantic novels in his retirement,\" observed Joffy, putting his head round the door.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"he most probably took it all so no one else would carry on with his work. Mycroft's scruples were the equal of his intellect.\"\n\nMy mother was sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow, her dodos clustered around her on the off chance of a marshmallow.\n\n\"They're not coming back,\" said my mother sadly. \"You know that, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, giving her a hug, \"I know.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "White Horse, Uffington, Picnics, for the Use of",
                "text": "\u2002We decided that \"Parke-Laine-Next\" was a bit of a mouthful, so I kept my surname and he kept his. I called myself \"Ms.\" instead of \"Miss,\" but nothing else changed. I liked being called his wife in the same way I liked calling Landen my husband. It felt sort of tingly. I had the same feeling when I stared at my wedding ring. They say you get used to it but I hoped that they were wrong. Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like. I changed my mind about opera when I was nine years old. My father took me to the first night of Madama Butterfly at Brescia in 1904. After the performance Dad cooked while Puccini regaled me with hilarious stories and signed my autograph book\u2014from that day on I was a devoted fan. In the same way, it took being in love with Landen to make me change my mind about marriage. I found it exciting and exhilarating; two people, together, as one. It was where I was meant to be. I was happy; I was contented; I was fulfilled.\n\n\u2002And spinach? Well, I'm still waiting.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, Private Diaries\n\n\"What do you think they'll do?\" asked Landen as we lay in bed, he with one hand resting gently on my stomach and the other wrapped tightly around me. The bedclothes had been thrown off and we had only just regained our breath.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"SO-1 this afternoon. About you punching the neanderthal.\"\n\n\"Oh, that. I don't know. Technically speaking, I really haven't done anything wrong at all\u2014I think they'll let me off, considering all the good PR work I've done. Look a bit daft to arrest their star operative, don't you think?\"\n\n\"That's always assuming they think logically like you or me.\"\n\n\"It is, isn't it?\"\n\nI sighed.\n\n\"People have been busted for less. SO-1 like to make an example from time to time.\"\n\n\"You don't have to work, you know.\"\n\nI looked across at him, but he was too close to focus on, which was sort of nice, in its way.\n\n\"I know,\" I replied, \"but I'd like to keep it up. I don't really see myself as a mummsy sort of person.\"\n\n\"Your cooking might tend to support that fact.\"\n\n\"Mother's cooking is terrible, too\u2014I think it's hereditary. My SO-1 hearing is at four. Want to go and see the mammoth migration?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nThe doorbell rang.\n\n\"Who could that be?\"\n\n\"It's a little early to tell,\" quipped Landen. \"I understand the 'go and see' technique sometimes works.\"\n\n\"Very funny.\"\n\nI pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. There was a gaunt man with lugubrious features standing on the doorstep. He looked as close to a bloodhound as one can get without actually having a tail and barking.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nHe raised his hat and gave me a somnambulant smile.\n\n\"The name is Hopkins,\" he explained. \"I'm a reporter for The Owl. I was wondering if I could interview you about your time within the pages of Jane Eyre.\"\n\n\"You'll have to go through Cordelia Flakk at SpecOps, I'm afraid. I'm not really at liberty\u2014\"\n\n\"I know you were inside the book. In the first and original ending, Jane goes to India, yet in your ending she stays and marries Rochester. How did you engineer this?\"\n\n\"You really have to get clearance from Flakk, Mr. Hopkins.\"\n\nHe sighed.\n\n\"Okay, I will. Just one thing. Did you prefer the new ending, your new ending?\"\n\n\"Of course. Didn't you?\"\n\nMr. Hopkins scribbled in a notepad and smiled again.\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Next. I'm very much in your debt. Good day!\"\n\nHe raised his hat again and was gone.\n\n\"What was all that about?\" asked Landen as he handed me a cup of coffee.\n\n\"Pressman.\"\n\n\"What did you tell him?\"\n\n\"Nothing. He has to go through Flakk.\"\n\nThe grassy escarpment at Uffington was busy that morning. The mammoth population in England, Wales and Scotland amounted to 249 individuals in nine groups, all of whom migrated north to south around late autumn and back again in the spring. The routes followed the same pattern every year with staggering accuracy. Inhabited areas were mostly avoided\u2014except Devizes, where the High Street was shuttered up and deserted twice a year as the plodding elephantines crashed and trumpeted their way through the center of the town, cheerfully following the ancient call of their forebears. No one in Devizes could get any sleep or Proboscidea damage insurance cover, but the extra cash from tourism generally made up for it.\n\nBut there weren't just mammoth twitchers, walkers, druids and a neanderthal \"right to hunt\" protest up the hill that morning. A dark blue automobile was waiting for us, and when somebody is waiting for you in a place you hadn't planned on being, then you take notice. There were three of them standing next to the car, all dressed in dark suits with blue enameled Goliath badges on their lapels. The only one I recognized was Schitt-Hawse; they all hastily hid their ice creams as we approached.\n\n\"Mr. Schitt-Hawse,\" I said, \"what a surprise! Have you met my husband?\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse offered his hand, but Landen didn't take it. The Goliath agent grimaced for a moment, then gave a bemused grin.\n\n\"Saw you on the telly, Ms. Next. It was a fascinating talk about dodos, I must say.\"\n\n\"I'd like to expand my subjects next time,\" I replied evenly. \"Might even try and include something about Goliath's malignant stranglehold on the nation.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse shook his head sadly.\n\n\"Unwise, Next, unwise. What you singularly fail to grasp is that Goliath is all you'll ever need. All anyone will ever need. We manufacture everything from cots to coffins and employ over eight million people in our six thousand or so subsidiary companies. Everything from the womb to the wooden overcoat.\"\n\n\"And how much profit do you expect to scavenge as you massage us from hatched to dispatched?\"\n\n\"You can't put a price on human happiness, Next. Political and economic uncertainty are the two biggest forms of stress. You'll be pleased to know that the Goliath Cheerfulness Index has reached a four-year high this morning at nine point one three.\"\n\n\"Out of a hundred?\" asked Landen sarcastically.\n\n\"Out of ten, Mr. Parke-Laine,\" he replied testily. \"The nation has grown beyond all measure under our guidance.\"\n\n\"Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer, Schitt-Hawse.\"\n\nHis face dropped and he stared at us for a moment, doubtless wondering how best to continue.\n\n\"So,\" I said politely, \"out to watch the mammoths?\"\n\n\"Goliath don't watch mammoths, Next. There's no profit in it. Have you met my associates Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese?\"\n\nI looked at his two gorillalike lackeys. They were immaculately dressed, had impeccably trimmed goatees, and stared at me through impenetrable dark glasses.\n\n\"Which is which?\" I asked.\n\n\"I'm Cheese,\" said Cheese.\n\n\"I'm Chalk,\" said Chalk.\n\n\"When is he going to ask you about Jack Schitt?\" asked Landen in an unsubtly loud whisper.\n\n\"Pretty soon,\" I replied.\n\nSchitt-Hawse shook his head sadly. He opened the briefcase Mr. Chalk was holding, and inside, nestled in the carefully cut foam innards, lay a copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.\n\n\"You left Jack imprisoned in this copy of 'The Raven.' Goliath need him out to face a disciplinary board on charges of embezzlement, Goliath contractual irregularities, misuse of the corporation's leisure facilities, missing stationery\u2014and crimes against humanity.\"\n\n\"Oh yes?\" I asked. \"Why not just leave him in?\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse sighed and stared at me.\n\n\"Listen, Next. We need Jack out of here, and believe me, we'll manage it.\"\n\n\"Not with my help.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse stared silently at me for a moment.\n\n\"Goliath are not used to being refused. We asked your uncle to build another Prose Portal. He told us to come back in a month's time. We understand he left on retirement last night. Destination?\"\n\n\"Not a clue.\"\n\nMycroft had retired, it seemed, not out of choice but out of necessity. I smiled to myself. Goliath had been hoodwinked and they didn't like it.\n\n\"Without the Portal,\" I told him, \"I can't jump into books any more than Mr. Chalk can.\"\n\nChalk shuffled slightly as I mentioned his name.\n\n\"You're lying,\" replied Schitt-Hawse. \"The ineptness card doesn't work on us. You defeated Hades, Jack Schitt and the Goliath Corporation. We have a great deal of admiration for you. Goliath has been more than fair given the circumstances, and we would hate for you to become a victim of corporate impatience.\"\n\n\"Corporate impatience?\" I repeated, staring Schitt-Hawse straight in the eye. \"What's that, some sort of threat?\"\n\n\"This unhelpful attitude of yours might make me vindictive\u2014 and you wouldn't like me when I get vindictive.\"\n\n\"I don't like you when you're not vindictive.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse shut the briefcase with a snap. His left eye twitched and the color drained out of his face. He looked at us both and started to say something, stopped, got ahold of his temper and managed to squeeze out a half-smile before he climbed back into his car with Chalk and Cheese and was gone.\n\nLanden was still chuckling as we spread a groundsheet and blanket on the well-nibbled grass just above the White Horse. Below us at the bottom of the escarpment a herd of mammoths were quietly browsing, and on the horizon we could see several airships on the approach to Oxford. It was a pleasant day, and since airships don't fly in poor weather, they were all making the best use of it.\n\n\"You don't have much fear of Goliath, do you, darling?\" he asked.\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Goliath are nothing more than a bully, Land. Stand up to them and they'll soon scurry away. All that large car and henchman stuff\u2014it's for frighteners. But I'm kind of puzzled as to how they knew we would be here.\"\n\nLanden shrugged.\n\n\"Cheese or ham?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I said: 'Cheese or ham.'\"\n\n\"Not you.\"\n\nLanden looked around. We were about the only ones within a hundred-yard radius.\n\n\"Who then?\"\n\n\"Snell.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Snell!\" I yelled out loud. \"Is that you?\"\n\n\"I didn't!\"\n\n\"Prosecution? Who?\"\n\n\"Thursday,\" said Landen, now looking worried, \"what the hell's going on?\"\n\n\"I'm talking to my lawyer.\"\n\n\"What have you done wrong?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\"\n\nLanden threw his hands up in the air and I addressed Snell again.\n\n\"Can you tell me the charge I'm facing at the very least?\"\n\nI sighed.\n\n\"She's not married, apparently.\"\n\n\"Snell! Wait! Snell? Snell\u2014!\"\n\nBut he had gone. Landen was staring at me.\n\n\"How long have you been like this, darling?\"\n\n\"I'm fine, Land. But something weird is going on. Can we drop it for the moment?\"\n\nLanden looked at me, then at the clear blue sky and then at the cheese he was still holding.\n\n\"Cheese or ham?\" he said at last.\n\n\"Both\u2014but go easy on the cheese; this is a very limited supply.\"\n\n\"Where did you find it?\" asked Landen, looking at the anonymously wrapped block suspiciously.\n\n\"From Joe Martlet at the Cheese Squad. They intercept about twelve tons a week coming over the Welsh border. It seems a shame to burn it, so everyone at SpecOps gets a pound or two. You know what they say: 'Cops have the best cheese.'\"\n\n\"Goodbye, Thursday,\" muttered Landen, looking at the ham.\n\n\"Are you going somewhere?\" I replied, unsure of what he meant.\n\n\"Me? No. Why?\"\n\n\"You just said 'Goodbye.'\"\n\n\"No,\" he laughed, \"I was commenting on the ham. It's a good buy.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nHe cut me a slice and put it with the cheese in a sandwich, then made one for himself. There was a distant trumpet of a mammoth as it made heavy weather of the escarpment and I took a bite.\n\n\"It's farewell and so long, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Are you doing this on purpose?\"\n\n\"Doing what? Isn't that Major Tony Fairwelle and your old school chum Sue Long over there?\"\n\nI turned to where Landen was pointing. It was Tony and Sue, and they waved cheerily before walking across to say hello.\n\n\"Goodness!\" said Tony when they had seated themselves. \"Looks like the regimental get-together is early this year! Remember Sarah Nara, who lost an ear at Bilohirsk? I just met her in the car park; quite a coincidence.\"\n\nAs he said the word my heart missed a beat. I rummaged in my jacket pocket for the entroposcope Mycroft had given me.\n\n\"What's the matter, Thurs?\" asked Landen. \"You're looking kind of... odd.\"\n\n\"I'm checking for coincidences,\" I muttered, shaking the jam jar of mixed lentils and rice. \"It's not as stupid as it sounds.\"\n\nThe two pulses had gathered in a sort of swirly pattern. Entropy was decreasing by the second.\n\n\"We're out of here,\" I said to Landen, who looked at me quizzically. \"Let's go. Leave the things.\"\n\n\"What's the problem, Thurs?\"\n\n\"I've just spotted my old croquet captain, Alf Widdershaine. This is Sue Long and Tony Fairwelle; they just saw Sarah Nara\u2014 see a pattern emerging?\"\n\n\"Thursday\u2014!\" sighed Landen. \"Aren't you being a little\u2014\"\n\n\"Want me to prove it? Excuse me!\" I said, shouting to a passerby. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Bonnie,\" she said. \"Bonnie Voige. Why?\"\n\n\"See?\"\n\n\"Voige is not a rare name, Thurs. There are probably hundreds of them up here.\"\n\n\"All right, smarty-pants, you try.\"\n\n\"I will,\" replied Landen indignantly, heaving himself to his feet. \"Excuse me!\"\n\nA young woman stopped, and Landen asked her name.\n\n\"Violet,\" she replied.\n\n\"You see?\" said Landen. \"There's nothing\u2014\"\n\n\"Violet De'ath,\" continued the woman. I shook the entroposcope again\u2014the lentils and rice had separated almost entirely.\n\nI clapped my hands impatiently. Tony and Sue looked perturbed but got to their feet nonetheless.\n\n\"Everybody! Let's go!\" I shouted.\n\n\"But the cheese\u2014!\"\n\n\"Bugger the cheese, Landen, trust me\u2014please!\"\n\nThey all grudgingly joined me, confused and annoyed at my strange behavior. Their minds changed when, following a short whooshing noise, a large and very heavy Hispano-Suiza motorcar landed on the freshly vacated picnic blanket with a teeth-jarring thump that shook the ground and knocked us to our knees. We were showered with soil, pebbles, and a grassy sod or two as the vast phaeton-bodied automobile sank itself into the soft earth, the fine bespoke body bursting at the seams as the massive chassis twisted with the impact. One of the spoked wheels broke free and whistled past my head as the heavy engine, torn from its rubber mounting blocks, ripped through the polished bonnet and landed at our feet with a heavy thud. There was silence for a moment as we all stood up, brushed ourselves off and checked for any damage. Landen had cut his hand on a piece of twisted wing mirror, but apart from that\u2014 miraculously, it seemed\u2014no one had been hurt. The huge motorcar had landed so perfectly on the picnic that the blanket, thermos, basket, food\u2014everything, in fact\u2014had disappeared from sight. In the deathly hush that followed, everyone in the small group was staring\u2014not at the twisted wreck of the car, but at me, their mouths open. I stared back, then looked slowly upwards to where a large airship freighter was still flying, minus a couple of tons of freight, on to the north and\u2014one presumes\u2014a lengthy stop for an accident inquiry. I shook the entroposcope and the random clumping pattern returned.\n\n\"Danger's passed,\" I announced.\n\n\"You haven't changed, Thursday Next!\" said Sue angrily. \"Whenever you're about, something dangerously other walks with you. There's a reason I didn't keep in contact after school, you know\u2014weirdbird! Tony, we're leaving.\"\n\nLanden and I stood and watched them go. He put his arm round me.\n\n\"Weirdbird?\" he asked.\n\n\"They used to call me that at school,\" I told him. \"It's the price for being different.\"\n\n\"You got a bargain. I would have paid double that to be different. Come on, let's skedaddle.\"\n\nWe slipped quietly away as a crowd gathered around the twisted automobile, the incident generating all manner of \" instant experts\" who all had theories on why an airship should jettison a car. So to a background chorus of \"needed more lift\" and \"golly, that was close\" we crept away and sat in my car.\n\n\"That's not something you see very often,\" murmured Landen after a pause. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Land. There are a few too many coincidences around at present\u2014I think someone's trying to kill me.\"\n\n\"I love it when you're being weird, darling, but don't you think you are taking this a little too far? Even if you could drop a car from a freighter, no one could hope to hit a picnic blanket from five thousand feet. Think about it, Thurs\u2014it makes no sense at all. Who would do something like this anyway?\"\n\n\"Hades,\" I whispered.\n\n\"Hades is dead, Thursday. You killed him yourself. It was a coincidence, pure and simple. They mean nothing\u2014you might as well rail against your dreams or bark at shadows on the wall.\"\n\nWe drove in silence to the SpecOps building and my disciplinary hearing. I switched off the engine and Landen held my hand tightly.\n\n\"You'll be fine,\" he assured me. \"They'd be nuts to take any action against you. If things get bad, just remember what Flanker rhymes with.\"\n\nI smiled at the thought. He said he'd wait for me in the caf\u00e9 across the road, kissed me again and limped off."
            },
            {
                "title": "Mr. Stiggins and SO-1",
                "text": "\u2002Contrary to popular belief, neanderthals are not stupid. Poor reading and writing skills are due to fundamental differences in visual acuity\u2014in humans it is called dyslexia. Facial acuity in neanderthals, however, is highly developed\u2014the same silence might have thirty or more different meanings depending on how you looked. \"Neanderthal English\" has a richness and meaning that is lost on the relatively facially blind human. Because of this highly developed facial grammar, neanderthals instinctively know when someone is lying\u2014hence their total disinterest in plays, films or politicians. They like stories read out loud and speak of the weather a great deal\u2014another area in which they are expert. They never throw anything away and love tools, especially power tools. Of the three cable channels allocated to neanderthals, two of them show nothing but woodworking programs.\n\n\u2014GERHARD VON SQUID, Neanderthals: Back After a Short Absence\n\n\"Thursday Next?\" inquired a tall man with a gravelly voice as soon as I stepped into the SpecOps building.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nHe flashed a badge.\n\n\"Agent Walken, SO-5; this is my associate, James Dedmen.\"\n\nDedmen tipped his hat politely and I shook their hands.\n\n\"Can we talk somewhere privately?\" asked Walken.\n\nI took them down the corridor and we found an empty interview room.\n\n\"I'm sorry about Phodder and Kannon,\" I told them as soon as we had sat down.\n\n\"They were careless,\" intoned Dedmen gravely. \"Contact adhesive should always be used in a well-ventilated room\u2014it says so on the tin.\"\n\n\"We were wondering,\" asked Walken in a slightly embarrassed manner, \"whether you could fill us in on what they were up to; they both died before submitting a report.\"\n\n\"What happened to their case notes?\"\n\nDedmen and Walken exchanged looks.\n\n\"They were eaten by rabbits.\"\n\n\"How could that happen?\"\n\n\"Classified,\" announced Dedmen. \"We analyzed the remains but everything was pretty well digested\u2014except these.\"\n\nHe placed three small scraps of tattered and stained paper wrapped in cellophane on the desk. I leaned closer. I could just read out part of my name on the first one, the second was a fragment of a credit card statement, and the third had a single name on it that gave me a shiver: Hades.\n\n\"Hades?\" I queried. \"Do you think he's still alive?\"\n\n\"You killed him, Next\u2014what do you think?\"\n\nI had seen him die up there on the roof at Thornfield and even found his charred remains when we searched the blackened ruins. But Hades had died before\u2014or so he had made us believe.\n\n\"As sure as I can be. What does the credit card statement mean?\"\n\n\"Again,\" replied Walken, \"we're not sure. The card was stolen. Most of these purchases are of women's clothes, shoes, hats, bags and so forth\u2014we've got Dorothy Perkins and Camp Hopson under twenty-four-hour observation. Does any of this ring any bells?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"Then tell us about your meeting with Phodder.\"\n\nI told them as much as I could about our short meeting while they made copious notes.\n\n\"So they wanted to know if anything odd had happened to you recently?\" asked Walken. \"Had it?\"\n\nI told them about the Skyrail and the Hispano-Suiza and they made even more notes. Finally, after asking me several times whether there was anything more I could add, they got up and Walken handed me his card.\n\n\"If you discover anything at all\u2014?\"\n\n\"No problem,\" I replied. \"I hope you catch them.\"\n\nThey grunted in reply and left.\n\nI sighed, got up and walked back into the lobby to await Flanker and SO-1. I watched the busy station around me and then suddenly felt very hot as the room started to swim. The sides of my vision started to fade and if I hadn't put my head between my knees I would have passed out there and then. The buzz from the room became a dull rumble and I closed my eyes, temples thumping. I stayed there for several moments until the nausea lessened. I opened my eyes and stared at the flecks of mica in the concrete floor.\n\n\"Lost something, Next?\" came Flanker's familiar voice.\n\nI very gently raised my head. He was reading some notes and spoke without looking at me.\n\n\"I'm running late\u2014someone's misappropriated an entire cheese seizure. Fifteen minutes, interview room three\u2014be there.\"\n\nHe strode off without waiting for a reply and I stared at the floor again. Somehow Flanker and SpecOps seemed insignificant given that this time next year I could be a mother. Landen had enough money for us both and it wasn't as though I needed to actually resign\u2014I could go on the SpecOps reservist list and do the odd job when necessary. I was just starting to ponder on whether I was really cut out for motherhood when I felt a hand on my shoulder and someone pushed a glass of water into my line of vision. I gratefully took the glass and drank half of it before looking up at my rescuer. It was a neanderthal dressed in a neat double-breasted suit with an SO-13 badge clipped to its top pocket.\n\n\"Hello, Mr. Stiggins,\" I said, recognizing him.\n\n\"Hello, Ms. Next\u2014the nausea will pass.\"\n\nThere was a shudder and the world whirled backwards in time a couple of seconds so suddenly it made me jump. Stiggins spoke again but this time made less sense:\n\n\"Helto, our m Ms. Next\u2014the nauplea will knoass.\"\n\n\"What the hell\u2014\" I muttered as the lobby snapped backwards again and the mauve-painted walls switched to green. I looked at Stiggins, who said:\n\n\"Hatto, is our am Mss Next\u2014bue nauplea will kno you.\"\n\nThe people in the lobby were now wearing hats. Stiggins jumped back again and said:\n\n\"Thato is our ame Miss Next\u2014bue howplea kno you?\"\n\nMy feet felt strange as the world rippled again and I looked down and saw that I was wearing trainers instead of boots. It was clear now that time was flexing slightly, and I expected my father to appear, but he didn't. Stiggins flicked back to the beginning of his sentence yet again and said, this time in a voice I could make out clearly:\n\n\"That is our name, Miss Next, but how know you?\"\n\n\"Did you feel anything odd just then?\"\n\n\"No. Drink the water. You are very pale.\"\n\nI had another sip, leaned back and took a deep breath.\n\n\"This wall used to be mauve,\" I mused as Stiggins looked at me.\n\n\"How you know our name, Miss Next?\"\n\n\"You turned up at my wedding party,\" I told him. \"You said you had a job for me.\"\n\nHe stared at me for almost half a minute through his deep-set eyes. His large nose sniffed the air occasionally. Neanderthals thought a great deal about what they said before they said it\u2014if they said anything at all.\n\n\"You speak the truth,\" he said at last. It was almost impossible to lie to a neanderthal, and I wasn't going to try. \"We are to represent you on this case, Miss Next.\"\n\nI sighed. Flanker was taking no chances; I had nothing against neanderthals, but they wouldn't have been my first choice to defend me, particularly against an attack on one of their own.\n\n\"If you have a problem you should tell us,\" said Stiggins, eyeing me carefully.\n\n\"I have no problem with you representing me.\"\n\n\"Your face does not match your words. You think we have been placed here to hurt your case. It is our belief too. But as to whether it will hurt your case, we shall see. Are you well enough to walk?\"\n\nI said I was, and we went and sat down in the interview room. Stiggins opened his case and drew out a buff file. It was a large-print version made out in underlined capitals. He brought out a wooden ruler and placed it across the page to help him read.\n\n\"Why you hit Kaylieu, the Skyrail operator?\"\n\n\"I thought he had a gun.\"\n\n\"Why would you think that?\"\n\nI stared into Mr. Stiggins's unblinking brown eyes. If I lied he would know. If I told him the truth he might feel it his duty to tell SO-1 that I had been involved in my father's work. With the world due to end and the trust in my father implicit, it was a sticky moment, to say the least.\n\n\"They will ask you, Miss Next. Your evasion will not be appreciated.\"\n\n\"I'll have to take that chance.\"\n\nStiggins tilted his head to one side and regarded me for a moment.\n\n\"They know about your father, Miss Next. We advise you to be careful.\"\n\nI didn't say anything, but to Stiggins I probably spoke volumes. Half the thal language is about body movements. It's possible to conjugate verbs with facial muscles; dancing is conversation.\n\nWe didn't have a chance to say anything else as the door opened and Flanker and two other agents trooped in.\n\n\"You know my name,\" he told me. \"These are Agents King and Nosmo.\"\n\nThe two officers stared at me unnervingly.\n\n\"This is a preliminary interview,\" announced Flanker, who now fixed me with a steely gaze. \"There will be time enough for a full inquiry\u2014if we so decide. Anything you say and do can affect the outcome of the hearing. It's really up to you, Next.\"\n\nHe wasn't kidding. SO-1 were not within the law\u2014they made the law. If they really meant business I wouldn't be here at all\u2014 I'd be spirited away to SpecOps Grand Central, wherever the hell that was. It was at times like this that I suddenly realized quite why my father had rebelled against SpecOps in the first place.\n\nFlanker placed two tapes into the recorder and idented it with the date, time and all our names. Once done, he asked in a voice made more menacing by its softness: \"You know why you are here?\"\n\n\"For hitting a Skyrail operator?\"\n\n\"Striking a neanderthal is hardly a crime worthy of SO-1's valuable time, Miss Next. In fact, technically speaking, it's not a crime at all.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"When did you last see your father?\"\n\nThe other SpecOps agents leaned forward imperceptibly to hear my answer. I wasn't going to make it easy for them.\n\n\"I don't have a father, Flanker\u2014you know that. He was eradicated by your buddies in the ChronoGuard seventeen years ago.\"\n\n\"Don't play me for a fool, Next,\" warned Flanker. \"This is not something I care to joke about. Despite Colonel Next's non-actualization he continues to be a thorn in our side. Again: When did you last see your father?\"\n\n\"At my wedding.\"\n\nFlanker frowned and looked at his notes.\n\n\"You married? When?\"\n\nI told him, and he squiggled a note in the margin.\n\n\"And what did he say when he turned up at your wedding?\"\n\n\"Congratulations.\"\n\nHe stared at me for a few moments, then changed tack.\n\n\"This incident with the Skyrail operator,\" he began. \"You were convinced that he had a soap gun hidden about his person. According to a witness you thumped him on the chin, handcuffed and searched him. They said you seemed very surprised when you didn't find anything.\"\n\nI shrugged and remained silent.\n\n\"We don't give a sod about the thal, Next. Your father's deputizing you is something we could overlook\u2014replacing you out-of-time is something we most definitely will not. Is this what happened?\"\n\n\"Is that the charge? Is that why I'm here?\"\n\n\"Answer the question.\"\n\n\"No sir.\"\n\n\"You're lying. He brought you back early but your father's control of the timestream is not that good. Mr. Kaylieu decided not to threaten the Skyrail that morning. You were sideslipped, Next. Joggled slightly in the timestream. Things happened the same way but not exactly in the same order. Not a big one either\u2014barely a Class IX. Sideslips are an occupational hazard in ChronoGuard work.\"\n\n\"That's preposterous,\" I scoffed. Stiggins would know I was lying, but perhaps I could fool Flanker.\n\n\"I don't think you understand, Miss Next. This is more important than just you or your father. Two days ago we lost all communications beyond the 12th December. We know there is industrial action, but even the freelancers we've sent upstream haven't reported back. We think it's the Big One. If your father was willing to risk using you, we reckon he thinks so too. Despite our animosity for your father, he knows his business\u2014if he didn't we'd have had him years from now. What's going on?\"\n\n\"I just thought he had a gun,\" I repeated.\n\nFlanker stared at me silently for a few moments.\n\n\"Let's start again, Miss Next. You search a neanderthal for a fake gun he carries the following day, you apologize to him using his name, and the arresting officer at the Skyrail station tells me she saw you resetting your watch. A bit out of time, were you?\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'for a fake gun he carries the following day'?\"\n\nFlanker answered without the merest trace of emotion. \"Kaylieu was shot dead this morning. I think you should talk and talk fast. I've enough to loop you for twenty years. Fancy that?\"\n\nI glared back at him, at a loss to know what to do or say. \"Looping\" was a slang term for Closed Loop Temporal Field Containment. They popped the criminal in an eight-minute repetitive time loop for five, ten, twenty years. Usually it was a Laundromat, doctor's waiting room or bus stop, and your presence often caused time to slow down for others near the loop. Your body aged but never needed sustenance. It was cruel and unnatural\u2014yet cheap and required no bars, guards or food.\n\nI opened my mouth and shut it again, gaping like a fish.\n\n\"Or you can tell us about your father and walk out a free woman.\"\n\nI felt a prickly sweat break out on my forehead. I stared at Flanker and he stared at me, until, mercifully, Stiggins came to my rescue.\n\n\"Miss Next was working for us at SO-13 that morning, Commander,\" he said in a low monotone. \"Kaylieu had been implicated in neanderthal sedition. It was a secret operation. Thank you, Miss Next, but we will have to tell SO-1 the truth.\"\n\nFlanker shot an angry glance at the neanderthal, who stared back at him impassively.\n\n\"Why the hell didn't you tell me this, Stiggins?\"\n\n\"You never asked.\"\n\nAll Flanker had on me now was a slow watch. He lowered his voice to a growl.\n\n\"I'll see you looped behind the Crunch if your father is up to no good and you didn't tell us.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment and jabbed a finger in the direction of Stiggins.\n\n\"If you've been bearing false witness I'll have you too. You're running the thal end of SO-13 for one reason and one reason only\u2014window dressing.\"\n\n\"How you managed to become the dominant species we will never know,\" Stiggins said at last. \"So full of hate, anger and vanity.\"\n\n\"It's our evolutionary edge, Stiggins. Change and adapt to a hostile environment. We did, you didn't. QED.\"\n\n\"Darwin won't mask your sins, Flanker,\" replied Stiggins. \"You made our environment hostile. You will fall too. But you won't fall because of a more dominant life form. You will fall over yourselves.\"\n\n\"Garbage, Stiggins. You lot had your chance and blew it.\"\n\n\"We have right to health, freedom and pursuit of happiness, too.\"\n\n\"Legally speaking you don't,\" replied Flanker evenly. \"Those rights belong only to humans. If you want equality, speak to Goliath. They sequenced you. They own you. If you get lucky, perhaps you can be at risk. Beg and we might make you endangered.\"\n\nFlanker shut my file with a snap, grabbed his hat, removed both interview tapes and was gone without another word.\n\nAs soon as the door closed I breathed a sigh of relief. My heart was going like a trip-hammer but I still had my liberty.\n\n\"I'm sorry about Mr. Kaylieu.\"\n\nStiggins shrugged.\n\n\"He was not happy, Miss Next. He did not ask to come back.\"\n\n\"You lied for me,\" I added in a disbelieving tone. \"I thought neanderthals couldn't lie.\"\n\nHe stared at me for a moment or two.\n\n\"It's not that we can't,\" he said at last. \"We just have no reason to. We helped because you are a good person. You have sapien aggression, but you have compassion, too. If you need help again, we will be there.\"\n\nStiggins's normally placid and unmoving face curled up into a grimace that showed two rows of widely gapped teeth. I was fearful for a moment until I realized that what I was witnessing was a neanderthal smile.\n\n\"Miss Next\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Our friends call us Stig.\"\n\n\"Mine call me Thursday.\"\n\nHe put out a large hand and I shook it gratefully.\n\n\"You're a good man, Stig.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied slowly, \"we were sequenced that way.\"\n\nHe gathered up his notes and left the room.\n\nI left the SpecOps building ten minutes later and looked for Landen in the caf\u00e9 opposite. He wasn't there, so I ordered a coffee and waited twenty minutes. He didn't turn up, so I left a message with the caf\u00e9 owner and drove home, musing that with death-by-coincidence, the world ending in a fortnight, charges in a court for I didn't know what and a lost play by Shakespeare, things couldn't get much stranger. But I was wrong. I was very wrong."
            },
            {
                "title": "The More Things Stay the Same",
                "text": "\u2002Minor changes to soft furnishings are the first indications of a sideslip. Curtains, cushion covers and lampshades are all good litmus indicators for a slight diversion in the timestream\u2014the same way as canaries are used down the mines or goldfishes to predict earthquakes. Carpet and wallpaper patterns and changes in paint hues can also be used, but this requires a more practiced eye. If you are within the sideslip then you will notice nothing, but if your pelmets change color for no good reason, your curtains switch from festoon to swish or your antimacassars have a new pattern on them, I should be worried; and if you're the only one who notices, then worry some more. A great deal more...\n\n\u2014BENDIX SCINTILLA, Timestream Navigation for CG Cadets Module IV\n\nLanden's absence made me feel unsettled. All sorts of reasons as to why he wasn't waiting for me ran through my head as I pushed open the gate and walked up to our front door. He could have lost track of time, gone to pick up his running leg from the menders or dropped in to see his mum. But I was fooling myself. Landen said he would be there and he wasn't. And that wasn't like him. Not at all.\n\nI stopped abruptly halfway up the garden path. For some reason Landen had taken the opportunity to change all the curtains. I walked on more slowly, a feeling of unease rising within me. I stopped at the front door. The footscraper had gone. But it hadn't been taken recently\u2014the hole had been concreted over long ago. There were other changes, too. A tub of withered Tickia orologica had appeared in the porch next to a rusty pogo stick and a broken bicycle. The dustbins were all plastic rather than steel, and a copy of Landen's least favorite paper, The Mole, was resting in the newspaper holder. I felt a hot flush rise in my cheeks as I fumbled in vain to find my door key\u2014not that it would have mattered if I had found it, because the lock I used that morning had been painted over years ago.\n\nI must have been making a fair amount of noise, because all of a sudden the door opened to reveal an elderly version of Landen complete with paunch, bifocals and a shiny bald pate.\n\n\"Yes?\" he inquired in a slow Parke-Laine sort of baritone.\n\nFilbert Snood's time aggregation sprang instantly\u2014and unpleasantly\u2014to mind.\n\n\"Oh my God. Landen? Is that you?\"\n\nThe elderly man seemed almost as stunned as I was.\n\n\"Me? Good heavens, no!\" he snapped and started to close the door. \"No one of that name lives here!\"\n\nI jammed my foot against the closing door. I'd seen it done in cop movies but the reality is somewhat different. I had forgotten I was wearing trainers and the weatherboard squashed my big toe. I yelped in pain, withdrew my foot and the door slammed shut.\n\n\"Buggeration!\" I yelled as I hopped up and down. I pressed the doorbell long and hard but received only a muffled \"Clear off!\" for my troubles. I was just about to bang on the door when I heard a familiar voice ring out behind. I turned to find Landen's mum staring at me.\n\n\"Houson!\" I cried. \"Thank goodness! There's someone in our house and they won't answer, and... Houson?\"\n\nShe was looking at me without a flicker of recognition.\n\n\"Houson?\" I said again, taking a step towards her. \"It's me, Thursday!\"\n\nShe hurriedly took a pace backwards and corrected me sharply: \"That's Mrs. Parke-Laine to you. What do you want?\"\n\nI heard the door open behind me. The elderly Landen-that-wasn't had returned.\n\n\"She's been ringing the doorbell,\" explained the man to Landen's mother. \"She won't go away.\" He thought for a moment and then added in a quieter voice, \"She's been asking about Landen.\"\n\n\"Landen?\" replied Houson sharply, her glare becoming more baleful by the second. \"How is Landen any business of yours?\"\n\n\"He's my husband.\"\n\nThere was a pause as she mulled this over.\n\n\"Your sense of humor is severely lacking, Miss whoever-you-are,\" she retorted angrily, pointing towards the garden gate. \"I suggest you leave.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute!\" I exclaimed, almost wanting to laugh at the situation. \"If I didn't marry Landen, then who gave me this wedding ring?\"\n\nI held up my left hand for them to see, but it didn't seem to have much effect. A quick glance told me why. I didn't have a wedding ring.\n\n\"Shit\u2014!\" I mumbled, looking around in a perplexed manner. \"I must have dropped it somewhere\u2014\"\n\n\"You're very confused,\" said Houson more with pity than anger. She could see I wasn't dangerous\u2014just positively, and irretrievably, insane. \"Is there anyone we can call?\"\n\n\"I'm not crazy,\" I declared, trying to get a grip on the situation. \"This morning, no, less than two hours ago, Landen and I lived in this very house\u2014\"\n\nI stopped. Houson had moved to the side of the man at the door. As they stood together in a manner bred of long association, I knew exactly who he was; it was Landen's father. Landen's dead father.\n\n\"You're Billden,\" I murmured. \"You died when you tried to rescue...\"\n\nMy voice trailed off. Landen had never known his father. Billden Parke-Laine had died saving the twoyear-old Landen from a submerged car thirty-eight years ago. My heart froze as the true meaning of this bizarre confrontation began to dawn.\n\nSomeone had eradicated Landen.\n\nI put out a hand to steady myself, then sat quickly on the garden wall and closed my eyes as a dull thumping started up in my head. Not Landen, not now of all times\u2014\n\n\"Billden,\" announced Houson, \"you had better call the police\u2014\"\n\n\"NO!\" I shouted, opening my eyes and glaring at him.\n\n\"You didn't go back, did you?\" I said slowly, my voice cracking. \"You didn't rescue him that night. You lived, and he\u2014\"\n\nI braced myself for his anger, but it never came. Instead, Billden just stared at me with a mixture of pity and confusion on his face.\n\n\"I wanted to,\" he said in a quiet voice.\n\nI swallowed my emotion.\n\n\"Where's Landen now?\"\n\n\"If we tell you,\" asked Houson in a slow and patronizing tone, \"will you promise to go away and never come back?\"\n\nShe took my silence for assent and continued: \"Swindon Municipal Cemetery\u2014and you're right, our son drowned thirty-eight years ago.\"\n\n\"Shit!\" I cried, my mind racing as I tried to figure out who might be responsible. Houson and Billden took a fearful step backwards. \"Not you,\" I added hastily. \"Goddammit, I'm being blackmailed.\"\n\n\"You should report that to SpecOps.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't believe me any more than you\u2014\"\n\nI paused and thought for a moment.\n\n\"Houson, I know you have a good memory, because when Landen did exist, you and I were the best of pals. Someone has taken your son, my husband, and believe me, I'll get him back. But listen to me, I'm not crazy, and here's how I can prove it: He's allergic to bananas, has a mole on his neck\u2014and a birthmark the shape of a lobster on his bum. How could I know that unless\u2014?\"\n\n\"Oh yes?\" said Houson slowly, staring at me with growing interest. \"This birthmark. Which cheek?\"\n\n\"The left.\"\n\n\"Looking from the front, or looking from the back?\"\n\n\"Looking from the back,\" I said without hesitating.\n\nThere was silence for a moment. They looked at each other, then at me, and in that instant, they knew. When Houson spoke it was in a quiet voice, her temper transplanted with a sadness all her own.\n\n\"How\u2014how would he have turned out?\"\n\nShe started to cry, large tears that rolled uninhibited down her cheeks; tears of loss, tears for what might have been.\n\n\"He was wonderful!\" I returned gratefully. \"Witty and generous and tall and clever\u2014you would have been so proud!\"\n\n\"What did he become?\"\n\n\"A novelist,\" I explained. \"Last year he won the Armitage Shanks Fiction Award for Bad Sofa. He lost a leg in the Crimea. We were married two months ago.\"\n\n\"Were we there?\"\n\nI looked at them both and said nothing. Houson had been there, of course, shedding tears of joy for us both\u2014but Billden, well, Billden had swapped his life for Landen's when he returned to the submerged car and ended up in the Swindon Municipal Cemetery instead. We stood for a moment or two, the three of us lamenting the loss of Landen. Houson broke the silence.\n\n\"I think it would really be better for all concerned if you left now,\" she said quietly, \"and please don't come back.\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I said. \"Was there someone there, someone who stopped you from rescuing him?\"\n\n\"More than one,\" replied Billden. \"Five or six\u2014one woman; I was sat upon\u2014\"\n\n\"Was one a Frenchman? Tall, distinguished-looking? Named Lavoisier, perhaps?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" answered Billden sadly. \"It was a long time ago.\"\n\n\"You really have to leave now,\" repeated Houson in a forthright tone.\n\nI sighed, thanked them, and they shuffled back inside and closed the door.\n\nI walked out of the garden gate and sat in my car, trying to contain the emotion within me so I could think straight. I was breathing heavily and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel my knuckles showed white. How could SpecOps do this to me? Was this Flanker's way of compelling me to talk about my father? I shook my head. Futzing with the timestream was a crime punishable by almost unimaginable brutality. I couldn't imagine Flanker would have risked his career\u2014and his life\u2014on a move so rash.\n\nI took a deep breath and leaned forward to press the starter button. As I did so I glanced into my wing mirror and saw a Packard parked on the other side of the road. There was a well-dressed figure leaning on the wing, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette and looking in my direction. It was Schitt-Hawse. He appeared to be smiling. Suddenly, the whole plan came into sharp focus. Jack Schitt. What had Schitt-Hawse threatened me with? Corporate impatience? My anger reestablished itself.\n\nMuttering Bastard! under my breath I jumped out of the car and walked briskly and purposefully towards Schitt-Hawse, who stiffened slightly as I approached. I ignored a car that screeched to a halt inches from me and as Schitt-Hawse took a pace forward I put out both hands and pushed him hard against the car. He lost his footing and fell heavily to the ground; I was quickly upon him, grabbed his shirt lapels and raised a fist to punch him. But the blow never fell. In my blind anger I had failed to see that his associates Chalk and Cheese were close by, and they did their job admirably, efficiently and yes, painfully, too. I fought like hell and was gratified that in the confusion I managed to kick Schitt-Hawse hard on the kneecap\u2014he yelped in pain. But my victory, such as it was, was short-lived. I must have been a tenth of their combined weight, and my struggles were soon in vain. They held me tightly, and Schitt-Hawse approached with an unpleasant smile etched upon his pinched features.\n\nI did the first thing I could think of. I spat in his face. I'd never tried it before, but it turned out delightfully; I got him right in the eye.\n\nHe raised the back of his hand to strike me, but I didn't flinch\u2014I just stared at him, anger burning in my eyes. He stopped, lowered his hand and wiped his face with a crisply laundered pocket handkerchief.\n\n\"You are going to have to control that temper of yours, Next.\"\n\n\"That's Mrs. Parke-Laine to you.\"\n\n\"Not anymore. If you'd stop struggling, perhaps we could talk sensibly, like adults. You and I need to come to an arrangement.\"\n\nI gave up squirming, and the two men relaxed their grip. I straightened my clothes and glared at Schitt-Hawse, who rubbed his knee.\n\n\"What sort of arrangement?\" I demanded.\n\n\"A trade,\" he answered. \"Jack Schitt for Landen.\"\n\n\"Oh yes?\" I retorted. \"And how do I know I can trust you?\"\n\n\"You can't and you don't,\" replied Schitt-Hawse simply, \"but it's the best offer you're going to get.\"\n\n\"My father will help me.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse laughed.\n\n\"Your father is a washed-out clock jockey. I think you overestimate his chances\u2014and his talents. Besides, we've got the summer of 1947 locked down so tight not even a transtemporal gnat could get back there without us knowing about it. Retrieve Jack from 'The Raven' and you can have your own dear hubby back.\"\n\n\"And how do you propose I do that?\"\n\n\"You're a resourceful and intelligent woman\u2014I'm sure you'll think of something. Do we have a deal?\"\n\nI stared hard at him, shaking with fury. Then, almost without thinking, I had my automatic pressed against Schitt-Hawse's forehead. I heard two safety catches click off behind me. Associates Chalk and Cheese were fast, too.\n\nSchitt-Hawse seemed unperturbed; he smiled at me in a supercilious manner and ignored the weapon.\n\n\"You won't kill me, Next,\" he said slowly. \"It's not the way you do things. It might make you feel better, but believe me, it won't get your Landen back, and Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese would make quite sure you were dead long before you hit the asphalt.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse was good. He'd done his homework and he hadn't underestimated me one little bit. I'd do all I could to get Landen back, and he knew it. I reholstered my pistol.\n\n\"Splendid!\" he enthused. \"We'll be hearing from you in due course, I trust, hmm?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "A Lack of Differences",
                "text": "Landen Parke-Laine's eradication was the best I'd seen since Veronica Golightly's. They plucked him out and left everything else exactly as it was. Not a crude hatchet job like Churchill or Victor Borge\u2014we got those sorted out eventually. What I never figured out was how they took him out and left her memories of him completely intact. Agreed, there would be no point to the eradication without her knowing what she had missed, but it still intrigued me over four centuries later. Eradication was never an exact art.\n\nCOLONEL NEXT,QT CG (nonexist.),\n\nUpstream/Downstream (unpublished)\n\nISTARED AFTER their departing car, trying to figure out what to do. Finding a way into \"The Raven\" to release Jack Schitt would be my first priority. It wasn't going to be hard\u2014it was going to be impossible. It wouldn't deter me. I'd done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn't scare me as much as it used to. I thought of Landen and the last time I saw him, limping across to the caf\u00e9 just opposite the SpecOps building. It was going to be his birthday in two weeks\u2014we planned to take the airship to Spain, or somewhere hot for a break; we knew we wouldn't be able to go on holiday so easily once there was a baby\u2014\n\nThe baby. With all that had happened, I didn't know whether I was still pregnant. I jumped into my car and screeched off into town, startling a few great auks who were picking their way through a nearby garbage can.\n\nI was heading for the doctor's surgery on Shelley Street. Every shop I passed seemed to either stock prams or high chairs, toys or something else baby-related, and all the toddlers and infants, heavily pregnant women and prams in Swindon seemed to be crowding the route\u2014and all staring at me. I skidded to a halt outside the surgery. It was a double yellow line and a traffic warden looked at me greedily.\n\n\"Hey!\" I said, pointing a finger at her. \"Expectant mother. Don't even think about it.\"\n\nI dashed in and found the nurse I'd seen the day before.\n\n\"I was in here yesterday,\" I blurted out. \"Was I pregnant?\"\n\nShe looked at me without even the least vestige of surprise. I guess she was used to this sort of thing.\n\n\"Of course!\" she replied. \"Confirmation is in the post. Are you okay?\"\n\nI sat down heavily on a chair and burst into tears. The sense of relief was overwhelming. I had more than just Landen's memories\u2014I had his child, too. I rubbed my face with my hands. I'd been in a lot of difficult and dangerous life-or-death situations both in the military and law enforcement\u2014but nothing even comes close to the tribulations of emotion. I'd face Hades again twice rather than go through that little charade again.\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" I assured her happily. \"I really couldn't be better!\"\n\n\"Good,\" beamed the nurse. \"Is there anything else you'd like to know?\"\n\n\"Yes, actually,\" I replied. \"Tell me, where do I live?\"\n\nThe shabby block of flats in the old town didn't look like my sort of place, but who knows where I might be living without Landen. I trotted briskly up the stairs to the top landing and flat six. I took a deep breath, unlocked and opened the door. There was a brief scrabble of activity from the kitchen and Pickwick was there to greet me as usual, bearing a gift that turned out to be the torn cover off last month's SpecOps-27 Gazette. I closed the door with my foot as I tickled her under the chin and looked cautiously about. I was relieved to discover that despite the shabby exterior my apartment was south-facing, warm and quite comfortable. I couldn't remember a thing about any of it, of course, but I was glad to see that Pickwick's egg was still in residence. I walked softly around the flat, exploring my new surroundings. It seemed I painted a lot more without Landen about, and the walls were covered with half-finished canvases. There were several of Pickwick and the family which I could remember painting, and a few others that I couldn't\u2014but none, sadly, of Landen. I looked at the other canvases and wondered why several included images of amphibious aircraft. I sat on the sofa, and when Pickwick came up to nuzzle me I put my hand on her head.\n\n\"Oh, Pickers,\" I murmured, \"what shall we do?\"\n\nI sighed, tried to get Pickwick to stand on one leg with the promise of a marshmallow, failed, then made a cup of tea and something to eat before searching the rest of the apartment in an inquisitive sort of way. Most things were where I would expect to find them; there were more dresses in the closet than usual and I even found a few copies of FeMole stashed under the sofa. The fridge was well stocked with food, and it seemed that in this non-Landen world I was a vegetarian. There were a lot of things that I couldn't remember ever having acquired, including a table light shaped like a pineapple, a large enamel sign advertising Dr. Spongg's footcare remedies and\u2014slightly more worryingly\u2014a size twelve pair of socks in the laundry and some boxer shorts. I rummaged further and found two toothbrushes in the bathroom, a large Swindon Mallets jacket on the hook and several XXL-size Tshirts with SpecOps-14 Swindon written on them. I called Bowden straightaway.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday,\" he said. \"Have you heard? Professor Spoon has given his 100% backing to Cardenio\u2014I've never heard him actually laugh before!\"\n\n\"That's good, that's good,\" I said absently. \"Listen, this might seem an odd question, but do I have a boyfriend?\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"A boyfriend. You know. A male friend I see on a regular basis for dinner and picnics and... thingy, y'know?\"\n\n\"Thursday, are you okay?\"\n\nI took a deep breath and rubbed my neck.\n\n\"No, no, I'm not,\" I gabbled. \"You see, my husband was eradicated this afternoon. I went to see SO-1 and just before I went in the walls changed color and Stig talked funny and Flanker didn't know I was married\u2014which I'm not, I suppose\u2014and then Houson didn't know me and Billden wasn't in the cemetery but Landen was and Goliath said they'd bring him back if I got Jack Schitt out and I thought I'd lost Landen's baby which I haven't so everything was fine and now it's not fine anymore because I've found an extra toothbrush and some men's clothes in my flat!\"\n\n\"Okay, okay,\" said Bowden in a soothing voice. \"Slow down a bit and just let me think.\"\n\nThere was a pause as Bowden mulled all this over. When he answered his voice was tinged with urgency\u2014and concern. I knew he was a good friend, but until now I never knew how good.\n\n\"Thursday. Calm down and listen to me. Firstly, we keep this to ourselves. Eradication can never be proved\u2014mention this to anyone at SpecOps and the quacks will enforce your retirement on a Form D4. We don't want that. I'll try and fill you in with any lost memories I might have that you don't. What was the name of your husband, again?\"\n\n\"Landen.\"\n\nI found strength in his approach. You could always rely on Bowden to be analytical about a problem\u2014no matter how strange it might seem. He made me go over the day again in more detail, something that I found very calming. I asked him again about a possible boyfriend.\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" he replied. \"You're kind of a private person.\"\n\n\"Come on\u2014office rumors, SpecOps gossip\u2014there must be something.\"\n\n\"There is some talk, but I don't hear a lot of it, since I'm your partner. Your love life is a matter of some quiet speculation. They call you\u2014\"\n\nHe went quiet.\n\n\"What do they call me, Bowden?\"\n\n\"You don't want to know.\"\n\n\"Tell me.\"\n\n\"All right,\" sighed Bowden. \"It's\u2014they call you the Ice Maiden.\"\n\n\"The Ice Maiden?\"\n\n\"It's not as bad as my nickname,\" continued Bowden. \"I'm known as Dead Dog.\"\n\n\"Dead dog?\" I repeated, trying to sound as though I'd not heard it before. \"Ice Maiden, eh? It's kind of, well, corny. Couldn't they think of something better? Anyway, did I have a boyfriend or not?\"\n\n\"There was a rumor of someone over at SO-14\u2014\"\n\nI held up the croquet jacket, trying to figure out how tall this unnamed beau might be.\n\n\"Do we have a positive ID?\"\n\n\"I think it's only a rumor, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Tell me, Bowden.\"\n\n\"Miles,\" he said at last. \"His name's Miles Hawke.\"\n\n\"Is it serious?\"\n\n\"I have no idea. You don't talk about these things to me.\"\n\nI thanked him and put the phone down nervously, butterflies dancing in my stomach. I knew I was still pregnant, but the trouble was: who was the father? If I had a casual boyfriend named Miles, then perhaps it wasn't Landen's after all. I called my mother, who seemed more interested in putting out a fire on the kitchen stove than in talking to me. I asked her when she last met one of my boyfriends and she said that if memory served, not for at least six years, and if I didn't hurry up and get married she was going to have to adopt some grandchildren\u2014 or steal some from outside Tesco's, whichever was easier. I told her I would go out and look for one as soon as possible and put the phone down.\n\nI paced the room in a flurry of nerves. If I hadn't introduced this Miles bloke to Mum, then it was quite likely he wasn't that serious; yet if he did leave his gear here then it undoubtedly was. I had an idea and rummaged in the bedside table and found a packet of unopened condoms which were three years out of date. I breathed a sigh of relief. This did sound more like me\u2014unless Miles brought his own, of course\u2014but then if I had a bun in the oven, then finding them was immaterial, as we didn't use them. Or perhaps the clothes weren't Miles's at all? And what about my memories? If they had survived, then surely Landen's share in Junior-to-be had also survived. I sat down on the bed and pulled out my hair tie. I ran my fingers through my hair, flopped backwards, covered my face and groaned\u2014long and loud."
            },
            {
                "title": "Granny Next",
                "text": "Young Thursday came that morning, as I knew she would. She had just lost Landen, as I had lost my own husband all those years ago. She had youth and hope on her side, and although she did not yet know it, she had plenty of what we call the Other Stuff. She would, I hoped, use it wisely. At the time not even her own father knew quite how important she was. More than Landen's life would depend on her. All life would depend on her, from the lowliest paramecium to the most complex life form that would ever exist.\n\n[ From papers discovered in ex\u2013SpecOps agent Next's effects ]\n\nITOOK PICKWICK to the park first thing in the morning. Perhaps it would be better to say that she took me\u2014she was the one who knew the way. She played coyly with a few other dodos while I sat on a park bench. A crotchety old woman sat next to me and turned out to be Mrs. Scroggins, who lived directly below. She told me not to make so much noise in future, and then, without drawing breath, gave me a few extremely useful tips about smuggling pets in and out of the building. I picked up a copy of The Owl on the way home and was just crossing the road back to my apartment when a patrol car drew up beside me and the driver rolled down his window. It was Officer \"Spike\" Stoker of SpecOps-17\u2014the Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operation, or Suckers and Biters as they preferred to call themselves. I helped him out once on a vampire stakeout; dealing with the undead is not a huge barrel of fun, but I liked Spike a great deal.\n\n\"Hey, Thursday, word is you lipped Flanker.\"\n\n\"Good news travels fast, doesn't it? But he got the last laugh\u2014I'm suspended.\"\n\nHe switched off the engine and thought about this for a moment.\n\n\"If the shit hits the fan I can offer you some freelance staking for cash at Suckers and Biters; the minimum entry requirements have been reduced to 'anyone mad enough to join me.'\"\n\nI sighed.\n\n\"Sorry, Spike. I can't. Not right now. I've got husband troubles.\"\n\n\"You're married? When?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" I said, showing him my empty ring finger. \" Someone eradicated my husband.\"\n\nSpike hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.\n\n\"Bastards. I'm sorry to hear that, but listen, it's not the end of the world. A few years back my uncle Bart was eradicated. Someone goofed and left some memories of him with my aunt. She lodged an appeal and had him reactualized a year later. Thing is, I never knew I had an uncle after he left, and never knew he had gone when he came back\u2014I've only my aunt's word that it ever happened at all. Does any of this make any sense to you?\"\n\n\"Twenty-four hours ago it would have sounded insane. Right now it seems\u2014stop that, Pickwick!\u2014as clear as day.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" murmured Spike. \"You'll get him back, don't worry. Listen: I wish they'd sideslip all this vampire and werewolf crap so I could go and work at Somme World\u2122 or something.\"\n\nI leaned against his car, SpecOps gossip a welcome distraction.\n\n\"Got a new partner yet?\" I asked him.\n\n\"For this shit? You must be kidding. But there is some good news. Look at this.\"\n\nHe pulled a photo from his breast pocket. It was of himself standing next to a petite blond girl who barely came up to his elbow.\n\n\"Her name's Cindy,\" he murmured affectionately. \"A cracker\u2014 and smart, too.\"\n\n\"I wish you both the best. How does she feel about all this vampire and werewolf stuff?\"\n\n\"Oh, she's fine with all that\u2014or at least she will be, when I tell her.\" His face fell. \"Oh, craps. How can I tell her that I thrust sharpened stakes through the undead and hunt down werewolves like some sort of dogcatcher?\" He stopped and sighed, then asked, in a brighter tone, \"You're a woman, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Last time I looked.\"\n\n\"Well, can't you figure out some sort of a\u2014I don't know\u2014 strategy for me? I'd hate to lose this one as well.\"\n\n\"How long do they last when you tell them?\"\n\n\"Oh, they're usually peachy about it,\" said Spike, laughing. \"They hang about for, well, five, six, maybe more\u2014\"\n\n\"Weeks?\" I asked. \"Months?\"\n\n\"Seconds,\" replied Spike mournfully, \"and those were the ones that really liked me.\"\n\nHe sighed deeply.\n\n\"I think you should tell her the truth. Girls don't like being lied to\u2014unless it's about surprise holidays and rings and stuff like that.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd say something like that,\" replied Spike, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. \"But the shock\u2014!\"\n\n\"You don't have to tell her outright. You could always scatter a few copies of Van Helsing's Gazette around the house.\"\n\n\"Oh, I get it!\" replied Spike, thinking hard. \"Sort of build her up to it\u2014stakes and crucifixes in the garage\u2014\"\n\n\"And you could drop werewolves into the conversation every now and then.\"\n\n\"It's a great plan, Thurs,\" replied Spike happily. \"Hang on.\"\n\nThe wireless had started to report an occurrence of unspeakable nastiness up near Banbury. He started the engine.\n\n\"I've got to go. Think about my offer. Always some work if you need it!\"\n\nAnd he was gone in a screech of tires.\n\nI smuggled Pickwick back to my apartment and read the paper\u2014I was glad to see the discovery of Cardenio had not yet broken in the press, but I was distracted. I stared out of the window for a moment, trying to formulate some sort of plan to get Landen back. Get into books? I didn't know where to even begin. On reflection, that wasn't quite right. It was time to go and visit the closest thing to the Delphic Oracle I would ever know: Granny Next.\n\nGran was playing Ping-Pong at the SpecOps Twilight Homes when I found her. She was thrashing her opponent, who was at least twenty years her junior\u2014but still about eighty. Nervous nurses looked on, trying to stop her before she fell over and broke a bone or two. Granny Next was old. Really old. Her pink skin looked more wrinkled than the most wrinkled prune I had ever seen, and her face and hands were livid with dark liver spots. She was dressed in her usual blue gingham dress and hailed me from the other side of the room as I walked in.\n\n\"Ah!\" she said. \"Thursday! Fancy a game?\"\n\n\"Don't you think you've played enough today?\"\n\n\"Nonsense! Grab a paddle and we'll play to the first point.\"\n\nI picked up a paddle as a ball careened past me.\n\n\"Wasn't ready!\" I protested as another ball came over the net. I swiped at it and missed.\n\n\"Ready is as ready does, Thursday. I'd have thought you knew that more than most!\"\n\nI grunted and returned the next ball, which was deftly deflected back to me.\n\n\"How are you, Gran?\"\n\n\"Old,\" she replied, behaving quite the opposite as she skipped nimbly sideways and whacked the ball towards me with savage backspin. \"Old and tired, and I need looking after. The grim reaper is lurking close by\u2014I can almost smell him!\"\n\n\"Gran!\"\n\nShe missed my shot and declared, \"No ball,\" before pausing for a moment.\n\n\"Do you want to know a secret, young Thursday?\" she asked, leaning on the table.\n\n\"Go on then,\" I replied, taking the opportunity to retrieve some balls.\n\n\"I am cursed to eternal life!\"\n\n\"Perhaps it just seems like it, Gran.\"\n\n\"Insolent pup,\" she replied as she returned my serve. \"I didn't attain one hundred and eight years on physical fortitude or a statistical quirk alone. Your point.\"\n\nI served again and missed her return. She paused for a moment.\n\n\"I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can't shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.\"\n\nI looked into her bright eyes. She wasn't kidding.\n\n\"How far have you got?\" I replied, returning another ball that flew wide.\n\n\"Well, that's the trouble, isn't it?\" she replied, serving again. \"I read what I think is the dullest book on God's own earth, finish the last page, go to sleep with a smile on my face and wake up the following morning feeling better than ever!\"\n\n\"Have you tried Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene?\" I asked. \"Six volumes of boring Spenserian stanza, the only saving grace of which is that he didn't write the twelve volumes he had planned.\"\n\n\"Read them all,\" replied Gran. \"And his other poems, too, just in case.\"\n\nI put down my paddle. The balls kept plinking past me.\n\n\"You win, Gran. I need to talk to you.\"\n\nShe reluctantly agreed, and I helped her to her bedroom, a small chintzily decorated cell she darkly referred to as her \" departure lounge.\" It was sparsely furnished; there was a picture of me, Anton, Joffy and my mother alongside a couple of empty frames.\n\nAs soon as she was seated I said: \"They... they sideslipped my husband, Gran.\"\n\n\"When did they take him?\" she asked, looking at me over her glasses in the way that grannies do; she never questioned what I said, and I explained everything to her as quickly as I could\u2014except for the bit about the baby.\n\n\"Hmm,\" said Granny Next when I had finished. \"They took my husband too\u2014I know how you feel.\"\n\n\"Why did they do it?\"\n\n\"The same reason they did it to you. Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open for blackmail. Give way to tyranny and others will suffer just as badly as you\u2014 perhaps worse.\"\n\n\"Are you saying I shouldn't try to get Landen back?\"\n\n\"Not at all; just think carefully before you help them. They don't care about you or Landen; all they want is Jack Schitt. Is Anton still dead?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\"\n\n\"What a shame. I hoped to see your brother before I popped myself. Do you know what the worst bit about dying is?\"\n\n\"Tell me, Gran.\"\n\n\"You never get to see how it all turns out.\"\n\n\"Did you get your husband back, Gran?\"\n\nInstead of answering she unexpectedly placed her hand on my midriff and smiled that small and all-knowing smile that grandmothers seem to learn at granny school, along with crochet, January sales battle tactics and wondering what you are doing upstairs.\n\n\"June?\" she asked.\n\nYou never argue with Granny Next, nor seek to know how she knows such things.\n\n\"July. But Gran, I don't know if it's Landen's, or Miles Hawke's, or whose!\"\n\n\"You should call this Hawke fellow and ask him.\"\n\n\"I can't do that!\"\n\n\"Worry yourself woolly then,\" she retorted. \"Mind you, my money is on Landen as the father\u2014as you say, the memories avoided the sideslip, so why not the baby? Believe me, everything will turn out fine. Perhaps not in the way that you imagine, but fine nonetheless.\"\n\nI wished I could share her optimism. She took her hand off my stomach and lay back on the bed, the energy expended during the Ping-Pong having taken its toll.\n\n\"I need to find a way to get back into books without the Prose Portal, Gran.\"\n\nShe opened her eyes and looked at me with a keenness that belied her old age.\n\n\"Humph!\" she said, then added: \"I was SpecOps for seventy-seven years in eighteen different departments. I jumped backwards and forwards and even sideways on occasion. I've chased bad guys who make Hades look like St. Zvlkx and saved the world from annihilation eight times. I've seen such weird shit you can't even begin to comprehend, but for all of that I have absolutely no idea how Mycroft managed to jump you into Jane Eyre.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\n\"Sorry, Thursday\u2014but that's the way it is. If I were you I'd work the problem out backwards. Who was the last person you met who could bookjump?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Nakajima.\"\n\n\"And how did she manage it?\"\n\n\"She just read herself in, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Have you tried it?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"Perhaps you should,\" she replied with deadly seriousness. \"The first time you went into Jane Eyre\u2014wasn't that a bookjump?\"\n\n\"I guess.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" she said as she picked a book at random off the shelf above her bed and tossed it across to me, \"you had better try.\"\n\nI picked the book up.\n\n\"The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies?\"\n\n\"Well, you've got to start somewhere, haven't you?\" replied Gran with a chuckle. I helped her take off her blue gingham shoes and made her more comfortable.\n\n\"One hundred and eight!\" she muttered. \"I feel like the bunny in that Fusioncell ad, you know, the one that has to run on brand X?\"\n\n\"You're Fusioncell all the way to me, Gran.\"\n\nShe gave a faint smile and leaned back on the pillows.\n\n\"Read the book to me, my dear.\"\n\nI sat down and opened the small Beatrix Potter volume. I glanced up at Gran, who had closed her eyes.\n\n\"Read!\"\n\nSo I did, right from the front to the back.\n\n\"Anything?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied sadly, \"nothing.\"\n\n\"Not even the whiff of garden refuse or the distant buzz of a lawn mower?\"\n\n\"Not a thing.\"\n\n\"Hah!\" said Gran. \"Read it to me again.\"\n\nSo I read it again, and again after that.\n\n\"Still nothing?\"\n\n\"No, Gran,\" I replied, beginning to get bored.\n\n\"How do you see the character of Mrs. Tittlemouse?\"\n\n\"Resourceful and intelligent,\" I replied. \"Probably a gossip and likes to name-drop. Leagues ahead of Benjamin in the brain department.\"\n\n\"How do you figure that?\" queried Gran.\n\n\"Well, by allowing his children to sleep so vulnerably in the open air, Benjamin clearly shows minimal parenting skills, yet he has enough self-preservation to cover his own face. It was Flopsy who had to come and look for him, as this sort of thing has obviously happened before\u2014it is clear that Benjamin can't be trusted with the children. Once again the mother has to show restraint and wisdom.\"\n\n\"Maybe so,\" replied Gran, \"but where's the wisdom in watching from the window while Mr. and Mrs. McGregor discovered they had been duped with the rotten vegetables?\"\n\nShe had a point.\n\n\"A narrative necessity,\" I declared. \"I think there is more high drama if you follow the outcome of the rabbit's subterfuge, don't you? I think Flopsy, had she been making all the decisions, would have just returned to the burrow but was, on this occasion, overruled by Beatrix Potter.\"\n\n\"It's an interesting theory,\" commented Gran, stretching her toes out on the counterpane and wriggling them to keep the circulation going. \"Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.\"\n\n\"Misunderstood,\" I told her. \"I see Mrs. McGregor as the villain of the piece. A sort of Lady Macbeth. His labored counting and inane chuckling might indicate a certain degree of dementia that allows him to be easily dominated by Mrs. McGregor's more aggressive personality. I think their marriage is in trouble, too. She describes him as a 'silly old man' and 'a doddering old fool' and claims the rotten vegetables in the sack are just a pointless prank to annoy her.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Not really. I think that's about it. Good stuff, isn't it?\"\n\nBut Gran didn't answer; she just chuckled softly to herself.\n\n\"So you're still here then,\" she asked, \"you didn't jump into Mr. and Mrs. McGregor's cottage?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" began Gran with a mischievous air, \"how did you know she called him a 'doddering old fool'?\"\n\n\"It's in the text.\"\n\n\"Better check, young Thursday.\"\n\nI flicked to the correct page and found, indeed, that Mrs. McGregor had said no such thing.\n\n\"How odd!\" I said. \"I must have made it up.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" replied Gran, \"or perhaps you overheard it. Close your eyes and describe the kitchen in Mr. McGregor's cottage.\"\n\n\"Lilac-washed walls,\" I muttered, \"a large range with a kettle singing merrily above a coal fire. There is a dresser against one wall with floral-patterned crocks upon it and atop the scrubbed kitchen table there is a jug with flowers\u2014\"\n\nI lapsed into silence.\n\n\"And how would you have known that,\" asked Gran triumphantly, \"unless you had actually been there?\"\n\nI quickly skimmed the book, surprised and impressed by the tantalizing glimmer of another world beyond the attractive watercolors and simple prose. I concentrated hard but nothing similar happened. Perhaps I wanted it too much; I don't know. After the tenth reading I was just looking at the words and ink and nothing else.\n\n\"It's a start,\" said Gran encouragingly. \"Try another book when you get home, but don't expect too much too soon\u2014and I'd strongly recommend you go and look for Mrs. Nakajima. Where does she live?\"\n\n\"She took retirement in Jane Eyre.\"\n\n\"Before that?\"\n\n\"Osaka.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps you should seek her there\u2014and for heaven's sake, relax!\"\n\nI told her I would, kissed her on the forehead and quietly left the room."
            },
            {
                "title": "At Home with My Memories",
                "text": "\u2002ToadNewsNetwork was the top news station, Lydia Startright their top reporter. If there was a top event, you could bet your top dollar that Toad would make it their top story. When Tunbridge Wells was given to the Russians as war reparations there was no topper story\u2014except, that is, the mammoth migrations, speculation on Bonzo the Wonder Hound's next movie or whether Lola Vavoom shaved her armpits or not. My father said that it was a delightfully odd\u2014and dangerously self-destructive\u2014quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia than in genuine news stories.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nSince I was still on official leave pending the outcome of the SO-1 hearing, I went home and let myself into my apartment, kicked off my shoes and poured some pistachios into Pickwick's dish. I made some coffee and called Bowden for a long chat, trying to find out what else had changed since Landen's eradication. As it turned out, not much. Anton had still been blamed for the charge of the light armored brigade, I had still lived in London for ten years, still arrived back in Swindon at the same time, still been up at Uffington picnicking the day before. Dad had once said the past has an astonishing resilience to change; he wasn't kidding. I thanked Bowden, hung up and painted for a while, trying to relax. When that failed I went up for a walk at Uffington, joining the sightseers who had gathered to watch the smashed Hispano-Suiza being loaded onto a trailer. The Leviathan Airship Company had begun an inquiry and volunteered one of their directors to accept charges of corporate manslaughter. The hapless executive had begun his seven-year term already, thus hoping to avoid an expensive and damaging lawsuit for his company.\n\nI returned home to find a dangerous-looking man was standing on my doorstep. I'd never seen him before but he knew me well enough.\n\n\"Next!\" he bellowed. \"I want three months' rent in advance or I'll throw all your stuff in the skip!\"\n\n\"In advance?\" I replied as I unlocked my door, hoping to sneak inside and close it as soon as possible. \"You can't do that!\"\n\n\"I can,\" he said holding up a dog-eared lease agreement. \"Pets are strictly against the terms of the lease. Clause 7 subsection B, under 'Pets\u2014special conditions.' Now pay up.\"\n\n\"There's no pet in here,\" I explained innocently.\n\n\"What's that, then?\"\n\nPickwick had made a quiet plock-plock noise and poked her head round the door to see what was going on. It was a badly timed move.\n\n\"Oh that. I'm looking after her for a friend.\"\n\nMy landlord's eyes suddenly lit up as he looked closer at Pickwick, who shrank back nervously. She was a rare Version 1.2 and my landlord seemed to know this.\n\nHe eyed Pickwick greedily. \"Hand over the dodo,\" he said, \"and I'll give you four months' free rent.\"\n\n\"She's not for trade,\" I said firmly. I could feel Pickwick quivering behind me.\n\n\"Ah,\" said my landlord. \"Then you have two days to pay all your bills or you're out on your sweet little SpecOps arse. Capishe?\"\n\n\"You say the nicest things.\"\n\nHe glared at me, handed me a bill and disappeared off down the corridor to harass someone else.\n\nI didn't have three months' advance rent, and he knew it. After a search I eventually found a lease agreement, and he was right\u2014the clause was there in case of something much bigger and more dangerous, such as a sabertooth, but he was within his rights. My cards had reached their limit and my overdraft was nearly full. SpecOps wages were just about enough to keep you fed and a roof over your head, but buying the Speedster had all but cleared me out and I hadn't even seen the garage repair bills yet. There was a nervous plock-plock from the kitchen.\n\n\"I'd sooner sell myself,\" I told Pickwick, who was standing expectantly with collar and lead in her beak.\n\nI stashed the bank statements back into the shoebox, fixed myself some supper and then flopped in front of the telly, switching to ToadNewsNetwork.\n\n\"\u2014the czar's chief negotiator has accepted the foreign minister's offer of Tunbridge Wells as war reparations,\" intoned the anchorman gravely. \"The small town and two-thousand-acre environs would become a Russian-owned enclave named Botchkamos Istochnik within England and all citizens of the new Russian colony would be offered dual nationality. On the spot for TNN is Lydia Startright. Lydia, how are things down there?\"\n\nThe screen changed to ToadNewsNetwork's preeminent reporter in the main street of Tunbridge Wells.\n\n\"There is a mixture of disbelief and astonishment amongst the residents of this sleepy Kent town,\" responded Startright soberly, surrounded by an assortment of retired gentlefolk carrying shopping and looking vaguely bemused. \"Panic warm-clothing shopping has given way to anger that the foreign secretary could make such a decision without mentioning some sort of generous compensation package. I have with me retired cavalry officer Colonel Prongg. Tell me, Colonel, what is your reaction to the news that you might be Colonel Pronski this time next month?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the colonel in an aggrieved tone, \"I would like to say that I am disgusted and appalled at the decision. Appalled and disgusted in the strongest possible terms. I didn't fight the Russkies for forty years only to become one in my retirement. Myself and Mrs. Prongg will be moving, obviously!\"\n\n\"Since Imperial Russia is the second-wealthiest nation on the planet,\" replied Lydia, \"Tunbridge Wells may find itself, like the island of Fetlar, to be an important offshore banking institution for Russia's wealthy nobility.\"\n\n\"Obviously,\" replied the colonel, thinking hard, \"I would have to wait to see how things went before coming to any final decision. But if the takeover means colder winters, we'll move back to Brighton. Chilblains, y'know.\"\n\n\"There you have it, Carl. This is Lydia Startright reporting for ToadNewsNetwork, Tunbridge Wells.\"\n\nThe camera switched back to the studio.\n\n\"Trouble at Mole TV,\" continued the anchorman, \"and a bitter blow for the producers of Surviving Cortes, the channel's popular Aztec conquering reenactment series when, instead of being simply voted out of the sealed set of Tenochtitl\u00e1n, a contestant was sacrificed live to the Sun God. The show has been canceled and an inquiry has been launched. MoleTV were said to be 'sorry and dismayed about the incident' but pointed out that the show was 'the highest-rated on TV, even after the blood sacrifice.' Brett?\"\n\nThe camera switched to the other newsreader.\n\n\"Thank you, Carl. Henry, a two-and-a-half-ton male juvenile from the Kirkbride herd, was the first mammoth to reach the winter pastures of Redruth at 6:07 p.m. this evening. Clarence Oldspot was there. Clarence?\"\n\nThe scene changed to a field in Cornwall where a bored-looking mammoth had almost vanished inside a scrum of TV news reporters and crowds of well-wishers. Clarence Oldspot was still wearing his flak jacket and looked bitterly disappointed that he was reporting on hairy once extinct herbivores and not at the Crimean front line.\n\n\"Thank you, Brett. Well, the migration season is truly upon us, and Henry, a two-hundred-to-one outsider, wrongfooted the bookies when\u2014\"\n\nI flicked the channel. It was Name That Fruit!, the nauseating quiz show. I flicked again to a documentary about the Whig political party's links to Radical Baconian groups in the seventies. I switched through several other channels before returning to the ToadNewsNetwork.\n\nThe phone rang and I picked it up.\n\n\"It's Miles,\" said a voice that sounded like one hundred push-ups in under three minutes.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Miles.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I said in shock. Miles. Miles Hawke, the owner of the boxer shorts and the tasteless sports jacket.\n\n\"Thursday? You okay?\"\n\n\"Me? Fine. Fine. Completely fine. Couldn't be finer. Finer than a\u2014How are you?\"\n\n\"Do you want me to come round? You sound kinda odd.\"\n\n\"No!\" I answered a little too sharply. \"I mean, no, thanks\u2014I mean, we saw each other only\u2014um\u2014\"\n\n\"Two weeks ago?\"\n\n\"Yes. And I'm very busy. God how busy I am. Never been busier. That's me. Busy as a busy thing\u2014\"\n\n\"I heard you went up against Flanker. I was concerned.\"\n\n\"Tell me, did you and I ever\u2014\"\n\nI couldn't say it but I needed to know.\n\n\"Did you and I ever what?\"\n\n\"Did you and I\u2014\"\n\nThink, think.\n\n\"Did you and I ever... visit the mammoth migrations?\"\n\nDamn and blast!\n\n\"The migrations? No. Should we have? Thursday, are you sure you're okay?\"\n\nI started to panic\u2014and that was daft, given the circumstances. When facing people like Hades I didn't panic at all.\n\n\"Yes\u2014I mean no. Oops, there's the doorbell. Must be my cab.\"\n\n\"A cab? What happened to your car?\"\n\n\"A pizza. A cab delivering a pizza. Got to go!\"\n\nAnd before he could protest I had put the phone down.\n\nI slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand and muttered:\n\n\"Idiot... idiot... idiot!\"\n\nI then ran around the flat like a lunatic, closing all the curtains and switching off the lights in case Miles decided to pop round to see me. I sat in the dark listening to Pickwick walking into the furniture for a bit before deciding I was being a twit and elected to go to bed with a copy of Robinson Crusoe.\n\nI fetched a flashlight from the kitchen, undressed in the dark and climbed into bed, rolled around a bit on the unfamiliar mattress and then started to read the book, somehow hoping to repeat the sort of semisuccess I had enjoyed with The Flopsy Bunnies. I read of Crusoe's shipwreck and his arrival on the island and skipped the dull religious philosophizing. I stopped for a moment and looked around my bedroom to see whether anything was happening. It wasn't; the only changes in the room were the lights of cars sweeping around my bedroom as they turned out of the road opposite. I heard Pickwick plock-plocking to herself, and returned to my book. I was more tired than I thought and as I read, I lapsed into slumber.\n\nI dreamt I was on an island somewhere, hot and dry, the palms languid in the slight breeze, the sky a deep blue, the sunlight pure and clear. I trod barefoot in the surf, the water cooling my feet as I walked. There was a wrecked ship, all broken masts and tangled rigging, resting on the reef a hundred yards from the shore. As I watched I could see a naked man climb aboard the ship, rummage on the deck, pull on a pair of trousers and disappear below. After waiting a moment or two and not seeing him again I walked further along the beach, where I found Landen sitting under a palm tree gazing at me with a smile on his face.\n\n\"What are you looking at?\" I asked him, returning his smile and raising my hand to shield my eyes from the sun.\n\n\"I'd forgotten how beautiful you are.\"\n\n\"Oh stop!\"\n\n\"I'm not kidding,\" he replied as he jumped to his feet and hugged me tightly. \"I'm really missing you.\"\n\n\"I'm missing you, too,\" I told him, \"but where are you?\"\n\n\"I'm not exactly sure,\" he replied with a confused look. \"Strictly speaking I don't think I'm anywhere\u2014just here, alive in your memories.\"\n\n\"This is my memory? What's it like?\"\n\n\"Well,\" replied Landen, \"there are some really outstanding parts but some pretty dreadful ones too\u2014in that respect it's a little like Majorca. Would you care for some tea?\"\n\nI looked around for the tea but Landen simply smiled.\n\n\"I've not been here long but I've learnt a trick or two. Remember that place in Winchester where we had scones that were fresh warm from the oven? You remember, on the second floor, when it was raining outside and the man with the umbrella\u2014\"\n\n\"Darjeeling or Assam?\" asked the waitress.\n\n\"Darjeeling,\" I replied, \"and two cream teas. Strawberry for me and quince for my friend.\"\n\nThe island had gone. In its place was the tearoom in Winchester. The waitress scribbled a note, smiled and departed. The rooms were packed with amiable-looking middle-aged couples dressed in tweed. It was, not surprisingly, just as I remembered it.\n\n\"That was a neat trick!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"Naught to do with me!\" replied Landen grinning. \"This is all yours. Every last bit of it. The smells, the sounds\u2014 everything.\"\n\nI looked around in silent wonderment.\n\n\"I can remember all this?\"\n\n\"Not quite, Thurs. Look at our fellow tea drinkers again.\"\n\nI turned in my chair and scanned the room. All the couples were more or less identical. Each was a middle-aged couple dressed in tweed and twittering in a home counties twang. They weren't really eating or talking coherently; they were just moving and mumbling to give the impression of a packed tearoom.\n\n\"Fascinating, isn't it?\" said Landen excitedly. \"Since you can't actually remember anything about who was here, your mind has just filled in the room with an amalgam of who you might expect to see in a teashop in Winchester. Mnemonic wallpaper, so to speak. There is nothing in this room that won't be familiar. The cutlery is your mother's and the pictures on the walls are all odd mixes of the ones we had up in the house. The waitress is a compound of Lottie from your lunch with Bowden and the woman in the chip shop. Every blank space in your memory has been filled with something that you do remember\u2014a sort of shuffling of facts to fill in the gaps.\"\n\nI looked back at our fellow tea-takers, who now seemed faceless.\n\nI had a sudden\u2014and worrying\u2014thought.\n\n\"Landen, you haven't been around my late teenage years, have you?\"\n\n\"Of course not. That's like opening private mail.\"\n\nI was glad of this. My wholly unlikely infatuation for a boy named Darren and my clumsy introduction to being a woman in the back of a stolen Morris 8 was not something I wanted Landen to witness in all its ignominious glory. For once I was kind of wishing I had a bad memory\u2014or that Uncle Mycroft had perfected his memory erasure device.\n\nLanden poured the tea and asked: \"How are things in the real world?\"\n\n\"I have to figure out a way into books,\" I told him. \"I'm going to take the Gravitube to Osaka tomorrow and see if I can track down anyone who knew Mrs. Nakajima. It's a long shot, but who knows.\"\n\n\"Take care won't y\u2014\"\n\nLanden stopped short as something over my shoulder caught his eye. I turned to see probably the last person I wanted to be there. I quickly stood up, knocked my chair over backwards with a clatter and aimed my automatic at the tall figure who had just entered the tearoom.\n\n\"No call for that!\" grinned Acheron Hades. \"The way to kill me here is to forget about me, and there is about as much chance of doing that as forgetting little hubbles here.\"\n\nI looked at Landen, who rolled his eyes heavenward.\n\n\"Sorry, Thurs. I meant to tell you about him. He's quite alive here in your memories\u2014but harmless, I assure you.\"\n\nHades told the couple next to us to scram if they knew what was good for them and then sat down, tucking into their unfinished seed cake. He was exactly as I last saw him on the roof at Thornfield\u2014his clothes were even smoking slightly. I could smell the dry heat of the blaze at Rochester's old house, almost hear the crackle of the fire and the unearthly scream of Bertha as Hades threw her to her death. Hades smiled a supercilious grin. He was relatively safe in my memories, and he knew it\u2014 the worst I could do was to wake up.\n\nI reholstered my gun.\n\n\"Hello, Hades,\" I said, sitting back down again. \"Tea?\"\n\n\"Would you? Frightfully kind.\"\n\nI poured him a cup. He stirred in four sugars and observed Landen for a bit with an inquisitorial eye before asking: \"So you're Parke-Laine, eh?\"\n\n\"What's left of him.\"\n\n\"And you and Next are in love?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nI took Landen's hand as though to reinforce the statement.\n\n\"I was in love once, you know,\" murmured Hades with a sad and distant smile. \"I was quite besotted, in my own sort of way. We used to plan heinous deeds together, and for our first anniversary we set fire to a large public building. We then sat on a nearby hill together to watch the fire light up the sky, the screams of the terrified citizens a symphony to our ears.\"\n\nHe sighed again, only this time more deeply.\n\n\"But it didn't work out. The course of true love rarely runs smooth. I had to kill her.\"\n\n\"You had to kill her?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he sighed, \"but I spared her any pain\u2014and said I was sorry.\"\n\n\"That's a very heartwarming story,\" murmured Landen.\n\n\"You and I have something in common, Mr. Parke-Laine.\"\n\n\"I sincerely hope not.\"\n\n\"We live only in Thursday's memories. She'll never be rid of me until she dies, and the same goes for you\u2014sort of ironic, isn't it? The man she loves, the man she hates\u2014!\"\n\n\"He'll be returning,\" I replied confidently, \"when Jack Schitt is out of 'The Raven.'\"\n\nAcheron laughed.\n\n\"I think you overestimate Goliath's commitment to their promises. Landen is as dead as I am, perhaps more so\u2014at least I survived childhood.\"\n\n\"I beat you fair and square, Hades,\" I said, handing him a jam pot and a knife as he helped himself to a scone, \"and I'll take on Goliath and win, too.\"\n\n\"We'll see,\" replied Acheron thoughtfully, \"we'll see.\"\n\nI thought of the Skyrail and the falling Hispano-Suiza.\n\n\"Did you try and kill me the other day, Hades?\"\n\n\"If only!\" he answered, waving the jam spoon in our direction and laughing. \"But then again I might have done\u2014after all, I'm here only as your memory of me. I sincerely hope that I am, perhaps, not dead and out there somewhere for real, plotting, plotting...!\"\n\nLanden stood up.\n\n\"C'mon, Thurs. Let's leave this clown to our scones. Do you remember when we first kissed?\"\n\nThe tearoom was suddenly gone and in its place was a warm night in the Crimea. We were back at Camp Aardvark watching the shelling of Sevastopol on the horizon, the finest fireworks show on the planet if only you could forget what it was doing. The sound of the barrage was softened almost into a lullaby by the distance. We were both in battle dress and standing together but not touching\u2014and by God how much we wanted to.\n\n\"Where's this?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"It's where we kissed for the first time,\" I replied.\n\n\"No\u2014!\" replied Landen. \"I remember watching the shelling with you, but we only talked that evening. I didn't actually kiss you until the night you drove me out to forward CP and we got stuck in the minefield.\"\n\nI laughed out loud.\n\n\"Men have such crap memories when it comes to things like this! We were standing apart like this and desperately wanting to just touch each other. You put your hand on my shoulder to pretend to point something out and I slid my hand into the small of your back like... so. We didn't say anything but when we held each other it was like, like electricity!\"\n\nWe did. It was. The shivers went all the way to my feet, bounced back, returned in a spiral up my body and exited my neck as a light sweat.\n\n\"Well,\" replied Landen in a quiet voice a few minutes later. \"I think I prefer your version. So if we kissed here, then the night in the minefield was\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I told him, \"yes, yes it was.\"\n\nAnd there we were, sitting outside an armored personnel carrier in the dead of night two weeks later, marooned in the middle of probably the best-signposted minefield in the area.\n\n\"People will think you did this on purpose,\" I told him as unseen bombers droned overheard, off on a mission to bomb someone to pulp.\n\n\"I got away only with a reprimand, as I recall,\" he replied. \"And anyway, who's to say that I didn't?\"\n\n\"You drove deliberately into a minefield just for a legover?\" I asked, laughing.\n\n\"Not any old legover,\" he replied. \"Besides, there was no risk involved.\"\n\nHe pulled a hastily drawn map out of his battle-dress pocket.\n\n\"Captain Bird drew this for me.\"\n\n\"You scheming little shitbag!\" I told him, throwing an empty Kration tin at him. \"I was terrified!\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Landen with a grin. \"So it was terror and not passion that drove you into my arms?\"\n\n\"Well\"\u2014I shrugged\u2014\"maybe a bit of both.\"\n\nLanden leaned forward, but I had a thought and pressed a fingertip to his mouth.\n\n\"But this wasn't the best, was it?\"\n\nHe stopped, smiled and whispered in my ear: \"At the furniture store?\"\n\n\"In your dreams, Land. I'll give you a clue. You still had a leg and we both had a week's leave\u2014by lucky coincidence at the same time.\"\n\n\"No coincidence,\" said Landen with a smile.\n\n\"Captain Bird again?\"\n\n\"Two hundred bars of chocolate but worth every packet.\"\n\n\"You're a bit of a rake, y'know, Land\u2014but in the nicest kind of way. Anyhow,\" I continued, \"we elected to go cycling in the Republic of Wales.\"\n\nAs I spoke the APC vanished, the night rolled back and we were walking hand in hand through a small wood to the side of a stream. It was summer and the water babbled excitedly among the rocks, the springy moss a warm carpet to our bare feet. The blue sky was devoid of clouds and the sunlight trickled in amongst the verdant foliage above our heads. We pushed aside low branches and followed the sound of a waterfall. We came across two bicycles leaning up against a tree, the panniers open and the tent half pegged out on the ground. My heart quickened as the memories of that particular summer's day flooded back. We had started to put the tent up but stopped for a moment, the passion overcoming us. I squeezed Landen's hand and he curled his hands round my waist. He smiled at me with his funny half-smile.\n\n\"When I was alive I came to this memory a lot,\" he confided to me. \"It's one of my favorites, and amazingly, your memory seems to have got most things correct.\"\n\n\"Is that a fact?\" I asked him as he kissed me gently on my neck. I shivered slightly and ran my fingers down his naked back.\n\n\"Most\u2014plock\u2014definitely.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"Nothing\u2014plock plock\u2014why?\"\n\n\"Oh no! Not now of all times!\"\n\n\"What?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"I think I'm about to\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014wake up.\"\n\nBut I was talking to myself. I was back in my bedroom in Swindon, my memory excursion annoyingly cut short by Pickwick, who was staring at me from the rug, leash in beak and making quiet plock-plock noises. I gave her a baleful stare.\n\n\"Pickers, you are such a pest. Just when I was getting to the good bit.\"\n\nShe stared at me, little comprehending what she had done.\n\n\"I'm going to drop you round at Mum's,\" I told her as I sat up and stretched. \"I'm going to Osaka for a couple of days.\"\n\nShe cocked her head on one side and stared at me curiously.\n\n\"You and Junior will be in good hands, I promise.\"\n\nI got out of bed and trod on something hard and whiskery. I looked at the object and smiled to myself. It was a good sign. Lying on the carpet was an old coconut husk\u2014and better than that, there was still some sand stuck to my feet. My reading of Robinson Crusoe hadn't been a total failure after all."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Gravitube\u2122",
                "text": "\u2002By the time this decade is out, we aim to construct a transport system that can take a man or a woman from New York to Tokyo and back again in two hours....\n\n\u2014U.S. PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY\n\n\u2002For mass transport over the globe there were primarily the railroads and the airship. Rail was fast and convenient but stopped short of crossing the oceans. Airships could cover greater distances\u2014but were slow and fraught with delays due to weather. In the fifties the journey time to Australia or New Zealand was typically ten days. In 1960, a new form of transportation system was begun\u2014 the Gravitube. It promised delay-free travel to anywhere on the planet. Any destination, whether Auckland, Rome or Los Angeles, would take exactly the same: a little over forty minutes. It was, quite possibly, the greatest feat of engineering that mankind would ever undertake.\n\n\u2014VINCENT DOTT, The Gravitube: Tenth Wonder of the World\n\nPickwick insisted on sitting on her egg all the way to Mum's house and plocked nervously whenever I went over twenty miles per hour. I made her a nest in the airing cupboard and left her fussing over her egg while the other dodos strained at the window, trying to figure out what was going on. I rang Bowden while Mum fixed me a sandwich.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he inquired. \"Your phone's been off the hook!\"\n\n\"I'm okay, Bowd. What's happening at the office?\"\n\n\"The news is out.\"\n\n\"About Landen?\"\n\n\"About Cardenio. Someone blabbed to the press. Vole Towers is besieged by news channels as we speak. Lord Volescamper has been yelling at Victor about one of us talking.\"\n\n\"Wasn't me.\"\n\n\"Nor me. Volescamper has turned down fifty million quid for it already\u2014every impresario on the planet wants to buy the rights for first performance. And get this\u2014you've been cleared by SO-1 of any wrongdoing. They thought that since Kaylieu was shot by SO-14 marksmen yesterday morning you might have been right after all.\"\n\n\"Big of them. Does this mean my leave is over?\"\n\n\"Victor wants to see you as soon as possible.\"\n\n\"Tell him I'm ill, would you? I have to go to Osaka.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Best not to know. I'll call you.\"\n\nI replaced the receiver and Mum gave me some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. She sat down at the other side of the table and flicked through a well-thumbed copy of last month's FeMole\u2014the one with me in it.\n\n\"Any news from Mycroft and Polly, Mum?\"\n\n\"I got a card from London saying they were fit and well,\" she replied, \"but they said they needed a jar of piccalilli and a torque wrench. I left them in Mycroft's study and they'd vanished by the afternoon.\"\n\n\"Mum?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"How often do you see Dad?\"\n\nShe smiled. \"Most mornings. He drops by to say hello. Sometimes I even make him a packed lunch\u2014\"\n\nShe was interrupted by a roar that sounded like a thousand tubas in unison. The sound reverberated through the house and set the teacups in the corner cupboard rattling.\n\n\"Oh Lordy!\" she exclaimed. \"Not mammoths again!\" And was out of the door in a flash.\n\nAnd a mammoth it was, in name and stature. Covered with thick brown hair and as big as a tank, it had walked through the garden wall and now sniffed suspiciously at the wisteria.\n\n\"Get away from there!\" yelled my mother, searching around for a weapon of some sort. Wisely, the dodos had all run away and hid behind the potting shed. Rejecting the wisteria, the mammoth delicately scraped through the vegetable patch with a long curved tusk and then picked the vegetables up with its trunk, stuffed them into its mouth and munched slowly and deliberately. My mother was wide-eyed and almost apoplectic with rage.\n\n\"Second time this has happened!\" she yelled defiantly. \"Get off my hydrangeas, you... you... thing!\" The mammoth ignored her, sucked up the entire contents of the ornamental pond in one go and clumsily trampled the garden furniture to matchwood.\n\n\"A weapon,\" announced my mother. \"I need a weapon. I've sweated blood over this garden and no reactivated herbivore is going to have it for dinner!\"\n\nShe disappeared into the shed and reappeared a moment later brandishing a yard broom. But the mammoth had little to fear, even from my mother. It did, after all, weigh almost five tons. It was used to doing exactly what it pleased. The only good news about the invasion was that it wasn't the whole herd.\n\n\"Giddout!\" yelled my mother, raising the broom to whack the mammoth on the hindquarters.\n\n\"Hold it right there!\" said a loud voice. We turned. A man dressed in a safari suit had hopped over the wall and was running towards us.\n\n\"Agent Durrell, SO-13,\" he announced breathlessly, showing my mother an ID. \"Spank the mammoth and you're under arrest.\"\n\nMy mother's fury switched to the SpecOps agent.\n\n\"So he eats my garden and I'm supposed to do nothing?\"\n\n\"Her name is Buttercup,\" corrected Durrell. \"The rest of the herd went to the west of Swindon as planned, but Buttercup here is a bit of a dreamer. And yes, you do nothing. Mammoths are a protected species.\"\n\n\"Well!\" said my mother indignantly. \"If you did your job properly then ordinary law-abiding citizens like me would still have gardens!\"\n\nThe once verdant garden looked as though it had been the target of an artillery bombardment. Buttercup, her voluminous tum now full of Mum's vegetable patch, stepped over the wall and scratched herself against an iron streetlamp, snapping it like a twig. The lamp standard dropped heavily on the roof of a car and popped the windscreen. Buttercup let out another almighty trumpeting, which set off a few car alarms, and in the distance there was an answer. She stopped, listened for a bit and then happily lumbered off down the road.\n\n\"I've got to go!\" said Durrell, handing Mum a card. \" Compensation can be claimed if you call this number. You might like to ask for our free leaflet 'How to Make Your Garden Less Palatable to Proboscidea.' Good morning!\"\n\nHe tipped his hat and jumped over the wall to where his partner had pulled up in an SO-13 Land Rover. Buttercup gave out another call and the Land Rover screeched off, leaving my mother and me staring at her wrecked garden. The dodos, sensing the danger had passed, crept out from behind the potting shed and plock-plocked quietly to themselves as they pecked and scratched at the scoured earth.\n\n\"Perhaps it's time for a Japanese garden,\" sighed my mother, throwing down the broom handle. \"Reverse engineering! Where will it all end? They say there's a Diatryma living wild in the New Forest!\"\n\n\"Urban legend,\" I assured her as she started to tidy up the garden. I looked at my watch. I would have to run if I was to get to Osaka that evening.\n\nI took the train to the busy Saknussum International Gravitube Terminus, located just to the west of London. I made my way into the departures terminal and studied the board. The next DeepDrop to Sydney would be in an hour. I bought a ticket, hurried to the checkin and spent ten minutes listening to a litany of pointless antiterrorist questions.\n\n\"I don't have a bag,\" I explained. She looked at me oddly, so I added: \"Well, I did, but you lost it the last time I traveled. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a bag returned to me after tubing.\"\n\nShe thought about this for a moment and then said: \"If you had a bag and if you had packed it yourself, and if you had not left it unattended, might it contain any of the following?\"\n\nShe showed me a list of prohibited items and I shook my head.\n\n\"Would you like an in-drop meal?\"\n\n\"What are my choices?\"\n\n\"Yes or no.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe looked at the next question on her sheet.\n\n\"Who would you prefer to sit next to?\"\n\n\"Nun or a knitting granny, if that's possible.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" mused the checkin girl, studying the passenger manifest carefully. \"All the nuns, grannies and intelligent nonamorous males are taken. It's technobore, lawyer, self-pitying drunk or copiously vomiting baby, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"Technobore and lawyer, then.\"\n\nShe marked me down on the seating plan and then announced: \"There will be slight delay in receiving the excuse for the lateness of the DeepDrop to Sydney, Miss Next. The reason for the delay in the excuse has yet to be established.\"\n\nAnother checkin girl whispered something in her ear.\n\n\"I've just been informed that the reason for the excuse for the delay has been delayed itself. As soon as we find out why the reason for the excuse has been delayed we will tell you\u2014in line with government guidelines. If you are at all unhappy with the speed at which the excuse has been delivered, you might be eligible for a 1% refund. Have a nice drop.\"\n\nI was handed my boarding card and told to go to the gate when the drop was announced. I thanked her, bought some coffee and biscuits and sat down to wait. The Gravitube seemed to be plagued with delays. There were a lot of travelers sitting around looking bored as they waited for their trip. In theory every drop took under an hour irrespective of destination; but even if they developed a twenty-minute accelerated DeepDrop to the other side of the planet, you'd still spend four hours at either end waiting for baggage or customs or something.\n\nThe PA barked into life again.\n\n\"Attention, please. Passengers for the 11:04 DeepDrop to Sydney will be glad to know that the delay was due to too many excuses being created by the Gravitube's Excuse Manufacturing Facility. Consequently we are happy to announce that since the excess excuses have now been used, the 11:04 DeepDrop to Sydney is ready for boarding at gate six.\"\n\nI finished my coffee and made my way with the throng to where the shuttle was waiting to receive us. I had ridden on the Gravitube several times before, but never the DeepDrop. My recent tour of the world had all been by overmantles, which are more like trains. I carried on through passport control, boarded the shuttle and was shown to my seat by a stewardess whose fixed smile reminded me of a synchronized swimmer's. I sat next to a man with a shock of untidy black hair who was reading a copy of Astounding Tales.\n\n\"Hello,\" he said in a subdued monotone. \"Ever Deep-Dropped before?\"\n\n\"Never,\" I replied.\n\n\"Better than any roller coaster,\" he announced with finality and returned to his magazine.\n\nI strapped myself in as a tall man in a large check suit sat down next to me. He was about forty, had a luxuriant red mustache and wore a carnation in his buttonhole.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday!\" he said in a friendly voice as he proffered his hand. \"Allow me to introduce myself\u2014Akrid Snell.\"\n\nI stared at him in surprise, and he laughed.\n\n\"We needed some time to talk, and I've never been on one of these before. How does it work?\"\n\n\"The Gravitube? It's a tunnel running through the center of the earth. We freefall all the way to Sydney. But... but... how on earth did you find me?\"\n\n\"Jurisfiction has eyes and ears everywhere, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"Plain English, Snell\u2014or I could turn out to be the most difficult client you've ever had.\"\n\nSnell looked at me with interest for a few moments as a stewardess gave a monotonous safety announcement, culminating with the warning that there were no toilet facilities until gravity returned to 40%.\n\n\"You work in SpecOps, don't you?\" asked Snell as soon as we were comfortable and all loose possessions had been placed in zippered bags.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Jurisfiction is the service we run inside novels to maintain the integrity of popular fiction. The printed word might look solid to you, but where I come from, 'movable type' has a much deeper meaning.\"\n\n\"The ending of Jane Eyre,\" I murmured, suddenly realizing what all the fuss was about. \"I changed it, didn't I?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" agreed Snell, \"but don't admit that to anyone but me. It was the biggest Fiction Infraction to a major work since someone futzed so badly with Thackeray's Giant Despair we had to delete it completely.\"\n\n\"Drop is D minus two minutes,\" said the announcer. \"Would all passengers please take their seats, check their straps and make sure all infants are secured.\"\n\n\"So what's happening now?\" asked Snell.\n\n\"Do you really not know anything about the Gravitube?\"\n\nSnell looked around and lowered his voice.\n\n\"All of your world is a bit strange to me, Next. I come from a land of trench coats and deep shadows, complex plot lines, frightened witnesses, underground bosses, gangster's molls, seedy bars and startling six-pages-from-the-end denouements.\"\n\nI must have looked confused, for he lowered his voice further and hissed: \"I'm fictional, Miss Next. Co-lead in the Perkins & Snell series of crime books. I expect you've read me?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" I admitted.\n\n\"Limited print run,\" sighed Snell, \"but we had a good review in CrimeBooks Digest. I was described as 'a well rounded and amusing character... with quite a few memorable lines.' The Mole placed us on their 'Read of the Week' list but The Toad were less enthusiastic\u2014but listen, who takes any notice of the critics?\"\n\n\"You're fictional?\" I said at last.\n\n\"Keep it to yourself though, won't you?\" he urged. \"Now, about the Gravitube?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I replied, gathering my thoughts, \"in a few minutes the shuttle will have entered the airlock and depressurization will commence\u2014\"\n\n\"Depressurization? Why?\"\n\n\"For a frictionless drop. No air resistance\u2014and we are kept from touching the sides by a powerful magnetic field. We then simply freefall the eight thousand miles to Sydney.\"\n\n\"So all cities have a DeepDrop to every other city, then?\"\n\n\"Only London and New York connecting to Sydney and Tokyo. If you wanted to get from Buenos Aires to Auckland, you'd first take the overmantle to Miami, then to New York, DeepDrop to Tokyo, and finally another overmantle to Auckland.\"\n\n\"How fast does it go?\" asked Snell, slightly nervously.\n\n\"Peaks at fourteen thousand miles per hour,\" said my neighbor from behind his magazine, \"give or take. We'll fall with increasing velocity but decreasing acceleration until we reach the center of the earth, at which point we will have attained our maximum velocity. Once past the center our velocity will decrease until we reach Sydney, when our velocity will have decreased to zero.\"\n\n\"Is it safe?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" I assured him.\n\n\"What if there's another shuttle coming the other way?\"\n\n\"There can't be,\" I assured him. \"There's only one shuttle per tube.\"\n\n\"What you say is true,\" said my boring neighbor. \"The only thing we have to worry about is a failure of the magnetic containment system that keeps the ceramic tube and us from melting in the liquid core of the earth.\"\n\n\"Don't listen to this, Snell.\"\n\n\"Is that likely?\" he asked.\n\n\"Never happened before,\" replied the man somberly, \"but then if it had, they wouldn't tell us about it, now would they?\"\n\nSnell thought about this for a few moments.\n\n\"Drop is D minus ten seconds,\" said the announcer.\n\nThe cabin went quiet and everyone tensed, subconsciously counting down. The drop, when it came, was a bit like going over a very large humpback bridge at a great deal of speed, but the initial unpleasantness\u2014which was accompanied by grunts from the passengers\u2014gave way to the strange and curiously enjoyable feeling of weightlessness. Many people do the drop for this reason only. I turned to Snell.\n\n\"You okay?\"\n\nHe nodded and managed a wan smile.\n\n\"It's a bit... strange,\" he said at last, watching as his tie floated in front of him.\n\n\"So I'm charged with a Fiction Infraction, yes?\"\n\n\"Fiction Infraction Class II,\" corrected Snell, swallowing hard. \"It's not as though you did it on purpose. Even though we could argue convincingly that you improved the narrative of Jane Eyre, we still have to prosecute; after all, we can't have people blundering around in Little Women trying to stop Beth from dying, can we?\"\n\n\"Can't you?\"\n\n\"Of course not. Not that people don't try. When you get before the magistrate, just deny everything and play dumb. I'm trying to get the case postponed on the grounds of strong reader approval.\"\n\n\"Will that work?\"\n\n\"It worked when Falstaff made his illegal jump to The Merry Wives of Windsor and proceeded to dominate and alter the story. We thought he'd be sent packing back to Henry IV, Part 2. But no, his move was approved. The judge was an opera fan, so maybe that had something to do with it. You haven't had any operas written about you by Verdi or Vaughan Williams, have you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Pity.\"\n\nThe feeling of weightlessness didn't last long. The increasing deceleration once more gently returned weight to us all. At 40% normal gravity the cabin warning lights went out and we could move around if we wanted.\n\nThe technobore on my right started up again.\n\n\"\u2014but the real beauty of the Gravitube is its simplicity,\" he continued. \"Since the force of gravity is the same irrespective of the declination of the tunnel, the trip to Tokyo will take exactly the same time as the trip to New York\u2014and it would be the same again to Carlisle if it didn't make more sense to use a conventional railway. Mind you,\" he went on, \"if you could use a wave induction system to keep us accelerating all the way to the surface at the other end, the speed could be well in excess of the seven miles per second needed to achieve escape velocity.\"\n\n\"You'll be telling me that we'll fly to the moon next,\" I said.\n\n\"We already have,\" returned my technobore neighbor in a conspiratorial whisper. \"Secret government experiments have already constructed a base on the far side of the moon where transmitters control our thoughts and actions from atop the Empire State Building using interstellar communications from extraterrestrial life forms intent on world domination with the express agreement of the Goliath Corporation and a secret cabal of world leaders known as SPORK.\"\n\n\"And don't tell me,\" I added, \"there's a Diatryma living in the New Forest.\"\n\n\"How did you know?\"\n\nI ignored him, and only thirty-eight minutes after leaving London we came in for a delicate dock in Sydney, the faintest click being heard as the magnetic locks held on to the shuttle to stop it falling back down again. After the safety light had extinguished and the airlock had been pressurized we made our way to the exit, avoiding the technobore, who was trying to tell anyone who would listen that the Goliath Corporation were responsible for smallpox.\n\nSnell, who genuinely seemed to enjoy the DeepDrop, walked with me until baggage retrieval, looked at his watch and announced: \"Well, that's me. Thanks for the chat. I've got to go and defend Tess for the umpteenth time. As Hardy originally wrote it she gets off. Listen, try and figure some extenuating circumstances as to your actions. If you can't, then try and think up some stonking great lies. The bigger the better.\"\n\n\"That's your best advice? Perjure myself?\"\n\nSnell coughed politely.\n\n\"The astute lawyer has many strings to his bow, Miss Next. They've got Mrs. Fairfax and Grace Poole to testify against you. It doesn't look great, but no case is lost until it's lost. They said I couldn't get Henry V off the war crimes rap when he ordered the French POWs murdered, but I managed it\u2014the same as Max de Winter's murder charge. No one figured he'd get off that in a million years. By the by, can you give this letter to that gorgeous Flakky girl? I'd be eternally grateful.\"\n\nHe handed me a crumpled letter from his pocket and made to move off.\n\n\"Wait!\" I said. \"Where and when is the hearing?\"\n\n\"Didn't I say? Sorry. The prosecution has chosen the Examining Magistrate from Kafka's The Trial. Not my choice, believe me. Tomorrow at 9:25. Do you speak German?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then we'll make sure it's an English translation\u2014drop in at the end of Chapter Two; we're on after Herr K. Remember what I said. So long!\"\n\nAnd before I could ask him how I might even begin to enter Kafka's masterpiece of frustrating circuitous bureaucracy, he was gone.\n\nI caught the overmantle to Tokyo a half hour later. It was almost deserted, and I hopped on board a Skyrail to Osaka and alighted in the business district at one in the morning, four hours after leaving Saknussum. I took a hotel room and sat up all night, staring out at the blinking lights and thinking about Landen."
            },
            {
                "title": "Curiouser & Curiouser in Osaka",
                "text": "\u2002I first learned of my strange bookjumping skills as a little girl in the English school where my father taught in Osaka. I had been instructed to stand up and read to the class a passage from Winnie-the-Pooh. I began with Chapter Nine\u2014\"It rained and it rained and it rained... \"\u2014but then had to stop abruptly as I felt the hundred-acre wood move rapidly in all around me. I snapped the book shut and returned, damp and bewildered, to my classroom. Later on I visited the hundred-acre wood from the safety of my own bedroom and enjoyed wonderful adventures there. But I was always careful, even at that tender age, never to alter the visible story lines. Except, that is, to teach Christopher Robin how to read and write.\n\n\u2014O. NAKAJIMA, Adventures in the Book Trade\n\nOsaka was less flashy than Tokyo but no less industrious. In the morning I took breakfast at the hotel, bought a copy of the Far Eastern Toad and read the home news but from a Far Eastern viewpoint\u2014which makes for a good take on the whole Russian thing. During breakfast I pondered just how I might find one woman in a city of a million. Apart from her surname and perfect English, there was little to go on. As a first step I asked the concierge to photocopy all the Nakajima entries from the telephone directory. I was dismayed to discover that Nakajima was quite a common name\u2014there were 2,729 of them. I called one at random and a very pleasant Mrs. Nakajima spoke to me for about ten minutes. I thanked her profusely and put the phone down, having not understood a single word. I sighed, ordered a large jug of coffee from room service, and began.\n\nIt was 351 non-bookjumper Nakajimas later that, tired and annoyed, I started telling myself that what I was doing was useless\u2014if Mrs. Nakajima had retired to the distant backstory of Jane Eyre, was she really going to be anywhere near a telephone?\n\nI sighed, stretched one of those groany-clicky stretches, drank the rest of my cold coffee and decided to go for a brief stroll to loosen up. I was staring at the photocopied pages as I strolled along, trying to think of something to narrow the search, when a young man's jacket caught my eye.\n\nAs is popular in the Far East, many Tshirts and jackets have English writing upon them\u2014some of them making sense, but others just collections of words that must appear as fashionable to the Japanese youth as kanji appear elegant to us. I had seen jackets with the strange legend 100% Chevrolet OK Fly-boy and later one with Pratt & Whitney squadron movie, so I should have been ready for anything. But this one was different. It was a smart leather jacket with the following message embroidered on the back:\n\nFollow me, Next Girl!\n\nSo I did. I followed the young man for two blocks before I noticed a second jacket much like the first. By the time I had crossed the canal I had seen another jacket with SpecOps this way emblazoned on the back, then Jane Eyre forever! followed quickly by Bad Boy Goliath. But that wasn't all\u2014like some bizarre homing call, all the people wearing these jackets, hats and Tshirts seemed to be heading in the same direction. Thoughts of falling Hispano-Suizas and ambushed Skyrails suddenly filled my head, so I dug the entroposcope from my bag, shook it and noticed a slight separation between the rice and lentils. Entropy was decreasing. I rapidly turned and started walking in the opposite direction. I took three paces and stopped as a daring notion filled my head. Of course\u2014why not make the entropic failure do the work for me? I followed the logos to a nearby market square, where I noticed the rice and lentils in the entroposcope had settled\u2014despite repeated shakings\u2014into curved bands. Coincidence had increased to the point where everyone I saw was wearing something with a relevant logo. MycroTech Developments, Charlotte Bront\u00eb, Hispano-Suiza, Goliath and Skyrail were all sewn or stuck to hats, jackets, umbrellas, shirts, bags. I looked around, desperately trying to find the coincidental epicenter. Then I found it. In an inexplicably vacant gap within the busy market, an old man was seated in front of a small table. He was as brown as a nut and quite bald, and opposite him the other chair had just been vacated by a young woman. A piece of battered card leaning against his small valise declared, in eight languages, the fortune-teller's trade and pledge. The English part of the sign read: \"I have the answer you seek!\" And I was in no doubt that whatever he said would be so\u2014but, given the unlikely modes of death already meted out by my unseen assailant, probably, yet very improbably in its undertaking, would result in my demise. I took two paces closer to the fortune-teller and shook the entroposcope again. The patterns were more defined but not the clean half-and-half separation I needed. The little man had seen me dither and beckoned me closer.\n\n\"Please!\" he said. \"Please come. Tell you everything!\"\n\nI paused and looked around for any sign of jeopardy. There was nothing. I was in a perfectly peaceful square in a prosperous area of a large city in Japan. Whatever my anonymous foe had in store for me, it was something that I would least expect.\n\nI stayed back, unsure of the wisdom of what I was doing. It was the appearance of a T-shirt that had nothing to do with me that clinched it. If I let this opportunity slide I would never find Mrs. Nakajima this side of a month. I took out my ballpoint, clicked it open and marched purposefully towards the small man, who grinned at me.\n\n\"You come!\" he said in poor English. \"You learn everything. Good buy, from me!\"\n\nBut I didn't stop. As I walked towards the fortune-teller I thrust my hand in my bag and pulled out a sheet of the Nakajima pages at random, then, just as I passed the little nut-brown man, I stabbed arbitrarily on the page with my pen and broke into a run. There was a horrified gasp from the onlookers as a bolt of lightning came to earth in the small square and struck the clearly not very talented fortune-teller with a bright flash. I didn't stop until I was away from that place, back to plain polo shirts, ordinary designer labels and my entroposcope to random clumping. I sat on a bench to get my breath back, felt nauseous again and almost threw up in a nearby trash can, much to the consternation of a little old lady who was sitting next to me. I recovered slightly and looked at the Nakajima that the fall of my ballpoint had decreed. If coincidences were running as high as I had hoped, then this Nakajima had to be the one I sought. I turned to ask the little old lady next to me the way, but she had gone. I stopped a passerby and asked for directions. It seemed that a small amount of negative entropy still lingered\u2014I was barely two minutes' walk from my quarry.\n\nThe apartment block I was directed to was not in a very good state of repair. The plaster that was covering the cracks had cracks, and the grime on the peeling paint was itself starting to peel. Inside there was a small lobby where an elderly doorman was watching a dubbed version of 65 Walrus Street. He directed me to the fourth floor, where I found Mrs. Nakajima's apartment at the end of the corridor. The varnish on the door had lost its shine and the brass doorknob was tarnished, dusty and dull; no one had been in here for some time. I knocked despite this, and when silence was all that answered me, grasped the knob and turned it slowly. To my surprise it turned easily and the door creaked open. I paused to look about me, and, seeing no one, pushed open the door and stepped in.\n\nMrs. Nakajima's apartment was ordinary in the extreme. Three bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. The walls and ceiling were plainly painted, the flooring a light-colored wood. It seemed as though she had moved out a few months ago and taken almost everything with her. The only notable exception to this was a small table near the window of the living room, upon which I found four slim leatherbound volumes lying next to a brass reading lamp. I picked up the uppermost book. It had Jurisfiction embossed on the cover, above a name I didn't recognize. I tried to open the book, but the covers were stuck fast. I tried the second book with no better luck, but paused for a moment when I saw the third book. I gently touched the slim volume and ran my fingertips across the thin layer of dust that had accumulated on the spine. The hair bristled on my neck and I shivered. But it wasn't a fearful feeling. It was the light tingle of apprehension; this book, I knew, would open. The name on the cover was my own. I had been expected. I opened the book. On the title page was a handwritten note from Mrs. Nakajima that was short and to the point:\n\nFor Thursday Next, in grateful anticipation of good work and fine times ahead with Jurisfiction. I jackanoried you into a book when you were nine but now you must do it for yourself\u2014and you can, and you shall. I also suggest that you be quick; Mr. Schitt-Hawse is walking along the corridor outside as you read this and he isn't out collecting for ChronoGuard orphans."
            },
            {
                "title": "Mrs. Nakajima",
                "text": "I ran to the door and slid the bolt just as the door handle rattled. There was a pause and then a loud thump on the door.\n\n\"Next!\" went Schitt-Hawse's unmistakable voice. \"I know you're in there! Let me in and we can fetch Jack together!\"\n\nI had been followed, obviously. It suddenly struck me that perhaps Goliath were more interested in how to get into books than in Jack Schitt himself. There was a billion-pound hole in the budget for their advanced weapons division, and a Prose Portal, any Prose Portal, would be just the thing to fill it.\n\n\"Go to hell!\" I shouted as I returned to my book. On the first page, under a large heading that read READ ME FIRST!, there was a description of a library somewhere. I needed no second bidding; the door flexed under a heavy blow and I saw the paint crack near the lock. If it were Chalk and Cheese they wouldn't take long to gain entry.\n\nI relaxed, took a deep breath, cleared my throat and read in a clear, strong and confident voice, expressive and expansive. I added pauses and inflections and raised the tone of my voice where the text required it. I read like I had never read before.\n\n\"I was in a long, dark, wood-paneled corridor,\" I began, \"lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling\u2014\"\n\nThe sound of thumping increased, and as I spoke the doorframe splintered near the hinges and collapsed inwards with Chalk, who fell with a heavy thump onto the floor, closely followed by Cheese, who landed on top of him.\n\n\"The carpet was elegantly patterned with geometric designs and the ceiling was decorated with sculpted reliefs that depicted scenes from the classics\u2014\"\n\n\"Next!\" yelled Schitt-Hawse, putting his head round the door as Chalk and Cheese struggled to get up. \"Coming to Osaka was not part of the deal! I told you to keep me informed. Nothing will happen to you\u2014\"\n\nBut something was happening. Something new, something other. My utter loathing of Goliath, the urge to get away, the knowledge that without entry to books I would never see Landen again\u2014all of these things gave me the will to soften the barriers that had hardened since the day I first entered Jane Eyre in 1958.\n\n\"\u2014High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry\u2014\"\n\nI could see Schitt-Hawse move towards me, but he had started to become less tangible; although I could see his lips move, the sound arrived at my ears a full second later. I continued to read, and as I did so the room about me began to fworp from view.\n\n\"Next!\" yelled Schitt-Hawse. \"You'll regret this, I swear\u2014!\"\n\nI carried on reading.\n\n\"'\u2014reinforcing the serious mood of the library\u2014'\"\n\n\"Bitch!\" I heard Schitt-Hawse cry. \"Grab her\u2014!\"\n\nBut his words were as a zephyr; the room took on the appearance of morning mist and darkened. I felt a gentle tingling sensation on my skin\u2014and in the next instant, I had gone.\n\nI blinked twice, but Osaka was far behind. I closed the book, carefully placed it in my pocket and looked around. I was in a long, dark, wood-paneled corridor lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling. The carpet was elegantly patterned with geometric designs and the ceiling was decorated with sculpted reliefs that depicted scenes from the classics, each cornice supporting the marble bust of an author. High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry and reflected off the polished wood, reinforcing the serious mood of the library. Running down the center of the corridor was a long row of reading tables, each with a green-shaded brass lamp. The library appeared endless; in both directions the corridor vanished into darkness with no definable end. But this wasn't important. Describing the library would be like going to see a Turner and commenting on the frame. On all of the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, were books. Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leatherbound, uncorrected proofs, handwritten manuscripts, everything. I stepped closer and rested my fingertips lightly against the pristine volumes. They felt warm to the touch, so I leaned closer and pressed my ear to the spines. I could hear a distant hum, the rumble of machinery, people talking, traffic, seagulls, laughter, waves on rocks, wind in the winter branches of trees, distant thunder, heavy rain, children playing, a blacksmith's hammer\u2014 a million sounds all happening together. And then, in a revelatory moment, the clouds slid back from my mind and a crystal-clear understanding of the very nature of books shone upon me. They weren't just collections of words arranged neatly on a page to give the impression of reality\u2014each of these volumes was reality. The similarity of these books to the copies I had read back home was no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject. These books were alive!\n\nI walked slowly down the corridor, running my fingers along the spines and listening to the comfortable pat-pat-pat sound they made, every now and then recognizing a familiar title. After a couple of hundred yards I came across a junction where a second corridor crossed the first. In the middle of the crossways was a large circular void with a wrought-iron rail and a spiral staircase bolted securely to one side. I peered cautiously down. Not more than thirty feet below me I could see another floor, exactly like this one. But in the middle of that floor was another circular void through which I could see another floor, and another and another and so on to the depths of the library. I looked up. It was the same above me, more circular light wells and the spiral staircase reaching up into the dizzy heights above. I leaned on the balcony and looked about me at the vast library once again.\n\n\"Well,\" I said to no one in particular, \"I don't think I'm in Osaka anymore.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Interview with the Cat",
                "text": "\u2002The Cheshire Cat was the first character I met at Jurisfiction, and his sporadic appearances enlivened the time I spent there. He gave me much advice. Some was good, some was bad and some was so nonsensically nonsequitous that it confuses me even now to think about it. And yet, during all that time, I never learnt his age, where he came from or where he went when he vanished. It was one of Jurisfiction's lesser mysteries.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\n\"A visitor!\" exclaimed a voice behind me. \"What a delightful surprise!\"\n\nI turned and was astonished to see a large and luxuriant tabby cat sitting precariously on the uppermost bookshelf. He was staring at me with a curious mixture of insanity and benevolence and remained quite still except for the tip of his tail, which twitched occasionally from side to side. I had never come across a talking cat before, but good manners, as my father used to say, cost nothing.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Mr. Cat.\"\n\nThe Cat's eyes opened wide and the grin fell from his face. He looked up and down the corridor for a few moments and then inquired:\n\n\"Me?\"\n\nI stifled a laugh.\n\n\"I don't see any others.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied the Cat, giving me another broad grin. \"That's because you have a temporary form of cat blindness.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I've heard of that.\"\n\n\"It's quite common,\" he replied airily, licking a paw and stroking his whiskers. \"I suppose you have heard of knight blindness, when you can't see any knights?\"\n\n\"It's night, not knight,\" I corrected him.\n\n\"It all sounds the same to me.\"\n\n\"Suppose I do have cat blindness,\" I ventured. \"Then how is it I can see you?\"\n\n\"Suppose we change the subject?\" retorted the Cat, waving a paw at the surroundings. \"What do you think of the library?\"\n\n\"It's pretty big,\" I murmured, looking all around me.\n\n\"Two hundred miles in every direction,\" said the Cat offhandedly and beginning to purr. \"Twenty-six floors above ground, twenty-six below.\"\n\n\"You must have a copy of every book that's been written,\" I observed.\n\n\"Every book that will ever be written,\" corrected the Cat, \"and a few others besides.\"\n\n\"How many?\"\n\n\"Well, I've never counted them myself, but certainly more than twelve.\"\n\nAs the Cat grinned and blinked at me with his large green eyes I suddenly realized where I had seen him before.\n\n\"You're the Cheshire Cat, aren't you?\" I asked.\n\n\"I was the Cheshire Cat,\" he replied with a slightly aggrieved air. \"But they moved the county boundaries, so technically speaking I'm now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but it doesn't have the same ring to it. Oh, and welcome to Jurisfiction. You'll like it here; everyone is quite mad.\"\n\n\"But I don't want to go among mad people,\" I replied indignantly.\n\n\"Oh, you can't help that,\" said the Cat. \"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.\"\n\nI snapped my fingers.\n\n\"Wait a moment!\" I exclaimed. \"This is the conversation you had in Alice in Wonderland, just after the baby turned into a pig!\"\n\n\"Ah!\" returned the Cat with an annoyed flick of his tail. \"Fancy you can write your own dialogue, do you? I've seen people try; it's never a pretty sight. But have it your own way. And what's more, the baby turned into a fig, not a pig.\"\n\n\"It was a pig, actually.\"\n\n\"Fig,\" said the Cat stubbornly. \"Who was in the book, me or you?\"\n\n\"It was a pig,\" I insisted.\n\n\"Well!\" exclaimed the Cat. \"I'll go and check. Then you'll look pretty stupid, I can tell you!\"\n\nAnd so saying, he vanished.\n\nI stood there for a moment or two wondering if things could get much odder. By the time I had thought that, no, they probably couldn't, the Cat's tail started to appear, then his body and finally his head and mouth.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked.\n\n\"All right,\" grumbled the Cat, \"so it was a pig. My hearing is not so good; I think it's all that pepper. By the by, I almost forgot. You're apprenticed to Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"Miss Havisham? Great Expectations' Miss Havisham?\"\n\n\"Is there any other? You'll be fine\u2014just don't mention the wedding.\"\n\n\"I'll try not to. Wait a moment\u2014apprenticed?\"\n\n\"Of course. Getting here is only half the adventure. If you want to join us you'll have to learn the ropes. Right now all you can do is journey. With a bit of practice on your own you might learn to be page-accurate when you jump. But if you want to delve deep into the backstory or take an excursion beyond the sleeve notes, you're going to have to take instruction. Why, by the time Miss Havisham has finished with you, you'll think nothing of being able to visit early drafts, deleted characters or long-discarded chapters that make little or no sense at all. Who knows, you may even glimpse the core of the book, the central nub of energy that binds a novel together.\"\n\n\"You mean the spine?\" I asked, not quite up to speed yet.\n\nThe Cat lashed its tail in exasperation.\n\n\"No, stupid, the idea, the notion, the spark. Once you've laid your eyes on the raw concept of a book, everything you've ever seen or felt will seem about as interesting as a stair carpet. Try and imagine this: You are sitting on soft grass on a warm summer's evening in front of a dazzling sunset; the air is full of truly inspiring music and you have in your hands a wonderful book. Are you there?\"\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\n\"Okay, now imagine a simply vast saucer of warm cream in front of you and consider lapping it really slowly until your whiskers are completely drenched.\"\n\nThe Cheshire Cat shivered deliriously.\n\n\"If you do all of that and multiply it by a thousand, then perhaps, just perhaps, you will have some idea of what I'm talking about.\"\n\n\"Can I pass on the cream?\"\n\n\"Whatever you want. It's your daydream, after all.\"\n\nAnd with a flick of his tail, the Cat vanished. I turned to explore my surroundings and was surprised to find that the Cheshire Cat was sitting on another shelf on the other side of the corridor.\n\n\"You seem a bit old to be an apprentice,\" continued the Cat, folding its paws and staring at me with an unnerving intensity. \"We've been expecting you for almost twenty years. Where on earth have you been?\"\n\n\"I... I... didn't know I could do this.\"\n\n\"What you mean is that you did know that you couldn't\u2014it's quite a different thing. The point is, do you think you have what it takes to help us here at Jurisfiction?\"\n\n\"I really don't know,\" I replied, truthfully enough\u2014although I hung to the hope that this was the only way I even had a chance to get Landen back. But since I didn't see why he should ask all the questions, I asked: \"What do you do?\"\n\n\"I,\" said the Cat proudly, \"am the librarian.\"\n\n\"You look after all these books?\"\n\n\"Certainly. Ask me any question you want.\"\n\n\"Jane Eyre,\" I asked, intending only to ask its location but realizing when the Cat answered that a librarian here was far removed from the sort I knew at home.\n\n\"Ranked the 728th favorite fictional book ever written,\" the Cat replied, parrot-fashion. \"Total readings to date: 82,581,430. Current reading figure: 829,321\u20141,421 of whom are reading it as we speak. It's a good figure; quite possibly because it has been in the news recently.\"\n\n\"So what's the most-read book?\"\n\n\"Up until now or forever and all time?\"\n\n\"For all time.\"\n\nThe Cat thought for a moment.\n\n\"In fiction, the most-read book ever is To Kill a Mockingbird. Not just because it is a cracking good read for us, but because of all the Vertebrate \u00fcberclassics it was the only one that really translated well into Arthropod. And if you can crack the Lobster market\u2014if you'll pardon the pun\u2014a billion years from now, you're really going to flog some copies. The Arthropod title is tlk\u00eeltl\u00edlk\u00eexlkilk\u00efxlkl\u00ef, or, literally translated, The Past Nonexistent State of the Angelfish. Atticus Finch is a lobster called Tkl\u00eek\u00ef, and he defends a horseshoe crab named Klik\u00efflik.\"\n\n\"How does it compare?\"\n\n\"Not too bad, although the scene with the prawns is a little harrowing. It's the crustacean readership that makes Daphne Farquitt such a major player, too.\"\n\n\"Daphne Farquitt?\" I echoed with some surprise. \"But her books are frightful!\"\n\n\"Only to us. To the highly evolved Arthropods, Farquitt's work is considered sacred and religious to the point of lunacy. Listen, I'm no fan of Farquitt's, but her bodice-ripping potboiler The Squire of High Potternews sparked one of the biggest, bloodiest, shellbrokenist wars the planet has ever witnessed.\"\n\nI was getting off the point.\n\n\"So all these books are your responsibility?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied the Cat airily.\n\n\"If I wanted to go into a book I could just pick it up and read it?\"\n\n\"It's not quite that easy,\" replied the Cat. \"You can only get into a book if someone has already found a way in and then exited through the library. Every book, you will observe, is bound in either red or green. Green for go, red for no-go. It's quite easy, really\u2014you're not color-blind, are you?\"\n\n\"No. So if I wanted to go into\u2014oh, I don't know, let's pull a title out of the air\u2014'The Raven,' then\u2014\"\n\nBut the Cat flinched as I said the title.\n\n\"There are some places you should not go!\" he muttered in a reproachful tone, lashing his tail from side to side. \"Edgar Allan Poe is one of them. His books are not fixed; there is a certain otherness that goes with them. Most of Macabre Gothic fiction tends to be like that\u2014Sade is the same; also Webster, Wheatley and King. Go into those and you may never come out\u2014they have a way of weaving you in the story, and before you know it you're stuck there. Let me show you something.\"\n\nAnd all of a sudden we were in a large and hollow-sounding vestibule where huge Doric columns rose to support a high vaulted ceiling. The floor and walls were all dark red marble and reminded me of the entrance lobby of an old hotel\u2014only about forty times as big. You could have parked an airship in here and still had room to hold an air race. There was a red carpet leading up from the high front doors, and all the brasswork shone like gold.\n\n\"This is where we honor the Boojummed,\" said the Cat in a quiet voice. He waved a paw in the direction of a large granite memorial about the size of two upended cars. The edifice was shaped like a large book, open in the center and splayed wide with the depiction of a person walking into the left-hand page, the person's form covered by text as he entered. On the opposite page were row upon row of names. A mason was delicately working on a new name with a mallet and chisel. He tipped his hat respectfully and resumed his work.\n\n\"Prose Resource Operatives deleted or lost in the line of duty,\" explained the Cat from where he was perched on top of the statue. \"We call it the Boojumorial.\"\n\nI pointed to a name on the memorial.\n\n\"Ambrose Bierce was a Jurisfiction agent?\"\n\n\"One of the best. Dear, sweet Ambrose! A master of prose, but quite impetuous. He went\u2014alone\u2014into 'The Literary Life of Thingum Bob'\u2014a Poe short story that one would've thought held no terrors.\"\n\nThe Cat sighed before continuing.\n\n\"He was trying to find a back door into Poe's poems. We know you can get from 'Thingum Bob' into 'The Black Cat' by way of an unstable verb in the third paragraph, and from 'Black Cat' into 'The Fall of the House of Usher' by the simple expedient of hiring a horse from the Nicaean stables; from there he was hoping to use the poem within 'Usher,' 'The Haunted Palace,' to springboard him into the rest of the Poe poetical canon.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"Never heard from him again. Two fellow booksplorers went in after him. One lost his breath, and the other, well, poor Ahab went completely bonkers\u2014thought he was being chased by a white whale. We suspect that Ambrose was either walled up with a cask of Amontillado or buried alive or suffered some other unspeakable fate. It was decided that Poe was out of bounds.\"\n\n\"So Antoine de St. Exup\u00e9ry, he disappeared on assignment too?\"\n\n\"Not at all; he crashed on a reconnaissance sortie.\"\n\n\"It was tragic.\"\n\n\"It certainly was,\" replied the Cat. \"He owed me forty francs and had promised to teach me to play Debussy on the piano using only oranges.\"\n\n\"Oranges?\"\n\n\"Oranges. Well, I'm off now. Miss Havisham will explain everything. Go through those doors into the library, take the elevator to the fourth floor, first right, and the books are about a hundred yards on your left. Great Expectations is green-bound, so you should have no trouble.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's nothing,\" said the Cat, and with a wave of his paw he started to fade, very slowly, from the tip of his tail. He just had time to ask me to get some tuna-flavored Moggilicious for him the next time I was home before he vanished completely and I was alone in front of the granite Boojumorial, the quiet tapping of the mason's hammer echoing around the lofty heights of the library vestibule.\n\nI took the marble stairs into the library and ascended by one of the wrought-iron lifts, walked down the corridor until I came across several shelves of Dickens novels. There were, I noted, twenty-nine different editions of Great Expectations from early draft to the last of Dickens's own revised editions. I picked up the newest tome, opened it at the first chapter and heard the gentle sound of wind in the trees. I flipped through the pages, the sounds changing as I moved from scene to scene, page to page. I located the first mention of Miss Havisham, found a good place to start and then read loudly to myself, willing the words to live. And live they did."
            },
            {
                "title": "Miss Havisham",
                "text": "\u2002Great Expectations was written in 1860\u201361 to reverse flagging sales of All the Year Round, the weekly periodical founded by Dickens himself. The novel was regarded as a great success. The tale of Pip the blacksmith's apprentice and his rise to the position of young gentleman through an anonymous benefactor introduced readers to many new and varied characters: Joe Gargery, the simple and honorable blacksmith; Abel Magwitch, the convict Pip helps in the first chapter; Jaggers, the lawyer; Herbert Pocket, who befriends him and teaches him how to behave in London society. But it is Miss Havisham, abandoned at the altar and living her life in dreary isolation dressed in her tattered wedding robes, that steals the show. She remains one of the book's most memorable fixtures.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, \"Great Expectations\": A Study\n\nI found myself in a large and dark hall which smelt of musty decay. The windows were tightly shuttered, the only light from a few candles scattered around the room; they added little to the room except to heighten the gloominess. In the center of the room a long table was covered with what had once been a wedding banquet but was now a sad arrangement of tarnished silver and dusty crockery. In the bowls and meat platters dried remnants of food were visible, and in the middle of the table a large wedding cake bedecked with cobwebs had begun to collapse like a dilapidated building. I had read the scene many times, but it was somehow different when you saw it for real\u2014for a start, it was more colorful\u2014and there was also a smell of mustiness that rarely comes out in the readings. I was on the other side of the room from Miss Havisham, Estella and Pip. I stood silently and watched.\n\nA game of cards had just ended between Pip and Estella, and Miss Havisham, resplendently shabby in her rotting wedding dress and veil, seemed to be trying to come to a decision.\n\n\"When shall I have you here again?\" said Miss Havisham in a low growl. \"Let me think.\"\n\n\"Today is Wednesday, ma'am\u2014\" began Pip, but he was silenced by Miss Havisham.\n\n\"There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\nMiss Havisham sighed deeply and addressed the young woman, who seemed to spend most of her time glaring at Pip; his discomfort in the strange surroundings seemed to fill her with inner mirth.\n\n\"Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.\"\n\nThey left the darkened room, and I watched as Miss Havisham stared at the floor, then at the half-filled trunks of old and yellowed clothes that might have accompanied her on her honeymoon. I watched her as she pulled off her veil, ran her fingers through her graying hair and kicked off her shoes. She looked about her, checked the door was closed and then opened a bureau that I could see was full, not of the trappings of her wretched life, but of small luxuries that must, I presumed, make her existence here that much more bearable. Amongst other things I saw a Sony Walkman, a stack of National Geographics, a few Daphne Farquitt novels, and one of those bats that has a rubber ball attached to a piece of elastic. She rummaged some more and took out a pair of trainers and pulled them on, with a great deal of relief. She was just about to tie the laces when I shifted my weight and knocked against a small table. Havisham, her senses heightened by her long incarceration in silent introspection, gazed in my direction, her sharp eyes piercing the gloom.\n\n\"Who is there?\" she asked sharply. \"Estella, is that you?\"\n\nHiding didn't seem to be a worthwhile option, so I stepped from the shadows. She looked me up and down with a critical eye.\n\n\"What is your name, child?\" she asked sternly.\n\n\"Thursday Next, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she said again. \"The Next girl. Took you long enough to find your way in here, didn't it?\"\n\n\"Sorry\u2014?\"\n\n\"Never be sorry, girl\u2014it's a waste of time, believe me. If only you had seriously attempted to come to Jurisfiction after Mrs. Nakajima showed you how up at Haworth\u2014well, I'm wasting my breath, I have no doubt.\"\n\n\"I had no idea\u2014!\"\n\n\"I don't often take apprentices,\" she carried on, disregarding me completely, \"but they were going to allocate you to the Red Queen. The Red Queen and I don't get along, I suppose you've heard that?\"\n\n\"No, I've\u2014\"\n\n\"Half of all she says is nonsense and the other half is irrelevant. Mrs. Nakajima recommended you most highly, but she has been wrong before; cause any trouble and I'll bounce you out of Jurisfiction quicker than you can say ketchup. How are you at tying shoelaces?\"\n\nSo I tied Miss Havisham's trainers for her, there in Satis House amongst the rotted trappings of her abandoned marriage. It seemed churlish to refuse, and I really didn't mind. If Havisham was my teacher, I would do whatever she reasonably expected of me. I'd not get into \"The Raven\" without her help, that much was obvious.\n\n\"There are three simple rules if you want to stay with me,\" continued Miss Havisham in the sort of voice that seeks no argument. \"Rule One: You do exactly as I tell you. Rule Two: You don't patronize me with your pity. I have no desire to be helped in any way. What I do to myself and others is my business and my business alone. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"What about Rule Three?\"\n\n\"All in good time. I shall call you Thursday and you may call me Miss Havisham when we are together; in company I shall expect you to call me ma'am. I may summon you at any time and you will come running. Only funerals, childbirth or Vivaldi concerts take precedence. Is that clear?\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Havisham.\"\n\nI stood up and she thrust a candle nearer to my face and regarded me closely. It gave me a chance to look at her too\u2014 despite her pallid demeanor, her eyes sparkled brightly and she was not nearly as old as I supposed; all she needed was a fortnight of good meals and some fresh air. I was tempted to say something to enliven the dismal surroundings but her iron personality stopped me; I felt as though I were facing my teacher at school for the first time.\n\n\"Intelligent eyes,\" muttered Havisham. \"Committed and honest. Quite, quite sickeningly self-righteous. Are you married?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014\" I mumbled. \"That is to say\u2014no.\"\n\n\"Come, come!\" said Havisham angrily. \"It is a simple enough question.\"\n\n\"I was married,\" I answered.\n\n\"Died?\"\n\n\"No\u2014\" I mumbled. \"That is to say\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"I'll try harder questions in future,\" announced Havisham, \"for you are obviously not adept at the easy ones. Have you met the Jurisfiction staff?\"\n\n\"I've met Mr. Snell\u2014and the Cheshire Cat.\"\n\n\"As useless as each other,\" she announced shortly. \" Everyone at Jurisfiction is either a charlatan or an imbecile\u2014except the Red Queen, who is both. We'll go to Norland Park and meet them all, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Norland? Jane Austen? The house of the Dashwoods? Sense and Sensibility?\"\n\nBut Havisham had moved on. She held my wrist to look at my watch and took me by the elbow, and before I knew what had happened we had joggled out of Satis House to the library. Before I could recover from this sudden change of surroundings, Miss Havisham was reading from a book she had drawn from a shelf. There was another strange joggle and we were in a small kitchen parlor somewhere.\n\n\"What was that?\" I asked in alarm; I wasn't at all accustomed to the sudden move from book to book, but Havisham, well used to such maneuvers, thought little of it.\n\n\"That,\" replied Miss Havisham, \"was a standard book-to-book transfer. When you're jumping solo you can sometimes make it through without going to the library\u2014so much the better; the Cat's banal musings can make one's head ache. But since I am taking you with me, a short visit is sadly necessary. We're now in the backstory of Kafka's The Trial. Next door is Josef K's hearing; you're up after him.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I remarked, \"is that all?\"\n\nMiss Havisham missed the sarcasm, which was probably just as well, and I looked around. The room was sparsely furnished. A washing tub sat in the middle of the room, and next door, from the sound of it at least, a political meeting seemed to be in progress. A woman entered from the courtroom, smoothed her skirts, curtsied and returned to her washing.\n\n\"Good morning, Miss Havisham,\" she said politely.\n\n\"Good morning, Esther,\" replied Miss Havisham. \"I brought you something.\" Havisham handed her a box of Pontefract cakes and then asked: \"Are we on time?\"\n\nThere was a roar of laughter from behind the door which quickly subsided into excited talking.\n\n\"Won't be long,\" replied the washerwoman. \"Snell and Hopkins have both gone in already. Would you like to take a seat?\"\n\nMiss Havisham sat, but I remained standing.\n\n\"I hope Snell knows what he's doing,\" muttered Havisham darkly. \"The Examining Magistrate is something of an unknown quantity.\"\n\nThe applause and laughter suddenly dropped to silence in the room next door and we heard the door handle grasped. Behind the door a deep voice said: \"I only wanted to point out to you, since you may not have realized it yet, that today you have thrown away all the advantage that a hearing affords an arrested man in every case.\"\n\nI looked at Havisham with some consternation, but she shook her head, as though to tell me not to worry.\n\n\"You scoundrels!\" shouted a second voice, still from behind the door. \"You can keep all your hearings!\"\n\nThe door opened and a young man with a red face and dressed in a dark suit ran out, fairly shaking with rage. As he left, the man who had spoken\u2014I assumed this to be the Examining Magistrate\u2014shook his head sadly and the courtroom started to chatter about Josef K's outburst. The Magistrate, a small fat man who breathed heavily, looked at me and said: \"Thursday N?\"\n\n\"Yes sir?\"\n\n\"You're late.\"\n\nAnd he shut the door.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Miss Havisham kindly, \"he always says that. It's to make you ill at ease.\"\n\n\"It works. Aren't you coming in with me?\"\n\nShe shook her head and placed her hand on mine. \"Have you read The Trial?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Then you will know what to expect. Good luck, my dear.\"\n\nI thanked her, took a deep breath, grasped the door handle and with heavily beating heart, entered."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Trial of Fr\u00e4ulein N",
                "text": "\u2002The Trial, Franz Kafka's enigmatic masterpiece of bureaucratic paranoia, was unpublished in the writer's lifetime. Indeed, Kafka lived out his short life in relative obscurity as an insurance clerk and bequeathed his manuscripts to his best friend on the understanding that they would be destroyed. How many other great writers, one wonders, penned masterworks which actually were destroyed upon their death? For the answer, you will have to look in amongst the subbasements of the Great Library, twenty-six floors of unpublished manuscripts. Amongst a lot of self-indulgent rubbish and valiant yet failed attempts at prose you will find works of pure genius. For the greatest nonwork of non-nonfiction, go to subbasement thirteen, Category MCML, Shelf 2919/B12, where a rare and wonderful treat awaits you\u2014Bunyan's Footscraper by John McSquurd. But be warned. No trip to the Well of Lost Plots should be undertaken alone....\n\n\u2014UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT, The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library\n\nThe courtroom was packed full of men all dressed in dark suits and chattering and gesticulating constantly. There was a gallery running around just below the ceiling where more people stood, also talking and laughing, and the room was hot and airless to the point of suffocation. There was a narrow path between the men, and I slowly advanced, the crowd merging behind me and almost propelling me forward. As I walked the spectators chattered about the weather, the previous case, what I was wearing and the finer points of my case\u2014of which, it seemed, they knew nothing. At the other end of the hall was a low dais upon which was seated, just behind a low table, the Examining Magistrate. He was on a high chair to make himself seem bigger and was shiny with perspiration. Behind him were court officials and clerks talking with the crowd and each other. To one side of the dais was the lugubrious man who had knocked on my door and tricked me into confessing back in Swindon. He was holding an impressive array of official-looking papers. This, I assumed, was Mathew Hopkins, the prosecution lawyer. Snell was standing next to him but joined me as soon as I approached and whispered in my ear:\n\n\"This is only a formal hearing to see if there is a case to answer. With a bit of luck we can get your case postponed to a more friendly court. Ignore the onlookers\u2014they are simply here as a narrative device to heighten paranoia and have no bearing on your case. We will deny all charges.\n\n\"Herr Magistrate,\" said Snell as we took the last few paces to the dais, \"my name is Akrid S, defending Thursday N in Jurisfiction v. The Law, case number 142857.\"\n\nThe Magistrate looked at me, took out his watch and said:\n\n\"You should have been here an hour and five minutes ago.\"\n\nThere was an excited murmur from the crowd. Snell opened his mouth to say something, but it was I that answered.\n\n\"I know,\" I said, having read a bit of Kafka in my youth and attempting a radical approach to the proceedings, \"I am to blame. I beg the court's pardon.\"\n\nAt first the Magistrate didn't hear me and he began to repeat himself for the benefit of the crowd: \"You should have been here an hour and\u2014What did you say?\"\n\n\"I said I was sorry and begged your pardon, sir,\" I repeated.\n\n\"Oh,\" said the Examining Magistrate as a hush fell upon the room. \"In that case, would you like to go away and come back in, say, an hour and five minutes' time, when you will be late through no fault of your own?\"\n\nThe crowd applauded at this, although I couldn't see why.\n\n\"At your honor's pleasure,\" I replied. \"If it is the court's ruling that I do so, then I will comply.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" whispered Snell.\n\n\"Oh!\" said the Magistrate again. He briefly conferred with his clerks behind him, seemed rattled for a moment, stared at me again and said: \"It is the court's decision that you be one hour and five minutes late!\"\n\n\"I am already one hour and five minutes late!\" I announced to scattered applause from the room.\n\n\"Then,\" said the Magistrate simply, \"you have complied with the court's ruling and we may proceed.\"\n\n\"Objection!\" said Hopkins.\n\n\"Overruled,\" replied the Magistrate as he picked up a tatty notebook that lay on the table in front of him. He opened it, read something and passed the book to one of his clerks.\n\n\"Your name is Thursday N. You are a housepainter?\"\n\n\"No, she\u2014\" said Snell.\n\n\"Yes,\" I interrupted, \"I have been a housepainter, your honor.\"\n\nThere was a stunned silence from the crowd, punctuated by someone at the back who yelled \"Bravo!\" before another spectator thumped him. The Examining Magistrate peered closer at me.\n\n\"Is this relevant?\" demanded Hopkins, addressing the bench.\n\n\"Silence!\" yelled the Magistrate, continuing slowly and with very real gravity: \"You mean to tell me that you have, at one time, been a housepainter?\"\n\n\"Indeed, your honor. After I left school and before college I painted houses for two months. I think it might be safe to say that I was indeed\u2014although not permanently\u2014a housepainter.\"\n\nThere was another burst of applause and excited murmuring.\n\n\"Herr S?\" said the Magistrate. \"Is this true?\"\n\n\"We have several witnesses to attest to it, your honor,\" answered Snell, getting into the swing of the strange proceedings.\n\nThe room fell silent again.\n\n\"Herr H,\" said the magistrate, taking out a handkerchief and mopping his brow carefully and addressing Hopkins directly, \"I thought you told me the defendant was not a housepainter?\"\n\nHopkins looked flustered.\n\n\"I didn't say she wasn't a housepainter, your honor, I merely said she was an operative for SpecOps-27.\"\n\n\"To the exclusion of all other professions?\" asked the Magistrate.\n\n\"Well, no,\" stammered Hopkins, now thoroughly confused.\n\n\"Yet you did not state she was not a housepainter in your affidavit, did you?\"\n\n\"No sir.\"\n\n\"Well then!\" said the Magistrate, leaning back on his chair as another peal of laughter and spontaneous applause broke out for no reason. \"If you bring a case to my court, Herr H, I expect it to be brought with all the details intact. First she apologizes for being late, then she readily agrees to a past profession as a housepainter. Court procedure will not be compromised\u2014your prosecution is badly flawed.\"\n\nHopkins bit his lip and turned a dark shade of crimson.\n\n\"I beg the court's pardon, your honor,\" he replied through gritted teeth, \"but my prosecution is sound. May we proceed with the charge?\"\n\n\"Bravo!\" said the man at the back again.\n\nThe Magistrate thought for a moment and handed me his dirty notebook and a fountain pen.\n\n\"We will prove the veracity of prosecution counsel by a simple test,\" he announced. \"Fr\u00e4ulein N, would you please write the most popular color that houses were painted in, when you were\u2014\" and here he turned to Hopkins and spat the words out\u2014\"a housepainter!\"\n\nThe room erupted into cheers and shouts as I wrote the answer in the back of the exercise book and returned it.\n\n\"Silence!\" announced the Magistrate. \"Herr H?\"\n\n\"What?\" he replied sulkily.\n\n\"Perhaps you would be good enough to tell the court the color that Fr\u00e4ulein N has written in my book?\"\n\n\"Your honor,\" began Hopkins in an exasperated tone, \"what has this to do with the case in hand? I arrived here in good faith to arraign Fr\u00e4ulein N on a charge of a Class II Fiction Infraction and instead I find myself embroiled in some lunatic rubbish about housepainters. I do not believe this court represents justice\u2014\"\n\n\"You do not understand,\" said the Magistrate, rising to his feet and raising his short arms to illustrate the point, \"the manner in which this court works. It is the responsibility of the prosecution council to not only bring a clear and concise case before the bench, but also to fully verse himself in the procedures that he must undertake to achieve that goal.\"\n\nThe Magistrate sat down amidst applause.\n\n\"Now,\" continued the Magistrate in a quieter voice, \"either you tell me what Fr\u00e4ulein N has written in this book or I will be forced to arrest you for wasting the court's time.\"\n\nTwo guards had pushed their way through the throng and now stood behind Hopkins, ready to seize him. The Magistrate waved the book and fixed the lawyer with an imperious stare.\n\n\"Well?\" he inquired. \"What was the most popular color?\"\n\n\"Blue,\" said Hopkins in a miserable voice.\n\n\"What's that you say?\"\n\n\"Blue,\" repeated Hopkins in a louder voice.\n\n\"Blue, he said!\" bellowed the Magistrate. The crowd were silent and pushed and shoved to get closer to the action. Slowly and with high drama, the Magistrate opened the book to reveal the word green written across the page. The crowd burst into an excited cry, several cheers went up, and hats rained down upon our heads.\n\n\"Not blue, green,\" said the Magistrate, shaking his head sadly and signaling to the guards to take hold of Hopkins. \"You have brought shame upon your profession, Herr H. You are under arrest!\"\n\n\"On what charge?\" replied Hopkins arrogantly.\n\n\"I am not authorized to tell you,\" said the Magistrate triumphantly. \"Proceedings have been started and you will be informed in due course.\"\n\n\"But this is preposterous!\" shouted Hopkins as he was dragged away.\n\n\"No,\" replied the Magistrate, \"this is Kafka.\"\n\nWhen Hopkins had gone and the crowd had stopped chattering, the Magistrate turned back to me and said: \"You are Thursday N, age thirty-six, one hour and five minutes late and occupation housepainter?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"You are brought before this court on a charge of\u2014what is the charge?\"\n\nThere was silence.\n\n\"Where,\" asked the magistrate, \"is the prosecution counsel?\"\n\nOne of his clerks whispered in his ear as the crowd spontaneously burst into laughter.\n\n\"Indeed,\" said the Magistrate grimly. \"Most remiss of him. I am afraid, in the absence of prosecuting counsel, this court has no alternative but to grant a postponement.\"\n\nAnd so saying he pulled a large rubber stamp from his pocket and brought it down with a crash on some papers that Snell, quick as a flash, managed to place beneath it.\n\n\"Thank you, your honor,\" I managed to say before Snell grasped me by the arm, whispered in my ear, \"Let's get the hell out of here!\" and steered me ahead of him past the throng of dark suits to the door.\n\n\"Bravo!\" yelled a man from the gallery. \"Bravo!... and bravo again!\"\n\nWe walked out to find Miss Havisham deep in conversation with Esther about the perfidious nature of men in general and Esther's husband in particular. They were not the only ones in the room. A bronzed Greek was sitting sullenly next to a Cyclops who had a bloodied bandage round his head. The lawyers who were accompanying them were discussing the case quietly in the corner.\n\n\"How did it go?\" asked Havisham.\n\n\"Postponement,\" said Snell, mopping his brow and shaking me by the hand. \"Well done, Thursday. Caught me unawares with your housepainter defense. Very good indeed!\"\n\n\"But only a postponement?\"\n\n\"Oh yes. I've never known a single acquittal from this court. But next time we'll be up before a proper judge\u2014one of my choosing!\"\n\n\"And what will become of Hopkins?\"\n\n\"He,\" laughed Snell, \"will have to get a very good lawyer!\"\n\n\"Good!\" said Havisham, getting to her feet. \"It's time we were at the sales. Come along!\"\n\nAs we made for the door, the Magistrate called into the kitchen parlor: \"Odysseus? Charge of Grievous Bodily Harm against Polyphemus the Cyclops?\"\n\n\"He devoured my comrades\u2014!\" growled Odysseus angrily.\n\n\"That's tomorrow's case. We will not hear about that today. You're next up\u2014and you're late.\"\n\nAnd the Examining Magistrate shut the door again."
            },
            {
                "title": "Bargain Books",
                "text": "\u2002Jurisfiction was the fastest learning curve I had ever experienced. I think they were all expecting me to arrive a lot earlier than I did. Miss Havisham tested my bookjumping prowess soon after I arrived and I was marked up a dismal 38 out of a hundred. Mrs. Nakajima was 93 and Havisham a 99. I would always need a book to read from to make a jump, no matter how well I had memorized the text. It had its disadvantages but it wasn't all bad news. At least I could read a book without vanishing off inside it....\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nOutside the room, Snell tipped his hat and vanished off to represent a client currently languishing in debtor's prison. The day was overcast yet mild. I leaned on the balcony and looked down into the yard below at the children playing.\n\n\"So!\" said Havisham. \"On with your training now that hurdle is over. The Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale begins at midday and I'm in the mood for a bit of bargain-hunting. Take me there.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Use your head, girl!\" replied Havisham sternly as she grabbed her walking stick and thrashed it through the air a few times. \"Come, come! If you can't jump me straight there, then take me to your apartment and we'll drive\u2014but hurry. The Red Queen is ahead of us and there is a boxed set of novels that she is particularly keen to get her hands on\u2014we must get there first!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry\u2014\" I stammered. \"I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"No such word as can't!\" exploded Miss Havisham. \"Use the book, girl, use the book!\"\n\nSuddenly, I understood. I took the leatherbound Jurisfiction book from my pocket and opened it. The first page, the one I had read already, was of the Great Library. On the second page there was a passage from Austen's Sense and Sensibility and on the third a detailed description of my apartment back at Swindon\u2014it was good, too, right down to the water stains on the kitchen ceiling and the magazines stuffed under the sofa. The rest of the pages were covered with closely printed rules and regulations, hints and tips, advice and places to avoid. There were illustrations, too, and maps quite unlike any I had seen before. There were, in fact, far more pages in the book than could possibly be fitted within the covers.\n\n\"Well?\" said Havisham impatiently. \"Are we going?\"\n\nI flicked to the page that held the short description of my apartment in Swindon. I started to read and felt Havisham's bony hand hang on to my elbow as the Prague rooftops and aging tenement buildings faded out and my own apartment hove into view.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Havisham, looking around at the small kitchen with a contemptuous air. \"And this is what you call home?\"\n\n\"At the moment. My husband\u2014\"\n\n\"The one who you're not sure is alive or dead or married to you or not?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said firmly, \"that one.\"\n\nShe smiled at this and added with a baleful stare: \"You wouldn't have an ulterior motive for joining me, would you?\"\n\n\"No,\" I lied.\n\n\"Didn't come to do something else?\"\n\n\"Absolutely not.\"\n\n\"Not some sort of book privateer or something, out for riches and adventure?\"\n\nI shook my head. Doing what I was doing for Landen might not have sat too well with Havisham, so I decided to keep myself to myself.\n\n\"You're lying about something,\" she announced slowly, \"but about what I'm not so sure. Children are such consummate liars. Have your servants recently left you?\"\n\nShe was staring at the dirty dishes.\n\n\"Yes,\" I lied again, not so keen on her disparagement anymore. \"Domestic service is a tricky issue in 1985.\"\n\n\"It's no bed of roses in the nineteenth century either,\" Miss Havisham replied, leaning on the kitchen table to steady herself. \"I find a good servant but they never stay. It's the lure of them, you know\u2014the liars, the evil ones.\"\n\n\"Evil ones?\"\n\n\"Men!\" hissed Havisham contemptuously. \"The lying sex. Mark my words, child, for no good will ever come of you if you succumb to their charms\u2014and they have the charms of a snake, believe me!\"\n\n\"I'll try to keep on my toes,\" I told her.\n\n\"And your chastity firmly guarded,\" she told me sternly.\n\n\"Goes without saying.\"\n\n\"Good. Can I borrow that jacket?\"\n\nShe was pointing at Miles Hawke's Swindon Mallets jacket. Without waiting for a reply she put it on and replaced her veil with a SpecOps cap. Satisfied, she asked: \"Is this the way out?\"\n\n\"No, that's the broom cupboard. This is the way out over here.\"\n\nWe opened the door to find my landlord with his fist raised ready to knock.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said in a low growl. \"Next!\"\n\n\"You said I had until Friday,\" I told him.\n\n\"I'm turning off the water. The gas, too.\"\n\n\"You can't do that!\"\n\n\"If you've got six hundred quid or a V1.2 dodo on you,\" he leered, \"perhaps I can be convinced not to.\"\n\nBut his smirk changed to fear as the point of Miss Havisham's stick shot out and caught him in the throat. She pushed him heavily against the wall in the corridor. He choked and made to move the stick, but Miss Havisham knew just how much pressure was needed\u2014she pushed the stick harder and he stayed his hand.\n\n\"Listen to me!\" she snapped. \"Annoy Miss Next once more and you'll have me to answer to. She'll pay you on time, you worthless wretch\u2014you have Miss Havisham's word on that!\"\n\nHe gasped in short breaths, the tip of Miss Havisham's stick stuck fast against his windpipe. His eyes were clouded with the panic of suffocation; all he could do was breathe fitfully and try to nod.\n\n\"Good!\" replied Miss Havisham, releasing the man, who fell into a heap on the floor.\n\n\"The evil ones,\" announced Miss Havisham. \"You see what men are like?\"\n\n\"They're not all like that,\" I tried to explain.\n\n\"Nonsense!\" replied Miss Havisham as we walked downstairs. \"He was one of the better ones. At least he didn't attempt to lie his way into your favors. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this one was barely repulsive at all. Do you have a car?\"\n\nMiss Havisham's eyebrows rose slightly as she saw the curious paintwork on my Porsche.\n\n\"It was painted this way when I bought it,\" I explained.\n\n\"I see,\" replied Miss Havisham in a disapproving tone. \"Keys?\"\n\n\"I don't think\u2014\"\n\n\"The keys, girl! What was Rule One again?\"\n\n\"Do exactly as you say.\"\n\n\"Disobedient perhaps,\" she replied with a thin smile, \"but not forgetful!\"\n\nI reluctantly handed over the keys. Havisham grasped them with a gleam in her eye and jumped in the driver's seat.\n\n\"Is it the four-cam engine?\" she asked excitedly.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"standard 1.6 unit.\"\n\n\"Oh well!\" snorted Havisham, pumping the accelerator twice before turning the key. \"It'll have to do, I suppose.\"\n\nThe engine burst into life. Havisham gave me a smile and a wink as she revved the engine up to the redline before briskly snapping the gearshift into first gear and dropping the clutch. There was a screech of rubber as we careered off up the road, the rear of the car swinging from side to side as the spinning wheels sought to find traction on the asphalt.\n\nI have not been frightened many times in my life. Charging into the massed artillery of the Imperial Russian Army had a surreal detachment that I had found eerie rather than fearsome. Tackling Hades first in London and then on the roof of Thornfield Hall had been quite unpleasant. So had leading an armed police raid, and the two occasions I had stared at close quarters down the barrel of a gun hadn't been a bundle of joy either.\n\nNone of those, however, even came close to the feeling of almost certain death that I experienced during Miss Havisham's driving. We must have violated every road traffic regulation that had ever been written. We narrowly missed pedestrians, other cars and traffic bollards and ran three traffic lights at red before Miss Havisham had to stop at a junction to let a juggernaut go past. She was smiling to herself, and although erratic and bordering on homicidal, her driving had a sort of idiot savant skill about it. Just when I thought it was impossible to avoid a postbox she tweaked the brakes, flicked down a gear\u2014 and missed the unyielding iron lump by the width of a hair.\n\n\"The carburetors seem slightly unbalanced!\" she bellowed above the terrified screams of pedestrians. \"Let's have a look, shall we?\" She hauled on the handbrake and we slid sideways up a dropped curbstone and stopped next to an open-air caf\u00e9, causing a group of nuns to run for cover. Havisham climbed out of the car and opened the engine cover.\n\n\"Rev the car for me, girl!\" she shouted. I did as I was told. I offered a weak smile to one of the customers at the caf\u00e9, who eyed me malevolently.\n\n\"She doesn't get out often,\" I explained as Havisham returned to the driver's seat, revved the engine loudly and left the customers at the caf\u00e9 in a cloud of foul-smelling rubber smoke.\n\n\"That's better!\" yelled Miss Havisham. \"Can't you hear it? Much better!\"\n\nAll I could hear was the wail of a police siren that had started up.\n\n\"Oh, Christ!\" I muttered; Miss Havisham punched me painfully on the arm.\n\n\"What was that for?\"\n\n\"Blaspheming! If there is one thing I hate more than men, it's blaspheming\u2014Get out of my way, you godless heathens!\"\n\nA group of people at a pedestrian crossing scattered in confused panic as Havisham shot past, angrily waving her fist. I looked behind us as a police car came into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. I could see the occupants bracing themselves as they took the corner; Miss Havisham dropped a gear and we took a tight left bend, ran the wheels on the curb, swerved to avoid a mother with a pram and found ourselves in a car park. We accelerated between the rows of parked cars, but the only way out was blocked by a delivery van. Miss Havisham stamped on the brakes, flicked the car into reverse and negotiated a neat reverse slide that took us off in the opposite direction.\n\n\"Don't you think we'd better stop?\" I asked.\n\n\"Nonsense, girl!\" snapped Havisham, looking for a way out while the police car nosed up to our rear bumper. \"Not with the sales about to open. Here we go! Hold on!\"\n\nThere was only one way out of the car park that didn't involve capture: a path between two concrete bollards that looked way too narrow for my car. But Miss Havisham's eyes were sharper than mine and we shot through the gap, bounced across a grass bank, skidded past the statue of Brunel, drove the wrong way down a one-way street, through a back alley, past the Carer's Monument and across the pedestrianized precinct to screech to a halt in front of a large queue that had gathered for the Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale\u2014just as the town clock struck twelve.\n\n\"You nearly killed eight people!\" I managed to gasp out loud.\n\n\"My count was closer to twelve,\" returned Havisham as she opened the door. \"And anyhow, you can't nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not; and not one of them was so much as scratched!\"\n\nThe police car slid to a halt behind us; both sides of the car had deep gouges down the side\u2014the bollards, I presumed.\n\n\"I'm more used to my Bugatti than this,\" said Miss Havisham as she handed me the keys, got out and slammed the door, \"but it's not so very bad, now is it? I like the gearbox especially.\"\n\nI knew both of the officers and they didn't look very amused. The local PD didn't much care for SpecOps and we didn't much care for them. They would be overjoyed to pin something on any of us. They peered at Miss Havisham closely, unsure of how to put their outrage at her flagrant disregard for the Road Traffic Act into words.\n\n\"You,\" said one of the officers in a barely controlled voice, \"you, madam, are in a lot of trouble.\"\n\nShe looked at the young officer with an imperious glare.\n\n\"Young man, you have no idea of the word!\"\n\n\"Listen, Rawlings,\" I interrupted, \"can we\u2014\"\n\n\"Miss Next,\" replied the officer firmly but positively, \"your turn will come, okay?\"\n\nI got out of the car.\n\n\"Name?\"\n\n\"Miss Dame-rouge,\" announced Havisham, lying spectacularly, \"and don't bother asking me for my license or insurance\u2014 I haven't either!\"\n\nThe officer pondered this for a moment.\n\n\"I'd like you to get in my car, madam. I'm going to have to take you in for questioning.\"\n\n\"Am I under arrest?\"\n\n\"If you refuse to come with me.\"\n\nHavisham glanced at me and mouthed, \"After three.\" She then sighed deeply and walked over to the police car in a very overdramatic manner, shaking with muscle tremors and generally behaving like the ancient person she wasn't. I looked at her hand as she signaled to me\u2014out of sight of the officers\u2014a single finger, then two, then finally, as she rested for a moment against the front wing of their car, the third and final finger.\n\n\"Look out!\" I yelled, pointing up.\n\nThe officers, mindful of the Hispano-Suiza accident two days before, dutifully looked up as Havisham and I bolted to the head of the queue, pretending we knew someone. The two officers wasted no time and leapt after us, only to lose us in the crowd as the doors to Swindon Booktastic opened and a sea of keen bibliophiles of all different ages and reading tastes moved forward, knocking both officers off their feet and sweeping Miss Havisham and me into the bowels of the bookstore.\n\nInside there was a near riot in progress, and I was soon separated from Miss Havisham; ahead of me a pair of middle-aged men were arguing over a signed copy of Kerouac's On the Road which eventually ripped down the middle. I fought my way round the ground floor past Cartography, Travel and Self-Help and was just giving up the idea of ever seeing Havisham again when I noticed a red flowing robe poking out from beneath a fawn macintosh. I watched the crimson hem cross the floor and go into the elevator. I ran across and put my foot in the door just before it shut. The neanderthal lift operator looked at me curiously, opened the doors to let me in and then closed them again. The Red Queen stared at me loftily and shuffled slightly to achieve a more regal position. She was quite heavily built; her hair was a bright auburn shade tied up in a neat bun under her crown, which had been hastily concealed under the hood of her cloak. She was dressed completely in red, and I suspected that under her makeup her skin might be red, too.\n\n\"Good morning, your majesty,\" I said, as politely as I could.\n\n\"Humph!\" replied the red queen, then after a pause, added: \"Are you that tawdry Havisham woman's new apprentice?\"\n\n\"Since this morning, ma'am.\"\n\n\"A morning wasted, I shouldn't wonder. Do you have a name?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next, ma'am.\"\n\n\"You may curtsy if you so wish.\"\n\nSo I did.\n\n\"You will regret not learning with me, my dear\u2014but you are, of course, merely a child, and right and wrong are so difficult to spot at your tender age.\"\n\n\"Which floor, your majesty?\" asked the neanderthal.\n\nThe Red Queen beamed at him, told him that if he played his cards right she would make him a duke and then added, \"Three,\" as an afterthought.\n\nThere was one of those funny empty pauses that seem to exist only in elevators and dentist waiting rooms. We stared at the floor indicator as it moved slowly upwards and stopped on the second floor.\n\n\"Second floor,\" announced the neanderthal. \"Historical, Allegorical, Historical-Allegorical, Poetry, Plays, Theology, Critical Analysis and Pencils.\"\n\nSomeone tried to get on. The Red Queen barked \"Taken!\" in such a fearful tone that the person backed out again.\n\n\"And how is Havisham these days?\" asked the Red Queen with a diffident air as the lift moved upwards again.\n\n\"Well, I think,\" I replied.\n\n\"You must ask her about her wedding.\"\n\n\"I don't think that's very wise,\" I returned.\n\n\"Decidedly not!\" said the Red Queen, guffawing like a sea lion. \"But it will elicit an amusing effect. Like Vesuvius, as I recall!\"\n\n\"Third floor,\" announced the neanderthal. \"Fiction, Popular, authors A\u2013J.\"\n\nThe doors opened to reveal a mass of book fans, fighting in a most unseemly fashion over what even I had to admit were some very good bargains. I had heard about these Fiction Frenzies before\u2014but never witnessed one.\n\n\"Come, this is more like it!\" announced the Red Queen happily, rubbing her hands together and knocking a little old lady flying as she hopped out of the elevator.\n\n\"Where are you, Havisham?\" she yelled, looking to left and right. \"She has to be... Yes! Yes! Ahoy there, Stella, you old trollop!\"\n\nMiss Havisham stopped in midstride and stared in the Queen's direction. In a single swift movement she drew a small pistol from the folds of her tattered wedding dress and loosed off a shot in our direction. The Red Queen ducked as the bullet knocked a corner off a plaster cornice.\n\n\"Temper, temper!\" shouted the Red Queen, but Havisham was no longer there.\n\n\"Hah!\" said the Red Queen, hopping into the fray. \"The devil take her\u2014she's heading towards Romantic Fiction!\"\n\n\"Romantic Fiction?\" I echoed, thinking of Havisham's hatred of men. \"I don't think that's very likely!\"\n\nThe Red Queen ignored me and made a detour through Fantasy to avoid a scrum near the Agatha Christie counter. I knew the store a little better and nipped in between Haggard and Herg\u00e9, where I was just in time to see Miss Havisham make her first mistake. In her haste she had pushed past a little old lady sizing up a \"buy two get one free\" offer on contemporary fiction. The little old lady\u2014no stranger to department store sales battle tactics\u2014parried Havisham's blow expertly and hooked her bamboo-handled umbrella around her ankle. Havisham came down with a heavy thud and lay still, the breath knocked out of her. I kneeled beside her as the Red Queen hopped past, laughing loudly and making \"nyah, nyah\" noises.\n\n\"Thursday!\" panted Miss Havisham as several stockinged feet ran across her. \"A complete set of Daphne Farquitt novels in a walnut display case\u2014run!\"\n\nAnd run I did. Farquitt was so prolific and popular she had a bookshelf all to herself, and her recent boxed sets were fast becoming collector's items\u2014it was not surprising that there was a fight in progress. I entered the scrum behind the Red Queen and was instantly punched on the nose. I reeled with the shock and was pushed heavily from behind while someone else\u2014an accomplice, I assumed\u2014thrust a walking stick between my shins. I lost my footing and fell with a thud on the hard wooden floor. This was not a safe place to be. I crawled out of the battle and joined Miss Havisham where she had taken cover behind a display of generously discounted Du Maurier novels.\n\n\"Not so easy as it looks, eh, girl?\" asked Havisham with a rare smile, holding a lacy white handkerchief to my bleeding nose. \"How close is the Royal Harridan to the Farquitt shelves?\"\n\n\"I last saw her fighting somewhere between Ervine and Euripides.\"\n\n\"Blast!\" replied Havisham with a grunt. \"Listen, girl, I'm done for. My ankle's twisted and I think I've had it. But you\u2014 you might be able to make it.\"\n\nI looked out at the squabbling masses as a pocket derringer fell to the ground not far from us.\n\n\"I thought this might happen,\" she continued, \"so I drew a map.\"\n\nShe unfolded a piece of Satis House notepaper and pointed out where she thought we were.\n\n\"You won't make it across the main floor alive. You're going to have to climb over the Police Procedurals bookcase, make your way past the cash register and stock returns, crawl under the Chicklit and then fight the last six feet to the Farquitt boxed set. It's a limited edition of one hundred\u2014I will never get another chance like this!\"\n\n\"This is lunacy, Miss Havisham!\" I replied indignantly. \"I will not fight over a set of Daphne Farquitt novels!\"\n\nMiss Havisham looked sharply at me as the muffled crack of a small-caliber firearm sounded and there was the thud of a body falling.\n\n\"I thought as much!\" she sneered. \"A streak of yellow a mile wide all the way down your back! How did you think you were going to handle the otherness at Jurisfiction if you can't handle a few crazed fiction-fanciers hell bent on finding bargains? Your apprenticeship is at an end. Good day, Miss Next!\"\n\n\"Wait! This is a test?\"\n\n\"What did you think it was? Think someone like me with all the money I have enjoys spending my time fighting for books I can read for free in the library?\"\n\nI resisted the temptation to say \"Well, yes\" and answered instead: \"Will you be okay here, ma'am?\"\n\n\"I'll be fine,\" she replied, tripping up a man near us for no reason I could see. \"Now go!\"\n\nI turned and crawled rapidly across the carpet, climbed over the Police Procedurals to just beyond the registers, where the sales assistants rang in the bargains with a fervor bordering on messianic. I crept past them, through the empty returns department, and dived under the Chicklit table to emerge a scant two yards from the Daphne Farquitt special editions display; by a miracle no one had yet grabbed the boxed set. And it was very discounted\u2014down from \u00a3300 to only \u00a350. I looked to my left and could see the Red Queen fighting her way through the crowd. She caught my eye and dared me to try and beat her. I took a deep breath and waded into the swirling maelstrom of popular-prose-induced violence. Almost instantly I was punched on the jaw and thumped in the kidneys; I cried out in pain and quickly withdrew. I met a woman next to the J. G. Farrell section who had a nasty cut above her eye; she told me in a concussed manner that the Major Archer character appeared in both Troubles and The Singapore Grip. I glanced to where the Red Queen was cutting a swath through the crowd, knocking people aside in her bid to beat me. She smiled triumphantly as she head-butted a woman who had tried to poke her in the eye with a silver-plated bookmark. I took a step forward to join the fray, then stopped, considered my condition for a moment and decided that perhaps pregnant women shouldn't get involved in bookshop brawls.\n\nSo instead I took a deep breath and yelled: \"Ms. Farquitt is signing copies of her books in the basement!\"\n\nThere was a moment's silence, then a mass exodus towards the stairs and escalators. The Red Queen, caught up in the crowd, was dragged unceremoniously away with them; in a few seconds the room was empty. Daphne Farquitt was notoriously private\u2014I didn't think there was a fan of hers anywhere who wouldn't jump at the chance of actually meeting her. I walked calmly up to the boxed set, picked it up and took it to the counter, paid and rejoined Miss Havisham behind the discounted Du Mauriers, where she was idly flicking through a copy of Rebecca. I showed her the books.\n\n\"Not bad,\" she said grudgingly. \"Did you get a receipt?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"And the Red Queen?\"\n\n\"Lost somewhere between here and the basement.\"\n\nA thin smile crossed Miss Havisham's lips, and I helped her to her feet. Together we walked slowly past the mass of squabbling book-bargainers and made for the exit.\n\n\"How did you manage it?\" asked Miss Havisham.\n\n\"I told them Daphne Farquitt was signing in the basement.\"\n\n\"She is?\" exclaimed Miss Havisham, turning to head off downstairs.\n\n\"No, no, no,\" I added, taking her by the arm and steering her to the exit. \"That's just what I told them.\"\n\n\"Oh, I get it!\" replied Havisham. \"Very good indeed. Resourceful and intelligent. Mrs. Nakajima was quite right\u2014I think you'll do as an apprentice after all.\"\n\nShe regarded me for a moment, making up her mind about something. Eventually she nodded, gave another rare smile and handed me a simple gold ring that slipped easily over my little finger.\n\n\"Here\u2014this is for you. Never take it off. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Havisham, it's very pretty.\"\n\n\"Pretty nothing, Next. Save your gratitude for real favors, not baubles, my girl. Come along. I know of a very good bun shop in Little Dorrit\u2014and I'm buying!\"\n\nOutside, paramedics were dealing with the casualties, many of them still clutching the remnants of the bargains for which they had fought so bravely. My car was gone\u2014towed away, most likely\u2014and we trotted as fast as we could on Miss Havisham's twisted ankle, round the corner of the building until\u2014\n\n\"Not so fast!\"\n\nThe officers who had chased us earlier were blocking our path.\n\n\"Looking for something? This, I suppose?\"\n\nMy car was on the back of a low loader being taken away.\n\n\"We'll take the bus,\" I stammered.\n\n\"You'll take the car,\" corrected the police officer. \"My car\u2014 Hey! Where do you think you're going?\"\n\nHe was talking to Miss Havisham, who had taken the Farquitt boxed set and walked into a small group of women to disguise her bookjump\u2014back to Great Expectations or the bun shop in Little Dorrit or somewhere. I wished I could join her but my skills in these matters were not really up to scratch. I sighed.\n\n\"We want some answers, Next,\" said the policeman in a grim tone.\n\n\"Listen, Rawlings, I don't know the lady very well. What did she say her name was? Dame-rouge?\"\n\n\"It's Havisham, Next\u2014but you know that, don't you? That 'lady' is extremely well known to the police\u2014she's racked up seventy-four outrageously serious driving offenses in the past twenty-two years.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, really. In June she was clocked driving a chain-driven Liberty-engined Higham Special automobile at 171.5 MPH down the M4. It's not only irresponsible, it's\u2014Why are you laughing?\"\n\n\"No reason.\"\n\nThe officer stared at me.\n\n\"You seem to know her quite well, Next. Why does she do these things?\"\n\n\"Probably,\" I replied, \"because they don't have motorways where she comes from\u2014or 27-liter Higham Specials.\"\n\n\"And where would that be, Next?\"\n\n\"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"I could arrest you for helping the escape of an individual in custody.\"\n\n\"She wasn't arrested, Rawlings, you said so yourself.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not, but you are. In the car.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Yorrick Kaine",
                "text": "\u2002In 1983 the youthful Yorrick Kaine was elected leader of the Whigs, at that time a small and largely inconsequential party whose desire to put the aristocracy back in power and limit voting rights to homeowners had placed it on the outer edges of the political arena. A pro-Crimean stance coupled with a wish for British unification helped build nationalist support, and by 1985 the Whigs had three MPs in Parliament. They built their manifesto on populist tactics such as reducing the cheese duty and offering dukedoms as prizes on the National Lottery. A shrewd politician and clever tactician, Kaine was ambitious for power\u2014in whatever way he could get it.\n\n\u2014A.J.P. MILLINER, The New Whigs: From Humble Beginnings to Fourth Reich\n\nIt took two hours for me to convince the police I wasn't going to tell them anything about Miss Havisham other than her address. Undeterred, they thumbed through a yellowed statute book and eventually charged me with a little-known 1621 law about permissioning a horse and carte to be driven by personn of low moral turpithtude, but with the \"horse and carte\" bit crossed out and \"car\" written in instead\u2014so you can see how desperate they were. I would have to go before the magistrate the following week. I started to sneak out of the building to go home, but\u2014\n\n\"So there you are!\"\n\nI turned and hoped my groan wasn't audible.\n\n\"Hello, Cordelia.\"\n\n\"Thursday, are you okay? You look a bit bruised!\"\n\n\"I got caught in a Fiction Frenzy.\"\n\n\"No more nonsense, now\u2014I need you to meet the couple who won my competition.\"\n\n\"Do I have to?\"\n\nFlakk looked at me sternly.\n\n\"It's very advisable.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I replied. \"Where are they?\"\n\n\"I'm\u2014um\u2014not sure,\" said Cordelia, biting her lip and looking at her watch. \"They said they'd be here half an hour ago. Can you wait a few minutes?\"\n\nSo we stood around for a bit, Cordelia looking at her watch and staring at the front door. After ten minutes of waiting and without her guests turning up, I made my excuses and nipped up to the Litera Tec's office.\n\n\"Thursday!\" said Bowden as I entered. \"I told Victor you had the flu. How did you get on in Osaka?\"\n\n\"Pretty well, I think. I've been inside books without a Prose Portal. I can do it on my own\u2014more or less.\"\n\n\"You're kidding.\"\n\n\"No,\" I told him, \"Landen's almost as good as back. I've seen The Trial from the inside and have just been at the Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale with Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"What's she like?\" asked Bowden with interest.\n\n\"Odd\u2014and don't ever let her drive. It seems there is something very like SpecOps-27 inside books\u2014I've yet to figure it all out. How have things been out here?\"\n\nHe showed me a copy of The Owl. The headline read: New Play by Will Found in Swindon. The Mole had the headline Cardenio Sensation! and The Toad, predictably enough, led with Swindon Croquet Supremo Aubrey Jambe Found in Bath with Chimp.\n\n\"So Professor Spoon authenticated it?\"\n\n\"He did indeed,\" replied Bowden. \"One of us should take the report up to Volescamper this afternoon. This is for you.\"\n\nHe handed me the bag of pinkish goo attached to a report from the SpecOps forensic labs. I thanked him and read the analysis of the slime Dad had given me with interest and confusion in equal measures.\n\n\"Sugar, fatty animal protein, calcium, sodium, maltodextrin, carboxy-methyl-cellulose, phenylalanine, complex hydrocarbon compounds and traces of chlorophyll.\"\n\nI flicked to the back of the report but was none the wiser. Forensics had faithfully responded to my request for analysis\u2014 but it told me nothing new.\n\n\"What does it mean, Bowd?\"\n\n\"Search me, Thursday. They're trying to match the profile to known chemical compounds, but so far, nothing. Perhaps if you told us where you got it?\"\n\n\"I don't think that would be safe. I'll drop the Cardenio report in to Volescamper\u2014I'm keen to avoid Cordelia. Tell forensics that the future of the planet depends on them\u2014that should help. I have to know what this pink stuff is.\"\n\nI saw Cordelia waiting for me in the lobby with her two guests, who had finally, it seemed, turned up. Unluckily for them, Spike Stoker had been passing and Cordelia, eager to do something to amuse her competition winners, had obviously asked him to say a few words. The look of frozen jaw-dropping horror on her guests' faces said it all. I hid my face behind the Cardenio report and left Cordelia to it.\n\nI blagged a ride in a squad car up to the crumbling but now far busier Vole Towers. The mansion was besieged by the news stations, all keen to report any details regarding the discovery of Cardenio. Two dozen outside broadcast trucks were parked on the weed-infested gravel, all humming with activity. Dishes were trained into the afternoon sky, transmitting the pictures to an airship repeater station that had been routed in to bounce the stories live to the world's eager viewers. For security, SpecOps-14 had been drafted in and stood languidly about, idly chatting to one another. Mostly, it seemed, about Aubrey Jambe's apparent indiscretion with the chimp.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday!\" said a handsome young SO-14 agent at the front door. It was annoying; I didn't recognize him. People I didn't know hailing me as friends was something that had happened a lot since Landen's eradication; I supposed I would get used to it.\n\n\"Hello!\" I replied to the stranger in an equally friendly tone. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"Yorrick Kaine is heading a press conference.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I asked, suddenly suspicious. \"What's Cardenio got to do with him?\"\n\n\"Hadn't you heard? Lord Volescamper has given the play to Yorrick Kaine and the Whig party!\"\n\n\"Why would,\" I asked slowly, smelling a political rat of epic proportions, \"Lord Volescamper have anything to do with a minor right-wing pro-Crimean Welsh-hater like Kaine?\"\n\nThe SpecOps-14 agent shrugged. \"Because he's a lord and wants to reclaim some lost power?\"\n\nAt that moment two other SpecOps agents walked past, and one of them nodded to the young agent at the door and said: \"All well, Miles?\"\n\nThe dashing young SO-14 agent said that all was well, but he was wrong. All was not well\u2014at least it wasn't for me. I'd thought I might bump into Miles Hawke eventually, but not unprepared, like this. I stared at him, hoping my shock and surprise wouldn't show. He had spent time in my flat and knew me a lot better than I knew him. My heart thumped inside my chest and I tried to say something intelligent and witty, but it came out more like:\n\n\"Asterfobulongus?\"\n\nHe looked confused and leaned forward slightly.\n\n\"I'm sorry, what was that?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"You seemed a bit upset when I called, Thursday. Is there a problem with our arrangement?\"\n\nI stared at him for a few seconds in numbed silence before mumbling: \"No\u2014no, not at all.\"\n\n\"Good!\" he said. \"We must fix a date or two.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, running on auto-fear, \"yes we must. Gottogo\u2014 bye.\"\n\nI trotted off before he could say anything else. I paused for breath outside the door to the library. Sooner or later I was going to have to ask him straight out. I decided on the face of it that later suited me better than sooner, so I walked through the heavy steel doors and into the library. Yorrick Kaine and Lord Volescamper were sitting behind a table, and beyond them was Mr. Swaike and two security guards who were standing on either side of the play itself, proudly displayed behind a sheet of bulletproof glass. The press conference was halfway through, and I tapped Lydia Startright\u2014who happened to be standing quite near\u2014on the arm.\n\n\"Hey, Lyds!\" I said in a low whisper.\n\n\"Hey, Thursday,\" replied the reporter. \"I heard you did the initial authentication. How good is it?\"\n\n\"Very good,\" I replied. \"Somewhere on par with The Tempest. What's happening here?\"\n\n\"Volescamper has just officially announced he is giving the play to Yorrick Kaine and the Whigs.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Who knows? Hang on, I want to ask a question.\"\n\nLydia stood up and raised her hand. Kaine pointed at her.\n\n\"What do you propose to do with the play, Mr. Kaine? We understand that there has been talk of offers in the region of a hundred million pounds.\"\n\n\"Good question,\" replied Yorrick Kaine, getting to his feet. \"We in the Whig party thank Lord Volescamper for his kind generosity. I am of the opinion that Cardenio is not for one person or group to exploit, so we at the Whig party propose offering free licenses to perform the play to anyone who wishes to do so.\"\n\nThere was an excited babbling from the attendant journalists as they took this in. It was an act of unprecedented generosity, especially from Kaine, but more than that, it was the right thing to do, and the press suddenly warmed towards Yorrick. It was as if Kaine had never suggested the invasion of Wales two years ago or the reduction of the right to vote the year before; I was instantly suspicious.\n\nThere were several more questions about the play and a lot of well-practiced answers from Kaine, who seemed to have reinvented himself as a caring and sharing patriarch and not the extremist of yore. After the press conference had ended, I made my way to the front and approached Volescamper, who looked at me oddly for a moment.\n\n\"The Spoon report,\" I told him, handing him the buff-colored file, \"about the authentication... we thought you might want to see it.\"\n\n\"What? Of course!\"\n\nVolescamper took the report and glanced at it in a cursory manner before passing it to Kaine, who seemed to show more interest. Kaine didn't even look at me, but since I obviously wasn't going to leave like some message girl, Volescamper introduced me.\n\n\"Oh yes! Mr. Kaine, this is Thursday Next, SpecOps-27.\"\n\nKaine looked up from the report, his manner abruptly changed to one of charm and gushing friendship.\n\n\"Ms. Next, delighted!\" he enthused. \"I read of your exploits with great interest, and believe me, your intervention improved the narrative of Jane Eyre considerably!\"\n\nI wasn't impressed by him or his faux charm.\n\n\"Think you can change the Whig party's fortunes, Mr. Kaine?\"\n\n\"The party is undergoing something of a restructuring at present,\" replied Kaine, fixing me with a serious stare. \"Old ideology has been retired and the party now looks forward to a fresh look at England's political future. Rule by informed patriarch and voting restricted to responsible property owners is the future, Miss Next\u2014ruling by committee has been the death of common sense for far too long.\"\n\n\"And Wales?\" I asked. \"Where do you stand on Wales these days?\"\n\n\"Wales is historically part of greater Britain,\" announced Kaine in a slightly more guarded manner. \"The Welsh have been flooding the English market with cheap goods, and this has to stop\u2014but I have no plans whatsoever for forced unification.\"\n\nI stared at him for a moment.\n\n\"You have to get in power first, Mr. Kaine.\"\n\nThe smile dropped from his face.\n\n\"Thank you for delivering the report, Miss Next,\" put in Volescamper hurriedly. \"Can I offer you a drink or something before you go?\"\n\nI took the hint and made my way to the front door. I stood and looked at the outside broadcast units thoughtfully. Yorrick Kaine was playing his hand well."
            },
            {
                "title": "Les Artes Modernesde Swindon '85",
                "text": "\u2002The very Irreverent Joffy Next was the minister for the Global Standard Deity's first church in England. The GSD had a little bit of all religions, arguing that if there was one God, then He would really have very little to do with all the fluff and muddle down here on the material plane, and a streamlining of the faiths might very well be in His interest. Worshipers came and went as they pleased, prayed according to how they felt most happy, and mingled freely with other GSD members. It enjoyed moderate success, but what God actually thought of it no one ever really knew.\n\n\u2014PROFESSOR M. BLESSINGTON, PR (ret.), The Global Standard Deity\n\nI paid to have my car released with a check that I felt sure would bounce, then drove home and had a snack and a shower before driving over to Wanborough and Joffy's first Les Artes Modernes de Swindon exhibition. Joffy had asked me for a list of my colleagues to boost the numbers, so I fully expected to see some work people there. I had even asked Cordelia, who I had to admit was great fun when not in PR mode. The art exhibition was being held in the Global Standard Deity church at Wanborough and had been opened by Frankie Saveloy a half hour before I arrived. It seemed quite busy as I stepped inside. All the pews had been moved out, and artists, critics, press and potential purchasers milled amongst the eclectic collection of art. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter, suddenly remembered I shouldn't be drinking, sniffed at it longingly and put it down again. Joffy, looking very smart indeed in a dinner jacket and dog collar, leapt forward when he saw me, grinning wildly.\n\n\"Hello, Doofus!\" he said, hugging me affectionately. \"Glad you could make it. Have you met Mr. Saveloy?\"\n\nWithout waiting for an answer, he propelled me towards a puffy man who stood quite alone at the side of the room. He introduced me as quickly as he could and then legged it. Frankie Saveloy was the comp\u00e8re of Name That Fruit! and looked more like a toad in real life than he did on TV. I half expected a long sticky tongue to shoot out and capture a wayward fly, but I smiled politely nonetheless.\n\n\"Mr. Saveloy?\" I said, offering my hand. He took it in his clammy mitt and held on to it tightly.\n\n\"Delighted!\" grunted Saveloy, his eyes flicking to my cleavage. \"I'm sorry we couldn't get you to appear on my show\u2014but you're probably feeling quite honored to meet me, just the same.\"\n\n\"Quite the reverse,\" I assured him, retrieving my hand forcibly.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Saveloy, grinning so much the sides of his mouth almost met his ears and I feared the top of his head might fall off. \"I have my Rolls-Royce outside\u2014perhaps you might like to join me for a ride?\"\n\n\"I think,\" I replied, \"that I would sooner eat rusty nails.\"\n\nHe didn't seem in the least put out. He grinned some more and said: \"Shame to put such magnificent hooters to waste, Miss Next.\"\n\nI raised my hand to slap him but my wrist was caught by Cordelia Flakk, who had decided to intervene.\n\n\"Up to your old tricks, Frankie?\"\n\nSaveloy grimaced at Cordelia.\n\n\"Damn you, Dilly\u2014out to spoil my fun!\"\n\n\"Come on, Thursday, there are plenty of bigger fools to waste your time on than this one.\"\n\nFlakk had dropped the bright pink outfit for a more reserved shade but was still able to fog film at forty yards. She took me by the hand and steered me towards some of the art on display.\n\n\"You have been leading me around the houses a bit, Thursday,\" she said testily. \"I only need ten minutes of your time with those guests of mine!\"\n\n\"Sorry, Dilly. Things have been a bit hectic. Where are they?\"\n\n\"Well,\" she replied, \"they were meant to be both performing in Richard III at the Ritz.\"\n\n\"Meant to be?\"\n\n\"They were late and missed curtain up. Can you please make time for them both tomorrow?\"\n\n\"I'll try.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nWe approached a small scrum where one of the featured artists was presenting his latest work to an attentive audience composed mostly of art critics who all wore collarless black suits and were scribbling notes in their catalogues.\n\n\"So,\" said one of the critics, gazing at the piece through his half-moon spectacles, \"tell us all about it, Mr. Duchamp2924.\"\n\n\"I call it The Id Within,\" said the young artist in a quiet voice, avoiding everyone's gaze and pressing his fingertips together. He was dressed in a long black cloak and had sideburns cut so sharp that if he turned abruptly he would have had someone's eye out. He continued: \"Like life, my piece reflects the many different layers that cocoon and restrict us in society today. The outer layer\u2014reflecting yet counterpoising the harsh exoskeleton we all display\u2014is hard, thin, yet somehow brittle\u2014but beneath this a softer layer awaits, yet of the same shape and almost the same size. As one delves deeper one finds many different shells, each smaller yet no softer than the one before. The journey is a tearful one, and when one reaches the center there is almost nothing there at all, and the similarity to the outer crust is, in a sense, illusory.\"\n\n\"It's an onion,\" I said in a loud voice.\n\nThere was a stunned silence. Several of the art critics looked at me, then at Duchamp2924, then at the onion.\n\nI was sort of hoping the critics would say something like \"I'd like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. We nearly made complete dopes of ourselves,\" but they didn't. They just said: \"Is this true?\"\n\nTo which Duchamp2924 replied that this was true in fact, but untrue representationally, and as if to reinforce the fact he drew a bunch of shallots from within his jacket and added: \"I have here another piece I'd like you to see. It's called The Id Within II (Grouped) and is a collection of concentric three-dimensional shapes locked around a central core...\"\n\nCordelia pulled me away as the critics craned forward with renewed interest.\n\n\"You seem very troublesome tonight, Thursday,\" smiled Cordelia. \"Come on, I want you to meet someone.\"\n\nShe introduced me to a young man with a well-tailored suit and well-tailored hair.\n\n\"This is Harold Flex,\" announced Cordelia. \"Harry is Lola Vavoom's agent and a big cheese in the film industry.\"\n\nFlex shook my hand gratefully and told me how fantastically humbled he was to be in my presence.\n\n\"Your story needs to be told, Miss Next,\" enthused Flex, \"and Lola is very enthusiastic.\"\n\n\"Oh no,\" I said hurriedly, realizing what was coming. \"No, no. Not in a million years.\"\n\n\"You should hear Harry out, Thursday,\" pleaded Cordelia. \"He's the sort of agent who could cut a really good financial deal for you, do a fantastic PR job for SpecOps and make sure your wishes and opinions in the whole story were rigorously listened to.\"\n\n\"A movie?\" I asked incredulously. \"Are you nuts? Didn't you see The Adrian Lush Show? SpecOps and Goliath would pare the story to the bone!\"\n\n\"We'd present it as fiction, Miss Next,\" explained Flex. \"We've even got a title: The Eyre Affair. What do you think?\"\n\n\"I think you're both out of your tiny minds. Excuse me.\"\n\nI left Cordelia and Mr. Flex plotting their next move in low voices and went to find Bowden, who was staring at a dustbin full of paper cups.\n\n\"How can they present this as art?\" he asked. \"It looks just like a rubbish bin!\"\n\n\"It is a rubbish bin,\" I replied. \"That's why it's next to the refreshments table.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" he said, then asked me how the press conference went.\n\n\"Kaine is fishing for votes,\" he told me when I had finished. \"Got to be. A hundred million might buy you some serious airtime for advertising, but putting Cardenio in the public domain could sway the Shakespeare vote\u2014that's one group of voters you can't buy.\"\n\nI hadn't thought of this.\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\nBowden unfolded a piece of paper.\n\n\"Yes. I'm trying to figure out the running order for my stand-up comedy routine tomorrow night.\"\n\n\"How long is your slot?\"\n\n\"Ten minutes.\"\n\n\"Let me see.\"\n\nHe had been trying out his routine on me, although I protested that I probably wasn't the best person to ask. Bowden himself didn't find any of the jokes funny, although he understood the technical process involved.\n\n\"I'd start off with the penguins on the ice floe,\" I suggested, looking at the list as Bowden made notes, \"then move on to the pet centipede. Try the white horse in the pub next, and if that works well do the tortoise that gets mugged by the snails\u2014but don't forget the voice. Then move on to the dogs in the waiting room at the vet's and finish with the one about meeting the gorilla.\"\n\n\"What about the lion and the baboon?\"\n\n\"Good point. Use that instead of the white horse if the centipede goes flat.\"\n\nBowden made a note.\n\n\"Centipede... goes... flat. Got it. What about the man going bear hunting? I told that to Victor and he sprayed Earl Grey out of both nostrils at once.\"\n\n\"Keep it for an encore. It's three minutes long on its own\u2014 but don't hurry; let it build. Then again, if your audience is middle-aged and a bit fuddy-duddy I'd drop the bear, baboon and the dogs and use the greyhound and the racehorses instead\u2014or the one about the two Rolls-Royces.\"\n\n\"Canap\u00e9s, darling?\" said Mum, offering me a plate.\n\n\"Got any more of those prawny ones?\"\n\n\"I'll go and see.\"\n\nI followed her into the vestry, where she and several other members of the Women's Federation were getting food ready.\n\n\"Mum, Mum,\" I said, following her to where the profoundly deaf Mrs. Higgins was laying doilies on plates, \"I must talk to you.\"\n\n\"I'm busy, sweetness.\"\n\n\"It's very important.\"\n\nShe stopped doing what she was doing, put everything down and steered me to the corner of the vestry, just next to a worn stone effigy, reputedly a follower of St. Zvlkx.\n\n\"What's the problem that's more important than canap\u00e9s, oh daughter-my-daughter?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I began, unsure of how to put it, \"remember you said how you wanted to be a grandmother?\"\n\n\"Oh that,\" she said, laughing and moving to get up. \"I've known you had a bun in there for a while\u2014I was just wondering when you were going to tell me.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute!\" I said, feeling suddenly cheated. \"You're meant to be all surprised and tearful.\"\n\n\"Done that, darling. Can I be so indelicate as to ask who the father is?\"\n\n\"My husband's, I hope\u2014and before you ask, the ChronoGuard eradicated him.\"\n\nShe pulled me into her arms and gave me a long hug.\n\n\"Now that I can understand. Do you ever see him in the sort of way I see your father?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied a bit miserably. \"He's only in my memories.\"\n\n\"Poor little duck!\" exclaimed my mother, giving me another hug. \"But thank the Lord for small mercies\u2014at least you got to remember him. Many of us never do\u2014just vague feelings of something that might have been. You must come along to Eradications Anonymous with me one evening. Believe me, there are more Lost Ones than you might imagine.\"\n\nI'd never really talked about Dad's eradication with my mother. All her friends had assumed my brothers and I had been fathered by youthful indiscretions. To my highly principled mother this had been almost as painful as Dad's eradication. I'm not really one for any organization with \"anonymous\" in the title, so I decided to backtrack slightly.\n\n\"How did you know I was pregnant?\" I asked as she rested her hand on mine and smiled kindly.\n\n\"Spot it a mile off. You've been eating like a horse and staring at babies a lot. When Mrs. Pilchard's little cousin Henry came round last week you could hardly keep your hands off him.\"\n\n\"Aren't I like that usually?\"\n\n\"Not even remotely. You're filling out along the bustline too\u2014that dress has never looked so good on you. When's sprogging time? July?\"\n\nI paused as a wave of despondency washed over me, brought about by the sheer inevitability of motherhood. When I first knew about it Landen had been with me and everything seemed that much easier.\n\n\"Mum, what if I'm no good at it? I don't know the first thing about babies. I've spent my working life chasing after bad guys. I can field-strip an M-16 blindfold, replace an engine in an APC and hit a twopence piece from thirty yards eight times out of ten. I'm not sure a cot by the fireside is really my sort of thing.\"\n\n\"It wasn't mine either,\" confided my mother, smiling kindly. \"It's no accident that I'm a dreadful cook. Before I met your father and had you and your brothers I worked at SO-3. Still do, on occasions.\"\n\n\"You didn't meet him on a day trip to Portsmouth then?\" I asked slowly, wondering whether I really wanted to hear what I was hearing.\n\n\"Not at all. It was in another place entirely.\"\n\n\"SO-3?\"\n\n\"You'd never believe me if I told you, so I'm not going to. But the point is, I was very happy to have children when the time came. Despite all your ceaseless bickering when you were kids and teenage grumpiness, it's been a wonderful adventure. Losing Anton was a storm cloud for a bit, but on balance it's been good\u2014better than SpecOps any day.\" She paused for a moment. \"But I was the same as you, worrying about not being ready, about being a bad mother. How did I do?\"\n\nShe stared at me and smiled kindly.\n\n\"You did good, Mum.\"\n\nI hugged her tightly.\n\n\"I'll do what I can to help, sweetness, but strictly no nappies or potty training, and Tuesday and Thursday evenings are right out.\"\n\n\"SO-3?\"\n\n\"No,\" she replied, \"bridge and skittles.\"\n\nShe handed me a handkerchief and I dabbed at my eyes.\n\n\"You'll be fine, sweetness.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Mum.\"\n\nShe bustled off, muttering something about having a million mouths to feed. I watched her leave, smiling to myself. I thought I knew my mother but I didn't. Children rarely know their parents at all.\n\n\"Thursday!\" said Joffy as I reappeared from the vestry. \"What use are you if you don't mingle? Will you take that wealthy Flex fellow to meet Zorf, the neanderthal artist? I'd be ever so grateful. Oh my goodness!\" he muttered, staring at the church door. \"It's Aubrey Jambe!\"\n\nAnd so it was. Mr. Jambe, Swindon's croquet captain, despite his recent indiscretion with the chimp, was still attending functions as though nothing had happened.\n\n\"I wonder if he's brought the chimp?\" I said, but Joffy flashed me an angry look and rushed off to press flesh. I found Cordelia and Mr. Flex discussing the merits of a minimalist painting by Welsh artist Tegwyn Wedimedr that was so minimalist it wasn't there at all. They were staring at a blank wall with a picture hook on it.\n\n\"What does it say to you, Harry?\"\n\n\"It says... nothing, Cords\u2014but in a very different way. How much is it?\"\n\nCordelia bent forward to look at the price tag.\n\n\"It's called Beyond Satire and it's twelve hundred pounds; quite a snip. Hello, Thursday! Changed your mind about the book-flick?\"\n\n\"Nope. Have you met Zorf, the neanderthal artist?\"\n\nI guided them over to where Zorf was exhibiting. Some of his friends were with him, one of whom I recognized\u2014it was Stiggins of SpecOps-13.\n\n\"Good evening, Stig.\"\n\nHe nodded his head politely and introduced me to a younger neanderthal who was dressed in a boiler suit that was almost completely covered in different-colored blobs of paint.\n\n\"Good evening, Thursday,\" returned Stig. \"This is our friend Zorf.\" The younger neanderthal shook my hand as I explained who Harry and Cordelia were.\n\n\"Well, this is a very interesting painting, Mr. Zorf,\" said Harry, staring at a mass of green, yellow and orange paint on a six-foot-square canvas. \"What does it represent?\"\n\n\"Is not obvious?\" replied the neanderthal.\n\n\"Of course!\" said Harry, turning his head this way and that. \"It's daffodils, isn't it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"A sunset?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Field of barley?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I give up.\"\n\n\"Closest yet, Mr. Flex. If you have to ask, then you never understand. To neanderthal, sunset is only finish-day. Van Gogh's Green Rye is merely poor depiction of a field. The only sapien painters we truly understand are Pollock and Kandinsky; they speak our language. Our paintings are not for you.\"\n\nI looked at the small gathering of neanderthals who were staring at Zorf's abstract paintings with wonderment. But Harry, a bullshitter to the end, had not yet given up hope.\n\n\"Can I have another guess?\" he asked Zorf, who nodded.\n\nHe stared at the canvas and screwed up his eyes.\n\n\"It's a\u2014\"\n\n\"Hope,\" said a voice close by. \"It's hope. Hope for the future of neanderthal. It is the fervent wish\u2014for children.\"\n\nZorf and all the other neanderthals turned to stare at the speaker. It was Granny Next.\n\n\"Exactly what I was about to say,\" said Flex, fooling no one but himself.\n\n\"The esteemed lady shows understanding beyond her species,\" said Zorf, making a small grunting noise that I took to be laughter. \"Would lady sapien like to add to our painting?\"\n\nThis was indeed an honor. Granny Next stepped forward, took the proffered brush from Zorf, mixed a subtle shade of turquoise and made a few fine brushstrokes to the left of center. There was a gasp from the neanderthals, and the women in the group hastily placed veils over their faces while the men\u2014 including Zorf\u2014raised their heads and stared at the ceiling, humming quietly. Gran did likewise. Flex, Cordelia and I looked at one another, confused and ignorant of neanderthal customs. After a while the staring and humming stopped, the women raised their veils and they all ambled slowly over to Gran and smelled her clothes and touched her face gently with their large hands. Within a few minutes it was all over; the neanderthals returned to their seats and were staring at Zorf's paintings again.\n\n\"Hello, young Thursday!\" said Gran, turning to me. \"Let's find somewhere quiet to have a chat!\"\n\nWe walked off towards the church organ and sat on a pair of hard plastic chairs.\n\n\"What did you paint on his picture?\" I asked her, and Gran smiled her sweetest smile.\n\n\"Something a bit controversial,\" she confided, \"yet supportive. I have worked with neanderthals in the past and know many of their ways and customs. How's hubby?\"\n\n\"Still eradicated,\" I said glumly.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said Gran seriously, touching my chin so I would look into her eyes. \"Always there is hope. You'll find, as I did, that it's really very funny the way things turn out.\"\n\n\"I know. Thanks, Gran.\"\n\n\"Your mother will be a tower of strength\u2014never be in any doubt of that.\"\n\n\"She's here if you want to see her.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said Gran hurriedly, \"I expect she's a little busy. While we're here,\" she went on, changing the subject without drawing breath, \"can you think of any books that might be included in the 'ten most boring classics'? I'm about ready to go.\"\n\n\"Gran!\"\n\n\"Indulge me, young Thursday!\"\n\nI sighed.\n\n\"How about Paradise Lost?\"\n\nGran let out a loud groan.\n\n\"Awful! I could hardly walk for a week afterwards\u2014it's enough to put anyone off religion for good!\"\n\n\"Ivanhoe?\"\n\n\"Pretty dull but redeemable in places. It isn't in the top ten, I think.\"\n\n\"Moby-Dick?\"\n\n\"Excitement and action interspersed with mind-numbing dullness. Read it twice.\"\n\n\"A la recherche du temps perdu?\"\n\n\"English or French, its sheer tediousness is undiminished.\"\n\n\"Pamela?\"\n\n\"Ah! Now you're talking. Struggled through that when a teenager. It might have had resonance in 1741, but today the only resonance it possesses is the snores that emanate from those deluded enough to attempt it.\"\n\n\"How about A Pilgrim's Progress?\"\n\nBut Gran's attention had wandered.\n\n\"You have visitors, my dear. Look over there past the stuffed squid inside the piano and just next to the Fiat 500 carved from frozen toothpaste.\"\n\nThere were two people in ill-fitting dark suits who looked very out of place. They were clearly SpecOps but not Dedmen and Walken. It looked as though SO-5 had suffered another mishap. I asked Gran if she would be all right on her own and walked across to meet them. I found them looking dubiously at a flattened tuba on the ground entitled The Indivisible Thriceness of Death.\n\n\"What do you think?\" I asked them.\n\n\"I don't know,\" began the first agent nervously. \"I'm... I'm... not really up on art.\"\n\n\"Even if you were, it wouldn't help here,\" I replied dryly. \"SpecOps-5?\"\n\n\"Yes, how did\u2014\"\n\nHe checked himself quickly and rummaged for a pair of dark glasses.\n\n\"I mean, no. Never heard of SpecOps, much less SpecOps-5. Don't exist. Oh blast. I'm not very good at this, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"We're looking for someone named Thursday Next,\" said his partner in a very obvious whisper from the side of her mouth, adding, in case I didn't get the message, \"Official business.\"\n\nI sighed. Obviously, SO-5 were beginning to run out of volunteers. I wasn't surprised.\n\n\"What happened to Dedmen and Walken?\" I asked them.\n\n\"They were\u2014\" began the first agent but the second nudged him in the ribs and announced instead:\n\n\"Never heard of them.\"\n\n\"I'm Thursday Next,\" I told them, \"and I think you're in more danger than you realize. Where did they get you from? SO-14?\"\n\nThey took their sunglasses off and looked at me nervously.\n\n\"I'm from SO-22,\" said the first. \"The name's Lamme. This is Slorter; she's from\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014SO-28,\" said the woman. \"Thank you, Blake, I can talk, you know\u2014and let me handle this. You can't open your mouth without putting your foot in it.\"\n\nLamme sank into a sulky silence.\n\n\"SO-28? You're an income tax assessor?\"\n\n\"So what if I am?\" retorted Slorter defiantly. \"We all have to risk things for advancement.\"\n\n\"I know that only too well,\" I replied, steering them towards a quiet spot next to a model of a matchstick made entirely out of bits of the houses of Parliament. \"Just so long as you know what you're getting into. What happened to Walken and Dedmen?\"\n\n\"They were reassigned,\" explained Lamme.\n\n\"You mean dead?\"\n\n\"No,\" exclaimed Lamme with some surprise. \"I mean reas\u2014 Oh my goodness! Is that what it means?\"\n\nI sighed. These two weren't going to last the day.\n\n\"Your predecessors are both dead, guys\u2014and the ones before that. Four agents gone in less than a week. What happened to Walken's case notes? Accidentally destroyed?\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous!\" laughed Lamme. \"When recovered they were totally intact\u2014they were then put through the shedder by a new member of staff who mistook it for a photocopier.\"\n\n\"Do you have anything at all to go on?\"\n\n\"As soon as they realized it was a shredder, I\u2014sorry, they stopped and we were left with these.\"\n\nHe handed two half documents over. One was a picture of a young woman striding out of a shop laden down with carrier bags and parcels. Her face, tantalizingly enough, was the part that had been destroyed by the shredder. I turned the picture over. On the back was a penciled note: \"A.H. leaves Dorothy Perkins having shopped with a stolen credit card.\"\n\n\"The 'A.H.' means Acheron Hades,\" explained Lamme in a confident tone. \"We were allowed to read part of his file. He can lie in thought, deed and action.\"\n\n\"I know. I wrote it. But this isn't Hades. Acheron doesn't resolve on film.\"\n\n\"Then who is it that we're after?\" asked Slorter.\n\n\"I have no idea. What was on the other document?\"\n\nThis was simply a handwritten page of notes, compiled by Walken about whoever it was they were watching. I read:\n\n\"...9:34: Contact with suspect at Camp Hopson sales. 11:03: Elevenses of carrot juice and flapjack\u2014leaves without paying. 11:48: Dorothy Perkins. 12:57: Lunch. 14:45: Continues shopping. 17:20: Argues with manager of Tammy Girl about returned leg warmers. 17:45: Lost contact. 21:03: Reestablished contact at the HotBox nightclub. 23:02: A.H. leaves the HotBox with male companion. 23:16: Contact lost....\"\n\nI put down the sheet.\n\n\"It's not exactly how I'd describe the work of a master criminal, now is it?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Slorter glumly.\n\n\"What were your orders?\"\n\n\"Classified,\" announced Lamme, who was getting the hang of SpecOps-5 work, right at the point I didn't want him to.\n\n\"Stick to you like glue,\" said Slorter, who understood the situation a lot better, \"and reports every half hour sent to SO-5 HQ in three separate ways.\"\n\n\"You're being used as live bait,\" I told them. \"If I were you I'd go back to SO-23 and -28 just as quick as your legs can carry you.\"\n\n\"And miss all this?\" asked Slorter, replacing her dark glasses and looking every bit the part. SO-5 would be the highest office for either of them. I hoped they lived long enough to enjoy it.\n\nBy ten-thirty the exhibition was pretty much over. I sent Gran home in a cab fast asleep and a bit tipsy. Saveloy tried to kiss me goodnight but I was too quick for him, and Duchamp2924 had managed to sell an installation of his called The Id Within VII\u2014 in a Jar, Pickled. Zorf refused to sell any paintings to anyone who couldn't see what they were, but to neanderthals who could see what they were he gave them away, arguing that the bond between a painting and an owner should not be sullied by anything as obscenely sapien as cash. The flattened tuba was sold too, the new owner asking Joffy to drop it round to him, and if he wasn't at home to just slip it under the door. I went home via Mum's place to collect Pickwick, who hadn't come out of the airing cupboard the entire time I was in Osaka.\n\n\"She insisted on being fed in there,\" explained my mother, \"and the trouble with the other dodos! Let one in and they all want to follow!\"\n\nShe handed me Pickwick's egg wrapped in a towel. Pickwick hopped up and down in a very aggravated manner and I had to show her the egg to keep her happy, then we both drove home to my apartment at the same sedate twenty miles per hour and the egg was safely placed in the linen cupboard with Pickwick sitting on it in a cross mood, very fed up with being moved about."
            },
            {
                "title": "Travels with My Father",
                "text": "\u2002The first time I went traveling with my father was when I was much younger. We attended the opening night of King Lear at the Globe in 1602. The place was dirty and smelly and slightly rowdy, but for all that, not unlike a lot of other opening nights I had attended. We bumped into someone named Bendix Scintilla, who was, like my father, a lonely traveler in time. He said he hung around in Elizabethan England to avoid ChronoGuard patrols. Dad said later that Scintilla had been a truly great fighter for the cause but his drive had left him when they eradicated his best friend and partner. I knew how he felt but did not do as he did.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, Private Diaries\n\nDad turned up for breakfast. I was just flicking through that morning's copy of The Toad at the kitchen table when he arrived. The big news story was the volte-face in Yorrick Kaine's fortunes. From being a sad politically dead no-hoper he was polling ahead of the ruling Teafurst party. The power of Shakespeare. The world suddenly stopped, the picture on the TV froze up and the sound became a dull hum, the same tone and pitch as it was the moment Dad arrived. He had the power to stop the clock like this; time ground to a halt when he visited me. It was a hard-won skill\u2014for him there was no return to normality.\n\n\"Hello, Dad,\" I said brightly. \"How are things?\"\n\n\"Well, it depends,\" he replied. \"Have you heard of Winston Churchill yet?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\n\"Blast!\" he muttered, sitting down and raising his eyebrows at the newspaper headline: Chimp Merely Pet, Claims Croquet Supremo. \"How's your mother?\"\n\n\"She's well. Is the world still going to end next week?\"\n\n\"Looks like it. Does she ever talk about me?\"\n\n\"All the time. I got this report from SpecOps forensics.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said my father, donning his glasses and reading the report carefully. \"Carboxy-methyl-cellulose, phenylalanine and hydrocarbons. Animal fat? Doesn't make any sense at all!\"\n\nHe handed back the report.\n\n\"I don't get it,\" he said quietly, sucking the end of his spectacles. \"That cyclist lived and the world still ended. Maybe it's not him. Trouble is, nothing else happened at that particular time and place.\"\n\n\"Yes it did,\" I said in a sober voice.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nI picked up the evidence bag with the pink goo inside.\n\n\"You gave me this.\"\n\nDad snapped his fingers.\n\n\"That must be it. My handing you the bag of slime was the key event and not the death of the cyclist. Did you tell anyone where that pink goo came from?\"\n\n\"No one.\"\n\nHe thought for a bit.\n\n\"Well,\" he said at last, \"unlike hindsight, avoiding Armageddons is not an exact science. We may have to let events lead us for a while until we can figure it out. How is everything else going?\"\n\n\"Goliath eradicated Landen,\" I replied glumly.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"My husband.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" he said, suddenly thoughtful. \"Any particular reason?\"\n\n\"Goliath want Jack Schitt out of 'The Raven.'\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he exclaimed. \"The old blackmail routine. I'm sorry to hear that, sweetpea. But listen, don't be downhearted. We have a saying about reactualizing eradicatees that goes like this: 'No one is truly dead until they are forgotten.'\"\n\n\"So,\" I answered slowly, \"if I forgot about him, then he would be gone?\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" remarked my father, helping himself to some coffee. \"That's why I'm having so much trouble reactualizing Churchill and Nelson\u2014I have to find someone who remembers them as they were so I can figure out where things might have gone awry.\" He laughed for a moment and then got up.\n\n\"Well, get dressed, we're leaving!\"\n\n\"Where to?\"\n\n\"Where?\" he exclaimed. \"Why, to get your husband back, of course!\"\n\nThis was good news. I quickly dashed into the bedroom to pull some clothes on while Dad read the paper and had a bowl of cereal.\n\n\"Schitt-Hawse told me they had the summer of 1947 sewn up so tight not even a transtemporal gnat could get in there,\" I told him, breathless from preparation.\n\n\"Then,\" replied my father thoughtfully, \"we will have to outsmart them! They will expect us to arrive at the right time and the right place\u2014but we won't. We'll arrive at the right place but at the wrong time, then simply wait. Worth a try, wouldn't you say?\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"Definitely!\"\n\nI was conscious of a series of rapid flashes and there we were in a blacked-out Humber Snipe, driving alongside a dark strip of water on a moonlit night. In the distance I could see searchlights crisscross the sky and the distant thump-thump-thump of a bombing raid.\n\n\"Where are we?\" I asked.\n\nDad changed down a gear.\n\n\"Approaching Henley-on-Thames in occupied England, November 1946.\"\n\nI looked out at the river again, an uncomfortable feeling starting to develop in the pit of my stomach.\n\n\"Is this... is this where Landen\u2014you know\u2014in the car accident?\"\n\n\"This is where it happens, but not when. If I were to jump straight there, Lavoisier would be on to us like a shot. Ever played Kick the Can?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"It's a bit like that. Guile, stealth, patience\u2014and a small amount of cheating. Okay, we're here.\"\n\nWe had reached an area of the road where there was a sharp bend. I could see how an inattentive motorist might easily misjudge the road and end up in the river. I shivered.\n\nWe got out and Dad walked across the road to where a small group of silver birches stood amidst a tangle of dead bracken and brambles. It was a good place to observe the bend in the road; we were barely ten yards away. Dad laid down a plastic carrier bag he had brought and we sat on the grass, leaning up against the smooth bark of a large birch.\n\n\"Now what?\"\n\n\"We wait for six months.\"\n\n\"Six months? Dad, are you crazy? We can't sit here for six months!\"\n\n\"So little time, so much to learn,\" mused my father. \"Do you want a sandwich? Your mother leaves them out for me every morning. I'm not mad keen on corned beef and custard, but it has a sort of eccentric charm\u2014and it does fill a hole.\"\n\n\"Six months?\" I repeated.\n\nHe took a bite from his sandwich.\n\n\"Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travelers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day. Now if we accelerate ourselves like so\u2014\"\n\nThe clouds gathered speed above our heads and the trees shook faster in the light breeze; by the light of the moon I could see that the pace of the river had increased dramatically; a convoy of lorries sped past us in sudden accelerated movement.\n\n\"This is about twenty days per day\u2014every minute compressed into about three seconds. Any slower and we would be visible. As it is, an outside observer might think he saw a man and woman sitting at the bottom of these trees, but if he looked again we would be gone. Ever thought you saw someone, then looked again only to find them gone?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"ChronoGuard traffic moving through, most likely.\"\n\nThe dawn was breaking and presently a German Wehrmacht patrol found our abandoned car and dashed around looking for us before a breakdown truck appeared and took the car away. More cars rushed along the road and the clouds sped rapidly across the sky.\n\n\"Pretty, isn't it?\" said my father. \"I miss all this, but I have so little time these days. At fifty daypers we would still have to wait a good three or four days for Landen's accident; I've a dental appointment, so we're going to have to pick it up a bit.\"\n\nThe clouds sped faster; cars and pedestrians were nothing more than blurs. The shadow of the trees cast by the sun traversed rapidly and lengthened in the afternoon sun; pretty soon it was evening and the clouds were tinged with pink before the rapidly gathering gloom overtook the day and the stars appeared, followed by the moon, which arced rapidly across the sky. The stars spun around the pole star as the sky grew bluer with the early dawn and the sun began its rapid climb in the east.\n\n\"Eight and one-half thousand daypers,\" explained my father. \"This is my favorite bit. Watch the leaves!\"\n\nThe sun now rose and set in under ten seconds. Pedestrians were invisible to us as we were to them, and a car had to be parked for at least two hours for us to see it at all. But the leaves! They turned from green to brown as we watched, the outer branches a blur of movement, the river a soft undulating mirror without so much as a ripple. The plants died off as we watched, the sky grew more overcast and the spells of dark were now much longer than the light. Flecks of light showed along the road where traffic moved, and opposite us an abandoned K\u00fcbelwagen was rapidly stripped of spares and then dumped upside down in the river.\n\n\"I'd never get bored of this, Dad. Do you travel like this all the time?\"\n\n\"Never this slow. This is just for tourists. We usually approach speeds of ten billion or more daypers; if you want to go backwards you have to go faster still!\"\n\n\"Go backwards by going forwards faster?\" I queried, confounded by the illogicality of it.\n\n\"That's enough for now, sweetpea. Just enjoy yourself and watch.\"\n\nI pulled myself closer to him as the air grew chilly and a heavy blanket of snow covered the road and forest around us.\n\n\"Happy New Year,\" said my father.\n\n\"Snowdrops!\" I cried in delight as green shoots nuzzled through the snow and flowered, their heads angling towards the low sun. Then the snow was gone and the river rose again and small amounts of detritus gathered around the upturned K\u00fcbelwagen, which rusted as we watched. The sun flashed past us higher and higher in the sky and soon there were daffodils and crocuses.\n\n\"Ah!\" I said in surprise as a shoot from a small shrub started to grow up my trouser leg.\n\n\"Train them away from your body,\" explained my father, diverting the course of a bramble trying to ensnare him with the palm of his hand. My own shoot pushed against my hand like a small green worm and moved off in another direction. I did the same with the others that threatened me, but Dad went one further and with a practiced hand trained his bramble into a pretty bow.\n\n\"I've known students literally rooted to the spot,\" explained my father. \"It's where the phrase comes from. But it can be fun, too. We had an operative named Jekyll who once trained a four-hundred-year-old oak into a heart as a present for her boyfriend.\"\n\nThe air was warmer now, and as my father checked his chronograph again we started to decelerate. The six months we had spent there had passed in barely thirty minutes. By the time we had returned to one day per day, it was night again.\n\n\"I don't see anyone, do you?\" he hissed.\n\nI looked around; the road was deserted. I opened my mouth to speak but he put a finger to his lips. At that moment a Morris 8 saloon appeared around the corner and drove rapidly down the road. It swerved to avoid a fox, skidded sideways off the road and landed upside down in the river. I wanted to get up, but my father held me with a pinched grip. The driver of the car\u2014who I assumed was Billden\u2014broke the surface of the river, then quickly dived back to the car and resurfaced a few moments later with a woman. He dragged her to the bank and was just about to return to the submerged vehicle when a tall man in a greatcoat appeared from nowhere and placed his hand on Billden's arm.\n\n\"Now!\" said my father and we dashed from the safety of the copse.\n\n\"Leave him!\" yelled my father. \"Leave him to do what he has to do!\"\n\nMy father grabbed the interloper, and with a sharp cry the man vanished. Billden looked confused and made a run for the river, but in a few short moments a half-dozen ChronoGuard had dropped in, Lavoisier amongst them. One of the agents rugby-tackled Landen's father before he could return to rescue Landen. I yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nI yelled, \"NO!\" and pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.\n\nThe next thing I knew I was disarmed, sitting on the ground and feeling shocked and disoriented after my brief enloopment. It was how I imagine a stuck record might feel. Two SO-12 operatives stared at me while my father and Lavoisier talked in angry voices close by. Billden was breathing heavily and sobbing into the damp earth, holding his still-unconscious wife.\n\n\"Bastards!\" I spat. \"My husband's in there!\"\n\n\"So much to learn,\" muttered Lavoisier as I got to my feet and stood by my father's side. \"The infant Parke-Laine is not your husband, he is an accident statistic\u2014or not. It rather depends on your father.\"\n\n\"A lackey for the Goliath Corporation, Lavoisier?\" said Dad quietly. \"You disappoint me.\"\n\n\"Greater need prevails, Colonel. If you'd handed yourself in I wouldn't have had to take these extreme measures. Besides, the ChronoGuard can't function without corporate sponsorship.\"\n\n\"And in return you do a few favors?\"\n\n\"As I said, greater needs prevail. And before you start waving charges of corruption at me, this combined Goliath/ChronoGuard operation has been fully sanctioned by the Chamber. Now, it's so simple even you can understand it. Give yourself up and your daughter can have her husband back\u2014whether or not she decides to help Goliath. As you can see, I am in a very generous mood.\"\n\nI looked at Dad and saw him bite his lip. He rubbed his temples and sighed. He had spent years fighting corruption in the ChronoGuard, and despite Landen's being so close to reactualization, I wasn't going to see Dad lose his liberty over either of us. What had he said?\u2014\"No one is truly dead until they are forgotten.\" Landen was still strong in my memory\u2014we would have another chance.\n\nAs Dad opened his mouth to reluctantly agree, I said: \"No.\"\n\n\"What?\" exclaimed Lavoisier.\n\n\"No,\" I repeated. \"Dad, don't do it\u2014I'll get Jack Schitt out\u2014 or something!\"\n\nDad smiled and rested his hand on my shoulder.\n\n\"Bah!\" went Lavoisier. \"Each as hideously self-righteous as the other!\"\n\nHe nodded to his men, who raised their weapons. But Dad was quick. I felt him grasp my shoulder tightly and we were off. The sun rose quickly as we leapt forward in time, leaving Lavoisier and the others several hours away before they realized what had happened.\n\n\"Let's see if we can lose him!\" muttered my father. \"As for that Chamber stuff\u2014bullshit. Landen's eradication was murder, pure and simple. In fact, it's just the sort of information I need to bring Lavoisier down!\"\n\nDays amounted to no more than brief flashes of alternate dark and light as we hurtled into the future. But the odd thing was, we didn't actually move physically from the place we were standing. The world just aged about us.\n\n\"We're not at full speed,\" Dad explained. \"He might overtake me without thinking. Keep an eye out for\u2014\"\n\nLavoisier and his cronies appeared for no more than the briefest glimpse as they moved past us into the future. Dad stopped abruptly and I staggered slightly as we returned to real time. We moved off the road as a fifties-style truck drove past, horn blaring.\n\n\"What now?\"\n\n\"I think we shook him off. Blast\u2014!\"\n\nWe were off again\u2014Lavoisier had reappeared. We lost him for a moment but pretty soon he was back again, keeping pace with us, matching our speed as we moved through history. As Dad slowed down slightly, so did Lavoisier. As he accelerated, Lavoisier did the same. It was like a transtemporal game of follow the leader.\n\n\"I'm too old to fall for that one!\" smiled Lavoisier.\n\nSoon after, two of his cronies reappeared as each one found us and matched the speed we were moving through time.\n\n\"I knew you'd come,\" said Lavoisier triumphantly, walking towards us slowly as the time flashed past, faster and faster. A new road was built where we were standing, then a bridge, houses, shops. \"Give yourself up. You'll have a fair trial, believe me.\"\n\nThe two other ChronoGuard operatives grabbed my father and held him tightly.\n\n\"I'll see you hang for this, Lavoisier! The Chamber would never sanction such an action. Give Landen back his life and I promise you I will say nothing.\"\n\n\"Well, that's just it, isn't it?\" replied Lavoisier scornfully. \"Who do you think they're going to believe? You, with your record, or me, third in command at the ChronoGuard? Besides, your clumsy attempt to get Landen back has covered any tracks I might have made getting rid of him!\"\n\nLavoisier aimed his gun at my father. The two ChronoGuards held on to Dad tightly to stop him accelerating away, and we buffeted slightly as he tried. Things, to say the least, looked bad. From the makes of the cars on the road I could see we were approaching the early eighties. It wouldn't be long before we arrived at 1985. I had a sudden thought. Wasn't there ChronoGuard industrial action happening sometime soon?\n\n\"Say,\" I said, \"do you guys cross picket lines?\"\n\nThe ChronoGuard agents looked at each other, then at the chronographs on their wrists, then at Lavoisier. The taller of the two was the first to speak.\n\n\"She's right, Mr. Lavoisier, sir. I don't mind bullying and killing innocents, and I'll follow you beyond the crunch normally, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But what?\" asked Lavoisier angrily.\n\n\"\u2014but I am a loyal TimeGuild member. I don't cross picket lines.\"\n\n\"Neither do I,\" replied the other agent, nodding to his friend. \"Likewise and truly.\"\n\nLavoisier smiled engagingly.\n\n\"Listen here, guys, I'll personally pay\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Mr. Lavoisier,\" replied the operative with a hint of indignation, \"but we've been instructed not to enter into any individual contracts.\"\n\nAnd in an instant they were gone as December arrived and the world turned pink. What had once been the road was now a few inches of the same pink slime that Dad had shown me. We were beyond the 12th December 1985, and where before there had been growth, change, seasons, clouds, now there was nothing but a never-ending landscape of shiny opaque curd.\n\n\"Saved by industrial action!\" said Dad, laughing. \"Tell that to your friends at the Chamber!\"\n\n\"Bravo,\" replied Lavoisier wryly. He lowered his pistol. Without his cronies to hold on to Dad and stop him escaping, there was little he could do. \"Bravo. I think we should just say au revoir, my friends\u2014until we meet again.\"\n\n\"Do we have to make it au revoir?\" I asked. \"What's wrong with goodbye?\"\n\nHe didn't have time to answer as I felt Dad tense and we accelerated faster through the timestream. The pink slime was washed away, leaving only earth and rocks, and as I watched, the river moved away from us, meandered off into the flood plain and then swept under our feet and undulated back and forth like a snake before finally being replaced by a lake. We moved faster, and soon I could see the earth start to buckle as the crust bent and twisted under the force of plate tectonics. Plains dropped to make seas and mountains rose in their place. New vegetation reestablished itself as millions of years swept past in a matter of seconds. Vast forests grew and fell. We were covered, then uncovered, then covered again, now in a sea, now inside rock, now surrounded by an ice sheet, now a hundred feet in the air. More forests, then a desert, then mountains rose rapidly in the east, only to be scoured flat a few moments later.\n\n\"Well,\" said my father as we traveled through time, \"Lavoisier in the pocket of Goliath. Who'd have thought it?\"\n\n\"Dad?\" I asked as the sun grew visibly bigger and redder. \"How do we get back?\"\n\n\"We don't go back,\" he replied. \"We can't go back. Once the present has happened, that's it. We just carry on going until we return to where we started. Sort of like a roundabout. Miss an exit and you have to drive around again. There are just a few more exits and the roundabout is much, much, bigger.\"\n\n\"How much bigger?\"\n\n\"A lot.\"\n\n\"How much of a lot?\" I persisted.\n\n\"A lot of a lot. Quiet now\u2014we're nearly there!\"\n\nAnd all of a sudden we weren't nearly there, we were there, back at breakfast in my apartment, Dad turning the pages of the newspaper and me running out from my bedroom having just got dressed. I stopped in midstride and sat down at the table, feeling deflated.\n\n\"Well, we tried, didn't we?\" said my father.\n\n\"Yes Dad,\" I replied, staring at the floor, \"we did. Thanks.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" he said kindly. \"Even the finest eradications leave something behind for us to reactualize from. There is always a way\u2014we just have to find it. Sweetpea, we will get him back\u2014I'm not having my grandchild without a father.\"\n\nHis determination did reassure me, and I thanked him.\n\n\"Good!\" he said, closing his newspaper. \"By the way, did you manage to get any tickets for the Nolan Sisters concert?\"\n\n\"I'm working on it.\"\n\n\"Good show. Well, time waits for no man, as we say\u2014\"\n\nHe squeezed my hand and was gone. The world started up again, the TV came back on, and there was a muffled plocking from Pickwick, who had managed to lock herself in the airing cupboard again. I let her out and she ruffled her feathers in an embarrassed fashion before going off in search of her water dish.\n\nI went in to work, but there was precious little to do. We had a call from an enraged Mrs. Hathaway34, demanding to know when we were going to arrest the unlick'd bear-whelp who had cheated her, and another from a student who wanted to know whether we thought Hamlet's line was this too too solid flesh or this too too sullied flesh, or even perhaps this two-toed swordfish. Bowden spent the morning mouthing the lines for his routine, and by noon there had been two attempts to steal Cardenio from Vole Towers. Nothing serious; SO-14 had doubled the guard. This didn't concern SpecOps-27 in any way, so I spent the afternoon surreptitiously reading the Jurisfiction instruction manual, which felt a little like flicking through a girls' magazine during school. I was tempted to have a go at entering a work of fiction to try out a few of their \"handy bookjumping tips\" (page 28), but Havisham had roundly forbidden me from doing anything of the sort until I was more experienced. By the time I was ready to go home I had learned a few tricks about emergency book evacuation procedures (page 34) and read about the aims of the Bowdlerizers (page 62), who were a group of well-meaning yet censorious individuals hell bent on removing obscenities from fiction. I also read about Heathcliff's unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name of Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights (page 71), the forty-six abortive attempts to illegally save Beth from dying in Little Women (page 74), details of the Character Exchange Program (page 81), using holorimic verse to flush out renegade book people, or PageRunners as they were known (page 96), and how to use spelling mistakes, misprints and double negatives to signal to other PROs in case emergency book evacuation procedures (page 34) failed (page 105). But there weren't only pages of instructions. The last ten or so pages featured hollowed-out recesses which contained devices that were far too deep to have fitted in the book. One of the pages contained a device similar to a flare gun which had \"Mk IV TextMarker\" written on its side. Another page had a glass panel covering a handle like a fire alarm. A note painted on the glass read: IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY* BREAK GLASS. The asterisk, I noted somewhat chillingly, related to the footnote: *Please note: personal destruction does NOT count as an unprecedented emergency. I was just learning about writing brief descriptions of where you are by hand to enable you to get back (page 136) when it was time to clock off. I joined the general exodus and wished Bowden good luck with his routine. He didn't seem in the least nervous, but then he rarely did.\n\nI got home to find my landlord on my doorstep. He looked around to make sure Miss Havisham was nowhere in sight, then said: \"Time's up, Next.\"\n\n\"You said Saturday,\" I replied, unlocking the door.\n\n\"I said Friday,\" countered the man.\n\n\"How about I give you the money on Monday when the banks open?\"\n\n\"How about if I take that dodo of yours and you live rent-free for three months?\"\n\n\"How about you stick it in your ear?\"\n\n\"It doesn't pay to be impertinent to your landlord, Next. Do you have the money or not?\"\n\nI thought quickly.\n\n\"No\u2014but you said Friday, and it's not the end of Friday yet. In fact, I've got over six hours to find the cash.\"\n\nHe looked at me, looked at Pickwick, who had popped her head round the door to see who it was, then at his watch.\n\n\"Very well,\" he said. \"But you'd better have the cash to me by midnight sharp or there'll be serious trouble.\"\n\nAnd with a last withering look, he left me alone on the landing.\n\nI offered Pickwick a marshmallow in a vain attempt to get her to stand on one leg. She stared vacantly at me, so after several more attempts I gave up, fed her and changed the paper in her basket before calling Spike at SO-17. It wasn't the perfect plan, but it did have the benefit of being the only plan, so on that basis alone I reckoned it was worth a try. I was eventually patched through to him in his squad car. I related my problem, and he told me his freelance budget was overstuffed at present as no one ever wanted to be deputized, so we arranged a ludicrously high hourly rate and a time and place to meet. As I put the phone down I realized I had forgotten to say that I preferred not to do any vampire work. What the hell. I needed the money."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fun with Spike",
                "text": "VAN HELSING'S GAZETTE: \"Did you do much SEB containment work?\"\n\nAGENT STOKER: \"Oh yes. The capture of Supreme Evil Beings, or SEBs, as we call them, is the main bread-and-butter work for SO-17. Quite how there can be more than one Supreme Evil Being I have no idea. Every SEB I ever captured considered itself not only the worst personification of unadulterated evil that ever stalked the earth, but also the only personification of unadulterated evil that ever stalked the earth. It must have been quite a surprise\u2014and not a little galling\u2014to be locked away with several thousand other SEBs, all pretty much the same, in row upon row of plain glass jars at the Loathsome Id Containment Facility. I don't know where they came from. I think they leak in from elsewhere, the same way as a leaky tap drips water. [laughs] They should replace the washer.\"\n\n\u2014AGENT \"SPIKE\" STOKER, SO-17 (ret.), interviewed for Van Helsing's Gazette, 1996\n\nThe incidents I am about to relate took place in the winter of the year 1985, at a place whose name even now, by reasons of propriety, it seems safer not to divulge. Suffice to say that the small village I visited that night was deserted, and had been for some time. The houses stood empty and vandalized, the pub, corner store, and village hall but empty shells. As I drove slowly into the dark village, rats scurried amongst the detritus and small pockets of mist appeared briefly in my headlights. I reached the old oak at the crossroads, stopped, switched off the lights and surveyed the morbid surroundings. I could hear nothing. Not a breath of wind gave life to the trees about me, no distant sound of humanity raised my spirits. It had not always been so. Once children played here, neighbors hailed neighbors with friendly greetings, lawn mowers buzzed on a Sunday afternoon, and the congenial crack of leather on willow drifted up from the village green. But no more. All lost one late winter's night not five years earlier, when the forces of evil rose and claimed the village and all that lived within. I looked about, my breath showing on the still night. By the manner in which the blackened timbers of the empty houses pierced the sky it seemed as though the memory of that night was still etched upon the fabric of the ruins. Parked close by was another car, and leaning against the door was the man who had brought me to this place. He was tall and muscular and had faced horrors that I, thankfully, would never have to face. He did this with his heart filled with courage and duty in equal measure, and, as I approached, a smile rose on his features, and he spoke.\n\n\"Quite a shithole, eh, Thurs?\"\n\n\"You're not kidding,\" I replied, glad to be with company. \"All kinds of creepy weirdness was running through my head just now.\"\n\n\"How have you been? Hubby still with an existence problem?\"\n\n\"Still the same\u2014but I'm working on it. What's the score here?\"\n\nSpike clapped his hands together and rubbed them.\n\n\"Ah, yes! Thanks for coming. This is one job I can't do on my own.\"\n\nI followed his gaze towards the derelict church and surrounding graveyard. It was a dismal place even by SpecOps-17 standards, which tended to regard anything that is merely dreary as a good venue for a party. It was surrounded by two rows of high wire fences; no one had come or gone since the \"troubles\" ten years previously. The restless spirits of the condemned souls trapped within the churchyard had killed all plant life not only within the confines of the Dark Place but for a short distance all around it\u2014I could see the grass wither and die not two yards from the inner fence, the trees standing lifeless in the moonlight. In truth, the wire fences were to keep the curious or just plain stupid out as much as to keep the undead in; a ring of burnt yew wood just within the outer wire was the last line of undead defense across which they could never move, but it didn't stop them trying. Occasionally a member of the Dark One's Legion of Lost Souls made it across the inner fence. Here they lumbered into the motion sensors affixed at ten-foot intervals. The undead might be quite good servants of the Dark One, but they were certainly crap when it came to electronics. They usually blundered around in the area between the fences until the early-morning sun or an SO-17 flamethrower reduced their lifeless husk to a cinder, and released the tormented soul to make its way through eternity in peace.\n\nI looked at the derelict church and the scattered tombs of the desecrated graveyard and shivered.\n\n\"What are we doing? Torching the lifeless walking husks of the undead?\"\n\n\"Well, no,\" replied Spike uneasily, moving to the rear of his car. \"I wish it were as simple as that.\"\n\nHe opened the boot of his car and passed me a clip of silver bullets. I reloaded my gun and frowned at him.\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"Dark forces are afoot, Thursday. Another Supreme Evil Being is pacing the earth.\"\n\n\"Another? What happened? Did he escape?\"\n\nSpike sighed.\n\n\"There have been a few cuts in recent years, and SEB transportation is now done by a private contractor. Three months ago they mixed up the consignment and instead of delivering him straight to the Loathsome Id Containment Facility, they left him at the St. Merryweather's Home for Retired Gentlefolk.\"\n\n\"TNN said it was Legionnaire's disease.\"\n\n\"That's the usual cover story. Anyhow, some idiot opened the jar and all hell broke loose. I managed to corner it, but getting the SEB transferred back to his jar is going to be tricky\u2014 and that's where you come in.\"\n\n\"Does this plan involve going in there?\"\n\nI pointed to the church. As if to make a point, two barn owls flew noiselessly from the belfry and soared close by our heads.\n\n\"I'm afraid so. We should be fine. There will be a full moon tonight, and they don't generally perambulate on the lightest of nights\u2014it'll be easy as falling off a log.\"\n\n\"So what do I do?\" I asked uneasily.\n\n\"I can't tell you for fear that he will hear my plan, but keep close and do precisely what I tell you. Do you understand? No matter what it is, you must do precisely what I tell you.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\"Promise?\"\n\n\"I promise.\"\n\n\"No, I mean you have to really promise.\"\n\n\"All right\u2014I really promise.\"\n\n\"Good. I officially deputize you into SpecOps-17. Let's pray for a moment.\"\n\nSpike dropped to his knees and muttered a short prayer under his breath\u2014something about delivering us both from evil and how he hoped his mother would get to the top of the hip replacement waiting list, and that Cindy wouldn't drop him like a hot potato when she found out what he did. As for myself, I said pretty much what I usually said but added that if Landen was watching, could he please please please keep an eye out for me.\n\nSpike got up.\n\n\"Ready?\"\n\n\"Ready.\"\n\n\"Then let's make some light out of this darkness.\"\n\nHe pulled a green holdall from the back of the car and a pump-action shotgun. We walked towards the rusty gates and I felt a chill on my neck.\n\n\"Feel that?\" asked Spike.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"He's close. We'll meet him tonight, I promise you.\"\n\nSpike unlocked the gates, and they swung open with a squeak of long-unoiled hinges. Operatives generally used their flamethrowers through the wire; no one would trouble coming in here unless there was serious work to be done. He relocked the gates behind us and we walked through the undead no-go zone.\n\n\"What about the motion sensors?\"\n\nA beeper went off from his car.\n\n\"I'm pretty much the only recipient. Helsing knows what I'm doing; if we fail he'll be along tomorrow morning to clean up the mess.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the reassurance.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" replied Spike with a grin, \"we won't fail!\"\n\nWe arrived at the second gate. The musty smell of long-departed corpses reached my nostrils. It had been softened to the odor of rotted leaves by age, but it was still unmistakable. Once inside the inner gates we made our way swiftly to the lych-gate and walked through the crumbling structure. The churchyard was a mess. The graves had all been dug up, and the remains of those too far gone to be resurrected had been flung around the graveyard. They had been the fortunate ones. Those that were freshly dead had been press-ganged into a second career as servants of the Dark One\u2014not something you would want to put on your CV, if you still had one.\n\n\"Untidy bunch, aren't they?\" I whispered as we picked our way across the scattered human bones to the heavy oak door.\n\n\"I wrote Cindy some poetry,\" said Spike softly, rummaging in his pocket. \"If anything happens, will you give it to her?\"\n\n\"Give it to her yourself. Nothing's going to happen\u2014you said so yourself. And don't say things like that; it gives me the wobblies.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said Spike, putting the poem back in his pocket. \"Sorry.\"\n\nHe took a deep breath and grasped the handle, turned it and pushed open the door. The interior was not as pitch-black as I had supposed; the moonlight streamed in the remains of the large stained-glass windows and the holes in the roof. Although it was gloomy, we could still see. The church was in no better state than the graveyard. The pews had been thrown around and broken into matchwood. The lectern was lying in an untidy heap, and all sorts of vandalism of a chilling nature had taken place.\n\n\"Home away from home for His Supreme Evilness, wouldn't you say?\" said Spike with a cheery laugh. He moved behind me and shut the heavy door, turning the large iron key in the lock and handing it to me for safekeeping.\n\nI looked around but could see no one in the church. The door to the vestry was firmly locked, and I looked across at Spike.\n\n\"He doesn't appear to be here.\"\n\n\"Oh, he's here, all right\u2014we just have to flush him out. Darkness can hide in all sorts of corners. We just need the right sort of fox terrier to worry it out of the rabbit hole\u2014metaphorically speaking, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course. And where might this metaphorical rabbit hole be?\"\n\nSpike looked at me sternly and pointed to his temple.\n\n\"He's up here. He thought he could dominate me from within, but I've trapped him somewhere in the frontal lobes. I have some uncomfortable memories, and those help to screen him\u2014trouble is, I can't seem to get him out again.\"\n\n\"I have someone like that,\" I replied, thinking of Hades barging into the tearoom memory with Landen.\n\n\"Oh? Well, forcing him out is going to be a bit tricky. I thought his home ground might make him emerge spontaneously, but it seems not. Hang on, let me have a go.\"\n\nSpike leaned against the remains of a pew and grunted and strained for a few minutes, making some of the oddest faces as he tried to expel the spirit of the Evil One. It looked as if he were trying to force a bowling ball out of his left nostril. After a few minutes of exertions he stopped.\n\n\"Bastard. It's like trying to snatch a trout from a mountain stream with a boxing glove. Never mind. I have a plan B which shouldn't fail.\"\n\n\"The metaphorical fox terrier?\"\n\n\"Exactly so. Thursday, draw your weapon.\"\n\n\"Now what?\"\n\n\"Shoot me.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"In the chest, head, anywhere fatal\u2014where did you think? In my foot?\"\n\n\"You're joking!\"\n\n\"Never been more serious.\"\n\n\"Then what?\"\n\n\"Good point. I should have explained that first.\"\n\nHe opened the holdall to reveal a vacuum cleaner.\n\n\"Battery powered,\" explained Spike. \"As soon as his spirit makes an appearance, suck him up.\"\n\n\"As simple as that?\"\n\n\"As simple as that. SEB containment isn't rocket science, Thursday\u2014it's just not for the squeamish. Now, kill me.\"\n\n\"Spike\u2014!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I can't do it!\"\n\n\"But you promised\u2014and what's more you really promised.\"\n\n\"If promising meant killing you,\" I replied in an exasperated tone, \"I wouldn't have gone along with it!\"\n\n\"SpecOps-17 work ain't no bed of roses, Thursday. I've had enough, and believe me, having this little nurk coiled up in my head is not as easy as it looks. I should have never let him in in the first place, but what's done is done. You have to kill me and kill me well.\"\n\n\"You're crazy!\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. But look around you. You followed me in here. Who's crazier? The crazy or the crazy who follows him?\"\n\n\"Listen\u2014\" I began. \"What's that?\"\n\nThere was a thump on the church door.\n\n\"Blast!\" replied Spike. \"The undead. Not necessarily fatal, and severely handicapped by that slow swagger\u2014but they can be troublesome if you get cornered. After you have killed me and captured Chuckles up here, you may have to shoot your way out. Take my keys; these two here are for the inner and outer gates. It's a bit stiff, and you have to turn it to the left\u2014\"\n\n\"I get the picture.\"\n\nAnother thump echoed the first. There was a crash from the vestry, and a shape moved past one of the lower windows.\n\n\"They are gathering!\" said Spike ominously. \"You'd better get a move on.\"\n\n\"I can't!\"\n\n\"You can, Thursday. I forgive you. It's been a good career. Did you know that out of the three hundred and twenty-nine SpecOps-17 operatives who have ever been, only two ever made it to retirement age?\"\n\n\"Did they tell you that when you joined?\"\n\nThere was the sound of stone against stone as one of the graves from the floor was pushed aside. The undead who was thumping on the door was joined by another\u2014and then another. Outside we could hear the noises of the awakening. Despite the moonlit night, the Evil One was calling to his servants\u2014and they were coming running, or shambling, at the very least.\n\n\"Do it!\" said Spike in a more urgent manner. \"Do it now before it's too late!\"\n\nI raised my gun and pointed it at Spike.\n\n\"Do it!\"\n\nI increased the pressure on the trigger as a shaky form stood up from the open grave behind him. I pointed the gun at the figure instead\u2014the pathetic creature was so far dried out it could barely move\u2014but it sensed our presence and teetered in our direction anyway.\n\n\"Don't shoot it, shoot me!\" said Spike with some alarm in his voice. \"The job in hand, Thursday, please!\"\n\nI ignored him and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell harmlessly with a dull thock.\n\n\"Eh?\" I said, rechambering the next round. Spike was quicker than I and loosed off a shot that disintegrated the head of the abomination, who then collapsed in a heap of dried skin and powdery bone. The sound of scrabbling increased from the door.\n\n\"God damn and blast, Next, why couldn't you do as I told you?!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I put that dud on the top of your clip, idiot!\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nHe tapped his head.\n\n\"So I could trick Chuckles in here to come out\u2014he's not going to stay in a host he thinks is about to croak! You pull the trigger, out he comes, dud bullet, Stoker lives, SEB sucked up\u2014QED.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you tell me?\" I asked, my temper rising.\n\n\"You had to mean to kill me! He might be the personification of all that is evil within the heart of man, but he's no fool.\"\n\n\"Oops.\"\n\n\"Oops indeed, knucklehead! Right, we'd better be out of here!\"\n\n\"Isn't there a plan C?\" I asked as we headed for the door.\n\n\"Shit no!\" replied Spike as he fumbled with the key. \"B is as high as I ever get!\"\n\nAnother creature was arising from behind some upended tables that once held a harvest festival display; I caught it before it was even upright. I turned back to Spike, who had the key in the lock and was muttering something about how he wished he was working at Somme World\u2122.\n\n\"Stay away from the door, Spike.\"\n\nHe recognized the serious tone in my voice. He turned to face the barrel of my automatic.\n\n\"Whoa! Careful, Thursday, that's the end that bites.\"\n\n\"It ends here and tonight, Spike.\"\n\n\"This is a joke, right?\"\n\n\"No joke, Spike. You're right. I have to kill you. It's the only way.\"\n\n\"Er\u2014steady on, Thursday\u2014aren't you taking this just a little bit too seriously?\"\n\n\"The Supreme Evil Being must be stopped, Spike\u2014you said so yourself!\"\n\n\"I know I said that, but we can come back tomorrow with a plan C instead!\"\n\n\"There is no plan C, Spike. It ends now. Close your eyes.\"\n\n\"Wait!\"\n\n\"Close them!\"\n\nHe closed his eyes and I pulled the trigger and twitched my hand at the same time; the slug powered its way through three layers of clothing, grazed Spike's shoulder and buried itself in the wood of the old door. It did the trick; with a short and unearthly wail, a wispy entity like smoke emerged from Spike's nostrils and coalesced into the ethereal version of an old and long-unwashed dishcloth.\n\n\"Good work!\" muttered Spike in a very relieved voice as he took a step sideways and started to fumble with the bag that contained the vacuum cleaner. \"Don't let it get near you!\"\n\nI drew back as the wraithlike spirit moved in my direction.\n\n\"Fooled!\" said a low voice. \"Fooled by a mere mortal, how utterly, utterly depressing!\"\n\nThe thumping had now increased and was also coming from the vestry door; I could see the hinge pins start to loosen in the powdery mortar.\n\n\"Keep him talking!\" yelled Spike as he pulled out the vacuum cleaner.\n\n\"A vacuum cleaner!\" sneered the low voice. \"Spike, you insult me!\"\n\nSpike didn't answer but instead unwound the hose and switched the battery-powered appliance on.\n\n\"A vacuum cleaner won't hold me!\" sneered the voice again. \"Do you really believe that I can be trapped in a bag like so much dust?\"\n\nSpike turned the vacuum cleaner on and sucked up the small spirit in a trice.\n\n\"He didn't seem that frightened of it,\" I murmured as Spike fiddled with the machine's controls.\n\n\"This isn't any vacuum cleaner, Thursday. James over at R&D dreamt it up for me. You see, unlike conventional vacuum cleaners, this one works on a dual cyclone principle that traps dust and evil spirits by powerful centrifugal force. Since there is no bag, there is no loss of suction\u2014you can use a lower-wattage motor. There's a hose action\u2014and a small brush for stair carpets.\"\n\n\"You find evil spirits in stair carpets?\"\n\n\"No, but my stair carpets need cleaning just the same as anyone else's.\"\n\nI looked at the glass container and could see a small vestige of white spinning round very rapidly. Spike deftly placed the lid on the jar and detached it from the machine. He held it up, and there inside was a very angry and now quite dizzy spirit of the Evil One\u2014well and truly trapped.\n\n\"As I said,\" went on Spike, \"it's not rocket science. You had me scared, though; I thought you really were going to kill me!\"\n\n\"That,\" I replied, \"was plan D!\"\n\n\"Spike... you... you... you... bastard!\" said the small voice from inside the jar. \"You'll suffer the worst torments in hell for this!\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" replied Spike as he placed the jar in the holdall, \"you and all the rest.\"\n\nHe slung the bag round his body, replaced the spent cartridge in his shotgun with another from his pocket and flicked off the safety.\n\n\"Come on, those deadbeats are starting to get on my tits. Whoever nails the least is a sissypants.\"\n\nWe flung open the door to a bunch of very surprised dried corpses, who fell inwards in a large tangled mass of putrefied torsos and sticklike limbs. Spike opened fire first, and after we had dispatched that lot we dashed outside, dodged the slower of the undead and cut down the others as we made our way to the gates.\n\n\"The Cindy problem,\" I said as the head of a long-dead carcass exploded in response to Spike's shotgun. \"Did you do as I suggested?\"\n\n\"Sure did,\" replied Spike, letting fly at another walking corpse. \"Stakes and crucifixes in the garage and all my back issues of Van Helsing's Gazette in the living room.\"\n\n\"Did she get the message?\" I asked, surprising another walking corpse who had been trying to stay out of the action behind a tombstone.\n\n\"She didn't say anything,\" he replied, decapitating two dried cadavers, \"but the funny thing is, I now find copies of Sniper magazine in the toilet\u2014and a copy of Great Underworld Hitmen has appeared in the kitchen.\"\n\n\"Perhaps she's trying to tell you something?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" agreed Spike, \"but what?\"\n\nI bagged ten undead that night, but Spike only managed eight\u2014 so he was the sissypants. We partook of a haddock chowder with freshly baked bread at a roadside eatery and joked about the night's events while the SEB swore at us from his glass jar. I got my six hundred quid and my landlord didn't get Pickwick. All in all, it was a good evening well spent."
            },
            {
                "title": "Performance-Related Pay, Miles Hawke & Norland Park",
                "text": "\u2002Performance-Related Pay was the bane of SpecOps as much then as it is now. How can your work be assessed when your job is so extraordinarily varied? I would love to have seen Officer Stoker's review panel listen to what he got up to. It was no surprise to anyone that they rarely lasted more than twenty seconds, and he was, as always, awarded an A++\u2014\"Exceptional service, monthly bonus recommended.\"\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, A Life in SpecOps\n\nDog-tired, i slept well that night and had expected to see Landen but dreamt of Humpty Dumpty, which was odd. I went in to work, avoided Cordelia again and then had to take my turn with the employment review board, which was all part of the SpecOps work-related pay scheme. Victor would have given us all A++, but sadly it wasn't conducted by him\u2014it was chaired by the area commander, Braxton Hicks.\n\n\"Ah, Next!\" he said jovially as I entered. \"Good to see you. Have a seat, won't you?\"\n\nI thanked him and sat down. He looked at my performance file over the past few months and stroked his mustache thoughtfully.\n\n\"How's your golf?\"\n\n\"I never took it up.\"\n\n\"Really?\" he said with surprise. \"You sounded most keen when we first met.\"\n\n\"I've been busy.\"\n\n\"Quite, quite. Well, you've been with us three months and on the whole your performance seems to be excellent. That Jane Eyre malarkey was a remarkable achievement; it did SpecOps the power of good and showed those bean counters in London that the Swindon office could hold its own.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"No really, I mean it. All this PR work you've been doing. The network is very grateful to you, and more than that, I'm grateful to you. I could have been on the scrap heap if it wasn't for you. I'd really like to shake you by the hand and\u2014I don't do this very often, y'know\u2014put you up for membership of my golf club. Full membership, no less\u2014the sort usually reserved for men.\"\n\n\"That's more than generous of you,\" I said, getting up to leave.\n\n\"Sit down, Next\u2014that was just the friendly bit.\"\n\n\"There's more?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied, his demeanor changing abruptly. \"Despite all of that, your conduct over the past two weeks has been less than satisfactory. I've had a complaint from Mrs. Hathaway34 to say that you failed to spot her forged copy of Cardenio.\"\n\n\"I told her it was a forgery in no uncertain terms.\"\n\n\"That's your story, Next. I haven't located your report on the matter.\"\n\n\"I didn't think it was worth the trouble to write one, sir.\"\n\n\"We have to keep on top of paperwork, Next. If the new legislation on SpecOps accountability comes into force, we will be under severe scrutiny every time we so much as sneeze, so get used to it. And what's this about you hitting a neanderthal?\"\n\n\"A misunderstanding.\"\n\n\"Hm. Is this also a misunderstanding?\"\n\nHe laid a police charge sheet on the desk.\n\n\"Permissioning a horse and cartecar to be driven by personn of low moral turpithtude. You lent your car to a lunatic driver, then helped her to escape the law. What on earth did you think you were doing?\"\n\n\"The greater good, sir.\"\n\n\"No such thing,\" he barked back, handing me a SpecOps claim docket. \"Officer Tillen at stores gave me this. It's your claim for a new Browning automatic.\"\n\nI stared dumbly at the docket. My original Browning, the one I had looked after from first issue, had been left in a motorway services somewhere in a patch of bad time.\n\n\"I take this very seriously, Next. It says here you 'lost' SpecOps property in unsanctioned SO-12 work. Flagrant disregard for network property makes me very angry, Next. There is our budget to think of, you know.\"\n\n\"I thought it would come down to that,\" I murmured.\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"I said: 'I'll retrieve it eventually, sir.'\"\n\n\"Maybe so. But lost property has to come under the monthly current expenditure and not the yearly resupply budget. We've been a little stretched recently. Your escapade with Jane Eyre was successful but not without cost. All things considered, I am sorry but I will have to mark your performance as 'F\u2014definite room for improvement.'\"\n\n\"An F? Sir, I must protest!\"\n\n\"Talk's over, Next. I'm truly sorry. This is quite outside my hands.\"\n\n\"Is this an SO-1 way of punishing me?\" I asked indignantly. \"You know I've never had anything lower than an A in all my eight years with the service!\"\n\n\"Raising your voice does you no good at all, young lady,\" replied Hicks in an even tone, wagging his finger as a man might do to his spaniel. \"This interview is over. I am sorry, believe me.\"\n\nI didn't believe he was sorry for one moment\u2014and suspected that he had been influenced from higher up. I sighed, got up, saluted and made for the door.\n\n\"Wait!\" said Braxton. \"There's something else.\"\n\nI returned.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Keep your temper.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nHe handed over a packet of clothes in a polythene bundle.\n\n\"The department is now sponsored by the Toast Marketing Board. You'll find a hat, T-shirt and jacket in this package. Wear them when you can and be prepared for some corporate entertainment.\"\n\n\"Sir\u2014!\"\n\n\"Don't complain. If you hadn't eaten that toast on The Adrian Lush Show they never would have contacted us. Over a million quid in funding\u2014not to be sniffed at with people like you soaking up the funds. Shut the door on the way out, will you?\"\n\nThe morning's fun wasn't over. As I stepped out of Braxton's office I almost bumped into Flanker.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said. \"Next. A word with you, if you don't mind\u2014?\"\n\nIt wasn't a request\u2014it was an order. I followed him into an empty interview room and he closed the door.\n\n\"Seems to me you're in such deep shit your eyes will turn brown, Next.\"\n\n\"My eyes are already brown, Flanker.\"\n\n\"Then you're halfway there already. I'll come straight to the point. You earned \u00a3600 last night.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"The service takes a dim view of moonlighting.\"\n\n\"It was Stoker at SO-27,\" I told him. \"I was deputized\u2014all aboveboard.\"\n\nFlanker went quiet. His intelligence-gathering had obviously let him down badly.\n\n\"Can I go?\"\n\nFlanker sighed.\n\n\"Listen, here, Thursday,\" he began in a more moderate tone of voice, \"we need to know what your father is up to.\"\n\n\"What's the problem? Industrial action standing in the way of next week's cataclysmic event?\"\n\n\"Freelance navigators will sort it out, Next.\"\n\nHe was bluffing.\n\n\"You have no more idea about the nature of the Armageddon than Dad, me, Lavoisier, or anyone else, do you?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not,\" replied Flanker, \"but we at SpecOps are far better suited to having no clue at all than you and that chronupt father of yours.\"\n\n\"Chronupt?\" I said angrily, getting to my feet. \"My father? That's a joke! What is your golden boy Lavoisier doing eradicating my husband, then?\"\n\nFlanker eyed me silently for a moment.\n\n\"That's a very serious accusation,\" he observed. \"Have you any proof?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" I replied, barely able to conceal my rage. \"Isn't that the point of eradication?\"\n\n\"I have known Lavoisier for longer than I would care to forget,\" intoned Flanker gravely, \"and I have never had anything but the highest regard for his integrity. Making wild accusations isn't going to help your cause one iota.\"\n\nI sat down again and rubbed a hand across my face. Dad had been right. Accusing Lavoisier of any wrongdoing was pointless.\n\n\"Can I go?\"\n\n\"I have nothing to hold you on, Next. But I'll find something. Every agent is on the make. It's just a question of digging deep enough.\"\n\n\"How did it go?\" asked Bowden when I got back to the office.\n\n\"I got an F,\" I muttered, sinking into my chair.\n\n\"Flanker,\" said Bowden, trying on his Eat More Toast cap. \"Has to be.\"\n\n\"How did the stand-up go?\"\n\n\"Very well, I think,\" answered Bowden, dropping the cap in the bin. \"The audience seemed to find it very funny indeed. So much so that they want me to come back as a regular\u2014What are you doing?\"\n\nI slithered to the floor as quickly as I could and hid under the table. I would have to trust Bowden's quick wits.\n\n\"Hello!\" said Miles Hawke as he walked into the room. \"Has anyone seen Thursday?\"\n\n\"I think she's at her monthly assessment meeting,\" replied Bowden, whose deadpan delivery was obviously as well suited to lying as it was to stand-up. \"Can I take a message?\"\n\n\"No, just ask her to get in contact, if she could.\"\n\n\"Why don't you stay and wait?\" said Bowden. I kicked him under the table.\n\n\"No, I'd better run along,\" replied Miles. \"Just tell her I dropped by, won't you?\"\n\nHe walked off and I stood up. Bowden, very unusually for him, was giggling.\n\n\"What's so funny?\"\n\n\"Nothing\u2014why don't you want to see him?\"\n\n\"Because I might be carrying his baby.\"\n\n\"You're going to have to speak up. I can hardly hear you.\"\n\n\"I might,\" I repeated in a hoarse whisper, \"be carrying his baby!\"\n\n\"I thought you said it was Land\u2014What's the matter now?\"\n\nI had dropped to the ground again as Cordelia Flakk walked in. She was scanning the office for me in annoyance, hands on hips.\n\n\"Have you seen Thursday about?\" she asked Bowden. \"She's got to meet these people of mine.\"\n\n\"I'm really not sure where she is,\" replied Bowden.\n\n\"Really? Then who was it I saw ducking under this table?\"\n\n\"Hello, Cordelia,\" I said from beneath the table. \"I dropped my pencil.\"\n\n\"Sure you did.\"\n\nI clambered out and sat down at my desk.\n\n\"I expected more from you, Bowden,\" said Flakk crossly, then turned to me: \"Now, Thursday. We promised these two people they could meet you. Do you really want to disappoint them? Your public, you know.\"\n\n\"They're not my public, Cordelia, they're yours. You made them for me.\"\n\n\"I've had to keep them at the Finis for another night,\" implored Cordelia. \"Costs are escalating. They're downstairs right now. I knew you'd be in for your assessment. How did you do, by the way?\"\n\n\"Don't ask.\"\n\nI looked at Bowden, who shrugged. Looking for some sort of rescue, I twisted on my seat to where Victor was running a possible unpublished sequel of 1984 entitled 1985 through the Prose Analyzer. All the other members of the office were busy on their various tasks. It looked like my PR career was just about to restart.\n\n\"All right,\" I sighed, \"I'll do it.\"\n\n\"Better than hiding under the desk,\" said Bowden. \"All that jumping around is probably not good for the baby.\"\n\nHe clapped his hand over his mouth, but it was too late.\n\n\"Baby?\" echoed Cordelia. \"What baby?\"\n\n\"Thanks, Bowden.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Well, congratulations!\" said Cordelia, hugging me. \"Who is the lucky father?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"You mean you haven't told him yet?\"\n\n\"No, I mean I don't know. My husband's, I hope.\"\n\n\"You're married?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"But you said\u2014?\"\n\n\"Yes I did,\" I retorted as dryly as I could. \"Confusing, isn't it?\"\n\n\"This is very bad PR,\" muttered Cordelia darkly, sitting on the edge of the desk to steady herself. \"The leading light of SpecOps knocked up in a bus shelter by someone she doesn't even know!\"\n\n\"Cordelia, it's not like that\u2014and I wasn't 'knocked up'\u2014and who mentioned anything about bus shelters? Perhaps the best thing would be if you kept this under your hat and we pretend that Bowden never said anything.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" muttered Bowden meekly.\n\nCordelia leaped to her feet.\n\n\"Good thinking, Next. We can tell everyone you have water retention or an eating disorder brought on by stress.\" Her face fell. \"No, that won't work. The Toad will see through it like a shot. Can't you get married really quickly to someone? What about to Bowden? Bowden, would you do the decent thing for the sake of SpecOps?\"\n\n\"I'm seeing someone over at SpecOps-13,\" replied Bowden hurriedly.\n\n\"Blast!\" muttered Flakk. \"Thursday, any ideas?\"\n\nBut this was a part of Bowden I knew nothing about.\n\n\"You never told me you were seeing someone over at SO-13!\"\n\n\"I don't have to tell you everything.\"\n\n\"But I'm your partner, Bowden!\"\n\n\"Well, you never told me about Miles.\"\n\n\"Miles?\" exclaimed Cordelia. \"The oh-so-handsome-to-die-for Miles Hawke?\"\n\n\"Thanks, Bowden.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"That's wonderful!\" exclaimed Cordelia, clapping her hands together. \"A dazzling couple! 'SpecOps wedding of the year!' This is worth soooooo much coverage! Does he know?\"\n\n\"No. And you're not going to tell him. And what's more\u2014 Bowden\u2014it might not even be his.\"\n\n\"Which puts us back to square one again!\" responded Cordelia in a huff. \"Stay here, I'm going to fetch my guests. Bowden, don't let her out of your sight!\"\n\nAnd she was gone.\n\nBowden stared at me for a moment and then asked: \"Do you really believe the baby is Landen's?\"\n\n\"I'm hoping.\"\n\n\"You're not married, Thurs. You might think you are, but you're not. I looked at the records. Landen Parke-Laine died in 1947.\"\n\n\"This time he did. My father and I went\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't have a father, Thursday. There is no record of anyone on your birth certificate. I think maybe you should speak to one of the stressperts.\"\n\n\"And end up doing comedy stand-up, arranging pebbles or counting blue cars? No, thanks.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"He is very handsome,\" said Bowden.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Miles Hawke, of course.\"\n\n\"Oh. Yes, yes I know he is.\"\n\n\"Very polite, very popular.\"\n\n\"I know that.\"\n\n\"A child without a father\u2014\"\n\n\"Bowden, I'm not in love with him and it isn't his baby\u2014 okay?\"\n\n\"Okay, okay. Let's forget it.\"\n\nWe sat there in silence for a bit. I played with a pencil and Bowden stared out of the window.\n\n\"What about the voices?\"\n\n\"Bowden\u2014!\"\n\n\"Thursday, this is for your own good. You told me you heard them yourself, and officers Hurdyew, Tolkien and Lissning heard you talking and listening to someone in the upstairs corridor.\"\n\n\"Well, the voices have stopped,\" I said categorically. \" Nothing like that will ever happen again.\n\n\"Oh shit.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'Oh shit'?\"\n\n\"Nothing\u2014just, well, that. I've got to use the ladies' room\u2014 would you excuse me?\"\n\nI left Bowden shaking his head sadly and was soon in the ladies'. I checked the stalls were empty and then said: \"Miss Havisham, are you there?\"\n\n\"You must understand, Miss Havisham, that where I come from customs are different from your own. People curse here as a matter of course.\"\n\n\"I'll be there directly, ma'am!\"\n\nI bit my lip and rushed out of the ladies', grabbed my Jurisfiction travelbook and my jacket and was heading back when\u2014\n\n\"Thursday!\" went a loud and strident voice that I knew could only be Flakk's. \"I've got the winners outside in the corridor\u2014!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Cordelia, but I have to go to the loo.\"\n\n\"Don't think I'm going to fall for that one again, do you?\" she growled under her breath.\n\n\"It's true this time.\"\n\n\"And the book?\"\n\n\"I always read on the loo.\"\n\nShe narrowed her eyes at me and I narrowed my eyes back.\n\n\"Very well,\" she said finally, \"but I'm coming with you.\"\n\nShe smiled at the two lucky winners of her crazy competition, who were outside in the corridor. They smiled back through the half-glazed office door and we both trotted into the ladies'.\n\n\"Ten minutes,\" she said to me as I locked myself in a cubicle. I opened the book and started to read:\n\n\"Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. 'Dear, dear Norland!' said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there....\"\n\nThe small melamine cubicle started to evaporate, and in its place was a large park, bathed in the light of a dying sun, the haze softening the shadows and making the house glow in the failing light. There was a light breeze and in front of the house a lone girl dressed in a Victorian dress, bonnet and shawl. She walked slowly, gazing fondly at the\u2014\n\n\"Do you always read aloud in the toilet?\" asked Cordelia from behind the door.\n\nThe images evaporated in a flash and I was back in the ladies'.\n\n\"Always,\" I replied. \"And if you don't leave me alone, I'll never be finished.\"\n\n\"...when shall I cease to regret you!\u2014when learn to feel a home elsewhere?\u2014Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you know more!\u2014And you, ye well known trees!\u2014But you will continue...\"\n\nThe house came back again, the young woman talking quietly, matching her words to mine as I drifted into the book. I was now sitting not on a hard SpecOps standard toilet seat but a white-painted wrought-iron garden bench. I stopped reading when I was certain I was completely within Sense and Sensibility and listened to Marianne as she finished her speech:\n\n\"...and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade!\u2014But who will remain to enjoy you?\"\n\nShe sighed dramatically, clasped her hands to her breast and sobbed quietly for a moment or two. Then she took one long look at the large white-painted house and turned to face me.\n\n\"Hello!\" she said in a friendly voice. \"I haven't seen you around here before. Would you be working for Juris-thingummy-whatsit?\"\n\n\"Don't we have to be careful as to what we say?\" I managed to utter, looking around nervously.\n\n\"Goodness me no!\" exclaimed Marianne with a delightful giggle. \"The chapter is over, and besides, this book is written in the third person. We are free to do what we please until tomorrow morning, when we depart for Devon. The next two chapters are heavy with exposition\u2014I hardly have anything to do, and I say even less! You look confused, poor thing! Have you been into a book before?\"\n\n\"I went into Jane Eyre once.\"\n\nMarianne frowned overdramatically.\n\n\"Poor, dear, sweet Jane! I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people reading your thoughts! Here we do what we are told but think what we wish. It is a much happier circumstance, believe me!\"\n\n\"What do you know about Jurisfiction?\" I asked.\n\n\"They will be arriving shortly,\" she explained. \"Mrs. Dashwood might be beastly to Mama, but she understands self-preservation. We wouldn't want to suffer the same tragic fate as Confusion and Conviviality, now would we?\"\n\n\"Is that Austen?\" I queried. \"I've not even heard of it!\"\n\nMarianne sat down next to me and rested her hand on my arm.\n\n\"Mama said it was socialist collective,\" she confided in a hoarse whisper. \"There was a revolution\u2014they took over the entire book and decided to run it on the principle of every character having an equal part, from the Duchess to the cobbler! I ask you! Jurisfiction tried to save it, of course, but it was too far gone\u2014not even Ambrose could do anything. The entire book was... boojummed!\"\n\nShe said the last word so seriously that I would have laughed had she not been staring at me so intensely with her dark brown eyes.\n\n\"How I do talk!\" she said at last, jumping up, clapping her hands and doing a twirl on the lawn. \"...and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade...\"\n\nShe stopped and checked herself, placed her hand over her mouth and nose and uttered an embarrassed girlish giggle.\n\n\"What a loon!\" she muttered. \"I've said that already! Farewell, Miss, miss\u2014I beg your pardon but I don't know your name!\"\n\n\"It's Thursday\u2014Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"What a strange name!\"\n\nShe gave a small curtsy in a half-joking way.\n\n\"I am Marianne Dashwood, and I welcome you, Miss Next, to Sense and Sensibility.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I replied. \"I'm sure I shall enjoy it here.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you shall. We all enjoy it tremendously\u2014do you think it shows?\"\n\n\"I think it shows a great deal, Miss Dashwood.\"\n\n\"Call me Marianne, if it pleases you.\"\n\nShe stopped and thought for a moment, smiled politely, looked over her shoulder and then said:\n\n\"May I be so bold as to ask you a favor?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nShe sat on the seat with me and stared into my eyes.\n\n\"Please, I wonder if I might be so bold as to ask when your own book is set.\"\n\n\"I'm not a bookperson, Miss Dashwood\u2014I'm from the real world.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she exclaimed. \"Please excuse me; I didn't mean to imply that you weren't real or anything. In that case, when, might I ask, is your own world set?\"\n\nI smiled at her strange logic and told her: 1985. She was pleased to hear this and leaned closer still.\n\n\"Please excuse the impertinence, but would you bring something back next time you come?\"\n\n\"Such as\u2014?\"\n\n\"Mintolas. I simply adore Mintolas. You've heard of them, of course? A bit like Munchies but minty\u2014and, if it's no trouble, a few pairs of nylon tights\u2014and some AA batteries; a dozen would be perfect.\"\n\n\"Sure. Anything else?\"\n\nMarianne thought for a moment.\n\n\"Elinor would so hate me asking favors from a stranger, but I happen to know she has an inordinate fondness for Marmite\u2014and some real coffee for Mama.\"\n\nI told her I would do what I could. She thanked me profusely, pulled on a leather flying helmet and goggles that she had secreted within her shawl, held my hand for a moment and then was gone, running across the lawn."
            },
            {
                "title": "Roll Call at Jurisfiction",
                "text": "Boojum: Term used to describe the total annihilation of a word/ line/character/subplot/book/series. Complete and irreversible, the nature of a boojum is still the subject of some heated speculation. Some past members of Jurisfiction theorize that a Boojum might be a gateway to an \"antilibrary\" somewhere beyond the \" imagination horizon.\" It is possible that the semimythical Snark may hold the key to decipher what is, at present, a mystery.\n\nBowdlerizers: A group of fanatics who attempt to excise obscenity and profanity from all texts. Named after Thomas Bowdler, who attempted to make Shakespeare \"family reading\" by cutting lines from the plays, believing by so doing that \"the transcendental genius of the poet would undoubtedly shine with greater luster.\" Bowdler died in 1825, but his torch is still carried, illegally, by active cells eager to complete and extend his unfinished work at any cost. Attempts to infiltrate the Bowdlerizers have so far met with no success.\n\n\u2014UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT, The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library (glossary)\n\nIWATCHED MARIANNE until she was no longer in sight and then, realizing that her \"remain to enjoy you\" line was the last of Chapter Five and Chapter Six begins with the Dashwoods already embarked on their journey, I decided to wait and see what a chapter ending looks like. If I had expected a thunderclap or something equally dramatic, I was to be disappointed. Nothing happened. The leaves in the trees gently rustled, the occasional sound of a wood pigeon reached my ears, and before me a red squirrel hopped across the grass. I heard an engine start up and a few minutes later a biplane rose from the meadow behind the rhododendrons, circled the house twice and then headed off towards the setting sun. I rose and walked across the finely manicured lawn, nodded at a gardener who tipped his head in reply and made my way to the front door. Norland was never described in that much detail in Sense and Sensibility, but it was every bit as impressive as I thought it would be. The house was located within a broad sweeping parkland which was occasionally punctuated by mature oak trees. In the distance I could see only woods, and beyond that, the occasional church spire. Outside the front door there was a Bugatti 35B motorcar and a huge white charger saddled for battle, munching idly on some grass. A large white dog was attached to the saddle by a length of string, and it had managed to wrap itself three times around a tree.\n\nI trotted up the steps and tugged on the bell pull. Within a few minutes a uniformed footman answered and looked at me blankly.\n\n\"Thursday Next,\" I said. \"Here for Jurisfiction\u2014Miss Havisham.\"\n\nThe footman, who had large bulging eyes and a curved head like a frog, opened the door and announced me simply by rearranging the words a bit:\n\n\"Miss Havisham, Thursday Next\u2014here for Jurisfiction!\"\n\nI stepped inside and frowned at the empty hall, wondering quite who the footman thought he was actually announcing me to. I turned to ask him where I should go, but he bowed stiffly and walked\u2014excruciatingly slowly, I thought\u2014to the other side of the hall, where he opened a door and then stood back, staring at something above and behind me. I thanked him, stepped in and found myself in the central ballroom of the house. The room was painted in white and pale blue, and the walls, where not decorated with delicate plaster moldings, were hung with lavish gold-framed mirrors. Above me the glazed ceiling let in the evening light, but already I could see servants preparing candelabra.\n\nIt had been a long time since the Jurisfiction offices had been used as a ballroom. The floor space was liberally covered with sofas, tables, filing cabinets and desks piled high with paperwork. To one side a table had been set up with coffee urns, and tasty snacks were arrayed upon delicate china. There were two dozen or so people milling about, sitting down, chatting or just staring vacantly into space. I could see Akrid Snell at the far side of the room, speaking into what looked like a small gramophone horn connected by a flexible brass tube to the floor. I tried to get his attention, but at that moment\u2014\n\n\"Please,\" said a voice close by, \"draw me a sheep!\"\n\nI looked down to see a young boy of no more than ten. He had curly golden locks and stared at me with an intensity that was, to say the least, unnerving.\n\n\"Please,\" he repeated, \"draw me a sheep.\"\n\n\"You had better do as he asks,\" said a familiar voice close by. \"Once he starts on you he'll never let it go.\"\n\nIt was Miss Havisham. I dutifully drew the best sheep I could and handed the result to the boy, who walked away, very satisfied with the result.\n\n\"Welcome to Jurisfiction,\" said Miss Havisham, still limping slightly from her injury at Booktastic and once more dressed in her rotted wedding robes. \"I won't introduce you to everyone straightaway, but there are one or two people you should know.\"\n\nShe took me by the arm and guided me towards a conservatively dressed lady who was attending to the servants as they laid out some food upon the table.\n\n\"This is Mrs. John Dashwood; she graciously allows us the use of her home. Mrs. Dashwood, this is Miss Thursday Next\u2014 she is my new apprentice.\"\n\nI shook Mrs. Dashwood's delicately proffered hand, and she smiled politely.\n\n\"Welcome to Norland Park, Miss Next. You are fortunate indeed to have Miss Havisham as your teacher\u2014she does not often take pupils. But tell me, as I am not so very conversant with contemporary fiction\u2014what book are you from?\"\n\n\"I'm not from a book, Mrs. Dashwood.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood looked startled for a moment, then smiled even more politely, took my arm in hers, muttered a pleasantry to Miss Havisham about \"getting acquainted\" and steered me off towards the tea table.\n\n\"How do you find Norland, Miss Next?\"\n\n\"Very lovely, Mrs. Dashwood.\"\n\n\"Can I offer you a Crumbobbilous cutlet?\" she asked in a clearly agitated manner, handing me a sideplate and napkin and indicating the food.\n\n\"Or some tea?\"\n\n\"No, thank you.\"\n\n\"I'll come straight to the point, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"You seem most anxious to do so.\"\n\nShe glanced furtively to left and right and lowered her voice.\n\n\"Does everyone out there think my husband and I are so very cruel, cutting the girls and their mother out of Henry Dashwood's bequest?\"\n\nShe looked at me so very seriously that I wanted to smile.\n\n\"Well,\" I began\u2014\n\n\"Oh I knew it!\" gasped Mrs. Dashwood. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead in a dramatic gesture. \"I told John that we should reconsider\u2014I expect out there we are burnt in effigy, reviled for our actions, damned for all time?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I said, attempting to console her. \"Narratively speaking, without your actions there wouldn't be much of a story.\"\n\nMrs. Dashwood took a handkerchief from her cuff and dried her eyes, which, as far as I could see, had not even the smallest tear in them.\n\n\"You are so right, Miss Next. Thank you for your kind words\u2014but if you hear anyone speaking ill of me, please tell them that it was my husband's decision\u2014I tried to stop him, believe me!\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I said, reassuring her. I made my excuses and left to find Miss Havisham.\n\n\"We call it minor character syndrome,\" explained Miss Havisham after I rejoined her. \"Quite common when an essentially minor character has a large and consequential part. She and her husband have allowed us the use of this room ever since the trouble with Confusion and Conviviality. In return we make all Jane Austen books a matter of our special protection; we don't want anything like that to happen again. There is a satellite office in the basement of Elsinore castle run by Mr. Falstaff\u2014 that's him over there.\"\n\nShe pointed to an overweight man with a florid face who was in conversation with another agent. They both laughed uproariously at something Falstaff had said.\n\n\"Who is he talking to?\"\n\n\"Vernham Deane, romantic lead in one of Daphne Farquitt's novels. Mr. Deane is a stalwart member of Jurisfiction, so we don't hold it against him\u2014\"\n\n\"WHERE IS HAVISHAM!?\" bellowed a voice like thunder. The doors burst open and a very disheveled Red Queen hopped in. The whole room fell silent. Except, that is, for Miss Havisham, who said in an unnecessarily provocative tone:\n\n\"Bargain hunting just doesn't suit some people, now does it?\"\n\nThe assembled Jurisfiction operatives, realizing that all they were witnessing was another round in a long and very personal battle, carried on talking.\n\nThe Red Queen had a large and painful-looking black eye, and two of her fingers were in a splint. The sales at Booktastic had not been kind to her.\n\n\"What's on your mind, your majesty?\" asked Havisham in an even tone.\n\n\"Meddle in my affairs again,\" growled the Red Queen, \"and I won't be responsible for my actions!\"\n\nI shuffled uncomfortably and wanted to move away from this embarrassing confrontation. But since I thought someone should be on hand to separate them if there was a fight, I remained where I was.\n\n\"Don't you think you're taking this a little too seriously, your majesty?\" said Havisham, always maintaining due regal respect. \"It was only a set of Farquitts, after all!\"\n\n\"A boxed set!\" replied the Red Queen coldly. 'You deliberately took the gift I planned to give to my own dear beloved husband. And do you know why?\"\n\nMiss Havisham pursed her lips and was silent.\n\n\"Because you can't bear it that I'm happily married!\"\n\n\"Rubbish!\" returned Miss Havisham angrily. \"We beat you fair and square!\"\n\n\"Ladies and, er, ladies and majesties, please!\" I said in a conciliatory tone. \"Do we have to argue here at Norland Park?\"\n\n\"Ah yes!\" said the Red Queen. \"Do you know why we use Sense and Sensibility? Why Miss Havisham insisted on it, in fact?\"\n\n\"Don't believe this,\" murmured Miss Havisham. \"It's all poppycock. Her majesty is a verb short of a sentence.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you why,\" went on the Red Queen angrily, \"because in Sense and Sensibility there are no strong father or husband figures!\"\n\nMiss Havisham was silent.\n\n\"Face the facts, Havisham. Neither the Dashwoods, the Steeles, the Ferrar brothers, Eliza Brandon or Willoughby have a father to guide them! Aren't you taking your hatred of men just a little too far?\"\n\n\"Deluded,\" replied Havisham, then added after a short pause: \"Well then, your majesty, since we are in a questioning vein, just what is it, exactly, that you rule over?\"\n\nThe Red Queen turned scarlet\u2014which was tricky, as she was quite red to begin with\u2014and pulled a small dueling pistol from her pocket. Havisham was quick and also drew her weapon, and there they stood, quivering with rage, guns pointing at each other. Fortunately the sound of a bell tingling caught their attention and they both lowered their weapons.\n\n\"The Bellman!\" hissed Miss Havisham as she took my arm and moved towards where a man dressed as a town crier stood on a low dais. \"Showtime!\"\n\nThe small group of people gathered around the crier; the Red Queen and Miss Havisham stood side by side, their argument seemingly forgotten. I looked around at the odd assortment of characters and wondered quite what I was doing here. Still, if I was to learn how to travel in books, I would have to know more. I listened attentively.\n\nThe Bellman put down his bell and consulted a list of notes.\n\n\"Is everyone here? Where's the Cat?\"\n\n\"I'm over there,\" purred the Cat, sitting precariously atop one of the gold-framed mirrors.\n\n\"Good. Okay, anyone missing?\"\n\n\"Shelley's gone boating,\" said a voice at the back. \"He'll be back in an hour if the weather holds.\"\n\n\"O-kay,\" continued the Bellman. \"Jurisfiction session number 40311 is now in session.\"\n\nHe tingled his bell again, coughed and consulted a clipboard.\n\n\"Item one is bad news, I'm afraid.\"\n\nThere was a respectful hush. He paused for a moment and picked his words carefully.\n\n\"I think we will all have to come to the conclusion that David and Catriona aren't coming back. It's been eighteen sessions now, and we have to assume that they've been... boojummed.\"\n\nThere was a reflective pause.\n\n\"We remember David and Catriona Balfour as friends, colleagues, worthy members of our calling, protagonists in Kidnapped and Catriona and for all the booksploring they did\u2014 especially finding a way into Barchester, for which we will always be grateful. I ask for a minute's silence. To the Balfours!\"\n\n\"The Balfours!\" we all repeated. Then, heads bowed, we stood in silence. After a minute ticked by, the Bellman spoke again.\n\n\"Now, I don't want to sound disrespectful, but what we learn from this is that we must always sign the outings book so we know where you are\u2014particularly if you are exploring new routes. Don't forget the ISBN numbers either\u2014they weren't introduced just for cataloguing, now were they? Mr. Bradshaw's maps might have a traditionalist's charm about them\u2014\"\n\n\"Who's Bradshaw?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Commander Bradshaw,\" explained Havisham. \"Retired now but a wonderful character\u2014did most of the booksploring in the early days.\"\n\n\"\u2014but they are old and full of errors,\" continued the Bellman. \"New technology is here to be used, guys. Anyone who wants to attend a training course on how ISBN numbers relate to transbook travel, see the Cat for details.\"\n\nThe Bellman looked around the room as if to reinforce the order, then unfolded a sheet of paper and adjusted his glasses.\n\n\"Right. Item two. New recruit. Thursday Next. Where are you?\"\n\nThe assembled Prose Resource Operatives looked around the room before I waved a hand to get their attention.\n\n\"There you are. Thursday is apprenticed to Miss Havisham; I'm sure you'll all join me in welcoming her to our little band.\"\n\n\"Didn't like the way Jane Eyre turned out?\" said someone in a hostile tone from the back. Everyone watched as a middle-aged man stood up and walked up to the Bellman's dais. There was silence.\n\n\"Who's that?\" I hissed.\n\n\"Harris Tweed,\" replied Havisham. \"Dangerous and arrogant but quite brilliant\u2014for a man.\"\n\n\"Who approved her application?\" asked Tweed.\n\n\"She didn't apply, Harris,\" replied the Bellman. \"Her appointment was forshadowed long ago. Besides, her work within Jane Eyre ridding the book of the loathsome Hades is good enough testimonial for me.\"\n\n\"But she altered the book!\" cried Tweed angrily. \"Who's to say she wouldn't do the same again?\"\n\n\"I did what I did for the best,\" I said in a loud voice, feeling I had to defend myself against Tweed. This startled him\u2014I got the feeling no one really stood up to him.\n\n\"If it wasn't for Thursday we wouldn't have a book,\" said the Bellman. \"A full book with a different ending is better than half a book without.\"\n\n\"That's not what the rules say, Bellman.\"\n\nTo my great relief, Miss Havisham spoke up.\n\n\"Truly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed\u2014you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?\"\n\n\"It's not that at all,\" protested Tweed. \"But what if she were here for another reason altogether?\"\n\n\"I shall vouch for her!\" said Miss Havisham in a thunderous tone. \"I call for a show of hands. If there is a majority amongst you who think my judgment poor, then put your hands up now and I will banish her back to where she came from!\"\n\nShe said it with such a show of fierce temper that I thought that no one would raise a hand; in the event, only one did\u2014 Tweed himself, who, after reading the situation, judged that good grace was the best way in which to retire. He gave a wan half-smile, bowed and said: \"I withdraw all objections.\"\n\nI sighed a sigh of relief as Havisham nudged me in the ribs and gave me a wink.\n\n\"Good,\" said the Bellman as Tweed returned to his desk. \"As I was saying, we welcome Miss Next to Jurisfiction and we don't want any of those silly practical jokes we usually play on new recruits\u2014okay?\"\n\nHe surveyed the room with a stern expression before returning to his list.\n\n\"Item two: There is an illegal PageRunner from Shakespeare, so this is a priority red. Perp's name is Feste; worked as a jester in Twelfth Night. Took flight after a debauched night with Sir Toby. Who wants to go after him?\"\n\nA hand went up in the crowd.\n\n\"Fabien? Thanks. You may have to stand in for him for a while; take Falstaff with you, but please, Sir John\u2014stay out of sight. You've been allowed to stay in Merry Wives, but don't push your luck.\"\n\nFalstaff got up, bowed clumsily, burped, and sat down again.\n\n\"Item three: Interloper in the Sherlock Holmes series by the name of Mycroft\u2014turns up quite unexpectedly in The Greek Interpreter and claims to be his brother. Anyone know anything about this?\"\n\nI shrank lower, hoping that no one would have enough knowledge of my world to know we were related. Sly old Fox! So he had rebuilt the Prose Portal. I covered my mouth to hide a smile.\n\n\"No?\" went on the Bellman. \"Well, Sherlock seems to think he is his brother, and so far there is no harm done\u2014but I think this would be a good opportunity to open up a way into the Sherlock Holmes series. Suggestions, anyone?\"\n\n\"How about through 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'?\" suggested Tweed, to the accompaniment of laughter and catcalls from around the room.\n\n\"Order! Sensible suggestions, please. Poe is out of bounds and will remain so. It's possible 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' might open an avenue to all detective stories that came after it, but I won't sanction the risk. Now\u2014any other suggestions?\"\n\n\"The Lost World?\"\n\nThere were a few giggles, but they soon stopped; this time Tweed was serious.\n\n\"Conan Doyle's other works might afford a link to the Sherlock Holmes series,\" he added gravely. \"I know we can get into The Lost World. I just need to find a way to move beyond that.\"\n\nThere was an uncomfortable moment as the Jurisfiction agents muttered to one another.\n\n\"What's the problem?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Adventure stories always bring the highest risks to anyone establishing a new route,\" hissed back Miss Havisham. \"The worst you might expect from a romantic novel or domestic potboiler is a slapped face or a nasty burn from the Aga. Finding a way into King Solomon's Mines cost two agents' lives.\"\n\nThe Bellman spoke again.\n\n\"The last booksplorer who went into The Lost World was shot by Lord Roxton.\"\n\n\"Gomez was an amateur,\" retorted Tweed. \"I can take care of myself.\"\n\nThe Bellman thought about this for a moment, weighed up the pros and cons and then sighed.\n\n\"Okay, you're on. But I want reports every ten pages, understand? Okay. Item four\u2014\"\n\nThere was a noise from two younger members of the service who were laughing about something.\n\n\"Hey, listen up, guys. I'm not just talking for my health.\"\n\nThey were quiet.\n\n\"Okay. Item four: nonstandard spelling. There have been some odd spellings reported in nineteenth-and twentieth-century texts, so keep your eyes open. It's probably just texters having a bit of fun, but it just might be the mispeling vyrus coming back to life.\"\n\nThere was a groan from the assembled agents.\n\n\"Okay, okay, keep your hair on\u2014I only said 'might.' Samuel Johnson's dictionary cured it after the 1744 outbreak and Lavinia-Webster and the OED keep it all in check, but we have to be careful of any new strains. I know this is boring, but I want every misspelling you come across reported and given to the Cat. He'll pass it on to Agent Libris at Text Grand Central.\"\n\nHe paused for effect and looked at us sternly.\n\n\"We can't let this get out of hand, people. Okay. Item five: There are thirty-one pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales but only twenty-four stories. Mrs. Cavendish, weren't you keeping an eye on this?\"\n\n\"We've been watching Canterbury Tales all week,\" said a woman dressed in the most fabulously outrageous clothes, \"and every time we look away, another story gets boojummed. Someone's getting in there and erasing the story from within.\"\n\n\"Deane? Any idea who's behind all this?\"\n\nDaphne Farquitt's romantic lead stood up and consulted a list.\n\n\"I think I can see a pattern beginning to emerge,\" he said. \"The Merchant's Wife was the first to go, followed by The Milliner's Tale, The Pedlar's Cok, The Cuckold's Revenge, The Maiden's Wonderful Arse and, most recently, The Contest of Farts. The Cook's Tale is already half gone\u2014it looks as though whoever is doing this has a problem with the healthy vulgarity of Chaucerian texts.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said the Bellman with a grave expression, \"it looks like we have an active cell of Bowdlerizers at work again. The Miller's Tale will be the next to go. I want twenty-four-hour surveillance, and we should get someone on the inside. Volunteers?\"\n\n\"I'll go,\" said Deane. \"I'll take the place of the host\u2014he won't mind.\"\n\n\"Good. Keep me informed of your progress.\"\n\n\"I say!\" said Akrid Snell, putting up his hand.\n\n\"What is it, Snell?\"\n\n\"If you're going to be the host, Deane, can you get Chaucer to cool it a bit on the Sir Topaz story? He's issued a writ for libel, and not to put too fine a point on it, I think we could lose our trousers over this one.\"\n\nDeane nodded, and the Bellman returned to his notes.\n\n\"Item six: Now this I regard as kind of serious, guys.\"\n\nHe held up an old copy of the Bible.\n\n\"In this 1631 printing, the seventh commandment reads: Thou shalt commit adultery.\"\n\nThere was a mixture of shock and stifled giggles from the small gathering.\n\n\"I don't know who did this, but it's just not funny. Fooling around with internal Text Operating Systems might have a sort of mischievous appeal to it, but it's not big and it's not clever. The occasional bout of high spirits I might overlook, but this isn't an isolated incident. I've also got a 1716 edition that urges the faithful to sin on more, and a Cambridge printing from 1653 which tells us that The unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God. Now listen, I don't want to be accused of having no sense of humor, but this is something that I will not tolerate. If I find out the joker who has been doing this, it'll be a month's enforced holiday inside Ant & Bee.\"\n\n\"Marlowe!\" said Tweed, making it sound like a cough.\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Bad cough\u2014sorry.\"\n\nThe Bellman stared at Tweed for a moment, laid down the offending Bible and looked at his watch.\n\n\"Okay, that's it for now. I'll be doing individual briefings in a few minutes. We thank Mrs. Dashwood for her hospitality, and Perkins\u2014it's your turn to feed the Minotaur.\"\n\nThere was a groan from Perkins. The group started to wander off and talk to one another. The Bellman had to raise his voice to be heard.\n\n\"We go off shift in eight bells, and listen up\u2014!\"\n\nThe assembled Jurisfiction staff stopped for a moment.\n\n\"Let's be careful out there.\"\n\nThe Bellman paused, tingled his bell and everyone returned to their tasks. I caught Tweed's eye; he smiled, made a pistol out of his hand and pointed it at me. I did the same back and he laughed.\n\n\"King Pellinore,\" said the Bellman to a disheveled white-haired whiskery gentleman in half-armor, \"there has been a sighting of the Questing Beast in the backstory of Middlemarch.\"\n\nKing Pellinore's eyes opened wide; he muttered something that sounded like \"What what, hey hey?,\" then drew himself up to his full height, picked a helmet from a nearby table and clanked from the room. The Bellman ticked his list, consulted the next entry and turned to us.\n\n\"Next and Havisham,\" he said. \"Something easy to begin with. Bloophole needs closing. It's in Great Expectations, Miss Havisham, so you can go straight home afterwards.\"\n\n\"Good,\" she exclaimed. \"What do we have to do?\"\n\n\"Page two,\" explained the Bellman, consulting his clipboard. \"Abel Magwitch escapes\u2014swims, one assumes\u2014from a prison hulk with a 'great iron' on his leg. He'd sink like a stone. No Magwitch, no escape, no career in Australia, no cash to give to Pip, no 'expectations,' no story. He's got to have the shackles still on him when he reaches the shore so Pip can fetch a file to release him, so you're going to have to footle with the backstory. Any questions?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Miss Havisham. \"Thursday?\"\n\n\"Er\u2014no also,\" I replied, my head still spinning after the Bellman's speech. I was just going to walk in Miss Havisham's shadow for a bit\u2014which was, on reflection, a very good place to be.\n\n\"Good,\" said the Bellman, signing a docket and tearing it off. \"Take this to Wemmick in stores.\"\n\nHe left us and called to Foyle and the Red Queen about a missing person named Cass in Silas Marner.\n\n\"Did you understand any of that?\" asked Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"Good!\" smiled Miss Havisham. \"Confused is exactly how all cadets to Jurisfiction should enter their first assignment!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Assignment One: Bloophole Filled in Great Expectations",
                "text": "Bloophole: Term used to describe a narrative hole by the author that renders his/her work seemingly impossible. An unguarded bloophole may not cause damage for millions of readings, but then, quite suddenly and catastrophically, the book may unravel itself in a very dramatic fashion. Hence the Jurisfiction saying \"A switch in a line can save a lot of time.\"\n\nTextMarker: An emergency device that outwardly resembles a flare pistol. Designed by the Jurisfiction Design & Technology department, the TextMarker allows a trapped PRO to \"mark\" the text of the book they are within using a predesignated code of bold, italics, underlining, etc., unique to the agent. Another agent may then jump in at the right page to effect a rescue. Works well as long as the rescuer is looking for the signal.\n\nUNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT, The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library (glossary)\n\nMISS HAVISHAM had dispatched me to get some tea and meet her back at her desk, so I walked across to the refreshments.\n\n\"Good evening, Miss Next,\" said a well-dressed young man in plus fours and a sports jacket. He had a well-trimmed mustache and a monocle screwed into his eye; he smiled and offered me his hand to shake. \"Vernham Deane, resident cad of The Squire of High Potternews, D. Farquitt, 246 pages, softcover \u00a33.99.\"\n\nI shook his hand.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking,\" he said sadly. \"No one thinks much of Daphne Farquitt, but she sells a lot of books and she's always been pretty good to me\u2014apart from the chapter where I ravish the serving girl at Potternews Hall and then callously have her turned from the house. I didn't want to, believe me.\"\n\nHe looked at me with the same earnestness that Mrs. Dashwood had exhibited when explaining her actions in Sense and Sensibility. It sounded as though a preordained life could be something of a nuisance.\n\n\"I've not read the book,\" I told him untruthfully, unwilling to get embroiled in Farquitt plot intricacies\u2014I could be stuck here for days.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said with some relief, then added: \"You have a good teacher in Miss Havisham. Solid and dependable, but a stickler for rules. There are many shortcuts here that the more mature members either frown upon or have no knowledge of; will you permit me to show you around some time?\"\n\nI was touched by the courtesy.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Deane\u2014I accept.\"\n\n\"Vern,\" he said. \"Call me Vern. Listen, don't rely too heavily on the ISBN numbers. The Bellman's a bit of a technophile and although the ISBN Positioning System might seem to have its attractions, I should keep one of Bradshaw's maps with you as a backup at all times.\"\n\n\"I'll bear that in mind, Vern, thanks.\"\n\n\"And don't worry about old Harris. His bark is a lot worse than his bite. He looks down on me because I'm from a racy potboiler, but listen\u2014I can hold my own against him any day!\"\n\nHe poured some tea for us both before continuing.\n\n\"He was trained during the days when cadets were cast into A Pilgrim's Progress and told to make their own way out. He thinks all us young 'uns are soft as soap. Don't you, Tweed?\"\n\nHe turned to meet my detractor.\n\nHarris Tweed stood by with an empty coffee cup.\n\n\"What are you blathering about, Deane?\" he asked, scowling like thunder.\n\n\"I was telling Miss Next here that you think we're all a bit soft.\"\n\nHarris took a step closer, glared at Deane and then fixed me with his dark brown eyes. He was about fifty, graying, and had the sort of face that looked as though the skin had been measured upon a skull three sizes smaller before fitment.\n\n\"Has Havisham mentioned the Well of Lost Plots to you?\" he asked.\n\n\"The Cat mentioned it. Unpublished books, I think he said.\"\n\n\"Not just unpublished. The Well of Lost Plots is where vague ideas ferment into sketchy plans. This is the Notion Nursery. The Word Womb. Go down there and you'll see plot outlines coalescing on the shelves like so many primordial life forms. The spirits of roughly sketched characters flit about the corridors in search of plot and dialogue before they are woven into the story. If they get lucky, the book finds a publisher and rises into the Great Library above.\"\n\n\"And if they're unlucky?\"\n\n\"They stay in the basement. But there's more. Below the Well of Lost Plots is another basement. Subbasement twenty-seven. No one talks of it much. It's where deleted characters, poor plot devices, half-baked ideas and corrupt Jurisfiction agents go to spend a painful eternity. Just remember that.\"\n\nI was stunned, so said nothing. Tweed glared at Deane, scowled at me, filled up his coffee cup and left. As soon as he was out of earshot, Vernham turned to me and said: \"Old wives' tales. There's no such thing as basement twenty-seven.\"\n\n\"Sort of like using the Jabberwock to frighten children, yes?\"\n\n\"Well, not really,\" replied Deane thoughtfully, \"because there is a Jabberwock. Frightfully nice fellow\u2014good at fly-fishing and plays the bongos. I'll introduce you sometime.\"\n\nI heard Miss Havisham calling my name.\n\n\"I'd better go,\" I told him.\n\nVern looked at his watch.\n\n\"Of course. Goodness, is that the time? Well, hey-ho, see you about!\"\n\nDespite Vern's assurances about Harris Tweed's threats I still felt uneasy. Was jumping into a copy of Poe from my side enough of a misdemeanor to attract Tweed's ire? And how much training would I need before I could even attempt to rescue Jack Schitt? I returned to Miss Havisham deep in thought about Jurisfiction and Landen and bookjumping. I noticed her desk was as far from the Red Queen's as one could get and laid her tea in front of her.\n\n\"What do you know about subbasement twenty-seven?\" I asked her.\n\n\"Old wives' tales,\" replied Havisham, concentrating on the report she was filing. \"One of the other PROs trying to frighten you?\"\n\n\"Sort of.\"\n\nI looked around while Miss Havisham busied herself. There seemed to be a lot of activity in the room; PROs melted in and out of the air around me with the Bellman moving around, reading instructions from his clipboard. My eyes alighted on a shiny horn that was connected to a polished wood-and-brass device on the desk by a flexible copper tube. It reminded me of a very old form of gramophone\u2014something that Thomas Edison might have come up with.\n\nMiss Havisham looked up, saw I was trying to read the instructions on the brass plaque and said: \"It's a footnoterphone. We use them to communicate. Book-to-book or external calls, their value is incalculable. Try it out if you wish.\"\n\nI took the horn and looked inside. There was a cork plug pushed into the end attached to a short chain. I looked at Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Just give the title of the book, page, character, and if you really want to be specific, line and word.\"\n\n\"As simple as that?\"\n\n\"As simple as that.\"\n\nI pulled out the plug and heard a voice say: \"Operator services. Can I help you?\"\n\n\"Oh! yes\u2014er, book-to-book, please.\" I thought of a novel I had been reading recently and chose a page and line at random. \"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, page 156, line four.\"\n\n\"Trying to connect you. Thank you for using FNP Communications.\"\n\nThere were a few clicking noises and I heard a man's voice saying: \"...and our hearts, though stout and brave, still like muffled...\"\n\nThe operator came back on the line.\n\n\"I'm sorry, we had a crossed line. You are through now, caller. Thank you for using FNP Communications.\"\n\nNow all I could hear was the low murmur of conversation above the sound of engines of a ship. At a loss to know what to say I just gabbled: \"Antonio?\"\n\nThere was the sound of a confused voice, and I hurriedly replaced the plug.\n\n\"You'll get the hang of it,\" said Havisham kindly, putting her report down. \"Paperwork! My goodness. Come along, we've got to visit Wemmick in the stores. I like him, so you'll like him. I won't expect you to do much on this first assignment\u2014just stay close to me and observe. Finished your tea? We're off!\"\n\nI hadn't, of course, but Miss Havisham grabbed my elbow and before I knew it we were back in the huge entrance lobby near the Boojumorial. Our footsteps rang out on the polished floor as we crossed to one side of the vestibule, where a small counter not more than six feet wide was set into the deep red marble wall. A battered notice told us to take a number and we would be called.\n\n\"Rank must have its privileges!\" cried Miss Havisham gaily as she walked to the front of the queue. A few of the Jurisfiction agents looked up, but most were too busy swotting up on their passnotes, cramming for their impending destinations.\n\nHarris Tweed was in front of us, kitting up for his trip into The Lost World. On the counter before him there was a complete safari suit, knapsack, binoculars and revolver.\n\n\"\u2014and one Rigby .416 sporting rifle, plus sixty rounds of ammunition.\"\n\nThe storekeeper laid a mahogany rifle box on the counter and shook his head sadly.\n\n\"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer an M-16? A charging stegosaurus can take some stopping, I'll be bound.\"\n\n\"An M-16 would be sure to raise suspicions, Mr. Wemmick. Besides, I'm a bit of a traditionalist at heart.\"\n\nMr. Wemmick sighed, shook his head and handed the clipboard to Tweed for him to sign. Harris grunted his thanks to Mr. Wemmick, signed the top copy, had the docket stamped and returned to him before he gathered up his possessions, nodded respectfully at Miss Havisham, ignored me and then murmured, \"...long, dark, wood-paneled corridor lined with bookshelves...\" before vanishing.\n\n\"Good day, Miss Havisham!\" said Mr. Wemmick politely as soon as we stepped up. \"And how are we this day?\"\n\n\"In health, I think, Mr. Wemmick. Is Mr. Jaggers quite well?\"\n\n\"Quite well to my way of thinking, I should say, Miss Havisham, quite well.\"\n\n\"This is Miss Next, Mr. Wemmick. She has joined us recently.\"\n\n\"Delighted!\" remarked Mr. Wemmick, who looked every bit the way he was described in Great Expectations. That is to say, he was short, had a slightly pockmarked face, and had been that way for about forty years.\n\n\"Where are you two bound?\"\n\n\"Home!\" said Miss Havisham, laying the docket on the counter.\n\nMr. Wemmick picked up the piece of paper and looked at it for a moment before disappearing into the storeroom and rummaging noisily.\n\n\"The stores are indispensable for our purposes, Thursday. Wemmick quite literally writes his own inventory. It all has to be signed for and returned, of course, but there is very little that he doesn't have. Isn't that so, Mr. Wemmick?\"\n\n\"Exactly so!\" came a voice from behind a large pile of Turkish costumes and a realistic rubber bison.\n\n\"By the way, can you swim?\" asked Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nMr. Wemmick returned with a small pile of items.\n\n\"Life vests\u2014life preserving, for the purpose of\u2014two. Rope\u2014 in case of trouble\u2014one. Life belt\u2014to assist Magwitch buoyancy\u2014 one. Cash\u2014for incidental expenses\u2014ten shillings and fourpence. Cloak\u2014for disguising said agents Next and Havisham, heavy-duty, black\u2014two. Packed supper\u2014two. Sign here.\"\n\nMiss Havisham picked up the pen and paused before signing.\n\n\"We'll need my boat, Mr. Wemmick,\" she said lowering her voice.\n\n\"I'll footnoterphone ahead, Miss H,\" said Wemmick, winking broadly. \"You'll find it on the jetty.\"\n\n\"For a man you are not bad at all, Mr. Wemmick!\" said Miss Havisham. \"Thursday, gather up the equipment!\"\n\nI picked up the heavy canvas bag.\n\n\"Dickens is within walking distance,\" explained Havisham, \"but it's better practice for you if you jump us straight there\u2014 there are over fifty thousand miles of shelf space.\"\n\n\"Ah\u2014okay, I know how to do that,\" I muttered, putting down the bag, taking out my travel book and flicking to the passage about the library.\n\n\"Hold on to me as you jump, and think Dickens as you read.\"\n\nSo I did, and within a trice we were at the right place in the library.\n\n\"How was that?\" I asked, quite proudly.\n\n\"Not bad,\" said Havisham. \"But you forgot the bag.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"I'll wait while you get it.\"\n\nSo I read myself back to the lobby, retrieved the bag to a few friendly jibes from Deane, and returned\u2014but by accident to where a series of adventure books for plucky girls by Charles Pickens were stored. I sighed, read the library passage again and was soon with Miss Havisham.\n\n\"This is the outings book,\" she said without looking up from one of the reading desks. \"Name, destination, date, time\u2014 I've filled it in already. Are you armed?\"\n\n\"Always. Do you expect any trouble?\"\n\nMiss Havisham drew out her small pistol, released the twin barrels, pivoted it upwards and gave me one of her more serious stares.\n\n\"I always expect trouble, Thursday. I was on HPD\u2014 Heathcliff Protection Duty\u2014in Wuthering Heights for two years, and believe me, the ProCaths tried everything. I personally saved him from assassination eight times.\"\n\nShe extracted a spent cartridge, replaced it with a live one and locked the barrels back into place.\n\n\"But Great Expectations? Where's the danger there?\"\n\nShe rolled up her sleeve and showed me a livid scar on her forearm.\n\n\"Things can turn pretty ugly even in Toytown,\" she explained. \"Believe me, Larry is no lamb\u2014I was lucky to escape with my life.\"\n\nI must have been looking nervous, because she said: \" Everything okay? You can bail out whenever you want, you know. Say the word and you'll be back in Swindon before you can say 'Mrs. Hubbard.'\"\n\nIt wasn't a threat. She was giving me a way out. I thought of Landen and the baby. I'd survived the book sales and Jane Eyre with no ill effects\u2014how hard could \"footling\" with the backstory of a Dickens novel be? Besides, I needed all the practice I could get.\n\n\"Ready when you are, Miss Havisham.\"\n\nShe nodded, rolled down her sleeve again, pulled Great Expectations from the bookshelf and opened it on one of the reading desks.\n\n\"We need to go in before the story really begins, so this is not a standard bookjump. Are you paying attention?\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"Good. I've no desire to go through this more than once. First, read us into the book.\"\n\nI opened the book and read aloud from the first page, making quite sure I had hold of the bag this time:\n\n\"...Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon toward evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all, and beginning to cry, was Pip....\"\n\nAnd there we were, in amongst the gravestones at the beginning of Great Expectations, the chill and dampness in the air, the fog drifting in from the sea. On the far side of the graveyard a small boy was crouched among the weathered stones, talking to himself as he stared at two gravestones set to one side. But there was someone else there. In fact, there were a group of people, digging away at an area just outside the churchyard walls. They were illuminated in the fading light by two electric lamps powered by a small generator that hummed to itself some distance away.\n\n\"Who are they?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Okay,\" hissed Havisham, not hearing me straightaway, \"now we jump to wherever we want by\u2014What did you say?\"\n\nI nodded in the direction of the group. One of their number pushed a wheelbarrow along a plank and dumped it onto a large heap of spoil.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" exclaimed Miss Havisham, walking briskly toward the small group. \"It's Commander Bradshaw!\"\n\nI trotted after her and I soon saw that the digging was of an archaeological nature. Pegs were set in the ground and joined by lengths of string, delineating the area in which the volunteers were scraping with trowels, all trying to make as little noise as possible. Sitting on a folding safari seat was a man dressed like a big game hunter. He wore a safari suit and pith helmet and sported both a monocle and a large and bushy mustache. He was also barely three feet tall. When he got up from his chair, he was shorter.\n\n\"'pon my word, it's the Havisham girlie!\" he said in a hoarse whisper. \"You're looking younger every time I see you!\"\n\nMiss Havisham thanked him and introduced me. Bradshaw shook me by the hand and welcomed me to Jurisfiction.\n\n\"What are you up to, Trafford?\" asked Havisham.\n\n\"Archaeology for the Charles Dickens Foundation, m'girl. A few of their scholars are of the belief that Great Expectations began not in this churchyard but in Pip's house when his parents were still alive. There is no manuscriptual evidence, so we thought we'd have a little dig around the environs and see if we could pick up any evidence of previously overwritten scenes.\"\n\n\"Any luck?\"\n\n\"We've struck a reworked idea that ended up in Our Mutual Friend, a few dirty limericks and an unintelligible margin squiggle\u2014but nothing much.\"\n\nHavisham wished him well, and we said our goodbyes and left them to their dig.\n\n\"Is that unusual?\"\n\n\"You'll find around here that there is not much that is usual,\" replied Havisham. \"It's what makes this job so enjoyable. Where did we get to?\"\n\n\"We were going to jump into the pre-book backstory.\"\n\n\"I remember. To jump forwards we have only to concentrate on the page number or, if you prefer, a specific event. To go backwards before the first page we have to think of negative page numbers or an event that we assume had happened before the book began.\"\n\n\"How do I picture a negative page number?\"\n\n\"Visualize something\u2014an albatross, say.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Okay, now take the albatross away.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Now take another albatross away.\"\n\n\"How can I? There are no albatrosses left!\"\n\n\"Okay; imagine I have lent you an albatross to make up your seabird deficit. How many albatrosses have you now?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Good. Now relax while I take my albatross back.\"\n\nI shivered as a coldness swept through me and for a fleeting moment an empty vaguely albatross-shaped void opened and closed in front of me. But the strange thing was, for that briefest moment I understood the principle involved\u2014but then it was gone like a dream upon waking. I blinked and stared at Havisham.\n\n\"That,\" she announced, \"was a negative albatross. Now you try it\u2014only use page numbers instead of albatrosses.\"\n\nI tried hard to picture a negative page number, but it didn't work and I found myself in the garden of Satis House, watching two boys square up for a fight. Miss Havisham was soon beside me.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I'm trying\u2014\"\n\n\"You are not, my girl. There are two sorts of people in this world, doers and tryers. You are the latter and I am trying to make you the former. Now concentrate, girl!\"\n\nSo I had another attempt at the negative page number idea and this time found myself in a curious tableau resembling the graveyard in Chapter One but with the graves, wall and church little more than cardboard cutouts. The two featured characters, Magwitch and Pip, were also very two-dimensional and as still as statues\u2014except that their eyes swiveled to look at me as I jumped in.\n\n\"Oi,\" hissed Magwitch between clenched teeth, not moving a muscle. \"Piss off.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry?\"\n\n\"Piss off!\" repeated Magwitch, this time more angrily.\n\nI was just pondering over all this when Havisham caught up with me, grabbed my hand and jumped to where we were meant to be.\n\n\"What was that?\" I asked.\n\n\"The frontispiece. You're not a natural at this, are you?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" I replied, feeling like a bit of a clot.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said Miss Havisham in a kindlier tone, \"we'll make a Prose Resource Operative out of you yet.\"\n\nWe walked down the darkened jetty to where Havisham's boat was moored. But it wasn't any old boat. It was a polished-wood and gleaming-chrome Riva. I stepped aboard the beautifully built motor launch and stowed the gear as Miss Havisham sat in the skipper's seat.\n\nMiss Havisham seemed to take on a new lease of life when confronted by anything with a powerful engine. I cast off when she ordered me to and pushed off into the oily black waters of the Thames. The boat rocked slightly as I sat down next to Havisham, who fired up the twin Chevrolet petrol engines with a throaty growl and then gently piloted our way into the darkness of the river. I pulled two cloaks from the bag, donned one and took the other to Miss Havisham, who was standing at the helm, the wind blowing through her gray hair and tugging at her tattered veil.\n\n\"Isn't this a bit anachronistic?\" I asked.\n\n\"Officially yes,\" replied Havisham, weaving to avoid a small jolly-boat, \"but we're actually in the backstory minus one day, so I could have brought in a squadron of hurricanes and the entire Ringling Brothers circus and no one would be any the wiser. If we had to do this any time during the book then we'd be stuck with whatever was available\u2014which can be a nuisance.\"\n\nWe were moving upriver against a quickening tide. It had gone midnight and I was glad of the cloak. Billows of fog blew in from the sea and gathered in great banks that caused Miss Havisham to slow down; within twenty minutes the fog had closed in and we were alone in the cold and clammy darkness. Miss Havisham shut down the engines and doused the navigation lights, and we gently drifted in with the tide.\n\n\"Sandwich and soup?\" said Miss Havisham, peering in the picnic basket.\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Do you want my wagonwheel?\"\n\n\"I was about to offer you mine.\"\n\nWe heard the prison ships before we saw them, the sound of men coughing and cursing and the occasional shout of fear. Miss Havisham started the engines and idled slowly in the direction of the sounds. Then the mist parted and we could see the prison hulk appear in front of us as a large black shape that rose from the water, the only light visible the oil lamps that flickered through the gunports. The old man-of-war was secured fore and aft by heavily rusted anchor chains against which flotsam had collected in a tangle. After checking the name of the ship Miss Havisham slowed down and stopped the engines. We drifted down the flanks of the prison hulk, and I used the boathook to fend us off. The gunports were above us and out of reach, but as we moved silently down the ship we came across a homemade rope draped from a window on the upper gun deck. I quickly fastened the boat to a projecting ring, and the motor launch swung around and settled facing the current.\n\n\"Now what?\" I hissed.\n\nMiss Havisham pointed to the life preserver, and I quickly tied it onto the end of the homemade rope.\n\n\"That's it?\" I asked.\n\n\"That's it,\" replied Miss Havisham. \"Not much to it, is there? Wait\u2014! Look there!\"\n\nShe pointed to the side of the prison hulk, where a strange creature had attached itself to one of the gunports. It had large batlike wings folded untidily across the back of its body, which was covered by patchy tufts of matted fur. It had a face like a fox, sad brown eyes and a long thin beak that was inserted deep into the wood of the gunport. It was oblivious to us both and made quiet sucky noises as it fed.\n\nMiss Havisham raised her pistol and fired. The bullet struck close by the strange creature, which uttered a startled cry of \"Gawk!,\" unfolded its large wings and flew off into the night.\n\n\"Blast!\" said Miss Havisham, lowering her gun and pushing the safety back on. \"Missed!\"\n\nThe noise had alerted the guards on the deck.\n\n\"Who's there?\" yelled one. \"You had better be on the king's business or by St. George you'll feel the lead from my musket!\"\n\n\"It's Miss Havisham,\" replied Havisham in a vexed tone, \"on Jurisfiction business, Sergeant Wade.\"\n\n\"Begging your pardon, Miss Havisham,\" replied the guard apologetically, \"but we heard a gunshot!\"\n\n\"That was me,\" yelled Havisham. \"You have grammasites on your ship!\"\n\n\"Really?\" replied the guard, leaning out and looking around. \"I don't see anything.\"\n\n\"It's gone now, you dozy idiot,\" said Havisham to herself, quickly adding: \"Well, keep a good lookout in future\u2014if you see any more I want to know about them immediately!\"\n\nSergeant Wade assured her he would, bade us both goodnight, then disappeared from view.\n\n\"What on earth is a grammasite?\" I asked, looking nervously about in case the odd-looking creature should return.\n\n\"A parasitic life form that live inside books and feed on grammar,\" explained Havisham. \"I'm no expert, of course, but that one looked suspiciously like an adjectivore. Can you see the gunport it was feeding on?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Describe it to me.\"\n\nI looked at the gunport and frowned. I had expected it to be old or dark or wooden or rotten or wet, but it wasn't. But then it wasn't sterile or blank or empty either\u2014it was simply a gunport, nothing more nor less.\n\n\"The adjectivore feeds on the adjectives describing the noun,\" explained Havisham, \"but it generally leaves the noun intact. We have verminators who deal with them, but there are not enough grammasites in Dickens to cause any serious damage\u2014yet.\"\n\n\"How do they move from one book to the next?\" I asked, wondering if Mycroft's bookworms weren't some sort of grammasite-in-reverse.\n\n\"They seep through the covers using a process called oozemosis. That's why individual bookshelves are never more than six feet long in the library\u2014you'd be well advised to follow the same procedure at home. I've seen grammasites strip a library to nothing but indigestible nouns and page numbers. Ever read Sterne's Tristram Shandy?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Grammasites.\"\n\n\"I have a lot to learn,\" I said softly.\n\n\"Agreed,\" replied Havisham. \"I'm trying to get the Cat to write an updated travelbook that includes a bestiary, but he has a lot to do in the library\u2014and holding a pen is tricky with paws. Come on, let's get out of this fog and see what this motor launch can do.\"\n\nAs soon as we were clear of the prison ship, Havisham started the engines and slowly powered back the way we had come, once again keeping a careful eye on the compass but even so nearly running aground six times.\n\n\"How did you know Sergeant Wade?\"\n\n\"As the Jurisfiction representative in Great Expectations it is my business to know everybody. If there are any problems, then they must be brought to my attention.\"\n\n\"Do all books have a rep?\"\n\n\"All the ones that have been brought within the controlling sphere of Jurisfiction.\"\n\nThe fog didn't lift. We spent the rest of that cold night steering in amongst the moored boats at the side of the river. Only when dawn broke did we see enough to manage a sedate ten knots.\n\nWe returned the boat to the jetty and Havisham insisted I jump us both back to her room at Satis House, which I managed to accomplish at the first attempt, something that helped me recover some lost confidence over the debacle with the frontispiece. I lit some candles and saw her to bed before returning alone to the stores, and Wemmick. I had the second half of the docket signed, filled out a form for a missing life vest and was about to return home when a very scratched and bruised Harris Tweed appeared from nowhere and approached the counter where I was standing. His clothes were tattered and he had lost one boot and most of his kit. It looked like The Lost World hadn't really agreed with him. He caught my eye and pointed a finger at me.\n\n\"Don't say a word. Not a single word!\"\n\nPickwick was still awake when I got in even though it was nearly 6 a.m. There were two messages on the answer machine\u2014one from Cordelia, and another from a very annoyed Cordelia."
            },
            {
                "title": "Landen and Joffy Again",
                "text": "\u2002George Formby was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904. He followed his father into the music hall business, adopted the ukulele as his trademark and by the time the war broke out was a star of variety, pantomime and film. During the first years of the war, he and his wife, Beryl, toured extensively for ENSA, entertaining the troops as well as making a series of highly successful movies. By 1942 he and Gracie Fields stood alone as the nation's favorite entertainers. When invasion of England was inevitable, many influential dignitaries and celebrities were shipped out to Canada. George and Beryl elected to stay and fight, as George put it, \"to the last bullet on the end of Wigan pier!\" Moving underground with the English resistance and various stalwart regiments of the Local Defense Volunteers, Formby manned the outlawed \"Wireless St. George\" and broadcast songs, jokes and messages to secret receivers across the country. Always in hiding, always moving, the Formbys used their numerous contacts in the north to smuggle allied airmen to neutral Wales and form resistance cells that harried the Nazi invaders. Hitler's order of 1944 to \"have all ukuleles and banjos in England burnt\" was a clear indication of how serious a threat he was considered to be. George's famous comment after peace was declared, \"ee, turned out nice again!,\" became a national catchphrase. In postwar republican England he was made nonexecutive president for life, a post he held until his assassination.\n\n\u2014JOHN WILLIAMS, The Extraordinary Career of George Formby\n\nIt was after two or three days of plain Litera Tec work and a dull weekend without Landen that I found myself lying awake and staring at the ceiling, listened to the clink-clink of milk bottles and the click-click of Pickwick's feet on the linoleum as she meandered around the kitchen. Sleep patterns never came out quite right in reengineered species; no one knew why. There had been no major coincidences over the past few days, although on the night of Joffy's exhibition the two SpecOps-5 agents who had been assigned to watch Slorter and Lamme died in their car as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. It seemed their car had a faulty exhaust. Lamme and Slorter had been following me around very indiscreetly for the past two days. I just let them get on with it; they weren't bothering me\u2014or my unseen assailant. If they had, they'd as likely as not be dead.\n\nBut there was more than just SO-5 to worry about. In three days the world would be reduced to a sticky mass of sugar and proteins\u2014or so my father said. I had seen the pink and gooey world for myself, too, but then I had also seen myself shot at Cricklade Skyrail station, so the future wasn't exactly immutable\u2014thank goodness. There had been no advance on the forensic report; the pink slime matched to no known chemical compound. Coincidentally, next Thursday was also the day of the general election, and Yorrick Kaine looked set to make some serious political gain thanks to his \"generous\" sharing of Cardenio. Mind you, he was still taking no chances\u2014the first public unveiling of the text was not until the day after the election. The thing was, if the pink gunge got a hold, Yorrick Kaine could have the shortest career as a prime minister ever. Indeed, next Thursday could be the last Thursday for all of us.\n\nI closed my eyes and thought of Landen. He was there as I best remembered him: seated in his study with his back to me, oblivious to everything, writing. The sunlight streamed in through the window and the familiar clacketty-clack of his old Underwood typewriter sounded like a fond melody to my ears. He stopped occasionally to look at what he had written, make a correction with the pencil clenched between his teeth, or just pause for pause's sake. I leaned on the doorframe for a while and smiled to myself. He mumbled a line he had written, chuckled to himself and typed faster for a moment, hitting the carriage return with a flourish. He typed quite animatedly in this fashion for about five minutes until he stopped, took out the pencil and slowly turned to face me.\n\n\"Hey, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Hey, Landen. I didn't want to disturb you; shall I\u2014?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" he said hurriedly, \"this can wait. I'm just pleased to see you. How's it going out there?\"\n\n\"Boring,\" I told him despondently. \"After Jurisfiction, SpecOps work seems as dull as ditchwater. Flanker at SO-1 is still on my back, I can feel Goliath breathing down my neck, and this Lavoisier character is using me to get to Dad.\"\n\n\"Can I do anything to help?\"\n\nSo I sat on his lap and he massaged the back of my neck. It was heaven.\n\n\"How's Junior?\"\n\n\"Junior is smaller than a broadbean\u2014little more to the left\u2014but making himself known. The Lucozade keeps the nausea at bay most of the time; I must have drunk a swimming pool of it by now.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Is it mine?\" he asked.\n\nI held him tightly but said nothing. He understood and patted my shoulder.\n\n\"Let's talk about something else. How are you getting along at Jurisfiction?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, blowing my nose loudly, \"I'm not a natural at this bookjumping lark. I want you back, Land, but I'm only going to get one shot at 'The Raven,' and I need to get it right. I've not heard from Havisham for nearly three days\u2014I don't know when the next assignment will be.\"\n\nLanden shook his head slowly.\n\n\"Sweetness, I don't want you to go into 'The Raven.'\"\n\nI looked up at him.\n\n\"You heard me. Leave Jack Schitt where he is. How many people would have died for him to make a packet out of that plasma rifle scam? One thousand? Ten thousand? Listen, your memory may grow fuzzy, but I'll still be here, the good times\u2014\"\n\n\"But I don't want just the good times, Land. I want all the times. The shitty ones, the arguments, that annoying habit you had of always trying to make the next filling station and running out of petrol. Picking your nose, farting in bed. But more than that, I want the times that haven't happened yet\u2014the future. Our future! I am getting Schitt out, Land\u2014make no mistake about that.\"\n\n\"Let's talk about something else again,\" said Landen. \"Listen\u2014 I'm a bit worried about someone trying to kill you with coincidences.\"\n\n\"I can look after myself.\"\n\nHe looked at me solemnly.\n\n\"I don't doubt it for one moment. But I'm only alive in your memories\u2014and some mewling and puking ones of my mum's I suppose\u2014and without you I'm nothing at all, ever\u2014so if whoever is juggling with entropy gets lucky next time, you and I are both for the high jump\u2014but at least you get a memorial and a SpecOps regulation headstone.\"\n\n\"I see your point, however muddled you might make it. Did you see how I manipulated coincidences in the last entropic lapse to find Mrs. Nakajima? Clever, eh?\"\n\n\"Inspired. Now, can you think of any linking factor\u2014except the intended victim\u2014that connects the three attacks?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Positive. I've thought it through a thousand times. Nothing.\"\n\nLanden thought for a moment, tapped a finger on his temple and smiled.\n\n\"Don't be so sure. I've been having a little peek myself, and, well, I want to show you something.\"\n\nAnd there we were, on the platform of the Skyrail station at South Cerney. But it wasn't a moving memory, like the other ones I had enjoyed with Landen, it was frozen like a stilled video image\u2014and like a stilled video image, it wasn't very good; all blurry and a bit jumpy.\n\n\"Okay, what now?\" I asked as we walked along the platform.\n\n\"Have a look at everyone. See if there is anyone you recognize.\"\n\nI stepped onto the shuttle and walked round the players in the fiasco, who were frozen like statues. The faces that were most distinct were the neanderthal driver-operator, the well-heeled woman, the woman with Pixie Frou-Frou and the woman with the crossword. The rest were vague shapes, generic female human forms and little else\u2014no mnemonic tags to make them unique. I pointed them out.\n\n\"Good,\" said Landen, \"but what about her?\"\n\nAnd there she was, the young woman sitting on the bench in the station, doing her face in a makeup mirror. We walked closer and I looked intently at the nondescript face that loomed dimly out of my memory.\n\n\"I only glimpsed her for a moment, Land. Slightly built, mid-twenties, red shoes. So what?\"\n\n\"She was here when you arrived, she's on the southbound platform, all trains go to all stops\u2014yet she didn't get the Skyrail. Suspicious?\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Landen, sounding crestfallen, \"not exactly a smoking gun, is it? Unless,\" he smiled, \"unless you look at this.\"\n\nThe Skyrail station folded back to be replaced by the area near the Uffington white horse on the day of the picnic. I looked up nervously. The large Hispano-Suiza automobile was hanging motionless in the air not fifty feet up.\n\n\"Anything spring to mind?\" asked Landen.\n\nI looked around carefully. It was another bizarre frozen vignette. Everyone and everything was there\u2014Major Fairwelle, Sue Long, my old croquet captain, the mammoths, the gingham tablecloth, even the bootleg cheese. I looked at Landen.\n\n\"Nothing, Land.\"\n\n\"Are you sure? Look again.\"\n\nI sighed and scanned their faces. Sue Long, an old school friend whose boyfriend set his own trousers on fire for a bet; Sarah Nara, who lost her ear at Bilohirsk on a training accident and ended up marrying General Spottiswode; croquet pro Alf Widdershaine, who taught me how to \"peg out\" all the way from the forty-yard line. Even the previously unknown Bonnie Voige was there, and\u2014\n\n\"Who's this?\" I asked, pointing at a shimmering memory in front of me.\n\n\"It's the woman who called herself Violet De'ath,\" answered Landen. \"Does she seem familiar?\"\n\nI looked at her blank features. I hadn't given her a second thought at the time, but something about her was familiar.\n\n\"Sort of,\" I responded. \"Have I seen her somewhere before?\"\n\n\"You tell me, Thursday,\" Landen said, shrugging. \"It's your memory. But if you want a clue, look at her shoes.\"\n\nAnd there they were. Bright red shoes that just might have been the same ones on the girl at the Skyrail platform.\n\n\"There's more than one pair of red shoes in Wessex, Land.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" he observed. \"I did say it was a long shot.\"\n\nI had an idea, and before Landen could say another word we were in the square at Osaka with all the Nextian-logoed Japanese, the fortune-teller frozen in mid-beckon, the crowd around us an untidy splash of visual noise that is the way crowds appear to the mind's eye, the logos I remembered jutting out in sharp contrast to the unremembered faces. I peered through the crowd as I anxiously searched for anything that might resemble a young European woman.\n\n\"See anything?\" asked Landen, hands on hips and surveying the strange scene.\n\n\"No,\" I replied. \"Wait a minute, let's come in a bit earlier.\"\n\nI took myself back a minute and there she was, getting up from the fortune-teller's chair the moment I first saw him. I walked closer and looked at the vague shape. I squinted at her feet. There, in the haziest corner of my mind, was the memory I was looking for. The shoes were definitely red.\n\n\"It's her, isn't it?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"Yes,\" I murmured, staring at the wraithlike figure in front of me. \"But it doesn't help; none of these memories are strong enough for a positive ID.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not on their own,\" observed Landen. \"But since I've been in here I've figured out a few things about how your memory works. Try and superimpose the images.\"\n\nI thought of the woman on the platform, placed her across the vague form in the market and then added the specter who had called herself De'ath. The three images shimmered for a bit before they locked together. It wasn't great. I needed more. I pulled from my memory the half-shredded picture that Lamme and Slorter had shown me. It fitted perfectly, and Landen and I stared at the result.\n\n\"What do you think?\" asked Landen. \"Twentyfive?\"\n\n\"Possibly a little older,\" I muttered, looking closer at the amalgam of my attacker, trying to fix it in my memory. She had plain features, a small amount of makeup and blond hair cut in an asymmetric bob. She didn't look like a killer. I ran through all the information I had\u2014which didn't take long. The failed SpecOps-5 investigations allowed me a few clues: the recurring name of Hades, the initials A.H., the fact that she did resolve on pictures. Clearly it wasn't Acheron in disguise, but perhaps\u2014\n\n\"Oh, shit.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"It's Hades.\"\n\n\"It can't be. You killed him.\"\n\n\"I killed Acheron. He had a brother named Styx\u2014why couldn't he have a sister?\"\n\nWe exchanged nervous looks and stared at the mnemonograph in front of us. Some of her features did seem to resemble Acheron now that I stared at her. Like Hades, she was tall and her lips were thin. That alone would not have been enough; after all, many people are tall with thin lips, and few, if any, are evil geniuses. But her eyes were unmistakable\u2014they had a sort of brooding darkness to them.\n\n\"No wonder she's pissed off with you,\" murmured Landen. \"You killed her brother.\"\n\n\"Thanks for that, Landen,\" I replied. \"Always know how to relax a girl.\"\n\n\"Sorry. So we know the H in A.H. is Hades\u2014what about the A?\"\n\n\"The Acheron was a tributary of the river Styx,\" I said quietly. \"As was the Phlegethon, Cocytus, Lethe\u2014and Aornis.\"\n\nI'd never felt so depressed at having identified a suspect before. But something was niggling at me. There was something here that I couldn't see, like listening to a TV from another room. You hear dramatic music but you have no idea what's going on.\n\n\"Cheer up,\" smiled Landen, rubbing my shoulder, \"she's ballsed it up three times already\u2014it might never happen!\"\n\n\"There's something else, Landen.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Something I've forgotten. Something I never remembered. Something about\u2014I don't know.\"\n\n\"It's no good asking me,\" replied Landen. \"I may seem real to you, but I'm not\u2014I'm only here as your memory of me. I can't know any more than you do.\"\n\nAornis had vanished and Landen was starting to fade.\n\n\"You've got to go now,\" he said in a hollow-sounding voice. \"Remember what I said about Jack Schitt.\"\n\n\"Don't go!\" I yelled. \"I want to stay here for a bit. It's not much fun out here at the moment, I think it's Miles's baby, Aornis wants to kill me and Goliath and Flanker\u2014\"\n\nBut it was too late. I'd woken up. I was still in bed, undressed, bedclothes rumpled. The clock told me it was a few minutes past nine. I stared at the ceiling in a forlorn mood, wondering how I could really have got myself into such a mess, and then wondering if there was anything I could have done to prevent it. I decided, on the face of it, probably not. This, to my fuddled way of thinking, I took to be a positive sign, so I slipped on a T-shirt and shuffled into the kitchen, filled the kettle and put some dried apricots in Pickwick's bowl after trying and failing once again to get her to stand on one leg.\n\nI shook the entroposcope just in case\u2014was thankful to find everything normal\u2014and was just checking the fridge for some fresh milk when the doorbell rang. I trotted out to the hall, picked up my automatic from the table and asked: \"Who is it?\"\n\n\"Open the door, Doofus.\"\n\nI put the gun away and opened the door. Joffy smiled at me as he entered and raised his eyebrows at my disheveled state.\n\n\"Half day today?\"\n\n\"I don't feel like working now that Landen's gone.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Never mind. Coffee?\"\n\nWe walked into the kitchen. Joffy patted Pickwick on the head, and I emptied the old grounds out of the coffee jug. He sat down at the table.\n\n\"Seen Dad recently?\"\n\n\"Last week. He was fine. How much did you make on the art sale?\"\n\n\"Over \u00a32,000 in commission. I thought of using the cash to repair the church roof but then figured, what the hell\u2014I'll just blow it on drink, curry and prostitutes.\"\n\nI laughed.\n\n\"Sure you will, Joff.\"\n\nI rinsed some mugs and stared out of the window.\n\n\"What can I do for you, Joff?\"\n\n\"I came round to pick up Miles's things.\"\n\nI stopped what I was doing and turned to face him.\n\n\"Say that again.\"\n\n\"I said I'd come\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what you said, but, but\u2014how do you know Miles?\"\n\nJoffy laughed, saw I was serious, frowned at me and then remarked: \"He said you didn't recognize him that night at Vole Towers. Is everything okay?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Not really, Joff\u2014but tell me: How do you know him?\"\n\n\"We're going out, Thurs\u2014surely you can't have forgotten?\"\n\n\"You and Miles?\"\n\n\"Sure! Why not?\"\n\nThis was very good news indeed.\n\n\"Then his clothes are in my apartment because\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014we borrow it every now and then.\"\n\nI tried to grasp the facts.\n\n\"You borrow my apartment because it's... secret\u2014?\"\n\n\"Right. You know how old-fashioned SpecOps are when it comes to their staff fraternizing with clerics.\"\n\nI laughed out loud and wiped away the tears that had sprung to my eyes.\n\n\"Sis?\" said Joffy, getting up. \"What's the matter?\"\n\nI hugged him tightly.\n\n\"Nothing's the matter, Joff. Everything's wonderful!\u2014I'm not carrying his baby!\"\n\n\"Miles?\" said Joff. \"Wouldn't know how. Wait a minute, sis\u2014you've got a bun in the oven? Who's the father?\"\n\nI smiled through my tears.\n\n\"It's Landen's,\" I said with a renewed confidence. \"By God it's Landen's!\"\n\nAnd I jumped up and down overwhelmed by the sheer joy of the fact, and Joffy, who had nothing better to do, joined me in jumping up and down until Mrs. Scroggins in the apartment below banged on the ceiling with a broom handle.\n\n\"Sister dearest,\" said Joffy as soon as we had stopped, \"who in St. Zvlkx's name is Landen?\"\n\n\"Landen Parke-Laine,\" I gabbled happily. \"The ChronoGuard eradicated him, but something other happened and I still have his child, so it's all meant to come out right, don't you see? And I have to get him back because if Aornis does get to me then he'll never exist ever ever ever\u2014and neither will the baby and I can't stand that idea and I've been farting around for too long so I'm going to go into 'The Raven' no matter what\u2014 because if I don't I'm going to go nuts!\"\n\n\"I'm more than happy for you,\" said Joffy slowly. \"You've completely lost your tiny doofus-like mind, but I'm very happy for you, in spite of it.\"\n\nI ran into the living room, rummaged across my desk until I found Schitt-Hawse's calling card and rang the number. He answered in less than two rings.\n\n\"Ah, Next,\" he said with a triumphant air. \"Changed your mind?\"\n\n\"I'll go into 'The Raven' for you, Schitt-Hawse. Double-cross me and I'll maroon both you and your half brother in the worst Daphne Farquitt novel I can find. Believe me, I can do it\u2014and will do it, if necessary.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"I'll send a car to pick you up.\"\n\nThe phone went dead and I placed the receiver back on the cradle. I took a deep breath, shooed Joffy out of the door once he had collected Miles's stuff, then had a shower and got dressed. My mind was set. I would get Landen back, no matter what the risks. I was still lacking a coherent plan, but this didn't bother me that much\u2014I seldom did."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Raven",
                "text": "\u2002\"The Raven\" was undoubtedly Edgar Allan Poe's finest and most famous poem, and was his own personal favorite, being the one he most liked to recite at poetry readings. Published in 1845, the poem drew heavily on Elizabeth Barrett's \"Lady Geraldine's Courtship,\" something he acknowledged in the original dedication but had conveniently forgotten when explaining how he wrote \"The Raven\" in his essay \"The Philosophy of Composition\"\u2014the whole affair tending to make nonsense of Poe's attacks on Longfellow as a plagiarist. A troubled genius, Poe also suffered the inverse cash/ fame law\u2014the more famous he became, the less money he had. \"The Gold Bug,\" one of his most popular short stories, sold over 300,000 copies but netted him only $100. With \"The Raven\" he fared even worse. Poe's total earnings for one of the greatest poems in the English language were a paltry $9.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Who Put the Poe in Poem?\n\nThe doorbell rang as I was putting my shoes on. But it wasn't Goliath. It was Agents Lamme and Slorter. I was really quite glad to see that they were still alive; perhaps Aornis didn't regard them as a threat. I wouldn't.\n\n\"Her name's Aornis Hades,\" I told them as I hopped up and down, trying to pull my other shoe on, \"sister of Acheron. Don't even think of tackling her. You know you're close when you stop breathing.\"\n\n\"Wow!\" exclaimed Lamme, patting his pockets for a pen. \"Aornis Hades! How did you figure that out?\"\n\n\"I glimpsed her several times over the past few weeks.\"\n\n\"You must have a good memory,\" observed Slorter.\n\n\"I have help.\"\n\nLamme found a pen, discovered it didn't work and borrowed a pencil off his partner. The point broke. I lent him mine.\n\n\"What was her name again?\"\n\nI spelled it out for him and he wrote it down so slowly it was painful.\n\n\"Good!\" I said once they had finished. \"What are you guys doing here, anyway?\"\n\n\"Flanker wants a word.\"\n\n\"I'm busy.\"\n\n\"You're not busy anymore,\" replied Slorter, looking very awkward and wringing her hands. \"I'm sorry about this\u2014but you're under arrest.\"\n\n\"What for now?\"\n\n\"Possession of an illegal substance.\"\n\nThis was an interesting development. He'd obviously not found the cause of tomorrow's Armageddon and was attempting a little framing to make me compliant. I had thought he would try something of the sort, but now wasn't the time. I had a appointment in \"The Raven\" I needed to keep.\n\n\"Listen, guys, I'm not just busy, I'm really busy, and Flanker sending you along with some bullshit trumped-up charge is just wasting your time and mine.\"\n\n\"It's not trumped up,\" said Slorter, holding out an arrest warrant. \"It's cheese. Illegal cheese. SO-1 found a block of flattened cheese under a Hispano-Suiza with your prints all over it. It was part of a cheese seizure, Thursday. It should have been consigned to the furnaces.\"\n\nI groaned. It was just what Flanker wanted. A simple internal charge that usually meant a reprimand\u2014but could, if needed, result in a custodial sentence. A solid gold arm-twister, in other words. Before the two agents could even draw breath I had slammed the door in their faces and was heading out the fire escape. I heard them yell at me as I ran out onto the road, just in time to be picked up by Schitt-Hawse. It was the first and last time I would ever be pleased to see him.\n\nSo there I was, unsure if I had just got out of the frying pan and into the fire or out of the fire and into the frying pan. I had been frisked for weapons and a wire and they had taken my automatic, keys and Jurisfiction travelbook. Schitt-Hawse drove and I was sitting in the backseat\u2014wedged tightly between Chalk and Cheese.\n\n\"I'm kind of glad to see you, in a funny sort of way.\"\n\nThere was no answer, so I waited ten minutes and then asked: \"Where are we going?\"\n\nThis didn't elicit a response either, so I patted Chalk and Cheese on the knees and said: \"You guys been on holiday this year?\"\n\nChalk looked at me for a moment, then looked at Cheese and answered: \"We went to Majorca,\" before he lapsed back into silence.\n\nAn hour later we arrived at Goliath's Research & Development Facility at Aldermaston. Surrounded by triple fences of razor wire and armed guards patrolling with full-sized sabertooths, the complex was a labyrinth of aluminum-clad windowless buildings and concrete bunkers interspersed with electrical substations and large ventilation ducts. We were waved through the gate and parked in a layby next to a large marble Goliath logo where Chalk, Cheese and Schitt-Hawse offered up a short prayer of contrition and unfailing devotion to the corporation. That done, we were on our way again past thousands of yards of pipework, buildings, parked military vehicles, trucks and all manner of junk.\n\n\"Be honored, Next,\" said Schitt-Hawse. \"Few are blessed with seeing this far into the workings of our beloved corporation.\"\n\n\"I feel more humbled by the second, Mr. Schitt-Hawse.\"\n\nWe drove on to a low building with a domed concrete roof. This was of an even higher security than the main entrance, and Chalk, Cheese and Schitt-Hawse had to have their half-windsor tie knots scanned for verification. The guard on duty opened a heavy blast door that led to a brightly lit corridor which in turn contained a row of elevators. We descended to lower ground twelve, went through another security check and then along a shiny corridor past doors either side of us that had brass placards screwed to the polished wood explaining what went on inside. We walked past Electronic Computing Engines, Tachyon Communications, Square Peg in a Round Hole and stopped at The Book Project. Schitt-Hawse opened the door and we entered.\n\nThe room was quite like Mycroft's laboratory apart from the fact that the devices seemed to have been built to a much higher degree of quality and had actually cost some money. Where my uncle's machines were held together with baler twine, cardboard and rubber solution glue, the machines in here had all been crafted from high-quality alloys. All the testing apparatus looked brand-new, and there was not an atom of dust anywhere. It was chaos\u2014but refined chaos. There were about a half-dozen technicians, all of whom seemed to have a certain pallid disposition as though they spent most of their life indoors, and they looked at us curiously as we walked in\u2014I don't suppose they saw many strange faces. In the middle of the room was a doorway a little like a walk-through metal detector; it was tightly wrapped with thousands of yards of fine copper wire. The wire ended in a tight bunch the width of a man's arm that led away to a large machine that hummed and clicked to itself. As we walked in, a technician pulled a switch, there was a crackle and a puff of smoke, and everything went dead. It was a Prose Portal, but more relevant to the purposes of this narrative, it didn't work.\n\nI pointed to the copper-bound doorway in the middle of the room. It had started to smoke, and the technicians were now trying to put it out with CO2 extinguishers.\n\n\"Is that thing meant to be a Prose Portal?\"\n\n\"Sadly, yes,\" admitted Schitt-Hawse. \"As you may or may not know, all we managed to synthesize was a form of curdled stodgy gunge from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese.\"\n\n\"Jack Schitt said it was cheddar.\"\n\n\"Jack always tended to exaggerate a little, Miss Next. This way.\"\n\nWe walked past a large hydraulic press which was rigged in an attempt to open one of the books that I had seen at Mrs. Nakajima's apartment. The steel press groaned and strained but the book remained firmly shut. Further on a technician was valiantly attempting to burn a hole in another book, with similar poor results, and after that another technician was looking at an X-ray photograph of the book. He was having a little trouble as two or three thousand pages of text and numerous other \"enclosures\" all sandwiched together didn't lend themselves to easy examination.\n\n\"What do these books do, Next?\"\n\nI was in no mood for a show-and-tell; I was here to get Landen back, nothing more.\n\n\"Do you want me to get Jack Schitt out or not?\"\n\nHe stared at me for a moment before dropping the subject and walking on past several other experiments, down a short corridor and through a large steel door to another room that contained a table, chair\u2014and Lavoisier. He was reading the copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe as we entered. He looked up.\n\n\"Monsieur Lavoisier, I understand you already know Miss Next?\" asked Schitt-Hawse.\n\n\"We did some time together,\" I replied slowly, staring at Lavoisier, who seemed a great deal older and distinctly ill at ease with the situation. I got the impression he didn't like Goliath any more than I did. He didn't say anything; he just nodded his head in greeting, shut the book and rose to his feet. We stood in silence for a moment.\n\n\"So go on,\" said Schitt-Hawse finally, \"do your booky stuff, and Lavoisier will reactualize your husband as though nothing had happened. No one will ever know he had gone\u2014except you, of course.\"\n\nI bit my lip. This was one of the biggest chances I was ever likely to take. I would try and capitalize on Lavoisier's apparent dislike of Goliath\u2014after all, the ChronoGuard had no interest in Landen or Jack Schitt\u2014and there was more than one way to trap my father. I was going to have to risk it.\n\n\"I need more than just your promise, Schitt-Hawse.\"\n\n\"It's not my promise, Next\u2014it's a Goliath Guarantee. Believe me, it's riveted iron.\"\n\n\"So was the Titanic,\" I replied. \"In my experience a Goliath Guarantee guarantees nothing.\"\n\nHe stared at me and I stared back.\n\n\"Then what do you want?\" he asked.\n\n\"One: I want Landen reactualized as he was. Two: I want my travelbook back and safe conduct from here. Three: I want a signed confession admitting that you employed Lavoisier to eradicate Landen.\"\n\nI gazed at him steadily, hoping my audacity would strike a positive nerve.\n\n\"One: Agreed. Two: You get the book back afterwards. You used it to vanish in Osaka, and I'm not having that again. Three: I can't do.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" I asked. \"Bring Landen back and the confession is irrelevant, because it never happened\u2014but I can use it if you ever try anything like this again.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" put in Lavoisier, \"you would accept this as a token of my intent.\"\n\nHe handed me a brown hardback envelope. I opened it and pulled out a picture of Landen and me at our wedding.\n\n\"I have nothing to gain from your husband's eradication and everything to lose, Miss Next. Your father, well, I'll get to him eventually. But you have the word of a commander in the ChronoGuard\u2014if that's good enough.\"\n\nI looked at Lavoisier, then at Schitt-Hawse, then at the photo. It was the one that used to sit on the mantelpiece at my mother's house.\n\n\"Where did you get this?\"\n\n\"In another time, another place,\" replied Lavoisier. \"And at considerable personal risk to myself, I assure you. Landen is nothing to us, Miss Next\u2014I am only here to help Goliath. Once done I can leave them to their nefarious activities\u2014and not before time.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse shuffled slightly and glared at Lavoisier. It was clear they mistrusted each other deeply; it could only work to my advantage.\n\n\"Then let's do it,\" I said finally. \"But I need a sheet of paper.\"\n\n\"Why?\" asked Schitt-Hawse.\n\n\"Because I have to write a detailed description of this charming dungeon to be able to get back, that's why.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse nodded to Chalk, who gave me a pen and paper, and I sat down and wrote the most detailed description that I could. The travelbook said that five hundred words was adequate for a solo jump, a thousand words if you were to bring anyone with you, so I wrote fifteen hundred just in case. Schitt-Hawse looked over my shoulder as I wrote, checking I wasn't writing another destination.\n\n\"I'll take that back, Next,\" said Schitt-Hawse, retrieving the pen as soon as I had finished. \"Not that I don't trust you or anything.\"\n\nI took a deep breath, opened the copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and read the first verse to myself:\n\nOnce upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,\n\nO'er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next\u2014\n\nThis Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising,\n\nHere I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text.\n\n\"Get me out!\" I said, advising, \"Pluck me from this jail of text\u2014\n\nor I swear I'll wring your neck!\"\n\nHe was still pissed off, make no mistake about that. I read on:\n\n[ Ah, distinctly I remember it was in my bleak September ]\n\nwhen that loathsome SpecOps member tricked me through \"The Raven's\" door.\n\nEagerly I wished the morrow would release me from this sorrow,\n\nthen a weapon I will borrow, Sorrow her turn to explore\u2014\n\nI declare that obnoxious maiden who is little but a whore\u2014\n\ndarkness hers\u2014for evermore!\n\n\"Still the same old Jack Schitt,\" I murmured.\n\n\"I won't let him lay a finger on you, Miss Next,\" assured Schitt-Hawse. \"He'll be arrested before you can say ketchup.\"\n\nSo, gathering my thoughts, I offered my apologies to Miss Havisham for being an impetuous student, cleared my mind and throat and then read the words out loud, large as life and clear as a bell.\n\nThere was a distant rumble of thunder and the flutter of wings close to my face. An inky blackness fell and a wind sprang up and whistled about me, tugging at my clothes and flicking my hair into my eyes. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the sky about me, and I realized with a start that I was high above the ground, hemmed in by clouds filled with the ugly passion of a tempest in full spate. The rain struck my face with a sudden ferocity, and I saw in the feeble moonlight that I was being swept along close to a large storm cloud, illuminated from within by bolts of lightning. Just when I thought that perhaps I had made a very big mistake by attempting this feat without proper instruction, I noticed a small dot of yellow light through the swirling rain. I watched as the dot grew bigger until it wasn't a dot but an oblong, and presently this oblong became a window, with frames, and glass, and curtains beyond. I flew closer and faster, and just when I thought I must collide with the rain-splashed glass I was inside, wet to the skin and quite breathless.\n\nThe mantel clock struck midnight in a slow and steady rhythm as I gathered my thoughts and looked around. The furniture was of highly polished dark oak, the drapes a gloomy shade of purple, and the wall coverings, where not obscured by bookshelves or morbid mezzotints, were a dismal brown color. For light there was a solitary oil lamp that flickered and smoked from a poorly trimmed wick. The room was in a mess; the bust of Pallas lay shattered on the floor, and the books that had once graced the shelves were now scattered about the room with their spines broken and pages torn. Worse still, some books had been used to rekindle the fire; a choked profusion of blackened paper had fallen from the grate and now covered the hearth. But to all of this I paid only the merest attention. Before me was the poor narrator of \"The Raven\" himself, a young man in his mid-twenties seated in a large armchair, bound and gagged. He looked at me imploringly and mumbled something behind the gag as he struggled with his bonds. As I removed the gag the young man burst forth in speech as though his life depended upon it:\n\n\"'Tis some visitor,\" he said urgently and rapidly, \"tapping at my chamber door\u2014only this and nothing more!\"\n\nAnd so saying, he disappeared from view into the room next door.\n\n\"Damn you, Sebastian!\" said a chillingly familiar voice from the adjoining room. \"I would pin you to your chair if this poetical coffin had seen so fit as to furnish me with hammer and nails\u2014!\"\n\nBut the speaker stopped abruptly as he entered the room and saw me. Jack Schitt was in a wretched condition. His previously neat crew cut had been replaced by straggly hair and his thin features were now covered with a scruffy beard; his eyes were wide and haunted and hung with dark circles from lack of sleep. His sharp suit was rumpled and torn, his diamond tiepin lacking in luster. His arrogant and confident manner had given way to a lonely desperation, and as his eyes met mine I saw tears spring up and his lips tremble. It was, to a committed Schitt-hater like myself, a joyous spectacle.\n\n\"Thursday!\" he croaked in a strangled cry. \"Take me back! Don't let me stay one more second in this vile place! The endless clock striking midnight, the tap-tap-tapping, the raven\u2014 oh my good God, the raven!\"\n\nHe fell to his knees and sobbed as the young man bounded happily back into the room and started to tidy up as he muttered:\n\n\"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door\u2014!\"\n\n\"I'd be more than happy to leave you here, Mr. Schitt, but I've cut a deal. C'mon, we're going home.\"\n\nI grasped the Goliath agent by the lapel and started to read the description of the vault back at Goliath R&D. I felt a tug on my body and another rush of wind, the tapping increased, and I just had time to hear the student say, \"Sir or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore...\" when we found ourselves back in the Goliath lab at Aldermaston. I was pleased with this, as I hadn't thought it would be that easy, but all my feelings of self-satisfaction vanished when, instead of being arrested, Jack was hugged warmly by his half brother.\n\n\"Jack\u2014!\" said Schitt-Hawse happily. \"Welcome back!\"\n\n\"Thank you, Brik\u2014how's Mum?\"\n\n\"She had to have her hip done.\"\n\n\"Again\u2014?\"\n\n\"Wait a minute!\" I interrupted. \"How about your part of the deal?\"\n\nThe two Schitts stopped chattering for a moment.\n\n\"All in good time, Miss Next,\" murmured Schitt-Hawse with an unpleasant grin. \"We need you to do one or two other small jobs before your husband is reactualized.\"\n\n\"The hell I will,\" I said angrily, taking a step forward as Chalk put a massive hand on my shoulder. \"What happened to the riveted-iron Goliath Guarantee?\"\n\n\"Goliath don't do promises,\" replied Schitt-Hawse slowly as Jack stood blinking stupidly. \"The profit margin is too low. I want you to remain our guest for a while\u2014a woman with your talents is far too useful to lose. You may actually quite like it here.\"\n\n\"Lavoisier!\" I yelled, turning to the Frenchman. \"You promised! The word of a commander in the ChronoGuard\u2014!\"\n\nHe stared at me coldly.\n\n\"After what you did to me,\" he said tersely, \"this is the most glorious revenge possible. I hope you rot in hell.\"\n\n\"What did I ever do to you?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing yet,\" he replied, readying himself to leave, \"but you will.\"\n\nI stared at him coldly. I didn't know what I was going to do to him, but I hoped it was painful.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied in a quieter voice, \"you can count on it.\"\n\nHe walked from the room without looking back.\n\n\"Thank you, monsieur!\" shouted Schitt-Hawse after him. \"The wedding picture was a touch of genius!\"\n\nI leaped forward to grab Schitt-Hawse but was pinned down by Chalk and Cheese. I struggled long, hard\u2014and hopelessly. My shoulders sagged and I stared at the ground. Landen had been right. I should have walked away.\n\n\"I want to wring her ghost upon the floor,\" said Jack Schitt, staring in my direction, \"to still this beating of my heart. Mr. Cheese, your weapon.\"\n\n\"No, Jack,\" said Schitt-Hawse. \"Miss Next and her unique attributes could open up a large and highly profitable market to exploit.\"\n\nSchitt rounded on his half brother.\n\n\"Do you have any idea of the fantastic terrors I've just been through? Tapping\u2014I mean trapping\u2014me in 'The Raven' is something Next is not going to live to regret. No, Brik, the bookslut will surcease my sorrow\u2014!\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse held Jack by the shoulders and shook him.\n\n\"Snap out of that 'Raven' talk, Jack. You're home now. Listen: The bookslut is potentially worth billions.\"\n\nSchitt stopped and gathered his thoughts.\n\n\"Of course,\" he murmured finally. \"A vast untapped resource of consumers. How much useless rubbish do you think we can offload on those ignorant masses in nineteenth-century literature?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied Schitt-Hawse, \"and our unreprocessed waste\u2014finally an effective disposal location. Untold riches await the corporation. And listen\u2014if it doesn't work out, then you can kill her.\"\n\n\"When do we start?\" asked Schitt, who seemed to be growing stronger by the second in the life-giving warmth of corporate avarice.\n\n\"It depends,\" said Schitt-Hawse, looking at me, \"on Miss Next.\"\n\n\"I'd sooner die,\" I told them. I meant it, too.\n\n\"Oh!\" said Schitt-Hawse. \"Hadn't you heard? As far as the outside world is concerned you're dead already! Did you think you could see all that was going on here and live to tell the tale?\"\n\nI tried to think of some sort of way to escape, but there was nothing to hand\u2014no weapon, no book, nothing.\n\n\"I really haven't decided,\" continued Schitt-Hawse in a patronizing tone, \"whether you fell down a lift shaft or blundered into some machinery. Do you have any preferences?\"\n\nAnd he laughed a short and very cruel laugh. I said nothing. There didn't seem to be anything I could say.\n\n\"I'm afraid, my girl,\" said Schitt-Hawse as they started to file out the vault door, taking my travelbook with them, \"that you are a guest of the corporation for the rest of your natural life. But it won't all be bad. We will be willing to reactualize your husband. You won't actually meet him again, of course, but he will be alive\u2014so long as you cooperate, and you will, you know.\"\n\nI glared at the two Schitts.\n\n\"I will never help you, as long as I have breath in my lungs.\"\n\nSchitt-Hawse's eyelid twitched.\n\n\"Oh, you'll help us, Next\u2014if not for Landen, then for your child. Yes, we know about that. We'll leave you for now. And you needn't bother looking for any books in here to pull your vanishing trick\u2014we made quite sure there were none!\"\n\nHe smiled again and stepped out of the vault. The door slammed shut with a reverberating boom that shook me to the core. I sat down on one of the chairs, put my head in my hands and cried tears of frustration, anger\u2014and loss."
            },
            {
                "title": "Rescued",
                "text": "\u2002Miss Havisham's extraction of Thursday from the Goliath vault is the stuff that legends are built on. The thing was, not only had no one ever done it before, no one had even thought of doing it before. It put them both on the map and earned Havisham her eighth cover on the Jurisfiction trade paper, Movable Type, and Thursday her first. It cemented the bond between them. In the annals of Jurisfiction there were notable partnerships such as Beowulf & Sneed, Falstaff & Tiggywinkle, Voltaire & Flark. That night Havisham & Next emerged as one of the greatest pairings Jurisfiction would ever see....\n\n\u2014UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT, Jurisfiction Journals\n\nThe most noticeable thing about being locked in a vault twelve floors below ground at the Goliath R&D lab was not the isolation, but the silence. There was no hum of air-conditioning, no odd snatch of conversation heard through the door, nothing. I thought about Landen, about Miss Havisham, Joffy, Miles and then the baby. What, I wondered, did Schitt-Hawse have in store for him? I got up and paced around the vault, which was lit by harsh striplights. There was a large mirror on the wall that I had to assume was some kind of watching gallery. There was a toilet and shower in a room behind, and a bedroll and a few toiletries in a locker that someone had left out for me.\n\nI spent twenty minutes searching the few nooks and crannies of the room, hoping to find a discarded trashy novel or something that might effect me an escape. There was nothing\u2014 not so much as a pencil shaving, let alone a pencil. I sat on the only chair, closed my eyes and tried to visualize the library and remember the description in my travelbook, and I even recited aloud the opening passage to A Tale of Two Cities, something I had learned at school many years ago. My bookjumping skills were nonexistent without a text to read from, but there was nothing to lose, so I tried every quote, passage and poem I had ever committed to memory from Ovid to de la Mare. When I ran out of those I switched to limericks\u2014and ended up telling Bowden's jokes out loud. Nothing. Not so much as a flicker.\n\nI unrolled the bedroll, lay on the floor and closed my eyes, hoping to remember Landen again and discuss the problem with him. It wasn't to be. At that moment the ring that Miss Havisham had given me grew almost unbearably hot, there was a sort of fworpish noise, and a figure was standing next to me.\n\nIt was Miss Havisham, and she didn't look terribly pleased. Before I could tell her how relieved I was to see her she pointed a finger at me and said: \"You, young lady, are in a lot of trouble!\"\n\n\"Tell me about it.\"\n\nThis wasn't the sort of careless remark she liked to hear from me, and she certainly expected me to jump to my feet when she arrived, so she rapped me painfully on the knee with her stick.\n\n\"Ow!\" I said, getting the message and rising. \"Where did you spring from?\"\n\n\"Havishams come and go as they please,\" she replied imperiously. \"Why on earth didn't you tell me?\"\n\n\"I\u2014I didn't think you'd approve of me leaping into a book on my own\u2014especially not Poe,\" I muttered sheepishly, expecting a tirade of abuse\u2014Vesuvius, in fact. But it didn't happen. Miss Havisham's ire was from quite a different direction.\n\n\"I couldn't care less about that,\" remarked Miss Havisham haughtily. \"What you do in your own time to cheap reprints is no concern of mine!\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, contemplating her stern features and trying to figure out what I had done wrong.\n\n\"You should have said something!\" she said, taking another pace towards me.\n\n\"About the baby?\" I stammered.\n\n\"No, idiot\u2014about Cardenio!\"\n\n\"Cardenio?\"\n\nThere was a faint clank from the door as someone fiddled with the lock. Havisham's arrival, it seemed, had been observed.\n\n\"It'll be Chalk and Cheese,\" I told her. \"You'd better jump out of here.\"\n\n\"Absolutely not!\" replied Havisham. \"We go together. You might be a complete and utter imbecile, but you are my responsibility. Trouble is, fourteen feet of concrete is slightly daunting\u2014I'm going to have to read us out. Quick, pass me your travelbook!\"\n\n\"They took it from me.\"\n\nThe door opened and Schitt-Hawse entered; he was grinning fit to burst.\n\n\"Well, well,\" he said, \"lock up a bookjumper and another soon joins her!\"\n\nHe took one look at Havisham's old wedding dress and put two and two together.\n\n\"Goodness! Is that... Miss Havisham?\"\n\nAs if in answer, Havisham whipped out her small pistol and fired it in his direction. Schitt-Hawse gave a yelp and leaped back out the door, which clanged shut.\n\n\"We need a book,\" said Miss Havisham grimly. \"Anything will do\u2014even a pamphlet.\"\n\n\"There's nothing in here, Miss Havisham.\"\n\nShe looked around.\n\n\"Are you sure? There must be something!\"\n\n\"I've looked\u2014there's nothing!\"\n\nMiss Havisham raised an eyebrow and looked me up and down.\n\n\"Take off your trousers, girl\u2014and don't say 'what?' in that impudent manner. Do as you're told.\"\n\nSo I did, and Havisham turned the garment over in her fingers as she searched for something.\n\n\"There!\" she cried triumphantly as the door opened and a hissing gas canister was lobbed in. I followed her gaze but she had found only\u2014the washing label. I must have looked incredulous, for she said in an offended manner: \"It's enough for me!\" and then repeated out loud: \"Wash inside out, wash and dry separately, wash inside out, wash and dry separately...\"\n\nWe surfed in on the pungent smell of washing detergent and overheated iron. The landscape was dazzling white and was without depth; my feet were firmly planted on ground, yet I could see nothing but white surrounding my shoes when I looked down, the same as the view above me and to either side. Miss Havisham, whose dirty dress seemed even more shabby than usual in the white surroundings, was looking around the lone inhabitants of this strange and empty world: five bold icons the size of garden sheds that stood neatly in a row like standing stones. There was a crude tub with the number 60 on it, an iron shape, a tumble-dryer shape and a couple of others that I wasn't too sure about. I touched the first icon, which felt warm to the touch and very comforting; they all seemed to be made of compressed cotton.\n\n\"What were you saying about Cardenio?\" I asked, still wondering why she was so angry.\n\n\"Yes, yes, Cardenio,\" she replied crossly, examining the large washing icons with interest. \"Just how likely was it for a pristine copy of a missing play to just pop up out of the blue like that?\"\n\n\"You mean,\" I said, the penny finally dropping, \"it's a Great Library copy?\"\n\n\"Of course it's a library copy. That fog-headed pantaloon Snell only just reported it, and we need your help to get it back\u2014What are these big shape things?\"\n\n\"Iconographic representations of washing instructions,\" I told her as I put my trousers back on.\n\n\"Hmm,\" responded Miss Havisham. \"This could be tricky. We're inside a washing label, but there are none of those in the library\u2014we need to jump into a book which is. I can do it without text, but I need a target book to head for. Is there a book written about washing labels?\"\n\n\"Probably,\" I replied, \"but I've no idea what it might be called.\" I had an idea. \"Does it have to be a book about washing labels?\"\n\nHavisham raised an eyebrow, so I carried on.\n\n\"Washing machine instructions always carry these icons, explaining what they mean.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said Miss Havisham thoughtfully. \"Do you have a washing machine?\"\n\nFortunately, I did\u2014and more fortunately still, it was one of the things that had survived the sideslip. I nodded excitedly.\n\n\"Good. Now, more important, do you know the make and model?\"\n\n\"Hoover Electron 1000\u2014no! 800 Deluxe\u2014I think.\"\n\n\"Think? You think? You'd better be sure, girl, or you and I will be nothing more than carved names on the Boojumorial! Now. Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said confidently. \"Hoover Electron 800 Deluxe.\"\n\nShe nodded, placed her hands on the tub icon and concentrated hard, teeth clenched and her face red with the effort. I took hold of her arm, and after a moment or two in which I could feel Miss Havisham shake with exertion, we had jumped out of the washing label and into the Hoover instructions.\n\n\"Don'tallow the drain hose to kink as this could stop the machine from emptying,\" said a small man in a blue Hoover boiler suit standing next to a brand-new washing machine. We were standing in a sparkling clean washroom that was barely ten feet square. It had neither windows nor door\u2014just a belfast sink, tiled floor, hot and cold inlet taps and a single plug on the wall. For furniture a bed was pushed against the corner, and next to it was a chair, table and cupboard.\n\n\"Doremember that to start a program you must pull out the program control knob. Sorry,\" he said, \"I'm being read at the moment. I'll be with you in a sec. If you have selected white nylon, minimum iron, delicate or...\"\n\n\"Thursday\u2014!\" said Miss Havisham, who suddenly seemed weak at the knees and whose face had turned the same color as her wedding dress. \"That took quite some\u2014\"\n\nI just managed to catch her as she collapsed; I gently laid her down on the small truckle bed.\n\n\"Miss Havisham? Are you okay?\"\n\nShe patted my arm encouragingly, smiled and closed her eyes. I could see she was pleased with herself\u2014even if the jump had worn her out.\n\nI pulled the single blanket over her, sat on the edge of the low bed, pulled my hair tie out and rubbed my scalp. My trust in Havisham was implicit, but it was still a bit unnerving to be stuck in Hoover instructions.\n\n\"...until the drum starts to rotate. Your machine will emptyand spin to complete the program.... Hello!\" said the man in the boiler suit. \"The name's Cullards\u2014I don't often get visitors!\"\n\n\"Thursday Next,\" I told him, shaking his hand. \"This is Miss Havisham of Jurisfiction.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" said Mr. Cullards, scratching his shiny bald head and smiling impishly. \"Jurisfiction, eh? You are off the beaten track. The only visitor I've had was\u2014excuse me\u2014 Control setting D: Whites economy, lightly soiled cotton or linen articles which are color-fast to boiling\u2014was the time we had a new supplement regarding woolens\u2014but that would have been six or seven months ago. Where does the time go?\"\n\nHe seemed a cheerful enough chap. He thought for a moment and then said: \"Would you like a cup of tea?\"\n\nI thanked him and he put the kettle on.\n\n\"So what's the news?\" asked Mr. Cullards, rinsing out his one and only cup. \"Any idea when the new washing machines are due out?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said, \"I have no idea\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm about ready to move on to something a bit more modern. I started on vacuum cleaner instructions but was promoted to Hoovermatic T5004, then transferred to the Electron 800 after twin-tub obsolescence. They asked me to take care of the 1100 Deluxe, but I told them I'd sooner wait until the Logic 1300 came out.\"\n\nI looked around at the small room.\n\n\"Don't you ever get bored?\"\n\n\"Not at all!\" said Cullards, pouring the hot water into the teapot. \"Once I've put in my ten years I'm eligible to apply for work in all domestic appliance instructions: food mixers, liquidizers, microwaves\u2014who knows, if I work really hard I could make it into television or wireless. That's the future for an ambitious manual worker. Milk and sugar?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\nHe leaned closer.\n\n\"Management have this idea that only young 'uns should do Sound & Vision instructions, but they're wrong. Most of the kids in VCR manuals barely do six months in Walkmans before they're transferred. It's little wonder no one can understand them.\"\n\n\"I never thought of that before,\" I confessed.\n\nWe chatted for the next half hour. He told me he had begun French and German classes so he could apply for work in multilingual instructions, then confided in me his fondest feelings for Tabitha Doehooke, who worked for Kenwood Mixers. We were just talking about the sociological implications of labor-saving devices within the kitchen and how they related to the women's movement when Miss Havisham stirred.\n\n\"Compeyson\u2014!\" she muttered without waking. \"You lying, stealing, thieving, hound of a...\"\n\n\"Miss Havisham?\" I asked.\n\nShe stopped mumbling and opened her eyes.\n\n\"Next, my girl,\" she gasped. \"I need\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes?\" I asked, leaning closer.\n\n\"\u2014a cup of tea.\"\n\n\"Can do!\" said Mr. Cullards cheerfully, pouring out a fresh cup. Miss Havisham sat up, drank three cups of tea and also ate the biscuit that Cullards was reserving for his birthday next May. I introduced the Hoover instructionalist, and Miss Havisham nodded politely before announcing we would have to be off.\n\nWe said our goodbyes and Mr. Cullards made me promise I would clean out the powder dispenser on my washer; in an unguarded moment I had let slip I had yet to do so, despite the washer's being nearly three years old.\n\nThe short trip to the nonfiction section of the Great Library was an easy jump for Miss Havisham, and from there we fworped back into her dingy ballroom in Great Expectations, where the Cheshire Cat and Harris Tweed were waiting for us, talking to Estella. The Cat seemed quite relieved to see us both, but Harris simply scowled.\n\n\"Estella!\" said Miss Havisham abruptly. \"Please don't talk to Mr. Tweed.\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Havisham,\" replied Estella meekly.\n\nHavisham replaced her trainers with the less comfortable wedding shoes.\n\n\"I have Pip waiting outside,\" said Estella slightly nervously. \"If you will excuse me mentioning it\u2014ma'am is a paragraph late.\"\n\n\"Dickens can just flannel for a bit longer,\" replied Havisham. \"I must finish with Miss Next.\"\n\nShe turned to me with a grim look; I thought I'd better say something to soothe her\u2014I hadn't yet seen Havisham lose her temper and I was in no hurry to do so.\n\n\"Thank you for my rescue, ma'am,\" I said quickly. \"I'm very grateful to you.\"\n\n\"Humph!\" replied Miss Havisham. \"Don't expect salvation from me every time you get yourself into a jam, my girl. Now, what's all this about a baby?\"\n\nThe Cheshire Cat, sensing trouble, vanished abruptly on the pretext of some \"cataloguing,\" and even Tweed mumbled something about checking Lorna Doone for grammasites and went too.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Havisham again, peering at me quite intensely.\n\nI didn't feel quite as frightened of her as I once did, so I thought I should come clean and tell her everything. I told her all about Landen's eradication, the offer from Goliath, Jack Schitt in \"The Raven\" and even Mycroft's Prose Portal. Just for good measure I finished up by telling her how much I was in love with Landen and how I'd do anything to get him back.\n\n\"For love? Pah!\" she answered, dismissing Estella with a wave of her hand in case the young woman got any odd ideas. \"And what, in your tragically limited experience, is that?\"\n\nShe didn't seem to be losing her temper, so, emboldened, I continued: \"I think you know, ma'am. You were in love once, I believe?\"\n\n\"Stuff and nonsense, girl!\"\n\n\"Isn't the pain you feel now the equal to the love you felt then?\"\n\n\"You're coming perilously close to contravening my Rule Two!\"\n\n\"I'll tell you what love is,\" I told her. \"It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter!\"\n\n\"That was quite good,\" said Havisham, looking at me curiously. \"Could I use that? Dickens won't mind.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said Miss Havisham after a few moments of deliberation, \"that I shall categorize your complex marital question under widowed, which sits with me well enough. Upon reflection\u2014and quite possibly against my better judgment\u2014 you may stay as my apprentice. That's all. You are needed to help retrieve Cardenio. Go!\"\n\nSo I left Miss Havisham in her darkened chamber with all the trappings of her wedding that never was. In the few days I had known her I had learned to like her a great deal, and hoped someday I might repay her kindness and match her fortitude."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cardenio Rebound",
                "text": "PageRunner: Any character who is out of his or her book and moves through the backstory (or more rarely the plot) of another book. PageRunners may be lost, vacationing, part of the Character Exchange Program or criminals, intent on mischief. (See: Bowdlerizers)\n\nTexters: Slang term given to a relatively harmless PageRunner (q.v.) (usually juvenile) who surfs from book to book for adventure and rarely appears in the frontstory but does, on occasion, cause small changes to text and/or plot lines.\n\n\u2014UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT, The Jurisfiction Guide to BookJumping (glossary)\n\n\u2002HARRIS TWEED and the Cheshire Cat took me back to the library. We sat on a bench in front of the Boojumorial and Harris stared at me while the Cat\u2014who was nothing if not courteous\u2014went to get me a pasty from the snack bar just next to Mr. Wemmick's storeroom.\n\n\"Where did she find you?\" snapped Harris. I was getting used to his aggressive mannerisms by now. If he thought as little of me as he made out, then I wouldn't be here at all.\n\nThe Cat popped his head up between us and said: \"Hot or cold pasty?\"\n\n\"Hot, please.\"\n\n\"Okay then,\" he said, and vanished again.\n\nI explained Havisham's leap from the Goliath vault to the washing label; Tweed was clearly impressed. He had been apprenticed to Commander Bradshaw many years previously, and Bradshaw's accuracy in bookjumping was as poor as Havisham's was good\u2014hence the commander's interest in maps.\n\n\"A washing label. Now that is impressive,\" mused Harris. \"Not many PROs would even attempt to jump blind into less than a hundred words. Havisham took quite a risk with you, Miss Next. Cat, what do you think?\"\n\n\"I think,\" said the Cat, handing me a steaming hot pasty, \"that you've forgotten the Moggilicious cat food you promised, hmm?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" I replied. \"Next time.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said the Cat.\n\n\"Right,\" said Harris. \"To business. Tell me, who are the chief players in Cardenio's discovery?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I began, \"there's Lord Volescamper, an hereditary peer. He said he found it in his library. Amiable chap\u2014bit of a duffer. Then there's Yorrick Kaine, a Whig politician who hopes to use the free distribution of the play to sway the Shakespeare vote in his favor at tomorrow's election.\"\n\n\"I'll see if I can find which book they're from\u2014if at all,\" said the Cat, and vanished.\n\n\"Is that really likely?\" I asked. \"Volescamper has been around since before the war, and Kaine has been on the political scene for at least five years.\"\n\n\"It means nothing, Miss Next,\" replied Harris impatiently. \"Mellors had a wife and family in Slough for two decades and Heathcliff worked in Hollywood for three years under the name of Buck Stallion\u2014no one suspected a thing in either case.\"\n\n\"But Cardenio,\" I asked, \"it is the library's copy, yes?\"\n\n\"Without a doubt. Despite elaborate security arrangements, someone managed to swipe it from under the Cat's whiskers\u2014 he's very upset about it.\"\n\n\"Did you say fig, or whig?\" inquired the Cat, who had reappeared.\n\n\"I said Whig,\" I replied. \"And I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said the Cat; and this time he vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of his tail, and ending with his grin.\n\n\"He doesn't seem terribly upset,\" I observed.\n\n\"Looks can be deceptive\u2014in the Cat's case, trebly so. We heard about Cardenio only yesterday. It nearly gave the Bellman a fit. He was all for putting together one of his madcap and typically Boojum-ridden expeditions. As soon as I found out that Kaine was going to make Cardenio public property, I knew we had to act and act fast.\"\n\n\"But listen,\" I said, my head spinning slightly with all this new intelligence, \"why is it so important that Cardenio remain lost? It's a brilliant play.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't expect you to understand,\" replied Tweed crossly, \"but believe me, there are extremely good reasons why Cardenio must stay lost. Listen, it's no accident that only seven out of Aeschylus' hundred or so plays survive, or that Paradise Lost Once More will never be known.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Don't ask,\" replied Tweed shortly. \"And besides, if the rest of the bookworld figures out there is something to gain by swiping library books, then we could be in one hell of a state.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I returned, quite used to secretive policing divisions at SpecOps, \"so why am I here?\"\n\n\"Clearly, this is no place for an apprentice, but you know the layout of Vole Towers as well as having met the key suspects. Do you know where Cardenio is kept?\"\n\n\"In a combination-and-key safe within the library itself.\"\n\n\"Good. But first we need to get in. Can you remember any of the other books in the library?\"\n\nI thought for a moment.\n\n\"There was a rare first edition of Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.\"\n\n\"Come on then,\" he said abruptly. \"No time for dawdling. We're off.\"\n\nWe took the elevator to Floor W of the library, found the copy we were looking for and were soon within the book, tiptoeing past a noisy party in the quad at Scone College. Tweed concentrated on the outward jump, and a few moments later we were standing inside the locked library at Vole Towers.\n\n\"Cat,\" said Harris, looking around at the untidy library, \"you there?\"\n\n\"A simple 'Yes' will do. Send the safecrackers in by way of a first of Decline and Fall. If they come across Captain Grimes, they are not to lend him money on any account. Anything on Volescamper or Kaine?\"\n\n\"Blast!\" exclaimed Tweed. \"Too much to hope they'd be stupid enough to use their own names.\"\n\nTwo men suddenly appeared next to us, and Harris pointed them in the direction of the safe. One wore a fine evening dress; the other was attired in a more sober woolen suit and carried a holdall that once opened revealed an array of beautifully crafted safecracking tools. After running an expert eye over the safe for a few moments the elder of the two removed his jacket, took the stethoscope proffered to him by his companion and listened to the safe as he gently turned the combination wheel.\n\n\"Is that Raffles?\" I whispered. \"The gentleman thief?\"\n\nHarris nodded, checking his watch.\n\n\"With his assistant, Bunny. If anyone can, they can.\"\n\n\"So who do you think stole Cardenio?\"\n\n\"A good one for tricky questions, aren't you, Next? We have a suspect list as long as your arm\u2014there are several million possible contenders in the bookworld, and any one of them could have gone rogue, jumped out of their book, swiped Cardenio and legged it over here.\"\n\n\"So how do you tell whether someone is an impostor or not?\"\n\nHarris looked at me.\n\n\"With great difficulty. Do you think I belong here, in your world?\"\n\nI looked at the short man with the elegant tweed herringbone suit and touched him gently on the chest with a finger. He was as real to me as anyone I had ever met, either within books or without. He breathed, smiled, scowled\u2014how was I meant to tell?\n\n\"I don't know. Are you from a 1920s detective novel?\"\n\n\"Wrong,\" replied Harris. \"I'm as real as you are. I work three days a week for Skyrail as a signals operator. But how could I prove that? I could just as easily be a minor character in an obscure novel somewhere. The only sure way to tell would be to place me under observation for two months\u2014that's about the limit any bookperson can stay outside their book. But enough of this. Our first priority is to get the manuscript back. After that, we can start figuring out who is who.\"\n\n\"There's no quicker way?\"\n\n\"Only one other that I know of. No bookperson is going to take a bullet; if you try and shoot one, chances are they'll jump.\"\n\n\"It sounds a bit like testing for witches. If they sink and drown, they're innocent\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not ideal,\" said Harris gruffly. \"I'm the first to admit that.\"\n\nWithin half an hour Raffles had worked out the combination and now turned his attention to the secondary locking mechanism. He was slowly drilling a hole above the combination knob, and the quiet squeaking of the drill bit seemed inordinately loud to our heightened nerves. We were staring at him and silently urging him to go faster when a noise from the library's heavy door made us turn. Harris and I leaped to either side as the unlocking wheel spun to draw the steel tabs from the slots in the iron frame, and the door swung slowly open. Raffles and Bunny, well used to being disturbed, silently gathered up their tools and hid beneath a table.\n\n\"The manuscript will be released to the publishers first thing tomorrow morning,\" said Kaine as he and Volescamper strolled in. Tweed pointed his automatic at them, and they jumped visibly. I pushed the door shut behind them and spun the locking mechanism.\n\n\"What is the meaning of this?\" said Volescamper in an outraged voice. \"Miss Next? Is that you?\"\n\n\"As large as life, Volescamper. I'm sorry, I have to search you.\"\n\nThe two of them meekly acquiesced to a searching; they were unarmed, but Yorrick Kaine had turned a deep shade of crimson during the process.\n\n\"Thieves!\" he spat. \"How dare you!\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Harris, beckoning them further into the room and signaling for Raffles to continue with his work, \"we have only come to retrieve Cardenio\u2014something that does not belong to either of you.\"\n\n\"Now look here, I don't know what you're talking about,\" began Volescamper, who was visibly outraged. \"This house is surrounded by SO-14 agents\u2014there is no escape. And as for you, Miss Next, look here, I am deeply disappointed by your perfidy!\"\n\n\"What do you reckon?\" I said to Harris. \"His indignation seems real.\"\n\n\"It does\u2014but he has less to gain from this than Kaine.\"\n\n\"You're right\u2014my money's on Kaine.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?!\" demanded Kaine angrily. \"The manuscript belongs to literature\u2014how do you think you can sell something like this on the open market? You may think you can get away with it, but I will die before I allow you to remove the literary heritage that belongs to all of us!\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know,\" I added. \"Kaine is pretty convincing too.\"\n\n\"Remember, he's a politician.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I returned, snapping my fingers. \"I'd forgotten. What if it's neither?\"\n\nI didn't have time to answer as there was a crash from somewhere near the front of the house and the sound of an explosion. A low guttural moan reached our ears, followed by the terrified scream of a man in mortal terror. A shiver ran up my spine and I could see that everyone else in the room had felt it too. Even the implacable Raffles paused for a moment before returning to work with just a little bit more urgency.\n\n\"Cat!\" exclaimed Harris. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"The Questing Beast?\" exclaimed Tweed. \"The Glatisant? Summon King Pellinore immediately.\"\n\n\"The Questing Beast?\" I asked. \"Is that bad?\"\n\n\"Bad?\" replied Harris. \"It's the worst. Think loathsome, think repulsive, think evil, think of escape. The Questing Beast was born in the oral tradition before books; an amalgam of every dark and fetid horror that ever sprang from the most depraved recesses of the human imagination\u2014all rolled into one foul-smelling package. It has many names, but its goal is always the same: death and destruction. As soon as it comes through the door anyone still in here will be stone cold dead.\"\n\n\"Through the vault door?\"\n\n\"There is no barrier yet created that can withstand the Questing Beast, except a Pellinore\u2014they have hunted it for years!\"\n\nHarris turned to Kaine and Volescamper.\n\n\"But there's one thing it does tell us. One of you is fictional. One of you has invoked the Questing Beast. I want to know who it is!\"\n\nKaine and Volescamper looked at Tweed, then at me, at each other and finally at the steel door as we heard another low moan. The light machine gun at the front door fell silent and a splintering of wood met our ears as the Questing Beast forced its way through the main entrance and moved its odious form closer to the library.\n\n\"Cat!\" yelled Tweed again. \"Where's that King Pellinore I asked for?\"\n\n\"Keep trying,\" muttered Tweed. \"We've still got a few minutes. Next\u2014have you any ideas?\"\n\nFor once, I didn't. With loathsome creatures from the id outside, a fictional person pretending to be real inside and me in the middle wondering quite what I was doing here in the first place, creative thought wasn't exactly high on my agenda. I mumbled an apology and shook my head.\n\nThere was a crunching sound as the Questing Beast made its way down the corridor amidst screams of terror and sporadic rifle fire.\n\n\"Raffles?\" yelled Tweed. \"How long?\"\n\n\"Two minutes, old chum,\" replied the safecracker without pausing or looking up. He had finished drilling the hole, made a small cup out of clay and stuck it against the side of the safe and was now pouring in what looked like liquid nitrogen.\n\nThe battle outside seemed to increase in ferocity. There were shouts, concussions from grenades, screams and the rattle of automatic weaponry until, after an almighty crash that shook the ceiling lights and toppled books from their shelves, all was quiet.\n\nWe looked at one another. Then a gentle tap rang out, like the tip of a spear struck against the other side of the steel door. There was a pause, then another.\n\n\"Thank goodness!\" said Tweed in relief. \"King Pellinore must have arrived and seen it off. Next, open the door.\"\n\nBut I didn't. Suspicious of loathsome beasts from the deepest recesses of the human imagination, I stayed my hand. It was as well that I did. The next blow was harder. The blow following that was harder still; the vault door shook.\n\n\"Blast!\" exclaimed Tweed. \"Why is there never a Pellinore around when you need one? Raffles, we don't have much time\u2014!\"\n\n\"Just a few minutes more...\" replied Raffles quietly, tapping the safe door with a hammer while Bunny pulled on the brass handle.\n\nTweed looked at me as the library door buckled under another heavy blow; a split opened up in the steel, and the locking wheel sheared off and dropped to the ground. It wasn't a question of if the Glatisant got in, it was a question of when.\n\n\"Okay,\" said Tweed reluctantly, grabbing my elbow in anticipation of a jump, \"that's it. Raffles, Bunny, out of here!\"\n\n\"Just a few moments longer...\" replied the safecracker with his usual calm. Raffles was used to fine deadlines and didn't like to give up on a safe, no matter what the possible consequences.\n\nThe steel door buckled once more and the rent in the steel grew wider as the Questing Beast charged it with a deafening crash. Books fell off the shelves in a cloud of dust and a foul odor began to fill the air. Then, as the Questing Beast readied itself for another blow, I had the one thing that had eluded me for the past half hour. An idea. I pulled Tweed close to me and whispered in his ear.\n\n\"No!\" he said. \"What if\u2014?\"\n\nI explained again, he smiled and I began:\n\n\"So one of you is fictional,\" I announced, looking at them both.\n\n\"And we have to find out who it is,\" remarked Tweed, leveling his pistol in their direction.\n\n\"Might it be Yorrick Kaine\u2014\" I added, staring at Kaine, who glared back at me, wondering what we were up to,\n\n\"\u2014failed right-wing politician\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014with a cheery enthusiasm for war\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014and putting a lid on civil liberties?\"\n\nTweed and I bantered lines back and forth for as long as we dared, faster and faster, the blows from the beast outside matching the blows from Raffles's hammer within.\n\n\"Or perhaps it is Volescamper\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014lord of the old realm, who wants\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014to try and get\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014back into power with the help\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014of his friends at the Whig party?\"\n\n\"But the important thing is, in all this dialogue\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014that has pitched back and forward between\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014the two of us, a fictional person\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014might have lost track of which one of us is talking.\"\n\n\"And do you know, in all the excitement, I kind of forgot myself!\"\n\nThere was another crash against the door. A splinter of steel flew off and zipped past my ear. The doors were almost breached; with the next blow the abomination would be upon us.\n\n\"So you're going to have to ask yourselves one simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?\"\n\n\"You are!\" yelled Volescamper, pointing\u2014correctly\u2014at me. Kaine, revealing his fictional roots by his inability to follow undedicated dialogue, pointed his finger\u2014at Tweed.\n\nHe corrected himself quickly, but it was too late for the politician, and he knew it. He scowled at the two of us, trembling with rage. His charming manner seemed to desert him as we sprang the trap; suaveness gave way to snarling, smooth politeness to clumsy threats.\n\n\"Now listen,\" growled Kaine, trying to regain control of the situation, \"you two are in way over your heads. Try to arrest me and I can make things very difficult for you\u2014one footnoterphone call from me and the pair of you will spend the next eternity on grammasite watch inside the OED.\"\n\nBut Tweed was made of stern stuff, too.\n\n\"I've closed bloopholes in Dracula and Biggles Flies East,\" he replied evenly. \"I don't frighten easily. Call off the Glatisant and put your hands on your head.\"\n\n\"Leave Cardenio here with me\u2014if only until tomorrow,\" added Kaine, changing tack abruptly and forcing a smile. \"In return I can give you anything you want. Power, cash\u2014an earldom, Cornwall, character exchange into Hemingway\u2014you name it, Kaine will provide!\"\n\n\"You have nothing of any value to bargain with, Mr. Kaine,\" Tweed told him, his hand tightening on his pistol. \"For the last time\u2014\"\n\nBut Kaine had no intention of being taken, alive or otherwise. He cursed us both to a painful excursion in the twelfth circle of hell and melted from view as Tweed fired. The slug buried itself harmlessly in a complete set of bound Punch magazines. At the same time the steel doors burst open. But instead of a pestilential hellbeast conjured from the depths of mankind's most degenerate thoughts, only an icy rush of air entered, bringing with it the lingering smell of death. The Questing Beast had vanished as quickly as its master, back to the oral tradition and any books unfortunate enough to feature it.\n\n\"Cat!\" yelled Tweed as he reholstered his gun. \"We've got a PageRunner. I need a bookhound ASAP!\"\n\nVolescamper sat down on a handy chair and looked bewildered.\n\n\"You mean,\" he stammered incredulously, \"look here, Kaine was\u2014?\"\n\n\"\u2014entirely fictional\u2014yes,\" I replied, laying a hand on his shoulder.\n\n\"You mean Cardenio didn't belong to my grandfather's library after all?\" he asked, his confusion giving way to sadness.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Volescamper,\" I told him. \"Kaine stole the manuscript. He used your library as a front.\"\n\n\"And if I were you,\" added Tweed in a less kindly aside, \"I should just go upstairs and pretend you slept all through this. You never saw us, never heard us, you know nothing of what happened here.\"\n\n\"Bingo!\" cried Raffles as the handle on the safe turned, shattering the frozen lock inside and creaking open. Raffles handed me the manuscript before he and Bunny vanished back to their own book with only the thanks of Jurisfiction to show for the night's efforts\u2014a valuable commodity on their side of the law.\n\nI passed Cardenio to Tweed. He rested a reverential hand on the play and smiled a rare smile.\n\n\"An undedicated dialogue trap, Next\u2014quick thinking. Who knows, we might make a Jurisfiction agent of you yet.\"\n\n\"Well, thank\u2014\"\n\n\"Cat!\" bellowed Tweed again. \"Where's that blasted bookhound?\"\n\nA large and sad-looking bloodhound appeared from nowhere, looked at us both lugubriously, made a sort of hopeless doggy-sigh and then started to sniff the books scattered on the floor in a professional manner. Tweed snapped a lead on the dog's collar.\n\n\"If I was the sort of person to apologize,\" he conceded, straining at the leash of the bookhound, who had locked onto the scent of one of Kaine's expletives, \"I would. Join me in the hunt for Kaine?\"\n\nIt was tempting, but I remembered Dad's prediction\u2014and there was Landen to think of.\n\n\"I have to save the world tomorrow,\" I announced, surprising myself by just how matter-of-fact I sounded. Tweed, on the other hand, didn't seem in the least surprised.\n\n\"Oh!\" he said. \"Well, another time, then. On sir, seek, away!\"\n\nThe bookhound gave an excited bark and leaped forward; Tweed hung grimly to the leash and they both disappeared into fine mist and the smell of hot paper.\n\n\"I suppose,\" said Lord Volescamper, interrupting the silence in a glum voice, \"that this means I won't be in Kaine's government after all?\"\n\n\"Politics is overrated,\" I told him.\n\n\"Perhaps you're right,\" he agreed, getting up. \"Well, goodnight, Miss Next. I didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, is that right?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all.\"\n\nVolescamper sighed and looked at the shattered remains of the interior of his house. He picked his way to the twisted steel door and turned to face me.\n\n\"Always was a heavy sleeper. Look here, pop round for tea and scones one day, why don't you?\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir. I shall. Goodnight.\"\n\nVolescamper gave me a desultory wave and was soon out of sight. I smiled to myself at the revelation of Kaine's fictional identity; I reckoned that not being a real person had to present a pretty good obstacle to being prime minister, but I couldn't help wondering just how much power he did wield within the world of fiction\u2014and whether I had heard the last of him. After all, the Whig party was still in existence, with or without their leader. Still, Tweed was a professional, and I had other things to deal with.\n\nI looked down the corridor, past the twisted doors. The front of Vole Towers, was virtually destroyed; the ceiling had collapsed and rubble lay strewn around where the Glatisant had fought the very finest of SO-14. I picked my way through the twisted door and down the corridor, where deep gouges had been scraped in the floor and walls by the leaden hide of the beast. The remaining SpecOps-14 operatives had all pulled back to regroup, and I slipped out in the confusion. Nine good men fell to the Questing Beast that night. The officers would all be awarded the SpecOps Star for Conspicuous Bravery in the Face of Other.\n\nAs I walked along the gravel drive away from what remained of Vole Towers, I could see a white charger galloping towards me, the warrior on its back holding a sharpened lance while behind him a dog barked excitedly. I waved King Pellinore to a halt.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, raising his visor and peering down at me. \"The Next girl! Seen the Questin' Beast, what what?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you've missed it,\" I explained. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Dem shame,\" announced Pellinore sadly, parking the lance in his stirrup. \"Dem shame indeed, eh? I'll find it, you know. It is the lot of the Pellinores, to go a-mollocking for the beastly beast. Come, sir\u2014away!\"\n\nHe spurred his steed and galloped off across the parkland of Vole Towers, the horse's hooves throwing great divots of grass high in the air, the large white dog running behind them, barking furiously.\n\nI returned to my apartment after giving an anonymous tip-off to The Mole, suggesting that they confirm the ongoing existence of Cardenio. The fact that I still had the apartment verified once and for all that Landen hadn't been returned. I had been a fool to think that Goliath would honor their part of the deal. I sat in the dark for a while, but even fools need rest, so I went to sleep under the bed as a precaution, which was just as well\u2014at 3 a.m. Goliath turned up, had a good look around and then left. I stayed hidden as a further precaution and was glad of this also, because SpecOps turned up at 4 a.m. and did exactly the same. Confident now of no further interruptions, I crawled out from my hiding place and climbed into bed, sleeping heavily until ten the next morning."
            },
            {
                "title": "Dream Topping",
                "text": "\u2002Ever since calories and \"sugar intake\" were discovered, the realm of the pudding has suffered intensely. There was a day when one could honestly and innocently enjoy the sheer pleasure of a good sticky toffee pudding; when ice cream was nice cream and bakewell tart really was baked well. Tastes change, though, and the world of the sweet has often been sour, having to go through some dramatic overhaulage in order to keep pace. Whilst a straightforward sausage and a common kedgeree maintain their hold on a nation's culinary choices, the pudding has to stay on its toes to tantalize our tastebuds. From low fat through to no fat, from sugar-free through to taste-free; what the next stage is we can only wait and see....\n\n\u2014CILLA BUBB, Don't Desert Your Desserts\n\nI peered cautiously from the window as I ate my breakfast and could see a black SpecOps Packard on the street corner, doubtless waiting for me to make an appearance. Across the road from them was another car, this time the unmistakable deep blue of Goliath; Mr. Cheese leaned against the bonnet, smoking. I switched on the telly and caught the news. The breakin at Vole Towers had been heavily censored, but it was reported that an unknown \"agency\" had gained entrance to the building, killed a number of SO-14 agents and made off with Cardenio. Lord Volescamper had been interviewed and maintained that he had been \"sound asleep\" and knew nothing. Yorrick Kaine was still reported as \"missing,\" and early exit polls from the day's election had shown that Kaine and the Whigs had not to have lived up to expectations. Without Cardenio, the powerful Shakespeare lobby had returned their allegiances to the current administration, who had promised to postpone, with the help of the ChronoGuard, the eighteenth-century demolition of Shakespeare's old Stratford home.\n\nI allowed myself a wry smile at Kaine's dramatic fall but felt sorry for the officers who had had to face the Questing Beast. I walked through to the kitchen. Pickwick looked at me and then at her empty supper dish with an accusing air.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I muttered as I poured her some dried fruit.\n\n\"How's the egg?\"\n\n\"Plock-plock,\" said Pickwick.\n\n\"Well,\" I replied, \"suit yourself. I was only asking.\"\n\nI made another cup of tea and sat down to have a think. Dad had said the world was going to end this evening, but whether that was really going to happen or not, I had no idea. As for me, I was wanted by SpecOps and Goliath; I was going to have to either outwit them or lie very low for a long time. I spent most of the day pacing my apartment, trying to figure out the best course of action. I wrote out my account of what had happened and hid it behind the fridge, just in case. I expected Dad to turn up, but the hours ticked by and everything carried on as normal. The Goliath and SpecOps vehicles were relieved by two others at midday, and as dusk drew on I became more desperate. I couldn't stay trapped inside my own apartment forever. Bowden and Joffy I could trust\u2014and perhaps Miles, too. I elected to sneak out and use a public phonebox to call Bowden and was just about to open the door when someone pressed the intercom buzzer downstairs. I quickly ducked out of my apartment and started to run down the staircase. If I reached the bottom and made my way out through the service entrance I might be able to slip away. Then, disaster. One of the tenants was about to leave at that precise moment and opened the door for whoever it was. I heard a brusque voice.\n\n\"Here for Miss Next\u2014SpecOps.\"\n\nI cursed Mrs. Scroggins as she replied: \"Fourth floor, second on the left!\"\n\nThe fire escape was out the front in full view of SpecOps and Goliath, so I ran all the way back upstairs to my flat, only to find that in my hurry I had locked myself out. There was nowhere to hide except behind a potted rubber plant about seven sizes too small, so I pushed open the letterbox and hissed: \"Pickwick!\"\n\nShe wandered out into the hall from the living room and stared at me, head cocked on one side.\n\n\"Good. Now listen. I know that Landen said you were really bright, and if you don't do this I'm going to be looped and you're going to be put in a zoo. Now, I need you to find my keys.\"\n\nPickwick stared at me dubiously, took two steps closer and then relaxed and plocked a bit.\n\n\"Yes, yes, it's me. All the marshmallows you can eat, Pickers, but I need my keys. My keys.\"\n\nPickwick obediently stood on one leg.\n\n\"Shit,\" I muttered.\n\n\"Ah, Next!\" said a voice behind me. I stopped, rested my head against the door and let the letterbox snap shut.\n\n\"Hello, Cordelia,\" I said softly without turning round.\n\n\"Well, you have been giving us the runaround, haven't you?\"\n\nI paused, turned and stood up. But Cordelia wasn't with any other SpecOps types\u2014she was with a couple, the winners of her competition. Perhaps things were not quite as bad as I thought. I put my arm around her shoulder and walked her out of earshot.\n\n\"Cordelia\u2014\"\n\n\"Dilly.\"\n\n\"Dilly\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, Thurs?\"\n\n\"What's the word over at SpecOps?\"\n\n\"Well, darling,\" answered Cordelia, \"the order for your arrest is still only within SpecOps\u2014Flanker is hoping you'll give yourself up. Goliath are telling anyone who will listen that you stole some highly sensitive industrial secrets.\"\n\n\"It's all bullshit, Cordelia.\"\n\n\"I know that, Thursday. But I've a job to do. Are you going to meet my people now?\"\n\nI had nothing to lose, so we returned to where the two of them were looking at a brochure for the Gravitube.\n\n\"Thursday Next, this is James and Catia Plummer, visitors to Swindon for their honeymoon.\"\n\n\"Congratulations,\" I said, shaking their hands and adding: \"Swindon for a honeymoon, eh? You must live only for pleasure.\"\n\nCordelia elbowed me and scowled.\n\n\"I'd invite you in for a coffee,\" I explained, \"but I've locked myself out.\"\n\nJames rummaged in his pocket and produced a set of keys.\n\n\"Are these yours? I found them on the path outside.\"\n\n\"I don't think that's very likely.\"\n\nBut they were my keys\u2014a set I had lost a few days earlier. I unlocked the door.\n\n\"Come on in. That's Pickwick. Stay away from the windows; there are a few people I don't want to meet outside.\"\n\nThey shut the door behind them and I walked through to the kitchen.\n\n\"I was married once,\" I said as I looked out of the kitchen window. I needn't have worried; the two cars and their occupants were in the same place. \"And I hope to be again. Did you tie the knot in Swindon?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Catia. \"We were going to have a blessing in the Church of Our Blessed Lady of the Lobsters, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But what?\"\n\n\"We were late and missed the appointment.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I replied, pausing to consider just how wholly unlikely it was that James had found my keys when other passing residents had missed them.\n\n\"Can I ask you a question, Miss Next?\" asked James.\n\n\"Call me Thursday. Hang on a minute.\"\n\nI nipped into the living room to fetch the entroposcope and shook it as I walked back in.\n\n\"Well, Thursday,\" continued James, \"I was wondering\u2014\"\n\n\"Shit!\" I exclaimed, looking at the swirling pattern within the rice and lentils. \"It's happening again!\"\n\n\"I think your dodo is hungry,\" observed Catia, as Pickwick performed her \"starving dodo\" routine for her on the kitchen floor.\n\n\"It's a scam for a marshmallow,\" I replied absently. \"You can give her one if you want. The jar is on top of the fridge.\"\n\nCatia put down her bag and reached up for the glass jar.\n\n\"Sorry, James, you were saying?\"\n\n\"Here it is. Who do you\u2014\"\n\nBut I wasn't listening. I was looking out of the kitchen window. Below me, sitting on the wall at the entrance to the apartment block, was a woman in her mid-twenties. She was dressed in slightly garish clothes and was reading a fashion magazine.\n\n\"Aornis?\" I whispered. \"Can you hear me?\"\n\nThe figure turned to look at me as I said the words, and my scalp prickled. It was her, no doubt about it. She smiled, waved and pointed to her watch.\n\n\"It's her,\" I mumbled. \"Goddamned sonofabitch\u2014it's her!\"\n\n\"\u2014and that's my question,\" concluded James.\n\n\"I'm sorry, James, I wasn't listening.\"\n\nI shook the entroposcope, but the pulses were no more patterned than before\u2014whatever the danger was, we weren't quite there yet.\n\n\"You had a question, James?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, slightly annoyed. \"I was wondering\u2014\"\n\n\"Look out!\" I shouted, but it was too late. The glass marshmallow jar had slipped from Catia's grasp and fell heavily on the worktop\u2014right on top of the small evidence bag full of the pink goo from beyond the end of the world. The jar didn't break, but the bag did, and Catia, myself, Cordelia and James were splattered in gooey slime. James got the worst of it\u2014a huge gob went right in his face.\n\n\"Ugh!\"\n\n\"Here,\" I said, handing him a Seven Wonders of Swindon tea towel, \"use this.\"\n\n\"What is that gick?\" asked Cordelia, dabbing at her clothes with a damp cloth.\n\n\"I wish I knew.\"\n\nBut James licked his lips and said: \"I'll tell you what this is. It's Dream Topping.\"\n\n\"Dream Topping?\" I queried. \"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Yes. Strawberry flavor. Know it anywhere.\"\n\nI put a finger in the goo and tasted it. No mistake, it was Dream Topping. If only forensics had looked at the big picture instead of staring at molecules, they might have figured it out for themselves. But it got me thinking.\n\n\"Dream Topping?\" I wondered out loud, looking at my watch. There were eighty-seven minutes of life left on the planet. \"How could the world turn to Dream Topping?\"\n\n\"It's the sort of thing,\" piped up James, \"that Mycroft might know.\"\n\n\"You,\" I said, pointing a finger at the pudding-covered individual, \"are a genius.\"\n\nWhat had Mycroft said before he left about his R&D work at ConStuff? Miniaturized machines, nanomachines barely bigger than a cell, building food protein out of nothing more than garbage? Banoffee pie from landfills? Perhaps there was going to be an accident. After all, what stopped nanomachines from making banoffee pie once they had started? I looked out of the window. Aornis had gone.\n\n\"Do you have a car?\" I asked.\n\n\"Sure,\" said James.\n\n\"You're going to have to take me over to ConStuff. Dilly, I need your clothes.\"\n\nCordelia looked suspicious.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I've got watchers. Three in, three out\u2014they'll think I'm you.\"\n\n\"No way on earth,\" replied Cordelia indignantly. \"Unless you agree to do all my interviews and press junkets.\"\n\n\"At my first appearance I'll have my head lopped off by Goliath or SpecOps\u2014or both.\"\n\n\"Perhaps that's so,\" replied Cordelia slowly, \"but I'd be a fool to pass on an opportunity as good as this. All the interviews and appearances I request for a year.\"\n\n\"Two months, Cordelia.\"\n\n\"Six.\"\n\n\"Three.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" she sighed, \"three months\u2014but you have to do TheThursday Next Workout Video and talk to Harry about the Eyre Affair film project.\"\n\n\"Deal.\"\n\nSo Cordelia and I switched clothes. It felt very odd to be wearing her large pink sweater, short black skirt and high heels.\n\n\"Don't forget the Peruvian love beads,\" said Cordelia, \"and my gun. Here.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, Miss Flakk,\" said James in a slightly indignant tone. \"You promised I could ask Miss Next a question.\"\n\nFlakk pointed a finely manicured fingertip at him and narrowed her eyes. \"Listen here, buster. You're both on SpecOps business right now\u2014a bonus I'd say. Any complaints?\"\n\n\"Er\u2014no, I guess not,\" stammered James.\n\nI led them outside, past the Goliath and SpecOps agents waiting for me. I made some expansive Cordelia-like moves and they barely gave us a second glance. We were soon in James's hired Studebaker, and I directed him across town as I switched back to my own clothes.\n\n\"Thursday?\" asked James.\n\n\"Yes?\" I replied, looking around to see if I could see Aornis and shaking the entroposcope. Entropy seemed to be holding at the \"slightly odd\" mark.\n\n\"Who is the father of Pickwick's egg?\"\n\nI get asked some odd questions sometimes. But he was driving me across town, so I thought I would show him some slack.\n\n\"I think it was one of the feral dodos down at the park,\" I explained. \"I caught Pickwick doing a sort of coy come-hither dodo thing a month back, with a large male near the bandstand. Pickwick's amour plocked noisily outside the house for a week, but I didn't know anything had actually happened. Does that answer your question?\"\n\n\"I guess.\"\n\n\"Good. Okay, pull up over there. I'll walk the rest of the way.\"\n\nThey dropped me by the side of the road, and I thanked them before running up the street. It was already quite dark and the streetlamps were on. It didn't look like the world was about to end in twenty-six minutes, but then I don't suppose it ever does."
            },
            {
                "title": "The End of Life as We Know It",
                "text": "\u2002After failing to get Landen back, dealing with Armageddon didn't really hold the same sort of excitement for me that it would later. They always say the first time you save the world is the hardest\u2014 personally I have always found it tricky, but this time, I don't know. Perhaps Landen's loss numbed my mind and immunized me against panic. Perhaps the distraction actually helped.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, Private Diaries\n\nConsolidated useful stuff was situated in a large complex on the airfield at Stratton. There was a guardhouse, but I had coincidence on my side\u2014as I walked into the security building all three guards had been called away on some errand or other, and I was able to slip through unnoticed. I rubbed my arm, which had inexplicably twinged with pain, and followed the signs toward Mycro Tech Developments. I was just wondering how to get into the locked building when a voice made me jump.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday!\"\n\nIt was Wilbur, Mycroft's boring son.\n\n\"No time to explain, Will\u2014I need to get into the nanotechnology lab.\"\n\n\"Why?\" asked Wilbur, fumbling with his keys.\n\n\"There's going to be an accident.\"\n\n\"Absolutely impossible!\" he scoffed, throwing the doors open to reveal a mass of spinning red lights and the raucous sounding of a klaxon.\n\n\"Heavens!\" exclaimed Wilbur. \"Do you think it's meant to be doing that?\"\n\n\"Call someone.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\nHe picked up the phone. Predictably enough, it was dead. He tried another but they were all dead.\n\n\"I'll get help!\" he said, tugging at the doorknob, which came off in his hand. \"What the\u2014\"\n\n\"Entropy's decreasing by the second, Will. Are you using Dream Topping in any of your nanomachines?\"\n\nHe led me to a cabinet where a tiny drop of pink goo was suspended in midair by powerful magnets.\n\n\"There she is. The first of her kind. Still experimental, of course. There are a few problems with the discontinuation command string. Once it starts changing organic matter into Dream Topping, it won't stop.\"\n\nI looked at my watch and noticed that there were barely twelve minutes left.\n\n\"What's keeping it from working at the moment?\"\n\n\"The magnetic field keeps the nanodevice immobilized, the refrigeration system is set below its activation temperature of minus ten degrees\u2014what was that?\"\n\nThe lights had flickered.\n\n\"Power grid failure.\"\n\n\"No problem, Thursday\u2014there are three backup generators. They can't all fail at the same time, that would be too much of a\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014coincidence, yes, I know. But they will. And when they do, that coincidence will be the biggest, the best\u2014and the last.\"\n\n\"Thursday, that's not possible!\"\n\n\"Anything is possible right now. We're in the middle of an isolated high-coincidental localized entropic field decreasement.\"\n\n\"We're in a what?\"\n\n\"We're in a pseudoscientific technobabble.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Wilbur, having witnessed quite a few at MycroTech Developments. \"One of those.\"\n\n\"What happens when the final backup fails, Wilbur?\"\n\n\"The nanodevice will be expelled into the atmosphere,\" said Wilbur grimly. \"It is programmed to make strawberry-flavored pudding mix and will continue to do so as long as it has organic material to work with. You, me, that table over there\u2014then when someone comes to let us out in the morning, the machine will get to work on the outside.\"\n\n\"How quickly?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Wilbur, thinking hard, \"the device will make replicas of itself to carry out the work even faster, so the more organic material is swallowed up, the faster the process becomes. The entire planet? I'd give it about a week.\"\n\n\"And nothing can stop it?\"\n\n\"Nothing I know of,\" he replied sadly. \"The best way to stop this is to not allow it to start\u2014sort of a minimum entry requirement for man-made disasters, really.\"\n\n\"Aornis!\" I shouted at the top of my voice. \"Where the hell are you?\"\n\nThere was no reply.\n\n\"AORNIS!\"\n\nAnd then she answered. But it was from such an unexpected quarter that I cried out in fright. She spoke to me\u2014from my memory. It was as though a barrier had been lifted in my mind. The day on the Skyrail platform. The moment I first set eyes on Aornis. I thought it had only been a glimpse, but it wasn't. We had spoken together for several minutes as I waited for the shuttle. I cast my mind back and read the newly recovered memories as my palms grew sweaty. The answers had been there all along.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday,\" said the young woman on the bench, dabbing her nose with a powder compact.\n\nI walked over to her.\n\n\"You know my name?\"\n\n\"I know a lot more than that. My name is Aornis Hades. You killed my brother.\"\n\nI tried not to let my surprise show.\n\n\"Self-defense, Miss Hades. If I could have taken him alive, I would have.\"\n\n\"No member of the Hades family has been taken alive for over eighty-three generations.\"\n\nI thought about the twin puncture, the Skyrail ticket, all the chance happenings to get me on the platform.\n\n\"Are you manipulating coincidences, Hades?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" she replied as the shuttle hissed into the station. \"You're going to get on that shuttle and be shot accidentally by an SO-14 marksman. An ironic end, don't you think? Shot by one of your own?\"\n\n\"What if I don't get on the Skyrail? What if I take you in right here and now?\"\n\nAornis sniggered at my na\u00efvet\u00e9.\n\n\"Dear Acheron was a fine and worthy Hades despite the fact he killed his brother\u2014something Mother was very cut up about\u2014but he was never truly au fait with some of the family's more diabolical attributes. You'll get on that train, Thursday\u2014 because you won't remember anything about this conversation!\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous!\" I laughed, but Aornis returned to her powder compact and I had got on the train.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Wilbur, who had been staring at me as the memories of Aornis came flooding back.\n\n\"Recovered memories,\" I replied grimly as the lights flickered. The first backup generator had failed. I checked my watch. There were six minutes to go.\n\n\"Thursday?\" murmured Wilbur, lower lip trembling. \"I'm frightened.\"\n\n\"Me too, Will. Quiet a sec.\"\n\nAnd I thought back to my next meeting with Aornis. At Uffington, when she posed as Violet De'ath. On this occasion we had been in company, so she hadn't said anything, but the next time, when I was in Osaka, she had sat next to me on the bench, just after the fortune-teller was struck by lightning.\n\n\"Clever trick,\" she said, arranging her shopping bags so they wouldn't fall over, \"using the coincidence in that way. Next time you won't be so lucky\u2014and while we're on the subject, how did you get out of the jam on the Skyrail?\"\n\nI really didn't want to answer her questions.\n\n\"What are you doing to me?\" I demanded instead. \"What are you doing to my head?\"\n\n\"A simple recollection erasure, Thursday. I'm a mnemenomorph. My particular edge is that I am instantly forgettable\u2014 you will never capture me because you will forget that we ever met. I can erase your memory of me so instantaneously I am rendered invisible. I can walk where I please, steal what I wish\u2014I can even murder in broad daylight.\"\n\n\"Very clever, Hades.\"\n\n\"Please, call me Aornis\u2014I'd like us to be pals.\"\n\nShe pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at her nails for a moment before asking: \"I saw a beautiful cashmere sweater just now; it's available in turquoise or emerald. Which do you think would suit me better?\"\n\n\"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"I'll get them both,\" she replied after a moment of reflection. \"It's on a stolen credit card, after all.\"\n\n\"Enjoy your game, Aornis, it won't be forever. I defeated your brother\u2014I'll do the same to you.\"\n\n\"And how do you propose to do that?\" she sneered. \"When you can't recollect anything about our meetings at all? My dear, you won't even remember this one\u2014until I want you to!\"\n\nAnd she gathered up her bags and walked off.\n\nThe lights in the nanotechnology lab flickered again. Wilbur and I looked at one another as the second backup generator failed. He tried the phones again in desperation, but everything was still dead. Death by coincidence. What a way to go. But it was now, with only two minutes to go, that Aornis lifted the last barrier and I clearly remembered the last occasion she and I had faced each other. It had occurred not twenty minutes before at the ConStuff reception. It hadn't been empty at all; Aornis had been there, waiting for me\u2014ready to deliver the coup de gr\u00e2ce.\n\n\"Well!\" she exclaimed as I walked in. \"Figured this one out, did you?\"\n\n\"Damn you, Hades!\" I retorted, reaching for my pistol. She caught my wrist and pulled me into a painful half nelson with surprising speed.\n\n\"Listen to me,\" she whispered in my ear while holding my arm locked tightly behind me. \"There's going to be an accident in the nanotechnology lab. Your uncle hoped to feed the world, when in fact he will be the father of its destruction. The irony is so heavy you could cut it with a knife!\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014!\" I said, but she pulled my arm up harder and I yelped.\n\n\"I'm talking, Next. Never interrupt a Hades when they're talking. You will die for what you have done to our family, but just to show I'm not a total fiend, I will allow you one last heroic gesture, something your pathetic self-righteous character seems to crave. At precisely six minutes before the accident, you will begin to remember all our little chats together.\"\n\nI struggled, but she held me tight.\n\n\"You'll remember this meeting last. So here's my offer. Take your pistol and turn it upon yourself\u2014and I'll spare the planet.\"\n\n\"And if I don't?\" I shouted. \"You'll die too!\"\n\n\"No,\" she laughed, \"I know you'll do it. Despite the baby. Despite everything. You're a good person, Next. A fine human being. It will be your downfall. I'm counting on it.\"\n\nShe leaned forwards and whispered in my ear.\n\n\"They're wrong, you know, Thursday. Revenge is so sweet!\"\n\n\"Thursday?\" asked Wilbur. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"No, not really,\" I muttered as I saw the clock tick into the final minute. Acheron was nothing compared to Aornis, either in his powers or his sense of humor. I'd messed with the Hades family and now I was paying the price.\n\nI pulled out my automatic as the clock ticked into the last half minute.\n\n\"If Landen ever comes back, tell him I love him.\"\n\nTwenty seconds.\n\n\"If who ever comes back?\"\n\n\"Landen. You'll know him when you see him. Tall, one leg, writes daft books and had a wife named Thursday who loved him beyond comprehension.\"\n\nTen seconds.\n\n\"So long, Wilbur.\"\n\nI closed my eyes and placed the gun to my temple."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Dawn of Life as We Know It",
                "text": "\u2002Three billion years ago the atmosphere on earth had stabilized to what scientists referred to as A-II. The relentless hammering of the atmosphere had created the ozone layer, which in turn now stopped new oxygen from being produced. A new and totally different mechanism was needed to kick-start the young planet into the living green ball that we know and enjoy today.\n\n\u2014DR. LUCIANO SPAGBOG, How I Think Life Began on Earth\n\n\"No need for that,\" said my father, gently taking the gun from my hand and laying it on the table. I don't know whether he purposely arrived late to increase the drama, but there he was. He hadn't frozen time\u2014I think he was done with that. Whenever he had appeared in the past he had always been smiles and cheeriness, but today he was different. And he looked, for the first time ever, old. Perhaps eighty\u2014maybe more.\n\nHe thrust his hand inside the nanodevice container as the final generator failed. The small blob of nanotechnology fell on his hand, and the emergency lights flicked on, bathing us all in a dim green glow.\n\n\"It's cold,\" he said. \"How long have I got?\"\n\n\"It has to warm up first,\" replied Wilbur glumly. \"Three minutes?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to disappoint you, sweetpea, but self-sacrifice is not the answer.\"\n\n\"It was all I had left, Dad. Me alone or me and three billion souls.\"\n\n\"You don't get to make that decision, Thursday, but I do. You've got a lot of good work to do, and your son, too. Me, I'm just glad that it all ends before I become so enfeebled as to be useless.\"\n\n\"Dad\u2014!\"\n\nI felt the tears start to roll down my cheeks. There was so much I wanted to ask him. There always is.\n\n\"It all seems so clear to me now!\" he said, smiling as he cupped his hand so none of the all-consuming Dream Topping would fall to the ground. \"After several million years of existence I finally realized my purpose. Will you tell your mother there was absolutely nothing between me and Emma Hamilton?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2014Dad! Don't, please!\"\n\n\"And tell Joffy I forgive him for breaking the windows of the greenhouse.\"\n\nI hugged him tightly.\n\n\"I'll miss you. And your mother of course, and S\u00e9v\u00e9, Louis Armstrong, the Nolan Sisters\u2014which reminds me, did you get any tickets?\"\n\n\"Third row, but\u2014but\u2014I don't suppose you'll need them now.\"\n\n\"You never know,\" he murmured. \"Leave my ticket at the box office, will you?\"\n\n\"Dad, there must be something we can do for you, surely?\"\n\n\"No, my darling, I'm going to be out of here pretty soon. The Great Leap Forward. The thing is, I wonder where to? Was there anything in the Dream Topping that shouldn't have been there?\"\n\n\"Chlorophyll.\"\n\nHe smiled and sniffed the carnation in his buttonhole. \"Yes, I thought as much. It's all very simple, really\u2014and quite ingenious. Chlorophyll is the key\u2014Ow!\"\n\nI looked at his hand. His skin and flesh were starting to swirl as the wayward nanodevice thawed enough to start work, devouring, changing and replicating with ever-increasing speed.\n\nI looked at him, wanting to ask a hundred questions but not knowing where to start.\n\n\"I'm going three billion years in the past, Thursday, to a planet with only the possibility of life. A planet waiting for a miraculous event, something that has not happened, as far as we know it, anywhere else in the universe. In a word, photosynthesis. An oxidizing atmosphere, sweetpea\u2014the ideal way to start an embryonic biosphere.\"\n\nHe laughed.\n\n\"It's funny the way things turn out, isn't it? All life on earth descended from the organic compounds and proteins contained within Dream Topping.\"\n\n\"And the carnation. And you.\"\n\nHe smiled at me.\n\n\"Me. Yes. I thought this might be the ending, the Big One\u2014 but in fact it's really only just the beginning. And I'm it. Makes me feel all sort of, well, humble.\"\n\nHe touched my face with his good hand and kissed me on the cheek.\n\n\"Don't cry, Thursday. It's how it happens. It's how it has always happened, always will happened. Take my chronograph; I'm not going to need it anymore.\"\n\nI unstrapped the heavy watch from his good wrist as the smell of artificial strawberries filled the room. It was Dad's hand. It had almost completely changed to pudding. It was time for him to go, and he knew it.\n\n\"Goodbye, Thursday. I never could have wished for a finer daughter.\"\n\nI composed myself. I didn't want his last memory of me to be of a sniveling wretch. I wanted him to see I could be as strong as he was. I pursed my lips and wiped the tears from my eyes.\n\n\"Goodbye, Dad.\"\n\nHe winked at me.\n\n\"Well, time waits for no man, as we say.\"\n\nHe smiled again and started to fold and collapse and spiral into a single dot, much like water escaping from a plughole. I could feel myself tugged into the event, so I took a step back as my father vanished into himself with a very quiet plop as he traveled into the deep past. A final gravitational tug dislodged one of my shirt buttons; the wayward pearl fastener sailed through the air and was caught in the small rippling vortex. It vanished from sight, and the air rocked for a moment before settling down to that usual state that we refer to as normality.\n\nMy father had gone.\n\nThe lights flickered back on as entropy returned to normal. Aornis's boldly audacious plan for revenge had backfired badly. She had, perversely enough, actually given us all life. And after all that talk about irony. She'd probably be kicking herself all the way to TopShop. Dad was right. It is funny the way things turn out.\n\nI sat through the Nolan Sisters concert that evening with an empty seat beside me, glancing at the door to see if he would arrive. I hardly even heard the music\u2014I was thinking instead of a lonely foreshore on a planet devoid of any life, a person who had once been my father sloughing away to his component parts. Then I thought of the resultant proteins, now much replicated and evolved, working on the atmosphere. They released oxygen and combined hydrogen with carbon dioxide to form simple food molecules. Within a few hundred million years the atmosphere would be full of free oxygen; aerobic life could begin\u2014and a couple of billion years after that, something slimy would start wriggling onto land. It was an inauspicious start, but now there was a sort of family pride attached to it. He wasn't just my father but everyone's father. As the Nolans performed \"Goodbye Nothing to Say,\" I sat in quiet introspection, regretting, as children always do upon the death of a parent, all the things we never said nor ever did. But my biggest regret was far more mundane: Since his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard, I never knew, nor ever asked him\u2014his name."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Well of Lost Plots",
                "text": "\u2002Character Exchange Program: If a character from one book looks suspiciously like another from the same author, more than likely, they are. There is a certain degree of economy that runs through the bookworld, and personages from one book are often asked to stand in for others. Sometimes a single character may play another in the same book, which lends a comedic tone to the proceedings if they have to talk to themselves. Margot Metroland once told me that playing the same person over and over and over again was as tiresome as \"an actress condemned to the same part in a provincial repertory theater for eternity with no holiday.\" After a spate of illegal PageRunning (q.v.) by bored and disgruntled bookpeople, the Character Exchange Program was set up to allow a change of scenery. In any year there are close to ten thousand exchanges, few of which result in any major plot or dialogue infringements. The reader rarely suspects anything at all.\n\n\u2014UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT, The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library (glossary)\n\nI slept over at Joffy's place. I say slept, but that wasn't entirely accurate. I just stared at the elegantly molded ceiling and thought of Landen. At dawn I crept quietly out of the vicarage, borrowed Joffy's Brough Superior motorcycle and rode into Swindon as the sun crept over the horizon. The bright rays of a new day usually filled me with hope, but that morning I could think only of unfinished business and an uncertain future. I rode through the empty streets, past Coate and up the Marlborough road towards my mother's house. She had to know about Dad, however painful the news might be, and I hoped she would take solace, as I did, in his final selfless act. I would go to the station and hand myself in to Flanker afterwards. There was a good chance that SO-5 would believe my account of what happened with Aornis, but I suspected that convincing SO-1 of Lavoisier's chronuption might take a lot more. Goliath and the two Schitts were a worry, but I was sure I would be able to think of something to keep them off my back. Still, the world hadn't ended yesterday, which was a big plus\u2014and Flanker couldn't exactly charge me with \"failing to save the planet his way,\" no matter how much he might want to.\n\nAs I approached the junction outside Mum's house I noticed a car that looked suspiciously Goliathesque parked across the street, so I rode on and did a wide circuit, abandoning the motorcycle two blocks away and treading noiselessly down the back alleys. I skirted around another large dark blue Goliath motorcar, climbed over the fence into Mum's garden and crept past the vegetable patch to the kitchen door. It was locked, so I pushed open the large dodo flap and crawled inside. I was just about to switch on the lights when I felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against my cheek. I started and almost cried out.\n\n\"Lights stay off,\" growled a husky woman's voice, \"and don't make any sudden moves.\"\n\nI dutifully froze. A hand snaked into my jacket and removed Cordelia's pistol. DH-82 was fast asleep in his basket; the idea of being a fierce guard-Taswolf had obviously not entered his head.\n\n\"Let me see you,\" said the voice again. I turned and looked into the eyes of a woman who had departed more rapidly into middle age than years alone might allow. I noticed that her gun arm wavered slightly, she had a slightly florid appearance and her hair had been clumsily brushed and pulled into a bun. But for all that it was clear she had once been beautiful; her eyes were bright and cheerful, her mouth delicate and refined, her bearing resolute.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" she demanded.\n\n\"This is my mother's house.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she said, giving a slight whisper of a smile and raising an eyebrow. \"You must be Thursday.\"\n\nShe returned her pistol to a holster that was strapped to her thigh beneath several layers of her large brocade dress and started to rummage in the cupboards.\n\n\"Do you know where your mother keeps the booze?\"\n\n\"Suppose you tell me who you are?\" I demanded, my eyes alighting on the knife block as I searched for a weapon\u2014just in case.\n\nThe woman didn't give me an answer, or, at least, not to the question I'd asked.\n\n\"Your father told me Lavoisier eradicated your husband.\"\n\nI halted my surreptitious creep towards the carving knives.\n\n\"You know my father?\" I asked in some surprise.\n\n\"I do so hate that term eradicated,\" she announced grimly, searching in vain amongst the tinned fruit for anything resembling alcohol. \"It's murder, Thursday\u2014nothing less. They killed my husband, too\u2014even if it did take three attempts.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Lavoisier and the French revisionists.\"\n\nShe thumped her fist on the kitchen top as if to punctuate her anger and turned to face me.\n\n\"You have memories of your husband, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Me too,\" she sighed. \"I wish to heaven I hadn't, but I have. Memories of things that might have happened. Knowledge of the loss. It's the worst part of it.\"\n\nShe opened another cupboard door, revealing still more tinned fruit.\n\n\"I understand your husband was barely two years old\u2014 mine was forty-seven. You might think that makes it better, but it doesn't. The petition for his divorce was granted and we were married the summer following Trafalgar. Nine years of glorious life as Lady Nelson\u2014then I wake up one morning in Calais, a drunken, debt-ridden wretch, and with the revelation that my one true love died a decade ago, shot by a sniper's bullet on the quarterdeck of the Victory.\"\n\n\"I know who you are,\" I murmured. \"You're Emma Hamilton.\"\n\n\"I was Emma Hamilton,\" she replied sadly. \"Now I'm a broke out-of-timer with a dismal reputation, no husband and a thirst the size of the Gobi.\"\n\n\"But you still have your daughter?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she groaned, \"but I never told her I was her mother.\"\n\n\"Try the end cupboard.\"\n\nShe moved down the counter, rummaged some more and found a bottle of cooking sherry. She poured a generous helping into one of my mother's teacups. I looked at the saddened woman and wondered if I'd end up the same way.\n\n\"We'll sort out Lavoisier eventually,\" muttered Lady Hamilton sadly, downing the cooking sherry. \"You can be sure of that.\"\n\n\"We?\"\n\nShe looked at me and poured another generous\u2014even by my mother's definition\u2014cup of sherry.\n\n\"Me\u2014and your father, of course.\"\n\nI sighed. She obviously hadn't heard the news.\n\n\"That's what I came to talk to my mother about.\"\n\n\"What did you come to talk to me about?\"\n\nIt was my mother. She had just walked in wearing a quilted dressing gown with her hair sticking in all directions. For someone usually so suspicious of Emma Hamilton, she seemed quite cordial and even wished her good morning\u2014although she swiftly removed the sherry from the counter and replaced it in the cupboard.\n\n\"You early bird!\" she cooed. \"Do you have time to take DH-82 to the vet's this morning? His boil needs lancing again.\"\n\n\"I'm kind of busy, Mum.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she exclaimed, sensing the seriousness in my voice. \"Was that business at Vole Towers anything to do with you?\"\n\n\"Sort of. I came over to tell you\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"That Dad has\u2014Dad is\u2014Dad was\u2014\"\n\nMum looked at me quizzically as my father, large as life, strode into the kitchen.\n\n\"\u2014is making me feel very confused.\"\n\n\"Hello, sweetpea!\" said my father, looking considerably younger than the last time I saw him. \"Have you been introduced to Lady Hamilton?\"\n\n\"We had a drink together,\" I said uncertainly. \"But\u2014you're\u2014 you're\u2014alive!\"\n\nHe stroked his chin and replied: \"Should I be something else?\"\n\nI thought for a moment and furtively shook my cuff down to hide his ChronoGraph on my wrist.\n\n\"No\u2014I mean, that is to say\u2014\"\n\nBut he had twigged me already.\n\n\"Don't tell me! I don't want to know!\"\n\nHe stood next to Mum and placed an arm round her waist. It was the first time I had seen them together for nearly seventeen years.\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"You mustn't be so linear,\" said my father. \"Although I try to visit only in your chronological order, sometimes it's not possible.\"\n\nHe paused.\n\n\"Did I suffer much pain?\"\n\n\"No\u2014none at all,\" I lied.\n\n\"It's funny,\" he said as he filled the kettle, \"I can recall everything up until final curtain minus ten, but after that it's all a bit fuzzy\u2014I can vaguely see a rugged coastline and the sunset on a calm ocean, but other than that, nothing. I've seen and done a lot in my time, but my entry and exit will always remain a mystery. It's better that way. Stops me getting cold feet and trying to change them.\"\n\nHe spooned some coffee into the Cafetiere. I was glad to see that I had only witnessed Dad's death and not the end of his life, as the two, I learned, are barely related at all.\n\n\"How are things, by the way?\" he asked.\n\n\"Well,\" I began, unsure of where to start, \"the world didn't end yesterday.\"\n\nHe looked at the low winter sun that was shining through the kitchen windows.\n\n\"So I see. Good job too. An Armageddon right now might have been awkward. Have you had any breakfast?\"\n\n\"Awkward? Global destruction would be awkward?\"\n\n\"Decidedly so. Tiresome almost,\" replied my father thoughtfully. \"The end of the world could really louse up my plans. Tell me, did you manage to get me a ticket to the Nolans' concert last night?\"\n\nI thought quickly.\n\n\"Er\u2014no, Dad\u2014sorry. They'd all sold out.\"\n\nThere was another pause. Mum nudged her husband, who looked at her oddly. It looked as if she wanted him to say something.\n\n\"Thursday,\" she began when it became obvious that Dad wasn't going to take her cue, \"your father and I think you should take some leave until our first grandchild is born. Somewhere safe. Somewhere other.\"\n\n\"Oh yes!\" added Dad with a start. \"With Goliath, Aornis and Lavoisier after you, the herenow is not exactly the best place to be.\"\n\n\"I can look after myself.\"\n\n\"I thought I could too,\" grumbled Lady Hamilton, gazing longingly at the cupboard where the cooking sherry was hidden.\n\n\"I will get Landen back,\" I replied resolutely.\n\n\"Perhaps now you might be physically up to it\u2014but what happens in six months' time? You need a break, Thursday, and you need to take it now. Of course, you must fight\u2014but fight with a level playing field.\"\n\n\"Mum?\"\n\n\"It makes sense, darling.\"\n\nI rubbed my head and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. It did seem to be a good idea.\n\n\"What have you in mind?\"\n\nMum and Dad exchanged looks.\n\n\"I could downstream you to the sixteenth century or something, but good medical care would be hard to come by. Upstreaming is too risky\u2014and besides, SO-12 would soon find you. No, if you're going to go anywhere, it will have to be sideways.\"\n\nHe came and sat down next to me.\n\n\"Henshaw at SO-3 owes me a favor. Between the two of us we could slip you sideways into a world where Landen doesn't drown aged two.\"\n\n\"You could?\" I replied, suddenly perking up.\n\n\"Sure. But steady on. It's not so simple. A lot will be... different.\"\n\nMy euphoria was short-lived. A prickle rose on my scalp.\n\n\"How different?\"\n\n\"Very different. You won't be in SO-27. In fact, there won't be any SpecOps at all. The Second World War will finish in 1945 and the Crimean conflict won't last much beyond 1854.\"\n\n\"I see. No Crimean War? Does that mean Anton will still be alive?\"\n\n\"It does.\"\n\n\"Then let's do it, Dad.\"\n\nHe laid a hand on mine and squeezed it.\n\n\"There's more. It's your decision, and you have to know precisely what is involved. Everything will be gone. All the work you've ever done, all the work you will do. There will be no dodos or neanderthals, no Willspeak machines, no Gravitube\u2014\"\n\n\"No Gravitube? How do people get around?\"\n\n\"In things called jetliners. Large passenger aircraft that can fly seven miles high at three-quarters of the speed of sound\u2014 some even faster.\"\n\nIt was plainly a ridiculous idea, and I told him.\n\n\"I know it's far-fetched, sweetpea, but you'll never know any different. The Gravitube will seem as impossible there as jetliners do here.\"\n\n\"What about mammoths?\"\n\n\"No\u2014but there will be ducks.\"\n\n\"Goliath?\"\n\n\"Under a different name.\"\n\nI was quiet for a moment.\n\n\"Will there be Jane Eyre?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" sighed my father. \"Yes, there will always be Jane Eyre.\"\n\n\"And Turner? Will he still paint The Fighting Temeraire?\"\n\n\"Yes, and Carravaggggio will be there too, although his name will be spelt more sensibly.\"\n\n\"Then what are we waiting for?\"\n\nMy father was silent for a moment.\n\n\"There's a catch.\"\n\n\"What sort of catch?\"\n\nHe sighed.\n\n\"Landen will be back, but you and he won't have met. Landen won't even know you.\"\n\n\"But I'll know him. I can introduce myself, can't I?\"\n\n\"Thursday, you're not part of this. You're outside of it. You'll still be carrying Landen's child, but you won't know the sideslip has ever happened. You will remember nothing about your old life. If you want to go sideways to see him, then you'll have to have a new past and a new present. Perversely enough, to be able to see him, you cannot have any recollection of him\u2014nor he of you.\"\n\n\"That's some catch,\" I observed.\n\n\"It's the second-best there is,\" Dad agreed.\n\nI thought for a moment.\n\n\"So I won't be in love with him?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. You might have a small residual memory\u2014 feelings that you can't explain for someone you've never met.\"\n\n\"Will I be confused?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nHe looked at me with an earnest expression. They all did. Even Lady Hamilton, who had been moving quietly towards the sherry, stopped and was staring at me. It was clear that making myself scarce was something I had to do. But having zero recollection of Landen? I didn't really have to think very hard.\n\n\"No, Dad. Thanks, but no thanks.\"\n\n\"I don't think you understand,\" he intoned, using his paternal go-to-your-room-young-lady voice. \"In a year's time you can come back and everything will be as right as\u2014\"\n\n\"No. I'm not losing any more of Landen than I have already.\"\n\nI had an idea.\n\n\"Besides, I do have somewhere I can go.\"\n\n\"Where?\" inquired my father. \"Where could you possibly go that Lavoisier couldn't find you? Backwards, forwards, sideways, otherways\u2014there isn't anywhere else!\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"You're wrong, Dad. There is somewhere. A place where no one will ever find me\u2014not even you.\"\n\n\"Sweetpea\u2014!\" he implored. \"It is imperative that you take this seriously! Where will you go?\"\n\n\"I'll just,\" I replied slowly, \"lose myself in a good book.\"\n\nDespite their pleading, I bade farewell to Mum, Dad and Lady Hamilton, crept out of the house and sped to my apartment on Joffy's motorbike. I parked outside the front door in clear defiance of the Goliath and SpecOps agents who were still waiting for me. I ambled slowly in; it would take them twenty minutes or more to report to base and then get up the stairs and break down the door\u2014and I really only needed to pack a few things. I still had my memories of Landen, and they would sustain me until I got him back. Because I would get him back\u2014but I needed time to rest and recuperate and bring our child into the world with the minimum of fuss, bother and interruptions. I packed four tins of Moggilicious cat food, two packets of Mintolas, a large jar of Marmite and two dozen AA batteries into a large holdall along with a few changes of clothing, a picture of my family and the copy of Jane Eyre with the bullet lodged in the cover. I placed a sleepy and confused Pickwick and her egg into the holdall and zipped up the bag so that only her head stuck out. I then sat and waited on a chair in front of the door with a copy of Great Expectations on my lap. I wasn't a natural bookjumper, and without my travelbook I was going to need the fear of capture to help catapult me through the boundaries of fiction.\n\nI started to read at the first knock on the door and continued through the volley of shouts for me to open up, past the muffled thuds and the sound of splintered wood, until finally, as the door fell in, I melted into the dingy interior of Great Expectations and Satis House.\n\nMiss Havisham was understandably shocked when I explained what I needed, and even more shocked at the sight of Pickwick, but she consented to my request and cleared it with the Bellman\u2014 on the proviso that I'd continue with my training. I was hurriedly inducted into the Character Exchange Program and given a secondary part in an unpublished book deep within the Well of Lost Plots\u2014the woman I was replacing had for some time wanted to take a course in drama at the Reading Academy of Dramatic Arts, so it suited her equally well. As I wandered down to subbasement six, Exchange Program docket in hand made out to someone named Briggs, I felt more relaxed than I had for weeks. I found the correct book sandwiched between the first draft of an adventure in the Tasman Sea and a vague notion of a comedy set in Bomber Command. I picked it up, took it to one of the reading tables and quietly read myself into my new home.\n\nI found myself on the banks of a reservoir somewhere in the home counties. It was summer and the air smelt warm and sweet after the wintry conditions back home. I was standing on a wooden jetty in front of a large and seemingly derelict flying boat, which rocked gently in the breeze, tugging on the mooring ropes. A woman had just stepped out of a door in the high-sided hull; she was holding a suitcase.\n\n\"Hello!\" she shouted, running up and offering me a hand. \"I'm Mary. You must be Thursday. My goodness! What's that?\"\n\n\"A dodo. Her name's Pickwick.\"\n\n\"I thought they were extinct.\"\n\n\"Not where I come from. Is this where I'm going to live?\" I was pointing at the shabby flying boat dubiously.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking,\" smiled Mary proudly. \"Isn't she just the most beautiful thing ever? Short Sunderland; built in 1943 but last flew in '54. I'm midway converting her to a houseboat, but don't feel shy if you want to help out. Just keep the bilges pumped out, and if you can run the number three engine once a month I'd be very grateful.\"\n\n\"Er\u2014okay,\" I stammered.\n\n\"Good. I've left a rough pr\u00e9cis of the story taped to the fridge, but don't worry too much\u2014since we're not published you can do pretty much what you want. Any problems, ask Captain Nemo who lives on the Nautilus two boats down, and don't worry, Jack might seem gruff to begin with, but he has a heart of gold, and if he asks you to drive his Austin Allegro, make sure you depress the clutch fully before changing gear. Did the Bellman supply you with all the necessary paperwork and fake IDs?\"\n\nI patted my pocket, and she handed me a scrap of paper and a bunch of keys.\n\n\"Good. This is my footnoterphone number in case of emergencies, these are the keys to the flying boat and my BMW. If someone named Arnold calls, tell him he had his chance and he blew it. Any questions?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\nShe smiled.\n\n\"Then we're done. You'll like it here. It's pretty odd. I'll see you in about a year. So long!\"\n\nShe gave a cheery wave and walked off up the dusty track. I looked across the lake at the faraway dinghies, then watched a pair of swans beating their wings furiously and pedaling the water to take off. I sat down on a rickety wooden seat and let Pickwick out of the bag. It wasn't home but it looked pleasant enough. Landen's reactualization was in the uncharted future, along with Aornis's and Goliath's comeuppance\u2014but all in good time. I would miss Mum, Dad, Joffy, Bowden, Victor and maybe even Cordelia. But it wasn't all bad news\u2014at least this way I wouldn't have to do The Thursday Next Workout Video.\n\nAs my father said, it's funny the way things turn out.\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Well of Lost Plots ]\n\n[ The Absence of Breakfast ]\n\n The Well of Lost Plots. To understand the Well you have to have an idea of the layout of the Great Library. The library is where all published fiction is stored so it can be read by the readers in the Outland; there are twenty-six floors, one for each letter of the alphabet. The library is constructed in the layout of a cross with the four corridors radiating from the center point. On all the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, are books. Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leatherbound, everything. But the similarity of all these books to the copies we read back home is no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject; these books are alive.\n\n\u2002Beneath the Great Library are twenty-six floors of dingy yet industrious subbasements known as the Well of Lost Plots. This is where books are constructed, honed and polished in readiness for a place in the library above\u2014if they make it that far. The failure rate is high. Unpublished books outnumber published by an estimated eight to one.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nMaking one's home in an unpublished novel wasn't without its compensations. All the boring day-to-day mundanities that we conduct in the real world get in the way of narrative flow and are thus generally avoided. The car didn't need refueling, there were never any wrong numbers, there was always enough hot water, and vacuum cleaner bags came in only two sizes\u2014upright and pull along. There were other more subtle differences, too. For instance, no one ever needed to repeat themselves in case you didn't hear, no one shared the same name, talked at the same time or had a word annoyingly \"on the tip of their tongue.\" Best of all, the bad guy was always someone you knew of, and\u2014Chaucer aside\u2014there wasn't much farting. But there were some downsides. The relative absence of breakfast was the first and most notable difference to my daily timetable. Inside books, dinners are often written about and therefore feature frequently, as do lunches and afternoon tea; probably because they offer more opportunities to further the story.\n\nBreakfast wasn't all that was missing. There was a peculiar lack of cinemas, wallpaper, toilets, colors, books, animals, underwear, smells, haircuts, and strangely enough, minor illnesses. If someone was ill in a book, it was either terminal and dramatically unpleasant or a mild head cold\u2014there wasn't much in between.\n\nI was able to take up residence inside fiction by virtue of a scheme entitled the Character Exchange Program. Due to a spate of bored and disgruntled bookpeople escaping from their novels and becoming what we called PageRunners, the authorities set up the scheme to allow characters a change of scenery. In any year there are close to ten thousand exchanges, few of which result in any major plot or dialogue infringements\u2014the reader rarely suspects anything at all. Since I was from the real world and not actually a character at all, the Bellman and Miss Havisham had agreed to let me live inside the BookWorld in exchange for helping out at Jurisfiction\u2014at least as long as my pregnancy would allow.\n\nThe choice of book for my self-enforced exile had not been arbitrary; when Miss Havisham asked me in which novel I would care to reside, I had thought long and hard. Robinson Crusoe would have been ideal considering the climate, but there was no one female to exchange with. I could have gone to Pride and Prejudice, but I wasn't wild about high collars, bonnets, corsets\u2014and delicate manners. No, to avoid any complications and reduce the possibility of having to move, I had decided to make my home in a book of such dubious and uneven quality that publication and my subsequent enforced ejection was unlikely in the extreme. I found just such a book deep within the Well of Lost Plots amongst failed attempts at prose and half-finished epics of such dazzling ineptness that they would never see the light of day. The book was a dreary crime thriller set in Reading entitled Caversham Heights. I had planned to stay there for only a year, but it didn't work out that way. Plans with me are like De Floss novels\u2014try as you might, you never know quite how they are going to turn out.\n\nI read my way into Caversham Heights. The air felt warm after the wintry conditions back home, and I found myself standing on a wooden jetty at the edge of a lake. In front of me there was a large and seemingly derelict flying boat of the sort that still plied the coastal routes back home. I had flown on one myself not six months before on the trail of someone claiming to have found some unpublished Burns poetry. But that was another lifetime ago, when I was SpecOps in Swindon, the world I had temporarily left behind.\n\nThe ancient flying boat rocked gently in the breeze, tautening the mooring ropes and creaking gently, the water gently slapping against the hull. As I watched the old aircraft, wondering just how long something this decrepit could stay afloat, a well-dressed young woman stepped out of an oval-shaped door in the high-sided hull. She was carrying a suitcase. I had read the novel of Caversham Heights so I knew Mary well although she didn't know me.\n\n\"Hullo!\" she shouted, trotting up and offering me a hand. \"I'm Mary. You must be Thursday. My goodness! What's that?\"\n\n\"A dodo. Her name's Pickwick.\"\n\nPickwick plocked and stared at Mary suspiciously.\n\n\"Really?\" she replied, looking at the bird curiously. \"I'm no expert of course but\u2014I thought dodoes were extinct.\"\n\n\"Where I come from, they're a bit of a pest.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" mused Mary. \"I'm not sure I've heard of a book with live dodoes in it.\"\n\n\"I'm not a bookperson,\" I told her, \"I'm real.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" exclaimed Mary, opening her eyes wide. \"An Outlander.\"\n\nShe touched me inquisitively with a slender index finger as though I might be made of glass.\n\n\"I've never seen someone from the other side before,\" she announced, clearly relieved to find that I wasn't going to shatter into a thousand pieces. \"Tell me, is it true you have to cut your hair on a regular basis? I mean, your hair actually grows?\"\n\n\"Yes\"\u2014I smiled\u2014\"and my fingernails, too.\"\n\n\"Really?\" mused Mary. \"I've heard rumors about that but I thought it was just one of those Outlandish legends. I suppose you have to eat, too? To stay alive, I mean, not just when the story calls for it?\"\n\n\"One of the great pleasures of life,\" I assured her.\n\nI didn't think I'd tell her about real-world downsides such as tooth decay, incontinence, or old age. Mary lived in a three-year window and neither aged, died, married, had children, got sick or changed in any way. Although appearing resolute and strong-minded, she was only like this because she was written that way. For all her qualities, Mary was simply a foil to Jack Spratt, the detective in Caversham Heights, the loyal sergeant figure to whom Jack explained things so the readers knew what was going on. She was what writers called an expositional, but I'd never be as impolite to say so to her face.\n\n\"Is this where I'm going to live?\" I was pointing at the shabby flying boat.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking.\" Mary smiled proudly. \"Isn't she just the most beautiful thing ever? She's a Sunderland; built in 1943 but last flew in '68. I'm midway converting her to a houseboat, but don't feel shy if you want to help out. Just keep the bilges pumped out, and if you can run the number three engine once a month, I'd be very grateful\u2014the start-up checklist is on the flight deck.\"\n\n\"Well\u2014okay,\" I muttered.\n\n\"Good. I've left a pr\u00e9cis of the story taped to the fridge and a rough idea of what you have to say, but don't worry about being word perfect; since we're not published, you can say almost anything you want\u2014within reason, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" I thought for a moment. \"I'm new to the Character Exchange Program. When will I be called to do something?\"\n\n\"Wyatt is the inbook exchange liaison officer; he'll let you know. Jack might seem gruff to begin with,\" continued Mary, \"but he has a heart of gold. If he asks you to drive his Austin Allegro, make sure you depress the clutch fully before changing gear. He takes his coffee black and the love interest between myself and DC Baker is strictly unrequited, is that clear?\"\n\n\"Very clear,\" I returned, thankful I would not have to do any love scenes.\n\n\"Good. Did they supply you with all the necessary paperwork, IDs, that sort of thing?\"\n\nI patted my pocket and she handed me a scrap of paper and a bunch of keys.\n\n\"Good. This is my footnoterphone number in case of emergencies, these are the keys to the flying boat and my BMW. If a loser named Arnold calls, tell him I hope he rots in hell. Any questions?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\nShe smiled as a yellow cab with TransGenre Taxis painted on the side materialized in front of us. The cabbie looked bored and Mary opened the passenger door.\n\n\"Then we're done. You'll like it here. I'll see you in about a year. So long!\"\n\nShe turned to the cabbie, muttered, \"Get me out of this book,\" and she and the car faded out, leaving me alone on the dusty track.\n\nI sat upon a rickety wooden seat next to a tub of long-dead flowers and let Pickwick out of her bag. She ruffled her feathers indignantly and blinked in the sunlight. I looked across the lake at the sailing dinghies that were little more than brightly colored triangles that tacked backwards and forwards in the distance. Nearer to shore a pair of swans beat their wings furiously and pedaled the water in an attempt to take off, landing almost as soon as they were airborne, throwing up a long streak of spray on the calm waters. It seemed a lot of effort to go a few hundred yards.\n\nI turned my attention to the flying boat. The layers of paint that covered and protected the riveted hull had partly peeled off to reveal the colorful livery of long-forgotten airlines beneath. The Perspex windows had clouded with age, and high in the massive wing untidy cables hung lazily from the oil-stained cowlings of the three empty engine bays, their safe inaccessibility now a haven for nesting birds. Goliath, Aornis, and SpecOps seemed a million miles away\u2014but then, so did Landen. Landen. Memories of my husband were never far away. I thought of all the times we had spent together that hadn't actually happened. All the places we hadn't visited, all the things we hadn't done. He might have been eradicated at the age of two, but I still had our memories\u2014just no one to share them with.\n\nI was interrupted from my thoughts by the sound of a motorcycle approaching. The rider didn't have much control of the vehicle; I was glad that he stopped short of the jetty\u2014his erratic riding might well have led him straight into the lake.\n\n\"Hullo!\" he said cheerfully, removing his helmet to reveal a youngish man with a dark Mediterranean complexion and deep sunken eyes. \"My name's Arnold. I haven't seen you around here before, have I?\"\n\nI got up and shook his hand.\n\n\"The name's Next. Thursday Next. Character Exchange Program.\"\n\n\"Oh, blast!\" he muttered. \"Blast and double blast! I suppose that means I've missed her?\"\n\nI nodded and he shook his head sadly.\n\n\"Did she leave a message for me?\"\n\n\"Y-es,\" I said uncertainly. \"She said she would, um, see you when she gets back.\"\n\n\"She did?\" replied Arnold, brightening up. \"That's a good sign. Normally she calls me a loser and tells me to go rot in hell.\"\n\n\"She probably won't be back for a while,\" I added, trying to make up for not passing on Mary's message properly, \"maybe a year\u2014maybe more.\"\n\n\"I see,\" he murmured, sighing deeply and staring off across the lake. He caught sight of Pickwick, who was attempting to outstare a strange aquatic bird with a rounded bill.\n\n\"What's that?\" he asked suddenly.\n\n\"I think it's a duck, although I can't be sure\u2014we don't have any where I come from.\"\n\n\"No, the other thing.\"\n\n\"A dodo.\"\n\n\"What's the matter?\" asked Arnold.\n\nI was getting a footnoterphone signal; in the BookWorld people generally communicated like this.\n\n\"A footnoterphone call,\" I replied, \"but it's not a message\u2014it's like the wireless back home.\"\n\nArnold stared at me. \"You're not from around here, are you?\"\n\n\"I'm from the other side of the page. What you call the Outland.\"\n\nHe opened his eyes wide. \"You mean\u2014you're real?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" I replied, slightly bemused.\n\n\"Goodness! Is it true that Outlanders can't say 'red-Buick-blue-Buick' many times quickly?\"\n\n\"It's true. We call it a tongue twister.\"\n\n\"Fascinating! There's nothing like that here, you know. I can say 'The sixth sheikh's sixth sheep's sick' over and over as many times as I want!\"\n\nAnd he did, three times.\n\n\"Now you try.\"\n\nI took a deep breath. \"The sixth spleeps sics sleeks... sick.\"\n\nArnold laughed like a drain. I don't think he'd come across anything quite so funny in his life. I smiled.\n\n\"Do it again!\"\n\n\"No thanks.4 How do I stop this footnoterphone blabbering inside my skull?\"\n\n\"Just think Off very strongly.\"\n\nI did, and the footnoterphone stopped.\n\n\"Better?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"You'll get the hang of it.\"\n\nHe thought for a minute, looked up and down the lake in an overtly innocent manner, then said, \"Do you want to buy some verbs? Not any of your rubbish, either. Good, strong, healthy regulars\u2014straight from the Text Sea\u2014I have a friend on a scrawltrawler.\"\n\nI smiled. \"I don't think so, Arnold\u2014and I don't think you should ask me\u2014I'm Jurisfiction.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Arnold, looking pale all of a sudden. He bit his lip and gave such an imploring look that I almost laughed.\n\n\"Don't sweat,\" I told him, \"I won't report it.\"\n\nHe sighed a deep sigh of relief, muttered his thanks, remounted his motorbike and drove off in a jerky fashion, narrowly missing the mailboxes at the top of the track.\n\nThe interior of the flying boat was lighter and more airy than I had imagined, but it smelt a bit musty. Mary was mistaken; she had not been halfway through the craft's conversion\u2014it was more like one-tenth. The walls were half-paneled with pine tongue-and-groove, and rock-wool insulation stuck out untidily along with unused electrical cables. There was room for two floors within the boat's cavernous hull, the downstairs a large, open-plan living room with a couple of old sofas pointing towards a television set. I tried to switch it on but it was dead\u2014there was no TV in the BookWorld unless called for in the narrative. Much of what I could see around me were merely props, necessary for the chapter in which Jack Spratt visits the Sunderland to discuss the case. On the mantelpiece above a small wood-burning stove were pictures of Mary from her days at the police training college, and another from when she was promoted to detective sergeant.\n\nI opened a door that led into a small kitchenette. Attached to the fridge was the pr\u00e9cis of Caversham Heights. I flicked through it. The sequence of events was pretty much as I remembered from my first reading in the Well, although it seemed that Mary had overstated her role in some of the puzzle-solving areas. I put the pr\u00e9cis down, found a bowl and filled it with water for Pickwick, took her egg from my bag and laid it on the sofa, where she quickly set about turning it over and tapping it gently with her beak. I went forward and discovered a bedroom where the nose turret would have been and climbed a narrow aluminum ladder to the flight deck directly above. This was the best view in the house, the large greenhouselike Perspex windows affording a vista of the lake. The massive control wheels were set in front of two comfortable chairs, and facing them and ahead of a tangled mass of engine control levers was a complex panel of broken and faded instruments. To my right I could see the one remaining engine, looking forlorn, the propeller blades streaked with bird droppings.\n\nBehind the pilots' seats, where the flight engineer would have sat, there was a desk with reading lamp, footnoterphone and typewriter. On the bookshelf were mainly magazines of a police nature and lots of forensic textbooks. I walked through a narrow doorway and found a pleasant bedroom. The headroom was not overgenerous, but it was cozy and dry and was paneled in pine with a porthole above the double bed. Behind the bedroom was a storeroom, a hot-water boiler, stacks of wood and a spiral staircase. I was just about to go downstairs when I heard someone speak from the living room below.\n\n\"What do you think that is?\"\n\nThe voice had an empty ring to it and was neuter in its inflection\u2014I couldn't tell if it was male or female.\n\nI stopped and instinctively pulled my automatic from my shoulder holster. Mary lived alone\u2014or so it had said in the book. As I moved slowly downstairs, I heard another voice answer the first: \"I think it's a bird of some sort.\"\n\nThe second voice was no more distinctive than the first, and indeed, if the second voice had not been answering the first, I might have thought they belonged to the same person.\n\nAs I rounded the staircase, I saw two figures standing in the middle of the room staring at Pickwick, who stared back, courageously protecting her egg from behind a sofa.\n\n\"Hey!\" I said, pointing my gun in their direction. \"Hold it right there!\"\n\nThe two figures looked up and stared at me without expression from features that were as insipid and muted as their voices. Because of their equal blandness it was impossible to tell them apart. Their arms hung limply by their sides, exhibiting no body language. They might have been angry or curious or worried or elated\u2014but I couldn't tell.\n\n\"Who are you?\" I asked.\n\n\"We are nobody,\" replied the one on the left.\n\n\"Everyone is someone,\" I replied.\n\n\"Not altogether correct,\" said the one on the right. \"We have a code number but nothing more. I am TSI-1404912-A and this is TSI-1404912-C.\"\n\n\"What happened to B?\"\n\n\"Taken by a grammasite last Tuesday.\"\n\nI lowered my gun. Miss Havisham had told me about Generics. They were created here in the Well to populate the books that were to be written. At the point of creation they were simply a human canvas without paint\u2014blank like a coin, ready to be stamped with individualism. They had no history, no conflicts, no foibles\u2014nothing that might make them either readable or interesting in any way. It was up to various institutions to teach them to be useful members of fiction. They were graded, too. A to D, one through ten. Any that were D-graded were like worker bees in crowds and busy streets. Small speaking parts were C-grades; B-grades usually made up the bulk of featured but not leading characters. These parts usually\u2014but not always\u2014went to the A-grades, handpicked for their skills at character projection and multidimensionality. Huckleberry Finn, Tess and Anna Karenina were all A-grades, but then so were Mr. Hyde, Hannibal Lecter and Professor Moriarty. I looked at the ungraded Generics again. Murderers or heroes? It was impossible to tell how they would turn out. Still, at this stage of their development they would be harmless. I reholstered my automatic.\n\n\"You're Generics, right?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" they said in unison.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"You remember the craze for minimalism?\" asked the one on the right.\n\n\"Yes?\" I replied, moving closer to stare at their blank faces curiously. There was a lot about the Well that I was going to have to get used to. They were harmless enough\u2014but decidedly creepy. Pickwick was still hiding behind the sofa.\n\n\"It was caused by the 1982 character shortage,\" said the one on the left. \"Vikram Seth is planning a large book in the next few years and I don't think the Well wants to be caught out again\u2014we're being manufactured and then sent to stay in unpublished novels until we are called into service.\"\n\n\"Sort of stockpiled, you mean?\"\n\n\"I'd prefer the word billeted,\" replied the one on the left, the slight indignation indicating that it wouldn't be without a personality forever.\n\n\"How long have you been here?\"\n\n\"Two months,\" replied the one on the right. \"We are awaiting placement at St. Tabularasa's Generic College for basic character training. I live in the spare bedroom in the tail.\"\n\n\"So do I,\" added the one on the left. \"Likewise.\"\n\nI paused for a moment. \"O-kay. Since we all have to live together, I had better give you names. You,\" I said, pointing a finger at the one on the right, \"are henceforth called ibb. You\"\u2014I pointed to the other\u2014\"are called obb.\"\n\nI pointed at them again in case they had missed it as neither made any sign of comprehending what I'd said\u2014or even hearing it.\n\n\"You are ibb, and you are obb.\"\n\nI paused. Something didn't sound right about their names but I couldn't place it.\n\n\"ibb,\" I said to myself, then: \"obb. ibb. ibb-obb. Does that sound strange to you?\"\n\n\"No capitals,\" said obb. \"We don't get capitalized until we start school\u2014we didn't expect a name so soon, either. Can we keep it?\"\n\n\"It's a gift from me,\" I told them.\n\n\"I am ibb,\" said ibb, as if to make the point.\n\n\"And I am obb,\" said obb.\n\n\"And I'm Thursday,\" I told them, offering my hand. They shook it in turn slowly and without emotion. I could see that this pair weren't going to be a huge bundle of fun.\n\n\"And that's Pickwick.\"\n\nThey looked at Pickwick, who plocked quietly, came out from behind the sofa, settled herself on her egg and pretended to go to sleep.\n\n\"Well,\" I announced, clapping my hands together, \"does anyone know how to cook? I'm not very good at it and if you don't want to eat beans on toast for the next year, you had better start to learn. I'm standing in for Mary, and if you don't get in my way, I won't get in yours. I go to bed late and wake up early. I have a husband who doesn't exist and I'm going to have a baby later this year so I might get a little cranky\u2014and overweight. Any questions?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the one on the left. \"Which one of us is obb, did you say?\"\n\nI unpacked my few things in the small room behind the flight deck. I had sketched a picture of Landen from memory and I placed it on the bedside table, staring at it for a moment. I missed him dreadfully and wondered, for the umpteenth time, whether perhaps I shouldn't be here hiding, but out there, in my own world, trying to get him back. Trouble was, I'd tried that and made a complete pig's ear of it\u2014if it hadn't have been for Miss Havisham's timely rescue, I would still be locked up in a Goliath vault somewhere. With our child growing within me I had decided that flight was not a coward's option but a sensible one\u2014I would stay here until the baby was born. I could then plan my return, and following that, Landen's.\n\nI went downstairs and explained to obb the rudiments of cooking, which were as alien to it as having a name. Fortunately I found an old copy of Mrs. Beeton's Complete Housekeeper, which I told obb to study, half-jokingly, as research. Three hours later it had roasted a perfect leg of lamb with all the trimmings. I had discovered one thing about Generics already: dull and uninteresting they may be\u2014but they learn fast."
            },
            {
                "title": "Inside Caversham Heights",
                "text": "Book/YGIO/1204961/: Title: Caversham Heights. UK, 1976, 90,000 words. Genre: Detective fiction. Book Operating System: BOOK V7.2. Grammasite Infestation: 1 (one) nesting pair of Parenthiums (protected). Plot: Routine detective thriller with stereotypical detective Jack Spratt. Set in Reading (England), the plot (such as it is) revolves around a drug czar hoping to muscle in on Reading's seedy underworld. Routine and unremarkable, Caversham Heights represents all the worst aspects of amateur writing. Flat characters, unconvincing police work and a pace so slow that snails pass it in the night. Recommendation: Unpublishable. Suggest book to be broken up for salvage at soonest available opportunity. Current Status: Awaiting Council of Genres Book Inspectorate's report before ordering demolition.\n\nLibrary Subbasement Gazetteer,"
            },
            {
                "title": "1982, volume CLXI",
                "text": "I DISCUSSED THE RUDIMENTS of breakfast with ibb and obb the following morning. I told them that cereal traditionally came before the bacon and eggs, but that toast and coffee had no fixed place within the meal; they had problems with the fact that marmalade was almost exclusively the preserve of breakfast, and I was just trying to explain the technical possibilities of dippy egg fingers when a copy of The Toad dropped on the mat. The only news story was about some sort of drug-related gang warfare in Reading. It was part of the plot in Caversham Heights and reminded me that sooner or later\u2014and quite possibly sooner\u2014I would be expected to take on the mantle of Mary as part of the Character Exchange Program. I had another careful read of the pr\u00e9cis, which gave me a good idea of the plot chapter by chapter, but no precise dialogue or indication as to what I should be doing, or when. I didn't have to wonder very long as a knock at the door revealed an untidy man wearing a hat named Wyatt.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said sheepishly, apologizing for the misrelated grammatical construction almost immediately, \"Wyatt is my name, not the hat's.\"\n\n\"I kind of figured that,\" I replied.\n\nWooden and worn with use, he was holding a clipboard.\n\n\"Oh, bother!\" he said in the manner of someone who had just referred to George Eliot as \"he\" in a room full of English professors. \"I've done it again!\"\n\n\"Really, I don't mind,\" I repeated. \"What can I do for you?\"\n\n\"You're very kind. As a Character Exchange Program member, I would like to ask you to get yourself into Reading.\" He stopped and his shoulders sagged. \"No, I'm not the Character Exchange Program member\u2014you are. And you need to get into Reading.\"\n\n\"Sure. Do you have an address for me?\"\n\nDog-eared and grubby, he handed me a note from his clipboard.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" I said before he could apologize again, \"I understand.\"\n\nHis condition was almost certainly permanent, and since I didn't seem to care that much, he regained some confidence.\n\n\"Despite the ten-year demolition order hanging over us,\" he continued, \"you should try and give it your best. The last Character Exchanger didn't take it seriously at all. Had to send him dusty and covered in asphalt on the road out of here.\"\n\nHe raised an eyebrow quizzically.\n\n\"I won't let you down,\" I assured him.\n\nHe thanked me, and small, brown and furry, the man with the hat named Wyatt raised it and vanished.\n\nI took Mary's car and drove into Reading across the M4, which seemed as busy as it was back home; I used the same road myself when traveling between Swindon and London. Only when I was approaching the junction at the top of Burghfield road did I realize there were, at most, only a half dozen or so different vehicles on the roads. The vehicle that first drew my attention to this strange phenomenon was a large, white truck with Dr. Spongg Footcare Products painted on the side. I saw three in under a minute, all with an identical driver dressed in a blue boilersuit and flat cap. The next most obvious vehicle was a red VW Beetle driven by a young lady, then a battered blue Morris Marina with an elderly man at the wheel. By the time I had drawn up outside the scene of Caversham Heights' first murder, I had counted forty-three white trucks, twenty-two red Beetles and sixteen identically battered Morris Marinas, not to mention several green Ford Escorts and a brace of white Chevrolets. It was obviously a limitation within the text and nothing more, so I hurriedly parked, read Mary's notes again to make sure I knew what I had to do, took a deep breath and walked across to the area that had been taped off. A few uniformed police officers were milling around. I showed my pass and ducked under the Police: Do Not Cross tape.\n\nThe yard was shaped as an oblong, fifteen feet wide and about twenty feet long, surrounded by a high redbrick wall with crumbling mortar. A large, white SOCO tent was over the scene, and a forensic pathologist, dictating notes into a tape recorder, was kneeling next to a well-described corpse.\n\n\"Hullo!\" said a jovial voice close by. I turned to see a large man in a mackintosh grinning at me.\n\n\"Detective Sergeant Mary,\" I told him obediently. \"Transferred here from Basingstoke.\"\n\n\"You don't have to worry about all that yet.\" He smiled. \"The story is with Jack at the moment\u2014he's meeting Officer Tibbit on the street outside. My name's DCI Briggs and I'm your friendly yet long-suffering boss in this little caper. Crusty and prone to outbursts of temper yet secretly supportive, I will have to suspend Jack at least once before the story is over.\"\n\n\"How do you do?\" I spluttered.\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Briggs, shaking my hand gratefully. \"Mary told me you're with Jurisfiction. Is that true?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Any news about when the Council of Genres Book Inspectorate will be in?\" asked Briggs. \"It would be a help to know. You've heard about the demolition order, I take it?\"\n\n\"Council of Genres?\" I echoed, trying not to make my ignorance show. \"I'm sorry. I've not spent that much time in the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"An Outlander?\" replied Briggs, eyes wide in wonderment. \"Here, in Caversham Heights?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"Tell me, what do waves look like when they crash on the shore?\"\n\n\"Who's an Outlander?\" echoed the pathologist, a middle-aged Indian woman who suddenly leapt to her feet and stared at me intently. \"You?\"\n\n\"Y-es,\" I admitted.\n\n\"I'm Dr. Singh,\" explained the pathologist, shaking my hand vigorously. \"I'm matter-of-fact, apparently without humor, like cats and people who like cats, don't suffer fools, yet on occasion I do exhibit a certain warmth. Tell me, do you think I'm anything like a real pathologist?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I answered, trying to think of her brief appearances in the book.\n\n\"You see,\" she went on with a slightly melancholic air, \"I've never seen a real pathologist and I'm really not sure what I'm meant to do.\"\n\n\"You're doing fine,\" I assured her.\n\n\"What about me?\" asked Briggs. \"Do you think I need to develop more as a character? Am I like all those real people you rub shoulders with, or am I a bit one-dimensional?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\n\"I knew it!\" he cried unhappily. \"It's the hair, isn't it? Do you think it should be shorter? Longer? What about having a bizarre character trait? I've been learning the trombone\u2014that would be unusual, yes?\"\n\n\"Someone said there was an Outlander in the book!\" interrupted a uniformed officer, one of a pair who had just walked into the yard. \"I'm Unnamed Police Officer No. 1; this is my colleague, Unnamed Police Officer No. 2. Can I ask a question about the Outland?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"What's the point of alphabet soup?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Are you sure you're from the Outland?\" he asked suspiciously. \"Then tell me this: Why is there no singular for scampi?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\"\n\n\"You're not from the Outland,\" said Unnamed Police Officer No. 1 sadly. \"You should be ashamed of yourself, lying and raising our hopes like that!\"\n\n\"Very well,\" I replied, covering my eyes, \"I'll prove it to you. Speak to me in turn but leave off your speech designators.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Unnamed Police Officer No. 1. \"Who is this talking?\"\n\n\"And who is this?\" added Dr. Singh.\n\n\"I said leave off your speech designators. Try again.\"\n\n\"It's harder than you think,\" sighed Unnamed Police Officer No. 1. \"Okay, here goes.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Which one of us is talking now?\"\n\n\"And who am I?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Singh first, Unnamed Police Officer No. 1 second. Was I correct?\"\n\n\"Amazing!\" murmured Mrs. Singh. \"How do you do that?\"\n\n\"I can recognize your voices. I have a sense of smell, too.\"\n\n\"No kidding? Do you know anyone in publishing?\"\n\n\"None who would help. My husband is, or was, an author, but his contacts wouldn't know me from Eve at present. I'm a SpecOps officer; I don't have much to do with contemporary fiction.\"\n\n\"SpecOps?\" queried UPO No. 2. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"We're going to be scrapped, you know,\" interrupted Briggs, \"unless we can get a publisher.\"\n\n\"We could be broken down into words,\" added UPO No. 1 in a hushed tone, \"cast into the Text Sea; and I have a wife and two kids\u2014or at least, in my backstory I do.\"\n\n\"I can't help you,\" I told them, \"I'm not even\u2014\"\n\n\"Places, please!\" yelled Briggs so suddenly I jumped.\n\nThe pathologist and the two unnamed officers both hurried back to their places and awaited Jack, whom I could hear talking to someone in the house.\n\n\"Good luck,\" murmured Briggs from the side of his mouth as he motioned me to sit on a low wall. \"I'll prompt you if you dry.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nDCI Briggs was sitting on a low wall with a plainclothes policewoman who busied herself taking notes and did not look up. Briggs stood as Jack entered and looked at his watch in an unsubtle way. Jack answered the unasked question in the defensive, which he soon realized was a mistake.\n\n\"I'm sorry, sir, I came here as quick as I could.\"\n\nBriggs grunted and waved a hand in the direction of the corpse.\n\n\"It looks like he died from gunshot wounds,\" he said grimly. \"Discovered dead at eight forty-seven this morning.\"\n\n\"Anything else I need to know?\" asked Spratt.\n\n\"A couple of points. First, the deceased is the nephew of crime boss Angel DeFablio, so I wanted someone good with the press in case the media decide to have a bonanza. Second, I'm giving you this job as a favor. You're not exactly first seed with the seventh floor at the moment. There are some people who want to see you take a fall\u2014and I don't want that to happen.\"\n\n\"Is there a third point?\"\n\n\"No one else is available.\"\n\n\"I preferred it when there were only two.\"\n\n\"Listen, Jack,\" Briggs went on. \"You're a good officer, if a little sprung-loaded at times, and I want you on my team without any mishaps.\"\n\n\"Is this where I say thank you?\"\n\n\"You do. Mop it up nice and neat and give me an initial report as soon as you can. Okay?\"\n\nBriggs nodded in the direction of the young lady who had been waiting patiently.\n\n\"Jack, I want you to meet Thurs\u2014I mean, DS Mary Jones.\"\n\n\"Hello,\" said Jack.\n\n\"Pleased to meet you, sir,\" said the young woman.\n\n\"And you. Who are you working with?\"\n\n\"Next\u2014I mean Jones is your new detective sergeant,\" said Briggs, beginning to sweat for some inexplicable reason. \"Transferred with an A-one record from Swindon.\"\n\n\"Basingstoke,\" corrected Mary.\n\n\"Sorry. Basingstoke.\"\n\n\"No offense to DS Jones, sir, but I was hoping for Butcher, Spooner or\u2014\"\n\n\"Not possible, Jack,\" said Briggs in the tone of voice that made arguing useless. \"Well, I'm off. I'll leave you here with, er\u2014\"\n\n\"Jones.\"\n\n\"Yes, Jones, so you can get acquainted. Remember, I need that report as soon as possible. Got it?\"\n\nJack did indeed get it and Briggs departed.\n\nHe shivered in the cold and looked at the young DS again.\n\n\"Mary Jones, eh?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"What have you found out so far?\"\n\nShe dug in her pocket for a notebook, couldn't find it, so counted the points off on her fingers instead.\n\n\"Deceased's name is Sonny DeFablio.\"\n\nThere was a pause. Jack didn't say anything, so Jones, now slightly startled, continued as though he had.\n\n\"Time of death? Too early to tell. Probably three A.M. last night, give or take an hour. We'll know more when we get the corpse. Gun? We'll know when...\"\n\n\"...Jack, are you okay?\"\n\nHe had sat down wearily and was staring at the ground, head in hands.\n\nI looked around, but both Dr. Singh, her assistants and the unnamed officers were busily getting on with their parts, unwilling, it seemed, to get embroiled\u2014or perhaps they were just embarrassed.\n\n\"I can't do this anymore,\" muttered Jack.\n\n\"Sir,\" I persisted, trying to ad-lib, \"do you want to see the body or can we remove it?\"\n\n\"What's the use?\" sobbed the crushed protagonist. \"No one is reading us; it doesn't matter.\"\n\nI placed my hand on his shoulder.\n\n\"I've tried to make it more interesting,\" he sobbed, \"but nothing seems to work. My wife won't speak to me, my job's on the line, drugs are flooding into Reading and if I don't make the narrative even remotely readable, then we all get demolished and there's nothing left at all except an empty hole on the bookshelf and the memory of a might-have-been in the head of the author.\"\n\n\"Your wife only left you because all loner, maverick detectives have domestic problems,\" I explained. \"I'm sure she loves you really.\"\n\n\"No, no, she doesn't,\" he sobbed again. \"All is lost. Don't you see? It's customary for detectives to drive unusual cars and I had a wonderful 1924 Delage-Talbot Supersport. The idea was stolen and replaced with that dreadful Austin Allegro. If any scenes get deleted, we'll really be stuffed.\"\n\nHe paused and looked up at me. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next.\"\n\nHe perked up suddenly. \"Thursday Next the Outlander Jurisfiction agent apprenticed to Miss Havisham Thursday Next?\"\n\nI nodded. News travels fast in the Well.\n\nAn excited gleam came into his eye. \"I read about you in The Word. Tell me, would you have any way of finding out when the Book Inspectorate are due to read our story? I've lined up seven three-dimensional B-2 freelancers to come in and give the book a bit of an edge\u2014just for an hour or so. With their help we might be able to hang on to it; all I need to know is the when.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Mr. Spratt,\" I sighed, \"I'm new to all this; what exactly is the Council of Genres?\"\n\n\"They look after fictional legislature, dramatic conventions, mainly\u2014a representative from every genre sits on the Council\u2014it is they who decide the conventions of storytelling, and it is they, through the Book Inspectorate, who decide whether an unpublished book is to be kept\u2014or demolished.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I replied, realizing that the BookWorld was governed by almost as many rules and regulations as my own, \"then I can't help you.\"\n\n\"What about Text Grand Central? Do you know anyone there?\"\n\nTGC I had heard of: amongst other things, they monitored the books in the Great Library and passed any textual problems on to us at Jurisfiction, who were purely a policing agency\u2014but I knew no more than that. I shook my head again.\n\n\"Blast!\" he muttered, staring at the ground. \"I've applied to the C of G for a cross-genre makeover, but you might as well try and speak to the Great Panjandrum himself.\"\n\n\"Why don't you change the book from within?\"\n\n\"Change without permission?\" he replied, shocked at my suggestion. \"That would mean rebellion. I want to get the C of G's attention, but not like that\u2014we'd be crushed in less than a chapter!\"\n\n\"But if the inspectorate haven't been round yet,\" I said slowly, \"then how would they even know anything had changed?\"\n\nHe thought about this for a moment. \"Easier said than done\u2014if I start to fool with the narrative, it might all collapse like a pack of cards!\"\n\n\"Then start small, change yourself first. If that works, you can try to bend the plot slightly.\"\n\n\"Y-esss,\" said Jack slowly, \"what did you have in mind?\"\n\n\"Give up the booze.\"\n\n\"How did you know about my drink problem?\"\n\n\"All maverick, loner detectives with domestic strife have drinking problems. Give up the liquor and go home to your wife.\"\n\n\"That's not how I've been written,\" replied Jack slowly. \"I just can't do it\u2014it would be going against type\u2014the readers\u2014!\"\n\n\"Jack, there are no readers. And if you don't at least try what I suggest, there never will be any readers\u2014or any Jack Spratt. But if things go well, you might even be in... a sequel.\"\n\n\"A sequel?\" repeated Jack with a sort of dreamy look in his eyes. \"You mean\u2014a Jack Spratt series?\"\n\n\"Who knows\"\u2014I shrugged\u2014\"maybe even one day\u2014a boxed set.\"\n\nHis eyes gleamed and he stood up. \"A boxed set,\" he whispered, staring into the middle distance. \"It's up to me, isn't it?\" he said in a slow voice.\n\n\"Yes. Change yourself, change the book\u2014and soon, before it's too late\u2014make the novel into something the Book Inspectorate will want to read.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he said at last, \"beginning with the next chapter. Instead of arguing with Briggs about letting a suspect go without charging them, I'll take my ex-wife out to lunch.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"No,\" I affirmed. \"Not tomorrow or next chapter or even next page or paragraph\u2014you're going to change now.\"\n\n\"We can't! There are at least nine more pages while you and I discuss the state of the body with Dr. Singh and go through all that boring forensic stuff.\"\n\n\"Leave it to me. We'll jump back a paragraph or two. Ready?\"\n\nHe nodded and we moved to the top of the previous page, just as Briggs was leaving.\n\nJack did indeed get it and Briggs departed.\n\nHe shivered in the cold and looked at the young DS again.\n\n\"Mary Jones, eh?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"What have you found out so far?\"\n\nShe dug in her pocket for a notebook, couldn't find it, so counted the points off on her fingers instead.\n\n\"Deceased's name is Sonny DeFablio.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"Your wife phoned.\"\n\n\"She... did?\"\n\n\"Yes. Said it was important.\"\n\n\"I'll drop by this evening.\"\n\n\"She said it was very urgent,\" stressed Jones.\n\n\"Hold the fort for me, would you?\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir.\"\n\nJack walked from the crime scene leaving Jones with Dr. Singh.\n\n\"Right,\" said Mary. \"What have we got?\"\n\nWe ran the scene together, Dr. Singh telling me all the information that she was more used to relating to Jack. She went into a huge amount of detail regarding the time of death and a more-than-graphic explanation of how she thought it had happened. Ballistics, trajectory, blood-splatter patterns, you name it. I was really quite glad when she finished and the chapter moved off to Jack's improvised meeting with his ex-wife.\n\nAs soon as we were done, Dr. Singh turned to me and said in an anxious tone, \"I hope you know what you're doing.\"\n\n\"Not a clue.\"\n\n\"Me neither,\" replied the quasi pathologist. \"You know that long speech I made just now about postmortem bruising, angles of bullet entry and discoloration of body tissues?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nShe leaned closer. \"Didn't understand a word. Eight pages of technical dialogue and haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about. I only trained at Generic college as a mother figure in domestic potboilers. If I'd known I was to be drafted to this, I would have spent a few hours in a Cornwell. Do you have any clues as to what I'm actually meant to do?\"\n\nI rummaged in her bag and brought out a large thermometer.\n\n\"Try this.\"\n\n\"What do I do with it?\"\n\nI pointed.\n\n\"You're kidding me,\" replied Dr. Singh, aghast."
            },
            {
                "title": "Three Witches, Multiple Choice and Sarcasm",
                "text": "\u2002Jurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency that works inside books. Under a remit from the Council of Genres and working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction comprise a mixed bag of characters, most drawn from the ranks of fiction but some, like Harris Tweed and myself, from the real world. Problems in fiction are noticed by \"spotters\" employed at Text Grand Central, and from there relayed to the Bellman, a ten-yearly elected figure who runs Jurisfiction under strict guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres. Jurisfiction has its own code of conduct, technical department, canteen and resident washerwoman.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nDr. Singh didn't waste the opportunity, and she gathered together several other trainee pathologists she knew from the Well. They all sat spellbound as I recounted the limited information I possessed. Exhausted, I managed to escape four hours later. It was evening when I finally got home. I opened the door to the flying boat and kicked off my shoes. Pickwick rushed up to greet me and tugged excitedly at my trouser leg. I followed her through to the living room and then had to wait while she remembered where she had left her egg. We finally found it rolled behind the hi-fi and I congratulated her, despite there being no change in its appearance.\n\nI returned to the kitchen. ibb and obb had been studying Mrs. Beeton's all day, and ibb was attempting steak diane with french fries. Landen used to cook that for me and I suddenly felt lonesome and small, so far from home I might well be on Pluto. obb was making the final touches to a fully decorated fourtier wedding cake.\n\n\"Hello, ibb,\" I said, \"how's it going?\"\n\n\"How's what going?\" replied the Generic in that annoying literal way that they spoke. \"And I'm obb.\"\n\n\"Sorry\u2014obb.\"\n\n\"Why are you sorry? Have you done something?\"\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\nI sat down at the table and opened a package that had arrived. It was from Miss Havisham and contained the Jurisfiction Standard Entrance Exam. I had joined Jurisfiction almost by accident\u2014I had wanted to get Landen out of \"The Raven\" and getting involved with the agency seemed to be the best way to learn. But Jurisfiction had grown on me and I now felt strongly about maintaining the solidity of the written word. It was the same job I had undertaken at SpecOps, just from the other side. But it struck me that, on this occasion, Miss Havisham was wrong\u2014I was not yet ready for full membership.\n\nThe hefty tome consisted of five hundred questions, nearly all of them multiple choice. I noticed that the exam was self-invigilating; as soon as I opened the book a clock in the top left-hand corner started to count down from two hours. The questions were mostly about literature, which I had no problem with. Jurisfiction law was trickier and I would probably need to consult with Miss Havisham. I made a start and ten minutes later was pondering question forty-six: Which of the following poets never used the outlawed word majestic in their work? when there was a knock at the door accompanied by a peal of thunder.\n\nI closed the exam book and opened the door. On the jetty were three ugly, old crones dressed in filthy rags. They had bony features, rough and warty skin, and they launched into a well-rehearsed act as soon as the door opened.\n\n\"When shall we three meet again?\" said the first witch. \"In Thurber, Wodehouse, or in Greene?\"\n\n\"When the hurly-burly's done,\" added the second, \"when the story's thought and spun!\"\n\nThere was a pause until the second witch nudged the third.\n\n\"That will be Eyre the set of sun,\" she said quickly.\n\n\"Where the place?\"\n\n\"Within the text.\"\n\n\"There to meet with MsNext!\"\n\nThey stopped talking and I stared, unsure of what I was meant to do.\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" I replied, but the first witch snorted disparagingly and wedged her foot in the door as I tried to close it.\n\n\"Prophecies, kind lady?\" she asked as the other two cackled hideously.\n\n\"I really don't think so,\" I answered, pushing her foot away, \"perhaps another time.\"\n\n\"All hail, MsNext! Hail to thee, citizen of Swindon!\"\n\n\"Really, I'm sorry\u2014and I'm out of change.\"\n\n\"All hail, MsNext, hail to thee, full Jurisfiction agent, thou shalt be!\"\n\n\"If you don't go,\" I began, starting to get annoyed, \"I'll\u2014\"\n\n\"All hail, MsNext, thou shalt be Bellman thereafter!\"\n\n\"Sure I will. Go on, clear off, you imperfect speakers\u2014bother someone else with your nonsense!\"\n\n\"A shilling!\" said the first. \"And we shall tell you more\u2014or less, as you please.\"\n\nI closed the door despite their grumbling and went back to my multiple choice. I'd only answered question forty-nine: Which of the following is not a gerund? when there was another knock at the door.\n\n\"Blast!\" I muttered, getting up and striking my ankle on the table leg. It was the three witches again.\n\n\"I thought I told you\u2014\"\n\n\"Sixpence, then,\" said the chief hag, putting out a bony hand.\n\n\"No,\" I replied firmly, rubbing my ankle, \"I never buy anything at the door.\"\n\nThey all started up then: \"Thrice to thine and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up\u2014\"\n\nI shut the door again. I wasn't superstitious and had far more important things to worry about. I had just sat down again, sipped at my tea and answered the next question: Who wrote Toad of Toad Hall? when there was another rap at the door.\n\n\"Right,\" I said to myself, marching across the room, \"I've had it with you three.\"\n\nI pulled open the door and said, \"Listen here, hag, I'm really not interested, nor ever will be in your... Oh.\"\n\nI stared. Granny Next. If it had been Admiral Lord Nelson himself I don't think I could have been more surprised.\n\n\"Gran!?!\" I exclaimed. \"What on earth are you doing here?\"\n\nShe was dressed in her usual outfit of spectacular blue gingham, from her dress to her overcoat and even her hat, shoes and bag.\n\nI hugged her. She smelt of Bodmin for Women. She hugged me in return in that sort of fragile way that very elderly people do. And she was elderly\u2014108, at the last count.\n\n\"I have come to look after you, young Thursday,\" she announced.\n\n\"Er\u2014thank you, Gran,\" I replied, wondering quite how she had got here.\n\n\"You're going to have a baby and need attending to,\" she added grandly. \"My suitcase is on the jetty and you're going to have to pay the taxi.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I muttered, going outside and finding a yellow TransGenre Taxi.\n\n\"How much?\" I asked the cabby.\n\n\"Seventeen and six.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes?\" I replied sarcastically. \"Took the long way round?\"\n\n\"Trips to Horror, Bunyan and the Well cost double,\" said the cabbie. \"Pay up or I'll make sure Jurisfiction hears about it. I had that Heathcliff in the back of my cab once.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I replied, handing him a pound.\n\nHe patted his pockets. \"Sorry, have you got anything smaller? I don't carry much change.\"\n\n\"Keep it,\" I told him as his footnoterphone muttered something about a party of ten wanting to get out of Florence in The Decameron. I got a receipt and he melted from view. I picked up Gran's suitcase and hauled it into the Sunderland.\n\n\"This is ibb and obb,\" I explained. \"Generics billeted with me. The one on the left is ibb.\"\n\n\"I'm obb.\"\n\n\"Sorry. That's ibb and that's obb. This is my grandmother.\"\n\n\"Hello,\" said Granny Next, gazing at my two houseguests.\n\n\"You're very old,\" observed ibb.\n\n\"One hundred and eight,\" announced Gran proudly. \"Do you two do anything but stare?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" said ibb.\n\n\"Plock,\" said Pickwick, who had popped her head round the door, ruffled her feathers excitedly and rushed up to greet Gran, who always seemed to have a few spare marshmallows about her.\n\n\"What's it like being old?\" asked ibb, who was peering closely at the soft, pink folds in Gran's skin.\n\n\"Death's adolescence,\" replied Gran. \"But you know the worst part?\"\n\nibb and obb shook their heads.\n\n\"I'm going to miss my funeral by three days.\"\n\n\"Gran!\" I scolded. \"You'll confuse them\u2014they tend to take things literally.\"\n\nIt was too late.\n\n\"Miss your own funeral?\" muttered ibb, thinking hard. \"How is that possible?\"\n\n\"Think about it, ibb,\" said obb. \"If she lived three days longer, she'd be able to speak at her own funeral\u2014get it?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said ibb, \"stupid of me.\"\n\nAnd they went into the kitchen, talking about Mrs. Beeton's book and the best way to deal with amorous liaisons between the scullery maid and the bootboy\u2014it must have been an old edition.\n\n\"When's supper?\" asked Gran, looking disdainfully at the interior of the flying boat. \"I'm absolutely famished\u2014but nothing tougher than suet, mind. The gnashers aren't what they were.\"\n\nI delicately helped her out of her gingham coat and sat her down at the table. Steak diane would be like eating railway sleepers to her, so I started to make an omelette.\n\n\"Now, Gran,\" I said, cracking some eggs into a bowl, \"I want you to tell me what you're doing here.\"\n\n\"I need to be here to remind you of things you might forget, young Thursday.\"\n\n\"Such as what?\"\n\n\"Such as Landen. They eradicated my husband, too, and the one thing I needed was someone to help me through it, so that's what I'm here to do for you.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to forget him, Gran!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she agreed in a slightly peculiar way, \"I'm here to make sure of it.\"\n\n\"That's the why,\" I persisted, \"but what about the how?\"\n\n\"I, too, used to do the occasional job for Jurisfiction in the old days. A long time ago, mind, but it was just one of many jobs that I did in my life\u2014and not the strangest, either.\"\n\n\"What was?\" I asked, knowing in my heart that I shouldn't really be asking.\n\n\"Well, I was God Emperor of the Universe, once,\" she answered in the same manner to which she might have admitted to going to the pictures, \"and being a man for twenty-four hours was pretty weird.\"\n\n\"Yes, I expect it was.\"\n\nibb laid the table and we sat down to eat ten minutes later. As Gran sucked on her omelette I tried to make conversation with ibb and obb. The trouble was, neither of them had the requisite powers of social communication to assimilate anything from speech other than the bald facts it contained. I tried a joke I had heard from Bowden, my partner at SpecOps, about an octopus and a set of bagpipes. But when I delivered the punch line, they both stared at me.\n\n\"Why would the bagpipes be dressed in pajamas?\" asked ibb.\n\n\"It wasn't,\" I replied, \"it was the tartan. That's just what the octopus thought they were.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said obb, not seeing at all. \"Would you mind going over it again?\"\n\n\"That's it,\" I said resolutely, \"you're going to have a personality if it kills me.\"\n\n\"Kill you?\" inquired ibb in all seriousness. \"Why would it kill you?\"\n\nI thought carefully. There had to be somewhere to begin. I clicked my fingers.\n\n\"Sarcasm,\" I said. \"We'll start with that.\"\n\nThey both looked at me blankly.\n\n\"Well,\" I began, \"sarcasm is closely related to irony and implies a twofold view\u2014a literal meaning, yet a wholly different intention from what is said. For instance, if you were lying to me about who ate all the anchovies I left in the cupboard, and you had eaten them, you might say, 'It wasn't me,' and I would say, 'Sure it wasn't,' meaning I'm sure it was but in an ironic or sarcastic manner.\"\n\n\"What's an anchovy?\" asked ibb.\n\n\"A small and very salty fish.\"\n\n\"I see,\" replied ibb. \"Does sarcasm work with other things or is it only fish?\"\n\n\"No, the stolen anchovies was only by way of an example. Now you try.\"\n\n\"An anchovy?\"\n\n\"No, you try some sarcasm.\"\n\nThey continued to look at me blankly.\n\nI sighed. \"Like trying to nail jelly to the wall,\" I muttered under my breath.\n\n\"Plock,\" said Pickwick in her sleep as she gently keeled over. \"Plocketty-plock.\"\n\n\"Sarcasm is better explained through humor,\" put in Gran, who had been watching my efforts with interest. \"You know that Pickwick isn't too clever?\"\n\nPickwick stirred in her sleep where she had fallen, resting on her head with her claws in the air.\n\n\"Yes, we know that,\" replied ibb and obb, who were nothing if not observant.\n\n\"Well, if I were to say that it is easier to get yeast to perform tricks than Pickwick, I'm using mild sarcasm to make a joke.\"\n\n\"Yeast?\" queried ibb. \"But yeast has no intelligence.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" replied Gran. \"So I am making a sarcastic observation that Pickwick has less brainpower than yeast. You try.\"\n\nThe Generic thought long and hard.\n\n\"So,\" said ibb slowly, \"how about... Pickwick is so clever she sits on the TV and stares at the sofa?\"\n\n\"It's a start,\" said Gran.\n\n\"And,\" added ibb, gaining confidence by the second, \"if Pickwick went on Mastermind, she'd do best to choose 'dodo eggs' as her specialist subject.\"\n\nobb was getting the hang of it, too. \"If a thought crossed her mind, it would be the shortest journey on record.\"\n\n\"Pickwick has a brother at Oxford. In a jar.\"\n\n\"All right, that's enough sarcasm,\" I said quickly. \"I know Pickwick won't win 'Brain of BookWorld' but she's a loyal companion.\"\n\nI looked across at Pickwick, who slid off the sofa and landed with a thump on the floor. She woke up and started plocking loudly at the sofa, coffee table, rug\u2014in fact, anything close by\u2014before calming down, climbing on top of her egg and falling asleep again.\n\n\"You did well, guys,\" I said. \"Another time we'll tackle subtext.\"\n\nibb and obb went to their room soon afterwards, discussing how sarcasm was related to irony, and whether irony itself could be generated in laboratory conditions. Gran and I chatted about home. Mother was very well, it seemed, and Joffy and Wilbur and Orville were as mad as ever. Gran, conscious of my dealings with Yorrick Kaine in the past, reported that Kaine had returned soon after the episode with the Glatisant at Volescamper Towers, lost his seat in the House and been back at the helm of his newspaper and publishing company soon after. I knew he was fictional and a danger to my world but couldn't see what to do about it from here. We talked into the night about the BookWorld, Landen, eradications and having children. Gran had had three herself so gleefully told me all the stuff they don't tell you when you sign on the dotted line.\n\n\"Think of swollen ankles as trophies,\" she said, somewhat unhelpfully.\n\nThat night I put Gran in my room and slept in the bedroom under the flight deck. I washed, undressed and climbed into bed, weary after the day's work. I lay there, staring at the pattern of reflected light dancing on the ceiling and thought of my father, Emma Hamilton, Jack Spratt, Dream Topping and babies. I was meant to be here resting but the demolition problem of Caversham Heights, my adopted home, couldn't be ignored\u2014I could have moved but I liked it here, and besides, I had done enough running away already. The arrival of Gran had been strange, but since much was odd here in the Well, weird had become commonplace. If things carried on like this, the dull and meaningless would become items of spectacular interest."
            },
            {
                "title": "Landen Parke-Laine",
                "text": "\u2002They say that no one really dies until you forget them, and in Landen's case it was especially true. Since Landen had been eradicated, I had discovered that I could bring him back to life in my memories and my dreams, and I had begun to look forward to falling asleep and returning to treasured moments that we could share, albeit only fleetingly.\n\n\u2002Landen had lost a leg to a land mine and his best friend to a military blunder. The friend had been my brother Anton\u2014and Landen had testified against him at the hearing that followed the disastrous \"Charge of the Light Armored Brigade\" in 1973. My brother was blamed for the debacle, Landen was honorably discharged and I was awarded the Crimea Star for gallantry. We didn't speak for ten years, and we were married two months ago. Some people say it was an unorthodox romance\u2014but I never noticed myself.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nThat night, i went to the Crimea again. Not, you might think, the most obvious port of call in my sleep. The peninsula had been a constant source of anguish in my waking hours: a time of stress, of pain, and violent death. But the Crimea was where I'd met Landen, and where we'd fallen in love. The memories were more dear to me now because they had never happened, and for this reason the Crimea's sometimes painful recollections came back to me. I relaxed and was transported in the arms of Morpheus to the Black Sea peninsula, twelve years before.\n\nNo shots had been fired for ten years when I arrived on the peninsula in the May of 1973, although the conflict had been going for 120 years. I was attached to the Third Wessex Tank Light Armored Brigade as a driver\u2014I was twenty-three years old and drove thirteen tons of armored vehicle under the command of Major Phelps, who was later to lose his lower arm and his mind during a badly timed charge into the massed Russian artillery. In my youthful na\u00efvet\u00e9, I had thought the Crimea was fun\u2014a notion that was soon to change.\n\n\"Report to the vehicle pool at fourteen hundred hours,\" I was told one morning by our sergeant, a kindly yet brusque man by the name of Tozer. He would survive the charge but be lost in a training accident eight years later. I was at his funeral. He was a good man.\n\n\"Any idea what I'll be doing, Sarge?\" I asked.\n\nSergeant Tozer shrugged. \"Special duties. I was told to allocate someone intelligent\u2014but they weren't available, so you'll have to do.\"\n\nI laughed. \"Thanks, Sarge.\"\n\nI dreamed this scene more often these days and the reason was clear\u2014it was the first time Landen and I spent any time together. My brother Anton was also serving out here and he had introduced us a few weeks before\u2014but Anton did that a lot. Today I was to drive Landen in an armored scout car to an observation post overlooking a valley in which a buildup of Imperial Russian artillery had been reported. We referred to the incident as \"our first date.\"\n\nI arrived for duty and was told to sign for a Dingo scout car, a small, two-person armored vehicle with enough power to get out of trouble quickly\u2014or into it, depending on one's level of competency. I duly picked up the scout car and waited for nearly an hour, standing in a tent with a lot of other drivers, talking and laughing, drinking tea and telling unlikely stories. It was a chilly day but I was glad I was doing this instead of daily orders, which generally meant cleaning up the camp and other tedious tasks.\n\n\"Corporal Next?\" said an officer who poked his head into the tent. \"Drop the tea\u2014we're off!\"\n\nHe wasn't handsome but he was intriguing, and unlike many of the officers, he seemed to have a certain relaxed manner about him.\n\nI jumped to my feet. \"Good morning, sir,\" I said, unsure of whether he remembered me. I needn't have worried. I didn't know it yet, but he had specifically asked Sergeant Tozer for me. He was intrigued, too, but fraternizing on active duty was a subtle art. The penalties could be severe.\n\nI led him to where the Dingo was parked and climbed in. I pressed the starter and the engine rumbled to life. Landen lowered himself into the commander's seat.\n\n\"Seen Anton recently?\" he asked.\n\n\"He's up the coast for a few weeks,\" I told him.\n\n\"Ah, you made me fifty pounds when you won the ladies' boxing last weekend. I'm very grateful.\"\n\nI smiled and thanked him but he wasn't paying me any attention\u2014he was busy studying a map.\n\n\"We're going here, Corporal.\"\n\nI studied the chart. It was the closest to the front lines I'd ever been. To my shame, I found the perceived danger somewhat intoxicating. Landen sensed it.\n\n\"It's not as wildly exciting as you might think, Next. I've been up there twenty times and was only shelled once.\"\n\n\"What was it like?\"\n\n\"Disagreeably noisy. Take the road to Balaklava\u2014I'll tell you when to turn right.\"\n\nSo we bumped off up the road, past a scene of such rural tranquillity that it was hard to imagine that two armies were facing each other not ten miles away with enough firepower to lay the whole peninsula to waste.\n\n\"Ever seen a Russian?\" he asked as we passed military trucks supporting the frontline artillery batteries; their sole job was to lob a few shells towards the Russians\u2014just to show we were still about.\n\n\"Never, sir.\"\n\n\"They look just like you and me, you know.\"\n\n\"You mean they don't wear big furry hats and have snow on their shoulders?\"\n\nThe sarcasm wasn't wasted.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said, \"I didn't mean to patronize. How long have you been out here?\"\n\n\"Two weeks.\"\n\n\"I've been here two years, but it might as well be two weeks. Take a right at the farmhouse just ahead.\"\n\nI slowed down and cranked the wheel round to enter the dusty farm track. The springs on a Dingo are quite hard\u2014it was a jarring ride along the track, which passed empty farm buildings, all bearing the scars of long-past battles. Old and rusting armor and other war debris was lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumor had it that in the middle of no-man's-land there were still artillery pieces dating from the nineteenth century. We stopped at a checkpoint, Landen showed his pass and we drove on, a soldier joining us up top \"as a precaution.\" He had a second ammunition clip taped to the first in his weapon\u2014always a sign of someone who expected trouble\u2014and a dagger in his boot. He had only fourteen words and twenty-one minutes left before he was to die amongst a small spinney of trees that in happier times might have been a good place for a picnic. The bullet would enter below his left shoulder blade, deflect against his spine, go straight through his heart and exit three inches below his armpit, where it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and eighteen months later I would relate what had happened to his parents. His mother would cry and his father would thank me with a dry throat. But the soldier didn't know that. These were my memories, not his.\n\n\"Russian spotter plane!\" hissed the doomed soldier.\n\nLanden ordered me back to the trees. The soldier had eleven words left. He would be the first person I saw killed in the conflict but by no means the last. As a civvy you are protected from such unpleasantries, but in the forces it is commonplace\u2014and you never get used to it.\n\nI pulled the wheel over hard and doubled back towards the spinney as fast as I could. We halted under the protective cover of the trees and watched the small observation plane from the dappled shade. We didn't know it at the time, but an advance party of Russian commandos were pushing towards the lines in our direction. The observation post we were heading for had been overrun half an hour previously, and the commandos were being supported by the spotter plane we had seen\u2014and behind them, twenty Russian battle tanks with infantry in support. The attack was to fail, of course, but only by virtue of the VHF wireless set carried in the Dingo. I would drive us out of there and Landen would call in an airstrike. That was the way it had happened. That's the way it had always happened. Brought together in the white heat and fear of combat. But as we sat beneath the cover of the birch trees, huddled down in the scout car, the only sound the gentle thrum of the Dingo's engine, we knew nothing\u2014and were only concerned that the spotter plane that wheeled above us would delay our arrival at the OP.\n\n\"What's it doing?\" whispered Landen, shielding his eyes to get a better look.\n\n\"Looks like a Yak-12,\" replied the soldier.\n\nSix words left and under a minute. I had been looking up with them but now glanced out of the hatch at the front of the scout car. My heart missed a beat as I saw a Russian run and jump into a natural hollow a hundred yards in front of the Dingo.\n\n\"Russki!\" I gasped. \"Hundred yards, twelve o'clock!\"\n\nI reached up to close the viewing hatch but Landen grabbed my wrist.\n\n\"Not yet!\" he whispered. \"Put her in gear.\"\n\nI did as I was told as Landen and the soldier twisted around to look.\n\n\"What have you got?\" hissed Landen.\n\n\"Five, maybe six,\" the soldier whispered back, \"heading this way.\"\n\n\"Me, too,\" muttered Landen. \"Go, Corporal, go!\"\n\nI revved the engine, dropped the clutch and the Dingo lunged forward. Almost instantaneously there was a rasp of machine-gun fire as the Russians opened up. To them, we were a surprise ruined. I heard the closer rattle of gunfire as our soldier replied along with the sporadic crack of a pistol that I knew was Landen. I didn't close the steel viewing hatch; I needed to be able to see as much as I could. The scout car bounced across the track and swerved before gathering speed with the metallic spang of small-arms fire hitting the armor plate. I felt a weight slump against my back and a bloodied arm fell into my vision.\n\n\"Keep going!\" shouted the soldier. \"And don't stop until I say!\"\n\nHe let go another burst of fire, took out the spent clip, knocked the new magazine on his helmet, reloaded and fired again.\n\n\"That wasn't how it happened\u2014!\" I muttered aloud, the soldier having gone way over his allotted time and word count. I looked at the bloodied hand that had fallen against me. A feeling of dread began to gnaw slowly inside me\u2014the fuel gauge was still intact\u2014shouldn't it have been shattered when the soldier was shot? Then I realized. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.\n\nI sat bolt upright in the bed, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The strength of the memories had lessened with the years, but here was something new, something unexpected. I replayed the images in my head, watching the bloodstained hand fall again and again. It all felt so horribly real. But there was something, just there outside my grasp, something that I should know but didn't\u2014a loss that I couldn't explain, an absence of some sort I couldn't place\u2014\n\n\"Landen,\" said a soft voice in the darkness, \"his name was Landen.\"\n\n\"Landen\u2014!\" I cried. \"Yes, yes, his name was Landen.\"\n\n\"And he didn't die in the Crimea. The soldier did.\"\n\n\"No, no, I just remembered him dying!\"\n\n\"You remembered wrong.\"\n\nIt was Gran, sitting beside me in her gingham nightie. She held my hand tightly and gazed at me through her spectacles, her gray hair adrift and hanging down in wispy strands. And with her words, I began to remember. Landen had survived\u2014he must have done in order to call up the airstrike. But even now, awake, I could remember him lying dead beside me. It didn't make sense.\n\n\"He didn't die?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nI picked up the picture I had sketched of him from the bedside table.\n\n\"Did I ever see him again?\" I asked, studying the unfamiliar face.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" replied Gran. \"Lots and lots. In fact, you married him.\"\n\n\"I did, didn't I?\" I cried, tears coming to my eyes as the memories returned. \"At the Blessed Lady of the Lobster in Swindon! Were you there?\"\n\n\"Yes, wouldn't have missed it for the world.\"\n\nI was still confused. \"What happened to him? Why isn't he with me now?\"\n\n\"He was eradicated,\" replied Gran in a low voice, \"by Lavoisier\u2014and Goliath.\"\n\n\"I remember,\" I answered, the darkness in my mind made light as a curtain seemed to draw back and everything that had happened flooded in. \"Jack Schitt. Goliath. They eradicated Landen to blackmail me. But I failed. I didn't get him back\u2014and that's why I'm here.\" I stopped. \"But, but, how could I possibly forget him? I was only thinking about him yesterday! What's happening to me?\"\n\n\"It's Aornis, my dear,\" explained Gran, \"she is a mnemonomorph. A memory-changer. Remember the trouble you had with her back home?\"\n\nI did, now she mentioned it. Gran's prompting broke the delicate veil of forgetfulness that cloaked Aornis's presence in my mind\u2014and everything about Hades's little sister returned to me as though no longer hidden from my conscious memory. Aornis, who had sworn revenge for her brother's death at my hands; Aornis, who could manipulate memories as she chose; Aornis, who had nearly brought about a gooey Dream Topping global Armageddon. But Aornis wasn't from here. She lived in\u2014\n\n\"\u2014the real world,\" I murmured out loud. \"How can she be here, inside fiction? In Caversham Heights of all places?\"\n\n\"She isn't,\" replied Gran. \"Aornis is only in your mind. It isn't all of her, either\u2014simply a mindworm\u2014a sort of mental virus. She is resourceful, adaptable and spiteful; I know of no one else who can have an independent life within someone else's memory.\"\n\n\"So how do I get rid of her?\"\n\n\"I have some experience of mnemonomorphs from my youth, but some things you have to defeat on your own. Stay on your toes and we will speak often and at length.\"\n\n\"Then this isn't over yet?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Gran sadly, shaking her head. \"I wish it were. Be prepared for a shock, young Thursday\u2014tell me Landen's name in full.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous!\" I scoffed. \"It's Landen Parke\u2014\"\n\nI stopped as a cold fear welled up inside my chest. Surely I could remember my own husband's name? But try as I might, I could not. I looked at Gran.\n\n\"Yes, I do know,\" she replied, \"but I'm not going to tell you. When you remember, you will know you have won.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Well of Lost Plots",
                "text": "\u2002Footnoterphone: Although the idea of using footnotes as a communication medium was suggested by Dr. Faustus as far back as 1622, it wasn't until 1856 that the first practical footnoterphone was demonstrated. By 1895 an experimental version was built into Hard Times, and within the next three years most of Dickens was connected. The system was expanded rapidly, culminating in the first transgenre trunk line, opened with much fanfare in 1915 between Human Drama and Crime. The network has been expanded and improved ever since, but just recently the advent of mass junkfootnoterphones and the deregulation of news and entertainment channels has almost clogged the system. A mobilefootnoterphone network was introduced in 1985.\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE,, Guide to the Great Library\n\nGran had got up early to make my breakfast and I found her asleep in the armchair with the kettle almost molten on the stove and Pickwick firmly ensnared in Gran's knitting. I made some coffee and cooked myself breakfast despite feeling nauseated. ibb and obb wandered in a little later and told me they had \"slept like dead people\" and were so hungry they could \"eat a horse between two mattresses.\" They were just tucking into my breakfast when there was a rap at the door. It was Akrid Snell, one-half of the Perkins & Snell series of detective fiction. He was about forty, dressed in a sharp fawn suit with a matching fedora, and wore a luxuriant red mustache. He was one of Jurisfiction's lawyers and had been appointed to represent me; I was still facing a charge of Fiction Infraction after I changed the ending of Jane Eyre.\n\n\"Hello!\" he said. \"Welcome to the BookWorld!\"\n\n\"Thank you. Are you well?\"\n\n\"Just dandy! I got Oedipus off the incest charge\u2014technicality, of course\u2014he didn't know it was his mother at the time.\"\n\n\"Of course. And Fagin?\"\n\n\"Still due to hang, I'm afraid,\" he said more sadly. \"The Gryphon is onto it\u2014he'll find a way out, I'm sure.\"\n\nHe was looking around the shabby flying boat as he spoke.\n\n\"Well!\" he said at last. \"You do make some odd decisions. I've heard the latest Daphne Farquitt novel is being built just down the shelf\u2014it's set in the eighteenth century and would be a lot more comfortable than this. Did you see the review of my latest book?\"\n\nHe meant the book he was featured in, of course\u2014Snell was fictional from the soles of his brogues to the crown of his fedora\u2014and like most fictioneers, a little sensitive about it. I had read the review of Wax Lyrical for Death and it was pretty scathing; tact was of the essence in situations like these.\n\n\"No, I think I must have missed it.\"\n\n\"Oh! Well, it was really\u2014really quite good, actually. I was glowingly praised as 'Snell is... very good... well rounded is... the phrase I would use,' and the book itself was described as 'surely the biggest piece of... 1986.' There's talk of a boxed set, too. Listen, I wanted to tell you that your Fiction Infraction trial will probably be next week. I tried to get another postponement but Hopkins is nothing if not tenacious; place and time to be decided upon.\"\n\n\"Should I be worried?\" I asked, thinking about the last time I'd faced a court here in the BookWorld. It had been in Kafka's The Trial and it turned out predictably unpredictable.\n\n\"Not really,\" admitted Snell. \"Our 'strong readership approval' defense should count for something\u2014after all, you did actually do it, so just plain lying might not help so much after all. Listen,\" he went on without stopping for breath, \"Miss Havisham asked me to introduce you to the wonders of the Well\u2014she would have been here this morning but she's on a grammasite extermination course.\"\n\n\"We saw a grammasite in Great Expectations.\"\n\n\"So I heard. You can never be too careful as far as grammasites are concerned.\" He looked at ibb and obb, who were just finishing off my bacon and eggs. \"Is this breakfast?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Fascinating! I've always wondered what a breakfast looked like. In our books we have twenty-three dinners, twelve lunches and eighteen afternoon teas\u2014but no breakfasts.\" He paused for a moment. \"And why is orange jam called marmalade, do you suppose?\"\n\nI told him I didn't know and passed him a mug of coffee.\n\n\"Do you have any Generics living in your books?\" I asked.\n\n\"A half dozen or so at any one time,\" he replied, spooning in some sugar and staring at ibb and obb, who, true to form, stared back. \"Boring bunch until they develop a personality, then they can be quite fun. Trouble is, they have an annoying habit of assimilating themselves into a strong leading character, and it can spread amongst them like a rash. They used to be billeted en masse, but that all changed after we lodged six thousand Generics inside Rebecca. In under a month all but eight had become Mrs. Danvers. Listen, I don't suppose I could interest you in a couple of housekeepers, could I?\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" I replied, recalling Mrs. Danvers's slightly abrasive personality.\n\n\"Don't blame you,\" replied Snell with a laugh.\n\n\"So now it's only limited numbers per novel?\"\n\n\"You learn fast. We had a similar problem with Merlins. We've had aged-male-bearded-wizard-mentor types coming out of our ears for years.\" He leaned closer. \"Do you know how many Merlins the Well of Lost Plots has placed over the past fifty years?\"\n\n\"Tell me.\"\n\n\"Nine thousand!\" he breathed. \"We even altered plotlines to include older male mentor figures! Do you think that was wrong?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" I said, slightly confused.\n\n\"At least the Merlin type is a popular character. Stick a new hat on him and he can appear pretty much anywhere. Try getting rid of thousands of Mrs. Danvers. There isn't a huge demand for creepy fifty-something housekeepers; even buy-two-get-one-free deals didn't help\u2014we use them on anti-mispeling duty, you know. A sort of army.\"\n\n\"What's it like?\" I asked.\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"Being fictional.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Snell slowly. \"Yes\u2014fictional.\"\n\nI realized too late that I had gone too far\u2014it was how I imagined a dog would feel if you brought up the question of distemper in polite conversation.\n\n\"I forgive your inquisitiveness, Miss Next, and since you are an Outlander, I will take no offense. If I were you, I shouldn't inquire too deeply about the past of fictioneers. We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot. After basic training at St. Tabularasa's, I progressed to the Dupin school for detectives; I went on field trips around the works of Hammett, Chandler and Sayers before attending a postgraduate course at the Agatha Christie finishing school. I would have liked to be an original, but I was born seventy years too late for that.\"\n\nHe stopped and paused for reflection. I was sorry to have raised the point. It can't be easy, being an amalgamation of all that has been written before.\n\n\"Right!\" he said, finishing his coffee. \"That's enough about me. Ready?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Then let's go.\"\n\nSo, taking my hand, he transported us both out of Caversham Heights and into the endless corridors of the Well of Lost Plots.\n\nThe Well was similar to the library as regards the fabric of the building\u2014dark wood, thick carpet, tons of shelves\u2014but here the similarity ended. Firstly, it was noisy. Tradesmen, artisans, technicians and Generics all walked about the broad corridors appearing and vanishing as they moved from book to book, building, changing and deleting to the author's wishes. Crates and packing cases lay scattered about the corridors, and people ate, slept and conducted their business in shops and small houses built in the manner of an untidy shantytown. Advertising billboards and posters were everywhere, promoting some form of goods or services unique to the business of writing.\n\n\"I think I'm picking up junkfootnoterphone messages, Snell,\" I said above the hubbub. \"Should I be worried?\"\n\n\"You get them all the time down here. Ignore them\u2014and never pass on chain footnotes.\"\n\nWe were accosted by a stout man wearing a sandwich board advertising bespoke plot devices \"for the discerning wordsmith.\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" yelled Snell, taking me by the arm and walking us to a quieter spot between Dr. Forthright's Chapter Ending Emporium and The Premier Mentor School.\n\n\"There are twenty-six floors down here in the Well,\" he told me, waving a hand towards the bustling crowd. \"Most of them are chaotic factories of fictional prose like this one, but the twenty-sixth subbasement has an entrance to the Text Sea\u2014we'll go down there and see them offloading the scrawltrawlers one evening.\"\n\n\"What do they unload?\"\n\n\"Words\"\u2014Snell smiled\u2014\"words, words and more words. The building blocks of fiction, the DNA of story.\"\n\n\"But I don't see any books being written,\" I observed, looking around.\n\nHe chuckled. \"You Outlanders! Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head. Vast storycode engines at Text Grand Central throughput the images to the readers as they scan the text in the Outland. We're currently using Book Operating System V8.3\u2014not for long, though\u2014Text Grand Central want to upgrade the system.\"\n\n\"Someone mentioned Ultra Word\u2122 on the news last night,\" I observed.\n\n\"Fancy-pants name. It's BOOK V9 to me and you. WordMaster Libris should be giving us a presentation shortly. UltraWord\u2122 is being tested as we speak\u2014if it's as good as they say it is, books will never be the same again!\"\n\n\"Well,\" I sighed, trying to get my head around this idea, \"I had always thought novels were just, well, written.\"\n\n\"Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,\" replied Snell as we walked along. \"The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer's imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader's mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer\u2014perhaps more.\"\n\nThis was a new approach; I mulled the idea around in my head.\n\n\"Really?\" I replied, slightly doubtfully.\n\n\"Of course!\" Snell laughed. \"Surf pounding the shingle wouldn't mean diddly unless you'd seen the waves cascade onto the foreshore, or felt the breakers tremble the beach beneath your feet, now would it?\"\n\n\"I suppose not.\"\n\n\"Books\"\u2014Snell smiled\u2014\"are a kind of magic.\"\n\nI thought about this for a moment and looked around at the chaotic fiction factory. My husband was or is a novelist\u2014I had always wanted to know what went on inside his head, and this, I figured, was about the nearest I'd ever get.3 We walked on, past a shop called A Minute Passed. It sold descriptive devices for marking the passage of time\u2014this week they had a special on seasonal changes.\n\n\"What happens to the books which are unpublished?\" I asked, wondering whether the characters in Caversham Heights really had so much to worry about.\n\n\"The failure rate is pretty high,\" admitted Snell, \"and not just for reasons of dubious merit. Bunyan's Bootscraper by John McSquurd is one of the best books ever written, but it's never been out of the author's hands. Most of the dross, rejects or otherwise unpublished just languish down here in the Well until they are broken up for salvage. Others are so bad they are just demolished\u2014the words are pulled from the pages and tossed into the Text Sea.\"\n\n\"All the characters are just recycled like waste cardboard or something?\"\n\nSnell paused and coughed politely. \"I shouldn't waste too much sympathy on the one-dimensionals, Thursday. You'll run yourself ragged and there really isn't the time or resources to recharacterize them into anything more interesting.\"\n\n\"Mr. Snell, sir?\"\n\nIt was a young man in an expensive suit, and he carried what looked like a very stained pillowcase with something heavy in it about the size of a melon.\n\n\"Hello, Alfred!\" said Snell, shaking the man's hand. \"Thursday, this is Garcia\u2014he has been supplying the Perkins and Snell series of books with intriguing plot devices for over ten years. Remember the unidentified torso found floating in the Humber in Dead Among the Living? Or the twenty-year-old corpse discovered with the bag of money bricked up in the spare room in Requiem for a Safecracker?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" I said, shaking the technician's hand. \"Good, intriguing page-turning stuff. How do you do?\"\n\n\"Well, thank you,\" replied Garcia, turning back to Snell after smiling politely. \"I understand the next Perkins and Snell novel is in the pipeline and I have a little something that might interest you.\"\n\nHe held the bag open and we looked inside. It was a head. Or more importantly, a severed head.\n\n\"A head in a bag?\" queried Snell with a frown, looking closer.\n\n\"Indeed,\" murmured Garcia proudly, \"but not any old head in a bag. This one has an intriguing tattoo on the nape of the neck. You can discover it in a skip, outside your office, in a deceased suspect's deep freeze\u2014the possibilities are endless.\"\n\nSnell's eyes flashed excitedly. It was the sort of thing his next book needed after the critical savaging of Wax Lyrical for Death.\n\n\"How much?\" he asked.\n\n\"Three hundred,\" ventured Garcia.\n\n\"Three hundred?!\" exclaimed Snell. \"I could buy a dozen head-in-a-bag plot devices with that and still have change for a missing Nazi gold consignment.\"\n\n\"No one's using the old 'missing Nazi gold consignment' plot device anymore.\" Garcia laughed. \"If you don't want the head you can pass\u2014I can sell heads pretty much anywhere I like. I just came to you first because we've done business before and I like you.\"\n\nSnell thought for a moment. \"A hundred and fifty.\"\n\n\"Two hundred.\"\n\n\"One seventy-five.\"\n\n\"Two hundred and I'll throw in a case of mistaken identity, a pretty female double agent and a missing microfilm.\"\n\n\"Done!\"\n\n\"Pleasure doing business with you,\" said Garcia as he handed over the head and took the money in return. \"Give my regards to Mr. Perkins, won't you?\"\n\nHe smiled, shook hands with us both and departed.\n\n\"Oh, boy!\" exclaimed Snell, excited as a kid with a new bicycle. \"Wait until Perkins sees this! Where do you think we should find it?\"\n\nI thought in all honesty that \"head in a bag\" plot devices were a bit lame, but being too polite to say so, I said instead, \"I liked the deep-freezer idea, myself.\"\n\n\"Me, too!\" Snell enthused as we passed a small shop whose painted headboard read: Backstories built to order. No job too difficult. Painful childhoods a specialty.\n\n\"Backstories?\"\n\n\"Sure. Every character worth their salt has a backstory. Come on in and have a look.\"\n\nWe stooped and entered the low doorway. The interior was a workshop, small and smoky. A workbench in the middle of the room was liberally piled with glass retorts, test tubes and other chemical apparatus; the walls, I noticed, were lined with shelves that held tightly stoppered bottles containing small amounts of colorful liquids, all with labels describing varying styles of backstory, from one named Idyllic childhood to another entitled Valiant war record.\n\n\"This one's nearly empty,\" I observed, pointing to a large bottle with Misguided feelings of guilt over the death of a loved one/partner ten years previously written on the label.\n\n\"Yes,\" said a small man in a corduroy suit so lumpy it looked as though the tailor were still inside doing alterations, \"that one's been quite popular recently. Some are hardly used at all. Look above you.\"\n\nI looked up at the full bottles gathering dust on the shelves above. One was labeled Studied squid in Sri Lanka and another, Apprentice Welsh mole catcher.\n\n\"So what can I do for you?\" inquired the backstoryist, gazing at us happily and rubbing his hands. \"Something for the lady? Ill treatment at the hands of sadistic stepsisters? Traumatic incident with a wild animal? No? We've got a deal this week on unhappy love affairs; buy one and you get a younger brother with a drug problem at no extra charge.\"\n\nSnell showed the merchant his Jurisfiction badge.\n\n\"Business call, Mr. Grnksghty\u2014this is apprentice Next.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, deflating slightly. \"The law.\"\n\n\"Mr. Grnksghty here used to write backstories for the Bront\u00ebs and Thomas Hardy,\" explained Snell, placing his bag on the floor and sitting on a table edge.\n\n\"Ah, yes!\" replied the man, gazing at me from over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles. \"But that was a long time ago. Charlotte Bront\u00eb, now she was a writer. A lot of good work for her, some of it barely used\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, speaking,\" interrupted Snell, staring vacantly at the array of glassware on the table. \"I'm with Thursday down in the Well.... What's up?\"\n\nHe noticed us both staring at him and explained, \"Footnoterphone. It's Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"It's so rude,\" muttered Mr. Grnksghty. \"Why can't he go outside if he wants to talk on one of those things?\"\n\n\"It's probably nothing but I'll go and have a look,\" said Snell, staring into space. He turned to look at us, saw Mr. Grnksghty glaring at him and waved absently before going outside the shop, still talking.\n\n\"Where were we, young lady?\"\n\n\"You were talking about Charlotte Bront\u00eb ordering backstories and then not using them?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes.\" The man smiled, delicately turning a tap on the apparatus and watching a small drip of an oily colored liquid fall into a flask. \"I made the most wonderful backstory for both Edward and Bertha Rochester, but do you know she only used a very small part of it?\"\n\n\"That must have been very disappointing.\"\n\n\"It was,\" he sighed. \"I am an artist, not a technician. But it didn't matter. I sold it lock, stock and barrel a few years back to The Wide Sargasso Sea. Harry Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays went the same way. I had Mr. Pickwick's backstory for years but couldn't make a sale\u2014I donated it to the Jurisfiction museum.\"\n\n\"What do you make a backstory out of, Mr. Grnksghty?\"\n\n\"Treacle, mainly,\" he replied, shaking the flask and watching the oily substance change to a gas, \"and memories. Lots of memories. In fact, the treacle is really only there as a binding agent. Tell me, what do you think of this upgrade to Ultra Word\u2122?\"\n\n\"I have yet to hear about it properly,\" I admitted.\n\n\"I particularly like the idea of ReadZip\u2122,\" mused the small man, adding a drop of red liquid and watching the result with great interest. \"They say they will be able to crush War and Peace into eightysix words and still retain the scope and grandeur of the original.\"\n\n\"Seeing is believing.\"\n\n\"Not down here,\" Mr. Grnksghty corrected me. \"Down here, reading is believing.\"\n\nThere was a pause as I took this in.\n\n\"Mr. Grnksghty?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"How do you pronounce your name?\"\n\nAt that moment Snell strolled back in.\n\n\"That was Miss Havisham,\" he announced, retrieving his head. \"Thank you for your time, Mr. Grnksghty\u2014come on, we're off.\"\n\nSnell led me down the corridor past more shops and traders until we arrived at the bronze-and-wood elevators. The doors opened and several small street urchins ran out holding cleft sticks with a small scrap of paper wedged in them.\n\n\"Ideas on their way to the books-in-progress,\" explained Snell as we stepped into the elevator. \"Trading must have just started. You'll find the Idea Sales and Loan department on the seventeenth floor.\"\n\nThe ornate elevator plunged rapidly downwards.\n\n\"Are you still being bothered by junkfootnoterphones?\"\n\n\"A little.\"\n\n\"You'll get used to ignoring them.\"\n\nThe bell sounded and the elevator doors slid open, bringing with it a chill wind. It was darker than the floor we had just visited and several disreputable-looking characters stared at us from the shadows. I moved to get out but Snell stopped me. He looked about and whispered, \"This is the twenty-second subbasement. The roughest place in the Well. A haven for cutthroats, bounty hunters, murderers, thieves, cheats, shape-shifters, scene-stealers, brigands and plagiarists.\"\n\n\"We don't tolerate these sort of places back home,\" I murmured.\n\n\"We encourage them here,\" explained Snell. \"Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.\"\n\nI could feel the menace as soon as we stepped from the elevator. Low mutters were exchanged amongst several hooded figures who stood close by, their faces obscured by the shadows, their hands bony and white. We walked past two large cats with eyes that seemed to dance with fire; they stared at us hungrily and licked their lips.\n\n\"Dinner,\" said one, looking us both up and down. \"Shall we eat them together or one by one?\"\n\n\"One by one,\" said the second cat, who was slightly bigger and a good deal more fearsome, \"but we better wait until Big Martin gets here.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" said the first cat, retracting his claws quickly, \"so we'd better.\"\n\nSnell had ignored the two cats completely; he glanced at his watch and said, \"We're going to the Slaughtered Lamb to visit a contact of mine. Someone has been cobbling together plot devices from half-damaged units that should have been condemned. It's not only illegal\u2014it's dangerous. The last thing anyone needs is a 'Do we cut the red wire or the blue wire?' plot device going off an hour too early and ruining the suspense\u2014how many stories have you read where the bomb is defused with an hour to go?\"\n\n\"Not many, I suppose.\"\n\n\"You suppose right. We're here.\"\n\nThe gloomy interior was shabby and smelt of beer. Three ceiling fans stirred the smoke-filled atmosphere, and a band was playing a melancholy tune in one corner. The dark walls were spaced with individual booths where somberness was an abundant commodity; the bar in the center seemed to be the lightest place in the room and gathered there, like moths to a light, were an odd collection of people and creatures, all chatting and talking in low voices. The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic clich\u00e9s you could have cut it with a knife.\n\n\"See over there?\" said Snell, indicating two men who were deep in conversation.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Mr. Hyde talking to Blofeld. In the next booth are Von Stalhein and Wackford Squeers. The tall guy in the cloak is Emperor Zhark, tyrannical ruler of the known galaxy and star of the Zharkian Empire series of SF books. The one with the spines is Mrs. Tiggywinkle\u2014they'll be on a training assignment, just like us.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Tiggywinkle is an apprentice?\" I asked incredulously, staring at the large hedgehog who was holding a basket of laundry and sipping delicately at a sherry.\n\n\"No; Zhark is the apprentice\u2014Tiggy's a full agent. She deals with children's fiction, runs the Hedgepigs Society\u2014and does our washing.\"\n\n\"Hedgepigs Society?\" I echoed. \"What does that do?\"\n\n\"They advance hedgehogs in all branches of literature. Mrs. Tiggywinkle was the first to get star billing and she's used her position to further the lot of her species; she's got references into Kipling, Carroll, Aesop and four mentions in Shakespeare. She's also good with really stubborn stains\u2014and never singes the cuffs.\"\n\n\"Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth,\" I muttered, counting them off on my fingers. \"Where's the fourth?\"\n\n\"Henry VI, part one, act four, scene one: 'Hedge-born Swaine.'\"\n\n\"I always thought that was an insult, not a hedgehog. Swaine can be a country lad just as easily as a pig\u2014perhaps more so.\"\n\n\"Well,\" sighed Snell, \"we've given her the benefit of the doubt\u2014it helps with the indignity of being used as a croquet ball in Alice. Don't mention Tolstoy or Berlin when she's about, either\u2014conversation with Tiggy is easier when you avoid talk of theoretical sociological divisions and stick to the question of washing temperatures for woolens.\"\n\n\"I'll remember that,\" I murmured. \"The bar doesn't look so bad with all those pot plants scattered around, does it?\"\n\nSnell sighed audibly. \"They're Triffids, Thursday. The big blobby thing practicing golf swings with the Jabberwock is a Krell, and that rhino over there is Rataxis. Arrest anyone who tries to sell you soma tablets, don't buy any Bottle Imps no matter how good the bargain and above all don't look at Medusa. If Big Martin or the Questing Beast turn up, run like hell. Get me a drink and I'll see you back here in five minutes.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\nHe departed into the gloom and I was left feeling a bit ill at ease. I made my way to the bar and ordered two drinks. On the other side of the bar a third cat had joined the two I had previously seen. The newcomer pointed to me but the others shook their heads and whispered something in his ear. I turned the other way and jumped in surprise as I came face-to-face with a curious creature that looked as though it had escaped from a bad science fiction novel\u2014it was all tentacles and eyes. A smile may have flicked across my face because the creature said in a harsh tone:\n\n\"What's the problem, never seen a Thraal before?\"\n\nI didn't understand; it sounded like a form of Courier bold, but I wasn't sure so said nothing, hoping to brazen it out.\n\n\"Hey!\" it said. \"I'm talking to you, two-eyes.\"\n\nThe altercation had attracted another man, who looked like the product of some bizarre genetic experiment gone hopelessly wrong.\n\n\"He says he doesn't like you.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I don't like you, either,\" said the man in a threatening tone, adding, as if I needed proof, \"I have the death sentence in seven genres.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that,\" I assured him, but this didn't seem to work.\n\n\"You're the one who'll be sorry!\"\n\n\"Come, come, Nigel,\" said a voice I recognized. \"Let me buy you a drink.\"\n\nThis wasn't to the genetic experiment's liking for he moved quickly to his weapon; there was a sudden blur of movement and in an instant I had my automatic pressed hard against his head\u2014Nigel's gun was still in his shoulder holster. The bar went quiet.\n\n\"You're quick, girlie,\" said Nigel. \"I respect that.\"\n\n\"She's with me,\" said the newcomer. \"Let's all just calm down.\"\n\nI lowered my gun and replaced the safety. Nigel nodded respectfully and returned to his place at the bar with the odd-looking alien.\n\n\"Are you all right?\"\n\nIt was Harris Tweed. He was a fellow Jurisfiction agent and Outlander, just like me. The last time I had seen him was three days ago in Lord Volescamper's library, when we had flushed out the renegade fictioneer Yorrick Kaine after he had invoked the Questing Beast to destroy us. Tweed had been carried off by the exuberant bark of a bookhound and I had not seen him since.\n\n\"Thanks for that, Tweed,\" I said. \"What did the alien thing want?\"\n\n\"He was a Thraal, Thursday\u2014speaking in Courier bold, the traditional language of the Well. Thraals are not only all eyes and tentacles, but mostly mouth, too\u2014he'd not have harmed you. Nigel, on the other hand, has been known to go a step too far on occasion\u2014what are you doing alone in the twenty-second subbasement anyway?\"\n\n\"I'm not alone. Havisham's busy so Snell's showing me around.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" replied Tweed, looking about, \"does this mean you're taking your entrance exams?\"\n\n\"Third of the way through the written already. Did you track down Kaine?\"\n\n\"No. We went all the way to London, where we lost the scent. Bookhounds don't work so well in the Outland, and besides\u2014we have to get special permission to pursue PageRunners into the real world.\"\n\n\"What does the Bellman say about that?\"\n\n\"He's for it, of course,\" replied Tweed, \"but the launch of Ultra Word\u2122 has dominated the Council of Genres' discussion time. We'll get round to Kaine in due course.\"\n\nI was glad of this; Kaine wasn't only an escapee from fiction but a dangerous right-wing politician back home. I would be only too happy to see him back inside whatever book he'd escaped from\u2014permanently.\n\nAt that moment Snell returned and nodded a greeting to Tweed, who returned it politely.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. Tweed,\" said Snell, \"will you join us for a drink?\"\n\n\"Sadly, I cannot,\" replied Tweed. \"I'll see you tomorrow morning at roll call, yes?\"\n\n\"Odd sort of fellow,\" remarked Snell as soon as Tweed had left. \"What was he doing here?\"\n\nI handed Snell his drink and we sat down in an empty booth. It was near the three cats and they stared at us hungrily while consulting a large recipe book.\n\n\"I had a bit of trouble at the bar and Tweed stepped in to help.\"\n\n\"Good thing, too. Ever see one of these?\"\n\nHe rolled a small globe across the table and I picked it up. It was a little like a Christmas decoration but a lot more sturdy. A small legend complete with a bar code and ID number was printed on the side.\n\n\"'Suddenly, a Shot Rang Out! FAD/167945,'\" I read aloud. \"What does it mean?\"\n\n\"It's a stolen freeze-dried plot device. Crack it open and pow!\u2014the story goes off at a tangent.\"\n\n\"How do we know it's stolen?\"\n\n\"It doesn't have a Council of Genres seal of approval. Without one, these things are worthless. Log it as evidence when you get back to the office.\"\n\nHe took a sip of his drink, coughed and stared into the glass. \"W-what is this?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure but mine is just as bad.\"\n\n\"Not possible. Hello, Emperor, have you met Thursday Next? Thursday, this is Emperor Zhark.\"\n\nA tall man swathed in a high-collared cloak was standing next to our table. He had a pale complexion, high cheekbones and a small and precise goatee. He looked at me with cold, dark eyes and raised an eyebrow imperiously.\n\n\"Greetings,\" he intoned indifferently. \"You must send my regards to Miss Havisham. Snell, how is my defense looking?\"\n\n\"Not too good, Your Mercilessness,\" he replied. \"Annihilating all the planets in the Cygnus cluster might not have been a very good move.\"\n\n\"It's those bloody Rambosians,\" Zhark said angrily. \"They threatened my empire. If I didn't destroy entire star systems, no one would have any respect for me; it's for the good of galactic peace, you know\u2014stability, and anyway, what's the point in possessing a devastatingly destructive death ray if you can't use it?\"\n\n\"Well, I should keep that to yourself. Can't you claim you were cleaning it when it went off or something?\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" said Zhark grudgingly. \"Is there a head in that bag?\"\n\n\"Yes, do you want to have a look?\"\n\n\"No, thanks. Special offer, yes?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Special offer. You know, clearance sale. How much did you pay for it?\"\n\n\"Only a... hundred,\" Snell said, glancing at me. \"Less than that, actually.\"\n\n\"You were done.\" Zhark laughed. \"They're forty a half dozen at CrimeScene, Inc.\u2014with double stamps, too.\"\n\nSnell's face flushed with anger and he jumped up.\n\n\"The little scumbag!\" he spat. \"I'll have him in a bag when I see him again!\" He turned to me. \"Will you be all right getting out on your own?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Good,\" he replied through gritted teeth. \"See you later!\"\n\n\"Hold it!\" I said, but it was too late. He had vanished.\n\n\"Problems?\" asked Zhark.\n\n\"No,\" I replied slowly, holding up the dirty pillowcase, \"he just forgot his head\u2014and careful, Emperor, there's a Triffid creeping up behind you.\"\n\nZhark turned to face the Triffid, who stopped, thought better of an attack and rejoined his friends, who were cooling their roots at the bar.\n\nZhark departed and I looked around. At the next table a fourth cat had joined the other three. It was bigger than the others and considerably more battle-scarred\u2014it had only one eye and both ears had large bites taken out of them. They all licked their lips as the newest cat said in a low voice, \"Shall we eat her?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" replied the first cat, \"we're waiting for Big Martin.\"\n\nThey returned to their drinks but never took their eyes off me. I could imagine how a mouse felt. After ten minutes I decided that I was not going to be intimidated by outsize house pets and got up to leave, taking Snell's head with me. The cats got up and followed me out, down the dingy corridor. Here the shops sold weapons, dastardly plans for world domination and fresh ideas for murder, revenge, extortion and other general mayhem. Generics, I noticed, could be trained in the dark art of being an accomplished evildoer as easily as any other profession. The cats yowled excitedly and I quickened my step only to stumble into a clearing amidst the shantytown of wooden buildings. The reason for the clearing was obvious. Sitting atop an old packing case was another cat. But this one was different. No oversize house cat, this beast was four times the size of a tiger and it stared at me with ill-disguised malevolence. Its claws were extended and fangs at the ready, glistening slightly with hungry anticipation. I stopped and looked behind me to where the four other cats had lined up and were staring at me expectantly, tails gently lashing the air. A quick glance around the corridor proved that there was no one near who might offer me any assistance; indeed, most of the bystanders seemed to be getting ready for something of a show.\n\nI pulled out my automatic as one of the cats bounded up to the newcomer and said, \"Can we eat her now, please?\"\n\nThe large cat placed one of its claws in the packing case and drew it through the wood like a razor-sharp chisel cutting through soft clay; it stared at me with huge green eyes and said in a deep, rumbling voice:\n\n\"Shouldn't we wait until Big Martin gets here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" sighed the smaller cat with a strong air of disappointment, \"perhaps we should.\"\n\nSuddenly, the big cat pricked up his ears and jumped from his box into the shadows; I pointed my gun but it wasn't attacking\u2014the overgrown tiger was departing in a panic. The other cats quickly left the scene and pretty soon the bystanders had gone, too. Within a few moments I was completely alone in the corridor, with nothing to keep me company but the rapid thumping of my own heart, and a head in a bag."
            },
            {
                "title": "Night of the Grammasites",
                "text": "\u2002Grammasite: Generic term for a parasitic life-form that lives inside books and feeds on grammar. Technically known as Gerunds or Ingers, they were an early attempt to transform nouns (which were plentiful) into verbs (which at the time were not) by simply attaching an ing. A dismal failure at verb resource management, they escaped from captivity and now roam freely in the subbasements. Although they are thankfully quite rare in the library itself, isolated pockets of grammasites are still found from time to time and dealt with mercilessly.\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\nI turned and walked quickly towards the elevators, a strong feeling of impending oddness raising the hair on the back of my neck. I pressed the call button but nothing happened. I quickly dashed across the corridor and tried the second bank of elevators, but with no more success. I was just thinking of running to the stairwell when I heard a noise. It was a distant, low moan that was quite unlike any other sort of low moan that I had ever heard, nor would ever want to hear again. I put down the head in a bag as my palms grew sweaty, and although I told myself I was calm, I pressed the call button several more times and reached for my automatic as a shape hove into view from the depths of the corridor. It was flying close to the bookshelves and was something like a bat, something like a lizard and something like a vulture. It was covered in patchy gray fur and wearing stripy socks and a brightly colored waistcoat of questionable taste. I had seen this sort of thing before; it was a grammasite, and although dissimilar to the adjectivore I had seen in Great Expectations, I imagined it could do just as much harm\u2014it was little wonder that the residents of the Well had locked themselves away. The grammasite swept past in a flash without noticing me and was soon gone with a rumble like distant artillery. I relaxed slightly, expecting to see the Well spring back into life, but nothing stirred. Far away in the distance, beyond the Slaughtered Lamb, an excited burble reached my straining ears. I pressed the call button again as the noise grew louder and a slight breeze drafted against my face, like the oily zephyr that precedes an underground train. I shuddered. Where I came from, a Browning automatic spoke volumes, but how it would work on a grammar-sucking parasite, I had no idea\u2014and I didn't think this would be a good time to find out. I was preparing myself to run when there was a melodious bing, the call button light came on and one of the elevator pointers started to move slowly towards my floor. I ran across and leaned with my back against the doors, releasing the safety on my automatic as the wind and noise increased. By the time the elevator was four floors away, the first grammasites had arrived. They looked around the corridor as they flew, sniffing at books with their long snouts and giving off excited squeaks. This was the advance guard. A few seconds later the main flock arrived with a deafening roar. One or two of them poked at books until they fell off the shelves, while other grammasites fell upon the unfinished manuscripts with an excited cry. There was a scuffle as a character burst from a page, only to be impaled by a grammasite, who reduced the unfortunate wretch to a few explanatory phrases, which were then eaten by scavengers waiting on the sidelines. I had seen enough. I opened fire and got three of them straightaway, who were devoured in turn by the same scavengers\u2014clearly there was little honor or sense of loss amongst grammasites; their compatriots merely shuffled into the gaps left by their fallen comrades. I picked off two who were scrabbling at the bookcases attempting to dislodge more books and then turned away to reload. As I did, another eerie silence filled the corridor. I released the slide on my automatic and looked up. About a hundred or so grammasites were staring at me with their small black eyes, and it wasn't a look that I'd describe as anywhere near friendly. I sighed. What a way to go. I could see my headstone now:\n\n\u2002Thursday Next\n\n\u20021950\u20131986\n\n\u2002SpecOps agent & beloved wife\n\n\u2002to someone who doesn't exist\n\n\u2002Died for no adequately explained reason\n\n\u2002in an abstract place by an abstract foe.\n\nI raised my gun and the grammasites shuffled slightly, as though deciding amongst themselves who would be sacrificed for them to overpower me. I pointed the gun at whichever one started to move, hoping to postpone the inevitable. The one who seemed to be the leader\u2014he had the brightest-colored waistcoat, I noted\u2014took a step forward and I pointed my gun at him as another grammasite seized the opportunity and made a sudden leap towards me, its sharpened beak heading straight for my chest. I whirled around in time to see its small black eyes twinkle with a thousand well-digested verbs when a hand on my shoulder pulled me roughly backwards into the elevator. The grammasite, carried on by its own momentum, buried its beak into the wood surround. I reached to thump the close button, but my wrist was deftly caught by my as yet unseen savior.\n\n\"We never run from grammasites.\"\n\nIt was a scolding tone of voice that I knew only too well. Miss Havisham. Dressed in her rotting wedding dress and veil, she stared at me with despair. I think I was one of the worst apprentices she had ever trained\u2014or that was the way she made me feel, at any rate.\n\n\"We have nothing to fear except fear itself,\" she intoned, whipping out her pocket derringer and dispatching two grammasites who made a rush at the elevator's open door. \"I seem to spend my waking hours extricating you from the soup, my girl!\"\n\nThe grammasites were slowly advancing on us; they were now at least three hundred strong and others were joining them. We were heavily outnumbered.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I replied quickly, curtsying just in case as I loosed off another shot, \"but don't you think we should be departing?\"\n\n\"I fear only the Questing Beast,\" announced Havisham imperiously. \"The Questing Beast, Big Martin... and semolina.\"\n\nShe shot another grammasite with a particularly fruity waistcoat and carried on talking. \"If you had troubled to do some homework, you would know that these are Verbisoids and probably the easiest grammasite to vanquish of them all.\"\n\nAnd almost without pausing for breath, Miss Havisham launched into a croaky and out-of-tune rendition of William Blake's \"Jerusalem.\" The grammasites stopped abruptly and stared at one another. By the time I had joined her at the \"holy Lamb of God\" line, they had begun to back away in fright. We sang louder, Miss Havisham and I, and by \"dark Satanic mills\" they had started to take flight; by the time we had got to \"Bring me my chariot of fire,\" they had departed completely.\n\n\"Quick!\" said Miss Havisham. \"Grab the waistcoats\u2014there's a bounty on each one.\"\n\nWe stripped the waistcoats from the fallen grammasites; it was not a pleasant job\u2014the corpses smelt so strongly of ink that it made me cough. The carcasses would be taken away by a verminator, who would boil down the bodies and distill off any verbs he could. In the Well, nothing is wasted.\n\n\"What were the smaller ones?\"\n\n\"I forget,\" replied Havisham, gathering up the waistcoats. \"Here, you're going to need this. Study it well if you want to pass your exams.\"\n\nShe handed me my TravelBook, the one that Goliath had taken. Within its pages were almost all the tips and equipment I needed for travel within the BookWorld.\n\n\"How did you manage that?\"\n\nMiss Havisham didn't answer. She was a bit like a strict parent, your worst teacher and a newly appointed South American dictator all rolled into one\u2014which wasn't to say I didn't like her or respect her. It was just that I felt I was still nine whenever she spoke to me.\n\n\"Why do grammasites wear stripy socks?\" I ventured, tying up the waistcoats with some string that Havisham had given me.\n\n\"Probably because spotted ones are out of fashion,\" she replied with a shrug, reloading her pistol. \"What's in the bag?\"\n\n\"Oh, some, er, shopping of Snell's.\"\n\nI tried to change the subject. I didn't suppose carrying around unlicensed plot devices was something Havisham would approve of\u2014even if they were Snell's.\n\n\"So why did we, um, sing 'Jerusalem' to get rid of them?\"\n\n\"As I said, those grammasites were Verbisoids,\" she replied without looking up, \"and a Verbisoid, in common with many language students, hates and fears irregular verbs\u2014they far prefer consuming regular verbs with the ed word ending. Strong irregulars such as to sing with their internal vowel changes\u2014we will sing\u2014we sang\u2014we have sung\u2014tend to scramble their tiny minds.\"\n\n\"Any irregular verb frightens them off?\" I asked with interest.\n\n\"Pretty much; but some irregulars are more easy to demonstrate than others\u2014we could cut, I suppose, or even be, but then the proceedings change into something akin to a desperate game of charades\u2014far easier to just sing and have done with it.\"\n\n\"What about if we were to go?\" I ventured, thinking practically for once. \"There can't be anything more irregular than go, went, gone, can there?\"\n\n\"Because,\" replied Miss Havisham, her patience eroding by the second, \"they might misconstrue it as walked\u2014note the ed ending?\"\n\n\"Not if we ran,\" I added, not wanting to let this go. \"That's irregular, too.\"\n\nMiss Havisham stared at me icily. \"Of course we could. But ran might be seen in the eyes of a hungry Verbisoid to be either trotted, galloped, raced, rushed, hurried, hastened, sprinted and even departed.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I said, realizing that trying to catch Miss Havisham out was about as likely as nailing Banquo's ghost to a coffee table, \"yes, it might, mightn't it?\"\n\n\"Look,\" said Miss Havisham, softening slightly, \"if running away killed grammasites, there wouldn't be a single one left. Stick to 'Jerusalem' and you won't go far wrong\u2014just don't try it with adjectivores or the parataxis; they'd probably join in\u2014and then eat you.\"\n\nShe snorted, picked up the bundle of waistcoats and pulled me towards the elevator, which had just reopened. It was clear that the twenty-second subbasement wasn't a place she liked to be. I couldn't say I blamed her.\n\nShe relaxed visibly as we rose from the subbasements and into the more ordered nature of the library itself. We weren't alone in the elevator. With us was a large Painted Jaguar and her son, who had a paddy-paw full of prickles and was complaining bitterly that he had been tricked by a hedgehog and a tortoise, who had both escaped. The Mother Jaguar shook her head sadly and looked at us both with an exasperated air before addressing her son:\n\n\"Son, son,\" she said, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, \"what have you been doing that you shouldn't have?\"\n\n\"So,\" said Miss Havisham as the elevator moved off, \"how are you getting along in that frightful Caversham Heights book?\"\n\n\"Well, thank you, Miss Havisham,\" I muttered, \"the characters in it are worried that their book will be demolished from under their feet.\"\n\n\"With good reason I expect. Hundreds of books like Heights are demolished every day. If you stopped to waste any sympathy, you'd go nuts\u2014so don't. It's man eat man in the Well. I'd keep yourself to yourself and don't make too many friends\u2014they have a habit of dying just when you get to like them. It always happens that way. It's a narrative thing.\"\n\n\"Heights isn't a bad place to live,\" I ventured, hoping to elicit a bit of compassion.\n\n\"Doubtless,\" she murmured, staring at the floor indicator. \"I remember when I was in the Well, when they were building Great Expectations. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when they told me I would be working with Charles Dickens. Top of my class at Generic College and, without seeming immodest, something of a beauty. I thought I would make an admirable young Estella\u2014both refined and beautiful, haughty and proud, yet ultimately overcoming the overbearing crabbiness of her cantankerous benefactor to find true love.\"\n\n\"So... what happened?\"\n\n\"I wasn't tall enough.\"\n\n\"Tall enough? For a book? Isn't that like having the wrong hair color for the wireless?\"\n\n\"They gave the part to a little strumpet who was on salvage from a demolished Thackeray. Little cow. It's no wonder I treat her so rotten\u2014the part should have been mine!\"\n\nShe fell into silence.\n\n\"Let me get this straight,\" said the Painted Jaguar, who was having a bit of trouble telling the difference between a hedgehog and a tortoise. \"If it's slow and solid, I drop him in the water and then scoop him out of his shell\u2014\"\n\n\"Son, son!\" said his mother, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail. \"Now attend to me and remember what I say. A hedgehog curls himself up into a ball and his prickles stick out every way\u2014\"\n\n\"Did you get the Jurisfiction exam papers I sent you?\" asked Miss Havisham. \"I've got your practical booked for the day after tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" I said with quite the wrong tone in my voice.\n\n\"Problems?\" she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.\n\n\"No, ma'am\u2014I just feel a bit unprepared\u2014I think I might make a pig's ear of it.\"\n\n\"I disagree. I know you'll make a pig's ear of it. But wheels within wheels\u2014all I ask is you don't make a fool of yourself or lose your life. Now that would be awkward.\"\n\n\"So,\" said the Painted Jaguar, rubbing his head, \"if it can roll itself into a ball it must be a tortoise and\u2014\"\n\n\"Ahhh!\" cried the Mother Jaguar, lashing her tail angrily. \" Completely wrong. Miss Havisham, what am I to do with this boy?\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" she replied. \"All men are dolts, from where I'm standing.\"\n\nThe Painted Jaguar looked crestfallen and stared at the floor.\n\n\"Can I make a suggestion?\" I asked.\n\n\"Anything!\" replied the Mother Jaguar.\n\n\"If you make a rhyme out of it, he might be able to remember.\"\n\nThe Mother Jaguar sighed. \"It won't help. Yesterday he forgot he was a Painted Jaguar. He makes my spots ache, really he does.\"\n\n\"How about this?\" I said, making up a rhyme on the spot:\n\nCan't curl, but can swim\u2014\n\nSlow-Solid, that's him!\n\nCurls up, but can't swim\u2014\n\nStickly-Prickly, that's him!\n\nThe Mother Jaguar stopped lashing her tail and asked me to write it down. She was still trying to get her son to remember it when the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor and we got out.\n\n\"I thought we were going to the Jurisfiction offices,\" I said as we walked along the corridors of the Great Library, the wooden shelves groaning under the weight of the collected imaginative outpourings of nearly two millennia.\n\n\"The next roll call is tomorrow,\" Miss Havisham replied, stopping at a shelf and dropping the grammasite's waistcoats into a heap before picking out a roughly bound manuscript, \"and I told Perkins you'd help him feed the Minotaur.\"\n\n\"You did?\" I asked slightly apprehensively.\n\n\"Of course. Fictionalzoology is a fascinating subject and believe me, it's an area in which you should know more.\"\n\nShe handed me the book, which, I noticed, was handwritten.\n\n\"It's code-word protected,\" announced Havisham. \"Mumble sapphire before you read yourself in.\" She gathered up the waistcoats again. \"I'll pick you up in about an hour. Perkins will be waiting for you on the other side. Please pay attention and don't let him talk you into looking after any rabbits. Don't forget the password\u2014you'll not get in or out without it.\"\n\n\"Sapphire,\" I repeated.\n\n\"Very good,\" she said, and vanished.\n\nI placed the book on one of the reading desks and sat down. The marble busts of writers that dotted the library seemed to glare at me, and I was just about to start reading when I noticed, high up on the shelf opposite, an ethereal form that was coalescing, wraithlike, in front of my eyes. At home this might be considered a matter of great pith and moment, but here it was merely the Cheshire Cat making one of his celebrated appearances.\n\n\"Hullo!\" he said as soon as his mouth had appeared. \"How are you getting along?\"\n\nThe Cheshire Cat was the librarian and the first person I had met in the BookWorld. With a penchant for non sequiturs and obtuse comments, it was hard not to like him.\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" I replied. \"I was attacked by grammasites, threatened by Big Martin's friends and a Thraal. I've got two Generics billeted with me, the characters in Caversham Heights think I can save their book and right now I have to give the Minotaur his breakfast.\"\n\n\"Nothing remarkable there. Anything else?\"\n\n\"How long have you got?\"\n\nI tapped my ears.\n\n\"Problems?\"\n\n\"I can hear two Russians gossiping, right here inside my head.\"\n\n\"Probably a crossed footnoterphone line,\" replied the Cat.\n\nHe jumped down, pressed his head against mine and listened intently.\n\n\"Can you hear them?\" I asked after a bit.\n\n\"Not at all,\" replied the Cat, \"but you do have very warm ears. Do you like Chinese food?\"\n\n\"Yes, please.\" I hadn't eaten for a while.\n\n\"Me, too,\" mused the Cat. \"Shame there isn't any. What's in the bag?\"\n\n\"Something of Snell's.\"\n\n\"Ah. What do you think of this Ultra Word\u2122 lark?\"\n\n\"I'm really not sure,\" I replied, truthfully enough. \"How about you?\"\n\n\"How about me what?\"\n\n\"What do you think of the new operating system?\"\n\n\"When it comes in, I shall give it my fullest attention,\" he said ambiguously, adding, \"It's a laugh, isn't it?\"\n\n\"What is?\"\n\n\"That noise you make at the back of your throat when you hear something funny. Let me know if you need anything. Bye.\"\n\nAnd he slowly faded out, from the tip of his tail to the tip of his nose. His grin, as usual, stayed for some time after the rest of him had gone.\n\nI turned back to the book, murmured, \"Sapphire,\" and read the first paragraph aloud.\n\n\u2002Feeding the Minotaur\n\n\u2002Name and Operator's Number: Perkins, David \"Pinky.\" AGD136-323\n\n\u2002Address: c/o Perkins & Snell Detective Series\n\n\u2002Induction Date: September 1957\n\n\u2002Notes: Perkins joined the service and has shown exemplary conduct throughout his service career. After signing up for a twenty-year tour of duty, he extended that to another tour in 1977. After five years heading the mispeling Protection Squad, he was transferred to grammasite inspection and eradication and in 1981 took over leadership of the grammasite research facility.\n\n\u2002ENTRY FROM JURISFICTION SERVICE RECORD (ABRIDGED)"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 79",
                "text": "I found myself in a large meadow next to a babbling brook. Willows and larches hung over the crystal clear waters while mature oaks punctuated the land. It was warm and dry and quite delightful\u2014like a perfect summer's day in England, in fact, and I suddenly felt quite homesick.\n\n\"I used to look at the view a lot,\" said a voice close at hand. \"Don't seem to have the time, these days.\"\n\nI turned to see a tall and laconic man leaning against a silver birch, holding a copy of the Jurisfiction trade paper, Movable Type. I recognized him although we had never been introduced. It was Perkins, who partnered Snell at Jurisfiction, much as they did in the Perkins & Snell series of detective novels.\n\n\"Hello,\" he said, proffering a hand and smiling broadly, \"put it there. Perkins is the name. Akrid tells me you sorted Hopkins out good and proper.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Akrid's very kind, but it isn't over yet.\"\n\nHe cast an arm towards the horizon. \"What do you think?\"\n\nI looked at the view. High, snowcapped mountains rose in the distance above a green and verdant plain. At the foot of the hills were forests, and a large river wended its way through the valley.\n\n\"Beautiful.\"\n\n\"We bought it from the fantasy division of the Well of Lost Plots. It's a complete world in itself, written for a sword-and-sorcery novel entitled The Sword of the Zenobians. Beyond the mountains are icy wastes, deep fjords and relics of long-forgotten civilizations, castles, that sort of stuff. It was auctioned off when the book was abandoned. There were no characters or events written in, which was a shame\u2014considering the work he did on the world itself, this might have been a bestseller. Still, the Outland's loss is our gain. We use it to keep grammasites and other weird beasts who for one reason or another can't live safely within their own books.\"\n\n\"Sanctuary?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014and also for study and containment\u2014hence the password.\"\n\n\"There seem to be an awful lot of rabbits,\" I observed, looking around.\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" replied Perkins, crossing a stone-arched bridge that spanned the small stream, \"we never did get the lid on reproduction within Watership Down\u2014if left to their own devices, the book would be so full of dandelion-munching lagomorphs that every other word would be rabbit within a year. Still, Lennie enjoys it here when he has some time off.\"\n\nWe walked up a path towards a ruined castle. Grass covered the mounds of masonry that had collapsed from the curtain wall, and the wood of the drawbridge had rotted and fallen into a moat now dry and full of brambles. Above us, what appeared to be ravens circled the highest of the remaining towers.\n\n\"Not birds,\" said Perkins, handing me a pair of binoculars. \"Have a look.\"\n\nI peered up at the circling creatures who were soaring on large wings of stretched skin. \"Parenthiums?\"\n\n\"Very good. I have six breeding pairs here\u2014purely for research, I hasten to add. Most books can easily support forty or so with no ill effects\u2014it's just when the numbers get out of hand that we have to take action. A swarm of grammasites can be pretty devastating.\"\n\n\"I know, I was almost\u2014\"\n\n\"Watch out!\"\n\nHe pushed me aside as a lump of excrement splattered on the ground near where I had been standing. I looked up at the battlements and saw a man-beast covered in coarse, dark hair who glared down at us and made a strangled cry in the back of his throat.\n\n\"Yahoos,\" explained Perkins with disdain. \"They're not terribly well behaved and quite beyond training.\"\n\n\"From Gulliver's Travels?\"\n\n\"Bingo. When truly original works like Jonathan Swift's are made into new books, characters are often duplicated for evaluation and consultative purposes. Characters can be retrained, but creatures usually end up here. Yahoos are not exactly a favorite of mine but they're harmless enough, so the best thing to do is ignore them.\"\n\nWe walked quickly under the keep to avoid any other possible missiles and entered the inner bailey, where a pair of centaurs were grazing peacefully. They looked up at us, smiled, waved and carried on eating. I noticed that one of them was listening to a Walkman.\n\n\"You have centaurs here?\"\n\n\"And satyrs, troglodytes, chimeras, elves, fairies, dryads, sirens, Martians, leprechauns, goblins, harpies, aliens, daleks, trolls\u2014you name it.\" Perkins smiled. \"A large proportion of unpublished novels are in the fantasy genre, and most of them feature mythical beasts. Whenever one of those books gets demolished, I can usually be found down at the salvage yard. It would be a shame to reduce them to text, now wouldn't it?\"\n\n\"Do you have unicorns?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" sighed Perkins, \"sackloads. More than I know what to do with. I wish potential writers would be more responsible with their creations. I can understand children writing about them, but adults should know better. Every unicorn in every demolished story ends up here. I had this idea for a bumper sticker: 'A unicorn isn't for page twenty-seven, it's for eternity.' What do you think?\"\n\n\"I think you won't be able to stop people writing about them. How about taking the horn off and seeking placement in pony books?\"\n\n\"I'll pretend I didn't hear that,\" replied Perkins stonily, adding, \"We have dragons, too. We can hear them sometimes, at night when the wind is in the right direction. When\u2014or if\u2014Pellinore captures the Questing Beast, it will come to live here. Somewhere a long way away, I hope. Careful\u2014don't tread in the Orc shit. You're an Outlander, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Born and bred.\"\n\n\"Has anyone realized that platypuses and sea horses are fictional?\"\n\n\"Are they?\"\n\n\"Of course\u2014you don't think anything that weird could have evolved by chance, do you? By the way, how do you like Miss Havisham?\"\n\n\"I like her a great deal.\"\n\n\"So do we all. I think she quite likes us, too, but she'd never admit it.\"\n\nWe had arrived at the inner keep and Perkins pushed open the door. Inside was his office and laboratory. One wall was covered with glass jars filled with odd creatures of all shapes and sizes, and on the table was a partially dissected grammasite. Within its gut were words being digested into letters.\n\n\"I'm not really sure how they do it,\" said Perkins, prodding at the carcass with a spoon. \"Have you met Mathias?\"\n\nI looked around but could see nothing but a large chestnut horse whose flanks shone in the light. The horse looked at me and I looked at the horse, then past the horse\u2014but no one else was in the room. The penny dropped.\n\n\"Good morning, Mathias,\" I said as politely as I could. \"I'm Thursday Next.\"\n\nPerkins laughed out loud and the horse brayed and replied in a deep voice, \"Delighted to make your acquaintance, madam. Permit me to join you in a few moments?\"\n\nI agreed and the horse returned to what I now saw were some complicated notes it was writing in a ledger open on the floor. Every now and then it paused and dipped the quill that was attached to its hoof into an inkpot and wrote in a large copperplate script.\n\n\"A Houyhnhnm?\" I asked. \"Also from Gulliver's Travels?\"\n\nPerkins nodded. \"Mathias, his mare and the two Yahoos were all used as consultants for Pierre Boulle's 1963 remake: La plan\u00e8te des singes.\"\n\n\"Louis Aragon once said,\" announced Mathias from the other side of the room, \"that the function of geniuses was to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years on.\"\n\n\"I hardly think that Boulle was a cretin, Mathias,\" said Perkins, \"and anyway, it's always the same with you, isn't it? 'Voltaire said this,' 'Baudelaire said that.' Sometimes I think that you just, just\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped, trying to think of the right words.\n\n\"Was it da Vinci who said,\" suggested the horse helpfully, \"that anyone who quotes authors in discussion is using their memory, not their intellect?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" replied the frustrated Perkins, \"what I was about to say.\"\n\n\"Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis,\" murmured the horse, staring at the ceiling in thought.\n\n\"The only thing that proves is how pretentious you are,\" muttered Perkins. \"It's always the same when we have visitors, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Someone has to raise the tone in this miserable backwater,\" replied Mathias, \"and if you call me a 'pseudo-erudite ungulate' again, I shall bite you painfully on the buttock.\"\n\nPerkins and the horse glared at one another.\n\n\"You said there was a pair of Houyhnhnms?\" I asked, trying to defuse the situation.\n\n\"My partner, my love, my mare,\" explained the horse, \"is currently at Oxford, your Oxford\u2014studying political science at All Souls.\"\n\n\"Don't they notice?\" I asked. \"A horse, at Oxford?\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised how unobservant some of the professors are,\" replied Perkins. \"Napoleon the pig studied Marxism at Nuffield. Got a first, too. This way. I keep the Minotaur in the dungeons. You are fully conversant with the legend?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I replied. \"It's the half-man, half-bull offspring of King Minos' wife, Pasipha\u00eb.\"\n\n\"Spot on.\" Perkins chuckled. \"The tabloids had a field day: 'Cretan Queen in Bull Love-Child Shock.' We built a copy of the labyrinth to hold it, but the Monsters' Humane Society insisted two officials inspect it first.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"That was over twelve years ago; I think they're still in it. I keep the Minotaur in here.\"\n\nHe opened a door that led into a vaulted room below the old hall. It was dark and smelt of rotten bones and sweat.\n\n\"Er, you do keep it locked up?\" I asked as my eyes struggled to see in the semidark.\n\n\"Of course!\" he replied, nodding towards a large key hanging from a hook. \"What do you think I am, an idiot?\"\n\nAs my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I could see that the back half of the vault was caged off with rusty iron bars. A door in the center was secured with a ridiculously large padlock.\n\n\"Don't get too near,\" warned Perkins as he took a steel bowl down from a shelf. \"I've been feeding him on yogurt for almost five years, and to be truthful he's getting a bit bored.\"\n\n\"Yogurt?\"\n\n\"With some bran mixed in. Feeding him on Grecian virgins was too expensive.\"\n\n\"Wasn't he slain by Theseus?\" I asked, as a dark shape started moving at the back of the vault accompanied by a low growling noise. Even with the bars I really wasn't happy to be there.\n\n\"Usually,\" replied Perkins, ladling out some yogurt, \"but mischievous Generics took him out of a copy of Graves's The Greek Myths in 1944 and dropped him in Stalingrad. A sharp-eyed Jurisfiction agent figured out what was going on and we took him out\u2014he's been here ever since.\"\n\nPerkins filled the steel bowl with yogurt, mixed in some bran from a large dustbin and then placed the bowl on the floor a good five feet from the bars. He pushed the dish the remainder of the way with the handle of a floor mop.\n\nAs we watched, the Minotaur appeared from the dark recesses of the cage and I felt the hair bristle on the back of my neck. His large and muscular body was streaked with dirt, and sharpened horns sprouted from his bull-like head. He moved with the low gait of an ape, using his forelegs to steady himself. As I watched, he put out two clawed hands to retrieve the bowl, then slunk off to a dark corner. I caught a glimpse of his fangs in the dim light, and a pair of deep yellow eyes that glared at me with hungry malevolence.\n\n\"I'm thinking of calling him Norman,\" murmured Perkins. \"Come on, I want to show you something.\"\n\nWe left the dark and fetid area beneath the old hall and walked back into the laboratory, where Perkins opened a large leatherbound book that was sitting on the table.\n\n\"This is the Jurisfiction bestiary,\" he explained, turning the page to reveal a picture of the grammasite we had encountered in Great Expectations.\n\n\"An adjectivore,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Very good. Fairly common in the Well but under control in fiction generally.\"\n\nHe turned a page to reveal a sort of angler fish, but instead of a light dangling on a wand sticking out of its head, it had the indefinite article.\n\n\"Nounfish,\" explained Perkins. \"They swim the outer banks of the Text Sea, hoping to attract and devour stray nouns eager to start an embryonic sentence.\"\n\nHe turned the page to reveal a picture of a small maggot.\n\n\"A bookworm?\" I suggested, having seen these before at my uncle Mycroft's workshop.\n\n\"Indeed. Not strictly a pest and actually quite necessary to the existence of the BookWorld. They take words and expel alternate meanings like a hot radiator. I think earthworms are the nearest equivalent in the Outland. They aerate the soil, yes?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Bookworms do the same job down here. Without them, words would have one meaning, and meanings would have one word. They live in thesauri but their benefit is felt throughout fiction.\"\n\n\"So why are they considered a pest?\"\n\n\"Useful, but not without their drawbacks. Get too many bookworms in your novel and the language becomes almost unbearably flowery.\"\n\n\"I've read books like that,\" I confessed.\n\nHe turned the page and I recognized the grammasites that had swarmed through the Well earlier.\n\n\"Verbisoid,\" he said with a sigh, \"to be destroyed without mercy. Once the Verbisoid extracts the verb from a sentence, it generally collapses; do that once too often and the whole narrative falls apart like a bread roll in a rainstorm.\"\n\n\"Why do they wear waistcoats and stripy socks?\"\n\n\"To keep warm, I should imagine.\"\n\n\"Ah. What about the mispeling vyrus?\"\n\n\"Speltificarious molesworthian,\" murmured Perkins, moving to where a pile of dictionaries were stacked up around a small glass jar. He picked out the container and showed it to me. A thin purple haze seemed to wisp around inside; it reminded me of one of Spike's SEBs.\n\n\"This is the larst of the vyrus,\" explained Perkins. \"We had to distroy the wrist. Wotch this.\"\n\nHe picked up a letter opener and delicately brought it towards the vyrus. As I watched, the opener started to twist and change shape until it looked more like a miniature sheaf of papers\u2014an operetta, complete with libretto and score. I think it was The Pirates of Penzance, but I couldn't be sure.\n\n\"The vyrus works on a subtextual level and disstorts the meaning of a wurd,\" explained Perkins, removing the operetta, which morphed back to its previous state. \"The mispeling arises as a consekwence of this.\"\n\nHe replaced the jar back in the dictosafe.\n\n\"So the mispeling itself is really only a symptom of sense distortion?\"\n\n\"Exactly so. The vyrus was rampant before Agent Johnson's Dictionary in 1744,\" added Perkins. \"Lavinia-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary keep it all in check, but we have to be careful. We used to contain any outbreak and offload it in the Molesworth series, where no one ever notices. These days we destroy any new vyrus with a battery of dictionaries we keep on the seventeenth floor of the Great Library. But we can't be too careful. Every mispeling you come across has to be reported to the Cat on a form S-12.\"\n\nThere was the raucous blast of a car horn from outside.\n\n\"Time's up!\" Perkins smiled. \"That will be Miss Havisham.\"\n\nMiss Havisham was not on her own. She was sitting in a vast automobile, the bonnet of which stretched ten feet in front of her. The large-spoked and unguarded wheels carried tires that looked woefully skinny and inadequate; eight huge exhaust pipes sprouted from either side of the bonnet, joined into one and stretched the length of the body. The tail of the car was pointed, like a boat, and just forward of the rear wheels two huge drive sprockets carried the power to the rear axle on large chains. It was a fearsome beast. It was the twenty-seven-liter Higham Special."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ton-Sixty on the A419",
                "text": "\u2002The wealthy son of a Polish count and an American mother, Louis Zborowski lived at Higham Place near Canterbury, where he built three aero-engined cars, all called Chitty Bang Bang. But there was a fourth: the Higham Special, a car he and Clive Gallop had engineered by squeezing a twenty-seven-liter aero-engine into a Rubery Owen chassis and mating it with a Benz gearbox. At the time of Zborowski's death at Monza behind the wheel of a Mercedes, the Special had been lapping Brooklands at 116 mph\u2014but her potential was as yet unproved. After a brief stint with a lady owner whose identity has not been revealed, the Special was sold to Parry Thomas, who with careful modifications of his own pushed the land speed record up to 170.624 mph at Pendine sands, south Wales, in 1926.\n\n\u2014THE VERY REVEREND MR. TOREDLYNE, The Land Speed Record\n\n\"Has she been boring you, Mr. Perkins?\" called out Havisham.\n\n\"Not at all,\" replied Perkins, giving me a wink, \"she has been a most attentive student.\"\n\n\"Humph,\" muttered Havisham. \"Hope springs eternal. Get in, girl, we're off!\"\n\nI paused. I had been driven by Miss Havisham once before, and that was in a car that I thought relatively safe. This beast of an automobile looked as though it could kill you twice before even reaching second gear.\n\n\"What are you waiting for, girl?\" said Havisham impatiently. \"If I let the Special idle any longer, we'll coke up the plugs. Besides, I'll need all the fuel to do the run.\"\n\n\"The run?\"\n\n\"Don't worry!\" shouted Miss Havisham as she revved the engine. The car lurched sideways with the torque, and a throaty growl filled the air. \"You won't be aboard when I do\u2014you're needed for other duties.\"\n\nI took a deep breath and climbed into the small two-seater body. It looked newly converted and was little more than a racing car with a few frills tacked on to make it roadworthy. Miss Havisham depressed the clutch and wrestled with the gearshift for a moment. The large sprockets took up the power with a slight tug; it felt like a Thoroughbred racehorse that had just got the scent of a steeplechase.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" I asked.\n\n\"Home!\" answered Miss Havisham as she moved the hand throttle. The car leaped forward across the grassy courtyard and gathered speed.\n\n\"To Great Expectations?\" I asked as Miss Havisham steered in a broad circuit, fiddling with the levers in the center of the massive steering wheel.\n\n\"Not my home,\" she retorted, \"yours!\"\n\nWith another deep growl and a lurch the car accelerated rapidly forward\u2014but to where I was not sure. In front of us lay the broken drawbridge and stout stone walls of the castle.\n\n\"Fear not!\" yelled Havisham above the roar of the engine. \"I'll read us into the Outland as easy as blinking!\"\n\nWe gathered speed. I expected us to jump straightaway, but we didn't. We carried on towards the heavy castle wall at a speed not wholly compatible with survival.\n\n\"Miss Havisham?\" I asked, my voice tinged with fear.\n\n\"I'm just trying to think of the best words to get us there, girl!\" she replied cheerfully.\n\n\"Stop!\" I yelled as the point of no return came and went in a flash.\n\n\"Let me see... ,\" muttered Havisham, thinking hard, the accelerator still wide open.\n\nI covered my eyes. The car was running too fast to jump out and a collision seemed inevitable. I grasped the side of the car's body and tensed as Miss Havisham took herself, me and two tons of automobile through the barriers of fiction and into the real world. My world.\n\nI opened my eyes again. Miss Havisham was studying a road map as the Higham Special swerved down the middle of the road. I grabbed the steering wheel as a milk-float swerved into the hedge.\n\n\"I won't use the M4 in case the C of G get wind of it,\" she said, looking around. \"We'll use the A419\u2014are we anywhere close?\"\n\nI recognized where we were instantly. Just north of Swindon outside a small town called Highworth.\n\n\"Continue round the roundabout and up the hill into the town,\" I told her, adding, \"but it's not your right of way, remember.\"\n\nIt was too late. To Miss Havisham, her way was the right way. The first car braked in time but the one behind it was not so lucky\u2014it drove into the rear of the first with a crunch. I held on tightly as Miss Havisham accelerated rapidly away up the hill into Highworth. I was pressed into my seat, and for a single moment, perched above two tons of bellowing machinery, I suddenly realized why Havisham liked this sort of thing\u2014it was, in a word, exhilarating.\n\n\"I've only borrowed the Special from the count,\" she explained. \"Parry Thomas will take delivery of it next week and aim to lift the speed record for himself. I've been working on a new mix of fuels; the A419 is straight and smooth\u2014I should be able to do at least a ton-eighty on that.\"\n\n\"Turn right onto the B4019 at the Jesmond,\" I told her, \"after the lights turn to greeeeeeen.\"\n\nThe truck missed us by about six inches.\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"You know, Thursday, you should really loosen up and learn to enjoy life more\u2014you can be such an old stickin-the-mud.\"\n\nI lapsed into silence.\n\n\"And don't sulk,\" added Miss Havisham. \"If there's something I can't abide, it's a sulky apprentice.\"\n\nWe bowled down the road, nearly losing it on an S-bend, until miraculously we reached the main Swindon-Cirencester road. It was a no right turn but we did anyway, to a chorus of screeching tires and angry car horns. Havisham accelerated off, and we had just approached the top of the hill when we came across a large Diversion sign blocking the road. Havisham thumped the steering wheel angrily.\n\n\"I don't believe it!\" she bellowed.\n\n\"Road closed?\" I queried, trying to hide my relief. \"Good\u2014I mean, good-ness gracious, what a shame\u2014another time, eh?\"\n\nHavisham clunked the Special into first gear and we moved off round the sign and motored down the hill.\n\n\"It's him, I can sense it!\" she growled. \"Trying to steal the speed record from under my very nose!\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nAs if in answer, another racing car shot past us with a loud poop poop!\n\n\"Him,\" muttered Havisham as we pulled off the road next to a speed camera. \"A driver so bad he is a menace to himself and every sentient being on the highways.\"\n\nHe must have been truly frightful for Havisham to notice. A few minutes later the other car returned and pulled up alongside.\n\n\"What ho, Havisham!\" said the driver, taking the goggles from his bulging eyes and grinning broadly. \"Still using Count 'Snail' Zborowski's old slowpoke Special, eh?\"\n\n\"Good afternoon, Mr. Toad,\" said Havisham. \"Does the Bellman know you're in the Outland?\"\n\n\"Of course not!\" yelled Mr. Toad, laughing. \"And you're not going to tell him, old girl, because you're not meant to be here either!\"\n\nHavisham was silent and looked ahead, trying to ignore him.\n\n\"Is that a Liberty aero-engine under there?\" asked Mr. Toad, pointing at the Special's bonnet, which trembled and shook as the vast engine idled roughly to itself.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" replied Havisham.\n\n\"Ha!\" replied Toad with an infectious smile. \"I had a Rolls-Royce Merlin shoehorned into this old banger!\"\n\nI watched Miss Havisham with interest. She stared ahead but her eye twitched slightly when Mr. Toad revved his car's engine. In the end, she could resist it no more and her curiosity got the better of her disdain.\n\n\"How does it go?\" she asked, eyes gleaming.\n\n\"Like a rocket!\" replied Mr. Toad, jumping up and down in his excitement. \"Over a thousand horses to the back axle\u2014makes your Higham Special look like a motor-mower!\"\n\n\"We'll see about that,\" replied Havisham, narrowing her eyes. \"Usual place, usual time, usual bet?\"\n\n\"You're on!\" Mr. Toad revved his car, pulled down his goggles and vanished in a cloud of rubber smoke. The poop poop of his horn lingered on as an echo some seconds after he had gone.\n\n\"Slimy reptile,\" muttered Havisham.\n\n\"Strictly speaking, he's neither,\" I retorted. \"More like a dry-skinned, land-based amphibian.\"\n\nIt felt safe to be impertinent because I knew she wasn't listening.\n\n\"He's caused more accidents than you've had hot dinners.\"\n\n\"And you're going to race him?\" I asked slightly nervously.\n\n\"And beat him, too, what's more.\" She handed me a pair of bolt cutters.\n\n\"What do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"Open up the speed camera and get the film out once I've done my run.\"\n\nShe donned a pair of goggles and was gone in a howl of engine noise and screeching of tires. I looked nervously around as she and the car hurtled off into the distance, the roar of the engine fading into a hum, occasionally punctuated by muffled cracks from the exhaust. I looked around. The sun was out and I could see at least three airships droning across the sky; I wondered what was going on at SpecOps. I had written a note to Victor telling him I had to be away for a year or more and tendered my resignation. Suddenly I was shaken from my daydream by something else. Something dark and just out of sight. Something I should have done or something I'd forgotten. I shivered and then it clicked. Last night. Gran. Aornis's mindworm. What had she been unraveling in my mind? I sighed as the pieces slowly started to merge together in my head. Gran had told me to run the facts over and over to renew the familiar memories that Aornis was trying to delete. But how do you start trying to find out what it is you've forgotten? I concentrated.... Landen. I hadn't thought about him all day and that was unusual. I could remember where we met and what had happened to him\u2014no problem there. Anything else? His full name. Damn and blast! Landen Parke- something. Did it begin with a B? I couldn't remember. I sighed and placed my hand on where I imagined our baby to be, now the size of a half crown. I remembered enough to know I loved him, and I missed him dreadfully\u2014which was a good sign, I supposed. I thought of Lavoisier's perfidy and the Schitt brothers and started to feel rage building inside me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. There was a phone box by the side of the road, and on impulse I called my mother.\n\n\"Hi, Mum, it's Thursday.\"\n\n\"Thursday!\" she screamed excitedly. \"Hang on\u2014the stove's on fire.\"\n\n\"The stove?\"\n\n\"Well, the kitchen really\u2014wait a mo!\"\n\nThere was a crashing noise and she came back on the line a few seconds later.\n\n\"Out now. Darling! Are you okay?\"\n\n\"I'm fine, Mum.\"\n\n\"And the baby?\"\n\n\"Fine, too. How are things with you?\"\n\n\"Frightful! Goliath and SpecOps have been camping outside since the moment you left, and Emma Hamilton is living in the spare room and eats like a horse.\"\n\nThere was an angry growl and a loud whooshing noise as Havisham swept past in little more than a blur. Two flashes from the speed camera went off in quick succession, and there were several more loud bangs as Havisham rolled off the throttle.\n\n\"What was that noise?\" asked my mother.\n\n\"You'd never believe me if I told you. My, er, husband hasn't been round looking for me, has he?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not, sweetheart,\" she said in her most understanding voice. She knew about Landen and understood better than most\u2014her own husband, my father, had been eradicated himself seventeen years previously. \"Why don't you come round and talk. The Eradications Anonymous meeting is at eight this evening; you'll be among friends there.\"\n\n\"I don't think so, Mum.\"\n\n\"Are you eating regularly?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mum.\"\n\n\"I managed to get DH-82 to do a few tricks.\"\n\nDH-82 was her rescue thylacine. Training a usually unbelievably torpid thylacine to do anything except eat or sleep on command was almost front-page news.\n\n\"That's good. Listen, I just called to say I missed you and not to worry about me\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm going to try another run!\" shouted Miss Havisham, who had drawn up. I waved to her and she drove off.\n\n\"Are you keeping Pickwick's egg warm?\"\n\nI told Mum that this was Pickwick's job, that I would call again and hung up. I thought of ringing Bowden but decided on the face of it that this was probably not a good idea. Mum's phone was bound to have been tapped and I had given them enough already. I walked back to the road and watched as a small gray dot grew larger and larger until it swept past with a strident bellow. The speed camera flashed again and a belch of flame erupted from the exhaust pipe. It took Miss Havisham about a mile to slow down, so I sat on a wall and waited patiently for her to return. A small four-seater airship had appeared no more than half a mile away. It appeared to be a SpecOps traffic patrol and I couldn't risk them finding out who I was. I looked urgently towards where Havisham was motoring slowly back to me.\n\n\"Come on,\" I muttered under my breath, \"put some speed on, for goodness' sake.\"\n\nHavisham pulled up and shook her head sadly. \"Mixture's too rich. Take the film out of the speed camera, will you?\"\n\nI pointed out the airship heading our way. It was approaching quite fast\u2014for an airship.\n\nMiss Havisham looked over at it, grunted and jumped down to open the huge bonnet and peer inside. I cut off the padlock, pulled the speed camera down and rewound the film as quickly as I could.\n\n\"Halt!\" barked the PA system on the airship when it was within a few hundred yards. \"You are both under arrest. Wait by your vehicle.\"\n\n\"We've got to go,\" I said, this time more urgently.\n\n\"Poppycock!\" replied Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Place you hands on the bonnet of the car!\" yelled the PA as the airship droned past at treetop level. \"You have been warned!\"\n\n\"Miss Havisham, if they find out who I am, I could be in a lot of trouble!\"\n\n\"Nonsense, girl. Why would they want someone as inconsequential as you?\"\n\nThe airship swung round with the vectored engines in reverse; once they started asking questions, I'd be answering them for a long time.\n\n\"We have to go, Miss Havisham!\"\n\nShe sensed the urgency in my voice and beckoned for me to get in the car. Within a moment we were away from that place, car and all, back to the lobby of the Great Library.\n\n\"You're not so popular in the Outland, then?\" Havisham asked, turning off the engine, which spluttered and shook to a halt, the sudden quiet a welcome break.\n\n\"You could say that.\"\n\n\"Broken the law?\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\nShe stared at me for a moment. \"I thought it a bit odd that Goliath had you trapped in their deepest and most secure subbasement. Do you have the film from the speed camera?\"\n\nI handed it over.\n\n\"I'll get double prints,\" she mused. \"Thanks for your help. See you at roll call tomorrow\u2014don't be late!\"\n\nI waited until she had gone, then retraced my steps to the library where I had left Snell's head-in-a-bag plot device and made my way home. I didn't jump direct; I took the elevator. Bookjumping might be a quick way to get around, but it was also kind of knackering."
            },
            {
                "title": "Apples Benedict, a Hedgehog and Commander Bradshaw",
                "text": "ImaginoTransferenceRecordingDevice: A machine used to write books in the Well, the ITRD resembles a large horn (typically eight feet across and made of brass) attached to a polished mahogany mixing board a little like a church organ but with many more stops and levers. As the story is enacted in front of the collecting horn, the actions, dialogue, humor, pathos, etc., are collected, mixed and transmitted as raw data to Text Grand Central, where the wordsmiths hammer it into readable storycode. Once done, it is beamed direct to the author's pen or typewriter, and from there through a live footnoterphone link back to the Well as plain text. The page is read, and if all is well, it is added to the manuscript and the characters move on. The beauty of the system is that authors never suspect a thing\u2014they think they do all the work."
            },
            {
                "title": "COMMANDER TRAFFORD BRADSHAW, CBE",
                "text": "[ Bradshaw's Guide to the BookWorld ]\n\nI'M HOME!\" I yelled as I walked through the door. Pickwick plocked happily up to me, realized I didn't have any marshmallows and then left in a huff, only to return with the gift of a piece of paper she had found in the wastepaper basket. I thanked her profusely and she went back to her egg.\n\n\"Hello,\" said ibb, who had been experimenting, Beeton-like, in the kitchen. \"What's in the bag?\"\n\n\"You don't want to know.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" replied ibb thoughtfully, \"since I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know, your response must be another way of saying, 'I'm not going to tell you, so sod off.' Is that correct?\"\n\n\"More or less,\" I replied, placing the bag in the broom cupboard. \"Is Gran around?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\nobb walked in a little later, reading a textbook entitled Personalities for Beginners.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday,\" it said. \"A hedgehog and a tortoise came round to see you this afternoon.\"\n\n\"What did they want?\"\n\n\"They didn't say.\"\n\n\"And Gran?\"\n\n\"In the Outland. She said not to wait up for her. You look very tired; are you okay?\"\n\nIt was true, I was tired, but I wasn't sure why. Stress? It's not every day that you have to fight swarms of grammasites and deal with Havisham's driving, Yahoos, Thraals, Big Martin's friends or head-in-a-bag plot devices. Maybe it was just the baby playing silly buggers with my hormones.\n\n\"What's for supper?\" I asked, slumping in a chair and closing my eyes.\n\n\"I've been experimenting with alternative recipes,\" said ibb, \"so we're having Apples Benedict.\"\n\n\"Apples Benedict?\"\n\n\"Yes; it's like Eggs Benedict but with\u2014\"\n\n\"I get the picture. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Of course. You could try Turnips \u00e0 l'Orange or Macaroni Custard; for pudding I've made Anchovy Trifle and Herring Fool. What will you have?\"\n\n\"Beans on toast.\"\n\nI sighed. It was like being back home at mother's.\n\nI didn't dream that night. Landen was absent, but then so, too, was... was... what's-her-name. I slept soundly and missed the alarm. I woke up feeling terrible and just lay flat on my back, breathing deeply and trying to push away the clouds of nausea. There was a rap at the door.\n\n\"ibb!\" I yelled. \"Can you get that?\"\n\nMy head throbbed but there was no answer. I glanced at the clock; it was nearly nine and both of them would be out at St. Tabularasa's practicing whimsical asides or something. I hauled myself out of bed, steadied myself for a moment, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and went downstairs. No one was there when I opened the door. I was just closing it when a small voice said:\n\n\"We're down here.\"\n\nIt was a hedgehog and a tortoise. But the hedgehog wasn't like Mrs. Tiggywinkle, who was as tall as me; this hedgehog and tortoise were just the size they should have been.\n\n\"Thursday Next?\" said the hedgehog.\n\n\"Yes. What can I do for you?\"\n\n\"You can stop poking your nose in where it's not wanted,\" said the hedgehog haughtily, \"that's what you can do.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Painted Jaguar?\" suggested the tortoise. \"Can't curl, can swim. Ring any bells, smart aleck?\"\n\n\"Oh! You must be Stickly-Prickly and Slow-Solid.\"\n\n\"The same. And that little mnemonic you so kindly gave to the Painted Jaguar is going to cause us a few problems\u2014the dopey feline will never forget that in a month of Sundays.\"\n\nI sighed. Living in the BookWorld was a great deal more complicated than I had imagined.\n\n\"Well, why don't you learn to swim or something?\"\n\n\"Who, me?\" said Stickly-Prickly. \"Don't be absurd; whoever heard of a hedgehog swimming?\"\n\n\"And you could learn to curl,\" I added to Slow-Solid.\n\n\"Curl?\" replied the tortoise indignantly. \"I don't think so, thank you very much.\"\n\n\"Give it a go,\" I persisted. \"Unlace your backplates a little and try and touch your toes.\"\n\nThere was a pause. The hedgehog and the tortoise looked at one another and giggled.\n\n\"Won't Painted Jaguar be surprised!\" they chortled, thanked me and left.\n\nI closed the door, sat down and looked in the fridge, shrugged and ate a large portion of Apples Benedict before having a long and relaxing shower.\n\nThe corridors of the Well were as busy as the day before. Traders bustled with buyers, deals were done, orders taken, bargains struck. Every now and then I saw characters fading in and out as their trade took them from book to book. I looked at the shop-fronts as I walked past, trying to guess how they did what they did. There were holesmiths, grammatacists, pacesetters, mood-mongers, paginators\u2014you name it.\n\nIt was the junkfootnoterphones starting up again. I tried to shut it out but only succeeded in lowering the volume. As I walked along, I noticed a familiar figure amongst the traders and plot speculators. He was dressed in his usual African-explorer garb: safari jacket, pith helmet, shorts, stout boots and a revolver in a leather holster. It was Commander Bradshaw, star of thirty-four thrilling adventure stories for boys available in hardback at 7/6 each. Out of print since the thirties, Bradshaw entertained himself in his retirement by being something of an \u00e9minence grise at Jurisfiction. He had seen and done it all\u2014or claimed he had.\n\n\"A hundred!\" he exclaimed bitterly as I drew closer. \"Is that the best you can offer?\"\n\nThe Action Sequence trader he was talking to shrugged. \"We don't get much call for lion attacks these days.\"\n\n\"But it's terrifying, man, terrifying!\" exclaimed Bradshaw. \"Real hot-breath-down-the-back-of-your-neck stuff. Brighten up contemporary romantic fiction no end, I should wager\u2014make a change from parties and frocks, what?\"\n\n\"A hundred and twenty, then. Take it or leave it.\"\n\n\"Bloodsucker!\" mumbled Bradshaw, taking the money and handing over a small glass globe with the lion attack, I presumed, safely freeze-dried within. He turned away from the trader and caught me looking at him. He quickly hid the cash and raised his pith helmet politely.\n\n\"Good morning!\"\n\n\"Good morning,\" I replied.\n\nHe waved a finger at me. \"It's Havisham's apprentice, isn't it? What was your name again?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Is it, by gum! Well, I never.\"\n\nHe was, I noticed, a good foot taller than the last time we had met. He now almost came up to my shoulder.\n\n\"You're much\u2014\" I began, then checked myself.\n\n\"Taller?\" he guessed. \"Quite correct, girlie. Appreciate a woman who isn't trammeled by the conventions of good manners. Melanie\u2014that's the wife, you know\u2014she's pretty rude, too. 'Trafford,' she says\u2014that's my name, Trafford\u2014'Trafford,' she said, 'you are a worthless heap of elephant dung.' Well, this was from out the blue\u2014I had just returned home after a harrowing adventure in Central Africa where I was captured and nearly roasted on a spit. The sacred emerald of the Umpopo had been stolen by two Swedish prospectors and\u2014\"\n\n\"Commander Bradshaw,\" I interrupted, desperate to stop him from recounting one of his highly unlikely and overtly jingoistic adventures, \"have you seen Miss Havisham this morning?\"\n\n\"Quite right to interrupt me,\" he said cheerfully, \"appreciate a woman who knows when to subtly tell a boring old fart to button his lip. You and Mrs. Bradshaw have a lot in common. You must meet up someday.\"\n\nWe walked down the busy corridor.\n\nI tapped my ears.\n\n\"Problems?\" inquired Bradshaw.\n\n\"Yes, I've got two gossiping Russians inside my head again.\"\n\n\"Crossed line? Infernal contraptions. Have a word with Plum at JurisTech if it persists. I say,\" he went on, lowering his voice and looking round furtively, \"you won't tell anyone about that lion-attack sale, will you? If the story gets around that old Bradshaw is cashing in his Action Sequences, I'll never hear the last of it.\"\n\n\"I won't say a word,\" I assured him as we avoided a trader trying to sell us surplus B-3 Darcy clones, \"but do many people try and sell off parts of their own books?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. But only if they are out of print and can spare it. Trouble is, I'm a bit strapped for the old moola. What with the BookWorld Awards coming up and Mrs. Bradshaw a bit shy in public, I thought a new dress might be just the ticket\u2014and the cost of clothes are pretty steep down here, y'know.\"\n\n\"It's the same in the Outland.\"\n\n\"Is it, by George?\" he guffawed. \"The Well always reminds me of the market in Nairobi; how about you?\"\n\n\"There seems to be an awful lot of bureaucracy. I would have thought a fiction factory would be, by definition, a lot more free and relaxed.\"\n\n\"If you think this is bad, you ought to visit nonfiction. Over there, the rules governing the correct use of a semicolon alone run to several volumes. Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hardwired at inception, m'girl. I'm surprised you hadn't figured that out yet. What do you think of the Well?\"\n\n\"I'm still a bit new to it.\"\n\n\"Really? Let me help you out.\"\n\nHe stopped and looked around for a moment, then pointed out a man in his early twenties who was walking towards us. He was dressed in a long riding jacket and carried a battered leather suitcase emblazoned with the names of books and plays he had visited in his trade.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"He's an artisan\u2014a holesmith.\"\n\n\"He's a plasterer?\"\n\n\"No; he fills narrative holes\u2014plot and expositional anomalies\u2014bloopholes. If a writer said something like 'The daffodils bloomed in summer' or 'They checked the ballistics report on the shotgun,' then artisans like him are there to sort it out. It's one of the final stages of construction just before the grammatacists, echolocators and spellcheckers move in to smooth everything over.\"\n\nThe young man had drawn level with us by this time.\n\n\"Hello, Mr. Starboard,\" said Bradshaw to the holesmith, who gave a wan smile of recognition.\n\n\"Commander Bradshaw,\" he muttered slightly hesitantly, \"what a truly delightful honor it is to meet you again, sir. Mrs. Bradshaw quite well?\"\n\n\"Quite well, thank you. This is Miss Next\u2014new at the department. I'm showing her the ropes.\"\n\nThe holesmith shook my hand and made welcoming noises.\n\n\"I closed a hole in Great Expectations the other day,\" I told him. \"Was that one of your books?\"\n\n\"Goodness me, no!\" exclaimed the young man, smiling for the first time. \"Holestitching has come a long way since Dickens. You won't find a holesmith worth his thread trying the old 'door opens and in comes the missing aunt/father/business associate/friend, et cetera,' all ready to explain where they've been since mysteriously dropping out of the narrative two hundred pages previously. The methodology we choose these days is to just go back and patch the hole, or more simply, to camouflage it.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" carried on the young man, becoming more flamboyant in the light of my perceived interest, \"I'm working on a system that hides holes by highlighting them to the reader, that just says, 'Ho! I'm a hole, don't think about it!' but it's a little cutting-edge. I think,\" added the young man airily, \"that you will not find a more experienced holesmith anywhere in the Well; I've been doing it for more than forty years.\"\n\n\"When did you start?\" I asked, looking at the youth curiously. \"As a baby?\"\n\nThe young man aged, grayed and sagged before my eyes until he was in his seventies and then announced, arms outstretched and with a flourish:\n\n\"Da-daaaa!\"\n\n\"No one likes a show-off, Llyster,\" said Bradshaw, looking at his watch. \"I don't want to hurry you, Tuesday, old girl, but we should be getting over to Norland Park for the roll call.\"\n\nHe gallantly offered me an elbow to hold and I hooked my arm in his.\n\n\"Thank you, Commander.\"\n\n\"Stouter than stout!\" Bradshaw said, laughing, and read us both into Sense and Sensibility."
            },
            {
                "title": "Jurisfiction Session No. 40319",
                "text": "\u2002JurisTech: Popular contraction of Jurisfiction Technological Division. This R&D company works exclusively for Jurisfiction and is financed by the Council of Genres through Text Grand Central. Due to the often rigorous and specialized tasks undertaken by Prose Resource Operatives, Juris Tech is permitted to build gadgets deemed outside the usual laws of physics\u2014the only department (aside from the SF genre) licensed to do so. The standard item in a PRO's manifest is the TravelBook (qv), which itself contains other JurisTech designs like the Martin-Bacon Eject-O-Hat, Punctuation Repair Kit and textual sieves of various porosity, to name but a few.\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\nThe offices of Jurisfiction were situated at Norland Park, the house of the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility. The family kindly lent the ballroom to Jurisfiction on the unspoken condition that Jane Austen books would be an area of special protection.\n\nNorland Park was located within a broad expanse of softly undulating grassland set about with ancient oaks. The evening was drawing on, as it generally did, when we arrived, and wood pigeons cooed from the dovecote. The grass felt warm and comfortable like a heavily underlaid carpet, and the delicate scent of pine needles filled the air.\n\nBut all was not perfect in this garden of nineteenth-century prose; as we approached the house, there seemed to be some sort of commotion. A demonstration, in fact\u2014the sort of thing I was used to seeing at home. But this wasn't a rally about the price of cheese or whether the Whig party were dangerously right-wing and anti-Welsh, nor of whether Goliath had the right to force legislation compelling everyone to eat SmileyBurger at least twice a week. No, this demonstration was one you would expect to find only in the world of fiction.\n\nThe Bellman, elected head of Jurisfiction and dressed in his usual garb of a town crier, was angrily tingling his bell to try to persuade the crowd to calm down.\n\n\"Not again,\" muttered Bradshaw as we walked up. \"I wonder what the Orals want this time?\"\n\nI was unfamiliar with the term Orals, and since I didn't want to appear foolish, I tried to make sense of the crowd on my own. The person nearest to me was a shepherdess, although that was only a guess on my part as she didn't have any sheep\u2014only a large crook. A boy dressed in blue with a horn was standing next to her discussing the falling price of lamb, and next to them was a very old woman with a small dog who whined, pretended to be dead, smoked a pipe and performed various other tricks in quick succession. Standing next to her was a small man in a long nightdress and bed hat who yawned loudly. Perhaps I was being slow, but it was only when I saw a large egg with arms and legs that I realized who they were.\n\n\"They're all nursery rhyme characters!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"They're a pain in the whatsit, that's what they are,\" murmured Bradshaw as a small boy jumped from the crowd, grabbed a pig and made a dash for it. Bo-peep hooked his ankle with her crook, and the boy sprawled headlong on the grass. The pig rolled into a flower bed with a startled oink and then beat a hurried escape as a large man started to give the boy six of the best.\n\n\"...all we want is the same rights as any other character in the BookWorld,\" said Humpty-Dumpty, his ovoid face a deep crimson. \"Just because we have a duty to children and the oral tradition doesn't mean we can be taken advantage of.\"\n\nThe crowd murmured and grunted their agreement. Humpty-Dumpty continued as I stared at him, wondering whether his belt was actually a cravat, as it was impossible to tell which was his neck and which was his waist.\n\n\"...we have a petition signed by over a thousand Orals who couldn't make it today,\" said the large egg, waving a wad of papers amidst shouts from the crowd.\n\n\"We're not joking this time, Mr. Bellman,\" added a baker who was standing in a wooden tub with a butcher and a candlestick maker. \"We are quite willing to withdraw our rhymes if our terms are not met.\"\n\nThere was a chorus of approval from the assembled characters.\n\n\"It was fine before they were unionized,\" Bradshaw whispered in my ear. \"Come on, let's take the back door.\"\n\nWe walked around to the side of the house, our feet crunching on the gravel chippings.\n\n\"Why can't characters from the oral tradition be a part of the Character Exchange Program?\" I asked.\n\n\"Who'd cover for them?\" snorted Bradshaw. \"You?\"\n\n\"Couldn't we train up Generics as sort of, well, 'character locums'?\"\n\n\"Best to leave industrial relations to the people with the facts at their fingertips. We can barely keep pace with the volume of new material as it is. I shouldn't worry about Mr. Dumpty; he's been agitating for centuries. It's not our fault he and his badly rhyming friends are still looked after by the old OralTradPlus agreement\u2014Good heavens, Miss Dashwood! Does your mother know that you smoke?\"\n\nIt was Marianne Dashwood and she had been puffing away at a small cigarette as we rounded the corner. She quickly threw the butt away and held her breath for as long as possible before coughing and letting out a large cloud of smoke.\n\n\"Commander!\" she wheezed, eyes watering. \"Promise you won't tell!\"\n\n\"My lips are sealed,\" replied Bradshaw sternly, \"just this once.\"\n\nMarianne breathed a sigh of relief and turned to me. \"Miss Next!\" she enthused. \"Welcome back to our little book. I trust you are well?\"\n\n\"Quite well,\" I assured her, passing her the Marmite, Mintolas and AA batteries I had promised her from my last visit. \"Will you make sure these get to your sister and mother?\"\n\nShe clapped her hands with joy and took the gifts excitedly. \"You are a darling!\" she said happily. \"What can I do to repay you?\"\n\n\"Don't let Lola Vavoom play you in the movie.\"\n\n\"Out of my hands,\" she replied unhappily, \"but if you need a favor, I'm here!\"\n\nWe made our way up the servants' staircase and into the hall above where a much bedraggled Bellman was walking towards us, shaking his head and holding the employment demands that Humpty-Dumpty had thrust into his hands.\n\n\"Those Orals get more and more militant every day,\" he gasped. \"They are planning a forty-eight-hour walkout tomorrow.\"\n\n\"What effect will that have?\" I asked.\n\n\"I should have thought that would be obvious,\" chided the Bellman. \"Nursery rhymes will be unavailable for recall. In the Outland there will be a lot of people thinking they have bad memories. It won't do the slightest bit of good\u2014a storybook is usually in reach wherever a nursery rhyme is told.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I said.\n\n\"The biggest problem,\" added the Bellman, mopping his brow, \"is that if we give in to the nursery rhymsters, everyone else will want to renegotiate their agreements\u2014from the poeticals all the way through to nursery stories and even characters in jokes. Sometimes I'm glad I'm up for retirement\u2014then someone like you can take over, Commander Bradshaw!\"\n\n\"Not me!\" he said grimly. \"I wouldn't be the Bellman again for all the T's in Little Tim Tottle's twin sisters take time tittle-tattling in a tuttle-tuttle tree\u2014twice.\"\n\nThe Bellman laughed and we entered the ballroom of Norland Park.\n\n\"Have you heard?\" said a young man who approached us with no small measure of urgency in his voice. \"The Red Queen had to have her leg amputated. Arterial thrombosis, the doctor told me.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I said. \"When?\"\n\n\"Last week. And that's not all.\" He lowered his voice. \"The Bellman has gassed himself!\"\n\n\"But we were just talking to him,\" I replied.\n\n\"Oh,\" said the young man, thinking hard. \"I meant Perkins has gassed himself.\"\n\nMiss Havisham joined us.\n\n\"Billy!\" she said in a scolding tone. \"That's quite enough of that. Buzz off before I box your ears!\"\n\nThe young man looked deflated for a moment, then pulled himself up, announced haughtily that he had been asked to write additional dialogue for John Steinbeck and strode off. Miss Havisham shook her head sadly.\n\n\"If he ever says 'good morning,'\" she said, \"don't believe him. All well, Trafford?\"\n\n\"Top-notch, Estella, old girl, top-notch. I bumped into Tuesday here in the Well.\"\n\n\"Not selling parts of your book, were you?\" she asked mischievously.\n\n\"Good heavens, no!\" replied Bradshaw, feigning shock and surprise. \"Goodness me,\" he added, staring into the room for some form of escape, \"I must just speak to the Warrington Unitary\u2014I mean the authority of Cat\u2014wait\u2014I mean, the Cat formerly known as Cheshire. Good day!\"\n\nAnd tipping his pith helmet politely, he was gone.\n\n\"Bradshaw, Bradshaw,\" sighed Miss Havisham, shaking her head sadly. \"If he flogs one more inciting incident from Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser, it will have so many holes we could use it as a colander.\"\n\n\"He needed the money to buy a dress for Mrs. Bradshaw,\" I explained.\n\n\"Have you met her yet?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\n\"When you do, don't stare, will you? It's very rude.\"\n\n\"Why would I\u2014\"\n\n\"Come along! Almost time for roll call!\"\n\nThe ballroom of Norland Park had long since been used for nothing but Jurisfiction business. The floor space was covered with tables and filing cabinets, and the many desks were piled high with files tied up with ribbon. There was a table to one side with food upon it, and waiting for us\u2014or the Bellman, at least\u2014were the staff at Jurisfiction. About thirty operatives were on the active list, and since up to ten of them were busy on assignment and five or so active in their own books, there were never more than fifteen people in the office at any one time. Vernham Deane gave me a cheery wave as we entered. He was the resident cad and philanderer in a Daphne Farquitt novel entitled The Squire of High Potternews, but you would never know to talk to him\u2014he had always been polite and courteous to me. Next to him was Harris Tweed, who had intervened back at the Slaughtered Lamb only the day before.\n\n\"Miss Havisham!\" he exclaimed, walking over and handing us both a plain envelope. \"I've got your bounty for those grammasites you killed; I split it equally, yes?\"\n\nHe winked at me, then left before Havisham could say anything.\n\n\"Thursday!\" said Akrid Snell, who had approached from another quarter. \"Sorry to dash off like that yesterday\u2014hello, Miss Havisham\u2014I heard you got swarmed by a few grammasites; no one's ever shot six Verbisoids at one go before!\"\n\n\"Piece of cake,\" I replied. \"And, Akrid, I've still got that, er, thing you bought.\"\n\n\"Thing? What thing?\"\n\n\"You remember,\" I urged, knowing that trying to influence his own narrative was strictly forbidden, \"the thing. In a bag. You know.\"\n\n\"Oh! Ah... ah, yes,\" he said, finally realizing what I was talking about. \"The thing thing. I'll pick it up after work, yes?\"\n\n\"Snell insider-trading again?\" asked Havisham quietly as soon as he had left.\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\"\n\n\"I'd do the same if my book was as bad as his.\"\n\nI looked around to see who else had turned up. Sir John Falstaff was there, as was King Pellinore, Deane, Lady Cavendish, Mrs. Tiggywinkle with Emperor Zhark in attendance, Gully Foyle, and Perkins.\n\n\"Who are they?\" I asked Havisham, pointing to two agents I didn't recognize.\n\n\"The one on the left holding the pumpkin is Ichabod Crane. Beatrice is the other. A bit loud for my liking, but good at her job.\"\n\nI thanked her and looked around for the Red Queen, whose open hostility to Havisham was Jurisfiction's least-well-kept secret; she was nowhere to be seen.\n\n\"Hail, Miss Next!\" rumbled Falstaff, waddling up and staring at me unsteadily from within a cloud of alcohol fumes. He had drunk, stolen and womanized throughout Henry IV parts I and II, then inveigled himself into Merry Wives of Windsor. Some saw him as a likable rogue; I saw him as just plain revolting\u2014although he was the blueprint of likable debauchers in fiction everywhere, so I thought I should try to cut him a bit of slack.\n\n\"Good morning, Sir John,\" I said, trying to be polite.\n\n\"Good morning to you, sweet maid,\" he exclaimed happily. \"Do you ride?\"\n\n\"A little.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps you might like to take a ride up and down the length of my merry England? I could take you places and show you things\u2014\"\n\n\"I must politely decline, Sir John.\"\n\nHe laughed noisily in my face. I felt a flush of anger rise within me, but luckily the Bellman, unwilling to waste any more time, had stepped up to his small dais and tingled his bell.\n\n\"Sorry to keep you all waiting,\" he muttered. \"As you have seen, things are a little fraught outside. But I am delighted to see so many of you here. Is there anyone still to come?\"\n\n\"Shall we wait for Godot?\" inquired Deane.\n\n\"Anyone know where he is?\" asked the Bellman. \"Beatrice, weren't you working with him?\"\n\n\"Not I,\" replied the young woman. \"You might inquire this of Benedict if he troubles to attend, but you would as well speak to a goat.\"\n\n\"The sweet lady's tongue does abuse to our ears,\" said Benedict, who had been seated out of our view but now rose to glare at Beatrice. \"Were the fountain of your mind clear again, that I might water an ass at it.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" retorted Beatrice with a laugh. \"Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike!\"\n\n\"Dear Beatrice,\" returned Benedict, bowing low, \"I was looking for a fool when I found you.\"\n\n\"You, Benedict? Who has not so much brain as earwax?\"\n\nHe thought hard for a moment. \"Methink'st thou art a general offense and every man should beat thee, fair Beatrice.\"\n\nThey narrowed their eyes at each other and then smiled with polite enmity.\n\n\"All right, all right,\" interrupted the Bellman, \"calm down, you two. Do you know where Agent Godot is or not?\"\n\nBeatrice answered that she didn't.\n\n\"Then,\" announced the Bellman, \"we'll get on. Jurisfiction meeting number 40319 is now in session.\"\n\nHe tingled his bell again, coughed and consulted his clipboard.\n\n\"Item one. Our congratulations go to Deane and Lady Cavendish for foiling the bowdlerisers in Chaucer.\"\n\nThere were a few words of encouragement and backslapping.\n\n\"There has been damage done but it's got no worse, so let's just try and keep an eye out in the future. Item two.\"\n\nHe put down his clipboard and leaned on the lectern.\n\n\"Remember that craze a few years back in the BookWorld for sending chain letters? Receive a letter and send one on to ten friends? Well, someone has been overenthusiastic with the letter U\u2014I've got a report here from the Text Sea Environmental Protection Agency saying that reserves of the letter U have reached dangerously low levels\u2014we need to decrease consumption until stocks are brought back up. Any suggestions?\"\n\n\"How about using a lower-case n upside down?\" said Benedict.\n\n\"We tried that with M and W during the great M Migration of '62; it never worked.\"\n\n\"How about respelling what, what?\" suggested King Pellinore, stroking his large white mustache. \"Any word with the our ending could be spelt or, don'tchaknow.\"\n\n\"Like neighbor instead of neighbour?\"\n\n\"It's a good idea,\" put in Snell. \"Labor, valor, flavor, harbor\u2014there must be hundreds. If we confine it to one geographical area, we can claim it as a local spelling idiosyncrasy.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said the Bellman, thinking hard, \"do you know, it just might work.\"\n\nHe looked at his clipboard again. \"Item three\u2014Tweed, are you here?\"\n\nHarris Tweed signaled from where he was standing.\n\n\"Good,\" continued the Bellman. \"I understand you were pursuing a PageRunner who had taken up residence in the Outland?\"\n\nTweed glanced at me and stood up.\n\n\"Fellow by the name of Yorrick Kaine. He's something of a big cheese in the Outland\u2014runs Kaine Publishing and has set himself up as head of his own political party\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" said the Bellman impatiently, \"and he stole Cardenio, I know. But the point is, where is he now?\"\n\n\"He went back to the Outland, where I lost him,\" replied Tweed.\n\n\"The Council of Genres are not keen to sanction any work in the real world,\" said the Bellman slowly, \"it's too risky. We don't even know which book Kaine is from\u2014and since he's not doing anything against us at present, I think he should stay in the Outland.\"\n\n\"But Kaine is a real danger to our world,\" I exclaimed.\n\nConsidering Kaine's righter-than-right politics, this was a fresh limit to the word understatement.\n\n\"He has stolen from the Great Library once,\" I continued. \"How can we suppose he won't do the same again? Don't we have a duty to the readers to protect them from fictionauts hellbent on\u2014\"\n\n\"Ms. Next,\" interrupted the Bellman, \"I understand what you are saying, but I am not going to sanction an operation in the Outland. I'm sorry, but that is how it is going to be. He goes on the PageRunners' register and we'll set up textual sieves on every floor of the library in case he plans to come back. Out there you may do as you please; here you do as we tell you. Is that clear?\"\n\nI grew hot and angry but Miss Havisham squeezed my arm, so I remained quiet.\n\n\"Good,\" carried on the Bellman, consulting his clipboard. \"Item four. Text Grand Central have reported several attempted incursions from the Outland. Nothing serious, but enough to generate a few ripples in the Ficto-Outland barrier. Miss Havisham, didn't you report that an Outlander company was doing some research into entering fiction?\"\n\nIt was true. Goliath had been attempting entry into the BookWorld for many years but with little success; all they had managed to do was extract a stodgy gunge from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese. Uncle Mycroft had sought refuge in the Sherlock Holmes series to avoid them.\n\n\"It was called the Something Company,\" replied Havisham thoughtfully.\n\n\"Goliath,\" I told her. \"It's called the Goliath Corporation.\"\n\n\"Goliath. That was it. I had a look round while I was retrieving Miss Next's TravelBook.\"\n\n\"Do you think their technology is that far advanced?\" asked the Bellman.\n\n\"No. They're still a long way away. They'd been trying to send an unmanned probe into The Listeners, but from what I saw, with little success.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" replied the Bellman, \"we'll keep an eye on them. What was their name again?\"\n\n\"Goliath,\" I said.\n\nHe made a note.\n\n\"Item five. All of the punctuation has been stolen from the final chapter of Ulysses. Probably about five hundred assorted full stops, commas, apostrophes and colons.\" He paused for a moment. \"Vern, weren't you doing some work on this?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied the squire, stepping forward and opening a notebook, \"we noticed the theft two days ago. To take so much punctuation in one hit initially sounds audacious, but perhaps the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into Ulysses\u2014you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from Moby-Dick, where no one noticed? Well, this theft was noted, but initial reports show that readers are regarding the lack of punctuation as not a cataclysmic error but the mark of a great genius, so we've got some breathing space.\"\n\n\"Are we sure it was a thief?\" asked Beatrice. \"Couldn't it just be grammasites?\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" replied Perkins, who had made book-zoology into something closely resembling a science. \"Punctusauroids are pretty rare, and to make off with so many punctuations you would need a flock of several hundred. Also, I don't think they would have left the last full stop\u2014that looks to me like a mischievous thief.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said the Bellman, \"so what are we to do?\"\n\n\"The only ready market for stolen punctuation is in the Well.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" mused the Bellman. \"A Jurisfiction agent down there is about as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. We need someone to go undercover. Any volunteers?\"\n\n\"It's my case,\" said Vernham Deane. \"I'll go. That is\u2014if no one thinks themselves better qualified.\"\n\nThere was silence.\n\n\"Looks like you're it!\" enthused the Bellman, writing a note on his clipboard. \"Item six. As you recall, David and Catriona Balfour were lost a few weeks back. Because there can't be much to Kidnapped and Catriona without them and Robert Louis Stevenson remains a popular author, the Council of Genres have licensed a pair of A-4 Generics to take their place. They'll be given unlimited access to all Stevenson's books, and I want you all to make them feel welcome.\"\n\nThere was a murmuring from the collected agents.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the Bellman with a resigned air, \"I know they'll never be exactly the same, but with a bit of luck we should be okay; no one in the Outland noticed when David Copperfield was replaced, now did they?\"\n\nNo one said anything.\n\n\"Good. Item seven. As you know, I am retiring in two weeks' time and the Council of Genres will need a replacement. All nominations are to be given direct to the Council for consideration.\n\nHe paused again.\n\n\"Item eight. As you all know, Text Grand Central have been working on an upgrade to the Book Operating System for the last fifty years\u2014\"\n\nThe assembled agents groaned. Clearly this was a matter of some contention. Snell had explained about the imaginotransference technology behind books in general, but I had no idea how it worked. Still don't, as a matter of fact.\n\n\"Do you know what happened when they tried to upgrade SCROLL?\" said Bradshaw. \"The system conflict wiped out the entire library at Alexandria\u2014they had to torch the lot to stop it spreading.\"\n\n\"We knew a lot less about operating systems then, Commander,\" replied the Bellman in a soothing voice, \"and you can rest assured that early upgrading problems have not been ignored. Many of us have reservations about the standard version of BOOK that all our beloved works are recorded in, and I think the latest upgrade to BOOK V9 is something that we should all welcome.\"\n\nNo one said anything. He had our attention.\n\n\"Good. Well, I could rabbit on all day but I really feel that it would be better to let WordMaster Libris, all the way from Text Grand Central, tell you the full story. Xavier?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Introducing UltraWord\u2122",
                "text": "\u2002First there was OralTrad, upgraded ten thousand years later by the rhyming (for easier recall) Oral TradPlus. For thousands of years this was the only Story Operating System and it is still in use today. The system branched in two about twenty thousand years ago; on one side with CaveDaubPro (forerunner of PaintPlus V2.3, GrecianUrn V1.2, Sculpt-Marble V1.4 and the latest, all-encompassing SuperArtisticExpression-5). The other strand, the Picto-Phonetic Storytelling Systems, started with Clay Tablet V2.1 and went through several competing systems (WaxTablet, Papyrus, VellumPlus) before merging into the award-winning SCROLL, which was upgraded eight times to V3.5 before being swept aside by the all new and clearly superior BOOK V1. Stable, easy to store and transport, compact and with a workable index, BOOK has led the way for nearly eighteen hundred years.\n\n\u2014WORDMASTER XAVIER LIBRIS, Story Operating Systems\u2014the Early Years\n\nA small and rather pallid-looking man took his position on the dais; he could only just see over the lectern. He wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and was almost weighed down by the number of pens in his top pocket. We all took a seat and gazed at him with interest. Ultra Word\u2122 had been the talk of the Well for ages and everyone was keen to learn whether the rumors of its technical virtuosity were true.\n\n\"Good morning, everyone,\" began Libris in a nervous voice, \"over the next thirty minutes I will try and explain a little about our latest operating system: BOOK Version 9, which we have code-named Ultra Word\u2122.\"\n\nThere was silence as the agents mulled this over. I got the feeling that this was not just important but really important. Like being at the signing of a peace accord or something. Even Bradshaw, who was no fan of technology, was leaning forward and listening with interest, a frown etched on his forehead.\n\nLibris pulled the first sheet off a flip chart. There was a picture of an old book.\n\n\"Well,\" he began, \"when we first came up with the 'page' concept in BOOK V1, we thought we'd reached the zenith of story containment\u2014compact, easy to read, and by using integrated PageNumber\u2122 and Spine Title technologies, we had a system of indexing far superior to anything SCROLL could offer. Over the years\u2014\"\n\nHere he flipped the chart over to show us varying degrees of books through the ages.\n\n\"\u2014we have been refining the BOOK system. Illustrations were the first upgrade at 1.1, standardized spelling at V3.1 and vowel and irregular verb stability in V4.2. Today we use BOOK V8.3, one of the most stable and complex imaginotransference technologies ever devised\u2014the smooth transfer of the written word into the reader's imagination has never been faster.\"\n\nHe stopped for a moment. We all knew that BOOK V8.3 was excellent; apart from a few typos that crept in and the variable quality of stories\u2014neither of which were the system's fault\u2014it was good, very good indeed.\n\n\"Constructing the books down in the subbasements, although time-consuming, seems to work well even if it is a little chaotic.\"\n\nThere were murmurs of agreement from the assembled agents; it was clear that no one much liked it down there.\n\n\"But,\" went on Libris, \"endlessly recycling old ideas might not hold the readers' attention for that much longer\u2014the Council of Genres' own market research seems to indicate that readers are becoming bored with the sameness of plotlines.\"\n\n\"I think it's already happened,\" said the Bellman, then checked himself quickly, apologized for the interruption and let Libris carry on.\n\n\"But to understand the problem we need a bit of history. When we first devised the BOOK system eighteen hundred years ago, we designed it mainly to record events\u2014we never thought there would be such a demand for story. By the tenth century story usage was so low that we still had enough new plots to last over a thousand years. By the time the seventeenth century arrived, this had lowered to six hundred\u2014but there was still no real cause for worry. Then, something happened that stretched the Operating System to the limit.\"\n\n\"Mass literacy,\" put in Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Exactly,\" replied Libris. \"Demand for written stories increased exponentially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ten years before Pamela was published in 1740, we had enough new ideas to last four hundred years; by the time of Jane Austen this had dropped to thirty. By Dickens's time ideas were almost wholly recycled, something we have been doing on and off since the thirteenth century to stave off the inevitable. But by 1884, for all intents and purposes, we had depleted our stock of original ideas.\"\n\nThere was a muttering amongst the collected Jurisfiction agents.\n\n\"Flatland,\" said Bradshaw after pausing for a moment's reflection. \"It was the last original idea, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Pretty much. The few leftover pieces were mopped up by the SF movement until the 1950s, but as far as pure ideas are concerned, 1884 was the end. We were expecting the worst\u2014a melt-down of the whole BookWorld and a wholesale departure of readers. But that didn't happen. Against all expectations, recycled ideas were working.\"\n\n\"But isn't it the way they are told?\" asked Havisham in her not-to-be-argued-with voice. \"Surely the permutations of storytelling are endless!\"\n\n\"Large perhaps, but not infinite, Miss Havisham. What I'm trying to say is that once all the permutations are used up, there will be nowhere for us to go. The twentieth century has seen books being written and published at an unprecedented rate\u2014even the introduction of the Procrastination 1.3 and Writer's-Block 2.4 Outlander viruses couldn't slow the authors down. Plagiarism lawsuits are rising in the Outland; authors are beginning to write the same books. The way I see it we've got a year\u2014possibly eighteen months\u2014before the well of fiction runs dry.\"\n\nHe paused to let this sink in.\n\n\"That's why we had to go back to the drawing board and rethink the whole system.\"\n\nHe flipped the chart again and there were audible gasps. On the chart was written 32-Plot Story Systems.\n\n\"As you know,\" he went on, \"every Book Operating System has at its heart the basic eight-plot architecture we inherited from OralTrad. As we used to say, 'No one will ever need more than eight plots.'\"\n\n\"Nine if you count Coming of Age,\" piped up Beatrice.\n\n\"Isn't that Journey of Discovery?\" said Tweed.\n\n\"What's Macbeth then? asked Benedict.\n\n\"Bitter Rivalry/Revenge, my dear,\" answered Havisham.\n\n\"I thought it was Temptation,\" mused Beatrice, who liked to contradict Benedict whenever possible.\n\n\"Please!\" said the Bellman. \"We could argue these points all night. And if you let Libris finish, you can.\"\n\nThe agents fell silent. I guessed this was a perennial argument.\n\n\"So the only way forward,\" continued Libris, \"is to completely rebuild the Operating System. If we go for a thirty-two-plot basis for our stories, there will be more ideas than you or I will know what to do with. The BookWorld won't have seen such an advance since the invention of movable type.\"\n\n\"I'm always supportive of new technology, Mr. Libris,\" said Lady Cavendish kindly, \"but isn't the popularity of books a fair indication of how good the current system actually is?\"\n\n\"It depends what you mean by popular. Only thirty percent of the Outland read fiction on a regular basis\u2014with Ultra Word\u2122 we aim to change all that. But I'm running ahead of myself\u2014an abundance of new ideas is only half the story. Let me carry on and tell you what other benefits the new system will give us.\"\n\nLibris flipped the chart again. This time it read, Enhanced Features.\n\n\"Firstly, Ultra Word\u2122 is wholly reverse compatible with all existing novels, plays and poetry. Furthermore, new books written with this system will offer bonus features that will enhance and delight.\"\n\n\"I say,\" asked Bradshaw slowly, \"how do you hope to improve a book?\"\n\n\"Let me give you an example,\" replied Libris enthusiastically. \"In books that we know at present, dialogue has to be dedicated to the people who are talking as the reader has no idea who is speaking from the words alone. This can be tricky if we want a large scene with many people talking to one another\u2014it's very easy to get bogged down in the 'said George,' 'replied Michael,' 'added Paul' and suchlike; with the Ultra Word\u2122 Enhanced Character Identification\u2122, a reader will have no trouble placing who is speaking to whom without all those tedious dialogue markers. In addition, Ultra Word\u2122 will be bundled with PlotPotPlus\u2122, which gives the reader a potted pr\u00e9cis if they are lost or have put the book down unfinished for a few months or more. Other options will be ReadZip\u2122, PageGlow\u2122 and three music tracks.\"\n\n\"How will the reader get these new features to work?\" asked Lady Cavendish.\n\n\"There will be a preferences page inserted just after the frontispiece.\"\n\n\"Touch sensitive?\" I asked.\n\n\"No,\" replied Libris excitedly, \"read sensitive. Ultra words that know when they are being read. On the preferences page you can also select WordClot\u2122, which adjusts the vocabulary to the reader\u2014no more difficult words, or, if you like difficult words, you can increase the vocabulary complexity.\"\n\nThere was silence as everyone took this in.\n\n\"But to get back to your point, Lady Cavendish, a lot of people reject fiction because they find reading tedious and slow. At present levels the fastest throughput we can manage is about six words per second. With UltraWord\u2122 we will have the technology to quadruple the uptake\u2014something that will be very attractive to new readers\u2014or slow ones.\"\n\n\"Cards on the table and all that, Libris,\" said Bradshaw in a loud voice. \"Technology is all very well but unless we get it absolutely right, it could turn out to be a debacle of the highest order.\"\n\n\"You didn't like the ISBN positioning system, either, Commander,\" replied Libris, \"yet book navigation has never been easier.\"\n\nThey stared at one another until a loud belch rent the air. It was Falstaff.\n\n\"I have lived,\" he said, getting to his feet with a great deal of effort, \"through much in my time; some good, some bad\u2014I was witness to the great vowel shift and remember fond those better days when puns, fat people and foreigners were funny beyond all. I saw the novel rise and the epic poem fall, I remember when you could get blind drunk, eat yourself ill and still have change for a whore out of sixpence. I remember when water would kill you and spirits would save you; I remember\u2014\"\n\n\"Is there a point to all this?\" asked Libris testily.\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Falstaff, trying to figure out where he was going with all this. \"Oh, yes. I was there for the much heralded Version-4 upgrade. 'Change the way we read forever,' quoth the Council of Genres. And what happened? The Deep Text Crash of 1842. Almost everything by Euripedes, Aeschylus and Sophocles gone forever\u2014and we created grammasites.\"\n\n\"It was never proven that Version 4 created the grammasites, Sir John\u2014\"\n\n\"Come, come, Libris, have you dried your brain? I was there. I saw it. I know.\"\n\nLibris put up his hands. \"I didn't come here to argue, Sir John\u2014I just want to stick to the facts. Anyhow, Ultra Word\u2122 is incompatible with grammasites. Text will be locked\u2014they'll have nothing to feed on.\"\n\n\"You hope, sir.\"\n\n\"We know,\" replied Libris firmly, adding more slowly, \"Listen, Version-4 was a big mistake, we freely admit that\u2014which is why we have taken so long to rigorously test UltraWord\u2122. It is no small boast that we call it 'the ultimate reading experience.' \" He paused for a moment. \"It's here to stay, ladies and gentlemen\u2014so get used to it.\"\n\nHe expected another attack from Falstaff, but King Hal's old friend had sat down and was shaking his head sadly. No one else added anything.\n\nLibris took a step back and looked pointedly at the Bellman, who tingled his bell.\n\n\"Well, thank you all for listening to WordMaster Libris's presentation, and I would like to thank him for coming here today to tell us all about it.\"\n\nThe Bellman started to clap his hands and we joined in\u2014with the notable exceptions of Falstaff and Bradshaw.\n\n\"Presentation booklets will be available shortly,\" said the Bellman, who had suddenly begun to fidget, \"individual assignments will be given out in ten minutes. And remember, let's be careful out there. That's it. Session's over.\"\n\nAnd he tingled his bell.\n\nLibris stepped down from the dais and melted away before Bradshaw had a chance to question him further. Miss Havisham rested her hand on his shoulder. Bradshaw was the only man to whom I had ever seen Miss Havisham show any friendliness at all. Born of a long working association, I think.\n\n\"I'm too long in the tooth for this game, Havisham, old girl,\" he muttered.\n\n\"You and me both, Trafford. But who'd teach the young ones?\" She nodded in my direction. I hadn't been described as \"young\" for over a decade.\n\n\"I'm spent, Estella,\" said Bradshaw sadly. \"No more new technology for me. I'm going back to my own book for good. At least I won't have to put up with all this nonsense in Bradshaw of the Congo. Goodbye, old girl.\"\n\n\"Goodbye, Commander\u2014send my regards to Mrs. Bradshaw.\"\n\n\"Thank you. And to you, too. Miss\u2014I'm sorry, what was your name again?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Of course it is. Well, toodle-oo.\"\n\nAnd he smiled, tipped his pith helmet and was gone.\n\n\"Dear old Bradshaw,\" mused Miss Havisham, \"he's retired about twelve times a year since 1938. I expect we'll see him again next week.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" muttered the Bellman as he approached. \"Havisham and Next.\" He consulted his clipboard for a moment. \"You weren't in the Outland on another speed attempt, were you?\"\n\n\"Me?\" replied Havisham. \"Of course not!\"\n\n\"Well,\" murmured the Bellman, not believing her for an instant, \"the Council of Genres have told me that any Jurisfiction staff found abusing their privileges will be dealt with severely.\"\n\n\"How severely?\"\n\n\"Very severely.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't dare,\" replied Havisham in the manner of an elderly duchess. \"Now, what have you got for us?\"\n\n\"You're chairing the Wuthering Heights rage-counseling session.\"\n\n\"I've done my six sessions. It's Falstaff's turn.\"\n\nThe Bellman raised an eyebrow. \"Now that's not true, is it? You're only on your third. Changing counselors every week is not the best way to do it. Everyone has to take their turn, Miss Havisham, even you.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"Very well.\"\n\n\"Good. Better not keep them waiting!\"\n\nThe Bellman departed rapidly before Havisham could answer. She stood silently for a moment, a bit like a volcano deciding whether to erupt or not. After a few moments her eyes flicked to mine.\n\n\"Was that a smile?\" she snapped.\n\n\"No, Miss Havisham,\" I replied, trying to hide my inner amusement that someone like her would try to counsel anyone about anything\u2014especially rage.\n\n\"Please do tell me what you think is so very funny. I really am very keen to know.\"\n\n\"It was a smile,\" I said carefully, \"of surprise.\"\n\n\"Was it now? Well, before you get the mistaken belief that I am somehow concerned about the feelings of such a pathetic bunch of characters, let's make it clear that I was ordered to do this job\u2014same as being drafted on to Heathcliff Protection Duty. I'd sooner he were dead, personally speaking\u2014but orders are orders. Fetch me a tea and meet me at my table.\"\n\nThere was a lot of excited chatter about the upgrade to UltraWord\u2122 and I picked up snatches of conversation that ran the full gamut from condemnation to full support. Not that it mattered; Jurisfiction was only a policing agency and had little say in policy\u2014that was all up to the higher powers at the Council of Genres. It was sort of like being back at SpecOps. I bumped into Vernham Deane at the table of refreshments.\n\n\"Well,\" said Vernham, helping himself to a pastry, \"what do you think?\"\n\n\"Bradshaw and Falstaff seem a bit put out.\"\n\n\"Caution is sometimes an undervalued commodity,\" Vernham said warily. \"What does Havisham think?\"\n\n\"I'm really not sure.\"\n\n\"Vern!\" said Beatrice, who had just joined us along with Lady Cavendish. \"Which plot does Winnie-the-Pooh have?\"\n\n\"Triumph of the Underdog?\" he suggested.\n\n\"Told you!\" said Beatrice, turning to Cavendish. \"'Bear with little brain triumphs over adversity.' Happy?\"\n\n\"No,\" she replied, \"it's Journey of Discovery all the way.\"\n\n\"You think every story is Journey of Discovery!\"\n\n\"It is.\"\n\nThey continued to bicker as I selected a cup and saucer.\n\n\"Have you met Mrs. Bradshaw yet?\" asked Deane.\n\nI told him that I hadn't.\n\n\"When you do, don't laugh or anything.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"You'll see.\"\n\nI poured some tea for Miss Havisham, remembering to put the milk in first.\n\nDeane ate a canap\u00e9 and asked, \"So how are things with you these days? Last time we met, you were having a little trouble in the Outland.\"\n\n\"I'm living in the Well now, as part of the Character Exchange Program.\"\n\n\"Really? What a lark. How's the latest Farquitt getting along?\"\n\n\"Well, I think,\" I told him, always sensitive to Deane's slight shame at being a one-dimensional evil-squire figure, \"the working title is Shameless Love.\"\n\n\"Sounds like a Farquitt,\" sighed Deane. \"There'll probably be a rustic serving girl who is ravaged by someone like me, cruelly cast from the house to have her baby in the poorhouse\u2014only to have their revenge ten chapters later.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not fair, you know,\" he said, his mood changing. \"Why should I be condemned, reading after reading, to drink myself to a sad and lonely death eight pages before the end?\"\n\n\"Because you're the bad guy and they always get their comeuppance in Farquitt novels?\"\n\n\"It's still not fair.\" He scowled. \"I've applied for an Internal Plot Adjustment countless times but they keep turning me down. You wouldn't have a word with Miss Havisham, would you? She's on the Council of Genres Plot Adjustment subcommittee, I'm told.\"\n\n\"Would that be appropriate? Me talking to her, I mean?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" he retorted, \"but I'm willing to try anything. Speak to her, won't you?\"\n\nI told him I would try but decided on the face of it that I probably wouldn't. Deane seemed pleasant enough at Jurisfiction, but in The Squire of High Potternews he was a monster. Dying sad, lonely and forgotten was probably just right for him\u2014in narrative terms, anyway.\n\nI gave the tea to Miss Havisham, who abruptly broke off talking to Perkins as I approached. She gave me a grimace and vanished. I followed her to the second floor of the Great Library, where I found her in the Bront\u00eb section already with a copy of Wuthering Heights in her hand. I knew from Havisham's hatred of men that she probably did have a soft spot for Heathcliff\u2014but I imagined it was only the treacherous marsh below Penistone crag.\n\n\"Did you meet the three witches, by the way?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied. \"They told me\u2014\"\n\n\"Ignore everything they say. Look at the trouble they got Macbeth into.\"\n\n\"But they said\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't want to hear it. Claptrap and mumbo jumbo. They are troublemakers and nothing more. Understand?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Don't say 'Sure'\u2014it's so slovenly! What's wrong with 'Yes, Miss Havisham'?\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"Better, I suppose. Come, we are Bront\u00eb bound!\"\n\nAnd so saying, we read ourselves into the pages of Wuthering Heights."
            },
            {
                "title": "Wuthering Heights",
                "text": "\u2002Wuthering Heights was the only novel written by Emily Bront\u00eb, which some say is just as well, and others, a crying shame. Quite what she would have written had she lived longer is a matter of some conjecture; given Emily's strong-willed and passionate character, probably more of the same. But one thing is certain; whatever feelings are aroused in the reader by Heights, whether sadness for the ill-matched lovers, irritability at Catherine's petulant ways or even profound rage at how stupid Heathcliff's victims can act as they meekly line up to be abused, one thing is for sure: the evocation of a wild and windswept place that so well reflects the destructive passion of the two central characters is captured here brilliantly\u2014and some would say, it has not been surpassed.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Wuthering Heights: Masterpiece or Turgid Rubbish?\n\nIt was snowing when we arrived and the wind whipped the flakes into something akin to a large cloud of excitable winter midges. The house was a lot smaller than I imagined but no less shabby, even under the softening cloak of snow. The shutters hung askew and only the faintest glimmer of light showed from within. It was clear we were visiting the house not in the good days of old Mr. Earnshaw but in the tenure of Mr. Heathcliff, whose barbaric hold over the house seemed to be reflected in the dour and windswept abode that we approached.\n\nOur feet crunched on the fresh snow as we approached the front door and rapped upon the gnarled wood. It was answered, after a very long pause, by an old and sinewy man who looked at us both in turn with a sour expression before recognition dawned across his tired features and he launched into an excited gabble:\n\n\"It's bonny behavior, lurking amang t' fields, after twelve o' t' night, wi' that fahl, flaysome divil of a gipsy, Heathcliff! They think I'm blind; but I'm noan: nowt ut t' soart!\u2014I seed young Linton boath coming and going, and I seed yah\u2014yah gooid fur nowt, slatternly witch!\u2014nip up and bolt into th' house, t' minute yah heard t' maister's horse-fit clatter up t' road!\"\n\n\"Never mind all that!\" exclaimed Miss Havisham, to whom patience was an alien concept. \"Let us in, Joseph, or you'll be feeling my boot upon your trousers!\"\n\nHe grumbled but opened the door anyway. We stepped in amidst a swirl of snowflakes and tramped our feet upon the mat as the door was latched behind us.\n\n\"What did he say?\" I asked as Joseph carried on muttering to himself under his breath.\n\n\"I have absolutely no idea,\" replied Miss Havisham, shaking the snow from her faded bridal veil, \"in fact, nobody does. Come, you are to meet the others. For the rage-counseling session, we insist that every major character within Heights attends.\"\n\nThere was no introductory foyer or passage to the room. The front door opened into a large family sitting room where seven people were clustered around the hearth. One of the men rose politely and inclined his head in greeting. This, I learned later, was Edgar Linton, husband of Catherine Earnshaw, who sat next to him on the wooden settle and glowered meditatively into the fire. Next to them was a dissolute-looking man who appeared to be asleep, or drunk, or quite possibly both. It was clear that they were waiting for us, and equally clear from the lack of enthusiasm that counseling wasn't high on their list of priorities\u2014or interests.\n\n\"Good evening, everyone,\" said Miss Havisham, \"and I'd like to thank you all for attending this Jurisfiction Rage Counseling session.\"\n\nShe sounded almost friendly. It was quite out of character and I wondered how long she could keep it up.\n\n\"This is Miss Next, who will be observing this evening's session. Now, I want us all to join hands and create a circle of trust to welcome her to the group. Where's Heathcliff?\"\n\n\"I have no idea where that scoundrel might be!\" declaimed Linton angrily. \"Facedown in a bog for all I care\u2014the devil may take him and not before time!\"\n\n\"Oh!\" cried Catherine, withdrawing her hand from Edgar's. \"Why do you hate him so? He, who loved me more than you ever could\u2014!\"\n\n\"Now now,\" interrupted Havisham in a soothing tone, \"remember what we said last week about name-calling? Edgar, I think you should apologize to Catherine for calling Heathcliff a scoundrel, and Catherine, you did promise last week not to mention how much you were in love with Heathcliff in front of your husband.\"\n\nThey grumbled their apologies.\n\n\"Heathcliff is due here any moment,\" said another servant, who I assumed was Nelly Dean. \"His agent said he had to do some publicity. Can we not start without him?\"\n\nMiss Havisham looked at her watch. \"We could get past the introductions, I suppose,\" she replied, obviously keen to finish this up and go home. \"Perhaps we could introduce ourselves to Miss Next and sum up our feelings at the same time. Edgar, would you mind?\"\n\n\"Me? Oh, very well. My name is Edgar Linton, true owner of Thrushcross Grange, and I hate and despise Heathcliff because no matter what I do, my wife, Catherine, is still in love with him.\"\n\n\"My name is Hindley Earnshaw,\" slurred the drunk, \"Old Mr. Earnshaw's eldest son. I hate and despise Heathcliff because my father preferred Heathcliff to me, and later, because that scoundrel cheated me out of my birthright.\"\n\n\"That was very good, Hindley,\" said Miss Havisham, \"not one single swear word. I think we're making good progress. Who's next?\"\n\n\"I am Hareton Earnshaw,\" said a sullen-looking youth who stared at the table as he spoke and clearly resented these gatherings more than most, \"son of Hindley and Frances. I hate and despise Heathcliff because he treats me as little more than a dog\u2014and it's not as though I did anything against him, neither\u2014he punishes me because my father treated him like a servant.\"\n\n\"I am Isabella,\" announced a good-looking woman, \"sister of Edgar. I hate and despise Heathcliff because he lied to me, abused me, beat me and tried to kill me. Then, after I was dead, he stole our son and used him to gain control of the Linton inheritance.\"\n\n\"Lot of rage in that one,\" whispered Miss Havisham. \"Do you see a pattern beginning to emerge?\"\n\n\"That they don't much care for Heathcliff?\" I whispered back.\n\n\"Does it show that badly?\" she replied, a little crestfallen that her counseling didn't seem to be working as well as she'd hoped.\n\n\"I am Catherine Linton,\" said a confident and headstrong young girl of perhaps no more than sixteen, \"daughter of Edgar and Catherine. I hate and despise Heathcliff because he kept me prisoner for five days away from my dying father to force me to marry Linton\u2014solely to gain the title of Thrushcross Grange, the true Linton residence.\"\n\n\"I am Linton,\" announced a sickly looking child, coughing into a pocket handkerchief, \"son of Heathcliff and Isabella. I hate and despise Heathcliff because he took away the only possible happiness I might have known and let me die a captive, a pawn in his struggle for ultimate revenge.\"\n\n\"Hear, hear,\" murmured Catherine Linton.\n\n\"I am Catherine Earnshaw,\" said the last woman, who looked around at the small group disdainfully, \"and I love Heathcliff more than life itself!\"\n\nThe group groaned audibly, several members shook their heads sadly and the younger Catherine did the \"fingers down the throat\" gesture.\n\n\"None of you know him the way I do, and if you had treated him with kindness instead of hatred, none of this would have happened!\"\n\n\"Deceitful harlot!\" yelled Hindley, leaping to his feet. \"If you hadn't decided to marry Edgar for power and position, Heathcliff might have been half-reasonable\u2014no, you brought all this on yourself, you selfish little minx!\"\n\nThere was applause at this, despite Havisham's attempts to keep order.\n\n\"He is a real man,\" continued Catherine, amidst a barracking from the group, \"a Byronic hero who transcends moral and social law; my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks. Group, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being!\"\n\nIsabella thumped the table and waved her finger angrily at Catherine. \"A real man would love and cherish the one he married,\" she shouted, \"not use and abuse all those around him in a never-ending quest for ultimate revenge for some perceived slight of twenty years ago! So what if Hindley treated him badly? A good Christian man would forgive him and learn to live in peace!\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the young Catherine, also jumping up and yelling to be heard above the uproar of accusations and pent-up frustrations. \"There we have the nub of the problem. Heathcliff is as far from Christian as one can be; a devil in human form who seeks to ruin all those about him!\"\n\n\"I agree with Catherine,\" said Linton weakly. \"The man is wicked and rotten to the core!\"\n\n\"Come outside and say that!\" yelled the elder Catherine, brandishing a fist.\n\n\"You would have him catch a chill and die, I suppose?\" replied the younger Catherine defiantly, glaring at the mother who had died giving birth to her. \"It was your haughty spoilt airs that got us into this whole stupid mess in the first place! If you loved him as much as you claim, why didn't you just marry him and have done with it?\"\n\n\"Can we have some order please!\" yelled Miss Havisham so loudly that the whole group jumped. They looked a bit sheepish and sat down, grumbling slightly.\n\n\"Thank you. Now, all this yelling is not going to help, and if we are to do anything about the rage inside Wuthering Heights, we are going to have to act like civilized human beings and discuss our feelings sensibly.\"\n\n\"Hear, hear,\" said a voice from the shadows. The group fell silent and turned in the direction of the newcomer, who stepped into the light accompanied by two minders and someone who looked like his agent. The newcomer was dark, swarthy and extremely handsome. Up until meeting him I had never comprehended why the characters in Wuthering Heights behaved in the sometimes irrational ways that they did; but after witnessing the glowering good looks, the piercing dark eyes, I understood. Heathcliff had an almost electrifying charisma; he could have charmed a cobra into a knot.\n\n\"Heathcliff!\" cried Catherine, leaping into his arms and hugging him tightly. \"Oh, Heathcliff my darling, how much I've missed you!\"\n\n\"Bah!\" cried Edgar, swishing his cane through the air in anger. \"Put down my wife immediately or I'll swear to God I shall\u2014\"\n\n\"Shall what?\" inquired Heathcliff. \"You gutless popinjay! My dog has more valor in its pizzle than you possess in your entire body! And, Linton, you weakling, what did you say about me being 'wicked and rotten'?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" said Linton quietly.\n\n\"Mr. Heathcliff,\" said Miss Havisham sternly, \"it doesn't pay to be late for these sessions, nor to aggravate your cocharacters.\"\n\n\"The devil take your sessions, Miss Havisham,\" he said angrily. \"Who is the star of this novel? Who do the readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me. Without me, Heights is a tediously overlong, provincial potboiler of insignificant interest. I am the star of this book and I'll do as I please, my lady, and you can take that to the Bellman, the Council, or all the way to the Great Panjandrum for all I care!\"\n\nHe pulled a signed glossy photo of himself from his breast pocket and passed it to me with a wink. The odd thing was, I actually recognized him. He had been acting with great success in Hollywood under the name Buck Stallion, which probably explained where he got his money from; he could have bought Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights three times over on his salary.\n\n\"The Council of Genres has decreed that you will attend the sessions, Heathcliff,\" said Havisham coldly. \"If this book is to survive, we have to control the emotions within it; as it is, the novel is three times more barbaric than when first penned\u2014left to its own devices it won't be long before murder and mayhem start to take over completely\u2014remember what happened to that once gentle comedy of manners Titus Andronicus? It's now the daftest, most cannibalistic blood fest in the whole of Shakespeare. Heights will go the same way unless you can all somehow contain your anger and resentment!\"\n\n\"I don't want to be made into a pie!\" moaned Linton.\n\n\"Brave speech,\" replied Heathcliff sardonically, \"very brave.\" He leaned closer to Miss Havisham, who stood her ground defiantly. \"Let me 'share' something with your little group. Wuthering Heights and all who live within her may go to the devil for all I care. It has served its purpose as I honed the delicate art of treachery and revenge\u2014but I'm now bigger than this book and bigger than all of you. There are better novels waiting for me out there, that know how to properly service a character of my depth!\"\n\nThe assembled characters gasped as this new intelligence sank in. Without Heathcliff there would be no book\u2014and in consequence, none of them, either.\n\n\"You wouldn't make it into Spot's Birthday without the Council's permission,\" growled Havisham. \"Try and leave Heights and we'll make make you wish you'd never been written!\"\n\nHeathcliff laughed. \"Nonsense! The Council has urgent need of characters such as I; leaving me stuck in the classics where I am only ever read by bored English students is a waste of one of the finest romantic leads ever written. Mark my words, the Council will do whatever it takes to attract a greater readership\u2014a transfer will not be opposed by them or anyone else, I can assure you of that!\"\n\n\"What about us?\" wailed Linton, coughing and on the verge of tears. \"We'll be reduced to text!\"\n\n\"Best thing for all of you!\" growled Heathcliff. \"And I'll be there at the shoreline, ready to rejoice at your last strangled cry as you dip beneath the waves!\"\n\n\"And me?\" asked Catherine.\n\n\"You will come with me.\" Heathcliff smiled, softening. \"You and I will live again in a modern novel, without all these trappings of Victorian rectitude. I thought we could reside in a spy thriller somewhere, go shopping at Ikea and have a boxer puppy with one ear that goes down\u2014\"\n\nThere was a loud detonation and the front door exploded inwards in a cloud of wood splinters and dust. Havisham pushed Heathcliff to the ground and laid herself across him, yelling, \"Take cover!\"\n\nShe fired her small pistol at a masked man who jumped through the smoking doorway firing a machine gun. Havisham's bullet struck home and the figure crumpled in a heap. One of Heathcliff's two minders took rounds in the neck and chest from the first assailant, but the second minder pulled out his own submachine gun and pressed himself against the wall. Linton fainted on the spot, quickly followed by Isabella and Edgar. At least it stopped them screaming. I drew my gun and fired along with the minder and Havisham as another masked assassin came in the door; we got him, but one of his bullets caught the second bodyguard in the head, and he dropped lifeless to the flags.\n\nI crawled across to Havisham and heard Heathcliff whimper, \"Help me! Don't let them kill me! I don't want to die!\"\n\n\"Shut up!\" hissed Havisham, and Heathcliff was instantly quiet. I looked around. His agent was cowering under a briefcase, and the rest of the cast were hiding beneath the oak table. There was a pause.\n\n\"What's going on?\" I hissed.\n\n\"ProCath attack,\" murmured Havisham, reloading her pistol in the sudden quiet, \"support of the young Catherine and hatred of Heathcliff runs deep in the BookWorld; usually its only a lone gunman\u2014I've never seen anything this well planned before. I'm going to jump out with Heathcliff; I'll be back for you straightaway.\"\n\nShe mumbled a few words but nothing happened. She tried them again but still nothing.\n\n\"The devil take them!\" she muttered, pulling her mobilefootnoterphone from the folds of her wedding dress. \"They must be using a textual sieve.\"\n\n\"What's a textual sieve?\"\n\n\"I don't know\u2014it's never fully explained.\"\n\nShe looked at the mobilefootnoterphone and tossed it aside. \"Blast! No signal. Where's the nearest footnoterphone?\"\n\n\"In the kitchen,\" replied Nelly Dean, \"next to the breadbasket.\"\n\n\"We have to get word to the Bellman. Thursday, I want you to go to the kitchen\u2014\"\n\nBut she never got to finish her sentence because a barrage of machine-gun fire struck the house, decimating the windows and shutters. The curtains danced as they were shredded, the plaster erupting off the wall as the shots slammed into it. We kept our heads down as Catherine screamed, Linton woke up only to faint again, Hindley took a swig from a hip flask and Heathcliff convulsed with fear beneath us. After about five minutes the firing stopped. Dust hung lazily in the air and we were covered with plaster, shards of glass and wood chips.\n\n\"Havisham!\" came a subdued voice on a bullhorn from outside. \"We wish you no harm! Just surrender Heathcliff and we'll leave you alone!\"\n\n\"No!\" cried the older Catherine, who had crawled across to us and was trying to clasp Heathcliff's head in her hands. \"Heathcliff, don't leave me!\"\n\n\"I have no intention of doing any such thing,\" he said in a muffled voice, nose pressed hard into the flags by Havisham's weight. \"Havisham, I hope you remember your orders.\"\n\n\"Send out Heathcliff and we will spare you and your apprentice!\" yelled the bullhorn again. \"Stand in our way and you'll both be terminated!\"\n\n\"Do they mean it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" replied Havisham grimly. \"A group of ProCaths attempted to hijack Madame Bovary last year to force the Council to relinquish Heathcliff.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"The ones who survived were reduced to text, but it hasn't stopped the ProCath movement. Do you think you can get to the footnoterphone?\"\n\n\"Sure\u2014I mean, yes, Miss Havisham.\"\n\nI crawled off towards the kitchen.\n\n\"We'll give you two minutes,\" said the voice into the bullhorn again. \"After that, we're coming in.\"\n\n\"I have a better deal,\" yelled Havisham.\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"And that is?\" came the voice on the bullhorn.\n\n\"Leave now and I will be merciful when I find you.\"\n\n\"I think,\" replied the voice on the bullhorn, \"that we'll stick to my plan. You have one minute forty-five seconds.\"\n\nI reached the doorway of the kitchen, which had been as devastated as the living room. Flour and beans from broken storage jars were strewn across the floor, and a flurry of snowflakes was blowing in through the windows. I found the footnoterphone; it had been riddled with machine-gun fire. I cursed and went to look out the pantry window. I could see two of them, sitting in the snow, weapons ready. I dashed back to Havisham.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Footnoterphone destroyed, and two ProCaths at the back that I could see.\"\n\n\"And at least three at the front,\" she added, snapping her pistol shut. \"I'm open to suggestions.\"\n\n\"How about giving them Heathcliff?\" came a chorus of voices.\n\n\"Other than that?\"\n\n\"I can try and get behind them,\" I muttered, \"if you give me covering fire\u2014\"\n\nI was interrupted by an unearthly cry of terror from outside, followed by a sort of crunching noise, then another cry and sporadic machine-gun fire. There was a large thump and another shot, then a shout, then the ProCaths at the back started to open fire. But not at the house\u2014at some unseen menace. We heard two more cries of terror, a few more gunshots, a slow tearing noise, then silence.\n\nI got up and peered cautiously from the door. There was nothing outside except the soft snow, disturbed occasionally by dinner-plate-sized footprints.\n\nWe found only one complete body, tossed onto the roof of the pigsty.\n\n\"Look at this,\" said Miss Havisham from where she was standing at the corner of the barn. It looked as though one of the ProCaths had been stationed there by the large quantity of spent cartridges, but what Havisham was actually pointing out were the four freshly dug grooves in the masonry, spaced about six inches apart.\n\n\"It looks like... claw marks,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Must have caught the corner of the barn midswipe,\" replied Miss Havisham thoughtfully, peering closer at the damaged stonework.\n\n\"It was Big Martin,\" I said with a shiver. \"Some of his friends had me pegged for dinner down on the twenty-second floor yesterday.\"\n\n\"Then we should be glad Big Martin got to this bunch first. Mind you, I've heard rumors that the Big M was into classics\u2014he might have been doing us a favor.\"\n\nWe turned and walked through the snow back to the house.\n\n\"Who is Big Martin?\" I asked.\n\n\"Less of a who and more of a what,\" replied Miss Havisham, tramping her feet on the doorstep to get rid of the snow. \"Even the Glatisant is nervous of Big Martin. He's a law unto himself. I'd watch your back and eat plenty of cashews.\"\n\n\"Cashews?\"\n\n\"Big Martin loathes them. Unusually for a Book Fiend he has a sense of smell\u2014one whiff and he's off.\"\n\n\"I'll remember that.\"\n\nWe returned to where the cast of Wuthering Heights were dusting themselves down. Joseph was muttering incomprehensibly to himself and trying to block the windows up with blankets.\n\n\"Well,\" said Miss Havisham, clapping her hands together, \"that was an exciting session, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"I am still leaving this appalling book,\" retorted Heathcliff, who was back on full obnoxious form again.\n\n\"No you're not,\" replied Havisham.\n\n\"You just try and stop\u2014\"\n\nHavisham, who was fed up with pussyfooting around and hated men like Heathcliff with a vengeance, grasped him by the collar and pinned his head to the table with her pistol pressed painfully into his neck.\n\n\"Listen here,\" she said, her voice quavering with anger, \"to me, you are worthless scum. Thank your lucky stars I am loyal to Jurisfiction. Many others in my place would have handed you over. I could kill you now and no one would be any the wiser.\"\n\nHeathcliff looked at me imploringly.\n\n\"I was outside when I heard the shot,\" I told him.\n\n\"So were we!\" exclaimed the rest of the cast eagerly, excepting Catherine Earnshaw, who simply scowled.\n\n\"Perhaps I should do it!\" growled Havisham again. \"Perhaps it would be a mercy. I could make it look like an accident!\"\n\n\"No!\" cried Heathcliff in a contrite tone. \"I've changed my mind. I'm going to stay right here and just be plain old Mr. Heathcliff for ever and ever.\"\n\nHavisham slowly released her grasp. \"Right,\" she said, switching her pistol to safe and regaining her breath, \"I think that pretty much concludes this session of Jurisfiction rage counseling. What did we learn?\"\n\nThe cocharacters all stared at her, dumbstruck.\n\n\"Good. Same time next week, everyone?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Educating the Generics",
                "text": "\u2002Generics are the chameleons of the Well. In general they were trained to do specific jobs but could be upgraded if the need arose. Occasionally a Generic would jump up spontaneously within the grade, but to jump from one grade to another without external help, they said, was impossible. From what I would learn, impossible was a word that should not be bandied about the Well without due thought\u2014imagination being what it is, anything could happen\u2014and generally did.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nBig Martin had made a mess of the ProCath fanatics who had attacked us. The leader was identified by his dental records\u2014why he had them on him, no one was quite sure. He had been a D-3 crew member in On the Beach and was replaced within twenty-four hours. Wuthering Heights was repaired within a few lines, and because Havisham had been holding the rage-counseling session between chapters, no one reading the book noticed anything. In fact, the only evidence of the attack now to be seen in the book was Hareton's shotgun, which exploded accidentally in chapter 32, most likely as a result of a ricocheting bullet damaging the latching mechanism.\n\n\"How was your day today?\" asked Gran as I walked back on board the Sunderland.\n\n\"Very... expositional to begin with,\" I said, falling into a sofa and tickling Pickwick, who had come over all serious and matronly, \"but it ended quite dramatically.\"\n\n\"Did you have to be rescued again?\"\n\n\"Yes and no.\"\n\n\"The first few days in a new job are always a bit shaky,\" said Gran. \"Why do you have to work for Jurisfiction anyway?\"\n\n\"It was part of the Exchange Program deal.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" she replied. \"Would you like me to make you an omelette?\"\n\n\"Anything.\"\n\n\"Right. I'll need you to crack the eggs and mix them and get me down the saucepan and...\"\n\nI heaved myself up and went through to the small galley, where the fridge was full of food, as always.\n\n\"Where's ibb and obb?\" I asked.\n\n\"Out, I think,\" replied Gran. \"Would you make us both a cup of tea while you're up?\"\n\n\"Sure. I still can't remember Landen's second name, Gran\u2014I've been trying all day.\"\n\nGran came into the galley and sat on a kitchen stool, which happened to be right in the way of everything. She smelt of sherry, but for the life of me I didn't know where she hid it.\n\n\"But you remember what he looks like?\"\n\nI stopped what I was doing and stared out of the kitchen porthole.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied slowly, \"every line, every mole, every expression\u2014but I still remember him dying in the Crimea.\"\n\n\"That never happened, my dear. But the fact\u2014I should use a bigger bowl if I were you\u2014you can remember his features proves he's not gone any more than yesterday. I should use butter and not oil; and if you have any mushrooms, you could chop them up with a bit of onion and bacon\u2014do you have any bacon?\"\n\n\"Probably. You still didn't tell me how you managed to find your way here, Gran.\"\n\n\"That's easily explained. Tell me, did you manage to get a list of the dullest books you could find?\"\n\nGranny Next was 108 years old and was convinced that she couldn't die until she had read the ten most boring classics. On an earlier occasion I had suggested Fairie Queene, Paradise Lost, Ivanhoe, Moby-Dick, A la recherche du temps perdu, Pamela and A Pilgrim's Progress. She had read them all and many others but was still with us. Trouble is, \"boring\" is about as hard to quantify as \"pretty,\" so I really had to think of the ten books that she would find most boring.\n\n\"What about Silas Marner?\"\n\n\"Only boring in parts\u2014like Hard Times. You're going to have to do a little better than that\u2014and if I were you, I'd use a bigger pan\u2014but on a lower heat.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said, beginning to get annoyed, \"perhaps you'd like to cook? You've done most of the work so far.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" replied Gran, completely unfazed, \"you're doing fine.\"\n\nThere was a commotion at the door and Ibb came in, followed closely by Obb.\n\n\"Congratulations!\" I called out.\n\n\"What for?\" asked Ibb, who no longer looked identical to Obb. For a start, Obb was at least four inches taller and its hair was darker than Ibb's, which was beginning to go blond.\n\n\"For becoming capitalized.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" enthused Ibb, \"it's amazing what a day at St. Tabularasa's will do for one. Tomorrow we'll finish our gender training, and by the end of the week we'll be streamed into character groups.\"\n\n\"I want to be a male mentor figure,\" said Obb. \"Our tutor said that sometimes we can have a choice of what we do and where we go. Are you making supper?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied, testing their sarcasm response, \"I'm giving my pet egg heat therapy.\"\n\nIbb laughed\u2014which was a good sign, I thought\u2014and went off with Obb to practice whimsical retorts in case either of them was given a posting as a humorous sidekick.\n\n\"Teenagers,\" said Granny Next. \"Tch. I better make it a bigger omelette. Take over, would you? I'm going to have a rest.\"\n\nWe all sat down to eat twenty minutes later. Obb had brushed its hair into a parting and Ibb was wearing one of Gran's gingham dresses.\n\n\"Hoping to be female?\" I asked, passing Ibb a plate.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Ibb, \"but not one like you. I'd like to be more feminine and a bit hopeless\u2014the sort that screams a lot when they get into trouble and has to be rescued.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I asked, handing Gran the salad. \"Why?\"\n\nIbb shrugged. \"I don't know. I just like the idea of being rescued a lot, that's all\u2014being carried off in big, strong arms sort of... appeals. I thought I could have the plot explained to me a lot, too\u2014but I should have a few good lines of my own, be quite vulnerable, yet end up saving the day due to a sudden flash of idiot savant brilliance.\"\n\n\"I think you'll have no trouble getting a placement,\" I sighed, \"but you seem quite specific\u2014have you used someone in particular as a model?\"\n\n\"Her!\" exclaimed Ibb, drawing out a much thumbed Outland copy of Silverscreen from beneath the table. On the cover was none other than Lola Vavoom, being interviewed for the umpteenth time about her husbands, her denial of any cosmetic surgery and her latest film\u2014usually in that order.\n\n\"Gran!\" I said sternly. \"Did you give Ibb that magazine?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014!\"\n\n\"You know how impressionable Generics can be! Why didn't you give her a magazine with Jenny Gudgeon in it? She plays proper women\u2014and can act, too.\"\n\n\"Have you seen Ms. Vavoom in My Sister Kept Geese?\" replied Gran indignantly. \"I think you'd be surprised\u2014she shows considerable range.\"\n\nI thought about Cordelia Flakk and her producer friend Harry Flex wanting Lola to play me in a film. The idea was too awful to contemplate.\n\n\"You were going to tell us about subtext,\" said Obb, helping itself to more salad.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" I replied, a distraction from Vavoom a welcome break. \"Subtext is the implied action behind the written word. Text tells the reader what the characters say and do but subtext tells us what they mean and feel. The wonderful thing about subtext is that it is common grammar, written in human experience\u2014you can't understand it without a good working knowledge of people and how they interact. Got it?\"\n\nIbb and Obb looked at one another. \"No.\"\n\n\"Okay, let me give you a simple example. At a party, a man gives a woman a drink and she takes it without answering. What's going on?\"\n\n\"She isn't very polite?\" suggested Ibb.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I replied, \"but I was really looking for some sort of clue as to their relationship.\"\n\nObb scratched its head and said, \"She can't speak because, er, she lost her tongue in an industrial accident due to his negligence?\"\n\n\"You're trying too hard. For what reason would someone not necessarily say 'thank you' for something?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said Ibb slowly, \"they know one another?\"\n\n\"Good. Being handed a drink at a party by your wife, husband, girlfriend or partner, you would as likely as not just take it; if it was from a host to a guest, then you would thank them. Here's another: there is a couple walking down the road\u2014and she is walking eight paces behind him.\"\n\n\"He has longer legs?\" suggested Ibb.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"They've broken down?\"\n\n\"They've had an argument,\" said Obb excitedly, \"and they live nearby or they would be taking their car.\"\n\n\"Could be,\" I responded. \"Subtext tells you lots of things. Ibb, did you take the last piece of chocolate from the fridge?\"\n\nThere was a pause. \"No.\"\n\n\"Well, because you paused, I know pretty confidently that you did.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Ibb. \"I'll remember that.\"\n\nThere was a knock at the door.\n\nI opened it to reveal Mary's ex-beau Arnold looking very dapper in a suit and holding a small bunch of flowers. Before he had time to open his mouth, I had closed the door again.\n\n\"Ah!\" I said, turning to Ibb and Obb. \"This is a good opportunity to study subtext. See if you can figure out what is going on behind our words\u2014and Ibb, please don't feed Pickwick at the table.\"\n\nI opened the door again, and Arnold, who had started to slink off, came running back.\n\n\"Oh!\" he said with mock surprise. \"Mary not back yet?\"\n\n\"No. In fact, she probably won't be back for some time. Can I take a message?\"\n\nAnd I closed the door on his face again.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said to Ibb and Obb, \"what do you think is going on?\"\n\n\"He's looking for Mary?\" suggested Ibb.\n\n\"But he knows she's gone away,\" said Obb. \"He must be coming to speak to you, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"For a date?\"\n\n\"Good. What am I saying to him?\"\n\nIbb and Obb thought hard. \"If you didn't want to see him, you'd have told him to go away, so you might be the tiniest bit interested.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" I told them. \"Let's see what happens next.\"\n\nI opened the door again to a confused-looking Arnold, who broke into a wide smile.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"no message for Mary\u2014it's just\u2014we had planned to see Willow Lodge and the Limes this evening...\"\n\nI turned to Ibb and Obb, who shook their heads. They didn't believe it, either.\n\n\"Well,\" said Arnold slowly, \"...perhaps you might like to come with me to the concert?\"\n\nI shut the door again.\n\n\"He pretended to have the idea about going to see Willow Lodge tonight,\" said Ibb slowly and more confidently, \"when in fact I think he had it planned all along that way. I think he fancies you big time.\"\n\nI opened the door again.\n\n\"I'm sorry, no,\" I told him hastily, \"happily married.\"\n\n\"It's not a date,\" exclaimed Arnold quickly, \"just a lift to a concert. Here, take the ticket anyway. I've no one else to give it to; if you don't want to go, just bin it.\"\n\nI shut the door again.\n\n\"Ibb's wrong,\" said Obb, \"he really fancies you\u2014but he's blown it by being too desperate\u2014it would be hard for you to respect someone who would almost start begging.\"\n\n\"Not bad,\" I replied, \"let's see how it turns out.\"\n\nI opened the door again and stared into Arnold's earnest eyes.\n\n\"You miss her, don't you?\"\n\n\"Miss who?\" asked Arnold, seemingly nonchalant.\n\n\"Denial of love!\" yelled Ibb and Obb from behind me. \"He doesn't really fancy you at all\u2014he's in love with Mary and wants a date on the rebound!\"\n\nArnold looked suspicious. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"Subtext classes,\" I explained, \"sorry for being rude. Do you want to come in for a coffee?\"\n\n\"Well, I should be going really\u2014\"\n\n\"Playing hard to get!\" hooted Ibb, and Obb added quickly, \"The balance of power has tipped in his favor because you've been rude to him with all that door nonsense, and now you're going to have to insist that he come in for coffee, even if that means being nicer to him than you originally intended!\"\n\n\"Are they always like this?\" inquired Arnold, stepping inside.\n\n\"They learn quick,\" I observed. \"That's Ibb and that's Obb. Ibb and Obb, this is Arnold.\"\n\n\"Hullo!\" said Arnold, thinking for a moment. \"Do you Generics want to go and see Willow Lodge and the Limes?\"\n\nThey looked at one another for a moment, realized they were sitting just that little bit too close and moved apart.\n\n\"Do you?\" said Ibb.\n\n\"Well, only if you want to\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm easy\u2014it's your decision.\"\n\n\"Well y-es, I'd really like to.\"\n\n\"Then let's go\u2014unless you've made other plans\u2014?\"\n\n\"No, no, I haven't.\"\n\nThey got up, took the tickets from Arnold and were out the door in a flash.\n\nI laughed and went though to the galley.\n\n\"Who's the elderly woman?\" asked Arnold.\n\n\"It's my Gran,\" I replied, switching on the kettle and getting out the coffee.\n\n\"Is she\u2014you know?\"\n\n\"Goodness me, no! She's only asleep. She's one hundred and eight.\"\n\n\"Really? Why is she dressed in this dreadful blue gingham?\"\n\n\"Has been for as long as I can remember. She came here to make sure I didn't forget my husband. Sorry. That makes me sound as though I'm laboring the point, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Listen, don't worry. I didn't mean to come over all romantic just then. But, Mary, well, she's quite something, you know\u2014and I'm not just in love with her because I was written that way. This one's for real. Like Nelson and Emma, Bogart and Bacall\u2014\"\n\n\"Finch Hatton and Blixen. Yes, I know. I've been there.\"\n\n\"Denys was in love with Baron Blixen?\"\n\n\"Karen Blixen.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nHe sat down and I placed a coffee in front of him.\n\n\"So, tell me about your husband.\"\n\n\"Hah!\" I said, smiling. \"You don't want me to bore you about Landen.\"\n\n\"It's not boring. You listen to me when I hark on about Mary.\"\n\nI stirred my coffee absently, running through my memories of Landen to make sure they were all there. Gran mumbled something about lobsters in her sleep.\n\n\"It must have been a hard decision to come and hide out here,\" said Arnold quietly. \"I don't imagine Thursdays generally do that sort of thing.\"\n\n\"You're right, they don't. But sometimes falling back and regrouping is not the same as running away.\"\n\n\"Tactical withdrawal?\"\n\n\"Right. What would you do to get together with Mary again?\"\n\n\"Anything.\"\n\n\"And I with Landen. I will get him back\u2014just not quite yet. But the strange thing is,\" I added slightly wistfully, \"when he comes back, he won't even know he'd been gone\u2014it's not as though he's waiting for me to reactualize him.\"\n\nWe chatted for about an hour. Arnold told me about the Well and I talked about the Outland. He was just trying to get me to repeat \"irrelevant benevolent elephant\" when Gran woke up with a yell shouting, \"The French! The French!\" and had to be calmed down with a glass of warm whiskey before I put her to bed.\n\n\"I'd better be going,\" said Arnold. \"Mind if I drop round again?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I replied. \"That would be nice.\"\n\nI went to bed after that and was still awake when Ibb and Obb returned from the concert. They were giggling and made a noisy cup of tea before retiring. I lay back and tried to sleep, hoping that I would dream of being back at our house, the one that Landen and I shared when we were married. Failing that, on holiday somewhere. Failing that, when we first met\u2014and if that wasn't available, an argument\u2014and lastly, anything with Landen in it at all. Aornis had other ideas."
            },
            {
                "title": "Landen Parke-Somebody",
                "text": "Before Aornis Hades, the existence of mnemonomorphs was suspected only to SO-5, who, through deceit, idleness or forgetfulness, never told anyone else. The files on mnemonomorphs are kept in eight different locations and updated automatically between each location every week. An ability to control entropy does not necessarily go with the skill to alter memories; indeed, Aornis has been the only entity (thus far that we know about) who can do such a thing. As Miss Next demonstrated between 1986\u201387, mnemonomorphs are not without their Achilles' heel. There is one question we would all like answered about Aornis, however, since no physical evidence of her remains: Was she real, or just a bad memory?\n\nBLAKE LAMME, (EX-SO-5)\n\n[ Remember Them? A Study of Mnemonomorphs ]\n\nDEAR, SWEET Thursday!\" muttered a patronizing voice that was chillingly familiar.\n\nI opened my eyes. I was on the roof of Thornfield Hall, Rochester's house in Jane Eyre. It was the time and place of my final showdown with Acheron Hades. The old house was on fire and I could feel the roof growing hot beneath my feet. I coughed in the smoke and felt my eyes begin to smart. Next to me was Edward Rochester, cradling a badly wounded hand. Acheron had already thrown Rochester's poor wife, Bertha, over the parapet and was now preparing to finish us both off.\n\n\"Sweet madness, eh?\" Acheron laughed. \"Jane is with her cousins; the narrative is with her. And I have the manual!\" He waved it at me, deposited it in his pocket and picked up his gun. \"Who's first?\"\n\nI ignored Hades and looked around. The patronizing \"Dear, sweet Thursday!\" voice had not been his\u2014it had belonged to Aornis. She was wearing the same designer clothes as when I last saw her\u2014she was only my memory of her, after all.\n\n\"Hey!\" said Acheron. \"I'm talking to you!\"\n\nI turned and dutifully fired, and Hades caught the approaching bullet\u2014as he had when this had happened for real. He opened his fist; the slug was flattened into a small lead disk. He smiled and a shower of sparks flew up behind him.\n\nBut I wasn't so interested in Acheron this time around.\n\n\"Aornis!\" I shouted. \"Show yourself, coward!\"\n\n\"No coward, I!\" said Aornis, stepping from behind a large chimney piece.\n\n\"What are you doing to me?\" I demanded angrily, pointing my gun at her. She didn't seem to be in the least put out\u2014in fact, she seemed more concerned with preventing the dirt from the roof soiling her suede shoes.\n\n\"Welcome\"\u2014she laughed\u2014\"to the museum of your mind!\"\n\nThe roof at Thornfield vanished and was replaced by the interior of the abandoned church where Spike and I were about to do battle with the Supreme Evil Being that was stuck in his head. It had happened for real a few weeks ago; the memories were still fresh\u2014it was all chillingly lifelike.\n\n\"I am the curator in this museum,\" said Aornis as we moved again, to the dining room at home when I was eight, a small girl with pigtails and as precocious as they come. My father\u2014before his eradication, of course\u2014was carving the roast and telling me that if I kept on being a nuisance, I would be made to go to my room.\n\n\"Familiar to you?\" asked Aornis. \"I can call on any exhibit I want. Do you remember this?\"\n\nAnd we were back on the banks of the Thames, during my father's abortive attempt to rescue the twoyear-old Landen. I felt the fear, the hopelessness, squeezing my chest so tight I could barely breathe. I sobbed.\n\n\"I can run it again if you want to. I can run it for you every night forever. Or I can delete it completely. How about this one?\"\n\nNight came on and we were in the area of Swindon that young couples go with their cars to get a bit of privacy. I had come here with Darren, a highly unlikely infatuation kindled in the furnace of parental disapproval. He loomed close to me in an amorous embrace in the back of his Morris 8. I was seventeen and impulsive\u2014Darren was eighteen and repulsive. I could smell his beery breath and a postadolescent odor that was so strong you could have grabbed the air and wrung the stench from it with your bare hands. I could see Aornis outside the car, grinning at me, and through the labored panting of Darren, I screamed.\n\n\"But this isn't the worst place we could go.\" Aornis grinned through the window. \"We can go back to the Crimea and unlock memories that have been too terrifying even for you. The suppressed memories, the ones you block out to let you carry on the day.\"\n\n\"No, Aornis, not the charge\u2014!\"\n\nBut there we were, in the last place I wanted to be, driving my APC into the massed field artillery of the Russian army that August afternoon in 1973. Of the eighty-four APCs and light tanks that advanced into the Russian guns, only two vehicles returned. Out of the 534 soldiers involved, 51 survived.\n\nIt was the moment before the barrage began. My CO, Major Phelps, was riding on the outside as he liked to do, foolhardy idiot that he was, and to my left and right I could see the other armored vehicles throwing up large swathes of summer dust from the parched land. We could be seen for miles. The first salvo was so unexpected that I thought the munitions in a light tank had simply ignited by accident; the whine of a near miss made me realize that it hadn't. I changed direction instantly and started to zigzag. I looked to Phelps for orders, but he was slumped in the hatch; he had lost the lower part of his arm and was unconscious. The barrage was so intense that it became a single rumbling growl, the pressure waves thumping the APC so hard that it was all I could do to keep my hands on the controls.\n\nI read the official report two years later. Forty-two guns had been trained on us from a thousand yards, and they had expended 387 rounds of high-explosive shells\u2014about four to each vehicle. It had been like shooting fish in a barrel.\n\nSergeant Tozer took command and ordered me to an APC that had lost its tracks and been thrown upside down. I parked behind the wrecked carrier as Tozer and the squad jumped out to retrieve the wounded.\n\n\"But what were you really thinking about?\" asked Aornis, who was beside me in the carrier, looking disdainfully at the dust and oil.\n\n\"Escape,\" I said. \"I was terrified. We all were.\"\n\n\"Next!\" yelled Tozer. \"Stop talking to Aornis and take us to the next APC!\"\n\nI pulled away as another explosion went off. I saw a turret whirling through the air, a pair of legs dangling from beneath it.\n\nI drove to the next APC, the shrapnel hitting our carrier almost continuously like hail on a tin roof. The survivors were firing impotently back with their rifles; it wasn't looking good. The APC was filled with the wounded, and as I turned round, something hit the carrier a glancing blow. It was a dud; it had struck us obliquely and bounced off\u2014I would see the yard-long gouge in the armor plate the following day. Within a hundred yards we were in relative safety as the dust and smoke screened our retreat; pretty soon we had passed the forward command post, where all the officers were shouting into their field telephones, and were on to the dressing areas beyond. Even though I knew this was a dream, the fear felt as real as it had on the day, and tears of frustration welled up inside me. I thought Aornis would carry on with this memory for the return run to the barrage, but there was clearly a technique behind her barbaric game. In a blink we were back on the roof at Thornfield Hall.\n\nAcheron was looking at me with a triumphant expression and carried on where he had left off:\n\n\"It may come as some consolation that I planned to bestow upon you the honor of becoming Felix9\u2014Who are you?\"\n\nHe was looking at Aornis.\n\n\"Aornis,\" she said shyly.\n\nAcheron gave a rare smile and lowered his gun.\n\n\"Aornis?\" he echoed. \"Little Aornis?\" She nodded and ran across to give him a hug.\n\n\"My goodness!\" he said, looking her over carefully. \"How you have grown! Last time I saw you, you were this high and had barely even started torturing animals. Tell me, did you follow us into the family business or did you flunk out like that loser Styx?\"\n\n\"I'm a mnemonomorph!\" she said proudly, eager for her sibling's approval.\n\n\"Of course! I should have guessed. We're in that Next woman's memories right now, aren't we?\"\n\nShe nodded enthusiastically.\n\n\"Attagirl! Tell me, did she actually kill me? I'm only here as the memory of me in her mind, after all.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" said Aornis glumly. \"She killed you well and good.\"\n\n\"By using treachery? Did I die a Hades?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not\u2014it was a noble victory.\"\n\n\"Bitch!\"\n\n\"Seconded. But I'll have the revenge you deserve, dear brother, you can be sure of that.\"\n\nA family reunion like this should have been heartwarming, but I can't say I was moved. Still, at least it kept us away from the Crimea.\n\n\"Mother's very upset with you,\" said Aornis, who had the Hades penchant for straight talking.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Why do you think? You murdered Styx.\"\n\n\"Styx was a fool and he brought shame on the Hades family. If father was still alive, he would have done the job himself.\"\n\n\"Well, Mother was very upset about it and I think you should apologize.\"\n\n\"Okay, next time\u2014wait a moment, I'm dead\u2014I can't apologize to anyone. You apologize for me.\"\n\n\"I'm a mnemonomorph, remember\u2014and this is only me as a mindworm; a sort of satellite persona, if you like. Listen, if I knew where Thursday was, she'd be dead already. No, when I can report back to Aornis proper, this is what we'll do\u2014\"\n\n\"Psssst!\" said a voice close to my ear. It was Granny Next.\n\n\"Gran! Am I glad to see you!\"\n\n\"C'mon, while Aornis is distracted.\"\n\nGran took my hand and led me across the roof to the window, where we entered the building. But instead of being in the burning remains of Thornfield Hall, we were on the sidelines of a croquet match. Not any croquet match; it was a Croquet Federation Final\u2014a SuperHoop. I used to play croquet quite seriously until SpecOps work absorbed all my free time. The two teams were in their body armor, leaning on their willow mallets and discussing strategy during a time-out.\n\n\"Okay,\" said Aubrey Jambe, who was wearing the captain's sweater, \"Biffo is going to take the red ball from the forty-yard line over the rhododendron bushes, past the Italian sunken garden and into a close position to hoop five. Spike, you'll take it from there and croquet their yellow\u2014Stig will defend you. George, I want you to mark their number five. He's a neanderthal, so you're going to have to use any tricks you can. Smudger, you're going to foul the duchess\u2014when the vicar gives you the red card, I'm calling in Thursday. Yes?\"\n\nThey all looked at me. I was in body armor, too. I was a substitute. A croquet mallet was slung round my wrist with a lanyard and I was holding a helmet.\n\n\"Thursday?\" repeated Aubrey. \"Are you okay? You look like you're in a dreamworld!\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" I said slowly. \"I'll wait for your command.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nA horn went off, indicating the time-out was over. I looked up at the scoreboard. Swindon was losing, 12 hoops to 21.\n\n\"Gran,\" I said slowly, watching the team run out to continue play, \"I don't remember this.\"\n\n\"Of course not!\" she said as though I were a fool. \"This is one of mine. Aornis will never find us here.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment. How can I be dreaming with your memories?\"\n\n\"Tch tch,\" she scolded, \"so many questions! It will all be explained in due course. Now, do you want to go into some of that deep, dreamless sleep and get some rest?\"\n\n\"Please!\"\n\n\"Good. Aornis will not bother you again tonight\u2014I shall watch over you.\"\n\nGran approached a burly croquet player who only had one ear. After saying a few words, she pointed at me. I looked around at the stadium. It was the Swindon croquet stadium, yet somehow different. Behind me at the dignitaries box I was surprised to see Yorrick Kaine speaking to one of his assistants. Next to him was President Formby, who gave me a smile and a wave. I turned away, my eyes looking into the crowd and falling upon the one person that I did want to see. It was Landen, and he was bouncing a young child on his lap.\n\n\"Landen!\" I shouted, but a cheer went up from the crowd and I was drowned out. But he did see me and smiled. He held the infant's hand and made it wave, too. Gran tugged my shoulder pad to get my attention.\n\n\"Gran,\" I said, \"it's Lan\u2014\"\n\nAnd then the mallet struck my head. Blackness and oblivion. As usual, just when I got to the good bit."
            },
            {
                "title": "Captain Nemo",
                "text": "\u2002Wemmick's Stores: To enable Jurisfiction agents to travel easily and undetected within fiction, Wemmick's Stores was built within the lobby of the Great Library. The stores have an almost unlimited inventory as Mr. Wemmick is permitted to create whatever he needs using a small Imagino TransferenceDevice licensed by Text Grand Central. To reduce pilfering by Jurisfiction staff, all items checked out must be checked in again, where they are promptly reduced to text.\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\nI woke late the following morning. My bed was next to the porthole so I rolled over, doubled up a pillow and gazed out at the sun sparkling upon the surface of the lake. I could hear the gentle slap of the water against the flying boat's hull, and it gave me a sense of ease and inner peace that ten years of SpecOps' finest stressperts couldn't bully into you.\n\nI got up slowly and felt woozy all of a sudden. The room spun around and I felt hot. After a brief and unpleasant visit to the loo, I felt a bit better and went downstairs.\n\nI made myself some toast, as it helped the nausea, and caught sight of myself in the chrome toaster. I looked dreadful, and I was holding up the toaster and sticking my tongue out, trying to see what it looked like, when the Generics walked in.\n\n\"What on earth are you doing?\" asked Ibb.\n\n\"Nothing,\" I replied, hurriedly replacing the toaster. \"Off to college?\"\n\nThey both nodded. I noticed that they'd not only made their own lunch but actually cleared away after themselves. A certain sensitivity to others is a good sign in a Generic. It shows personality.\n\n\"Do you know where Gran is?\" I asked.\n\n\"She said she was off to the Medici court for a few days,\" replied Obb. \"She left you that note.\"\n\nI found the note on the counter and picked it up, studying the one-word message with slight confusion.\n\n\"We'll be back at five,\" announced Ibb. \"Do you need anything?\"\n\n\"What, er\u2014no,\" I said, reading Gran's note again. \"See you then.\"\n\nI made some more toast and continued with the multiple-choice test. After a half hour battling through such questions as Which book does Sam Weller the Bootboy reside in? and Who said, \"When she appeared, it was as though spring had finally arrived after a miserable winter\"? I stopped and looked at Gran's note for the tenth time. It was confusing. Written in a small and shaky hand, the note consisted of a single word: REMEMBER!\n\n\"Remember what?\" I muttered to myself, and went for a walk.\n\nI strolled down the banks of the lake, taking a path through a grove of birches that grew by the water's edge. I ducked under the low branches and followed my nose towards the odd assortment of vessels that were moored next to the old Sunderland. The first was a converted naval pinnace, her decks covered in plastic and in a constant state of conservation. Beyond this was a Humber lighter, abandoned and sunk at its moorings. As I walked on, a sudden screech of demonic laughter was followed by a peal of thunder and the smell of brimstone borne on a gust of icy wind. I blinked and coughed as thick green smoke momentarily enveloped me; when it had cleared, I was no longer alone. Three old hags with hooked chins and mottled complexions danced and cackled in front of me, rubbing their dirty hands and dancing in the most clumsy and uncoordinated fashion. It was the worst piece of overacting I had ever seen.\n\n\"Thrice the blinded dog shall bark,\" said the first witch, producing a cauldron from the air and placing it on the path in front of me.\n\n\"Thrice and once the hedgepig ironed,\" said the second, who conjured up a fire by throwing some leaves beneath the cauldron.\n\n\"Passerby cries, ' 'Tis time, 'tis time!' \" screeched the third, tossing something into the cauldron that started to bubble ominously.\n\n\"I really don't have time for this,\" I said crossly. \"Why don't you go and bother someone else?\"\n\n\"Fillet of a pickled hake,\" continued the second witch, \"in the cauldron broil and bake; lie of Stig and bark of dog, woolly hat and bowl of fog, Fadda loch and song by Bing, wizard's leg and Spitfire's wing. For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to interrupt,\" I said, \"but I really am very busy\u2014and none of your prophecies have come true\u2014apart from the citizen of Swindon bit and anyone with a telephone directory could find that out\u2014and listen, you knew I was an apprentice so I had to be taking my finals sooner or later!\"\n\nThey stopped cackling and looked at one another. The first witch drew a large pocket watch from the folds of her tatty cloak and looked at it carefully.\n\n\"Give it ye time, imperfect waiter!\" she cried. \"All hail MsNext! Beware, beware the thrice-read rule!\"\n\n\"All hail MsNext! Exempted from I before E except after C rule Reigate is!\" cackled the second.\n\n\"All hail MsNext!\" added the third, who clearly didn't want to be left out. \"Meet a king but not be one, read a King but not visit one\u2014\"\n\n\"Shoo!\" shouted a loud voice behind me. The three witches stopped and stared at the new visitor crossly. He was an old man whose weathered face looked as though it had been gnarled by years of adventuring across the globe. He wore a blue blazer over a polo-neck Aran sweater, and on his head a captain's cap sat above his lined features, a few wisps of gray hair showing from underneath the sweatband. His eyes sparkled with life and a grimace cracked his craggy features as he walked along the path towards us. It could only be Captain Nemo.\n\n\"Away with you, crones!\" he cried. \"Peddle your wares elsewhere!\"\n\nHe would probably have beaten them with the stout branch he was brandishing had the witches not taken fright and vanished in a thunderclap of sound, cauldron and all.\n\n\"Hah!\" said Nemo, throwing the branch towards where they had been. \"Next time I will make mincemeat of you, foul dissemblers of nature with your 'hail this' and your 'hail that'!\"\n\nHe looked at me accusingly. \"Did you give them any money?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Truthfully now! Did you give them anything at all?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Good, never give them any money. It only encourages them. They'll coax you in with their fancy prophecies\u2014suggest you'll have a new car, and as soon as you start thinking you might need one\u2014bang!\u2014they're offering you loans and insurance and other unwanted financial services. Poor old Macbeth took it a bit too seriously\u2014all they were trying to do was sell him a mortgage and insurance on a bigger castle\u2014when the Birnam wood and 'no woman born' stuff all came true, the witches were as surprised as anyone. So never fall for their little scams\u2014it'll drain your wallet before you know it. Who are you, anyway?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next. I'm standing in for\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he muttered thoughtfully. \"The Outlander. Tell me, how do escalators work? Do they have one long staircase that is wound up on a huge drum and then rewound every night, or are they a continuous belt that just goes round and round?\"\n\n\"An\u2014um\u2014continuous belt.\"\n\n\"Really?\" he replied reflectively. \"I've always wondered that. Welcome to Caversham Heights. I am Captain Nemo. I have some coffee on the stove\u2014I wonder whether you would do me the honor of your company?\"\n\nI thanked him and we continued to walk along the lake's edge.\n\n\"A beautiful morning, would you not agree?\" he asked, sweeping a hand towards the lake and the puffy clouds.\n\n\"It usually is.\"\n\n\"For a terrestrial view it is almost passable,\" added Nemo quickly. \"It is nothing but a passing fancy to the beauty of the deep, but in retirement, we all have to make sacrifices.\"\n\n\"I have read your book many times,\" I said as courteously as I could, \"and have found much pleasure in its narrative.\"\n\n\"Jules Verne was not simply my author but also a good friend,\" said Nemo sadly. \"I was sorrowful on his passing, an emotion I do not share with many others of my kind.\"\n\nWe had arrived at Nemo's home. No longer the sleek and dangerous craft from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the riveted iron submarine was a shabby wreck streaked with rust, a thick green line of algae growing on the glass of the two large viewing windows. She belonged to a redolent age of high technological expectation. She was the Nautilus.\n\nWe made our way up the gangplank and Nemo helped me aboard.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, walking down the outer casing to the small conning tower, where he had set up a chair and a table upon which stood a glass hookah. He pulled up another folding chair and bid me sit down.\n\n\"You are here, like me,\" he asked, \"resting\u2014between engagements?\"\n\n\"Maternity leave\u2014of a sort.\"\n\n\"Of these matters I know nothing,\" he said gravely, pouring out a cup of coffee; the porcelain was White Star Line.\n\nI took a sip and accepted the proffered biscuit. The coffee was excellent.\n\n\"Good, is it not?\" he asked, a smile upon his lips.\n\n\"Indeed! Better than I have ever tasted. What is it?\"\n\n\"From the Guiana Basin, an area of sea scattered with subterranean mountains and hills every bit as beautiful as the Andes. In a deep valley in this region I discovered an aquatic plant whose seeds, when dried and ground, make a coffee to match any that land can offer.\"\n\nHis face fell for a moment and he looked into his cup, swirling the brown liquid around.\n\n\"As soon as this coffee is drunk, that will be the end of it. I have been moved around the Well of Lost Plots for almost a century now. I was to be in a sequel, you know\u2014Jules Verne had written half of it when he died. The manuscript, alas, was thrown out after his death, and destroyed. I appealed to the Council of Genres against the enforced demolition order, and I\u2014and the Nautilus of course\u2014were reprieved.\"\n\nHe sighed. \"We have survived numerous moves from book to book within the Well. Now, as you see, I am marooned here. The voltaic piles, the source of the Nautilus's power, are almost worn out. The sodium, which I extract from seawater, is exhausted. For many years I have been the subject of a preservation order, but preservation without expenditure is worthless. The Nautilus needs only a few thousand words to be as good as new\u2014yet I have no money, nor influence. I am only an eccentric loner awaiting a sequel that I fear will never be written.\"\n\n\"I\u2014I wish I could do something,\" I replied, \"but Jurisfiction only keeps fiction in order\u2014it does not dictate policy nor choose which books are to be written. You have, I trust, advertised yourself?\"\n\n\"For many years. Here, see for yourself.\"\n\nHe handed me a copy of The Word. The Situations Sought page took up half the newspaper and I read where Nemo pointed.\n\nEccentric and autocratic sea dog (ex-Verne) requires exciting and morally superior tale to exercise knowledge of the oceans and discuss man's place within his environment. French spoken, has own submarine. Apply: Captain Nemo, c/o Caversham Heights, Subbasement Six, WOLP.\n\n\"Every week for over a century,\" he grumbled, \"but not one sensible offer.\"\n\nI doubted that his idea of a sensible offer would be like anyone else's\u201420,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a tough act to follow.\n\n\"You have read Caversham Heights?\" he asked.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Then you will know that the scrapping is not only inevitable, but quite necessary. When the book goes to the breakers yard, I will not apply for a transfer. The Nautilus\u2014and I, too\u2014will be broken down into text\u2014and long do I wish for it!\"\n\nHe scowled at the floor and poured another cup of coffee.\n\n\"Unless,\" he added, suddenly perking up, \"you thought I should have the advert in a box, with a picture? It costs extra but it might make it more eye-catching.\"\n\n\"It is worth a try, of course.\"\n\nNemo rose to his feet and went below without another word. I thought he might return, but after twenty minutes had elapsed I decided to go home. I was ambling back along the lakeside path when I got a call from Havisham on the footnoterphone.\n\n\"As always, Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"Perkins must be annoyed about that,\" I said, thinking, what with grammasites, a Minotaur, Yahoos and a million or two rabbits, life in the bestiary must be something of a handful.\n\n\"I'm on my way.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Minotaur Trouble",
                "text": "\u2002TravelBook: Standard-issue equipment to all Jurisfiction agents, the dimensionally ambivalent TravelBook contains information, tips, maps, recipes and extracts from popular or troublesome novels to enable speedier transbook travel. It also contains numerous Juris Tech gadgets for more specialized tasks such as an MV Mask, TextMarker and Eject-O-Hat. The TravelBook's cover is readlocked to each individual operative and contains as standard an emergency alert and autodestruct mechanism.\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\nI read myself into the Well and was soon in an elevator, heading up towards the library. I had bought a copy of The Word; the front page led with \"Nursery Rhyme Characters to Go on Indefinite Strike.\" Farther down, the previous night's attack on Heathcliff had been reported. It added that a terror group calling itself the Great Danes had also threatened to kill him\u2014they wanted Hamlet to win this year's Most Troubled Romantic Lead BookWorld Award and would do anything to achieve this. I turned to page two and found a large article extolling the virtues of Ultra Word\u2122 with an open letter from Text Grand Central explaining how nothing would change and all jobs and privileges would be protected.\n\nThe elevator stopped on the first floor; I quickly made my way to Sense and Sensibility and read myself in. The crowd were still outside the doors of Norland Park, this time with tents, a brass band and a metal brazier burning scrap wood. As soon as they saw me a chant went up:\n\n\"We need a break, we need a break...\"\n\nA tired-looking woman with an inordinate amount of children gave me a leaflet.\n\n\"Three hundred and twentyfive years I've been doing this job,\" she said, \"without even so much as a weekend off!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"We don't want pity,\" said Solomon Grundy, who, what with it being a Saturday, wasn't looking too healthy, \"we want action. Oral traditionalists should be allowed the same rights as any other fictioneers.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said a young lad carrying a bucket with his head wrapped in brown paper, \"no amount of money can compensate the brotherhood for the inconvenience caused by repetitive retellings. However, we would like to make the following demands: One, that all nursery rhyme characters are given immediate leave of absence for a two-week period. Two, that\u2014\"\n\n\"Really,\" I interrupted him, \"you're talking to the wrong person. I'm only an apprentice. Jurisfiction has no power to dictate policy anyway\u2014you need to speak to the Council of Genres.\"\n\n\"The Council sent us to talk to TGC, who referred us to the Great Panjandrum,\" said Humpty-Dumpty to a chorus of vigorous head-nodding, \"but no one seems to know if he\u2014or she\u2014even exists.\"\n\n\"If you've never seen him, he probably doesn't exist,\" said Little Jack Horner. \"Pie anyone?\"\n\n\"I've never seen Vincent Price,\" I observed, \"but I know he exists.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"An actor,\" I explained, feeling somewhat foolish. \"Back home.\"\n\nHumpty-Dumpty narrowed his eyes suspiciously. \"You're talking complete Lear, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"King?\"\n\n\"No. Edward.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Mongoose!\" yelled Humpty, drawing a small revolver and throwing himself on to the ground where, unluckily for him, there just happened to be a muddy puddle.\n\n\"You're mistaken,\" explained Grundy wearily, \"it's a guide dog. Put the gun away before you hurt yourself.\"\n\n\"A guide dog?\" repeated Humpty, slowly getting to his feet. \"You're sure?\"\n\n\"Have you spoken to WordMaster Libris?\" I asked. \"We all know he exists.\"\n\n\"He won't speak to us,\" said Humpty-Dumpty, wiping his face with a large handkerchief. \"The oral tradition is unaffected by the Ultra Word\u2122 upgrade, so he doesn't think we're that important. If we don't negotiate a few rights before the new system comes in, we won't ever get any!\"\n\n\"Libris won't even speak to you?\" I repeated.\n\n\"He sends us notes,\" squeaked the oldest of three mice, all of whom had no tails, held a white cane in one hand and a golden retriever in the other. \"He says that he is very busy but will give our concerns his 'fullest attention.'\"\n\n\"What's going on?\" squeaked one of the other mice. \"Is that Miss Next?\"\n\n\"It's a brush-off,\" said Grundy again. \"Unless we get an answer soon, there won't be a single nursery rhyme anywhere, either spoken or read! We're going on a forty-eight-hour stoppage from midnight. When parents can't remember the words to our rhymes, the fur will really fly, I can promise you that!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I began again, \"I have no authority\u2014I can't do anything\u2014\"\n\n\"Then just take this to WordMaster Libris?\"\n\nHumpty-Dumpty handed me a list of demands, neatly written on a page of foolscap paper. The crowd grew suddenly silent. A sea of eyes, all blinking expectantly, were directed at me.\n\n\"I promise nothing,\" I said, taking the piece of paper, \"but if I see Libris, I will give this to him\u2014okay?\"\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" said Humpty. \"At last someone from Jurisfiction will listen!\"\n\nI turned away and overheard Humpty say to Grundy, \"Well, I thought that went pretty well, don't you?\"\n\nI walked briskly up the front steps of Norland Park, where I was admitted by the same froglike footman I had seen on my first visit. I crossed the hall and entered the ballroom. Miss Havisham was at her desk with Akrid Snell, who was talking into the footnoterphone. Standing next to them was Bradshaw, who had not retired as promised, filling out a form with the Bellman, who appeared grave. The only other occupant of the room was Harris Tweed, who was reading a report. He looked up as I entered, said nothing and continued reading. Miss Havisham was studying some photographs as I approached.\n\n\"Damn and blast!\" she said, looking at one before tossing it over her shoulder and staring at the next. \"Pathetic!\" she muttered, looking at another. \"Derisive!\"\n\n\"Perkins?\" I asked, sitting down.\n\n\"Speed-camera pictures back from the labs,\" she said, handing them over. \"I thought I would have topped one hundred and sixty, but look, well\u2014it's pitiful, that's what it is!\"\n\nI looked. The speed camera had caught the Higham Special but recorded only a top speed of 152.76 mph\u2014but what was worse, it showed Mr. Toad traveling at over 180\u2014and he had even raised his hat at the speed camera as he went past.\n\n\"I managed a hundred and seventy when I tried it on the M4,\" she said sadly. \"Trouble is, I need a longer stretch of road\u2014or sand. Well, can't be helped now. The car has been sold. I'll have to go cap in hand to Sir Malcolm if I want to get a shot at beating Toad.\"\n\n\"Norland Park to Perkins,\" said Snell into the footnoterphone, \"come in please. Over.\"\n\nI looked at Havisham.\n\n\"No answer for almost six hours,\" she said. \"Mathias isn't answering, either\u2014we got a Yahoo once but you might as well talk to Mrs. Bennett. What's that?\"\n\n\"It's a list of demands from the nurseries outside.\"\n\n\"Rabble,\" replied Havisham, \"all of them replaceable. How hard can it be, appearing in a series of rhyming couplets? If they don't watch themselves, they'll be replaced by scab Generics from the Well. It happened when the Amalgamated Union of Gateway Guardians struck in 1932. They never learn.\"\n\n\"All they want is a holiday\u2014\"\n\n\"I shouldn't concern yourself with nursery politics, Miss Next,\" said Havisham so sharply I jumped.\n\n\"Good work on the ProCath attack,\" announced Tweed, who had walked over. \"I've had a word with Plum over at JurisTech; he's going to extend the footnoterphone network to cover more of Wuthering Heights\u2014we shouldn't have a problem with mobilefootnoterphones dropping out again.\"\n\n\"We'd better not,\" replied Miss Havisham coldly. \"Lose Heathcliff and the Council of Genres will have our colons for garters. Now, to work. We don't know what to expect in the bestiary, so we have to be prepared.\"\n\n\"Like Boy Scouts?\"\n\n\"Can't stand them, but that's beside the point. Turn to page seven hundred eighty-nine in your TravelBook.\"\n\nI did as she bid. This was an area of the book where the pages contained gadgets in hollowed-out recesses deeper than the book was thick. One page contained a device similar to a flare gun that had Mk IV TextMarker written on its side. Another page had a glass panel covering a handle like a fire alarm. A note painted on the glass read, IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS. The page Havisham had indicated was neither of these; page 789 contained a brown homburg hat. Hanging from the brim was a large red toggle with In emergency pull down sharply written on it. There was also a chin strap, something I've never seen on a homburg before\u2014or even a fedora or trilby, come to that.\n\nHavisham took the hat from my hands and gave me a brief induction course: \"This is the Martin-Bacon Mk VII Eject-O-Hat, for high-speed evacuation from a book. Takes you straight out in an emergency.\"\n\n\"Where to?\"\n\n\"A little-known novel entitled The Middle of Next Week. You can make your way out to the library at leisure. But be warned: the jump can be painful, even fatal\u2014so it should only be used as a last resort. Remember to keep the chin strap tight or it'll take your ears off during the ejection sequence. I will say 'Jump!' twice\u2014by the third I will have gone. Any questions?\"\n\n\"How does it work?\"\n\n\"I'll rephrase that\u2014any questions I can possibly hope to answer?\"\n\n\"Does this mean we'll see Bradshaw without his pith helmet?\"\n\n\"Ha-ha!\" laughed Bradshaw, releasing the toggle from the brim. \"I have the smaller Mk XII version\u2014it could be fitted into a beret or a veil, if we so wished.\"\n\nI picked up the homburg from the table and put it on.\n\n\"What are you expecting?\" I asked slightly nervously, adjusting the chin strap.\n\n\"We think the Minotaur has escaped,\" Havisham answered gravely. \"If it has and we meet it, just pull the cord as quick as you can\u2014it always takes at least ten to twelve words to initiate a jump\u2014you could be Minotaur appetizer by that time.\"\n\nI pulled out my automatic to check it, but Bradshaw shook his head. \"Your Outlander lead will not be enough.\" He held up the box of cartridges he had signed for. \"Boojum-tipped,\" he explained, tapping the large hunting rifle he was carrying, \"for total annihilation. Back to text in under a second. We call them eraserheads. Snell? Are you ready?\"\n\nSnell had a fedora version of the Eject-O-Hat, which suited his trench coat a bit better. He grunted but didn't look up. This assignment was personal. Perkins was his partner\u2014not just at Jurisfiction but in the Perkins & Snell series of detective novels. If Perkins was hurt in some way, the future could be bleak. Generics could be trained to take over a vacated part, but it's never the same.\n\n\"Okay,\" said Havisham, adjusting her own homburg, \"we're out of here. Hold on to me, Next\u2014if we are split up, we'll meet at the gatehouse\u2014no one enters the castle without Bradshaw, okay?\"\n\nEveryone agreed and Havisham mumbled to herself the code word and some of the text of The Sword of the Zenobians.\n\nPretty soon Norland Park had vanished and the bright sun of Zenobia greeted us. The grass was springy underfoot and herds of unicorns grazed peacefully beside the river. Grammasites wheeled in the blue skies, riding the thermals that rose from the warm grassland.\n\n\"Everyone here?\" asked Havisham.\n\nBradshaw, Snell, and I nodded our heads. We walked in silence, past the bridge, up to the old gatehouse and across the drawbridge. A dark shadow leaped from a corner of the deserted guardroom, but before Bradshaw could fire, Havisham yelled, \"Wait!\" and he stopped. It was a Yahoo\u2014but he hadn't come to throw his shit about\u2014he was running away in terror.\n\nBradshaw and Havisham exchanged nervous looks and we moved closer to where Perkins and Mathias had been doing their work. The door was broken and the hinges had vanished, replaced by two very light burn marks.\n\n\"Hold it!\" said Bradshaw, pointing at the hinges. \"Did Perkins hold any vyrus on the premises?\"\n\nFor a moment I didn't understand why Bradshaw was asking this question, but realization slowly dawned upon me. He meant the mispeling vyrus. The hinges had become singes.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"a small jar\u2014well shielded by dictionaries.\"\n\nThere was a strange and pregnant pause. The danger was real and clear, and even seasoned PROs like Bradshaw and Havisham were thinking twice about entering Perkins's lab.\n\n\"What do you think?\" asked Bradshaw.\n\n\"Vyrus and a Minotaur,\" sighed Havisham. \"We need more than the four of us.\"\n\n\"I'm going in,\" said Snell, pulling the MV mask from his TravelBook. The device was made of rubber and similar to the gas respirator I had worn in the Crimea\u2014only with a dictionary on the side where the filter would have been. It wasn't just one dictionary, either\u2014the Lavinia-Webster had been taped back to back with the Oxford English Dictionary.\n\n\"Don't forget your carrot,\" said Havisham, pinning a vegetable to the front of his jacket.\n\n\"I'll need the rifle,\" said Snell.\n\n\"No,\" replied Bradshaw, \"I signed for it, so I'm keeping it.\"\n\n\"This is not the time for sticking to the rules, Bradshaw, my partner's in there!\"\n\n\"This is exactly the time we should stick to the rules, Snell.\"\n\nThey stared at one another.\n\n\"Then I'll go alone,\" replied Snell with finality, pulling the mask down over his face and releasing the safety on his automatic.\n\nHavisham caught his elbow as she rummaged in her TravelBook for her own mask. \"We go together or not at all, Akrid.\"\n\nI found the correct page for the mask, pulled it out of its slot and put it on under the Eject-O-Hat. Miss Havisham pinned a carrot to my jacket, too.\n\n\"A carrot is the best litmus test for the mispeling vyrus,\" she said, helping Bradshaw on with his mask. \"As soon as the carrot comes into contact with the vyrus, it will start to mispel into parrot. You need to be out before it can talk. We have a saying: 'When you can hear Polly, use the brolly.' \" She tapped the toggle of the Eject-O-Hat. \"Understand?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Good. Bradshaw, lead the way!\"\n\nWe stepped carefully across the door with its mispeled hinges, and into the lab, which was in chaotic disorder. Mispeling was merely an annoyance to readers\u2014but inside the BookWorld it was a menace. The mispeling was the effect of sense distortion, not the cause\u2014once the internal meaning of a word started to break down, then the mispeling arose merely as a result of this. Unmispeling the word at TGC might work if the vyrus hadn't taken a strong hold, but usually it was pointless; like making the beds in a burning house.\n\nThe interior of the laboratory was heavily disrupted. On the far wall the shelves were filled with a noisy company of featherbound rooks; we stepped forward onto the fattened tarpit only to see that the imposing table in the center of the room was now an enormous label. The glass apparatus had become grass asparagus, and worst of all, Mathias the talking horse was simply a large model house\u2014like a doll's house but much more detailed. Miss Havisham looked at me and pointed to her carrot. Already it was starting to change color\u2014I could see tinges of red, yellow and blue.\n\n\"Carefool,\" said Snell, \"look!\"\n\nOn the floor next to more shards of broken grass was a small layer of the same purple mist I had seen the last time I was here. The area of the floor touched by the vyrus was constantly changing meaning, texture, color and appearance.\n\n\"Where waz the Minotour kept?\" asked Havisham, her carrot beginning to sprout a small beak.\n\nI pointed the way and Bradshaw took the lead. I pulled out my gun, despite Bradshaw's assurances that it was a waste of time, and he gently pushed the door open to the vault beneath the old hall. Snell snapped on a torch and flicked it within the chamber. The door to the Minotaur's cage was open, but of the beast, there was no sign. I wish I could have said the same for Perkins. He\u2014or what was left of him\u2014was lying on the stone floor. The Minotaur had devoured him up to his chest. His spine had been picked clean and the lower part of a leg had been thrown to one side. I choked at the sight and felt a knot rise in my throat. Bradshaw cursed low and turned to cover the doorway. Snell dropped to his knees to close Perkins's eyes, which were staring off into space, a look of fear still etched upon his features. Miss Havisham laid a hand on Snell's shoulder.\n\n\"I'm so sory, Akrid. Perkins wos a good man.\"\n\n\"I can't beleive he wood have been sew stewpid,\" muttered Snell angrily.\n\n\"We shood be leaving,\" said Bradshaw, \"now we kno there is definitly a Minotour loose, we must come bak beter armed and with more peeple!\"\n\nSnell got up. Behind his MV Mask I could see tears in his eyes. Miss Havisham looked at me and pointed to her carrot, which had started to sprout feathers. A proper cleanup gang would be needed. Snell placed his jacket over Perkins and joined us as Bradshaw led the way out.\n\n\"Bak to Norland, yes?\"\n\n\"I've hunted Minotour befour,\" said Bradshaw, his instincts alerted, \"Stalingrad, 1944. They neffer stray far from the kil.\"\n\n\"Bradshore\u2014!\" urged Miss Havisham, but the commander wasn't the sort to take orders from another, not even someone as forthright as Havisham.\n\n\"I don't git it,\" murmured Snell, stopping for a moment and staring at the chaos within the laboratory and the small glob of purple mist on the floor. \"Their just isn't enuff vyrus here to corze the problims we've seen.\"\n\n\"Wot are U saying?\" I asked.\n\nBradshaw looked carefully out of the open door, indicated all was clear and beckoned for us to leave.\n\n\"There mite be some moor vyrus around,\" continued Snell. \"Wot's in this cuppboard?\"\n\nHe strode towards a small wooden cabinet that had telephone directory pages pasted all over it.\n\n\"Wate!\" cried Bradshaw, striding from the other side of the room. \"Let me.\"\n\nHe grasped the handle as a thought struck me. They weren't telephone directory pages, they were from a dictionary. The door was shielded.\n\nI shouted but it was too late. Bradshaw opened the cupboard and was bathed in a faint purple light. The cabinet contained two dozen or so broken jars, all of which leaked the pestilential vyrus.\n\n\"Ahh!\" he cried, staggering backwards and dropping his gum as the carrot transformed into a loud parrot. Bradshaw, his actions instinctive after years of training, pulled the cord on his Eject-O-Hat and vanished with a loud bang.\n\nThe room mutated as the mispeling got a hold. The floor buckled and softened into flour, the walls changed into balls. I looked across at Havisham. Her carrot was a parrot, too\u2014it had hopped to her other shoulder and was looking at me with its head cocked to one side.\n\n\"Go, go!\" she yelled at me, pulling the cord and vanishing like Bradshaw before her. I grasped the handle and pulled\u2014but it came off in my hand. I threw it to the ground, where it became a candle.\n\n\"Hear,\" said Snell, removing his own Eject-O-Hat, \"use myne.\"\n\n\"Bat the vyruz!\"\n\n\"Hange the vyruz, Neckts\u2014jist go!\"\n\nHe did not look at me again. He just walked towards the cupboard with the broken jars and slowly closed the door, his hands morphing into lands\u2014complete with miniature trees, forests and hills\u2014as he touched the raw power of the vyrus. I ran outside, casting off the now useless hat and attempting to clip on the chin strap of Snell's. It wasn't easy. I caught my foot on a piece of half-buried masonry and fell headlong\u2014to land within three paces of two large cloven hooves.\n\nI looked up. The Minotaur was semicrouched on his muscular haunches, ready to jump. His bull's head was large and sat heavily on his body\u2014what neck he did have was hidden beneath taut muscle. Within his mouth two rows of fine-pointed teeth were shiny with saliva, and his sharpened horns pointed forward, ready to attack. Five years eating nothing but yogurt. You might as well feed a tiger on Ryvita.\n\n\"Nice Minotaur,\" I said soothingly, slowly reaching for my automatic, which had fallen on the grass beside me, \"good Minotaur.\"\n\nHe took a step closer, his hooves making deep impressions in the grass. He stared at me and breathed out heavily through his nostrils, blowing tendrils of mucus into the air. He took another step, his deep-set yellow eyes staring into mine with an expression of loathing. My hand closed around the butt of my automatic as the Minotaur bent closer and put out a large clawed hand. I moved the gun slowly towards me as the Minotaur reached down and\u2014picked up Snell's hat. He turned it over in his claws and licked the brim with a tongue the size of my forearm. I had seen enough. I leveled my automatic and pulled the trigger at the same time as the Minotaur's clawed hand caught in the toggle and activated the Eject-O-Hat. The mythological man-beast vanished with a loud detonation as my gun went off, the shot whistling harmlessly through the air.\n\nI breathed a sigh of relief but quickly rolled aside because, with a loud whooshing noise, a packing case fell from the heavens and landed with a crash right where I had lain. The case had Property of Jurisfiction stenciled on it and had split open to reveal\u2014dictionaries. Another case landed close by, then a third and a fourth. Before I had time to even begin to figure out what was happening, Bradshaw had reappeared.\n\n\"Why didn't you jump, you litle fool?\"\n\n\"My hat failed!\"\n\n\"And Snell?\"\n\n\"Insyde.\"\n\nBradshaw pulled on his MV Mask and rushed off into the building as I took refuge from the packing cases of dictionaries that were falling with increased rapidity. Harris Tweed appeared and barked orders at the small army of Mrs. Danvers that had materialized with him. They were all wearing identical black dresses high-buttoned to the collar, which only served to make their pale skin seem even whiter, their hollow eyes more sinister. They moved slowly but purposefully, and began to stack, one by one, the dictionaries against the castle keep.\n\n\"Where's the Minotaur?\" asked Havisham, who suddenly appeared close by.\n\nI told her he had ejected with Snell's fedora and she vanished without another word.\n\nBradshaw reappeared from the keep, dragging Snell behind him. The rubber on Akrid's MV Mask had turned to blubber, his suit to soot. Bradshaw removed him from Sword of the Zenobians to the Jurisfiction sick bay just as Miss Havisham returned. We watched together as the stacked dictionaries rose around the remains of Perkins's laboratory, twenty feet thick at the base, rising to a dome like a sugarloaf over the castle keep. It might have taken a long time but there were many Mrs. Danvers, they were highly organized and they had an inexhaustible supply of dictionaries.\n\n\"Find the Minotaur?\" I asked Havisham.\n\n\"Long gon. There will be hell to pay about this, I assure you!\"\n\nWhen our carrots had returned to being crunchy vegetables, and the last vestiges of parrotness had been removed, Havisham and I pulled off our vyrus masks and tossed them in a heap\u2014the dictionary filters were almost worn out.\n\n\"What happens now?\" I asked.\n\n\"It is torched,\" replied Tweed, who was close by, \"it is the only way to destroy the vyrus.\"\n\n\"What about the evidence?\" I asked.\n\n\"Evidence?\" echoed Tweed. \"Evidence of what?\"\n\n\"Perkins,\" I replied. \"We don't know the full details of his death.\"\n\n\"I think we can safely say he was killed and eaten by the Minotaur,\" said Tweed, borrowing Havisham's not-to-be-questioned voice. \"It's too dangerous to go back in, even if we wanted to. I'd rather torch this now than risk spreading the vyrus and having to demolish the whole book and everything in it\u2014do you know how many creatures live in here?\"\n\nHe lit a flare.\n\n\"You'd better stand clear.\"\n\nThe DanverClones were leaving now, vanishing with a faint pop, back to wherever they had been pulled from. Bradshaw and I withdrew as Tweed threw the flare on the pile of dictionaries. They burst into flames and were soon so hot that we had to withdraw to the gatehouse, the black smoke that billowed into the sky taking with it the remnants of the vyrus\u2014and the evidence of Perkins's murder. Because I was sure it was murder. When we had walked into the Minotaur's vault, I had noticed that the key was missing from its hook. Someone had let the Minotaur out."
            },
            {
                "title": "Snell Rest in Peece and Lucy Deane",
                "text": "\u2002I didn't notice it straightaway but Vernham, Nelly and Lucy all had the same surname: Deane. They weren't related. In the Outland this happens all the time, but in fiction it is rare; the problem is aggressively attacked by the echolocators (qv), who insist that no two people in the same book have the same name. I learned years later that Hemingway once wrote a book that was demolished because he insisted that every single one of the eight characters was named Gordon.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nThe minotaur had given Havisham the slip and was last seen heading towards the works of Zane Grey; the semibovine wasn't stupid\u2014he knew we'd have trouble finding him amidst a cattle drive. Snell lasted another three hours. He was kept in an isolation tent made of fine plastic sheeting that had been overprinted with pages from the Oxford English Dictionary. We were in the sick bay of the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group. At the first sign of any deviant mispeling, thousands of these volumes were shipped to the infected book and set up as barrages either side of the chapter. The barrage was then moved in, paragraph by paragraph, until the vyrus was forced into a single sentence, then word, then smothered completely. Fire was not an option in a published work; they had tried it once in Samuel Pepys's Diary and burnt down half of London.\n\n\"Does he have any family?\" I asked.\n\n\"Snell was a loner detective, Miss Next,\" explained the doctor. \"Perkins was his only family.\"\n\n\"Is it safe to go up to him?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014but be prepared for some mispelings.\"\n\nI sat by his bed while Havisham stood and spoke quietly with the doctor. Snell lay on his back and was breathing with small, shallow gasps, the pulse on his neck racing\u2014it wouldn't be long before the vyrus took him away and he knew it. I leaned closer and held his hand through the sheeting. His complexion was pail, his breething labored, his skein covered in painful and unsightly green pastilles. As I wotched, his dry slips tried to foam worlds but all he could torque was ninsense.\n\n\"Thirsty!\" he squeeked. \"Wode\u2014Cone, udder whirled\u2014doughnut Trieste\u2014!\"\n\nHe grisped my arm with his fungers, made one last stringled cry before feeling bakwards, his life force deported from his pathotic mispeled boddy.\n\n\"He was a fine operative,\" said Havisham as the doctor pulled a sheep over his head.\n\n\"What will happen to the Perkins and Snell series?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" she replied softly. \"Demolished\u2014saved with new Generics\u2014I don't know.\"\n\n\"What ho!\" exclaimed Bradshaw, appearing from nowhere. \"Is he\u2014?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" replied Havisham.\n\n\"One of the best,\" murmured Bradshaw sadly. \"When they made Snell, they threw away the mold.\"\n\n\"I hope not,\" added Havisham. \"If we do replace him, it might make things a bit tricky.\"\n\n\"Figure of speech,\" countered Bradshaw. \"Did he say anything before he died?\"\n\n\"Nothing coherent.\"\n\n\"Hmm. The Bellman wanted a report on his death as soon as possible. What do you think?\"\n\nHe handed Havisham a sheet of paper, and she read:\n\n\"'Minotaur escapes, finds captor, eats captor, captor dies. Horse mispeled in struggle. Colleague dies attempting rescue. Minotaur escapes.'\"\n\nShe turned over the piece of paper, but it was blank on the other side.\n\n\"That's it?\"\n\n\"I didn't want it to get boring,\" replied Bradshaw, \"and the Bellman wanted it as simple as possible. I think he's got Libris breathing down his neck. The investigation of a Jurisfiction agent so close to the launch of Ultra Word\u2122 will make the Council of Genres jittery as hell.\"\n\nMiss Havisham handed the report back to Bradshaw. \"Perhaps, Commander, you should lose that report in the pending tray for a bit.\"\n\n\"This sort of stuff happens in fiction all the time,\" he replied. \"Do you have any evidence that it was not accidental?\"\n\n\"The key to the padlock wasn't on its hook,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Well spotted,\" replied Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Skulduggery?\" Bradshaw hissed excitedly.\n\n\"I fervently hope not,\" she returned. \"Just delay the findings for a few days\u2014we should see if Miss Next's observational skills hold up to scrutiny.\"\n\n\"Righty-o!\" replied Bradshaw. \"I'll see what I can do!\"\n\nAnd he vanished. We were left alone in the corridor, the bunk beds of the DanverClones stretching off to the distance in both directions.\n\n\"It might be nothing, Miss Havisham, but\u2014\"\n\nShe put her fingers to her lips. Havisham's eyes, usually resolute and fixed, had, for a brief moment, seemed troubled. I said nothing but inwardly I felt worried. Up until now I had thought Havisham feared nothing.\n\nShe looked at her watch. \"Go to the bun shop in Little Dorrit, would you? I'll have a doughnut and a coffee. Put it on my tab and get something for yourself.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Where shall we meet?\"\n\n\"Mill on the Floss, page five hundred twenty-three in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\"Assignment?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she replied, deep in thought. \"Some damn meddling fool told Lucy Deane that Stephen and not Philip will be boating with Maggie\u2014she may try to stop them. Twenty minutes and not the jam doughnuts, the ones with the pink icing, yes?\"\n\nThirty-two minutes later I was inside Mill on the Floss, on the banks of a river next to Miss Havisham, who was observing a couple in a boat. The woman was dark-skinned with a jet-black coronet of hair. She was lying on a cloak with a parasol above her as a man rowed her gently downriver. He was of perhaps five-and-twenty years old, quite striking, and with short dark hair that stood erect, not unlike a crop of corn. They were talking earnestly to each other. I passed Miss Havisham a cup of coffee and a paper bag full of doughnuts.\n\n\"Stephen and Maggie?\" I asked, indicating the couple as we walked along the path by the river.\n\n\"Yes,\" she replied. \"As you know, Lucy and Stephen are a hairsbreadth from engagement. Stephen and Maggie's indiscretion in this boat causes Lucy Deane no end of distress. I told you to get the ones with pink icing.\"\n\n\"They'd run out.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\nWe kept a wary eye on the couple in the boat as I tried to remember what actually happened in Mill on the Floss.\n\n\"They agree to elope, don't they?\"\n\n\"Agree to\u2014but don't. Stephen is being an idiot and Maggie should know better. Lucy is meant to be shopping in Lindum with her father and Aunt Tulliver, but she gave them the slip an hour ago.\"\n\nWe walked on for a few more minutes. The story seemed to be following the correct path with no intervention of Lucy's we could see. Although we couldn't make out the words, the sound of Maggie's and Stephen's voices carried across the water.\n\nMiss Havisham took a bite of her doughnut.\n\n\"I noticed the missing key, too,\" she said after a pause. \"It was pushed under a workbench. It was murder. Murder... by Minotaur.\"\n\nShe shivered.\n\n\"Why didn't you tell Bradshaw?\" I asked. \"Surely the murder of a Jurisfiction operative warrants an investigation?\"\n\nShe stared at me hard and then looked at the couple in the boat again.\n\n\"You don't understand, do you? The Sword of the Zenobians is code-word-protected.\"\n\n\"Only Jurisfiction agents can get in and out,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Whoever killed Perkins and Mathias was Jurisfiction, and that's what frightens me. A rogue agent.\"\n\nWe walked in silence, digesting this information.\n\n\"But why would anyone want to kill Perkins and a talking horse?\"\n\n\"I think Mathias just got in the way.\"\n\n\"And Perkins?\"\n\n\"Not just Perkins. Whoever killed him tried to get someone else that day.\"\n\nI thought for a moment and a sudden chill came over me.\n\n\"My Eject-O-Hat. It failed.\"\n\nMiss Havisham produced the homburg from a carrier bag, slightly squashed from where several Mrs. Danvers had trodden on it. The frayed cord looked as though it might have been cut.\n\n\"Take this to Professor Plum at Juris Tech and have him look at it. I'd like to be sure.\"\n\n\"But... but why am I a threat?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" admitted Miss Havisham. \"You are the most junior member of Jurisfiction and arguably the least threatening\u2014you can't even bookjump without moving your lips, for goodness' sake!\"\n\nI didn't need reminding, but I saw her point.\n\n\"So what happens now?\" I asked at length.\n\n\"We have to assume whoever killed Snell might try again. You are to be on your guard. Wait\u2014there she is!\"\n\nWe had walked over a small rise and were slightly ahead of the boat. A young woman was lying on the ground in a most unladylike fashion, pointing a sniper's rifle towards the small skiff that had just come into view. I crept cautiously forward; she was so intent on her task that she didn't notice me until I was close enough to grab her. She was a slight thing, and her strugglings, whilst energetic, were soon overcome. I secured her in an armlock as Havisham unloaded the rifle. Maggie and Stephen, unaware of the danger, drifted softly past on their way to Mudport.\n\n\"Where did you get this?\" asked Havisham, holding up the rifle.\n\n\"I don't have to say anything,\" replied the angelic-looking girl in a soft voice. \"I was only going to knock a hole in the boat, honestly I was!\"\n\n\"Sure you were. You can let go, Thursday.\"\n\nI relaxed my grip and the girl stepped back, pulling at her clothes to straighten them after our brief tussle. I checked her for any other weapons but found nothing.\n\n\"Why should Maggie force a wedge between our happiness?\" she demanded angrily. \"Everything would be so wonderful between my darling Stephen and I\u2014why am I the victim? I, who only wanted to do good and help everyone\u2014especially Maggie!\"\n\n\"It's called drama,\" replied Havisham wearily. \"Are you going to tell us where you got the rifle or not?\"\n\n\"Not. You can't stop me. Maybe they'll get away, but I can be here ready and waiting on the next reading\u2014or even the one after that! Think you have enough Jurisfiction agents to put Maggie under constant protection?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry you feel that way,\" replied Miss Havisham, looking her squarely in the eye. \"Is that your final word?\"\n\n\"It is.\"\n\n\"Then you are under arrest for attempted Fiction Infraction, contrary to Ordinance FMB/0608999 of the Narrative Continuity Code. By the power invested in me by the Council of Genres, I sentence you to banishment outside Mill on the Floss. Move.\"\n\nMiss Havisham ordered me to cuff Lucy and, once I had, held on to me as we jumped into the Great Library. Lucy, for an arrested ad-libber, didn't seem too put out.\n\n\"You can't imprison me,\" she said as we walked along the corridor of the twenty-third floor. \"I reappear in Maggie's dream seven pages from now. If I'm not there, you'll be in more trouble than you know what to do with. This could mean your job, Miss Havisham! Back to Satis House\u2014for good.\"\n\n\"Would it mean that?\" I asked, suddenly wondering whether Miss Havisham wasn't exceeding her authority.\n\n\"It would mean the same as it did the last time,\" replied Havisham, \"absolutely nothing.\"\n\n\"Last time?\" queried Lucy. \"But this is the first time I've tried something like this!\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Miss Havisham, \"no, it most certainly is not.\"\n\nMiss Havisham pointed out a book entitled The curious experience of the Patterson Family on the island of Uffa and told me to open it. We were soon inside, on the foreshore of a Scottish island in the late spring.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" asked Lucy, looking around her as her earlier confidence evaporated to be replaced by growing panic. \"What is this place?\"\n\n\"It is a prison, Miss Deane.\"\n\n\"A prison? A prison for whom?\"\n\n\"For them,\" said Havisham, indicating several identically youthful and fair-complexioned Lucy Deanes, who had broken cover and were staring in our direction. Our Lucy Deane looked at us, then at her identical sisters, then back to us again.\n\n\"I'm sorry!\" she said, dropping to her knees. \"Give me another chance\u2014please!\"\n\n\"Take heart in that this doesn't make you a bad person,\" said Miss Havisham. \"You just have a repetitive character disorder. You are a serial ad-libber and the seven hundred and ninety-sixth Lucy we have had to imprison here. In less civilized times you would have been reduced to text. Good day.\"\n\nAnd we vanished back to the corridors of the Great Library.\n\n\"And to think she was the most pleasant person in Floss!\" I said, shaking my head sadly.\n\n\"You'll find that the most righteous characters are the first ones to go loco down here. The average life of a Lucy Deane is about a thousand readings; self-righteous indignation kicks in after that. No one could believe it when David Copperfield killed his first wife, either. Good day, Chesh.\"\n\nThe Cheshire Cat had appeared on a high shelf, grinning to us, itself and anything else in view.\n\n\"Well!\" said the Cat. \"Next and Havisham! Problems with Lucy Deane?\"\n\n\"The usual. Can you get the Well to send in the replacement as soon as possible?\"\n\nThe Cat assured us he would, seemed crestfallen that I hadn't brought him any Moggilicious cat food and vanished again.\n\n\"We need to find out anything unusual about Perkins's death,\" said Miss Havisham. \"Will you help?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" I enthused.\n\nMiss Havisham smiled a rare smile. \"You remind me of myself, all those years ago, before that rat Compeyson brought my happiness to an end.\"\n\nShe moved closer and narrowed her eyes. \"We keep this to ourselves. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Start poking around in the workings of Jurisfiction and you may find more than you bargained for\u2014just remember that.\"\n\nShe fell silent for a few moments.\n\n\"But first, we need to get you fully licensed as a Jurisfiction agent\u2014there's a limit to what you can do as an apprentice. Did you finish the multiple choice?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Good. Then you can do your practical exam today. I'll go and organize it while you take your Eject-O-Hat to Juris Tech.\"\n\nShe melted into the air about me and I walked off down the library corridor towards the elevators. I passed Falstaff, who invited me to dance around his maypole. I told him to sod off, of course, and pressed the elevator call button. The doors opened a minute later and I stepped in. But it wasn't empty. With me were Emperor Zhark and Mrs. Tiggywinkle.\n\n\"Which floor?\" asked Zhark.\n\n\"First, please.\"\n\nHe pressed the button with a long and finely manicured finger and continued his conversation with Mrs. Tiggywinkle.\n\n\"...and that was when the rebels destroyed the third of my battle stations,\" said the emperor sorrowfully. \"Have you any idea how much these things cost?\"\n\n\"Tch,\" said Mrs. Tiggywinkle, bristling her spines, \"they always find some way of defeating you, don't they?\"\n\nZhark sighed. \"It's like one huge conspiracy,\" he muttered. \"Just when I think I have the galaxy at my mercy, some hopelessly outnumbered young hothead destroys my most insidious death machine using some hitherto-undiscovered weakness. I'm suing the manufacturer after that last debacle.\"\n\nHe sighed again, sensed he was dominating the conversation and asked, \"So how's the washing business?\"\n\n\"Well, the price of starch is something terrible these days.\"\n\n\"Oh, I know,\" replied Zhark, thumbing his high collar, \"look at this. My name alone strikes terror into billions, but can I get my collars done exactly how I want them?\"\n\nThe elevator stopped at my floor and I stepped out.\n\nI read myself into Sense and Sensibility and avoided the nursery rhyme characters who were still picketing the front door; I had Humpty's proposals in my back pocket but still hadn't given them to Libris\u2014in truth I had only promised to do my best, but didn't particularly want to run the gauntlet again. I ran up the back stairs, nodded a greeting to Mrs. Henry Dashwood and bumped into Tweed in the lobby; he was talking to a lithe and adventurous-looking young man whose forehead was etched with an almost permanent frown.\n\nTweed quickly broke off when I appeared. \"Ah! Thursday. Sorry to hear about Snell; he was a good man.\"\n\n\"I know\u2014thank you.\"\n\n\"I've appointed the Gryphon as your new attorney,\" Tweed said. \"Is that all right?\"\n\n\"Sounds fine.\" I turned to the youth, who was pulling his hands nervously through his curly hair. \"Hello! I'm Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Sorry!\" mumbled Tweed. \"This is Uriah Hope from David Copperfield; an apprentice I have been asked to train.\"\n\n\"Pleased to meet you,\" replied Hope in a friendly tone. \"Perhaps you and I could discuss apprenticeships together sometime?\"\n\n\"The pleasure's mine, Mr. Hope. I'm a big fan of your work in Copperfield.\"\n\nI thanked them both and left to find the JurisTech offices along Norland Park's seemingly endless corridors. I stopped at a door at random, knocked and looked in. Behind a desk was one of the many Greek heroes who could be seen wandering around the library; licensing their stories for remakes made a very reasonable living. He was on the footnoterphone.\n\n\"Okay,\" he said, \"I'll be down to pick up Eurydice next Friday. Anything I can do for you in return?\" He raised a finger at me to wait. \"Don't look back? That's all? Okay, no problem. See you then. Bye.\"\n\nHe put down the horn and looked at me. \"Thursday Next, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes; do you know where the Juris Tech office is?\"\n\n\"Down the corridor, first on the right.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nI made to leave but he called me back, pointing at the footnoterphone. \"I've forgotten already\u2014what was I meant not to do?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.\"\n\nI walked down the corridor, opened another door into a room that had nothing in it except a man with a frog growing out of his shiny bald head.\n\n\"Goodness!\" I said. \"How did that happen?\"\n\n\"It all started with a pimple on my bum,\" said the frog. \"Can I help you?\"\n\n\"I'm looking for Professor Plum.\"\n\n\"You want Juris Tech. This is Old Jokes. Try next door.\"\n\nI thanked him and knocked on the next door. There was a very singsong \"Come in!\" and I entered. Although I had expected to see a strange laboratory full of odd inventions, there was nothing of the sort\u2014just a man dressed in a check suit sitting behind a desk, reading some papers. He reminded me of Uncle Mycroft\u2014just a little more perky.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, looking up. \"Miss Next. Did you bring the hat with you?\"\n\n\"Yes, but how\u2014?\"\n\n\"Miss Havisham told me,\" he said simply.\n\nIt seemed there weren't many people who didn't talk to Miss Havisham or who didn't have Miss Havisham talk to them.\n\nI took out the battered Eject-O-Hat and placed it on the table. Plum picked up the broken activation handle, flicked a magnifying glass in front of his eye and stared at the frayed end minutely.\n\n\"Oh!\" I said. \"I'm getting it again!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"A crossed line on my footnoterphone!\"\n\n\"I can get a trace if you want\u2014here, put this galvanized bucket on your head.\"\n\n\"Not for a minute or two. I want to see how it all turns out.\"\n\n\"As you wish.\"\n\nSo as he examined the hat, I listened to Sofya and Vera prattle on.\n\n\"Well,\" he said finally, \"it looks as though it has chafed through. The Mk VII is an old design\u2014I'm surprised to see it still in use.\"\n\n\"So it was just a failure due to poor maintenance?\" I asked, not without some relief.\n\n\"A failure that saved a life, yes.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I asked, my relief short-lived.\n\nHe showed me the hat. Inside an inspection cover were intricate wires and small flashing lights that looked impressive.\n\n\"Someone has wired the retextualizing inhibitor to the ISBN Code rectifiers. If the cord had been pulled, there would have been an overheat in the primary booster coils.\"\n\n\"Overheat? My head would have got hot?\"\n\n\"More than hot. Enough energy would have been released to write about fourteen novels.\"\n\n\"I'm an apprentice, Plum, tell me in simple terms.\"\n\nHe looked at me seriously. \"There wouldn't be much left of the hat\u2014or the person wearing it. It happens occasionally on the Mk VII's\u2014it would have been seen as an accident. Good thing there was a broken cord.\"\n\nHe whistled low. \"Nifty piece of work, too. Someone who knew what they were doing.\"\n\n\"That's very interesting,\" I said slowly. \"Can you give me a list of people who might have been able to do this sort of work?\"\n\n\"Take a few days.\"\n\n\"Worth the wait. I'll call back.\"\n\nI met up with Miss Havisham and the Bellman in the Jurisfiction offices.\n\nThe Bellman nodded a greeting and consulted his ever-present clipboard. \"Looks like a dog day, ladies.\"\n\n\"Thurber again?\"\n\n\"No, Mansfield Park. Lady Bertram's pet pug has been run over and needs to be replaced.\"\n\n\"Again?\" replied Havisham. \"That must be the sixth. I wish she'd be more careful.\"\n\n\"Seventh. You can pick it up from stores.\"\n\nHe turned his attention to me. \"Miss Havisham says you are ready to take the practical test to bring you up from apprentice to restricted agent.\"\n\n\"I'm ready,\" I replied, thinking I was anything but.\n\n\"I'm sure you are,\" answered the Bellman thoughtfully, \"but it is a bit soon\u2014if it wasn't for the shortage caused by Mrs. Nakajima's retirement, I think you would remain as an apprentice for a few more months. Well,\" he sighed, \"can't be helped. I've had a look at the duty roster and I think I've found an assignment that should test your mettle. It's an Internal Plot Adjustment order from the Council of Genres.\"\n\nDespite my natural feelings of caution, I was also, to my shame, excited by a practical test of my abilities. Dickens? Hardy? Perhaps even Shakespeare.\n\n\"Shadow the Sheepdog,\" announced the Bellman, \"by Enid Blyton. It needs to have a happy ending.\"\n\n\"Shadow... the Sheepdog,\" I repeated slowly, hoping my disappointment didn't show. Blyton wasn't exactly high literature, but on reflection, perhaps that was just as well.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said more enthusiastically, \"what do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"Simple. As the story stands, Shadow is blinded by the barbed wire, so he can't be sold to the American film producer. Up ending because he isn't sold, down ending because he is blinded and useless. All we need to do is to have him miraculously regain his sight the next time he goes to the vet on page\"\u2014he consulted his clipboard\u2014\"two thirty-two.\"\n\n\"And,\" I said cautiously, not wanting the Bellman to realize how unprepared I was, \"what plan are we going to use?\"\n\n\"Swap dogs,\" replied the Bellman simply. \"All collies look pretty much the same.\"\n\n\"What about Vestigial Plot Memory?\" asked Havisham. \"Do we have any smoothers?\"\n\n\"It's all on the job sheet.\" The Bellman tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to me. \"You do know all about smoothers, of course?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" I replied.\n\n\"Good. Any more questions?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"Excellent!\" exclaimed the Bellman. \"Just one more thing. Bradshaw is investigating the Perkins incident. Would you make sure he gets your reports as soon as possible?\"\n\n\"Of course!\"\n\n\"Er... Good.\"\n\nHe made a few \"must get on\" noises and left.\n\nAs soon as he had gone, I said to Havisham, \"Do you think I'm ready for this, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Thursday,\" she said in her most serious voice, \"listen to me. Jurisfiction has need of agents who can be trusted to do the right thing.\" She looked around the room. \"Sometimes it is difficult to know whom we can trust. Sometimes the sickeningly self-righteous\u2014like you\u2014are the last bastion of defense against those who would mean the BookWorld harm.\"\n\n\"Meaning?\"\n\n\"Meaning you can stop asking so many questions and do as you're told\u2014just pass this practical first time. Understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"That's settled, then. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Yes. What's a smoother?\"\n\n\"Do you not read your TravelBook?\"\n\n\"It's quite long,\" I pleaded. \"I've been consulting it whenever possible but still got no further than the preface.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she began as we jumped to Wemmick's Stores in the lobby of the Great Library, \"plots have a sort of inbuilt memory. They can spring back to how they originally ran with surprising ease.\"\n\n\"Like time,\" I murmured, thinking about my father.\n\n\"If you say so. On Internal Plot Adjustment duties we often have to have a smoother\u2014a secondary device that reinforces the primary plot swing. We changed the end of Conrad's Lord Jim, you know. Originally, he runs away. A bit weak. We thought it would be better if Jim delivered himself to Chief Doramin as he had pledged following Brown's massacre.\"\n\n\"That didn't work?\"\n\n\"No. The chief kept on forgiving him. We tried everything. Insulting the chief, tweaking his nose\u2014after the forty-third attempt we were getting desperate; Bradshaw was almost pulling his hair out.\"\n\n\"So what did you do?\"\n\n\"We retrospectively had the chief's son die in the massacre. It did the trick. The chief had no trouble shooting Jim after that.\"\n\nI mused about this for a moment. \"How did Jim take it? The decision for him to die, I mean?\"\n\n\"He was the one that asked for the plot adjustment in the first place. He thought it was the only honorable thing to do\u2014mind you, the chief's son wasn't exactly over the moon about it.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I said, pondering that here in the BookWorld the pencil of life occasionally did have an eraser on the other end.\n\n\"So you'll send a check for a hundred pounds to the farmer and buy his pigs for double the market rate\u2014that way, he won't need the cash and won't want to resell Shadow to the film producer. Get it? Good afternoon, Mr. Wemmick.\"\n\nWe had arrived at the stores. Wemmick himself was a short man, a native of Great Expectations, aged about forty with a pockmarked face. He greeted us enthusiastically.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Miss Havisham, Miss Next\u2014I trust all is well?\"\n\n\"Quite well, Mr. Wemmick. I understand you have a few canines for us?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied the storekeeper, pointing to where two dogs were attached to a hook in the wall by their leads.\n\n\"Pug, Lady Bertram's, to be replaced, one. Shadow, sheepdog, sighted, to swap with existing dog, blind, one. Check for the farmer, value one hundred pounds sterling, one. Cash to buy pigs, forty-two pounds, ten shillings and fourpence. Sign here.\"\n\nThe two dogs panted and wagged their tails. The collie had his eyes bound with a bandage.\n\n\"Any questions?\"\n\n\"Do we have a cover story for this check?\" I asked.\n\n\"Use your imagination. I'm sure you'll think of something.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment,\" I said, alarm bells suddenly ringing, \"aren't you coming with me to supervise?\"\n\n\"Not at all!\" Havisham grinned with a strange look in her eye. \"Assessed work has to be done solo; I'll mark you on your report and the successful\u2014or not\u2014realigned story within the book. This is so simple even you can't mess it up.\"\n\n\"Couldn't I do Lady Bertram's pug?\" I asked, trying to make it sound like something hard and of great consequence.\n\n\"Out of the question! Besides, I don't do children's books anymore\u2014not after the incident with Larry the Lamb. But since Shadow is out of print, no one will notice if you make a pig's ear of it. Remember that Jurisfiction is an honorable establishment and you should reflect that in your bearing and countenance. Be resolute in your work and fair and just. Destroy grammasites with extreme prejudice\u2014and shun any men with amorous intentions.\"\n\nShe thought for a moment. \"Or any intentions, come to that. Have you got your TravelBook to enable you to jump back?\"\n\nI patted my breast pocket where the slim volume was kept and she was gone, only to return a few moments later to swap dogs and vanish again. I read my way diligently to the second floor of the Library and picked Shadow the Sheepdog off the shelf. I paused. I was nervous and my palms had started to sweat. I scolded myself. How hard could a plot adjustment in an Enid Blyton be? I took a deep breath and, notwithstanding the simplistic nature of the novel, opened the slim volume with an air of serious trepidation\u2014as though it were War and Peace."
            },
            {
                "title": "Shadow the Sheepdog",
                "text": "\u2002Shadow the Sheepdog, the story of a supremely loyal and intelligent sheepdog in a rural prewar countryside, was published by Collins in 1950. A compulsive scribbler from her early teens, Enid Blyton found escape from her own unhappy childhood in the simple tales she wove for children. She has been republished in revised forms to suit modern tastes and has consistently remained popular over five decades. The independently minded children of her stories live in an idealized world of eternal summer holidays, adventure, high tea, ginger beer, cake and grown-ups with so little intelligence that they need everything explained to them\u2014something that is not so very far from the truth.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Enid Blyton\n\nI read myself into Shadow's featured town halfway down page 231. Johnny, the farmer's boy who was Shadow's owner and coprotagonist, would be having Shadow's eyes checked in a few days, so a brief reconnaissance of the locality seemed like a good idea. If I could persuade rather than order the vet to swap the dogs, then so much the better. I alighted in a town that looked like some sort of forties English rural idyll\u2014a mix between Warwickshire and the Dales. All green grass, show-quality cattle, yellow-lichened stone walls, sunshine and healthy-looking, smiling people. Horses pulled carts laden high with hay down the main street, and the odd shiny motorcar puttered past. Pies cooled on windowsills and children played with hoops and tinplate steam engines. The smell in the breeze was of freshly mown grass, clean linen and cooking. Here was a world of high tea, tasty trifles, zero crime, eternal summers and boundless good health. I suspected living here might be quite enjoyable\u2014for about a week.\n\nI was nodded at by a passerby.\n\n\"Beautiful day!\" she said politely.\n\n\"Yes. My\u2014\"\n\n\"Rain later?\"\n\nI looked up at the puffy clouds that stretched away to the horizon. \"I shouldn't have thought so, but can you\u2014\"\n\n\"Well, be seeing you!\" said the woman politely, and was gone.\n\nI found an alleyway and tied the sheepdog to a downpipe; it was neither useful nor necessary to lead a dog around town for the next few hours. I walked carefully down the road, past a family butcher's, a tearoom and sweetshop selling nothing but gobstoppers, bull's-eyes, ginger beer, lemonade and licorice. A few doors farther on I found a newsagent and post office combined. The outside of the small shop was liberally covered with enamel signs advertising Fry's chocolates, Colman's starch, Wyncarnis tonic, Ovaltine and Lyons cakes. A small sign told me I could use the telephone, and a rack of postcards shared the pavement with boxes of fresh veg. There was also a display of newspapers, the headlines reflecting the interwar politics of the book.\n\nBritain Voted Favorite Empire Tenth Year Running, said one. Foreigners Untrustworthy, Study Shows, said another. A third led with \"Spiffing\"\u2014New Buzzword Sweeps Nation.\n\nI posted the \"smoother\" check to Johnny's father with a covering letter explaining that it was an old loan repaid. Almost immediately a postman appeared on a bicycle and removed the letter\u2014the only one in the postbox, I noted\u2014with the utmost of reverence, taking it into the post office where I could hear cries of wonderment. There weren't many letters in Shadow, I assumed. I stood outside the shop for a moment, watching the townsfolk going about their business. Without warning one of the cart horses decided to drop a huge pile of dung in the middle of the road. In a trice a villager had run across with a bucket and shovel and removed the offending article almost as soon as it had happened. I watched for a while and then set off to find the local auctioneers.\n\n\"So let me get this straight,\" said the auctioneer, a heavyset and humorless man with a monocle screwed into his eye, \"you want to buy pigs at treble the going rate? Why?\"\n\n\"Not anyone's pigs,\" I replied wearily, having spent the last half hour trying to explain what I wanted, \"Johnny's father's pigs.\"\n\n\"Quite out of the question,\" muttered the auctioneer, getting to his feet and walking to the window. He did it a lot, I could tell\u2014there was a worn patch right through the carpet to the floorboards beneath, but only from his chair to the window. There was another worn patch from the door to a side table\u2014the use of which I was yet to understand. Considering his limitations, I guessed the auctioneer was no more than a C-9 Generic\u2014it explained the difficulty of persuading him to alter anything.\n\n\"We do things to a set formula here,\" added the auctioneer, \"and we don't very much like change.\"\n\nHe walked back across the worn floorboards to his desk, turned to face me and wagged a reproachful finger.\n\n\"And believe me, if you try anything a bit rum at the auction, I can discount your bid.\"\n\nWe stared at each other. This wasn't working.\n\n\"Tea and cake?\" asked the auctioneer, walking to the window again.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Splendid!\" He rubbed his hands together and returned to his desk. \"They tell me there is nothing quite so refreshing as a cup of tea!\"\n\nHe flipped the switch on the intercom. \"Miss Pittman, would you bring in some tea, please?\"\n\nThe door opened instantaneously to reveal his secretary holding a tray of tea things. She was in her late twenties, and pretty in an English rose sort of way; she wore a floral summer dress under a fawn cardigan.\n\nMiss Pittman followed the smoothly worn-down floorboards and carpet from the door to the side table. She curtsied and laid the tea things next to an identical tray left from an earlier occasion. She threw the old tea tray out the window and I heard the soft tinkle of broken crockery; I had seen a large pile of broken tea things outside the window when I arrived.\n\nHis secretary paused, hands pressed tightly together. \"Shall\u2014shall I pour you a cup?\" she asked, a flush rising to her cheeks.\n\n\"Thank you!\" exclaimed Mr. Phillips, walking excitedly to the window and back again. \"Milk and\u2014\"\n\n\"One sugar.\" His secretary smiled shyly. \"Yes, yes... I know.\"\n\n\"But of course you do!\" He smiled back.\n\nThen, the next stage of this odd charade took place. The auctioneer and secretary moved to the place where their two worn paths were closest, the outer limits that their existence and limited story line allowed them. Miss Pittman held the cup by its rim, placed her toes right on the edge where the worn carpet began and shiny floorboard ended, stretching out as far as she could. Mr. Phillips did the same on his side of the divide. The tips of his fingers could just touch the opposite rim of the cup, but try as he might, he could not reach far enough to grasp it.\n\n\"Allow me,\" I said, unable to watch the cruel spectacle any longer. I passed the cup from one to the other.\n\nHow many cups of tea had gone cold in the past thirty-five years, I wondered, how uncrossable the six feet of carpet that divided them! Whoever event-managed this book down in the Well had a cruel sense of humor.\n\nMiss Pittman curtsied politely and departed while the auctioneer watched her go. He sat down at his desk, eyeing the teacup thirstily. He licked his lips and rubbed his fingertips in expectation, then took a sip and savored the moment lovingly.\n\n\"Oh my goodness!\" he said deliriously, \"Even better than I thought it would be!\"\n\nHe took another sip and closed his eyes with the sheer delight of it.\n\n\"Where were we?\" he asked.\n\nI took a deep breath. \"I want you to buy Johnny's father's pigs with an offer that purports to come from an unknown buyer\u2014and as close to the top of page two hundred and thirty-two as you can.\"\n\n\"Utterly impossible! You are asking me to change the narrative! I will have to see higher authority.\"\n\nI passed him my Jurisfiction ID card. It wasn't like me to pull rank, but I was getting desperate.\n\n\"I'm on official business sanctioned by the Council of Genres themselves through Text Grand Central.\" It was how I thought Miss Havisham might say it.\n\n\"You forget that we are out of print pending modernization,\" he replied shortly, tossing my ID back across the table. \"You have no mandatory powers here, Apprentice Next. I think Jurisfiction will look very carefully before attempting a change on a book without internal approval. You can tell the Bellman that, from me.\"\n\nWe stared at each other, a diplomatic impasse having arrived.\n\nI had an idea. \"How long have you been an auctioneer in this book?\"\n\n\"Thirty-six years.\"\n\n\"And how many cups of tea have you had in that time?\"\n\n\"Including this one?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"One.\"\n\nI leaned forward. \"I can fix it for you to have as many cups of tea as you want, Mr. Phillips.\"\n\nHe narrowed his eyes. \"Oh, yes? And how would you manage that? As soon as you've got what you want, you'll be off and I'll never be able to reach Miss Pittman's proffered cup again!\"\n\nI stood up and went to the table on which the tea tray was lying. It was a small table made of oak and lightly decorated. It had a vase of flowers on it, but nothing else. As Mr. Phillips watched, I picked up the table and placed it next to the window. The auctioneer looked at me dumbfounded, got up, walked to the window and delicately touched the table and the tea things.\n\n\"An audacious move,\" he said, waving the sugar tongs at me, \"but it won't work\u2014she's a D-7\u2014she won't be able to change what she does.\"\n\n\"D-7s never have names, Mr. Phillips.\"\n\n\"I gave her that name,\" he said quietly, \"you're wasting your time.\"\n\n\"Let's see, shall we?\" I spoke into the intercom to ask Miss Pittman to bring in more tea.\n\nThe door opened as before and a look of shock and surprise crossed the girl's face.\n\n\"The table!\" she gasped, rattling the Royal Doulton tea things on the tray. \"It's\u2014!\"\n\n\"You can do it, Miss Pittman,\" I told her, \"just place the tea where you always do.\"\n\nShe moved forward, following the well-worn path, arrived at where the table used to be and then looked at its new position, two strides away. The smooth and unworn carpet was alien and fearful to her; it might as well have been a bottomless chasm. She stopped dead.\n\n\"I don't understand\u2014!\" she began, her face bewildered as her hands continued to shake.\n\n\"Tell her to put the tea things down,\" I told the auctioneer, who was becoming as distressed as Miss Pittman\u2014perhaps more so. \"Tell her!\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Pittman,\" murmured Mr. Phillips, his voice croaking with emotion, \"put the tea things down over here, would you?\"\n\nShe bit her lip and closed her eyes, raised her foot and held it, quivering above the edge of the shiny floorboards. Then she moved it forward and rested it on the soft carpet. She opened her eyes, looked down and beamed at us both.\n\n\"Well done!\" I said. \"Just two more.\"\n\nBrimming with confidence, she negotiated the two remaining steps with ease and placed the tray on the table. She and Mr. Phillips were closer now than they had ever been before. She put out a hand to touch his lapel, but checked herself quickly.\n\n\"Shall\u2014shall I pour you a cup?\"\n\n\"Thank you!\" exclaimed Mr. Phillips. \"Milk and\u2014\"\n\n\"One sugar,\" She smiled shyly. \"Yes, yes, I know.\"\n\nShe poured the tea and handed the cup and saucer to him. He took it gratefully.\n\n\"Mr. Phillips?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Do I have a first name?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" he replied quietly and with great emotion, \"I have had over thirty years to think about it. Your name is Aurora, as befits somebody as beautiful as the dawn.\"\n\nShe covered her nose and mouth to hide her smile and blushed deeply.\n\nMr. Phillips raised a shaking hand to touch her cheek but stopped as he remembered that I was still present. He nodded imperceptibly in my direction and said, \"Thank you, Miss Pittman\u2014perhaps later you might come in for some... dictation.\"\n\n\"I will look forward to it, Mr. Phillips!\"\n\nAnd she turned, trod softly on the carpet to the door, looked round once more and went out. When I looked back at Mr. Phillips, he had sat down, drained by the emotionally charged encounter.\n\n\"Do we have a deal? Or do I put the table back where it was?\"\n\nHe looked shocked. \"You wouldn't.\"\n\n\"I would.\"\n\nHe considered his position for a moment and then offered me his hand. \"Pigs at treble the going rate?\"\n\n\"Top of page two thirty-two.\"\n\n\"Deal.\"\n\nPleased with my actions so far, I collected the dog and jumped forward to the middle of page two thirty-two. By now the sale of Johnny's father's pigs was the talk of the town and had even made it into the headlines of the local papers: Unprecedented Pig Prices Shock Town. There was only one thing left to do\u2014replace the blind collie for the sighted one.\n\n\"I'm looking for the vet,\" I asked a passerby.\n\n\"Are you?\" replied the woman amiably. \"Good for you!\" and she hurried on.\n\n\"Could you tell me the way to the vet?\" I asked the next person, a sallow man in a tweed suit.\n\nHe was no less literal: \"Yes, I could.\" He attempted to walk on. I tried to grasp him by the sleeve but missed and momentarily clasped his hand. He gasped out loud. This was echoed by two women who had witnessed the incident. They started to gossip volubly. I pulled out my ID.\n\n\"Jurisfiction,\" I told him, adding, \"on official business,\" just to make sure he got the picture.\n\nBut something had happened. The townsfolk, who up until that moment had seemed to wander the streets like automatons, were all of a sudden animated individuals, talking, whispering and pointing. I was a stranger in a strange land, and while the townsfolk didn't seem hostile, I was clearly an object of considerable interest.\n\n\"I need to get to the vet,\" I said loudly. \"Now, can anyone tell me where he lives?\"\n\nThe two ladies who had been chattering suddenly smiled and nodded to one another.\n\n\"We'll show you where he works.\"\n\nI left the first man still staring at his hand and looking at me in an odd way. I didn't take offense. People looked at me oddly quite a lot.\n\nI followed the ladies to a small building set back from the road. I thanked them both, one of whom I noticed remained at the gate while the other bustled away with a purposeful stride. I rang the doorbell.\n\n\"Hello?\" said the vet, opening the door and looking surprised; he only had one client booked that day\u2014Johnny and Shadow. The vet was meant to tell the young lad how Shadow would stay blind forever.\n\n\"This dog,\" said the vet automatically, \"will never see again. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.\"\n\n\"Jurisfiction,\" I told him, showing him my ID. \"There's been a change of plan.\"\n\n\"What sort of change?\" he asked as I gently forced my way in and closed the door. \"Are you here to alter the less-than-savory references to stereotypical Gypsy folk in chapters thirteen to fifteen?\"\n\n\"We'll get round to that, don't you worry.\"\n\nI wasn't going to take any chances and go through the same rigmarole as I had with Mr. Phillips, so I looked around furtively and said in a conspiratorial whisper, \"I shouldn't be telling you this, but... wicked men are planning to steal Shadow and sell him off for medical experiments!\"\n\n\"No!\" exclaimed the vet, eyes open wide.\n\n\"Indeed,\" I replied, adding in a hushed tone, \"and what's more, we suspect that these men might not even be English.\"\n\n\"You mean... Johnny Foreigners?\" asked the vet, visibly shocked.\n\n\"Probably French. Now, are you with me on this?\"\n\n\"Absolutely!\" he breathed. \"What are we going to do?\"\n\n\"Swap dogs. When Johnny arrives, you tell him to go outside for a moment, we swap the dogs, when he comes back, you unwrap the bandages, the dog can see\u2014and you say this dialogue instead.\"\n\nI handed him a scrap of paper. He looked at it thoughtfully.\n\n\"So Shadow stays here and the swapped Shadow is abducted by Johnny Foreigner and used for medical experiments?\"\n\n\"Something like that. But not a word to anyone, you understand?\"\n\n\"Word of honor!\" replied the vet.\n\nSo I gave him the collie, and sure enough, when Johnny brought in the blinded Shadow, the vet told him to go and get some water, we swapped dogs and when Johnny returned, lo and behold, the dog could see again. The vet feigned complete surprise and Johnny, of course, was delighted. They left soon after.\n\nI stepped from the office where I had been hiding.\n\n\"How did I do?\" asked the vet, washing his hands.\n\n\"Perfect. There could be a medal in it for you.\"\n\nIt all seemed to have gone swimmingly well. I couldn't believe my luck. But more than that, I had the feeling that Havisham might actually be quite proud of her apprentice\u2014at the very least this should make up for having to rescue me from the grammasites. Pleased, I opened the door to the street and was surprised to find that a lot of the locals had gathered, and they all seemed to be staring at me. My feeling of euphoria over the completed mission suddenly evaporated as unease welled up inside me.\n\n\"It's time! It's time!\" announced one of the ladies I had seen earlier.\n\n\"Time for what?\"\n\n\"Time for a wedding!\"\n\n\"Whose?\" I asked, not unreasonably.\n\n\"Why yours, of course!\" she answered happily. \"You touched Mr. Townsperson's hand. You are betrothed. It is the law!\"\n\nThe crowd surged towards me and I reached, not for my gun, but for my TravelBook in order to get out quickly. It was the wrong choice. Within a few moments I had been overpowered. They took my book and gun, then held me tightly and propelled me towards a nearby house, where I was forced into a wedding dress that had seen a lot of previous use and was several sizes too big.\n\n\"You won't get away with this!\" I told them as they hurriedly brushed and plaited my hair with two men holding my head. \"Jurisfiction know where I am and will come after me, I swear!\"\n\n\"You'll get used to married life,\" exclaimed one of the women, her mouth full of pins. \"They all complain to begin with\u2014but by the end of the afternoon they are as meek as lambs. Isn't that so, Mr. Rustic?\"\n\n\"Aye, Mrs. Passerby,\" said one of the men holding my arms, \"like lambs, meek.\"\n\n\"You mean there were others?\"\n\n\"There is nothing like a good wedding,\" said one of the other men, \"nothing except\u2014\"\n\nHere Mr. Rustic nudged him and he was quiet.\n\n\"Nothing except what?\" I asked, struggling again.\n\n\"Oh, hush!\" said Mrs. Passerby. \"You made me drop a stitch! Do you really want to look a mess on your wedding day?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nTen minutes later, bruised and with my hands tied behind my back and a garland of flowers in my badly pinned hair, I was being escorted towards the small village church. I managed to grab the lych-gate on the way in but was soon pulled clear. A few moments later I was standing at the altar next to Mr. Townsperson, who was neatly dressed in a morning suit. He smiled at me happily and I scowled back.\n\n\"We are gathered here today in the eyes of God to bring together this woman and this man...\"\n\nI struggled but it was no good.\n\n\"This proceeding has no basis in law!\" I shouted, attempting to drown out the vicar. He signaled to the verger, who placed a bit of sticking plaster over my mouth. I struggled again, but with four burly farmworkers holding me, it was useless. I watched with a sort of strange fascination as the wedding proceeded, the villagers sniveling with happiness in the small church. When it came to the vows, my head was vigorously nodded for me, and a ring pressed on my finger.\n\n\"...I now pronounce you man and wife! You may kiss the bride.\"\n\nMr. Townsperson loomed closer. I tried to back away but was held tightly. Mr. Townsperson kissed me tenderly on the sticking plaster that covered my mouth. As he did so, an excited murmur went up from the congregation.\n\nThere was applause and I was dragged towards the main door, covered in confetti and made to pose for a wedding photograph. For the picture the sticking plaster was removed so I had time to make my protestations.\n\n\"No coerced wedding was ever recognized by law!\" I bellowed. \"Let me go right now and I may not report you!\"\n\n\"Don't worry, Mrs. Townsperson,\" said Mrs. Passerby, addressing me, \"in ten minutes it really won't matter. You see, we rarely get the opportunity to perform nuptials as no one in here ever gets married\u2014the Well never went so far as to offer us that sort of luxury.\"\n\n\"What about the others you mentioned?\" I asked, a sense of doom rising within me. \"Where are the other brides who were forced into marriage?\"\n\nEveryone looked solemn, clasped their hands together and stared at the ground.\n\n\"What's going on? What will happen in ten minutes?\"\n\nI turned as the four men let go of me and saw the vicar again. But he wasn't cheery this time. He was solemn, and well he might be. Before him was a freshly dug grave. Mine.\n\n\"Oh my God!\" I muttered.\n\n\"Dearly beloved, we are gathered... ,\" began the vicar as the same townsfolk began to sniffle into their hankies again. But this time the tears weren't of happiness\u2014they were of sorrow.\n\nI cursed myself for being so careless. Mr. Townsperson had my automatic and released the safety. I looked around desperately. Even if I had been able to get a message to Havisham, I doubted whether she could have made it in time.\n\n\"Mr. Townsperson,\" I said in a quiet voice, staring into his eyes, \"my own husband! You would kill your bride?\"\n\nHe trembled slightly and glanced at Mrs. Passerby. \"I'm... I'm afraid so, my dear,\" he faltered.\n\n\"Why?\" I asked, stalling for time.\n\n\"We need the... need the\u2014\"\n\n\"For Panjandrum's sake get on with it or I shall!\" snapped Mrs. Passerby, who seemed to be the chief instigator of all this. \"I need my emotional fix!\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I said. \"You're after emotion?\"\n\n\"They call us sentiment junkies,\" said Mr. Townsperson sadly. \"It's not our fault. We are all Generics rated between C-7 and D-3; we don't have many emotions of our own but are smart enough to know what we're missing.\"\n\n\"If you don't kill her, I shall!\" mumbled Mr. Rustic, tapping my \"husband\" on the elbow.\n\nHe pulled away. \"She has a right to know. She is my wife, after all.\" He looked nervously left and right.\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"We started with humorous one-liners that offered a small kick. That kept us going for a few months, but soon we wanted more: laughter, joy, happiness in any way we could get it. Thrice-monthly garden fetes, weekly harvest festivals and tombola four times a day were not enough; we wanted... the hard stuff.\"\n\n\"Grief,\" murmured Mrs. Passerby, \"grief, sadness, sorrow, loss\u2014we wanted it but we wanted it strong. Ever read On Her Majesty's Secret Service?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"We wanted that. Our hearts raised by the happiness of a wedding and then dashed by the sudden death of the bride!\"\n\nI stared at the slightly crazed Generics. Unable to generate emotions synthetically from within the confines of their happy rural idyll, they had embarked upon a systematic rampage of enforced weddings and funerals to give them the high they desired. I looked at the graves in the churchyard and wondered how many others had suffered this fate.\n\n\"We will all be devastated by your death, of course,\" whispered Mrs. Passerby, \"but we will get over it\u2014the slower the better!\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I said. \"I have an idea!\"\n\n\"We don't want ideas, my love,\" said Mr. Townsperson, pointing the gun at me again, \"we want emotion.\"\n\n\"How long will this fix last?\" I asked him. \"A day? How sad can you be for someone you barely know?\"\n\nThey all looked at one another. I was right. The fix they were getting by killing and burying me would last them until teatime if they were lucky.\n\n\"You have a better idea?\"\n\n\"I can give you more emotion than you know how to handle, feelings so strong you won't know what to do with yourselves.\"\n\n\"She's lying!\" cried Mrs. Passerby dispassionately. \"Kill her now\u2014I can't wait any longer! I need the sadness! Give it to me!\"\n\n\"I'm Jurisfiction. I can bring more jeopardy and strife into this book than a thousand Blytons could give you in a lifetime!\"\n\n\"You could?\" echoed the townspeople excitedly, lapping up the expectation I was generating.\n\n\"Yes\u2014and here's how I can prove it. Mrs. Passerby?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Mr. Townsperson told me earlier he thought you had a fat arse.\"\n\n\"He said what?\" she replied angrily, her face suffused with joy as she fed off the hurt feelings I had generated.\n\n\"I most certainly said no such thing!\" blustered Mr. Townsperson, obviously getting a big hit himself from the indignation.\n\n\"Us, too!\" yelled the townsfolk excitedly, eager to see what else I had in my bag of goodies.\n\n\"Nothing before you untie me!\"\n\nThey did so with great haste; sorrow and happiness had kept them going for a long time, but they had grown bored\u2014I was here like a dealer, offering new and different experiences.\n\nI asked for my gun and was handed it, the townspeople watching me expectantly like a dodo waiting for marshmallows.\n\n\"For a start,\" I said, rubbing my wrists and throwing the wedding ring aside, \"I can't remember who got me pregnant!\"\n\nThere was a sudden silence.\n\n\"Shocking!\" said the vicar. \"Outrageous, morally repugnant\u2014mmmm!\"\n\n\"But better than that,\" I added, \"if you had killed me, you would also have killed my unborn son\u2014guilt like that could have lasted for months!\"\n\n\"Yes!\" yelled Mr. Rustic. \"Kill her now!\"\n\nI pointed the gun at them and they stopped in their tracks.\n\n\"You'll always regret not having killed me,\" I murmured.\n\nThe townsfolk went quiet and mused upon this, the feeling of loss coursing through their veins.\n\n\"It feels wonderful!\" said one of the farmworkers, taking a seat on the grass to focus his mind more carefully on the strange emotional potpourri of a missed opportunity of double murder.\n\nBut I wasn't done yet. \"I'm going to report you to the Council of Genres and tell them how you tried to kill me\u2014you could be shut down and reduced to text!\"\n\nI had them now. They all had their eyes closed and were rocking backwards and forwards, moaning quietly.\n\n\"Or perhaps,\" I added, beginning to back away, \"I won't.\"\n\nI pulled off the wedding dress at the lych-gate and looked back. The townspeople were laid out on the ground, eyes closed, surfing their inner feelings on a cocktail of mixed emotions. They wouldn't be down for days.\n\nI picked up my jacket and TravelBook on the way to the vet's, where the blind Shadow was waiting for me. I had completed the mission, even if I had come a hairsbreadth from a sticky end. I could do better, and would, given time. I heard a low, growly voice close at hand.\n\n\"What happens to me? Am I reduced to text?\"\n\nIt was Shadow.\n\n\"Officially, yes.\"\n\n\"I see. And unofficially?\"\n\nI thought for a moment.\n\n\"Do you like rabbits?\"\n\n\"Rather.\"\n\nI pulled out my TravelBook.\n\n\"Good. Give me your paw. We're off to Rabbit Grand Central.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Ibb and Obb Named and Heights Again",
                "text": "\u2002BookStackers: To rid a book of the mispeling vyrus, many thousands of dictionaries are moved into the offending novel and stacked either side of the outbreak as a mispeling barrage. The wall of dictionaries is then moved in, paragraph by paragraph, until the vyrus is forced into a single sentence, then a word, then smothered completely. The job is done by BookStackers, usually D-grade Generics, although for many years the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group (AFRG) has been manned by over five thousand WOLP-surplus Mrs. Danvers. (See Danvers, Mrs., Over-production of.)\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\nIt was three days later. I had just had my early-morning vomit and was lying back in bed, staring at Gran's note and trying to make sense of it. One word. Remember. What was I meant to remember? She hadn't yet returned from the Medici court, and although the note might have been the product of a Granny Next \"fuzzy moment,\" I still felt uneasy. There was something else. Beside my bed was a sketch of an attractive man in his late thirties. I didn't know who he was\u2014which was odd, because I had sketched it.\n\nThere was an excited knock at the door. It was Ibb. It had been looking more feminine all week and had even gone so far as to put on haughty airs all day Wednesday. Obb, on the other hand, had been insisting it was right about everything, knew everything, and had sulked when I proved it wrong, and we all knew where that was leading.\n\n\"Hello, Ibb,\" I said, placing the sketch aside, \"how are you?\"\n\nIbb replied by unzipping and opening the top of its overalls.\n\n\"Look!\" she said excitedly, showing me her breasts.\n\n\"Congratulations,\" I said slowly, still feeling a bit groggy, \"you're a her.\"\n\n\"I know!\" said Ibb, hardly able to contain her excitement. \"Do you want to see the rest?\"\n\n\"No, thanks, I believe you.\"\n\n\"Can I borrow a bra?\" she asked, moving her shoulders up and down. \"These things aren't terribly comfortable.\"\n\n\"I don't think mine would fit you,\" I said hurriedly, \"you're a lot bigger than I am.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she answered, slightly crestfallen, then added, \"How about a hair tie and a brush? I can't do a thing with this hair. Up, down\u2014perhaps I should have it cut\u2014and I so wish it were curly!\"\n\n\"Ibb, it's fine, really.\"\n\n\"Lola,\" she corrected me, \"I want you to call me Lola from now on.\"\n\n\"Very well, Lola, sit on the bed.\"\n\nSo Lola sat while I brushed her hair and she nattered on about a weight-loss idea she had had, which seemed to revolve around weighing yourself with one foot on the scale and one on the floor. Using this idea, she told me, she could lose as much weight as she wanted and not give up cakes. Then she started talking about this great new thing that she had discovered that was so much fun she thought she'd be doing it quite a lot\u2014and she reckoned she'd have no trouble getting men to assist.\n\n\"Just be careful,\" I told her. \"Think before you do what you do with whom.\" It was advice my mother had given me. I expected Lola would ignore it as much as I had.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" Lola assured me, \"I'll be very careful\u2014I'll always ask them their name first.\"\n\nWhen I had finished, she stared at herself in the mirror for a moment, gave me a big hug and skipped out the door. I dressed slowly and walked into the kitchen.\n\nObb was sitting at the table painting a Napoleonic cavalry officer the height of a pen top. He was gazing intently at the miniature horseman and glowering with concentration. He had developed into a dark-haired and handsome man of at least six foot three over the past few days, with a deep voice and measured speech; he also looked about fifty. I suspected it was now a he but hoped he wouldn't try to demonstrate it in the same way that Lola had.\n\n\"Morning, Obb,\" I said, \"breakfast?\"\n\nHe dropped the horseman on the floor.\n\n\"Now look what you've made me do!\" he growled, adding, \"Toast, please, and coffee\u2014and it's Randolph, not Obb.\"\n\n\"Congratulations,\" I told him, but he only grunted in reply, found the cavalry officer and carried on with his painting.\n\nLola bounced into the living room, saw Randolph and stopped for a moment to stare at her nails demurely, hoping he would turn to look at her. He didn't. So she stood closer and said:\n\n\"Good morning, Randolph.\"\n\n\"Morning,\" he grunted without looking up, \"how did you sleep?\"\n\n\"Heavily.\"\n\n\"Well, you would, wouldn't you?\"\n\nShe missed the insult and carried on jabbering. \"Wouldn't yellow be prettier?\"\n\nRandolph stopped and stared at her. \"Blue is the color of a Napoleonic cavalry officer, Lola. Yellow is the color of custard\u2014and bananas.\"\n\nShe turned to me and pulled a face, mouthed square and then helped herself to coffee.\n\n\"Can we go shopping, then?\" she asked me. \"If we are buying underwear, we might as well get some makeup and some scent; we could try on clothes and generally do girl sort of things together\u2014I could take you out to lunch and gossip a lot, have our hair done and then shop some more, talk about boyfriends and perhaps after that go to the gym.\"\n\n\"It's not exactly my sort of thing,\" I said slowly, trying to figure out what sort of book St. Tabularasa's had thought Lola might be most suitable for. I couldn't remember the last time I had a girls' day out\u2014certainly not this decade. Most of my clothes came mail order\u2014when did I ever have time for shopping?\n\n\"Oh, go on!\" said Lola. \"You could do with a day off. What were you doing yesterday?\"\n\n\"Attending a course on bookjumping using the ISBN positioning system.\"\n\n\"And the day before?\"\n\n\"Practical lessons in using textual sieves as PageRunner capturing devices.\"\n\n\"And before that?\"\n\n\"Searching in vain for the Minotaur.\"\n\n\"Exactly why you need a break. We don't even have to leave the Well\u2014the latest Grattan catalog is still under construction. We can get in because I know someone who's got a part-time job as a text-justifying engineer. Please say yes. It means so much to me!\"\n\nI sighed. \"Well, all right\u2014but after lunch. I've got to do my Mary Jones thing in Caversham Heights all morning.\"\n\nLola jumped up and down and clapped her hands with joy. I had to smile at her childish exuberance.\n\n\"You might move up a size, too,\" said Randolph.\n\nShe narrowed her eyes and turned to face him. \"And what do you mean by that?\" she asked angrily.\n\n\"Exactly what I said.\"\n\n\"That I'm fat?\"\n\n\"You said it, not me,\" replied Randolph, concentrating on his metal soldier.\n\nShe picked up a glass of water and poured it into his lap.\n\n\"What the hell did you do that for!\" he spluttered, getting up and grabbing a tea towel.\n\n\"To teach you,\" yelled Lola, wagging a finger at him, \"that you can't say whatever you want, to whoever you want!\"\n\nAnd she walked out.\n\n\"What did I say?\" said Randolph in an exasperated tone. \"Did you see that? She did that for no reason at all!\"\n\n\"I think you got off lightly,\" I told him. \"I'd go and apologize if I were you.\"\n\nHe thought about this for a few seconds, lowered his shoulders and went off to find Lola, whom I could hear sobbing somewhere near the stern of the flying boat.\n\n\"Young love!\" said a voice behind me. \"Eighteen years of emotions packed into a single week\u2014it can't be easy, now can it?\"\n\n\"Gran!\" I said, whirling round. \"When did you get back?\"\n\n\"Just now.\" She removed her gingham hat and gloves and passed me some cash.\n\n\"What's this?\"\n\n\"D-3 Generics are annoyingly literal, but it can pay dividends\u2014I asked the cabbie to drive backwards all the way here, and by the end of the trip he owed me money. How are things?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I sighed, \"it's like having a couple of teenagers in the house.\"\n\nLook upon it as training for having your own children.\" Gran sat down on a chair and sipped at my coffee.\n\n\"Gran?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"How did you get here? I mean, you are here, aren't you? You're not just a memory, or something?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm real all right.\" She laughed. \"You just need a bit of looking after until we sort out Aornis.\"\n\n\"Aornis?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" sighed Gran. \"Think carefully for a moment.\"\n\nI mulled the name around in my mind, and sure enough, Aornis came out of the murk like a ship in fog. But the fog was deep, and other things were hidden within\u2014I could feel it.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" I murmured, \"her. What else was I meant to remember?\"\n\n\"Landen.\"\n\nHe came out of the fog, too. The man in the sketch. I sat down and put my head in my hands. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten him.\n\n\"I'd regard it a bit like measles,\" said Gran, patting my back. \"We'll cure you of her, never fear.\"\n\n\"But then I have to go and battle with her again, in the real world?\"\n\n\"Mnemonomorphs are always easier to contain on the physical plane. Once you have beaten her in your mind, the rest should be easy.\"\n\nI looked up at her. \"Tell me again about Landen.\"\n\nAnd she did, for the next hour\u2014until it was time for me to stand in for Mary Jones again.\n\nI drove into Reading in Mary's car, past red minis, blue Morris Marinas and the ubiquitous Spongg Footcare trucks. I had visited the real Reading on many occasions in my life, and although the Heights Reading was a fair impression, the town was lacking in detail. A lot of roads were missing, the library was a supermarket, the Caversham district was a lot more like Beverly Hills than I remember and the very grotty downtown was more like New York in the seventies. I think I could guess where the author got his inspiration; I suppose it was artistic license\u2014something to increase the drama.\n\nI stopped in a traffic jam and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Our investigation of Perkins's death had not made much progress. Bradshaw had found the partially molten padlock and key in the remnants of the castle keep, but it didn't tell us any more. Havisham and I were not having much better luck ourselves: after three days of discreet investigation, only two pieces of information had come to light: Firstly, that only eight members of Jurisfiction had access to The Sword of the Zenobians, and that one of them was Vernham Deane. I mention this because he was posted as missing following an excursion into Ulysses to try to figure out what had happened to the stolen punctuation in the final chapter, and no one had seen him since. Successive sweeps of Ulysses had failed to show that he had been there at all. In the absence of any more information, Havisham and I had started to discuss the possibility that Perkins might have removed the padlock himself\u2014to clean out the cage or something, although this seemed doubtful. And what about my sabotaged Eject-O-Hat? Neither Havisham nor I had any more idea why I should be considered a threat; as Havisham delighted in pointing out, I was \"completely unimportant.\"\n\nBut the big news that had emerged in the past few days was that the time of the UltraWord\u2122 upgrade had been set. Text Grand Central had brought the date forwards a fortnight to coincide with the 923rd Annual BookWorld Awards. During the ceremony Libris would inaugurate the new system before an audience of seven million invited characters. The Bellman told us he had been up to Text Grand Central and seen the new UltraWord\u2122 engines for himself. Sparkling new, each engine could process about a thousand simultaneous readings of each book\u2014the old V8.3 engines were lucky to top a hundred.\n\nI wound down the window and looked out. Traffic jams in Reading weren't uncommon, but they usually moved a little bit, and this one had been solid for twenty minutes. Exasperated, I got out of the car and went to have a look. Strangely, there appeared to have been an accident. I say strangely because all the drivers and pedestrians inside Caversham Heights were only Generic D-2s to D-9s, and anything as dramatic as an accident was quite outside their brief. As I walked past the eight blue Morris Marinas in front of me, I noticed that each one had an identically damaged front wing and shattered windscreen. By the time I reached the head of the queue, I could see that the incident involved one of the white Spongg Footcare trucks. But this truck was different from the others. Usually, they were unwashed Luton-bodied Fords with petrol streaks near the filler cap and a scratched rollershutter at the rear. This truck had none of these\u2014it was pure white, very boxy and without a streak of dirt on it anywhere. The wheels, I noticed, weren't strictly round, either\u2014they were more like a fifty-sided polygon, which gave an impression of a circle. I looked closer. The tires had no surface detail or texture. They were just flat black, without depth. The driver was no more detailed than the truck; he\u2014or she or it\u2014was pink and cubist with simple features and a pale blue boilersuit. The truck had been turning left and had hit one of the blue Morris Marinas, damaging all of them identically. The driver, a gray-haired man wearing herringbone tweed, was trying to remonstrate with the cubist driver but without much luck. The truck driver turned to face him, tried to speak but then gave up and looked straight ahead, going through the motions of driving the truck even though he was stationary.\n\n\"What's going on?\" I asked the small crowd that had gathered.\n\n\"This idiot turned left when he shouldn't have,\" explained the gray-haired Morris Marina driver while his identical gray-haired Generic D-4 clones nodded their heads vigorously. \"We could all have been killed!\"\n\n\"Are you okay?\" I said to the cubist driver, who looked blankly at me and attempted to change gear.\n\n\"I've been driving in Caversham Heights since the book was written and never had an accident,\" carried on the Morris Marina driver indignantly. \"This will play hell with my no-claims bonus\u2014and what's more, I can't get any sense out of him at all!\"\n\n\"I saw it all,\" said another Spongg truck driver\u2014a proper one this time. \"Whoever he is he needs to go back to driving school and take a few lessons.\"\n\n\"Well, the show's over,\" I told them. \"Mr. Morris Marina Driver, is your car drivable?\"\n\n\"I think so,\" replied the eight identical middle-aged drivers in unison.\n\n\"Then get it out of here. Generic Truck Driver?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Find a towrope and get this heap of junk off the road.\"\n\nHe left to do my bidding as the eight Morris Marina drivers drove off in their identically spluttering cars.\n\nI was waving the cars around the stranded truck when there was a crackle in the air. The cubist truck vanished from the roadside, leaving nothing but the faint smell of cantaloupes. I stared at the space left by the truck. The drivers were more than happy that this obstacle to their ordered lives had been removed, and they sounded their horns at me to get out of the way. I examined the area of the road carefully but found nothing except a single bolt made in the same style as the truck\u2014no texture, just the same cubic shape. I walked back to my car, placed it in my bag and drove on.\n\nJack was waiting for me outside Mickey Finn's Gym, situated above a couple of shops in Coley Avenue. We were there to question a boxing promoter about allegations of fight fixing. It was the best scene in Caversham Heights\u2014gritty, realistic\u2014and with good characterization and dialogue. I met Jack slightly earlier while the story was off on a subplot regarding a missing consignment of ketamine, so there was time for a brief word together. Caversham Heights wasn't first person\u2014which was just as well, really, as I didn't think Jack had the depth of character to support it.\n\n\"Good morning, Jack,\" I said as I walked up, \"how are things?\"\n\nHe looked a lot happier than the last time I'd seen him and he smiled agreeably, handing me a coffee in a paper cup.\n\n\"Excellent, Mary\u2014I should call you Mary, shouldn't I, just in case I have a slip of the tongue when we're being read? Listen, I went to see my wife, Madeleine, last night, and after a heated exchange of opinions we came to some sort of agreement.\"\n\n\"You're going back to her?\"\n\n\"Not quite.\" Jack took a sip of coffee. \"But we agreed that if I stopped drinking and never saw Agatha Diesel again, she would consider it!\"\n\n\"Well, that's a start, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, but it might not be as simple as you think. I received this in the post this morning.\"\n\nHe handed me a letter. I unfolded it and read:\n\nDear Mr. Spratt,\n\nIt has come to our attention that you may be attempting to give up the booze and reconcile with your wife. While we approve of this as a plot device to generate more friction and inner conflicts, we most strongly advise you not to carry it through to a happy reconciliation, as this would put you in direct contravention of Rule 11c of the Union of Sad Loner Detectives' Code, as ratified by the Union of Literary Detectives, and it will ultimately result in your expulsion from the association with subsequent loss of benefits.\n\nI trust you will do the decent thing and halt this damaging and abnormal behavior before it leads to your downfall.\n\nP.S. Despite repeated demands, you have failed to drive a classic car or pursue an unusual hobby. Please do so at once or face the consequences.\n\n\"Hmm,\" I muttered, \"it's signed Poi\u2014\"\n\n\"I know who it's signed by,\" replied Jack sadly, retrieving the letter. \"The union is very powerful. They have influence that goes all the way up to the Great Panjandrum. This could hasten the demolition of Caversham Heights, not delay it. Father Brown wanted to renounce the priesthood umpteen times, but, well, the union\u2014\"\n\n\"Jack, what do you want?\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\n\"Yes, you.\"\n\nHe sighed. \"It's not as simple as that. I have a responsibility for the seven hundred eightysix other characters in this book. Think of it\u2014all those Generics sold off like post-Christmas turkeys or reduced to text. It makes me shudder just to think about it!\"\n\n\"That might happen anyway, Jack. At least this way we have a fighting chance. Do your own thing. Break away from the norm.\"\n\nHe sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair. \"But what about the conflicts? Isn't that the point of being a loner detective? The appalling self-destruction, the inner battles within ourselves that add spice to the proceedings and enable the story to advance more interestingly? We can't just have setup\u2013murder\u2013interview\u2013interview\u2013second murder\u2013conjecture\u2013interview\u2013more conjecture\u2013false ending\u2013third murder\u2013dramatic twist\u2013resolution, can we? Where's the interest if a detective doesn't get romantically involved with someone who has something to do with the first murder? Why, I might never have to make a choice between justice and my own personal feelings ever again!\"\n\n\"And what if you don't?\" I persisted. \"It needn't be like that. There's more than one way to make a story interesting.\"\n\n\"Okay, let's say I do live happily with Madeleine and the kids\u2014what am I going to do for subplots? Conflict, for want of a better word, is good. Conflict is right. Conflict works.\"\n\nHe gazed at me angrily, but I knew he still believed in himself\u2014that we were even having this conversation proved that.\n\n\"It doesn't have to be marital conflicts,\" I told him. \"We could get a few subplots from the Well and sew them in\u2014I agree the action can't always stay with you, but if we\u2014Hello, I think we've got company.\"\n\nA pink Triumph Herald had pulled up with a middle-aged woman in it. She got out, walked straight up to Jack and slapped him hard in the face.\n\n\"How dare you!\" she screamed. \"I waited three hours for you at the Sad and Single wine bar\u2014what happened?\"\n\n\"I told you, Agatha. I was with my wife.\"\n\n\"Sure you were,\" she spat, her voice rising. \"Don't patronize me with your pathetic little lies\u2014who are you screwing this time? One of those little tarts down at the station?\"\n\n\"It's true,\" he replied in an even voice, more shocked than outraged. \"I told you last night\u2014it's all over, Agatha.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes? I suppose you put him up to this?\" she said, looking at me, scorn and anger in her eyes. \"You come down here on a character exchange with your Outlander airs and self-determination bullshit and think you can improve the story line? The supreme arrogance of you people!\"\n\nShe stopped for a moment and narrowed her eyes. \"You're sleeping together, aren't you?\"\n\n\"No,\" I told her firmly, \"and if there aren't some improvements round here soon, there won't be a book. If you want a transfer out of here, I'm sure I can arrange something\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all so easy for you, isn't it?\" she said, her face convulsing with anger and then fear as her voice rose. \"Think you can just make a few footnoterphone calls and everything will be just dandy?\" She pointed a long bony finger at me. \"Well, I'll tell you, Miss Outlander, I will not take this lying down!\"\n\nShe glared at us both, marched back to her car and drove off with a squeal of tires.\n\n\"How about that for a conflictual subplot?\" I asked, but Jack wasn't amused.\n\n\"Let's see what else you can dream up\u2014I'm not sure I like that one. Did you find out when the Book Inspectorate are due to read us?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\nJack looked at his watch. \"Come on, we've got the fight-rigging scene to do. You'll like this one. Mary was sometimes a little late with the 'If you don't know, we can't help you' line when we did the old good-cop/bad-cop routine, but just stay on your toes and you'll be fine.\"\n\nHe seemed a lot happier having stood up to Agatha, and we walked across the road to where some rusty iron stairs led up to the gym.\n\nReading, Tuesday. It had been raining all night and the rain-washed streets reflected the dour sky. Mary and Jack walked up the steel steps that led to Mickey Finn's. A lugubrious gym that smelt of sweat and dreams, where hopefuls tried to spar their way out of Reading's underclass. Mickey Finn was an ex-boxer himself, with scarred eyes and a tremor to prove it. In latter days he was a trainer, then a manager. Today he just ran the gym and dabbled in drugs on the side.\n\n\"Who are we here to see?\" asked Mary as their feet rang out on the iron treads.\n\n\"Mickey Finn,\" replied Jack. \"He got caught up in some trouble a few years ago and I put in a good word. He owes me.\"\n\nThey reached the top and opened the doo\u2014\n\nIt was a good job the door opened outwards. If it had opened inwards, I would not be here to tell the tale. Jack teetered on the edge and I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. The only part of Mickey Finn's that remained were short floorboards that changed to descriptive prose less than a foot out, the ragged ends whipping and fluttering like pennants in the wind. Beyond these remnants was nothing but a dizzying drop to a bleak and windswept sea, whipped up into a frenzy by a typhoon. The waves rose and fell, carrying with them small ships that looked like trawlers, the sailors on board covered in oilskins. But the sea wasn't water as I knew it, the waves here were made of letters. Every now and then they would coalesce and a word or sentence would burst enthusiastically from the surface, where it would be caught by the sailors who held nets on long poles.\n\n\"Blast!\" said Jack. \"Damn and blast!\"\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked as a word that spelled saxophone came barreling towards us, changing to a real saxophone as it crossed the threshold and hit the ironwork of the staircase with a crash. The clouds of individual letters in the sky above the wave-tossed sea contained punctuation marks that swirled in ugly patterns. Now and then a bolt of lightning struck the sea and the letters swirled near the point of discharge, spontaneously creating words.\n\n\"The Text Sea!\" yelled Jack against the rush of wind. We attempted to close the door against the gale as a grammasite flew past with a loud \"Gark!\" and expertly speared a verb that had jumped from the sea at a badly chosen moment.\n\nWe pressed our weight against the door and it closed. The wind abated, the thunder now merely a distant rumble behind the half-glazed door. I picked up the bent saxophone.\n\n\"I had no idea the Text Sea looked like anything at all,\" I said, panting. \"I thought it was just an abstract notion.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's real all right,\" replied Jack, picking up his hat, \"as real as anything is down here. The LiteraSea is the basis for all prose written in roman script. It's connected to the Searyllic Ocean somewhere, but I don't know the details. You know what this means, don't you?\"\n\n\"That scene stealers have been at work?\"\n\n\"It looks more like a deletion to me,\" replied Jack grimly, \" excised. The whole kerfuffle. Characters, setting, dialogue, subplot and the narrative-turning device regarding the fight-fixing that the writer had pinched from On the Waterfront.\"\n\n\"Where to?\"\n\n\"Probably to another book by the same author,\" sighed Jack. \"Kind of proves we won't be long for the Well. It's the next nail in the coffin.\"\n\n\"Can't we just jump into the next chapter and the discovery of the drug dealer shot dead when the undercover buy goes wrong?\"\n\n\"It would never work,\" said Jack, shaking his head. \"Let me see\u2014I wouldn't have known about Hawkins's involvement with Davison's master plan. More importantly, Mickey Finn would have no reason to be killed if he didn't talk to me, so he would have been there to stop the fight before Johnson placed his three-hundred-thousand-pound bet\u2014and the heartwarming scene in the last two pages of the book with the young lad will make no sense unless I meet him here first. Shit. There isn't a holesmith anywhere in the Well who can fill this one. We're finished, Thursday. As soon as the book figures the gym scene has gone, the plot will start to spontaneously unravel. We'll have to declare literary insolvency. If we do it quick, we might be able to get most of the major parts reassigned to another book.\"\n\n\"There must be something we can do!\"\n\nJack thought for a moment. \"No, Thursday. It's over. I'm calling it.\"\n\n\"Hang on. What if we come in again, but instead of us both walking up the stairs, you start at the top, meet me coming up and explain what you have just found out. We jump straight from there to chapter eight and... you're looking at me a bit oddly.\"\n\n\"Mary\u2014\"\n\n\"Thursday.\"\n\n\"Thursday. That would make chapter seven only a page long!\"\n\n\"Better than nothing.\"\n\n\"It won't work.\"\n\n\"Vonnegut does it all the time.\"\n\nHe sighed. \"Okay. Lead on, maestro.\"\n\nI smiled and we jumped back three pages.\n\nReading, Tuesday. It had been raining all night and the rain-washed streets reflected the dour sky. Mary was late and she met Jack walking down the stairway from an upstairs gymnasium, his feet ringing on the iron treads.\n\n\"Sorry I'm late,\" said Mary, \"I had a puncture. Did you meet up with your contact?\"\n\n\"Y-es,\" replied Jack. \"Had you visited the gym\u2014which you haven't of course\u2014you would have found it a lugubrious place that smells of sweat and dreams, where hopefuls try to spar their way out of Reading's underclass.\"\n\n\"Who were you seeing?\" asked Mary as they walked back to her car.\n\n\"Mickey Finn, ex-boxer with scarred eyes and a tremor to match. He told me that Hawkins was involved with Davison's master plan. There is talk of a big shipment coming in on the fifth and he also let slip that he was going to see Jethro\u2014the importance of which I won't understand until later.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\" asked Mary, looking thoughtful.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Are you sure you're sure?\"\n\n\"Er... No, wait. I've just remembered. There was this young kid there up for his first fight. It could make him. Mickey said he was the best he'd ever seen\u2014he could be a contender.\"\n\n\"Sounds like you had a busy morning,\" said Mary, looking up at the gray sky.\n\n\"The busiest,\" answered Jack, pulling up his jacket around his shoulders. \"Come on, I'll buy you lunch.\"\n\nThe chapter ended and Jack covered his face with his hands and groaned.\n\n\"I can't believe I said 'the importance of which I won't understand until later.' They'll never buy it. It's rubbish!\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, \"stop fretting. It'll be fine. We just have to hold the book together long enough to figure out a rescue plan.\"\n\n\"What have we to lose?\" replied Jack with a good measure of stoicism. \"You get up to Jurisfiction and see what you can find out about the Book Inspectorate. I'll hold a few auditions and try to rebuild the scene from memory.\"\n\nHe paused.\n\n\"And, Thursday?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nI drove back to the flying boat. Having said I wasn't going to get involved with any internal politics, I was surprised by how much of a kinship with Caversham Heights I was feeling. Admittedly, the book was pretty dreadful, but it was no worse than the average Farquitt\u2014perhaps I felt this way because it was my home.\n\n\"Are we going shopping now?\" asked Lola, who had been waiting for me. \"I need something to wear for the BookWorld Awards the week after next.\"\n\n\"Are you invited?\"\n\n\"We all are,\" she breathed excitedly. \"It's going to be quite an event!\"\n\n\"It certainly will,\" I said, going upstairs. Lola followed me and watched from my bed as I changed out of Mary's clothes.\n\n\"You're quite important at Jurisfiction, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" I replied, trying to do up my trouser button and realizing that it was tighter than normal. \"Blast!\" I said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"My trousers are too small.\"\n\n\"Shrunk?\"\n\n\"No...\" I stared into the mirror. There was no doubt about it. I was starting to put on a small amount of girth. I stared at it this way and that and Lola did the same, trying to figure out what I was looking at.\n\nCatalog shopping from the inside was a lot more fun than I had thought. Lola squeaked with delight at all the clothes on offer and tried about thirty different types of perfume before deciding not to buy any at all\u2014she, in common with nearly all bookpeople, had no sense of smell. Watching her was like letting a child loose in a toy store\u2014and her energy to shop was almost unbelievable. It was while we were on the lingerie page that she asked me about Randolph.\n\n\"What do you think of him?\"\n\n\"Oh, he's fine,\" I replied noncommittally, sitting on a chair and thinking of babies while Lola tried on one bra after another, each of which she seemed to love to bits until the next one. \"Why do you ask?\"\n\n\"Well, I rather like him in a funny kind of way.\"\n\n\"Does he like you?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. I think that's why he ignores me and makes jokes about my weight. Men always do that when they're interested. It's called subtext, Thursday\u2014I'll tell you all about it someday.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said slowly, \"so what's the problem?\"\n\n\"He doesn't really have a lot of, well, charisma.\"\n\n\"There are lots of men out there, Lola, don't hurry. When I was seventeen, I had the hots for this complete and utter flake named Darren. My mother disapproved, which made him into something of a magnet.\"\n\n\"Ah! What about this bra?\"\n\n\"I thought the pink suited you better.\"\n\n\"Which pink? There were twelve.\"\n\n\"The sixth pink, just after the tenth black and nineteenth lacy.\"\n\n\"Okay, let's look at that one again.\" She rummaged through the pile, found what she wanted. \"Thursday?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Randolph calls me a tart because I like boys. Do you think that's fair?\"\n\n\"It's one of the great injustices of life. If he did the same, he'd be toasted as a 'ladies' man.' But, Lola, have you met anyone who you really like, someone with whom you'd like to spend more exclusive time with?\"\n\n\"You mean\u2014a boyfriend?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nShe paused and looked at herself in the mirror. \"I don't think I'm written that way, Thurs. But you know, sometimes\u2014just afterwards, you know\u2014when there is that really nice moment and I'm in his big strong arms and feeling sleepy and warm and contented, I can feel there is something that I need just outside my grasp\u2014something I want but can't have.\"\n\n\"You mean love?\"\n\n\"No\u2014a Mercedes.\"\n\nShe wasn't joking.\n\nIt was my footnoterphone.\n\n\"Hang on, Lola\u2014Thursday speaking.\"\n\nI looked at Lola, who was trying on a basque.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"why?\"\n\n\"The safe side of what?\"\n\n\"I see. What can I do for you apart from answering questions about pianos?\"\n\nI wasn't busy. Apart from a Jurisfiction session tomorrow at midday, I was clear.\n\n\"Sure. Where and when?\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nLola was looking at me mournfully. \"Does this mean we'll have to miss out on the gym? We have to go to the gym\u2014if I don't, I'll feel guilty about eating all those cakes.\"\n\n\"What cakes?\"\n\n\"The ones I'm going to eat on the way to the gym.\"\n\n\"I think you get enough exercise, Lola. But we've got half an hour yet\u2014c'mon, I'll buy you a coffee.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Who Stole the Tarts?",
                "text": "\u2002My first adult foray into the BookWorld had not been without controversy. I had entered Jane Eyre and changed the ending. Originally, Jane goes off to India with the drippy St. John Rivers, but in the ending that I engineered, Jane and Rochester married. I made the decision from the heart, which I had not been trained to do but couldn't help myself. Everyone liked the new ending but my actions weren't without criticism. Technically I had committed a Fiction Infraction, and I would have to face the music. My first hearing in Kafka's The Trial had been inconclusive. The trial before the King and Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland would not be as strange\u2014it would be stranger.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nThe gryphon was a creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. In his youth he must have been a frightening creature to behold, but in his later years he wore spectacles and a scarf, which somewhat dented his otherwise fearsome appearance.\n\nHe was, I was told, one of the finest legal eagles around, and after Snell's death he became head of the Jurisfiction legal team. It was the Gryphon who secured the record payout in the celebrated Farmer's Wife v. Three Blind Mice case, and he was instrumental in reducing Nemo's piracy charges to \"accidental manslaughter.\"\n\nThe Gryphon was reading my notes when I arrived and made small and incomprehensible noises as he flicked through the pages, grunting here and there and staring at me over his spectacles with large eyes.\n\n\"Well!\" he said. \"We should be in for some fun now!\"\n\n\"Fun?\" I repeated. \"Defending a Class II Fiction Infraction?\"\n\n\"I'm prosecuting a class action for blindness against the Triffids this afternoon,\" said the Gryphon soberly, \"and the Martians' war crimes trial in War of the Worlds just drags on and on. Believe me, a Fiction Infraction is fun. Do you want to see my caseload?\"\n\n\"No, thanks.\"\n\n\"Okay. We'll see what their witnesses have to say and how Hopkins presents his case. I may decide not to put you on the stand. Please don't do anything stupid like grow\u2014it nearly destroyed Alice's case there and then. And if the Queen orders your head to be cut off, ignore her.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I sighed, \"let's get on with it.\"\n\nThe King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their thrones when we arrived, but they were the only people in the courtroom who were seemingly composed\u2014Alice's exit two pages earlier had caused a considerable amount of distress to the jury, who were back in their places but were bickering furiously with the foreman, a rabbit who stared back at them, nibbling a large carrot that he had somehow smuggled in.\n\nThe Knave of Hearts was being escorted back to the cells, and the tarts\u2014exhibit A\u2014were being taken away and replaced by the original manuscript of Jane Eyre. Seated before the King and Queen was prosecuting attorney Mathew Hopkins and a collection of severe-looking birds. He glared at me with barely concealed venom. He looked a lot less amused since we had last crossed swords in The Trial, and he hadn't looked particularly amused then. The King was obviously the judge because he wore a large wig, but quite which part the Queen of Hearts was to play in the proceedings, I had no idea.\n\nThe twelve jurors calmed down and all started writing busily on their slates.\n\n\"What are they doing?\" I whispered to the Gryphon. \"The trial hasn't even begun yet!\"\n\n\"Silence in court!\" yelled the White Rabbit in a shrill voice.\n\n\"Off with her head!\" yelled the Queen.\n\nThe King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round to find out who had been talking. The Queen nudged him and nodded in my direction.\n\n\"You there!\" he said. \"You will have your say soon enough, Miss, Miss...\"\n\n\"Next,\" put in the White Rabbit after consulting his parchment.\n\n\"Really?\" replied the King with some confusion. \"Does that mean we're done?\"\n\n\"No, Your Majesty,\" replied the White Rabbit patiently, \"her name is Next. Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"I suppose you think that's funny?\"\n\n\"No, indeed, Your Majesty,\" I replied. \"It was the name I was born with.\"\n\nThe jurymen all frantically started to write \"It was the name I was born with\" on their slates.\n\n\"You're an Outlander, aren't you?\" said the Queen, who had been staring at me for some time.\n\n\"Yes, Your Majesty.\"\n\n\"Then answer me this: When there are two people and one of them has left, who is left? The person who is left or the person who has left? I mean, they can't both be left, can they?\"\n\n\"Herald, read the accusation!\" said the King.\n\nOn this, the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, then unrolled the parchment scroll and read as follows:\n\n\"Miss Thursday Next is hereby accused of a Fiction Infraction Class II against the Jurisfiction penal code FAL/0605937 and pursuant to the BookWorld general law regarding continuity of plotlines, as ratified to the Council of Genres, 1584.\"\n\n\"Consider your verdict,\" said the King to the jury.\n\n\"Objection!\" cried the Gryphon. \"There's a great deal to come before that!\"\n\n\"Overruled!\" shouted the King, adding, \"Or do I mean 'sustained'? I always get the two mixed up\u2014it's a bit like is it 'feed a cold and starve a fever' or 'starve a cold and feed a fever'? I never know. At any rate, you may call the first witness.\"\n\nThe White Rabbit blew three more blasts on the trumpet and called out, \"First witness!\"\n\nThe first witness was Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall, Rochester's home. She blinked and looked around the court slowly, smiling at Hopkins and glaring at me. She was assisted into the witness box by an usher who was actually a large guinea pig.\n\n\"Do you promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?\" asked the White Rabbit.\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Write that down,\" the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly all wrote \"write that down\" on their slates.\n\n\"Mrs. Fairfax,\" began Hopkins, rising to his feet, \"I want you to tell me in your own words the events surrounding Miss Next's intrusion into Jane Eyre, starting at the beginning and not stopping until you get to the end.\"\n\n\"And then what?\" asked the King.\n\n\"Then she may stop,\" said Hopkins with a trace of annoyance.\n\n\"Ah,\" said the King in the voice of someone who thinks he understands a great deal but is sadly mistaken, \"proceed.\"\n\nFor the next two hours we listened to not only Mrs. Fairfax but Grace Poole, Blanche Ingram and St. John Rivers all giving evidence to explain the old ending and how by calling \"Jane Jane Jane!\" at Jane's bedroom I had changed the narrative completely. The jury tried to keep up with the proceedings, and they wrote as and when directed by the King until there was no more room on their slates and they tried to write on the benches in front of them, and failing that, on each other.\n\nAfter every witness, the smallest dormouse in the jury was excused for a trip to the bathroom, which gave the Gryphon time to explain to the King\u2014who probably wouldn't have been able to touch his head with his eyes shut\u2014the procedure of the law. When the dormouse returned, the witness was given to the Gryphon for cross-examination, and every time he called, \"No further questions.\" The afternoon wore on and it became hotter in the courtroom. The Queen grew more and more bored and seemed to demand the verdict on a more and more frequent basis, once even asking during a witness's testimony.\n\nAnd all during this tedious performance, as the characters from Jane Eyre came and repeated the truth in front of me, a seemingly endless parade of guinea pigs interrupted the proceedings. Each one was immediately set upon and placed headfirst into a large canvas bag, then ejected from the court. Each time this happened, there followed a quite inordinate amount of confusion, cries and noise. As the din grew to a fever pitch, the Queen would scream \"Off with his head! Off with his head!\" as though she were somehow in direct competition with the tumult. By the time another guinea pig had been thrown from the court, Grace Poole had vanished in a cloud of alcoholic vapors, and no one knew where she was.\n\n\"Never mind!\" said the King with an air of great relief. \"Call the next witness.\" He added in an undertone to the Queen, \"Really, my dear, you must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my forehead ache!\"\n\nI watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list and read out at the top of his shrill little voice, \"Thursday Next!\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said the Gryphon, stirring himself from the lethargy he had shown throughout the trial, \"but Miss Next will not be giving evidence against herself in this court of law.\"\n\n\"Is that allowed?\" asked the King. The jury all looked at one another and shrugged.\n\n\"It proves she's guilty!\" screamed the Queen. \"Off with her head! Off with\u2014\"\n\n\"It proves nothing of the sort,\" interrupted the Gryphon. The Queen went scarlet and would probably have exploded had not the King laid his hand on her arm.\n\n\"Come come, my dear,\" he said softly, \"you must stay calm. All these orders of execution are probably not good for your hearts.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"Hearts,\" he said again. \"I say, I've made a joke that's rather good, don't you think?\"\n\nThe jury all laughed dutifully and the brighter ones explained to the more stupid ones what the joke was, and the stupid ones explained to the even stupider ones what a joke actually is.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said the dormouse again, \"may I go to the bathroom?\"\n\n\"Again?\" bellowed the King. \"You must have a bladder the size of a peanut.\"\n\n\"A grain of rice, so please Your Majesty,\" said the dormouse, knees knocking together.\n\n\"Very well,\" said the King, \"but make it quick. Now, can we reach a verdict?\"\n\n\"Now who wants a verdict?\" asked the Queen triumphantly.\n\n\"There's more evidence to come yet, please Your Majesty,\" said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry. \"We have to hear from the defense yet.\"\n\n\"The defense?\" asked the King wearily. \"Haven't we just heard from them?\"\n\n\"No, Your Majesty,\" replied the White Rabbit, \"that was the prosecution.\"\n\n\"The two always confuse me,\" replied the King, staring at his feet, \"a bit like that 'Overruled' and 'Sustained' malarkey\u2014which was which again?\"\n\n\"The prosecution rests,\" said Hopkins, who could see that this trial might last for months if he didn't get a move on, \"and I think we have conclusively proved that Miss Next not only changed the ending of Jane Eyre but was also premeditated in her actions. This is not a court of opinion, it is a court of law, and there is only one verdict which this court can reach\u2014guilty.\"\n\n\"I told you she was guilty,\" muttered the King, getting up to leave.\n\n\"Please Your Majesty,\" said the White Rabbit, \"that was just the prosecution summing up. You must listen to the defense now.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the King, sitting down again.\n\nThe Gryphon stood up and walked to the jury box. They all recoiled in fear as he scratched his chin with a large paw. The dormouse put up his hand to be excused and was allowed to leave. When he had returned, the Gryphon began.\n\n\"The question here is not whether Miss Next took a few textual and narrative liberties with the end of Jane Eyre, as my learned friend the prosecution has made so abundantly clear. We admit that she did.\"\n\nThere was a gasp from the jury.\n\n\"No, I contend that whilst Miss Next broke the law in a technical sense, she did so for the best possible motives\u2014love.\"\n\nThe Gryphon paused for dramatic effect.\n\n\"Love?\" said the King, \"Is that a defense?\"\n\n\"Historically speaking,\" whispered the White Rabbit, \"one of the best, Your Majesty.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the King. \"Proceed.\"\n\n\"And not for her own love, either,\" continued the Gryphon. \"She did it so that two others who were in love might stay that way and not be parted. For such things are against the natural order, a court far higher than the court Miss Next faces today.\"\n\nThere was silence, so he continued:\n\n\"I contend that Miss Next is a very extraordinary person with a selfless streak that demands the highest leniency from this court. I have only one witness to call, who will prove the veracity of this defense. I call... Edward Rochester!\"\n\nThere was a sharp intake of breath and the remaining guinea pig fainted clean away. The clerks of the court, unsure what to do, popped the guinea pig in a sack and sat on it.\n\n\"Call Edward Rochester!\" cried the White Rabbit in his shrill voice, a demand that was echoed four times in a succession of voices each diminished further by the distance.\n\nWe heard his footfalls shuffle on the floor before we saw him, a slightly hesitant stride with the click of a cane for punctuation. He walked slowly into the courtroom with a fragile yet resolute air and scanned the room carefully to gauge, as well as he could, which of the shapes before him were judge and jury and counsel. The change I had wrought upon Jane Eyre had not been without its price. Rochester had lost a hand and only had the milkiest vision in one eye only. I put my hand to my mouth as I watched his form shuffle into the silenced courtroom. If I had known the outcome of my actions, would I still have taken them? Acheron's perfidy had been the author of Rochester's ills, but I had been the catalyst.\n\nEdward's face was healed, although badly scarred, but it did no desperate harm to his looks. He took the oath, his features glowering beneath the dark hair that hung in front of his face.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said the dormouse who was sitting closest to Rochester, \"would you sign my slate, please?\"\n\nRochester gave a dour half smile, took the stylus and said, \"Name?\"\n\n\"Geoffrey.\"\n\nRochester signed and returned the slate and was instantly handed eleven more, all wiped clean of their carefully written notes.\n\n\"Enough!\" roared the King. \"I will not have my court turned into a haven for autograph hunters! We pursue the truth here, not celebrities!\"\n\nThere was dead silence.\n\n\"But if you wouldn't mind...,\" said the King, passing down his notebook to Rochester and adding quietly, \"It's for my daughter.\"\n\n\"And your daughter's name?\" asked Rochester, pen poised.\n\n\"Rupert.\"\n\nRochester signed the book and passed it back.\n\n\"Mr. Rochester,\" said the Gryphon, \"I wonder if you might expound in your own words what Miss Next's actions have done for you?\"\n\nThe court fell silent. Even the King and Queen were interested to see what Mr. Rochester had to say.\n\n\"To me alone?\" replied Rochester slowly. \"Nothing. For us, my own dear sweet Jane and I\u2014everything!\"\n\nHe clenched the hand that carried his wedding ring, rubbing the band of gold with his thumb, trying to turn his feelings into words.\n\n\"What has Miss Next not done for us?\" he intoned quietly. \"She has given us everything we could want. She has released us both from a prison that was not of our making, a dungeon of depression from which we thought we should never be free. Miss Next gave us the opportunity to love and be loved\u2014I can think of no greater gift anyone could have been given, no word in my head can express the thanks that is ours, for her.\"\n\nThere was silence in the courtroom. Even the Queen had fallen quiet and was staring\u2014quite like a fish, I thought\u2014at Rochester.\n\nThe Gryphon's voice broke the silence: \"Your witness.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Hopkins, gathering his thoughts. \"Tell me, Mr. Rochester, just to confirm one point: Did Miss Next change the end of your novel?\"\n\n\"Although I am now, as you see, maimed,\" replied Rochester, \"no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut tree in Thornfield orchard, I am happier than I have ever been. Yes, sir, Miss Next changed the ending, and I thank her every evening for it!\"\n\nHopkins smiled. \"No further questions.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the Gryphon after the court had been adjourned for the King to consider what form the sentence should take. The Queen, unusually for her, had called for acquittal. The word sounded alien on her lips and everyone stared at her with shock and surprise when she said it\u2014Bill the lizard almost choked and had to be slapped on the back.\n\n\"The outcome was a foregone conclusion,\" said the Gryphon, nodding his respect to Hopkins, who was organizing some notes with the White Rabbit, \"but I knew Rochester would put on a good show for you. The King and Queen of Hearts may be the stupidest couple to ever preside upon a court, but they are, after all, Hearts, and since you were undeniably guilty, we needed a court to show a bit of compassion when it came to sentencing.\"\n\n\"Compassion?\" I echoed with some surprise. \"With the Queen of 'Off with her head'?\"\n\n\"It's just her little way,\" replied the Gryphon, \"she never actually executes anyone. I was just worried for a moment that they might try to hold you on remand until the sentencing, but fortunately the King isn't very up on legal terminology.\"\n\n\"What do you think I'll get?\"\n\n\"Do you know, I have absolutely no idea. Time will tell. I'll see you around, Next!\"\n\nI made my way slowly back to the Jurisfiction offices, where I found Miss Havisham.\n\n\"How did it go?\" she asked.\n\n\"Guilty as charged.\"\n\n\"Bad luck. When's the sentencing?\"\n\n\"Not a clue.\"\n\n\"Might not be for years, Thursday. I've got something for you.\"\n\nShe passed me across the report I had written for her regarding Shadow the Sheepdog. I read the mark on the cover, then read it again, then looked at Havisham.\n\n\"A-plus-plus Hons?\" I echoed incredulously.\n\n\"Think I'm being overgenerous?\"\n\n\"Well, yes,\" I said, feeling confused. \"I was forcibly married and then nearly murdered!\"\n\n\"Marriage by force is not recognized, Next. But bear this in mind: we've given that particular assignment to every new Jurisfiction apprentice for the past thirty-two years and every single one has failed.\"\n\nI gaped at her.\n\n\"Even Harris Tweed.\"\n\n\"Tweed was married to Mr. Townsperson?\"\n\n\"Apart from that bit. He didn't even manage to buy the pigs\u2014let alone fool the vet. You did well, Next. Your cause-and-effect technique is good. Needs work, but good.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" I said, kind of relieved, then added after a moment's reflection, \"But I could have been killed!\"\n\n\"You wouldn't have been killed. Jurisfiction has eyes and ears everywhere\u2014we're not that reckless with our apprentices. Your multiple-choice mark was ninety-three percent. Congratulations. Pending final submissions to the Council of Genres, you're made.\"\n\nI thought about this and felt some pride in it, despite knowing in my heart of hearts that this would not be a long appointment\u2014as soon as I could return to the Outland, I would.\n\n\"Did you find out anything about Perkins?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" I replied. \"Any news of Vernham Deane?\"\n\n\"Vanished without trace. The Bellman's going to talk to us about it.\"\n\n\"Could the two be related?\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" she said slightly mysteriously. \"I'll have to make further inquiries. Ask me again tomorrow.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Crimean Nightmares",
                "text": "\u2002Echolocator: An artisan who will enter a book close to publication and locate and destroy echoed words in the work. As a general rule, identical words (with exceptions such as names, small words and modified repetitions) cannot be repeated within fifteen words as it interrupts the smooth transfer of images into the reader's mind. (See Imagino TransferenceDevice User's Manual, page 782.) Although echoes can be jarring to the eye, they are more jarring when read out loud, which belies their origin from the first OralTrad Operating System. (See also OralTradPlus, Operating Systems, History of.)\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\n\"Ah!\" Said gran as I walked in the door. \"There you are! How were things at work today?\"\n\n\"Good and bad,\" I told her, sitting on a sofa and undoing the top button of my trousers. \"The good news is I passed the Jurisfiction practical; the bad news is that I was found guilty of my Fiction Infraction.\"\n\n\"Did they tell you the sentence?\"\n\n\"I'll have to wait for that.\"\n\n\"Waiting's the worst part,\" she murmured. \"I was up for murder once and the worst part of it all was waiting for the jury to come back with their verdict. Longest eight hours of my life.\"\n\n\"I believe you. Did you go home today?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"I brought you a few bits and bobs. I notice there is no chocolate here in the WOLP\u2014nothing worth eating, anyway.\"\n\n\"Did you find out anything about Yorrick Kaine?\"\n\n\"Not much,\" replied Gran, eating the chocolate she had brought for me, \"but he's not in hiding or anything. He's bought another publishing house and at the same time trying to rebuild his political career after that Cardenio debacle.\"\n\n\"Ah. Where are Lola and Randolph?\"\n\n\"At a party, I think. You look all done in\u2014why don't you get an early night?\"\n\n\"And have what's-her-name pester me?\"\n\nGran looked at me seriously through her large-framed spectacles. \"Aornis. It's Aornis. Remember?\"\n\n\"Yes. Who was my husband again?\"\n\n\"Landen. He was eradicated by the ChronoGuard, yes?\"\n\nI remembered and my heart sank. \"Yes,\" I said in a quiet voice. I had been happy in my nonremembering state, but now I could feel the anger rising again.\n\n\"Sometimes I think it would be better if I just forgot, Gran.\"\n\n\"Never say that, Thursday!\" said Gran so sharply I jumped, and she had to rest for a moment to get her breath back and eat a few more chocolates. \"Aornis has no right to take that which does not belong to her, and you must be strong with her, and yourself\u2014retake your memories!\"\n\n\"Easier said than done, Gran.\" I tried to grab a chocolate as they were pulled out of my reach. \"I want to dream about\u2014\"\n\n\"Landen.\"\n\n\"\u2014Landen, yes\u2014I want to dream about him again. He's there but we don't talk like we used to.\"\n\nThe door banged open and Randolph walked in. He ignored us both and hung up his coat.\n\n\"Randolph?\" I said. \"You okay?\"\n\n\"Me?\" he said, not looking at either of us. \"I'm fine\u2014it's that little tarty little bitchlet who's going to come to a sticky end\u2014she can't talk to a man without wanting to add him to her collection!\"\n\nAnd he walked out.\n\n\"Is she all right?\" I called after him, but all we heard was the door to their bedroom slam shut. We looked at each other and shrugged.\n\n\"Where were we?\"\n\n\"I was telling you how I never dream about Landen the way I used to. We used to go to the really great memories we shared. We never got to\u2014you know\u2014but it was wonderful\u2014at least I had some control of where I went when the 'Sable Goddess' laid down her cloak.\"\n\nGran looked at me and patted my hand reassuringly. \"You need to make her feel she's winning, Thursday. Lull her into a trap. She might think she is in command, but she's only in your mind and you are the one that controls what you think. Our memories are precious and should never be sullied by an outside agent.\"\n\n\"Of course\u2014but how?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Gran, passing me a chocolate she didn't like, \"it isn't Aornis up there, my dear, it's only your memory of her. She's alone and afraid, too. Without the real Aornis here in the BookWorld she doesn't have so much power; all she can do is try and\u2014\"\n\nThe door burst open again. This time it was Lola. She looked as though she had been crying. She stopped dead when she saw us.\n\n\"Ah!\" she said. \"Is rat-face shit-for-brains in?\"\n\n\"Do you mean Randolph?\"\n\n\"Who else?\"\n\n\"Then, yes, he is.\"\n\n\"Right!\" she announced. \"I'll go and sleep over at Nemo's.\"\n\nShe started to leave.\n\n\"Wait!\" I said. \"What's going on?\"\n\nShe stopped and put her hands on her hips. Her bag slid down and hung off her elbow, which spoiled the illusion, but Lola was past caring.\n\n\"I went to meet him for coffee after college, and blow me if he's not talking to that little D-2 runt\u2014you know, the one with the squinty eyes and the stupid, snorty laugh?\"\n\n\"Lola,\" I said quietly, \"they were probably just talking.\"\n\nShe looked at her hands for a moment. \"You're right. And what do I care anyway? They clearly deserve one another!\"\n\n\"I heard that!\" said a voice from the back of the flying boat. Randolph strode into the room and waved a finger at Lola, who glared back angrily.\n\n\"You've got a nerve accusing me of being with another woman when you've slept with almost everyone at school!\"\n\n\"And so what if I have?\" screamed Lola. \"Who are you, my father? Have you been spying on me?\"\n\n\"Even the worst spy in the genre couldn't fail to notice what you're up to\u2014don't you know the meaning of the word discretion?\"\n\n\"One-dimensional!\"\n\n\"Cardboard!\"\n\n\"Stereotype!\"\n\n\"Predictable!\"\n\n\"Jerkoff!\"\n\n\"Arsehole!\"\n\n\"Duck, Gran,\" I whispered as Lola picked up a vase and threw it at Randolph. It missed and went sailing over the top of our heads to shatter on the far wall.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said loudly, using my best and most assertive voice, \"any more crap out of you two and you can live somewhere else. Randolph. You can sleep on the sofa. Lola, you can go to your room\u2014and if I hear a peep out of either of you, I'll have you both allocated to knitting patterns\u2014get it?\"\n\nThey went quiet, mumbled something about being sorry and walked slowly from the room.\n\n\"Oh, that was good, balls-for-brains,\" muttered Lola as they moved off, \"get us both into trouble, why don't you?\"\n\n\"Me?\" he returned angrily. \"Your knickers are off so often I'm amazed you bother with them at all.\"\n\n\"Did you hear me?\" I yelled after them, and there was quiet.\n\nI sat down next to Gran again, who was picking bits of broken vase from the tabletop.\n\n\"Where were we?\" she asked.\n\n\"Er... retaking my memories?\"\n\n\"Exactly so. She'll be wanting to try and break you down, so things are going to get worse before they get better\u2014only when she thinks she has defeated you can we go on the offensive.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by getting worse? Hades? Landen's eradication? Darren? How far do I have to go?\"\n\n\"Back to the worst time of all\u2014the truth about what happened during the charge.\"\n\n\"Anton.\" I groaned and rubbed my face. \"I don't want to go back there, Gran, I can't!\"\n\n\"Then she'll pick away at your memory until there is nothing left; she doesn't want that\u2014she's after revenge. You have to go back to the Crimea, Thursday. Face up to the worst and grow stronger from it.\"\n\n\"No, I won't go back there and you can't make me.\"\n\nI got up without a word and went to have a bath, trying to soak away the worries. Aornis, Landen, Goliath, the ChronoGuard and now Perkins's and Snell's murders here in the BookWorld; I'd need a bath the size of Windermere to soak those away. I had come to Caversham Heights to stay away from crisis and conflict\u2014but they seemed to follow me around like a stray dodo.\n\nI stayed in the bath long enough to need to top it up with hot water twice and, when I came out, found Gran sitting on the laundry basket outside the door.\n\n\"Ready?\" she asked softly.\n\n\"Yes, I'm ready.\"\n\nI slept in my own bed\u2014Gran said she would sit in the armchair and wake me if things looked as though they were getting out of hand. I stared at the ceiling, the gentle curve of the wooden paneling and the single domed ceiling light. I stayed awake for hours, long after Gran had fallen asleep and dropped her copy of Tristram Shandy on the floor. Night and sleep had once been a time of joyous reunion with Landen, a collection of moments that I treasured: tea and hot buttered crumpets, curled up in front of a crackling log fire, or golden moments on the beach, cavorting in slow motion as the sun went down. But no longer. With Aornis about, my memory was now a battleground. And with the whistle of an artillery shell, I was back where I least wanted to be\u2014the Crimea.\n\n\"So there you are!\" cried Aornis, grinning at me from her seat in the armored personnel carrier as the wounded were removed. I had returned from the lines to the forward dressing station where the disaster had generated a sustained and highly controlled panic. Cries of \"Medic!\" and swearing punctuated the air while less than three miles away we could still hear the sound of the Russian guns pummeling the remains of the Wessex Light Tank. Sergeant Tozer stepped from the back of the APC with his hand still inside the leg of a soldier as he tried to staunch the bleeding; another soldier blinded by splinters was jabbering on about some girl he had left back home in Bradford-on-Avon.\n\n\"You haven't dreamt for a few nights,\" said Aornis as we watched the casualties being unloaded. \"Have you missed me?\"\n\n\"Not even an atom,\" I replied, adding, \"Are we done?\" to the medics unloading the APC.\n\n\"We're done!\" came back the reply, and with my foot I flicked the switch that raised the rear door.\n\n\"Where do you think you're going?\" asked a red-faced officer I didn't recognize.\n\n\"To pick up the rest, sir!\"\n\n\"The hell you are! We're sending in Red Cross trucks under a flag of truce!\"\n\nIt would take too long and we both knew it. I dropped back into the carrier, revved the engine and was soon heading back into the fray. The amount of dust thrown up might screen me\u2014as long as the guns kept firing. Even so, I still felt the whine of a near miss, and once an explosion went off close by, the concussion shattering the glass in the instrument panel.\n\n\"Disobeying a direct order, Thursday?\" said Aornis scathingly. \"They'll court-martial you!\"\n\n\"But they didn't. They gave me a medal instead.\"\n\n\"But you didn't go back for a gong, did you?\"\n\n\"It was my duty. What do you want me to say?\"\n\nThe noise grew louder as I drove towards the front line. I felt something large pluck at my vehicle and the roof opened up, revealing a shaft of sunlight in the dust that was curiously beautiful. The same unseen hand picked up the carrier and threw it in the air. It ran along on one track for a few yards and then fell back upright. The engine was still functioning, the controls still felt right; I carried on, oblivious to the damage. Only when I reached up for the wireless switch did I realize the roof had been partially blown off, and only later did I discover an inch-long gash in my chin.\n\n\"It was your duty, all right, Thursday, but it was not for the army, regiment, brigade or platoon\u2014certainly not English interests in the Crimea. You went back for Anton, didn't you?\"\n\nEverything stopped. The noise, the explosions, everything. My brother Anton. Why did she have to bring him up?\n\n\"Anton,\" I whispered.\n\n\"Your dear brother Anton,\" replied Aornis. \"Yes. You worshiped him. From the time he built you a tree house in the back garden. You joined the army to be like him, didn't you?\"\n\nI said nothing. It was true, all true. Tears started to course down my cheeks. Anton had, quite simply, been the best elder brother a girl could have. He always had time for me and always included me in whatever he got up to. My anger at losing him had been driving me for longer than I cared to remember.\n\n\"I brought you here so you can remember what it's like to lose a brother. If you could find the man that killed Anton, what would you do to him?\"\n\n\"Losing Anton was not the moral equivalent of killing Acheron,\" I shouted. \"Hades deserved to die\u2014Anton was just doing his misguided patriotic duty!\"\n\nWe had arrived outside the remains of Anton's APC. The guns were firing more sporadically now, picking their targets more carefully; I could hear the sound of small arms as the Russian infantry advanced to retake the lost ground. I released the rear door. It was jammed but it didn't matter; the side door had vanished with the roof and I rapidly packed twenty-two wounded soldiers into an APC designed to carry eight. I closed my eyes and started to cry. It was like seeing a car accident about to happen, the futility of knowing something is about to occur but being unable to do anything about it.\n\n\"Hey, Thuzzy!\" said Anton in the voice I knew so well. Only he had ever called me that; it was the last word he would speak. I opened my eyes and there he was, as large as life and despite the obvious danger, smiling.\n\n\"No!\" I shouted, knowing full well what was going to happen next. \"Stop! Don't come over here!\"\n\nBut he did, as he had done all those years before. He stepped out from behind cover and ran across to me. The side of my APC was blown open and I could see him clearly.\n\n\"Please no!\" I shouted, my eyes full of tears. The memory of that day would fill my mind for years to come. I would immerse myself in work to get away from it.\n\n\"Come back for me, Thuz\u2014!\"\n\nAnd then the shell hit him.\n\nHe didn't explode; he just sort of vanished in a red mist. I didn't remember driving back and I didn't remember being arrested when I tried to take another APC back into the fray to find him. I had to be forcibly restrained and confined to barracks. I didn't remember anything up until the moment Sergeant Tozer told me to have a shower and clean myself up. I remember treading on the small pieces of sharp bone that washed out of my hair in the shower.\n\n\"This is what you try and forget, isn't it?\" said Aornis, smiling at me through the steam from the shower as I tugged my fingers through my matted hair, heart thumping, the fear and pain of loss tensing my every muscle and numbing my senses. I tried to grab her by the throat in the shower but my fingers collapsed on nothing and I barked my knuckles on the shower stall. I swore and thumped the wall.\n\n\"You all right, Thursday?\" said Prudence, a WT operator from Lincoln in the next shower. \"They said you went back. Is that true?\"\n\n\"Yes, it's true,\" put in Aornis, \"and she'll be going back again right now!\"\n\nThe shower room vanished and we were back on the battlefield, heading towards the wrecked armor amidst the smoke and dust.\n\n\"Well!\" said Aornis, clapping her hands happily. \"We should be able to manage at least eight of these before dawn\u2014don't you just hate reruns?\"\n\nI stopped the APC near the smashed tank and the wounded were heaved aboard.\n\n\"Hey, Thursday!\" said a familiar male voice. I opened one eye and looked across at the soldier with his face bloodied and less than ten seconds of existence remaining on his slate. But it wasn't Anton\u2014it was another officer, the one I had met earlier and with whom I had become involved.\n\n\"Thursday!\" said Gran in a loud voice. \"Thursday, wake up!\"\n\nI was back in my bed on the Sunderland, drenched in sweat. I wished it had all just been a bad dream; but it was a bad dream and that was the worst of it.\n\n\"Anton's not dead,\" I gabbled, \"he didn't die in the Crimea it was that other guy and that's the reason he's not here now because he died and I've been telling myself it was because he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard but he wasn't and\u2014\"\n\n\"Thursday!\" snapped Gran. \"Thursday, that is not how it happened. Aornis is trying to fool with your mind. Anton died in the charge.\"\n\n\"No, it was the other guy\u2014\"\n\n\"Landen?\"\n\nBut the name meant little to me. Gran explained about Aornis and Landen and mnemonomorphs, and although I understood what she was saying, I didn't fully believe her. After all, I had seen the Landen fellow die in front of my own eyes, hadn't I?\n\n\"Gran, are you having one of your fuzzy moments?\"\n\n\"No, far from it.\"\n\nBut her voice didn't have the same sort of confidence it usually did. She wrote Landen on my hand with a felt pen and I went back to sleep wondering what Anton was up to, and thinking about the short and passionate fling I had enjoyed in the Crimea with that lieutenant, the one who's name I couldn't remember\u2014the one who died in the charge."
            },
            {
                "title": "Jurisfiction Session No. 40320",
                "text": "\u2002Snell was buried in the Text Sea. It was invited guests only, so although Havisham went, I did not. Both Perkins's and Snell's places were to be taken by B-2 Generics who had been playing them for a while in tribute books\u2014the copies you usually find in cheaply printed book-of-the-month choices. As they lowered Snell's body into the sea to be reduced to letters, the Bellman tingled his bell and spoke a short eulogy for both of them. Havisham said it was very moving\u2014but the most ironic part of it was that the entire Perkins & Snell detective series was finally to be offered as a boxed set, and neither of them ever knew.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nI felt tired and washed-out the following morning. Gran was still fast asleep, snoring loudly with Pickwick on her lap when I got up. I made a cup of coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table flicking through a copy of Movable Type and feeling grotty when there was a gentle rap at the door. I looked up too quickly and my head throbbed.\n\n\"Yes?\" I called.\n\n\"It's Dr. Fnorp. I teach Lola and Randolph.\"\n\nI opened the door, checked his ID and let him in. A tall man, he seemed quite short and was dark-haired, although on occasion seemed blond. He spoke with a notable accent from nowhere at all, and he had a limp\u2014or perhaps not. He was a Generic's Generic\u2014all things to all people.\n\n\"Coffee?\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" he said, adding, \"Aha!\" when he saw the article I had been reading. \"Every year there are more categories!\"\n\nHe was referring to the BookWorld Awards, which had, I noted, been sponsored by Ultra Word\u2122.\n\n\"'Dopiest Shakespearean Character,'\" he read. \"Othello should win that one hands down. Are you going to the Bookies?\"\n\n\"I've been asked to present one. Being the newest Jurisfiction member affords one that privilege, apparently.\"\n\n\"Oh? It's the first year all the Generics will be going\u2014we've had to give them a day off college.\"\n\n\"What can I do for you?\"\n\n\"Well, Lola has been late every day this week, constantly talks in class, leads the other girls astray, smokes, swears and was caught operating a distillery in the science block. She has little respect for authority and has slept with most of her male classmates.\"\n\n\"That's terrible! What shall we do?\"\n\n\"Do?\" replied Fnorp. \"We aren't going to do anything\u2014Lola has turned out admirably\u2014so much so that we've got her a leading role in Girls Make All the Moves, a thirty-something romantic comedy novel. No, I'm really here because I'm worried about Randolph.\"\n\n\"I... see. What's the problem?\"\n\n\"Well, he's just not taking his studies very seriously. He's not stupid; I could make him an A-4 if only he'd pay a little more attention. Those good looks of his are probably his downfall. Aged fifty-something and what we call a 'distinguished gray' archetype, I think he feels he doesn't need any depth\u2014that he can get away with a good descriptive passage at introduction and then do very little.\"\n\n\"And this is a problem because...?\"\n\n\"I just want something a bit better for him,\" sighed Dr. Fnorp, who clearly had the best interests of his students at heart. \"He's failed his B-grade exams twice; once more and he'll be nothing but an incidental character with a line or two\u2014if he's lucky.\"\n\n\"Perhaps that's what he wants. There isn't enough room for all characters to be A-grade.\"\n\n\"That's what's wrong with the system,\" said Fnorp bitterly. \"If incidental characters had more depth, the whole of fiction would be a lot richer\u2014I want my students to enliven even the C-grade parts.\"\n\nI got the point. Even from my relative ignorance I could see the importance of fully rounded characters\u2014trouble was, for budgetary reasons, the Council of Genres had pursued a policy of minimum characterization requirements for Generics for more than thirty years.\n\n\"They fear rebellion,\" he said quietly. \"The C of G want Generics to stay stupid; an unsophisticated population is a compliant one\u2014but it's at the cost of the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"So what do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"Well,\" sighed Fnorp, finishing his coffee, \"have a word with Randolph and see what you can do\u2014try to find out why he is being so intransigent.\"\n\nI told him I would and saw him out the door.\n\nI found Randolph asleep back in his own bed. He was clutching his pillow. Lola had gone out early to meet some friends. A photo of her was on the bedside table next to him and he snored quietly to himself. I crept back to the door and banged on it.\n\n\"Wshenifyduh,\" said a sleepy voice.\n\n\"I need to run one of the engines,\" I told him, \"can you give me a hand?\"\n\nThere was a thump as he fell out of bed. I smiled to myself and took my coffee up to the flight deck.\n\nMary had told me to run the number three engine periodically and left instructions on how to do so in the form of a checklist. I didn't know how to fly but did know a thing or two about engines\u2014and needed an excuse to talk to Randolph. I sat in the pilot's seat and looked along the wing to the engine. The cowlings were off and the large radial was streaked with oil and grime. It never rained here, which was just as well, although things didn't actually age either, so it didn't matter if it did. I consulted the checklist in front of me. The engine would have to be turned by hand to begin with and I didn't really fancy this, so got a slightly annoyed Randolph out on the wing.\n\n\"How many times?\" he asked, turning the engine by way of a crank inserted through the cowling.\n\n\"Twice should do,\" I called back, and ten minutes later he returned, hot and sweaty with the exertion.\n\n\"What do we do now?\" he asked, suddenly a lot more interested. Starting big radial engines was quite a boy thing, after all.\n\n\"You read it out,\" I said, handing him the checklist.\n\n\"'Master fuel on, ignition switches off,'\" he read.\n\n\"Done.\"\n\n\"'Prop controls fully up and throttle one inch open.'\"\n\nI wrestled with the appropriate levers from a small nest that sprouted from the center console.\n\n\"Done. I had Dr. Fnorp round this morning.\"\n\n\"'Gills set to open and mixture at idle cutoff.' What did that old fart have to say for himself?\"\n\nI set the gills and pulled back the mixture lever. \"He said he thought you could do a lot better than you had been. What's next?\"\n\n\"'Switch on the fuel booster pump until the warning light goes out.'\"\n\n\"Where do you think that is?\"\n\nWe found the fuel controls in an awkward position above our heads and to the rear of the flight deck. Randolph switched on the booster pumps.\n\n\"I don't want to be a featured character,\" he said. \"I'll be quite happy working as a mature elder-male mentor figure or something; there is call for one in Girls Make All the Moves.\"\n\n\"Isn't that the novel Lola will be working in?\"\n\n\"Is it?\" he said, feigning ignorance badly. \"I had no idea.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said as the fuel pressure warning light went out, \"now what?\"\n\n\"'Set the selector switch to the required engine and operate the priming pump until the delivery pipes are full.'\"\n\nI pumped slowly, the faint smell of aviation spirit filling the air.\n\n\"What's this love/hate thing between you and Lola?\"\n\n\"Oh, that's all well over,\" he said dismissively. \"She's seeing some guy over at the Heroes Advanced Classes.\"\n\nI stopped pumping as the handle met with some resistance. \"We have fuel pressure. What's next?\"\n\n\"'Ignition and booster coil both on.'\"\n\n\"Check.\"\n\n\"'Press starter and when engine is turning, operate the primer.' Does that make sense?\"\n\n\"Let's see.\"\n\nI pressed the starter button and the prop slowly started to move. Randolph pumped the primer, and there was a cough as the engine fired; then another, this time accompanied by a large puff of black smoke from the exhaust. A few waders who were poking around in the shallows took flight as the engine appeared to die, then caught again and started to fire more regularly, the loud detonations transmitting through the airframe as a series of rumbles, growls and squeaks. I released the start button and Randolph stopped priming. The engine smoothed out, I switched to Auto-Rich and the oil pressure started to rise. I throttled back and smiled at Randolph, who grinned at me.\n\n\"Are you seeing anyone?\" I asked him.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nHe looked at me with his large eyes. When we had first met, he had been an empty husk, a blank face with no personality or features to call his own. Now he was a man of fifty but with the emotional insecurity of a fifteen-year-old.\n\n\"I can't imagine life without her, Thursday!\" he suddenly burst out. \"I think about her every second of every minute of every day!\"\n\n\"So tell her.\"\n\n\"And make myself look an idiot? She'd tell everyone at Tabularasa's\u2014I'd be the laughingstock of them all!\"\n\n\"Who cares? Dr. Fnorp tells me it's affecting your work; do you want to end up as a walk-on part somewhere?\"\n\n\"I really don't care,\" he said sadly. \"Without Lola there isn't much of a future.\"\n\n\"There'll be other Generics!\"\n\n\"Not like her. Always laughing and joking. When she's around, the sun shines and the birds sing.\" He stopped and coughed, embarrassed at his admission. \"You won't tell anyone I said all that stuff, will you?\"\n\nHe was smitten good and proper.\n\n\"Randolph,\" I said slowly, \"you have to tell her your feelings, even for your own sake. This will prey on your mind for years!\"\n\n\"What if she laughs at me?\"\n\n\"What if she doesn't? There's a good chance she actually quite likes you!\"\n\nRandolph's shoulders slumped. \"I'll speak to her as soon as she gets back.\"\n\n\"Good.\" I looked at my watch. \"I've got roll call in twenty minutes. Let the engine run for ten minutes and then shut her down. I'll see you tonight.\"\n\n\"Who are we waiting for?\" asked the Bellman.\n\n\"Godot,\" replied Benedict.\n\n\"Absent again. Anybody know where he is?\"\n\nThere was a mass shaking of heads.\n\nThe Bellman made a note in his book, tingled his bell and cleared his throat.\n\n\"Jurisfiction session number 40320 is now in session,\" he said in a voice tinged with emotion.\n\n\"Item one. Perkins and Snell. Fine operatives who made the ultimate sacrifice for duty. Their names will be carved into the Boojumorial to live forever as inspiration for those who come after us. I call now for two minutes silence. Perkins and Snell!\"\n\n\"Perkins and Snell,\" we all repeated, and stood in silent memory of those lost.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said the Bellman after two minutes had ticked by. \"Commander Bradshaw will be taking over the bestiary. Mathias's mare has been contacted and asked me to say thank you to all those who sent tributes. The Perkins and Snell detective series will be taken over by B-2 clones from the tribute book, and I know you will join me in wishing them the very best on their new venture.\"\n\nHe paused and took a deep breath.\n\n\"These losses are a great shock to us all, and the lessons to be learned must not be ignored. We can never be too careful. Okay, item two.\n\nHe turned over a page on his clipboard.\n\n\"Investigation of Perkins's death. Commander Bradshaw, doesn't this come under your remit?\"\n\n\"Investigations are proceeding,\" replied Bradshaw slowly. \"There is no reason to suppose that their deaths were anything other than an accident.\"\n\n\"So what stops you closing the case?\"\n\n\"Because,\" replied Bradshaw, trying to think up an excuse quickly, \"because, um, we still want to speak to Vernham Deane.\"\n\n\"Deane is somehow involved?\" asked the Bellman.\n\n\"Yes\u2014perhaps.\"\n\n\"Interesting turn of events,\" said the Bellman, \"which brings us neatly on to item three. I'm sorry to announce that Vernham Deane has been placed on the PageRunner's list.\"\n\nThere was a sharp intake of breath. Classed as a PageRunner meant only one thing: illegal activities.\n\n\"We've known Vern since he was written, guys, and hard as it might be, we think he's done something pretty bad. Tweed, haven't you got something to say about this?\"\n\nHarris Tweed stood up and cleared his throat. \"Vernham Deane is familiar to all of us. As the resident cad in The Squire of High Potternews, he was well-known for his cruelty towards the maidservant, who he ravages and then casts from the house. The maid returns ten chapters later, but three days ago\u2014the morning following Perkins's death, I might add\u2014she didn't.\"\n\nHe placed a picture of an attractive dark-haired woman on the board.\n\n\"She's a C-3 Generic by the name of Mimi. Twenty years old, identification code CDT/2511922.\"\n\n\"What did Deane say about her disappearance?\"\n\n\"That's just it,\" replied Tweed grimly, \"he vanished at the same time. The Squire of High Potternews has been suspended pending further inquiries. It's been removed to the Well and will stay there until Deane returns. If he returns.\"\n\n\"Aren't you leaping to conclusions just a little bit early?\" asked Havisham, obviously concerned by the lack of objectivity in Tweed's report. \"Do we even have a motive?\"\n\n\"We all liked Vern,\" said Tweed, \"me included. Despite being a villain in Potternews, he never gave us any cause for alarm. I was surprised by what I found, and you might be, too.\"\n\nHe pulled a piece of paper from his top pocket and unfolded it.\n\n\"This is a copy of a refusal by the Council of Genres narrative realignment subcommittee to agree to Deane's application for an Internal Plot Adjustment.\"\n\nHe pinned it on the board next to the picture of the maidservant.\n\n\"In it he requests for the maidservant to die in childbirth, thus saving his character from the traumatic scene at the end of chapter twenty-eight when the maidservant turns up with the infant, now aged six, to his wedding to Ellen O'Shaugnessy, the wealthy mill owner's daughter. With the maidservant out of the way he can marry O'Shaugnessy and not suffer the degrading slide into alcoholism and death that awaits him in chapter thirty-two. I'm sorry to say that he had motive, Miss Havisham. He also had the opportunity\u2014and the Jurisfiction skills to cover his tracks.\"\n\nThere was silence as everyone took in the awful possibility of a Jurisfiction agent gone bad. The only time it had happened before was when David Copperfield murdered Dora Spenlow so he could marry Agnes Wickfield.\n\n\"Did you search his book?\" asked Falstaff.\n\n\"Yes. We subjected The Squire of High Potternews to a word-by-word search and we only found one person who was not meant to be there\u2014a stowaway from Farquitt's previous book, Canon of Love, hiding in a cupboard in Potternews Hall. She was evicted back to her book.\"\n\n\"Have you tried the bookhounds?\" inquired the Red Queen, running a cleaner through the barrel of her pistol. \"Once they get onto a scent, there's no stopping them.\"\n\n\"We lost them at the fence-painting sequence in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.\"\n\n\"Tell them about the Perkins connection, Harris.\"\n\n\"I think that is assumption, Bellman, if you please,\" answered Tweed.\n\n\"Tell them,\" repeated the Bellman, his shoulders sagging. \"I think everyone needs to know the full facts if we are to hunt Deane down.\"\n\n\"Very well.\" Tweed upended a box and deposited a huge quantity of full stops, commas and semicolons onto the table.\n\n\"We found these hidden at the back of Deane's locker. We had them analyzed and found traces of Guinness.\"\n\n\"Ulysses!\" gasped Benedict.\n\n\"So it would appear,\" replied Tweed gravely. \"Perkins mentioned something about a surprising discovery in a report filed the day before he died. We're working on the theory that Deane was involved in stealing or handling stolen punctuation. Perkins finds out, so Deane releases the Minotaur and vyrus to cover his tracks. Flushed with success and knowing he will have to vanish, he kills the maidservant, something he has been wanting to do since first publication.\"\n\n\"Isn't Perkins my investigation?\" asked Bradshaw.\n\n\"My apologies,\" replied Tweed, \"I will give you a full copy of my report.\"\n\nHe stopped and sat down.\n\n\"I hate to say this,\" began the Bellman sadly, \"but it seems as though we have underestimated Deane. Until I am shown otherwise, I have no choice but to declare him a PageRunner. He is to be arrested on sight\u2014and exercise extreme caution. If he has killed twice, he will not hesitate to kill again.\"\n\nWe exchanged anxious glances. Being declared a PageRunner was serious\u2014few were captured alive.\n\n\"Item four,\" continued the Bellman. \"The Minotaur. We've got an APB out on him at present, but until he turns up or does something stupid, we won't know where he is. There was a report he had crossed over into nonfiction, which I would love to believe. Until we know otherwise, everyone should keep a good lookout.\"\n\nHe consulted his clipboard again.\n\n\"Item five. The 923rd Annual BookWorld Awards. Because we are launching UltraWord\u2122 at the same time, all serving members of the BookWorld have been invited. Obviously we can't leave books unmanned, so skeleton staff will be left in charge. The venue will be the Starlight Room again, although with a displacement field technology we've borrowed from the SF boys so everyone can attend. This will mean extra security and I have allocated Falstaff to look after it. Any questions?\"\n\nThere weren't, so he moved on.\n\n\"Item six. Thursday Next has been made a probationary Jurisfiction member. Where are you?\"\n\nI put up my hand.\n\n\"Good. Let me be the first to welcome you to the service\u2014and not before time; we need all the extra hands we can get. Ladies and gentlemen, Thursday Next!\"\n\nI smiled modestly as there was a round of applause; the people nearest me patted me on the arm.\n\n\"Well done!\" said Tweed, who was close by, grinning.\n\n\"Miss Next will be afforded full rights and privileges, although she will remain under Miss Havisham's watchful eye for twenty chapters or a year, whichever be the longer. Will you take her up to the Council of Genres and have her sworn in?\"\n\n\"Happily,\" replied Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren't you working on this?\"\n\nLady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. \"Indeed. The uses of had had and that that have to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the imaginotransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid.\"\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"It's mostly an unlicensed-usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem due to its had had/that that ratio.\"\n\n\"So what's the problem in Progress?\"\n\n\"That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked, but not if the number exceeds that that that usage.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said the Bellman, \"I thought had had had had TGC's approval for use in Dickens? What's the problem?\"\n\n\"Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,\" explained Lady Cavendish. \"You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.\"\n\n\"So the problem with that other that that was that...?\"\n\n\"That that other-other that that had had approval.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, \"let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?\"\n\nThere was a very long pause.\n\n\"Right,\" said the Bellman with a sigh, \"that's it for the moment. I'll be giving out assignments in ten minutes. Session's over\u2014and let's be careful out there.\"\n\n\"Never would have thought it of Vernham, by George!\" exclaimed Bradshaw as he walked up. \"He was like a son to me!\"\n\n\"I didn't know you had a son.\"\n\n\"I don't. But if I did, he would be just like Vern.\"\n\n\"His character in Potternews wasn't that pleasant,\" I observed.\n\n\"We usually try and keep our book personalities separate from our Jurisfiction ones,\" said Havisham. \"Think yourself lucky I don't carry over any of my personality from Great Expectations\u2014if I did, I'd be pretty intolerable!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said diplomatically, \"I'm very grateful for it.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the Bellman as he joined us. \"Miss Havisham. You're to go and swear in Agent Next at the C of G, then get yourself to the Well and see if you can find any clues inside The Squire of High Potternews. If possible, I want him alive. But\u2014take no risks.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" replied Miss Havisham.\n\n\"Good!\" The Bellman clapped his hands together and departed to talk to the Red Queen.\n\nHavisham beckoned me over to her desk and indicated for me to sit.\n\n\"Firstly, congratulations on becoming a full Jurisfiction agent.\"\n\n\"I'm not ready for this!\" I hissed. \"I'm probably going to fall flat on my face!\"\n\n\"Probably has nothing to do with it; you shall. Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.\"\n\nI started to thank her for her faint praise, but she interrupted, \"This is for you.\"\n\nFrom the bottom drawer of her desk she had withdrawn a small, green leather box of the sort that might contain a wedding ring. She passed it over and I opened it. As I did, I felt a flash of inspiration move through me. I knew what it was. No bigger than a grain of rice, it had value far in excess of its size.\n\n\"From the Last Original Idea,\" murmured Havisham, \"a small shard from when the whole was cleaved in 1884, but a part nonetheless. Use it wisely.\"\n\n\"I can't accept this,\" I said, shutting the case.\n\n\"Rubbish. Accept with good grace that which is given with good grace.\"\n\n\"Thank you very much, Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"Don't mention it. Why do you have Landen written on your hand?\"\n\nI looked at my hand but had no idea why. Gran had put it there\u2014she must have been having one of her fuzzy moments.\n\n\"I'm not sure, Miss Havisham.\"\n\n\"Then wash it off\u2014it looks so vulgar. Come, let us adjourn to the Council of Genres\u2014you are to sign the pledge!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Pledges, the Council of Genres and Searching for Deane",
                "text": "\u2002Bookhound/Booktracker: Name given to a breed of bloodhound peculiar to the Well. With a keen sense of smell and boundless energy, a bookhound can track a PageRunner not only from page to page but from book to book. The finest bookhounds, diligently trained, have also been known to track transgenre PageRunners and, on occasion, to the Outland. They drool and slobber a lot. Not recommended as pets.\n\n\u2014CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE, Guide to the Great Library\n\nWe took the elevator. Miss Havisham told me that it was considered the height of poor breeding and vulgarity to jump all the way to the lobby at the Council of Genres\u2014and it was impossible to jump straight into the Council chambers for security purposes. The chambers were situated on the twenty-sixth floor of the Great Library. Like the seventeenth floor it was almost deserted; authors whose names begin with Q and Z are not that abundant. The doors opened and we stepped out. But it wasn't like the previous library floors I had visited, all somber dark wood, molded plaster ceilings and busts of long-dead writers\u2014the twenty-sixth floor had a glazed roof. Curved spans of wrought iron arched high above our heads supporting the glass, through which we could see clouds and a blue sky beyond. I had always thought that the library was created conceptually to contain the books and had no use or existence outside that. Miss Havisham noticed me staring up at the sky and drew me towards a large window. Although it was the twenty-sixth floor, it seemed a lot higher\u2014and the library, inwardly shaped like a fine cross many miles in length, was far squatter when seen from the outside. I looked down the rain-streaked exterior and beyond the stone gargoyles to a tropical forest far below us, where wispy clouds flecked the tops of the lush foliage.\n\n\"Anything is possible in the BookWorld,\" murmured Miss Havisham. \"The only barriers are those of the human imagination. See the other libraries?\"\n\nNot more than five miles distant, just visible in the aerial haze, was another tower like ours, and beyond that, another\u2014and over to my right, six more. We were just one towering library of hundreds\u2014or perhaps thousands.\n\n\"The nearest one to us is German,\" said Miss Havisham, \"beyond that French and Spanish. Arabic is just beyond them\u2014and that one over there is Welsh.\"\n\n\"What are they standing on?\" I asked, looking at the jungle far below. \"Where exactly are we?\"\n\n\"Getting all philosophical, are we?\" murmured Miss Havisham. \"The long and short answer is we really don't know. Some people claim we are just part of a bigger story that we can't see. Others maintain that we were created by the Great Panjandrum, and still others that we are merely in the mind of the Great Panjandrum.\"\n\n\"Who,\" I asked, my curiosity finally getting the better of me, \"is the Great Panjandrum?\"\n\n\"Come and see the statue.\"\n\nWe turned from the window and walked along the corridor to where a large lump of marble rested on a plinth in the middle of the lobby. The marble was roped off, and below it was a large and highly polished plaque proclaiming Our Glorious Leader.\n\n\"That's the Great Panjandrum?\" I asked, looking at the crude block of stone.\n\n\"No, that's only the statue of the Great P\u2014or at least it will be when we figure out what he or she looks like. Good afternoon, Mr. Price.\"\n\nMr. Price was a stonemason but he wasn't doing anything; in fact, I don't think he had ever done anything\u2014his tools were brightly polished, unmarked, and lying in a neat row next to where he was sitting, reading a copy of The Word.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Miss Havisham,\" he said, politely raising his hat.\n\nHavisham indicated the surroundings. \"The Great Panjandrum is meant to be the architect of all this and controls everything we do. I'm a little skeptical myself; no one controls my movements.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't dare,\" I whispered.\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"I said, they couldn't care. Not a great deal, given the violence in books.\"\n\nShe looked at me and raised an eyebrow. \"Perhaps. Come along and see the Council at work.\"\n\nShe steered me down the corridor to a door that opened into a viewing gallery above the vast Council chamber with desks arranged in concentric circles.\n\n\"The main genres are seated at the front,\" whispered Miss Havisham. \"The subgenres are seated behind and make up a voting group that can be carried forward to the elected head of each genre, although they do have a veto. Behind the subgenres are elected representatives from the Congress of Derivatives, who bring information forward to the subgenres inspectorate\u2014and behind them are the subcommittees who decide on day-to-day issues such as the Book Inspectorate, new words, letter supply and licensing the reworkings of old ideas. The Book Inspectorate also license plot devices, Jurisfiction agents and the supply and training schedules for Generics.\"\n\n\"Who's that talking now?\" I asked.\n\n\"The Thriller delegate. She's arguing against Detective having a genre all of its own\u2014at present Detective is under Crime, but if they break away, the genres at Thriller will want to split themselves three ways into Adventure, Spy and Thriller.\"\n\n\"Is it always this boring?\" I asked, watching the Thriller delegate drone on.\n\n\"Always. We try to avoid any entanglements and let Text Grand Central take all the flak. This way.\"\n\nWe left the viewing gallery and padded down the corridor to a door that led into the smallest room I had ever seen. It seemed to be mostly filing cabinet and desk. An equally small man was eating biscuits\u2014and most of them were falling down his front.\n\n\"Thursday Next to take the pledge,\" announced Miss Havisham. \"I have the documents all signed and sealed by the Bellman.\"\n\n\"Work, work, work,\" said the small man, taking a swig of tea and looking up at me with small yet oddly intense eyes. \"I rarely get any peace\u2014you're the second pledge this year.\" He sighed and wiped his mouth on his tie. \"Who seconds the application?\"\n\n\"Commander Bradshaw.\"\n\n\"And who vouches for Miss Next?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Good. Stand up and repeat the oath of the BookWorld.\"\n\nI stood up and, primed by Miss Havisham, repeated:\n\n\"I swear by the Great Panjandrum that I shall uphold the rules of Jurisfiction, protect the BookWorld and defend every fictioneer, no matter how poorly written, against oppression. I shall not shirk from my duty, nor use my knowledge or position for personal gain. Secrets entrusted to me by the Council of Genres or Text Grand Central must remain secret within the service, and I will do all I can to maintain the power of storytelling within the minds and hearts of the readers.\"\n\n\"That'll do,\" said the small man, after another bite of his biscuit. \"Sign here, here, and, er, here. And you have to witness it, Miss Havisham.\"\n\nI signed where he indicated in the large ledger, noting as I did so that the last Jurisfiction agent to have signed was Beatrice. He snapped the book shut after Miss Havisham had witnessed my signature.\n\n\"Good. Here's your badge.\"\n\nHe handed over a shiny Jurisfiction badge with my name and number engraved below the colorful logo. It could get me into any book I wanted without question\u2014even Poe if I so chose, although it wasn't recommended.\n\n\"Now if you'll excuse me,\" said the bureaucrat, looking at his watch, \"I'm very busy. These forms have to be processed in under a month.\"\n\nWe returned to the elevator and Miss Havisham pressed the twenty-sixth subbasement button. We were going back into the Well.\n\n\"Good,\" she said, \"now that's out of the way we can get on. Perkins and Mathias we can safely say were murdered; Snell might as well have been. We are still waiting for Godot and someone tried to kill you with an exploding hat. As an apprentice you have limited powers; as a full member of Jurisfiction you can do a lot more. You must be on your guard!\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"Because I don't want you dead, and if you know what's good for you, neither do you.\"\n\n\"No, I mean why is someone trying to kill me?\"\n\n\"I wish I knew.\"\n\n\"Let's suppose,\" I said, \"that Deane isn't just missing\u2014that he might have been murdered. Is there a link between Perkins, Deane, Mathias, and myself?\"\n\n\"None that I can think of,\" said Miss Havisham after a great deal of thought, \"but if we consider that Mathias might have been killed because he was a witness, and that one of your Outlander friends might be trying to kill you, then that narrows the list to Perkins and Deane. And there is a link between those two.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Harris Tweed, myself, Perkins and Deane were all given an Ultra Word\u2122 book to test.\"\n\n\"I didn't know this.\"\n\n\"No one did. I can only tell you now because you are a full agent\u2014didn't you hear what was in the pledge?\"\n\n\"I see,\" I said slowly. \"What's Ultra Word\u2122 like?\"\n\n\"As Libris states: 'the ultimate reading experience.' The first thing that hits you is the music and color.\"\n\n\"What about the new plots?\"\n\n\"I didn't see that,\" confessed Miss Havisham as the elevator doors opened. \"We were all given a copy of The Little Prince updated with the new operating system\u2014but PageGlow\u2122, WordBuddy\u2122, PlotPotPlus\u2122 and ReadZip\u2122 are all quite dazzling in their simplicity.\"\n\n\"That's good.\"\n\n\"But something just doesn't seem right.\"\n\n\"That's not so good.\"\n\nThe doors of the elevator opened and we walked along the corridor to where the Text Sea opened out in front of us, the roof of the corridor lifting higher and higher until it had no discernible end, just swirling patterns of punctuation forming into angry storm clouds. Scrawltrawlers rode gently at their moorings at the dockside while the day's wordcatch was auctioned off.\n\n\"Like what? A problem with the system?\"\n\n\"I wish I knew,\" said Miss Havisham, \"but try as I might I couldn't make the book do anything it shouldn't. In BOOK V7.2 you could force an uncommanded translation into Esperanto by subjecting the book to a high-g maneuver. In BOOK V6.3 the verb to eat conflicted with any description of a pangolin and caused utter mayhem with the tenses. I've tried everything to get Ultra Word\u2122 to fail, but it's steady as a rock.\"\n\nWe walked beyond the harbor to where large pipes spewed jumbled letters back into the Text Sea amidst a strong smell of rubber.\n\n\"This is where the words end up when you erase them in the Outland,\" mentioned Miss Havisham as we strolled past. \"Anything the matter?\"\n\n\"Junkfootnoterphones again,\" I muttered, trying to screen the rubbish out, \"a scam of some sort, I think. What makes you believe anything is the trouble with Ultra Word\u2122?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Havisham slowly, \"Perkins called me the night before he died. He said he had a surprising discovery but didn't want to talk over the footnoterphone.\"\n\n\"Was it about Ultra Word\u2122?\"\n\nHavisham shrugged. \"To be truthful, I don't know. It's possible\u2014but it could have been about Deane just as easily.\"\n\nThe road petered out into a beach formed by shards of broken letters. This was where novels met their end. Beneath the leaden skies the books\u2014here taking the appearance of seven-story buildings\u2014were cast high upon the shore, any plot devices and settings of any use torn out to be sold as salvage. The remaining hulks were then pulled to pieces by Generics working in teams with nothing more high-tech than crowbars, cutting torches and chains, stripping the old novels back into words, which were tipped into the sea by wheelbarrow gangs, the words dissolving back into letters, their meaning burning off into a slight bluish haze that collected at the foreshore.\n\nWe arrived at the copy of The Squire of High Potternews. It looked dark and somber here on the shore of the Text Sea. Anyone trying to find a copy in the Outland would have a great deal of trouble; when Text Grand Central withdraw a book, they really mean it.\n\nThe book was resting on its end and was slightly open. A large tape had been run round the outside that read Jurisfiction, Do Not Cross.\n\n\"Looking for something?\"\n\nIt was Harris Tweed and Uriah Hope; they jumped down from the book and looked at us curiously.\n\n\"Good evening, Harris,\" said Miss Havisham. \"We were trying to find Deane.\"\n\n\"Me, too. Have a look around if you wish, but I'm damned if I can find a single clue as to his whereabouts.\"\n\n\"Has anyone tried to kill you recently?\" I asked.\n\n\"Me?\" replied Harris. \"No. Why, should they?\"\n\nI told him about the Ultra Word\u2122 connection.\n\n\"It's possible that there might be a link,\" he mused, \"but I gave UltraWord\u2122 the fullest test; it seemed to work extremely well no matter what I did! Do you have any idea what Perkins had discovered?\"\n\n\"We don't know he found anything wrong at all,\" said Havisham.\n\nHarris thought for a moment. \"I think we should definitely keep this to ourselves,\" he said at last, \"and take great care what we do. If Deane is about and had anything to do with Perkins's death, he might be after you or I next.\"\n\nHavisham agreed, told me to go see Professor Plum to see if he could shed any more light on the failed Eject-O-Hat and vanished after telling me she had an urgent appointment to keep.\n\nWhen she had gone, Harris said to me, \"Keep an eye on the old girl, won't you?\"\n\nI promised I would and made my way back towards the elevators, deep in thought."
            },
            {
                "title": "Havisham\u2014the Final Bow",
                "text": "\"Ah!\" Said Plum as I walked into his office. \"Miss Next\u2014good news and bad news.\"\n\n\"Better give me the bad news first.\"\n\nPlum took off his spectacles and polished them.\n\n\"The Eject-O-Hat. I've pulled the records and traced the manufacturing process all the way back to the original milliner; it seems that over a hundred people have been involved in it's manufacture, modification and overhaul schedules. Fifteen years is a long service life for an Eject-O-Hat. Add the people with the know-how and we've got a shortlist of about six hundred.\"\n\n\"A broad net.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\"\n\nI went to the window and looked out. Two peacocks were strutting across the lawn.\n\n\"What was the good news?\"\n\n\"You know Miss Scarlett at records?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"We're getting married on Tuesday.\"\n\n\"Congratulations.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Was there anything else?\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" I replied, walking to the door. \"Thanks for your help.\"\n\n\"My pleasure!\" he replied kindly. \"Tell Miss Havisham she should get a new Eject-O-Hat\u2014this one is quite beyond repair.\"\n\n\"It wasn't Havisham's, it was mine.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows. \"You're mistaken,\" he said after a pause. \"Look.\"\n\nHe pulled the battered homburg from his desk and showed me Havisham's name etched on the sweatband with a number, manufacturing details and size.\n\n\"But,\" I said slowly, \"I was wearing this hat in\u2014\"\n\nThe awful truth dawned. There must have been a mix-up with the hats. They hadn't been trying to kill me that day\u2014they had been after Miss Havisham!\n\n\"Problems?\" said Plum.\n\n\"Of the worst sort,\" I muttered. \"Can I use your footnoterphone?\"\n\nI didn't wait for a reply; I picked up the brass horn and asked for Miss Havisham. She wasn't in the Well, nor Great Expectations. I replaced the speaking horn and jumped to the lobby of the Great Library, where the general stores were situated; if anyone knew what Havisham was up to, it would be Wemmick.\n\nMr. Wemmick wasn't busy; he was reading a newspaper with his feet on the counter.\n\n\"Miss Next!\" he said happily, getting up to shake my hand warmly. \"What can I do for you?\"\n\n\"Miss Havisham,\" I blurted out, \"do you know where she is?\"\n\nWemmick squirmed inwardly. \"I'm not sure she'd like me to tell\u2014\"\n\n\"Wemmick!\" I cried. \"Someone tried to kill Miss Havisham and they may try again!\"\n\nHe looked shocked and bit his lip. \"I don't know where she is,\" he said slowly, \"but I know what she's doing.\"\n\nMy heart sank. \"It's another land speed attempt, isn't it?\"\n\nHe nodded miserably.\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"I don't know. She said the Higham wasn't powerful enough. She signed out the Bluebird, a twin-engined, twentyfive-hundred horsepower brute of a car\u2014it almost didn't fit in the storeroom.\"\n\n\"Do you have any idea where she's going to drive it?\"\n\n\"None at all.\"\n\n\"Damn!\" I yelled, slamming my hand against the counter. \"Think, Thursday, think!\"\n\nI had an idea. I grasped the footnoterphone and asked to be put through to Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows. He wasn't in but Ratty was; and after I had explained who I was and what I wanted, he gave me the information I needed. Havisham and Mr. Toad were racing on Pendine sands, in the Socialist Republic of Wales.\n\nI ran up the stairs and to the works of Dylan Thomas, picked up a slim volume of poetry and concentrated on my exit point in the Outland. To my delight it worked and I was catapulted out of fiction and into an untidy heap in a small bookshop in Laugharne, Thomas's old village in the south of Wales. Now a shrine for Welsh and non-Welsh visitors alike, the bookshop was one of eight in the village selling nothing but Welsh literature and Thomas memorabilia.\n\nThere was a scream from a startled book buyer as I appeared, and I stepped backwards in alarm only to fall over a pile of Welsh cookery books. I got up and ran from the shop as a car screeched to a halt in front of me. Pendine sands with its ten miles of flat beach was down the coast from Laugharne and I would need transport to get me there.\n\nI showed the driver my Jurisfiction badge, which looked official even if it meant nothing, and said, in my very best Welsh, \"Esgipysgod fi ond ble mae bws i Pendine?\"\n\nShe got the message and drove me along the road towards Pendine. Before we arrived I could see the Bluebird on the sands, together with Mr. Toad's car and a small group of people. The tide was out and a broad expanse of inviting smooth sand greeted Miss Havisham. As I watched, my pulse racing, two plumes of black smoke erupted from the back of the record-breaker as the engines fired up. Even through the window I could hear the guttural cry of the engines.\n\n\"Dewch ymlaen!\" I urged the driver, and we swerved onto the car park just near the statue of John Parry Thomas. I ran down onto the beach, arms waving and yelling, but no one heard me above the roar of the engines, and even if they had, there was little reason for them to take any notice.\n\n\"Hi!\" I shouted. \"Miss Havisham!\"\n\nI ran as fast as I could but only exhausted myself so that I ran slower with every passing step.\n\n\"Stop!\" I yelled, getting weaker and breathless. \"For pity's sake\u2014!\"\n\nBut it was too late. With another deep growl the car moved off and started to gather speed across the sand. I stopped and dropped to my knees, trying to gulp deep lungfuls of air, my heart racing. The car hurtled away from me, the engine roar fading as she tore along the hard sand. I watched it go at medium speed to the far end of the beach, then turn in a large arc for the first of her two runs. The engine growled again, rising to a high scream as the car gathered speed, the driving wheels throwing a shower of sand and pebbles far behind it. I willed her to be safe and for nothing to happen, and indeed, nothing did until she was decelerating after the first run. I was breathing a sigh of relief when one of the front wheels broke loose and was dragged beneath the car, throwing it up into the air. The front edge of the bodywork dug into the sand and the car swerved violently sideways. I heard a cry of fear from the small crowd and a series of sickening thuds as the car rolled end over end down the beach, the engine screaming out of control as the wheels gripped nothing but air. It came to rest right way up not five hundred yards from me, and I ran towards it. I was three hundred yards away when the petrol tank ignited in a mushroom of fire that lifted the three-ton car from the sand. When I got there, I jumped onto the front of the car and pulled Miss Havisham from the burning wreck, dragged her clear and rolled her on the sand to extinguish the flames.\n\n\"Water!\" I cried. \"Water for her burns!\"\n\nThe small crowd of onlookers were hopeless and could do nothing but stare at us in shock as I used my pocketknife to cut away the burnt remnants of her wedding veil. I winced as I worked\u2014she was horribly burned.\n\n\"Thursday?\" she murmured, although she couldn't see me. \"Please\u2014please take me home.\"\n\nI'd never jumped dual, taking someone with me, but I did it now. I jumped clean out of Pendine and into Great Expectations, right into Miss Havisham's room at Satis House, next to the rotting wedding party that never was, the darkened room, the clocks stopped at twenty to nine. It was the place where I had first seen her all those weeks ago, and it would be the place I saw her last. I laid her on the bed and tried to make her comfortable.\n\n\"Cat!\"\n\n\"There's been a code-12. Fictional vehicle left on Pendine sands in the Outland. I need a fixed perimeter and a cleanup gang ASAP!\"\n\n\"Not good, Chesh. I'll get back to you.\"\n\n\"Dear Thursday,\" said Miss Havisham, clasping my hand in hers, \"was it an accident?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Miss Havisham. But the Eject-O-Hat was not mine\u2014it was intended for you.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"Then, then... they got to me.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"I don't know. This is the BookWorld so it's got to be someone close and whom we don't suspect. Someone we thought was a friend.\"\n\n\"Bradshaw?\"\n\nShe shook her head and started to cough. For a moment, I didn't think she would stop. The Jurisfiction medic jumped into the darkened room, followed by several nurses, who pushed me out of the way as they tried to cool and dress her wounds. But I couldn't get away. Havisham still had hold of my hand and pulled me closer.\n\n\"I will not come through this,\" she whispered.\n\n\"You'll be fine! In Great Expectations you survive until the end\u2014can't let Dickens or the readers down, hey?\"\n\n\"Then it looks like we will both be guilty of a Fiction Infraction, my dear.\"\n\nShe tried to smile but couldn't make her swollen features do as she bid.\n\n\"I have enough strength to make a good exit. I will make my peace with Pip and Estella\u2014a far better ending for me, I think.\"\n\n\"Miss Havisham!\" I pleaded. \"Please don't talk this way!\"\n\n\"You are close to me, my dear,\" she hissed, \"they will come for you next!\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"The formulaic, Thursday. It is our enemy. Uphold fiction's independence, beware of Big Martin and shun the frumious bandersnatch...\"\n\n\"She's becoming delirious,\" said the medic as I felt her clasp loosen from mine, and with it, I felt my eyes start to stream. More medics arrived and I moved towards the back of the room where Pip, Estella, and Mr. Pumblechook had all arrived to look on helplessly as the medics attempted to save her life.\n\n\"You did what you could,\" said Pip slowly, \"and we are very grateful to you.\"\n\n\"It wasn't enough,\" I said quietly, \"but she wants to improvise a new ending with you.\"\n\n\"Then I will stay here,\" said Pip softly, \"until she regains consciousness.\"\n\nWe waited there, Pip and I, until Miss Havisham was well enough to make her final appearance in Great Expectations. She had bade farewell to the Bellman and Bradshaw. The Council of Genres had even interrupted their busy schedule to rubber-stamp an Internal Plot Adjustment to allow her to improvise her own fiery ending. An A-2 generic was being trained to take her place even as we were saying our goodbyes. She took my arm even though she couldn't see me and pressed the Ultra Word\u2122 copy of The Little Prince into my hand.\n\n\"The formulaic,\" she said again, \"is our one true enemy. Defend the BookWorld against it, promise me?\"\n\n\"I promise.\"\n\n\"You know, Thursday, you're going to be pretty good at all this.\"\n\nI thanked her.\n\n\"One more thing.\"\n\nI leaned closer.\n\n\"Don't tell anyone I said this, but I don't think men are quite so bad as I make out.\"\n\nI smiled. \"You might be right.\"\n\nShe coughed again and signaled for me to leave. I had many questions I needed to ask, but she didn't have long and we both knew it. I nodded to Pip as we passed each other at the door, and I gently closed it behind me. I waited outside with a heavy heart and tensed as I heard a shriek and a flickering orange light shone beneath the door. I heard Pip curse, then more thumps and shouts as he smothered the fire with his cape. Jaw clenched, I turned away, my heart heavy with loss. She had been bossy and obnoxious, but she had protected me, rescued me and taught me well. I have yet to meet a more extraordinary woman, either real or imagined, and she would always have a place in my heart."
            },
            {
                "title": "Post-Havisham Blues",
                "text": "\u2002The Bellman lived in a grace-and-favor apartment at Norland Park when he wasn't working in The Hunting of the Snark. He had been head of Jurisfiction for twenty years and was required, under Council of Genres mandate, to stand down. The Bellman, oddly enough, had always been called the Bellman\u2014it was no more than coincidence that he had actually been a Bellman himself. The previous Bellman had been Bradshaw, and before him, Virginia Woolf. Under Woolf, Jurisfiction roll calls tended to last several hours.\n\n\u2014THE BELLMAN, Hardest Job in Fiction\n\nI walked into the Jurisfiction offices an hour later. The Bellman, Bradshaw and Harris Tweed were staring at two pieces of broken and scorched metal lying on a desk.\n\n\"I can't say how sorry we all are,\" said the Bellman, \"we all thought the world of her. Did she tell you about the time the Martians escaped and tried to force the Council of Genres into ordering a sequel\u2014one where they were triumphant?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said quietly, \"she rarely talked about her past work. What's this?\" I pointed at the broken pieces of metal.\n\n\"It's the stub axle from the Bluebird. It looks as though it failed through metal fatigue.\"\n\n\"An accident?\"\n\nThe Bellman nodded his head. They hadn't got to her after all. Earlier, Bradshaw had shown me the UltraWord\u2122 reports written by Perkins, Deane and Miss Havisham. They'd all given it the thumbs-up. If Perkins was murdered, it wasn't over Ultra Word\u2122. Despite all that had happened, I still only had a doctored Eject-O-Hat to point to anything suspicious about Havisham's death, and only a misplaced key for Perkins's. Motor racing has its own share of dangers, and Havisham knew it.\n\n\"You're off the active list for a few days, Miss Next,\" said the Bellman. \"Take it easy at home and come back in when you're ready.\"\n\nTweed said, \"She was one of the best.\"\n\n\"One in a million,\" added Bradshaw, \"won't see the likes of her again, I'll be bound.\"\n\n\"We want to offer you a permanent job,\" said the Bellman. \"A modern system like Ultra Word\u2122 needs people like you to police it. I want you to consider a post here within Fiction. Good retirement plan and plenty of perks.\"\n\nI looked up at him. This seemed to me like rather a good idea. After all, there was no one waiting for me back at Swindon. What did I need the real world for?\n\n\"Sounds good, Mr. Bellman. Can I sleep on it?\"\n\nHe smiled. \"Take as long as you want.\"\n\nI got back to Mary's flying boat and sat on the jetty until the sun had gone down, mulling over everything that Miss Havisham and I had done together. When it grew chilly, I moved myself indoors and read over what Miss Havisham had done with her final scene. A professional to the last, she had enacted her own death with a sensitivity I had never seen her exhibit in life. I found a bottle of wine, poured myself a large glass and drank it gratefully. Oddly, I thought there was a reason perhaps I shouldn't be drinking, but couldn't think what it was. I looked at my hand where there had been a name written that morning. Havisham had instructed me to scrub it out, and I had\u2014but even so I was intrigued and tried to figure out from the small marks visible what had been written there.\n\n\"Lisbon,\" I muttered. \"Why would I write Lisbon on my hand?\"\n\nI shrugged. The delicate red was a welcome friend and I poured another glass. I found the copy of The Little Prince that Havisham had given me and opened the cover. The paper felt like a sort of thin plastic, the letters a harsh black against the milky white pages. The text glowed in the dim light of the kitchen, and intrigued, I took the book into the darkness of the utility cupboard where I could still read it as clear as day. I returned to my place at the table and tried the \"read sensitive\" preferences page, the words changing from red to blue as I read them, then back again as I reread them. In this manner I turned the PageGlow\u2122 feature on and off, and then I played with the levels of the background and music tracks.\n\nI started to read the book, and as the first words entered my head, a huge panoply of new emotions opened up. As I read the sequence in the desert, I could hear the sound of the wind on the dunes and even feel the heat and taste the scorched sands. The voice of the narrator was different to that of the Prince, and no dialogue tags were needed to differentiate them. It was, as Libris had asserted, an extraordinary piece of technology. I shut the book, leaned back on my chair and closed my eyes.\n\nThere was a tap at the door.\n\n\"Hullo!\" Arnold said. \"Can I come in?\"\n\n\"Make yourself at home. Drink?\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nHe sat down and smiled at me. I'd never really noticed it before but he was quite a handsome man.\n\n\"Where's everyone else?\" he asked, looking around.\n\n\"Out somewhere,\" I replied, waving a hand in the direction of the boat and feeling a bit dizzy. \"Lola's probably under her latest beau, Randolph is doubtless complaining to someone about it\u2014and I've no idea where Gran is. Have a drink?\"\n\n\"You've already poured one.\"\n\n\"So I have. What brings you here, Arnie?\"\n\n\"Just passing. How are things at work?\"\n\n\"Shit. Miss Havisham died, and something maybe, perhaps, possibly, is wrong\u2014I just don't know what\u2014if at all. Does that make sense?\"\n\n\"Kind of. I've heard Outlanders sometimes go through a period of 'imagination free fall' where they start trying to create plotlines out of nothing. You'll settle down to it, I shouldn't worry. Congratulations, by the way, I read about your appointment in the paper.\"\n\nI held up my glass in salute, and we both drank.\n\n\"So what's the deal with you and Mary?\" I asked.\n\n\"Over for a long time. She thinks I'm a loser and\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014tells you to go to hell. Yes, I've heard. What about Lola? Have you slept with her yet?\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"You must be the only bloke in Caversham Heights who hasn't. Do you want another drink?\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\"What about you? Tell me about your husband in the Outland.\"\n\n\"I don't have a husband, never did.\"\n\n\"You told me\u2014\"\n\n\"Probably one of those 'push off' comments we girls sometimes use. There was this guy named Snood in the ChronoGuard, but that was a long time ago. He suffered a time aggre. Agg-era. Aggreg\u2014\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"He got old before his time. He died.\"\n\nI felt confused all of a sudden and looked at the wineglass and the half-empty bottle of wine.\n\n\"What's the matter, Thursday?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2014nothing. You know when you suddenly have a memory of something and you don't know why\u2014a sort of flashback?\"\n\nHe smiled. \"I don't have many memories, Thursday, I'm a Generic. I could have had a backstory but I wasn't considered important enough.\"\n\n\"Is that a cat? I mean, is that a fact? Well, I just thought about the White Horse in Uffington back home. Soft, warm grassland and blue skies, warm sun on my face. Why would I have done that?\"\n\n\"I have no idea. Don't you think you've had enough to drink?\"\n\n\"I'm fine. Right as rain. Never better. What's it like being a Generic?\"\n\n\"It's not bad.\" He took another swig of wine. \"Promotion to a better or new part is always there if you are diligent enough and hang out at the Character Exchange. I miss having a family\u2014that must be good.\"\n\n\"My mum is a hoot, and Dad doesn't exist\u2014he's a time-traveling knight-errant\u2014don't laugh\u2014and I have two brothers. They both live in Swindon. One's a priest and the other...\"\n\n\"Is what?\"\n\nI felt confused again. It was probably the wine. I looked at my hand. \"I don't know what he does. We haven't spoken in years.\"\n\nThere was another flashback, this time of the Crimea.\n\n\"This bottle's empty,\" I muttered, trying to pour it.\n\n\"You have to take the cork out first. Allow me.\"\n\nArnold fumbled with the corkscrew and drew the cork after a lot of effort. I think he was drunk. Some people have no restraint.\n\n\"What do you think of the Well?\" he asked.\n\n\"It's all right. Life here is pretty good for an Outlander. No bills to pay, the weather is always good and best of all\u2014no Goliath, SpecOps or my mother's cooking.\"\n\n\"SpecOps can cook?\"\n\nI giggled stupidly and so did he. Within a few seconds we had both collapsed in hysterics. I hadn't laughed like this for ages.\n\nThe laughter stopped.\n\n\"What were we giggling about?\" asked Arnold.\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nAnd we collapsed in hysterics again.\n\nI recovered and took another swig of wine. \"Do you dance?\"\n\nArnie looked startled for a moment. \"Of course.\"\n\nI took him by the hand and led him through into the living room, found a record and put it on the turntable. I placed my hands on his shoulders and he placed his hands on my waist. It felt odd and somehow wrong, but I was past caring. I had lost a good friend that day and deserved a little unwinding.\n\nThe music began and we swayed to the rhythm. I had danced a lot in the past, which must have been with Filbert Snood, I supposed.\n\n\"You dance well for someone with one leg, Arnie.\"\n\n\"I have two legs, Thursday.\"\n\nAnd we burst out laughing again. I steadied myself on him and he steadied himself on the sofa. Pickwick looked on and ruffled her feathers in disgust.\n\n\"Do you have a girl in the Well, Arnie?\"\n\n\"Nobody,\" he said slowly, and I moved my cheek against his, found his mouth and kissed him, gently and without ceremony. He began to pull away, then stopped and returned the kiss. It felt dangerously welcome; I didn't know why I had been single for so long. I wondered whether Arnie would stay the night.\n\nHe stopped kissing me and took a step back.\n\n\"Thursday, this is all wrong.\"\n\n\"What could be wrong?\" I asked, staring at him unsteadily. \"Do you want to come and see my bedroom? It has a great view of the ceiling.\"\n\nI stumbled slightly and held the back of the sofa.\n\n\"What are you staring at?\" I asked Pickwick, who was glaring at me.\n\n\"My head's thumping,\" muttered Arnold.\n\n\"So's mine.\"\n\nArnold cocked his head and listened. \"It's not our heads\u2014it's the door.\"\n\n\"The door of perception,\" I noted, \"of heaven and hell.\"\n\nHe opened the door and a very old woman dressed in blue gingham walked in. I started to giggle but stopped when she strode up to me and took away my wineglass.\n\n\"How many glasses have you had?\"\n\n\"Two?\" I replied, leaning against the table for support.\n\n\"Bottles,\" corrected Arnie.\n\n\"Crates,\" I added, giggling, although nothing actually seemed that funny all of a sudden. \"Listen here, Gingham Woman,\" I added, wagging my finger, \"give me my glass back.\"\n\n\"What about the baby?\" she demanded, staring at me dangerously.\n\n\"What baby? Who's having a baby? Arnie, are you having a baby?\"\n\n\"It's worse than I thought,\" she muttered. \"Do the names Aornis and Landen mean anything to you?\"\n\n\"Not a thing, but I'll drink to them, if you want. Hello, Randolph.\"\n\nRandolph and Lola had arrived at the doorstep and were staring at me in shock.\n\n\"What?\" I asked them. \"Have I grown a second head or something?\"\n\n\"Lola, fetch a spoon,\" said Gingham Woman. \"Randolph, take Thursday to the bathroom.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I collapsed in a heap. \"I can walk. And why is there a carpet on the wall?\"\n\nThe next thing I saw was the view down the back of Randolph's legs and the living room floor, then the stairs, as I was carried up over his shoulder. I started to giggle but the rest was a bit blurry. I remember choking and throwing up in the loo, then being deposited in bed, then starting to cry.\n\n\"She died. Burned. I tried to help her. It was her hat, you know.\"\n\n\"I know, darling. I'm your grandmother, do you remember?\"\n\n\"Gran?\" I sobbed, realizing who she was all of a sudden. \"I'm sorry I called you Gingham Woman!\"\n\n\"It's okay. Perhaps being drunk is for the best. You're going to sleep now, and dream\u2014and in that dream you'll do battle to win back your memories. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe sighed and wiped my forehead with her small, pink hand. It felt reassuring and I stopped crying.\n\n\"Be vigilant, my dear. Keep your wits about you and be stronger than you have ever been. We'll see you on the other side, come the morning.\"\n\nBut she was starting to fade as slumber swept over me, her voice ringing in my ears as my mind relaxed and transported me deep into my subconscious."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Lighthouse at the Edge of My Mind",
                "text": "\u2002The Hades family when I knew them comprised, in order of age, Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, Lethe, and the only girl, Aornis. Their father had died many years previously, leaving their mother in charge of the youthful and diabolical family all on her own. Described once by Vlad the Impaler as \"unspeakably repellent,\" the Hades family drew strength from deviancy and committing every sort of horror that they could. Some with panache, some with halfhearted seriousness, others with a sort of relaxed insouciance about the whole thing. Lethe, the \"white sheep\" of the family, was hardly cruel at all\u2014but the others more than made up for him. In time, I was to defeat three of them.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, Hades: Family from Hell\n\nA wave burst on the rocks behind me, showering me with cold water and flecks of foam. I shivered. I was on a rocky outcrop in the darkest gale-torn night, and before me stood a lighthouse. The wind whistled and moaned around the tower, and a flash of lightning struck the apex. The bolt coursed down the earthing cable and trailed a shower of sparks, leaving behind the acrid stench of brimstone. The lighthouse was as black as obsidian, and as I looked up, it seemed as though the arc lamp rotating within the vast lenses was floating in midair. The light swept through the inky blackness illuminating nothing but a heaving, angry sea. I looked backwards in my mind but could see nothing\u2014I was without memory or past experiences. This was the loneliest outpost of my subconscious, a memoryless island where nothing existed other than that which I could feel and see and smell at this moment in time. But I still had emotions, and I had a sense of danger, and purpose. Somehow I understood I was here to vanquish\u2014or be vanquished.\n\nAnother wave burst behind me, and with beating heart I pulled on the locking lever of the steel front door and was soon inside, safe from the gale. The door securely fastened, I looked around. There was a central spiral staircase but nothing else\u2014not a stick of furniture, a book, a packing case, nothing.\n\nI shivered again and pulled out my gun.\n\n\"A lighthouse,\" I murmured, \"a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere.\"\n\nI walked slowly up the concrete steps keeping a careful watch as they curved away out of sight. The first floor was empty and I moved on up, each circular room I reached devoid of any signs of habitation. In this way I slowly climbed the tower, gun arm outstretched and trembling with a dread of impending loss that I could not control or understand. On the top floor the spiral staircase ended; a steel ladder was the only means by which to climb any higher. I could hear the electric motors that drove the rotating lamp whine above me, the bright white light shining through the open roof hatch as the beam swept slowly about. But this room was not empty. Sitting in an armchair was a young woman powdering her nose with the help of a small handmirror.\n\n\"Who are you?\" I asked, pointing my gun at her.\n\nShe lowered the mirror, smiled and looked at the pistol.\n\n\"Dear me!\" she exclaimed. \"Always the woman of action, aren't you?\"\n\n\"What am I doing here?\"\n\n\"You really don't know, do you?\"\n\n\"No.\" I lowered the gun. I couldn't remember any facts but I could feel love and loss and frustration and fear. The woman was linked to one of these but I didn't know which.\n\n\"My name is\u2014\" The young woman stopped and smiled again. \"No, I think even that is too much.\"\n\nShe rose and walked towards me. \"All you need to know is that you killed my brother.\"\n\n\"I'm a murderer?\" I whispered, searching in my heart for guilt of such a crime and finding none. \"I... I don't believe you.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's true, and I will have my revenge. Let me show you something.\"\n\nShe took me to the window and pointed. There was another flash of lightning and the view was illuminated outside. We were on the edge of a massive waterfall that curved away from us into the darkness. The ocean was emptying over the edge; millions of gallons every second, falling into the abyss. But that wasn't all. In another flash of lightning I could see that the waterfall was rapidly eroding the small island on which the lighthouse was built\u2014as I watched, the first piece of the rocky outcrop fell away noiselessly and disappeared into space.\n\n\"What's happening?\" I demanded.\n\n\"You are forgetting everything,\" she said simply, sweeping her hands in the direction of the room. \"These are a just a few of your memories I have cobbled together\u2014a last stand, if you like. The storm, the lighthouse, the waterfall, the night, the wind\u2014none of them are real.\" She walked closer to me until I could smell her perfume. \"All this is merely a representation of your mind. The lighthouse is you; your consciousness. The sea around us your experience, your memories\u2014everything that makes you the person you are. They are all draining away like water from a bath. Soon the lighthouse will topple into the void and then...\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"And then I will have won. You will remember nothing\u2014not even this. You will relearn, of course\u2014in ten years you might be able to tie your own shoelaces. But for the first few years the only decision you will have to make is which side of your mouth to drool out of.\"\n\nI turned to leave but she called out, \"You can't run. Where will you go? For you, there's nowhere else but here.\"\n\nI stopped at the door and turned back, raised my gun and fired a single shot. The bullet whistled through the young woman and impacted harmlessly on the wall behind.\n\n\"It will take more than that, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Thursday? That's my name?\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter, there is no one you can remember who will help you.\"\n\n\"Doesn't this make your victory hollow?\" I demanded, lowering my gun and rubbing my temple, trying to recall even a single fact.\n\n\"Ridding your mind of that which you value most was the hard bit. All I had to do then was to invoke your dread, the memory that you feared the most. After that, it was easy.\"\n\n\"My greatest fear?\"\n\nShe smiled again and showed me the handmirror. There was no reflection, only images that flashed past anonymously. I took the mirror and peered at it, trying to make sense of what I saw.\n\n\"These are the images of your life, your memories, the people you love, everything you held dear\u2014but also everything that you've ever feared. I can modify and change them at will\u2014or even delete them completely. But before I do, I'm going to make you view the worst once more. Gaze upon it, Thursday, gaze upon it and feel the death of your brother one last time!\"\n\nThe mirror showed me the image of a war long ago, the violent death of a soldier who seemed familiar, and I felt the pain of loss tearing through me. The woman laughed as the images repeated themselves, this time clearer, and more graphic. I shut my eyes to block the horror, but opened them again quickly in shock. I had seen something else, right at the edge of my mind, dark and menacing, waiting to engulf me. I gasped, and the woman felt my fear.\n\n\"What is it?\" she cried. \"There is something I have missed? Worse than the Crimea? Let me see!\"\n\nShe tried to grasp the mirror but I let it drop. It shattered on the concrete floor as we heard a muffled thump of something striking the steel door five stories below.\n\n\"What was that?\" she demanded.\n\nI realized what I had seen. Its presence, unwelcome for so many years in the back of my mind, might be just what I needed to defeat her.\n\n\"My worst nightmare,\" I told her, \"and now yours.\"\n\n\"But it can't be! Your worst nightmare was the Crimea, your brother's death\u2014I know, I've searched your mind!\"\n\n\"Then,\" I replied slowly, my strength returning as the woman's confidence trickled away, \"you should have searched harder!\"\n\n\"But it's still too late to help you,\" she said, her voice quavering, \"it will not gain entry, I assure you of that!\"\n\nThere was another loud crash; the steel door on the ground floor had been torn from its hinges.\n\n\"Wrong again,\" I said quietly. \"You asked for my worse fear, my dread, to appear\u2014and it came.\"\n\nShe ran to the stairs and yelled, \"Who is there? Who are you? What are you?\"\n\nBut there was no reply; only a soft sigh and the sound of footfalls on the stairs as it climbed slowly upwards. I looked from the window as another section of the rocky island fell away. The lighthouse was now poised on top of the abyss and I could see straight down into the dizzying depths. There was a tremor as the foundations shifted; the lighthouse flexed and a section of plaster fell from the wall.\n\n\"Thursday!\" she yelled out pitifully. \"You can control it! Make it stop!\"\n\nShe slammed the door to the staircase, her hands shaking as she hurriedly threw the bolt.\n\n\"I could hide it if I chose,\" I said, staring at the terrified woman, \"but I choose not. You asked me to gaze upon my fears\u2014now you may join me.\"\n\nThe lighthouse shifted again and a crack opened in the wall revealing the storm-tossed sea beyond; the arc light stopped rotating with a growl of twisted metal. There was a thump at the door.\n\n\"There are always bigger fish, Aornis,\" I said slowly, suddenly realizing who she was as my past began to reveal itself from the fog. \"Like all Hadeses, you were lazy. You thought Anton's demise was the worst thing you could dredge up. You never looked further. Hardly looked into my subconscious at all. The old stuff, the terrifying stuff, the stuff that keeps us awake as children, the nightmares we can only half glimpse on waking, the fear we sweep to the back of our minds but which is always there, gloating from a distance.\"\n\nThe door collapsed inwards as the lighthouse swayed and part of the wall fell away. An icy gust blew in, the ceiling dropped two feet and electricity sparked from a severed cable. Aornis stared at the form lurking in the doorway, making quiet slavering noises to itself.\n\n\"No!\" she whined. \"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you, I\u2014\"\n\nI watched as Aornis's hair turned snow-white, but no scream came from her dry throat. I lowered my eyes and turned to the door, seeing only a vague shape out of the corner of my eye advancing towards Aornis. She had dropped to her knees and was sobbing uncontrollably. I walked past the shattered door and down the stairs two at a time. As I stepped outside, the outcrop shivered again and the conical roof of the lighthouse came wheeling down amidst masonry and scraps of rusty iron. Aornis found her voice, finally, and screamed.\n\nI didn't pause or break my pace. I could still hear her yelling for mercy as I climbed into the small jolly boat she had kept for her escape and rowed away across the oily black water, her cries only drowned out as the lighthouse collapsed into the abyss, taking the malevolent spirit of Aornis with it.\n\nI paused for a moment, then put my back into rowing, the oars rattling in the rowlocks.\n\n\"That was impressive,\" said a quiet voice behind me. I turned and found Landen sitting in the bow. He was every bit as I remembered him. Tall and good-looking with hair graying slightly at the temples. My memories, which had been blunted for so long, now made him more alive than he had been for weeks. I dropped the oars and nearly upset the small boat in my hurry to fling my arms around him, to feel his warmth. I hugged him until I could barely breath, tears coursing down my cheeks.\n\n\"Is it you?\" I cried. \"Really you, not one of Aornis's little games?\"\n\n\"No, it's me all right.\" He kissed me tenderly. \"Or at least, your memory of me.\"\n\n\"You'll be back for real, I promise!\"\n\n\"Have I missed much? It's not nice being forgotten by the one you love.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I began as we made ourselves more comfortable in the boat, lying down to look up at the stars, \"there's this upgrade called Ultra Word\u2122, see, and...\"\n\nWe stayed in each other's arms for a long time, the small rowing boat adrift in the museum of my mind, the sea calming before us as we headed towards the gathering dawn."
            },
            {
                "title": "Lola Departs and Heights Again",
                "text": "\u2002Daphne Farquitt wrote her first book in 1936 and had by 1988 written three hundred others exactly like it. The Squire of High Potternews was arguably the least worst, although the best you could say about it was that it was a \"different shade of terrible.\" Astute readers have complained that Potternews originally ended quite differently, an observation also made about Jane Eyre. It is all they have in common.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, The Jurisfiction Chronicles\n\nThe following morning my head felt as if it had a road drill in it. I lay awake in bed, the sun streaming through the porthole. I smiled as I remembered the defeat of Aornis the night before and mouthed out loud:\n\n\"Landen Parke-Laine, Landen Parke-Laine!\"\n\nThen I remembered the loss of Miss Havisham and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. After a few minutes of introspection I sat up slowly and stretched. It was almost ten. I staggered to the bathroom and drank three glasses of water, brought it all up again and brushed my teeth, drank more water, sat with my head between my knees, then tiptoed back to bed to avoid waking Gran. She was fast asleep in the chair with a copy of Finnegans Wake on her lap. I knew I was going to have to apologize to Arnie and thank him for not taking advantage of the situation. I couldn't believe I had made such a fool of myself but felt that I could, at a pinch, lay most of the blame at Aornis's door.\n\nI got up half an hour later and went downstairs, where I found Randolph and Lola at the breakfast table. They weren't talking to each other and I noticed Lola's small suitcase at the door.\n\n\"Thursday!\" said Randolph, offering me a chair. \"Are you okay?\"\n\n\"Groggy,\" I replied as Lola placed a steaming mug of coffee in front of me that I inhaled gratefully. \"Groggy but happy\u2014I got Landen back. Thanks for helping me out last night\u2014and I'm sorry if I made a complete idiot of myself. Arnie must think I'm the worst tease in the Well.\"\n\n\"No, that's me,\" said Lola innocently. \"Your Gran explained to us all about Aornis and Landen. We had no idea what was going on. Arnie understood and he said he'd drop around later and see how you were.\"\n\nI looked at Lola's suitcase and then at the two of them, who were studiously ignoring each other.\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\n\"I'm leaving to start work on Girls Make All the Moves.\"\n\n\"That's excellent news, Lola,\" I said, genuinely impressed. \"Randolph?\"\n\n\"Yes, very good. All the clothes and boyfriends she wants.\"\n\n\"You're sour because you didn't get that male-mentor part you wanted,\" retorted Lola.\n\n\"Not at all,\" replied Randolph, resentment bubbling under the surface. \"I've been offered a small part in an upcoming Amis\u2014a proper novel. A literary one.\"\n\n\"Well, good luck to you,\" replied Lola. \"Send me a postcard if you can be troubled to talk to anyone in chicklit.\"\n\n\"Guys,\" I said, \"don't part like this!\"\n\nLola looked at Randolph, who turned away. She sighed, stared at me for a moment and then got up.\n\n\"Well,\" she said, picking up her case, \"I've got to go. Fittings all morning, then rehearsals until six. Busy busy busy. I'll keep in touch, don't worry.\"\n\nI got up, held my head for a moment as it thumped badly, then hugged Lola, who hugged me back happily.\n\n\"Thanks for all the help, Thursday,\" she said, tears in her eyes. \"I wouldn't have made it up to B-3 without you.\"\n\nShe went to the door and stopped for a moment, looked across at Randolph, who was staring resolutely out the window at nothing in particular.\n\n\"Goodbye, Randolph.\"\n\n\"Goodbye,\" he said without looking up.\n\nLola looked at me, bit her lip and went across to him and kissed him on the back of the head. She returned to the door, said goodbye to me again and went out.\n\nI sat down next to him. A large tear had rolled down his nose and dropped onto the table. I laid a hand on his.\n\n\"Randolph\u2014!\"\n\n\"I'm fine!\" he growled. \"I've just got a bit of grit in my eye!\"\n\n\"Did you tell her how you felt?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't!\" he snapped. \"And what's more, I don't want you dictating to me what I should and shouldn't do!\"\n\nHe got up and stormed off to his bedroom, the door slamming shut behind him.\n\n\"Hellooo!\" said a Granny Next sort of voice. \"Are you well enough to come upstairs?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Then you can come and help me down.\"\n\nI assisted her down the stairs and sat her at the table, fetching a cushion or two from the living room.\n\n\"Thanks for your help, Gran. I made a complete fool of myself last night.\"\n\n\"What's life for? Don't mention it. And by the way, it was Lola and me who undressed you, not the boys.\"\n\n\"I think I was past caring.\"\n\n\"All the same. Aornis will have a lot more trouble getting at you in the Outland, my dear\u2014my experience of mnemonomorphs tends to be that once you dispose of a mindworm, the rest is easy. You won't forget her in a hurry, I assure you.\"\n\nWe chatted for an hour, Gran and I, about Miss Havisham, Landen, babies, Anton and all other things besides. She told me about her own husband's eradication and his eventual return. I knew he had returned because without him there would be no me, but it was interesting to talk to her nonetheless. I felt well enough to go into Caversham Heights at midday to see how Jack was getting on.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Jack as I arrived. \"Just in time. I've been thinking about a full Caversham Heights makeover\u2014do you want to have a look?\"\n\n\"Go on, then.\"\n\n\"Is anything the matter? You look a bit unwell.\"\n\n\"I got myself pickled to the gills last night. I'll be fine. What have you in mind?\"\n\n\"Get in. I want you to meet someone.\"\n\nI climbed into the Allegro and he handed me a coffee. We were parked opposite a large redbrick semi in the north of the town. In the book we stake out this house for two days, eventually sighting the mayor emerging with crime boss Angel DeFablio. With the mayor character excised from the manuscript for an unspecified reason, it would be a long wait.\n\n\"This is Nathan Snudd,\" said Jack, indicating a young man sitting in the backseat. \"Nathan is a plotsmith who's just graduated in the Well and has kindly agreed to help us. He has some ideas about the book that I wanted you to hear. Mr. Snudd, this is Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Hi,\" I said, shaking his hand.\n\n\"The Outlander Thursday Next?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Fascinating! Tell me, why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?\"\n\n\"I don't know. What are your ideas for the book?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Nathan, affecting the manner of someone who knows a great deal, \"I've being looking at what you have left and I've put together a rescue plan that uses the available budget, characters and remaining high points of the novel to best effect.\"\n\n\"Is it still a murder inquiry?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes; and the fight-rigging bit I think we can keep, too. I've bought a few cut-price plot devices from a bargain warehouse in the Well and sewn them in. For instance, I thought that instead of having one scene where Jack is suspended by DCI Briggs, you could have six.\"\n\n\"Will that work?\"\n\n\"Sure. Then there will be a bad-cop routine where an officer close to you is taking bribes and betrays you to the Mob. I've got this middle-aged, creepy housekeeper Generic we can adapt. In fact, I've got seventeen middle-aged, creepy housekeepers we can pepper about the book.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Danvers, by any chance?\" I asked.\n\n\"We're working on a tight budget,\" replied Snudd coldly, \"let's not forget that.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"I thought there could be several gangster's molls or a prostitute who wants to go straight and helps you out.\"\n\n\"A 'tart with a heart'?\"\n\n\"In one. They're ten a penny in the Well at the moment\u2014we should be able to get five for a ha'penny.\"\n\n\"Then what happens?\"\n\n\"This is the good bit. Someone tries to kill you with a car bomb. I've bought this great little scene for you where you go to your car, are about to start it but find a small piece of wire on the floor mat. It's a cinch and cheap, too. I can buy it wholesale from my cousin; he said he would throw in a missing consignment of Nazi bullion and a sad-loser-detective-drunk-at-a-bar-with-whiskey-and-a-cigarette scene. You are a sad, loner, loser maverick detective with a drink problem, yes?\"\n\nJack looked at me and smiled. \"No, not anymore. I live with my wife and have four amusing children.\"\n\n\"Not on this budget.\" Snudd laughed. \"Humorous sidekicks\u2014kids or otherwise\u2014cost bundles.\"\n\nThere was a tap on the window.\n\n\"Hello, Prometheus,\" said Jack, \"have you met Thursday Next? She's from the Outland.\"\n\nPrometheus looked at me and put out a hand. He was an olive-skinned man of perhaps thirty, with tightly curled black hair close to his head. He had deep black eyes and a strong Grecian nose that was so straight you could have laid a set square on it.\n\n\"Outland, eh? What did you think of Byron's retelling of my story?\"\n\n\"I thought it excellent.\"\n\n\"Me, too. When are we going to get the Elgin marbles back?\"\n\n\"No idea.\"\n\nPrometheus, more generally known as the fire-giver, was a Titan who had stolen fire from the gods and given it to mankind, a good move or a terrible one, depending on which papers you read. As punishment, Zeus had him chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where his liver was picked out every night by eagles, only to regrow during the day. He looked quite healthy, in spite of it. What he was doing in Caversham Heights, I had no idea.\n\n\"I heard you had a spot of bother,\" he said to Jack, \"something about the plot falling to pieces?\"\n\n\"My attempts to keep it secret don't appear to be working,\" muttered Jack. \"I don't want a panic. Most Generics have a heart of gold, but if there is the sniff of a problem with the narrative, they'll abandon Heights like rats from a ship\u2014and an influx of Generics seeking employment to the Well could set the Book Inspectorate off like a rocket.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" replied the Titan, \"tricky indeed. I was wondering if I could offer my services in any way?\"\n\n\"As a Greek drug dealer or something?\" asked Nathan.\n\n\"No,\" replied Prometheus slightly testily, \"as Prometheus.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah?\" Snudd laughed. \"What are you going to do? Steal fire from the DeFablio family and give it to Mickey Finn?\"\n\nPrometheus stared at him as though he were a twit\u2014which he was, I suppose.\n\n\"No, I thought I could be here awaiting extradition back to the Caucasus by Zeus' lawyers or something\u2014and Jack could be in charge of witness protection, trying to protect me against Zeus' hit men\u2014sort of like The Client but with gods instead of the Mob.\"\n\n\"If you want to cross-genre we have to build from the ground up,\" replied Snudd disparagingly, \"and that takes more money and expertise than you guys will ever possess.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\" asked Prometheus in a threatening manner.\n\n\"You heard me. Everyone thinks it's easy to be a plotsmith.\"\n\n\"What you've described,\" continued the Titan, showing great restraint, \"isn't a crime thriller\u2014it's a mess.\"\n\nSnudd prodded Prometheus on the tie and sneered, \"Well, let me tell you, Mr. Smart-Aleck-Greek-Titan-fire-giver, I didn't spend four years at Plotschool to be told my job by an ex-convict!\"\n\nThe Titan's lip quivered. \"Okay,\" he snarled, pulling up his shirtsleeves, \"you and me. Right now, here on the sidewalk.\"\n\n\"C'mon,\" said Jack in a soothing manner, \"this isn't going to get us anywhere. Snudd, I think perhaps you should listen to what Prometheus has to say. He might have a point.\"\n\n\"A point?\" cried Snudd, getting out of the car but avoiding Prometheus. \"I'll tell you the point. You came to me wanting my help and I gave it\u2014now I have to listen to dumb ideas from any myth that happens to wander along. This was a favor, Jack\u2014my time isn't cheap. And since this is an ideas free-for-all, let me tell you a home truth: the Great Panjandrum himself couldn't sort out the problems in this book. And you know why? Because it was shit to begin with. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got two subplots to write for proper, paying clients!\"\n\nAnd without another word, Snudd vanished.\n\n\"Well,\" said Prometheus, getting into the backseat, \"who needs cretins like him?\"\n\n\"Me,\" sighed Jack, \"I need all the help I can get. What do you care what happens to us anyway?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the Titan slowly, \"I kind of like it here, and all that mail redirection is a pain in the arse. What shall we do now?\"\n\n\"Lunch?\" I suggested.\n\n\"Good idea,\" said Prometheus. \"I wait tables at Zorba's in the high street\u2014I can get us a discount.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Mrs. Bradshaw and Solomon (Judgments) Inc.",
                "text": "\u2002The \"police officer being suspended by reluctant boss\" plot device was pretty common in the crime genre. It usually happened just before a down-ending second act, when the author sets things up so the reader thinks that there is no way the hero can extricate himself. A down-ending second usually heralds an upending third, but not always; you can finish a third down, but it usually works better if the end of the second is up\u2014which means the end of the first should be up, not down.\n\n\u2014JEREMY FNORP, The Ups and Downs of Act Breaks\n\nI went to work as normal the following morning, my head cleared and feeling better than I had for some time. Randolph, however, was inconsolable without Lola and had moped all the previous evening, becoming quite angry that I believed him when he said that nothing was the matter. Gran was out and I slept well for the first time in weeks. I even dreamt of Landen\u2014and wasn't interrupted during the good parts, either.\n\n\"I share your grief for Miss Havisham,\" murmured Beatrice when I arrived at Norland Park.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Rotten luck,\" said Falstaff as I walked past. \"There were the remains of a fine woman about Havisham.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Miss Next?\" It was the Bellman. \"Can I have a word?\"\n\nI walked over with him to his office and he shut the door.\n\n\"So, tell me, how do you feel about joining us permanently?\"\n\n\"I can stay for a year, but I have a husband back in the real world who doesn't exist and needs me.\"\n\n\"Ah. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Shame.\" He scratched his nose nervously. Something was going on that I didn't know about. \"Anyway, irrespective of your plans, I will be moving you to less demanding duties. Miss Havisham's death shook us all up and I'm not risking your future health by hurrying you back onto the active list.\"\n\n\"I'm fine, really.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you are\u2014but since you have only recently qualified and are without a mentor, we felt it was better if you were taken off the active list for a while.\"\n\n\"'We'?\"\n\nHe picked up his clipboard, which had beeped at him. Havisham had told me that he never actually placed any papers in the all-important clipboard\u2014the words were beamed directly there from Text Grand Central.\n\n\"The Council of Genres have taken a personal interest in your case,\" he said after reading the clipboard. \"I think they felt you were too valuable to lose through stress\u2014an Outlander in Jurisfiction is quite a coup, as you know. You have powers of self-determination that we can only dream of. Take it in the good spirit it is meant, won't you?\"\n\n\"So I don't get to take Havisham's place at Jurisfiction?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. Perhaps when the dust has settled. Who knows? In the BookWorld, anything is possible.\"\n\nHe handed me a scrap of paper. \"Report to Solomon on the twenty-sixth floor. Good luck!\"\n\nI got up, thanked the Bellman and left his office. There was silence as I walked back past the other agents, who looked at me apologetically. I had been canned through no fault of my own, and everyone knew it. I sat down at Havisham's desk and looked at all her stuff. She had been replaced by a Generic in Expectations, and although they would look almost identical, it could never be the same person. The Havisham that I had known had been lost at Pendine sands. I sighed. Perhaps demotion was a good thing. After all, I did have a lot to learn, and working with the C of G for a bit probably had its merits.\n\n\"Miss Next?\"\n\nIt was Commander Bradshaw.\n\n\"Hello, sir.\"\n\nHe smiled and raised his hat. \"Would you care to have tea with me on the veranda?\"\n\n\"I'd be delighted.\"\n\nHe smiled, took me by the arm and jumped us both into Bradshaw Hunts Big Game. I had never been to East Africa, either in our world or this, but it was as beautiful as I had imagined it from the many images I had grown up with. Bradshaw's house was a low colonial building with a veranda facing the setting sun; the land around the house was wild scrub and whistling thorns. Herds of wildebeests and zebras wandered across in a desultory manner, their hooves kicking up red dust as they moved.\n\n\"Quite beautiful, wouldn't you say?\"\n\n\"Extraordinary,\" I replied, staring at the scenery.\n\n\"Isn't it just?\" He grinned. \"Appreciate a woman who knows beauty when she sees it.\"\n\nHis voice lowered a tone. \"Havisham was one of the finest, a little too fast for me, but a good egg in a scrap. She was very fond of you.\"\n\n\"And I of her. Mr. Bradshaw\u2014\"\n\n\"Trafford. Call me Trafford.\"\n\n\"Trafford, do you think it was an accident?\"\n\n\"Well, it looked like one,\" he said after thinking for a moment, \"but then a real one and a written one are pretty similar, even to an expert eye. Mr. Toad was pretty cut up about it and got into a helluva pickle for visiting the Outland without permission. Why, are you still suspicious?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"It's in my nature. Someone wants me off the active list and it isn't the Bellman. Did Havisham confide in you about Perkins?\"\n\n\"Only that she thought he'd been murdered.\"\n\n\"Had he?\"\n\n\"Who knows?\" Bradshaw took off his hat and fanned himself with it. \"The office think it's Deane, but we'll never know for sure until we arrest him. Have you met the memsahib? My darling, this is Thursday Next\u2014a colleague from work.\"\n\nI looked up and jumped slightly because Mrs. Bradshaw was, in fact, a gorilla. She was large and hairy and was dressed only in a floral-patterned pinafore.\n\n\"Good evening,\" I said, slightly taken aback, \"a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Bradshaw.\"\n\n\"Good evening,\" replied the gorilla politely, \"would you like some cake with your tea? Alphonse has made an excellent lemon sponge.\"\n\n\"That would be nice, thank you,\" I spluttered as Mrs. Bradshaw stared at me with her dark, deep-set eyes.\n\n\"Excellent! I'll be out in a jiffy to join you. Feet, Trafford.\"\n\n\"What? Oh!\" said Bradshaw, taking his boots off the chair opposite. When Mrs. Bradshaw had left, he turned and said to me in a serious whisper, \"Tell me, did you notice anything odd about the memsahib?\"\n\n\"Er,\" I began, not wanting to hurt his feelings, \"not really.\"\n\n\"Think, it's important. Is there anything about her that strikes you as a little out of the ordinary?\"\n\n\"Well, she's only wearing a pinafore,\" I managed to say.\n\n\"Does that bother you?\" he asked in all seriousness. \"Whenever male visitors attend, I always have her cover up. She's a fine-looking gal, wouldn't you agree? Drive any man wild, wouldn't you say?\"\n\n\"Very fine.\"\n\nHe shuffled in his chair and drew closer. \"Anything else?\" he said, staring at me intently. \"Anything at all. I won't be upset.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I began slowly, \"I couldn't help noticing that she was...\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"...a gorilla.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" he said, leaning back, \"our little subterfuge didn't fool you, then?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not.\"\n\n\"Melanie!\" he shouted. \"Please come and join us.\"\n\nMrs. Bradshaw lumbered back onto the veranda and sat in one of the club armchairs, which creaked under her weight.\n\n\"She knows, my love.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Mrs. Bradshaw, producing a fan and hiding her face. \"However did you find out?\"\n\nA servant appeared with a tray of teas, left them on the table, bowed and withdrew.\n\n\"Is it the hair?\" she asked, delicately pouring the tea with her feet.\n\n\"Partly,\" I admitted.\n\n\"I told you the powder wouldn't cover it up,\" she said to Bradshaw in a scolding tone, \"and I'm not shaving. It makes one itch so. One lump or two?\"\n\n\"One please,\" I replied. \"Is it a problem?\"\n\n\"It's no problem here,\" said Mrs. Bradshaw. \"I often feature in my husband's books and nowhere does it specify precisely that I am anything but human.\"\n\n\"We've been married for over fifty years,\" added Bradshaw. \"The problem is that we've had an invitation to the Bookies next week and Melanie here is a little awkward in public.\"\n\n\"To hell with them all,\" I replied. \"Anyone who can't accept that the woman you love is a gorilla isn't worth counting as a friend!\"\n\n\"Do you know,\" said Mrs. Bradshaw, \"I think she's right. Trafford?\"\n\n\"Right also!\" He grinned. \"Appreciate a woman who knows when to call a wife a gorilla. Hoorah! Lemon sponge, anyone?\"\n\nI took the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor and walked out into the lobby of the Council of Genres, clasping the orders that the Bellman had given me.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" I said to the receptionist, who was busy fielding calls on a footnoterphone, \"I have to report to Mr. Solomon.\"\n\n\"Seventh door on the left,\" she said without looking up. I walked down the corridor amongst the thronging mass of bureaucrats walking briskly hither and thither clasping buff files as though their lives and existence depended on it, which they probably did.\n\nI found the correct door. It opened onto a large waiting room full of bored people who all clutched numbered tickets and stared vacantly at the ceiling. At a door at the far end was a desk manned by a single receptionist. He stared at my sheet when I presented it, sniffed and said, \"How did you know I was single?\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"Just then, in your description of me.\"\n\n\"I meant single as in solitary.\"\n\n\"Ah. You're late. I'll wait ten minutes for you and 'His Lordship' to get acquainted, then send the first lot in. Okay?\"\n\n\"I guess.\"\n\nI opened the door to reveal another long room, this time with a single table at the far end of it. Sitting at the desk was an elderly, bewhiskered man dressed in long robes, who was dictating a letter to a stenographer. The walls of the room were covered with copies of letters from satisfied clients; he obviously took himself very seriously.\n\n\"Thank you for your letter dated the seventh of this month,\" said the elderly man as I walked closer. \"I am sorry to inform you that this office no longer deals with problems arising with or appertaining to junkfootnoterphones. I suggest you direct your anger towards the FNP's complaints department. Yours very cordially, Solomon. That should do it. Yes?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next reporting for duty.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, rising and giving me a hand to shake. \"The Outlander. Is it true that\u2014out there\u2014two or more people can talk at the same time?\"\n\n\"In the Outland it happens all the time.\"\n\n\"And do cats do anything else but sleep?\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"I see. And what do you make of this?\"\n\nHe lifted a small traffic cone onto his desk and presented it with a dramatic flourish.\n\n\"It's... it's a traffic cone.\"\n\n\"Something of a rarity, yes?\"\n\nI chose my words carefully. \"In many areas of the Outland they are completely unknown.\"\n\n\"I collect Outlandish objects,\" he said with a great deal of pride. \"You must come and see my novelty-teapot collection.\"\n\n\"I'd be delighted.\"\n\nHe sat down and indicated for me to take a chair. \"I was sorry to hear about Miss Havisham; she was one of the best operatives Jurisfiction ever had. Will there be a memorial?\"\n\n\"Tuesday.\"\n\n\"I'll be sure to send flowers. Welcome to The Judgment of Solomon. It's arbitration, mainly, a bit of licensing. We need someone to look after the crowds outside. It can get a bit impassioned sometimes.\"\n\n\"You're King Solomon?\"\n\nThe old man laughed. \"Me? You must be joking! There aren't enough minutes in the day for one Solomon\u2014as soon as he did that 'divide the baby in two' thing, everyone and his uncle wanted him to arbitrate\u2014from corporate takeovers to playground disputes. So he did what any right-thinking businessman would do: he franchised. How else do you think he could afford the temple and the chariots and the navy and whatnot? The land he sold to Hiram of Tyre? Give me a break! My real name's Kenneth.\"\n\nI looked a little doubtful.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking. 'The Judgment of Kenneth' does sound a bit daft\u2014that's why we are licensed to give judgments under his name. All aboveboard, I assure you. You have to purchase the cloak and grow a beard and go on the training course, but it works out very well. The real Solomon works from home, but he sticks only to the ultimate riddles of existence these days.\"\n\n\"What if a franchisee makes a dishonest judgment?\"\n\n\"Very simple.\" Kenneth smiled. \"The offender will be smitten from on high and forced to spend a painful eternity being tortured mercilessly by sadistic demons from the fieriest depths of hell. Solomon's very strict about that.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"Good. Let's see the first punter.\"\n\nI went to the door and asked for ticket holder number 32. A small man with a briefcase walked with me up to Kenneth's table. His knees became quite weak by the time he arrived, but he managed to contain himself.\n\n\"Name?\"\n\n\"Mr. Toves from Text Grand Central, Your Eminence.\"\n\n\"Reason?\"\n\n\"I need to ask for more exemptions from the 'I before E except after C' rule.\"\n\n\"More?\"\n\n\"It's part of the upgrade to Ultra Word\u2122, Your Honor.\"\n\n\"Very well, go ahead.\"\n\n\"Feisty.\"\n\n\"Approved.\"\n\n\"Feigned.\"\n\n\"Approved.\"\n\n\"Weighty.\"\n\n\"Approved.\"\n\n\"Believe.\"\n\n\"Not approved.\"\n\n\"Reigate.\"\n\n\"Approved.\"\n\n\"That's it for the moment,\" said the small man, passing his papers across for Kenneth to sign.\n\n\"It is The Judgment of Solomon,\" said Kenneth slowly, \"that these words be exempt from Rule 7b of the arbitrary spelling code as ratified by the Council of Genres.\"\n\nHe stamped the paper and the small man scurried off.\n\n\"What's next?\"\n\nBut I was thinking. Although I had been told repeatedly to ignore the three witches, their premonition about Reigate being exempted from the \"I before E except after C\" rule had just come true. Come to think of it, they had all come true. The \"blinded dog\"\u2014the real Shadow\u2014had barked, the \"hedgepig\"\u2014Mrs. Tiggywinkle\u2014had ironed, and Mrs. Passerby from Shadow the Sheepdog had cried, \"'Tis time, 'tis time!\" There must be something in it. But there were two other prophecies. One, I was to be the Bellman, which seemed unlikely in the extreme, and two, I was to beware the \"thrice-read rule.\" What the hell did that mean?\n\n\"I'm a busy man,\" said Kenneth, glaring at me, \"I don't need daydreamers!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, I was thinking of something the three witches told me.\"\n\n\"Charlatans! And worse\u2014the competition.\"\n\n\"Sorry. What do you know of the thrice-read rule?\"\n\n\"Is this a professional consultation?\" he asked, sitting back and twiddling his thumbs.\n\n\"Staff freebie?\" I asked hopefully.\n\nSolomon laughed. \"Never heard of any thrice-read rule. Now, you can do me a favor: if you see the three witches again, try and pinch their mailing list. In the meantime, can we have the next customer?\"\n\nI ushered them in. It was several characters from Wuthering Heights and they were all glaring at one another so much they didn't even recognize me. Heathcliff was wearing dark glasses and saying nothing; he was accompanied by his agent and a lawyer.\n\n\"Proceed!\"\n\n\"Wuthering Heights first-person narrative dispute,\" said the lawyer, placing a sheet of paper on the table.\n\n\"Let me see,\" said Kenneth slowly, studying the report. \"Mr. Lockwood, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Nelly Dean, Isabella and Catherine Linton. Are you all here?\"\n\nThey nodded their heads. Heathcliff looked over his sunglasses at me and winked.\n\n\"Well,\" murmured Kenneth at length, \"you all believe that you should have the first-person narrative, is that it?\"\n\n\"No, Your Worshipfulness,\" said Nelly Dean, \"'tis the otherways. None of us want it. It's a curse to any honest Generic\u2014and some not so honest.\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, serving girl!\" yelled Heathcliff.\n\n\"Murderer!\"\n\n\"Say that again!\"\n\n\"You heard me!\"\n\nAnd they all started to yell at one another until Kenneth banged his gavel on the desk and they were all instantly quiet. The Judgment of Solomon was the last form of arbitration; there was no appeal from here and they all knew it.\n\n\"It is The Judgment of Solomon that... you should all have the first-person narrative.\"\n\n\"What?!\" yelled Mr. Lockwood. \"What kind of loopy idea is that? How can we all be the first person?\"\n\n\"It is fair and just,\" replied Kenneth, placing his fingertips together and staring at them all serenely.\n\n\"What will we do?\" asked Catherine sarcastically. \"Talk at the same time?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Kenneth. \"Mr. Lockwood, you will introduce the story, and you, Nelly, will tell the major part of it in deep retrospection; the others will have your say in the following ratios.\"\n\nKenneth scribbled on the back of an envelope, signed it and handed it over. They all grumbled for a bit, Nelly Dean the most.\n\n\"Mrs. Dean,\" said Kenneth, \"you are, for better or worse, the single linking factor for all the families. Consider yourself lucky I did not give the whole book to you. It is The Judgment of Solomon\u2014now go!\"\n\nAnd they all filed out, Nelly complaining bitterly while Heathcliff strode ahead, ignoring all the others.\n\n\"That was quite good,\" I said as soon as they had left.\n\n\"Do you think so?\" asked Kenneth, genuinely pleased by my praise. \"Judgmenting is not for everyone, but I quite like it. The trick is to be scrupulously fair and just\u2014you could do with a few Solomon franchises in the Outland. Tell me, do you think Lola will be going to the Bookie Awards next week?\"\n\n\"You know Lola?\"\n\n\"Let's just say I have made her acquaintance in the course of my duties.\"\n\n\"I'm sure she'll be there\u2014on the chicklit table, I should imagine\u2014she's starring in Girls Make All the Moves.\"\n\n\"Is she really?\" he said slowly. \"Who's next?\"\n\n\"I don't know; it depends on the choice available. Sometimes she goes through them alphabetically, other times in order of height.\"\n\n\"Not Lola, next for me.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said, flushing slightly, \"I'll go and get them.\"\n\nIt was Emperor Zhark. He seemed surprised to see me and told me what a great agent Miss Havisham had been. I walked him in, and he and Kenneth both stopped when they saw each other. They had clearly met before\u2014but not for some time.\n\n\"Zhark!\" cried Kenneth, walking around to the front of the desk and offering the emperor a Havana cigar. \"You old troublemaker! Haven't seen you for ages! What are you up to?\"\n\n\"Tyrannical ruler of the known galaxy,\" he replied modestly.\n\n\"Get away! Old 'Slippery Zharky,' the class sneak of form 5C at St. Tabularasa's? Who'd have thought it!\"\n\n\"It's Emperor Zhark, now, old chum,\" he said through gritted teeth.\n\n\"Glad to hear it. Whatever happened to Captain Ahab? Haven't seen him since we left school.\"\n\n\"Ahab?\" queried the emperor, brow furrowed.\n\n\"You remember. One leg and madder than the March Hare. Set fire to his own trousers for a bet and stocked the school pond with piranhas.\"\n\n\"Oh, him. Last I heard he was convinced a white whale was after him\u2014but that was years ago. We should have a reunion; one falls out of touch so easily in the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"Don't I know it,\" returned Kenneth sadly.\n\nThey sat in silence for a moment, recalling various school-friends, I imagine.\n\n\"So, Zharky old stick, how can I help you?\"\n\n\"It's the Rambosians,\" he said at last, \"they just refuse to cede power to me.\"\n\n\"How awkward for you. Is there any reason why they should?\"\n\n\"Stability, old man, stability. The Rambosians have been responsible for numerous acts of savage satire in the Galactic Federation's daily tabloid Stars My Destination. They lampoon me constantly and the cartoons are shockingly insulting.\"\n\n\"So you want to invade?\"\n\n\"Of course not; that would be wasteful of resources\u2014no, I want them to open their arms and worship me as their one true God. They will give ultimate executive power to me, and in return, I will protect them with the might of the Zharkian Empire.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" replied Kenneth thoughtfully, \"that wouldn't be because the planet Rambosia is composed of eighteen trillon tons of valuable A-grade nutmeg, now would it?\"\n\n\"Not in the least,\" replied the emperor unconvincingly.\n\n\"Very well. It is The Judgment of Solomon that you make peace with the Rambosians.\"\n\n\"What?!\"\n\nThe emperor jumped to his feet and went as dark as a thundercloud. He jabbed a long, slender finger in Kenneth's direction. Anywhere in the Zharkian Empire books such an action would have spelt instant death. Kenneth merely raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"You'll never play golf at the Old White Male Club again,\" yelled Zhark. \"I'll have you blackballed so far out you won't be able to get your hat checked even if you come in the company of the Great Panjandrum himself!\"\n\nAnd so saying, he threw his cloak behind him, made a large huff noise, turned on his heels and strode to the door.\n\n\"Well,\" said Kenneth, \"tyrants are all the same\u2014shocking temper when they don't get their own way! Who's next?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Revelations",
                "text": "\u2002Commander Bradshaw did much of the booksploring in the early years, before the outlying Rebel Book Categories were brought within the controlling sphere of the Council of Genres. Inexplicably, novels can only be visited when someone has found a way in\u2014and a way out. Bradshaw's mapping of the known BookWorld (1927\u201349) was an extraordinary feat, and until the advent of the ISBN Positioning System (1962), Bradshaw's maps were the only travel guide to fiction. Not all booksploring ends so happily. Ambrose Bierce was lost trying to access Poe. His name, along with many others, is carved on the Boojumorial, situated in the lobby of the Great Library.\n\n\u2014RONAN EMPYRE, A History of Gibbons\n\nI couldn't find the three witches, no matter how hard I looked. Their prophecies bothered me but not enough to keep me from sleeping soundly that night. It was two days later that I came home from a long day of Solomon's judgments to find Arnie waiting for me. He and Randolph were drinking some beers in the kitchen and talking about the correct time to use a long dash to designate interrupted speech.\n\n\"You can use it any\u2014\"\n\n\"Arnie, I owe you an apology,\" I said, blushing and forgetting my manners, \"you must think me the worst tease in the Well.\"\n\n\"No, that would be Lola. Forget it. Gran explained everything. How are you? Memories returned?\"\n\n\"All present and correct.\"\n\n\"Good. Dinner sometime\u2014as good friends, of course?\" he added hastily.\n\n\"I'd love to, Arnie. And thanks for being... so... well, decent.\"\n\nHe smiled and looked away.\n\n\"Beer?\" said Randolph, who seemed to have recovered from his Lola-induced trauma.\n\n\"Anything nonalcoholic?\"\n\nHe passed me a carton of orange juice and I poured myself a glass.\n\n\"Are you going to tell her?\" said Arnie.\n\n\"Tell me what?\"\n\n\"I didn't get the Amis part,\" began Randolph, \"but I've been shortlisted for a minor speaking appearance in the next Wolfe.\"\n\n\"That's excellent news!\" I responded happily. \"When?\"\n\n\"Sometime in the next couple of years. I'm going to do some standing-in work until then; the C of G has opened up travel writing as holiday destinations for Generics\u2014no more away-day breaks in Barsetshire. I'm to cover for Count Smorltork while he goes on holiday for two weeks in Wainwright's A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells.\"\n\n\"Congratulations.\"\n\nRandolph thanked me but was still somehow distant. He stared out of the porthole at the lake, deep in thought.\n\n\"What about you?\" asked Arnie. \"What will you do? Your demotion is all over the Well!\"\n\n\"It's not a demotion. Well, perhaps it is.\"\n\n\"Word is that Harris Tweed is up to be the next Bellman,\" murmured Arnie, \"despite his low experience. Jurisfiction favors an Outlander.\"\n\n\"What's so special about Outlanders?\" asked Randolph.\n\n\"I think the C of G like our independence. We are not bound to our narrative, nor\u2014in theory\u2014do we favor one genre over another.\"\n\n\"And memories,\" murmured Arnie wistfully. \"Love to be able to remember a childhood. Any childhood.\"\n\n\"Sense of smell, too,\" I added.\n\nRandolph picked up the copy of The Little Prince that had been lying on the table and placed it on his nose.\n\n\"Under your nose,\" I told him, \"and inhale deeply.\"\n\nRandolph inhaled deeply and then exhaled. He looked confused. \"What's meant to happen?\"\n\n\"You kind of taste it in your head. Here.\"\n\nI took the book and sniffed at it delicately. I had expected the odor of leather, but instead I could smell sweet melons\u2014cantaloupes. I was transported back to the last time I had come across this particular scent: the odd boxy truck in Caversham Heights. The truck without texture, the automaton driver without personality. Something clicked.\n\n\"It was an UltraWord\u2122 truck,\" I murmured, searching through my bag for the angular and textureless bolt I had picked up after the truck had departed. I found it and sniffed at it cautiously, my mind racing as I tried to think of a connection.\n\n\"If this is anything to go by,\" said Arnie, flicking through the pages of The Little Prince, \"then the readers are in for a treat.\"\n\n\"They are indeed,\" I replied as Randolph tried to open the cover\u2014but couldn't.\n\nI took it from him and the book opened easily. I handed it back but the cover was still stuck fast.\n\n\"Odd,\" I muttered as Arnie opened it again without any problem.\n\n\"It's Havisham's copy,\" I said slowly, \"she's read it, and me, and now you.\"\n\n\"A book which only three people can read!\" observed Randolph scornfully. \"A bit mean, I must say!\"\n\n\"Only three readers,\" I murmured, my heart going cold as I recalled the three witches' prophecy: Beware the thrice-read rule! Perhaps the new operating system was not quite the egalitarian advance it claimed\u2014if it was really the case that Ultra Word\u2122 books could only be opened by three people, then libraries would be a thing of the past. Secondhand bookshops closed overnight. You could only lend a book twice. I thought of the increased revenue that might be generated from such a commercially useful attribute and shook my head sadly. I had been right. There was something rotten in the state of fiction!\n\n\"Thursday?\" asked Arnie. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nI put The Little Prince down. \"Yes\u2014just one of those epiphanic moments that fiction seems to be littered with.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Randolph knowledgeably. \"We learnt all about those at Tabularasa's.\"\n\nI got up and walked about the kitchen, thinking hard. The angular truck, the strange bolt? What did that all mean? I shivered. If something was so insidiously wrong with the new upgrade that they would kill to keep it quiet, then the \"thrice-read rule\" was just the beginning\u2014after all, a timed readblock would only affect readers in the Outland\u2014it wouldn't affect the BookWorld at all. There had to be more.\n\n\"Problems?\" asked Arnie, sensing my disquiet.\n\n\"It's the Ultra Word\u2122 upgrade.\"\n\n\"Bad?\"\n\n\"The worst. I was removed from Jurisfiction for a reason\u2014who other than the grieving apprentice to ask awkward questions? Miss Havisham was sure there was something wrong with Ultra Word\u2122. Her death proves it.\"\n\n\"I think at best it only suggests it,\" declared Randolph, who had obviously been studying law as part of his Amis bit part. \"Without any evidence it will be hard to prove. Did she or any of the others say anything to you about it?\"\n\nI thought hard. \"From Havisham and Perkins\u2014nothing. And all I got from Snell was gobbledygook on his deathbed. He might have told me everything, but it was so badly spelled I didn't understand a word.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He said, 'Thirsty! Wode\u2014Cone, udder whirled\u2014doughnut Trieste\u2014!' or something quite like it.\"\n\nArnie exchanged looks with Randolph.\n\n\"The Thirsty must be Thursday,\" murmured Arnie.\n\n\"I figured that,\" I returned, \"but what about the rest?\"\n\n\"Do you suppose,\" said Randolph thoughtfully, \"that if you were to recite those words near a source of mispeling, they would revert back again?\"\n\nThere was one of those long pauses that usually accompany a flash of brilliance.\n\n\"It's worth a try,\" I replied, thinking hard. I checked the clip of my automatic and opened my TravelBook.\n\n\"Where are you going?\" asked Arnie.\n\n\"To visit the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group on the seventeenth floor. I think they might be able to help.\"\n\n\"Will they want to?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Asking wasn't part of the plan.\"\n\nThe elevator doors opened on the seventeenth floor. This held all the books whose authors began with Q, and since there weren't that many of them, the remainder of the space had been given over to the Jurisfiction Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group. If any live mispeling vyrus was at Jurisfiction, this would be the place to find it.\n\nThis floor of the Great Library was more dimly lit than the others, and the rows of bunk beds containing the DanverClones began soon after the Quiller-Couch novels ended. The Danvers were all sitting bolt upright, their eyes following me silently as I walked slowly down the corridor. It was disquieting to be sure, but I could think of no other place to look.\n\nI reached the central core of the library, a circular void surrounded by a wrought-iron rail at the center of the four corridors. The way I had come was all Danvers, and so were two of the others. The fourth corridor was lined with packing cases of dictionaries, and beyond them, the medical area in which I had last seen Snell. I walked closer, my feet making no noise on the padded carpet. Perhaps Snell had known as much as Perkins? They were partners, after all. I cursed myself for not thinking of this before.\n\nI arrived at the small medical unit that was ready and waiting to deal with any infected person. The shielded curtains, the bandages overprinted with dictionary entries. They could soothe and contain but rarely cure\u2014Snell was doomed as soon as he was soaked in the vyrus and he knew it.\n\nI opened a few drawers here and there but found nothing. Then, I noticed a large pile of dictionaries stacked by themselves in a roped-off area. I walked closer, repeating the word ambidextrous as I did so.\n\n\"Ambidextrous... ambidextrous... ambidextrous... ambidextruos.\"\n\nBingo. I'd found it.\n\n\"Miss Next? What in heaven's name are you doing here?\"\n\nI nearly jumped out of my skin. If it had been Libris, I would have been worried; but it wasn't\u2014it was Harris Tweed.\n\n\"You nearly scared me half to death!\" I told him.\n\n\"Sorry!\" He grinned. \"What are you up to?\"\n\n\"There's something wrong with Ultra Word\u2122.\"\n\nTweed looked up and down the corridor and lowered his voice. \"I think so, too,\" he hissed, \"but I'm not sure what\u2014I've a feeling that it uses a faster 'memory fade' utility than Version 8.3 so the readers will want to reread the book more often. The Council of Genres are interested in upping their published ReadRates\u2014the battle with nonfiction is hotting up; more than they care to tell us about.\"\n\nIt was the sort of thing I had suspected.\n\n\"What have you discovered?\" he asked.\n\nI leaned closer. \"UltraWord\u2122 has a 'thrice only' read capability.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" exclaimed Tweed. \"Find anything else?\"\n\n\"Not yet. I was hoping to discover what Snell said before he died. It was badly mispeled but I thought perhaps I could unmispel it by repeating it close to a mispeling source.\"\n\n\"Good thought, but we must take care.\" Tweed donned a pair of dictosafe gloves. \"Sit here and repeat Snell's words.\" He placed a chair not a yard from the pile of dictionaries. \"I'll remove one OED at a time and we'll see what happens.\"\n\n\"Wode\u2014Cone, udder whirled\u2014doughnut Trieste,\" I recited as Tweed pulled a single dictionary from the large pile that covered the vyrus. \"Wode\u2014Cone, ulder whirled\u2014dougnut Trieste.\"\n\n\"Who else knows about this?\" he asked. \"If what you say is true, this knowledge is dangerous enough to have killed three times\u2014I hate to say it, but I think we have a rotten apple at Jurisfiction.\"\n\n\"I told no wun at Jurizfaction. Wede\u2014Caine, ulder whorled\u2014dogn'ut Triuste.\"\n\nHarris carefully removed another dictionary. I could see the faint purple glow from within the stacked books.\n\n\"We don't know who we can trust,\" he said somberly. \"Who did you tell, precisely? It's important, I need to know.\"\n\nHe removed another dictionary.\n\n\"Twede\u2014Caine, ulter whorled\u2014dogn't Truste.\"\n\nMy heart went cold. Twede. Could that be Tweed? I tried to look normal and glanced across at him, attempting to figure out if he had heard me. I had good reason to be concerned; if he removed one too many dictionaries, I could be fatally mispeled into a Thirsty Neck or something\u2014and nobody knew I was here.\n\n\"I cane right you a liszt if it wood yelp,\" I said, trying to sound as normal as I could.\n\n\"Why not just tell me,\" he said, still smiling. \"Who was it? Some of those Generics at Caversham Heights?\"\n\n\"I tolled the bell, man.\"\n\nThe smile dropped from his face. \"Now I know you're lying.\"\n\nWe stared at one another. Tweed was no fool; he knew his cover was blown.\n\n\"Tweed,\" I said, the unmispeling now complete, \"Kaine\u2014Ultra Word\u2014Don't trust!\"\n\nI jumped aside as soon as I had said it. I was only just in time\u2014Tweed yanked out three dictionaries near the bottom and the dictosafe partially collapsed.\n\nI sprawled on the ground as the heavy glow, emanating in one direction from the disrupted pile of dictionaries, instantly turned the hospital bed behind me into an hospitable ted, a furry stuffed bear who waved his paw cheerfully and told me to pop round for dinner any day of the week\u2014and to bring a friend.\n\nI threw myself at Tweed, who was not as quick as I, my speech returning to normal almost immediately.\n\n\"Snell and Perkins?!\" I yelled pinning him to the ground. \"Who else? Havisham?\"\n\n\"It's not important,\" he cried as I took his gun and forced his chin into the carpet.\n\n\"You're wrong!\" I told him angrily. \"What's the problem with Ultra Word\u2122?\"\n\n\"Nothing's wrong with it,\" he replied, trying to sound reasonable. \"In fact, everything's right with it! Control of the BookWorld will have never been easier. And with modern and freethinking Outlanders like you and I, we can take fiction to new and dizzying heights!\"\n\nI pushed my knee harder into the back of his neck and he yelped.\n\n\"And where does Kaine come into this?\"\n\n\"Ultra Word\u2122 benefits everyone, Next. Us in here and publishers out there. It's the perfect system!\"\n\n\"Perfect? You need to resort to murder to keep it on track? How can it be perfect?\"\n\n\"You don't understand, Next. In the Outland murder is morally reprehensible, but in here it as a narrative necessity\u2014without it and the jeopardy it generates, we'd have lost a million readers long ago!\"\n\n\"She was my friend, Tweed!\" I yelled. \"Not some cannon fodder for a cheap thriller!\"\n\n\"You're making a big mistake,\" he replied, face still pressed into the carpet. \"I can offer you an important position at Text Grand Central. With UltraWord\u2122 under our control we will have the power to change anything we please within fiction. You gave Jane Eyre a happy ending\u2014we can do the same with countless others and give the reading public what they want. We will dictate terms to that moth-eaten bunch of bureaucrats at the Council of Genres and forge a new, stronger fiction that will catapult the novel to new heights\u2014no longer will we be looked down upon by the academic press and marginalized by nonfiction!\"\n\nI had heard enough. \"You're finished, Tweed. When the Bellman hears what you've been up to\u2014!\"\n\n\"The Bellman is only a tool of Text Grand Central, Next. He does what we tell him. Release me and take your place at my side. Untold adventures and riches await you\u2014we can even write your husband back.\"\n\n\"Not a chance. I want the real Landen or none at all.\"\n\n\"You won't know the difference. Take my hand\u2014I won't offer it again.\"\n\n\"No deal.\"\n\n\"Then,\" he said slowly, \"it is goodbye.\"\n\nI saw something out of the corner of my eye and moved quickly to my right. A pickax handle glanced off my shoulder and struck the carpet. It was Uriah Hope. No wonder Tweed hadn't seemed that worried. I rolled off Tweed and dodged Uriah's next blow, pushing myself backwards along the carpet in my haste to get away. He swung again and shattered a desk, wedging the handle in the wood and struggling with it long enough for me to get to my feet and raise my gun. I wasn't quick enough and he knocked it from my grasp; I ducked the next blow and ran back towards Tweed, who was starting to get up. He hooked my ankle and I came crashing down. I rolled onto my back as Uriah jumped towards me with a wild cry. I put out a foot, caught him on the chest and heaved. His momentum carried him over onto the pile of dictionaries\u2014and the mispeling vyrus. Tweed tried to grab me but I was off and running down the corridor as the DanverClones began to stir.\n\n\"Kill her!\" screamed Tweed, and the Danvers started to move off their bunk beds and walk slowly towards me. I took my TravelBook from my pocket, opened it at the right page and stopped, right in the middle of the corridor. I couldn't outrun them but I could outread them. As I jumped out, I could just feel the bony fingers of the Danvers clutching my rapidly vanishing form.\n\nI jumped clean into Norland Park. Past the striking nursery characters and the frog-faced doorman to appear a little too suddenly in the Jurisfiction offices. I ran straight into the Red Queen, who collapsed and in turn knocked over Benedict and the Bellman. I quickly grabbed Benedict's pistol in case Tweed or Hope arrived ready for action and was consequently attacked from an unexpected quarter. Mistaking my intentions, the Red Queen grabbed my gun arm and twisted it around behind me while Benedict tackled me round the waist and pulled me down yelling, \"Gun! Protect the Bellman!\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I shouted. \"There's a problem with Ultra Word\u2122!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" demanded the Bellman when I had surrendered the gun. \"Is this some sort of joke?\"\n\n\"No joke. It's Tweed\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't listen to her!\" shouted Tweed, who had just appeared. \"She is an ambitious murderer who will stop at nothing to get what she wants!\"\n\nThe Bellman looked at us both in turn. \"You have proof of this, Harris?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes\u2014more proof than you'll ever need. Heep, bring it in.\"\n\nUriah Hope\u2014or Heep as he was now\u2014had survived the mispeling but had been changed irrevocably. Whilst before he had been adventurous, he was, thanks to the vyrus, cadaverous; thin instead of lithe, fawning instead of frowning. But that was, for the moment, by the by. Uriah was holding the stained pillowcase that contained Snell's head. Not his own, of course\u2014the plot device Snell had paid so much for in the Well.\n\n\"We found this in Thursday's home,\" announced Tweed, \"hidden in the broom cupboard. Heep, would you?\"\n\nThe thin and sallow youth, whose hair was now oily rather than curly, laid the bag on a table and lifted the head out by its hair. A gasp came from Benedict's lips and the Red Queen crossed herself.\n\n\"Heavens above,\" murmured the Bellman, \"it's Godot!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Tables Turned",
                "text": "\u2002Insider Trading: Slang term for Internal Narrative Manipulation. Illegal since 1932 and contrary to item B17(g) of the Narrative Continuity Code, this self-engineered plot fluctuation is so widespread within the BookWorld that it is dealt with on a discretionary basis to enable it to be enforced at all. Small manipulation such as dialogue violations are generally ignored, but larger unlicensed plot adjustments are aggressively investigated. The most publicized flaunting of these rules was by Heathcliff when he burned down Wuthering Heights. Fined and sentenced to 150 hours community service within Green Eggs and Ham, Heathcliff was just one of many high-profile cases that Jurisfiction were prosecuting at that time.\n\n\u2014Cat formerly known as cheshire, Guide to the Great Library (glossary)\n\nI had underestimated tweed or the power he wielded in the BookWorld. Until then I don't think I'd realized just how far they would warp the narrative to realize their ambitions. I was still standing there gaping like an idiot when Heep grasped me painfully by the arm and twisted it around, pushing me into a bookcase as he did so.\n\n\"I be ever so humbly sorry about this, Miss Next,\" he whined, the mispeling having gone deeper than his skin and rotted his very soul. \"Imagine me, an A-7 arresting a pretty Outlander such as yourself!\"\n\nHis breath smelt rotten; I breathed through my mouth to avoid gagging. He reached in for my TravelBook and took the opportunity to slide his hand across my breast; I struggled harder\u2014but to no avail.\n\n\"That head's not mine!\" I shouted, realizing how stupid it sounded straightaway.\n\n\"That is one thing we are certain of,\" replied Tweed quietly. \"Why did you kill him?\"\n\n\"I didn't. It's Snell's,\" I said somewhat uselessly, \"he bought it for use in his next book and asked me to keep it for him.\"\n\n\"Snell, insider trading? Any other ills you'd like to heap on the dead? I don't think that's very likely\u2014and how did it turn out to be Godot's? Coincidence?\"\n\n\"I'm being framed,\" I replied, \"Godot's head in a bag in my closet? Isn't that a chapter ending too slick to be anything but an engineered dramatic moment?\"\n\nI stopped. I had been told many times by my SpecOps instructors that the biggest mistake anyone can make in a high-stress situation is to act too fast and say too much before thinking. I needed time\u2014a commodity that was fast becoming a rarity.\n\n\"We have evidence of her involvement in at least three other murders, Mr. Bellman,\" said Tweed.\n\nThe Bellman sighed and shook his head sadly as I was relieved of my TravelBook and handcuffed to three anvils to stop me jumping out.\n\n\"Havisham?\" he asked with a tremor in his voice.\n\n\"We believe so,\" replied Tweed.\n\n\"They're fooling you, Mr. Bellman, sir,\" I said, trying to sound as normal as I could. \"Something is badly wrong with UltraWord\u2122.\"\n\n\"That something is you, Next,\" spat Tweed. \"Four Jurisfiction agents dead in the line of duty\u2014and Deane nowhere to be found. I can't believe it\u2014you'd kill your own mentor?\"\n\n\"Steady, Tweed,\" said the Bellman, drawing up a chair and looking at me sadly. \"Havisham vouched for her and that counts for something.\"\n\n\"Then let me educate you, Mr. Bellman,\" said Tweed, sitting on the corner of a table. \"I've been making a few inquiries. Even discounting Godot, there is more than enough evidence of Next's perfidy.\"\n\n\"Evidence?\" I scoffed. \"Such as what?\"\n\n\"Does the code word sapphire mean anything to you?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Only eight Jurisfiction agents had access to The Sword of the Zenobians,\" said Tweed, \"and four of them are dead.\"\n\n\"It's hardly a smoking gun, is it?\"\n\n\"Not on its own,\" replied Tweed carefully, \"but when we add other facts, it starts to make sense. Bradshaw and Havisham eject from Zenobians leaving you alone with Snell\u2014they arrive a few minutes later and he is mortally mispeled. Very neat, very clever.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked. \"Why would I kill Miss Havisham? Why would I want to kill any of these people?\"\n\n\"Ambition.\"\n\n\"What ambition? All I want to do is to have my child and go home.\"\n\n\"The Bellman's job,\" announced Tweed like a hidden trump. \"As an Outlander you have seniority, but only after Bradshaw, Havisham, Perkins, Deane\u2014and me. Bradshaw has been the Bellman already, so that rules him out. Were you going to kill me next?\"\n\n\"I have no ambition to be the Bellman and didn't kill Miss Havisham,\" I muttered, trying to think of a plan of action.\n\nTweed leaned closer. \"You've been using Jurisfiction as a springboard to feed your own burning ambition. It's a dangerous thing to possess. Ambition will sustain for a while\u2014and then it kills indiscriminately.\"\n\nThe Bellman, who up until this moment had been quiet, suddenly said, \"I'll need more proof than your say-so, Mr. Tweed.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied Tweed triumphantly, \"as you know, the three witches have to log all their prophecies. They don't like to do it, but they have to\u2014no paperwork, no license to read chicken entrails. Simple as that.\"\n\nHe pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. \"The day after Miss Next arrived, they filed this report.\" He handed the paper to the Bellman. \"Read the third on the list.\"\n\n\"Prophecy three,\" read the Bellman slowly, \"Thou shalt be Bellman thereafter.\"\n\nTweed retrieved the sheet of paper and slid it across the table to me. \"Do you deny this?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said glumly.\n\n\"We call it Macbeth's syndrome,\" said the Bellman sadly, \"an insane desire to fulfill your own prophecies. It's nearly always fatal. Sadly, not only for the sufferer.\"\n\n\"I'm not a Macbeth sufferer, Mr. Bellman, and even if I am, shouldn't even the smallest error in Ultra Word\u2122 be looked at?\"\n\n\"There aren't any errors,\" put in Tweed, \"Ultra Word\u2122 is the finest piece of technology we have ever devised\u2014foolproof, stable and totally without error. Tell me the problem\u2014I'm sure there is a satisfactory explanation.\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\" I stopped myself. I knew the Bellman was still an honest man. Should I tell him about the thrice-read problem and risk Tweed covering his tracks even more? On reflection, probably not. The more I dug, the more would be found against me. I needed breathing space\u2014I needed to escape.\n\n\"What's to become of me?\"\n\n\"Permanent expulsion from the BookWorld,\" replied Tweed. \"We don't have enough evidence to convict but we do have enough to have you banned from fiction forever. There is no appeals procedure. I only have to ratify it with the Bellman.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the Bellman, tingling his bell sadly, \"I must concur with Tweed's recommendation. Search her for any BookWorld accessories before we send her back.\"\n\n\"You're making a mistake, Mr. Bellman,\" I said angrily, \"a very\u2014\"\n\n\"Oooh!\" said Heep, who had been rummaging in my pockets and taking the opportunity to try to touch my breasts again. \"Look what I've found!\"\n\nIt was the Suddenly, a Shot Rang Out! plot device Snell had given me at the Slaughtered Lamb.\n\n\"A plot device, Miss Next?\" said Tweed, taking the small glass globe from Heep. \"Do you have any paperwork for this?\"\n\n\"No. It's evidence. I just forgot to sign it in.\"\n\n\"Illegal carriage of all Narrative Turning Devices is strictly illegal. Are you a dealer? Who's your source? Peddle this sort of garbage in teenage fiction?\"\n\n\"Blow it out of your arse, Tweed.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"You heard me.\"\n\nHe went crimson and might have hit me, but all I wanted was for him to move close enough for me to kick him\u2014or his hand, at least.\n\n\"You piece of crap,\" he sneered. \"I've known you were no good from the moment I saw you. Think you're something special, Miss SpecOps Outlander supremo?\"\n\n\"At least I don't work for the Skyrail, Tweed. Inside fiction you're a big cheese, but out in the real world you're less than a nobody!\"\n\nIt had the desired effect. He took a step closer and I kicked out, connected with his hand and the small glass globe went sailing into the air, high above our heads. Heep, coward that he now was, dived for cover, but Tweed and the Red Queen, wary of a Narrative Turning Device going off in a confined area, tried to catch it. They might have been successful if just one of them had attempted it. As it was, they collided with a grunt and the small glass globe fell to the floor and shattered as they looked on helplessly.\n\nSuddenly, a shot rang out. I didn't see where it came from but felt its full effect; the bullet hit the chain that was holding me to the anvils, shattering it neatly. I didn't pause for breath. I was off and running towards the door. I didn't know where I was heading; without my TravelBook I was trapped and Sense and Sensibility was not that big. Tweed and Heep were soon on their feet, only to hit the floor again as a second volley followed the first. I ducked through the door and came upon... Vernham Deane, pistol in hand. Heep and Tweed returned fire as Deane holstered his pistol and took both my hands.\n\n\"Hold tight,\" he said, \"and empty your mind. We're going to go abstract.\"\n\nI cleared my mind as much as I could and\u2014\n\n\"How odd!\" said Tweed, walking to the place he had last seen Thursday. He knew she couldn't jump without her book, but something was wrong. She had vanished\u2014not with the fade out of a standard bookjump, but an instantaneous departure.\n\nHeep and the Bellman joined him, Heep with a bookhound on a leash, who sniffed the ground and whimpered and yelped noisily, chops slobbering.\n\n\"No scent?\" said the Bellman in a puzzled tone. \"No destination signature? Harris, what's going on?\"\n\n\"I don't know, sir. With your permission I'd like to set up textual sieves on every floor of the Great Library. Heep will be your personal bodyguard from now on; Next is quite clearly insane and will try to kill you\u2014I have no doubt about that. Do I have your permission to apply for an Extremely Prejudicial Termination order from the Council of Genres?\"\n\n\"No, that is one step I am not prepared to take. Order the death of an Outlander? Not I.\"\n\nTweed made to move off but the Bellman called him back. \"Tweed, Thursday said there was a problem with UltraWord\u2122 do you think we should contact Text Grand Central and delay its release?\"\n\n\"You mean you take all this seriously, sir?\" exclaimed Tweed in a shocked tone. \"Excuse me for being so blunt, but Next is a murderer and a liar\u2014how many more people does she have to kill before she is stopped?\"\n\n\"UltraWord\u2122 is bigger than all of us,\" said the Bellman slowly, \"even if she is a murderer, she still might have found something wrong. I cannot afford to take any risks over the new upgrade.\"\n\n\"Well, we can delay,\" said Tweed slowly, \"but that would take the inauguration of the new Operating System out of your term as Bellman. If you think that is the best course of action, perhaps we should take it. But whichever Bellman signs Ultra Word\u2122 into law might be looked on favorably by history, do you not think?\"\n\nThe Bellman rubbed his chin thoughtfully.\n\n\"What more tests could we do?\" he asked at length.\n\nTweed smiled. \"I'm not sure, sir. We fixed the flight manual conflict and debugged AutoPageTurnDeluxe\u2122. The raciness overheat problem has been fixed, and the Esperanto translation module is now working one hundred percent. All these faults have been dealt with openly and transparently. We need to upgrade and upgrade now\u2014the popularity of nonfiction is creeping up and we have to be vigilant.\"\n\nHeep ran up and whispered in Tweed's ear.\n\n\"That was one of our intelligence sources, sir. It seems that Next has been suffering from a mnemonomorph recently.\"\n\n\"Great Scott!\" gasped the Bellman. \"She might not even know she had done it!\"\n\n\"It would explain that convincing act,\" added Tweed. \"A woman with no memory of her evil has no guilt. Now, do I have your permission to apply for an Extremely Prejudicial Termination order?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" sighed the Bellman, taking a seat, \"yes, you better had\u2014and Ultra Word\u2122 is to go ahead, as planned. We have dithered enough.\"\n\nWe jumped back into the Jurisfiction offices. Tweed and Heep were alone with the Bellman, overseeing a document that I found out later was my termination warrant. I had Deane's gun pointed\u2014at Deane. He had his hands up. Heep and Tweed exchanged nervous glances.\n\n\"I've brought you Deane, Bellman,\" I announced. \"I had no other way of proving my innocence. Vern, tell them what you told me.\"\n\n\"Go to hell!\"\n\nI whacked him hard on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and he fell to the ground, momentarily stunned. Blood welled up in his hairline and I winced; luckily, no one saw me.\n\n\"That's for Miss Havisham,\" I told him.\n\n\"Miss Havisham?\" echoed the Bellman.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" I replied. \"Bastard.\"\n\nDeane touched the back of his head and looked at his hand.\n\n\"Bitch!\" he muttered. \"I'd have killed you, too!\"\n\nHe turned and leaped at me with surprising speed, grasped me by the throat before I could stop him, and we both crashed to the floor, knocking over a table as we went. It was an impressive charade.\n\n\"The little slut serving wench deserved to die!\" he screamed. \"How dare she spoil the happy life that could have been mine!\"\n\nI couldn't breath and started to black out. I had wanted it to look realistic\u2014and so, I suppose, did he.\n\nTweed placed a gun under Deane's chin and forced him off. He spat in my face as I lay there, trying to get my breath back. Deane was then set upon by Heep, who took an unhealthy delight in beating him despite apologizing superciliously every time he struck him.\n\n\"Stop!\" yelled the Bellman. \"Calm down, all of you!\"\n\nThey propped the now bleeding Deane in a chair and Heep bound his hands.\n\n\"Did you kill Perkins?\" asked the Bellman, and Deane nodded sullenly.\n\n\"He was going to blow the whistle on me\u2014Havisham, too. Snell and Mathias just got in the way. Happiness should have been mine!\" he sobbed. \"Why did the slut have to turn up with that little bastard\u2014I should have married Miss O'Shaugnessy\u2014all I wanted was something no evil squire in Farquitt ever gets!\"\n\n\"And what was that?\" asked the Bellman sternly.\n\n\"A happy ending.\"\n\n\"Pitiful, wouldn't you say, Tweed?\"\n\n\"Pitiful, yes, sir,\" he replied stonily, staring at me as I picked myself off the floor.\n\nThe Bellman tore up my termination order. \"It looks like we have underestimated you,\" he said happily. \"I knew Havisham couldn't be wrong. Tweed, I think you owe Miss Next an apology.\"\n\n\"I apologize unreservedly,\" replied Tweed through gritted teeth.\n\n\"Good,\" said the Bellman. \"Now, Thursday, what's the problem with Ultra Word\u2122?\"\n\nIt was a sticky moment. We had to take this higher than the Bellman. With Libris and the whole of Text Grand Central involved, there was no knowing what they would do. I remembered an error from an early Ultra Word\u2122 test version.\n\n\"Well,\" I began, \"I think there is a flight manual conflict. If you read an UltraWord\u2122 book on an airship, it can play havoc with the flight manuals.\"\n\n\"That's been cured,\" said the Bellman kindly, \"but thank you for being so diligent.\"\n\n\"That's a relief. May I have some leave?\"\n\n\"Of course. And if you find any other irregularities in UltraWord\u2122, I want them brought to me and me alone.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. May I?\" I indicated my TravelBook.\n\n\"Of course! Very impressive job capturing Deane, don't you think, Tweed?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Tweed grimly, \"very impressive\u2014well done, Next.\"\n\nI opened my TravelBook and read myself to Solomon's outer office. Tweed wouldn't try anything at the C of G, and the following three days were crucial. Everything I needed to say to the Bellman would have to wait until I had seven million witnesses."
            },
            {
                "title": "The 923rd Annual BookWorld Awards",
                "text": "\u2002The Annual BookWorld Awards (or Bookies) were instigated in 1063 C.E. and for the first two hundred years were dominated by Aeschylus and Homer, who won most of the awards in the thirty or so categories. Following the expansion in fiction and the inclusion of the oral tradition, categories totaled two hundred by 1423. Technical awards were introduced twenty years later and included Most Used English Word and the Most Widely Mispelt Word, witch has remained a contentious subject ever since. By 1879 there were over six hundred categories, but neither the length of the awards nor the vote-rigging scandal in 1964 has dented the popularity of this glittering occasion\u2014it will remain one of the BookWorld's most popular fixtures for years to come.\n\n\u2014COMMANDER TRAFFORD BRADSHAW, CBE, Bradshaw's Guide to the BookWorld\n\nI stood offstage at the Starlight Room, one in a long line of equally minor celebrities, all awaiting our turn to go and read the nominations. The hospitality lounge where we had all been mustered was about the size of a football pitch, and the massed babble of excited voices sounded like rushing water. I had been trying to avoid Tweed all evening. But whenever I lost him, Heep would take over. There were others about, too. Bradshaw had pointed out Orlick and Legree, two other assistants of Tweed's that he thought I should be wary of.\n\nOf them all, Heep was the most amateur. His skills at unobserved observation were woefully inadequate.\n\n\"Well!\" he said when I caught him staring at me. \"You and me both waiting for awards!\" He rubbed his hands and tapped his long fingers together. \"I ask you, me all humble and you an Outlander. Thanks to you and the mispeling incident I'm up for Most Creepy Character in a Dickens Novel. What would you be up for?\"\n\n\"I'm giving one, not accepting one, Uriah\u2014and why are you following me?\"\n\n\"Apologies, ma'am,\" he said, squirming slightly and clasping his hands together to try to stop them from moving, \"Mr. Tweed asked me to keep a particular close eye on you in case of an attack, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes?\" I replied, unimpressed by the lame cover story. \"From whom?\"\n\n\"Those who would wish you harm, of course. ProCaths, bowdlerizers\u2014even the townspeople from Shadow. It was them what tried to kill you at Solomon's, I'll be bound.\"\n\nSadly, it was true. There had been two attempts on my life since Deane's arrest. The first had been a tiger released in Kenneth's office. I thought at first it was Big Martin catching up with me\u2014but it wasn't. Bradshaw had dealt with the creature; he sent it on a one-way trip to Zenobians. The second had been a contract killing. Fortunately for me, Heep's handwriting was pretty poor and Thursby from The Maltese Falcon was shot instead. It was only because I was an Outlander that I was still alive\u2014if I'd been a Generic, Text Grand Central could have erased me at source long ago.\n\n\"Mr. Tweed said that Outlanders have to stick together,\" carried on Heep, \"and look after each other. Outlanders have a duty\u2014\"\n\n\"This is all really very sweet of him,\" I interrupted, \"but I can look after myself. Good luck with your award; I'm sure you'll win.\"\n\n\"Thank you!\" he said, fidgeting for a moment before moving off a little way and continuing to stare at me in an unsubtle manner.\n\nI was summoned towards the stage where I could see the master of ceremonies winding up the previous award. He reminded me of Adrian Lush\u2014all smiles, insincerity and bouffant hair.\n\n\"So,\" he carried on, \"'teleportation' a clear winner for the Most Implausible Premise in an SF Novel, which was hard luck on 'And they lived happily after,' which won last year. If I could thank all the nominees and especially Ginger Hebblethwaite for presenting it.\"\n\nThere was applause; a freckled youth in a flying jacket waved to the crowd and winked at me as he trotted offstage.\n\nThe emcee took a deep breath and consulted his list. Unlike awards at home, there was no TV coverage as no one in the BookWorld had a TV. You didn't need one. The Generics who had remained in the books as a skeleton staff to keep the stories in order were kept up-to-date with a live footnoterphone link from the Starlight Room. With all the usual characters away at the awards, fiction wasn't quite so good, but no one generally noticed. This was often the reason people in the Outland argued over the quality of a recommended book. They had read it during the Bookies.\n\n\"The next award, ladies, gentleman and, er, things, is to be given by the newest Jurisfiction agent to join the ranks of the BookWorld's own policing agency. Fresh from a glittering career in the Outland and engineer of the improved ending to Jane Eyre, may I present\u2014Thursday Next!\"\n\nThere was applause and I walked on, smiling dutifully. I shook the hand of the emcee and looked out into the auditorium.\n\nIt was vast. Really vast. The Starlight Room was the largest single-function room ever described in any book. A lit candelabra graced each of the hundred thousand tables, and as I looked into the room, all I could see was a never-ending field of white lights, flickering in the distance like stars. Seven million characters were here tonight, but by using a convenient temporal-field displacement technology borrowed from the boys in the SF genre, everyone in the room had a table right next to the stage and could hear and see us with no problems at all.\n\n\"Good evening,\" I said, staring out at the sea of faces, \"I am here to read the nominations and announce the winner of the Best Chapter Opening in the English Language category.\"\n\nI started to feel hot under the lights. I composed myself and read the back of the envelope.\n\n\"The nominations are The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.\"\n\nI waited until the applause had died down and then opened the envelope.\n\n\"And the winner is... Brideshead Revisited!\"\n\nThere was thunderous applause and I smiled dutifully as the emcee bent closer to the microphone.\n\n\"Wonderful!\" he said enthusiastically as the applause subsided. \"Let's hear the winning paragraph, shall we?\"\n\nHe placed the short section of writing into the Imagino TransferenceDevice that had been installed on the stage. But this wasn't a recording ITD like the ones they used to create books in the Well\u2014it was a transmitter. The words of Waugh's story were read by the machine and projected directly into the crowd's imagination.\n\n\"...I have been here before,\" I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and although I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest...\"\n\nThere was more applause from the guests, and when finally it stopped, the emcee announced, \"Mr. Waugh can't be with us tonight, so I would like to ask Sebastian to accept the award on his behalf.\"\n\nThere was a drumroll and a brief alarum of music as Sebastian walked from his table, up the steps to the podium and after kissing me on the cheek shook the emcee's hand warmly.\n\n\"Goodness!\" he said, taking a swig from the glass he had brought with him. \"It's a great honor to accept the award on behalf of Mr. Waugh. I know he would want me to thank Charles, from whose mouth all the words spring, and also Lord Marchmain for his excellent death scene, my mother, of course, and Julia, Cords\u2014\"\n\n\"What about me?\" said a small voice from the Brideshead table.\n\n\"I was getting to you, Aloysius.\" Sebastian cleared his throat and took another swig. \"Of course, I would also like to say that we in Brideshead could not have done it all on our own. I'd like to thank all the other characters in previous works who have done so much to lay the groundwork. I'd particularly like to mention Captain Grimes, Margot Metroland, and Lord Copper. In addition...\"\n\nHe droned on like this for almost twenty minutes, thanking everyone he could think of before finally taking the Bookie statuette and returning to his table. I was thanked by the emcee and walked off the stage feeling really quite relieved, the voice of the emcee echoing behind me:\n\n\"And for the next category, Most Incomprehensible Plot in Any Genre, we are very pleased to welcome someone who has kindly taken a few hours' leave of his grueling schedule of sadistic galactic domination. Ladies, gentlemen and things, his Supreme Holiness Emperor Zhark!\"\n\n\"You're on,\" I whispered to the emperor, who was trying to calm his nerves with a quick cigarette in the wings.\n\n\"How do I look? Enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions of merciless life-forms?\"\n\n\"Terrifying. Have you got the envelope?\"\n\nHe patted his thick black cloak until he found it and held it up, gave a wan smile, took a deep breath and strode purposefully onto the stage to screams of terror and boos.\n\nI reentered the Starlight Room as the Most Incomprehensible Plot was awarded for the fifth year running to The Magus. I glanced at my watch. There was an hour to go until the last and most prestigious award was due to be announced\u2014the Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male). It was a hot contest and the odds had been fluctuating all day. Heathcliff was the clear favorite at 7\u20132. He had won it seventy-seven times in a row, and ever conscious of someone trying to steal his thunder, he had been altering his words and actions subtly to keep the crown firmly on his head, something the opposition had also been attempting. Jude Fawley had been trying to spike his own plot to add drama, and even Hamlet was not averse to a subtle amount of plot-shifting; he had hammed up his madness so much he had to be sent on a cruise to calm him down.\n\nI passed a table populated entirely by rabbits.\n\n\"Waiter!\" called one of them, thumping his rear paw to get attention. \"More dandelion leaves for table eight, if you please, sir!\"\n\n\"Good evening, Miss Next.\"\n\nIt was the Bradshaws; I was glad to see that they had not been swayed by convention\u2014Mrs. Bradshaw had decided to attend after all.\n\n\"Good evening, Commander, good evening, Mrs. Bradshaw\u2014nice dress you're wearing.\"\n\n\"Do you think so?\" asked Mrs. Bradshaw slightly nervously. \"Trafford wanted me to wear something full length, but I think this little Coco Chanel cocktail number is rather fetching, don't you?\"\n\n\"Black suits your eyes,\" I told her, and she smiled demurely.\n\n\"I've got the thing you wanted me to keep for you,\" whispered Bradshaw under his breath. \"Appreciate a girl who knows how to delegate\u2014say the word and it's yours!\"\n\n\"I'm waiting for the announcement of Ultra Word\u2122,\" I hissed. \"Tweed is on my back; don't let him get it no matter what!\"\n\n\"Don't worry your little head about that,\" he said, nodding towards Mrs. Bradshaw. \"The memsahib's in the loop\u2014she may look a delicate thing, but by Saint George she's a fearful lass when riled.\"\n\nHe gave me a wink and I moved on, heart pounding. I hoped the nervousness didn't show. Heep was on the stage, but Legree had taken his place and was keeping a surreptitious eye on me from seven hundred tables away\u2014the temporal-field displacement technology worked in his favor\u2014every table was next to every other.\n\nAll of a sudden there was a strong smell of beer.\n\n\"Miss Next!\"\n\n\"Sir John, good evening.\"\n\nFalstaff looked me up and down. I didn't wear a dress that often and I crossed my arms defensively.\n\n\"Resplendent, my dear, resplendent!\" he exclaimed, pretending to be something of an expert.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nUsually I avoided Falstaff, but if I was being watched, it made sense to talk to as many people as possible; if Tweed and TGC thought I could throw a spanner in the works, I would not help them by drawing attention to my genuine confederates.\n\n\"I know of a side room, Mistress Next, a small place of an acquainting manner\u2014a niche d'amour. What say you and I retire to that place where you might learn there how I came by the name 'Falstaff.'\"\n\n\"Another time.\"\n\n\"Really?\" he asked, surprised by my\u2014albeit accidental\u2014acquiescence.\n\n\"No, not really, Sir John,\" I said hurriedly.\n\n\"Phew!\" he said, mopping his brow. \"'T'would not be half the sport if you were to lie with me\u2014resistance, Mistress Next, is rich allurement indeed!\"\n\n\"If resistance is all you seek,\" I told him, smiling, \"then you will never have a keener woman to woo!\"\n\n\"I'll drink to that!\" He laughed heartily\u2014the word might have been written for him.\n\n\"I have to leave you, Sir John, no more than a gallon of beer an hour, remember?\"\n\nI patted his large tum, which was as hard and unyielding as a beer barrel.\n\n\"On my word!\" he replied, wiping the froth from his beard.\n\nI reached the Jurisfiction table. Beatrice and Benedict were arguing, as usual.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Benedict as soon as I sat down. \"'Tis beauty that dost oft make women proud, but God he knows Beatrice's share thereof is small!\"\n\n\"How so?\" replied Beatrice. \"That face of yours that hungry cannibals would not have touch'd!\"\n\n\"Have either of you seen the Bellman?\" I asked.\n\nThey said they hadn't and I left them to their arguing as Foyle sat down next to me. I had seen him at Norland Park from time to time. He was Jurisfiction, too.\n\n\"Hello, we haven't been introduced. Gully Foyle is my name, terra is my nation; deep space is my dwelling place and death's my destination\u2014I police Science Fiction.\"\n\nI shook his hand. \"Thursday Next. Call me Thursday. How are you liking the awards?\"\n\n\"Pretty good. I was disappointed that Hamlet won the Shakespearean Character You'd Most Like to Slap Award\u2014my money was on Othello.\"\n\n\"Well, Othello won Dopiest Shakespearean Lead, and they don't like them to win more than one each.\"\n\n\"Is that how it works?\" Foyle mused. \"The voting system makes no sense to me.\"\n\n\"They say you'll be partnered at Jurisfiction with Emperor Zhark,\" I said, more by way of conversation than anything else.\n\n\"I hope not. We've been trying to raise the intellectual and philosophical status of science fiction for some time now; people like him don't help the cause one iota.\"\n\n\"Why's that?\"\n\n\"Well,\" mused Foyle, \"how can I put it? Zhark belongs to what we describe as Lesser Science Fiction or Winsome or maybe even Classic.\"\n\n\"How about crap?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm afraid so.\"\n\nThere was a burst of applause as the emcee announced the next award.\n\n\"Ladies, gentlemen and things,\" he declared, \"we had asked Dorothy to present the next award, but she was, sadly, kidnapped by flying monkeys just before the show. I will therefore read the nominations myself.\"\n\nThe emcee sighed. Dorothy's absence was just the latest in a number of small problems that usually interrupted the smooth running of the show. Earlier, Rumplestiltskin had gone berserk and attacked someone who guessed his name, Mary Elliot from Persuasion had declared herself \"too unwell\" to collect the Most Tiresome Austen Character Award, and Boo Radley couldn't be persuaded to come out of his dressing room.\n\n\"So,\" carried on the emcee, \"the nominations for the Best Dead Person in Fiction Award are as follows.\" He looked at the back of the envelope. \"First nomination: Count Dracula.\"\n\nThere was a brief burst of applause, mixed with a few jeers.\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" exclaimed the emcee, \"the supreme Dark Lord himself, father of an entire subgenre. From his castle in the Carpathians he embarked upon the world and darkened shadows forever. Let's read a little bit.\"\n\nHe placed a short extract under the ImaginoTransferanceDevice and I felt a cold shadow on my neck as the Dark Lord's description entered my imagination.\n\nThere, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of newly dug earth, lay the Count! He was either dead or asleep, I could not say which\u2014for the eyes were open and stony, but without the glassiness of death\u2014and the cheeks had the warmth of life through all their pallor, and the lips were as red as ever. But there was no sign of movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart. I bent over him, to find any sign of life, but in vain...\n\nThere was applause and the lights came up again.\n\n\"From the undead to the very dead, the second nomination is for a man who returns selflessly from the grave to warn his erstwhile business partner the terrors which await him if he does not change his ways. All the way from A Christmas Carol\u2014Jacob Marley!\"\n\nThe same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind...\n\nI glanced across at Marley at the Christmas Carol table. Through his semitransparent form I could see Scrooge pulling a large Christmas cracker with Tiny Tim.\n\nWhen the applause died down, the emcee announced the third nomination:\n\n\"Banquo's ghost from Macbeth. A slain friend and bloody revenge are on the menu in this Scottish play of power and obsession in the eleventh century. Is Macbeth the master of his own destiny, or the other way round? Let's have a look.\"\n\nEnter Ghost."
            },
            {
                "title": "MACBETH",
                "text": "Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!\n\nThy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;\n\n[ Thou hast no speculation in those eyes ]\n\nWhich thou dost glare with."
            },
            {
                "title": "LADY MACBETH",
                "text": "Think of this, good peers,\n\nBut as a thing of custom. 'Tis no other,\n\nOnly it spoils the pleasure of the time."
            },
            {
                "title": "MACBETH",
                "text": "What man dare, I dare.\n\nApproach thou like the rugged Russian bear,\n\nThe arm'd rhinoceros, or th' Hyrcan tiger;\n\n[ Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves ]\n\n[ Shall never tremble. Or be alive again ]\n\nAnd dare me to the desert with thy sword.\n\n[ If trembling I inhabit then, protest me ]\n\nThe baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!\n\nUnreal mock'ry, hence!\n\nExit Ghost.\n\n\"And the winner is,\" announced the emcee, opening the envelope, \"...Count Dracula.\"\n\nThe applause was deafening as the Count walked up to receive his award. He shook hands with the emcee and took the statuette before turning to the audience. He was white and cadaverous and I shivered involuntarily.\n\n\"First,\" said the Count in a soft voice with a slight lisp, \"my thanks go to Bram for his admirable reporting of my activities. I would also like to thank Lucy, Mr. Harker and Van Helsing\u2014\"\n\n\"I hope he's not going to start crying like he did last year,\" said a voice close to my ear. I turned to find the Cheshire Cat sitting precariously on a seat back. \"It's so embarrassing.\"\n\nBut he did. The Count was soon choking back floods of tears, thanking everyone he could think of and generally making a complete fool of himself.\n\n\"How are you enjoying the awards?\" I said to the Cat, glad to see a friendly face.\n\n\"Not bad. I think Orlando was a bit miffed to lose out to Puss in Boots for the Best Talking Cat award.\"\n\n\"My money was on you.\"\n\n\"Was it really?\" said the Cat, smiling even more broadly. \"You are nice. Do you want some advice?\"\n\n\"Indeed I do.\" The Cheshire Cat had always remained totally impartial at Jurisfiction. A hundred Bellmans could come and go, but the Cat would always be there\u2014and his knowledge was vast. I leaned closer.\n\n\"Okay,\" he announced grandly, \"here's the advice. Are you ready?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Don't get off a bus while it's still moving.\"\n\n\"That's very good advice,\" I said slowly. \"Thank you very much.\"\n\n\"Don't mention it,\" said the Cat, and vanished.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Hi, Randolph. How are things?\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he said slightly doubtfully. \"Have you seen Lola?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Unlike her to miss a party,\" he muttered. \"Do you think she's okay?\"\n\n\"I think Lola can look after herself. Why are you so interested?\"\n\n\"I'm going to tell her that I quite like her!\" he answered resolutely.\n\n\"Why stop there?\"\n\n\"You mean tell her I really like her?\"\n\n\"And more\u2014but it's a good place to start.\"\n\n\"Thanks. If you see her, tell her I'm on the Unplaced Generics table.\"\n\nI wished him good luck and he left. I got up and walked to a curtained-off area where several bookies were taking bets. I placed a hundred on Jay Gatsby to win the Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male) Award. I didn't think he would win; I just wanted Tweed to waste time trying to figure out what I was up to. I joined the Caversham Heights table soon afterwards and sat down next to Mary, who had returned for the awards.\n\n\"What's going on in the book?\" she demanded indignantly. \"Jack tells me he's been changing a few things whilst I've been away!\"\n\n\"Just a few,\" I said, \"but don't worry, we wouldn't write anything embarrassing for you without consultation.\"\n\nHer eyes flicked across to Arnie, who was sharing a joke with Captain Nemo and Agatha Diesel.\n\n\"Just as well,\" she replied.\n\nThe evening drew on, the celebrities announcing the nominations becoming more important as the categories became more highly regarded. Best Romantic Male went to Darcy and Best Female in a Coming-of-Age Book went to Scout Finch. I looked at the clock. Only ten minutes to go before the prestigious Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male) was due to be announced; the female version of this award had been well represented by Thomas Hardy; Bathsheba Everdene and Tess Durbeyfield had both made it to the nominations only to be pipped at the post by the surprise winner, Lady Macbeth. Sylvia Plath was shortlisted but was disqualified for being real.\n\nI got up and walked to the Jurisfiction table as a drumroll announced the final category. The Bellman nodded politely to me and I looked around the room. It was time to act. UltraWord\u2122 was not the savior of the BookWorld\u2014it would be the end, and I hoped that Mimi down in the footnoterphone conduits was ready.\n\n\"And now, ladies, gentlemen and things, for the high point of the evening, the 923rd Annual BookWorld Award for Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male). To read the nominations we have none other than WordMaster Xavier Libris, all the way from Text Grand Central!\"\n\nThere was loud applause, which I hadn't expected\u2014TGC wasn't that popular. I had a sudden attack of doubt. Could Deane be wrong? I thought again about Perkins, Snell and Havisham and my resolve returned. I grabbed my bag and got up. I saw Legree stiffen and rise from the Uncle Tom's Cabin table, speaking into his cuff as he did so. I headed towards the exit with him tailing me.\n\n\"Thank you very much!\" said Libris, raising his hands to quell the applause as Hamlet, Jude Fawley and Heathcliff stood close by, each wishing that Libris would hurry up so they could collect the statuette. \"I have a few words to say about the new Operating System and then we can all get back to the awards.\"\n\nHe took a deep breath. \"Many good words have been written about Ultra Word\u2122, and I have to tell you, they are all true. The benefits to everyone will be felt throughout the BookWorld, from the lowliest D-10 in the trashiest paperback to the finest A-1 in high literature.\"\n\nI walked to the side of the stage, towards the swing doors that led through to the hospitality lounge. Legree followed but was tripped up by Mathias's widow. She placed a hoof on his chest and held him firm while Mrs. Hubbard grabbed one arm and Miss Muffet the other. It had been done so quietly no one had noticed.\n\n\"Nonfiction is gaining in popularity, and this invasion into areas historically part of fiction must be cut off at the root. To this end, myself and the technicians at Text Grand Central have created Ultra Word\u2122, the Book Operating System that gives us more choice, more plots, more ideas and more ways in which to work. With these tools you and I will forge a new fiction, a fiction so varied that the readers will flock to us in droves. The future is bright\u2014the future is Ultra Word\u2122.\"\n\n\"Going somewhere, missy?\" asked Heep, blocking my path.\n\n\"Get out of my way, Uriah.\"\n\nHe pulled a gun from his pocket but stopped dead when a voice said:\n\n\"Do you know what an eraserhead can do to an A-7 like you, Heep?\"\n\nBradshaw emerged from behind a potted Triffid. He was carrying his trusty hunting rifle.\n\n\"You'd never kill a featured Dickens character, Mr. Bradshaw!\" said Heep, attempting to call his bluff.\n\nBradshaw pulled back the hammer on his rifle. \"Poltroon! Ever wondered what happened to Edwin Drood?\"\n\nHeep's eyes nearly popped out of his skull, and coward that he was, he dropped his pistol and started pleading for his life.\n\nMrs. Bradshaw tied Heep's thumbs together and, after gagging him, hid him under the Summer Lightning table.\n\n\"Drood?\" I asked Bradshaw with some surprise. \"Was that you?\"\n\n\"Not at all!\" He laughed. \"I only asked him if he had ever wondered what happened to Drood. Now get out of here, girly\u2014there's work to be done!\"\n\nI pushed the swing doors to the hospitality lounge and pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone. The room was deserted, but I met Tweed at the entrance to the stage. I could see Libris talking, and beyond him, the audience hanging on his every word.\n\n\"Of course,\" he went on, \"the new system will need new work procedures, and all of you have had ample time to study our detailed seventeen-hundred-page prospectus; all jobs will be protected, the status of all Generics will be maintained. In a few minutes I will ask for a vote to carry the new system, as required by the Council of Genres. But before we do, let us go over the main points again. Firstly, UltraWord\u2122 will support the possibility of a 'No Frills' range of books with only forty-three different words, none of them longer than six letters. Designed for the hard-of-reading, these...\"\n\nI leaned forward and spoke to Tweed as Libris carried on.\n\n\"Is that why you invited all the C-and D-class Generics, Tweed?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"So you could force the vote? Your lies have the greatest effect on those with little influence in the Well\u2014give them the power to change something and they'll meekly follow you. After Libris has finished, I'll give a rebuttal. When I'm done, you and Libris and Ultra Word\u2122 will be history.\"\n\nTweed glared at me as Libris went on to his third point. \"UltraWord\u2122 is too important to be loused up by you,\" said Tweed with a sneer. \"I agree there might be certain downsides, but overall the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.\"\n\n\"Benefits to who, Tweed? You and Kaine?\"\n\n\"Of course. And you, too, if only you'd stop meddling.\"\n\n\"What did Kaine buy you with?\"\n\n\"He didn't buy me, Next. We merged. His contacts in the Outland and my position at Jurisfiction. A fictional person in the real world and a real person in fiction. A better partnership it would be hard to imagine!\"\n\n\"When they hear what I have to say,\" I replied calmly, \"they'll never give you the vote.\"\n\nTweed smiled that supercilious smile of his and stepped aside. \"You want to have your say, Thursday? Go ahead. Make a fool of yourself. But remember this: Anything you say, we can refute. We can modify the rules, change the facts, deny the truth, with written proof. That's the beauty of Ultra Word\u2122\u2014everything can be keyed in direct from Text Grand Central, and as you've so correctly gathered, everything there is controlled by Kaine, Libris and I. It's as easy to change the facts as it is to write a stub axle failure on the Bluebird\u2014or unlock a padlock, put Godot in a bag or create an outbreak of mispeling vyrus. Merely keystrokes, Next. We have the Great Library within our control\u2014with the source text at our fingertips we can do anything. History will be good to us because we are the ones who shall write it!\"\n\nTweed laughed. \"Battle against UltraWord\u2122 and you might as well try and canoe up a waterfall.\"\n\nHe patted me patronizingly on the shoulder. \"But just in case you've got something up your sleeve, six thousand highly trained Mrs. Danvers are on call, ready to move in on my word. We can even write a BookWorld rebellion if we want\u2014the Council won't be able to tell the difference between a real one and a written one. We will have this vote, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Yes, you might,\" I conceded. \"All I want is for the characters to have their say with all the facts, not just yours.\"\n\nI looked at Libris on the stage. \"Point ten,\" he went on as Heathcliff looked at his watch impatiently, \"all characters wherever they reside will be given four weeks' holiday a year in whichever book they choose.\"\n\nThere was a roar of applause. He was offering everything they wanted to hear, buying the inhabitants of the BookWorld with hollow promises.\n\nTweed spoke into his mobilefootnoterphone. \"Miss Next wants to have her say.\"\n\nI saw Libris touch his ear and turn round to stare at me contemptuously.\n\n\"But before the vote,\" he added, \"before you say the word and we move upwards into broad, sunlit pastures, I understand we have a Jurisfiction agent who wants to offer a counterpoint to my statement. This is her right. It is your right to ask for proof if you wish\u2014and I most strongly request that you do so. Ladies and gentlemen\u2014things\u2014Miss Thursday Next!\"\n\nI murmured into my mobilefootnoterphone, \"Go, Mimi, go!\"\n\nEveryone in the Starlight Room reacted slightly to the distant explosion.\n\nTweed steadied himself and spun round to glare at me. \"What was that?\"\n\nI patted him patronizingly on the shoulder. \"It's called leveling the playing field, Harris.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "UltraWord\u2122",
                "text": "Storycode Engine: The name given to the imaginotransference machines used by Text Grand Central to throughput the books in the Great Library to the readers in the Outland. On a single machine floor at TGC there are five hundred of these complex, cast-iron colossi. A single engine can cope with up to fifty thousand simultaneous readings of the same book at up to six words per second per reader. With a hundred similar floors, TGC is able to handle two and a half billion different readings, although the lowest ten floors are generally used only when a long-awaited bestseller is published. Using the UltraWordTM system, only twelve engines would be needed to handle the same number of readings\u2014but at speeds of up to twenty words per second.\n\n\u2014XAVIER LIBRIS, Ultra Word\u2122\u2014the Ultimate Reading Experience\n\nHamlet and Jude Fawley exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders as I walked up the steps and looked out at the crowd. Heathcliff, to whom all of this was merely delaying his moment of honor, glowered at me angrily. Oddly, I didn't feel at all nervous\u2014only a sort of numb elation. I would do some serious throwing up in the loo later, but for now, I was fine.\n\n\"Good evening,\" I began to the utterly silent audience. \"No one would deny that we need more plots, but there are one or two things about Ultra Word\u2122 that you should know.\"\n\n\"Grand Central?!\" barked Tweed uselessly into his mobilefootnoterphone. \"Tweed to Text Grand Central, come in please!\"\n\nI didn't have long. As soon as TGC knew what had happened, they could write themselves another footnoterphone link.\n\n\"Firstly, there are no new plots. In all the testing that has been done, not one has been described or hinted at. Libris, would you care to outline a 'new' plot now?\"\n\n\"They won't be available until Ultra Word\u2122 is on-line,\" he said, glaring at Tweed, who was still trying to contact Text Grand Central.\n\n\"Then they are untested. Secondly,\" I went on, \"Ultra Word\u2122 carries a thrice-read-only feature.\"\n\nThere was a gasp from the audience.\n\n\"This means no more book lending. Libraries will close down overnight, secondhand bookshops will be a thing of the past. Words can educate and liberate\u2014but TGC want to make them a salable commodity and nothing more.\"\n\nThe crowd started to murmur to one another. Not one of those murmurs, which is just a descriptive term, you usually get in the BookWorld, but a real murmur\u2014seven million people all discussing what I had just said.\n\n\"Orlick!\" I heard Tweed shout. \"Get to TGC\u2014run if you have to\u2014and get the footnoterphone repaired!\"\n\n\"This is preposterous!\" yelled Libris, almost apoplectic with rage. \"Lies, damnable lies!\"\n\n\"Here,\" I said, tossing Deane's copy of The Little Prince onto the table right at the front. The displacement-field technology worked perfectly\u2014a single book landed on each of the hundred thousand tables.\n\n\"This is an UltraWord\u2122 book,\" I explained. \"Read the first page and pass it on. See how long it takes before you can't open it.\"\n\n\"Tweed!?\" yelled Libris, who was still next to me on the stage and becoming more agitated by the second. \"Do something!\"\n\nI pointed at Xavier. \"WordMaster Libris could refute my arguments with ease, simply by rewriting the facts. He could have unblocked the book already but for one thing\u2014all the lines are down to Text Grand Central. As soon as they are up again, each of these books will be unblocked. Perkins was murdered when he found out what they were up to. He told Snell and he was killed, too. Miss Havisham didn't know, but TGC suspected that she did, so she had to be silenced.\"\n\nThe Bellman had risen to his feet and was walking to the front of the stage. \"Is this true?\" he asked, eyes blazing.\n\n\"No, Your Bellship,\" replied Libris, \"on my honor. As soon as we get back on-line, we will refute every single claim the misinformed Miss Next has made!\"\n\nThe Bellman looked at me. \"Better get a move on, young lady. You have the crowd, but for how long, I have no idea.\"\n\n\"Thirdly and more importantly, all books written using the UltraWord\u2122 system can be fixed direct using the source storycode from Text Grand Central\u2014there will be no need for Jurisfiction. Everything we do can be achieved by low-skilled technicians at TGC.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Libris, interrupting. \"Now we get to your real point\u2014fearful of your job, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Not my job, Libris\u2014my real home is in the Outland. I would applaud a BookWorld in which we had no need of a policing agency\u2014but not one where we lose the Well of Lost Plots!\"\n\nThere was a gasp from the crowd, seven million people all drawing breath at the same time.\n\n\"Under UltraWord\u2122 there will be no need for plotsmiths, echolocators, imaginators, holesmiths, grammatacists and spellcheckers. No need for Generics to be trained because characters will be constructed with the minimum of description necessary to do the job. I'm talking about the wholesale destruction of everything that is intuitive in writing\u2014to be replaced by the formulaic. The Well would be dismantled and run instead by a few technicians at TGC who will construct books with no input from any of you.\"\n\n\"Then what will happen to us?\" said a voice from the front.\n\n\"Replaced,\" I said simply, \"replaced by a string of nouns and verbs. No hopes, no dreams, no future. No more holidays because you won't need or want one\u2014you will all be reduced to nothing more than words on a page, lifeless as ink and paper.\"\n\nThere was silence.\n\n\"Proof!\" cried Libris. \"All you have demonstrated so far is that you can spin a yarn as good as any plotsmith! Where is your proof?\"\n\n\"Very well,\" I said slowly. \"Mrs. Bradshaw? The skylark, if you please.\"\n\nMrs. Bradshaw produced the small cage from beneath the table and handed it up to me.\n\n\"I have seen an UltraWord\u2122 character with my own eyes, and they are empty husks. If an old book is read in Ultra Word\u2122, it is very good\u2014but if it is written in Ultra Word\u2122, it will be flat and trite, devoid of feeling\u2014the SmileyBurger of the storytelling world. The Well may be wasteful and long-winded, but every book read in the Outland was built there\u2014even the greats.\"\n\nI took the skylark from the cage. \"This was the proof that Perkins died for.\"\n\nI placed the small songbird beneath the Imagino TransferenceDevice and the skylark's description was transmitted into the audience.\n\nO Lark so quick of wing,\n\nDive down from up on high,\n\nPerch proud upon the post,\n\nMelt darkness with thy cry.\n\nCome make my spirits soar,\n\nDance here and hover long,\n\nTempt summer with your trill,\n\nSweet stream of endless song.\n\nThe audience reacted favorably to the words and there was a smattering of applause, despite their nervousness.\n\n\"What's wrong with that?\" insisted Libris. \"UltraWord\u2122 takes language and uses it in ways more wonderful than you can imagine!\"\n\nThe Bellman looked at me. \"Miss Next,\" he demanded, \"explain yourself.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said slowly, \"that wasn't an UltraWord\u2122 skylark. I picked it up from the library this morning.\"\n\nThere was an expectant hush as Mrs. Bradshaw produced a second bird seemingly identical to the first and handed it up to me.\n\n\"This is the Ultra Word\u2122 version. Shall we compare?\"\n\n\"That's not necessary!\" said Libris quickly. \"We get the point.\" He turned to the Bellman. \"Sir, we need a few more weeks to sort out a few minor kinks\u2014\"\n\n\"Go ahead, Thursday,\" said the Bellman, \"let's see how UltraWord\u2122 compares.\"\n\nI placed the bird in the ITD, and it transmitted the cold and clinical description into the audience.\n\nWith a short tail and large wings, a skylark is easily recognized in flight. There is a distinctive streaking pattern to the brown plumage on the breast, and a black-and-white pattern beneath the tail. Nests in hollow on ground. Can sing a bit.\n\n\"I call a vote right now!\" exclaimed the Bellman, climbing onto the stage.\n\nI looked across at Tweed, who was tapping his mobilefootnoterphone and smiling.\n\n\"What's the problem?\" I asked.\n\n\"Eh?\" asked the Bellman.\n\n\"The vote!\" I urged. \"Hurry!\"\n\n\"Of course,\" he replied, knowing full well that Text Grand Central were not defeated until the vote had been taken. The Council of Genres weren't involved\u2014but would be if TGC tried to go against a BookWorld referendum. That was something they could never rewrite.\n\n\"Good!\" said Tweed into his mobilefootnoterphone. \"Communications have been restored.\"\n\nHe smiled at me and signaled to Libris, who calmed dramatically as only the supremely confident can do.\n\n\"Very well,\" said Libris slowly, \"the Bellman has called for a vote, and as the rules state, I am allowed to answer any criticism laid before me.\"\n\n\"A rebuttal of a rebuttal?\" I cried. \"The rules don't state that!\"\n\n\"But they do!\" said Libris kindly. \"Perhaps you'd like to look at the BookWorld constitution?\"\n\nHe pulled the slim volume from his coat and I could smell the cantaloupes from where I stood. It would say whatever they wanted it to say.\n\nLibris walked over to us and said to the Bellman in a quiet voice, \"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. We make the rules, we can change the rules, we can modify the rules. We can do anything we want. You are due to step down. Go with me on this one and you can have an easy retirement. Go against me and I'll crush you.\"\n\nLibris turned to me. \"What do you care? No one in the Outland will notice the difference. You'll have a week to pack up and move out\u2014you have my word on that.\"\n\nThe Bellman glared at Libris. \"How much did they pay you?\"\n\n\"They didn't need to. Money doesn't mean anything down here. No, it's the technology that I really love. It's too perfect to be sidelined by people like you. I get one hundred percent control. Everything will go through TGC. No more Well of Lost Plots, no more Generics, no more Council, no more strikes by disgruntled nursery rhyme workers. But do you know the best bit? No more authors. No more missed deadlines. No more variable-quality second books\u2014each one in the series will be the same as the last. When a publisher needs a bestseller, all they need do is contact our sole representative in the Outland!\"\n\n\"Yorrick Kaine,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Indeed. It's all for the best, my dear.\"\n\nIncredibly, it was worse than I thought. It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries.\n\n\"But the books!\" I cried. \"They'll be terrible!\"\n\n\"Within a few years no one will notice,\" replied Libris. \"Mr. Bellman, do you go with us on this or not?\"\n\n\"I would sooner die!\" he exclaimed, trembling with rage.\n\n\"As you wish,\" replied Libris.\n\nThere was a short crackling noise and I saw the Bellman stiffen slightly.\n\n\"Now,\" said Libris, \"let's finish this all up. Bellman, would you refute Miss Next's points one by one?\"\n\n\"I should be delighted,\" he said slowly and without emotion. I turned to him in shock and could see how his features were less defined than before\u2014sort of like a wire-framed, three-dimensional model clothed in realistic skintone. I could see it easily but I was up close\u2014the audience hadn't noticed anything at all. The smell of melons once more drifted across the stage.\n\n\"Friends!\" began the Bellman. \"Miss Next is entirely mistaken...\"\n\nI turned to Libris and he smiled triumphantly. I reached into my bag for my gun, but it had been changed to marmalade.\n\n\"Tch, tch,\" said Libris in a whisper, \"that's a BookWorld gun and under our control. What a shame you lost your Outlander Browning in the struggle with Tweed!\"\n\nI had only one card left. I pulled out my TravelBook and opened it, flicking past the TextMarker and Eject-O-Hat and on towards the glass panel covering a red-painted handle. A note painted on the glass read, IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS. If this wasn't an unprecedented emergency, I didn't know what was. I smashed the glass, grabbed the handle and pulled it down with all my strength."
            },
            {
                "title": "Loose Ends",
                "text": "\u2002Contrary to Text Grand Central's claims, there were no new plots using UltraWordTM. Ex-WordMaster Libris had become so obsessed with the perfection of his Operating System that nothing else had mattered to him and he lied repeatedly to cover up its failings. BOOK V8.3 remained the Operating System for many years to come, although one of the UltraWord TM copies of The Little Prince can be viewed in the Jurisfiction museum. To avoid a repeat of this near disaster, the Council of Genres took the only course of action open to them to ensure TGC would be too inefficient and unimaginative to pose a threat. They appointed a committee to run it.\n\n\u2014MILLON DE FLOSS, Ultra Word\u2122\u2014the Aftermath\n\nIt was nearly morning when the BookWorld Awards party finished. Heathcliff was furious that in all the excitement the final award of the night had been forgotten; I saw him talking angrily to his personal imaginator an hour after the appearance of the Great Panjandrum. There would be next year of course, but his seventy-seven-year record had been broken and he didn't like it. I thought he might take it out on Linton and Catherine when he got home, and he did.\n\nNo one had been more surprised than me by the arrival of the Great Panjandrum when I pulled the emergency handle. For the nonbelievers it was something of a shock, but not any less than for the faithful. She had been so long a figure of speech that seeing her in the flesh was something of a shock. I thought she had seemed quite plain and in her midthirties, but Humpty-Dumpty told me later he had been shaped like an egg. In any event, the marble statue that now stands in the lobby of the Council of Genres depicts the Great Panjandrum as Mr. Price the stonemason saw him\u2014with a leather apron and carrying a mallet and stone chisel.\n\nWhen she arrived, the Great Panjandrum read the situation perfectly. She froze all the text within the room, locked the doors and decreed that a vote be taken there and then. She summoned the head of the Council of Genres, and the vote against UltraWord was carried unanimously. She spoke to me three times: once to tell me I had The Write Stuff, second to ask me if I would take on the job of the Bellman, and lastly to ask if disco mirror-balls in the Outland had a motor to make them go round or whether they did it by the action of the lights. I answered \"Thank you,\" \"Yes\" and \"I don't know\" in that order.\n\nAfter the party was over, I walked back through the slowly stirring Well of Lost Plots to the shelf that held Caversham Heights and read myself back inside, tired but happy. The Bellman's job would, I hoped, keep me busy, but purely in administration\u2014I wouldn't have to go jumping around in books\u2014just the thing to allow my ankles to swell in peace and quiet, and to plan my return to the Outland when the infant Next and its mother were strong enough. Together we would face the tribulations of Landen's return, because the little one would have a father, I had promised it that much already. I opened the door to the Sunderland and felt the old flying boat rock slightly as I entered. When I'd first come here, it had unnerved me, but now I wouldn't have had it any other way. Small wavelets slapped against the hull, and somewhere an owl hooted as it returned to roost. It felt as much like home as home had ever done. I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long because, she said, she had \"yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel.\"\n\nI closed my eyes for a moment and fell fast asleep without the nagging fear of Aornis, and it was nearly ten the next morning when I awoke. But I didn't wake naturally\u2014Pickwick was tugging at the corner of my dress.\n\n\"Not now, Pickers,\" I mumbled sleepily, trying to turn over and nearly impaling myself on a knitting needle. She carried on tugging until I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched noisily. She seemed insistent so I followed her upstairs to my bedroom. Sitting on the bed and surrounded by broken eggshell was something that I could only describe as a ball of fluff with two eyes and a beak.\n\n\"Plock-plock,\" said Pickwick.\n\n\"You're right,\" I told her, \"she's very beautiful. Congratulations.\"\n\nThe small dodo blinked at us both, opened its beak wide and said, in a shrill voice, \"Plunk!\"\n\nPickwick started and looked at me anxiously.\n\n\"Well!\" I told her. \"A rebellious teenager already?\"\n\nPickwick nudged the chick with her beak and it plunked indignantly before settling down.\n\nI thought for a moment and said, \"You aren't going to feed her doing that disgusting regurgitation seabird thing are you?\"\n\nThe door burst open downstairs.\n\n\"Thursday!\" yelled Randolph anxiously. \"Are you in here?\"\n\n\"I'm here,\" I shouted, leaving Pickwick with her offspring and coming downstairs to find a highly agitated Randolph, pacing up and down the living room.\n\n\"What's up?\"\n\n\"It's Lola.\"\n\n\"Some unsuitable young man again? Really, Randolph, you've got to learn not to be so jealous\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" he said quickly, \"it's not that. Girls Make All the Moves didn't find a publisher and the author burnt the only manuscript in a drunken rage! That's why she wasn't at the awards last night!\"\n\nI stopped. If a book had been destroyed in the Outland, then all the characters and situations would be up for salvage\u2014\n\n\"Yes,\" said Randolph, reading my thoughts, \"they're going to auction off Lola!\"\n\nI quickly changed out of my dress and we arrived as the sale was winding up. Most of the descriptive scenes had already gone, the one-liners packaged and sold as a single lot, and all the cars and most of the wardrobe and furniture were disposed of. I pushed through to the front of the crowd and found Lola looking dejected, sitting on her suitcase.\n\n\"Lola!\" said Randolph, as they hugged. \"I brought Thursday to help you!\"\n\nShe jumped up and smiled, but it was a despairing half smile at best and it spoke volumes.\n\n\"Come on,\" I said, grabbing her by the hand, \"we're out of here.\"\n\n\"Not so fast!\" said a tall man in an immaculate suit. \"No goods are to be removed until paid for!\"\n\n\"She's with me,\" I told him as several hulking great bouncers appeared from nowhere.\n\n\"No, she's not. She's lot ninety-seven. You can bid if you want to.\"\n\n\"I'm Thursday Next, the Bellman-elect, and Lola is with me.\"\n\n\"I know who you are and you did good, but I have a business to run. I haven't done anything wrong. You can take the Generic home with you in ten minutes\u2014after you have won the bidding.\"\n\nI glared at him. \"I'm going to close down this foul trade and enjoy it every step of the way!\"\n\n\"Really? I'm quaking in my boots. Now, are you going to bid or do I withdraw the lot and put it up for private tender?\"\n\n\"She's not an it,\" snarled Randolph angrily, \"she's a Lola\u2014and I love her!\"\n\n\"You're breaking my heart. Bid or bugger off, the choice is yours.\"\n\nRandolph made to plant a punch on the dealer's chin, but he was caught by one of the bouncers and held tightly.\n\n\"Control your Generic or I'll throw you both out! Get it?\"\n\nRandolph nodded and he was released. We stood together at the front watching Lola, who was weeping silently into her handkerchief.\n\n\"Gentlemen. Lot ninety-seven. Fine female B-3 Generic, ident: TSI-1404912-A, attractive and personable. An opportunity to secure this sort of highly entertaining and pneumatic young lady does not come often. Her high appetite for sexual congress, slight dopiness and winsome innocence mated to indefatigable energy makes her especially suitable for 'racy' novels. What am I bid?\"\n\nIt was bad. Very bad. I turned to Randolph. \"Do you have any money?\"\n\n\"About a tenner.\"\n\nThe bidding had already reached a thousand. I didn't have a tenth of that either here or back home\u2014nor anything to sell to raise such a sum. The bidding rose higher, and Lola grew more depressed. For the amount that was being bid, she was probably in for a series of books\u2014and the movie rights. I shuddered.\n\n\"With you, sir, at six thousand!\" announced the auctioneer as the bidding bounced backwards and forwards between two well-known dealers. \"Any more bids?\"\n\n\"Seven thousand!\"\n\n\"Eight!\"\n\n\"Nine!\"\n\n\"I can't watch,\" said Randolph, tears streaming down his face. He turned and left as Lola stared after him, trying to see him as he pushed his way to the back.\n\n\"Any more bids?\" asked the auctioneer. \"With you, sir, at nine thousand... going once... going twice...\"\n\n\"I bid one original idea!\" I shouted, digging in my bag for the small nugget of originality and marching up to the auctioneer's table. There was a deathly hush as I held the glowing fragment aloft, then placed it on his desk with a flourish.\n\n\"A nugget of originality for a trollop like that?\" muttered a man at the front. \"The Bellman-elect's got a screw loose.\"\n\n\"Lola is that important to me,\" I said somberly. Miss Havisham had told me to use the nugget wisely\u2014I think I did.\n\n\"Is it enough?\"\n\n\"It's enough,\" said the vendor, picking up the nugget and staring at it avariciously through an eyeglass. \"This lot is withdrawn from the sale. Miss Next, you are the proud owner of a Generic.\"\n\nLola nearly wet herself, poor girl, and she hugged me tightly during the five minutes it took to complete the paperwork.\n\nWe found Randolph sitting on a bollard down by the docks, staring off into the Text Sea with a sad and vacant look in his eyes. Lola leaned down and whispered in his ear.\n\nRandolph jumped and turned round, flung his arms around her and cried for joy.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, \"yes, I did mean it! Every bit of it!\"\n\n\"Come on, lovebirds,\" I told them, \"I think it's time to leave this cattle market.\"\n\nWe walked back to Caversham Heights, Randolph and Lola holding hands, making plans to start a home for Generics who had fallen on hard times, and trying to think up ways to raise funding. Neither of them had the resources to undertake such a project, but it got me thinking.\n\nThe following week and soon after the Bellman inauguration, I gave my proposal to the Council of Genres\u2014Caversham Heights should be bought by the Council and used as a sanctuary for characters who needed a break from the sometimes arduous and repetitive course that fictional people are forced to tread. A sort of textual summer camp. To my delight the Council approved the measure, as it had the added bonus of a solution to the nursery rhyme problem. Jack Spratt was overjoyed at the news and didn't seem in the least put out by the massive changes that would be necessary to embrace the visitors.\n\n\"The drug plot is out, I'm afraid,\" I told him as we discussed it over lunch a few days later.\n\n\"What the hell,\" he exclaimed, \"I was never in love with it anyway. Do we have a replacement boxer?\"\n\n\"The boxing plot is out, too.\"\n\n\"Ah. How about the money-laundering subplot where I discover the mayor has been taking kickbacks? That's still in, yes?\"\n\n\"Not... as such,\" I said slowly.\n\n\"It's gone, too? Do we even have a murder?\"\n\n\"That we have.\" I passed him the new outline I had been thrashing out with a freelance imaginator the previous day.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, scanning the words eagerly. \"It's Easter in Reading\u2014a bad time for eggs\u2014and Humpty-Dumpty is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town....\"\n\nHe flicked a few more pages. \"What about Dr. Singh, Madeleine, Unidentified Police Officers 1 and 2 and all the others?\"\n\n\"All still there. We've had to reassign a few parts, but it should hold together. The only person who wouldn't move was Agatha Diesel\u2014I think she might give you a few problems.\"\n\n\"I can handle her,\" replied Jack, flicking to the back of the outline to see how it all turned out. \"Looks good to me. What do the nurseries say about it?\"\n\n\"I'm talking to them next.\"\n\nI left Jack with the outline and jumped to Norland Park, where I took the news to Humpty-Dumpty; he and his army of pickets were still camped outside the doors of the house\u2014they had been joined by characters from nursery stories, too.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Humpty as I approached. \"The Bellman. The three witches were right after all.\"\n\n\"They generally are,\" I replied. \"I have a proposal for you.\"\n\nHumpty's eyes grew bigger and bigger as I explained what I had in mind.\n\n\"Sanctuary?\" he asked.\n\n\"Of sorts,\" I told him. \"I'll need you to coordinate all the nurseries who will find narrative a little bit alien after doing couplets for so long, so you'll be dead when the story opens.\"\n\n\"Not... the wall thing?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so. What do you think?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Humpty, reading the outline carefully and smiling, \"I'll take it to the membership, but I think I can safely say that there is nothing here that we can find any great issue with. Pending a ballot, I think you've got yourself a deal.\"\n\nIt took the C of G almost a year to scrap the pristine and unused Ultra Word engines, and many more arrests followed, although sadly, none in the Outland. Vernham Deane was released, and he and Mimi were awarded the Gold Star for Reading as well as the plot realignment they had wanted for so many years. They married and\u2014quite unprecedented for a Farquitt baddy\u2014lived happily ever after, something that caused a severe drop in sales for The Squire of High Potternews. Harris Tweed, Xavier Libris and twenty-four others at Text Grand Central were tried and found guilty of \"crimes against the BookWorld.\" Harris Tweed was expelled permanently from fiction and returned to Swindon. Heep, Orlick and Legree were all sent back to their books, and the rest were reduced to text.\n\nIt was the first day of the influx of nursery rhyme refugees, and Lola and I were sitting on a park bench in Caversham Heights\u2014soon to be renamed Nursery Crime. We were watching Humpty-Dumpty welcome the long line of guests as Randolph allocated parts. Everyone was happy with the arrangements, but I wasn't overwhelmed with joy myself. I still missed Landen and I was reminded of this every time I tried\u2014and failed\u2014to get my old trousers to button up over my rapidly expanding waistline.\n\n\"What are you thinking about?\"\n\n\"Landen.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Lola, staring at me with her big brown eyes. \"You will get him back, I am sure of it\u2014please don't be downhearted!\"\n\nI patted her hand and thanked her for her kind words.\n\n\"I never did say thank you for what you did,\" she said slowly. \"I missed Randolph more than anything\u2014if only he'd told me what he felt I would have stayed in Heights or sought a dual placement\u2014even as a C-grade.\"\n\n\"Men are like that. I'm just glad you're both happy.\"\n\n\"I'll miss being the main protagonist,\" she said wistfully. \"Girls Make All the Moves was a good role but in a crap book. Do you think I'll ever be the heroine again?\"\n\n\"Well, Lola, some would say that the hero of any story is the one who changes the most. If we take the moment when we first met as the beginning of the story and right now as the end, I think that makes you and Randolph the heroes by a long straw.\"\n\n\"It does, doesn't it?\"\n\nShe smiled and we sat in silence for a moment.\n\n\"Thursday?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"So who did kill Godot?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Heavy Weather",
                "text": "BookWorld Meteorology: Aside from the rain, snow and wind that often feature within the pages of novels for dramatic effect, another weather system works within the BookWorld; a sort of transgenre wind that is not a moving mass of air but one of text, sense distortion and snippets of ideas. It is usually only a mild zephyr whose welcome breeze brings with it a useful cross-fertilization of ideas within the genres and usually has no greater vice than the spread of the mispeling vyrus. On occasion, however, the wind has been known to whip itself up into a WordStorm that can dislodge whole sentences and plot devices and deposit them several genres away. It's not a common phenomenon, but it's wise to keep an eye on it. In my second week as Bellman, a WordStorm of unprecedented ferocity hit the library. It was the first real test of my Bellmanship. I think I did okay.\n\n\u2014Thursday NEXT, Private Diaries\n\nI was asleep in my room in the Sunderland not long after my inauguration as Bellman. Everything had been pretty quiet that week. A few PageRunners and a sighting of the Minotaur, but nothing too serious. Text Grand Central was still coming to grips with the new management regime, and all the storycode engines had been shut down and rebooted to rid them of the UltraWord Operating System. So a lull was not only welcome, but necessary.\n\nI was awoken from my slumber by a loud purring and was shocked to find the Cat formerly known as Cheshire about an inch from my nose.\n\n\"Hullo!\" he purred, grinning fit to burst. \"Were you dreaming about oysters?\"\n\n\"No,\" I confessed. \"In fact,\" I added, rubbing my eyes and attempting to sit up, \"I don't think I've ever dreamt about oysters.\"\n\n\"Really? I dream about them all the time. Sometimes on the half shell and other times in an oyster bed. Sometimes I dream about them playing the piano.\"\n\n\"How can an oyster play the piano?\"\n\n\"No, I dream about them when I'm playing the piano.\"\n\nI looked at the clock. It was three in the morning.\n\n\"Did you wake me up to tell me about your oyster dreams?\"\n\n\"Not at all. I can't think for a moment why you are interested. Something has come up over at Text Grand Central and we thought you should be informed.\"\n\nI was suddenly a great deal wider awake. I moved to get up and the Cat politely faded from view as I stepped from the bed.\n\n\"So what's up?\" I asked, slipping on a T-shirt.\n\n\"It's the TextWind,\" said the Cat from the corridor. \"We've been monitoring it all day and there is a possibility it could whip itself up into a WordStorm.\"\n\nWeather inside fiction is much like weather at home, only usually more extreme. Book rain generally comes down in stair rods, and book snow always has flakes the size of farthings. But these all exist within books for narrative purposes. The BookWorld itself has less easily recognized weather patterns but has them, just the same\u2014a particularly bad storm in '34 swept through Horror and rained detritus on Drama for weeks, the most notable result being the grisly spontaneous-combustion sequence in Dickens's Bleak House.\n\nI pulled on my trousers and shoes and walked out of the door, leaving Pickwick and her chick asleep in an untidy snoring mass on the rug. The Cat was waiting for me and together we jumped to Text Grand Central.\n\nTGC was the technical nerve center of the BookWorld. Modified from an unpublished Gothic horror novel, the one hundred floors of TGC were lit by flickering gas mantles that only faintly illuminated the vaulted ceilings high above the polished marble floors. We entered near the corner of floor sixty-nine and I followed the Cat as we walked past the humming storycode engines, each one a colossi of cast iron, shiny brass and polished mahogany. Just one of five hundred on this floor alone, the bus-sized machine could cope with up to fifty thousand simultaneous readings of the same book\u2014or one reading apiece of fifty thousand different books, as demand saw fit. I had only visited TGC once before as part of my induction to the Bellman's job and was amazed not only on how impossible the concept was to my flat Outlander mind, but the supreme scale of it all. The technicians scurried like tireless ants over the clanking machinery, checking dials, oiling moving parts and venting steam while keeping a close lookout for any narrative anomalies to report to the collators upstairs. It was from these collators that reports of Fiction Infractions, PageRunners and all the other BookWorld misdemeanors filtered through to us at the Jurisfiction offices. The whole system was hopelessly antiquated and manpower intensive\u2014but it worked.\n\nWe left the engine floor and walked into a large anteroom where the BookWorld Meteorological Department worked. It was here the ten-strong team spent their days busily searching for patterns in the seemingly random textual anomalies that occur throughout fiction. The department was run by Dr. Howard. I had met him briefly once before and knew that a century or two ago he had been real, like me. TGC had commissioned a biography of the original Luke Howard solely so a Generic could be trained and then employed part-time in this office.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said as we walked in. \"Glad you're here, Bellman. Heavy weather moving in from the Western genre. This is Senator Jobsworth from the Council of Genres, here as part of the C of G committee for observation of anomalies.\"\n\nJobsworth, a small and weedy-looking man, didn't look comfortable nor regal in his senatorial robes. As part of the regime change after the Ultra Word debacle, it was deemed that a senator should be present at any unusual event. He looked shifty and I took an instant dislike to him.\n\n\"Senator,\" I said, bowing slightly as protocol dictated.\n\n\"Miss Next,\" he said dryly, \"I must tell you right now that I didn't vote for you. I will be keeping a close eye on your behavior.\"\n\n\"Good,\" I replied noncommittally, then added, \"What's up, Dr. Howard?\"\n\nHe motioned us towards the center of the room where beneath us in a recessed pit there was a large map of the BookWorld.\n\n\"We plot everything,\" he explained as the staff below moved marker tags with long sticks to the orders of the controllers above, \"from the largest unconstrained narrative flexation to the smallest tense distortion. Then, by plotting the size of the changes and their positions, a rough map of the BookWorld's weather can be constructed.\"\n\nI looked down at the sea of small markers, which seemed, indeed, to have a sort of swirling pattern to them. He pointed to a mass of reports.\n\n\"About two hours ago an outbreak of anomalous plot flexations began in Riders of the Purple Sage.\"\n\n\"The Minotaur was reported in Zane Grey last week,\" I commented.\n\n\"That's what we thought at first,\" replied Dr. Howard, \"but the slight flexations were moving too fast to be a PageRunner. Within twenty minutes a cloud of grammatical oddities had joined the weather front, and together they left the Western genre. The front brushed the southeast corner of Erotica and vanished ten minutes later into Stream of Consciousness.\"\n\n\"Vanished?\"\n\n\"Difficult to spot, perhaps. It's been quiet in SOC ever since. But that's not all. At pretty much the same time a cloud of mispunctuation arose in Horror, circled twice and then developed into a pretty stiff breeze of split infinitives and jumbled words before traveling through Fantasy into Romance. Unchallenged, it hit the Farquitt series and split in two. One storm front headed north into Steel, the other along the Collins ridge just east of Krantz. We expect the two fronts to merge just past Cooper in a few minutes.\"\n\n\"So we can safely say it's over then?\" asked the senator, staring at the plotting table with more than a little confusion.\n\n\"Up to a point, Senator,\" replied Dr. Howard diplomatically. \"As you so expertly point out, it just might dissipate into the Taylor Bradford canon harmlessly.\"\n\n\"Oh, good!\" said the senator with relief.\n\n\"However,\" continued Dr. Howard, \"and far be it from me to contradict Your Grace, it's equally probable they will strengthen and then careen off on a destructive course towards Drama.\"\n\n\"Boss!\" said a technician who had been staring at a list of recent anomalies. \"I think you better see this.\"\n\nBelow us on the plotting table we could see a small bulge emerge on the western flanks of Stream of Consciousness.\n\n\"How fast?\" asked Dr. Howard.\n\n\"About three pages a second.\"\n\n\"Give me a projected route.\"\n\nThe technician picked up a slide rule and scribbled some notes on a pad of paper. Unluckily for us, the front that had begun in Western had traversed Stream of Consciousness and emerged four times as strong.\n\n\"I knew we hadn't seen the last of it,\" muttered Howard. \"Damn and blast!\"\n\nBut that wasn't all. In the next two minutes we watched nervously as the split storm fronts coursing through Romance rejoined, grew stronger and diverted off towards Drama, as feared.\n\n\"And that's why we called you,\" said Dr. Howard, gazing at me intently. \"In under ten minutes the Romance and Stream of Consciousness frontal systems will merge and strengthen. We've got a WordStorm brewing of magnitude five-point-four or more heading straight for Drama.\"\n\n\"Five-point-four?\" echoed the senator. \"That's good, right?\"\n\n\"In storm terms, it's very good,\" replied Dr. Howard grimly, \"make no mistake about that. A two-point-three might only scramble text and change tenses; a three-point-five can muddle chapters and remove entire words. Anything above a five has enough power to tear whole ideas and paragraphs out of a book and dump them several shelves away.\"\n\n\"O-kay,\" I said slowly as Commander Bradshaw appeared, looking a bit bleary-eyed.\n\n\"Glad you could make it, Trafford. We've got a potential WordStorm brewing.\"\n\n\"WordStorm, eh?\" he mused. \"Reminds me of a typhoon that struck The French Lieutenant's Woman ten years back. By gad, we were picking superfluous adjectives out of the book for a month!\"\n\n\"And that had been a small one,\" added Dr. Howard, \"barely a two-point-one.\"\n\n\"Cat,\" I said, \"issue a storm warning to the residents of all books on the storm's path. Trafford, we need every single DanverClone we have on thirty-second readiness. I want textual sieves ready and standing by.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Senator Jobsworth, \"this is all quite exciting, isn't it? And what is a textual sieve, anyway?\"\n\nWe all ignored him and moved to a table in Dr. Howard's office where one of his team had unrolled a more detailed map of the threatened area of Drama. It was essentially one of Bradshaw's booksploring charts overlaid with the footnoterphone conduits in red ink. The map looked like a giant spiderweb of interconnections, the books that remained unexplored standing alone and unprotected. If we couldn't get in to warn them, they certainly wouldn't be able to see it coming.\n\nWe waited patiently as the minutes ticked by, the plotters updating the course of the two storm fronts on the chart as they merged, gathered speed and hurtled across the emptiness of intergenre space, directly towards Drama. Bradshaw had relayed my orders to the DanverClones; all we needed was the title of the books most likely to be hit by the coming storm.\n\n\"Why don't we set up those textual sieves across this area here?\" suggested Senator Jobsworth, waving a hand at the chart.\n\n\"We mustn't spread our sieves too thin,\" I explained. \"We need them concentrated at the place the storm hits to do any good at all.\"\n\nAs if to confirm its waywardness, the storm changed direction. It had been heading almost straight for the Satire end of Drama when it veered away and headed instead for Novel.\n\n\"Which one do you think, old girl?\" asked Bradshaw, footnoterphone in hand. It was one of those moments where leadership has a lonely, hollow emptiness to it. The wrong decision now and we could be mopping up the mess for years. Give my order too early and the storm might veer again and cut an ugly swath through Trollope; give the order too late and the textual sieves might not be up in time to stop the storm in its tracks. A half-unfurled sieve would be broken like matchwood and carried with the storm to who knows where.\n\n\"What shall we do, Bellman?\" asked the Cat. He wasn't smiling.\n\nA technician updated the plot. The storm had moved slightly to the west and was now four minutes from hitting Drama. Would it hold that course or veer off again?\n\n\"Dr. Howard,\" I said, \"I need your best estimate.\"\n\n\"It's almost impossible to say\u2014!\"\n\n\"I know that!\" I snapped. \"Like it or not, you are the best guesser and I'm going to go with your hunch\u2014that's my decision. Now, where do you think it will hit?\"\n\nHe sighed resignedly and stabbed a finger on the map. \"I think about here. Page two hundred fourteen of The Scarlet Letter, give or take a chapter or two.\"\n\n\"Hawthorne,\" I murmured, \"not good.\"\n\nNo one had ever traveled into any of his books before, so the DanverClones would be working on the books closest to it\u2014never a satisfactory alternative.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, drawing a deep breath, \"do we have an updated report on the size of this WordStorm?\"\n\n\"It's now a five-point-seven,\" replied the technician in a voice tinged with fear, \"and it's heavy with ideas and plot devices picked up on its journey so far.\"\n\n\"Compact?\"\n\n\"I'd say,\" replied the technician, reading the latest weather report, \"barely three paragraphs wide but with a density over six-point-four. It's currently moving at eight pages a second.\"\n\n\"It could tear a hole straight through The Scarlet Letter at that rate,\" exploded Bradshaw, \"and litter the whole book with dramatic events!\"\n\nThe consequence of this was terrible to consider\u2014a new version of The Scarlet Letter where things actually happen.\n\n\"Impact time?\"\n\n\"Three minutes.\"\n\nI had an idea. \"How many people are reading Scarlet Letter at present?\"\n\n\"Six hundred and twenty-two,\" replied the Cat, who as librarian had these figures at his paws twenty-four hours a day.\n\n\"Pleasure readers?\"\n\n\"Mostly,\" replied the Cat, thinking hard, \"except for a class of thirty-two English students at Frobisher High School in Michigan who are studying it.\"\n\n\"Good. Bradshaw? I want you to set up textual sieves in every book ever written by Hemingway\u2014even the bad ones. Sieves are to be set to coarse in all short stories, letters, Winner Take Nothing and In Our Time, medium in The Sun Also Rises and The Green Hills of Africa. I want to channel the storm, slowing it down as it passes. By A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, sieves should be set to fine. The storm will bounce between all the works, moving west towards the void between Hemingway and Fitzgerald. If it makes it that far, we'll reset the sieves and attack it again.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"But, Thursday,\" said Bradshaw slowly, \"the storm isn't going to hit Hemingway.\"\n\n\"It will if we shut The Scarlet Letter down.\"\n\n\"Out of the question!\" exploded Senator Jobsworth, spontaneously and automatically rejecting any possible infringements of his sacred regulations. \"The rules do not permit any book to be shut down without a vote at the Council of Genres\u2014I can quote the rule number if you wish!\"\n\nTechnically, he was right. Even with a vote, nobody had tried anything so audacious before. It usually took an hour to shut down a book, more to bring it up to full readability again.\n\n\"Is that wise?\" asked Dr. Howard.\n\n\"Not in the least,\" I replied, \"but I'm out of time and ideas right now.\"\n\n\"Isn't anyone listening to me?\" continued the senator, more outraged at our lack of respect than at losing The Scarlet Letter.\n\n\"Oh, we're listening all right,\" purred the Cat, \"we just don't agree with you.\"\n\n\"Rules are there for a good reason, Miss Next. We have ordered the demolition of bigger books than The Scarlet Letter. I personally\u2014\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, \"classics have been lost before but never during my tenure as Bellman. Tomorrow morning you can have my badge if I'm wrong and send me packing. Right now you can sit down and shut up. Cat and Bradshaw, are you with me on this?\"\n\n\"Appreciate a woman who can make bold decisions!\" muttered Bradshaw, repeating my orders to the DanverClones. Senator Jobsworth had gone red with impotent fury, and his mouth was twitching as he sought to find words to adequately express his anger at my insubordination.\n\n\"Two minutes to impact.\"\n\nI picked up the footnoterphone and asked to be put through to the storycode engine floor.\n\n\"Bradshaw, I want you to take a trip to the Outland and set the fire alarm off at Frobisher High in exactly seventy-eight seconds. That will give us a few minutes breathing space. The pleasure readers will just think they've got bored and lost concentration when the book shuts down. Hello, storycode floor? This is the Bellman. I want you to divert Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter to an empty storycode engine and shut it down.... Yes, that's quite correct. Shut it down. I don't have time to issue a written order so you're going to have to take my word for it. You are to do it in exactly sixty-three seconds.\"\n\n\"Sieves are going up as requested, Thursday,\" reported Bradshaw. \"Think they'll hold?\"\n\nI shrugged. There was nothing else we could do. The storm plot ran towards The Scarlet Letter and struck it just as the storycode engine shut down. The book closed. The characters stopped in their tracks as an all-pervading darkness swept over every descriptive passage, every line of dialogue, every nuance, every concept. Where a moment ago there had been a fascinating treatise on morality, there was now only a lifeless hulk of dark reading matter. It was as if The Scarlet Letter had never been written. The storm bounced off, then attracted to the brighter lights of the Hemingway canon next door, struck off on a new course. I breathed a sigh of relief but then held my breath once more as the storm struck In Our Time\u2014and glanced off. The sieve had held. Over the next few minutes the WordStorm ran between the books as planned, the textual sieves slowing it down as it brushed past the collected works of Hemingway.\n\n\"Damage report?\"\n\n\"Slight grammatical warpage in A Farewell to Arms, but nothing serious,\" said the Cat. \"The Sun Also Rises is reporting isolated bursts of narrative flexations, but nothing we can't handle. All other books report no damage.\"\n\n\"Good. Bring The Scarlet Letter back on-line.\"\n\nWe watched nervously as the storm slowly subsided. It had littered the Hemingway canon with words and ideas, but nothing violent enough to embed them and change the narrative. As likely as not the residents of the novels would just pick them up and sell them to traveling scrap merchants. But the WordStorm wasn't quite finished with us yet. After brushing past the preface to For Whom the Bell Tolls, the storm suddenly sped up and, in its last dying throes, embedded a Bride Shot at the Altar plot device right at the end of Blackmore's Lorna Doone, where it remains to this day. Aside from that minor flexation, no real harm was done by the WordStorm. The senator berated me for a good ten minutes and filed a report on my behavior the following day, which was summarily rejected by the other members of the Jurisfiction oversight committee.\n\nI left the Cat and Bradshaw to log the damage reports and thanked Dr. Howard and his staff for their slavish attention. I decided to walk back home, across the storycode engine floor and down the empty corridors of the Great Library to the Well of Lost Plots and back to bed. I was feeling quite good about myself. I had run a team of highly skilled technicians and saved The Scarlet Letter from almost certain devastation. It would be one of my easier tasks as Bellman, but I didn't know that yet. The evening had gone well. Landen would have been proud of me.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ A Cretan Mino taurin Nebraska ]\n\nJurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency inside books. Working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the many Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction work tirelessly to maintain the continuity of the narrative within the pages of all the books ever written. Performing this sometimes thankless task, Jurisfiction agents live mostly on their wits as they attempt to reconcile the author's original wishes and readers' expectations against a strict and largely pointless set of bureaucratic guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres. I headed Jurisfiction for over two years and was always astounded by the variety of the work: one day I might be attempting to coax the impossibly shy Darcy from the toilets, and the next I would be thwarting the Martians' latest attempt to invade Barnaby Rudge. It was challenging and full of bizarre twists. But when the peculiar and downright weird becomes commonplace, you begin to yearn for the banal.\n\n[ Thursday Next, The Jurisfiction Chronicles ]\n\nThe Minotaur had been causing trouble far in excess of his literary importance\u2014first by escaping from the fantasy-genre prison erary importance\u2014first by escaping from the fantasy-genre prison book Sword of the Zenobians, then by leading us on a merry chase across most of fiction and thwarting all attempts to recapture him. The mythological half-man, half-bull son of Queen Pasipha\u00eb of Crete had been sighted within Riders of the Purple Sage only a month after his escape. We were still keen on taking him alive at this point, so we had darted him with a small dose of slapstick. Theoretically, we needed only to track outbreaks of custard-pie-in-the-face routines and walking-into-lamppost gags within fiction to lead us to the cannibalistic man-beast. It was an experimental idea and, sadly, also a dismal failure. Aside from Lafeu's celebrated mention of custard in All's Well That Ends Well and the ludicrous four-wheeled-chaise sequence in Pickwick Papers, little was noticed. The slapstick either hadn't been strong enough or had been diluted by the BookWorld's natural disinclination to visual jokes.\n\nIn any event we were still searching for him two years later in the western genre, amongst the cattle drives that the Minotaur found most relaxing. And it was for this reason that Commander Bradshaw and I arrived at the top of page 73 of an obscure pulp from the thirties entitled Death at DoubleX Ranch.\n\n\"What do you think, old girl?\" asked Bradshaw, whose pith helmet and safari suit were ideally suited to the hot Nebraskan summer. He was shorter than I by almost a head but led age-wise by four decades; his sun-dried skin and snowy white mustache were a legacy of his many years in colonial African fiction: He had been the lead character in the twenty-three \"Commander Bradshaw\" novels, last published in 1932 and last read in 1963. Many characters in fiction define themselves by their popularity, but not Commander Bradshaw. Having spent an adventurous and entirely fictional life defending British East Africa against a host of unlikely foes and killing almost every animal it was possible to kill, he now enjoyed his retirement and was much in demand at Jurisfiction, where his fearlessness under fire and knowledge of the BookWorld made him one of the agency's greatest assets.\n\nHe was pointing at a weathered board that told us the small township not more than half a mile ahead hailed by the optimistic name of Providence and had a population of 2,387.\n\nI shielded my eyes against the sun and looked around. A carpet of sage stretched all the way to the mountains, less than five miles distant. The vegetation had a repetitive pattern that belied its fictional roots. The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft, undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author's initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeats itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak. It hadn't bothered me that much to begin with, but after two years living inside fiction, I had begun to yearn for a world where every tree and rock and hill and cloud has its own unique shape and identity. And the sunsets. I missed them most of all. Even the best-described ones couldn't hold a candle to a real one. I yearned to witness once again the delicate hues of the sky as the sun dipped below the horizon. From red to orange, to pink, to blue, to navy, to black.\n\nBradshaw looked across at me and raised an eyebrow quizzically. As the Bellman\u2014the head of Jurisfiction\u2014I shouldn't really be out on assignment at all, but I was never much of a desk jockey, and capturing the Minotaur was important. He had killed one of our own, and that made it unfinished business.\n\nDuring the past week, we had searched unsuccessfully through six Civil War epics, three frontier stories, twenty-eight high-quality westerns and ninety-seven dubiously penned novellas before finding ourselves within Death at DoubleX Ranch, right on the outer rim of what might be described as acceptably written prose. We had drawn a blank in every single book. No Minotaur, nor even the merest whiff of one, and believe me, they can whiff.\n\n\"A possibility?\" asked Bradshaw, pointing at the PROVIDENCE sign.\n\n\"We'll give it a try,\" I replied, slipping on a pair of dark glasses and consulting my list of potential Minotaur hiding places. \"If we draw a blank, we'll stop for lunch before heading off into The Oklahoma Kid.\"\n\nBradshaw nodded and opened the breech of the hunting rifle he was carrying and slipped in a cartridge. It was a conventional weapon, but loaded with unconventional ammunition. Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw's rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist\u2014all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed. Charges of cruelty failed to have any meaning when at the last Beast Census there were over a million almost identical Minotaurs, all safely within the hundreds of books, graphic novels and urns that featured him. Ours was different\u2014an escapee. A PageRunner.\n\nAs we walked closer, the sounds of a busy Nebraskan frontier town reached our ears. A new building was being erected, and the hammering of nails into lumber punctuated the clop of horses' hooves, the clink of harnesses and the rumble of cartwheels on compacted earth. The metallic ring of the blacksmith's hammer mixed with the distant tones of a choir from the clapboard church, and all about was the general conversational hubbub of busy townsfolk. We reached the corner by Eckley's Livery Stables and peered cautiously down the main street.\n\nProvidence as we now saw it was happily enjoying the uninterrupted backstory, patiently awaiting the protagonist's arrival in two pages' time. Blundering into the main narrative thread and finding ourselves included within the story was not something we cared to do, and since the Minotaur avoided the primary story line for fear of discovery, we were likely to stumble across him only in places like this. But if for any reason the story did come anywhere near, I would be warned\u2014I had a Narrative Proximity Device in my pocket that would sound an alarm if the thread came too close. We could hide ourselves until it passed by.\n\nA horse trotted past as we stepped up onto the creaky decking that ran along in front of the saloon. I stopped Bradshaw when we got to the swinging doors as the town drunk was thrown out into the road. The bartender walked out after him, wiping his hands on a linen cloth.\n\n\"And don't come back till you can pay your way!\" he yelled, glancing at us both suspiciously.\n\nI showed the barkeeper my Jurisfiction badge as Bradshaw kept a vigilant lookout. The whole western genre had far too many gunslingers for its own good; there had been some confusion over the numbers required on the order form when the genre was inaugurated. Working in westerns could sometimes entail up to twenty-nine gunfights an hour.\n\n\"Jurisfiction,\" I told him. \"This is Bradshaw, I'm Next. We're looking for the Minotaur.\"\n\nThe barkeeper stared at me coldly. \"Think you's in the wrong genre, pod'ner,\" he said.\n\nAll characters or Generics within a book are graded A to D, one through ten. A-grades are the Gatsbys and Jane Eyres, D-grades the grunts who make up street scenes and crowded rooms. The barkeeper had lines, so he was probably a C-2. Smart enough to get answers from but not smart enough to have much character latitude.\n\n\"He might be using the alias Norman Johnson,\" I went on, showing him a photo. \"Tall, body of a man, head of a bull, likes to eat people?\"\n\n\"Can't help you,\" he said, shaking his head slowly as he peered at the photo.\n\n\"How about any outbreaks of slapstick?\" asked Bradshaw. \"Boxing glove popping out of a box, sixteen-ton weights dropping on people, that sort of thing?\"\n\n\"Ain't seen no weights droppin' on nobody,\" laughed the barkeeper, \"but I hear tell the sheriff got hit in the face with a frying pan last Toosday.\"\n\nBradshaw and I exchanged glances.\n\n\"Where do we find the sheriff?\" I asked.\n\nWe followed the barkeeper's directions and walked along the wooden decking past a barbershop and two grizzled prospectors who were talking animatedly in authentic frontier gibberish. I stopped Bradshaw when we got to an alleyway. There was a gunfight in progress. Or at least, there would have been a gunfight had not some dispute arisen over the times allocated for their respective showdowns. Both sets of gunmen\u2014two dressed in light-colored clothes, two in dark\u2014with low-slung gun belts decorated with rows of shiny cartridges\u2014were arguing over their gunfight time slots as two identical ladyfolk looked on anxiously. The town's mayor intervened and told them that if there were any more arguments, they would both lose their slot times and would have to come back tomorrow, so they reluctantly agreed to toss a coin. The winners of the toss scampered into the main street as everyone dutifully ran for cover. They squared up to one another, hands hovering over their Colt .45s at twenty paces. There was a flurry of action, two loud detonations, and then the gunman in black hit the dirt while the victor looked on grimly, his opponent's shot having dramatically only removed his hat. His lady rushed up to hug him as he reholstered his revolver with a flourish.\n\n\"What a load of tripe,\" muttered Bradshaw. \"The real West wasn't like this!\"\n\nDeath at DoubleX Ranch was set in 1875 and written in 1908. Close enough to be historically accurate, you would have thought, but no. Most westerns tended to show a glamorized version of the Old West that hadn't really existed. In the real West, a gunfight was a rarity, hitting someone with a short-barreled Colt .45 at anything other than point-blank range a virtual impossibility. The 1870s gunpowder generated a huge amount of smoke; two shots in a crowded bar and you would be coughing\u2014and almost blind.\n\n\"That's not the point,\" I replied as the dead gunslinger was dragged away. \"Legend is always far more readable, and don't forget we're in pulp at present\u2014poor prose always outnumbers good prose, and it would be too much to hope that our bullish friend would be hiding out in Zane Grey or Owen Wister.\"\n\nWe continued on past the Majestic Hotel as a stagecoach rumbled by in a cloud of dust, the driver cracking his long whip above the horses' heads.\n\n\"Over there,\" said Bradshaw, pointing at a building opposite that differentiated itself from the rest of the clapboard town by being made of brick. It had SHERIFF painted above the door, and we walked quickly across the road, our nonwestern garb somewhat out of place amongst the long dresses, bonnets and breeches, jackets, dusters, vests, gun belts and bootlace ties. Only permanently billeted Jurisfiction officers troubled to dress up, and many of the agents actively policing the westerns are characters from the books they patrol\u2014so they don't need to dress up anyway.\n\nWe knocked and entered. It was dark inside after the bright exterior, and we blinked for few moments as we accustomed ourselves to the gloom. On the wall to our right was a notice board liberally covered with wanted posters\u2014pertaining not only to Nebraska but also to the BookWorld in general; a yellowed example offered three hundred dollars for information leading to the whereabouts of Big Martin. Below this was a chipped enameled coffeepot sitting atop a cast-iron stove, and next to the wall to the left were a gun cabinet and a tabby cat sprawled upon a large bureau. The far wall was the barred frontage to the cells, one of which held a drunk fast asleep and snoring loudly on a bunk bed. In the middle of the room was a large desk that was stacked high with paperwork\u2014circulars from the Nebraska State Legislature, a few Council of Genres Narrative Law amendments, a Campanology Society newsletter and a Sears, Roebuck catalog open to the \"fancy goods\" section. Also on the desk were a pair of worn leather boots, and inside these were a pair of feet, attached in turn to the sheriff. His clothes were predominantly black and could have done with a good wash. A tin star was pinned to his vest, and all we could see of his face were the ends of a large gray mustache that poked out from beneath his downturned Stetson. He, too, was fast asleep, and balanced precariously on the rear two legs of a chair that creaked as he snored.\n\n\"Sheriff?\"\n\nNo answer.\n\n\"SHERIFF!\"\n\nHe awoke with a start, began to get up, overbalanced and tipped over backwards. He crashed heavily on the floor and knocked against the bureau, which just happened to have a jug of water resting upon it. The jug overbalanced as well, and its contents drenched the sheriff, who roared with shock. The noise upset the cat, who awoke with a cry and leapt up the curtains, which collapsed with a crash on the cast-iron stove, spilling the coffee and setting fire to the tinder-dry linen drapes. I ran to put it out and knocked against the desk, dislodging the lawman's loaded revolver, which fell to the floor, discharging a single shot, which cut the cord of a stuffed moose's head, which fell upon Bradshaw. So there were the three of us: me trying to put out the fire, the sheriff covered in water and Bradshaw walking into furniture as he tried to get the moose's head off him. It was precisely what we were looking for: an outbreak of unconstrained and wholly inappropriate slapstick.\n\n\"Sheriff, I'm so sorry about this,\" I muttered apologetically, having doused the fire, demoosed Bradshaw and helped a very damp lawman to his feet. He was over six foot tall, and had a weather-beaten face and deep blue eyes. I produced my badge. \"Thursday Next, head of Jurisfiction. This is my partner, Commander Bradshaw.\" The sheriff relaxed and even managed a thin smile.\n\n\"Thought you was more of them Baxters,\" he said, brushing himself down and drying his hair with a \"Cathouses of Dawson City\" tea cloth. \"I'll be mighty glad you're not. Jurisfiction, hey? Ain't seen none of youse around these parts for longer then I care to remember\u2014quit it, Howell.\"\n\nThe drunk, Howell, had awoken and was demanding a tipple \"to set him straight.\"\n\n\"We're looking for the Minotaur,\" I explained, showing the sheriff the photograph.\n\nHe rubbed his stubble thoughtfully and shook his head. \"Don't recall ever seeing this critter, missy Next.\"\n\n\"We have reason to believe he passed through your office not long ago\u2014he's been marked with slapstick.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said the sheriff. \"I was a-wonderin' 'bout all that. Me and Howell here have been trippin' and a-stumblin' for a while now\u2014ain't we, Howell?\"\n\n\"You're darn tootin',\" said the drunk.\n\n\"He could be in disguise and operating under an alias,\" I ventured. \"Does the name Norman Johnson mean anything to you?\"\n\n\"Can't say it does, missy. We have twenty-six Johnsons here, but all are C-7s\u2014not 'portant 'nuff to have fust names.\"\n\nI sketched a Stetson onto the photograph of the Minotaur, then a duster, vest and gun belt.\n\n\"Oh!\" said the sheriff with a sudden look of recognition. \"That Mr. Johnson.\"\n\n\"You know where he is?\"\n\n\"Sure do. Had him in jail only last week on charges of eatin' a cattle rustler.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"Paid his bail and wuz released. Ain't nothing in the Nebraska statutes that says you can't eat rustlers. One moment.\"\n\nThere had been a shot outside, followed by several yells from startled townsfolk. The sheriff checked his Colt, opened the door and walked out. Alone on the street and facing him was a young man with an earnest expression, hand quivering around his gun, the elegantly tooled holster of which I noticed had been tied down\u2014a sure sign of yet another potential gunfight.\n\n\"Go home, Abe!\" called out the sheriff. \"Today's not a good day for dyin'.\"\n\n\"You killed my pappy,\" said the youth, \"and my pappy's pappy. And his pappy's pappy. And my brothers Jethro, Hank, Hoss, Red, Peregrine, Marsh, Junior, Dizzy, Luke, Peregrine, George an' all the others. I'm callin' you out, lawman.\"\n\n\"You said Peregrine twice.\"\n\n\"He wuz special.\"\n\n\"Abel Baxter,\" whispered the sheriff out of the corner of his mouth, \"one of them Baxter boys. They turn up regular as clockwork, and I kill 'em same ways as regular.\"\n\n\"How many have you killed?\" I whispered back.\n\n\"Last count, 'bout sixty. Go home, Abe, I won't tell yer again!\"\n\nThe youth caught sight of Bradshaw and me and said, \"New deputies, Sheriff? Yer gonna need 'em!\"\n\nAnd it was then we saw that Abel Baxter wasn't alone. Stepping out from the stables opposite were four disreputable-looking characters. I frowned. They seemed somehow out of place in Death at DoubleX Ranch. For a start, none of them wore black, nor did they have tooled leather double gun belts with nickel-plated revolvers. Their spurs didn't clink as they walked, and their holsters were plain and worn high on the hip\u2014the weapon these men had chosen was a Winchester rifle. I noticed with a shudder that one of the men had a button missing on his frayed vest and the sole on the toe of his boot had come adrift. Flies buzzed around the men's unwashed and grimy faces, and sweat had stained their hats halfway to the crown. These weren't C-2 generic gunfighters from pulp, but well described A-9s from a novel of high descriptive quality\u2014and if they could shoot as well as they had been realized by the author, we were in trouble.\n\nThe sheriff sensed it, too.\n\n\"Where yo' friends from, Abe?\"\n\nOne of the men hooked his Winchester into the crook of his arm and answered in a low southern drawl, \"Mr. Johnson sent us.\"\n\nAnd they opened fire. No waiting, no drama, no narrative pace. Bradshaw and I had already begun to move\u2014squaring up in front of a gunman with a rifle might seem terribly macho, but for survival purposes it was a nonstarter. Sadly, the sheriff didn't realize this until it was too late. If he had survived until page 164 as he was meant to, he would have taken a slug, rolled twice in the dust after a two-page buildup and lived long enough to say a pithy final goodbye to his sweetheart, who cradled him in his bloodless dying moments. Not to be. Realistic violent death was to make an unwelcome entry into Death at DoubleX Ranch. The heavy lead shot entered the sheriff 's chest and came out the other side, leaving an exit wound the size of a saucer. He collapsed inelegantly onto his face and lay perfectly still, one arm sprawled outwards in a manner unattainable in life and the other hooked beneath him. He didn't collapse flat either. He ended up bent over on his knees with his backside in the air.\n\nThe gunmen stopped firing as soon as there was no target\u2014but Bradshaw, his hunting instincts alerted, had already drawn a bead on the sherriff 's killer and fired. There was an almighty detonation, a brief flash and a large cloud of smoke. The eraserhead hit home, and the gunman disintegrated midstride into a brief chysanthemum of text that scattered across the main street, the meaning of the words billowing out into a blue haze that hung near the ground for a moment or two before evaporating.\n\n...the gunman disintegrated midstride into a brief chysanthemum of text that scattered across the main street....\n\n\"What are you doing?\" I asked, annoyed at his impetuosity.\n\n\"Him or us, Thursday,\" replied Bradshaw grimly, pulling the lever down on his Martini-Henry to reload, \"him or us.\"\n\n\"Did you see how much text he was composed of?\" I replied angrily. \"He was almost a paragraph long. Only featured characters get that kind of description\u2014somewhere there's going to be a book one character short!\"\n\n\"But,\" replied Bradshaw in an aggrieved tone, \"I didn't know that before I shot him, now did I?\"\n\nI shook my head. Perhaps Bradshaw hadn't noticed the missing button, the sweat stains and the battered shoes, but I had. Erasure of a featured part meant more paperwork than I really wanted to deal with. From Form F36/34 (Discharge of an Eraserhead) and Form B9/32 (Replacement of Featured Part) to Form P13/36 (Narrative Damage Assessment), I could be bogged down for two whole days. I had thought bureaucracy was bad in the real world, but here in the paper world, it was everything.\n\n\"So what do we do?\" asked Bradshaw. \"Ask politely for them to surrender?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking,\" I replied, pulling out my footnoterphone and pressing the button marked CAT. In fiction the commonest form of communication was by footnote, but way out here...\n\n\"Blast!\" I muttered again. \"No signal.\"\n\n\"Nearest repeater station is in The Virginian,\" observed Bradshaw as he replaced the spent cartridge and closed the breech before peering outside, \"and we can't bookjump direct from pulp to classic.\"\n\nHe was right. We had been crossing from book to book for almost six days, and although we could escape in an emergency, such a course of action would give the Minotaur more than enough time to escape. Things weren't good, but they weren't bad either\u2014yet.\n\n\"Hey!\" I yelled from the sheriff 's office. \"We want to talk!\"\n\n\"Is that a fact?\" came a clear voice from outside. \"Mr. Johnson says he's all done talkin'\u2014'less you be in mind to offer amnesty.\"\n\n\"We can talk about that!\" I replied.\n\nThere was a beeping noise from my pocket.\n\n\"Blast,\" I mumbled again, consulting the Narrative Proximity Device. \"Bradshaw, we've got a story thread inbound from the East, two hundred and fifty yards and closing. Page 74, line 6.\"\n\nBradshaw quickly opened his copy of Death at DoubleX Ranch and ran a finger along the line \"McNeil rode into the town of Providence, Nebraska, with fifty cents in his pocket and murder on his mind....\"\n\nI cautiously peered out the window. Sure enough, a cowboy on a bay horse was riding slowly into town. Strictly speaking, it didn't matter if we changed the story a little, as the novella had been read only sixteen times in the past ten years, but the code by which we worked was fairly unequivocal. \"Keep the story as the author intended!\" was a phrase bashed into me early on during my training. I had broken it once and would pay the consequences\u2014I didn't want to do it again.\n\n\"I need to speak to Mr. Johnson,\" I yelled, keeping an eye on McNeil, who was still some way distant.\n\n\"No one speaks to Mr. Johnson 'less Mr. Johnson says so,\" replied the voice, \"but if you'll be offerin' an amnesty, he'll take it and promise not to eat no more people.\"\n\n\"Was that a double negative?\" whispered Bradshaw with disdain. \"I do so hate them.\"\n\n\"No deal unless I meet Mr. Johnson first!\" I yelled back.\n\n\"Then there's no deal!\" came the reply.\n\nI looked out again and saw three more gunmen appear. The Minotaur had clearly made a lot of friends during his stay in the western genre.\n\n\"We need backup,\" I murmured.\n\nBradshaw clearly thought the same. He opened his TravelBook and pulled out something that looked a little like a flare gun. This was a TextMarker, which could be used to signal to other Jurisfiction agents. The TravelBook was dimensionally ambivalent; the device was actually larger than the book that contained it.\n\n\"Jurisfiction knows we're in western pulp; they just don't know where. I'll send them a signal.\"\n\nHe dialed in the sort of TextMarker he was going to place, using a knob on the back of the gun, then moved to the door, aimed the marker into the air and fired. There was a dull thud, and the projectile soared into the sky. It exploded noiselessly high above us, and for an instant I could see the text of the page in a light gray against the blue of the sky. The words were back to front, of course, and as I looked at Bradshaw's copy of Death at DoubleX Ranch, I noticed that the written word \"ProVIDence\" had been partially capitalized. Help would soon arrive\u2014a show of force would deal with the gunmen. The problem was, would the Minotaur make a run for it or fight it out to the end?\n\n\"Purty fireworks don't scare us, missy,\" said the voice again. \"You comin' out, or do we-uns have to come in and get yer?\"\n\nI looked across at Bradshaw, who was smiling. \"What?\"\n\n\"This is all quite a caper, don't you think?\" said the Commander, chuckling like a schoolboy who had just been caught stealing apples. \"Much more fun than hunting elephant, wrestling lions to the ground and returning tribal knickknacks stolen by unscrupulous foreigners.\"\n\n\"I used to think so,\" I said under my breath. Two years of assignments like these had been enjoyable and challenging, but not without their moments of terror, uncertainty and panic\u2014and I had a twoyear-old son who needed more attention than I could give him. The pressure of running Jurisfiction had been building for a long time now, and I needed a break in the real world\u2014a long one. I had felt it about six months before, just after the adventure that came to be known as the Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, but had shrugged it off. Now the feeling was back\u2014and stronger.\n\nA low, deep rumble began somewhere overhead. The windows rattled in their frames, and dust fell from the rafters. A crack opened up in the plaster, and a cup vibrated off the table to break on the floor. One of the windows shattered, and a shadow fell across the street. The deep rumble grew in volume, drowned out the Narrative Proximity Device that was wailing plaintively, then became so loud it didn't seem like a sound at all\u2014just a vibration that shook the sheriff 's office so strongly my sight blurred. Then, as the clock fell from the wall and smashed into pieces, I realized what was going on.\n\n\"Oh... no! \" I howled with annoyance as the noise waned to a dull roar. \"Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!\"\n\n\"Emperor Zhark?\" queried Bradshaw.\n\n\"Who else would dare pilot a Zharkian battle cruiser into western pulp?\"\n\nWe looked outside as the vast spaceship passed overhead, its vectored thrusters swiveling downwards with a hot rush of concentrated power that blew up a gale of dust and debris and set the livery stables on fire. The huge bulk of the battle cruiser hovered for a moment as the landing gear unfolded, then made a delicate touchdown\u2014right on top of McNeil and his horse, who were squashed to the thickness of a ha'penny.\n\nMy shoulders sagged as I watched my paperwork increase exponentially. The townsfolk ran around in panic and horses bolted as the A-7 gunmen fired pointlessly at the ship's armored hull. Within a few moments, the interstellar battle cruiser had disgorged a small army of foot soldiers carrying the very latest Zharkian weaponry. I groaned. It was not unusual for the Emperor to go overboard at moments like this. Undisputed villain of the eight Emperor Zhark books, the most feared tyrannical god-emperor of the known galaxy just didn't seem to comprehend the meaning of restraint.\n\nIn a few minutes, it was all over. The A-7s had either been killed or escaped to their own books, and the Zharkian Marine Corps had been dispatched to find the Minotaur. I could have saved them the trouble. He would be long gone. The A-7s and McNeil would have to be sourced and replaced, the whole book rejigged to remove the twenty-sixth-century battle cruiser that had arrived uninvited into 1875 Nebraska. It was a flagrant breach of the Anti-Cross-Genre Code that we attempted to uphold within fiction. I wouldn't have minded so much if this was an isolated incident, but Zhark did this too often to be ignored. I could hardly control myself as the Emperor descended from his starship with an odd entourage of aliens and Mrs. Tiggywinkle, who also worked for Jurisfiction.\n\n\"What the hell do you think you're playing at?!?\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said the Emperor, taken aback at my annoyance. \"I thought you'd be pleased to see us!\"\n\n\"The situation was bad, but not irredeemable,\" I told him, sweeping my arm in the direction of the town. \"Now look what you've done!\"\n\nHe looked around. The confused townsfolk had started to emerge from the remains of the buildings. Nothing so odd as this had happened in a western since an alien brainsucker had escaped from SF and been caught inside Wild Horse Mesa.\n\n\"You do this to me every time! Have you no conception of stealth and subtlety?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" said the Emperor, looking at his hands nervously. \"Sorry.\"\n\nHis alien entourage, not wanting to hang around in case they also got an earful, walked, slimed or hovered back into Zhark's ship.\n\n\"You sent a TextMarker\u2014\"\n\n\"So what if we did? Can't you enter a book without destroying everything in sight?\"\n\n\"Steady on, Thursday,\" said Bradshaw, laying a calming hand on my arm. \"We did ask for assistance, and if old Zharky here was the closest, you can't blame him for wanting to help. After all, when you consider that he usually lays waste to entire galaxies, torching just the town of ProVIDence and not the whole of Nebraska was actually quite an achievement...\" His voice trailed off before he added, \"...for him.\"\n\n\"AHHH!\" I yelled in frustration, holding my head. \"Sometimes I think I'm\u2014\"\n\nI stopped. I lost my temper now and again, but rarely with my colleagues, and when that happens, things are getting bad. When I started this job, it was great fun, as it still was to Bradshaw. But just lately the enjoyment had waned. It was no good. I'd had enough. I needed to go home.\n\n\"Thursday?\" asked Mrs. Tiggywinkle, concerned by my sudden silence. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nShe came too close and spined me with one of her quills. I yelped and rubbed my arm while she jumped back and hid a blush. Six-foot-high hedgehogs have their own brand of etiquette.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" I replied, dusting myself down. \"It's just that things have a way of... well, spiraling out of control.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"What do I mean? What do I mean? Well, this morning I was tracking a mythological beast using a trail of custard-pie incidents across the Old West, and this afternoon a battle cruiser from the twenty-sixth century lands in ProVIDence, Nebraska. Doesn't that sound sort of crazy?\"\n\n\"This is fiction,\" replied Zhark in all innocence. \"Odd things are meant to happen.\"\n\n\"Not to me,\" I said with finality. \"I want to see some sort of semblance of... of reality in my life.\"\n\n\"Reality?\" echoed Mrs. Tiggywinkle. \"You mean a place where hedgehogs don't talk or do washing?\"\n\n\"But who'll run Jurisfiction?\" demanded the Emperor. \"You were the best we ever had!\"\n\nI shook my head, threw up my hands and walked to where the ground was peppered with the A-7 gunman's text. I picked up a D and turned it over in my hands.\n\n\"Please reconsider,\" said Commander Bradshaw, who had followed me. \"I think you'll find, old girl, that reality is much overrated.\"\n\n\"Not overrated enough, Bradshaw,\" I replied with a shrug. \"Sometimes the top job isn't the easiest one.\"\n\n\"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,\" murmured Bradshaw, who probably understood me better than most. He and his wife were the best friends I had in the BookWorld; Mrs. Bradshaw and my son were almost inseparable.\n\n\"I knew you wouldn't stay for good,\" continued Bradshaw, lowering his voice so the others didn't hear. \"When will you go?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Soon as I can. Tomorrow.\"\n\nI looked around at the destruction that Zhark had wrought upon Death at DoubleX Ranch. There would be a lot of clearing up, a mountain of paperwork\u2014and there might be the possibility of disciplinary action if the Council of Genres got wind of what had happened.\n\n\"I suppose I should complete the paperwork on this debacle first,\" I said slowly. \"Let's say three days.\"\n\n\"You promised to stand in for Joan of Arc while she attended a martyrs' refresher course,\" added Mrs. Tiggywinkle, who had tiptoed closer.\n\nI'd forgotten about that. \"A week, then. I'll be off in a week.\" We all stood in silence, I pondering my return to Swindon and all of them considering the consequences of my departure\u2014except Emperor Zhark, who was probably thinking about invading the planet Thraal, for fun.\n\n\"Your mind is made up?\" asked Bradshaw. I nodded slowly. There were other reasons for me to return to the real world, more pressing than Zhark's gung ho lunacy. I had a husband who didn't exist and a son who couldn't spend his life cocooned inside books. I had retreated into the old Thursday, the one who preferred the black-and-white certainties of policing fiction to the ambiguous midtone grays of emotion.\n\n\"Yes, my mind's made up,\" I said, smiling. I looked at Bradshaw, the Emperor and Mrs. Tiggywinkle. For all their faults, I'd enjoyed working with them. It hadn't been all bad. Whilst at Jurisfiction I had seen and done things I wouldn't have believed. I'd watched grammasites in flight over the pleasure domes of Xanadu, felt the strangeness of listeners glittering on the dark stair. I had cantered bareback on unicorns through the leafy forests of Zenobia and played chess with Ozymandias, the King of Kings. I had flown with Biggles on the Western Front, locked cutlasses with Long John Silver and explored the path not taken to walk upon England's mountains green. But despite all these moments of wonder and delight, my heart belonged back home in Swindon and to a man named Landen Parke-Laine. He was my husband, the father of my son; he didn't exist, and I loved him."
            },
            {
                "title": "No Place Like Home",
                "text": "Swindon, Wessex, England, was the place I was born and where I lived until I left to join the Literary Detectives in London. I returned ten years later and married my former boyfriend, Landen Parke-Laine. He was subsequently murdered at the age of two by the Goliath Corporation, who had decided to blackmail me. It worked, I helped them\u2014but I didn't get my husband back. Oddly, I kept his son, my son, Friday\u2014it was one of those quirky, paradoxical time-travel things that my father understands but I don't. Two years further on, Landen was still dead, and unless I did something about it soon, he might remain that way forever.\n\n[ Thursday Next, Thursday Next: A Life in SpecOps ]\n\nIt was a bright and clear morning in mid-July two weeks later that I found myself on the corner of Broome Manor Lane in Swindon, on the opposite side of the road to my mother's house with a toddler in a stroller, two dodos, the Prince of Denmark, an apprehensive heart and hair cut way too short. The Council of Genres hadn't taken the news of my resignation very well. In fact, they'd refused to accept it at all and given me instead unlimited leave, in the somewhat deluded hope that I might return if actualizing my husband \"didn't work out.\" They also suggested I might like to deal with escaped fictionaut Yorrick Kaine, someone with whom I had crossed swords twice in the past.\n\nHamlet had been a late addition to my plans. Increasingly concerned over reports that he was being misrepresented as something of a \"ditherer\" in the Outland, he had requested leave to see for himself. This was unusual in that fictional characters are rarely troubled by public perception, but Hamlet would worry about having nothing to worry about if he had nothing to worry about, and since he was the indisputable star of the Shakespeare canon and had lost the Most Troubled Romantic Lead to Heathcliff once again at this year's BookWorld awards, the Council of Genres thought they should do something to appease him. Besides, Jurisfiction had been trying to persuade him to police Elizabethan drama since Sir John Falstaff had retired on grounds of \"good health,\" and a trip to the Outland, it was thought, might persuade him.\n\n\"'Tis very strange!\" he murmured, staring at the sun, trees, houses and traffic in turn. \"It would take a rhapsody of wild and whirling words to do justice of all that I witness!\"\n\n\"You're going to have to speak English out here.\"\n\n\"All this,\" explained Hamlet, waving his hands at the fairly innocuous Swindon street, \"would take millions of words to describe correctly!\"\n\n\"You're right. It would. That's the magic of the book imaginotransference technology,\" I told him. \"A few dozen words conjure up an entire picture. But in all honesty the reader does most of the work.\"\n\n\"The reader? What's it got to do with him?\"\n\n\"Well, each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to each of those who read it because they clothe the author's description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people that they've met, read or seen before\u2014far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader's experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader.\"\n\n\"So,\" replied the Dane, thinking hard, \"what you're saying is that the more complex and apparently contradictory the character, the greater the possible interpretations?\"\n\n\"Yes. In fact, I'd argue that every time a book is read by the same person it is different again\u2014because the reader's experiences have changed, or he is in a different frame of mind.\"\n\n\"Well, that explains why no one can figure me out. After four hundred years nobody's quite decided what, exactly, my inner motivations are.\" He paused for a moment and sighed mournfully. \"Including me. You'd have thought I was religious, wouldn't you, with all that not wanting to kill Uncle Claudius when at prayer and suchlike?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"I thought so, too. So why do I use the atheistic line: there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so? What's that all about?\"\n\n\"You mean you don't know?\"\n\n\"Listen, I'm as confused as anyone.\"\n\nI stared at Hamlet and he shrugged. I had been hoping to get some answers out of him regarding the inconsistencies within his play, but now I wasn't so sure.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said thoughtfully, \"that's why we like it. To each our own Hamlet.\"\n\n\"Well,\" snorted the Dane unhappily, \"it's a mystery to me. Do you think therapy would help?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. Listen, we're almost home. Remember: to anyone but family you're\u2014who are you?\"\n\n\"Cousin Eddie.\"\n\n\"Good. Come on.\"\n\nMum's house was a detached property of good proportions in the south of the town, but of no great charm other than that which my long association had bred upon it. I had spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up here, and everything about the old house was familiar. From the tree I had fallen out of and cracked a collarbone to the garden path where I had learned to ride my bicycle. I hadn't really noticed it before, but empathy for the familiar grows stronger with age. The old house felt warmer to me now than it ever had before.\n\nI took a deep breath, picked up my suitcase and trundled the stroller across the road. My pet dodo, Pickwick, followed with her unruly son, Alan, padding grumpily after her.\n\nI rang Mum's doorbell, and after about a minute, a slightly overweight vicar with short brown hair and spectacles answered the door.\n\n\"Is that Doofus...?\" he said when he saw me, suddenly breaking into a broad grin. \"By the GSD, it is Doofus!\"\n\n\"Hi, Joffy. Long time no see.\"\n\nJoffy was my brother. He was a minister in the Global Standard Deity religion, and although we had had differences in the past, they were long forgotten. I was pleased to see him, and he I.\n\n\"Whoa!\" he said. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"That's Friday,\" I explained. \"Your nephew.\"\n\n\"Wow!\" replied Joffy, undoing Friday's harness and lifting him out. \"Does his hair always stick up like that?\"\n\n\"Probably leftovers from breakfast.\"\n\nFriday stared at Joffy for a moment, took his fingers out of his mouth, rubbed them on his face, put them in again and offered Joffy his polar bear, Poley.\n\n\"Kind of cute, isn't he?\" said Joffy, jiggling Friday up and down and letting him tug at his nose. \"But a bit... well, sticky. Does he talk?\"\n\n\"Not a lot. Thinks a great deal, though.\"\n\n\"Like Mycroft. What happened to your head?\"\n\n\"You mean my haircut?\"\n\n\"So that's what it was!\" murmured Joffy. \"I thought you'd had your ears lowered or something. Bit... er... bit extreme, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I had to stand in for Joan of Arc. It's always tricky to find a replacement.\"\n\n\"I can see why,\" exclaimed Joffy, still staring incredulously at my pudding-bowl haircut. \"Why don't you just have the whole lot off and start again?\"\n\n\"This is Hamlet,\" I said, introducing the Prince before he began to feel awkward, \"but he's here incognito so I'm telling everyone he's my cousin Eddie.\"\n\n\"Joffy,\" said Joffy, \"brother of Thursday.\"\n\n\"Hamlet,\" said Hamlet, \"Prince of Denmark.\"\n\n\"Danish?\" said Joffy with a start. \"I shouldn't spread that around if I were you.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Darling!\" said my mother, appearing behind Joffy. \"You're back! Goodness! Your hair!\"\n\n\"It's a Joan of Arc thing,\" explained Joffy, \"very fashionable right now. Martyrs are big on the catwalk, y'know\u2014remember the Edith Cavell / Tolpuddle look in last month's FeMole?\"\n\n\"He's talking rubbish again, isn't he?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Joffy and I in unison.\n\n\"Hello, Mum,\" I said, giving her a hug. \"Remember your grandson?\"\n\nShe picked him up and remarked how much he had grown. It was unlikely in the extreme that he had shrunk, but I smiled dutifully nonetheless. I tried to visit the real world as often as I could but hadn't been able to manage it for at least six months. When she had nearly fainted by hyperventilating with ooohs and aaaahs and Friday had stopped looking at her dubiously, she invited us indoors.\n\n\"You stay out here,\" I said to Pickwick, \"and don't let Alan misbehave himself.\"\n\nIt was too late. Alan, small size notwithstanding, had already terrorized Mordecai and the other dodos into submission. They all shivered in fright beneath the hydrangeas.\n\n\"Are you staying for long?\" inquired my mother. \"Your room is just how you left it.\"\n\nThis meant just how I left it when I was nineteen, but I thought it rude to say so. I explained that I'd like to stay at least until I got an apartment sorted out, introduced Hamlet and asked if he could stay for a few days, too.\n\n\"Of course! Lady Hamilton's in the spare room and that nice Mr. Bismarck is in the attic, so he can have the box room.\"\n\nMy mother grasped Hamlet's hand and shook it heartily. \"How are you, Mr. Hamlet? Where did you say you were the prince of again?\"\n\n\"Denmark.\"\n\n\"Ah! No visitors after seven P.M. and breakfast stops at nine A.M. prompt. I do expect guests to make their own beds and if you need washing done you can put it in the wicker basket on the landing. Pleased to meet you. I'm Mrs. Next, Thursday's mother.\"\n\n\"I have a mother,\" replied Hamlet gloomily as he bowed politely and kissed my mother's hand. \"She shares my uncle's bed.\"\n\n\"They should buy another one, in that case,\" she replied, practical as ever. \"They do a very good deal at IKEA, I'm told. Don't use it myself because I don't like all that self-assembly\u2014I mean, what's the point of paying for something you have to build yourself? But it's popular with men for exactly that same reason. Do you like Battenberg?\"\n\n\"Wittenberg?\"\n\n\"No, no. Battenberg.\"\n\n\"On the river Eder?\" asked Hamlet, confused over my mother's conversational leap from self-assembly furniture to cake.\n\n\"No, silly, on a doily\u2014covered with marzipan.\"\n\nHamlet leaned closer to me. \"I think your mother may be insane\u2014and I should know.\"\n\n\"You'll get the hang of what she's talking about,\" I said, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm.\n\nWe walked through the hall to the living room, where, after managing to extract Friday's fingers from Mum's beads, we managed to sit down.\n\n\"So tell me all your news!\" she exclaimed as my eyes flicked around the room, trying to take in all the many potential hazards for a twoyear-old.\n\n\"Where do you want me to begin?\" I asked, removing the vase of flowers from the top of the TV before Friday had a chance to pull them over on himself. \"I had a flurry of things to do before I left. Two days ago I was in Camelot trying to sort out some marital strife, and the day before\u2014sweetheart, don't touch that\u2014I was negotiating a pay dispute with the Union of Orcs.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" replied my mother. \"You must be simply dying for a cup of tea.\"\n\n\"Please. The BookWorld might be the cat's pajamas for characterization and explosive narrative, but you can't get a decent cup of tea for all the bourbon in Hemingway.\"\n\n\"I'll do it!\" said Joffy. \"C'mon, Hamlet, tell me about yourself. Got a girlfriend?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014but she's bonkers.\"\n\n\"In a good way or a bad way?\"\n\nHamlet shrugged. \"Neither\u2014just bonkers. But her brother\u2014hell's teeth! Talk about sprung-loaded...!\"\n\nTheir conversation faded as they disappeared into the kitchen.\n\n\"Don't forget the Battenberg,\" my mother called after them.\n\nI opened my suitcase and took out a few rattly toys Mrs. Bradshaw had given me. Melanie had looked after Friday a lot, as she and Commander Bradshaw had no children of their own, what with Melanie's being a mountain gorilla, so she had doted on Friday. It had its upsides: he always ate his greens and loved fruit, but I had my suspicions that they climbed on the furniture when I wasn't about, and once I found Friday trying to peel a banana with his feet.\n\n\"How's life treating you?\" I asked.\n\n\"Better for seeing you. It's quite lonely with Mycroft and Polly away at the Fourteenth Annual Mad Scientists' Conference. If it wasn't for Joffy and his partner Miles popping round every day, Bismarck and Emma, Mrs. Beatty next door, Eradications Anonymous, my auto-body work class and that frightful Mrs. Daniels, I'd be completely alone. Should Friday be in that cupboard?\"\n\nI turned, jumped up and grabbed Friday by the straps of his dungarees and gently took the two crystal wineglasses from his inquisitive grasp. I showed him his toys and sat him down in the middle of the room. He stayed put for about three seconds before tottering off in the direction of DH-82, Mum's bone-idle Thylacine, who was asleep on a nearby chair.\n\nDH-82 yelped as Friday tugged playfully at his whiskers. The Thylacine then got up, yawned and went to find his supper dish. Friday followed. And I followed Friday.\n\n\"\u2014in the ear?\" said Joffy as I walked into the kitchen. \"Does that work?\"\n\n\"Apparently,\" replied the Prince. \"We found him stone dead in the orchard.\"\n\nI scooped up Friday, who was about to tuck in to DH-82's food, and took him back to the living room.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I explained. \"He's into everything at the moment. Tell me about Swindon. Much changed?\"\n\n\"Not really. The Christmas lights have improved tremendously, there's a Skyrail line straight through the Brunel Centre, and Swindon now has twenty-six different supermarkets.\"\n\n\"Can the residents eat that much?\"\n\n\"We're giving it our best shot.\"\n\nJoffy walked back in with Hamlet and placed a tray of tea things in front of us.\n\n\"That small dodo of yours is a terror. Tried to peck me when I wasn't looking.\"\n\n\"You probably startled him. How's Dad?\"\n\nJoffy, to whom this was a touchy subject, decided not to join us but play with Friday instead.\n\n\"C'mon, young lad,\" he said, \"let's get drunk and shoot some pool.\"\n\n\"Your father has been wanting to get hold of you for a while,\" said my mother as soon as Joffy and Friday had gone. \"As you probably guessed, he's been having trouble with Nelson again. He often comes home simply reeking of cordite, and I'm really not keen on him hanging around with that Emma Hamilton woman.\"\n\nMy father was a sort of time-traveling knight errant. He used to be a member of SO-12, the agency charged with policing the time lines: the ChronoGuard. He resigned due to differences over the way the historical time line was managed and went rogue. The ChronoGuard decided that he was too dangerous and eradicated him by a well-timed knock at the door during the night of his conception; my aunt April was born instead.\n\n\"So Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar?\" I asked, recalling Dad's previous problems in the time line.\n\n\"Yes,\" she replied, \"but I'm not sure he was meant to. That's why your father says he has to work so closely with Emma.\"\n\nEmma, of course, was Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson's consort. It was she who had alerted my father to Nelson's eradication. One moment she had been married to Lord Nelson for more than ten years, the next she was a bankrupt lush living in Calais. Must have been quite a shock. My mother leaned closer.\n\n\"Between the two of us, I'm beginning to think Emma's a bit of a tram\u2014Emma! How nice of you to join us!\"\n\nAt the doorway was a tall, red-faced woman wearing a brocade dress that had seen better days. Despite the rigors of a lengthy and damaging acquaintance with the bottle, there were the remains of great beauty and charm about her. She must have been dazzling in her youth.\n\n\"Hello, Lady Hamilton,\" I said, getting up to shake her hand. \"How's the husband?\"\n\n\"Still dead.\"\n\n\"Mine, too.\"\n\n\"Bummer.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I exclaimed, wondering quite where Lady Hamilton had picked up the word, although on reflection she probably knew a few worse. \"This is Hamlet.\"\n\n\"Emma Hamilton,\" she cooed, casting an eye in the direction of the unquestionably handsome Dane and giving him her hand. \"Lady.\"\n\n\"Hamlet,\" he replied, kissing her proffered hand. \"Prince.\"\n\nHer eyelashes fluttered momentarily. \"A Prince? Of anywhere I'd know?\"\n\n\"Denmark, as it happens.\"\n\n\"My... late boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.\"\n\n\"We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,\" replied the Prince with a great deal of charm, \"although I'm not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast\u2014Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large. Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.\"\n\n\"Haunted?\"\n\n\"One that I know of. What did your late boyfriend do when he wasn't bombarding Danes?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing much,\" she said offhandedly. \"Fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe\u2014it was quite de rigueur at the time.\"\n\nThere was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself.\n\n\"Goodness!\" she murmured. \"All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!\"\n\n\"Right!\" said my mother, jumping to her feet. \"That's it! I'm not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!\"\n\nHamlet and Emma looked startled at her outburst, but I managed to pull her aside and whisper, \"Mother! Don't be so judgmental\u2014after all, they're both single. And Hamlet's interest in Emma might take her interest off someone else.\"\n\n\"Someone... else?\"\n\nYou could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause, she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly.\n\n\"My dears, why don't you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the niche d'amour in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.\"\n\n\"A good time for a drink, perhaps?\" asked Emma hopefully.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle.\n\nEmma didn't reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of \"not the French windows\" and took him out by way of the kitchen.\n\n\"As I was saying,\" said my mother as she sat down, \"Emma's a lovely girl. Cake?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\n\"Here,\" she said, handing me the knife, \"help yourself.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" I began as I cut the Battenberg carefully, \"did Landen come back?\"\n\n\"That's your eradicated husband, isn't it?\" she replied kindly. \"No, I'm afraid he didn't.\" She smiled encouragingly. \"You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings\u2014we're meeting tomorrow night.\"\n\nIn common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every so often from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who existed only in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen because I'd told her. To anyone else, Landen's parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday's father was Landen, despite his nonexistence, in the same way that my brothers and I had been born, despite my father's not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes.\n\n\"I'll get him back,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Landen.\"\n\nJoffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn't see why adults couldn't give airplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour. The usually torpid DH-82 opened an eye, darted in, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds.\n\n\"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!\" Friday cried indignantly.\n\n\"Yes, it was impressive, wasn't it?\" I agreed. \"Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast\u2014even for a marshmallow.\"\n\n\"Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo consequat,\" replied Friday with great indignation. \"Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!\"\n\n\"Serves you right,\" I told him. \"Here, have a cucumber sandwich.\"\n\n\"What did my grandson say?\" asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself.\n\n\"Oh, that's just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.\"\n\n\"Lorem\u2014what?\"\n\n\"Lorem Ipsum. It's dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don't know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said my mother, not seeing at all.\n\n\"How are the cousins?\" I asked.\n\n\"Wilbur and Orville both run Mycrotech these days,\" answered Joffy as he passed me a cup of tea. \"They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he's got them on a short leash now.\"\n\nWilbur and Orville were were my aunt and uncle's two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up.\n\n\"Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?\"\n\n\"Quite a lot, actually. Remember Mycroft's memory-erasure machine?\"\n\n\"Yes and no.\"\n\n\"Well, they opened a chain of High Street erasure centers called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.\"\n\n\"Lucrative, I should imagine.\"\n\n\"Extremely lucrative\u2014right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an if but a when.\"\n\n\"Dare I ask what happened?\"\n\n\"I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to 'blow' by accident. A certain Mrs. Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem-U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.\"\n\n\"And...?\"\n\n\"Well, she was accidentally uploaded with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of Name That Fruit! She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and address of one of the men whose exploits is now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.\"\n\n\"I like a story with a happy ending,\" put in my mother.\n\n\"In any event,\" continued Joffy, \"Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon\u2014if Goliath hasn't pinched the idea first.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I muttered, taking another bite of cake. \"And how is my least favorite multinational?\"\n\nJoffy rolled his eyes. \"Up to no good as usual. They're attempting to switch to a faith-based corporate-management system.\"\n\n\"Becoming a... religion?\"\n\n\"Announced only last month on the suggestion of their own corporate precog, Sister Bettina of Stroud. They aim to switch the corporate hierarchy to a multideity plan with their own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and official prayer book. In the new Goliath, employees will not be paid with anything as un-spiritual as money, but faith\u2014in the form of coupons that can be exchanged for goods and services at any Goliath-owned store. Anyone holding Goliath shares will have these exchanged on favorable terms with these 'foupons' and everyone gets to worship the Goliath upper echelons.\"\n\n\"And what do the 'devotees' get in return?\"\n\n\"Well, a warm sense of belonging, protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife\u2014oh, and I think there's a T-shirt in it somewhere, too.\"\n\n\"That sounds very Goliath-like.\"\n\n\"Doesn't it just?\" Joffy smiled. \"Worshipping in the hallowed halls of consumerland. The more you spend, the closer to their 'god' you become.\"\n\n\"Hideous!\" I exclaimed. \"Is there any good news?\"\n\n\"Of course! The Swindon Mallets are going to beat the Reading Whackers to win the SuperHoop this year.\"\n\n\"You've got to be kidding!\"\n\n\"Not at all. Swindon winning the 1988 SuperHoop is the subject of the incomplete Seventh Revealment of St. Zvlkx. It goes like this: 'There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty eight, and in consequence of...' The rest is missing, but it's pretty unequivocal.\"\n\nSt. Zvlkx was Swindon's very own saint, and no child educated here could fail to know about him, including me. His Revealments had been the subject of much conjecture over the years, for good reason\u2014they were uncannily accurate. Even so, I was skeptical\u2014especially if it meant the Swindon Mallets' winning the SuperHoop. The city's team, despite a surprise appearance at the SuperHoop finals a few years back and the undeniable talents of team captain Roger Kapok, was probably the worst side in the country.\n\n\"That's a bit of a long shot, isn't it? I mean, St. Zvlkx vanished in, what\u20141292?\"\n\nBut Joffy and my mother didn't think it very funny.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Joffy, \"but we can ask him to confirm it.\"\n\n\"You can? How?\"\n\n\"According to his Revealment the Sixth, he's due for spontaneous resurrection at ten past nine the day after tomorrow.\"\n\n\"But that's remarkable!\"\n\n\"Remarkable but not unprecedented,\" replied Joffy. \"Thirteenth-century seers have been popping up all over the place. Eighteen in the last six months. Zvlkx will be of interest to the faithful and us at the Brotherhood, but the TV networks probably won't cover it. The ratings of Brother Velobius' second coming last week didn't even come close to beating Bonzo the Wonder Hound reruns on the other channel.\"\n\nI thought about this for a moment in silence.\n\n\"That's enough about Swindon,\" said my mother, who had a nose for gossip\u2014especially mine. \"What's been happening to you?\"\n\n\"How long have you got? What I've been getting up to would fill several books.\"\n\n\"Then... let's start with why you're back.\"\n\nSo I explained about the pressures of being the head of Jurisfiction, and just how annoying books could be sometimes, and Friday, and Landen, and Yorrick Kaine's fictional roots. On hearing this, Joffy jumped.\n\n\"Kaine is... fictional?\"\n\nI nodded. \"Why the interest? Last time I was here, he was a washed-up ex-member of the Whig Party.\"\n\n\"He's not now. Which book is he from?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"I wish I knew. Why? What's going on?\"\n\nJoffy and Mum exchanged nervous glances. When my mother gets interested in politics, it means things are really bad.\n\n\"Something is rotten in the state of England,\" murmured my mother.\n\n\"And that something is the English Chancellor Yorrick Kaine,\" added Joffy, \"but don't take our word for it. He's appearing on ToadNewsNetwork's Evade the Question Time here in Swindon at eight tonight. We'll go and see him for ourselves.\"\n\nI told them more about Jurisfiction, and Joffy, in return, cheerfully reported that attendance at the Global Standard Deity church was up since he had accepted sponsorship from the Toast Marketing Board, a company that seemed to have doubled in size and influence since I was here last. They had spread their net beyond hot bread and now included jams, croissants and pastries in their portfolio of holdings. My mother, not to be outdone, told me she'd received a little bit of sponsorship money herself from Mr. Rudyard's Cakes, although she privately admitted that the Battenberg she served up was actually her own. She then told me in great detail about her aged friends' medical operations, which I can't say I was overjoyed to hear about, and as she drew breath in between Mrs. Stripling's appendectomy and Mr. Walsh's \"plumbing\" problems, a tall and imposing figure walked into the room. He was dressed in a fine morning coat of eighteenth-century vintage, wore an impressive mustache that would have put Commander Bradshaw's to shame and had an imperiousness and sense of purpose that reminded me of Emperor Zhark. \"Thursday,\" announced my mother in a breathless tone, \"this is the Prussian Chancellor, Herr Otto Bismarck\u2014your father and I are trying to sort out the Schleswig-Holstein question of 1863-64; he's gone to fetch Bismarck's opposite number from Denmark so they can talk. Otto\u2014I mean, Herr Bismarck, this is my daughter, Thursday.\"\n\nBismarck clicked his heels and kissed my hand in an icily polite manner.\n\n\"Fraulein Next, the pleasure is all mine,\" he intoned in a heavy German accent.\n\nMy mother's curious and usually long-dead houseguests should have surprised me, but they didn't. Not anymore. Not since Alexander the Great turned up when I was nine. Nice enough fellow\u2014but shocking table manners.\n\n\"So, how are you enjoying 1988, Herr Bismarck?\"\n\n\"I am especially taken with the concept of dry cleaning,\" replied the Prussian, \"and I see big things ahead for the gasoline engine.\" He turned back to my mother: \"But I am most eager to speak to the Danish prime minister. Where might he be?\"\n\n\"I think we're having a teensy-weensy bit of trouble locating him,\" replied my mother, waving the cake knife. \"Would you care for a slice of Battenberg instead?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Bismarck, his demeanor softening. He stepped delicately over DH-82 to sit next to my mother. \"The finest Battenberg I have ever tasted!\"\n\n\"Oh, Herr B,\" said my flustered mother. \"You do flatter me so!\"\n\nShe made shooing motions at us out of vision of Bismarck and, obedient children that we were, we withdrew from the living room.\n\n\"Well!\" said Joffy as we shut the door. \"How about that? Mum's after a bit of Teutonic slap and tickle!\"\n\nI raised an eyebrow and stared at him.\n\n\"I hardly think so, Joff. Dad doesn't turn up that often and intelligent male company can be hard to find.\"\n\nJoffy chuckled.\n\n\"Just good friends, eh? Okay. Here's the deal: I'll bet you a tenner Mum and the Iron Chancellor are doing the wild thing by this time next week.\"\n\n\"Done.\"\n\nWe shook hands and with Emma, Hamlet, Bismarck and my mother thus engaged, I asked Joffy to look after Friday so I could slip out of the house to get some air.\n\nI turned left and wandered up Marlborough Road, looking about at the changes that two years' absence had wrought. I had walked this way to school for almost eight years, and every wall and tree and house was as familiar to me as an old friend. A new hotel had gone up on Piper's Way, and a few shops in the Old Town had either changed hands or been updated. It all felt very familiar, and I wondered whether the feeling of wanting to belong somewhere would stay with me or fade, like my fondness for Caversham Heights, the book in which I had made my home these past few years.\n\nI walked down Bath Road, took a right and found myself in the street where Landen and I had lived before he was eradicated. I had returned home one afternoon to find his mother and father in residence. Since they hadn't known who I was and considered\u2014not unreasonably\u2014that I was dangerously insane, I decided to play it safe today and just walk past slowly on the other side of the street.\n\nNothing looked very different. A tub of withered Tickia orologica was still on the porch next to an old pogo stick, and the curtains in the windows were certainly his mother's. I walked on, then retraced my steps and returned, my resolve to get him back mixed with a certain fatalism that perhaps ultimately I wouldn't and the thought that I should prepare myself. After all, he had died when he was two years old, and I had no memories of how it had been, but only of how things might have turned out had he lived.\n\nI shrugged my shoulders and chastised myself upon the morbidity of my own thoughts, then walked towards the Goliath Twilight Homes, where my gran was staying these days.\n\nGranny Next was in her room watching a nature documentary called Walking with Ducks when I was shown in by the nurse. Gran was wearing a blue gingham nightie, had wispy gray hair and looked all of her 110 years. She had got it into her head that she couldn't shuffle off this mortal coil until she had read the ten most boring books, but since \"boring\" was about as impossible to quantify as \"not boring,\" it was difficult to know how to help.\n\n\"Shhh!\" she muttered as soon as I walked in. \"This program's fascinating!\" She was staring at the TV screen earnestly. \"Just think,\" she went on, \"by analyzing the bones of the extinct duck Anas platyrhynchos, they can actually figure out how it walked.\"\n\nI stared at the small screen where an odd animated bird waddled strangely in a backwards direction as the narrator explained just how they had managed to deduce such a thing.\n\n\"How could they know that just by looking at a few old bones?\" I asked doubtfully, having learned my lesson long ago that an \"expert\" was usually anything but.\n\n\"Scoff not, young Thursday,\" replied Gran. \"A panel of expert avian paleontologists have even deduced that a duck's call might have sounded something like this: 'Quock, quock.'\"\n\n\"'Quock'? Hardly seems likely.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you're right,\" she replied, switching off the TV and tossing the remote aside. \"What do experts know?\"\n\nLike me, Gran was able to jump inside fiction. I wasn't sure how either of us did it, but I was very glad that she could\u2014it was she who helped me not to forget my husband, something at one time I was in a clear and real danger of doing thanks to Aornis, the mnemonomorph, of course. But Gran had left me about a year ago, announcing that I could fend for myself and she wouldn't waste any more time laboring for me hand and foot, which was a bit of cheek really, as I generally looked after her. But no matter. She was my gran, and I loved her a great deal.\n\n\"Goodness!\" I said, looking at her soft and wrinkled skin, which put me oddly in mind of a baby echidna I had once seen in National Geographic.\n\n\"What?\" she asked sharply.\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Nothing? You were thinking of how old I was looking, weren't you?\"\n\nIt was hard to deny it. Every time I saw her, I felt she couldn't look any older, but the next time, with startling regularity, she did.\n\n\"When did you get back?\"\n\n\"This morning.\"\n\n\"And how are you finding things?\"\n\nI brought her up to date with current events. She made \"tuttutting\" noises when I told her about Hamlet and Lady Hamilton, then even louder \"tut-tut\" noises when I mentioned my mother and Bismarck.\n\n\"Risky business, that.\"\n\n\"Mum and Bismarck?\"\n\n\"Emma and Hamlet.\"\n\n\"He's fictional and she's historical\u2014what could be wrong about that?\"\n\n\"I was thinking,\" she said slowly, raising an eyebrow, \"about what would happen if Ophelia found out.\"\n\nI hadn't thought of that, and she was right. Hamlet could be difficult, but Ophelia was impossible.\n\n\"I always thought the reason Sir John Falstaff retired from policing Elizabethan drama was to get away from Ophelia's sometimes unreasonable demands,\" I mused, \"such as having petting animals and a goodly supply of mineral water and fresh sushi on hand at Elsinore whenever she was working. Do you think I should insist Hamlet return to Hamlet?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not right away,\" said Gran, coughing into her hanky. \"Let him see what the real world is like. Might do him good to realize it needn't take five acts to make up one's mind.\"\n\nShe started coughing again, so I called the nurse, who told me I should probably leave her. I kissed her goodbye and walked out of the rest home deep in thought, trying to work up a strategy for the next few days. I dreaded to think what my overdraft was like, and if I was to catch Kaine I'd be better off inside SpecOps than outside. There were no two ways about it: I needed my old job back. I'd attempt that tomorrow and take it from there. Kaine certainly needed dealing with, and I'd play it by ear at the TV studios tonight. I'd probably have to find a speech therapist for Friday to try to wean him off the Lorem Ipsum, and then, of course, there was Landen. How do I even begin to get someone returned to the here-and-now after they were deleted from the there-and-then by a chronupt official from the supposedly incorruptible ChronoGuard.\n\nI was jolted from my thoughts as I approached Mum's house. There appeared to be someone partially hidden from view in the alleyway opposite. I nipped into the nearest front garden, ran between the houses, across two back gardens and then stood on a dustbin to peak cautiously over a high wall. I was right. There was someone watching my mother's house. He was dressed too warmly for summer and was half hidden in the buddleia. My foot slipped on the dustbin, and I made a noise. The lurker looked around, saw me and took flight. I jumped over the wall and gave chase. It was easier than I thought. He wasn't terribly fit, and I caught up with him as he tried rather pathetically to climb a wall. Pulling the man down, I upset his small duffel bag, and out poured an array of battered notebooks, a camera, a small pair of binoculars and several copies of the SpecOps-27 Gazette, much annotated in red pen.\n\n\"Ow, ow, ow, get off!\" he said. \"You're hurting!\"\n\nI twisted his arm, and he dropped to his knees. I was just patting his pockets for a weapon when another man, dressed not unlike the first, came charging out from behind an abandoned car, holding aloft a tree branch. I spun, dodged the blow, and as the second man's momentum carried him on, I pushed him hard with my foot, and he slammed headfirst into a wall and collapsed unconscious.\n\nThe first man was unarmed, so I made sure his unconscious friend was also unarmed\u2014and wasn't going to choke on his blood or teeth or something.\n\n\"I know you're not SpecOps,\" I observed, \"because you're both way too crap. Goliath?\"\n\nThe first man got slowly to his feet and was looking curiously at me, rubbing his arm where I had twisted it. He was a big man, but not an unkindly-looking one. He had short dark hair and a large mole on his chin. I had broken his spectacles; he didn't look Goliath, but I had been wrong before.\n\n\"I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Next. I've been waiting for you for a long long time.\"\n\n\"I've been away.\"\n\n\"Since January 1986. I've waited nearly two and a half years to see you.\"\n\n\"And why would you do a thing like that?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said the man, producing an identity badge from his pocket and handing it over, \"I am your officially sanctioned stalker.\"\n\nI looked at the badge. It was true enough; he was allocated to me. All 100 percent legit, and I didn't have a say in it. The whole stalker thing was licensed by SpecOps-33, the Entertainments Facilitation Department, who had drawn up specific rules with the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers as to who is allowed to stalk whom. It helps to regulate a historically dark business and also grades stalkers according to skill and perseverance. My stalker was an impressive Grade-1, the sort who are permitted to stalk the really big celebrities. And that made me suspicious.\n\n\"A Grade-1?\" I queried. \"Should I be flattered? I don't suppose I'm anything above a Grade-8.\"\n\n\"Not nearly that high,\" agreed my stalker. \"More like a Grade-12. But I've got a hunch you're going to get bigger. I latched on to Lola Vavoom in the sixties when she was just a bit part in The Streets of Wootton Bassett and stalked her for nineteen years, man and boy. I only gave her up to move on to Buck Stallion. When she heard, she sent me a glass tankard with THANK YOU FOR A GREAT STALK, LOLA etched onto it. Have you ever met her?\"\n\n\"Once, Mr....\" I looked at the pass before handing it back. \"De Floss. Interesting name. Any relation to Candice?\"\n\n\"The author? In my dreams,\" replied the stalker, rolling his eyes. \"But since I'd like us to be friends, do please call me Millon.\"\n\n\"Millon it is, then.\"\n\nAnd we shook hands. The man on the ground moaned and sat up, rubbing his head.\n\n\"Who's your friend?\"\n\n\"He's not my friend,\" said Millon, \"he's my stalker. And a pain in the arse he is, too.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014you're a stalker and you have a stalker?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" laughed Millon. \"Ever since I published my autobiography, A Stalk on the Wild Side, I've become a bit of a celebrity myself. I even have a sponsorship deal with Compass Rose\u2122 duffel coats. It is my celebrity status that enables Adam here to stalk me. Come to think of it, he's a Grade-3 stalker, so it's possible he's got a stalker of his own\u2014haven't you heard the poem?\"\n\nBefore I could stop him, he started to recite:\n\n\u2003\"...And so the tabloids do but say,\n\n\u2003that stalkers on other stalkers prey,\n\n\u2003and these have smaller stalkers to stalk 'em\n\n\u2003and so proceed, ad infinitum....\"\n\n\"No, I hadn't heard that one,\" I mused as the second stalker placed a handkerchief to his bleeding lip.\n\n\"Miss Next, this is Adam Gnusense. Adam, Miss Next.\"\n\nHe waved weakly at me, looked at the bloodied handkerchief and sighed mournfully. I felt rather remorseful all of a sudden.\n\n\"Sorry to hit you, Mr. Gnusense, \" I said apologetically. \"I didn't know what either of you were up to.\"\n\n\"Occupational hazard, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"Hey, Adam,\" said Millon, suddenly sounding enthusiastic, \"do you have your own stalker yet?\"\n\n\"Somewhere,\" said Gnusense looking around, \"a Grade-34 loser. The sad bastard was rummaging through my bins last night. Pass\u00e9 or what!\"\n\n\"Kids\u2014tsk,\" said Millon. \"It might have been de rigueur in the sixties, but the modern stalker is much more subtle. Long vigils, copious notes, timed entry and exits, telephoto lenses.\"\n\n\"We live in sad times,\" agreed Adam, shaking his head sadly. \"Must be off. I said I'd keep a close eye on Adrian Lush for a friend.\"\n\nHe stood up and shambled slowly away down the alley, stumbling on discarded beer cans.\n\n\"Not a great talker is old Adam,\" said Millon in a whisper, \"but sticks to his target like a limpet. You wouldn't catch him rummaging through dustbins\u2014unless he was giving a master class for a few of the young pups, of course. Tell me, Miss Next, but where have you been for the past two and a half years? It's been a bit dull here\u2014after the first eighteen months of you not showing up, I'd reduced my stalking to only three nights a week.\"\n\n\"You'd never believe me.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised what I can believe. Aside from stalking I've just finished my new book, A Short History of the Special Operations Network. I'm also editor of Conspiracy Theorist magazine. In between pieces on the very tangible link between Goliath and Yorrick Kaine and the existence of a mysterious beast known only as Guinzilla, we've run several articles devoted entirely to you and that Jane Eyre thing. We'd love to do a piece on your uncle Mycroft's work, too. Even though we know almost nothing, the conspiracy network is alive with healthy half-truths, lies and supposition. Did he really build an LCD cloaking device for cars?\"\n\n\"Sort of.\"\n\n\"And translating carbon paper?\"\n\n\"He called it rossetionery.\"\n\n\"And what about the Ovinator? Conspiracy Theorist devotes several pages of unsubstantiated rumors to this one invention alone.\"\n\n\"I don't know. Some sort of machine for cooking eggs, perhaps? Is there anything you don't know about my family?\"\n\n\"Not a lot. I'm thinking of writing a biography about you. How about Thursday Next: A Biography?\"\n\n\"The title? Way too imaginative.\"\n\n\"So I have your permission?\"\n\n\"No, but if you can put a dossier together on Yorrick Kaine, I'll tell you all about Aornis Hades.\"\n\n\"Acheron's little sister? It's a deal! Are you sure I can't write your biography? I've already made a start.\"\n\n\"Positive. If you find anything, knock on my door.\"\n\n\"I can't. There's a blanket restraining order on all members of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers. We're not allowed within a hundred yards of your place of residence.\"\n\nI sighed. \"All right, just wave when I come out.\"\n\nDe Floss readily agreed to that plan, and I left him rearranging his notebook, binoculars and camera and starting to make copious notes on his first encounter with me. I couldn't get rid of the poor deluded fool, but a stalker just might\u2014might\u2014be an ally."
            },
            {
                "title": "Evade the Question Time",
                "text": "\u2002Perfidious Danes \"Historically Our Enemy,\" Claims Insane Historian.\n\n\u2002\"Quite frankly, I was yim-pim-pim appalled,\" said England's leading mad history scholar yesterday. \"The eighth-century Danish attack on our flibble-flobble sceptered isle is a story of invasion, subjugation, plunder and exploitation that would remain bleep-bleep-baaaaa unequaled until we tried it ourselves many years later.\" The confused and barely coherent historian's work has been authenticated by another equally feeble-minded academic who told us yesterday, \"The Danish invasion began in 786 when the Danes set up a kingdom in East Anglia. They didn't even use their own names either. They preferred to do their brutal work cowardly hiding beneath the pseudonyms of Angles, Bruts and Flynns.\" Further research has shown that the Danes stayed for over four hundred years and were driven home only by the crusading help of our new close friends the French.\n\n\u2014Article in The New Oppressor, the official mouthpiece of the Whig Party\n\nHow did Kaine rise so quickly to power?\" I asked incredulouslyas Joffy and I queued patiently outside Swindon's ToadNewsNetwork studios that evening. \"When I was here last, Kaine and the Whig Party were all but washed up after the Cardenio debacle.\"\n\nJoffy looked grim and nodded towards a large crowd of uniformed Kaine followers who were waiting in silence for their glorious leader.\n\n\"Things haven't been good back here, Thurs. Kaine regained his seat after Samuel Pring was assassinated. The Whigs formed an alliance with the Liberals and elected Kaine as their leader. He has some sort of magnetism, and the numbers that attend his rallies increase all the time. His 'British unification' stance has had much support\u2014mostly with stupid people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.\"\n\n\"War with Wales?\"\n\n\"He hasn't said as such, but a leopard doesn't change its spots. He won by a landslide after the previous government collapsed over the 'cash for llamas' scandal. As soon as he was in power he proclaimed himself chancellor. His Unreform Act last year restricted the vote to people with property.\"\n\n\"How did he get parliament to agree to that?\" I muttered, aghast at the thought of it.\n\n\"We're not sure,\" said Joffy sadly. \"Sometimes parliament does the funniest things. But he's not happy just being chancellor. He's arguing that committees and accountants only slow things down, and if people really want trains to run on time and shopping trolleys to run straight, it could be done only by one man wielding unquestionable executive power\u2014a dictator.\"\n\n\"So what's stopping him?\"\n\n\"The President,\" replied Joffy quietly. \"Formby has told Kaine that if Kaine pushes for a dictatorial election, he will stand against him, and Yorrick knows full well that Formby would win\u2014he's as popular now as he ever was.\"\n\nI thought for a moment. \"How old is President Formby?\"\n\n\"That's the problem. He was eighty-four last May.\"\n\nWe fell silent for a moment and shuffled with the queue up to the stage door, had our identities checked by two ugly men from SO-6 and were then ushered in. We took our seats at the back and waited patiently for the show to begin. It seemed hard to believe that Kaine had managed to inveigle his way to the top of English politics, but, I reflected, anything can happen to a fictional character\u2014a trait that Yorrick had obviously exploited to the full.\n\n\"See that nasty-looking man on the edge of the stage?\" asked Joffy.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, following Joffy's finger to a stocky man with short hair and no visible neck.\n\n\"Colonel Fawsten Gayle, Kaine's head of security. Not a man to trifle with. It's rumored he was expelled from school for nailing his head to a park bench on a bet.\"\n\nStanding next to Gayle was a cadaverous man with pinched features and small round spectacles. He was holding a battered red briefcase and was dressed in a rumpled sports jacket and corduroy trousers.\n\n\"Who's that?\"\n\n\"Ernst Stricknene. Kaine's personal adviser.\"\n\nI stared at them both for a while and noticed that, despite being barely two feet from each other, they didn't exchange a single word or look. Things in the Kaine camp were far from settled. If I could get close, I'd just grab Yorrick and jump him straight to one of Jurisfiction's many prison books, and that would be that. It looked as though I had got back home just in time.\n\nI consulted the complimentary copy of The New Oppressor I had found on my seat.\n\n\"Why is Kaine blaming the nation's woes on the Danish?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because economically we're in a serious mess after losing to Russia in the Crimean War. They didn't just get Tunbridge Wells as war reparations but a huge chunk of cash, too. The country is near bankruptcy, Kaine wants to stay in power, so\u2014\"\n\n\"Misdirection.\"\n\n\"Bingo. He blames someone else.\"\n\n\"But the Danish?\"\n\n\"Shows how desperate he is, doesn't it? As a nation we've been blaming the Welsh and the French for far too long and with the Russians out of the frame he's come up with Denmark as public enemy number one. He's using the Viking raids of 800 A.D. and the Danish rule of England in the eleventh century as an excuse to whip up some misinformed xenophobia.\"\n\n\"Ludicrous!\"\n\n\"Agreed. The papers have been full of anti-Danish propaganda this past month. All Bang & Olufsen entertainment systems have been withdrawn due to 'safety' concerns, and Lego has been banned pending 'choking hazard' investigations. The list of outlawed Danish writers is becoming longer by the second. Kierkegaard's works have already been declared illegal under the Undesirable Danish Literature Act and will be burnt. Hans Christian Andersen will be next, we're told\u2014and after that maybe even Karen Blixen.\"\n\n\"They can pull my copy of Out of Africa from my cold, dead fingers.\"\n\n\"Mine, too. You'd better make sure Hamlet doesn't tell anyone where he's from. Shhh. I think something's happening.\"\n\nSomething was happening. The floor manager had walked out onto the set and was explaining to us exactly what we should do. After a protracted series of technical checks, the host of the show walked on, to applause from the audience. This was Tudor Webastow of The Owl, who had made a career out of being just inquisitive enough to be considered a realistic political foil for the press but not so inquisitive that he would be found in the Thames wearing concrete overshoes.\n\nHe sat down at the center of a table with two empty chairs either side of him and sorted his notes. Unusually for Evade the Question Time, the show had two speakers instead of four, but tonight was special: Yorrick Kaine would be facing his political opposition, Mr. Redmond van de Poste, of the Commonsense Party. Mr. Webastow cleared his throat and began.\n\n\"Good evening and welcome to Evade the Question Time, the nation's premier topical talk show. Tonight, as every night, a panel of distinguished public figures generally evade answering the audience's questions and instead toe the party line.\"\n\nThere was applause at this, and Webastow continued: \"The show tonight comes from Swindon in Wessex. Sometimes called the third capital of England or ' Venice on the M4,' the Swindon of today is a financial and manufacturing powerhouse, its citizens a cross-section of professionals and artists who are politically indicative of the country as a whole. I'd also like to mention at this point that Evade the Question Time is brought to you by Neat-Fit\u00ae Exhaust Systems, the tailpipe of choice.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment and shuffled his papers.\n\n\"We are honored to have with us tonight two very different speakers from opposite ends of the political spectrum. First I would like to introduce a man who was politically dead two years ago but has managed to pull himself up to the second-highest political office in the nation, with a devoted following of many millions, not all of whom are deranged. Ladies and gentlemen, Chancellor Yorrick Kaine!\"\n\nThere was mixed applause when he walked onto the stage, and he grinned and nodded for the benefit of the crowd. I leaned forward in my seat. He didn't appear to have aged at all in the two years since I had last seen him, which is what I would expect from a fictioneer. Still looking in his late twenties, with black hair swept neatly to the side, he might have been a male model from a knitting pattern. I knew he wasn't. I'd checked.\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" said Kaine, sitting at the table and clasping his hands in front of him. \"May I say that I always regard Swindon as a home away from home.\"\n\nThere was a brief twitter of delight from the front of the audience, mostly little old ladies who looked upon him as the son they never had.\n\nMr. Webastow went on, \"And opposing him we are also honored to welcome Mr. Redmond van de Poste of the opposition Commonsense Party.\"\n\nThere was notably less applause as van de Poste walked in. He was older than Kaine by almost thirty years, looked tired and gaunt, wore round horn-rimmed spectacles and had a high-domed forehead that shone when it caught the light. He looked about furtively before sitting down stiffly. I guessed the reason. He was wearing a heavy flak vest beneath his suit\u2014and with good reason. The last three Commonsense leaders had all met with mysterious deaths. The previous incumbent had been Mrs. Fay Bentoss, who had died after being hit by a car. Not so unusual, you might think\u2014except she had been in her front room when it happened.\n\n\"Thank you, gentlemen, and welcome. The first question comes from Miss Pupkin.\"\n\nA small woman stood up and said shyly, \"Hello. A Terrible Thing was done by Somebody this week, and I'd like to ask the panel if they condemn this.\"\n\n\"A very good question,\" replied Webastow. \"Mr. Kaine, perhaps you'd like to start the ball rolling?\"\n\n\"Thank you, Tudor. Yes, I condemn utterly and completely the Terrible Thing in the strongest possible terms. We in the Whig Party are appalled by the way in which Terrible Things are done in this great nation of ours, with no retribution against the Somebody who did them. I would also like to point out that the current spate of Terrible Things being undertaken in our towns and cities is a burden we inherited from the Commonsense Party, and I am at pains to point out that in real terms the occurrence of Terrible Things has dropped by over twenty-eight percent since we took office.\"\n\nThere was applause at this, and Webastow then asked Mr. van de Poste for his comments.\n\n\"Well,\" said Redmond with a sigh, \"quite clearly my learned friend has got his facts mixed up. According to the way we massage the figures, Terrible Things are actually on the increase. But I'd like to stop playing party politics for a moment and state for the record that although this is of course a great personal tragedy for those involved, condemning out of hand these acts does not allow us to understand why they occur, and more needs to be done to get to the root cause of\u2014\"\n\n\"Yet again,\" interrupted Kaine, \"yet again we see the Commonsense Party shying away from its responsibilities and failing to act toughly on unspecified difficulties. I hope all the unnamed people who have suffered unclearly defined problems will understand\u2014\"\n\n\"I did say we condemned the Terrible Thing,\" put in van de Poste. \"And I might add that we have been conducting a study into the entire range of Terrible Things, all the way from Just Annoying to Outrageously Awful, and will act on these findings\u2014if we gain power.\"\n\n\"Trust the Commonsensers to do things by half measures!\" scoffed Kaine, who obviously enjoyed these sorts of discussions. \"By going only so far as 'Outrageously Awful,' Mr. van de Poste is selling his own nation short. We at the Whig Party have been looking at the Terrible Things problem and propose a zero-tolerance attitude to offenses as low as Mildly Inappropriate. Only in this way can the Somebodies who commit Terrible Things be stopped before they move on to acts that are Obscenely Perverse.\"\n\nThere was a smattering of applause again, presumably as the audience tried to figure out whether \"Just Annoying\" was worse than \"Mildly Inappropriate.\"\n\n\"Succinctly put,\" announced Webastow. \"At the end of the first round, I will award three points to Mr. Kaine for an excellent nonspecific condemnation, plus one bonus point for blaming the previous government and another for successfully mutating the question to promote the party line. Mr. van de Poste gets a point for a firm rebuttal, but only two points for his condemnation, as he tried to inject an impartial and intelligent observation. So at the end of the first round, it's Kaine leading with five points and van de Poste with three.\"\n\nThere was more applause as the numbers came up on the scoreboard.\n\n\"On to the next stage of the show, which we call the 'not answering the question' round. We have a question from Miss Ives.\"\n\nA middle-aged woman put up her hand and asked, \"Does the panel think that sugar should be added to rhubarb pie or the sweetness deficit made up by an additive, such as custard?\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Ives. Mr. van de Poste, would you care to not answer this question first?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Redmond, eyeing the audience for any possible assassins, \"this question goes straight to the heart of government, and I'd like to first point out that the Commonsense Party, when we were in power, tried more ways of doing things than any other party in living memory, and in consequence came closer to doing the right way of doing something, even if we didn't know it at the time.\"\n\nThere was applause, and Joffy and I exchanged looks.\n\n\"Does it get any better?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Wait until they get on to Denmark.\"\n\n\"I utterly refute,\" began Kaine, \"the implication that we aren't doing things the right way. To demonstrate this I'd like to wander completely off the point and talk about the Health Service overhaul that we will launch next year. We want to replace the outdated 'preventive' style of health care this country has relentlessly pursued with a 'wait until it gets really bad' system, which will target those most in need of medical treatment\u2014the sick. Yearly health screenings for all citizens will end and be replaced by a 'tertiary' diagnostic regime that will save money and resources.\"\n\nAgain there was applause.\n\n\"Okay,\" announced Webastow, \"I'm going to give van de Poste three points for successfully not answering that question at all, but five points to Kaine, who not only ignored the question but instead used it as a platform for his own political agenda. So with six rounds still to go, we have Kaine with ten points and van de Poste with six. Next question, please.\"\n\nA young man with dyed red hair sitting in our row put his hand up. \"I would like to suggest that the Danish are not our enemy, and this is nothing more than a cynical move by the Whigs to blame someone else for our own economic troubles.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Webastow. \"The controversial Danish question. I'm going to let Mr. van de Poste avoid this question first.\"\n\nVan de Poste looked unwell all of a sudden and glanced nervously towards where Stricknene and Gayle were glaring at him.\n\n\"I think,\" he began slowly, \"that if the Danish are as Mr. Kaine describes, I will offer my support to his policies.\"\n\nHe dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief as Kaine began: \"When I came to power, England was a nation in the grip of economic decline and social ills. No one realized it at the time, and I took it upon myself to demonstrate by any means in my power the depths to which this great nation had fallen. With the support of my followers, I have managed to demonstrate reasonably clearly that things aren't as good as we thought they were, and what we imagined was peace and coexistence with our neighbors was actually a fool's paradise of delusion and paranoia. Anyone who thinks...\"\n\nI leaned over to Joffy. \"Do people believe this garbage?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so. I think he's working on the 'people will far more readily believe a big lie than a small one' principle. Still surprises me, though.\"\n\n\"...whoever disturbs this mission,\" rattled on Kaine, \"is an enemy of the people, whether they be Danish or Welsh sympathizers, eager to overthrow our nation, or ill-informed lunatics who do not deserve the vote or a voice.\"\n\nThere was applause, but a few boos, too. I saw Colonel Gayle make notes on a scrap of paper as to who was shouting them, counting out the seat numbers as he did so.\n\n\"But why the Danish?\" continued the man with the red hair. \"They have a notoriously fair system of parliament, an impeccable record of human rights and a deserved reputation of upstanding charitable works in Third World nations. I think these are lies, Mr. Kaine!\"\n\nThere were gasps and intakes of breath, but a few head noddings, too. Even, I think, from van de Poste.\n\n\"For the moment, at least,\" began Kaine in a conciliatory tone, \"everyone is permitted an opinion, and I thank our friend for his candor. However, I would like to bring the audience's attention to an unrelated yet emotive issue that will bring the discussion away from embarrassing shortcomings of my administration and back into the arena of populist politics. Namely: the disgraceful record of puppy and kitten death when the Commonsense Party was in power.\"\n\nAt the mention of puppies and kittens dying, there were cries of alarm from the elder members of the audience.\n\nConfident that he had turned the discussion, Kaine went on, \"As things stand at the moment, over one thousand unwanted puppies and kittens are destroyed each year by lethal injections, which are freely available to veterinarians in Denmark. As committed humanitarians, the Whig Party has always condemned unwanted pet extermination.\"\n\n\"Mr. Van de Poste?\" asked Webastow. \"How do you react to Mr. Kaine's diversionary tactics regarding kitten death?\"\n\n\"Clearly,\" began van de Poste, \"kitten and puppy death is regrettable, but we in the Commonsense Party must bring it to everyone's attention that unwanted pets have to be destroyed in this manner. If people were more responsible with their pets, then this sort of thing wouldn't happen.\"\n\n\"Typical of the Commonsense approach!\" barked Kaine. \"Blaming the population as though they were feeble-minded fools with little personal responsibility! We in the Whig Party would never condone such an accusation and are appalled by Mr. van de Poste's outburst. I will personally pledge to you now that I will make the puppy-home-deficit problem my primary concern when I am made dictator.\"\n\nThere were loud cheers at this, and I shook my head sadly.\n\n\"Well,\" said Webastow happily, \"I think I will give Mr. Kaine a full five points for his masterful misdirection, plus a bonus two points for obscuring the Danish issue rather than facing up to it. Mr. van de Poste, I'm sorry that I can only offer you a single point. Not only did you tacitly agree to Mr. Kaine's outrageous foreign policy, but you answered the unwanted-pet problem with an honest reply. So at the end of round three, Kaine is galloping ahead with seventeen points and van de Poste is bringing up the rear with seven. Our next question comes from Mr. Wedgwood.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said a very old man in the third row, \"I should like to know if the panel supports the Goliath Corporation's change to a faith-based corporate-management system.\"\n\nAnd so it dragged on for nearly an hour, Kaine making outrageous claims and most of the audience failing to notice or, even worse, care. I was extremely glad when the program drew to a close, with Kaine leading thirty-eight points to van de Poste's sixteen, and we filed out of the door.\n\n\"What now?\" asked Joffy.\n\nI took my Jurisfiction TravelBook from my pocket and opened it at the page that offered a paragraph of The Sword of the Zenobians, one of the many unpublished works Jurisfiction used as a prison. All I had to do was grab Kaine's hand and read.\n\n\"I'm going to take Kaine back to the BookWorld with me. He's far too dangerous to leave out here.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" said Joffy, leading me around to where two large limousines were waiting for the Chancellor. \"He'll want to meet his 'adoring' public, so you should have a chance.\"\n\nWe found the crowd waiting for him and pushed our way to the front. Most of the TV audience had turned up to see Kaine, but probably not for the same purpose as I. There was excited chatter as Kaine appeared. He smiled serenely and walked down the line, shook hands and was presented with flowers and babies to kiss. Close by his side was Colonel Gayle, with a phalanx of guards who stared into the crowd to make sure no one would try anything. Behind them all, I could see Stricknene still clinging onto the red briefcase. I partially hid myself behind a Kaine acolyte waving a Whig Party flag so Kaine didn't see me. We had crossed swords once before, and he knew what I was capable of, much as I knew what he was capable of\u2014the last time we met, he had tried to have us eaten by the Glatisant, a sort of hell beast from the depths of mankind's most depraved imagination. If he could conjure up fictional beasts at will, I would have to be more careful.\n\nBut then, as the small group moved closer, I started to feel a curious impulse not to trap Kaine but to join in with the infectious enthusiasm. The atmosphere was electric, and being swept along with the crowd was something that just suddenly seemed right. Joffy had fallen under the spell already and was waving and whistling his support. I fought down a strong feeling to stop what I was doing and perhaps give Yorrick the benefit of the doubt when he and his entourage were upon us. His hand came out towards the crowd. I steadied myself, glanced at the opening lines of Zenobians and waited for the right moment. I would have to hold on tight as I read our way into the BookWorld, but that didn't bother me, as I'd done it many times before. What did worry me was the fact that my resolve was softening even faster.\n\nBefore the Kaine magnetism could take me over any further, I took a deep breath, grabbed the outstretched hand and muttered quickly, \"It was a time of peace within the land of the Zenobians....\"\n\nIt didn't take long for me to jump into the BookWorld. Within a few moments, the bustling nighttime crowd in the car park of ToadNewsNetwork studios had vanished from view, to be replaced by a warm, verdant valley where herds of unicorns grazed peacefully under the summer sun. Grammasites wheeled in the blue skies, riding the thermals that rose from the warm grassland.\n\n\"So!\" I said, turning to Kaine and receiving something of a shock. Beside me was not Yorrick but a middle-aged man holding a Whig Party flag and staring at the crystal-clear waters babbling through a gap in the rocks. I must have grabbed the wrong hand.\n\n\"Where am I?\" asked the man, who was understandably confused.\n\n\"It's a near-death experience,\" I told him hastily. \"What do you think?\"\n\n\"It's beautiful!\"\n\n\"Good. Don't get too fond of it. I'm taking you back.\"\n\nI grasped him again, muttered the password under my breath and jumped out of fiction, something I had a lot less trouble with. We arrived behind some dustbins just as Kaine and his entourage were driving off. I ran up to Joffy, who was still waving goodbye, and told him to snap out of it.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said, shaking his head. \"What happened to you?\"\n\n\"Don't ask. C'mon, let's go home.\"\n\nWe left the scene as a very excited and confused middle-aged man tried to tell anyone who would listen about his \"near-death experience.\"\n\nI went to bed past midnight, my head spinning from my experience of Kaine's almost hypnotic hold of the populace. Still, I wasn't out of ideas. I could try to grab him again and, failing that, use the eraserhead I had smuggled out of the BookWorld. Destroying him didn't bother me. I'd be no more guilty of murder than would an author with a delete key. But while Formby opposed him, Kaine would not become dictator, so I had a bit of time to work up a strategy. I could observe and plan. \"Time spent doing renaissance,\" Mrs. Malaprop used to say, \"is never wasted.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "A Town Like Swindon",
                "text": "\u2002Formby Denies Kaine\n\n\u2002President-for-Life George Formby vetoed Chancellor Kaine's attempts to make himself dictator of England yesterday during one of the most heated exchanges this nation has ever seen. Kaine's Ultimate Executive Power Bill, already passed by parliament, requires only the presidential signature to become law. President Formby, speaking from the presidential palace in Wigan, told reporters, \"Eeee, I wouldn't have a "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 114",
                "text": " like that run a grocer's, let alone a country!\" Chancellor Kaine, angered by the President's remark, declared Formby \"too old to have a say in this nation's future,\" \"out of touch\" and \"a poor singer,\" the last of which he was forced to retract after a public outcry.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 13, 1988\n\nIt was the morning following Evade the Question Time, and I had slept badly, waking up before Friday, which was unusual. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Kaine. I'd have to follow him to his next public engagement before he discovered that I had returned. I was just thinking about why Joffy and I had nearly been sucked into the whole Yorrick circus when Friday awoke and blinked at me in a breakfast sort of way. I dressed quickly and took him downstairs.\n\n\"Welcome to Swindon Breakfast with Toad,\" announced the TV presenter as we walked in, \"with myself, Warwick Fridge, and the lovely Leigh Onzolent\u2014\"\n\n\"Hello.\"\n\n\"\u2014bringing you two hours of news and views, fun and competitions to see you into the day. Breakfast with Toad is sponsored by Arkwright's Doorknobs, the finest door furniture in Wessex.\"\n\nWarwick turned to Leigh, who was looking way too glamorous for eight in the morning.\n\nShe smiled and continued, \"This morning we'll be speaking to croquet captain Roger Kapok about Swindon's chances in the SuperHoop-88 and also to a man who claims to have seen unicorns in a near-death experience. Network Toad's resident dodo whisperer will be on hand for your pet's psychiatric problems, and our Othello backwards-reading competition reaches the quarterfinals. Later on we talk to Mr. Joffy Next about tomorrow's potential resurrection with St. Zvlkx, but first the news. The CEO of Goliath has announced contrition targets to be attainable within\u2014\"\n\n\"Morning, daughter,\" said my mother, who had just walked into the kitchen. \"I never thought of you as an early riser.\"\n\n\"I wasn't until junior turned up,\" I replied, pointing at Friday, who was eyeing the porridge pot expectantly, \"but if there's one thing he knows how to do, it's eat.\"\n\n\"It's what you did best when you were his age. Oh,\" added my mother absently, \"I have to give you something, by the way.\"\n\nShe hurried from the room and returned with a sheaf of official-looking papers.\n\n\"Mr. Hicks left them for you.\"\n\nBraxton Hicks was my old boss back at Swindon SpecOps. I had left abruptly, and from the look of his opening letter, it didn't look like he was very happy about it. I had been demoted to \"Literary Detective Researcher,\" and it demanded my gun and badge back. The second letter was an outstanding warrant of arrest due to a trumped-up charge over possession of a small amount of illegally owned bootleg cheese.\n\n\"Is cheese still overpriced?\" I asked my mother.\n\n\"Criminal!\" she muttered. \"Over five hundred percent duty. And it's not just cheese, either. They've extended the duty to cover all dairy products\u2014even yogurt.\"\n\nI sighed. I would probably have to go into SpecOps and explain myself. I could beg forgiveness, go to the stressperts and plead posttraumatic stress disorder or Xplkqulkiccasia or something and ask for my old job back. Perhaps if I were to get handy with a nine iron, it might swing things with my golf-mad boss. Outside SpecOps was not a good place to be if I wanted to hunt Yorrick Kaine or lobby the ChronoGuard for my husband back; it would help to have access to all the SpecOps and police databases.\n\nI looked through the papers. I had apparently been found guilty of the cheese transgression and fined five thousand pounds plus costs.\n\n\"Did you pay this?\" I asked my mother, showing her the court demand.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Then I should pay you back.\"\n\n\"No need,\" she replied, adding before I could thank her, \"I paid it out of your overdraft\u2014which is quite big now.\"\n\n\"How... thoughtful of you.\"\n\n\"Don't mention it. Bacon and eggs?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\n\"Coming up. Would you get the milk?\"\n\nI went to the front door to fetch the milk, and as I bent down to pick it up, there was a whang-thop noise as a bullet zipped past my ear and thudded into the doorframe next to me. I was about to slam the door and grab my automatic when an unaccountable stillness took hold, like a sudden becalming. Above me a pigeon hung frozen in the air, the wingtip feathers splayed as it reached the bottom of a downstroke. A motorcyclist on the road was balancing impossibly still, and passersby were now as stiff and unmoving as statues\u2014even Pickwick had stopped in midwaddle. Time, for the moment at least, had frozen. I knew only one person who had a face that could stop a clock like this\u2014my father. The question was, where was he?\n\nI looked up and down the road. Nothing. Since I was about to be assassinated, I thought it might help to know who was doing the assassinating, so I walked down the garden path and across the road to the alley where de Floss had hidden himself so badly the previous day. It was here that I found my father looking at a small and very pretty blond woman no more than five foot high who was time frozen halfway through the process of disassembling a sniper's rifle. She was probably in her late twenties and her hair was pulled back into a pony tail held tight with a flower hair tie. I noted with a certain detached amusement that there was a lucky mascot attached to the trigger guard and the stock was covered with pink fur. Dad looked younger than I, but he was instantly recognizable. The odd nature of the time business tended to make their operatives live nonlinear lives\u2014every time I met him, he was of a different age.\n\n\"Hello, Dad.\"\n\n\"You were correct,\" he said, comparing the woman's rigid features with those on a series of photographs, \"it's an assassin, all right.\"\n\n\"Never mind that for the moment!\" I cried happily. \"How are you? I haven't seen you for years!\"\n\nHe turned and stared at me. \"My dear girl, we spoke only a few hours ago!\"\n\n\"No we didn't.\"\n\n\"We did, actually.\"\n\n\"We did not.\"\n\nHe stopped, stared at me for a moment and then looked at his watch, shook it and listened to it, then shook it again.\n\n\"Here,\" I said, handing him the chronograph I was wearing, \"take mine.\"\n\n\"Very nice\u2014thank you. Ah! I stand corrected. Three hours from now. It's an easy mistake to make. Did you have any thoughts about that matter we discussed?\"\n\n\"No, Dad,\" I said in an exasperated tone. \"It hasn't happened yet, remember?\"\n\n\"You're always so linear,\" he muttered, returning to his job comparing the pictures to the assassin. \"I think you ought to try and expand your horizons a bit\u2014Bingo!\"\n\nHe had found a picture that matched my assassin and read the label on the back.\n\n\"Expensive hit woman working in the Wiltshire-Oxford area. Looks petite and bijou but as deadly as the best of them. She trades under the name 'The Windowmaker.' \" He paused. \"Should be Widowmaker, shouldn't it?\"\n\n\"But I heard that the Windowmaker was lethal,\" I pointed out. \"A contract with her and you're deader than corduroy.\"\n\n\"I heard that, too,\" replied my father thoughtfully. \"Sixty-seven victims\u2014sixty-eight if she was the one that did Samuel Pring. She must have meant to miss. It's the only explanation. In any event, her real name is Cindy Stoker.\"\n\nThis was unexpected. Cindy was married to Spike Stoker, an operative over at SO-17 whom I had worked with a couple of times. I had even given him advice on how best to tell Cindy that he hunted down werewolves for a living\u2014not the choicest profession for a potential husband.\n\n\"Cindy is my assassin? Cindy is the Windowmaker?\"\n\n\"You know her?\"\n\n\"Of her. Wife of a good friend.\"\n\n\"Well, don't get too chummy. She tries and fails to kill you three times. The second time with a bomb under your car on Monday, then next Friday at eleven in the morning\u2014but she fails and you, ultimately, choose for her to die. I shouldn't really be telling you this, but like we discussed, we've got bigger fish to fry.\"\n\n\"What bigger fish to fry?\"\n\n\"Sweetpea,\" he said, giving me his stern \"Father knows best\" voice, \"I'm really not going to go through it all again. Now I have to get back to work\u2014there's a timephoon brewing in the Dark Ages, and if we don't sort it out, we'll be picking anachronisms out of the time line for a century.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014you're working at the ChronoGuard?\"\n\n\"I've told you all about this already! Do try and keep up\u2014you're going to need all your wits about you over the next week. Now, get back to the house, and I'll start the world up again.\"\n\nHe wasn't in a very chatty mood, but since I would be seeing him later and would find out then what we had just discussed, there didn't seem a lot of point to talking anyway, so I bade him goodbye, and as I walked up the garden path, time returned to normal with a snap. The pigeon flew on, the traffic continued to move, and everything carried on as usual. Time had stopped so completely that everything my father and I had talked about occupied no time at all. Still, at least this meant I wouldn't have to be constantly looking over my shoulder if I knew when she would try to get rid of me. Mind you, I wasn't looking forward to her death. Spike would be severely pissed off.\n\nI returned to the kitchen where Mum was still hard at work cooking my bacon and eggs. To her and Friday, I had been gone less than twenty seconds.\n\n\"What was that noise when you were at the door, Thursday?\"\n\n\"Probably a car backfiring.\"\n\n\"Funny,\" she said, \"I could have sworn it was a high-velocity bullet striking wood. Two eggs or one?\"\n\n\"Two, please.\"\n\nI picked up the newspaper, which was running a five-page expos\u00e9 revealing that \"Danish pastries\" were actually brought to Denmark by displaced Viennese bakers in the sixteenth century. \"In what other ways,\" thundered the article, \"have the dishonest Danes made fools of us?\" I shook my head sadly and turned to another page.\n\nMum said she could look after Friday until tea, something I got her to promise before she had fully realized the implications of nappy changing and seen just how bad his manners were at breakfast. He yelled, \"Ut enim ad veniam!\" which might have meant \"Look how far I can throw my porridge!\" as a spoonful of oatmeal flew across the kitchen, much to the delight of DH-82, who had learned pretty quickly that hanging around messy toddlers at mealtimes was an extremely productive pastime.\n\nHamlet came down to breakfast, followed, after a prudent gap, by Emma. They bade each other good morning in such an obvious way that only their serious demeanor kept me from laughing out loud.\n\n\"Did you sleep well, Lady Hamilton?\" asked Hamlet.\n\n\"I did, thank you. My room faces east for the morning light, you know.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" replied Hamlet. \"Mine doesn't. I believe it was once the box room. It has pretty pink wallpaper and a bedside light shaped like Tweety Pie. Not that I noticed much, of course, being fast asleep\u2014on my own.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Let me show you something,\" said Mum after breakfast.\n\nI followed her down to Mycroft's workshop. Alan had kept Mum's dodos trapped in the potting shed all night and even now threatened to peck anyone who so much as looked at him \"in a funny way.\"\n\n\"Pickwick!\" I said sternly. \"Are you going to let your son bully those dodos?\"\n\nPickwick looked the other way and pretended to have an itchy foot. To be honest, she couldn't control Alan any more than I could. Only half an hour previously, he had chased the postman out of the garden accompanied by an angry plink-plink-plink noise, something even the postman had to admit \"was a first.\"\n\nMum opened the side door to the large workshop, and we entered. This was where my uncle Mycroft did all his inventing. It was here that he had demonstrated, amongst many other things, translating carbon paper, a sarcasm early-warning device, Nextian Geometry and, most important to me, the Prose Portal\u2014the method by which I first entered fiction. Mother was always nervous in Mycroft's lab. Many years ago he'd developed some four-dimensional paper, the idea being that you could print on the same sheet of paper again and again, isolating the different overprintings in marginally different time zones that could be read by the use of temporal spectacles. By going to the nanosecond level, a million sheets of text or pictures could be stored on one sheet of paper in a single second. Brilliant\u2014but the paper looked identical to a standard sheet of 8\u00bd-by-11\u2014and it had been a long contentious family argument that my mother had used the irreplaceable prototype to line the compost bucket. It was no wonder she was careful near his inventions.\n\n\"What did you want to show me?\"\n\nShe smiled and led me to the end of the workshop, and there, next to my stuff that she had rescued from my apartment, was the unmistakable shape of my Porsche 356 Speedster hidden beneath a dust sheet.\n\n\"I've run the engine every month and kept it MOTed for you. I even took it for a spin a couple of times.\"\n\nShe pulled the sheet off with a flourish. The car still looked slightly shabby after our various encounters, but just the way I liked it. I gently touched the bullet holes that had been made by Hades all those years ago, and the bent front wing where I had slid it into the river Severn. I opened the garage doors.\n\n\"Thanks, Mum. Sure you're all right with the boy Friday?\"\n\n\"Until four this afternoon. But you have to promise me something.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"That you'll come to my Eradications Anonymous group this evening.\"\n\n\"Mum\u2014\"\n\n\"It will do you good. You might enjoy it. Might meet someone. Might make you forget Linden.\"\n\n\"Landen. His name's Landen. And I don't need or want to forget him.\"\n\n\"Then the group will support you. Besides, you might learn something. Oh, and would you take Hamlet with you? Mr. Bismarck has a bee in his bonnet about Danes because of that whole silly Schleswig-Holstein thingummy.\"\n\nI narrowed my eyes. Could Joffy be right?\n\n\"What about Emma? Do you want me to take her, too?\"\n\n\"No. Why?\"\n\n\"...er, no reason.\"\n\nI picked up Friday and gave him a kiss. \"Be good, Friday. You're staying with Nana for the day.\"\n\nFriday looked at me, looked at Mum, stuck his finger up his nose and said, \"Sunt in culpa qui officia id est laborum?\"\n\nI ruffled his hair, and he showed me a booger he had found. I declined the present, wiped his hand with a hanky, then went to look for Hamlet. I found him in the front garden demonstrating a thrust-and-parry swordfight to Emma and Pickwick. Even Alan had left off bullying the other dodos and was watching in silence. I called out to Hamlet, and he came running.\n\n\"Sorry,\" said the Prince as I opened the garage doors, \"just showing them how that damn fool Laertes gets his comeuppance.\"\n\nI showed him how to get into the Porsche, dropped in myself, started the engine and drove off down the hill towards the Brunel Centre.\n\n\"You seem to be getting on very well with Emma.\"\n\n\"Who?\" asked Hamlet, unconvincingly vague.\n\n\"Lady Hamilton.\"\n\n\"Oh, her. Nice girl. We have a lot in common.\"\n\n\"Such as...?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Hamlet, thinking hard, \"we both have a good friend called Horatio.\"\n\nWe motored on down past the magic roundabout, and I pointed out the new stadium with its four floodlit towers standing tall amongst the low housing.\n\n\"That's our croquet stadium,\" I said. \"Thirty thousand seats. Home of the Swindon Mallets croquet team.\"\n\n\"Croquet is a national sport out here?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" I replied, knowing a thing or two about it, since I used to play myself. \"It has evolved a lot since the early days. For a start the teams are bigger\u2014ten a side in World Croquet League. The players have to get their balls through the hoops in the quickest possible time, so it can be quite rough. A stray ball can pack a wallop, and a flailing mallet is potentially lethal. The WCL insists on body armor and Plexiglas barriers for the spectators.\"\n\nI turned left into Manchester Road and parked up behind a Griffin-6 Lowrider.\n\n\"What now?\"\n\n\"Haircut. You don't think I'm going to spend the next few weeks looking like Joan of Arc, do you?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Hamlet. \"You hadn't mentioned it for a while, so I'd stopped noticing. If it's all right with you, I'll just stay here and write a letter to Horatio. Does 'pirate' have one t or two?\"\n\n\"One.\"\n\nI walked into Mum's hairdresser. The stylists looked at my hair with a sort of shocked numbness until Lady Volescamper, who along with her increasingly eccentric mayoral husband constituted Swindon's most visible aristocracy, suddenly pointed at me and said in a strident tone that could shatter glass:\n\n\"That's the style I want. Something new. Something retro\u2014something to cause a sensation at the Swindon Mansion House Ball!\"\n\nMrs. Barnet, who was both the chief stylist and official gossip laureate of Swindon, kept her look of horror to herself and then said diplomatically, \"Of course. And may I say that Her Grace's boldness matches her sense of style.\"\n\nLady Volescamper returned to her FeMole magazine, appearing not to recognize me, which was just as well\u2014the last time I went to Vole Towers, a hell beast from the darkest depths of the human imagination trashed the entrance lobby.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday,\" said Mrs. Barnet, wrapping a sheet around me with an expert flourish, \"haven't seen you for a while.\"\n\n\"I've been away.\"\n\n\"In prison?\"\n\n\"No\u2014just away.\"\n\n\"Ah. How would you like it? I have it on good authority that the Joan of Arc look is set to be quite popular this summer.\"\n\n\"You know I'm not a fashion person, Gladys. Just get rid of the dopey haircut, would you?\"\n\n\"As madame wishes.\" She hummed to herself for a moment, then asked, \"Been on holiday this year?\"\n\nI got back to the car a half hour later to find Hamlet talking to a traffic warden, who seemed so engrossed in whatever he was telling her that she wasn't writing me a ticket.\n\n\"And that,\" said Hamlet as soon as I came within earshot and making a thrusting motion with his hand, \"was when I cried, 'A rat, a rat!' and killed the unseen old man. Hello, Thursday\u2014goodness\u2014that's short, isn't it?\"\n\n\"It's better than it was. C'mon, I've got to go and get my job back.\"\n\n\"Job?\" asked Hamlet as we drove off, leaving a very indignant traffic warden who wanted to know what had happened next.\n\n\"Yes. Out here you need money to live.\"\n\n\"I've got lots,\" said Hamlet generously. \"You should have some of mine.\"\n\n\"Somehow I don't think fictional kroner from an unspecified century will cut the mustard down at the First Goliath\u2014and put the skull away. They aren't generally considered a fashion accessory here in the Outland.\"\n\n\"They're all the rage where I come from.\"\n\n\"Well, not here. Put it in this grocery bag.\"\n\n\"Stop!\"\n\nI screeched to a halt. \"What?\"\n\n\"That, over there. It's me!\"\n\nBefore I could say anything, Hamlet had jumped out of the car and run across the road to a coin-operated machine on the corner of the street. I parked the Speedster and walked over to join him. He was staring with delight at the simple box, the top half of which was glazed; inside was a suitably attired mannequin visible from the waist up.\n\n\"It's called a WillSpeak machine,\" I said, passing him a shopping bag. \"Here\u2014put the skull in the bag like I asked.\"\n\n\"What does it do?\"\n\n\"Officially it's called a 'Shakespeare Soliloquy Vending Automaton, ' \" I explained. \"You put in two shillings and get a short snippet from Shakespeare.\"\n\n\"Of me?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"of you.\"\n\nFor it was, of course, a Hamlet WillSpeak machine, and the mannequin Hamlet sat looking blankly out at the flesh-and-blood Hamlet standing next to me.\n\n\"Can we hear a bit?\" asked Hamlet excitedly.\n\n\"If you want. Here.\"\n\nI dug out a coin and placed it in the machine. There was a whirring and clicking as the dummy came to life.\n\n\"To be, or not to be,\" began the mannequin in a hollow, metallic voice. The machine had been built in the thirties and was now pretty much worn out. \"That is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind\u2014\"\n\nHamlet was fascinated, like a child listening to a tape recording of his own voice for the first time. \"Is that really me?\" he asked.\n\n\"The words are yours\u2014but actors do it a lot better.\"\n\n\"\u2014Or to take arms against a sea of troubles\u2014\"\n\n\"Actors?\"\n\n\"Yes. Actors, playing Hamlet.\"\n\nHe looked confused.\n\n\"\u2014That flesh is heir to\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I began, looking around to check that no one was listening, \"you know that you are Hamlet, from Shakespeare's Hamlet?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nFor it was, of course, a Hamlet WillSpeak machine, and the mannequin Hamlet sat looking blankly out at the flesh-and-blood Hamlet standing next to me.\n\n\"\u2014To die, to sleep, to sleep\u2014perchance to dream\u2014\"\n\n\"Well, that's a play, and out here in the Outland, people act out that play.\"\n\n\"With me?\"\n\n\"Of you. Pretending to be you.\"\n\n\"But I'm the real me?\"\n\n\"\u2014Who would fardels bear\u2014\"\n\n\"In a manner of speaking.\"\n\n\"Ahhh, \" he said after a few moments of deep thought, \"I see. Like the whole Murder of Gonzago thing. I wondered how it all worked. Can we go and see me sometime?\"\n\n\"I... suppose,\" I answered uneasily. \"Do you really want to?\"\n\n\"\u2014from whose bourn no traveler returns\u2014\"\n\n\"Of course. I've heard that some people in the Outland think I am a dithering twit unable to make up his mind rather than a dynamic leader of men, and these 'play' things you describe will prove it to me one way or the other.\"\n\nI tried to think of the movie in which he prevaricates the least. \"We could get the Zeffirelli version out on video for you to look at.\"\n\n\"Who plays me?\"\n\n\"Mel Gibson.\"\n\n\"\u2014Thus conscience does make cowards of us all\u2014\"\n\nHamlet stared at me, mouth open. \"But that's incredible!\" he said ecstatically. \"I'm Mel's biggest fan!\" He thought for a moment. \"So... Horatio must be played by Danny Glover, yes?\"\n\n\"\u2014sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no. Listen: the Lethal Weapon series is nothing like Hamlet.\"\n\n\"Well,\" replied the Prince reflectively, \"in that I think you might be mistaken. The Martin Riggs character begins with self-doubt and contemplates suicide over the loss of a loved one but eventually turns into a decisive man of action and kills all the bad guys. Same as the Road Warrior series, really. Is Ophelia played by Patsy Kensit?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied, trying to be patient, \"Helena Bonham Carter.\"\n\nHe perked up when he heard this. \"This gets better and better! When I tell Ophelia, she'll flip\u2014if she hasn't already.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said thoughtfully, \"you'd better see the Olivier version instead. Come on, we've work to do.\"\n\n\"\u2014their currents turn awry / And lose the name of action.\"\n\nThe WillSpeak Hamlet stopped clicking and whirring and sat silent once more, waiting for the next florin."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ham (let) and Cheese",
                "text": "\u2002\"Seven Wonders of Swindon\" Naming Bureaucracy Unveiled\n\n\u2002After five years of careful consideration, Swindon City Council has unveiled the naming procedure for the city's much vaunted \"Seven Wonders\" tourism plan. The twenty-seven-point procedure is the most costly and complicated piece of bureaucracy the city has ever devised and might even be included as one of the wonders itself. The plan will be be undertaken by the Swindon Special Committee for Wonders, which will consider applications prepared by the Seven Wonders Working Party from six separate name-selection subcommittees. Once chosen, the wonders will be further scrutinized by eight different oversight committees before being adopted. The byzantine and needlessly expensive system is already tipped to win the coveted Red Tape Award from Bureaucracy Today.\n\n\u2014Article in Swindon Globe News, June 12, 1988\n\nI drove to the car park above the Brunel Centre and bought a pay-and-display ticket, noting how they had almost tripled in price since I was here last. I looked in my purse. I had fifteen pounds, three shillings and an old Skyrail ticket.\n\n\"Short of cash?\" asked Hamlet as we walked down the stairs to the street-level concourse.\n\n\"Let's just say I'm very 'receipt rich' at present.\"\n\nMoney had never been a problem in the BookWorld. All the details of life were taken care of by something called Narrative Assumption. A reader would assume you had gone shopping, or gone to the toilet, or brushed your hair, so a writer never needed to outline it\u2014which was just as well, really. I'd forgotten all about the real-world trivialities, but I was actually quite enjoying them, in a mind-dulling sort of way.\n\n\"It says here,\" said Hamlet, who had been reading the newspaper, \"that Denmark invaded England and put hundreds of innocent English citizens to death without trial!\"\n\n\"It was the Vikings in 786, Hamlet. I hardly think that warrants the headline BLOODTHIRSTY DANES GO ON RAMPAGE. Besides, at the time they were no more Danish than we were English.\"\n\n\"So we're not the historical enemies of England?\"\n\n\"Not at all.\"\n\n\"And eating rollmop herrings won't lead to erectile dysfunction?\"\n\n\"No. And keep your voice down. All these people are real, not D-7 generic crowd types. Out here, you only exist in a play.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he said, stopping at an electronics shop and staring at the TVs. \"Who's she?\"\n\n\"Lola Vavoom. An actress.\"\n\n\"Really? Has she ever played Ophelia?\"\n\n\"Many times.\"\n\n\"Was she better than Helena Bonham Carter?\"\n\n\"Both good\u2014just different.\"\n\n\"Different? What do you mean?\"\n\n\"They both brought different things to the role.\"\n\nHamlet laughed. \"I think you're confusing the matter, Thursday. Ophelia is just Ophelia.\"\n\n\"Not out here. Listen, I'm just going to see how bad my overdraft is.\"\n\n\"How you Outlanders complicate matters!\" he murmured. \"If we were in a book right now, you'd be accosted by a solicitor who tells you a wealthy aunt has died and left you lots of money\u2014and then we'd just start the next chapter with you in London making your way to Kaine's office disguised as a cleaning woman.\"\n\n\"Excuse me!\" said a suited gentleman who looked suspiciously like a solicitor. \"But are you Thursday Next?\"\n\nI glanced nervously at Hamlet.\n\n\"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr. Wentworth of Wentworth, Wentworth and Wentworth, Solicitors. I'm the second Wentworth, if you're interested.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"And... I wonder if I could have your autograph? I followed your Jane Eyre escapade with a great deal of interest.\"\n\nI breathed a sigh of relief and signed his autograph book. Mr. Wentworth thanked me and hurried off.\n\n\"You had me worried for a moment there,\" said Hamlet. \"I thought I was meant to be the fictitious one.\"\n\n\"You are.\" I smiled. \"And don't you forget it.\"\n\n\"Twenty-two thousand pounds?\" I said to the cashier. \"Are you sure?\"\n\nThe cashier looked at me with unblinking eyes, then at Hamlet, who was standing over me a bit indelicately.\n\n\"Quite sure. Twenty-two thousand, three hundred eight pounds and four shillings three pence ha'penny\u2014overdrawn,\" she added, in case I had missed it. \"Your landlord sued you for dodo-related tenancy violations and won five thousand pounds. Since you weren't here, we upped your credit limit when he demanded payment. Then we raised the limit again to pay for the additional interest.\"\n\n\"How very thoughtful of you.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Goliath First National Friendly always aims to please.\"\n\n\"Are you sure you wouldn't rather go with the 'wealthy aunt' scenario?\" asked Hamlet, being no help at all.\n\n\"No. Shhh.\"\n\n\"We haven't had a single deposit from you for nearly two and a half years,\" continued the bank clerk.\n\n\"I've been away.\"\n\n\"Prison?\"\n\n\"No. So the rest of my overdraft is...?\"\n\n\"Interest on the money we lent you, interest on the interest we lent you, letters asking for money that we know you haven't got, letters asking for an address that we knew wouldn't reach you, letters asking whether you got the letters we knew you hadn't received, further letters asking for a response because we have an odd sense of humor\u2014you know how it all adds up! Can we expect a check in the near future?\"\n\n\"Not really. Um... any chance of raising my credit limit?\"\n\nThe cashier arched an eyebrow. \"I can get you an appointment to see the manager. Do you have an address to which we can send expensive letters demanding money?\"\n\nI gave them Mum's address and made an appointment to see the manager. We walked past the statue of Brunel and the Booktastic shop, which I noted was still open, despite several closing-down sales\u2014one of which I had witnessed with Miss Havisham.\n\nMiss Havisham. How I had missed her guidance in my first few months heading Jurisfiction. With her I might have avoided that whole stupid sock episode in Lake Wobegon Days.\n\n\"Okay, I give up,\" said Hamlet quite suddenly. \"How does it all turn out?\"\n\n\"How does what all turn out?\"\n\nHe spread his arms out wide.\n\n\"All this. You, your husband, Miss Hamilton, the small dodo, that SuperHoop thing and the big company\u2014what's it called again?\"\n\n\"Goliath?\"\n\n\"Right. How does it all turn out?\"\n\n\"I haven't the slightest idea. Out here our lives are pretty much an unknown quantity.\"\n\nHamlet seemed shocked by the concept. \"How do you live here not knowing what the future might bring?\"\n\n\"That's part of the fun. The pleasure of anticipation.\"\n\n\"There is no pleasure in anticipation,\" said Hamlet glumly. \"Except perhaps,\" he added, \"in killing that old fool Polonius.\"\n\n\"My point exactly,\" I replied. \"Where you come from, events are preordained and everything that happens to you has some sort of relevance further on in the story.\"\n\n\"It's clear you haven't read Hamlet for a\u2014LOOK OUT!\"\n\nHamlet pushed me out of the way as a small steamroller\u2014the size that works on sidewalks and paths\u2014bore rapidly down upon us and crashed past into the window of the shop we had been standing outside. The roller stopped amongst a large display of electrical goods, the rear wheels still rotating.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" asked Hamlet, helping me to my feet.\n\n\"I'm fine\u2014thanks to you.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" said a workman, running up to us and turning a valve to shut off the roller. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"Not hurt in the least. What happened?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" replied the workman, scratching his head. \"Are you sure you're okay?\"\n\n\"Really, I'm fine.\"\n\nWe walked off as a crowd began to gather. The owner of the shop didn't look that upset; doubtless he was thinking about what he could charge to insurance.\n\n\"You see?\" I said to Hamlet as we walked away.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"This is exactly what I mean. A lot happens in the real world for no good reason. If this were fiction, this little incident would have relevance thirty or so chapters from now; as it is it means nothing\u2014after all, not every incident in life has a meaning.\"\n\n\"Tell that to the scholars who study me,\" Hamlet snorted disdainfully, then thought for a moment before adding, \"If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction\u2014and ultimately, without a major resolution.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said thoughtfully, \"that's exactly what we like about it.\"\n\nWe reached the SpecOps Building. It was of a sensible Germanic design built during the occupation, and it was here that I, along with Bowden Cable and Victor Analogy, dealt with Acheron Hades' plot to kidnap Jane Eyre out of Jane Eyre. Hades had failed and died in the attempt. I wondered how many of the old gang would still be around. I had sudden doubts and decided to think for a moment before going in. Perhaps I should have a plan of action instead of charging in Zhark-like.\n\n\"Fancy a coffee, Hamlet?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\nWe walked into the Caf\u00e9 Goliathe opposite. The same one, in fact, that I had last seen Landen walking towards an hour before he was eradicated.\n\n\"Hey!\" said the man behind the counter who seemed somehow familiar. \"We don't serve those kind in here!\"\n\n\"What kind?\"\n\n\"The Danish kind.\"\n\nGoliath was obviously working with Kaine on this particular nonsense.\n\n\"He's not Danish. He's my cousin Eddie from Wolverhampton.\"\n\n\"Really? Then why is he dressed like Hamlet?\"\n\nI thought quickly. \"Because... he's insane. Isn't that right, Cousin Eddie?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Hamlet, to whom feigning madness was not much of a problem. \"When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.\"\n\n\"See?\"\n\n\"Well, that's all right, then.\"\n\nI started as I realized why he seemed familiar. It was Mr. Cheese, one of the Goliath corporate bullies that Brik Schitt-Hawse had employed. He and his partner, Mr. Chalk, had made my life difficult before I left. He didn't have his goatee anymore, but it was definitely him. Undercover? I doubted it\u2014his name was on his Caf\u00e9 Goliathe badge with, I noted, two gold stars, one for washing up and the other for latte frothing. But he didn't show any sign of recognizing me.\n\n\"What will you have, Ham\u2014I mean, Cousin Eddie?\"\n\n\"What is there?\"\n\n\"Espresso, mocha, latte, white mocha, hot chocolate, decaf, recaf, nocaf, somecaf, extracaf, Goliachino\u2122... what's the matter?\"\n\nHamlet had started to tremble, a look of pain and hopelessness on his face as he stared wild-eyed at the huge choice laid out in front of him.\n\n\"To espresso or to latte, that is the question,\" he muttered, his free will evaporating rapidly. I had asked Hamlet for something he couldn't easily supply: a decision. \"Whether 'tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain,\" he continued in a rapid garble, \"or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache\u2014\"\n\n\"Cousin Eddie!\" I said sharply. \"Cut it out!\"\n\n\"To froth, to sprinkle, perchance to drink, and in that\u2014\"\n\n\"He'll have a mocha with extra cream, please.\"\n\nHamlet stopped abruptly once the burden of decision was taken from him.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said, rubbing his temples, \"I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything. Is that normal?\"\n\n\"Not for me. I'll have a latte, Mr. Cheese,\" I said, watching his reaction carefully.\n\nHe still didn't seem to recognize me. He rang up the cost and then started making the coffees.\n\n\"Do you remember me?\"\n\nHe narrowed his eyes and stared at me carefully for a moment or two. \"No.\"\n\n\"Thursday Next?\"\n\nHis face broke into a broad grin, and he put out a large hand for me to shake, welcoming me as an old workmate rather than a past nemesis. I faltered, then shook his hand slowly.\n\n\"Miss Next! Where have you been? Prison?\"\n\n\"Away.\"\n\n\"Ah! But you're well?\"\n\n\"I'm okay,\" I said suspiciously, retrieving my hand. \"How are you?\"\n\n\"Not bad!\" he laughed, looking at me sideways for a moment and narrowing his eyes. \"You've changed. What is it?\"\n\n\"Almost no hair?\"\n\n\"That's it. We were looking for you everywhere. You spent almost eighteen months in the Goliath top ten most wanted\u2014although you never made it to the number-one slot.\"\n\n\"I'm devastated.\"\n\n\"No one has ever spent ten months on the list,\" carried on Cheese with a sort of dreamy, nostalgic look. \"The next longest was three weeks. We looked everywhere for you!\"\n\n\"But you gave up?\"\n\n\"Goodness me, no,\" replied Cheese. \"Perseverance is what Goliath does best. There was a restructuring of corporate policy, and we were reallocated.\"\n\n\"You mean fired.\"\n\n\"No one is ever fired from Goliath,\" said Cheese in a shocked tone. \"Cots to coffins. You've heard the adverts.\"\n\n\"So just moved on from bullying and terrifying and into lattes and mochas?\"\n\n\"Haven't you heard?\" said Cheese, frothing up some milk. \"Goliath has moved its corporate image away from the 'overbearing bully' and more towards 'peace, love and understanding.'\"\n\n\"I heard something about it last night,\" I replied, \"but you'll forgive me if I'm not convinced.\"\n\n\"Forgive is what Goliath does best, Miss Next. Faith is a difficult commodity to imbue\u2014and that's why violent and ruthless bullies like me have to be reallocated. Our corporate seer, Sister Bettina, foresaw a necessity for us to change to a faith-based corporate-management system, but the rules concerning new religions are quite strict\u2014we have to make changes to the corporation that are meaningful and genuine. That's why the old Goliath Internal Security Service is now known as Goliath Is Seriously Sorry\u2014you see, we even kept the old initials so we didn't have to divert money away from good causes to buy new headed notepaper.\"\n\n\"Or have to change them back when this charade has been played out.\"\n\n\"You know,\" said Cheese, waving a finger at me, \"you always were just that teensy-weensy bit cynical. You should learn to be more trusting.\"\n\n\"Trusting. Right. And you think the public will believe this touchy-feely, good-Lord-we're-sorry-forgive-us-please crap after four decades of rampant exploitation?\"\n\n\"Rampant exploitation?\" echoed Cheese in a dismayed tone. \"I don't think so. 'Proactive greater goodification' was more what we had in mind\u2014and it's five decades, not four. Are you sure your cousin Eddie isn't Danish?\"\n\n\"Definitely not.\"\n\nI thought about Brik Schitt-Hawse, the odious Goliath agent who'd had my husband eradicated in the first place. \"What about Schitt-Hawse? Where does he work these days?\"\n\n\"I think he moved into some post in Goliathopolis. I really don't move in those circles anymore. Mind you, we should all get together for a reunion and have a drink! What do you think?\"\n\n\"I think I'd rather have my husband back,\" I replied darkly.\n\n\"Oh!\" said Cheese, suddenly remembering just what particular unpleasantness he and Goliath had done to me. Then he added slowly, \"You must hate us!\"\n\n\"Just a lot.\"\n\n\"We can't have that. Repent is what Goliath does best. Have you applied for a Goliath Unfair Treatment Reversal?\"\n\nI stared at him and raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"Well,\" he began, \"Goliath has been allowing disgruntled citizens to apply to have reversed any unfair or unduly harsh measures taken against them\u2014sort of a big apology, really. If Goliath is to become the opiate of the masses, we must first atone for our sins. We like to right any wrongs and then have a good strong hug to show we really mean it.\"\n\n\"Hence your demotion to coffee-shop attendant.\"\n\n\"Exactly so!\"\n\n\"How do I apply?\"\n\n\"We've opened an Apologarium in Goliathopolis; you can take the free shuttle from Tarbuck Graviport. They'll tell you what to do.\"\n\n\"Harmonious peace, eh?\"\n\n\"Peace is what Goliath does best, Miss Next. Just fill out a form and see one of our trained apologists. I'm sure they can get your husband back in a jiffy!\"\n\nI took the mocha with extra cream and the latte and sat by the window, staring at the SpecOps Building in silence. Hamlet sensed my disquiet and busied himself on a list of things he wanted to tell Ophelia but didn't think he would be able to, then another list of things he should tell her but won't. Then a list of all the different lists he had written about Ophelia and, finally, a letter of appreciation to Sir John Gielgud.\n\n\"I'm going to sort out a few things,\" I said after a while. \"Don't move from here, and don't tell anyone who you really are. Understand?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Hamlet, Prince of... just kidding. I'm your cousin Eddie.\"\n\n\"Good. And you have cream on your nose.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Spec Ops",
                "text": "The Special Operations Network was the agency that looked after areas too specialized to be undertaken by the regular police. There were over thirty SpecOps divisions. SO-1 policed us all, SO-12 was the ChronoGuard, and SO-13 dealt with reengineered species. SO-17 was the Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operations and SO-32 the Horticultural Enforcement Agency. I had been SO-27, the Literary Detectives. Ten years authenticating Milton and tracking down forged Shakespeareana. After my work actually within fiction, it all seemed a bit tame. At Jurisfiction I could catch a horse as it bolted\u2014in the Literary Detectives, it was like wandering around a very large field armed with only a halter and a photograph of a carrot.\n\n[ Thursday Next, Private Journals ]\n\nI pushed open the door to the station and walked in. The building was shared with Swindon's regular force and seemed slightly shabbier than I remembered.The walls were the same dismal shade of green, and I could smell the faint aroma of boiled cabbage from the canteen on the second floor. In truth, my stay here in late '85 had not actually been that long\u2014most of my SpecOps career had been undertaken in London.\n\nI walked over to the main desk, expecting to see Sergeant Ross. He had been replaced by someone who seemed too young to be a police officer, much less a desk sergeant.\n\n\"I'm here to get my old job back,\" I announced.\n\n\"Which was?\"\n\n\"Literary Detective.\"\n\nHe chuckled. Unkindly, I thought.\n\n\"You'll need to see the commander,\" he replied without taking his gaze from the book he was scribbling in. \"Name?\"\n\n\"Thursday Next.\"\n\nA hush descended slowly on the room, beginning with those closest to me and moving outwards with my whispered name like ripples in a pool. Within a few moments I was being stared at in silence by at least two dozen assorted police and SpecOps officers, a couple of Gaskell impersonators and an ersatz Coleridge. I gave an embarrassed smile and looked from blank face to blank face, trying to figure out whether to run, or to fight, or what. My heart beat faster as a young officer quite close to me reached into his breast pocket and pulled out\u2014a notebook.\n\n\"Please,\" he said. \"I wonder if I might have your autograph?\"\n\n\"Well, no\u2014of course not.\"\n\nI breathed a sign of relief, and pretty soon I was having my back slapped and being congratulated on the whole Jane Eyre adventure. I'd forgotten the celebrity thing but also noticed that there were officers in the room who were interested in me for another reason\u2014SO-1, probably.\n\n\"I need to see Bowden Cable,\" I said to the desk sergeant, realizing that if anyone could help, it was my old partner. He smiled, picked up a phone, announced me and wrote out a visitor's pass, then told me to go to Interview Suite 16 on the third floor. I thanked my newfound acquaintances, made my way to the elevators and ascended to the third floor. When the lift doors rattled open I walked with a hurried step towards Room 16. Halfway there I was accosted by Bowden, who slid his arm in mine and steered me into an empty office.\n\n\"Bowden!\" I said happily. \"How are you?\"\n\nHe hadn't changed much in the past two years. Fastidiously neat, he was wearing the usual pinstripe suit but without jacket, so he must have been in a hurry to meet me.\n\n\"I'm good, Thursday, real good. But where the hell have you been?\"\n\n\"I've been\u2014\"\n\n\"You can tell me later. Thank the GSD I got to you first! We don't have a lot of time. Goodness! What have you done to your hair?\"\n\n\"Well, Joan of\u2014\"\n\n\"You can tell me later. Ever heard of Yorrick Kaine?\"\n\n\"Of course! I'm here to\u2014\"\n\n\"No time for explanations. He's not fond of you at all. He has a personal adviser named Ernst Stricknene who calls us every day to ask if you've returned. But this morning\u2014he didn't call!\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"So he knows you're back. Why is the Chancellor interested in you, anyway?\"\n\n\"Because he's fictional, and I want to take him back to the BookWorld where he belongs.\"\n\n\"That coming from anyone but you, I'd laugh. Is that really true?\"\n\n\"As true as I'm standing here.\"\n\n\"Well, your life is in danger, that's all I know. Ever heard of the assassin known as the\u2014\"\n\n\"Windowmaker?\"\n\n\"How did you know?\"\n\n\"I have my sources. Any idea who took out the contract?\"\n\n\"Well, they've killed sixty-seven people\u2014sixty-eight if they did Samuel Pring\u2014and they definitely did the number on Gordon Duff-Rolecks, whose death really only benefited\u2014\"\n\n\"Kaine.\"\n\n\"Exactly. You need to take particular care. More than that, we need you back as a full serving member of the Literary Detectives. We've got one or two problems that need ironing out in our department.\"\n\n\"So what do we do?\"\n\n\"Well, you're AWOL at best and a cheese smuggler at worst. So we've concocted a cover story of such bizarre complexity and outrageous daring that it can only be true. Here it is: in a parallel universe ruled entirely by lobsters, you\u2014\"\n\nBut at that moment, the door opened and a familiar figure walked in. I say familiar, but not exactly welcome. It was Commander Braxton Hicks, head of SpecOps here in Swindon.\n\nI could almost hear Bowden's heart fall\u2014mine, too.\n\nHicks still had a job because of me, but I didn't expect that to count for much. He was a company man, a bean counter\u2014more fond of his precious budget than anything else. He had never given me any quarter, and I didn't expect any now.\n\n\"Ah, found you!\" said the Commander in a serious tone. \"Miss Next. They told me you'd arrived. Been giving us the little runaround, haven't you?\"\n\n\"She's been\u2014\" began Bowden.\n\n\"I'm sure Miss Next can explain for herself, hmmm?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Good. Close the door behind you, eh?\"\n\nBowden gave a sickly smile and slinked out of the interview room.\n\nBraxton sat, opened my file and stroked his large mustache thoughtfully.\n\n\"Absent without leave for over two years, demoted eighteen months ago, nonreturn of SpecOps weapon, badge and ruler, pencil, eight pens and a dictionary.\"\n\n\"I can explain\u2014\"\n\n\"Then there is the question of the illegal cheese we found under a Hispano-Suiza at your picnic two and half years ago. I have sworn affidavits from everyone present that you were alone, met them up there, and that the cheese was yours.\"\n\n\"Yes, but\u2014\"\n\n\"And the traffic police said they saw you aiding and abetting a known serial dangerous driver on the A419 north of Swindon.\"\n\n\"That's\u2014\"\n\n\"But what's worse was that you lied to me systematically from the moment you came under my command. You said you would learn to play golf, and you never so much as picked up a putter.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"I have proof of your lies, too. I personally visited every single golf club, and not one of them had ever let someone of your description play golf there\u2014not even on the practice ranges. How do you explain that, eh?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\n\"You vanish from sight two and a half years ago. Not a word. Had to demote you. Star employee. Newspapers had a field day. Upset my swing for weeks.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry if it upset your golf, sir.\"\n\n\"You're rather in the soup, young lady.\"\n\nHe stared at me in exactly the sort of way my English teacher used to at school, and I had that sudden and dangerously overpowering urge to laugh out loud. Luckily, I didn't.\n\n\"What have you got to say for yourself?\"\n\n\"I can explain, if you'll let me.\"\n\n\"My girl, I've been trying to get you to tell me for five\u2014\"\n\nThe door opened again, and in walked Colonel Flanker of SO-1. He ran Internal Affairs, the SpecOps Police. About as welcome as worms and another old b\u00eate noire of mine. If Hicks was bad, Flanker was worse. Braxton only wanted me to do some sort of disciplinary nonsense\u2014Flanker would want to lock me up for good, after I had led them to my father.\n\n\"So!\" he said as soon as he saw me. \"It's true. Thank you, Braxton, my prisoner. Officer Jodrell, cuff her.\"\n\nJodrell walked over to me, took one of my wrists and placed it behind my back. There didn't seem to be much point of running; I could see at least three other SO-1 agents hovering near the door. I thought of Friday. If only Bowden had got to me a few minutes earlier!\n\n\"Just a minute, Mr. Flanker,\" said Braxton, closing my file. \"What do you think you're doing?\"\n\n\"Arresting Miss Next on charges of being AWOL, dereliction of duty and illegal possession of bootleg cheese\u2014for starters.\"\n\n\"She was on assignment for SO-23,\" said Braxton, staring at him evenly, \"undercover for the Cheese Squad.\"\n\nI couldn't believe my ears. Braxton lying? For me?\n\n\"The Cheese Squad?\" echoed Flanker with some surprise.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Braxton, who, once started, clearly found the subterfuge and reckless use of his authority somewhat exciting. \"She's been in deep cover in Wales for two years on a clandestine espionage operation monitoring illegal cheese factories. The cheeses with her fingerprints on them were part of an illegal cross-border shipment that she helped seize.\"\n\n\"Really?\" said Flanker, his confidence rattled.\n\n\"On my word. She's not under arrest, she's being debriefed. It seems that the operation was under the control of Joe Martlet. Full details will be available from him.\"\n\n\"You know as well as I do that Joe was shot dead by the Cheese Mafia two weeks ago.\"\n\n\"It was a tragedy,\" admitted Braxton. \"Fine man, Martlet\u2014one of the best. Could play a three under par with ease and never swore when he drove it into the rough\u2014and hence Miss Next's reappearance,\" he added without a pause. I'd never seen anyone lie so well before. Not even me. Not even Friday when I found he'd raided the cookie jar with Pickwick's help.\n\n\"Is this true?\" asked Flanker. \"Two years undercover in Wales?\"\n\n\"Ydy, ond dydy hi ddim wedi bwrw glaw pob dydd!\" I replied in my best Welsh.\n\nHe narrowed his eyes and stared at me for a moment without speaking.\n\n\"I was just reassigning her to the Literary Detectives when you walked in the door,\" added Braxton.\n\nFlanker looked at Braxton, then at me, then at Braxton again. He nodded to Jodrell, who released me.\n\n\"Very well. But I want a full report on my desk Tuesday.\"\n\n\"You can have it Friday, Mr. Flanker. I'm a very busy man.\"\n\nFlanker glared at me for a moment, then addressed Braxton: \"Since Miss Next is back with the Literary Detectives perhaps you would be good enough to appoint her the SO-14 Danish Book Seizure Liaison Officer. My boys are pretty good at the seizure stuff, but to be honest, none of them can tell a Mark Twain from a Samuel Clemens.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I want\u2014\" I began.\n\n\"I think you should be happy to assist me, Miss Next, don't you? A chance to make amends for past transgressions, yes?\"\n\nBraxton answered for me.\n\n\"I'm sure Miss Next would be happy to assist in any way she can, Mr. Flanker.\"\n\nFlanker gave a rare smile.\n\n\"Good. I'll have my divisional head of SO-14 get in touch with you.\" He turned to Braxton. \"But I'll still need that report on Tuesday.\"\n\n\"You'll get it,\" replied Braxton, \"...on Friday.\"\n\nFlanker glared at us both and without another word strode from the room, his minions at his heels. When the door closed I breathed a sigh of relief.\n\n\"Sir, I\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't want to hear anything more about it,\" replied Braxton sharply, gathering up his papers. \"I retire in two months' time and wanted to do something that made my whole pen-pushing, play-it-safe, shiny-arse career actually be worth it. I don't know what's going to happen to the LiteraTec division with all this insane Danish book-burning stuff, but what I do know is that people like you need to stay in it. Lead them on a merry goose chase, young lady\u2014I can keep Flanker wrapped up in red tape pretty much forever.\"\n\n\"Braxton,\" I said, giving him a spontaneous hug, \"you're a darling!\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" he said gruffly, and a tad embarrassed. \"But I do expect a little something in return.\"\n\n\"And that is?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said slowly, his eyes dropping to the ground, \"I wonder if you and I might\u2014\"\n\n\"Might what?\"\n\n\"Might... play golf on Sunday. A few holes.\" His eyes gleamed. \"Just for you to get the taste. Believe me, as soon as you grasp the handle of a golf club, you'll be hooked forever! Mrs. Hicks need never know. How about it?\"\n\n\"I'll be there at nine,\" I told him, laughing.\n\n\"You'll be a long time waiting\u2014I get there at eleven.\"\n\n\"Eleven it is.\"\n\nI shook his hand and walked out of the door a free woman. Sometimes help arrives from the last place you expect it."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Literary Detectives",
                "text": "\u2002Goliath Corporation Publishes Broad Denial\n\n\u2002The Goliath Corporation yesterday attempted to head off annoying and time-wasting speculation by issuing the broadest denial to date. \"Quite simply, we deny everything,\" said Mr. Toedee, the Goliath head PR operative, \"including any story that you might have heard now or in the future.\" Goliath's shock tactics reflected the growing unease with Goliath's unaccountability, especially over its advanced weapons division. \"It's very simple,\" continued Mr. Toedee. \"Until we have been elevated to a Faith when everything can be denied using the 'Goliath works in mysterious ways' excuse, we expressly deny possessing, or any involvement with, the Ovinator, Anti-Smite technology, Speedgrow tomatoes or Diatrymas running wild in the New Forest. In fact, we don't know what any of these things are.\" To cries of \"What is an Ovinator?\" and \"Tomatoes?\" Mr. Toedee declared the press conference over, blessed everyone and departed.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad on Sunday, July 3, 1988\n\nI found Bowden fretting in the LiteraTec office and related what had happened.\n\n\"Well, well,\" he said at last, \"I think old Braxton's got a crush.\"\n\n\"Oh, stop it!\"\n\nThe office we were sitting in resembled a large library in a country house somewhere. It was two stories high, with shelves crammed full of books covering every square inch of wall space. A spiral staircase led to a catwalk that ran around the wall, enabling access to the upper galleries. It was neat and methodical\u2014but somehow less busy than I remembered.\n\n\"Where is everyone?\"\n\n\"When you were here last, we had a staff of eight. Now it's only Victor, me, and Malin. All the rest were reassigned or laid off.\"\n\n\"All SpecOps departments?\"\n\nBowden laughed. \"Of course not! The bullyboys at SO-14 are alive and well and answer to Yorrick Kaine's every order. SO-1 hasn't seen many cuts, either\u2014\"\n\n\"Thursday, what a delightful surprise!\"\n\nIt was Victor Analogy, my old boss here at the Swindon LiteraTecs. He was an elderly gentlemen with large muttonchop sideburns and was dressed in a neat tweed suit and bow tie. He had taken off his jacket due to the summer heat but still managed to cut a very dashing figure, despite his advanced age.\n\n\"Victor, you're looking very well!\"\n\n\"And you, dear girl. What devilry have you been up to since last we met?\"\n\n\"It's a long story.\"\n\n\"The best sort. Let me guess: inside fiction?\"\n\n\"In one.\"\n\n\"What's it like?\"\n\n\"It's quite good, really. Confusing at times and subject to moments of extreme imaginative overload, but varied, and the weather's generally pretty good. Can we talk safely in here?\"\n\nVictor nodded, and we sat down. I told them about Jurisfiction, the Council of Genres and everything else that had happened to me during my tenure as Bellman. I even told them loosely about my involvement in The Solution of Edwin Drood, which amused them both no end.\n\n\"I've always wondered about that,\" mused Victor thoughtfully. \"But you're sure about Yorrick Kaine's being fictional?\"\n\nI told him that I was.\n\nHe stood up and walked to the window. \"You'll have a hard time getting close,\" said Victor thoughtfully. \"Does he know you're back?\"\n\n\"Definitely,\" said Bowden.\n\n\"Then you could be threatening his position as absolute ruler of England almost as much as President Formby is. I should keep on your toes, my girl. Is there anything we can do to help?\"\n\nI thought for a moment. \"There is, actually. We can't find which book Yorrick Kaine has escaped from. He could be using a false name, and we should contact any readers who might recognize the Chancellor's somewhat crazed antics from an obscure character they might have read somewhere. We at Jurisfiction have been going through the Great Library at our end, but we've still drawn a blank\u2014every character in fiction has been accounted for.\"\n\n\"We'll do what we can, Thursday. When can you rejoin us?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I answered slowly. \"I have to get my husband back. Remember I told you he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard?\"\n\n\"Yes. Lindane, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Landen. If it weren't for him, I'd probably stay inside fiction.\"\n\nWe all fell silent for a moment.\n\n\"So,\" I said cheerfully, \"what's been happening in the world of the LiteraTecs?\"\n\nVictor frowned.\n\n\"We can't hold with the book-burning lark of Kaine's. You heard about the order to start incinerating Danish literature?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Kierkegaard's works are being rounded up as we speak. I told Braxton that if we were asked to do any of it we'd resign.\"\n\n\"Oh-ah.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I like the way you said that,\" said Bowden.\n\nI winced. \"I agreed to be the SO-14 Danish Book Seizure Liaison Officer for Flanker\u2014sorry. I didn't have much of a choice.\"\n\n\"I see that as good news,\" put in Bowden. \"You can have them searching in places they won't find any Danish books. Just be careful. Flanker has been suspicious ever since we said we were too busy to find out who was planning to smuggle copies of The Concept of Dread to Wales for safekeeping.\"\n\nBowden laughed and lowered his voice. \"It wasn't an excuse,\" he chuckled. \"We actually were too busy\u2014gathering copies of banned books ready for transportation to Wales!\"\n\nVictor grimaced. \"I really don't want to hear this, Bowden. If you get caught, we'll all be for the high jump!\"\n\n\"Some things are worth going to jail for, Victor,\" replied Bowden in an even tone. \"As LiteraTecs we swore to uphold and defend the written word\u2014not indulge a crazed politician's worst paranoic fantasies.\"\n\n\"Just be careful.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" replied Bowden. \"It might come to nothing if we can't find a way to get the books out of England\u2014the Welsh border shouldn't be a problem since Wales aligned itself with Denmark. I don't suppose you have any ideas how to get across the English border post?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" I replied. \"How many copies of banned books do you want to smuggle anyway?\"\n\n\"About four truckloads.\"\n\nI whistled. Things\u2014like cheese, for instance\u2014were usually smuggled in to England. I didn't know how I'd get banned books out.\n\n\"I'll give it a shot. What else is going on?\"\n\n\"Usual stuff,\" replied Bowden. \"Faked Milton, Jonson, Swift... Montague and Capulet street gangs... someone discovered a first draft of The Mill on the Floss entitled The Sploshing of the Weirs. Also, the Daphne Farquitt Specialist Bookshop went up in smoke.\"\n\n\"Insurance scam?\"\n\n\"No\u2014probably anti-Farquitt protesters again.\"\n\nFarquitt had penned her first bodice-ripping novel in 1932 and had been writing pretty much the same one over and over again ever since. Loved by many and hated by a vitriolic minority, Farquitt was England's leading romantic novelist.\n\n\"There's also been a huge increase in the use of performance-enhancing drugs by novelists,\" added Victor. \"Last year's Booker speedwriting winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin. And only last week Handley Paige narrowly missed a twoyear writing ban for failing a random dope test.\"\n\n\"Sometimes I wonder if we don't have too many rules,\" murmured Victor pensively, and we all three stood in silence, nodding thoughtfully for a moment.\n\nBowden broke the silence. He produced a piece of stained paper wrapped in a cellophane evidence bag and passed it across to me. \"What do you make of this?\"\n\nI read it, not recognizing the words but recognizing the style. It was a sonnet by Shakespeare\u2014and a pretty good one, too.\n\n\"Shakespeare, but it's not Elizabethan\u2014the mention of Howdy Doody would seem to indicate that\u2014but it feels like his. What did the Verse Meter Analyzer say about it?\"\n\n\"Ninety-one percent probability of Will as the author,\" replied Victor.\n\n\"Where did you get it?\"\n\n\"Off the body of a down-and-out by the name of Shaxtper killed on Tuesday evening. We think someone has been cloning Shakespeares.\"\n\n\"Cloning Shakespeares? Are you sure? Couldn't it just be a ChronoGuard 'temporal kidnap' sort of thing?\"\n\n\"No. Blood analysis tells us they were all vaccinated at birth against rubella, mumps and so forth.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014you've got more than one?\"\n\n\"Three,\" said Bowden. \"There's been something of a spate recently.\"\n\n\"When can you come back to work, Thursday?\" asked Victor solemnly. \"As you can see, we need you.\"\n\nI paused for a moment. \"I'm going to need a week to get my life into gear first, sir. There are a few pressing matters that I have to attend to.\"\n\n\"What, may I ask,\" said Victor, \"is more important than Montague and Capulet street gangs, cloned Shakespeares, smuggling Kierkegaard out of the country and authors using banned substances?\"\n\n\"Finding reliable child care.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" said Victor. \"Congratulations! You must bring the little squawker in sometime. Mustn't she, Bowden?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\n\"Bit of a problem, that,\" murmured Victor. \"Can't have you dashing around the place only to have to get home at five to make junior's tea. Perhaps we'd better handle all this on our own.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said with an assertiveness that made them both jump. \"No, I'm coming back to work. I just need to sort a few things out. Does SpecOps have a nursery?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Ah. Well, I suspect I shall think of something. If I get my husband back, there won't be a problem. I'll call you tomorrow.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Well, we have to respect that, I suppose,\" said Victor solemnly. \"We're just glad that you're back. Aren't we, Bowden?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied my ex-partner, \"very glad indeed.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Time Waits for No Man",
                "text": "SpecOps-12 is the ChronoGuard, the governmental department dealing with temporal stability. It is their job to maintain the integrity of the Standard History Eventline (SHE) and police the timestream against any unauthorized changes or usage. Their most brilliant work is never noticed, as changes in the past always seem to have been that way. It is not unusual in any one ChronoGuard work shift for history to flex dramatically before settling back down to the SHE. Planet-destroying cataclysms generally happen twice a week but are carefully rerouted by skilled ChronoGuard operatives. The citizenry never notices a thing\u2014which is just as well, really.\n\nColonel Next, QT CG (nonexst.),\n\nUpstream/Downstream (unpublished)\n\nI wasn't done with SpecOps yet. I still needed to figure out what my father had told me on our first meeting. Finding a time traveler can be fraught with difficulties, but since I passed the ChronoGuard office at almost exactly three hours from our last meeting, it seemed the obvious place to look.\n\nI knocked at their door and, hearing no answer, walked in. When I was last working at SpecOps, we rarely heard anything from the mildly eccentric members of the time-traveling elite, but when you work in the time business, you don't waste it by nattering\u2014it's much too precious. My father always argued that time was far and away the most valuable commodity we had and that temporal profligacy should be a criminal offense\u2014which kind of makes watching Celebrity Kidney Swap or reading Daphne Farquitt novels a crime straightaway.\n\nThe room was empty and from appearances had been so for a number of years. Although, that's what it looked like when I first peered in\u2014a second later some painters were decorating it for the first time, the second after that it was derelict, then full, then empty again. It continued like this as I watched, the room jumping to various different stages in its history but never lingering for more than a few seconds on any one particular time. The ChronoGuard operatives were merely smears of light that moved and whirled about, momentarily visible to me as they jumped from past to future and future to past. If I had been a trained member of the ChronoGuard, perhaps I could have made more sense of it, but I wasn't, and couldn't.\n\nThere was one piece of furniture that remained unchanged whilst all about raced, moved and blurred in a never-ending jumble. It was a small table with an old candlestick telephone upon it. I stepped into the room and lifted the receiver.\n\n\"Hello?\"\n\n\"Hello,\" said a prerecorded voice. \"You're through to the Swindon ChronoGuard. To assist with your inquiry, we have a number of choices. If you have been the victim of temporal flexation, dial one. If you wish to report a temporal anomaly, dial two. If you feel you might have been involved in a timecrime...\"\n\nIt gave me several more choices, but nothing that told me how to contact my father. Finally, at the end of the long list, it gave me the option for meeting an operative, so I chose that. In an instant the blurred movement in the room stopped and everything fell into place\u2014but with furniture and fittings more suited to the sixties. There was an agent sitting at the desk. A tall and undeniably handsome man in the blue uniform of the ChronoGuard, emblazoned at the shoulder with the pips of a captain. As he himself had predicted, it was my father, three hours later and three hours younger. At first he didn't recognize me.\n\n\"Hello,\" he said. \"Can I help you?\"\n\n\"It's me, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Thursday?\" he echoed, eyes wide open as he stood up. \"My daughter Thursday?\"\n\nI nodded, and he moved closer.\n\n\"My goodness!\" he exclaimed, scrutinizing me with great interest. \"How wonderful to see you again! How long's it been? Six centuries?\"\n\n\"Two years,\" I told him, not wanting to confuse a confusing matter even further by mentioning our conversation this morning, \"but why are you working for the ChronoGuard again? I thought you went rogue?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, beckoning me closer and lowering his voice. \"There was a change of administration, and they said they would look very closely at my grievances if I'd come and work for them at the Historical Preservation Corps. I had to take a demotion, and I won't be reactualized until the paperwork is done, but it's working out quite well otherwise. Is your husband still eradicated?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so. Any chance...?\"\n\nHe winced. \"I'd love to, Sweetpea, but I've really got to watch my p's and q's for a few decades. Do you like the office?\"\n\nI looked at the sixties decor in the tiny room. \"Bit small, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes.\" My father grinned, clearly in an ebullient mood. \"And over seven hundred of us work here. Since we could not all be here at one time, we simply stretch the usage out across the timestream, like a long piece of elastic.\"\n\nHe stretched his arms wide as if to demonstrate.\n\n\"We call it a timeshare.\"\n\nHe rubbed his chin and looked around. \"What's the time out there?\"\n\n\"It's July fourteenth, 1988.\"\n\n\"That's a stroke of good fortune,\" he said, lowering his voice still further. \"It's a good job you've turned up. They've blamed me for the 1864 war between Germany and Denmark.\"\n\n\"Was it your fault?\"\n\n\"No\u2014it was that clot Bismarck. But it doesn't matter. They've transferred me to another division inside the Historical Preservation Corps for a second chance. My first assignment occurs in July 1988, so local knowledge right now is a godsend. Have you heard of anyone named Yorrick Kaine?\"\n\n\"He's Chancellor of England.\"\n\n\"That figures. Did St. Zvlkx return tomorrow?\"\n\n\"He might.\"\n\n\"Okay. Who won the SuperHoop?\"\n\n\"That's Saturday week,\" I explained. \"It hasn't happened yet.\"\n\n\"Not strictly true, Sweetpea. Everything that we do actually happened a long, long time ago\u2014even this conversation. The future is already there. The pioneers that plowed the first furrows of history into virgin time line died eons ago\u2014all we do now is try and keep it pretty much the way it should be. Have you heard of someone named Winston Churchill, by the way?\"\n\nI thought for a moment. \"He was an English statesman who seriously blotted his copybook in the Great War, then was run over by a cab and killed in 1932.\"\n\n\"So no one of any consequence?\"\n\n\"Not really. Why?\"\n\n\"Ahh, no reason. Just a little pet theory of mine. Anyway, everything has already happened\u2014if it hadn't, there'd be no need for people like me. But things go wrong. In the normal course of events, time flies back and forth from the end of and then until the beginning of now like a shuttle on a loom, weaving the threads of history together. If it encounters an obstacle, then it might just flex slightly and no change will be noticed. But if that obstacle is big enough\u2014and Kaine is plenty big enough, believe me\u2014then history will veer off at a tangent. And that's when we have to sort it out. I've been transferred to the Armageddon Avoidance Division, and we've got an apocalyptic disaster of life-extinguishing capability Level III heading your way.\"\n\nThere was a moment's silence.\n\n\"Does your mother know you wear your hair this short?\"\n\n\"Is it meant to happen?\"\n\n\"Your hair?\"\n\n\"No, the Armageddon.\"\n\n\"Not at all. This one has an Ultimate Likelihood Index rating of only twenty-two percent: 'not very likely.'\"\n\n\"Nothing like that incident with the Dream Topping, then,\" I observed.\n\n\"What incident?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Right. Well, since I'm on probation\u2014sort of\u2014they thought they'd start me on the small stuff.\"\n\n\"I still don't understand.\"\n\n\"It's simple,\" began my father. \"Two days after the SuperHoop, President Formby will die of natural causes. The following day Yorrick Kaine proclaims himself Dictator of England. Two weeks after that, following the traditional suspension of the press and summary executions of former associates, Kaine will declare war on Wales. Two days after a prolonged tank battle on the Welsh Marches, the United Clans of Scotland launch an attack on Berwick-on-Tweed. In a fit of pique, Kaine carpet-bombs Glasgow, and the Swedish Empire enters on Scotland's side. Russia joins Kaine after their colonial outpost of Fetlar is sacked\u2014and the war moves to mainland Europe. It soon escalates to an apocalyptic shoot-out between the African and American superpowers. In less than three months, the earth will be nothing but a steaming radioactive cinder. Of course,\" he added, \"that is a worst-case scenario. It'll probably never happen, and if you and I do our jobs properly, it won't.\"\n\n\"Can't you just kill Kaine?\"\n\n\"Not that easy. Time is the glue of the cosmos, Sweetpea, and it has to be eased apart\u2014you'd be surprised how strongly the Historical Time Line tends to look after despots. Why do you think dictators like Pol Pot, Bokassa and Idi Amin live such long lives and people like Mozart, Jim Henson and Mother Teresa are plucked from us when relatively young?\"\n\n\"I don't think Mother Teresa could be thought of as young.\"\n\n\"On the contrary\u2014she was meant to live until a hundred and twenty-eight.\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Okay, Dad\u2014so what's the plan?\"\n\n\"Right. It's incredibly complex and also unbelievably simple. To stop Kaine gaining power, we have to seriously disrupt his sponsor, the Goliath Corporation. Without them his power is zero. To do that we need to ensure... that Swindon wins the SuperHoop.\"\n\n\"How is that going to work?\"\n\n\"It's a causality thing. Small events have large consequences. You'll see.\"\n\n\"No, I mean, how am I going to get Swindon to win? Apart from Kapok and Aubrey Jambe and perhaps 'Biffo' Mandible, the players are... well, crap\u2014not to put too fine a point on it. Especially when you compare them to their SuperHoop opponents, the Reading Whackers.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you'll think of something, but keep an eye on Kapok\u2014they'll try to get to him first. You'll have to do this on your own, Sweetpea. I've got my own problems. It seems Nelson's getting killed at the beginning of the Battle of Trafalgar wasn't French History Revisionists after all. I talked to someone I know over at the ChronoGendarmerie, and they thought it amusing that the Revisionists should even attempt such a thing; advanced timestream models with Napoleon as emperor of all Europe bode very poorly for France\u2014they're much better in the long run with things as they are meant to be.\"\n\n\"So who is killing Nelson?\"\n\n\"Well, it's Nelson himself. Don't ask me why. Now, what did you want to see me about?\"\n\nI had to think carefully. \"Well... nothing, really. I met you three hours ago and you said we'd spoken, so I came here to find you, so then I suppose I should ask you to figure out who's trying to kill me this morning, which you wouldn't have been able to do if I hadn't met you this morning, and I only met you this morning because I've just told you right now I might be assassinated....\"\n\nDad laughed. \"It's a bit like having a tumble dryer in your head, Sweetpea. Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thening or nowing. But I'd better check this assassin out, just in case.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, more confused than ever, \"I suppose you should.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Eradications Anonymous",
                "text": "[ Goliath Backs Kaine and Whig Party ]\n\n\u2002The Goliath Corporation yesterday renewed its support for Chancellor Kaine at a party to honor England's leader. At a glittering dinner attended by over five hundred heads of commerce and governmental departments, Goliath pledged to continue its support of the Chancellor. In a reply speech, Mr. Kaine gratefully acknowledged their support and announced a package of measures designed to assist Goliath in the difficult yet highly desirable change to its faith-based corporate status, as well as funding for several ongoing weapons programs, details of which have been classified.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 13, 1988\n\nHamlet and I arrived home to find a TV news crew from Swindon-5 waiting for me outside the house.\n\n\"Miss Next,\" said the reporter. \"Can you tell us where you've been these past two years?\"\n\n\"No comment.\"\n\n\"You can interview me,\" said Hamlet, realizing he was something of a celebrity out here.\n\n\"And who are you?\" asked the reporter, mystified.\n\nI stared at him and his face fell.\n\nI'm... I'm... her cousin Eddie.\"\n\n\"Well, Cousin Eddie, can you tell us where Miss Next has been for the past two years?\"\n\n\"No comment.\"\n\nAnd we walked up the garden path to the front door.\n\n\"Where have you been?\" demanded my mother as we walked in the door.\n\n\"Sorry I'm late, Mum\u2014how's the little chap?\"\n\n\"Tiring. He says that his aunt Mel is a gorilla who can peel bananas with her feet while hanging from the light fixtures.\"\n\n\"He talked?\"\n\nFriday was using the time-honored international child signal to be picked up\u2014raising his arms in the air\u2014and when I did so, gave me a wet kiss and started to chatter away unintelligibly.\n\n\"Well, he didn't exactly say as much,\" admitted Mum, \"but he drew me a picture of Aunt Mel, which is pretty conclusive.\"\n\n\"Aunt Mel a gorilla?\" I laughed, looking at the picture, which was unequivocally of... well, a gorilla. \"Quite an imagination, hasn't he?\"\n\n\"I'd say. I found him standing on the sideboard ready to swing from the curtains. When I told him it wasn't allowed, he pointed to the picture of Aunt Mel, which I took to mean that she used to let him.\"\n\n\"Does she, now? I mean, did he, now?\"\n\nPickwick walked in looking very disgruntled and wearing a bonnet made of cardboard and held together with sticky tape.\n\n\"Pickwick's a very tolerant playmate,\" said my mother, who was obviously not that skilled at reading dodo expressions.\n\n\"I really need to get him into a play group. Did you change his nappy?\"\n\n\"Three times. It just goes straight through, doesn't it?\"\n\nI sniffed at the leg of his dungarees. \"Yup. Straight through.\"\n\n\"Well, I've got my auto-body work group to attend to,\" she said, putting on her hat and taking her handbag and welding goggles from the peg, \"but you'd better sort out some more reliable child care, my dear. I can do the odd hour here and there, but not whole days\u2014and I certainly don't want to do any more nappies.\"\n\n\"Do you think Lady Hamilton would look after him?\"\n\n\"It's possible,\" said my mother in the sort of voice that means the reverse. \"You could always ask.\"\n\nShe opened the door and was plinked at angrily by Alan, who was in a bit of a bad mood and was pulling up flowers in the front garden. With unbelievable speed she grabbed him by the neck and, with a lot of angry plinking and scrabbling, deposited him unceremoniously inside the potting shed and locked the door.\n\n\"Miserable bird!\" said my mother, giving me and Friday a kiss. \"Have I got my purse?\"\n\n\"It's in your bag.\"\n\n\"Am I wearing my hat?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nShe smiled, told me that Bismarck was not to be disturbed and that I mustn't buy anything from a door-to-door salesman unless it was truly a bargain and was gone.\n\nI changed Friday, then let him toddle off to find something to do. I made a cup of tea for myself and Hamlet, who had switched on the TV and was watching MOLE-TV 's Shakespeare channel. I sat on the sofa and stared out the windows into the garden. It had been destroyed by a mammoth when I was last here, and I noted that my mother had replanted it with plants that are not very palatable to the Proboscidea tongue\u2014quite wise, considering the migrations. As I watched, Pickwick waddled past, possibly wondering where Alan had gone. For the day's work, I had done very little. I was still a Literary Detective, but twenty thousand pounds in debt and no nearer getting Landen back.\n\nMy mother returned at about eight, and the first of her Eradications Anonymous friends began to appear at nine. There were ten of them, and they started to chatter about what they described as their \"lost ones\" as soon as they got through the door. Emma Hamilton and I weren't alone in having a husband with an existence problem. But although it seemed my Landen and Emma's Horatio were strong in our memories, many people were not so lucky. Some had only vague feelings about someone they felt who should be there but wasn't. To be honest, I really didn't want to be here, but I had promised my mother and I was living in her house, so that was the end of it.\n\n\"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,\" said my mother, clapping her hands, \"and if you'd all like to take a seat, we can allow this meeting to begin.\"\n\nEveryone sat down, tea and Battenberg cake in hand, and looked expectant.\n\n\"Firstly I would like to welcome a new member to the group. As you know, my daughter has been away for a couple of years\u2014not in prison, I'd like to make that clear!\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mother,\" I murmured under my breath as there was polite laughter from the group, who instantly assumed that's exactly where I had been.\n\n\"And she has kindly agreed to join our group and say a few words. Thursday?\"\n\nI took a deep breath, stood up and said quickly, \"Hello, everyone. My name's Thursday Next, and my husband doesn't exist.\"\n\nThere was applause at this, and someone said, \"Way to go, Thursday,\" but I couldn't think of anything to add, nor wanted to, so sat down again. There was silence as everyone stared at me, politely waiting for me to carry on.\n\n\"That's it. End of story.\"\n\n\"I'll drink to that!\" said Emma, gazing forlornly at the locked drinks cabinet.\n\n\"You're very brave,\" said Mrs. Beatty, who was sitting next to me. She patted my hand in a kindly manner. \"What was his name?\"\n\n\"Landen. Landen Parke-Laine. He was murdered by the ChronoGuard in 1947. I'm going to the Goliath Apologarium tomorrow to try to get his eradication reversed.\"\n\nThere was a murmuring.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"You must understand,\" said a tall and painfully thin man who up until now had remained silent, \"that for you to progress in this group, you must begin to accept that this is a problem of the memory\u2014there is no Landen; you just think there is.\"\n\n\"You mean to tell me, Mr. Holmes, that by a scientific oddity we are in the wrong book?\"\n\n\"It's very dry in here, isn't it?\" muttered Emma unsubtly, still staring at the drinks cabinet.\n\n\"I was like you once,\" said Mrs. Beatty, who had stopped patting my hand and returned to her knitting. \"I had a wonderful life with Edgar, and then one morning I wake up in a different house with Gerald lying next to me. He didn't believe me when I explained the problem, and I was on medication for ten years until I came here. It is only now, in the company of your good selves, am I coming to the realization that it is merely a malady of the head.\"\n\nI was horrified. \"Mother?\"\n\n\"It's something that we must try and face, my dear.\"\n\n\"But Dad visits you, doesn't he?\"\n\n\"Well, I believe he does,\" she said, thinking hard, \"but of course when he's gone, it's only a memory. There isn't any real proof that he ever existed.\"\n\n\"What about me? And Joffy? Or even Anton? How were we born without Dad?\"\n\nShe shrugged at the impossibility of the paradox. \"Perhaps it was, after all,\" sighed my mother, \"youthful indiscretions that I have expunged from my mind.\"\n\n\"And Emma? And Herr Bismarck? How do you explain them being here?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said my mother, thinking hard, \"I'm sure there's a rational explanation for it... somewhere.\"\n\n\"Is this what this group teaches you?\" I replied angrily. \"To deny the memories of your loved ones?\"\n\nI looked around at the gathering, who had, it seemed, given up in the face of the hopeless paradox that they lived every minute of their lives. I opened my mouth to try to describe eloquently just how I knew that Landen had once been married to me when I realized I was wasting my time. There was nothing, but nothing, to suggest that it was anything other than in my mind. I sighed. To be truthful, it was in my mind. It hadn't happened. I just had memories of how it might have turned out. The tall, thin man, the realist, was beginning to convince everyone they were not victims of a timeslip, but delusional.\n\n\"You want proof\u2014\"\n\nI was interrupted by an excited knock at the front door. Whoever it was didn't waste any time; she just walked straight into the house and into the front room. It was a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who was holding the hand of a confused and acutely embarrassed-looking man.\n\n\"Hello, group!\" she said happily. \"It's Ralph! I got him back!\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Emma. \"This calls for a celebration!\" Everyone ignored her.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said my mother, \"have you got the right house? Or the right self-help group?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" she reasserted. \"It's Julie, Julie Aseizer. I've been coming to this group every week for the past three years!\"\n\nThere was silence in the group. All you could hear was the quiet click of Mrs. Beatty's knitting needles.\n\n\"Well, I haven't seen you,\" announced the tall, thin man. He looked around at the group. \"Does anyone recognize this person?\"\n\nThe group shook their heads blankly.\n\n\"I expect you think this is really funny, don't you?\" said the thin man angrily. \"This is a self-help group for people with severe memory aberrations, and I really don't think it is either amusing or constructive for pranksters to make fun of us! Now, please leave!\"\n\nShe stood for a moment, biting her lip, but it was her husband who spoke.\n\n\"Come on, darling, I'm taking you home.\"\n\n\"But wait!\" she said. \"Now he's back, everything is as it was, and I wouldn't have needed to come to your group, so I didn't\u2014yet I remember...\"\n\nHer voice trailed off, and her husband gave her a hug as she started to sob. He led her out, apologizing profusely all the while.\n\nAs soon as they had gone, the thin man sat down indignantly. \"A sorry state of affairs!\" he grumbled.\n\n\"Everyone thinks it's funny to do that old joke,\" added Mrs. Beatty. \"That's the second time this month.\"\n\n\"It gave me a powerful thirst,\" added Emma. \"Anyone else?\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" I suggested, \"they should start a self-help group for themselves\u2014they could call it Eradications Anonymous Anonymous.\"\n\nNo one thought it was funny, and I hid a smile. Perhaps there would be a chance for me and Landen after all.\n\nI didn't contribute much to the group after that, and indeed the conversation soon threaded away from eradications and onto more mundane matters, such as the latest crop of TV shows that seemed to have flourished in my absence. Celebrity Name That Fruit! hosted by Frankie Saveloy was a ratings topper these days, as was Toasters from Hell and You've Been Stapled!, a collection of England's funniest stationery incidents. Emma had given up all attempts at subtlety by now and was prying the lock off the drinks cabinet with a screwdriver when Friday wailed one of those ultrasonic cries that only parents can hear\u2014makes you understand how sheep can know who's lamb is whose\u2014and I mercifully excused myself. He was standing up in his cot rattling the bars, so I took him out and read to him until we were both fast asleep."
            },
            {
                "title": "Mrs. Tiggywinkle",
                "text": "[ Kierkegaard Book-Burning Ceremony Proves Danish Philosopher's Unpopularity ]\n\n\u2002Chancellor Yorrick Kaine last night officiated at the first burning of Danish literature with the incineration of eight copies of Fear and Trembling, a quantity that fell far short of the expected \"thirty or forty tons.\" When asked to comment on the apparent lack of enthusiasm among the public to torch their Danish philosophy, Kaine explained that \"Kierkegaard is clearly less popular than we thought, and rightly so\u2014next stop Hans Christian Andersen!\" Kierkegaard himself was unavailable for comment, having inconsiderately allowed himself to be dead for a number of years.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 14, 1988\n\nI was dreaming that a large chainsaw-wielding elephant was sitting on me when I awoke at two in the morning. I was still fully dressed, with a snoring Friday fast asleep on my chest. I put him back in his cot and turned the bedside lamp to the wall to soften the light. My mother, for reasons known only to herself, had kept my bedroom pretty much as it was from the time I had left home. It was nostalgic, but also deeply disturbing, to see just what had interested me in my late teens. It seemed like it had been boys, music, Jane Austen and law enforcement, but not particularly in that order.\n\nI undressed and slipped on a long T-shirt and stared at Friday's sleeping form, his lips making gentle sucky motions.\n\n\"Pssst!\" said a voice close at hand. I turned. There, in the semidark, was a very large hedgehog dressed in a pinafore and bonnet. She was keeping a close lookout at the door and, after giving me a wan smile, crept to the window and peeked out.\n\n\"Whoa!\" she breathed in wonderment. \"Streetlights are orange. Never would have thought that!\"\n\n\"Mrs. Tiggywinkle,\" I said, \"I've only been gone two days!\"\n\n\"Sorry to bother you,\" she said, curtsying quickly and absently folding my shirt, which I had tossed over a chair back, \"but there are one or two things going on that I thought you should know about\u2014and you did say that if I had any questions, to ask.\"\n\n\"Okay\u2014but not here; we'll wake Friday.\"\n\nSo we crept downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled down the blinds before turning the lights on, as a six-foot hedgehog in a bonnet might have caused a few eyebrows to be raised in the neighborhood\u2014no one wore bonnets in Swindon these days.\n\nI offered Mrs. Tiggywinkle a seat at the table. Although she, Emperor Zhark and Bradshaw had been put in charge of running Jurisfiction in my absence, none of them had the leadership skills necessary to do the job on their own. And while the Council of Genres refused to concede that my absence was anything but \"compassionate leave,\" a new Bellman was yet to be elected in my place.\n\n\"So what's up?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, Miss Next!\" she wailed, her spines bristling with vexation. \"Please come back!\"\n\n\"I have things to deal with out here,\" I explained. \"You all know that!\"\n\n\"I know,\" she sighed, \"but Emperor Zhark threw a tantrum when I suggested he spend a little less time conquering the universe and a little more time at Jurisfiction. The Red Queen won't do anything post-1867, and Vernham Deane is tied up with the latest Daphne Farquitt novel. Commander Bradshaw does his own thing, which leaves me in charge\u2014and someone left a saucer of bread and milk on my desk this morning.\"\n\n\"It was probably just a joke.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm not laughing,\" replied Mrs. Tiggywinkle indignantly.\n\n\"By the way,\" I said as a thought suddenly struck me, \"did you find out which book Yorrick Kaine escaped from?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. The Cat is searching unpublished novels in the Well of Lost Plots at the moment, but it might take a little time. You know how chaotic things are down there.\"\n\n\"Only too well.\" I sighed, thinking about my old home in unpublished fiction with a mixture of fondness and relief. The Well was where books are actually constructed, where plotsmiths create the stories that authors think they write. You can buy plot devices at discount rates and verbs by the pint. An odd place, to be sure. \"Okay,\" I said finally, \"you'd better tell me what's going on.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Mrs. Tiggywinkle, counting the points out on her claw, \"this morning a rumor of potential change in the copyright laws swept through the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"I don't know how these rumors get started,\" I replied wearily. \"Was there any truth in it?\"\n\n\"Not in the least.\"\n\nThis was a contentious subject to the residents of the BookWorld. The jump to copyright-free Public Domain Status had always been a fearful prospect for a book character, and even with support groups and training courses to soften the blow, the Narrative Menopause could take some getting used to. The problem is that copyright laws tend to vary around the world, and sometimes characters are in public domain in one market and not in another, which is confusing. Then there is the possibility that the law might change and characters who had adjusted themselves to a Public Domain Status would find themselves in copyright again, or vice versa. Unrest in the BookWorld in these matters is palpable; it only takes a small spark to set off a riot.\n\n\"So all was well?\"\n\n\"Pretty much.\"\n\n\"Good. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Starbucks wants to open another coffee shop in the Hardy Boys series.\"\n\n\"Another one?\" I asked with some surprise. \"There's already sixteen. How much coffee do they think they can drink? Tell them they can open another in Mrs. Dalloway and two more in The Age of Reason. After that, no more. What else?\"\n\n\"The Tailor of Gloucester needs three yards of cherry-colored silk to finish the Mayor's embroidered coat\u2014but he's got a cold and can't go out.\"\n\n\"Who are we? Interlink? Tell him to send his cat, Simpkin.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"You didn't come all this way to tell me bad news about Kaine, copyright panics and cherry-colored twist, now, did you?\"\n\nShe looked at me and sighed. \"There's a bit of a problem with Hamlet.\"\n\n\"I know. But he's doing a favor for my mother at the moment. I'll send him back in a few days.\"\n\n\"Um,\" replied the hedgehog nervously. \"It's a bit more complex than that. I think it might be a good idea if you kept him out here for a bit longer.\"\n\n\"What's going on?\" I asked suspiciously.\n\n\"It wasn't my fault!\" she burst out, reaching for her pocket handkerchief. \"I thought the Internal Plot Adjustment request was to sort out the seasonal anomalies! All that death in the orchard, then winter, then flowers\u2014\"\n\n\"What happened?\" I asked again.\n\nMrs. Tiggywinkle looked miserable.\n\n\"Well, you know there has been much grumbling unrest within Hamlet ever since Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got their own play?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Well, just after you left, Ophelia attempted a coup de \u00e9tat in Hamlet's absence. She imported a B-6 Hamlet from Lamb's Shakespeare and convinced him to reenact some of the key scenes with a pro-Ophelia bias.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Mrs. Tiggywinkle, \"they retitled it: The Tragedy of the Fair Ophelia, Driven Mad by the Callous Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.\"\n\n\"She's always up to something, isn't she? I'll give her 'Hey nonny, nonny.' Tell her to get back into line or we'll slap a Class II Fiction Infraction on her so fast it will make her head spin.\"\n\n\"We tried that, but Laertes returned from Paris and lent his voice to the revolution. Together they made some more changes, and it is now called The Tragedy of the Noble Laertes, Who Avenges His Sister, the Fair Ophelia, Driven Mad by the Callous and Murderous Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.\"\n\nI ran my fingers through what remained of my hair. \"So... arrest them both?\"\n\n\"Too late. Their father, Polonius, was in a 'have a go' mood and joined in. He also made changes, and together they renamed it: The Tragedy of the Very Witty and Not Remotely Boring Polonius, Father of the Noble Laertes, Who Avenges His Fair Sister, Ophelia, Driven Mad by the Callous, Murderous and Outrageously Disrespectful Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.\"\n\n\"What was it like?\"\n\n\"With Polonius? Very... wordy. We could replace them all,\" carried on Mrs. Tiggywinkle, \"but changing so many major players in one swoop might cause irreparable damage. The last thing we need right now is Hamlet coming back and sticking his oar in\u2014you know how mad he gets when anybody even suggests a word change.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said, \"here's the plan. This is all happening in the 1623 folio edition, yes?\"\n\nMrs. Tiggywinkle nodded her head.\n\n\"Okay. Move Hamlet\u2014or whatever it is called at present\u2014to a disused Storycode Engine and fire up The Penguin Modern Hamlet so that is the one everyone in the Outland will read. It will give us some breathing space without anyone seeing the Polonized version. It won't be at its best, but it'll have to do. Horatio must still be on Hamlet's side, surely?\"\n\n\"Most definitely.\"\n\n\"Then deputize him to Jurisfiction and try to get him to convince the Polonius family to attend an arbitration session. Keep me posted. I'll try to keep Hamlet amused out here.\"\n\nShe made a note.\n\n\"Is that all?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not unless you need some washing done.\"\n\n\"I have a mother who will fight you for that. Now, please, please, Mrs. Tiggywinkle, you must leave me to sort out Kaine and get my husband back!\"\n\n\"You're right,\" she said after a short pause. \"We're going to handle this all on our own.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"Well... good night, then.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the hedgehog, \"good night.\"\n\nShe stood there on the kitchen linoleum, tapping her paws together and staring at the ceiling.\n\n\"Tiggy, what is it?\"\n\n\"It's Mr. Tiggywinkle!\" she burst out at last. \"He came home late last night in a state of shock and smelling of car exhaust, and I'm so worried!\"\n\nIt was about three in the morning when I was finally left alone with my thoughts, a sleeping son and a pocket handkerchief drenched with hedgehog tears."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Greatness of St. Zvlkx",
                "text": "[ Goliath Corporation Implements \"Distraction Reduction\" Program ]\n\n\u2002Accusations were growing yesterday that the corporation's drive to increase productivity would result in the loss of civil liberties. This was strongly denied by Goliath, who commented, \"We don't see bricking up the million or so windows in our ten thousand work facilities as anything less than a positive step forward. By removing windows we aim to help the worker who might be suffering from interestin-work deficit disorder to higher levels of self-help and greater productivity. We also think that it will save thousands of gallons of Windex and the estimated six hundred deaths suffered by window cleaners every year.\" Accusations that the corporation was \"nothing short of a bunch of bullies\" were met with a three-hundred-page writ for defamation, delivered personally by very big men with tattoos.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad on Sunday, July 3, 1988\n\nFrom humble beginnings in 1289 to a fiery end in the autumn of 1536, the towering beauty of the Great Cathedral of Swindon was once the equal of Canterbury or York, but no longer. Built over at least four times since then, the site of the cathedral was now occupied by a temple of another kind: Tesco's. Where monks once moved silently to prayer beneath vaulted cloisters, you can now buy Lola Vavoom workout videos, and where the exquisite stained-glass east window once brought forth tears from the coldest heart, there is now a refrigerated display boasting five different types of smoked sausage.\n\nI took my seat and placed Friday on my lap, and he wriggled while I looked around. The car park was full of eager spectators. Some, like myself, were sitting on the especially constructed tiered seating, the rest standing behind barriers on the asphalt. But everyone, sitting or standing, was facing a small fenced-off area sandwiched between the shopping-trolley return point and the ATM machines. This small area contained a weathered arched doorway, the only visible remnant of Swindon's once great monastic settlement.\n\n\"How are you doing?\" asked Joffy, who, as well as being a minister for the GSD and several other smaller denominations, was also head of the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx.\n\n\"Fine. Isn't that Lydia Startright?\"\n\nI was pointing at a well-dressed female reporter readying herself for a broadcast.\n\n\"She's about to interview me. How do I look?\"\n\n\"Very... ecclesiastical.\"\n\n\"Good. Excuse me.\"\n\nHe straightened his dog collar and walked over to join Lydia. She was standing next to her producer, a small and curiously unappealing man who was so unoriginal of thought that he still considered it cool and desirable for people in the media to wear black.\n\n\"What time is old Zvlkxy due to appear?\" the producer asked Joffy.\n\n\"In about five minutes.\"\n\n\"Good. Lyds, we better go live.\"\n\nLydia composed herself, took one more look at her notes, awaited the countin of the producer, gave a welcoming smile and began.\n\n\"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is Lydia Startright for Toad News Network, reporting live from Swindon. In under five minutes, St. Zvlkx, the obscure and sometimes controversial thirteenth-century saint, is due to be resurrected here, live on regional TV.\"\n\nShe turned to indicate the weathered pieces of stone, previously ignored by thousands of shoppers but now the center of attention.\n\n\"On this spot once stood the towering Cathedral of Swindon, founded by St. Zvlkx in the thirteenth century. Where the wet fish counter now stands was where St. Zvlkx penned his Book of Revealments containing seven sets of prophecies, five of which have already come true. To help us through the quagmire of claims and counterclaims I have with me the Very Irreverent Joffy Next, head of the church of the Global Standard Deity here in Swindon, speaker at the the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx and something of an expert in things Zvlkxian. Hello, Joffy, welcome to the show.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Lydia,\" said Joffy. \"We're all big fans of yours at the GSD.\"\n\n\"Thank you. So tell me, what exactly are the revealments?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he began, \"details are understandably vague, but St. Zvlkx wrote a number of predictions in a small book before he vanished in a 'cleansing fire' in 1292. An incomplete copy of the revealments is in the Swindon City Library, but unlike the work of most of the other seers, who make vague and sweeping generalizations that are open to interpretation, St. Zvlkx's predictions are refreshingly specific.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you could give us an example?\"\n\n\"Of course. Part of Zvlkx's Revealment the First tells us that 'a lowly butcher's son from the town of Ipswich will rise to be Lord Chancellor. His name shall be Tommy Wolsey, and he will be inaugurated the day before Christmas, and shall get only one present, not two, as should be his right....'\"\n\n\"That's uncannily accurate!\" breathed Lydia.\n\n\"Indeed\u2014existing letters from Cardinal Wolsey indicate most strongly that he was 'vexed and annoyed' at having to make do with only one present, something which he often spoke about and might have contributed, many years later, to his failure to persuade the Pope to grant Henry VIII an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.\"\n\n\"Remarkable,\" said Lydia. \"What else?\"\n\n\"Well,\" continued Joffy, \"Zvlkx's Revealment the Second told us that 'it shall be known as the \"Sail of the Century\"\u2014an armada of over a hundred ships smelling of paella shall cross the Channel. Fire and wind will conspire to destroy them, England shall remain free.'\"\n\n\"Not quite so good,\" said Lydia.\n\n\"I agree,\" replied Joffy. \"Paella wasn't invented until after the Spanish Armada. There are the odd mistakes, but even so, his accuracy is astonishing. Not only do his revealments include names and dates but also, on one occasion, a reliable phone number for a good time in Leeds. By the end of the sixteenth century, St. Zvlkx had been afforded that rare hallmark of unbridled Elizabethan success\u2014the commemorative plate. By the time of his next revealment a century and a half later, his supporters and followers had dwindled to only a handful. But when it arrived, this Revealment the Third catapulted Zvlkx back into the world's headlines: 'In seventeen hundred and seventy-six, a George King numbered three will lose his mind, his largest colony, and his socks. The colony would grow to be the greatest power in the world, but his mind and his socks will stay lost.'\"\n\n\"And the fourth?\"\n\n\"'A man named after a form of waterproof shoe shall trounce a short Frenchman in Belgium.'\"\n\n\"Clearly Waterloo\u2014and the fifth?\"\n\n\"'The evil yet nattily dressed aggressors known as Nasis, whose fear has polarized the nation, will be ejected from these islands by\u2014and I know this sounds really weird\u2014the colony that was mentioned in prediction three. And Denis Compton will score 3,816 runs for Middlesex in a single season.'\"\n\n\"Uncanny,\" murmured Lydia. \"How would a thirteenth-century monk know that Compton batted for Middlesex?\"\n\n\"He was, and indeed might be again, the greatest of seers,\" replied Joffy.\n\n\"We know that his Revealment the Sixth was a prediction of his own second coming, but it is the sports fans of Swindon who will really be bowled over by his Revealment the Seventh.\"\n\n\"Exactly so,\" replied Joffy. \"According to the incomplete Codex Zvlkxus, it shall be 'There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of...' There is more, but it's been lost. We can ask him about it when he reappears.\"\n\n\"Fascinating stuff, Irrev. Next! Just one question. Where is he?\"\n\nI looked at my watch as Friday stood on my lap and stared that unnerving sort of twoyear-old stare at the couple behind us. St. Zvlkx was already three minutes late, and I saw Joffy bite his lip nervously. They had made much of the Great Man's predictions, and for him not to turn up would be just plain embarrassing\u2014not to mention costly. Joffy had spent a great deal of Mum's savings learning Old English at the local adult-education center.\n\n\"Tell me, Irrev. Next,\" continued Lydia, trying to pad out the interview. \"I understand that the Toast Marketing Board has secured a sponsorship deal with St. Zvlkx?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" replied Joffy. \"We at the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx have secured on his behalf a very favorable deal with Toast, who wanted to have exclusive rights to his likeness and wisdom, if he has any.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, I understand that the Goliath Corporation was also said to be interested?\"\n\n\"Not really. Goliath has been less than enthusiastic since their sportswear division paid over two hundred fifty thousand pounds for an exclusive sponsorship deal with St. Bernadette of Lincoln. But since her return six months ago, she has done nothing except brick herself up in a room and pray in silent retrospection, something that doesn't lend itself to selling running shoes. The Toast Marketing Board, on the other hand, made no such demands\u2014they are happy just to see what Zvlkx himself would like to do for them.\"\n\nLydia turned back to the camera. \"Astonishing. If you've just joined us, I'm speaking from the live telecast of the second coming of the thirteenth-century saint Thomas Zvlkx.\"\n\nI looked at my watch again. Zvlkx was now five minutes late. Lydia carried on her live broadcast, interviewing several other people to soak up time. The crowd grew slightly impatient, and a low murmuring started to arise from the expectant silence. Lydia had just asked a style guru about the sort of clothes they might be expecting Zvlkx to be wearing when she was interrupted by a shout. Something was happening just outside Tesco's between the child's coin-in-the-slot flying-elephant ride and the letterbox. Joffy vaulted over the press enclosure and ran towards where a column of smoke was rising from a crack that had opened up in the mother-and-child parking area. The sky grew dark, birds stopped singing and shoppers coming out of the revolving doors stared in astonishment as a bolt of lightning struck the weathered stone arch and split it asunder. There was a collective cry of alarm as a wind sprang up from nowhere. Pennants advertising new Saver product lines that were hanging limply on the flagpoles opened with a crack, and a whirling mass of dust and wastepaper spread across the car park, making several people cough.\n\nWithin a few moments, it was all over. Sitting on the ground and dressed in a rough habit tied with a rope at the waist was a grubby man with a scraggy beard and exceptionally bad teeth. He blinked and looked curiously around at his new surroundings.\n\n\"Welcome,\" said Joffy, the first on the scene. \"I represent the Idolatry Friends of St. Zulkx and offer you protection and guidance.\"\n\nThe thirteenth-century monk looked at Joffy with his dark eyes, then at the crowds who had gathered closer to him, all of them talking and pointing and asking him if they could have their pictures taken with him.\n\n\"Your accent is not bad,\" replied St. Zvlkx slowly. \"Is this 1988?\"\n\n\"It is, sir. I'ue brokered a sponsorship deal for you with the Toast Marketing Board.\"\n\n\"Cash?\"\n\nJoffy nodded.\n\n\"Thank?*&\u00a3@ for that,\" said Zvlkx. \"Has the ale improued since I'ue been away?\"\n\n\"Not much. But the choice is better.\"\n\n\"Can't wait. Hubba-hubba! Who's the moppet in the tight blouse?\"\n\n\"Mr. Next,\" interjected Lydia, who had managed to push her way to the front, \"perhaps you would be good enough to tell us what Mr. Zvlkx is saying?\"\n\n\"I... um, welcomed him to the twentieth century and said we had much to learn from him as regards beekeeping and the lost art of brewing mead. He... um, said just then that he is tired after his journey and wants only world peace, bridges between nations and a good home for orphans, kittens and puppies.\"\n\nThe crowd suddenly parted to make way for the Mayor of Swindon. St. Zvlkx knew power when he saw it and smiled a greeting to Lord Volescamper, who walked briskly up and shook the monk's grimy hand.\n\n\"Look here, welcome to the twentieth century, old salt,\" said Volescamper, wiping his hand on his handkerchief. \"How are you finding it?\"\n\n\"Welcome to our age,\" translated Joffy. \"How are you enjoying your stay?\"\n\n\"Cushty, me old cocker babe,\" replied the saint simply.\n\n\"He says, 'Very well, thank you.'\"\n\n\"Tell the worthy saint that we have a welcome pack awaiting him in the presidential suite at the Finis Hotel. Knowing his aversion to comfort, we took the liberty of removing all carpets, drapes, sheets and towels and replaced the bedclothes with hemp sacks stuffed with rocks.\"\n\n\"What did the old fart say?\"\n\n\"You don't want to know.\"\n\n\"What about the incomplete Seventh Revealment?\" asked Lydia. \"Can St. Zvlkx tell us anything about that?\"\n\nJoffy swiftly translated, and St. Zvlkx rummaged in the folds of his blanket and produced a small leatherbound book. The crowd fell silent as he licked a grubby finger, turned to the requisite page and read:\n\n\"'There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of this, and only in consequence of this, a great tyrant and the company named Goliathe will fall.'\"\n\nAll eyes switched to Joffy, who translated. There was a sharp intake of breath and a clamor of questions.\n\n\"Mr. Zvlkx,\" said a reporter from The Mole who up until that moment had been bored out of his skull, \"do you mean to say that Goliath will be lost if Swindon wins the SuperHoop?\"\n\n\"That is exactly what he says,\" replied Joffy.\n\nThere was a further clamor of questions from the assembled journalists as I carefully tried to figure out the repercussions of this new piece of intelligence. Dad had said that a SuperHoop win for Swindon would avert an Armageddon, and if what Zvlkx was saying came true, a triumph on Saturday would do precisely this. The question was, how? There was no connection as far as I could see. I was still trying to think how a croquet final could unseat a near dictator and destroy one of the most powerful multinationals on the planet, when Lord Volescamper intervened and silenced the noisy crowd of newsmen with a wave of his hand.\n\n\"Mr. Next, thank the gracious saint for his words. There is time enough to muse on his revealment, but right now I would like him to meet members of the Swindon Chamber of Commerce, which, I might add, is sponsored by St. Biddulph's\u00ae Hundreds and Thousands, the cake decoration of choice. After that we might take some tea and carrot cake. Would he be agreeable to that?\"\n\nJoffy translated every word, and Zvlkx smiled happily.\n\n\"Look here, St. Zvlkx,\" said Volescamper as they walked towards the marquee for tea and scones, \"what was the thirteenth century like?\"\n\n\"The Mayor wants to know what the thirteenth century was like\u2014and no lip, sunshine.\"\n\n\"Filthy, damp, disease-ridden and pestilential.\"\n\n\"He said it was like London, Your Grace.\"\n\nSt. Zvlkx looked at the weathered arch, the only visible evidence of his once great cathedral and asked, \"What happened to my cathedral?\"\n\n\"Burned during the dissolution of the monasteries.\"\n\n\"Hot damn,\" he muttered, eyebrows raised, \"should haue seenthat coming.\"\n\n\"Duis aute dolor in fugiat nulla pariatur,\" murmured Friday, pointing at St. Zvlkx's retreating form, rapidly vanishing in a crowd of well-wishers and newsmen.\n\n\"I have no idea, Sweetheart\u2014but I've a feeling things are just beginning to get interesting.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Lydia to the camera, \"a revealment that could spell potential disaster for the Goliath Corporation and\u2014\"\n\nHer producer was gesticulating wildly for her not to connect \"Tyrant\" with \"Kaine\" live on air.\n\n\"\u2014an as-yet-unnamed tyrant. This is Lydia Startright, bringing you a miraculous event live for Toad News. And now a word from our sponsors, Goliath Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Hemmorrelief.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Spike and Cindy",
                "text": "Operative Spike Stoker was with SO-17, the Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operations. Undeniably employed in the loneliest of the SpecOps divisions, SO-17 operatives worked in the twilight world of the semidead, changelings, vampires, lycanthropes and those of a generally evil disposition. Stoker had been decorated more times than I had read Three Men in a Boat, but then he was the only staker in the southwest, and no one in his right mind would do what he did on a SpecOps wage, except me. And only then when I was desperate for the cash.\n\n[ Thursday Next, Thursday Next: A Life in SpecOps ]\n\nDeep in thought, I pushed Friday back towards my car. The stakes had just been raised, and any chance that I might somehow influence the outcome of the SuperHoop was suddenly made that much more impossible. With Goliath and Kaine both having a vested interest in making sure the Swindon Mallets lost, chances of our victory had dropped from \"highly unlikely\" to \"nigh impossible.\"\n\n\"It explains,\" said a voice, \"why Goliath is changing to a faith-based corporate-management system.\"\n\nI turned to find my stalker, Millon de Floss, walking close behind me. It must have been important for him to contravene the blanket restraining order. I stopped for a moment. \"Why do you think that?\"\n\n\"Once they are a religion, they won't be a 'company named Goliathe' as stated in Zvlkx's prophecy,\" observed Millon, \"and they can avoid the revealment's coming true. Sister Bettina, their own corporate precog, must have foreseen something like this and alerted them.\"\n\n\"Does that mean,\" I asked slowly, \"that they're taking St. Zvlkx seriously?\"\n\n\"He's too accurate not to be, Miss Next, however unlikely it may seem. Now that they know the complete Seventh Revealment, they'll try to do anything to stop Swindon's winning\u2014and continue with the religion thing as a backup, just in case.\"\n\nIt made sense\u2014sort of. Dad must have known this or something very like it. None of it boded very well, but my father had said the likelihood of this Armageddon was only 22 percent, so the answer must be somewhere.\n\n\"I'm going to visit Goliathopolis this afternoon,\" I said slowly. \"Have you found out anything about Kaine?\"\n\nMillon rummaged in his pocket for a notepad, found it and flicked through the pages, which seemed to be full of numbers.\n\n\"It's here somewhere,\" he said apologetically. \"I like to collect vacumn-cleaner serial numbers and was investigating a rare Hoover XB-23E when I got the call. Here it is. This Kaine fellow is a conspiracist's delight. He arrived on the scene five years ago with no past, no history, no parents\u2014nothing. His national insurance number wasn't given to him until 1982, and it seems the only jobs he has ever held were with his publishing company and then as MP.\"\n\n\"Not a lot to go on, then.\"\n\n\"Not yet, but I'll keep digging. You might be interested to know that he has been seen on several occasions with Lola Vavoom.\"\n\n\"Who hasn't?\"\n\n\"Agreed. You wanted to know about Mr. Schitt-Hawse? He heads the Goliath tech division.\"\n\n\"You sure?\"\n\nMillon looked dubious for a moment.\n\n\"In the conspiracy industry, the word 'sure' has a certain plasticity about it, but yes. We have a mole at Goliathopolis. Admittedly our mole only serves in the canteen, but you'd be surprised the sensitive information that one can overhear giving out shortbread fingers. Apparently Schitt-Hawse has been engaged in something called the Ovitron Project. We're not positive, but it might be a development of your uncle's Ovinator. Could it be something along the lines of The Midwich Cuckoos?\"\n\n\"I sincerely hope not.\"\n\nI made a few notes, thanked Millon for his time and pushed Friday back to my car, my head full of potential futures, Ovinators and Kaine.\n\nTen minutes later we were in my Speedster, heading north towards Cricklade. My father had told me that Cindy would fail to kill me three times before she died herself, but there was a chance the future didn't have to turn out that way\u2014after all, I had once been shot dead by a SpecOps marksman in an alternative future, and I was still very much alive.\n\nI hadn't seen Spike for more than two years but had been gratified to learn he had moved out of his dingy apartment to a new address in Cricklade. I soon found his street\u2014it was on a newly built estate of Cotswold stone that shone a warm glow of ocher in the sunlight. As we drove slowly down the road checking door numbers, Friday helpfully pointed out things of interest.\n\n\"Ipsum,\" he said, pointing at a car.\n\nI was hoping that Spike wasn't there so I could speak to Cindy on her own, but I was out of luck. I parked up behind his SpecOps black-and-white and climbed out. Spike himself was sitting on a deck chair on the front lawn, and my heart fell when I saw that not only had he married Cindy but they had also had a child\u2014a one-year-old girl was sitting on the grass next to him playing under a parasol. I cursed inwardly as Friday hid behind my leg. I was going to have to make Cindy play ball\u2014the alternative wouldn't be good for her and would be worse for Spike and their daughter.\n\n\"Yo!\" yelled Spike, telling the person on the other end of the phone to hold it one moment and getting up to give me a hug. \"How you doing, Next?\"\n\n\"I'm good, Spike, you?\"\n\nHe spread his arms, indicating the trappings of middle-England suburbia. The UPVC double glazing, the well-kept lawn, the drive, the wrought-iron sunrise gate.\n\n\"Look at all this, sister! Isn't it the best?\"\n\n\"Ipsum,\" said Friday, pointing at a plant pot.\n\n\"Cute kid. Go on in. I'll be with you in a moment.\"\n\nI walked into the house and found Cindy in the kitchen. She had an apron on and her hair tied up.\n\n\"Hello,\" I said, trying to sound as normal as possible, \"you must be Cindy.\"\n\nShe stared me straight in the eye. She didn't look like a professional assassin who had killed sixty-seven times\u2014sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring\u2014yet the really good ones never do.\n\n\"Well, well, Thursday Next,\" she said slowly, crouching down to pull some damp clothes out of the washing machine and tweaking Friday's ear. \"Spike holds you in very high regard.\"\n\n\"Then you know why I'm here?\"\n\nShe put down the washing and picked up a Fisher-Price Webster that was threatening to trip someone up, and passed it to Friday, who sat down to scrutinize it carefully.\n\n\"I can guess. Handsome lad. How old is he?\"\n\n\"He was two last month. And I'd like to thank you for missing yesterday.\"\n\nShe gave a wan smile and walked out the backdoor. I caught up with her as she started to hang the washing on the line.\n\n\"Is it Kaine trying to have me killed?\"\n\n\"I always respect client confidentiality,\" she said quietly, \"and I can't miss forever.\"\n\n\"Then stop it right now,\" I said. \"Why do you even need to do it at all?\"\n\nShe pegged a blue romper on the line.\n\n\"Two reasons: first, I'm not going to give up work just because I'm married with a kid, and second, I always complete a contract, no matter what. When I don't deliver the goods, the clients want refunds. And the Windowmaker doesn't do refunds.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"I was curious about that. Why the Windowmaker?\"\n\nShe glared at me coldly. \"The printers made a mistake on the notepaper, and it would have cost too much to redo. Don't laugh.\"\n\nShe hung up a pillowcase.\n\n\"I'll contract you out, Miss Next, but I won't try today\u2014which gives you some time to get yourself together and leave town once and for all. Somewhere where I can't find you. And hide well\u2014I'm very good at what I do.\"\n\nShe took a sideways glance towards the kitchen. I hung up a large SO-17 T-shirt on the line.\n\n\"He doesn't know, does he?\" I asked.\n\n\"Spike is a fine man,\" replied Cindy, \"just a little slow on the uptake. You're not going to tell him, and he's never going to know. Grab the other end of that sheet, will you?\"\n\nI took the end of a dry sheet, and we folded it together.\n\n\"I'm not going anywhere, Cindy,\" I told her, \"and I'll protect myself in any way I can.\"\n\nWe stared at one another for a moment. It seemed like such a waste.\n\n\"Retire!\"\n\n\"Never!\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because I like it and I'm good at it\u2014would you like some tea, Thursday?\"\n\nSpike had entered the garden carrying the baby. \"So how are my two favorite ladies?\"\n\n\"Thursday was helping me with the washing, Spikey,\" said Cindy, her hard-as-nails professionalism replaced with a silly sort of girlie ditziness. \"I'll put the kettle on\u2014two sugars, Thursday?\"\n\n\"One.\"\n\nShe skipped into the house.\n\n\"What do you think?\" asked Spike in a low tone. \"Isn't she just the cutest thing ever?\"\n\nHe was like a fifteen-year-old in love for the first time.\n\n\"She's lovely, Spike. You're a lucky man.\"\n\n\"This is Betty,\" said Spike, waving the tiny arm of the infant with his huge hand. \"One year old. You were right about being honest with Cindy\u2014she didn't mind me doing all that vampire sh\u2014I mean stuff. In fact, I think she's kinda proud.\"\n\n\"You're a lucky man,\" I repeated, wondering just how I was going to avoid making him a widower and the gurgling child motherless.\n\nWe walked back into the house, where Cindy was busying herself in the kitchen.\n\n\"Where have you been?\" asked Spike, depositing Betty next to Friday, where they looked at one another suspiciously. \"Prison?\"\n\n\"No. Somewhere weird. Somewhere other.\"\n\n\"Will you be returning there?\" asked Cindy innocently.\n\n\"She's only just got back!\" exclaimed Spike. \"We don't want to be shot of her quite yet.\"\n\n\"Shot of her\u2014of course not,\" replied Cindy, placing a mug of tea on the table. \"Have a seat. There are Hobnobs in that novelty dodo biscuit tin over there.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"So,\" I continued, \"how's the vampire business?\"\n\n\"So-so. Been quiet recently. Werewolves the same. I dealt with a few zombies in the city center the other night, but Supreme Evil Being containment work has almost completely dried up. There has been a report of a few ghouls, bogeys and phantoms in Winchester, but it's not really my area of expertise. There is talk of disbanding the division and then taking me on freelance when they need something done.\"\n\n\"Is that bad?\"\n\n\"Not really. I can charge what I want with vampires on the prowl\u2014but in slack times I'd be a bit stuffed. Wouldn't want to send Cindy out to work full-time, now, would I?\"\n\nHe laughed, and Cindy laughed with him, handing a rusk to Betty, who gave it an almighty toothless bite and then looked puzzled when there was no effect. Friday took it off her and showed how it was done.\n\n\"So what are you up to at present?\" asked Spike.\n\n\"Not much. I was just dropping in before I went off up to Goliathopolis\u2014my husband still isn't back.\"\n\n\"Did you hear about Zvlkx's revealment?\"\n\n\"I was there.\"\n\n\"Then Goliath will want all the forgiveness they can get\u2014you won't find a better time for forcing them to bring him back.\"\n\nWe chatted for ten minutes or more until it was time for me to leave. I didn't manage to speak to Cindy on her own again, but I had said what I wanted to say\u2014I just hoped she would take notice, but somehow I doubted it.\n\n\"If I ever have any freelance jobs to do, will you join me?\" asked Spike as he was seeing me out the door, Friday having nearly eaten all the rusks.\n\nI thought of my overdraft. \"Please.\"\n\n\"Good,\" replied Spike, \"I'll be in touch.\"\n\nI drove down the M4 to Saknussum International, where I had to run to catch the Gravitube to the James Tarbuck Graviport in Liverpool. Friday and I had a brief lunch before hopping on the shuttle to Goliathopolis. Goliath took my husband from me, and they could bring him back. And when you have a grievance with a company, you go straight to the top."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Goliath Apologarium",
                "text": "[ Danish Car a \"Deathtrap,\" Claims Kainian Minister ]\n\n\u2002Robert Edsel, the Kainian minister of road safety, hit out at Danish car manufacturer Volvo yesterday, claiming the boxy and unsightly vehicle previously considered one of the safest cars on the market to be the complete reverse\u2014a death trap for anyone stupid enough to buy one. \"The Volvo fared very poorly in the rocket-propelled grenade test,\" claimed Mr. Edsel in a press release yesterday, \"and owners and their children risk permanent spinal injury when dropped in the car from heights as low as sixty feet.\" Mr. Edsel continued to pour scorn on the pride of the Danish motoring industry by revealing that the Volvo's air filters offered \"scant protection\" against pyroclastic flows, poisonous fumes and other forms of common volcanic phenomena. \"I would very much recommend that anyone thinking of buying this poor Danish product should think again,\" said Mr. Edsel. When the Danish foreign minister pointed out that Volvos were, in fact, Swedish, Mr. Edsel accused the Danes of once again attempting to blame their neighbors for their own manufacturing weaknesses.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad on Sunday, July 16, 1988\n\nThe Isle of Man had been an independent corporate state within England since it was appropriated for the greater fiscal good in 1963. The surrounding Irish Sea was heavily mined to deter unwanted visitors and the skies above protected by the most technologically advanced antiaircraft system known to man. It had hospitals and schools, a university, its own fusion reactor and also, leading from Douglas to the Kennedy Graviport in New York, the world's only privately run Gravitube. The Isle of Man was home to almost two hundred thousand people who did nothing but support, or support the support, of the one enterprise that dominated the small island: the Goliath Corporation.\n\nThe old Manx town of Laxey was renamed Goliathopolis and was now the Hong Kong of the British archipelago, a forest of glassy towers striding up the hillside towards Snaefell. The largest of these skyscrapers rose higher even than the mountain peak behind and could be seen glinting in the sunlight all the way from Blackpool, weather permitting. In this building was housed the inner sanctum of the whole vast multinational, the cream of Goliath's corporate engineers. An employee could spend a lifetime on the island and never even get past the front desk. And it was on the ground floor of this building, right at the heart of the corporation, that I found the Goliath Apologarium.\n\nI joined a small queue in front of a modern glass-topped table where two happy, smiling Goliath employees were giving out questionnaires and numbered tickets.\n\n\"Hello!\" said the clerk, a youngish girl with a lopsided smile. \"Welcome to the Goliath Corporation's Apology Emporium. Sorry you had to wait. How can we help you?\"\n\n\"The Goliath Corporation murdered my husband.\"\n\n\"How simply dreadful!\" she responded in a lame and insincere display of sympathy. \"I'm so sorry to hear that. Goliath, as part of our move to a faith-based corporate-management system, is committed to reversing all the unpleasant matters we might have previously been engaged in. You need to fill in this form, and this form\u2014and Section D of this one\u2014and then take a seat. We'll get one of our highly trained apologists to see you just as soon as they can.\"\n\nShe handed me several long forms and a numbered ticket, then indicated a door to one side. I opened the door of the Apologarium and walked in. It was a large hall with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a serene view of the Irish Sea. On one side was a row of perhaps twenty cubicles containing suited apologists, all listening intently to what they were being told with the same sad and contrite expression. On the other side were rows upon rows of wooden seating that held eager and once bullied citizens, anxiously clasping their numbered tickets and patiently waiting their turn. I looked at my ticket. It was number 6,174. I glanced up at the board, which told me that number 836 was now being interviewed.\n\n\"Dear, sweet people!\" said a voice through a tannoy. \"Goliath is deeply sorry for all the harm it might inadvertently have caused you in the past. Here at the Goliath Apologarium we are only too happy to assist in your problem, no matter how small\u2014\"\n\n\"You!\" I said to a man who was hobbling past me towards the exit. \"Has Goliath repented to your satisfaction?\"\n\n\"Well, they didn't really need to,\" he replied blandly. \"It was I who was at fault\u2014in fact, I apologized for wasting their valuable time!\"\n\n\"What did they do?\"\n\n\"They bathed my neighborhood with ionizing radiation, then denied it for seventeen years, even after people's teeth fell out and I grew a third foot.\"\n\n\"And you forgave them?\"\n\n\"Of course. I can see now that it was a genuine accident and the public has to accept equal risks if we are to have abundant clean energy, limitless food and household electrodefragmentizers.\"\n\nHe was carrying a sheaf of papers, not the application form that I had to fill out but leaflets on how to join New Goliath. Not as a consumer but as a worshipper. I had always been deeply distrustful of Goliath, but this whole \"repentance\" thing smelt worse than anything I had so far witnessed. I turned, tore up my numbered ticket and headed for the exit.\n\n\"Miss Next!\" called out a familiar voice. \"I say, Miss Next!\"\n\nA short man with pinched features and a rounded head covered with the fuzz of an aggresively short crew cut was facing me. He was wearing a dark suit and heavy gold jewelry and was arguably the person I liked least\u2014this was Jack Schitt, once Goliath's top advanced-weapons guru and ex-convict of \"The Raven.\" This was the man who had tried to prolong the Crimean War so he could make a fortune out of Goliath's latest superweapon, the Plasma Rifle.\n\nAnger rose quickly within me. I turned Friday in the other direction so as not to give his young mind any wrong ideas about the use of violence and then grasped Schitt by the throat. He took a step back, stumbled and collapsed beneath me with a yelp. Sensing I had been in this position before, I released him and placed my hand on the butt of my automatic, expecting to be attacked by a host of Jack's minders. But there was nothing. Just sad citizens looking on sorrowfully.\n\n\"There is no one here to help me,\" said Jack Schitt, slowly getting to his feet. \"I have been assaulted eight times today\u2014I count myself fortunate. Yesterday it was twenty-three.\"\n\nI looked at him and noticed, for the first time, that he had a black eye and a cut on his lip.\n\n\"No minders?\" I echoed. \"Why?\"\n\n\"It is my absolution to face those I have bullied and harangued in the past, Miss Next. When we last met, I was head of Goliath's Advanced Weapons Division and corporate laddernumber 329.\" He sighed. \"Now, thanks to your well-publicized denouncement of the failings of our Plasma Rifle, the corporation decided to demote me. I am an Apology Facilitation Operative Second Class, laddernumber 12,398,219. The mighty has fallen, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" I replied, \"you have merely been moved to a level more fitting for your competence. It's a shame. You deserved much worse than this.\"\n\nHis eyes twitched as he grew angry. The old Jack, the homicidal one, returned for a moment. But the feelings were short-lived, and his shoulders fell as he realized that without the Goliath Security Service to back him up, his power over me was minimal.\n\n\"Maybe you are right,\" he said simply. \"You will not have to wait your turn, Miss Next. I will deal with your case personally. Is this your son?\" He bent down to look closer. \"Cute fellow, isn't he?\"\n\n\"Eiusmod tempor incididunt adipisicing elit,\" said Friday, glaring at Jack suspiciously.\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He said, 'If you touch me, my mum will break your nose.'\"\n\nJack stood up quickly. \"I see. Goliath and myself offer a full, frank and unreserved apology.\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Have it on account. Would you care to come to my office?\"\n\nHe beckoned me out the door, and we crossed a courtyard with a large fountain in the middle, past a few suited Goliath officials chattering in a corner, then through another doorway and down a wide corridor full of clerks moving backwards and forwards with folders tucked under their arms.\n\nJack opened a door, ushered me in, offered me a chair and then sat himself. It was a miserable little office, devoid of any decoration except a shabby Lola Vavoom calendar on the wall and a dead plant in a pot. The only window looked out onto a wall. He arranged some papers on his desk and spoke into the intercom.\n\n\"Mr. Higgs, would you bring the Thursday Next file in, please?\"\n\nHe looked at me earnestly and set his head at a slight angle, as though trying to affect some sort of apologetic demeanor.\n\n\"None of us quite realized,\" he began in the sort of soft voice that undertakers use when attempting to persuade you to buy the deluxe coffin, \"just how appalling we had been until we started asking people if they were at all unhappy with our conduct.\"\n\n\"Why don't we cut the cr\u2014\" I looked at Friday, who looked back at me. \"Cut the... cut the... nonsense and go straight to the place where you atone for your crimes.\"\n\nHe sighed and stared at me for a moment, then said, \"Very well. What did we do wrong again?\"\n\n\"You can't remember?\"\n\n\"I do lots of wrong things, Miss Next. You'll excuse me if I can't remember details.\"\n\n\"You eradicated my husband,\" I said through gritted teeth.\n\n\"Of course! And what was the name of the eradicatee?\"\n\n\"Landen,\" I replied coldly. \"Landen Parke-Laine.\"\n\nAt that moment a clerk arrived with a pile of papers and laid them on his desk. Jack opened the file, which was marked \"Most Secret,\" and leafed through them.\n\n\"The record shows that at the time you say your husband was eradicated, your case officer was operative Schitt-Hawse. It says here that he pressured you to release operative Schitt\u2014that's me\u2014from within the pages of 'The Raven' by utilizing an unnamed ChronoGuard operative who volunteered his services. It says that you complied but our promise was revoked due to an unforeseen and commercially necessary overriding blackmail-continuance situation.\"\n\n\"You mean corporate greed, don't you?\"\n\n\"Don't underestimate greed, Miss Next\u2014it's commerce's greatest motivating force. In this context it was probably due to our plans to use the BookWorld to dump nuclear waste and sell our extremely high-quality goods and services to characters in fiction. You were then imprisoned in our most inaccessible vault, from where you escaped, methodology unknown.\"\n\nHe closed the file.\n\n\"What this means, Miss Next, is that we kidnapped you, tried to kill you, and then had you on our shoot-on-sight list for over a year. You may be in line for a generous cash settlement.\"\n\n\"I don't want cash, Jack. You had someone go back in time to kill Landen. Now you can just get someone to go back again and unkill him!\"\n\nJack Schitt paused and drummed his fingers on the table for a moment.\n\n\"That's not how it works,\" replied Schitt testily. \"The apology and restitution rules are very clear\u2014for us to repent, we must agree as to what we have done wrong, and there's no mention of any Goliath-led illegal-time-related jiggery-pokery in our report. Since Goliath's records are time-audited on a regular basis, I think that proves conclusively that if there was any timefoolery, it was instigated by the ChronoGuard\u2014Goliath's chronological record is above reproach.\"\n\nI thumped the table with my fist, and Jack jumped. Without his henchmen around him, he was a coward, and every time he flinched, I grew stronger.\n\n\"This is complete and utter sh\u2014\" I looked at Friday again. \"Rubbish, Jack. Goliath and the ChronoGuard eradicated my husband. You had the power to remove him\u2014you can be the ones that put him back.\"\n\n\"That's not possible.\"\n\n\"Give me back my husband!\"\n\nThe anger in Jack returned. He also rose and pointed an accusing finger at me. \"Have you even the slightest idea how much it costs to bribe the ChronoGuard? More money than we care to spend on the sort of miserable, halfhearted forgiveness you can offer us. And another thing, I\u2014Excuse me.\"\n\nThe phone had rung, and he picked it up, his eyes flicking instantly to me as he listened.\n\n\"Yes, it is.... Yes, she is.... Yes, we do.... Yes, I will.\"\n\nHis eyes opened wide, and he stood up.\n\n\"This is indeed an honor, sir.... No, that would not be a problem at all, sir.... Yes, I'm sure I can persuade her about that, sir.... No, it's what we all want.... And a very good day to you, sir. Thank you.\"\n\nHe put down the phone and fetched an empty cardboard box from the cupboard with a renewed spring in his step.\n\n\"Good news!\" he exclaimed, taking some junk out of his desk and placing it in the box. \"The CEO of New Goliath has taken a special interest in your case and will personally guarantee the return of your husband.\"\n\n\"I thought you said that timefoolery had nothing to do with you?\"\n\n\"Apparently I was misinformed. We would be very happy to reactualize Libner.\"\n\n\"Landen.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"What's the catch?\" I asked suspiciously.\n\n\"No catch,\" replied Jack, picking up his desk nameplate and depositing it in the box along with the calendar. \"We just want you to forgive us and like us.\"\n\n\"Like you?\"\n\n\"Yes. Or pretend to anyway. Not so very hard, now, is it? Just sign this Standard Forgiveness Release Form at the bottom here, and we'll reactualize your hubby. Simple, isn't it?\"\n\nI was still suspicious.\n\n\"I don't believe you have any intention of getting Landen back.\"\n\n\"All right, then,\" said Jack, taking some files out of the filing cabinet and dumping them in his cardboard box, \"don't sign and you'll never know. As you say, Miss Next\u2014we got rid of him, so we can get him back.\"\n\n\"You stiffed me once before, Jack. How do I know you won't do it again?\"\n\nJack paused in his packing and looked slightly apprehensive.\n\n\"Are you going to sign?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nJack sighed and started to take things back out of the cardboard box and return them to their places.\n\n\"Well,\" he muttered, \"there goes my promotion. But listen, whether you sign or not, you walk out of here a free woman. New Goliath has no argument with you any longer. Besides, what do you have to lose?\"\n\n\"All I want,\" I replied, \"is to get my husband back. I'm not signing anything.\"\n\nJack took his nameplate out of the cardboard box and put it back on his desk.\n\nThe phone rang again.\n\n\"Yes, sir.... No, she won't, sir.... I tried that, sir.... Very well, sir.\"\n\nHe put the phone down and picked up his nameplate again and hovered it over his box.\n\n\"That was the CEO. He wants to apologize to you personally. Will you go?\"\n\nI paused. Seeing the head honcho of Goliath was an almost unprecedented event for a non-Goliath official. If anyone could get Landen back, it was him. \"Okay.\"\n\nJack smiled, dropped the nameplate in his box and then hurriedly threw everything else back in.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"must dash\u2014I've just been promoted up three laddernumbers. Go to the main reception desk, and someone will meet you. Don't forget your Standard Forgiveness Release Form, and if you could mention my name, I'd be really grateful.\"\n\nHe handed me my unsigned forms as the door opened and another Goliath operative walked in, also holding a cardboard box full of possessions.\n\n\"What if I don't get him back, Mr. Schitt?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, looking at his watch, \"if you have any grievances about the quality of our contrition, you had better take it up with your appointed Goliath apologist. I don't work here anymore.\"\n\nAnd he smiled a supercilious smile, put on his hat and was gone.\n\n\"Well!\" said the new apologist as he walked around the desk and started to arrange his possessions in the new office. \"Is there anything you'd like us to apologize for?\"\n\n\"Your corporation,\" I muttered.\n\n\"Fully, frankly and unreservedly,\" replied the apologist in the sincerest of tones."
            },
            {
                "title": "Meeting the CEO",
                "text": "Fifty years ago we were only a small multinational with barely 7,000 employees. Today we have over 38 million employees in 14,000 companies dealing in over 12 million different products and services. The size of Goliath is what gives us the stability to be able to say confidently that we will be looking after you for many years to come. By 1980 our turnover was equal to the combined GNP of 72 percent of the planet's nations. This year we see the corporation take the next great leap forward\u2014to fully recognized religion with our own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and prayerbook. Goliath shares will be exchanged for entry into our new faith-based corporate-management system, where you (the devotees) will worship us (the gods) in exchange for protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife. I know you will join me in this endeavor as you have in all our past endeavors. A full leaflet explaining how you can help further the corporation's interest in this matter will be available shortly. New Goliath. For all you'll ever need. For all you'll ever want. Ever.\n\n[ Extract from the Goliath Corporation CEO's 1988 Conference speech ]\n\nI walked to the main desk and gave my name to the receptionist, who, raising her eyebrows at my request, called the 110th floor, registered some surprise and then asked me to wait. I pushed Friday towards the waiting area and gave him a banana I had in my bag. I sat and watched the Goliath officials walking briskly backwards and forwards across the polished marble floors, all looking busy but seemingly doing nothing.\n\n\"Miss Next?\"\n\nThere were two individuals standing in front of me. One was dressed in the dark Goliath blue of an executive; the other was a footman in full livery holding a polished silver tray.\n\n\"Yes?\" I said, standing up.\n\n\"My name is Mr. Godfrey, the CEO's personal assistant's assitant. If you would be so kind?\" He indicated the tray.\n\nI understood his request, unholstered my automatic and laid it on the salver. The footman paused politely. I got the message and placed my two spare clips on it as well. He bowed and silently withdrew, and the Goliath executive led me silently towards a roped-off elevator at the far end of the concourse. I wheeled Friday in, and the doors hissed shut behind us.\n\nIt was a glass elevator that rose on the outside of the building and from our vantage point as we were whisked noiselessly heavenward, I could see all of Goliathopolis's buildings, reaching almost all the way down the coast to Douglas. The size of the corporation's holdings was never more demonstrably immense\u2014all these buildings simply administered the thousands of companies and millions of employees around the world. If I had been in a charitable frame of mind, I might have been impressed by the scale and grandeur of Goliath's establishment. As it was, I saw only ill-gotten gains.\n\nThe smaller buildings were soon left behind as we continued on upwards, until even the other skyscrapers were dwarfed. I was staring with fascination at the spectacular view when without warning the exterior was suddenly obscured by a white haze. Water droplets formed on the outside of the elevator, and I could see nothing until we burst clear of the cloud and into bright sunshine and a deep blue sky a few seconds later. I stared across the tops of the clouds that stretched away unbroken into the distance. I was so enthralled by the spectacle that I didn't realize the elevator had stopped.\n\n\"Ipsum,\" said Friday, who was also impressed and pointed in case I had missed the view.\n\n\"Miss Next?\"\n\nI turned. To say the boardroom of the Goliath Corporation was impressive would not be doing it the justice it deserves. It was on the top floor of the building. The walls and roof were all tinted glass and, from where we stood, on a clear day you must be able to look down upon the world with the viewpoint of a god. Today it looked as though we were afloat on a cotton-wool sea. The building and its position, high above the planet both geographically and morally, perfectly reflected the corporation's dominance and power.\n\nIn the middle of the room was a long table with perhaps thirty suited Goliath board members all standing next to their seats, watching me in silence. No one said anything, and I was about to ask who was the boss when I noticed a large man staring out the window with his hands clasped behind his back.\n\n\"Ipsum!\" said Friday.\n\n\"Allow me,\" began my escort, \"to introduce the chief executive officer of the Goliath Corporation, John Henry Goliath V, great-great-grandson of our founder, John Henry Goliath.\"\n\nThe figure staring out the window turned to meet me. He must have been over six foot eight and was large with it. Broad, imposing and dominating. He was not yet fifty and had piercing green eyes that seemed to look straight through me, and he gave me such a warm smile that I was instantly put at my ease.\n\n\"Miss Next?\" he said in a voice like distant thunder. \"I've wanted to meet you for some time.\"\n\nHis handshake was warm and friendly; it was easy to forget just who he was and what he had done.\n\n\"They are standing for you,\" he announced, indicating the board members. \"You have personally cost us over a billion pounds in cash and at least four times that in lost revenues. Such an adversary is to be admired rather than reviled.\"\n\nThe board members applauded for about ten seconds, then sat back down at their places. I noticed among them Brik Schitt-Hawse, who inclined his head to me in recognition.\n\n\"If I didn't already know the answer I would offer you a position on our board,\" said the CEO with a smile. \"We're just finishing a board meeting, Miss Next. In a few minutes, I shall be at your disposal. Please ask Mr. Godfrey if you require any refreshments for you or your son.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nI asked Godfrey for an orange juice in a beaker for Friday and took Friday out of his stroller and sat with him on a nearby armchair to watch the proceedings.\n\n\"Item seventy-six,\" said a small man wearing a Goliath-issue cobalt blue suit, \"Antarctica. There has been a degree of opposition to our purchase of the continent by a small minority of do-gooders who believe our use is anything but benevolent.\"\n\n\"And this, Mr. Jarvis, is a problem because...?\" demanded John Henry Goliath.\n\n\"Not a problem but an observation, sir. I propose that, to offset any possible negative publicity, we let it be known that we merely acquired the continent to generate new ecotourism-related jobs in an area traditionally considered a low point in employment opportunities.\"\n\n\"It shall be so,\" boomed the CEO. \"What else?\"\n\n\"Well, since we will take the role of 'ecocustodians' very seriously, I propose sending a fleet of ten warships to protect the continent against vandals who seek to harm the penguin population, illegally remove ice and snow and create general mischief.\"\n\n\"Warships eat heavily into profit margins,\" said another member of the board. But Mr. Jarvis had already thought of that. \"Not if we subcontract the security issue to a foreign power eager to do business with us. I have formulated a plan whereby the United Caribbean Nations will patrol the continent in exchange for all the ice and snow they want. With the purchase of Antarctica, we can undercut snow exports from all the countries in the Northern Alliance. Their unsold snow will be bought by us at four pence a ton, melted and exchanged for building sand with Morocco. This will be exported to sand-deficient nations at an overall profit of twelve percent. You'll find it all in my report.\"\n\nThere was a murmur of assent around the table. The CEO nodded his head thoughtfully.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Jarvis, your idea finds favor with the board. But tell me, what about the vast natural resource that we bought Antarctica to exploit in the first place?\"\n\nJarvis snapped his fingers, and the elevator doors opened to reveal a chef who wheeled in a trolley with a silver dinner cover. He stopped next to the CEO's chair, took off the cover and served the CEO a small plate with what looked like sliced pork on it. A footman laid a knife and a fork next to the plate, along with a crisp napkin, then withdrew.\n\nThe CEO took a small forkful and put it in his mouth. His eyes opened wide in shock, and he spit it out. The footman passed him a glass of water.\n\n\"Disgusting!\"\n\n\"I agree, sir,\" replied Jarvis, \"almost completely inedible.\"\n\n\"Blast! Do you mean to tell me we've bought an entire continent with a potential food yield of ten million penguin-units per year only to find we can't eat any of them?\"\n\n\"Only a minor setback, sir. If you would all turn to page 72 of your agenda...\"\n\nAll the board members simultaneously opened their files. Jarvis picked up his report and walked to the window to read it.\n\n\"'The problem of selling penguins as the Sunday roast of choice can be split into two parts: one, that penguins taste like creosote, and two, that many people have a misguided idea that penguins are somewhat \"cute\" and \"cuddly\" and \"endangered.\" To take the first point first, I propose that, as part of the launch of this abundant new foodstuff, there should be a special penguin-cookery show on GoliathChannel 16, as well as a highly amusing advertising campaign with the catchy phrase \"P-p-p-prepare a p-p-p-penguin.\" '\"\n\nThe CEO nodded thoughtfully.\n\n\"I further suggest,\" continued Jarvis, \"that we finance an independent study into the health-imbuing qualities of seabirds in general. The findings of this independent and wholly impartial study shall be that the recommended weekly intake of penguin per person should be... one penguin.\"\n\n\"And point two?\" asked another board member. \"The public's positive and noneatworthy perception of penguins in general?\"\n\n\"Not insurmountable, sir. If you recall, we had a similar problem marketing baby-seal burgers, and that is now one of our most popular lines. I suggest we depict penguins as callous and unfeeling creatures who insist on bringing up their children in what is little more than a large chest freezer. Furthermore, the 'endangered' marketing problem can be used to our advantage by an advertising strategy along the lines of 'Eat them quick before they're all gone!'\"\n\n\"Or,\" said another board member, \"'Place a penguin in your kitchen\u2014have a snack before extinction.'\"\n\n\"Doesn't rhyme very well, does it?\" said a third. \"What about 'For a taste that's a bit more distinct, eat a bird before it's extinct'?\"\n\n\"I preferred mine.\"\n\nJarvis sat down and awaited the CEO's thoughts.\n\n\"It shall be so. Why not 'Antarctica\u2014the New Arctic' as a by-line? Have our people in advertising put a campaign together. The meeting is over.\"\n\nThe board members closed their folders in one single synchronized movement and then filed in an orderly way to the far end of the room, where a curved staircase led downstairs. Within a few minutes, only Brik Schitt-Hawse and the CEO remained. He placed his red-leather briefcase on the desk in front of me and looked at me dispassionately, saying nothing. For someone like Schitt-Hawse who loved the sound of his own voice, it was clear the CEO called every shot.\n\n\"What did you think?\" asked Goliath.\n\n\"Think?\" I replied. \"How about 'Morally Reprehensible'?\"\n\n\"I believe that you will find there is no moral good or bad, Miss Next. Morality can be asserted only from the safe retrospection of twenty years or more. Parliaments have far too short a life to do any long-term good. It is up to corporations to do what is best for everyone. The tenure of an administration may be five years\u2014for us it can be several centuries, and none of that tiresome accountability to get in the way. The leap to Goliath as a religion is the next logical step.\"\n\n\"I'm not convinced, Mr. Goliath,\" I told him. \"I thought you were becoming a religion to evade the Seventh Revealment of St. Zvlkx.\"\n\nHe gazed at me with his piercing green eyes. \"It's avoid, not evade, Miss Next. A trifling textual change but legally with great implications. We can legally attempt to avoid the future but not evade it. As long as we can demonstrate a forty-nine-percent chance that our future-altering attempts might fail, we are legally safe. The ChronoGuard is very strict on the rules and we'd be fools to try and break them.\"\n\n\"You didn't ask me up here to argue legal definitions, Mr. Goliath.\"\n\n\"No, Miss Next. I wanted to have this opportunity to explain ourselves to you, one of our most vociferous opponents. I have doubts, too, and if I can make you understand then I will have convinced myself that what we are doing is right, and good. Have a seat.\"\n\nI sat, rather too obediently. Mr. Goliath had a strong personality.\n\n\"Humans are molded by evolution to be short-termists, Miss Next,\" he continued. His voice rumbled deeply and seemed to echo inside my head. \"We need only to see our children to reproductive age to be successful in a biological sense. We have to move beyond that. If we see ourselves as residents on this planet for the long term, we need to plan for the long term. Goliath has a thousand-year plan for itself. The responsibility for this planet is far too important to leave to a fragmented group of governments, constantly bickering over borders and only looking towards their own self-interest. We at Goliath see ourselves not as a corporation or a government but as a force for good. A force for good in waiting. We have thirty-eight million employees at present; it isn't difficult to see the benefit of having three billion. Imagine everyone on the planet working towards a single goal\u2014the banishment of all governments and the creation of one business whose sole function it is to run the planet for the people on the planet, equally and sustainably for all\u2014not Goliath, but Earth, Inc. A company with every member of the world holding a single, equal share.\"\n\n\"Is that why you're becoming a religion?\"\n\n\"Let's just say that your friend Mr. Zvlkx has goaded us into a course of action that is long overdue. You used the word 'religion,' but we see it more as a one, unifying faith to bring all mankind together. One world, one nation, one people, one aim. Surely you can see the sense in that?\"\n\nThe strange thing was, I began to see that it could work. Without nations there would be no border disputes. The Crimean War alone had lasted for nearly 132 years, and there were at least a hundred smaller conflicts going on around the planet. Suddenly Goliath seemed not so bad after all, and was indeed our friend. I was a fool not to realize it before.\n\nI rubbed my temples.\n\n\"So,\" continued the CEO in a soft rumble, \"I'd like to offer an olive branch to you right now and uneradicate your husband.\"\n\n\"In return,\" added Schitt-Hawse, speaking for the first time, \"we would like for you to accept our full, frank and unreserved apology and sign our Standard Forgiveness Release Form.\"\n\nI looked at them both in turn, then at the contract they had placed in front of me, then at Friday, who had put his fingers in his mouth and was looking up at me with an inquisitive air. I had to get my husband back, and Friday his father. There didn't seem any good reason not to sign.\n\n\"I want your word you'll get him back.\"\n\n\"You have it,\" replied the CEO.\n\nI took the offered pen and signed the form at the bottom.\n\n\"Excellent!\" muttered the CEO. \"We'll reactualize your husband as soon as possible. Good day, Miss Next. It was a very great pleasure to meet you.\"\n\n\"And you,\" I replied, smiling and shaking both their hands. \"I must say I'm very pleased with what I've heard here today. You can count on my support when you become a religion.\"\n\nThey gave me some leaflets on how to join New Goliath, which I eagerly accepted, and I was shown out a few minutes later, the shuttle to Tarbuck Graviport having been held on my account. By the time I had reached Tarbuck, the inane grin had subsided from my face; by the time I had arrived at Saknussum, I was confused; on the drive back to Swindon, I was suspicious that something wasn't quite right; by the time I had reached Mum's home, I was furious. I had been duped by Goliath\u2014again."
            },
            {
                "title": "That Evening",
                "text": "[ Toast May Be Injurious to Health ]\n\n\u2002That was the shock statement put out by a joint Kaine-Goliath research project undertaken last Tuesday morning. \"In our research we have found that in certain circumstances eating toast may make the consumer writhe around in unspeakable agony, foaming at the mouth before death mercifully overcomes them.\" The scientists went on to report that although these findings were by no means complete, more work needed to be done before toast had a clean bill of health. The Toast Marketing Board reacted angrily and pointed out that the \"at risk\" slice of toast in the experiment had been spread with the deadly poison strychnine and these \"scientific\" trials were just another attempt to besmirch the board's good name and that of their sponsee, opposition leader Redmond van de Poste.\n\n\u2014Report in Goliath Today!, July 17, 1988\n\nHow was your day?\" asked Mum, handing me a large cup of tea. Friday had been tuckered out by all the activity and had fallen asleep into his cheesy bean dips. I had bathed him and put him to bed before having something to eat myself. Hamlet and Emma were out at the movies or something, Bismarck was listening to Wagner on his Walkman, so Mum and I had a moment to ourselves.\n\n\"Not good,\" I replied slowly. \"I can't dissuade an assassin from trying to kill me; Hamlet isn't safe here, but I can't send him back; and if I don't get Swindon to win the SuperHoop, then the world will end. Goliath somehow duped me into forgiving them, I have my own stalker, and also have to figure out how to get the banned books I should be hunting for SO-14 out of the country. And Landen's still not back.\"\n\n\"Really?\" she said, not having listened to me at all. \"I think I've got a plan how we can deal with that annoying offspring of Pickwick's.\"\n\n\"Lethal injection?\"\n\n\"Not funny. No, my friend Mrs. Beatty knows a dodo whisperer who can work wonders with unruly dodos.\"\n\n\"You're kidding me, right?\"\n\n\"Not at all.\"\n\n\"I'll try anything, I suppose. I can't understand why he's so difficult\u2014Pickers is a real sweetheart.\"\n\nWe fell silent for a moment.\n\n\"Mum?\" I said at last.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"What do you think of Herr Bismarck?\"\n\n\"Otto? Well, most people remember him for his 'blood and iron' rhetoric, unification arguments, and the wars\u2014but few give him credit for devising the first social security system in Europe.\"\n\n\"No, I mean... that is to say... you wouldn't\u2014\"\n\nAt that moment we heard some oaths and a slammed door. After a few thumps and bumps, Hamlet burst into the living room, stopped, composed himself, rubbed his forehead, looked heavenwards, sighed deeply and then said:\n\n\"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!\"\n\n\"Is everything all right?\" I asked.\n\n\"Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter!\"\n\n\"I'll make a cup of tea,\" said my mother, who had an instinct for these sorts of things. \"Would you like a slice of Battenberg, Mr. Hamlet?\"\n\n\"O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable\u2014yes, please\u2014seem to me all the uses of this world!\"\n\nShe nodded and moved off.\n\n\"What's up?\" I asked Emma, who had entered with Hamlet, as he strutted around the living room, beating his head in frustration and grief.\n\n\"Well, we went to see Hamlet at the Alhambra.\"\n\n\"Crumbs!\" I muttered. \"It... er... didn't go down too well, I take it?\"\n\n\"Well,\" reflected Emma, as Hamlet continued his histrionics around the living room, \"the play was okay apart from Hamlet shouting out a couple of times that Polonius wasn't meant to be funny and Laertes wasn't remotely handsome. The management weren't particularly put out\u2014there were at least twelve Hamlets in the audience, and they all had something to say about it.\"\n\n\"Fie on't! Ah, fie!\" continued Hamlet. \"'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely\u2014!\"\n\n\"No,\" continued Emma, \"it was when we and the twelve other Hamlets went to have a quiet drink with the play's company afterwards that things turned sour. Piarno Keyes\u2014who was playing Hamlet\u2014took umbrage at Hamlet's criticisms of his performance; Hamlet said his portrayal was far too indecisive. Mr. Keyes said Hamlet was mistaken, that Hamlet was a man racked by uncertainty. Then Hamlet said he was Hamlet so should know a thing or two about it; one of the other Hamlets disagreed and said he was Hamlet and thought Mr. Keyes was excellent. Several of the Hamlets agreed, and it might have ended there, but Hamlet said that if Mr. Keyes insisted on playing Hamlet, he should look at how Mel Gibson did it and improve his performance in light of that.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Emma. \"Oh, dear. Mr. Keyes flew right off the handle. 'Mel Gibson?' he roared. 'Mel fucking Gibson? That's all I ever fucking hear these days!' and he then tried to punch Hamlet on the nose. Hamlet was too quick, of course, and had his bodkin at Keyes's throat before you could blink, so one of the other Hamlets suggested a Hamlet contest. The rules were simple: they all had to perform the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, and the drinkers in the tavern gave them points out of ten.\"\n\n\"And...?\"\n\n\"Hamlet came last.\"\n\n\"Last? How could he come last?\"\n\n\"Well, he insisted on playing the soliloquy less like an existential question over life and death and the possibility of an afterlife, and more about a postapocalyptic dystopia where crossbow-wielding punks on motorbikes try to kill people for their gasoline.\"\n\nI looked across at Hamlet who had quieted down a bit and was looking through my mother's video collection for Olivier's Hamlet to see if it was better than Gibson's.\n\n\"No wonder he's hacked off.\"\n\n\"Here we go!\" said my mother, returning with a large tray of tea things. \"There's nothing like a nice cup of tea when things look bad!\"\n\n\"Humph,\" grunted Hamlet, staring at his feet. \"I don't suppose you've got any of that cake, have you?\"\n\n\"Especially for you!\" My mother smiled, producing the Battenberg with a flourish. She was right, too. After a few cups and a slice of cake, Hamlet was almost human again.\n\nI left Emma and Hamlet arguing with my mother over whether they should watch Olivier's Hamlet or Great Croquet Sporting Moments on the television and went to sort some washing in the kitchen. I stood there trying to figure out just what sort of brain-scrubbing technique Goliath had used on me to get me to sign their Forgiveness Release. Oddly, I was still getting pro-Goliath flashbacks. In absent moments I felt they weren't so bad, then had to consciously remind myself that they were. On the plus side, there was a possibility Landen might be reactualized, but I didn't know when it would be, or how.\n\nI was just getting around to wondering if a cold soak might remove ketchup stains better than a hot wash when there was a light crackling sound in the air, like crumpled cellophane. It grew louder, and green tendrils of electricity started to envelop the Kenwood mixer, then grew stronger until a greenish glow like St. Elmo's fire was dancing around the microwave. There was a bright light and a rumble of thunder as three figures started to materialize into the kitchen. Two of them were dressed in body armor and holding ridiculously large blaster-type weapons; the other figure was tall and dressed in jet black high-collared robes that hung to the floor in one direction and buttoned tightly up to his throat in the other. He had a pale complexion, high cheekbones and a small and very precise goatee. He stood with his arms crossed and was staring at me with one eyebrow raised imperiously. This was truly a tyrant among tyrants, a cruel galactic leader who had murdered billions in his never-ending and inadequately explained quest for total galactic domination. This... was Emperor Zhark."
            },
            {
                "title": "Emperor Zhark",
                "text": "The eight Emperor Zhark novels were written throughout the seventies by Handley Paige, an author whose previous works included Spacestation Z-5 and Revenge of the Thraals. With Zhark he hit upon a pastiche of everything a bad SF novel should ever be. Weird worlds, tentacled aliens, space travel and square-jawed fighter aces doing battle with a pantomime emperor who lived for no other reason than to cause evil and disharmony in the galaxy. His usual nemesis in the books was Colonel Brandt of the Space Corps assisted by his alien partner, Ashley. There have been two Zhark films starring Buck Stallion, Zhark the Destroyer and Bad Day at Big Rock, neither of which was any good.\n\n[ Millon de Floss, The Books of H. Paige ]\n\nDo you have to do that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Dowhat?\" replied the Emperor.\n\n\"Make such a pointlessly dramatic entrance? And what are those two goons doing here?\"\n\n\"Who said that?\" said a muffled voice from inside the opaque helmet of one of his minders. \"I can't see a sodding thing in here.\"\n\n\"Who's a goon?\" said the other.\n\n\"It's a contractual thing,\" explained the Emperor, ignoring them both. \"I've got a new agent who knows how to properly handle a character of my quality. I have to be given a minimum of eighty words' description at least once in any featured book, and at least twice in a book a chapter has to end with my appearance.\"\n\n\"Do you get book-title billing?\"\n\n\"We gave that one away in exchange for chapter-heading status. If this were a novel, you'd have to start a new chapter as soon as I appeared.\"\n\n\"Well, it's a good thing we're not,\" I replied. \"If my mother was here, she'd probably have had a heart attack.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" replied the Emperor, looking around. \"Do you live with your mother, too?\"\n\n\"What's up? Problems at Jurisfiction?\"\n\n\"Take five, lads,\" said Zhark to the two guards, who felt around the kitchen until they found a chair and sat down. \"Mrs. Tiggywinkle sent me,\" he breathed. \"She's busy at the Beatrix Potter Characters Annual General Meeting but wanted me to give you an update on what's happening at Jurisfiction.\"\n\n\"Who's that, darling?\" called my mother from the living room.\n\n\"It's a homicidal maniac intent on galactic domination,\" I called back.\n\n\"That's nice, dear.\"\n\nI turned back to Zhark. \"So what's the news?\"\n\n\"Max de Winter from Rebecca,\" said Zhark thoughtfully. \"The BookWorld Justice Department has rearrested him.\"\n\n\"I thought Snell got him off the murder charge.\"\n\n\"He did. The department is still gunning for him, though. They've arrested him on\u2014get this\u2014insurance fraud. Remember the boat he sank with his wife in it?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Well, apparently he claimed the boat on insurance, so they think they might be able to get him on that.\"\n\nIt was not an untypical turn of events in the BookWorld. Our mandate from the Council of Genres was to keep fictional narrative as stable as possible. As long as it was how the author intended, murderers walked free and tyrants stayed in power\u2014that was what we did. Minor infringements that weren't obvious to the reading public, we tended to overlook. However, in a masterstroke of inspired bureaucracy, the Council of Genres also empowered a Justice Department to look into individual transgressions. The conviction of David Copperfield for murdering his first wife was their biggest cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre\u2014before my time, I hasten to add\u2014and Jurisfiction, unable to save him, could do little except train another character to take Copperfield's place. They had tried to get Max de Winter before, but we had always managed to outmaneuver them. Insurance fraud. I could scarcely believe it.\n\n\"Have you alerted the Gryphon?\"\n\n\"He's working on Fagin's umpteenth appeal.\"\n\n\"Get him on it. We can't leave this to amateurs. What about Hamlet? Can I send him back?\"\n\n\"Not... as such,\" replied Zhark hesitantly.\n\n\"He's becoming something of a nuisance,\" I admitted, \"and Danes are liable to be arrested. I can't keep him amused by watching Mel Gibson's films forever.\"\n\n\"I'd like Mel Gibson to play me,\" said Zhark thoughtfully.\n\n\"I don't think Gibson does bad guys,\" I conceded. \"You'd probably be played by Geoffrey Rush or someone.\"\n\n\"That wouldn't be so bad. Is that cake going begging?\"\n\n\"Help yourself.\"\n\nZhark cut a large slice of Battenberg, took a bite and continued, \"Okay, here's the deal: we managed to get the Polonius family to attend arbitration over their unauthorized rewriting of Hamlet.\"\n\n\"How did you achieve that?\"\n\n\"Promised Ophelia her own book. All back to normal\u2014no problem.\"\n\n\"So... I can send Hamlet back?\"\n\n\"Not quite yet,\" replied Zhark, hiding his unease by pretending to find a small piece of fluff on his cape. \"You see, Ophelia has now got her knickers in a twist about one of Hamlet's infidelities\u2014someone she thinks is called Henna Appleton. Have you heard anything about this?\"\n\n\"No. Nothing. Nothing at all. Not a thing. Don't even know anyone called Henna Appleton. Why?\"\n\n\"I was hoping you could tell me. Well, she went completely nuts and threatened to drown herself in the first act rather than the fourth. We think we've got her straightened out. But whilst we were doing this\u2014there was a hostile takeover.\"\n\nI cursed aloud, and Zhark jumped. Nothing was ever straightforward in the BookWorld. Book mergers, where one book joined another to increase the collective narrative advantage of their own mundane plotlines, were thankfully rare but not unheard of. The most famous merger in Shakespeare was the conjoinment of the two plays Daughters of Lear and Sons of Gloucester into King Lear. Other potential mergers, such as Much Ado About Verona and A Midsummer Night's Shrew, were denied at the planning stage and hadn't taken place. It could take months to extricate the plots, if it could be done at all. King Lear resisted unraveling so strongly we just let it stand.\n\n\"So who merged with Hamlet?\"\n\n\"Well, it's now called The Merry Wives of Elsinore, and features Gertrude being chased around the castle by Falstaff while being outwitted by Mistress Page, Ford and Ophelia. Laertes is the king of the fairies, and Hamlet is relegated to a sixteen-line subplot where he is convinced Doctor Caius and Fenton have conspired to kill his father for seven hundred pounds.\"\n\nI groaned. \"What's it like?\"\n\n\"It takes a long time to get funny, and when it finally does, everyone dies.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I conceded, \"I'll try to keep Hamlet amused. How long do you need to unravel the play?\"\n\nZhark winced and sucked in air through his teeth in the same manner heating engineers do when quoting on a new boiler. \"Well, that's the problem, Thursday. I'm not sure that we can do it all. If this happened anywhere but in the original, we could have just deleted it. You know the trouble we had with King Lear? Well, I don't see that we're going to have any better luck with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.\"\n\nI sat down and put my head in my hands. No Hamlet. The loss was almost too vast to comprehend.\n\n\"How long have we got before Hamlet starts to change?\" I asked without looking up.\n\n\"About five days, six at the outside,\" replied Zhark quietly. \"After that, the breakdown will accelerate. In two weeks' time, the play as we know it will have ceased to exist.\"\n\n\"There must be something we can do.\"\n\n\"We've tried pretty much everything. We're stuffed\u2014unless you've got a spare William Shakespeare up your sleeve.\"\n\nI sat up. \"What?\"\n\n\"We're stuffed?\"\n\n\"After that.\"\n\n\"A spare William Shakespeare up your sleeve?\"\n\n\"Yes. How will that help?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Zhark thoughtfully, \"since no original manuscripts of either Hamlet or Wives exist, a freshly penned script by the author would thus become the original manuscript\u2014and we could use those to reboot the Storycode Engines from scratch. It's quite simple, really.\"\n\nI smiled but Zhark looked at me with bewilderment. \"Thursday, Shakespeare died in 1616!\"\n\nI stood up and patted him on the arm. \"You get back to the office and make sure things don't get any worse. Leave the Shakespeare up to me. Now, has anyone figured out yet which book Yorrick Kaine is from?\"\n\n\"We've got all available resources working on it,\" replied Zhark, still a bit confused, \"but there are a lot of novels to go through. Can you give us any pointers?\"\n\n\"Well, he's not very multidimensional, so I shouldn't go looking into anything too literary. I'd start at political thrillers and work your way towards spy.\"\n\nZhark made a note.\n\n\"Good. Any other problems?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied the Emperor. \"Simpkin is being a bit of a pest in The Tailor of Gloucester. Apparently the tailor let all his mice escape, and now Simpkin won't let him have the cherry-colored twist. If the Mayor's coat isn't ready for Christmas, there'll be hell to pay.\"\n\n\"Get the mice to make the waistcoat. They're not doing anything.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he sighed, \"I'll give it a whirl.\" He looked at his watch. \"Well, better be off. I've got to annihilate the planet Thraal at four, and I'm already late. Do you think I should use my trusty Zharkian death-ray and fry them alive in a millisecond or nudge an asteroid into their orbit, thus unleashing at least six chapters of drama as they try to find an ingenious solution to defeat me?\"\n\n\"The asteroid sounds a good bet.\"\n\n\"I thought so, too. Well, see you later.\"\n\nI waved goodbye as he and his two guards were beamed out of my world and back into theirs, which was certainly the best place for them. We had quite enough tyrants in the real world as it was.\n\nI was just wondering what The Merry Wives of Elsinore might be like when there was another buzzing noise and the kitchen was filled with light once more. There, imperious stare, high collar, etc., etc., was Emperor Zhark."
            },
            {
                "title": "Emperor Zhark Again",
                "text": "[ President George Formby Opens Motorcycle Factory ]\n\n\u2002The President opened the new Brough-Vincent-Norton Motorcycle factory yesterday in Liverpool, bringing much-welcomed jobs to the area. The highly modernized factory, which aims to produce up to a thousand quality touring and racing machines every week, was described by the President as \"Cracking stuff!\" The President, a longtime advocate of motorcycling, rode one of the company's new Vincent \"Super Shadow\" racers around the test track, reportedly hitting over 120 MPH, much to his retinue's obvious concern for the octogenarian Formby's health. Our George then gave a cheerful rendering of \"Riding in the TT Races,\" reminding his audience of the time he won the Manx Tourist Trophy on a prototype Rainbow motorcycle.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 9, 1988\n\nForget something?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes. What was that cake of your mother's?\" \"Yes. What was that cake of your mother's?\"\n\n\"It's called Battenberg.\"\n\nHe got a pen and made a note on his cuff. \"Right. Well, that's it, then.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"Is there something else?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And...?\"\n\n\"It's... it's...\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nEmperor Zhark bit his lip, looked around nervously and drew closer. Although I'd had good reason for reprimanding him in the past\u2014and even suspended his Jurisfiction badge for \"gross incompetence\" on two occasions\u2014I actually liked him a great deal. Within the amnesty of his own books, he was a sadistic monster who murdered millions with staggering ruthlessness, but out here he had his own fair share of worries, demons and peculiar habits\u2014many of which seemed to have stemmed from the strict upbringing undertaken by his mother, the Empress Zharkeena.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, unsure of quite how to put it, \"you know the sixth in the Emperor Zhark series is being written as we speak?\"\n\n\"Zhark: End of Empire? Yes, I'd heard that. What's the problem?\"\n\n\"Well, I've just read the advanced plotline, and it seems that I'm going to be vanquished by the Galactic Freedom Alliance.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Emperor, I'm not sure I see your point\u2014are you concerned about losing your empire?\"\n\nHe moved closer. \"If the story calls for it, I guess not. But it's what happens to me at the end that I have a few problems with. I don't mind being cast adrift in space on the imperial yacht or left marooned on an empty planet, but my writer has planned... a public execution.\"\n\nHe stared at me, shocked by the enormity of it all.\n\n\"If that's what he has planned\u2014\"\n\n\"Thursday, you don't understand. I'm going to be killed off\u2014written out! I'm not sure I can take that kind of rejection.\"\n\n\"Emperor,\" I said, \"if a character has run its course, then it's run its course. What do you want me to do? Go and talk the author out of it?\"\n\n\"Would you?\" replied Zhark, opening his eyes wide. \"Would you really do that?\"\n\n\"No. You can't have characters trying to tell their authors what to write in their books. Besides, within your books you are truly evil and need to be punished.\"\n\nZhark pulled himself up to his full height. \"I see,\" he said at length. \"Well, I might decide to take drastic action if you don't at least attempt to persuade Mr. Paige. And besides, I'm not really evil\u2014I'm just written that way.\"\n\n\"If I hear any more of this nonsense,\" I replied, beginning to get annoyed, \"I will have you placed under book arrest and charged with incitement to mutiny for what you've just told me.\"\n\n\"Oh, crumbs,\" he said, suddenly deflated. \"You can, can't you?\"\n\n\"I can. I won't because I can't be bothered, but if I hear anything more about this, I will take steps\u2014do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Zhark meekly and, without another word, vanished."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cloned Will Hunting",
                "text": "[ Opposition Leader Mildly Criticizes Kaine ]\n\n\u2002Opposition leader Mr. Redmond van de Poste lightly attacked Yorrick Kaine's government yesterday over the possible failure to adequately address the nation's economic woes. Mr. van de Poste suggested that the Danish were \"no more guilty of attacking this country than the Swedes\" and then went on to question Kaine's independence due to his close sponsorship ties with the Goliath Corporation. In reply Chancellor Kaine thanked van de Poste for alerting him to the Swedes, who were \"doubtless up to something,\" and pointed out that Mr. van de Poste himself was sponsored by the Toast Marketing Board.\n\n\u2014Article in The Gadfly, July 17, 1988\n\nSunday was meant to be a day off but it didn't really seem like it. I played golf with Braxton in the morning and outside work he was as amiable a gent as I could possibly hope to meet. He delighted in showing me the rudiments of golf and once or twice I hit the ball quite well\u2014when it made the thwack noise and flew away as straight as a die I suddenly realized what all the fuss was about. It wasn't all fun and games, though\u2014Braxton had been leaned on by Flanker who, I assume, had been leaned on by somebody else higher up. In between putting practice and attempting to get my ball out of the bunker, Braxton confided that he couldn't hold off Flanker forever with his empty promise of a report on my alleged Welsh cheese activities, and if I knew what was good for me I would have to at least try and look for banned books with SO-14. I promised I would and then joined him for a drink at the nineteenth hole where we were regaled with stories by a large man with a red nose who was, apparently, the Oldest Member.\n\nI was awakened Monday morning by a burbling noise from Friday. He was standing up in his cot and trying to grasp the curtain, which was out of his reach. He said that now that I was awake I could do a lot worse than take him downstairs, where he could play whilst I made some breakfast. Well, he didn't use those precise words, of course\u2014he said something more along the lines of, \"Reprehenderit in voluptate velit id est mollit,\" but I knew what he meant.\n\nI couldn't think of any good reason not to, so I pulled on my dressing gown and took the little fellow downstairs, pondering on quite who, if anyone, was going to look after him today. After I nearly got into a fight with Jack Schitt in front of Friday, I wasn't sure he should witness all that his mum got up to.\n\nMy own mother was already up.\n\n\"Good morning, Mother,\" I said cheerfully, \"and how are you today?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not during the morning,\" she said, divining my unasked question instantly, \"but I can probably manage from teatime onwards.\"\n\n\"I'd appreciate it,\" I replied, looking at The Mole as I put on the porridge. Kaine had given an ultimatum to the Danish: either the government in Denmark ended all its efforts to destabilize England and undermine our economy, or England would have no choice but to recall our ambassador. The Danish had replied that they didn't know what Kaine was talking about and demanded that the trade ban on Danish goods be lifted. Kaine responded angrily, made all sorts of counterclaims, put a 200 percent tariff on Danish bacon imports and closed all avenues of communication.\n\n\"Duis aute irure dolor est!\" yelled Friday.\n\n\"Keep your hair on,\" I replied, \"it's coming.\"\n\n\"Plink!\" said Alan angrily, gesturing towards his supper dish indignantly.\n\n\"Wait your turn,\" I told him.\n\n\"Plink, PLINK!\" he replied in a threatening tone, taking a step closer and opening his beak threateningly.\n\n\"Try to bite me,\" I told him, \"and you'll be finding a new owner from the front window of Pete & Dave's!\"\n\nAlan figured out this was a threat and closed his beak. Pete & Dave's was the local reengineered-pet store, and I was serious. He'd already tried to bite my mother, and even the local dogs were giving him a wide berth.\n\nAt that moment Joffy opened the back door and walked in. But he wasn't alone. He was with something that I can only describe as an untidy bag of thin bones covered in dirty skin and a rough blanket.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Joffy. \"Mum and Sis. Just the ticket. This is St. Zvlkx. Your Grace, this is my mother, Mrs. Next, and my sister, Thursday.\"\n\nSt. Zvlkx looked at me suspiciously from behind a heavy curtain of oily black hair.\n\n\"Welcome to Swindon, Mr. Zvlkx,\" said my mother, curtsying politely. \"Would you like some breakfast?\"\n\n\"He only speaks Old English,\" put in Joffy. \"Here, let me translate.\"\n\n\"Oi, pigface\u2014are you going to eat or what?\"\n\n\"Ahh!\" said the monk, and sat down at the table. Friday stared at him a little dubiously, then started to jabber Lorem Ipsum at him while the monk stared at him dubiously.\n\n\"How's it all going?\" I asked.\n\n\"Pretty good,\" replied Joffy, pouring some coffee for himself and St. Zvlkx. \"He's shooting a commercial this morning for the Toast Marketing Board and will be on The Adrian Lush Show at four. He's also guest speaker at the Swindon Dermatologists' Convention at the Finis; apparently some of his skin complaints are unknown to science. I thought I'd bring him around to see you\u2014he's full of wisdom, you know.\"\n\n\"It's barely eight in the morning!\" said Mum.\n\n\"St. Zvlkx rises with the dawn as a penance,\" Joffy explained. \"He spent all of Sunday pushing a peanut around the Brunel Centre with his nose.\"\n\n\"I spent it playing golf with Braxton Hicks.\"\n\n\"How did you do?\"\n\n\"Okay, I think. My croquet-playing skills stopped me making a complete arse of myself. Did you know that Braxton had six kids?\"\n\n\"Well, how about some wisdom, then?\" asked my mother brightly. \"I'm very big on thirteenth-century sagacity.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Joffy. \"Oi! Make yourself useful and giue us some wisdom, you old fart.\"\n\n\"Poke it up your arse.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"Er... he said he would meditate upon it.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said my mother, who was nothing if not hospitable and could just about make breakfast without consulting the recipe book, \"since you are our guest, Mr. Zvlkx, what would you like for breakfast?\"\n\nSt. Zvlkx stared at her.\n\n\"Eat,\" repeated my mother, making biting gestures. This seemed to do the trick.\n\n\"Your mother has firm breasts for a middle-aged woman, orblike and defying grauity. I should like to play with them, as a baker plays with dough.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He says he'd be very grateful for bacon and eggs,\" replied Joffy quickly, turning to St. Zvlkx and saying, \"Any more crap out of you, sunshine, and I'll lock you in the cellar tomorrow night as well.\"\n\n\"What did you say to him?\"\n\n\"I thanked him for his attendance in your home.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\nMum put the big frying pan on the cooker and broke some eggs into it, followed by large rashers of bacon. Pretty soon the smell of bacon pervaded the house, something that attracted not only a sleepwalking DH-82 but also Hamlet and Lady Hamilton, who had given up pretending they weren't sleeping together.\n\n\"Hubba hubba,\" said St. Zvlkx as soon as Emma entered. \"Who's the bunny with the scrummy hooters?\"\n\n\"He wishes you... um... both good morrow,\" said Joffy, visibly shaken. \"St. Zulkx, this is Lady Hamilton and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.\"\n\n\"If you're giuing away one of those puppies,\" continued St. Zvlkx, staring at Emma's cleavage, \"I'll haue the one with the brown nose.\"\n\n\"Good morning,\" said Hamlet without smiling. \"Any more bad language against the good Lady Hamilton and I'll take you outside and make your quietus with a bare bodkin.\"\n\n\"What did the Prince say?\" asked St. Zvlkx.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Joffy, \"what did he say?\"\n\n\"It's Courier Bold,\" I told him, \"the traditional language of the BookWorld. He said that he would be failing in his duty as a gentleman if he allowed Zvlkx to show any disrespect to Lady Hamilton.\"\n\n\"What did your sister say?\" asked St. Zvlkx.\n\n\"She said that if you insult Hamlet's bird again, your nose will be two foot wide across your face.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said my mother, \"this is turning out to be a very pleasant morning!\"\n\n\"In that case,\" asked Joffy, sensing that the time was just right, \"could St. Zvlkx stay here until midday? I've got to give a sermon to the Sisters of Eternal Punctuality at ten, and if I'm late, they throw their prayer books at me.\"\n\n\"No can do, oh, son-my-son,\" said my mother, flipping the bacon. \"Why not take St. Zvlkx with you? I'm sure the nuns will be impressed by his piety.\"\n\n\"Did someone mention nuns?\" asked St. Zvlkx, looking around eagerly.\n\n\"How you got to be a saint I haue no idea,\" chided Joffy. \"Another peep out of you and I'll personally kick your uulgar arse all the way back to the thirteenth century.\"\n\nSt. Zvlkx shrugged, wolfed down his bacon and eggs with his hands and then burped loudly. Friday did the same and collapsed into a fit of giggles.\n\nThey all left soon after. Joffy wouldn't mind Friday, and Zvlkx certainly couldn't, so there was nothing for it. As soon as Mum had found her hat, coat and keys and gone out, I rushed upstairs, dressed, then read myself into Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser to ask Melanie if she would look after Friday until teatime. Mum said she would be out the whole day, and since Hamlet already knew that Melanie was a gorilla and neither Emma nor Bismarck could exactly complain since they were long-dead historical figures themselves, I thought it a safe bet. It was against regulations, but with Hamlet and the world facing an uncertain future, I was past caring.\n\nMelanie happily agreed, and once she had changed into a yellow polka-dot dress, I brought her out of the BookWorld to my mother's front room, which she thought very smart, especially the festoon curtains. She was pulling the cord to watch the curtains rise and fall when Emma walked in.\n\n\"Lady Hamilton,\" I announced, \"this is Melanie Bradshaw.\" Mel put out a large hand, and Emma shook it nervously, as though expecting Melanie to bite her or something.\n\n\"How... how do you do?\" she stammered. \"I've never been introduced to a monkey before.\"\n\n\"Ape,\" corrected Melanie helpfully. \"Monkeys generally have tails, are truly arboreal and belong to the families Hylobatidae, Cebidae and Ceropithecidae. You and I and all the great apes are Pongidae. I'm a gorilla. Well, strictly speaking, I'm a mountain gorilla\u2014Gorilla gorilla beringei\u2014which lives on the slopes of the Virunga volcanoes\u2014we used to call it British East Africa, but I'm not sure what it is now. Have you ever been there?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Charming place. That's where Trafford\u2014my husband\u2014and I met. He was with his gun bearers hacking his way through the undergrowth during the backstory to Bradshaw Hunts Big Game (Collins, 1878, 4/6, illustrated), and he slipped from the path and fell twenty feet into the ravine below, where I was taking a bath.\"\n\nShe picked up Friday in her massive arms, and he chortled with delight.\n\n\"Well, I was most dreadfully embarrassed. I mean, I was sitting there in the running water without a stitch on, but\u2014and I'll always remember this\u2014Trafford politely apologized and turned his back so I could nip into the bushes and get dressed. I came out to ask him if he might want directions back to civilization\u2014Africa was quite unexplored then, you know\u2014and we got to chatting. Well, one thing led to another, and before I knew it, he had asked me out to dinner. We've been together ever since. Does that sound silly to you?\"\n\nEmma thought about how her relationship with Admiral Lord Nelson was lampooned mercilessly in the press. \"No, I think that sounds really quite romantic.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said, clapping my hands, \"I'll be back at three. Don't go out, and if anyone calls, get Hamlet or Emma to answer the door. Okay?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" replied Melanie. \"Don't go out, don't answer the door. Simple.\"\n\n\"And no swinging on the curtains or lamp fixtures\u2014they won't stand it.\"\n\n\"Are you saying I'm a bit large?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I replied hastily. \"Things are just different in the real world. There is lots of fruit in the bowl and fresh bananas in the refrigerator. Okay?\"\n\n\"No problemo. Have a nice day.\"\n\nI drove into town and, avoiding several newspapermen who were still eager to interview me, entered the SpecOps Building, which I noted had been freshly repainted since my last visit. It looked a bit more cheery in mauve, but not much.\n\n\"Agent Next?\" said a young and extremely keen SO-14 agent in a well-starched black outfit, complete with Kevlar vest, combat boots, and highly visible weaponry.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nHe saluted.\n\n\"My name is Major Drabb, SO-14. I understand you have been assigned to us to track down more of this pernicious Danish literature.\"\n\nHe was so keen to fulfill his duties I felt chilled. To his credit he would be as enthusiastic helping flood victims; he was just following orders unquestioningly. Worse acts than destroying Danish literature had been perpetrated by men like this. Luckily, I was prepared.\n\n\"Good to see you, Major. I had a tip-off that this address might hold a few copies of the banned books.\"\n\nI passed him a scrap of paper and he read it eagerly.\n\n\"The Albert Schweitzer Memorial Library? We'll be on it right away.\"\n\nAnd he saluted smartly once again, turned on his heel and was gone.\n\nI made my way up to the LiteraTec office and found Bowden in the process of packing Karen Blixen's various collections of stories into a cardboard box.\n\n\"Hi!\" he said, tying up the box with string. \"How are things with you?\"\n\n\"Pretty good. I'm back at work.\"\n\nBowden smiled, put down the scissors and string and shook my hand.\n\n\"That's very good news indeed! Heard the latest? Daphne Farquitt has been added to the list of banned Danish writers.\"\n\n\"But... Farquitt isn't Danish!\"\n\n\"Her father's name was Farquittsen, so it's Danish enough for Kaine and his idiots.\"\n\nIt was an interesting development. Farquitt's books were pretty dreadful but burning was still a step too far. Just.\n\n\"Have you found a way to get all these banned books out of England?\" asked Bowden, running some tape across a box of Out of Africas. \"With Farquitt's books and all the rest of the stuff that's coming in, I think we'll need closer to ten trucks.\"\n\n\"It's certainly on my mind,\" I replied, having not done anything about it at all.\n\n\"Excellent! We'd like to take a convoy through as soon as you say the word. Now, what do you want me to brief you on first? The latest Capulet v. Montague drive-by shooting or which authors are next up for a random dope test?\"\n\n\"Neither,\" I replied. \"Tell me everything you know about cloned Shakespeares.\"\n\n\"We've had to put that on low priority. It's intriguing to be sure, but ultimately pointless from a law-and-order point of view\u2014anyone involved in their sequencing will be too dead or too old to go to trial.\"\n\n\"It's more of a BookWorld thing,\" I replied, \"but important, I promise.\"\n\n\"Well, in that case,\" began Bowden, who knew me too well to think I'd waste his time or my own, \"we have three Shakespeares on the slab at the moment, all aged between fifty and sixty\u2014put those Hans Christian Andersen books in that box, would you? If they were cloned, it was way back in the poorly regulated days of the thirties, when there was all sorts of nonsense going on, when people thought they could engineer Olympic runners with four legs, swimmers with real fins, that sort of thing. I've had a brief trawl through the records. The first confirmed WillClone surfaced in 1952 with the accidental shooting of a Mr. 'Shakstpear' in Ten-bury Wells. Then there's the unexplained death of a Mr. 'Shaxzpar' in 1958, Mr. 'Shagxtspar' in 1962 and a Mr. 'Shogtspore' in 1969. There are others, too\u2014\"\n\n\"Any theories why?\"\n\n\"I think,\" said Bowden slowly, \"that perhaps someone was trying to synthesize the great man so they could have him write some more great plays. Illegal and morally reprehensible, of course, but potentially of huge benefit to Shakespearean scholars everywhere. The lack of any young Shakespeares turning up makes me think this was an experiment long since abandoned.\"\n\nThere was a pause as I mulled this over. Genetic cloning of entire humans was strictly forbidden\u2014no commercial bioengineering company would dare try it, and yet no one but a large bioengineering company would have the facilities to undertake it. But if these Shakespeare clones had survived, chances are there were more. And with the real one long dead, his reengineered other self was the only way we could unravel The Merry Wives of Elsinore.\n\n\"Doesn't this come under the jurisdiction of SO-13?\" I said at last.\n\n\"Officially, yes,\" conceded Bowden, \"but SO-13 is as underfunded as we are, and Agent Stiggins is far too busy dealing with mammoth migrations and chimeras to have anything to do with cloned Elizabethan playwrights.\"\n\nStiggins was the neanderthal head of the cloning police. Legally reengineered by Goliath, he was the ideal person to run SO-13.\n\n\"Have you spoken to him?\" I asked.\n\n\"He's a neanderthal,\" Bowden replied. \"They don't talk at all unless it's absolutely necessary. I've tried a couple of times, but he just stares at me in a funny way and eats live beetles from a paper bag\u2014yuck.\"\n\n\"He'll talk to me,\" I said. He would, too. I still owed him a favor for when he got me out of a jam with Flanker. \"Let's see if he's about.\"\n\nI picked up the phone, consulted the internal directory and dialed a number.\n\nI watched as Bowden boxed up more banned books. If he was caught, he'd be finished. The irony of a LiteraTec's being jailed for protecting Farquitt's Canon of Love. I liked him all the more for it. No one in the Literary Detectives would knowingly harm a book. We'd all resign before torching a single copy of anything.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, replacing the phone. \"His office said there was a chimera alert in the Brunel Centre\u2014we should be able to find him there.\"\n\n\"Whereabouts in the Brunel Centre?\"\n\n\"If it's a chimera alert, we just follow the screams.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "ChimerasandNeanderthals",
                "text": "The neanderthal experiment was conceived in order to create the euphemistically entitled \"medical test vessels,\" living creatures that were as close as possible to humans without actually being human within the context of the law. The experiment was an unparalleled success\u2014and failure. The neanderthal was everything that could be hoped for. A close cousin, but not human, physiologically almost identical\u2014and legally with fewer rights than a dormouse. But, sadly for Goliath, even the hardiest of medical technicians balked at experiments conducted upon intelligent and speaking entities, so the first batch of neanderthals were trained instead as \"expendable combat units,\" a project that was shelved as soon as the lack of aggressive instincts in the neanderthal was noted. They were subsequently released into the community as cheap labor and became a celebrated tax write-off. It was Homo sapien at his least sapient.\n\n[ Gerhard von Squid, Neanderthals\u2014Back After a Short Absence ]\n\nThe Brunel Centre was packed, as usual. Busy shoppers moved from chain store to chain store, trying to find bargains in places whose identical goods were price-fixed by the head office several months in advance. It didn't stop them trying, though.\n\n\"So why the interest in photocopied bards?\" asked Bowden as we crossed the canal.\n\n\"We've got a crisis in the BookWorld.\"\n\nI outlined what was happening within the play formerly known as Hamlet, and he opened his eyes wide.\n\n\"Whoa!\" he said after a pause. \"And I thought our work was unusual!\"\n\nWe didn't have to wait long to find Mr. Stiggins. Within a few moments, there was a bloodcurdling cry of terror from a startled shopper. A second scream followed, and all of a sudden there was a mad rush of people moving away from the junction of Canal Walk and Bridge Street. We moved against the flow, stepping over discarded shopping and the odd shoe. The cause of the panic was soon evident. Rifling through a rubbish bin for a tasty snack was a bizarre hybrid of a creature\u2014in SO-13 slang a chimera. The genetic revolution that gave us unlimited replacement organs and the power to create dodos and other extinctees from home cloning kits had a downside: perverse pastiches of animals who were borne not on the shoulders of evolution but by hobby gene splicers who didn't know any better than to try to play God in the comfort of their own potting sheds.\n\nAs the crowds rapidly departed, Bowden and I stared at the strange creature that lurched and slavered as it rooted through the waste bin. It was about the size of a goat and had the rear legs of one, but not much else. The tail and the forelegs were lizard, the head almost feline. It had several tentacles, and it sucked noisily on a chip-soaked newspaper, the saliva from its toothless mouth dribbling copiously onto the pavement. In general, hybrid birds were the most common product of illegal gene splicing, as birds were closely enough related to one another to come out pretty well no matter how ham-fisted the amateur splicer. You could even create a passable dogfoxwolf or a domestic catleopard with no greater knowledge than a biology O level. No, it was the cross-class abominations that had led to the total ban on home cloning, the lizard-mammal switcheroos that really pushed the limits on what was socially acceptable. It didn't stop the sport, just pushed it underground.\n\nThe creature rummaged with its one good arm in the bin, found the remains of a SmileyBurger, stared at it with its five eyes, then pushed it into its mouth. It then flopped to the ground and moved, half shuffling and half slithering to the next bin, all the while hissing like a cat and slapping its tentacles together.\n\n\"Oh, my God,\" said Bowden, \"it's got a human arm!\"\n\nAnd so it had. It was when there were bits of recognizable human in them that chimeras were most repellant\u2014a failed attempt to replace a deceased loved one, or hobby gene splicers trying to make themselves a son.\n\n\"Repulsive?\" said a voice close at hand. \"The creature... or the creator?\" I turned to find myself looking at a squat, beetle-browed neanderthal in a pale suit with a homburg hat perched high on his domed head. I had met him several times before. This was Bartholomew Stiggins, head of SO-13 here in Wessex.\n\n\"Both,\" I replied.\n\nStiggins nodded imperceptibly as a blue SO-13 Land Rover pulled up with a squealing of brakes. A uniformed officer jumped out and started to try to push us back.\n\nStiggins said, \"We are together.\"\n\nThe neanderthal took a few steps forward, and we joined him at the creature, which was close enough to touch.\n\n\"Reptile, goat, cat, human,\" murmured the neanderthal, crouching down and staring intently at the creature as it ran a thin, pink, forked tongue across a crisps packet.\n\n\"The eyes look insectoid,\" observed the SO-13 agent, dart gun in the crook of his arm.\n\n\"Too big. More like the eyes we found on the chimera up at the bandstand. You remember, the one that looked like a giant hamster?\"\n\n\"Same splicer?\"\n\nThe neanderthal shrugged. \"Same eyes. You know how they like to trade.\"\n\n\"We'll take a sample and compare. Might lead us to them. That looks like a human arm, doesn't it?\"\n\nThe creature's arm was red and mottled and no bigger than a child's. To grasp anything, the fingers grabbed and twisted randomly until they found something and then clung on tight.\n\nThe cause of the panic was soon evident. Rifling through a rubbish bin for a tasty snack was a bizarre hybrid of a creature\u2014in SO-13 slang a chimera.\n\n\"Gives it an age,\" said Stiggins. \"Perhaps five years.\"\n\n\"Do you want to take it alive, sir?\" asked the SO-13 agent, breaking the barrel of his gun and pausing. The neanderthal shook his head.\n\n\"No. Send him home.\"\n\nThe agent inserted a dart and snapped the breech shut. He took careful aim and fired it into the creature. The chimera didn't flinch\u2014a fully functioning nervous system is a complicated piece of design and well beyond the capabilities of even the most gifted of amateur splicers\u2014but it stopped trying to chew the bark off a tree and twitched several times before lying down and breathing more slowly. The neanderthal moved closer and held the creature's grubby hand as its life ebbed away.\n\n\"Sometimes,\" said the neanderthal softly, \"sometimes the innocent must suffer.\"\n\n\"Dennis!\" came a panicked voice from the gathering crowd, who had fallen silent as the creature's breathing grew slower. \"Dennis, Daddy's worried! Where are you?\"\n\nThe whole sad, sorry scene had just got a lot worse. A man with a beard and in a sleeveless white shirt had run into the empty circle around the rapidly dying creature and stared at us with a look of numb horror on his face.\n\n\"Dennis?\"\n\nHe dropped to his knees next to his creation, which was now breathing in short gasps. The man opened his mouth and made such a wail of heartbroken grief that it made me feel quite odd inside. Such an outpouring cannot be feigned; it comes from the soul, one's very being.\n\n\"You didn't have to kill him!\" he wailed, wrapping his arms around the dying beast. \"You didn't have to kill him...!\"\n\nThe uniformed agent moved to pull Dennis's creator away, but the neanderthal stopped him. \"No,\" he said gravely. \"Leave him for a moment.\"\n\nThe agent shrugged and walked to the Land Rover to fetch a body bag.\n\n\"Every time we do this, it's like killing one of our own,\" said Stiggins softly. \"Where have you been, Miss Next? In prison?\"\n\n\"Why does everyone think I've been in prison?\"\n\n\"Because you were heading towards either death or prison when we last met\u2014and you are not dead.\"\n\nDennis's maker was rocking backwards and forwards, bemoaning the loss of his creation.\n\nThe agent returned with a body bag and a female colleague, who gently pried the man from the creature and told his unhearing ears his rights.\n\n\"Only one signature on a piece of paper keeps neanderthals from being destroyed, the same as him,\" said Stiggins, indicating the creature. \"We can be added to the list of banned creatures and designated a chimera without even an act of parliament.\"\n\nWe turned from the scene as the other two agents laid out the body bag and then rolled the corpse of the chimera onto it.\n\n\"You remember Bowden Cable?\" I asked. \"My partner at the LiteraTecs.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" replied Stiggins, \"we met at your reception.\"\n\n\"How have you been?\" asked Bowden.\n\nStiggins stared back at him. It was a pointless human pleasantry that neanderthals never trouble themselves with.\n\n\"We have been fine,\" replied Stig, forcing the standard answer from his lips. Bowden didn't know it, but he was only rubbing Stiggins's nose deeper in sapien-dominated society.\n\n\"He means nothing by it,\" I said matter-of-factly, which is how neanderthals like all their speech. \"We need your help, Stig.\"\n\n\"Then we will be happy to give it, Miss Next.\"\n\n\"Mean nothing by what?\" asked Bowden as we walked across to a bench.\n\n\"Tell you later.\"\n\nStig sat down and watched as another SO-13 Land Rover turned up, followed by two police cars to disperse the now curious crowd. He pulled out a carefully wrapped package of greaseproof paper and unfolded it to reveal his lunch\u2014two windfall apples, a small bag of live bugs and a chunk of raw meat.\n\n\"Bug?\"\n\n\"No thanks.\"\n\n\"So what can we do for the Literary Detectives?\" he asked, attempting to eat a beetle that didn't really want him to and was chased twice around Stig's hand until caught and devoured.\n\n\"What do you make of this?\" I asked as Bowden handed him a picture of the Shaxtper cadaver.\n\n\"It is a dead human,\" replied Stig. \"Are you sure you won't have a beetle? They're very crunchy.\"\n\n\"No thanks. What about this?\"\n\nBowden handed him another picture of one of the other dead clones, and then a third.\n\n\"The same dead human from a different viewpoint?\"\n\n\"They're all different corpses, Stig.\"\n\nHe stopped chewing the uncooked lamb chop and stared at me, then wiped his hands on a large handkerchief and looked more carefully at the photographs. \"How many?\"\n\n\"Eighteen that we know of.\"\n\n\"Cloning entire humans has always been illegal,\" murmured Stig. \"Can we see the real thing?\"\n\nThe Swindon morgue was a short walk from the SpecOps office. It was an old Victorian building, which in a more enlightened age would have been condemned. It smelt of formaldehyde and damp, and all the morgue technicians looked unhappy and probably had odd hobbies that I would be happier not knowing about.\n\nThe lugubrious head pathologist, Mr. Rumplunkett, looked avariciously at Mr. Stiggins. Since killing a neanderthal wasn't technically a crime, no autopsy was ever performed on one\u2014and Mr. Rumplunkett was by nature a curious man. He said nothing, but Stiggins knew precisely what he was thinking.\n\n\"We're pretty much the same inside as you, Mr. Rumplunkett. That was, after all, the reason we were brought into being in the first place.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry\u2014\" began the embarrassed chief pathologist.\n\n\"No, you're not,\" replied Stig. \"Your interest is purely professional and in the pursuit of knowledge. We take no offense.\"\n\n\"We're here to look at Mr. Shaxtper,\" said Bowden.\n\nWe were led to the main autopsy room, where several bodies were lying under sheets with tags on their toes.\n\n\"Overcrowding,\" said Mr. Rumplunkett, \"but they don't seem to complain too much. This the one?\"\n\nHe threw back a sheet. The cadaver had a high-domed head, deep-set eyes, a small mustache and goatee. It looked a lot like William Shakespeare from the Droeshout engraving on the title page of the First Folio.\n\n\"What do you think?\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said slowly, \"he looks like Shakespeare, but if Victor wore his hair like that, so would he.\"\n\nBowden nodded. It was a fair point.\n\n\"And this one wrote the Howdy Doody sonnet?\"\n\n\"No, that particular sonnet was written by this one.\"\n\nWith a flourish, Bowden pulled back the sheet from another cadaver to reveal an identical corpse to the first, only a year or two younger. I stared at them both as Bowden revealed yet another.\n\n\"So how many Shakespeares did you say you had?\"\n\n\"Officially, none. We've got a Shaxtper, a Shakespoor and a Shagsper. Only two of them had any writing on them, all have ink-stained fingers, all are genetically identical, and all died of disease or hypothermia brought on by self-neglect.\"\n\n\"Down-and-outs?\"\n\n\"Hermits is probably nearer the mark.\"\n\n\"Aside from the fact they all have two left eyes and one size of toe,\" said Stig, who had been examining the cadavers at length, \"they are very good indeed. We haven't seen this sort of craftsmanship for years.\"\n\n\"They're copies of a playwright named William Shakes\u2014\"\n\n\"We know of Shakespeare, Mr. Cable,\" interupted Stig. \"We are particularly fond of Caliban from The Tempest. This is a deep recovery job. Brought back from a piece of dried skin or a hair in a death mask or something.\"\n\n\"When and where, Stig?\"\n\nHe thought for a moment.\n\n\"They were probably built in the midthirties,\" he announced. \"At the time there were perhaps only ten biolabs in the world who could have done this. We think we can safely say we are looking at one of the three biggest genetic-engineering labs in England.\"\n\n\"Not possible,\" said Bowden. \"The manufacturing logs of York, Bognor Regis and Scunthorpe are a matter of public record; it would be inconceivable that a project of this magnitude could have been kept secret.\"\n\n\"And yet they exist,\" replied Stig, pointing to the corpses and bringing Bowden's argument to a rapid close. \"Do you have the genome logs and trace-element spectroscopic evaluations?\" he added. \"More careful study might reveal something.\"\n\n\"That's not standard autopsy procedure,\" replied Rumplunkett. \"I have my budget to think of.\"\n\n\"If you do a molar cross-section as well, we will donate our body to this department when we die.\"\n\n\"I'll do them for you while you wait,\" said Mr. Rumplunkett.\n\nStig turned back to us. \"We'll need forty-eight hours to have a look at them. Shall we meet again at my house? We would be honored by your presence.\" He looked me in the eye and would know if I lied.\n\n\"I'd like that very much.\"\n\n\"We, too. Wednesday at midday?\"\n\n\"I'll be there.\"\n\nThe neanderthal raised his hat, gave a small grunt and moved off.\n\n\"Well,\" said Bowden as soon as Stig was out of earshot, \"I hope you like eating beetles and dock leaves.\"\n\n\"You and me both, Bowden\u2014you're coming, too. If he wanted me and me alone, he would have asked me in private. But I'm sure he'll make something more palatable for us.\"\n\nI frowned as we walked blinking back out into the sunlight. \"Bowden?\"\n\n\"Yup?\"\n\n\"Did Stig say anything that seemed unusual to you?\"\n\n\"Not really. Do you want to hear my plans for infil\u2014\"\n\nBowden stopped talking in midsentence as the world ground to a halt. Time had ceased to exist. I was trapped between one moment and the next. It could only be my father.\n\n\"Hello, Sweetpea,\" he said cheerfully, giving me a hug. \"How did the SuperHoop turn out?\"\n\n\"That's next Saturday.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" he said, looking at his watch and frowning. \"You won't let me down, will you?\"\n\n\"How will I not let you down? What's the connection between the SuperHoop and Kaine?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you. Events must unfold naturally or there'll be hell to pay. You'll just have to trust me.\"\n\n\"Did you come all this way just to not tell me anything?\"\n\n\"Not at all. It's a Trafalgar thing. I've been trying all sorts of plans, but Nelson stubbornly resists surviving. I think I've figured it out, but I need your help.\"\n\n\"Will this take long?\" I asked. \"I've got a lot to do, and I have to get home before my mother finds I've left a gorilla in charge of Friday.\"\n\n\"I think I am right in saying,\" replied my father with a smile, \"that this will take no time at all\u2014if you'd prefer, even less!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Victory on the Victory",
                "text": "[ Raunchy Admiral in Love Child Shock ]\n\n\u2002Our sources can reveal exclusively in this paper that Admiral Lord Nelson, the nation's darling and much-decorated war hero, is the father of a daughter with Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton. The affair has been going on for some time, apparently with the full knowledge of both Sir William and Lady Nelson, from whom the hero of the Nile is now estranged. Full story, page two; leader, page three; lurid engravings, pages four, seven, and nine; hypocritical moralistic comment, page ten; bawdy cartoon featuring an overweight Lady Hamilton, pages twelve and fourteen. Also in this issue: reports of the French and Spanish defeat at Cape Trafalgar, page thirty-two, column four.\n\n\u2014Article in The Portsmouth Penny Dreadful, October 28, 1805\n\nThere was a succession of flickering lights, and we were on the deck of a fully rigged battleship that heaved in a long swell as the wind gathered in its sails. The deck was scrubbed for action, and a sense of expectancy hung over the vessel. We were sailing abreast with two other men-of-war, and to landward a column of French ships sailed on a course that would bring us into conflict. Men shouted, the ship creaked, the sails heaved and pennants fluttered in the breeze. We were on board Nelson's flagship, the Victory.\n\nI looked around. High on the quarterdeck stood a group of men, uniformed officers in navy blue, with cream breeches and cockaded hats. Amongst them was a smaller man with one arm of his uniform tucked neatly into a jacket festooned with medals and decorations. He couldn't have been a better target if he'd tried.\n\n\"It would be hard to miss him,\" I breathed.\n\n\"We keep telling him that, but he's pretty pigheaded about it and won't budge\u2014just says they are military orders and he does not fear to show them to the enemy. Would you like a jawbreaker?\"\n\nHe offered me a small paper bag, which I declined. The vessel healed over again, and we watched in silence as the distance between the two ships steadily closed.\n\n\"I never get bored of this. See them?\"\n\nI followed his gaze to where three people were huddled the other side of a large coil of rope. One was dressed in the uniform of the ChronoGuard, another was holding a clipboard, and the third had what looked like a TV camera on his shoulder.\n\n\"Documentary filmmakers from the twenty-second century,\" explained my father, hailing the other ChronoGuard operative. \"Hello, Malcolm, how's it going?\"\n\n\"Well, thanks!\" replied the agent. \"Got into the soup a bit when I lost that cameraman at Pompeii. Wanted an extra close-up or something.\"\n\n\"Hard cheese old man, hard cheese. Golf after work?\"\n\n\"Righto!\" replied Malcolm, returning to his charges.\n\n\"It's nice being back at work, actually,\" confessed my father, turning back to me. \"Sure you won't have a jawbreaker?\"\n\n\"No, thanks.\"\n\nThere was a flash and a burst of smoke from the closest French warship. A second later two cannon shots plopped harmlessly into the water. The balls didn't move as fast as I supposed\u2014I could actually see them in flight.\n\n\"Now what?\" I asked. \"Take out the snipers so they can't shoot Nelson?\"\n\n\"We'd never get them all. No, we must cheat a little. But not yet. Time is of the essence at moments like this.\"\n\nSo we waited patiently on the main deck while the battle heated up. Within minutes seven or eight warships were firing at the Victory, the cannonballs tearing into the sails and rigging. One even cut a man in half on the quarterdeck, and another dispatched a small gang of what I took to be marines, who dispersed rapidly. All through this the diminutive admiral, his captain and a small retinue paced the quarterdeck as the smoke from the guns billowed around us, the heat of the muzzle flashes hot on our faces, the concussion almost deafening. The ship's wheel disintegrated as a shot went through it, and as the battle progressed, we moved about the deck, following the safest path in the light of my father's superior and infinitely precise knowledge of the battle. We moved to one side as a cannonball flew past, moved to another area of the deck as a heavy piece of wood fell from the rigging, then to a third place when some musket balls whizzed past where we had been crouched.\n\n\"You know the battle very well!\" I shouted above the noise.\n\n\"I should do!\" he shouted back. \"I've been here over sixty times.\"\n\nThe French and British warships drew nearer and nearer until the Victory was so close behind the Bucentaure that I could see the faces of the staff in the staterooms as we passed. There was a deafening broadside from the guns, and the stern of the ship was torn apart as the British cannonballs ripped through it and down the length of the gun deck. In the lull of the cannon fire as the crews reloaded, I could hear the multilingual cries of injured men. I had seen warfare in the Crimea, but nothing like this. Such close fighting with such devastating weapons reduced men to nothing more than tatters in an instant, the plight of the survivors made worse by the almost certain knowledge that the medical attention they would receive was of the most rudimentary and brutal kind.\n\nI nearly fell over as the Victory collided with a French ship just astern of the Bucentaure, and as I recovered my balance, I realized just how close the ships were to one another in these sorts of battles. It wasn't a cable's length\u2014they were actually touching. The smoke of the guns made me cough, and the wheeezip of musket shot close by made me realize that the danger here was very real. There was another deafening concussion as the Victory's guns spoke, and the French ship seemed to tremble in the water. My father leaned back to allow a large metal splinter to pass between us, then handed me a pair of binoculars.\n\n\"Dad?\"\n\nHe was reaching into his pocket and pulling out, of all things\u2014a slingshot. He loaded it with a lead ball that was rolling along the deck and pulled the elastic back tight, aiming through the swirling smoke at Nelson.\n\n\"See the sharpshooter on the most for'ard platform in the French rigging?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"As soon as he puts his finger on the trigger, count two and then say 'fire.'\"\n\nI stared up at the French rigging, found the sharpshooter and kept a close eye on him. He was less than fifty feet from Nelson. It was the easiest shot in the world. I saw his finger touch the trigger and\u2014\n\n\"Fire!\"\n\nThe lead ball flew from the slingshot and caught Nelson painfully on the knee; he collapsed on the deck while the shot that would have killed him buried itself harmlessly in the deck behind.\n\nCaptain Hardy ordered his men to take Nelson below, where he would be detained for the rest of the battle. Hardy would face his wrath come the morning and for disobeying orders would not serve with him again. My father saluted Captain Hardy, and Captain Hardy saluted him back. Hardy had marred his career but saved his admiral. It was a good trade.\n\n\"Well,\" said my father, placing the slingshot back in his pocket, \"we all know how this turns out\u2014come on!\"\n\nHe took my hand as we started to accelerate through time. The battle quickly ended, and the ship's deck was scrubbed clean; day rapidly followed night as we sailed swiftly back to England to a riotous welcome of crowds lining the docks. Then the ship moved again, but this time to Chatham, moldered, lost its rigging, gained it and then moved again\u2014but this time to Portsmouth, whose buildings rose around us as we moved into the twentieth century at breakneck speed.\n\nWhen we decelerated, we were back in the present time but still in the same position on the deck, by now in dry dock and crowded with schoolchildren holding exercise books and in the process of being led around by a guide.\n\n\"And it was at this spot,\" said the guide, pointing to a plaque on the deck, \"that Admiral Nelson was hit on the leg by a ricochet that probably saved his life.\"\n\n\"Well, that's that job taken care of,\" said Dad, standing up and dusting off his hands. He looked at his watch.\n\n\"I've got to go. Thanks for helping out, Sweetpea. Remember: Goliath may try to nobble the Swindon Mallets\u2014especially the team captain\u2014to rig the outcome of the SuperHoop, so be on your toes. Tell Emma\u2014I mean, Lady Hamilton\u2014that I'll pick her up at 0830 her time tomorrow\u2014and send my love to your mother.\"\n\nHe smiled, there was another rapid flashing of lights, and I was back in the SpecOps Building, walking down the corridor with Bowden who was just finishing the sentence he had begun when Dad arrived.\n\n\"\u2014trating the Montagues?\"\n\n\"Sorry?\"\n\n\"I said, 'Do you want to hear my plans for infiltrating the Montagues? ' \" He wrinkled his nose. \"Is that you smelling of cordite?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so. Listen, you'll have to excuse me\u2014I think Goliath may try to nobble Roger Kapok, and without him we have even less chance of winning the SuperHoop.\"\n\nHe laughed.\n\n\"Photocopied bards, Swindon Mallets, eradicated husbands. You like impossible assignments, don't you?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Roger Kapok",
                "text": "[ Contrition Rates Not High Enough to Meet Targets ]\n\n\u2002That was the shocking report from Mr. Tork Armada, the spokesman for OFGOD, the religious-institution-licensing authority. \"Despite continual and concerted efforts by Goliath to meet the levels of repentance demanded by this authority,\" said Mr. Armada at a press conference yesterday, \"they have not managed to reach even halfway to the minimum divinity requirements of this office.\" Mr. Armada's report was greeted with surprise by Goliath, who had hoped their application would be swift and unopposed. \"We are changing tactics to target those to whom Goliath is anathema,\" said Mr. Brik Schitt-Hawse, a Goliath spokesman. \"We have recently secured forgiveness from someone who had despised us deeply, something that counts twentyfold in OFGOD's own contrition-target goals. More like her will soon follow.\" Mr. Armada was clearly not impressed and simply said, \"Well, we'll see.\"\n\n\u2014Report in Goliath News, July 17, 1988\n\nI trotted up the road to the thirty-thousand-seat croquet stadium, deep in thought. Goliath's contrition rate had been published that morning, and thanks to me and the Crimean Mass-Apology Project, switching to a religion was now not only possible but probable. The only plus side was that in all likelihood it wouldn't happen until after the SuperHoop, which raised the possibility\u2014confirmed by my father\u2014that Goliath would try and nobble the Swindon team. And getting to the captain, Roger Kapok, was probably the best way to do it.\n\nI passed the VIP car park, where a row of expensive automobiles was on display, and showed my SpecOps pass to the bored security guard. I entered the stadium and walked up one of the public-access tunnels to the terraces and from there looked down upon the green. From this distance the hoops were almost invisible, but their positions were marked by large white circles painted on the turf. The ten-yard lines crossed the green from side to side, and the \"natural hazards\"\u2014the Italian Sunken Garden, rhododendron bushes and herbaceous flower beds\u2014stood out from within their positions on the green itself. Each \"obstruction\" was scrupulously constructed to World Croquet League specifications. The height of the rhododendrons was carefully measured before each game, the herbaceous border stocked with identical shrubs, the sunken garden with its lilies and lead fountain of Minerva was the same on every green the world over, from Dallas to Poona, Nairobi to Reykjavik.\n\nBelow me I could see the Swindon Mallets indulging in a tough training session. Roger Kapok was amongst them, barking orders as his team ran backwards and forwards, whirling their mallets dangerously close to one another. Four-ball croquet could be a dangerous sport, and close-quarters stickwork that managed not to involve severe physical injury was considered a skill unique to the Croquet League.\n\nI ran down the steps between the tiered seating, which was nearly my undoing; halfway down I slipped on some carelessly deposited banana skins and if it hadn't have been for some deft footwork I might have plunged headfirst onto the concrete steps. I muttered a curse under my breath, glared at one of the grounds-men and stepped out onto the green.\n\n\"So,\" I heard Kapok say as I drew closer, \"we've got the big match on Saturday, and I don't want anyone thinking that we will automatically win just because St. Zvlkx said so. Brother Thomas of York predicted a twenty-point victory for the Battersea Chargers last week, and they were beaten hollow, so stay on your toes. I won't have the team relying on destiny to win this match\u2014we do it on teamwork, application and tactics.\" There was a grunting and nodding of heads from the assembled team, and Kapok continued. \"Swindon has never won a SuperHoop, so I want this to be our first. Biffo, Smudger and Aubrey will lead the offensive as usual, and I don't want anyone tumbling into the sunken garden like at last Tuesday's practice. The hazards are there to lose opponents' balls on a clean and legal roquet, and I don't want them used for any other purpose.\"\n\nRoger Kapok was a big man with closely cropped hair and a badly broken nose, which he wore with pride. He had taken a croquet ball in the face five years ago, before helmets and body armor were compulsory. At thirty-five he had reached the upper age limit for pro croquet and had been with Swindon for over ten years. He and the rest of the team were local legends and hadn't needed to buy a drink in Swindon's pubs for as long as anyone could remember\u2014but outside Swindon they were barely known at all.\n\n\"Thursday Next,\" I said, walking closer and introducing myself, \"SpecOps. Can I have a word?\"\n\n\"Sure. Take five, guys.\"\n\nI shook Roger's hand, and we walked off towards the herbaceous border, which was aligned on the forty-yard line, just next to the garden roller, which, due to a horrific accident at the Pan-Pacific Cup last year, was now padded.\n\n\"I'm a big fan, Miss Next,\" said Roger, smiling broadly to reveal several missing teeth. \"Your work on Jane Eyre was astounding. I love Charlotte Bront\u00eb's novels. Don't you think the Ginerva Fanshawe character from Villette and Blanche Ingram from Jane Eyre are sort of similar?\"\n\nI had noticed of course, because they actually were the same person, but I didn't think Kapok or anyone else out should know about the economics of the BookWorld.\n\n\"Really?\" I said. \"I'd not noticed. I'll come straight to the point, Mr. Kapok. Has anyone tried to dissuade you from playing this Saturday?\"\n\n\"No. And you probably just heard me telling the team to ignore the Seventh Revealment. We aim to win for our own sakes and that of Swindon. And we will win, you have my word on that!\"\n\nHe smiled that dazzling reconstructed Roger Kapok smile that I had seen so many times on billboards throughout Swindon, advertising everything from toothpaste to floor paint. His confidence was infectious, and suddenly our chances of beating the Reading Whackers seemed to move from \"totally impossible\" to \"deeply improbable.\"\n\n\"And what about you?\" I asked, remembering my father's warning that he would be the first one Goliath would try to nobble.\n\n\"What about me?\"\n\n\"Would you stay with the team no matter what?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" he replied. \"Wild horses couldn't drag me away from leading the Mallets to victory.\"\n\n\"Promise?\"\n\n\"On my honor. The code of the Kapoks is at stake. Only death will keep me off the green on Saturday.\"\n\n\"You should be on your guard, Mr. Kapok,\" I murmured. \"Goliath will try anything to make sure Reading wins the SuperHoop.\"\n\n\"I can look after myself.\"\n\n\"I don't doubt it, but you should be on your guard.\"\n\nI paused as a sudden childish urge came over me. \"Would you mind... if I had a whack?\"\n\nI pointed at his mallet, and he dropped a blue ball to the ground.\n\n\"Did you used to play?\"\n\n\"For my university.\"\n\n\"Roger!\" called one of the players from behind us. He excused himself, and I squared up to the ball. I hadn't played for years, but only through a lack of spare time. It was a fast and furious game, quite unlike its ancient predecessor, although the natural hazards such as rhododendrons and other garden architecture had remained from when it was simply a polite garden sport. I rolled the ball with my foot to plant it firmly on the grass. My old croquet coach had been an ex-league player named Alf Widdershaine, who always told me that concentration made the finest croquet players\u2014and Alf should know, as he had been a pro for the Slough Bombers and retired with 7,892 career hoops, a record yet to be beaten. I looked down the green at the forty-yard right-back hoop. From here it was no bigger than my fingertip. Alf had hooped from up to fifty yards away, but my personal best was only twenty. I concentrated as my fingers clasped the leather grip, and then I raised the mallet and followed through with a hard swing. There was a satisfying crack, and the ball hurtled off in a smooth arc\u2014straight into the rhododendrons. Blast. If this had been a match, I would have lost the ball until the next third. I turned around to see if anyone had been watching, but fortunately no one had. Instead an altercation seemed to be going on between the team members. I dropped the mallet and hurried up.\n\n\"You can't leave!\" cried Aubrey Jambe, hoop defense. \"What about the SuperHoop?\"\n\n\"You'll do fine without me,\" implored Kapok, \"really you will!\"\n\nHe was standing with two men in suits who didn't appear as though they were in the sports business. I showed them my ID.\n\n\"Thursday Next, SpecOps. What's going on?\"\n\nThe two men looked at one another, but it was the tall one who spoke.\n\n\"We're scouts for the Gloucester Meteors, and we think Mr. Kapok would like to come play for us.\"\n\n\"Less than a week before a SuperHoop?\"\n\n\"I'm due for a change, Miss Next,\" said Kapok, glancing about nervously. \"I think that Biffo would lead the team far better than me. Don't you think so, Biffo?\"\n\n\"What about all that 'wild horses' and 'code of the Kapoks' stuff?\" I demanded. \"You promised!\"\n\n\"I need to spend more time with my family,\" muttered Kapok, shrugging his shoulders and clearly not keen to remain in the stadium one second longer than he had to. \"You'll be fine\u2014hasn't St. Zvlkx predicted it?\"\n\n\"Seers aren't always a hundred percent accurate\u2014you said so yourself!\" I retorted. \"Who are you two really?\"\n\n\"Leave us out of it,\" said the tall suited man. \"All we did was make an offer\u2014Mr. Kapok decides if he stays or goes.\"\n\nKapok and the two men turned to leave.\n\n\"Kapok, for God's sake!\" yelled Biffo. \"The Whackers will knock the stuffing out of the team if you're not here to lead us!\"\n\nBut Kapok continued walking; his former teammates looked on in disgust and grumbled and swore for a while before the Mallets' manager, a reedy-looking character with a thin mustache and a pale complexion, walked on the green and asked what was going on.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said when he heard the news. \"I'm very sorry to hear that, but since you are all present, I think it's probably the right time to announce that I'm retiring on grounds of ill health.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"Right now,\" said the manager, and ran off. Goliath was working overtime this morning.\n\n\"Well,\" said Aubrey as soon as he had gone, \"what now?\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, \"I can't tell you why, but it is historically imperative that we win this SuperHoop. You will win this match because you have to. It's that simple. Can you captain?\" I asked, turning to a burly croquet player named Biffo. I had seen him do \"blind passes\" across the rhododendron bushes with uncanny accuracy, and his classic \"pegging out\" shot from the sixty-yard line during the league game against Southampton was undeniably one of the Top Ten Great Croquet Moments of history. Of course, that was over ten years ago and before a bad tackle had twisted his knee. These days he played defense, guarding the hoops against opposition strikers.\n\n\"Not me,\" he replied with a resigned air.\n\n\"Smudger?\"\n\nSmudger played attack and had made midair roquets something of a trademark. His celebrated double hoop in the Swindon-Gloucester playoff of 1978 was still talked about, even if it hadn't won us the match.\n\n\"Nope,\" he answered.\n\n\"Anyone?\"\n\n\"I'll captain, Miss Next.\"\n\nIt was Aubrey Jambe. He had been captain once before until a medialed campaign had had him ousted following allegations about him and a chimp.\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"But we'll need a new manager,\" said Aubrey slowly, \"and since you seem to be so passionate about it, I think you'd better take it on.\"\n\nBefore I knew what I was saying, I had agreed, which went down pretty well with the players. Morale of a sort had returned. I took Aubrey by the arm, and we walked into the middle of the green for our first strategy meeting.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said, \"tell me truthfully, Jambe, what are our chances?\"\n\n\"Borderline impossible,\" answered Aubrey candidly. \"We had to sell our best player to Glasgow to be able to meet the changes that the World Croquet League insisted we do to the green. Then our top defender, Laura de Rematte, won a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa on one of those junk-mail prize-draw things. With Kapok gone, we're down to ten players, no reserve, and lost the best striker. Biffo, Smudger, Snake, George and Johnno are all good players, but the rest are second-raters.\"\n\n\"So what do we need to win?\"\n\n\"If all the players on the Reading team were to die overnight and be replaced by unfit nine-year-olds, then we might be in with a chance.\"\n\n\"Too difficult and probably illegal. What else?\"\n\nAubrey stared at me glumly. \"Five quality players and we might have a chance.\"\n\nIt was a tall order. If they could get to Kapok, they could offer \"inducements\" to any other player who might want to join us.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said, \"leave it to me.\"\n\n\"You have a plan?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I lied, feeling the managerial mantle falling about my shoulders. \"Your new players are as good as signed. Besides,\" I added, with a certain amount of faux conviction, \"we've got a revealment to protect.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Granny Next",
                "text": "[ Reading Whackers Confident to Win SuperHoop ]\n\n\u2002Following the surprise resignation of both Roger Kapok and Gray Ferguson from the Swindon Mallets croquet team this afternoon, the Whackers seem almost certain to win next Sunday's SuperHoop, despite the prophecy by St. Zvlkx. Betting shops were being cautious despite the news and lowered the Mallets' odds to 700-1. Miss Thursday Next, the new manager of the Mallets, derided any talk of failure and told waiting reporters that Swindon would triumph. When pressed how that might be so, she declared the interview over.\n\n\u2014Article in the Swindon Evening Blurb, July 18, 1988\n\nYou're the manager of the Mallets?\" asked Bowden with incredulity. \"What happened to Gray Ferguson?\"\n\n\"Bought out, bribed, frightened\u2014who knows?\"\n\n\"You like being busy, don't you? Does this mean you won't be able to help me get banned books out of England?\"\n\n\"Have no fear of that,\" I reassured him. \"I'll find a way.\"\n\nI wished I could share in my own confidence. I told Bowden I'd see him tomorrow and walked out, only to be waylaid by the overzealous Major Drabb, who told me with great efficiency that he and his squad had searched the Albert Schweitzer Memorial Library from top to bottom but had not unearthed a single Danish book. I congratulated him for his diligence and told him to check in with me again tomorrow. He saluted smartly, presented me with a thirty-two-page written report and was gone.\n\nGran was in the garden of the Goliath Twilight Homes when I stopped by on the way home. She was dressed in a blue gingham frock and was attending to some flowers with a watering can.\n\n\"I just heard the news on the wireless. Congratulations!\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" I replied without enthusiasm, slumping myself into a large wicker chair. \"I have no idea why I volunteered to run the Mallets\u2014I don't know the first thing about running a croquet team!\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" replied Gran, reaching forward to deadhead a rose, \"all that is required is faith and conviction\u2014two areas in which, I might add, I think you excel.\"\n\n\"Faith isn't going to conjure up five world-class croquet players, now, is it?\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised what faith can do, my dear. You have St. Zvlkx's revealment on your side, after all.\"\n\n\"The future isn't fixed, Gran. We can lose\u2014and probably will.\"\n\nShe tuttutted. \"Well! Aren't you the Moaning Minnie today! What does it matter if we do lose? It's only a game, after all!\"\n\nI slumped even lower. \"If it was only a game, I wouldn't be worried. This is how my father sees it: Kaine proclaims himself dictator as soon as President Formby dies next Monday. Once he wields ultimate executive power, he will embark on a course of warfare that results in an Armageddon of life-extinguishing capability Level III. We can't stop the President from dying, but we can, my father insists, avoid the world war by simply winning the SuperHoop.\"\n\nGran sat down in a wicker chair next to me.\n\n\"And then there's Hamlet,\" I continued, rubbing my temples. \"His play has been subjected to a hostile takeover from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and if I don't find a Shakespeare clone pronto, there won't be a Hamlet for Hamlet to return to. Goliath tricked me yet again. I don't know what they did, but it felt as though my free will was being sucked out through my eyeballs. They said they'd get Landen back, but, quite frankly, I have my doubts. And I have to illegally smuggle ten truckloads of banned books out of England.\"\n\nTirade over, I sighed and was silent. Gran had been thoughtful for a while and, after appearing to come to some sort of a momentous decision, announced, \"You know what you should do?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Take Smudger off defense and make him the midhoop wingman. Jambe should be the striker as usual, but Biffo\u2014\"\n\n\"Gran! You haven't listened to a word I've said, have you?\"\n\nShe patted my hand. \"Of course I did. Hamlet was having his merry wives smuggled out of England by sucking out his eyeballs, which leads to an Armageddon and the death of the President. Right?\"\n\n\"Never mind. How are things with you? Found the ten most boring books?\"\n\n\"Indeed I have,\" she replied, \"but I am loath to finish reading them, as I feel there is one last epiphanic moment to my life that will be revealed just before I die.\"\n\n\"What sort of epiphanic moment?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Do you want to play Scrabble?\"\n\nSo Gran and I played Scrabble. I thought I was winning until she got \"cazique\" on a triple-word score, and it was downhill from there. I lost, 503 points to 319."
            },
            {
                "title": "Home Again",
                "text": "[ Denmark Blamed for Dutch Elm Disease ]\n\n\u2002\"Dutch elm disease was nothing of the sort,\" was the shock claim from leading arborealists last week. \"For many years we had blamed Dutch elm disease on the Dutch,\" declared Jeremy Acorn, head spokesman of the Knotty Pine Arboreal Research Facility. \"So-called Dutch elm disease, a tree virus that killed off nearly all England's elms in the mid-seventies, was thought to have originated in Holland\u2014hence the name.\" But new research has cast doubt on this long-held hypothesis. \"Using techniques unavailable to us in the seventies, we have uncovered new evidence to suggest that Dutch elm disease originated in Denmark.\" Mr. Acorn went on to say, \"We have no direct evidence to suggest that Denmark is engaged in the design and proliferation of arborealogical weapons, but we have to maintain an open mind. There are many oaks and silver birches in England at present unprotected against attack.\" Arboreal Warfare\u2014Should We Be Worried? Full report, page 9.\n\n\u2014Article in the Arboreal Times, July 17, 1988\n\nI hurried home to get there before my mother, as I wasn't sure how she'd react to finding that Friday was being looked after by a gorilla. It was possible that she might not have any problems with this, but I didn't really want to put it to the test.\n\nTo my horror Mum had got there before me\u2014and not just her, either. A large crowd of journalists had gathered outside her house, awaiting the return of the Mallets' new manager, and it was only after I had run the gauntlet of a thousand \"no comments\" that I caught her, just as she was putting her key in the front door.\n\n\"Hello, Mother,\" I said, somewhat breathlessly.\n\n\"Hello, daughter.\"\n\n\"Going inside?\"\n\n\"That's what I usually do when I get home.\"\n\n\"Not thinking of going shopping?\" I suggested.\n\n\"What are you hiding?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nShe pushed the key in the lock and opened the door, giving me a funny look. I ran past her and into the living room, where Melanie was asleep on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table, with Friday snoring happily on her chest. I quickly shut the door.\n\n\"He's sleeping!\" I hissed to my mother.\n\n\"The little lamb! Let's have a look.\"\n\n\"No, better let him be. He's a very light sleeper.\"\n\n\"I can look very quietly.\"\n\n\"Maybe not quietly enough.\"\n\n\"I'll look through the serving hatch, then.\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"It's jammed. Stuck fast. Meant to tell you this morning, but it slipped my mind. Remember how Anton and I used to climb through it? Got any oil?\"\n\n\"The serving hatch has never been stuck\u2014\"\n\n\"How about tea?\" I asked brightly, attempting a form of misdirection that I knew my mother would find irresistible. \"I want to talk to you about an emotional problem\u2014that you might be able to help me with!\"\n\nSadly, she knew me only too well.\n\n\"Now I know you're hiding something. Let me in!\"\n\nShe attempted to push past, but I had a brain wave.\n\n\"No, Mother, you'll embarrass them\u2014and yourself.\"\n\nShe stopped. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"It's Emma.\"\n\n\"Emma? What about her?\"\n\n\"Emma... and Hamlet.\"\n\nShe looked shocked and covered her mouth with her hand. \"In there? On my sofa?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Doing... you know? Both of them\u2014together?\"\n\n\"And very naked\u2014but they folded the antimacassars first,\" I added, so as not to shock her too much.\n\nShe shook her head sadly. \"It's not good, you know, Thursday.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"Highly immoral.\"\n\n\"Very.\"\n\n\"Well, let's have that cup of tea, and you can tell me about that emotional problem of yours\u2014is it about Daisy Mutlar?\"\n\n\"No. I don't have any emotional problems.\"\n\n\"But you said...?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mother, that was an excuse to stop you barging in on Emma and Hamlet.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she said, realization dawning. \"Well, let's have a cup of tea anyway.\"\n\nI breathed a sigh of relief, and Mother walked into the kitchen\u2014to find Hamlet and Emma talking as they did the washing up. Mother stopped dead and stared at them.\n\n\"It's disgusting!\" she said at last.\n\n\"Excuse me?\" inquired Hamlet.\n\n\"What you're doing in the living room\u2014on my sofa.\"\n\n\"What are we doing, Mrs. Next?\" asked Emma.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" flustered my mother, her voice rising. \"I'll tell you what you're doing. Well, I won't because it's too\u2014Here, have a look for yourself.\"\n\nAnd before I could stop her, she opened the door to the living room to reveal\u2014Friday, alone, asleep on the sofa.\n\nMy mother looked confused and stared at me.\n\n\"Thursday, just what is going on?\"\n\n\"I can't even begin to explain it,\" I replied, wondering where Melanie had gone. It's a big room, but not nearly large enough to hide a gorilla. I leaned in and saw that the French windows were ajar. \"Must have been a trick of the light.\"\n\n\"Trick of the light?\"\n\n\"Yes. May I?\"\n\nI closed the door and froze as I noticed Melanie tiptoeing across the lawn, fully visible through the kitchen windows.\n\n\"How can it be a trick of the light?\"\n\n\"I'm... not really sure,\" I stammered. \"Have you changed the curtains in here? They look kind of different.\"\n\n\"No. Why didn't you want me to look in the living room?\"\n\n\"Because... because... I asked Mrs. Beatty to look after Friday, and I knew you didn't approve, but now she's gone and everything is okay.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said my mother, satisfied at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd got away with it.\n\n\"Goodness!\" said Hamlet, pointing. \"Isn't that a gorilla in the garden?\"\n\nAll eyes swiveled outside, where Melanie stopped in midstride over the sweet williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting.\n\n\"Where?\" said my mother. \"All I can see is an unusually hairy woman tiptoeing through my sweet williams.\"\n\n\"That's Mrs. Bradshaw,\" I murmured, casting an angry glance at Hamlet. \"She's been doing some child care for me.\"\n\n\"Well, don't be so rude and let her wander around the garden, Thursday\u2014ask her in!\"\n\nMum put down her shopping and filled the kettle. \"Poor Mrs. Bradshaw must think us dreadfully inhospitable. Do you suppose she'd fancy a slice of Battenberg?\"\n\nHamlet and Emma stared at me, and I shrugged. I beckoned Melanie into the house and introduced her to my mother.\n\n\"Pleased to meet you,\" said Melanie. \"You have a very lovely grandchild.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Mum replied, as though the effort had been entirely hers. \"I do my best.\"\n\n\"I've just come back from Trafalgar,\" I said, turning to Lady Hamilton. \"Dad's restored your husband, and he said he'd pick you up at eight-thirty tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she said, with not quite as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. \"That's... that's wonderful news.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" added Hamlet more sullenly, \"wonderful news.\"\n\nThey looked at one another.\n\n\"I'd better go and pack,\" said Emma.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Hamlet, \"I'll help you.\"\n\nAnd they both left the kitchen.\n\n\"What's wrong with them?\" asked Melanie, helping herself to a slice of the proffered cake and sitting down on one of the chairs, which creaked ominously.\n\n\"Lovesick,\" I replied. And I think they genuinely were.\n\n\"So, Mrs. Bradshaw,\" began my mother, settling into business mode, \"I have recently become an agent for some beauty products, many of which are completely unsuitable for people who are bald\u2014if you get my meaning.\"\n\n\"Ooooh!\" exclaimed Melanie, leaning closer. She did have a problem with facial hair\u2014hard not to, being a gorilla\u2014and had never had the benefit of talking to a cosmetics consultant. Mum would probably end up trying to sell her some Tupperware, too.\n\nI went upstairs, where Hamlet and Emma were arguing. She seemed to be saying that her \"dear Admiral\" needed her more than anything, and Hamlet said that she should come and live with him at Elsinore and \"to hell with Ophelia.\" Emma replied that this really wasn't practical and then Hamlet made an extremely long and intractable speech which I think meant that nothing in the real world was simple or slick and he lamented the day he ever left his play, and that he was sure Ophelia had discussed country matters with Horatio when his back was turned. Then Emma got confused and thought he was impugning her Horatio, and when he explained that it was his friend Horatio she changed her mind and said she would come with him to Elsinore, but then Hamlet thought perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all and he made another long speech until even Emma got bored and she crept downstairs for a beer and returned before he'd even noticed she had gone. After a while he just talked himself to a standstill without having made any decision\u2014which was just as well as there wasn't a play for him to return to.\n\n...Melanie stopped in midstride over the sweet williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting.\n\nI was just pondering whether finding a cloned Shakespeare was actually going to be possible when I heard a tiny wail. I went back downstairs to find Friday blinking at me from the door to the living room, looking tousled and a little sleepy.\n\n\"Sleep well, little man?\"\n\n\"Sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit,\" he replied, which I took to mean, \"I have slept very well and now require a snack to see me through the next two hours.\"\n\nI walked back into the kitchen, something niggling away at my mind. Something that Mum had said. Something that Stiggins had said. Or maybe Emma? I made Friday a Nutella sandwich, which he proceeded to smear about his face.\n\n\"I think you'll find I have just the color for you,\" said my mother, picking out a shade of gray varnish that suited Melanie's black fur. \"Goodness\u2014what strong nails!\"\n\n\"I don't dig as much as I used to,\" replied Melanie with an air of nostalgia. \"Trafford doesn't like it. He thinks it makes the neighbors talk.\"\n\nMy heart missed a beat, and I shouted out, quite spontaneously, \"AHHHHHHHHH!\"\n\nMy mother jumped and painted a line of nail varnish up Melanie's hand and upset the bottle onto her polka-dot dress.\n\n\"Look what you've made me do!\" she scolded. Melanie didn't look very happy either.\n\n\"Posh, Murray Posh, Daisy Posh, Daisy Mutlar\u2014Why did you... mention Daisy Mutlar a few minutes ago?\"\n\n\"Well, because I thought you'd be annoyed she was still around.\"\n\nDaisy Mutlar, it must be understood, was someone whom Landen nearly married during our ten-year enforced separation. But that wasn't important. What was important is that without Landen there had never been any Daisy. And if Daisy was around, then Landen must be, too\u2014\n\nI looked down at my hand. On my ring finger was... a ring. A wedding ring. I pulled it forward to the knuckle to reveal a white ridge. It looked as though it had always been there. And if it had...\n\n\"Where's Landen now?\"\n\n\"At his house, I should imagine,\" said my mother. \"Are you staying here for supper?\"\n\n\"Then... he's not eradicated?\"\n\nShe looked confused. \"Good Lord, no!\"\n\nI narrowed my eyes. \"Then I didn't ever go to Eradications Anonymous?\"\n\n\"Of course not, darling. You know that myself and Mrs. Beatty are the only people who ever attend\u2014and Mrs. Beatty is just there to comfort me. What on earth are you talking about? And come back! Where do you\u2014\"\n\nI opened the door and was two paces down the garden path when I remembered I had left Friday behind, so went back to get him, found he had got chocolate all over his front despite the bib, put on his sweatshirt over his T-shirt, found he had glibbed down the front of it, got a clean one, changed his nappy, and\u2014no socks.\n\n\"What are you doing, darling?\" asked my mother as I rummaged in the laundry basket.\n\n\"It's Landen,\" I babbled excitedly. \"He was eradicated, and now he's back, and it's as though he'd never gone, and I want him to meet Friday, but Friday is way way too sticky right now to meet his father.\"\n\n\"Eradicated? Landen? When?\" asked my mother incredulously. \"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Isn't that the point about eradication?\" I replied, having found six socks, none of them matching. \"No one ever knows. It might surprise you to know that Eradications Anonymous once had forty or more attendees. When I came, there were fewer than ten. You did a wonderful job, Mother. They'd all be really grateful\u2014if only they could remember.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said my mother in a rare moment of complete clarity. \"Then... when eradicatees are brought back, it was as if they had never gone. Ergo: the past automatically rewrites itself to take into account the noneradication.\"\n\n\"Well, yes\u2014more or less.\"\n\nI slipped some odd socks on Friday's feet\u2014he didn't help matters by splaying his toes\u2014then found his shoes, one of which was under the sofa and the other right on top of the bookcase\u2014Melanie had been climbing on the furniture after all. I found a brush and tidied his hair, trying desperately to get an annoying crusty bit that smelt suspiciously of baked beans to lie flat. It didn't and I gave up, then washed his face, which he didn't like one bit. I eventually managed to make it out of the door when I saw myself in the mirror and dashed back upstairs. I plonked Friday onto the bed, put on a clean pair of jeans and T-shirt and tried to do something\u2014anything\u2014with my short hair.\n\n\"What do you think?\" I asked Friday, who was sitting on the dressing table staring at me.\n\n\"Aliquippa ex consequat.\"\n\n\"I hope that means ' You look adorable, Mum.'\"\n\n\"Mollit anim est laborum.\"\n\nI pulled on my jacket, walked out of my room, came back to brush my teeth and fetch Friday's polar bear, then was out the door again, telling Mum that I might not be back tonight. My heart was still racing as I walked outside, ignored the journalists and popped Friday into the passenger seat of the Speedster, put down the hood\u2014might as well arrive in style\u2014and strapped him in. I put the key in the ignition and then\u2014\n\n\"Don't drive, Mum.\"\n\nFriday spoke. I was speechless for a second, hand poised on the ignition.\n\n\"Friday?\" I said. \"You're talking...?\"\n\nAnd then my heart grew cold. He was looking at me with the most serious look I have ever seen on a twoyear-old, before or since. And I knew the reason why. Cindy. It was the day of the second assassination attempt. In all the excitement, I had completely forgotten. I slowly and very carefully took my hands off the key and left it where it was, turn signal blinking, oil and generator warning lights burning. I carefully unstrapped Friday, and then, not wanting to open any of the doors, I climbed carefully out of the open top and took him with me. It was a close call.\n\n\"Thanks, baby, I owe you\u2014but why did you wait until now to say anything?\"\n\nHe didn't answer, just put his fingers in his mouth and sucked them innocently.\n\n\"Strong silent type, eh? Come on, wonder boy, let's call SO-14.\"\n\nThe police closed the road and the bomb squad arrived twenty minutes later, much to the excitement of the journalists and TV crews. They went live to the networks almost immediately, linking the bomb squad with my new job as the Mallets' manager, filling up any gaps in the story with speculation or, in one case, colorful invention.\n\nThe four pounds of explosives had been connected to the starter-motor relay. One more second and Friday and I would have been knocking on the pearly gates. I was jumping up and down with impatience by the time I had given a statement. I didn't tell them this was the second of three assassination attempts, nor did I tell them there would be another attempt at the end of the week. But I wrote it on my hand so I wouldn't forget.\n\n\"Windowmaker,\" I told them. \"Yes, with an n\u2014I don't know why. Well, yes\u2014but sixty-eight if you count Samuel Pring. Reason? Who knows? I was the Thursday Next who changed the ending of Jane Eyre. Never read it? Preferred The Professor? Never mind. It'll be in my files. No, I'm with SO-27. Victor Analogy. His name's Friday. Two years old. Yes, he's very cute, isn't he? You do? Congratulations. No, I'd love to see the pictures. His aunt? Really? Can I go now?\"\n\nAfter an hour they said I could leave, so I plonked Friday into his buggy and pushed him rapidly up to Landen's place. I arrived a bit puffed and had to stop and regain my breath and my thoughts. The house was back to how I remembered it. The tub of Tickia orologica on the porch had vanished, along with the pogo stick. Beyond the more tasteful curtains, I could see movement within. I straightened my shirt, attempted to smooth Friday's hair, walked up the garden path and rang the doorbell. My palms felt hot and sweaty, and I couldn't control a stupid grin that had spread all over my face. I was carrying Friday for greater dramatic effect and moved him to the other hip, as he was a bit of a lump. After what seemed like several hours but was, I suspect, less than ten seconds, the door opened to reveal... Landen, every bit as tall and handsome and as large as life as I had wished to see him all these past years. He wasn't as I remembered him\u2014he was way better than that. My love, my life, the father of my son\u2014made human. I felt the tears start to well up in my eyes and tried to say something, but all that came out was a stupid snorty cough. He stared at me, and I stared at him, and then he stared at me some more, and I stared at him some more, and then I thought perhaps he didn't recognize me with the short hair, so I tried to think of something really funny and pithy and clever but couldn't, so I shifted Friday to the other hip, as he was becoming even more of a lump with every passing second, and said, rather stupidly:\n\n\"It's Thursday.\"\n\n\"I know who it is,\" he said unkindly. \"You've got a bloody nerve, haven't you?\"\n\nAnd he shut the door in my face.\n\nI was stunned for a moment and had to recover my thoughts before I rang the doorbell again. There was another pause that seemed to last an hour but I suspect was only fractionally longer\u2014thirteen seconds, tops\u2014and the door opened again.\n\n\"Well,\" said Landen, \"if it isn't Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"And Friday,\" I replied, \"your son.\"\n\n\"My son,\" replied Landen, deliberately not looking at him, \"right.\"\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I asked, tears starting to well up again in my eyes. \"I thought you'd be pleased to see me!\"\n\nHe let out a long breath and rubbed his forehead. \"It's difficult\u2014\"\n\n\"What's difficult? How can anything be difficult?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he began, \"you disappear from my life two and a half years ago. I haven't seen hide nor hair of you. Not a postcard, not a letter, not a phone call\u2014nothing. And then you just turn up at my doorstep as though nothing has happened and I should be pleased to see you!\"\n\nI sort of breathed a sigh of relief. Sort of. Somehow I'd always imagined Landen's being uneradicated as just a simple sort of meeting each other after a long absence. I hadn't ever thought that Landen wouldn't know he had been eradicated. When he was gone, no one had known he had ever existed, and now that he was back, no one knew he had gone. Not even him.\n\n\"Ever heard of an eradication?\" I asked.\n\nHe shook his head.\n\nI took a deep breath. \"Well, two and a half years ago, a chronupt member of SO-12 had you killed at the age of two in an accident. It was a blackmail attempt by a Goliath Corporation member called Brik Schitt-Hawse.\"\n\n\"I remember him.\"\n\n\"Right. And he wanted me to get his half brother out of 'The Raven,' where Bowden and I had trapped him.\"\n\n\"I remember that, too.\"\n\n\"O-kay. So all of a sudden you didn't exist. Everything we had done together hadn't happened. I tried to get you back by going with my father to your accident in 1947, was thwarted and chose to live inside fiction while little Friday was born and return when I was ready. Which was now. End of story.\"\n\nWe stared at each other for another long moment that might also have been an hour but was probably only twenty seconds. I moved Friday to the other hip again, and then finally he said, \"The trouble is, Thursday, that things are different now. You vanished from my life. Gone. I've had to carry on.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I asked, suddenly feeling very uneasy.\n\n\"Well, the thing is,\" he went on slowly, \"I didn't think you were coming back. So I married Daisy Mutlar.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Practical Difficulties Regarding Uneradications",
                "text": "[ Danish Person Sought ]\n\n\u2002A man of Danish appearance was sought yesterday in connection with an armed robbery at the First Goliath Bank in Banbury. The man, described as being \"of Danish appearance,\" entered the bank at 9:35 and demanded the teller hand over all the money. Five hundred pounds in sterling and a small amount of Danish kroner held in the foreign-currencies department were stolen. Police described this small sum of kroner as of \"particular significance\" and pledged to wipe out the menace of Danish criminality as soon as possible. The public has been warned to be on the lookout for anyone of Danish appearance, and to let the police know of any Danes acting suspiciously, or failing that, any Danes at all.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 15, 1988\n\nYou did what?\"\n\n\"Well, you did vanish without a trace\u2014what was I meant to do?\"\n\nI couldn't believe it. The little scumbag had sought solace in the arms of a miserable cow who wasn't good enough to carry his bag, let alone be his wife. I stared at him, speechless. I think my mouth might even have dropped open at that point, and I was just wondering whether I should burst into tears, kill him with my bare hands, slam the door, scream, swear or all of the above at the same time when I noticed that Landen was doing that thing he does when he's trying not to laugh.\n\n\"You one-legged piece of crap,\" I said at last, smiling with relief, \"you did no such thing!\"\n\n\"Had you going though, didn't I?\" He grinned.\n\nNow I was angry.\n\n\"What do you want to go and do that stupid joke for? You know I'm armed and unstable!\"\n\n\"It's no more stupid than your dopey yarn about me being eradicated!\"\n\n\"It's not a dopey yarn.\"\n\n\"It is. If I had been eradicated, then there wouldn't be any little boy....\"\n\nHis voice trailed off, and suddenly all our remonstrations vanished as Friday became the center of attention. Landen looked at Friday, and Friday looked at Landen. I looked at both of them in turn. Then, taking his fingers out of his mouth, Friday said:\n\n\"Bum.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. Sounds like a word he picked up from St. Zvlkx.\"\n\nLanden pressed Friday's nose. \"Beep,\" said Landen.\n\n\"Bubbies,\" said Friday.\n\n\"Eradicated, eh?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"That must be the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life.\"\n\n\"I have no argument with that.\"\n\nHe paused. \"Which I guess makes it too weird not to be true.\"\n\nWe moved towards each other at the same time, and I bumped into his chin with my head. There was a crack as his teeth snapped together, and he yelped in pain\u2014I think he had bitten his tongue. It was as Hamlet said. Nothing is ever slick and simple in the real world. He hated it for that reason\u2014and I loved it.\n\n\"What's so funny?\" Landen demanded.\n\n\"Nothing,\" I replied. \"It's just something Hamlet said.\"\n\n\"Hamlet? Here?\"\n\n\"No\u2014at Mum's. He was having an affair with Emma Hamilton, whose boyfriend, Admiral Nelson, seems to be trying to commit suicide.\"\n\n\"By what means?\"\n\n\"The French navy.\"\n\n\"No... no,\" said Landen, shaking his head. \"Let's just stick with one ludicrously preposterous story at a time. Listen, I'm an author and I can't think up the sort of cr\u2014I mean, nonsense you get yourself into.\"\n\nFriday managed to squeeze off one shoe despite the best attention of my double knots and was now tugging at his sock.\n\n\"Handsome fellow, isn't he?\" said Landen after a pause.\n\n\"He takes after his father.\"\n\n\"Nah\u2014his mother. Is his finger stuck permanently up his nose?\"\n\n\"Most of the time. It's called 'The Search.' An amusing little pastime that has kept small children amused since the dawn of time. Enough, Friday.\"\n\nHe took his finger out with an almost audible pop and handed Landen his polar bear.\n\n\"Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I replied. \"It's something called Lorem Ipsum\u2014a sort of quasi Latin that typesetters use to make up blocks of realistic-looking type.\"\n\nLanden raised an eyebrow. \"You're not joking, are you?\"\n\n\"They use it a lot in the Well of Lost Plots.\"\n\n\"The what?\"\n\n\"It's a place where all fiction is\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough!\" said Landen, clapping his hands together. \"We can't have you telling ridiculous stories here on the front step. Come on in and tell me them inside.\"\n\nI shook my head and stared at him.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"My mother said Daisy Mutlar was back in town.\"\n\n\"She has a job here, apparently.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I asked suspiciously. \"How do you know?\"\n\n\"She works for my publisher.\"\n\n\"And you haven't been seeing her?\"\n\n\"Definitely not!\"\n\n\"Cross your heart, hope to die?\"\n\nHe held up his hand.\n\n\"Scout's honor.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said slowly, \"I believe you.\" I tapped my lips. \"I don't come inside until I get one right here.\"\n\nHe smiled and took me in his arms. We kissed very tenderly, and I shivered.\n\n\"Consequat est laborum,\" said Friday, joining in with the hug.\n\nWe walked into the house, and I put Friday on the floor. His sharp eyes scanned the house for anything he could pull on top of himself.\n\n\"Thursday?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Let's just say for reasons of convenience that I was eradicated.\"\n\n\"Yuh?\"\n\n\"Then everything that happened since the last time we parted outside the SpecOps Building didn't really happen?\"\n\nI hugged him tightly.\n\n\"It did happen, Land. It shouldn't have had, but it did.\"\n\n\"Then the pain I felt was real?\"\n\n\"Yes. I felt it, too.\"\n\n\"Then I missed you getting bulgy\u2014got any pictures, by the way?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. But play your cards right and I may show you the stretch marks.\"\n\n\"I can hardly wait.\" He kissed me again and stared at Friday while an inane grin spread across his face.\n\n\"Thursday?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I have a son!\"\n\nI decided to correct him.\n\n\"No\u2014we have a son!\"\n\n\"Right. Well,\" he said, rubbing his hands together. \"I suppose you better have some supper. Do you still like fish pie?\"\n\nThere was a crash as Friday found a vase in the living room to knock over. So I mopped it up while apologizing, and Landen said it was okay but shut the doors of his office anyway. He made us both supper, and I caught up with what he was doing whilst he wasn't eradicated\u2014if that makes any sense at all\u2014and I told him about Mrs. Tiggywinkle, WordStorms, Melanie and all the rest of it.\n\n\"So a grammasite is a parasitic life-form that lives inside books?\"\n\n\"Pretty much.\"\n\n\"And if you don't find a cloned Shakespeare, then we lose Hamlet?\"\n\n\"Yup.\"\n\n\"And the SuperHoop is inextricably linked to the avoidance of a thermonuclear war?\"\n\n\"It is. Can I move back in?\"\n\n\"I kept the sock drawer just how you liked it.\"\n\nI smiled. \"Alphabetically, left to right?\"\n\n\"No, rainbow. Violet to the right\u2014or was that how Daisy liked\u2014Ah! Just kidding! You have no sense of\u2014Ah! Stop it! Get off! No! Ow!\"\n\nBut it was too late. I had pinned him to the floor and was attempting to tickle him. Friday sucked his fingers and looked on, disgusted, while Landen managed to get out of my hands, roll around and tickle me, which I didn't like at all. After a while we just collapsed into a silly, giggling mess.\n\n\"So, Thursday,\" he said as he helped me off the floor, \"are you going to spend the night?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"No. I'm moving in and staying forever.\"\n\nWe put Friday to bed in the spare room after making up a sort of cot for him. He was quite happy sleeping almost anywhere as long as he had his polar bear with him. He'd stayed over at Melanie's house and once at Mrs. Tiggywinkle's, which was warm and snug and smelt of moss, sticks and washing powder. He had even slept on Treasure Island during a visit there I made last year to sort out the Ben Gunn goat problem\u2014Long John had talked him to sleep, something he was very good at.\n\n\"Now, then,\" said Landen as we went across to our room, \"a man's needs are many\u2014\"\n\n\"Let me guess! You want me to rub your back?\"\n\n\"Please. Right there in the small where you used to do it so well. I've really missed that.\"\n\n\"Nothing else?\"\n\n\"No, nothing. Why, did you have something in mind?\"\n\nI giggled as he pulled me closer. I breathed in his scent. I could remember pretty well what he looked like and how he sounded, but not his smell. That was something that was instantly recognizable as soon as I pressed my face into the folds of his shirt, and it brought back memories of courting, and picnics, and passion.\n\n\"I like your short hair,\" said Landen.\n\n\"Well, I don't,\" I replied, \"and if you ruffle it once more like that, I may feel inclined to poke you in the eye.\"\n\nWe lay back on the bed, and he pulled my sweatshirt very slowly over the top of my head. It caught on my watch, and there was an awkward moment as he tugged gently, trying to keep the romance of the moment. I couldn't help it and started giggling.\n\n\"Oh, do please be serious, Thursday!\" he said, still pulling at the sweatshirt. I giggled some more, and he joined in, then asked if I had any scissors and finally removed the offending garment. I started to undo the buttons of his shirt, and he nuzzled my neck, something that gave me a pleasant tingly sensation. I tried to flip off my shoes, but they were lace-ups, and when one finally came off, it shot across the room and hit the mirror on the far wall, which fell off and smashed.\n\n\"Bollocks!\" I said. \"Seven years' bad luck.\"\n\n\"That was only a twoyear mirror,\" explained Landen. \"You don't get the full seven-year jobs from the pound shop.\"\n\nI tried to get the other shoe off and slipped, striking Landen's shin\u2014which wasn't a problem, as he had lost a leg in the Crimea and I'd done it several times before. But there wasn't a hollow bong sound as usual.\n\n\"New leg?\"\n\n\"Yeah! Do you want to see?\"\n\nHe removed his trousers to reveal an elegant prosthesis that looked as though it had come from an Italian design studio\u2014all curves, shiny metal and rubber absorption joints. A thing of beauty. A leg amongst legs.\n\n\"Wow!\"\n\n\"Your uncle Mycroft made it for me. Impressed?\"\n\n\"You bet. Did you keep the old one?\"\n\n\"In the garden. It has a hibiscus in it.\"\n\n\"What color?\"\n\n\"Blue.\"\n\n\"Light blue or dark blue?\"\n\n\"Light.\"\n\n\"Have you redecorated this room?\"\n\n\"Yes. I got one of those wallpaper books and couldn't make up my mind which one to use, so I just took the samples out of the book and used them instead. Interesting effect, don't you think?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure that the Regency Flock matches Bonzo the Wonder Hound.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" he conceded, \"but it was very economical.\"\n\nI was nervous as hell, and so was he. We were talking about everything but what we really wanted to talk about.\n\n\"Shh!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Was that Friday?\"\n\n\"I didn't hear anything.\"\n\n\"A mother's hearing is finely attuned. I can hear a half-second wail across ten shopping aisles.\"\n\nI got up and went to have a look, but he was fast asleep, of course. The window was open, and a cooling breeze moved the muslin curtains ever so slightly, causing shadows of the streetlights to move across his face. How much I loved him, and how small and vulnerable he was. I relaxed and once more regained control of myself. Apart from a stupid drunken escapade that luckily went nowhere, my romantic involvement with anyone had been the sum total of zip over the past two and a half years. I had been waiting for this moment for ages. And now I was acting like a lovesick sixteen-year-old. I took a deep breath and turned to go back to our bedroom, taking off my T-shirt, trousers, remaining shoe and socks as I walked, half hobbled and hopped down the corridor. I stopped just outside the bedroom door. The light was off, and there was silence. This made things easier. I stepped naked into the bedroom, padded silently across the carpet, slipped into bed and snuggled up to Landen. He was wearing pajamas and smelt different. The light switched on, and there was a startled scream from the man lying next to me. It wasn't Landen but Landen's father\u2014and next to him, his wife, Houson. They looked at me, I looked back, stammered \"Sorry, wrong bedroom,\" and ran out of the room, grabbing my clothes from the heap outside the bedroom door. But I wasn't in the wrong room, and the lack of a wedding ring confirmed what I feared. Landen had been returned to me\u2014only to be taken away again. Something had gone wrong. The uneradication hadn't held.\n\n\"Don't I recognize you?\" said Houson, who came out of the bedroom and stared at me as I retrieved Friday from the spare bedroom, where he was tucked up next to Landen's aunt Ethel.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"I've just walked into the wrong house. Happens all the time.\"\n\nI left my shoes and trotted downstairs with Friday tucked under my arm, picked up my jacket from where it was hanging on the back of a different chair in a differently furnished front room and ran into the night, tears streaming down my face."
            },
            {
                "title": "Breakfast with Mycroft",
                "text": "[ Feathered Friend Found Tarred ]\n\n\u2002Swindon's mysterious seabird asphalt-smotherer has struck again, this time a stormy petrel found in an alleyway off Commercial Road. The unnamed bird was discovered yesterday covered in a thick glutinous coating that forensic scientists later confirmed as crude oil. This is the seventh such attack in less than a week and the Swindon police are beginning to take notice. \"This has been the seventh attack in less than a week,\" declared a Swindon policeman this morning, \"and we are beginning to take notice.\" The inexplicable seabird tarrer has so far not been seen, but an expert from the NSPB told the police yesterday that the suspect would probably have a displacement of 280,000 tons, be covered in rust and be floundering on a nearby rock. Despite numerous searches by police in the area, a suspect of this description has not yet been found.\n\n\u2014Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, July 18, 1988\n\nIt was the following morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ring finger and the complete absence of a wedding band. Mum walked in wrapped in a dressing gown and with her hair in curlers, fed DH-82, let Alan out of the broom cupboard, where we had to keep him these days, and pushed the delinquent dodo outside with a mop. He made an angry plinking noise, then attacked the bootscraper.\n\n\"What's wrong, sweetheart?\"\n\n\"It's Landen.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"My husband. He was reactualized last night, but only for about two hours.\"\n\n\"My poor darling! That must be very awkward.\"\n\n\"Awkward. Extremely. I climbed naked into bed with Mr. and Mrs. Parke-Laine.\"\n\nMy mother went ashen and dropped a saucer. \"Did they recognize you?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Thank the GSD for that!\" she gasped, greatly relieved. Being embarrassed in public was something she cared to avoid more than anything else, and having a daughter climbing into bed with patrons of the Swindon Toast League was probably the biggest faux pas she could think of.\n\n\"Good morning, pet,\" said Mycroft, shuffling into the kitchen and sitting down at the breakfast table. He was my extraordinarily brilliant inventor uncle and apparently had just returned from the 1988 Mad Scientists' Conference, or MadCon-88, as it was known.\n\n\"Uncle,\" I said, probably with less enthusiasm than I should, \"how good to see you again!\"\n\n\"And you, my dear,\" he said kindly. \"Back for good?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" I replied, thinking about Landen. \"Aunt Polly well?\"\n\n\"The very best of health. We've been to MadCon\u2014I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for something, but for the life of me I can't think what, or why.\"\n\nIt was a typically Mycroft statement. Despite his undoubted brilliance, he never thought he was doing anything particularly clever or useful\u2014he just liked to tinker with ideas. It was his Prose Portal invention that got me inside books in the first place. He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago.\n\n\"Did Goliath ever bother you again?\" I asked. \"After you came back, I mean?\"\n\n\"They tried,\" he replied softly, \"but they didn't get anything from me.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't tell them anything?\"\n\n\"No. It was better than that. I couldn't. You see, I can't remember a single thing about any of the inventions they wanted me to talk about.\"\n\n\"How is that possible?\"\n\n\"Well,\" replied Mycroft, taking a sip of tea, \"I'm not sure, but, logically speaking, I must have invented a memory-erasure device or something and used it selectively on myself and Polly\u2014what we call the Big Blank. It's the only possible explanation.\"\n\n\"So you can't remember how the Prose Portal actually works?\"\n\n\"The what?\"\n\n\"The Prose Portal. A device for entering fiction.\"\n\n\"They were asking me about something like that, now you mention it. It's very intriguing to try to redevelop it, but Polly says I shouldn't. My lab is full of devices, the purpose of which I haven't the foggiest notion about. An Ovinator, for example\u2014it's clearly something to do with eggs\u2014but what?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps it's all for the best. These days I only work for peaceful means. Intellect is worthless if it isn't for the betterment of us all.\"\n\n\"I'll agree with you on that one. What work were you presenting to MadCon-88?\"\n\n\"Theoretical Nextian Mathematics, mostly,\" replied Mycroft, warming to the subject dearest to his heart\u2014his work. \"I told you all about Nextian Geometry, didn't I?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Well, Nextian Number Theory is very closely related to that, and in its simplest form allows me to work backwards to discover the original sum from which the product is derived.\"\n\n\"Eh?\"\n\n\"Well, say you have the numbers 12 and 16. You multiply them together and get 192, yes? Well, in conventional maths, if you were given the number 192, you would not know how that number was arrived at. It might just as easily have been 3 times 64 or 6 times 32 or even 194 minus 2. But you couldn't tell just from looking at the number alone, now, could you?\"\n\n\"I suppose not.\"\n\n\"You suppose wrong,\" said Mycroft with a smile. \"Nextian Number Theory works in an inverse fashion from ordinary maths\u2014it allows you to discover the precise question from a stated answer.\"\n\n\"And the practical applications of this?\"\n\n\"Hundreds.\" He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it over. I unfolded it and found a simple equation written upon it: 2216,091 minus 1, or 2 raised to the power of 216,091, minus 1.\n\n\"It looks like a big number.\"\n\n\"It's a medium-size number,\" he corrected.\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Well, if I were to give you a short story of ten thousand words, instructed you to give a value for each letter and punctuation mark and then wrote them down, you'd get a number with sixty-five thousand or so digits. All you need to do then is to find a simpler way of expressing it. Using a branch of Nextian Maths that I call FactorZip, we can reduce any size number to a short, notated style.\"\n\nI looked at the equation in my hand again. \"So this is...?\"\n\n\"A FactorZipped Sleepy Hollow. I'm working on reducing all the books ever written to an equation less than fifty digits long. Makes you think, eh? Instead of buying a newspaper every day, you'd simply jot down today's equation and pop it in your Nexpanding Calculator to read it.\"\n\n\"Ingenious!\" I breathed.\n\n\"It's still early days, but I hope one day to be able to predict a cause simply by looking at the event. And after that, trying to construct unknown questions from known answers.\"\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\n\"Well, the answer 'Good Lord no, quite the reverse.' I've always wanted to know the question to that.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I replied, still trying to figure out how you'd know by looking at the number nine that it had got there by being three squared or the square root of eighty-one.\n\n\"Isn't it just?\" he said with a smile, thanking my mother for the bacon and eggs she had just put down in front of him.\n\nLady Hamilton's departure at eight-thirty was really sad only for Hamlet. He went into a glowering mood and made up a long soliloquy about his heart that was aching fit to break and how cruel a fate life's hand had dealt him. He said that Emma was his one true love and her departure made his life bereft; a life that had little meaning and would be better ended\u2014and so on and so forth until eventually Emma had to interrupt him and thank him but she really must go or else she'd be late for something she couldn't specify. So he then screamed abuse at her for five minutes, told her she was a whore and marched out, muttering something about being a chameleon. With him gone we could all get on with our goodbyes.\n\n\"Goodbye, Thursday,\" said Emma, holding my hand. \"You've always been very kind to me. I hope you get your husband back. Would you permit me to afford you a small observation that I think might be of help?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Don't let Smudger dominate the forward hoop positions. He works best in defense, especially if backed up by Biffo\u2014and play offensively if you want to win.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said slowly, \"you're very kind.\"\n\nI gave her a hug, and my mother did, too\u2014a tad awkwardly, as she had never fully divested herself of the suspicion that Emma had been carrying on with Dad. Then, a moment later, Emma vanished\u2014which must be what it was like when Father arrives and stops the clock for other people.\n\n\"Well,\" said my mother, wiping her hands on her apron, \"that's her gone. I'm glad she got her husband back.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I agreed somewhat diffidently, and walked off to find Hamlet. He was outside, sitting on the bench in the rose garden, deep in thought.\n\n\"You okay?\" I asked, sitting down next to him.\n\n\"Tell me truthfully, Miss Next. Do I dither?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014not really.\"\n\n\"Truthfully now!\"\n\n\"Perhaps... a bit.\"\n\nHamlet gave a groan and buried his face in his hands.\n\n\"Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! A slave to this play with contradictions so legion that scholars write volumes attempting to explain me. One moment I love Ophelia, the next I treat her cruelly. I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. By all accounts my father was a war-hungry monster\u2014was Claudius's act of assassination so bad after all? Did I really see a ghost of my father or was it Fortinbras in disguise, trying to sow discord within Denmark? How long did I spend in England? How old am I? I've watched sixteen different film adaptations of Hamlet and two plays, read three comic books and listened to a wireless adaptation. Everything from Olivier to Gibson to Barrymore to William Shatner in Conscience of the King.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Every single one of them is different.\"\n\nHe looked around in quiet desperation for his skull, found it, and then stared at it meditatively for a few moments before continuing. \"Do you have any idea the pressure I'm under being the world's leading dramatic enigma?\"\n\n\"It must be intolerable.\"\n\n\"It is. I'd feel worse if anyone else had figured me out\u2014but they haven't. Do you know how many books there are about me?\"\n\n\"Hundreds?\"\n\n\"Thousands. And the slanders they write! The Oedipal thing is by far the most insulting. The goodnight kiss with Mum has got longer and longer. That Freud fellow will have a bloody nose if ever I meet him. My play is a complete and utter mess\u2014four acts of talking and one of action. Why does anyone trouble to watch it?\"\n\nHis shoulders sagged and he appeared to sob quietly to himself. I rested a hand on his shoulder.\n\n\"It is your complexity and philosophical soul-searching that we pay money to see\u2014you are the quintessential tragic figure, questioning everything, dissecting all life's shames and betrayals. If all we wanted was action, we'd watch nothing but Chuck Norris movies. It is your journey to resolving your demons that makes the play the prevaricating tour de force that it is.\"\n\n\"All four and a half hours of it?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, wary of his feelings, \"all four and a half hours of it.\"\n\nHe shook his head sadly.\n\n\"I wish I could agree with you but I need more answers, Horatio.\"\n\n\"Thursday.\"\n\n\"Yes, her, too. More answers and a new facet to my character. Less talk, more action. So I have secured the services... of a conflict-resolution consultant.\"\n\nThis didn't sound good at all.\n\n\"Conflict resolution? Are you sure that's wise?\"\n\n\"It might help me resolve matters with my uncle\u2014and that twit Laertes.\"\n\nI thought for a moment. An allaction Hamlet might not be such a good idea, but since he had no play to return to, it at least gave me a few days' breathing space. I decided not to intervene for the time being.\n\n\"When are you talking to him?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"Tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after. Conflict-resolution advisers are pretty busy, you know.\"\n\nI breathed a sigh of relief. True to form, Hamlet was still dithering. But he had brightened up, having come to a decision of sorts, and continued in a more cheery tone. \"But that's enough about me. How goes it with you?\"\n\nI gave him a brief outline, beginning with Landen's reeradication and ending with the importance of finding five good players to help Swindon win the SuperHoop.\n\n\"Hmm,\" he replied as soon as I had finished. \"I've got a plan for you. Want to hear it?\"\n\n\"As long as it's not about where Biffo should play.\"\n\nHe shook his head, looked around carefully and then lowered his voice. \"Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then\u2014and this is the important bit\u2014do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" I said at length, \"I'll remember that.\"\n\n\"Plink!\" said Alan, who had been padding grumpily around the garden.\n\n\"I think that bird is looking for trouble,\" observed Hamlet.\n\nAlan, who clearly didn't like Hamlet's attitude, decided to attack and made a lunge at Hamlet's shoe. It was a bad move. The Prince of Denmark leapt up, drew his sword and, before I could stop him, made a wild slash in Alan's direction. He was a skilled swordsman and did no more damage than to pluck the feathers off the top of Alan's head. The little dodo, who now had a bald patch, opened his eyes wide and looked around him with a mixture of horror and awe at the small feathers that were floating to the ground.\n\n\"Any more from you, my fine feathered friend,\" announced Hamlet, replacing his sword, \"and you'll be in the curry!\"\n\nPickwick, who had been watching from a safe corner near the compost heap, boldly strode out and stood defiantly between Alan and Hamlet. I'd never seen her acting brave before, but I suppose Alan was her son, even if he was a hooligan. Alan, either terrified or incensed, stood completely motionless, beak open.\n\n\"Telephone for you,\" my mother called out. I walked into the house and picked up the receiver. It was Aubrey Jambe. He wanted me to speak to my old coach Alf Widdershaine to get him out of retirement and also to know if I had found any new players yet.\n\n\"I'm working on it,\" I said, rummaging through the Yellow Pages under \"Sports Agents.\" \"I'll call you back. Don't lose hope, Aubrey.\"\n\nHe harrumphed and rang off. I called Wilson Lonsdale & Partners, England's top sports agents, and was delighted to hear there were any number of world-class croquet players available; sadly, the interest evaporated when I mentioned which team I represented.\n\n\"Swindon?\" said one of Lonsdale's associates. \"I've just remembered\u2014we don't have anyone on our books at all.\"\n\n\"I thought you said you had?\"\n\n\"It must have been a clerical error. Good day.\"\n\nThe phone went dead. I called several others and received a similar response from all of them. Goliath and Kaine were obviously covering all their bases.\n\nFollowing that, I called Alf Widdershaine and, after a long chat, managed to persuade him to go down to the stadium and do what he could. I called Jambe back to tell him the good news about Alf, although I thought it prudent to hide the lack of new players from him for the time being.\n\nI thought about Landen's existence problem for a moment and then found the number of Julie Aseizer, the woman at Eradications Anonymous who had got her husband back. I called her and explained the situation.\n\n\"Oh, yes!\" she said helpfully. \"My Ralph flickered on and off like a faulty lightbulb until his uneradication held!\"\n\nI thanked her and put the phone down, then checked my finger for a wedding ring. It still wasn't there.\n\nI glanced into the garden and saw Hamlet walking on the lawn, deep in thought\u2014with Alan following him at a safe distance. As I watched, Hamlet turned to him and glared. The small dodo went all sheepish and laid his head on the ground in supplication. Clearly Hamlet wasn't just a fictional Prince of Denmark but also something of an alpha dodo.\n\nI smiled to myself and wandered into the living room where I found Friday building a castle out of bricks with Pickwick helping. Of course, \"helping\" in this context meant \"watching.\" I glanced at the clock. Time for work. Just when I could do with some relaxing brick-building therapy. Mum agreed to look after Friday and I gave him a kiss goodbye.\n\n\"Be good.\"\n\n\"Arse.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"Pikestaff.\"\n\n\"If those are rude Old English words, St. Zvlkx is in a lot of trouble\u2014and so are you, my little fellow. Mum, sure you're okay?\"\n\n\"Of course. We'll take him to the zoo.\"\n\n\"Good. No, wait\u2014we?\"\n\n\"Bismarck and I.\"\n\n\"Mum!?\"\n\n\"What? Is there any reason a more or less widowed woman can't have a bit of male company from time to time?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I stammered, feeling unnaturally shocked for some reason. \"I suppose no reason at all.\"\n\n\"Good. Be off with you. After we've gone to the zoo we might drop in at the tea rooms. And then the theater.\"\n\nShe had started to go all dreamy so I left, shocked not only that Mother might be even considering some sort of a fling with Bismarck, but that Joffy might have been right."
            },
            {
                "title": "Weird Shit on the M4",
                "text": "\u2002George Formby was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904. He followed his father into the music-hall business, adopted the ukulele as his trademark, and by the time the war broke out, he was a star of variety, pantomime and film. During the first years of the war, he and his wife Beryl toured extensively for ENSA, entertaining the troops as well as making a series of highly successful movies. When invasion of England was inevitable, many influential dignitaries and celebrities were shipped out to Canada. Moving underground with the English resistance and various stalwart regiments of the Local Defence Volunteers, Formby manned the outlawed \"Wireless St. George\" and broadcast songs, jokes and messages to secret receivers across the country. The Formbys used their numerous contacts in the north to smuggle Allied airmen to neutral Wales and form resistance cells that harried the Nazi invaders. In postwar republican England, he was made nonexecutive President for Life.\n\n\u2014John Williams, The Extraordinary Career of George Formby\n\nI avoided the news crews who were staking out the SpecOps Building and parked at the rear. Major Drabb was waiting for me as I walked into the entrance lobby. He saluted smartly but I detected a slight reticence about him this morning. I handed him another scrap of paper. \"Good morning, Major. Today's assignment is the Museum of the American Novel in Salisbury.\"\n\n\"Very... good, Agent Next.\"\n\n\"Problems, Major?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, biting his lip nervously, \"yesterday you had me searching the library of a famous Belgian and today the Museum of the American Novel. Shouldn't we be searching more, well, Danish facilities?\"\n\nI pulled him aside and lowered my voice. \"That's precisely what they would be expecting us to do. These Danes are clever people. You wouldn't expect them to hide their books in somewhere as obvious as the Wessex Danish Library, now would you?\"\n\nHe smiled and tapped his nose.\n\n\"Very astute, Agent Next.\"\n\nDrabb saluted again, clicked his heels and was gone. I smiled to myself and pressed the elevator call button. As long as Drabb didn't report to Flanker I could keep this going all week.\n\nBowden was not alone. He was talking to the last person I would expect to see in a LiteraTec office: Spike.\n\n\"Yo, Thursday,\" Spike said.\n\n\"Yo, Spike.\"\n\nHe wasn't smiling. I feared it might be something to do with Cindy, but I was wrong.\n\n\"Our friends in SO-6 tell us there's some seriously weird shit going down on the M4,\" he announced, \"and when someone says 'weird shit' they call\u2014\"\n\n\"You.\"\n\n\"Bingo. But the weird shit merchant can't do it on his own, so he calls\u2014\"\n\n\"Me.\"\n\n\"Bingo.\"\n\nThere was another officer with them. He wore a dark suit typical of the upper SpecOps divisions, and he looked at his watch in an unsubtle manner.\n\n\"Time is of the essence, Agent Stoker.\"\n\n\"What's the job?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" returned Spike, whose somewhat laid-back attitude to life-and-death situations took a little getting used to. \"What is the job?\"\n\nThe suited agent looked impassively at us both.\n\n\"Classified,\" he announced. \"But I am authorized to tell you this: unless we get "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 137",
                "text": " back in under "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 138",
                "text": "-"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 139",
                "text": " hours, then "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 140",
                "text": " will seize ultimate executive "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 141",
                "text": " and you can "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 142",
                "text": " goodbye to any semblance of "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 143",
                "text": ".\"\n\n\"Sounds pretty "
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 144",
                "text": "ing serious,\" said Spike, turning back to me. \"Are you in?\"\n\n\"I'm in.\"\n\nWe were driven without explanation to the roundabout at Junction 16 of the M4 motorway. SO-6 were national security, which made for some interesting conflicts of interest. The same department protecting Formby also protected Kaine. And for the most part the SO-6 agents looking after Formby did so against Kaine's SO-6 operatives who were more than keen to see him gone. SpecOps factions always fought, but rarely from within the same department. Kaine had a lot to answer for.\n\nIn any case, I didn't like them and neither did Spike, and whatever it was they wanted it would have to be pretty weird. No one calls Spike until every avenue has been explored. He was the last line of defense before rationality started to crumble.\n\nWe pulled onto the verge, where two large black Bentley limousines were waiting for us. Parked next to them were six standard police cars, with the occupants looking bored and waiting for orders. Something pretty big was going down.\n\n\"Who's she?\" demanded a tall agent with a humorless demeanor as soon as we stepped from the car.\n\n\"Thursday Next,\" I replied, \"SO-27.\"\n\n\"Literary Detectives?\" he sneered.\n\n\"She's good enough for me,\" said Spike. \"If I don't get my own people, you can do your own weird shit.\"\n\nThe SO-6 agent looked at the pair of us in turn. \"ID.\"\n\nI showed him my badge. He took it, looked at it for a moment, then passed it back.\n\n\"My name is Colonel Parks,\" said the agent. \"I'm head of Presidential Security. This is Dowding, my second in command.\"\n\nSpike and I exchanged looks. The President. This really was serious.\n\nDowding, a laconic figure in a dark suit, nodded his greeting as Parks continued:\n\n\"Firstly, I must point out to you both that this is a matter of great national importance, and I am asking for your advice only because we are desperate. We find ourselves in a head-of-state-deficit condition by virtue of a happenstance of a high-otherworldlinesspossibility situation\u2014and we hoped you might be able to reverse-engineer us out of it.\"\n\n\"Cut the waffle,\" said Spike. \"What's going on?\"\n\nParks's shoulders slumped, and he took off his dark glasses. \"We've lost the President.\"\n\nMy heart missed a beat. This was bad news. Really bad news. The way I saw it, the President wasn't due to die until next Monday, after Kaine and Goliath had been neutered. Formby's going missing or dying early allowed Kaine to gain power and start World War III a week before he was meant to\u2014and that was certainly not in the game plan.\n\nSpike thought for a moment and then said, \"Bummer.\"\n\n\"Quite.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\nParks swept his arm towards the busy traffic speeding past on the motorway. \"Somewhere out there.\"\n\n\"How long ago?\"\n\n\"Twelve hours. Chancellor Kaine has got wind of it, and he's pushing a parliamentary vote to establish himself dictator at six o'clock this evening. That gives us less than eight hours.\"\n\nSpike nodded thoughtfully. \"Show me where you last saw him.\"\n\nParks snapped his fingers, and a black Bentley drew up alongside. We climbed in, and the limo joined the M4 in a westerly direction, the police cars dropping in behind to create a rolling road-block. Within a few miles, our lane of the busy thoroughfare was deserted and quiet. As we drove on, Parks explained what had happened. President Formby was being driven from London to Bath along the M4, and somewhere between Junctions 16 and 17\u2014where we now were\u2014he vanished.\n\nThe Bentley glided to a halt on the empty asphalt.\n\n\"The President's car was the center vehicle in a three-car motorcade,\" explained Parks as we got out. \"Saundby's car was behind, I was with Dowding in front, and Mallory was driving the President. At this precise point, I looked behind and noticed that Mallory was indicating to turn off. I saw them move onto the hard shoulder, and we pulled over immediately.\"\n\nSpike sniffed the air. \"And then what happened?\"\n\n\"We lost sight of the car. We thought it had gone over the embankment, but when we got there\u2014nothing. Not a bramble out of place. The car just vanished.\"\n\nWe walked to the edge and looked down the slope. The motorway was carried above the surrounding countryside on an earth embankment; there was a steep slope that led down about fifteen feet through ragged vegetation to a fence. Beyond this was a field, a concrete bridge over a drainage ditch and beyond that, about half a mile distant, a row of white houses.\n\n\"Nothing just vanishes,\" said Spike at last. \"There is always a reason. Usually a simple one, sometimes a weird one\u2014but always a reason. Dowding, what's your story?\"\n\n\"Pretty much the same. His car started to pull over, then just... well, vanished from sight.\"\n\n\"Vanished?\"\n\n\"More like melted, really,\" said a confused Dowding. Spike rubbed his chin thoughtfully and bent down to pick up a handful of roadside detritus. Small granules of toughened glass, shards of metal and wires from the lining of a car tire. He shivered.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Parks.\n\n\"I think President Formby's gone... deadside.\"\n\n\"Then where's the body? In fact, where's the car?\"\n\n\"There are three types of dead,\" said Spike, counting on his fingers. \"Dead, undead and semidead. Dead is what we call in the trade 'spiritually bereft'\u2014the life force is extinct. Those are the lucky ones. Undead are the 'spiritually challenged' that I seem to spend most of my time dealing with. Vampires, zombies, bogeys and what have you.\"\n\n\"And the semidead?\"\n\n\"Spiritually ambiguous. Those that are moving on from one state to another or in a spiritual limbo\u2014what you and I generally refer to as ghosts.\"\n\nParks laughed out loud, and Spike raised an eyebrow, the only outward sign of indignation I had ever seen him make.\n\n\"I didn't ask you along so I could listen to some garbage about ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, Officer Stoker.\"\n\n\"Don't forget 'things that go bump in the night,'\" countered Spike. \"You won't believe how bad a thing can bump if you don't deal with it quick.\"\n\n\"Whatever. As far as I can see, there is one state of dead and that's 'not living.' Now, do you have anything useful to add to this investigation or not?\"\n\nSpike didn't answer. He stared hard at Parks for a moment and then scrambled down the embankment towards a dead and withered tree. It had leafless branches that looked incongruous amongst the summer greenery, and the plastic bags that had caught in its branches moved lazily in the breeze. Parks and I looked at one another, then slid down the bank to join him. We found Spike examining the short grass with great interest.\n\n\"If you have a theory, you should tell us,\" said Parks, leaning against the tree. \"I'm getting a bit bored with all this New Age mumbo jumbo.\"\n\n\"We all visit the realm of the semidead at some point,\" continued Spike, picking at the ground with his fingers like a chimp checking a partner for fleas, \"but for most of us it is only a millisecond as we pass from one realm to the next. Blink and you'll miss it. But there are others. Others who loiter around in the world of the semidead for years. The 'spiritually ambiguous' who don't know they are dead, or, in the case of the President, there by accident.\"\n\n\"And...?\" asked Parks, who was becoming less keen on Spike with each second that passed. Spike carried on rummaging in the dirt, so the SO-6 agent shrugged resignedly and started to walk back up the embankment.\n\n\"He didn't stop for a leak at Membury or Chievley services, did he?\" announced Spike in a loud voice. \"I wonder if he even went at Reading.\"\n\nParks stopped, and his attitude changed abruptly. He slid clumsily back down the embankment and rejoined us.\n\n\"How did you know that?\"\n\nSpike looked around at the empty fields. \"There is a motorway services here.\"\n\n\"There was going to be one,\" I corrected, \"but after Kington St\u2014I mean, Leigh Delamare was built, it wasn't considered necessary.\"\n\n\"It's here all right,\" replied Spike, \"just occluded from our view. This is what happened: The President needs a leak and tells Mallory to pull over at the next services. Mallory is tired, and his mind is open to those things usually hidden from our sight. He sees what he thinks are the services and pulls over. For a fraction of a second, the two worlds touch\u2014the presidential Bentley moves across\u2014and then part again. I'm afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that President Formby has accidentally entered a gateway to the underworld\u2014a living person adrift in the abode of the dead.\"\n\nThere was deathly quiet.\n\n\"That is the most insanely moronic story I have ever been forced to listen to,\" announced Parks, not wanting to lose sight of reality for even one second. \"If I listened to a gaggle of lunatics for a month, I'd not hear a crazier notion.\"\n\n\"There are more things in heaven and earth, Parks, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.\"\n\nThere was a pause as the SO-6 agent weighed up the facts.\n\n\"Do you think you can get him back?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"I fear not. The spirits of the semidead will be flocking to him like moths to a light, trying to feed off his life force and return themselves to the land of the living. Such a trip would almost certainly be suicidal.\"\n\nParks sighed audibly. \"All right. How much?\"\n\n\"Ten grand. Realm-of-the-dead-certain-to-die work pays extra.\"\n\n\"Each?\"\n\n\"Since you mention it, why not?\"\n\n\"Okay then,\" said Parks with a faint grin, \"you'll get your blood money\u2014but only on results.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't have it any other way.\"\n\nSpike beckoned me to follow him, and we climbed back over the fence, the SO-6 agents staring at us, unsure of whether to be impressed or have us certified or what.\n\n\"That really put the wind up them!\" hissed Spike as we scrambled to the top of the embankment, across bits of broken bumpers and shards of plastic moldings. \"Nothing like a bit of that wooo-wooo crossing-over-into-the-spirit-world stuff to scare the crap out of them!\"\n\n\"You mean you were making all that up?\" I asked, not without a certain degree of nervousness in my voice. I had been on two jobs with Spike before. On the first I was nearly fanged by a vampire, on the second almost eaten by zombies.\n\n\"I wish,\" he replied, \"but if we make it look too easy, then they don't cough up the big moola. It'll be a cinch! After all, what do we have to lose?\"\n\n\"Our lives?\"\n\n\"Dahhhh! You must loosen up a bit, Thursday. Look upon it as an experience\u2014part of death's rich tapestry. You ready?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Good. Let's hit those semideads where it hurts!\"\n\nBy the fifth time we had driven the circuit between Junctions 16 and 17 and without so much as a glimpse of anything other than bored motorists and a cow or two, I was beginning to wonder whether Spike really knew what he was doing.\n\n\"Spike?\"\n\n\"Mmm?\" he replied, concentrating on the empty field that he thought might contain the gateway to the dead.\n\n\"What exactly are we looking for?\"\n\n\"I don't have the foggiest idea, but if the President can make his way in without dying, so can we. Are you sure you won't put Biffo on midhoop attack? He's wasted on defense. You could promote Johnno to striker and use Jambe and Snake to build up defense.\"\n\n\"If I don't find another five players, it might not matter anyway,\" I replied. \"I managed to get Alf Widdershaine out of retirement to coach, though. You used to play county croquet, didn't you?\"\n\n\"No way, Thursday.\"\n\n\"Oh, go on.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nThere was a long pause. I stared out the window at the traffic, and Spike concentrated on driving, every now and then looking expectantly into the fields by the side of the road. I could see this was going to be a long day, so it seemed as good a time as any to broach the subject of Cindy. I wasn't keen to kill her, and Spike, I knew, would be less than happy to see her dead.\n\n\"So... when did you and Cindy tie the knot?\"\n\n\"About eighteen months ago. Have you ever visited the realm of the dead?\"\n\n\"Orpheus told me about the Greek version of it over coffee once\u2014but only the highlights. Does she... er... have a job?\"\n\n\"She's a librarian,\" replied Spike, \"part-time. I've been there a couple of times; it's not half as creepy as you'd have thought.\"\n\n\"The library?\"\n\n\"The abode of the dead. Orpheus would have paid the ferryman, but, you know, that's just a scam. You can easily do it yourself; those inflatable boats from Wal-Mart work a treat.\"\n\nI tried to visualize Spike paddling his way to the underworld on a brightly colored inflatable boat but quickly swept it aside.\n\n\"So... which library does Cindy work in?\"\n\n\"The one in Highclose. They have day care, so it's very convenient. I want to have another kid, but Cindy's not sure. How's your husband, by the way\u2014still eradicated?\"\n\n\"Wavering between 'to be' and 'not to be' at the moment.\"\n\n\"So there's hope, then?\"\n\n\"There's always hope.\"\n\n\"My sentiments entirely. Ever had a near-death experience?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, recalling the time I was shot by a police marksman in an alternative future.\n\n\"What was it like?\"\n\n\"Dark.\"\n\n\"That sounds like a plain old common or garden-variety death experience,\" replied Spike cheerfully. \"I get them all the time. No, we need something a bit better than that. To pass over into the dark realm, we need to just come within spitting distance of the Grim Reaper and hover there, tantalizingly just out of his reach.\"\n\n\"And how are we going to achieve that?\"\n\n\"Haven't a clue.\"\n\nHe turned off the motorway at Junction 17 and took the entrance ramp back onto the opposite carriageway to do another circuit.\n\n\"What did Cindy do before you were married?\"\n\n\"She was a librarian then, too. She comes from a long line of dedicated Sicilian librarians\u2014her brother is a librarian for the CIA.\"\n\n\"The CIA?\"\n\n\"Yes, he spends the time traveling the world\u2014cataloging their books, I presume.\"\n\nIt seemed as though Cindy was wanting to tell him what she really did but couldn't pluck up the courage. The truth about Cindy might easily shock him, so I thought I'd better plant a few seeds of doubt. If he could figure it all out himself, it would be a great deal less painful.\n\n\"Does it pay well, being a librarian?\"\n\n\"Certainly does!\" exclaimed Spike. \"Sometimes she is called away to do freelance contract work\u2014emergency card-file indexing or something\u2014and they pay her in used notes, too\u2014in suitcases. Don't know how they manage it, but they do.\"\n\nI sighed and gave up.\n\nWe drove around twice more. Parks and the rest of the SO-6 spooks had long since got bored and driven off, and I was beginning to get a little tired of this myself.\n\n\"How long do we have to do this for?\" I asked as we drove onto the Junction 16 roundabout for the seventh time, the sky darkening and small spots of rain appearing on the windshield. Spike turned on the wipers, which squeaked in protest.\n\n\"Why, am I keeping you from something?\"\n\n\"I promised Mum she wouldn't have to look after Friday past five.\"\n\n\"What are grannies for? Anyway, you're working.\"\n\n\"Well, that's not the point, is it?\" I answered. \"If I annoy her, she may decide not to look after him again.\"\n\n\"She should be grateful for it. My parents love looking after Betty, although Cindy doesn't have any\u2014they were both shot by police marksmen while being librarians.\"\n\n\"Doesn't that strike you as unusual?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"In my line of work, it's difficult to know what unusual is.\"\n\n\"I know the feeling. Are you sure you don't want to play in the SuperHoop?\"\n\n\"I'd sooner attempt root-canal work on a werewolf.\" He pressed his foot hard on the accelerator and weaved around the traffic that was waiting to return to the westbound M4. \"I'm bored with all this. Death, drape your sable coat upon us!\"\n\nSpike's car shot forward and rapidly gathered speed down the slip road as a deluge of summer rain suddenly dumped onto the motorway, so heavy that even with the wipers on full speed, it was difficult to see. Spike turned on the headlights, and we joined the motorway at breakneck speed, through the spray of a passing juggernaut, before pulling into the fast lane. I glanced at the speedometer. The needle was just touching ninety-five.\n\n\"Don't you think you'd better slow down?\" I yelled, but Spike just grinned maniacally and overtook a car on the inside.\n\nWe were going almost a hundred when Spike pointed out the window and yelled, \"Look!\"\n\nI gazed out my window to the empty fields; there was nothing but a curtain of heavy rain falling from a leaden sky. As I stared, I suddenly glimpsed a sliver of light as faint as a will-o'-the-wisp. It might have been anything, but to Spike's well-practiced eye, it was just what we'd been looking for\u2014a chink in the dark curtain that separates the living from the dead.\n\n\"Here we go!\" yelled Spike, and he pulled the wheel hard over. The side of the M4 greeted us in a flash, and I had just the barest glimpse of the embankment, the white branches of the dead tree and rain swirling in the headlights before the wheels thumped hard on the drainage ditch and we left the road. There was a sudden smoothness as we were airborne, and I braced myself for the heavy landing. It didn't happen. A moment later we were driving slowly into a motorway services in the dead of night. The rain had stopped, and the inky black sky had no stars. We had arrived."
            },
            {
                "title": "Dauntsey Services",
                "text": "\u2003Art is long, and Time is fleeting,\n\n\u2003And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating\n\n\u2003Funeral marches to the grave.\n\n\u2014Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, \"A Psalm of Life\"\n\nWe motored slowly in and parked next to where Formby's Bentley was standing empty with the keys in the ignition.\n\n\"Looks like we're still in time. What sort of plan do you suggest?\"\n\n\"Well, I understand a lyre seems to work quite well\u2014and not looking back has something to do with it.\"\n\n\"Optional, if you ask me. My strategy goes like this: We locate the President and get the hell out. Anyone who tries to stop us gets bashed. What do you think?\"\n\n\"Wow!\" I muttered. \"You planned this down to the smallest detail, didn't you?\"\n\n\"It has the benefit of simplicity.\"\n\nSpike looked around at the number of people entering the motorway services building. \"This gateway isn't just for road accidents,\" he muttered, opening the boot of the car and taking out a pump-action shotgun. \"From the numbers, I reckon this portal must service most of Wessex and a bit of Oxfordshire as well. Years ago there was no need for this sort of place. You just croaked, then went up or down. Simple.\"\n\n\"So what's changed?\"\n\nSpike tore open a box of cartridges and pushed them one by one into the shotgun. \"The rise of secularism has a hand in it, but mostly it's down to CPR. Death takes a hold\u2014you come here, someone resuscitates you, you leave.\"\n\n\"Right. So what's the President doing here?\"\n\nSpike filled his pockets with cartridges and placed the sawn-off shotgun in a long pocket on the inside of his duster. \"An accident. He's not meant to be here at all\u2014like us. Are you packing?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Then let's see what's going on. And act dead\u2014we don't want to attract any attention.\"\n\nWe strode slowly down the parking lot towards the motorway services. Tow trucks that pulled the empty cars of the departed souls drove past, vanishing into the mist that swathed the exit ramp.\n\nWe opened the doors to the services and stepped in, ignoring a Royal Automobile Club man who tried in a desultory manner to sell us membership. The interior was well lit, airy, smelt vaguely of disinfectant and was pretty much identical to every other motorway services I had ever been in. The visitors were the big difference. Their talking was muted and low and their movements languorous, as though the burden of life was pressing heavily on their shoulders. I noticed also that although many people were walking in the main entrance, not so many people were walking out.\n\nWe passed the phones, which were all out of order, and then walked towards the canteen, which smelt of stewed tea and pizza. People sat around in groups, talking softly, reading out-of-date newspapers or sipping coffee. Some of the tables had a number on a stand that designated some unfulfilled food order.\n\n\"Are all these people dead?\" I asked.\n\n\"Nearly. This is only a gateway, remember. Have a look over there.\" Spike pulled me to one side and pointed out the bridge that connected us\u2014the Southside services\u2014to the other side, the Northside. I looked out the grimy windows at the pedestrian bridge that stretched in a gentle arc across the carriageways towards nothingness.\n\n\"No one comes back, do they?\"\n\n\"'The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns, ' \" replied Spike. \"It's the last journey we ever make.\"\n\nThe waitress called out a number. \"Thirty-two?\"\n\n\"Here!\" said a couple quite near us.\n\n\"Thank you, the Northside is ready for you now.\"\n\n\"Northside?\" echoed the woman. \"I think there's been some sort of mistake. We ordered fish, chips and peas for two.\"\n\n\"You can take the pedestrian footbridge over there. Thank you!\"\n\nThe couple grumbled and muttered a bit to themselves but got up nonetheless and walked slowly up the steps to the footbridge and began to cross. As I watched, their forms became more and more indistinct until they vanished completely. I shivered and looked by way of comfort towards the living world and the motorway. I could dimly make out the M4 streaming with rush-hour traffic, the headlights shining and sparkling on the rain-soaked asphalt. The living, heading home to meet their loved ones. What in God's name was I doing here?\n\nI was interrupted from my thoughts by Spike, who nudged me in the ribs and pointed. On the far side of the canteen was a frail old man who was sitting by himself at a table. I'd seen President Formby once or twice before, but not for about a decade. According to Dad, he would die of natural causes in six days, and it wouldn't be unkind to say that he looked it. He was painfully thin, and his eyes seemed sunken into his sockets. His teeth, so much a trademark, more protruding than ever. A lifetime's entertaining can be punishing, a half lifetime in politics doubly so. He was hanging on to keep Kaine from power, and by the look of it, he was losing and knew it.\n\nI moved to get up but Spike murmured:\n\n\"We might be too late. Look at his table.\"\n\nThere was a \"Number 33\" sign in front of him. I felt Spike tense and lower his shoulders, as though he had seen someone he recognized but didn't want them to see him.\n\n\"Thursday,\" he whispered, \"get the President to my car by whatever means you can before the waitress comes back. I have to take care of something. I'll see you outside.\"\n\n\"What? Hey, Spike!\"\n\nBut he was away, moving slowly amongst the lost souls milling around the newsagent until he was gone from sight. I took a deep breath, got up and crossed to Formby's table.\n\n\"Hullo, young lady!\" said the President. \"Where are me bodyguards?\"\n\n\"I've no time to explain, Mr. President, but you need to come with me.\"\n\n\"Oh, well,\" he said agreeably, \"if you say so\u2014but I've just ordered pie and chips. Could eat a horse and probably will, too!\" He grinned and laughed weakly.\n\n\"We must go,\" I urged. \"I will explain everything, I promise!\"\n\n\"But I've already paid\u2014\"\n\n\"Table 33?\" said the waitress, who had crept up behind me.\n\n\"That's us,\" replied the President cheerfully.\n\n\"There's been a problem with your order. You're going to have to leave for the moment, but we'll keep it hot for you.\"\n\nI breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't meant to be dead, and the staff knew it.\n\n\"Now can we go?\"\n\n\"I'm not leaving until I get a refund,\" he said stubbornly.\n\n\"Your life is in danger, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Been in danger many times, young lady, but I'm not leaving till I get my ten bob back.\"\n\n\"I will pay it,\" I replied. \"Now, let's get out of here.\"\n\nI heaved him to his feet and walked him to the exit. As we pushed open the doors and stumbled out, three disreputable-looking men appeared from the shadows. They were all armed.\n\n\"Well, well!\" said the first man, who was dressed in a very tired and battered SpecOps uniform. He had stubble, oily hair and was pale to the point of cadaverousness. With one hand he held an aged SpecOps-issue revolver, and the other was planted firmly on the top of his head. \"Looks like we've got some live ones here!\"\n\n\"Drop your gun,\" said the second.\n\n\"You'll live to regret this,\" I told him, but realized the stupidity of the comment as soon as I had said it.\n\n\"Way too late for that!\" he replied. \"Your gun, if you please.\"\n\nI complied, and he grabbed Formby and took him back inside while the first man picked up my gun and put it in his pocket.\n\n\"Now you,\" said the first man again, \"inside. We've got a little trading to do, and time is fleeting.\"\n\nI didn't know where Spike was, but he had sensed the danger, that much was certain. I supposed he had a plan, and if I delayed, perhaps it would help.\n\n\"What do you want?\"\n\n\"Nothing much,\" laughed the man who had his hand pressed firmly on his head, \"just... your soul.\"\n\n\"Looks like a good one, too,\" said the third man, who was holding some sort of humming meter and was pointing it in my direction. \"Lots of life in this one. The old man has only six days to run\u2014we won't get much for that.\"\n\nI didn't like the sound of this, not one little bit.\n\n\"Move,\" said the first man, indicating the doors.\n\n\"Where to?\"\n\n\"Northside.\"\n\n\"Over my dead body.\"\n\n\"That's the poi\u2014\"\n\nThe third man didn't finish his sentence. His upper torso exploded into a thousand dried fragments that smelt of moldy vegetables. The first man whirled around and fired in the direction of the cafeteria, but I seized the opportunity and ran back into the car park to take cover behind a car. After a few moments, I peered out cautiously. Spike was inside, trading shots with the first man, who was pinned behind the presidential Bentley, still with his hand on his head. I cursed myself for giving up my weapon, but as I stared at the scene\u2014the nighttime, the motorway services\u2014a strong sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu welled up inside me. No, it was stronger than that\u2014I had been here before\u2014during a leap through time nearly three years ago. I had witnessed the jeopardy I was in and left a gun for myself. I looked around. Behind me a man and a woman\u2014Bowden and myself, in point of fact\u2014were jumping into a Speedster\u2014my Speedster. I smiled and dropped to my knees, feeling under the car tire for the weapon. My hands closed around the automatic and I flicked off the safety and moved from the car, firing as I went. The first man saw me and ran for cover amongst the milling crowds, who scattered, terrified. I cautiously entered the now seemingly deserted services and rejoined Spike just inside the doorway of the shop. We had a commanding position of the stairs to the connecting bridge; no one was going Northside without passing us. I dropped the magazine out of my automatic and reloaded.\n\n\"The tall guy is Chesney, my ex-partner from SO-17,\" announced Spike as he reloaded his shotgun. \"The necktie covers the decapitation wound I gave him. He has to hold his head to stop it falling off.\"\n\n\"Ah. I wondered why he was doing that. But losing his head\u2014that makes him dead, right?\"\n\n\"Usually. He must be bribing the gateway guardians or something. It's my guess he's running some sort of soul-reclamation scam.\"\n\n\"Wait, wait,\" I said, \"slow down. Your ex-partner, Chesney\u2014who is dead\u2014is now running a service pulling souls out of the netherworld?\"\n\n\"Looks like it. Death doesn't care about personalities\u2014he's more interested in meeting quotas. After all, one departed soul is very like another.\"\n\n\"So...\"\n\n\"Right. Chesney swaps the soul of someone deceased for the soul of someone healthy and living.\"\n\n\"I'd say, 'You're shitting me,' but I've got a feeling you're not.\"\n\n\"I wish I was. Nice little earner, I'm sure. It looks like that's where Formby's driver, Mallory, went. Okay, here's the plan: we'll do a hostage swap for the President, and once you're in their custody, I'll get Formby to safety and return for you.\"\n\n\"I've got a better idea,\" I replied. \"How about we swap you for Formby and I go to get help?\"\n\n\"I thought you knew all about the underworld from your bosom pal Orpheus?\" countered Spike with a trace of annoyance.\n\n\"It was highlights over coffee\u2014and anyway, you've done it before. What was that about an inflatable boat from Wal-Mart to paddle yourself to the underworld?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Spike slowly, \"that was more of a hypothetical journey, really.\"\n\n\"You haven't a clue what you're doing, do you?\"\n\n\"No. But for ten grand, I'm willing to take a few risks.\"\n\nWe didn't have time to argue further, as several shots came our way. There was a frightened scream from a customer as one of the bullets reduced a magazine shelf to confetti. Before I knew it, Spike had fired his shotgun into the ceiling, where it destroyed a light fixture in a shower of bright sparks.\n\n\"Who shot at us?\" asked Spike. \"Did you see?\"\n\n\"I think it's fair to say that it wasn't the light fixture.\"\n\n\"I had to shoot at something. Cover me.\"\n\nHe jumped up and fired. I joined him, fool that I was. I had thought that my being out of my depth was okay because Spike vaguely knew what he was doing. Now that I was certain this was not the case, escape seemed a very good option indeed. After firing several shots ineffectively down the corridor, we stopped and dropped back behind the corner.\n\n\"Chesney!\" shouted Spike. \"I want to talk to you!\"\n\n\"What do you want here?\" came a voice. \"This is my patch!\"\n\n\"Let's have a head-to-head,\" replied Spike, stifling a giggle. \"I'm sure we can come to some sort of arrangement!\"\n\nThere was a pause, and then Chesney's voice rang out again:\n\n\"Hold your fire. We're coming out.\"\n\nChesney stepped out into the open, just next to the children's helicopter ride and a Coriolanus WillSpeak machine. His remaining henchman joined him, holding the President.\n\n\"Hello, Spike,\" said Chesney. He was a tall man, who looked as though he didn't have a drop of liquid blood in his entire body. \"I haven't forgiven you for killing me.\"\n\n\"I kill vampires for a living, Dave. You became one\u2014I had to.\"\n\n\"Had to?\"\n\n\"Sure. You were about to sink your teeth into an eighteen-year-old virgin's neck and turn her into a lifeless husk willing to do your every bidding.\"\n\n\"Everyone should have a hobby.\"\n\n\"Train sets, I tolerate,\" Spike replied. \"Spreading the seed of vampirism, I do not.\"\n\nHe nodded towards Chesney's neck. \"Nasty scratch you have there.\"\n\n\"Very funny. What's the deal?\"\n\n\"Simple. I want President Formby back.\"\n\n\"And in return?\"\n\nSpike turned the shotgun towards me. \"I give you Thursday. She's got bags of life left in her. Give me your gun, sweetheart.\"\n\n\"What?\" I yelled in a well-feigned cry of indignation.\n\n\"Do as I say. The President must be protected at all costs\u2014you told me so yourself.\"\n\nI handed the gun over.\n\n\"Good. Now move forward.\"\n\nI walked slowly up the concourse, the cowering visitors watching us with a sort of morbid fascination. We stopped ten yards apart just near the game-arcade area.\n\n\"Send the President to me.\"\n\nChesney nodded to his henchman who let him go. Formby, a little confused by now, tottered up to us.\n\n\"Now send me Thursday.\"\n\n\"Whoa!\" said Spike. \"Still using that old SpecOps-issue revolver? Here, have her automatic\u2014she won't need it anymore.\"\n\nAnd he tossed my gun towards his ex-partner. Chesney, in an unthinking moment, went to catch the gun\u2014but with the hand he used to keep his head on. Unrestrained, his head wobbled dangerously. He tried to grab it, but this made matters worse, and his head tumbled off to the front, past his flailing hands, where it hit the floor with the sound of a large cabbage. This unseemly situation had distracted Chesney's number two, who was then disarmed by a blast from Spike's shotgun. I didn't see why Spike should have all the fun, so I ran forward and caught Chesney's head on the bounce and expertly booted it through the door of the arcade, where it scored a direct hit into the SlamDunk! basketball game, earning three hundred points. Spike had thumped the now confused and headless Chesney in the stomach and retrieved both my automatics. I grabbed the President, and we legged it for the car park while Chesney's head screamed obscenities from where he was stuck upside down in the SlamDunk! basket.\n\n\"Well...\" Spike smiled as we reached his car. \"Chesney really lost his\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"don't say it. It's too corny.\"\n\n\"Is this some sort of theme park?\" asked Formby as we bundled him into Spike's car.\n\n\"Of a sort, Mr. President,\" I replied as we reversed out of the parking lot with a squealing of tires and tore towards the exit ramp. No one tried to stop us, and a couple of seconds later, we were blinking in the daylight\u2014and the rain\u2014of the M4 westbound. The time, I noticed, was 5:03\u2014lots of time to get the President to a phone and oppose Kaine's vote in parliament. I put out my hand to Spike, who shook it happily and returned my gun, which was still covered in the desiccated dust of Chesney's hoodlum friend.\n\n\"Did you see the look on his face when his head started to come off?\" Spike asked, chuckling. \"Man, I live for moments like that!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire",
                "text": "[ Danish King in Tidal Command Fiasco ]\n\n\u2002In another staggering display of Danish stupidity, King Canute of Denmark attempted to use his authority to halt the incoming tide, our reporters have uncovered. It didn't, of course, and the dopey monarch was soaked. Danish authorities were quick to deny the story and rushed with obscene haste to besmirch the excellent and unbiased English press with the following lies: \"For a start it wasn't Canute\u2014it was Cnut,\" began the wild and wholly unconvincing tirade from the Danish minister of propaganda. \"You English named him Canute to make it sound less like you were ruled by foreigners for two hundred years. And Cnut didn't try to command the sea\u2014it was to demonstrate to his overly flattering courtiers that the tide wouldn't succumb to his will. And it all happened nine hundred years ago\u2014if it happened at all.\" King Canute himself was unavailable for comment.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 18, 1988\n\nWe told the President that yes, he was right\u2014the whole thing was some sort of motorway services theme park. Dowding and Parks were genuinely pleased to get their President back, and Yorrick Kaine canceled the vote in parliament. Instead he led a silent prayer to thank providence for returning Formby to our midst. As for Spike and me, we were each given a postdated check and told we would be sure to receive the Banjulele with Oak Clusters for our steadfast adherence to duty.\n\nSpike and I parted after the tiring day's work and I returned to the SpecOps office where I found a slightly annoyed Major Drabb waiting for me near my car.\n\n\"No Danish books found again, Agent Next!\" he said through clenched teeth, handing me his report. \"More failure and I will have to take the matter to higher authority.\"\n\nI glared at him, took a step closer and prodded him angrily in the chest. I needed Flanker off my back until the SuperHoop at the very least.\n\n\"You blame me for your failings?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, faltering slightly and taking a nervous step backwards as I moved even closer, \"that is to say\u2014\"\n\n\"Redouble your efforts, Major Drabb, or I will have you removed from your command. Do you understand?\"\n\nI shouted the last bit, which I didn't want to do\u2014but I was getting desperate. I didn't want Flanker on my back in addition to everything else that was going on.\n\n\"Of course,\" croaked Drabb. \"I take full responsibility for my failure.\"\n\n\"Good,\" I said, straightening up, \"tomorrow you are to search the Australian Writers' Guild in Wooten Bassett.\"\n\nDrabb dabbed his brow and made another salute.\n\n\"As you say, Miss Next.\"\n\nI tried to drive past the mixed bag of journalists and TV news crews, but they were more than insistent so I stopped to say a few words.\n\n\"Miss Next,\" said a reporter from ToadSports, jostling with the five or six other TV crews trying to get the best angle, \"what is your reaction to the news that five of the Mallets team members have withdrawn following death threats?\"\n\nThis was news to me but I didn't show it.\n\n\"We are in the process of signing new players to the team\u2014\"\n\n\"Miss Manager, with only five players in your team, don't you think it better to just withdraw?\"\n\n\"We'll be playing, I assure you.\"\n\n\"What is your response to the rumor that the Reading Whackers have signed ace player Bonecrusher McSneed to play forward hoop?\"\n\n\"The same as always\u2014the SuperHoop will be a momentous victory for Swindon.\"\n\n\"And what about the news that you have been declared 'unfit to manage' given your highly controversial move of putting Biffo on defense?\"\n\n\"Positions on the field are yet to be decided and are up to Mr. Jambe. Now if you'll excuse me...\"\n\nI started the engine again and drove away from the SpecOps Building, the news crews still shouting questions after me. I was big news again, and I didn't like it.\n\nI arrived home just in time to rescue Mother from having to make more tea for Friday.\n\n\"Eight fish fingers!\" she muttered, shocked by his greed. \"Eight!\"\n\n\"That's nothing,\" I replied, putting my paycheck into a novelty teapot and tickling Friday on the ear. \"You wait until you see how many beans he can put away.\"\n\n\"The phone's been ringing all day. Aubrey somebody-or-other about death threats or something?\"\n\n\"I'll call him. How was the zoo?\"\n\n\"Ooh!\" she cooed, touched her hair and tripped out of the kitchen. I waited until she was gone then knelt down close to Friday.\n\n\"Did Bismarck and Gran... kiss?\"\n\n\"Tempor incididunt ut labore,\" he replied enigmatically, \"et do-lore magna aliqua.\"\n\n\"I hope that's a 'definitely not,' darling,\" I murmured, filling up his beaker. As I did so, I caught my wedding ring on the lip of the cup, and I stared at it in a resigned manner. Landen was back again. I clasped it tightly and picked up the phone.\n\n\"Hello?\" came Landen's voice.\n\n\"It's Thursday.\"\n\n\"Thursday!\" he said with a mixture of relief and alarm. \"What happened to you? I was waiting for you in the bedroom, and then I heard the front door close! Did I do something wrong?\"\n\n\"No, Land, nothing. You were eradicated again.\"\n\n\"Am I still?\"\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\nThere was a long pause. Too long, in fact. I looked at my hand. My wedding ring had gone again. I sighed, replaced the receiver and went back to Friday, heavy in heart. I called Aubrey as I was giving Friday his bath and tried to reassure him about the missing players. I told him to keep training and I'd deliver. I wasn't sure how, but I didn't tell him that. I just said it was \"in hand.\"\n\n\"I have to go,\" I told him at last. \"I've got to wash Friday's hair and I can't do it with one hand.\"\n\nThat evening, as I was reading Pinocchio to Friday, a large tabby cat appeared on the wardrobe in my bedroom. He didn't appear instantly, either\u2014he faded in from the tip of his tail all the way up to his very large grin. When he first started working in Alice in Wonderland, he was known as the Cheshire Cat, but the authorities moved the Cheshire county boundaries, and he thus became the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but that was a bit of a mouthful, so he was known more affectionately as the Cat formerly known as Cheshire or, more simply, the Cat. His real name was Archibald, but that was reserved for his mother when she was cross with him.\n\nHe worked very closely with us at Jurisfiction, where he was in charge of the Great Library, a cavernous and almost infinite depository of every book ever written. But to call the Cat a librarian would be an injustice. He was an \u00fcberlibrarian\u2014he knew about all the books in his charge. When they were being read, by whom\u2014everything. Everything, that is, except where Yorrick Kaine was a featured part. Friday giggled and pointed as the Cat stopped appearing and stared at us with a grin etched on his features, eagerly listening to the story.\n\n\"Hello!\" he said as soon as I had finished, kissed Friday and put out the bedside light. \"I've got some information for you.\"\n\n\"About?\"\n\n\"Yorrick Kaine.\"\n\nI took the Cat downstairs, where he sat on the microwave as I made some tea.\n\n\"So what have you found out?\" I asked.\n\n\"I've found out that an alligator isn't someone who makes allegations\u2014it's a large reptile a bit like a crocodile.\"\n\n\"I mean about Kaine.\"\n\n\"Ah. Well, I've had a careful trawl, and he doesn't appear anywhere in the character manifests, either in the Great Library or the Well of Lost Plots. Wherever he's from, it isn't from published fiction, poetry, jokes, nonfiction or knitting patterns.\"\n\n\"I didn't think you'd come out here to tell me you've failed, Chesh,\" I said. \"What's the good news?\"\n\nThe Cat's eyes flashed, and he twitched his whiskers. \"Vanity publishing!\" he announced with a flourish.\n\nIt was an inspired guess. I'd never even considered he might be from there. The realm of the self-published book was a bizarre mix of quaint local histories, collections of poetry, magnum opuses of the truly talentless\u2014and the occasional gem. The thing was, if such books became officially published, they were welcomed into the Great Library with open arms\u2014and that hadn't happened.\n\n\"You're sure?\"\n\nThe Cat handed me an index card. \"I knew this was important to you, so I called in a few favors.\"\n\nI read the card aloud. \"'At Long Last Lust. 1931. Limited-edition run of one hundred. Author: Daphne Farquitt.'\"\n\nI looked at the Cat. Daphne Farquitt. Writer of nearly five hundred romantic novels and darling of the romance genre.\n\n\"Before she got famous writing truly awful books, she used to write truly awful books that were self-published,\" explained the Cat. \"In At Long Last Lust, Yorrick plays a local politician eager for advancement. He isn't a major part either. He's only mentioned twice and doesn't even warrant a description.\"\n\n\"Can you get me into the vanity-publishing library?\" I asked.\n\n\"There is no vanity library,\" he said with a shrug. \"We have figures and short reviews gleaned from vanity publishers' manifests and Earnest Scribbler Monthly, but little else. Still, we need only to find one copy and he's ours.\"\n\nHe grinned again, but I didn't join him.\n\n\"Not that easy, Cat. Take a look at this.\"\n\nI showed him the latest issue of The Toad. The Cat carefully put on his spectacles and read, \"'Danish book-burning frenzy reaches new heights, with Copenhagen-born Farquitt's novels due to be consigned to flames.'\n\n\"I don't get it,\" said the Cat, placing a longing paw on a Moggilicious Cat Food advert. \"What's he up to, burning all her books?\"\n\n\"Because,\" I said, \"he obviously can't find all the original copies of At Long Last Lust and in desperation has whipped up anti-Danish feeling as a cover. With luck his book-burning idiots will do the job for him. I'm a fool not to have realized. After all, where would you hide a stick?\"\n\nThere was a long pause.\n\n\"I give up,\" said the Cat. \"Where would you hide a stick?\"\n\n\"In a forest.\"\n\nI stared out the window thoughtfully. At Long Last Lust. I didn't know how many of the hundred copies still remained, but with Farquitt's books still being consigned to the furnaces, I figured there had to be at least one. An unpublished Farquitt novel the key to destroying Kaine. I couldn't make this stuff up.\n\n\"Why would you hide a stick in a forest?\" asked the Cat, who had been pondering over this question for some moments in silence.\n\n\"It's an analogy,\" I explained. \"Kaine needs to get rid of every copy of At Long Last Lust but doesn't want us to get suspicious, so he targets the Danes\u2014the forest, rather than Farquitt\u2014the stick. Get it?\"\n\n\"Got it.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"Well, I'd better be off then,\" announced the Cat and he vanished.\n\nI was not much surprised at this for the Cat usually left in this manner. I poured the tea, added some milk, and then put some mugs on a tray. I was just pondering where I might find a copy of At Long Last Lust and, more important, calling Julie again to ask her how long her husband flicked on and off \"like a lightbulb,\" when the Cat reappeared balanced precariously on the Kenwood mixer.\n\n\"By the by,\" he said, \"the Gryphon tells me that the sentencing for your Fiction Infraction is due in two weeks' time. Do you want to be present?\"\n\nThis related to the time I changed the ending of Jane Eyre. They found me guilty at my trial but the law's delay in the BookWorld just dragged things on and on.\n\n\"No,\" I said after a pause. \"No, tell him to come and find me and let me know what my sentence will be.\"\n\n\"I'll tell him. Well, toodle-oo,\" said the Cat, and vanished, this time for good.\n\nI pushed open the door of Mycroft's workshop with my toe, held it open for Pickwick to follow me in, then closed it before Alan could join us and placed the tray on a worktop. Mycroft and Polly were staring intently at a small and oddly shaped geometric solid made of brass.\n\n\"Thank you, pet,\" said Polly. \"How are things with you?\"\n\n\"Fair to not very good at all, Auntie.\"\n\nPolly was Mycroft's wife of some forty-two years and, although seemingly in the background, was actually almost as brilliant as her husband. She was a bouncy seventy and managed Mycroft's often irascible and forgetful nature with a patience that I found inspiring. \"The trick,\" she told me once, \"is to regard him like a five-year-old with an IQ of two hundred sixty.\" She picked up her tea and blew on it.\n\n\"Still thinking about whether to put Smudger on defense?\"\n\n\"I was thinking of Biffo, actually.\"\n\n\"Smudger and Biffo would both be wasted on defense,\" muttered Mycroft, making a fine adjustment on one face of the brass polyhedron with a file. \"You ought to put Snake on defense. He's untried, I admit, but he plays well and has youth on his side.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm really leaving team strategy to Aubrey.\"\n\n\"I hope he's up to it. What do you make of this?\"\n\nHe handed me the solid, and I turned the grapefruit-size object over in my hands. Some of the faces were odd-sided and some even-sided\u2014and some, strangely enough, appeared to be both, and my eyes had trouble making sense of it.\n\n\"Very... pretty,\" I replied. \"What does it do?\"\n\n\"Do?\" Mycroft smiled. \"Put it on the worktop, and you'll see what it do!\"\n\nI placed it on the surface, but the oddly shaped solid, unstable on the face I had placed it upon, tipped onto another. Then, after a moment's pause, it wobbled again and fell onto a third. It carried on in this jerky fashion across the worktop until it fell against a screwdriver, where it stopped.\n\n\"I call it a Nextahedron,\" announced Mycroft, picking up the solid and placing it on the floor, where it continued its random perambulations, watched by Pickwick, who thought it might be chasing her and ran away to hide. \"Most irregular solids are only unstable on one or two faces. The Nextahedron is unstable on all its faces\u2014it will continue to fall and tip until a solid object impedes its progress.\"\n\n\"Fascinating!\" I murmured, always surprised by the ingenuity of Mycroft's inventions. \"But what's the point?\"\n\n\"Well,\" explained Mycroft, warming to the subject, \"you know those inertial-generator things that self-wind a wristwatch?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"If we have a larger one of those inside a Nextahedron weighing six hundred tons, I calculate we could generate as much as a hundred watts of power.\"\n\n\"But... but that's only enough for a lightbulb!\"\n\n\"Considering the input is nil, I think it's a remarkable achievement,\" replied Mycroft somewhat sniffily. \"To generate significant quantities of power, we'd have to carve something of considerable mass\u2014Mars, say\u2014into a huge Nextahedron with a flat plate falling around the exterior, held firm by gravity. The power could be transmitted to Earth using Tesla beams and...\"\n\nHis voice trailed off as he started to sketch ideas and equations in a small notebook. I watched the Nextahedron fall and rock and jiggle across the floor until it fell against a roll of wire.\n\n\"On a more serious note,\" confided Polly, putting down her tea, \"you could help us identify some of the devices in the workshop. Since both Mycroft and I have taken the Big Blank, you might be able to help.\"\n\n\"I'll try,\" I said, looking around the room at the bizarre devices. \"That one over there guesses how many pips there are in an unopened orange, the one with the horn is an Olfactrograph for measuring smells, and the small box thing there can change gold into lead.\"\n\n\"What's the point in that?\"\n\n\"I'm not entirely sure.\"\n\nPolly made notes against her inventory, and I spent the next ten minutes trying to name as many of Mycroft's inventions as I could. It wasn't easy. He didn't tell me everything.\n\n\"I'm not sure what this one is either,\" I said, pointing at a small machine about the size of a telephone directory lying on a workbench.\n\n\"Oddly enough,\" replied Polly, \"this is one we do have a name for. It's an Ovinator.\"\n\n\"How do you know if you can't remember?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said Mycroft, who had finished his notes and now rejoined us, \"it has 'Ovinator' engraved on the case just there. We think it's either a device for making eggs without the need of a chicken or for making chickens without the need of an egg. Or something else entirely. Here, I'll switch it on.\"\n\nMycroft flicked a switch and a small red light came on.\n\n\"Is that it?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Polly, staring at the small and very unexciting metallic box thoughtfully.\n\n\"No sign of any eggs or chickens,\" I observed.\n\n\"None at all,\" sighed Mycroft. \"It might just be a machine for making a red light come on. Drat my lost memory! Which reminds me: any idea which device actually is the memory eraser?\"\n\nWe looked around the workshop at the odd and mostly anonymous contraptions. Any one of them might have been used to erase memories, but then any one of them might have been a device for coring apples, too.\n\nWe stood in silence for a moment.\n\n\"I still think you ought to have Smudger on defense,\" said Polly, who was probably the biggest croquet fan in the house.\n\n\"You're probably right,\" I said, suddenly feeling that it would be easier just to go with the flow. \"Uncle?\"\n\n\"Polly knows best,\" he replied. \"I'm a bit tired. Who wants to watch Name That Fruit! on the telly?\"\n\nWe all agreed that it would be a relaxing way to end the day, and I found myself watching the nauseating quiz show for the first time in my life. Halfway through, I realized just how bad it was and went to bed, temples aching."
            },
            {
                "title": "Neanderthal Nation",
                "text": "[ Neanderthals \"of Use\" at Politicians' Training College ]\n\n\u2002Neanderthals, the reengineered property of the Goliath Corporation, found unexpected employment at the Chipping Sodbury College for Politicians yesterday when four selected individuals were inducted as part of the Public Office Veracity Economics class. Neanderthals, whose high facial-acuity skills make them predisposed to noticing an untruth, are used by students to hone their lying skills\u2014something that trainee politicians might find useful once in a position of office. \"Man, those thals can spot everything!\" declared Mr. Richard Dixon, a first-year student. \"Nothing gets past them\u2014even a mild embellishment or a tactical omission!\" The lecturers at the college declared themselves wholly pleased with the neanderthals and privately admitted that \"if the proletariat were even half as good at spotting lies, we'd really be in the soup!\"\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad (political section), July 4, 1988\n\nThe hunt for At Long Last Lust had been going on all morning, but with little success. Kaine had almost two years' head start on us. Of the one hundred copies in the print run, sixty-two of them had changed hands within the past eighteen months. Initially they had been sold for modest sums of \u00a31,000 or so, but there is nothing like a mystery buyer with deep pockets to push up the price, and the last copy sold was for \u00a3720,000 at Agatha's Auction House\u2014an unprecedented sum, even for a prewar Farquitt.\n\nThe likelihood of finding a copy of Lust was looking increasingly desperate. I called Farquitt's agent, who said that the author's entire library had been confiscated and the septuagenarian author questioned at length about pro-Danish political activism before being released. Even a visit to the Library of Farquitt in Didcot didn't bear any fruit\u2014both their original manuscript of At Long Last Lust and a signed copy had been seized by \"government agents\" nearly eighteen months before. The librarian met us in the sculpted marble hall and after telling us not to talk so loudly, reported that representative copies of all Farquitt's works were packed and ready for removal \"as soon as we wanted.\" Bowden responded that we'd be heading towards the border just as soon as we finalized the details. He didn't look at me as he said it, but I knew what he was thinking\u2014I still needed to figure out a way to get us across the border.\n\nWe drove back to the LiteraTec office in silence, and as soon as we got in, I called Landen. My wedding ring, which had been appearing and disappearing all morning, had been solid for a good twenty minutes.\n\n\"Yo, Thursday!\" he said enthusiastically. \"What happened to you yesterday? We were talking, and you just went quiet.\"\n\n\"Something came up.\"\n\n\"Why don't you come around for lunch? I've got fish fingers, beans and peas\u2014with mashed banana and cream for pudding.\"\n\n\"Have you been discussing the menu with Friday?\"\n\n\"Whatever made you think that?\"\n\n\"I'd love to, Land. But you're still a bit existentially unstable at the moment, so I'd only end up embarrassing myself in front of your parents again\u2014and I've got to go and meet someone to talk about Shakespeares.\"\n\n\"Anyone I know?\"\n\n\"Bartholomew Stiggins.\"\n\n\"The neanderthal?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Hope you like beetles. Call me when I exist next. I lo\u2014\"\n\nThe phone went dead. My wedding ring had gone again, too.\n\nI listened to the dial tone for a moment, tapping the receiver thoughtfully on my forehead. \"I love you too, Land,\" I said softly.\n\n\"Your Welsh contact?\" asked Bowden, walking up with a fax from the Karen Blixen Appreciation Society.\n\n\"Not exactly.\"\n\n\"New players for the SuperHoop, then?\"\n\n\"If only. Goliath and Kaine have frightened every player in the country except Penelope Hrah, who'll play for food and doesn't care what anyone says, thinks or does.\"\n\n\"Didn't she have a leg torn off during the Newport Strikers v. Dartmoor Wanderers semifinal a few years back?\"\n\n\"I'm in no position to be choosy, Bowd. If I put her on back-hoop defense, she can just growl at anyone who comes close. Ready for lunch?\"\n\nThe neanderthal population of Swindon numbered about three hundred, and they all lived in a small village to the west known as the Nation. Because of their tool-using prowess, they were just given six acres of land, water and sewage points and told to get on with it, as if they needed to be asked, which they didn't.\n\nThe neanderthals were not humans nor descendants of ours, but cousins. They had evolved at the same time as us, then been forced into extinction when they failed to compete successfully with the more aggressive human. Brought back to life by Goliath BioEngineering in the late thirties and early forties, they were as much a part of modern life as dodos or mammoths. And since they had been sequenced by Goliath, each individual was actually owned by the corporation. A less-than-generous \"buyback\" scheme to enable one to purchase oneself hadn't been well received.\n\nWe parked a little way down from the Nation and got out of the car.\n\n\"Can't we just park inside?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"They don't like cars,\" I explained. \"They don't see the point in traveling any distance. According to neanderthal logic, anywhere that can't be reached in a day's walk isn't worth visiting. Our neanderthal gardener used to walk the four miles to our house every Tuesday and then walk back again, resisting all offers of a lift. Walking was, he maintained, 'the only decent way to travel\u2014if you drive, you miss the conversations in the hedgerows.'\"\n\n\"I can see his point,\" replied Bowden, \"but when I need to be somewhere in a hurry\u2014\"\n\n\"That's the difference, Bowd. You've got to get off the human way of thinking. To neanderthals nothing is so urgent that it can't be done another time\u2014or not done at all. By the way, did you remember not to wash this morning?\"\n\nHe nodded. Because scent is so important to neanderthal communications, the soapy cleanliness of humans reads more like some form of suspicious subterfuge. Speak to a neanderthal while wearing scent and he'll instantly think you have something to hide.\n\nWe walked into the grassy entrance of the Nation and encountered a lone neanderthal sitting on a chair in the middle of the path. He was reading the large-print Neanderthal News. He folded up the paper and sniffed the air delicately before staring at us for a moment or two and then asking, \"Whom do you wish to visit?\"\n\n\"Next and Cable, lunch with Mr. Stiggins.\"\n\nThe neanderthal stared at us for moment or two, then pointed us towards a house on the other side of a grassed open area that surrounded a totem representing I-don't-know-what. There were five or six neanderthals playing a game of street croquet on the grass area, and I watched them intently for a while. They weren't playing in teams, just passing the ball around and hooping where possible. They were excellent, too. I watched one player hoop from at least forty yards away off a roquet. It was a pity neanderthals were aggressively noncompetitive\u2014I could have done with them on the team.\n\n\"Notice anything?\" I asked as we walked across the grassed area, the croquet players moving past us in a blur of well-coordinated limbs.\n\n\"No children?\"\n\n\"The youngest neanderthal is fifty-two,\" I explained. \"The males are infertile. It's probably their biggest source of disagreement with their owners.\"\n\n\"I'd be pissed off, too.\"\n\nWe found Stiggins's house, and I opened the door and walked straight in. I knew a bit about neanderthal customs, and you would never go into a neanderthal home unless you were expected\u2014in which case you treated it as your own and walked in unannounced. The house was built entirely of scrap wood or recycled rubbish and was circular in shape, with a central hearth. It was comfortable and warm and cozy, but not the sort of basic cave I think Bowden expected. There was a TV and proper sofas, chairs and even a hi-fi. Standing next to the fire was Stiggins, and next to him was a slightly smaller neanderthal.\n\n\"Welcome!\" said Stig. \"This is Felicity\u2014we are a partnership.\"\n\nHis wife walked silently up to us and hugged us both in turn, taking an opportunity to smell us, first in the armpit and then in the hair. I saw Bowden flinch, and Stig gave a small, grunty cough that was a neanderthal laugh.\n\n\"Mr. Cable, you are uncomfortable,\" observed Stig.\n\nBowden shrugged. He was uncomfortable, and he knew neanderthals well enough to know that you can't lie to them.\n\n\"I am,\" he replied. \"I've never been in a neanderthal house before.\"\n\n\"Is it any different to yours?\"\n\n\"Very,\" said Bowden, looking up at the construction of the roof beams, which had been made by gluing oddments of wood together and then planing them into shape.\n\n\"Not a single wood screw or bolt, Mr. Cable. Have you heard the noise wood makes when you turn a screw into it? Most uncharitable.\"\n\n\"Is there anything you don't make yourself?\"\n\n\"Not really. You are insulting the raw material if you do not extract all possible use from it. Any cash we earn has to go to our buyback scheme. We may be able to afford our ownership papers by the time we are due to leave.\"\n\n\"Then what, if you'll excuse me, is the point?\"\n\n\"To die free, Mr. Cable. Drink?\"\n\nMrs. Stiggins appeared with four glasses that had been cut from the bottom of wine bottles and offered them to us. Stig drank his straight down, and I tried to do the same and nearly choked\u2014it was not unlike drinking petrol. Bowden did choke, and clasped his throat as if it were on fire. Mr. and Mrs. Stiggins stared at us curiously, then collapsed into an odd series of grunty coughs.\n\n\"I'm not sure I see the joke,\" said Bowden, eyes streaming.\n\n\"It is the neanderthal custom to humiliate guests,\" announced Stig, taking our glasses from us. \"Yours was potato gin\u2014ours was merely water. Life is good. Have a seat.\"\n\nWe sat down on the sofa, and Stig poked at the embers in the fire. There was a rabbit on a stick, and I gave a deep sigh of relief it wasn't going to be beetles for lunch.\n\n\"Those croquet players outside,\" I began, \"do you suppose anything could induce them to play for the Swindon Mallets?\"\n\n\"No. Only humans define themselves by conflict with other humans. Winning or losing has no meaning to us. Things just are as they are meant to be.\"\n\nI thought about offering some money. After all, a month's salary for an averagely rated player would easily cover a thousand buyback schemes. But neanderthals are funny about money\u2014especially money that they don't think they've earned. I kept quiet.\n\n\"Have you had any more thoughts about the cloned Shakespeares?\" asked Bowden.\n\nStig thought for a moment, twitched his nose, turned the rabbit and then went to a large rolltop bureau and returned with a manila folder\u2014the genome report he had got from Mr. Rumplunkett.\n\n\"Definitely clones,\" he said, \"and whoever built them covered their tracks\u2014the serial numbers are scrubbed from the cells, and the manufacturer's information is missing from the DNA. On a molecular level, they might have been built anywhere.\"\n\n\"Stig,\" I said, thinking of Hamlet, \"I can't stress how important it is that I find a WillClone\u2014and soon.\"\n\n\"We haven't finished, Miss Next. See this?\"\n\nHe handed me a spectroscopic evaluation of Mr. Shaxtper's teeth, and I looked at the zigzag graph uncomprehendingly.\n\n\"We do this test to monitor long-term health patterns. By taking a cross-section of Shaxtper's teeth, we can trace the original manufacturing area solely from the hardness of the water.\"\n\n\"For what purpose?\"\n\n\"We recognize this pattern,\" he said, jabbing a stubby finger at the chart. \"In particular the high concentration of calcium just here. We can usually trace a chimera's original manufacturing area solely from the hardness of the water.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Bowden. \"So where do we find this sort of water?\"\n\n\"Simple: Birmingham.\"\n\nBowden clapped his hands happily. \"You mean to tell me there's a secret bioengineering lab in the Birmingham area? We'll find it in a jiffy!\"\n\n\"The lab isn't in Birmingham,\" said Stig.\n\n\"But you said...?\"\n\nI knew exactly what he was driving at.\n\n\"Birmingham imports its water,\" I said in a low voice, \"from the Elan Valley\u2014in the Socialist Republic of Wales.\"\n\nThe job had just got that much worse. Goliath's biggest biotech facility used to be on the banks of the Craig Goch Reservoir, deep in the Elan, before they moved to the Presellis. They had built across the border due to the lax bioengineering regulations; they shut down as soon as the Welsh parliament caught up. The lab in the Presellis did only legitimate work.\n\n\"Impossible!\" scoffed Bowden. \"They closed down decades ago!\"\n\n\"And yet,\" retorted Stig slowly, \"your Shakespeares were built there. Mr. Cable, you are not a natural friend to the neanderthal, and you do not have the strength of spirit of Miss Next, yet you are impassioned.\"\n\nBowden was unconvinced by Stig's pr\u00e9cis. \"How can you know me that well?\"\n\nThere was a silence for a moment as Stig turned the rabbit on the spit.\n\n\"You live with a woman whom you don't truly love, but need for stability. You are suspicious that she is seeing someone else, and that anger and suspicion hangs heavily on your shoulders. You feel passed over for promotion, and the one woman whom you truly love is inaccessible to you\u2014\"\n\n\"All right, all right,\" he said sullenly, \"I get the picture.\"\n\n\"You humans radiate emotions like a roaring fire, Mr. Cable. We are astounded how you are able to deceive each other so easily. We see all deception, so have evolved to have no need for it.\"\n\n\"These labs,\" I began, eager to change the subject, \"you are sure?\"\n\n\"We are sure,\" affirmed Stig, \"and not only Shakespeares were built there. All neanderthals up to Version 2.3.5, too. We wish to return. We have an urgent wish for that which we have been denied.\"\n\n\"And that is?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Children,\" breathed Stig. \"We have planned for just such an expedition, and your sapien characteristics will be useful. You have an impetuosity that we can never have. A neanderthal considers each move before taking it and is genetically predisposed towards caution. We need someone like you, Miss Next\u2014a human with drive, a propensity towards violence and the ability to take command\u2014yet someone governed by what is right.\"\n\nI sighed. \"We're not going to get into the Socialist Republic,\" I said. \"We have no jurisdiction, and if we're caught, there will be hell to pay.\"\n\n\"What about your plan to take all those books across, Thursday?\" asked Bowden in a quiet voice.\n\n\"There is no plan, Bowd. I'm sorry. And I can't risk being banged up in some Welsh slammer during the SuperHoop. I have to make sure the Mallets win. I have to be there.\"\n\nStig frowned at me. \"Strange!\" he said at last. \"You do not want to win for a deluded sense of hometown pride\u2014we see a greater purpose.\"\n\n\"I can't tell you, Stig, but what you read is true. It is vital to all of us that Swindon wins the SuperHoop.\"\n\nStig looked across to Mrs. Stiggins, and the two of them held a conversation for a good five minutes\u2014using only facial expressions and the odd grunt.\n\nAfter they had finished, Stig said, \"It is agreed. You, Mr. Cable, and ourself will break into the abandoned Goliath reengineering labs. You to find your Shakespeares, we to find a way to seed our females.\"\n\n\"I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Even if we fail,\" continued Stig, \"the Neanderthal Nation will field five players to help you win your SuperHoop. There can be no payment and no glory. Is this the deal?\"\n\nI stared at his small brown eyes. By the quality I had seen of the players outside and my knowledge of neanderthals in general, we would be in with a chance\u2014even with me locked up in a Welsh jail.\n\nI shook his outstretched hand. \"This is the deal.\"\n\n\"Then we must eat. Do you like rabbit?\"\n\nWe both nodded.\n\n\"Good. This is a speciality of ours. In Neanderlese it is called rabite'n'bitels.\"\n\n\"Sounds excellent,\" replied Bowden. \"What's it served with?\"\n\n\"Potatoes and a... tangy, greeny-brown, crunchy sauce.\"\n\nI can't be sure, but I think Stig winked at me. I needn't have worried. The meal was excellent, and neanderthals are quite correct\u2014beetles are severely underrated."
            },
            {
                "title": "Planning Meeting",
                "text": "[ Common Cormorants' Numbers Decline ]\n\n\u2002A leading ornithologist claimed yesterday that bear-bird incompatibility is to blame for the cormorant decline in recent years. \"We have known for many years that cormorants lay eggs in paper bags to keep the lightning out,\" explained Mr. Daniel Chough, \"but the reintroduction of bears to England has placed an intolerable strain on the birds' breeding habits. Even though bears and birds rarely compete for food and resources, it seems that wandering bears with buns steal the cormorants' paper bags in order, according to preliminary research, to hold the crumbs.\" That the bears are of Danish origin is suspected but not yet substantiated.\n\n\u2014Article in Flap! magazine, July 20, 1988\n\nSo what do you know about the Elan?\" asked Bowden as we drove back into the town.\n\n\"Not much,\" I replied, looking at the charts of Mr. Shaxspoor's teeth. Stig reckoned he had lived in the Elan for a lot longer than the others\u2014perhaps until only a few years ago. If he had survived that long, why not some of the others? I wasn't going to raise any false hopes quite yet, but at least it seemed possible we could save Hamlet after all.\n\n\"Were you serious about not being able to think of a way in?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so. We could always pretend to be water officials from Birmingham or something.\"\n\n\"Why would water officials have ten truckloads of banned Danish books?\" asked Bowden, not unreasonably.\n\n\"Something to read while doing water-officially things?\"\n\n\"If we don't get these books to safety, they'll be burned, Thursday\u2014we've got to find a way into the Republic.\"\n\n\"I'll think of something.\"\n\nI spent the rest of the afternoon fielding calls from numerous sports reporters, eager to get a story and find out who would be playing in what position on the field. I called Aubrey and told him that he would have five new players\u2014but I didn't tell him they'd be neanderthals. I couldn't risk the press's finding out.\n\nBy the time I returned to Mum's house, my wedding ring was firmly back on my finger again. I pushed Friday around to Landen's house and, noticing that everything seemed to be back to normal, knocked twice. There was an excited scrabble from within, and Landen opened the door.\n\n\"There you are!\" he said happily. \"When you hung up on me, I got kinda worried.\"\n\n\"I didn't hang up, Land.\"\n\n\"I was eradicated again?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\"\n\n\"Will I be again?\"\n\n\"I'm hoping not. Can I come in?\"\n\nI put Friday on the floor, and he immediately started to try to climb the stairs.\n\n\"Bedtime already, is it, young man?\" asked Landen, following him as he clambered all the way up. I noticed that in the spare room there were two as-yet-unpacked stair gates, which put my mind at rest. He had bought a cot, too, and several toys.\n\n\"I bought some clothes.\"\n\nHe opened the drawer. It was stuffed with all kinds of clothes for the little chap, and although some looked a bit small, I didn't say anything. We took Friday downstairs, and Landen made some supper.\n\n\"So you knew I was coming back?\" I asked as he cut up some broccoli.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" he replied, \"as soon as you got all that eradication nonsense sorted out. Make us a cup of tea, would you?\"\n\nI walked over to the sink and filled the kettle.\n\n\"Any closer to a plan for dealing with Kaine?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"No,\" I admitted, \"I'm really banking on Zvlkx's Seventh Revealment coming true.\"\n\n\"What I don't understand,\" said Landen, chopping some carrots, \"is why everyone except Formby seems to agree with everything Kaine says. Bloody sheep, the lot of them.\"\n\n\"I must say I'm surprised by the lack of opposition to Kaine's plans,\" I agreed, staring absently out the kitchen window. I frowned as the germ of an idea started to ferment in my mind. \"Land?\"\n\n\"Yuh?\"\n\n\"When was the last time Formby went anywhere near Kaine?\"\n\n\"Never. He avoids him like the plague. Kaine wants to meet him face-to-face, but the President won't have anything to do with him.\"\n\n\"That's it!\" I exclaimed, suddenly having a flash of inspiration.\n\n\"What's it?\"\n\n\"Well...\"\n\nI stopped because something at the bottom of the garden had caught my eye.\n\n\"Do you have nosy neighbors, Land?\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"It's probably my stalker, then.\"\n\n\"You have a stalker?\"\n\nI pointed. \"Sure. Just there, in the laurels, beckoning to me.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to do the strong male thing and chase him off with a stick?\"\n\n\"No. I've got a better idea.\"\n\n\"Hello, Millon. How's the stalking going? I brought you a cup of tea and a bun.\"\n\n\"Pretty well,\" he said, marking down in his notebook the time I had stopped to talk to him and budging aside to make room for me in the laurel bush. \"How are things with you?\"\n\n\"They're mostly good. What were you waving at me for?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he said. \"We were going to run a feature about thirteenth-century seers in Conspiracy Theorist magazine, and I wanted to ask you a few questions.\"\n\n\"Go ahead.\"\n\n\"Do you think it's odd that no fewer than twenty-eight Dark Ages saints have chosen this year for their second coming?\"\n\n\"I'd not really given it that much thought.\"\n\n\"O-kay. Do you not also find it strange that of these twenty-eight supposed seers, only two of them\u2014St. Zvlkx and Sister Bettina of Stroud\u2014have actually made any prophecies that have come remotely true?\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"That St. Zvlkx might not be a thirteenth-century saint at all, but some sort of time-traveling criminal. He takes an illicit journey to the Dark Ages, writes up what he can remember of history and then, at the appropriate time, he is catapulted forward to see his last revealment come true.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked. \"If the ChronoGuard gets wind of what he's up to, he's never been born\u2014literally. Why risk nonexistence for at most a few years' fame as a washed-up visitor from the thirteenth century with a host of unpleasant skin complaints?\"\n\nMillon shrugged. \"I don't know. I thought you might be able to help me.\" He lapsed into silence.\n\n\"Tell me, Millon\u2014is there any connection between Kaine and the Ovinator?\"\n\n\"Of course! You should read Conspiracy Theorist magazine more often. Although most of our links between secret technology and those in power are about as tenuous as mist, this one really is concrete: his personal assistant, Stricknene, used to work with Schitt-Hawse at the Goliath tech division. If Goliath has an Ovinator, then Kaine might very well have one, too. Do you know what it does, then?\"\n\nI laughed. This was exactly the news I wanted to hear.\n\n\"You'll see. Tell me,\" I added, my hopes rising by the second, \"what do you know about the old Goliath BioEngineering labs?\"\n\n\"Hoooh!\" he said, making a noise like any enthusiast invited to comment on his particular field of interest. \"Now you're talking! The old Goliath BioE is still standing in what we call Area 21\u2014the empty quarter in Mid-Wales, the Elan.\"\n\n\"Empty metaphorically or empty literally?\"\n\n\"Empty as in no one goes there except water officials\u2014and we have wholly uncorroborated evidence that we peddle as fact that an unspecified number of officials have vanished without a trace. In any event, it's all off-limits to everyone, surrounded by an electrified fence.\"\n\n\"To keep people out?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Millon slowly, \"to keep whatever genetic experiments Goliath was working on in. The whole of Area 21 is infested with chimeras. I've got files and files of dubious stories about people breaking in, allegedly never to be seen again. What's your interest in the Elan BioE plant anyway?\"\n\n\"Illegal genetic experiments on humans undertaken covertly by an apparently innocent multinational.\"\n\nMillon nearly passed out with the conspiracy overload. When he had recovered, he asked how he could help.\n\n\"I need you to find any pictures, plans, layout drawings\u2014anything that might be of use for a visit.\"\n\nMillon opened his eyes wide and scribbled in his notepad. \"You're going to go into Area 21?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"we both are. Tomorrow. Leaving here at seven in the morning, sharp. Can you find what I asked for?\"\n\nHe narrowed his eyes. \"I can get you your information, Miss Next,\" he said slowly and with a gleam in his eye, \"but it will cost. Let me be your official biographer.\"\n\nI put out a hand and he shook it gratefully. \"Deal.\"\n\nI walked back inside to find Landen talking to a man dressed in slightly punky clothes, with brightly colored spectacle frames, bleached-blond hair and an infinitesimally small goatee firmly planted just under his lower lip.\n\n\"Darling,\" Landen said, grasping the hand that I had just rested on his shoulder, \"this is my very good friend Handley Paige.\"\n\nI shook Paige's hand. He seemed pretty much the same as any other SF writers I had ever met. Slightly geeky, but pleasant enough.\n\n\"You write the Emperor Zhark books,\" I observed.\n\nHe winced slightly. \"No one ever talks about the decent stuff I write,\" he moaned. \"They just ask me for more and more Zhark stuff. I did it as a joke\u2014a pastiche of bad science fiction\u2014and blow me down if it isn't the most popular thing I've ever done.\"\n\nI remembered what Emperor Zhark had told me. \"You're going to kill him off, aren't you?\"\n\nHandley started. \"How did you know that?\"\n\n\"She works for SO-27,\" explained Landen. \"They know everything.\"\n\n\"I thought you guys were more hooked on the classics?\"\n\n\"We deal with all genres,\" I explained. \"For reasons that I can't reveal, I advise you to maroon Zhark on an uninhabited planet rather than expose him to the humiliation of a public execution.\"\n\nHandley laughed. \"You talk about him as if he were a real person!\"\n\n\"She takes her work very seriously, Handley,\" said Landen without the glimmer of a smile. \"I'd advise you to consider very seriously anything she happens to say. Wheels within wheels, Handley.\"\n\nBut Handley was adamant. \"I'm going to kill him off so utterly and completely that no one will ever ask me for another Zhark novel again. Thanks for lending me the book, Land. I'll see myself out.\"\n\n\"Is Handley in danger?\" asked Landen as soon as he had gone.\n\n\"Quite possibly. I'm not sure the Zharkian death-ray works in the real world, and I'd hate for Handley to be the one who finds out.\"\n\n\"This is a BookWorld thing, isn't it? Let's just change the subject. What did your stalker want?\"\n\nI smiled. \"You know, Landen, things are beginning to look up. I must call Bowden.\"\n\nI quickly dialed his number.\n\n\"Bowd? It's Thursday. I've figured out how we're going to get across the border. Set everything up for tomorrow morning. We'll muster at Leigh Delamare at eight.... I can't tell you.... Stig and Millon.... See you there. Bye.\"\n\nI called Stig and told him the same, then kissed Landen and asked him if he'd mind feeding Friday on his own. He didn't, of course, and I dashed off to speak to Mycroft.\n\nI was back in time to help Landen scrub the food off Friday, read the boy a story and put him to bed. It wasn't late, but we went to bed ourselves. Tonight there was no shyness or confusion, and we undressed quickly. He pushed me backwards onto the bed and with his fingertips\u2014\n\n\"Wait!\" I cried out.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I can't concentrate with all those people!\"\n\nLanden looked around the empty bedroom. \"What people?\"\n\n\"Those people,\" I repeated, waving a hand in the general direction of everywhere, \"the ones reading us.\"\n\nLanden stared at me and raised an eyebrow. I felt stupid, then relaxed and gave out a nervous giggle.\n\n\"Sorry. I've been living inside fiction for too long; sometimes I get this weird feeling that you, me and everything else are just... well, characters in a book or something.\"\n\n\"Plainly, that is ridiculous.\"\n\n\"I know, I know. I'm sorry. Where were we?\"\n\n\"Just here.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Area 21: The Elan",
                "text": "\u2002Freedom of Act a Step Closer, Announces Mr.\n\n\u2002Open government came one step closer yesterday with the announcement that Mr. would lend his weight to the Freedom of Act. The act, which aims to bring once top-information from into the hands of the, was hailed as a \"great leap forward\" by Mr., the Department of 's senior. The chief opponent to the draft bill, Mr., gave his assurance that \"as long as my name is, I won't allow this to be passed.\"\n\n\u2014Article in The, July, 19\n\nSo what's the plan?\" asked Bowden as we drove towards the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye. It was about ten in the morning, and we were traveling in Bowden's Welsh-built Griffin Sportina with Millon de Floss and Stig in the backseat. Behind us was a convoy of ten lorries, all loaded with banned Danish books.\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"ever thought it odd that parliament just rolls over and does anything that Kaine asks?\"\n\n\"I've given up with even trying to understand parliament,\" said Bowden.\n\n\"They're all sniveling toadies,\" put in Millon.\n\n\"If you even need a government,\" added Stig, \"you are a life-form flawed beyond redemption.\"\n\n\"I was confused, too,\" I continued. \"A government wholly agreeable to the worst excesses of Kaine could mean only one thing: some form of short-range mind control wielded by unscrupulous power brokers.\"\n\n\"Now, that's my kind of theory!\" exclaimed Millon excitedly.\n\n\"I couldn't figure it out at first, but then when I was up at Goliathopolis, I felt it myself. A sort of mind-numbing go-with-the-flow feeling, where I just wanted to follow the path of least resistance, no matter how pointless or wrong. I had seen its effect at the Evade the Question TV show, too\u2014the front row was eating out of Kaine's hand, no matter what he said.\"\n\n\"So what's the connection?\"\n\n\"I felt it again in Mycroft's lab. It was only when Landen made a sarcastic comment that it twigged. The Ovinator. We all thought the 'ovi' part of it was to do with eggs, but it's not. Think 'ovine.' It's to do with sheep. The Ovinator transmits subalpha brain waves that inhibit free will and instill sheeplike tendencies into the minds of anyone close by. It can be tuned to the user so he is unaffected; it's possible that Goliath might have developed a long-range version called the Ovitron and an antiserum. Mycroft thinks he probably invented it to transmit public health messages, but he can't remember. Goliath gets hold of it, Stricknene gives it to Kaine\u2014bingo. Parliament does everything Kaine asks. The only reason Formby is still anti-Yorrick is because he refuses to go anywhere near him.\"\n\nThere was silence in the car.\n\n\"What can we do about it?\"\n\n\"Mycroft's working on an Ovi-negator that should cancel it out, but our plans carry on as before. The Elan\u2014and win the SuperHoop.\"\n\n\"Even I'm finding this hard to believe,\" murmured Millon, \"and that's a first for me.\"\n\n\"How does it get us out of England?\" asked Bowden.\n\nI patted the briefcase that was sitting on my lap. \"With the Ovinator on our side, no one will want to oppose us.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure that's morally acceptable,\" said Bowden. \"I mean, doesn't that make us as bad as Kaine?\"\n\n\"I think we should stop and talk this through,\" added Millon. \"It's one thing making up stories about mind-control experiments but quite another actually using them.\"\n\nI opened the briefcase and switched the Ovinator on.\n\n\"Who's with me to go to the Elan, guys?\"\n\n\"Well, all right then,\" conceded Bowden, \"I guess I'm with you on this.\"\n\n\"Millon?\"\n\n\"I'll do whatever Bowden does.\"\n\n\"It really does work, doesn't it?\" observed Stig, giving a short, snorty cough. I chuckled slightly myself, too.\n\nGetting through the English checkpoint at Clifford was even easier than I had imagined. I went ahead with the Ovinator in my briefcase and stood for some time at the border station, chatting to the duty guard and giving him and the small garrison a good soaking with Ovinator rays for half an hour before Bowden drove up with the ten trucks behind him.\n\n\"What's in those trucks?\" asked the guard with a certain degree of torpidity in his voice.\n\n\"You don't need to look in the trucks,\" I told him.\n\n\"We don't need to look in the trucks,\" echoed the border guard.\n\n\"We can go through unimpeded.\"\n\n\"You can go through unimpeded.\"\n\n\"You're going to be nicer to your girlfriend.\"\n\n\"I'm definitely going to be nicer to my girlfriend.... Move along.\"\n\nHe waved us through, and we drove across the demilitarized zone to the Welsh border guards who called their colonel as soon as we explained that we had ten truckloads of Danish books that required safekeeping. There was a long and convoluted phone call with someone from the Danish consulate, and after about an hour, we and the trucks were escorted to a disused hangar at the Llan-drindod Wells airfield park. The colonel in charge offered us free passage back to the border, but I switched on the Ovinator again and told him that he could take the truck drivers back but to let us go on our way, a plan that he quickly decided was probably the best thing.\n\nTen minutes later we were on the road north towards the Elan, Millon directing us all the way according to a 1950s tourist map. By the time we were past Rhayder, the countryside became more rugged and the farms less and less frequent and the road more and more potholed until, as the sun reached its zenith and started its downward track, we arrived at a tall set of gates, strung liberally with rusty barbed wire. There was an old stone-built guardhouse with two very bored guards who needed only a short burst from the Ovinator to switch off the electrified fence, allowing us to pass. Bowden drove the car through and stopped at another internal fence twenty yards inside the first. This was unelectrified, and I pushed it open to let the car pass.\n\nThe road was in worse repair on the Area 21 side of the gates. Tussocky grass was growing from the cracks in the concrete roadway, and on occasion trees that had fallen across the road impeded our progress.\n\n\"Now can you tell me what we're doing here?\" asked Millon, staring intently out the window and taking frequent photographs.\n\n\"Two reasons,\" I said, looking at the map that Millon had obtained from his conspiracy buddies. \"First, because we think someone's been cloning Shakespeares and I need one as a matter of some urgency, and second, to find vital reproductive information for Stig.\"\n\n\"So it's true you can't have children?\"\n\nStig liked Millon because he asked such direct questions.\n\n\"It is true,\" he replied simply, loading up his dart gun with tranqs the size of Havana cigars.\n\n\"Take a left here, Bowd.\"\n\nHe changed gear, pulled the wheel around, and we entered a stretch of road with dark woodland on either side. We drove up a hill, took a left-hand turn past an outcrop of rock, then stopped. There was a rusty car upside down on the road in front of us, blocking the way.\n\n\"Stay in the car, keep it running,\" I said to Bowden. \"Millon, stay put. Stig\u2014with me.\"\n\nStig and I climbed out of the car and cautiously approached the upturned vehicle. It was a custom-made Studebaker, probably about ten years old. I peered in. Vandals never came here. The glass in the speedometer was unbroken, the rusty keys still in the ignition, the leather from the seats hanging in rotten strands. There was a sun-bleached briefcase lying on the ground, and it was full of water-related technical stuff, now all mushy and faded by the wind and rain. Of the occupants there was no sign. I had thought Millon was overcooking it with all his \"chimeras running wild\" stuff, but suddenly I felt nervous.\n\n\"Miss Next!\"\n\nIt was Stig. He was about ten yards ahead of the car and was squatting down, rifle across his knees. I walked slowly up to him, looking anxiously into the deep woodland on either side of the road. It was quiet. Rather too quiet. The sound of my own footfalls felt deafening.\n\n\"What's up?\"\n\nHe pointed to the ground. There was a human ulna lying on the road. Whoever had been in this accident, one of them never left.\n\n\"Hear that?\" asked Stig.\n\nI listened. \"No.\"\n\n\"Exactly. No noise at all. We think it advisable to leave.\"\n\nWe pivoted the car on its roof to give us room to pass and drove on, this time much slower, and in silence. There were three other cars on that stretch of road, two on their sides and one pushed into the verge. None of them had the least sign of the occupants, and the woods to either side seemed somehow even darker and deeper and more impenetrable as we drove past. I was glad when we reached the top of the hill, cleared the forest and drove down past a small dam and a lake before a rise in the road brought us within sight of the old Goliath BioEngineering labs. I asked Bowden to stop. He pulled up silently, and we all got out to observe the old factory through binoculars.\n\nIt was in a glorious location, right on the edge of the reservoir. But from what we had been led to expect from Millon's hyperactive imagination and a tatty photograph taken in its heyday, it was something of a disappointment. The plant had once been a vast, sprawling complex, built in the art deco style popular for factories in the thirties, but now it looked as though a hurried and not entirely successful effort had been made to demolish it a long time ago. Although much of the building had been destroyed or collapsed, the east wing looked as though it had survived relatively unscathed. Even so, it didn't appear that anyone had been there for years, if not decades.\n\n\"What was that?\" said Millon.\n\n\"What was what?\"\n\n\"A sort of yummy noise.\"\n\n\"Hopefully just the wind. Let's have a closer look at the plant.\" We motored down the hill and parked in front of the building. The front facade was still imposing, though half collapsed, and even retained much of the ceramic tile exterior and decoration. Clearly Goliath had great things planned for this place. We picked our way amongst the rubble that lay strewn across the steps and approached the main doors. They had both been pushed off their hinges, and one of them had large gouge marks, something that Millon was most interested in. I stepped inside. Broken furniture and fallen masonry lay everywhere in the oval lobby. The once fine suspended glass ceiling had long since collapsed, bringing natural light to an otherwise gloomy interior. The glass squeaked and cracked as we stepped across it.\n\n\"Where are the main labs?\" I asked, not wanting to be here a minute longer than I had to.\n\nMillon unfolded a blueprint.\n\n\"Where do you get all this stuff?\" asked Bowden incredulously.\n\n\"I swapped it for a Cairngorm yeti's foot,\" he replied, as though talking about bubble-gum cards. \"It's this way.\"\n\nWe walked through the building, amongst more fallen masonry and partially collapsed ceilings towards the relatively undamaged east wing. The roof was more intact here, and our torches flicked into offices and incubating rooms where rows upon rows of abandoned glass amniojars were lined up against the wall. In many of them, the liquefied remnant of a potential life-form had pooled in the bottom. Goliath had left in a hurry.\n\n\"What was this place?\" I asked, my voice barely louder than a whisper.\n\n\"This was,\" muttered Millon, consulting his blueprint, \"the main sabertoothed tiger manufacturing facility. The neanderthal wing should be through there and the first on the left.\"\n\nThe door was locked and bolted, but it was dry and rotten, and it didn't take much to force it open. There were papers scattered everywhere, and a halfhearted attempt had been made to destroy them. We stopped at the doorway and let Stiggins walk in alone. The room was about a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. It was similar to the tiger facility next door, but the amniojars were larger. The glass nutrient pipes were still in evidence, and I shivered. To me the room was undeniably creepy, but to Stig it was his first home. He, along with many thousands of his fellow extinctees, had been grown here. I had sequenced Pickwick at home using nothing more complex than average kitchen utensils and cultivated her in a denucleated goose egg. Birds and reptiles were one thing, umbilical cultivation of mammals quite another. Stig trod carefully amongst the twisted pipes and broken glass to a far door and found the decanting room, where the infant neanderthals were taken out of their amniojars and breathed for the first time. Beyond this the nursery, where the young had been brought up. We followed Stig through, and he stood at the large window that overlooked the reservoir.\n\n\"When we dream, it is of this,\" he said quietly. Then, obviously feeling that he was wasting time, he strode back to the incubating room and started rummaging in filing cabinets and desk drawers. I told him we'd meet him outside and rejoined Millon, who was trying to make sense of his floor plan.\n\nAfter walking in silence through several more rooms with even more ranks of amniojars, we arrived at a steel-gated secure area. The gate was open, and we stepped through, entering what had once been the most secret area of the entire plant.\n\nA dozen or more paces farther on, the corridor led into a large hall, and we knew we had found what we had been looking for. Built within the large room was a full-scale copy of the Globe Theatre. The stage and groundling area were strewn with torn-out pages of Shakespeare's plays, heavily annotated in black ink. In a room leading off, we found a dormitory that might have contained two hundred beds. All the bedding was upended in a corner, the bedsteads broken and lying askew.\n\n\"How many do you think went through here?\" asked Bowden in a whisper.\n\n\"Hundreds and hundreds,\" replied Millon, holding up a battered copy of The Two Gentlemen of Verona with the name \"Shaxpreke, W, 769\" written on the inside front cover. He shook his head sadly.\n\n\"What happened to them all?\"\n\n\"Dead,\" said a voice, \"dead as a ducat!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Shgakespeafe",
                "text": "\u2002\"All the World's a Stage,\" Claims Playwright\n\n\u2002That was the analogy of life offered by Mr. William Shakespeare yesterday when his latest play opened at the Globe. Mr. Shakespeare went on to further compare plays with the seven stages of life by declaring \"all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.\" Mr. Shakespeare's latest offering, a comedy entitled As You Like It, opened to mixed reviews with the \u0192outh-wark Gazette calling it \"a rollicking comedy of the highest order,\" while the Westminster Evening News described it as \"tawdry rubbish from the Warwickshire shithouse.\" Mr. Shakespeare declined to comment, as he is already penning a follow-up.\n\n\u2002\u2014Article in Blackfriars News, September 1589\n\nWe turned to find a small man with wild, unkempt hair standing at the doorway. He was dressed in Elizabethan clothes that had seen far better days, and his feet were bound with strips of cloth as makeshift shoes. He twitched nervously, and one eye was closed\u2014but beyond this the similarity to the Shakespeares Bowden had found was unmistakable. A survivor. I took a step closer. His face was lined and weathered, and those teeth he still possessed were stained dark brown and worn. He must have been at least seventy, but it didn't matter. The genius that had been Shakespeare had died in 1616, but genetically speaking, he was with us right now.\n\n\"William Shakespeare?\"\n\n\"I am a William, sir, and my name is Shgakespeafe,\" he corrected.\n\n\"Mr. Shgakespeafe,\" I began again, unsure of how to explain exactly what I wanted, \"my name is Thursday Next, and I have a Danish prince urgently in need of your help.\"\n\nHe looked from me to Bowden to Millon and back to me again. Then a smile broke across his weathered features.\n\n\"O wonder!\" he said at last. \"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't!\"\n\nHe stepped forward and shook our hands warmly; it didn't look as though he had seen anyone for a while.\n\n\"What happened to the others, Mr. Shgakespeafe?\"\n\nHe beckoned us to follow him and then was off like a gazelle. We had a hard job keeping up with him as he darted down the labyrinthine corridors, nimbly avoiding the rubbish and broken equipment. We caught up with him when he stopped at a smashed window that overlooked what had once been a large exercise compound. In the middle were two grassy mounds. It didn't take a huge amount of imagination to guess what was underneath them.\n\n\"O heart, heavy heart, why sigh'st thou without breaking?\" murmured Shgakespeafe sorrowfully. \"After the slaughter of so many peers by falsehood and by treachery, when will our great regenitors be conquered?\"\n\n\"I only wish I could say your brothers would be avenged,\" I told him sadly, \"but in all honesty, the men who did this are now dead themselves. I can only offer yourself and those who survive my protection.\"\n\nHe took in every word carefully and seemed impressed by my candor. I looked beyond the mass graves of the Shakespeares to several other mounds beyond. I had thought they might have cloned two dozen or so, not hundreds.\n\n\"Are there any other Shakespeares here?\" asked Bowden.\n\n\"Only myself\u2014yet the night echoes with the cries of my cousins,\" replied Shgakespeafe. \"You will hear them anon.\"\n\nAs if in answer, there was a strange cry from the hills. We had heard something like it when Stig dispatched the chimera back in Swindon.\n\n\"We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe,\" he said, looking around nervously. \"Follow me and give me audience, friends.\"\n\nShgakespeafe led us along the corridor and into a room that was full of desks set neatly in rows, each with a typewriter upon it. Only one typewriter was anything like still functioning; around it stood stacks and stacks of typewritten sheets of paper\u2014the product of Shgakespeafe's outpourings. He led us across and gave us some of his work to read, looking on expectantly as our eyes scanned the writing. It was, disappointingly, nothing special at all\u2014merely scraps of existing plays cobbled together to give new meaning. I tried to imagine the whole room full of Shakespeare clones clattering away at their typewriters, their minds filled with the Bard's plays, and scientists moving amongst them trying to find one, just one, who had even one half the talent of the original.\n\nShgakespeafe beckoned us to the office next to the writing room, and there he showed us mounds and mounds of paperwork, all packaged in brown paper with the name of the Shakespeare clone who had written it printed on a label. As the production of writing outstripped the ability to evaluate it, the people working here could only file what had been written and then store it for some unknown employee in the future to peruse. I looked again at the piles of paperwork. There must have been twenty tons or more in the storeroom. There was a hole in the roof, and the rain had got in; much of this small mountain of prose was damp, moldy and unstable.\n\n\"It would take an age to sort through it for anything of potential brilliance,\" mused Bowden, who had arrived by my side. Perhaps, ultimately, the experiment had succeeded. Perhaps there was an equal of Shakespeare buried in the mass grave outside, his work somewhere deep within the mountain of unintelligible prose facing us. It was unlikely we would ever know, and if we did, it would teach us nothing new\u2014except that it could be done and others might try. I hoped the mound of paperwork would just slowly rot. In the pursuit of great art, Goliath had perpetrated a crime that far outstripped anything I had so far seen.\n\nMillon took pictures, his flashgun going off in the dim interior of the scriptorium. I shivered and decided I needed to get away from the oppressiveness of the interior. Bowden and I walked to the front of the building and sat amongst the rubble on the front steps, just next to a fallen statue of Socrates that held a banner proclaiming the value of the pursuit of knowledge.\n\n\"Do you think we'll have trouble persuading Shgakespeafe to come with us?\" he asked.\n\nAs if in answer, Shgakespeafe walked cautiously from the building. He carried a battered suitcase and blinked in the harsh sunlight. Without waiting to be asked, he got into the back of the car and started to scribble in a notebook with a pencil stub.\n\n\"Does that answer your question?\"\n\nThe sun dropped below the hill in front of us, and the air suddenly felt colder. Every time there was a strange noise from the hills, Shgakespeafe jumped and looked around nervously, then continued to scribble. I was just about to fetch Stig when he appeared from the building carrying three enormous leatherbound volumes.\n\n\"Did you find what you needed?\"\n\nHe passed me the first book, which I opened at random. It was, I discovered, a Goliath BioTech manual for building a neanderthal. The page I had selected gave a detailed description of the neanderthal hand.\n\n\"A complete manual,\" he said slowly. \"With it we can make children.\"\n\nI handed back the volume, and he placed it with the others in the boot of the car just as there was another unearthly wail in the distance.\n\n\"A deadly groan,\" muttered Shgakespeafe, sitting lower in his seat, \"like life and death's departing!\"\n\n\"We had better get going,\" I said. \"There is something out there, and I've a feeling we should leave before it gets too inquisitive.\"\n\n\"Chimera?\" asked Bowden. \"To be honest, we've seen the grand total of none from the moment we came in here.\"\n\n\"We do not see them because they do not wish to be seen,\" observed Stig. \"There is chimera here. Dangerous chimera.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Stig,\" said Millon, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief, \"that's a real help.\"\n\n\"It is the truth, Mr. de Floss.\"\n\n\"Well, keep the truth to yourself in future.\"\n\nI shut the rear door as soon as Stig had wedged himself in next to Shgakespeafe, and then I climbed into the front passenger seat. Bowden drove off as rapidly as the car would allow.\n\n\"Millon, is there any other route out that doesn't take us through that heavily wooded area where we found the other cars?\"\n\nHe consulted the map for a moment. \"No. Why?\"\n\n\"Because it looked like a good place for an ambush.\"\n\n\"This really gets better and better, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" replied Stig, who took all speech on face value, \"this is not good at all. We find the prospect of being eaten by chimeras extremely awkward.\"\n\n\"Awkward?\" echoed Millon. \"Being eaten is awkward?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Stig, \"the neanderthal instruction manuals are far more important than we.\"\n\n\"That's your opinion,\" retorted Millon. \"Right now there is nothing more important than me.\"\n\n\"How very human,\" replied Stig simply.\n\nWe sped up the road, drove back through the rock cutting and headed towards the wood.\n\n\"By the pricking of my thumbs,\" remarked Shgakespeafe in an ominous tone of voice, \"something wicked this way comes!\"\n\n\"There!\" yelled Millon, pointing a quivering finger out the window. I caught a glimpse of a large beast before it vanished behind a fallen oak, then another jumping from one tree to another. They didn't hide themselves anymore. We could all see them as we drove down the wooded road, past the abandoned cars. Lolloping beasts of a ragged shape flitted through the woods, experimental creations of an industry before regulation. We heard a thump as one leapt out of the woods, sprung upon the steel roof of the car and then disappeared with a whoop into the forest. I looked out of the rear window and saw something unspeakably nasty scrabble across the road behind us. I drew my automatic, and Stig wound down the window to have his tranquilizer gun at the ready. We rounded the next corner, and Bowden stomped on the brakes. A row of chimeras had placed themselves across the road. Bowden threw the car into reverse, but a tree came crashing down behind us, cutting off our escape. We had driven into the trap, the trap was sprung\u2014and all that remained was for the trappers to do with the trapped whatever they wished.\n\n\"How many?\" I asked.\n\n\"Ten up front,\" said Bowden.\n\n\"Two dozen behind,\" answered Stig.\n\n\"Lots either side!\" quivered Millon, who was more used to making up facts to fit his bizarre conspiracy theories than actually witnessing any firsthand.\n\n\"What a sign it is of evil life,\" murmured Shgakespeafe. \"Where death's approach is seen so terrible!\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I muttered, \"everyone stay calm, and when I say, open fire.\"\n\n\"We will not survive,\" said Stig in a matter-of-fact tone. \"Too many of them, not enough of us. We suggest a different strategy.\"\n\n\"And that is?\"\n\nStig was momentarily lost for words. \"We do not know. Just different.\"\n\nThe chimeras slavered and emitted low moans as they moved closer. Each one was a kaleidoscope of varying body parts, as though the beasts' creators had been indulging in some sort of perverse genetic mix-and-match one-upmanship.\n\n\"When I count to three, rev up and drop the clutch,\" I instructed Bowden. \"The rest of you open up with everything we've got.\" I handed Bowden's gun to Floss. \"Know how to use one of these?\"\n\nHe nodded and flipped off the safety.\n\n\"One... two...\"\n\nI stopped counting because a cry from the woods had startled the chimeras. Those that had ears pricked them up, paused, then began to depart in fright. It wasn't an occasion for relief. Chimeras are bad, but something that frightened chimeras could only be worse. We heard the cry again.\n\n\"It sounds human,\" murmured Bowden.\n\n\"How human?\" added Millon.\n\nThere followed several more cries from more than one individual, and as the last of the terrified chimeras vanished into the brush, I breathed a sigh of relief. A group of men appeared out of the undergrowth to our right. They were all extremely short and wore the faded and tattered uniform of what appeared to be the French army. Some wore shabby cockaded hats, others had no jackets at all, and some wore only a dirty white linen shirt. My relief was short-lived. They stood at the edge of the forest and regarded us suspiciously, heavy cudgels in their hands.\n\n\"Qu'est-ce que c'est?\" said one, pointing at us.\n\n\"Anglais?\" said another.\n\n\"Les rosbifs? Ici, en France?\" said a third in a shocked tone.\n\n\"Non, ce n'est pas possible!\"\n\nIt didn't take a genius to figure out who they were.\n\n\"A gang of Napoleons,\" hissed Bowden. \"Looks like Goliath wasn't just trying to eternalize the Bard. The military potential of cloning a Napoleon in his prime would be considerable.\"\n\nThe Napoleons stared at us for a moment and then talked amongst themselves in low tones, had an argument, gesticulated wildly, raised their voices and generally disagreed with one another.\n\n\"Let's go,\" I whispered to Bowden.\n\nBut as soon as the car clunked into gear, the Napoleons leapt into action with cries of \"Au secours! Les rosbifs s'\u00e9chappent! N'oubliez pas Agincourt! Vite! Vite!\" and then rushed the car. Stig got off a shot and managed to tranq a particularly vicious-looking Napoleon in the thigh. They smashed their cudgels against the car, broke the windows and sent a cascade of broken glass all over us. I thumped the central door-locking mechanism with my elbow as a Napoleon grappled with my door handle. I was just about to fire at point-blank range into the face of another Napoleon when there was a tremendous explosion thirty yards in front. The car was rocked by the blast and enveloped momentarily in a drifting cloud of smoke.\n\n\"Sacre bleu!\" shrieked a Napoleon, breaking off the attack. \"Le Grand Nez! Avancez, mes amis! Mort aux ennemis de la R\u00e9publique!\"\n\n\"Go!\" I shouted to Bowden, who, despite having been struck a glancing blow by a Napoleon, was still just about conscious. The car juddered away, and I grabbed the steering wheel to avoid a band of twenty or so Wellingtons of varying shabbiness who were streaming past the car in their haste to dispose of Napoleons.\n\n\"Up, guards, and at them!\" I heard a Wellington shout as we gathered speed down the road, past a smoking artillery piece and the abandoned cars we had seen on the way in. Within a few minutes, we were clear of the wood and the battling factions, and Bowden slowed down.\n\n\"Everyone okay?\"\n\nAlthough not unscathed, they all answered in the affirmative. Millon was still ashen, and I took Bowden's gun off him just in case. Stig had a bruise coming up on his cheek, and I had several cuts on my face from the glass.\n\n\"Mr. Shgakespeafe,\" I asked, \"are you okay?\"\n\n\"Look about you,\" he said grimly. \"Security gives way to conspiracy.\"\n\nWe drove to the gates, out of Area 21 and through the darkening evening sky to the Welsh border and home."
            },
            {
                "title": "St. Zvlkx and Cindy",
                "text": "\u2002Kaine \"Fictional,\" Claims Bournemouth Man\n\n\u2002Retired gas-fitter Mr. Martin Piffco made the ludicrous comment yesterday, claiming that the beloved leader of the nation was simply a fictional character \"come to life.\" Speaking from the Bournemouth Home for the Exceedingly Odd where he has been committed \"for his own protection,\" Mr. Piffco was more specific and likened Mr. Yorrick Kaine to a minor character with an over-inflated opinion of himself in a Daphne Farquitt book entitled At Long Last Lust. The Chancellor's office dubbed the report \"a coincidence,\" but ordered the Farquitt book be confiscated nonetheless. Mr. Piffco, who faces unspecified charges, made news last year when he made a similar outrageous claim regarding Kaine and Goliath investing in \"mind-control experiments.\"\n\n\u2014Article in the Bournemouth Bugle, March 15, 1987\n\nI awoke and gazed at Landen in the early-morning light that had started to creep around the bedroom. He was snoring ever so softly, and I gave him a long hug before I got up, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and tiptoed past Friday's room on my way downstairs to make some coffee. I walked into Landen's study as I waited for the kettle to boil, sat down at the piano and played a very quiet chord. The sun crept above the roof of the house across the way at that precise moment and cast a finger of orange light across the room. I heard the kettle click off and returned to the kitchen to make the coffee. As I poured the hot water on the grounds, there was a small wail from upstairs. I paused to see if another would follow it. A single wail might be only a stirring, and Friday could be left alone. Two wails or more would be Hungry Boy, eager for a gallon or two of porridge. There was a second wail ten seconds later, and I was just about to go and get him when I heard a thump and a scraping as Landen pulled on his leg and then walked along the corridor to Friday's room. There were more footsteps as he returned to his room, then silence. I relaxed, took a sip of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, deep in thought.\n\nThe SuperHoop was tomorrow and I had my team\u2014the question was, would it make a difference? There was a chance we might find a copy of At Long Last Lust, too\u2014but I wasn't counting on this, either. Of equal chance and equal risk of failure was Shgakespeafe's being able to unravel The Merry Wives of Elsinore, and Mycroft's coming up with an Ovi-negator at short notice. But none of these pressing matters was foremost in my mind: most important to me was that at eleven o'clock this morning Cindy would try to kill me for the third and final time. She would fail, and she would die. I thought of Spike and Betty and picked up the phone. I figured he'd be a heavy sleeper, and I was right\u2014Cindy answered the phone.\n\n\"It's Thursday.\"\n\n\"This is professionally very unethical,\" said Cindy in a sleepy voice. \"What's the time?\"\n\n\"Half six. Listen, I rang to suggest that it'd be a good idea if you stayed at home today and didn't go to work.\"\n\nThere was a pause. \"I can't do that,\" she said at last. \"I've arranged child care and everything. But there's nothing to stop you getting out of town and never returning.\"\n\n\"This is my town, too, Cindy.\"\n\n\"Leave now, or the Next family crypt will be up for a dusting.\"\n\n\"I won't do that.\"\n\n\"Then,\" replied Cindy with a sigh, \"we've got nothing else to discuss. I'll see you later\u2014although I doubt you'll see me.\"\n\nThe phone went dead, and I gently replaced the receiver. I felt sick. The wife of a good friend would die, and it didn't feel good.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" said a voice close at hand. \"You seem upset.\"\n\nIt was Mrs. Tiggywinkle.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"everything's just as it should be. Thanks for dropping round; I've found us a William Shakespeare. He's not the original, but close enough for our purposes. He's in this cupboard.\"\n\nI opened the cupboard door, and a very startled Shgakespeafe looked up from where he'd been scribbling by the light of a candle end he had stuck upon his head. The wax had begun to run down his face, but he didn't seem to mind.\n\n\"Mr. Shgakespeafe, this is the hedgehog I was telling you about.\"\n\nHe shut his notebook and stared at Mrs. Tiggywinkle. He wasn't the slightest bit afraid or surprised\u2014after the abominations he'd dodged on an almost daily basis in Area 21, I suspect a six-foot-high hedgehog was something of a relief.\n\nMrs. Tiggywinkle curtsied gracefully. \"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Shgakespeafe,\" she said politely. \"Will you come with me, please?\"\n\n\"Who was that?\" Landen called out as he walked downstairs a little later.\n\n\"It was Mrs. Tiggywinkle picking up a William Shakespeare clone in order to save Hamlet from permanent destruction.\"\n\n\"You can't ever be serious, can you?\" he laughed as he gave me a hug. I had smuggled Shgakespeafe into the house without Landen's seeing. I know you're meant to be honest and truthful to your spouse, but I thought there might be a limit, and if there was, I didn't want to reach it too soon.\n\nFriday came down to breakfast ten minutes later. He looked tousled, sleepy and a bit grumpy.\n\n\"Quis nostrud laboris,\" he moaned. \"Nisi ut aliquip ex consequat.\"\n\nI gave him some toast and rummaged in the cupboard under the stairs for my bulletproof vest. All my stuff was now back in Landen's house as if I had never moved out. Sideslips are confusing, but you can get used to almost anything.\n\n\"Why are you wearing a bulletproof vest?\"\n\nIt was Landen. Drat. I should have put it on at the station.\n\n\"What bulletproof vest?\"\n\n\"The one you're trying to put on.\"\n\n\"Oh, that one. No reason. Listen, if Friday gets hungry you can always give him a snack. He likes bananas\u2014you may have to buy some more, and if a gorilla calls, it's only that Mrs. Bradshaw I was telling you about.\"\n\n\"Don't change the subject. How can you go to work wearing a vest for 'no reason'?\"\n\n\"It's a precaution.\"\n\n\"Insurance is a precaution. A vest means you're taking unnecessary risks.\"\n\n\"I'd be taking a bigger one without it.\"\n\n\"What's going on, Thursday?\"\n\nI waved a hand vaguely in the air and tried to make light of it. \"Just an assassin. A small one. Barely worth thinking about.\"\n\n\"Which one?\"\n\n\"I can't remember. Window... something.\"\n\n\"The Windowmaker? A contract with her and stick to reading short stories? Sixty-seven known victims?\"\n\n\"Sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring.\"\n\n\"That's not important. Why didn't you tell me?\"\n\n\"I... I... didn't want you to worry.\"\n\nHe rubbed his face with his hands and stared at me for a moment, then sighed deeply. \"This is the Thursday Next I married, isn't it?\"\n\nI nodded my head.\n\nHe wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly. \"Will you be careful?\" he whispered in my ear.\n\n\"I'm always careful.\"\n\n\"No, really careful. The sort of careful that you should be when you have a husband and son who'd be supremely pissed off if they were to lose you?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I whispered back, \"that sort of careful. Yes, I will.\"\n\nWe kissed and I Velcroed up the vest, put my shirt over the top of it and my shoulder holster on top of this. I kissed Friday and told him to be good, then kissed Landen again.\n\n\"I'll see you this evening,\" I told him, \"and that's a promise.\"\n\nI drove to Wanborough to find Joffy. He was officiating at a GSD civil-union ceremony, and I had to wait in the back of the temple until he had finished. I had some time before I had to deal with Cindy, and looking more closely into St. Zvlkx seemed like a good way to fill it. Millon's idea that Zvlkx wasn't a seer but a rogue member of the ChronoGuard involved in some sort of timecrime seemed, on the face of it, unlikely. You couldn't hide from the ChronoGuard. They would always find you. Perhaps not here and now, but then and there\u2014when you least expected it. Long before you even thought about doing something wrong. Plus, the ChronoGuard left no trace. With the perpetrator gone, then the timecrime never happened either. Very neat, very clever. But with the historical record so closely scrutinized and the ChronoGuard itself giving Zvlkx the seal of approval, how on earth did Zvlkx\u2014if he was a fake\u2014get around the system?\n\n\"Hello, Doofus!\" said Joffy as the happy couple kissed outside the temple to a shower of confetti. \"What brings you here?\"\n\n\"St. Zvlkx\u2014where is he?\"\n\n\"He got the bus into Swindon this morning. Why?\"\n\nI outlined my suspicions.\n\n\"Zvlkx a rogue member of the ChronoGuard? But why? What's he up to? Why risk permanent eradication for dubious fame as a thirteenth-century seer?\"\n\n\"How much did he get from the Toast Marketing Board?\"\n\n\"Twentyfive grand.\"\n\n\"Hardly a fortune. Can we look in his room?\"\n\n\"Outrageous!\" replied Joffy. \"I would be guilty of a shameful breach of trust if I were to allow a room search in his absence. I have a spare key here.\"\n\nZvlkx's room was much as you would suppose a monk's cell to be. Spartan in the extreme. He slept on a mattress stuffed with straw and had only a table and chair as furniture. On the table was a Bible. It was only after we started searching that we found a CD Walkman under the mattress, along with a few copies of Big & Bouncy and Fast Horse.\n\n\"A betting man?\" I asked.\n\n\"Drinking, betting, smoking, wenching\u2014he did it all.\"\n\n\"The magazines show he can read English, too. What are you looking for, Joff?\"\n\nJoffy had been opening the drawers of his desk and looking under the pillow.\n\n\"His Book of Revealments. He usually hides it here.\"\n\n\"So! You've searched his room before. Suspicious?\"\n\nJoffy looked sheepish. \"I'm afraid so. His behavior is less like a saint's and more like... well, a cheap vulgarian's\u2014when I translate, I have to make certain... adjustments.\"\n\nI pulled out his desk drawer and turned it over. Stuck to the bottom was an envelope. \"Bingo!\"\n\nIt contained a single one-way Gravitube ticket all the way to Bali. Joffy raised his eyebrows, and we exchanged nervous glances. Zvlkx was definitely up to something.\n\nJoffy accompanied me into Swindon, and we drove up and down the streets trying to find the wayward saint. We visited the site of his old cathedral at Tesco's but couldn't find him, so went on a circuit that took in the law courts, the SpecOps Building and the theater before driving past the university and down Commercial Road. Joffy spotted him outside Pete & Dave's, lumbering up the street.\n\n\"There!\"\n\n\"I see him.\"\n\nWe abandoned the car and trotted to keep up with the scruffy figure dressed in only a blanket. It was just bad luck that he glanced furtively behind and spotted us. He darted across the street. I don't know whether his lank and uncut hair had got in his eyes or he had forgotten about traffic during his stay in the Dark Ages, but he didn't look where he was going and ran straight in front of a bus. His head cracked the windscreen, and his bony body was thrown sideways onto the pavement with a thump. Joffy and I were first on the scene. A younger man might have survived relatively unscathed, but Zvlkx, his body weakened through poor diet and disease, didn't stand much of a chance. He was coughing and crawling with all the strength he could muster to the entrance of the nearest shop.\n\n\"Easy, Your Grace,\" murmured Joffy, laying a hand on his shoulder and stopping him moving. \"You're going to be all right.\"\n\n\"Bollocks,\" said Zvlkx in a state of exasperation, \"bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. Suruiued the plague to get hit by a sodding Number Twenty-three bus. Bollocks.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He's annoyed.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" I said. \"Are you ChronoGuard?\"\n\nHis eyes flicked across to mine, and he groaned. Not only dying, but dying and rumbled.\n\nHe made another attempt to reach the doorway and collapsed.\n\n\"Someone call for an ambulance!\" yelled out Joffy.\n\n\"It's too late for that,\" he muttered. \"Too late for me, too late for all of us. This wasn't how it was meant to turn out; time is out of joint\u2014and it won't be for me to set it right. Ah, well. Joffy, take this and use it wisely, as I would not haue done. Bury me in the grounds of my cathedral\u2014and don't tell them who I was. I liued a sinner, but I'd like to die a saint. Oh, and if a fat slapper named Shirley tells you I promised her a thousand quid, she's a bloody liar.\"\n\nHe coughed again, shivered for a moment and stopped moving. I placed my hand on his grimy neck but could feel no pulse.\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"Something about an overweight lady named Shirley, time being out of joint\u2014and using his revealments as I see fit.\"\n\n\"What did he mean by that? That his revealment is not going to come true?\"\n\n\"I don't know\u2014but he handed me this.\"\n\nIt was Zvlkx's Book of Revealments. Joffy flicked through the yellowed pages, which outlined in Old English every supposed prophecy he had made, next to an arithmetic sum of some sort. Joffy closed Zvlkx's eyes and placed his jacket over the dead saint's head. A crowd had assembled, including a policeman, who took charge. Joffy hid the book, and we stood to one side as the blare of an ambulance started up in the distance. The owner of the shop had come out and told us that having tramps dying on his doorstep was bad for business but changed his mind when he found out who it was.\n\n\"My goodness!\" he said with a respectful tone. \"Imagine a real live saint honoring us with his death on our doorstep!\"\n\nI nudged Joffy and pointed to the shop front. It was a betting shop.\n\n\"Typical!\" snorted Joffy. \"If he didn't die trying to get to the bookies, it would have been the brothel. The only reason I knew he wouldn't be at the pub is because it's not opening time.\"\n\nStartled, I looked at my watch. It was 10:50. Cindy. I had been thinking about St. Zvlkx so much I had forgotten all about her. I backed into the doorway and glanced around. No sign of her, of course, but then she was the best. I thought the fact that a crowd had gathered was good, as she would be unlikely to want to kill innocent people, but then changed my mind when I realized that Cindy's creed of respect for innocent life could be written in very large letters on the back of a matchbox. I had to get away from the crowd in case someone else was hurt. I dashed off up Commercial Road and was approaching the corner with Granville Street when I stopped abruptly. Cindy had walked around the corner. My hand reflexively closed around the butt of my gun, but then I stopped, all of a sudden uncertain. She was not alone. She had Spike with her.\n\n\"Well!\" said Spike, looking beyond me to the melee on the street behind. \"What's going on here?\"\n\n\"The death of Zvlkx, Spike.\"\n\nI was staring at Cindy, who stared back at me. I could see only one of her hands. The other was hidden in her handbag. She had failed twice\u2014how far would she go to kill me? In broad daylight, with her husband as witness? I was standing awkwardly with my hand on my automatic, but it was still in its holster. I had to trust my father. He had been right about Cindy on the previous attempt. I pulled out my gun and pointed it at her. There was a gasp from several passersby, who scattered.\n\n\"Thursday?\" yelled Spike. \"What the hell is going on? Put that down!\"\n\n\"No, Spike. Cindy isn't a librarian, she's the Windowmaker.\" Spike looked at me, then at his petite wife and laughed. \"Cindy, an assassin? You're joking!\"\n\n\"She's delusional, and I'm frightened, Spikey,\" whimpered Cindy, in her best pathetic-girlie voice. \"I don't know what she's talking about. I've never even held a gun!\"\n\n\"Very slowly take your hand out of your handbag, Cindy.\"\n\nBut it was Spike who made the next move. He pulled out his gun and pointed it\u2014at me.\n\n\"Put the gun down, Thurs. I've always liked you, but I have no problem making this choice.\"\n\nI bit my lip but didn't stop staring at Cindy. \"Ever wondered why she was paid cash to do those freelance library jobs? Why her brother works for the CIA? Why her parents were killed by police marksmen? Have you ever heard of librarians being killed by the police?\"\n\n\"There's an explanation for it all, Spikey!\" whined Cindy. \"Kill her! She's mad!\"\n\nI saw her game now. She wasn't even going to do the job herself. In broad daylight, her husband pulls the trigger, and it's all legal: a good man defending his wife. She was good. She was the best. She was the Windowmaker. A contract with her and you're deader than corduroy.\n\n\"She has a contract out on me, Spike. Already tried to kill me on two occasions!\"\n\n\"Put down the gun, Thursday!\"\n\n\"Spikey, I'm frightened!\"\n\n\"Cindy, I want to see both your hands!\"\n\n\"Drop the gun, Thursday!\"\n\nWe had reached an impasse. As I stood there with Spike pointing a gun at my head and with me pointing a gun at Cindy's, I realized this was quite possibly the worst situation to be in. If I lowered my gun, Cindy would kill me. If I didn't lower my gun, Spike would kill me. If I killed Cindy, Spike would kill me. Try as I might, I couldn't think of a scenario that didn't end in my own death. Tricky, to say the least. And it was then that the grand piano fell on her.\n\nI'd never heard a piano falling thirty feet onto concrete before, but it was exactly as I imagined. A sort of musical concussion that reverberated around the street. As chance would have it, the piano\u2014a Steinway baby, I learned later\u2014missed us all. It was the stool that hit Cindy and she went down like a sack of coal. One look at her and we both knew it was bad. A serious head wound and a badly broken neck.\n\nIt was a time of mixed emotions for Spike. Grief and shock at the accident but also realization that I had been right\u2014still clasped in Cindy's hand was a silenced .38 revolver.\n\n\"No!\" yelled Spike, placing his hand gently upon her pale cheek. \"Not again!\"\n\nCindy groaned weakly as the policeman who had been dealing with St. Zvlkx rushed up with two paramedics at his side.\n\n\"You should have told me,\" Spike muttered, refusing to look at me, his powerful shoulders quivering slightly as tears rolled down his cheeks.\n\n\"I'm so sorry, Spike.\"\n\nHe didn't reply but moved aside so the paramedics could try to stabilize her.\n\n\"Who is she?\" asked the policeman. \"In fact, who are you two?\"\n\n\"SpecOps,\" we said in unison, producing our badges.\n\n\"And this is Cindy Stoker,\" said Spike sadly, \"the assassin known as the Windowmaker\u2014and my wife.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "What Thursday Did Next",
                "text": "\u2002Kainian Government to Fund \"Anti-Smite Shield\"\n\n\u2002Mr. Yorrick Kaine yesterday announced plans to set up a defensive network to counter the growing threat of God's wrath unto His creations. Specific details of the \"Anti-Smite Shield\" are still classed top secret, but defense experts and top theologians have both agreed that a system might be in place within five years. Kaine's followers point to the smiting of the small town of Oswestry with a \"rain of cleansing fire\" last October and the Rutland plague of toads. \"Both Oswestry and Rutland are wake-up calls to our nation,\" said Mr. Kaine. \"They may have been sinful, but ultimate retribution without due process of law is something that I will not tolerate. In today's modern world where the accepted definition of sin has become blurred, we need to protect ourselves against an overzealous deity keen to promote an outdated set of rules. It is for this reason that we are investing in Anti-Smite technology.\" The \u00a314 billion contract will be awarded exclusively to Goliath Weapons, Inc.\n\n\u2014Article in The Mole, July 1988\n\nThe news networks had a field day. The death of St. Zvlkx so soon after his resurrection raised a few eyebrows, but the Windowmaker's somewhat bizarre accident while \"on assignment\" became a sensation, supplanting even the upcoming SuperHoop from the front pages. Incredibly, despite severe internal injuries and a devastating head wound, she didn't die. She was taken to St. Septyk's Hospital, where they battled to stabilize her. Not from any great sense of moral duty, you understand, but for the fact that she could finger the sixty-seven or sixty-eight clients who had paid her to carry out her foul trade, and this was a prize the prosecutors were keen to claim. Within an hour of her coming out of surgery, three attempts by underworld bosses had been made to silence her for good. She was moved to the secure ward at the Kingsdown Home for the Criminally Insane, and there she stayed, comatose, attached to a ventilator.\n\n\"Spike was right. I should have told him earlier,\" I said to Gran, \"or tipped off the authorities or something!\"\n\nGranny Next was feeling a lot better today. Although greatly enfeebled by her advanced years, she had actually walked around for a bit that morning. When I arrived, she had her reading glasses on and was surrounded by stacks of well-read tomes. The kind of things one generally reads for study, and rarely for pleasure.\n\n\"But you didn't,\" she replied, looking over the top of her spectacles, \"and your father knew you wouldn't when he told you.\"\n\n\"He also said that I would decide whether she lived or died, but he was wrong\u2014it's out of my hands now.\" I rubbed my scalp and sighed. \"Poor Spike. He's taking it very badly.\"\n\n\"Where is he?\"\n\n\"Still being interviewed by SO-9. They got an agent down from London who's been after her for more than ten years. I'd be there yet but for Flanker.\"\n\n\"Flanker?\" queried Gran. \"What did he do?\"\n\n\"He came to thank me for leading SO-14 to a huge stockpile of hidden Danish literature.\"\n\n\"I thought you were trying not to help them?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"So did I. How was I to know the Danish underground really was using the Australian Writers' Guild as a depository?\"\n\n\"Did you tell them it was Kaine who had paid her to kill you?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, looking down. \"I don't know who I can trust and the last thing I need is to be taken into protective custody or something. If I'm not at the touchline tomorrow for the SuperHoop, the neanderthals won't play.\"\n\n\"But there is good news, surely?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, brightening somewhat, \"we got some Danish books out of the country, Hamlet is on the mend\u2014and I got Landen back.\"\n\nGran stared at me and lifted my face with her hand.\n\n\"For good?\"\n\nI looked down at my wedding ring.\n\n\"Twenty-four hours and counting.\"\n\n\"They did the same to me,\" sighed Gran, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes with a bony hand. \"We were very happy for over forty years, until he was taken away again\u2014this time in a more natural and inevitable way. And that was over thirty years ago.\"\n\nShe fell silent for a moment, and to distract her I told her about St. Zvlkx and his death and his revealments and how little of it made any sense. Time-traveling paradoxes tended to make my head spin.\n\n\"Sometimes,\" said Gran, holding up the cover of the Swindon Evening Globe, \"the facts are all in front of us\u2014we just have to get them in the right order.\"\n\nI took the picture and stared at it. It had been taken a few seconds after the piano fell on Cindy. I hadn't realized how far the wreckage of the Steinway had scattered. A little way down the road, the lonely figure of Zvlkx was still lying on the pavement, abandoned in the drama.\n\n\"Can I keep this?\"\n\n\"Of course. Be careful, my dear\u2014remember that your father can't warn you of every single one of your potential demises. Invulnerability is reserved only for superheroes. The croquet final is far from won and anything can happen in the next twenty-four hours.\"\n\n\"A neanderthal defense?\" repeated Aubrey and Alf when I found them taking \"pegging out\" at the croquet stadium. They had threatened to fire me if I didn't tell them what I was up to. \"Of course, any team would spend millions trying to get a neanderthal to join\u2014but they just won't do it.\"\n\n\"I've already got them. You can't pay them, and I really don't know how they will work as a team with humans\u2014I get the feeling that they'll be a team of their own within your team.\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" said Aubrey, leaning on his mallet and sweeping a hand in the direction of the squad. \"I was fooling myself. Biffo's too old, Smudger has a drink problem, and Snake is mentally unstable. George is okay, and I can handle myself, but a fresh crop of talent has infused the Whackers' team. They'll be fielding people like Bonecrusher McSneed.\"\n\nHe wasn't kidding. A mysterious benefactor\u2014probably Goliath\u2014had given a vast amount of money to the Whackers. Enough for them to buy almost anyone they wanted. Goliath was taking no chances that the Seventh Revealment would be fulfilled.\n\n\"So we're still in the game with five thals?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Aubrey with a smile, \"we're still in the game.\"\n\nI dropped in to see Mum on the way home, ostensibly to take Hamlet and the dodos round to Landen's place. I found my mother in the kitchen with Bismarck, who seemed to be in the middle of telling her a joke.\n\n\"...and then the white horse he says, 'What, Erich?'\"\n\n\"Oh, Herr B!\" said my mother, giggling and slapping him on the shoulder. \"You are a wag!\"\n\nShe noticed me standing there.\n\n\"Thursday! Are you okay? I heard on the radio there was some sort of accident involving a piano....\"\n\n\"I'm fine, Mum, really.\" I stared coldly at the Prussian Chancellor who, I had decided, was taking liberties with my mother's affections. \"Good afternoon, Herr Bismarck. So, you haven't sorted out the Schleswig-Holstein question yet?\"\n\n\"I am waiting still for the Danish prime minister,\" replied Bismarck, rising to greet me. \"But I am growing impatient.\"\n\n\"I expect him very soon, Herr Bismarck,\" said my mother, putting the kettle on the stove. \"Would you like a cup of tea while you're waiting?\"\n\nHe bowed politely again. \"Only if Battenberg cake we will be having.\"\n\n\"I'm sure there's a bit left over if that naughty Mr. Hamlet hasn't eaten it!\" Her face dropped when she discovered that, indeed, naughty Mr. Hamlet had eaten it. \"Oh dear! Would you like an almond slice instead?\"\n\nBismarck's eyebrows twitched angrily.\n\n\"Everywhere I turn, the Danish are mocking my person and the German Confederation,\" he intoned angrily, smacking his fist into his open palm. \"The incorporation of the Duchy of Schleswig into Danish state overlooked I might have, but personal Battenberg insult I will not. It is war!\"\n\n\"Hang on a minute, Otto,\" said my mother, who, having brought up a large family almost single-handedly, was well placed to sort out the whole Battenberg-Schleswig-Holstein issue. \"I thought we'd agreed that you weren't going to invade Denmark.\"\n\n\"That was then, this is now,\" muttered the Chancellor, puffing out his chest so aggressively that one of his brass buttons shot across the room and struck Pickwick a glancing blow on the back of the head. \"Choice: Mr. Hamlet for his behavior apologizes on behalf of Danish people, or we go to war!\"\n\n\"He's talking to that nice conflict-resolution man at the moment,\" replied my mother in an anxious tone.\n\n\"Then it is war,\" announced Bismarck, sitting down at the table and having an almond slice anyway. \"More talk is pointless. Return I wish to 1863.\"\n\nBut then the door opened. It was Hamlet. He stared at us all and looked... well, different.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, drawing his sword. \"Bismarck! Your aggressive stance against Denmark is at an end. Prepare... to die!\"\n\nThe conflict-resolution talk had obviously affected him deeply. Bismarck, unmoved by the sudden threat to his life, drew a pistol.\n\n\"So! Battenberg you finish behind my back, yes?\"\n\nAnd they might have killed one another there and then if Mum and I hadn't intervened.\n\n\"Hamlet!\" I said. \"Killing Bismarck won't get your father back, now, will it?\"\n\n\"Otto!\" said Mum. \"Killing Hamlet won't alter the feelings of the Schleswigers, now, will it?\"\n\nI took Hamlet into the hall and tried to explain why sudden retributive action might not be such a good idea after all.\n\n\"I disagree,\" he said, swishing his sword through the air. \"The first thing I shall do when I get home is kill that murdering uncle of mine, marry Ophelia and take on Fortinbras. Better still, I shall invade Norway in a preemptive bid, and then Sweden, and\u2014what's the one next to that?\"\n\n\"Finland?\"\n\n\"That's the one.\"\n\nHe placed his left hand on his hip and lunged aggressively with his sword at some imaginary foe. Pickwick made the mistake of walking into the corridor at that precise moment and made a startled plooock noise as the point of Hamlet's rapier stopped two inches from her head. She looked unsteady for a moment, then fainted clean away.\n\n\"That conflict-management specialist really taught me a thing or two, Miss Next. Apparently my problem was an unresolved or latent conflict\u2014the death of my father\u2014that persists and festers in an individual\u2014me. To face up to problems, we must meet those conflicts head-on and resolve them to the best of our ability!\"\n\nIt was worse than I thought.\n\n\"So you won't pretend to be mad and talk a lot, then?\"\n\n\"No need,\" replied Hamlet, laughing. \"The time for talking is over. Polonius will be for the high jump, too. As soon as I marry his daughter, he'll be fired as adviser and made chief librarian or something. Yes, we're going to have some changes around my play, I can tell you.\"\n\n\"What about building tolerance between opponents for a longstanding peaceful and ultimately rewarding coexistence between the conflicting parties?\"\n\n\"I think he was going to cover that in the second session. It doesn't matter. By this time tomorrow, Hamlet will be a dynamic tale of one man's revenge and rise to power as the single greatest king Denmark has ever seen. It's the end of Hamlet the ditherer and the beginning of Hamlet the man of action! There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet says... it's payback time!\"\n\nThis was bad. I couldn't send him back until Mrs. Tiggywinkle and Shgakespeafe had sorted out his play, and in this condition there was no saying what he was capable of. I had to think fast.\n\n\"Good idea, Hamlet. But before that, I think you might like to know that Danish people are being insulted and maligned here in England, and that Kierkegaard, Andersen, Branner, Blixen and Farquitt are having their books burned.\"\n\nHe went quiet and stared at me with dumbstruck horror in his eyes.\n\n\"I am doing what I can to stop this,\" I went on, \"but\u2014\"\n\n\"Daphne's books are being burned?\"\n\n\"You know of her?\"\n\n\"Of course. I'm a big fan. We have to have something to do during those long winters at Elsinore. Mum's a big fan, too\u2014although my uncle prefers Catherine Cookson. But enough talk,\" he carried on, his postprevarication, nonhesitative brain clicking over rapidly, \"what shall we do about it?\"\n\n\"Everything hinges on us winning the SuperHoop tomorrow, but we need a show of force in case Kaine tries anything. Can you get together as many Danish supporters as you can?\"\n\n\"Is it very important?\"\n\n\"It could be vital.\"\n\nHamlet's eyes flashed with steely resolution. He picked his skull off the hall table, placed a hand on my shoulder and struck a dramatic pose.\n\n\"By tomorrow morning, my friend, you will have more Danes than you know what to do with. But stay this idle chitter-chatter\u2014I must away!\"\n\nAnd without another word, he was out the door. From all-talk-no-action, he was now allaction-no-talk. I should never have brought him into the real world.\n\n\"By the way,\" said Hamlet who had popped his head back around the door, \"you won't tell Ophelia about Emma, will you?\"\n\n\"My lips are sealed.\"\n\nI gathered up the dodos and popped them in the car, then drove home. I had called Landen soon after Cindy's accident to say I was unhurt. He said he knew all along I'd come to no harm, and I promised that I'd avoid assassins where possible from now onwards. I couldn't pull up outside the house as there were at least three news vans, so I parked round the back, walked through the alleyway, nodded a greeting to Millon and walked across the back lawn to the French windows.\n\n\"Lipsum!\" said Friday, running up to give me a hug. I picked him up as Alan sized up his new home, trying to work out the areas of highest potential mischief.\n\n\"There's a telegram for you on the table,\" said Landen, \"and if you're feeling masochistic the press would love you to reiterate how the Mallets will win tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm not,\" I replied, tearing open the telegram. \"How was your...\"\n\nMy voice trailed off as I read the telegram. It was clear and to the point. WE HAVE UNFINISHED BUSINESS. COME ALONE, NO TRICKS, HANGAR D, SWINDON AIRPARK\u2014KAINE.\n\n\"Darling?\" I called out.\n\n\"Yes?\" came Landen's voice from upstairs.\n\n\"I have to go out.\"\n\n\"Assassins?\"\n\n\"No\u2014megalomaniac tyrants keen on global domination.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to wait up?\"\n\n\"No, but Friday needs a bath\u2014and don't forget behind the ears.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Kaine v. Next",
                "text": "\u2002Anti-Smite Technology Faces Criticism\n\n\u2002Leading churchmen were not keen on Mr. Kaine's use of Anti-Smite technology. \"We're not sure Mr. Kaine can place his will above that of God,\" said a nervous bishop who preferred not to be named, \"but if God decides to smite something, then we think He had probably very good reason to do so.\" Atheists weren't impressed by Kaine's plans, nor that the cleansing of Oswestry was anything but an unlucky hit by a meteorite. \"This smacks of the usual Kainian policy of keeping us cowed and afraid,\" said Rupert Smercc of Ipswich. \"While the population worries about nonexistent threats from a product of mankind's need for meaning in a dark and brutal world, Kaine is raising taxes and blaming the Danes for everything.\" Not everyone was so forthright in condemnation. Mr. Pascoe, official spokesman of the Federated Agnostics, claimed, \"There might be something in the whole smiting thing, but we're not sure.\"\n\n\u2014Article in The Mole, July 1988\n\nIt was night when I arrived at Swindon Airpark's maintenance depot. Although airships still droned out into the night sky from the terminal opposite, this side of the field was deserted and empty, the workers long since punched out for the day. I showed my badge to security then followed the signs along the perimeter road and passed a docked airship, its silvery flanks shimmering with the reflected moon. The eight-story-high main doors of the gargantuan Hangar D were shut tight but I soon found a black Mercedes sports car near an open side door, so I stopped a little way short and killed my engine and lights. I replaced the clip in my automatic with the spare that I had loaded with five eraserheads\u2014all I had managed to smuggle out of the BookWorld. I got out of the car, paused to listen and, hearing nothing, made my way quietly into the hangar.\n\nSince the transcontinental \"thousand-footer\" airships were built these days at the Zeppelinwerks in Germany, the only airship within the cathedral-sized hangar was a relatively small sixty-seater, halfway through construction and looking like a metallic basket, its aluminum ribs held together with a delicate filigree of interconnecting struts each riveted carefully to the next. It looked overly complex for something in essence so simple. I glanced around the lofty interior but of Kaine there was no sign. I pulled out my automatic, chambered the first eraserhead and released the safety.\n\n\"Kaine?\"\n\nNo answer.\n\nI heard a noise and whipped my gun towards where a partly completed engine nacelle was resting on some trestles. I cursed myself for being so jumpy and suddenly realized that I wished Bradshaw was with me. Then I felt it\u2014or at least, I smelt it. The lazy stench of death borne on a light breeze. I turned as a dark fetid shape loomed rapidly towards me. I had a brief vision of some unearthly terror before I pulled the trigger and the hollow thud of my first eraserhead hit home and the hellbeast evaporated into a flurry of the individual letters that made up its existence. They fell about me with the light tinkling sound of Christmas decorations shattering.\n\nI heard the sound of a single slow handclap and noticed the silhouette of Kaine standing behind the partly finished control gondola. I didn't pause for a moment and let fly a second eraserhead. In an instant Kaine invoked a minor character\u2014a small man with glasses\u2014right in the path of the projectile and he, not Kaine, was erased.\n\nYorrick moved into the light. He hadn't aged a day since I had seen him last. His complexion was unblemished and he didn't have a hair out of place. Only the finest described characters were indistinguishable from real people; the rest\u2014and Kaine was among them\u2014had a vague plasticity that belied their fictional origins.\n\n\"Enjoying yourself?\" I asked him sarcastically.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he replied, giving me a faint smile.\n\nHe was a B character in an A role and had been elevated far beyond his capabilities\u2014a child in control of a nation. Whether by virtue of Goliath or the Ovinator or simply by his fictional roots I wasn't sure, but what I did know was that he was dangerous in the real world and dangerous in the BookWorld. Anyone who could invoke hellbeasts at will was not to be ignored.\n\nI fired again and the same thing happened. The character was different\u2014from a costume drama, I think\u2014but the effect was identical. Kaine was using expendable bit parts as shields. I glanced nervously around, sensing a trap.\n\n\"You forget,\" said Kaine as he stared at me with his unblinking eyes, \"that I have had many years to hone my powers, and as you can see, nobodies from the Farquitt canon are ten a penny.\"\n\n\"Murderer!\"\n\nKaine laughed.\n\n\"You can't murder a fictional person, Thursday. If you could, every author would be behind bars!\"\n\n\"You know what I mean,\" I growled, beginning to move forwards. If I could just grasp hold of him I could jump into fiction and take him with me. Kaine knew this and kept his distance.\n\n\"You're something of a pest, you know,\" he carried on, \"and I really thought the Windowmaker would have been able to dispose of you so I wouldn't have to. Despite the woefully poor odds on Swindon winning tomorrow, I really can't risk Zvlkx's revealment coming true, no matter how unlikely. And my friends at Goliath agree with me.\"\n\n\"This place is not your place,\" I told him, \"and you are messing with real people's lives. You were created to entertain, not to rule.\"\n\n\"Have you any idea,\" he carried on as we slowly circled one another about the airship's unfinished control gondola, \"just what it's like being stuck as a B-9 character in a self-published novel? Never being read, having two lines of dialogue and constantly being bettered by my inferiors?\"\n\n\"What's wrong with the character exchange program?\" I asked, stalling for time.\n\n\"I tried. Do you know what the Council of Genres told me?\"\n\n\"I'm all ears.\"\n\n\"They told me to do the best with what I had. Well, I'm doing exactly that, Miss Next!\"\n\n\"I have some swing with the council, Kaine. Surrender and I'll do the best I can for you.\"\n\n\"Lies!\" spat Kaine. \"Lies, lies, and more lies! You have no intention of helping me!\"\n\nI didn't deny it.\n\n\"Well,\" he carried on. \"I said I needed to speak to you, and here it is: you've found out where I'm from, and despite my best efforts to retain all copies of At Long Last Lust, there is still a possibility you might find a copy and delete me from within. I can't have that. So I wanted to give you the opportunity of entering into a mutually agreeable partnership. Something that will benefit both of us. Me in the corridors of power and you as head of any SpecOps division you want\u2014or SpecOps itself, come to that.\"\n\n\"I think you underestimate me,\" I said quietly. \"The only deal I'm listening to tonight will be your unconditional surrender.\"\n\n\"Oh, I didn't underestimate you at all,\" continued the Chancellor with a slight smile. \"I only said that to give a Gorgon friend of mine enough time to creep up behind you. Have you met... Medusa, by the way?\"\n\nI heard a hissing noise behind me. The hairs on my neck rose and my heart beat faster. I looked down as I twisted and jumped to the side, resisting any temptation to look at the naked and repellent creature that had been slinking towards me. It's difficult to hit a target that you are trying not to look at and my fourth eraserhead impacted harmlessly on a gantry on the other side of the hangar. I stepped back, caught my foot on a piece of metal and collapsed over backwards, my gun skittering across the floor towards some packing cases. I swore and attempted to scramble away from the mythological horror, only to have my ankle grasped by Medusa, whose head snakes were now hissing angrily. I tried to kick off her grasp but she had a grip like a vise. Her free hand grabbed my other ankle and then, cackling wildly, she crept her way up my body as I struggled in vain to push her away, her sharply nailed claws biting into my flesh and making me cry out in pain.\n\n\"Stare into my face!\" screamed the Gorgon as we wrestled in the dust. \"Stare into my face and accept your destiny!\" I kept my eyes averted as she pinned me against the cold concrete and then, when her bony and foul-smelling body was sitting on my chest, she cackled again and took hold of my head in both hands. I screamed and shut my eyes tight, gagging at her putrid breath. It was no escape. I felt her hands move on my face, her fingertips on my eyelids.\n\n\"Come along, Thursday my love,\" she screeched, the hissing of the snakes almost drowning her out, \"gaze into my soul and feel your body turn to stone\u2014!\"\n\nI strained and cried out as her fingers pulled my eyelids open. I swiveled my eyes as low in their sockets as I could, desperate to stave off the inevitable, and was just beginning to see glimmers of light and the lower part of her body when there was the sound of steel being drawn from a scabbard and a soft whoop noise. Medusa fell limp and silent on my chest. I opened my eyes and pushed the severed head of the Gorgon into the shadows. I jumped up, slipped once in the pool of blood issuing from her headless corpse and ran backwards, stumbling in my panic to get away.\n\n\"Well,\" said a familiar voice. \"Looks like I got here just in time!\"\n\nIt was the Cheshire Cat. He was sitting on an unfinished airship rib and was grinning wildly. He wasn't alone. Next to him stood a man. But it wasn't any ordinary man. He was, firstly, tall\u2014at least seven foot six and broad with it. He was dressed in rudimentary armor and grasped in his powerful hands a shield and sword that appeared to weigh almost nothing. He was a frightening warrior to behold; the sort of hero for whom epics are written\u2014the likes of which we have no need of in our day and age. He was the most alpha of males\u2014he was Beowulf. He made no sound, knees slightly bent in readiness, bloody sword moving elegantly in a slow figure-eight pattern.\n\n\"Good move, Mr. Cat,\" said Kaine sardonically, stepping from behind the gondola and facing us across the only open area in the hangar.\n\n\"You can end this right now, Mr. Kaine,\" said the Cat. \"Go back to your book and stay there\u2014or face the consequences.\"\n\n\"I choose not to,\" he replied with an even smile, \"and since you have raised the stakes by invoking an eighth-century hero, I challenge you to a one-on-one invocation contest pitting my fictional champions against yours. You win and I stay forever in At Long Last Lust; I win and you leave me unmolested.\"\n\nI looked at the Cheshire Cat who was, for once, not smiling.\n\n\"Very well, Mr. Kaine. I accept your challenge. Usual rules? One beast at a time and strictly no kraken?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" replied Kaine impatiently. He closed his eyes and with a wild shriek Grendel appeared and flew towards Beowulf, who expertly sliced it into eight more or less equal pieces.\n\n\"I think we got him riled,\" whispered the Cheshire Cat from the corner of his mouth. \"That was a bad move\u2014Beowulf always vanquishes Grendel.\"\n\nBut Kaine didn't waste any more time and a moment later there was a living, breathing Tyrannosaurus rex tramping the concrete floor, fangs drooling with saliva. It whipped its tail angrily and knocked the engine nacelle onto its side.\n\n\"From The Lost World,\" queried the Cat, \"or Jurassic Park?\"\n\n\"Neither,\" replied Kaine. \"The Boy's Bumper Book of Dinosaurs.\"\n\n\"Ooh!\" replied the Cat. \"The nonfiction gambit, eh?\"\n\nKaine clicked his fingers and the thunder lizard lunged forwards as Beowulf went into the attack, sword flailing. I retreated towards the Cat and asked anxiously, \"This Beowulf isn't the original, is it?\"\n\n\"Good Lord no, quite the reverse!\"\n\nIt was just as well. Beowulf had made mincemeat of Grendel but the Tyrannosaurus, in turn, made mincemeat of him. As the giant lizard slurped down the remnants of the warrior, the Cat hissed to me: \"I do so love these competitions!\"\n\nI wiped my scratched face with my handkerchief. I must say I couldn't really share the Cat's mischievous sense of glee or enjoyment. \"What's our next move?\" I asked him. \"Smaug the dragon?\"\n\n\"No point. He'd invoke a Baggins to kill it. Perhaps it would be best to make a tactical retreat and introduce an Allan Quatermain with an elephant gun, but I'm late for my son's birthday party, so it's going to be... him!\"\n\nThere was another shimmer in the air about us and, with a whiffling and a burbling, a bat-winged creature appeared. It had a long tail, reptilian feet, flaming eyes, huge sort of catchy hairy claws... and was wearing a lilac-colored tunic with matching socks.\n\nThe Tyrannosaurus looked up from its feast at the jabberwock who stared back at it while hovering in the air and making dangerous whiffling noises. It was about the same size as the dinosaur and went for it aggressively, jaws biting, claws catching. As the Cat, Kaine and I looked on, the jabberwock and the Tyrannosaurus rolled around in mortal combat, tails flailing. At one point it looked as though Kaine's champion had the upper hand until the jabberwock executed a maneuver known in wrestling circles as an \"airplane spin and body slam\" that shook the ground. The giant lizard lay still, moving feebly. An animal that large does not need to fall from very high to break bones. The jabberwock burbled contentedly to itself, doing a little triumphant two-step dance as he walked back over to us.\n\n\"Right!\" yelled Kaine. \"I've had just about my fill of this!\"\n\nHe raised his arms in the air and a gale seemed to fill the hangar. There were several crashes of thunder from outside and a large shape started to rise within the empty framework of the half-built airship. It grew and grew until it was wearing the airship skeleton like a corset, then broke free of it and with one tentacle clasped the jabberwock and raised it high in the air. Kaine had cheated. It was the kraken. Wet, strangely shapeless and smelling of overcooked oysters, it was the largest and most powerful creature that I knew of in fiction.\n\n\"Now, now!\" said the Cat, waving a claw at Kaine. \"Remember the rules!\"\n\n\"To hell with your rules!\" shouted Kaine. \"Puny Jurisfiction agents, prepare to meet thy doom!\"\n\n\"Now that,\" said the Cat, addressing me, \"was a very corny line.\"\n\n\"He's Farquitt! What did you expect? What are we going to do?\"\n\nThe kraken wrapped a slippery tentacle several times around the jabberwock's body and then squeezed until his eyes bulged ominously.\n\n\"Cat!\" I said more urgently. \"What's the next move?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking,\" replied the Cat, lashing his tail angrily. \"Trying to come up with something to defeat the kraken is not that easy. Wait. Wait. I think I've got it!\"\n\nThere was a bright flash and there, facing the kraken, was\u2014a small fairy no higher than my knee. It had delicate wings like those of a dragonfly, a silver tiara and a wand, which she waved in Kaine's direction. In an instant the kraken had melted away and the jabberwock fell to the ground, gasping for breath.\n\n\"What the hell\u2014?\" shouted Kaine in anger and surprise, waving his hands uselessly to try and bring the kraken back.\n\n\"I'm afraid you've lost,\" replied the Cat. \"But you cheated and I had to cheat a bit, too, and even though I've won I can't insist on my prize. It's all in Thursday's hands now.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" shouted Kaine angrily. \"Who was that and why can't I summon up beasts from fiction any longer?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the Cat as he began to purr, \"that was the Blue Fairy, from Pinocchio.\"\n\n\"You mean\u2014?\" asked Kaine, mouth agape.\n\n\"Right,\" replied the Cat. \"She made you into a real person, just like she made Pinocchio into a real boy.\"\n\nHe touched his hands on his chest, then his face, trying to figure it out.\n\n\"But... that means you have no authority over me\u2014!\"\n\n\"Alas not,\" replied the Cat. \"Jurisfiction has no jurisdiction over real people in the real world. As I said, it's all up to Thursday now.\"\n\nThe Cat stopped and repeated two words as if to see which sounded better. \"Jurisfiction\u2014jurisdiction\u2014Jurisfiction\u2014jurisdiction.\"\n\nKaine and I stared at one another. If he was real it definitely meant Jurisfiction had no mandate to control him and it also meant we couldn't destroy him through his book. But then he couldn't escape from the real world either\u2014and would bleed and die and age like a real man. Kaine started to laugh.\n\n\"Well, this is a turnaround! Thank you very much, Mr. Cat!\" The Cheshire Cat gave a contemptuous snort and turned to face the other direction. \"You have done me a great service,\" continued Kaine. \"I am now free to lead this country to new heights without the meddling of you and your fictional band of idiots. I'll be free to put behind me the last vestiges of kindness that I was forced to carry because of my written character. Mr. Cat, I thank you, and the people of the unified Britain thank you.\" He laughed again and turned to me. \"And you, Miss Next, won't be able to even get close!\"\n\n\"There's still the Seventh Revealment,\" I said a bit weakly.\n\n\"Win the SuperHoop? With that ragtag bunch of no-hopers? I think you grossly overrate your chances, my lady\u2014and with Goliath and the Ovinator to help me, I can't begin to overestimate mine!\"\n\nAnd he laughed again, looked at his watch and walked briskly from the hangar. We heard his car start up and drive away.\n\n\"Sorry,\" said the Cat, still looking the other way. \"I had to think of something quickly. At least this way he didn't win\u2014tonight.\"\n\nI sighed. \"You did well, Chesh\u2014I would never have thought of invoking the Blue Fairy.\"\n\n\"It was quite good, wasn't it?\" agreed the Cat. \"Can you smell hot buttered crumpets?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Me neither. Who are you going to put on midfield?\"\n\n\"Biffo, probably,\" I said slowly, picking up my automatic from where it had fallen and replacing the clip, \"and Stig as roquet taker.\"\n\n\"Ah. Well, good luck and see you soon,\" said the Cat, and vanished.\n\nI sighed and looked around at the quiet and empty hangar. The fictional gore and corpses of Medusa, the Tyrannosaurus and Beowulf had vanished and apart from the wrecked airship, there was no evidence of the battle that had been fought here. We had scored a victory against Kaine but not the total victory I had hoped for. I was just walking back towards the exit when I noticed the Cheshire Cat had reappeared, balanced on the handle of a pallet trolley.\n\n\"Did you say Stig, or fig?\" asked the Cat.\n\n\"I said Stig,\" I replied, \"and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly\u2014you make one quite giddy.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said the Cat and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Before the Match",
                "text": "\u2002Zvlkx Followers Hold Nighttime Peace March.\n\n\u2002All seventy-six members of the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx spent the night silently marching between the places of interest of their worshipful leader, who was hit by a Number 23 bus on Friday. The march began at Tesco's car park and visited places in Swindon that St. Zvlkx held most dear\u2014seven pubs, six betting shops and Swindon's leading brothel\u2014before undertaking a silent prayer at his place of death. The march went off peacefully, except for numerous interruptions by a woman who gave her name as Shirley and insisted that Zvlkx owed her money.\n\n\u2014Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, July 22, 1988\n\nI arrived at the croquet stadium at eight. The fans were already waiting at the turnstiles, hoping to get the best seats in the stands. I was waved past and parked my Speedster in the manager's parking spot, then made my way into the changing rooms. Aubrey was waiting there for me, pacing up and down.\n\n\"Well?\" he said. \"Where's our team?\"\n\n\"They'll be here at one o'clock.\"\n\n\"Can't we get them here earlier?\" he asked. \"We need to discuss tactics.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said firmly. \"They'll be here on time. It's senseless to try to impose human time constraints on them. They're playing on our side\u2014that's the main thing.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" agreed Aubrey reluctantly. \"Have you met Penelope Hrah?\"\n\nPenelope was a large and powerful woman who looked as though she could crack walnuts with her eyelids. She had moved to croquet because hockey wasn't violent enough, and although at thirty-two she was at the end of her career, she might prove an asset\u2014as a terror weapon, if nothing else. She scared me\u2014and I was on the same team.\n\n\"Hello Penelope,\" I said nervously. \"I really appreciate you joining us.\"\n\n\"Urg.\"\n\n\"Everything okay? Can I get you something?\"\n\nShe grunted again, and I rubbed my hands together anxiously.\n\n\"Right, well, leave you to it, then.\"\n\nI left her to talk strategy with Alf and Aubrey. I spent the next couple of hours doing interviews and ensuring that the team's lawyers were up to speed on the game's complex legal procedures. At midday Landen and Friday arrived with Mycroft, Polly and my mother. I took them down to the seating reserved for the VIPs just behind the players' benches and sat them down next to Joffy and Miles, who had arrived earlier.\n\n\"Is Swindon going to win?\" asked Polly.\n\n\"I hope so,\" I said, not brimming with confidence.\n\n\"The problem with you, Thursday,\" put in Joffy, \"is that you have no faith. We in the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx have complete faith in the revealments. Lose and Goliath moves to new heights of human exploitation and unfathomable avarice, hidden amongst the trappings of religious formality and perverted ecclesiastical dogma.\"\n\n\"That was a very good speech.\"\n\n\"Yes, I thought so, too. I was practicing on the march last night. Don't feel you're under any pressure now.\"\n\n\"Thanks for nothing. Where's Hamlet?\"\n\n\"He said he'd join us later.\"\n\nI left them to do a live broadcast with Lydia Startright, who was really more interested in knowing where I had been for the past two and a half years than asking me about Swindon's chances. After this I hurried down to the players' entrance to welcome Stig\u2014who was playing\u2014and the four other neanderthals. They were completely unfazed by the media attention and ignored the phalanx of pressmen completely. I thanked them for joining our team, and Stig pointed out that they were there only because that was part of the deal, and nothing more.\n\nI walked them towards the changing rooms, where the human team members greeted them with a good measure of curiosity. They talked haltingly with one another, the neanderthals confining their speech to the technical aspects of croquet play. It was of no matter or consequence to them if they won or lost\u2014they would simply do the best they could. They refused body armor, as they preferred instead to play barefoot in shorts and brightly colored Hawaiian shirts. This caused a slight problem with the Toast Marketing Board, which had insisted that its name be on the team strip, but I smoothed it over with them eventually and all was well. There was less than ten minutes before we were due out, so Aubrey made a stirring speech to the team, which the neanderthals didn't really comprehend. Stig, whose understanding of humans was perhaps a little better than most, just told them to \"hoop as much as we can,\" which they understood.\n\n\"Miss Next?\"\n\nI turned to face a thin, cadaverous man staring at me. I recognized him instantly. It was Ernst Stricknene, Kaine's adviser\u2014and he was carrying a red briefcase. I had seen a similar case at Goliathopolis and during Evade the Question Time. It doubtless concealed an Ovinator.\n\n\"What do you want?\"\n\n\"Chancellor Kaine would like to meet the Swindon team for a pep talk.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nStricknene looked at me coldly. \"It is not for you to question the will of the Chancellor, young lady.\"\n\nIt was then that Kaine marched in, surrounded by his goons and entourage. The team stood up respectfully\u2014except the neanderthals, who, completely ambivalent to the vagaries of perceived hierarchy, carried on talking to one another in soft grunts. Kaine looked at me triumphantly, but I noticed, too, that he had changed slightly. His eyes looked tired and his mouth had a barely discernible sag to it. He'd started to show signs of being human. He was beginning to age.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said. \"The ubiquitous Miss Next. LiteraTec, team manager, savior of Jane Eyre. Is there anything you can't do?\"\n\n\"I'm not that good at knitting.\"\n\nThere was a ripple of laughter amongst the team, and also from Kaine's followers, who abruptly silenced themselves as Kaine glanced around the room, scowling. But he controlled himself and gave a disingenuous smile after nodding to Stricknene.\n\n\"I just came down here to talk to the team and tell all of you that it would be a far better thing for this country if I stayed in power, and even though I don't know how Zvlkx's revealment will work, I can't leave the secure future of this nation to the vagaries of a thirteenth-century seer with poor personal hygiene. Do you understand what I am saying?\"\n\nI knew what he was up to. The Ovinator. It would, as likely as not, have us all eating out of his hand in under a minute. But I wasn't figuring on Hamlet, who appeared suddenly from behind Stricknene, rapier drawn.\n\nIt was now or nothing, and I yelled, \"The briefcase! Destroy the Ovinator!\"\n\nHamlet needed no second bidding, and he leapt into action, expertly piercing the case, which gave off a brief flash of green light and a short, high-pitched wail that started the police dogs outside barking. Hamlet was swiftly overpowered by two SO-6 agents, who handcuffed him.\n\n\"Who is this man?\" demanded Kaine.\n\n\"He's my cousin Eddie.\"\n\n\"NO!\" yelled Hamlet, standing up straight even though he had two men holding him. \"My name is Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Danish, and proud of it!\"\n\nKaine gave a smug laugh. \"Captain, arrest Miss Next for harboring a known Danish person\u2014and arrest the entire team for aiding and abetting.\"\n\nIt was a bad moment. With no players, the game had to be forfeited. But Hamlet, actioneer that he had become, was not out of ideas.\n\n\"I shouldn't do that if I were you.\"\n\n\"And why not?\" sneered Kaine, not without a certain quaver in his voice; he was now acting solely on his wits. He had neither his fictional roots nor the Ovinator to help him.\n\n\"Because,\" announced Hamlet, \"I am a very special friend of Ms. Daphne Farquitt.\"\n\n\"And...?\" inquired Kaine with a slight smile.\n\n\"She is outside awaiting my return. If I fail to reappear or you try any sort of anti-Mallets skulduggery, she will mobilize her troops.\"\n\nKaine laughed, and Stricknene, sycophant that he was, laughed with him.\n\n\"Troops? What troops are these?\" Kaine asked, amused.\n\nBut Hamlet was deadly serious. He glowered at them for a moment before answering. \"Her fan club. They're highly organized, armed to the teeth, profoundly angry at having had their books burned and ready to move at her command. There are thirty thousand stationed near the stadium and a further ninety thousand in reserve. One word from Daphne and you're finished.\"\n\n\"I have reversed the law banning Farquitt,\" replied Kaine hastily. \"They will disperse when they learn this.\"\n\n\"They will believe nothing from your lying tongue,\" replied Hamlet softly, \"only that which Ms. Farquitt tells them. Your power is waning, my friend, and destiny's inelegant toe creaks the boards to your door.\"\n\nThere was a tense silence as Kaine stared at Hamlet and Hamlet stared back at Kaine. I'd witnessed quite a few standoffs but none with so much at stake.\n\n\"You haven't a hope in hell anyway,\" announced Kaine after considering his options carefully. \"I'm going to enjoy watching the Whackers trash you. Release him.\"\n\nThe SO-6 agents uncuffed Hamlet and escorted Kaine out the door.\n\n\"Well,\" said Hamlet, \"looks like we're back in the game. I'm going to watch with your mother. Win this one for the Farquitt fans, Thursday!\"\n\nAnd he was gone.\n\nNone of us had any time to ponder on the matter further, as we heard a Klaxon go off and an excited roar from the crowd echoed down the tunnel.\n\n\"Good luck, everyone,\" said Aubrey with a good measure of bravado. \"It's showtime!\"\n\nThe crowd erupted into screams of jubilation as we trotted down the tunnel onto the green. The stadium could seat thirty thousand, and it was packed. Large monitors had been set up outside for the benefit of those who could not get a seat, and the TV networks were beaming the match live to an estimated 2 billion people in seventy-three countries worldwide. It was going to be quite a show.\n\nI stayed on the touchline as the Swindon Mallets lined up face-to-face with the Reading Whackers. They all glared at one another as the Swindon & District Wheel-Tappers' Brass Band marched on, headed by Lola Vavoom. There was then a pause while President Formby took his seat in the VIP box and, again led by Ms. Vavoom, the audience stood to sing the unofficial English national anthem, \"When I'm Cleaning Windows.\" After the song had finished, Yorrick Kaine appeared at the VIP box, but his reception was derisory at best. There was a smattering of applause and a few \"Hail!\"s, but nothing like the reception he was expecting. His anti-Danish stance had lost a lot of popular support when he'd made the mistake of accusing the Danish Women's Handball Team of being spies and arrested them. I saw him sit down and scowl at the President, who smiled back warmly.\n\nI was standing at the touchline with Alf Widdershaine, watching the proceedings.\n\n\"Is there anything more we could have done?\" I whispered.\n\n\"No,\" said Alf after a pause. \"I just hope those neanderthals can cut the mustard.\"\n\nI turned and walked back towards Landen. On his lap was Friday, gurgling and clapping his hands. I had taken him once to the chariot race in the novel of Ben-Hur, and he'd loved it.\n\n\"What are our chances, darling?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"Reasonable to middling with the neanderthals playing. I'll speak to you later.\"\n\nI gave them a kiss each, and Landen wished me good luck.\n\n\"Dolor in reprehenderit\u2014Mummy,\" said Friday. I thanked him for his kind words and heard my name being called. It was Aubrey who was talking to the umpire, who, as custom dictated, was dressed as a country parson.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I heard Aubrey say in an outraged tone as I moved closer. It seemed there was some sort of altercation, and we hadn't even begun play yet. \"Show me where it says that in the rules!\"\n\n\"What's the problem?\" I asked.\n\n\"It's the neanderthals,\" he said between gritted teeth. \"According to the rules, it seems that nonhumans are barred from taking part!\"\n\nI glanced back to where Stig and the four other neanderthals were sitting in a circle, meditating.\n\n\"Rule 78b-45(ii),\" quoted the umpire as O'Fathens, the Reading Whackers' captain, looked on with a gleeful expression, \"'No player or team may use an equine or any other nonhuman creature to gain an advantage over the opposing team.'\"\n\n\"But that doesn't mean players,\" I said. \"That rule clearly only refers to horse, antelope and so forth\u2014it was brought in when the Dorchester Slammers attempted to gain the advantage by playing on horseback in 1962.\"\n\n\"The rules seem clear to me,\" growled O'Fathens, taking a step forwards. \"Are neanderthals human?\" Aubrey also took a step forwards. Their noses were almost touching.\n\n\"Well... sort of,\" I answered hesitantly.\n\nThere was nothing for it but to seek a judgment. Since the rules regarding on-field litigation had been relaxed ten years ago, it was not uncommon for the first half hour of a match to be taken up with legal wranglings by the teams' lawyers, of which each side was permitted two, with one substitute. It added a new form of drama to the proceedings but was not without its own problems: after a particularly litigious SuperHoop six years ago, when a legal argument was overturned in the high court two years after the match was played, it became mandatory that three high-court judges be at readiness to give an instant, unquestionable ruling on any legal point.\n\nWe approached the Port-a-Court, and our respective lawyers made their representations. The three judges retired to their chambers and returned a few minutes later to announce:\n\n\"It is the finding of this Croquet Appellant Court in the action Mallets v. Whackers (neanderthal player legality) that the Whackers' complaint is upheld. In the eyes of English law, neanderthals are not human, and cannot play.\"\n\nThe Reading side of the crowd erupted into joyous yells as the judges' ruling was run up on the screen.\n\nAubrey opened his mouth, but I pulled him aside.\n\n\"Don't waste your breath, Aubrey.\"\n\n\"We can prepare an appeal in seven minutes,\" said Mr. Runcorn, one of our lawyers. \"I think we can find a nonhuman precedent in the Worcester Sauces v. Taunton Ciders SuperHoop semifinals of 1963.\"\n\nAubrey scratched his head and looked at me. \"Thursday?\"\n\n\"A failed appeal could result in a two-hoop forfeit,\" I pointed out. \"I say we get the lawyers working on it. If they think it's worth a try, we'll lodge an appeal at the end of the first third.\"\n\n\"But we're five players down, and we haven't even picked up our mallets!\"\n\n\"The game's not lost until it's lost, Aubrey. We've got a few tricks up our sleeve, too.\"\n\nI wasn't kidding. I had visited the lawyers' pavilion earlier, where they were performing background checks on every player on the opposing side. The Whackers' striker, George \"Rhino\" McNasty, had fourteen unpaid parking violations, and our legal team successfully pleaded that this should be heard here and now; he was sentenced to an hour's community service, which effectively had him picking up litter in the car park until the end of the second third. Jambe turned back to Mr. Runcorn.\n\n\"Okay, prepare an appeal for the end of the first third. We'll start with what we've got.\"\n\nEven with our substitute brought on, we still had only six players to their full complement of ten. But it got worse. To play on a local side, you had to have been born in the town or lived there for at least six months before playing. Our substitute, Johnno Swift, had lived here for only five months and twenty-six days when he began his career at the Mallets three years before. The Reading lawyers argued that he was playing illegally in his first match, a transgression that should have won him a life ban. Once again the judges upheld the complaint, and, to another excited yell from the crowd, Swift walked dejectedly back to the dressing rooms.\n\n\"Well,\" said O'Fathens, putting out his hand to Jambe, \"we'll just accept you've conceded the match, okay?\"\n\n\"We're playing, O'Fathens. Even if Swindon were to lose a thousand hoops, people will still say, 'This was their finest\u2014'\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" interrupted the Whackers' team lawyer with a triumphant grin. \"You're now down to only five players. Under Rule 681g, Subsection (f/6), 'Any team that fails to start the game with the minimum of six players forfeits the match.'\"\n\nHe pointed out the entry in Volume 7 of the World Croquet League rule book. It was there, all right, just under the rules governing the minimum raisin requirement in the buns served at the concession stands. Beaten! Beaten even before we'd picked up a mallet! Swindon could weather it, but the world could not\u2014the revealment would be broken, and Kaine and Goliath would carry on their perverse plans unmolested.\n\n\"I'll announce it,\" said the umpire.\n\n\"No,\" said Alf, clicking his fingers, \"we do have a player we can field!\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nHe pointed at me. \"Thursday!\"\n\nI was gobsmacked. I hadn't played for over eight years.\n\n\"Objection!\" blurted out the Whackers' lawyer. \"Miss Next is not a native of Swindon!\"\n\nMy inclusion would be of questionable value\u2014but at least it meant we could play.\n\n\"I was born at St. Septyk's,\" I said slowly. \"I'm Swindon enough for this team.\"\n\n\"Perhaps Swindon enough,\" said the lawyer, consulting a rule book hurriedly, \"but not experienced enough. According to Rule 23f, Subsection (g/9), you are ineligible to play international-standard croquet since you have not played the minimum of ten matches to county standard.\"\n\nI thought for a moment. \"Actually, I have.\"\n\nIt was true. I used to play for the SpecOps Middlesex team when I was based in London. I was quite good, too\u2014but nothing like these guys.\n\n\"It is the decision of the Croquet Appellant Court,\" intoned the three judges, who wanted to see a good game the same as anyone, \"that Miss Next be allowed to represent her city in this match.\"\n\nO'Fathens's face fell. \"This is preposterous! What kind of stupid decision is that?\"\n\nThe judges looked at him sternly. \"It is the decision of this court\u2014and we find you in contempt. The Whackers will forfeit one hoop.\"\n\nO'Fathens boiled with inner rage, held it within him, turned on his heel and, followed by his lawyers, strode to where his team was waiting.\n\n\"Good one!\" laughed Aubrey. \"The whistle hasn't even gone, and we're winning!\"\n\nHe tried to sound full of enthusiasm, but it was difficult. We were fielding a six-strong team\u2014five and a quarter if you count me\u2014and still had an entire game to play.\n\n\"We've got ten minutes to the off. Thursday, get changed into Snake's spare set\u2014he's about your size.\"\n\nI dashed off to the changing rooms and dressed myself up in Snake's leg guards and shoulder pads. Widdershaine helped me adjust the straps around my chest, and I grabbed a spare mallet before running back onto the field, fiddling with my helmet strap just as Aubrey was beginning his strategy talk.\n\n\"In past matches,\" he said in a hushed tone, \"the Whackers have been known to test a weak side with a standard 'Bomperini' opening tactic. A deflective feint towards midhoop left, but actually aiming for an undefended back-hoop right.\"\n\nThe team whistled low.\n\n\"But we'll be ready for them. I want them to know we're playing an aggressive game. Instead of backfooting it, we'll go straight into a surprise roquet maneuver. Smudger, you're to lead with a sideways deflection to Biffo, who'll pass to Thursday\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait,\" put in Biffo. \"Thursday is here making up the numbers. She hasn't hit a ball in years!\"\n\nThis was true. But Jambe had bigger plans.\n\n\"Exactly. I want them to think Thursday is a dark horse\u2014that we planned this late addition. With a bit of luck, they'll waste a good player marking her. Thursday, drive it towards their red ball, and Spike will intercept. It doesn't matter if you miss\u2014I want them to be confused by our tactics. And, Penelope\u2014just frighten the other team.\"\n\n\"Urg,\" grunted the wingwoman.\n\n\"Okay, keep it tight, no more violence than is necessary, and keep an eye out for the Duchess. She's not averse to a bit of ankle swiping.\"\n\nWe all tapped our fists together and made a harump noise. I walked slowly to my place on the green, my heart beating with the pump of adrenaline.\n\n\"You okay?\" It was Aubrey.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Good. Let's play some croquet.\"\n\n\u2002WCL SuperHoop-88\n\n\u200200 P.M., Saturday, July 22, 1988, Swindon Stadium, Wessex\n\n\u2002Reading Whackers:\n\n\u2002Tim O'Fathens, Captain\n\n\u2002Molly \"The Mark\" Stern, Midfield\n\n\u2002Tim \"The Mouse\" McCall, Forward Striker\n\n\u2002Gretchen \"Barker\" Koss, Striker\n\n\u2002Wallace \"Back to Front\" Acadia, DefenseAlessandra Lusardi, Roquet Taker\n\n\u2002\"Bonecrusher\" McSneed, Forward Hoop\n\n\u2002Freddie \"Dribbler\" Loehnis, Peg Defense\n\n\u2002Duchess of Sheffield, Wingman\n\n\u2002Legal Team: Wapcaplitt & Sfortz\n\n\u2002Linesman: Bruce Giffords\n\n\u2002Coach: Geoffrey Snurge\n\n\u2002Swindon Mallets:\n\n\u2002Aubrey Jambe, Captain\n\n\u2002Alan \"Biffo\" Mandible, Midfield\n\n\u2002\"Snake\" Spillikin, Forward Striker\"Smudger\" Blarney, Forward HoopPenelope Hrah, Midhoop Wingman\n\n\u2002Thursday Next, Manager/Midfield\n\n\u2002Legal Team: Runcorn & Twizzit\n\n\u2002Sub: Coach: Alf Widdershaine\n\nI took up my station at the twenty-yard line and looked around the green. The rhododendron bushes in the center occluded my vision of the back-hoop right; I glanced up at the scoreboard and clock. Two minutes to go. There were three other natural hazards that we were to play around on the green\u2014the Tea Party, which even now was being stocked by volunteers, the garden roller, and the Italian Sunken Garden. Once the Tea Party volunteers were safe and the parson umpire was happy his curate linesmen were all in position, the Klaxon went off with a loud blare.\n\nMany things happened at once. There were two almost simultaneous clacks as both teams whacked off, and I ran forward instinctively to intercept the pass from Biffo. Since the Whackers didn't think I was of any use, I had been left unmarked, and Biffo's pass came sailing towards me. I was flushed by the excitement and caught it in midair, smashing it towards the opponent's ball for what looked like an aerial roquet. It didn't work. I missed by about a foot. The opponent's ball carried on to the forty-yard line where McCall blasted it through the back-hoop right\u2014the classic Bomperini opener. I didn't have time to think about it, as there was a shout of \"Thursday!\" from Aubrey, and I turned to make a swipe at the opposition's ball. The Klaxon went, and everyone stopped playing. I had touched the opponent's ball when south of the forty-yard line after it had been passed from the last person to have hit a red ball in the opposite direction\u2014one of the more obvious offside transgressions.\n\n\"Sorry, guys,\" I said as the Whackers lined up to take their penalty. O'Fathens took the shot and catapulted our ball into the rhododendrons. As George tried to find it, and with our other ball out of play in the Italian Sunken Garden, the Whackers went on the offensive and hooped three times before we'd even realized it. Even when we found the ball, we were too dispersed, and after another twenty-eight minutes of hard defensive footwork, managed to end the first third with only four hoops to Reading's eight.\n\n\"There are too many of them,\" panted Snake. \"Eight-four is the worst opening score for a SuperHoop final ever.\"\n\n\"We're not beat yet,\" replied Jambe, taking a drink. \"Thursday, you played well.\"\n\n\"Well?\" I returned, taking off my helmet and wiping the sweat from my brow. \"I sank the ball with my first whack and dropped us a hoop on the offside penalty!\"\n\n\"But we still scored a hoop\u2014and we would have already lost if you hadn't joined us. You just need to relax more. You're playing as though the world depended on it.\"\n\nThe team didn't know it, but I was.\n\n\"Just calm down a bit, take a second before you whack, and you'll be fine. Biffo\u2014good work, and nice hoop, Penelope, but if you chase their wingman again, you might be booked.\"\n\n\"Urg,\" replied Penelope.\n\n\"Mr. Jambe?\" said Mr. Runcorn, who had been working on a rearguard legal challenge to the antineanderthal ruling.\n\n\"Yes? Do we have a case?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. I can't seem to find any grounds for one. The nonhuman precedent was overruled on appeal. I'm very sorry, sir. I think I'm playing very badly\u2014might I resign and bring on the legal substitute?\"\n\n\"It's not your fault,\" said Jambe kindly. \"Have the substitute lawyer continue the search.\"\n\nRuncorn bowed and went to sit on the lawyers' bench, where a young man in a badly fitting suit had been sitting silently throughout the first third.\n\n\"That Duchess is murder,\" muttered Biffo, breathlessly. \"She almost had me twice.\"\n\n\"Isn't striking an opponent a red-card three-hoop penalty offense?\" I asked.\n\n\"Of course! But if she can take out our best player, then it might be worth it. Keep an eye on her, everyone.\"\n\n\"Mr. Jambe?\"\n\nIt was the referee, who told us further litigation had been brought against our team. We dutifully approached the Port-a-Court, where the judges were just signing an amendment to the World Croquet League book of law.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"As a result of the Danish Economic (Scapegoat) Act coming into law, people of Danish descent are not permitted to vote or take key jobs.\"\n\n\"When did this law come into effect?\"\n\n\"Five minutes ago.\"\n\nI looked up at Kaine in the VIP box, where he smiled and waved at me.\n\n\"So?\" asked Jambe. \"Kaine's dopey ideas have no reflection on croquet\u2014this is sport, not politics.\"\n\nThe Whackers' lawyer, Mr. Wapcaplitt, coughed politely.\n\n\"In that you would be mistaken. The definition of 'key job' includes being a highly paid sports personality. We have conducted some background checks and discovered that Ms. Penelope Hrah was born in Copenhagen\u2014she's Danish.\"\n\nJambe was silent.\n\n\"I might have been born there, but I'm not Danish,\" said Hrah, taking a menacing step towards Wapcaplitt. \"My parents were on holiday at the time.\"\n\n\"We are well aware of the facts,\" intoned Wapcaplitt, \"and have already gained judgment on this matter. You were born in Denmark, you are technically Danish, you are in a 'key job,' and you are thus disqualified from playing on this team.\"\n\n\"Balls!\" yelled Aubrey. \"If she was born in a kennel, would that make her a dog?\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" replied the attorney thoughtfully, \"it's an interesting legal question.\"\n\nPenelope couldn't contain herself any longer and went for him. It took four of us to hold her back, and she had to be forcibly restrained and frogmarched from the green.\n\n\"Down to five players,\" muttered Jambe. \"Below the minimum player requirement.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Mr. Wapcaplitt glibly, \"it appears the Whackers are the winners\u2014\"\n\n\"I think not,\" interrupted our substitute lawyer, whose name we learned was Twizzit. \"As my most esteemed colleague so rightly pointed out, the rule states thus: 'Any team that fails to start the game with the minimum of six players forfeits the match.' The way I see it, the match has already begun, and we can carry on playing with five. Your Honors?\"\n\nThe judges put their heads together for a moment and then pronounced, \"This court finds for the Swindon Mallets in this matter. They may continue to play into the second third with five players.\"\n\nWe walked slowly back to the touchline. Four of the neanderthal players were still sitting on the bench, staring off into space.\n\n\"Where's Stig?\" I asked them.\n\nI didn't get an answer. The Klaxon for the second third went off, and I grabbed my mallet and helmet and hurried onto the green.\n\n\"New strategy, everyone,\" said Jambe to myself, Smudger, Snake and Biffo\u2014all that remained of the Swindon Mallets\u2014\"we play defensively to make sure they don't score any more hoops. Anything goes\u2014and watch out for the Duchess.\"\n\nThe second third was probably the most interesting third ever seen in World League Croquet. To begin with, Biffo and Aubrey whacked both of our own balls into the rhododendrons. This was a novel tactic and had two consequences: firstly, that we weren't going to score any hoops in the middle third by natural hooping, and second, that we denied the opposition any roquets off our balls. No advantage to win, clearly, but we weren't trying to win\u2014we were fighting for survival. The Whackers had only to score thirty hoops and hit the center peg to win outright\u2014and the way it was going, we wouldn't make the last third. Staving off the inevitable, perhaps, but World League Croquet is like that. Frustrating, violent and full of the unexpected.\n\n\"No prisoners!\" yelled Biffo, waving his mallet above his head in a display of bravado that would sum up our second-third strategy. It worked. Freed from the constraint of ball defense, we all went into the attack and together caused some considerable problems to the Whackers, who were thrown by the unorthodox playing tactics. At one point I yelled \"Offside!\" and made up something so outrageously complex that it sounded as if it could be true\u2014it took ten minutes of precious time to prove that it wasn't.\n\nBy the time the second third ended, we were almost completely exhausted. The Whackers now led by twenty-one hoops to twelve, and we won another eight only because \"Bonecrusher\" McSneed had been sent off for trying to hit Jambe with his mallet and Biffo had been concussed by the Duchess.\n\n\"How many fingers am I holding up?\" asked Alf.\n\n\"Fish,\" said Biffo, eyes wandering.\n\n\"You okay?\" asked Landen when I had returned to the stands to see him.\n\n\"I'm okay,\" I puffed. \"I'm out of shape, though.\"\n\nFriday gave me a hug.\n\n\"Thursday?\" hissed Landen in a hushed voice. \"I've been thinking. Where did that piano actually come from?\"\n\n\"What piano?\"\n\n\"The one that fell on Cindy.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose, it... just, well... fell\u2014didn't it? What are you saying?\"\n\n\"That it was a murder attempt.\"\n\n\"Someone tried to assassinate the assassin with a piano?\"\n\n\"No. It hit her accidentally. I think it was intended for you!\"\n\n\"Who'd want to kill me with a piano?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Have there been any other unorthodox attempts on your life recently?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I think you're still in danger, sweetheart. Please be careful.\"\n\nI kissed him again and stroked his face with a muddy hand.\n\n\"Sorry!\" I muttered, trying to rub it off and making it worse. \"But I've got too much to think about at the moment.\"\n\nI ran off and joined Jambe for a last-third pep talk.\n\n\"Right,\" he said, handing out the Chelsea buns, \"we're going to lose this match, but we're going to go out in glory. I don't want it to be said that the Mallets didn't fight until the last man standing. Right, Biffo?\"\n\n\"Trilby.\"\n\nWe all knocked our fists together and made the harump noise again, the team reinvigorated\u2014except for me. It was true that no one could say we didn't try, but for all Jambe's well-meaning rhetoric, in three weeks' time the earth would be a smoldering radioactive cinder, and no amount of tarnished glory would save Swindon or anyone else. But I helped myself to a Chelsea bun and a cup of tea anyway.\n\n\"I say,\" said Twizzit, who had suddenly appeared in the company of Stig.\n\n\"Have a bun!\" said Aubrey. \"We're going out in style!\"\n\nBut Twizzit wasn't smiling. \"We've been looking at Mr. Stig's genome\u2014\"\n\n\"His what?\"\n\n\"His genome. The complete genetic plan of him and the other neanderthals.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\nTwizzit rummaged through some papers. \"They were all built between 1939 and 1948 in the Goliath BioEngineering labs. The thing is, the prototype neanderthal could not speak in words that we could understand\u2014so they were built using a human voice box.\" Twizzit gave a curious half smile, as though he had produced a spare ace from his sleeve, and announced with great drama, \"The neanderthals are 1.03 percent human.\"\n\n\"But that doesn't make them human,\" I observed. \"How does this help us?\"\n\n\"I agree they're not human,\" conceded Twizzit with the ghost of a smile, \"but the rules specifically exclude anyone 'nonhuman.' Since they have some human in them, they technically can't fall into this category.\"\n\nThere was another long pause. I looked at Stig, who stared back and raised his eyebrows.\n\n\"I think we should lodge an appeal,\" muttered Jambe, leaving his Chelsea bun half eaten in his haste. \"Stig, have your men limber up!\"\n\nThe judges agreed with us. The 1.03 percent was enough to prove they weren't nonhuman and thus could not be excluded from play. While Wapcaplitt ran off to search the croquet statutes for a reason to appeal, the neanderthals\u2014Grunk, Warg, Dorf, Zim and Stig\u2014limbered up as the Whackers looked on nervously. Neanderthals had often been approached to play, as they could run all day without tiring, but no one until now had ever managed to get any.\n\n\"Okay, listen up,\" said Jambe, gathering us around. \"We're back in the game at full strength. Thursday, I want you to stay on the benches to regain your breath. We're going to fool them with a Puchonski switch. Biffo is going to take the red ball from the forty-yard line over the rhododendron bushes, past the Italian Sunken Garden and into a close position to hoop five. Snake, you'll take it from there and croquet their yellow\u2014Stig will defend you. Mr. Warg, I want you to mark their number five. He's dangerous, so you're going to have to use any tricks you can. Smudger, you're going to foul the Duchess\u2014when the Vicar gives you the red card, I'm calling in Thursday. Yes?\"\n\nI didn't reply; for some reason I was having a sudden heavy bout of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\n\n\"Thursday?\" repeated Aubrey. \"Are you okay? You look like you're in a dreamworld!\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" I said slowly. \"I'll wait for your command.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nWe all did the harump thing, and they went to their places whilst I sat on the bench and looked once again at the scoreboard. We were losing twenty-one hoops to twelve.\n\nAubrey nodded at Smudger, who took out the Duchess in grand style: they both careered into the Tea Party and knocked over the table.\n\nThe Klaxon went off, and the game started with renewed aggression. Biffo whacked the yellow ball in the direction of the up-end hoop and hit the Whackers' ball. Warg took the roquet. With an expert swing, the opponents' ball tumbled into the Italian Sunken Garden, and ours sailed as straight as a die over the rhododendrons; a distant clack was mirrored by a roar from the crowd, and I knew the ball had been intercepted by Grunk and taken through the hoop. Aubrey nodded at Smudger, who took out the Duchess in grand style: they both careered into the Tea Party and knocked over the table. The Klaxon sounded for a time-out while the Duchess was pulled clear of the tea things. She was conscious but had a broken ankle. Smudger was given the red card but no hoop penalty, as the Duchess had been shown the yellow card earlier for concussing Biffo. I joined the fray as play started up again, but the Whackers' early confidence was soon evaporating under a withering attack from the neanderthals, who could anticipate their every move simply by reading their body language. Warg passed to Grunk, who gave the ball such an almighty whack that it passed clear through the rhododendrons with a tearing of foliage and was converted by Zim on the other side towards an undefended hoop.\n\nBy the time there were three minutes to play, we had almost caught up: twentyfive hoops to the Whackers' twenty-nine. Firmly rattled, the Whackers missed a roquet and, with only a minute to run, scored their thirtieth hoop with us only two behind. All they had to do to win was \"peg out\" by hitting the center post. Whilst they were trying to do this and we tried our best to stop them, Grunk, with eight seconds to go and two hoops to make, whacked a clear double-hooper that went through one up-end hoop, all the forty yards down the green and through the mid. I'd never heard a crowd yell more.\n\nWe had leveled the score and desperately tried to get our ball to the peg in the scrum of players trying to stop the Whackers from doing the same. Warg grunted to Grunk, who ran towards the scrum and tore into them, taking six players down as Warg whacked the ball towards the now unprotected peg. It hit the peg fair and square\u2014but a second after the Klaxon had sounded. Play had ended\u2014in a draw."
            },
            {
                "title": "Sudden Death",
                "text": "\u2002Neanderthals Turn Down Croquet Offer\n\n\u2002A group of neanderthals unwisely turned down an exciting and unrepeatable offer from the Gloucester Meteors yesterday, following their astonishing performance at the 1988 Whackers v. Mallets SuperHoop on Saturday. The generous offer of ten brightly colored glass beads was rejected by a neanderthal spokesman, who declared that conflict, howsoever staged, was inherently insulting. The offer was raised to a set of solid-bottomed cook-ware, and this was also roundly rejected. A spokesman for the Meteors later stated that the neanderthal tactics displayed on Saturday were actually the result of some clever tricks taught them by the Mallets' team coach.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, July 24, 1988\n\nGood work,\" said Alf as we sat on the ground, panting hard. I had lost my helmet in the scrum somewhere but hadn't until now noticed. My armor was dirty and torn, my mallet handle had split, and there was a cut on my chin. The whole team was muddy, bruised and worn out\u2014but we were still in with a good chance.\n\n\"What order?\" asked the umpire, referring to the sudden-death penalty shoot-out. It worked quite simply. We took it in turns to hit the peg, each time moving back ten yards. There were six lines all the way back to the boundary. If we got them all, we started again until someone missed. Alf looked at the players who were still able to hold a mallet and put me seventh, so if we went around again, I was on the easiest ten-yard line.\n\n\"Biffo first, then Aubrey, Stig, Dorf, Warg, Grunk and Thursday.\"\n\nThe umpire jotted down our names and moved away. I went to see my family and Landen again.\n\n\"What about the steamroller?\" he asked.\n\n\"What about the steamroller?\"\n\n\"Didn't it nearly run you over?\"\n\n\"An accident, Land. Gotta go. Bye.\"\n\nThe ten-yard line was simple; both players hit the peg with ease. The twenty-yard line was still no problem. The crowd roared as Reading hit the peg first, but our side roared equally when we hit ours. Thirty yards was no problem either\u2014both teams hit the peg, and we all moved back to the forty-yard line. From this distance the peg was tiny, and I didn't see how anyone could hit it, but they did\u2014first Stern for Reading, then Dorf for us. The crowd roared its support, but then there was a slight rumble of thunder and it began to rain, the full significance of which was yet to dawn.\n\n\"Where are they going?\" asked Aubrey as Stig, Grunk, Dorf and Warg ran off to find shelter.\n\n\"It's a neanderthal thing,\" I explained as the rain increased dramatically to a downpour, the water streaming down our armor and onto the turf. \"Neanderthals never work, play or even stand in the rain if they can help it. Don't worry, they'll be back as soon as it stops.\"\n\nBut it didn't stop.\n\n\"Fifty-yard penalty,\" announced the umpire. \"O'Fathens for the Whackers and Mr. Warg for the Mallets.\"\n\nI looked at Warg, who was sitting on the bench under the stands, staring at the rain with a mixed expression of respect and wonder.\n\n\"He's going to lose us the game!\" muttered Jambe in my ear. \"Can't you do something?\"\n\nI ran across the soggy green to Warg, who stared at me blankly when I implored him to come and take the penalty.\n\n\"It's raining,\" replied Warg, \"and it's only a game. It doesn't really matter who wins, does it?\"\n\n\"Stig?\" I implored.\n\n\"We'd work in the rain for you, Thursday, but we've taken our turn already. Rain is precious; it gives life\u2014you should respect it more, too.\"\n\nI returned to the fifty-yard line as slowly as I could to try to give the rain time to finish. It didn't.\n\n\"Well?\" demanded Jambe.\n\nI shook my head sadly. \"I'm afraid not. Winning has never been of any interest to the neanderthals. They played only as a favor to me.\"\n\nAubrey sighed.\n\n\"We'd like to delay the next penalty until it stops raining,\" announced Twizzit, who had appeared holding a newspaper over his head. He was on legal marshland with this request, and he knew it. The umpire asked the Whackers if they wanted to delay, but O'Fathens stared at me and said that he didn't. So the next person on the list took her turn at the fifty-yard line\u2014me.\n\nI wiped the rain from my eyes and tried to even see the peg. The rain was coming down so heavily that the cascading droplets created a watery haze a few inches above the turf. Still, I had the second shot\u2014O'Fathens might miss, too.\n\nThe Whackers' captain concentrated for a moment, swung and connected well. The ball went sailing high towards the peg and seemed set to hit it fairly and squarely. But with a loud plop it landed short. There was an expectant rumble from the crowd.\n\nThe word was relayed up the field\u2014O'Fathens had landed four feet from the peg. I had to get closer than that to win the SuperHoop.\n\n\"Good luck,\" said Aubrey, giving my arm a squeeze.\n\nI walked up to the fifty-yard line, the now muddy ground oozing around my boots. I removed my shoulder pads and cast them aside, made a few practice swings, wiped my eyes and stared at the multicolored peg that somehow seemed to have retreated another twenty yards. I squared up in front of the ball and shifted my weight to maintain the right poise. The crowd went silent. They didn't know how much was riding on this, but I did. I didn't dare miss. I looked at the ball, stared towards the peg, looked at the ball again, clasped the handle of my mallet and raised it high in the air, then swung hard into the ball, yelling out as the wood connected and the ball went sailing off in a gentle arc. I thought about Kaine and Goliath, of Landen and Friday and the consequences if I missed. The fate of all life on this beautiful planet decided on the swing of a croquet mallet. I watched as my ball plopped into the soggy ground and the groundsman dashed ahead to compare distances. I turned away and walked back through the rain towards Landen. I had done my best, and the game was over. I didn't hear the announcement, only a roar from the crowd. But whose crowd? A flashbulb went off, and I felt dizzy as the sounds became muted and everything appeared to slow down. Not in the way that my father could engineer, but a postadrenaline moment when everything seems odd, and other. I searched the seating for Landen and Friday, but my attention was distracted by a large figure dressed in a duster coat and hat who had vaulted over the barrier and was running towards me. He drew something from his pocket as he ran, his feet throwing up great splashes of muddy water on his trousers. I stared at him as he came closer and noticed that his eyes were yellow and beneath his hat were what appeared to be\u2014horns. I didn't see any more; there was a bright white flash, a deafening roar, and all the rest was silence."
            },
            {
                "title": "Second First Person",
                "text": "\u2002Yacht Choice of Famed Literary Detective a Mystery\n\n\u2002The shooting of Thursday Next last Saturday leaves the question of her favorite yacht unanswered, our Swindon correspondent writes. \"From the look of her, I would expect a thirty-two-foot ketch, spinnaker-rigged and with a Floon automatic pilot.\" Other yachting commentators disagree and think she would have gone for something larger, such as a sloop or yawl, although it is possible she might only have wanted a boat for coastal day work or a long weekend, in which case she might have gone for a compact twenty-footer. We asked her husband to comment on her taste in sailing, but he declined to give an answer.\n\n\u2014Article in Yachting Monthly, July 1988\n\nI was watching her, right up to the moment she was shot. She looked confused and tired as she walked back from the penalty, and the crowd roared when I shouted to get her attention, so she didn't hear me. It was then that I saw a man vault across the barrier and run up to her. I thought it was a nutty fan or something, and the shot sounded more like a firecracker. There was a puff of blue smoke, and she looked incredulous for a moment, and then she just crumpled up and collapsed on the turf. As simple as that. Before I knew what I was doing, I had handed Friday to Joffy and jumped over the barrier, moving as fast as I could. I was the first one to reach Thursday, who was lying perfectly still on the muddy ground, her eyes open, a neat red hole two inches above her right eye.\n\nSomeone yelled, \"Medic!\" It was me.\n\nI switched to automatic. For the moment the idea that someone had shot my wife was expunged from my mind; I was simply dealing with a casualty\u2014and heaven knows I'd done that often enough. I pulled out my handkerchief and pressed it on the wound.\n\nI said, \"Thursday, can you hear me?\"\n\nShe didn't answer. Her eyes were unblinking as the rain struck her, and I placed my hand above her head to shield her. A medic appeared at my side, sloshing down into the muddy ground in his haste to help.\n\nHe said, \"What's happened?\"\n\nI said, \"He shot her.\"\n\nI reached gingerly around the back of her head and breathed a small sigh of relief when I couldn't find an exit wound.\n\nA second medic\u2014a woman this time\u2014joined the first and told me to step aside. But I moved only far enough for her to work. I took hold of Thursday's hand.\n\nThe first medic said, \"We've got a pulse,\" as he unwrapped an airway, then added, \"Where's the blasted ambulance?\"\n\nI stayed with her all the way to the hospital and let go of her hand only when they took her into the operating theater.\n\nA friendly casualty nurse at St. Septyk's said, \"Here you go,\" as she gave me a blanket. I sat on a hard chair and stared at the wall clock and the public-information posters. I thought about Thursday, trying to figure out how much time we had spent together. Not long for two and a half years, really.\n\nA boy next to me with his head stuck in a saucepan said, \"Wot you in here for, mister?\"\n\nI leaned closer and spoke into the hollow handle so he could hear me and said, \"I'm okay, but someone shot my wife.\"\n\nThe little boy with his head stuck in a saucepan said, \"Bummer,\" and I replied, \"Yes, bummer.\"\n\nI sat and looked at the posters again for a long time until someone said, \"Landen?\"\n\nI looked up. It was Mrs. Next. She had been crying. I think I had, too.\n\nShe said, \"How is she?\"\n\nAnd I said, \"I don't know.\"\n\nShe sat down next to me. \"I brought you some Battenberg.\"\n\nI said, \"I'm not really that hungry.\"\n\n\"I know. But I just don't know what else to do.\"\n\nWe both stared at the clock and the posters in silence for some minutes. After a while I said, \"Where's Friday?\"\n\nMrs. Next patted my arm. \"With Joffy and Miles.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I said, \"good.\"\n\nThursday came out of surgery three hours later. The doctor, who had a haggard look but stared me in the eye, which I liked, told me that things weren't terrific but she was stable and a fighter and I wasn't to give up hope. I went to have a look at her with Mrs. Next. There was a large bandage around her head, and the monitors did that beep thing they do in movies. Mrs. Next sniffed and said, \"I've lost one son already. I don't want to lose another. Well, a daughter I mean, but you know what I mean, a child.\"\n\nI said, \"I know what you mean.\"\n\nI didn't, having never lost a son, but it seemed the right thing to say.\n\nWe sat with her for two hours while the light failed outside and the fluorescents flickered on.\n\nWhen we had been there another two hours, Mrs. Next said, \"I'm going to go now, but I'll be back in the morning. You should try and get some sleep.\"\n\nI said, \"I know. I'm just going to stay here for another five minutes.\"\n\nI stayed there for another hour. A kindly nurse brought me a cup of tea, and I ate some Battenberg. I got home at eleven. Joffy was waiting for me. He told me that he had put Friday to bed and asked me how his sister was.\n\nI said, \"It's not looking very good, Joff.\"\n\nHe patted me on the shoulder, gave me a hug and told me that everyone at the GSD had joined the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx and the Sisters of Eternal Punctuality to pray for her, which was good of him, and them.\n\nI sat on the sofa for a long time, until there was a gentle knock at the kitchen door. I opened it to find a small group of people. A man who introduced himself as Thursday's cousin Eddie but whispered that actually his name was Hamlet said to me, \"Is this a bad time? We heard about Thursday and wanted to tell you how sorry we were.\"\n\nI tried to be cheery. I really wanted him to sod off, but instead I said, \"Thank you. I don't mind at all. Friends of Thursday are friends of mine. Tea and Battenberg?\"\n\n\"If it's not too much trouble.\"\n\nHe had three others with him. The first was a short man who looked exactly like a Victorian big-game hunter. He wore a pith helmet and safari suit and had a large bushy white mustache.\n\nHe gave me his hand to shake and said, \"Commander Bradshaw, dontchaknow. Damn fine lady, your wife. Appreciate a girl who knows how to carry herself in a scrap. Did she tell you about the time she and I hunted Morlock in Trollope?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Shame. I'll tell you all about it one day. This is the memsahib, Mrs. Bradshaw.\"\n\nMelanie was large and hairy and looked like a gorilla. In fact, she was a gorilla, but she had impeccable manners and curtsied as I shook her large coal black hand, which had the thumb in an odd place, so was difficult to shake properly. Her deep-set eyes were wet with tears, and she said, \"Oh, Landen! Can I call you Landen? Thursday used to talk about you all the time when you were eradicated. We all loved her a great deal\u2014I mean, we still do. How is she? How is Friday? You must feel awful!\"\n\nI said, \"She's not really very well,\" which was the truth.\n\nThe third member of the party was a tall man dressed in black robes. He had a very large bald head and high arched eyebrows. He put out a finely manicured hand and said, \"My name's Zhark, but you can call me Horace. I used to work with Thursday. You have my condolences. If it will help, I would happily slaughter a few thousand Thraals as a tribute to the gods.\"\n\nI didn't know what a Thraal was but told him it really wasn't necessary. He said, \"It's really no trouble. I've just conquered their planet, and I'm not sure what I should do with them.\"\n\nI told him that this really, really wasn't necessary and added that I didn't think Thursday would have liked it, then cursed myself for using the past tense. I put on the kettle and said, \"Battenberg?\"\n\nHamlet and Zhark answered together. They were obviously quite keen on my motherin-law's speciality. I smiled for the first time in eight hours and twenty-three minutes and said, \"There's plenty for everyone. Mrs. Next keeps on sending it over, and the dodos won't touch it. You can take away a cake each.\"\n\nI made the tea, Mrs. Bradshaw poured it, and there was an uncomfortable silence. Zhark asked if I knew where Handley Paige lived, but the big-game hunter gave him a stern look and he was quiet.\n\nThey all talked to me about Thursday and what she had done in the fictional BookWorld. The stories were all highly unbelievable, but I didn't think to question any of them\u2014I was glad for the company and happy to hear about what she had been doing over the past two years. Mrs. Bradshaw gave me a rundown of what Friday had been up to as well and even offered to come and look after him whenever I wanted. Zhark was more interested in talking about Handley but still had time to tell me a wholly unbelievable story about how he and Thursday dealt with a Martian who had escaped from The War of the Worlds and turned up in The Wind in the Willows.\n\n\"It's a W thing,\" he explained, \"in the titles, I mean. Wind-War, Worlds-Willows, they are so similar that\u2014\"\n\nBradshaw nudged him to be quiet.\n\nThey left two hours later, slightly full of drink and very full of Battenberg. I noticed the tall one in the black cloak had riffled though my address book before he left, and when I looked, he had left it open on Handley's address. I returned to the living room and sat on the sofa until sleep overcame me.\n\nI was wakened by Pickwick wanting to be let out, and Alan wanting to be let in. The smaller dodo had some paint spilled on him, smelt of perfume, had a blue ribbon tied around his left foot and was holding a mackerel in his beak. I have no idea to this day what he'd been getting up to. I went upstairs, checked that Friday was sleeping in his cot, then had a long shower and a shave."
            },
            {
                "title": "Death Becomes Her",
                "text": "\u2002SuperHoop Assailant \"Vanishes\"\n\n\u2002The mysterious assassin who shot the Mallets' team manager has not yet been found, despite a vigorous SpecOps search. \"It's still early days in the investigation,\" said a police spokesman, \"but from clothes left at the crime scene we are interested in interviewing a Mr. Norman Johnson, whom we understand had been staying at the Finis Hotel for the past week.\" Asked to comment further on the rumored link between the attack on Miss Next and a grand piano incident last Friday, the same police spokesman confirmed that the attacks were connected, but wouldn't be pressed on details. Miss Next is still in St. Septyk's Hospital where her condition is reported as \"critical.\"\n\n\u2014Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, July 24, 1988\n\nTable seventeen?\"\n\n\"Sorry?\"\n\n\"Table seventeen. You are table seventeen, I take it?\"\n\nI looked up at the waitress in a confused manner. A second ago I had been taking a penalty during a SuperHoop\u2014and now I was in a cafeteria somewhere. She was a kindly woman with a friendly manner. I looked at the table marker. I was table seventeen.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"You're to go... Northside.\"\n\nI must have looked confused, because she repeated it and then gave me directions: along the concourse, past the Coriolanus WillSpeak machine, up the stairs and across the pedestrian walkway.\n\nI thanked her and got up. I was still dressed in my croquet gear, but without mallet or helmet, and I touched my head gently where I could feel a small hole. I stopped for a moment and looked around. I had been here before, and recently. I was in a motorway services. The same one that I had visited with Spike. But where was Spike? And why couldn't I remember how I got here?\n\n\"Well, looky what we have here!\" came a voice from behind me. It was Chesney, this time wearing some sort of neck brace, but with a bruise on the side of his head where I had kicked him. Next to him was one of his henchmen, who was minus an arm.\n\n\"Chesney,\" I muttered, looking around for a weapon, \"still in the soul-reclamation business?\"\n\n\"And how!\"\n\n\"Touch me and I'll knock your block off.\"\n\n\"Ooooh!\" said Chesney. \"Don't flatter yourself, girlie\u2014you've just been called to go Northside, haven't you?\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"Well, there's only one reason you go over there,\" replied Chesney's sidekick with an unkindly laugh.\n\n\"You mean...?\"\n\n\"Right,\" said Chesney with a grin. \"You're dead.\"\n\n\"Dead?\"\n\n\"Dead. Join the club, sweetheart.\"\n\n\"How can I be dead?\"\n\n\"Remember the assassin at the SuperHoop?\"\n\nI touched the hole in my head again. \"I was shot.\"\n\n\"In the head. Get out of that one, Miss Next!\"\n\n\"Landen must be devastated,\" I murmured, \"and I have to take Friday for a health checkup on Tuesday.\"\n\n\"Ain't none of your concern no longer!\" sneered Chesney's sidekick, and they walked off, laughing loudly.\n\nI turned to the steps of the pedestrian footbridge that led towards the Northside and looked around. Oddly, I didn't feel any great fear about being dead\u2014I just wished I'd had the chance to say goodbye to the boys. I took the first step on the staircase when I heard a screeching of tires and a loud crash. A car had just pulled outside the services, jumped the curb and collided with a rubbish bin. A large man had leapt out and was running through the doors, looking up and down in desperation until he saw me. It was Spike.\n\n\"Thursday!\" he gasped. \"Thank heavens I got to you before you went across!\"\n\n\"You're alive?\"\n\n\"Of course. It took me two days of driving up and down the M4 to get here. Looks like I was just in time.\"\n\n\"In time? In time for what?\"\n\n\"I'm taking you home.\"\n\nHe gave me his car keys.\n\n\"That's the ignition, but the engine starter is a pushbutton in the middle of the dash.\"\n\n\"Middle of the dash, okay. What about you?\"\n\n\"I've got some unfinished business with Chesney, so I'll see you on the other side.\"\n\nHe gave me a hug and trotted off towards the newsagents'.\n\nI walked outside and got into Spike's car, grateful that I had a friend like him who knew how to deal with things like this. I'd be seeing Friday and Landen again, and everything would be just hunky-dory. I pressed the starter, reversed off the rubbish bin and drove towards the exit. I wondered if we'd won the SuperHoop. I should have asked Spike. SPIKE!!!\n\nI stomped on the brakes and reversed rapidly back to the services, jumped out of the car and ran across the footbridge leading to the Northside of the Dauntsey services.\n\nOnly it wasn't the Northside, of course. It was a large cavern of incalculable age lit by dozens of burning torches. The stalactites and stalagmites had joined, giving the impression of organic Doric columns supporting the high roof, and snaking amongst the columns and the boulder-strewn floor was an orderly queue of departed souls who had lined up ready to cross the river that guarded the entrance to the underworld. The lone ferryman was doing a brisk trade; for an extra shilling, you could be taken on a guided tour on the way. Another entrepreneur was selling guides to the underworld: how best to ensure that the departed soul went to a land of milk of honey and, for the more dubious characters, a few helpful hints on how to square yourself with the Big Guy on Judgment Day.\n\nI ran up the queue and found Spike ten souls from the front.\n\n\"Absolutely no way, Spike!\"\n\n\"Shhh!\" said someone ahead of us.\n\n\"Nuts to you, Thursday. Just look after Betty, would you?\"\n\n\"You are not taking my place, Spike.\"\n\n\"Let me do this, Thursday. You deserve a long life. You have many wonderful things in front of you.\"\n\n\"So do you.\"\n\n\"It's debatable. Battling the undead was never a bowl of cherries. And without Cindy?\"\n\n\"She's not dead, Spike.\"\n\n\"If she pulls through they'll never let her out of jail. She was the Windowmaker. No, after the shit I've been through, this actually seems like a good option. I'm staying.\"\n\n\"You are not.\"\n\n\"Try and stop me.\"\n\n\"Shhh!\" said the man in front again.\n\n\"I won't let you do it, Spike. Think of Betty. Besides, I'm the one that's dead, not you. SECURITY!\"\n\nA moldy skeleton holding a lance and dressed in rusty armor clanked up. \"What's going on here?\"\n\nI stabbed a finger at Spike. \"This man's not dead.\"\n\n\"Not dead?\" replied the guard in a shocked tone. The queue of people all turned around to stare as the guard drew a rusty sword and pointed it at Spike, who reluctantly raised his hands and, head shaking sadly, walked back towards the footbridge.\n\n\"Tell Landen and Friday I love them!\" I yelled at his departing form, suddenly realizing that I should have asked him who'd won the SuperHoop. I turned to the queue behind me that snaked amongst the boulder-strewn cavern and said, \"Does anyone know the results of SuperHoop-88?\"\n\n\"Shhh!\" said the man in front again.\n\n\"Why don't you poke your 'shhh' up your\u2014Oh. Hello, Mr. President.\"\n\nAs soon as he recognized me, Formby gave me a broad toothy grin. \"Eeee, Miss Next! Is this that theme park again?\"\n\n\"Sort of.\"\n\nI was glad that the trip across the river led up as well as down. One thing was for sure: unless there had been some sort of dreadful administrative mix-up, Formby was certainly not bound for eternal torment within the all-consuming flames of hell.\n\n\"So... how are you?\" I asked, momentarily lost for words when confronted with the biggest\u2014and last\u2014celebrity I would be likely to meet.\n\n\"Pretty good, lass. One moment I was giving a concert, next thing I was in the cafeteria ordering pie and chips for one.\"\n\nSpike had said he'd driven for two days to get to me, so it must be the twenty-fourth\u2014and, as Dad had predicted, Formby had died as he had been meant to, performing for the Lancaster Regiment Veterans. My heart fell as I realized that the days following Formby's death would mark the beginning of World War III. Still, it was out of my hands now.\n\nThe boat arrived for the ex-President, and he stepped in. The ferryman pushed the small craft into the limpid waters of the river and dropped his pole into the dark waters.\n\n\"Mr. Formby, isn't it?\" said the ferryman. \"I'm a big fan of yours. I had that Mr. Garrick in the back of my boat once. Do you do requests?\"\n\n\"Ooh, aye,\" replied the entertainer, \"but I don't have me uke with me.\"\n\n\"Borrow mine,\" said the ferryman. \"I do a bit of entertaining myself, you know.\"\n\nFormby picked up the ukulele and strummed the strings. \"What would you like?\"\n\nThe ferryman told him, and the dour cavern was soon filled with a chirpy rendition of \"We've Been a Long Time Gone.\" It seemed a fitting way to go for the old man who had given so much to so many\u2014not only as an entertainer but as freedom fighter and elder statesman. The boat, Formby and the ferryman disappeared into the mist that drifted across the river, obscuring the far bank and muting the sound. It was my turn next. What had Gran said? The worst bit about dying is not knowing how it all turns out? Still, at least I'd got Landen back, so Friday was in good hands.\n\n\"Miss Next?\"\n\nI looked up. The ferryman had returned. He was dressed in a sort of dirty muslin cloth; I couldn't see his face.\n\n\"You have the fare?\"\n\nI dug out a coin and was about to hand it over when\u2014\n\n\"WAIT!!!\"\n\nI turned around as a petite young woman trotted up, out of breath. She brushed the blond hair from her face and smiled shyly at me. It was Cindy.\n\n\"I'm taking her place,\" she told the ferryman, handing over a coin.\n\n\"How can you?\" I said in some surprise. \"You're almost dead yourself!\"\n\n\"No,\" she corrected me, \"I'm not. And what's more, I pull through. I shouldn't, but I do. Sometimes the devil looks after his own.\"\n\n\"But you'll leave Spike and Betty\u2014\"\n\n\"Listen to me for a moment, Thursday. I've killed sixty-eight people in my career.\"\n\n\"So you did do Samuel Pring.\"\n\n\"It was a fluke. But listen: sixty-eight innocent souls sent across this river before their time, all down to me. And I did it all for cash. You can play the self-righteous card for all I care, but the fact remains that I'll never see the light of day when I recover, and I'll never get to hold Betty again, or hug Spike. I don't want that. You're a better person than me, Thursday, and the world is far better off with you in it.\"\n\n\"But that's not the point, surely?\" I asked. \"When it's time to go\u2014\"\n\n\"Look,\" she interrupted angrily, \"let me do one good thing to make up for even one-quarter of one percent of the misery I've caused.\"\n\nI stared at her as the skeleton in rusty armor clanked up again. \"More trouble, Miss Next?\"\n\n\"Give us a minute, will you?\"\n\n\"Please,\" implored Cindy. \"You'd be doing me a favor.\"\n\nI looked at the skeleton, who probably would have rolled his eyes if he had any.\n\n\"It's your decision, Miss Next,\" said the guard, \"but someone has to take that boat or I'm out of a job\u2014and I've got a bony wife and two small skeletons to put through college.\"\n\nI turned back to Cindy, put out my hand and she shook it, then pulled me forward and hugged me tightly while whispering in my ear, \"Thank you, Thursday. Keep an eye on Spike for me.\"\n\nShe hopped quickly into the boat before I had a chance to change my mind. She gave a wan smile and sat in the bows as the ferryman leaned on his pole, sending the small boat noiselessly across the river. Against the burden of her sins, saving me was only small recompense, but she felt better for it, and so did I. As the boat containing Cindy faded into the mists of the river, I turned and walked back towards the pedestrian footbridge, the Southside of the Dauntsey services\u2014and life."
            },
            {
                "title": "Explanations",
                "text": "\u2002State Funeral Attracts World's Leaders\n\n\u2002Millions of heartbroken citizens of England and the most important world leaders arrived in Wigan yesterday to pay tribute to President George Formby, who died two weeks ago. The funeral cortege was driven on a circuitous route of the Midlands, the streets lined with mourners, eager to bid a final goodbye to England's President of the past thirty-nine years. At the memorial service in Wigan Cathedral, the new Chancellor, Mr. Redmond van de Poste, spoke warmly of the great man's contribution to world peace. After the Lancashire Male Voice Choir sang \"With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock,\" accompanied by two hundred ukuleles, the Chancellor invited the Queen of Denmark to sing with him a duet of \"Your Way Is My Way,\" something that \"might well serve to patch the rift between our respective nations.\"\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, August 4, 1988\n\nIt was touch and go for a moment,\" said Landen, who was sitting by my hospital bed holding my hand. \"There was a moment when we really didn't think you'd make it.\"\n\nI gave a wan smile. I had regained consciousness only the day before, and every movement felt like daggers in my head. I looked around. Joffy and Miles and Hamlet were there, too. \"Hi, guys.\"\n\nThey smiled and welcomed me back.\n\n\"How long?\" I asked in a whisper.\n\n\"Two weeks,\" said Landen. \"We really thought... thought\u2014\"\n\nI gently squeezed his hand and looked around.\n\nLand divined my thoughts perfectly. \"He's with his grandmother.\"\n\nI raised a hand to touch the side of my head but could feel only a heavy bandage. Landen took my hand and returned it to the sheet.\n\n\"What...?\"\n\n\"You were astonishingly lucky,\" he said in a soothing tone. \"The doctors say you'll make a full recovery. The caliber was quite small, and it entered your skull obliquely; by the time it had gone through, most of the energy was gone.\" He tapped the side of his head. \"It lodged between your brain and the inside of the skull. Gave us quite a fright, though.\"\n\n\"Cindy died, didn't she?\"\n\nJoffy answered. \"Looked to be improving, but then septicemia set in.\"\n\n\"They really loved one another, you know, despite their differences.\"\n\n\"She was a hit woman, Thursday, a trained assassin. I don't think she regarded death as anything more than an occupational hazard.\"\n\nI nodded. He was right.\n\nLanden leaned forwards and kissed my nose.\n\n\"Who shot me, Land?\"\n\n\"Does the name 'Norman Johnson' mean anything to you?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"The Minotaur. You were right. He'd been trying to slapstick me to death all week\u2014steamroller, banana skin, piano\u2014I was a fool not to see it. Mind you, a gun's hardly slapstick, is it?\"\n\nLanden smiled.\n\n\"It had a large BANG sign that came out of the barrel, as well as the bullet. The police are still trying to make sense of it.\"\n\nI sighed. The Minotaur was long gone but I'd still have to be careful. I turned to Landen. There was still something I needed to know.\n\n\"Did we win?\"\n\n\"Of course. You pegged a foot closer than O'Fathens. Your shot has been voted Sporting Moment of the Century\u2014in Swindon, at any rate.\"\n\n\"So we aren't at war with Wales?\"\n\nLanden shook his head and smiled. \"Kaine's finished, my darling\u2014and Goliath has abandoned all attempts to become a religion. St. Zvlkx does indeed work in mysterious ways.\"\n\n\"Are you going to tell me?\" I said with a wan smile. \"Or do I have to beat it out of you with a stick?\"\n\nJoffy unfolded the picture of St. Zvlkx and Cindy's fatal pianoing on Commercial Road, the one from the Swindon Evening Globe that Gran had given me.\n\n\"We found this in your back pocket,\" said Miles,\n\n\"And it got us to thinking,\" continued Joffy, \"exactly where Zvlkx was heading that morning and why he had the ticket for the Gravitube in his bedroom. He was cutting his losses and running. I don't think even Zvlkx\u2014or whoever he was\u2014believed that Swindon could possibly win the SuperHoop. Dad had always said that time wasn't immutable.\"\n\n\"I don't get it.\"\n\nMiles leaned forward and showed me the picture again. \"He died trying to get to Tudor Turf Accounting.\"\n\n\"So? Oldest betting shop in Swindon.\"\n\n\"No\u2014in the world. We made a few calls. It had been trading continually since 1264.\"\n\nI looked at Joffy quizzically. \"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"That the Book of Revealments was nothing of the kind\u2014it's a thirteenth-century betting slip!\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\nHe pulled Zvlkx's Revealments from his pocket and opened it to the front page. There was a countersigned receipt for a farthing that we had thought was a bookbinder's tax or something. The small arithmetical sum next to each revealment was actually the odds against that particular event's coming true, each one countersigned by the same signature as on the front page. Joffy flicked through the slim volume.\n\n\"The Spanish Armada revealment had been given the odds of 600-1, Wellington's victory at Waterloo 420-1.\" He flicked to the final page. \"The outcome of the croquet match was set at 124,000-1. The odds were generous because Zvlkx was betting on things centuries before they happened\u2014indeed, centuries before croquet was even thought of. No wonder the person who had underwritten the bet felt confident to offer such odds.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"don't hold your breath. A hundred twenty-four thousand farthings only adds up to... up to...\"\n\n\"One hundred and thirty quid,\" put in Miles.\n\n\"Right. One hundred and thirty quid. Nelson's victory would net Zvlkx only\u2014what? Nine bob?\"\n\nI still didn't quite get it.\n\n\"Thursday\u2014it's a totalizer. Each bet or event that comes true is multiplied by the winnings of the previous event\u2014and any prophecy that didn't come true would have negated the whole deal.\"\n\n\"So... how much are the revealments worth?\"\n\nJoffy looked at Miles, who looked at Landen, who grinned and looked at Joffy.\n\n\"One hundred and twenty-eight billion pounds.\"\n\n\"But Tudor Turf wouldn't have that sort of cash!\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" replied Miles, \"but the parent company that underwrites Tudor Turf would be legally bound to meet all bets drawn up. And Tudor Turf is owned by Wessex Cashcow, which is itself owned by Tails You Lose, the wholly owned gaming division of Consolidated Glee, which is owned by\u2014\"\n\n\"The Goliath Corporation,\" I breathed.\n\n\"Right.\"\n\nThere was a stunned silence. I wanted to jump out of bed and laugh and scream and run around, but that, I knew, would have to be postponed until I was in better health. For now I just smiled.\n\n\"So how much of Goliath does the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx actually own?\"\n\n\"Well,\" continued Joffy, \"it doesn't actually own any of it. If you recall, we sold all his wisdom to the Toast Marketing Board. They now own fifty-eight percent of Goliath. We told them what we wanted, and they wholeheartedly agreed. Goliath has dropped its plans to become a religion and decided to support another political party other than the Whigs. There was something in the deal about a new cathedral to be built, too. We won, Thursday\u2014we won!\"\n\nKaine's fall, I discovered, had been rapid and humiliating. Once he was without Goliath's backing and minus his Ovinator, parliament suddenly started wondering why they had been following him so blindly, and those who had supported him turned against him with the same enthusiasm. In less than a week he realized just what it was to be human. All the vanity and plotting and conniving that worked so well for him when fictional didn't seem to have the same power at all when spoken with a real tongue, and he was removed from office within three days of the SuperHoop. Ernst Stricknene, questioned at length over calls made to Cindy Stoker from his office, decided to save as much of his skin as he could and talked at great length about his former boss. Kaine now had to face the biggest array of indictments ever heaped upon a public figure in the history of England. So many, in fact, that it was easier to list the offenses he wasn't indicted for\u2014which were: \"working as an unlicensed nanny\" and \"using a car horn in a built-up area during the hours of darkness.\" If found guilty on all charges, he was facing more than nine hundred years in prison.\n\n\"I almost feel sorry for him,\" said Joffy, who was a lot more forgiving than I. \"Poor Yorrick.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Hamlet sarcastically, \"alas.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Recovery",
                "text": "\u2002Toast Party Unveils Manifesto\n\n\u2002Mr. Redmond van de Poste, whose ruling Toast (formerly Commonsense) Party took control of the nation last week, announced the party's manifesto to raise the country from economic and social collapse. Mr. van de Poste began by announcing mandatory toast-eating requirements for all citizens on a sliding scale based on age, then proposed a drive to place a new toaster in every home within a year. \"In the long term,\" continued Mr. van de Poste, \"we will instigate a five-year plan to upgrade all our manufacturing facilities to build a new brand of supertoaster that will sweep aside all competition and make England the toast capital of the world.\" Critics of the Toast manifesto indicated alarm at Poste's strident calls for a North Atlantic Toast Alliance, and pointed out that by excluding non-toast-eating nations it would create unnecessary international tension. Mr. van de Poste has not yet responded, and has called for a reform of parliament.\n\n\u2014Article in The Toad, August 4, 1988\n\nI went home two weeks later to a house that was so full of flowers it looked like Kew Gardens. I still didn't have complete command of the right-hand side of my body but every day it seemed a little bit more like part of me, a little less numb. I sat and looked out the open French windows into the garden. The air was heavy with the scents of summer and the breeze gently played upon the net curtains. Friday was drawing with some crayons on the floor and I could hear the clacketty-clack of Landen's old Underwood typewriter next door, and in the kitchen Louis Armstrong was on the wireless singing \"La Vie en Rose.\" It was the first time I had been able to relax for almost as long as I could remember. I was going to need an extended convalescence but would go back to work eventually\u2014perhaps at SpecOps, perhaps at Jurisfiction, perhaps both.\n\n\"I came to say goodbye.\"\n\nIt was Hamlet. I had learned from him earlier that William Shgakespeafe had managed to extricate Hamlet from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and both plays were as they should be. The one enigmatic, the other a spin-off.\n\n\"Are you sure you're\u2014\"\n\nHe silenced me with a wave of his hand and sat down on the sofa while Alan gazed at him adoringly.\n\n\"I've learned a lot of things while I've been here,\" he said. \"I've learned that there are many Hamlets, and we love each one of them for their different interpretation. I liked Gibson's because it has the least amount of dithering, Orson because he did it with the best voice, Gielgud for the ease in which he placed himself within the role and Jacobi for his passion. By the way, have you heard of this Branagh fellow?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"He's just starting to get going. I've got a feeling his Hamlet will be stupendous.\"\n\nHe thought for a moment.\n\n\"For centuries I've been worrying about audiences seeing me as a mouthy spoiled brat who can't make up his mind about anything, but, having seen the real world, I can understand the appeal. My play is popular because my failings are your failings, my indecision the indecision of you all. We all know what has to be done; it's just that sometimes we don't know how to get there. Acting without thought doesn't really help in the long run. I might dither for a while, but at least I make the right decision in the end: I bear my troubles and take arms against them. And thereby lies a message for all mankind, although I'm not exactly sure what it is. Perhaps there's no message. I don't really know. Besides, if I don't dither, there's no play.\"\n\n\"So you're not going to kill your uncle in the first act?\"\n\n\"No. In fact, I'm going to leave the play exactly as it is. I've decided instead to focus my energies towards being the Jurisfiction agent for all of Shakespeare's works. I'll have a go at Marlowe, too\u2014but I'm not keen on Webster.\"\n\n\"That's excellent news,\" I told him. \"Jurisfiction will be very happy.\"\n\nHe paused. \"I'm still a bit annoyed that someone told Ophelia about Emma. It wasn't you, was it?\"\n\n\"On my honor.\"\n\nHe got up, bowed and kissed my hand. \"Come and visit me, won't you?\"\n\n\"You can count on it,\" I replied. \"Just one question: where on earth did you find Daphne Farquitt? She's the recluse's recluse.\"\n\nHe grinned. \"I didn't. By the morning of the SuperHoop, I had managed to gather about nine people. There's a limit to how much anti-Kaine sentiment you can muster going door to door in Swindon at two in the morning.\"\n\n\"So there never was a Farquitt Fan Club?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm sure there is somewhere, but Kaine didn't know it, now, did he?\"\n\nI laughed. \"I've a feeling you're going to be an asset to Jurisfiction, Hamlet. And I want you to take something with you as a gift from me.\"\n\n\"A gift? I don't think I've ever had one of those before.\"\n\n\"No? Well, always a first for everything. I want you to have... Alan.\"\n\n\"The dodo?\"\n\n\"I think he'd be an invaluable addition to Elsinore Castle\u2014just don't let him get into the main story.\"\n\nHamlet looked at Alan, who looked back at him longingly.\n\n\"Thank you,\" he said with as much sincerity as he could. \"I'm deeply honored.\"\n\nAlan went a bit floppy as Hamlet picked him up, and a few moments later they both vanished back to Elsinore, Hamlet to further continue his work as a career procrastinator, and Alan to cause trouble in the Danish court.\n\n\"Hello, Sweetpea.\"\n\n\"Hi, Dad.\"\n\n\"You did a terrific job over that SuperHoop. How are you feeling?\"\n\n\"Pretty good.\"\n\n\"Did I tell you that as soon as Zvlkx got hit by that Number 23 bus, the Ultimate Likelihood Index of that Armageddon rose to eighty-three percent?\"\n\n\"No, you never told me that.\"\n\n\"Just as well really\u2014I wouldn't have wanted you to panic.\"\n\n\"Dad, who was St. Zvlkx?\"\n\nHe leaned closer. \"Don't tell a soul, but he was someone named Steve Schultz of the Toast Marketing Board. I think I might have recruited him, or he might have approached me to help\u2014I'm not sure. History has rewritten itself so many times I'm really not sure how it was to begin with\u2014it's a bit like trying to guess the original color of a wall when it's been repainted eight times. All I can say is that everything turned out okay\u2014and that things are far weirder than we can know. But the main thing is that Goliath now answers to the Toast Marketing Board and Kaine is out of power. The whole thing has been rubber-stamped into historical fact, and that's the way it's going to stay.\"\n\n\"Dad?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"How did you manage to jump Schultz or Zvlkx or whoever he was all the way from the thirteenth century without the ChronoGuard spotting what you were up to?\"\n\n\"Where do you hide a pebble, Sweetpea?\"\n\n\"On a beach.\"\n\n\"And where do you hide a thirteenth-century impostor saint?\"\n\n\"With... lots of other thirteenth-century impostor saints?\"\n\nHe smiled.\n\n\"You sent all twenty-eight of them forward just to hide St. Zvlkx?\"\n\n\"Twenty-seven, actually\u2014one of them was real. But I didn't do it alone. I needed someone to whip up a timephoon in the Dark Ages as cover. Someone with remarkable skills as a time traveler. An expert who can surf the time line with a skill I will never possess.\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"No, silly\u2014Friday.\"\n\nThe little boy looked up when he heard his name and chewed a crayon, made a face and spat the bits on Pickwick, who jumped up in fright and ran away to hide.\n\n\"Meet the future head of the ChronoGuard, Sweetpea. How did you think he survived Landen's eradication?\"\n\nI stared at the little boy, who stared back, and smiled.\n\nDad looked at his watch. \"Well, I've got to go. Nelson's up to his old tricks again. Time waits for no man, as we say.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Final Curtain",
                "text": "\u2002Neanderthals Make New Year's \"At Risk\" List\n\n\u2002Neanderthals, the once extinct cousins of Homo sapien, were yesterday granted \"at risk\" status along with the Edible Dormouse and Poorly Crested Grebe. Incoming Chancellor Mr. Redmond van de Poste of the Toast Party granted them this honor as recognition of their work during the Swindon-Reading SuperHoop. Mr. van de Poste met with neanderthals and read from a specially prepared speech. \"Personally, I really don't give a button over your status,\" he told them, \"but it's politically expedient and vote-winning to be doing something to help lowly clods like you gain some sort of limited freedom.\" His speech was received warmly by the neanderthals, who were expecting half-truths and disinformation. \"An application to become 'endangered,'\" continued Mr. van de Poste, \"will be looked at on its merits in the New Year\u2014if we can be bothered.\"\n\n\u2014Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, September 7, 1988\n\nI was well enough to be given an award three weeks later at a mayoral lunch. Lord Volescamper presented the whole SuperHoop team with a special \"Swindon Star\" medal, especially struck for the purpose. The only neanderthal to show up was Stig, who understood what it meant to me, even if he couldn't truly understand the concept of individual aggrandizement.\n\nThere was a party afterwards, and everyone wanted to chat to me, mostly to ask me if I would play any more professional croquet. I met Handley Paige again, who jumped when he saw me and downed a drink nervously.\n\n\"I've decided not to kill off my Emperor Zhark character,\" he announced quickly. \"I'd just like to make that point right now, in case anyone might think I was going to stop writing Zhark books, which I'm not. Not at all. Not ever.\" He looked around nervously.\n\n\"I'm sorry?\" I said. \"I'm not sure I understand.\"\n\n\"Oh... right,\" he replied sarcastically, tried to drink from his empty glass and then strode off to the bar.\n\n\"What was all that about?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"Search me.\"\n\nSpike was at the party, too, and he sidled up to me as I was fetching another drink.\n\n\"What did she say to you when she took your place?\"\n\nI turned to face him; I wasn't surprised that he knew Cindy had replaced me. The semidead was his field of expertise, after all.\n\n\"She said that she wanted to make up for some of the misery she had caused, and she knew she would never hold either you or Betty again.\"\n\n\"You could have refused her, but I'm glad you didn't. I loved her, but she was rotten to the core.\"\n\nHe fell silent for a moment and I touched him on the arm.\n\n\"Not entirely rotten, Spike. She loved you both very much.\"\n\nHe looked at me and smiled.\n\n\"I know. You did the right thing, Thursday. Thank you.\"\n\nAnd he hugged me, and was gone.\n\nI answered lots more questions regarding the SuperHoop match, and when I decided enough was enough, I asked Landen to take me home.\n\nWe drove towards home in the Speedster, Landen driving and Friday in a baby seat in the back, right next to Pickwick, who didn't want to be left alone now that Alan had gone.\n\n\"Land?\"\n\n\"Mmm?\"\n\n\"Did you ever think it odd that I survived?\"\n\n\"I'm grateful that you did, of course\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop the car a minute.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Just do as I say.\"\n\nHe pulled up, and I very carefully climbed out and walked towards where two familiar figures were sitting on the pavement outside a Goliath Coffee Shop. I approached silently and sat down next to the larger of the two before he'd even noticed. He looked around and jumped visibly when he saw me.\n\n\"Once,\" said a sad and familiar voice, \"you would never have been able to sneak up on a Gryphon!\"\n\nI smiled. He was a creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. He wore spectacles and a scarf under his trench coat, which somewhat dented his otherwise fearsome appearance. He was fictional, to be sure, but he was also head of Jurisfiction's legal team, my lawyer\u2014and a friend.\n\n\"Gryphon!\" I said with some surprise. \"What are you doing in the Outland?\"\n\n\"Here to see you,\" he whispered, looking around and lowering his voice. \"Have you met Mock Turtle? He's now my number two at the legal desk.\"\n\nHe gestured towards where a turtle with the head of a calf was staring mournfully into space. He was, like the Gryphon, straight out of the pages of Alice in Wonderland.\n\n\"How do you do?\"\n\n\"Okay\u2014I suppose,\" sighed the Mock Turtle, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief.\n\n\"So what's up?\" I asked.\n\n\"It's quite serious\u2014too serious for the footnoterphone. And I needed an excuse to do some Outlander research on traffic islands. Fascinating things.\"\n\nI felt hot and prickly all of a sudden. Not about traffic islands, of course, about my conviction. The Fiction Infraction. I had changed the ending of Jane Eyre and was found guilty by the Court of Hearts. All that was missing was the sentence.\n\n\"What did I get?\"\n\n\"It's not that bad!\" exclaimed the Gryphon, snapping his fingers at the Mock Turtle, who passed him a sheet of paper now stained with his own tears.\n\nI took the paper and scanned the semiblurred contents.\n\n\"It's a bit unusual,\" admitted the Gryphon. \"I think the bit about the gingham is unnaturally cruel\u2014might be the cause of an appeal on its own.\"\n\nI stared at the paper. \"Twenty years of my life in blue gingham,\" I murmured.\n\n\"And you can't die until you've read the ten most boring books,\" added the Gryphon.\n\n\"My gran had to do the same,\" I explained, feeling just a little puzzled.\n\n\"Not possible,\" said the Mock Turtle, drying his eyes. \"This sentence is unique, as befits the crime. You can take the twenty years of gingham anytime you want\u2014not necessarily now.\"\n\n\"But my gran had this punishment\u2014\"\n\n\"You're mistaken,\" replied the Gryphon firmly, retrieving the paper, folding it and placing it in his pocket, \"and we had better be off. Will you be at Bradshaw's golden wedding anniversary?\"\n\n\"Y-es,\" I said slowly, still confused.\n\n\"Good. Page 221, Bradshaw and the Diamond of M'shala. It's bring-a-bottle-and-a-banana. Drag your husband along. I know he's real, but no one's perfect\u2014we'd all like to meet him.\"\n\n\"Thank you. What about\u2014\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" said the Gryphon, consulting a large pocketwatch. \"Is that the time? We've got a lobster quadrille to perform in ten pages!\"\n\nThe Mock Turtle cheered up a bit when he heard this, and in a moment they were gone.\n\nI walked slowly back to where Landen and Friday were waiting for me in the car.\n\n\"Dah!\" said Friday really loudly.\n\n\"There!\" said Landen. \"He most definitely said 'Dad'!\" He noticed my furrowed brow. \"What's up?\"\n\n\"Landen, my gran on my mother's side died in 1968.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Well, if she died then, and Dad's mum died in 1979...\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Then who is that up at the Goliath Twilight Homes?\"\n\n\"I've never met her,\" explained Landen. \"I thought 'Gran' was a term of endearment.\"\n\nI didn't answer. I had thought she was my gran but she wasn't. In fact, I'd known her only about three years. Before that I had never set eyes on her before. Perhaps that's less than accurate. I had seen her whenever I stared into a mirror, but she had been a lot younger. Gran wasn't my gran. Gran was me.\n\nLanden drove me up to the Goliath Twilight Homes, and I went in alone, leaving Landen and Friday in the car. I made my way with heavily beating heart to her room and found the ward sister bending over the gently dozing form of the old, old woman that I would eventually become.\n\n\"Is she suffering much?\"\n\n\"The painkillers keep it under control,\" replied the nurse. \"Family?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"we're very close.\"\n\n\"She's a remarkable woman,\" murmured the nurse. \"It's a wonder she's still with us at all.\"\n\n\"It was a punishment,\" I said.\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"Never mind. It won't be long now.\"\n\nI moved closer to the bed, and she opened her eyes.\n\n\"Hello, young Thursday!\" said Gran, waving at me weakly. She took off the oxygen mask, was roundly scolded by the nurse and put it back on again.\n\n\"You're not my gran, are you?\" I said slowly, sitting on the bedside.\n\nShe smiled benevolently and placed her small and pink wrinkled hand on mine.\n\n\"I am Granny Next,\" she replied, \"just not yours. When did you find out?\"\n\n\"I got my sentencing from the Gryphon just now.\"\n\nNow that I knew, she seemed more familiar to me than ever before. I even noticed the small scar on her chin, from the Charge of the Armored Brigade way back in '72, and the wellhealed scar above her eye.\n\n\"Why did I never realize?\" I asked her in confusion. \"My real grandmothers are both dead\u2014and I always knew that.\"\n\nThe tired old woman smiled again. \"You don't have Aornis in one's head without learning a few tricks, my dear. My time with you has not been wasted. Our husband would not have survived without it, and Aornis could have erased everything when we were living in Caversham Heights. Where is he, by the way?\"\n\n\"He's looking after the boy Friday outside.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\nShe looked into my eyes for a moment, then said, \"Will you tell him I love him?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Well, now that you know who I am, I think it's time to go. I did find the ten most boring classics\u2014and I've almost finished the last.\"\n\n\"I thought you had to have an 'epiphanic moment' before you departed? A last exciting resolution to your life?\"\n\n\"This is it, young Thursday. But it's not mine, it's ours. Now, pick up that copy of Faerie Queen. I am one hundred and ten, and it is well past my out time.\"\n\nI looked across at the table and picked up the book. I had never read the end\u2014nor even past page 40. It was that dull.\n\n\"Don't you have to read it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Me, you, what's the difference?\" She giggled, something that turned into a weak cough that wouldn't stop until I had leaned her gently upright.\n\n\"Thank you, my dear!\" she gasped when the fit had passed. \"There is only a paragraph to go. The page is marked.\"\n\nI opened the book but didn't want to read the text. My eyes filled with tears, and I looked at the old woman, only to be met by a soft smile.\n\n\"It is time,\" she said simply, \"but I envy you\u2014you have so many wonderful years ahead of you! Read, please.\"\n\nI wiped away my tears and had a sudden thought.\n\n\"But if I read this now,\" I began slowly, \"then when I am one hundred and ten years old, I will already have read it, and then I'd be\u2014you know\u2014just before the last sentence before I... that is, the younger me...\" I paused, thinking about the seemingly impossible paradox.\n\n\"Dear Thursday!\" said the old woman kindly, \"always so linear! It does work, believe me. Things are just so much weirder than we can know. You'll find out in due course, as I did.\"\n\nShe smiled benignly, and I opened the book.\n\n\"Is there anything you need to tell me?\"\n\nShe smiled again.\n\n\"No, my dear. Some things are best left unsaid. You and Landen will have a wonderful time together, mark my words. Read on, young Thursday!\"\n\nThere was a ripple, and my father was standing on the other side of the bed.\n\n\"Dad!\" said the old woman. \"Thank you for coming!\"\n\n\"I wouldn't miss it, oh, daughter-my-daughter,\" he said softly, bending down to kiss her on the forehead and hold her hand. \"I've brought a few people with me.\"\n\nAnd there he was, the young man whom I had seen with Lavoisier at my wedding party. He laid a hand on hers and kissed her.\n\n\"Friday!\" said the old woman. \"How old are your children at the moment?\"\n\n\"Here, Mum. Ask them yourself!\"\n\nAnd there they were, next to Friday's wife, whom he had yet to meet. She was a one-year-old somewhere, with no idea of her future either. There were two children with her. Two grandchildren of mine, who had yet to be even thought of, let alone born. I continued reading Faerie Queen, slowly pacing myself as more people rippled in to see the old woman before she left.\n\n\"Tuesday!\" said the old woman as another person appeared. It was my daughter. We'd vaguely talked about her, but that was all\u2014and here she was, a sprightly sixty-year-old. She had brought her children, too, and one of them had brought hers.\n\nIn all, I think I saw twenty-eight descendants of mine that afternoon, all of them somber and only one of them yet born. When they had said their goodbyes and rippled from sight, other visitors appeared to see her. There was Emperor and Empress Zhark, and Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, who were never to age at all. The Cheshire Cat came, too, and several Miss Havishams, as well as a delegation of lobsters from the distant future, a large man smoking a cigar and several other people who rippled in and out in a polite manner. I carried on reading, holding her other hand as the fire of life slowly faded from her tired body. By the time I had started on the final verse of Faerie Queen, her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow. The last of the guests had gone, and only my father and I were left.\n\nI finished the verse, and my sentence was complete. Twenty years of gingham and ten boring books. I closed the volume and laid it on the bed next to her. Already her face had drained of color, and her mouth was partly open. I was alerted by a quiet sniffle next to me. I had never seen my father cry before, but even now large tears rolled silently down his cheeks. He thanked me and departed, leaving me alone with the woman in the bed, the nurse discreetly waiting at the door. I felt sad in that I had lost a valued companion, but no great sense of grief. After all, I was still very much alive. I had learned from my own father's death many years ago that the end of one's life and dying are two very different things indeed, and took solace in that.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" asked Landen when I got back to the car. \"You look as though you've seen a ghost!\"\n\n\"Several,\" I replied. \"I think I just saw my whole life pass in front of my eyes.\"\n\n\"Do I feature?\"\n\n\"Quite a lot, Land.\"\n\n\"I had my life flash in front of me once,\" he said. \"Trouble is, I blinked and missed all the good bits.\"\n\n\"It will need more than a blink,\" I told him, nuzzling his ear. \"How's the little man?\"\n\n\"Tired after a lot of pointing.\"\n\nI looked into the backseat. Friday was spark out and snoring.\n\nLanden started the car and pulled out of the parking space.\n\n\"Who was the old woman, by the way?\" he asked as we turned into the main road. \"You never did tell me.\"\n\nI thought for a moment. \"Someone who knew me really well and turned up when it mattered.\"\n\n\"I have someone like that,\" said Landen, \"and if she's feeling up to it, I'd like to take her out for dinner. Where do you fancy?\"\n\nI thought of the old woman in the bed, dressed in gingham, hanging on for the last verse, and all the people who had come to see her off. Life, I decided, would be good and, more than that, unusual.\n\n\"If I'm with you,\" I told him tenderly, \"SmileyBurger is the Ritz.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ First Among Sequels ]\n\nThe Swindon that I knew in 2002 had a lot going for it. A busy financial center coupled with excellent infrastructure and surrounded by green and peaceful countryside had made the city about as popular a place as you might find anywhere in the nation. We had our own forty-thousand-seat croquet stadium, the recently finished Cathedral of St. Zvlkx, a concert hall, two local TV networks and the only radio station in En gland dedicated solely to mariachi music. Our central position in southern En gland also made us the hub for high-speed overland travel from the newly appointed Clary-LaMarr Travelport. It was little wonder that we called Swindon \"the Jewel on the M4.\"\n\nThe dangerously high level of the stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in The Owl that morning. The reason for the crisis was clear: Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste and his ruling Commonsense Party had been discharging their duties with a reckless degree of responsibility that bordered on inspired sagacity. Instead of drifting from one crisis to the next and appeasing the nation with a steady stream of knee-jerk legislation and headline-grabbing but arguably pointless initiatives, they had been resolutely building a raft of considered long-term plans that concentrated on unity, fairness and tolerance. It was a state of affairs deplored by Mr. Alfredo Traficcone, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, who wanted to lead the nation back onto the safer grounds of uninformed stupidity.\n\n\"How could they let it get this bad?\" asked Landen as he walked into the kitchen, having just dispatched our daughters off to school. They walked themselves, naturally; Tuesday was twelve and took great pride in looking after Jenny, who was now ten.\n\n\"Sorry?\" I said, my mind full of other matters, foremost among them the worrying possibility that Pickwick's plumage might never grow back, and that she would have to spend the rest of her life looking like a supermarket oven-ready chicken.\n\n\"The stupidity surplus,\" repeated Landen as he sat down at the kitchen table, \"I'm all for responsible government, but storing it up like this is bound to cause problems sooner or later\u2014even by acting sensibly, the government has shown itself to be a bunch of idiots.\"\n\n\"There are a lot of idiots in this country,\" I replied absently, \"and they deserve representation as much as the next man.\"\n\nBut he was right. Unlike previous governments that had skillfully managed to eke out our collective stupidity all year round, the current administration had decided to store it all up and then blow it on something unbelievably dopey, arguing that one major balls-up every ten years or so was less damaging than a weekly helping of mild political asininity. The problem was, the surplus had reached absurdly high levels, where it had even surpassed the \"monumentally dumb\" mark. Only a blunder of staggering proportions would remove the surplus, and the nature of this mind-numbing act of idiocy was a matter of considerable media speculation.\n\n\"It says here,\" he said, getting into full rant mode by adjusting his glasses and tapping at the newspaper with his index finger, \"that even the government is having to admit that the stupidity surplus is a far, far bigger problem than they had first imagined.\"\n\nI held the striped dodo cozy I was knitting for Pickwick against her pink and blotchy body to check the size, and she puffed herself up to look more alluring, but to no avail. She then made an indignant plocking noise, which was the only sound she ever uttered.\n\n\"Do you think I should knit her a party one as well? Y'know, black, off the shoulder and with sparkly bits in it?\"\n\n\"But,\" Landen went on in a lather of outrage, \"the prime minister has poured scorn on Traficcone's suggestion to offload our unwanted stupidity to Third World nations, who would be only too happy to have it in exchange for several sacks of cash and a Mercedes or two.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" I replied with a sigh. \"Idiocy offsets are bullshit; stupidity is our own problem and has to be dealt with on an individual 'stupidity footprint' basis\u2014and landfill certainly doesn't work.\"\n\nI was thinking of the debacle in Cornwall, where twenty thousand tons of half-wittedness was buried in the sixties, only to percolate to the surface two decades later when the residents started to do inexplicably dumb things, such as using an electric mixer in the bath and parting their hair in the center.\n\n\"What if,\" Landen continued thoughtfully, \"the thirty million or so inhabitants of the British Archipelago were to all simultaneously fall for one of those e-mail 'tell us all your bank details' phishing scams or\u2014I don't know\u2014fall down a manhole or something?\"\n\n\"They tried the mass walking-into-lamppost experiment in France to see if they could alleviate la dette idiote,\" I pointed out, \"but the seriousness under which the plan was undertaken made it de facto sensible, and all that was damaged was the proud Gallic forehead.\"\n\nLanden took a sip of coffee, unfolded the paper and scanned the rest of the front page before remarking absently, \"I took up your idea and sent my publisher a few outlines for self-help books last week.\"\n\n\"Who do they think you should be helping?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026me\u2026and them, I suppose\u2014isn't that how it's meant to work? It looks really easy. How about this for a title: Men Are from Earth, Women Are from Earth\u2014Just Deal with It.\"\n\nHe looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. I didn't love him just because he had a nice knee, was tall and made me laugh, but because we were two parts of one, and neither of us could imagine life without the other. I wish I had a better way to describe it, but I'm not a poet. Privately he was a husband and father to our three mostly wonderful kids, but professionally he was a writer. Unfortunately, despite winning the 1988 Armitage Shanks Fiction Award for Bad Sofa, a string of flops had left the relationship with his publisher a bit strained. So strained, in fact, that he was reduced to penning point-of-sale nonfiction classics such as The Little Book of Cute Pets That You Really Like to Hug and The Darndest Things Kids Say. When he wasn't working on these, he was looking after our children and attempting to rekindle his career with a seriously good blockbuster\u2014his magnum opus. It wasn't easy, but it was what he loved, and I loved him, so we lived off my salary, which was about the size of Pickwick's brain\u2014not that big, and unlikely to become so.\n\n\"This is for you,\" said Landen, pushing a small parcel wrapped in pink paper across the table.\n\n\"Sweetheart,\" I said, really annoyed and really pleased all at the same time, \"I don't do birthdays.\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said without looking up, \"so you'll just have to humor me.\"\n\nI unwrapped the package to find a small silver locket and chain. I'm not a jewelry person, but I am a Landen person, so held my hair out of the way while he fastened the clasp, then thanked him and gave him a kiss, which he returned. And then, since he knew all about my abhorrence of birthdays, dropped the matter entirely.\n\n\"Is Friday up?\"\n\n\"At this hour?\"\n\nFriday, it should be noted, was the eldest of our three children and the only boy. He was now sixteen, and instead of gearing himself up for a successful career with the time industry's elite operatives known as the ChronoGuard, he was a tedious teenage clich\u00e9\u2014grunting, sighing at any request no matter how small and staying in bed until past midday, then slouching around the house in a state of semiconsciousness that would do credit to a career zombie. We might not have known he was living with us if it weren't for the grubby cereal bowls that mysteriously appeared in the vague vicinity of the sink, a muffled heavy metal beat from his bedroom that Landen was convinced kept the slugs from the garden and a succession of equally languid no-hopers who called at the door to mumble, \"Is Friday at home?\"\u2014something that I couldn't resist answering with, \"It's a matter of some conjecture.\"\n\n\"When does he go back to school?\" asked Landen, who did most of the day-to-day kidwork but, like many men, had trouble remembering specific dates.\n\n\"Next Monday,\" I replied, having gone to retrieve the mail that had just fallen through the door. \"Exclusion from school was better than he deserved\u2014it's a good thing the cops didn't get involved.\"\n\n\"All he did was throw Barney Plotz's cap in a muddy puddle,\" said Landen reflectively, \"and then stomp on it.\"\n\n\"Yes, but Barney Plotz was wearing it at the time,\" I pointed out, thinking privately that the entire Plotz family stomped on in a muddy puddle might be a very good idea indeed. \"Friday shouldn't have done what he did. Violence never solved anything.\"\n\nLanden raised an eyebrow and looked at me.\n\n\"Okay, sometimes it solves things\u2014but not for him, at least not yet.\"\n\n\"I wonder,\" mused Landen, \"if we could get the nation's teenagers to go on a serious binge of alcohol-inspired dopiness to use up the excess stupidity?\"\n\n\"It's a surplus of stupidity we have, not stereotypical dreariness,\" I replied, picking up an envelope at random and staring at the postmark. I still received at least half a dozen fan letters every day, even though the march of time had, fortunately, reduced my celebrity to what the Entertainments Facilitation Department termed Z-4, which is the kind of celebrities who appear in \"Whatever happened to\u2026?\" articles and only ever get column inches if arrested, divorced, in rehab or, if the editor's luck is really in, all three at the same time\u2014and have some tenuous connection to Miss Corby Starlet, or whoever else happens to be the c\u00e9l\u00e9brit\u00e9 du jour.\n\nThe fan mail was mostly from die-hard fans who didn't care that I was Z-4, bless them. They usually asked obscure questions about my many adventures that were now in print, or something about what crap the movie was, or why I'd given up professional croquet. But for the most part, it was from fans of Jane Eyre, who wanted to know how Mrs. Fairfax could have been a ninja assassin, whether I had to shoot Bertha Rochester and if it was true I'd slept with Edward Rochester\u2014three of the more per sis tent and untrue rumors surrounding the factually dubious first novel of my adventures, The Eyre Affair.\n\nLanden grinned. \"What's it about? Someone wanting to know whether Lola Vavoom will play you in the next Thursday film?\"\n\n\"There won't be one. Not after the disaster of the first. No, it's from the World Croquet Federation. They want me to present a video entitled The Fifty Greatest Croquet Sporting Moments.\"\n\n\"Is your SuperHoop fifty-yard peg-out in the top ten?\"\n\nI scanned the list. \"They have me at twenty-six.\"\n\n\"Tell them ballocks.\"\n\n\"They'll pay me five hundred guineas.\"\n\n\"Cancel the ballocks thing\u2014tell them you'll be honored and overjoyed.\"\n\n\"It's a sellout. I don't do sellouts. Not for that price anyway.\"\n\nI opened a small parcel that contained a copy of the third book in my series: The Well of Lost Plots. I showed it to Landen, who made a face.\n\n\"Are they still selling?\" he asked.\n\n\"Unfortunately.\"\n\n\"Am I in that one?\"\n\n\"No, sweetheart\u2014you're only in number five.\" I looked at the covering letter. \"They want me to sign it.\"\n\nI had a stack of form letters in the office that explained why I wouldn't sign it\u2014the first four Thursday Next books were about as true to real life as a donkey is to a turnip, and my signature somehow gave a credibility that I didn't want to encourage. The only book I would sign was the fifth in the series, The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, which, unlike the first four, had my seal of approval. The Thursday Next in The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco was much more of a caring and diplomatic heroine\u2014unlike the Thursday in the previous four, who blasted away at everything in sight, drank, swore, slept around and generally kicked butt all over the BookWorld. I wanted the series to be a thought-provoking romp around literature; a book for people who like stories or a story for people who like books. It wasn't to be. The first four in the series had been less a lighthearted chronicling of my adventures and more of a \"Dirty Harry meets Fanny Hill,\" but with a good deal more sex and violence. The publishers managed to be not only factually inaccurate but dangerously slanderous as well. By the time I'd regained control of the series for The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, the damage to my reputation had been done.\n\n\"Oh!\" said Landen, reading a letter. \"A rejection from my publisher. They didn't think Fatal Parachuting Mistakes and How to Avoid Making Them Again was what they had in mind for self-help.\"\n\n\"I guess their target audience doesn't include dead people.\"\n\n\"You could be right.\"\n\nI opened another letter. \"Hang on,\" I said, scanning the lines thoughtfully. \"The Swindon Dodo Fanciers Society is offering us thirty grand for Pickers.\"\n\nI looked across at Pickwick, who had started to do that almost-falling-over thing she does when she goes to sleep standing up. I had built her myself when home-cloning kits were all the rage. At almost twenty-nine and with the serial number D-009, she was the oldest dodo in existence. Because she was an early Version 1.2, she didn't have any wings, as the gene sequence wasn't complete at that time, but then she didn't have built-in cell redundancy either. It was likely she'd outlive\u2026well, everything. In any event, her value had grown considerably as interest in the seventies home-cloning unextincting revolution had suddenly become fashionable. A 1978 V1.5.6 mammoth recently changed hands for sixty thousand, great auks in any condition could be worth up to five grand each, and if you had a pre-1972 trilobite of any order, you could pretty much name your price.\n\n\"Thirty grand?\" echoed Landen. \"Do they know she's a bit challenged in the brain and plumage department?\"\n\n\"I honestly don't think they care. It would pay off the mortgage.\"\n\nPickwick was suddenly wide awake and looking at us with the dodo equivalent of a raised eyebrow, which is indistinguishable from the dodo equivalent of sniffing a raw onion.\n\n\"And buy one of those new diesel-molasses hybrid cars,\" said Landen.\n\n\"Or a holiday.\"\n\n\"We could send Friday off to the Swindon Home for Dreary Teenagers,\" added Landen.\n\n\"And Jenny could have a new piano.\"\n\nIt was too much for Pickwick, who fainted dead away in the middle of the table.\n\n\"Doesn't have much of a sense of humor, does she?\" said Landen with a smile, returning to his paper.\n\n\"Not really,\" I replied, tearing up the letter from the Swindon Dodo Fanciers Society. \"But, you know, for a bird of incalculably little brain, I'm sure she understands almost everything we say.\"\n\nLanden looked at Pickwick, who had by now recovered and was staring suspiciously at her left foot, wondering if it had always been there and, if not, what it might be doing creeping up on her.\n\n\"It's not likely.\"\n\n\"How's the book going?\" I asked, returning to my knitting.\n\n\"The self-help stuff?\"\n\n\"The magnum opus.\"\n\nLanden looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, \"More opus than magnum. I'm trying to figure out whether the lack of progress is writer's block, procrastination, idleness or just plain incompetence.\"\n\n\"Well, now,\" I said, feigning seriousness, \"with such an excellent range of choices, it's hard to put my finger on it. Have you considered that it might be a mixture of all four?\"\n\n\"By gad!\" he said, slapping his palm on his forehead. \"You could be right!\"\n\n\"Seriously, though?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"It's so-so. Although the story is toodling along, there's no real bite to it\u2014I think I need to inject a new plot twist or character.\"\n\n\"Which book are you working on?\"\n\n\"Bananas for Edward.\"\n\n\"You'll think of something, sweetheart\u2014you usually do.\"\n\nI dropped a stitch on my knitting, rehooked it, checked the wall clock and then said, \"Mum texted me earlier.\"\n\n\"Has she got the hang of it yet?\"\n\n\"She said, 'L&Ks4DnRNXT-SNDY??'\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said Landen, \"one of the most coherent yet. That's probably code for 'I've forgotten how to text.' Why does she even bother to try to use new technology at her age?\"\n\n\"You know what she's like. I'll nip over and see what she wants on my way to work.\"\n\n\"Don't forget about Friday and the ChronoGuard 'If You've Got Time for Us, We've Got Time for You' careers presentation this evening.\"\n\n\"How could I forget?\" I replied, having tried to cajole Friday into this for weeks.\n\n\"He's behind with his homework,\" added Landen, \"and since you're at least six times more scary than I am, would you do phase one of the teenager-waking procedure? Sometimes I think he's actually glued to the bed.\"\n\n\"Considering his current level of personal hygiene,\" I mused, \"you're probably right.\"\n\n\"If he doesn't get up,\" added Landen with a smile, \"you could always threaten him with a bar of soap and some shampoo.\"\n\n\"And traumatize the poor lad? Shame on you, Mr. Parke-Laine.\"\n\nLanden laughed, and I went up to Friday's room.\n\nI knocked on his door, received no reply and opened it to a fetid smell of old socks and unwashed adolescence. Carefully bottled and distilled, it would do sterling work as a shark repellent, but I didn't say so. Teenage sons react badly to sarcasm. The room was liberally covered with posters of Jimi Hendrix, Che Guevara and Wayne Skunk, lead guitar and vocals of Strontium Goat. The floor was covered with discarded clothes, deadline-expired schoolwork and side plates with hardened toast crusts on them. I think the room had once been carpeted, but I couldn't be sure anymore.\n\n\"Hiya, Friday,\" I said to an inert object wrapped up in a duvet. I sat on the bed and prodded a small patch of skin I could see.\n\n\"Grunt,\" came a voice from somewhere deep within the bedclothes.\n\n\"Your father tells me that you're behind with your homework.\"\n\n\"Grunt.\"\n\n\"Well, yes, you might be suspended for two weeks, but you still need to do your coursework.\"\n\n\"Grunt.\"\n\n\"The time? It's nine right now, and I need you to be sitting up with your eyes open before I leave the room.\"\n\nThere was another grunt and a fart. I sighed, prodded him again, and eventually something with unwashed dark hair sat up and stared at me beneath heavy lids.\n\n\"Grunt,\" it said. \"Grunt-grunt.\"\n\nI thought of making some sarcastic remark about how it helps to open your mouth when talking but didn't, as I desperately needed his compliance, and although I couldn't actually speak teenage Mumblegrunt, I could certainly understand it.\n\n\"How's the music going?\" I asked, as there is a certain degree of consciousness that you have to bring teenagers toward before leaving them to get up on their own. Fall even a few degrees below the critical threshold and they go back to sleep for eight hours\u2014sometimes more.\n\n\"Mumble,\" he said slowly. \"I've grunt-mumble formed a band grunty-mutter.\"\n\n\"A band? What's it called?\"\n\nHe took a deep breath and rubbed his face. He knew he wouldn't get rid of me until he'd answered at least three questions. He looked at me with his bright, intelligent eyes and sniffed before announcing in a rebellious tone, \"It's called the Gobshites.\"\n\n\"You can't call it that!\"\n\nFriday shrugged. \"All right,\" he grumbled in a slovenly manner, \"we'll go back to the original name.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\n\"The Wankers.\"\n\n\"Actually, I think Gobshites is a terrific name for a band. Pithy and degenerate all at the same time. Now, listen, I know you're not keen on this whole 'career in the time industry' stuff, but you did promise. I'll expect you to be all bright-eyed, alert and bushy-tailed, washed, showered, scrubbed and all homework finished by the time I get back.\"\n\nI stared at the picture of slovenly teenagerhood in front of me. I'd have settled for \"awake and/or coherent\"\u2014but I always aim high.\n\n\"Allrightmum,\" he said in a long slur.\n\nAs soon as I had closed the door behind me I heard him flop back. It didn't matter. He was awake, and his father could do the rest.\n\n\"I expect he's raring to go?\" suggested Landen when I came downstairs. \"Had to lock him in his room to curb his enthusiasm?\"\n\n\"Champing at the bit,\" I replied wearily. \"We'd get a more dynamic response from a vapid slug on tranquilizers.\"\n\n\"I wasn't so dreary when I was a kid,\" said Landen thoughtfully, handing me my tea. \"I wonder where he gets it from?\"\n\n\"Modern living, but don't worry. He's only sixteen\u2014he'll snap out of it.\"\n\n\"I hope so.\"\n\nAnd that was the problem. This wasn't just the usual worries of concerned parents with grunty and unintelligible teenagers; he had to snap out of it. I'd met the future Friday several times in the past, and he'd risen to the lofty heights of ChronoGuard director-general with absolute power over the Standard History Eventline, a job of awesome responsibilities. He was instrumental in saving my life, his own\u2014and the planet from destruction no fewer than 756 times. By his fortieth birthday, he would be known as \"Apocalypse\" Next. But that hadn't happened yet. And with Friday's chief interest in life at present being Strontium Goat, sleeping, Che Guevara, Hendrix and more sleeping, we were beginning to wonder how it ever would.\n\nLanden looked at his watch.\n\n\"Isn't it time you were off to work, wifey darling? The good folk of Swindon would be utterly lost and confused without you to take the burden of floor-covering decision making from them.\"\n\nHe was right. I was already ten minutes late, and I kissed him several times, just in case something unexpected occurred that might separate us for longer than planned. By \"unexpected\" I was thinking of the time he was eradicated for two years by the Goliath Corporation. Although the vast multinational was back in business after many years in the financial and political doldrums, they had not yet attempted any of the monkey business that had marked our relationship in the past. I hoped they'd learned their lesson, but I'd never quite freed myself of the idea that a further fracas with them might be just around the corner, so I always made quite sure that I'd told Landen everything I needed to tell him.\n\n\"Busy day ahead?\" he asked as he saw me to the garden gate.\n\n\"A large carpet to install for a new company in the financial center\u2014bespoke executive pile, plus the usual quotes. I think Spike and I have a stair carpet to do in an old Tudor house with uneven treads, so one of those nightmare jobs.\"\n\nHe paused and sucked his lower lip for a moment.\n\n\"Good, so\u2026no\u2026no\u2026SpecOps stuff or anything?\"\n\n\"Sweetheart!\" I said, giving him a hug. \"That's all past history. I do carpets these days\u2014it's a lot less stressful, believe me. Why?\"\n\n\"No reason. It's just that what with Diatrymas being seen as far north as Salisbury, people are saying that the old SpecOps personnel might be recalled into ser vice.\"\n\n\"Six-foot-tall carnivorous birds from the late Paleocene would be SO-13 business if they were real, which I doubt,\" I pointed out. \"I was SO-27. The Literary Detectives. When copies of Tristram Shandy are threatening old ladies in dark alleys, I just might be asked for my opinion. Besides, no one's reading books much anymore, so I'm fairly redundant.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" said Landen. \"Perhaps being an author isn't such a great move after all.\"\n\n\"Then write your magnum opus for me,\" I told him tenderly. \"I'll be your audience, wife, fan club, sex kitten and critic all rolled into one. It's me picking up Tuesday from school, right?\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"And you'll pick up Jenny?\"\n\n\"I won't forget. What shall I do if Pickwick starts shivering in that hopelessly pathetic way that she does?\"\n\n\"Pop her in the airing cupboard\u2014I'll try and get her cozy finished at work.\"\n\n\"Not so busy, then?\"\n\nI kissed him again and departed."
            },
            {
                "title": "Mum and Polly and Mycroft",
                "text": "My mother's main aim in life was to get from the cradle to the grave with the minimum of fuss and bother and the maximum of tea and Battenberg. Along the way she brought up three children, attended a lot of Women's Federation meetings and managed to squeeze a few severely burned meals somewhere in between. It wasn't until I was six that I realized that cake wasn't meant to be 87 percent carbon and that chicken actually tasted of something. Despite all this, or perhaps even because of it, we all loved her a great deal.\n\nMy mother lived less than a mile away and actually on the route to work, so I often dropped in just to make sure she was okay and wasn't about to embark on some harebrained scheme, as was her habit. A few years ago she had hoarded tinned pears on the principle that once she'd cornered the market, she could \"name her price,\" a flagrant misunderstanding of the rules of supply and demand that did no damage to the tinned-fruit producers of the world but condemned her immediate family and friends to pears at every meal for almost three years.\n\nShe was the sort of parent you would want to have living close by, but only on the grounds that she would then never come to stay. I loved her dearly, but in small doses. A cup of tea here, a dinner there\u2014and as much child care as I could squeeze out of her. The text excuse I gave Landen was actually something of a mild fib, as the real reason for my popping around was to pick something up from Mycroft's workshop.\n\n\"Hello, darling!\" said Mum as soon as she opened the door. \"Did you get my text?\"\n\n\"Yes. But you must learn how to use the backspace and delete keys\u2014it all came out as nonsense.\"\n\n\"'L&Ks4DnRNXT-SNDY??'\" she repeated, showing me her cell phone. \"What else could that mean but 'Landen and kids for dinner next Sunday?' Really, darling, how you even begin to communicate with your children, I have no idea.\"\n\n\"That wasn't real text shorthand,\" I said, narrowing my eyes suspiciously. \"You just made it up.\"\n\n\"I'm barely eighty-two,\" she said indignantly. \"I'm not on the scrap heap yet. Made up the text indeed! Do you want to come back for lunch?\" she added, without seeming to draw breath. \"I've got a few friends coming around, and after we've discussed who is the most unwell, we'll agree volubly with one another about the sorry state of the nation and then put it all to rights with poorly thought-out and totally impractical ideas. And if there's time after that, we might even play cribbage.\"\n\n\"Hello, Auntie,\" I said to Polly, who hobbled out of the front room with the aid of a stick, \"If I texted you 'L&Ks4DnRNXT-SNDY??' what would you think I meant?\"\n\nPolly frowned and thought for a moment, her prunelike forehead rising in a folding ripple like a festoon curtain. She was over ninety and looked so unwell that she was often mistaken for dead when asleep on the bus. Despite this she was totally sound upstairs, with only three or four fair-to-serious medical ailments, unlike my mother, who had the full dozen\u2014or so she claimed.\n\n\"Well, do you know I'd be a bit confused\u2014\"\n\n\"Hah!\" I said to Mum. \"You see?\"\n\n\"\u2014because,\" Polly carried on, \"if you texted me asking for Landen and the kids to come over for Sunday dinner, I'd not know why you hadn't asked him yourself.\"\n\n\"Ah\u2026I see,\" I mumbled, suspicious that the two of them had been colluding in some way\u2014as they generally did. Still, I never knew why they made me feel as though I were an eighteen-year-old when I was now fifty-two and myself in the sort of respectable time of life that I thought they should be. That's the thing about hitting fifty. All your life you think the half century is death's adolescence, but actually it's really not that bad, as long as you can remember where you left your glasses.\n\n\"Happy birthday, by the way,\" said my mother. \"I got you something\u2014look.\"\n\nShe handed me the most hideous sweater you could possibly imagine.\n\n\"I don't know what to say, Mum, and I really mean that\u2014a short-sleeved lime green sweater with a hood and mock-antler buttons.\"\n\n\"Do you like it?\"\n\n\"One's attention is drawn to it instantly.\"\n\n\"Good! Then you'll wear it straightaway?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't want to ruin it,\" I replied hastily. \"I'm just off to work.\"\n\n\"Ooh!\" said Polly. \"I've only now remembered.\" She handed me a CD in a plain sleeve. \"This is a preproduction copy of Hosing the Dolly.\"\n\n\"It's what?\"\n\n\"Please try to keep up with the times, darling. Hosing the Dolly. The new album by Strontium Goat. It won't be out until November. I thought Friday might like it.\"\n\n\"It's really totally out there, man,\" put in my mother. \"Whatever that means. There's a solo guitar riff on the second track that reminded me of Friday's playing and was so good it made my toes tingle\u2014although that might just have been a pinched nerve. Wayne Skunk's granny is Mrs. Arbuthnot\u2014you know, the funny old lady with the large wart on her nose and the elbows that bend both ways. He sent it to her.\"\n\nI looked at the CD. Friday would like it, I was certain of that.\n\n\"And,\" added Polly, leaning closer and with a conspiratorial wink, \"you don't have to tell him it was from us\u2014I know what teenagers are like, and a bit of parental kudos counts for a lot.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, and meant it. It was more than a CD\u2014it was currency.\n\n\"Good!\" said my mother. \"Have you got time for a cup of tea and a slice of Battenberg?\"\n\n\"No, thank you\u2014I'm going to pick something up from Mycroft's workshop, and then I'll be on my way.\"\n\n\"How about some Battenberg to go, then?\"\n\n\"I've just had breakfast.\"\n\nThe doorbell rang.\n\n\"Ooooh!\" said Polly, peering furtively out the window. \"What fun. It looks like a market researcher!\"\n\n\"Right,\" said my mother in a very military tone. \"Let's see how long we can keep him before he runs out screaming. I'll pretend to have mild dementia, and you can complain about your sciatica in German. We'll try to beat our personal Market-Researcher Containment record of two hours and twelve minutes.\"\n\nI shook my head sadly. \"I wish you two would grow up.\"\n\n\"You are so judgmental, daughter dear,\" scolded my mother. \"When you reach our age and level of physical decrepitude, you'll take your entertainment wherever you can find it. Now, be off with you.\"\n\nAnd they shooed me into the kitchen while I mumbled something about how remedial basket weaving, whist drives or daytime soaps would probably suit them better. Mind you, inflicting mental torture on market researchers kept them busy, I suppose.\n\nI walked out the back door, crossed the back garden and quietly entered the wooden out house that was my uncle Mycroft's laboratory. I switched on the light and walked to my Porsche, which was looking a little forlorn under a dust sheet. It was still unrepaired from the accident five years before. The damage hadn't been that severe, but 356 parts were getting pricey these days, and we couldn't spare the cash. I reached into the cockpit, pulled the release and opened the hood. It was here that I kept a tote bag containing twenty thousand Welsh tocyns. On this side of the border pretty worthless, but enough to buy a three-bedroom house in Merthyr. I wasn't planning to move to the Welsh Socialist Republic, of course\u2014I needed the cash for a Welsh cheese deal I had cooking that evening. I checked that the cash was all still there and was just replacing the sheet on the car when a noise made me turn. Standing at the workbench in the half-light was my uncle Mycroft. An undeniable genius, with his keen mind he had pushed the frontiers in a range of disciplines that included genetics, fusion power, abstract geometry, perpetual motion and romantic fiction. It was he who had ushered in the home-cloning revolution, he who may have developed a memory-erasure machine and he who had invented the Prose Portal that had catapulted me into fiction. He was dressed in his trademark wool three-piece suit but without the jacket, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he was in what we all called his \"inventing mode.\" He seemed to be concentrating on a delicate mechanism, the function of which was impossible to guess. As I watched him in silence and with a growing sense of wonder, he suddenly noticed me.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said with a smile. \"Thursday! Haven't seen you for a while\u2014all well?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied a bit uncertainly, \"I think so.\"\n\n\"Splendid! I just had an idea for a cheap form of power: by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and the liberation of vast quantities of energy. I safely predict that an average-size cannelloni would be able to power Swindon for over a year. Mind you, I could be wrong.\"\n\n\"You're not often wrong,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"I think I was wrong to start inventing in the first place,\" he replied after a moment's reflection. \"Just because I can do it, it doesn't follow that I should. If scientists stopped to think about their creations more, the world might be a better\u2014\"\n\nHe broke off talking and looked at me in a quizzical manner.\n\n\"You're staring at me in a strange way,\" he said, with uncharacteristic astuteness.\n\n\"Well, yes,\" I replied, trying to frame my words carefully. \"You see\u2026I think\u2026that is to say\u2026I'm very surprised to see you.\"\n\n\"Really?\" he said, putting down the device he was working on. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I replied with greater firmness, \"I'm surprised to see you because\u2026you died six years ago!\"\n\n\"I did?\" inquired Mycroft with genuine concern. \"Why does no one tell me these things?\"\n\nI shrugged, as there was really no good answer to this.\n\n\"Are you sure?\" he asked, patting himself on the chest and stomach and then taking his pulse to try to convince himself I might be mistaken. \"I know I'm a bit forgetful, but I'm certain I would have remembered that.\"\n\n\"Yes, quite sure,\" I replied. \"I was there.\"\n\n\"Well, goodness,\" murmured Mycroft thoughtfully, \"if what you say is correct and I am dead, it's entirely possible that this isn't me at all, but a variable-response holographic recording of some sort. Let's have a look for a projector.\"\n\nAnd so saying, he began to ferret through the piles of dusty machinery in his lab. And with nothing better to do and faintly curious, I joined in.\n\nWe searched for a good five minutes, but after finding nothing even vaguely resembling a holographic projector, Mycroft and I sat down on a packing case and didn't speak for some moments.\n\n\"Dead,\" muttered Mycroft with a resigned air. \"Never been that before. Not even once. Are you quite sure?\"\n\n\"Quite sure,\" I replied. \"You were eighty-seven. It was expected.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" he said, as though some dim memory were stirring. \"And Polly?\" he added, suddenly remembering his wife. \"How is she?\"\n\n\"She's very well,\" I told him. \"She and Mum are up to their old tricks.\"\n\n\"Annoying market researchers?\"\n\n\"Among other things. But she's missing you dreadfully.\"\n\n\"And I her.\" He looked nervous for a moment. \"Has she got a boyfriend yet?\"\n\n\"At ninety-two?\"\n\n\"Damn good-looking woman\u2014smart, too.\"\n\n\"Well, she hasn't.\"\n\n\"Hmm. Well, If you see someone suitable, O favorite niece, push him her way, won't you? I don't want her to be lonely.\"\n\n\"I'll do that, Uncle, I promise.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for a few seconds more, and I shivered.\n\n\"Mycroft,\" I said, suddenly thinking that perhaps there wasn't a scientific explanation for his appearance after all, \"I'm going to try something.\"\n\nI put out my fingertips to touch him, but where they should have met the firm resistance of his shirtsleeve, there was none\u2014my fingers just melted into him. He wasn't there. Or if he was, he was something insubstantial\u2014a phantom.\n\n\"Ooooh!\" he said as I withdrew my hand. \"That felt odd.\"\n\n\"Mycroft\u2026you're a ghost.\"\n\n\"Nonsense! Scientifically proven to be completely impossible.\" He paused for thought. \"Why would I be one of those?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"I don't know\u2014perhaps there's something you hadn't finished at your death and it's been bothering you.\"\n\n\"Great Scott! You're right. I never did finish the final chapter of Love Among the Begonias.\"\n\nIn retirement Mycroft had spent his time writing romantic novels, all of which sold surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that he had attracted the lasting enmity of Daphne Farquitt, the indisputable leader in the field. She fired off an accusatory letter accusing him of \"wanton\" plagiarism. A barrage of claims and counterclaims followed, which ended only when Mycroft died. It was so venomous, in fact, that conspiracy theorists claimed he was poisoned by crazed Farquitt fans. We had to publish his death certificate to quell the rumors.\n\n\"Polly finished Love Among the Begonias for you,\" I said.\n\n\"Ah,\" he replied, \"maybe I've come back to haunt that loathsome cow Farquitt.\"\n\n\"If that were the case, you'd be over at her place doing the wooo-wooo thing and clanking chains.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" he said disdainfully, \"that doesn't sound very dignified.\"\n\n\"How about some last-minute inventing? Some idea you never got around to researching?\"\n\nMycroft thought long and hard, making several bizarre faces as he did so.\n\n\"Fascinating!\" he said at last, panting with the effort. \"I can't do original thought anymore. As soon as my brain stopped functioning, that was the end of Mycroft the inventor. You're right: I must be dead. It's most depressing.\"\n\n\"But no idea why you're here?\"\n\n\"None,\" he said despondently.\n\n\"Well,\" I said as I got up, \"I'll make a few inquiries. Do you want Polly to know you've reappeared in spirit form?\"\n\n\"I'll leave it to your judgment,\" he said. \"But if you do tell her, you might mention something about how she was the finest partner any man could have. Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.\"\n\nI snapped my fingers. That's how I wanted to describe Landen and me. \"That was good\u2014can I use it?\"\n\n\"Of course. Have you any idea how much I miss Polly?\"\n\nI thought of the two years Landen had been eradicated. \"I do. And she misses you, Uncle, every second of every day.\"\n\nHe looked up at me, and I saw his eyes glisten.\n\nI tried to put my hand on his arm, but it went through his phantom limb and instead landed on the hard surface of the workbench.\n\n\"I'll have a think about why I might be here,\" said Mycroft in a quiet voice. \"Will you look in on me from time to time?\" He smiled to himself and began to tinker with the device on the workbench again.\n\n\"Of course. Goodbye, Uncle.\"\n\n\"Goodbye, Thursday.\"\n\nAnd he slowly began to fade. I noticed as he did so that the room grew warmer again, and within a few more seconds he had vanished entirely. I retrieved the bag of Welsh cash and walked thoughtfully to the door, turning to have one last look. The workshop was empty, dusty and forgotten. Abandoned as it was when Mycroft died, six years before."
            },
            {
                "title": "Acme Carpets",
                "text": "The Special Operations Network was instituted in 1928 to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. Amongst the stranger departments were those that dealt with vampires (SO-17), time travel (SO-12), literary crime (SO-27) and the Cheese Enforcement Agency (SO-31). Notoriously secretive and with increased accusations of unaccountability and heavy-handedness, 90 percent of the ser vice was disbanded during the winter of 1991\u201392. Of the thirty-two departments, only five were retained. My department, the Literary Detectives, was not among them.\n\nThe name Acme Carpets was a misnomer, to be honest. We didn't just do carpets\u2014we did tiles, linoleum and wooden flooring, too. Competitive, fast and reliable, we had been trading in Swindon for ten years, ever since the SpecOps divisions were disbanded in '92. In 1996 we moved to bigger premises on the Oxford Road trading estate. If you needed any sort of floor covering in the Swindon area, you could come to us for the most competitive quote.\n\nI pushed open the front doors and was surprised that there was no one around. Not that there was a lack of customers, as Mondays before ten were generally pretty light, but that there was no staff\u2014not even in the office or skulking next to the spotlessly clean complimentary-tea area. I walked to the back of the store, past quality rolls of carpet and a varied selection of samples piled high on the light and spacious showroom floor. I opened the heavy swinging doors that led to the storerooms and froze. Standing next to a pile of last year's sample books was a flightless bird about four feet high and with an unfeasibly large and rather nastily serrated beak. It stared at me suspiciously with two small black eyes. I looked around. The stockroom staff were all dutifully standing still, and behind the Dyatrima was a stocky figure in an Acme Carpets uniform, a man with a large, brow-ridged head and deeply sunken brown eyes. He had a lot in common with the Paleocene anomaly that faced me\u2014he, too, had once been extinct and was here not by the meanderings of natural selection but from the inconsiderate meddling of a scientist who never stopped to ask whether if a thing could be done, that it should. His name was Stig, and he was a reengineered neanderthal, ex\u2013SO-13 and a valued colleague from the old days of SpecOps. He'd saved my butt on several occasions, and I'd helped him and his fellow extinctees to species self-determination.\n\n\"Don't move,\" said Stig in a low rumble. \"We don't want to hurt it.\"\n\nHe never did. Stig saw any renegade unextinctees as something akin to family and always caught them alive, if possible. On the other hand, chimeras, a hodgepodge of the hobby sequencer's art, were another matter\u2014he dispatched them without mercy, and without pain.\n\nThe Diatryma made a vicious jab toward me; I jumped to my left as the beak snapped shut with the sound of oversize castanets. Quick as a flash, Stig leaped forward and covered the creature's head with an old flour sack, which seemed to subdue it enough for him to wrestle it to the floor. I joined in, as did the entire storeroom staff, and within a few moments we had wrapped some duct tape securely around its massive beak, rendering it harmless.\n\n\"Thanks,\" said Stig, securing a leash around the bird's neck.\n\n\"Salisbury?\" I asked as we walked past the rolls of Wilton shag and cushioned linoleum in a wide choice of colors.\n\n\"Devizes,\" replied the neanderthal. \"We had to run for eight miles across open farmland to catch it.\"\n\n\"Did anyone see you?\" I asked, mindful of any rumors getting out.\n\n\"Who'd believe them if they did?\" he replied. \"But there're more Diatrymas\u2014we'll be out again to night.\"\n\nAcme Carpets, as you might have gathered, was just the cover story. In truth it was the old SpecOps under another name. The ser vice hadn't really been disbanded in the early nineties\u2014it just went underground, and freelance. All strictly unofficial, of course. Luckily, the Swindon chief of police was Braxton Hicks, my old divisional boss at SpecOps. Although he suspected what we got up to, he told me he would feign ignorance unless \"someone gets eaten or something.\" Besides, if we didn't mop up all the bizarrer elements of modern living, his regular officers would have to, and Braxton might then have a demand of bonus payments for \"actions beyond the call of duty.\" And Hicks loved his bud get almost as much as he loved his golf. So the cops didn't bother us and we didn't bother them.\n\n\"We have a question,\" said Stig. \"Do we have to mention the possibility of being trampled by mammoths on our Health and Safety Risk-Assessment Form?\"\n\n\"No\u2014that's the part of Acme we don't want anyone to know about. The safety stuff only relates to carpet laying.\"\n\n\"We understand,\" said Stig. \"What about being shredded by a chimera?\"\n\n\"Just carpets, Stig.\"\n\n\"Okay. By the way,\" he added, \"have you told Landen about all your SpecOps work yet? You said you were going to.\"\n\n\"I'm\u2026building up to it.\"\n\n\"You should tell him, Thursday.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"And have a good anniversary of your mother giving birth to you.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nI bade Stig good day and then walked to the store offices, which were situated in a raised position halfway between the storeroom and the showroom floor. From there you could see pretty much everything that went on in the building.\n\nAs I walked in, a man looked up from where he was crouched under the desk.\n\n\"Have you captured it?\" he asked in a quavering voice.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nHe looked relieved and clambered out from his hiding place. He was in his early forties, and his features were just beginning to show the shades of middle age. Around his eyes were fine lines, his dark hair now flecked with gray. Even though he was management, he also wore an Acme Carpets uniform. Only his looked a lot better on him than mine did on me. In fact, he looked a lot better in his than anyone in the establishment, leading us to accuse him of having his professionally tailored, something he strenuously denied but, given his fastidious nature, not outside the bounds of possibility. Bowden Cable had been my partner at the Swindon branch of the Literary Detectives, and it seemed only natural that he would have the top admin job at Acme Carpets when we were all laid off from SpecOps.\n\n\"Are we busy today?\" I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee.\n\nBowden pointed to the newspaper. \"Have you read this?\"\n\n\"The stupidity surplus?\"\n\n\"Part of it, I guess,\" he replied despondently. \"Incredibly enough, reality TV has just gotten worse.\"\n\n\"Is that possible?\" I asked. \"Wasn't Celebrity Trainee Pathologist the pits?\" I thought for a moment. \"Actually, Whose Life Support Do We Switch Off? was worse. Or maybe Sell Your Granny. Wow, the choice these days makes it all so tricky to decide.\"\n\nBowden laughed.\n\n\"I'll agree that Granny lowered the bar for distasteful program makers everywhere, but RTA-TV, never one to shrink from a challenge, has devised Samaritan Kidney Swap. Ten renal-failure patients take turns trying to convince a tissue-typed donor\u2014and the voting viewers\u2014which one should have his spare kidney.\"\n\nI groaned. Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment\u2014the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the walls down at the local mad house. I shook my head sadly.\n\n\"What's wrong with a good book?\" I asked.\n\nBowden shrugged. In these days of junk TV, short attention spans and easy-to-digest sound bites, it seemed that the book, the noble device to which both Bowden and I had devoted much of our lives, was being marginalized into just another human storytelling experience also-ran, along with the epic poem, Greek theater, Jackanory, Beta and Tarzanagrams.\n\n\"How's the family?\" asked Bowden, trying to elevate the mood.\n\n\"They're all good,\" I replied. \"Except Friday, who is still incapable of any human activity other than torpidity.\"\n\n\"And Pickwick? Feathers growing back?\"\n\n\"No\u2014listen, can you knit?\"\n\n\"No\u2026. Why?\"\n\n\"No reason. What's on the books for us today?\"\n\nBowden picked up a clipboard and thumbed through the pages. \"Spike's got a brace of undead to deal with and a possible pack of howlers in the Savenake. Stig's still on the path of those Diatrymas. The Taste Division has got an outbreak of stonecladding to deal with in Cirencester, and the Pampas Squad will be busy on a slash 'n' burn in Bristol. Oh, yes\u2014and we've an outbreak of doppelg\u00e4ngers in Chippenham.\"\n\n\"Any literary stuff?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\"Only Mrs. Mattock and her stolen first editions\u2014again. Face it, Thurs, books just don't light anyone's candle these days. It's as good that they don't\u2014add the sixteen or so carpets to be laid and the twenty-eight quotes needed yesterday, and we're kind of stretched. Do we pull Spike off zombies to do stair runners?\"\n\n\"Can't we just drag in some freelance installers?\"\n\n\"And pay them with what? An illegal Diatryma each?\"\n\n\"It's that bad, is it?\"\n\n\"Thursday, it's always that bad. We're nuzzling up to the overdraft limit again.\"\n\n\"No problem. I've got a seriously good cheese deal going down this evening.\"\n\n\"I don't want to know about it. When you're arrested, I need deniability\u2014and besides, if you actually sold carpets instead of gallivanting around like a lunatic, you wouldn't need to buy and sell on the volatile cheese market.\"\n\n\"That reminds me,\" I said with a smile. \"I'll be out of my office today, so don't put any calls through.\"\n\n\"Thursday!\" he said in an exasperated tone. \"Please don't vanish today of all days. I really need you to quote for the new lobby carpet in the Finis, I've got the Wilton rep popping in at four-thirty to show us their new line, and the Health and Safety Inspectorate is coming in to make sure we're up to speed.\"\n\n\"On safety procedures?\"\n\n\"Good Lord no! On how to fill the forms in properly.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, \"I've got to take Friday to the ChronoGuard career night at five-thirty, so I'll try to get back a couple of hours before then and do some quotes. Have a list ready for me.\"\n\n\"Already done,\" he said, and before I could make up an excuse, he passed me a clipboard full of addresses and contact names.\n\n\"Good,\" I muttered, \"very efficient\u2014nice job.\"\n\nI took my coffee and walked to my own office, a small and windowless room next to the forklift-recharging point. I sat at my desk and stared despondently at the list Bowden had given me, then rocked back and forth on my chair in an absent mood. Stig had been right. I should tell Landen about what I got up to, but life was better with him thinking I was working at Acme. Besides, running several illegal SpecOps departments wasn't all I did. It was\u2026well, the tip of a very large and misshapen iceberg.\n\nI got up, took off my jacket and was about to change into more comfortable clothes when there was another tap at the door. I opened it to reveal a large and muscular man a few years younger than myself and looking even more incongruous in his Acme Carpets uniform than I looked in mine\u2014although I doubted that anyone would ever try to tell him so. He had long dreadlocks that reached almost to his waist and were tied back in a loose hair band, and he was wearing a liberal amount of jewelry, similar to the sort that Goths are fond of\u2014skulls, bats, things like that. But it wasn't for decoration\u2014it was for protection. This was ex\u2013SO-17 operative \"Spike\" Stoker, the most successful vampire staker and werewolf hunter in the Southwest, and although no friend of the undead, he was a friend of mine.\n\n\"Happy birthday, bookworm,\" he said genially. \"Got a second?\"\n\nI looked at my watch. I was late for work. Not carpet work, of course, since I was already there, but work work.\n\n\"Is it about health and safety?\"\n\n\"No, this is important and relevant.\"\n\nHe led the way to the other side of the storeroom, just next to where we kept the adhesive, tacks and grippers. We entered a door hidden behind a poster for Brinton's Carpets and took a small flight of steps down to the level below. Spike opened a sturdy door with a large brass key, and we stepped into what I described as the \"Containment Suite\" but what Spike referred to as the \"Weirdshitorium.\" His appraisal was better. Our work took us to the very limits of credibility\u2014to a place where even the most stalwart conspiracy theorists would shake their heads and remark sarcastically, \"Oh, yeah\u2026right.\" When we were SpecOps, we had secrecy, manpower, bud get and unaccountability to help us do the job. Now we had just secrecy, complimentary tea and cookies and a big brass key. It was here that Stig kept his creatures until he decided what to do with them and where Spike incarcerated any of the captured undead for observation\u2014in case they were thinking of becoming either nearly dead or mostly dead. Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.\n\nWe passed a cell that was full of gallon-size glass jars containing captured Supreme Evil Beings. They were small, wraithlike objects about the size and texture of well-used dish cloths, only less substantial, and they spent most of the time bickering over who was the most supreme Supreme Evil Being. But we weren't here to bother with SEBs; Spike led me on to a cell right at the end of the corridor and opened the door. Sitting on a chair in the middle of the room was a man in jeans and a plain leather jacket. He was staring at the floor with the light on above, so I couldn't at first see his face, and his large and well-manicured hands were clenched tightly in front of him. I also noticed that his ankle was attached to the floor by a sturdy chain. I winced. Spike would have to be right about this one\u2014imprisonment of something actually human was definitely illegal and could be seriously bad for business.\n\n\"Hey!\" said Spike and the figure slowly raised his head to look at me. I recognized him instantly and not without a certain degree of alarm. It was Felix8, Acheron Hades' henchman from way back in the days of the Jane Eyre adventure. Hades had taken the face from the first Felix when he died and implanted it on a suitable stranger who'd been bent to his evil will. Whenever a Felix died, which was quite often, he just swapped the face. Felix8's real name was Danny Chance, but his freewill had been appropriated by Hades\u2014he was merely an empty vessel, devoid of pity or morals. His life had no meaning other than to do his master's bidding. The point now was, his master had died sixteen years ago, and the last time I saw Felix8 was at the Penderyn Hotel in Merthyr, the capital of the Welsh Socialist Republic.\n\nFelix8 looked at me with a slight sense of amusement and gave a subtle nod of greeting.\n\n\"Where did you find him?\" I asked.\n\n\"Outside your place half an hour ago. He had this on him.\" Spike showed me an ugly-looking machine pistol with a delicately carved stock. \"There was a single round in the chamber.\"\n\nI bent down to Felix8's level and stared at him for a moment. \"Who sent you?\"\n\nFelix8 smiled, said nothing and looked at the chain that was firmly clasped around his ankle.\n\n\"What do you want?\"\n\nStill Felix8 said nothing.\n\n\"Where have you been these past sixteen years?\"\n\nAll my questions were met with blank insolence, and after five minutes of this I walked back outside the cell block, Spike at my side.\n\n\"Who reported him?\" I asked.\n\n\"Your stalker\u2014what's his name again?\"\n\n\"Millon.\"\n\n\"Right. He thought Felix8 might have been another stalker and was going to warn him off, but when he noticed the absence of notebooks, cameras or even a duffel coat, he called me.\"\n\nI thought for a moment. If Felix8 was back on my trail, then somebody in the Hades family was looking for revenge\u2014and they were big on revenge. I'd had run-ins with the Hades family before, and I thought they'd learned their lesson by now. I had personally defeated Acheron, Aornis and Cocytus, which left only Lethe and Phlgethon. Lethe was the \"white sheep\" of the family and spent most of his time doing charity work, which left only Phlgethon, who had dropped off the radar in the mid-nineties, despite numerous manhunts by SO-5 and myself.\n\n\"What do you suggest?\" I asked. \"He doesn't fall into any of the categories that might ethically give us a reason to keep him under lock and key without trial of some sort. After all, he's only wearing the face of Felix\u2014under there he's an erased Danny Chance, married father of two who went missing in 1985.\"\n\n\"I agree we can't keep him,\" replied Spike, \"but if we let him go he'll just try to kill you.\"\n\n\"I live to be over a hundred,\" I murmured. \"I know\u2014I've met the future me.\"\n\nIt was said without much conviction. I'd seen enough of time's paradoxical nature to know that meeting the future me wasn't any guarantee of a long life.\n\n\"We'll keep him for twenty-four hours,\" I announced. \"I'll make a few inquiries and see if I can figure out which Hades is involved\u2014if any. He might be simply trying to carry out the last order he was given. After all, he was under orders to kill me, but no one said anything about when.\"\n\n\"Thursday\u2026?\" began Spike in a tone that I recognized and didn't like.\n\n\"No,\" I said quickly. \"Out of the question.\"\n\n\"The only reason he'd mind being killed,\" said Spike in an annoyingly matter-of-fact way, \"is that it would mean he failed to carry out his mission\u2014to kill you.\"\n\n\"I hear you, Spike, but he's done nothing wrong. Give me a day, and if I can't find anything, we'll hand him over to Braxton.\"\n\n\"Okay, then,\" replied Spike, with a sulky air of disappointment.\n\n\"Another thing,\" I said as we returned to the carpet storeroom. \"My uncle Mycroft has returned as a ghost.\"\n\n\"It happens,\" replied Spike with a shrug. \"Did he seem substantial?\"\n\n\"As you or I.\"\n\n\"How long was he materialized for?\"\n\n\"Seven minutes, I guess.\"\n\n\"Then you got him at first haunting. First-timers are always the most solid.\"\n\n\"That might be so, but I'd like to know why.\"\n\n\"I'm owed a few favors by the Realm of the Dead,\" he said offhandedly, \"so I can find out. By the way, have you told Landen about all this crazy SpecOps shit?\"\n\n\"I'm telling him this evening.\"\n\n\"Sure you are.\"\n\nI walked back to my office, locked the door and changed out of the less-than-appealing Acme Carpets uniform and put on something more comfortable. I would have to speak to Aornis Hades about Felix8, but she would probably tell me to go and stick it in my ear\u2014after all, she was seven years into a thirty-year enloopment based on my testimony, and yours truly was unlikely to fill her evil little soul with any sort of heartwarming benevolence.\n\nI finished lacing my boots, locked the door, refilled my water bottle and placed it in the shoulder bag. Acme Carpets might have been a cover for my clandestine work at SpecOps, but this itself was cover for another job that only Bowden knew about. If Landen found out about SpecOps, he'd be annoyed\u2014if he found out about Jurisfiction, he'd go bonkers. Not long after the Minotaur's attack following the '88 SuperHoop, Landen and I had a heart-to-heart where I told him I was giving up Jurisfiction\u2014my primary duty being wife and mother. And so it was agreed. Unfortunately, my other primary duty was to fiction\u2014the make-believe. Unable to reconcile the two, I did both and lied a bit\u2014well, a lot, actually\u2014to plaster over the gaping crack in my loyalties. It wasn't with an easy or light heart, but it had worked for the past fourteen years. The odd thing was, Jurisfiction didn't earn me a penny and was dangerous and wildly unpredictable. There was another reason I liked it, too\u2014it brought me into close contact with story. It would have been easier to get a registered cheesehead off a five-times-a-day Limburger habit than to keep me away from fiction. But, hey\u2014I could handle it.\n\nI sat down, took a deep breath and opened the TravelBook I kept in my bag. It had been given to me by Mrs. Nakajima many years before and was my passport in and out of the world on the other side of the printed page. I lowered my head, emptied my mind as much as possible and read from the book. The words echoed about me with a resonance that sounded like wind chimes and looked like a thousand glowworms. The room around me rippled and stretched, then returned with a twang to my office at Acme. Blast. This happened more and more often these days. I had once been a natural bookjumper, but the skill had faded with the years. I took a deep breath and tried again. The wind chimes and glowworms returned, and once more the room distorted around me like a barrel, then faded from view to be replaced by a kaleidoscope of images, sounds and emotions as I jumped through the boundary that separates the real from the written, the actual from the fable. With a rushing sound like distant waterfalls and a warm sensation that felt like hot rain and kittens, I was transported from Acme Carpets in Swindon to the entrance hallway of a large Georgian country house."
            },
            {
                "title": "Jurisfiction",
                "text": "Jurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency within books. Working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction work tirelessly to maintain the continuity of the narrative within the pages of all the books ever written, a sometimes thankless task. Jurisfiction agents live mostly on their wits as they attempt to reconcile the author's original wishes and the reader's expectations against a strict and largely pointless set of bureaucratic guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres.\n\nIt was a spacious hallway, with deep picture windows that afforded a fine view of the extensive parklands beyond the gravel drive and perfectly planted flower beds. Inside, the walls were hung with delicate silks, the woodwork shone brightly, and the marble floor was so polished I could see myself in it. I quickly drank a pint of water, as the bookjumping process could leave me dangerously dehydrated these days, and dialed TransGenre Taxis on my mobilefootnoterphone to order a cab in a half hour's time, since they were always busy and it paid to book ahead. I then looked around cautiously. Not to check for impending danger, as this was the peaceful backstory of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. No, I was making quite sure my current Jurisfiction Cadet wasn't anywhere in sight. My overriding wish at present was not to have to deal with her until roll call had finished.\n\n\"Good morning, ma'am!\" she said, appearing in front of me so abruptly I almost cried out. She spoke in the overeager manner of the terminally keen, a trait that began to annoy soon after I'd agreed to assess her suitability, twenty-four hours before.\n\n\"Do you have to jump in so abruptly?\" I asked her. \"You nearly gave me a heart attack!\"\n\n\"Oh! I'm sorry. But I did bring you some breakfast.\"\n\n\"Well, in that case\u2026\" I looked into the bag she handed me and frowned. \"Wait a minute\u2014that doesn't look like a bacon sandwich.\"\n\n\"It isn't. It's a crispy lentil cake made with soy milk and bean curd. It cleanses the bowels. Bacon definitely will give you a heart attack.\"\n\n\"How thoughtful of you,\" I remarked sarcastically. \"The body is a temple, right?\"\n\n\"Right. And I didn't get you coffee because it raises blood pressure. I got you this beetroot-and-edelweiss energy drink.\"\n\n\"What happened to the squid ink and hippopotamus milk?\"\n\n\"They were out.\"\n\n\"Look,\" I said, handing back the lentil animal-feed thing and the drink, \"tomorrow is the third and last day of your assessment, and I haven't yet made up my mind. Do you want to be a Jurisfiction agent?\"\n\n\"More than anything.\"\n\n\"Right. So if you want me to sign you out for advanced training, you're going to have to do as you're told. If that means killing a grammasite, recapturing an irregular verb, dressing Quasimodo or even something as simple as getting me coffee and a bacon roll, then that's what you'll do. Understand?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" she said, adding as an afterthought, \"Then I suppose you don't want this?\" She showed me a small lump of quartz crystal.\n\n\"What do I do with it?\"\n\n\"You wear it. It can help retune your vibrational energy system.\"\n\n\"The only energy system I need right now is a bacon roll. You might be a veggie, but I'm not. I'm not you\u2014you're a version of me. You might be into tarot and yogurt and vitamins and standing naked in the middle of crop circles with your eyes closed and your palms facing skyward, but don't think that I am as well, okay?\"\n\nShe looked crestfallen, and I sighed. After all, I felt kind of responsible. Since I'd made it into print, I'd been naturally curious about meeting the fictional me, but I'd never entertained the possibility that she might want to join Jurisfiction. But here she was\u2014the Thursday Next from The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. It was mildly spooky at first, because she wasn't similar just in the way that identical twins are similar, but physically indistinguishable from me. Stranger still, despite Pepys Fiasco's being set six years before, she looked as old as my fifty-two years. Every crag and wrinkle, even the flecks of gray hair I pretended I didn't care about. For all intents and purposes, she was me. But only, I was at pains to point out, in facial appearance. She didn't act or dress like me; her clothes were more earthy and sustainable. Instead of my usual jeans, shirt and jacket, she wore a naturally dyed cotton skirt and a homespun crocheted pullover. She carried a shoulder bag of felt instead of my Billingham, and in place of the scarlet scrunchie holding my ponytail in place, hers was secured with a strip of hemp cloth tied in a neat bow. It wasn't by accident. After I had endured the wholly unwarranted aggression of the first four Thursday books, I'd insisted that the fifth reflect my more sensitive nature. Unfortunately, they took me a little too seriously, and Thursday5 was the result. She was sensitive, caring, compassionate, kind, thoughtful\u2014and unreadable. The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco sold so badly it was remaindered within six months and never made it to paperback, something I was secretly glad of. Thursday5 might have remained in unreadable retirement, too, but for her sudden wish to join Jurisfiction and \"do her bit,\" as she called it. She'd passed her written tests and basic training and was now with me for a three-day assessment. It hadn't gone that well\u2014she was going to have to do something pretty dramatic to redeem herself.\n\n\"By the way,\" I said as I had an unrelated thought, \"can you knit?\"\n\n\"Is this part of my assessment?\"\n\n\"A simple yes or no will suffice.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nI handed her Pickwick's half-knitted sweater. \"You can finish this. The dimensions are on that piece of paper. It's a cozy for a pet,\" I added as Thursday5 stared at the oddly shaped stripy piece of knitting.\n\n\"You have a deformed jellyfish for a pet?\"\n\n\"It's for Pickwick.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Thursday5. \"I'd be delighted. I have a dodo, too\u2014she's called Pickwick5.\"\n\n\"You don't say.\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014how did yours lose her plumage?\"\n\n\"It's a long story that involves the cat next door.\"\n\n\"I have a cat next door. It's called\u2026now, what was her name?\"\n\n\"Cat Next Door5?\" I suggested.\n\n\"That's right,\" she said, astonished at my powers of detection. \"You've met her, then?\"\n\nI ignored her and pushed open the doors to the ballroom. We were just in time. The Bellman's daily briefing was about to begin.\n\nJurisfiction's offices were in the disused ballroom of Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood's residence of Norland Park, safely hidden in the backstory of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Wagging and perhaps jealous tongues claimed that it was for \"special protection,\" but I'd never seen any particular favors shown myself. The room was painted pale blue, and the walls, where not decorated with delicate plaster moldings, were hung with lavish gold-framed mirrors. It was here that we ran the policing agency that functioned within books to keep order in the dangerously flexible narrative environment. We called it Jurisfiction.\n\nThe offices of Jurisfiction had long been settled at Norland. It had been many years since they had been used as a ballroom. The floor space was liberally covered with tables, chairs, filing cabinets and piles of paperwork. Each desk had its own brass-horned footnoterphone, a typewriter and an in-tray that always seemed larger than the out. Although electronics were a daily part of life in the real world, here in fiction there was no machine so complicated that it couldn't be described in a line or two. It was a different story over in nonfiction, where they had advanced technology coming out of their ears\u2014it was a matter of some pride that we were about eight times more efficient with half the workforce. I paused for a moment. Even after sixteen years, walking into the Jurisfiction offices always gave me a bit of a buzz. Silly, really, but I couldn't help myself.\n\n\"Just in time!\" barked Commander Bradshaw, who was standing on a table so as to be more easily seen. He was Jurisfiction's longest-serving member and onetime star of the Commander Bradshaw colonial ripping adventure stories for boys. His jingoistic and anachronistic brand of British Empire fiction wasn't read at all these days, which he'd be the first to admit was no great loss and freed him up to be the head of Jurisfiction, or Bellman, a post he was unique in having held twice. He and Mrs. Bradshaw were two of the best friends I possessed. His wife, Melanie, had been Friday and Tuesday's au pair, and even though Jenny was now ten and needed less looking after, Mel was still around. She loved our kids as if they were her own. She and Bradshaw had never had children. Not surprisingly, really, since Melanie was, and had always been, a gorilla.\n\n\"Is everyone here?\" he asked, carefully scanning the small group of Jurisfiction agents.\n\n\"Hamlet's dealing with a potentially damaging outbreak of reasonable behavior inside Othello,\" said Mr. Fainset, a middle-aged man dressed in worn merchant navy garb. \"He also said he needed to see Iago about something.\"\n\n\"That'll be about their Shakespeare spin-off play Iago v. Hamlet,\" said the Red Queen, who was actually not a real queen at all but an anthropomorphized chess piece from Through the Looking Glass. \"Does he really think he's going to get the Council of Genres to agree to a thirty-ninth Shakespeare play?\"\n\n\"Stranger things have happened.\" Bradshaw sighed. \"Where are Peter and Jane?\"\n\n\"The new feline in The Tiger Who Came to Tea got stage fright,\" said Lady Cavendish, \"and after that they said they needed to deal with a troublesome brake van in The Twin Engines.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Bradshaw, tingling a small bell. \"Jurisfiction meeting number 43,369 is now in session. Item One: The number of fictioneers trying to escape into the real world has increased this month. We've had seven attempts, all of them rebuffed. The Council of Genres has made it abundantly clear that this will not be tolerated without a Letter of Transit, and anyone caught moving across or attempting to move across will be reduced to text on sight.\"\n\nThere was silence. I was the only one who crossed over on a regular basis, but no one liked the idea of reducing people to text, whether they deserved it or not. It was irreversible and the closest thing there was to death in the written world.\n\n\"I'm not saying you have to do that,\" continued Bradshaw, \"and I want you to pursue all other avenues before lethal force. But if it's the only way, then that's what you'll do. Item Two: It's been six months, and there's still no sign of the final two volumes of The Good Soldier \u0160vejk. If we don't hear anything more, we'll just bundle up the four volumes into one and reluctantly call it a day. Thursday, have you seen anything around the Well that might indicate they were stolen to order to be broken up for scrap?\"\n\n\"None at all,\" I replied, \"but I spoke with our opposite number over at Jurisfiktivn\u00ed, and he said they'd lost it over there, too.\"\n\n\"That's wonderful news!\" breathed Bradshaw, much relieved.\n\n\"It is?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014it's someone else's problem. Item Three: The inexplicable departure of comedy from the Thomas Hardy novels is still a cause for great concern.\"\n\n\"Hadn't we put a stop to that?\" asked Emperor Zhark.\n\n\"Not at all,\" replied Bradshaw. \"We tried to have the comedy that was being leached out replaced by fresh comedy coming in, but because misery has a greater natural affinity for the Wessex novels, it always seems to gain the ascendancy. Hard to believe Jude the Obscure was once the most rip-roaringly funny novel in the English language, eh?\"\n\nI put up my hand.\n\n\"Yes, Thursday?\"\n\n\"Do you think the Comedy genre might be mining the books for laughs? You know how those guys will happily steal and modify from anything and everywhere for even the most perfunctory of chuckles.\"\n\n\"It's possible, but we need hard evidence. Who wants to have a trawl around Comedy for a Thomas Hardy funnyism we can use to prove one way or the other?\"\n\n\"I will,\" said the Red Queen, before I could volunteer.\n\n\"Better get busy. If they are sucking the comedy out of Jude, we don't have much time. Now that the farce, rib-cracking one-liners and whimsical asides have all been removed, a continued drain on the novel's reserves of lightheartedness will place the book in a state of negative funniness. Insufferably gloomy\u2014miserable, in fact.\"\n\nWe thought about it for a moment. Even until as little as thirty years ago, the whole Thomas Hardy series was actually very funny\u2014pointlessly frivolous, in fact. As things stood at the moment, if you wanted a happy ending to anything in Hardy, you'd be well advised to read it backward.\n\n\"Item Four,\" continued Bradshaw, \"a few genre realignments.\"\n\nThere was an audible sigh in the air, and a few agents lost interest. This was one of those boring-but-important items that, while of little consequence to the book in question, subtly changed the way in which it was policed. We had to know what novel was in what genre\u2014sometimes it wasn't altogether obvious, and when a book stretched across two genres or more, it could open a jurisdictional can of worms that might have us tied up for years. We all reached for our note pads and pencils as Bradshaw stared at the list.\n\n\"Erich von D\u00e4niken's Chariots of the Gods? has been moved from nonfiction to fiction,\" he began, leaving a pause so we could write it down, \"and Orwell's 1984 is no longer truly fiction, so has been reallocated to nonfiction. Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan is no longer Sci-fibut Philosophy.\"\n\nThis was actually good news; I'd thought the same for years.\n\n\"The subgenre of Literary Smut has finally been disbanded, with Fanny Hill and Moll Flanders being transferred to Racy Novel and Lady Chatterley's Lover to Human Drama.\"\n\nWe diligently wrote it all down as Bradshaw continued:\n\n\"The History of Tom Jones is now in Romantic Comedy, and The Story of O is part of the Erotic Novel genre, as are Lolita and The Autobiography of a Flea. As part of a separate genre reappraisal, Orwell's Animal Farm belongs not just to the Allegorical and Political genres but has expanded to be part of Animal Drama and Juvenilia as well.\"\n\n\"Four genres bad, two genres good,\" murmured Mr. Fainset.\n\n\"I'm sorry?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Good,\" said Bradshaw, stroking his large white mustache. \"Item Five: The entire works of Jane Austen are down in the maintenance bay for a refit. We've diverted all the Outlander readings through a book-club boxed set, and I want someone to patrol the series until the originals are back online. Volunteers?\"\n\n\"I will,\" I said.\n\n\"You're on cadet assessment, Thursday. Anyone else?\"\n\nLady Margaret Cavendish put up her hand. Unusually for a resident of fiction, she had once been real. Originally a flamboyant seventeenth-century aristocratic socialite much keen on poetry, women's issues and self-publicity, our Lady Cavendish hailed from an unfair biography. Annoyed by the slurs committed, as so often to the defamed dead, she took flight to the bright lights of Jurisfiction, in which she seemed to excel, especially in the poetry form, which no one else much liked to handle.\n\n\"What would you have me do?\" she asked.\n\n\"Nothing, really\u2014just maintain a presence to make sure any mischievous character understudies think twice before they do their own dialogue or try to 'improve' anything.\"\n\nLady Cavendish shrugged and nodded her agreement.\n\n\"Item Six,\" said Bradshaw, consulting his clipboard again, \"Falling Outlander ReadRates.\"\n\nHe looked at us all over his glasses. We all knew the problem but saw it more as a systemic difficulty rather than something we could deal with on a book-to-book policing basis.\n\n\"The Outlander Reading Index has dropped once again for the 1,782nd day running,\" reported Bradshaw, \"and although there are certain books that will always be read, we are finding that more and more minor classics and a lot of general fiction are going for long periods without even being opened. Because of this, Text Grand Central is worried that bored characters in lesser books might try to move to more popular novels for work, which will doubtless cause friction.\"\n\nWe were all silent, and the inference wasn't lost on any of us: The fictional characters in the BookWorld could be a jittery bunch, and it didn't take much to set off a riot.\n\n\"I can't say any more at this point,\" concluded Bradshaw, \"as it's only a potential problem, but be aware of what's going on. The last thing we need right now is a band of disgruntled bookpeople besieging the Council of Genres demanding the right to be read. Okay, Item Seven: The MAWk-15H virus has once again resurfaced in Dickens, particularly in the death of Little Nell, which is now so uncomfortably saccharine that even our own dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell complained. I need someone to liaise with the BookWorld Communicable Textual Diseases Unit to deal with this. Volunteers?\"\n\nFoyle reluctantly put up his hand. Working for the BCTD on Bookviruses was never popular, as it required a lengthy quarantine on completion; most of Victorian melodrama was to some degree infected with MAWk-15H, and it was often blamed on Jurisfiction agents with poor hygiene.\n\n\"Item Eight: Jurisfiction recruitment. The percentage of recruits making it to full agent status is currently eight percent, down from twenty-two percent three years ago. I'm not saying that standards need to slip or anything, but Senator Jobsworth has threatened to force agents upon us if we can't recruit, and we don't want that.\"\n\nWe all muttered our agreement. Just recently a few cadets had been making themselves conspicuous by their poor performance. None of us wanted to be understaffed, but then neither did we want the ser vice swamped with knuckleheads.\n\n\"So,\" continued Bradshaw, \"on the basis that poor training makes failed cadets, I want you all to think about giving them all a little more of your time.\"\n\nHe put down his clipboard.\n\n\"That's it for now. Do the best you can, keep me informed as to progress and, as regards health and safety, we've had the welcome news that you can ignore safety practices to save time, but you must complete the paperwork. Good luck, and\u2026let's be careful out there.\"\n\nEveryone started to talk among themselves, and after I told Thursday5 to wait at my desk, I threaded my way through the small gathering to speak to Bradshaw. I caught up with him as he was heading back to his desk.\n\n\"You want me to report on the Jane Austen refit?\" I asked him. \"Any par tic ular reason?\"\n\nBradshaw was dressed as you might expect a colonial white hunter to dress: in a safari suit with shorts, pith helmet and a revolver in a leather holster. He didn't need to dress like that anymore, of course, but he was a man of habit.\n\n\"That was mostly misdirection,\" he asserted. \"I do want you to take a gander, but there's something else I'd like you to look at\u2014something I don't want Senator Jobsworth to know about, or at least not yet.\"\n\nSenator Jobsworth was the head of the Council of Genres and a powerful man. Politics within Jurisfiction could be tricky at times, and I had to be particularly diplomatic as far as Jobsworth was concerned\u2014I often had to cross swords with him in the debating chamber. As the only real person in fiction, my advice was often called for\u2014but rarely welcomed.\n\n\"What do you want me to do?\"\n\nBradshaw rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. \"We've had a report of something that sounds transfictional.\"\n\n\"Another one?\"\n\nIt was the name given to something that had arrived from the real world\u2014the Outland, as it was known. I was a transfictional, of course, but the term was more usually used to refer to something or somebody that had crossed over unexpectedly.\n\nBradshaw handed me a scrap of paper with the title of a book on it. \"I feel happier with you handling it, because you're an Outlander. Appreciate a woman who's proper flesh and blood. By the way, how's Thursday5 doing?\"\n\n\"She isn't,\" I replied. \"Her timidity will end up getting her killed. We had a run-in with a grammasite inside Lord of the Flies while dealing with the glasses problem, and she decided to give the Verbisoid the benefit of the doubt and a very large hug.\"\n\n\"What type of Verbisoid? Intransitive?\"\n\nI shook my head sadly. \"Nope. Ditransitive.\"\n\nBradshaw whistled low. He hadn't been kidding over recruitment troubles or Senator Jobsworth's involvement. Even I knew there were at least three totally unsuitable candidates Jobsworth was pressuring us to \"reappraise.\"\n\n\"She's lucky to have a single verb left in her body,\" said Bradshaw after a pause. \"Give her the full three days before firing her, yes? It has to be by the book, in case she tries to sue us.\"\n\nI assured him I would and moved back to my desk, where Thursday5 was sitting on the floor in the lotus position. I had a quick rummage through my case notes, which were now stacked high on my desk. In a rash moment I'd volunteered to look at Jurisfiction \"cold cases,\" thinking that there would only be three or four. As it turned out, there were over a hundred infractions of sorts, ranging from random plot fluctuations in the Gormenghast trilogy to the inexplicable and untimely death of Charles Dickens, who had once lived long enough to finish Edwin Drood. I did as much as I had time for, which wasn't a lot.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, pulling on my jacket and grabbing my bag, \"we're off. Stick close to me and do exactly as I say\u2014even if that means killing grammasites. It's them or us.\"\n\n\"Them or us,\" repeated Thursday5 halfheartedly, slinging her felt handbag over her shoulder in exactly the same way as I did. I stopped for a moment and stared at my desk. It had been rearranged.\n\n\"Thursday?\" I said testily. \"Have you been doing feng shui on my desk again?\"\n\n\"It was more of a harmonization, really,\" she replied somewhat sheepishly.\n\n\"Well, don't.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Just\u2026just don't.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Training Day",
                "text": "The BookWorld was a minefield for the unwary, so apprenticeships were essential. We'd lost more agents through poor training than were ever taken by grammasites. A foot wrong in the imaginatively confusing world of fiction could see the inexperienced Jurisfiction Cadet mispelled, conjugated or reduced to text. My tutor had been the first Miss Havisham, and I like to think it was her wise counsel that had allowed me to survive as long as I did. Many cadets didn't. The average life expectancy for a raw recruit in BookWorld was about forty-seven chapters.\n\nWe stepped outside the colonnaded entrance of Norland Park and basked in the warmth of the sunshine. The story had long ago departed with the Dashwood family to Devon, and this corner of Sense and Sensibility was quiet and unused. To one side a saddled horse was leaning languidly against a tree with a hound sitting on the ground quite near it. Birds sang in the branches, and clouds moved slowly across the heavens. Each cloud was identical, of course, and the sun didn't track across the sky as it did back home, and, come to think of it, the birdsong was on a twenty-second loop. It was what we called \"narrative economics,\" the bare amount of description necessary to create a scene. The BookWorld was like that\u2014mostly ordered, and without the rich texture that nature's randomness brings to the real world.\n\nWe sat in silence for a few minutes to wait for my taxi. I was thinking about the mostly bald Pickwick, Friday's ChronoGuard pre sen ta tion, Felix8's return and my perfidy to Landen. Thursday5 had no such worries\u2014she was reading the astrology section of the BookWorld's premier newspaper, The Word.\n\nAfter a while she said, \"It's my birthday today.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"You do? How?\"\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\n\"Listen to what it says in the horoscopes: 'If it is your birthday, there may be an increased amount of mail. Expect gifts, friendly salutations from people and the occasional surprise. Possibility of cake.' That's so weird\u2014I wonder if any of it will come true?\"\n\n\"I've no idea. Have you noticed the amount of Mrs. Danvers you see wandering around these days?\"\n\nI mentioned this because a pair of them had been seen at Norland Park that morning. They were becoming a familiar sight in fiction, hanging around popular books out of sight of the reader, looking furtive and glaring malevolently at anyone who asked what they were up to. The excess of Mrs. Danvers in the BookWorld was easily explained. Generics, or characters-in-waiting, are created blank, without any personality or gender, and are then billeted in novels until called up for training in character schools. From there they are sent either to populate the books being built or to replace characters who are due for retirement or replacement. The problem is, generics have a chameleonic habit of assimilating themselves to a strong leading character, and when six thousand impressionable generics were lodged inside Rebecca, all but eight became Mrs. Danvers, the creepy house keeper of Manderley. Since creepy house keepers are not much in demand these days, they were mostly used as expendable drones for the Mispeling Vyrus Farst Respons Groop or, more sinisterly, for riot control and any other civic disturbances. At Jurisfiction we were concerned that they were becoming another layer of policing, answerable only to the Council of Genres, something that was stridently denied.\n\n\"Mrs. Danvers?\" repeated Thursday5, studying a pullout guide to reading tea leaves. \"I've got one or two in my books, but I think they're meant to be there.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" I said by way of conversation, \"is there any aspect of the BookWorld that you'd like to learn about as part of your time with me?\"\n\n\"Well,\" she said after a pause, \"I'd like to have a go and see what it's like inside a story during a recitation in the oral tradition\u2014I've heard it's really kind of buzzing.\"\n\nShe was right. It was like sweaty live improv theater\u2014anything could happen.\n\n\"No way,\" I said, \"and if I hear that you've been anywhere near OralTrad, you'll be confined to The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. It's not like books where everything's laid out and orderly. The oral tradition is dynamic like you've no idea. Change anything in there and you will, quite literally, give the narrator an aneurysm.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"A brain hemorrhage. The same can be said of Poetry. You don't want to go hacking around in there without a clear head on your shoulders.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"It's like a big emotion magnifier. All feelings are exacerbated to a dangerous level. You can find things out about yourself that you never knew\u2014or never wanted to know. We have a saying: 'You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.' It's like being able to see yourself when drunk.\"\n\n\"Aha,\" she said in a quiet voice.\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"You've never been drunk, have you?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Do you think I should try it?\"\n\n\"It's overrated.\"\n\nI had a thought. \"Have you ever been up to the Council of Genres?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"A lamentable omission. That's where we'll go first.\"\n\nI pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone and called TransGenre Taxis to see where my cab had gone. The reason for a taxi was not altogether obvious to Thursday5, who, like most residents of the BookWorld, could bookjump to any novel previously visited with an ease I found annoying. My intrafictional bookjumping was twenty times better than my transfictional jumps, but even then a bit ropey. I needed to read a full paragraph to get in, and if I didn't have the right section in my TravelBook, then I had to walk via the Great Library or get a taxi\u2014as long as one was available.\n\n\"Wouldn't it be quicker just to bookjump?\" asked Thursday5 with annoying directness.\n\n\"You young things are always in a hurry, aren't you?\" I replied. \"Besides, it's more dignified to walk\u2014and the view is generally better. However,\" I added with a sense of deflated ego, \"in the absence of an available cab, we shall.\"\n\nI pulled out my TravelBook, turned to the correct page and jumped from Sense and Sensibility to the Great Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Great Library and",
                "text": "[ Council of Genres ]\n\nThe Textual Sieve was designed and constructed by JurisTech, the technological arm of Jurisfiction. The Textual Sieve is a fantastically useful and mostly unexplained device that allows the user to \"sieve\" or \"strain\" text in order to isolate a specified search string. Infinitely variable, a well-tuned Textual Sieve on \"full opaque\" can rebuff an entire book, but set to \"fine\" can delicately remove a spiderweb from a half-million-word novel.\n\nI found myself in a long, dark, wood-paneled corridor lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling. The carpet was elegantly patterned, and the ceiling was decorated with rich moldings that depicted scenes from the classics, each cornice supporting the marble bust of an author. High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry and reflected off the polished wood, reinforcing the serious mood of the library. Running down the center of the corridor was a long row of reading tables, each with a green-shaded brass lamp. In both directions the corridor vanished into darkness with no definable end.\n\nI had first entered the Great Library sixteen years ago, and the description of it hadn't altered by so much as a word. Hundreds of miles of shelves containing not every single book but every single edition of every book. Anything that had been published in the real world had a counterpart logged somewhere within its endless corridors.\n\nThursday5 was nearby and joined me to walk along the corridor, making our way toward the crossover section right at the heart of the library. But the thing to realize was that it wasn't in any sense of the word real, any more than the rest of the BookWorld was. The library was as nebulous as the books it contained; its form was decided not only by the base description but my interpretation of what a Great Library might look like. Because of this the library was as subtly changeable as my moods. At times dark and somber, at others light and airy. Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work\u2014the writer might have died long ago.\n\nWe approached another corridor perpendicular to the one we had just walked down. In the middle of the crossway was a large, circular void with a wrought-iron rail and a spiral staircase bolted securely to one side. We walked over to the handrail and peered down. Not more than thirty feet below us, I could see another floor, exactly like this one. In the middle of that floor was another circular void through which I could see another floor, and another and another, and so on to the depths of the library. It was the same above us.\n\n\"Twenty-six floors for the published works,\" replied Thursday5 as I caught her eye and raised an eyebrow quizzically, \"and twenty-six subbasements where books are actually constructed\u2014the Well of Lost Plots.\"\n\nI beckoned her to the ornate wrought-iron elevator and pressed the call button. We got into the elevator, I drew the gates shut with a clatter, and the electric motors whined as we headed upward. Because there are very few authors whose names begin with Q, X and Z, floors seventeen, twenty-four and twenty-six were relatively empty and thus free for other purposes. The seventeenth floor housed the Mispeling Vyrus Farst Respons Groop, the twenty-fourth floor was used essentially for storage, and the twenty-sixth was where the legislative body that governs the BookWorld had taken up residence: the Council of Genres.\n\nThis was a floor unlike any other in the Great Library. Gone were the dark wood, molded plaster ceilings and busts of long-dead writers, and in their place was a light, airy working space with a roof of curved wrought iron covered in glass through which we could see the clouds and sky. I beckoned Thursday5 to a large picture window in an area to one side of the corridor. There were a few chairs scattered about, and it was a restful spot, designed so that overworked CofG employees could relax for a moment. I had stood here with my own mentor, the first Miss Havisham, almost sixteen years previously.\n\n\"The Great Library looks smaller from the outside,\" observed Thursday5, staring out the window at the rain-streaked exterior.\n\nShe was right. The corridors in the library below could be as long as two hundred miles in each direction, expandable upon requirements, but from the outside the library looked more akin to the Chrysler Building, liberally decorated with stainless-steel statuary and measuring less than two hundred yards along each face. And even though we were only on the twenty-sixth floor, it looked a great deal higher. I had once been to the top of the 120-story Goliath Tower at Goliathopolis, and this seemed easily as high as that.\n\n\"The other towers?\" she asked, still staring out the window. Far below us were the treetops of a deep forest flecked with mist, and scattered around at varying distances were other towers just like ours.\n\n\"The nearest one is German,\" I said, \"and behind those are French and Spanish. Arabic is just beyond them\u2014and that one over there is Welsh.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Thursday5, staring at the green foliage far below.\n\n\"The Council of Genres looks after the Fictional Legislature,\" I said, walking down the corridor to the main assembly chamber. It had become busier since we'd arrived, with various clerks moving around holding file folders, reports and so forth. I had thought red tape was bad in the real world, but in the paper world it was everything. I'd come to realize over the years that anything created by mankind had error, mischief and bureaucratic officialdom hardwired at inception, and the fictional world was no different.\n\n\"The council governs dramatic conventions, strictly controls the use of irony, legislates on word use and, through the Book Inspectorate, decides which novels are to be published and which ones scrapped.\"\n\nWe had arrived at a viewing gallery overlooking the main debating chamber, which was a spacious hall of white marble with an arched roof suspended by riveted iron girders. There was a raised dais at the back surmounted by a central and ornately carved chair flanked on each side by four smaller ones. A lectern for the speaker was in front of that, and facing both the lectern and the dais was a horse shoe pattern of desks for the representatives of the various genres. The back wall of the chamber was decorated with a vast mosaic representing the theoretical positions of the genres as they hung in the Nothing. The only other item of note in the debating chamber was the Read-O-Meter, which gave us a continually updated figure of just how many books had been read over the previous twenty-four hours. This instrument was a constant reminder of the falling ReadRates that had troubled the BookWorld over the past five years, and every time the numbers flopped over\u2014and they did every five seconds\u2014the number went down. Sometimes in depressingly large amounts. There was someone speaking volubly at the lectern, and the debating chamber was less than a third full.\n\n\"The main genres are seated at the front,\" I explained, \"and the subgenres radiate out behind them, in order of importance and size. Although the CofG oversees broad legislative issues, each individual genre can make its own decision on a local level. They all field a senator to appear before the council and look after their own interests\u2014sometimes the debating chamber resembles something less like a seat of democracy and more like plain old horse trading.\"\n\n\"Who's talking now?\" she asked as a new member took the podium. He looked as though he hadn't brushed his hair that morning, was handsome if a bit dim-looking, had no shoes and was wearing a shirt split open to the waist.\n\n\"That'll be Speedy Muffler, the senator from the Racy Novel genre, although I suspect that might not be his real name.\"\n\n\"They have a senator?\"\n\n\"Of course. Every genre has at least one, and depending on the popularity of subgenres, they might have several. Thriller which is subgenred into political, Spy and Adventure, has three. Comedy at the last count had six; Crime has twelve.\"\n\n\"I see. So what's Racy Novel's problem?\"\n\n\"It's a border dispute. Although each book exists on its own and is adrift in the intragenre space known as the Nothing, the books belonging to the various genres clump together for mutual protection, free trade of ideas and easy movement of characters.\"\n\n\"I get it. Books of a feather flock together, yes?\"\n\n\"Pretty much. Sensibly, Thriller was placed next door to Crime, which itself is bordered by Human Drama\u2014a fine demonstration of inspired genreography for the very best mutual improvement of both.\"\n\n\"And Racy Novel?\"\n\n\"Some idiot placed it somewhat recklessly between Ecclesiastical and Feminist, with the tiny principality of Erotica to the far north and a buffer zone with Comedy to the south comprising the subcrossover genre of Bedroom Farce/Bawdy Romp. Racy Novel gets along with Comedy and Erotica fine, but Ecclesiastical and Feminist really don't think Racy Novel is worthy of a genre at all and often fire salvos of long-winded intellectual dissent across the border, which might do more damage if anyone in Racy Novel could understand them. For its part, Racy Novel sends panty-raiding parties into its neighbors, which wasn't welcome in Feminist and even less in Ecclesiastical\u2014or was it the other way around? Anyway, the whole deal might have escalated into an all-out genre war without the Council of Genres stepping in and brokering a peace deal. The CofG would guarantee Racy Novel's independence as long as it agreed to certain\u2026sanctions.\"\n\n\"Which were?\"\n\n\"An import ban on metaphor, characterization and competent description. Speedy Muffler is a bit of a megalomaniac, and both Feminist and Ecclesiastical thought containment was better than out-and-out conflict. The problem is, Racy Novel claims that this is worse than a slow attritional war, as these sanctions deny it the potential of literary advancement beyond the limited scope of its work.\"\n\n\"I can't say I'm very sympathetic to that cause.\"\n\n\"It's not important that you are\u2014your role in Jurisfiction is only to defend the status\u2014\"\n\nI stopped talking, as something seemed to be going on down in the debating chamber. In a well-orchestrated lapse of protocol, delegates were throwing their ballot papers around, and among the jeering and catcalls Muffler was struggling to make himself heard. I shook my head sadly.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Something that Racy Novel has been threatening for some time\u2014they've claimed to have developed and tested a\u2026dirty bomb.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"It's a tightly packed mass of inappropriate plot devices, explicit suggestions and sexual scenes of an expressly gratuitous nature. The 'dirty' elements of the bomb fly apart at a preset time and attach themselves to any unshielded prose. Given the target, it has the potential for untold damage. A well-placed dirty bomb could scatter poorly described fornication all across drab theological debate or drop a wholly unwarranted scene of a sexually exploitative nature right into the middle of Mrs. Dalloway.\"\n\nEven Thursday5 could see this was not a good thing. \"Would he do that?\"\n\n\"He just might. Senator Muffler is as mad as a barrel of skunks, and the inclusion of Racy Novel in the Council of Genres' definition of the 'Axis of Unreadable' along with Misery Memoirs and Pseudointellectual Drivel didn't help matters a bit. It'll be all over the BookWorld by nightfall, mark my words\u2014the papers love this kind of combative, saber-rattling crap.\"\n\n\"Ms. Next!\" came an annoying, high-pitched voice.\n\nI turned to find a small weasel of a man with pinched features, dressed in robes and with a goodly retinue of self-important assistants stacked up behind him.\n\n\"Good morning, Senator,\" I said, bowing as protocol demanded. \"May I introduce my apprentice, Thursday5? Thursday5, this is Senator Jobsworth, director-general of the CofG and head of the Pan-Genre Treaty Organization.\"\n\n\"Sklub,\" gulped Thursday5, trying to curtsy, bob and bow all at the same time. The senator nodded in her direction, then dismissed everyone before beckoning me to join him at the large picture window.\n\n\"Ms. Next,\" he said in a quiet voice, \"how are things down at Jurisfiction?\"\n\n\"Underfunded as usual,\" I replied, well used to Jobsworth's manipulative ways.\n\n\"It needn't be so,\" he replied. \"If I can count on your support for policy direction in the near future, I am sure we can rectify the situation.\"\n\n\"You are too kind,\" I replied, \"but I will judge my decisions on what is best for the BookWorld as a whole, rather than the department I work in.\"\n\nHis eyes flashed angrily. Despite his being the head of the council, policy decisions still had to be made by consensus\u2014and it annoyed the hell out of him.\n\n\"With Outlander ReadRates almost in free fall,\" continued Jobsworth with a snarl, \"I'd have thought you'd be willing to compromise on those precious scruples of yours.\"\n\n\"I don't compromise,\" I told him resolutely, repeating, \"I base my decisions on what is best for the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Jobsworth with an insincere smile, \"let's hope you don't regret any of your decisions. Good day.\"\n\nAnd he swept off with his entourage at his heels. His threats didn't frighten me; he'd been making them\u2014and I'd been ignoring them\u2014for almost as long as we'd known each other.\n\n\"I didn't realize you were so close to Senator Jobsworth,\" said Thursday5 as soon as she had rejoined me.\n\n\"I have a seat at the upper-level policy-directive meetings as the official LBOCS. Since I'm an Outlander, I have powers of abstract and long-term thought that most fictioneers can only dream about. The thing is, I don't generally toe the line, and Jobsworth doesn't like that.\"\n\n\"Can I ask a question?\" asked Thursday5 as we took the elevator back down into the heart of the Great Library.\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"I'm a little confused over how the whole imaginotransference technology works. I mean, how do books here get to be read out there?\"\n\nI sighed. Cadets were supposed to come to me for assessment when they already knew the basics. This one was as green as Brighton Rock. The elevator stopped on the third floor, and I pulled open the gates. We stepped out into one of the Great Library's endless corridors, and I waved a hand in the direction of the bookshelves.\n\n\"Okay: imaginotransference. Did any of your tutors tell you even vaguely how the reader-writer thing actually works?\"\n\n\"I think I might have been having a colonic that morning.\"\n\nI moved closer to the shelves and beckoned her to follow. As I came to within a yard of the books, I could feel their influence warm me like a hot radiator. But it wasn't heat I was feeling; it was the warmth of a good story, well told. A potpourri of jumbled narrative, hovering just above of the books like morning mist on a lake. I could actually feel the emotions, hear the whispered snatches of conversation and see the images that momentarily broke free of the gravity that bound them to the story.\n\n\"Can you feel that?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Feel what?\"\n\nI sighed. Fictional people were less attuned to story; it was rare indeed that anyone in the BookWorld actually read a book\u2014unless the narrative called for it.\n\n\"Place your hands gently against the spines.\"\n\nShe did as I asked, and after a moment's puzzlement she smiled.\n\n\"I can hear voices,\" she whispered back, trying not to break the moment, \"and a waterfall. And joy, betrayal, laughter\u2014and a young man who has lost his hat.\"\n\n\"What you're feeling is the raw imaginotransference energy, the method by which all books are dispersed into the reader's imagination. The books we have in the Outland are no more similar to these than a photograph is to the subject\u2014these books are alive, each one a small universe unto itself\u2014and by throughputting some of that energy from here to their counterparts in the real world, we can transmit the story direct to the reader.\"\n\nThursday took her hand from the books and experimented to see how far out she had to go before losing the energy. It was barely a few inches.\n\n\"Throughputting? Is that where Textual Sieves come into it?\"\n\n\"No. I've got to go and look at something for Bradshaw, so we'll check out core containment\u2014it's at the heart of the imaginotransference technology.\"\n\nWe walked a few yards up the corridor, and after carefully consulting the note Bradshaw had given me, I selected a book from the bewildering array of the same title in all its various incarnations. I opened the volume and looked at the stats page, which blinked up a real-time Outland ReadRate, a total of the editions still in existence and much else besides.\n\n\"The 1929 book-club deluxe leatherbound edition with nine copies still in circulation from a total of twentyfive hundred,\" I explained, \"and with no readers actually making their way through it. An ideal choice for a bit of training.\"\n\nI rummaged in my bag and brought out what looked like a large-caliber flare pistol.\n\nThursday5 regarded me nervously.\n\n\"Are you expecting trouble?\"\n\n\"I always expect trouble.\"\n\n\"Isn't that a TextMarker?\" she asked, her confusion understandable, because this wasn't officially a weapon at all. These were generally used to mark the text of a book from within so an agent could be extracted in an emergency. Once an essential piece of equiment, they were carried less and less as the mobilefootnoterphone had made such devices redundant.\n\n\"It was,\" I replied, breaking open the stubby weapon and taking a single brass cartridge from a small leather pouch. \"But I've modified it to take an eraserhead.\"\n\nI slipped the cartridge in, snapped the pistol shut and put it back in my bag. The eraserhead was just one of the many abstract technologies that JurisTech built for us. Designed to sever the bonds between letters in a word, it was a devastating weapon to anyone of textual origin\u2014a single blast from one of these and the unlucky recipient would be nothing but a jumbled heap of letters and a bluish haze. Its use was strictly controlled\u2014Jurisfiction agents only.\n\n\"Gosh,\" said Thursday after I'd explained it to her. \"I don't carry any weapons at all.\"\n\n\"I'd so love not to have to,\" I told her, and with the taxi still nowhere in sight, I passed the volume across to her. \"Here,\" I said, \"let's see how good you are at taking a passenger into a book.\"\n\nShe accepted the novel without demur, opened it and started to read. She had a good speaking voice, fruity and expressive, and she quickly began to fade from view. I grabbed hold of her cuff so as not to be left behind, and she instantly regained her solidity; it was the library that was now faded and indistinct. Within a few more words, we had traveled into our chosen book. The first thing I noticed as we arrived was that the chief protagonist's feet were on fire. Worse still, he hadn't noticed."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Probe Inside Pinocchio",
                "text": "Although the idea of using footnotes as a communication medium was suggested by Dr. Faustus as far back as 1622, it wasn't until 1856 that the first practical footnoterphone was demonstrated. The first transgenre trunk line between Human Drama and Crime was opened in 1915, and the network has been expanded and improved ever since. Although the system is far from complete, with many books still having only a single payfootnoterpayphone, on the outer reaches of the known BookWorld many books are without any coverage at all.\n\nIt was Pinocchio, of course, I'd know that nose anywhere. As we jumped into the toy workshop on page 26, the wooden puppet\u2014Geppetto's or Collodi's creation, depending on which way you looked at it\u2014was asleep with his feet on a brazier. The workbench was clean and tidy. Half-finished wooden toys filled every available space, and all the woodworking tools were hung up neatly upon the wall. There was a cot in one corner, a sideboard in another, and the floor was covered with curly wood shavings, but there was no sawdust or dirt. The fictional world was like that, a sort of narrative shorthand that precluded any of the shabby grottiness and texture that gives the real world its richness.\n\nPinocchio was snoring loudly. Comically, almost. His feet were smoldering, and within a few lines it would be morning and he would have nothing left but charred stumps. He wasn't the only person in the room. On the sideboard were two crickets watching the one-day test match on a portable TV. One was wearing a smoking jacket and a pillbox hat and held a cigarette in a silver holder, and the other had a broken antennae, a black eye and one leg in a sling.\n\n\"The name's Thursday Next,\" I announced to them both, holding up my Jurisfiction badge, and this is\u2026Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Which is the real one?\" asked the cricket in the pillbox hat\u2014somewhat tactlessly, I thought.\n\n\"I am,\" I replied through gritted teeth. \"Can't you tell?\"\n\n\"Frankly, no,\" replied the cricket, looking at the pair of us in turn. \"So\u2026which is the one that does naked yoga?\"\n\n\"That would be me,\" said Thursday5 brightly.\n\nI groaned audibly.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" she asked, amused by my prudishness. \"You should try it someday. It's relaxing and very empowering.\"\n\n\"I don't do yoga,\" I told her.\n\n\"Take it up and drop the bacon sandwiches and it will put ten years on your life.\"\n\nThe cricket, who spoke in a clipped accent reminiscent of No\u00ebl Coward's, folded up his paper and said, \"We don't often get visitors, you know\u2014the last lot to pass through this way was the Italian Translation Inspectorate making sure we were keeping to the spirit of the original.\"\n\nThe cricket had a sudden thought and indicated the damaged cricket sitting next to him. \"How rude could I be? This is Jim 'Bruises' McDowell, my stunt double.\"\n\nBruises looked as though the stunt sequence with the mallet hadn't gone quite as planned.\n\n\"Hello,\" said the stunt cricket with an embarrassed shrug. \"I had an accident during training. Some damn fool went and moved the crash mat.\" As he said it, he looked at the other cricket, who did nothing but puff on his cigarette and preen his antennae in a nonchalant fashion.\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that,\" I said by way of conversation\u2014a good relationship with the characters within the BookWorld was essential in our work. \"Have you been read recently?\"\n\nThe cricket in the pillbox hat suddenly looked embarrassed.\n\n\"The truth is,\" he said awkwardly, \"we've never been read. Not once in seventy-three years. Deluxe book-club editions are like that\u2014just for show. But if we did have a reading, we'd all be primed and set to go.\"\n\n\"I can do a lot more than the 'being hit with the mallet' stunt,\" added Bruises excitedly. \"Would you like me to set myself on fire and fall out of a window? I can wave my arms very convincingly.\"\n\n\"No thanks.\"\n\n\"Shame,\" replied Bruises wistfully. \"I'd like to broaden my skills to cover car-to-helicopter transfers and being dragged backwards by a horse\u2014whatever that is.\"\n\n\"When the last of the nine copies of this book have gone,\" pointed out the cricket, \"we can finally come off duty and be reassigned. I'm studying for the lead in Charlotte's Web.\"\n\n\"Do you know of any other books that require stunt crickets?\" asked Bruises hopefully. \"I've been practicing the very dangerous and not-at-all-foolhardy leap over seventeen motorcycles in a double-decker bus.\"\n\n\"Isn't it meant to be the other way around?\"\n\n\"I told you it seemed a bit rum,\" said the cricket as Bruises' shoulders sagged. \"But never mind all that,\" he added, returning his attention to me. \"I suppose you're here about\u2026the thing?\"\n\n\"We are, sir. Where is it?\"\n\nThe cricket pointed with three of his legs at a pile of half-finished toys in the corner and, thus rendered lopsided, fell over. His stunt double laughed until the cricket glared at him dangerously.\n\n\"It appeared unannounced three days ago\u2014quite ruined my entrance.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd never been read?\"\n\n\"Rehearsals, dahling. I do like to keep the thespian juices fresh\u2014and Bruises here likes to practice his celebrated 'falling from the wall after being struck by a mallet' stunt\u2014and then the leg twitching and death throes, which he does so well.\"\n\nBruises said nothing and studied the tips of his antennae modestly.\n\nI cautiously approached the area of the room the cricket had indicated. Half hidden behind a marionette with no head and a hobby horse in need of sanding was a dull metallic sphere about the size of a grapefruit. It had several aerials sticking out of the top and an array of lenses protruding from the front. I leaned closer and sniffed at it cautiously. I could smell the odor of corrosion and see the fine pits on the heat-streaked surface. This wasn't an errant space probe from the Sci-ficanon; it was too well described for that. Bradshaw had been right\u2014it was transfictional.\n\n\"Where do you think it's from?\" asked the cricket. \"We get scraps of other books blowing in from time to time when there's a WordStorm, but nothing serious. Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream sheltered here for a while during the textphoon of '32 and picked up a thing or two from Lamp-Wick, but only the odd verb or two otherwise. Is it important?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" I replied. It was a lie, of course\u2014but I didn't want a panic. This was anything but unimportant. I gently rotated the probe and read the engraved metal plate on the back. There was a serial number and a name that I recognized only too well\u2014the Goliath Corporation. My least favorite multinational and a thorn in my side for many years. I was annoyed and heartened all at the same time. Annoyed that they had developed a machine for hurling probes inside fiction, but heartened that this was all they had managed to achieve. As I peered closer at the inert metallic ball, there was a warning chirp from my bag. I quickly dug out a small instrument and tossed it to Thursday5.\n\n\"A reader?\" she said with surprise. \"In here?\"\n\n\"So it seems. How far away?\"\n\nShe flipped the device open and stared at the flickering needle blankly. Technology was another point she wasn't that strong on. \"We're clear. The reader is\u2026er, two paragraphs ahead of us.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\nShe looked at the instrument again. It was a Narrative Proximity Device, designed to ensure that our intrafictional perambulations couldn't be seen by readers in the Outland. One of the odd things about the BookWorld was that when characters weren't being read, they generally relaxed and talked, rehearsed, drank coffee, watched cricket or played mah-jongg. But as soon as a reading loomed, they all leaped into place and did their thing. They could sense the reading approaching out of long experience, but we couldn't\u2014hence the Narrative Proximity Device. Being caught up in a reading wasn't particularly desirable for a Jurisfiction agent, as it generally caused a certain degree of confusion in the reader. I was spotted once myself\u2014and once is once too often.\n\n\"I think so,\" replied Thursday, staring at the meter again. \"No, wait\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"A positive echo means the reader is ahead of us, a negative means\u2026?\"\n\n\"Bother,\" she muttered. \"Paragraphs behind and coming this way\u2014Ma'am, I think we're about to be read.\"\n\n\"Is it a fast reader?\"\n\nShe consulted the meter once more. If the reader was fast\u2014a fan on a reread or a bored student\u2014then we'd be fine. A slow reader searching every word for hidden meaning and subtle nuance and we might have to jump out until whoever it was had passed.\n\n\"Looks like a 41.3.\"\n\nThis was faster than the maximum throughput of the book, which was pegged at about sixteen words per second. It was a speed-reader, as likely as not reading every fifth word and skimming over the top of the prose like a stone skipping on water.\n\n\"They'll never see us. Press yourself against the wall until the reading moves through.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" asked Thursday5, who had done her basic training with the old Jurisfiction adage \"Better dead than read\" ringing in her ears.\n\n\"You should know what a reading looks like if you're to be an asset to Jurisfiction. Besides,\" I added, \"overcaution is for losers.\"\n\nI was being unnecessarily strict. We could quite easily have jumped out or even hopped back a few pages and followed the narrative behind the reading, but cadets need to sail close to the wind a few times. Both the crickets were in something of a tizzy at the prospect of their first-ever reading and tried to run in several directions at once before vanishing off to their places.\n\n\"Stand still,\" I said as we pressed ourselves against the least-well-described part of the wall and looked again at the NPD. The needle was rising rapidly and counting off the words to what we termed \"Read Zero\"\u2014the actual time and place, the comprehension singularity, where the story was actually being read.\n\nThere was a distant hum and a rumble as the reading approached. Then came a light buzz in the air like static and an increased heightening of the senses as the reader took up the descriptive power of the book and translated it into his or her own unique interpretation of the events\u2014channeled from here through the massive imaginotransference Storycode Engines back at Text Grand Central and into the reader's imagination. It was a technology of almost incalculable complexity, which I had yet to fully understand. But the beauty of the whole process was that the reader in the Outland never suspected there was any sort of process at all\u2014the act of reading was to most people, myself included, as natural as breathing.\n\nGeppetto's woodworking tools started to jiggle on the workbench, and a few of the wood shavings started to drift across the floor, gaining more detail as they moved. I frowned. Something wasn't right. I had expected the room to gain a small amount of increased reality as the reader's imagination bathed it in the power of his or her own past experiences and interpretations, but as the trembling and warmth increased, I noticed that this small section of Collodi's eighteenth-century allegorical tale was being raised into an unprecedented level of descriptive power. The walls, which up until then had been a blank wash of color, suddenly gained texture, a myriad of subtle hues and even areas of damp. The window frames peeled and dusted up, the floor moved and undulated until it was covered in flagstones that even I, as an Outlander, would not be able to distinguish from real ones. As Pinocchio slept on, the reading suddenly swelled like a breaking ocean roller and crossed the room in front of us, a crest of heightened reality that moved through us and imparted a warm feeling of well-being. But more than that, a rare thing in fiction, a delicate potpourri of smells. Freshly cut wood, cooking, spice, damp\u2014and Pinocchio's scorched legs, which I recognized were carved from cherry. There was more, too\u2014a strange jumble of faces, a young girl laughing and a derelict castle in the moonlight. The smells grew stronger, to the point where I could taste them in my mouth, the dust and grime in the room seemingly accentuated until there was a faint hiss and a ploof sound and the enhanced feelings dropped away in an instant. Everything once more returned to the limited reality we had experienced when we arrived\u2014the bare description necessary for the room to be Geppetto's workshop. I nudged Thursday5, who opened her eyes and looked around with relief.\n\n\"What was that?\" she asked, staring at me in alarm.\n\n\"We were read,\" I said, a little rattled myself. Whoever it was could not have failed to see us.\n\n\"I've been read many times,\" murmured Thursday5, \"from perfunctory skim to critical analysis, and nothing ever felt like that.\"\n\nShe was right. I'd stood in for GSD knows how many characters over the years, but even I'd never felt such an in-depth reading.\n\n\"Look,\" she said, holding up the Narrative Proximity Device. The read-through rate had peaked at an unheard-of 68.5.\n\n\"That's not possible,\" I muttered. \"The imaginotransference bandwidth doesn't support readings of that depth at such a speed.\"\n\n[ The reading suddenly swelled like a breaking ocean roller ]\n\nand crossed the room in front of us.\n\n\"Do you think they saw us?\"\n\n\"I'm sure of it,\" I replied, my ears still singing and a strange woody taste still in my mouth. I consulted the NPD again. The reader was now well ahead of us and tearing through the prose toward the end of the book.\n\n\"Goodness!\" exclaimed the cricket, who looked a little flushed and spacey when he reappeared along with his stunt double a few minutes later. \"That was every bit as exhilarating as I thought it would be\u2014and I didn't dry. I was excellent, wasn't I?\"\n\n\"You were just wonderful, darling,\" said his stunt double. \"The whole of Allegorical Juvenilia will be talking about you\u2014one for the envelope, I think.\"\n\n\"And you, sir,\" returned the cricket, \"that fall from the wall\u2014simply divine.\"\n\nBut self-congratulatory crickets didn't really concern me right now, and even the Goliath probe was momentarily forgotten.\n\n\"A Superreader,\" I breathed. \"I've heard the legends but thought they were nothing more than that, tall tales from burned-out text jockeys who'd been mainlining on irregular verbs.\"\n\n\"Superreader?\" echoed Thursday5 inquisitively, and even the crickets stopped congratulating each other on a perfect performance and leaned closer to listen.\n\n\"It's a reader with an unprecedented power of comprehension, someone who can pick up every subtle nuance, all the inferred narrative and deeply embedded subtext in one-tenth the time of normal readers.\"\n\n\"That's good, right?\"\n\n\"Not really. A dozen or so Superreads could strip all the meaning out of a book, leaving the volume a tattered husk with little characterization and only the thinnest of plots.\"\n\n\"So\u2026most Daphne Farquitt novels have been subjected to a Superreader?\"\n\n\"No, they're just bad.\"\n\nI thought for a moment, made a few notes in the pad I kept in my pocket and then picked up the Outlander probe. I tried to call Bradshaw to tell him but got only his answering machine. I placed the probe in my bag, recalled that I was also here to tell Thursday5 something about the imaginotransference technology and turned to the crickets.\n\n\"Where's the core-containment chamber?\"\n\n\"Cri-cri-cri,\" muttered the cricket, thinking hard. \"I think it's one of the doors off the kitchen.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\nI bade farewell to the crickets, who had begun to bicker when the one with the pillbox hat suggested it was high time he did his own stunts.\n\n\"I say, do you mind?\" inquired Pinocchio indolently, neither opening his eyes nor removing his feet from the brazier. \"Some of us are trying to get some shut-eye.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Julian Sparkle",
                "text": "Standard-issue equipment to all Jurisfiction agents, the dimensionally ambivalent TravelBook contains information, tips, maps, recipes and extracts from popular or troublesome novels to enable speedier intrafiction travel. It also contains numerous JurisTech gadgets for more specialized tasks, such as an MV Mask, TextMarker and Eject-O-Hat. The TravelBook's cover is readlocked to each individual operative and contains a standard emergency alert and autodestruct mechanism.\n\nWe entered the kitchen of Geppetto's small house. It had a sort of worthy austerity about it but was clean and functional. A cat was asleep next to a log basket, and a kettle sang merrily to itself on the range. But we weren't the only people in the kitchen. There were two other doors leading off, and in front of each was a bored-looking individual sitting on a three-legged stool. In the center of the room was what appeared to be a quiz-show host dressed in a gold lam\u00e9 suit. He had a fake tan that was almost orange, was weighed down with heavy gold jewelry, and had a perfectly sculpted hairstyle that looked as though it had been imported from the fifties.\n\n\"Ah!\" he said as soon as he saw us. \"Contestants!\"\n\nHe picked up his microphone.\n\n\"Welcome,\" he said with faux bonhomie, showing acres of perfect white teeth, \"to Puzzlemania, the popular brain game. I'm your host, Julian Sparkle.\"\n\nHe smiled at us and an imaginary audience and beckoned Thursday5 closer, but I indicated for her to stay where she was.\n\n\"I can do this!\" she exclaimed.\n\n\"No,\" I whispered. \"Sparkle might seem like an innocuous gameshow host, but he's a potential killer.\"\n\n\"I thought you said overcaution was for losers?\" she returned, attempting to make up for the bacon-roll debacle. \"Besides, I can look after myself.\"\n\n\"Then be my guest,\" I said with a smile. \"Or, rather, you can be his guest.\"\n\nMy namesake turned to Sparkle and walked up to a mark on the floor that he had indicated. As she did so, the lights in the room dimmed, apart from a spotlight on the two of them. There was a short blast of applause, seemingly from nowhere.\n\n\"So, Contestant Number One, what's your name, why are you in Geppetto's kitchen, and where do you come from?\"\n\n\"My name's Thursday Next\u20135, I want to visit the core-containment chamber as part of a training mission, and I'm from The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco.\"\n\n\"Well, then, if you can contain your excitement, you could have a prize visited upon you\u2014fail and it might well be a fiasco.\"\n\nThursday5 blinked at him uncomprehendingly.\n\n\"Contain your excitement\u2026prize visited\u2026not a fiasco?\" repeated Sparkle, trying to get her to understand his appalling attempts at humor.\n\nShe continued to stare at him blankly.\n\n\"Never mind. All righty, then. Ms. Next who wants to visit core containment, today we're going to play\u2026Liars and Tigers.\"\n\nHe indicated the two doors leading off the kitchen, each with a bored-looking individual staring vacantly into space in front of it.\n\n\"The rules are very simple: You have two identical doors. Behind one is the core-containment chamber you seek, and behind the other\u2026is a tiger.\"\n\nThe confident expression dropped from Thursday5's face, and I hid a smile.\n\n\"A what?\" she asked.\n\n\"A tiger.\"\n\n\"A real one or a written one?\"\n\n\"It's the same thing. Guarding each door is an individual, one who always tells the truth and another who always lies. You can't know which is which, nor which door is guarded by whom\u2014and you have one question, to one guard, to discover the correct door. Ms. Next, are you ready to play Liars and Tigers?\"\n\n\"A tiger? A real tiger?\"\n\n\"All eight feet of it.\" Julian smiled, enjoying himself again. \"Teeth one end, tail the other, claws at all four corners. Are you ready?\"\n\n\"If it's just the same to you,\" she said politely, \"I'll be getting on my way.\"\n\nIn a flash, Sparkle had pulled out a shiny automatic and pressed it hard into her cheek.\n\n\"You're going to play the game, Next,\" he growled. \"Get it right and you win today's super-duper prize. Get it wrong and you're tiger poo. Refuse and I play the Spread the Dopey Cow All Over the Kitchen game.\"\n\n\"Can't we form a circle of trust, have a cup of herbal tea and then discuss our issues?\"\n\n\"That,\" said Sparkle softly, a maniacal glint in his eyes, \"was the incorrect answer.\"\n\nHis finger tightened on the trigger, and the two guards both covered their heads. This had gone far enough.\n\n\"Wait!\" I shouted.\n\nSparkle stopped and looked at me. \"What?\"\n\n\"I'll take her place.\"\n\n\"It's against the rules.\"\n\n\"Not if we play the Double-Death Tiger-Snack game.\"\n\nSparkle looked at Thursday5, then at me. \"I'm not fully conversant with that one,\" he said slowly, eyes narrowed.\n\n\"It's easy,\" I replied. \"I take her place, and if I lose, then you get to feed us both to the tiger. If I win, we both go free.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Sparkle, and he released Thursday5, who ran and hid behind me.\n\n\"Shoot him,\" she said in hoarse whisper.\n\n\"What about the herbal tea?\"\n\n\"Shoot him.\"\n\n\"That's not how we do things,\" I said in a quiet voice. \"Now, just watch and listen and learn.\"\n\nThe two guards donned steel helmets, and Sparkle himself retreated to the other side of the room, where he could escape if the tiger was released. I walked up to the two individuals, who looked at me with a quizzical air and started to rub some tiger repellent on themselves from a large tube. The doors were identical, and so were the guards. I scratched my head and thought hard, considering my question. Two doors, two guards. One guard always told the truth, one always lied\u2014and one question to one guard to find the correct door. I'd heard of this puzzle as a kid but never thought my life might depend upon it. But hey, this was fiction. Strange, unpredictable\u2014and fun."
            },
            {
                "title": "Core Containment",
                "text": "For thousands of years, OralTrad was the only Story Operating System and indeed is still in use today. The recordable Story Operating Systems began with ClayTablet V2.1 and went through several competing systems (WaxTablet, Papyrus, VellumPro) before merging into the award-winning SCROLL, which was upgraded eight times before being swept aside by the all new and clearly superior BOOK V1. Stable, easy to store and transport, compact and with a workable index, BOOK has led the way for nearly eighteen hundred years.\n\nI turned to the guard on the left.\n\n\"If I asked the other guard,\" I said with some trepidation, \"which was the door to the core-containment chamber, which one would he say?\"\n\nThe guard thought for a moment and pointed to one of the doors, and I turned back to look at Sparkle and the somewhat concerned face of Thursday5, who was rapidly coming to terms with the idea that there was a lot of weird shit in the BookWorld that she'd no idea how to handle\u2014such as potential tiger attacks inside Pinocchio.\n\n\"Have you chosen your door, Ms. Next?\" asked Julian Sparkle. \"Remember, if you win, you get through to core containment\u2014and if you lose, there is a high probability of being eaten. Choose your door\u2026wisely.\"\n\nI gave a smile and grasped the handle\u2014not on the door that had been indicated by the guard but the other one. I pulled it open to reveal\u2026a flight of steps leading downward.\n\nSparkle's eyebrow twitched, and he grimaced momentarily before breaking once more into an insincere grin. The two guards breathed a sigh of relief and removed their helmets to mop their brows\u2014it was clear that dealing with tigers wasn't something they much liked to do\u2014and the tiger, itself a bit miffed, growled from behind the other door.\n\n\"Congratulations,\" muttered Sparkle. \"You have chosen\u2026correctly.\"\n\nI nodded to Thursday5, who joined me at the doorway, leaving Sparkle and the two guards arguing over what my super-duper prize should be.\n\n\"How did you know which guard was which?\" she asked in a respectful tone.\n\n\"I didn't,\" I replied, \"and still don't. But I assumed that the guards would know who told the truth and who didn't. Since my question would always show me the wrong door irrespective of whom I asked, I just took the opposite of the one indicated.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she said, trying to figure it out. \"What were they doing there anyway?\"\n\n\"Sparkle and the others are what we call 'anecdotals.' Brain teasers, puzzles, jokes, anecdotes and urban legends that are in the oral tradition but not big enough to exist on their own. Since they need to be instantly retrieved, they have to be flexible and available at a moment's notice\u2014so we billet them unseen around the various works of fiction.\"\n\n\"I get it,\" replied Thursday. \"We had the joke about the centipede playing rugby with us at Fiasco for a while. Out of sight of the readers, of course. Total pest\u2014we kept on tripping over his boots.\"\n\nWe stopped at the foot of the stairs. The room was about the size of a double garage and seemed to be constructed of riveted brass that was green with oxidization. The walls were gently curved, giving the impression that we were inside a huge barrel, and there was a hollow, cathedral-like quality to our voices. In the center of the room was a circular, waist-high bronze plinth about the size and shape of a ship's capstan, upon which two electrodes sprouted upward and then bent gently outward until they were about six inches apart. At the end of each electrode was a carbon sphere no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball, and between the two of them a languid blue arc of electricity crackled quietly to itself.\n\n\"What's that?\" asked Thursday5 in a deferential whisper.\n\n\"It's the spark, the notion, the core of the book, the central nub of energy that binds a novel together.\"\n\nWe watched for a few moments as the arc of energy moved in a lazy wave between the poles. Every now and then, it would fizzle as though somehow disturbed by something.\n\n\"It moves as the crickets talk to each other upstairs,\" I explained. \"If the book were being read, you'd really see the spark flicker and dance. I've been in the core of Anna Karenina when it was going full bore with fifty thousand simultaneous readings, and the effect was better than any fireworks display\u2014a multi-stranded spark in a thousand different hues that snaked and arced out into the room and twisted around one another. A book's reason for being is to be read; the spark reflects this in a shimmering light show of dynamic proportions.\"\n\n\"You speak as though it were alive.\"\n\n\"Sometimes I think it is,\" I mused, staring at the spark. \"After all, a story is born, it can evolve, replicate and then die. I used to go down to core containment quite a lot, but I don't have as much time for it these days.\"\n\nI pointed at a pipe about the width of my arm that led out from the plinth and disappeared into the floor.\n\n\"That's the throughput pipe that takes all the readings to the Storycode Engine Floor at Text Grand Central and from there to the Outland, where they're channeled direct to the reader's imagination.\"\n\n\"And\u2026all books work this way?\"\n\n\"I wish. Books that are not within the influence of Text Grand Central have their own onboard Storycode Engines, as do books being constructed in the Well of Lost Plots and most of the vanity publishing genre.\"\n\nThursday5 looked thoughtful. \"The readers are everything, aren't they?\"\n\n\"Now you've got it,\" I replied. \"Everything.\"\n\nWe stood in silence for a moment.\n\n\"I was just thinking about the awesome responsibility that comes with being a Jurisfiction agent,\" I said at last. \"What were you thinking about?\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\nI looked around the empty room. \"Yes, you.\"\n\n\"I was wondering if extracting aloe vera hurt the plant. What's that?\"\n\nShe was pointing at a small round hatch that was partially hidden behind some copper tubing. It looked like something you might find in the watertight bulkhead of a submarine. Riveted and of robust construction, it had a large central lever and two locking devices farther than an arm span apart, so it could never be opened accidentally by one person.\n\n\"That leads to\u2026Nothing,\" I murmured.\n\n\"You mean a blank wall?\"\n\n\"No, a blank wall would be something. This is not a nothing but the Nothing, the Nothing by which all Somethings are defined.\"\n\nShe looked confused, so I beckoned her to a small porthole next to the hatch and told her to look out.\n\n\"I can't see anything,\" she said after a while. \"It's completely black\u2026. No, wait, I can see small pinpoints of light\u2014like stars.\"\n\n\"Not stars,\" I told her. \"Books. Each one adrift in the firmament and each one burning not just with the light that the author gave it upon creation but with the warm glow of being read and appreciated. The brighter ones are the most popular.\"\n\n\"I can see millions of them,\" she murmured, cupping her hands around her face to help her eyes penetrate the inky blackness.\n\n\"Every book is a small world unto itself, reachable only by bookjumping. See how some points of light tend to group near others?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"They're clumped together in genres, attracted by the gravitational tug of their mutual plotlines.\"\n\n\"And between them?\"\n\n\"An abstraction where all the laws of literary theory and storytelling conventions break down\u2014the Nothing. It doesn't support textual life and has no description, form or function.\"\n\nI tapped the innocuous-looking hatch.\n\n\"Out there you'd not last a second before the text that makes up your descriptive existence was stripped of all meaning and consequence. Before bookjumping was developed, every character was marooned in his or her own novel. For many of the books outside the influence of the Council of Genres and Text Grand Central, it's still like that. Pilgrim's Progress and the Sherlock Holmes series are good examples. We know roughly where they are, due to the literary influence they exert on similar books, but we still haven't figured out a way in. And until someone does, a bookjump is impossible.\"\n\nI switched off the light, and we returned to Geppetto's kitchen.\n\n\"Here you go,\" said Julian Sparkle, handing me a cardboard box. Any sort of enmity he might have felt toward us had vanished.\n\n\"What's this?\"\n\n\"Why, your prize, of course! A selection of Tupperware\u2122 containers. Durable and with ingenious spillproof lids, they're the ideal way to keep food fresh.\"\n\n\"Give them to the tiger.\"\n\n\"He doesn't like Tupperware\u2014the lids are tricky to get off with paws.\"\n\n\"Then you have them.\"\n\n\"I didn't win them,\" replied Sparkle with a trace of annoyance, but then he added after a moment's thought, \"However, if you would like to play our Super Wizzo Double Jackpot game, we can double your prize the next time you play!\"\n\n\"Good, fine\u2014whatever,\" I said as a phone on the kitchen table started jangling. Julian picked it up.\n\n\"Hello? Two doors, one tiger, liar/nonliar puzzle speaking.\" He raised his eyebrows and grabbed a handy pen to scribble a note. \"We'll be onto it right away.\"\n\nHe replaced the phone and addressed the two guards, who were watching him expectantly. \"Scramble, lads. We're needed on a boring car journey on the M4 westbound near Lyneham.\"\n\nThe room was suddenly a whirl of activity. Each guard removed his door, which seemed to be on quick-release hinges, and then held it under his arm. The first guard placed his hand on the shoulder of Sparkle, who had turned his back, and the second on the shoulder of his compatriot. The tiger, now free, stood behind the second guard and placed one paw on his shoulder and with the other lifted the telephone off the table.\n\n\"Ready?\" called out Sparkle to the odd line that had formed expertly behind him.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the first guard.\n\n\"No,\" said the second.\n\n\"Growl,\" said the tiger, and turned to wink at us.\n\nThere was a mild concussion as they all jumped out. The fire blazed momentarily in the grate, the cat ran out of the room, and loose papers were thrown into the air. Phone call to exit had taken less then eight seconds. These guys were professionals.\n\nThursday5 and I, suitably impressed and still without a taxi, jumped out of Pinocchio and were once again in the Great Library.\n\nShe replaced the book on the shelf and looked up at me.\n\n\"Even if I had played Liars and Tigers,\" she said with a mournful sigh, \"I wouldn't have been able to figure it out. I'd have been eaten.\"\n\n\"Not necessarily,\" I replied. \"Even by guessing, your chances were still fifty-fifty, and that's thought favorable odds at Jurisfiction.\"\n\n\"You mean I have a fifty percent chance of being killed in the ser vice?\"\n\n\"Consider yourself lucky. Out in the real world, despite huge advances in medical science, the chance of death remains unchanged at a hundred percent. Still, there's a bright side to the human mortality thing\u2014at least, there is for the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\n\"A never-ending supply of new readers. Come on, you can jump me back to the Jurisfiction offices.\"\n\nShe stared at me for a moment and then said, \"You're not so good at bookjumping anymore, are you?\"\n\n\"Not really\u2014but that's between you and me, yes?\"\n\n\"Do you want to talk about it?\"\n\n\"No.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Well of Lost Plots",
                "text": "Due to the specialized tasks undertaken by Prose Resource Operatives, JurisTech is permitted to build gadgets deemed outside the usual laws of physics\u2014the only department (aside from the SF genre) licensed to do so. Aside from the famed TravelBook, JurisTech is also responsible for the Textual Sieve, an extremely useful device that can do almost anything\u2014even though its precise use, form and function are never fully explained.\n\nAs soon as we were back at the Jurisfiction offices in Norland Park, I gave Thursday5 an hour off for lunch so I could get some work done. I pulled all the files on potential transfictional probe appearances and discovered I had the only solid piece of evidence\u2014all the rest had merely been sightings. It seemed that whenever a Goliath probe appeared, it was gone again in under a minute. The phenomenon had begun seven years ago, reached a peak eight months before and now seemed to be ebbing. Mind you, this was based on only thirty-six sightings and so couldn't be considered conclusive.\n\nI took the information to Bradshaw, who listened carefully to my report and to what I knew about Goliath, which was quite a lot and none of it good. He nodded soberly as I spoke and, when I had finished, paused for a moment before observing, \"Goliath is Outlander and well beyond our jurisdiction. I'm loath to take it to Senator Jobsworth, as he'll instigate some daft 'initiative' or something with resources that we just don't have. Is there any evidence that these probes do anything other than observe? Throwing a metal ball into fiction is one thing; moving a person between the two is quite another.\"\n\n\"None at all,\" I replied. \"But it must be their intention, even if they haven't managed it yet.\"\n\n\"Do you think they will?\"\n\n\"My uncle could do it. And if he could, then it's possible.\"\n\nBradshaw thought for a moment. \"We'll keep this to ourselves for now. With our plunging ReadRates, I don't want to needlessly panic the CofG into some insane knee-jerk response. Is there a chance you could find out something from the real world?\"\n\n\"I could try,\" I replied reflectively, \"but don't hold your breath\u2014I'm not exactly on Goliath's Christmas-card list.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" said Bradshaw, passing me the probe, \"I'm sure they'd be overjoyed to meet someone who can travel into fiction. Can you check up on the Jane Austen refits this afternoon? Isambard was keen to show us something.\"\n\nI told him I'd go down there straightaway, and he thanked me, wished me good luck and departed. I had a few minutes to spare before Thursday5 got back, so I checked the card-index databases for anything about Superreaders, of which there was frustratingly little. Most Superreader legends had their base in the Text Sea, usually from word fishermen home on leave from scrawltrawlers. The issue was complicated by the fact that one Superread is technically identical to a large quantity of simultaneous reads, so only an examination of a book's maintenance log would identify whether it had been a victim or not.\n\nThursday5 returned exactly on time, having spent the lunch hour in a mud bath, the details of which she felt compelled to tell me\u2014at length. Mind you, she was a lot more relaxed than I was, so something was working. We stepped outside, and after I argued with TransGenre Taxis' dispatch for five minutes, we read ourselves to the Great Library, then took the elevator and descended in silence to the subbasements, which had been known colloquially as the Well of Lost Plots for so long that no one could remember their proper name\u2014if they'd ever had one. It was here that books were actually constructed. The \"laying of the spine\" was the first act in the process, and after that a continuous series of work gangs would toil tirelessly on the novel, embedding plot and subtext within the fabric of the narrative. They carefully lowered in the settings and atmosphere before the characters, fresh from dialogue training and in the presence of a skilled imaginator, would record the book onto an ImaginoTransferoRecordingDevice ready for reading in the Outland. It was slow, manpower-intensive and costly\u2014any Supervising Book Engineer who could construct a complex novel in the minimum of time and on bud get was much in demand.\n\n\"I was thinking,\" said Thursday5 as the elevator plunged downward, \"about being a bit more proactive. I would have been eaten by that tiger, and it was, I must confess, the seventh time you've rescued me over the past day and a half.\"\n\n\"Eighth,\" I pointed out. \"Remember you were attacked by that adjectivore?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. It didn't really take to my suggestion of a discussion group to reappraise the passive role of grammasites within the BookWorld, now, did it?\"\n\n\"No. All it wanted was to tear the adjectives from your still-breathing body.\"\n\n\"Well, my point is that I think I need to be more aggressive.\"\n\n\"Sounds like a good plan,\" I replied. \"If a situation arises, we'll see how you do.\"\n\nThe elevator stopped, and we stepped out. Down here in the Well, the subbasements looked more like narrow Elizabethan streets than corridors. It was here that purveyors of book-construction-related merchandise could be found displaying their wares in a multitude of specialty shops that would appeal to any genre, style or setting. The corridors were alive with the bustling activity of artisans moving hither and thither in the gainful pursuit of book building. Plot traders, backstoryists, hole stitchers, journeymen and generics trotted purposefully in every direction, and cartloads of prefabricated sections for protobooks were being slowly pulled down the center of the street by Pitman ponies, which are a sort of shorthand horse that doesn't take up so much room.\n\nMost of it was salvage. In the very lowest subbasement was the Text Sea, and it was on the shores of this ocean that scrapped books were pulled apart by work gangs using nothing more refined than hammers, chains and muscle. The chunks of battered narrative were then dismantled by cutters, who would remove and package any salvageable items to be resold. Any idea, setting or character that was too damaged or too dull to be reused was unceremoniously dumped in the Text Sea, where the bonds within the sentences were loosened until they were nothing but words, and then these, too, were reduced to letters and punctuation, the meaning burning off into a bluish mist that lingered near the foreshore before evaporating.\n\n\"Who are we going to see?\" asked Thursday5 as we made our way through the crowded throng.\n\n\"Bradshaw wanted me to cast an eye over the Jane Austen refit,\" I replied. \"The engineer in charge is Isambard Kingdom Bu\u00f1uel, the finest and most surreal book engineer in the WOLP. When he constructed War and Peace, no one thought that anything of such scale and grandeur could be built, let alone launched. It was so large an entire subbasement had to be constructed to take it. Even now a permanent crew of twenty is needed to keep it going.\"\n\nThursday5 looked curiously around as a gang of riveters walked past, laughing loudly and talking about a spine they'd been working on.\n\n\"So once the book is built, it's moved to the Great Library?\" she asked.\n\n\"If only,\" I replied. \"Once completed and the spark has been ignited, it undergoes a rigorous twelve-point narrative safety-and-compliance regime before being studiously and penetratively test-read on a special rig. After that, the book is taken on a trial reading by the Council of Genres Book Inspectorate before being passed\u2014or not\u2014for publication.\"\n\nWe walked on and presently saw the Book Maintenance Facility hangars in the distance, rising above the low roofs of the street like the airship hangars I knew so well back home. They were always full; book maintenance carried on 24/7. After another five minutes' walk and with the street expanding dramatically to be able to encompass the vast size of the complex, we arrived outside the Book Maintenance Facility."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Refit",
                "text": "Books suffer wear and tear, just the same as hip joints, cars and reputations. For this reason all books have to go into the maintenance bay for a periodic refit, either every thirty years or every million readings, whichever comes first. For those books that suffer a high initial readership but then lose it through boredom or insufficient reader intellect, a partial refit may be in order. Salmon Thrusty's intractable masterpiece The Demonic Couplets has had its first two chapters rebuilt six times, but the rest is relatively unscathed.\n\nEver since the ProCaths had mounted a guerrilla-style attack on Wuthering Heights during routine maintenance, security had been increased, and tall cast-iron railings now separated the Book Maintenance Facility from the rest of the Well. Heathcliff\u2014possibly the most hated man inside fiction\u2014had not been harmed, partly due to the vigilance of the Jurisfiction agents who were on Heathcliff Protection Duty that day but also due to a misunderstanding of the word \"guerrilla,\" a woeful lexicological lapse that had left five confused apes dead and the facility littered with bananas. There was now a guard house, too, and it was impossible to get in unless on official business.\n\n\"Now, here's an opportunity,\" I whispered to Thursday5, \"to test your aggressiveness. These guys can be tricky, so you need to be firm.\"\n\n\"Firm?\"\n\n\"Firm.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath, steeled herself and marched up to the guard house in a meaningful manner.\n\n\"Next and Next,\" she announced, passing our IDs to a guard who was sitting in a small wooden shed at the gates of the facility. \"And if you cause us any trouble, we'll\u2026not be happy. And then you'll not be happy, because we can do unhappy things\u2026to people\u2026sometimes.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry?\" said the guard, who had a large white mustache and seemed to be a little deaf.\n\n\"I said\u2026ah, how are you?\"\n\n\"Oh, we're fine, thank you, missy,\" replied the guard amiably. Thursday5 turned to me and gave me the thumbs-up sign, and I smiled. I actually quite liked her, but there was a huge quantity of work to be done before she might be considered Jurisfiction material. At present I was planning on assessing her \"potential with retraining\" and sending her back to cadet school.\n\nI looked around as the guard stared at our identification and then at us. Above the hangars I could see tall chimneys belching forth clouds of smoke, while in the distance we could hear the ring of hammers and the rumble of machinery.\n\n\"Which one is Thursday Next?\" asked the guard, staring closely at the almost identical IDs.\n\n\"Both of us,\" said Thursday5. \"I'm Thursday5, and she's the Outlander.\"\n\n\"An Outlander?\" repeated the guard with great interest. I glared at Thursday5. My Outlander status wasn't something I liked to bandy about.\n\n\"Hey, Bert!\" he said to the other guard, who seemed to be on permanent tea break. \"We've got an Outlander here!\"\n\n\"No!\" he said, getting up from a chair that had its seat polished to a high shine. \"Get out of here!\"\n\n\"What an honor!\" said the first guard. \"Someone from the real world.\" He thought for a moment. \"Tell me, if it rains on a really hot day, do sheep shrink?\"\n\n\"Is that a security question?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" replied the guard quickly. \"Bert and I were just discussing it recently.\"\n\nThis wasn't unusual. Characters in fiction had a very skewed view of the real world. To them the extreme elements of human experience were commonplace, as they were generally the sorts of issues that made it into books, which left the mundanities of real life somewhat obscure and mysterious. Ask a resident of the BookWorld about terminal diseases, loss, gunshot trajectories, dramatic irony and problematic relatives and he'd be more expert than you or me\u2014quiz him on paintbrushes and he'd spend the rest of the week trying to figure out how the paint stays on the bristles until it touches another surface.\n\n\"It's woolens that shrink,\" I explained, \"and it has to be very hot.\"\n\n\"I told you so,\" said Bert triumphantly.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, taking the security badges from the guard while I signed the ledger. He admitted us both to the facility, and almost from nowhere a bright yellow jeep appeared with a young man dressed in blue overalls and a cap sporting the BMF logo.\n\n\"Can you take us to Isambard Kingdom Bu\u00f1uel?\" I said as we climbed in the back.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied the driver without moving.\n\n\"Then would you?\"\n\n\"I suppose.\"\n\nThe jeep moved off. The hangars were, as previously stated, of gigantic proportions. Unlike the real world, where practical difficulties in civil engineering might be a defining factor in the scale of a facility, here it was not a consideration at all. Indeed, the size of the plant could expand and contract depending on need, a little like Mary Poppins's suitcase, which was hardly surprising, as they were designed by the same person. We drove on for a time in silence.\n\n\"What's in Hangar One at the moment?\" I asked the driver.\n\n\"The Magus.\"\n\n\"Still?\"\n\nEven the biggest refit never took more than a week, and John Fowles's labyrinthine-plotted masterpiece had been in there nearly five.\n\n\"It's taking longer than we thought\u2014they removed all the plot elements for cleaning, and no one can remember how they go back together again.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure it will make a difference,\" I murmured as we pulled up outside Hangar Eight. The driver said nothing, waited until we climbed out and then drove off without a word.\n\nTo say that the interior of the hangar was vast would have been pointless, as the Great Library, Text Grand Central and the CofG also had vast interiors, and continued descriptions of an increasingly hyperbolic nature would be insufferably repetitious. Suffice it to say that there was room on the hangar floor for not only Darcy's country home of Pemberley but also Rosings, Netherfield and Longbourn as well. They had all been hoisted from the book by a massive overhead crane so the empty husk of the novel could be checked for fatigue cracks before being fumigated for nesting grammasites and then repainted. At the same time, an army of technicians, plasterers, painters, carpenters and so forth were crawling over the houses, locations, props, furnishings and costumes, all of which had been removed for checking and maintenance.\n\n\"If this is Pride and Prejudice,\" said Thursday5 as we walked toward the Bennets' property of Longbourn, \"then what are people reading in the Outland?\"\n\nThe house was resting incongruously on wooden blocks laid on the hangar floor but without its grounds\u2014they were elsewhere being tended to by a happy buzz of gardeners.\n\n\"We divert the readings to a lesser copy on a standby Storycode Engine, and people read that,\" I replied, nodding a greeting to the various technicians who were trying to make good the damage wrought by the last million readings or so. \"The book is never quite as good, but the only people who might see a difference are the Austen enthusiasts and scholars. They would notice the slight dulling and lack of vitality, but, unable to come to a satisfactory answer as to why this might be so, they will simply blame themselves\u2014a reading later in the week will once again renew their confidence in the magnificence of the novel.\"\n\nWe stepped inside the main doorway of Longbourn, where a similar repair gang was working on the interior. They had only just gotten started, and from here it was easier to see the extent of the corrosion. The paintwork was dull and lifeless, the wallpaper hung off the wall in long strips, and the marble fireplace was stained and darkened by smoke. Everything we looked at seemed tired and worn.\n\n\"Oh, mercy!\" came a voice behind us, and we turned to find Mrs. Bennet dressed in a threadbare poke bonnet and shawl. Following her was a construction manager, and behind him was Mr. Bennet.\n\n\"This will never be ready in time,\" she lamented, looking around the parlor of her house unhappily, \"and every second not spent looking for husbands is a second wasted.\"\n\n\"My dear, you must come and have your wardrobe replaced,\" implored Mr. Bennet. \"You are quite in tatters and unsuited for being read, let alone receiving gentlemen\u2014potential husbands or otherwise.\"\n\n\"He's quite right,\" urged the manager. \"It is only a refit, nothing more; we will have you back on the shelf in a few days.\"\n\n\"On the shelf?\" she shrieked. \"Like my daughters?\"\n\nAnd she was about to burst into tears when she suddenly caught sight of me.\n\n\"You there! Do you have a single brother in possession of a good fortune who is in want of a wife?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" I replied, thinking of Joffy, who failed on all three counts.\n\n\"Are you sure? I've a choice of five daughters; one of them must be suitable\u2014although I have my doubts about Mary being acceptable to anyone. Ahhhhh!\"\n\nShe had started to scream.\n\n\"Good lady, calm yourself!\" cried Mr. Bennet. \"What ever is the matter?\"\n\n\"My nerves are so bad I am now seeing double!\"\n\n\"You are not, madam,\" I told her hastily. \"This is my\u2026twin sister.\"\n\nAt that moment a small phalanx of seamstresses came in holding a replacement costume. Mrs. Bennet made another sharp cry and ran off upstairs, quickly followed by the wardrobe department, who would doubtless have to hold her down and undress her\u2014like the last time.\n\n\"I'll leave it in your capable hands,\" said Mr. Bennet to the wardrobe mistress. \"I am going to my library and don't wish to be disturbed.\"\n\nHe opened the door and found to his dismay that it, too, was being rebuilt. Large portions of the wall were missing, and plasterers were attempting to fill the gaps to the room beyond. There was the flickering light of an arc welder and a shower of sparks. He harrumphed, shrugged, gave us a wan smile and walked out.\n\n\"Quite a lot of damage,\" I said to the construction manager, whose name we learned was Sid.\n\n\"We get a lot of this in the classics,\" he said with a shrug. \"This is the third P refit I've done in the past fifteen years\u2014but it's not as bad as the Lord of the Rings trilogy; those things are always in for maintenance. The fantasy readership really gives it a hammering\u2014and the fan fiction doesn't help neither.\"\n\n\"The name's Thursday Next,\" I told him, \"from Jurisfiction. I need to speak to Isambard.\"\n\nHe led us outside to where the five Bennet sisters were running through their lines with a wordsmith holding a script.\n\n\"But you are not entitled to know mine; nor will such behavior ever induce me to be explicit,\" said Elizabeth.\n\n\"Not quite right,\" replied the wordsmith as she consulted the script. \"You dropped the 'as this,' from the middle of the sentence.\"\n\n\"I did?\" queried Lizzie, craning over to look at the script. \"Where?\"\n\n\"It still sounded perfect to me,\" said Jane good-naturedly.\n\n\"This is all just so boring,\" muttered Lydia, tapping her foot impatiently and looking around. Wisely, the maintenance staff had separated the soldiers and especially Wickham from Kitty and Lydia\u2014for their own protection, if not the soldiers'.\n\n\"Lydia dearest, do please concentrate,\" said Mary, looking up from the book she was reading. \"It is for your own good.\"\n\n\"Ms. Next!\" came an authoritarian voice that I knew I could ignore only at my peril.\n\n\"Your ladyship,\" I said, curtsying neatly to a tall woman bedecked in dark crinolines. She had strongly marked features that might once have been handsome but now appeared haughty and superior.\n\n\"May I present Cadet Next?\" I said. \"Thursday5, this is the Right Honorable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh.\"\n\nThursday5 was about to say something, but I caught her eye and she curtsied instead, which Lady Catherine returned with a slight incline of her head.\n\n\"I must speak to you, Ms. Next,\" continued her ladyship, taking my arm to walk with me, \"upon a matter of considerable concern. As you know, I have a daughter named Anne, who is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented her from making accomplishments she otherwise could not have failed. If good health had been hers, she would have joined Jurisfiction many years ago and about now would begin to accrue the benefits of her age, wisdom and experience.\"\n\n\"Doubtless, your ladyship.\"\n\nLady Catherine gave a polite smile. \"Then we are agreed. Miss Anne should join Jurisfiction on the morrow with a rank, salary and duties commensurate with the standing that her ill health has taken from her\u2014shall we say five thousand guineas a year and light work only with mornings off and three servants?\"\n\n\"I will bring it to the attention of the relevant authorities,\" I told her diplomatically. \"My good friend and colleague Commander Bradshaw will attend to your request personally.\"\n\nI sniggered inwardly. Bradshaw and I had spent many years attempting to drop each other in impossible situations for amusement, and he'd never top this.\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Lady Catherine in an imperious tone. \"I spoke to Commander Bradshaw, and he suggested I speak to you.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\n\"Shall we say Monday?\" continued Lady Catherine. \"Jurisfiction can send a carriage for my daughter, but be warned\u2014if it is unfit for her use, it shall be returned.\"\n\n\"Monday would be admirable,\" I told her, thinking quickly. \"Miss Anne's assumed expertise will be much in demand. As you have no doubt heard, Fanny Hill has been moved from Literary Smut to the Racy Novel genre, and your daughter's considerable skills may be required for character retraining.\"\n\nLady Catherine was silent for a moment.\n\n\"Quite impossible,\" she said at last. \"Next week is the busiest in our calendar. I shall inform you as to when and where she will accept her duties\u2014good day!\"\n\nAnd with a harrumph of a most haughty nature, she was gone.\n\nI rejoined Thursday5, who was waiting for me near two carriages that were being rebuilt, and then we made our way toward the engineer's office. As we passed a moth-eaten horse, I heard it say to another shabby old nag, \"So what's this Pride and Prejudice all about, then?\"\n\n\"It's about a horse who pulls a carriage for the Bennets,\" replied his friend, taking a mouthful from the feed bucket and munching thoughtfully.\n\n\"Please come in,\" said the construction manager, and we entered the work hut. The interior was a neat and orderly drawing office with a half dozen octopi seated at draftsmen's desks and dressed in tartan waistcoats that made them all look like oversize bagpipes\u2014apart from one, who actually was an oversize set of bagpipes. They were all studying plans of the book, consulting damage reports and then sketching repair recommendations on eight different note pads simultaneously. The octopi blinked at us curiously as we walked in, except for one who was asleep and muttering something about his \"garden being in the shade,\" and another who was playing a doleful tune on a bouzouki.\n\n\"How odd,\" said Thursday5.\n\n\"You're right,\" I agreed. \"Bruce usually plays the lute.\"\n\nIn the center of the room was Isambard Kingdom Bu\u00f1uel. He was standing in shirtsleeves over the blueprints of the book and was a man in healthy middle age who looked as if he had seen a lot of life and was much the better for it. His dark wool suit was spattered with mud, he wore a tall stovepipe hat, and moving constantly in his mouth was an unlit cigar. He was engaged in animated conversation with his three trusty engineering assistants. The first could best be described as a mad monk who was dressed in a coarse habit and had startling, divergent eyes. The second was a daringly sparkly drag queen who it seemed had just hopped off a carnival float in Rio, and the third was more ethereal\u2014he was simply a disembodied voice known only as Horace. They were all discussing the pros and cons of balancing essential work with budgetary constraints, then about Loretta's choice of sequins and the available restaurants for dinner.\n\n\"Thursday!\" said Isambard as we walked in. \"What a very fortuitous happenstance\u2014I trust you are wellhealthy?\"\n\n\"Wellhealthy indeedly,\" I replied.\n\nBu\u00f1uel's engineering skills were without peer\u2014not just from a simple mechanistic point of view but also from his somewhat surreal method of problem solving that made lesser book engineers pale into insignificance. It was he who first thought of using custard as a transfer medium for speedier throughput from the books to the Storycode Engines and he who pioneered the hydroponic growth of usable dramatic irony. When he wasn't working toward the decriminalization of class-C grammatical abuses, such as starting a sentence with \"and,\" he was busy designing new and interesting plot devices. It was he who suggested the groundbreaking twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and also the \"Gally Threepwood memoirs\" device in the Blandings series. Naturally, he'd had other, lesser ideas that didn't find favor, such as the discarded U-boat\u2013Nautilus battle sequence in Mysterious Island, a new process for distilling quotation marks from boiled mice, a method of making books grammasite-proof by marinating them in dew, and a whole host of farcical new words that only he used. But his hits were greater than the sum of his misses, and such is the way with greatness.\n\n\"I hope we are not in any sort of troublesome with Jurisfiction?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I assured him. \"You spoke to Bradshaw about something?\"\n\n\"My memory is so stringbagness these days,\" he said, slapping his forehead with his palm. \"Walk with me.\"\n\nWe left the work hut at a brisk pace and walked toward the empty book, Thursday5 a few steps behind.\n\n\"We've got another seventeen clockchimes before we have to click it all back onwise,\" he said, mopping his brow.\n\n\"Will you manage it?\"\n\n\"We should be dokey,\" replied Isambard with a laugh. \"Always supposeding that Mrs. Bennet doesn't do anything sensible.\"\n\nWe walked up a set of wooden stairs and stepped onto the novel. From our vantage point, we could see the empty husk of the book laid out in front of us. Everything had been removed, and it looked like an empty steel barge several hundred acres in size.\n\n\"What's happening over there?\" asked Thursday5, pointing to a group of men working in an area where several girders joined in a delicate latticework of steel and rivets.\n\n\"We're checklooking for fatigue splitcracks near the irony-expansion slot,\" explained Isambard. \"The ceaseless flexiblations of a book as readers of varying skill make their way through it can set up a harmonic that exacts stresstications the book was never blueprinted to take. I expect you heard about the mid-read fractsplosion of Hard Times during the postmaintenance testification in 1932?\"\n\nThursday5 nodded.\n\n\"We've had to be more uttercarefulness since then,\" continued Isambard, \"which is why classics like this come in for rebuildificance every thirty years whether they require it or not.\"\n\nThere was a crackle of bright blue light as the work gang effected a repair, and a subengineer supervising the gang waved to Isambard, who waved back.\n\n\"Looks like we found a fatigue crevicette,\" he said, \"which goes to show that one can never be too carefulphobic.\"\n\n\"Commander Bradshaw told me you had something you wanted to say?\"\n\n\"That's true,\" replied Bu\u00f1uel. \"I've done enough rebuildificances to know when something's a bit squiddly. It's the Council of Genres. They've been slicedicing bud gets for years, and now they ask us to topgrade the imaginotransference conduits.\"\n\nHe pointed at a large pipe that looked like a water main. A conduit that size would take a lot of readers\u2014far more than we had at present. Although in itself a good move, with falling ReadRates it seemed a little\u2026well, odd.\n\n\"Did they give a reason?\"\n\n\"They said Pride and Prejudice has been added to twenty-eight more teachcrammer syllabuses this year, and there's another silverflick out soon.\"\n\n\"Sounds fair to me.\"\n\n\"Posstruthful, but it makes nonsense. It's potentious new books we should be cashsquandering on, not the stalnovelwarts who will be read no matter what. Besides, the costcash of the extra conduits is verlittle compared to the amount of custard needed to fillup all.\"\n\n\"I'll make some inquiries,\" I told him.\n\nWe watched as the overhead crane gently lowered Darcy's stately home of Pemberley back into its position in the book, where it was then securely bolted by a group of men in overalls wielding wrenches as big as they were.\n\n\"Spot-on-time-tastic,\" murmured Isambard, consulting a large gold pocketwatch. \"We might make the deadule after all.\"\n\n\"Mr. Bu\u00f1uel?\" murmured a disembodied voice that sounded as though it came from everywhere at once.\n\n\"Yes, Horace?\"\n\n\"Sorry to trouble you, sir,\" came the voice again, \"but Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh have locked antlers in the living room and are threatening to kill each other. What do you want to do?\"\n\n\"No time to lose!\" exclaimed Bu\u00f1uel, reaching into his pocket. \"I'll have five guineas on Mrs. Bennet.\"\n\nThursday5 and I walked out of the maintenance facility and back to the busy corridors of the Well of Lost Plots. I called TransGenre Taxis and was told that my cab was \"stuck in a traffic jam in Mrs. Beeton's\" but would \"be with you shortly,\" so we walked toward the elevators. Bu\u00f1uel had a point about the extra conduiting\u2014but equally it could be just another of the bizarre accounting anomalies that abound at the council\u2014they once refused to allocate funds for maintenance on Captain Corelli's Mandolin, despite an almost unprecedented burst of popularity. By the time they agreed to some remedial construction work, it was too late\u2014the first few chapters suffered permanent damage. On the other side of the coin, they had no problem issuing the Danvers with new black uniforms and designer dark glasses so they \"looked nice on parade.\"\n\n\"Is it true you have a chair at the Council of Genres?\" asked Thursday5 with a sense of wholly unwarranted awe in her voice.\n\n\"And a table, too. As an Outlander I don't have the strictures of the narrative to dictate my actions, so I'm quite good at forward planning and\u2014Hang on a moment.\"\n\nRecalling Landen's writer's block, I ducked into a bric-a-brac store full of plot devices, props, backstories and handy snatches of verbal banter for that oh-so-important exchange. I made my way past packing cases full of plot twists and false resolutions and walked up to the counter.\n\n\"Hello, Murray.\"\n\n\"Thursday!\" replied the own er of the store, a retired gag-and-groan man who had worked the Comedy genre for years before giving it all up to run a used-plot shop. \"What can I do you for?\"\n\n\"A plot device,\" I said somewhat vaguely. \"Something exciting that will change a story from the mundane to the fantastic in a paragraph.\"\n\n\"Bud get?\"\n\n\"Depends on what you've got.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said the shop keep er, thinking hard and staring at the wall of small drawers behind him, which made it look a little like an apothecary's shop. On each drawer there was a painted label denoting some exciting and improbable plot-turning device. \"Tincture of breathlessness,\" said one, and \"Paternal root,\" read another.\n\n\"How about a Suddenly a shot rang out? That's always a safe bet for mysteries or to get you out of a scrape when you don't know what to do next.\"\n\n\"I think I can afford something better than that. Got anything a bit more\u2026complex?\"\n\nMurray looked at the labels on the drawers again. \"I've got a And that, said Mr. Wimple, was when we discovered\u2026the truth.\"\n\n\"Too vague.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, but it's cheap. Okay. How about a Mysterious stranger arriving during a thunderstorm? We've got a special on this week. Take the stranger and you can have a corrupt local chief of police and an escaped homicidal lunatic at no extra charge.\"\n\nBut I was still undecided.\n\n\"I was thinking of something more character-than plotled.\"\n\n\"I hope you've got deep pockets,\" said the shop keep er ominously and with a trace of annoyance, as the line behind me was becoming longer by the second.\n\n\"How about the arrival of a distant and extremely eccentric ex-military uncle upsetting the delicate balance of the ordered house hold?\"\n\n\"That sounds like just the thing. How much?\"\n\n\"He was pulled out complete and unused a few days ago. Took a lot of skill to pluck him out of the narrative without damage, and with all ancillary props and walk-ons\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, okay, okay, I get the picture\u2014How much?\"\n\n\"To you, a thousand guineas.\"\n\n\"I get the uncle fully realized for that, yes?\"\n\n\"He's over there.\"\n\nI turned to see a slender and very jovial-looking gentleman sitting on a packing case on the other side of the shop. He was dressed in a suit of outrageously loud green and yellow checks and was resting his gloves on the top of a cane. He inclined his head in greeting when he saw us looking at him and smiled impishly.\n\n\"Perfect. I get a full backstory as well, yes?\"\n\n\"It's all here,\" said Murray, placing on the counter a glass jar that seemed to be full of swirling colored mist.\n\n\"Then it's a deal.\"\n\nWe shook hands, and I gave him my BookWorld ChargeCard. I was just standing there in that blank sort of way you do while waiting for a shop keep er to complete a transaction, when the hair on the back of my neck suddenly rose. It was a sixth sense, if you like\u2014something you acquire in the BookWorld, where jeopardy is sometimes never more than a line away. I surreptitiously slipped my hand into my bag and clasped the butt of my pistol. I looked cautiously from the corner of my eye at the customer to my left. It was a freelance imaginator buying powdered kabuki\u2014no problem there. I looked to the right and perceived a tall figure dressed in a trench coat with a fedora pulled down to hide his face. I tensed as the faint odor of bovine reached my nostrils. It was the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull son of Queen Pasipha\u00eb of Crete. He'd killed one Jurisfiction agent and tried the same with me several times, so consequently he had an \"erase on sight\" order across sixteen genres\u2014there were few these days who would dare harbor him. I stayed calm and turned toward Thursday5, who was looking at a pair of toucans that were a job lot from a scrapped bird-identification handbook. I caught her eye and showed her three fingers, which was a prearranged signal of imminent danger, then gave an almost imperceptible nod in the Minotaur's direction. Thursday5 looked bewildered, I gave up and turned slowly back.\n\n\"Soon be done!\" muttered Murray, filling out the credit form. I stole a look toward the Minotaur again. I could have erased him there and then, but it was always possible that this wasn't the Minotaur we were hunting. After all, there were thousands of Minotaurs dotted around the BookWorld, and they all looked pretty much alike. Admittedly, not many wore trench coats and fedoras, but I wasn't going to dispatch anyone without being sure.\n\n\"Would you like that frying pan wrapped, Mr. Johnson?\" asked the lady serving the Minotaur. I required nothing more. He'd been using the \"Mr. Johnson\" pseudonym for many years\u2014and the frying pan? Well, we'd darted him once with SlapStick as a tracking device, and it seemed to have crept into his modus operandi of assassination. Steamrollers, banana skins, falling pianos\u2014he'd used them all. In the pantheon of SlapStick, the close-quarters hand weapon of choice was\u2026a frying pan. Without waiting another second, I drew my pistol. The Minotaur, with a speed out of all proportion to his bulk, flipped the frying pan to his other hand and swiped it in my direction, catching the pistol and sending it clattering to the other side of the room. We paused and stared at each other. The frying pan had a two-foot handle, and he brandished it at me in a threatening manner. He removed his hat, and as the other customers realized who he was, there was a cry of fear and a mass exodus from the shop. He had the body of a man but the head of a bull, which had a kind of humanness about it that was truly disturbing. His yellow eyes gleamed at me with malevolence, and his horns, I noticed, had been sharpened to wickedly fine points.\n\n\"We can talk about this,\" I said in a quiet tone, wondering if Thursday5 had the wits to try to distract him.\n\n\"No talk,\" said the Minotaur in a basso profundo. \"My job is to kill you, and yours\u2026is to die.\"\n\nI tried to stall him. \"Let's talk for a minute about job descriptions.\"\n\nBut the Minotaur wasn't in the talking vein. He took a pace forward and made another swipe at me with the frying pan. I took a step backward but even so felt the breeze of the pan as it just missed my head. I grabbed the object nearest to hand, which was a golf club, and tried to hit him with it, but he was faster, and the wooden shaft of the club was reduced to splinters and sawdust with the ferocity of his blow. He gave out another deep, hearty laugh and took a further step toward me.\n\n\"I say,\" came a voice that sounded like crumpets and tea at four o'clock sharp. \"You, sir\u2014with the horns.\"\n\nThe Minotaur looked to where the voice had come from but still kept me within his vision. The interloper, of course, was the eccentric relative I'd just purchased for Landen's book. He had left his packing case and stood facing the beast armed with nothing more than his walking stick.\n\n\"Now, run along, there's a good chap,\" he said, as though he were talking to a child.\n\nThe Minotaur curled a lip and breathed a threatening, \"Begone!\"\n\n\"Look here,\" replied the character in the green and yellow checks. \"I'm not sure I care for the tone of your voice.\"\n\nThe Minotaur was suddenly a whirling mass of demonic destruction. He swung the frying pan toward the gentleman in an arc that could never have missed. But he did miss. There was a flash of silver, a blur of green and yellow, and the frying pan clattered to the floor\u2014with the Minotaur's hand still clutching it. The Minotaur looked at the frying pan, at the severed hand, then at his stump. He grimaced, gave out a deafening yell that shattered the windows of the shop and then evaporated into nothing as he jumped off and away.\n\n\"By gad, what a to-do,\" exclaimed the gentleman as he calmly cleaned his sword-stick and returned it to his sheath. \"Anyone know who he was?\"\n\n\"The Minotaur.\"\n\n\"Was he, by George?\" exclaimed the gentleman in surprise. \"Would have expected a better fight than that. Are you quite well?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I answered, \"thanks to you. That was a nifty piece of sword-work.\"\n\n\"My dear girl, think nothing of it,\" he replied with the ghost of a smile. \"I was captain of the fencing team at Rugby.\"\n\nHe was a handsome man in his mid-forties, and everything he did and said was liberally iced with a heavy coating of stiff British reserve. I couldn't imagine what book he had come from or even why he'd been offered up as salvage.\n\n\"Thursday Next,\" I said, putting out my hand.\n\n\"The plea sure is all mine, Ms. Next,\" he replied. \"Wing Commander Cornelius Scampton-Tappett at your ser vice.\"\n\nThe customers were slowly coming back to peer into the store, but Murray was already placing Closed signs on the doors.\n\n\"So,\" said Scampton-Tappett, \"now that you've bought me, what would you have me do?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2026yes\u2026right.\"\n\nI dug a calling card from my pocket, wrote down the title of Landen's latest novel\u2014Bananas for Edward\u2014and handed it to him.\n\n\"Do what you can, would you? And if you need anything, you can contact me over at Jurisfiction.\"\n\nScampton-Tappett raised an eyebrow, told me he would do the very best he could, tucked the jar containing his backstory under his arm and vanished.\n\nI breathed a sigh of relief and glanced around. Thursday5 was regarding me with such a sense of abject loss and failure on her face that I thought at first she'd been hurt.\n\n\"Are you all right?\"\n\nShe nodded and looked down. I followed her gaze. Lying at her feet was my pistol.\n\n\"Is that where it ended up after it was knocked from my grasp?\"\n\nShe nodded miserably, her eyes brimming with tears of self-anger.\n\nI sighed. She and I both knew that this was the end of the road when it came to her cadetship. If Scampton-Tappett hadn't intervened, I might well be dead\u2014and she'd done nothing to prevent it.\n\n\"You don't have to say it,\" she said. \"I'm manifestly not cut out for this work and never shall be. I'd try to apologize, but I can't think of words that could adequately express my shame.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath, pulled the bow out of her hair, put it in her mouth and then gathered up her hair in a ponytail again before retying it. It was just the way I did it, and I suddenly felt a pang of guilt. After all, she only acted in her morbidly peaceable way because that's how she was written, as an antidote to the rest of the Thursday series. The thing was, the sex-and-violence nature of the first four books had been my fault, too. I'd sold the character rights in order to fund Acme Carpets.\n\n\"I'd best be getting back to my book now,\" she said, and turned to go.\n\n\"Did I say you could leave?\" I asked in my stoniest voice.\n\n\"Well, that is to say\u2026no.\"\n\n\"Then until I say you can go, you stay with me. I'm still undecided as to your fate, and until that happens\u2014Lord help me\u2014you'll stay as my cadet.\"\n\nWe returned to Jurisfiction, and Thursday5 went and did some Pilates in the corner, much to the consternation of Mrs. Dashwood, who happened to be passing. I reported the Minotaur's appearance and the state of the Austen refit to Bradshaw, who told me to have the Minotaur's details and current whereabouts texted to all agents.\n\nAfter returning to my desk, dealing with some paperwork and being consulted on a number of matters, I drew out Thursday5's assessment form, filled it in and then checked the \"Failed\" box on the last page before I signed it. I folded it twice, slid it into the envelope and wavered for a moment before eventually placing it in the top drawer of my desk.\n\nI looked at my watch. It was time to go home. I walked over to Thursday5, who had her eyes closed and was standing on one leg. \"Same time tomorrow?\"\n\nShe opened her eyes and stared into mine. I got the same feeling when staring into the mirror at home. The touchy-feely New Age stuff was all immaterial. She was me, but me as I might have been if I'd never joined the police, army, SpecOps or Jurisfiction. Perhaps I wouldn't have been any happier if I'd connected with the side of me that was her, but I'd be a lot more relaxed and a good deal healthier.\n\n\"Do you mean it?\" she asked.\n\n\"Wouldn't say it if I didn't. But remember one thing: It's coffee and a bacon roll.\"\n\nShe smiled. \"Right. Coffee and bacon roll it is.\" She handed me a paper bag. \"This is for you.\"\n\nI peered inside. It contained Pickwick's blue-and-white knitted cozy\u2014finished.\n\n\"Good job,\" I murmured, looking at the delicate knitting enviously. \"Thank\u2014\"\n\nBut she'd gone. I walked to the corridor outside and dug out my TravelBook, turned to the description of my office at Acme Carpets and read. After a few lines, the air turned suddenly colder, there was the sound of crackling cellophane, and I was back in my small office with a dry mouth and a thirst so strong I thought I would faint. I kept a pitcher of water close by for just these moments, and thus I spent the next ten minutes drinking water and breathing deeply."
            },
            {
                "title": "Kids",
                "text": "Landen and I had often talked about it, but we never had a fourth. When Jenny came along, I was forty-two, and that, I figured, was it. On the occasion of our last attempt to induct Friday into the ChronoGuard's Academy of Time, he was the eldest at sixteen, Tuesday was twelve, and Jenny, the youngest, was ten. I resisted naming Jenny after a day of the week; I thought at least one of us should have the semblance of normality.\n\nI arrived at Tuesday's school at ten to four and waited patiently outside the math room. She'd shown a peculiar flair for the subject all her life but had first achieved prominence when aged nine. She'd wandered into the sixth-form math room and found an equation written on the board, thinking it was homework. But it wasn't. It was Fermat's Last Theorem, and the math master had written it down to demonstrate how this simple equation could not be solved. The thing was, Tuesday had found a solution, thus rendering a proof of the unworkability of the equation both redundant and erroneous.\n\nWhen the hunt was on for the person who had solved it, Tuesday thought they were angry with her for spoiling their fun, so she wasn't revealed as the culprit for almost a week. Even then she had to be cajoled into explaining the answer. Professors of mathematics had tubed in from every corner of the globe to see how such a simple solution could have been staring them in the face without any of them noticing it.\n\nAt four on the button, Tuesday came out of the math class looking drained and a bit cross.\n\n\"Hi, sweetheart,\" I said. \"How was school?\"\n\n\"S'okay,\" she said with a shrug, handing me her Hello Kitty school bag, pink raincoat and half-empty Winnie-the-Pooh lunch box. \"Do you have to pick me up in your Acme uniform? It's, like, soooooo embarrassing.\"\n\n\"I certainly do,\" I replied, giving her a big smoochy kiss to embarrass her further, something that didn't really work, as the pupils in her math class were all grown up and too obsessed with number sets and parameterized elliptic curves to be bothered by a daughter's embarrassment over her mother.\n\n\"They're all a bit slow,\" she said as we walked to the van. \"Some of them can barely count.\"\n\n\"Sweetheart, they are the finest minds in mathematics today; you should be happy that they're coming to you for tutoring. It must have been a bit of a shock to the mathematics fraternity when you revealed that there were sixteen more odd numbers then even ones.\"\n\n\"Seventeen,\" she corrected me. \"I thought of another one on the bus this morning. The odd-even disparity is the easy bit,\" she explained. \"The hard part is trying to explain that there actually is a highest number, a fact that tends to throw all work regarding infinite sets into a flat spin.\"\n\nClearly, the seriously smart genes that Mycroft had inherited from his father had bypassed my mother and me but appeared in Tuesday. It was odd to think that Mycroft's two sons were known collectively as \"the Stupids\"\u2014and it wasn't an ironic title either.\n\nTuesday groaned again when she saw we were driving home in the Acme Carpets van but agreed to get in when I pointed out that a long walk home was the only alternative. She scrunched down in her seat so as not to be spotted.\n\nWe didn't go straight home. I'd spoken to Spike before leaving work, and he mentioned that he had some news about Mycroft's haunting and agreed to meet me at Mum's. When I arrived, she and Polly were in the kitchen bickering about something pointless, such as the average size of an orange, so I left Tuesday with them: Mother to burn her a cake and Polly to discuss advanced Nextian Geometry.\n\n\"Hiya,\" I said to Spike, who'd been waiting in his car.\n\n\"Yo. Thought about what to do with Felix8?\"\n\n\"Not yet. I'll interview him again later this evening.\"\n\n\"As you wish. I made a few inquiries on the other side. Remember my dead partner, Chesney? He said Mycroft's spooking was what we call a Nonrecurring Informative Phantasm.\"\n\n\"You have them categorized?\"\n\n\"Sure. The A-list contains Pointless Screamer, Crisis Warner, Murder Avenger and Recurrent Dreary. From there it's all downhill: poltergeists, faceless orbs, quasi-religious visions and phantom smells\u2014more usually associated with recently departed pet Labradors.\"\n\nWe walked up the garden path to Mycroft's workshop.\n\n\"I get the picture. So what does it all mean?\" I asked.\n\n\"It means that Mycroft had something he wanted to say before he died\u2014but didn't manage to. It was obviously important enough for him to be given a license to come back, if only for a few hours. Turn off your cell phone.\"\n\nI reached into my pocket and did as he asked.\n\n\"Radio waves scramble their energy field,\" he explained. \"Spooking's dropped big-time since the cell-phone network kicked in. I'm amazed there are any ghosts left at all. Ready?\"\n\n\"Ready.\"\n\nWe had arrived at my uncle's workshop, and Spike grasped the handle and gently pushed the door open. If we were hoping to find Mycroft standing there in all his spectral glory, we were disappointed. The room was empty.\n\n\"He was just over there.\"\n\nSpike closed his eyes, sniffed the air and touched the workbench. \"Yeah,\" he said, \"I can feel him.\"\n\n\"Can you?\"\n\n\"No, not really. Where was he again?\"\n\n\"At the worktop. Spike, what exactly is a ghost?\"\n\n\"A phantom,\" said my uncle Mycroft, who had just materialized, \"is essentially a heteromorphic wave pattern that gains solidity when the apparition converts thermal energy from the surroundings to visible light. It's a fascinating process, and I'm amazed no one has thought of harnessing it\u2014a holographic TV that could operate from the heat given off by an average-size guinea pig.\"\n\nI shivered. Mycroft was right\u2014the temperature had dropped\u2014and there he was, but a lot less solid than the previous time. I could easily see the other side of the workshop through him.\n\n\"Hello again, Thursday,\" he said. \"Good afternoon, Mr. Stoker.\"\n\n\"Good afternoon, sir,\" replied Spike. \"Word in the Realm of the Dead says you've got something to tell us.\"\n\n\"I have?\" asked Mycroft, looking at me.\n\n\"Yes, Uncle,\" I told him, \"You're a Nonrecurring\u2026um\u2014\"\n\n\"Nonrecurring Informative Phantasm,\" put in Spike helpfully. \"An NIP, or what we call in the trade Speak Up and Shut Down.\"\n\n\"It means, Uncle,\" I said, \"that you've got something really important to tell us.\"\n\nMycroft looked thoughtful for so long that I almost nudged him before I realized it would be useless.\n\n\"Like what?\" he said at last.\n\n\"I don't know. Perhaps a\u2026philosophy of life or something?\"\n\nMycroft looked at me doubtfully and raised an eyebrow. \"The only thing that springs to mind is, 'You can never have too many chairs.'\"\n\n\"That's it? You returned from the dead to give me advice on furniture distribution?\"\n\n\"I know it's not much of a philosophy,\" said Mycroft with a shrug, \"but it can pay dividends if someone unexpectedly pops around for dinner.\"\n\n\"Uncle, please try to remember what it is you have to tell us!\"\n\n\"Was I murdered or anything?\" he asked in a dreamy fashion. \"Ghosts often come back if they've been killed or something\u2014at least, Patrick Swayze did.\"\n\n\"You definitely weren't murdered,\" I told him. \"It was a long illness.\"\n\n\"Then this is something of a puzzle,\" murmured Mycroft, \"but I suppose I've got the greater part of eternity to figure it out.\"\n\nThat's what I liked about my uncle\u2014always optimistic. But that was it. In another moment he had gone.\n\n\"Thirty-three seconds,\" said Spike, who had put a stopwatch on him, \"and about fifty-five percent opacity.\" He flicked through a small book of tables he had with him. \"Hmm,\" he said at last, \"almost certainly a trivisitation. You've got him one more time. He'll be down at fifteen to twenty percent opacity and will only be around for about fifteen seconds.\"\n\n\"Then I could miss him?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Spike with a smile, \"he appeared to you twice out of twice. The final appearance will be to you, too. Just have a proper question ready for him when you next come here\u2014Mycroft's memory being what it is, you can't rely on him remembering what he came back for. It's up to you.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Spike,\" I said as I closed the door of the workshop. \"I owe you.\"\n\nTuesday and I were home in a few minutes. The house felt warm and comfy, and there was the smell of cooking that embraced me like an old friend.\n\n\"Hi, darling!\" I called out. Landen stopped his typing and came out of the office to give me a hug.\n\n\"How was work?\" he asked.\n\nI thought of what I'd been doing that day. Of firing and not firing my drippy alter ego, of a Superreader loose somewhere in the BookWorld, of Goliath's unwelcome intrusion and of Mycroft as a ghost. Then there was the return of Felix8, the Minotaur, and my bag of Welsh cash. The time for truth was now. I had to tell him.\n\n\"I\u2026I had to do a stair carpet over in Baydon. Hell on earth; the treads were all squiffy, none of the stair rods would fit, and Spike and I spent the whole afternoon on it\u2014how's the book going?\"\n\nHe kissed me on the forehead and tousled Tuesday's hair affectionately, then took me by the hand and led me into the kitchen, where there was a stew on the stove.\n\n\"Kind of okay, I guess,\" he replied, stirring the dinner, \"but nothing really spectacular.\"\n\n\"No ideas?\" I prompted. \"An odd character, perhaps?\"\n\n\"No\u2014I was mostly working on pace and atmosphere.\"\n\nThis was strange. I'd specifically told Scampton-Tappett to do his best. I had a sudden thought.\n\n\"What book are you working on, sweetheart?\"\n\n\"The Mews of Doom.\"\n\nAha.\n\n\"I thought you said you'd be rewriting Bananas for Edward?\"\n\n\"I got bored with it. Why do you ask?\"\n\n\"No reason. Where's Friday?\"\n\n\"In his room. I made him have a shower, so he's in a bit of a snot.\"\n\n\"Plock.\"\n\n\"A clean snot is better than a dirty snot I suppose. And Jenny?\"\n\n\"Watching TV.\"\n\nI called out, \"Hey, Jenny!\" but there was no answer.\n\n\"Plock.\"\n\n\"She's upstairs in her room.\"\n\nI looked at the hall clock. We still had a half hour until we had to go to the ChronoGuard's career-advisory pre sen ta tion.\n\n\"PLOCK!\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, hello, Pickwick\u2014how's this?\"\n\nI showed her the finished blue-and-white sweater, and before she could even think of complaining, I had slipped it over her featherless body. Landen and I stared at her this way and that, trying to figure out if it was for the better or the worse.\n\n\"It makes her look like something out of the Cornish Blue pottery cata log,\" said Landen at last.\n\n\"Or a very large licorice allsort,\" I added.\n\nPickwick glared at us sullenly, then realized she was a good deal warmer and hopped off the kitchen table and trotted down the corridor to try to look in the mirror, which was unfortunately just too high, so she spent the next half hour jumping up and down trying to catch a glimpse of herself.\n\n\"Hi, Mum,\" said Friday, looking vaguely presentable as he walked down the stairs.\n\n\"Hello, Sweetpea,\" I said, passing him the CD Polly had given me. \"I got this for you. It's an early release of Hosing the Dolly. Check out the guitar riff on the second track.\"\n\n\"Cool,\" replied Friday, visibly impressed in a \"nothing impresses me\" sort of way. \"How did you get hold of it?\"\n\n\"Oh, you know,\" I said offhandedly. \"I have friends in the recording industry. I wasn't always just a boring mum, you know.\"\n\n\"Polly gave it to you, didn't she?\"\n\nI sighed. \"Yes. Ready to go?\"\n\nLanden joined us, and he and I moved toward the door. Friday stood where he was.\n\n\"Do I have to?\"\n\n\"You promised. And there isn't another ChronoGuard career-advisory meeting in Swindon for another six months.\"\n\n\"I don't want to work in the time industry.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, my voice rising as I finally lost patience, \"get your lazy butt out the door\u2014okay?\"\n\nHe knew better than to argue with angry-determined Mum. Landen knocked on the partition wall, and a minute later our neighbor Mrs. Berko-Boyler was on the doorstep wearing a pink quilted dressing gown, her hair in curlers.\n\n\"Good evening, Mrs. Berko-Boyler,\" I said.\n\n\"Is it?\" she said with a snarl. \"Is it really?\"\n\n\"We'll be about an hour,\" explained Landen, who was more skilled at dealing with our volatile yet oddly helpful neighbor.\n\n\"Do you know the last time Mr. Berko-Boyler took me out anywhere?\" she asked, scowling at all three of us.\n\n\"I've no idea.\"\n\n\"Saturday.\"\n\n\"Well, that's not that long ago\u2014\"\n\n\"Saturday, October the sixth, 1983,\" she said with a contemptuous sniff, and shuffled past us into the living room. \"Nineteen years ago. Makes me sick, I tell you. Hello, Tuesday,\" she said in a kindlier tone. \"Where's your sister?\"\n\nWe walked down to the tram stop in silence. Friday's lack of interest in the ChronoGuard was a matter not only of annoyance but surprise. The Standard History Eventline had him joining the industry three years ago on their Junior Time Scout program, something that he had failed to do despite our efforts and those of the ChronoGuard, which was as concerned as we were. But we couldn't force him either\u2014time was the glue of the cosmos and had to be eased apart\u2014push destiny too hard and it had an annoying habit of pushing back. He had to join the ChronoGuard, but it had to be his decision. Every way you looked at it, time was out of joint."
            },
            {
                "title": "The ChronoGuard",
                "text": "SpecOps-12 is the ChronoGuard, the governmental department dealing with Temporal Stability. Its job is to maintain the integrity of the Standard History Eventline (SHE) and police the time stream against any unauthorized changes or usage. Its most brilliant work is never noticed, as changes in the past always seem to have been that way. Planet-destroying cataclysms generally happen twice a week but are carefully rerouted by skilled ChronoGuard operatives. The citizenry never notices a thing\u2014which is just as well, really.\n\nThe ChronoGuard had its regional offices in the old SpecOps building where I had worked at SO-27, the Literary Detectives. It was a large, no-nonsense Germanic design that had certainly seen better days. Landen and I walked into what had once been the main debriefing room, Friday shuffling in behind us, hands thrust deeply in his pockets and head nodding to the beat of his Walkman. Of course, this being the ChronoGuard, they already had a list of attendees from the forms we'd filled out at the end of the evening, which seemed to work quite well until a couple with a spotty kid in front of us found they weren't on the list.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" said the woman at the registration desk in an apologetic tone. \"But it seems that you don't stay until the end of the presentation, so we've been unable to include you in the registration process. You're going to have to come to the next careers presentation in six months' time.\"\n\nThe father of the group scratched his head for a moment, stopped to say something, thought better of it and then departed, arguing with his wife.\n\n\"Mr. and Mrs. Parke-Laine-Next and their son, Friday,\" I said to the woman, who blinked for a few seconds, looked at Friday, gave a shy smile and then started to chatter and gush in a most unseemly manner.\n\n\"Mr. Next\u2014Friday\u2014how do you do? I've wanted to meet you again for the first time. May I shake you by the hand and congratulate you on\u2014\"\n\nShe stopped, realized she was being a bit previous and making a fool of herself, so coughed in an embarrassed manner before smoothing her skirt absently and sitting down again.\n\n\"Sorry. Welcome to the pre sen ta tion. Here are your badges and your information pack. If you would like to go in, Captain Scintilla will join you soon.\"\n\nWe dutifully took our seats, and Friday slouched in a very obvious don't-give-a-monkey's manner until I told him to sit up straight, which he didn't like but sat up nonetheless.\n\n\"What are we doing here?\" he asked in a bored voice. \"And why the time industry? What about plumbing or something?\"\n\n\"Because your grandfather was a time operative.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he grunted, \"and look what happened to him.\"\n\nLanden and I exchanged glances. Friday was right. Ending up not having existed wasn't a terrific end to a promising career.\n\n\"Well!\" said a youthful-looking man in the pale blue uniform of the ChronoGuard who up until now had been helping escort the previous group out of the room. \"My name is Captain Bendix Scintilla, and I am head of ChronoGuard Recruitment. I'd like to welcome all of you to this ChronoGuard careers pre sen ta tion and hope that this short talk might go some way toward explaining what it is that we done. Did. Do. Anyhow, my aims are twofold: secondly, to try to demonstrate to the young people here that a career in the time industry is a very exciting prospect indeed and, firstly, to lift the lid on the Temporal Trade and explode a few common myths and misunderstandings. As I'm about to say, did say or would say, my name is Bendix Scintilla, and I was died on March sixteenth, 3291. I'm twenty-three years old in my own personal time, seven hundred and twenty-six in my elapsed work time, and you meet me twenty-seven percent through my life.\"\n\nHe smiled, unaware that he was making very little sense. I was used to it, but by the manner in which the rest of the audience members were scratching their heads and looking at one another, they weren't. Bendix picked up a solid bar of yellow plastic that was about three feet long, two inches wide and domed at either end.\n\n\"Does anyone know what this is?\" he asked. There was silence, so he passed it to the nearest family and told them to pass it on. \"Anyone who can guess wins a prize.\"\n\nThe first family shrugged and passed it to us. Friday gave it the most cursory of glances, and I passed it on.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\" asked Bendix, pointing to a man in the front row who was with his painfully thin wife and a pair of geeky-looking twins.\n\n\"Me?\" said the man in a confused voice.\n\n\"Yes. I understand you have a question? Sorry, I should have explained. To save time I thought I'd ask you before you actually raised your hand.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said the man, and then he shrugged and said, \"I was wondering, since we were told this was the only open day for six months, just who the previous group filing out of the door was\u2014and why were they looking at us in that extremely inquisitive manner?\"\n\n\"Why, that was you good people, of course! In order not to keep you from your busy schedules, this meeting actually takes no time at all. The moment you arrived was precisely the time you left, only out the other entrance so you wouldn't meet yourselves.\"\n\nAs soon as he said it, a twitter of understanding and wonderment went through the small group. I'd experienced the ChronoGuard in the past, so these sorts of cheap parlor tricks didn't impress me, but for many of the people present, to whom time was immutable, it was something new and exciting. Scintilla had been doing this show for many years and knew how to get an audience's attention.\n\n\"Time is odd,\" said Bendix, \"very odd. It's odder than almost anything you can think of. What you consider the usual march of time\u2014effect rather quaintly following cause and so forth\u2014is actually a useful illusion, impressed upon you by rules of physics so very benign that we consider them devised by Something Awfully Friendly indeed; if it weren't for time, everything would happen at the same instant and existence would become tiresomely frenetic and be over very quickly. But before we get into all that, let's have a show of hands to see who is actually considering a career in time?\"\n\nQuite a few hands went up, but Friday's was not among them. I noticed Scintilla staring in our direction as he asked, and he seemed put out by Friday's intransigence.\n\n\"Yes, miss, you have a question?\"\n\nHe pointed to a young girl sitting in the back row with her expensive-looking parents.\n\n\"How did you know I was going to ask a question?\"\n\n\"That was your question, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026yes.\"\n\n\"Because you've already asked it.\"\n\n\"I haven't.\"\n\n\"Actually, you have. Everything that makes up what you call the present is in reality the long distant past. The actual present is in what you regard as the far-distant future. All of this happened a long time ago and is recorded in the Standard History Eventline, so we know what will happen and can see when things happen that weren't meant to. You and I and everything in this room are actually ancient history\u2014but if that seems a bit depressing, let me assure you that these really are the good old days. Yes, madam?\"\n\nA woman just next to us hadn't put up her hand, of course, but was clearly thinking of it.\n\n\"So how is it possible to move through time?\"\n\n\"The force that pushes the fabric of time along is the past attempting to catch up with the future in order to reach an equilibrium. Think of it as a wave\u2014and where the past starts to break over the future in front of it, that's the present. At that moment of temporal instability is a vortex\u2014a tube, in surfing parlance\u2014that runs perpendicular to the arrow of time but leads to everything that has ever happened or ever will happen. Of course, that's greatly simplified, but with skill, training, a really good uniform and a bit of aptitude, you'll learn to ride the tube as it ripples through the fabric of spacetime. Yes, sir?\"\n\nA young lad in the front row was the next to ask a question.\n\n\"How can you surf a time wave that is squillions of years in the future?\"\n\n\"Because it isn't. It's everywhere, all at once. Time is like a river, with the source, body and mouth all existing at the same time.\"\n\nFriday turned to me and said in a very unsubtle whisper, \"Is this going to take long?\"\n\n\"Keep quiet and pay attention.\"\n\nHe looked heavenward, sighed audibly and slouched deeper in his chair.\n\nScintilla carried on, \"The time industry is an equal-opportunity employer, has its own union of Federated Timeworkers and a pay structure with overtime payments and bonuses. The working week is forty hours, but each hour is only fifty-two minutes long. Time-related holidays are a perk of the ser vice and can be undertaken after the first ten years' employment. And also, to make it really attractive, we will give each new recruit a Walkman and vouchers to buy ten CDs of your\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped talking, because Friday had put up his hand. We noticed that the other members of the ChronoGuard were staring in dumb wonderment at Friday. The reason wasn't altogether clear until it suddenly struck me: Scintilla hadn't known that Friday was going to ask a question.\n\n\"You\u2026have a question?\"\n\n\"I do. The question is, 'Tell me the question I'm going to ask.'\"\n\nScintilla gave a nervous laugh and looked around the audience in an uncomfortable manner. Eventually he hazarded a guess:\n\n\"You\u2026want to know where the toilet is?\"\n\n\"No. I wanted to know if everything we do is preordained.\"\n\nScintilla gave out another shrill, nervous laugh. Friday was a natural, and they all knew it. The thing was, I think Friday did, too\u2014but didn't care.\n\n\"A good point and, as you just demonstrated, not at all. Your question was what we call a 'free radical,' an anomalous event that exists in de pen dent of the Standard History Eventline, or SHE. Generally, SHE is the one that must be obeyed, but time also has an annoying propensity for random flexibility. Like rivers, time starts and finishes in generally the same place. Certain events\u2014like gorges and rapids\u2014tend to stay the same. However, on the flat temporal plain, the timestream can meander quite considerably, and when it moves toward danger, it's up to us to change something in the event-past to swing the timestream back on course. It's like navigation on the open seas, really, only the ship stays still and you navigate the storm.\"\n\nHe smiled again. \"But I'm getting ahead of myself. Apocalypse avoidance is only one area of our expertise. Patches of bad time that open spontaneously need to be stitched closed, ChronoTheft is very big in the seventh millennium, and the total eradication of the Dark Ages by a timephoon is requiring a considerable amount of effort to repair, and\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped talking, because Friday had inexplicably raised his hand once again.\n\n\"Why don't you tell us about the downside?\" asked Friday in a sullen voice from beneath a curtain of hair. \"About time aggregations and leaks in the gravity suits that leave cadets a molecule thick?\"\n\n\"That's why we're here,\" explained Scintilla, attempting to make light of the situation, \"to clear up any small matters of misrepresentation that you might have heard. I won't try to convince you that accidents haven't happened, but like all industries we take health and safety very seriously.\"\n\n\"Son,\" I said, laying a hand on his arm, \"hear what he has to say first.\"\n\nFriday turned and parted his long hair so I could see his eyes. They were intelligent, bright\u2014and scared.\n\n\"Mum, you told me about the accidents\u2014about Dad's eradication and Filbert Snood. Why do you want me to work for an industry that seems to leave its workers dead, non ex is tent or old before their time?\"\n\nHe got up and made for the exit, and we followed him as Scintilla attempted to carry on his talk, although firmly rattled. But as we tried to leave, a ChronoGuard operative stood in our way.\n\n\"I think you should stay and listen to the pre sen ta tion,\" he said, addressing Friday, who told him to get stuffed. The Chrono took exception to this and made a grab for him, but I was quicker and caught the guard's wrist, pulled him around and had him on the floor with his arm behind his back.\n\n\"Muumm!\" whined Friday, more embarrassed than outraged. \"Do you have to? People are watching!\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said, letting go of the guard. Scintilla had excused himself from his talk and came over to see what was going on.\n\n\"If we want to leave, we leave,\" growled Landen.\n\n\"Of course!\" agreed Scintilla, motioning with a flick of his head for the Chrono to move off. \"You can go whenever you want.\" He looked at me; he knew how important it was to get Friday inducted, and knew I knew it, too.\n\n\"But before you go,\" he said, \"Friday, I want you to know that we would be very happy to have you join the time industry. No minimum academic qualifications, no entrance exam. It's an unconditional offer\u2014the first we've ever made.\"\n\n\"And what makes you think I'd be any good at it?\"\n\n\"You can ask questions that aren't already lodged in the SHE. Do you think just anyone can do that?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"I'm not interested.\"\n\n\"I'm just asking for you to stay and hear what we have to say.\"\n\n\"I'm\u2026not\u2026interested,\" replied Friday more forcefully.\n\n\"Listen,\" said Scintilla, after looking around furtively and lowering his voice, \"this is a bit unofficial, but I've had a word with Wayne Skunk, and he's agreed to let you play a guitar riff on the second track of Hosing the Dolly.\"\n\n\"It's too late,\" said Friday, \"it's already been recorded.\"\n\nBendix stared at him. \"Yes\u2014and by you.\"\n\n\"I never did anything of the sort!\"\n\n\"No, but you might. And since that possibility exists, you did. Whether you actually do is up to you, but either way you can have that one on us. It's your solo in any case. Your name is already in the liner notes.\"\n\nFriday looked at Scintilla, then at me. I knew how much he loved Strontium Goat, and Scintilla knew, too. He had Friday's complete ser vice record, after all. But Friday wasn't interested. He didn't like being pushed, cajoled, bullied or bribed. I couldn't blame him\u2014I hated it, too, and he was my son, after all.\n\n\"You think you can buy me?\" he said finally, and left without another word.\n\n\"I'll catch up,\" I said as he walked out with Landen.\n\nWhile the swinging doors shut noisily behind them, Scintilla said to me, \"Do I need to emphasize how important it is that Friday joins the ChronoGuard as soon as possible? He should have signed up three years ago and be surfing the timestream by now.\"\n\n\"You may have to wait a little longer, Bendix.\"\n\n\"That's just it,\" he replied. \"We don't have much time.\"\n\n\"I thought you had all the time there was.\"\n\nHe took me by the arm, and we moved to a corner of the room.\n\n\"Thursday\u2014can I call you Thursday?\u2014we're facing a serious crisis in the time industry, and as far as we know, Friday's leadership several trillion bang/crunch cycles from now is the only thing that we can depend on\u2014his truculence at this end of time means his desk is empty at the other.\"\n\n\"But there's always a crisis in time, Bendix.\"\n\n\"Not like this. This isn't a crisis in time\u2014it's a crisis of time. We've been pushing the frontiers of time forward for trillions upon trillions of years, and in a little over four days we'll have reached the\u2026End of Time.\"\n\n\"And that's bad, right?\"\n\nBendix laughed. \"Of course not! Time has to end somewhere. But there's a problem with the very mechanism that controls the way we've been scooting around the here and now for most of eternity.\"\n\n\"And that is?\"\n\nHe looked left and right and lowered his voice. \"Time travel has yet to be invented! And with the entire multiverse one giant hot ball of superheated gas contracting at incalculable speed into a point one trillion-trillionth the size of a neutron, it's not likely to be.\"\n\n\"Wait, wait,\" I said, trying to get this latest piece of information into my head. \"I know that the whole time travel thing makes very little logical sense, but you must have machines that enable you to move through time, right?\"\n\n\"Of course\u2014but we've got no idea how they work, who built them or when. We've been running the entire industry on something we call 'retro-deficit-engineering.' We use the technology now, safe in the assumption that it will be invented in the future. We did the same with the Gravitube in the fifties and the microchip ten years ago\u2014neither of them actually gets invented for over ten thousand years, but it helps us more to have them now.\"\n\n\"Let me get this straight,\" I said slowly. \"You're using technology you don't have\u2014like me overspending on my credit card.\"\n\n\"Right. And we've searched every single moment in case it was invented and we hadn't noticed. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Rien.\"\n\nHis shoulders slumped, and he ran his fingers through his hair.\n\n\"Listen, if Friday doesn't retake his seat at the head of the ChronoGuard and use his astonishing skills to somehow save us, then everything that we've worked toward will be undone as soon as we hit Time Zero.\"\n\n\"I think I get it. Then why is Friday not following his destined career?\"\n\n\"I've no idea. We always had him down as dynamic and aggressively inquisitive when he was a child\u2014what happened?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"All kids are like that today. It's a modern thing, caused by too much TV, video games and other instant-gratification bullshit. Either that\u2014or kids are exactly the same and I'm getting crusty and intolerant in my old age. Listen, I'll do what I can.\"\n\nScintilla thanked me, and I joined Friday and Landen outside.\n\n\"I don't want to work in the time industry, Mum. I'd only break some dumb rule and end up eradicated.\"\n\n\"My eradication was pretty painless,\" reflected Landen. \"In fact, if your mother hadn't told me about it, I never would have known it happened.\"\n\n\"That doesn't help, Dad,\" grumbled Friday. \"You were reactualized\u2014what about Granddad? No one can say whether he exists or not\u2014not even him.\"\n\nI rested my hand on his shoulder. He didn't pull away this time.\n\n\"I know, Sweetpea. And if you don't want to join, no one's going to make you.\"\n\nHe was quiet for a while, then said, \"Do you have to call me Sweetpea? I'm sixteen.\"\n\nLanden and I looked at each other, and then we took the tram back home. True to his word, Bendix had slipped us back a few minutes to just before we went in, and as we rattled home in silence, we passed ourselves arriving.\n\n\"You know that yellow rod Bendix showed us?\" said Friday, staring out the window.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"It was a half second of snooker ball.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Home Again",
                "text": "Noting with dismay that most cross-religion bickering occurred only because all the major religions were convinced they were the right one and every other religion was the wrong one, the founders of the Global Standard Deity based their fledgling \"portmanteau\" faith on the premise that most religions want the same thing once all the shameless, manipulative power play had been subtracted: peace, stability, equality and justice\u2014the same as the nonfaiths. As soon as they found that centralizing thread that unites all people and made a dialogue of sorts with a Being of Supreme Moral Authority mostly optional, the GSD flourished.\n\nFriday went to his room in a huff as soon as we got in. Mrs. Berko-Boyler told us that the girls were fine and that she had folded all the washing, cleaned the kitchen, fed Pickwick and made us all cottage pie. This wasn't unusual for her, and she scoffed at any sort of payment, then shuffled off home, muttering darkly about how if she'd killed her husband when she'd first thought of it, she'd be \"out of prison by now.\"\n\n\"Where's Jenny?\" I asked Landen, having just gone upstairs to check. \"She's not in her room.\"\n\n\"She was just in the kitchen.\"\n\nThe phone rang, and I picked it up.\n\n\"Hello?\"\n\n\"It's Millon,\" came a soft voice, \"and I'm sorry to call you at home.\"\n\n\"Where are you?\"\n\n\"Look out the window.\"\n\nI did as he asked and saw him wave from his usual spot between the compost heap and the laurels. Millon de Floss, it should be explained, was my official stalker. Even though I had long ago dropped to the bottom of the Z-class celebrity list, he had insisted on maintaining his benign stalkership because, as he explained it, \"we all need a retirement hobby.\" Since he had shown considerable fortitude during a sojourn into the Elan back in '88, I now counted him as a family friend, something that he always denied, when asked. \"Friendship,\" he intoned soberly, \"always damages the pest factor that is the essence of the bond between stalker and stalkee.\" None of the kids were bothered by him at all, and his early-warning capabilities were actually very helpful\u2014he'd spotted Felix8, after all. Not that stalking was his sole job, of course. Aside from fencing cheese to the east of Swindon, he edited Conspiracy Theorist magazine and worked on my official biography, something that was taking longer than we had both thought.\n\n\"So what's the problem? You still up for the cheese buy this evening?\" I asked him.\n\n\"Of course\u2014but you've got visitors. A car on the street with two men in it and another man climbing over the back wall.\"\n\nI thanked him and put the phone down. I'd made a few enemies in the past, so Landen and I had some prearranged contingency measures.\n\n\"Problems?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"It's a code yellow.\"\n\nLanden understood and without a word dashed off toward the front of the house. I opened the back door and crept out into the garden, took the side passage next to the dustbins and slipped behind the summer house. I didn't have to wait long, as a man wearing a black coverall and a balaclava helmet came tiptoeing up the path toward where I was hidden. He was carrying a sack and a bag of marshmallows. I didn't waste any time on pleasantries; I simply whacked him hard on the chin with my fist, and when he staggered, momentarily stunned, I thumped him in the chest, and he fell over backward with a grunt. I pulled off the balaclava to reveal a man I recognized\u2014it was Arthur Plunkett of the Swindon Dodo Fanciers Guild.\n\n\"For GSD's sake, Arthur,\" I said, \"how many times do I have to tell you that Pickwick's not for sale?\"\n\n\"Uuuuh,\" he said, groaning and wheezing as he tried to regain his wind.\n\n\"Come on, idiot,\" I said as I heaved him up and rested him against the back of the summer house. \"You know better than to break into my house\u2014I can be dangerously protective of my family. Why do you think I'm the only one in Swindon able to leave my car unlocked at night?\"\n\n\"Ooooooh.\"\n\n\"Wait here,\" I said to him, and trotted back indoors. I could be dangerous, but then so could Landen, even with one leg. The front door was open, and I could see him hiding behind the privet hedge. I ran low across the lawn and joined him.\n\n\"It's only dodo fanciers,\" I hissed.\n\n\"Again?\" he replied. \"After what happened last time?\"\n\nI nodded. Clearly, Pickwick's Version 1.2 rarity was a prize worth risking a lot for. I looked across the road to where a Buick was parked by the curb. The two men inside were wearing dark glasses and making a lot of effort to be inconspicuous.\n\n\"Shall we stop them?\"\n\n\"No,\" giggled Landen. \"They won't get far.\"\n\n\"What have you done?\" I asked in my serious voice.\n\n\"You'll see.\"\n\nAs we watched, Arthur Plunkett decided to make a run for it\u2014well, a hobble for it, actually\u2014and came out through the gate and limped across the road. The driver of the car started up the engine, waited until Plunkett had thrown himself in the back, then pulled rapidly away from the curb. They got about twenty feet before the cable that Landen had tied around their rear axle whipped tight and, secured to a lamppost at the other end and far too strong to snap, it tore the axle and most of the suspension clear from the back of the car, which then almost pitched up onto its nose before falling with a crunch in the middle of the road. After a short pause, the three men climbed shakily out of the car and then legged it off down the street, Plunkett behind.\n\n\"Was that really necessary?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not at all,\" admitted Landen through a series of childish giggles. \"But I'd always wanted to try it.\"\n\n\"I wish you two would grow up.\"\n\nWe looked up. My brother Joffy and his partner, Miles, were staring at us over the garden gate.\n\n\"I don't know what you mean,\" I said, getting up from where we'd been crouched behind the hedge and giving Landen a heave to get him on his feet. \"It's just a normal evening in Swindon.\" I looked around, as the neighbors had come out to gawk at the wreck of the Buick and motioned Joffy and Miles inside. \"Come on in for a cup of tea.\"\n\n\"No tea,\" said Joffy as we walked into the house. \"We've just had a tankerful at Mum's\u2014can't you hear me slosh as I walk?\"\n\n\"And enough Battenberg cake to fill the Grand Canyon,\" added Miles in a stuffed-with-cake sort of voice.\n\n\"How's the carpet business, Doofus?\" asked Joffy as we stood in the hall.\n\n\"Couldn't be better\u2014how's the faith-unification business?\"\n\n\"We've nearly got everyone,\" said Joffy with a smile. \"The atheists came on board last week. Once we'd suggested that 'god' could be a set of essentially beneficent physical rules of the cosmos, they were only too happy to join. In fact, apart from a few scattered remnants of faith leaders who can't quite come to terms with the loss of their power, influence and associated funny hats, it's all looking pretty good.\"\n\nJoffy's nominal leadership of the British Archipelago Branch of the Global Standard Deity was a matter of considerable import within the Next family. The GSD was proposed by delegates of the 1978 Global Interfaith Symposium and had gathered momentum since then, garnering converts from all the faiths into one diverse religion that was flexible enough to offer something for everyone.\n\n\"I'm amazed you managed to convert them all,\" I said.\n\n\"It wasn't a conversion,\" he replied, \"it was a unification.\"\n\n\"And you are here now because\u2026?\"\n\n\"Landen said he'd videotape Dr. Who for me, and the Daleks are my favorite.\"\n\n\"I'm more into the Sontarans myself,\" said Miles.\n\n\"Humph!\" said Joffy. \"It's what I would expect from someone who thinks Jon Pertwee was the best Doctor.\"\n\nLanden and I stared at him, unsure of whether we should agree, postulate a different theory\u2014or what.\n\n\"It was Tom Baker,\" said Joffy, ending the embarrassed silence. Miles made a noise that sounded like \"conventionalist,\" and Landen went off to fetch the tape.\n\n\"Doofus?\" whispered Joffy when Landen had gone.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Have you told him?\"\n\n\"No,\" I whispered back.\n\n\"You can't not tell him, Thursday\u2014if you don't tell him the truth about the BookWorld and Acme Carpets, it's like you're\u2014I don't know\u2014lying to him.\"\n\n\"It's for his own good,\" I hissed. \"It's not like I'm having an affair or something.\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\n\"No, of course not!\"\n\n\"It's still a lie, sister dearest. How would you like it if he lied to you about what he did all day?\"\n\n\"I daresay I'd not like it. Leave it to me, Joff\u2014I'll be fine.\"\n\n\"I hope so. Happy birthday\u2014and in case you hadn't noticed, there's some Camembert on fire in the hood of your Acme Carpets van.\"\n\n\"Some what?\"\n\n\"Camembert. On fire.\"\n\n\"Here it is,\" said Landen, returning with a video. \"'Remembrance of the Daleks.' Where did Thursday go?\"\n\n\"Oh, she just nipped out for something. Well, must be off! People to educate, persuade and unify\u2014hopefully in that order. Ha-ha-ha.\"\n\n\"Sorry about that,\" I said, coming back from outside. \"I thought I saw Pickwick make faces at the cat next door\u2014you know how they hate each other.\"\n\n\"But she's over there,\" said Landen, pointing to where Pickwick was still struggling to look at herself and her blue-and-white stripy sweater in the mirror.\n\nI shrugged. \"Must have been another dodo.\"\n\n\"Is there another bald dodo in the neighborhood with a blue stripy cardigan? And can you smell burning cheese?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said innocently. \"What about you, Joff?\"\n\n\"I've got to go,\" he repeated, staring at his watch. \"Remember what I said, sister dearest!\"\n\nAnd he and Miles walked off toward the crowd that had started to gather around the wrecked car.\n\n\"I swear I can smell burning cheese,\" said Landen as I shut the front door.\n\n\"Probably Mrs. Berko-Boyler cooking next door.\"\n\nOutwardly I was worry-free, but inside I was more nervous. A chunk of burning Camembert on your doorstep meant only one thing: a warning from the Swindon Old Town Cheese Mafia\u2014or, as they liked to be known, the Stiltonistas."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cheese",
                "text": "The controversial Milk Levy from which the unpopular Cheese Duty is derived was imposed in 1970 by the then Whig government, which needed to raise funds for a potential escalation of war in the Crimea. With the duty now running at 1,530 percent on hard and 1,290 percent on smelly, illegal cheese making and smuggling had become a very lucrative business indeed. The Cheese Enforcement Agency was formed not only to supervise the licensing of cheese but also to collect the tax levied on it by an overzealous government. Small wonder that there was a thriving underground cheese market.\n\nThanks for tipping us the wink about the dodo fanciers,\" I said as we drove through the darkened streets of Swindon two hours later. A tow truck had removed the wreckage of the fanciers' car, and the police had been around to collect statements. Despite its being a busy neighborhood, no one had seen anything. They had, of course, but the Parke-Laine-Nexts were quite popular in the area.\n\n\"Are you sure we weren't followed?\" asked Millon as we pulled up outside an empty industrial unit not a stone's throw from the city's airship field.\n\n\"Positive,\" I replied. \"Have you got buyers for it?\"\n\n\"The usual cheeseheads are all champing at the bit, recipes at the ready. The evening air will be rich with the scent of Welsh rarebit to night.\"\n\nA large seventy-seat airship rose slowly into the sky behind the factory units. We watched while its silver flanks caught the colors of the late-evening sun as it turned and, with its four propellers beating the still air with a rhythmic hum, set course for Southampton.\n\n\"Ready?\" I asked.\n\n\"Ready,\" said Millon.\n\nI beeped the horn twice, and the steel shutters were slowly raised on the nearest industrial unit.\n\n\"Tell me,\" said Millon, \"why do you think the Old Town Stiltonistas gave you the flaming Camembert?\"\n\n\"A warning, perhaps. But we've never bothered them, and they've never bothered us.\"\n\n\"Our two territories don't even overlap,\" he observed. \"Do you think the Cheese Enforcement Agency is getting bolder?\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"You don't seem very worried.\"\n\n\"The CEA is underfunded and knows nothing. Besides, we have customers to attend to\u2014and Acme needs the cash. Think you can liberate five grand by tomorrow morning?\"\n\n\"Depends what they've got,\" he said after a moment's reflection. \"If they're trying to peddle common-or-garden Cheddaresque or that processed crap, then we could be in trouble. But if they've got something exotic, then no problem at all.\"\n\nThe roller shutter was high enough to let us in by now, and we drove inside, the shutter reversing direction to close behind us.\n\nWe climbed out of the van. The industrial unit was empty except for a large Welsh-registered Griffin-V8 truck, a long table with leather sample cases lying on it and four men wearing black suits with black ties and sunglasses and looking vaguely menacing. It was all bravado, of course\u2014Scorsese movies were big in the Welsh Republic. I tried to see by the swing of their jackets if any of them were packing heat and guessed that they weren't. I'd only carried a gun once in the real world since SpecOps was disbanded and hoped I never had to again. Cheese smuggling was still a polite undertaking. As soon as it turned ugly, I was out.\n\n\"Owen Pryce the Cheese,\" I said in a genial manner, greeting the leader of the group with a smile and a firm handshake, \"good to see you again. I trust the trip across the border was uneventful?\"\n\n\"It's getting a lot harder these days,\" he replied in a singsong Welsh accent that betrayed his roots in the south of the republic, probably Abertawe. \"There are dutymen everywhere, and the bribes I have to pay are reflected in the price of the goods.\"\n\n\"As long as it's fair price, Pryce,\" I replied pleasantly. \"My clients love cheese, but there's a limit to what they'll pay.\"\n\nWe were both lying, but it was the game we played. My clients would pay good money for high-quality cheese, and as likely as not he didn't bribe anyone. The border with Wales was 170 miles long and had more holes than a hastily matured Emmentaler. There weren't enough dutymen to cover it all, and to be honest, although it was illegal, no one took cheese smuggling that seriously.\n\nPryce nodded to one of his compatriots, and they opened the sample cases with a flourish. It was all there\u2014every single make of cheese you could imagine, from pure white to dark amber. Crumbly, hard, soft, liquid, gas. The rich aroma of well-matured cheese escaped into the room, and I felt my taste buds tingle. This was top-quality shit\u2014the best available.\n\n\"Smells good, Pryce.\"\n\nHe said nothing and showed me a large slab of white cheese. \"Caerphilly,\" he said, \"the best. We can\u2014\"\n\nI put up a hand to stop him. \"The punks can deal with the mild stuff, Pryce. We're interested in Level 3.8 and above.\"\n\nHe shrugged, set the Caerphilly down and picked up a small chunk of creamy-colored cheese.\n\n\"Quintuple Llanboidy,\" he announced, \"a 5.2. It'll play on your taste buds like the plucked strings of a harp.\"\n\n\"We'll have the usual of that, Pryce,\" I muttered, \"but my clients are into something a little stronger. What else you got?\"\n\nWe always went through this charade. My specialty was the volatile cheese market, and when I say volatile, I don't mean the market\u2014I mean the cheese.\n\nPryce nodded and showed me a golden yellow cheese that had veins of red running through it.\n\n\"Qua druple-strength Dolgellau Veinclotter,\" he announced. \"It's a 9.5. Matured in Blaenafon for eighteen years and not for the fainthearted. Good on crackers but can function equally well as an amorous-skunk repellent.\"\n\nI took a daringly large amount and popped it on my tongue. The taste was extraordinary; I could almost see the Cambrian Mountains just visible in the rain, low clouds, gushing water and limestone crags, frost-shattered scree and\u2014\n\n\"Are you all right?\" said Millon when I opened my eyes. \"You passed out for a moment there.\"\n\n\"Kicks like a mule, doesn't it?\" said Pryce kindly. \"Have a glass of water.\"\n\n\"Thank you. We'll take all you have\u2014what else you got?\"\n\n\"Mynachlog-ddu Old Contemptible,\" said Pryce, showing me a whitish crumbly cheese. \"It's kept in a glass jar because it will eat through cardboard or steel. Don't leave it in the air too long, as it will start dogs howling.\"\n\n\"We'll have thirty kilos. What about this one?\" I asked, pointing at an innocuous-looking ivory-colored soft cheese.\n\n\"Ystradgynlais Molecular Unstable Brie,\" announced Pryce, \"a soft cheese we've cloned from our cheese-making brethren in France\u2014but every bit as good. Useful as a contact anesthetic or a paint stripper, it can cure insomnia and ground to dust is a very useful self-defense against muggers and wandering bears. It has a half-life of twenty-three days, glows in the dark and can be used as a source of X-rays.\"\n\n\"We'll take the lot. Got anything really strong?\"\n\nPryce raised an eyebrow, and his minders looked at one another uneasily. \"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"It's not for me,\" I said hastily, \"but we've got a few serious cheeseheads who can take the hard stuff.\"\n\n\"We've got some Machynlleth Wedi Marw.\"\n\n\"What the hell's that?\"\n\n\"It's what you asked for\u2014really strong cheese. It'll bring you up in a rash just by looking at it. Denser than enriched plutonium, two grams can season enough macaroni and cheese for eight hundred men. The smell alone will corrode iron. A concentration in air of only seventeen parts per million will bring on nausea and unconsciousness within twenty seconds. Our chief taster ate a half ounce by accident and was dead to the world for six hours. Open only out of doors, and even then only with a doctor's certificate and well away from populated areas. It's not really a cheese for eating\u2014it's more for encasing in concrete and dumping in the ocean a long way from civilization.\"\n\nI looked at Millon, who nodded. There was always someone stupid enough to experiment. After all, no one had ever died from cheese ingestion. Yet.\n\n\"Let us have a half pound, and we'll see what we can do with it.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Pryce. He nodded to a colleague, who opened another suitcase and gingerly took out a sealed lead box. He laid it gently on the table and then took a hurried step backward.\n\n\"You won't attempt to open it until we're at least thirty miles away, will you?\" Pryce asked.\n\n\"We'll do our best.\"\n\n\"Actually, I'd advise you not to open it at all.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the advice.\"\n\nThe trading went on in this manner for another half hour, and with our order book full and the cost totted up, we transported the cheese from their truck to the Acme van, whose springs groaned under the weight.\n\n\"What's that?\" I asked, pointing at a wooden crate in the back of their truck. It was securely fixed to the floor with heavy chains.\n\n\"That's nothing,\" Pryce said quickly, his henchmen moving together to try to block my view.\n\n\"Something you're not showing us?\"\n\nPryce took me by the arm as they slammed the rear doors and threw the latch.\n\n\"You've always been a good customer, Ms. Next, but we know what you will and won't do, and this cheese is not for you.\"\n\n\"Strong?\"\n\nHe wouldn't answer me.\n\n\"It's been nice doing business with you, Ms. Next. Same time next month?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said slowly, wondering just how strong a cheese has to be before you've got to keep it chained down. More interestingly, the box was stenciled with the code X-14.\n\nI handed over the Welsh cash, it was swiftly counted, and before I knew it, Owen Pryce and his marginally threatening flunkies had revved up the truck and vanished into the night, off to sell cheese to the Stiltonistas in the Old Town. I always got first dibs\u2014that was probably what the flaming Camembert was all about.\n\n\"Did you see that cheese chained up in the back?\" I asked Millon as we got back into the van.\n\n\"No\u2014what cheese?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\nI started the van, and we drove out of the industrial estate. This was the point at which the CEA would have pounced if they'd have known what was going on, but they didn't. All was quiet in the town, and within a few minutes Millon had dropped me off at home, taking the Acme van himself to start peddling the cheese.\n\nI had only just opened the garden gate when I noticed a figure standing in the shadows. I instinctively moved to grab my pistol, before remembering that I didn't carry one in the Outland anymore. I needn't have worried: It was Spike.\n\n\"You made me jump!\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" he replied soberly. \"I came to ask you if you wanted any help disposing of the body.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry?\"\n\n\"The body. The ground can be hard this time of year.\"\n\n\"Whose body?\"\n\n\"Felix8. You did him in, right?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then how did he escape? You, me and Stig have the only keys.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment,\" I said nervously. \"Felix8 has gone?\"\n\n\"Completely. Are you sure you didn't kill him?\"\n\n\"I think I would have remembered.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Spike, handing me a spade, \"you better give this back to Landen, then.\" I must have looked horrified, because he added, \"I told him it was to plant some garlic. Listen, you get inside and keep the doors and windows locked\u2014I'll be in my car across the street if you need me.\"\n\nI went into the house and locked the door securely behind me. Felix8 was a worry, but not tonight\u2014I had a complimentary block of Llangloffan, and nothing was going to come between me and Landen's unbeatable macaroni and cheese."
            },
            {
                "title": "Breakfast Again",
                "text": "Commonsense Party leader Redmond van de Poste, MP, succeeded Chancellor Yorrick Kaine in the hastily called elections of 1988, changed the job title back to \"prime minister\" and announced a series of innovative policies. For a start he insisted that democracy, while a good idea for a good idea, was potentially vulnerable to predation by the greedy, egotistical and insane, so his plan to demo cratize democracy was ruthlessly implemented. There were initial issues regarding civil liberties, but now, fourteen years later, we were beginning to accrue the benefits.\n\nThe news on the radio that morning was devoted\u2014once again\u2014to the ongoing crisis of the week\u2014namely, where the nation's stupidity surplus could be discharged safely. Some suggested a small war in a distant country against a race of people we weren't generally disposed toward, but others thought this too risky and favored crippling the efficiency of the public services by adding a new layer of bureaucracy at huge expense and little benefit. Not all suggestions were sensible: Fringe elements of the debate maintained that the nation should revitalize the stupendously costly Anti-Smite Shield project. Designed to protect mankind\u2014or at least England\u2014against the potential threat by an enraged deity eager to cleanse a sinful race with a rain of fire, the shield project would have the twin benefits of profligate waste of good cash plus the possibility that other European nations could be persuaded to join and thus deal with Europe's combined stupidity excess in one fell swoop.\n\nPrime Minister Redmond van de Poste took the unusual step of speaking on live radio to not only reject all the suggestions but also to make the inflammatory statement that despite the escalating surplus they would continue the Commonsense approach to government. When asked how the stupidity surplus might be reduced, Van de Poste replied that he was certain something would come along that \"would be fantastically dim-witted but economical,\" and added that as a conciliatory dumb mea sure to appease his critics they would be setting fire to a large quantity of rubber tires for no very good purpose. This last remark was met with a cry of \"too little, too late\" from Mr. Alfredo Traficcone of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, which was gradually gaining ground promoting policies of \"immediate gain,\" something that Mr. Traficcone said was \"utterly preferable to the hideously longsighted policies of cautious perceptiveness.\"\n\n\"What a load of old poo,\" said Landen, giving Tuesday a boiled egg for breakfast and putting one in front of Jenny's place, then yelling up the stairs to her that breakfast was on the table.\n\n\"What time did Friday get in last night?\" I asked, since I had gone to bed first.\n\n\"Past midnight. He said he was making noise with his mates.\"\n\n\"The Gobshites?\"\n\n\"I think so, but they might as well be called the Feedbacks and working on the single 'Static' from the White Noise album.\"\n\n\"It's only because we're old and fuddy-duddy,\" I said, resting an affectionate hand on his. \"I'm sure the music we listened to was as much crap to our parents as his music is to us.\"\n\nBut Landen was elsewhere. He was composing an outline for a self-help book for dogs, called Yes, You CAN Open the Door Yourself, and was thus functionally deaf to everything.\n\n\"Land, I'm sleeping with the milkman.\"\n\nHe didn't look up, but said, \"That's nice, darling.\"\n\nTuesday and I laughed, and I turned to look at her with an expression of faux shock and said, \"What are you laughing about? You shouldn't know anything about milkmen!\"\n\n\"Mum,\" she said with a mixture of precocity and matter-of-factness, \"I have an IQ of two hundred and eighty and know more about everything than you do.\"\n\n\"I doubt it.\"\n\n\"Then what does the ischiocavernosus muscle do?\"\n\n\"Okay, you do know more than I do. Where is Jenny? She's always late for breakfast!\"\n\nI took the tram toward the old SpecOps Building to do some investigations. The escape of Felix8 was fresh in my mind, and several times I saw someone who I thought was him, but on each occasion it was a harmless passerby. I still had no idea how he had escaped, but one thing I did know was that the Hades family had some pretty demonic attributes, and they looked after their friends. Felix8, loathsome cur that he was, would have been considered a friend. If he was still in their pay, then I would have to speak to a member of the Hades family. It had to be Aornis: the only one in custody.\n\nI got off the tram at the Town Hall and walked down the hill to the SpecOps Building. It was eerily deserted as I stepped in, a strong contrast to the hive of activity that I had known. I was issued a visitor's badge and headed off down the empty corridors toward the ChronoGuard's office. Not the briefing hall we had visited the previous evening but a small room on the second floor. I'd been here on a number of occasions, so knew what to expect\u2014as I watched, the decor and furniture changed constantly, the ChronoGuard operatives themselves jumping in and out, their speed making them into little more than smears of light. There was one piece of furniture that remained unchanged while all about raced, moved and blurred in a never-ending jumble. It was a small table with an old candlestick telephone upon it, and as I put out my hand, it rang. I picked up the phone and held the earpiece to my ear.\n\n\"Mrs. Parke-Laine-Next?\" came a voice.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"He'll be right down.\"\n\nAnd in an instant he was. The room stopped moving from one time to the next and froze with a decor that looked vaguely contemporary. There was a figure at the desk who smiled when he saw me. But it wasn't Bendix or my father\u2014it was Friday. Not the mid-twenties Friday I'd met at my wedding bash or the old Friday I'd met during the Samuel Pepys Fiasco but a young Friday\u2014almost indistinguishable from the one who was still fast asleep at home, snoring loudly in the pit of despair we called his bedroom.\n\n\"Hi, Mum!\"\n\n\"Hi, Sweetpea,\" I said, deeply confused and also kind of relieved. This was the Friday I thought I was meant to have\u2014clean-cut, well presented, confident and with an infectious smile that reminded me of Landen. And he probably bathed more than once a fortnight, too.\n\n\"How old are you?\" I asked, placing a hand on his chin to make sure he was real, and not a phantasm or something, like Mycroft. He was real. Warm and still needing to shave only once a week.\n\n\"I'm sixteen, Mum, the same age as the lazy slob asleep at home. In a context that you'd understand, I'm a Potential Friday. I started with the Junior Time Scouts at thirteen and popped my first tube at fifteen\u2014the youngest ever to do so. The Friday you know is the Friday Present. The older me that will hopefully be the director-general is the Friday Last, and because he's indisposed due to a mild temporal ambiguity caused by the younger alternative me not joining the Time Scouts, Bendix reconstituted me from the echoes of the might-have-been. They asked me to see what I can do.\"\n\n\"Nope,\" I replied in some confusion, \"didn't understand a word.\"\n\n\"It's a split-timeline thing, Mum,\" explained Friday, \"in which two versions of the same person can exist at the same time.\"\n\n\"So can't you become the director-general at the other end of time?\"\n\n\"Not that easy. The alternative timelines have to be in concurrence to go forward to a mutually compatible future.\"\n\nI understood\u2014sort of.\n\n\"I guess this means you haven't invented time travel yet?\"\n\n\"Nope. Any idea why the other me is such a slouch?\"\n\n\"I asked you to join the Time Scouts three years ago, but you couldn't be bothered,\" I murmured by way of explanation. \"You were too busy playing on computer games and watching TV.\"\n\n\"I don't blame you or Dad. Something's seriously out of joint, but I don't know what. Friday Present seems to have the intelligence but not the pizzazz to want to do anything.\"\n\n\"Except play the guitar in the Gobshites.\"\n\n\"If you can call it playing,\" said Friday with an unkind laugh.\n\n\"Don't be so\u2014\" I checked myself. If this wasn't self-criticism, I didn't know what was.\n\nAll of a sudden, there was another Friday standing next to Potential Friday. He was identical, except he was carrying a manila folder. They looked at each other curiously. The newest Friday said \"Sorry\" in an embarrassed fashion and walked a little way down the corridor, where he pretended to be interested in the carved wood around the doorframe.\n\n\"This morning I only had one son,\" I muttered despondently. \"Now I've got three!\"\n\nFriday glanced at the second Friday over his shoulder, who was caught staring at us and quickly looked the other way. \"You've only got one, Mum. Don't worry about him.\"\n\n\"So what's gone wrong?\" I asked. \"Why is Friday Present so unlike Potential Friday?\"\n\n\"It's difficult to tell. This 2002 isn't like the one in the Standard History Eventline. Everyone seems introspective and lacking in any sort of charisma. It's as though a heavy sky is forcing lassitude on the population\u2014in a word, a grayness seems to have spread across the land.\"\n\n\"I know what you mean,\" I said, shaking my head sadly. \"We've seen a sixty percent drop in book readership; it seems no one can be bothered to invest their time in a good novel.\"\n\n\"That would figure,\" replied Friday thoughtfully. \"It's not supposed to be like this, I assure you\u2014the best minds have it as the beginning of the Great Unraveling. If what we suspect is true and time travel isn't invented in the next three and a half days, we might be heading toward a spontaneously accelerated inverse obliteration of all history.\"\n\n\"Can you put that into a carpet metaphor I might understand?\"\n\n\"If we can't secure our existence right at the beginning, time will start to roll up like a carpet, taking history with it.\"\n\n\"How fast?\"\n\n\"It will begin slowly at 22:03 on Friday with the obliteration of the earliest fossil record. Ten minutes after that, all evidence of ancient hominids will vanish, swiftly followed by the sudden absence of everything from the middle Holocene. Five minutes later all megalithic structures will vanish as if they'd never been. The pyramids will go in another two minutes, with ancient Greece vanishing soon after. In the course of another minute, the Dark Ages will disappear, and in the next twenty seconds the Norman Conquest will never have happened. In the final twenty-seven seconds, we will see modern history disappear with increased rapidity, until at 22:48 and nine seconds the end of history will catch up with us and there will be nothing left at all, nor any evidence that there was\u2014to all intents and purposes, we won't ever have existed.\"\n\n\"So what's the cause?\"\n\n\"I've no idea, but I'm going to have a good look around. Did you want something?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2014yes. I need to speak to Aornis. One of her family's old henchmen is on the prowl\u2014or was.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment.\"\n\nAnd in an instant he was gone.\n\n\"Ah!\" said the other Friday, returning from just up the corridor.\n\n\"Sorry about that. Enloopment records are kept in the twelfth millennium, and being accurate to the second on a ten-thousand-year jump is still a bit beyond me.\"\n\nHe opened the manila file and flicked through the contents.\n\n\"She's done seven years of a thirty-year looping for unlawful memory distortion,\" he murmured. \"We had to hold her trial in the thirty-seventh century, where it actually is a crime. The dubious legality of being tried outside one's own time zone would have been cause for an appeal, but she never lodged one.\"\n\n\"Perhaps she forgot.\"\n\n\"It's possible. Shall we go?\"\n\nWe stepped outside the SpecOps Building, turned left and walked the short distance to the Brunel Shopping Centre.\n\n\"Have you seen anything of my father?\" I asked. I hadn't seen him for over a year, not since the last potential life-extinguishing Armageddon anyway.\n\n\"I see him flash past from time to time,\" replied Friday, \"but he's a bit of an enigma. Sometimes we're told to hunt him down, and the next moment we're working under him. Sometimes he's even leading the hunt for himself. Listen, I'm ChronoGuard and even I can't figure it out. Ah! We're here.\"\n\nI looked up and frowned. We didn't seem to be \"here\" anywhere in particular\u2014we were outside T.J. Maxx, the discount clothes store."
            },
            {
                "title": "Aornis Hades",
                "text": "They called it being \"in the loop,\" but the official name was Closed Loop Temporal Field Containment. It was used only for criminals where there was little hope of rehabilitation, or even contrition. It was run by the ChronoGuard and was frighteningly simple. They popped the convict in an eight-minute repetitive time loop for five, ten, twenty years. The prisoner's body aged but never needed sustenance. It was cruel and unnatural\u2014yet cheap and required no bars, guards or food.\n\nWe walked into the Swindon T. J. Maxx, threaded our way through the busy morning bargain hunters and found the manager, a well-dressed woman with an agreeable manner who had been in my class at school but whose name I had forgotten\u2014we always gave polite nods to each other, but nothing more than that. Friday showed her his ID. She smiled and led us to a keypad mounted on the wall. The manager punched in a long series of numbers, and then Friday punched an even longer series of numbers. There was a shift in the light to a greeny blue, the manager and all the customers stopped dead in their tracks as time ground to a halt, and a faint buzz replaced the happy murmur of shoppers.\n\nFriday looked at the manila folder he was carrying and then around the store. The illumination was similar to the cool glow you get from underwater lights in a swimming pool, with reflections that danced on the ceiling. Within the bluey greenness of the store's interior, I could see spheres of warm light, and within these there seemed to be some life. We walked past several of these spheres, and I noted that while most of the people inside were dark and indistinct, at least one was more vivid than the rest and looking very much alive\u2014the prisoner.\n\n\"She should be at Checkout Six,\" said Friday, leading the way past a ten-foot-wide translucent yellow sphere that was centered on the chair outside the changing rooms. \"That's Reginald Danforth,\" murmured Friday. \"He assassinated Mahatma Winston Smith al Wazeed during his historic speech to the citizens of the World State in 3419. Looped for seven hundred and ninety-eight years in an eight-minute sliver of time where he's waiting for his girlfriend, Trudi, to try on a camisole.\"\n\n\"Does he know he's looped?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nI looked at Danforth, who was staring at the floor and clenching and unclenching his fists in frustration.\n\n\"How long's he been in?\"\n\n\"Thirty-four years. If he tells us who his co-conspirator was, we'll enlarge his loop from eight minutes to fifteen.\"\n\n\"Do you loop people just in stores?\"\n\n\"We used to use dentists' waiting rooms, bus stops and cinemas during Merchant-Ivory films, as these tended to be natural occurrences of slow time, but there were too many prisoners, so we had to design our own. Temporal-J, Maximum Security\u2014why, what did you think T.J. Maxx was?\"\n\n\"A place to buy designer-label clothing at reasonable prices?\"\n\nHe laughed. \"The very idea! Next you'll be telling me that IKEA just sells furniture you have to build yourself.\"\n\n\"Isn't it?\"\n\n\"Of course not. Here she is.\"\n\nWe had approached the checkout, where a sphere of warm light about eighteen feet wide encompassed most of the till and a line of bored-looking shoppers. Right at the back of the queue was a familiar face: Aornis Hades, younger sister of Acheron. She was a Mnemonomorph\u2014someone with the ability to control memories. I'd defeated her good and proper, twice in the real world and once in my head. She was slim, dark and attractive and dressed in the very latest fashion\u2014but only from when she was looped seven years ago. Mind you, because of the vague meanderings of the fashion industry, she'd been in and out of high style twenty-seven times since then and was currently in\u2014although she'd never know it. To a looped individual, time remains the same.\n\n\"You know she can control coincidences?\"\n\n\"Not anymore,\" replied Friday, with a grimness that I found disconcerting in one so young.\n\n\"Who are they?\" I asked, pointing at the other women in the line for the checkout.\n\n\"They're not prisoners\u2014just real shoppers doing real shopping at the time of her enloopment; Miss Hades is stuck in an eight-minute zone waiting to pay for goods, but she never does. If it's true what they say about her love of shopping, this punishment is particularly apt.\"\n\n\"Do I have anything to bargain with?\"\n\nFriday looked at the file. \"You can stretch her loop by twenty minutes.\"\n\n\"How do I get to talk to her?\"\n\n\"Just step inside the sphere of influence.\"\n\nI took a deep breath and walked into the globe of yellow light. All of a sudden, normality returned with a jerk. I was back in what seemed like real life. It was raining outside, which was what must have been happening when she was looped. Aornis, well used to the monotonous round of limited dialogue during her eight-minute existence, noticed me immediately.\n\n\"Well, well,\" she murmured sarcastically, \"is it visitors' day already?\"\n\n\"Hello, Aornis,\" I said with a smile. \"Remember me?\"\n\n\"Very funny. What do you want, Next?\"\n\nI offered her a small vanity case with some cosmetics in it that I had picked off a shelf earlier. She didn't take it.\n\n\"Information,\" I said.\n\n\"Is there a deal in the offing?\"\n\n\"I can give you another ten minutes. It's not much, but it's something.\"\n\nShe looked at me, then all around her. She knew that people were outside the sphere looking in, but not how many and who. She had the power to wipe memories but not read minds. If she could, she'd know how much I hated her. Mind you, she probably knew that already.\n\n\"Next, please!\" said the checkout girl, and Aornis put two dresses and a pair of shoes on the counter.\n\n\"How's the family, Thursday\u2014Landen and Friday and the girls?\"\n\n\"Information, Aornis.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath as the loop jumped back to the beginning of her eight minutes and she was once more at the rear of the line. She clenched her fists so tightly her knuckles went white. She'd been doing this for ten years without respite. The only thing worse than a loop was a loop in which one suffered a painful trauma, such as a broken leg. But even the most sadistic judges could never find it in themselves to order that.\n\nAornis calmed herself, looked up at me and said, \"Give me twenty minutes and I'll tell you what you want to know.\"\n\n\"I want to know about Felix8.\"\n\n\"That's not a name I've heard for a while,\" replied Aornis evenly. \"What's your interest in that empty husk?\"\n\n\"He was hanging around my house with a loaded gun yesterday,\" I told her, \"and I can only assume he was wanting to do me harm.\"\n\nAornis looked mildly perturbed. \"You saw him?\"\n\n\"With my own eyes.\"\n\n\"Then I don't understand. After Acheron's untimely end, Felix8 seemed rather at a loss. He came around to the house and was making a nuisance of himself, very like an abandoned dog.\"\n\n\"So what happened?\"\n\n\"Cocytus put him down.\"\n\n\"I'm assuming you don't mean in the sense of 'to humiliate.'\"\n\n\"You think correct.\"\n\n\"And when was this?\"\n\n\"In 1986.\"\n\n\"Did you witness the murder? Or see the body?\" I stared at her carefully, trying to determine if she was telling the truth.\n\n\"No. He just said he had. You could have asked him yourself, but you killed him, didn't you?\"\n\n\"He was evil. He brought it upon himself.\"\n\n\"I wasn't being serious,\" replied Aornis. \"It's what passes for humor in the Hades family.\"\n\n\"This doesn't really help me,\" I murmured.\n\n\"That's nothing to do with me,\" replied Aornis. \"You wanted intel, and I gave it to you.\"\n\n\"If I find out you've lied,\" I said, getting ready to leave, \"I'll be back to take away the twenty minutes I gave you.\"\n\n\"If you've seen Felix8, how could you think otherwise?\" pointed out Aornis with impeccable logic.\n\n\"Stranger things have happened.\"\n\nI stepped out of the loop cell and was back in the bluey greenness of T.J. Maxx among the time-frozen customers, with Friday at my side.\n\n\"Think she's telling the truth?\" he asked.\n\n\"If she is, it makes no sense at all, which is a point in her favor. If she'd told me what I wanted to hear, I'd have been more suspicious. Did she say anything else to me she might have made me forget?\"\n\nAornis, with her power of memory distortion and erasure, was wholly untrustworthy\u2014she could tell you everything, only to make you forget it a few seconds later. At her trial the judge and jury were merely actors\u2014the real judge and jury watched it all on CCTV. To this day the actors in the courtroom still have no idea why that \"frightfully pleasant girl\" was in the dock at all. Friday ran over what he had witnessed her saying, and we managed to find an exchange that she'd erased from my recollection: that she was going to bust out of T.J. Maxx with the help of someone \"on the outside.\"\n\n\"Any idea who that might be?\" I asked. \"And why did she shield it from me?\"\n\n\"No idea\u2014and it's probably just her being manipulative; my guess is the recollection will be on time release\u2014it'll pop into your head in a few hours.\"\n\nI nodded. She'd done something similar to me before.\n\n\"But I wouldn't worry,\" added Friday. \"Temporal Enloopment has a hundred percent past-present-future escape-free record; she'd have to bend the Standard History Eventline to get out.\"\n\nI left Aornis to her never-ending wait at the checkout, and Friday powered down the visitors' interface. The manager popped back into life as time started up again.\n\n\"Did you get all you need?\" she asked pleasantly.\n\n\"I hope so,\" I replied, and followed Friday from the store. \"Thanks,\" I said, giving him a motherly hug and a kiss.\n\n\"Mum,\" he said in a serious tone.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"There's something I need to suggest to you, and you're going to have to think really carefully before you reply.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"It's Friday. The other Friday. We've got two and a half days to the End of Time. Does it seriously look like he's going to join the ChronoGuard?\"\n\n\"It's possible.\"\n\n\"Mum\u2014truthfully?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"We're running out of options fast. My director-general older self is still absent at the End of Time, so I had a word with Bendix, and he suggested we try\u2026replacement.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"That your Friday is removed and I take his place.\"\n\n\"Define 'removed.'\"\n\nFriday scratched his head.\n\n\"We've run several timestream models, and it looks good. I'm precisely the same age as him, and I'm what he would be like if he hadn't gone down the bone-idle route. If 'replacement' isn't a good word for you, why not think of it as just rectifying a small error in the Standard History Eventline.\"\n\n\"Let me get this straight,\" I said. \"You want to murder my son and replace him with yourself? I only met you ten minutes ago.\"\n\n\"I'm your son, Mum. Every memory, good or bad is as much a part of me as it is the Friday at home. You want me to prove it? Who else knows about the BookWorld? One of your best friends is Melanie Bradshaw, who's a gorilla. It's true she let me climb all over the furniture and swing from the light fixtures. I can speak Courier Bold and Lorem Ipsum and even unpeel a banana with my feet\u2014want me to show you?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"I accept that you're my son. But you can't kill the other Friday\u2014he's done nothing wrong. I won't let you.\"\n\n\"Mum! Which Friday would you rather have? The feckless, lazy ass or me?\"\n\n\"You don't understand what it is to be a mother, Friday. The answer's no. I'll take the Friday I'm dealt.\"\n\n\"I thought you might say that,\" he said in a harsher manner. \"I'll report back to Scintilla, but if the ChronoGuard feels there's no alternative, we might decide to go ahead anyway\u2014with or without your permission.\"\n\n\"I think we've spoken enough,\" I said, keeping my anger at bay. \"Do one thing for me: Tell me how long you think I have until they might take that action.\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"Forty-eight hours?\"\n\n\"Promise?\"\n\n\"I promise,\" said Friday. \"By the way, have you told Dad about all your Jurisfiction work? You said you were going to.\"\n\n\"I will\u2014soon, I promise. Goodbye, darling.\"\n\nAnd I kissed him again and walked away, boiling with inner rage. Fighting with the ChronoGuard was like fighting city hall. You couldn't win. Every way I looked at it, Friday's days were numbered. But, paradoxically, they weren't\u2014the Friday I had just spoken to was the one I was meant to have and the one I'd met in the future, the one who made sure he escaped Landen's eradication and the one who whipped up the timephoon in the Dark Ages to cover up St. Zvlkx's illegal time fraud. I rubbed my head. Time travel was like that\u2014full of impossible paradoxes that defied explanation and made theoretical physicists' brains turn to something resembling guacamole. But at least I still had two days to figure out a way to save the lazy good-for-nothing loafer that was my son. Before then, though, I needed to find out just how Goliath had managed to send a probe into fiction."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Goliath Corporation",
                "text": "The Isle of Man had been an independent corporate state within En gland since it was appropriated for the greater fiscal good in 1963. It had hospitals and schools, a university, its own fusion reactor and also, leading from Douglas to Kennedy Graviport in New York, the world's only privately run Gravitube. The Isle of Man was home to almost two hundred thousand people who did nothing but support, or support the support, of the one enterprise that dominated the small island: the Goliath Corporation.\n\nI hopped on the Skyrail at the Brunel Shopping Centre and went the three stops to Swindon's Clary-LaMarr Travelport, where I caught the bullet train to Saknussemm International. From there I jumped on the next Overmantle Gravitube with seconds to spare and was at James Tarbuck Graviport in Liverpool in a journey time of just over an hour. The country's hyperefficient public transport network was the Commonsense Party's greatest achievement so far. Very few people used cars for journeys over ten miles these days. The system had its detractors, of course\u2014the car-parking consortiums were naturally appalled, as was the motorway ser vice industry, which had taken the extraordinary step of producing decent food in order to win back customers.\n\nI made good use of the time by calling Landen and telling him all about the alternative Friday's offer: to replace our idle and mostly bedridden headbanger of a son with a well-groomed, upright and responsible member of society, and Landen had agreed with me\u2014that we'd keep the smelly one we had, thank you very much. Once I'd tubed to Tarbuck, I took the high-speed Ekrano-plane all the way to the distinctly unimaginatively titled Goliathopolis on what had once been the Isle of Man. Despite losing nearly everything during the dramatic St. Zvlkx adventure back in 1988, the vast multinational had staged an impressive comeback\u2014mostly, it was said, by hiding its net worth and filing for bankruptcy on a subsidiary company that conveniently emerged from the distant past to take a lot of the flak. Timefoolery was suggested, but despite an investigation by the ChronoGuard's Fiscal Chronuption Unit, which looked very closely at such matters, no wrongdoing had been found\u2014or could be proved. After that it didn't take long for the corporation to reestablish itself, and Goliathopolis was once again the Hong Kong of the Western Hemisphere, a forest of glassy towers striding up the hillside toward Snaefell.\n\nEven before we left the dock at Tarbuck International, I had the idea that I was being watched. As the Goliath ground-effect transport jetted across the Irish Sea, several of the Goliath employees on the craft looked at me cautiously, and when I sat down in the coffee shop, the people near me moved away. It was kind of flattering, really, but since I had trounced the corporation in the very biggest way possible at least once, they clearly regarded me as something of a threat. How big a threat was revealed to me when we docked at Goliathopolis forty minutes later. There was a welcoming committee already waiting for me. But I don't mean \"welcoming committee\" in the ironic sense of large men with no necks and blackjacks\u2014they had laid out the red carpet, bedecked the jetty with bunting and put on a baton-twirling demonstration by the Goliathopolis Majorettes. More important, the entire upper echelons of Goliath management had turned out to greet me, which included the president, John Henry Goliath V, and a dozen or so of his executive officers, all of whom had a look of earnest apprehension etched upon their pasty faces. As someone who'd cost the company dearly over the past two decades, I was clearly feared\u2014and possibly even revered.\n\n\"Welcome back to Goliathopolis,\" said John Henry politely, shaking my hand warmly. \"I hope that your stay is a happy one and that what ever brings you here can be a matter of mutual concern. I hardly need to stress the respect in which we hold you and would hate that you might find reason to act upon us without first entertaining the possibility of a misunderstanding.\"\n\nHe was a large man. It looked as though someone had handed his parents a blueprint of a baby and told them to scale it up by a factor of one and a quarter.\n\n\"This is a joke, right?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, Ms. Next. Based on past experiences, we have decided that complete and utter disclosure is the only policy worth pursuing as far as your good self is concerned.\"\n\n\"You'll excuse me if I remain unconvinced by your perceived honesty.\"\n\n\"It's not honesty, Ms. Next. You personally cost us over a hundred billion pounds in lost revenue, so we regard our openness as a sound business strategy\u2014albeit of an abstract nature. Because of this, there is no door closed to you, no document unreadable, no member to whom you may not speak. I hope I am candid?\"\n\n\"Very,\" I replied, put off my guard by the corporation's attitude. \"I have a matter I'd like to discuss with you.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" replied John Henry. \"The majorettes would like to perform, if that's all right with you?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nSo we watched the majorettes march up and down for twenty minutes to music of the Goliath Brass Band, and when it was over, I was driven in John Henry's Bentley toward the Goliath head office, a mighty 110-story building right at the heart of Goliathopolis.\n\n\"Your son and family are well?\" asked John Henry, who aside from a few more gray hairs didn't seem to have aged a great deal since we last met. He fixed me with his piercing green eyes and poured on the natural charm he'd been blessed with.\n\n\"I expect you know full well they are,\" I replied, \"and everything else about me.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" protested John Henry. \"We thought that if even the sniff of surveillance was detected, you might decide to take action, and action from you, as we have seen to our cost, is never less than devastating to our interests.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I murmured, suddenly realizing why there had been a deafening silence from Goliath over the years.\n\n\"So how can we help?\" asked John Henry. \"If,\" he added, \"we can help at all.\"\n\n\"I want to find out what advances you have made in transfictional travel.\"\n\nJohn Henry raised his eyebrows and smiled genially. \"I never thought it would remain a secret from you forever.\"\n\n\"You've been leaving Outlander probes scattered all over the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"The research and development on the Book Project has been somewhat hit or miss, I'll admit that,\" replied John Henry candidly. \"To be honest, I had expected you to call on us sooner than you have.\"\n\n\"I've been busy.\"\n\n\"Of course. And since you are here, perhaps you would grace us with your comments on the technical aspects of our project.\"\n\n\"I promise nothing, but I'd certainly like to see what you're up to.\"\n\nThe car drove toward the glassy modern towers of the corporate center of the multinational and past well-tailored executives going about their administrative business. A few minutes later, we pulled up outside the front entrance of the Goliath headquarters, which was comfortably nestled into the hillside.\n\n\"I don't suppose that you would want to freshen up or anything before we show you around?\" asked John Henry hopefully.\n\n\"And miss something you might try and hide from me?\" I answered. \"No, if it's all the same to you, I'd really like to see how far you've gotten.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said John Henry without any sense of concern, \"come with me.\"\n\nWe walked into the expansive lobby and crossed not to the elevators or the Apologarium, where I'd been last time, but to where a golf cart was at the ready. A curious crowd of Goliath employees had gathered to watch our progress with undisguised inquisitiveness. I couldn't think it was just me\u2014I don't suppose many of them had ever seen John Henry Goliath either.\n\nWe drove out of the lobby and into a tunnel that led directly back into the hillside. It was crudely utilitarian after the simple elegance of the entrance vestibule, with roughly concreted walls and lit by overhead track lights. The roadway was smooth concrete, and there were cable conduits attached to the walls. The subterranean vaults of Goliath R&D were at least half a mile inside the hill, and on the journey, John Henry and I chatted amiably about national politics and global economics. Surprisingly, a more intelligent and well-informed conversation about current affairs I have yet to have. I might even have liked him, but for the utter ruthlessness and singularity of purpose that ran through his speech. Excusable in a person of little or no power, but potentially devastating in one such as John Henry Goliath.\n\nWe encountered three different levels of security on the way, each of them waved aside by John Henry. Beyond the third security checkpoint was a large set of steel blast doors, and after abandoning the golf cart we proceeded on foot. John Henry had his tie knot scanned to confirm his identity, and the doors slid open to let us in. I gasped at the sight that met my eyes. Their technology had gone beyond the small metal probe I'd already seen. It had gone further\u2014much further."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Austen Rover",
                "text": "I had been aware for many years of Goliath's endeavors to enter fiction. Following their abortive attempt to use the fictional world to \"actualize\" flawed technology during the Plasma Rifle debacle of '85, they had embarked upon a protracted R&D project to try to emulate Mycroft's Prose Portal. Until the appearance of the probe, the furthest I thought they'd gotten was to synthesize a form of stodgy grunge from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese.\n\nIn the center of the room and looking resplendent in the blue-and-yellow livery of some long-forgotten bus company was a flat-fronted single-decker bus that to my mind dated from the fifties. Something my mother, in her long-forgotten and now much-embellished youth, might have boarded for a trip to the seaside, equipped with hampers of food and gallons of ice cream. Aside from the anachronistic feel, the most obvious feature of the bus was that the wheels had been removed and the voids covered over to give the vague appearance of streamlining. Clearly, it wasn't the only modification. The vehicle in front of me now was probably the most advanced piece of transport technology known to man.\n\n\"Why base it on an old bus?\" I asked.\n\nJohn Henry shrugged. \"If you're going to travel, do it in style. Besides, a Rolls-Royce Phantom II doesn't have enough seats.\"\n\nWe walked down to the workshop floor, and I took a closer look. On both sides at the rear of the bus and on the roof were small faired outriggers that each held a complicated engine with which I was not familiar. The tight-fitting cowlings had been removed, and the engines were being worked on by white-coated technicians who had stopped what they were doing as soon as we walked in but now resumed their tinkering with a buzz of muted whispers. I moved closer to the front of the bus and ran my fingers across the Leyland badge atop the large and very prominent radiator. I looked up. Above the vertically split front windshield was a glass-covered panel that once told prospective passengers the ultimate destination of the bus. I expected it to read BOURNEMOUTH or PORTSMOUTH but it didn't. It read NORTHANGER ABBEY.\n\nI looked at John Henry Goliath, who said, \"This, Ms. Next, is the Austen Rover\u2014the most advanced piece of transfictional technology in the world!\"\n\n\"Does it work?\" I asked.\n\n\"We're not entirely sure,\" remarked John Henry. \"It's the prototype and has yet to be tested.\"\n\nHe beckoned to the technician who seemed to be in charge and introduced us.\n\n\"This is Dr. Anne Wirthlass, the project manager of the Austen Rover. She will answer any questions you have\u2014I hope perhaps you will answer some of ours?\"\n\nI made a noncommittal noise, and Wirthlass gave me a hand to shake. She was tall, willowy and walked with a rolling gait. Like everyone in the lab, she wore a white coat with her Goliath ID badge affixed to it, and although I could not see her precise laddernumber, she was certainly within four figures\u2014the top 1 percent. Seriously important.\n\n\"I'm pleased to meet you at last,\" she said in a Swedish accent. \"We have much to learn from your experience.\"\n\n\"If you know anything about me,\" I responded, \"you'll know exactly why it is that I don't trust Goliath.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she said, somewhat taken aback. \"I thought we'd left those days behind us.\"\n\n\"I'll need convincing,\" I returned without malice. It wasn't her fault, after all. I indicated the tour bus. \"How does it work?\"\n\nShe looked at John Henry, who nodded his permission.\n\n\"The Austen Rover is a standard Leyland Tiger PS2/3 under a Burlingham body,\" she began, touching the shiny coachwork fondly, \"but with a few\u2026modifications. Come aboard.\"\n\nShe stepped up into the bus, and I followed her. The interior had been stripped and replaced with the very latest technology, which she attempted to explain in the sort of technical language where it is possible to understand only one word in eight, if you're lucky. I came off the bus ten minutes later having absorbed not much more than the fact that it had twelve seats, carried a small thirty-megawatt fusion device in the rear and couldn't be tested\u2014its first trip would be either an utter failure or a complete success, nothing in between.\n\n\"And the probes?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" replied Wirthlass. \"We've been using a form of gravity-wave inducer to catapult a small probe into fiction on a one-minute free-return trajectory\u2014think of it as a very large yo-yo. We aimed them at the Dune series, because it was a large and very wordy target that was probably somewhere near the heart of Science Fiction, and after seven hundred and ninety-six subfictional flights we hit pay dirt: The probe returned with a twenty-eight-second audiovisual recording of Paul Atreides riding a sandworm.\"\n\n\"When was this?\" I asked.\n\n\"In 1996. We fared better after that and by a system of trial and error have managed to figure out that individual books seem to be clumped together in groups. We've started plotting a map\u2014I'll show you if you like.\"\n\nWe walked into a room next door that seemed to be filled to capacity with computers and their operators.\n\n\"How many probe missions have you sent?\"\n\n\"About seventy thousand,\" said John Henry, who had followed us. \"Most come back without recording anything, and over eight thousand never return at all. In total we have had four hundred and twenty successful missions. As you can see, getting into fiction for us is at present a somewhat haphazard affair. The Austen Rover is ready for its first trip\u2014but by simple extrapolation of the probe figures, every journey has a one-in-eight chance of not returning, and only a one-in-one-hundred-and-sixty possibility of hitting something.\"\n\nI could see what they were up against\u2014and why. They were hurling probes into a BookWorld that was 80 percent Nothing. The thing was, I could pretty much draw from memory a genre map of the BookWorld. With my help they might actually make it.\n\n\"This is the BookWorld as we think it exists,\" explained John Henry, laying out a large sheet of paper on a desk. It was patchy in the extreme and full of errors. It was a bit like throwing Ping-Pong balls into a dark furniture store and then trying to list the contents by the noises they made.\n\n\"This will take you a long time to figure out,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Time that we don't really have, Ms. Next. Despite my position as president, even I have to concede that the amount spent will never be recouped. All funding for this project will be withdrawn in a week.\"\n\nIt was the first time I'd felt any sort of relief since I arrived. The idea of Goliath's even setting so much as a toe inside fiction filled me with utter dread. But one question still niggled at me.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry?\" said John Henry.\n\n\"Why are you trying to get into fiction at all?\"\n\n\"Book tourism,\" he replied simply. \"The Austen Rover was designed to take twelve people around the high points of Jane Austen's work. At five hundred pounds for a twenty-minute hop around the most-loved works, we thought at the time it would be quite profitable. Mind you, that was nine years ago, when people were still reading books.\"\n\n\"We thought it might reinvigorate the classics,\" added Wirthlass.\n\n\"And your interest in the classics?\"\n\nIt was John Henry who answered. \"We feel that publishing in general and books in par tic ular are well worth hanging on to.\"\n\n\"You'll excuse me if I'm not convinced by your supposed altruism.\"\n\n\"No altruism, Ms. Next. The fall in revenue of our publishing arm has been dramatic, and since we own little in the way of computer games or consoles, the low ReadRate is something that affects us financially. I think you'll find that we're together on this one. What we want is what you want. Even though our past associations have not been happy and I understand your distrust, Goliath in its reborn shape is not quite the all-devouring corporation that you think it is.\"\n\n\"I haven't been in the BookWorld since the days of The Eyre Affair.\"\n\nJohn Henry coughed politely. \"You knew about the probes, Ms. Next.\"\n\nDamn.\n\n\"I have\u2026contacts over there.\"\n\nI could tell they didn't believe me, but that was tough. I'd seen enough.\n\n\"Looks like you've wasted a lot of money,\" I said.\n\n\"With or without you, we're going to test it on Friday evening,\" announced Wirthlass. \"I and two others have decided to risk all and take her out for a spin. We may not return, but if we do, then the data gained would be priceless!\"\n\nI admired her courage, but it didn't matter\u2014I wasn't going to tell them what I knew.\n\n\"Just explain one thing,\" said Wirthlass. \"Is the force of gravity entirely normal in the BookWorld?\"\n\n\"What about the universality of physical laws?\" piped up a second technician, who'd been watching us.\n\n\"And communication between books\u2014is such a thing possible?\"\n\nBefore long there were eight people, all asking questions about the BookWorld that I could have answered with ease\u2014had I any inclination to do so.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said as the questions reached a crescendo. \"I can't help you!\"\n\nThey were all quiet and stared at me. To them this project was everything, and to see its cancellation without fruition was clearly a matter of supreme frustration\u2014especially as they suspected I had the answers.\n\nI made my way toward the exit and was joined by John Henry, who had not yet given up trying to charm me.\n\n\"Will you stay for lunch? We have the finest chefs available to make what ever you want.\"\n\n\"I run a carpet shop, Mr. Goliath, and I'm late for work.\"\n\n\"A carpet shop?\" he echoed with incredulity. \"That sells carpets?\"\n\n\"All sorts of floor coverings, actually.\"\n\n\"I would offer you discounted carpets for life in order for you to help us,\" he said, \"but from what I know of you, such a course would be unthinkable. My private Dakota is at Douglas Graviport if you want to use it to fly straight home. I ask for nothing but say only this: We are doing this for the preservation and promotion of books and reading. Try to find it in your heart to consider what we are doing here in an objective light.\"\n\nWe had by now walked outside the building, and John Henry's Bentley pulled up in front of us.\n\n\"My car is yours. Good day, Ms. Next.\"\n\n\"Good day, Mr. Goliath.\"\n\nHe shook my hand and then departed. I looked at the Bentley and then at the ranks of cabs a little way down the road. I shrugged and climbed in the back of the Bentley.\n\n\"Where to, madam?\" asked the driver.\n\nI thought quickly. I had my TravelBook on me and could jump to the Great Library from here\u2014as long as I could find a quiet spot conducive to bookjumping.\n\n\"The nearest library,\" I told him. \"I'm late for work.\"\n\n\"You're a librarian?\" he inquired politely.\n\n\"Let's just say I'm really into books.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Holmes",
                "text": "I don't know what it was about traveling to and from the BookWorld that dehydrated me so much. It had gotten progressively worse, almost without my noticing, a bit like a mildly increased girth and skin that isn't as elastic as it used to be. On the upside, however, the textual environment kept all the aches and pains at bay. I hardly noticed my bad back in the BookWorld and was never troubled by headaches.\n\nA few minutes and several pints of rehydrating water later, I walked into the Jurisfiction offices at Norland Park. Thursday5 was waiting for me by my desk, looking decidedly pleased with herself.\n\n\"Guess what!\" she enthused.\n\n\"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"Go on, guess!\"\n\n\"I don't want to guess,\" I told her, hoping the tedium in my voice would send out a few warning bells. It didn't.\n\n\"No, you must guess!\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I sighed. \"You've got some new beads or something.\"\n\n\"Wrong,\" she said, producing a paper bag with a flourish. \"I got you the bacon roll you wanted!\"\n\n\"I never would have guessed that,\" I replied, sitting before a desk that seemed to be flooded with new memos and reports, adding, in an unthinking moment, \"How are things with you?\"\n\n\"I didn't sleep very well last night.\"\n\nI rubbed my forehead as she sat down and stared at me intently, hands clasped nervously in front of her. I didn't have the heart to tell her that my inquiry over her health was merely politeness. I didn't actually want to know. Quite the reverse, in fact.\n\n\"Really?\" I said, trying to find a memo that might be vaguely relevant to something.\n\n\"No. I was thinking about the Minotaur incident yesterday, and I want to apologize\u2014again.\"\n\n\"It's past history. Any messages?\"\n\n\"So I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Apology accepted. Now: Any messages?\"\n\n\"I wrote you a letter outlining my apology.\"\n\n\"I won't read it. The matter is closed.\"\n\n\"Yes\u2026well\u2026right,\" she began, flustered that we weren't going to analyze the previous day at length and trying to remember everything she'd been told that morning. \"Mr. Bu\u00f1uel called to say that he'd completed the refit of Pride and Prejudice and it was online again this morning. He's got Northanger Abbey in the maintenance bay at the moment, and it should be ready on time as long as Catherine stops attempting to have the book 'Gothicized.'\"\n\n\"Good. What else?\"\n\n\"The Council of Genres,\" she announced, barely able to control her excitement. \"Senator Jobsworth's secretary herself called to ask you to appear in the debating chamber for a policy-directive meeting at three this afternoon!\"\n\n\"I wonder what the old bore wants now? Anything else?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Thursday5, disappointed that I didn't share her unbridled enthusiasm over an appearance at the CofG. I couldn't. I'd been there so many times I just saw it as part of my duties, nothing more.\n\nI opened my desk drawer to take out a sheet of letterhead and noticed Thursday5's assessment letter where I'd put it the night before. I thought for a moment and decided to give her one more chance. I left it where it was, pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote a letter to Wing Commander Scampton-Tappett, telling him to get out of Bananas for Edward, since Landen wasn't currently working on it, and move instead to The Mews of Doom, which he was. I folded up the letter, placed it in an envelope and told Thursday5 to deliver it to Scampton-Tappett in person. I could have asked her to send it by courier, but twenty minutes' peace and quiet had a great deal of appeal to it. Thursday5 nodded happily and vanished.\n\nI had just leaned back in my chair and was thinking about Felix8, the possible End of Time and the Austen Rover when a hearty bellow of \"Stand to!\" indicated the imminence of Bradshaw's daily Jurisfiction briefing. I dutifully stood up and joined the other agents who had gathered in the center of the room.\n\nAfter the usual apologies for absence, Bradshaw climbed on to a table, tinkled a small bell and said, \"Jurisfiction meeting number 43370 is now in session. But before all that we are to welcome a new agent to the fold: Colonel William Dobbin!\"\n\nWe all applauded as Colonel Dobbin gave a polite bow and remarked in a shy yet resolute manner that he would do his utmost to further the good work of Jurisfiction.\n\n\"Jolly good,\" intoned Bradshaw, eager to get on. \"Item One: An active cell of bowdlerizers has been at work again, this time in Philip Larkin and 'This Be the Verse.' We've found several editions with the first line altered to read 'They tuck you up, your mum and dad,' which is a gross distortion of the original intent. Who wants to have a go at this?\"\n\n\"I will,\" I said.\n\n\"No. What about you, King Pellinore?\"\n\n\"Yes-yes what-what hey-hey?\" said the white-whiskered knight in grubby armor.\n\n\"You've had experience dealing with bowdlerizers in Larkin before\u2014cracking the group that altered the first line of 'Love Again' to read: 'Love again: thanking her at ten past three' was great stuff\u2014fancy tackling them again?\"\n\n\"What-what to go a mollocking for the bowlders?\" replied Pellinore happily. \"'Twill be achieved happily and in half the time.\"\n\n\"Anyone want to go with him?\"\n\n\"I'll go.\" I said.\n\n\"Anyone else?\"\n\nThe Red Queen put up her hand.\n\n\"Item Two: The Two Hundred Eighty-seventh Annual BookWorld Conference is due in six months' time, and the Council of Genres has insisted we need to have a security review after last year's\u2026problems.\"\n\nThere was a muttering from the assembled agents. BookCon was the sort of event that was too large and too varied to keep all factions happy, and the previous year's decision to lift the restriction on Abstract Concepts attending as delegates opened the floodgates to a multitude of Literary Theories and Grammatical Conventions who spent most of the time pontificating loftily and causing trouble in the bar, where fights broke out at the drop of a participle. When Poststructuralism got into a fight with Classicism, they were all banned, something that upset the Subjunctives no end, who complained bitterly that if they had been fighting, they would have won.\n\n\"Are the Abstracts allowed to attend this year?\" asked Lady Cavendish.\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" replied Bradshaw. \"Not to invite them would be seen as discriminatory. Volunteers?\"\n\nSix of us put up our hands, and Bradshaw diligently scribbled down our names.\n\n\"Top-notch,\" he said at last. \"The first meeting will be next week. Now, Item Three, and this one is something of a corker: We've got a Major Narrative Flexation brewing in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.\"\n\n\"Is it the Watson bullet-wound problem again?\" asked Mr. Fainset.\n\n\"No, it's more serious than that. Sherlock Holmes\u2026has been murdered!\"\n\nThere was a spontaneous cry of shock and outrage from the assembled agents. The Holmes series was a perennial favorite and thus of par tic ular concern\u2014textual anomalies in unread or unpopular books were always lower priority, or ignored altogether. Bradshaw handed a stack of papers to Lady Cavendish, who distributed them.\n\n\"It's in 'The Final Problem.' You can read it yourself, but essentially Sherlock travels to Switzerland to deal with Professor Moriarty. After the usual Holmesian escapades, Watson follows Sherlock to the Reichenbach Falls, where he discovers that Holmes has apparently fallen to his death\u2014and the book ends twenty-nine pages before it was meant to.\"\n\nThere was a shocked silence as everyone took this in. We hadn't had a textual anomaly of this size since Lucy Pevensie refused to get into the wardrobe at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.\n\n\"But The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes was the fourth volume,\" observed Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, looking up from her ironing. \"With Sherlock dead at the Reichenbach, it would render the remaining five volumes of stories narratively unsustainable.\"\n\n\"Partly right,\" replied Bradshaw. \"The Hound of the Baskervilles was written after Memoirs but is set earlier\u2014I think we can keep hold of that one. But yes, the remaining four in the series will start to spontaneously unravel unless we do something about it. And we will, I assure you\u2014erasure is not an option.\"\n\nThis was not as easy as it sounded despite Bradshaw's rhetoric, and we all knew it. The entire Sherlock Holmes series was closed books, unavailable to enter until someone had actually booksplored his or her way in\u2014and the Holmes canon had continuously resisted exploration. Gomez was the first Jurisfiction booksplorer to try by way of Conan Doyle's The Lost World, but he mistakenly became involved in the narrative and was shot dead by Lord Roxton. Harris Tweed tried it next and was nearly trampled by a herd of angry Stegosauri.\n\n\"I want everyone in on this problem. The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire will be keeping a careful eye on the narrative corruption of the series up at Text Grand Central, and I want Beatrice, Benedict, Zhark and Tiggy-Winkle to try to find a way of using the other books in the Conan Doyle oeuvre\u2014I suggest the Professor Challenger stories. Fainset and Foyle, I want you to explore the possibility of communication with anyone inside the Holmes series\u2014they may not even know they have a problem.\"\n\n\"They're well outside the footnoterphone network,\" said Mr. Fainset. \"Any suggestions?\"\n\n\"I'm relying on Foyle's ingenuity. If anyone sees Hamlet or Peter and Jane before I do, send them immediately to me. Any questions?\"\n\n\"What do you want me to do?\" I asked, wondering why I had been left out of everything important so far.\n\n\"I'll speak to you later. Okay, that's it. Good luck, and\u2026let's be careful out there.\"\n\nThe collected agents instantly started chattering. We hadn't had anything like this for years, which made it seem even more stupid that Bradshaw wasn't including me on the assignment. I caught up with him as he sat at his desk.\n\n\"What's going on?\" I asked. \"You need me on this.\"\n\n\"Hello, my dear! Not like you to nearly miss a session\u2014problems in the Outland?\"\n\n\"I was up at Goliath.\"\n\nHe raised an eyebrow. \"How do things look?\"\n\nI explained at length what I had seen, ending with the observation that it wasn't likely they'd perfect a transfictional machine anytime soon, if at all\u2014but we needed to keep our eyes on them.\n\nBradshaw nodded sagely, and I reiterated my feeling that I was being somehow \"left out\" of the Holmes inquiry.\n\n\"How's Friday? Still a bed slug?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014but nothing I can't handle.\"\n\n\"Have you told Landen about us yet?\"\n\n\"I'm building up to it. Bradshaw, you're flanneling\u2014why aren't I on the Holmes case?\"\n\nHe gestured for me to sit and lowered his voice. \"I had a call from Senator Jobsworth this morning. He's keen to reinstate a certain cadet that we recently\u2026had to let go.\"\n\nI knew the cadet he was referring to. There was a sound reason for her rejection\u2014she'd been euphemistically entitled \"unsuitable.\" Not in the way that my nice-but-a-bit-dopey cadet was unsuitable, but unsuitable as in obnoxious. She'd gone through five tutors in as many days. Even Emperor Zhark said that he'd preferred to be eaten alive by the Snurgg of Epsilon-7 than spend another five minutes in her company.\n\n\"Why has Jobsworth requested her? There are at least ten we rejected that are six times better.\"\n\n\"Because we're light on agents in contemporary fiction, and the CofG thinks she checks all the genre boxes.\"\n\n\"He's wrong, of course,\" I said quite matter-of-factly, but people like Jobsworth are politicians and have a different set of rules. \"I can see his point, though. The question is, what are you going to do about it? She's exhausted all the agents licensed to take apprentices.\"\n\nBradshaw said nothing and stared at me. In an instant I understood.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" I said, \"not me. Not in a thousand years. Besides, I've already got a cadet on assessment.\"\n\n\"Then get rid of her. You told me yourself that her timidity would get her killed.\"\n\n\"It will\u2014but I feel kind of responsible. Besides, I've already got a full caseload. The Mrs. Danvers that went berserk in The God of Small Things still needs investigating, the Minotaur tried to kill me\u2014not to mention about thirty or so cold cases, some of which are potentially solvable\u2014especially the Drood case. I think it's possible Dickens was\u2026murdered.\"\n\n\"In the Outland? And for what reason?\"\n\n\"To silence Edwin Drood\u2014or someone else in the book.\"\n\nI wasn't sure about this, of course, and any evidence was already over a hundred years old, but I would do anything not to get stuck with this apprentice. Sadly, Bradshaw wasn't taking no for an answer or softening to my pleas.\n\n\"Don't make me order you, old girl. It will embarrass us both. Besides, if you fail her\u2014as I'm sure you shall\u2014then we really have run out of tutors, and I can tell Jobsworth we did everything in our power.\"\n\nI groaned. \"How about I take her next week? That way I can come to grips with the Holmes death thing.\"\n\n\"Senator Jobsworth was most insistent,\" added Bradshaw. \"He's been on the footnoterphone three times this morning already.\"\n\nI knew what he meant. When Jobsworth got his teeth into something, he rarely let go. The relationship between us was decidedly chilly, and we were at best only cordial. The crazy thing was, we both wanted the best for the BookWorld\u2014we just had different methods of trying to achieve it.\n\n\"Very well,\" I said finally. \"I'll give her a day\u2014or a morning, if she lasts that.\"\n\n\"Good lass!\" exclaimed Bradshaw happily. \"Appreciate a woman who knows when she's being coerced. I'll get her to meet you outside Norland.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\" I asked somewhat crossly.\n\n\"No. It seems someone's made an ass of themselves over at Resource Management regarding maintenance schedules, and we've got a\u2014Well, see for yourself.\"\n\nHe handed me a report, and I flicked through the pages with a rising sense of despair. It was always the same. Someone at admin screws up and we have to pick up the pieces.\n\n\"The Piano Squad has been on the go for eight hours straight,\" he added, \"so I'd like you to step in and relieve them for a rest period. Take your cadets with you. Should be a useful training session.\"\n\nMy heart sank.\n\n\"I've got to appear at the CofG later this afternoon,\" I explained, \"and if I've a second cadet to nursemaid\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll make it up to you,\" interrupted Bradshaw. \"It'll be a doddle\u2014a walk in the park. How much trouble can anyone get into with pianos?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Next",
                "text": "TransGenre Taxis was one of several BookWorld taxi companies and the only firm that could boast an accident rate that was vaguely acceptable. Taxis were a good way to get around the BookWorld if you weren't that good at jumping or had lots of luggage, but in comparison to the instantaneous bookjump they were like snails. They didn't so much jump as creep. Getting all the way across the BookWorld\u2014from Philosophy to Poetry, for instance\u2014could take as long as an hour.\n\nYou're kidding me?\" I said into my mobilefootnoterphone twenty minutes later. I was outside the main entrance to Norland Park as the sun began its downward slope from midday heat into the rare beauty of an Austen literary afternoon. The warm rural environment was rich with the sounds of the plow horse's bridles jingling in the fields, the bees buzzing merrily in the hedgerows and young ladies atwitter with gossip regarding the genteel ensnarement of monied husbands.\n\n\"Well,\" I added crossly, \"just send it as soon as you can.\"\n\nI snapped the phone shut.\n\n\"Problems?\" asked Thursday5, who had been making daisy chains while sitting cross-legged on the warm grass.\n\n\"Those twits at TransGenre Taxis,\" I replied. \"More excuses. They claim there are long backups due to a traffic accident inside The Great Gatsby and our cab will be at least an hour.\"\n\n\"Can't we just jump straight to wherever it is we're going?\" She stopped and thought for a moment. \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\"The Piano Squad. But we're waiting for someone.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"We're waiting,\" I said, unsure of how to break the news, \"for a cadet who is under reappraisal.\"\n\n\"Another cadet?\" repeated Thursday5, who seemed vaguely miffed at first but soon recovered. \"If only I'd known, I could have baked a welcome cake.\"\n\n\"I don't think she's a cake sort of person,\" I murmured, as a noise like the scrunching of cellophane heralded her arrival. She appeared looking somewhat out of breath, and we all three stared at one another for some moments in silence until both cadets said at precisely the same time:\n\n\"What's she doing here?\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said to them both, \"I know this is an awkward situation\u2014and a little weird, too, if you want to know my opinion, and if either of you doesn't like it, you can just go straight back to your respective books.\"\n\nMy latest apprentice glared at me, then at Thursday5, then at me again before saying with a forced smile, \"In that case I should probably introduce myself and say what an incredible honor it is to be apprenticed to the great Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Why don't you save your breath\u2014and your sarcasm?\" I retorted. I liked a challenge, but this was probably one or two challenges too far. For this, of course, was the other Thursday Next, the one from the first four books in the series\u2014the violent ones full of death and gratuitous sex.\n\n\"Well, whoop-de-do,\" she said quietly, looking at us both. \"If this is how the day starts, it can only get better.\"\n\nThursday5 and I stared at the newcomer with a curious kind of fascination. Unlike Thursday5, who always dressed in fair-trade cotton and woolens, this Thursday preferred aggressive black leather. Leather trousers, jacket and a greatcoat that swept to the floor. So much, in fact, that she squeaked when she walked. Her hair was the same length as ours but was pulled back into a ponytail more sharply, and her eyes were hidden by small dark glasses. Attached to her belt were two automatic pistols with the butts facing in so she could cross-draw\u2014heaven knows why. Aside from this and despite being featured in books that were set between 1985 and 1988, she looked exactly as I did\u2014even to the flecks of gray hair that I still pretended I didn't care about.\n\nBut she wasn't me. She was less like me, in fact, than the talking-to-flowers version, if such a thing was possible. I'd read the books and although she attempted to do things for the right reason, her methods could best be described as dubious and her motivations suspect. Thursday5 was mostly thought with very little action; Thursday1\u20134 was mostly action with very little thought. The series had sacrificed characterization for plot, and humor for action and pace. All atmosphere had evaporated, and the books were a parade of violent set pieces interspersed with romantic interludes, and when I say \"romantic,\" I'm stretching the term. Most famous was her torrid affair with Edward Rochester and the stand-up catfight with Jane Eyre. I had thought it couldn't get any worse until Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be a ninja assassin and Bertha Rochester was abducted by aliens. And all that was just in the first book. It got more far-fetched after that. By book four it felt as though the first draft had been torn apart by wolves and then stuck back together at random before publication.\n\nI took a deep breath, inwardly cursed Commander Bradshaw and said, \"Thursday\u2026meet Thursday.\"\n\n\"Hello!\" said Thursday5 brightly, offering a hand in reconciliation. \"So pleased to meet you, and happy birthday\u2014for yesterday.\"\n\nThursday looked at Thursday's outstretched hand and raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"I've had the misfortune to read The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco,\" she said in an unfriendly tone. \"If you took the 'Samuel Pepys' out of the title, it would be a lot more honest. A bigger crock of shit I've yet to find. I kept on waiting for the shoot-outs to begin, and there weren't any\u2014just a load of hugging, vitamins and people saying they love one another.\"\n\n\"There's nothing wrong with hugging,\" retorted Thursday5 defensively. \"Perhaps if you were to try\u2026?\"\n\nShe put out her arms but was met with the curt response, \"Lay your muesli-smelling paws on me and I'll break your nose.\"\n\n\"Well!\" said Thursday5 in an indignant huff. \"I'm almost sorry I wished you a happy birthday\u2014and I'm very glad I didn't bake you a cake.\"\n\n\"I'm devastated.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said before this descended into blows, \"I'm not going to ask you to get along, I'm telling you to get along. Okay?\"\n\nThursday1\u20134 gave a lackadaisical shrug.\n\n\"Right,\" I began, addressing Thursday1\u20134. \"There are three simple rules if you want to train with me. Rule One: You do exactly as I tell you. Rule Two: You speak when you're spoken to. Rule Three: I shall call you 'Thursday1\u20134' or 'Thur1\u20134' or Onesday or\u2026anything I want, really. You will call me 'ma'am.' If I summon you, you come running. Rule Four: You give me any crap and you're history.\"\n\n\"I thought you said there were only three rules.\"\n\n\"I make it up as I go along. Do you have any problem with that?\"\n\n\"I suppose not.\"\n\n\"Good. Let's start at the beginning. How much classroom theory have you done?\"\n\n\"Six weeks. Took my finals last Tuesday and came in third.\"\n\n\"That's not bad.\"\n\n\"How many in the class?\" asked Thursday5, who was still smarting over the possibility that her hands smelled of muesli, let alone the threat of a broken nose.\n\nThursday1\u20134 glared at her and mumbled, \"Three, and two percent above the minimum pass mark, before you ask. But I scored ninety-nine percent on the range. Pistols, rifle, machine gun, grenade launcher\u2014you name it.\"\n\nThis was the main reason I didn't like the Thursday Next series\u2014far, far too many guns and a body count that would be the envy of the cinematic Rambo. Thursday1\u20134 unholstered an aggressive-looking automatic and showed it to us both.\n\n\"Glock nine-millimeter,\" she said proudly. \"Sixteen in the clip and one up the spout. Severe stopping power. I carry two to make quite sure.\"\n\n\"Only two?\" I murmured sarcastically.\n\n\"No, since you're asking.\" She lifted up the back of her leather greatcoat to show me a large, shiny revolver stuffed down the back of her trousers.\n\n\"What do you carry?\" she asked. \"Beretta? Browning? Walther?\"\n\n\"None,\" I said. \"Charge into a room with a gun and someone ends up dead.\"\n\n\"Isn't that how it's supposed to work?\"\n\n\"In your books, perhaps. If someone dies during an assignment, then the assignment was a failure. No exceptions.\"\n\n\"Diplomacy and using your head,\" put in Thursday5 bravely, \"are better than waving a gun around.\"\n\n\"And what would you know about it, your supreme bogusness?\"\n\n\"You don't have to insult me all the time,\" she replied, visibly upset. \"And besides, I'm not sure 'bogusness' is a word.\"\n\n\"Well, listen here, veggieburger,\" said the leather-clad Thursday in a sneering tone of voice, \"I do have to insult you all the time. Firstly because it's fun, and secondly because\u2026No, I don't need a second reason.\"\n\n\"Jeez,\" I said, shaking my head sadly as all patience left me. \"You're still revolting, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Revolting?\" she retorted. \"Perhaps. But since I'm mostly you, I guess you're partly to blame, right?\"\n\n\"Get this straight in your head,\" I said, moving closer. \"The only thing you share with me is a name and a face. You can have a go at The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco all you want, but at least it's not a constant orgy of comic-book violence and abundant, meaningless sex.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm sorry\u2014is that a criticism? Or just wishful thinking on your part? Because I was having a look at the figures the other day and I'm still selling strongly.\" She turned to the Pepys Thursday. \"How many books have you sold in the past five years?\"\n\nIt was a pointed yet strictly rhetorical remark. The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco had been remaindered less than six months after publication.\n\n\"You don't hate me,\" said Thursday1\u20134 to Thursday5. \"You secretly want to be like me. If you want to hate anyone, hate her.\" She directed this comment at me.\n\n\"Why would I?\" asked Thursday5, close to tears.\n\nWith a creaking of leather, Thursday1\u20134 moved closer to her and said in a low voice, \"Because she insisted that your book was full of touchy-feely family values\u2014pet dodo, gardening, a husband, two lovely kids\u2014\"\n\n\"Three.\"\n\n\"What ever. They asked me to do book five, but I took one look at the script and told them to stick it.\" She pointed a gloved finger at me. \"Her personal vanity condemned you to the slow death of being unread, unreviewed, undiscussed and out of print. The real Thursday is as single-minded as I am\u2014even to the ultimate vanity of rewriting herself into the guise of little Miss Granola Tree-Hugger here\u2014with no other reason than to protect her own fragile vanity, Z-class celebrity status and inconsequential public opinion. She and I are more alike than she thinks.\"\n\nShe stopped talking with a triumphant smile on her face. The other Thursday looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I was feeling hotly indignant myself, mostly because what she was saying was true. The only reason I'd taken on Thursday5 at all was that I felt responsible. Not just because she was an insufferable drip, but because she was an unread one as well.\n\n\"Oh, no!\" said Thursday5, giving out a heavy sob. \"Now all my chakras are completely unaligned\u2014can I have the rest of the day off?\"\n\n\"Good idea,\" said Thursday1\u20134 with an unpleasant chuckle. \"Why not go and meditate? After all, it's better than doing nothing the whole day.\"\n\nThursday gave another cry of indignation, I told her she could leave, and she did so with a faint pop.\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, also lowering my voice, \"you can do your character-assassination crap all day if you want, but that's not important. What is important is that the CofG in all its misguided wisdom seems to think you might be good enough for Jurisfiction. Five previous tutors don't agree. I don't agree. I think you're a viper. But it's not up to me. It's up to you. For you to join Jurisfiction, you need to learn how to survive in the hostile and dynamic textual environment. You and I are going to spend the next few days together whether I like it or not, and since my conduct review of you is the only thing that counts toward your final acceptance at Jurisfiction, you need to try really hard not to piss me off.\"\n\n\"Ahh!\" she murmured patronizingly. \"She does speeches. Listen, sister, you may be a big cheese at Jurisfiction today, but if I were you, I'd show a keen sense of diplomacy. I'll have the Bellman's job one day\u2014and I'll be looking out only for my friends. Now, are you going to be a friend or not?\"\n\n\"Good Lord,\" I said in a quiet voice, \"the Cheshire Cat was right\u2014you really are completely obnoxious. Is that your final word?\"\n\n\"It is.\"\n\n\"Then you can piss off back to your boxed set right now. Give me your badge.\"\n\nShe seemed perturbed for an instant. Her all-consuming arrogance had not even once entertained the notion she might actually be fired. But, true to form, instead of even attempting conciliation, she went into more threats:\n\n\"The CofG cadet selection subcommittee won't be happy.\"\n\n\"Screw them. Your badge?\"\n\nShe stared at me with a sense of rising confusion. \"You'd fire\u2026me?\"\n\n\"Just have. Give me your badge or I'll place you under arrest.\"\n\nShe took the Jurisfiction Cadet's shield from her pocket and slapped it into my open palm. Without that or a travel permit, she was technically a PageRunner and could be erased on sight.\n\n\"Good day,\" I said. \"I won't say it's been a plea sure, because it hasn't.\"\n\nAnd I walked away, pulling out my mobilefootnoterphone as I did so.\n\n\"Hello, Bradshaw? I've just fired Thursday1\u20134. I'm amazed anyone lasted more than ten minutes with her\u2014I didn't.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 181",
                "text": "\"Yes, already. Tell Jobsworth we did our best.\"\n\n\"Too bad. I'll take the flak for it. This one's a serious piece of\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait, wait!\" yelled Thursday, holding her head in a massive display of self-control. \"That was my last chance, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nShe massaged her temples. \"I can do this. I'm sor\u2014I'm sor\u2014Soooor\u2014\"\n\n\"You can say it.\"\n\n\"I can't.\"\n\n\"Try.\"\n\nShe screwed up her face and forced the word out. \"I'm\u2026soorry. I'll be your apprentice. Jurisfiction has need of people like me, and I am willing to run the gauntlet of your overbearing mediocrity in order to achieve that.\"\n\nI stared at her for a moment. \"Vague apology accepted.\"\n\nI moved away so Thursday1\u20134 couldn't hear me and spoke into my mobilefootnoterphone again.\n\n\"Bradshaw, how badly do we need to suck up to Jobsworth right now?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 182",
                "text": "I told Bradshaw to rely on me. He thanked me profusely, wished me well and rang off. I snapped the phone shut and placed it back in my bag.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, tossing Thursday1\u20134's badge back at her. \"For your first assignment, you are to get Thursday5 back here, chakras realigned or not, and apologize to her.\"\n\nThursday1\u20134 stared at me for a moment, then dialed her own cell phone. I turned away and walked down the gravel drive, trying to relax. What a start.\n\nI sat on an ornamental lion at the foot of the entrance steps and watched from a distance as Thursday5 reappeared and, after the briefest of altercations, they shook hands. There was a pause and then a few raised voices until finally, incredibly, and with Thursday1\u20134 as stiff as a poker, she allowed herself to be hugged. I smiled to myself, got up and walked back to where the pair of them were standing, Thursday5 looking optimistically positive and Thursday1\u20134 brooding stonily.\n\n\"Have you two sorted yourselves out?\"\n\nThey both nodded.\n\n\"Good,\" I said, consulting my watch. \"We've got a few hours before we attend the Council of Genres' policy-directive meeting, but before that\u2014\"\n\n\"We are attending the CofG meeting?\" asked Thursday5 with eyes like saucers.\n\n\"Yes, but only in the sort of 'we' that means you stand at the back and say nothing.\"\n\n\"Wow! What will they be discussing?\"\n\n\"BookWorld policy. Such as whether we should be supplying characters to video games to give them added depth. It's particularly relevant, as publishing these days doesn't necessarily restrict books to being just books. It's said that Harry Potter will make a rare appearance. Now, we've got to\u2014\"\n\n\"Will we really meet Harry Potter?\" she asked in a soft whisper, her eyes going all dewy at the mention of the young wizard. Thursday1\u20134 looked to heaven and stood, arms crossed, waiting for us to get on with the day's work.\n\n\"It depends,\" I sighed. \"If you pay attention or not. Now for this afternoon's assignment: relieving the staff who are dealing with the BookWorld's ongoing piano problem. And for that we need to go to Text Grand Central.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Piano Problem",
                "text": "The piano was thought to have been invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori in the early eighteenth century and was originally called the gravicembalo col piano e forte, which was fortunately reduced to pianoforte, then more simply to piano. Composed of 550 pounds of iron, wood, strings and felt, the eighty-eight-key instrument is capable of the subtlest of melodies, yet stored up in the tensioned strings is the destructive power of a subcompact moving at twenty miles per hour.\n\nIf Jurisfiction was the policing agency inside books and the Council of Genres was the political arm, Text Grand Central was the bureaucracy that bridged the two. Right up until the Ultraword\u2122 debacle, TGC had remained unimpeachably honest, but after that, the Council of Genres\u2014on my advice\u2014took the harsh but only possible course of action to ensure that Text Grand Central would be too inefficient and unimaginative to pose a threat. They appointed a committee to run it.\n\nAs we walked onto one of the main Storycode Engine floors, I heard Thursday5 gasp. The proportions of the room were more in keeping with a factory that made Very Large Things, and the stone walls, vaulted ceiling and flickering gas lamps betrayed the room's provenance as something borrowed from an unpublished Gothic Horror novel. Laid in serried ranks across the echoing vastness of the space were hundreds of Storycode Engines, each one the size of a bus and built of shiny brass, mahogany and cast iron. A convoluted mass of pipes, valves and gauges, they looked like a cross between an espresso machine, a ship's engine and a euphonium on acid. They were so large there was a catwalk running around the upper section for easy maintenance, with a cast-iron spiral staircase at one end for access.\n\n\"These are Imaginotransference Storycode Engines. The most important piece of technology we possess. Remember the pipe leading out of core containment in Pinocchio?\"\n\nThursday5 nodded.\n\n\"The throughput is radiated across the intragenre Nothing and ends up here, where they are then transmitted into the reader's imagination.\"\n\nI knew why it worked but not how. Indeed, I was suspicious that perhaps there wasn't an explanation at all\u2014or indeed any need for one. It was something we called an \"abstract narrative imperative\": They work solely because it's expedient that they do. The BookWorld is like that. Full of wholly improbable plot devices that are there to help grease the storytelling cogs.\n\nI paused so they could both watch the proceedings for a moment. Thursday5 made no secret of her fascination, but Thursday1\u20134 stifled a faux yawn. Despite this, she still looked around. It was hard not to be impressed\u2014the machines stretched off into the hazy distance almost as far as you could see. Technicians scurried like ants over the whirring machinery checking dials, oiling, venting off steam and filling out reports on clipboards. Others moved between machines with trolleys full of papers to be filed, and the air was full of the smell of hot oil and steam. Above our heads a series of clanking shafts and flapping leather belts brought power to the engines, and the combined clatter and hum in the vast chamber sounded like a cascading waterfall.\n\n\"Five hundred machines on each floor!\" I shouted above the tumult. \"With each one capable of handling up to fifty thousand concurrent readings. The ones in the blue overalls are the storycode technicians, known affectionately as 'word monkeys.' They keep the engines running smoothly, clean out the dialogue injectors and make sure there isn't a buildup of irony on the compressors. The man dressed in the white lab coat is the 'text collector.' There is a reader echo that pings back to the engine to throughput the next word, so we can use that to check if the book is running true to the author's original wishes. Any variance is termed a 'textual anomaly' and is caught in the waste gate of the echo skimmers, which are those large copper things on the top.\"\n\n\"This is all really fascinating technological stuff,\" observed Thursday1\u20134 drily, \"but I'm waiting to see how it relates to pianos.\"\n\n\"It doesn't, O sarcastic one. It's called education.\"\n\n\"Pointless exposition, if you ask me.\"\n\n\"She's not asking you,\" retorted Thursday5.\n\n\"Exactly,\" I replied, \"and some people enjoy the techie stuff. Follow me.\"\n\nI opened an arched oak door that led off the engine floor and into the administrative section of Text Grand Central, a labyrinth of stone corridors lit by flaming torches affixed to the walls. It was insufferably gloomy but economical\u2014part of the unfinished Gothic Horror novel from which all of TGC was fashioned. As soon as the door closed, the noise from the main engine floor ceased abruptly.\n\n\"I was just trying to explain,\" I said, \"how we find out about narrative flexations. Most of the time, the anomalies are just misreads and lazy readers getting the wrong end of the stick, but we have to check everything, just in case.\"\n\n\"I can get this on the Text Grand Central tour for twenty shillings and with better company,\" said Thursday1\u20134, looking pointedly at Thursday5.\n\n\"I'm interested, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Creep.\"\n\n\"Slut.\"\n\n\"What did you call me?\"\n\n\"Hey!\" I shouted. \"Cut it out!\"\n\n\"She started it,\" said Thursday1\u20134.\n\n\"I don't care who started it. You'll both be fired if you carry on like this.\"\n\nThey fell silent, and we walked along the echoing corridors, past endless oak doors, all relating to some textual activity such as word meanings, idea licensing and grammasite control.\n\n\"The problem with pianos,\" I began, \"is that there aren't enough to go around. Lots of people in the BookWorld play them, they frequently appear in the narrative, and they're often used as plot devices. Yet for an unfathomable reason that no one can fully explain, there are only fifteen to cover the entire BookWorld.\"\n\n\"Fifteen?\" snorted Thursday1\u20134, who was lagging behind in a petulant manner. \"How do they manage that, then?\"\n\n\"With a lot of difficulty. Have a look.\"\n\nI opened a door off the corridor. The room was much like a psychiatrist's office, full of bookshelves and with diplomas on the wall. There were two chairs, a desk and a couch. Two men were sitting in the chairs: A beard and pipe identified the first man immediately as a psychiatrist, and the second, who seemed desperately nervous, was obviously the patient.\n\n\"So, Mr. Patient,\" began the psychiatrist, \"what can I do for you?\"\n\n\"Well, Doc,\" muttered the patient unhappily, \"I keep on thinking I'm a dog.\"\n\n\"I see. And how long has this been going on?\"\n\n\"Since I was a puppy.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" I interrupted, \"I'm looking for the Piano Squad.\"\n\n\"This is Very Old Jokes,\" explained the psychiatrist apologetically. \"Pianos are down the corridor, first on the left.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" I muttered somewhat sheepishly, and quietly closed the door. \"I keep on doing that,\" I murmured. \"They should really label these doors better.\"\n\nWe walked along the corridor, found the correct door and opened it to reveal a room about fifty feet square. The walls were roughly plastered, and the vaulted stone ceiling was supported in the center of the room by a sturdy pillar. Set into the wall to our right was an aperture the size of a single garage, painted bright white and illuminated from within by several hundred lightbulbs. As we watched, there was a faint buzz, a flicker, and an ornate cabinet piano suddenly appeared in the aperture. Almost instantly a workman dressed in brown overalls and with a flat cap moved forward to wheel it out on well-oiled castors. Facing the bright white opening was a control desk that looked like a recording studio's mixing console, and behind this were two men of youthful countenance, dressed in linen suits. They were wearing headsets and had the harried look of people under great pressure.\n\n\"Upright rosewood returned from Sons and Lovers,\" whispered the one who was standing. \"Stand by to send the Goetzmann into Villette.\"\n\n\"Check!\" shouted the other man as he adjusted the knobs and sliders on the console. The workman pushed a Goetzmann grand into the empty aperture, stepped back, called \"Clear,\" and with another buzz, the piano vanished.\n\nThey looked at us as soon as we entered, and I nodded a greeting. They nodded one back and returned to their work.\n\n\"Observe,\" I said to the Thursdays, pointing to a large indicator panel on the wall behind the men. The fifteen pianos were listed down the left-hand side, and in columns next to them were indicator lights and illuminated panels that explained what was happening to each. The uppermost piano on the list we noted was a \"generic\" grand and was currently inside Bleak House. It would be available in a few minutes and was next due to appear in Mill on the Floss, where it would stay for a number of scenes until departing for Heart of Darkness. While we watched, the indicator boards clicked the various changes as the two operators expertly moved the pianos back and forth across fiction. Below the indicator boards were several other desks, a watercooler and a kitchenette and coffee bar. There were a few desultory potted plants kicking around, but aside from several rusty filing cabinets, there was not much else in the room.\n\n\"Fifteen pianos is usually ample,\" I explained, \"and when all pianos are available for use, the Piano Squad just trots along merrily to a set timetable. There are a few changes here and there when a new book requires a piano, but it generally works\u2014eightysix percent of pianos appear in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century literature.\"\n\nI pointed to the indicator board.\n\n\"But if you notice, eight pianos are 'status unavailable,' which means that they have been pulled out of frontline ser vice for maintenance.\" I waved the report Bradshaw had handed me. \"There was an administrative mix-up; we usually have one piano offline at a time, but some clot had them all refitted at once to save costs.\"\n\nThe Thursdays looked at the two operators again, and as we watched, the upright piano made of rosewood and with inlaid brass was moved from Sons and Lovers to The Mayor of Casterbridge and then on to The Turn of the Screw.\n\n\"That's right,\" I said, \"Charles and Roger are having to spread seven pianos around the entire canon of English fiction. Hang on, it looks as though we're coming to a break.\"\n\nThey did indeed seem to be about to stop work for a few minutes. The two operators relaxed, stopped what they were doing, removed their headsets and stretched.\n\n\"Hello, Thursday,\" said the younger of the two in a quiet whisper. \"Brought your family in to work?\"\n\n\"Not a chance,\" I laughed. \"Jurisfiction Cadets Thursday5 and Thursday1\u20134, meet Charles and Roger of the Piano Squad.\"\n\n\"Hello!\" yelled Roger, who appeared not to be able to converse at anything less than a shout. \"Come up and have a look-see!\"\n\nThe Thursdays went to join Roger at the console, Thursday5 because she was genuinely interested and Thursday1\u20134 because Roger was actually quite attractive.\n\n\"Just how many piano mentions are there in fiction?\" asked Thursday5.\n\n\"Thousands,\" he replied, \"but in varying degrees. Much of nineteenth-century literature\u2014the Bront\u00ebs, Hardy and Dickens in particular\u2014is literally awash with pianos, but they're rarely played. Those are the easy ones to deal with. Our pianos one to seven are nonfunctioning and are for description only. They are simply on an automatic circuit of the BookWorld, appearing momentarily in the text before flashing off to appear elsewhere.\" He turned to the indicator board. \"If you look at the panel, our trusty old P-6 Broadwood upright is currently on page three hundred and thirty-nine of The Lost World, where it occupies a space near the standard lamp in the Pottses' villa in Streatham. In a few moments, it will jump automatically to the subbasement on page ninety-one of Howards End, where it will sit beneath a Maud Goodman painting. A moment later it will jump off to page one hundred and sixty-one of Huckleberry Finn and the Grangerford parlor.\"\n\n\"However,\" added Charles in a whisper, \"Eliot, Austen and Thackeray are not only knee-deep in pianos, but working ones which in many instances are the linchpin of a scene. And those are the ones we have to be most careful about regarding supply and demand. Amelia Sedley's piano in Vanity Fair is sold at auction and repurchased by Dobbin to be given to her as a gift, and the singing and accompaniment within Austen do much to add to the general atmosphere.\"\n\nThursday5 nodded enthusiastically, and Thursday1\u20134, for the first time that day, actually expressed a vague interest and asked a question: \"Can't someone just make some more pianos?\"\n\n\"There is a mea sure of economy that runs throughout the BookWorld,\" he replied. \"We count ourselves lucky\u2014pianos are positively bountiful compared to the number of real dusty gray and wrinkly elephants.\"\n\n\"How many of those are there?\"\n\n\"One. If anyone needs a herd, the Pachyderm Supply Division has to make do with cardboard cutouts and a lot of off-page trumpeting.\"\n\nThe Thursdays mused upon this for a moment, as Charles and Roger donned their jackets and prepared to take a few hours off while I took over. I'd done it before, so it wasn't a problem.\n\n\"Everything's pretty much set on automatic,\" explained Charles as they headed out the door, \"but there are a few manual piano movements you'll need to do\u2014there's a list on the console. We'll be back in two hours to take care of the whole Jude the Obscure letterin-the-piano plot-device nonsense and to somehow juggle the requirements of a usable piano in Three Men in a Boat with the destruction of a Beulhoff grand in Decline and Fall.\"\n\n\"Sooner you than me,\" I said. \"Enjoy your break.\"\n\nThey assured me that they would and departed with the man in overalls, whose name, we learned, was Ken.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, sitting down and putting my feet up on the console. \"Get the coffee on, Thursday.\"\n\nNeither of them budged an inch.\n\n\"She gave you an order,\" said Thursday1\u20134. \"And I take mine black and strong.\"\n\n\"Humph!\" muttered Thursday5, but she went off to put the kettle on nonetheless.\n\nThursday1\u20134 took off her greatcoat, hung it on a peg and sat down in one of the other chairs.\n\n\"So\u2026we just sit here and watch pianos move around the BookWorld?\" she asked in a somewhat sneering tone of voice. Mind you, she usually spoke like that, so it was nothing unusual.\n\n\"That's exactly what we do. Much of Jurisfiction's work is like this. Boring but essential. Without an uninterrupted supply of pianos, much essential atmosphere would be lost. Can you imagine The Woman in White without Laura's playing?\"\n\nThursday1\u20134 looked blank.\n\n\"You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?\"\n\n\"The classics are too slow for me,\" she replied, idly taking one of her automatics from its holster and removing the clip to stare at the shiny rounds. \"Not enough action. I'm more into David Webb.\"\n\n\"You've read Robert Ludlum?\" I asked in surprise. Most bookpeople didn't read. It was too much like a busman's holiday.\n\n\"Nope. It's Dave I like, especially when he's Jason Bourne. Knows how to show a lady a good time and can pop a head shot from a thousand yards.\"\n\n\"Is there anyone in fiction you haven't slept with?\"\n\n\"I love The Woman in White,\" put in Thursday5, who had returned with a tray of coffees\u2014but with a glass of water for herself, I noticed. \"All that Mozart to express her love for Hartright\u2014dreamy!\"\n\nI took my coffee, and we watched the lights flicker on the console as a nonfunctioning B\u00f6sendorfer was moved from Our Mutual Friend to Persuasion, where it jumped rapidly between the twelve different scenes in which it was mentioned before vanishing off into Wives and Daughters.\n\n\"I think atmosphere in novels is overrated,\" said Thursday1\u20134, taking a sip of coffee before she added patronizingly, \"Good coffee, Thursday\u2014jolly well done.\"\n\n\"That's put my mind at rest,\" replied Thursday5 sarcastically, something that Thursday1\u20134 missed.\n\n\"Are there any cookies?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" echoed Thursday1\u20134, \"are there any?\"\n\nThursday5 huffed, got up, found some Jaffa cakes and placed them on the console in front of me, glaring at Thursday1\u20134 as she did so.\n\n\"Don't underestimate atmosphere,\" I said slowly, helping myself to a Jaffa cake. \"The four opposing forces in any novel are atmosphere, plot, character and pace. But they don't have to be in equilibrium. You can have a book without any plot or pace at all, but it has to make up for it in character and a bit of atmosphere\u2014like The Old Man and the Sea. Most thrillers are plot and pace and nothing else, such as Where Eagles Dare. But it doesn't matter; each to a reader's own\u2014\"\n\nI stopped talking, because a warning light was flashing on the console in front of us.\n\n\"Hmm,\" I murmured as I leaned closer, \"they're overrunning in The Dubliners, and Ulysses needs an upright piano for Mr. Dedalus to comment upon at the Ormond Hotel in less than a minute's time.\"\n\n\"Isn't there a spare piano at Norland Park?\" asked Thursday5.\n\n\"No\u2014Marianne took it with her to Devon, and it's currently one of those being overhauled.\"\n\nI scanned the knobs and switches of the console, looking for a spare piano that could be redirected. I eventually found one in Peter Pan. It was only referred to in a line of dialogue, so I redirected it to Ulysses as quickly as I could. Too quickly, to be honest, and I fumbled the interchange.\n\n\"Shit,\" I muttered under my breath.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" I replied, knowing full well that no one would notice. I'd placed it in the wrong part of the Ormond Hotel. I didn't have time to worry about this, however, as another warning light was flashing. This was to alert us that the first manual piano movement that Roger and Charles had left us with was approaching. I picked up the handwritten note and read it.\n\n\"We've got the Goetzmann grand returning from Villette, and it has to be sent with piano stool 87B into Agatha Christie's They Do It with Mirrors. Who can see a piano stool anywhere?\"\n\nNeither of the Thursdays moved an inch. Thursday5 eventually tapped Thursday1\u20134 on the arm and said, \"Your turn. I did the coffee.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" replied Thursday1\u20134 with impeccable twisted logic, \"it must have been my turn to do the Jaffa cakes.\"\n\n\"I suppose.\"\n\n\"Then, since you very kindly undertook that task on my be-half, it's your turn to do something again\u2014so find the sodding piano stool and stop bothering me with your bleating.\"\n\nI laid a hand on Thursday1\u20134's arm and said, \"Find the piano stool, Thursday.\"\n\nShe tutted haughtily in a manner that Friday would have approved of but got up and had a look around the room, eventually finding it near a heap of sheet music, a few music stands and a dusty bassoon.\n\n\"Here,\" she said in a bored tone, lifting the lid to look inside. Just at that moment, there was a buzzing noise, and the Goetzmann grand appeared in the brightly lit aperture in the wall.\n\n\"Right on time.\"\n\nI twiddled a few knobs to set its onward journey, told Thursday1\u20134 to put the piano stool with it, which she did, and then, with yet another buzz, I sent it on to the great hall of Stonygates inside Agatha Christie's They Do It with Mirrors.\n\n\"Good,\" I muttered, crossing that first task off the list. \"We've got nothing else for a half hour.\"\n\nBut my troubles weren't nearly over, as Thursday5 had sat in the chair recently vacated by Thursday1\u20134.\n\n\"You're in my seat.\"\n\n\"It's not your seat.\"\n\n\"I sat in it first, so it's mine.\"\n\n\"You can't do dibs on seats, and besides, you don't own it.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" growled Thursday1\u20134, \"do you like doing crochet?\"\n\n\"Yes, so\u2026?\"\n\n\"Then perhaps you can imagine how tricky that might be\u2026with broken fingers.\"\n\nThursday5's lip trembled for a moment. \"I'm\u2026I'm\u2026sure we can discuss this like rational adults before resorting to anything so crude as violence.\"\n\n\"Perhaps we could,\" returned Thursday1\u20134, \"but it's far easier with me telling you how it's going to be. Now, get your tie-dyed butt out of my seat.\"\n\n\"Thursday?\" I said.\n\n\"I can deal with this,\" snapped Thursday5 in a rare show of annoyance. \"I don't need to be rescued like a child every single time Miss Slagfest here opens her trap!\"\n\n\"I'm not meddling,\" I replied. \"All I want to know is where Thursday1\u20134 got that pistol.\"\n\n\"This?\" she said, holding up the small black automatic that I'd suddenly noticed she was holding. \"It's really cool, isn't it? A Browning twenty-six-caliber standard single-action automatic with slide and grip safety.\"\n\n\"Where did you get it?\"\n\n\"I found it,\" she retorted defensively, \"so I'm keeping it.\"\n\nI didn't have time for this.\n\n\"Tell me where you found it, or you'll be its next victim.\"\n\nShe paused, then said, \"It was\u2026in that piano stool.\"\n\n\"Idiot!\" I yelled, getting up and demanding she hand it over, which she did. \"That's an essential plot point in They Do It with Mirrors! Why can't you just leave things alone?\"\n\n\"I thought\u2014\"\n\n\"That's the problem. You don't. Stay here while we sort this out, and don't touch anything. I repeat: Touch nothing. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, of course I understand\u2014what do you think I am, a child?\"\n\nI didn't have time to argue, so after telling Thursday5 to follow me closely, I jumped out of the Piano Squad to the Great Library, and from there we made our way into Agatha Christie's They Do It with Mirrors.\n\nWe arrived at Stonygates in the short length of dimly lit corridor that connected the square lobby with the great hall. We pressed ourselves into the shadows, and I looked inside the hall. It was a large room that oozed Victorian Gothic gloominess, with dark wood and minimal lighting. There were a half dozen or so people chattering, but more important, directly ahead of us was the Goetzmann grand that we had dispatched not two minutes before. And in front of this, the piano stool to which the weapon had to be returned. I was about to chance my luck and sneak in but had not gotten two paces when a young man came and sat on the piano stool and began to play. I retreated into the shadows and felt Thursday5 grip my arm nervous ly as the lights flickered and went out, leaving the house in semidarkness. We backed farther into the shadows as a large man with a sulky expression came out of the door and vanished into the gloom, muttering about the fuses. A few minutes later, an elderly woman tottered to the dining room and back to retrieve something, and almost immediately the front door was pushed violently open and a young man strode into the hall in an overdramatic manner. This was followed by an argument, the sound of the study door opening and closing, more muffled shouting and eventually two shots. With the characters in the room thus distracted, I padded softly to the man seated at the piano and tapped him lightly on his shoulder. He looked up with some surprise, and I showed him my Jurisfiction badge. I raised my eyebrows, placed a finger to my lips and gestured him to join the people on the other side of the room. He did as I asked, and once his back was turned, I slipped the small automatic into the piano stool, between a copy of Handel's Largo and Chopin's Preludes.\n\nI quickly and noiselessly retraced my steps to where Thursday5 was waiting for me, and within a few minutes we had returned to the Piano Squad's headquarters.\n\nAs we reentered, the squad room was in chaos. Warning lights were flashing, klaxons were going off, and the control console was a mass of flickering indicator lights. I was relieved to see\u2014if such a word could be used in such uproar\u2014that Roger and Charles had both returned and were trying to bring some sort of semblance of order back to the piano-distribution network.\n\n\"I need the Th\u00fcrmer back from Agnes Grey!\" yelled Roger. \"And I'll swap it for a nonworking Streicher\u2014\"\n\n\"What the hell's going on, Thursday?\"\n\nIt was Commander Bradshaw, and he didn't look very happy.\n\n\"I don't know. When I left everything was fine.\"\n\n\"You left?\" he echoed incredulously. \"You left the piano room unattended?\"\n\n\"I left\u2014\"\n\nBut I stopped myself. I was responsible for any cadet's actions or inactions, irrespective of what they were and where they happened. I'd made a mistake. I should have called Bradshaw to cover for me or to get someone to go into Mirrors.\n\nI took a deep breath. \"No excuses, sir\u2014I screwed up. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Sorry?\" repeated Bradshaw, \"That's it? You're sorry? I've got a dead Holmes on my hands, one of the Outland's most favorite series is about to unravel, and I really don't need one of your idiot cadets suddenly thinking that she's god of all the pianos.\"\n\n\"What did she do?\"\n\n\"If you'd been supervising properly, you'd know!\"\n\n\"Okay, okay,\" I retorted, seriously beginning to get pissed off, \"this one's down to me, and I'll face the music, but I'd like to know what she's done before I wipe the smirk off her face for good.\"\n\n\"She decided,\" he said slowly and with great restraint, \"to do her own thing with piano supply in your absence. Every single piano reference has been deleted from Melville, Scott and Defoe.\"\n\n\"What?\" I said, looking around the room and finally catching sight of Thursday1\u20134 on the other side of the room, where she was standing arms folded and apparently without a care in the world.\n\n\"As I said. And we don't have the time or the pianos to replace them. But that's not the worst bit.\"\n\n\"It gets worse?\"\n\n\"Certainly. For some reason known only to herself, she dropped an upright Broadwood straight into Miss Bates's drawing room inside Austen's Emma.\"\n\n\"Have they noticed?\"\n\n\"Pianos aren't generally the sort of thing one can miss. As soon as it arrived, speculation began on where it might have come from. Miss Bates agrees with Mrs. Cole that it's from Colonel Campbell, but Emma thinks it's from Mrs. Dixon. Mrs. Weston is more inclined to think it was from Mr. Knightley, but Mr. Knightley believes it's from Frank Churchill. Quite a mess, wouldn't you agree?\"\n\n\"Can we get it out?\"\n\n\"It's embedded itself now. I'm going to get Churchill to take the rap, and it shouldn't inflict too much damage. But this is down to you, Thursday, and I've got no choice but to suspend you from Jurisfiction duties pending a disciplinary inquiry.\"\n\n\"Let's keep a sense of perspective on this, Bradshaw. I know I'm responsible, but it's not my fault\u2014besides, you told me to do this, and I said I couldn't.\"\n\n\"It's my fault, is it?\"\n\n\"Partly.\"\n\n\"Humph,\" replied Bradshaw, bristling his mustache in anger. \"I'll take it under advisement\u2014but you're still suspended.\"\n\nI jerked a thumb in the direction of Thursday1\u20134. \"What about her?\"\n\n\"She's your cadet, Thursday. you deal with it.\"\n\nHe took a deep breath, shook his head, softened for a moment to tell me to look after myself and departed. I told Thursday5 to meet me up at the CofG and beckoned Thursday1\u20134 into the corridor.\n\n\"What the hell did you think you were doing?\"\n\n\"Oh, c'mon,\" she said, \"don't be such a hard-ass. There's no seriously lasting damage. So I dropped a piano into Emma\u2014it's not like it landed on anyone.\"\n\nI stared at her for a moment. Even allowing for Thursday1\u20134's supreme arrogance, it still didn't make any sense.\n\n\"You're not stupid. You knew it would get you fired once and for all, so why do it?\"\n\nShe stared at me with a look of cold hatred. \"You were going to fire me anyway. There wasn't a ghost's chance I'd have made it.\"\n\n\"The chance was slim,\" I admitted, \"but it was there.\"\n\n\"I don't agree. You hate me. Always have. From the moment I was first published. We could have been friends, but you never even visited. Not once in four entire books. Not a postcard, a footnote, nothing. I'm closer to you than family, Thursday, and you treated me like crap.\"\n\nAnd then I understood.\n\n\"You put the piano into Emma to stitch me up, didn't you?\"\n\n\"After what you've done to me, you deserve far worse. You had it in for me the moment I arrived at Jurisfiction. You all did.\"\n\nI shook my head sadly. She was consumed by hate. But instead of trying to deal with it, she just projected it onto everyone around her. I sighed.\n\n\"You did this for revenge over some perceived slight?\"\n\n\"That wasn't revenge,\" said Thursday1\u20134 in a quiet voice. \"You'll know revenge when you see it.\"\n\n\"Give me your badge.\"\n\nShe dug it from her pocket and then tossed it onto the floor rather than hand it over.\n\n\"I quit,\" she spat. \"I wouldn't join Jurisfiction now if you begged me.\"\n\nIt was all I could do not to laugh at her preposterous line of reasoning. She couldn't help herself. She was written this way.\n\n\"Go on,\" I said in an even tone, \"go home.\"\n\nShe seemed surprised that I was no longer angry.\n\n\"Aren't you going to yell at me or hit me or try to kill me or something? Face it: This isn't much of a resolution.\"\n\n\"It's all you're going to get. You really don't understand me at all, do you?\"\n\nShe glared at me for a moment, then bookjumped out.\n\nI stood in the corridor for a few minutes, wondering if there was anything else I might have done. Aside from not trusting her an inch, not really. I shrugged, tried and failed to get TransGenre Taxis to even answer the footnoterphone and then, checking the time so I wouldn't be late for the policy-directive meeting, made my way slowly toward the elevators."
            },
            {
                "title": "Policy Directives",
                "text": "The Council of Genres is the administrative body that looks after all aspects of BookWorld regulation, from making policy decisions in the main debating chamber to the day-to-day running of ordinary BookWorld affairs, from furnishing plot devices to controlling the word supply coming in from the Text Sea. They oversee the Book Inspectorate, which governs which books are to be published and which to be demolished, and also Text Grand Central and Jurisfiction\u2014but only regarding policy. For the most part, they are evenhanded but need to be watched, and that's where I come into the equation.\n\nI didn't go straight to either Jurisfiction or the Council of Genres but instead went for a quiet walk in Wainwright's Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells. I often go there when in a thoughtful or pensive mood, and although the line drawings that I climbed were not as beautiful nor as colorful as the real thing, they were peaceful and friendly, imbued as they were with a love of the fells that is seldom equaled or surpassed. I sat on the warm sketched grass atop Haystacks, threw a pebble into the tarn and watched the drawn ripples radiate outward. I returned much refreshed an hour later.\n\nI found Thursday5 still waiting for me in the seating area near the picture window with the view of the other towers. She stood up when I approached.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said.\n\n\"Why?\" I responded. \"It wasn't your fault.\"\n\n\"But it certainly wasn't yours.\"\n\n\"That's the thing,\" I replied. \"It was. She's a cadet. She has no responsibility. Her faults are mine.\"\n\nI stopped to think about what I'd just said. Thursday 1\u20134 was impetuous, passionate and capable of almost uncontrollable rage. Her faults really were mine.\n\nI took a deep breath and looked at my watch. \"Showtime,\" I murmured despondently. \"Time for the policy-directive meeting.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" exclaimed Thursday5, and then searched through her bag until she found a small yellow book and a pen.\n\n\"I hope that's not what I think it is.\"\n\n\"What do you think it is?\"\n\n\"An autograph book.\"\n\nShe said nothing and bit her lip.\n\n\"If you even think about asking Harry Potter for an autograph, your day ends right now.\"\n\nShe sighed and dropped the book back into her bag.\n\nThe policy meeting was held in the main debating chamber. Jobsworth's chair was the large one behind the dais, with the seats on either side of him reserved for his closest aides and advisers. We arrived twenty minutes early and were the first ones there. I sat down in my usual seat to the left of where the genres would sit, and Thursday5 sat just behind me. The Read-O-Meter was still clicking resolutely downward, and I looked absently around the chamber, trying to gather my thoughts. Along the side walls were paintings of various dignitaries who had distinguished themselves in one way or another during the Council of Genres' rule\u2014my own painting was two from the end, sandwiched between Paddington Bear and Henry Pooter.\n\n\"So what's on the agenda?\" asked Thursday5.\n\nI shrugged, having become somewhat ticked off with the whole process. I just wanted to go home\u2014somewhere away from fiction and the parts of me I didn't much care for.\n\n\"Who knows?\" I said in a nonchalant fashion. \"Falling ReadRates, I imagine\u2014fundamentally, it's all there is.\"\n\nAt that moment the main doors were pushed open and Jobsworth appeared, followed by his usual retinue of hangers-on. He saw me immediately and chose a route that would take him past my desk.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Next,\" he said. \"I heard you were recently suspended?\"\n\n\"It's an occupational hazard when you're working in the front line,\" I replied pointedly\u2014Jobsworth had always been administration. If he understood the remark, he made no sign of it. I added, \"Are you well, sir?\"\n\n\"Can't complain. Which one's that?\" he asked, pointing to Thursday5 in much the same way as you'd direct someone to the toilet.\n\n\"Thursday5, sir.\"\n\n\"You're making a mistake to fire the other one,\" said Jobsworth, addressing me. \"I'd ask for a second or third opinion about her if there was anyone left to ask. Nevertheless, the decision was yours, and I abide by it. The matter is closed.\"\n\n\"I was down in the maintenance facility recently,\" I told him, \"and Isambard told me that the CofG had insisted on upgrading all the throughput conduits.\"\n\n\"Really?\" replied Jobsworth vaguely. \"I do wish he'd keep himself to himself.\"\n\nHe walked to the raised dais, sat in the central chair and busied himself with his notes. The room fell silent, aside from the occasional click of the Read-O-Meter as it heralded another drop in the Outland ReadRate.\n\nThe next delegate to arrive was Colonel Barksdale, head of the CofG Combined Forces. He sat down four desks away without looking at me. We had not seen eye to eye much in the past, as I disliked his constant warmongering. Next to arrive was Baxter, the senator's chief adviser, who flicked a distasteful look in my direction. In fact, all eight members of the directive panel, except for the Equestrian senator Black Beauty, didn't much like me. It wasn't surprising. I wasn't just the only Outlander member on the panel, I was the LBOCS and consequently wielded the weapon that committees always feared\u2014the veto. I tried to discharge my duties as well as I could, despite the enmity it brought.\n\nI could see Thursday5 move expectantly every time the door opened, but apart from the usual ten members of the committee and their staff, no one else turned up.\n\n\"Good afternoon, everyone,\" said Jobsworth, standing up to address us. There weren't many of us in the debating chamber, but it was usually this way\u2014policy meetings were closed-door affairs.\n\n\"Sadly, I have to advise you that Mr. Harry Potter is unable to attend due to copyright restrictions, so we're going to leave the 'supplying characters from video games' issue for another time.\"\n\nThere was a grumbling from the senators, and I noticed one or two put their autograph books back into their bags.\n\n\"Apologies for absence,\" continued Jobsworth. \"Jacob Marley is too alive to attend, the Snork Maiden is at the hairdresser's, and Senator Zigo is once more unavailable. So we'll begin. Item One: the grammasite problem. Mr. Bamford?\"\n\nSenator Bamford was a small man with wispy blond hair and eyes that were so small they almost weren't there. He wore a blue coverall very obviously under his senatorial robes and had been in charge of what we called \"the grammasite problem\" for almost four decades, seemingly to no avail. The predations of the little parasitical beasts upon the books on which they fed was damaging and a constant drain on resources. Despite culling in the past, their numbers were no smaller now than they'd ever been. Mass extermination was often suggested, something the Naturalist genre was violently against. Pests they might be, but the young were cute and cuddly and had big eyes, which was definitely an evolutionary edge to secure survival.\n\n\"The problem is so well known that I will not outline it here again, but suffice it to say that numbers of grammasites have risen dramatically over the years, and in order to keep the naturalists happy I suggest we undertake a program of textualization, whereby representative specimens of the seven hundred or so species will be preserved in long-winded accounts in dreary academic tomes. In that way we can preserve the animal and even, if necessary, bring it back from extinction\u2014yet still exterminate the species.\"\n\nBamford sat down again, and Jobsworth asked for a show of hands. We all agreed. Grammasites were a pest and needed to be dealt with.\n\n\"Item Two,\" said Jobsworth. \"Falling readership figures. Baxter?\"\n\nBaxter stood up and addressed the room, although, to be honest, the other delegates\u2014with the possible exception of Beauty\u2014generally went with Jobsworth on everything. The person Baxter really needed to address was me. As the holder of the only veto, I was the one he would have to swing.\n\n\"The falling readership figures have been a matter of some concern for a number of years now, and increased expenditure in the Well of Lost Plots to construct thrilling new books has failed to grasp the imagination of the reading public. As head of the Readership Increasement Committee, I have been formulating some radical ideas to rekindle interest in novels.\"\n\nHe turned over a paper and coughed before continuing.\n\n\"After a fact-finding mission conducted in the real world, I have decided that 'interactivity' is the keyword of the new generation. For many readers books are too much of a one-sided conduit of information, and a new form of novel that allows its readers to choose where the story goes is the way forward.\"\n\n\"Isn't that the point of books?\" asked Black Beauty, stamping his hoof angrily on the table and upsetting an inkwell. \"The pleasure lies in the unfolding of the plots. Even if we know what must happen, how one arrives there is still entertaining.\"\n\n\"I couldn't agree with you more,\" remarked Baxter, \"but our core readership is aging, and the world's youth is growing up without being in the habit of reading books.\"\n\n\"So what's your suggestion?\" asked Jobsworth.\n\n\"To create a new form of book\u2014an interactive book that begins blank except for ten or so basic characters. Then, as it is written, chapter by chapter, the readers are polled on whom they want to keep and whom they want to exclude. As soon as we know, we write the new section, and at the end of the new chapter we poll the readers again. I call it a 'reality book show'\u2014life as it really is, with all the human interactions that make it so rich.\"\n\n\"And the boring bits as well?\" I asked, recalling my only experience with reality TV.\n\n\"I don't suggest that every book should be this way,\" added Baxter hurriedly, \"but we want to make books hip and appealing to the youth market. Society is moving on, and if we don't move with it, books\u2014and we\u2014will vanish.\"\n\nAs if to reinforce his argument, he waved a hand at the Read-O-Meter, which dropped another seventeen books by way of confirmation.\n\n\"Why don't we just write better books?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because it's expensive, it's time-consuming, and there's no guarantee it will work,\" said Senator Aimsworth, speaking for the first time. \"From what I've seen of the real world, interactivity is a sure-fire hit. Baxter is right. The future is reality book shows based on democratic decision making shared by the creators and the readers. Give people what they want and in just the way they want it.\"\n\n\"Once the ball starts rolling downhill, it can't be stopped,\" I remarked. \"This is the wrong route\u2014I can feel it.\"\n\n\"Your loyalty is misplaced, Ms. Next. What could be wrong with offering readers choice? I say we vote on it. All those in favor of directing funds and resources to an interactive reality-book project?\"\n\nThey all raised their hands\u2014except me and Senator Beauty.\n\nMe because I didn't agree with them and Beauty because he had a hoof. It didn't matter. He was against it.\n\n\"As usual,\" growled Aimsworth, \"the contrarian amongst us knows better. Your objections, Ms. Next?\"\n\nI took a deep breath. \"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that we're not in the book industry. This isn't a publishing meeting with sales targets, goals, market research and focus groups. The book may be the delivery medium, but what we're actually peddling here is story. Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms\u2014of life, of love, of knowledge\u2014has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath, and we should be there, too, supporting that one last person. I say we place our faith in good stories well told and leave the interactivity as the transient Outlander fad that it is. Instead of being subservient to reader opinion, we should be leading it.\"\n\nI paused for a moment and stared at the sea of unconvinced faces. The Read-O-Meter clicked down another twenty-eight books.\n\n\"Listen, I'm as worried about falling ReadRates as anyone, but wild and desperate measures are not the answer. We've got to go back to the root cause and figure out why people prefer watching Samaritan Kidney Swap to reading a good book. If we can't create better books, then we should be doing a lot more than simply dreaming up gimmicks to pander to the lowest common denominator.\"\n\nThere was silence. I meant about 75 percent of it but needed to get the message across. There should be room on this planet for Dr. Zhivago and Extreme Spatula Make over, but the scales had tipped far enough\u2014and I didn't want them to go any further. They all stared at me in silence as Jobsworth drummed his fingers on the desk.\n\n\"Does this mean you are exercising your veto?\"\n\n\"It does.\"\n\nThere was a collective groan from the other delegates, and I suddenly wondered if I'd gone too far. After all, they had the good of the BookWorld as their priority, as did I\u2014and it wasn't as though I could come up with anything better.\n\n\"I'd like to conduct my own study group,\" I said, hoping that by using their own corporate-buzzword language I might get them to go for it, \"and see if I can throw up any strategies to pursue. If I can't, we'll go with your interactivity idea, no matter how dumb it sounds.\"\n\n\"I see,\" intoned Jobsworth as they all exchanged annoyed looks. \"Since I know you too well to expect you to change your mind, we'll reappraise the situation in a week's time and move on. Next item?\"\n\nColonel Barksdale stood up and looked at us all in the somber manner in which he always imparted bad news. He never had anything else. In fact, I think he engineered bad news in order to have the plea sure of giving it. He'd been head of BookWorld Defense for the past eight years and clearly wanted to increase his game to include an intragenre war or two. A chance to achieve greatness, if you like.\n\n\"I expect you've all heard about Speedy Muffler's recent threat to the stability of the BookWorld?\"\n\nWe all mumbled our agreement.\n\n\"Good. Well, as security is my province, I want you all to agree to a plan of action that is both decisive and final. If Muffler can deploy a dirty bomb, then none of us are safe. Hard-liners in Ecclesiastical and Feminist are ready to mobilize for war to protect their ideologies, and it is my opinion that a preemptive strike will show those immoral bastards that we mean business. I've three brigades of Danverclones ready and waiting to stream across the border. It won't take long\u2014Racy Novel is a ramshackle genre at best.\"\n\n\"Isn't war a bit hasty?\" I persisted. \"Muffler will try anything to punch above his weight. And even if he has developed a dirty bomb, he still has to deliver it. How's he going to smuggle something like that into Feminist? It's got one of the best-protected frontiers in the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"We have it on good authority that they might disguise it as a double entendre in a bedroom farce and deliver it up the rear entrance at Comedy.\"\n\n\"Pure conjecture. What about good old-fashioned diplomacy? You could offer Muffler some Well-surplus subtext or even dialogue to dilute the worst excesses of the genre\u2014he'd probably respond favorably to it. After all, they merely want to develop as a genre.\"\n\nColonel Barksdale drummed his fingers impatiently and opened his mouth to speak, but Jobsworth beat him to it.\n\n\"That's the worry. Ecclesiastical is concerned that Racy Novel wants to undertake an expansionist policy\u2014there's talk of their wanting to reoccupy the dehumorized zone. Besides,\" he added, \"subtext and dialogue are up to almost seven hundred and fifty guineas a kilo.\"\n\n\"Do we know if they even have a dirty bomb?\" I asked. \"It might all be a bluff.\"\n\nJobsworth signaled to Colonel Barksdale, who handed me a dossier marked 'Terribly Secret.'\n\n\"It's no bluff. We've been sent some rather disturbing reports regarding outbreaks of incongruous obscenity from as far away as Drama\u2014Charles Dickens, no less.\"\n\n\"Bleak House,\" I read from the sheet of paper I'd been handed, \"and I quote: 'Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates.'\"\n\n\"You see?\" said Barksdale as the rest of the delegates muttered to themselves and shook their heads in a shocked manner. \"And what about this one?\"\n\nHe handed me another sheet of paper, this time from Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge.\n\n\"'\u2026the Mayor beheld the unattractive exterior of Farfrae's erection.'\"\n\n\"And,\" he added decisively, \"we've got a character named 'Master Bates' turning up all over Oliver Twist.\"\n\n\"Master Bates has always been called that,\" I pointed out. \"We used to giggle over the name at school.\"\n\n\"Despite that,\" replied Colonel Barksdale with no loss of confidence, \"the other two are quite enough to have this taken extremely seriously. The Danverclones are ready. I only need your approval\u2014\"\n\n\"It's called 'word drift.'\"\n\nIt was Thursday5. The meeting had never seen such a flagrant lapse of protocol, and I would have thrown her out myself\u2014but for the fact she had a point.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Senator Jobsworth in a sarcastic tone. \"I must have missed the meeting where the other Thursday was elected to the Security Council. Jurisfiction Cadets must train, so I will overlook it this once. But one more word\u2026!\"\n\nUnabashed, Thursday5 added, \"Did Senator Muffler send those examples to you?\"\n\nSenator Jobsworth wasted no time and called over his shoulder to one of the many Danverclones standing close by. \"Security? See that Thursday with the flower in her hair? She is to be returned to her\u2014\"\n\n\"She's with me,\" I said, staring at Jobsworth, who glared back dangerously, \"and I vouch for her. She has opinions that I feel are worth listening to.\"\n\nJobsworth and Barksdale went silent and looked at each other, wondering if there wasn't some sort of rule they could invoke. There wasn't. And it was for precisely these moments that the Great Panjandrum had given me the veto\u2014to slow things down and make the Council of Genres think before it acted.\n\n\"Well?\" I said. \"Did Speedy Muffler send those examples to you?\"\n\n\"Well, not perhaps\u2026as such,\" replied Colonel Barksdale with a shrug, \"but the evidence is unequivocally compelling and totally, absolutely without doubt.\"\n\n\"I contend,\" added Thursday5, \"that they are simply words whose meanings have meandered over the years, and those books were written with precisely the words you quoted us now. Word drift.\"\n\n\"I hardly think that's likely, my dear,\" replied Jobsworth patronizingly.\n\n\"Oh, no?\" I countered. \"Do you mean to tell me that when Lydia from Pride and Prejudice thinks of Brighton and '\u2026the glories of the camp\u2014its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay,' that she might possibly mean something else?\"\n\n\"Well, no, of course not,\" replied the senator, suddenly feeling uncomfortable under the combined baleful stares of Thursday5 and me.\n\nThere was a mumbling among the other delegates, and I said, \"Words change. Whoever sent these examples to you has an agenda, which is more about confrontation than a peaceful outcome to the crisis. I'm going to exercise my veto again. I suggest that a diplomatic resolution be attempted until we have irrefutable evidence that Muffler really has the capabilities he claims.\"\n\n\"This is bad judgment,\" growled Jobsworth with barely controlled rage as he rose from his seat and gathered his papers together. \"You're on morally tricky ground if you side with Racy Novel.\"\n\n\"I'm on morally trickier ground if I don't,\" I replied. \"I will not sanction a war on misplaced words in a few of the classics. Show me a blatantly unsubtle and badly written sex scene in To the Lighthouse and I will personally lead the battle myself.\"\n\nJobsworth stared at me, and I stared back angrily.\n\n\"By then the damage will have been done. We want to stop them before they even get started,\" he insisted.\n\nHe paused and composed himself.\n\n\"Two vetoes in one day,\" he added. \"You must be particularly pleased with yourself. I hope you have as many smart answers when smutty innuendo is sprinkled liberally across The Second Sex.\"\n\nAnd without another word, he stormed from the meeting, closely followed by Barksdale, Baxter and all the others, each of them making tut-tut noises and shaking their heads in a sickening display of inspired toadying. Only Senator Beauty wasn't with them. He shook his own head at me in a gesture meaning \"better you than me\" and then trotted out.\n\nWe were left in silence, aside from the Read-O-Meter, which ominously dropped another thirty-six books.\n\n\"That word-drift explanation was really very good,\" I said to Thursday5 when we were back in the elevator.\n\n\"It was nothing, really.\"\n\n\"Nothing?\" I echoed. \"Don't sell yourself short. You probably just averted a genre war.\"\n\n\"Time will tell. I meant to ask. You said you were the 'LBOCS.' What does that mean?\"\n\n\"It means I'm the council's Last Bastion of Common Sense. Because I'm from the Outland, I have a better notion of in de pendent thought than those in the generally deterministic BookWorld. Nothing happens without my knowledge or comment.\"\n\n\"That must make you unpopular sometimes.\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied, \"it makes me unpopular all the time.\"\n\nWe went back down to the Jurisfiction offices for me to formally hand over my badge to Bradshaw, who took it from me without expression and resumed his work. I returned despondently to where Thursday5 was waiting expectantly at my desk. It was the end of her assessment, and I knew she wanted to be put out of her misery one way or another.\n\n\"There are three recommendations I can make,\" I began, sitting back in my chair. \"One: for you to be put forward for further training. Two: for you to be returned to basic training. And three: for you to leave the ser vice entirely.\"\n\nI looked across at her and found myself staring back at me. It was the look I usually gave to the mirror, and it was disconcerting. But I had to be firm and make my decision based on her performance and suitability.\n\n\"You were nearly eaten by a grammasite, and you would have let the Minotaur kill me,\" I began, \"but on the plus side, you came up with the word-drift explanation, which was pretty cool.\"\n\nShe looked hopeful for a moment.\n\n\"But I have to take all things under consideration and without bias\u2014either in your favor or against. The Minotaur episode was too important a failing for me to ignore, and much as I like your mildly eccentric ways, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to recommend that you do not join Jurisfiction, either now or in the future.\"\n\nShe didn't say anything for a while and looked as though she was about to cry, which she did a second or two later. She might have made a decent Jurisfiction agent, but the chances of her getting herself killed were just too high for me to risk. On my graduation assignment, I was almost murdered by a bunch of emotion junkies inside Shadow the Sheepdog. Given the same situation, Thursday5 wouldn't have survived, and I wasn't going to have that on my conscience. She wasn't just a version of me, she was something closer to family, and I didn't want her coming to any harm.\n\n\"I understand,\" she said between sniffs, dabbing at her nose with a lacy handkerchief.\n\nShe thanked me for my time, apologized again for the Minotaur, laid her badge on my desk and vanished off into her book. I leaned back in my chair and sighed\u2014what with firing both Thursdays, I'd really been giving myself a hard time today. I wanted to go home, but the power required for a transfictional jump to the Outland might be tricky on an empty stomach. I looked at my watch. It was only four, and Jurisfiction agents at that time liked to take tea. And to take tea, they generally liked to go to the best tearooms in the BookWorld\u2014or anywhere else, for that matter."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Paragon",
                "text": "There are three things in life that can make even the worst problems seem just that tiniest bit better. The first is a cup of tea\u2014loose-leaf Assam with a hint of Lapsang and poured before it gets too dark and then with a dash of milk and the smallest hint of sugar. Calming, soothing and almost without peer. The second, naturally, is a hot soaking bath. The third is Puccini. In the bath with a hot cup of tea and Puccini. Heaven.\n\nIt was called the Paragon and was the most perfect 1920s tearoom, nestled in the safe and unobserved background fabric of P. G. Wode house's Summer Lightning. To your left and right upon entering through the carved wooden doors were glass display cases containing the most sumptuous homemade cakes and pastries. Beyond these were the tearooms proper, with booths and tables constructed of a dark wood that perfectly matched the paneled interior. This was itself decorated with plaster reliefs of Greek characters disporting themselves in matters of equestrian and athletic prowess. To the rear were two additional and private tearooms, the one of light-colored wood and the other in delicate carvings of a most agreeable nature. Needless to say, it was inhabited by the most populous characters in Wode house's novels. That is to say it was full of voluble and opinionated aunts.\n\nThere were two Jurisfiction agents sitting at the table we usually reserved for our three-thirty tea and cakes. The first was tall and dressed in jet black, high-collared robes buttoned tightly up to his throat. He had a pale complexion, prominent cheekbones and a small and very precise goatee. He sat with his arms crossed and was staring at all the other customers in the tearooms with an air of haughty superiority, eyebrows raised imperiously. This was truly a tyrant among tyrants, a ruthless leader who had murdered billions in his never-ending and inadequately explained quest for the unquestioned obedience of every living entity in the known galaxy. The other, of course, was a six-foot-tall hedgehog dressed in a multitude of petticoats, an apron and bonnet, and carrying a wicker basket of washing. There was no more celebrated partnership in Jurisfiction either then or now\u2014it was Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark. The hedgehog from Beatrix Potter and the emperor from the Zhark series of bad science-fiction novels.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Thursday,\" intoned the emperor when he saw me, a flicker of a smile attempting to crack through his imperialist bearing.\n\n\"Hi, Emperor. How's the galactic-domination business these days?\"\n\n\"Hard work,\" he replied, rolling his eyes heavenward. \"Honestly, I invade peaceful civilizations on a whim, destroy their cities and generally cause a great deal of unhappy mayhem\u2014and then they turn against me for absolutely no reason at all.\"\n\n\"How senselessly irrational of them,\" I remarked, winking at Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.\n\n\"Quite,\" continued Zhark, looking aggrieved and not getting the sarcasm. \"It's not as though I put them all to the sword anyway\u2014I magnanimously decided to spare several hundred thousand as slaves to build an eight-hundred-foot-high statue of myself striding triumphantly over the broken bodies of the vanquished.\"\n\n\"That's probably the reason they don't like you,\" I murmured.\n\n\"Oh?\" he asked with genuine concern. \"Do you think the statue will be too small?\"\n\n\"No, it's the 'striding triumphantly over the broken bodies of the vanquished' bit. People generally don't like having their noses rubbed in their ill fortune by the person who caused it.\"\n\nEmperor Zhark snorted. \"That's the problem with inferiors,\" he said at last. \"No sense of humor.\"\n\nAnd he lapsed into a sullen silence, took an old school exercise book from within his robes, licked a pencil stub and started to write.\n\nI sat down next to him.\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"My speech. The Thargoids graciously accepted me as god-emperor of their star system, and I thought it might be nice to say a few words\u2014sort of thank them, really, for their kindness\u2014but underscore the humility with veiled threats of mass extermination if they step out of line.\"\n\n\"How does it begin?\"\n\nZhark read from his notes. \"'Dear Worthless Peons\u2014I pity you your irrelevance.' What do you think?\"\n\n\"Well, it's definitely to the point,\" I admitted. \"How are things on the Holmes case?\"\n\n\"We've been trying to get into the series all morning,\" said Zhark, laying his modest acceptance speech aside for a moment and taking a spoonful of the pie that had been placed in front of him, \"but to no avail. I heard you got suspended. What was that about?\"\n\nI told him about the piano and Emma, and he whistled low.\n\n\"Tricky. But I shouldn't sweat it. I saw Bradshaw writing up the duty rosters for next week, and you're still on them. One moment.\" He waved a carefully manicured hand at the waitress and said, \"Sugar on the table, my girl, or I'll have you, your family and all your descendants put to death.\"\n\nThe waitress bobbed politely, ignored his manner entirely and said, \"If you killed me, Your Imperial Mightiness, I wouldn't have any descendants, now would I?\"\n\n\"Yes, well, obviously I meant the ones yet living, girl.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she said. \"Just so we're clear on the matter,\" and with a cute bob she was gone.\n\n\"I keep on having trouble with that waitress,\" muttered Zhark after she had departed. \"Do you think she was\u2026mocking me?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, hiding a smile, \"I think she was terrified of you.\"\n\n\"Has anyone thought of redirecting the Sherlock Holmes throughput feeds from the Outland?\" I asked. \"With a well-positioned Textual Sieve, we could bounce the series to a Storycode Engine at TGC and rewrite the ending with the Holmes and Watson from The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. It will hold things together long enough to give us time to effect a permanent answer.\"\n\n\"But where exactly to put the sieve?\" inquired Zhark, not unreasonably.\n\n\"What exactly is a Textual Sieve?\" asked Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.\n\n\"It's never fully explained,\" I replied.\n\nThe waitress returned with the sugar.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Zhark kindly. \"I have decided to\u2026spare your family.\"\n\n\"Your Highness is overly generous,\" replied the waitress, humoring him. \"Perhaps you could just torture one of us\u2014my younger brother, for instance?\"\n\n\"No, my mind is made up. You're to be spared. Now begone or I will\u2014Oh, no. You don't trick me that way. Begone or I will never torture your family.\"\n\nThe waitress bobbed again, thanked him and was gone.\n\n\"Perky, that one, isn't she?\" said Zhark, staring after her. \"Do you think I should make her my wife?\"\n\n\"You're considering getting married?\" asked Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, almost scorching a collar in her surprise.\n\n\"I think it's high time that I did,\" he said. \"Slaughtering peaceful civilizations on a whim is a lot more fun when you've got someone to do it with.\"\n\n\"Does your mother know about this?\" I asked, fully aware of the power that the Dowager Empress Zharkina IV wielded in his books. Emperor Zhark might have been the embodiment of terror across innumerable star systems, but he lived with his mum\u2014and if the rumors were correct, she still insisted on bathing him.\n\n\"Well, she doesn't know yet,\" he replied defensively. \"But I'm big enough to make my own decisions, you know.\"\n\nMrs. Tiggy-Winkle and I exchanged knowing looks. Nothing happened in the imperial palace without the empress's agreement.\n\nZhark chewed for a moment, winced and then swallowed with a look of utter disgust on his face. He turned to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.\n\n\"I think you've got my pie.\"\n\n\"Have I?\" she replied offhandedly. \"Now you come to mention it, I thought these slugs tasted sort of funny.\"\n\nThey swapped pies and continued eating.\n\n\"Ms. Next?\"\n\nI looked up. A confident middle-aged woman was standing next to the table. She had starburst wrinkles around the eyes and graying brown hair, a chicken-pox scar above her left brow, and asymmetric dimples. She was a well-realized character but I didn't recognize her\u2014at least not at first.\n\n\"Can I help?\" I asked.\n\n\"I'm looking for the Jurisfiction agent named Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"That's me.\"\n\nOur visitor seemed relieved at this and allowed herself a smile. \"Pleased to meet you. My name's Dr. Temperance Brennan.\"\n\nI knew who she was, of course: the heroine of her own genre\u2014that of the forensic anthropologist.\n\n\"Very pleased to meet you,\" I said, rising to shake her hand. \"Perhaps you'd care to join us?\"\n\n\"Thank you, I shall.\"\n\n\"This is Emperor Zhark,\" I said, \"and the one with the spines is Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.\"\n\n\"Hello,\" said Zhark, sizing her up for matrimony as he shook her hand. \"How would you like the power of life or death over a billion godless heathens?\"\n\nShe paused for a moment and raised an eyebrow. \"Montreal suits me just fine.\"\n\nShe shook Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's claw, and they exchanged a few pleasantries over the correct method to wash linens. I ordered her some coffee, and after I'd asked about her Outlander book sales, which were impressively large compared to mine, she admitted to me that this wasn't a social call.\n\n\"I've got an understudy covering for me, so I'll come straight to the point,\" she said, looking with apparent professional interest at Zhark's high cheekbones. \"Someone's trying to kill me.\"\n\n\"You and I have much in common, Dr. Brennan,\" I replied. \"When did this happen?\"\n\n\"Call me Tempe. Have you read my latest adventure?\"\n\n\"Grave Secrets? Of course.\"\n\n\"Near the end I'm captured after being slipped a Mickey Finn. I talk my way out of it, and the bad guy kills himself.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"Thirty-two readings ago, I was drugged for real and nearly didn't make it. It was all I could do to stay conscious long enough to keep the book on its tracks. I'm first-person narrative so everything's up to me.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" I murmured, \"that first-person thing can be a drag. Did you report it to Text Grand Central?\"\n\nShe pushed the hair away from her face and said, \"Naturally. But since I kept the show going, it was never logged as a textual anomaly, so according to TGC there's no crime. You know what they told me? 'Come back when you're dead, and then we can do something.'\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" I said, drumming my fingers on the desk. \"Who do you think is behind it?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"No one in the book. We're all on very good terms.\"\n\n\"Any skeletons in the closet? If you'll excuse the expression.\"\n\n\"Plenty. In Crime there's always at least one seriously bad guy to deal with per book\u2014sometimes more.\"\n\n\"Narratively speaking, that's how it appears,\" I pointed out. \"But with you dead, everyone else in your books would become redundant overnight\u2014and with the possibility of erasure looming over them, your former enemies actually have some of the best reasons to keep you alive.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said Dr. Brenann thoughtfully, \"I hadn't thought of it that way.\"\n\n\"The most likely person to want to kill you is someone outside your book\u2014any thoughts?\"\n\n\"I don't know anyone outside my books\u2014except Kathy and Kerry, of course.\"\n\n\"It won't be them. Leave it with me,\" I said after a moment's pause, \"and I'll see what I can do. Just keep your eyes and ears open, yes?\"\n\nDr. Brennan smiled and thanked me, shook my hand again, said goodbye to Zhark and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and was gone, muttering that she had to relieve the substandard and decidedly bone-idle understudy who was standing in for her.\n\n\"What was that all about?\" asked Zhark.\n\n\"No idea,\" I replied. \"It's kind of flattering that people bring their problems to me. I just wish there were another Thursday to deal with it.\"\n\n\"I thought there was.\"\n\n\"Don't even joke about it, Emperor.\"\n\nThere was a crackle in the air, and Commander Bradshaw suddenly appeared just next to us. Zhark and Tiggy-Winkle looked guilty all of a sudden, and the hedgepig washerwoman made a vain attempt to hide the ironing she was doing.\n\n\"I thought I would find you here,\" he said, mustache all atwitch, as it was when he was a bit peeved. \"That wouldn't be moonlighting, would it, Agent Tiggy-Winkle?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" she replied. \"I spend so much time at Jurisfiction I can hardly get through the ironing I need to do for my own book!\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Bradshaw slowly, turning to me. \"I thought I'd find you here, too. I have a job that only you can handle.\"\n\n\"I thought I was suspended?\"\n\nHe passed me my badge. \"The suspension was purely for the CofG's benefit. The disciplinary paperwork was accidentally eaten by snails. Most perplexing.\"\n\nI smiled. \"What's up?\"\n\n\"A matter of great delicacy. There were a few minor textual irregularities in\u2026the Thursday books.\"\n\n\"Which ones?\" I asked, suddenly worried that Thursday5 might have taken her failure to heart.\n\n\"The first four. Since you know them quite well and no one else wants to touch them or her with a barge pole, I thought you might want to check it out.\"\n\n\"What sorts of irregularities?\"\n\n\"Small ones,\" said Bradshaw, handing me a sheet of paper. \"Nothing you'd notice from the Outland unless you were a committed fan. I'm thinking it might be the early stage of a breakdown.\"\n\nHe didn't mean a breakdown in the Outlander sense. In the BookWorld a breakdown meant an internal collapse of the character's pattern of reason\u2014the rules that made one predictable and understandable. Some, like Lucy Deane, collapsed spontaneously and with an annoying regularity; others just crumbled slowly from within, usually as a result of irreconcilable conflicts within their character. In either case, replacement by a fully trained-up generic was the only option. Of course, it might be nothing and very possible that Thursday1\u20134 was just angry about being fired and venting her spleen on the cocharacters in the series.\n\n\"I'll check her out.\"\n\n\"Good,\" said Bradshaw, turning to Zhark and Tiggy-Winkle. \"And you two\u2014I want you all geared up and ready to try to get into 'The Speckled Band' by way of 'The Disintegrator Ray' by fourteen hundred hours.\"\n\nBradshaw looked at his clipboard and then vanished. We all stood up.\n\n\"Do you want us to come with you?\" asked Zhark. \"Strictly speaking, your checking up on Thursday1\u20134 is a conflict-of-interest transgression.\"\n\n\"I'll be fine,\" I said, and the pair of them wished me well and vanished, like Bradshaw, into thin air."
            },
            {
                "title": "Thursday Next",
                "text": "I was only vaguely consulted when the first four of the Thursday Next books were constructed. I was asked about my car, my house, and I even lent them a photo album (which I never got back). I was also introduced to the bland and faceless generic who would eventually become Thursday1\u20134. The rest was created from newspaper reports and just plucked from the air. If I'd cared more about how it all was going to turn out, perhaps I would have given them more time.\n\nAfter another fruitless argument with the dispatcher at TransGenre Taxis, who told me they had two drivers off sick and it wasn't their fault but they would \"see what could be done,\" I took the elevator down to the sixth floor of the Great Library and walked to the section of shelving that carried all five of the Thursday books, from The Eyre Affair all the way through to The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. There was every edition, too\u2014from publisher's proof to hardback, large print and mass-market paperback. I picked up a copy of The Eyre Affair and looked carefully for a way in. I knew that the book was first-person narrative, and having a second me clearly visible to readers would be wildly confusing\u2014if the book wasn't confusing enough already. I soon found what I was looking for: a time lapse of six weeks after Landen's death near the beginning of the book. I scanned the page for the correct place, and, using an oblique, nonappearing-entry method taught to me by Miss Havisham, I slipped unseen into the end of chapter one.\n\nI arrived in the written Swindon just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, and I was standing opposite our house in the Old Town. Or at least it was the remains of our house. The fire had just been put out, and the building was now a blackened ruin, the still-hot timbers steaming as they were doused with water. Through the twinkling of blue and red emergency lights, I could see a small figure sitting in the back of an ambulance, a blanket draped across her shoulders. The legal necessity of removing Landen from the series was actually a blessing in disguise for the publishers. It freed up their Thursday romantically and also gave a reason for her psychotic personality. Boy, was this book ever crap.\n\nI waited in the crowd for a moment until I could sense that the chapter was over, then approached Thursday1\u20134, who had her back to me and was talking to a badly realized version of Bowden, who in this book was known by the legally unactionable \"Crowden Babel.\"\n\n\"Good evening,\" I said, and Thursday jumped as though stuck with a cattle prod.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" she asked without turning around.\n\n\"Text Grand Central saw a few wrinkles in the narrative, and you're too unpleasant for anyone other than me to come and have a look.\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" she said, \"everything's fine. It's probably a Storycode Engine on the fritz. A buildup of irony on the dialogue injectors or something.\"\n\nShe seemed jittery but still didn't want to turn and look at me straight on.\n\n\"You sure?\"\n\n\"Of course I'm sure\u2014do you think I don't know my own book? I'm afraid I must go. I've got to run through some lines with the replacement Hades.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" I said, and grabbed her arm. I pulled her around to face\u2026someone else entirely. It wasn't Thursday1\u20134. It was a woman with the same coloring and build, clothes and general appearance, but it wasn't her.\n\n\"Who the hell are you?\" I demanded.\n\nShe sighed heavily and shrugged. \"I'm\u2026I'm\u2026a character understudy.\"\n\n\"I can see that. Do you have a name?\"\n\n\"Alice-PON-24330,\" she replied resignedly.\n\n\"This series isn't up for maintenance for years. What are you doing here?\"\n\nShe bit her lip, looked away and shifted her weight uneasily. \"If she finds I've talked\u2026well, she has a temper.\"\n\n\"And I don't?\"\n\nShe said nothing. I turned to Crowden Babel. \"Where is she?\"\n\nHe rubbed his face but said nothing. It seemed I was the only person not frightened by Thursday1\u20134.\n\n\"Listen,\" I said to Babel, pointing at Alice-PON-24330, \"she's just an understudy and is like a phone number\u2014replaceable. You're in every book and have a lot more to lose. Now, either you talk to me right this minute and it goes no further or we turn you over to Jurisfiction and thirty tons of prime-quality shit is going to descend on you from a very great height.\"\n\nBabel scratched the back of his head. \"She does this every now and then. She thinks the series is too small for her.\"\n\nBabel and the ersatz Thursday glanced nervous ly at each other. There was something else going on. This wasn't just a simple substitution so Thursday1\u20134 could have a break.\n\n\"Somebody better start talking, or you'll discover where she gets her temper from. Now, where has she gone?\"\n\nBabel looked nervously around. \"She came back furious. Said you'd fired her on false pretenses and she wanted to get some\u2026serious payback.\"\n\n\"What sort of payback?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"If you're lying to me!\"\n\n\"I swear on the life of the Great Panjan\u2014\"\n\n\"I know where she is,\" said the ersatz Thursday in a quiet voice. \"What the hell. When she discovers I've talked to you, I'll be dead anyway. She's out\u2026in the real world!\"\n\nThis was serious. Substitution and illegal pagerunning were one thing, but crossing over to the real world was quite another. I could legally erase her on sight, and the way I felt right now, I\u2014\n\nMy thoughts were interrupted because both Crowden and the understudy had looked anxiously toward the burned-out shell of the house. I suddenly had a very nasty thought, and my insides changed to lead. I could barely say the word, but I did:\n\n\"Landen?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the understudy in a soft voice. \"She wanted to know what it was\u2026to love.\"\n\nI felt anger well up inside me. I pulled out my TravelBook and read as I walked toward the house. As I did so, the evening light brightened, the emergency vehicles faded back into fiction, and the house, which burned to a husk in The Eyre Affair, was suddenly perfect again as I moved back into the real world. My mouth felt dry after the jump, and I could feel a headache coming on. I broke into a panicky sweat and dumped my jacket and bag in the front garden but kept my pistol and slipped a spare eraserhead into my back pocket. I very quietly stepped up to the front door and silently slipped the key into the lock.\n\nThe house was silent aside from the thumping of my heart, which in my heightened state of anxiety was almost deafening. I had planned to lie in wait for her, but a glance down at the hall table made me reappraise the situation. My house keys and distinctive grammasite key ring were already lying where I left them\u2014but I still had mine in my hand. I felt powerfully thirsty, too, and was badly dehydrated\u2014the most annoying side effect of my return to the Outland. I looked through to the kitchen and could see a pitcher of half-finished juice on the kitchen drainer. If I didn't drink something soon, I'd pass out. On the other hand, Thursday1\u20134 was somewhere in the house, waiting for Landen or rummaging in our sock drawer or something. I silently crept along the downstairs hallway, checked the front room, then went through to the dining room beyond and from there to the kitchen. The only thing I noticed out of place was a book of family holiday snapshots open on the coffee table. I moved into the kitchen and was about to take a swig of juice straight from the pitcher when I heard a noise that turned my blood to ice. I dropped the pitcher, which shattered on the kitchen floor with a concussion that echoed around the house.\n\nPickwick woke up in her basket and started plocking at everything in sight until she saw who it was and went back to sleep. I heard voices upstairs and the sound of footsteps padding across the bedroom floor. I held my pistol at arm's length and walked slowly down the hall to the stairs. The sound that had made me drop the pitcher was Landen, but it was the sort of sound that only I ever heard him make\u2014something that was for me and me alone.\n\nI rounded the newel post and looked up. Almost immediately Thursday1\u20134 stepped onto the landing, completely naked and holding her automatic. Fictional she might have been, but out here she was as deadly as any real person. We stared at each other for a moment, and she fired. I felt her shot whine past me and embed itself in the doorframe. At almost exactly the same time, I fired my pistol. There was a low thud, and the air wobbled as though momentarily seen through a milk bottle. She jumped back into the bedroom as the wide spread of the eraserhead hit harmlessly on the walls and stairs\u2014the charge only affected anything textual. She'd know my weapon was a single shot, so I turned on my heels and ran back through the front room, breaking the pistol open to reload. The cartridge ejected with a soft thwup, and I yanked the spare out of my back pocket and pushed it into the breech. There was a detonation and another whine of a near miss as I jumped across the breakfast table and snapped the pistol shut with a flick of my wrist. I pulled the heavy oak kitchen table to shield me, and three shots smashed into the wood. I heard the sound of footsteps running away and rose to fire at her retreating form. The dull thud of the eraserhead echoed around the room, and there was a mild hiss as it struck its mark. I heard the front door open, I got up\u2014slightly too quickly\u2014and the room went squiffy. I staggered to the sink and drank from the running tap and then, still feeling light-headed but tolerably alert, stumbled up the hall to the open front door. There was a small scattering of fine text on the doorstep and more leading out into the front garden, where I saw her automatic lying on the garden path. I turned and yelled upstairs, \"Stay where you are, Land!\" and then followed the trail of text to the front gate, where there was a random sprinkling of letters. I cursed. There wasn't enough here to be fatal\u2014I'd probably just clipped her and caused a small part of her to unravel. It was no big deal. She could have another body part written exclusively for her down in the Well.\n\nMy shoulder bag was still where I'd left it in the front garden, and I rummaged inside for a spare eraserhead. I slipped the shiny cartridge into the barrel, then stopped. Something was wrong. I searched the bag more frantically, then all around the area nearby, but found only a light smattering of text. The wounded Thursday1\u20134 had been here\u2014and taken my TravelBook. I looked around, closed the pistol and followed the small trail of letters to the garden gate, where they ended abruptly. I gazed out into the empty street. Nothing. She had jumped out, back to where she belonged\u2014and with my TravelBook. My TravelBook.\n\nI wiped the sweat from my brow and muttered, \"Shit-shit-shit-SHIT.\"\n\nI turned and ran back to the house but then stopped as I suddenly had a series of terrible thoughts. Thursday1\u20134's adventures ranged across several years, so she wasn't particularly age-specific. Landen couldn't know that it was not me but my fictional counterpart he'd just made love to. I didn't bear him any malice\u2014I mean, it wasn't as if he'd slept with another woman or anything. But because he knew nothing about Jurisfiction and it was better for our relationship that he never knew, there was only one course of action I could take.\n\n\"Hang on, Land!\" I yelled upstairs. \"I'm okay. Just stay where you are.\"\n\n\"Why?\" he yelled back.\n\n\"Just do as I ask, sweetheart.\"\n\nI grabbed the dustpan and brush and hurriedly swept up the text that littered the front step and the path, and when I heard the distant wail of the police sirens, I went back indoors, took off all my clothes, stashed them behind the sofa and ran upstairs.\n\n\"What's going on?\" asked Land, who had just gotten his leg and trousers on. I wrapped myself in a robe but couldn't look at him and just sat at the dressing table, clenching and unclenching my fists to try to control the violent thoughts. Then I realized: After what she'd done, I could think about wringing her badly written neck as much as I wanted. I was a woman wronged. Dangerously violent thoughts were allowed. I'd get her for this, but I was in no hurry. She had nowhere to go. I knew exactly where I could find her.\n\n\"Nothing's going on,\" I said in a quiet voice. \"Everything's fine.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Bound to the Outland",
                "text": "Although we never really saw eye to eye with the local police force when we were SpecOps, we always used to help them out if they got into a jam, and the young ones never forgot it. Hard not to, really, when some lunatic plucks you from the jaws of a werewolf or something. Because of this I was still granted favors in return. Not parking tickets, unfortunately\u2014just the big stuff.\n\nBy the time the police arrived, I had regained control of myself. I picked up Thursday1\u20134's clothes with a disdainful finger and thumb and deposited them in the laundry basket, in which I would take them out to burn them later that evening. I went through the pockets of her jacket but found only an empty wallet and a few coins. I knew I was going to have to admit to owning her automatic, so I had to hope they would take my previous exemplary conduct into account before citing me on any illegal-firearms charges. While I explained it all to the cops, Landen called Joffy's partner, Miles, to get him to pick up the girls from school, and we eventually tracked Friday down at Mum's, where he'd been discussing with his aunt the merits of the guitar riff on the second track of Hosing the Dolly.\n\n\"So let me get this straight,\" said Detective Inspector Jamison an hour later, thumbing through his notes. \"You were both upstairs\u2026er, naked when you heard a noise. You, Mrs. Parke-Laine-Next, went downstairs to investigate with an illegally held Glock nine-millimeter. You saw this man whom you identified as 'Felix8,' an associate of the deceased Acheron Hades, whom you last met sixteen years ago. He was armed, and you fired at him once when he was standing at the door, once when he was running to the kitchen, then three times as he hid behind the kitchen table. He then made his escape from the house without firing a single shot. Is that correct?\"\n\n\"Quite correct, Officer.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" he said, and his sergeant whispered something in his ear and handed him a fax. Jamison looked at it, then at me. \"You're sure it was Felix8?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014why?\"\n\nHe placed the fax on the table and slid it across.\n\n\"The body of missing father of two Danny Chance was discovered in a shallow grave in the Savernake Forest three years ago. It was skeletal by then and only identifiable by his dental records.\"\n\n\"That's not possible,\" I murmured, with good reason. Even if he hadn't been in the house this afternoon, I'd certainly seen him yesterday.\n\n\"I know that Hades and Felix are tied up in all manner of weird shit, so I'm not going to insist you didn't see him, but I thought you should know this.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Officer,\" I muttered, reading through the report, which was unequivocal; it even said the bones had been in the ground a good ten years. Aornis had been right\u2014Cocytus had killed him like a stray dog.\n\nInspector Jamison turned to Landen. \"Mr. Parke-Laine? May we speak to you now?\"\n\nThey finally left at nine in the evening and we called Miles to bring the kids back. We'd been given the all-clear to tidy up, and to be honest it didn't sound as though they were gong to make a big deal of it. It didn't look as if they would even bother to prosecute; they knew about Felix8\u2014everyone did. He, Hades and Aornis were as much a part of popular culture as Robin Hood. And that was it. They took the Glock nine-millimeter, privately told me that it was an honor to meet me and that I could expect their report to be lost before being passed to the prosecutor, and then they were gone.\n\n\"Darling?\" said Landen as soon as the kids had been safely returned home.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Something's bothering you.\"\n\n\"You mean aside from having an amoral lunatic who died fifteen years ago try to kill us?\"\n\n\"Yes. There's something else on your mind.\"\n\nDamn. Found out. Lucky I had several things on my mind I could call upon.\n\n\"I went to visit Aornis.\"\n\n\"You did? Why?\"\n\n\"It was about Felix8. I should have told you: He was hanging around the house yesterday. Millon spotted him, and Spike nabbed him\u2014but he escaped. I thought Aornis might have an idea why he's suddenly emerged after all these years.\"\n\n\"Did Aornis\u2026say anything about us?\" asked Landen. \"Friday, Me, Tuesday, Jenny?\"\n\n\"She asked how everyone was, but only in an ironic way. I don't think she was concerned in the least\u2014quite the opposite.\"\n\n\"Did she say anything else?\"\n\nI turned to look at him, and he was gazing at me with such concern that I rested a hand on his cheek.\n\n\"Sweetheart\u2014what's the matter? She can't harm us any longer.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Landen with a sigh, \"she can't. I just wondered if she said anything\u2014anything at all. Even if you remembered it later.\"\n\nI frowned. Landen knew about Aornis's powers because I'd told him, but his specific interest seemed somehow unwarranted.\n\n\"Yeah. She said that she was going to bust out with the help of someone 'on the outside.'\"\n\nHe took my hands in his and stared into my eyes. \"Thursday\u2014sweetheart\u2014promise me something?\"\n\nI laughed at his dramatic earnestness but stopped when I saw he was serious.\n\n\"Two minds with but a single thought,\" I told him, \"two hearts that beat as one.\"\n\n\"That was good. Who said that?\"\n\n\"Mycroft.\"\n\n\"Ah! Well, here it is: Don't let Aornis out.\"\n\n\"Why should I want to do that?\"\n\n\"Trust me, darling. Even if you forget your own name, remember this: Don't let Aornis out.\"\n\n\"Babes\u2014\"\n\nBut he rested his finger on my lips, and I was quiet. Aornis was the least of my worries. Without my TravelBook I was marooned in the Outland.\n\nWe had dinner late. Even Friday was vaguely impressed by the three bullet holes in the table. They were so close they almost looked like one.\n\nWhen he saw them, he said, \"Nice grouping, Mum.\"\n\n\"Firearms are no joking matter, young man.\"\n\n\"That's our Thursday,\" said Landen with a smile. \"When she shoots up our furniture, she does as little damage as possible.\"\n\nI looked at them all and laughed. It was an emotional release, and tears sprang to my eyes. I helped myself to more salad and regarded Friday. There was still the possibility of his replacement by the-Friday-that-could-have-been hanging over him. The thing was, I couldn't do anything about it. There's never anywhere to hide from the ChronoGuard. But the other Friday had told me I had forty-eight hours until they might attempt such a thing, and that wasn't up until midmorning the day after tomorrow.\n\n\"Fri,\" I said, \"have you thought any more about the time industry?\"\n\n\"Lots,\" he said, \"and the answer's still no.\"\n\nLanden and I exchanged looks.\n\n\"Have you ever wondered,\" remarked Friday in a languid monotone from behind a curtain of oily hair, \"how nostalgia isn't what it used to be?\"\n\nI smiled. Dopey witticisms at least showed he was trying to be clever, even if for the greater part of the day he was asleep.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.\"\n\n\"I'm serious,\" he said, mildly annoyed.\n\n\"Sorry!\" I replied. \"It's just difficult to know what you're thinking when I can't see your face. I might as well converse to the side of a yak.\"\n\nHe parted his hair so I could see his eyes. He looked a lot like his father did at that age. Not that I knew him then, of course, but from photographs.\n\n\"Nostalgia used to have a minimum twenty years before it kicked in,\" he said in all seriousness, \"but now it's getting shorter and shorter. By the late eighties, people were doing seventies stuff, but by the mid-nineties the eighties-revival thing was in full swing. It's now 2002, and already people are talking about the nineties\u2014soon nostalgia will catch up with the present and we won't have any need for it.\"\n\n\"Good thing, too, if you ask me,\" I said. \"I got rid of all my seventies rubbish as soon as I could and never regretted it for a second.\"\n\nThere was an indignant plock from Pickwick.\n\n\"Present company excepted.\"\n\n\"I think the seventies are underrated,\" said Landen. \"Admittedly, fashion wasn't terrific, but there's been no better decade for sitcoms.\"\n\n\"Where's Jenny?\"\n\n\"I took her dinner up to her,\" said Friday. \"She said she needed to do her homework.\"\n\nI frowned as I thought of something, but Landen clapped his hands together and said, \"Oh, yes! Did you hear that the British bobsled team has been disqualified for using the banned force 'gravity' to enhance performance?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Apparently so. And it transpires that the illegal use of gravity to boost speed is endemic within most downhill winter sports.\"\n\n\"I wondered why they managed to go so fast,\" I replied thoughtfully.\n\nMuch later that night, when the lights were out, I was staring at the glow of the streetlamps on the ceiling and thinking about Thursday1\u20134 and what I'd do to her when I caught her. It wasn't terribly pleasant.\n\n\"Land?\" I whispered in the darkness.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"That time we\u2026made love today.\"\n\n\"What about it?\"\n\n\"I was just thinking\u2014how did you rate it? Y'know, on a one-to-ten?\"\n\n\"Truthfully?\"\n\n\"Truthfully.\"\n\n\"You won't be pissed off at me?\"\n\n\"Promise.\"\n\nThere was a pause. I held my breath.\n\n\"We've had better. Much better. In fact, I thought you were pretty terrible.\"\n\nI hugged him. At least there was one piece of good news today."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Discreet Charm of the Outland",
                "text": "The real charm of the Outland was the richness of detail and the texture. In the BookWorld a pig is generally just pink and goes oink. Because of this, most fictional pigs are simply a uniform flesh color without any of the tough bristles and innumerable scabs and skin abrasions, shit and dirt that makes a pig a pig. And it's not just pigs. A carrot is simply a rod of orange. Sometimes living in the BookWorld is like living in Legoland.\n\nThe stupidity surplus had been beaten into second place by the news that the militant wing of the no-choice movement had been causing trouble in Manchester. Windows were broken, cars overturned, and there were at least a dozen arrests. With a nation driven by the concept of choice, a growing faction of citizens who thought life was simpler when options were limited had banded themselves together into what they called the \"no-choicers\" and demanded the choice to have no choice. Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste condemned the violence but explained that the choice of choice over \"just better services\" was something the previous administration had chosen and was thus itself a no-choice principle for the current administration. Alfredo Traficcone, MP, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, was quick to jump on the bandwagon, proclaiming that it was the inalienable right of all citizens to have the chice over whether they have choice or not. The no-choicers had suggested that there should be a referendum to settle the matter once and for all, something that the opposition \"choice\" faction had no option but to agree with. More sinisterly, the militant wing known only as NOPTION was keen to go further and demanded that there should be only one option on the ballot paper\u2014the no-choice one.\n\nIt was eight-thirty, and the girls had already gone to school.\n\n\"Jenny didn't eat her toast again,\" I said, setting the plate with its uneaten contents next to the sink. \"That girl hardly eats a thing.\"\n\n\"Leave it outside Friday's door,\" said Landen. \"He can have it for lunch when he gets up\u2014if he gets up.\"\n\nThe front doorbell had rung, and I checked on who it might be through the front-room windows before opening the door to reveal\u2026Friday. The other Friday.\n\n\"Hello!\" I said cheerily. \"Would you like to come in?\"\n\n\"I'm in a bit of a hurry,\" he replied. \"I just wondered whether you'd thought about my offer of replacement yesterday. Hi, Dad!\"\n\nLanden had joined us at the door. \"Hello, son.\"\n\n\"This,\" I said by way of introduction, \"is the Friday I was telling you about\u2014the one we were supposed to have.\"\n\n\"At your ser vice,\" said Friday politely. \"And your answer? I'm sorry to push you on this, but time travel has still to be invented and we have to look very carefully at our options.\"\n\nLanden and I glanced at each other. We'd already made up our mind.\n\n\"The answer's no, Sweetpea. We're going to keep our Friday.\"\n\nFriday's face fell, and he glared at us. \"This is so typical of you. Here I am a respected member of the ChronoGuard, and you're still treating me like I'm a kid!\"\n\n\"Friday!\"\n\n\"How stupid can you both be? The history of the world hangs in the balance, and all you can do is worry about your lazy shitbag of a son.\"\n\n\"You talk like that to your mother and you can go to your room.\"\n\n\"He is in his room, Land.\"\n\n\"Right. Well\u2026you know what I mean.\"\n\nFriday snorted, glared at us both, told me that I really shouldn't call him \"Sweetpea\" anymore and walked off, slamming the garden gate behind him.\n\nI turned to Landen. \"Are we doing the right thing?\"\n\n\"Friday told us to dissuade him from joining the ChronoGuard, and that's what we're doing.\"\n\nI narrowed my eyes, trying to remember.\n\n\"He did? When?\"\n\n\"At our wedding bash? When Lavoisier turned up looking for your father?\"\n\n\"Shit,\" I said, suddenly remembering. Lavoisier was my least favorite ChronoGuard operative, and on that occasion he had a partner with him\u2014a lad of about twentyfive who'd looked vaguely familiar. We figured it out several years later. It was Friday himself, and his advice to us was unequivocal: \"If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try to dissuade him.\" Perhaps it wasn't just a complaint\u2014perhaps it had been\u2026a warning.\n\nLanden placed a hand on my waist and said, \"I think we should follow his best advice and see where it leaves us.\"\n\n\"And the End of Time?\"\n\n\"Didn't your father say that the world was always five minutes from total annihilation? Besides, it's not until Friday evening. It'll work itself out.\"\n\nI took the tram into work and was so deep in thought I missed my stop and had to walk back from MycroTech. Without my TravelBook I was effectively stuck in the real world, but instead of feeling a sense of profound loss as I had expected, I felt something more akin to relief. In my final day as the LBOCS, I had scotched any chance of book interactivity or the preemptive strike on Speedy Muffler and the ramshackle Racy Novel, and the only worrying loose end was dealing with slutty bitchface Thursday1\u20134. That was if she hadn't been erased on sight for making an unauthorized trip to the Outland. Well, I could always hope. Jurisfiction had gotten on without me for centuries and would doubtless continue to do so. There was another big plus point, too: I wasn't lying to Landen quite as much. Okay, I still did a bit of SpecOps work, but at least this way I could downgrade my fibs from \"outrageous\" to a more manageable \"whopping.\" All of a sudden, I felt really quite happy\u2014and I didn't often feel that way. If there hadn't been a major problem with Acme's overdraft and the potential for a devastating chronoclasm in two and a half days, everything might be just perfect.\n\n\"You look happy,\" said Bowden as I walked into the office at Acme.\n\n\"Aren't I always?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, \"hardly at all.\"\n\n\"Well, this is the new me. Have you noticed how much the birds are singing this morning?\"\n\n\"They always sing like that.\"\n\n\"Then\u2026the sky is always that blue, yes?\"\n\n\"Yes. May I ask what's brought on this sudden change?\"\n\n\"The BookWorld. I've stopped going there. It's over.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Bowden, \"that's excellent news!\"\n\n\"It is, isn't it? More time for Landen and the kids.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bowden, choosing his words carefully, \"I mean excellent news for Acme\u2014we might finally get rid of the backlog.\"\n\n\"Of undercover SpecOps work?\"\n\n\"Of carpets.\"\n\n\"You mean you can make a profit selling carpets?\" I asked, having never really given it a great deal of thought.\n\n\"Have you seen the order books? They're full. More work than we can handle. Everyone needs floor coverings, Thurs\u2014and if you can give some of your time to get these orders filled, then we won't need the extra cash from your illegal-cheese activities.\"\n\nHe handed me a clipboard.\n\n\"All these customers need to be contacted and given the best deal we can.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\n\"Just smile, chat, take the measurements, and I'll do the rest.\"\n\n\"Then you go.\"\n\n\"No, the big selling point for Acme is that Thursday Next\u2014the Z-4 celebrity Thursday Next\u2014comes and talks to you about your floor-covering needs. That's how we keep our heads above water. That's how we can support all these ex-SpecOps employees.\"\n\n\"C'mon,\" I said doubtfully, \"ex-celebrities don't do retail.\"\n\n\"After the disaster of the Eyre Affair movie, Lola Vavoom started a chain of builders' merchants.\"\n\n\"She did, didn't she?\"\n\nI took the clipboard and stared at the list. It was long. Business was good. But Bowden's attention was suddenly elsewhere.\n\n\"Is that who I think it is?\" he asked, looking toward the front of the store. I followed his gaze. Standing next to the cushioned-linoleum display was a man in a long dark coat. When he saw us watching him, he reached into his pocket and flashed a badge of some sort.\n\n\"Shit,\" I murmured under my breath. \"Flanker.\"\n\n\"He probably wants to buy a carpet,\" said Bowden with a heavy helping of misplaced optimism.\n\nCommander Flanker was our old nemesis from SO-1, the SpecOps department that policed other SpecOps departments. Flanker had adapted well to the disbanding of the ser vice. Before, he made life miserable for SpecOps agents he thought were corrupt, and now he made life miserable for ex-SpecOps agents he thought were corrupt. We had crossed swords many times in the past, but not since the disbandment. We regarded it as a good test of our discretion and secrecy that we had never seen him at Acme Carpets. Then again, perhaps we were kidding ourselves. He might know all about us but thought flushing out renegade operatives just wasn't worth his effort\u2014especially when we were actually doing a ser vice that no one else wanted to do.\n\nI walked quickly to the front of the shop.\n\n\"Good morning, Ms. Next,\" he said, glancing with ill-disguised mirth at my name embroidered above the company logo on my jacket. \"Literary Detective at SO-27 to carpet layer? Quite a fall, don't you think?\"\n\n\"It depends on your point of view,\" I said cheerfully. \"Everyone needs carpets\u2014but not everyone needs SpecOps. Is this a social call?\"\n\n\"My wife has read all your books.\"\n\n\"They're not my books,\" I told him in an exasperated tone. \"I had absolutely no say in their content\u2014for the first four anyway.\"\n\n\"Those were the ones she liked. The violent ones full of sex and death.\"\n\n\"Did you come all this way to give me your wife's analysis of my books?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, \"that was just the friendly breaking-the-ice part.\"\n\n\"It isn't working. Is there a floor covering I could interest you in?\"\n\n\"Axminster.\"\n\n\"We can certainly help you with that,\" I replied professionally. \"Living room or bedroom? We have some very hard-wearing wool/acrylic at extremely competitive prices\u2014and we've a special this week on underlayment and free installation.\"\n\n\"It was Axminster Purple I was referring to,\" he said slowly, staring at me intently. My heart jumped but I masked it well. Axminster Purple wasn't a carpet at all, of course, although to be honest there probably was an Axminster in purple, if I looked. No, he was referring to the semi-exotic cheese, one that I'd been trading in only a couple of days ago. Flanker showed me his badge. He was CEA\u2014the Cheese Enforcement Agency.\n\n\"You're not here for the carpets, are you?\"\n\n\"I know you have form for cheese smuggling, Next. There was a lump of Rhayder Speckled found beneath a Hispano-Suiza in '86, and you've been busted twice for possession since then. The second time you were caught with six kilos of Streaky Durham. You were lucky to be fined only for possession and not trading without a license.\"\n\n\"Did you come here to talk about my past misdemeanors?\"\n\n\"No. I've come to you for information. While cheese smuggling is illegal, it's considered a low priority. The CEA has always been a small department more interested in collecting duty than banging up harmless cheeseheads. That's all changed.\"\n\n\"It has?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" replied Flanker grimly. \"There's a new cheese on the block. Something powerful enough to make a user's head vanish in a ball of fire.\"\n\n\"That's a figure of speech for 'really powerful,' right?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Flanker with deadly seriousness. \"The victim's head really does vanish in a ball of fire. It's a killer, Next\u2014and addictive. It's apparently the finest and most powerful cheese ever designed.\"\n\nThis was worrying. I never regarded my cheese smuggling as anything more than harmless fun, cash for Acme and to supply something that should be legal anyway. If a cheese that I'd furnished had killed someone, I would face the music. Mind you, I'd tried most of what I'd flogged, and it was, after all, only cheese. Okay, so the taste of a particularly powerful cheese might render you unconscious or make your tongue numb for a week, but it never killed anyone\u2014until now.\n\n\"Does this cheese have a name?\" I asked, wondering if there'd been a bad batch of Machynlleth Wedi Marw.\n\n\"It only has a code name: X-14. Rumor says it's so powerful that it has to be kept chained to the floor. We managed to procure a half ounce. A technician dropped it by mistake, and this was the result.\"\n\nHe showed me a photograph of a smoking ruin.\n\n\"The remains of our central cheese-testing facility.\"\n\nHe put the photograph away and stared at me. Of course, I had seen some X-14. It'd been chained up in the back of Pryce's truck the night of the cheese buy. Owen had declined to even show it to me. I'd traded with him every month for over eight years, and I never thought he was the sort of person to knowingly peddle anything dangerous. He was like me: someone who just loved cheese. I wouldn't snitch on him, not yet\u2014not before I had more information.\n\n\"I don't know anything,\" I said at length, \"but I can make inquiries.\"\n\nFlanker seemed to be satisfied with this, handed me his card and said in a stony voice, \"I'll expect your call.\"\n\nHe turned and walked out of the store to a waiting Range Rover and drove off.\n\n\"Trouble for us?\" asked Bowden as soon as I returned.\n\n\"No,\" I replied thoughtfully, \"trouble for me.\"\n\nHe sighed. \"That's a relief.\"\n\nI took a deep breath and thought for a moment. Communications into the Socialist Republic of Wales were nonexistent\u2014when I wanted to contact Pryce, I had to use a shortwave wireless transmitter at prearranged times. There was nothing I could do for at least forty-eight hours.\n\n\"So,\" continued Bowden, handing me the clipboard with the list of people wanting quotes on it, \"how about some Acme Carpets stuff?\"\n\n\"What about SpecOps work?\" I asked. \"How's that looking?\"\n\n\"Stig's still on the case of the Diatrymas and has at least a half dozen outstanding chimeras to track down. Spike has a few biters on the books, and there's talk of another SEB over in Reading.\"\n\nIt was getting desperate. I loved Acme, but only insofar as it was excellent cover and I never actually had to do anything carpet-related.\n\n\"And us? The ex\u2013Literary Detectives?\"\n\n\"Still nothing, Thursday.\"\n\n\"What about Mrs. Mattock over in the Old Town? She still wants us to find her first editions, surely?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bowden. \"She called yesterday and said she was selling her books and replacing them with cable TV\u2014she wanted to watch En gland's Funniest ChainSaw Mishaps.\"\n\n\"And I felt so good just now.\"\n\n\"Face it,\" said Bowden sadly, \"books are finished. No one wants to invest the time in them anymore.\"\n\n\"I don't believe you,\" I replied, an optimist to the end. \"I reckon if we went over to the Booktastic! megastore, they'd tell us that books are still being sold hand over fist to hard-core story aficionados. In fact, I'll bet you that jar of cookies you've got hidden under your desk that you think no one knows about.\"\n\n\"And if they're not?\"\n\n\"I'll spend a day installing carpets and pressing flesh as the Acme Carpets celebrity saleswoman.\"\n\nIt was a deal. Acme was on a trading estate with about twenty or so outlets, but, unusually, it was the only carpet showroom\u2014we always suspected that Spike might have a hand in scaring off the competition, but we never saw him do it. Between us and Booktastic! there were three sporting-goods outlets all selling exactly the same goods at exactly the same price and, since they were three branches of the same store, with the same sales staff, too. The two discount electrical shops actually were competitors but still spookily managed to sell the same goods at the same price, although \"sell\" in this context actually meant \"serve as brief custodian between outlet and landfill.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" I said as we stood inside the entrance of Booktastic! and stared at the floor display units liberally stacked with CDs, DVDs, computer games, peripherals and special-interest magazines. \"I'm sure there was a book in here last time I came in. Excuse me?\"\n\nA shop assistant stopped and stared at us in a vacant sort of way.\n\n\"I was wondering if you had any books.\"\n\n\"Any what?\"\n\n\"Books. Y'know\u2014about so big and full of words arranged in a specific order to give the effect of reality?\"\n\n\"You mean DVDs?\"\n\n\"No, I mean books. They're kind of old-fashioned.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she said. \"What you mean are videotapes.\"\n\n\"No, what I mean are books.\"\n\nWe'd exhausted the sum total of her knowledge, so she went into default mode. \"You'll have to see the manager. She's in the coffee shop.\"\n\n\"Which one?\" I asked, looking around. There appeared to be three\u2014and this wasn't Booktastic!'s biggest outlet either.\n\n\"That one.\"\n\nWe thanked her and walked past boxed sets of obscure sixties TV series that were better\u2014and safer\u2014within the rose-tinted glow of memory.\n\n\"This is all so wrong,\" I said, beginning to think I might lose the bet. \"Less than five years ago, this place was all books and nothing else. What the hell's going on?\"\n\nWe arrived at the coffee shop and couldn't see the manager, until we noticed that they had opened a smaller branch of the coffee shop actually inside the existing one, and named it \"X-press\" or \"On-the-Go\" or \"More Profit\" or something.\n\n\"Thursday Next,\" I said to the manager, whose name we discovered was Dawn.\n\n\"A great plea sure,\" she replied. \"I did so love your books\u2014especially the ones with all the killing and gratuitous sex.\"\n\n\"I'm not really like that in real life,\" I replied. \"My friend Bowden and I wondered if you'd sold many books recently or, failing that, if you have any or know what one is?\"\n\n\"I'm sure there are a few somewhere,\" she said, and with a \"woman on a mission\" stride led us around most of the outlet. We walked past computer peripherals, stationery, chocolate, illuminated world globes and pretty gift boxes to put things in until we found a single rack of long-forgotten paperbacks on a shelf below the boxed set of Hale & Pace Outtakes Volumes 1\u20138 and The Very Best of Little and Large, which Bowden said was an oxymoron.\n\n\"Here we are!\" she said, wiping away the cobwebs and dust. \"I suppose we must have the full collection of every book ever written!\"\n\n\"Very nearly,\" I replied. \"Thanks for your help.\"\n\nAnd that was how I found myself in an Acme van with Spike, who had been coerced by Bowden to do an honest day's carpeting in exchange for a week's washing for him and Betty. I hadn't been out on the road with Spike for a number of years, either for the weird shit we used to do from time to time or for any carpet-related work, so he was particularly talkative. As we drove to our first installation, he told me about a recent assignment.\n\n\"\u2026so I says to him, 'Yo, Dracula! Have you come to watch the eclipse with us?' You should have seen his face. He was back in his coffin quicker than shit from a goose, and then when he heard us laughing, he came back out and said with his arms folded, 'I suppose you think that's funny?' and I said that I thought it was perhaps the funniest thing I'd seen for years, especially since he'd tripped and fallen headfirst into his coffin, and then he got all shitty and tried to bite me, so I rammed a sharpened stake through his heart and struck his head from his body.\"\n\nHe laughed and shook his head. \"Oh, man, did that crease us up.\"\n\n\"My amusement might have ended with the sharpened-stake thing,\" I confessed, \"but I like the idea of Dracula falling flat on his face.\"\n\n\"He did that a lot. Clumsy as hell. That biting-the-neck thing? He was going for the breast and missed. Now he pretends that's what he was aiming for all along. Jerk. Is this number eight?\"\n\nIt was. We parked, got out and knocked at the door.\n\n\"Major Pickles?\" said Spike as a very elderly man with a pleasant expression answered the door. He was small and slender and in good health. His snow white hair was immaculately combed, a pencil mustache graced his upper lip, and he was wearing a blazer with a regimental badge sewn on the breast.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Good morning. We're from Acme Carpets.\"\n\n\"Jolly good!\" said Major Pickles, who hobbled into the house and ushered us to a room that was devoid of any sort of floor covering. \"It's to go down there,\" he said, pointing at the floor.\n\n\"Right,\" said Spike, who I could tell was in a mischievous mood. \"My associate here will begin carpeting operations while I view the selection of tea and cookies on offer. Thursday\u2014the carpet.\"\n\nI sighed and surveyed the room, which was decorated with stripy green wallpaper and framed pictures of Major Pickles's notable war time achievements\u2014it looked as if he'd been quite a formidable soldier. It seemed a shame that he was in a rather miserable house in one of the more rundown areas of Swindon. On the plus side, at least he was getting a new carpet. I went to the van and brought in the toolbox, vacuum cleaner, grippers and a nail gun. I was just putting on my knee pads when Spike and Pickles came back into the room.\n\n\"Jaffa cakes!\" exclaimed Major Pickles, placing a tray on the windowsill. \"Mr. Stoker here said that you were allergic to anything without chocolate on it.\"\n\n\"You're very kind to indulge my partner's bizarre and somewhat disrespectful sense of humor,\" I said. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said in a kindly manner, \"I'll leave you to get along, then.\"\n\nAnd he tottered out the door. As soon as he had gone, Spike leaned close to me and said, \"Did you see that!?!\"\n\n\"See what?\"\n\nHe opened the door a crack and pointed at Pickles, who was limping down the corridor to the kitchen. \"His feet.\"\n\nI looked, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. There was a reason Major Pickles was hobbling\u2014just visible beneath the hems of his trouser legs were hooves.\n\n\"Right,\" said Spike as I looked up at him. \"The cloven one.\"\n\n\"Major Pickles is the devil?\"\n\n\"Nah!\" said Spike, sniggering as if I were a simpleton. \"If that was Mephistopheles, you'd really know about it. Firstly, the air would be thick with the choking stench of brimstone and decay, and we'd be knee-deep in the departed souls of the damned, writhing in perpetual agony as their bodies were repeatedly pierced with the barbed spears of the tormentors. And secondly, we'd never have got Jaffa cakes. Probably rich tea or graham crackers.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I hate them, too. But listen, if not Satan, then who?\"\n\nSpike closed the door carefully. \"A demi-devil or Junior demon or something, sent to precipitate mankind's fall into the eternal river of effluent that is the bowels of hell. Let's see if we can't get a make on this guy. Have a look in the backyard and tell me if you see anything unusual.\"\n\nI peered out the window as Spike looked around the room.\n\n\"I can see the old carpet piled up in the carport,\" I said, \"and an almost-brand-new washing machine.\"\n\n\"How does the carpet look?\"\n\n\"It seems perfect.\"\n\n\"Figures. Look here.\"\n\nHe pointed to an old cookie jar that was sitting on the mantelpiece. The lid was half off, and clearly visible inside was a wad of banknotes.\n\n\"Bingo!\" said Spike, drawing out the hefty wad. They were all fifty-pound notes\u2014easily a grand. \"This is demi-demon Raum, if I'm not mistaken. He tempts men to eternal damnation by the sin of theft.\"\n\n\"Come on!\" I said, mildly skeptical. \"If Lucifer has everyone that had stolen something, he'd have more souls than he'd know what to deal with.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" agreed Spike. \"The parameters of sin have become blurred over the years. A theft worthy of damnation has to be deceitful, cowardly and loathsome\u2014like from a charming and defenseless pensioner war veteran. So what Raum does is stash the real Major Pickles in a closet somewhere, assume his form, leaves the cash in plain sight, and some poor boob chances his luck. He counts his blessings, has a good few evenings out and forgets all about it until Judgment Day. And then\u2014shazam! He's having his eyeballs gouged out with a spoon. And then again. And again\u2026and again.\"\n\n\"I\u2026get the picture. So this Raum guy's a big deal, right?\"\n\n\"Nah\u2014pretty much a small-timer,\" said Spike, replacing the money. \"First sphere, tenth throne\u2014any lower and he'd be in the second hierarchy and confined to hell rather than doing the cushy number up here, harvesting souls for Lucifer and attempting to engineer the fall of man.\"\n\n\"Is there a lot of this about?\" I asked. \"Demons, I mean\u2014hanging around ready to tempt us?\"\n\nSpike shrugged. \"In Swindon? No. And there'll be one less if I can do anything about it.\"\n\nHe flipped open his cell phone and dialed a number, then pointed at the floor. \"You better get those grippers down if we're to finish by lunchtime. I'm kidding. He doesn't want a carpet; we're only here to be tempted\u2014remember all that stuff in the backyard? Hi, Betty? It's Dad. I've got a five-five in progress with a tenth-throner name of Raum. Will you have a look in Wheatley's and see how to cast him out? Thanks.\" He paused for a moment, looked at me and added, \"Perhaps it wasn't Felix8 at all. Perhaps he was\u2026Felix9. After all, the linking factor between the Felixes was only ever his face, yes?\"\n\n\"Good point,\" I said, wondering quite how Spike might be so relaxed about the whole demon thing that he could be thinking about the Felix problem at the same time.\n\n\"Betty?\" said Spike into his phone. \"I'm still here\u2026. Cold steel? No problem. Have you done your homework?\u2026Well, you'd better get started. One more thing: Bowden said he'd do the washing for us, so get all the curtains down\u2026. Love you, too. Bye.\"\n\nHe snapped his phone shut and looked around the room for something made of steel. He picked up the nail gun, muttered, \"Damn, galvanized\" then rummaged in the toolbox. The best he could find was a long screwdriver, but he rejected this because it was chrome-plated.\n\n\"Can't we just go away and deal with Raum later?\"\n\n\"Doesn't work like that,\" he said, peering out the window to see if there was anything steel within reach, which there wasn't. \"We deal with this clown right now or not at all.\"\n\nHe opened the door a crack and peeked out.\n\n\"Okay, he's in the front room. Here's the plan: You gain his attention while I go into the kitchen and find something made of steel. Then I send him back to the second sphere.\"\n\n\"What if you're mistaken?\" I asked. \"He might be suffering from some\u2014I don't know\u2014rare genetic disorder that makes him grow hooves.\"\n\nSpike fixed me with a piercing stare. \"Have you even heard of such a thing?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then let's do it. I hope there's a Sabatier or a tire iron or something\u2014it'll be a pretty messy job with an eggbeater.\"\n\nSo while Spike slipped into the kitchen, I went to the door of the front room where Major Pickles was watching TV. He was seated on a floral-patterned settee with a cup of tea and a slice of fruitcake on a table nearby.\n\n\"Hello, young lady,\" he said amiably. \"Done already?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, trying to appear unflustered, \"but we're going to use the nail gun, and it might make some noise.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's quite all right,\" he said. \"I was at Tobruk, you know.\"\n\n\"Really? What was it like?\"\n\n\"My dear girl, the noise\u2014and you couldn't get a decent drink anywhere.\"\n\n\"So a nail gun is no problem?\"\n\n\"Nostalgic, my dear\u2014fire away.\"\n\nSpike hadn't yet reappeared, so I carried on. \"Good. Right, well\u2014Hey, is that Bedazzled you're watching?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied, \"the Brendan Fraser version\u2014such a broad head, but very funny.\"\n\n\"I met him once,\" I said, stalling for time, \"at the launch party for the Eyre Affair movie. He played the part of\u2014\"\n\n\"Thursday?\"\n\nIt was Spike, calling from the kitchen. I smiled and said to Major Pickles, \"Would you excuse me for just one moment?\"\n\nPickles nodded politely, and I walked to the kitchen, which was, strangely enough, empty. Not a sign of Spike anywhere. It had two doors, and the only other entrance, the back door, had a broom leaned up against it. I was about to open the fridge to look for him when I heard a voice.\n\n\"I'm up here.\"\n\nI glanced up. Spike was pinned to the ceiling with thirty or so knives, scissors and other sharp objects, all stuck through the periphery of his clothing and making him look like the victim of an overenthusiastic circus knife thrower.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" I hissed. \"We're supposed to be dealing with the Raum guy.\"\n\n\"What am I doing? Oh, just admiring the view\u2014why, what do you think I'm doing?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Thursday,\" added Spike in a quiet voice, \"I think he's on to us.\"\n\nI turned to the door and jumped in fright because Major Pickles had crept up without my realizing. But it wasn't the little old gent I'd a seen a few moments ago; this Pickles had two large horns sticking out of his head, yellow eyes like a cat's, and he was dressed in a loincloth. He was lean and muscular and had shiny, bright red skin\u2014a bit like those ducks that hang in Chinese-restaurant windows. He also smelled strongly of sewage.\n\n\"Well,\" said Raum in a guttural, rasping voice that sounded like a box of rusty nails, \"Thursday Next. What a surprise!\" He looked up. \"And Mr. Stoker, I presume\u2014believe me, you are very unpopular from where I come from!\"\n\nI made a move to thump him, but he was too quick, and a moment later I was thrown to the ceiling with a force so hard it cracked the plaster. I didn't drop; I was held, face pointing down, not by any knives or scissors but the action of an unearthly force that felt as if I were being sat upon by a small walrus.\n\n\"Thursday,\" added Spike in a quiet voice, \"I think he's onto us.\"\n\n\"Two unsullied souls,\" growled Raum sadly. \"To His Infernal Majesty, worthless.\"\n\n\"I'm warning you,\" said Spike in a masterful display of misplaced optimism, \"give yourself up and I'll not be too hard on you.\"\n\n\"SILENCE!\" roared Raum, so loudly that two of the kitchen windows shattered. He laughed a deep, demonic cackle, then carried on. \"Just so this morning hasn't been a complete waste, I am prepared to offer a deal: Either you both die in an exceptionally painful manner and I relinquish all rights to your souls, or one of you gives yourself to me\u2014and I free the other!\"\n\n\"How about a game of chess?\" suggested Spike.\n\n\"Oh, no!\" said Raum, wagging a reproachful finger. \"We don't fall for that one anymore. Now, who's it going to be?\"\n\n\"You can take me,\" said Spike.\n\n\"No!\" I cried, but Raum merely laughed. He laughed long and loud. He laughed again. Then some more. He laughed so long, in fact, that Spike and I looked at each other. But still Raum laughed. The plates and cups smashed on the dresser, and glasses that were upside down on the drainer broke into smithereens. More laughter. Louder, longer, harder, until suddenly and quite without warning he exploded into a million tiny fragments that filled the small kitchen like a red mist. Released from the ceiling, I fell to the floor via the kitchen table, which was luckily a bit frail and had nothing on it. I was slightly dazed but got up to see\u2026the real Major Pickles, standing where Raum had been, still holding the steel bayonet that had dispatched the demon back to hell.\n\n\"Hah!\" said the elderly little gent with an aggressive twinkle in his eye. \"They don't like the taste of cold steel up 'em!\"\n\nHe had several days of stubble and was dressed in torn pajamas and covered in soil.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" I asked him.\n\n\"He thought he could keep me prisoner in the garden shed,\" replied the pensioner resolutely, \"but it was only fifteen yards nornoreast under the patio to the geranium bed.\"\n\n\"You dug your way out?\"\n\n\"Yes, and would have been quicker, too, if I'd had a soup spoon instead of this.\"\n\nHe showed me a very worn and bent teaspoon.\n\n\"Or a spade?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Hah!\" he snorted contemptuously. \"Spades are for losers.\" He looked up and noticed Spike. \"I say, you there, sir\u2014get off my ceiling this minute.\"\n\n\"Nothing I'd like better.\"\n\nSo we got Spike down and explained as best we could to the sprightly nonagenarian just who Raum was, something that he seemed to have very little trouble understanding.\n\n\"Good Lord, man!\" he said at last. \"You mean I killed a demon? There's a notch for the cricket bat, and no mistake.\"\n\n\"Sadly, no,\" replied Spike. \"You just relegated him to the second sphere\u2014he'll not reappear on earth for a decade or two and will get a serious lashing from the Dark One into the bargain.\"\n\n\"Better than he deserves,\" replied Major Pickles, checking the cookie jar. \"The rotten blighter has pigged all my Jaffa cakes.\"\n\n\"Spike,\" I said, pointing at a desk diary I'd found on the counter, \"we're not the only people who have had an appointment this morning.\"\n\nHe and Major Pickles bent over to have a look, and there it was. This morning was the first of three days of soul entrapment that Raum had planned for the house-call professionals of Swindon, and we had been the third potential damnees. The first, an electrician, Raum had crossed out and made a note: \"sickeningly pleasant.\" The next, however, was for a new washing machine, and Raum had made three checks next to the name of the company: Wessex Kitchens. I rummaged through the papers on the counter-top and found a job sheet\u2014the workman had been someone called Hans Towwel.\n\n\"Blast!\" said Spike. \"I hate it when Satan obtains a soul. Don't get me wrong, some people deserve to be tortured for all eternity, but damnation without the possibility of salvation\u2014it's like a three-strike life sentence without the possibility of parole.\"\n\nI nodded in agreement. Obscene though the crime was, eternal damnation was several punishments too far.\n\n\"All this defeatist claptrap is making me sick to the craw,\" growled Major Pickles. \"No one is going to hell on my account\u2014what happens if we get the money back?\"\n\nSpike snapped his fingers.\n\n\"Pickles, you're a genius! Mr. Towwel doesn't join the legion of the damned until he actually makes use of his ill-gotten gains. Thursday, call Wessex Kitchens and find out where he is\u2014we need to get to him before he spends any of the cash.\"\n\nTen minutes later we were heading at high speed toward the Greasy Monk, a popular medieval-themed eatery not far from the rebuilt cathedral of St. Zvlkx. I had tried to call Towwel's cell phone, but it was switched off, and when I explained that there was a substantial sum of money missing from Major Pickles's house, the boss of Wessex Kitchens said he was horrified\u2014and promised to meet us there.\n\nThe restaurant was filled to capacity, as the cathedral of St. Zvlkx had just been nominated as the first GSD drop-around-if-you-want-but-hey-no-one's-forcing-you place of worship/contemplation/meditation, and the many followers/adherents/vaguely interested parties of the single unified faith were having lunch and discussing ways in which they could best use the new multi-faith for overwhelming good.\n\nAs soon as we pushed open the doors Spike yelled, \"Hans Towwel?\" in his most commanding voice, and in the silence that followed, a man in a navy blue coverall signaled to us from behind a wooden plate of bread and dripping.\n\n\"Problems?\" he said as we walked up.\n\n\"Could be,\" said Spike. \"Did you pay for that meal with the money you pinched from Major Pickles?\"\n\n\"Did I what?\"\n\n\"You heard him,\" I said. \"Did you pay for that meal with the money you stole from Major Pickles?\"\n\n\"Ballocks to you!\" he said, getting up. Spike, who was pretty strong, pushed the man hard back down into his seat.\n\n\"Listen,\" said Spike in a quiet voice, \"we're not cops, and we don't give a shit about the money, and we don't give a shit about you\u2014but we do give a shit about your soul. Now, just tell us: Have you spent any of the cash or not?\"\n\n\"That's well sweet, isn't it?\" growled Towwel. \"Some cash is missing so you blame the workingman.\"\n\n\"Towwel?\" said a crumpled and untidy-looking man in a crumpled and untidy-looking suit, who had just arrived. \"Is what they say true?\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" asked Spike.\n\n\"Mr. Hedge Moulting of Wessex Kitchens,\" said the untidy man, offering us a business card. \"I must say I am shocked and appalled by our employee's behavior\u2014how much was taken?\"\n\n\"Now, look here!\" said Towwel, growing angrier by the second, which caused Mr. Moulting of Wessex Kitchens to flinch and hide behind Spike. \"I don't steal from people. Not from customers, not from pensioners, not from you, not from anyone!\"\n\n\"You should be ashamed of yourself!\" said Moulting, still half hidden behind Spike. \"You're fired\u2014and don't expect a reference.\"\n\n\"How do we know you didn't take it?\" demanded Towwel.\n\n\"Me?\" exclaimed Moulting. \"How dare you!\"\n\n\"you made a random inspection of my work this morning, and you're a sleazy piece of crap\u2014I say you took it.\"\n\n\"An outrageous accusation!\" yelled Moulting, waving a threatening finger in Towwel's direction. \"You'll never install a washing machine in this town again, and what's more I will make it my duty\u2014nay, pleasure\u2014to see you convicted of this heinous crime. A thousand pounds? From a war veteran? You deserve all you're going to get!\"\n\nThere was silence for a moment.\n\n\"Mr. Moulting,\" said Spike, \"we never said how much was stolen. As I said to Mr. Towwel here, we don't give a shit about the money. We're here to save a soul from the torment of eternal damnation. It was a diabolical entrapment from one of Old Scratch's accomplices. If you've got the money and haven't spent any of it, then just drop it in the nearest poor box, and your soul is clear. If you have spent some of the cash, then there's nothing anyone can do for you.\"\n\nI turned to Mr. Towwel. \"Sorry to have accused you unjustly, sir. If you need a job, call me anytime at Acme Carpets.\"\n\nAnd we walked out, bumping aside Moulting as we went. His shaking hand reached for a chair back to steady himself. He had turned pale and was sweating, trembling with the fear of the man who is condemned to eternal hellfire and knows it.\n\nWe recarpeted Major Pickles's entire house with the finest carpet we had. We also did his shopping, his washing and bought him two dozen packets of Jaffa cakes. After that, the three of us sat down and nattered all afternoon, drinking tea and telling stories. We parted the best of friends and left our phone numbers on his fridge so he could call us if he needed anything. I even suggested he give Polly a call if he wanted some company.\n\n\"I never realized carpet laying could be so much fun,\" I said as we finally drove away.\n\n\"Me neither,\" replied Spike. \"Do you think Bowden will be pissed off that we've done this one for free and it took us all day?\"\n\n\"Nah,\" I replied with a smile, \"I'm sure he'll be just fine about it.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Time Out of Joint",
                "text": "I never did get my head around time's carefree propensity to paradox. My father didn't exist, yet I was still born, and time travel had never been invented, but they still hoped that it might. There were currently two versions of Friday, and I had met him several times in the past\u2014or was it the future? It gave me a dull ache in the head when I thought about it.\n\nHow was work?\" asked Landen when I walked in the door.\n\n\"Quite good fun,\" I replied. \"The floor-covering business is definitely looking up. How are things with you?\"\n\n\"Good, too\u2014lots of work done.\"\n\n\"On The Mews of Doom?\" I asked, still hopeful about Scampton-Tappett and remembering that I had sent a note down to Bananas for Edward for him to swap books. He'd cost me a thousand book-guineas, and I was sure as hell going to get my money's worth.\n\n\"No. I've been working on Spike's weird-shit self-help book: Collecting the Undead.\"\n\nDamn and blast again.\n\nI recalled a news item I had overheard on the tram home.\n\n\"Hey, do you know what Redmond van de Poste's Address to the Nation is all about?\"\n\n\"Rumor says it's going to be about the stupidity surplus. Apparently his top advisers have come up with a plan that will deal with the excess in a manner that won't damage economic interests and might actually generate new business opportunities.\"\n\n\"He'll top the ratings with that one\u2014I only hope he doesn't generate more stupidity. You know how stupidity tends to breed off itself. How are the girls?\"\n\n\"They're fine. I'm just playing Scrabble with Tuesday. Is it cheating for her to use Nextian Geometry to bridge two triple-word scores with a word of only six letters?\"\n\n\"I suppose. Where's Jenny?\"\n\n\"She's made a camp in the attic.\"\n\n\"Again?\"\n\nSomething niggled in my head once more. Something I was meant to do. \"Land?\"\n\n\"Yuh?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I'll get it.\"\n\nThere was someone at the door, and whoever it was had knocked, rather than rung, which is always mildly ominous. I opened the door, and it was Friday, or at least it was the clean-cut, nongrunty version. He wasn't alone either\u2014he had two of his ChronoGuard friends with him, and they all looked a bit serious. Despite the dapper light blue ChronoGuard uniforms, they all looked too young to get drunk or vote, let alone do something as awesomely responsible as surf the timestream. It was like letting a twelve-year-old do your epidural.\n\n\"Hello, Sweetpea!\" I said. \"Are these your friends?\"\n\n\"They're colleagues,\" said Friday in a pointed fashion. \"We're here on official business.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" I said, attempting not to patronize him with motherly pride and failing spectacularly. \"Would you all like a glass of milk and a cookie or something?\"\n\nBut Friday, it seemed, wasn't in much of a mood for milk\u2014or a cookie.\n\n\"Not now, Mum. There's only forty-eight hours of time left, and we still haven't invented time travel.\"\n\n\"Maybe you can't,\" I replied. \"Maybe it's impossible.\"\n\n\"We used the technology to get here,\" said Friday with impeccable logic, \"so the possibility still exists, no matter how slight. We've got every available agent strung out across the timestream doing a fingertip search of all potential areas of discovery. Now, where is he?\"\n\n\"Your father?\"\n\n\"No, him. Friday\u2014the other me.\"\n\n\"Don't you know? Isn't this all ancient history?\"\n\n\"Time is not as it should be. If it were, we'd have solved it all by now. So where is he?\"\n\n\"Are you here to replace him?\"\n\n\"No, we just want to talk.\"\n\n\"He's out practicing with his band.\"\n\n\"He is not. Would it surprise you to learn that there was no band called the Gobshites?\"\n\n\"Oh, no!\" I said with a shudder. \"He didn't call it the Wankers after all, did he?\"\n\n\"No, no, Mum\u2014there is no band.\"\n\n\"He's definitely doing his band thing,\" I assured him, inviting them in and picking the telephone off the hall table. \"I'll call Toby's dad. They use their garage for practice. It's the perfect venue\u2014both Toby's parents are partially deaf.\"\n\n\"Then there's not much point in phoning them, now, is there?\" said the cockier of Friday's friends.\n\n\"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Nigel,\" said the one who had spoken, a bit sheepishly.\n\n\"No one likes a smart-ass, Nigel.\"\n\nI stared at him, and he looked away, pretending to find some fluff on his uniform.\n\n\"Hi, is that Toby's dad?\" I said as the phone connected. \"It's Friday's mum here\u2026. No, I'm not like that\u2014it only happens in the book. My question is: Are the boys jamming in your garage?\"\n\nI looked at Friday and his friends.\n\n\"Not for at least three months? I didn't know that. Thank you. Good night.\"\n\nI put the phone down.\n\n\"So where is he?\" I asked.\n\n\"We don't know,\" replied the other Friday, \"and since he's a free radical whose movements are entirely in de pen dent of the SHE, we have no way of knowing where or when he is. The feckless, dopey, teenage act was a good one and had us all fooled\u2014you especially.\"\n\nI narrowed my eyes. This was a surprising development. \"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"We've had some new information, and we think Friday might be actually causing the nondiscovery of the technology\u2014conspiring with his future self to overthrow the ChronoGuard!\"\n\n\"Sounds like a trumped-up bullshit charge for you to replace him,\" I said, beginning to get annoyed.\n\n\"I'm serious, Mum. Friday is a dangerous historical fundamentalist who will do what ever it takes to achieve his own narrow agenda\u2014to keep time as it was originally meant to run. If we don't stop him, then the whole of history will roll up and there'll be nothing left of any of us!\"\n\n\"If he's so dangerous,\" I said slowly, \"then why haven't you eradicated him?\"\n\nFriday took a deep breath. \"Mum? Like\u2026duh. He's a younger version of me and the future director-general. If we get rid of him, we get rid of ourselves. He's clever, I'll grant him that. But if he can stop time travel from being discovered, then he knows how it was invented in the first place. We need to speak to him. Now\u2014where is he?\"\n\n\"I don't rat out my son, son,\" I said in a mildly confusing way.\n\n\"I'm your son, Mum.\"\n\n\"And I wouldn't rat you out either, Sweetpea.\"\n\nFriday took a step forward and raised his voice a notch. \"Mum, this is important. If you have any idea where he is, then you're going to have to tell us\u2014and don't call me Sweetpea in front of my friends.\"\n\n\"I don't know where he is\u2014Sweetpea\u2014and if you want to talk to me in that tone of voice, you'll go to your room.\"\n\n\"This is beyond room, Mother.\"\n\n\"Mum. It's Mum. Friday always calls me Mum.\"\n\n\"I'm Friday, Mum\u2014your Friday.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"you're another Friday\u2014someone he might become. And do you know, I think I prefer the one who can barely talk and thinks soap is a type of TV show?\"\n\nFriday glared at me angrily. \"You've got ten hours to hand him over. Harboring a time terrorist is a serious offense, and the punishment unspeakably unpleasant.\"\n\nI wasn't fazed by his threats.\n\n\"Are you sure you know what you're doing?\" I asked.\n\n\"Of course!\"\n\n\"Then, by definition, so does he. Why don't you take your SO-12 buddies and go play in the timestream until dinner?\"\n\nFriday made a harrumph noise, turned on his heels and departed, with his friends following quickly behind.\n\nI closed the door and walked through to the hall where Landen was leaning on the newel post staring at me. He'd been listening to every word.\n\n\"Pumpkin, just what the hell's going on?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure myself, darling, but I'm beginning to think that Friday's been making monkeys out of the pair of us.\"\n\n\"Which Friday?\"\n\n\"The hairy one that grunts a lot. He's not a dozy slacker after all\u2014he's working undercover as some sort of historical fundamentalist. We need some answers, and I think I know where to find them. Friday may have tricked his parents, the SHE and half the ChronoGuard, but there's one person no teenage boy ever managed to fool.\"\n\n\"And that is?\"\n\n\"His younger sister.\"\n\n\"I can't believe it took you so long to figure out,\" said Tuesday, who agreed to spill the beans on her brother for the bargain price of a new bicycle, a thirty-pound gift card to MathWorld and lasagna three nights in a row. \"He didn't stomp on Barney Plotz either\u2014he forged the letters and the phone call. He needed the time to conduct what he called his\u2026investigations. I don't know what they were, but he was at the public library a lot\u2014and over at Gran's.\"\n\n\"Gran's? Why Gran's? He likes his food.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Tuesday, thinking long and hard about it. \"He said it was something to do with Mycroft and a chronuption of staggering proportions.\"\n\n\"That boy,\" I muttered grimly, \"has got some serious explaining to do.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Now Is the Winter",
                "text": "One of the biggest wastes of money in recent years was the Anti-Smite shield, designed to protect mankind (or Britain, at the very least) from an overzealous deity eager to cleanse the population of sin. Funded initially by Chancellor Yorrick Kaine, the project was halted after his ignominious fall from grace. Canceled but not forgotten, the network of transmission towers still lies dotted about the country, a silent testament to Kaine's erratic and somewhat costly administration.\n\nMy mother answered the door when we knocked, and she seemed vaguely surprised to see us all. Landen and I were there as concerned parents, of course, and Tuesday was there as she was the only one who might be able to understand Mycroft's work, if that was what was required.\n\n\"Is it Sunday lunchtime already?\" asked my mother.\n\n\"No, Mother. Is Friday here?\"\n\n\"Friday? Goodness me, no! I haven't seen him for over\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all right, Gran,\" came a familiar voice from the living-room door. \"There's no more call for subterfuge.\"\n\n\"It was Friday\u2014our Friday, the grunty, smelly one, who up until an hour ago was someone we thought wouldn't know what \"subterfuge\" meant, let alone be able to pronounce it. He had changed. There seemed to be a much more upright bearing about him. Perhaps it was because he wasn't dragging his feet when he walked, and he actually looked at us when he spoke. Despite this, he still seemed like a sad-teenager clich\u00e9: spots, long unkempt hair, and with clothes so baggy you could dress three people out of the material and still have enough to make some curtains.\n\n\"Why don't you tell us what's going on?\" I asked.\n\n\"You wouldn't understand.\"\n\nI fixed him with my best \"Son, you are in so much trouble\" look. \"You'd be amazed what I can understand.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he said, drawing a deep breath. \"You've heard that the ChronoGuard is using time-travel technology now in the almost certain knowledge that it's invented in the future?\"\n\n\"I get the principle,\" I replied somewhat guardedly, as I still had no idea how you could use something that had yet to be invented.\n\n\"As weird as it might seem,\" explained Friday, \"the principle is sound. Many things happen solely because of the curious human foible of a preconceived notion's altering the outcome. More simply put: If we convince ourselves that something is possible, it becomes so. It's called the Schr\u00f6dinger Night Fever principle.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"It's simple. If you go to see Saturday Night Fever expecting it to be good, it's a corker. However, if you go expecting it to be a crock of shit, it's that, too. Thus Saturday Night Fever can exist in two mutually opposing states at the very same time, yet only by the weight of our expectations. From this principle we can deduce that any opposing states can be governed by human expectation\u2014even, as in the case of retro-deficit-engineering, the present use of a future technology.\"\n\n\"I think I understand that,\" said Landen. \"Does it work with any John Travolta movie?\"\n\n\"Only the artistically ambiguous ones,\" replied Friday, \"such as Pulp Fiction and Face/Off. Battlefield Earth doesn't work, because it's a stinker no matter how much you think you're going to like it, and Get Shorty doesn't work either, because you'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy it, irrespective of any preconceived notions.\"\n\n\"It's a beautiful principle,\" I said admiringly. \"Yours?\"\n\n\"Sadly not,\" replied Friday with a smile. \"Much as I'd like to claim it, the credit belongs to an intellect far superior to mine\u2014Tuesday. Way to go, sis.\"\n\nTuesday squirmed with joy at getting a compliment from her big brother, but still none of it made any real sense.\n\n\"So how does this relate to Mycroft and time travel?\"\n\n\"Simple,\" said Friday. \"The obscenely complex technologies that the ChronoGuard uses to power up the time engines contravene one essential premise that is at the very core of science: that disorder will always stay the same or increase. More simply stated, you can put a pig in a machine to make a sausage, but you can't put a sausage in a machine to make a pig. It's the Second Law of Thermodynamics. One of the most rigid tenets of our understanding of the physical world. You can't reverse the arrow of time to make something unhappen\u2014whether it be unscrambling eggs or unmaking a historical event.\"\n\n\"The recipe for unscrambled eggs,\" I murmured, suddenly remembering a family dinner we had about the time of the Jane Eyre episode. \"He was scribbling it on a napkin, and Polly made him stop. They had an argument\u2014that's how I remember it.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said Friday. \"The recipe was actually an equation that showed how the Second Law of Thermodynamics could be modified to allow a reversibility of time's arrow. That you could unbake a cake with almost breathless simplicity. The recipe for unscrambled eggs is at the heart of reversing the flow of time\u2014without it, there is no time travel!\"\n\n\"So,\" I said slowly, \"the whole of the ChronoGuard's ability to move around in time rests on their getting hold of this recipe?\"\n\n\"That's about the tune of it, Mum.\"\n\n\"So where is it?\" asked Landen. \"Logically, it must still exist, or the likelihood of time travel drops to zero. Since your future self just popped up twenty minutes ago to make veiled threats, the possibility remains that it will be discovered sometime before the End of Time\u2014sometime in the next forty-eight hours.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said Friday, \"and that's what I've been doing with Polly for the past two weeks\u2014trying to find where Mycroft put it. Once I've got the recipe, I can destroy it: The possibility of time travel drops to zero, and it's good night, Vienna, for the ChronoGuard.\"\n\n\"Why would you want that?\"\n\n\"The less you know, Mum, the better.\"\n\n\"They say you're a dangerous historical fundamentalist,\" I added cautiously. \"A terrorist of time.\"\n\n\"But they would say that, wouldn't they? The Friday you met\u2014he's okay. He's following orders, but he doesn't know what I know. If he did, he'd be trying to destroy the recipe, the same as me. The Standard History Eventline is bullshit, and all they're doing is trying to protect their temporal-phony-baloney jobs.\"\n\n\"How do you know this?\"\n\n\"I become director-general of the ChronoGuard when I'm thirty-six. In the final year before retirement, at seventy-eight, I'm inducted into the ChronoGuard Star Chamber\u2014the ruling elite. It was there that I discovered something so devastating that if it became public knowledge would shut down the industry in an instant. And the time business is worth six hundred billion a year\u2014minimum.\"\n\n\"Tell them what it is,\" said Polly, who'd been standing at his side. \"If anything happens to you, then at least one of us might be able to carry on.\"\n\nFriday nodded and took a deep breath. \"Has anyone noticed how short attention spans seem to have cast a certain lassitude across the nation?\"\n\n\"Do I ever,\" I replied, rolling my eyes and thinking of the endlessly downward clicking of the Read-O-Meter. \"No one's reading books anymore. They seem to prefer the mind-numbing spectacle of easily digested trash TV and celebrity tittle-tattle.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Friday. \"The long view has been eroded. We can't see beyond six months, if that, and short-termism will spell our end. But the thing is, it needn't be that way\u2014there's a reason for it. The time engines don't just need vast quantities of power\u2014they need to run on time. Not punctuality, but time itself. Even a temporal leap of a few minutes will use up an infinitesimally small amount of the abstract concept. Not the hard clock time but the soft stuff that keeps events firmly embedded in a small cocoon of prolonged event\u2014the Now.\"\n\n\"Oooh!\" murmured Tuesday, who twigged it first. \"They've been mining the Now!\"\n\n\"Exactly, sis,\" said Friday, sweeping the hair from his eyes. \"The Short Now is the direct result of the time industry's unthinking depredations. If the ChronoGuard continues as it is, within a few years there won't be any Now at all, and the world will move into a Dark Age of eternal indifference.\"\n\n\"You mean TV could get worse?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"Much worse,\" replied Friday grimly. \"At the rate the Now is being eroded, by this time next year Samaritan Kidney Swap will be considered the height of scholarly erudition. But easily digestible TV is not the cause\u2014it's the effect. A Short Now will also spell the gradual collapse of forward planning, and mankind will slowly strangulate itself in a downward spiral of uncaring self-interest and short-term instant gratification.\"\n\nThere was a bleak silence as we took this on board. We could see it all now. Short attention spans, a general malaise, no tolerance, no respect, no rules. Short-termism. No wonder we were seeing Outlander ReadRates go into free fall. The Short Now would hate books; too much thought required for not enough gratification. It brought home the urgency to find the recipe, wherever it was: Without unscrambled eggs, there was no time travel, no more depredation of the Now, and we could look to a brighter future of long-term thought\u2014and more reading. Simple.\n\n\"Shouldn't this be a matter for public debate?\" asked Landen.\n\n\"What would that achieve, Dad? The ChronoGuard doesn't have to disprove that the reduction of the Now is caused by humans\u2014they only have to create doubt. They'll always be Short Now deniers, and the debate will become so long and drawn out that as soon as we realize there is a problem, we won't care enough to want to do anything about it. This issue is not for debate\u2014the ChronoGuard cannot get hold of that recipe. I'm staking my career on it. And believe me, I would have had an excellent career to stake.\"\n\nThere was silence after Friday's speech. We all realized that he was right, of course, but I was also thinking about how proud I was of him and how refreshing it was to hear such eloquence and moral lucidity from such a grubby and disheveled individual who was wearing a WAYNE SKUNK IS THE BALLOCKS T-shirt.\n\nPolly sighed, breaking the silence. \"If only Mycroft were alive. we could ask him where he put it.\"\n\nAnd then I understood.\n\n\"Aunt,\" I said, \"come with me. Friday\u2014you, too.\"\n\nIt was dusk by now, and the last rays of evening light were shining through the dusty windows of Mycroft's workshop. It seemed somehow shabbier in the twilight.\n\n\"All those memories!\" breathed Polly, hobbling across the concrete floor with Friday holding her arm. \"What a life. Yes indeed, what a life. I've not been in here since before he\u2026you know.\"\n\n\"Don't be startled,\" I told her, \"but I've seen Mycroft twice in here over the past two days. He came back to tell us something, and until now I had no idea what it was. Polly?\"\n\nHer eyes had filled with tears as she stared into the dim emptiness of the workshop. I followed her gaze, and as my eyes became accustomed to the light, I could see him, too. Mycroft's opacity was low, and the color seemed to have drained from his body. He was barely there at all.\n\n\"Hello, Poll,\" he said with a smile, his voice a low rumble. \"You're looking positively radiant!\"\n\n\"Oh, Crofty!\" she murmured. \"You're such a fibber\u2014I'm a doddering wreck ready for the scrap heap. But one that has missed you so much!\"\n\n\"Mycroft,\" I said in a respectful whisper, \"I don't want to keep you from your wife, but time is short. I know why you came back.\"\n\n\"You mean it wasn't Farquitt or the chairs?\"\n\n\"No. It was about the recipe for unscrambled eggs.\"\n\n\"We need to know,\" added Polly, \"where you left it.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\" laughed Mycroft. \"Why, goodness\u2014I put in my jacket pocket!\"\n\nHe was beginning to fade, and his voice sounded hollow and empty. His post-life time was almost up.\n\n\"And after that?\"\n\nHe faded some more. I was worried that if I blinked, he'd go completely.\n\n\"Which jacket, my darling?\" asked Polly.\n\n\"The one you gave me for Christmas,\" came an ethereal whisper, \"the blue one\u2026with the large checks.\"\n\n\"Crofty?\"\n\nBut he had vanished. Friday and I rushed to support Polly, who had gone a bit wobbly at the knees.\n\n\"Damn!\" said Friday. \"When does he next come back?\"\n\n\"He doesn't,\" I said. \"That was it.\"\n\n\"Then we're no closer to knowing where it is,\" said Friday. \"I've been through all his clothes\u2014there isn't one with blue checks in his closet.\"\n\n\"There's a reason for that,\" said Polly, her eyes glistening with tears. \"He left it on the Hesperus. I scolded him at the time, but now I see why he did it.\"\n\n\"Mum? Does this make any sense to you?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said with a smile. \"It's somewhere the ChronoGuard can't get to it. Back in 1985, before he used the Prose Portal to send Polly into 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,' he tested it on himself. The jacket is right where he left it\u2014in the teeth of an Atlantic gale inside Henry Longfellow's poem 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.'\"\n\n\"Inside the BookWorld?\"\n\n\"Right,\" I replied, \"and nothing\u2014repeat, nothing\u2014would compel me to return there. In two days the ChronoGuard will be gone, and the slow repair of the Now can begin. You did good, Sweetpea.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Mum,\" he said, \"but please\u2014don't call me Sweetpea.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Spending the Surplus",
                "text": "The Commonsense Party's first major policy reversal of perceived current wisdom was with the scrapping of performance targets, league standings and the attempt to make subtle human problems into figures on a graph that could be solved quickly and easily through \"initiatives.\" Arguing that important bodies such as the Health Ser vice should have the emphasis on care and not on administration, the Commonsense Party forced through legislation that essentially argued, \"If it takes us ten years to get into the shit, it will take us twenty years to get out\u2014and that journey starts now.\"\n\nWe stayed at Mum's for dinner, although \"dinner\" in this context might best be described as a loose collection of foodstuffs tossed randomly into a large saucepan and then boiled for as long as it took for all taste to vanish, never to return. Because of this we missed Redmond van de Poste's Address to the Nation, something that didn't really trouble us, as the last address had been, as they always were, unbelievably dreary but astute and of vital importance. It was just so good to talk to Friday again one-to-one. I'd forgotten how pleasant he actually was. He lost no time in telling me that he was going to have to stay undercover as a lazy good-for-nothing until the ChronoGuard had ceased operations\u2014and this meant that I shouldn't even attempt to wake him until at least midday, or two on weekends.\n\n\"How convenient,\" I observed.\n\nTuesday had been thoughtful for some time and finally asked, \"But can't the ChronoGuard go back to the time between when Great-Uncle Mycroft wrote the recipe and when he left it on the Hesperus?\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Friday with a wink. \"It was only twenty-eight minutes, and the older me has it covered at the other end. The only thing we have to do is make sure the recipe stays in 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' We can win this fight with nothing more than inaction, which as a teenager suits me just fine.\"\n\nIt was only as we were driving home that I suddenly thought of Jenny.\n\n\"Oh, my God!\" I said in a panic. \"We left Jenny at home on her own!\"\n\nLanden took hold of my arm and squeezed it, and I felt Friday rest his hand on my shoulder.\n\n\"It's all right, darling, calm down,\" Landen soothed. \"We left her with Mrs. Berko-Boyler.\"\n\nI frowned. \"No, we didn't. You said she was making a camp in the attic. We came straight out. How could we have forgotten?\"\n\n\"Sweetheart,\" said Landen with a deep breath, \"there is no Jenny.\"\n\n\"What do you you mean?\" I demanded, chuckling at the stupidity of his comment. \"Of course there's a Jenny!\"\n\n\"Dad's right,\" said Friday soothingly. \"There has never been a Jenny.\"\n\n\"But I can remember her!\"\n\n\"It's Aornis, Mum,\" added Tuesday. \"She gave you this mindworm seven years ago, and we can't get rid of it.\"\n\n\"I don't understand,\" I said beginning to panic. \"I can remember everything about her! Her laugh, the holidays, the time she fell off her bicycle and broke her arm, her birth\u2014everything!\"\n\n\"Aornis did this to you for revenge,\" said Landen. \"After she couldn't wipe me from your memory, she left you with this\u2014that's what she's doing her forty-year stretch for.\"\n\n\"The bitch!\" I yelled. \"I'll kill her for this!\"\n\n\"Language, Mum,\" said Tuesday. \"I'm only twelve. Besides, even if you did kill her, we think Jenny would still be with you.\"\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" I said as reason started to replace confusion and anger. \"That's why she never turns up at mealtimes.\"\n\n\"We pretend there is a Jenny to minimize the onset of an attack,\" said Landen. \"It's why we keep her bedroom as it is and why you'll find her stuff all around the house\u2014so when you're alone, you don't go into a missing-daughter panic.\"\n\n\"The evil little cow!\" I muttered, rubbing my face. \"But now that I know, we can do something about it, right?\"\n\n\"It's not as easy as that, sweetheart,\" said Landen with a note of sadness in his voice. \"Aornis is truly vindictive\u2014in a few minutes you won't remember any of this and you'll again believe that you have a daughter named Jenny.\"\n\n\"You mean,\" I said slowly, \"I've done this before?\"\n\nWe pulled up outside the house, and Landen turned off the engine. There was silence in the car.\n\n\"Sometimes you can go weeks without an attack,\" said Landen quietly. \"At other times you can have two or three an hour.\"\n\n\"Is that why you work from home?\"\n\n\"Yeah. We can't have you going to school every day expecting to pick up a daughter who isn't there.\"\n\n\"So\u2026you've explained all this to me before?\"\n\n\"Many times, darling.\"\n\nI sighed deeply. \"I feel like a complete twit,\" I said in a soft voice. \"Is this my first attack today?\"\n\n\"It's the third,\" said Landen. \"It's been a bad week.\"\n\nI looked at them all in turn, and they were all staring back at me with such a sense of loving concern for my well-being that I burst into tears.\n\n\"It's all right, Mum,\" said Tuesday, holding my hand. \"We'll look after you.\"\n\n\"You are the best, most loving, supportive family anyone could ever have,\" I said through my sobs. \"I'm so sorry if I'm a burden.\"\n\nThey all told me not to be so bloody silly, I told them not to swear, and Landen gave me his handkerchief for my tears.\n\n\"So,\" I said, wiping my eyes, \"how does it work? How do I stop remembering the fact that there's no Jenny?\"\n\n\"We have our ways. Jenny's at a sleepover with Ingrid. Okay?\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nHe leaned across and kissed me, smiled and said to the kids, \"Right, team, do your stuff.\"\n\nFriday poked Tuesday hard in the ribs, and she squealed, \"What was that for!?\"\n\n\"For being a geek!\"\n\n\"I'd rather be a geek than a duh-brain. And what's more, Strontium Goat is rubbish and Wayne Skunk couldn't play a guitar if his life depended on it!\"\n\n\"Say that again!\"\n\n\"Will you two cut it out!\" I said crossly. \"Honestly, I think Friday's proved he's no duh-brain over the Short Now thing, so just pack it in. Right. I know your gran gave us some food, but does anybody want anything proper to eat?\"\n\n\"There's some pizza in the freezer,\" said Landen. \"We can have that.\"\n\nWe all got out of the car and walked up to the house with Friday and Tuesday bickering.\n\n\"Geek.\"\n\n\"Duh-brain.\"\n\n\"Geek.\"\n\n\"Duh-brain.\"\n\n\"I said cut it out.\" I suddenly thought of something. \"Land, where's Jenny?\"\n\n\"At a sleepover with Ingrid.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah. Again?\"\n\n\"Thick as thieves, those two.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said with a frown, \"thick as thieves, those two.\"\n\nBowden called during dinner. This was unusual for him, but not totally unexpected. Spike and I had crept away from Acme like naughty schoolkids, as we didn't want to get into trouble over the cost of Major Pickles's carpet, not to mention that it had taken us both all day and we'd done nothing else.\n\n\"It's not great, is it?\" said Bowden in the overserious tone he used when he was annoyed, upset or angry. To be honest, I had the most shares in Acme, but he was the managing director, so day-to-day operations were up to him.\n\n\"I don't think it's all that bad,\" I said, going on the defensive.\n\n\"Are you insane?\" replied Bowden. \"It's a disaster!\"\n\n\"We've had bigger problems,\" I said, beginning to get annoyed. \"I think it's best to keep a sense of proportion, don't you?\"\n\n\"Well, yes,\" he replied, \"but if we let this sort of thing take a hold, you never know where it might end up.\"\n\nI was pissed off now.\n\n\"Bowden,\" I said, \"just cool it. Spike got stuck to the ceiling by Raum, and if Pickles hadn't given the demi-devil the cold steel, we'd both be pushing up daisies.\"\n\nThere was silence on the line for a moment, until Bowden said in a quiet voice, \"I'm talking about van de Poste's Address to the Nation\u2014what are you talking about?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2014nothing. What did he say?\"\n\n\"Switch on the telly and you'll see.\"\n\nI asked Tuesday to switch channels. OWL-TV was airing the popular current-affairs show Fresh Air with Tudor Webastow, and Tudor, who was perhaps not the best but certainly the tallest reporter on TV, was interviewing the Commonsense minister of culture, Cherie Yogert, MP.\n\n\"\u2026and the first classic to be turned into a reality book show?\"\n\n\"Pride and Prejudice,\" announced Yogert proudly. \"It will be renamed The Bennets and will be serialized live in your house hold copy the day after tomorrow. Set in starchy early-nineteenth-century En gland, the series will feature Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters being given tasks and then voted out of the house one by one, with the winner going on to feature in Northanger Abbey, which itself will be the subject of more 'readeractive' changes.\"\n\n\"So what van de Poste is sanctioning,\" remarked Webastow slowly, \"is the wholesale plunder of everything the literary world holds dear.\"\n\n\"Not everything,\" corrected Ms. Yogert. \"Only books penned by English authors. We don't have the right to do dumb things with other nations' books\u2014they can do that for themselves. But,\" she went on, \"I think 'plunder' would be too strong a word. We would prefer to obfuscate the issue by using nonsensical jargon such as 'market-led changes' or 'user-choice enhancments.' For centuries now, the classics have been dreary, overlong and incomprehensible to anyone without a university education. Reality book shows are the way forward, and the Interactive Book Council are the people to do it for us!\"\n\n\"Am I hearing this right?\"\n\n\"Unfortunately,\" murmured Landen, who was standing next to me.\n\n\"We have been suffering under the yoke of the Stalinist principle of one-author books,\" continued Ms. Yogert, \"and in the modern world we must strive to bring democracy to the writing process.\"\n\n\"I don't think any authors would regard their writing process as creative totalitarianism,\" said Webastow uneasily. \"But we'll move on. As I understand it, the technology that will enable you to alter the story line of a book will change it permanently, and in every known copy. Do you not think it would be prudent to leave the originals as they are and write alternative versions?\"\n\nYogert smiled at him patronizingly. \"If we did that,\" she replied, \"it would barely be stupid at all, and the Commonsense Party takes the stupidity surplus problem extremely seriously. Prime Minister van de Poste has pledged to not only reduce the current surplus to zero within a year but to also cut all idiocy emissions by seventy percent in 2020. This requires unpopular decisions, and he had to compare the interests of a few die-hard, elitist, dweeby, bespectacled book fans with those of the general voting public. Better still, because this idea is so idiotic that the loss of a single classic\u2014say, Jane Eyre\u2014will offset the entire nation's stupidity for an entire year. Since we have the potential to overwrite all the English classics to reader choice, we can do really stupid things with impunity. Who knows? We may even run a stupidity deficit\u2014and can then afford to take on other nations' idiocy at huge national profit. We see the UK as leading the stupidity-offset-trading industry\u2014and the idiocy of that idea will simply be offset against the annihilation of Vanity Fair. Simple, isn't it?\"\n\nI realized I was still holding the phone. \"Bowden, are you there?\"\n\n\"I'm here.\"\n\n\"This stinks to high heaven. Can you find out something about this so-called Interactive Book Council? I've never heard of such a thing. Call me back.\"\n\nI returned my attention to the TV.\n\n\"And when we've lost all the classics and the stupidity surplus has once again ballooned?\" asked Webastow. \"What happens then?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Ms. Yogert with a shrug, \"we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?\"\n\n\"You'll forgive me for saying this,\" said Webastow, looking over his glasses, \"but this is the most harebrained piece of unadulterated stupidity that any government has ever undertaken anywhere.\"\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" replied Ms. Yogert courteously. \"I'll make sure your compliments are forwarded to Prime Minister van de Poste.\"\n\nThe program changed to a report on how the \"interactive book\" might work. Something about \"new technologies\" and \"user-defined narrative.\" It was all baloney. I knew what was going on. It was Senator Jobsworth. He'd pushed through that interactive book project of Baxter's. Worse, he'd planned this all along\u2014witness the large throughput conduits in Pride and Prejudice and the recent upgrading of all of Austen's work. I wasn't that concerned with how they'd managed to overturn my veto or even open an office in the real world\u2014what worried me was that I needed to be in the BookWorld to stop the nation's entire literary heritage from being sacrificed on the altar of popularism.\n\nThe phone rang. It was Bowden again. I made a trifling and wholly unbelievable excuse about looking for a hammer, then vanished into the garage so Landen couldn't hear the conversation.\n\n\"The Interactive Book Council is run out of an office in West London,\" Bowden reported when I was safely perched on the lawn mower. \"It was incorporated a month ago and has the capacity to take a thousand simultaneous calls\u2014yet the office itself is barely larger than the one at Acme.\"\n\n\"They must have figured a way to transfer the calls en masse to the BookWorld,\" I replied. \"I'm sure a thousand Mrs. Danvers would be overjoyed to be working in a call center rather than bullying characters or dealing with rampant mispellings.\"\n\nI told Bowden I'd try to think of something and hung up. I stepped out of the garage and went back into the living room, my heart thumping. This was why I had the veto\u2014to protect the BookWorld from the stupefyingly shortsighted decisions of the Council of Genres. But first things first. I had to contact Bradshaw and see what kind of reaction Jurisfiction was having to the wholesale slaughter of literary treasures\u2014but how? JurisTech had never devised a two-way communication link between the BookWorld and the Outland, as I was the only one ever likely to use it.\n\n\"Are you all right, Mum?\" asked Tuesday.\n\n\"Yes, poppet, I'm fine,\" I said, tousling her hair. \"I've just got to muse on this awhile.\"\n\nI went upstairs to my office, which had been converted from the old box room, and sat down to think. The more I thought, the worse things looked. If the CofG had discounted my veto and forced the interactivity issue, it was entirely possible that they would also be attacking Speedy Muffler and Racy Novel. The only agency able to police these matters was Jurisfiction\u2014but it worked to Text Grand Central's orders, which was itself under the control of the Council of Genres, so Jobsworth was ultimately in command of Jurisfiction\u2014and he could do with it what he wanted.\n\nI sighed, leaned forward and absently pulled out my hair tie, then rubbed at my scalp with my fingertips. Commander Bradshaw would never have agreed to this interactivity garbage and would resign out of principle\u2014as he had hundreds of times before. And if I were there, I could reaffirm my veto. It was a right given me by the Great Panjandrum, and not even Jobsworth would go against her will. This was all well and good but for one thing: I'd never even considered the possibility of losing my TravelBook, so I'd never worked out an emergency strategy for getting into the BookWorld without it.\n\nThe only person I knew who could bookjump without a book was Mrs. Nakajima, and she was in retirement at Thornfield Hall. Ex\u2013Jurisfiction agent Harris Tweed had been banished permanently to the Outland, and without his TravelBook he was as marooned as I was. Ex-chancellor Yorrick Kaine, real these days and currently licking his wounds from a cell at Parkhurst, was no help at all, and neither was the only other fictionaut I knew still living, Cliff Hangar. I thought again about Commander Bradshaw. He'd certainly want to contact me and was a man of formidable resources\u2014if I were him, how would I go about contacting someone in the real world? I checked my e-mails but found nothing and looked to see if I had any messages on my cell phone, which I hadn't. My mobilefootnoterphone, naturally, was devoid of a signal.\n\nI leaned back in my chair to think more clearly and let my eyes wander around the room. I had a good collection of books, amassed during my long career as a Literary Detective. Major and minor classics, but little of any great value. I stopped and thought for a moment, then started to rummage through my bookshelf until I found what I was looking for\u2014one of Commander Bradshaw's novels. Not one he wrote, of course, but one of the ones that featured him. There were twenty-three in the series, written between 1888 and 1922, and all featured Bradshaw either shooting large animals, finding lost civilizations or stopping \"Johnny Foreigner\" from causing mischief in British East Africa. He had been out of print for over sixty years and hadn't been read at all for more than ten. Since no one was reading him, he could say what he wanted in his own books, and I would be able to read what he said. But there were a few problems: one, that twenty-three books would take a lot of reading; two, that Text Grand Central would know if his books were being read; and three, that it was simply a one-way conduit, and if he did leave a message, he would never know if it was me who'd read it.\n\nI opened Two Years Amongst the Umpopo and flicked through the pages to see if anything caught my eye, such as a double line space or something. It didn't, so I picked up Tilapia, the Devil-Fish of Lake Rudolph and, after that, The Man-Eaters of Nakuru. It was only while I was idly thumbing through Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser that I hit pay dirt. The text of the book remained unaltered, but the dedication had changed. Bradshaw was smart; only a variance in the story would be noticed at Text Grand Central\u2014they wouldn't know I was reading it at all. I took the book back to my desk and read:\n\nThursday, D'girl.\n\nIf you can read this, you have realized that something is seriously squiffy in the BookWorld. Plans had been afoot for weeks, and none of us had seen them. Thursday1\u20134 (yes, it's true) has taken your place as the CofG's LBOCS and is rubber-stamping all of Jobsworth's idiotic schemes. The interactivity idea is going ahead full speed, and even now Danverclones are massing on the borders of Racy Novel, ready to invade. Evil Thursday has loaded Text Grand Central with her toadies in order to keep a careful watch for any textual anomalies that might give them\u2014and her\u2014a clue as to whether you have returned. For it is this that Evil Thursday fears more than anything: that you will return, unmask her as an impostor and retake your place. She has suspended Jurisfiction and had all agents confined to their books, and she now commands a legion of Danverclones, who are waiting to capture you should you appear in the BookWorld. We stole back your TravelBook and have left it for you with Captain Carver inside It Was a Dark and Stormy Night if you can somehow find a way in. This dedication will self-erase in two readings. Good luck, old girl\u2014and Melanie sends her love.\n\nBradshaw.\n\nI read the dedication again and watched as the words slowly dissolved from the page. Good old Bradshaw. I had been to It Was a Dark and Stormy Night a couple of times, mostly for training. It was a maritime adventure set aboard a tramp steamer on the Tasman Sea in 1924. It was a good choice, because it came under the deregulated area of the library known as Vanity Publishing. Text Grand Central wouldn't even know I was there. I replaced Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser on the shelf, then unlocked the bottom drawer and took out my pistol and eraserhead cartridges. I stuffed them in my bag, noted that it was almost ten and knocked on Friday's door.\n\n\"Darling?\"\n\nHe looked up from the copy of Strontmania he was reading.\n\n\"Yuh?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Sweetpea, but I have to go back to the BookWorld. It may put the unscrambled-eggs recipe in jeopardy.\"\n\nHe sighed and stared at me. \"I knew you would.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nHe beckoned me to the window and pointed to three figures sitting on a wall opposite the house. \"The one in the middle is the other me. It shows there is still a chance they'll get hold of the recipe. If we'd won, they'd be long gone.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" I said, laying a hand on his. \"I know how important the length of the Now is to all of us. I won't go anywhere near 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.'\"\n\n\"Mum,\" he said in a quiet voice, \"if you get back home and I'm polite, well-mannered and with short hair, don't be too hard on me, eh?\"\n\nHe was worried about being replaced.\n\n\"It won't come to that, Sweetpea. I'll defend your right to be smelly and uncommunicative\u2026with my life.\"\n\nWe hugged and I said goodbye, then did the same to Tuesday, who was reading in bed, giggling over the risible imperfections of the Special Theory of Relativity. She knew I was going somewhere serious, so she got out of bed to give me an extra hug just in case. I hugged her back, tucked her in, told her not to make Einstein look too much of a clot in case it made her look cocky. I then went to say goodbye to Jenny and can remember doing so, although for some reason Friday and Tuesday picked that moment to argue about the brightness of the hall light. After sorting them out, I went downstairs to Landen.\n\n\"Land,\" I said, unsure of what to say, since I rarely got emergency call-outs for carpet laying, and to pretend I did now would be such an obvious lie, \"you do know I love you?\"\n\n\"More than you realize, sweetheart.\"\n\n\"And you trust me?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Good. I've got to go and\u2014\"\n\n\"Do some emergency carpet laying?\"\n\nI smiled. \"Yeah. Wish me luck.\"\n\nWe hugged, I put on my jacket and left the house, hailing a cab to take me to the Clary-LaMarr Travelport. When I was safely on the bullet train to Saknussemm, I took out my cell phone and keyed in a number. I stared out at the dark Wessex countryside that zipped past so fast the few streetlamps I could see were almost orange streaks. The cell was picked up, and I paused, heart thumping, before speaking.\n\n\"My name's Thursday Next. I'd like to speak to John Henry Goliath. You're going to have to wake him. It's a matter of some importance.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Austen Rover Roving",
                "text": "The basis for the Austen Rover, I learned much later, was a bus that the Goliath Corporation had bought in 1952 to transport its employees to the coast on \"works days out,\" a lamentable lapse in Goliath's otherwise fine record of rampant worker exploitation. The error was discovered after eight years and the day trips discontinued. True to form, Goliath docked the wages of all who attended and charged them for the trip\u2014with backdated interest.\n\nThe Austen Rover has two separate systems,\" explained Dr. Anne Wirthlass, \"the transfictional propulsion unit and the book-navigation protocol. The former we have worked out\u2014the latter is something you need to update us on.\"\n\nIt was almost noon of the following day, and I was being brought up to speed on the Rover's complexities by the brilliant Dr. Wirthlass, who had thanked me profusely for changing my mind so close to the time before they were to fire themselves off into the unknown.\n\n\"It was the least I could do,\" I replied, keeping the real reason to myself.\n\nThere had been an excited buzz among the technicians in the lab that morning, and I had been introduced to more specialists in an hour than I'd met in a lifetime. John Henry Goliath himself was on hand to smooth over any problems we might have, and there had already been a propulsion test. The Austen Rover had been chained to the floor, and the engines had been spooled up. With a deafening roar, the Rover had flexed at the chains while an inky black void had opened up in front of it. The engines had been throttled back, and the void had closed. It didn't have the quiet subtleness of Mycroft's Prose Portal, but it had certainly been impressive.\n\nThat had been three hours earlier. Right now we were in the control room, and I'd been trying to explain to them just what form the BookWorld takes, which was a bit odd, as it was really only my interpretation of it, and I had a feeling that if they accepted my way, it would become the way, so I was careful not to describe anything that might be problematical later. I spread a sheet of paper on the table and drew a rough schematic of the various genres that made up the BookWorld, but without too many precise locations\u2014just enough for them to get us inside and then to It Was a Dark and Stormy Night without any problems.\n\n\"The Nothing is a big place,\" I said without fear of understatement, \"and mostly empty. Theoretical storyologists have calculated that the readable BookWorld makes up only twenty-two percent of visible reading matter\u2014the remainder is the unobservable remnants of long-lost books, forgotten oral tradition and ideas still locked in writers' heads. We call it 'dark reading matter.'\"\n\n\"Why is so much of it unread and untold?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"We're not altogether sure, but we think ninety-eight percent of the world's fiction was wiped out by the accidental death of an Iron Age storyteller about three thousand years ago. It was what we call a 'mass erasure'\u2014we wouldn't see anything of that size until human perfidy, fire and mold wiped out seventy-five percent of Greek drama at the CE boundary. The reason I mention it is that navigating through the Nothing could be more treacherous than you imagine\u2014colliding with a lost work of Aeschylus or being pulled apart by the Hemingway 'lost suitcase of manuscripts' could bring your trip to a painfully verbose. And incorrectly punctuated. End.\"\n\nDr. Wirthlass nodded sagely.\n\nI drew a rough circle near the Maritime Adventure (Civilian) genre. \"We think that this area is heavy with detritus from an unknown genre\u2014possibly Squid Action/Adventure\u2014that failed to fully form a century ago. Twice a year Maritime is pelted with small fragments of ideas and snatches of inner monologue regarding important invertebrate issues that don't do much harm, but bookjumping through this zone has always been a bit bumpy. If we wanted to go from Maritime to Frontier quickly and easily, we wouldn't jump direct but go through Western.\"\n\nWe talked along these lines for a good four hours; it surprised me that I knew so much about the BookWorld without really having had to sit down and learn it, and it also surprised me to what an advanced stage the Goliath Book Project had progressed. By agreement they would drop me on page 68 of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night before slingshotting back to Goliath, then await my return and a debrief before attempting any further travel. I had made my demands clearly when I'd spoken to John Henry the previous evening. They would do this my way or not at all, something that he was happy to agree with. He also proposed some sort of business partnership where I could oversee the whole Austen Rover project and determine in what direction book tourism would go. I still didn't like the idea of it, but if the alternative was the wholesale loss of all the classics through reality book shows, then I'd pretend to go along. I told John Henry we could discuss the precise details upon my return. Throughout the day I'd been having nagging doubts about cozying up to Goliath despite their entreaties, and in an afternoon rest break I wandered into the employees' canteen area, where there was a TV showing a program all about the upcoming Pride and Prejudice reality show.\n\n\"Welcome to Bennetmania,\" said a lively young man with painfully fashionable facial hair. He was presenting one of several reality book TV shows that had been rushed onto the schedules to cater to the latest fad. \"\u2026And our studio panel will be here to give an up-to-date analysis of the book's unfolding drama as soon as it begins. Dr. Nessecitar, our resident pseudopyschologist, will point out the bleeding obvious about the Bennet house mates' progress, and our resident experts will give their opinions and advice on whom should be voted out. But first let's have a rundown on who our house mates actually are.\"\n\nI stood and stared with a kind of numb fascination as a jaunty tune started up under an annoyingly buoyant voice-over that accompanied \"artists' impressions\" of the family.\n\n\"Mr. Bennet is the father of the clan, and when he's not chastizing his younger daughters for their silliness or teasing his wife, he likes nothing better than to sit in his study and conduct his affairs. His wife is Mrs. Bennet, who has a brother in trade and is convinced that her daughters should marry up. This old bunny is highly unstable, prone to panic attacks and socially awkward, so keep your eyes fixed on her for some seriously good fireworks.\"\n\nThe illustration changed to that of the sisters, with each being highlighted in turn as the voice-over described them.\n\n\"None of the daughters will inherit Longbourn due to the lack of an heir, and the apparent absence of any suitable males in Meryton makes the issue of potential husbands a major concern. Curvaceous, doe-eyed Jane, twenty-two, is the beauty of the family, with a kindly temperament to match. And if Bingley looks at another woman, hold on for the waterworks! Next in line is the thinker of the house and Mr. Bennet's favorite: Lizzie, who is twenty. Willful, skillful and adept with words, she is certainly one to watch\u2014never mind the looks, check out the subtext! Third eldest is Mary, who just likes to read and criticize the rest of them. Dreary and unappealing, and we don't think she'll last long. Kitty and Lydia are the two youngest of the Bennets and the silliest and most excitable of them all, especially when there's a uniform around, or even the sniff of a party. Impetuous and uncontrollable\u2014these are the two that all eyes will be riveted upon!\"\n\nThe music ended, and the annoying presenter came back on-screen.\n\n\"There you have it. Seven Bennets, one house, three chapters, one task, one eviction. Bookies are already taking bets as to who's for the bullet. Tune in tomorrow at eleven P.M. with your book in hand to read the house mates' first task as it is set, and join us for the reading of The Bennets\u2014live!\"\n\nI switched off the set and walked back to the Book Project lab, all doubts over the wisdom of my actions dispelled from my mind.\n\nBy six that evening, the Austen Rover was primed and ready to go. Although there was seating for twelve, the crew was to be only the four of us\u2014myself, Dr. Wirthlass and two technicians, whose sole function was to monitor the systems and collect data. I called Landen before we left and told him I'd be home before bedtime. I didn't see any problems. After all, I'd been prancing around the inside of the BookWorld for near on twenty years and had faced almost all the terrors that could be thrown in my direction. I felt as safe and confident inside fiction as I did walking down the street in Swindon. I'd turn up at the CofG, reveal Thursday1\u20134 as an impostor, put everything to rights and be back in time to take Jenny to her piano lesson. Simple. But if it was that simple, why did my insides feel so leaden?\n\nJohn Henry Goliath came to see us off, and we all shook hands before the door closed and sealed itself with a hermetic hiss. The doctor and the two technicians were too busy to be worried over the risks, something that I felt myself but tried not to show. After a half-hour countdown, Wirthlass fired up the main reactors, released the handbrake, rang the bell twice and engaged the gravity engines.\n\nAnd with a mild tingling sensation, we were somewhere else entirely."
            },
            {
                "title": "Somewhere Else Entirely",
                "text": "The BookWorld was generally agreed to be only part of a much larger Bookverse, but quite how big it was and what percentage was unobservable was a matter of hot debate among booklogians. The fundamental rules of the Bookverse were also contentious. Some factions argued that the Bookverse was constantly expanding as new books were written, but others argued convincingly of a steady-state Bookverse, where ideas were endlessly recycled. A third faction who called themselves \"simplists\" argued that there was a single fundamental rule that governed all story: If it works, it works.\n\nThe darkness drifted away like morning mist, leaving us hovering above a slate gray sea with empty horizons in all directions. The sky was the same color as the sea and stretched across the heavens like a blanket, heavy and oppressive. A light breeze blew flecks of foam from the tops of the waves, and positioned not thirty feet below us was an old steamer of riveted construction. The vessel was making a leisurely pace through the waves, a trail of black smoke issuing languidly from her funnel and the stern trailing a creamy wake as the ship rose and fell in the seas.\n\n\"That'll be the Auberon,\" I said, craning my neck to see if I could spot Captain Carver in the wheel house. I couldn't, so I asked Wirthlass to move closer and try to land the Rover on the aft hold cover so I could step aboard. She expertly moved the bus in behind the bridge and gently lowered it onto the boards, which creaked ominously under the weight. The door of the coach hissed opened, and a strong whiff of salty air mixed with coal smoke drifted in. I could feel the rhythmic thump of the engine and the swell of the ocean through the decking. I took my bag and stepped from the Rover, but I hadn't gone three paces when all of a sudden I realized there was something badly wrong. This ship wasn't the Auberon, and if that was the case, this book certainly wasn't Dark and Stormy Night.\n\n\"Okay, we've got a problem,\" I said, turning back to the Rover only to find Dr. Wirthlass standing in the doorway\u2014holding a pistol and smiling.\n\n\"Ballocks,\" I muttered, which was about as succinct as I could be, given the sudden change of circumstance.\n\n\"Ballocks indeed,\" replied Dr. Wirthlass. \"We've waited over fifteen years for this moment.\"\n\n\"Before now I'd always thought patience was a virtue,\" I murmured, \"not the secret weapon of the vengeful.\"\n\nShe shook her head and smiled again. \"You're exactly how he described you. An ardent moralist, a Goody Two-shoes, pathologically eager to do what's best and what's right.\" She looked around at the ship, which heeled in the swell. \"So this place is particularly apt\u2014and the perfect place for you to spend the rest of your pitifully short life.\"\n\n\"What do you want?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Nothing at all. With you trapped here, we have everything I want. We'll be off to the Hesperus now, Ms. Next\u2014to find that recipe.\"\n\n\"You know about the unscrambled eggs?\" I asked, shocked at the sudden turn of events.\n\n\"We're Goliath,\" she said simply, \"and information is power. With the End of Time due tomorrow evening, it will be something of a challenge, but listen: I like a challenge, and I have the knowledge of your defeat to freshen my mind and make the task that much more enjoyable.\"\n\n\"You'll never find it,\" I said. \"Longfellow is at the other end of the BookWorld, and Poetry is the place you'll discover\u2014\"\n\nI checked myself. I wasn't helping these people, no matter how acute the perils.\n\n\"Discover what?\" asked Wirthlass with a frown.\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\n\"We'll be fine,\" she replied. \"We just needed your expertise to make the initial jump. We're not quite so stupid as you think.\"\n\nI couldn't believe that I'd been hoodwinked by Goliath again. I had to hand it to them\u2014this plan had been hatched and executed beautifully.\n\n\"How long have you known about the recipe?\"\n\n\"That's just the weirdest thing of it.\" Dr. Wirthlass smiled. \"On the one hand, only a day, but on the other\u2026over fifteen years.\"\n\n\"Retrospective investment,\" I whispered, suddenly understanding. In their desperation, the ChronoGuard was breaking every single rule they'd ever made.\n\n\"Right! The Star Chamber lost confidence in your son's ability to secure the future, so they called Lavoisier out of retirement to see if there weren't other avenues to explore. He approached John Henry yesterday at breakfast time to ask him if the long-abandoned Book Project could be brought up to speed. Since it couldn't, Lavoisier suggested that they restart the project fifteen years ago so it could be ready for the End of Time tomorrow evening. John Henry agreed with certain conditions, and I must say we only just made it.\"\n\n\"This is something of a mindf**k,\" I replied, with no possibility of understatement. \"What does Goliath get out of it?\"\n\n\"How do you think we survived being taken over by the Toast Marketing Board? Two days ago Goliath was just a bad memory, with John Henry in debtors' prison and me working for International Pencils. When you have friends in the time industry, anything is possible. The ChronoGuard will be willing to offer us almost untold patronage for the recipe to unscramble eggs and, with it, the secret to travel in time. And in return? A corporation allowed to speculate freely in time. Finally we will be able to bring our 'big plan' to fruition.\"\n\n\"And that plan is\u2026?\"\n\n\"To own\u2026everything.\"\n\n\"In a world with a Short Now?\"\n\n\"Of course! With a compliant population only interested in the self and instant gratification, we can flog all manner of worthless crap as the 'latest thing to have.' There'll be big profits, Next\u2014and by subtly choosing from whom the Now is mined, the Long Now \u00dcberclass can sit back and enjoy the benefits that will be theirs and theirs alone.\"\n\nI stared at Wirthlass, wondering if I could rush her. It seemed doubtful, since I was at least ten feet away, and the two technicians still on board the Rover also looked as if they had weapons.\n\n\"Okay,\" said the doctor, \"we're all about done here. Enjoy your imprisonment. You'll know what it was like for my husband. Two years in \"The Raven,\" Next\u2014two years. He still has nightmares, even today.\"\n\n\"You're Jack Schitt's wife?\"\n\nShe smiled again. \"Now you're getting it. My full name is Dr. Anne Wirthlass-Schitt, but if you'd known, it might have been a bit of a giveaway, hmm? Bye-bye now.\"\n\nThe door swung shut, the bell rang twice, there was a low hiss and the Austen Rover lifted off. They hovered for a moment and then slowly rotated, expertly missed the crane derrick, rose above the height of the funnel and then became long and drawn out like a piece of elastic before vanishing with a faint pop. I was left standing on the deck, biting my lip in frustration and anger. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. The reality book show of The Bennets wasn't due to start until tomorrow morning, so there was always hope. I looked around. The steamer rolled gently in the swell, the smoke drifted across the stern past the fluttering red ensign, and the beat of the engine echoed up through the steel deck. I knew I wasn't in Dark and Stormy Night, because the ship wasn't a rusty old tub held together by paint, but I was certainly somewhere, and somewhere was better than nowhere. It was only when I arrived there and was out of ideas, time and essential metabolic functions that I was going to give up.\n\nI trotted up the companionway, ducked into the galley and made my way up the ladder to the bridge, where a boy not much older than Friday was holding the ship's wheel.\n\n\"Who's in command?\" I asked, a bit breathless.\n\n\"Why, you, of course,\" replied the lad.\n\n\"I'm not.\"\n\n\"Then why are you a-wearin' the cap?\"\n\nI put up my hands to check, and strangely enough, I was wearing the captain's cap. I took it off and stared at it stupidly.\n\n\"What book is this?\"\n\n\"No book I knows of, Cap'n. What be your orders?\"\n\nI looked out of the wheel house ahead but could see nothing except a gray sea meeting a gray sky. The light was soft and directionless, and for the first time I felt a shiver of dread. Something about this place was undeniably creepy, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I went to the navigation desk and looked at the chart. There was nothing on it but the pale blueness of open ocean, and a cursory look in the drawers of the desk told me that every chart was the same. What ever this place was, this was all there was of it. I had to assume I was somewhere in the Maritime genre, but a quick glance at my mobilefootnoterphone and the absence of any signal told me that I was several thousand volumes beyond our repeater station in the Hornblower series, and if that was the case, I was right on the periphery of the genre\u2014as good as lost. I tapped my finger on the desk and thought hard. Panic was the mind killer, and I still had several hours to figure this out. If I was no further on in ten hours' time\u2014then I could panic.\n\n\"What are your orders, Cap'n?\" asked the lad at the wheel again.\n\n\"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Baldwin.\"\n\n\"I'm Thursday. Thursday Next.\"\n\n\"Good to know you, Cap'n Next.\"\n\n\"Have you heard my name? Or of Jurisfiction?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"Right. Tell me, Baldwin, do you know this ship well?\"\n\n\"As well as I know meself,\" he replied proudly.\n\n\"Is there a core-containment room?\"\n\n\"Not that I knows of.\"\n\nSo we weren't in a published work.\n\n\"How about a Storycode Engine anywhere on board?\"\n\nHe frowned and looked confused. \"There's an ordinary engine room. I don't know nuffin' 'bout no Storycode.\"\n\nI scratched my head. Without a Storycode Engine, we were either nonfiction or something in the oral tradition. Those were the upbeat possibilities: I might also be in a forgotten story, a dead writer's unrealized idea or even a handwritten short story stuck in a desk drawer somewhere\u2014the dark reading matter.\n\n\"What year is this?\"\n\n\"Spring of 1932, Cap'n.\"\n\n\"And the purpose of this voyage?\"\n\n\"Not for the likes of me to know, Cap'n.\"\n\n\"But something must happen!\"\n\n\"Oh, aye,\" he said more confidently, \"things most definite happen!\"\n\n\"What sort of things?\"\n\n\"Difficult things, Cap'n.\"\n\nAs if in answer to his enigmatic comment, someone shouted my name. I walked out onto the port wing, where a man in a first officer's uniform was on the deck below. He was in his mid-fifties and looked vaguely cultured, but somehow out of place, as though his ser vice in the merchant navy had been to remove him from problems at home.\n\n\"Captain Next?\" he said.\n\n\"Yes, sort of.\"\n\n\"First Officer William Fitzwilliam at your ser vice, ma'am. We've got a problem with the passengers!\"\n\n\"Can't you deal with it?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am\u2014you're the captain.\"\n\nI descended and met Fitzwilliam at the foot of the ladder. He led me into the paneled wardroom, where there were three people waiting for us. The first man was standing stiffly with his arms folded and looked aggrieved. He was well dressed in a black morning coat and wore a small pince-nez perched on the end of his nose. The other two were obviously man and wife. The woman was of an unhealthy pallor, had recently been crying and was being comforted by her husband, who every now and then shot an angry glance at the first man.\n\n\"I'm very busy,\" I told them. \"What's the problem here?\"\n\n\"My name is Mr. Langdon,\" said the married man, wringing his hands. \"My wife, Louise, here suffers from Zachary's syndrome, and without the necessary medicine she will die.\"\n\n\"I'm very sorry to hear that,\" I said, \"but what can I do?\"\n\n\"That man has the medicine!\" cried Langdon, pointing an accusatory finger at the man in the pince-nez. \"Yet he refuses to sell it to me!\"\n\n\"Is this true?\"\n\n\"My name is Dr. Glister,\" said the man, nodding politely. \"I have the medicine, it is true, but the price is two thousand guineas, and Mr. and Mrs. Langdon have only a thousand guineas and not the capacity to borrow more!\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said to the doctor, \"I think it would be a kindly gesture to lower the price, don't you?\"\n\n\"I wish that I could,\" replied Dr. Glister, \"but this medicine cost me everything I possessed to develop. It destroyed my health and damaged my reputation. If I do not recoup my losses, I will be forced into ruin, my property will be repossessed, and my six children will become destitute. I am sympathetic to Mrs. Langdon's trouble, but this is a fiscal issue.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said to the Langdons, \"it's not up to me. The medicine is Dr. Glister's property for him to dispose of as he wishes.\"\n\n\"But she needs the medicine now,\" pleaded Mr. Langdon. \"If she doesn't get it, she will die. You are the captain on this ship and so have the ultimate authority. You must make the decision.\"\n\nI sighed. I had a lot more important things to deal with right now.\n\n\"Dr. Glister, give him the medicine for a thousand guineas. Mr. Langdon, you will work to repay Dr. Glister no matter what. Understand?\"\n\n\"But my livelihood!\" wailed Glister.\n\n\"I place Mrs. Langdon's definite death above the possibility of your penury, Dr. Glister.\"\n\n\"But this is nothing short of theft!\" he replied, outraged at my words. \"And I have done nothing wrong\u2014only discovered a cure for a fatal illness. I deserve better treatment than this!\"\n\n\"You do, you're right. But I know nothing of you, nor the Langdons. My decision is based only on the saving of a life. Will you excuse me?\"\n\nBaldwin had called from the wheel house, and I quickly scooted up the stairs.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\nHe pointed to something about a mile off the starboard bow. I picked up a pair of binoculars and trained it on the distant object. Finally some good luck. It looked like a \"turmoil,\" the name we gave to a small, localized disruption in the fabric of the written word. This was how heavy weather in the BookWorld got started: A turmoil would soon progress into a powerful WordStorm able to uproot words, ideas and even people, then carry them with it across the empty darkness of the Nothing, eventually dumping them on distant books several genres distant. It was my way out. I'd never hitched a ride on a WordStorm before, but it didn't look too difficult. Dorothy, after all, had no real problems with the tornado.\n\n\"Alter course to starboard thirty degrees,\" I said. \"We're going to intercept the WordStorm. How long do you think it will take for us to get there, Baldwin?\"\n\n\"Twenty minutes, Cap'n.\"\n\nIt would be a close thing. Turmoils increase their pace until a rotating tube rises up into the heavens, filled with small sections of plot and anything else it can suck up. Then, with a flurry of distorted sense, it lifts off and vanishes. I wouldn't get this chance again.\n\n\"Is that wise, Captain?\" asked First Officer Fitzwilliam, who had joined us on the bridge. \"I've seen storms like that. They can do serious damage\u2014and we have forty passengers, many of them women and children.\"\n\n\"Then you can lower me in a lifeboat ahead of the storm.\"\n\n\"And leave us without a lifeboat?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2026no\u2026I don't know. Fitzwilliam?\"\n\n\"Yes, Captain?\"\n\n\"What is this place?\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean, Captain.\"\n\n\"I mean\u2014\"\n\n\"Cap'n,\" said Baldwin, pointing off of the port side of the ship, \"isn't that a lifeboat?\"\n\nI turned my attention to the area in which he pointed. It was a lifeboat, with what looked like several people, all slumped and apparently unconscious. Damn. I looked again, hoping for confirmation that they might already be dead, but saw nothing to tell me either way. I frowned to myself. Had I just hoped for them to be dead?\n\n\"You can pick them up after you've dropped me off,\" I said. \"It'll only mean an extra forty minutes for them, and I really need to get out of here.\"\n\nI saw Fitzwilliam and Baldwin exchange glances. But as we watched, the lifeboat was caught by a wave and capsized, casting the occupants into the sea. We could see now that they were alive, and as they scrabbled weakly to cling to the upturned boat, I gave the order.\n\n\"Turn about. Reduce power and stand by to pick up survivors.\"\n\n\"Aye-aye, Cap'n,\" said Baldwin, spinning the wheel as Fitzwilliam rung up \"slow ahead\" on the engine-room telegraph. I walked out onto the starboard wing and watched despondently as the turmoil developed into a WordStorm. Within the twenty minutes it took to intercept the lifeboat, the whirling mass of narrative distortion lifted off, taking part of the description of the ocean with it. There was a ragged dark hole for an instant, and then the sea washed in to fill the anomaly, and in a few moments everything was back to normal. Perhaps I should have left the lifeboat. After all, the Long Now and the classics were more important than several fictional castaways. Mind you, if I'd been on that lifeboat, I know what I would have wanted.\n\n\"Captain!\"\n\nIt was Dr. Glister.\n\n\"I don't want to know about your arguments with the Langdons,\" I told him.\n\n\"No, no,\" he replied in something of a panic, \"you cannot pick up these castaways!\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"They have Squurd's disease.\"\n\n\"They have what?\"\n\nWe walked into the wheel house and out again onto the port wing, where Fitzwilliam was directing the rescue operation. The lifeboat was still ahead of us at least a hundred yards. The ship was moving forward slowly, a cling net had been thrown over the side, and several burly sailors were making ready to pick up the castaways.\n\n\"Look carefully at the survivors,\" urged Dr. Glister, and I trained my binoculars on the small group. Now that they were closer, I could see that their faces were covered with unsightly green pustules.\n\nI lowered the binoculars and looked at Dr. Glister. \"What's the prognosis?\"\n\n\"A hundred percent fatal, and highly contagious. Bring them on board and we'll be looking at a minimum of twenty percent casualties. We don't reach port for six months, and these poor wretches will already have died in agony long before we could get any help to them.\"\n\nI rubbed my temples. \"You're completely sure of this?\"\n\nHe nodded. I took a deep breath.\n\n\"Fitzwilliam?\"\n\n\"Yes, Captain?\"\n\n\"Break off the rescue.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You heard me. These people have a contagious fatal illness, and I won't risk my passengers' lives saving castaways who will die no matter what we do.\"\n\n\"But, Captain!\" he protested. \"We never leave a man in the water!\"\n\n\"We're doing it today, Fitzwilliam. Do you understand?\"\n\nHe glared at me menacingly, then leaned over the rail and repeated my order, making sure the men knew who had made it. After that, he went into the wheel house, rang up \"full ahead,\" and the vessel shuddered as we made extra speed and steamed on.\n\n\"Come inside,\" said Dr. Glister.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"I'm staying here. I won't hide from the men I've condemned to death.\"\n\nAnd I stood there and watched as the lifeboat and the men drifted astern of the ship and were soon lost to view in the seas.\n\nIt was with a heavy heart that I walked back into the wheel-house and sat in the captain's chair. Baldwin was silent, gazing straight ahead.\n\n\"It was the right thing to do,\" I muttered, to no one in particular. \"And what's more, I could have used the WordStorm to escape after all.\"\n\n\"Things happen here,\" muttered Baldwin. \"Difficult things.\"\n\nI suddenly had a thought, but hoped upon hope I was wrong. \"What's the name of this ship?\"\n\n\"The ship?\" replied Baldwin cheerily. \"It's the steamship Moral Dilemma, Cap'n.\"\n\nI covered my face with my hands and groaned. Anne Wirthlass-Schitt and her obnoxious husband had not been kidding when they said they'd chosen this place especially for me. My nerves were already badly frayed, and I felt the heavy hand of guilt pressing upon me. I'd only been here an hour\u2014what would I be like in a week, or a month? Truly, I was trapped in an unenviable place: adrift on the Hypothetical Ocean, in command of the Moral Dilemma.\n\n\"Captain?\"\n\nIt was the cook this time. He was unshaven and wearing a white uniform that had so many food stains on it that it was hard to say where stain ended and uniform began.\n\n\"Yes?\" I said, somewhat wearily.\n\n\"Begging your pardon, but there's been a gross underestimation on the provisions.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"We don't get into port for another six months,\" the cook continued, referring to a grubby sheet of calculations he had on him, \"and we only have enough to feed the crew and passengers on strict rations for two-thirds of that time.\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"That all forty of us will starve long before we reach port.\"\n\nI beckoned Fitzwilliam over. \"There wouldn't be another port closer than that, would there?\"\n\n\"No, Captain,\" he answered. \"Port Conjecture is the only port there is.\"\n\n\"I thought so. And no fish either?\"\n\n\"Not in these waters.\"\n\n\"Other ships?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\nI got it now. These were the \"difficult things\" Baldwin had spoken of, and they were mine and mine alone to deal with. The ship, the sea and the people on it might be hypothetical\u2014but they could suffer and die the same as anyone.\n\n\"Thank you, Cook,\" I said. \"I'll let you know of my decision.\"\n\nHe gave a lazy salute and was gone.\n\n\"Well, Fitzwilliam,\" I said, doing some simple math on a piece of paper, \"there's enough food for twenty-six people to survive until we reach port. Do you think we could find fourteen volunteers to throw themselves over the side to ensure the survival of the rest?\"\n\n\"I doubt it.\"\n\n\"Then I have something of a problem. Is my primary sense of duty as captain to see to it that as many people as possible survive on my ship, or is it my moral obligation not to conduct or condone murder?\"\n\n\"The men in the lifeboat just now wouldn't see you as anything but a murderer.\"\n\n\"Perhaps so, but this one's harder; it's not a case of inaction to bring about a circumstance, but action. This is what I'm going to do. Anyone under eighteen is excluded, as are six essential crew to keep the ship going. All the rest will choose straws\u2014thirteen will go over the side.\"\n\n\"If they don't want to go?\"\n\n\"Then I will throw them over.\"\n\n\"You'll hang for it.\"\n\n\"I won't. I'll be the fourteenth.\"\n\n\"Very\u2026selfless,\" murmured Fitzwilliam, \"but even after your crew and age exclusions, thirty-one passengers are still under eighteen. You will still have to select seven of them. Will you be able to throw them overboard, the children, the innocents?\"\n\n\"But I save the rest, right?\"\n\n\"It's not for me to say,\" said Fitzwilliam quietly. \"I am not the captain.\"\n\nI closed my eyes and took a deep breath, my heart thumping and a cold panic roiling inside me. I had to do terrible things in order to save others, and I'm not sure I could even do it\u2014and thus imperil everyone's life. I stopped for a moment and thought. The dilemmas had been getting progressively worse since I arrived. Perhaps this place\u2014wherever it was\u2014was quirkily responsive to my decisions. I decided to try something.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"I'm not going to kill anyone simply because an abstract ethical situation demands it. We're going to sail on as we are and trust to providence that we meet another ship. If we don't, then we may die, but we will have at least done the right thing by one another.\"\n\nThere was a distant rumble of thunder in the distance, and the boat heeled over. I wondered what would be next.\n\n\"Begging your pardon, Captain, but I bring bad news.\" It was a steward whom I hadn't seen before.\n\n\"And\u2026?\"\n\n\"We have a gentleman in the wardroom who claims there is a bomb on board the ship\u2014and it's set to go off in ten minutes.\"\n\nI allowed myself a wry smile. The rapidly changing scenarios seemed to have a clumsy intelligence to them. It was possible this was something in the oral tradition, but I couldn't be sure. If this small world were somehow sentient, though, it could be beaten. To vanquish it, I needed to find its weakness, and it had just supplied one: impatience. It didn't want a long, drawn-out starvation for the passengers; it wanted me to commit a hands-on murder for the greater good\u2014and soon.\n\n\"Show me.\"\n\nI followed the steward down into the wardroom, where a man was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He looked sallow and had fine, wispy blond hair and small eyes that stared intently at me as I walked in. A burly sailor named McTavish, who was tattoo and Scotsman in a three-to-four ratio, was standing guard over him. There was no one else in the room\u2014there didn't need to be. It was a hypothetical situation.\n\n\"Your name, sir?\"\n\n\"Jebediah Salford. And I have hidden a bomb\u2014\"\n\n\"I heard. And naturally you won't tell me where it is?\"\n\n\"Naturally.\"\n\n\"This bomb,\" I went on, \"will sink the ship, potentially leading to many deaths?\"\n\n\"Indeed, I hope so,\" replied Jebediah cheerily.\n\n\"Your own included?\"\n\n\"I fear no death.\"\n\nI paused for thought. It was a classic and overused ethical dilemma. Would I, as an essentially good person, reduce myself to torturing someone for the greater good? It was a puzzle that had been discussed for many years, generally by those to whom it has no chance of becoming real. But the way in which the scenarios came on thick and fast suggested that whoever was running this show had a prurient interest in seeing just how far a decent person could be pushed before doing bad things. I could almost feel the architect of the dilemma gloating over me from afar. I would have to stall him if I could.\n\n\"Fitzwilliam? Have all passengers go on deck, close all watertight doors, and have every crew member and able-bodied passenger look for the bomb.\"\n\n\"Captain,\" he said, \"that's a waste of time. There is a bomb, but you can't find it. The decision has to be made here and now, in this wardroom.\"\n\nDamn. Outmaneuvered.\n\n\"How many lifeboats do we have?\" I asked, getting increasingly desperate.\n\n\"Only one left, ma'am\u2014with room for ten.\"\n\n\"Shit. How long do we have left before this bomb goes off?\"\n\n\"Seven minutes.\"\n\nIf this were the real world and in a situation as black and white as this, there wasn't a decision to make. I would use all force necessary to get the information. But, most important, submit myself to scrutiny afterward. If you permit or conduct torture, you must be personally responsible for your actions\u2014it's the kind of decision where it's best to have the threat of prison looming behind you. But the thing was, on board this ship here and now, it didn't look as though torturing him would actually achieve anything at all. He would eventually tell me, the bomb would be found\u2014and the next dilemma would begin. And they would carry on, again and again, worse and worse, until I had done everything I would never have done and the passengers of this vessel were drowned, eaten or murdered. It was hell for me, but it would be hell for them, too. I sat down heavily on a nearby chair, put my head in hands and stared at the floor.\n\n\"Captain,\" said Fitzwilliam, \"we only have five minutes. You must torture this person.\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" I mumbled incoherently, \"I know.\"\n\n\"We will all die,\" he continued. \"Again.\"\n\nI looked up into his eyes. I'd never noticed how incredibly blue they were.\n\n\"You all die in the end, don't you?\" I said miserably. \"No matter what I do. It's just one increasingly bad dilemma after another until everyone's dead, right?\"\n\n\"Four minutes, Captain.\"\n\n\"Am I right?\"\n\nFitzwilliam looked away.\n\n\"I asked you a question, Number One.\"\n\nHe looked up at me, and he seemed to have tears in his eyes. \"We have all been drowned,\" he said in a quiet voice, \"over a thousand times each. We have been eaten, blown up and suffered fatal illnesses. The drownings are the worst. Each time I can feel the smothering effect of water, the blind panic as I suffocate\u2014\"\n\n\"Fitzwilliam,\" I demanded, \"where is this damnable place?\"\n\nHe took a deep breath and lowered his voice. \"We're oral tradition, but we're not in a story\u2014we're an ethics seminar.\"\n\n\"You mean you're all hypothetical characters during a lecture?\"\n\nFitzwilliam nodded miserably. The steward somewhat chillingly handed me a pair of pliers, while reminding me in an urgent whisper that there were only three minutes left.\n\nI looked down at the pliers in an absent sort of way, at Jebediah, then back to Fitzwilliam, who was staring at the floor. So much suffering on board this ship, and for so long. Perhaps there was another way out. The thing was, to take such radical action in the oral tradition risked the life of the lecturer giving the talk. But what was more important? The well-being of one real-life ethics professor or the relentless torture of his subjects, who had to undergo his sadistic and relentless hypothetical dilemmas for two-hour sessions three times a week? When you tell a tragic story, someone dies for real in the BookWorld. I was in the oral tradition. Potentially the best storytelling there was\u2014and the most destructive.\n\n\"McTavish, prepare the lifeboat for launching. I'm leaving.\"\n\nMcTavish looked at Fitzwilliam, who shrugged, and the large Scotsman and his tattoos departed.\n\n\"That isn't one of the options,\" said Fitzwilliam. \"You can't do it.\"\n\n\"I have experience of the oral tradition,\" I told him. \"All these scenarios are taking place only because I am here to preside in judgment upon them. This whole thing goes just one way: in a downward spiral of increasingly impossible moral dilemmas that will leave everyone dead except myself and one other, whom I will be forced to kill and eat or something. If I take myself out of the equation, you are free to sail across the sea unhampered, unimpeded\u2014and safe.\"\n\n\"But that might\u2026that might\u2014\"\n\n\"Harm the lecturer, even kill him? Possibly. If the bomb goes off, you'll know I've failed and he's okay. If it doesn't, you'll all be safe.\"\n\n\"And you?\" he asked. \"What about you?\"\n\nI patted him on the shoulder. \"Don't worry about me. I think you've all suffered enough on account of the Outland.\"\n\n\"But surely\u2026we can pick you up again if all goes well?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"that's not how it works. It can't be a trick. I have to cast myself adrift.\"\n\nI trotted out of the wardroom and to the side of the ship, where McTavish had already lowered the lifeboat. It was being held against the scramble net by lines fore and aft clutched by deck-hands, and it thumped against the hull as the waves caught it. As I put my leg over the rail to climb down, Fitzwilliam grasped my arm. He wasn't trying to stop me\u2014he wanted to shake me by the hand.\n\n\"Goodbye, Captain\u2014and thank you.\"\n\nI smiled. \"Think you'll make Port Conjecture?\"\n\nHe smiled back. \"We'll give it our best shot.\"\n\nI climbed down the scramble net and into the lifeboat. They let go fore and aft, and the boat rocked violently as the bow wave caught it. For a moment I thought it would go over, but it stayed upright, and I rapidly fell behind as the ship steamed on.\n\nI counted off the seconds until the bomb was meant to explode, but, thankfully, it didn't, and across the sea I heard the cheer of forty people celebrating their release. I couldn't share in their elation, because in a university somewhere back home the ethics lecturer had suddenly keeled over with an aneurysm. They'd call a doctor, and with a bit of luck he'd pull through. He might even lecture again, but not with this crew.\n\nThe Moral Dilemma was at least a quarter mile away by now, and within ten minutes the steamer was just a smudge of smoke on the horizon. In another half hour, it had vanished completely, and I was on my own in a gray sea that lasted forever in all directions. I looked through my shoulder bag and found a bar of chocolate, which I ate in a despondent manner and then just sat in the bow of the lifeboat and stared up at the gray sky, feeling hopelessly lost. I leaned back and closed my eyes.\n\nHad I done the right thing? I had no idea. The lecturer couldn't have known the suffering he was putting his hypothetical characters through, but even if he had, perhaps he'd justify it by reasoning that the suffering was worth the benefits to his students. If he survived, I'd be able to ask him his opinion. But that wasn't likely. Rescue seemed a very remote possibility, and that was at the nub of the whole ethical-dilemma argument. You never come out on top, no matter what. The only way to win the game is not to play."
            },
            {
                "title": "Rescue/Capture",
                "text": "There was only one Jurisfiction agent who worked exclusively in the oral tradition. He was named Ski, rarely spoke and wore a tall hat in the manner of Lincoln\u2014but that was the sum total of his recognizable features. When appearing at the Jurisfiction offices, he was always insubstantial, flickering in and out like a badly tuned TV. Despite this he did some of the best work in the OralTrad I'd seen. Rumor had it that he was a discarded Childhood Imaginary Friend, which accounted for his inconsolable melancholy.\n\nWhen I awoke, nothing had changed. The sea was still gray, the sky a dull overcast. The water was choppy but not dangerously so and had a sort of twenty-second pattern of movement to it. With nothing better to do, I sat up and watched the waves as they rose and fell. By fixing my eyes on a random part of the ocean, I could see that the same wave would come around again like a loop in a film. Most of the BookWorld was like that. Fictional forests had only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. It was what made the real world so rich by comparison. I looked at my watch. The reality book show of The Bennets would be replacing Pride and Prejudice in three hours, and the first task of the house hold would be unveiled in two. Equally bad, that worthless shit Wirthlass-Schitt might well have the recipe by now and would be hoofing it back to Goliath. But then again, she might not. I'd visited enough Poetry to know that it's an emotionally draining place and on a completely different level. Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.\n\nMy mind, I knew, was wandering. It was intentional. If I didn't let it, it returned like an annoying default setting to Landen and the kids. Whenever I thought of them, my eyes welled up, and that was no good for anything. Perhaps, I mused, instead of lying to Landen after the Minotaur had shot me in 1988, I should have just stayed at home and led a blameless life of unabashed domestication. Washing, cleaning and making meals. Okay, with some part-time work down at Acme in case I went nuts. But no SpecOps stuff. None. Except maybe dispatching a teensy-weensy chimera. Or two. And if Spike needed a hand? Well, I couldn't say no, now could\u2014"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 195",
                "text": "My thoughts were interrupted by my mobilefootnoterphone. Until now it had been resolutely silent. I dug it out of my bag and stared at it hopefully. There was still no signal, which meant that someone else was within a radius of about 10 million words. Not far in a shelf of Russian novels, perhaps, but out here in the oral tradition it could mean over a thousand stories or more. It was entirely possible that whoever it was wasn't a friend at all, but anything was better than slow starvation, so I keyed the mike and pretended I was a communications expert from OFF-FNOP, the watchdog responsible for overseeing the network.\n\n\"OFF-FNOP tech number\u2026um, 76542: Request user ident.\"\n\nI looked carefully all around me, but the horizon was clear. There was nothing at all, just endless gray. It was like\u2014"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 196",
                "text": "I paused. Footnoterphones weren't like normal phones\u2014they were textual. It was impossible to tell who was talking. It was a bit like text messages back home, but without the dopey CUL8R shorthand nonsense.\n\n\"I say again: Request user ident.\"\n\nI looked around desperately, but still nothing. I hoped it wasn't another poor twit like me, compelled to take over the reins as ethical arbiter."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 197",
                "text": "My heart suddenly leaped. Whoever it was, was somewhere close\u2014and didn't read like anyone who would do me harm. I needed to tell the person how to find me, but the only directions I could think of were \"I'm near a wave,\" which was marginally less useful than \"I'm in a boat.\" Then I had an idea.\n\n\"If you can hear me,\" I said into my phone, \"head for the rainstorm of text.\"\n\nI tucked the phone in my pocket and took out my pistol. I released the safety, pointed it into the air and fired. There was a low thud, and the air seemed to wobble as the eraserhead arced high into the sky. It was a risky move, as it would almost certainly be picked up by the weather stations dotted around the genres and from there to Text Grand Central. If they were looking for me, they'd know instantly where I was.\n\nIt took a few seconds for the charge to reach the thick stratus of cloud, but when it hit, the effect can be described only as spectacular. There was a yellow-and-green starburst, and the textual clouds changed rapidly from gray to black as the words dissolved, taking the meaning with them. A dark cloud of letters was soon fluttering down toward the sea like chaff, a pillar of text that could be seen for miles. They landed on me and the boat, but mostly the sea, where they settled like autumn leaves on a lake.\n\nI looked up and saw that the hole in the clouds was already healing itself, and within a few minutes the text would start to sink. I opened the pistol and reloaded, but I didn't need to fire a second time. On the horizon and heading toward me was a small dot that gradually grew bigger and bigger until it was overhead, then circled twice before it slowed to a stop, hovering in the air right next to the lifeboat. The driver rolled down his window and consulted a clipboard.\n\n\"Are you Ms. Next?\" he asked, which was mildly surprising, to say the least.\n\n\"Yes, I am.\"\n\n\"And you ordered me?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes I did.\"\n\n\"Well, you better get in, then.\"\n\nI was still in mild shock at the turn of events but quickly gathered my thoughts and my belongings and climbed into the yellow vehicle. It was dented and dirty and had the familiar TransGenre Taxis logo on the door. I'd never been so glad to see a cab in my entire life.\n\nI settled myself into the backseat as the driver switched on the meter, turned to me with a grin and said, \"Had the devil's job finding you, darling\u2014where to?\"\n\nIt was a good point. I thought for a moment. Pride and Prejudice was definitely in dire peril, but if the Now got any shorter, then all books were in danger\u2014and a lot more besides.\n\n\"Longfellow,\" I said, \"and make it snappy. I think we're going to have some unwanted company.\"\n\nThe cabbie raised his eyebrows, pressed on the accelerator, and we were soon scooting across the sea at a good rate of knots.\n\nHe caught my eye in the rearview mirror. \"Are you in some kind of trouble?\"\n\n\"The worst kind,\" I replied, thinking that I was going to have to trust this cabbie to do the right thing. \"I'm subject to a shoot-to-kill order from the CofG, but it's bullshit. I'm a Jurisfiction agent, and I could seriously do with some help right now.\"\n\n\"Bureaucrats!\" he snorted disparagingly, then thought hard for a moment and added, \"Next, Next\u2014you wouldn't be Thursday Next, would you?\"\n\n\"That's me.\"\n\n\"I like your books a lot. Especially the early ones with all the killing and gratuitous sex.\"\n\n\"I'm not like that. I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"Whoa!\"\n\nThe cabbie swerved abruptly, and I was thrown violently to the other side of the taxi. I looked out the rear window and could see a figure in a long black dress hit the sea in a cascade of foam. They were onto me already.\n\n\"That was strange,\" said the cabbie, \"but I could have sworn that was a fifty-something, creepy-looking house keeper dressed entirely in black.\"\n\n\"It was a Danverclone,\" I said. \"There'll be more.\"\n\nHe clicked down the central locking and turned to stare at me. \"You've really pissed someone off good and proper, haven't you?\"\n\n\"Not without good reason\u2014Look out!\"\n\nHe swerved again as another Danverclone bounced off the hood and stared at me in a very unnerving way as she flew past the window. I watched her cartwheel across the the waves behind us. That was the thing about Danverclones. They were wholly expendable.\n\nA moment later a heavy thump on the roof shook the cab. I looked behind, but no one had fallen off, and then I heard a noise like an angle grinder from above. It was another Danverclone on the roof, and she was planning on getting in.\n\n\"This is too heavy for me,\" said the cabbie, whose sense of fair play was rapidly departing. \"I've got a livelihood and a very expensive backstory to support.\"\n\n\"I'll buy you a fleet of new cabs,\" I told him somewhat urgently. \"And Master Backstoryist Grnksghty is a personal friend of mine; he'll spin you a backstory of your choice.\"\n\nBefore the cabbie could answer, another Mrs. Danvers landed heavily on the hood near the radiator. She stared at us for a moment and then, by pushing her fingers into the steel bodywork, began to crawl up the hood toward us, lips pursed tightly, the slipstream flapping her clothes and tugging at her tightly combed black hair. She wore the same small dark glasses as the rest of them, but you didn't need to see her eyes to guess her murderous intent.\n\n\"I'm going to have to turn you in,\" said the cabbie as yet another Danverclone landed on the taxi with a crash that shattered the side window. She hung on to the roof trim and flapped around for a bit before finally getting a hold, and then, reaching in through the broken window, she fumbled for the door handle. I reached across, flicked off the lock and kicked the door open, dislodging the Danverclone, who seemed to hang in the air for a moment before a large wave caught her and she was left behind the rapidly moving taxi.\n\n\"I'm not sure I can help you any further,\" continued the cabbie. \"This is some seriously bad shit you're gotten yourself into.\"\n\n\"I'm from the Outland,\" I told him as another two Danvers fell past, vainly flailing their arms as they attempted to catch hold of the taxi. \"Ever wanted something Outlandish? I can get it for you.\"\n\n\"Anything?\" asked the cabbie. There was a screech of metal from the roof as the Danverclone up there began to cut her way in. Sparks fell from the roof as the angle grinder bit into the metal.\n\n\"Anything!\"\n\n\"Well, now,\" said the cabbie, ignoring still another Danvers, who landed on the one crawling up the hood. There was the sort of sound a squeaky toy makes when you sit on it heavily, and then they both bounced off and were gone. \"What I'd really like,\" he continued, completely unfazed, \"is an original Hoppity Hop.\"\n\nIt seemed an unusual request until you realized just how valuable Outlander memorabilia was. I'd once seen two generics almost kill each other over a traffic cone.\n\n\"Orange and with a face on the front?\"\n\n\"Is there any other? You'll find a seat belt in the back.\" he said. \"I suggest you use it.\"\n\nI didn't even have time to search for it before he suddenly pointed the cab straight up and went into a vertical climb toward the clouds. He turned to look at me, raised his eyebrows and smiled. He thought it was something of a lark. I was\u2026well, concerned. I looked behind me as the Mrs. Danvers fell from the roof along with the gasoline-driven grinder and tumbled in a spiraling manner toward the sea, which was now far below. A few moments later, we were enveloped by the soft grayness of the clouds, and almost immediately, but without any sensation of having righted ourselves, we left the cloud on an even keel and were moving slowly between a squadron of French sailing ships and a lone British one. That might have been nothing to worry about, except that they were both armed naval vessels and were firing salvos at one another, and every now and again a hot ball of iron would sail spectacularly close to the cab with a whizzing noise.\n\n\"I had that Admiral Hornblower in the back of my cab once,\" said the taxidriver, chatting amiably to me in that curious way cabbies do when they talk over their shoulder and look at the road at the same time. \"What a gent. Tipped me a sovereign and then tried to press me into ser vice.\"\n\n\"Where are we?\" I asked.\n\n\"C. S. Forester's Ship of the Line,\" replied the cabbie. \"We'll hang a left after the HMS Sutherland and move through The African Queen to join the cross-Maritime thoroughfare at The Old Man and the Sea. Once there we'll double back through The Sea Wolf and come out at Moby-Dick, which neatly sidesteps Trea sure Island, as it's usually jammed at this hour.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't it be better to go via 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and hang a left at Robinson Crusoe?\"\n\nI could see him staring at me in the rearview mirror. \"You want to try it that way?\" he asked, annoyed that I might question his judgment.\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied hastily. \"We'll do what you think best.\"\n\nHe seemed happier at this. \"Okeydokey. Whereabouts in Longfellow were you wanting to go?\"\n\n\"'The Wreck of the Hesperus.'\"\n\nHe turned around to stare at me. \"Hesperus? You're one whole heap of trouble, lady. I'll drop you off at 'A Psalm of Life,' and you can walk from there.\"\n\nI glared at him. \"An original Hoppity Hop was it? Boxed?\"\n\nHe sighed. It was a good deal, and he knew it.\n\n\"Okay,\" he said at last. \"Hesperus it is.\"\n\nWe moved slowly past a small steam launch that was shooting some rapids on the Ulanga, and the cabbie spoke again. \"So what's your story?\"\n\n\"I was replaced by my written other self, who is rubber-stamping the CofG's most harebrained schemes with the woeful compliance of our prime minister back home. You've heard about Pride and Prejudice being serialized as a reality book show called The Bennets? That's what I'm trying to stop. You got a name?\"\n\n\"Colin.\"\n\nWe fell silent for a moment as we followed the Ulanga downriver to where it joined the Bora and then into the lake, where the gunboat K\u00f6nigin Luise lay at anchor. I busied myself reloading my pistol and checking the last two eraserheads. I even took the pistol's holster and clipped it to my belt. I didn't like these things, but I was going to be prepared. Mind you, if they decided to send in the clones, I'd be in serious shit. There were seven thousand Danvers and only one of me. I'd have to erase over three thousand per cartridge, and I didn't think they'd all gather themselves in a convenient heap for me. I pulled out my cell phone and stared at it. We were in full signal, but they'd have a trace on me for sure.\n\n\"Use mine,\" said Colin, who'd been watching me. He passed his footnoterphone back to me, and I called Bradshaw.\n\n\"Commander? It's Thursday.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 198",
                "text": "\"I'm in a taxi heading toward Moby-Dick via The Old Man and the Sea.\"\n\n\"Apparently not. How are things?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 199",
                "text": "\"No; I've got to destroy something in Hesperus that will hopefully raise the Outlander ReadRates. As soon as I'm done there, I'll go straight to Jobsworth.\"\n\nI looked out of the window. We were over the sea once again, but this time the weather was brighter. Two small whaling boats, each with five men at the oars, were pulling toward a disturbance in the water, and as I watched, a mighty, gray-white bulk erupted from beneath the green water and shattered one of the small boats, pitching the hapless occupants into the sea.\n\n\"I'm just coming out the far end of Moby-Dick. Do you have anything for me at all?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 200",
                "text": "I closed the phone and handed it back. If Bradshaw was short on ideas, the situation was more hopeless than I had imagined. We crossed from Maritime to Poetry by way of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and after hiding momentarily in the waste of wild dunes, marram and sand of \"False Dawn\" while a foot patrol of Danvers moved past, we were off again and turned into Longfellow by way of \"The Light house.\"\n\n\"Hold up a moment,\" I said to Colin, and we pulled up beneath a rocky ledge on a limestone spur that led out in the deep purple of the twilight to a light house, its beam a sudden radiance of light that swept around the bay.\n\n\"This isn't a wait-and-return job, is it?\" he asked nervously.\n\n\"I'm afraid it is. How close can you get me to the actual wrecking of the Hesperus?\"\n\nHe sucked in air through his teeth and scratched his nose. \"During the gale itself, not close at all. The reef of Norman's Woe during the storm is not somewhere you'd like to be. Forget the wind and the rain\u2014it's the cold.\"\n\nI knew what he meant. Poetry was an emotional roller coaster of a form that could heighten the senses almost beyond straining. The sun was always brighter, the skies bluer, and forests steamed six times as much after a summer shower and felt twelve times earthier. Love was ten times stronger, and happiness, hope and charity rose to a level that made your head spin with giddy well-being. On the other side of the coin, it also made the darker side of existence twenty times worse\u2014tragedy and despair were bleaker, more malevolent. As the saying goes, \"They don't do nuffing by half measures down at Poetry.\"\n\n\"So how close?\" I asked.\n\n\"Daybreak, three verses from the end.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said, \"let's do it.\"\n\nHe released the handbrake and motored slowly forward. The light moved from twilight to dawn as we entered \"The Wreck of the Hesperus.\" The sky was still leaden, and a stiff wind scoured the foreshore, even though the worst of the storm had passed. The taxi drew to a halt on the sea beach, and I opened the door and stepped out. I suddenly felt a feeling of strong loss and despair, but knowing full well that these were simply emotions seeping out of the overcharged fabric of the poem, I attempted to give it no heed. Colin got out as well, and we exchanged nervous looks. The sea beach was littered with the wreckage of the Hesperus, reduced to little more than matchwood by the gale. I pulled my jacket collar close against the wind and trudged up the shoreline.\n\n\"What are we looking for?\" asked Colin, who had joined me.\n\n\"Remains of a yellow tour bus,\" I said, \"or a tasteless blue jacket with large checks.\"\n\n\"Nothing too specific, then?\"\n\nMost of the flotsam was wood, barrels, ropes and the odd personal artifact. We came across a drowned sailor, but he wasn't someone from the Rover. Colin became emotional over the loss of life and lamented how the sailor had been \"sorely taken from the bosom of his family\" and \"given his soul to the storm\" before I told him to pull himself together. We reached some rocks and chanced across a fisherman, staring with a numbed expression at a section of mast that gently rose and fell in the sheltered water of an inlet. Lashed to the mast was a body. Her long brown hair was floating like seaweed, and the intense cold had frozen her features in the expression she'd last worn in life\u2014of abject terror. She was wearing a heavy seaman's coat, which hadn't done much good, and I waded into the icy water to look closer. Ordinarily I wouldn't have, but something was wrong. This should have been the body of a young girl\u2014the skipper's daughter. But it wasn't. It was a middle-aged woman. It was Wirthlass-Schitt. Her eyelashes were encrusted with frozen salt, and she stared blankly out at the world, her face suffused with fear.\n\n\"She saved me.\"\n\nIt was a little girl's voice, and I turned. She was aged no more than nine and was wrapped in a Goliath-issue down jacket. She looked confused, as well she might; she hadn't survived the storm for over 163 years. Wirthlass-Schitt had underestimated the power not only of the BookWorld, the raw energy of Poetry\u2026but also herself. Despite her primary goal of corporate duty, she couldn't leave a child to drown. She'd done what she thought was right and suffered the consequences. It was what I was trying to warn her about. The thing you discover in Poetry\u2026is your true personality. The annoying thing was, she'd done it all for nothing. A cleanup gang from Jurisfiction would be down later, putting everything chillingly to rights. It was why I didn't like to do \"the rhyming stuff.\"\n\nColin, overcome by the heavy emotions that pervaded the air like fog, had begun to cry. \"O wearisome world!\" he sobbed.\n\nI checked Anne's collar and found a small necklace on her cold flesh. I pulled it off and then stopped. If she'd been on the Hesperus, perhaps she had picked up his jacket?\n\nThe seaman's coat was like cardboard, and I eased it open at the collar to look beneath. My heart fell. She wasn't wearing the jacket, and after checking her pockets I found that she wasn't carrying the recipe either. I took a deep breath, and my emotions, enhanced by the poem, suddenly fell to rock bottom. Wirthlass-Schitt must have given the jacket to her crewmates\u2014and if it was back at Goliath, I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of getting to it. Friday had entrusted me with the protection of the Long Now, and I had failed him. I waded back to shore and started sniffing as large, salty tears ran down my face.\n\n\"Oh, please dry up,\" I said to Colin, who was sobbing into his hankie next to me. \"You've got me started now.\"\n\n\"But the sadness drapes heavily on my countenance!\" he whimpered.\n\nWe sat on the foreshore next to the fisherman, who was still looking aghast, and sobbed quietly as though our hearts would break. The young girl came and sat down next to me. She patted my hand reassuringly.\n\n\"I didn't want to be rescued anyway,\" she announced. \"If I survive, the whole point of the poem is lost\u2014Henry will be furious.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" I said. \"It'll all be repaired.\"\n\n\"And everyone keeps on giving me their jackets,\" she continued in a huffy tone. \"Honestly, it gets harder and harder to freeze to death these days. There's this one that Anne gave me,\" she added, thumbing the thick pile on the blue Goliath jacket, \"and the one the old man gave me seventeen years ago.\"\n\n\"Really, I'm not interested in\u2014\"\n\nI stopped sobbing as a bright shaft of sunlight cut through the storm clouds of my melancholia.\n\n\"Do\u2026you still have it?\"\n\n\"Of course!\"\n\nAnd she unzipped the Goliath jacket to reveal\u2014a man's blue jacket in large checks. Never had I been happier to see a more tasteless garment. I quickly rummaged through the pockets and found a yo-yo string, a very old bag of jelly beans, a domino, a screwdriver, an invention for cooking the perfect hard-boiled egg and\u2026wrapped in a plastic freezer bag, a paper napkin with a simple equation written upon it. I gave the young girl a hug, my feeling of elation quadrupled by the magnifying effect of Poetry. I breathed a sigh of relief. Found! Without wasting a moment, I tore the recipe into small pieces and ate them.\n\n\"Riublf,\" I said to Colin with my mouth full, \"leb's get goinf.\"\n\n\"I don't think we're going anywhere, Ms. Next.\"\n\nI looked up and saw what he meant. Occupying every square inch of space\u2014on the sea beach, the foreshore, the dunes and even standing in the sea\u2014were hundreds upon hundreds of identical black-clad Mrs. Danvers, staring at me malevolently. We'd killed five of their number recently, so I guessed they wouldn't be that pleased. Mind you, they were always pretty miserable, so it might have had nothing to do with it. I instinctively grasped the butt of my pistol, but it was pointless\u2014like using a peashooter against a T-54 battle tank.\n\n\"Well,\" I said, swallowing the last piece of the recipe and addressing the nearest Danverclone, \"you'd better take me to your leader.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Bees, the Bees",
                "text": "The Danverclones had advanced a good deal since their accidental creation from the original Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. At first, they had simply been creepy, fifty-something house keepers with bad attitude, but now they had weapons training as well. A standard Danverclone was a fearless yet generally vapid drone who would willingly die to follow orders. But just recently an elite force of Danverclones had arisen, with not only weaponry but a sound working knowledge of the BookWorld. Even I would think twice before tackling this bunch. We called them the SWOT team.\n\nThe Danverclones moved in silently. With bewildering speed and a tentacle-like movement of their bony limbs, four of them grasped my arms while another took my shoulder bag and a sixth removed my pistol. A seventh, who appeared to be the platoon commander, spoke briefly into a mobilefootnoterphone:\n\n\"Target Number One located and in custody.\"\n\nShe then snapped the phone shut and used a brief series of hand signals to the other Mrs. Danvers, who began to jump out of the poem, beginning with the ones right at the back. I looked across at Colin, who was also being held tightly. A Danverclone had pulled his taxi license from his wallet and held it up in front of him before tearing it in two and tossing the halves in the air. He glanced at me and looked severely annoyed, but not with me\u2014more with the Danverclones and the circumstances. I was just wondering where they would take me when there was a faint crackle in the air and my recently appointed least-favorite person was standing right in front of me. She was dressed in all her black leather finery, twin automatics on her hips and a long black greatcoat that fell to the ground. She leered at me as she appeared, and I thought about spitting in her eye but decided against it\u2014she was too far away, and if I'd missed, I would just have looked even more enfeebled.\n\n\"Well, well,\" said Thursday1\u20134, \"the great Thursday Next finally brought to book.\"\n\n\"Wow!\" I replied. \"Black is surely the color of choice today.\"\n\nShe ignored me and continued, \"Do you know, it's going to be fun being you. Senator Jobsworth has extended me all the rights that are usually yours\u2014you in the BookWorld, you at the CofG, you in the much-awaited and now greenlighted Thursday Next Returns\u2014This Time It's Personal and you in the Outland. That's the bit I like best. As much Landen as I want.\" She leaned closer and lowered her voice. \"And believe me, I want a lot.\"\n\nI gave an almighty howl of anger and struggled to break loose from the Danvers, but without any luck. The clones all sniggered, and Thursday1\u20134 smiled unpleasantly.\n\n\"It's time for you to vanish, Thursday,\" she growled.\n\nShe tossed a pair of handcuffs to the Danvers, who pulled my arms behind my back and secured them. Thursday1\u20134 held on to me, took my shoulder bag from a nearby clone and began to walk away when the commander of the Mrs. Danvers contingent said, \"I have orders to take her direct to the \u00cele Saint-Joseph within Papillon as per your original plan, Ms. Next1\u20134.\"\n\nThe other me turned to the Mrs. Danvers, looked her up and down and sneered, \"You've done your job, Danny\u2014you'll be rewarded. This is my prisoner.\"\n\nBut Mrs. Danvers had an order, and Danvers only do one thing: They do as they're told\u2014and, until countermanded by a written order, they do it rather well.\n\n\"I have my written instructions,\" the clone said more firmly, and the other Danvers took a menacing step toward us, three of them producing weapons from within the folds of their black dresses.\n\n\"I'm countermanding your order.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Mrs. Danvers. \"I have my orders, and I will carry them out.\"\n\n\"Listen here shitface,\" said Thursday1\u20134 with a snarl, \"I'm the new Mrs. de Winter now\u2014geddit?\"\n\nMrs. Danvers took a step back in shocked amazement, and in that short moment Thursday1\u20134 held tightly to my arm and jumped us both out.\n\nI was expecting a ready dug grave\u2014or worse, a shovel and a place for me to dig one, but there wasn't. Instead the place where we'd arrived looked more like the sitting room of a Georgian country house of moderate means somewhere, and, thankfully, there wasn't a shovel in sight\u2014but there was a Bradshaw, five Bennet sisters and Mr. Bennet, who were all staring at me expectantly, which was somewhat confusing.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Bradshaw. \"Thank goodness for that. Sorry to keep you in the dark, old girl, but I knew my footnoterphone was bugged. We've got to get you across to the CofG, but right now we have a serious and very pressing problem.\"\n\n\"O-kay,\" I said slowly and in great puzzlement. I looked across at Thursday who was rapidly divesting herself of the weapons and leather apparel.\n\n\"I actually swore,\" she muttered unhappily, holding one of the automatics with a disdainful finger and thumb. \"And these clothes! Made from animal skins\u2026\"\n\nMy mouth may have dropped open at this. \"Thursday5?\" I mumbled. \"That's you?\"\n\nShe nodded shyly and shrugged. Underneath the leathers, I noticed, was her usual attire of naturally dyed cotton, crocheted sweater and Birkenstocks. She had taken her failure over the Minotaur to heart and made good. Perhaps I'd been too hasty over her assessment.\n\n\"We knew you were in the BookWorld, but then you disappeared off the radar,\" said Bradshaw. \"Where have you been the past ten hours?\"\n\n\"I was trapped in a moral dilemma. Any news from the Outland? I mean, are people buying into this whole reality book thing?\"\n\n\"And how!\" exclaimed Bradshaw. \"The news from the CofG is that a half million people are waiting to see how The Bennets will turn out, as the idea of being able to change a major classic has huge appeal\u2014it's the latest fad in the Outland, and you know how the Outlanders like fads.\"\n\n\"Sometimes I think they like little else.\"\n\nBradshaw looked at his watch. \"There's only six minutes before Pride and Prejudice as we know it is going to be rewritten and lost forever, and we don't have a seriously good plan of action. In fact,\" he added, \"we don't have any plan of action.\"\n\nEveryone stared at me. Twenty seconds ago I thought I was almost certainly dead; now I was expected at short notice to fashion a plan of infinite subtlety to save one of our greatest novels from being reduced to a mind-numbing morass of transient popular entertainment.\n\n\"Right,\" I said as I attempted to gather my thoughts. \"Lizzie?\"\n\n\"Here, ma'am,\" said the second-eldest Bennet sister, bobbing respectfully.\n\n\"Fill me in. How does this reality-book thing work? Have you been given any instructions?\"\n\n\"We've not been told much, ma'am. We are expected to collect ourselves in the house, but instead of looking for husbands and happiness, we are to undertake a preset task of an altogether curious nature. And as we do so,\" she added sorrowfully, \"our new actions and words are indelibly burned into the new edition of our book.\"\n\nI looked around the room. They were still all staring at me expectantly.\n\n\"Let me see the task.\"\n\nShe handed me a sheet of paper. It was on Interactive Book Council letterhead and read:"
            },
            {
                "title": "TASK ONE",
                "text": "Chapters 1 to 3 (one hour's reading time)\n\n[ All House mates ]\n\n[ Must ]\n\nThe house mates will gather in the parlor of Longbourn and make bee costumes. After that, the house mates will be expected to act like bees. One of the house mates, dressed as a bee, will ask Mr. Bingley to organize a fancy-dress costume ball where everyone is required to dress as a bee. The house mate who is judged to have made the best bee costume and to have done the most satisfactory bee impersonation will win the first round and be allowed to put up two house mates for eviction. The voting Outlander public will decide who is to go. House mates will be expected to go to the diary room and talk about what ever comes into their heads, no matter how dreary.\n\nI put down the sheet of paper. This was a good deal worse than I'd expected, and my expectations hadn't been high.\n\n\"I'm not dressing up as a bee,\" announced Mr. Bennet indignantly. \"The very idea. You girls may indulge in such silliness, but I shall withdraw to my study.\"\n\n\"Father,\" said Lizzie, \"remember we are doing this to ensure that the Outland ReadRates do not continue to fall in the precipitous manner that has marked their progress in recent years. It is a sacrifice, to be sure, but one that we should shoulder with determination and dignity\u2014for the good of the BookWorld.\"\n\n\"I'll dress as a bee!\" cried Lydia excitedly, jumping up and down.\n\n\"Me, too!\" added Kitty. \"I will be the finest bee in Meryton!\"\n\n\"You shall not, for I shall!\" returned Lydia, and they joined hands and danced around the room. I looked at Mary, who turned her eyes heavenward and returned to her book.\n\n\"Well,\" said Jane good-naturedly, \"I shall dress as a bee if it is for the greater good\u2014do you suppose Mr. Bingley will also be required to dress as a bee? And whether,\" she added somewhat daringly, \"we might get to see each other again, as bees?\"\n\n\"It doesn't state as such,\" replied Mr. Bennet, looking at the task again, \"but I expect Mr. Bingley will be requested to make an idiot of himself in the fullness of time\u2014and Darcy, too, I should wager.\"\n\n\"Where's Mrs. Bennet?\" I asked, having not seen her since I'd arrived.\n\n\"We had to put poor Mama in the cupboard again,\" explained Lizzie, pointing at a large wardrobe, which Thursday5 opened to reveal that yes, Mrs. Bennet was indeed inside, stock-still and staring with blank eyes into the middle distance.\n\n\"It calms her,\" explained Jane as Thursday5 closed the wardrobe door again. \"We have to commit dear Mama to the wardrobe quite often during the book.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" added Lizzie thoughtfully, \"I fear she will not take to the bee task. While there are daughters unmarried, Mama has only one thing on her mind, and she is liable to get\u2026agitated and cause a dreadful scene. Do you think that will spoil the task?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said wearily. \"The worse it gets, the better reality it is, if you see what I mean.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I don't.\"\n\n\"Thursday, old girl,\" interrupted Bradshaw, who'd been staring at his watch, \"how's this for a suggestion? Everyone hides so there's no book at all.\"\n\n\"Out of the question!\" intoned Mr. Bennet. \"I will not hide my family from view and skulk in my own home. No indeed. No matter how silly we may look, we shall be here in the front room when the new book begins.\"\n\n\"Wait a moment,\" I said. \"This first section lasts an hour's reading time, yes?\"\n\nLizzie nodded.\n\nI took the piece of paper with the task written upon it and pulled a pen from my top pocket, put three broad lines through the task and started to write my own. When I had finished, I handed it to Lizzie, who looked at it thoughtfully and then passed it to her father.\n\n\"Oh, boo!\" said Lydia, crossing her arms and jutting out a lip. \"And I did so want to become a bee!\"\n\n\"I'm going to read this out loud,\" announced Mr. Bennet, \"since we must all, as a family, agree to undertake this new task\u2014or not. He looked around at everyone, who all nodded their agreement, except Lydia and Kitty, who were poking each other, and Mrs. Bennet, who couldn't, as she was still \"relaxing\" in the closet.\n\n\"'First Task. Chapters One to Three,'\" he began. \"'Mr. Bennet, of Longbourn House in Meryton, should be encouraged by his wife to visit Mr. Bingley, who has taken up residence at nearby Netherfield Park. Mr. Bingley shall return the visit without meeting the daughters, and a ball must take place. In this ball Mr. Bingley and Jane Bennet are to dance together. Mr. Darcy is also to attend, and he shall be considered rude, proud and aloof by Lizzie and the rest of the family. At the same time, we are to learn much of the Bennet marriage, and their daughters, and their prospects. The reading public can vote on whether Jane and Bingley are to dance a second time. Mrs. Bennet is free to do \"her own thing\" throughout.'\"\n\nMr. Bennet stopped reading, gave a smile and looked around the room. \"Well, my children?\"\n\n\"It sounds like an excellent task,\" said Jane, clapping her hands together. \"Lizzie?\"\n\n\"I confess I cannot fault it.\"\n\n\"Then it is agreed,\" opined Mr. Bennet with a twinkle in his eye. \"Truly an audacious plan\u2014and it might just work. How long before we begin?\"\n\n\"Forty-seven seconds,\" answered Bradshaw, consulting his pocketwatch.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" said Lydia. \"This new task\u2014isn't that what usually happens?\"\n\n\"Duh,\" replied Kitty, making a face.\n\n\"Places, everyone,\" said Mr. Bennet, and they all obediently sat in their allotted chairs. \"Lizzie, are you ready to narrate?\"\n\n\"Yes, Father.\"\n\n\"Good. Mary, would you let Mrs. Bennet out of the cupboard? Then we can begin.\"\n\nMyself, Thursday5 and Bradshaw scurried out into the corridor as Lizzie began the reality book show with words that rang like chimes, loud and clear in the canon of English literature:\n\n\"'It is a truth universally acknowledged,'\" we heard her say through the closed door, \"'that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.'\"\n\n\"Thursday,\" said Bradshaw as he, Thursday5 and I walked to the entrance hall, \"we've kept the book exactly as it is\u2014but only until the Council of Genres and the Interactive Book people find out what we've done. And then they'll be down here in a flash!\"\n\n\"I know,\" I replied, \"so I haven't got much time to change the CofG's mind over this interactivity nonsense. Stay here and try to stall them as long as possible. It's my guess they'll let this first task run its course and do the stupid bee thing for task two. Wish me luck.\"\n\n\"I do,\" said Bradshaw grimly, \"and you're going to need it.\"\n\n\"Here,\" said Thursday5, handing me an emergency TravelBook and my bag. \"You'll need these as much as luck.\"\n\nI didn't waste a moment. I opened the TravelBook, read the required text and was soon back in the Great Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Senator Jobsworth",
                "text": "Senatorial positions in the Council of Genres are generally pulled from the ranks of the individual book council members, who officiate on all internal book matters. They are usually minor characters with a lot of time on their hands, so aside from a few notable exceptions, the Council of Genres is populated entirely by unimaginative D-4s. They meddle, but they don't do it very well. It is one of the CofG's strengths.\n\nI impatiently drummed my fingers on the wall of the elevator as I rose to the twenty-sixth floor of the Great Library and the Council of Genres. I checked in my bag and found I still had two eraserheads but wasn't sure if a show of force was the correct way to go about this. If what Bradshaw had said was true and Evil Thursday was commanding a legion of Danvers, I might not even have a chance to plead my own case, let alone Pride and Prejudice's.\n\nI decided that the best course of action was simply to wing it and was just wondering how I should approach even this strategy when the elevator doors opened and I was confronted by myself, staring back at me from the corridor. The same jacket, the same hair, trousers, boots\u2014everything except a black glove on her left hand, which covered the eraserhead wound, I imagined. Bradshaw was right\u2014Thursday1\u20134 had divested herself of her own identity and taken mine\u2014along with my standing, integrity and reputation\u2014an awesome weapon for her to wield. Not only as the CofG's LBOCS and as a trusted member of Jurisfiction, but everything. Jobsworth, in all his dreary ignorance, probably thought that this was me, having undergone a bizarre and\u2014to him\u2014entirely fortuitous change of mind about policy directives.\n\nWe stared at each other for a moment, she with a sort of numbed look of disbelief, and I\u2014I hoped\u2014with the expression that a wife rightly reserves for someone who has slept with her husband.\n\n\"Meddling fool!\" she said at last, waving a copy of Pride and Prejudice that she'd been reading. \"I can only think this is your doing. You may have won the first round, but it's merely a postponement\u2014we'll have the reality book show back on track after the first three chapters have run their course!\"\n\n\"I'm going to erase you,\" I said in a quiet voice, \"and, what's more, enjoy it.\"\n\nShe stared at me with a vague look of triumph. \"Then I was wrong,\" she replied. \"We are alike.\"\n\nI didn't have time to answer. She took to her heels and ran off down the corridor toward the debating chamber. I followed; if we were externally identical, then the first to plead her case to the CofG had a clear advantage.\n\nThinking about it later, the pair of us running hell for leather down the corridors must have been quite a sight, but probably not that unusual, given the somewhat curious nature of fiction. Annoyingly, we were evenly matched in speed and stamina, and her ten-foot head start was still there when we arrived at the main debating chamber's door two minutes and many startled CofG employees later. She had to slow down at the door, and as she did so, I made a flying tackle and grabbed her around the waist. Toppled by the momentum, the pair of us went sprawling headlong on the carpet, much to the astonishment of three heavily armed Danverclones who were just inside the door.\n\nThe strange thing about fighting with yourself is that not only are you of equal weight, strength and skill, but you both know all the same moves. After we had grappled and rolled around on the carpet for about five minutes and achieved nothing but a lot of grunting and strained muscles, my mind started to shift and think about other ways in which to win\u2014something my opponent did at exactly the same moment\u2014and we both switched tactics and went for each other's throats. The most this achieved was that Landen's birthday locket was torn off, something that drove me to a rage I never knew I had.\n\nI knocked her hand away, rolled on top of her and punched her hard in the face. She went limp, and I climbed off, breathing hard, picked up my bag and locket and turned to Jobsworth and the rest of the security council, who had come into the corridor to watch.\n\n\"Arrest her,\" I panted, wiping a small amount of blood from my lip, \"and bind her well.\"\n\nJobsworth looked at me and the other Thursday, then beckoned to the Danverclones to do as I asked.\n\nShe was still groggy but seemed to regain enough consciousness to yell, \"Wait, wait! She's not the real Thursday\u2014I am!\"\n\nJobsworth, Barksdale and Baxter all swiveled their heads to me, and even the Danverclones took notice. In the CofG, my veto counted for everything, and if there was any doubt at all over which was the correct Thursday, I had to quash it here and now.\n\n\"Want me to prove it?\" I said. \"Here it is: The interactive book project stops now.\"\n\nJobsworth's face fell. \"Stop it? But you were all for it not less than an hour ago!\"\n\n\"That wasn't me,\" I said, pointing an accusing finger at the disheveled and now-defeated Thursday, who was at that moment being cuffed by the Danverclones. \"It was the other Thursday, the one from the crappy-as-hell TN series, who has been trying, for reasons of her own personal vindictiveness, to screw up everything I've worked so hard to achieve.\"\n\n\"She's lying!\" said the other Thursday, who now had her arms secured behind her back and still seemed unsteady from when I'd hit her. \"She's the ersatz Thursday\u2014I'm the real one!\"\n\n\"You want more proof?\" I said. \"Okay. I'm also reinforcing my veto on the insane decision to invade the Racy Novel genre. Diplomacy is the key. And I want all Jurisfiction agents released from their books and returned to work.\"\n\n\"But that was your idea!\" muttered Jobsworth, who, poor fellow, was still confused. \"You said there was a bad apple at Jurisfiction and you needed to flush it out!\"\n\n\"Not me,\" I said. \"Her. To keep me from returning. And if you need any more proof, here's the clincher: We're not going to have her reduced to text. She's going to spend the next two years contemplating her navel within the pages of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. She's smart and resourceful, so we'll keep her in isolation in case she wants to try to be me again, and if she even attempts to escape, she'll be reduced to text.\"\n\nJobsworth needed no further convincing.\n\n\"It shall be so,\" he said in a faintly pompous way, and the other Thursday was dragged off, still uselessly proclaiming her unbogusness.\n\nI took a deep breath and sat down at my desk. I could feel a bruise coming up on the side of my neck and my knee hurt. I stretched my hand and rubbed it where I'd struck her.\n\n\"Well,\" said Baxter, \"I can't say I'm glad you've decided against either invading Racy Novel or canceling the reality book shows, but I am a lot happier that you are the one making the wrong decisions, and not some poorly written wannabe. What the hell was she up to?\"\n\n\"As you say. Just a jumped-up generic who wanted to be real. Better put a Textual Sieve Lockdown on The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco both in and out\u2014I don't want to even entertain the possibility of someone rescuing her.\"\n\nJobsworth nodded to one of his aides to do as I'd asked and also\u2014very reluctantly\u2014to put a halt to the interactivity project and the Racy Novel invasion plans.\n\n\"But look here,\" said Colonel Barksdale, who seemed to be somewhat miffed that he wasn't going to spearhead an invasion of Racy Novel, \"we can't just ignore Speedy Muffler and those heathens.\"\n\n\"And we shan't,\" I replied. \"After we have followed all possible diplomatic channels, then we'll have a look at other means of keeping them in check\u2014and I rule out nothing.\"\n\nBarksdale stared at me, unconvinced.\n\n\"Trust me,\" I said. \"I'm Thursday Next. I know what I'm doing.\"\n\nHe seemed to find some solace in this\u2014my name counted for a lot.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, \"I'm bushed. I'm going to go home. We'll discuss things tomorrow, right?\"\n\n\"Very well,\" replied Jobsworth stonily. \"We can talk at length then about the falling ReadRates and what you intend to do about them.\"\n\nI didn't reply and left his office. But instead of going back to Swindon, I took a walk in the corridors of power at the CofG. Everything was busy as usual, the debating chamber in full swing, and there was little\u2014if any\u2014evidence that we were no longer at war or rewriting the classics. I stopped by the large picture window that faced out onto the other towers. I'd never really looked out of here for any length of time before, but now, with time and the BookWorld as my servant, I stared out, musing upon the new responsibilities that I had and how I would exercise them first.\n\nI was still undecided twenty minutes later when Bradshaw tapped me lightly on the shoulder. \"Old girl?\"\n\nHe startled me, and I looked around, took one glance at who was with him and drew my automatic.\n\n\"Whoa, whoa!\" said Bradshaw hurriedly. \"This is Thursday5.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\" I barked, pointing my gun directly at her, my sensibilities keenly alert to any sort of look-alike subterfuge. \"How do we know it isn't the evil bad Thursday back here in disguise or something?\"\n\nBradshaw looked mildly shocked at my suggestion. \"Because she's not left my side since we last saw you, old girl.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Absolutely! Here, I'll prove it.\" He turned to Thursday5. \"What were the names of the von Trapp children in The Sound of Music?\"\n\nThursday5 didn't pause for an instant and recited in one breath: \"Kurt, Friedrich, Louisa, Brigitta, Marta, Gretl and Liesl.\"\n\n\"You see?\"\n\n\"You're right,\" I said. \"Only a total drip like Thursday5 would know that\u2014or at least,\" I added hurriedly, \"that's what Evil Thursday would think.\"\n\nI clicked on the safety and lowered the gun.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said. \"It's been a tough day, and my nerves are in shreds. I need to get home and have a long, hot bath and then a martini.\"\n\nThursday5 thought for a moment. \"After you've drunk the long, hot bath,\" she observed, \"you'll never have room for the martini.\"\n\n\"Say what?\"\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\n\"We just came to congratulate you,\" said Bradshaw, \"on rereversing the vetoes. Pride and Prejudice is running precisely as it should, and without the Interactive Book Council idiots to set any new tasks, we're in the clear. The Bennets wanted me to send you their very best and to tell you to drop around for tea sometime.\"\n\n\"How very proper of them,\" I said absently, feeling a bit hot and bothered and wanting them to go away. \"If there's nothing else\u2026?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" replied Bradshaw, \"but we wondered: Why did you lock her up in The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Punishment to fit the crime, I guess. Are you questioning my judgment?\"\n\n\"Of course not, old girl,\" replied Bradshaw genially, exchanging a glance with Thursday5.\n\n\"that explains why I can't get back in,\" murmured Thursday5 in dismay. \"Is this permanent? I know my book's unreadable\u2014but it's home.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" I said, rubbing my scalp, \"that's your problem. Since when were you part of the decision-making process?\"\n\nBradshaw's mobilefootnoterphone rang.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" he said, and wandered off to answer it.\n\n\"It's been a long day,\" murmured Thursday5, staring out the window at the view. \"You must be tired. Do you want me to fetch you a chai?\"\n\n\"No, I don't drink any of that rubbish. What were you saying about the hot bath and the martini again?\"\n\nShe didn't have time to answer.\n\n\"That was Text Grand Central,\" said Bradshaw as he returned. \"We've been getting some Major Narrative Flexations inside The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. It seems the entire first chapter has broken away from the rest of the book.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"As I said. It's a good thing no one reads it these days. We've tracked Thursday to page two hundred and eight.\"\n\nI took a deep breath and looked at Bradshaw and Thursday5 in turn. \"This is unfinished business,\" I said quietly. \"I'm going to put an end to her once and for all.\"\n\nThey didn't try to argue with me. I should have killed her there and then in the corridor. What was I thinking of?\n\n\"The book's been two-way-sieved,\" said Bradshaw. \"Call me when you're about to jump, and I'll get Text Grand Central to open you a portal. As soon as you're in, we'll close it down and you'll both be trapped. Do you have your mobilefootnoterphone?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Then call me when you're done. Use Mrs. Bradshaw's middle name so I know it's you and really you. Good luck.\"\n\nI thanked them, and they walked off down the corridor before evaporating from view. I tried to calm my nerves and told myself that facing Thursday couldn't be that bad, but the consequences if I failed were high indeed. I took another deep breath, wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers, made the call to Bradshaw and jumped all the way to page 208 of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco",
                "text": "The real adventure that came to be known as The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco was my first proper sojourn into nonfiction, which was, as the title suggests, one of my more embarrassing failures. I don't really know why, but nothing ever went right. I tried to convey a sense of well-meaning optimism in the book where I was caught between two impossible situations, but it came across as mostly inept fumbling, with a lot of hugging and essential oils.\n\nI came to earth in Swindon. Or at least, the Fiasco touchy-feely version of Swindon, which was sunny and blue-skied and every garden an annoying splash of bright primary colors that gave me a headache. The houses were perfect, the cars clean, and everything was insanely neat and orderly. I pulled out my automatic, removed the clip to check it, replaced it and released the safety. There would be no escape for her this time. I knew she was unarmed, but somehow that didn't fill me with such confidence; after all, she was almost infinitely resourceful. The thing was, so was I. After I'd killed her, I would just jump out and everything would be right\u2014forever. I could reinstate the interactive book project before the readers had finished the first three chapters\u2014then go to the Outland and savor the joys of Landen once more. Following that and after paying a small amount of lip ser vice to diplomacy, I could also deploy two legions of Mrs. Danvers into Racy Novel. Who knows? I might even lead the attack myself. That, I had discovered, was the best thing about being Thursday Next\u2014you could do anything you damn well pleased and no one would, could or dared oppose you. I had only two problems to deal with right now: disposing of the real Thursday Next and trying to figure out Mrs. Bradshaw's middle name, the code word to get out. I hadn't a clue\u2014I'd never even met her.\n\nI pulled the glove off my hand and looked at where the mottled flesh still showed signs of the eraserhead. I rubbed the itchy skin, then moved to the side of the street and walked toward where this version of Thursday's house was located. It was the same as the one that was burned down in the first chapter of my book, so I knew the way. But the strange thing was, the street was completely deserted. Nothing moved. Not a person, not a cat, squirrel\u2014nothing. I stopped at a car that was abandoned in the street and looked in the open passenger door. The key was still in the ignition. Whoever had once populated this book had left\u2014and in a hurry.\n\nI carried on walking slowly down the road. That pompous fool Bradshaw had mentioned something about a chapter breaking away from the main book\u2014perhaps that was where all the background characters were. But it didn't matter. Thursday was here now, and she was the one I was after. I reached the garden gate of Landen5's house and padded cautiously up the path, past the perfectly planted flowers and windows so clean and sparkly they almost weren't there. Holding my gun outstretched, I stepped quietly inside the house.\n\nThursday5's idea of home furnishing was different from mine and the real Thursday's. For a start, the floor covering was seagrass, and the curtains were an odiously old-fashioned tie-dye. I also noticed to my disgust that there were Tibetan mandalas in frames upon the wall and dream catchers hanging from the ceiling. I stepped closer to the pictures on the mantelpiece and found one of Thursday5 and Landen5 at Glastonbury. They had their faces painted as flowers and were grinning stupidly and hugging each other, with Pickwick5 sitting between them. It was quite sickeningly twee, to be honest.\n\n\"I would have done the same.\"\n\nI turned. Thursday was leaning on the doorway that led through to the kitchen. It was an easy shot, but I didn't take it. I wanted to relish the moment.\n\n\"What would you have done the same?\" I asked.\n\n\"I would have spared you, too. I'll admit it, your impersonation of me was about the most plausible I'll ever see. I'm not sure there's anyone out there who would have spotted it. But I didn't think you could keep it up. The real you would soon bubble to the surface. Because, like it or not, you're not enough of me to carry it off. To be me you need the seventeen years of Jurisfiction experience\u2014the sort of experience that means I can take on people like you and come out victorious.\"\n\nI laughed at her presumption. \"I think you overestimate your own abilities, Outlander. I'm the one holding the gun. Perhaps you're a little bit right, but I can and will be you, given time. Everything you have, everything you are. Your job, your family, your husband. I can go back to the Outland and take over from where you left off\u2014and probably have a lot more fun doing it, too.\"\n\nI pointed my gun at her and began to squeeze the trigger, then stopped. She didn't seem particularly troubled, and that worried me.\n\n\"Can you hear that?\" she asked.\n\n\"Hear what?\"\n\nShe cupped a hand to her ear. \"That.\"\n\nAnd now that she mentioned it, I could hear something. A soft thrumming noise that seemed to reverberate through the ground.\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked, and was shocked to discover that my voice came out cracked and\u2026afraid.\n\n\"Take a look for yourself,\" she said, pointing outside.\n\nI wiped the sweat from my brow and backed out the door, still keeping my gun firmly trained on her. I ran down to the garden gate and looked up the street. The houses at the end of the road seemed to have lost definition and were being eaten away by a billowing cloud of sand.\n\n\"What the hell's that?\" I snapped.\n\n\"You'd know,\" she replied quietly, \"if only you'd gone to Jurisfiction classes instead of wasting your time on the shooting range.\"\n\nI looked at the mailbox on the corner of the street, and it seemed to crumble to fragments in front of my eyes and then was taken up into the cloud of dust and debris that was being sucked into a vortex high above us. I pulled out my footnoterphone and frantically dialed Bradshaw's number.\n\n\"But you don't know Melanie Bradshaw's middle name,\" observed Thursday, \"do you?\"\n\nI lowered the phone and stared at her uselessly. It was a setup. Thursday must have spoken to Bradshaw, and together they'd tricked me into coming here.\n\n\"It's Jenny,\" she added. \"I named my second daughter after her. But it won't help you. I told Bradshaw not to lift the Textual Sieve on any account, password or not. As soon as you were inside and the generics were safely evacuated, he was instructed to begin\u2026the erasure of the entire book.\"\n\n\"How did you contact him?\" I asked.\n\n\"He contacted me,\" she replied. \"Thursday5 suggested to Bradshaw that you might have pulled the same trick as she did. I couldn't get out, but we could trick you in.\"\n\nShe looked at her watch.\n\n\"And in another eight minutes, this book and everything in it\u2014you included, will be gone.\"\n\nI looked around and saw to my horror that the erasure had crept up without my noticing and was less than ten feet away\u2014we were standing on the only piece of remaining land, a rough circle a hundred feet across containing only Landen's house and its neighbors. But they wouldn't stay for long, and even as I watched, the roofs were turning to dust and being whirled away, consumed by the erasure. The dull roar was increasing, and I had to raise my voice to be heard.\n\n\"But this will erase you, too!\" I shouted.\n\n\"Maybe not\u2014it depends on you.\"\n\nShe beckoned me back into the house as the garden gate turned to smoke and was carried away into the dust cloud. As soon as we were in the kitchen, she turned to me.\n\n\"You won't need that,\" she said, pointing at my gun. I fumbled the reholstering clumsily, and it fell to the floor with a clatter. I didn't stoop to pick it up. I looked out the window into the back garden. The shed and the apple tree had both gone, and the erasure was slowly eating its way across the lawn. The ceiling was starting to look blotchy, and as I watched, the front door turned to dust and was blown away in the wind.\n\n\"Ballocks!\" I said, as realization suddenly dawned. Not that I was going to be erased, no. It was the cold and sobering revelation that I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was. I'd met a foe immeasurably superior to me, and I would suffer the consequences of my own arrogance. The question was, would I give her the pleasure of knowing it? But on reflection she didn't want or need that sort of plea sure, and everything suddenly seemed that much more peaceful.\n\nI said instead, \"I'm truly flattered.\"\n\n\"Flattered?\" she inquired. \"About what?\"\n\nThe ceiling departed in a cloud of swirling dust, and the walls started to erode downward with the pictures, mantel and furniture rapidly crumbling away to a fine debris that was sucked up into the whirlwind directly above us.\n\n\"I'm flattered,\" I repeated, \"because you'd erase a whole book and give your own life just to be rid of me. I must have been a worthy adversary, right?\"\n\nShe sensed my change of heart and gave me a faint smile.\n\n\"You almost defeated me,\" said Thursday, \"and you still might. But if I do survive this,\" she added, \"it is my gift to you.\"\n\nThe walls had almost gone, and the seagrass flooring was crumbling under my feet. Thursday opened a door in the kitchen, beyond which a concrete flight of steps led downward. She beckoned me to follow, and we trotted down into a spacious subterranean vault shaped like the inside of a barrel. Upon a large plinth, there were two prongs across which a weak spark occasionally fired. The noise of the wind had subdued, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the erasure reached us.\n\n\"This is the core-containment room,\" explained Thursday. \"You'd know about that if you'd listened in class.\"\n\n\"How,\" I asked, \"is your survival a gift to me?\"\n\n\"That's easily explained,\" replied Thursday, removing some pieces of packing case from the wall to reveal a riveted iron hatch. \"Behind there is the only method of escape\u2014across the emptiness of the Nothing.\"\n\nThe inference wasn't lost on me. The Nothing didn't support textual life\u2014I'd be stripped away to letters in an instant if I tried to escape across it. But Thursday wasn't text: She was flesh and blood and could survive.\n\n\"I can't get out of here on my own,\" she added, \"so I need your help.\"\n\nI didn't understand to begin with. I frowned, and then it hit me. She wasn't offering me forgiveness, a second chance or rescue\u2014I was far too bitter and twisted for that. No, she was offering me the one thing that I would never, could never have. She was offering me redemption. After all I'd done to her, all the things I'd planned to do, she was willing to risk her life to give me one small chance to atone. And what's more, she knew I would take it. She was right. We were more alike than I thought.\n\nThe roof fell away in patches as the erasure started to pull the containment room apart.\n\n\"What do I do?\"\n\nShe indicated the twin latching mechanisms that were positioned eight feet apart. I held the handle and pulled it down on the count of three. The hatch sprung open, revealing an empty, black void.\n\n\"Thank you,\" she said as the erasure crept inexorably across the room. The sum total of the book was now a disk less than eight feet across, and we were in the middle of what looked like a swirling cloud of dirt and detritus, while all about us the wind nibbled away at the remaining fabric of the book, reducing it to undescriptive textdust.\n\n\"What will it be like?\" I asked as Thursday peered out into the inky blackness.\n\n\"I can't tell you,\" she replied. \"No one knows what happens after erasure.\"\n\nI offered her my hand to shake. \"If you ever turn this into one of your adventures,\" I asked, \"will you make me at least vaguely sympathetic? I'd like to think there was a small amount of your humanity in me.\"\n\nShe took my hand and shook it. It was warmer than I'd imagined.\n\n\"I'm sorry about sleeping with your husband,\" I added as I felt the floor grow soft beneath my feet. \"And I think this is yours.\"\n\nAnd I gave her the locket that had come off when we fought.\n\nAs soon as Thursday1\u20134 returned my locket, I knew that she had finally learned something about me and, by reflection, her. She was lost and she knew it, so helping me open the hatch and handing over the locket could only be altruism\u2014the first time she had acted thus and the last time she acted at all. I climbed partially out of the hatch into the Nothing. There was barely anything left of the book at all, just the vaguest crackle of its spark growing weaker and weaker. I was still holding Thursday1\u20134's hand as I saw her body start to break up, like sandstone eroded by wind. Her hair was being whipped by the currents of air, but she looked peaceful.\n\nShe smiled and said, \"I just got it.\"\n\n\"Got what?\"\n\n\"Something Thursday5 said about hot baths and a martini.\"\n\nHer face started to break down, and I felt her hand crumble within mine like crusty, sun-baked sand. There was almost nothing left of Fiasco at all, and it was time to go.\n\nShe smiled again, and her face fell away into dust, her hand turned to sand in mine, and the spark crackled and went out. I let go and was\u2014\n\nThe textual world that I had become so accustomed to returned with a strange wobbling sensation. I found myself in another core-containment room pretty much identical to the first\u2014aside from the spark, which crackled twenty times more brightly as readers made their way through the book. I picked myself up, shut and secured the hatch and made my way up the steps and toward the exit, fastening the locket around my neck as I did so.\n\nI couldn't really say I was saddened by Thursday1\u20134's loss, as she would almost certainly have killed me and done untold damage if she'd lived. But I couldn't help feeling a sense of guilt that I might have done more for her. After all, it wasn't strictly her fault\u2014she'd been written that way. I sighed. She had found a little bit of me in her, but I knew there was some of her in me, too.\n\nI cautiously opened the containment room door and peered out. I was in a collection of farm buildings constructed of red brick and in such a dilapidated state of disrepair it looked as if they were held together only by the moss in the brickwork and the lichen on the roof. I spotted Adam Lambsbreath through the kitchen window, where he was scraping ineffectually at the washing-up with a twig. I made the sign for a telephone through the window at him, and he pointed toward the woodshed across the yard. I ran across and pushed open the door.\n\nThere was something nasty sitting in the corner making odd slavering noises to itself, but I paid it no heed other than to reflect that Ada Doom had been right after all, and found the public footnoterphone that I needed. I dialed Bradshaw's number and waited impatiently for him to answer.\n\n\"It's me,\" I said. \"Your plan worked: She's dust. I'm in Cold Comfort Farm, page sixty-eight. Can you bring a cab to pick me up? This is going to be one serious mother of a debrief.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The End of Time",
                "text": "No one ever did find out who the members of the ChronoGuard Star Chamber were, nor what their relationship with the Goliath Corporation actually was. But it was noted that some investment opportunities taken by the multinational were so fortuitous and so prudent and so longsighted that they seemed statistically impossible. There were never any whistle-blowers, so the extent of any chronuption was never known, nor ever would be.\n\nBy the time I arrived back home, it was dark. Landen heard my key in the latch and met me in the hallway to give me a long hug, which I gratefully received\u2014and returned.\n\n\"What's the news on the reality book show?\"\n\n\"Canceled. Van de Poste has been on the TV and radio explaining that due to a technical error, the project has been shelved\u2014and that the stupidity surplus would be discharged instead by reinvigorating the astronomically expensive and questionably useful Anti-Smite shield.\"\n\n\"And Pride and Prejudice?\"\n\n\"Running exactly as it ever did. But here's the good bit: All the readers who bought copies of the book to see the Bennets dress up as bees continued reading to see if Lizzie and Jane would get their men and if Lydia would come to a sticky end. Naturally, all the new readers were delighted at what happened\u2014so much so that people with the name of Wickham have had to go into hiding.\"\n\n\"Just like the old days,\" I said with a smile.\n\nThe passion for books was returning. I thought for a moment and walked over to the bookcase, pulled out my copy of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco and riffled through the pages. They were blank, every single one.\n\n\"How are Friday and the girls?\" I asked, dropping the book into the wastepaper basket.\n\n\"Friday is out. The girls are in bed.\"\n\n\"And Pickwick?\"\n\n\"Still bald and a bit dopey. So\u2026you managed to do what you set out to do?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said quietly, \"and Land, I can't lie to you anymore. The Acme Carpets stuff is just a front.\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said softly. \"You still do all that SpecOps work, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes. But, Land, that's a front, too.\"\n\nHe placed a hand on my cheek and stared into my eyes. \"I know about Jurisfiction as well, Thurs.\"\n\nI frowned. I hadn't expected this. \"You knew? Since when?\"\n\n\"Since about three days after you'd said you'd given it up.\"\n\nI stared at him. \"You knew I was lying to you all those years?\"\n\n\"Pumpkin,\" he said as he gently ushered me into the house and closed the door behind us, \"you do love me, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, but\u2014\"\n\nHe put his finger to my lips. \"Hang on a minute. I know you do, and I love it that you do. But if you care too much about upsetting me, then you won't do the things you have to do, and those things are important\u2014not just to me but to everyone.\"\n\n\"Then\u2026you're not cross I've been lying to you for fourteen years?\"\n\n\"Thursday, you mean everything to me. Not just because you're cute, smart, funny and have a devastatingly good figure and boobs to die for, but that you do right for right's sake\u2014it's what you are and what you do. Even if I never get my magnum opus published, I will still die secure in the knowledge that my time on this planet was well spent\u2014giving support, love and security to someone who actually makes a difference.\"\n\n\"Oh, Land,\" I said, burying my head in his shoulder, \"you're making me go all misty!\"\n\nAnd I hugged him again, while he rubbed my back and said that everything was all right. We stood like this for some time until I suddenly had a thought.\n\n\"Land,\" I said slowly, \"how much do you know?\"\n\n\"Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw tell me quite a lot, and Spike and Bowden often call to keep me updated.\"\n\n\"The rotten swines!\" I said with a smile. \"They're always telling me to spill the beans to you!\"\n\n\"We all care about you, Thursday.\"\n\nThis was abundantly true, but I couldn't get Thursday1\u20134 and her brief sojourn to the real world out of my mind. \"What about\u2026other stuff?\"\n\nLanden knew exactly what I was talking about. \"I only figured out she was the written Thursday when you came back upstairs.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Because it was only then I realized she hadn't been wearing the necklace I gave you for your birthday.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, fingering the locket around my neck. There was silence for a moment as we both considered what had happened. Eventually I said, \"But she was a terrible lay, right?\"\n\n\"Hopeless.\"\n\nAnd we both laughed. We would never mention it again.\n\n\"Listen,\" said Landen, \"there's someone to see you in the front room.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Just go in. I'll make some tea.\"\n\nI walked into the living room, where a tall man was standing at the mantel with his back to me, looking at the framed pictures of the family.\n\n\"That's us holidaying on the Isle of Skye,\" I said in a soft voice, \"at the Old Man of Storr. Jenny's not there because she was in a huff and sat in the car, and you can just see Pickwick's head at the edge of the frame.\"\n\n\"I remember it well,\" he said, and turned to face me. It was Friday, of course. Not my Friday but his older self. He was about sixty, and handsome to boot. His hair was graying at the temples, and the smile wrinkles around his eyes made me think of Landen. He was wearing the pale blue uniform of the ChronoGuard, the shoulder emblazoned with the five gold pips of director-general. But it wasn't the day-to-day uniform, it was ceremonial dress. This was a special occasion.\n\n\"Hi, Mum.\"\n\n\"Hi, Sweetpea. So you did make it to director-general after all!\"\n\nHe shrugged and smiled. \"I did and I didn't. I'm here, but I can't be. It's like everything else that we've done in the past to change the present\u2014we were definitely there, but we couldn't have been. The one thing you learn about the time business is that mutually opposing states can comfortably coexist.\"\n\n\"Like Saturday Night Fever being excellent and crap at the same time?\"\n\n\"Kind of. When it comes to traveling about in the timestream, paradox is always a cozy bedfellow\u2014you get used to living with it.\" He looked at his watch. \"You destroyed the recipe, didn't you?\"\n\n\"I ate it.\"\n\n\"Good. I've just come to tell you that with only twenty-three minutes to go until the End of Time and without the equation for unscrambling eggs, the Star Chamber has conceded that the continued existence of time travel is retrospectively insupportable. We're closing down the time engines right now. All operatives are being demobilized. Enloopment facilities are being emptied and places found for the inmates in conventional prisons.\"\n\n\"She was right after all,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"I'm sorry?\"\n\n\"Aornis. I did get her out of the loop.\"\n\n\"We're making quite sure that all prisoners with 'special requirements' are being looked after properly, Mum.\"\n\n\"I hope so. What about the other inventions built using retro-deficit-engineering?\"\n\n\"They'll stay. The microchip and Gravitube will be invented, so it's not a problem\u2014but there won't be any new retro-deficit technologies. More important, the Standard History Eventline will stay as it was when we switch off the engines.\"\n\n\"None of the history-rolling-up-like-a-carpet, then?\"\n\n\"Possibly\u2014but not very likely.\"\n\n\"And Goliath gets to stay as it is?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\" He paused briefly, then sighed. \"So many things I could have done, might have done, have done and haven't done. I'm going to miss it all.\"\n\nHe looked at me intently. This was my son, but it wasn't. It was him as he might have turned out but never would. I still loved him, but it was the only time in my life where I was glad to say goodbye.\n\n\"What about the Now?\"\n\n\"It'll recover, given time. Keep people reading books, Mum; it helps to reinforce and strengthen the indefinable moment that anchors us in the here-and-now. Strive for the Long Now. It's the only thing that will save us. Well,\" he added with finality, giving me a kiss on the cheek, \"I'll be going. I've got to do some paperwork before I switch off the last engine.\"\n\n\"What will happen to you?\"\n\nHe smiled again. \"The Friday Last? I wink out of existence. And do you know, I'm not bothered. I've no idea what the future will bring to the Friday Present, and that's a concept I'll gladly die for.\"\n\nI felt tears come to my eyes, which was silly, really. This was only the possibility of Friday, not the actual one.\n\n\"Don't cry, Mum. I'll see you when I get up tomorrow\u2014and you know I'm going to sleep in, right?\"\n\nHe hugged me again, and in an instant he was gone. I wandered through to the kitchen and rested my hand on Landen's back as he poured some milk in my tea. We sat at the kitchen table until, untold trillions years in the future, time came to a halt. There was no erasure of history, no distant thunder, no \"we interrupt this broadcast\" on the wireless\u2014nothing. The technology had gone for good and the ChronoGuard with it. Strictly speaking, neither of them had ever been. But as our Friday pointed out the following day, they were still there, echoes from the past that would make themselves known as anachronisms in ancient texts and artifacts that were out of place and out of time. The most celebrated of these would be the discovery of a fossilized 1956 Volkswagen Beetle preserved in Precambrian rock strata. In the glove box, they would find the remains of the following day's paper featuring the car's discovery\u2014and a very worthwhile tip for the winner of the three-thirty at Kempton Park.\n\n\"Well, that's it,\" I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. \"The ChronoGuard has shut itself down, and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically and theoretically\u2026impossible.\"\n\n\"Good thing, too,\" replied Landen. \"It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing a self-help book for SF novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't.\"\n\nI laughed, and we heard a key turn in the front door. It turned out to be Friday, and I recoiled in shock when he walked into the kitchen. He had short hair and was wearing a suit and tie.\n\nAs I stood there with my mouth open, he said, \"Good evening, Mother. Good evening, Father. I trust I am not too late for some sustenance?\"\n\n\"Oh, my God!\" I cried in horror. \"They replaced you!\"\n\nNeither Landen nor Friday could hold it in for long, and they both collapsed into a sea of giggles. He hadn't been replaced at all\u2014he'd just had a haircut.\n\n\"Oh, very funny,\" I said, arms folded and severely unamused. \"Next you'll be telling me Jenny is a mindworm or something.\"\n\n\"She is,\" said Landen, and it was my turn to burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the suggestion. They didn't find it at all funny. Honestly, some people have no sense of humor."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Woman Named",
                "text": "[ Thursday Next ]\n\nThe Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going on to Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, so what they got up to was anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are slightly unbalanced. \"If you want to be a SpecOp,\" the saying goes, \"act kinda weird.\"\n\nMy father had a face that could stop a clock. I don't mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultraslow trickle. Dad had been a Colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn't know he'd gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication Order open-dated at both ends and demanded to know where and when he was. Dad has remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole ser vice as \"morally and historically corrupt\" and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Stemporal Temp\u2026Tability. Temporal\u2026Stemp\u2026Special\u2014\n\n\"Why don't we just hold it right there?\" I said before Thursday5 tied her tongue in knots.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said with a sigh. \"I think my biorhythms must be out of whack.\"\n\n\"Remember what we talked about?\" I asked her, raising an eyebrow.\n\n\"Or perhaps it's just a tricky line to say. Here goes: Special\u2026Temporal\u2026Stability. Got it!\" She smiled proudly at her accomplishment. Then a stab of self-doubt crossed her face. \"But aside from that, I'm doing okay, right?\"\n\n\"You're doing fine.\"\n\nWe were standing in the opening chapter of The Eyre Affair, or at least the refurbished first chapter. Evil Thursday's erasure caused a few ruffled feathers at Text Grand Central, especially when Alice-PON-24330 said that while happy to keep the series running for the time being, she was not that keen about taking on the role permanently\u2014what with all the sex, guns, swearing and stuff. There were talks of scrapping the series until I had a brain wave. With the erasure of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, Thursday5 was now bookless and needed a place to live; she could take over. Clearly, there had to be a few changes\u2014quite a lot actually\u2014but I didn't mind; in fact, I welcomed it. I applied for a whole raft of internal plot adjustments, and Senator Jobsworth, still eager to make amends and keep his job after the reality book farrago, was only too happy to accede to my wishes\u2014as long as I at least tried to make the series commercial.\n\n\"Can we get a move on?\" asked Gerry, the first assistant imaginator. \"If we don't get to the end of this chapter by lunchtime, we're going to get behind schedule for the scene at Gad's Hill tomorrow.\"\n\nI left them to it and walked to the back of Stanford Brookes's caf\u00e9 in London, faithfully re-created from my memory and the place where the new Eyre Affair starts, rather than at a burned-out house belonging to Landen, where, in point of fact, I didn't live for another two years. I watched as the imaginators, characters and technicians translated the story into storycode text to be uploaded to the engines at TGC\u2014and eventually to replace the existing TN series. Perhaps, I mused to myself, life might be getting back to normal after all.\n\nIt had been a month since we'd erased Pepys Fiasco, and Racy Novel, despite all manner of threats, had to admit that dirty-bomb technology was still very much in the early stages, so Feminist and Ecclesiastical breathed a combined sigh of relief and returned to arguing with each other about the malecentricity of religion.\n\nAt the same time, the gentle elongation of the Now was beginning to take effect: The Read-O-Meter had been steadily clicking upward as ReadRates once again began to rise. In the Outland the reality TV craze was now fortunately on the wane\u2014Samaritan Kidney Swap had so few viewers that by the second week they became desperate and threatened to shoot a puppy on live TV unless a million people phoned in. They had 2 million complaints and were closed down. Bowden and I visited Booktastic! a week ago to find they now had two entire sections of books because, as the manager explained, \"there had been a sudden demand.\"\n\nAs part of the whole ChronoGuard decommissioning process, Dad had been reactualized from his state of quasi nonexistence and turned up at Mum's carrying a small suitcase and a bunch of flowers. We had a terrific reunion for him, and I invited Major Pickles along, who seemed to hit it off rather well with Aunt Polly.\n\nOn other matters, I traveled to Goliathopolis to meet with Jack Schitt and return his wife's necklace, with an explanation of what had happened to her on board the Hesperus. He took the jewelry and the details of her death in stony silence, thanked me and was gone. John Henry Goliath made no appearance, and I didn't tell anyone at Goliath that the Austen Rover was, as far as we knew, still adrift without power in intragenre space somewhere between Poetry and Maritime. I didn't know whether this was the end of the Book Project or not, but TGC was taking no chances and had erected a battery of Textual Sieves in the direction of the Outland and marked any potential transfictional incursions as \"high priority.\"\n\nI walked out of the caf\u00e9 to where Isambard Kingdom Bu\u00f1uel was waiting for me. We were standing in Hangar Three among the fabric of Affair, ready to be bolted in. Bu\u00f1uel had already built a reasonable facsimile of Swindon that included my mum's house and the Literary Detectives' office, and he was just getting started on Thornfield Hall, Rochester's house.\n\n\"We've pensketched the real Thornfield,\" he explained, showing me some drawings for approval, \"but we were kind of think-worthing how your Porsche was painted?\"\n\n\"Do you know Escher's Reptiles?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It's like that\u2014only in red, blue and green.\"\n\n\"How about the Prose Portal?\"\n\nI thought for a moment. \"A sort of large leatherbound book covered in knobs, dials and knife switches.\"\n\nHe made a note. \"And the unextincted Pickwick?\"\n\n\"About so high and not very bright.\"\n\n\"Did you bring some snapimagery?\"\n\nI rummaged in my shoulder bag, brought out a wad of snaps and went through them.\n\n\"That's Pickers when she still had feathers. It's blurred because she blinked and fell over, but it's probably the best. And this is Landen, and that's Joffy, and that's Landen again just before his trousers caught fire\u2014that was hilarious\u2014and this is Mycroft and Polly. You don't need pictures of Friday, Tuesday or Jenny do you?\"\n\n\"Only Friday birth-plus-two for Something Rotten.\"\n\n\"Here,\" I said, selecting one from the stack. \"This was taken on his second birthday.\"\n\nBu\u00f1uel recoiled in shock. \"What's that strangeturbing stick-brownymass on his face? Some species of alien facehugger or somewhat?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" I said hurriedly, \"that's chocolate cake. He didn't master the fine art of cutlery until\u2026well, he's yet to figure it out, actually.\"\n\n\"Can I temporown these?\" asked Bu\u00f1uel. \"I'll have them snoodled up to St. Tabularasa's to see what they can do.\"\n\n\"Be my guest.\"\n\nThe book preproduction had been going on for about two weeks now, and as soon as Bu\u00f1uel had constructed everything for The Eyre Affair, he could move on to the more complex build for Lost in a Good Book.\n\n\"Is there anything you'll be able to salvage from the old series?\" I asked, always thinking economically.\n\n\"Indeedly-so,\" he answered. \"Acheron Hades and all his heavisters can be brought across pretty much unaltered. Delamare, Hobbes, Felix7 and 8, M\u00fcller\u2014a few different lines here and there and you'll never know the difference.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" I said slowly as an odd thought started to germinate in my mind.\n\n\"A few of the other iddybiddyparts we can scavenge,\" added Bu\u00f1uel, \"but most of it will be a newbuild. The warmspect the Council of Genres holds for you is reflected in the high costcash.\"\n\n\"What was that?\" I asked. \"I was miles away.\"\n\n\"I was mouthsounding that the bud get for the new TN series\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I replied in a distracted manner, \"would you excuse me for a moment?\"\n\nI walked to where Colin was waiting for me in his brand-new taxi. Under the TransGenre Taxis logo, they had added \"By Appointment to Thursday Next\" in an elegant cursive font. I didn't ordinarily endorse anything, but they had told me I would always be 'priority one', so I figured it was worth it.\n\n\"Where to, Ms. Next?\" he asked as I climbed in.\n\n\"Great Library, floor six.\"\n\n\"Righto.\"\n\nHe pulled off, braked abruptly as he nearly hit a shiny black Ford motorcar, yelled at the other driver, then accelerated rapidly toward the wall of the hangar that opened like a dark void in front of us.\n\n\"Thanks for the Hoppity Hop,\" he said as the hole closed behind us and we motored slowly past the almost limitless quantity of books in the Great Library. \"I'll be dining out on that for months. Any chance you can get me a Lava Lite?\"\n\n\"Not unless you save my life again.\"\n\nI noted the alphabetically listed books on the shelves of the library and saw that we were getting close. \"Just drop me past the next reading desk.\"\n\n\"Visiting Tom Jones?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Bridget Jones?\"\n\n\"No. Just drop me about\u2026here.\"\n\nHe stopped next to the bookcase, and I got out, told him he didn't need to wait and to put the fare on my account, and he vanished.\n\nI was in the Great Library standing opposite the original Thursday Next series, the one kept going by Alice-PON-24330, and I was here because of something Bu\u00f1uel had said. Spike and I had never figured out how Felix8 had managed to escape, and since his skeletal remains were found up on the Savernake, Spike had suggested quite rightly that he had been not Felix8 but Felix9. But Spike could have been wrong. What if the Felix I had met was the written Felix8? It would explain how he had gotten out of the Weirdshitorium\u2014he'd just melted back into his book.\n\nI took a deep breath. I didn't want to go anywhere near the old TN series, but this begged further investigation. I picked up the first in the series and read myself inside.\n\nWithin a few moments, the Great Library was no more and I was instead aboard an airship floating high over the home counties. But this wasn't one of the small fifty-seaters that plied the skies these days; it was a \"Hotel Class\" leviathan, designed to roam the globe in style and opulence during the halcyon days of the airship. I was in what had once been the observation deck, but many of the Plexiglas windows had been lost, and the shabby craft rattled and creaked as its lumbering bulk pushed through the air. The icy slipstream blew into the belly of the craft where I stood and made me shiver, while the rush of air and incessant flap of loose fabric were a constant percussive accompaniment to the rhythmic growl of the eight engines. The aluminum latticework construction was apparent wherever I looked, and to my left a door gave access to a precipitous veranda where first-class passengers would once have had a unique bird's-eye view of the docking and landing procedure. In the real world, these monsters had been melted down into scrap long ago, the job of repeater stations for TV and wireless signals now taken over by pilotless drones in the upper atmosphere. But it was kind of nostalgic to see one again, even in this illusory form.\n\nI wasn't in the main action, the \"better dead than read\" adage as important to me as to anyone else. The narrative was actually next door in the main dining room, where Thursday, a.k.a. Alice-PON-24330, was attempting to outwit Acheron Hades. This wasn't how it really happened, of course\u2014Acheron's hideout had actually been in Merthyr Tydfil's abandoned Penderyn Hotel in the Socialist Republic of Wales. It was dramatic license\u2014and fairly bold dramatic license at that.\n\nThere was a burst of gunfire from next door, some shouting and then more shots. I positioned myself behind the door as Felix8 came running through the way he usually did, escaping from Bowden and myself once Acheron leaped into the pages of Jane Eyre. As soon as he was inside, he relaxed, since he was officially \"out of the story.\" I saw him grin to himself and click on the safety of his machine pistol.\n\n\"Hello, Felix8.\"\n\nHe turned and stared at me. \"Well, well,\" he said after a pause. \"Will the real Thursday Next please stand up?\"\n\n\"Just drop the gun.\"\n\n\"I'm not really violent,\" he said. \"It's just the part I play. The real Felix8\u2014now, that's someone you should keep an eye on.\"\n\n\"Drop the gun, Felix. I won't ask you again.\"\n\nHis eyes darted around the room, and I saw his hand tighten on the grip of his gun.\n\n\"Don't even think about it,\" I told him, pointing my pistol in his general direction. \"This is loaded with eraserhead. Put the gun on the floor\u2014but really slowly.\"\n\nFelix8, fully aware of the destructive power of an eraserhead, gently laid his weapon on the ground, and I told him to kick it to one side.\n\n\"How did you get into the real world?\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean.\"\n\n\"You were in the real Swindon five weeks ago. Do you know the penalty for pagerunning?\"\n\nHe said nothing.\n\n\"I'll remind you. It's erasure. And if you read the papers, you know that I'll erase a whole book if required.\"\n\n\"I've never been out of The Eyre Affair,\" he replied. \"I'm just a C-3 generic trying to do my best in a lousy book.\"\n\n\"You're lying.\"\n\n\"That it's a lousy book?\"\n\n\"You know what I mean. Keep your hands in the air.\"\n\nI walked behind him and, jamming my pistol firmly against his back, searched his pockets. Given the obsession that members of the BookWorld held for the Outland, I reckoned it was impossible that he'd been all the way to Swindon and not returned with a few Outlandish mementos to sell or barter. And so it proved. In one pocket I found a joke rubber chicken and a digital watch, in the other a packet of Cup-a-Soup and a Mars bar. I chucked them on the floor in front of him.\n\n\"Where did you get these, then?\"\n\nHe was silent, and I backed off a few yards before telling him to turn slowly around and face me.\n\n\"Now,\" I said, \"let's have some answers: You're too mediocre to have hatched this yourself, so you're working for someone. Who is it?\"\n\nFelix8 gave no answer, and the airship banked slightly as it made a trifling correction to its course. The aluminum-framed door to the exterior promenade walkway swung open and then clattered shut again. It was dusk, and two miles below, the small orange jewels that were the streetlights had begun to wink on.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said, \"here's the deal: You tell me what you know and I'll let you go. Play the hard man and it's a one-way trip to the Text Sea. Understand?\"\n\n\"I've only eighteen words and one scene,\" he said at last. \"One lousy scene! Do you have any idea what that's like?\"\n\n\"It's the hand you were dealt,\" I told him, \"the job you do. You can't change that. Again: Who sent you into the Outland to kill me?\"\n\nHe stared at me without emotion. \"And I would have done it, too, if it wasn't for that idiot stalker. Mind you, Johnson blew it as well, so I'm in good company.\"\n\nThis was more worrying. \"Mr. Johnson\" was the pseudonym used by the Minotaur\u2014and he'd referred to my murder as \"a job,\" so this looked to be better organized than I'd thought.\n\n\"Who ordered my death? And why me?\"\n\nFelix8 smiled. \"You do flatter yourself, Ms. Next. You're not the only one they want, you're not the only one they'll get. And now I shall take my leave of you.\"\n\nHe moved toward the exterior door that clattered in the breeze, opened it and stepped out onto the exterior promenade. I ran forward and yelled \"Hold it!\"\u2014but it was too late. With a swing of his leg, Felix8 slipped neatly over the rail and went tumbling off into space. I ran to the rail and looked down. Already he was a small figure spiraling slowly downward as the airship droned on. I felt a curious sickly feeling as he became nothing more than a small dot and then disappeared from view.\n\n\"Damn!\" I shouted, and slapped the parapet with my palm. I took a deep breath, went inside out of the chill wind, pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone and pressed the speed-dial connection to the Cheshire Cat, who had assumed command of Text Grand Central.\n\n\"Chesh, it's Thursday.\"\n\n\"I've lost a C-3 generic Felix8 from page two hundred and seventy-eight of The Eyre Affair, ISBN 0-14-200180-5. I'm going to need an emergency replacement ASAP.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Blast,\" I muttered. \"Can you find out who's been dicking around with the Textual Sieves and get it lifted? I've no urge to hang around a cold airship for any longer than I have to.\"\n\nI told him that I'd be fine if he'd just call me back when the sieve was lifted, then snapped the phone shut. I pulled my jacket up around my neck and stamped my feet to keep warm. I leaned against an aluminum girder and stared out at the mauve twilight, where even now I could see stars begin to appear. Felix8 would have hit the ground so hard his text would have fused with the surrounding description; when we found him, we'd have to cut him from the earth. Either way he'd not be doing any talking.\n\nI started thinking of people who might want me to kill me but stopped counting when I reached sixty-seven. This would be harder than I thought. But\u2026what did Felix8 say: that I shouldn't flatter myself\u2026it wasn't just me? The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed, until suddenly, with a flash of realization, I knew what was going on. Sherlock Holmes, Temperance Brennan, the Good Soldier Svejk and myself\u2014kill us and you kill not just the individual, but the series. It seemed too bizarre to comprehend, but it had to be the truth\u2014there was a serial killer loose in the BookWorld.\n\nI looked around the airship, and my heart fell. They'd tried to kill me twice already, and who was to say they wouldn't try again? And here I was, trapped ten thousand feet in the air by a Textual Sieve that no one had ordered, hanging beneath 20 million cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen. I pulled out my cell phone and hurriedly redialed the cat."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 207",
                "text": "\"No questions, Chesh\u2014I need a parachute and I need it now.\"\n\nAs if in answer, there was a bright flare from the rear of the airship as a small charge exploded in one of the gas cells. Within a second this had ignited the cell next to it, and I could see the bright flare arc out into the dusk; the airship quivered gently and started to drop at the stern as it lost lift.\n\n\"I need that parachute!\" I yelled into my phone as a third gas cell erupted, vaporizing the fabric covering and sending a shower of sparks out either side of the craft. The tail-down attitude increased as the fourth gas cell erupted, followed quickly by the fifth and sixth, and I grabbed a handrail to steady myself.\n\n\"Goddamn it!\" I yelled to no one in par tic ular. \"How hard can it be to get a parachute around here?!\" The airship trembled again as another explosion ripped through the envelope, and with an unpleasant feeling of lightness I felt the craft very slowly begin to fall. As I looked down to see where we were heading and how fast, twelve parachutes of varying styles, colors and vintage appeared in front of me. I grabbed the most modern-looking, stepped into the leg straps and quickly pulled it onto my back as the ship was again rocked by a series of explosions. I clicked the catch on the front of the webbing and without even pausing for breath, leaped over the rail and out into the cold evening air. There was a sudden sense of rapid acceleration, and I tumbled for a while, eventually coming to rest on my back, the air rushing past me, flapping my clothes and tugging at my hair. Far above me the airship was now a chrysanthemum of fire that looked destructively elegant, and from even this distance I could feel the heat on my face. As the airship grew smaller, I snapped out of my reverie and looked for a toggle or something to deploy the chute. I found it across my chest and pulled as hard as I could. Nothing happened for a moment, and I was just thinking that the chute had failed when there was a whap and a jerk as it opened. But before I had even begun to sigh with relief, there was a thump as I landed on the ground, bounced twice and ended up inside the lines and the canopy, which billowed around me. I scrambled clear, released the harness, pulled out my phone and pressed the speed dial for Bradshaw, running as fast as I could across the empty and undescribed land as the flaming hulk of the airship fell slowly and gracefully in the evening sky, the blackened skeleton of the stricken ship silhouetted dark against the orange fireball above it, an angry flaming mass that even now was beginning to spread to the fabric of the book, as the clouds and sky started to glow with the green iridescence of text before it spontaneously combusts.\n\n\"It's Thursday,\" I panted, running to get clear of the airship before it hit the ground, \"and I think we've got a situation\u2026.\"\n\nMy Thanks to:\n\nMy very dear Lipali Mari Roberts, for countless hours of research, assistance and for looking after her writer and partner in the throes of creation. I hope that in the fullness of time I might do the same for her.\n\nMolly Stern and Carolyn Mays, the finest editors in the galaxy, to whom I am always grateful for support and guidance. And by extension, to the hordes of unsung heroes and heroines at Hodder and Penguin who diligently support and promote me and my work.\n\nMy grateful thanks goes to Kathy Reichs for allowing Dr. Temperance Brennan to make a guest appearance in this book.\n\nJordan Fforde, my own teenage son, who is a fine, upstanding young man and displays nothing like the worst excesses of Friday's idleness, and who served only vaguely as any sort of reference material.\n\nBill Mudron and Dylan Meconis of Portland, Oregon, for their outstanding artwork completed in record time and with an understanding of the author's brief that left me breathless. Further examples of their work and contact details for commissions can be found at www.thequirkybird.com (Dylan) and www.excelsiorstudios.net (Bill).\n\nProfessor John Sutherland for his Puzzles in Fiction series of books, which continue to fascinate and inspire.\n\nThe Paragon tearooms exist in the same or greater splendor in which they are referred to in the pages of this novel. They can be found on the main street of Katoomba, in the Blue Mountain region of New South Wales, Australia, and no visit to the area would be complete without your attendance. Who knows\u2014you may even see a giant hedgehog and a tyrannical leader of the known universe sharing a booth and discussing Irritable Vowel Syndrome in hushed tones.\n\nThis novel was written in BOOK V8.3 and was sequenced using a Mark XXIV ImaginoTransferenceRecording Device. Harley Farley was the imaginator. Generics supplied and trained by St. Tabularasa's. Holes were filled by apprentices at the HoleSmiths' Guild, and echolocation and postcreative grammatization was undertaken by Outland contractors at Hodder and Penguin.\n\nThe \"Galactic Cleansing\" policy carried out by Emperor Zhark is a personal vision of the emperor's, and its inclusion in this work does not constitute tacit approval by the author or the publisher for any such projects, howsoever conducted.\n\nThursday Next will return in:"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Ash and Quill",
        "author": "Rachel Caine",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy",
            "steampunk"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "dystopia",
            "books about books",
            "Great Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the Archivist Magister, head of the Great Library of Alexandria, to the commander of the High Garda of the Great Library. Not indexed in the Codex. Restricted viewing:\n\n\u2002The Welsh army has broken treaty with the Library and shamelessly looted the valuable books located in our daughter library in London. St. Paul's Serapeum was a monument and sacred space of knowledge for hundreds of years, and now they claim it for their own.\n\n\u2002We excused the destruction of our Oxford Serapeum as an accident of war. But this? This is too much. The Welsh king has gone too far and must be shown his mistake.\n\n\u2002The king of Wales and England must make immediate reparation for our losses or face the consequences. There are stirrings of rebellion against us on every front, and we must contain and control kingdoms and countries that refuse our authority.\n\n\u2002I will allow no further disobedience, whether that comes from foreign kings or our own Scholars.\n\n\u2002The penalty for traitors is death.\n\n\u2002Handwritten addendum to the Artifex Magnus by the Archivist\n\n\u2002I care little for provincial kingdoms and their spats, but London is the last place our troubling band of Scholar-traitors was spotted... and near St. Paul's, too. I know the Welsh have no love for us, but under threat of total war with the High Garda, they'll hand them over. If they're still alive.\n\n\u2002Handwritten reply from the Artifex Magnus\n\n\u2002They were seen inside St. Paul's by one of the last librarians to flee, so we know that they were, at least, alive then. Whether they escaped in the confusion or are in a mass grave dug by the Welsh remains to be seen. I wouldn't assume them dead. Christopher Wolfe should have been dead years ago, and none of us has managed to put him in the ground yet.\n\n\u2002In regard to your earlier request, I must regretfully recommend that Gregory be appointed to the position of Obscurist Magnus. I know he's a vile creature, but the only other candidate is Eskander. I had him dragged out of his self-imposed prison to be shown to me, so I could ensure, on your behalf, that he's still alive and well. Still a lot of fight left in him, no doubt about that, but as he swore so long ago, he's saying nothing. Not a word. He decided decades ago to make himself useless to us, and I think he's succeeded all too well. Don't pin your hopes on him.\n\n\u2002He did write a note for you. I took the liberty of reading it, and I'll just say that he'd like you dead. I suppose he blames you for Keria Morning's death, the way his son does. I suppose neither of them is particularly wrong, come to that.\n\n\u2002Don't worry about your rogue Scholars. We've put a high price on their heads. Their own families will be tempted to sell them soon enough."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a paper letter from the Burner leader of London to Willinger Beck, head of the Burner city of Philadelphia. Destroyed upon receipt:\n\n\u2002I send you a gift out of the ashes of London: four full Scholars of the Library\u2014a gloriously decorated High Garda captain and two of his soldiers, and... best of all... an Obscurist! Not a half-wild hedge witch, but a real, Iron Tower\u2013trained Obscurist with power even I've never seen.\n\n\u2002Not only that\u2014they come bearing their own gifts. It's said that the Scholars have some secret that might well destroy the Great Library's power forever. I suppose it's up to you to find a way to coax that out of them.\n\n\u2002Strength and courage, my brother."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Books burned so easily.\n\nPaper tanned in the fluttering heat, then sparked sullen red at the edges. Flames left fragile curls of ash. Leather bindings smoked and shriveled and blackened, just like burning flesh.\n\nJess Brightwell watched the fire climb the pyramid of books and willed himself not to flinch as each layer caught. His brain raced with involuntary calculations. One hundred books in five layers. The burning bottom layer: forty-four gone. The second level held another thirty-two, and it was already billowing dull smoke. The next had eighteen more volumes, then five on top of that. The pyramid was capped by one lone book that sat tantalizingly ready for the grabbing. Easy to save as the flames climbed the stack, consuming layer after layer and burning something inside him blacker and colder.\n\nIf I could just save one...\n\nBut he couldn't save anything. Even himself, at the moment.\n\nJess's head hurt fiercely in the glare of the sun. Everything was still a blur. He remembered the chaos of London as the Welsh army descended on it, a battle even he had never imagined the English would lose; he remembered the mesmerizing sight of the dome of St. Paul's catching fire above them as librarians struggled to save what they could.\n\nHe remembered his father and brother, when it counted, turning their backs on him and running.\n\nMost of all, he remembered being forced into the Translation Chamber, and the sickening ripping sensation of being destroyed and created again far, far from London... here in the Burner-held city of Philadelphia.\n\nSent to the rebellious colonies of America.\n\nJess and his friends hadn't been granted any time to recover; they'd been dragged, still sick and weak, to what must have once been a sports stadium; in better times, maybe it had been filled with cheering crowds. Now it was half ruined, melted into a misshapen lump on one side of the concrete stands, and instead of a grassy field in the middle there were bare ground and a funeral pyre of books.\n\nJess couldn't take his eyes off of them as they burned, because he was thinking, sickly, We're next.\n\n\"Jess,\" said Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who was on his knees next to him in the dirt. \"They're not original books. They're Blanks.\" That was true. But Jess didn't miss the tremors running through the man, either. The shine in Wolfe's dark eyes was made of pure, unholy rage. He was right: Blanks were just empty paper and bindings provided by the Great Library of Alexandria, vessels to hold words copied on command from originals kept safe within the Library's archives. These were empty symbols that were burning. In any Library territory, they'd be cheaply and easily replaced, and nothing would be lost at all.\n\nBut seeing them destroyed still hurt. He'd been raised to love books, for all that his family had smuggled them, sold them, and profited from them.\n\nWords were sacred things, and this was a particularly awful kind of heresy.\n\nAs he watched, the last book shivered in the rising heat, as if it might break free and escape the fire. But then the edges crisped, paper smoked, and it was gone in rising curls of ash.\n\nScholar Khalila Seif knelt on his left side, as straight and quiet as a statue. She looked perfectly calm; she had her hands resting lightly on her thighs, her head high and her hijab fluttering lightly at the edges in the hot breeze. Beneath the black silk Scholar's outer robe she wore a still-clean dress, only a little muddy and ashen at the hem from their progress through London. Next to Khalila, Glain Wathen looked as if she were only momentarily frozen in the act of rising\u2014a lithe warrior, all vibrating tension. Beyond her was Thomas Schreiber, then Morgan Hault, then\u2014last and least, in Jess's thoughts\u2014Dario Santiago. Outcast, even among their little band of exiles.\n\nTo Jess's right was Scholar Wolfe and, beyond him, Captain Santi. That was the entire roll call of their party of prisoners, and not a single useful weapon among them. They'd not had time to make a plan. Jess couldn't imagine that any of them had much worthwhile to say just now.\n\nThere was an audience in the crumbling stands: the good citizens of Philadelphia. A ragged, patchwork crowd of hard men and women and children who'd survived starvation, deprivation of all sorts, and constant attacks. They had no pity for the pampered servants of the Great Library.\n\nWhat would Wolfe tell them if he had the chance? That the Great Library was still a great and precious thing, something to be saved, not destroyed? That the cancer that had rotted it from within could still be healed? They'd never believe it. Jess took in a deep breath and choked on the stench of burning books. Imaginary Wolfe, he thought, gave crap speeches.\n\nA man dressed in a fine-cut suit of black wool stepped up to block Jess's view of the pyre. He was a tall, bespectacled fellow, full of the confidence of a man of property; he could have, by appearance, been a banker or a lawyer in a more normal sort of place. The smoke that rose black against the pale blue morning sky seemed to billow right from the crown of his head. His collar-length hair was the same gray as the ash.\n\nWillinger Beck. Elected leader of the Burners of Philadelphia\u2014and, by extension, all Burners everywhere, since this place was the symbol of their fanatical movement. The head fanatic in a movement composed entirely of fanatics.\n\nHe studied their faces without making any comment at all. He must have enjoyed what he saw.\n\n\"Very impressive waste of resources,\" Scholar Wolfe said. His tone was sour, and completely bracing to Jess. Wolfe sounds the same, no matter what. \"Is this a prelude to setting us on fire next?\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous,\" Beck said. \"Surely our learned guests understand the power of a symbol.\"\n\n\"This is barbaric,\" Khalila said from Jess's other side. \"A criminal waste.\"\n\n\"My dear Scholar, we handwrite our own books here. On paper we rescue by picking apart the Library's Blanks and destroying their alchemical bindings. You speak of us as barbaric? Do you know whose symbols you wear? You will not take that tone with us.\" At the end of it, his friendly voice sharpened into an edge.\n\nJess said, \"Talk to her that way again and I'll snap your kneecaps.\" His hands were not bound. He was free to move; they all were. Which meant they could, as a group, do serious damage before they were taken down by the Burner guards stationed behind them.\n\nIn theory, anyway. He knew the guard directly behind him held a gun barrel trained on the back of his neck, precisely where it could blow a hole that would instantly end his life.\n\nBut he'd gotten Beck's attention, and his stare. Good.\n\n\"Here now,\" Beck said, back to mild and reproving. \"We should be friends, after all; we share a common sense that the Great Library of Alexandria has become a destructive parasite. It's no longer some great, untouchable icon. There's no need for anger between us.\"\n\n\"I'm not familiar with American customs,\" said Captain Santi, on the other side of Wolfe. He sounded pleasant and calm. Jess sincerely doubted he was either. \"Is this how you treat your friends?\"\n\n\"Considering you alone put three of my men in the infirmary on your arrival, even in your weakened state? Yes,\" Beck said. \"Captain Santi, we really do resist the Library, just as I am told you do. So should we all. The Library grants people pitiful drops of knowledge while it hoards up oceans for itself. Surely you, too, must see the way it manipulates the world to its own gain.\" He nodded at the black robe that Wolfe wore. \"The common man calls you Scholars by another name: Stormcrows. That black robe isn't a sign of your scholarship anymore, and it isn't an object of reverence. It's a sign of the chaos and destruction you bring down in your wake.\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said. \"It still stands for what it's always stood for: that I will die to preserve the knowledge of this world. I may hate the Archivist, I may want him and his brand of greed and cruelty gone, but I still hold to the ideals. The robe is a symbol of that.\" He paused, and his tone took on silky, dark contempt. \"You, of all people, understand the power of a symbol.\"\n\n\"Oh, I do,\" Beck said. \"Take the robe off.\"\n\nWolfe's chin went up, just a fraction. He was staring straight at Beck. His graying hair whipped in the hot breeze from the pyre, and still he didn't blink as he said, simply, \"No.\"\n\n\"Last chance, Scholar Wolfe. If you repudiate the Library now, it will all go better for you. The Library certainly doesn't stand by you.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nBeck nodded to someone behind them, and Jess, from the corner of his eye, saw the flash of a knife being drawn. He tried to turn, but a hand fell hard on his shoulder, and the gun barrel pressed close enough to bruise the base of his skull.\n\nHe was already too late for any kind of rescue.\n\nOne of Beck's guards grabbed Wolfe's black robe by the sleeve and sliced the silk all the way to the neck\u2014left sleeve, then right, efficient and ruthlessly precise cuts. With the flourish of a cheap street magician, the man tore the robe from Wolfe to leave him kneeling in plain, dark street clothes. He held the mangled fabric up above his head. A breeze heated by burning books caught the silk and fluttered it out like a ragged banner.\n\nWolfe's expression never changed, but next to him, Niccolo Santi let out a purely murderous growl and came half up from his knees before the guard behind him slammed a heavy metal club into the back of his head. The blow crashed Santi back down. He looked dazed but still dangerous.\n\nThe man who'd taken Wolfe's robe paraded it around, as proud as a strutting rooster, and from the stands applause and cheers swelled. It nearly covered up the muttering roar of burning books. Beck ignored that and pointed to Khalila. \"Now her.\" Another guard stepped up to the young woman, but before he could use his knife, Khalila held up both hands. The gesture looked like an order, not a surrender, and it stopped the guard in his tracks.\n\n\"I will stand up now,\" Khalila said. \"I will not resist.\"\n\nThe guard looked uncertainly at Beck, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.\n\nJess watched her tensely from the corner of his eye as she stood in a smooth, calm motion, and from her other side, he saw Glain doing the same, openly ready to fight if Khalila gave a sign she needed help.\n\nBut Khalila lifted her hands in a graceful, unhurried way to unfasten the catch that held the black silk robe closed at her throat. She slipped the robe off her shoulders and caught it as it fluttered down, then folded it with precise movements into a neat, smooth square.\n\nThen she took a step forward and held the folded silk out, one hand supporting it, the other on top, like a queen presenting a gift to a subject. In one calculated move, she had taken Willinger Beck's symbol away and made it her own. Jess felt a fierce surge of savage joy at the look on Beck's face. He'd just been bested by a girl a quarter of his age, and the taste seemed bitter.\n\nBut he wasn't taking that without hitting back, and Jess saw that an instant before Beck grabbed the folded robe and flung it into the pyre of burning books. Petty contempt, but it struck Jess like a gut punch. He saw a shiver run through Khalila, too... just the barest flinch. Like Wolfe, she lifted her chin. Defiant.\n\n\"Only cowards are so afraid of a scrap of cloth,\" she said, clear enough to carry to the stands. There was a shimmer in her eyes: anger, not tears. \"We may not agree with the Archivist; we may want to see him gone and better Scholars take his place. But we still stand for knowledge. You stand for nothing.\"\n\nBeck looked past her and gave a bare, terse nod to a guard, and in the next instant, Khalila was seized, yanked back, and forced to her knees. She almost fell, toppling toward Jess. He instinctively put out a hand to help her, and her fingers twined with his.\n\nThat was the instant he understood what she was really about. Removing her robe hadn't been just defiance; it was distraction. Concealed between her fingers, she held a single metal hairpin\u2014one she'd plucked from under her hijab.\n\nShe knew that in Jess's hands, a hairpin was as good a weapon as any.\n\nA vast, cooling sense of relief washed through his chest, and he exchanged a swift glance with her as he slipped the pin between his own fingers. She's right. Sooner or later, there'll be locks to open. If we live so long.\n\nHe let go of her and hid the metal inside his shirtsleeve. He'd need to find a better hiding place for it, but that would do for now.\n\nBeck ignored them. He was busy throwing Wolfe's robe to the flames. Farther down the line, they had taken Thomas's robe, and Dario's. Four robes flung onto the pyre, one by one, while the crowd roared approval. Jess expected the silk to burn fast, but instead the robes smoked, smoldered, shriveled in, and finally turned to gray and began to powder at the edges. Hardly any drama to it at all, which must have been disappointing for Beck's purposes. A stench of burning hair joined the meaty reek of crisping leather bindings, and for a moment, Jess had the vision again of a body burning in those flames.\n\nOne of their bodies.\n\n\"Now we may start fresh,\" Beck said after the silk was nothing but a tangle of ashes. \"You are no longer part of the Library. In time, you'll come to see that we are your brothers and sisters.\"\n\n\"If you want to convince us of that, let us stand up,\" Santi said, and Jess could hear the ragged edge in his voice. A trickle of bright red blood ran down the sharp plane of his cheekbone from his hairline, but his eyes were clear and intensely focused on Beck. \"Let us up and see how fraternal we can be.\"\n\n\"In time,\" Beck said. \"In due time, Captain.\"\n\nJess swallowed and tasted ashes. Fraternal. He didn't want to believe that he and his friends\u2014for whom this had started as personal loyalty, personal risk, and nothing they'd deliberately planned\u2014had anything in common with Burners. He loathed them, even though they wanted books to be free and owned by anyone who wanted them. He'd grown up a book smuggler, so by definition he believed in that same ideal.\n\nBut he didn't believe in indiscriminate murder, either, and the Burners had been known to incinerate the guilty and the innocent alike, just to make their point.\n\nThe Great Library, for all its shining history and high ideals, had just as rotten a heart; it might even be worse. The Archivist Magister might love books just as he did, but that evil old man loved power far more. He and the Curia were part of a system that had turned toxic hundreds of years ago, when a long-dead Archivist had chosen to destroy an invention, and a Scholar, to keep his firm hold on power. Every Archivist since had chosen the same dark road. Maybe now they couldn't see any other way.\n\nBut there had to be a way. The Library was too precious to let it fall without trying to save what was good at its heart. And if it was just the eight of them who'd fight to save it... then that was a start.\n\nSaving anything didn't seem very likely. He was on his knees in a ruined arena in a Burner-held city, with nothing but a hairpin. Still, to a criminal like him? A hairpin was enough.\n\n\"I'll ask you now,\" Beck said, raising his voice to be heard in the stands. The echoes came back cold. \"Will you swear to join our city? To work for the ruin of the Great Library that keeps its foot on our necks, and the necks of every man, woman, and child on this earth? To do what must be done to prove our cause?\"\n\nHe was walking down the line. He stopped in front of Dario Santiago.\n\nJess forgot to take in the next breath, because if there was a weak link in their chain, Beck had put his finger directly on it. Dario would do what was good for Dario. Without fail. None of them expected anything else at this point.\n\nDario looked tired. He'd suffered some burns\u2014so had Jess\u2014in London, and his normal cocky grace was gone. He looked beaten.\n\nSo it came as a shock when he got to his feet to face Beck and said, very clearly, in as strong a voice as Jess could remember from him, \"Really? Do I look like a witless Burner? Don't insult me with the question.\" He followed it up with something in Spanish so fast Jess missed the meaning, but from scattered laughter in the stands, it must have been cutting.\n\nBeck's expression didn't change. He took a step onward. Morgan Hault was next, and just like Dario, she stood up. Not especially tall, not especially strong. Her hair blew wild around her face, and if she was frightened, she didn't show it as she said, \"No.\" A clear, firm, unshakeable denial.\n\nThey held Thomas down on his knees, probably worrying that he'd do real damage if they let him get up. He gave his answer with a sweet, broad smile. \"Of course not.\" He almost seemed amused.\n\nGlain definitely wasn't, and since she was held down as well, she contented herself with a rude gesture and a long string of Welsh syllables. Jess knew the gist of it well enough: screw off. Very Glain.\n\nKhalila got up, too. Like Thomas, she was smiling. \"I absolutely will not agree,\" she said. \"Foolish of you to even ask.\"\n\nJess stayed down. No choice, really, since the guard behind him whispered, \"Stand up and I'll splatter you all over the ground.\" But Beck barely paused to hear his clipped no before moving on to Wolfe.\n\nWolfe had been still and calm the whole time, but it was a brittle kind of stillness. His answer came, sharp: \"Never.\"\n\nNext to him, Santi bared his teeth in a savage grin. \"So say we all.\"\n\nBeck stared at them for such a long, silent moment that Jess started to sweat; that pyre was still hot, and Beck looked like a man who liked to make an example. But he finally shook his head and beckoned a woman of African descent who looked every bit as competent and dangerous as Glain. The woman moved like a trained soldier, though she wore no uniform, only a plain-spun shirt and trousers with heavy boots.\n\n\"Very well. Lock them up\u2014\"\n\n\"There's the good Burner welcome I was waiting for,\" Wolfe said sourly.\n\n\"\u2014and see that they are well treated,\" Beck continued. But he glanced at Wolfe, and behind the artifice of good humor, there was something far darker. He was the leader of a city that was fighting a war, and worse than that, he was a true believer. A fanatic who didn't hesitate to kill, maim, and destroy in his attempts to make the world in his own image. \"But search them thoroughly. I want no mistakes.\"\n\nJess's fingers tightened over the fragile metal pin he'd embedded in the fabric of his shirtsleeve. He'd need to find a good hiding place. Quickly.\n\nBy the time he was allowed up off his knees, he found his legs were steady, and his stomach, too. At least this horrible bit of theater had given them all time to recover from the shock of Translation and start to put their brains to use.\n\nPhiladelphia was going to be, in its own way, as dangerous a place as London, Rome, or Alexandria. It was impossible to know yet what the Burners wanted from them, or what they'd have to do to survive.\n\nBut that didn't matter. The idea of going behind bars actually cheered him up.\n\nAfter all, prisons\u2014like locks\u2014were made to be broken.\n\nThe guards weren't stupid, which was too bad; they separated the party out, two by two, and shoved them into barred cells inside a long, low building made of heavy stone. Cramped ceilings and rudimentary toilets, but it was far from the worst Jess had ever seen. Didn't even smell particularly bad. Maybe crime was low in Burnertown.\n\nBut, more important, the locks on the cells were large, crude, and old.\n\nBy a little subtle maneuvering that his friends managed without seeming to manage it, everyone sorted out nicely in ordered pairs: Wolfe and Santi, Glain and Khalila, Thomas and Jess. Dario and Morgan each managed their own private cells, which made Jess a little jealous. But only a little, because he needed to stay close to Thomas. The German had only just escaped from one prison. He might need help adjusting to yet another one.\n\n\"Search them thoroughly. You don't have to be gentle about it,\" the tall woman\u2014Beck's captain, Jess thought\u2014said, and exited without waiting to see it done. She left behind three men to do the job, which did seem adequate with the cell doors shut and locked.\n\n\"Right,\" said one of the men\u2014the squad leader, Jess thought\u2014who had a dramatic scar on one cheek: a melted look, courtesy of Greek fire. He didn't seem particularly nice and, after considering the pickings, unlocked the cell that Glain and Khalila shared first. \"You. Tall one. Step out.\"\n\nThat was, of course, Glain. She likely looked to be the bigger threat, though appearances might have been deceptive, depending on the situation. Glain shrugged, stepped out, and put her hands flat on the far stone wall of the hallway. Her quick glance at Wolfe asked the silent question: Are we cooperating? Jess couldn't see the reply from where he stood\u2014there was a wall between his cell and the next, where Wolfe and Santi were held\u2014but he saw her relax, so the answer must have been yes.\n\nGlain took having a guard's hands on her with the same indifference she gave most issues of modesty. Beyond saying, \"You missed a spot. Bad form,\" to the man searching her, she gave him no trouble.\n\n\"Right. Back in. You, in the veil. Come out.\"\n\n\"It's not a veil,\" Khalila said as she moved into the center hallway. \"It's called a hijab. Or a scarf, if you like.\"\n\nThe guard surveyed her uncertainly from head to toe. He was clearly not familiar with the traditional clothing that Khalila favored; Glain in battered trousers hadn't bothered him, but the volume of that dress did. \"Against the wall,\" he said. Khalila obligingly leaned, and though she clearly didn't like being touched, especially so freely, she said nothing as the man searched her. \"All right. Turn around.\"\n\nShe did, and started back to her cell. He put out a hand to stop her. \"No. Scarf comes off.\"\n\n\"It is against my religion. Does no one follow the Prophet here, peace and blessings be upon him? Here. I've removed the pins from my hair,\" Khalila said, and extended her hand to surrender a palmful of them. \"I have nothing else hidden beneath it. I swear that.\"\n\n\"I don't trust your oath, Scholar,\" the man said, and without any warning, he stepped behind her, grabbed a handful of the fabric of her hijab and yanked. Khalila's head snapped back as the scarf was dragged off, and she let out a small cry of dismay and shock as she grabbed for the fabric. He shoved her hard against the bars of the cell with his hand on the back of her neck. \"Stay still!\"\n\n\"Hey! Hands off!\" Jess shouted as a sudden ball of fury ignited inside him like Greek fire and he grabbed the bars and rattled them. Dario swore to knife the man in his sleep.\n\nKhalila didn't make another sound.\n\nThe guard pulled the scarf loose from where it sagged around Khalila's neck, and a riot of smooth, basalt black hair cascaded over her shoulders. He crumpled the fabric in his hand and stuck it in his belt. \"Better,\" he said to her. \"No special treatment around here for you or whatever god you follow, Scholar. Best you learn that quickly.\"\n\nKhalila turned whip fast to grab the man's wrist and extended and twisted his whole arm. She continued the spin and pressed her palm hard into the back of his elbow, reversing it to the breaking point, and held him there as he cried out. He shifted to try to take the strain off the joint, and she pressed harder. This time, she got a shrill cry. His knees buckled.\n\nThe other guards moved forward, and Glain glided out to get in their way. Khalila acknowledged that with a quick flick of a glance but kept her attention on the man she had in the painful, joint-cracking hold.\n\n\"Don't make me break it,\" she said. \"Never do that again. Never. It's insulting and disrespectful. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Let go!\" he panted. Khalila took her head scarf from his belt and shoved him away. He got his balance and lowered his chin, and Jess saw him reach for a knife at his belt.\n\nGlain, without a word, turned immediately and landed a swift, strong uppercut that jerked the guard's head up and rolled his eyes back to the whites. Her distraction gave the other two guards an opening, of course, and one grabbed Glain and pushed her back against the wall. He slammed a fist straight into her guts. She grinned with bare, wet teeth. \"Weak sauce, Burner,\" she almost purred. \"Have another go.\"\n\nHe followed up with a second punch, harder. Useless, and Jess knew it; Glain had made a lot of money in the High Garda barracks with this trick. As long as she had time to tense her abdominal muscles, he wouldn't do her damage, and she'd never let on that it hurt. A bloody savage kind of game, but it suited Glain to the ground.\n\n\"Enough,\" the last guard said, and shoved his friend back when he prepared to punch Glain again. \"You, get back in the cell and there'll be no more trouble,\" he told Khalila. \"I won't touch you if you don't force me to it. All right? You can keep the scarf. No need for any more of this.\"\n\nKhalila nodded. \"Thank you,\" she said. \"You might want to check on your friend. I think he might need a Medica.\" She stepped over the man Glain had put down as she slid the scarf back over her head and began to tuck it into shape.\n\n\"You too, soldier. Get back in,\" the third guard said to Glain, and stood out of her way. She hadn't stopped smiling\u2014it was a frighteningly feral thing\u2014and walked without a care in the world into the cell. She managed to step on the fallen guard as she did so. He didn't even groan.\n\n\"I appreciate the help.\" Khalila held up her palm; Glain casually slapped it.\n\n\"Oh, I did it for the fun,\" she said, and, with a flourish Jess rather enjoyed, swung the cell door closed once she was inside. It reminded him of Khalila removing her Scholar's robe before it could be taken. \"Well? Are you planning to lock it, y twpsyn?\" He didn't know the Welsh term, but he assumed it wasn't flattering.\n\nThe guard who'd punched Glain stepped up to turn the key. \"Next time,\" he said to Glain.\n\n\"Precious, next time I won't just stand there,\" she replied. \"And after that, I'll send flowers.\"\n\nJess laughed. \"You know, Glain, there was a time when I didn't like you. I was very stupid.\"\n\nGlain gave him that half-wild grin. \"Shut up. You still are.\"\n\nThe guards were a lot more careful, and they chose Morgan next; while they focused on her, Jess leaned against the bars with his arms folded to wait his turn. That conveniently put his right hand close enough to extract the precious metal hairpin from his sleeve and tease a long loose strand from the fraying cloth. The resulting thread wasn't as long as he would have preferred, but he was low on options. He tied the string one-handed onto the pin, made a running loop on the other end, and raised his hand to cover a cough as the guards finished with Morgan and locked her door. He pushed the loop over a back tooth and swallowed, and for a perilous second he was afraid the pin would catch in his throat before it slid through to dangle at the end of the string, halfway down his gullet.\n\nIt wasn't comfortable.\n\n\"Now you,\" the guard said, and unlocked the door to their cell. \"Big one. No resistance or I swear, we'll put you down for good.\" He pulled a gun this time and leveled it on Thomas as the big young man stepped out. \"Face the wall. Hands up and flat on the stone. No sudden moves.\"\n\nThomas seemed perfectly content to be searched, which was a relief to everyone; since his rescue from the Library's secret prison, his reactions had an unpredictable quality that put Jess on edge at moments like this. But he stayed docile, was pronounced clear, and was sent back into the cell without trouble.\n\nJess's turn went fast, but not fast enough; he'd never been as good at this magic trick as his brother Brendan, and sweat broke out on his brow as he fought the urge to gag the string and hairpin up again. He could maddeningly, constantly feel the foreign object in his throat, bouncing against tender parts, and even the fastest sweep of the guard's hands felt like eternity. It was important not to panic. He'd seen smugglers choke on swallowed keys.\n\n\"All right,\" the guard said, and shoved him back into the cell. \"Next. You. Spaniard.\"\n\nJess sat and slowed his breathing and pulse as best he could while the search went on. His stomach roiled and rebelled, but he somehow kept it from destroying him. Dario's search began and ended. The third guard had come around by then, muttering drunkenly about revenge, and was sent on his way to see a Medica.\n\nEven Wolfe and Santi submitted without trouble, as if they knew how important it was to get the guards out quickly.\n\nThe outer door finally shut behind the departing guards with a metallic clang, and Jess closed his eyes as he listened for the sound of keys. He heard them. So, he had individual cell locks to contend with and an outer door to get through as well. And one small hairpin to his name.\n\n\"They're gone,\" Thomas told him, and Jess opened his eyes. \"You've turned the color of spoiled milk. Are you sick?\"\n\nJess held up a finger to signal him to wait and then reached into his mouth to take hold of the slippery piece of string. Relax, he told himself, and gave it a steady pull. He couldn't hold back the half-retching cough as the pin slid free of his throat, but the temporary nausea was a small price to pay for the triumph of holding that pin up for Thomas to inspect. \"Old street magician's trick,\" Jess told him, and pulled the looped string off his tooth. \"Swallow it down, vomit it up. Preferably without vomit.\"\n\n\"That,\" Thomas said with real admiration, \"is disgusting.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\" Jess wiped the hairpin off and carefully bent it flat, then began to work the center until it snapped into two halves. \"So many useful things you learn running with a bad set.\"\n\n\"So I'm learning,\" Dario said from across the way. \"What good will that do?\"\n\n\"Lockpicks.\"\n\n\"So? You unlock our cells. We're still trapped in Philadelphia.\"\n\n\"Then I won't unlock yours.\"\n\n\"I take it back, dear English!\"\n\nJess ignored him as he bent one of the halves into a tension wrench and the other into the beginnings of a pick. Thomas leaned forward to watch him work. \"Do you need help?\" he asked, and Jess shook his head. \"Dario is right, you know. Opening a lock isn't escape.\"\n\n\"It's one step toward it, and Dario's never right.\"\n\n\"You know I can hear you,\" Dario said. \"Because you're talking out loud.\"\n\n\"Why do you think I said it?\" Jess used the fulcrum of a cell bar to put a bend into the pick, then knelt at the door to try out the feel. It required adjustments, which he made patiently, bit by bit, testing the lock and learning its peculiarities.\n\n\"Khalila, are you all right?\" Dario asked. His voice had shifted, gone warm and quiet. \"I'm sorry for what he did to you. That was vile.\"\n\n\"I'm all right,\" she said. She couldn't see Dario from her side. Walls between them. \"No damage done. You all stood with me. That matters more.\" Her voice was steady, but Jess could see her face. She was still shaken, and angry.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, because he couldn't think of anything other than the obvious truth, \"we're all family here, aren't we? It's what family does.\"\n\nShe took in a quick breath and let it out slowly. \"Yes,\" she said, \"I suppose we are. And that means a great deal.\"\n\nJess went back to work on the lock. \"Mind you, if I claim you as family, that's a huge step up for me, and probably several ones down for you,\" he said. \"I never said it, but... sorry about my father letting us down, everyone. He's always been rubbish as a parent. I just thought he was a better businessman than to let Burners get the better of him in a deal.\" And sell me out in the process, he thought, but didn't say. It still hurt.\n\n\"That wasn't your fault,\" Morgan said. \"My father tried to kill me, in case you've forgotten. Yours is the soul of family warmth next to him.\" She sat down on the bunk in her cell and pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged. \"Oh, all right, I suppose I'll claim the lot of you as my kin, too.\"\n\n\"Try not to sound so enthusiastic about it,\" Glain said. \"And, no offense, but I have a great father and mother and a lot of excellent brothers, so I'll be keeping them. Still, you make all right friends\u2014I'll give you that.\"\n\nKhalila sighed and stretched. \"Our time is going to pass very slowly if the only entertainment is listening to you all insult one another, and they won't give us books.\"\n\n\"I can recite a few books,\" Thomas said. \"If you're bored already.\" He began sonorously droning some desert-dry text about gear ratios he'd committed to memory while the others begged him to stop, and Jess muttered under his breath and felt the lock's stubborn, stiff mechanism and the unnerving fragility of his picks. Come on, he begged them. Work. He could feel the tension in the pick now and slipped the wrench in place for leverage. Hairpins weren't the ideal material for this, given the weight of the lock, and his fingertips told him the metal was bending under the strain. Needs better angles. He suppressed a groan and slipped the lockpicks free, studying the damage done, then began working carefully to put a sharper bend in the pick. Slipped them in place again, and suddenly, it felt as if the whole mechanism was laid out before him, brilliant white lines shining in his mind's eye. A subtle shift here, pressure there...\n\nWith a sudden harsh click, the pick caught, held, and turned.\n\nThomas sat up straight, breaking off his recitation, as Jess pushed on the door. It slowly swung open.\n\n\"Mother of God,\" Dario breathed, and rushed to his own cell door to wrap his hands around the bars. \"Well, come on, you beautiful criminal! Let us out!\"\n\n\"Changed your tune, didn't you?\" Santi said. \"Jess. That's enough.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" It was tempting to step out into the hall, very tempting to go try his luck on the outer door's lock, but he knew Santi was right. He grabbed the loose door and swung it closed, held it there with his boot jammed through the bars while he plied the pick again to refasten it. That was easier.\n\n\"No, no, no!\" Dario hammered the heel of his hand on the bars, a racket Jess could have well done without. \"You fool, what are you doing?\"\n\n\"He's biding his time, which you'll also do, quietly,\" Santi said. \"We need time to recover and regain our strength. We need to win their trust, scout the city, and make a decent plan of escape. That's going to take time, and some measure of trust from our captors. We earn none making a useless attempt now.\"\n\nDario must have known that was true, but his frustration was sharp enough to cut the air, and he hit the bars one last time and flung himself onto his bunk. No arguments, though. Not even Dario was foolish enough to rush out without a plan.\n\nSanti made it sound easy, Jess thought, but it wouldn't be. None of it. And he had the unpleasant thought that after escape, if they made it out of this city, then they were still in America, far from help.\n\nStill, having the small length of metal in his hand, and a bit of control, quieted the storm inside his head from a hurricane to a grumble of thunder. The thunder was muttering, It's useless; the metal won't last; the picks will break. What then?\n\nOut of nowhere, he remembered something his father had told him when he was just a child. When all the world is a lock, boy, you don't make a key. You become a key.\n\nBrightwell wisdom. Sharp, unsentimental, and right now, something that settled the last of his worry. For the time being."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text from the volume Liber de Potentia, addressing the dangers of unregulated Obscurists. For full reading only by the Curia and Archivist Magister. Certain sections available to the Medica division:\n\n\u2002...the toxic effect of the overuse of Obscurist abilities. This is most clearly and dreadfully illustrated by the case of French Obscurist Gilles de Rais. While trained in the Iron Tower, he left of his own accord to return to his family lands (n.b., for this reason we recommend no further releases, even for compassionate reasons, be allowed from the Iron Tower). He then used his great talents not in the service of the Library, as he was sworn to do, but in raising up a French warrior to do battle against the English for purely partisan reasons.\n\n\u2002De Rais used his God-granted quintessence to reckless and extravagant excess in keeping Jeanne d'Arc alive and well protected; while there is no doubt the woman was a born fighter who would have done the High Garda great credit had she been drawn to its service, his constant use of power to strengthen her armor and heal her wounds took the inevitable toll upon them both.\n\n\u2002De Rais's power increased, as is typical for an Obscurist allowed to hone his skills without restriction, but as Aristotle himself observed, that which comes in contact with contaminants is never again clean. His healings began well enough, but as the rot inside him took hold, his touch brought madness, fevers, and, ultimately, the downfall of his own sworn champion.\n\n\u2002Retreating to his castle, he swore to resurrect the fallen Jeanne. Corrupted from within, and maddened with it, he enacted a resulting horror within those walls that is a thing of terrible legend. That he was eventually purged by fire by his own people can only be seen as justice.\n\n\u2002His case is, therefore, a stark warning to those who believe that Obscurists may be left on their own to manage their power and duties unchecked. Inside the Iron Tower, Obscurists use their powers in a careful and constructed way; the very metal of the Tower itself acts to limit their ability. To this end, and with the dark example of Gilles de Rais before us, we must recommend that all Obscurists be forever confined to the Iron Tower, save for specific missions that lead them beyond its protection, and on those rare occasions, that they be carefully watched. Should any signs of danger emerge, the Obscurist must be immediately and decisively prevented from any further use of power until natural healing, if possible, might occur.\n\n\u2002While contamination may be reversed in early stages, it nevertheless poses a grave threat not only to the Obscurist who carries it but also to all those nearby.\n\n\u2002Power holds always the hidden edge of threat."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "In the morning, well before sunrise, Jess woke and started a systematic inventory of the cell, down to the stones, mortar, and bars.\n\nThomas overflowed his narrow bunk, hands folded on his chest, and his breathing seemed even and calm, but in the dim light seeping through the high window, Jess saw he wasn't asleep. Thomas's blue eyes were open, staring at the ceiling\u2014but not a blank stare. His mind was all too active.\n\n\"What are you thinking?\" Jess asked quietly as he stood on his bunk and pulled at the iron bars on the cell window. He kept it to a neutral question, because it was likely that the other young man's thoughts were on the past. These cells were cleaner than the Library's, and thus far refreshingly free of torture devices, but the similarities still chilled. He couldn't imagine what being imprisoned dredged up for Thomas, who'd endured months in that hell.\n\nThomas let two slow breaths pass in and out before he said, \"I imagine they'll try to take Morgan first.\"\n\nThat was far from what he'd been expecting, and Jess swung down to the floor with an almost noiseless hop. \"Why do you say that?\"\n\n\"The Burners may hate the Library, but they're not stupid\u2014at least, not this nest of them. They've resisted for more than a hundred years, and turned the American colonies into boiling pots of trouble on all fronts for the Library. Beck will fully understand the advantages of having a pet Obscurist. She could help them in their terrorist operations, repair their Translation Chamber, create their own Codex... They could build their own splinter version of the Great Library here in Philadelphia, but under their own control. They have original books, I imagine. What they need is an Obscurist. The rest of us...\" Thomas shrugged. \"We're only a bonus.\"\n\nA new voice said, \"We must use skills to our advantage.\" That was Khalila, who perched on the edge of her cot near her cell's door. \"Our knowledge is our value. We have to make them see that.\"\n\n\"Did you not hear the part where they're likely to take Morgan by force?\"\n\n\"Morgan is right here, and quite tired of being talked about as if she's some delicate treasure,\" Morgan said. \"I'm in the least danger of all of you; Thomas just eloquently pointed that out.\"\n\n\"Is nobody asleep?\" Jess asked in exasperation.\n\nIt drew a dry laugh from Dario's cell, though the Spaniard didn't bother to rise at all. \"Have you tried finding a comfortable position on these devil's excuses for beds? Khalila's right. Work with the Burners, or escape. Those are our choices.\"\n\n\"There is no working with them,\" Scholar Wolfe said. Jess couldn't see him; he was on the other side of the stone wall to Jess's left. \"There is appearing to work with them, and that is a means to a greater end than just survival. We need to have a goal of escaping not the cells, not the building, but the city. Even after, we must have a plan for what comes next. Make no move without knowing at least three ahead.\"\n\n\"I have a plan. Build my mechanical printer,\" Thomas said. \"Use it to break the Library's hold on knowledge. That is a good plan.\"\n\n\"That isn't a plan, my poor engineer. That is a goal,\" Dario said. \"A plan is steps we take to achieve the goal. You know, the boring part of being clever.\"\n\n\"I know how to build my part,\" Thomas replied. \"Which is more than I can say of you, Dario.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen, didn't we agree we are family?\" Khalila said.\n\n\"I argue with my family,\" Dario said. \"But yes, desert flower. I will do better.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" Thomas said. \"I apologize. I'm sure Dario has some skill I'm not aware of.\"\n\nKhalila almost laughed. \"Then let's proceed. Beck isn't stupid, or overly fanatical, or he wouldn't have survived as their leader this long. So...\"\n\n\"So we offer him something he won't find in the books he confiscated from us,\" Jess said. \"As Thomas said. The press.\"\n\nDario made a rude noise. \"Stupid idea. Once he has the plans, he has no need of us.\"\n\n\"You forget, he's got no need of us now,\" Wolfe said. His tone was as heavy and sharp as a guillotine blade. \"The only one of us he actually needs is Morgan. The rest of us are\u2014as Thomas so correctly put it\u2014bonuses. He has to want us alive.\"\n\nThomas still hadn't moved from his deathlike stillness on the bunk. His gaze hadn't varied from the shadowed ceiling. \"Then I don't give him the plans. I build the press first and prove to him it works,\" he said. \"And Jess builds it with me. Along with Morgan, that gives us three Beck can't kill, and it buys us time.\"\n\n\"He'll accept that for you. Jess is just another pair of hands.\"\n\n\"I hate to say it, but Beck does need me,\" Jess said. \"Not for my brilliant mind so much as his own survival. Have you looked around this so-called town? It isn't staying alive on its own merits; the buildings are half ruins, the people all but starved.\"\n\n\"A hundred years of unrelenting siege will do that,\" Santi said.\n\n\"And they don't survive on whatever meager crops they raise in here. At least, not completely.\"\n\nSanti's voice turned contemplative. \"I see your point. This town survives on smugglers getting them extra food and supplies.\"\n\n\"Exactly. And those smugglers will have ties that lead back to my family, one way or another. I'm more valuable for what I represent, once Beck knows who I am. I'm worth better terms and more supplies. Or the reverse, because if he kills me, he loses his flow of supplies.\"\n\n\"Nice for you,\" Dario said. \"That last bit is particularly good. I mean, better chance of us escaping in the chaos, of course, if you want to volunteer as sacrificial goat.\"\n\nJess replied silently. With a gesture.\n\n\"Getting beyond these walls will be a much greater challenge,\" said Santi. \"The walls have been standing for a hundred years\u2014treated by an Obscurist, most likely, to withstand Greek fire and other, more conventional bombardment. Plus, there are no fewer than four full High Garda companies stationed around the walls of Philadelphia, and they're constantly on watch. My own company\u2014\" His voice broke a bit, as if he'd only just remembered that they'd abandoned everything to save Thomas, including his position as a High Garda captain, and so, his soldiers. \"My own company spent a year here some time ago.\"\n\n\"About that,\" Dario said. \"I'd have thought the impressive armed High Garda could defeat a few hundred Burners inside a half-ruined city in less than a week, never mind a hundred years.\"\n\n\"Standing orders from two Archivists back,\" Santi answered. \"The American colonies have always been a powder keg of dissent. Burning Philadelphia could set the whole continent ablaze. Containment is the policy, with occasional bombardments.\"\n\n\"And I assume you had run-ins with smugglers.\"\n\n\"Of course. We caught hundreds of amateurs. Most were fanatics caught trying to fling supplies over the walls.\"\n\n\"Any of them ever use one of your ballistae?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"To throw supplies. I would have. Could get a lot over in a couple of quick tosses.\"\n\n\"Thank God you were not advising them.\" Santi sounded amused at that one. \"Jess\u2014I'm all for using your family's reputation, but don't push Beck too far. He might kill you just to make the point that he doesn't need your father's goodwill. He has an ego.\"\n\n\"You sound as if you know him,\" Jess said.\n\n\"I should\u2014we study him. He's survived here, head of a desperate group trapped like rats, and he's kept order by being equal parts clever and ruthless. His math is very cold: he doesn't keep anyone alive, wasting resources, who doesn't gain him something.\"\n\nKhalila said, \"Scholar Wolfe, Dario and I can interpret the books we brought from the Black Archives; I know Master Beck was quite excited about those. Most of the books are in dead and obscure languages I doubt anyone else in Philadelphia can decipher. That might give us some protection, at least for a time.\"\n\n\"That still leaves Glain and Santi,\" Wolfe said. \"And I'm not giving them up.\"\n\nGlain groaned sleepily and said, \"Would you all just shut up and let me rest? We're High Garda. We'll survive. Chatter when the sun's up, you wretches.\"\n\n\"Do you want us to sing to you?\" Dario asked.\n\n\"I swear to my gods and yours, Dario. Shut. Up.\"\n\nAfter that, it went quiet again. Some of them, Jess sensed, did go back to sleep. Not him. Not Thomas. Jess went back to a fingertip search of the cell, mind as white as a snowfield. His father had taught him how to look for hidden panels and triggers doing this, but the same principle served for anything you were looking to discover. It just took patience and focus.\n\nFrom time to time, he glanced up at Thomas. The other young man hadn't closed his eyes. He looked... dead. But Jess had no doubt that the mind inside that skull was whirring at top speed.\n\nJess finally paused his search. He'd covered most of the cell, and his back was on fire, his fingertips raw from scraping them over stone. He sat down on the floor to lean against his friend's cot. \"You all right?\" He whispered it softly enough that it wouldn't wake Thomas if he were asleep.\n\nBut he wasn't at all surprised to get a reply.\n\n\"To be truthful, I'm glad you're here, Jess.\" He didn't say the rest, but Jess could guess. Being trapped in a cell again, even surrounded by friends, wasn't good for him. Thomas had endured torment in that dark hell underneath Rome; he'd survived unimaginable things, and it had taken a toll. Jess wanted to ask, but he knew better; there was a gulf between what they could say and what they would say. Best to keep things simple. Thomas was fragile, raw inside and out, and the ugly truth of it was they needed him strong if they were going to survive Philadelphia.\n\nThomas said, \"Would you stay there while I sleep a little?\"\n\nJess looked over his shoulder and saw that Thomas's gaze had shifted to him. Neither of them looked away, and Jess finally said, \"I'll stand watch.\"\n\nIt was, he thought, exactly what Thomas needed, and with a sigh, the big German closed his eyes and let himself finally drift away.\n\nJess fell asleep, too, despite the hard stones under his behind, and the chill. He dreamed he was a guard at a gate, and the gate was on fire, and he knew, he knew, that what waited beyond it was something terrible and monstrous and impossible to defeat. But that he'd have to fight it anyway. The hopelessness of it overwhelmed him.\n\nHe woke with a start when he heard voices, the dream still vivid and vibrating in his muscles. The sun was well up, and the sky a cloudy teal blue beyond the window bars. No one had arrived to wake them, Jess realized, and there was nothing to eat. His stomach was growling. He also had an urgent need for the toilet. Bucket. Well, he'd made do with worse, and he rose and made use of the thing.\n\n\"Wathen, what in Heron's name are you doing?\" That was Wolfe's sharp, annoyed voice, and Jess buttoned up and angled a look over at the cell Glain shared with Khalila. Glain was, bafflingly enough, doing a handstand in the middle of her cell. Perfect balance, as steady as a rock. \"Practicing to become Philadelphia's court jester?\"\n\nGlain put her legs down in a smooth, perfectly coordinated move that Jess could in no way have duplicated, stood up straight, and stretched. \"It feels good,\" she said. \"Blood to the brain. Helps me think.\"\n\n\"Did you see anything useful from that position?\" Dario asked.\n\n\"Did you, from lying on your oh-so-uncomfortable mattress, lazybones?\"\n\nThe young man shrugged, which was a feat considering he was casually leaning a shoulder against the bars and had his arms crossed. \"What do you want me to say? It's a cell. There's nothing in here.\"\n\n\"Dario, you're hopeless,\" Wolfe said. \"Jess. Tell him how he's wrong.\"\n\n\"Strip the netting under the mattresses. Braid it together, tie it to the window bars, and twist. The torque will unseat at least one of the bars pretty easily. You can use it for a tool, sharpen it up as a weapon...\"\n\n\"The mattresses are flammable enough to make a decent amount of smoke,\" Morgan added. \"We'd need to be careful to keep it to a distraction. The air circulation isn't very good. Easy to breathe in too much if it gets thick.\"\n\nKhalila held up her head scarf and unfolded it with a snap of her hand. \"If I weight the two ends with pieces of stone, this makes a perfectly good weapon.\"\n\nDario said, \"Fine. You're all much better at dirty fighting and jail survival than I am. But as the Scholar so wisely said, we need to think three moves ahead. Let's assume that we're out of the cells, we've saved our lives from the Burners, we've found a way out of the city. What then? I think we need a way to communicate with whatever allies we have left out there. I don't suppose you've got that answer tucked up your sleeve.\"\n\nJess said, \"If they're getting supplies, they must have a smuggling tunnel.\"\n\n\"Explain,\" Wolfe said sharply. \"Because I'm not allowing you to run blindly out into unknown territory. We must\u2014\"\n\n\"They're coming,\" Santi interrupted him.\n\nJess heard footsteps then, and the scrape of the lock turning to the outer door, and was on his feet and at the bars so quickly he might have been spring-loaded. Thomas, by contrast, didn't even move a muscle from where he sat on the edge of his cot\u2014though it was an icy calm that Jess thought hard-won.\n\nThe door gaped open, and three men came in\u2014different ones this time, but with a brawny look that said they were ready for trouble. Khalila, across the way, unhurriedly tied her scarf in place and tucked the edges in to hold it. How she could stay so perfectly clean in these conditions, Jess had no idea, but she wouldn't have looked out of place in her own Library office, despite all they'd been through. Made him feel somewhat better.\n\nMorgan, on the other hand, looked more like he felt\u2014pale, tired, her hair tangled and badly in need of combing. He wanted to do that for her, run his fingers gently through that riot of silk and curls. Had they come for her? He was afraid that Thomas had been right\u2014Morgan's abilities were a valuable, vanishingly rare resource that the Burners would lock a collar around as sure as the Library had done.\n\nBut they didn't stop at Morgan's cell, which was a temporary relief that vanished as they stopped at Jess and Thomas's barred door and pointed at Thomas. \"You there. Come with us.\" The clipped tone of the guard's accent made the command sound that much more unfriendly. He had pale skin and straw blond hair cropped to a shimmer around his skull, and he'd been in more than one fight; noses didn't get that distorted from just one punch.\n\nJess was caught wrong-footed, and it took him a second to realize what it might mean. He turned to look at Thomas, and one glance at the other young man's set face was enough.\n\n\"He's not going anywhere alone,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Back up, boy.\"\n\n\"Never happen. You want him, you take us both.\"\n\nThe guard laughed. \"You mean go through you? Not a problem.\"\n\nJess was afraid that assessment was correct. He could fight; his High Garda training had made him efficient, fast, and deadly, and he was confident he could make them bleed. But there were three of them, and he couldn't count on Thomas, who wavered between sudden bursts of violence and crippling fear at the strangest of times. Thomas would probably fight for others. Jess wasn't sure he'd fight to save himself.\n\nJess was afraid, but it was a fear he was familiar with, after all the High Garda drills and the horror he'd already survived. An old friend, this kind of fear. Almost a strength.\n\n\"If you make us put you down, you'll go hard,\" the Burner said. He grinned and revealed an array of jagged teeth as battered and broken as his nose. \"Your choice.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" Santi said, from the next cell over, and leaned against the bars of the cell he shared with Wolfe. His tone was charming, which meant he was ready to do awful things. \"If you want answers, come and get someone who has command rank.\"\n\n\"Oh, we'll get to you,\" the man said. He smacked a heavy wooden club in his palm and moved down to look in at Santi. \"We'll ask real loud, if you keep it up, booklover.\"\n\n\"It's funny you think that's an insult. Whereas, I'd rather talk about the misshapen state of your face. Just how many fights did you lose? I think a much greater number than those you won. Are you sure you brought enough friends?\"\n\nThe man slammed his club against the bars of Santi's cell, which was a mistake; instead of moving back, Santi must have been ready, and he wrapped his fingers around the club and yanked the man's whole arm inside his cell. The man yelped in pain. Jess couldn't see much, but he heard the clatter of the club as it fell, and Santi must have retrieved it first, because he slammed it against the cell bars, which rang like a struck bell.\n\nAll three of the men on the other side flinched.\n\n\"Now we can talk,\" Santi said.\n\nIt almost worked, but unfortunately, the tough in charge was smarter than Jess gave him credit for... and he backed off, drew a large, crudely forged gun, and pointed it not at Santi, but square at Jess. \"Throw it out, Captain,\" he said. \"Now. We don't need all of you; you know that.\"\n\nThe man cocked the weapon as he spoke. Jess forced a smile. \"It's a bluff, Captain,\" he said. He'd gone cold inside, but he wasn't about to show it. His family had trained him first and well to fight like a cornered rat when there wasn't anywhere to run. \"He's not going to shoot. His master would have his hide.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't think so. We can afford to lose one or two. Especially those of you wearing Library uniforms. No worth in your hides except to toss you over the wall at our enemies.\"\n\nJess watched the man's finger whiten on the trigger\u2014and then quickly pull away as the club Santi had been holding hit the floor, bounced, and rolled to bump against the man's boot. \"All right,\" Santi said. \"Pax.\"\n\n\"Smart choice.\" The tough lowered the hammer on the pistol\u2014not Library issue, an American-produced slug-throwing device that undoubtedly would have blown a gruesomely large hole straight through Jess's chest\u2014and put it in a leather holster at his side. \"Now, let's start over. You. The big one. Like I said, you're coming with us.\"\n\nJess opened his mouth, but Thomas put a hand on his shoulder and moved him\u2014not unkindly, but firmly\u2014out of the way as he stepped up. He silently turned his back to the bars, which puzzled Jess until he realized it was to allow the men to reach in and snap ratcheted metal shackles around his wrists. He'd obviously been through this process before, many times, while in Library custody.\n\nThomas nodded to Jess, blue eyes clear and calm. \"I'll be fine,\" he said, which was a rotten lie.\n\nJess tried to think of something to say, and as the key turned, the door opened, and Thomas stepped out, he finally did. \"Thomas. In bocca al lupo.\" It was the phrase that the High Garda used to wish one another luck traveling through the Translation portals, a process that was painful and terrifying and dangerous in equal measure, and it seemed right now. In the mouth of the wolf.\n\n\"Crepi il lupo,\" Thomas responded as Jess's cell was locked tight, and then he was gone, prodded down the hall and to the outer door and away. Kill the wolf.\n\nIt slammed and locked behind him.\n\nJess let out a deeply felt English expletive and knelt to examine the lock as he dug the picks out of their hiding place, deep in the cotton ticking of his mattress.\n\n\"Jess?\" Wolfe was watching him with a frown. \"Don't.\"\n\n\"I'm not leaving him on his own!\"\n\nWolfe made a sound that managed to be completely disgusted. \"You'll be shot two steps out the door. Think. I know you're somewhat capable. Thomas has survived far worse than they'll ever do to him here, and he knows his business. He's going to sell Willinger Beck the idea of the press. He's safe enough right now. Beck doesn't want blood.\"\n\n\"Unlike me,\" Santi said. \"I'm not averse to spilling some.\"\n\n\"Nic.\"\n\n\"Jess is right. We need to keep an eye on Thomas.\"\n\n\"We wait,\" Wolfe said again. \"I've waited in worse places.\"\n\nHe had. Wolfe had suffered everything Thomas had in Library prisons... and for far longer. If anyone had things to fear, it was Christopher Wolfe, who was, at the best of times, bitterly fragile. It took some familiarity to see it; he was masterful at putting on a front. But everyone had a breaking point. Wolfe had passed his, shattered, and somehow painfully patchworked himself back together.\n\n\"We wait,\" Wolfe said. It sounded firm enough, but there was a hollow sound to his voice. \"Until we know more. That's all we can do.\"\n\nThe wait passed in grueling silence, but Wolfe was right. In a little over three hours, which Jess torturously calculated by the movement of the shadow of the bars on the cell floor, the men were back unlocking Jess's cell door. \"You,\" the ugly one said. \"Come on. You're wanted.\"\n\n\"Seen the reward posters, have you?\" he said, and managed a cocky grin, mostly for Morgan's benefit, because she was watching him with a worried frown. \"Back soon,\" he told her, and she nodded.\n\n\"In bocca al lupo,\" she murmured, and the others repeated it, like a prayer. That nearly knocked the grin off him. Nearly.\n\n\"Crepi il lupo,\" he said. \"Morgan. If I don't come back\u2014\"\n\n\"Walk,\" his guard said, and planted a hand in the center of his back to shove him onward. He stumbled, twisted his knee, and fell hard with his hands grasping the bars of Morgan's cell. \"Oh, for the love of God\u2014get up, you clumsy fool!\"\n\nJess hadn't had a chance to throw a signal, but that didn't matter. Morgan's quick fingers retrieved the lockpicks he'd been holding out stuck between two knuckles, and her touch skimmed light as breath over his skin. That almost stole his breath, and he looked up into her face.\n\nInto a quick, broken smile.\n\nHe'd wanted her to have them, in case he didn't come back, and she understood that without a word being said. He wanted to say a great deal more to her and was parting his lips to try when he was yanked upright again, and his head slammed hard into unyielding iron to teach him better balance. It didn't have that effect. His knees went weak, and he nearly fell again, this time not on purpose. While he was down, they added manacles to his wrists.\n\n\"Hey, scrubber.\" He looked up at the sound of Dario Santiago's voice and saw the Spaniard staring at him through the bars of the next cell. Dario didn't look like the pampered, arrogant dandy anymore; he looked like a pirate, with an evil gleam in those dark eyes. \"Don't embarrass us. Come back alive. Fetch Thomas while you're at it, eh?\" He transferred the look to the guard dragging on Jess's wrists. \"You, Burner, feel free to not come back at all. I see you again, friend...\" He made a lazy little throat-cutting gesture.\n\n\"Lovely,\" Wolfe said sourly from the far end of the hall. \"Leave it to you to make new friends, Santiago.\" He raised his voice a little. \"Brightwell. He's right. Bring yourselves back safe.\"\n\nDear God. Wolfe is worried about us? We are in real trouble.\n\nA hand shoved hard between his shoulder blades pushed Jess on, and the outer door gaped wide on a square of sunlight so bright it seemed like running face-first into a solid object. It dazed for a few seconds, then comforted as the guards locked up the door behind him and marched him away.\n\nPay attention, he told himself, and blinked his prison-adapted eyes back into focus. The building, which so far was devoted solely to their care, was a long, low, unprepossessing block set to one side of a wide public square full of grass and spreading trees that had the shimmering early colors of fall. The arena where they'd been forced to watch books burn lay on his right, and directly in front, on the other side of the park, rose a four-story building of gray stone and French blue accents, all gingerbreaded with thin windows and arches like raised eyebrows. A single tall tower rose at the back of it, topped with a statue: Benjamin Franklin, who'd been a Scholar in the Library, and then left it for the Burners later in life. Patron saint of the city, so they said. They'd destroyed the old statue of William Penn to elevate their own hero.\n\nSaint Franklin was doing a crap job of it. The town\u2014village, really\u2014of Philadelphia was half in ruins. The city hall in front of Jess was the only building of any size; the rest of the place was cottages and shops that looked cobbled together, and rightly so, because the Library's ballista bombs regularly shattered entire blocks, and with the city starved for resources by the permanent encampments around it, new building materials must have been hard to come by. So the remaining buildings were made of a dangerous hodgepodge of scrap metal, mismatched brick and stone, and patched lumber that managed to have a style all its own. I might not like them, but they're survivors, Jess had to admit. A hundred years they'd held out, against forces that had made short work of taking over entire countries.\n\nPhiladelphia was the defiant, rebellious example the Burners held up to the world. But Jess had a strong suspicion that it was less the Burners' valiant efforts than the Library's own agenda that kept the place alive. The decision had been made long ago to contain them inside their walls and wait them out. The Archivist had many other considerations, and destroying this place must have been lowest on his list.\n\nThe citizens of the town were as individual as the buildings, and their clothing as patchworked, heavily used, and durable. He saw tribal people walking the streets, shoulder to shoulder with fellows of European, African, and Asian descent. Odd, how varied the makeup of the place was, and how well they all seemed to get along. Common enemies, he supposed. And for Burners, this place had to be as much a draw as Alexandria was for would-be Scholars. He'd fully expected Alexandria to be a richly varied city. Somehow, he hadn't expected the same of the Burners.\n\nThe air smelled faintly of ashes coming from the stadium, with the whip of chill on a breeze that rattled leaves. I wonder what they do for heating, Jess thought. Winters must be brutal. Philadelphia survived on raw pride.\n\nRaw pride and smugglers. The place had to survive on smugglers bringing in food, fuel, weapons, materials. Slipping past the High Garda would be difficult, but difficult was meat and drink to people like his clan, who'd been thumbing their noses at the Library for longer than the family tree had been kept. And the Brightwells had cousins everywhere\u2014by kind, if not by kin. Someone who smuggled into Philadelphia would have at least a passing amount of loyalty to his family. Had to have.\n\nThe question would be who to trust, and how far. Right now, Jess didn't trust anyone except his own friends and fellows.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" he asked the guard, though he was fairly sure he already knew. \"Is Thomas all right?\"\n\nThat didn't even get a look, and that made nerves prick painfully along his back. Thomas had better be in fine shape and good spirits, or someone\u2014Willinger Beck, by preference\u2014was going to pay for it in blood.\n\nThe walls that towered around Philadelphia looked as patchwork as its buildings, but something must be extraordinary about them; the Library had Greek fire and other terrible weapons of war, and it would take an Obscurist's reinforcements to build something to stand firm against the constant assault. The Burners must have had at least one once, and a gifted one at that. Thomas is right, Jess thought. They'll take Morgan because they need her. So much she could do for them. Let them try. She was brighter than he was and had run from capture for most of her life. She hadn't allowed the Library to keep her long. The Burners wouldn't have any better luck.\n\n\"Move it,\" his guard grumbled, and shoved him between the shoulder blades. Jess kept his balance and shot the man a humorless grin.\n\n\"I can run,\" he said. \"If you want to make it a footrace.\"\n\nFor answer, the guard put a hand on his gun.\n\n\"Understandable that you'd say no. Truthfully, you're in no shape to run against my old, sainted grandmother.\"\n\n\"Shut up, booklover.\"\n\nIt was still funny to hear that as an insult.\n\nJess set himself to memorizing everything within view\u2014the position of trees, buildings, streets. He'd need to get a closer look at the walls to find any hidden doors. There had to be doors known only to the smugglers and the city's guards. Jess didn't think they'd remain hidden for long if a decent thief\u2014and he was a quite good one\u2014got a chance to take a dedicated look around.\n\nThey marched him straight to city hall, the only remaining building of any elegance. It wasn't immune to the war; he could see places where the granite had been melted and deformed, where walls had been smashed and cobbled back together. But it held a kind of rigid, gritty nobility, especially today, with a clear, breakable blue sky arching over it. The tower, impossibly enough, was still intact. A remnant of a better time.\n\n\"So what's behind this?\" Jess asked. \"Come on. It isn't like I can't find out for myself with a look out a window.\"\n\n\"Fields,\" said one of them. Interesting. The people of Philadelphia grew enough, then, that they tried not to rely solely on the good graces of the smugglers. That was understandable.\n\nIt also made them more vulnerable, but Jess doubted they realized it.\n\nInside city hall, Jess marched into antique grandeur. This place had originally been built as a Serapeum of the Great Library, and it still had the Library's trademark elegance stamped on it in the tall pillars, the inlaid marble floor, and the dazzling design of the place.\n\nWhat it didn't have were books. No shelves, no Codex, no statues of Scholars. The inlaid design in the center of the hall they passed had a far less intricate design than the rest of it, and he thought it had once been the Library's seal, broken up and redesigned by local craftsmen. The symbol that they walked over now was an open volume with flames leaping up from curling, burning pages. Sickeningly appropriate.\n\nThey climbed stairs, circling around to the third level and then down a long hall warmed with dark wood trim and old portraits of American notables. A large, well-done painting near the end depicted one of the battles that had raged for the city... a heroic army of Burners rebelling against the Library's troops while eerie green flames of Greek fire consumed trees and buildings around them. Chilling and thrilling at once.\n\nHe avoided looking too closely at the companion illustration of the victory, which showed books being piled on the steps of this building and set alight. It made him want to take a knife to it. Burning books for religion or politics was all the same to him: evil.\n\nOne of the guards knocked, a muffled voice said, \"Enter,\" and the guards eased the heavy door open at the end of the hall. One of them pushed Jess forward, as if he needed the instruction, but they didn't follow him inside.\n\n\"Shut the door behind you; there's a draft,\" said the man who sat behind the desk: Willinger Beck, as smug and self-satisfied as ever. Jess obliged, more because he wanted to block the guards than from any desire to please this man.\n\nHe ignored Beck, because Thomas sat off to the side in a comfortably plush old chair that almost was large enough to seem proportional to his frame. Thomas looked up and met Jess's gaze and nodded slightly. I'm all right. Jess wasn't sure that was true, but he knew what his friend intended to convey. And truthfully, being out of the cell probably was better than whatever threats Beck had to hand in this place.\n\nThe office didn't look particularly intimidating. It did look self-congratulatory, compared to the ruined poverty of the rest of the town.\n\nIt was filled with gleaming wood, sleek, comfortable couches and chairs, and a desk large enough to double as a dining table for eight, except that it had papers piled atop it. There were shelves in this room, and books, too... every one an original, not a single Blank among them. Some had the gilt and flash of rare volumes; Jess recognized a few at a glance that he'd personally read, held, or run across London for his father. The majority, though, had the shabby, handmade look of local production.\n\nWhat made Jess's stomach turn sour, though, were the books\u2014almost a hundred of them\u2014stacked near Thomas. He recognized those volumes, and the packs and bags that lay discarded in the corner that had held them. They were the books he and the others had rescued from Alexandria, from the Black Archives. Forbidden books, full of dangerous ideas and inventions and knowledge.\n\nThomas, he realized, was currently reading one of them.\n\n\"Ah,\" Beck said, and rose from his desk to come over to a chair near Thomas. \"Come, sit. We have things to discuss, you and I.\"\n\n\"I'm fine here,\" Jess said. He wanted to stay on his feet and mobile. He'd already begun analyzing ways out of the room\u2014the broad windows looked like the best exit. Chuck one of the handy, heavy sculptures through the glass, and oh, the possibilities. His main worry was in getting Thomas to follow him out. One thing at a time. I could kill Beck on the way.\n\n\"I said sit down,\" Beck said, and all the false good humor was gone now, which was an improvement. Jess responded by leaning against the wall, between two paintings he hadn't even glanced at, and crossing his arms. The silent standoff went on for almost half a minute before Beck pretended Jess hadn't just forced his hand, and turned to Thomas. \"You said he would be cooperative.\"\n\n\"He will be,\" Thomas said, unruffled, \"once you tell him why he's here.\"\n\nBeck didn't like this, Jess realized. He didn't like that Thomas, despite all sense and appearances, held power right now. He certainly didn't like having to pretend to be civil. Good, Jess thought, imagining those books going up in ash toward the sky. \"Well, this sounds interesting,\" Jess said. \"Go on.\"\n\nThomas didn't, which forced Beck to say\u2014growl, really, \"He's told me that you together can build a machine to reproduce original books without the use of an Obscurist or a copyist. He says the job requires you both.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" Thomas said. \"My first model was crude and unreliable. Jess designed many improvements to make the machine run correctly.\"\n\nThomas was getting very good at lying. I'm having a bad influence, Jess thought, and was rather proud of that. Beck glared at both of them, ending with Jess, who shrugged. \"Think of it this way: use us, and you'll be able to undermine the Library in a way that counts for more than just destroying books.\"\n\n\"It's true,\" Thomas said. \"How do you devalue a country's currency? Make more until it's worthless. Knowledge is the common currency of the Great Library. If you make books freely available with no restrictions, the Library has no power over you. Over anyone.\"\n\nBeck's resting expression\u2014dour\u2014didn't change, and Jess found himself thinking the man might be either very stupid or very good at holding his cards close. Since he'd survived as Burner leader so long, it had to be the latter. Beck's fingers reached for a pen and twirled it as he sat back, staring at Jess\u2014only at Jess\u2014and thinking. \"I see,\" he finally said. A gambit, that phrase, to buy time. \"Most interesting.\"\n\nJess sighed. \"Get to the point.\"\n\nBeck didn't like being rushed. He wanted to appear deeply thoughtful about it, but in fact, Jess knew, he'd already made up his mind. So despite the glare, Beck said, \"We have no opportunity to take any books you produce here beyond these walls. Unless you have some magical means of transporting them... your Obscurist, perhaps...\"\n\nKeep any mention of Morgan out of it, Jess thought, but he didn't know how to signal that to Thomas.\n\nHe didn't need to. \"You miss our meaning,\" Thomas said without missing a beat. \"What we offer eliminates the need for an Obscurist. We will build you a machine, and give you the plans to build more, out of simple components that can be made anywhere. Send those plans out, not books. Set up printing facilities in every corner of the world.\"\n\nBeck didn't manage to conceal a greedy little spark this time, something that fired through his expression in an instant and disappeared, leaving him professionally disinterested. \"I would have to see such a miracle in operation first.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" Jess said. \"And you will, provided you give us the tools and supplies to build it.\"\n\n\"And you will prepare written instructions for the building of this machine in return for what?\"\n\n\"Freedom,\" Jess replied. \"For us and all our friends.\"\n\nThat made Beck give a bitter little laugh. \"I can't set my own people free outside these walls. What makes you believe I can promise you any such thing?\"\n\n\"He means freedom here, in Philadelphia,\" Thomas said. He cut in so smoothly Jess couldn't tell if he'd anticipated the objection or just reacted fast. \"No more locked cells. You feed us and allow us to live as we wish. Freely.\"\n\nThat made Beck laugh out loud, but it was fast and humorless and ended in \"No.\" A flat slap of a word. \"You must think I'm a mewling idiot. Let Scholars and soldiers loose here to sabotage and destroy our city? I'd be better off trading you to the High Garda!\"\n\nThat was exactly what they didn't need to happen. Once the Great Library learned that Wolfe and his students had survived London and were trapped inside Philadelphia, Jess thought that would be a perfectly simple puzzle for the Archivist to solve: destroy the entire city. Kill them all in the process. Neat, and a dual benefit.\n\n\"Trading us to the High Garda wouldn't get you as much as trading with my family,\" Jess said, to head off the entire discussion. \"I assume you know of my father. Callum Brightwell.\"\n\nHe saw the exact second when Willinger Beck's world shifted. The man's eyes widened, blinked. In that moment, he didn't look like a man who'd be good at any game that required a bluff. \"Brightwell,\" he repeated, as if he couldn't quite believe it. \"Brightwell.\" That last repetition was weighted by a heavy varnish of chagrin.\n\n\"I see you know of him,\" Jess said. \"I assume you work with smugglers to stay alive. Might be a mistake to get on the wrong side of one of the most powerful families for a stupid, preventable reason.\"\n\nBeck's face went still, but red spots formed and burned high in his cheeks. Still, he wasn't a rash sort. He thought it out. While he did, Jess glanced at Thomas, who had raised his eyebrows and now quickly lowered them again. Surprised? Worried? Hard to tell.\n\nBeck gained control of his voice. It sounded smooth, but the tension underneath was as sharp as sharks. \"I didn't recognize the connection. I'm familiar with your illustrious father, and your very impressive brother.\"\n\nOf course you are, Jess thought. \"My illustrious father and very impressive brother got sold down the river by your people in London,\" he said. \"My father won't be in a good mood. And he won't look kindly on any further insults toward his family.\"\n\n\"I never heard that he had a son in Library uniform. I wonder, are you really still considered part of the family?\"\n\nThat struck, and cut. Jess smiled to hide it. \"Oh, Callum Brightwell knows full well I'm in this uniform. I can promise you, sending me to the Library was his plan.\" Both those things were true. They didn't quite add up to the sum of the parts, but Jess saw Beck reconsidering his stance.\n\nBeck went for a cautious half measure and said, \"He's always been fair to us. Sympathetic, even. I think I can count on him to be consistent in his dealings with us, whatever your... situation.\"\n\n\"My father values two things above all else: his business and his family. He considers the two the same. If you harm his son\u2014or my friends\u2014I can promise you that he'll take that personally.\"\n\nBeck took his time thinking it over. He stood up, walked to the window, and looked out, clasping his hands behind his back; with the soft light on his face, he looked like a flattering portrait of a statesman. Jess wondered if he'd done it for the effect. \"I must do what is the best for my people, of course. Alienating the Brightwells might not be in their interest.\"\n\n\"That's good sense,\" Jess said. He wasn't averse to praising people when they said the bloody obvious, so long as it was in his favor. \"My recommendation is to let me write and explain.\"\n\nBeck ignored that. He stared out for another long set of clock ticks and then turned to regard him and Thomas with a sudden smile on his face. Far too wide. Far too warm.\n\n\"No, I think that I will write to him. No doubt the fact you are in residence here will make him a stronger friend to Philadelphia. And of course, I welcome the construction of this machine you're talking about. We can discuss some small privileges for your friends while you do the work.\" He turned to Thomas then. \"If that is acceptable to you, Scholar Schreiber?\"\n\nThat speech, Jess thought, was a bit of a wonder. An implication of hostage taking; in the same breath, a promise of favors; and as an apple polish on the end, lauding Thomas with his rightfully earned title. A title the Burners normally used as a term of scorn.\n\n\"No,\" Thomas said. Not a diplomat, Thomas. Blunt, earnest, and to the point. \"For the price of humbling your pride and giving us food and trust, you get a weapon that kills no one, destroys nothing, and yet undermines the tyranny you claim to resist. A life is worth more than a book; that is your motto. We can make that a fact, not mere words.\"\n\nIn the silence that followed Thomas's words\u2014slow, deliberate, powerful words\u2014Jess imagined he could feel the world changing around him. It was subtle, but it was there.\n\nHe could see by the look in Willinger Beck's eyes that the man felt it, too. But he hadn't survived this long, against these odds, by being gullible. \"I will provide you with supplies to build your machine, and food for you two, and you two only,\" Beck said. \"Rations are dear here. The others need to earn their bread with useful work, and while I agree to leave the prison doors unlocked, there is no such thing as freedom of movement for any of you; you will go guarded, or you do not go anywhere. If your machine proves all that you promise, then you may earn additional rights. Not before.\"\n\nJess locked gazes with Thomas, and Thomas gave a rolling shrug. A very German sort of move, and it made Jess feel a slow burn of satisfaction. This could work. He nodded to Thomas.\n\n\"Acceptable,\" the other young man said. Looking at him, Jess could suddenly see the Scholar he'd one day become\u2014sure, centered, deliberate and calm, and sharply intelligent. A great man, if they survived this. \"I will make you a list of what we need.\"\n\nBeck laughed. It sounded barren. \"You may make all the lists you like, my boy. We have what we have, and you will make do, as we all must. I will write to your father, Brightwell. If there is something you need that can't be crafted here, we'll send to him for it. He might feel inclined to gift us with it, if he knows his son's life is at risk with the rest of us.\"\n\nMaybe. Jess's brother Liam had died dangling from a noose in London and was buried in an unmarked grave as a nameless book smuggler. Da could have saved him. Da hadn't bothered, because getting caught was, in his world, a mortal sin.\n\nJess was caught, too. The trick was letting Beck think he wasn't.\n\nIt seemed the agreement had been reached, and Jess allowed his shoulders to relax just a little... and a little too soon, because Beck suddenly said, \"One more thing. You're aware that Captain Santi once commanded troops outside these walls?\"\n\n\"Did he?\" Jess asked. And shrugged. He wasn't about to answer that. He'd hoped that Beck didn't know the identities of the many, many High Garda captains who'd camped out there in the dark.\n\n\"He is to sit with my guard captain, Indira, and map out for her everything he knows of the Library camps. Troop strengths, placement of tents, routines. Everything.\"\n\nHe's not going to do that. Jess knew it instantly. Santi might turn his back on the Library, but betray other High Garda? Never.\n\nThe next instant, he thought, But he might like the chance to lie his head off about it, though. And so he let a second pass before he said, without any change of tone or expression, \"I'll pass along your request.\"\n\n\"It wasn't a request.\"\n\nJess stared back without saying anything. There was something about Beck that reminded him, strongly, of his father. It wasn't a happy comparison, and he had no issue at all waiting the man out. He knew his father got impatient when faced with silence.\n\nAnd sure enough, so did Beck. \"I'll expect his attendance in the morning,\" Beck said. \"Tell him to report to Indira. If he isn't there at dawn, he'll be dragged along in chains.\"\n\n\"Everyone except us will be with you here tomorrow,\" Thomas said. \"The Scholars and Morgan will begin to translate these books. And that earns the bread we take from you, yes?\"\n\n\"Your soldier girl\u2014Wathen, is it? Wathen is of no use to me,\" Beck began, and Thomas cut him right off.\n\n\"Squad Leader Glain Wathen is Scholar Seif's personal guard. She stays with her. Protocol.\"\n\nThat was a truly excellent lie, and Jess had to admire it; he'd simultaneously made Khalila mysteriously important and given Glain status, too. Beck might have some information, but surely not enough. They only had to work around his preconceptions.\n\nBeck let out an offended little huff and tugged his jacket down. \"Protocol!\"\n\n\"Consider that it's for your own protection,\" Jess said. \"One of your men insulted Scholar Seif, and she's not in a forgiving mood.\"\n\n\"If Seif is so touchy, she can stay in her cell!\"\n\nThomas suddenly clapped shut the book he had open in his hand. It was a shockingly loud sound, and he got to his feet in the startled silence. \"She is properly addressed as Scholar Seif, and if you want your books translated, you need her above all the others,\" he said. \"Your man laid hands on her. Don't ever do it again.\"\n\n\"Oh, threats now? You must fancy yourself dangerous,\" Beck said.\n\nJess raised his eyebrows and looked at Thomas. \"Do we?\"\n\n\"Occasionally,\" Thomas said gravely.\n\nFor the first time, Beck lost his temper. He slammed both hands down on his desk, sending papers scattering. \"This is not a matter for your amusement, you spoiled children! You think it's easy to keep my people safe, fed, housed, and warmed with the Library bombing our city with regularity? Now, shut up and appreciate my forbearance, or you might not enjoy quite such special treatment in the future!\"\n\nJess opened his mouth to reply but shut it when Thomas shook his head. Best to let him have this, he realized. We have what we need.\n\nThomas bowed, the picture of calm. He made it seem easy. \"Thank you,\" he said.\n\n\"Just get out!\"\n\nThomas inclined his head meekly, and when Beck's office door opened, they followed the tall guard woman down the hall. More guards fell in behind.\n\n\"You're called Indira,\" Jess said. The woman glanced at him. Barely. \"You're in charge?\"\n\n\"As far as you're concerned,\" she said. Nothing else. Jess tried smiling, but he was aware he gave off a more criminal air next to Thomas's pleasant farm-boy charm. She remained distinctly uncharmed. He gave it up and concentrated instead on noting everything about the building they passed through, and everything he could see outside.\n\nThey were on the steps when the first alarms began to sound. It was a terrible wailing sound, coming from all around them. Outside the walls. It rose and fell like the cries of the damned, and even though Jess knew what it was, he felt a sick, falling sensation in his stomach. He had to resist an overwhelming urge to cover his ears.\n\n\"What is that?\" Thomas's shout near his ear was only just barely audible, and he heard the rattle of panic in it.\n\n\"High Garda warning signal,\" Jess shouted back. \"Bombardment.\"\n\nHe'd been exposed to it in training sessions, but he'd never expected to hear it this close; it sounded like an ancient, eerie thing, like the screaming of gods, and it was meant to warn the citizens of a city that hell was coming down.\n\nAnd the Philadelphians, he saw, were used to it. No one even covered their ears, except a few small children.\n\nIndira grabbed Jess's arm in a manacle grip and towed him along at a fast walk. It was the same fast but calm pace of all the other people he could see on the streets. As she pulled Thomas and him, and their guard escort, off toward the right, he saw that a steady stream of traffic was already moving in that direction, toward a doorway. Jess nearly pulled away. Buildings, in a Greek fire attack, couldn't protect you; they caught fire, burned around you, trapped you screaming.\n\nIndira sensed his hesitation and shouted, \"Basement!\"\n\nBetter. Not great, but better.\n\nThey'd just reached the steps that led down into darkness when the sirens cut off with a last warning wail, and the silence that swirled felt heavy and full of dread.\n\n\"Wait!\" Jess tried to turn back. \"The others\u2014\"\n\nIndira shoved him forward. \"They must fend for themselves, and God defend them now. Move!\"\n\n\"She's right,\" Thomas said. \"We'll never reach them in time.\"\n\nI'm fast, Jess wanted to argue, but what would he do if he made it? Was he fast enough to unlock all the doors, too? Morgan had his picks, but she might not know how to use them under pressure...\n\nHe still tried to turn back, but Thomas put a huge hand on the back of his neck and moved him on, down the stairs, and there was nothing he could do.\n\nBy the time Jess found leverage to break the hold, they were down the stairs, and above, three strong men lifted a massive hinged door and bolted it in place. That, at least, was smart; a door that opened upward might end up buried by debris. This way, at least they could dig their way out, after, if necessary.\n\nThey're alone out there. Locked up.\n\nJess turned on Thomas. He would have shouted at him, but he saw the other young man's face. The tears in his eyes. It silenced him.\n\n\"We couldn't have made it there in time,\" Thomas said. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nJess no longer wanted to yell, but he couldn't bring himself to agree, either. He just turned away.\n\nInside, the place was lit by flickering candles and oil lamps and was crowded with long wooden benches that wouldn't have been out of place in a pub. Rows of Philadelphia citizens sat in silence, eyes turned up at the blank ceiling.\n\n\"Sit,\" Indira said, and pushed him down with a firm hand on his shoulder. She crowded in next to him on the bench, with Thomas on the other side and her two men blocking the stairs, though it didn't seem likely anyone would try to rush for the exit. \"Quiet.\"\n\nJess took in the sharp smell of sweat and the rapid, ragged sound of breathing. Everyone stared upward.\n\nThen the world above shuddered with impact, like a giant's foot crushing down.\n\nDust sifted from the ceiling, and Jess ducked and coughed out the taste of it. A murmur went through those sitting near him\u2014an old gray-haired European man clutching a carved wooden pipe, a slender native woman with beads braided in patterns in her long black hair, two small African children who held each other's hands. Frightened but desperately silent.\n\nThe people in the bunker clung to their benches as another Library bomb fell, as the cellar ceiling trembled, as Philadelphia ignited above them. Jess thought of the mismatched scraps of timber and brick, stone and metal, that made up homes and stores. What wasn't burning would be shaken apart. And yet, as he looked around, he didn't see despair.\n\nHe saw determination.\n\nTomorrow, maybe even within the hour, they'd be scavenging the wreckage and building anew. Jess didn't like the Burners. Didn't agree with them in many critical ways. But he knew courage when he saw it. It would have been so much easier if he could see them as just enemies, instead of... people.\n\nIt took only a few minutes, and then the shuddering barrage stopped. Jess smelled the Greek fire... it was impossible not to recognize the sharp, sweetish reek of it. It was warm in the bunker but not, he thought, hot enough for the fire to be raging right above them. They waited. A child fussed and was quieted, but no one spoke.\n\nThey all relaxed when they heard a sudden, loud thumping on the overhead cellar door.\n\n\"All clear,\" Indira said, and as if they'd all been released from some spell, people around them stood and took in deep breaths. No one seemed relieved. Three muscular guards unbolted the door and eased it back on a latch, to allow the public to exit in slow, shuffling steps.\n\nJess followed, and came out into hell. Philadelphia was a confusion of broken ruins, flames, smoke, and screams.\n\nPart of the city hall had been hit and was a luminously green inferno; a team of people pulling a long wagon thundered past; then two clambered up to work a hand crank as the others unrolled a long hose and trained it on the blaze. The foam that vomited out smothered the flames as water couldn't; Greek fire was notorious for that, an oily compound that splashed and clung and ignited on its own, and nothing but thick powders or foams could starve it. Once those flames were doused, it was obvious that they'd lost at least a quarter of the building\u2014though not the end where Jess had been meeting with Beck. If the Library had been aiming to kill the Burner leader, they'd missed their shot.\n\nMore buildings on the street vomited black smoke\u2014half a dozen ruined, and farther on, what seemed a residential block had half the houses lit by that haunted green. Some were just black, smoldering cinders and boards scattered in the street. People moved quickly, with a purpose, but he also saw the human damage\u2014a woman weeping in the gutter, clutching a child. A man with a burned face staggering away into the smoke. A soldier hauling a body from rubble.\n\nUntil that moment, he'd pushed it away, but Jess felt panic hit him as he turned to look toward the prison, because one part of it was a mass of smoking, green-flickering debris.\n\n\"Thomas!\" he shouted, and pelted away across the soft grass, under the hissing sway of trees. One was burning, and he had to dodge around an orange, ashy rain of flaming leaves. Smoke welled up to smudge the sky. He heard Thomas running behind him, and the shouts of Indira and her fellow guards, but he didn't wait. A few rescuers had already gathered at the prison, and a tall, brawny man with a wheelbarrow was shoveling thick powder into the flames to quell them.\n\nThe door into the prison had been blocked by a fall of thick, cracked concrete and stones. Jess reached for one and hauled it aside, even as his mind mapped out the prison on the other side for him. That's the far corner, the cell Santi and Wolfe share. Across from Khalila and Glain.\n\nHe didn't hear any shouting inside, and that made his guts curdle in dread. Greek fire smoke was toxic. Morgan had pointed out the poor ventilation inside.\n\nThey had to get the door open. Quickly. Jess didn't think to ask for help; he just fell to it, grabbing fallen stones.\n\nThomas joined him at the door, and together they hefted a staggeringly large chunk of concrete and rolled it out of the way. Jess's muscles burned with effort, and the sharp edges of stone slashed red gashes in his fingers, and when he breathed in he smelled that horrible reek of Greek fire. The smoke made him cough until he was spitting up black bile.\n\nHe and Thomas cleared the rest of the blockage, hauling the last away with desperate strength, and Indira shoved between them and fitted keys into the door's lock. It turned with a shriek of protesting metal, and Thomas shoved the door in with a scrape and shudder.\n\nJess plunged into a thick cloud of rank, drifting smoke. He coughed at the chemical stench as he shouted, \"Morgan!\" It was the first name that came to him. \"Morgan!\"\n\nHe almost ran into a cell door, which stood completely open and gaping.\n\n\"Here!\" a voice called, and coughed. Metal banged on metal. \"We're here!\"\n\nHe almost tripped over them in the gloom. All of them were together\u2014Khalila, Glain, Santi, Wolfe, Dario, Morgan\u2014wedged together in the corner farthest from the smoke and flames, low to the ground to suck in the cleanest air. Jess grabbed Khalila and Morgan and hauled them up to their feet. \"Go, the door's open!\" he said. Glain stood and pulled Dario up with her. \"Go!\"\n\nJess reached down to pull Santi up, and Wolfe stopped him. The Scholar's face had gone ghostly pale, and his outstretched hand shook with urgency.\n\nHe was holding Santi against his chest in a protective, supportive embrace.\n\nJess crouched down. He pulled in his breath sharply when he saw the blackened edges on the captain's sleeve and the raw, red skin beneath, and looked at Wolfe, whose face in that moment was utterly unguarded... but only for an instant, before the bitter mask slipped back in place.\n\n\"Carefully,\" Wolfe said. \"For the love of Heron, careful.\"\n\nJess took hold of Santi's unburned arm, and Wolfe supported the captain with both his arms around Santi's waist as they rose together. Jess moved carefully in on the burned side without touching what had to be incredibly painful injuries. Santi's breath came in short, ragged pants, and his face was the color of pale amber. Still conscious, and sick with it.\n\n\"Easy, Captain,\" Jess said, and guided him out of the cell. He tried to sound reassuring. \"We'll get you help. Easy now.\"\n\nSanti let out a tortured gasp, and his legs suddenly folded. The man's full weight crushed down on Jess's shoulder and Wolfe's, but between the two they kept him upright and moving through the choking, smoky fog and out into the cleaner air.\n\nIt felt like coming up out of a grave, even if that grave looked out on ruins.\n\nIndira quickly took command and saw Santi settled on the grass while she sent one of her men running for a Medica\u2014no, they called them doctors here, Jess remembered. Some of their doctors had Library training but rejected the authority of the Medica branch, and they certainly didn't have the facilities, or the supplies. They probably heal with poultices and folk remedies, he thought, and felt a sick roil in his stomach. Santi could recover cleanly if we were on the other side of that wall. But that didn't matter. Santi, and all of them, were stuck here for now, in a city that despised them and distrusted them, among fanatics who'd burn a book to make a point.\n\nSanti took in a deep, slow breath and let it out. He still looked too pale, and he shivered convulsively. \"I'm all right,\" he lied. \"Chris. Don't look so angry.\"\n\n\"Do you expect me to look pleased?\" Wolfe shot back, and though his expression was harsh, his fingers were undeniably gentle as he eased Santi's burned sleeve aside to get a better look at the damage. It looked worse without the cover: a handspan of skin burned away nearly through to the muscle, and where it wasn't gone, the remaining skin had a scorched, puckered look that didn't bode well. \"Jess. Get that powder. Get it now.\"\n\nThe sudden tension in his voice sent Jess to his feet without question, and he ran to the wheelbarrow, scooped up a double handful of the heavy powder that the Philadelphia man was using to kill the blaze inside the prison, and raced back.\n\nRealization nearly made him falter, because Santi's arm was still burning. It was hard to see in daylight: little greenish flickers, but he could hear the sizzle as the Greek fire drew new breath in the open air. It would continue to burn, right down to the bone, if it wasn't smothered.\n\nJess dumped powder on it, spreading it thick, and ran back for another double handful. He used that, too, just in case, and couldn't imagine how that grit felt on raw, burned skin and exposed nerves. Santi didn't make a sound, though his shuddering was far worse now, and he looked seconds from passing out completely. Wolfe was holding him up in a reclining position, trying to keep the arm up and away from any more contamination.\n\nThey all waited tensely to see if the flames burned through the powder. A defeated wisp of smoke curled up instead, and Jess allowed himself a little jolt of relief. It's out.\n\nSanti slowly shut his eyes, and now the remaining color bled out of his face. Wolfe looked nearly as bad as he stared at the arm, alert for any sign of the fire's return. When it didn't come, he glanced to Indira, who was crouched nearby, watching. \"Knife,\" he demanded. \"I need to cut the cloth away. There might be more soaked in.\"\n\nShe silently handed one over, and Wolfe sliced the fabric of Santi's uniform sleeve off, high up at the shoulder, to bare a strongly muscled biceps, old seamed scars, and farther down, the wholesale ruin of his forearm. It looked bad, Jess thought. Very bad.\n\nIndira said, without any sign of emotion, \"He's done for.\"\n\nWolfe's head snapped up, and he gripped the knife in a way that made the back of Jess's neck go cold and tight. There was pure murder in the man's eyes, and it was only the fact that he was cradling Santi against him that kept him from it.\n\n\"He isn't,\" Jess said. \"The captain's been through worse. We need a Medica.\"\n\n\"Don't have Library Medica,\" she said. \"We have a doctor.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\nShe stood up in a smooth motion. \"Give me the knife, Scholar. Now.\" Wolfe didn't move, and Indira drew the gun that hung heavy at her belt. \"Right now.\"\n\nJess reached over and took the knife. He was nearly as surprised by it as Wolfe, but something had to be done to keep this from turning worse. He offered it to Indira, hilt first, but kept his fingers firmly gripping the flat of the blade when she started to pull it free. \"Doctor,\" he insisted.\n\nShe sighed impatiently and said, \"I'll take you.\"\n\nShe set off, and Jess, after a look exchanged with Wolfe, ran to catch up. He heard someone behind him and looked back to see that Morgan was following, too. She caught up and jogged along with him. Heat from the fires blew her hair in disorderly curls around her face. \"I used the lockpicks,\" she blurted out. \"When the Greek fire hit, all I could think was to get everyone out. But the pick broke on the outer door and I couldn't open it.\" Her voice trembled, and he felt her body shudder along with it. \"I thought we'd die in there, Jess. Is Captain Santi\u2014\"\n\n\"He'll be all right,\" Jess said, which was a lie, but it seemed to help. \"Wait. You broke my picks?\"\n\n\"Don't. Don't try to make me laugh, Jess, I was terrified and you were gone.\"\n\n\"I know.\" He'd never wanted to kiss her so badly as he did in that moment, to put his hands on her face and look into those lovely eyes and make her feel safe again. But there was no time. \"You saved their lives.\"\n\n\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\"Indira's leading us to find a doctor for Santi. His arm looks\u2014\" Jess shook his head. \"I don't know what kind of barbaric medicine they practice here. I hope it's enough.\"\n\n\"It has to be.\" She pulled in a breath, and when he shot a glance at her, he saw that the reality of the attack, the devastation around them, was starting to hit home. \"My God. Santi warned us when he heard the sirens that we needed to get out. I did my best, Jess, I did, but\u2014\"\n\n\"You did as well as anyone could.\"\n\nShe just shook her head at that. \"At least I might be able to help the doctor. Obscurists can sometimes add power to medicines, speed healing, prevent infection...\"\n\nHe hated the thought of betraying her power to more people, making her more valuable to Beck and his Burners... but there was nothing else to do if they wanted to save Santi now.\n\nThey ran with Indira through the smoking wreckage of the Burner town, and he had no idea how to keep any of them safe anymore."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Aurelian, emperor of the Roman World, to Zenobia, queen of the East. Indexed in the Codex:\n\n\u2002I command you to surrender upon the terms I propose, which are these\u2014your life shall be spared, so that you spend that life with your friends, where I shall, with the advice of the august Senate of Rome, think fit to place you. Your jewels, silver, gold, and precious things, you must give up to the Roman treasury.\n\n\u2002Text of a letter in response from Zenobia, queen of the East, to Aurelian Augustus. Indexed in the Codex.\n\n\u2002It is not by the pen but by the sword that the business of war is to be transacted. You forget that my ancestor, the royal Cleopatra, chose death rather than splendid slavery.\n\n\u2002Text of a notation from the Archivist Magister Zoran. Indexed in the Codex.\n\n\u2002By all means, let these two giants clash. Zenobia, we have heard, has a rare library of hoarded manuscripts, and Rome still hides their rarest and choicest works. Once both empires are on their knees, we will broker peace, at a price.\n\n\u2002I intend for the Great Library to become more than mere knowledge.\n\n\u2002I intend for it to use both pen and sword."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Indira spotted the doctor from a distance away. \"There,\" she said. \"The one in the long coat and hat.\" She immediately turned and grabbed a passing man\u2014one of hers, Jess assumed, though maybe Indira had the authority to press anyone into service she liked. \"Take them to the doctor. Watch them. If they try to escape, shoot them down.\"\n\n\"Ma'am,\" the man said, and gave a rough salute. He was young, only twenty at most, but the look in his eyes was ages older. Indira strode off, shouting at a group pulling apart boards on a burning building nearby. Saving what they could. Their new escort studied Jess, then Morgan, and said, \"You're the booklovers.\"\n\n\"Guilty,\" Morgan said. \"Where's the doctor?\"\n\n\"There.\" The young man pointed, and once he had, it was hard to miss the man. The doctor was a tall American native, with long hair tied in a square braid that trained down his back, and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with a broad red ribbon. The coat was a faded, tattered patchwork of leather and cloth that somehow retained a hint of a Medica's robe about it. Beanpole thin, as most Philadelphians were, but he moved with smooth assurance as he parted a knot of people and knelt beside someone lying on the ground.\n\n\"Come on,\" Jess said, and he and Morgan ran forward. The circle of watchers had closed up, shoulder to shoulder, but he was well used to slipping in where he wasn't wanted. He hoped their guard wouldn't take Indira literally and start shooting, but if he did, at least they'd have cover.\n\nOnce he'd wormed through to clear space, Jess found himself standing at the feet of a fallen young woman who gasped for breath through lips as blue as the clear, enameled sky overhead. The doctor bent next to her, fingers on her wrist, then on her neck. He pressed his ear to her chest, then snapped his fingers without looking up. He pointed... directly at Jess. \"In the bag there is a covered pot with a red cord. Get it.\"\n\nThe bag in question lay right at Jess's feet, and he bent down and sorted through the contents. Mismatched jars and pots, most chipped and carefully mended. There's another thing they have to reuse, Jess thought. Things so common we throw them out in other parts of the world. Every scrap is precious here.\n\nThe pot with the red cord\u2014though red was a generous description; it was more gray with a hint of orange at the frayed edges\u2014lay near the bottom. Jess took it and held it out for the doctor, who glanced up impatiently. \"Well? Open it!\"\n\nWhen Jess did, the smell hit the back of his throat and clung there like an oily parasite, and he coughed and gagged and quickly shoved the pot in the doctor's direction. The man took it, sniffed without appearing to flinch at all, and then dabbed two fingers into the liquid mess before smearing it under the nose of the woman lying before him. She took in a gasp, then another and another. Each seemed deeper than the one before, and the bluish tint to her skin began to shift to something less dire. \"Good,\" the doctor said, and thrust the pot back at Jess. \"Put the cap on tight; no leaks or you'll be paying for it.\"\n\nJess nodded and recapped the vile mixture while holding his breath, but somehow, the stench still crawled deep into his nose and mouth before he could secure the top in place with the cord again. By the time he was done, the girl on the ground was sitting up, clinging to the doctor's hand but breathing well.\n\n\"You took in a good dose of fumes,\" he was telling her, \"but keep the tincture on your upper lip and breathe it in until you don't feel liquid in your lungs. It'll burn your skin and leave a bright red patch, but that's better than death, isn't it? Go on, now. Help someone else when you feel strong enough.\"\n\n\"Doctor\u2014,\" Jess began.\n\n\"Who are you?\" The doctor climbed to his feet and assisted the girl up. He handed her off to two others waiting anxiously nearby. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"We need you at the prison,\" Jess said. \"We have someone seriously burned.\"\n\nThe doctor looked at him for the first time with real interest. \"Ah. The prisoners. You're still wearing a Library uniform. Strange no one has killed you for that yet.\"\n\nIt was a casual enough observation, but it caught Jess short; he hadn't even thought about it, in the heat of his worry about Santi, but on a day when the Great Library forces were raining destruction and death down on Philadelphia, wearing his High Garda uniform might well deserve a beating from the townsfolk. \"I'll worry about appropriate dress later,\" he said. \"Are you coming?\"\n\n\"I heal my own first. Anyone else? Anyone?\" No one stepped forward to claim the doctor's attention, so he sighed and focused back on Jess. \"Is your friend also wearing a High Garda uniform?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said, and held the doctor's cool stare with an effort. \"And you took a Medica oath to help any who ask.\"\n\n\"Years and many atrocities ago,\" the doctor said. \"No one is holding me accountable to it.\"\n\n\"No one but the gods.\"\n\n\"Then I'm sure my afterlife will be interesting.\" The tall man reached out and snatched the bag from Jess's grasp\u2014no mean feat, given Jess's High Garda\u2013trained reflexes\u2014and put it over one bony shoulder. \"Well? Go on. If you have a patient for me, show me!\"\n\n\"Yes, Med\u2014 I mean, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Dr. Askuwheteau. Go!\"\n\nJess pushed back out of the crowd and looked for Morgan. She was standing with their guard, who'd clearly not been comfortable allowing both out of his sight, and seemed relieved to see Jess, with the tall man striding behind him. \"Doctor,\" the guard greeted him. \"One of the prisoners is injured.\"\n\n\"Burns, the boy said.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Worth my time?\"\n\nThe guard shrugged. \"Not my call.\"\n\nAskuwheteau struck out in a walk that forced the three of them to a run to keep up. No one stopped them. Chaos had turned to organization in the short time they'd been to find the doctor, and teams of workers were on every burning building, while others were already at work salvaging from smoking wreckage. Everyone moved with a purpose.\n\nAnd, to Jess's relief, no one signaled to the doctor for help along the way.\n\nAs they hit the park, Askuwheteau lengthened his stride even more, moving at a speed that even Jess was hard-pressed to match, and despite his best efforts he was three steps behind when they arrived at the prison. He found Askuwheteau crouched down next to Santi and Wolfe.\n\nHe took one quick look at the wound and shook his head. He slipped his battered bag from his shoulder and, without a word, took Santi's arm and held it up for inspection in the smoky afternoon light. It was getting near on sunset, Jess realized.\n\n\"Are you trained?\" Wolfe demanded. The Philadelphia doctor gave him a narrow look and ignored him to focus past Jess, on Morgan, who'd just arrived.\n\n\"You. Girl. Give me the pot with green and yellow strings from my bag,\" he said.\n\nMorgan opened the bag and began rummaging in it. The doctor looked away, and then, as if he'd noticed something, returned his attention to her. He studied her closely, and his lips parted to say something.\n\nMorgan beat him to it, without looking up from the sack. \"Yes. And I can feel you have the talent, too. Not strong enough to send you to the Tower, but enough. Are you their only Obscurist?\" Jess knew he looked a fool; he'd never asked if Obscurists could recognize each other. Never thought of it. Morgan saw his look as she glanced up. \"The best Medica are often gifted, but not enough to be Obscurists,\" she said. \"He's almost strong enough.\"\n\n\"Almost, yes. I worked with the Obscurists when I was young, developing Library medicines,\" the doctor said. \"And yes, I am the only one with anything like Obscurist powers here. I've done what I could, but you are much stronger. You can increase the potency of what I've prepared. If you would, please. It might well save your friend.\"\n\nShe found the pot with green and yellow strings\u2014though those were almost as colorless as the red cord had been\u2014and opened it. She dipped her fingers inside and closed her eyes, and a faint shimmer of gold seemed to pass through her skin and into the pot. She handed it to the doctor, who sniffed and nodded, then took a soft brush from a kit at his belt and began painting the stuff onto Santi's burns. It did glow, Jess thought, a very faint, whispering shimmer.\n\n\"Excellent,\" Askuwheteau said. \"Never work against the properties of nature unless you have time, and focus. You know that, I suppose. Start with a healing potion, and you can make it much stronger quite easily. Changing poison to a healing potion takes a great deal more time, talent, and energy.\" He paused to look at the balm he'd applied. It continued to glimmer. \"You have a real gift, girl. Valuable. It's best you keep it hidden, or you'll find yourself serving the Iron Tower, locked in a collar.\"\n\n\"I escaped,\" she said. That earned her a set of raised eyebrows. Askuwheteau gestured for the bag, and she passed it over. \"You won't tell Beck about me?\"\n\n\"I expect he already knows. After all, the eight of you came here with two London Burners. They would have told him.\"\n\nAskuwheteau was right, of course. Beck had to know, though he'd said little. Not yet.\n\nMorgan said nothing, but her quick glance at Jess spoke volumes. Worry, but mixed with something else he couldn't identify as easily. She's plotting something, he thought, and the idea turned him cold. He didn't want Morgan risking herself.\n\n\"I can help you more,\" she told the doctor quietly. \"At least, with Captain Santi. If you'll allow it.\"\n\nJess watched as she methodically strengthened the potency of every one of Dr. Askuwheteau's medicines. The doctor applied them, layer on layer. He was examining the rest of Santi's arm now. Santi, while Jess hadn't been watching, had slipped into the kind embrace of unconsciousness, so if there was pain from the doctor's manipulations, he wasn't feeling it.\n\n\"You're Library trained,\" Wolfe said. \"But you left the service.\"\n\n\"My people have been living in and around this city since time began,\" Askuwheteau said. \"These are our lands, and we were trapped when the Burners took over. They needed a doctor. I wouldn't be true to the Lenape if I did what I was told by the Library and turned my back on them, would I?\"\n\nJess stayed silent and watched as the doctor applied another layer of salve. Wolfe studied Askuwheteau with angry intensity. Without looking up at him, Askuwheteau said, \"You are a Scholar? You have a touch of gift, too.\"\n\n\"Not enough,\" Wolfe said.\n\nThe doctor's long fingers smoothed more cream over weeping, burned flesh. \"Any power is enough to matter,\" he said. \"Love and power both. Stay with him. He will need strength.\" He sat back, frowning, and studied the arm again. Jess had the sense he wasn't looking with regular human sight. Morgan often got that same gauzy, unfocused look. \"All right. If we keep infection at bay, he may live. Will he have use of his arm?\" Askuwheteau moved his shoulders in a peculiar kind of rolling shrug. \"Perhaps. I will check him in the morning.\" He stoppered jars and bottles, slotted them back into his case, and stopped to give Morgan a nod. \"Good work.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I'll do whatever I can for him tonight.\"\n\nThe doctor's eyebrows rose, then fell into a straight line as he took another long look at her. \"Don't do as much as you think you can. Power is like fire,\" he said. \"It will turn on you in an instant, if you fail to respect it. I've seen it happen. And you? If you burn, you'll burn fast.\"\n\nShe murmured thanks, and with that, he was off again, striding at a pace that made those in his way scramble to leave it. He might look like a patchwork scarecrow, but the doctor had a certain strange grace to him. Jess thought he wouldn't like to have to fight the man. He had no doubt that the healer could take him apart as easily as fix him.\n\nMorgan moved to Santi's side and put her hand on his uninjured shoulder. \"Scholar, if you'll allow it, I can try to speed the healing for him.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Wolfe said. \"The sooner he's back on his feet, the better we can plan our exit from this wretched place.\" That sounded businesslike, but there was fear and grief in the man's face\u2014there, and gone. Wolfe transferred his focus to Jess. \"Thank you.\" A simple thing, but Wolfe rarely was civil, much less grateful, and Jess knew by that just how terrified he'd been of losing Niccolo Santi. \"Now. Fetch Schreiber. I want to hear everything.\"\n\nThomas relayed the news\u2014Jess and Thomas, tasked with building the press; the rest, working to catalog the Black Books. Santi was in no shape now to endure any questioning, and Beck couldn't possibly think it a ruse; Indira herself had seen the damage the Greek fire had done. So that was, Jess thought, one danger avoided, even if it led Santi deep into another.\n\n\"A decent bargain,\" Wolfe said. \"Serving as his translators and interpreters of the work gives us the chance to... obscure some of the more dangerously useful bits of information.\"\n\nJess frowned at that. \"Censorship,\" he said. \"So now we're taking on the role of Archivist?\"\n\n\"Would you prefer to hand Willinger Beck an arsenal of inventions even the Great Library thought too deadly?\"\n\nPut that way, Jess thought, there wasn't much he could muster in the way of an objection. But he didn't like it. He wondered if this was how it had started, all those ages ago, when some Scholar had earnestly advised an Archivist that a discovery was just too advanced, would cause too much damage. Who'd put the first of the books in the Black Archives? The records were all ashes now; they'd never know. But it worried him, how easy it was to slip down that path for reasons that seemed logical at the time.\n\nIt apparently didn't worry anyone else. Wolfe and Thomas had moved on to discussing the rest of the deal with Beck. \"We'll still be guarded,\" Thomas said. \"But not locked in. And we'll be fed, such as they have to offer. Which, I gather, isn't very much.\"\n\nWolfe nodded his satisfaction. \"I'll talk to the guards, but there's not likely to be rations tonight. The city's bound to save its own first. We'll ask tomorrow.\" At the mention of food, Jess's stomach let out an unhappy growl, and he wondered when it was he'd last managed to eat. Seemed a long time ago, and too little to matter.\n\nKhalila, Dario, and Glain, who'd been watching from the periphery, came back, one after the other. Khalila bent down and touched Scholar Wolfe's shoulder. \"Sir? How is he?\"\n\n\"Sleeping,\" Wolfe said. \"Their doctor is competent. I hope it'll be enough.\"\n\n\"The guards say the smoke's out of the building and the fires are all doused,\" Dario said. \"They also say we'd be better off staying in there, never mind the draft. Didn't say so, but the townsfolk left with houses and buildings in ruins might make our evening rough if we try to take up beds in the shelters. We'd best not press our luck.\"\n\n\"Captain Santi will rest better inside,\" Thomas said, and stepped forward. \"Let me, sir.\"\n\nWolfe didn't react for a few seconds, and then he nodded and stood up. Thomas scooped Santi up in his arms, careful of the salve-smeared burned arm. He didn't seem bothered by the man's weight in the least, and they all followed as he carried Santi's unconscious body through the narrow door into their prison. Morgan darted ahead to look over the cells and finally pointed to Dario's. Dario, to his credit, didn't even protest. \"This one's best; it'll be the warmest,\" she said, and Thomas eased the man down on the mattress. \"Thank you, Thomas. I'll take care of him now.\"\n\nThomas had positioned Santi with his head toward the wall so that his wounded arm lay straight and still, and now Morgan sank down on her knees next to the bed, studying the injury; Jess had the sense she was looking at something far different from what he could see, and her fingers spread out in a precise pattern to hover above his wounds. She let out a breath, closed her eyes, and went still.\n\nWolfe stood in the corner of the cell, all his focus on Santi's quiet face.\n\n\"Nothing more we can do here,\" Thomas said softly, and Jess nodded. \"Best we take stock of what Beck's given us to work with in this workshop of his. The sooner we know, the better we can plan.\"\n\nIt was oddly hard to leave, though there was plainly nothing to do; Jess's gaze lingered on Morgan's face\u2014fixed, tranquil, oddly tense beneath all that. Whatever she was doing, though, he knew it would take a toll. He could almost see the power, energy, quintessence\u2014whatever one wanted to call it\u2014pouring out of her, into Captain Santi's injured flesh. He remembered Askuwheteau's caution to her and wondered what price she was going to pay. Whatever it was, she wouldn't turn back.\n\nIn that way, he and Morgan were exactly alike.\n\nThe workshop was nothing but a junk heap.\n\nThe tools and materials that Philadelphia had to hand were, at best, a disaster. Broken bits of metal scavenged from wreckage, scrap bricks and broken stones, leather that had been rebraided and oiled to within an inch of its very ancient life. Rope was in short supply, and what they had, they kept carefully stored in barrels.\n\nThe wood\u2014and there was not a lot of it\u2014consisted mostly of scraps that showed hard use. A few precious new boards that must have been cut from trees inside the town walls lay in a neat, shallow stack. Miraculous that there were any trees standing at all, Jess thought, between desperate inhabitants and Library bombardments. Beck must have been brutal in his punishments for cutting them down.\n\n\"This is not so bad,\" Thomas said with forced good cheer as they looked over the disappointing lot. \"I've done more with less. Does that forge work?\"\n\n\"It does, but there's not much fuel,\" the guard who'd accompanied them said. \"We can't use wood. There's some coal. Not much. We can bring you some Blanks to burn.\"\n\nJess shuddered at the thought. \"Any Greek fire jugs that landed and didn't explode?\" The guard frowned. \"We just need a drop or two a day. Add some to a little supply of coal, you have a superheated forge that can stay hot for hours. It can burn rocks, if necessary.\"\n\n\"You can keep charge of what we don't use,\" Thomas quickly said. \"I understand you would not want to give us unlimited access.\"\n\n\"You're dead right. And if Master Beck approves it, you'll keep your mouths well shut about it. Greek fire in Library hands? The people would tear you all apart.\"\n\nHe was right. The Library had been a constant, faceless enemy to the Burners for more than a century. It was a minor miracle he and his friends were all still alive now, since they were the breathing, vulnerable examples of it. Given the slightest hint of betrayal, the people of Philadelphia would turn on them fast.\n\n\"We're here to give you a great weapon against the Library,\" Thomas said. \"Destroying us would be killing your own chance to win.\"\n\n\"I'm not listening. Master Beck can think what he likes.\" The guard glared at both of them with open, naked hatred now. \"But if I'd had my way, we'd have roasted the lot of you on top of the books, and thrown your skulls over the wall for your friends to mourn.\"\n\nThomas exchanged a look with Jess. \"You understand that we're under a sentence of death, to the Library? Killing us helps the Archivist. Not your own people.\"\n\nJess said, \"He's telling you the truth. We're enemies of the Archivist Magister, and we're going to find a way to bring him down.\"\n\n\"You. Your little band of children.\"\n\n\"You're at most three years older. How long have you been fighting? All your life, I think.\"\n\n\"I hate the Library, not the Archivist. Take him away, and you still have the same corrupt system. It will breed another just like him.\"\n\n\"He's not wrong. We have a great deal to repair to ensure another tyrant doesn't rise,\" Thomas said to Jess, and then turned back to the guard. \"What is your name?\"\n\n\"Diwell.\" It came out reluctantly, as if giving up his name meant forming a long-term relationship he didn't want.\n\n\"Diwell, five hundred years ago, the Great Library went down a dark path. But it still shines a light. Weaker now, but putting it out plunges us all into darkness together.\"\n\n\"Don't give me your recruiting speech.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Jess said. \"Beck wants us to build a machine for him. How do we do that, if we can't forge parts? We need the Greek fire, or we need a lot of fuel. His choice which he gives us.\"\n\nDiwell glared, but he nodded. \"I'll run it by Indira. What else?\"\n\n\"Wax,\" Thomas said. \"For casting parts. It doesn't matter if it's already been used.\"\n\n\"Candles are in short supply. Like wood and every other damned thing here.\"\n\n\"We'll make you new candles from the melt when we're done with it. The loss won't be so much, we promise,\" Thomas said, and rubbed his hands together. \"Mr. Diwell, please, take your ease. My friend and I will need to go through everything stored here. It will be a very long evening, and I promise we will do nothing more interesting than talking and writing things down.\"\n\nThomas's face had taken on a healthy color in the lamplight. It wasn't, Jess thought, just that they were out of the cells and relatively free; a workshop, however poor, was his real home, and he looked forward to surveying the tools and supplies and making do with what little they were given. Thomas loved a challenge.\n\nThomas's careful inventory took most of the night. Diwell tried his best to stay alert, but dozed, eventually, as Jess and Thomas created a list of all that the storehouse could offer. Some of it had nothing to do with the press at all, of course, but all of it could, in one way or another, come in handy. Once that was done, they used charcoal to sketch out plans on the stone wall of the workshop.\n\nBy the time they finished their plans, they were both as dirty handed as chimney sweeps, and when Thomas put the last touches on the sketch, they both stepped back to admire it by the flickering light of a single, smoky lamp that had the stench of many-times-fried bacon fat. \"Not bad,\" Jess said. \"Not a patch as good as we could do with decent materials, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But this will do,\" Thomas agreed. \"We don't even need to wait on more supplies. It'll take both of us, and hard, sweaty work, but it can be done, yes?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Jess agreed. \"There should be enough wood in here to make the frame, though I can't say how long this rotten stuff will hold together under strain. Then we just need to make springs, plates, and gears. Paper could be a problem. I imagine it's as dear as wood around here.\"\n\n\"Why? They're burning Blanks,\" Thomas said. \"We take some and cut the pages out.\"\n\nHe was right, and it was a far better fate for the Blanks than being set on fire just to inspire Burner fanaticism. \"I'll get some from Beck,\" Jess said, and surprised himself with a skull-cracking yawn. It was no longer just late; the night had advanced toward morning, and Jess realized he was well past exhausted. He cast a glance at Diwell, who was slumped in a corner near the door. Too far away to hear, and too deep asleep to care. He lowered his voice anyway, to just above a whisper. \"Thomas? Are you sure this will work?\"\n\n\"The press? Yes,\" Thomas said. \"And the Ray of Apollo? There are certain things we'll need to complete that. Glass to make mirrors, and so forth.\"\n\n\"And if it doesn't work?\"\n\n\"Then we die here,\" he said. \"And, Jess? I won't survive in a cage.\"\n\nIn a cold flash of memory, Jess saw Thomas as he'd been not so very long ago\u2014half-starved, bruised, shaking, with a matted head of hair and beard that made him look decades older. He looked better now, but by no means the old Thomas Schreiber. That boy had never known despair. The bleak shadow in Thomas's eyes now said he would never again know a day without it. Thomas can't go back in a cage. Neither can Wolfe. The elder Scholar had borne it in silence, but that silence had been heavy, and telling, and Jess had heard him cry out in nightmares before.\n\n\"How much time will we need?\" Jess asked him.\n\n\"That... I'm not sure,\" Thomas said. \"The press is only a few days. But the Ray of Apollo... well. A full day for the mirrors, but that must be done without anyone questioning our work, so two days, and we must be careful. I will consult Khalila with the calculations of focus. A week, at least, before we can be ready, and then we must find a power source.\"\n\n\"That's my job, then.\" He was overtaken by another yawn, and Thomas's smile broadened.\n\n\"Enough for tonight,\" his big friend said, and took a dampened cloth to the meticulous charcoal drawings they'd made on the walls. Jess sucked in a breath to protest, but Thomas shook his head. \"I've got them memorized. We can't leave them up for anyone to see.\"\n\nOnce the wall was clean again, Jess walked over and nudged Diwell's chair with one foot, bringing the guard instantly back to startled wakefulness, with one hand on his gun. \"We're finished for now.\"\n\nDiwell muttered something that probably wasn't kind, or complimentary, and led them back to the prison.\n\nNo way of knowing how late it was, but the moon was down. It felt like the world was spinning fast toward morning. Jess looked into Dario's old cell as they passed. Captain Santi was still asleep on one bunk, and on the opposite, he recognized the brown curls of Morgan's hair, though she slept facing the wall.\n\nWolfe, wrapped in one thin blanket, came awake the instant he felt their presence, and reached for a loose, jagged rock that was lying near to hand. He relaxed when he made out their faces in the dimness. He slipped the blanket away and climbed to his feet to meet them in the narrow hallway. \"You took your good time,\" he said. \"Can you do it?\"\n\n\"The press, yes. And possibly something more that could be a valuable help to getting us past these walls.\"\n\nWolfe took that in and mulled it in silence for a few seconds before he said, \"No unnecessary risks. Understand?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said. \"But everything is risk. You know that, sir. How is the captain?\"\n\n\"Resting. The doctor's not half the idiot I would have assumed.\" From Wolfe, that was high praise. \"Morgan's been tending to him, as much as she can. If she weren't, he'd certainly lose the arm. He still could.\"\n\nIt was the studied calm in the way he said it that hurt. Jess cast a quick look at Santi, then away. Nothing more to be done for him. \"How much is it hurting her?\"\n\nFor a long moment, Wolfe didn't answer; maybe he didn't think Jess was ready to hear it. But finally, he said, \"The power that the Obscurists possess comes from their life force, their quintessence. As they use it to transform and shift the nature of other organic and inorganic things, it becomes... affected by what it transforms. Think of it as water. Dip a dirty cloth in it, the cloth comes out clean, but the pollution remains.\" Wolfe finally shifted his gaze to meet Jess's stare. Jess wished he hadn't. \"Obscurists in the Iron Tower have time-tested ways to manage their work. They create scripts and formulae and touchstones\u2014filters, so that the corruption doesn't touch them directly. But using the quintessence daily... It's dangerous. There's a reason people have always feared witches. And there's a reason we never call Obscurists magicians.\"\n\n\"Because they aren't?\" Thomas asked. \"They have an ability, the same as gifted engineers.\"\n\n\"Engineers' gifts don't destroy them from within. An Obscurist without controls, without barriers...\" Wolfe shook his head. \"Nothing stops them. And that's dangerous. She's dangerous. She's learning too much, too fast, and no one to hold her back.\"\n\nJess swallowed. He didn't like the sound of that, but it had the ring of truth. \"And what do we do about that?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Wolfe said grimly. \"Because we need her. And every single bit of power she can provide, if we're to survive this and find a way out. I'm sorry about that, but you and I are alike: we'll do what must be done. Even if it means letting those we care for put themselves in danger.\"\n\nWolfe's gaze slipped back to Santi as he said it, and Jess knew he was thinking of all the times Santi had stepped into the path of harm for him. And would, for as long as he could stand, or crawl.\n\nI'm not like you, Jess thought. But he knew he was, really. He'd learned to be practical too young.\n\nThomas said, \"And everyone else is all right?\"\n\n\"Well enough. Are you hungry?\"\n\n\"Starving,\" Jess said. His stomach cramped and growled like a wild beast.\n\n\"Glain stole us a small supply of food. It's not enough, but I expect no one in this town gets more, except Willinger Beck.\" Wolfe nodded to two empty bunks in their cell. \"Eat quickly, and sleep while you can. It's very late.\" He went back to his uncomfortable bed on the cold floor beside Santi, wrapped himself up, and was asleep again\u2014at least, apparently\u2014within minutes.\n\nThomas had already found a handful of cheese and a small slice of bread that sat out on a small shelf near the unlit furnace, and was making an effort not to take more than his share, though he was twice the size of the rest of them. Jess wolfed down a smaller portion of the hard crusts and soft cheese; it tasted like a promise of heaven, but just a taste. He wanted a dozen more mouthfuls and had to convince himself to leave the rest for the others, who must not have gotten anything yet. Nothing but cold water to wash it down, but by the time he'd drunk his fill, Thomas was already in his bunk and halfway to dreams.\n\nJess took the other bed and blew out the lantern, and was dreamlessly unconscious before the afterimage of the burning wick died.\n\nHe woke up with a metallic, filthy taste in his mouth\u2014the aftermath of the Greek fire's toxic smoke\u2014with the glow of early sunlight spilling into the cell. Dario Santiago was looming over him, hands on his hips as he nudged the bunk with one knee. \"Come on, scrubber. Up. It's a bright new day.\"\n\nJess raised himself onto his elbows and looked around. He could tell by the stiffness in his spine that he hadn't moved much in the night, and he certainly hadn't been on guard, though he ought to have been. Khalila was up and bustling around, tucking her hair under the scarf and giving him a distracted smile as she took one of the small, broken pieces of dry cheese from the shelf. Glain was doing another handstand and then rolled into a rapid flurry of push-ups before she got to her feet.\n\nBut when Jess looked at the cell across the way, he saw two empty bunks. Santi was gone, and Morgan, too. Wolfe's blanket lay discarded on the floor.\n\nJess sat up and fixed his stare on Dario. \"Where are they?\"\n\nDario's normally cocky expression shifted a little into something... less. \"The captain woke up in some distress. They moved him into that Medica's house this morning.\"\n\n\"Some distress? What does that mean?\" Jess demanded as he swung his legs over the side of the bunk and sat up. Dario shook his head and looked away. It was rare to see him struck without words, and it didn't offer comfort. \"Did Morgan go with them?\"\n\n\"She said not to wake you.\"\n\nBecause she damned well knew I'd go with her, and I might try to stop her from killing herself, Jess thought, and for a moment he felt a surge of sick dread so real that it froze him in place. He finally cleared his throat and said, \"So you kindly waited here to rub my face in it?\"\n\n\"No,\" Dario said. \"Thomas left for the workshop, and he told me to give this to you.\" He reached inside his jacket and took out a thin, ragged scrap of cloth. It stank of dried sweat\u2014torn, Jess guessed, from the bottom of Thomas's shirt. There were words written on it in tiny, precise letters that had smudged just a little. Jess held the cloth closer to the light to read them.\n\n\"Where does he think I'm going to get this?\" he asked. \"Not from Beck. He'll want to know too much about what it's for.\"\n\n\"He said you're resourceful,\" Dario said. \"He's not wrong.\"\n\nDown the way, Glain stretched like a particularly large and dangerous cat, and went to join Khalila. The two of them left without a word, which left Dario and Jess alone. Somehow, Jess thought, Dario had asked for that solitude.\n\n\"All right,\" Jess said, and reached for his boots. \"What?\"\n\nDario seated himself on Thomas's bunk. \"You and I, in Santi's absence, are what passes for strategists in our little company, wouldn't you agree?\"\n\n\"I don't agree with much you say,\" Jess said. \"But I suppose.\"\n\n\"While Santi is\u2014indisposed, it's our job to think ahead,\" Dario said. \"Not just to tomorrow. Not to next week. Not to escape. We need to think beyond.\"\n\n\"Beyond to what?\"\n\n\"That,\" Dario said, \"is why you're the inferior chess player. What say you take a walk with me?\"\n\n\"We're not that friendly, in case you've forgotten.\"\n\n\"Relax, scrubber, I'm not suddenly thirsty for your company. But I thought a stroll near the wall...\"\n\nThat got Jess's firm attention. \"Meaning?\"\n\nDario's voice had gone very quiet, even though the room was deserted. \"Meaning, I struck up an acquaintance with two disreputable characters late last night who wanted to place bets on the fastest of three roaches. I won, by the way, quite nicely. One of them was one of Beck's guards, and they have access to some strong\u2014not good, mind you\u2014liquor. He was well into it when he told me they'd posted extra men at the eastern wall. I don't expect he'll remember much of any of that conversation today.\"\n\nJess's mind raced. Extra guards on a wall meant they expected something\u2014either someone trying to go out or someone coming in. The Library wasn't likely to give advance notice of tunneling in, though they'd been most polite about the bombardment. So that meant...\n\nJess pulled his boots on. \"Let's take a walk, like friends.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd see it my way,\" Dario said, and they went up and out the door.\n\n\"Don't let it go to your head.\"\n\n\"If we find this tunnel,\" Dario said as they walked\u2014oh so casually\u2014on a street of ruined buildings near the wall, \"then what comes next?\" No one was watching them. Crews of Philadelphians were up to their knees in rubble, sorting out bricks, metal, broken bits of wood that could be reused. Grimly repairing anything that could be saved.\n\n\"Finding a way to follow it without anyone here knowing. Scouting the exit. Figuring out a diversion to get us a chance to use it. Finding a way to cover our escape from the High Garda camped outside. Communicating with someone who can see us safely out of here and out of America.\" Jess listed it off without even thinking about it. Dario nodded soberly at the end of it.\n\n\"As I said, you're not a very good chess player,\" Dario said. \"You think too small.\" Usually, that would have come with a snide grin, or at the very least, a smarmy tone, but it sounded... contemplative. \"Skip those things. They are important, yes, but the question is, what is your endgame?\"\n\n\"Staying alive.\"\n\n\"Winning,\" Dario said. \"And how do you win?\"\n\n\"Me? Not you?\"\n\nDario drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. \"We both know my ambitions are different from yours. You want to change the world. I just want to have what I want. Whatever that is.\" He shrugged. \"You've got aspirations. So tell me what you want to achieve.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Jess said. \"Winning means defeating the Archivist. Making us all safe again.\"\n\n\"And, of course, changing the mission and direction of the oldest, largest, most powerful institution on earth.\"\n\n\"If you want to put it that way.\" Jess was silent for a while. The walk felt good, the sunshine, the slight breeze. The stretch of his legs. \"You win in chess by capturing the king. So we remove the Archivist Magister.\"\n\n\"The king, yes.\" Dario clasped his hands behind his back as they walked. \"You take a king by two methods: brute force or subtle attack. Brute force is beyond us, at least as I see it. So to win, we have to plan an attack he can't see coming. In chess, you don't play your opponent. You make your opponent play you. You draw him out. You make him watch one piece while another moves.\"\n\n\"And why are we talking about bloody chess?\"\n\nDario stopped in his tracks, turned, and faced Jess head-on. Suddenly, his friend looked like a man twice their age. A statesman, burdened with responsibility. \"Because Wolfe is an honest man. So is Santi. In their hearts, they are loyal, and they are not good liars. Khalila and Thomas are the same. Pure, down to their souls. You and I, and Morgan\u2014we're different. We understand the need for expedience. For deception. And when we need to be, the three of us can be ruthless. Wouldn't you agree?\"\n\nJess watched him for a moment, thinking, and then nodded. Dario turned and began walking again, and Jess joined him. It felt different now. It felt much more serious. \"And Glain?\"\n\n\"Glain is loyal, and also ruthless. I don't know. I give it even odds she would support or oppose us. So I leave her aside for now.\"\n\n\"You're talking about planning something that even our own friends don't know about,\" Jess said. \"Something the others wouldn't support.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And you have a plan?\"\n\n\"No,\" Dario said. \"I have a goal. You will have a plan. I know you well enough to know that given time, you will understand what needs to be done. I only wanted to say it, so you'll look for it. But it needs to be something no one else can see coming. If Wolfe and Santi see it, then so will the Archivist. They're all trained the same. I'm a disreputable black sheep. You are a thief and a criminal. Morgan has spent her life running from the Library. You see the difference?\"\n\n\"We're the difference,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Yes. And that will cost us. Victory always costs.\" Dario cleared his throat and said, in a very different tone, \"Oh look. We've picked up a new friend.\"\n\nAnother of Beck's guards\u2014not Diwell, this time, but someone older\u2014had joined them at a distance. Watching. Jess hadn't really expected anything less. They'd only gone a quarter of the way around the outer wall, and already he could sense that trouble was coming.\n\nThey'd been careful to keep a good distance away from the wall itself; there were Philadelphia guards posted at strategically effective distances, so that one was never out of sight of the others on either side. Jess had observed the guards along the western side yesterday, and Dario was right: security had been tightened all along this eastern wall. Here, near the center, there were four guards in attendance, all close together. They seemed less than relaxed, and when they spotted Jess and Dario walking parallel to them, one of them\u2014the largest, Jess noticed\u2014came stalking out to meet them.\n\nJess stopped. Dario did, too, and they both turned to face up to the newcomer. He was a Native American, like Askuwheteau; he wore his hair in a stiff, short brush down the center of his skull. Broad across the shoulders and chest, with the build of a born wrestler. And he had scars\u2014burns, mostly. Almost everyone in Philadelphia had burns.\n\n\"Leave,\" he said flatly. \"You can't walk here.\"\n\n\"Beck said we have freedom to move around the town,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Not here. Go.\"\n\nTheir guard caught up to them, red-faced. \"I'll move them on,\" he said, and turned a raw, furious look on Jess and Dario. \"When you're told to go, don't argue!\"\n\n\"We didn't argue,\" Dario said. \"We're looking for a dealer in glass. We were told to look near the wall around here.\"\n\n\"Glass?\" their guard said, and then his face slid into a twisting sneer. \"You need mirrors to look at your pretty faces?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, personal grooming is a virtue,\" Dario said, without so much as a flicker, \"but I understand that's a foreign concept here. Is there a glass vendor?\"\n\nThe native guard, who was looking at them with eyes that Jess thought were almost on the verge of catching fire, said, \"Sev sells broken glass.\" He jerked his chin toward a row of partially demolished buildings a street farther on. \"Maybe we'll feed it to you for dinner.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Dario said, \"but I'm trying to cut down.\" It was just enough of a pun that Jess had to control a laugh. Sometimes\u2014very occasionally\u2014Dario was good for that. But there was nothing casual about the tense set of the Spaniard's muscles. He looked relaxed, but he was ready for a fight, just as Jess was. They didn't even have to exchange a look to be in agreement. \"We'll move on, then. Jess? If you're ready?\"\n\n\"I'm ready,\" he said, and together, they turned and headed off. His shoulder blades itched, waiting to feel any hint of movement behind, but when he glanced back, the native soldier had gone back to take up his post against the wall.\n\nHowever, their trailing guard had decided to greatly close the gap. Inconvenient, and it kept Jess from talking to Dario until they were in the next street and the rattle of a passing cart\u2014drawn by a single, exhausted horse, the poor creature\u2014loaded with scavenged materials provided enough noise to cover it. Jess spoke fast, and to the point. \"Couldn't see the tunnel, but look there.\" He pointed quickly toward a weathered, half-burned old tree that grew in the no-man's-land between the wall and the street. \"See the mark?\"\n\n\"No,\" Dario whispered back, and then the cart was past them, and they had to go quiet again. It wasn't until they were inside the cramped, reeking confines of the shop\u2014a generous word for it; Jess thought repur posed privy might have been a better one\u2014and looking at sad piles of broken glass sorted by color on the warped floor that they had another chance to talk. The place held no attraction for their guard; he stayed outside, in the fresher air. There weren't any other ways out. \"What mark?\"\n\n\"Two parallel lines and a circle,\" Jess said. \"Means a tunnel controlled by the Comprehensive.\" Dario gave him a blank glance. \"Group of smugglers.\"\n\n\"Run by your family?\"\n\n\"No. Rivals. It's a problem.\" Jess crouched and looked at the clear glass pile. The largest pieces were the size of his hand, but those were rare. Most were just barely better than slivers.\n\nHe stood up and gestured at the tiny woman who stood half asleep at the back of the shop. \"How much?\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"All of this. The clear.\"\n\nShe blinked. \"In exchange for what fortune?\"\n\nJess looked at Dario. Steadily. Until the Spaniard sighed and produced a very fine money pouch. A fat one. \"You're taking my roach-racing winnings, you know.\"\n\n\"Why do you think I brought you along, for pleasant company?\"\n\n\"Ass.\" Dario handed over the pouch, and when the woman opened it, she gave an audible gasp and clutched it to her chest. She pushed a threadbare bag across with her foot.\n\n\"Take it,\" she said. \"Go.\"\n\n\"Everybody wants us gone,\" Dario said, and picked up the bag and thrust it toward Jess. \"You get the glass splinters. I paid.\"\n\nDario was right. It wasn't fun, handling the broken glass, but Jess took the cuts and jabs in stride. He'd had worse, and would again. Once he was done, he lifted the heavy, crunching bag and tried to think how best to carry it without giving his back a scratching it would never forget.\n\nThe woman held out a second, thicker bag. \"Free,\" she said, and smiled just a little. \"It's easy to get hurt, you know.\"\n\nHer arm was in the light from the door, and he saw the scars then, old and new layered into gnarled patterns. Her fingers looked raw. It was like looking at a map of pain, and he had to shake his head. \"No,\" he said. \"I can bear a few more scars. You keep that.\"\n\nOnce they were outside, he carefully put the bag over his shoulder and winced at the immediate sharp bites... but it was bearable. Dario said nothing, just shook his head. \"You're an idiot,\" he said. \"You should have taken it.\"\n\n\"You gave her all your money. She probably wouldn't have asked for half that much.\"\n\nDario shrugged, eloquently. \"Philadelphian notes. Worthless. Let her have the use of it.\"\n\nTruth was, Jess thought, that money could have bought Dario meat, bad liquor, all manner of indulgences. But Dario didn't like to be thought of as anything like kind.\n\nSo Jess just said, \"Let's go find the rest of Thomas's shopping list.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a work from the Black Archives, untitled, credited to Heron of Alexandria. Not indexed in the Codex:\n\n\u2002I have written before on the curvature of metals, and the reflections of light that may be done with such. The simplest use is a mirror, which reflects light upon the viewer. But light may also be concentrated in a series of highly polished mirrors, sending it from one surface to another to another, until the light is so bright and it becomes a solid thing, like a beam of fire. I have achieved this effect upon three occasions. With one, I used mirrors the size of shields, and was able to set alight a distant tree, which burned as if Zeus himself had cast down lightning upon it. In the second case, I used a finely polished set of jewels loaned to me by the gracious hand of Pharaoh, and the result was much stronger, and much smaller in width. Upon the third attempt, I seated these highly polished gems within an array of holders, precisely set to amplify the light, and contained it within a tube of brass. This attempt, shown before Pharaoh, melted through seven feet of thick, hardened iron, to the awe and terror of his court.\n\n\u2002It is the power of Apollo contained within mortal hands, and by the order of Pharaoh, I have been ordered not to continue these experiments, for the gods will not share such wonders without punishment.\n\n\u2002The will of Pharaoh is ever wise."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "Working with Thomas was like being a student playing next to a master pianist. Not that Jess didn't have aptitude; he was good at whittling parts from spare scraps of wood to Thomas's specifications, and then transferring those models to a hot wax impression, ready for casting. Thomas measured and cut what little good, solid wood they'd been given, and spent his time at the forge, melting scrap metal and casting the gears.\n\nWhen he wasn't sweating in front of the forge, Thomas had a strange way of staring at the empty space in the middle of the workroom, walking around and around it as if he were examining an actual machine that stood there.\n\nJess finally left off carving to stare at him. \"You really can see it, can't you?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes, of course. It's right there.\" Thomas raised his eyebrows and pointed to the plans they'd sketched again, in charcoal, on the wall. Jess shook his head.\n\n\"Yes, I can see the plans. But you see the whole thing already built, don't you? All the way around?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Thomas said. \"You don't? How else do you create something that doesn't exist?\"\n\nJess tried creating that machine in his imagination, but the sketch\u2014though he understood it\u2014remained stubbornly as flat as the charcoal on the wall. \"I don't think I'm meant for a gold band,\" he said, and grinned. \"And I think you always were, Scholar Schreiber.\"\n\nThomas turned and looked at him. \"I'm not really a Scholar.\"\n\n\"Didn't anyone tell you? Wolfe commissioned you. Lifetime appointment, gold band and all. When they told us you were dead, you were entered on the rolls as an honor. There was a ceremony. They put your name in hieroglyphs on the Scholar Steps.\" It had been, Jess thought, a somber and emotional afternoon; just six of them together on the vast Serapeum steps while an Egyptian priest intoned a prayer for the dead. Morgan had been gone in the Iron Tower, and Thomas... Thomas had been screaming in a cell underneath the streets of Rome.\n\n\"I didn't think\u2014\" Thomas broke off. \"I\u2014don't know what to feel. The Library did try to kill me. But\u2014\"\n\n\"But it's the only thing you ever wanted,\" Jess finished when Thomas didn't. \"It's complicated.\" What he didn't say was maybe it was worse that Thomas had been granted that dream, given how things stood now. Chances were, Thomas would never wear the gold band he so richly deserved.\n\nThomas shook his head and\u2014incredibly, to Jess\u2014smiled. \"It's fine, Jess. An honor. And it's not all I want. I want to build. And we are going to do that, right now. Yes?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThomas walked over and studied the gear. \"Almost right.\"\n\n\"Almost?\"\n\n\"Smoother here, yes?\" Somehow, getting a correction from Thomas didn't make Jess feel foolish; he nodded and took up a file to fix the problem. \"It's late. Are you tired?\"\n\n\"Do you have any idea what High Garda training is like? They run you until you forget how to be tired. No, I'm fine. How much have we done?\"\n\n\"We are a third complete, I think. Though we need to make extras of several of these gears. I'm not confident they'll take the stress even from the test. They must last for a few passes.\"\n\nJess put the finishing touches on the wooden model before handing it over. Thomas walked to the empty space, held out the wooden gear in a precise location, and cocked his head as he stared. It was the eeriest thing, Jess thought; he could actually see Thomas thinking. The power radiating out of that head seemed to fill the space around them with energy. Maybe Thomas had been right in his observation that geniuses and Obscurists had something in common.\n\n\"This is good,\" Thomas said, and tossed the gear back to him with a sudden flash of a grin. \"Twenty more to go, yes?\"\n\n\"I hate you.\" Jess put the tools down and stretched. His hands ached, and so did his back; his eyes burned from focusing in the dim light. \"Maybe we should stop for the night after all.\"\n\n\"I knew the High Garda had no real stamina,\" Thomas said as he scrubbed the plans from the wall. \"I'll bank the coals in the forge. A drop of Greek fire will bring it up in the morning.\" He nodded toward the guard\u2014Diwell again\u2014who dozed in the corner. By which Jess knew he meant, Distract him. So as Thomas carefully, quietly hefted the flimsy bag full of broken glass, Jess moved over to a large pile of scrap metal that he'd taken care to build up to tottering heights all day, and on Thomas's cue, he shoved the whole thing over.\n\nThe noisy racket of metal clanging together drowned out the tinkling sounds of the glass being poured into a thick stone bowl, and Thomas quickly picked it up and shoved it into the forge, then banged the door closed. Diwell came upright, tripped, and had his gun out and aimed at Jess and Thomas within a respectable few seconds, though he was smart enough not to fire. Thomas had managed to throw the empty bag into the forge, and all trace of it was already gone.\n\n\"What the hell do you think you're doing?\" Diwell barked. Thomas slowly held up his hands. They were nearly black with soot and charcoal and, here and there, reddened with burns. He never seemed to mind the wounds he took when working.\n\n\"Just an accident,\" Thomas said. \"We are banking the fire for the night. We will be leaving now.\" When Diwell finally put his weapon away, Thomas raked coals forward and added a layer of new ones behind, then a single drop of green liquid. The fire blazed up with a hiss, then subsided. Burning hot but steady.\n\nThe glass would slowly, surely melt overnight and be ready for the morning.\n\n\"Hurry up,\" Diwell growled near the door. \"I've missed my meal because of you.\"\n\nHe was out the door and locking it behind them, and as he fiddled with the padlock it allowed Jess and Thomas to stride on ahead a bit. Jess said, \"Do you think this is going to work?\" He didn't mean the press they were building; he knew that would.\n\nThomas met his gaze squarely and said, \"The Ray of Apollo? God preserve us if it doesn't. Did you get the power source?\"\n\n\"As it happens, yes.\" Jess reached into his trouser pocket, took out a small wooden box, and watched as Thomas slid it open. Inside, a little mechanical bird turned its head, hopped to its metal feet, and began to sing in a clear, warbling tone. Thomas reached down and touched a particular spot on the tail feathers, and the bird froze in midsong. Disabled. \"Morgan won't be happy you're destroying it. She treasures it, you know. She carried it with her into the Iron Tower, and out again. Khalila got it from the bag in Beck's office. Which, by the way, reminds me: I should look into wearing full skirts. Seems like they hide a wealth of tricky behavior.\"\n\n\"I'd be delighted to see you try.\"\n\n\"I'll bet Dario would be.\"\n\n\"So now we have our power source,\" Thomas said, and closed the box. He slipped it into his vest. \"We make our mirrors. And then, we will nearly be ready.\"\n\nJess didn't share the optimism. He knew it was in Thomas's nature; he knew Thomas needed it right now to see his way through the nights spent in a room with bars, in a city that was a trap. But he couldn't share it.\n\nIn his experience, optimism got people killed.\n\nOne of Khalila's requests had been put in place by the time they were back in the prison; she'd asked for privacy walls, and Beck\u2014probably as a bitter little joke\u2014had ordered pieces of paper glued across the bars of their cells. The paper, Jess immediately recognized, had been torn from Blanks. A little sting in the tail of his gift. But it was a little better, Jess had to admit. More of a sense of safety, even if it was an illusion.\n\nIt put a tiny scar on Jess's heart when he saw Dario, of all people, escort Morgan into the prison that evening and extravagantly bow her into her private cell. The two of them were spending days together in a comfortable sitting room in Willinger Beck's office, where the most dangerous thing either would do was to collect a paper cut. He also knew that it gave Dario time to talk with Morgan, to propose to her the same thing he'd discussed with Jess: deception.\n\nHe just hoped that Dario wasn't playing him false, along with everyone else. And he hoped that if Dario was, Morgan would refuse to go along with it.\n\nBut he didn't know. He'd lost that ability, in the hot glare of jealousy that he wasn't the one walking with her, smiling at her.\n\nDario said something to her, and she laughed and shook her head. It was a free sort of sound, that laugh, which was strange because they were anything but free here in Philadelphia. Then again, Morgan's talent, her mind, and her body had all been the Library's property. By contrast, this might seem like real freedom to her.\n\nMorgan's gaze skimmed across and snagged on Jess's, and he saw the laughter die away. Don't stop laughing, he wanted to tell her. I like it when you laugh. I just wish it was me.\n\nBut the smile that melted onto her lips was better, richer, deeper. It meant more, because it was meant only for him. And unlike the laughter, it lingered.\n\nShe held out her hand to him, and it felt right to take it. Just for a moment. She looked down at their twined hands and winced as she noticed his fingers. \"What have you been doing? Your hands\u2014\"\n\n\"Glass cuts,\" he said. \"Look, not even bleeding anymore. I'm fine. How\u2014\" He wanted to ask, How are you? because he was worried by the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the slight tremble in her hands. But he said, \"How is Santi?\"\n\n\"I haven't been there, but we're told he's better,\" she said. \"Scholar Wolfe sent me away once he was moved to the doctor's house. Beck demanded me at city hall.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"He wanted me to reactivate the Translation Chamber. They'd walled it up over a hundred years ago, the day they took the city. The floor was covered in giant spikes. If we'd entered there, when we left London\u2014\" Jess winced, imagining them dropping into such a place... sealed, and full of deadly traps. When the Burners had kidnapped them and forced her to make the journey, she'd chosen the park outside city hall; it had been the largest space, the easiest to find. \"He wanted it functioning, for use with his smugglers.\"\n\nJess lowered his voice. \"Could you do it?\" Because that might be exactly what they needed. But she shook her head.\n\n\"No chance. Translation Chambers work because they're places rich in quintessence\u2014and they're rich because they're used, over and over. Because people pour energy out inside them. But a hundred years of disuse has stripped it bare. There's nothing left. I'm sorry, Jess.\" She'd been thinking the same, that she could lie to Beck and hold that escape route in reserve. But if it was dead, that left only the smugglers' tunnel and the desperate, last-ditch idea of the Ray of Apollo. Jess didn't much like the chances of either one.\n\nKhalila came in soon after, with Glain, and she beamed when she saw Jess and Thomas. \"It makes me glad to see you both at the end of the day,\" she said. \"Sweaty and dirty as you are. I think we all worry, having you apart from us.\" Her smile slipped away, and she washed her hands and face in the cold-water bucket by the door. \"If only Santi and Wolfe were here to meet us, too.\" She'd found time, Jess saw, to change to a clean dress\u2014unbleached linen, something that Dario had found for her, no doubt. Neat, as always. \"I'm not sure I trust the work of this provincial Medica...\"\n\n\"I think the doctor is doing his best,\" Morgan said. Jess moved past them to plunge his hands into the cold water and used the sand provided next to it to scrub the charcoal from his skin. The cuts, he had to admit, looked bad. And they stung. \"And the captain is strong. A few days of rest will let him heal.\"\n\n\"If he doesn't take another turn for the worse,\" Dario said. When they all glared at him, he held his hands up. \"We were all thinking it.\"\n\n\"I wasn't,\" Glain said, and shoved past him. \"And I'm not. The captain's going to be fine.\"\n\n\"What if he isn't?\" Thomas asked. The question fell into a sudden, and very dark, silence. \"What happens to Wolfe?\"\n\n\"We look out for him,\" Khalila said. \"As he'd do for any one of us. But Captain Santi will be fine. That might be only my love of him speaking, but it's what I must believe.\"\n\nShe'd be the only one to admit it, but they all loved the captain, Jess thought; Santi brought out all the best parts of Wolfe. Without him... Jess could only think of the term Beck had used. Stormcrow. Without Santi, Wolfe would be more that than ever.\n\nThey were all silent for a moment. Not even Dario found anything stupid or inconsequential to say. Jess, without thinking about it, put his arm around Morgan, and she leaned against him, a lovely burst of warmth.\n\n\"Progress?\" Jess asked quietly, and Khalila seemed relieved to have something else to think about.\n\n\"Find me a pen and paper,\" she said. \"I took time in Beck's office today to study a city map.\"\n\n\"What map? You never moved from your chair!\" Glain said. \"I sat across from you the whole time, and it was easily the most boring day of my life!\"\n\nKhalila slowly smiled at her. \"The map was hidden in plain sight,\" she said. \"Framed. On the wall above your head.\"\n\nGlain froze, thinking back, and Jess saw the exact moment she remembered. She looked well kicked, but Jess didn't blame her at all. He'd been in that office. He didn't remember a map, either.\n\n\"It looked like another of their damned Burner paintings,\" Glain said. \"Mostly in orange. They like things the color of flames.\"\n\n\"It's not detailed, but it clearly shows fields behind city hall, the walls, the streets. A primitive style, and not by any real mapmaker. But it gives a good idea,\" Khalila said. \"Paper?\"\n\nFor answer, Dario plucked a sheet fastened to the inside of his cell\u2014the paper wall\u2014and handed it over. \"I'll make ink.\" He walked over to the very small pile of coal near the furnace that sat by the door\u2014designed, Jess thought, to barely keep them alive in colder weather\u2014and took one piece. With efficient motions, he used his boot heel to pound it into bits, grinding it fine, then used another paper sheet stripped from his cell to wrap into a cone, and scraped the black powder in. Added some drops of water and stirred, measuring and adding carefully, until he had a little pool of black, watery ink in the cone. It wicked steadily into the paper, but he presented the cone to Khalila, and a small stick he found just at the door. She accepted both with a dimpled smile and an appreciative flash in her eyes, and set to work.\n\n\"I don't have colors,\" she said as she carefully crosshatched lines across certain of the buildings, \"so I am using patterns. This one, I believe, shows the location of shelters, like the ones they use for bomb attacks.\" She used diagonal lines for the next, fewer landmarks. \"These, I don't know. We should take a look at them. Storehouses, perhaps? They might contain something useful.\"\n\n\"Brilliant,\" Jess said. \"Dario and I located a smugglers' tunnel marked here\u2014\" He hovered a finger over the part of the wall they'd strolled past earlier. \"They've put more guards on it, which could mean that they're getting ready to receive goods through it.\" A thought suddenly struck him, and he tried to think how his father would have conducted such a business, if he'd sat in that city hall office instead of Willinger Beck. He'd be much, much cleverer than that. \"Or they just want us to think that. If Beck is smart, he'd have increased the guards just to draw our attention to it. Make us commit to an attempt at using it. That gives him an excuse to draw us out.\"\n\n\"Or it could be genuine,\" Dario said, \"and Master Beck is just a provincial warlord who doesn't think like you do.\"\n\n\"I've talked to him,\" Jess said. \"I wouldn't trust anything he does.\"\n\n\"And if we tried to use it\u2014\"\n\n\"We'd end up captured, back in these cells without our comforts, and one or two of us roasted on a spit for our troubles,\" Glain broke in. \"Jess is right. Take our time. Note the obvious. Look harder.\"\n\nDario sighed. \"I like the obvious. It's easier.\"\n\nKhalila was still drawing. She colored two last squares in solid black. Jess leaned forward. Both were close to the wall, one at the far eastern end, one at the far western. They mirrored each other. \"And these?\" he asked.\n\n\"I don't know. But something. They were marked with red on his map.\"\n\nGlain said, \"The western one is a barracks room. I haven't managed to scout the eastern one yet. It's at the end of the fields behind city hall. Too exposed. It looks like it could be a barn, though I've seen few enough farm animals. Possibly some kind of storage.\"\n\n\"Don't risk it when they're too alert,\" Thomas said, and Glain glanced at him and gave him a smile that was only half-mocking.\n\n\"Do you think I'm afraid of risk, Thomas? Have you met me?\"\n\n\"If you want the guards distracted, I can help with that,\" Morgan said. Jess didn't know what she meant until she brushed fingers over the back of his hand, and he felt a wave of weariness break over him. It didn't feel unnatural, just the accumulation of days and weeks of the terror and stress they'd been under, and before he could stop himself, he felt a yawn coming on. He clenched his jaw and suppressed it, and sent her a disbelieving look. She gave him a sweetly crooked smile. \"We're all tired. Even the guards. Hardly takes more than a brush of fingers to make them less alert. Glain, let me know when you need the distraction.\" She brushed fingers over his skin again, and he felt the weariness lift like a cloud blowing away.\n\nHe felt chilled by it, not heartened. Is she getting stronger? Askuwheteau's warning, Wolfe's predictions... none of it felt good. \"Morgan,\" he said, and took her hand. Skin to skin. He didn't think she was using any of her quintessence on him now, but if she was, he wasn't certain he'd be able to tell. He bent his head closer to hers and whispered, \"You need to be careful. Slow down.\"\n\nShe pulled back in surprise, and her eyes found his. She didn't ask what he meant, and he supposed she already knew. \"Would you?\" she asked him. \"If you knew you could help? I know you, Jess. You'd run until your heart burst in your chest if you felt it would save the rest of us. How can you ask me to do less?\"\n\n\"Because\u2014\" He wanted to say something, but this wasn't the time. Wasn't the place. \"Because we'll need all your skill at some point. Don't waste it on small things. Promise me.\"\n\nHer jaw set in a way he was coming to know well, a look he was certain her tutors in the Iron Tower had learned to their regret.\n\nKhalila blew gently on the map to dry it, and then carefully rolled it up and looked around. \"Jess,\" she said. \"Where can I hide it...?\"\n\nHe went into his cell and took a small piece of metal from his pocket. It was about the size of a coin, with filed protrusions on all sides; he'd spent half an hour crafting it in the workshop, between making wooden models of gears. It was the sort of concealable tool that all smugglers and thieves used, and he plied it to loosen the screws of his bed and slip one of the rails loose. It was hollow. He put the map inside and screwed it together again.\n\n\"Why do you get to guard it, scrubber?\" Dario asked, frowning. \"Who made you Archivist?\"\n\n\"If it's discovered, he will be the one blamed,\" Thomas said. \"He's protecting you. And all of us.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"I'm just the one with the clever little screwdriver.\" But Thomas was, of course, correct. Jess was the one with the precious Brightwell immunity. Best any trouble fall on him, because Glain was right: Burners would be looking for an excuse to call them traitors, and make examples.\n\nAt least he had a better chance of staying alive, in that case.\n\n\"So what now?\" Morgan asked.\n\n\"You should rest,\" Jess said, but she shook her head.\n\n\"I only wanted to see that you're all right. I'm going back to the doctor's house to stay with Wolfe and Santi.\"\n\n\"I'll walk with you,\" Jess said. \"The more they see us doing normal, unremarkable things, like visiting our sick comrade, the better our chances of doing something remarkable later. We should all go.\"\n\nHe wanted to see Santi for himself, and he wanted to be sure Morgan arrived safely back at Askuwheteau's house.\n\nAnd a walk in the dark with her, however brief? Irresistible.\n\nThere was a minor argument with the two guards who'd been left to secure the prison, and who didn't look too happy to have their guests leaving again. They'd only just got settled, and one was halfway through his cold, meager dinner. Diwell, Jess realized. \"You're not going anywhere,\" Diwell said flatly. \"Not until we're relieved.\"\n\n\"Which will be when?\" Khalila asked. She'd carefully washed the ink stains from her hands. She'd also made Dario mop up the drips from the cone, which might not have been fair, but it had been dead amusing. \"Our friend needs to go back to the doctor's home to tend Captain Santi.\"\n\n\"Don't care,\" Diwell said. He took a bite of stale bread and stared at them as he chewed. The look in his eyes said he personally blamed them for the quality of his meal. \"You wait.\"\n\n\"How long?\"\n\nFor answer, the other guard\u2014older, calmer\u2014simply drew his gun and rested it on his knee. He didn't even get up from his comfortable sitting position.\n\nJess let out a frustrated sigh. \"All right,\" he said. \"We wait.\"\n\nThey did, impatiently. Morgan was looking up, craning her head back, and Jess did the same. It was dizzying. The lights of Philadelphia were thin and weak, and the stars shone so brightly that they seemed to fill the sky. The night had a weight to it, and a pull.\n\n\"Beautiful,\" Morgan said.\n\nDangerous, he thought, but he didn't say it. She was right. He was just trained to look for the danger in everything. \"Morgan, I meant what I said before. Please. Be careful.\"\n\n\"I am,\" she said. \"But there are things only I can do. You know that. Wolfe\u2014\"\n\nShe broke off, as if she shouldn't have said his name, and Jess looked down at her sharply. She continued to stare at the stars, willfully ignoring the question in his eyes.\n\n\"He's got you doing something other than healing Santi,\" he said.\n\n\"That's my own business.\" She lowered her gaze to meet his, and why, why did she have to be so stubborn? But he knew the answer to that... because all her life, it had kept her alive. Kept her free.\n\n\"I'm asking you to tell me.\"\n\nIt was, he thought, because he asked that she finally said, \"I offered Master Beck something to satisfy him when I couldn't reactivate the Translation Chamber. I told him I could increase the yield of their crops.\"\n\n\"Can you do that?\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" she said. \"I didn't, but it gave me an excuse to walk through the fields by the wall and find a protected spot in the wall where I could begin to weaken it. The Obscurist who put up the wall generations ago was strong. It takes time and concentration, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Can you bring it down?\" he asked her.\n\n\"No. But I can remove the protections that keep it from melting under Greek fire and other kinds of attacks. If I succeed, I can make it vulnerable.\"\n\n\"Enough for Thomas to finish the job.\" Jess sighed. He felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. He didn't like the moving parts of this plan, didn't like the ifs and maybes. \"Morgan\u2014how hard is this for you?\"\n\n\"Not bad,\" she said, and he was almost sure she was lying. That she'd lost weight since he'd seen her in the morning. That the shadows beneath her eyes\u2014in her eyes, too\u2014were darker than they should have been. \"Jess. Wolfe's right. We need at least two ways out of here. Three, if we can manage it. But if I can help...\"\n\n\"We can find a way for you to help without destroying yourself.\"\n\nShe reached up a hand, put it on his cheek, and looked into his eyes. A serious, steady regard. \"We all take risks,\" she said. \"This one's mine.\" The coolness of her skin shocked him, and he curled his fingers around her wrist. Her pulse beat fast under the skin, but it seemed to be providing her little warmth.\n\nSo he wrapped his arms around her to share some of his own. She sighed, as if it was a major relief, and for just a few moments, there weren't greater issues, or worries, or plans.\n\nJust the two of them, under the stars.\n\nThen the guard change arrived, and Diwell and the older man gladly departed. In their place came Indira, and another man whose ancestry looked drawn from the same part of the world as Dario's. Spaniards had helped colonize the American colonies and still claimed Mexico and beyond. Made sense there'd be some here.\n\nIndira didn't look especially pleased to see them lingering outside. She directed that displeasure at Thomas. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Taking the air?\" Dario said.\n\nShe ignored him. \"I was talking to you, Schreiber.\"\n\n\"Taking the air,\" Thomas said, without a flicker of a smile. Dario laughed. \"Also wondering... what is that?\" Thomas asked and jerked his chin toward the wall on their left. Beyond it lay a luminous glow, like sunset... but sunset had already passed. For the first time, Jess realized that there was a brighter glow outside the city than inside it.\n\n\"High Garda camp,\" Indira said. \"Their encampment has grown through the years. All the modern conveniences, including chemical lights. They never let us forget they're out there. Night or day.\"\n\nThomas nodded. \"We are walking to Dr. Askuwheteau's house, to see Captain Santi.\"\n\nShe nodded back. \"Very well. Proceed.\" She and her fellow guard fell in with them.\n\nJess realized, as Thomas led them on a course that meandered closer to the wall, that he could actually hear the Library forces. A low, whispering buzz of activity, voices, movement. A sudden, bright spark of laughter. A faint brush of music. Vital, modern life going on just a few hundred feet away, while here, the Burners scrambled for day-to-day crusts of bread and rebuilt their ruined city after every attack. That, too, was an attack. A subtle kind, one that would eat at the spirits of those trapped inside.\n\n\"They never shut up,\" Indira said. She sounded resigned, but there was a tense undercurrent of anger, too. The hatred for the Library that never quite receded, in any of the Burners. And Jess was starting to understand that all too well. \"And they never give up.\"\n\n\"Can I tell you a story?\" Jess asked her. She said nothing, so he kept going. \"Burners read books, so you should appreciate this one. You know of the Serapeum of Pergamum?\" Indira nodded. Pergamum was one of the most famous of the original libraries\u2014a Greek establishment, a rival to Alexandria in the early days. \"Artemon of Pergamum was the Scholar in charge of that place after it was made a Serapeum, two thousand years ago. He stood in the doors of the building, in front of a crowd of invading Roman soldiers, and told them that his death would come before they touched a single volume. They killed him. When he fell, another librarian stepped into his place. When she was killed, another. And another. One by one, they died to keep the Romans from looting the shelves. The last was a newly christened Scholar, just arrived that day. Her name was Flavia, and she was from the kingdom of Carthage. She stood on top of the bodies of her friends and colleagues, armed with nothing but a knife. She knew she would die, but that didn't stop her.\"\n\nIndira said nothing. But she was listening.\n\n\"The Roman commander himself stepped up to that bloody doorway and commanded her to save herself. She said, 'Better I die than a single book is lost.' Flavia was just fourteen years old. She'd been a full Scholar for less than a week. Her statue stands over the entrance to the Serapeum at Pergamum, because she saved it. The Roman commander said, 'If your love of these books is so great, then they must be worth saving.' And he set his men to guard the building, while the rest of Pergamum was looted and destroyed. It was the beginning of the Library's neutrality.\"\n\n\"You must have a point to this story,\" Indira said.\n\n\"Flavia is the spirit of the Library,\" Thomas said. \"Not the Archivist. Not the Curia. You call us booklovers, and it's true. We are. And so are you, at heart. You believe in the power of them to change the world.\"\n\n\"It's a nice story. I don't believe in fairy tales. It's the Archivist and the Curia who run the Library, not your martyred saint.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"They're just running it now. If you want to change the world, you don't destroy the entire Library. You put Flavia back in charge.\"\n\n\"As I said, a nice story,\" Indira said. \"We don't tell each other stories. We fight. We take action.\"\n\n\"You huddle behind your walls here and fight a losing battle,\" Morgan said. \"And you're going to lose. What good are you really doing here?\"\n\nIndira's lip curled, and her tone was softly mocking when she said, \"Being a symbol. Like your Flavia. Are you children really intending to teach us the proper way to rebel?\"\n\n\"No. We're doing it with you or without you,\" Thomas said. He sounded certain of himself. No bluster, no pride. Just fact. \"I don't see a future here, Indira. I don't see many children, and those I see are starving and frightened. You might be surviving, but I do not think you are winning. Do you?\"\n\nOnly Thomas, Jess thought, could say that with so much understanding and compassion.\n\nIndira's lips went thin, her gaze flat, and she took a faster pace, striding forward. \"The doctor's house is this way.\"\n\nThey silently followed her. Jess had been hoping to drift closer to the wall, see the substance of it and more smugglers' marks, but she was going nowhere near it. Best not to push their luck.\n\nHe looked over at Morgan. The descending shadows gave her face smooth, strong lines and hollows. Like the sky, she was fragile and beautiful. Like this city, she could be lost, either in a firestorm or by slow, deliberate ruin, and it hurt him to know that he couldn't stop her. That he had no right to try. He silently offered her his arm, and she slipped hers into it. It felt good. It felt seductively normal, two people walking together in the beautiful, fleeting night with the stars burning overhead.\n\nHe said nothing at all during the rest of their brisk walk, and neither did she; the parklike grounds in front of city hall were largely deserted, except for a couple in the shadows locked in a passionate kiss\u2014two girls, he realized. He waited for Indira to react to that, but she simply avoided them and moved on with a businesslike stride. The Burners, for all their passionate fanaticism against the Library, had very little prejudice to spare for anything else. He was seized by a desire to pull Morgan into those leafy shadows, to kiss her in just that way, with no thought for tomorrow, no cares for plans and future troubles. He wanted to lose himself in her, while he still could.\n\nHe was a little startled when he felt Morgan pull him in that direction, into the shadows. When it was his back against the rough bark. When it was her sweet, urgent lips on his, her hands cool against his cheeks, her body pressing his.\n\nBut he didn't question it, and for a moment, nothing else mattered, until he heard Indira say sharply, \"You two! Here! Now!\"\n\nMorgan pulled back, regretfully, and Jess realized they were both trembling a little. He felt on fire, everywhere she'd touched him, especially his mouth, and he tasted her on his tongue and desperately wanted more, like a starving man given a single drop of honey.\n\n\"Morgan,\" he said. \"Please don't let Wolfe push you into doing more than you safely can.\"\n\n\"I could say the same to you,\" she told him, and smiled. \"We both learned Flavia's lesson.\"\n\nThen she slipped away.\n\nHe had no choice but to follow.\n\nThe doctor's housekeeper\u2014a tall, strict-looking woman\u2014managed to convey both disapproval and welcome at the same time as she let them in. Thomas had to duck to fit under the low doorway, and his head came perilously close to the ceiling once he was inside the small house. With all of them crowding in\u2014except Indira and the other guard, who took up positions outside\u2014the room felt crushingly tiny.\n\n\"Quiet!\" the woman whispered at them as they shifted around. \"The doctor is exhausted. He needs his rest. I'll take you to your friend.\"\n\nAs they filed after her, Jess got a better look at the place. It felt like a real home\u2014more of a home, he thought, than his own house in London had been, though he'd had a mother, a father, one living brother, and rich enough surroundings to give it all the right appearances. Jess had never felt comfortable there, in the Brightwell family residence. He'd been happier in abandoned places, so long as they were quiet and had enough light to read by.\n\nBooks represented home to him, and around every wall, the doctor's shelves were full to bulging, a haphazard organization of varied colors of binding, sizes, shapes. There was a happy disorder about it that made Jess feel something settle inside he hadn't even known was restless. Beside him, Morgan whispered, \"So many!\" in a tone that was half awe, half horror. Because these weren't Library editions, stamped with the seal and protected in the Archives. They were entirely illegal copies. Ink on paper. Vulnerable. \"I didn't know they had so many!\" The doctor's house, Jess realized, must be the unofficial library for the town. Nothing so formal as the pretentiously bound editions in Beck's office. Here was the heart of the town. The life that sustained it.\n\nThe hallway beyond was also narrowed on either side by shelves and shelves of volumes, and the smell of old paper struck Jess with memories of his father's warehouses, of curling up with a glow and an original volume in the rafters.\n\nHe'd never really been safe in his childhood, but the books... books had made him feel that way.\n\nTheir little group filed silently into the room at the end of the hall, where Santi lay unmoving. His color was some better, if still at least three shades off normal, and his exposed arm looked raw and glistening. Covered in a fresh coating of salve, Jess realized, and the skin beneath looked fragile but healthy. Already healing.\n\nBut Santi's face was damp with sweat, and there was a smell in the room that raised the hackles on the back of his neck. Sweetly rotten\u2014the lingering stench of burned flesh and infection.\n\nWolfe sat in a chair next to Santi's bedside, holding his lover's uninjured hand with his left, and an open book in his right. As Jess stepped in, Wolfe let go of Santi to remove small, square glasses from his nose and stow them in a pocket, then put the book aside after slipping a feather in for a bookmark. The doctor had found new clothes for him, sized well, but he looked disconcertingly small in them. Jess was used to seeing him in the smothering, swirling cloud of a Scholar's robe.\n\n\"Close the door,\" he said, and Dario, the last one in, did so. \"Guards?\"\n\n\"Outside the house,\" Jess said. \"We're alone, for the moment.\"\n\nWolfe nodded. He looked weary. \"Then we'd best use the time well.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Dario said, \"is he all right?\"\n\n\"He's drugged,\" Wolfe said. \"If he wasn't in an opium haze, he'd be screaming. Try not to ask the stupidly obvious, Santiago.\"\n\nGlain said, \"Is he going to lose the arm?\"\n\nIt was a blunt question, and very like her to say the thing they were all wondering. She put no inflection on it. It was just a request for information.\n\n\"It's hard to know yet,\" Wolfe said. \"The next day will be critical. The burns were... significant.\" He cleared his throat. \"Any problems?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" Khalila said. As always, she was the opposite of Glain; even that simple response had a wealth of gentleness in it. \"No need to worry about us. We're fine. All proceeds well enough.\"\n\n\"And no one has harassed you again about\u2014\" He gestured vaguely to his head. She touched her own fingers to her hijab and shook her head. \"Good. Not that I worry. I trained you to be sturdier than that.\" He blinked and looked away. Looked at anything, it seemed, but Captain Santi's still, too-pale face.\n\n\"Sir\u2014\" Jess tried to think of something to say that was useful, but his mind was as empty as a snowfield. \"Have you eaten?\"\n\nWolfe shook his head. \"Not hungry,\" he said. \"Thomas. Jess. Update.\"\n\n\"We have most of the parts for the press designed, and we'll start casting tomorrow,\" Thomas said. \"The first mirror will be ready to grind and polish in the morning. That will take most of the day. Jess will be tending to it.\"\n\n\"Oh, will I?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said, with a flash of a grin. \"You will. They watch me, because I'm large and sweaty and working with heavy tools. You'll quietly do the important work.\"\n\n\"The boring, hard, repetitive work of polishing glass?\"\n\n\"Well, yes.\"\n\nWolfe gave them a quelling look. \"And the tunnels?\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Jess said. \"I'm of the mind that the one they're trying to point us toward is far too obvious. Even Dario noticed the entrance, and no smuggler worth a damn would build a tunnel so exposed.\" Jess had been turning it over in his mind, and now he looked at Khalila and Dario. \"Any chance you can slip away to explore city hall at all?\"\n\n\"They can't,\" Morgan said. \"But I might, if I claim to be able to build them a new Translation Chamber. He'd let me explore. He'd keep me guarded, of course, but that doesn't matter. Obscurists can see more than the obvious.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said, but at the same time, Wolfe said, \"Yes,\" and when Jess paused, Wolfe kept on speaking. \"You're the only one who can make a good search of it besides Jess, and he's otherwise needed. And can you make the Translation Chamber work?\"\n\n\"Not a chance in the world,\" she said. \"Too long idle. But I did make headway on the other matter.\"\n\nJess knew what that meant, but he could see the others didn't; Khalila whispered something to Dario, who shook his head. Wolfe was trying to keep that quiet, then. And if Wolfe wanted it quiet, it was because it was dangerous to Morgan, who was far too willing to risk it.\n\n\"Then Morgan will look for any sign of tunnels leading into the city hall building\u2014and I think Brightwell is right: it would be the most secure place for smugglers to bring goods, and for any communications to take place between Beck and those from outside.\"\n\n\"I should be the one to do it,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Mirror,\" Thomas reminded him. \"And Beck will be receiving reports of where each of us is, what we are doing. Just let her do the job.\"\n\n\"I'll be fine,\" Morgan said quietly. Her fingers brushed his, very lightly. \"I've survived the Iron Tower. Willinger Beck doesn't frighten me.\"\n\n\"Still. Don't assume you're safe at any time.\" Wolfe's smile looked thin, and grim. \"I don't assume we're safe here, either.\"\n\n\"He hasn't given you reason to think...\"\n\n\"The doctor's done his best,\" Wolfe said, and swept a dismissive hand at best. \"It isn't much. Without Morgan, we'd have lost Nic. Infection carries away many burned with Greek fire, even with modern Medica help. But whatever the doctor's intentions, he can't protect us from Beck.\"\n\nAnd Santi had never been as vulnerable as he was right now, Jess thought. Wolfe referred to us, but he meant Santi, really. He meant that he would not be separated from him as long as Santi couldn't defend himself.\n\nMorgan had been studying Santi closely, and now she said, quietly, \"His fever's still high. I can concentrate the medications in his bloodstream a little more.\" With that, her fingers moved down a little, to brush the tattoo inked high on Santi's biceps: a lion that snarled in startlingly lifelike blue ink, as if it might leap out of the skin to defend the man. Tattoos were a High Garda tradition. Glain already had three. Jess's first was of a closed book on his chest, over his heart. He felt it described him best.\n\nHe felt sick now that he was watching Morgan expend more energy, but he knew he couldn't stop her if he tried.\n\n\"The captain will be all right,\" Jess said, which was an empty promise, and he knew it was a mistake the moment he said it.\n\nWolfe's gaze snapped to him with a blazing fury, and he said through gritted teeth, \"Don't feed me platitudes. I know how bad it is. He protected me. He didn't hesitate, the second he knew we'd been hit with Greek fire. He pushed me down and took the burns for me.\"\n\nThat, Jess thought, was pure Santi. And here was Wolfe, with that knowledge shimmering like dull flames in his eyes. Hating himself for the sacrifice.\n\n\"He always protects you,\" Jess said. \"He always will. You know that.\"\n\nWolfe blinked and looked away, toward his lover's sleeping face. He reached out and put a gentle hand on Santi's sweating brow. \"I know. But I'm perfectly free to give him his Christian hell for it, too.\"\n\nMorgan's face had drawn tense with effort and worry, and Jess could see a faint shimmer at the tips of her fingers where she touched Santi's shoulder. She breathed deep and closed her eyes and stood motionless\u2014gone, in a sense. Lost to the rest of them until she came back of her own will.\n\n\"Leave her with us,\" Wolfe said. He was watching Jess now, as if he knew exactly what Jess was thinking. \"I'll make sure she doesn't do too much, and she can have my bed there in the corner. I won't sleep anyway.\"\n\n\"Do you want us to stay?\" Khalila asked him. \"Would it help?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"Go,\" he said. \"I need you all alert and strong. We're not even beginning our struggles yet.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" Dario said quietly\u2014 Dario, of all of them, suddenly the sensible one. He tapped Thomas on the arm. \"Scholar? Is there anything else we can do?\"\n\n\"Pray,\" Wolfe said. \"You can pray.\"\n\nJess was on his way to join the others when his steps slowed. The comfort of these cluttered shelves in the hallway... he couldn't quite understand it, but he couldn't deny it. He needed comfort just now, and he stopped to take in a deep breath of the smell of old paper, leather, books. A talisman against that fearful sickroom smell.\n\nA volume caught his eye, and he pulled it out to look. The dull red leather was stamped Rose Red, Sea Blue. It was, he gathered from skimming the book, a novel... one about lovers separated by distance, each pining for the other but thinking the other had abandoned them. The man had been abducted out to sea, to serve on a pirate ship. The woman, thinking herself betrayed, had married another and regretted it. A needlessly dramatic story, no doubt overwritten and dripping with breathless prose, but there was something about it that offered an escape.\n\n\"Take it,\" a sleepy voice said. Jess nearly dropped the book, but his respect for the written word kept his grip firm as he spun around to find the tall, thin doctor standing there, yawning. His hair was out of the braid, spreading in a fine black silk sheet over his shoulders. He was wearing a loose shirt ghosted with old stains, and a pair of trousers that had seen far better decades. Feet thrust into rough leather sandals that looked painful.\n\n\"I thought you were asleep, sir.\"\n\n\"I'm not a sir. My people don't have royalty. And I never sleep long. Too much to do.\" The doctor plucked another book from the shelves\u2014a small green one\u2014and smiled at it like an old friend. \"You're shocked by my collection?\"\n\n\"Delighted,\" Jess said. \"I think all houses should be stuffed with books. It makes them\u2014\"\n\n\"Homes?\" the doctor finished. \"You are quite the heretic, for someone in a Library uniform.\"\n\n\"Guilty.\"\n\n\"Then take the book. Read it. If it pleases you, keep it. I love for them to find good homes.\" The doctor studied him with a sharpness at odds with the yawns. \"Did that Obscurist girl tell you that Beck asked her to join us?\"\n\n\"What?\" Jess's fingers tightened on the cover of the book.\n\n\"He offered her sanctuary here. Freedom, and her own home. A life without fear of being locked into a collar. They're kept as little better than slaves in that tower, you know. No will of their own\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what the Library does to Obscurists,\" Jess cut in, and the edge in his voice was too sharp. \"They'll lock her up, make her work the rest of her life keeping the Archivist Magister and his cronies in power, and breed her like a prize cow\u2014\" He stopped, because that crack in the bedrock of his soul had widened with an almost audible snap. \"And I'm supposed to believe that the Burners will treat her better? Beck isn't a man who offers things from pure goodness. What kind of slavery will she have here, if he keeps her?\"\n\nThe doctor watched him in silence, then said, \"Why do you think I warned you? The girl deserves better.\"\n\nJess gripped the book tightly, and left.\n\nThe next day, Jess drowned himself in work. Morgan hadn't come back to her bed in their prison/guesthouse, and it hurt like he'd taken a crippling wound. He spoke little at the workshop, methodically following Thomas's instructions as he crafted more gears. Thomas had removed the stone vessel from the forge first thing, while Diwell fetched his meager breakfast, and quickly poured the thick, honey-colored liquid glass into a set of small frames they'd made ready the night before. Jess set it to cool behind some concealing junk. They both made themselves industrious and busy, and Diwell quickly got bored and took to his chair.\n\nIt was hours before the glass had cooled and hardened. Once it had, Jess nodded to Thomas, who took to heating metal and beating it with hammers, a spectacular show of strength and noise, while Jess took up the sandpaper he'd made earlier and began to polish the small mirrors, with a box of gears ready to pull over to conceal his work if needed. Thomas had explained the process to him and warned him it was exhausting and hard, and he was right: polishing, turning, polishing, turning, always in precise patterns. It made Jess's body ache in ways he'd never known it could. But he kept at it. When Diwell paid attention to him, he worked on cast-metal gears and sanded them to perfection; as soon as the man's attention moved on, it was back to the mirrors.\n\nFor hours, until the glasses were uniform in size, and he'd put in the precisely measured curves that Thomas had asked. Then it was more polishing, this time with a much softer-grit cloth. More hours. More grinding pain in his arms and shoulders, neck and chest.\n\nThomas finally called a halt by shoving a pitcher of water under his nose\u2014said nose was dripping with sweat, Jess realized. And outside the barred windows of the workshop, the day had gone well into sunset.\n\n\"Drink,\" Thomas ordered, and Jess did. The sweet relief of cool water on his parched throat made him realize that he ached in every muscle, and he sank down on a wobbly bench that gave an alarming creak as Thomas sat next to him. Jess gulped half the container and handed it back. Thomas finished it off and put the pewter down. Diwell was snoring in the corner. Loudly.\n\nJess passed over the mirrors. Six of them laid out on a soft piece of cloth on the tray. \"Will they work?\" he asked.\n\n\"They should,\" Thomas said quietly. He examined them closely and nodded. \"We won't know until it's all mounted. But I think yes. I will put everything together, but only when we're ready.\"\n\n\"We still don't know if it will even work.\"\n\n\"No,\" Thomas said. He didn't seem worried. Such an engineer. \"But that's why we have different plans on how we exit. Yes?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" Jess leaned back against the dirty, splinter-prone wall and closed his eyes. \"What about the press?\"\n\n\"I'll have the last pieces cast tomorrow,\" he said. \"Another day to put it together. Then we can set the timing as we like, to let Beck see the fruits of our labor.\"\n\n\"How fast is Santi healing?\"\n\nThomas shook his head. Not fast enough. But they had to keep Beck's attention, and there was only one way to do that: show him the goods.\n\nJess wiped a dirty cloth over his face. It probably did nothing but spread around the dirt and grime, but at least it dried his sweat a little. \"Have you done the pieces of type yet?\"\n\n\"Not yet. What language should we start with, do you think? English or Greek?\"\n\n\"Both,\" Jess said. \"We want to impress them.\"\n\n\"Casting will take a day. Then it's just assembly.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"Then we show him what he wants to see,\" Thomas said, and smiled. It was not the same innocent smile he'd had before the cells, before the torments. This one was a cold, confident thing, and it made Jess worry when he saw it. It also made him think, They should be afraid.\n\nJess certainly was, for a moment.\n\nThen the moment passed, and that unsettling smile warmed and shifted, and Thomas stood up. \"Come on,\" he said, and took up the cloth that Jess had used to wipe his sweaty face. He used it to scrub away the charcoal-sketched plans from the wall. \"There must be something left to eat. Perhaps Morgan will be back to tell us good news. And if not, you have a book to read and keep your mind off your troubles.\"\n\nTrue. The promise of food, Morgan, and words on paper made Jess shake off the last of his weariness as he followed Thomas out of the workshop. They had to wake up Diwell on the way out, and he seemed chagrined about it, but grateful they didn't take the opportunity to lock him in.\n\nIt was just after sunset, and Jess saw Khalila in the park across the way; Dario was with her, and she had a small prayer rug that one of the other Muslims in the town must have lent her. She unrolled it on the grass and began her evening prayers. Dario stood silent watch, far enough away that he wasn't a distraction. He nodded to Jess and Thomas as they passed.\n\nMorgan's was the first face he saw inside the prison walls. She looked as worn and tired as he felt, but she smiled as she set a few pieces of dried fruit and an entirely too small chunk of bread and cheese out. \"The doctor sent this,\" she said. \"You two look like you can use the first choice.\"\n\n\"You're a kind girl, Morgan,\" Thomas said, and raised his dirty hands to wiggle his fingers. \"But we'd better wash first, I think. Charcoal and metal shavings make poor spices.\" He studied her carefully, seeing the same things Jess had, most likely, and asked the question they both were afraid to pose. \"How is he?\"\n\n\"Better,\" she said. \"His fever is down, and the skin is healing faster. The infection's gone. He'll be scarred, and it'll be another couple of days before he's strong enough to join us, but he'll be all right.\"\n\nThomas closed his eyes. \"Thank God. I prayed, as the Scholar asked.\"\n\nJess had, too. He normally wasn't much for it, but he'd quietly whispered one himself, last night in the darkness. It seemed to have done some good. \"Now the problem is to keep him down until he's really healed.\"\n\nA stray breeze stirred Morgan's hair and exposed a vulnerable patch of skin just below her ear, where the skin curved sweetly down toward her neck. Jess had kissed that place so recently the memory of it burned. \"Well, you know the captain. As soon as he can get up, he will. Wolfe's finally sleeping. He refused to lie down until Santi woke up. His devotion is amazing, though I'm sure he doesn't want anyone to notice. Men. Always so worried about what others think.\"\n\nMorgan smiled suddenly, looking directly at Jess, and his mind emptied. She gave him what he was almost certain was a wink, so quick he might have imagined it, and then she turned away to talk to Glain.\n\nJess flinched as Thomas clapped a huge, strong arm over his shoulders. \"That girl,\" Thomas said, \"is going to be very good for someone. I hope it's you.\"\n\n\"Oh, get off me, Mountain,\" Jess groused, but he wasn't angry. He was, in fact, feeling better. \"Let's find a bucket and wash.\"\n\n\"And eat.\"\n\n\"If you want to call it that.\"\n\nOnce they'd washed and taken a meager meal, Jess slipped into Morgan's cell. She was sitting cross-legged on her mattress, and it pleased something deep inside to see that she, too, had chosen a book from Dr. Askuwheteau's vast collection. Hers was a biography. She smiled when she saw him, and closed her book.\n\n\"Here.\" He pulled out a blue feather he'd plucked from the grass outside. It was a rare piece of beauty in the dull rust and brown of Philadelphia\u2014bent, but unbroken. The moment he'd spotted it on the walk back, he'd known it was meant for her. \"I saw Wolfe using one as a bookmark. It seems appropriate.\"\n\nThe way her tired face lit up in joy felt like standing in sunshine, dazzling and warming. \"Thank you.\" He hated to see the smile go thinner, more tentative. She moved over, he slid in place beside her, and she lifted the book to show it to him. \"Askuwheteau said he gave you a book, too.\"\n\n\"Fiction,\" Jess said. He watched her twirl the small blue feather idly and brush it against her cheek. He imagined the softness of her skin under his fingers and quickly looked away to put a stop to that. Not the time. He had more serious things to discuss. \"You didn't tell me Beck made you an offer to stay.\"\n\n\"He made all of us that offer.\"\n\n\"Not like he made to you,\" Jess said. \"Your own home? Askuwheteau told me.\"\n\nShe didn't quite meet his eyes. She concentrated on twirling the feather in her fingers. \"Are you afraid that I'll take it?\" He didn't answer. She risked a glance at him, and he saw half circles like bruises under her eyes. Darker today than yesterday. \"I won't. Even though the idea of a real home is appealing.\"\n\n\"Nothing's safe here.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"Did you find anything inside city hall? Any sign of tunnels?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I'd hoped\u2014but if there's anything there, I couldn't see it. Tell me how you and Thomas are doing.\"\n\n\"We're a day or two from being ready with our work. But we need that tunnel.\"\n\n\"The wall is almost ready,\" Morgan said. \"I spent hours at it today.\" She hesitated, on the verge of saying something; he saw doubt in her eyes.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"It isn't.\"\n\n\"It's just that\u2014\" She fell silent, twirling the feather in her fingers. \"It's hard, what I'm doing. Exhausting, I admit that. And today it felt... different. I couldn't concentrate as well, toward the end.\"\n\n\"That's because you're running yourself too hard,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Says the pot to the kettle. But it has to be ready.\"\n\nHe took her hand and held it. \"Morgan. I don't have a smuggling tunnel where I can leave a message out to my family. I can't communicate with anyone outside these walls. There are High Garda camped out there. Even if you do get the wall weakened, even if Thomas's mad invention works, what then? We walk into the arms of the Library?\"\n\n\"You know, you're both depressing me,\" said a new voice from the door of the cell. Glain stepped in and leaned against the bars. \"Sorry. Hard to have a private conversation in here, since these walls are not just paper-thin, but actual paper.\" She was right. The thin pages torn from Blanks that Beck had given them to make their cells into proper rooms weren't soundproofing. Weren't even much of a modesty screen. \"What are we weeping about now?\"\n\n\"No way to contact anyone outside these walls,\" Jess said. \"So there's no point in escape, if we just die out there rather than in here.\"\n\n\"It's a fair point,\" Glain said. \"We can pass for Scholars and soldiers.\"\n\n\"The Scholar robes are ashes,\" Morgan pointed out. \"And I'd expect the Archivist would have our likenesses in every Codex by now.\"\n\n\"What about your family?\" Glain asked Jess. \"Would they help?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"Honestly? I don't know. Beck was going to write to my da, but he hasn't said anything yet about a reply.\"\n\n\"But your family knows we're here.\"\n\n\"Presumably, if Beck kept his word.\"\n\nGlain sank down into a comfortable, cross-legged position on the floor. \"Then you just need a way to talk to them secretly, right?\"\n\nHe gave her an exasperated look. \"That's what I was saying.\"\n\n\"Thick,\" she said, and shook her head. \"What exactly do you think is pasted up behind me?\"\n\nShe tapped the papers fixed to the bars of Morgan's cell. Jess glanced at them, then her, and lifted his shoulders. \"Paper?\"\n\nGlain plucked a sheet free. Then another. Then another. She gathered up a handful and gave them to Morgan. \"Now what do you have?\"\n\nMorgan's turn to shrug this time. \"I don't understand what you're getting at, Glain.\"\n\n\"How exactly does a Codex work?\"\n\nIt was a ridiculous question on the face of it, but Jess and Morgan put it together at the same jolting moment. Jess looked at her. Morgan stared back. \"A script written by an Obscurist,\" Jess said.\n\n\"In the binding!\" Morgan finished. \"My God, why didn't I think of it?\"\n\n\"Because you're tired, and I'm smarter than you think,\" Glain said. \"We can stitch together the pages; I'll sacrifice my extra shirt for the thread, if Thomas can forge us a decently thick needle. For the binding...\"\n\n\"Glain,\" Jess said.\n\nShe ignored him, focused entirely on Morgan. \"For the binding, we can use the tops of my boots. Good leather. I remember the Turks once destroyed a library for the leather covers to make marching shoes for their troops. Seems fitting to do the opposite.\"\n\n\"Glain!\" Jess nearly shouted it, and both of them looked at him with identical expressions of surprise and annoyance. \"No.\"\n\n\"Why not? It's perfect.\" Glain swung her look to Morgan, who nodded. Of course she would, Jess thought. He felt sick.\n\n\"I can write a touchstone script to narrow the communication, one to one. The Library won't be able to see it.\"\n\n\"And we can send a message to your brother,\" Glain said to Jess. Her eyebrows rose. \"Problem solved, and why are you looking at me like I killed your sainted grandmother?\"\n\nHe fought not to throw Glain out of the cell and slam the door behind her. \"Morgan's done too much already.\"\n\n\"Jess.\" Morgan put her hand on his. \"No one else can do this. Stop. Stop trying to protect me.\"\n\n\"Fine, then we'll do it in the morning,\" Glain said. She pulled out a set of faded, much-bent playing cards. \"That gives you the entire night to rest up. Jess? Care for a game?\"\n\n\"A game?\" Jess repeated. He'd gone from stunned to furious\u2014with Morgan, for volunteering again to overextend herself, with Glain, who didn't seem to understand the point at all. \"No. I don't.\" He cast a look at Morgan that begged for her to change her mind, to understand that she was destroying herself, but she held his gaze without flinching. All he could see were the dark circles beneath her eyes. The slight tremble in her hands.\n\nHe was right; she'd lost weight these past few days. If you burn, you'll burn fast. Askuwheteau's words to her. Was she already on fire, somewhere deep inside? How long before she failed, or something worse happened?\n\n\"Jess, please,\" Morgan said to him. \"Please stay.\"\n\nI'm not going to watch you burn, he thought, and went to his cell. He wrapped himself in blankets on his cot as the others sat down to play. All of them. Even Thomas.\n\nHe'd never felt exiled from their circle of friendship before, but it made him remember that if they succeeded, if his brother came through, if their plans worked, if they escaped from Philadelphia... then there was far worse to come. And he, Dario, and Morgan would have to lie to everyone to get it done.\n\nThis is what it will feel like.\n\nMaybe he needed to get used to it."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt on the subject of theories of printing from a work by Scholar Plato, interdicted and sent to the Black Archives. Restricted to the eyes of the Archivist Magister:\n\n\u2002...familiar with the common practice of inscribing notes upon tablets of soft wax, which it seems childishly simple to reproduce upon a fabric surface. A simple application of dye upon the tablet produces, when impressed upon fabric, a reverse of the letters inscribed upon the tablet. I have seen children playing at such games, pressing molds into the mud to make objects of great delight. Surely there is therefore a way to inscribe such letters in reverse, and when dyed and impressed upon the fabric, to create a record that may survive, rather than a tablet that is wiped and reused daily. We copy information to scrolls, yes, but this is still subject to error, and each copy must be made with time and skill.\n\n\u2002We must find a way to save for later generations the knowledge so laboriously written and rewritten. We must find a way to easily and quickly copy, for the more accurate reproductions we make, the better our chances of such knowledge surviving our lifetimes. Scrolls are prone to mold, to ruination by water and fire, by storms... and so are the lives of men.\n\n\u2002Our words must live after us, if we are to lift ourselves up."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "Glain woke Jess screamingly early, when dawn was still just an idea on the horizon. She put a finger to her lips and beckoned him up, past the still-sleeping Thomas, and then out. The guards stationed there came to alert, but Glain said, \"We're not going anywhere. Just over here, to the corner.\"\n\nThe woman on duty nodded and went back to sewing up a cut in a piece of cloth, but she was no fool; all her attention stayed on the two of them as they walked over a little distance.\n\n\"If this is about last night\u2014,\" he said, but she cut him off with an impatient gesture.\n\n\"There. Look.\" Glain crossed her arms as she stared at the repaired but clearly melted and misshapen corner.\n\n\"There, where? What am I supposed to be seeing?\"\n\nShe didn't bother to answer, only gave him a cool side eye that he knew all too well from their time in training. She expected him to work it out, so he tried, staring until his eyes ached.\n\nAnd then he got it. \"That's... not right.\"\n\nShe nodded, clearly pleased she didn't have to bang his head into the melted wall to make him recognize the truth. \"Why not?\"\n\n\"Is this rhetoric class? Who died and made you Scholar Wolfe?\"\n\n\"Shut up and answer the question. If you can.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Jess said. \"This damage isn't the same. If the Library had launched a bomb from beyond the walls that landed here, the whole prison should have gone up, not just this one corner.\" And, he thought with a chill, that would have killed everyone inside. It had been a miracle only Santi was badly hurt, but he'd been so grateful for the miracle, he hadn't really thought about anything else.\n\nGlain handed him a sharp-edged piece of age-clouded glass. When he reached for it, she said, \"I took it from the rubble. Careful. There's still residue.\" She transferred it to him, and he held it by one small corner, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed.\n\nThe odor was unmistakable, an oily blend of sweet and rotten. He coughed it out and handed it back, and Glain slipped it into a folded piece of cloth that she concealed in a pocket of those truly unfashionable trousers she'd acquired. \"Greek fire,\" he confirmed. \"But the glass is too thin to have been thrown by any ballista.\"\n\n\"Exactly. It was a bottle of the stuff, tossed by hand from...\" Glain measured off paces, moving back as she stared at the damage. Nobody, Jess realized, seemed to be paying attention to them, but he was suddenly very aware of what Glain was saying. \"About here.\"\n\nShe exchanged a look with him, and he understood her meaning perfectly. Someone had stood within these walls and tossed that bottle. Someone inside Philadelphia had tried to kill them. It hadn't been a ballista on the other side of the wall with blind lucky aim. They'd been targeted, very precisely.\n\nJess was too angry to speak, so he just nodded, stuck his hands in his pockets\u2014a habit he had, when thinking\u2014and rocked on his heels. \"Do you think that was done on Beck's orders? Or by someone acting on impulse against us?\"\n\nShe sighed, as if he were utterly hopeless. \"Jess. Grow a brain. That glass for the bomb must have been at least, oh, this large\u2014\" She described it with her hands, and Jess nodded to accept the estimate. \"Glass is precious here. So is Greek fire. So who has those things freely available?\"\n\n\"Beck.\"\n\n\"And it would have been filled with liquid. Heavy, yes? Someone came prepared. And I don't think he'd have done it without authorization.\"\n\n\"Beck knew a Library bombardment would come, sooner or later. He must have, if he had someone waiting with the Greek fire.\" He mimed pitching an imaginary bottle at the prison's roof and, in his mind's eye, saw it tumble and shatter on the corner... not in the center of the roof, where it would have done its worst. \"Which is why the angle of impact is all wrong for a bombardment bomb. But he knew the Library would be attacking and trusted that to cover his tracks. Trusted no one would look closer.\"\n\n\"You seem proud to have figured it out. That's mildly charming,\" Glain said. \"I don't suppose Wolfe would have given you full credit, so I won't, either. But yes. This was planned, cold-blooded attempted murder.\"\n\n\"Do you think they were specifically after Wolfe? Or Santi? Or both?\"\n\n\"I don't think Beck much cared,\" she said. \"He thinks that without them, we'll be easier to manipulate. He's probably bloody disappointed that it only resulted in a wounding, which means he could try again. We need Wolfe and Santi back with us. Now.\" She hesitated, which wasn't like her. \"Let's talk about Morgan. Specifically, that you're trying to hold her back.\"\n\n\"Not funny, Glain.\"\n\n\"Stop thinking like a lovestruck idiot; she's a weapon. She can build us a channel to communicate with your brother. Let her do the job she needs to do, all right?\"\n\nHe turned toward her. Hands out of his pockets, body set as if he expected her to attack. He saw her shift to match it. It was probably unconscious. Probably. \"I'm not willing to break her to serve the rest of us. We do that, we're no better than the Archivist.\"\n\nGlain's expression didn't shift. It was calm and set and confident. \"Flavia chose to pick up the knife.\"\n\n\"Flavia stood on the corpses of everyone who died first trying to protect her. So think about that a moment.\" His tone had gone so hard, cold, and final that he scarcely believed it was his.\n\n\"Flavia was a child,\" Glain said. \"And you don't have a moral right to treat Morgan as one!\"\n\nIt was a poisonous argument, done in whispers, but fierce enough to cut. Jess didn't acknowledge her point. He was already walking away, with long, angry strides\u2014not to the prison, but toward the workshop. As he passed her, the female guard stood and walked after him, tucking away the cloth and needles. When he reached the door, he fumbled for his copy of the key. His fingers felt thick and clumsy, but he finally managed. He was angry, but he knew it was for all the wrong reasons\u2014because he was frightened by what Glain had uncovered, by the fact that Beck was more than willing to kill them for his own purposes. And because she was right about Morgan. Of course she was.\n\nHe just didn't want to face it.\n\nWhen he looked back, Glain had gone inside the prison. Good. He didn't think he could stomach being next to her another moment. He felt betrayed, and stupid for feeling it. The fact that he was wrong was going to haunt him. Is there no way that this ends well for Morgan? She was being used, either by the Library, which at least took utmost care of her, or by him and the rest of her friends, who didn't.\n\nHe hated that he couldn't protect her. That, in truth, he didn't have the right.\n\nSo he went into the workshop, stripped off his shirt, stoked the fire, and began forging letters for the press instead.\n\nJess threw himself into the work. Nothing else to do, and it was pure physical labor, blanking his mind and erasing the worry that was never far away now. He hardly noticed time passing. Thomas joined him, and they didn't speak\u2014well, Thomas tried, but Jess was in no mood for it.\n\nIt wasn't until half the day was gone before he asked, \"Is Morgan making the Codex?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said. \"I made a needle for her earlier. Glain cut the leather for the binding from her boots. It's a good idea\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\"Morgan requires a drop of Brightwell blood to link it to Brendan.\"\n\n\"I'm damn well not doing it.\"\n\n\"Jess,\" Thomas said. \"Look at yourself. Your fingers sliced open getting the glass for us. Burns and bruises on you. You've gone to skin and bones because you're giving me your food, and don't think I haven't noticed. We all have to risk things. All of us. Together.\"\n\nIt's different, Jess wanted to insist, but he couldn't. It sounded hollow, and Thomas, of all people, knew him too well. So he went back to work and tried not to think.\n\nHe was so focused that he nearly missed the arrival of their visitor.\n\n\"Hard at work, I see,\" said a voice from the door of the workshop, and Jess, sweating from the constant pulse of heat from the forge, wiped perspiration from his face, blinked to focus.\n\nCaptain Santi stood in the doorway. Well, stood was an exaggeration. He leaned both on the wooden frame and on Scholar Wolfe's shoulder, and without both of those supports he likely wouldn't have stayed upright for long.\n\nHe looked better, though. His arm had been bound up in a sling, and even at this distance, he smelled quite oddly of honey.\n\nJess helped Wolfe ease Santi down onto the only bench. \"Oh, stop hovering like I'm broken,\" Santi snapped; there was a tight flush to his cheeks from the effort spent making the walk. \"I've taken worse than this.\"\n\n\"Liar,\" Wolfe said, but briskly, as a statement of fact rather than an accusation. \"I know all your glorious war wounds. You've never been burned this badly.\"\n\n\"And I've never had honey and moldy bread smeared on my skin, either. It's a week for new things.\" Santi turned his gaze to Jess. \"So. Progress?\"\n\n\"We're almost done,\" Thomas said as he left the glow of the forge; he wore a makeshift apron made from an old quilt, and mittens of the same material, and an eye covering he'd made from scavenged pieces of leftover broken glass and bits of cloth. He was glowing with sweat, hair glued tight to his head with it, and his grin looked exultant as he stripped off the extra layers. \"Captain. I'm so glad to see you better!\"\n\nSanti nodded, acknowledging the good wishes but clearly not wanting to discuss them. \"You realize that once you build this for Beck, he could easily reverse engineer it?\"\n\n\"Yes, we've taken all that into account,\" Thomas said. \"And it won't even be our fault, really.\"\n\nSanti's smile started small, then grew. \"You two,\" he said, and it sounded like affection. \"You have an alarming talent for destruction.\"\n\n\"Learned from the best,\" Jess said, and grinned back. His whole body ached, but he couldn't deny that seeing Santi alive and relatively well had done wonders for his spirits.\n\nHe also didn't miss the worry that Wolfe was trying hard to conceal. As usual, Captain Santi was pushing himself. And Wolfe was trying to hold him back, for his own good. That sounds familiar.\n\nThomas wiped sweat and smoke from his face with a rag that was already well sooted. He looked, Jess thought, like the ancient Greek god Hephaestus, stripped to a bare, ash-streaked chest, with a heavy hammer in his hand.\n\n\"Too bad you can't demonstrate it for me,\" Santi said. \"I'd have liked to see it print something.\"\n\n\"I'd have thought Scholar Wolfe would have demonstrated the one he built to you...?\" Thomas asked.\n\n\"I was away when he was working on it,\" Santi said. \"Training a new High Garda company in Belgium. I knew he had an important project, but not the specifics.\"\n\n\"That ignorance saved your life,\" Wolfe said. \"They'd have killed you if you'd ever laid eyes on it.\"\n\n\"Most likely,\" Santi replied mildly. \"When I returned from my assignment I found Chris gone, with all his work. You know the rest.\"\n\nThe rest: imprisonment, torture, erasure from the records of the Library\u2014for a Scholar of Wolfe's caliber, it was the assassination of immortality, the burning of a life's work, and for what? For being brilliant. For being exactly what the Library stood for in the first place. It gave Jess a hot ache in the back of his chest, like an unvoiced shout. Such a waste. It was all such a waste.\n\nHe still couldn't come to terms with the harsh, awful fact that it had been going on this way for hundreds of years. The Archivists, generation after generation, eliminating anyone who threatened their hold on power\u2014like Thomas, and Wolfe. Two examples that a thousand years earlier, the Library would have elevated and celebrated.\n\nSanti's calm acceptance of that left Jess chilled, even in the heat of the forge.\n\n\"When will you be ready to demonstrate?\" Wolfe asked. Thomas exchanged a quick look with Jess and raised his eyebrows.\n\n\"I don't know. Two more days?\"\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" Wolfe said. \"I'd rather you soothe Master Beck's anxiety sooner than later. The more nervous he becomes, the more he'll want to grandstand for his people.\" That was all true, but Jess thought there was the tiniest hint in Wolfe's expression, in the way he avoided meeting Jess's eyes, that it was more than that. Wolfe was playing his own game. Again.\n\n\"We can manage it for tomorrow,\" Thomas said. \"If you're sure of the timing.\"\n\n\"He's sure,\" Santi said, and gave them a small, determined nod. \"I'd best go get some rest now.\"\n\nThey were speaking around the subject, for the benefit of the female guard sitting in the corner. She was, unlike Diwell, all too alert.\n\n\"Yes,\" Wolfe said. \"Come, Nic. We'll leave them to work.\"\n\nThomas slid his goggles back on and silently returned to the forge, but Jess watched in silence as Wolfe helped Santi up. The captain's weakness was alarming. Tomorrow's too soon. But there were reasons that Wolfe wanted the timeline to be set just this way, and Jess felt the sick foreboding inside spiral up into real dread.\n\nTomorrow, everything was going to change.\n\nThey got nothing at all for dinner that night. The guards got nothing either, and said\u2014with barely concealed anger\u2014that as a precaution against inclement weather, rations were being cut. For the present, only the ill, elderly, and very young were to be fed.\n\nIt was horribly late when Jess was able to stagger, half-hobbled, back to his bed, but the letters had been carved, the molds made, and the metal poured. Now they had two long, neat rows of letters and numbers in English and in Greek, and his muscles felt as if they were coated in Greek fire. He was unconscious and uncaring for four hours before something\u2014he wasn't quite sure what\u2014brought him groggily back to the world. When he tried to sit up, the muscles that had been hot and painfully tight had hardened into poured concrete, and moving seemed like a terrible idea.\n\nMorgan stood looking down at him, and as he got enough awareness to identify her, he also saw the stark exhaustion on her face. She sank down to a sitting position when he didn't get up, and leaned against the frame of the bed.\n\n\"God,\" he whispered, and sat up. \"What's happened?\"\n\n\"Don't,\" she whispered back. \"Please.\" Her hands were shaking, even as they rested in her lap. He saw tears glisten faintly in her eyes. It was blushing dawn outside, and the new light should have been kind to her, but it only made her look more broken. \"It had to be done. It had to be. But the cost, oh, Jess\u2014\"\n\n\"Morgan, what did you do?\" She just shook her head, and he knew she wouldn't answer. Not now. She shivered all over, a convulsive movement that worried him even more. \"Have you even been to bed?\" he demanded. Her skin felt very cold. Icy. \"You're freezing. Come here.\"\n\n\"I need you to finish the Codex with me. We have no more time. Please.\"\n\n\"After you're warm,\" he said, and moved the blanket. \"Morgan, please. Get in.\"\n\nShe hesitated, but then she slipped in beside him. He moved over to give her the room, and she rolled toward him as he adjusted the blankets over her shivering body. \"This feels good,\" she told him quietly. \"I'm just so cold.\"\n\nHe put his arms around her and pulled her close\u2014not to kiss, just to hold, and felt the shuddering sigh of relief that came out of her. He could feel bones beneath her skin. She was just too thin. Whatever she was doing, whatever it was that had alarmed her so much... it was washing her away, like sand in water.\n\nShe was holding something in one hand, and it was trapped between their bodies. He recognized the shape: a book. The Codex she'd sewn together, with her Obscurist's script written and bound inside it. Waiting for the burst of power she'd give it to bring it to life.\n\n\"Morgan, you're too weak to do this. You need to rest. We'll find another way,\" he told her. \"I'm not going to watch you set yourself on fire for us.\" He did the only thing he could think of: he kissed her, and tried to tell her without words how much she meant to him.\n\nHis existence narrowed to the taste of her mouth, the silky softness of her lips, the gentle tension of her hands on his back. The dark added to her mystery as he slid his palm over her arm, her waist, her hip, to draw her in the shadows. In this predawn silent world, she was the only thing real to him just now\u2014every sense devoted to memorizing the scent of her, the taste, the touch. The sigh of her quiet breath against his skin. Taking away sight made every other sense come alive to him, and it felt like a dangerous kind of magic.\n\nAnd then she broke free of the kiss and whispered, \"I'm sorry, but there's no choice,\" and then he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his arm. A red starburst of sensation, and then a glow was forming around Morgan's hands, and in it he saw she had a thick needle in her hand, and from it hung a single drop of his blood.\n\nHe watched the crimson drop tremble there in the dawning golden glow of her quintessence, and then it fell through the light, flaring white as it passed. It landed on a page of the book she'd opened to catch it. It splashed into a vivid red blotch and absorbed without a trace into the paper.\n\nHe was close enough to feel the cost of what she did. Her whole body shuddered. The little warmth she'd managed to absorb from him rushed out, as if she'd been plunged into icy waters, and her eyes... her eyes went dead for a moment, as distant as those of a corpse floating beneath the waves. Then she blinked and dragged herself back, and the golden glimmer around her hand died... but not before he saw black threads woven into the glow, pulsing like veins. Like rot.\n\n\"Here,\" she whispered, and put her head wearily on his chest. \"Take it. Use it. There's no more time, Jess. Please. You have to get us help, and we must get out of here.\"\n\nThe raw desperation in her voice hurt. He drew in a breath and held her close for a second before he sat up and stepped out of bed, and made sure that she was wrapped as warmly as he could manage. She seemed small, lying in his bed. Broken and vulnerable.\n\nDespite the urgency, he had to limp a step before the too-stressed muscles unclenched in his legs enough to allow him to walk. Thomas wasn't in his bed after all; he must have gotten restless in the night and slipped out to the forge. He was probably still there, oblivious to the time and his own exhaustion. This close to the completion of a project, he'd be driven to finish it. No matter what.\n\nJess sat on Thomas's bunk, cleared his mind, and focused on his brother, his almost-mirror twin, and opened the book. He realized as he did that he had nothing to write with... but Morgan had thought of that, too. The blue feather he'd given her for a bookmark lay in the crease between the pages, and he picked it up and pressed it to the page. There was no ink in it, of course, but a dark dot appeared, shimmering around the edges with a faint gold light that made it easy to see even in the dimness. He wrote his first message. Ta for nothing, brother. You could have tried to get me a message, at least. The words were light, but he felt ashen inside. Seeing Morgan broken this way shook him in ways nothing else could.\n\nHis words faded and left a creamy, empty page behind.\n\nHe didn't have to wait long for Brendan's reply to appear, as if an invisible pen wrote in fast, looping letters. Da says hi. Hopes your limbs are all attached. I did try to get you a message. Intercepted by Beck. We've made offers for your return. Brendan didn't express anything about his own worries, but then, he wouldn't. That wasn't how things worked between the two of them, identical in looks, far from it in temperament.\n\nGenerous of you, Jess wrote. Where are you?\n\nClose, Brendan replied. Assuming no one else can read this?\n\nJust us.\n\nGood. Because what I'm about to tell you stays quiet, yeah? Santi's company is here. His lieutenant found some Burners in London to question and found out where you'd gone. She got the whole company sent to duty on the wall.\n\nJess stared at the words for a long, long moment. He didn't quite know how to take that in. They've joined the High Garda encampments? They're here?\n\nJust said so, Brendan agreed. I'm with them. We're hiding in plain sight, brother.\n\nYou said Santi's lieutenant... Zara? Jess wrote the name with too much pressure and nearly broke the tip of the quill. You can't trust Zara. She's loyal to the Library. Nearly killed the captain, before.\n\nYeah, she told me. She's dead sorry about it. Changed her mind after the Artifex Magnus decided to execute a few of her soldiers for disloyalty. She's not the only one who's turned on the bastard, plenty of unrest erupting all over these days. Details later. I trust you have bigger questions.\n\nA full High Garda company would be a blessing, no doubt about that, but Zara Cole? Santi's lieutenant hadn't seemed all that trustworthy the last time Jess had seen her. In fact, she'd been willing to shoot down every one of them, and all hail the Archivist.\n\nBut beggars couldn't be choosy, if the beggars wanted to live out the day.\n\nWe need a tunnel out of here, Jess wrote. And didn't like the delay. It took a solid minute of molasses-slow time before Brendan's answer appeared.\n\nYeah, well, he said. Little bit of a problem with the tunnel.\n\nWhat problem?\n\nWe don't have one.\n\nI know. It belongs to the Comprehensive.\n\nNo, there is no tunnel. The Comprehensive destroyed the last one after the High Garda twigged to its location. They haven't finished digging the new one yet. No way out through a tunnel. I'm sorry.\n\nJess... hadn't expected that. At all. We need that exit, brother. We need a way out. They must have something!\n\nYou'll find a way, Brendan repeated. When you do, tell me where. We'll get in position to cover you. If you can wait a few weeks\u2014\n\nWe don't have a few weeks. We'll be dead long before then. Jess paused and then wrote, I think we have to do it today.\n\nTODAY?! Brother, this is not making me feel calm.\n\nJess let out a little huff of a laugh, too quiet to be heard. Me, neither, Scraps. Me, neither. But have faith.\n\nHe waited for Brendan's usual comeback. It was always the same, with varying degrees of anger: Don't call me Scraps.\n\nBut instead, when the message appeared, it said, God be with you, brother. Get me a message when you can. And then, after a blank line: Don't go and die on me. I wouldn't know how to tell Da.\n\nThat, Jess thought, was as close as he was ever likely to get to an I love you from his own brother.\n\nHe put the feather in place and closed the book, and sat for a while, drinking in the stillness, the quiet.\n\nWhen he was ready, he added Thomas's blanket over Morgan's body. She was deeply asleep. She'd never looked so alone, he thought, and he hated Wolfe, purely and completely, for doing this to her. He wanted to crawl in beside her and hold her, but there wasn't time. There never is, he thought bitterly. And for one wild moment, he wanted to just forget it all, close his eyes, and pretend for another hour that it wasn't all moving too fast.\n\n\"Jess. With me.\" Scholar Wolfe was standing in his doorway.\n\nJess followed him. As he did, he saw that Dario's bunk was empty, and so were Glain's and Khalila's. \"Where is everyone?\"\n\n\"Off on business,\" Wolfe said. \"Inside.\"\n\nJess stepped into the cell Wolfe shared with Santi. Despite the repairs, it had a glassy, melted look to the stone, and there was still a faint, cloying smell of Greek fire here that made him want to cough. Santi, seated on his bunk, noticed. \"Not so bad once you get used to it,\" he said. \"You've been in touch with your brother?\"\n\nJess looked down at the Codex he still held, with Glain's boot leather binding it, scarred and rough with use. \"He says the tunnel's not an option.\"\n\nThat got Santi and Wolfe to exchange a fast, grim look. \"Narrows our options to one,\" Santi said. \"The wall. But that means we have to fight our way out of a High Garda camp. I don't like those odds.\"\n\n\"They're better than you think,\" Jess said. \"Brendan says Zara Cole's here. She brought your company. He says we can trust her.\"\n\nWolfe said, \"The hell we can,\" just as Captain Santi said, \"I think we should.\" That led to a strange silence, and the two of them staring at each other. Wolfe spoke first. \"Zara's loyal to the Library. She shot you.\"\n\n\"She could have killed me, and she didn't,\" Santi said. \"Believe me, Zara chose that shot carefully. It meant she wasn't convinced then. If she's here, she's convinced now.\"\n\n\"Maybe she's convinced that we need to have our heads on pikes; have you thought of that?\"\n\n\"I know how you feel about her, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Nic! This isn't some petty jealousy. I don't trust her!\"\n\nJess said, quietly, \"Doesn't really matter, does it? She's our only real chance. Brendan's with them. If we tell them where to meet us, they can cover our escape if we can get through the wall. If you've got another choice, say so.\"\n\nWolfe glared, but he shook his head.\n\n\"Tell your brother we're coming out at the eastern end of the wall, just behind the grain storage,\" Santi said. \"Dead-on east. They'll need time to arrange the move, if they need to move camps. A few hours at most.\"\n\nJess nodded, but he was looking at Wolfe. \"If nothing goes wrong,\" he said. \"But something has, hasn't it? I saw Morgan. What happened?\"\n\n\"Something that wasn't her fault,\" Wolfe said. \"But it shortens our timeline considerably. Tell your brother we're coming this afternoon. There's a storm moving in. It's better cover than we'd hoped. If you can summon Beck midafternoon, he'll bring his counselors, and many of the guards. While you're about that, we'll be quietly leaving. Once it starts, we can't break off. We're committed. You understand?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. \"Midafternoon.\"\n\n\"Try to spin it out until the storm begins,\" Santi said. \"And have a way out of that workshop besides the door. Understood?\"\n\n\"Morgan does nothing else,\" Jess said. \"Let her rest as much as you can.\"\n\n\"We all have our parts to play,\" Wolfe said.\n\n\"Really? And what's your part, Scholar? Because from where I sit, you've done nothing but use her.\"\n\n\"Jess,\" Santi said. He leaned toward him and held back a wince as he straightened his arm to push himself forward. \"Believe me, none of us is clean. None of this will be easy. The others already know their jobs. Now we're telling you yours.\"\n\n\"Kind of you to include me.\"\n\n\"You were included,\" Wolfe said, with a sharp whip in his tone. A barbed one. \"You and Thomas had to remain focused on the press and that invention of Thomas's. That was imperative.\" He took a tightly rolled scroll of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out. With a jolt, Jess recognized the map that Khalila had drawn from memory. Wolfe pointed to a building she'd painted black, hugging the eastern wall behind city hall, on the far side of the fields. \"This is where we'll rendezvous.\"\n\n\"You realize that we're planning to burn a hole in a wall that's stood for a hundred years,\" Jess said. \"You realize what that's going to do.\"\n\nSanti said, \"It's out of our hands. The wall can be patched, and the city will have to hold on the best it can. Believe me, I don't want more death on my conscience.\"\n\n\"But this won't be bloodless,\" Wolfe said. \"And we have to look out for ourselves now. Agreed?\"\n\nAnother Brightwell family motto, Jess thought bitterly. He opened the book, sketched the map, and gave Brendan the approximate time, along with the warning to stay well back from the wall.\n\nWhen he looked out the window, he saw that dawn was coming cold and steel gray, and Wolfe was right: there were black clouds massing on the horizon.\n\nThe storm would be on them soon enough.\n\nJess headed for the workshop. Inside the dark, smoky confines, he found that the forge had been allowed to sink back to coals, and the tiny amount of Greek fire that they'd been given to keep it burning had been carefully stored back in a padded box. Jess started to pocket it. There was no sign of Diwell, oddly enough.\n\n\"No, no, don't take that,\" Thomas called. He was half-hidden under the machine as he connected springs. \"It's just water. I colored it with some dye I stole from a clothing shop. The real bottle is over there.\" He pointed toward a shelf cluttered with scraps of unused metal. Jess felt around and found a tiny glass vial, half-full and carefully stoppered. \"Not much left. But good to have in an emergency.\"\n\n\"Where's Diwell?\"\n\n\"Privy,\" Thomas said. \"Something he ate disagreed with him. I offered him food I'd saved up. It was nicely rotten. It isn't my fault he decided to take it. I gave him a choice. Don't worry, I don't think it will kill him. Just make him wish he was dead.\"\n\n\"And I remember when you were just an innocent farm boy who wouldn't hurt a fly.\" Jess's smile quickly faded. \"I got in contact with my brother.\"\n\n\"And?\" Thomas slid out from beneath the frame of the machine to look at him. \"The tunnel?\"\n\n\"We're not going out the tunnel.\"\n\n\"Then it's good I made the Ray,\" Thomas said.\n\n\"Where is it?\"\n\n\"I haven't put it together yet.\"\n\n\"Wait. What?\"\n\nThomas slid back under the press. \"All the component parts are completed. All it needs is assembly. It will work.\"\n\n\"Have you tested it?\"\n\n\"It will work.\"\n\nThat, Jess thought sickly, wasn't an answer. \"Thomas! We recycled old glass and I polished it by hand. With terrible supplies! These are not fine manufacturing conditions!\"\n\n\"I know,\" he replied calmly, voice muffled by the machine looming over him. \"And the great Heron had far less to work with when he invented it. So it will work well enough.\"\n\nSometimes, Thomas's cheerful optimism could be painful. Jess stepped back and looked at the towering machine that now stood in the middle of the room. It wasn't a pretty sight\u2014no elegance to it at all, in fact\u2014but Thomas had assembled it while Jess was still sleeping, and it was very nearly...\n\n\"Done!\" Thomas said, and slid himself out from under it again. He stood up and shook the frame, but he did it carefully. It didn't look entirely stable; the woods were mismatched, and though carefully braced, the entire structure had the look of everything in Philadelphia: cobbled together. \"I think it's ready to test,\" Thomas said. \"Paper?\"\n\nJess found one of the sheets of paper they'd cut carefully out of Blanks and brought it over. He saw that Thomas had already laid in metal lettering, in English and in Greek. Reading it backward in the dim light was difficult, so he said, \"What are you printing?\"\n\n\"Something that will whet Beck's appetite.\" Thomas wiped dirty sweat from his face with an equally filthy sleeve. \"All right. One test only.\"\n\nJess reached for the pot of ink that they'd begged from the meager stores, and swabbed the letters in a thick black coating, placed the paper, and stepped back. He looked at Thomas, who placed his hand on the lever.\n\n\"Do you want to do it?\" Thomas asked.\n\n\"No. It's your invention.\"\n\n\"I suppose we should say something important.\"\n\n\"I just hope the damned thing works.\"\n\n\"I guess that will have to do,\" Thomas said. \"Do we risk it?\"\n\nJess looked at his friend's grin, at the sweaty, exalted expression on his face, and threw caution out the door. \"What's life without risk?\"\n\nThomas pulled down on the lever, and springs engaged to snap the press down\u2014paper against ink against metal, a sudden and violent collision. Nothing shattered. Both of them stayed quiet for a second, and then Thomas let out a gust of breath that ended in a shaky laugh. \"I admit I was not as confident as I seemed. Now, for the second part.\" He turned a wheel and cranked the plate back up again, revealing the paper adhering to it. Jess peeled it off, and he had to admit, there was a spark of real wonder as he held it up to the light.\n\n\"English and Greek,\" he said. Jess stared at what they'd made from that simple pull of the lever. The ink stood out clear and crisp on the creamy paper, chillingly perfect. They'd done something so world breaking that he couldn't even imagine the waves that would ripple out of this moment, out of something he and Thomas had built from sweat and pain and hope.\n\nIt was the start of something. And the end of something else. And in that moment, he couldn't find the thread of what was right, or wrong, in any of it.\n\nThomas set the catch to hold the plate in place, and came to look. He put a heavy arm around Jess's shoulder, and together they stared at the page they'd printed. The ink still glistened wet, giving the letters an almost supernatural gleam. We did this, Jess thought. We did.\n\nHe couldn't speak, he found, and he looked at Thomas and saw tears in the big German's eyes. He couldn't fully understand what this meant to him, either; it had started as a pure thing, and then it had become the reason he'd been dragged into torture and imprisonment. Was this anger? Joy? Was he crying for what had happened, or what was still to come? Or just from the same wonder that Jess felt pressing inside him?\n\nJess didn't know, because Thomas didn't speak, either.\n\nThey stood together, holding the page until the last of the damp sheen faded from the letters, and Jess finally cleared his throat to say, \"Show me the pieces of the Ray. We need to have them on us.\"\n\nThomas nodded, put the page down, and moved around the room. From a heap of scraps he pulled out what looked like just another piece of wood\u2014only more shaped and polished than the others. From a tangle of iron, a straight, thick tube. From behind the forge tools, a trigger mechanism. From behind a loose stone in the wall, a small golden ball that he pitched to Jess. \"Don't drop that,\" Thomas said.\n\n\"Will it blow up?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" Thomas said. \"But you'd crack the casing, and we've only got the one.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Jess slipped it in his pocket. It was the power source come from Morgan's little singing bird. He watched as Thomas found the other pieces\u2014small bits that he handed to Jess, while he used a length of cloth to bind the thick tube to his thigh. It came almost to his knee, but at least the heavy canvas trousers he wore helped conceal it. Jess took the other pieces and fashioned them into a necklace on another strip of cloth he tied around his neck, to dangle under his shirt. He had the Codex tied on his chest already, and slipped the trigger mechanism into the binding. \"I hope this all fits together.\"\n\n\"It will,\" Thomas said. \"What else?\"\n\n\"Santi said to make sure we have another way out of this building, if the worst happens.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Thomas said, and picked up a crude shovel. He tossed it to Jess, who nearly got knocked down by the weight of it. \"So we make one. You start.\"\n\nJess couldn't hold back a groan.\n\nHe hated digging.\n\nTwo hours had passed by the time Diwell, looking terribly unwell, staggered back to his chair by the door. The fact that he hadn't dispatched another guard to cover his shift was, Jess thought, fairly significant; accepting extra food must have been a dire crime for him to avoid mentioning why he was ill. He was afraid Thomas might report him.\n\nWe can use that, Jess thought. He checked the time\u2014a crude sundial using the sun from the window\u2014and saw they were approaching the hour. He wished he felt more confident.\n\nHe wished he knew that Morgan was all right. Wolfe will see to her, he told himself. Mind your work. It didn't help.\n\n\"Feeling better?\" Thomas asked the guard, with a cheerful glee that made Diwell send him a look that wished him burning in hell. \"Good. You can take a message to Master Beck for us: we will have his prize ready for him to see within the next hour. I'm sure he will be pleased.\"\n\nDiwell groaned. It was a faint sound, but raw. He put his head in his hands for a moment, then nodded and stood up. He started to speak, but maybe he realized that threats had no force now, and they watched in silence as he left. It might take him half an hour to limp his way to city hall, at that rate.\n\n\"Now we wait,\" Thomas said. \"Here.\" He tilted back an enormously heavy anvil, and beneath it, Jess saw he'd dug out a small space. Into it he'd thrust two wicked knives, gracefully shaped but deadly at edges and points. He handed one to Jess. \"Careful. It will split hairs.\"\n\nJess nodded and slipped it carefully into a slot in his boot\u2014one made for a dagger about this size. Something Thomas no doubt had observed, or asked Glain about. Thomas had made a small leather sheath from scraps here in the workshop, and he slipped his own knife into it and strapped it to his forearm, hilt down. He rolled his shirt cuffs down to cover it. \"Do you think we're going to die?\" Thomas sounded almost academic about it. Remote. \"I wish I could write to my parents. In case. But I suppose there's no way to do that, is there?\"\n\nJess silently took out the makeshift Codex that he'd concealed under his shirt, and opened it to the empty page. The blue feather was still there, waiting. \"I'll have to write it for you,\" he said. \"But I can ask Brendan to deliver it.\"\n\nThomas nodded, eyes fixed on the window. On the storm, still rushing toward them. \"It would be a bad omen,\" he finally said. \"No. I will wait. I will write to them when I am free. When this is done. Just\u2014just ask him to tell them that I love them.\"\n\nJess quietly wrote his brother the message, and added, Same from me to anyone who might care. And I suppose from Khalila to her family, and Dario, and Glain. Captain Santi has a brother somewhere. Morgan and Wolfe have no one, so if there are prayers to be done, I suppose it's left to you.\n\nHe wasn't sure his brother would write back at all, and when he finally did, the pen moved slowly, as if Brendan was fighting to write the words. Don't be such a morose bastard. You'll live to bury me. You're the luckiest ass who ever lived. And the fastest, and the bravest. So live, and do your own praying. We're moving our camp. Zara's made up some excuse. We'll be in place as agreed. You just get yourselves there. Understood?\n\nUnderstood, Jess wrote, and closed the book with the feather caught inside the pages. He retied the book across his chest. Not as secure as a smuggling harness, but it would have to do.\n\nOutside, the air grew charged and heavy, and the clouds massed higher and darker to the west like an approaching army. As Jess watched, lightning laced a bright line through the black, and a rumble of thunder rolled in the distance. Coming on fast, he thought. All of it. Too fast.\n\nDiwell returned nearly an hour after that, limping and looking miserable; he collapsed into his chair and glared at Thomas. \"You've poisoned me, you Library bastard.\"\n\n\"I did not!\" Thomas protested. \"If I had, you'd be dead by now. But some of the food might have spoiled, I suppose. My apologies.\"\n\nDiwell muttered something, took a deep breath, and suddenly bolted again for the door. Retching.\n\n\"I really am sorry,\" Thomas said, not to Diwell exactly. Just in general. \"For all of it.\"\n\n\"I didn't think Protestant Germans went to confession,\" Jess said.\n\n\"We don't,\" Thomas said. \"But sometimes, confession is good for the soul. And I think before this is over, our souls will need a little cleansing, don't you?\"\n\nHe was probably right about that."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Scholar Johannes Gutenberg to the Archivist Magister, interdicted to the Black Archives. Not indexed in the Codex:\n\n\u2002With the greatest respect and admiration I have always borne for you, great Archivist, I must ask why you have ordered the High Garda to remove the model of the device I described to you, a device I believe to be of eminent importance that will only add to the great reach of the Library.\n\n\u2002I must also ask why soldiers have taken from me all papers, drawings, and journals that refer to this device, and warned my family, in the safety of their own home, to say nothing of this, on pain of death.\n\n\u2002I cannot believe this is done with your approval, or if it has been, that you have been properly apprised of all the wondrous possibilities of my device for the greater glory of the Library.\n\n\u2002If I may pay a personal visit to you, I may put your mind at rest upon this matter.\n\n\u2002Text of a notation in the margins of the letter, from the Archivist Magister of the time to the Artifex Magnus. Not indexed in the Codex.\n\n\u2002Arrange for him to come to you. I have no stomach for the bloody work to be done here. His family, too, must be silenced, and you must see it done. Make sure no one else knows of this device. I want every tongue stilled, and every eye made blind that ever beheld the thing.\n\n\u2002I despise the necessity of such things, but the safety of the Library comes above all else. Gods help us all if this knowledge should ever escape."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "The storm hadn't yet arrived when Beck entered the workshop another hour later, surrounded by a small mob of guards and followers. \"I hope you haven't summoned me for nothing\u2014\" He fell silent. The light from the windows and a single oil lamp glimmered on gears, metal springs, and the tall wooden frame. At the very least, Jess thought, what they'd built looked imposing, and Beck seemed momentarily impressed. Momentarily. He slowed and walked around the machine, then gestured to Thomas.\n\n\"Interesting,\" he said at last. \"Explain it to me.\"\n\n\"Best to show you,\" Thomas said. \"Jess? Ink and paper.\"\n\nJess sponged the ink on the letters and fixed the paper in place.\n\n\"Now, Master Beck, step back. All the way back, please.\"\n\nBeck made a cautious retreat, and so did his men, as Thomas pulled down the lever. Beck let out a surprised yelp at the resulting crash, and several of the guards drew weapons. Luckily, they seemed unsure what exactly they should shoot or stab.\n\n\"It isn't dangerous,\" Thomas said, perfectly calmly. \"Now you will see.\"\n\n\"See what?\" Indira barked. \"All right, all of you. Relax. Fire only on my orders!\" Thank God, there was a professional in the fanatical ranks.\n\nThomas had managed to ignore their peril completely. Which was... very Thomas. \"This machine is the future of the Burners,\" he said. \"And the Library. Jess?\"\n\nWhile Thomas cranked the lever up and secured it, Jess stepped forward to retrieve the printed page. He carried the sheet to Willinger Beck, who took it, still looking doubtful... until he examined it in the light of the window.\n\n\"A life is worth more than a book,\" he read aloud, and the astonishment in his voice rang clear. \"This is in both English and Greek. Our motto. The motto of this city.\" He stared hard at the paper, then turned it to face Jess and Thomas. \"What kind of Obscurist trick is this?\"\n\n\"It's not magic,\" Thomas said. \"No Obscurists involved. It's pure machinery. Anyone can build it. Anyone can operate it. All you need is the machine, ink, and paper to print as many copies as you like, of anything you please.\"\n\n\"But... this is only a page,\" Beck said. \"You said I could have books. A book made of the same words, over and over? What use is it?\"\n\n\"This is all movable. Each letter is a separate piece. They can be removed and replaced, like a child's spelling blocks. You can write out anything you like, in any language known... we used English and Greek, but you could as easily use French and German, or Arabic and Chinese. You can mirror the text of any book and produce a thousand copies, one page at a time. All you have to do in the end is bind those pages together.\"\n\nBeck slowly turned the page around again, and his lips moved silently as he read what they'd printed once more. When he looked up this time, his eyes were shining. At first, Jess thought it was with lust for power, and then... and then he realized he was seeing tears, as they broke free and spilled down the man's stubbled cheeks.\n\nBeck said, \"My God... my God,\" and fell into wrenching sobs. He sank down on his knees, still clutching the page in trembling hands, while his soldiers looked on. Some of them clearly understood what had brought him low; as Jess looked around, he saw the comprehension on their faces. Some looked elated. Some, like Beck, seemed overwhelmed.\n\nOnly Indira seemed unmoved. She watched them with cold focus.\n\nBeck managed to regain control of his emotions and roughly swiped a handkerchief across his face and eyes. He cleared his throat with a sound like gravel turning over in a bucket. \"I am sorry. I just realized... that the words on this page exist by themselves. They can't be erased from existence. They are both original and copy.\" His eyes had taken on a faraway look. He was seeing the future, Jess thought. \"The Library does not control this page. It can't even see this page.\" He looked around at the others he'd brought with him. \"Do you understand what this means? What we have?\"\n\n\"What you have is dangerous,\" Thomas said. \"I give you fair warning: the Library will do anything to see this machine destroyed, any trace of it wiped away. When I sketched plans for it in my journal, I was taken. My machine was destroyed. I was put in prison. I would have died there without\u2014\" Thomas's steady, calm voice hitched just a little, and Jess felt him flinch. \"Without the devotion of my friends. You must not let them know what you have.\"\n\nThomas was blunt but honest; Jess wouldn't have warned Beck about consequences. He didn't think the man deserved the courtesy.\n\nBeck hardly paid attention at all. His whole attention was on the inked letters in front of him. \"Brilliant,\" he said, and it was clear he hadn't heard a word Thomas had said. \"This is brilliant. We will print our messages on this machine! We will post hundreds of them in every city, every town in the world where the Library lays its hand! We will shove them down the throats of every High Garda bastard we kill. We will shape the world at last in our image, not the Archivist's. It will be our calling card, these very words, printed on this wonder.\" Jess felt his stomach lurch at that, picturing Glain lying dead, a grinning Burner stuffing her mouth with paper he and Thomas had printed. He imagined Santi defiled like that, and Wolfe lying broken beside him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Beck rushed right over him. \"How quickly can you print more?\"\n\nThomas's face had gone entirely blank, but Jess had never seen his clear blue eyes so dark. \"We can begin now. Would you like to operate the machine yourself?\"\n\nBeck looked stunned, as if someone had offered him the chance to sit in the Archivist Magister's throne. \"Yes, yes, I would!\" Beck said, and rushed to stand uncertainly next to the cobbled-together press. \"What do I do? Show me, boy! Quickly!\"\n\nWithout comment, Jess brushed ink over the metal lettering and placed another blank sheet of paper over them. He stepped back. Beck stared expectantly, as if he was waiting for some magical process to begin.\n\n\"Pull the lever,\" Thomas said. Beck looked down, took hold, and pulled. He jumped and gasped when the weights snapped down, pressing the paper, and Thomas showed him how to crank the lever back until it caught on the ratchet. Then Jess demonstrated how to carefully peel away the still-wet paper.\n\n\"It has to dry,\" he said. \"Touch it when it's wet and it'll smear.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, fine, we'll build drying lines to hang the pages on,\" Beck said, and flapped a dismissive hand. \"Counselor Lindsay? You may keep the first page from the press.\"\n\nOne of the group who'd been standing in the shadows stepped forward and took the page almost reverently, and held it as carefully as she would something liable to break apart at a touch. \"Amazing,\" the woman said to Jess, and then bowed to Thomas. \"Astonishing. You have shown us a miracle. It will change the world.\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes it will, under our direction, of course,\" Beck said. \"Valin, you saw how the young men placed the ink and paper. This time, you do it. I want everyone proficient in the use of this machine.\"\n\nThunder boomed again. It sounded closer. Jess looked out toward the window. The clouds were rushing in on them, and as he watched, shadows began to strangle the light.\n\nThe storm was no longer coming. It was here.\n\nJess stepped back as the Burners crowded closer around the press. So did Thomas, and as he did, he took hold of Jess's arm and moved him farther away, all the way to the corner. It was done casually, as if giving the Burners possession of the device, and in truth, Beck hardly noticed. His attention was all on a small older man\u2014Valin, must have been\u2014who stepped forward at Beck's impatient gesture. He was clearly terrified of the machine, and he trembled as he slopped too much ink on the metal letters, and wasted a page when he placed it crookedly and tried to adjust it. He murmured a nervous apology and tried again, this time clipping the paper in the right spot before stepping back.\n\nBeck hardly waited for the man to get clear before he yanked hard on the lever, and the weights slammed down. When he cranked it open again, he nodded to Valin, who peeled the paper free. Smudged, but readable. \"It's the same!\" Valin said. \"Sir, the same exactly!\" He sounded overwhelmed.\n\nBeck's face was florid with pleasure. \"Again!\" he ordered. \"I want a full hundred of these pages before we're done!\"\n\n\"Will this work?\" Jess whispered to Thomas.\n\n\"It had better,\" he whispered back. \"It would be tragic if we built it too well.\"\n\nThe springs failed spectacularly on the fifth pull of the lever.\n\nJess heard the difference as the springs engaged; there was a distinct, flat snap to it, and the weights crashed down... and collapsed straight through. The wood frame shattered under the strain. Parts spun off in all directions, broken springs flying, gears smashing and breaking and rolling.\n\nIt was as magnificent a failure as they might have wished, and it was all Jess could do to keep from grinning. He nudged Thomas without looking at him, and thought, You brilliant, crazy fool, as Beck shouted in horror and alarm and his men\u2014those who hadn't been struck by flying pieces of shrapnel\u2014ran uselessly around trying to salvage the rolling gears and broken parts.\n\nBeck's shock lasted only a few seconds before his gaze turned on Jess and Thomas.\n\nAnd Thomas, bless him, shrugged with what looked like absolute innocence. \"My apologies, Master Beck, but this was never meant to be a permanent version of the machine. You gave us pot metals and castoffs to build your future. We did the best we could with what was available. We can do better, of course. We just need better materials. Perhaps you can acquire those for us?\" He picked up a piece of paper from the table to his left. \"Here's a list of the items that are necessary.\"\n\nBeck didn't take the list. He was staring at them with angry, bitter eyes, but it had looked like an accident, all right, and there was no denying that Thomas had worked a miracle from scraps, however long it had worked. Beck suspected he'd been tricked, but he couldn't work out how, or why.\n\nBut one thing was certain: he now felt he needed them. He lusted after this machine with a passion that was going to drive him for the rest of his life.\n\nBeck was still clutching the last page that had come off the machine, and from the way he held it, it seemed he didn't intend to ever let it go. He stooped and, with his other hand, picked up a broken, misshapen spring and ran his thumb over the coils while he stared at them both.\n\n\"Draw the plans,\" he said.\n\n\"The plans are no help to you without a working prototype, given your resources,\" Thomas said, in his most reasonable voice. \"Let us build you another, Master Beck. And we will do it in full cooperation with your picked craftspeople and provide detailed plans at every stage.\"\n\nBeck's friendly face took on new lines, new hard angles that made him look completely different from the man who'd been on his knees just a few moments before, weeping in joy... This one, Jess was sure, was the real Beck, the one who'd ruthlessly held power and kept a city together in the face of constant Library attacks. Not a man who would take no for an answer.\n\nThomas's ploy was not going to work, and Jess felt himself go a little cold inside.\n\n\"Indira,\" Beck said. \"Shoot the Brightwell boy in both knees. We'll cripple all of them to make sure they have no plans to cheat us.\"\n\nShe drew her gun. Jess threw himself backward and to the side, diving behind a pile of scrap metal. She cursed and moved forward to try for a better shot.\n\nThomas roared and moved. Fast. As Jess fumbled in the pile of broken metal for something of use, Thomas crossed the space to where Beck stood, put one enormous hand around his throat, and jerked the man off the ground and held him there to choke.\n\n\"Thomas, no!\" Jess shouted. Indira turned her gun on his friend, and at this range, she couldn't miss. Jess rose, grabbing the first thing he could reach\u2014the broken, twisted remains of a gear\u2014and flung it at her head. Poor throw, but he hit her shoulder and knocked her back a step. The gun went flying. Jess flung himself over the pile of metal and grabbed one of Thomas's massive hammers; adrenaline gave him strength to heft it easily. He rushed at Indira, and she dodged away, trying for her gun. He cut her off.\n\nHer other guards were starting to react now, shaking off shock and going for their weapons. This will be a massacre.\n\n\"Thomas! Don't!\" This was not the plan.\n\nThomas wasn't bloody well listening.\n\nBeck's toes thrashed the air, and he dropped the paper and the spring to slap at Thomas's arms, which did absolutely nothing. Thomas's face was bone white, his blue eyes wide and merciless in the dim light. He said something in German, and then switched to English. \"Drop your weapons, all of you, or I'll crush his throat.\"\n\nJess shot him a disbelieving glance\u2014 Who are you? What have you done with my friend?\u2014 then quickly returned his attention to the soldiers, who seemed torn between saving Beck and avenging him. Jess kept the hammer ready to deliver a blow if he had to, but there was something in the silky, even inflection of Thomas's voice that made even the most militant of the guards believe him. One by one, they dropped guns and knives.\n\nAll except Indira, who retrieved her gun and aimed it at Jess's head. \"Kill him, and I kill your friend, Schreiber.\"\n\nThomas lowered Beck back to the ground but didn't let him go. He did loosen the grip enough that Beck drew in a raw, whooping breath and coughed it out again.\n\n\"Tell her to put down her gun,\" Thomas said, \"or I'll follow your example. I'll cripple you for life. You know I can, as easily as closing my hand.\"\n\nDefinitely not the Thomas Jess knew. This Thomas had been born from pain and despair down in the depths of Rome's prison. This version of his friend was feral and angry and dangerous, and most of all, he was very, very strong.\n\n\"Indira! Put it down! For God's sake, put it down!\" Beck wheezed. She didn't seem inclined to obey, but his angry hysteria got to her at last. She crouched and put her weapon on the ground. She rose with both hands in the air. Thomas still didn't let go. He looked as if he was considering, very strongly considering, separating the man's head from his neck with a pull and a twist.\n\n\"Thomas,\" Jess said, in as calm a voice as he could manage while threatening men with a hammer. \"He's agreed. Let him go now or they're going to kill us. Including our friends.\"\n\nThomas still held his position, but he must have comprehended sense, because he released Beck with a sudden, dismissive push. Beck sprawled on the dirt floor, gagging and coughing as his soldiers quickly grabbed him and dragged him behind them to safety.\n\nNow was the moment of real danger, Jess thought, and adjusted his sweaty grip on the hammer. If Beck ordered their deaths... and Thomas, alarmingly, didn't seem to care. He stooped down and began picking up broken machine parts as if the men and women threatening the two of them didn't even exist. Jess felt faintly stupid, and very alone, brandishing a household tool.\n\n\"You've seen what we can do for you. You know you can use us. Leave us alone now,\" Thomas said, and wrenched half a broken cog from a bent iron rod. \"You're in our way. Go and get us decent wood, metal, and materials.\"\n\n\"You're mad!\" Beck said. He could only manage it as a croak. \"He's mad!\"\n\n\"He's a genius,\" Jess said. \"Master Beck, give us better materials and you'll get what you want. Threaten us, or any of our friends, and I don't think Thomas will stop next time at bruising you. You'll never reconstruct this machine without us. Do we have an understanding?\"\n\n\"You cocky little bastard,\" Beck grated. He sounded like he'd been gargling the leftover broken glass. \"You think you hold any kind of power?\"\n\n\"I just saw you weeping for joy, didn't I? You want this. We have it. That's the definition of negotiating, and if you contact my father, you know he'll give you a very fine deal on the things you need to make your dream a reality. Now, go.\"\n\nBeck didn't respond to that at all, but Jess knew he'd scored the point. He waited until the last of Beck's entourage disappeared out the workshop door, then slammed it and shut the bolt from inside before he turned back to Thomas.\n\nThomas stopped picking up the shattered pieces to look at him, and slowly, very slowly, a grin the likes of which Jess had never seen spread across his friend's face.\n\n\"So,\" he said. \"That was glorious.\"\n\n\"It was.\" Jess didn't want to spoil the moment, which had a kind of demented joy, but he also had to know. \"Why did you attack him?\"\n\nThomas's smile dimmed to a curl at the corners of his mouth. \"If I hadn't played the German berserker, he'd have done it. It was a good strategy: hobble you, cripple the rest one by one, and we're not likely to be able to flee, even if we've worked out how. Now he knows I'm half-mad, and he thinks he needs me. He will be more careful.\"\n\nIt was part of the truth, Jess thought. Not all. He studied his friend a moment before he said, \"Thank you.\"\n\nThomas's fingers were restlessly exploring the metal parts in his hands, and he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. \"You are my best friend,\" he said. \"And I will always fight for you.\"\n\nAs simple as that. Jess's throat closed up, as if Thomas's hand had taken hold, but it was only a rush of gratitude that left him weak.\n\n\"Check to make sure we have everything,\" Thomas said. \"All the parts of the Ray. They'll be waiting for us.\" He was still picking up parts and gears, and Jess didn't really understand why.\n\n\"You're not seriously going to make them another press, are you?\" he said. Thomas raised his brows and opened the forge. He dumped the entire bucket of metal parts and pieces inside and slammed the forge closed again. It would take only a few minutes to reduce all their work to a metal sludge.\n\n\"Absolutely not,\" he said. \"Let's go.\"\n\nDespite his dislike for digging, Jess was very glad he'd made the effort as they wormed through the newly excavated tunnel under the back wall and out into the rapidly darkening afternoon. The guards were still watching the closed, locked workshop door.\n\nA single drop of rain hit his face as he scrambled out. He couldn't judge the time accurately now.\n\nBut it was definitely time to go.\n\nWolfe, Santi, and Morgan were no longer in the prison. It was deserted\u2014except for the dead bodies of two guards, lying in the bunks that Wolfe and Santi had occupied. They'd been covered up to look like they were sleeping.\n\nJess remembered what the men had said, in the dim early morning. No going back. They'd meant it.\n\n\"Where are we to meet them, then?\" Thomas asked.\n\n\"Didn't Wolfe tell you?\"\n\n\"Only to stay with you. Which I will.\"\n\n\"Good. I'd hate to think I was on my own right now,\" Jess said. He took one last look at the prison, all the cell doors opened. If all the world's a lock, be a key. His father had been right. \"We're to head for the grain storage across the fields, far side of city hall. And we'd best do it quickly and quietly.\"\n\nThey were halfway across the park when the rain hit in earnest, and it went from fat, cold drops to a heavy, silvery curtain in moments. The storm was all to the good now, though Jess could see people out moving in the rain. Running here and there. No one could see well enough to recognize them and sound an alarm.\n\nAnd then he realized that the people were coming out of their houses and buildings. That they were not running for shelter, as would be sensible. The people of Philadelphia were pouring out of the buildings, into the streets, and they all seemed to be heading toward city hall... the very place Jess and Thomas, also, had to go.\n\nThe rain soaked Jess's clothes and hammered them close to his skin; the force of the drops was truly shocking, and overhead, lightning flashed in heavy, constant explosions. Thunder hit hard enough to echo in Jess's chest. This was very different from a London rain shower; it was violent, full of wind and fury, and the trees in the park\u2014including the one half-burned by the last Library attack\u2014were whipping their branches angrily, as if they intended to rip themselves from the ground and walk.\n\nThomas leaned close as they broke into a run to shout, \"What is it? What's happening? Is this part of the plan?\"\n\n\"I don't know!\" Jess shouted back.\n\nHe was sickly certain that it wasn't.\n\nThe crowd grew thicker around them, condensing as they drew near city hall, and in the flash of lightning, Jess saw that it numbered in the hundreds now. Nearly all of the city, it seemed, had come out in this storm, which was the opposite of what they needed.\n\nAnd then he saw the figures starkly illuminated at the top of the city hall steps. Even at this distance, he recognized them: Santi. Wolfe. Morgan. Khalila.\n\nAnd every one of them was being held by a guard.\n\n\"God, no,\" he said, and pulled Thomas to a halt in the mud. \"Stop!\" He dragged his friend off to the side, under the dark shelter of thrashing branches, and quickly dug from his pockets and bindings everything that Thomas had given him for the Ray of Apollo. \"Make your way around through the side streets. If the mob's gathering here, you should be able to make it around that way, to the fields. Get to the barn near the wall. Wait for us, but don't wait too long. Understand? Brendan knows where we'll be coming through. Make a hole behind that building. Morgan's weakened the wall for you. It should work, but when we come, we'll be coming fast. Start as soon as you can.\"\n\n\"I can't just leave,\" Thomas said. He sounded reasonable. Jess wasn't in the mood for reasonable. He grabbed Thomas and shoved him in the direction he wanted him to go. It was like pushing one of the trees. \"Jess. I can help you!\"\n\n\"No. You're the only one who can open up our way out, and I can't risk you. I need you to do that. Go. Go!\"\n\nThomas gave him one last, silent look, and then turned and went the way Jess had pointed. Away from trouble, for once.\n\nJess ran toward it.\n\nWillinger Beck had come out from shelter now, and took his place on the landing next to the captives. He raised his hands and shouted, but Jess couldn't hear what he was saying over the roar of the rain and the crowd. And couldn't bother to care. His attention was on his friends. Think. Dario and Glain weren't with them. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they'd slipped this trap, and that was good.\n\nWhat was bad was that Jess saw no chance at all to free the rest of them, and he was all too aware that at any moment, one of the men or women in the crowd might glance at him and recognize him, and then he'd be up there, too, pinned and helpless.\n\nYou should go, Wolfe's imaginary, sour voice lectured him. Staying to witness our deaths is less than useless. Get out while you can. That was always the plan.\n\nImaginary Wolfe's advice was still crap, and he wasn't going to abandon them, any more than he'd abandoned Thomas back in Alexandria\u2014and he'd thought Thomas might be dead.\n\nThe crowd was shouting, anger and fear smeared into a fog he could almost taste. He didn't know why they were so angry, but it didn't matter now. He cast a fast look around and fixed on one of Beck's guards lingering near the edge of the crowd. Jess faded back, and as he did, he picked up a fallen branch from one of the trees. Heavy wood. The guard was just in the shadow of a tree, and Jess circled around the trunk and came up behind him. He hit him hard in the back of the head and dragged him backward in the same instant, then hit him again to be sure he was unconscious before he stripped off the man's hooded coat and put it on. He relieved the man of two pistols and a knife. The coat smelled foul, but he hardly noticed; the hood kept his face in shadow and kept the rain off.\n\nA bolt of lightning sizzled from the clouds to strike the statue of Benjamin Franklin on top of city hall, and a cry went up from the crowd. They took it as a sign, he supposed.\n\nSo did he. He pushed through the crowd as if he had the right. He was wearing the guns, the coat, the attitude of one of Beck's security men. No one stopped him.\n\nHe went right up the steps.\n\nKhalila saw him first, and her eyes went wide; she was soaking wet and shivering, and her dress was clinging to her in ways that would probably make her blush, but she managed a very slight nod. He wanted to go to Morgan, but Morgan was next to Beck, and Khalila was at the end, easy to reach. He stepped up next to the guard who held her, pulled his hood lower, and thought about relieving the other guard... but that wouldn't work. The town was small. He'd be instantly recognized.\n\nSo he stood silently, tensely, and waited for his chance.\n\nBeck's voice was still hoarse from Thomas's hold, but he managed a full-throated shout to carry over the booms of thunder. A trick of acoustics on the steps amplified him, though how many of the crowd could hear was anyone's guess.\n\n\"I hear your anger!\" Beck shouted, and lifted his hands for quiet. Rain bedraggled him, like it did the rest of them, and gave him less of an imposing presence. He had mud on his shoes and trousers, and his glasses were beaded and blind with water. \"My people! I hear it and I understand it! We knew better than to trust the Library, or any of their creatures, and that was my mistake! But it is a mistake we will rectify, now! Come with me and see for yourself!\"\n\nThat... didn't bode well at all. Jess flexed his fingers and eased one of the guns out and to his side. Beck pointed\u2014bafflingly\u2014off to the side, and his guards began hustling the prisoners in that direction.\n\nKhalila was still last in that line. Beck and his attendants were striding down the steps, leading the movement wherever they were heading, and Jess took the chance, as lightning struck again, to slam the butt of his pistol into the neck of the guard who held Khalila. He staggered and turned and started to draw his gun.\n\nThunder shook the world and drowned out the sound of Jess shooting.\n\nThe man went down, and Jess quickly rolled him to the side and off the steps behind a row of bushes. He grabbed hold of Khalila and held her as if he were hustling a prisoner, but at an angle to the others. \"Make way!\" he shouted, and the crowd surging off to follow Beck parted for him. Some cast filthy looks on Khalila. One tried to slap her, but Jess reached out and shoved the other woman away.\n\nHe got Khalila down to the grass and moved her into the shelter of a shadowed corner, where they crouched together. He took the coat off and put it around her.\n\n\"No! Jess, keep it!\" She was trembling, but it was cold, not fear. \"You'll need it to get the others!\"\n\n\"What is all this?\" he asked her. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"Food riot,\" she said. \"We were getting the books. I gave everything to Dario and Glain and told them to go. The mob went to the prison and took Morgan, and Wolfe and Santi tried to stop them. I couldn't get them free. I tried. These people are frightened and angry, and they blame us for the crops rotting in the fields.\"\n\n\"Crops rotting in the fields,\" Jess repeated. They'd cut the rations days ago. But he remembered something Morgan had said. And something Wolfe had said, too. Unintended consequences. The way that suddenly, everything had accelerated.\n\n\"We have to go behind city hall, through the fields,\" he told Khalila. \"If we get separated, find your way to the building at the far end, near the eastern wall. Thomas and the others should be there. I'll fetch Morgan, Wolfe, and Santi.\"\n\nShe grabbed his collar as he started to rise. Her dark eyes were wide and worried. \"Can you?\" she asked him.\n\n\"I have to try.\"\n\nShe flung herself into his arms and kissed his cheek. \"Allah guide and keep you, my brother. We'll wait for you.\"\n\n\"Don't,\" he told her, and held on just a moment more. \"Promise me you won't. I need to know you'll be safe.\"\n\nShe shook her head as she stepped away, and gave him that beautiful smile he loved. \"I will never promise to abandon you,\" she said, and turned and ran into the rain. It was still heavy enough to hide her in seconds.\n\nJess looked up at the sky, the flickers of lightning, and rain stung cold against his skin. He let it wash him for a few brief heartbeats, and then he went up the steps to city hall, kicked the door open, and drew his guns.\n\nThere was no one inside city hall, which didn't much surprise him; he ran straight across the marble entry hall, the crudely done Burner seal, and kicked open another set of doors just beyond. It led to what must have been offices, but these held only a few startled clerk types, who cried out and dived for cover as he ran past. Through the far glass windows, he could see the back stairs of the building, and a broad swath of grass... and the fields. It was the first time he'd set eyes on them, and even though they were obscured by the rain, it was clear that Philadelphia was in real trouble. The plants looked black. Wheat, corn, all of it.\n\nNo wonder there were no rations. No wonder Beck was looking to place the blame. And no wonder the people were in a rage. Beck asked Morgan to increase their crop yields, Jess thought. And they'd seen her in the fields. It wouldn't have taken but one or two voices to start the outcry that Morgan was to blame for it.\n\nJess skidded to a halt and looked for doors, but all he saw were windows, and he had no time to bother with niceties. He picked up a handy sculpture\u2014a bust of one of the Burner leaders, he presumed\u2014and hurled it through the nearest plate of glass, which shattered with a gratifying crash that sprayed sharp points out to be lost in the rain. He dived through and nearly slipped on the wet landing, but he gained his feet again, made sure the guns were in place, and jumped off the edge of the steps to take shelter. The mob, led by Beck, was coming around the corner now, marching toward him. He knew Beck. He knew he'd want to make a production of their justice.\n\nThe wind shifted and blew toward him, and Jess gagged on the unmistakable smell of decay. It was coming from the fields. This was far worse than he'd imagined. There was something dark and awful about seeing these crops corrupted in the soil, battered and broken by the rain. A stand of apple trees not far from him held nothing but balls of black rot, and the trees themselves looked pale and diseased.\n\nMorgan had done this without meaning to. And they were shoving her, Santi, and Wolfe up the steps just as he'd expected, while the mob filled in the space between the steps and the fields. The rain was starting to slow a little, but the fields were a stinking mass of rotten plants and mud, and no one seeing it could fail to understand that they were going to starve this winter.\n\nBeck needed a scapegoat, or it would be his head on the chopping block.\n\nThe Burner leader took Morgan by the arm and marched her to the edge of the stairs, showing her to the crowd. It was easier to hear him now, and his voice seemed to have come back to full strength again. \"This creature is the traitor who destroyed our crops\u2014an Obscurist, sent by the Library to poison our food and force us to submit! We trusted her! We allowed her safety and shelter and our good welcome. I ask you, good people of Philadelphia: what punishment do you demand?\"\n\nThe answer roared back from a hundred throats: death. They were going to kill Morgan. They'd tear her apart.\n\nJess tried to breathe against the weight of suffocating fear. Think. Find a way out. He didn't see one.\n\nBeck moved on to Wolfe. \"This one is her master and her protector, a full Scholar of the Great Library! A Stormcrow, sent to us to destroy us! What punishment, good people?\"\n\nDeath. They took it up as a chant this time, and the power and fury of it chilled harder than the rain.\n\nSanti was next. Sworn enemy of our city. Captain of the High Garda. Murderer of our children.\n\nAnd the sentence was obvious.\n\nBeck turned to the three of them, and Jess saw him smile. It was a terrible, cynical thing, and it made him tighten his grip on the two pistols he'd drawn. \"Make her bring back our crops,\" Beck told Wolfe, \"And I'll let her live.\"\n\n\"I will,\" Morgan cried out. \"I'll fix this if you let them go!\"\n\n\"She can't fix it,\" Wolfe said with ruthless precision. \"Nothing can bring back the dead. You believe in the Christian teachings, Master Beck? Well. You reap what you sow.\"\n\nBeck hit him. Backhand, a viciously fast blow that rocked Wolfe's head to one side and left him spitting blood. Santi snarled and tried to pull free, but he was too weak.\n\n\"You reap what you sow, you filthy crow,\" Beck said. He swung around to glare at Morgan. \"Last chance, girl. Save our crops, and save their lives.\" Beck pulled out a pistol and leveled it at Santi's head. The captain looked at the weapon, then past it to meet Beck's eyes.\n\n\"I will not say it again, girl,\" Beck said. \"Bring back our crops. Or I'll kill this man right now, and his blood will be on your hands. I'll save the Scholar to burn alive and screaming. Do you hear?\"\n\nSanti said, in a deceptively calm and unbothered voice, \"None of this is your fault, Morgan. No matter what happens. In bocca al lupo, Christopher.\"\n\nWolfe took a sharp, sudden breath, and whispered,\" Crepi il lupo, dear Nic.\"\n\nIt meant good-bye.\n\nJess stood up, but he had no shot, no clear one; he could see a sliver of Beck, but not enough to aim for, not enough to do any good, but he had to shoot...\n\nAnd that was the moment when sirens began to wail beyond the walls.\n\nThe tone was different. Louder, higher, more dissonant than before. And an amplified voice with an Alexandrian accent spoke first in English, and then repeated the same phrase in German, Spanish, more languages that Jess didn't even recognize.\n\nBut the phrase would be the same in all of them.\n\nThe Great Library declares no quarter will be given.\n\nPhiladelphia was about to die."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Urgent directive from the Archivist Magister to commanders of all High Garda surrounding Philadelphia:\n\n\u2002You are ordered to disregard previous instructions on the preservation of the city, its occupants, and the capture of the Burner leaders. For the safety and preservation of the Library, you must bombard the city immediately with all speed and all strength, with no regard for casualties or for damage.\n\n\u2002Let the city of the Burners be reduced to ashes. Let no living thing remain.\n\n\u2002Let it burn.\n\n\u2002Text of a letter from the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus to his son. Available in the Codex.\n\n\u2002My son, these are the ways of brothers: you must reach the outer limits of virtue before you die. You must trust the man at your back and to your side. You must joyously run to the fight, and never from it. Do these things, and you will be both a good man, and a brave man.\n\n\u2002And the brave never die. Mark this well: the brave never die, for we remember."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "Jess took his finger off the trigger, and thank God he did, because he knew he would have killed someone he didn't intend to hit, his hand was shaking so badly. The mob had gone from rabid to panicked in a breath, and now they were starting to scatter. Now to run, slipping on the slick grass and in the mud. Desperate to get to a shelter.\n\nJess lunged forward, got Beck square in his sights, and very nearly killed him. Would have, if the guard Indira hadn't fired on Jess first. Her bullet hissed close enough that he felt the heat of its passage, and the shot intended to put Beck down went wide.\n\nBeck still had a gun of his own, and now he realized he was under attack. He turned and sighted on Jess.\n\nSanti hit the man with his uninjured shoulder, hard enough to lift Beck clear off his footing. Santi slammed him down on the steps. Beck landed with a bone-cracking thud, screaming.\n\nNow Indira had two enemies, Santi and Jess, and a hesitation of which to target cost her dear. Neither of them was quick enough to get her.\n\nWolfe was.\n\nHe turned, slipping out of his guard's hold with a grace that would have been unexpected to anyone who didn't know him, and just as easily plucked a knife from the man's belt. As he spun, he threw with an accuracy Jess knew he'd never equal, and the knife tumbled in a perfectly stable arc, end over end, to bury itself in Indira's chest.\n\nShe shot anyway, but shock disrupted her aim, and the one directed at Santi went wide, to pock a hole in the marble wall. She looked down in disbelief and then took hold of the knife and started to pull it free. She didn't manage more than a fraction of it before she was folding at the knees, and then down.\n\nBeck was screaming where he lay on the stairs, one leg at a drastic angle, but he had no weapon and was no threat now, and Jess, Santi, and Wolfe all turned on the guard holding Morgan.\n\nHe let go and ran. Morgan lurched forward, nearly falling, into Jess's arms.\n\n\"What is this?\" she shouted over the awful keening of the sirens. \"What's happening?\"\n\nHe didn't have time to explain. Even thinking of it made him sick. Santi tried to reach for Wolfe, but the Scholar shook him off and rushed down the steps, past Beck, to kneel next to Indira.\n\nThe woman was still alive, Jess saw. Wolfe bent and said something to her, and put his hand on her forehead. Her lips moved, and her eyes closed, and he jerked the knife free with one fast motion.\n\nShe died quickly, then. Fast and clean, as she probably deserved. Indira wasn't their enemy. Beck was, perhaps. But most of these people... They were just frightened and desperate, and it had all gone so suddenly, devastatingly wrong.\n\n\"What can we do?\" Jess shouted to Santi. Santi shook his head without taking his gaze from Wolfe, who was wearily rising. \"Sir!\"\n\n\"We go,\" Santi said. \"There's nothing else to be done.\"\n\nMorgan wasn't strong enough to run, even with Jess's help; he picked her up and carried her as they moved through the muddy, stinking, dead fields toward the outbuilding near the wall. Halfway across, Jess had the feeling that someone was following, and looked behind them.\n\nIt was the doctor. Askuwheteau. He was approaching at a slipping, stumbling run, and he was leading a small column of people, including the woman Jess had met at the doctor's home. His housekeeper. \"Wait!\" Askuwheteau called. A young child tripped and fell, and the doctor, without pausing, scooped him up and carried him. \"Do you have a way out? Please!\"\n\nJess looked at them. People of Askuwheteau's native blood, he thought, and a number of others who must have put their faith in him. This is mad. It'll get us all caught. \"Yes,\" he said. \"Come with us. Hurry.\"\n\nWolfe and Santi were ahead of them, and though Wolfe gave Jess a stern look when he saw the stragglers trailing in his wake, he didn't say anything. Santi opened the door of the building\u2014a barn, made for the storage of grain\u2014and gestured them all in. He clapped the door shut behind them.\n\nA lamp came alive with a soft hiss of flame, and it cast a smooth golden light over Khalila Seif's face. She took in a deep breath of relief at the sight of them. \"How did you get free? I thought\u2014\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter now,\" Wolfe said. \"Go. Go. Once the sirens stop\u2014\"\n\nAnd as if he'd commanded it, the wailing came to an abrupt end. Echoes shattered back from distant walls, and then it was ominously silent. Not even thunder broke the stillness. They looked up, though all they could see was the dark roof overhead.\n\nThe paralysis broke when Jess heard the first thin, high whistle of a ballista bomb. He remembered that hellish sound all too well. He'd heard it in Oxford, in England, and he'd seen what a no-quarter bombardment by the High Garda really meant. \"Go!\" Jess shouted, and they were all moving for the back of the building, where Khalila slid aside a door wide enough for a hay cart. They were only a short distance from the wall.\n\nAnd the wall was unbroken.\n\nThomas wasn't there.\n\n\"Where are they?\"\n\nJess turned on Khalila.\n\n\"They aren't with you?\" she demanded in turn. \"Thomas and Glain never arrived! Dario went to fetch them, I thought\u2014\" She pulled in a sudden, agonized breath. \"Does Beck have them?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"He'd have shoved them in our faces if he did.\" Thomas, you fool, what are you doing? \"Glain and Dario went to get the books?\"\n\n\"Yes! They're here!\" She pointed to a stack of bags and packs near the door. Familiar ones. They'd carried them from Alexandria to London to here. \"Glain went to get something else, and Dario went after her. I never saw Thomas!\"\n\nBut Thomas, Jess thought, had seen the others and decided they needed help. Without Thomas, without that device to melt a hole in this wall...\n\n\"I've got to go find them,\" he said, and ignored the protests that burst out of Morgan, Santi, Wolfe. Khalila said nothing, and he kept his gaze on her. \"If the building goes, stay near the wall. Ballista bombs don't drop straight down; you should be safe there.\"\n\nShe nodded, though they both knew that if the Library had declared no quarter in the battle, the volume of Greek fire that would shortly be descending on this city would leave nothing alive. Nothing safe.\n\n\"Which way did they go?\" he asked her, and she pointed back to city hall.\n\n\"Jess!\" Wolfe shouted, but he wasn't listening.\n\nHe was running.\n\nJess felt the waves of the explosion shudder through his body, and he nearly lost his footing; he watched one of the buildings in the street across from the fields shatter apart, wood and metal spinning in strangely beautiful arcs into the air, glittering end over end... and then the Greek fire contained inside the projectile caught fire. It was an awful, beautiful fountain of raw green liquid that breathed and spread, falling on other buildings, coating the street.\n\nEverything, burning.\n\nHe ran faster, heart pounding as he heard more high, keening screams overhead. More bombs coming, from every direction now. This is suicide! But he didn't know what else to do. He couldn't leave them. Better to die honest.\n\nHe'd just reached the strip of mud and grass where the mob had been when two bombs hit city hall. One shattered right through the tower, like a rock through an eggshell.\n\nThe other descended on the broad, white landing where Beck had threatened the prisoners. Right in front of him. He had just enough time to see Willinger Beck, with his badly broken leg, roll over and put his hands over his head in a futile attempt at protection, and thought, I'm sorry, and then the bomb went off.\n\nHe didn't realize he was falling. It was like a black stutter in the world, and with no transition at all he was lying on his back. A strange, hissing whine buzzed his ears, and he batted at it like a wasp, but it was in his ears, inside his head, and as he rolled slowly onto his side he remembered the ballista, the explosion. The thin, screaming sound of death approaching from the sky.\n\nThen he saw the fire.\n\nIt lived, breathed, roared like a beast, greenish at the edges, raw, bleeding red at the center as it melted the stone steps. The building itself was burning, the tower collapsing in on itself. He saw Benjamin Franklin's golden statue tumbling down in an arc, melting into golden streamers as it fell.\n\nThe grass around him exploded in poison green patches, spreading, crisping the soil beneath into brittle glass. A tree near the corner became a burning matchstick weeping lacy, lazy curls of flame.\n\nThe air swirled with ashes and bitter smoke so thick he could bite it, chew it, swallow it whole. The acrid taste made him retch uncontrollably. He wiped thick, colorless spit away from his lips and levered himself up on shaking legs. The burning tree began to hiss and screech like a human strapped to a pyre; it was only the sap boiling and cracking through the bark with thick pops, but it sounded so alive.\n\nHe could hear more bombs exploding, and the high, thin shrieking now wasn't the bombs falling; it was people with no way out, nowhere to run. Am I burning? It occurred to him only then, in a blind panic, that he might be, that if he looked down, he might see his skin crisping and curling off of muscle, and fear nearly sent him reeling until he got ahold of himself. I'm not. I'm not burning.\n\nA window at the far corner of the building suddenly exploded outward in a white shower of glass, and a large tufted chair crashed to the ground.\n\nGlain was the first through in a leap and a roll. Dario clambered out and made the jump, awkwardly.\n\nThomas came last. He was holding a thick, crude weapon clutched in one hand, and he had a large, bulky sack over one shoulder. He jumped and landed to his ankles in the thick mud, and doubled over coughing. All three of them were stained with smoke, retching out thin drools of phlegm.\n\nJess heard the whistling of incoming missiles\u2014more of them now. The keening of angry ghosts, made even more chilling by the thick clouds of smoke already spreading across the sky. Philadelphia\u2014a defiant, crumbling wreck of a town\u2014was burning, and burning as it never had before.\n\nJess stumbled to his friends and shouted, \"Run!\" He wanted to ask what had been so damned important that they'd risked everything, even the chance of life, but he had no breath to spare and neither did they. The air around them had grown hot, and every breath came painful and thick with smoke. He could taste the Greek fire now, as more and more containers shattered and the stuff spread into a fine, hazy mist. Flashover is coming. When Greek fire reached a dense enough fog in the air, it would ignite, and then there'd be nothing to breathe at all.\n\nThey ran through the rotten, dead fields. The plants were still too wet to burn, but mist rose off the mud like phantoms as the heat increased. Thomas had the advantage of extra-long legs; Dario and Glain struggled to keep up with the two of them. Jess ran like his life depended on every step, because it did.\n\nHe slowed as they approached the barn, and turned to look back. It was like looking back on hell. Philadelphia was a seething lake of flame, and still the ballistae keened, still the bombs exploded. The park where he'd kissed Morgan burned, every tree a candle. No building remained standing. None would.\n\n\"Jess!\" Thomas shouted, and tackled him into the mud, just as a ballista bomb shattered through the roof of the barn in front of them. We're dead. We're all bloody dead, Jess thought, because the explosion would catch them, catch those crouching near the wall...\n\nBut nothing happened. Thomas rolled off, and Jess ran to the door of the barn. The glass container of Greek fire had fallen on a pile of hay, and it hadn't broken... but the fuse still burned, and when it ignited the contents...\n\nJess didn't think. He moved. He hardly felt the shock of the burn on his fingers when he grabbed the fuse and pulled, because it didn't matter; all that mattered was that this bomb could not explode.\n\nHe dropped the hissing fuse to the ground and crushed it into ash with his boot, then allowed himself to stagger back outside, lean against the wall, and scream. It came out raw with terror, fury, horror... a sound as agonized as all those sounds in the town, all those voices crying out.\n\nHe couldn't do anything.\n\n\"Jess,\" Thomas said, and Jess looked up at him. The German's face was smudged and filthy, but tears made clear tracks through the soot. \"Come. Come now.\"\n\nThey followed Glain and Dario to the other side of the barn, where the rest of their friends crouched with Askuwheteau's fragile group of survivors near the wall. Wolfe shot to his feet when he saw them, and the anguish and relief on his face made Jess want to weep himself. This was too much, too much for anyone.\n\nThomas said, \"Everyone, get away from the wall now,\" and they did, though they still crouched low, looking up at the swirling black clouds, the bombs shrieking through the air somewhere above, an unseen terror.\n\nThomas had found the time to put the Ray of Apollo together from the components. It was bulky, crude, the ugliest thing Jess had ever seen Thomas craft; the long barrel flared out into a wide curve toward the end of it. We didn't test it, Jess thought with a horrible sense of fatality. We didn't test it, and now there's no time.\n\nBut Thomas was right. Heron had built this device back in the dim mists of antiquity. He'd made something that wouldn't be seen again until Archimedes, with his giant array of mirrors built to burn ships at sea. As Thomas had said, Heron's tools had been little better than what they'd had in Beck's workshop.\n\nThomas pressed the button, and a thick red light erupted from the barrel of the thing, spreading out but staying somehow solid in the air. The mirror, Jess thought, and remembered all those painful hours of grinding and polishing. It's working. The light hit the metal of the wall, and the wall began to hiss and glow and melt off in liquid layers. Concentrated light, burning its way through the surface of a wall softened by Morgan's efforts.\n\nIt was why she was so weak. She'd created this chance at life.\n\nIt took a long, torturous minute to burn completely through, and when Thomas switched off the gun, there was a hole in the wall just large enough to crawl through. The edges glowed sullenly, but they were already cooling.\n\nThomas groaned, dropped the weapon, and staggered backward\u2014and Jess realized, in the next instant, that his friend's palms were burned bright red. \"I didn't have time to put in shielding,\" Thomas said when Jess came toward him. \"I didn't think\u2014 No, no, I'm fine. Go, Jess, get them out! We don't have long!\"\n\n\"He's right,\" Santi said. He was already pushing Wolfe toward the escape. \"It's going to flash over soon. Move!\"\n\n\"The books!\" Dario shouted, and grabbed packs. They all grabbed for them, and the rest Jess shoved quickly through the hole and let Wolfe, on the other side now, drag away. Librarians to the end, Jess thought, and it should have been funny. Nothing was funny now.\n\nSanti went next, then Morgan. Khalila pushed Askuwheteau and his refugees ahead of her when her turn came, and no one argued, though Jess kept a nervous watch on the gathering mist. It had begun as a reeking, pale thing, but now it had taken on a definite tinge of green. The flames burning at city hall and in the town hadn't died at all. They'd grown into twisting, green, violent furies. He could feel the heat from here. Anyone closer would be dead from it.\n\nThe last of the Philadelphians went through, and then Khalila. Dario. Glain.\n\nIt was just Thomas, and Jess.\n\n\"Go,\" Jess said, and Thomas gave him a strange little smile.\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"You go first.\"\n\nThat was the moment when Jess, to his shock, realized that the hole just wasn't big enough. Thomas had dropped the weapon before he'd burned a hole big enough to accommodate his broad shoulders.\n\nThat smile meant that he knew he was about to die. That he'd worked it out and accepted it.\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. He meant it to the bottom of his soul.\n\nHe bent and picked up the still-hot gun, flipped the switch, and began to widen the hole.\n\nIt was hard to know how Thomas had managed to hold the weapon at all; Jess's hands began to sting and scream in the first few seconds of use, and he felt his whole body tense against the rising red pain. It won't take much. Thirty seconds. Maybe a little more. You can do this. He counted it off under his breath. Started strongly, then ran out of air. Couldn't even gasp against the agony. Hold on. Somehow, he did, even though the pain had built to an exquisite, vile pressure like nothing he'd ever felt. It felt like being boiled alive. He was dimly aware that Thomas was shouting at him to stop. But he couldn't. The hole wasn't big enough for Thomas yet.\n\nAnd then he felt something shudder inside the weapon, and the Ray of Apollo went dead. He tried the switch. Nothing. His hands were clumsy, and the metal slick, and he dropped it into the mud as he tried to get it working again; it had to work, had to.\n\nBut it would never work again. Pieces of it had melted. More of it glowed a dull red. The mirrors inside had shattered.\n\n\"You have to go,\" Thomas said to him.\n\nJess took a deep breath and said, \"Not until you do.\"\n\nDon't look at your hands, he told himself. He knew how badly they were burned, but he thrust his right into his pocket anyway. It felt like plunging it into molten glass, and he nearly screamed, but he managed not to, somehow, and when he pulled his hand out again, he was holding the small glass vial of the leftover Greek fire. He uncorked it and threw the liquid in a green, hissing arc to splash against the edge of the hole they'd burned.\n\nIt wasn't much, and it widened it by only an inch or so.\n\nBut it was enough.\n\nThomas picked Jess up and bodily threw him into the hole, and a pair of strong hands grabbed hold of him and pulled him to the other side. He hardly cared, but a glance up told him it was Dario Santiago who'd just saved his life.\n\nJess dragged in a sickly cool breath of air and bent over to retch out the poisonous stuff he'd been choking on. He didn't bother to see if they were under attack. He didn't care. He just crawled away to the side, gasping and shaking with pain.\n\nAnd then he thought, Thomas.\n\nHis friend made it just in time. He only just squeezed through, even with the widening of the hole, and as he emerged, Jess saw his clothes were giving off wisps of smoke and flickers of Greek fire. Someone shouted, and a fire blanket was thrown on him to smother the flames.\n\nScholar Wolfe grabbed Thomas's reaching hand and pulled him\u2014and the sack that Thomas wouldn't leave behind\u2014well away from the hole.\n\nJess had only just begun to realize they'd made it, actually made it, when someone cried, \"Watch out!\" and the wall beside them boomed with a sudden pressure. It creaked and groaned, and an explosion of brilliant green light boiled upward within it. Curls of fire lashed the low black clouds. A tongue of green flame blasted through the hole in the wall, burned for long seconds, and then vanished in a reeking, rotten puff of smoke.\n\nThe aerosolized Greek fire mist had just burned off and cooked everything inside the walls. If they'd still been in there...\n\nJess froze, thinking of what they'd just escaped. He was shocked to be alive. He wanted to be glad his friends were with him. But all he could think was, This is our fault.\n\n\"Jess.\" He looked up. For a second, nothing made sense to him, not even the face of his own twin... and then he flung himself up and embraced Brendan with trembling strength. Which Brendan returned. \"You gave me a fright, idiot!\"\n\nJess managed to say, \"What else am I for, then?\" and tried to wipe at his eyes. His hands felt clumsy, and Brendan drew in a sharp breath when he saw the damage and yelled for a Medica.\n\n\"What did they do to you?\" Brendan demanded, and his voice shook a little.\n\n\"I did it to myself.\"\n\n\"Shoveled burning coals with your hands?\"\n\n\"I'm all right.\"\n\n\"You're not!\" Brendan half snarled. \"Medica! Damn you, get your arse over here!\"\n\nMedica, not doctor. Back to civilization through the small span of a metal wall. It seemed impossible. He'd started to see Philadelphia as a world in itself. And now it was gone. The Library had ordered it gone, and it was like it had never been there at all.\n\n\"Jess?\" Brendan was in front of him now, eye level. Frowning in real worry. \"Jess! Are you with me?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, though he wasn't sure. But things were starting to make some sense again. The tents arrayed around them in a protective huddle seemed familiar. The Library sigil fluttered in gold embroidery on the flags. The company symbol\u2014a cobra coiled around a book\u2014flew just below it to identify whom the tents belonged to. Santi's company. So Jess and the rest had managed to come out among friends\u2014or, more accurately, the friends had managed to position themselves to meet the escape. He should thank Brendan for that. And for many other things. He just couldn't find the energy.\n\nJess caught sight of a tall woman striding toward them in her crisp uniform, with a shining black cap of hair hugging her face. Startling eyes. He knew the look she threw at Captain Santi, at Wolfe, and at each of them in turn. Not friendly, exactly. Assessing.\n\n\"Zara,\" Santi said, and struggled up to his feet. \"Thank you.\"\n\nShe ignored that and focused on the knot of refugees who were still huddled together, Askuwheteau in the center of them. \"You asked me to rescue Library personnel,\" she said. \"And you bring them with you? Burners?\"\n\n\"Innocents,\" Santi said. \"You know they didn't deserve that!\"\n\n\"All I know is Burners have spat on us and tried to kill us my entire life.\" Zara's dark eyes were utterly unreadable as she glanced at him, and then she said, \"But we can save that particular discussion for later. I thank the gods you're still with us, Captain. And still causing trouble.\"\n\n\"I'm still the captain?\"\n\n\"Until you say you're not, sir.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Then I'm grateful, Lieutenant. For many things.\"\n\nZara transferred her stare back to the refugees. \"And what are we supposed to do with them?\"\n\n\"Can't leave them,\" he said. \"Find them uniforms. I assume you have something appropriate for the rest of us.\"\n\n\"Scholar robes and uniforms,\" she said. \"Though finding anything in the German giant's size will be a challenge.\"\n\n\"He'll make do. He always does.\"\n\nJess was watching the exchange for any hint that Zara was about to turn on them, shoot Santi where he stood and announce that the rest of them were facing Library trial. He didn't trust her. Never had, really. But Santi did, and she seemed to be completely loyal again. However improbably.\n\nWhen he looked away, there was a Medica next to him, an older woman with a strong, walnut brown face and easy smile who said, \"I understand you've been\u2014 Oh, son. That must sting.\"\n\nHe glanced down at the swollen mess of his hands and said, \"Some.\" Better to sound tough than to give way to the emotion boiling inside him. He didn't even know what it was, only that the pressure of it made his eyes water and his breath come short. The relief as the Medica sprayed an anesthetic foam on the skin made him go a little weak, and he felt his brother gripping his shoulder from behind him. Holding him upright, it seemed, and Jess wasn't quite sure when he'd lost balance. \"Is everyone all right? Everyone else?\"\n\n\"No,\" Brendan said. \"Your big friend over there's having his hands treated, too. Santi's moving like he's wounded\u2014\"\n\n\"He is.\"\n\n\"And your girlfriend isn't in the best shape I've ever seen. Not a one of you looks healthy, by the way.\" Brendan paused. His voice went quieter. \"I've never seen you this thin.\"\n\n\"You try finding a solid meal in a city that's been under siege for a hundred years.\" Jess cut his brother a look. \"Worried about me?\"\n\nBrendan snorted. \"Hell freezes and the devil skates before that happens. You can survive anything.\" But despite the tone, the words, his hand was tight on Jess's shoulder, and there was a dark shadow in his eyes. Not for Jess's sake, purely. None of them could remain unaffected by what had just happened. There was no screaming from Philadelphia now. It was a city of dead bones and ash, and they all knew it. For the first time, Jess was glad the smell of Greek fire was so overpowering.\n\nHe didn't want to think about what that hot, searing wind would bring otherwise.\n\n\"I don't know why they did it,\" Jess said. He felt dull now that the pain was passing away. The Medica hadn't spoken again; she was covering his hands in a thick salve, and he expected the next step would be bandages. \"A hundred years, the Library let Philadelphia stand. Why would they declare no quarter now? Why\u2014\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter,\" Brendan said, and this time, Jess heard the false note in his voice. Saw the telltale hitch. His brother was lying to him. \"Lucky they did, though. They were about to kill you, I understand. Without that distraction, you'd never have made it out.\"\n\nJess's stomach turned cold. \"We had a plan.\"\n\n\"Yeah. How'd your plan go, then?\"\n\n\"We made it out!\"\n\n\"Would you have, if the bombs hadn't started falling?\" Brendan's face was fixed now. Masklike, and reflecting green from the flames beyond the wall. \"Serves them right. Beck thought he could take on everyone. The Library. Their own allies. Us.\"\n\nUs. It was hard to know if us meant the brothers, the Brightwells, the smugglers. Jess turned and stared at him, and Brendan looked away, into the middle distance\u2014but not in the direction of the dead town. For no reason at all, Jess remembered the woman in the glass shop, worn and tired and poor, desperately living as best she could.\n\n\"What did you do, Brendan?\" he asked quietly. His brother shook his head. \"Brendan.\"\n\nHis brother squeezed his shoulder, painfully tight, and then said, \"Look after him for me,\" to the Medica, who nodded without looking up. She was fully fixed on her work. Jess watched his brother walk away with a disconnected, drifting sense of horror and loss, and closed his eyes when it all swept over him again. Flames. Screams. Beck, lying helpless as the bomb exploded. Indira, falling with the knife in her chest. What happened to sour Diwell? The woman in the glass shop? The counselors who'd been so captivated by the press?\n\nWhat did our survival just cost?\n\nHe sat, unmoving, locked inside that private hell, until the Medica finished and said, with a gentleness not usual for her type, \"Rest if you can.\"\n\nJess shook his head. He didn't know if he'd ever rest again. But he was thinking one thing now, over and over: There's no going back. We have to make this mean something.\n\nNo matter the cost to him.\n\nHe did rest, because the Medica gave him some kind of injection to knock him out. At least it kept him from nightmares... from any he remembered, anyway.\n\nJess woke to a rush of nausea so intense it made his whole body burn with it, and immediately turned on his side and threw up thick black bile. Then he coughed up more.\n\nSomeone, he vaguely realized, was holding a bucket for him, and as he finished and collapsed back to the ground\u2014no, to a cot, a real one\u2014he realized that the person holding the bucket was Scholar Wolfe.\n\nHe was truly a Scholar again, washed clean, wearing a black robe and a severe expression of distaste as he set the bucket on the ground beside Jess's bed. \"Don't do that again,\" he said, and gave Jess a clinical stare. \"Can you breathe?\"\n\nHe could. Not easily; his lungs felt scorched and fragile, but each breath he took in felt cleaner than the last. The ceiling overhead waved and rippled, and he finally realized he wasn't imagining it. He was in a tent. A High Garda tent. He struggled to remember, because all he had in that moment were disorienting flashes... Beck, screaming, his leg bent wrong. Ben Franklin's golden statue tumbling and melting into green flames as the tower collapsed.\n\nWhen he blinked, he realized his heart was racing and cold sweat had broken out on his face and arms. He felt filthy and, despite the sleep, dully exhausted. \"We're safe?\" he asked. It seemed important to ask. His voice sounded appalling\u2014a toad's croak, barely understandable even to his own ears. Wolfe silently offered him a cup of water\u2014clean, fresh water that washed the grit out of his throat and went down wonderfully cool. Jess closed his eyes a moment to enjoy that, and then repeated what he'd tried to say.\n\n\"For the moment,\" Wolfe said. \"We'll leave soon. But we have some choices to make, and I want everyone healthy enough to make them intelligently.\" He paused a moment and then said, \"We were lucky, Jess. We won't be lucky again. From now on, once the Library knows we've survived, it will do everything in its power to wipe us from the earth. Us, our families, our friends. Everyone who has ever known our names. It's the only way the Archivist can win now.\"\n\nJess swallowed. \"No quarter,\" he said.\n\n\"That's why we must decide, once and for all, what each of us wants to do. There's a chance that if we hide, we could live out our lives in peace and obscurity. If we fight... if we fight, the Library will wage total war on us, wherever we go. There will be no safety. No rest. Win, or die.\"\n\n\"You make it sound so appealing.\"\n\n\"I mean to. Each one of you deserves the truth and is strong enough to stand up under the weight. I have known many Scholars and students. I have never met a more unruly, unteachable lot, and I thank the gods for forcing you all into my life.\" Wolfe's words were severe, but the look in his eyes, the quiet smile\u2014those were anything but. They said, I am proud of you. \"You came into this for me, in the beginning, and for Thomas. But this is your chance to walk away. Here, in the ashes, you can start new.\"\n\n\"You think that's what I want?\" Jess asked. \"To give up?\"\n\n\"I think we'll all discuss it more,\" Wolfe said, and stood up. He indicated the bucket with one dismissive wave. \"Empty that yourself; I'm not your nursemaid. And your brother wants to see you.\"\n\nJess said nothing to that. He didn't think he could stomach seeing Brendan just now. So, of course, his brother immediately threw back the tent flap and strolled right in.\n\nJess hadn't had much leisure to examine him before, so he did now, and it was like looking in a flawed mirror. His twin had lost the soft padding he'd acquired while lounging in Alexandria and falling in love with a Library girl; he looked more like the half-wild London urchin Jess had once been, and Brendan was dressed in an entirely wrong High Garda uniform and grinning like the devil on a drinking spree. Jess sat up, which served to remind him how incredibly sore he was, to lessen the height difference between them.\n\nThere was a terrible truth between them. It wasn't clear, and it wasn't spoken aloud, not yet, but Jess knew it all the same. His brother had arranged for the bombing of Philadelphia... how, he had no idea. But it had been horribly effective, both in securing them the chance at escape and in showing the Burners that double-crossing smugglers was bad, bad business.\n\nBrendan didn't want to talk about it any more than Jess did, it seemed, because he noisily dragged over a camp chair, made a face at the bucket Wolfe had abandoned, and edged it away with one booted foot. \"I came to tell you how your girl is doing. Thought that would be the first question you'd ask.\"\n\nHe was right, of course. Jess had been forming the question even as his brother spoke. He gave in. \"How is she?\"\n\n\"Morgan is receiving the best possible care from Library-trained Medicas,\" Brendan said. It sounded like an official, rehearsed answer that he'd been told to deliver.\n\n\"I said, how is she?\" His brother looked down at his hands and rubbed his thumbs together. Another tell, but a new one, and Jess didn't know what it meant. It put him on edge. \"Saint's sakes, just tell me!\"\n\n\"Weak,\" Brendan said. \"Burning up with some kind of fever that your Scholar Wolfe says has to do with her overusing her talents. He and that American doctor are doing their best, along with the Medica. Wolfe told me not to tell you. He thought you'd come rushing in.\"\n\n\"Exactly what I'm doing,\" Jess said, and sat up. The world melted and swirled around him, and he felt Brendan's strong hands holding him back from collapse. He tried to take in a deep breath, but his lungs weren't having it, and he heard a thick, noxious rattle of liquid in them. He coughed, and once he'd started he couldn't stop.\n\nBrendan eased him back down again, and he wasn't in any shape to say no to it. The bunk felt safe, even if everything inside him was screaming to get up. \"Nothing you can do but hover and look murderous,\" his twin said. \"The rest of them are doing that on your behalf, I promise. You and Thomas got the worst of the smoke. You'll be coughing through the night. I'm to sit and make sure you don't choke on it or stop breathing. If you stop breathing, by the way, I'll beat you until you start.\"\n\n\"I don't think that's a valid Medica technique.\"\n\nBrendan shrugged. \"Seems fine to me.\"\n\n\"And why are you dressed in a High Garda uniform?\"\n\n\"I was planning to kill you, dispose of the body, and take your place. After all, isn't that what twins do?\"\n\n\"Stop.\"\n\nBrendan cocked his head, a familiar gesture that made Jess want to cuff him on the ear. \"Wouldn't do to be some civilian in the middle of this camp. Did you trade your brains for tasty pudding? The Library's swarming like a hive; they're dismantling the walls and sending troops in to search the city. Zara's securing us a transport and sending us on our way as soon as night falls. And I can't wait to be out of this damned uniform, because it makes me itch.\"\n\nJess looked down at himself and, for the first time, realized he was no longer wearing the filthy, half-seared rags he'd had on; instead, he wore a silky shirt and trousers, the sort provided to patients by Medica hospitals. And nothing else beneath. He was grateful for the blanket, suddenly, and yanked it up. His hands were expertly bandaged, and the burns twinged. Not nearly as bad as they ought to have done. It occurred to him to wonder if, in addition to the Medica's sprays and ointments, Morgan had poured some of her healing ability into him and further damaged herself in the process. He prayed that hadn't happened. He had to hope that Wolfe would have had the good sense to prevent it, if Morgan tried.\n\nThe bandages were aggravating, and before Brendan could stop him\u2014if he was inclined to\u2014Jess grabbed the end of the one swaddling his right hand in his teeth and yanked until it came loose. He clumsily unwrapped it and surveyed his fingers and palm. Blistered, tender, but not nearly as bad as he'd expected. He stripped off the left hand's covering and flexed both. Winced. Then he tried to sit up again and was slightly more successful this time. His lungs heaved and protested with bubbling gurgles, but he managed an upright position without help. \"Are we safe here?\" he asked.\n\n\"Of course not; stupid question. But turns out Captain Santi has a significant number of friends, even here. Out of the other three captains here, two of them aren't well pleased with the Archivist removing the High Garda commander or demanding loyalty tests of his soldiers. And they're friends of Captain Santi. So they'll turn a blind eye and cover for us. The last one is going to be kept in the dark.\"\n\n\"So... we're leaving in a transport, but Santi's company is staying?\"\n\n\"No real choice. If Zara pulled out, there'd be no mistaking that she'd turned her loyalty. Santi says they stay and do everything asked of them until it's time to do something important. He's gambling that they will, of course. I'm not sure I'd take that chance.\"\n\nSo, they were going it alone. They didn't have much choice. As Wolfe had said: they'd have to decide to hide and play dead, or rise and fight. Brendan, ironically, was the one who'd liked the shadows. Avoiding duty and playing his own game.\n\nJess tried to stand up. His brother held him down. Jess snapped, \"I'm all right! Hands off, Scraps!\"\n\n\"You'd walk on severed legs and claim you were all right, but fine. Suit yourself; fall on your face and spit your lungs up while you're at it. I have things to do. You haven't asked, but I'll tell you anyway: we've got a ship waiting on the coast, and we'll be sailing home.\"\n\n\"Home? Meaning where?\"\n\n\"To our new fortress. You're going to love it. Da wants you with us. And he's generously agreed to give all your friends shelter, too.\" Brendan started for the tent's exit, then turned back. \"Don't call me Scraps. I'd beat you blue for it, but seems redundant.\"\n\nLooking at him was disorienting, like seeing himself at a distance. Am I really that annoying? Too late to ask. His brother was already gone.\n\nIt was significant, what he'd said, and the way he'd said it, dropping it at the last, casual moment. Jess's head hurt too much to decipher that message, but he knew it would come to him. Eventually. Meanwhile, he had somewhere to be.\n\nJess took a deep breath, reached for the support of the bunk's frame, and managed to stand. Didn't manage much more than that, for a long few moments, then spotted a uniform neatly folded on a chest nearby. That's not so far.\n\nIt was miles, and he was sweating and coughing up a red-tinged liquid by the time he got there. He spat mouthfuls of the sickening stuff into the bucket and, when he felt more steady, stripped off the loose, soft shirt and trousers. His skin, most places, was blotched and reddened. His hair felt dry, and singed at the ends, and it smelled like burning death.\n\nDressing seemed a lot of effort, and after he'd drawn on underclothes, fastened the trousers, pulled on the shirt and jacket and boots, he felt tired enough to lie back down again... but he wouldn't, for fear Brendan would come back and laugh. Instead, he got up, coughed again, and proceeded with slow care outside. The handmade Codex and the book he'd carried out of Philadelphia both lay bound together with dirty strips of cloth. He put them in the pockets of his coat.\n\nNiccolo Santi wasn't resting. He was sitting in a folding camp chair, but he was engaged in earnest conversation with his extremely capable and dangerous lieutenant. Too busy to notice Jess at all.\n\nSomehow, he wasn't surprised to find yet another person standing just behind him, off to the side, as if waiting to catch him when he inevitably collapsed. He made damn sure he was steady, and then turned his head. It was Dario, who attempted to look like total accident had placed him there.\n\n\"Really?\" Jess asked. Dario shrugged without commenting. \"Who put you up to it?\"\n\n\"Who's the one person I will unquestionably obey?\"\n\nKhalila, of course. That went without saying. \"So why did she turn on the Library, really?\" Jess asked, and jerked his head toward Zara. Not very hard, so as not to lose his balance. He could take a lot. He wasn't sure he could stomach Dario Santiago having to come to his rescue.\n\n\"I think she really did miss the captain,\" Dario said. \"And his soldiers didn't have the heart to turn against him. He's well liked, and she isn't, so it's in her best interests to stay loyal to him. Always an on or off with that one. Loyal, or not. I never know what to make of her, but Santi does. I suppose that's all that matters.\"\n\n\"So...,\" Jess said slowly. \"We have... an army?\"\n\n\"Two companies' worth, possibly three, but they won't be of any use to us until it comes to a real fight,\" Dario said. \"Still. That's... not insignificant.\" He was right about that. That was stunning. Defections from the High Garda were rare, and defections of entire companies? Unheard of. Jess imagined the Archivist's face turning a shade somewhere between crimson and eggplant when those companies turned on him. Maybe he'd burst his heart in fury. That would be most welcome.\n\n\"Chess,\" Jess said quietly. \"Three moves ahead.\"\n\n\"And now would be the time to plan it,\" Dario agreed. \"We'll have troops moving into position in Alexandria that we can count on. I assume your brother's arranged for passage for us?\"\n\n\"Not to Alexandria,\" Jess said. \"My father wants us with him.\"\n\n\"Why? Because, no offense to your family, but I never quite trusted any of you.\" He hesitated a long beat before he said, \"Present company excepted, of course.\"\n\nAnd that was the moment when Jess's head cleared, and he saw very plainly what his brother had tried to tell him without telling him at all. Da wants you with us. Fortress. Generously agreed to give all your friends shelter.\n\nDario was talking to him, but he ignored him and shut his eyes to think. He knew his brother. He knew his father.\n\nAnd he knew exactly what was coming for them in England.\n\n\"Shut up,\" he said to Dario, in the middle of what was probably an elaborate non-apology. \"You're always bragging about your family connections. Just how important are they, exactly? And no exaggerations. Facts.\"\n\nDario went silent for a long moment, then said, \"My cousin Jaume is the Spanish ambassador to the Great Library. My aunt Xijema is the speaker of the Cortes Generales, the Spanish congress. She's also the Duchess of Badajoz. And my second cousin twice removed is Ram\u00f3n Alfonse, His Royal Highness, the king of Spain.\" Jess opened his mouth to reply but couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. He just shook his head. Dario gave him a shrug. \"That's why I didn't tell you.\"\n\n\"You're... actual royalty.\"\n\n\"No. Not really. There are plenty of those scampering around, anyway. But you asked.\"\n\n\"And you never thought to mention this? It might have saved your life.\"\n\n\"I know that. I also know that the first thing Beck would have done would be to demand a ransom, and I know that my family wouldn't pay it.\" Dario spread his hands. \"They stopped paying for me a long time ago. So it sounds impressive; that's all.\"\n\n\"Apart from money, would they extend you any other kind of help? Diplomatic help?\"\n\n\"If there was something in it for them. Jaume would be the one I'd count on. He's clever, and he likes me well enough.\"\n\n\"Can he offer us sanctuary at his embassy? If we need it?\"\n\nThat made Dario turn and look at him with a blank expression. \"What are you thinking, Jess?\" Jess, not scrubber, or one of the even less attractive nicknames he generally used.\n\n\"I'm thinking,\" Jess said, \"that I agree with you. I don't trust my family, either. But I think I know how we can make that of some real use.\" He took in a breath. He had a plan. It made his stomach twist and his head hurt, but Dario had been right: chess was not about playing your opponent, but knowing him. And clearly seeing everyone, and everything, in your path.\n\nFor the first time, he was really seeing clearly. It wasn't pleasant.\n\n\"I'm going to see Morgan,\" he said. \"And I'm going to take a shower. I smell like death.\"\n\n\"You do,\" Dario agreed. \"Really quite repulsively.\"\n\nDario wore a black Scholar's robe now, and a gold band, though Jess imagined it had been fiddled with to remove any chance of tracking it. He'd bathed already, obviously. He looked every inch the part of a respectable young man of the Library. And he gave Jess a sudden frown. \"You're not asking me to go with you, are you?\"\n\n\"No.\" Jess turned to go and almost faltered. Dario's hand slid under his elbow and steadied him.\n\n\"Fine, since you're begging, I'll walk you there. But I'm not washing your back.\"\n\n\"Gods defend us both from that terrible fate.\"\n\nDario saw him into the shower tent and left him safely deposited on a bench. Jess quickly washed the worst of the dirt and smell off himself in the small cubicle, and came out to find two things.\n\nFirst, Dario had abandoned him. Fair enough.\n\nSecond, Tom Rolleson and three other members of the Blue Dogs squad\u2014the one that Jess and Glain had belonged to, in their brief career with Santi's company\u2014were waiting for him when he stepped out of the shower cubicle, dressed in a towel and feeling especially vulnerable. They were all in uniforms and boots and identically harsh expressions, and Jess set himself mentally for the fight. Won't go well, some part of him said, which was not a help. Probably undo all the good work the Medica put in.\n\nThere was a sick irony to surviving the Burners, only to end up dying at the hands of his friends. But he wasn't going easily, if that was the direction they intended to take it.\n\n\"Troll,\" he said to the squad leader. Tom's nickname, and it usually brought out a brash grin. Not this time. The young man just stared at him. He'd acquired a new scar since the last time Jess had seen him: a long, jagged one that ran along the edge of his jaw. Still pink, with a faint red line in the middle. \"So what's this, then?\"\n\n\"What do you think it is?\" Troll asked him. The three soldiers flanking him\u2014one a Chinese recruit named Wu Xiang, one a Greek named Phoena, and the last he didn't know even faintly\u2014gave him identical blank faces. \"Look like a welcome home to you, Brightwell? You think you deserve one?\"\n\n\"I wasn't looking for it.\" Jess decided to move to the bench where he'd folded his clothes. When no one stopped him, he sat and, with the typical High Garda lack of modesty, took off the towel and put on underclothes while they stared at him. With each bit of the uniform going on, he felt better. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"What were they like?\" Phoena asked suddenly. Jess froze in the act of doing up the crisp black fabric of his trousers.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"The Burners.\"\n\nHe was suddenly, acutely aware of the humidity in the little enclosure, the ever-present faint smell of mold, the painful scrape of stiff cloth over his burns. For a second the memory rolled over him of watching the first ballista bomb hit, of seeing that first building explode into looping curls of pure death.\n\nHe didn't want to think about the Burners. He was short of breath, and when he tried to slow down and breathe deeper, his lungs gurgled again. He nearly coughed but managed not to. Not yet.\n\n\"Why?\" he asked without looking up. He found himself staring at his still-reddened hands. He could see the faint scars of the glass cuts on his fingertips, and for an instant he saw the shy smile of that woman in the shop. His hands curled into fists. They hurt. Throbbed.\n\n\"Because you were in there,\" Tom said. \"You met them. We wanted to know. Were they all\u2014\"\n\n\"Fanatics?\" Jess looked up then and met Troll's eyes. His squad leader didn't flinch. \"I don't know. Does it matter? I didn't sit down and have long, meaningful conversations with them. I was busy trying to figure out a way out. Why?\"\n\nWu said, \"Because we were in charge of loading ballistae. We need to know\u2014\"\n\nThat trailed off into silence. Jess couldn't think of anything to say to that, to the painful quiet between them, and finally, shook his head. \"I don't have an answer to that question. You did what you had to do. We all did. We have to accept what we can't change.\"\n\nThere was a short silence, and then Tom offered his hand. No change in expression. Jess looked at it for a second, then took it and let Troll help him up. \"Glad you're alive,\" Tom said. It wasn't a warm welcome, but it was something. \"Glain said to tell you they're in the command tent, when you're ready to join them.\"\n\n\"I'm going to find Morgan first.\"\n\n\"She's in the Medica tent, but you'd best go to Glain first. Morgan's asleep, and you'll want to stay with her.\"\n\nJess leaned closer and said, \"I thought you came to kick my skull in.\"\n\n\"Honestly?\" Tom said. \"Hadn't decided.\" He suddenly dragged Jess in and clapped him on the back, which hurt intensely, but Jess managed not to wince. Much. \"You have a spot with us, Blue Dog. Always.\"\n\nTom's advice was sound; Jess knew that once he saw Morgan, he'd want to stay with her. So he went to the command tent and found Khalila and Dario arguing.\n\nOr rather, Dario was arguing and Khalila was ignoring him when Jess pushed open the flap of the command tent, and all of that skidded to a halt as Khalila rushed to Jess and examined him with intense, toe-to-head scrutiny. \"Does it hurt?\" she asked. Under stress, her accent grew stronger. \"The burns?\"\n\n\"Not as much as it ought,\" he said. He was out of breath and, yes, aching all over, but determined not to show it.\n\n\"Good.\" She embraced him then. Gently. When she drew back, he saw his damp hair had left little dark patches on the sky blue cloth of her hijab. Her eyes were very bright with tears, but she blinked them away. \"We made Thomas go back to bed. He looked terrible, and he was coughing constantly.\"\n\nWhich, of course, made Jess's throat tickle uncomfortably. When he swallowed, he could still taste bittersweet ashes. Imaginary, most likely, but very real to him. He blinked and saw a flash of green flames, falling buildings, screaming faces trapped and helpless. Pressure formed in his chest, dangerous and sickening, and he felt a terrible urge to run. But there was no running away from what he'd left behind. It would be with him, always. And he had to learn to stand it.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" she asked him quietly, and he nodded. \"When you didn't follow us through at first, I was so afraid\u2014but you came through; of course you did. I knew we couldn't lose you. You, of all of us, are a survivor.\"\n\nShe underestimated herself, he thought, and almost said it, but he knew she wouldn't like to have it pointed out. He and Khalila sat down on camp chairs a little distance away from the others in the tent, with the whispering, billowing fabric at their backs. Dario watched, arms folded, but didn't try to join them; Jess was dimly glad of that.\n\nKhalila looked exactly right once again, perfectly elegant in a long dress of thick, nubby silk that some other Muslim woman in the High Garda must have unearthed from a chest. She had the matching head scarf, and a full, black Scholar's robe over the dress. The only jarring detail was her hands\u2014treated with a Medica's skill, but still showing signs of burns. She'd cleaned her nails with scrupulous care, but the rest gave her away.\n\nJess nodded at them, where they were folded in her lap. \"What happened there?\"\n\nKhalila looked as if she had the impulse to hide her hands in the folds of her gown, but she didn't. She looked down to consider the scratched, burned fingers, and then said, \"After you collapsed, there was\u2014there was another young man, alone. A survivor. He crawled out the gap. He was\u2014he was on fire.\"\n\nJess's whole body registered the meaning of that in a horrific rush. \"You pulled him out.\"\n\nShe nodded. Her eyes were dark and distant, and he hoped never to see that look in her again. \"Dario and I, yes. We tried to\u2014to help him. But he died.\" She smiled, but it looked forced, and painful. \"We had to try.\" The smile faded, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. \"Oh, Jess. There were so many\u2014so many \u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said, and held her hand while she wept almost silently, but painfully. He had the same grief, but it seemed to be trapped behind a wall, seething and angry and bitter, and he didn't know how to let it out.\n\nBut he was glad she did.\n\nDario had turned his head away, but Jess couldn't miss the stiff line of his shoulders. He wanted to be the one Khalila turned to. And most of the time, Jess thought, he would get his wish. But not now.\n\nThe storm passed within half a minute, and she carefully dried her eyes and gave Jess a small, apologetic smile as she pulled away. When she started to speak, he shook his head. \"No apologies,\" he said. \"Not for being more human than the rest of us.\"\n\n\"We all deal with things in our own way,\" Scholar Wolfe said as he took a seat on Jess's other side. \"No shame in any of it. Even despair.\" He almost sounded... kind. Surely that couldn't be right.\n\nJess preferred a safe, solid world where Scholar Wolfe didn't have a kind bone in his body, and to preserve that, he moved back to watching Santi and Zara, who stood together at a long table, with maps.\n\nZara reached down and took a book from her pack. She opened it and flipped pages, and as Jess watched, she picked up a stylus and wrote in it.\n\nA Codex. She's writing in a Codex? He felt a chill, then a rush of heat, and fear. Easy for Zara to betray them doing that, and when he stood up, he meant to put a stop to it. But Wolfe grabbed his sleeve and said, \"Sit down before you fall, boy. You look wretched and you shouldn't be upright.\"\n\n\"I heard the captain wanted me to come here, and why are they writing in a Codex?\"\n\n\"Because it's important that Zara be seen as a loyal High Garda commander. Misdirection. Confusion. If we can't take the company with us, we have to protect them from suspicion. That means creating false reports and trails.\" Wolfe watched the two of them silently for a few seconds, and Jess had the feeling that he, too, was uncomfortable with the closeness between Santi and his lieutenant. Not quite jealousy, Jess thought, but there was a wariness to the way Wolfe held himself. Still, his voice sounded confident. \"Zara is meticulously documenting everything that she should, including the receipt of sealed secret orders from the Artifex.\"\n\n\"Are there sealed secret orders from the Artifex?\"\n\n\"No. But if we can sow a little distrust between the Archivist and his chief lackey, all the better. The other two commanders who've pledged to us will also be recording receipt of the same orders, and noting that they've been instructed to burn them on receipt, so there'll be no copies or records to disprove it. That's bound to cause conflict and confusion.\" Wolfe glanced at him. \"What would you give to see that another city never dies like that again?\"\n\nIt was the question he'd been asking himself so relentlessly. And he had his answer ready. \"Everything.\"\n\n\"Your life?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nWolfe sighed. \"So say we all, then. Are you with us? To fight?\"\n\n\"Of course I am,\" Jess said. \"Did you really doubt it?\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" Santi said from the table. \"Dario's decision rather surprised me, though.\"\n\nDario made a mock bow. \"Happy to fail that test, Captain. But I've never really been afraid to die for a good cause.\"\n\nSanti brushed that aside. \"Dying is the easy part,\" he said. \"Fanatics do it every day. I need to know\u2014 we need to know\u2014if you'll be ready to fight without the rest of us. You have to be ready to win. Not just die in a blaze of glory. Sometimes, what you have to do might not be glorious. Just dirty, and necessary.\"\n\nOne by one, they nodded. But of all of them, Jess thought, he was the only one who clearly, fully understood what that might really mean."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from High Garda Captain Wellington, found on his body in the field near Philadelphia, sent to the attention of the Archivist Magister by Acting Captain Zara Cole. Burned upon receipt:\n\n\u2002It is with great sadness and loathing that I report to you the total victory of High Garda forces at Philadelphia.\n\n\u2002Hardly a stone remains fixed to another, and in walking that wretched hell, I have seen not one living thing... not bird, dog, blade of grass, or human. What I have seen are carpets of bones, mounds of them from victims huddled together for protection that never came.\n\n\u2002Damn you. Damn you for forcing us to be your murderers. May the gods curse you forever.\n\n\u2002Text of a report from High Garda Acting Captain Zara Cole, in the field near Philadelphia, sent to the attention of the Commander of the High Garda. Available on the Codex.\n\n\u2002It is with deep regret that I inform you of the death of High Garda Captain Wellington, who served the Great Library with selfless devotion for more than thirty years. His death came at his own hand, out of despair and overwhelming grief for what has been done in the name of the power we all serve so faithfully. May the gods have mercy on us all."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "Morgan lay perfectly still. Her color was like porcelain, drained of all the warmth and vitality Jess loved in her.\n\nShe looked like a dead girl waiting for her coffin.\n\nDr. Askuwheteau was busy checking a supply of Medica vials and compounds in a brand-new case, but when he saw Jess standing in the tent doorway, frozen, he said, \"Come in, close the flap. We need to keep her warm.\"\n\nIt was, Jess thought, suffocatingly hot in the tent already, and they'd layered blankets on Morgan's motionless body as well. \"Has she been awake?\" he asked. Askuwheteau shook his head silently. \"Not at all?\"\n\n\"I don't want her awake just now,\" he said. \"This is necessary. An Obscurist who uses power too wildly... Well, you saw the fields in Philadelphia. She couldn't control the scope of what she did. She had to stop before it was too late. She was coming to pieces when she came out of that hell. She'll hurt herself, or someone else, if she doesn't allow herself to heal.\"\n\nThere was something in the phrasing of that, and Jess put the pieces together almost instantly. \"You did this. You've drugged her.\"\n\nThe doctor shrugged. \"For her protection. And ours. She would say the same.\"\n\n\"How long do you intend to keep her out?\"\n\n\"A day, maybe two,\" Askuwheteau said. \"I was trained for this, Mr. Brightwell, back when the Library thought me worth saving. Even the Iron Tower needs Medica. As someone with a trace of the talent, they thought I was... worthy.\" He drenched that word in a rich sauce of irony. \"The treatment is sound. Certain specific compounds to help her quintessence heal properly. Certain others to keep her conscious mind from interfering with that process.\"\n\n\"But she'll come out of it fine,\" Jess said. He made it a statement. The doctor said nothing either for or against it. \"She'll be all right.\" The silence stretched on. \"This is where you agree with me.\"\n\nAskuwheteau dragged a chair over and put it beside Morgan's bed. \"Sit,\" he said, \"before you fall. I can hear the state of your lungs from here. You realize that breathing in the vapors ruptures the lining of the lungs?\"\n\n\"Stop avoiding the question.\" Jess realized his voice had grown edges, despite the faint wheeze in it. \"We saved your life!\"\n\n\"And I've saved hers,\" Askuwheteau snapped back. \"If I hadn't kept her in this coma, she'd insist on trying to help you and your big friend.\"\n\n\"Did\u2014\" Jess didn't want to ask, but he forced himself. \"Did anyone else make it out?\"\n\n\"None that lived,\" the doctor said. His voice sounded tight and angry, but his eyes were flat and distant. Unfeeling. \"There's only so much to be done, by doctor or Medica or even Obscurist. Greek fire takes most who are touched by it even in passing.\" He finished his inventory of the bag and snapped it closed. \"They tell me we will be leaving just after dark. Your party and mine. I've asked for us to travel with you for a while, and then we will leave on our own for Boston, where we have tribal relations who will take us in.\"\n\n\"I thought\u2014I thought you'd stay with the Medica.\"\n\n\"Why? So I can treat the soldiers who destroyed my people?\" Askuwheteau looked down at the coat he wore, with the Library's symbol on it. \"It's like wearing someone else's skin.\"\n\nJess understood that. He didn't quite know how to reconcile himself to wearing a Library uniform now, either. He remembered the blank silence of Troll and his soldiers in the shower tent, the quiet suffering in their eyes.\n\nMaybe none of them knew how to do that anymore.\n\n\"Can I stay with her awhile?\" Jess asked, and took Morgan's cold, entirely limp hand in his scarred, burned one.\n\n\"Please yourself,\" Askuwheteau said. \"I need to go sit with my people and offer prayers for my friends.\"\n\nThen he was off, long strides, his long black braid bouncing against the new Medica robe he wore. He'd abandoned his battered old hat. He now looked like any Medica professional, though one badly in need of solid meals. He didn't fit here. Maybe he didn't fit anywhere.\n\nHe will, though. We all find our place, Jess thought, and brushed his thumb across Morgan's knuckles. And if we can't find one, we make one. We find our way through what's done to us, and come out the other side.\n\nWe heal.\n\nHe raised her limp fingers to his lips and whispered, \"Please come back.\"\n\nThree hours passed, and Jess watched the color of the light washing the west side of the tent. It had gone from pale gold to the color of honey to a rich orange, and then dark. He could almost pretend\u2014almost\u2014that it was a normal day, normal sunset, that the air didn't reek of smoke and ash and death.\n\nThat the flickering, ominous glow to the west wasn't the simmering remains of a city that would take weeks to finish burning.\n\nHe hadn't been able to sleep, though he'd been very tired; he kept running things through his mind in obsessive detail, looking for the risks, the tricks. The biggest risk, he thought, was that Brendan wouldn't help him... But somehow, he knew that his brother would. It had been there, in the inflection of his voice, in the way he wouldn't meet Jess's eyes as he lied for their father.\n\nSanti had asked what they would be willing to do. Jess doubted he had any idea that this would be the price of that question.\n\n\"Jess?\" The whisper was soft, but it went right through him\u2014not a sharp intrusion, but a wave of relief, and he looked down to see that Morgan's eyes were open, her dry lips parted. Her fingers tightened on his. \"Jess?\"\n\n\"I'm here,\" he said. One part of him hoped this was good, her waking this early. Askuwheteau seemed to believe that she'd sleep for the rest of the day and through the night, but the doctor was gone now, and the important thing was, she was awake. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\"Tired,\" she whispered. Her voice was just a thread of sound, and her eyes seemed dull. \"Thirsty.\"\n\nHe quickly poured her a cup of water and boosted her up to sip at it. Not too much. He wasn't sure what would be good for her, and there was no one to ask. \"Better?\"\n\nShe nodded a little, and shivered. He tucked the blankets around her, and her grip on his hand suddenly tightened. Tingled.\n\nBurned.\n\n\"Morgan?\"\n\nHe looked up, and she was staring at him with that fixed, unfocused stare he recognized as her accessing her Obscurist talents. She was still shivering; he could feel the convulsions of it through her fingers.\n\nHe suddenly felt a cough explode in his lungs, and turned aside to let it out. The coughing didn't stop. It got worse, doubling him over, and the liquid in his lungs that had been receding seemed to come out of nowhere, flooding up, suffocating, and he spat out one mouthful, two, three, each one redder than the last, and he couldn't get his breath, and Morgan's hand was holding his so tightly that he couldn't shake her loose...\n\nAnd then Askuwheteau burst through the tent flap, took one look at them, and stepped forward to grab Morgan's arm and twist it, breaking her hold on him. She cried out, and Jess nearly fell trying to turn to defend her, but he wasn't hurting her, she was saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and Askuwheteau, his face a grim mask, injected her with a solution of bluish liquid and held her down until she quieted again.\n\nOnce she was still, eyes closed, breathing steadily, he turned to Jess, who was still fighting to catch his breath. The dirt on the floor by his chair was soaked with liquid, and the liquid looked terribly like blood.\n\n\"What's wrong with her?\"\n\n\"She's trying to heal you. That's what her instincts tell her she must do. It will kill you both if she tries just now,\" Askuwheteau said. He rummaged in his bag and came up with another small glass vial. He pitched it to Jess. \"Drink this.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Drink it or I'll hold you down and inject you with it.\"\n\nJess tipped it up and swallowed. It tasted faintly of berries, and something bitter beneath, and he felt the constriction and pressure in his chest begin to ease. \"That's not half-bad\u2014\"\n\nThe darkness was already descending when he heard the doctor say, from a great distance, \"Better than the alternatives.\"\n\nWaking up came with a fierce, walnut-sized headache buried deep in his skull, a surging feeling of dizziness, and... no cough. Jess took in two or three breaths before he recognized that he was breathing easily and normally again. His memory seemed cheerily out of focus, and it took time for it all to trickle back to him... Philadelphia, burning. Morgan, coming awake, and the burning tingle in his hand where she gripped it. The helpless coughing fit.\n\nAskuwheteau's potion. Bloody man tricked me. But he had to admit, though his chest and throat still ached a bit, he felt much better. Except for the headache, and even that was starting to slowly unwind and vanish as he opened his eyes and sat up.\n\nWell, tried to. He couldn't. He was tied down. The most he could do was lift his head, and he did, straining to see, but it was very dark. He was in some kind of room, and it smelled of oil, metal, sweat. A hint of blood. The ground under him shuddered and rattled, and as he jerked against the restraints, he heard someone in the shadows say, \"Sleeping Beauty's up. Might want to cut him loose before he bruises.\" Dario's voice, dryly amused.\n\n\"Jess, I'm going to let you loose,\" said Glain's voice close to his ear. \"And if you try to take my knife away, I will punch you so hard you'll never wake up. Understand?\"\n\n\"Glain?\" The fog was lifting. The close, stinking room wasn't a room. The ground wasn't shaking. He was in a High Garda transport, and they were moving at a good rate of speed over rough ground, and he was safe. \"Why the hell am I tied up?\"\n\n\"Because nobody wanted to cradle you like an oversized baby while you slept,\" Dario said. \"Surprisingly enough.\"\n\n\"You'd have cracked your head open bouncing around, as rough as the travel is,\" Glain observed, and he felt his left wrist come loose, then the warmth of her body as she bent over him. \"I wasn't going to be the one washing your brains off the floor. There. Sit up and do the rest yourself.\"\n\nHis eyes were adjusting now to the very low lights. It was just enough of a pale glow to see shadows, hints of faces, and the glint on the edge of the knife she was holding out to him.\n\nJess sat up, took it, and cut through the restraints around his ankles. He'd been lying on a stretcher, taking up space in the middle of the floor. As he tried to get up, the transport lurched and nearly sent him pitching at the wall; hands from either side steadied him. \"Thanks,\" he muttered, and sank down into an empty seat along the side. He passed Glain's knife back to her, then snapped the restraints in place for the seat. It didn't make the ride more comfortable, but it did make it safer. \"How long was I out?\"\n\n\"Two years,\" Dario said.\n\n\"Shut up,\" Glain said. \"All night and half the day.\" As if it were taking her cue, the dull hissing of the transport's engine suddenly changed gear to a lower, more throbbing speed. \"We're stopping to let Askuwheteau's people off from the second transport.\"\n\nThomas was in this vehicle; Jess could see him curled uncomfortably in the small space. Dario. Glain. His twin brother, who wasn't saying a single word. Khalila was close, and she offered her hand to him silently. He took it and squeezed. Santi was driving the transport, and Wolfe sat beside him.\n\nThere was no sign of Morgan. There was an empty seat where she should have been.\n\n\"Before you ask,\" Khalila said, \"the doctor felt it was good to keep her in the other vehicle. But she will be moved here now. How do you feel?\"\n\n\"Better,\" he said. It was true; he did feel better. He could draw a breath without coughing, and some of the feeling had come back to his burned hands.\n\n\"That's good, because the doctor wasn't going to let the two of you in the same cabin until you were,\" Dario said. \"No idea why. Care to share?\"\n\n\"No.\" Jess knew. He remembered the burn of Morgan's touch. The explosion of fluid in his lungs. She'd tried to help, and nearly killed him. \"I'm all right.\"\n\n\"We're stopping,\" Glain said. She climbed past Jess, slid open the door of the transport, and hopped down before Santi had brought it to a complete halt. Jess had to blink against a sudden blast of daylight, and tried his balance once the vehicle had rolled to a stop with a hiss of steam. Not too bad. He jumped down and walked after Glain. Behind him, the others were coming out, too. Thomas was last, looking relieved to be released from confinement.\n\nThere was another transport directly behind them, and as Jess watched, Dr. Askuwheteau descended from the driver's position and slid open the side. One by one, his people came out. They'd all changed clothes, sometime since Jess had succumbed to the drugs... Most wore a mixture of plain cloth and soft leather. Askuwheteau wore the same patchwork coat he'd had in Philadelphia. He'd unbraided his hair to fall loose over his shoulders.\n\nSeven survivors of a dead city. Three were children, but Jess couldn't judge how old they were. They were too thin, small for their ages. None of them said a word, not even Askuwheteau's housekeeper.\n\nAskuwheteau tossed something to Captain Santi, who caught it out of sheer reflex. It unfurled in his hands. The Medica robe. \"You saved us,\" the doctor said. \"We don't forget. But we'll never wear the colors of our enemies again.\"\n\n\"Where will you go?\" Khalila asked him.\n\n\"To our people in Boston,\" he said. \"And we will tell what we know. What we saw. Within a week, there will be no safety for any of the Library here in this country. If the Archivist believed he could stop us by that slaughter, he doesn't know us at all. We will fight.\"\n\n\"We'll all fight,\" Khalila said. She took another step forward. She was wearing her black Scholar's robe, and it rippled like shadows in the breeze. \"When you go to Boston, you will carry the word of what happened. You will become symbols of what the Burners will become\u2014for better, or for worse. I beg you to think of that legacy, and the future we will share, because one day, we will be friends again, Dr. Askuwheteau. One day, the Library will meet with you in peace, and we will bury our dead together. We are not your enemies. The people in the Serapeums are not your enemies. Please remember, when you tell your stories, when you start your fires, that we saw your home, we saw the love you had for books. Remember that for each of us, that love is why we are here. Why we exist. And remember that we see you, and we grieve for you.\"\n\nThere was something mesmerizing about her in that moment, Jess thought; she seemed taller. Stronger. More real than ever before. It was impossible to look at Khalila Seif and not believe her, not feel the compassion that flowed out of her.\n\nShe bowed to the survivors of Philadelphia.\n\nAskuwheteau stood there for a long, silent moment, staring at her. \"You are my enemy,\" he said to Khalila at last. \"But you have my respect. I will think on what you say.\" He picked up a small leather pack from the grass by his feet. \"But you should go. Because if any of us find those wearing the sign of the Library here past tomorrow, I may not want to protect you. Anger is like the fires that still burn in my city. It will take time to die.\"\n\nThey watched them walk away in silence, until the Lenape and his small band of survivors were lost from sight, and then Khalila sighed.\n\n\"I think he means it,\" she said. \"We should go. As fast as we can.\"\n\n\"You know what you did?\" Santi asked her. \"That man is going to become the new leader of the Burners.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Khalila said. \"And someday, we will have to sit in a room with him and make our reparations for what the Archivist has done. Better we start that now, before more blood flows.\"\n\nWolfe said nothing. He watched her walk back to the transport with Dario before he said, \"Our children are growing up very well.\"\n\nSanti laughed softly. \"And I said you'd never make a good father. Come help me get the girl.\"\n\n\"I'll do it,\" Jess said. \"You're still half-healed, Captain. Thomas?\"\n\n\"Ja,\" his friend said. He was still staring after Khalila. Jess couldn't really tell what he was thinking. \"I'm coming.\"\n\nMorgan was asleep, but as they drove on, she woke up. Khalila had taken the seat beside her, displacing Dario, to Dario's annoyance. \"Better I talk to her,\" she told Jess. \"The doctor said to keep you away from her, for now.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Dario asked, suddenly and irritatingly interested.\n\n\"None of your business. Khalila, I'm fine. I'm better.\" And surely, the reason that Morgan's talents had turned on him had been because of his damage. Not hers. He didn't want to believe that.\n\nShe seemed all right, he was relieved to find. Exhausted, despite the drugs, or because of them, and she dozed for the next two hours, until Brendan got up from his place near the rear of the vehicle and pushed forward to lean over Santi's shoulder. \"We're coming to the coast,\" he said. \"You've followed the map?\"\n\n\"He's a High Garda captain,\" Wolfe said. \"Of course he followed the map. Probably better than you could.\"\n\nBrendan shrugged. \"Just checking. All right. You should see the cliffs coming up soon. There'll be some thick brush blocking the way. We'll need to clear it. It covers a switchback path down to the shore.\"\n\n\"And you're certain there's a boat.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm very certain.\"\n\nIt didn't take long for Santi to ease the transport to a halt, and Brendan was out the side door, with Glain hot on his heels. Thomas went, too.\n\nJess stayed where he was, watching Morgan. She'd opened her eyes, and in the quiet, as Khalila and Dario got out, and Wolfe and Santi left the cab, they didn't say anything at first. Then she reached out her hand to him. When he didn't take it, she slowly let it fall. \"I suppose I deserved that.\"\n\n\"It isn't because I don't want to,\" he said. \"Morgan\u2014until you're fully in control again\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. Best I don't touch you. Or anyone else.\" She looked down at her hands, loose in her lap. \"I didn't mean it, you know. Killing the fields. I was so tired, and I had to find the energy, the power, to keep going. I didn't know I was taking it from living things. Does that make me a monster?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"It makes you powerful. You saved our lives, weakening that wall. If you hadn't, we'd never have left that city. We'd be ash and bone.\"\n\nShe nodded wearily. \"I don't want to hurt anything else. Anyone else.\" Her smile didn't warm her eyes. \"I don't ever want to hurt you.\"\n\nHe wanted to cup her face in his hands and kiss the doubt and anguish from her, and for a moment he thought he might, until Thomas leaned the door in and said, \"You'd better come. Now.\" His friend had a tense look on his face, and that drove everything else out of Jess's mind. He forgot and offered his hand to Morgan to help her down, and the momentary press of their skin made her take in a sharp breath and quickly withdraw. She pulled well away after they hopped out of the transport.\n\n\"What?\" he asked Thomas, who jerked his head toward the trees to the south of where they were standing.\n\nA tall, handsome man stood there dressed in a flowing black Scholar's robe, with white Arabic garments on beneath. He had one hand on a large, gilded pole, and at the top fluttered a gold-fringed flag.\n\nThe flag of the Great Library. The all-seeing eye. Next to him, sitting on its haunches in the whispering tall grass, was a large bronze automaton lion.\n\nKhalila said, \"Cousin Rafa.\" Glain and Santi had drawn weapons. Jess did, too, but none of them were pointing them. Not yet.\n\n\"Khalila.\" He nodded. \"Captain Santi. Scholar Wolfe. I come in peace.\"\n\n\"Guns back in your holsters,\" Santi said, and put his away. Brendan swore softly. \"I mean it. Shoot a Scholar under a Library banner, and I'll be the one shooting you. Understood?\"\n\n\"Fools,\" Brendan said to Jess. \"Your friends are fools, you realize that?\" He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. \"Get to the transport. We can't outrun the thing, but it'll have a harder time gutting us before we can kill it.\"\n\nIt was good advice, but Jess didn't take it. He stood where he was, watching Santi. Watching Khalila, who looked stricken. Her cousin, for all his pronouncement of peace, looked like a man who could handle himself in a fight if it came to it. He had a High Garda\u2013issue gun on one hip and a fairly impressive sword on the other. Not quite completely peaceful, then.\n\n\"Peace is given when peace is received,\" Santi said. \"Hello, Rafa.\"\n\n\"Niccolo.\" The Scholar nodded. He planted the banner in the ground with one decisive thrust and left it there to sway and snap in the wind as he crossed his arms. His black silk robes fluttered and spread in the breeze, too, giving him an almost unnatural air, as if he were half made of smoke. \"It's been a long time since you guarded me on my journeys, but I hope we're still friends.\"\n\n\"I hope so, too,\" Santi said. \"It depends on why you're here.\"\n\n\"I'm here to beg my cousin to come home,\" Rafa said, and looked at Khalila. \"You had such promise, little one. Such a bright, bright future. And you've thrown it away, for what? For friendship? For some false ideal? We want to bring you home. Me, your uncle, your father. You need to come with me. Now.\"\n\n\"How did you find us?\" Jess asked. The Scholar's black eyes shifted to him, then dismissed the question. \"Who sent you here?\"\n\n\"You know who sent me,\" Rafa said. \"The Artifex Magnus, whom I serve. Whom you all serve. I'm not the only one who was dispatched, if that eases your mind. There are messengers at the seaports, and I bribed smugglers to tell me the most likely place a ship loyal to the Brightwells would dock. He thought you would have survived, you see. And he wanted to be sure you understood that you have a choice. You can come home. All of you. Before you bring more disgrace down on yourselves and your families.\"\n\nKhalila said, \"I don't think you're one to speak of disgrace, Cousin Rafa. I remember that my uncle had to buy you a pardon from prison. Twice.\"\n\n\"You're very young,\" Rafa said. \"And the young are often stupid. If you live through this, it's possible you might come back to find a place in the Library once more. I did.\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Not while the Archivist Magister sits in that chair.\"\n\nRafa sighed and moved his attention back to Santi. \"And you? Have you really betrayed everything you've been loyal to all your life?\"\n\n\"When it betrays me first? Sometimes one has to take a stand.\"\n\n\"Ah, but is it really your stand?\" Rafa's gaze moved toward Wolfe. \"I know you're doing it for love, but it borders on obsession, the way you come running. Is he really so wonderful, to make you betray everything you believed in?\"\n\nJess recognized the perfectly friendly, chilling smile that came on Santi's lips, and the tone that went with it. \"Well, since you're asking,\" he said, \"he is. Why? Jealous?\"\n\nThat volley hit. Rafa's face went tight.\n\n\"Enough,\" Wolfe said. \"If you have something useful to say, get on with it. If you're trying to bait us into a fight, it won't work.\"\n\n\"I think it might, with a little encouragement. But you're correct; we should move to business.\" The Scholar reached into his robes and came out with a scroll case. It was made of finely tooled leather, and he opened it, reached in, and then smiled even wider as Glain and Jess drew their sidearms at the same moment. \"Peace, peace. I am no Burner,\" he said. \"Though that seems to be company you prefer these days. It's only paper. Nothing more dangerous than that.\"\n\nIt was an official Library document, that much was clear, heavy with ornate braids as well as seals, and the Scholar offered it with a certain formal respect. Santi accepted with both hands, just as respectful, and then both retreated a few steps\u2014the Scholar to stand under his flapping banner, and Santi to snap the seals on the document and unroll it.\n\nHe said nothing. An alarming lot of nothing. He read it completely through and then let it snap shut. Rafa waited, and when Santi didn't speak, he crossed his arms. \"You surprise me. I've rarely seen you silent.\"\n\n\"You don't know what it says, do you?\" Santi turned and held the document out to Khalila. \"I'm sorry. I truly am.\"\n\nIt was the gentleness in the way he said it that made Jess go still, and he watched as Khalila unrolled the document and read. She made it only halfway, he thought, before she seemed to lose her balance, and immediately Dario moved forward, his shoulder a solid wall for her back to lean against and to keep her on her feet. She didn't make a sound as she let the scroll snap shut again.\n\n\"I told you\u2014I'm to accept your surrender, and you're to return with me to the New York Serapeum and then be Translated to Alexandria.\" Rafa still seemed unbearably smug. \"I'm told what the Archivist wrote will explain the uselessness of your continued defiance.\"\n\nNothing for Morgan, Jess, or Wolfe. Jess scrambled to understand what was going on here. Something big enough to rock Khalila on her heels.\n\nBut she was back on balance again now, and when she spoke, her voice was tight with suppressed fury. \"A question, for my friends,\" she said. \"Who else has family in Library service now?\"\n\n\"Now?\" Dario asked. \"I've had dozens, but none at the moment.\"\n\n\"Same,\" said Thomas.\n\nGlain nodded. \"First and only in this generation.\"\n\n\"I had one,\" Santi said. \"A brother. He's retired.\"\n\n\"No wonder he only meant this for me, then,\" Khalila said. She flung the scroll into her cousin's chest. \"Death sentences,\" she said. \"For our family! That is a sentence of death for my father, my brother, and your own father! All of them loyal to the Library without question, their entire lives. All arrested! He didn't even bother to tell you!\"\n\nRafa froze, then unrolled the scroll and scanned it enough to know that she wasn't lying. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"They've already been arrested. They're in prison, under sentence of treason,\" she said. \"Your name would have been here, too, only he must not have such respect for you. Instead, he uses you as his errand boy.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Rafa stared at her for a few seconds, then licked his lips as though they had gone suddenly very dry. He let the scroll drop again. \"I didn't know. I swear it.\"\n\n\"Then now you know why we're fighting,\" Santi said. \"Rafa. Come toward us.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Just try.\"\n\nRafa frowned, but he took a step out into the open space.\n\nNext to him, the automaton lion gave a little shake, as if it was waking up. They all stopped and looked toward it, but it subsided without more movement. But Jess could feel it watching. Waiting. What was it here to do? Rafa must have thought it was simply for his protection. Jess knew better. This is wrong, he thought.\n\nKhalila slowly drew the sword that she'd belted on at her side before they'd left. \"Rafa,\" she said. \"Pick up the scroll. It might believe that you're presenting it to me again. I don't think it can understand what we're saying.\"\n\n\"It's just an escort,\" Rafa said. \"It won't attack me.\"\n\n\"You're wrong,\" Santi said. \"Listen to her. She's trying to save you.\"\n\n\"From what?\"\n\n\"From your own stupidity,\" Khalila said. \"Rafa, do what I ask! Now, for the love of Allah, I beg you, while you still have a chance\u2014\"\n\nRafa didn't move. He stayed under the fluttering, fragile protection of his banner, next to the lion, and stared at her with a grim frown. \"I'm going nowhere with you. I'm loyal to the Library! The Archivist understands that I'm his servant, that I am trustworthy, and my loyalty will save our family from what you have done\u2014\"\n\nHe broke off suddenly, because the automaton lion rose from its comfortable sitting position. Standing, its head was level with Rafa's chest. It was massive and beautiful and terrifying, and it turned toward the Scholar and bared sharp metallic fangs.\n\nHe backed away, suddenly realizing that he was not in control of this situation. That he never had been.\n\nThat was the moment when, in utter silence, another lion eased up to a standing position from the grass directly behind him. Not bronze, this one. A dull matte pattern that blended perfectly with the grass, like High Garda camouflage.\n\nThis was what the Artifex had really planned. Not parlay. Not negotiation.\n\nDeath.\n\nJess couldn't shout, couldn't move for the shock of it... until the camouflaged lion lunged, sank teeth into Rafa's shoulder and cruel claws into his back, and dragged him screaming into the grass.\n\n\"No!\" Khalila shrieked, and would have lunged forward except that Glain caught her and held her back. It was a cruel choice, but wise; Rafa was dead already. A spray of ruby red blood clouded the air, and it seemed to Jess that he could see each and every drop with perfect, individual clarity... the way they rose, fell, spun, caught the light, splashed, dripped. The way the Scholar's heels flailed at the ground before they, too, vanished into the green hell of grass.\n\nGone.\n\nJess couldn't think about that, couldn't think about the sounds of flesh rending; he looked out, instead, at the large open field around them. Sunset was coming on fast, but the last gilding of light on the grass showed some of it shifting the wrong way. Seven of them, he thought. Seven at least, plus that damned bronze one meant to draw our attention. Another irrational fact stuck in his mind: the lion that had taken Rafa had no showy, flowing mane. That lion had been constructed to resemble a female.\n\nFemale lions, he remembered, hunted in packs. They cooperated.\n\n\"Circle!\" he shouted, almost at the same time as Niccolo Santi, and they all drew together, arms nearly touching. It wouldn't save them, but it would be the best they could do. Jess had his sidearm out, still, and struggled to think where to shoot the creatures.\n\nIt was Thomas who said, in a very cool, calm voice, \"If you shoot, aim for their foreheads. There is a nexus of cables there that will disable their front legs if you hit it squarely. If you can't, try for the right flank. The script that powers it is the only other vulnerable point.\"\n\n\"Off switch under the jaw, near the throat,\" Jess added, almost as an afterthought. His hand felt slippery and sweaty on the grip of his weapon. Zara might send reinforcements up to help; already, he could see one of the scouts racing away in the distance on his cycle. Still. Eight lions would kill them all quite efficiently before rescue could arrive, if they didn't do this on their own. \"Go for the off switch only if there's no choice. You can do it if you're fast and don't hesitate.\"\n\nDario let out a bitter bark of something halfway between a shout and a laugh. \"Just shut up and let me die in peace, for the love of God.\"\n\n\"We're not dying,\" Santi said. \"Not here.\" There was something so solid, so certain, in his voice that Jess sent him a sidelong look, half-shocked... and then it was too late, because the sleek, grass-clouded shape of an automaton lion rose from a crouch and sprang right for Jess's throat.\n\nIt was instinct, what he did then\u2014instinct and repetition. Running was useless; so was dodging\u2014she was too close. He lifted his arms and jammed his weapon sideways into her open jaws even as her weight slammed into him and carried him helplessly backward into the middle of the circle. Everything went razor clear again: the vividly red shimmer of her eyes, the way her metallic skin stretched as cables tightened, the way she bit down on the metal of the weapon with a bone-chilling crunch.\n\nWithout his even directing it, his hand slipped under her jaw and felt for the switch. Please be there, please...\n\nBy that time, he'd hit the grass, which was curiously like hitting a mattress; it might have even felt good, if the weight of the lion's cruel paw hadn't landed on his left arm, pinning it down. Her right raked down his chest, and he felt cloth and leather tear, but the chain armor built into the High Garda jacket blunted the attack enough that he got only bloody scratches, not fatal wounds. He didn't even feel them.\n\nHe was too focused on the switch, and the switch wasn't there, it wasn't bloody there, and he tasted a horrible flood of nausea and terror as he realized that this time, this time he wasn't getting out of it, that Santi was wrong, that they would all end here, bloody rags in the grass...\n\nAnd then he found it. Not on the jaw, but on the neck, set farther back. A slight bump beneath the hot, flexible skin.\n\nHe looked the lion in the eyes as she opened her jaws wider and the mangled remains of his weapon dropped away, and pushed the switch.\n\nThe lion froze, and the open jaws cranked down to a snarl, but it was too late for her. The light faded from her eyes, and in the next breath, she was still\u2014a horrible weight on his chest and arm, and he struggled to free himself. That wasn't as difficult as it might have been, since the slick grass helped, and he was able to slither to one side enough to overbalance her and send her crashing over like a felled monument.\n\nJess rolled to his feet, staggered a little from the dizzy bite of adrenaline, and found the next lion. It was on top of Dario, who'd likewise sacrificed his weapon and was frantically slapping at the creature's throat as it snarled and clawed at him. Jess slid in place and hit the proper spot just as the automaton's claws ripped Dario's shredded jacket away, exposing his equally tattered shirt and a bloody chest. One more swipe, and blocked jaws or not, he'd have been dead.\n\nDario was mumbling in Spanish, and Jess didn't wait for a translation; he moved on, looking for anyone else in trouble.\n\nWolfe was still on his feet. So were Khalila, Santi, Thomas, and Morgan. Glain had somehow\u2014the great inventor Heron only knew how\u2014managed to get on top of her lion and was actually riding the thing as it twisted, snarled, and tried unsuccessfully to claw her off. She poured one shot after another into its head until it suddenly collapsed in a heap, sending her into a roll that she somehow made look graceful as it brought her back to her feet.\n\nThomas had turned his lion off and must have done for Morgan's, too, because she stood close to him. Dead pale, his girl, but intently studying for the next target. No, Jess thought. Don't use your power. But he couldn't spare the breath, or time, to say it.\n\nSanti twisted loose from the lion that had come for him and ripped a glass vial from a loop on his belt. He threw it in the creature's face, and the distinctive, sickening odor of Greek fire blew into Jess's face and nearly made him retch. Where the liquid touched and clung, the lion burst into green fire and began to melt, but it was still moving. Santi fired into the thing's head but slipped and had to roll away as it leaped.\n\nIt kept coming for him until all that was left of the automaton was a metal skeleton and rage, and as Jess watched, the cables melted through and the whole thing collapsed in a melting inferno. The grass, Jess thought in alarm; they were in the middle of the stuff, and if the fire spread, it would go up like tinder. Santi must have had the same thought, because he took out a pouch of powder and threw it into the center of the fire. It guttered away into a surly, smoking ruin.\n\nWolfe's lion had one bullet hole in its head. Just one. And it was as still as the others, incredibly. Jess looked from it to Wolfe, who shook his head. \"Nic shot it for me,\" he said. \"I'm not that good. He took mine before he tried to take his. Stupid.\"\n\n\"Incredible,\" Thomas murmured, but he wasn't talking about Santi's accuracy. He was running his hands over the statue of a lion in front of him. \"A new version, so strong; you see how the cables are attached? That's new. Pack hunters, just incredible. And stealthy. Very dangerous. The artistry it takes to create these\u2014\"\n\nKhalila collapsed into a sudden sitting position, and Jess went to her, but she wasn't bleeding. Wasn't wounded. She was staring at the frozen lion in front of her, and her color had gone far too pale, her eyes too dead. She wasn't seeing the death she'd avoided, he thought. She was seeing that paper her cousin had brought.\n\nJess crouched next to her and said, \"It was a diversion; you know that. Rafa was only meant to keep us occupied while the lions closed in.\"\n\nHer lightless eyes shifted to lock on his face, but he didn't think she was actually looking. \"Not just a diversion, though. None of the rest of us have family in service. He's taken them, Jess. He'll kill them.\"\n\n\"We don't know that,\" he said. It sounded hollow, and it felt like a lie. \"Khalila\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. No quarter. I'm the first one to feel that bite. But I won't be the last. He'll come after everyone we love now. We'll have to get word to our families. Send them to safety.\" She finally looked up. \"You're bleeding.\"\n\n\"Scratches,\" he said. \"Dario's got worse.\" He silently offered her a hand up, and she took it and walked to the young Spaniard. Jess thought he'd never seen a look so vulnerable\u2014and so relieved\u2014as the one that flashed over Dario's face at the sight of Khalila, alive and safe.\n\nJess looked away and left them to it, whatever it was, because Morgan was rushing toward him.\n\n\"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he told her. \"All right.\" And he put his arms around her, just for a moment. He was afraid for her and afraid of her, too; that made him feel weak and exposed. But then again, risk made the safe harbor of her embrace all the sweeter. Standing here, with these people, with her, was like coming to something that was better, and more dangerous, than any home he'd ever known.\n\nIt hit him in a rush that he did have family at risk here, too. \"Brendan?\" He pulled away and turned in a fast circle, looking for his brother. He'd been standing\u2014where? There, near Glain and Morgan. \"Brendan!\"\n\nHis brother rose out of the grass almost as quietly as an automaton. \"I thought it was best to hide, since all of you seemed to know what you were doing.\" He looked over the scene: the destroyed or defeated lions, the blackened, melted skeleton of the one that Santi had burned. The look Brendan turned on Jess was purely and completely impressed. \"That,\" his brother said, \"is the most flash thing I ever saw. I thought for certain you'd all be stew meat. One lion is bad enough. This... this is...\"\n\n\"This is the Archivist coming after us,\" Jess said. \"No more prison, no more captives. He just wants us all dead now. Even Thomas. Maybe especially Thomas.\"\n\n\"Then they shouldn't send these poor creatures to do it,\" Thomas said. \"Morgan? Do you feel able to help me with rewriting a script?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said instantly, but at the same time she said, \"Of course.\"\n\nThomas looked from one of them to the other. \"Which is it?\"\n\n\"You need to save your strength,\" Jess told her in a fast whisper.\n\n\"I can rest on the ship,\" she said. \"And he's right. We can't leave these automata here for the Library to retrieve. We can use them.\" She gave him a smile. Forced, but it was a credible effort. \"I'm all right. This is easy. I can do this.\"\n\nShe went off to join Thomas where he crouched by one of the turned-off lions, expertly pressing panels to open the skin and expose the interior.\n\nBrendan looked far too fascinated by what Thomas was doing, so Jess turned him to look in the direction of the bloody grass where Khalila's cousin had died. \"That's what we're fighting,\" he said. \"They sent him to die just to keep us distracted while they set us up for the kill. This isn't a skirmish. It's the opening battle of the war.\"\n\nBrendan looked without expression on Rafa's corpse and said, \"You didn't count them. You're one beast short.\"\n\n\"What?\" Jess asked, an instant before he realized what his brother meant.\n\nThe lion that had ambushed Rafa rose out of the grass and lunged.\n\nJess shoved Brendan one way, and he dived another; it never would have worked had there not been two of them, two nearly identical... The lion was confused, conflicted, trying to decide which of the two to kill first. As Brendan sprawled and slid, fighting to get back to his feet in the slick grass, Jess took a page from Glain's book. The lion turned toward his twin, and Jess leaped on its back.\n\nThis is a mistake, he thought instantly, because the sense of power in the thing was eerie and horrifying, and all he could do for the next few seconds was wrap his legs under the belly and his arms around its neck and hold on, hold on for dear life as the lion thrashed, writhed, ran, tried to claw him loose. It ripped its own flexible metal skin in the effort. Jess heard shouting, screaming, heard someone\u2014Santi?\u2014ordering someone else to stop shooting for God's sake, and he heard Glain's deep-throated shout of encouragement as he hung on, tenacious and now desperate to make this hell ride stop at any price. She seemed to think it was fun. It was not fun.\n\nSwitch, he told himself, and even though it went against every possible instinct to release his hands from their death grip, he forced himself to do it and nearly got flung off in the next stomach-lifting gyration the lion made. He had to grab hold again, and keep holding, as the automaton suddenly flipped itself end over end through the air in a vicious, athletic circle, landing hard on all four paws and then rolling on its side. It was only the softness of the grass that kept Jess from being crushed and broken. As it was, the pain was lightning hot and too big to think about, and then just as quickly gone as the lion sprang again to its feet.\n\nNow.\n\nHe moved his nearly numb fingers, found the switch, and pressed it home just as the lion sprang forward, straight for his twin brother's throat.\n\n\"Down!\" Jess screamed at him, and Brendan threw himself forward, and flat, which was intelligent, because the lion landed just after him, took a wobbling step forward, and then froze.\n\nJess felt the cables trembling beneath the lion's metal casing. It felt like fury, like thwarted rage, but he knew he was reading into it; the lion didn't feel. Couldn't. But he still thought he could sense the bloodlust pulsing just under that skin, in the unbeating heart of the thing\u2014and it reflected the bloodlust of the man who'd set these automata after them.\n\nHe slipped off and nearly toppled over; his knees barely held, and his balance spun wildly until he felt a firm hand grip his shoulder and hold him steady. He thought it was Thomas, but a glance backward showed him it was Glain, grinning from ear to ear. \"Well done, Jess,\" she said. \"What possessed you to do that?\"\n\n\"You did it!\" he half gasped.\n\n\"Don't be stupid. I broke horses as a child. How many have you been bucked off of, you blazing fool?\"\n\n\"None,\" he admitted.\n\n\"Stupid.\" She tousled his hair, which hardly needed it after all that, and he shook it back out of his eyes. \"Brave, but still stupid as a bag of stones.\" She stepped forward and offered a hand to Brendan, who was still facedown in the grass. \"Well? Are you dead?\"\n\n\"Damn well ought to be,\" his brother said, and rolled over to look at her. \"God, that was close.\"\n\n\"You realized it before I did, or it'd have been a damn sight worse,\" Jess said. \"Get up. You're not broken.\"\n\n\"Only in spirit,\" Brendan said, and groaned when he clambered up. \"Is this what you lot do all the time? Because I'm reconsidering my decisions very quickly.\"\n\n\"Oh, you get used to it,\" Thomas said. He sounded maniacally cheerful, and of course he was; he had the skin loose from one of the lions and was poking around inside, moving cables and parts and fumbling in the bag at his side for tools.\n\n\"What's he doing?\" Brendan asked. Jess turned him away again. \"Jess, enough with his tinkering. We need to go. Now. They'll be following up with worse; you know that. That Scholar must have reported in. High Garda will be on the way here. The lions, they sent on ahead.\"\n\n\"If they're coming out of New York, they have a long way to go,\" Jess said. \"And Boston's a hotbed of trouble. They haven't dispatched High Garda out of there in a year. We've got time to get aboard. Assuming your ship's still there.\"\n\n\"It's there,\" Brendan said. \"Already checked.\"\n\n\"Then we wait until Thomas is done,\" Jess said. He plucked the gun from his brother's holster, ignored his objection, and walked over to Captain Santi. \"Sir. Show me how you dropped that lion. If we're going to do this more often, we'll need to know how to hit them from a distance.\"\n\nThey buried the Scholar's body before they left, and planted the banner as a marker. Wolfe wrote something on the back of the message and shoved it into the snarling open mouth of the bronze lion.\n\nJess checked. The message said, We will see you in Alexandria.\n\nThomas finished the last of the camouflaged lions and closed the skin back up. He activated them, one by one, and Jess waited with a sense of creeping horror to see if Thomas had made a mistake\u2014or worse, if Morgan had.\n\nBut the lions gave a soft mechanical purr when Thomas stroked their heads, and followed him placidly when he walked.\n\n\"Quickly,\" Morgan said. \"Jess, say, 'I am your friend.' The rest of you, do it in turn.\"\n\nIt felt stupid, but Jess said it, and as he did, he saw the lions turn as one to look at him. Remembering him, he realized, for later. All of them did it, even Brendan. His twin looked like he didn't half believe it, and Jess didn't blame him, but the lions ignored them all as Thomas sent them coursing out in a box formation around them. Their own nearly invisible metal army, to escort them back to the coast. Broken and reprogrammed.\n\nThey had a pack of their own now.\n\nAs he passed close, Dario said, \"The Archivist is right, you know. We are dangerous.\"\n\n\"We'd damn well better be,\" Jess said. \"Or we're all dead.\"\n\nSomehow, he wasn't surprised to find that the ship moored in the secluded cove flew a familiar flag: that of the Great Library of Alexandria. The golden eye of Horus flapped and hissed in the strong breeze, and it seemed to blaze even in the cloudy light.\n\nBut it wasn't a Library ship. Jess knew that, because he recognized the girl standing on the beach, surrounded by a small army of hard men and women of no particular uniform. \"Cousin Anit,\" Brendan called brightly, and swept her into a twirling hug. \"Good to see you!\"\n\n\"Put me down.\" She was stiff in his arms, and her voice was chilly, and Brendan let her go and stepped back. Well back. \"I'll pretend you didn't do that.\" She ignored him and shifted her gaze. \"Cousin Jess.\"\n\nThe girl was Egyptian to the bone, and of no blood relation to him; she was a cousin in business, though, and those ties counted for nearly as much. Her father\u2014implied, he thought, by those red stripes on the ships\u2014was Red Ibrahim, one of the most powerful smugglers in the world... and the book smuggler of Alexandria, which was precisely the most perilous and impossible place to practice such a craft. Not one to be underestimated, her father... and young Anit, for all her demure prettiness, was just as dangerous and clever. She was apprenticing in the trade and was well on the way to mastery, all as barely more than a child.\n\n\"You're joking,\" Jess said to his brother. \"You got her to help us. All the way from Alexandria?\"\n\n\"I wasn't in Alexandria,\" Anit said. \"I delivered a shipment of goods from Egypt to a port in Mexico and retrieved some new things. Diverting here was little trouble. But it will cost you.\" She smiled\u2014at Jess, not Brendan. \"My father does nothing for free.\"\n\nNo mistaking it\u2014she didn't care for Brendan much. She looked older, Jess thought... taller, and rounder beneath her practical trousers and jacket. Armed with both a gun and a knife, though the knife looked almost ornamental. She wore her dark hair up in a no-nonsense twist, and as she bowed slightly to Jess, he mirrored it, just a little lower.\n\n\"Didn't you make the deal?\" he asked his brother. Brendan raised his eyebrows. A familiar gesture. An irritating one.\n\n\"With what? You're lucky I arrived here, trading on favors, in time to save your sorry skin. Da didn't pour his fortune in my pockets. You want passage, you make the deal.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Anit said, and it sounded genuine enough. \"You understand this is business, not friendship.\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"And have you anything to offer? I would hate to leave you here, at the mercy of\u2014well\u2014enemies.\"\n\nJess turned toward Thomas, who was holding out a leather document case. He'd spent his time on the trip drawing plans and writing detailed instructions, and Jess held up the case with both hands. Anit raised both eyebrows and shifted her weight a little but didn't reach for it. \"Unless that is full of the handwritten papers of Archimedes, I don't think that is enough,\" she said.\n\n\"It will make you a fortune,\" Thomas said. \"It will change the world. And you can be part of it.\"\n\nAnit took the case. She opened it and looked at the plans for a good long time, then put everything back inside and said, \"And if we don't want the world changing? My father has built an empire on scarcity. So has yours, Jess. You want to destroy that?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. \"And so do you. The world is going to change with or without us, Anit. Now, or next year, or ten years from now. The Library's desperate hold on the future is slipping. We change now, we stay in front of that. We profit. Cling to the past, and you go the way of the Archivist.\"\n\n\"It's just paper,\" she said. \"You're paying me with an idea.\"\n\n\"You trade in ideas,\" Brendan said. \"And paper. And so do the Brightwells. We stick together, don't we? Cousin?\"\n\nAnit didn't answer. She lifted a hand to her neck and played with a necklace chain there; the pendant ring on it was concealed under her shirt, but Jess remembered it well. It had belonged to a brother she'd lost to an automaton, when they'd been trying to puzzle out how to turn them off. Jess had been the first to manage it and live, and she\u2014and Red Ibrahim\u2014owed him much for that discovery.\n\nBrendan shifted minutely. Making ready to fight. Anit, he noticed, saw it as well. She exchanged a lightning-quick glance with the man who stood on her right, and then made a tiny, almost imperceptible motion with her hand. Since no one died in the next few seconds, Jess assumed she'd told him to be calm.\n\n\"Do you accept this offer?\" Jess asked her, very quietly. Respectfully. He could see the calculation in the look she was giving him. She was very aware of both her youth and her responsibility. The decision she was making could destroy her family or seal its future wealth. A heavy weight for someone even younger than he was.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said then, as if it was not a hard decision at all, and smiled. It looked easy. His respect for her ability to lie grew. \"Of course, that is speaking cousin to cousin. If it proves not to be enough in the eyes of my father, well. We'll have talks, family to family. No doubt my father might speak directly with yours.\" That was a veiled threat of war, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Brendan start to speak.\n\n\"Fine,\" he said quickly and casually, and turned to his brother. \"Fine, yes?\"\n\nBrendan's eyes had gone dark, but his smile came as easily as Anit's. And just as falsely. \"Of course. But let's not make a mistake: you hurt one Brightwell, you hurt all of them. Right?\"\n\n\"Your father has two sons,\" Anit said. \"My father has only me. Red Ibrahim will also give blood for blood. But we are not talking about blood, my cousins. We talk gold. Rivers of it, if Jess and his friend are right.\"\n\n\"Rivers of gold,\" Brendan repeated. \"Enough for everyone.\"\n\nJess had to fight back a vision of the tower of the Philadelphia town hall crashing in, and the golden statue of Ben Franklin melting in ribbons. Rivers of gold. It must have run through the ashes of the dead and covered up bones. Gilded skeletons.\n\nHe closed his eyes for a moment and smelled the stench of Greek fire again, and gulped in a deep breath of sea air, then another.\n\n\"Actually,\" Thomas said, \"I did bring something else I thought might come in useful. Perhaps it would be of use to you, miss.\"\n\nHe had a sack over his shoulder, one with burned patches on the fabric, and Jess remembered the one he'd dragged out of Philadelphia. Refused to leave behind. He handed it to her, and Anit opened it, just a little tentatively.\n\nIt was full of books bound in matching red leather.\n\n\"What is this?\" She opened the first volume and gave Thomas a wide-eyed glance. \"Journals.\"\n\n\"The records of Philadelphia,\" he said. \"A hundred years of them, handwritten by the Burners. I... I didn't think their history should die with them.\"\n\nThat was what he'd gone back for, when he'd realized that the Library would destroy everything. History. The history of a city now in ashes.\n\nThey were all silent for a moment, and then Anit bowed to him. Deeply. \"I accept this as payment in full for your passage,\" she said. \"My father will treat this gift with the respect that it deserves. Thank you.\"\n\nAnit boarded the ship, but she paused at the rail to say, \"The lions must be kept below. And turned off. You understand.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Thomas said.\n\n\"And I might like to keep one, perhaps.\"\n\n\"Our gift to you,\" Wolfe said. \"With thanks.\"\n\nAnit practically grinned this time. She was, Jess thought, coming out of this far better than she'd ever expected.\n\nThey all boarded quickly, and Jess helped Thomas get the lions stowed and turned off in the cramped hold. Morgan had already been shown to a cabin, and so had Wolfe and Santi. Dario stood at the railing, watching as the ship pushed away from the dock.\n\nNext to him, Khalila didn't seem to be watching anything, but there was something in her face that made Jess pause beside her and ask, quietly, \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking of my cousin,\" she said. \"All wars have casualties. Rafa was dead the moment the Archivist handed him the letter. I pray we can get everyone else's family safe.\"\n\n\"We will. My family's been hiding from the Library for five generations of criminal success. We'll make sure they're put where the High Garda won't find them.\"\n\n\"If he dispatches them to Wales, Glain's family will send them packing,\" Dario said. \"Wales has already nearly broken away from the Library's control. My family is too royal for the Archivist to threaten. So that just leaves Thomas's to worry about, in Germany.\"\n\n\"I'll see to it,\" Brendan said. \"Least I can do, since I didn't pay a copper penny for our passage.\" He strolled off to speak with Anit. Dario followed him.\n\nKhalila swallowed hard, and for a moment there was a shine of tears in her eyes, but then it was gone, as if it had evaporated under the intense heat of the anger she was banking inside. She hesitated for a moment, then said, very quietly, \"Jess? It's past sunset. I have prayers. I can't think of a time I've needed them so much.\"\n\n\"Do you mind if I wait with you?\" he asked. She gave him a smile that nearly broke his heart. Brave and painful.\n\n\"Your God and mine are listening,\" she said. \"Perhaps you might talk to yours, as well.\"\n\n\"I might try. How do you say amen?\"\n\n\"Amen,\" she said, though it sounded slightly different from the English version, and laughed.\n\nHe repeated that, and she said the word with his pronunciation, and for a moment, it felt like... peace.\n\nAs Khalila prayed, facing toward Mecca, he stood and did his own kind of prayer. More of a bargain. Let me find the strength to do this, he said. And let me be strong enough to protect them from what's coming.\n\nThe ship's engines set up a low, steady thrum and raced them into the teeth of a howling, cold wind.\n\nToward England."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Alert sent out to all coastal ports in which the Library has presence:\n\n\u2002ATTENTION\n\n\u2002The Archivist Magister commands that you mark, record, and investigate every vessel that arrives or leaves your seaports. We are seeking a dangerous group of rebels who may be attempting to move through your area.\n\n\u2002Our best information is that they are aboard a vessel recently departed from America, but we have been unable to locate this ship, which may be traveling under different names and flags. You are directed to make all possible efforts, even to the disruption of normal trade and the inconvenience of passengers, to locate these individuals. Likenesses and descriptions are attached. These renegades may be traveling under the guises of High Garda uniforms and Scholar robes.\n\n\u2002They are the enemy of the Archivist and the Library. They must be stopped at all costs.\n\n\u2002A handwritten note appended to the order by the vice chancellor for the king of Wales and sent to all ports in Wales and England controlled by his forces\n\n\u2002In the name of our king, you are to ignore this and any other demands from the Great Library. Let them come do their own dirty work, and they can pay for docking privilege just like anyone else. We don't do their job for them in finding their runaways. Let them come search and see how far they get."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "A handwritten declaration sent under diplomatic seal to the Archivist Magister of the Great Library, signed by the reigning rulers of Wales, England, Portugal, Turkey, Russia, and Japan, as well as the queen in exile of the Library Territory of France, and the United Colonies of America:\n\n\u2002Comes before you now the will of the free people to withdraw from the Treaty of Pergamum, by which the Great Library in all its forms is held apart and above the laws of kingdoms in which it provides its service. Knowledge is a greater good, there is no dissent upon this fact, but we can no longer ignore the abuses of power pursued by generations of Archivists, and the use of High Garda not to protect knowledge, but to destroy it.\n\n\u2002The lessons of the past must guide us to the future, and as the Library once stood brave and alone against the dark, now we must stand together against the greater injustice that same Library now represents. We will not fight you, but we will no longer provide free passage within our territories, and we will no longer acknowledge any claims of Library neutrality. You have taken sides, Great Archivist. Proof has been offered that you have suppressed and destroyed the same knowledge you claim to hold sacred. We will no longer support, or allow, the Library's vendettas.\n\n\u2002Librarians may remain and operate the Serapeums within our borders, but be warned: if High Garda are sent by any method, whether land, sea, or Translation, we will act upon this as a declaration of open war. You are warned by the queen in exile that she reclaims France for its people, and so may choose to pursue war within those borders.\n\n\u2002May the ancient gods of Egypt, in whose shadow you still stand, guide you back to the path of wisdom and light.\n\n\u2002To this, we set our hands.\n\n\u2002[signatures and seals]\n\nText of an addendum written by the Archivist Magister, to the Artifex Magnus. Not indexed in the Codex:\n\n\u2002They think they can defy us. They aren't the first, but they will be the last. If they want war, we'll wage it on every front. If we allow these insignificant kings and queens and leaders to dictate to us, we lose everything. There is talk of interdicted mechanical presses. We must stop this before it's too late. Under my seal, you are to order the High Garda immediately from our borders to the attack on any country that opposes us in this document.\n\n\u2002Text of a handwritten message from the newly appointed High Garda commander to the Artifex Magnus\n\n\u2002You may send all the orders you like, sir. But I refuse to start wars I cannot win for the sake of an old man's desperation and vanity. I expect he will kill me for it, but it is my duty as a sworn soldier not of the Archivist, but of the Great Library, to tell you that he has become a danger to everything we hold dear.\n\n\u2002Text of a handwritten message from the Artifex Magnus to the Archivist\n\n\u2002If you want to keep your throne, you must make examples. And you must do it soon."
            },
            {
                "title": "The north of England, Castle Raby",
                "text": "Setting foot on a rocky English beach felt familiar to Jess\u2014cold, windy, damp. At the same time, it felt entirely alien to him, because England, for him, meant London, and London was gone. Not destroyed, not by half, but war torn, looted, scorched, and beaten. And in the hands, at least for now, of the Welsh, who were busy installing their own government in Parliament.\n\nThey'd put Anit's ship\u2014now repainted, with false windows and a brand-new figurehead, plus a different set of flags\u2014in at a smugglers' cove on the north coast, far enough from York to be safe and near enough to the Scottish border to be dangerous. Coming ashore brought with it weak, uncertain legs that had gotten used to the rolling seas, and a conviction that the horizon would never stop moving on him, but leaving the ship was a huge relief. Jess was not a good sailor.\n\nThomas was. His big friend clapped him on the shoulder as he tilted, and pulled him straight again. \"Good to be home?\" Thomas asked.\n\n\"This isn't my home,\" Jess said. \"I'm from London.\"\n\n\"Which is in England, yes? Isn't that the same?\"\n\nJess didn't bother to answer that. His stomach was cramping, his legs ached, and the stones turning under his boots didn't make walking uphill any easier... but he forgot his discomfort when he arrived at the top and was confronted by two men with drawn weapons.\n\nJess held up his hands and said, \"Stormcrow,\" which was the phrase he'd arranged with Brendan during the voyage. \"And don't try to fire that thing, Grainger; you've always been a terrible shot.\"\n\n\"Aye, that's true enough,\" said the taller of the two men, who had a cadaverous face, hollow eyes, and a strangely lush crop of black hair and whiskers. \"And you're a small enough target these days, Master Jess. What did they feed you on your travels, vinegar and air?\" Grainger put the weapon away, and so did his smaller, silent companion. \"Welcome home, sir. I expect your brother will be along?\"\n\n\"Sooner than either of us want.\" And it isn't home, Jess thought, but didn't say. He glanced behind him. \"Captain Santi, Scholar Wolfe, this is Mr. Grainger. My father's trusted secretary and man of all work.\" He politely ignored the other man, because Grainger did, too. New, since Jess had been off to Alexandria. \"Will we be walking?\"\n\n\"Thank God, no,\" Grainger said. \"We have cabs for you. Can only take four in each; how many do you have, then?\"\n\n\"Nine,\" Jess said, but Brendan stuck his head over Jess's shoulder and said, \"Ten,\" at the same time. As Jess shoved him back, Brendan grinned. \"Anit's coming, too. She says a night off the ship would do her good.\"\n\n\"Ten,\" Jess said, and turned back to Grainger. \"Is our father here?\"\n\n\"Waiting at the house for you. Said you were to take my word for his until then.\"\n\n\"Meaning I can ignore it altogether?\" Brendan said. \"Excellent. Good work, Grainger.\" He turned and politely bowed Khalila up the path to the road. \"Ladies first.\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" Glain said, and kicked him soundly on the backside. \"We don't need your smarmy consideration. Just shift yourself and get out of the way.\"\n\n\"I'm starting to like you,\" Brendan called after her. The hand gesture she gave him was not encouraging. Brendan threw an arm around his brother's neck. \"Come on, Jess. Smile. We're safe. We're home!\"\n\nThis isn't home, Jess thought again. But he was starting to realize that maybe he didn't really have a home, except with the people he loved. And they were piling into the three steam carriages lined up on the road.\n\nBack in London, his da had always favored modest transportation; he'd had his town house luxurious enough, but since he'd been pretending all his life to upper-merchant class, he'd never indulged in excesses.\n\nThat was clearly not the case anymore. The steam carriages were gleaming wonders of black lacquer and shining brasses, with the clockworks and hydraulics of the engines visible through transparent panes of thick, no doubt unbreakable, glass. Fit for kings and Archivists, Jess thought. He wondered how many rare books his father had sold to ink-lickers, to be eaten like so many delicious forbidden treats, to pay for them.\n\nDario had pushed on past Brendan to help Khalila into the carriage. The journey hadn't done well for her, either; she had a hungry, hollow look to her just now, and as Dario sank down beside her and took her hand, Jess was glad she had someone who cared so much. They'd had no word of her father, brother, or uncle, except that they were still in the Archivist's prison inside the Serapeum. Glain's family was safe. Thomas's had been moved, over their protests, to a remote mountain village, with considerable manpower protecting them, thanks to Santi's brother, and retired soldiers who still owed him debts.\n\nKhalila was bearing her weight of fear and grief alone, and they all could see the strain of it on her.\n\nMorgan stopped at Jess's shoulder and pushed her hair back from her face. The wind blew it in wild, shimmering strands. It had grown longer, and the heavy air had sent it into even thicker curls. He liked it. \"I wish there was more we could do for Khalila,\" Morgan said. \"It breaks my heart to see her so\u2014withdrawn.\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said. \"Me, too.\" Morgan had prospered at sea, as if she was drawing energy and strength from the vastness of it; she'd spent endless hours at the rail, watching the waves and the dolphins that raced ahead of the bow. She'd even put on some of the weight she'd lost in Philadelphia, regained curves beneath her clothes.\n\nHe offered her his elbow, and she took it with a crooked little smile. She'd tanned, sailing under the sun. It suited her.\n\nShe even let him boost her up into the carriage with his hands on her waist. It was the most contact she'd allowed since they'd boarded the ship. It had frightened her, what she'd nearly done to him outside Philadelphia. She'd wanted to be certain she was stronger, and more in control, before risking it again.\n\nHe'd hated every moment of that long, solitary voyage, and not only for the miserable hours he'd spent seasick.\n\nBrendan piled in behind him and took the seat facing him, then reached out a hand to pull in Anit. Red Ibrahim's daughter shut the carriage door and tapped the roof as if she were born to the practice, as at home here as she was in the streets of Alexandria and the smugglers' markets below them. \"Thank you for the hospitality.\"\n\n\"Surprised you're not staying with your ship and on your way,\" Jess said. \"I'd think this diversion put you off schedule.\"\n\n\"A small delay. I am to pay your father my sincere respects,\" she said. \"As you would if visiting my father's home.\"\n\nJess would have, of course; there was nothing to it but business courtesy. But it still set him on guard, and he saw the brief flash in Brendan's eyes before he turned to look out the carriage's window at the rough, rocky coast. Anit wasn't here just to smile prettily and offer family greetings, and his brother well knew that.\n\n\"You seem at home away from home,\" Jess said.\n\n\"You mean, considering my age?\" Anit said coolly. \"I have traveled with my father since I was old enough to remember. But this trip to Mexico is the first I've taken alone on his behalf.\"\n\n\"And we landed you in it, didn't we?\"\n\nShe looked away and lifted her shoulders in a very small shrug. \"I think none of us have ever been out of it.\"\n\nMorgan laughed. It had a bitter little edge to it. \"You and I already have much in common, Anit. It isn't just the smugglers who spend their lives hunted.\"\n\n\"No doubt.\" Anit glanced back at Jess. \"Thank you for the lions. I will hold them in trust for you, as I promised.\"\n\n\"We'll be along to get them. Sometime.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said. \"You may count on me, Jess.\"\n\nShe sounded all right when she said it, but she was still young, and he sensed that hint of falseness in it. Lying was as easy to smugglers as respiration, normally, but not among family. She wasn't quite comfortable with it yet.\n\nMorgan sighed and leaned her head on Jess's shoulder. \"I need a bath. A hot bath, with rose soap. And a meal that isn't military rations.\"\n\n\"I think that can be arranged,\" he said. \"One thing I know about my da: he won't be living in a tent and eating beans from a metal can if it can be helped.\"\n\n\"I think I'll like it, then.\"\n\n\"Oh, you won't,\" Brendan said. \"But I don't think he'll care.\"\n\nThere was a certain relaxing quality to the ride, the sway of the carrier, the hiss of the tires... at least until they hit a bump that lifted everyone in the vehicle six inches into the air, and slammed them down hard. They'd all been through enough to take it in stride, but even Brendan had to wince. The driver's cheerful cry of \"Sorry!\" didn't seem very sincere.\n\nNearly an hour later, and (by Jess's count) more than twenty similar bounces, they finally squealed to a halt, and the back doors flapped open to admit gray daylight. No rain, and though Jess had expected to step out onto mud, he found himself standing on clean, ancient flagstones. The sight of the brooding old walls that rose thirty feet into the air made the breath in his lungs turn sick and tainted. He turned, staring. The walls circled the court in which the carriage had parked. Another carriage had already come to a halt beside theirs, and a third rattled over a wide wooden bridge and in through an enormous arched door.\n\nAnd then, as the bridge cranked up with a hiss of powerful hydraulics and a clank of iron chains as thick as his legs, as it sealed shut with a boom and inner doors were pulled closed, Jess realized that his brother hadn't been exaggerating.\n\nHis father was living in a castle. And the sight of the walls made him feel sick and hot and short of breath, and he didn't know why, until he thought he smelled a phantom whiff of rotting plants and Greek fire.\n\nI'm past Philadelphia. I'm over it.\n\nBut it left him shaking and sweating, with a sick taste in the back of his throat, and he flinched as Morgan put her arm in his. \"Sorry,\" he murmured.\n\n\"This is your home?\"\n\n\"I've never seen it before,\" he said. The fortress proper consisted of gigantic, brooding buildings and towers. The London town house he'd grown up in could have fit within the entry hall, he imagined. The place was large enough to hold an entire High Garda company. Pity they'd had to leave theirs behind. \"I thought Brendan was exaggerating.\"\n\n\"Not a bit,\" his brother said, and lifted Anit down from the carriage. \"Da's owned this place for twenty years, give or take. Never in his own name, of course. And this is the first time he's felt threatened enough to make use of it.\"\n\n\"Jess! Oh, my dear boy!\"\n\nHe turned toward the voice, and his mother came rushing down the narrow stone steps of the castle's main door and threw her arms around him. He froze for a long second, staring in blank panic at Brendan, who'd crossed his arms, and then tentatively hugged her back. Celia Brightwell had always been a distant presence in his life; Callum had married her for position and money, not love, and though she'd been a dutiful enough mother, she'd never been a warm one. She'd certainly never embraced him like this before. If it weren't for her familiar features and the expensive cut of her dress, he'd have thought it was someone playing her.\n\n\"I was afraid you'd never come back,\" she told him, and put him at arm's length to stare at him. He realized, maybe for the first time, that he'd inherited the color of his eyes from her, as had Brendan. He couldn't remember what color their dead brother Liam's had been. More like his father's, he thought. \"Callum hasn't told me much, you know, but I know you've been in terrible danger. Oh, Jess!\"\n\n\"I'm all right,\" he said, and it sounded awkward; he cleared his throat and tried to make it sound warmer. \"I've missed you, Mother.\"\n\nShe'd always been Mother, never anything more affectionate. Then again, Callum had always been Da, and there was little enough affection there, either...\n\n\"I've missed you so,\" she said, and kissed his cheek, which was shocking. \"Welcome home, my dear.\"\n\nShe went to greet Brendan with the same outpouring of emotion, which must have surprised his twin just as much, but Jess didn't have a chance to observe it. His father was coming down the steps at a much more sedate, lordly pace, and he was using an ebony cane that he probably didn't need. Knowing his da, there'd be a poisoned blade inside it.\n\n\"Jess,\" his father said, when they were face-to-face.\n\n\"Da,\" he replied, and was unprepared for his father\u2014like his mother\u2014to sweep him into a strong, crushing embrace. It was confusing, and at the same time, he felt some war that had been waging inside him go silent, too. Had he needed this? God help him if he had, because it was very likely that it wasn't real at all. His da was perfectly capable of putting on a show for those he wanted to impress... which would be who, exactly?\n\nAh, of course. Anit.\n\nCallum let Jess go and gave Brendan the same greeting, and then gave Anit a decorous, formal bow. \"Your father always said you were as beautiful as the dawn,\" Callum said. \"I see that for once his genius for poetry failed him, because you're far lovelier than that, my dear.\"\n\nShe bowed, too, and stepped forward to offer him the kiss of greeting between friends\u2014one on each cheek, then one lightly on the lips. \"My father sends you warm greetings, my uncle. I am honored to be welcome in your house.\"\n\n\"Ever welcome, my dear. You're part of the family, after all.\" Callum\u2014still bluff and strong and barrel-chested, still expensively togged out, only a little thinner and a little grayer than Jess remembered him\u2014offered Anit his crooked elbow, and she took it with the calm assurance of a princess. \"And I see the lovely young Morgan is with us again.\" He bowed to her\u2014shallowly\u2014and she gave him a little nod back. \"Have all your friends survived your journey? That's a credit to your skills. A considerable achievement.\"\n\nThis smarmy flow of compliments, Jess gathered, was all for Anit's benefit. He glanced at Brendan and saw the answering glint in his brother's eyes. Cynical, but weirdly reassuring. His memories of the chilly distance with his mother weren't wrong. And neither were his recollections of the slaps his father dealt out to teach him the proper way to run a smuggled book through London.\n\nTheir parents moved on to greet the others with a good deal more restraint, and then led the way up into the castle.\n\n\"Quite the show,\" Brendan said, falling into step beside his brother, and Jess made a throwing-up sound in the back of his throat. \"What? Are you saying it isn't good to be back in the bosom of the old family?\"\n\n\"I feel welcome as ever,\" Jess said. \"Do you actually live in this great pile of rocks, or is it just a stage for whatever play they're putting on?\"\n\n\"Oh, I live here. For now, anyway.\" Brendan shook his head with a crooked smile on his lips. \"Come on, brother. I'll help get everyone sorted for sleeping quarters. There are twenty extra bedrooms in the place that can sleep three in a pinch, and ten more in the guesthouse\u2014\"\n\n\"Guesthouse?\"\n\n\"And you don't need to worry about our safety. Besides these castle walls, the entire grounds stretch on for miles in every direction. The borders are surrounded by walls and sentries. Plus, we're remote here, and we have spies on every road and approach who'll send word immediately if anyone starts our way. Unless the damned Library has learned how to fly, they won't be able to get here without ample warning, and a hell of a fight.\"\n\n\"You have troops.\"\n\n\"We have... hired men. And a great deal to defend. You know how it goes.\"\n\nWhat Brendan was really telling him, in so many words, was that this was a prison, and every escape route was guarded.\n\nDario came up the steps, where Brendan and Jess were locked in communication, and said, \"You never told me you lived like a real grandee, scrubber. I'm impressed.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said, \"you would be.\"\n\nThe warm welcome lasted through a receiving line of uniformed servants\u2014all armed, Jess noted, even the maids and cooks\u2014and stepping inside the hall was like taking a trip a thousand years into the past. The place was obviously well maintained, but ancient, from the enormous carved beams that rose far into the shadows, to the three huge fireplaces big enough to burn half a tree at a time. There were giant feasting tables that could seat at least a hundred, and tattered old battle flags hanging from the walls.\n\nBest of all, the hall was lined with bookshelves, double Jess's height, that stretched the length of the room on both sides. A dizzying archive, and everything in it original. Callum Brightwell's warehouse, right out in public view.\n\nThat, for the first time, made him feel less trapped.\n\n\"Mr. Grainger will show you all to your rooms,\" Jess's father announced, and then beckoned to Jess. \"Not you, boy. I'll need reports. And I'll need to speak with you and your big friend Thomas. Oh, and I understand you have books you've rescued from the Black Archives of Alexandria. I'll be needing those as well.\"\n\n\"There's my father,\" Jess murmured to Thomas. \"I was afraid someone had taken his place.\"\n\n\"Do you trust him?\" Thomas asked, just as quietly.\n\n\"Do you?\"\n\n\"I trust everyone. Until I see I shouldn't. But you know him.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Jess agreed. \"I do.\"\n\nThat wasn't an answer, but Thomas didn't push for one; they walked together after Callum, through the great hall. A grand stone staircase big enough to march five across up it lay beyond, and split to the left and right. Callum went right, and Jess had been correct: he didn't need the cane at all.\n\nThe top of the stairs led to another grand hallway lined with tapestries and paintings, and at the end of it, with a fine lord's view of the deer park and gardens beyond the walls, lay his father's office. It was surprisingly familiar. Jess remembered the desk, with its carved crouching lions. Da must have had it rescued out of London. More shelves of books, expensive warm rugs, and a smell of leather and old paper.\n\nThis was like coming home.\n\n\"Sit,\" his da said, and took his own advice. His winged desk chair was new, and quite like a throne. Jess took one of the three matching seats that faced the desk. The one Thomas chose was almost big enough for him. \"Books?\"\n\n\"They're coming,\" Jess said. \"Dario and Khalila will deliver them.\"\n\n\"Good.\" His father sat back and studied them. Warm smile, but his eyes were like cold pebbles at the bottom of a frozen lake. \"I understand that you built the unfortunate Philadelphians your press. And it worked.\"\n\n\"We did,\" Thomas said. \"And it did.\" He had his bag with him, and now he pulled out a copy of the blueprints that he'd sketched aboard the ship. \"Here is what we built. Of course, we can improve on it.\"\n\nBrightwell picked up the paper and peered at it closely. Jess knew that frown. It was mostly for show, done to get the best deal in any negotiation. It was so ingrained that he doubted his father even noticed he was doing it. \"Doesn't look like much, to be changing the world. That's what you're promising?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said. \"If you give me the tools, Jess and I will build one for you. We'll need supplies. I can make you a list.\"\n\n\"Then, do that.\" Somehow, Callum made it sound like a failure that Thomas hadn't done so already. \"You find my son an adequate assistant, or do you need someone better trained?\"\n\nThomas looked up, and for the first time, his smile flattened and his blue eyes seemed darker. \"I don't take your meaning, Mr. Brightwell. Do you not think your son is good enough for such a job?\"\n\n\"I suppose he's bright enough, but\u2014\"\n\n\"He is bright enough,\" Thomas said. \"And I don't need anyone else.\"\n\nFor the first time that Jess could remember, his da didn't have a ready response. He parted his lips and looked at Thomas curiously, then shook his head. \"If you're satisfied,\" he said. \"Of course.\"\n\nThomas stood up and took the plans back, to Callum's astonishment\u2014and, if he had to admit it, to Jess's own surprise, too. It was a bold move. One that Callum debated challenging, and then clearly decided to let pass. \"When can you start building this wonder?\"\n\n\"As soon as we come to an arrangement,\" Thomas said. \"You are a negotiator, I understand. So what do you offer?\"\n\n\"You don't think saving your hides from the High Garda and the Archivist is payment enough? You do set a high price on yourself, Scholar.\"\n\nThomas gave him a pure, and purely alarming, smile. \"Not on myself, sir. But on the knowledge I have to share, yes. On the lives of my friends, yes. On the future of the Library... yes. That, I put a high price on.\"\n\nCallum shot a glance at Jess. \"Last I met this one, he was a featherheaded optimist. You've had a bad influence on him.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" Jess said. \"What he has is valuable. Anit sold us passage here. What are you selling?\"\n\n\"Safety and shelter! A place to conduct whatever inventing you plan to do, at my cost, so long as I share in these discoveries! Isn't that enough?\"\n\nThomas didn't answer. He left it to Jess, which was wise. \"We're going to need a way back to Alexandria,\" he said. \"Something secure and secret. That's part of the deal, when we want to go.\"\n\n\"For how many of you?\"\n\n\"All of us.\"\n\n\"That's a stupid waste,\" his father said. \"Dragging your friends right back into the hands of executioners. Unless you have some larger plan...?\"\n\n\"We can discuss it later,\" Jess said. \"Thomas and I will build the press for you, to pay for the cost of our protection here. Thomas gets to build anything else he wants, and you pay for the costs of that. We'll discuss payment for the plans.\"\n\n\"Payment!\"\n\n\"I know exactly how much money you're going to be making from this.\" Jess smiled slowly. \"Did you really expect us to give things away for free, Da?\"\n\nCallum glared at him for a long, red moment, and then, quite suddenly, laughed. Slapped the surface of his desk so hard a sheet of paper curled into the air in surprise and floated back down. \"My son,\" he said. \"I used to think you'd never be good for much in our trade. I might have been wrong about that.\"\n\nFrom the corner of his eye, Jess saw Thomas flinch a little at the casual insult; he'd come from a different sort of family, and that had stung him, on Jess's behalf. But it hardly even registered, really. Growing up in the Brightwell household had meant being coldly judged, measured, trained, slapped, and corrected. Not encouraged.\n\nBy Callum's standards, that had been a real compliment.\n\n\"Do we have an accord?\" Jess asked.\n\nHis father reached for a piece of paper, pulled it over, and wrote rapidly. Signed with a flourish. Handed it to him with the pen. \"Sign,\" he said.\n\nJess scanned the text of what his father had written down. Flawlessly phrased in his own favor, of course, but it didn't much matter; Jess nodded and signed his name. His father took pen and paper back, sealed the document with wax, and filed it in a drawer that probably held a hundred similar agreements, some going back decades.\n\n\"Now,\" Callum said, and sat back in his chair. \"I expect you'll want to get yourselves off to a decent bed. Dinner's served at eight in the small reception room; they'll fetch you for it. Clothes in your rooms. Had to guess at sizes, but I think our tailors did well enough. Go on with you. I have other business.\"\n\nCallum had already pulled a stack of paper onto his desk and was rifling through it, ignoring them completely. Jess shrugged when Thomas sent him a baffled look.\n\nThis was the kind of welcome he'd been expecting all along.\n\nThey walked out together and closed his father's office door behind them, and Jess said nothing. Felt nothing, really, until he glanced at his friend's face and saw the anger there.\n\n\"I don't mean to offend, Jess, but your father is a fool if he thinks so little of you. Is that how he always treats you?\"\n\nIt was an odd question, and Jess shrugged. \"He's had his moments of fondness, I suppose. Swings between that, benign indifference, and from time to time, the back of his hand when he felt he needed to make a point.\"\n\nThomas was staring at him with the oddest expression. \"It's wrong, you know. For a father to be so cold.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Jess said. He forced out a grin and wondered if it looked as false as it felt. \"Whatever doesn't kill you, isn't that the saying?\"\n\nThomas shook his head. \"You are strong in spite of him. Not because of him.\"\n\nIt was, Jess thought, the kindest thing anyone had said to him, and for a moment he didn't say anything at all. Didn't quite know how. Then he said, \"Come on. If I don't find a bath and a bed, I might not live until dinner.\"\n\nWith the help of one of the maids, Jess was shown to his bedroom\u2014a cavernous, ornate thing with a bed larger than the cell he and Thomas had shared in Philadelphia. There was a bathroom attached, and Jess made good use of the shower until he was certain he was finally clean of every trace left of his time in Philadelphia. His burns had healed, but the scars still showed, and beneath them, like shadows, he could still see the faint lines of the cuts from the glass he'd gathered up. Good. That was like a badge of honor, those cuts. He wouldn't like to see them disappear, because they reminded him of what was lost.\n\nThe closet yielded too many choices, so he grabbed something at random that proved to be plain black trousers and an equally plain shirt in white, with red stripes on the edges of the collar and cuffs. He put it aside and tried the bed, but the softness of it felt wrong to him. He was drowning in it, after all the deprivations. The bare accommodations on the ship had seemed luxurious. This felt overwhelming.\n\nSo he dressed, found that his father had provided a new pair of soft leather boots, and went to wander the castle. One thing he'd learned not from his da, but from Wolfe and Santi: landing in a new place represented an entirely new set of challenges, and knowing the terrain might mean the difference between life and death. He'd rather make his map than sleep.\n\nNot that he thought he could sleep, anyway.\n\nHis circuit made it through only six rooms on the ground floor, because that was where he opened a set of doors and found a small old library, and Morgan curled in a chair, reading. She didn't hear him come in.\n\nThe soft light of late afternoon fell gently over her as she turned pages, and for a moment he just looked at her. He'd seen paintings that weren't as beautiful; the glow of her hair, the curve of her cheek, the drape of the simple dress she wore, all demanded study. The dress was the blue of a perfect sky, and perfectly flattering to her.\n\n\"I see you found my father's rarest books,\" Jess said, and startled her into a flinch, which he regretted. Seeing her peaceful was a gift. She marked her place with a ribbon and closed the volume. \"And did you find that bath?\"\n\n\"I did. Rose soap and all,\" she said. \"And I think you did, too.\"\n\nShe put the book down and came toward him. He ended up with his back to the shelves, and her warm lips on his. The dark floral scent of her rolled over his senses and blotted out everything else but the feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth. It was a long, sweet, burning kiss. They'd been so careful, since Philadelphia; they'd barely touched on the ship. She hadn't trusted herself not to hurt him, and he hadn't trusted himself to push her away, if he had to.\n\nThey parted with a shared gasp for air, and he pressed his forehead to hers as she let out a breathless giggle. \"Like champagne on an empty stomach,\" she said. \"Ah, I've missed you.\"\n\nHe curled his fingers in with hers and pulled her tight against him, as if they were prepared to dance. \"You seem much better.\"\n\n\"I am stronger,\" she said. \"Better is a different subject altogether. Being at sea was... good for me. All that energy, all that possibility. But...\" She took her fingers from his and lifted her hand. A thick glimmer of power formed around it, but it was shot through with dark, shifting stars, like a handful of black glitter. \"I'll never be what I was. Dr. Askuwheteau said as much. It's not a matter of strength as much as it is... a change of instinct.\"\n\nIt was dangerous, he knew that, but he reached for her hand again. The buzz of power felt like bees against his skin, and when he threaded his fingers through hers and pressed their palms together, he felt the sting. And then it cooled. Vanished.\n\nBut he still felt a little wave of weariness ripple through him. Just a little.\n\nHer smile seemed sad. \"I can control it. To a point. But what you saw\u2014the black spots\u2014they may lessen over time, but they'll never quite go away. I'm stronger, and I'm more dangerous. But we knew that would happen.\"\n\n\"And it might be needed,\" Jess said. He hated himself for saying it, but it was true. \"You know what we discussed? On the ship?\"\n\nShe seemed to stop breathing for a moment, and he hated the flutter of panic he saw pass across her face. Then it was gone, and she seemed entirely calm. \"We're not safe here.\"\n\n\"I don't know that for certain, but\u2014\" It was an instinct he couldn't fully explain, built out of history and hints, memories and feelings. \"If we aren't, I need you to be on your guard. Ready for whatever we have to do. All right?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Her fingers curled in the collar of his jacket, and her smile seemed sweet and unreadable. \"Not all Brightwells are as honest as you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"And you're an unrepentant criminal.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\" He wondered whether the doors locked properly, and if that curved divan across the room was sturdy enough to hold them both... until Morgan stiffened and stepped back out of the embrace.\n\n\"Should have known I'd find you where the best books are kept, Jess,\" said a voice from the door, and Jess realized with a savage pulse of fury that Dario stood there, arms folded. Enjoying the show, no doubt. \"Though I admit, finding you doing something other than reading them is a new experience. This must be the most excitement this room's ever seen.\"\n\n\"Oh, shut up. What do you want?\" This was one of the moments, Jess thought, when punching Dario until his hand got tired seemed very, very tempting.\n\nDario's lurid delight slid away, and he stepped in and closed the door behind him. Bolted it. Jess moved away from Morgan and in front of her\u2014protecting her, though he didn't know why, or from what. But Dario only walked to the divan that Jess had been so recently considering, and sat down. He must have had a closet full of clothing waiting, too, and he'd chosen the most opulent thing he could: a rich black velvet coat with gold buttons, thick cuffs, and a wine red silk shirt beneath it. Boots so shiny they seemed coated in glass. He'd had his hair cut and his beard trimmed back to a precise goatee, and somewhere, he'd found a single ruby stud to wear in his left earlobe. Somewhere\u2014possibly from Jess's father's collection\u2014he'd found an ebony walking stick with a golden lion's head.\n\nHe looked like he belonged in a castle. Like he owned at least two.\n\n\"Jess. Sit down,\" he said. \"We need to talk.\"\n\n\"Get up,\" Jess said, \"and walk out.\"\n\nThey stared at each other for a long moment, and then Dario crossed his legs and sat back, clearly refusing. \"I know you're not stupid enough to think we're safe,\" he said. \"And this might be exactly why we started our discussions back in\u2014back there.\" The little hesitation, the way he avoided the name Philadelphia, told Jess that Dario wasn't over it, either. He just hid it better. \"So sit down.\"\n\n\"I'll go,\" Morgan said. \"I should rest.\" Jess turned to face her, and she positioned him so that she could kiss him with his back to Dario, and Dario wouldn't see her whisper, \"Careful, whatever it is you're plotting. I still don't trust him.\"\n\nHe nodded, just slightly, and let her go.\n\nOnce she'd gone out the door, he locked it behind her and turned, leaning against it, arms folded. \"This isn't the time.\"\n\n\"It's the only time there is. Anit received word while I was loitering near her\u2014close enough to hear her captain deliver the message. I credit you with spying skills, but I grew up eavesdropping.\"\n\n\"Get to the point, if you have one.\"\n\n\"The Archivist has announced the closure of the city of Alexandria.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"A defensive measure against Burner attacks. So he says. But the Welsh-run newspapers\u2014your father keeps quite a good collection of them, by the way\u2014say differently. There's been a defection of treaty countries\u2014more than the Archivist can safely try to punish at once. America's in open rebellion, and the New York Serapeum fell to the Burners yesterday.\" Dario inspected his fingernails. Manicured, Jess noticed. \"Your rescued doctor seems to be their new spokesman. Better than the last cabr\u00f3n. But the important thing is that it's starting. Even without Thomas's press working yet, there are rumors of it. The Welsh and the English only agree on one thing, and that is that they both want the Library to stay out of their affairs. The French queen may be in exile, but Portugal agrees to shelter and help her. Add America to that boiling pot, and the Archivist will be wanting to crush resistance quickly.\"\n\nJess, without really meaning to, found himself sitting in a chair across from Dario, elbows on his knees. Leaning forward and thinking hard. \"He'll purge any dissenters from inside Alexandria. Go after anyone who opposes him in any way.\"\n\n\"He's already started. There was an announcement in the Alexandrian paper\u2014your father gets that, too\u2014that they will celebrate a Feast of Greater Burning at the statue of Horus in thirty days. Pomp, circumstance, and sacrifice.\"\n\nJess slowly raised his head and met Dario's dark gaze. Neither of them blinked. \"They'll be killing prisoners at the Feast of Greater Burning. And Khalila's family\u2014\"\n\n\"Is in cells at the Serapeum,\" Dario finished. \"We have thirty days to find a way to stop it. And we can't do it from here.\"\n\n\"And do we tell the others?\"\n\nFor answer, Dario reached in his coat pocket and took out a rolled sheet of thin paper. He let it fall open. It was the Alexandrian newspaper\u2014a Library-linked document that refreshed itself with new words and illustrations every few hours. \"I took the liberty of lifting it,\" he said. \"Until we decide, you and I, what we will do. Because we know what our beloved friends will do, don't we?\"\n\n\"Run straight into a trap,\" Jess said. \"Like heroes.\"\n\n\"And you and I, we are not heroes.\" Dario gave a small, ironic smile, mostly to himself. \"Much as I hate to admit that. But what we are might save all of us, and I think we have to settle for that.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Jess said, and leaned forward. \"Then let's find out just how much of villains we're going to have to be.\"\n\nJess had no taste for it, but dinner wasn't optional; he'd tried to beg off, but the servant had been calmly insistent, and in the end, he'd followed her off to find the rest already gathered. The small reception room was still vast, and ornately decorated. The table could seat twenty, and only half that many took chairs.\n\nHis parents put on a good show of graciousness, but the strain was evident in every forced interaction. Wolfe maintained a chilly silence and left it to the more socially eloquent Santi to oil the conversational wheels; Jess elected to be seen and not heard, except for murmured comments to Morgan, who'd been seated to his right next to Brendan, and Khalila, on his left. Glain and Thomas seemed quiet, though in Thomas's case, it was because he was eating everything in sight.\n\nJess seemed to be the only one with a lack of appetite, but he forced himself to eat. Roast beef, mushy peas, mash. A solid meal, uncomplicated, but that was probably by design. In this, at least, he could thank his mother, who seemed to understand that they were still recovering.\n\nIt was toward the end of the meal that Callum Brightwell tapped his crystal wineglass with a knife and brought all the conversation to a halt as he rose to his feet. \"I know this isn't a comfortable partnership,\" he said. \"I don't like Library folk any more than some of you like me and mine. But we have enemies in common, and friends as well.\" He nodded to Anit, and then to Jess. \"My son is more one of you than one of mine, and though that isn't a comfortable thing for a father to say, I'm proud of the company he's chosen. Tough and smart, all of you.\" He lifted his glass. \"To our rebels. Confusion to our foes.\"\n\nThey all drank\u2014Khalila, her water, and the rest, the free-flowing Brightwell wine. Some even echoed his toast. Not Jess. And, he noted, not Santi or Wolfe. Maybe they didn't like to see themselves as rebels. Or foes.\n\nAnd, Jess thought, maybe they'd realized that it was entirely out of character for his father to be so grandly supportive.\n\n\"Thank you for the most generous welcome,\" Wolfe said, once silence had fallen again. For once, he sounded less than mocking. A little less. \"But we won't impose on you for long. Our place isn't here, hiding. It's in Alexandria, fighting for what we love.\"\n\n\"Don't be daft\u2014you'll be slaughtered two steps inside the city, if you can even get there,\" Callum said. \"You lot, always thinking of a fight as a gentleman's duel instead of a proper throat cutting. Must be the Library training, eh? Makes you convinced you're invulnerable.\"\n\nJess drew in a breath to say something, but he wasn't needed. Santi took another sip of his wine and beat him to it. \"Some battles you have to fight face-to-face. Not in a dark alley.\"\n\n\"Knifing your enemy in a dark alley's how you avoid the fight in the first place,\" Callum replied. \"Which is something those of us who have to scrape a living outside the Library's generosity know.\"\n\n\"Yes, we can all see the shocking poverty in which you live,\" Santi said. \"Our fight is to free the Library to follow its real mission, not destroy it wholesale. That's for the Burners. And people like you.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's in my good interest to keep the Library alive, too. At least until it's no longer necessary, which will be several lifetimes from now, I'd imagine. So you needn't insult me by lumping me in with bloody Burners.\"\n\n\"He doesn't mean to insult you, sir,\" Khalila said. \"But he's right. We have to bring light back to the temple where it's gone out. We can't kindle that fire from here.\"\n\n\"And you can't go there,\" Callum said, \"or anywhere else, until it's safe. But not to worry, you're well protected, and we'll provide you with everything you need. Jess and Scholar Schreiber have seen to that. They'll be paying for your keep with a few jobs for me.\"\n\n\"Building the press,\" Wolfe said.\n\n\"Among other things. So have no fear\u2014all the plans are under way for your safe departure. Until then, enjoy the hospitality.\" Callum picked up a small bell next to his plate and rang it. \"Ah. Dessert.\"\n\nKhalila left the table first, pleading weariness, and she took Thomas, Glain, and Morgan with her. Jess stayed, even though he longed to see Morgan to her room; he wanted to watch Santi and Wolfe and his father. Besides, his twin had stayed, gleefully tucking into the sweet pudding that had been served, and though Jess could barely manage a mouthful, Brendan gestured meaningfully at it. \"Go on,\" he said. \"You need some cushion back on those bones. You look half-dead.\"\n\nFelt it, too, Jess realized; he was aching in every muscle. He forced down three more bites, until Brendan finally sighed and took the rest of it from him to finish.\n\nWolfe and Santi exchanged a few more words with the elder Brightwells, but not many, before they rose to leave. Jess intended to follow, but Brendan got up with him and said, \"We're off to bed, then. Good night.\"\n\nCallum mumbled the same back, concentrating on his pudding. Their mother looked at them both with distant sadness and nodded.\n\nThey hadn't gotten to the stairs before Jess pulled Brendan off into a side room. A dark one, until he dialed the glows up a little. It was cold and damp and was lined with shelves and neatly ordered crates and boxes. Storage, Jess thought. There was a lingering smell of spices, so likely it was for the kitchens.\n\n\"What are you not telling me?\" Jess asked him. \"Come on, Scraps. I know it when you're hiding something.\"\n\nBrendan tried to look innocent. He failed miserably. \"The usual Brightwell intrigue, old son. Nothing out of the ordinary, is it?\"\n\n\"Brendan.\"\n\nHis twin went quiet, staring at him, and then turned away. Picked at a rough spot on a shelf, winced as he gained a splinter. And finally said, \"You know our da. One profit isn't enough. Neither is two. He wants it all, and you've handed it to him on a silver platter, with a gift note.\"\n\n\"We're not guests,\" Jess said.\n\n\"Well, you're not a guest; you belong here.\"\n\n\"You know what I mean! They're not guests!\"\n\nHis brother's shoulders rose and fell in a faint shrug. \"They're fugitives. What exactly do they expect, that everyone will be rushing to join their army? Even us? Come on, Jess. When has Da ever done anything for anyone who isn't family?\"\n\n\"They're my family.\"\n\n\"They're prisoners,\" his brother said. \"And when they leave, it'll be because Da's made a better deal. You know it. We both know it.\"\n\nIt wasn't anything but confirmation of what Jess had already suspected, but he still felt the trap closing with an almost audible snap. Another set of walls. Another set of cells. Luxurious ones, with soft feather beds and plenty of food to distract them, but Callum Brightwell was no different from Willinger Beck, and never had been, really. For all that he was their father.\n\n\"And you're going along with it,\" Jess said.\n\nBrendan looked at him for a long, telling moment, and then dropped his gaze to his finger. A red dot of blood welled there, and he wiped it away. \"I haven't decided,\" he said. \"But I'll let you know. Go on, Jess. Nothing will happen tonight. Da wants that bloody machine of yours. Maybe you can convince him the lot of you are assets worth keeping, not selling.\"\n\nJess didn't try to argue with him. He wasn't sure he could even speak. All of the darkness had rolled up inside him, all the rage he'd felt since Philadelphia, all the fury of being trapped and hounded and threatened and helpless.\n\nBut he wasn't helpless here. And there was another, darker game to play.\n\nHe silently left and went up the stairs to the hall where they all had rooms, intending to knock on Morgan's door, but changed his mind when he heard soft voices and realized that the room at the end of the hall still had its door open. Not fully open, as if inviting others in, but cracked, as if it hadn't been fully latched.\n\nMen's voices. Wolfe and Santi. Jess knocked lightly and pushed the door open.\n\nHe wasn't surprised to find them standing close, as if they'd been arguing fiercely. There was a strong sense of emotion in the air, something that immediately made Jess wish he'd kept on to his own door, but it was too late now. Without looking at him, Wolfe said, \"Well? What?\"\n\nHe told them about what Brendan had said. Neither of them seemed surprised by the news that Callum Brightwell had plans for them. That they'd escaped Philadelphia only to land in yet another net.\n\n\"We have time,\" Wolfe said, and it sounded as if he was continuing the argument that Jess had walked in on. \"Your father wants this press as much as Willinger Beck ever did. We made it out of Philadelphia. We'll leave this place on our own terms.\"\n\n\"Maybe we don't want to leave,\" Santi said. \"This castle is strong and defensible, well situated to withstand any kind of attack. Brightwell was right about one thing: running into the Archivist's city like brave heroes of old will get us cut down. I don't want to see that. Neither do you.\"\n\nWolfe glared at him, and Jess saw the rage simmering in him, barely contained. Jess knew that feeling, because he'd just felt the helpless shudder of it, the desire to lash out. He'd walked away from his brother because of it.\n\n\"So we stay here, in this\u2014overstuffed prison, waiting for the Archivist to turn the High Garda on us? I won't. I can't!\"\n\n\"Chris\u2014\"\n\n\"No!\" The word came out of Wolfe in a barely checked snarl.\n\nSanti threw up his hands and stalked away to stare out the mullioned window at the darkness beyond. They were all raw, Jess thought. Too raw, too angry, and still too far from right.\n\nOn impulse, Jess said, \"Do you still smell it, too?\"\n\nWolfe frowned at him. \"Smell what?\"\n\n\"The smoke.\" Jess's throat convulsed as if a finger had brushed the back of it, and the nausea broke cold sweat onto his brow. \"Sweet and rotten. Every time I think about being trapped, I smell it. Feels like I'll never cough it all up.\"\n\nThe silence after he said it was profound and painful, and Wolfe dragged in a breath and then shook his head without speaking.\n\nSanti opened the window, and a blast of pure, cold air rushed into the room. It felt... clean. He turned and looked at Wolfe and said, \"I'm sorry. I didn't understand.\"\n\nWolfe managed a sick little laugh. \"No. Neither did I. The things we think we put behind us...\" He gazed down at his feet. \"We don't ever put it behind us. I should know that by now. I never meant to take it out on you, Nic. I'm sorry.\"\n\nSanti walked over to stand facing him and held out his hand. Without looking up, Wolfe took it.\n\n\"This isn't a time to make choices, sir. We'll make bad ones,\" Jess said, which was three-quarters of a lie; he was making choices, wasn't he? But he needed to keep Wolfe and Santi from anything more... aggressive.\n\n\"You're likely right,\" Wolfe said. \"You'll be working with Thomas on the press, I presume?\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\n\"Then you need to pay attention for the same from him. Thomas has exceeded what anyone could have thought he could do. But... I know how the Library's cells can break a person, and sometimes they don't even know they're broken. Anger is as poisonous as arsenic, and it rots you from the bones out.\" He looked up at Jess, and it felt like the old days, like being pinned under the Scholar's gaze like a butterfly to a board. \"If he falls, you must be the one to catch him.\"\n\nSanti, Jess noticed, was standing close to Wolfe, standing as if he expected to have to catch his lover. The press was pure tragedy for Wolfe; it was the physical expression of an idea that had destroyed his life and sentenced him to unimaginable pain. The symbol of all his hopes and dreams, and all his despair, too. And now Jess could hear the echoes of it in his voice.\n\n\"I'm all right, Nic,\" Wolfe said, and finally looked at him. \"We walked through the dungeons under Rome, survived Philadelphia, and this perfumed cage won't bring us to our knees. We're all stronger than that.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Santi said. \"But don't ask me to stop standing next to you. Because you know I will, however much you shout about it.\"\n\n\"I know.\" For the first time, Wolfe smiled. It was such a kind, unguarded sort of thing, it didn't seem to fit on him. \"That's what makes me live when the alternative seems so peaceful.\"\n\nWithout answering, Santi placed a quiet kiss on his lover's lips. It began quietly, at least. They'd never been prone to public displays, but that kiss... that was more intimate than most Jess had seen, and clearly, neither cared who was watching.\n\nSanti laughed softly when it ended and said, a little regretfully, \"Now, that's a proper hello. Haven't had one for a while. And you haven't talked to me about Philadelphia.\"\n\n\"True for you, too.\"\n\n\"I'm a soldier.\"\n\n\"That just means you hide it better, not that it didn't leave marks on you.\"\n\nThe two of them weren't paying Jess any mind now, and he wasn't wanted here, or needed. He silently turned to go.\n\n\"Jess.\" The two men were still close, still with their arms around each other, but Wolfe had turned to look at him. No rage in those dark eyes now. Just something like concern. \"You'll stop tasting that smoke. You never leave it behind you, but even that fades with distance. Even that. All right?\"\n\nJess nodded and kept walking. He was swinging the door shut when he said, \"Make sure you lock the door. I don't trust my father any more than you do.\"\n\nHe waited until he heard the thunk of the lock being turned, and then leaned against the wood, heaved a great sigh, and wished he could push away the plan that was forming in his head. Because it was starting to come clear to him exactly what his father had planned for them, and why his brother still wasn't being honest about the whole of it.\n\nAnd it was horribly clear that the wild idea that had come to him at dinner, watching his brother, represented the best chance any of them would ever have to accomplish the impossible... but it would cost them dearly.\n\nIt would cost him everything. But if he was right... it had to be done."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Callimachus, first Archivist of the Great Library, near the end of his service. Interdicted from the Codex to the personal records of the Archivists:\n\n\u2002I look back on this road we have together paved, stone by stone. I have served my pharaoh faithfully, but my gods more faithfully still, and the Library itself most of all. I have put it ahead of my own happiness, my own achievement. This is not a sorrow for me, and here is where I depart from this road, into the setting sun.\n\n\u2002But I warn you, my successors: even now, in such a short space as my single lifetime, I come to understand that knowledge is like any other treasure: it can be hoarded. It can be stolen. It can be scattered to the winds. And worst of all, it can inspire greed of a particularly poisonous kind.\n\n\u2002For who am I to say who should know a thing? Who am I to say to you, a farmer, that you may not read of a mason's work, or to you, a mason, that you may not read of a priest's duties? Who am I to say this is too dangerous, and that is not? Some say that women should not read, for they may be led astray into impurity, as if our women are not fit guardians of their own worthiness. Some of my fellow Scholars, to my eternal shame, say those of different skins and faces and nations are too backward to learn, and when that false belief is proven wrong, they claim such examples as prodigies, as exemptions, instead of realizing their own grave errors of evil pride.\n\n\u2002It is a terrible arrogance to think that there are any of humankind who are better or worse, or worthy or not. It comes of a pitiful need to believe in one's own worth when one is hollow within. We are all worthy. And none of us are, all at once. Once that is acknowledged, that hollow, howling space may be filled with understanding.\n\n\u2002But so many cling to their emptiness, and I fear that they may yet prevail.\n\n\u2002I worry, you who come after me, that we will stray from this barely begun path of truth, and instead set our stones toward... more. More wealth. More power. More authority. Away from a path up, and toward one that seems easier, and leads down.\n\n\u2002Never forget that we, too, are mortal. And the greed that the Library has already felt to possess, to control, to judge... and if it continues, all will end in fire."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "He couldn't sleep.\n\nJess prowled the halls of the castle, which were mostly deserted; he ached and felt a terrible drag of weariness, but the bed held no real comfort for him. Neither did dreams, because he knew, without question, that they would turn to nightmares.\n\nWhen he tapped quietly on Morgan's door, he heard nothing from within, but her door wasn't locked, and after hesitating only a few breaths, he eased in, closed the door, and whispered her name.\n\nShe touched a glow beside the bed, and the warmth of it spread over her, shimmering in her skin, her eyes, the fall of her tousled hair. It took him a second to realize that she was fully dressed, still. Wearing the same thing she'd worn down to dinner.\n\n\"Can't sleep,\" Jess said. \"You?\"\n\nShe sat up and shook her head. \"I keep waiting\u2014waiting for something. The moment I close my eyes, it's there. Coming in the dark.\"\n\nIt perfectly described his restlessness. \"Walk with me?\"\n\nShe nodded and slipped off the bed. Stupid, he shouted at himself, because he wanted to be in that bed with her, the way that Wolfe and Santi were no doubt already in theirs, and put everything else away for a time. But it wasn't right now. He could feel it.\n\nIt was freezing outside, and Jess fetched coats and blankets. The drawbridge was up. There was little inside the walls except the smooth, paved courtyard, but they walked down the steps into the cold, heavy moonlight.\n\n\"There,\" Morgan said, and pointed. To the south side of the fortress wall, part of the grounds had been tamed into a garden. Hedges and an arched iron gate, and beyond that, a beautiful little oasis. A fountain bubbled softly, though the water ran thick, on the verge of icing over as it dribbled from the edge into a bowl below. The cold had already stripped the trees bare, but the hedges were still full, with sharp, waxed leaves. A few winter-blooming flowers struggled on. The grass had gone a pale yellow.\n\nAnd it was still oddly peaceful.\n\nJess spread the blanket, and they sat on it, with another wrapping the two of them together. Cold, clean air cut hard into his lungs and plumed out as he exhaled, and somehow, Jess imagined that vapor was cleansing him of everything still left of toxins and terrors. They looked up at the stars in silence for a few moments. Then Jess turned his head and saw her watching him.\n\n\"Can it stay like this?\" she asked. \"Just like this?\"\n\nHe leaned close and kissed her. Gently this time, but a kiss that lingered. Her lips were cold, but so soft. \"I wish it could.\"\n\nShe took his hand in hers and held it to her cheek\u2014his fingers warm, her face chilled. Contrasts with her, as always. \"It's beautiful here, you know.\"\n\n\"It's nearly winter.\"\n\n\"No, really. Look.\" Her grip on his hand tightened, and he felt something strange twinge inside him, almost a pain, and then his head began to ache as well...\n\nAnd he saw. Exactly what he was seeing was hard to fathom; the world around him took on form and space, colors, shifting lines. None of it made sense, but all of it had a shimmering, breathtaking, living sort of beauty. He watched the leaves of a hedge across from them blur and shake and shift colors, saw the sap rising red through the trunk and branches, saw the life of it, muted by the cold... and then the pain in his head took on the sharp edge of an axe cleaving his skull, and he cried out and closed his eyes.\n\nSuddenly, it was all gone. The headache drained away like water from a broken glass. Morgan's hands touched his forehead, smoothed the last of the pain away, and she whispered, \"I'm sorry, I didn't know that would hurt you.\"\n\n\"Is that\u2014\" He could barely speak, and his throat felt strangely dry. \"Was that what you see? What Obscurists see?\"\n\n\"I have a gift for it; at least Wolfe's mother said I did. The colors you see, that's the quintessence, the element of life. It exists in everything, living or not. The difference between living things and nonliving things... it's smaller than you might think. It's only a matter of... activation. Or removal. We are all made of the same eternal material.\"\n\n\"Did they ever teach you this in the Iron Tower?\"\n\n\"No. They taught us just the opposite, but as usual, they lied. Layers and ages of lies, until nobody recognized the truth anymore. They warned us we'd all go mad, we'd become Gilles de Rais if we questioned their rules, but it isn't true. Quintessence isn't good. It isn't evil. It's just a force, like fire. And they never intended us to really use it for what it was.\" She hesitated a moment. \"I need to show you. Come with me.\"\n\nHe followed her to a stone bench under the tree. He sat, but she didn't.\n\n\"Stay there. No matter what. Understand?\"\n\n\"Why? Morgan, what are you doing?\"\n\n\"You remember the fields?\"\n\nThe memory grabbed him deep. The smell of dying things, rotten crops. The despair and anger of the people. \"That was a mistake,\" he said. \"You're better now.\"\n\n\"It was a mistake then. I spent my time on the ship learning. I won't hurt anyone by accident anymore. \"She walked to the center of the clearing. \"Stay there, Jess. It's important.\"\n\nMorgan held out her hands. There didn't seem to be any effect at first, and then he saw a mouse creep from the shadows. It was a field mouse, a small one, and it hesitantly made its way across the dried grass toward her. It stopped a few feet away and rose on its hind legs, nose twitching.\n\nA larger movement. A rabbit, hopping out into the clear space and stopping around the same distance. Then another mouse.\n\n\"That's enough,\" Morgan whispered. \"Forgive me.\"\n\nSuddenly, the mouse on its hind legs twitched, rolled, spasmed, and fell flat on the grass. It went still. Jess shot to his feet, heart pounding, and he didn't know where to run\u2014toward her. Away. He only knew that there was something powerful and dark happening in front of him.\n\n\"Jess, stop! Stay there!\" Morgan's urgency froze him in place, and the rabbit slumped and rolled over. It shivered and went limp. Then the other mouse. Something plummeted out of the air above her: a night-flying bird, graceless as it landed broken on the grass.\n\nDead.\n\nInsects were not exempt, either. Beetles struggled to the surface and died. Worms thrashed and went still. He could see the glimmer of tiny bodies like jewels thrown across the grass.\n\nMorgan opened her eyes and breathed in sharply. Her eyes seemed flat and lifeless for a moment. He didn't dare move, and she didn't speak. It was only when he saw a moth flap past her, unharmed, that he rushed forward past the invisible boundary in which the dead things lay.\n\nHe grabbed her. She felt solid and rigid, like a statue. Cold. \"Morgan? What did you do? Morgan!\"\n\n\"I'm here,\" she whispered, and blinked. Some life came back into those eyes, but not nearly enough to settle his fears. \"Here.\" She suddenly sagged, and he had to catch her. \"Now you see.\" She took a deep breath.\n\nHis own throat felt tight, his stomach roiling. \"For Heron's sake, Morgan\u2014what\u2014what is this?\" He already knew, but he needed her to explain it in a way that made sense to him.\n\n\"Practice. I started small,\" she said. \"Flies. Spiders. A sparrow. A mouse. Rats. The rabbit...\" She swallowed and blinked, and tears welled in her eyes. \"The rabbit was the largest I've done so far. Oh, Jess. I felt how afraid it was... but he didn't feel pain. None of them do; I make sure of that. But anything near me, in that circle... even the grass... I took the life from it. Just as easily as dousing a candle. I used it to make myself stronger.\"\n\nHe held her closer, though he had no real comfort for her. What she'd just said dried up his mouth and locked any capacity to speak. He just held her as she shivered and wept, in a circle of dead things.\n\nFinally, he asked, \"How long have you been at this?\"\n\n\"Since we boarded the ship,\" she said. \"Doctor Askuwheteau told me it was a corruption of my ability, that once I healed, once I rested, it would go away. But it didn't. I killed a fly that had gotten in the cabin on the ship\u2014I saw the spark of it, and... I turned it off. It was gone before it fell out of the air. Then a rat I found creeping in the corner. After that, I was afraid\u2014I was afraid to touch anyone. Afraid I couldn't control it, but the more time I spent out looking at the water, seeing the life out there, taking bits of it... the more I knew I could control it. And that was actually more frightening. This isn't a corruption. It's a talent, and we'll need it. Dr. Askuwheteau's a good man. I don't think he would ever understand what I'm saying.\"\n\nWhat she was saying, Jess thought, was that she was not as good. And maybe she was right. Maybe a lifetime of fear, of hiding, of knowing her future held slavery... maybe being wholly good was something that had never been in her, any more than it was in him.\n\nIt was a hard truth that right now, they didn't need to be purely good. They needed to be capable of anything.\n\nHer hands fisted in his shirt, as if she never wanted to let him go. \"Say something,\" she said. \"Please.\"\n\n\"Morgan\u2014\" He rested his cheek against her hair and ran a soothing hand down her back. \"It's all right.\"\n\n\"Do I frighten you?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. He wanted to believe that. Morgan was Morgan. Fearing what she could do was as bad as fearing what Santi could do with a gun. What Thomas could invent in his workshop.\n\nFear turned minds, and he would not be afraid of Morgan.\n\nBut he was now afraid, very afraid, that he knew exactly how best to use her.\n\nBy the time he finally found his bed, it was well on toward morning, and the thick, soft mattress let him doze, but not really rest. Between the High Garda, the deprivations of running from the Library, and a prison house in Philadelphia, his body had grown used to hard, lumpy beds and\u2014as he discovered when he lacked appetite for the rich breakfast\u2014unaccustomed to the greasy sausages and eggs that his family preferred. Buttered toast seemed like an indulgence, but he allowed himself that much, along with coffee that seemed weak, after Alexandria's.\n\nStrange, he'd been away from home for such a short time and had changed so much. Like Morgan, he'd grown into something new. He had no idea if it was something better, but he knew one thing: this Jess Brightwell was far, far stronger than the green, innocent one who'd boarded a train to the Great Library, hoping to find his place.\n\n\"Good night, elder brother?\" Brendan clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed, then left off when Jess didn't wince. \"The guards saw you go out into the garden with your girl last night. Must have been freezing out there, but I suppose you found a way to keep warm.\"\n\nMorgan wasn't here, but Glain was, and she missed absolutely nothing from where she sat contemplating a single poached egg and toast. Apart from her, the dining room was deserted, save for a servant putting more hot sausages in the warming tray, and so Jess put his plate down, met Glain's eyes, and then turned and grabbed Brendan hard by both arms. He shoved him up against the fine wood paneling and pressed very close, close enough that Brendan couldn't miss the seriousness in his eyes.\n\n\"Enough,\" he said. \"Taunt me about anything else. Not her. Understand?\"\n\nBrendan lost his cocky edge, and there was a flare of anger in his face, quickly damped. He nodded. \"Maybe I'm just out of sorts, you having got a girl to comfort you, and me having nothing but mocking you for it,\" he finally said. \"You remember what I left behind in Alexandria, don't you?\"\n\nJess had forgotten, but Brendan had spent months there, wooing a young woman who worked for the Archivist... a lovely, intelligent woman whom he'd professed not to care about. But there was something he recognized, twin to twin: heartbreak. When his brother had left Alexandria, he'd left his chance of happiness behind, too.\n\n\"When all this is over, go and find her,\" Jess said. \"I imagine she'll forgive you. Everyone does, for some insane reason.\"\n\n\"Even you?\"\n\n\"Even me, Scraps.\" Jess patted him on the cheek, none too gently; it was half a slap, and then a scuffle when Brendan retaliated, and soon he had his slightly younger twin in a headlock. He marched him to the breakfast room door and sent him packing with a boot in his ass, and when he turned back, he saw Glain still placidly eating her egg.\n\n\"Brothers,\" she said, and shook her head. He grinned and slid into the seat across from her with his toast and coffee. \"Unbearable creatures. Though at least mine were straightforward. It must be close to hell, having one nearly as clever as you. Like watching an angel struggle with a demon.\"\n\n\"I'm no angel.\"\n\n\"I didn't say which of you was which, did I? Shut up and eat, Brightwell.\"\n\n\"You seem uncommonly cheery.\"\n\n\"I'm not. All this\"\u2014Glain gestured at the hall, the tapestries, everything\u2014\"makes me itch. How long before you and Thomas have that press built and working?\"\n\n\"We'll start today,\" he said.\n\n\"Good. Because I don't half trust all this. Or you.\"\n\nJess sat back and stared at her, because he hadn't expected that. It was blunt, and utterly serious. \"Why?\"\n\n\"I can see you thinking. And I know that look, Jess. It's not a good thing. You and Dario, whispering together\u2014that isn't good, either.\"\n\nJess ate his toast and tasted none of it. She was waiting for an answer. He didn't have one to give.\n\nGlain didn't take that well. She stood up, pushed her plate away, and came to loom over him, one hand on the back of his chair, one pressed flat against the table. \"Don't,\" she said. \"Don't lock me out. You can't trust Dario.\"\n\n\"I don't,\" he said. \"I don't trust anyone.\" He sat back and looked up into her face. He could see the look that came into her eyes. \"Disappointed?\"\n\n\"Angry.\" She almost growled the word. \"Furious that after everything we've been through, you're this stupid. And you're not doing this.\"\n\n\"No?\" It hurt, looking into her eyes this way. Seeing everything he liked about her. Everything he knew wasn't going to agree with him. \"What exactly am I doing, Glain?\"\n\n\"I'll be watching you,\" she said. Her voice had gone low and calm, and it reminded him of how Santi got still and strangely happy when things were the worst. \"And if it comes to it, I'll break your bones to convince you not to be ridiculous. Because that's how much I like you, Jess: I'll hurt you to save you. Count on it.\"\n\nShe shoved his chair forward, bruisingly hard, and then she was gone, abandoning her breakfast to stride out with hard thuds of boots against wood. Jess pushed himself back from the table, rubbed his sore ribs, and finished his toast.\n\nHe'd hoped that it wouldn't come to this, but he wasn't much surprised. Glain was observant and decisive, and he was going to have to take that into account. She expected no better from him, though she hoped for it.\n\nThe only one he was absolutely certain he could fool, when it came down to it, was Khalila, and only because of all of them, she was the one who trusted without reservations. He remembered her in the cell in Philadelphia, claiming them as family. For her, trust, once given, was unbreakable without real proof of betrayal.\n\nHe wished he didn't have to break that trust so completely.\n\nBut you must. So let it begin.\n\nHe drained his coffee and went in search of Thomas.\n\nThe workshop they'd been given was set up in the vast old carriage house, where a blacksmith's forge had been replaced with a more modern furnace, something capable of producing high-tempered metals. Jess found his friend hard at work already, which didn't surprise him at all.\n\n\"How long have you been up, if you've chopped down half the forest?\" Jess asked as Thomas swung the furnace door closed with a heavy clang and spun the wheel to dog it shut. He was already sweating in the cool air, and the light shirt he wore clung to him; he wiped his forehead and gave Jess a full, unhindered smile.\n\n\"Long enough to tell you hardly had enough sleep at all,\" he said. \"Here. Your father had a gift for us. Look.\"\n\nIn the place where the horses, in older days, would have been stabled, the area had been cleared to a large open space, and along one wall a long trestle table held a row of wooden crates. Jess grabbed a pry bar and opened the first one, uncovering a supply of small, finely made gears. The next box held larger ones, and the next still larger. Another box held bars of lead, for casting movable letters. Jess checked off each one against the list in his memory. There was nothing lacking. His father had given them everything they needed, even strong oak boards to build the frame. How he'd done it in the space of less than a day was something Jess didn't care to think about.\n\nHe watched Thomas pick up gears, fit them together, run admiring hands over the fine craftsmanship like a miser who'd found a cache of gold. \"Perfect,\" Thomas murmured. \"Well. To start, anyway. Nothing is ever quite perfect once you start to build, yes? And we'll need a good watch. As small a one as you can find. Can you get one?\"\n\n\"A clock? Why?\"\n\n\"Because I have something to repair,\" Thomas said. \"Go find one. Two watches would be even better. And ask Captain Santi for as many extra power capsules as he can spare from his weapons.\"\n\n\"You want me to run errands.\"\n\n\"Well. Someone has to. And I can be at work, constructing\u2014\" Thomas suddenly fell silent, looking past Jess. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. Gone quiet. \"Scholar Wolfe.\"\n\n\"Schreiber,\" Wolfe said. He stood in the doorway of the workshop, looking at them in a distant kind of way that Jess found unsettling. The Scholar had left off his robe today and wore plain clothes, suitable for work, just as Thomas and Jess wore. \"I was thinking that I might help you.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Thomas glanced at Jess. \"Of course, sir. If you wish.\"\n\nWolfe nodded and moved to look over the boxes. The gears. Ran his fingers over a board, testing its straightness. \"I need something to do,\" he said. \"You understand. Rooms grow small. Silence gets heavy.\"\n\nThomas nodded slowly. \"I know. And you are welcome here. You created this, too.\"\n\n\"My version was crude. You improved on it,\" Wolfe said. \"But I'm not unskilled. Between us, I think we might do very well.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said. \"I would be glad of your assistance and knowledge.\"\n\n\"Don't butter me, Schreiber; I'm not a piece of bread. You're a rare kind of genius. I'm not your equal and never will be in this particular area. Tell me what to do. Show me plans. I'll do the rest, without complaint.\"\n\nIt was a new idea, thinking of Wolfe as someone who wasn't in charge. But as Jess watched him pick up a thick leather apron and put it on, he found himself smiling. It didn't altogether lift the heavy cold inside him, but for a moment, for this moment, he saw the delight in Thomas's expression, the answering spark in Wolfe's eyes, and warmed just a fraction.\n\n\"Then, here,\" Thomas said, and unrolled a huge drawing over the trestle table, while Jess and Wolfe shifted boxes to make room. \"Get started. And you.\" He leveled a finger as Jess put his heavy box on the floor. \"Go and find me those parts.\"\n\nJess saluted crisply. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nHe'd already been forgotten by the time he reached the door, and when he looked back, Wolfe and Schreiber were bent together, pointing and talking and already starting to make notes on the paper.\n\nScholars, doing what Scholars did.\n\nJess wasn't a Scholar and realized that he'd accepted somewhere along the line that it wasn't what he really was suited to, after all. So he went to do what thieves did.\n\nHe went to acquire what was needed\u2014and not necessarily ask permission.\n\nWhen he arrived back with two clocks and a couple of pocket watches he knew wouldn't be missed, Thomas and Wolfe had already constructed the frame of the machine. Wolfe was working with a grinder that spat huge red sparks across a stone wall, and he didn't stop for Jess's arrival.\n\n\"Watch your step,\" Thomas called out to Jess without looking up from his work. \"No, no, little Frauke, friend Jess is allowed. You may let him be.\"\n\nJess almost dropped the loot when he realized that one of the shadows behind Thomas was moving. It was nearly invisible where it crouched, but as he watched, he saw the outlines of it. \"Thomas,\" he said. \"You built an automaton? When?\"\n\n\"I didn't build it. Anit sent one along for me. To keep me company. And, I think, to keep us safe.\" Thomas seemed distracted but amused. He nailed a crossbar together with a single fast blow of his hammer and sat back on his haunches. \"Beautiful, isn't she?\"\n\nIt was one of the camouflage automata from America, and as Jess watched, it stretched, yawned to show bright, sharp metal teeth, and stretched out in a lazy sprawl by the furnace. It hadn't stopped watching him. \"I thought you named the one we had in Rome Frauke.\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"And that one was male.\"\n\n\"No, it was a machine. She is a machine. I may call them as I like. And her name is still Frauke. Did you get the watches?\"\n\nJess put the clocks down and pulled the watches from his coat, and Thomas stopped what he was doing to open the backs and examine the works.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"Yes, this is exactly what I need. Good quality. Thank you.\" He stood back and stared down at the clocks with his big hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers. \"I never expected to have to make anything but things of peace, you know. Things to better the lives of others. But that is not what I am doing, is it? Even this, the press... it's a weapon of war. A different kind of war, perhaps, but people will die for it. They already have.\"\n\nThat was a hard thing to acknowledge. Jess changed the subject. \"What did you want the clocks and watches for?\"\n\n\"I'm building another Ray of Apollo,\" he said. \"And a few other things that require delicate parts. If I have enough time, I might repair Morgan's bird for her. I know she prized it.\" Thomas put the watches on the workbench. \"Take those apart. Sort the parts into sizes. That should keep you too busy to frown at me. You are frowning at me, aren't you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess lied. He was, of course. \"You don't want me working on the press?\"\n\n\"The press is the least of what we need to do. With these tools, with Wolfe's help, with a little time... I think we can do a great deal. And we'll need to, if we're planning to take on the Archivist. We need a different kind of genius to do that, I think.\"\n\nThat sounded eerily like things that were taking shape in Jess's head. He thought he could fool Thomas, with a little work. A little luck. But he wasn't sure.\n\nSo instead of trying, he sat down, took the set of delicate tools that Thomas set out, and began dismantling watches. \"So is there anything else you might need?\" he asked, slipping on magnifying glasses to better navigate the inner workings.\n\n\"Yes, when you have time,\" Thomas said. \"I don't suppose your mother would part willingly with the three largest of her gemstones?\" He drove home four more nails with sharp, perfectly aimed blows.\n\nJess unscrewed a gear from the watch assembly, picked it free with tweezers, and put it aside. \"Let's just say that it's a good thing you have a thief for a best friend.\"\n\nStealing from his mother was a line Jess found himself unwilling to cross. He wouldn't have thought himself capable of such squeamishness, but he finally had to admit, after arguing with his worse angels for a few hours while breaking down the clocks and watches, that he didn't want to do it. Not alone.\n\nSo he asked Dario.\n\n\"No!\" Dario exclaimed, far too loudly. \"Who do you think I am, scrubber?\"\n\nJess had brought him to the old library at the farthest end of the castle from his parents' quarters, and he'd hoped to find it deserted. He hadn't quite succeeded there, because Khalila was curled up on the lush old divan, book in her hands, and of course she'd heard that indignant outburst and looked up, and there was no use in pretending otherwise.\n\n\"I thought you were someone who might be able to exercise some discretion, but I see I was wrong,\" Jess shot back. \"Never mind.\"\n\n\"No, just a minute, what is it you want me to, ah...\"\n\n\"Steal,\" Khalila supplied. She set her book aside, stood, and came toward them. \"Oh, don't bother\u2014I heard it quite clearly, and I know you're aware of the word. For all your protests, you're probably the second-best thief in our circle; don't pretend otherwise for my benefit. So what exactly is it you wish for us to steal?\"\n\n\"Us?\" Dario said, at the same time Jess blurted out, \"You?\" They were, in that moment, identically shocked.\n\nHer eyebrows formed perfect little arcs to frame the amusement in her gaze. \"I admit I don't have much experience, but it seems to me that I could help. Somehow.\"\n\n\"You,\" Dario said, \"have been around our pale little smuggler far too long. What would your father say about\u2014\" He caught himself, but too late, and Jess saw the amusement drain out of Khalila's expression, and her light turn to ashes. Dario reached out and took her hand and, in a very genuine motion of apology, pressed it to his lips. \"Forgive me, my rose. I wasn't thinking.\"\n\n\"No more than I was,\" she said, and swallowed, and raised her chin as she reclaimed her hand. \"From the cell where my father sits now, I imagine he would understand the necessity of doing whatever must be done. What are we stealing, then?\"\n\nShe put him to shame, Jess thought; he was wincing like a child at the thought of losing his mother's affection, and Khalila was enduring so much worse, and still willing to go on. \"My mother has a walnut jewel box in her room. Last I remember, she had a very large ruby in a necklace, an equally large emerald, and a diamond pendant big enough to choke on. Those are the three I'll need.\"\n\n\"From your mother?\" She seemed less comfortable with that. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"It's only three pieces,\" he assured her. \"And believe me, she has more. Many more.\"\n\n\"I'm happy enough to do it,\" Dario said. \"I think your whole family should be behind bars, but as they're not, I'm happy to lift from the pockets of your father.\"\n\nKhalila gave him an exasperated glance. \"It's his mother!\"\n\n\"And I very much doubt Jess's father allows her to own anything outright. I know the type; he's very much like my own father. Except my father is an arrogant, blue-blooded noble, of course, and not some jumped-up housebreaker.\"\n\n\"Is this you trying to say we're friends?\" Jess asked. \"Because I wonder how you think that sounds.\"\n\nKhalila put a finger to Dario's lips to shush his reply. \"Stealing is wrong, of course. A sin. And your mother has been quite kind to me,\" Khalila said, and then took in a deep breath, as if ready to plunge into deep waters. \"But I'll take care of keeping her occupied in conversation. You and Dario can, I hope, carry off this daring adventure by yourselves?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Dario said instantly.\n\n\"If he doesn't arse it up,\" Jess said at the same time, and almost laughed at the glare Dario gave him. That was vintage, straight out of the Ptolemy House, in their more innocent postulant days. \"We'll meet after lunch. Once Khalila draws my mother off, we'll do this quickly. Right?\"\n\n\"Right,\" Dario said.\n\n\"Wrong.\" They all turned. Wolfe stood in the doorway. He was sweaty and disheveled, straight from the workshop. \"I was on my way to clean up for lunch. I met your mother in the halls.\"\n\nHe pitched something toward them. Jess effortlessly caught it out of the air with sheer reflex before Dario even raised a hand to intercept. When he opened his palm, he was looking at a leather pouch, snugged tight with a drawstring. Jess opened it and spilled out three loose stones: two diamonds the size of pigeon eggs, and a ruby as dark as claret that blazed bright in a stray ray of sun. He looked up at the Scholar, not quite sure how to even phrase the question.\n\n\"I overheard Thomas asking you for these. Not everything needs to be a crime,\" Wolfe said. \"As Khalila said, your mother's been kind enough. I don't know what troubles you have in your household, but one thing I do know: mothers love their sons, however flawed that love might be. And a few gems is a small price to pay.\"\n\n\"She gave them to you.\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"She'd have given them to you, if you'd asked. But I knew you wouldn't.\"\n\nJess felt a wave of shame so strong he nearly gagged on it, and felt his face go hot, then cold, as a flush took hold and receded. He clenched the stones so hard in his fist that they cut. When he tipped them back into the pouch and tossed everything to Wolfe, his blood was still on them. \"She gave these to you for reasons you don't understand,\" he said. \"And it isn't out of generosity. Don't presume to know my family. Sir.\"\n\nWolfe caught the pouch without even looking at it. Nimble and focused. \"I know you,\" he said. \"Don't forget that, Jess. It might save you, in the end.\"\n\nKhalila and Dario were watching in silence, and it continued while Wolfe walked away, leaving Jess with that flush again rising in his face and a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach. My mother doesn't just give things. He's wrong.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" Khalila asked him. \"Jess?\"\n\n\"Fine,\" he said, and smiled at her. Offered her his elbow. \"May I have the honor of escorting you to lunch, desert flower?\"\n\n\"That,\" Dario said, \"is not fair.\"\n\nKhalila slipped her arm into Jess's. \"The honor is mine, dear thief. But only because you didn't actually have to steal.\"\n\nAs they walked away, Dario followed and muttered, \"I didn't steal anything, either, you know.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Khalila said. \"And now you won't.\"\n\n\"Is it finished?\"\n\nGlain leaned over Thomas's shoulder to stare at the small, elegant-looking weapon that lay on the workbench, under the merciless glare of a light almost as bright as the sun. Jess stared, too. He'd been watching the thing come together for three days now, piece by carefully crafted piece. Thomas had cut the three stones into shapes his mother would never have recognized\u2014taking away any flaws, he'd told Jess, who'd winced at seeing so much smashed away\u2014and built the rest of it around those three focal points.\n\nThe casing was made of walnut and brass, and now that it was all completed, the weapon looked to Jess's eyes much like a country squire's version of a High Garda rifle. It was a bit longer and thinner, and altogether simpler. There was a sight, and a trigger to pull, and a small knob to adjust. That was all.\n\nIt wasn't the same as what Thomas had built in Philadelphia, but there were undeniable similarities to it. And refinements. This had the fatal elegance of one of the Library's automata.\n\n\"Yes, it's done,\" Thomas said, and took off the magnifying spectacles he'd been wearing. He put them on the trestle table, stood up, and stretched. \"Just now done.\"\n\n\"You haven't tested it yet?\" Glain asked, looking the thing over. He shook his head. \"Want to do it now?\" Thomas gave her a strange smile and quirked his shoulders, and she smiled in return. \"You're afraid it won't work.\"\n\n\"It will work.\"\n\n\"I'd rather not stake my life, no matter how bright you are, you great cabbage. We're not playing games anymore, you know.\"\n\nSomething dark flitted through Thomas's eyes as he cut them toward the Welsh girl. \"I should know if anyone does,\" he said. \"Step back, please. I don't like to be crowded.\"\n\nGlain did, immediately. A generous step, at that. \"We still should test it,\" she said. \"Jess? Don't you agree? An untested weapon is no kind of weapon at all.\"\n\n\"May we not take a moment to admire what it is that he's done?\" Khalila stood on the other side of the table, and the light's glow made her look almost ethereally lovely as she raised her gaze to fix it on Thomas. \"It's an amazing attempt, whatever happens. I don't think anyone else on earth could have built the earlier version in Philadelphia. And this... it's beautiful in itself.\"\n\n\"It's not a work of art,\" Glain said. \"And even if it was, I'd still insist on seeing what it does.\"\n\n\"Same,\" Dario nodded. \"How do we know how to use it if we don't know what it can do?\"\n\n\"Morgan?\" Thomas asked. Morgan sat on a chair a little apart from them, staring not at Thomas's invention but at her clasped hands. \"You seem very quiet.\"\n\n\"It seems like a deadly thing,\" she said. \"The one you made in Philadelphia, you made to set us free. This one... I think you made it for another purpose. Don't we have enough things meant to kill?\"\n\nMaybe no one else heard it, but Jess did: a broken emptiness in the words, a haunted quality that made him want to hold her in his arms.\n\n\"Jess?\"\n\nNow Thomas was calling his name, which he'd been dreading, because it meant he had to agree with Glain and Dario. \"I'd rather never see it used,\" he said. \"But... it's true, we should know.\"\n\n\"And if the stones inside fail and shatter, and we've wasted the chance?\" Thomas asked. \"What then?\"\n\n\"My mother has other jewels.\" Jess managed a grin. \"You don't keep me around for my wit and charm. I'll find you what you need, when you need it. Count on it.\"\n\n\"How... noisy is this likely to be?\" Dario asked. \"Given we're in the middle of an armed encampment.\"\n\n\"The peacock has a point,\" Glain said. \"But still. You know my vote.\"\n\n\"If it works, there shouldn't be any sound at all,\" said Wolfe. He and Santi stood a little apart, together. Santi looked fascinated, and quite like he was itching to pick the thing up. \"Light doesn't make sound.\"\n\nThomas put his hand on the stock of the weapon that lay on the table. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then picked it up. It looked small in his grasp, and then he held it out to Jess with an abrupt move. \"You do it,\" he said. \"I don't think I can bear it if it breaks. Dial it to the lowest setting, aim, and fire. Keep the trigger down as long as you want the beam to burn, yes? Simple. If it works.\"\n\nJess took the gun and was surprised at the weight of it\u2014it had looked like a toy in Thomas's hand, but this had substance. Finely balanced, though. The weapon felt heavy and hot in his sweaty hands, and he looked carefully at the dial to be sure it was turned as far down as it could go.\n\nIt was.\n\n\"No point in waiting, English, unless you're worried it'll blow your hands off,\" Dario said.\n\n\"Want to try it first?\"\n\n\"No, by all means. Your privilege. I wouldn't dream of taking the honor.\"\n\n\"That's exactly what I thought.\" Jess was stalling, and he knew it. There was a moment of truth coming, and it frightened him, just as Morgan must have been terrified of her ability to kill so easily. It wasn't the same, but he knew that pulling this trigger would change his world, too.\n\nBut there was no way around that. The world was shifting faster than he'd ever imagined it could.\n\nJess silently stepped away\u2014far enough, he hoped, that any catastrophic disaster would spare the others\u2014and raised the weapon to his shoulder. He braced it, as if it might kick (would it?) and took aim at the far wall.\n\nHe took in a slow breath and pressed the trigger.\n\nThere was no kick. There was a hum, something that he felt more than heard, and the brass fittings of the gun went from cold to skin warm... but no hotter, thankfully. He actually saw the beam that came from the barrel of the weapon, a pure reddish line pointing straight to the wall, and then...\n\nAnd then nothing. There was no explosion. No devastating surprise. Jess let go of the trigger and lowered the weapon slowly, staring.\n\n\"Is that it?\" Dario asked. \"Disappointing.\"\n\n\"It's glowing,\" Morgan said, and Jess realized she was right. Santi moved toward the wall and held his hand about two feet from it.\n\n\"It's very hot,\" he said, and jumped back half his body length when the wall suddenly let out a sharp, percussive sound and a crack raced from the center of the wall from top to bottom. The entire workshop structure groaned, and for an insane moment Jess wondered if he'd just dropped the roof onto their heads... but then nothing else happened. The glowing point in the center of the wall began to fade. There was, he realized, a black scorch mark where he'd aimed the beam, and the wall had cracked in half at exactly that spot.\n\n\"\u00a1Joder!\" Dario came rushing up and stopped with his hand feeling the heat, just like Santi had. \"That was the lowest setting?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said, and checked it a third time. \"Lowest.\" He looked at Thomas, who had no particular expression on his face at all. Certainly no triumph. \"What happens if it goes higher?\"\n\n\"I expect it will destroy things quite easily,\" Thomas said. \"You remember the wall, in Philadelphia?\"\n\nHard to forget. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"This would have burned through it in seconds, even at half power. It is much stronger. And you might notice, I have shielded the heat.\"\n\n\"I did notice,\" Jess said. The casing was cool now, not even a trace of warmth remaining.\n\n\"Do it again,\" Santi said. \"On a higher setting.\"\n\n\"No. One test, Captain. We agreed.\" Thomas looked stern. And a little worried.\n\nFor answer, Santi walked to the end of the hall, picked up an empty wooden crate, and set it on top of the long trestle table. \"That will do,\" he said. \"Shoot it.\"\n\nJess, for answer, held out the weapon to him. Santi came back and took it, and Thomas silently shook his head, but didn't object, as Santi turned the dial up. It was, Jess saw, almost halfway.\n\n\"Niccolo,\" Wolfe said. \"I don't think\u2014\"\n\n\"Weapons are my part of the world. Not yours.\" Santi put the stock to his shoulder, sighted, and fired.\n\nThe crate... It didn't melt, exactly. It... dissolved, in a flutter of black ash. The only sound was a kind of sinister hiss, like steam escaping, and as Jess went forward to look, he saw liquid metal simmering and scarring the top of the thick wooden table. The nails, he realized. The crate's nails had melted.\n\nThe table began to smoke where the molten metal touched, and Jess grabbed a leather apron and flung it down over the top. Black scorched patches appeared on the thick material but didn't burn through. When he cautiously moved it, he saw the metal was cooling into sharp-edged smears.\n\n\"Dios santo,\" Dario whispered. He sounded shaken.\n\n\"It's what Archimedes used, to burn the Roman ships at sea,\" Khalila said. \"But stronger, and held in one hand. He called it the Forge of the Gods.\"\n\n\"The Romans probably called it something less flattering,\" Glain said. \"Imagine what it would do to a human body.\"\n\nJess did, all too vividly, and his stomach clenched. He looked back at Captain Santi. The tall Italian stood there, staring at the destruction with a cold calculus. The weapon in his hands no longer seemed so beautiful.\n\n\"It's demonic,\" he said. \"But this demon's out of hell now, and in our hands. And there's no going back from that now.\" He handed the weapon back to Thomas, who took it with the same solemnity. \"Can you hide it? Make sure the Brightwells don't find it?\" He cast a lightning-fast glance at Jess. \"The other Brightwells.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said. \"Frauke will guard it for me.\"\n\n\"Can you make more?\"\n\n\"Not like this,\" Thomas said. \"Not without more gemstones. But smaller ones, with mirrors, yes.\"\n\n\"Then, do it. We may need them.\" Santi had stopped being their friend again and was now a High Garda commander; it was all in the way he stood, the way he looked at them. \"No one talks about this. No one, for any reason. Understand?\"\n\nOne by one, they nodded.\n\nWolfe said, \"Tomorrow, we show Callum Brightwell the press.\"\n\n\"And then?\" Thomas asked. \"What will happen then?\"\n\nNo one answered, but Jess had his suspicions.\n\nAnd in the morning, after Callum Brightwell had been shown the miracle of Thomas's press, Jess saw the look that passed between his father and his brother, and he knew he was right.\n\nTheir usefulness to the Brightwells was fast coming to an end. It was time to make sure, as Dario had said back in Philadelphia, that they take command of the chessboard.\n\nAnd that, Jess knew, meant sacrifices.\n\nHe waited until the deepest, darkest part of the night and slipped out of his room, down the long corridors. He checked Brendan's room first, but it was empty, the bed still neatly made.\n\nHe found Brendan and Anit in the one place he supposed he should have expected to find them... playing chess in the library where he'd last found Morgan reading. He had a vision of his girl bathed in sunlight, there in the chair, and wished with aching sincerity that he could go to her, be with her, avoid this moment forever.\n\nBut he silently walked in, sat down, and pulled up another chair.\n\nBrendan and Anit played in silence for a few more moments. Anit took two pawns. Brendan took a rook. Then Anit froze, studied the board, and sighed. She tipped over her king. \"Third time,\" she said. \"I do not understand how you distract me. I'm very good at this.\"\n\n\"I'm better,\" Brendan said. \"But Jess? Better still. Anyone outplay you these days, brother?\"\n\n\"A few,\" Jess said. \"Khalila, for one. Dario, occasionally.\" He glanced at Anit, then back at Brendan. Silently asking, Are we doing this in front of her? Brendan nodded, just a little.\n\nJess turned to the girl and said, \"I thought you'd left.\"\n\n\"You knew better,\" she said. \"Because you understand the game. You were born for it, even though you wish you were not.\"\n\n\"She says you remind her of her brother,\" Brendan said. \"Ironic, because I don't, apparently. And if you're thinking what I believe you are, you're still underweight, you know.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Jess said. \"But not enough to matter.\" He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. \"When will he do it?\"\n\nAnit raised her eyebrows and exchanged a quick glance with Brendan. His twin wasn't surprised. Anit was. \"You told him?\"\n\nBrendan shook his head. \"He was born to this, like you said. And he knows my da as well as I do. Maybe better, in some ways. He understands people in ways I don't.\" He began resetting the chessboard\u2014not so much, Jess thought, to play a new game as to give his hands something to do. Restless, where Jess was suddenly and unexpectedly calm. \"Da's sent out summonses to the family, those who can arrive in time. Three days. There'll be a trick pony show that you'll all be expected to attend, and then...\" He didn't seem willing to say it. So Jess said it for him.\n\n\"Then the guards move in. My friends are taken prisoner, and Da ransoms them off. Some\u2014Thomas, Wolfe, and Santi, at a guess\u2014he's selling off to Red Ibrahim, who'll use them as bargaining chips with the Archivist. That's why Anit is still here.\"\n\nNeither of the other two said anything. Jess caught the slight hitch in his brother's movements in placing the rook, and then the knight.\n\n\"Almost correct,\" Anit said. \"I'm to take Khalila, Thomas, and Santi. Dario, your father plans to ransom back to Spain; he wants to build goodwill with the queen.\"\n\n\"And Morgan?\" Jess asked. He sounded calm, as if it were all of academic interest. It wasn't. \"Scholar Wolfe? Glain?\"\n\n\"Glain has no use to anyone,\" Brendan said. \"I convinced Da to offer her a post with us. She won't take it\u2014I know that\u2014but I had to try.\"\n\n\"And when she doesn't accept?\" For answer, Brendan tipped the knight over. \"Does Da really believe I'll ever forgive him for any of this? Ever?\"\n\n\"No, not really. But he'll keep you locked up until it's over. He thinks that once they're all gone, once the thing's settled, you'll\u2014and I'm quoting him, you understand, so don't take a fist to me\u2014you'll come to your senses.\"\n\n\"He's the one who's out of his mind. And you haven't told me about Morgan and Wolfe. What's he planning to do with them?\"\n\nBrendan set the knight upright again and finished putting the rest of the pieces on the board. He was playing black, Jess realized. Somehow, he wasn't at all surprised that his brother had let Anit have the advantage.\n\n\"This is where it gets interesting,\" Brendan said, and sat back to look directly at Jess. \"I'm taking them to Alexandria, the two most valuable prizes, as a gesture of good faith directly to the Archivist. We're making a deal to sell ten thousand original volumes to him at an extortionate price. They're the sweetener.\"\n\n\"Why?\" The question tore out of him, bloody and raw. He meant why to everything... why was he born into this family, why would his father betray him so badly. His brother.\n\nBrendan deliberately mistook the meaning of it. \"Because these are ten thousand obscure texts no one is going to want anyway, and it buys us time to print up the real treasures with your miracle machine. Once we start selling those, we'll need the warehouse space to store our profits. And it keeps the Archivist pointed away from us, until we're ready.\"\n\n\"I mean, why is he sending you, you idiot. You're his heir.\" That was half a lie, but Jess knew the rest of it had no answers. Or rather, the answers had always been right in front of him.\n\n\"No,\" Brendan replied quietly. \"You are his heir. His firstborn. I'm just his manager. His assistant. His bullyboy he sends in to solve a problem. You're the one he's always wanted. And now he can have you, because sooner or later, the lure of those books coming off the press will draw you. We both know that. That's the business you're inheriting.\"\n\nIt struck Jess with a sick little thrust that Brendan was saying that he was being sent to negotiate with the Archivist because it didn't matter if he lived to return. The old saying he'd once heard his father say, so jovially, came back in a rush. I still have an heir and a spare. And the other men around him had laughed.\n\nBrendan was the spare.\n\nAnit silently got up from her seat and offered it to Jess. He hardly knew what he was doing when he sat down across from his brother and began to move the pieces. Playing from instinct, and with foreknowledge of what his brother liked to do.\n\nHe won in six moves.\n\n\"You need to eat hearty,\" Brendan said as he tipped his black king forward on its face. He looked up, and their gazes locked, and Jess, on impulse, extended his hand. They were, on occasion, capable of this kind of communication, silent and instinctive; for all they were different, they were made of the same body, two halves of the whole. And Brendan knew exactly what he intended to do. Maybe he had from the beginning.\n\nHis brother took his hand and shook. They both stood and embraced. Jess understood precisely what Brendan had just said. He understood the magnitude of the sacrifice.\n\nAnit looked from one of them to the other, mystified by the fact that they were both smiling. \"What? What are you going to do?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Jess said. \"We're going to do nothing at all. It's the only way to win.\"\n\nWhen he left them, Anit had departed for her ship, and Brendan had stretched out on the divan and fallen soundly, immediately asleep\u2014a skill Jess had once had and wished he could recapture. I have to sleep, he thought. His body had a weight and drag and ache to it that only rest could cure, but there was so much to think of, and so much to dread.\n\nHe slipped into his room and locked the door behind him and was stripping off his shirt in the dark when he heard a small rustle of cloth and froze. He reached for a knife he'd concealed in his boot, and for the control of the glow by the door, and was already moving forward to engage the enemy when the light's glow rose like false dawn and spread over the young woman lying asleep in his bed.\n\nHe stopped, staring at her. Knife still in his hand. Mind gone entirely still, for the first time in what felt like an age. She had that effect on him, he realized; she created silence in the noise. Peace in the storm.\n\nHe put the knife down on the bed table with a soft clink, and her eyes opened. Morgan sat up and brushed her hair from her face. She was, he noticed, wearing a soft nightgown, something that showed the blush of her skin underneath it, and he had to drag his gaze away from that, back to her face. And the smile\u2014warm, sleepy, welcoming... and then changing into something else as she came fully awake.\n\nHe sank down wearily on the edge of the bed, watching her. \"You've been waiting here,\" he said. She nodded without saying anything at all. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nShe studied him so closely that he felt strangely uncomfortable, as if her power allowed her to reach too far into him. Maybe it did, because she said, \"I'm not a fool. You and Dario, you've been whispering together for days. You and your brother, too. Every day, I see the shadows get stronger in you. What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Is that why you're here?\"\n\nShe put the back of her hand to his cheek, and he held it there as he closed his eyes. Soft and warm. \"No, you fool, that's not why I'm here, but maybe it's why I ought to be here. Where were you?\"\n\nHe shook his head. I have two more days before I need to tell her, he thought. Two more days of her seeing me this way, as the Jess she likes. But that would require lying to her in a way he didn't think he could do. Not anymore. He moved her hand away from his face and captured it in both his hands. Rough hands, hard used lately in the workshop.\n\n\"My father's selling you and Wolfe to the Archivist,\" he told her, and watched the fragile peace in her break like dropped glass. \"He's got some way to send you there. That's not all; he's planning on selling the rest off to Red Ibrahim, so our business partners can use them for leverage inside Alexandria, to save their own operations. Khalila's family is going to be executed in twenty-one days. It's all falling apart, Morgan.\"\n\nSaying it out loud felt like relief, but it was just transferring the burden, not getting rid of it; he saw the shock in her, the anguish, then the resolution. \"All right,\" she said, and the grip of her fingers on his was almost painful in its strength. \"Then we fight. I can do that, Jess, I can\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't understand. We can't fight. My father's ready for that, and we've nowhere to go. No friends. No allies to magically swoop in to our rescue.\"\n\n\"What\u2014what are you saying?\" Morgan's voice had gone soft now, and unsteady. \"We can't give up.\"\n\n\"You don't fight a battle you can't win,\" he said. He didn't sound strong now, either. But he did sound certain. \"You take a loss to set your pieces where you need them. The Archivist won't hurt you, Morgan. He wants you in the Tower. And\u2014we need you there, too. If we're going to get to him at all, in Alexandria, it can't be done if he still controls the Obscurists.\"\n\nShe took in a sharp breath, ready to argue with him, and he saw the anger flash in her eyes, and burn away. \"You want me to take it from the inside for you.\"\n\n\"Because you can,\" he said. \"You're stronger than Gregory. And you want what the rest of the Obscurists want: to be free. Once you're Obscurist Magnus\u2014\"\n\nBut Morgan was shaking her head now. \"Not me,\" she said. \"I can win the fight. I can't lead them, Jess; they don't trust me. They'll never trust me, and I can't blame them for that; I never made any secret of the damage I'd do if I had the chance. But...\" She pulled in a breath and let it slowly out. \"You understand what you're asking me to do? Go back in there? And if this fails...\"\n\nIf it failed, he was sentencing her to a lifetime of slavery inside a prison. Alone. And he couldn't bring himself to admit that to her, out loud, so he only nodded.\n\n\"There might be someone else,\" she said. \"Eskander.\"\n\n\"I don't know who that is.\"\n\n\"Some say he's more powerful than Gregory,\" she said. \"But he locked himself away. Refuses to work or to speak with anyone. The only person he ever spoke to, as far as I know, was Wolfe's mother, when she was Obscurist. I've never seen him, not in person. But if I can convince him to help me, there might be a chance. A small one, but\u2014\" Her smile was beautiful, and shattered. \"But you've been thinking this all along, haven't you? This was never about finding shelter. It was about planning the war. You're using your father as much as he thinks he's using you.\"\n\n\"Not from the beginning,\" he said. \"But... yes. In a way, I suppose you're right.\"\n\n\"And Scholar Wolfe?\" Her eyes searched his, looking for something he wasn't sure she'd ever find. \"You know sending him there means sending him back to his death. And Santi will kill you.\"\n\n\"I'm sure he'll try,\" Jess said. \"But I won't be the one taking you. That will be my brother.\"\n\nHer lips parted, and then closed again, and it was strange: just as with Brendan, he didn't need to explain it to her. She knew. He saw the flash of it in her eyes, and the horror, and the understanding. She knew what was coming. And now he did feel lighter. A burden shared, at least. Neither of them worrying what would come next, because for this moment, at least, they had no more secrets.\n\n\"You can't tell the others,\" he said. \"Not even Wolfe. He'd never be able to hide it from Santi, and...\"\n\n\"And Santi would never accept it,\" she finished. \"Agreed. Dario knows?\"\n\n\"Yes. We'll need him.\" He didn't explain why, or how; it didn't matter just now. \"But nobody else. The fewer of us, the better. I didn't even want to tell you, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But you knew I'd kill too many fighting,\" she whispered. \"Of course.\" There were tears in her eyes, brief and bright, and then she blinked them away.\n\n\"I would have waited to tell you, but\u2014\"\n\n\"No. No, this is better. It gives us time. I knew\u2014I knew you were keeping something from me. And now this is right again. We're right again.\"\n\n\"For as long as it lasts,\" he said. \"Morgan\u2014\"\n\nShe put her hands on his chest, slipping beneath the fabric of his half-open shirt, and stopped his words, and thoughts, completely. All he could think of in that moment was the warm trail of her fingers moving on his skin, and then the tug as they released another button, and then the last, and eased the fabric off his shoulders. She leaned forward and kissed his bare skin, and his arms went around her and held her close.\n\n\"For as long as it lasts,\" she said, \"let's make it something to remember.\"\n\nAnd then she was kissing him, and it was all whispers and silence and heat, and no thought at all, and for the first time, when he fell asleep in this soft bed, it felt like heaven, and heaven included the young woman curled against him as if they would never again be apart."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "An excerpt from a historical letter on the importance of chess as a guide to war in the reign of King Noshirvan of Iran:\n\n\u2002Even as the wise have said, victory must be attained through wisdom and forethought upon the field of battle. In this, we look to chess, for the play of chess is that one must not wait for, or react upon, the movements of the other player, but rather comprehend one's opponent in his person, and thus shape a game to his defeat.\n\n\u2002As in war, chess requires one should preserve what one can, and sacrifice what one cannot.\n\n\u2002Even to the sacrifice of the most valuable of pieces to win the game."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "\"I think we've made a terrible mistake,\" Thomas said. He looked awful, Jess thought\u2014pallid, sweating hard enough to paste little tendrils of blond hair flat to the sides of his face. His hands were steady, though. That was a good sign.\n\nThe bad sign was that he was using those steady hands to pluck at the knot of his silk tie. He looked very elegant\u2014the Brightwell tailors being what they were\u2014and the sober dark blue velvet of the jacket suited him well, but he seemed to really hate the tie. He couldn't leave the thing alone, and he'd already jerked it nearly out of position.\n\nGlain slapped his hand away from his collar and stepped closer to pull the knot back into the right position. \"Stop yanking at that, you baboon,\" she said. \"Even my brothers aren't this bad at looking good.\"\n\n\"Easy for you to say. You get to wear what you like!\" Thomas's gesture took in the thick leather jacket that poured sleekly around her in graceful, dangerous lines to her thighs. Beneath that, she wore a loose dark shirt, fitted dark pants, and heavy boots, and in her own way, she looked elegant. Deadly, but elegant. \"Maybe if I put on the robe\u2014\"\n\n\"No Scholars' robes today,\" she reminded him. \"This isn't a time to remind anyone about the Library, now, is it? Even the captain is out of uniform. You need to be, too.\"\n\nHer brisk, matter-of-fact sureness settled Thomas, finally, and he took in a deep breath and nodded. He took out a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his face and attempted a vague smile. \"I hate speaking in public,\" he said. \"Jess, would you\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. He was dressed, like Thomas, in elegantly cut clothes; his tie was a dark purple to Thomas's wine red, and his jacket was black instead of navy blue, but they looked quite a bit alike. He hated the tie, too, but knew to keep his hands off it. \"Pretend it's your first lecture. You'll do fine.\"\n\n\"Lecture,\" Thomas repeated, and paced a little. It was the sign of very well-done tailoring, Jess thought, when someone of Thomas's size could clasp hands behind his back and not create a wrinkle in the coat. \"Lecture, yes, that's better than speech. Much better. And it is a lecture, you're right. I'm simply\u2014\"\n\n\"Explaining the principles and demonstrating the function,\" Jess said. \"You have it. You'll be all right.\" He kept smiling. He'd split himself into two halves over the past few days: one half had wolfed down double portions of every dinner and kept them down. Had coldly calculated every aspect of this night and made all the arrangements. That half was howling with rage and anguish, silently. It was more than a little insane.\n\nThe other half\u2014the half that smiled and talked and laughed and pretended that everything was all right\u2014that half was a liar. A good one. Maybe the best that Jess had ever been at deceiving everyone, even himself. The only person he'd been able to become real with had been Morgan, and only in secret, in the darkness. Magic and regret and fear, and a longing that only grew stronger with the knowledge that it was all coming to an end.\n\n\"Just remember that these are murderous criminals who won't hesitate to kill us and dump our bodies down a well. Talk in small words,\" Dario said, and shook him out of memory. If Jess and Thomas looked elegant enough, Dario looked... well, like Dario, only intensified. He wore a black-and-gold brocade coat that swept from neck to ankles, and beneath that, like Glain, he'd favored a dark shirt and trousers, but he'd added a brocade vest in a black-on-black design that was both decadent and subtle.\n\nGood enough to be buried in, Jess thought, and choked off the thought. The emotion. He needed to be silent inside. And empty.\n\n\"He doesn't mean that,\" Khalila said with an apologetic smile directed at him. Don't; don't smile at me. Of all of them, I can't stand it from you. She looked especially vivid tonight; the beautiful fine silk of her dress\u2014wine red this evening, with a matching hijab with gold embroidery\u2014was far better than what she'd been wearing for at least the past six months. She looked... happy. \"And he certainly doesn't mean to insult you or your family, Jess.\"\n\nHe felt his lips stretch. He could see from the look in her eyes that it was right, that this empty mannequin was still convincing. \"I'm sorry, did Dario say something? I never notice,\" Jess said. Dario grinned with bared teeth. Friendly, with an edge, as ever. There was a wild light in his eyes, a suppressed panic. And for a terrible moment, Jess was afraid that he was going to say something to upset everything.\n\nHe couldn't forget how Dario had looked this morning. For all his talk of chess moves and strategy, cold-blooded calculation and hard choices... when Jess had put the final plan to him, he'd flinched. Hard. There's got to be another way.\n\nHe'd convinced Dario there wasn't, and he could see the horror of it in his friend's face. He had to believe that Dario was steady enough to do this. He was the only one Jess could trust with it.\n\nThe only one, except for the other, vital piece of the puzzle.\n\n\"Is Morgan coming?\" Khalila asked. \"I expected her\u2014\"\n\n\"Now, I hope,\" Morgan said, and swept in the doorway. She looked magnificent \u2014dressed in a long, fitted dress in dark gold velvet, with a black velvet jacket that hugged her in soft curves. Her hair spilled down in shimmering curls, and he remembered how it felt, having her hair in his fingers, her lips pressed to his. He didn't want to remember it, but there were some things, sharp things, that cut even through the darkness.\n\nHer smile shattered him into a million pieces, and he had to turn away, to pretend to pick up a book he deliberately knocked from the table, because the reality of this was closing in around him and stealing the oxygen from his lungs. He wanted to scream. Seeing the strength in her eyes, the acceptance, even though she knew what was coming... it was harder to take than he'd thought.\n\nMorgan knew. Dario knew. Brendan and Anit knew. But that was all. Everyone else, everyone, would smash into this at speed, and the results would be... unimaginable.\n\nJess swallowed and tasted the smoke of Philadelphia again. Walls closing in. Saw the tower collapsing.\n\nSteady, said the other part of him, the mannequin with the smile and the straight back and the lies. It's almost done.\n\nThey stood in the huge, brooding, dark-paneled expanse of the great hall, waiting for the others. For Wolfe and Santi, Brendan and Callum Brightwell.\n\nWolfe and Santi arrived together. Both were dressed, as the orders from Callum had specified, in formal clothing; Wolfe, in utter defiance of the spirit of things, wore his Scholar's robe over his black velvet coat. Except for the coat, he looked much as he always did.\n\nSanti, like Dario, wore a brocade jacket. His was a mix of navy and black, subtle enough, but just a little flash, with silver buttons that winked down the front and on the cuffs.\n\n\"You look very fine, Captain,\" Glain said.\n\n\"I've worn my share of dress uniforms. It isn't so different.\" Santi seemed on edge, Jess thought, as if he scented something in the wind. Jess faded back a step, put himself next to Morgan and at an angle. If Santi was searching for signs of trouble, he didn't want the captain reading his blank expression, any more than he wanted Glain to study him closely.\n\nHe was going to break, and it might just be for an instant, but if either of them saw it\u2014\n\n\"Jess.\" He looked at Morgan, and she put both hands on his face and pulled him to her for a kiss. The shock of it stilled all the turmoil for a long, sweet moment, and when the kiss ended, she stayed close, lips touching his, to whisper, \"We can do this.\"\n\nHe nodded, took her hands in his, and held them. Breathed in and out and found his balance again.\n\nAt the far end of the hall, wide double doors opened, and Brendan stepped inside. He was dressed formally, too, only his jacket was a dark gray, and he wore a bright blue silk vest beneath it. No tie; he'd substituted a loose cravat instead. \"Ladies and gentlemen,\" Brendan said, and his voice rolled and echoed through the cavernous space, over the bookshelves and the ornate couches and chairs and walls. \"Dinner is served. Follow me.\"\n\n\"Pretentious prat,\" Jess muttered, and offered his elbow to Morgan. She took it, and the light touch of her hand on his arm, even through the coat, seemed to tingle against his skin.\n\n\"I heard that,\" Brendan told him as they passed.\n\n\"Meant it,\" Jess replied. The backs of their hands brushed, and when Jess glanced at him, he saw that his brother's face was pale but calm. He'd carry this through.\n\nThe dining hall's formal table was set for forty, and almost all of the chairs were already filled with Callum Brightwell's guests, save for the ones reserved for Jess and his friends, and Brendan. No Anit; she was waiting at her ship.\n\nAs Jess led them in, with Thomas and Glain, Dario and Khalila following, the men and women at the table stood silently, waiting. Once they'd all reached their chairs, and Brendan had gone to Callum Brightwell's right hand at the top end of the table, Jess's da said, \"Welcome, all of you,\" and took his seat. There was a great rush of scuffling and rustling, and then they were all seated, and the meal was under way. Jess found himself next to a scruffy old man in a suit that had seen better days; he vaguely remembered him. Another smuggler, named Argent. Morgan, across the table from him, was next to a younger, scarred man called Patel, who seemed completely at ease in his very fine evening dress. Dinner proceeded with perfect elegance, course by course, and Jess couldn't force himself to do more than pretend to take bites. He made small talk as best he could. Morgan fared better.\n\nThey were halfway through the main course\u2014lamb, though Patel had received a vegetarian option\u2014when the old salt next to Jess said, too loudly, \"It's said you were at Philadelphia when it was destroyed. Likely they meant before it was destroyed, eh? Couldn't have been there when the bombs fell, could you?\"\n\nIt was probably meant for casual conversation, but it hit their end of the table like, well, a globe of Greek fire. They all froze in place, knives and forks stilled. Everyone looked at Jess, who slowly put his utensils down and reached for the wineglass. He took a generous gulp, didn't taste it, and said, \"We were there.\" It was just three words, said softly enough, and he was proud that they didn't signify any emotion at all. Morgan was looking at him with wide, worried eyes. \"When the bombs started falling.\" He picked up his knife and fork and began cutting meat again. He chewed and swallowed, and that was a mistake, because the sweetish taste of rank smoke came back to him, and he nearly coughed. He reached for the wine again.\n\n\"Well, young lads and ladies, that is a truly remarkable thing,\" said the old man at his left elbow. \"The cleverness of smugglers, eh? Come out by one of the cousins' tunnels, did you?\"\n\nPatel was more sensitive to their stillness, their silence, and he leaned forward and said, \"Perhaps not the time, Mr. Argent.\"\n\n\"We didn't have any help from smugglers,\" Dario said. He had his wineglass in his hand, too, and fire in his dark eyes. \"We got ourselves out. Together.\"\n\nNot entirely accurate; Brendan had helped, but Brendan was twenty chairs away and couldn't hear, and Jess didn't feel the need to defend him.\n\n\"You were prisoners of the Burners?\" Patel asked, very politely indeed. Jess fervently wished he'd abandon the topic. They all did. But Khalila nodded, equally polite.\n\n\"For a time,\" she said. \"And while we don't like what they stand for, the destruction was\u2014\" Khalila, of all people, was suddenly at a loss for words. She glanced at Jess, but he had nothing to say. Even Dario stayed silent.\n\nIt was Morgan who said, very quietly, \"It was inhuman. And none of us wish to remember it. I'm sorry. We're lucky to be alive, and we know that.\"\n\nPatel said, \"Of course. I'm sorry.\" When Argent began to ask something else, Patel shook his head so sharply that the old man, too, fell silent, and the next comment was some grumble about the cold northern weather, which they could all agree to.\n\nAfter dinner, it was time for the show.\n\nThey, of course, were the show.\n\nArgent was right about the weather; even swathed in coats at the door, crossing the open space to the carriage house workshop was a reminder of just how unfriendly England could be; tonight, it was icy rain and fog, and they moved quickly into the warmth of the workshop. Thomas had tidied it up a bit, but even so, there was just barely enough space for everyone to crowd in out of the cold... but unlike Philadelphia, there was no expectation of destruction to come.\n\nThomas mounted the small, improvised steps and stood there uncomfortably next to his machine. He cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and then closed it again without speaking. He gestured to Jess, who sighed and came up to join him.\n\n\"You talk!\" Thomas whispered fiercely.\n\n\"No,\" Jess whispered back, and took the spot at the controls of the machine. Not a simple lever anymore. This was a small stand of levers and switches, and Thomas threw him a look of hurt betrayal... and then, with a deep breath, the German started speaking. He started out a little uncertainly, but before long, just as Jess had thought, he was well into the details and comfortable with them. Talk of ink density and valve pressure and tensile strength. The audience looked intrigued but still not impressed, and when Thomas's explanation came to a halt, Jess flicked the first switch.\n\nThe only thing that happened was that the large copper boiler in the corner began to hiss as it built up pressure. It was decidedly not impressive.\n\n\"Is this all?\" Old Man Argent asked, and ostentatiously checked his pocket watch. \"I didn't come to the hinterlands for an oversized kettle and vague promises\u2014\"\n\nThe hiss in the boiler reached a high-pitched whine; Jess flicked another switch. The machine lurched into motion. A roller spread ink over letters set in a metal plate. The watching crowd fell silent and craned forward to watch.\n\n\"Step one,\" said Thomas. \"The master plate is inked.\" He nodded, and Jess turned the next lever, which pulled a thick roll of paper into place and stretched it over the plate\u2014not close enough to touch. \"Now, the paper. You notice that it is in rolls, not in sheets, for speed.\" Thomas looked at Jess, who nodded. \"And now, the printing.\"\n\nJess flipped the final two switches together, and the paper was pressed down, lifted up, measured out, and cut with a sharp blade. It settled in the tray, and already, the next page was in place, the ink ready, the process repeating.\n\n\"We can print copies of the page at the rate of almost a hundred per minute, when we turn the speed higher,\" Thomas said over the steady thrumming of the machine. \"And as you will see, we print two pages at once\u2014the first and the last of the folio.\"\n\nThomas plucked the first sheet from the drying pile, and in the bright lights of the workshop, Jess felt a strange, exhilarating chill run through him. There, in block letters on the paper, were two full pages of text in Greek that had never been seen before by anyone but them. There was so much wrong with what would happen tonight.\n\nBut this... this was right. And important.\n\nThomas held the page up for all to see. \"The first and last pages of Hermocrates, by Plato,\" he said. \"Suppressed by the Great Library since Scholar Plato's death. Careful. The ink needs time to dry. This is one of the books we rescued from the Black Archives.\" The murmurs started then, and built. Thomas raised his voice again to be heard. \"These are words that few living people have read. This is what the Library has kept from us. This, and so much more. But with this machine, they no longer have that power.\"\n\nOne of the guests stepped forward\u2014a tall woman, severe in a long black gown. Jess vaguely remembered her from his childhood\u2014a refugee Frenchwoman who had built up a business in smuggled originals out of Sardinia. \"If none of us have ever read it, you could have made up the words, no? We're not blind fools. We've seen false miracle machines before that turn lead to gold, or glass into steel.\"\n\nJess reached for a leather case that lay on the table near him, opened it, and took out the scroll. He handed it to her. \"The original's here. You can compare it for yourself.\"\n\nThey had to almost shout now to be heard over the press, which continued to print page after page, slotting them into racks for drying. The thick smell of hot metal and ink made some of the visitors hold their noses, but they weren't leaving. They were crowding forward, experts all, to examine the original and then the copy.\n\n\"Word for word!\" one man exclaimed. \"And you can print the rest? Page by page?\"\n\n\"Yes. We can print anything. We have letters and symbols cast for seven languages already, and more to follow. It's as simple as putting the letters and symbols together in the tray,\" Thomas said.\n\n\"It's not that simple,\" Jess said in a quieter tone, but just to him.\n\n\"No point in disillusioning them with details,\" Thomas whispered, then went back to a near shout. \"We will turn off the press now, and you may inspect it for yourselves!\"\n\nJess shut it all down, reversing the order, and with a last, hissing sigh, the press went idle again. There were enough copies drying in the rack for every single one of Callum Brightwell's visitors to go home with a souvenir.\n\nAnd now Callum was taking the stage, as Thomas gratefully descended. Jess stayed where he was, not from any desire to be there, but his father was blocking his way out. \"You see the beginnings of this,\" his da said. \"Yes, it's a loud, noisy, smelly process. Yes, it takes an investment of time and ink and paper, bindings and skill. But you can print books. Any books. Sell copies of whatever you'd like. The Great Library doesn't control this machine. It can't even see it, or the pages that come off this press. This machine renders the all-seeing eye of Horus blind.\" He looked at the machine with something, Jess thought, like real reverence. \"It's freedom.\"\n\nThere was a roar of suddenly competing questions, protests, all vying for attention. Some people pressed forward to demand details from Thomas, who immediately started providing them. Some were hanging back, arguing with one another.\n\nAnd one stepped forward to say, \"Freedom, you say? Freedom to what? Destroy our own businesses? Get us all killed?\" The man was speaking so precisely his words could have been printed on the press in sharp edges and ink. \"You'll destroy our family with this\u2014abomination. And what do you think the Library will do? They'll kill us for just seeing this!\"\n\n\"It's a temporary loss and risk for a vast long-term gain, Cormac. With this machine, we become our own library. We sell endless copies of every book, to every set of hands eager to hold one...\" The glitter in Callum Brightwell's eyes was as much greed as hope. \"Imagine the possibilities. Hand-tooled bindings, engraved with the name of the printer, or the owner. Gilded titles. Mass production of forbidden classics! There's nothing people want more. Even the Burners would pay good money to get their hands on those books. And the plans for this machine. Which we now own.\"\n\n\"I still say it's a leap,\" said Cormac, but he seemed less against it now. In fact, most of those talking seemed to be discussing possibilities now, not penalties. \"And how long does it take to build one of these things? We'd need an Artifex to do it, and they're all Library sworn\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not that difficult,\" Thomas said. \"We can show you. And there are many Library-trained mechanics who can easily build, run, and repair these machines.\"\n\n\"Ink and paper, though,\" mused one elderly man, who leaned on his cane. \"They must be secured in large quantities. Might draw suspicion.\"\n\n\"Not if you buy the company that makes them,\" Callum said. \"And I've already acquired one of each right here in England. They'll supply what we need to our own specifications. My son Jess will be in charge of the business of the presses, while I continue to oversee our rare books.\" He glanced at Jess and, for the first time, smiled at him. Really, warmly smiled. Knowing what he did, Jess felt a tide of dizziness come over him in a shuddering wave. He couldn't bring himself to smile back. \"And my son, who's also participated in the building of this press, will answer any questions you may have on the workings of the machine. Along with inventor Thomas Schreiber, of course. The credit for this engine of change goes to them.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said, and held up his hands. \"No.\" He met Thomas's gaze and got the nod he expected. \"Not to us. You have to understand: this machine has existed for hundreds of years. Discovered by Scholar after Scholar, who died for their daring to imagine it. We aren't the first. We're just the ones who survived to tell you, and show you, what the world can be. If you want to give credit, give it to Scholar Gutenberg, who was murdered for this idea. And to Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who suffered for it in prison, at the hands of the Archivist.\" Wolfe deserved the recognition, tonight of all nights. He saw Santi and Wolfe turn, saw Wolfe's face, blank for a moment, and then full of some storm of emotion Jess couldn't properly read. Didn't want to know.\n\nPeople turned toward Wolfe in silence, and for a long moment, no one seemed to quite know what to do. Then someone applauded, a lone clap of hands. A scatter joined in, and then a wave, then a roar. Jess watched as Wolfe bowed slightly, accepting the applause. Santi squeezed a hand on Wolfe's shoulder. All of his friends were smiling now, applauding... all except Glain.\n\nGlain was watching Jess, with a sharp intelligence that alarmed him. He turned away to talk to an imperious old man who wanted to inspect the type pieces in the tray, and felt her continuing to watch him.\n\nHe'd known his false face couldn't hold with her. Not for long.\n\nHis da was suddenly at his shoulder, and slapped his back and whispered, \"Well done, son. Though I'd rather have not drawn attention to the bloody Scholar.\" And then he was gone down the steps to press palms.\n\nAs Jess stepped to the floor, Brendan blocked his way. For a moment, they just looked at each other, and then his twin threw his arms around him in a quick, fierce embrace. \"Now I'll never catch up to you. Always seconds and steps ahead, you are. Why did you have to make it more difficult than it has to be?\"\n\n\"Shut up, Scraps,\" Jess whispered, and the little broken pieces inside him healed a bit\u2014crooked, perhaps. A touch brittle. But better. \"You run your own race. You always have.\" He shoved his brother away. \"Doesn't mean I can't still beat you if I have to.\"\n\n\"Right. And now I'm going to pretend to be you and tell people absolute bollocks about how this thing runs. Meet me in ten minutes.\" Brendan slipped away into the crowd.\n\nWhen he turned, he found Morgan next to him. The room was full of noise, and it seemed too loud, suddenly, too warm, and he grabbed her hand and pulled her through the crowd, nodding at those who wanted to congratulate him, answering a few questions about power and capacity, and then they were through and out into the icy, whispering fog. The rain had stopped, though it glittered like diamonds on the branches of the old trees in the forecourt. The heavy bulk of the fortress loomed over them, stone and steel. No stars showing, just some dim, cloud-veiled moonlight.\n\nEnough for him to see her, even in the shadows by the carriage house. Enough for him to kiss her. The dark floral scent of her rolled over his senses and blotted out everything else but the feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth. It was a long, sweet kiss, and when they finally parted, she just held him tight. \"I know,\" she whispered. \"I know.\"\n\n\"I can't do it,\" he said. He wanted to scream. He wanted to gather her up and take her somewhere, anywhere, to hide with her and pretend none of it was happening, none of it would ever happen. He wondered if some part of her wanted that, too. He didn't think so. She wasn't the coward he was. \"I was wrong. I can't see this happen to them. To you. Morgan\u2014\"\n\nShe took hold of his tie to pull him even closer. He wondered rather wildly just how secluded this spot truly was, and whether they could find deeper shadows... and then she broke the kiss with a gasp and pulled back, lips damp and parted, eyes shining with tears. He hadn't meant to make her cry. Never that. \"I'm not the one in danger,\" she said. \"But Wolfe\u2014\"\n\n\"He's a survivor,\" Jess said. \"We know that. I'm more worried about what the captain and Thomas will do tonight when they realize what's happening. Do what you can to protect them. Please.\"\n\nShe nodded and said, \"I've got to go back in.\"\n\n\"Make sure that Dario does his part when you do,\" Jess said. \"Make it look good.\"\n\nHe heard the distant bells from the clock tower and pulled out a pocket watch to check the time. He needed to go, but something in him wouldn't let go of her hand, as if he knew this might be the last time he held it.\n\nSome of his father's guests were spilling out of the carriage house now, still talking, arguing, every one of them clutching one of the printed pages. Some had wrapped them into tubes, like scrolls; some had carefully folded them in half, to read later. All of them cradled them as if they were sacred, valuable objects. As usual, Callum Brightwell was going to get his way. And make a profit.\n\nJess saw that Callum was working his way toward a particular spot as well. He could see the Brightwell guards changing positions. Moving to plan.\n\n\"Go,\" he said, and lifted Morgan's hand to his lips. He kissed the back of it and saw her lips part. She said something, but it was lost in the noise of the crowd around them as the guests spread out.\n\nThen she turned and was gone, walking through the crowd to stand close to Santi. He felt cold. Alone. Separated from them now, the last tie cut, the last chain broken. Already, some of Da's guests were calling for their vehicles. Da had one of his trusted men taking payments\u2014discreetly, of course\u2014at a gilt-edged table set up near the exit. Even the toughs were dressed in real finery this evening, though most looked uncomfortable about it.\n\nThomas came barreling at him and wrapped him in a smothering embrace. \"Thank God I won't have to lecture again.\" He lowered his voice to a rough whisper. \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\"To piss,\" Jess said, and shoved him back. \"And the joke's on you, Mountain. You'll have to lecture all over Europe before long, once your press becomes famous.\"\n\n\"Ach, you're no fun,\" Thomas said. \"Come back here. Dario's promised to steal one of your father's prized wines.\"\n\n\"I will,\" Jess said. Thomas started to turn away, and on impulse, Jess held out his hand. Thomas frowned at it. \"Congratulations. You've done the impossible, you know. You've made Callum Brightwell believe in something.\"\n\n\"I've made your father believe in money,\" Thomas said archly, but he took Jess's hand and shook it anyway. He didn't let go. \"You don't look well, Jess. Is something wrong?\"\n\n\"Tired,\" Jess said, and smiled. \"Go on with you. I'll see you soon.\"\n\n\"All right.\"\n\nHe watched Thomas walk away and had to close his eyes and take deep breaths against the pain.\n\nHe needed to get to Brendan. He avoided the last few questions with an apologetic smile and jogged up the steps and into the castle hall. Crossed the vast open space with long strides, short of breath, his heart pounding like he'd run a marathon.\n\nHe'd almost gotten to the stairs when an arm like an iron bar closed around his throat and pulled him sharply backward, and he felt the sharp sting of a knife under his chin.\n\n\"Stay still,\" Glain said. \"And explain to me what the hell you're planning to do.\"\n\n\"Let go!\"\n\n\"Not going to happen, Jess. You haven't been right all day. I saw it when you looked at Wolfe. You looked like you were giving a damned eulogy at his grave, and you're going to tell me why!\"\n\n\"Let me go!\"\n\n\"If I have to slice you a new smile, Brightwell, I'll\u2014\"\n\nSomething hit her. Hard. Jess felt the impact of it throw her forward, and he was slammed into the hard stone of the banister. He twisted and grabbed her as she turned toward her attacker, and yanked her around to face him again. He couldn't let her see who had just hit her, and he moved faster than he would have believed possible, and with as much force as he could. With Glain, there was no possibility of pulling a punch.\n\nHe hit her square in the right side of the jaw, and felt a bone in his hand give with a bright red slash of pain. Her head snapped to the side, and she went down. He eased her to the floor and checked her pulse. It was there, slow and steady. She was out but wouldn't stay that way for long.\n\n\"Dios, is she dead?\" Dario asked. He stood there looking as pale as Jess had ever seen him, with a small marble bust clutched in a death grip in his right hand. His voice was shaking. He was shaking.\n\n\"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be out there, with Morgan!\"\n\n\"I saw her following you; I had to\u2014\"\n\n\"Go!\" Jess grabbed the bust away, and Dario turned and ran for the castle entrance.\n\nGlain was already starting to rouse\u2014vague movements, eyes rolling behind the closed lids. Jess left the bust there, kicked the knife off into the shadows, and ran to meet his brother.\n\nHe found him waiting in the chapel, just where they'd agreed. The peace of the place, the ancient weight of it, felt suffocating, and when Jess came to a halt, he saw the compassion in his brother's face.\n\n\"You look as bad as I've ever seen you,\" Brendan said. \"You can still change your mind.\"\n\n\"No. I know what I'm doing.\"\n\n\"It'll be easier for me. You know that.\"\n\n\"Shut up, Scraps.\"\n\n\"Call me that again and I'll knock you over the head and hide you in a corner.\"\n\n\"You thought about doing that already.\"\n\n\"Of course I did.\" Brendan gave him a broken little smile as he untied his cravat. \"And I might yet, if you don't hurry up.\"\n\nBrendan removed his gray jacket and cravat and handed them over. Jess gave him the tie and black coat, and the two of them dressed in silence. Brendan swept his hair back. \"Scar,\" Jess reminded him.\n\n\"Already gone. Your girl fixed it for me. I'm going to miss it, a bit. Just make damned sure your friend hits you in the right place to make it stick.\" Brendan took a breath and straightened his back. \"There. Do I look like enough of a sad, bookish arse?\"\n\n\"Do I look enough like a cutthroat thief?\"\n\n\"You'll do,\" Brendan said, and stuck out his hand. \"In bocca al lupo, brother.\"\n\n\"Crepi il lupo,\" Jess replied. He ignored the hand and embraced him, fast and hard, before he turned on his heel and walked out of the chapel. He had to be right now. Focused. Utterly right. I'm Brendan Brightwell. Shining son of this castle and this fortune. And I walk like I know it. He lengthened his stride, took on the easy, swinging gait of his brother, and as he did, he stuck his hands in his coat pockets. The clips Brendan had gotten from Da were there. Three of them. Two in the right pocket, one in the left. They felt cool and inert.\n\nGlain was coming up the stairs as he was going down. He flashed her Brendan's wild grin, and she ignored him, gaze sweeping up. Her eyes were a little unfocused, and she was holding on to the banister with one white-knuckled hand. \"Where's your brother?\" she asked.\n\n\"Not his keeper,\" he said. \"I think he just went out the front. Why?\"\n\nShe turned and ran down the steps. Stumbled and nearly fell, and Jess saw blood on the back of her head, matted in her hair. He resisted the urge to run after her. He followed at a deliberate walk, testing himself. Slowing his pulse. Stilling his thoughts.\n\nThe guests had cleared the courtyard. Brightwell guards had shown them all politely out, and as Jess, no, Brendan, I'm Brendan, came out the castle entrance, the drawbridge chains clattered, and the only exit from this place shut with a loud, final boom.\n\nCallum Brightwell gave him a narrow look. \"Where is he?\"\n\n\"Upstairs, in the chapel,\" Jess said. He kept his face turned away, so the lack of a scar that distinguished him easily from his brother couldn't be spotted. \"Did the other one come out?\"\n\n\"The Welsh girl? Yes.\" Callum nodded off to the side, and when Jess turned that way, he saw that Glain was down on her face, with three guards kneeling on her as they chained her at the neck, wrists, and ankles. She was unconscious again. He remembered the blood in her hair and hoped desperately that they hadn't hit her too hard.\n\n\"My advice? Send her off with Anit,\" Jess said. He kept it light, almost casual. \"From what Jess let slip, she might have some money to her name, and besides, we'll be dealing with the Welsh king soon enough. Bad form to be slaughtering his subjects when we don't need to.\"\n\nHis father grunted but didn't give any sign whether he'd take that advice or not. Jess couldn't force it, not without making things worse.\n\n\"Santiago, Wolfe, Seif, Santi, and Hault are together,\" Callum said. \"Santiago bribed Grainger to bring them a bottle of my best. When he goes in with it, Grainger will pull Santiago and Seif off with him. Taking them will be easy enough, I think. It's the other three who concern me. We need Wolfe and Hault alive and undamaged. You're certain you can manage that on your own?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. \"I think so. They trust me well enough.\"\n\n\"Pity you couldn't pretend to be your brother. We'd have had them all, quick as lightning.\"\n\nJess forced a laugh and moved off, because if he hadn't, he would have dragged his father's gun from his belt and damned himself to hell for murder. He kept moving, past where Glain had fallen, and into the lights outside the carriage house. It came to him with sudden, violent conviction. Dario's going to crack. He's going to forget where to hit me, and this will all come apart. If Grainger gets sight of me without a scar...\n\nJess paused and picked up a stray, sharp piece of stone from a pile beside the entrance, and without thinking about it, sliced it in exactly the spot where he knew his brother's scar would be. Blood jetted out, and the pain blinded him; he fought for a breath, then two, then three, and then found a handkerchief in his brother's pocket and clamped it to the wound. No disguising it, of course. But that was the plan.\n\nHe dropped the stone and walked into the workshop. No sign of Thomas in here; Jess wondered where he'd gone and realized his father hadn't spoken of him. They'd drawn him off, somehow. That was probably wise. Taking Thomas in close quarters would be dangerous, if not impossible.\n\nHe tried not to think about that, and sailed in as if he were Brendan, as if he hadn't a care in the world except for the bloody wound in his head.\n\nKhalila leaped to her feet in an instant and rushed to him. \"Brendan! What happened?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" he said, and pushed past her. \"Family squabble. I'm fine.\" Rudeness was the only defense against her right now, when he wanted so badly to look at her, apologize, beg for her forgiveness. Dario was coming now, and he gave Jess a horrified look, and then it turned to relief.\n\n\"Let me guess,\" he said, shifting back to the Dario Jess had always known and loathed. \"You pushed your brother once too often? He's got a bite, that one.\"\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" Jess said. \"He gave me the scar in the first place\u2014did you know that? Trust him to hit me in the same spot again. Grainger's coming with your wine. Any moment now. Relax, you won't die of thirst.\"\n\nDario understood that perfectly, and he drew Khalila away with him, out of Jess's path. When she started to follow, Dario held her hand. \"No, wait, flower. I need to tell you something.\" Jess almost, almost hesitated. If Dario lost his nerve now... but then he heard Dario continue, in a fierce, fast whisper, \"I love you. I've always loved you. I will always love you. And I am entirely the wrong man for you, I know this. But I have to ask: will you do me the honor of marrying me? If you don't wish that, Khalila, tell me, and I will leave you\u2014\"\n\nSilence.\n\nJess risked a glance back and saw she was kissing him. Dario broke the kiss with a gasp and put his arms around her.\n\nKhalila said, in a voice that was full of heartbreaking happiness, \"I do wish it. And don't you dare leave me, Dario Santiago.\"\n\nDario held her close and stared at Jess with a terrible joy in his eyes. I had to, it said. I had to know.\n\nAnd maybe he was right to do it. They might never have another chance to be happy.\n\nJess was five steps from Morgan, Wolfe, and Santi. Then three steps. And then he stopped and managed to wink his good eye at Morgan. \"Nothing fatal,\" he assured her. \"Not that you'd care, I suppose.\"\n\nShe said nothing, but she stepped forward and pulled his arm down, and the handkerchief away from the open wound. Before he could take a breath, she'd drawn her fingers across it, and he felt the hot twinge of her power washing over him. Saw gold and black stars, and then blinked them away. When he reached up to touch the spot, he found it closed. Healed shut.\n\n\"It'll leave a scar,\" she said, \"but then, you already had one anyway. Where's Jess?\"\n\nHer voice was steady, and her eyes bright on his. Don't look at me like that. Like I'm still Jess. But she wasn't, he realized. She was just afraid, and he saw her gaze shift behind him.\n\n\"Ah, the wine,\" Dario said, too loudly, and let go of Khalila as he turned to face Grainger, who held up the bottle. Jess dropped the bloody handkerchief to the floor, and at the last moment, he looked to the corner, where Frauke lay.\n\nShe was entirely still. No sign of life at all.\n\nMorgan had been tasked to turn the automaton off, and she'd remembered, thank God, because in the next instant, it all became suddenly, crashingly real.\n\nAll the pieces moved, and adrenaline slowed to a precise, clockwork crawl. Jess stepped forward, one hand diving into his pocket. He came out with a Translation tag, one of three his father had procured for Brendan. He heard the first indrawn breath behind him, as the wine bottle hit the flagstones and shattered, as Grainger grabbed Dario from behind.\n\nTwo more guards rushed in. He heard the commotion, didn't bother to look, because he was staring at Wolfe now. The older man was looking past him, at Dario and Khalila, starting to react to their danger.\n\nHe didn't realize his own. Not yet.\n\nAnd then Wolfe's gaze skimmed across him, and those dark eyes widened, and Jess saw the exact instant when he knew what was going to happen. Wolfe was quick and strong, and Jess knew that he had to be faster, stronger, and entirely ruthless.\n\nHe threw himself forward and slammed the Scholar back against the wall. He smelled something burning, thought it was the smoke of Philadelphia, but it was the stench of a burn mark on the wall, and Wolfe's head was against that crack, and he was bracing himself to push forward. His hands were coming up to punch, and he was already twisting and trying to pull free.\n\nJess took the blow that Wolfe landed on the side of his head. It staggered him, but he didn't let it stop his motion. His right arm slammed hard against Wolfe's throat and pinned him in place.\n\nHis left clipped the Translation tag to Wolfe's collar, and in that last instant, as their eyes locked, Jess saw the hell of despair in the man's eyes, and something else. Resignation. Acceptance of an end of things. I'm sorry, Jess wanted to say, but Brendan wouldn't.\n\nBrendan wouldn't be sorry for any of it.\n\nSanti was coming for him, he felt it like the heat before a fire, and he knew he was out of time. Only two seconds had really passed since he'd lunged, but that was all the grace period he was going to get.\n\nJess tapped the Translation tag and felt the wash of energy rush out of him and into the tag, and Wolfe opened his mouth and let out a scream of despair and pain as the alchemical energy contained in the clip ripped through him and tore him out of the world, and into it somewhere half a world away.\n\nOff to Alexandria.\n\nThere was another scream, one right next to him, loud enough to deafen him, but it wasn't pain. It was rage, pure, unbridled rage, and Jess ducked and twisted out of the way just as Santi grabbed for him.\n\nWolfe was gone. He was gone. And Santi was going to rip his head off.\n\nHe dodged and rolled over the trestle table, and as he did he saw a whirling kaleidoscope of violence: Dario, down on the floor and screaming Spanish curses while his chains were clapped on. Khalila Seif armed with an iron bar that she'd pulled from next to the furnace, weaving and dodging the guards who were closing in on her. She lunged and stabbed one through the heart, but the iron bar caught in the man's ribs, and as he fell, she was disarmed.\n\nShe screamed something in Arabic and lunged at them anyway, a beautiful, defiant, graceful whirl of silk and power.\n\nThere was nowhere for her to run, but she wouldn't give up, and he loved her fiercely for that.\n\nJess rolled off the table, landed on his feet, grabbed Morgan by the throat. He backed into the corner and used her as a shield against Santi\u2014a different Santi than he'd ever seen, a wild tiger that checked his spring at only the last second when he realized that he'd have to go through Morgan to reach his enemy.\n\n\"In bocca al lupo,\" he whispered against Morgan's ear, and pressed his lips there, just for an instant. Then he slipped the second tag onto the collar of her dress and activated it, too. She didn't have a chance to reply to him, if she'd intended to. Kill the wolf, Morgan. Kill it for me.\n\nAs her body dissolved in a tormented whirl, Jess braced himself and kicked out, hard. He caught the captain with both feet in the chest and sent him flying back, into the arms of two guards, and before Santi could break free they slammed him down on the table, and the chains were going on.\n\nJess stood there breathing hard, gagging on the knowledge of what he'd done. Khalila was still free. She'd killed two men now, but as he watched, he saw one slip behind her and pin her, and then it was over; she was finished, too. Dario was begging her to stop, stop fighting. He was nearly in tears.\n\nWhere's Thomas? He wanted to throw up, suddenly, to weep, to scream, but he couldn't allow himself to do any of that.\n\nBecause his father was walking into the room, taking a quick and efficient count of the damage and the gain.\n\nHis gaze stopped on Jess\u2014no, on Brendan. Took in the blood on his face, but Jess knew he wouldn't mention it.\n\nHe didn't. He said, \"Are they away?\"\n\n\"Gone,\" Jess said. He kept the answer short, because he was afraid of what he'd say otherwise. \"And where's Thomas?\"\n\nThat was the moment when the wall behind him, the cracked wall, suddenly and catastrophically collapsed, and Jess fell backward into a pair of enormous, grasping hands that closed around his throat and dragged him painfully over the rubble.\n\nThomas. Oh God, it was Thomas.\n\nHis friend was bloodied, but he wasn't down. There were four guards around him, but he was tossing them around like children, and his whole focus was on the Brightwell son he held.\n\nWhom he yanked into the air and held there, dangling and choking.\n\nJess remembered Willinger Beck in Philadelphia, and the way Thomas had dismissed his violence toward the man. If I hadn't played the German berserker... But Thomas wasn't playing this time. There was nothing but rage burning in those huge blue eyes. Red veins had spread around the irises, and Jess knew that the only thing keeping him alive, the only thing, was that Thomas could see the other three behind him in chains. Dario. Khalila. Santi.\n\nThomas's lips drew back from his teeth. Jess had never realized how big they were, those teeth. How straight and white and utterly terrifying, with the inhuman fury burning above them.\n\n\"Let them go!\" Thomas roared. His mild German friend hardly ever shouted, and he'd never unleashed this particular volume before, not that Jess had ever heard. \"Or this one's dead!\"\n\n\"Back away!\" Jess heard his father shouting, but it was harder to hear now; between Thomas's enormous bellow, and the fast, loud beating in his eyes, nothing quite seemed right. He was fighting, he could feel that; his hands scrabbled at Thomas's fingers, trying to pry them away.\n\nIt wasn't going to work. Thomas was going to kill him, and they were going to kill Thomas, because Callum would lose a valuable hostage rather than his younger son. Besides, Thomas had already built his press. Drawn his plans. In Callum Brightwell's calculus, Thomas's value had already fallen below Brendan's.\n\nThere was only one chance, and Jess was just barely clear minded enough to realize it. He stopped fighting, dropped his right hand to his pocket, and fumbled inside. Found the tag.\n\nHe clipped it to his coat and slapped at it in the same motion. Couldn't tell at first if it worked, because the only sensations left to him were the black, panicked struggling of his lungs, and the cold, because it was getting so cold...\n\nHe didn't think he screamed, but if he did, it wouldn't have mattered. He caught one last glimpse of Thomas's fury shattering, and Thomas's hands opened to let him drop.\n\nAs the wolf took him midfall, Jess saw his friend's lips move. Saw the recognition slip into Thomas's face like a strike of lightning.\n\nJess?\n\nAnd then he was gone, into the rushing darkness, where he would have to kill the wolf to survive."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "A contingency-of-death letter filed with the Scholar's Archives, from Scholar Christopher Wolfe to High Garda Captain Niccolo Santi. Interdicted to the Black Archives. Not delivered:\n\n\u2002Nic,\n\n\u2002If you're reading this, my ghost is speaking to you. Ink and paper, and a memory, because I'm gone. I hope I died well. I hope I died for something, as I lived for it. But even if I didn't, if accident took me, or illness, or a thousand meaningless happenstances, then it doesn't matter anymore.\n\n\u2002The only thing that matters now is that you loved me. You never should have, you know; I was, and remain as I write this, an unlovable man, full of flaws and cracks and terrible habits. From the moment I saw you, I felt drunk on possibilities, but I knew I would never deserve you. And I never have, through all of it. But still, you remained.\n\n\u2002I know you will be angry. I know you will want to drive out your grief with action. Don't. For my sake, don't throw yourself into battles, or pick fights with giants, or whatever mad thing comes into your head. Live. Because when next we meet in your Christian heaven or my pagan afterlife, or some shadowy, hidden corner where those two may touch, I want to hear that you lived a long and happy life after me. That you did as you liked, and loved as you liked, and left the world shattered and empty in your wake.\n\n\u2002Because that is the Niccolo Santi I know, and if a ghost can speak of love, then know I adore you still. You are my beloved, and I will be waiting, and you must not take offense when people speak of me harshly, as I surely deserve. We never cared for their opinions, and we shouldn't now.\n\n\u2002And if, with the help of the gods, you find I'm not dead, I will expect a proper good welcome, a bottle of wine, and to find the heaven I spoke of in your arms, because after being away from you, I will never want to be parted again.\n\n\u2002Wolfe"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "When Jess came back in the world, he was on his back on a cool stone floor, and all he knew for a second or two was that he was going to be horribly, violently ill. He rolled on his side, but the spasms passed, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a blurry smear of color and light, heard shouts and voices. Saw running feet go past him, and then there was a hand holding him flat and a gun in his face.\n\nThe man kneeling over him wasn't familiar, but the uniform was: High Garda. Jess took in a slow breath and felt the familiar air of Alexandria fill up the empty ruins inside him.\n\nHome.\n\n\"Who are you?\" the soldier snarled. Jess coughed. Tried to get his breath. Tasted blood and that rotten smoke, and thought, Who am I?\n\nBut he knew who he had to be.\n\n\"Brendan Brightwell,\" he managed to croak. \"I'm the one with gifts for the Archivist Magister; you know I'm coming. Get off me, you bloody fool; I'm expected!\" His throat hurt like he'd gargled broken glass, and his head throbbed where Wolfe's fist had connected. He felt cuts and scrapes down his back, where Thomas had pulled him through the broken wall.\n\nAll in all, it was a miracle he was still breathing. But he'd have to resist the urge to collapse and enjoy it, because he'd hardly even begun this dangerous night.\n\nThe soldier looked up and over to someone else. \"Who have you got there?\"\n\n\"Sir, this is the rebel Scholar! Christopher Wolfe!\"\n\n\"This one's the missing Obscurist,\" said another, farther away.\n\n\"Alive?\"\n\n\"Both alive, sir.\"\n\nJess tried to swallow the wave of relief. He waited. His heart was pounding itself to bits against his ribs, and he wanted desperately to wage a fight he knew he would lose, but he did nothing. Seconds ticked by, and then the High Garda straddling him stepped off to the side and said, \"Get up, you. Slowly.\"\n\nJess kept his hands raised and struggled to his knees, then\u2014as instructed\u2014slowly to his feet. \"I'm here to make a deal,\" he croaked. \"I've brought you two of the traitors in good faith. Shoot me, and you can explain to the Archivist how you lost ten thousand original books.\"\n\nHe finally risked a look at the others. Wolfe was flat on his stomach, and a High Garda woman knelt on him as she put his hands behind his back in restraints. Morgan looked barely conscious. He kept his face still, body loose, as he watched her being flipped over and cuffed, too.\n\nWolfe had raised his head at a painful angle to look at him. \"You fool,\" he said. \"What do you think you're doing? Your own brother's going to slaughter you. If Santi doesn't get you first!\"\n\n\"I don't think my fate's your problem, Scholar,\" Jess said, in a croaking approximation of Brendan's careless, chilly tones. \"Seems to me you've got bigger things to worry about. Like prison bars.\"\n\n\"And her? You think Jess is going to thank you for putting her back in the Iron Tower? You know what's going to happen to her, you cold bastard?\"\n\n\"I don't know and don't care, because I'm not my weak-livered brother. She's not my concern.\" Jess wanted to take the fear from Morgan's eyes, the pallor from her face, but he had to play this out, had to. He looked at the soldier who faced him, and slowly lowered his hands and put them behind his back. \"Take me to the Archivist, if you want to live to see the morning.\"\n\n\"Whatever you think you're doing, it won't work!\" Wolfe shouted. The soldier with him dragged him up to his knees, and loose graying hair fell around his face. It didn't disguise the urgent fire in his eyes. \"Brightwell! It won't work!\"\n\nFor an eerie moment, it felt like Wolfe was talking to him. To Jess, not to Brendan. But Wolfe didn't know. They'd taken great care to leave him out of all of this. Wolfe, Dario had argued, could break. Would break. But in that second, Jess wondered if Wolfe knew. Had maybe known the entire time.\n\n\"Sorry, Scholar,\" he managed to whisper. Brendan's smile on his lips. Brendan's voice. But inside, his soul was tearing itself apart. \"There's no turning back now.\"\n\nAnd that was the moment when the door of the entry hall of the Archive of the Great Library opened and the Archivist Magister walked in. Oh, not alone. Not by half. He had a dozen High Garda elite guards around him. He wore a rich, thickly embroidered robe of midnight blue, and a crown with the eye of Horus rising like the sun from his forehead. Gold and rubies, and worth a king's ransom.\n\nHe had an old man's face, worn and seamed and burned by years in the hot Egyptian sun, but his eyes were young. They missed nothing. Not the state that Jess was in, or the relatively undamaged captives.\n\n\"I met another Brightwell, once,\" the Archivist said. \"He looked a great deal like you.\"\n\nJess spat blood onto the marble floor and grinned. He knew he looked half-savage. Didn't care.\n\n\"Yeah, well, I'm nothing like my fool brother,\" he said. \"And you're going to want to keep me close, Archivist. Because I'm bringing you everything you ever wanted. Brendan Brightwell, at your service.\" He managed a mocking bow.\n\nThe silence rang for a long moment. Thomas, Jess thought, had done him a favor damaging his voice. Nothing about him would seem familiar now, not even that.\n\nThe Archivist considered all of it for what seemed far too long, and then nodded.\n\n\"We'll see,\" he said. \"Take Scholar Wolfe to the cells. The girl goes back to the Iron Tower. And you, Brendan Brightwell...\" The Archivist paused for so long that Jess had to ready himself for the end, for the sound of High Garda guns to be the last thing he heard. \"You come with me.\"\n\nThey walked out of the vast hall of the Great Archives, into the heat of an Alexandrian day, and the smell of the only place he'd ever felt at home, and Jess thought, Now all we have to do is play the game.\n\nBut he had the eerie feeling that this game was barely even begun... and that it wasn't chess at all.\n\nFrom here on out, it was war."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians",
        "author": "Brandon Sanderson",
        "genres": [
            "comedy",
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "young adult",
            "humor",
            "Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "I AM NOT A GOOD PERSON.\n\nOH, I KNOW WHAT THE STORIES SAY ABOUT ME. THEY CALL ME OCULATOR DRAMATUS, HERO, SAVIOR OF THE TWELVE KINGDOMS\u2026. THOSE, HOWEVER, ARE JUST RUMORS. SOME ARE EXAGGERATIONS; MANY ARE OUTRIGHT LIES. THE TRUTH IS FAR LESS IMPRESSIVE.\n\nWHEN MR. BAGSWORTH FIRST CAME TO ME, SUGGESTING THAT I WRITE MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY, I WAS HESITANT. HOWEVER, I SOON REALIZED THAT THIS WAS THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO THE PUBLIC.\n\nAS I UNDERSTAND IT, THIS BOOK WILL BE PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE FREE KINGDOMS AND INNER LIBRARIA. THIS PRESENTS SOMETHING OF A PROBLEM FOR ME, SINCE I WILL HAVE TO MAKE THE STORY UNDERSTANDABLE TO PEOPLE FROM BOTH AREAS. THOSE IN THE FREE KINGDOMS MIGHT BE UNFAMILIAR WITH THINGS LIKE BAZOOKAS, BRIEFCASES, AND GUNS. HOWEVER, THOSE IN LIBRARIA \u2013 OR THE HUSHLANDS, AS THEY ARE OFTEN CALLED \u2013 WILL LIKELY BE UNFAMILIAR WITH THINGS LIKE OCULATORS, CRYSTIN, AND THE DEPTH OF THE LIBRARIAN CONSPIRACY.\n\nTO THOSE OF YOU IN THE FREE KINGDOMS, I SUGGEST THAT YOU FIND A REFERENCE BOOK \u2013 THERE ARE MANY THAT WOULD DO \u2013 TO EXPLAIN UNFAMILIAR TERMS TO YOU. AFTER ALL, THIS BOOK WILL BE PUBLISHED AS A BIOGRAPHY IN YOUR LANDS, AND SO IT IS NOT MY PURPOSE TO TEACH YOU ABOUT THE STRANGE MACHINES AND ARCHAIC WEAPONRY OF LIBRARIA. MY PURPOSE IS TO SHOW YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT ME, AND TO PROVE THAT I AM NOT THE HERO THAT EVERYONE SAYS I AM.\n\nIN THE HUSHLANDS \u2013 THOSE LIBRARIAN-CONTROLLED NATIONS SUCH AS THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND ENGLAND \u2013 THIS BOOK WILL BE PUBLISHED AS A WORK OF FANTASY. DO NO BE FOOLED! THIS IS NO WORK OF FICTION, NOR IS MY NAME REALLY BRANDON SANDERSON. BOTH ARE GUISES TO HIDE THE BOOK FROM LIBRARIAN AGENTS. UNFORTUNATELY, EVEN WITH THESE PRECAUTIONS, I SUSPECT THAT THE LIBRARIANS WILL DISCOVER THE BOOK AND BAN IT. IN THAT CASE, OUR FREE KINGDOM AGENTS WILL HAVE TO SNEAK INTO LIBRARIES AND BOOKSTORES TO PUT IT ON SHELVES. COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY IF YOU'VE FOUND ONE OF THESE SECRET COPIES.\n\nFOR YOU HUSHLANDERS, I KNOW THE EVENTS OF MY LIFE MAY SEEM WONDROUS AND MYSTERIOUS. I WILL DO MY BEST TO EXPLAIN THEM, BUT PLEASE REMEMBER THAT MY PURPOSE IS NOT TO ENTERTAIN YOU. MY PURPOSE IS TO OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE TRUTH.\n\nI KNOW THAT IN WRITING THIS I SHALL MAKE FEW FRIENDS IN EITHER WORLD. PEOPLE ARE NEVER PLEASED WHEN YOU REVEAL THAT THEIR BELIEFS ARE WRONG.\n\nBUT THAT IS WHAT I MUST DO. THIS IS MY STORY \u2013 THE STORY OF A SELFISH, CONTEMPTIBLE FOOL.\n\nTHE STORY OF A COWARD."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.\n\nAs you might imagine, that sort of situation can be quite disturbing. It does funny things to the brain to be in such danger \u2013 in fact, it often makes a person and reflect upon his life. If you've never faced such a situation, then you'll simply have to take my word. If, on the other hand, you have faced such a situation, then you are probably dead and aren't likely to be reading this.\n\nIn my case, the moment of impending death made me think about my parents. It was an odd thought, since I hadn't grown up with them. In fact, up until my thirteenth birthday, I really only knew one thing about my parents: that they had a twisted sense of humor.\n\nWhy do I say this? Well, you see, my parents named me Al. In most cases, this would be short for Albert, which is a fine name. In fact, you have probably known an Albert or two in your lifetime, and chances are that they were decent fellows. If they weren't then it certainly wasn't the name's fault.\n\nMy name isn't Albert.\n\nAl also could be short for Alexander. I wouldn't have minded this either, since Alexander is a great name. It sounds kind of regal.\n\nMy name isn't Alexander.\n\nI'm certain that you can think of other names Al might be short for. Alfonso has a pleasant ring to it. Alan would also be acceptable, as would have been Alfred \u2013 thought I really don't have an inclination toward butlery.\n\nMy name is not Alfonso, Alan, or Alfred. Nor is it Alejandro, Alton, Aldris, or Alonzo.\n\nMy name is Alcatraz. Alcatraz Smedry. Now, some of you Free Kingdomers might be impressed by my name. That's wonderful for you, but I grew up in the Hushlands \u2013 in the United States itself. I didn't know about Oculators or the like, though I did know about prisons.\n\nAnd that was why I figured that my parents must have had a twisted sense of humor. Why else would they name their child after the most infamous prison in U.S. history?\n\nOn my thirteenth birthday, I received a second confirmation that my parents were indeed cruel people. That was the day when I unexpected received in the mail the only inheritance they left me.\n\nIt was a bag of sand.\n\nI stood at the door, looking down at the package in my hands, frowning as the postman drove away. The package looked old \u2013 its string ties were frayed, and its brown paper packaging was worn and faded. Inside the package, I found a box containing a simple note.\n\nAlcatraz,\n\nHappy thirteenth birthday!\n\nHere is your inheritance, as promised.\n\nLove, Mom and Dad\n\nUnderneath the note, I found the bag of sand. It was small, perhaps the size of a fist, and was filled with ordinary brown beach sand.\n\nNow, my first inclination was to think that the package was a joke. You probably would have thought the same. One thing, however, made me pause. I set the box down, then smoothed out it wrinkled packaging paper.\n\nOne edge of the paper was covered with wild scribbles a little like those made by a person trying to get the ink in a pen to flow. On the front there was writing. It looked old and faded \u2013 almost illegible in places \u2013 and yet it accurately spelled out me address. An address I'd been living at for only eight months.\n\nImpossible, I thought.\n\nThen I went inside my house and set the kitchen on fire.\n\nNow, I warned you that I wasn't a good person. Those who knew me when I was young would never have believed that one day I would be known as a hero. Heroic just didn't apply to me. Nor did people use words like nice or even friendly to describe me. They might have used the work clever, though I suspect that devious may have been more correct. Destructive was another common one that I heard. But I didn't care for it. (It wasn't actually all that accurate.)\n\nNo, people never said good things about me. Good people don't burn down kitchens.\n\nStill holding the strange package, I wandered toward my foster parents' kitchen, lost in thought. It was a very nice kitchen, modern looking with white wallpaper and lots of shiny chrome appliances. Anyone entering it would immediately notice that this was the kitchen of a person who took pride in their cooking skills.\n\nI set my package on the table, then moved over to the kitchen stove. If you're a Hushlander, you would have thought I looked like a fairly normal American boy, dressed in loose jeans and a T-shirt. I've been told I was a handsome kid \u2013 some even said that I had an \"innocent face.\" I was not too tall, had dark brown hair, and was skilled at breaking things.\n\nQuite skilled.\n\nWhen I was very young, other kids called me a klutz. I was always breaking things \u2013 plates, cameras, chickens. It seemed inevitable that whatever I picked up, I would end up dropping, cracking, or otherwise mixing up. Not exactly the most inspiring talent a young man ever had, I know. However, I generally tried to do my best despite it.\n\nJust like I did this day. Still thinking about the strange package, I filled a pot with water. Next I got out a few packs of instant ramen noodles. I set them down, looking at the stove. It was a fancy gas one with real flames. My foster mother Joan wouldn't settle for electric.\n\nSometimes it was daunting, knowing how easily I could break things. This one simple curse seemed to dominate my entire life. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to fix dinner. Perhaps I should simply have retreated to my room. But what was I to do? Stay there all the time? Never go out because I was worried about the things I might break? Of course not.\n\nI reached out and turned on the gas burner.\n\nAnd, of course, the flames immediately flared up around the sides of the pan, far higher that should have been possible. I quickly tried to turn down the flames, but the knob broke off in my hand. I tried to grab the pot and take it off of the stove. But, of course, the handle broke off. I stared at the broken handle for a moment, then looked up at the flames. They flickered, catching the drapes on fire. The fire gleefully began to devour the cloth.\n\nWell, so much for that, I thought with a sigh, tossing the broken handle over my shoulder. I left the fire burning \u2013 once again, I feel I must remind you that I'm not a very nice person \u2013 and picked up my strange package as I walked out into the den.\n\nThere, I pulled out the brown wrapper, flattening it against the table with one hand and looking at the stamps. One had a picture of a woman wearing flight goggles, with an old fashioned airplane in the background behind her. All of the stamps looked old \u2013 perhaps as old as I was. I turned on the computer and checked a database of stamp issue dates and found that I was right. They had been printed thirteen years ago.\n\nSomeone had taken quite a bit of effort to make it seem like my present had been packaged, addressed, and stamped over a decade earlier. That, however, was ridiculous. How would the sender have known where I'd be living? During the last thirteen years, I'd gone through dozens of sets of foster parents. Besides, my experience has been that the number of stamps it takes to send a package increases without warning or pattern. (The postage people are, I'm convinced, quite sadistic in that regard.) There was no way someone could have known, thirteen years, ago, how much postage it would cost to send a package in my day.\n\nI shook my head, standing up and tossing the M key from the computer keyboard into the trash. I'd stopped trying to stick the keys back on \u2013 they always fell off again anyway. I got the fire extinguisher from the hall closet, then walked back into the kitchen, which was not quite thoroughly billowing with smoke. I put the box and extinguisher on the table, then picked up a broom, holding my breath as I calmly knocked the tattered remnants of the drapes into the sink. I turned on the water, then finally used the extinguisher to blast the burning wallpaper and cabinets, also putting out the stove.\n\nThe smoke alarm didn't go off, of course. You see, I'd broken that previously. All I'd needed to do was rest my hand against its case for a second, and it had fallen apart.\n\nI didn't open a window but did have the presence of mind to get a pair of pliers and twist the stove's gas valve off. Then I glanced at the curtains, a smoldering ashen lump in the sink.\n\nWell, that's it, I thought, a bit frustrated. Joan and Roy will never continue to put up with me after this.\n\nPerhaps you think I should have felt ashamed. But what was I supposed to do? Like I said \u2013 I couldn't just hide in my room all the time. Was I to avoid living just because life was a little different for me than it was for regular people? No. I had learned to deal with my strange curse. I figured that others would simply have to do so as well.\n\nI heard a car in the driveway. Finally realizing that the kitchen was still rank with smoke, I opened the window and began using a towel to fan it out. My foster mother \u2013 Joan \u2013 rushed into the kitchen a moment later. She stood, horrified, looking at the fire damage.\n\nI tossed aside the towel and left without a word, going up to my room.\n\n\"That boy is a disaster!\"\n\nJoan's voice drifted up through the open window into my room. My foster parents were in the study down on the first floor, their favorite place for \"quiet\" conferences about me. Fortunately, one of the first things that I'd broken in the house had been the study's window rollers, locking the windows permanently open so that I could listen in.\n\n\"Now, Joan,\" said a consoling voice. It belonged to Roy, my foster father.\n\n\"I can't take it!\" Joan sputtered. \"He destroys everything he touches!\"\n\nThere was that word again. Destroy. I felt my hair bristle in annoyance. I don't destroy things, I thought. I break them. They're still there when I'm finished, they just don't work right anymore.\n\n\"He means well,\" Roy said. \"He's a kindhearted boy.\"\n\n\"First the washing machine,\" Joan ranted. \"Then the lawn mower. Then the upstairs bath. Now the kitchen. All in less than a year!\"\n\n\"He's had a hard life,\" Roy said. \"He just tries too hard \u2013 how would feel, being passed from family to family, never having a home\u2026?\"\n\n\"Well, can you blame people for getting rid of him?\" Joan said. \"I \u2013\"\n\nShe was interrupted by a knock on the front door. There was a moment of silence, and I imagined what was going on between my foster parents. Joan was probably giving Roy \"the look.\" Usually, it was the husband who gave \"the look,\" insisting that I be sent away. Roy had always been the soft one here, however. I heard his footsteps as he went to answer the door.\n\n\"Come in,\" Roy said, his voice faint, since he now stood in the entryway. I remained lying on my bed. It was still early evening \u2013 the sun hadn't even set yet.\n\n\"Mrs. Sheldon,\" a new voice said from below, acknowledging Joan. \"I came as soon as I heard about the accident.\" It was a woman's voice, familiar to me. Businesslike, curt, and more than a little condescending. I figured those were all good reasons why Ms. Fletcher wasn't married.\n\n\"Ms. Fletcher,\" Joan said, faltering now that the time had come. They usually did. \"I'm\u2026 sorry to \u2013\"\n\n\"No,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"You did well to last this long. I can arrange for the boy to be taken tomorrow.\"\n\nI closed my eyes, sighing quietly. Joan and Roy had lasted quite long \u2013 longer, certainly, than any of my other recent sets of foster parents. Eight months was a valiant effort when taking care of me was concerned. I felt a little twist in my stomach.\n\n\"Where is he now?\" Ms. Fletcher asked.\n\n\"He's upstairs.\"\n\nI waited quietly. Ms. Fletcher knocked but didn't wait for my reply before pushing open the door.\n\n\"Ms. Fletcher,\" I said. \"You look lovely.\"\n\nIt was a stretch. Ms. Fletcher \u2013 my personal caseworker \u2013 might have been a pretty woman, had she not been wearing a pair of hideous horn-rimmed glasses. She perpetually kept her hair up in a bun that was only slightly less tight than the dissatisfied line of her lips. She wore a simple white blouse and a black ankle-length skirt. For her, it was a daring outfit \u2013 the shoes, after all, were maroon.\n\n\"The kitchen, Alcatraz?\" Ms. Fletcher asked. \"Why the kitchen?\"\n\n\"It was an accident,\" I mumbled. \"I was trying to do something nice for my foster parents.\"\n\n\"You decided that you would be kind to Joan Sheldon \u2013 one of the city's finest and most well-renowned chefs \u2013 by burning down her kitchen?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Just wanted to fix dinner. I figured even I couldn't mess up ramen noodles.\"\n\nMs. Fletcher snorted. Finally, she walked into the room, shaking her head as she strolled past my dresser. She poked my inheritance package with her index finger, harrumphing quietly as she eyed the crumpled paper and worn strings. Ms. Fletcher had a thing about messiness. Finally, she turned back to me. \"We're running out of families, Smedry. The other couples are hearing rumors. Soon there won't be any place left to send you.\"\n\nI remained quiet, still lying down.\n\nMs. Fletcher sighed, folding her arms and tapping index finger against one arm. \"You realize, of course, that you are worthless.\"\n\nHere we go, I thought, feeling sick. This was my least favorite part of the process. I stared up at my ceiling.\n\n\"You are fatherless and motherless,\" Ms. Fletcher said, \"a parasite upon the system. You are a child who has been given a second, third, and now twenty-seventh chance. And how have you received this generosity? With indifference, disrespect, and destructiveness!\"\n\n\"I don't destroy,\" I said quietly. \"I break. There's a difference.\"\n\nMs. Fletcher sniffed in disgust. She left me then, walking out and pulling the door closed with a snap. I heard her say good-bye to the Sheldons, promising them that her assistant would arrive in the morning to deal with me.\n\nIt's too bad, I thought with a sigh. Roy and Joan really are good people. They would have made great parents."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Now, you're probably wondering about the beginning of the previous chapter, with its reference to evil Librarians, altars made from encyclopedias, and its general feeling of \"Oh, no! Alcatraz is going to be sacrificed!\"\n\nBefore we get to this, let me explain something about myself. I've been many things in my life. Student. Spy. Sacrifice. Potted plant. However, at this point, I'm something completely different from all of those \u2013 something more frightening than any of them.\n\nI'm a writer.\n\nYou may have noticed that I began my story with a quick, snappy scene of danger and tension \u2013 but then quickly moved on to a more boring discussion of my childhood. Well, that's because I wanted to prove something to you: that I am not a nice person.\n\nWould a nice person begin with such an exciting scene, then make you wait almost the entire book to read about it? Would a nice person write a book that exposes the true nature of the world to all of you ignorant Hushlanders, thereby forcing your lives into chaos? Would a nice person write a book that proves that Alcatraz Smedry, the Free Kingdoms' greatest hero, was just a mean-spirited adolescent?\n\nOf course not.\n\nI awoke grumpily that next morning, annoyed by the sound of some banging on my downstairs door. I climbed out of bed, then threw on a bathrobe. Though the clock read 10:00 A.M., I was still tired. I had stayed up late, lost in thought. Then Joan and Roy had tried to say goodbye. I hadn't opened my door to them. Better to get things over without all that gushing.\n\nNo, I was not happy to be reawoken at 10:00 A.M. \u2013 or, actually, any A.M. I yawned, walking downstairs and pulling open the door, prepared to meet whichever assistant Ms. Fletcher had sent to retrieve me. \"Hell \u2013\" I said. (I hadn't intended to swear, but a boisterous voice cut me off before I could get to the \"o.\") \"Alcatraz, my boy!\" then man at the doorway exclaimed. \"Happy Birthday!\"\n\n\"\u2014o,\" I said.\n\n\"You shouldn't swear, my boy!\" the man said, pushing his way into the house. He was an older man who was dressed in a sharp black tuxedo and wore a strange pair of red-tinted glasses. He was quite bald save for a small bit of white hair running around the back of his head, and this puffed out in an unkempt fashion. He wore a similarly bushy white mustache, and he smiled quite broadly as he turned to me, his face wrinkled but his eyes alight with excitement.\n\n\"Well, my boy,\" he said, \"how does it feel to be thirteen?\"\n\n\"The same as it did yesterday,\" I said, yawning. \"When it was actually my birthday. Ms. Fletcher must have told you the wrong date. I'm not packed yet \u2013 you're going to have to wait.\"\n\nI tiredly began to walk toward the stairs.\n\n\"Wait,\" the old man said. \"Your birthday was\u2026 yesterday?\"\n\nI nodded. I'd never met the man before, but Ms. Fletcher has several assistants. I didn't know them all.\n\n\"Rumbling Rowns!\" then man exclaimed. \"I'm late!\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, climbing the stairs. \"Actually, you're early. As I said, you'll need to wait.\"\n\nThe old man rushed up the stairs behind me.\n\nI turned, frowning. \"You can wait downstairs.\"\n\n\"Quickly, boy!\" the old man said. \"I can't wait. Soon you'll be getting a package in the mail, and \u2013\"\n\n\"Stop. You know about the package?\"\n\n\"Of course I do, of course I do. Don't tell me it already came?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Blistering Brooks!\" the old man exclaimed. \"Where lad? Where is it?\"\n\nI frowned. \"Did Ms. Fletcher send it?\"\n\n\"Ms. Fletcher? Never heard of her. Your parents sent that box, my boy!\"\n\nHe's never heard of her? I thought, realizing that I'd never verified the man's identity. Great. I've let a lunatic into the house.\n\n\"Oh, blast!\" the old man said, reaching into his suit pocket and pulling out a pair of yellow-tinted glasses. He quickly exchanged the light red ones for these, then looked around. \"There!\" he said, rushing up the stairs, pushing past me.\n\n\"Hey!\" I called, but he didn't stop. I muttered quietly to myself, following. The old man was surprisingly spry for his age, and he reached the door to my room in just a few heartbeats.\n\n\"Is this your room, my boy?\" the old man asked. \"Lots of footprints leading here. What happened to the doorknob?\"\n\n\"It fell off. My first night in the house.\"\n\n\"How odd,\" the old man said, pushing the door open. \"Now, where's that box\u2026?\"\n\n\"Look,\" I said, pausing in the doorway. \"You have to leave. If you don't, I'm going to call the police.\"\n\n\"The police? Why would you do that?\"\n\n\"Because you're in my house,\" I said. \"Well\u2026 my ex-house, at least.\"\n\n\"But you let me in, lad,\" the old man pointed out.\n\nI paused. \"Well, now I'm telling you to leave.\"\n\n\"But why? Don't you recognize me, my boy?\"\n\nI raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"I'm your grandfather, lad! Grandpa Smedry! Leavenworth Smedry, Oculator Dramatus. Don't tell me you don't remember me \u2013 I was there when you were born!\"\n\nI blinked. Then frowned. Then cocked my head to the side. \"You were there\u2026?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" the old man said. \"Thirteen years ago! You haven't seen me since, of course.\"\n\n\"And I'm supposed to remember you?\" I said.\n\n\"Well, certainly! We have excellent memories, we Smedrys. Now, about that box\u2026\"\n\nGrandfather? The man had to be lying, of course. I don't even have parents. Why would I have a grandfather?\n\nNow, looking back, I realize that this was a silly thought. Everybody has a grandfather \u2013 two of them, actually. Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they don't exist. In that way, grandfathers are kind of like kangaroos.\n\nAt any rate, I most certainly should have called the police on this elderly intruder. He has been the main source of all my problems ever since. Unfortunately, I didn't throw him out. Instead, I just watched him put away his yellow-tinted spectacles, retrieving the reddish-tinted ones again. Then he finally spotted the box on my dresser, scribbled-on brown paper still sitting beside it. The old man rushed over eagerly.\n\nDid he send it? I wondered.\n\nHe reached into the box, taking out the note with an oddly reverent touch. He read it, smiling fondly, then looked up at me.\n\n\"So, where is it?\" Grandpa Smedry \u2013 or whoever he really was \u2013 asked.\n\n\"Where is what?\"\n\n\"The inheritance, lad!\"\n\n\"In the box,\" I said, pointing at the package.\n\n\"There isn't anything in here but the note.\"\n\n\"What?\" I said, walking over. Indeed, the box was empty. The bag of sand was gone.\n\n\"What did you do with it?\" I asked.\n\n\"With what?\"\n\n\"The bag of sand,\" I said.\n\nThe old man breathed out in awe. \"So, it really came?\" he whispered, eyes wide. \"There was actually a bag of sand in this box?\"\n\nI nodded slowly.\n\n\"What color was the sand, lad?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026 sandy?\"\n\n\"Galloping Gemmells!\" he exclaimed. \"I'm too late! They must have gotten here before me. Quickly, lad. Who's been in this room since you received the box?\"\n\n\"Nobody,\" I said. By this point, as you can imagine, I was growing a little frustrated and increasingly confused. Not to mention hungry and still a bit tired. And a little sore from gym class the previous week \u2013 but that isn't exactly all that relevant, is it?\n\n\"Nobody?\" the old man repeated. \"Nobody else has been in this room?\"\n\n\"Nobody,\" I snapped. \"Nobody at all.\" Except\u2026 I frowned. \"Except Ms. Fletcher.\"\n\n\"Who is this Ms. Fletcher you keep mentioning, lad?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"My caseworker.\"\n\n\"What does she look like?\"\n\n\"Glasses,\" I said. \"Snobbish face. Usually has her hair in a bun.\"\n\n\"The glasses,\" Grandpa Smedry said slowly. \"Did they have\u2026 horn rims?\"\n\n\"Usually.\"\n\n\"Hyperventilating Hobbs!\" he exclaimed. \"A Librarian! Quickly, lad, we have to go! Get dressed; I'll go steal some food from your foster parents!\"\n\n\"Wait!\" I said, but the old man had already scrambled from the room, moving with a sudden urgency.\n\nI stood, dumbfounded.\n\nMs. Fletcher? I thought. Take the inheritance? That's stupid. Why would she want a silly bag of sand? I shook my head, uncertain what to make of all this. Finally, I just walked over to my dresser. Getting dressed, at least, seemed like a good idea. I threw on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and my favorite green jacket.\n\nAs I finished, Grandpa Smedry rushed back into the bedroom, carrying two of Roy's extra briefcases. I noticed a leaf of lettuce sticking halfway out of one, while the other seemed to be leaking a bit of ketchup.\n\n\"Here!\" Grandpa Smedry said, handing me the lettuce briefcase. \"I packed us lunches. No telling how long it will be before we can stop for food!\"\n\nI raised the briefcase, frowning. \"You packed lunches inside of briefcases?\"\n\n\"They'll look less suspicious that way. We have to fit in! Now, let's get moving. The Librarians could already be working on the sand.\"\n\n\"So?\" I said.\n\n\"So!\" the old man exclaimed. \"Lad, with those sands, the Librarians could destroy kingdoms, overthrow cultures, dominate the world! We need to get them back. We'll have to strike quickly, and possibly at great peril to our lives. But that's the Smedry way!\"\n\nI lowered the briefcase. \"If you say so.\"\n\n\"Before we leave, I need to know what our resources are. What's your Talent, lad?\"\n\nI frowned. \"Talent?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Every Smedry has a Talent. What is yours?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026 playing the oboe?\"\n\n\"This is no time for jokes, lad!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"This is serious! If we don't get that sand back\u2026\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, sighing. \"I'm pretty good at breaking things.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry froze.\n\nMaybe I shouldn't play with the old man, I thought, feeling guilty. He may be a loon, but that's no reason to make fun of him.\n\n\"Breaking things?\" Grandpa Smedry said, sounding awed. \"So it's true. Why such a Talent hasn't been seen in centuries\u2026.\"\n\n\"Look,\" I said, raising my hands. \"I was just joking around. I didn't mean \u2013\"\n\n\"I knew it!\" Grandpa Smedry said eagerly. \"Yes, yes, this improves our chances! Come, lad, we have to get moving.\" He turned and left the room again, carrying his briefcase and rushing eagerly down the stairs.\n\n\"Wait!\" I cried, chasing after the old man. However, when I reached the doorway, I paused.\n\nThere was a car parked on the curb outside. An old car. Now, when you read the words old car, you likely think of a beat-up or rusted vehicle that barely runs. A car that is old, kind of in the same way that cassette tapes are old.\n\nThis was not such a car. It was not old like cassette tapes are old \u2013 it wasn't even old like records are old. No, this car was old like Beethoven is old. Or, at least, so it seemed. To me \u2013 and, likely, to most of you living in the Hushlands \u2013 the car looked like an antique. Kind of like a Model-T.\n\nBut that was just my assumption.\n\nThe point is that many times, the first thing a person presumes about something \u2013 or someone \u2013 is inaccurate. Or, at the very least, incomplete. Take the young Alcatraz Smedry, for instance. After reading my story up to this point, you have probably made some assumptions. Perhaps you're \u2013 despite my best efforts \u2013 feeling a bit of sympathy for me. After all, orphans usually make very sympathetic heroes.\n\nPerhaps you think that my habit of using sarcasm is simply a method of hiding my insecurity. Perhaps you've decided that I wasn't a cruel boy, just a very confused one. Perhaps you've decided, despite my feigned indifference, I didn't like breaking things.\n\nObviously, you are a person of very poor judgment. I would ask you to kindly refrain from drawing conclusions that I don't explicitly tell you to make. That's a very bad habit, and it makes authors grumpy.\n\nI was none of those things. I was simply a mean boy who didn't really care whether or not he burned down kitchens. And that mean boy was the one who stood on the doorstep, watching Grandpa Smedry waving eagerly for him to follow.\n\nNow, perhaps I'll admit that I felt just a little bit of longing. A\u2026 wishfulness, you might say. Getting a package that claimed to be from my parents had made me remember days long ago \u2013 before I realized how foolish I was being \u2013 when I had yearned to know my real parents. Days when I had longed to find someone who had to love me, if only because they were related to me.\n\nFortunately, I had outgrown those feelings. My moment of weakness passed quickly, and I slammed the door closed and locked the old man outside. Then I went to the kitchen to get some breakfast.\n\nThat, however, is when someone drew a gun on me."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "I'd like to take this opportunity to point out something important. Should a strange old man of questionable sanity show up at your door \u2013 suggesting that he is your grandfather and that you should accompany him upon some quest of mystical import \u2013 you should flatly refuse him.\n\nDon't take his candy either.\n\nUnfortunately, as you will soon see, I was quickly forced to break this rule. Please don't hold it against me. It was done under duress. I'm really not used to being shot at.\n\nI walked tiredly into the kitchen \u2013 which still smelled of smoke \u2013 hoping that the strange old man wouldn't take to pounding on the door. I didn't really want to call the police on him \u2013 not only would I likely break the telephone in the process (I'm particularly bad with phones) but I really didn't want the old loon carted away in a police car. That would have been \u2013\n\n\"Alcatraz Smedry?\" a voice suddenly asked.\n\nI jumped, turning from the half-burned cupboard, a box of cornflakes in my hand. A man stood in the doorway behind me, wearing slacks and a button-down shirt. I frowned, realizing that I recognized the symbol on the man's shirt pocket and standard-issue attach\u00e9 case. He was a foster care caseworker \u2013 this was the man that Ms. Fletcher had sent to pick me up from the house. I realized that when I'd originally gone chasing the old man up to my room, I'd left the front door open. The caseworker must have come in looking for me while I was upstairs chatting with the lunatic.\n\n\"Hi,\" I said, putting down the box. \"I'll be ready in a bit \u2013 let me have breakfast first.\"\n\n\"You're him, then?\" the caseworker asked, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses. \"The Smedry kid?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Good,\" the man said, then pulled a gun out of his attach\u00e9 case and raised it toward me. It had a silencer on the barrel.\n\nI froze, shocked. (And don't try to claim that you did anything different the first time a government bureaucrat pulled a gun on you.)\n\nFortunately, I eventually found my tongue. \"Wait!\" I said, raising my hands. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Thanks for the sands, kid,\" the man said, and moved as if to pull the trigger.\n\nAt that moment something massive crashed through the wall of my house \u2013 something that looked a lot like the front end of an old Model-T Ford. I cried out, dodging to the side, and the caseworker stumbled to the ground in the chaos.\n\nThe man who called himself Grandpa Smedry sat happily in the driver's seat. A chunk of smoke-damaged ceiling fell down onto the hood of the car, throwing up a puff of white dust. The old man poked his head out the window.\n\n\"Lad,\" he said, \"might I point out that you have two choices right now? You can get in the car with me, or you can stay here with the man holding a gun.\"\n\nI stood, dazed.\n\n\"You really don't have much time to decide,\" Grandpa Smedry said, leaning toward me, speaking in a kind of half whisper, as if he were sharing some kind of great secret.\n\nNow, I'd like to pause here and note that Grandpa Smedry was lying to me. I didn't have only two choices at that point \u2013 I had quite a few more than that. True, I could have chosen to stay in the room and get shot. I also could have chosen to get in the car. However, there were lots of other things I could have done. For instance, I could have run around the house flapping my arms and pretending that I was a penguin. The logical choice to make in this situation would have been to call the police on both of those maniacs.\n\nUnfortunately, I didn't think of penguins or police and instead did as Grandpa Smedry said, scrambling over and getting into the car.\n\nAs I stated at the beginning of the chapter, I really shouldn't have done this. I was soon to learn the dangers involved in following strange old men on quests. I don't want to give away any more of the story, but let me say that my fate at this point took a sharp turn toward altars, sacrifices, and evil Librarians.\n\nAnd possible some sharks.\n\nThe car backed out of the house, the tires leaving tracks in the lawn. I sat in the front passenger seat, still stunned, looking at the wreckage of the Sheldons' house. Bits of siding were falling off the outside wall, crushing Roy's prize tulips. This was more damage than I'd ever done to any foster home. This time it wasn't directly my fault, but\u2026 well, that didn't change the fact that the kitchen was no longer just burned but also had quite a large hole in it.\n\nWe turned onto the street in front of the house \u2013 the car puttering along at a modest speed. The caseworker didn't chase after us, but that didn't stop me from watching anxiously until the house disappeared in the distance.\n\nSomeone just tried to kill me, I thought, feeling numb. You may find it hard to believe \u2013 considering the number of things I'd broken in my life \u2013 but this was the first time someone had actually tried to shoot me. It was an unsettling feeling. A little like the way you feel when you have the flu, actually. Maybe there's a connection.\n\n\"Well, that was exciting!\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\nI was still staring out the window. The street passed outside, a suburban neighborhood distinctive only in that it looked pretty much like every other one in the nation. Calm two-story houses. Green lawns. Oak trees, shrubs, flower beds, all carefully maintained.\n\n\"He tried to kill me,\" I whispered.\n\nGrandpa Smedry snorted. \"Not very well. You'll understand eventually, lad, but pulling a gun on a Smedry isn't exactly the smartest thing a man can do. But that's behind us. Now we have to decide what to do next.\"\n\n\"Next?\"\n\n\"Of course. We can't just let them have those sands!\" Grandpa Smedry raised a hand and pointed at me. \"Don't you understand, lad? It's not just your life that's in danger here. This is the fate of an entire world we're juggling! The Free Kingdoms are already losing their war against the Librarians. With a tool like the Sands of Rashid, the Librarians will have just the edge they need to win. If we don't get the sands back before they're smelted \u2013 which will only take a few hours \u2013 it could lead to the overthrow of the Free Kingdoms themselves! We are civilization's only hope.\"\n\n\"I\u2026 see,\" I said.\n\n\"I don't think you do, lad. The Lenses smelted from that sand will contain the most powerful Oculatory Distortions either land has ever seen. Gathering those sands was your father's life's work. I can't believe you let the Librarians steal them. I'll be honest, lad \u2013 I had higher hopes for you. I really expected better. If only I hadn't come so late\u2026\"\n\nI sat quietly, looking out the windshield. Now, it's time you understood something about me. Despite what the stories like to say about my honor and my foresight, the truth is that I possess neither trait in large amounts. One trait I've always possessed, however, is rashness. Some call it irresponsibility; others call it spontaneity. Either way, I could rightly be called a somewhat reckless boy, not always prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions. In this case, of course, there was something more behind the decision I made. I had seen some very odd things that day. It occurred to me that if something as crazy as a gunman showing up in my house could happen, perhaps it could be true that this old man was my grandfather.\n\nSomeone had tried to kill me. My house was in a shambles. I was sitting in a hundred-year-old car with a madman. What the heck, I thought. This might be fun.\n\nI turned, focusing on the man who claimed to be my grandfather. \"I\u2026 didn't let them steal the sand,\" I found myself saying.\n\nGrandpa Smedry turned to me.\n\n\"Or, well, I did,\" I said, \"but I let them take the sand on purpose, of course. I wanted to follow them and see what they tried to do with it. After all, how else are we going to uncover their dastardly schemes?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry paused, then he smiled. His eyes twinkled knowingly, and I saw for the first time a hint of wisdom in the old man. Grandpa Smedry didn't seem to believe what I had said, but he reached over anyway, clapping me on the arm. \"Now that's talking like a Smedry!\"\n\n\"Now,\" I said, holding up a finger. \"I want to make something very clear. I do not believe a word of what you have told me up to this point.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"I'm only going with you because someone just tried to kill me. You see, I am a somewhat reckless boy and am not always prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions.\"\n\n\"A Smedry trait for certain,\" Grandpa Smedry noted.\n\n\"In fact,\" I said, \"I think that you are a loon and likely not even my grandfather at all.\"\n\n\"Very well, then,\" Grandpa Smedry said, smiling.\n\nI paused as the old car turned a corner, moving with a very smooth speed. We were leaving the neighborhood behind, turning onto a commercial street. We began to pass convenience stores, service stations, and the occasional fastfood restaurant.\n\nIt was at that point that I realized Grandpa Smedry had taken his hands off the wheel sometime during the conversation, and now sat with his hands in his lap, smiling happily. I jumped in surprise.\n\n\"Grandpa!\" I yelped. \"The steering wheel!\"\n\n\"Drastic Drakes!\" Grandpa Smedry exclaimed. \"I nearly forgot!\" He grabbed the steering wheel as the car turned another corner. Grandpa Smedry proceeded to turn the wheel back and forth, seeming in random directions, as a child might play with a toy steering wheel. The car didn't respond to his motions but moved smoothly along the street, picking up speed.\n\n\"Good eye, lad!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"We always have to keep up appearances, eh?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026 yes,\" I said. \"Is the car driving itself, then?\"\n\n\"Of course. What good would it be if it didn't? Why, you'd have to concentrate so much that it wouldn't be worth the effort. Might as well walk, I say!\"\n\nRight, I thought.\n\nThose of you from the Free Kingdoms might be familiar with silimatic engines and can \u2013 perhaps - determine how they could be used to mimic a car. Of course, if you're from the Free Kingdoms, you probably have only a vague idea what a car is in the first place, since you're used to much larger vehicles. (It's kind of a like a silimatic crawler with wheels instead of legs, though people treat them more like horses. Only, unlike horses, they aren't alive \u2013 and when they poop, environmentalists get mad.)\n\n\"So,\" I asked, \"where are we going?\"\n\n\"There's only one place the Librarians would have taken an artifact as powerful as the Sands of Rashid,\" Grand Smedry said. \"Their local base of operations.\"\n\n\"That would be\u2026 the library\"\n\n\"Where else? The downtown library, to be exact. We'll have to be very careful infiltrating that place.\"\n\nI cocked my head. \"I've been there before. Last I checked, it wasn't too hard to get in.\"\n\n\"We don't have to just get in,\" Grand Smedry said. \"We have to infiltrate.\"\n\n\"And the difference is\u2026?\"\n\n\"One requires far more sneaking.\" Grandpa Smedry seemed quite delighted by the prospect.\n\n\"Ah,\" I said. \"Right, then. Are we going to need any\u2026 I don't know, special equipment for this? Or, perhaps, some more help?\"\n\n\"Ah. A very wise idea, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\nAnd the car suddenly jerked, turning onto a larger street. Cars passed on either side, whizzing off to their separate destinations, Grandpa Smedry's little black automobile puttering along happily in the center lane. Grandpa gave the wheel a few good twists, and we rode in silence.\n\nI kept glancing at the steering wheel, trying to sort out exactly what mechanism was controlling the vehicle. In my world, vehicles don't drive themselves, and men like Grandpa Smedry are generally kept in small padded rooms with lots of crayons.\n\nEventually (partially to keep myself from going mad from frustration) I decided to try conversation again. \"So,\" I said, \"why do you think that man tried to kill me?\"\n\n\"Because the Librarians got what they wanted from you, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"They have the sands, which we all knew would make their way to you eventually. Now that they have your inheritance, you're no longer an asset to them. In fact, you're a threat! They were right to be afraid of your Talent.\"\n\n\"My Talent?\"\n\n\"Breaking things. All Smedrys have a Talent, my boy. It's part of our lineage.\"\n\n\"So\u2026 you have one of these Talent things?\" I asked.\n\n\"Of course I do, lad!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I'm a Smedry, after all.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\nGrandpa smiled modestly. \"Well, I don't like to brag, but it's quite a powerful Talent indeed.\"\n\nI raised a skeptical eyebrow.\n\n\"You see,\" Grandpa Smedry said, \"I have the ability to arrive late to things.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" I said. \"Of course.\"\n\n\"I know, I know. I don't deserve such power, but I try to make good use of it.\"\n\n\"You are completely nuts, you know.\" It's always best to be blunt with people.\n\n\"Thank you!\" Grandpa Smedry said as the car began to slow. The vehicle pulled up to the pumps at a small gas station. I didn't recognize the brand \u2013 the sign hanging above the ridiculously high prices simply depicted the image of an upside-down teddy bear.\n\nOur doors swung open on their own. Grandpa hopped out of his seat and rushed over to meet the station attendant, who was approaching to fill up the tank.\n\nI frowned, still sitting in the car. The attendant was dressed in a pair of dirty overalls and no shirt. He was chewing on the end of a piece of straw, as one might see a farmer doing in old Hushlander movies, and he had on a large straw hat.\n\nGrandpa Smedry approached the man with an exaggerated look of nonchalance. \"Hello, good sir,\" Grandpa Smedry said, glancing around. \"I'd like a Philip, please.\"\n\n\"Of course, good sir,\" the attendant said, tipping his hat and accepting a couple of bills from Grandpa Smedry. The attendant approached the car, nodding to me, then took out one of the gasoline hoses and held it up against the side of the car, whistling pleasantly to himself.\n\n\"Come, Alcatraz!\" Grandpa Smedry said, walking up to the gas station's store. \"There isn't time!\"\n\nFinally, I just shook my head and climbed out of the car. Grandpa Smedry went inside, the screen door slamming behind him. I walked up, pulled open the screen door \u2013 threw the door handle over my shoulder as it broke off \u2013 then stepped inside after Grandpa Smedry.\n\nAnother attendant \u2013 also with straw in his mouth and a large hat on his head \u2013 stood leaning against the counter. The small \"store\" consisted of a single stand of snacks and a wall-sized cooler. The cooler was stocked completely with cans of motor oil, though a sign said ENJOY A COOL REFRESHING DRINK!\n\n\"Okay,\" I said, \"where exactly are you people finding straw to chew on in the middle of the city? It can't be all that easy to get.\"\n\n\"Quickly, now. Quickly!\" Grandpa Smedry gestured frantically from the back of the store. Glancing to either side, he said in a louder voice, \"I think I'll have a cool refreshing drink!\" Then he pulled open the cooler door.\n\nI froze in place.\n\nNow, it's very important to me that you understand that I am not stupid. It's perfectly all right if you end this book convinced that I'm not the hero that some reports claim me to be. However, I'd rather not everyone I meet presume me to be slow-witted. If that were the case, half of them would likely try and sell me insurance.\n\nThe truth is, however, that even clever people can be taken by surprise so soundly that they are at a loss for words. Or, at least, at a loss for words that make sense.\n\n\"Gak!\" I said.\n\nYou see. Now, before you judge me, place yourself in my position. Let's say that you had watched a crazy old man open up a cooler full of oilcans. You would have undoubtedly expected to see\u2026 well, a cooler full of oilcans on the other side.\n\nYou would not expect to see a room with a large hearth at the center, blazing with a cheery reddish-orange fire. You would not expect to see two men in full armor standing guard on either side of the door. Indeed, you would not expect to see a room \u2013 instead of a cooler full of oilcans \u2013 at all.\n\nPerhaps you would have said \"Gak\" too.\n\n\"Gak!\" I repeated.\n\n\"Would you stop that, boy?\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"There are absolutely no Gaks here. Why do you think we keep so much straw around? Now, come on!\" He stepped through the doorway into the room beyond.\n\nI approached slowly, then glanced at the other side of the open glass door \u2013 and saw oilcans cooling in their wall racks. I turned, looking through the doorway. It seemed as if I could see much more than I should have been able to. The two knights standing on either side of such a small doorway should have left no room to walk through, yet Grandpa Smedry had passed easily.\n\nI reached out, rapping lightly on one of the knight's breastplates.\n\n\"Please don't do that,\" a voice said from behind the faceplate.\n\n\"Oh,\" I said. \"Um, sorry.\" Still frowning to myself, I stepped into the room.\n\nIt was a large chamber. Far larger, I decided than could have possibly fit in the store. I could now see a rug set with thronelike chairs arranged to face the hearth in a homey manner (if your home is a medieval castle\u2026). To my left, there was a long, broad table, also set with chairs.\n\n\"Sing!\" Grandpa Smedry yelled, his voice echoing down a hallway to the right. \"Sing!\"\n\nIf he breaks into song, I think I might have to strangle myself\u2026 I thought, cringing.\n\n\"Lord Smedry?\" a voice called from down the hallway, and a huge figure rushed into sight.\n\nIf you've never seen a large Mokian man in sunglasses, a tunic, and tights before \u2013\n\nOkay. I'm going to assume that you've never seen a large Mokian man in sunglasses, a tunic, and tights. I certainly hadn't.\n\nThe man \u2013 apparently named Sing \u2013 was a good six and a half feet tall, and had dark hair and dark skin. He looked like he could be from Hawaii, or maybe Samoa or Tonga. He had the mass and girth of a linebacker and would have fit right in on the football field. Or, at least, he would have fit right in if he'd been wearing a football uniform, rather than a tunic \u2013 a type of garment that I still think looks silly. Bastille has pictures of me wearing one. If you ask her, she'll probably show them to you gleefully.\n\nOf course, if you do that, I'll probably have to hunt you down and kill you. Or dress you in a tunic and take pictures of you. I'm still not sure which is worse.\n\n\"Sing,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"We need to do a full library infiltration. Now.\"\n\n\"A library infiltration?\" Sing said excitedly.\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said hurriedly. \"Go get your cousin, and both of you get into your disguises. I need to gather my Lenses.\"\n\nSing rushed back the way he had come. Grandpa Smedry walked over to the wall on the other side of the hearth. Not sure what else to do, I followed, watching as Grandpa Smedry knelt beside what appeared to be a large box made entirely of black glass. Grandpa Smedry put his hand on it, closed his eyes, and the front of the box suddenly shattered.\n\nI jumped back, but Grandpa Smedry ignored the broken shards of black glass. He reached into the chest and pulled out a tray wrapped in red velvet. He set this on top of the box, unwrapping the cloth and revealing a small book and about a dozen pairs of spectacles, each with a slightly different tint of glass.\n\nGrandpa Smedry pulled open the front of his tuxedo jacket, then began to slip the spectacles into little pouches sewn into the lining of the garment. They hung like the watches on the inside of an illegal street peddler's coat.\n\n\"Something very strange is going on, isn't it?\" I finally asked.\n\n\"Yes, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, still arranging the spectacles.\n\n\"We're really going to go sneak into a library?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry nodded.\n\n\"Only, it's not really a library. But someplace more dangerous.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's really a library,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"What you haven't realized before is that all libraries are far more dangerous that you've always assumed.\"\n\n\"And we're going to break into this one,\" I repeated. \"A place filled with people who want to kill me.\"\n\n\"Most likely,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But what else can we do? We either infiltrate, or we let them make those sands into Lenses.\"\n\nThis isn't a joke, I began to realize. This man isn't actually crazy. Or, at least, the craziness includes much more than just him. I stood there for a moment, feeling overwhelmed, thinking about what I had seen.\n\n\"Well, all right, then,\" I finally said.\n\nNow, you Hushlanders may think that I took all of these strange experiences quite well. After all, it isn't every day that you get threatened with a gun, then discover a medieval dining room hiding inside the beverage cooler at a local gas station. However, maybe if you'd grown up with the magical ability to break almost anything you touched, then you would have been just as quick to accept unusual circumstances.\n\n\"Here, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, standing and picking up the final pair of spectacles. They were reddish tinted, like the pair Grandpa Smedry was currently wearing. \"These are yours. I've been saving them for you.\"\n\nI paused. \"I don't need glasses.\"\n\n\"You're an Oculator, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You'll always need glasses.\"\n\n\"Can't I wear sunglasses, like Sing?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry chuckled. \"You don't need Warrior's Lenses, lad. You can access abilities far more potent. Here, take these. They're Oculator's Lenses.\"\n\n\"What are Oculators?\" I asked.\n\n\"We are, my boy. Put them on.\"\n\nI frowned, but took the glasses. I put them on, then glanced around. \"Nothing looks different,\" I said, feeling disappointed. \"The room doesn't even look\u2026 redder.\"\n\nOf course not,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"The tints come from the sands they're made of and help us keep the Lenses straight. They're not intended to make things look different.\"\n\n\"I just\u2026 thought the glasses would do something.\"\n\n\"They do,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"They show you things that you need to see. It's just subtle, lad. Wear them for a while \u2013 let your eyes get used to them.\"\n\n\"All right\u2026.\" I glanced over as Grandpa Smedry knelt to put the tray back inside the broken box. \"What's that book?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry looked up \"Hmmm? This?\" He picked up the small book, handing it to me. I opened to the first page. It was filled with scribbles, as if made by a child.\n\n\"The Forgotten Language,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"We've been trying to decipher it for centuries \u2013 your father worked on that book for a while, before you were born. He thought its secrets might lead him to the Sands of Rashid.\"\n\n\"This isn't a language,\" I said. \"It's just a bunch of scribbles.\"\n\n\"Well, any language you don't understand would just look like scribbles, lad!\"\n\nI flipped through the pages of the book. It was filled with completely random circles, zigzags, loop-dee-loops, and the like. There were no patterns. Some of the pages only had a couple marks on them; others were so black with ink that they looked like a child's rendition of a tornado.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"No, I don't think so. A language has to make patterns! There's nothing like that in here.\"\n\n\"That's the big secret, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, taking back the book. \"Why do you think nobody, despite centuries of trying, has managed to break the code? The Incarna people \u2013 the ones who wrote in this language \u2013 held vast secrets. Unfortunately, nobody can read their records, and the Incarna disappeared many centuries ago.\"\n\nI wrinkled my brow at the strange comments. Grandpa Smedry stood up, stepping away from the glass box. And, suddenly, the shattered front of the box melted and reformed its glassy surface.\n\nI stepped back in shock. Then I reached up, suspiciously pulling off my glasses. Yet the box still sat pristine, as if it hadn't been broken in the first place.\n\n\"Restore Glass,\" Grandpa Smedry said, nodding toward the box. \"Only an Oculator can break it. Once he moves too far away, however, it will re-form into its previous shape. Makes for wonderful safes. It's even stronger than Builder's Glass, if used right.\"\n\nI slipped my Lenses back on.\n\n\"Tell me, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, laying a hand on my shoulder, \"why did you burn down your foster parents' kitchen?\"\n\nI started. That wasn't the question I'd been expecting. \"How did you know about that?\"\n\n\"Why, I'm an Oculator, of course.\"\n\nI just frowned.\n\n\"So why?\" he asked. \"Why burn it down?\"\n\n\"It was an accident,\" I replied.\n\n\"Was it?\"\n\nI looked away. Of course it was an accident, I thought, feeling a bit of shame. Why would I do something like that on purpose?\n\nGrandpa Smedry was studying me. \"You have a Talent for breaking things,\" he said. \"Or so you have said. Yet lighting fire to a set of drapes and ruining a kitchen with smoke doesn't seem like a use of that Talent. Particularly if you let the fire burn for a while before putting it out. That's not breaking. That seems more like destroying.\"\n\n\"I don't destroy,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"Why, then?\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\nI shrugged. What was he implying? Did he think I liked messing things up all the time? Did he think I liked being forced to move every few months? It seemed that every time I came to love someone, they decided that my Talent was just too much to handle.\n\nI felt a stab of loneliness but shoved it down.\n\n\"Ah,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You won't answer, I see. But I can still wonder, can't I? Why would a boy do such damage to the homes of such kind people? It seems like a perversion of his Talent. Yes, indeed\u2026\"\n\nI said nothing. Grandpa Smedry just smiled at me, then straightened his bow tie and checked his wristwatch. \"Garbled Greens! We're late. Sing! Quentin!\"\n\n\"We're ready, Uncle!\" a voice called from down the hallway.\n\n\"Ah, good,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Come, my boy. Let me introduce you to your cousins!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "Hushlanders, I'd like to take this opportunity to commend you for reading this book. I realize the difficulty you must have gone through to obtain it \u2013 after all, no Librarian is likely to recommend it, considering the secrets it exposes about their kind.\n\nActually, my experience has been that people generally don't recommend this kind of book at all. It is far too interesting. Perhaps you have had other kinds of books recommended to you. Perhaps, even, you have been given books by friends, parents, or teachers, then told that these books are the type you \"have to read.\" Those books are invariably described as \"important\" \u2013 which, in my experience, pretty much means that they're boring. (Words like meaningful and thoughtful are other good clues.)\n\nIf there is a boy in these kinds of books, he will not go on an adventure to fight against Librarians, paper monsters, and one-eyed Dark Oculators. In fact, the lad will not go on an adventure or fight against anything at all. Instead, his dog will die. Or, in some cases, his mother will die. If it's a really meaningful book, both his dog and his mother will die. (Apparently, most writers have something against dogs and mothers.)\n\nNeither my mother nor my dog dies in this book. I'm rather tired of those types of stories. In my opinion, such fantastical, unrealistic books \u2013 books in which boys live on mountains, families work on farms, or anyone has anything to do with the Great Depression \u2013 have a tendency to rot the brain. To combat such silliness, I've written the volume you now hold \u2013 a solid, true account. Hopefully, it will help anchor you in reality.\n\nSo, when people try to give you some book with a shiny round award on the cover, be kind and gracious, but tell them that you don't read \"fantasy,\" because you prefer stories that are real. Then come back here and continue your research on the cult of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world.\n\n\"This,\" Grandpa Smedry proclaimed, pointing to Sing, \"is your cousin Sing Sing Smedry. He's a specialist in ancient weapons.\"\n\nSing nodded modestly. He had exchanged his tunic for what appeared to be a formal kimono \u2013 though he still wore his dark sunglasses. The kimono was of a very rich dark blue silk and, though it fit him quite well, there was something\u2026 wrong about the entire presentation. More than just the fact that the kimono itself wasn't something a regular person in America wore. Sing's chest parted the front of the silk, and the loose garment hung tied about the waist with a large sash tucked beneath his massive stomach.\n\n\"Uh, nice to meet you Sing\u2026 Sing,\" I said.\n\n\"You can just call my Sing,\" the large man replied.\n\n\"Ask him what his Talent is,\" Grandpa whispered.\n\n\"Oh,\" I said. \"Um, what's your Talent, Sing?\"\n\n\"I can trip and fall to the ground,\" Sing said.\n\nI blinked. \"That's a Talent?\"\n\n\"It's not as grand as some, I know,\" Sing said, \"but it serves me well.\"\n\n\"And the kimono?\" I asked\n\n\"I come from a different kingdom than your grandfather,\" Sing said. \"I am from Mokia, while your grandfather and Quentin are from Melerand.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said. \"But what difference does that make?\"\n\n\"It means I have to wear a different disguise from the rest of you,\" Sing explained. \"That way, I won't stand out as much. If I look like a foreigner to America, people will ignore me.\"\n\nI paused. \"Whatever,\" I finally said.\n\n\"It makes perfect sense,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Trust me. We've researched this.\" He turned and pointed to the other man. \"Now, this is your cousin Quentin Smedry.\" Short and wiry, Quentin wore a sharp tuxedo like that of Grandpa Smedry, complete with a red carnation on the lapel. He had dark brown hair, pale skin, and freckles. Like Sing, he looked to be about thirty years old.\n\n\"Well met, young Oculator,\" Quentin said from behind his dark sunglasses.\n\n\"And what is your Talent?\" I dutifully asked.\n\n\"I can say things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.\"\n\n\"I thought everyone here had that Talent,\" I noted.\n\nNobody laughed. Free Kingdomers never get my jokes.\n\n\"He's also really sneaky,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\nQuentin nodded.\n\n\"Great,\" I said. \"So, are both of you\u2026 Oculators?\"\n\n\"Oh, goodness no,\" Sing said. \"We're cousins to the Smedry family, not members of the direct line.\"\n\n\"Didn't you notice the glasses?\" Grandpa Smedry asked. \"They're wearing Warrior's Lenses, one of the only kinds of Lenses that a non-Oculator can use.\"\n\n\"Um, yes,\" I said. \"Actually, I did notice the glasses. I\u2026 noticed the tuxedos too. Is there a reason you dress like that? If we go out like this, we'll kind of stand out, right?\"\n\n\"Maybe the young lord has a point,\" Sing said, rubbing his chin.\n\nLord? I thought. I had no idea what to make of that.\n\n\"Should we get Alcatraz a disguise too, Lord Smedry?\" Quentin asked my grandfather.\n\n\"No, no,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"He isn't supposed to wear a suit at his age. At least, I don't think\u2026\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" I said quickly.\n\nThe collection of Smedrys nodded.\n\nNow, many of you Hushlanders may be scoffing at the disguises used by the Smedry group. Before you pass judgment on them, realize that they were somewhat out of their element. Imagine if you were suddenly thrust into a different culture, with very little knowledge of its customs or fashions. Would you know the difference between a Rounsfield tunic and a Larkian tunic? Would you be able to distinguish when to wear a batoled and when to wear a carfoo? Would you even know where you wrap a Carlflogian wickerstrap? No? Well, that's because I just made all of those items up. But you didn't know that, did you?\n\nTherefore, my point is proven. All things considered, I think the Smedrys did quite well. I've seen other infiltration teams \u2013 ones without Grandpa Smedry, who is widely held as the Free Kingdoms' foremost expert on American culture and society. The last group that tried an infiltration without him ended up trying to sneak into the Federal Reserve Bank disguised as potted plants.\n\nThey got watered.\n\n\"Are we ready, then?\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"My grandson will be leading this infiltration. Our target is the central downtown library.\"\n\nSing and Quentin glanced at each other, looking a bit surprised. Grandpa had mentioned a library infiltration to Sing, but apparently the downtown library was not what he'd expected. It made me wonder, once again, what I was getting myself into.\n\n\"I realize this will be a most ambitious mission, gentlemen,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But we have no choice. Our goal is to recover the legendary Sands of Rashid, which the Librarians have acquired through some very clever scheming and plotting.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry turned, nodding to me. \"The sands belong to my grandson, and so he will be lead Oculator on this mission. Once we breach the initial stacks, we'll split into two groups and search for the sands. Gather as much information as you can, and recover the sands at all costs. Any questions?\"\n\nQuentin raised his hand. \"What exactly does this bag of sand do?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry wavered. \"we don't actually know,\" he admitted. \"Before this, nobody had ever managed to gather enough of them to smelt a Lens. Or, at least, nobody had managed to do it during our recorded history. There are vague legends, however. The Lenses of Rashid are supposed to be very powerful. They will be a great danger to the people of the Free Kingdoms if they are allowed to fall into Librarian hands.\"\n\nThe room fell silent. Finally, Sing raised a meaty hand. \"Does this mean I can bring weapons?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"Can I bring lots of weapons?\" Sing asked carefully.\n\n\"Whatever you deem necessary, Sing,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You're the specialist. But go quickly! We're going to be late.\"\n\nSing nodded, dashing back down his hallway.\n\n\"And you?\" Grandpa Smedry asked of Quentin.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" the short man said. \"But\u2026 my lord, don't you think we should tell Bastille what we're doing?\"\n\n\"Jabbering Jordans, no!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Absolutely not. I forbid it.\"\n\n\"She's not going to be happy\u2026.\" Quentin said.\n\n\"Nonsense,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"She enjoys being ignored \u2013 it gives her an excuse to be grumpy. Now, since we have to wait for Sing to get his weapons, I'm going to go get something to eat. I was clever enough to pack some lunches for myself and the lad. Coming Alcatraz?\"\n\nI shrugged, and we made our way out though the cooler \u2013 passing the armored knights \u2013 and walked back into the shop. Grandpa Smedry nodded to the two hillbilly attendants, then walked out toward his car, apparently going to grab the briefcases stuffed with food.\n\nI didn't follow him. At that point, I still felt a little overwhelmed by what was happening to me. Part of me couldn't believe what I had seen, so I decided to see if I could figure out how they were hiding that huge room inside. I turned, wandering around to the back of the small service station, then I carefully paced off the lengths of its walls.\n\nThe building was a rectangle, ten paces long on two sides, eighteen paces long on the other two. Yet the room inside had been far larger. A basement? I wondered. (Yes, I realize that it took me quite some time to accept that the place was magical. You Free Kingdomers really have no idea what it's like to live in Librarian-controlled areas. So, stop judging me and just keep reading.)\n\nI kept at it, trying to figure out some logical explanation. I squatted down on the hot, tar-stained concrete, trying to find a slope in the ground. I stood up, eyeing the back of the building, which was set with a small window. I grabbed a broken chair from a nearby Dumpster, then climbed up to peek in the window.\n\nI couldn't see anything through the dark glass. I pressed my face against it \u2013 bumping my glasses against the window \u2013 and shaded the sunlight with my hand, but I still couldn't see inside.\n\nI leaned back, sighing. But\u2026 then it seemed as if I could see something. Not through the window, but alongside it. The edges of the window seemed to fuzz just a little bit, and I got the distinct, strange impression that I could see through the wall's siding.\n\nI pulled off my glasses. The illusion disappeared, and the wall looked perfectly normal. I put them back on, and nothing really changed. Yet, as I stared at the wall, I felt the odd sense again. As if I could just barely see something. I cocked my head, teetering on the broken chair. Finally, I reached up a hand, laying it against the white siding.\n\nThen I broke it.\n\nI didn't really do much. I didn't have to twist, pull, or yank. I just rested my hand against the wall for a moment, and one of the siding planks popped free and toppled to the ground. Through the broken section, I could see the true wall of the building.\n\nGlass. The entire wall was made of a deep lavender glass.\n\nI saw through the siding, I thought. Was it my glasses that let me do that?\n\nA footstep sounded on the gravel behind me.\n\nI jumped, almost slipping off the chair. And there he was: the man from my house, the caseworker \u2013 or whatever he was \u2013 with the suit and the gun. I wobbled, feeling terror rise again. Of course he would chase us. Of course he would find us. What was I thinking? Why hadn't I just called the police?\n\n\"Lad?\" Grandpa Smedry's voice called. He appeared around the corner, holding an open briefcase smeared with ketchup. \"Your sand-burger is ready. Aren't you hungry?\"\n\nThe man with the gun spun around, weapon still raised. \"Don't move!\" he yelled nervously. \"Stay right there!\"\n\n\"Hmm?\" Grandpa Smedry asked, still walking.\n\n\"Grandpa!\" I screamed as the caseworker pulled the trigger.\n\nThe gun went off.\n\nThere was a loud crack, and a chunk of siding blew off the building right in front of Grandpa Smedry. The old man continued to walk along, smiling to himself, looking completely relaxed.\n\nThe caseworker fired again, then again. Both times, the bullets hit the wall right in front of Grandpa Smedry.\n\nNow, a true hero would have tackled the man who was shooting his grandfather, or done something else equally heroic. I am not a true hero. I stood frozen with shock.\n\n\"Here now,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"Looking desperate, the caseworker pointed his gun back at me and pulled the trigger. The consequences, of course, were immediate.\n\nThe clip dropped out of the bottom of the gun.\n\nThe top of the weapon fell off.\n\nThe gun's trigger popped free, propelled by a broken spring.\n\nThe screws fell out of the gun's sides, dropping to the pavement.\n\nThe caseworker widened his eyes in disbelief, watching as the last part of the handle fell to pieces in his hand. In a final moment of indignity, the dying gun belched up a bit of metal \u2013 an unfired bullet \u2013 which spun in the air a few times before clicking down to the ground.\n\nThe man stared at the pieces of his weapon.\n\nGrandpa Smedry paused beside me. \"I think you broke it,\" he whispered to me.\n\nThe caseworker turned and scrambled away. Grandpa Smedry watched him go, a sly smile on his lips.\n\n\"What did you do?\" I asked.\n\n\"Me?\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"No, you're the one who did that! At a distance, even! I've rarely seen a Talent work with such power. Though it's a shame to ruin a good antique weapon like that.\"\n\n\"I\u2026\" I looked at the gun pieces, my heart thumping. \"It couldn't have been me. I've never done anything like that before.\"\n\n\"Have you never been threatened by a weapon before today?\" Grandpa Smedry asked.\n\n\"Well, no.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry nodded. \"Panic instinct. Your Talent protects you \u2013 even at a distance \u2013 when threatened. It's a good thing that he attacked with such a primitive weapon; Talents are much more powerful against them. Honestly, you'd think the Librarians would know not to send someone with a gun against a Smedry of the true line. They obviously underestimate you.\"\n\n\"What am I doing here?\" I whispered. \"They're going to kill me.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You're a Smedry. We're made of tougher stuff than the Librarians give us credit for. Ruling the Hushlands for so long has made them sloppy.\"\n\nI stood quietly. Then I looked up. \"We're really going to go into the library? The place where these guys come from? Isn't that kind of\u2026 stupid?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said, speaking \u2013 for once \u2013 with a quiet solemnity. \"You can stay back, if you wish. I know how this must all seem to you. Overwhelming. Terrifying. Strange. But you must understand me when I say our task is vital. We've made a terrible mistake \u2013 I've made a terrible mistake \u2013 by letting those sands get into the wrong hands. I'm going to make it right, before thousands upon thousands of people suffer.\"\n\n\"But\u2026 isn't there anyone else who could do this?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry shook his head. \"Those sands will be forged into Lenses before the day is out. Our only chance \u2013 the world's only chance \u2013 is to get them before that happens.\"\n\nI nodded slowly. \"Then I'm going,\" I said. \"You can't leave me behind.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't dream of it,\" Grandpa Smedry said. Then he glanced up at the wall where I had broken it. \"You do that?\"\n\nI nodded again.\n\n\"Nagging Nixes! You really do have quite the skill for breaking things,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Must have been hard for you when you were younger.\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"What kinds of things can you break?\" Grandpa Smedry asked.\n\n\"All kinds of things,\" I said. \"Doors, electronics, tables. Once I broke a chicken.\"\n\n\"A chicken?\"\n\nI nodded. \"It was on a field trip. I got\u2026 kind of frustrated, and I picked up a chicken. When I put it down, it immediately lost all of its feathers, and from then on refused to eat anything but cat food.\"\n\n\"Breaking living things\u2026\" Grandpa Smedry mumbled to himself. \"Extraordinary. Untamed, yes, but extraordinary nonetheless\u2026\"\n\nI pointed at the building, hoping to change the subject. \"It's a glass box.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Expander's Glass \u2013 if you make space inside of it, you can push out the walls inside without pushing out the walls on the outside.\"\n\n\"That's impossible. It disobeys the laws of physics.\" (We Hushlanders pay a lot of attention to physics.)\n\n\"That's just Librarian talk,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You've got a lot to learn, lad. Come on, we need to get moving. We're late!\"\n\nI allowed myself to be led away, past the three bullet holes in the siding. \"They missed,\" I said, almost to myself. \"It's a good thing that man had such bad aim.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry laughed. \"Bad aim! He didn't have a chance of hitting me. I arrived late to every shot. Your Talent can do some great things, my boy, but it's not the only powerful ability around! I've been arriving late to my own death since before you were born. In fact, once I was so late to an appointment that I got there before I left!\"\n\nI paused, trying to work through that last statement, but Grandpa Smedry waved me on. We rounded the building. Quentin and Sing stood with one of the station attendants, talking quietly. Sing had a good dozen different guns strapped to his body. He wore two holsters on each leg, one holster around each upper arm, and one underneath each arm. These were complemented by a couple of uzis tucked into his sash, and what looked like a shotgun tied to his back in kind of swordlike fashion.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"He's not supposed to show them off like that, is he?\"\n\n\"Um, no,\" I said.\n\nCould we peace bond them, you think?\"\n\n\"I don't know what that is,\" I said, \"but I doubt it would help.\" Still, after getting shot at, the sight of Sing with all those weapons did make me feel a little more comfortable. Until I realized that, if we were going to be bringing an arsenal like that, what would our enemies have?\n\n\"Ah, well,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I already told him he could bring them. We can hide them in a bag or something. They're really not that dangerous \u2013 it's not like he's got a sword or something. Anyway, we need to get moving, we're \u2013\"\n\n\"-- late,\" I said. \"Yes, I know.\"\n\n\"Good, then let's \u2013\"\n\nAt this point, you should be very annoyed with people getting interrupted midsentence. I assure you that I feel the same way. In fact, I think \u2013\n\nA silver sports car screeched into the parking lot. Its windows were tinted the deepest black \u2013 even the windshield \u2013 and it had a sleek, ominous design, the make and model of which I couldn't quite place. It was like every spy car I'd ever seen melded into one.\n\nThe door burst open, and a girl \u2013 about my age \u2013 jumped out. Her hair was silvery, matching the car's paint, and she wore a fashionable black skirt and silver jacket, and carried a black handbag.\n\nShe appeared to be very, very angry.\n\n\"Smedry!\" she snapped, swatting her purse at Sing as he moved too slowly to get out of her way.\n\n\"What?\" I asked, jumping back slightly.\n\n\"Not you, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said with a sigh. \"She means me.\"\n\n\"What?\" I asked. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"Nothing much,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I just kind of left her behind. That's Bastille, lad. She's our team's knight.\"\n\nIf I'd had any sense, I'd have run away right then."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "At this point, perhaps you Hushlanders are beginning to doubt the truth of this narrative. You have seen several odd and inexplicable things happen. (Though, just as a warning, the story so far has actually been quite tame. Just wait until we get to the part with the talking dinosaurs.) Some readers might even think that I'm just making this story up. You might think that everything in this book is dreamy silliness.\n\nNothing could be further from the truth.\n\nThis book is serious. Terribly serious. Your skepticism results from a lifetime of training in the Librarians' school system, where you were taught all kinds of lies. Indeed, you'd probably never even heard of the Smedrys, despite the fact that they are the most famous family of Oculators in the entire world. In most parts of the Free Kingdoms, being a Smedry is considered equivalent to being nobility.\n\n(If you wish to perform a fun test, next time you are in history class, ask your teacher about the Smedrys. If your teacher is a Librarian spy, he or she will get red-faced and give you a detention. If, on the other hand, your teacher is innocent, he or she will simply be confused, then likely give you a detention.)\n\nRemember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a \"fantasy\" novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.\n\nRutabaga.\n\n\"That is a knight?\" I asked, pointed at the silver-haired girl.\n\n\"Unfortunately,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"But she's a girl!\" I said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"and a very dangerous one, I might add. She was sent to protect me.\"\n\n\"Sent?\" I said. \"Who sent her, then?\" And is she supposed to protect from Librarians, or from yourself?\n\nBastille stalked right up to Grandpa Smedry, placed her hands on her hips, and glared at him. \"I'd stab you with something if I didn't know that you'd arrive too late to get hurt.\"\n\n\"Bastille, my dear,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"How pleasant. Of course I didn't mean to leave you behind. You see, I was running late, and I needed to go \u2013\"\n\nBastille held up a hand to silence Grandpa, then glared at me. \"Who is he?\"\n\n\"My grandson,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"Another Smedry?\" she asked. \"I have to try to protect four of you now?\"\n\n\"Bastille, dear,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"No need to get upset. He won't be much trouble. Will you Alcatraz?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026 no,\" I said. That was, of course, an absolute lie. But would you have said anything different?\n\nBastille narrowed her eyes. \"Somehow I doubt that. What are you planning, old man?\"\n\n\"Nothing to worry about,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Just a little infiltration.\"\n\n\"Of?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"The downtown library,\" Grandpa Smedry said, then smiled innocently.\n\n\"What?\" Bastille said. \"Honestly, can't I even leave you alone for half a day? Shattering Glass! What would make you want to infiltrate that place?\"\n\n\"They have the Sands of Rashid,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"So? We've got plenty of sand.\"\n\n\"These sands are very important,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"It's an Oculator sort of thing.\"\n\nBastille's expression darkened a bit at that comment. She threw her hands into the air. \"Whatever,\" she said. \"I assume we're late.\"\n\n\"Very,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"Fine.\" She stabbed a finger at me; I barely suppressed a tense jump. \"You, get in my car. You can fill me in on the mission. We'll meet you there, old man.\"\n\n\"Lovely,\" Grandpa Smedry said, looking relieved.\n\n\"I \u2013 \" I began.\n\n\"Must I remind you, Alcatraz,\" Grandpa Smedry said, \"that you shouldn't swear? Now, we're late! Get moving!\"\n\nI paused. \"Swear?\" I said. However, my confusion gave Grandpa Smedry a perfect chance to escape, and I caught sight of the man's eyes twinkling as he jumped into his car, Quentin and Sing joining him.\n\n\"For an old man who arrives late to everything,\" I noted, \"he certainly is spry.\"\n\n\"Come on, Smedry!\" Bastille growled, climbing back into her sleek car.\n\nI sighed, then rounded the vehicle and pulled open the passenger side door. I tossed the handle to the side as it broke off, then climbed in. Bastille rapped her knuckles on the dashboard, and the car started. Then she reached for the gear shift, throwing it into reverse.\n\n\"Uh, doesn't the car drive itself?\" I asked.\n\n\"Sometimes,\" Bastille said. \"It can do both \u2013 it's a hybrid. We're trying to get closer to things that look like real Hushlander vehicles.\"\n\nWith that, the car burst into motion.\n\nNow, I had been very frightened on several different occasions in my life. The most frightening of these involved an elevator and a mime. Perhaps the second most frightening involved a caseworker and a gun.\n\nBastille's driving, however, quickly threatened to become number three.\n\n\"Aren't you supposed to be some sort of bodyguard?\" I asked, furiously working to find a seat belt. There didn't appear to be one.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Bastille said. \"So?\"\n\n\"So, shouldn't you avoid killing me in a car wreck?\"\n\nBastille frowned, spinning the wheel and taking a corner at a ridiculous speed. \"I don't know what you're talking about.\"\n\nI sighed, settling into my seat, telling myself that the car probably had some sort of mystical device to protect its occupants. (I was wrong, of course. Both Oculator powers and silimatic technology have to do with glass, and I seriously doubt that an air bag made of \u2013 or filled with \u2013 glass would be all that effective. Amusing, perhaps, but not effective.)\n\n\"Hey,\" I said. \"How old are you?\"\n\n\"Thirteen,\" Bastille replied.\n\n\"Should you be driving, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"I don't see why not.\"\n\n\"You're too young,\" I said.\n\n\"Says who?\"\n\n\"Says the law.\"\n\nI could see Bastille narrow her eyes, and her hands gripped the wheel even tighter. \"Maybe Librarian law,\" she muttered.\n\nThis, I thought, is probably not a topic to pursue further. \"So,\" I said, trying something different. \"What is your Talent?\"\n\nBastille gritted her teeth, glaring out through the windshield.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked.\n\n\"You don't have to rub it in, Smedry.\"\n\nGreat. \"You\u2026 don't have a Talent, then?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" she said. \"I'm a Crystin.\"\n\n\"A what?\" I asked.\n\nBastille turned \u2013 an action that made me rather uncomfortable, as I thought she should have kept watching the road \u2013 and gave me the kind of look that implied that I had just said something very, very stupid. (And, indeed, I had said something very stupid. Fortunately, I made up for it by doing something rather clever \u2013 as you will see shortly.)\n\nBastille turned her eyes back on the road just in time to avoid running over a man dressed like a large slice of pizza. \"So you're really him, then? The one old Smedry keeps talking about?\"\n\nThis intrigued me. \"He's mentioned me to you?\"\n\nBastille nodded. \"Twice a year or so we have to come back to this area and see where you've moved. Old Smedry always manages to lose me before he actually gets to your house \u2013 he claims I'll stand out or something. Tell me, did you really knock down one of your foster parents' houses?\"\n\nI shifted uncomfortably. \"That rumor is exaggerated,\" I said. \"It was just a storage shed.\"\n\nBastille nodded, eyes narrowing, as if for some reason she had a grudge against sheds to go along with her apparent psychopathic dislike of Librarians.\n\n\"So\u2026\" I said slowly. \"How does a thirteen-year-old girl become a knight anyway?\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\" Bastille asked, taking a screeching corner.\n\nAnd here's where I proved my cleverness: I remained silent.\n\nBastille seemed to relax a bit. \"Look,\" she said. \"I'm sorry. I'm not very good with people. They annoy me. That's probably why I ended up in a job that lets me beat them up.\"\n\nIs that supposed to be comforting? I wondered.\n\n\"Plus,\" she said, \"you're a Smedry \u2013 and Smedrys are trouble. They're reckless, and they don't like to think about the consequences of their actions. That means trouble for me. See, my job is to keep you alive. It's like\u2026 sometimes you Smedrys try to get yourselves killed just so I'll get in trouble.\"\n\n\"I'll try my best to avoid something like that,\" I said honestly. Thought her comment did spark a thought in my head. Now that I had begun to accept the things happening around me, I was actually beginning to think of Grandpa Smedry as \u2013 well \u2013 my grandfather. And that meant\u2026 My parents, I thought. They might actually be involved in this. They might actually have sent me that bag of sands.\n\nThey would have been Smedrys too, of course. So, were they some of the ones that \"got themselves killed,\" as Bastille so nicely put it? Or, like all these other relatives I was suddenly learning I had, were my parents still around somewhere?\n\nThat was a depressing thought. A lot of us foster children don't like to consider ourselves orphans. It's an outdated term, in my opinion. It brings to mind images of scrawny, dirty-faced thieves living on the street and getting meals from good-hearted nuns. I wasn't an orphan \u2013 I had lots of parents. I just never stayed with any of them all that long.\n\nI'd rarely bothered to consider my real parents, since Ms. Fletcher had never been willing to answer questions about them. Somehow, I found the prospect of their survival to be even more depressing that the thought of them being dead.\n\nWhy did you burn down your foster parents' kitchen, lad? Grandpa Smedry had asked. I quickly turned away from that line of thinking, focusing again on Bastille.\n\nShe was shaking her head, still muttering about the Smedrys who get themselves into trouble. \"Your grandfather,\" she said, \"he's the worst. Normal people avoid Inner Libraria. The Librarians have enough minions in our own kingdoms to be plenty threatening. But Leavenworth Smedry? Fighting them isn't nearly dangerous enough for him. He has to live as a spy inside of the shattering Hushlands themselves! And of course, he drags me with him.\n\n\"Now he wants in infiltrate a library. And not just any library but the regional headquarters \u2013 the biggest library in three states.\" She paused, glancing at me. \"You think I have good reason to be annoyed?\"\n\n\"Definitely,\" I said, again proving my cleverness.\n\n\"That's what I thought,\" Bastille said. Then she slammed on the brakes.\n\nI smashed against the dash, nearly losing my glasses. I groaned, sitting back. \"What?\" I asked, holding my head.\n\n\"What what?\" Bastille said, pushing open the door. \"We're here.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" I opened my door, dropping the inside handle to the street as it came off in my hand. (This kind of thing becomes second nature to you after you break off your first hundred or so door handles.)\n\nBastille had parked on the side of the street, directly across from the downtown library \u2013 a wide, single-story building set on a street corner. The area around us was familiar to me. The downtown wasn't extremely huge \u2013 not like that of a city like Chicago or L.A. \u2013 but it did have a smattering of large office buildings and hotels. These towered behind us; we were only a few blocks away from the city center.\n\nBastille rapped the hood of her car. \"Go find a place to park,\" she told it. It immediately started up, then backed away.\n\nI raised an eyebrow. \"Handy, that,\" I noted. Like Grandpa Smedry's car, this one had no visible gas cap. I wonder what powers it.\n\nThe answer to that, of course, was sand. Silimatic sand, to be precise \u2013 sometimes called steamsand. But I really don't have room to go into that now \u2013 even if its discovery was what eventually led to the break between silimatic technology and regular Hushlander technology. And that was kind of the foundation for the Librarians breaking off of the Free Kingdoms and creating the Hushlands.\n\nKind of.\n\n\"Old Smedry won't be here for a few more minutes,\" Bastille said, standing with her handbag over her shoulder. \"He'll be late. How does the library look?\"\n\n\"Umm\u2026 like a library?\" I said.\n\n\"Funny, Smedry,\" she said flatly. \"Very funny.\"\n\nNow, I generally know when I'm being funny. At this moment, I did not believe that I was. I looked over at the building, trying to decide what Bastille had meant.\n\nAnd, as I stared at it, something seemed to\u2026 change about the library. It wasn't anything I could distinctly put my finger on; it just grew darker somehow. More threatening. The windows appeared to curl slightly, like horns, and the stonework shadows took on a menacing cast.\n\n\"It looks\u2026 dangerous,\" I said.\n\n\"Well, of course,\" Bastille said. \"It's a library.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"What else should I look for, then?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said. \"I'm no Oculator.\"\n\nI squinted. As I watched, the library seemed to\u2026 stretch. \"It's not just one story,\" I said with surprise. \"It looks like three.\"\n\n\"We knew that already,\" Bastille said. \"Try for less permanent auras.\"\n\nWhat does that mean? I wondered, studying the building. It now looked far larger, far more grand, to my eyes. \"The top two floors look\u2026 thinner than the bottom floor. Like they're squeezing in slightly.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" Bastille said. \"That's probably a population aura \u2013 it means the library isn't very full today. Most of the Librarians must be out on missions. That's good for us. Any dark windows?\"\n\n\"One,\" I said, noticing it for the first time. \"It's jet-black, like it's tinted.\"\n\n\"Shattering Glass,\" Bastille muttered.\n\n\"What?\" I asked.\n\n\"Dark Oculator,\" Bastille said. \"What floor?\"\n\n\"Third,\" I said. \"North corner.\"\n\n\"We'll want to stay away from there, then.\"\n\nI frowned. \"I'm guessing a Dark Oculator is something dangerous, right?\"\n\n\"They're like super Librarians,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Not all Librarians are Oculators?\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes at me. \"Of course not,\" she said. \"Very few people are Oculators. Smedrys on the main line and\u2026 a few others. Regardless, Dark Oculators are very, very dangerous.\"\n\nWell, then, I said. \"If I had something valuable \u2013 like the Sands of Rashid \u2013 then I'd keep them with him. So, that's probably the first place we should go.\"\n\nBastille looked at me, eyes narrowing. \"Just like a Smedry. If you die, I'm never going to get promoted!\"\n\n\"How comforting,\" I said, then nodded at the library. \"I'm seeing something else about the building. I think\u2026 some of the windows are glowing just a bit.\"\n\n\"Which ones?\"\n\n\"All of them, actually,\" I said, cocking my head. \"Even the black one. It's\u2026 a little strange.\"\n\n\"There's a lot of Oculatory power in there. Strong Lenses, powerful sands, that sort of thing. They're making the glass charge with power by association.\"\n\nI reached up, sliding the glasses down on my nose. I still couldn't quite tell if I was seeing actual images, or if the light was just playing tricks on me. The changes were so subtle \u2013 even the stretching \u2013 that they didn't even seem like changes at all. More like impressions.\n\nI pushed the glasses back up, then glanced at Bastille. \"You certainly seem to know a lot about this \u2013 especially for someone who says she's no Oculator.\"\n\nBastille folded her arms, looking away.\n\n\"So how do you know all of this?\" I asked. \"About the Dark Oculator and the library seeming empty?\"\n\n\"Anyone would know those auras,\" she snapped. \"They're simple, really. Honestly, Smedry. Even someone raised by Librarians should know that.\"\n\n\"I wasn't raised by Librarians,\" I said. \"I was raised by regular people \u2013 good people.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Bastille said. \"Then why did you work so hard to destroy their houses?\"\n\n\"Look, aren't knights supposed to be a little less\u2026 annoying?\"\n\nBastille stood upright, sniffing angrily. Then she swung her purse straight at my head. I started but remained where I was. The handbag's strap will break, I thought. It won't be able to hit me.\n\nAnd so, of course, it smashed right into my face. It was surprisingly heavy, as if Bastille had packed a brick or two inside, just in case she had to whack the odd Smedry in the head. I stepped backward \u2013 half from the impact, half from surprise \u2013 and stumbled, falling to the ground. My head banged against the streetlamp, and I immediately heard a crack up above.\n\nThe lamp's bulb shattered on the ground beside me.\n\nOh, sure, I thought, rubbing my head. That breaks.\n\nBastille sniffed with satisfaction, as she looked down at me, but I caught a glimmer of surprise in her eyes \u2013 as if she too hadn't expected to be able to hit me.\n\n\"Stop making so much noise,\" she said. \"People will notice.\" Behind her, Grandpa Smedry's little black car finally puttered up the street, coming to a stop beside us. I could see Sing smushed into the backseat, obscuring the entire back window.\n\nGrandpa Smedry climbed perkily out of the car as I stood rubbing my jaw. \"what happened?\" he asked, glancing at the broken light, then at me, then at Bastille.\n\n\"Nothing,\" I said.\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled, eyes twinkling, as if he knew exactly what had happened. \"Well,\" he said, \"should we be off, then?\"\n\nI nodded, straightening my glasses. \"Let's go break in to the library.\"\n\nAnd once again, I considered just how strange my life had become during the last two hours.\n\nRutabaga."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Kindly pretend that you own a mousetrap factory.\n\nNow, I realize that some of this narrative still might feel a little far-fetched to you. For instance, you might wonder why the Librarians haven't captured Grandpa Smedry and his little team of spies long before they attempted this particular infiltration. My friends do \u2013 as you have undoubtedly noticed \u2013 stand out, with their self-driving cars, odd disguises and near-lethal handbags.\n\nThis brings us back to your mousetrap factory. How is it doing? Are profits up? Ah, that's very pleasant.\n\nA mousetrap factory \u2013 as you well know, since you own one \u2013 creates mousetraps. These mousetraps are used to kill mice. However, you factory is in a very nice, clean part of town. That area itself has never had a problem with mice \u2013 your mousetraps are sold to people who live near fields, where mice are far more common.\n\nSo, do you set mousetraps in your own factory? Of course not. You've never seen any mice there. And yet, because of this, if a small family of mice did somehow sneak into your factory, they might have a very nice time living there, as there are no traps to kill them.\n\nThis, friends, is called irony. Your mousetrap factory could itself become infested with mice. In a similar way, the Librarians are very good at patrolling the borders of their lands, keeping out enemy Oculators like Grandpa Smedry. Yet they don't expect to find mice like Grandpa Smedry hiding in the centers of their cities.\n\nAnd that is why two men in tuxedos, one very large Mokian in sunglasses and a kimono, one young girl with a soldier's grace, and a very confused young Oculator in a green jacket could walk right up to the downtown library without drawing too much Librarian attention.\n\nBesides, you've seen the kinds of people who walk around downtown, haven't you?\n\n\"All right, Smedry,\" Bastille said to Grandpa. \"What's the plan?\"\n\n\"Well, first I'll take an Oculatory reading of the building,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"Done,\" Bastille said tersely. \"Low Librarian population, high Oculatory magic content, and a very nasty fellow on the third floor.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry squinted at the library through his reddish glasses. \"Why, yes. How did you know?\"\n\nBasille nodded to me.\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled broadly. \"Getting used to the Lenses this quickly! You show quite a bit of promise, lad. Quite a bit indeed!\"\n\nI shrugged \"Bastille did the interpreting. I just described what I saw.\"\n\n\"Was this before or after she smacked you with her purse?\" Quentin asked. The short man watched the conversation with amusement, while Sing poked around in the gutter. Sing had, fortunately, put away his weapons \u2013 and was now carrying them in a large gym bag, which clashed horribly with his kimono.\n\n\"Well,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Well, well. Sneaking into the downtown library at last! I think our base infiltration plan should work, wouldn't you say, Quentin?\"\n\nThe wiry man nodded. \"Cantaloupe, fluttering paper makes a duck.\"\n\nI frowned. \"What is that supposed to mean?\"\n\n\"Don't mind him,\" Bastille said. \"He says things that don't make sense.\"\n\nHis Talent, I thought. Right.\n\n\"And what, exactly,\" Bastille said to Grandpa Smedry, \"is your base infiltration plan?\"\n\n\"Quentin takes a few minutes scouting and watching the lobby, just to make sure all's clear,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Then Sing makes a distraction and we all sneak into the employee access corridors. There, we split up \u2013 one Oculator per team \u2013 and search out powerful sources of Oculation. Those sands should glow like nothing else!\"\n\n\"And if we find the sands?\" I asked.\n\n\"Take them and get out. Sneakily, of course.\"\n\n\"Huh.\" Bastille paused. \"Why, that actually sounds like a good plan.\" She seem surprised.\n\n\"Of course it is,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"We spent long enough working on it! I've worried for years that someday we might have to infiltrate this place.\"\n\nWorried? I thought. The fact that even Grandpa Smedry found the infiltration a bit unnerving made it seem even more dangerous than it had before.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Quentin, be off! We're late already!\"\n\nThe short man nodded, adjusted the carnation on his lapel, then took a deep breath and ducked through the building's broad glass doors.\n\n\"Grandfather,\" I said, glancing at Grandpa Smedry. \"These people want to kill me, right?\"\n\n\"Don't feel bad,\" he said, removing his Lenses. \"They undoubtedly want to kill all of us.\"\n\n\"Right\", I said. \"So, shouldn't we be\u2026 hiding or something? Not just standing in plain sight?\"\n\n\"Well, answer me this,\" he said. \"That man with the gun \u2013 had you seen him before?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did he recognize you?\"\n\n\"No, actually,\" I said. \"He asked who I was before he tried to shoot me.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" Grandpa Smedry said, strolling over to glance in the library window. \"You are a very special person, Alcatraz \u2013 and because of that, I suspect that those who watch over you didn't want their peers knowing where you were. You may be surprised to hear this, but there are a lot of factions inside the Librarian ranks. The Dark Oculators, the Order of the Shattered Lens, the Scrivener's Bones\u2026 though they all work together, there's quite a bit of rivalry between them.\n\n\"For the faction controlling your movements, the fewer people who knew about you \u2013 or recognized you \u2013 the better. That way, they could keep better control of the sands when they arrived.\" He lowered his voice. \"I won't lie, Alcatraz. This mission will be very dangerous. If the Librarians catch us, they will likely kill us. Now that they have the sands, they have no reason to let you live \u2013 and every reason to destroy you. However, we have three things going for us. First, very few people will be able to recognize us. That should let us slip into the library without being stopped. Second \u2013 as you have noticed \u2013 most of the Librarians are out of the library at the moment. My guess is that they're actually searching for you and me, perhaps trying to break into our gas station hideout.\"\n\n\"And the third thing we have going for us?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled. \"Nobody would expect us to try something like this! It's completely insane.\"\n\nGreat, I thought.\n\n\"Now,\" he said, \"you might want to take off those Oculator's Lenses \u2013 they're the only thing that makes you distinctive right now.\"\n\nI quickly did so.\n\n\"Quentin will stay in the lobby and inner stacks for a good five minutes or so \u2013 watching for any signs of unusual patterns in Librarian movement or security \u2013 meaning we have a little bit of time here. Try to wait without looking suspicious.\"\n\nI nodded, and Grandpa Smedry wandered over to peek through another window. I lounged with my back against a lamp pole, trying not to break it. It was hard to remain still, considering my anxiety. As I thought about it, the three things Grandpa said we had going for us didn't seem to provide much of an advantage at all. I tried to calm my nerves.\n\nA few minutes later, a clink sounded behind me as Sing set down his gym bag of weaponry. I jumped slightly, eyeing the bag \u2013 I wasn't really that fond of the idea of having my toes shot off by an \"ancient\" weapon.\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Sing said. \"Your grandfather tells me that you grew up raised by Hushlander parents!\"\n\n\"Um, yes,\" I said slowly.\n\n\"Wonderful!\" Sing said. \"Tell me, tell me. What is the significance of this?\" He proffered something small and yellow which he had likely found in the gutter.\n\n\"Uh, it's just a bottle cap,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Sing said, peering at it through his sunglasses, \"I'm aware of your primitive liquid beverage packaging methods. But look, see here. What's this on the underneath?\"\n\nI accepted the bottle cap. On the underside, I could see printed the words YOU ARE NOT A WINNER.\n\n\"See what it says?\" Sing asked, pointing with a chubby finger. \"Is it common for Hushlanders to print insults on their foodstuffs? What is the purpose of this advertising campaign? Is it to make the consumer feel less secure, so they purchase more highly caffeinated drinks?\"\n\n\"It's just a contest,\" I said. \"Some of the bottles are winners, some aren't.\"\n\nSing frowned. \"Why would a bottle want to win a prize? In fact, how do bottles even go about claiming prizes? Have they been Alivened? Don't your people understand that Alivening things is dark Oculary?\"\n\nI rolled my eyes. \"It's not Oculary, Sing. If you open the bottle and the cap says you're a winner, then you can claim a prize.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He seemed a bit disappointed. Still, he carefully tucked the cap inside a pouch at his waist.\n\n\"Why do you care about that anyway?\" I asked. \"Aren't you an ancient weapons expert?\"\n\n\"Yes, well,\" Sing said, \"an ancient weapons expert, and an ancient clothing expert, and an ancient cultures expert.\"\n\n\"He's an anthropologist, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said from beside the library window. \"One of the most famous ones at the Mokian Royal University. That's why he's part of the team.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" I said. \"He's a professor?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Who else would be able to work those blasted guns? The civilized world hasn't used such things for centuries! We figured that we should have someone who can use them \u2013 swords might be more effective, but nobody carries them in the Hushlands. It's better to have at least one person on the team who understands and can use local weapons, just to be sure.\"\n\nSing nodded eagerly. \"But don't worry,\" he said. \"I may not be a soldier, but I've practiced with the weapons quite a bit. I've\u2026 never shot at something moving before, but how difficult can it be?\"\n\nI stood quietly, then turned to Grandpa Smedry. \"And what about Quentin? Is he a professor too?\"\n\nSing laughed. \"No, no. He's just a graduate student.\"\n\n\"He's quite capable, though,\" Grandpa Smedry said. He's a language specialist who focuses on Hushlander dialects.\"\n\n\"So,\" I said, holding up a finger. \"Let me get this straight. Our strike team consists of a loony old man, and anthropologist, a grad student, and two kids.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry and Sing nodded happily. Bastille, leaning against the library wall a short distance away, gave me a flat stare. \"You see what I have to work with?\"\n\nI nodded, beginning to understand where she might have gotten such a grumpy attitude.\n\n\"Oh, don't be like that,\" Grandpa Smedry said. He walked over, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me aside. \"Here, lad, I've got some things I want to give you.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry pulled open his tuxedo jacket and removed two pairs of spectacles. \"You'll recognize these,\" he said, holding up a yellow-tinted pair. \"I used them back when I first picked you up from the house. They're fairly easy Lenses to wield \u2013 if you can already do readings like you did on the library building, you should be able to use these.\"\n\nI accepted the glasses, then covertly tried them on. At first, nothing changed \u2013 but then I thought I saw something. Footsteps, in various colors, fading slowly on the ground around me.\n\n\"Tracks,\" I said with surprise, watching as Sing wandered over to another gutter, leaving a trail of blue footprints on the concrete behind him.\n\n\"Indeed, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"The better you know a person, the longer the footprints will remain visible. Once we get inside, we'll split up \u2013 you and I are the only Oculators in the group, and so we're the only ones who will be able to sense where the sands are. But the inside of a library can be deceptively large. Sometimes the stacks form mazes, and it's easy to get lost. If you lose your way, you can use these Tracker's Lenses to retrace our footprints. Also, you can probably track me down, if necessary.\"\n\nI glanced down. Grandpa Smedry's footprints glowed a blazing white, like little bursts of flame on the ground. I could easily see the trail of white back to Grandpa Smedry's black car, still parked across the street.\n\n\"Thanks,\" I said, still feeling a little apprehensive as I removed and pocket the Tracker's Lenses.\n\n\"You'll do fine, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, picking up a second pair of glasses. \"Remember, this is your inheritance we're searching for. You lost it, and you'll have to get it back. I can't hold your hand forever.\"\n\nI felt like noting that I had seen very little hand-holding in this adventure so far. I didn't really know what was going on, didn't quite trust my sanity anymore, and wasn't even convinced that I wanted my inheritance back. Grandpa Smedry, however, didn't give me an opportunity to complain. He held up the second pair of glasses \u2013 they had mostly clear Lenses, with a little dot of red at the center of each one.\n\n\"These,\" he said, handing the Lenses to me, \"are one of the most powerful pairs of Oculatory Lenses I possess. However, they're also one of the easiest to use, which is why I'm loaning them to you.\"\n\nI eyed the glasses. \"What do they do?\"\n\n\"You can use them for many purposes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Once you switch them on \u2013 you just have to concentrate a bit to do that \u2013 they'll begin gathering the light around you, then direct it out in concentrated beams.\"\n\n\"You mean, like a laser?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"These are very dangerous, Alcatraz. I don't carry many offensive Lenses, but I've found these too useful to leave behind. However, let me warn you \u2013 if there really is a Dark Oculator in there, he'll be able to sense when you activate these. Only use the Firebringer's Lenses in an emergency!\"\n\nDon't get too worried \u2013 this isn't the sort of story in which emergencies occur. Yes, it is highly unlikely that you will ever see those Firebringer's Lenses activated. So don't get your hopes up.\n\nI accepted the Firebringer's Lenses from my grandfather and they immediately started glowing.\n\n\"Cavorting Cards!\" Grandpa Smedry yelped, dodging to the side as the Lenses blasted a pair of intensely hot beams into the ground just in front of my feet. I hopped backward in shock, nearly dropping the Lenses in surprise.\n\nGrandpa Smedry grabbed the Lenses from behind, deactivating them. The scent of melted tar rose in the air, and I blinked, my vision marked by two bright afterimages of light.\n\n\"Well, well,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I told you they were easy to use.\" He glanced up at the building. \"We should be too far away for that to have been sensed\u2026.\"\n\nGreat, I thought. As my vision cleared, I could see Bastille rolling her eyes.\n\nSing waddled over, raising his sunglasses and inspecting the three-foot-wide disk of blackened, half-melted concrete. \"Nice shot,\" he noted. \"I think it's dead now.\"\n\nI blushed, but Grandpa Smedry just laughed. \"Here,\" he said, slipping a small velvet bag around the Firebringer's Lenses. He pulled the drawstring tight at the top. \"This should keep them safe. Now, with these Lenses and your Talent, you should be able to handle pretty much anything the Librarians throw at you!\"\n\nI accepted the glasses back, and fortunately they didn't go off. Now, as I was telling you previously, these Lenses will probably never get used in this story. You'll be lucky if you ever get to see them fired. Again.\n\n\"Grandfather,\" I said quietly, eyeing Bastille, then stepping aside again with Grandpa Smedry. \"I'm not sure that I can do this.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, lad! You're a Smedry!\"\n\n\"But I didn't even know I was until earlier today,\" I said. \"Or\u2026 well, I didn't know what being a Smedry meant. I don't think\u2026 well, I'm just not ready.\"\n\n\"What makes you say that?\" Grandpa Smedry asked.\n\n\"I tried to use my Talent earlier,\" I said. \"To stop Bastille from smacking me with her purse. It didn't work. And that wasn't the first time \u2013 sometimes I just can't make things break. And when I don't want them to break, they usually do anyway.\"\n\n\"Your Talent is still wild,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You haven't practiced it enough. Being a Smedry isn't just about having a Talent, it's about finding out how to use that Talent. A clever person can make anything turn to his advantage, no matter how much a disadvantage it may seem at first.\n\n\"No Smedry Talent is completely controllable. However, if you practice enough, you'll begin to get a grasp on it. Eventually, you'll be able to make things break not just when and where you want, by also how you want.\"\n\n\"I\u2026,\" I said, still uncertain.\n\n\"This doesn't sound like you, Alcatraz,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Where's that spark of spirit \u2013 that stubbornness \u2013 that you're always tossing about?\"\n\nI frowned. \"How do you know what I'm like? You only just met me.\"\n\n\"Oh? You think I've left you in Librarian hands all this time, never checking in on you?\"\n\nOf course he checked on me, I thought. Bastille mentioned something about that. \"But you don't know me,\" I said. \"I mean, you didn't even know what my Talent was.\"\n\n\"I suspected, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But I'll admit \u2013 I usually got to your foster homes after you'd moved somewhere else. Still, I've been watching over you, in my own way.\"\n\n\"If that's the case,\" I said, \"then why \u2013\"\n\n\"Why did I leave you to the foster homes?\" Grandpa Smedry asked. \"I'm not that great a parent. A boy needs somebody who can arrive on time to his birthdays and ball games. Besides, there were\u2026 reasons for letting you grow up in this world.\"\n\nThat didn't seem like much of an explanation to me, but Grandpa didn't look like he'd say more. So, I just sighed. \"I just can't help feeling like I won't be much help in this fight. I don't know how to use my Talent, or these Lenses. Maybe I should get a gun or a sword or something.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled. \"Ah lad. This war we're fighting \u2013 it isn't about guns, or even about swords.\"\n\n\"What is it about then? Sand?\"\n\n\"Information,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"That's the real power in this world. That man who held a gun on us earlier \u2013 he had power over you. Why?\"\n\n\"Because he was going to shoot me,\" I said.\n\n\"Because you thought he could shoot you,\" Grandpa Smedry said, raising a finger. \"But he had no power over me, because I knew that he couldn't hurt me. And when he realized that\u2026\"\n\n\"He ran away,\" I said slowly.\n\n\"Information. The Librarians control the information in this city \u2013 in this whole country. They control what gets read, what gets seen, and what gets learned. Because of that, they have power. Well, we're going to break that power, you and I. But first, we need those sands.\"\n\n\"Grandpa,\" I said. \"You have to have some kind of idea what the sands do. You came to get them from me, after all. Didn't you have a plan to use them?\"\n\n\"Pestering Pullmans, of course I did! I was going to smelt them into Lenses, just like the Librarians are probably doing now. Your father, lad \u2013 he was a sandhunter. He spent all his time searching out new and powerful types of sand, gathering the grains together, crafting Lenses like nobody had seen before. The Sands of Rashid were he crowning achievement. His greatest discovery.\" Grandpa Smedry's voice grew even quieter. \"He was convinced they had something to do with where the Smedry family gained its Talents in the first place. The Sands of Rashid are a key, somehow, to understanding the power and origin or our entire family. Can you understand, perhaps, why the Librarians might want them?\"\n\nI nodded slowly. \"The Talents.\"\n\n\"Indeed, lad. The Talents. If they could find a way to arm their agents with Talents like ours, then the Free Kingdoms could very well be doomed. Smedry powers are a large part of what has kept the Librarians at bay for so long. But we're losing. The land you call Australia was lost to us only a few decades back \u2013 absorbed and added to the Hushlands. Now Sing's homeland has almost fallen. They've already taken some of the outlying Mokian islands \u2013 the places you call Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa \u2013 and added them to the Hushlands. I fear it will only be a few years before Mokia itself falls.\"\n\nHe paused, then shook his head, looking just a little bit distant as he continued. \"Either the Free Kingdoms are going to fall \u2013 and everything will become Hushlands \u2013 or we're going to find a way to break the Librarians' power. The Smedry Talents, and the secrets these sands will reveal, are key to the next stage of the war. Things are changing\u2026 things have to change. We can't just keep fighting and losing ground. That's why your father spent so much of his life gathering those sands. He felt it was time to go on the offensive.\"\n\nI felt a stab of anxiety, a question surfacing that I wasn't certain I wanted to know the answer to. Finally, I couldn't keep it down. \"Is he still alive, Grandpa?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" he said, looking back at me. \"I honestly don't know.\"\n\nThe comment hung in the air. Grandpa Smedry placed a hand on my shoulder. \"Alive or not, Attica Smedry was a great man, Alcatraz. An amazing man. And he, like you, was no warrior. We are Oculators. Our weapon is information. Keep your eyes, and your mind, open. You'll do just fine.\"\n\nI nodded slowly.\n\n\"Good lad, good lad. Ah, here's Quentin.\"\n\nThe short, tuxedo-wearing man slipped quickly out of the library's front doors. \"Five Librarians in the main lobby,\" he said quietly. \"Three behind the checkout desk, two in the stacks. Their patterns are right on schedule with what we've seen from them before. The entrance to the employee corridors is on the far south side. It isn't guarded right now, though a Librarian passes to check on it every few minutes or so.\"\n\n\"All right, then,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"In we go!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "I seem to recall that last year a Free Kingdoms biographer wrote an article claiming I had spent my childhood performing a \"deep infiltration\" of Library lands. I guess in his mind, playing video games counted as a \"deep infiltration.\"\n\nI hope you Free Kingdomers aren't too put out to discover that dragons didn't come and bow to me at my birth. I wasn't tutored by the spirits of my dead Smedry ancestors, nor did I kill my first Librarian by slitting his throat with his own library card.\n\nThis is the real me, the troubled boy who grew into an even more troubled young man. Now, I'm not a terrible person. I'm just not a particularly nice one either. If you'd been tied to altars, nearly eaten by walking romance novels, and thrown off a glass pillar taller than Mt. Everest, you might have turned out a little like me yourself.\n\nSing tripped.\n\nNow, I've seen a lot of people trip in my lifetime. I've seen people stumble, tumble, and misstep. I once saw my foster brother fall down the stairs (not my fault) and I also saw a local bully belly flop when his diving board broke beneath him (I plead the Fifth on that one).\n\nI have never, however, seen a trip quite so\u2026 well executed as the one Sing performed in the library lobby that day. The hefty Mokian quite convincingly stumbled on the welcome mat just inside the doors. He cried out, hopping on one foot \u2013 a teetering, lumbering mound with the kinetic energy of a collapsing building.\n\nPeople scattered. Children cried, clutching picture books about aardvarks in their terrified fingers. A Librarian raised her hand in warning.\n\nWith a weird mixture of skillful grace and a mad lack of control, Sing fell over a comfortable reading chair and collided with a massive bookshelf. Those shelves \u2013 you may know \u2013 are usually bolted to the floor. That didn't matter. When confronted with a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound Mokian missile, iron bends.\n\nAnd the bookshelf fell.\n\nBooks flew in the air. Pages fluttered. Metal groaned.\n\n\"Now's our chance,\" Grandpa Smedry said. He dashed forward, just one more body in the flurry of lobby activity.\n\nThe rest of us followed, scooting past the horrified Librarians. Grandpa Smedry led us behind the children's section, through the media section, and to a pair of shabby doors at the back marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.\n\n\"Put your Oculator's Lenses back on, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, sliding on his reddish pair.\n\nI did so as well, and through those Lenses I could see a certain faint glow around the doors. Not a white or black glow, like I'd seen before. But instead\u2026 a bluish one. The power was focused on a square in the wall. On closer inspection, I could see that that section of the wall was inset with a small square of glass.\n\n\"A Hushlander handprint scanner,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Kind of like Recognizer's Glass. How quaint. All right lad, it's your turn.\"\n\nI gulped quietly, feeling nervous \u2013 both because of the Librarians so near and because everyone was counting on me. I reached out and pressed my hand against the door. There was a hum from the glass panel, but I ignored it. Instead I focused on myself.\n\nI'd always known, instinctively, about my power. I'd always had it, but I'd rarely tried to control it specifically. Now I focused on it, and I felt a tingle \u2013 like the shock that comes from touching a battery to your tongue \u2013 pulse out of my chest and down my arm.\n\nThere was a crack from the door as the lock snapped. \"Masterfully done, lad!\" Grand Smedry said. \"Masterfully done indeed.\"\n\nI shrugged, feeling proud. \"Doors have always been my specialty.\"\n\nQuentin quickly pushed open the door and waved everyone through. Grandpa Smedry's eyes twinkled as he passed me. \"I've always wanted to do this,\" he whispered.\n\nI could hear Bastille grumbling something under her breath as she joined us in the hallway, Sing's bag of guns slung over her shoulder. Quentin held the door open for a moment longer, and finally a puffing Sing rounded the bookshelves and joined us.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said. \"One of the female patrons insisted on wrapping my ankle for me.\" Indeed, his sandal-shod right foot now bore a support bandage.\n\nQuentin closed the door, then checked the handle, twisting it a few times. \"Coconuts, the pain don't hurt,\" he said, then paused. \"Sorry,\" he said, flushing. \"Sometimes the gibberish comes out when I don't want it to. Anyway, the lock is still broken \u2013 it will be suspicious next time someone comes through here.\"\n\n\"Can't be helped,\" Grandpa Smedry said, pulling out what appeared to be two small hourglasses. He gave them each a tap, and the sand started flowing. He handed one to me. The sand continued to flow at the same rate no matter which way I turned the device. Nifty, I thought. I'd always wanted a magical hourglass.\n\nWell, not really. But if I'd known that there were such things as magical hourglasses, I'd have wanted one. Who wouldn't? I should note, however, that the Free Kingdomers would be offended by my calling the hourglass magical. They have very strange feelings on what counts as magical and what doesn't. For instance, Oculatory powers and Smedry Talents are considered a form of magic to most Free Kingdomers, since they are things that can only be performed or used by a few select people. The hourglasses, like the silimatic cars, Sing's glasses, or Bastille's jacket, can be used by anyone. That makes those things \"technology\" in Free Kingdomer speak.\n\nIt's confusing, I know. However, you're probably smart enough to figure it out. And if you aren't, then I shall likely call you an insulting name. (Wait for Chapter Fifteen.)\n\n\"We'll meet here in one hour,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Any longer than that, and we'll be getting close to closing time. When that happens, all those Librarians out on patrol will return to check in \u2013 and we'll be in serious trouble. Quentin is with me \u2013 Sing and Bastille, go with Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"But \u2013 \" Bastille said.\n\n\"No,\" Grandpa Smedry interrupted. \"You're going with him, Bastille. I order you to.\"\n\n\"I'm your Crystin,\" she objected.\n\n\"True,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But you're sworn to protect all Smedrys, especially Oculators. The lad will need your help more than I will.\"\n\nBastille huffed quietly but made no further objections. As for myself, I wasn't really sure whether to be annoyed or glad.\n\n\"You three inspect this floor, then move up to the second one,\" Grandpa Smedry said quietly. \"Quentin and I will take the top floor.\"\n\n\"But,\" Bastille said, \"that's where the Dark Oculator is!\"\n\n\"That's where his lair is,\" Grandpa Smedry corrected. \"That aura glows so brightly because he spends so much time there. You might be able to notice the Dark Oculator's own aura if he's nearby, Alcatraz, but it won't give you much advance warning. Stay quiet and unseen, all right?\"\n\nI nodded slowly.\n\nGrandpa Smedry stepped a little closer, speaking quietly. \"If you do run into him, lad, make certain you keep those Oculator's Lenses on. They can protect you from an enemy's Lenses, if you use them right.\"\n\n\"How\u2026 how do I manage that?\" I asked.\n\n\"It takes time to practice, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Time we don't have! But, well, it probably won't come to that. Just\u2026 try to stay away from any rooms that shine black, okay?\"\n\nI nodded again.\n\n\"Well, then!\" Grandpa Smedry said to the whole group. \"The Librarians will have to spend ages cleaning up that mess in the lobby. Hopefully, they won't even notice the door until we're gone. One hour! Quickly, now. We're late!\"\n\nWith that, Grandpa Smedry spun to the left and began walking down the empty white hallway. Quentin waved good-bye. \"Rutabaga, fire over the inheritance!\" he said, then rushed after the elderly Oculator.\n\nSing and Bastille turned to me. It\u2026 looks like I'm in charge, I thought with surprise.\n\nThis was a strange realization. Yes, yes, I know \u2013 Grandpa Smedry had already said that I would have to lead my group. I shouldn't have been surprised to find myself in this situation. The truth is, however, that I was never the sort of person that people put in charge. Those kinds of duties generally go to the types of boys and girls who deliver apples, answer questions, and smile a lot. Leadership duties do not generally go to boys whose desks collapse, who are often accused of playing pranks by removing the doorknobs of school bathrooms, and who once unwittingly made a friend's pants fall down while he was writing on the chalkboard.\n\nI never did manage to get that stunt to work again.\n\n\"Um, I guess we go this way,\" I said, pointing down the hallway.\n\n\"You think?\" Bastille asked flatly, handing Sing his gym bag of guns. She pulled a pair of sunglasses \u2013 Warrior's Lenses, as the others called them \u2013 out of her jacket packet and slipped them on. Then she took off, walking down the hallway, handbag flipped around her shoulder.\n\nIf I ordered her to go back and follow Grandpa instead, I wonder if she'd go\u2026 I decided that she probably wouldn't.\n\n\"Say, Alcatraz,\" Sing said as we followed Bastille. \"What do you suppose this little wrap on my ankle means?\"\n\nI frowned, glancing down. \"The bandage?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Sing said. \"Is that what it is? First aid, it is called, correct?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"Why else would someone wrap your ankle like that?\"\n\nSing glanced down, obviously trying to inspect the ankle bandage while still walking. \"Oh, I don't know,\" he said, \"I thought maybe it was some preliminary courtship ritual\u2026\" He trailed off, looking toward me hopefully.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"Not a chance.\"\n\n\"That's sad,\" Sing said. \"She was pretty.\"\n\n\"Is that the sort of thing you should be thinking about?\" I asked. \"I mean, you're an anthropologist \u2013 you study cultures. Are you allowed to interfere with the 'natives' you meet?\"\n\n\"What?\" Sing said. \"Of course we can! Why, we're here to interfere! We're trying to overthrow Librarian domination of the Hushlands, after all.\"\n\n\"Why not just let people live their lives, and live yours?\"\n\nSing looked taken aback. \"Alcatraz, the Hushlanders are enslaved! They're being kept in ignorance, living only with the most primitive technologies! Besides, we need to do something to fight. Back at the Conclave of Kings, some people are starting to talk about surrendering to the Librarians completely!\" He shook his head. \"I'm glad for people like your grandfather, people willing to take the fight into Librarian lands. It shows that we won't just sit back and slowly have our kingdoms taken from us.\"\n\nUp ahead, Bastille glared back at us. \"Would you two like to chat a little more?\" she snapped. \"Perhaps sing a little tune? If there are any Librarians up ahead, we wouldn't want them to miss out on hearing us coming.\"\n\nSing looked at his feet sheepishly, and we fell silent \u2013 though a part of me wanted to yell something like, \"What did you say, Bastille?\" as loudly as I could. You see, that is the sad, sorry, terrible thing about sarcasm.\n\nIt's really funny.\n\nBut I just walked quietly, thinking about what Sing had said \u2013 particularly the part about the Librarians only letting Hushlanders have the most \"primitive\" of technologies. It seemed ridiculous to me that the Free Kingdomers considered things like guns and automobiles to be \"primitive.\" They weren't primitive, they were\u2026 well, they were what I knew. Growing up in America, I'd come to assume that everything I had \u2013 and did \u2013 was the newest, best, and most advanced in the world.\n\nIt was very unsettling to be confronted by people who weren't impressed by how advanced my culture was. I wanted to huff and think that whatever they had must not be all that good either. Except the problem was that I'd seen that they had self-driving cars, glasses that could track a person's footprints, and armored knights. All were, in one way or another, superior to what I'd know. (Admit it, knights are just cool.)\n\nI was coming to realize something very difficult. I was slowly accepting that the way I did things \u2013 the way my people did things \u2013 might not actually be the best way.\n\nIn other words, I was feeling humility.\n\nI sincerely hope that you never have to feel this emotion. Like asparagus and fish, it's not really as good for you as everyone says it is. Selfishness, arrogance, and callousness got me much further than humility ever did.\n\nHave I mentioned that I'm not really a very good person?\n\nOur small group reached the end of the unmarked hallway, Bastille still in the lead. She paused, holding up a hand, peeking around the corner. Then she continued onward, her platform sandals making a slight noise as she stepped onto a carpeted floor. Sing and I followed. The room beyond was filled with books.\n\nReally filled.\n\nPerhaps you've never experienced the full, suffocating majesty of a true library. You Hushlanders have probably visited your local libraries \u2013 you've perused the parts that normal people are allowed to see. These places tend to have row upon row of neat bookshelves, arranged nicely. They are presented attractively for the same reason that kittens are cute \u2013 so that they can draw you in, then pounce on you for the kill.\n\nSeriously. Stay away from kittens.\n\nPublic libraries exist to entice. The Librarians want everyone to read their books \u2013 whether those books are deep and poignant works about dead puppies or nonfiction books about made-up topics, like the Pilgrims, penicillin, and France. In fact, the only book they don't want you to read is the one you're holding right now.\n\nThose aren't real libraries, however. Real libraries take little concern for enticement. You who have visited the basements stacks of a university library's philosophy section know what I'm talking about. In such places, the shelves get squeezed closer and closer together, and they reach higher and higher. Piles of books appear randomly at the junctions and in corners waiting to be shelved, like the fourth-generation descendants of a copy of Summa Theologica and an edition of Little Women.\n\nDust settles on the books like a gray perversion of rain forest moss, giving the air a certain moldy, unwelcome scent faintly reminiscent of a baledragon's lair. At each corner, you expect to turn and see the withered, skeletal remains of some poor researcher who got lost in the stacks and never found his way out.\n\nAnd even those kinds of libraries are by pale apprentices to the enormous cavern of books that I entered that day. We walked quietly, passing shelves packed so tightly together that only an anorexic racing jockey could have squeezed between them. The bookshelves were easily fifteen feet high, and enormous plaques on the ends proclaimed, in very small letters, the titles each one contained. Long wooden poles with pincerlike hooks leaned against some shelves, and I got the impression that they were used for reaching between the shelves to pull out books.\n\nNo, I thought, it would take a ridiculous amount of practice to learn to do something like that. I must be wrong.\n\nYou may have guessed that I wasn't actually wrong. You see, Librarian apprentices have plenty of time to practice things that are ridiculous. They really only have three duties: First, to learn the incredibly and needlessly complicated filing system used to catalog books in the back library stacks. Second, to practice with the book-hooks. Third, to plot ways to torture an innocent populace.\n\nThat third one is the most fun. Kind of like gym class for the murderously insane.\n\nSing, Bastille, and I crept along the rows, careful to keep an eye out for Librarian apprentices. This was undoubtedly the most dangerous thing I'd ever done in my short life. Fortunately, we were able to get to the eastern edge of the room without incident.\n\n\"We should move along the wall,\" Bastille said quietly, \"so Alcatraz can look down each row of books. That way, he might see powerful sources of Oculation.\"\n\nSing nodded. \"But we should move quickly. We need to find the sands and get out fast, before the Librarians realize they've been infiltrated.\"\n\nThey looked at me expectantly. \"Uh, that sounds good,\" I finally said.\n\n\"You've got this leadership thing down, Smedry,\" Bastille said flatly. \"Very inspiring. Come on, then. Let's keep moving.\"\n\n\"Bastille and Sing began to walk along the wall. I however, didn't follow. I had just noticed something hanging on the wall above us: a very large painting that appeared to be an ornate, detailed map of the world.\n\nAnd it looked nothing like the one I was used to."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "At this point, you're probably expecting to read something like, \"I suddenly realized that everything I thought I had known was untrue.\"\n\nThough I'll likely use that exact phrase, I should warn you that it is actually misleading. Everything I knew was not untrue. In fact, many of the things I'd learned about the world were quite true.\n\nFor instance, I knew that the sun came up every day. That was not untrue. (Though, admittedly, that sun shone on a geography I didn't understand.) I knew that my homeland was named the United States of America. That was not untrue. (Though the U.S.A. was not actually run by senators, presidents, and judges \u2013 but instead by a cult of evil Librarians.) I knew that sharks were annoying. This also was not untrue. (There's actually nothing witty to add here. Sharks are annoying. Particularly the carnivorous kind.)\n\nYou have been warned.\n\nI stared up at the enormous wall map and suddenly realized something. Everything I thought I'd known about the world was untrue. \"This can't be real\u2026\" I whispered stepping back.\n\nI'm afraid it is, Alcatraz,\" Sing said, laying a hand on my shoulder. \"That's the world \u2013 the entire world, both the Hushlands and the Free Kingdoms. This is the thing that the Librarians don't want you to know about.\"\n\nI stared. \"But it's so\u2026 big.\"\n\nAnd indeed it was. The Americas were there, represented accurately. The other continents \u2013 Asia, Australia, Africa, and the rest \u2013 were there as well. They were collectively labeled INNER LIBRARIA on the map, but I recognized them easily enough. The difference, then, was the new continents. There were three of them, pressed into the oceans between the familiar continents. Two of the new continents were smaller, perhaps the size of Australia. One, however, was very large. It sat directly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, right between America and Japan.\n\nIt's impossible,\" I said. \"We would have noticed a landmass like that sitting in the middle of the ocean.\"\n\n\"You think you would have noticed,\" Sing said. \"But the truth is that the Librarians control the information in your country. How often have you personally been out sailing in the middle of what you call the Pacific Ocean?\"\n\nI paused. \"But\u2026 just because I haven't been there doesn't mean anything. The ocean is like kangaroos and grandfathers \u2013 I believe that other people have seen it. Ship captains, airplane pilots, satellite images\u2026\"\n\n\"Satellites controlled by the Librarians,\" Bastille said, regarding the map through her sunglasses. \"Your pilots fly guided by instruments and maps that the Librarians provide. And not many people sail boats in your culture \u2013 particularly not into the deep ocean. Those who do are bribed, threatened, brainwashed, or \u2013 most often \u2013 carefully misled.\"\n\nSing nodded. \"Those other continents make sense, if you think about it. I mean, a planet that is seventy percent water? What would be the point of so much wasted space? I'd never have thought people would buy that lie, had I not studied Hushlander cultures.\"\n\n\"People go along with what they're told,\" Bastille said. \"Even intelligent people believe what they read and hear, assuming they're given no reason to question.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"A hidden gas station I can believe, but this? This isn't some little cover-up or misdirection. There are three new continents on that map!\"\n\n\"Not new,\" Sing said. \"The cultures of the Free Kingdoms are quite well established. Indeed, they're far more advanced that Hushlander cultures.\"\n\nBastille nodded. \"The Librarians conquered the backward sections of the world first. They're easier to control.\"\n\n\"But\u2026\" I said. \"What about Columbus? What about history?\"\n\n\"Lies,\" Sing said quietly. \"Fabrications, many of them \u2013 the rest are distortions. I mean, haven't you always wondered why your people supposedly developed guns after more technology-advanced weapons, like swords?\"\n\n\"No! Swords aren't more advanced than guns!\"\n\nSing and Bastille shared a glance.\n\n\"That's what they want you to believe, Alcatraz,\" Sing said. \"That way, the Librarians can keep the powerful technology for themselves. Don't you think it's strange that nobody in your culture carries swords anymore?\"\n\n\"NO!\" I said, holding up my hands. \"Sing, most people don't need to carry swords \u2013 or even guns!\"\n\n\"You've been beaten down,\" Bastille said quietly. \"You're docile. Controlled.\"\n\n\"We're happy!\" I said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Sing said. \"You're quiet, happy, and completely ignorant \u2013 just like you're supposed to be. Don't you have a phrase 'Ignorance is bliss'?\"\n\n\"The Librarians came up with that one,\" Bastille said.\n\nI shook my head. \"No,\" I said. \"This is too much. I was willing to overlook the self-driving cars. The magic glasses\u2026 well, they could be some kind of trick. Sneaking into a library, that sounded like fun. But this\u2026 this is ridiculous. I can't accept it.\"\n\nAnd likely, you Hushlanders are thinking the very same thing. You are saying to yourself, \"The story just lost me. It degenerated into pure silliness. And since only silly people enjoy silliness, I'm going to go read a book about a boy whose dog gets killed by his mother. Twice.\"\n\nBefore you embark upon your voyage into caninicide, I'd like to offer a single argument for your consideration: Plato.\n\nPlato was a funny little Greek man who lived a long time ago. He is probably best known for two things: First, for writing stories about his friends, and second for philosophically proving that somewhere in the eternities there exists a perfect slice of cheesecake. (Read the Parmenides \u2013 it's in there.) At this moment, however, the reader should be less interested in cheesecake and more interested in caves.\n\nOne cave, to be specific. Plato tells a story about a group of prisoners who lived in a very special cave. The prisoners were tied up \u2013 heads held so they could only face one direction \u2013 and all they could see was the wall in front of them. A fire behind them threw shadows up on this wall and these shadows were the only things the prisoners ever knew. To them, the shadows were their world. As far as they knew, there was nothing else.\n\nHowever, one of these prisoners was eventually released and saw that the world was much more than just shadows. At first, he found this new world very, very strange. Once he learned of it, however, he returned and tried to tell his friends about it. They, however, didn't trust him \u2013 and didn't want to listen to him. They didn't want to believe in this new world, because it didn't make sense to them.\n\nYou Hushlanders are like these people. You have, through no fault of your own, lived your entire life believing in the shadows the Librarians have shown you. The things I reveal in this narrative will seem like nonsense to you. There is no getting around this. No matter how logical my arguments are, they will seem illogical to you. Your mind \u2013 struggling to find ways to hold on to your Librarian lies \u2013 will think of all kinds of ridiculous concerns. You will ask questions such as, \"But what about tidal patterns?\" Or, \"But how can you explain the lack of increased fuel costs created by airplanes flying around these hidden landmasses?\"\n\nSince nothing I can say would be able to pierce your delusions, let the fact that I make no arguments stand as ultimate proof that I am right. As Plato once said that his friend Socrates once said, \"I know that I'm right because I'm the only person humble enough to admit that I'm not.\"\n\nOr something like that.\n\nI stood for a long moment, staring up at that map. Part of me \u2013 most of me \u2013 resisted what I was seeing. And yet, the things I had experienced bounced around in my head, reminding me that many things \u2013 like gas station coolers and young men who set fires to kitchens \u2013 were not always as simple as they appeared.\n\n\"I'll deal with this later,\" I finally said, turning away from the map. \"Let's keep moving.\"\n\n\"Finally,\" Bastille said. \"You Hushlanders. Honestly, sometimes it seems like it would take a hammer to the face to get you to wake up and see the truth.\"\n\n\"Now, Bastille,\" Sing said as we walked by a long, low filing cabinet. \"That really isn't fair. I think young Lord Smedry is doing quite well, all things considered. It isn't every day that \u2013\n\n\"Gak!\"\n\nSing said this last part as he suddenly and without apparent reason, tripped and fell to the ground. I frowned, looking down, but Bastille burst into motion. She hopped dexterously over Sing, then grabbed me by the arm and threw me to the ground behind the filing cabinet. She ducked down beside me.\n\n\"Why \u2013\" I began, rubbing my arm in annoyance. Bastille, however, clapped a hand over my mouth, shooting me a very hostile, very persuasive silencing look.\n\nI fell quiet. Then I heard something. Voices approaching. Bastille removed her hand, the carefully peeked out over the filing cabinet. I moved to do likewise, and Bastille shot me another glance \u2013 I could see the glare even through her sunglasses. This time, however, I refused to be cowed.\n\nIf she can look, so can I, I thought stubbornly. I didn't spend thirteen years being a troublemaker so I can get pushed around by a girl my age. Even if she is a pretty good shot with that handbag of hers.\n\nI peeked over the cabinet. In the distance, moving between two lines of enormous bookshelves, I could see a group of figures. Most looked like they were wearing dark robes.\n\n\"Librarian apprentices,\" Sing whispered, peeking up beside me. \"Doing their tasks. Somewhere in this room, the Master Librarians have placed one misfiled volume. The apprentices have to find it.\"\n\nI eyed the nearly endless rows of tightly packed bookshelves. \"That could take years!\" I whispered.\n\nSing nodded. \"Some go insane from the pressure. They're usually the ones who get promoted first.\"\n\nI shivered as the group moved off. There were a couple of much larger figures following them, and these weren't dressed in robes. They were entirely white, and their bodies moved in a not-quite-natural manner. They lumbered as they stepped, arms held too far to the sides. They trailed behind the Librarian apprentices, moving with ponderous steps, some carrying stacks of books.\n\nI squinted, looking closer. The whitish figures glowed slightly, giving off a dark haze. The apprentices and the white figures turned a corner, disappearing from view.\n\n\"What were those?\" I whispered. \"Those white things that were with them?\"\n\n\"Alivened,\" Bastille said, shivering. She glanced at me, standing up. \"When Sing trips, Smedry, always duck.\"\n\n\"You trip whenever there's danger?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" Sing said. \"I only trip when there's danger and when tripping will be helpful. Or, at least, that's usually the way it works.\"\n\n\"Better that your Talent, Oculator,\" Bastille said with a snort. \"Do you want to tell me how you managed to break the carpet?\"\n\nI glanced down. The carpet lay unraveled around me, separated into individual strands of yarn.\n\n\"Come on,\" Bastille said. \"We should keep moving.\"\n\nI nodded, as did Sing, and we continued along the perimeter of the musty library chamber. We walked in silence; the sight of the apprentices had reminded us of the need for stealth. However, it quickly grew apparent to me that searching through that room wouldn't lead us to the Sands of Rashid. Despite the room's many alcoves (the thousands upon thousands of bookshelves made it feel like a cubicle-filled office for demonic bibliophiles) it didn't seem like the kind of place where one kept objects of great power. I figured that the sands would be in a locked room, or perhaps a laboratory. Not a vast storage chamber. I spotted a stairwell to the right, and I waved to the others. \"We should go up to the second floor.\"\n\nBastille raised an eyebrow. \"We haven't finished checking this room yet.\"\n\n\"We don't have time,\" I said, glancing at the hourglass Grandpa Smedry had given me. \"This room is too big. Besides, it doesn't feel right.\"\n\n\"We're going to let the fate of the world rest on your feelings?\" she asked flatly.\n\n\"He is our Oculator, Bastille,\" Sing reminded her. \"If he says we go up, then we go up. Besides, he's probably right \u2013 the sands aren't likely to be here in the stacks. Somewhere in this building should be a Lens forge. That's where they've probably got the sands.\"\n\nBastille sighed, the shrugged. \"Whatever,\" she said, pushing past me to lead the way toward the stairs.\n\nI was a little bit surprised that they'd listened to me. I followed Bastille, and Sing took the rear. The stairwell was made of stone, and it reminded me distinctly of something one might find in a medieval castle. It wound in circles around itself and was encased entirely in a massive stone pillar, lit by little frosted windows that let in marginal amounts of daylight.\n\nAfter several minutes of climbing the steep steps, I was puffing. \"Shouldn't we have reached the second floor by now?\"\n\n\"Space distortion,\" Bastille said from in front of me. \"You didn't honestly expect the Librarians to confine their entire base into a building as small as this one looks?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"I saw the stretching aura outside. But, I mean, how far up can this stairwell go?\"\n\n\"As far as it need to,\" Bastille said testily.\n\nI sighed but continued to climb. By that logic, that stairwell could go on forever. I didn't however, want to contemplate that point. \"For how 'advanced' you people always claim to be,\" I noted, \"you'd think that the Librarians would have elevators in their buildings.\"\n\nBastille snorted. \"Elevators? How primitive.\"\n\n\"Well, they're better than stairs.\"\n\n\"Of course they aren't,\" Bastille said. \"It took society centuries to develop from the elevator to the flight of stairs.\"\n\nI frowned. \"That doesn't make any sense. Stairs are far less advanced that elevators.\"\n\nShe glanced over her shoulder, looking at me over the top of her sunglasses. I was annoyed to note that she didn't seem the least bit winded.\n\n\"Don't be silly,\" she said. \"Why would elevators be more advanced than stairs? Obviously, stairs take more effort to climb, are harder to construct, and are far more healthy to use. Therefore, they took longer to develop. Don't you realize how stupid you sound when you claim otherwise?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, annoyed. \"The opposite is stupid to me. And does everything you say have to sound like an insult?\"\n\n\"Only when I intend to be insulting,\" she said, turning and resuming her climb.\n\nI sighed, looking back at Sing, who just shrugged and smiled, still carrying his gym bag of guns. We kept moving.\n\nStairs are more advanced than elevators? I thought. Ridiculous.\n\nCaves. Caves, shadows, and cheesecake.\n\nWe eventually reached the top of the stairwell, and it opened out into a long hallway constructed of stone blocks. Along this hallway was a line of large, thick, wooden doors set into stone archways.\n\n\"This is more like it,\" I said. \"I'll bet the sands are behind one of these doors.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Bastille said, \"let's try one, then.\"\n\nI nodded, then walked up to the first door. I listened at it for a moment, but either there was no sound on the other side of the wood was so thick that I couldn't hear anything.\n\n\"See any darkness around the door?\" Bastille whispered.\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"The Dark Oculator probably isn't in there, then,\" Bastille said quietly.\n\n\"It could open into anything,\" Sing said.\n\n\"Well, we'll never find the sands if we keep to the hallways,\" Bastille said.\n\nI glanced at the other doors. None of them seemed to glow any more than the others. Bastille was right \u2013 we had to start trying them, and any one was as good as the next. So, I took a breath and pushed against the door in front of me. I'd intended to move it open slightly, so we could peek in, but the door swung far more easily than I'd expected. It flew open, exposing the large room beyond, and I stumbled into the doorway.\n\nThe room was filled with dinosaurs. Real, live, moving dinosaurs. One of them waved at me.\n\nI paused for a moment. \"Oh,\" I finally said, \"is that all? I was worried that I might find something strange in here.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "I'd like you to realize two things at this point.\n\nFirst, I want you to know that when I uttered the words \"Oh, is that all? I was worried I might find something strange in here,\" I wasn't being sarcastic in the least. Actually, I as being quite serious. (Nearly as serious, even, as the moment when I would plead for my life while tied to an altar of outdated encyclopedias.)\n\nYou see, after all I'd seen that day, I was growing desensitized to strangeness. The realization that the world contained three new continents still had me in shock. Compared to that revelation, a room full of dinosaurs just couldn't compete.\n\n\"Why, hello, good chap!\" cried a small green Peteridactyl. \"You don't look like a Librarian sort.\"\n\nTalking rocks might have gotten a reaction out of me. A talking slice of cheese definitely would have. Talking dinosaurs\u2026 meh.\n\nThe second thing I want you to realize is this: You were warned beforehand about the talking dinosaurs. (Kindly see page 67.) So no whining.\n\nI stepped into the room. It was some sort of storage chamber and was filled with battered cages. Many of those cages contained\u2026 well, dinosaurs. At least, that's what they looked like to me.\n\nOf course, they were quite different from the dinosaurs I'd learned about in school. For one thing, they weren't very big. (The largest one, an orange Tyrannosaurus Rex, was maybe five or six feet tall. The smallest looked to be only about three feet tall.) The vests, trousers, and British accents were unexpected as well.\n\n\"I say,\" said a Triceratops. \"Do you think he's a mute? Does anybody by chance know sign language?\"\n\n\"Which sign language do you mean?\" asked the Pteridactle. \"American primitive, New Elshamian, or Librarian standard?\"\n\n\"My hands aren't articulated enough for sign language,\" noted the Tyrannosaurus Rex. \"That's always been rather a bother for deaf members of my subspecies.\n\n\"He can't be mute!\" another said. \"Didn't he say something when he opened the door?\"\n\nBastille poked her head into the room. \"Dinosaurs,\" she said, noticing the cages. \"Useless. Let's move on.\"\n\n\"I say!\" said the Triceratops. \"Charles, did you hear that?\"\n\n\"I did indeed!\" replied the Pterydactle. \"Quite rude, if I do say so myself.\"\n\nI frowned. \"Wait. Dinosaurs are British?\n\n\"Of course not,\" Bastille said, stepping into the room with a sigh. \"They're Melerandian.\"\n\n\"But they're speaking English with a British accent,\" I said.\n\n\"No,\" Bastille said, rolling her eyes. \"They're speaking Meleran \u2013 just like we are. Where do you think the British and the Americans got the language from?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026 from Great Britain?\"\n\nSing chuckled, stepping into the room and quietly shutting the door. \"You think a little island like that spawned a language used by most of the world?\"\n\nI frowned again. \"I say,\" said Charles the Pterrodactlye. \"Do you suppose you could let us free? It's terribly uncomfortable in here.\"\n\n\"No,\" Bastille said curtly. \"We have to keep a low profile. If you escaped, you could give us away.\" Then, under her breath, she muttered, \"Come on. We don't want to get involved.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" I asked. \"Maybe they could help us.\"\n\nBastille shook her head. \"Dinosaurs are never useful.\"\n\n\"She certainly is a rude one, isn't she?\" asked the Triceratops.\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" I replied, ignoring the dark look Bastille shot me. \"Why are you dinosaurs here anyway?\"\n\n\"Oh, we're to be executed, I'm afraid,\" Charles said.\n\nThe other dinosaurs nodded.\n\n\"What did you do?\" I asked. \"Eat somebody important?\"\n\nCharles gasped. \"No, no. That's a Librarian myth, good sir. We don't eat people. Not only would that be barbaric of us, but I'm sure you would taste terrible! Why all we did was come to your continent for a visit!\"\n\n\"Stupid creatures,\" Bastille said, leaning against the door. \"Why would you visit the Hushlands? You know that the Librarians have built you up as mythological monsters.\"\n\n\"Actually,\" Sing noted, \"I believe the Librarians claim that dinosaurs are extinct.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" Charles said. \"Quite true. That's why they're going to execute us! Something about enlarging our bones, then putting them inside of rock formations, so that they can be dug out by human archaeologists.\"\n\n\"Terribly undignified!\" the T. Rex said.\n\n\"Why did you even come here?\" Sing asked. \"The Hushlands aren't the type of place one comes on vacation.\"\n\nThe dinosaurs exchanged ashamed glances.\n\n\"We\u2026 wanted to write a paper,\" Charles admitted. \"About life in the Hushlands.\"\n\n\"Oh, for the love of\u2026\" I said. \"Is everybody from your continent a professor?\"\n\n\"We're not professors,\" the T. Rex huffed.\n\n\"We're field researchers,\" Charles said. \"Completely different.\"\n\n\"We wanted to study primitives in their own environment,\" the Triceratops said. Then he squinted, looking up at Sing. \"I say, don't I recognize you?\"\n\nSing smiled modestly. \"Sing Smedry.\"\n\n\"Why, it is you!\" the Triceratops said. \"I absolutely loved your paper on Hushlander bartering techniques. Do they really trade little books in exchange for goods?\"\n\n\"They call the books 'dollar bills,'\" Sing said. They're each only one page long \u2013 and yes, they do use them as currency. What else would you expect from a society constructed by Librarians?\"\n\n\"Can we go?\" Bastille asked, looking tersely at me.\n\n\"What about freeing us?\" the Triceratops asked. \"It would be terribly kind of you. We'll be quiet. We know how to sneak.\"\n\n\"We're quite good at blending in,\" Charles agreed.\n\n\"Oh?\" Bastille asked, raising an eyebrow. \"And how long did you last on this continent before being captured?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026\" Charles began.\n\n\"Well,\" the T. Rex said. \"We did get spotted rather quickly.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't have landed on such a popular beach,\" the Triceratops agreed.\n\n\"We pretended to be dead fish that washed up with the tide,\" Charles said. \"That didn't work very well.\"\n\n\"I kept sneezing,\" said the T. Rex. \"Blasted seaweed always makes me sneeze.\"\n\nI glanced at Bastille, then back at the dinosaurs. \"We'll come back for you,\" I told them. \"She's right \u2013 we can't risk exposing ourselves right now.\"\n\n\"Ah, very well, then,\" said Charles the Pterradactyl. \"We'll just sit here.\"\n\n\"In our cages,\" said the T. Rex.\n\n\"Contemplating our impending doom,\" said the Triceratops.\n\nThe reader may wonder why one of the dinosaurs was consistently referred to by his first name, while the others were not. There is a very simple and understandable reason for this.\n\nHave you ever tried to spell Pterodactyl?\n\nWe slipped out of the dinosaur room. \"Talking dinosaurs,\" I mumbled.\n\nBastille nodded. \"I can only think of one group more annoying.\"\n\n\"Talking rocks,\" she said. \"Where do we go next?\"\n\n\"Next door.\" I pointed down the hallway.\n\n\"Any auras?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"No,\" I replied.\n\n\"That doesn't necessarily mean the sands won't be in there,\" Bastille said. \"It would take some time for the sands to charge the area with a glow. I think we should check them.\"\n\nI nodded. \"Sounds good.\"\n\n\"Let me open this one,\" Bastille said. \"If there is something dangerous in there, it would be better if you didn't just stumble in and stare at it with a dumb look.\"\n\nI flushed as Bastille waved Sing and me back. Then she crept up to the door, placing her ear against the wood.\n\nI turned to Sing. \"So\u2026 do you really have talking rocks in your world?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" he said with a nod.\n\n\"That must be odd,\" I said contemplatively. \"Talking rocks\u2026\"\n\n\"They're really not all that exciting,\" Sing said.\n\nI looked at him quizzically.\n\n\"Can you honestly imagine anything interesting that a rock might have to say?\" Sing asked.\n\nBastille shot an annoyed look back at us, and we quieted. Finally, she shook her head. \"Can't hear anything,\" she whispered, moving to push open the door.\n\n\"Wait,\" I said, an idea occurring to me. I pulled out the yellow-tinted Tracker's Lenses and slipped them on. After focusing, I could see Bastille's footprints on the stone \u2013 they glowed a faint red. Other than that, the hallway was empty of footprints, except for mine and Sing's.\n\n\"Nobody's gone in the room recently,\" I said. \"Should be safe.\"\n\nBastille cocked her head, a strange expression on her face. As if she were surprised to see me do something useful. Then she quietly cracked the door open, peeking through the slit. After a moment she pushed it open the rest of the way, waving Sing and me forward.\n\nInstead of dinosaur cages, this room held bookshelves. They weren't the towering, closely packed bookshelves of the first floor, however. These were built into the walls and made the room look like a comfortable den. There were three desks in the room, all unoccupied, though all of them had books open on top of them.\n\nBastille shut the door behind us. I glanced around the small den \u2013 it was well furnished and, despite the books, didn't feel cluttered. This is more like it, I thought. This is the kind of place I might stash something important.\n\n\"Quickly,\" Bastille said. \"See what you can find.\"\n\nSing immediately walked to one of the desks. Bastille began poking around, peeking behind paintings, probably looking for a hidden safe. I stood for a moment, then walked over to the bookshelves.\n\n\"Smedry,\" Bastille hissed from across the room.\n\nI glanced over at her.\n\nShe tapped her dark sunglasses. Only then did I realize that I was still wearing the Tracker's Lenses. I quickly swapped them for me Oculator's Lenses, then stepped back, trying to get a good view of the room.\n\nNothing glowed distinctly. The books, however\u2026 the text on the spines seemed to wiggle slightly. I frowned, walking over to a shelf and pulling off one of the volumes. The text had stopped wiggling, but I couldn't read it anyway.\n\nIt was just like the book in Grandpa Smedry's glass safe. The pages were filled with scribbles, like a child had taken a fountain pen to a sheet of paper and attacked it in a bout of infantile artistic wrath. There was no specific direction, or reason, to the lines.\n\n\"These books,\" I said. \"Grandpa Smedry has one like them in the gas station.\"\n\n\"The Forgotten Language,\" Sing said from the other side of the room. \"It doesn't look like the Librarians are having any luck deciphering it either. Look.\"\n\nBastille and I walked over to the place where Sing was sitting. There, set out on the table, were pages and pages of scratches and scribbles. Beside them were different combinations of English letters, obviously written by someone trying to make sense of the scribbles.\n\n\"What would happen if they did translate it?\" I asked.\n\nSing snorted. \"I wish them good luck. Scholars have been trying to do that for centuries.\"\n\n\"But why?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because,\" Sing said. \"Isn't it obvious? There are important things hidden in those Forgotten Languages texts. If that weren't the case, the language wouldn't have been forgotten.\"\n\nI frowned. Something about that didn't make sense. \"It seems the opposite to me,\" I said. \"If the language were all that important, then we wouldn't have forgotten it, would we?\"\n\nBoth of them looked at me as if I were crazy.\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Sing said. \"The Forgotten Language wasn't just accidentally forgotten. We were made to forget it. The entire world somehow lost the ability to read it some three thousand years back. Nobody knows how it happened, but the Incarna \u2013 the people who wrote all of these texts \u2013 decided that the world wasn't worthy of their knowledge. We forgot all of it, as well as the method of reading their language.\"\n\n\"Don't they teach you anything in those schools of yours?\" Bastille said, not for the first time.\n\nI gave her a flat look. \"Librarian schools? What do you expect?\"\n\nShe shrugged, glancing away.\n\nSing glanced at me. \"It's taken us three thousand years to get back even a fraction of the knowledge we had before the Incarna stole it from us. But, there are still lots of things we've never discovered. And nobody has been able to crack the code of the Forgotten Language despite three thousand years of work.\"\n\nThe room fell silent. Finally, Bastille glanced at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\"Well what?\" I asked.\n\nShe glanced at me over the top of her sunglasses, giving me a suffering look. \"The Sands of Rashid. Are they in here?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said. \"I don't see anything glowing.\"\n\n\"Good enough. You would be able to see them glowing even if they were encased in Rebuilder's Glass.\"\n\n\"I did notice something odd, though,\" I said, glancing back at the bookshelves. \"The scribbles on the spines of those books started to wiggle the first time I looked at them.\"\n\nBastille nodded. \"That's just an attention aura \u2013 the glasses were trying to get you to notice the text.\"\n\n\"The glasses wanted me to notice something?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well,\" Bastille said. \"More like your subconscious wanted you to notice something. The glasses aren't alive, the just help you focus. I'd guess that because you've seen the Forgotten Language before, your subconscious recognized it on those spines. So, the glasses gave you an attention aura to make you notice.\"\n\n\"Interesting,\" Sing said.\n\nI nodded slowly \u2013 then, curiously, Bastille's entire shape fuzzed just slightly. Another attention aura? If so, what as it I was supposed to notice about her?\n\nHow do you know so much about Oculator auras, Bastille? I thought, realizing what was bothering me. There was more to this girl than she liked to let people see.\n\nSome things just weren't making sense to me. Why was Bastille chosen to protect Grandpa Smedry? Certainly, she seemed like a force to be reckoned with \u2013 but she was still just a kid. And for her to know so much about Oculating, when Sing \u2013 a professor, and a Smedry to boot \u2013 didn't seem to know much\u2026\n\nWell, it was odd.\n\nYou may think those above paragraphs are some kind of foreshadowing. You're right. Of course those thoughts weren't foreshadowing when they occurred to me. I couldn't know that they'd be important.\n\nI tend to have a lot of ridiculous thoughts. I'm having some right now. Most of these certainly aren't important. And so, I usually only mention the ones that matter. For instance, I could have told you that many of the lanterns in the library looked like types of fruits and vegetables. But that has no real relevance to the plot, so I left it out. Likewise, I could have included the scene where I noticed the roots of Bastille's hair and wondered why she dyed it silver, rather than letting it grow its natural red. But since that part isn't relevant to the \u2013\n\nOh. Wait. Actually, that is relevant. Never mind.\n\n\"Ready to go, then?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"I'm taking these,\" Sing said. He unzipped his duffel bag, tossed aside a spare uzi, then stuffed in the translator's notes. \"Quentin would kill me if I left them behind.\"\n\n\"Here,\" I said, tossing a Forgotten Language book into the bag. \"Might as well take one of these for him too.\"\n\n\"Good idea,\" Sing said, zipping up his duffel.\n\n\"There just one thing I don't get,\" I said.\n\n\"One thing?\" Bastille asked with a snort.\n\n\"Why do the Librarians work so hard to keep everything quiet?\" I asked. \"Why go to all that trouble? What's the point?\"\n\n\"Do you have to have a point if you're an evil sect of Librarians?\" Bastille asked with annoyance.\n\nI fell silent.\n\n\"They do have a point, Bastille,\" Sing said. \"Everyone has a reason to do what they do. The Librarians, they were founded by a man named Biblioden. Most people just call him The Scrivener. He taught that the world is too strange a place \u2013 that it needs to be ordered, organized, and controlled. One of Biblioden's teachings is the Fire Metaphor. He pointed out that if you let fire burn free, it destroys everything around it. If you contain it, however, it can be very useful. Well, the Librarians think that other things \u2013 Oculatory powers, technology, Smedry Talents \u2013 need to be contained too. Controlled.\"\n\n\"Controlled by those who supposedly know better,\" Bastille said. \"Librarians.\"\n\n\"So,\" I said, \"all of this cover-up\u2026\"\n\n\"It's to create the world The Scrivener envisioned,\" Sing said. \"To create a place where information is carefully controlled by a few select people, and where power is in the hands of his followers. A world where nothing strange or abnormal exists. Where magic is derided, and everything can be blissfully ordinary.\"\n\nAnd that's what we fight, I thought, coming to understand for the first time. That's what this is all about.\n\nSing threw his duffel over his shoulder, adjusting his glasses as Bastille went back to the door, cracking it open to make certain nobody was in the hallway. As she did, I noticed the discarded uzi, lying ignored on the floor. Trying to look nonchalant, I wandered over to it, absently reaching down and picking it up.\n\nThis is, I would like to note, precisely the same thing any thirteen-year-old boy would do in that situation. A boy who wouldn't do such a thing probably hasn't been reading enough books about killer Librarians.\n\nUnfortunately for me, I wasn't like most thirteen-year-old boys. I was special. And, in this case, my specialness manifested itself by making the gun break the moment I touched it. The weapon made a noise almost like a sigh, then busted into a hundred different pieces. Bullets rolled away like marbles, leaving me sullenly holding a piece of the gun's grip.\n\n\"Oh,\" Sing said. \"I meant to leave that there, Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"Yes, well,\" I said, dropping scrap of metal. \"I thought I should\u2026 uh, take care of the gun, just in case. We wouldn't want anyone to find such a primitive weapon and hurt themselves by accident.\"\n\n\"Ah, good idea,\" Sing said. Bastille held open the door, then we all moved into the hallway.\n\n\"Next door,\" Bastille said.\n\nI nodded, switching glasses. As soon as the Tracker's Lenses were on, I noticed something: bright black footprints, burning on the ground.\n\nThey were still fresh \u2013 I could see the trail disappearing as I watched. And there was a certain\u2026 power to the footprints. I instantly knew to whom they belonged.\n\nThe footprints passed through the hallway, beside a yellowish-black set, disappearing into the distance. They burned, foreboding and dark, like gasoline dropped to the floor and lit with black fire.\n\nAs Bastille crept toward the next door in the hallway, I made a decision. \"Forget the room,\" I said, growing tense. \"Follow me!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "Are you annoyed with me yet?\n\nGood. I've worked very hard \u2013 perhaps I will explain why later \u2013 to frustrate you. One of the ways I do this is by leaving cliff-hangers at the ends of chapters. These sorts of things force you, the reader, to keep on plunging through my story.\n\nThis time, at least, I plan to make good on the cliff-hanger. The one at the end of the previous chapter is entirely different from the hook I used at the beginning of the book. You remember that one, don't you? Just in case you've forgotten, I believe it said:\n\n\"So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.\"\n\nThis sort of behavior \u2013 using hooks to start books \u2013 is inexcusable. In fact, when you read a sentence like that one at the beginning of a book, you should know not to continue reading. I have it on good authority that when an author gives a hook like this, he isn't ever likely to explain why the poor hero is tied to an altar \u2013 and, if the explanation does come, it won't arrive until the end of the story. You'll have to sit through long, laborious essays, wandering narratives, and endless ponderings before you reach the small bit of the story that you wanted to read in the first place.\n\nHooks and cliff-hangers belong only at the ends of chapters. That way, the reader moves on directly to the next page \u2013 where, thankfully, they can read more of the story without having to suffer some sort of mindless interruption.\n\nHonestly, authors can be so self-indulgent.\n\n\"Alcatraz?\" Bastille asked as I took off down the hallway following the footprints.\n\nI waved for her to follow. The black footprints were fading quickly. True, if the black ones disappeared, we could just follow the yellow ones, since they appeared more stable. But if I didn't keep up with the black ones, I wouldn't know if the two sets diverged.\n\nBastille and Sing hurried along behind me. As we moved, however, the thought of what I was doing finally hit me: I was chasing down the Dark Oculator. I didn't even really know what a Dark Oculator was, but I was pretty certain that I didn't want to meet one. This was, after all, probably the person who had sent a gunman to kill me.\n\nYet I was also pretty certain that this Dark Oculator was the leader of the library. The most important person around. That made him the person most likely to know where the Sands of Rashid were. And I intended to get those sands back. They were my link to my parents, perhaps the only clue I would ever get to help me know what had happened to them. So, I kept moving.\n\nNow some of you reading this may assume that I as being brave. In truth, my insides were growing sick at the thought of what I was doing. My only excuse can be that I didn't really understand how much danger I was in. Knowledge of the Free Kingdoms and Oculators was still new to me, and the threat didn't quite seem real.\n\nIf I'd understood the risk \u2013 the death and pain that pursuing this course would lead to \u2013 I would have turned back right then. And it would have been the right decision, despite what my biographers say. You'll see.\n\n\"What are we doing?\" Bastille hissed, walking quickly beside me.\n\n\"Footprints,\" I whispered. \"Someone passed this way a short time ago.\"\n\n\"So?\" she asked.\n\n\"They're black.\"\n\nBastille stopped short, falling behind. She hurriedly caught up, though. \"How black?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said. \"Blackish black.\"\n\n\"But I mean\u2026\"\n\n\"It's him,\" I said. \"The footprints seem like they're burning. Like they were seared into the stones and are slowly melting away the floor. That's how black they are.\"\n\n\"That's the Dark Oculator, then,\" Bastille said. \"We don't want to follow them.\"\n\n\"Of course we do. We have to find the sands!\"\n\nBastille grabbed my arm, yanking me to a halt. Sing puffed up behind us. \"Goodness!\" he said. \"Ancient weapons certainly are heavy!\"\n\n\"Bastille,\" I said, \"we're going to lose the trail!\"\n\n\"Smedry, listen to me,\" she said, still gripping my arm. \"Your grandfather might be able to face a high-level Dark Oculator. Might. And he's one of the Free Kingdoms' most powerful living Oculators, with an entire repertoire of Lenses. What do you have? Two pairs?\"\n\nThree, I thought, reaching into my jacket pocket. Those Firebringer's Lenses. If I could turn them on the Dark Oculator\u2026\n\n\"I know that look,\" Bastille said. \"Your grandfather gets it too. Shattering Glass, Smedry! Is everyone in your family an idiot? Do your Talent genes replace the ones that give most people common sense? How am I supposed to protect you if you insist on being so foolish?\"\n\nI hesitated. Down the hallway, the last of the dark footprints burned away, leaving only the yellowish set. I looked down at them, frowning to myself.\n\nI'm missing something, I thought.\n\nGrandpa Smedry had explained about the Tracker's Lenses. He'd said\u2026 that the footprints would remain longer for people that I knew well. I glanced back down the way we had come. My own footprints, glowing a weak white, showed no signs of fading. Bastille and Sing's sets, however, were already beginning to disappear.\n\nThat yellow set of footprints, I realized, turning back toward the ways the Dark Oculator had gone. They must belong to someone I know\u2026\n\nThat was too big a mystery for me to ignore.\n\nI reached into my pocket, pulling out the small hourglass Grandpa Smedry had given me. \"Look, Bastille,\" I said, holding it up before her. \"We only have a half hour until this place gets filled with Librarians back from patrolling. If that happens, we'll get caught, and those sands will fall permanently into Librarian hands. We don't have time to go poking around, looking in random doors. This place is way too big. There's only one way to find what we need.\"\n\n\"The Dark Oculator might not even have the sands with him,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said. \"But he might know where to find them \u2013 or he might lead us to them. We at least have to try to follow him. It's our best lead.\"\n\nBastille nodded reluctantly. \"Don't try to fight him, though.\"\n\n\"I won't,\" I said. \"Don't worry \u2013 it'll be all right.\"\n\nAnd if you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you\u2026 on the moon.\n\nTo my credit, I didn't really want to face down a Dark Oculator. I was half hoping that Bastille would talk me out of the decision. Usually when I tried to do reckless things, there had been adults around to stop me. But things were different now. By some act of fortune \u2013 perhaps even more strange than the appearance of talking dinosaurs and evil Librarians \u2013 I was in charge. And people listened to me. I was realizing that if I chose poorly, I would not only get myself into trouble but I might end up getting Bastille and Sing hurt as well.\n\nIt was a sobering thought. My life was changing, and so my view of myself had to change as well. You might think I was turning into a hero \u2013 however, the truth is that I was just setting myself up for an even greater fall.\n\n\"We'll stay out of sight,\" I said. \"Eavesdrop and hope the Dark Oculator mentions where the sands are. Our goal is not to fight him. At the first sign of trouble \u2013 or, in Sing's case, tripping \u2013 we'll back out. All right?\"\n\nBastille and Sing nodded. Then I turned. The yellowish footprints were still there. A little more cautious, I followed them down the hallway. We passed a couple more archways, set with solid wooden doors, but the footprints didn't lead into any of them. The hallway led deeper and deeper into the library.\n\nWhy build a library that looks like a castle inside? I thought, passing an ornate lantern bracket shaped like a cantaloupe. The lantern atop it burned a large flame, and \u2013 despite the tense situation \u2013 something occurred to me.\n\n\"Fire,\" I said as we walked.\n\n\"What?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"You can't tell me that those lanterns are more 'advanced' than electric lights.\"\n\n\"You're still worried about that?\"\n\nI shrugged as we paused at an intersection, and Bastille peeked around it, then waved the all clear.\n\n\"They just don't seem very practical to me,\" I whispered as we started again. \"You can turn electric lights on and off with a switch.\"\n\nYou can do that with these too,\" Bastille said. \"Except without the switch.\"\n\nI frowned. \"Uh\u2026 okay.\"\n\n\"Besides,\" Bastille whispered. \"You can light things on fire with these lamps. Can you do that with electric ones?\"\n\n\"Well, not most of them,\" I said, pointing as the footprints turned down a side corridor. \"But that's sort of the idea. Open flames like that can burn things down.\"\n\nI couldn't see because of the sunglasses, but I had the distinct impression that Bastille was rolling her eyes at me. \"They only burn things if you want them to, Smedry.\"\n\n\"How does that work?\" I whispered, frowning.\n\n\"Look, do we have time for this?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"Actually, no,\" I said. \"Look up there.\"\n\nI pointed ahead, toward a place where the hallway opened into a large room. This diversion was actually quite fortunate for Bastille, for it meant that she didn't have to explain how silimatic lanterns work \u2013 something I now know that she couldn't have done anyway. Not that I'd point out her ignorance to her directly. She tends to start swinging handbags whenever I do things like that.\n\nBastille went up the hallway first. Despite myself, I was impressed by her stealth as she crept forward, close to the wall. The room ahead was far better lit than the hallway, and her movements threw shadows back along the walls. After reaching the place where the hallway opened into the room, she waved Sing and me forward. I realized that I could hear voices up ahead.\n\nI approached as quietly as possible, creeping up next to Bastille. There was a quiet clink as Sing huddled beside us, setting down his gym bag. Bastille shot him a harsh look, and he shrugged apologetically.\n\nThe room at the end of the corridor was actually a large, three-story entryway. It was circular, and our corridor opened up onto a second-story balcony overlooking the main floor down below. The footprints turned and wound around a set of stairs, leading down. We inched forward to the edge of the balcony and looked down upon the people I had tracked.\n\nOne of them was indeed a person I knew. It was I person I had known for my entire life: Ms. Fletcher.\n\nIt made sense. After all, Grandpa Smedry had said that she'd been the one to steal the sands from my room. The idea had seemed silly to me at the time, but then a lot of things had been confusing to me back then. I could now see that he must have been right.\n\nAnd yet, it seemed so odd to see a person from my regular life in the middle of the library. Ms. Fletcher wasn't a friend, but she was one of the few constants in my life. She had directed my moves from foster family to foster family, always checking in on my, looking after me\u2026.\n\nSpying on me?\n\nMs. Fletcher still wore her unflattering black skirt, tight bun, and horn-rimmed glasses. She stood next to a hefty man in a dark business suit with a black shirt and a red power tie. As he turned, conversing with Ms. Fletcher, I could see that he wore a patch over one eye. The other eye held a red-tinted monocle.\n\nBastille breathed in sharply.\n\n\"What?\" I asked quietly.\n\n\"He only has one eye,\" she said. \"I think that's Radrian Blackburn. He's a very power Oculator Alcatraz \u2013 they say he put out his own eye to increase the power focused through his single remaining one.\"\n\nI frowned. \"Blackburn?\" I whispered. \"That's an interesting name.\"\n\n\"It's a mountain,\" Bastille said. \"I think in the state you call Alaska. Librarians named mountains after themselves \u2013 just like they named prisons after us.\"\n\nI cocked my head. \"I'm pretty sure that Alcatraz Island is older than I am, Bastille.\"\n\n\"You were named after someone, Alcatraz,\" Sing said, crawling up next to us. \"A famous Oculator from long ago. Among people from our world \u2013 and among our opponents \u2013 names tend to get reused. We're traditional that way.\"\n\nI leaned forward. Blackburn didn't look all that threatening. True, he had an arrogant voice and seemed a bit imposing in his black-on-black suit. Still, I had expected something more dramatic. A cape, maybe?\n\nI was, of course, missing something very important. You'll see in a moment.\n\nBeside me, Bastille looked very nervous. I could see her pulling her purse up, reaching one hand inside of it. An odd gesture, I thought, since I doubted there was anything inside that purse that could face down a Dark Oculator. Anyway, the voices from below quickly stole my attention. I could just barely hear what Blackburn was saying.\n\n\"\u2026you hadn't scared him off last night,\" the Oculator said, \"we wouldn't be in this predicament.\"\n\nMs. Fletcher folded her arms. \"I brought you the sands, Radrian. That's what you wanted.\"\n\nBlackburn shook his head. Hands clasped behind his back, he began to stroll in a slow circle, his well-polished shoes clicking on the stones below.\n\n\"You were supposed to watch over the boy,\" he said, \"not just collect the sands. This was sloppy, Shasta. Very sloppy. What possessed you to send a regular thug to go collect the child?\"\n\nMs. Fletcher sent the gunman, I thought with a stab of anger. She really was working for them, all this time.\n\n\"That's what I've always done,\" Ms. Fletcher snapped. \"I send one of my men to move the boy to another foster home.\"\n\nBlackburn turned. \"Your man drew a gun on a Smedry.\"\n\n\"That wasn't supposed to happen,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"Someone must have bribed him \u2013 someone from one of the other factions, I'd guess. The Order of the Shattered Lens, perhaps? We won't know for certain until the interrogation is complete, but I suspect that they were afraid that you'd manage to recruit the boy.\"\n\nRecruit me? That comment made me cock my head. However, there was something more pressing in that statement. It implied that Ms. Fletcher hadn't wanted me killed. For some reason, that made me relieved, though I knew it was foolish.\n\nDown below, Blackburn shook his head. \"You should have gone yourself to collect him, Shasta.\"\n\n\"I intended to go along,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"But\u2026\"\n\n\"But what?\"\n\nShe was silent for a moment. \"I lost my keys,\" she said.\n\nI frowned. It seemed like an odd comment to make. Blackburn, however, simply laughed at this. \"It still has the better of you, doesn't it?\"\n\nI could see Ms. Fletcher flushing. \"I don't see what problem you have working with me. The man who tried to shoot the boy was working for someone else. We should be focusing on discovering what those sands do.\"\n\n\"The problem is, Shasta,\" Blackburn said, growing solemn again, \"this operation was sloppy. When my people are sloppy, it makes me look incompetent. I'm not very fond of that.\" He paused, then looked at her. \"This is not a time we can spare mistakes. Old Smedry is in this town somewhere.\"\n\nMs. Fletcher paused. \"Him? You think it was him?\"\n\n\"Who else?\" Blackburn asked.\n\n\"There are a lot of elderly Oculators, Radrian,\" she said.\n\nBlackburn shook his head. \"I should think that you, of all people, would recognize the Old One's handiwork. He's in the city, after the same thing that we were.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"If Leavenworth was here, he's gone now. He'll have the boy out of Inner Libraria before we can track him down.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" Blackburn said quietly.\n\nI squirmed. As I listened, I'd revised my earlier opinion of Blackburn. I didn't like this man. Blackburn seemed too\u2026 thoughtful. Careful.\n\nDangerous.\n\n\"I've always been curious,\" Blackburn said, as if to himself. \"Why did they leave a Smedry of the pure line to be raised in Inner Libraria? Old Leavenworth must have known that we would find the boy. That we would watch him, control him. It seems like an odd move, wouldn't you say?\"\n\nMs. Fletcher shrugged. \"Perhaps they just didn't want him. Considering his\u2026 parentage.\"\n\nWhat? I thought. Say more on that!\n\nBut Blackburn didn't. He just shook his head thoughtfully. \"Perhaps. But then this child seems to have an inordinately powerful Talent. And there were always the sands. Old Smedry must have known, as we did, that the sands would arrive on the boy's thirteenth birthday.\"\n\n\"So, they used the boy as bait for the sands,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"But we got to them first.\"\n\n\"And old Smedry ended up with the child. Who gained the better half of the deal, I wonder?\"\n\nTell me where the sands are! I thought. Say something useful!\n\n\"As for the sands,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"There is the matter of payment\u2026.\"\n\nBlackburn turned, and I caught a flash of emotion on his face. Anger?\n\nMs. Fletcher raised a finger. \"You don't own me, Blackburn. Don't presume to think that you do.\"\n\n\"You'll get paid, woman,\" Blackburn said, smiling.\n\nIt was not the type of smile one wanted to see. It was dark. Dark as the footprints I had followed. Dark as the hatred in a man's eyes the moment he does something terrible to another person. Dark as an unlit street on a silent night, when you know something is out there, watching you.\n\nIt was from this smile that I realized where Radrian Blackburn got the title \"Dark\" Oculator.\n\n\"You would sell the child too, wouldn't you?\" Blackburn said, still smiling as he removed his monocle, rubbed it clean, then placed it in his pocket. \"You would pass him off for wealth, as you did with the sands. Sometimes you impress even me, Fletcher.\"\n\nMs. Fletcher shrugged.\n\nBlackburn placed a different monocle onto his eye.\n\nWait, I thought. What am I forgetting?\n\nAnd then I realized what it was. Ms. Fletcher's foot prints, along with Blackburn's, shone below. I was still wearing the Tracker's Lenses. Cursing quietly, I pulled them off, then switched them for my Oculator's Lenses.\n\nBlackburn glowed with a vibrant black cloud. He crackled with power, giving off an aura so strong that I had to blink against the terrible shining darkness.\n\nIf Blackburn gave off an aura like that\u2026 what did I give off?\n\nBlackburn smiled, turning directly toward the place where I was hiding with the others. Then his monocle flashed with a burst of power.\n\nI immediately fell unconscious."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "You probably assume you know what is going to happen next: me, tied to an altar, about to get sacrificed. Unfortunately, you're wrong. The story hasn't gotten to that part yet.\n\nThis revelation may annoy you. It may even frustrate you. If it does, then I've achieved my purpose. However, before you throw this book against the wall, you should understand something about storytelling.\n\nSome people assume that authors write books because we have vivid imaginations and want to share our vision. Other people assume that authors write because we are bursting with stories, and therefore must scribble those stories down in moments of creative propondidty.\n\nBoth groups of people are completely wrong. Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.\n\nNow, actual torture is frowned upon in civilized society. Fortunately, the authorial community has discovered in storytelling an even more powerful \u2013 and more fulfilling \u2013 means of causing agony in others. We write stories. And by doing so, we engage in a perfectly legal method of doing all kinds of mean and terrible things to our readers.\n\nTake, for instance, the word I used above. Propondidty. There is no such word \u2013 I made it up. Why? Because it amused me to think of thousands of readers looking up a nonsense word in their dictionaries.\n\nAuthors also create lovable, friendly characters \u2013 then proceed to do terrible things to them (like throw them in unsightly, Librarian-controlled dungeons). This makes readers feel hurt and worried for the characters. The simple truth is that authors like making people squirm. If this weren't the case, all novels would be filled completely with cute bunnies having birthday parties.\n\nSo, now you know the reason why I \u2013 one of the most wealthy and famous people in the Free Kingdoms \u2013 would bother writing a book. This is the only way I can prove to all of you that I'm not the heroic savior that you think I am. If you don't believe what I'm telling you, then ask yourself this: would any decent, kindhearted individual become a writer? Of course not.\n\nI know how this story ends. I know what really happened to my parents. I know the true secret of the Sands of Rashid. I know how I finally ended up suspended over a bubbling pit of acid magma, tied to a flaming altar, staring at my reflection in the twisted, cracked dagger of a Librarian executioner.\n\nBut I am not a nice person. And so, I'm not going to reveal any of these things to you. Not yet, anyway.\n\nSo there.\n\n\"I can't believe how stupid I am!\" Bastille snapped.\n\nI blinked, slowly coming awake. I was lying on something hard.\n\n\"I should have realized that Alcatraz would have an aura,\" Bastille continued. \"It was so obvious!\"\n\n\"He only just started using Oculator's Lenses, Bastille,\" Sing said. \"You couldn't have known he'd have an aura already.\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"I was sloppy. I just\u2026 have trouble thinking of that idiot as an Oculator. He doesn't seem to know anything.\"\n\nI groaned and opened my eyes, discovering a bland stone ceiling above me. The something hard I was lying on turned out to be the ground. And no, it didn't want to be friends with me.\n\n\"What happened?\" I asked, rubbing my forehead.\n\n\"Shocker's Lens. They cause a flash of light that knocks out anyone who's looking at the Oculator.\"\n\nI grunted, sitting. \"I'll have to get a set of those.\"\n\n\"They're very difficult to use,\" Bastille said. \"I doubt you could manage it.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the confidence,\" I grumbled. We were in a cell, apparently. It felt more like a dungeon than a prison. There was a pile of straw to one side, apparently to use for sleeping, and there didn't appear to be any \"facilities\" besides a bucket by the wall.\n\nIt was certainly not a place I wanted to spend any extended period time. Especially in mixed company.\n\nI stumbled to my feet. My jacket was gone, as were Sing's bag of weapons and Bastille's handbag. \"Is there anyone out there?\" I asked quietly. The cell had three stone walls, while the front was set with more modern-style cagelike bars.\n\n\"One guard,\" Bastille said. \"Warrior.\"\n\nI nodded, then took a deep breath and walked up to the front of the cell. I put one hand on the bars and activated my Talent.\n\nOr, at least, I tried to. Nothing happened.\n\nBastille snorted. \"It won't work, Smedry. Those bars are made from Reinforcer's Glass. Things like Smedry Talents and Oculator powers won't affect them.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, lowering my hand.\n\n\"What did you expect to do anyway?\" she snapped. \"Save us? What about the soldier out there? What about the Dark Oculator, who is in the room next door?\"\n\n\"I didn't think \u2013\"\n\n\"No. No, you Smedrys never think! You make all this talk about 'seeing' and 'information,' but you never do anything useful. You don't plan, you just go. And you drag the rest of us along with you!\"\n\nShy spun and walked as far from me as she could, then sat down on the floor, not looking at me.\n\nI stood silent, a little stupefied.\n\n\"Don't mind her, Alcatraz,\" Sing said quietly, joining me at the front of the cell. \"She's just a little angry with herself for letting us get caught.\"\n\n\"It wasn't her fault,\" I said. \"It was mine.\"\n\nIt was mine. Not words I'd often said. I was a little surprised to hear them come out of my mouth.\n\n\"Actually,\" Sing said, \"it's really not any of our fault. You were right to suggest following Blackburn \u2013 he was probably our best chance of finding the sands. But, well, this is how things turned out.\"\n\nSing sighed, running his hand along one of the bars. I reached out and felt one too, noting now that Bastille had been right \u2013 the bar didn't quite feel like iron. It was too smooth.\n\n\"There were a few Smedrys who could have gotten through these bars, Reinforcer's Glass or no,\" Sing said. \"Ah, to have a Talent like that\u2026\"\n\n\"I think your Talent is pretty useful,\" I said. \"It saved us down below, and that stumble you did to create a distraction was great. I've never seen anything so amazing!\"\n\nSing smiled. \"I know you're just saying that. But I appreciate it anyway.\"\n\nWe stood quietly for a moment, and I found myself feeling frustrated, and more than a little guilty. Despite what Sing had said, I felt responsible for getting us captured. Slowly, the real weight of what was going on began to press against me.\n\nI'd been imprisoned by the type of people who sent armed gunmen to collect young boys from their homes \u2013 people who included a man so evil, he left dark footprints burning on the ground. Blackburn obviously could have killed me if he'd wanted. That meant he had kept me alive for a reason. And I was growing more and more certain I didn't want to know what that reason was.\n\nIt had been a long time since I'd felt true dread. I'd learned over the years to be a bit callous \u2013 I'd had to, with my foster parents abandoning me so often. In that moment, however, dread pushed through my shell.\n\nBastille was still sulking in the back, so I glanced at Sing, looking for some sort of comfort. \"Sing? Our ancestors \u2013 could you tell me about some of them?\"\n\n\"What would you like to know?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Well,\" Sing said, rubbing his chin. \"There was Libby Smedry \u2013 she was quite the capable one. I've often wished to have a Talent half as grand as hers.\"\n\n\"And it was?\"\n\n\"She could get impossible amounts of water on the floor when she did the dishes,\" Sing said, sighing slightly. \"She single-handedly ended the drought in Kalbeeze during the fourth-third century \u2013 and she did it while keeping all their dishware sparkling clean!\"\n\nHe smiled wistfully. \"Also, I suppose everyone knows about Alcatraz Smedry the Seventh \u2013 he would be about sixteen generations removed from you. The Librarians weren't around then, but Dark Oculators were. Alcatraz Seven had the Talent to make annoying noises at inappropriate times. He defeated enemy after enemy \u2013 you see, he distracted the Dark Oculators so much that they couldn't concentrate hard enough to work their Lenses!\"\n\nSing sighed. \"Thinking about those kinds of Talents always makes tripping seem so bland.\"\n\n\"Breaking things isn't all that great either,\" I said.\n\n\"No, Alcatraz. Breaking things \u2013 now that's a real Talent. One of the great old talents, talked about in the legends. I know I shouldn't really complain about my power \u2013 I should be happy to have anything. But you\u2026 it would be a true shame to speak ill of a Talent like that. And it couldn't have been given to a better Smedry.\n\nA better Smedry\u2026\n\nSing smiled at me encouragingly, and glanced away. I'm getting too attached to him, I thought. To all of them \u2013 Grandpa Smedry, Sing, even Bastille.\n\n\"Come on,\" Sing said. \"Don't look so glum.\"\n\n\"You don't really know me, Sing,\" I found myself saying. \"I'm not a good person.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" Sing said.\n\nI leaned against the bars of the cell, glancing out \u2013 not that there was much to look at. A simple stone wall stood across from the cell. \"You don't know the things I've done, Sing. The\u2026 breaking. The pain I've brought to good people \u2013 people who just wanted to give me a home.\"\n\nSing shrugged. \"Actually, Alcatraz, Grandpa Smedry spoke of you sometimes. He talked about the\u2026 mishaps that happened around you. He said he thought it might be related to your Talent, and turns out it was. Not your fault at all!\"\n\nWhy did you burn down your foster parents' kitchen? Grandpa Smedry had asked. It seems like a perversion of your Talent\u2026.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"It was my fault, Sing. I didn't break simple, ordinary things. I broke the things that were the most valuable to people who cared for me. I made them hate me. On purpose.\"\n\n\"No,\" Sing said. \"No, that doesn't sound like something a Smedry could do.\"\n\n\"Every family has its black sheep, Sing,\" I said. \"I'm a\u2026 broken Smedry. Maybe that's why the Dark Oculator didn't kill me. Maybe he knows that I'm not noble like the rest of you. Maybe he knows that he might be able to pull me to his side. Perhaps I'd be better there.\"\n\nSing fell silent. I waited for him to look horrified or betrayed.\n\nAfter a few moments, Sing raised a hand and put it on my shoulder. \"You're still my cousin. Even if you've done bad things, that doesn't make you a Dark Oculator. Anything you've done, you can fix. You can change.\"\n\nIt's not that easy, I thought. Will Sing be that forgiving when I accidentally break something precious to him? His books perhaps? What will Sing Smedry do when he finds all that he loves broken and mangled, discarded at the feet of the disaster known as Alcatraz Smedry?\n\nSing smiled, removing his hand from my shoulder, apparently thinking that the problem was resolved. But it wasn't, not for me. I sat down on the stones, arms around my knees. What's wrong with me lately? Sing seems determined to like me. Why am I so concerned with making certain he knows what I've done?\n\nI turned away from Sing and, for some reason, found myself thinking about days long past.\n\nI have trouble remembering the first things I broke. They were valuable, though \u2013 I remember that. Expensive crystal things, collected by my first foster mother. It seemed that I could barely walk by her room without one of them shattering.\n\nThat wasn't all either. Any room they locked me in I could escape without even really trying. Anything they bought or brought into the home, the curious young Alcatraz would study and inspect.\n\nAnd break.\n\nSo, they got rid of me. They hadn't been cruel people \u2013 I'd just been too much for them. I saw them once, on the street a few months later, walking with a little girl. My replacement. A girl who didn't break everything she touched, a girl who fit better into what they had imagined for their lives.\n\nI shivered, sitting with my back to the glass bars of my prison cell. Sometimes I tried \u2013 I tried so hard \u2013 not to break anything. But it was like the Talent welled up inside of me when I did that. And then, when it burst free, it was even more powerful.\n\nA tear rolled down my cheek. After moving from family to family enough times, I'd realized that they would all leave me eventually. After that, I hadn't worried as much about what I broke. In fact\u2026 I'd begun to break things more often \u2013 important things. The valuable cars of a father who collected vehicles. The trophies won by a father who played sports in college. The kitchen of a mother who was a renowned chef.\n\nI'd told myself that these things were simply accidents. But now I saw a pattern in my life.\n\nI broke things early, quickly. The most valuable, important things. That way, they'd know. They'd know what I was.\n\nAnd they'd send me away. Before I could come to care for them. And get hurt again.\n\nIt felt safer to act that way. But what had it done to me? In breaking so many objects, had I broken myself? I shivered again. Sitting in that cold Librarian dungeon \u2013 faced by my first (but certainly not last) failure as a leader \u2013 I finally admitted something to myself.\n\nI don't just break, I thought. I destroy."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "At this point, perhaps you feel sorry for me. Or perhaps you feel that my suffering was deserved, considering what I'd done to all those families who tried to take me in.\n\nI'd like to tell you that all of this soul-searching was good for me. And perhaps it did help in the short term. However, before you get your hopes up, let me promise you here and now that the Alcatraz Smedry you think you know is a farce. You may see some promising things developing in my young self, but in the end, none of these things were able to save those I love.\n\nIf I could go back, I'd drive Sing and the others away for good. Unfortunately, at that point in my life, I still had some small hope that I'd find acceptance with them. I should have realized that attachment would only lead to pain. Especially when I failed to protect them.\n\nStill, it was probably good for me to realize that I was driving people away on purpose, for it let me understand just how bad a person I am. Perhaps more young boys should be captured by evil Librarians, forced to sit in cold dungeons, contemplating their faults as they wait for their doom. Perhaps I'll start a summer camp based on that theme.\n\nThe weirdest part about this all, I thought, is that nobody yet has made a joke about a pair of kids named Alcatraz and Bastille getting locked in a prison.\n\nOf course, we weren't in a very jokey mood at that moment. I couldn't know for certain, since the hourglass \u2013 along with my jacket \u2013 had been taken from me, but I figured that our remaining half hour had passed, and then some. I tried very hard not to look at the latrine bucket, in the hopes that it wouldn't remind my body of any duties that needed to be done.\n\nYet as I sat and thought, some very strange things were happening to me. I'd always kind of thought of myself as a defiant rebel against the system. However, the truth was that I was just a whiny kid who threw tantrums and broke things because he wanted to make certain that he hurt others before they hurt him. It was that dreaded humility again, and it was having a very odd effect on me. It should have made me feel like a worm, crushing me down with shame. Yet for some reason, it didn't do that.\n\nRealizing my faults didn't make my head bow but made me look up instead. Realizing how stupid I had been didn't cause me grief but made me smile at my own foolishness. Losing my identity didn't make me feel paranoid or worthless.\n\nThe truth was, I'd secretly felt all of those things \u2013 shame, grief, paranoia, insecurity \u2013 for most of my life. Now that I wasn't covering them up, I could begin to let go of them. It didn't make me a perfect person, and it didn't change what I'd done. However, it did let me stand up and face my situation with a little more determination.\n\nI was a Smedry. And while I wasn't quite certain of all that meant, I was beginning to have a better idea. I crossed the room, passing Sing, and crouched down by Bastille.\n\n\"Bastille,\" I whispered. \"We've waited long enough. We have to figure a way to get out of here.\"\n\nShe glanced up at me, and I could see that her face was streaked with tears. I blinked in surprise. Why has she been crying?\n\n\"Get out?\" she said. \"We can't get out! This cell was built to hold people like you and me.\"\n\n\"There has to be a way.\"\n\n\"I've failed,\" Bastille said quietly, as if she hadn't heard me.\n\n\"Bastille,\" I said. \"We don't have time for this.\"\n\n\"What do you know?\" she snapped. \"You've been an Oculator all of your life, and have you done anything with it? Never! You didn't even know. How is that fair?\"\n\nI paused, then reached up to touch my face. I hadn't even noticed \u2013 my glasses were gone.\n\nOf course they are, I thought. They took my jacket with the Tracker's Lenses and the Firebringer's Lenses in the pocket. They took Bastille's and Sing's Warrior Lenses. They would have taken my Oculator's Lenses.\n\n\"You didn't even notice, did you?\" Bastille asked bitterly. \"They took your most powerful possession, and you didn't even notice.\"\n\n\"I haven't been wearing them for long,\" I said. \"Only a few hours, really. I guess it felt natural to me for them to not be there when I woke up.\"\n\n\"Natural for them to not be there,\" Bastille said, shaking her head. \"Why do you get to be an Oculator, Smedry? Why you?\"\n\n\"Aren't all Smedrys Oculators?\" I asked. \"Or, at least, all of those in the pure line?\"\n\n\"Most of them are,\" she said. \"But not all of them. And there are plenty of Oculators who aren't Smedrys.\"\n\n\"Obviously,\" I said, glancing over my shoulder, toward the room where Blackburn and Ms. Fletcher supposedly were.\n\nThen I glanced back at Bastille, cocking my head. She stared at me defiantly. That's it. That's what I've been missing. \"You wanted to be one, didn't you?\" I asked. \"An Oculator.\"\n\n\"It's none of your business, Smedry.\"\n\nBut it made too much sense to ignore. \"That's why you know so much about Oculator auras. And you were the one who identified the Lenses that Blackburn used on us. You must have studied a whole lot to learn so many things.\"\n\n\"For all the good it did,\" she said with a quiet snort. \"I learned that studying can't change a person, Smedry. I've always wanted to be something I wasn't \u2013 and the thing is, everyone supported me. 'You can be anything you want, if you try hard enough!' they said.\n\n\"Well, you know what, Smedry? They lied. There are some things that you just can't change.\"\n\nI stood silently.\n\nBastille shook her head. \"You can't study yourself into being something you aren't. I won't ever be an Oculator. I'll have to settle for being what my mother always told me I should be. The thing I'm apparently 'gifted' in.\"\n\n\"And that is?\" I asked.\n\n\"Being a warrior,\" she said with a sigh. \"But I guess I'm not too good at that either.\"\n\nNow, you're probably expecting poor Bastille to \"learn something\" by the end of this book. You probably expect to see her overcome her bitterness, to realize that she never should have given up on her dreams.\n\nYou think this because you've read too many silly stories about people who achieve things they previously thought impossible \u2013 deep and poignant books about trains that climb hills or little girls who succeed through sheer determination.\n\nLet me make one thing very clear. Bastille will never become an Oculator. It's a genetic ability, which means you can only become an Oculator if your ancestors were Oculators. Bastille's weren't.\n\nPeople can do great things. However, there are some things they just can't do. I, for instance, have not been able to transform myself into a Popsicle, despite years of effort. I could, however, make myself insane, if I wished. (Though if I achieved the second, I might be able to make myself think I'd achieved the first\u2026.)\n\nAnyway, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's this: Great success often depends upon being able to distinguish between the impossible and the improbable. Or, in easier terms, distinguishing between Popsicles and insanity.\n\nAny questions?\n\nI wanted to say something to help Bastille. After all, I'd just undergone a life-changing revelation, and I figured that there should be enough to go around. Unfortunately, Bastille wasn't exactly in a \"life-changing revelation\" sort of mood.\n\n\"I don't need your pity, Smedry,\" she snapped, swatting my arm away. \"I'm just fine as I am. There really isn't anything you could do to help anyway.\"\n\nI opened my mouth to reply, but at that moment, I heard a door open. I turned as Ms. Fletcher strolled into the hallway outside our cell.\n\n\"Hello, Smedry,\" she said.\n\n\"Ms. Fletcher,\" I said flatly. \"Or 'Shasta,' or whatever your real name is.\"\n\n\"Fletcher will do,\" she said, obviously trying to sound friendly. She couldn't quite pull it off. \"I've come to chat.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"I have little to say to you.\"\n\n\"Come now, Alcatraz. I've always looked out for you, despite how difficult you made my life. Surely you can see that I have your best interests at heart.\"\n\n\"Somehow I doubt that, Ms. Fletcher.\"\n\nShe raised an eyebrow. \"That's all you have to say? I expected something a little more\u2026 scathing, Smedry.\"\n\n\"Actually, I've changed,\" I said. \"You see, I just had a life-changing revelation and don't plan to make snide comments anymore.\"\n\n\"Is that so?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is,\" I said firmly.\n\nMs. Fletcher cocked her head, a strange look on her face.\n\n\"What?\" I asked.\n\n\"Nothing,\" she said. \"You just\u2026 reminded me of someone I used to know. Anyway, I don't care what game you are playing today. The time has come for us to deal.\"\n\n\"Deal?\"\n\nMs. Fletcher nodded, leaning in. \"We want the old man. The crazy one who came and got you this morning.\"\n\n\"You mean Grandpa Smedry?\" I asked, glancing at Sing, who was watching quietly. Apparently, he was content to let me take the lead in the conversation.\n\n\"Yes,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"Grandpa Smedry. Tell us where he is and we'll let you go.\"\n\n\"Let me go? Let me go where?\"\n\n\"Out,\" Ms. Fletcher said, motioning with her hand. \"We'll find you another foster family and things can go back to the way they were.\"\n\n\"That hardly seems compelling,\" I said.\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Ms. Fletcher said flatly. \"You're in a Librarian dungeon, and you have Oculator blood. If you aren't careful, you'll end up as a sacrifice. I'd be a little more friendly if I were you \u2013 I'm likely the only ally you'll find in this place.\"\n\nThis was, of course, the first time I ever heard about a ceremony involving sacrificial Oculators. I dismissed the comment as an idle threat.\n\nFoolish, foolish Alcatraz.\n\n\"If you're the best ally I have, Ms. Fletcher,\" I said, \"then I'm in serious trouble.\"\n\n\"That sounded just a little bit snide, Alcatraz,\" Sing said helpfully. \"You may want to back off a little.\"\n\n\"Thank you Sing,\" I said, still watching Ms. Fletcher, my eyes narrowed.\n\n\"I can get you out, Alcatraz,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"don't make me do something we'd both regret. I've watched over you for years, haven't I? You can trust me.\"\n\nWatched over you for years\u2026 \"Yes,\" I said. \"Yes, you have watched over me. And every time a family abandoned me, you told me I was useless. It was like you wanted me to feel abandoned and unimportant.\" I met her eyes. \"That's it, isn't it? You were worried that I'd learn what it meant to be a Smedry. That's why you always treated me like you did. You needed me to be insecure, so that I would trust you \u2013 and distrust my Talent.\"\n\nMs. Fletcher looked away. \"Look, let's just make a deal. Let me get you out, and we can forget about the past for now.\"\n\n\"And these others?\" I asked, nodding toward Sing and Bastille. \"If I go free, what happens to them?\"\n\n\"What do you care?\" Ms. Fletcher asked, looking back at me.\n\nI folded my arms.\n\n\"You have changed,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"And not for the better, I'd say. Is this the same boy who burned down a kitchen yesterday? Since when did you start caring about the people around you?\"\n\nThe answer to that question was actually \"About five minutes ago.\" However, I didn't intend to share that information with Ms. Fletcher.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said. \"We'll have an exchange. You want to know where the old man is? Well, I want to know some things too. Answer my questions, and I'll answer yours.\"\n\n\"Fine,\" Ms. Fletcher said, folding her arms.\n\nBusinesslike as always, I thought. \"How did you know about the Sands of Rashid?\"\n\nMs. Fletcher waved an indifferent hand. \"Your parents promised them to you at your birth. It's a custom \u2013 to pronounce an inheritance upon a newborn and deliver it on the child's thirteenth birthday. Everyone knew that you were supposed to get those sands. Some of us are a little surprised that they actually made their way to you, but we were happy to see them nonetheless.\"\n\n\"Did you know my parents, then?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"Actually, I studied under them. I thought they might be able to train me to be an Oculator.\"\n\nI snorted. \"That's not something you can learn.\"\n\n\"Yes, well,\" Ms. Fletcher said, looking a little flustered, \"I was young.\"\n\n\"Did you kill them?\" I asked, teeth gritted.\n\nMs. Fletcher laughed a flat, lifeless laugh. \"Of course not. Do I look like a killer?\"\n\n\"You send a man with a gun after me.\"\n\n\"That was a mistake,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"Besides, your parents were Smedrys. They would be even harder to kill than you.\"\n\n\"And why do you want Grandpa Smedry?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, I think I've answered enough questions,\" Ms. Fletcher said. \"Now fulfill your end of the bargain. Where is the old man?\"\n\nI smiled. \"I forgot.\"\n\n\"But\u2026 our bargain!\"\n\n\"I lied, Ms. Fletcher,\" I said. \"I do that sometimes.\"\n\nSee, I promised you. Life-changing revelation or not, I never was all that good a person.\n\nMs. Fletcher's eyes opened wide, and she displayed more emotion that I'd ever seen from her as she began muttering at me under her breath.\n\n\"Enough!\" a new voice said. A dark-suited arm shoved Ms. Fletcher away, and Blackburn moved over to stand in front of the cell.\n\n\"Tell me where the old fool is, boy,\" Blackburn said quietly. He stared at me, his monocle glistening with a reddish color. Even without my Oculator's Lenses, I swear that I could see a little black cloud rising from him.\n\n\"If you don't talk willingly,\" Blackburn said, reaching up to take off his monocle, \"I will make you.\" He pulled another monocle from a vest pocket. It had green and black tints. \"This is a Torturer's Lens. By looking through it and focusing on a part of your body, I can make you feel intense agony. It makes the muscles begin to rip, and while it probably won't kill you, you will soon start to wish that it would.\"\n\nHe reached up, putting the monocle in place. \"I've seen men permanently paralyzed by these things, boy. I've seen them break their own bones as they thrash about on the ground, crying out with such pain that they'd have killed themselves to stop it. Does that sound like fun? Well, if not, you should start talking. Now!\"\n\nIt's funny what a little taste of leadership can do to someone. A shade of responsibility, a smidgen of self-understanding, and I was ready to stand up to a full-blooded Dark Oculator. I gritted my teeth, jutted out my chin defiantly, and stared him in the eye.\n\nSo, of course, I got my heroic little self blasted with a beam of pure pain.\n\nThis is supposed to be a book for all ages, so I won't go into details about how it felt to get hit by a Torturer's Lens. Just try and remember the worst wound you've ever felt. The most agonizing, most terrifying pain in your life. Remember it, hold it in your head.\n\nThen imagine if a shark swam by and bit you in half while you were distracted. That's a little what it felt like. Only, add in swallowing a few grenades and suffering through a night at the opera too. (And don't try and tell me I didn't warn you about the sharks.)\n\nThe pain let up. I lay on the floor of the cell, though I didn't remember falling. Sing was at my side, and even Bastille was moving over to me, her face concerned. My agony faded slowly, and I looked up, seeing Blackburn as a dark shadow standing before the cell.\n\nThere was a small twist of pleasure on his lips. \"Now, boy, tell me what I want to know.\"\n\nAnd I would have. This is your hero, Free Kingdomers. I broke that easily \u2013 I hadn't ever known pain; I was no soldier. I was just a kid trapped by forces he had no hope of understanding. I would have told Blackburn anything he wanted to know.\n\nHowever, I didn't have a chance to spit it out. At that moment, you see, Grandpa Smedry poked his head into the dungeon hallway, smiling happily.\n\n\"Why, hello, Blackburn,\" he said. Then he waved to me, holding up a pair of hands that were manacled together. He wasn't wearing his Oculator's Lenses, and a pair of beefy-looking men in dark robes and black sunglasses stood behind him, holding his arms.\n\n\"It appears that I've been captured,\" Grandpa Smedry said, manacle chains clinking. \"I hope I'm not too late!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "We have now spent two complete chapters trapped in the dungeon. We're about to embark on our third chapter in there, assuming I ever finish with this introduction.\n\nThree chapters, on the other hand, is a very long time. It is a longer time than I spent in my foster home. It is a longer time that I spent visiting the gas station. It's a longer time than I spent in childhood, which was covered in only about two sentences.\n\nWhy so long in prison? At that moment, I was struggling with the same question. Few things are more maddening that forced inactivity, and I had been forced into inactivity for two entire chapters. True, I'd made some good, deep, personal revelations \u2013 however, the time for those had passed. I would almost rather have been tied to an altar and sacrificed, as opposed to being forced to sit around and wait while my grandfather was towed off to be tortured.\n\nFor, you see, that was what happened in between chapters \u2013 a space of time so short that it's practically nonexistent. During that void of nothingness, Blackburn laughed evilly a couple of times, then pulled Grandpa Smedry off to the \"Interrogation Room.\" Apparently, the Dark Oculator was overjoyed at the prospect of having a fully trained Smedry to torture.\n\nBut then again, who wouldn't be?\n\n\"Come back here!\" Bastille screamed, pounding the latrine bucket repeatedly against the bars. I was now even more glad that I hadn't ended up needing to use it.\n\n\"Come back and fight me!\" she yelled, slamming the bucket against the bars in one final overhand strike, venting her fury by smashing the wooden container into a dozen different pieces. She stood, puffing for a second, holding a broken handle.\n\n\"Well,\" Sing whispered, \"at least she's getting back some of her good humor.\"\n\nRight, I thought. By then, my agony had faded almost to nothingness. (I later learned that I'd only been subjected to the Torturer's Lens for a period of three seconds. It takes at least five to do permanent damage.)\n\nI empathized with Bastille \u2013 I even felt some of her same rage, even if I didn't express it by destroying innocent bucketry. The longer I sat, the more ashamed I felt at how quickly I'd broken. Yet remembering those three seconds of pain made me shudder.\n\nAnd even worse than the memory was the knowledge that my grandfather \u2013 a man I barely knew, but one for whom I already felt a sincere affection \u2013 had been captured. At that very moment, the old man was probably being subjected to the Torturer's Lens. And his torture would last far longer than three seconds.\n\nBastille reached down, picking up a few bucket shards and tossing them in annoyance at the wall outside the cell.\n\n\"That isn't helping, Bastille,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh?\" she snapped. \"And what about sitting on the ground, looking stupid? How much good is that doing?\"\n\nI blinked, flushing.\n\n\"Bastille, lass,\" Sing said quietly. \"That was harsh, even for you.\"\n\nBastille puffed quietly for a few more moments, the turned away. \"Whatever,\" she muttered, walking over to kick at the hay pile with a frustrated motion. \"It's just that\u2026 Old Smedry\u2026 I mean, he's a fool, but I think of him being tortured\u2026\"\n\nShe kicked at the hay again, tossing a pile into the air. The way it bounced off the wall and fell back on her might have been comical, had the situation been different.\n\n\"We all care for him, Bastille,\" Sing said.\n\n\"You don't understand,\" Bastille said, picking a few strands of hay out of her silvery hair. \"I'm a Knight of Crystallia! I'm sworn to protect the Oculators of the Free Kingdoms. And I was assigned to be his guard. I'm supposed to protect the old Smedry \u2013 keep him out of situations like this!\"\n\n\"Yes, but \u2013\"\n\n\"No, Sing,\" Bastille said. \"You really don't understand. Leavenworth is a fully trained Smedry of the pure line. Not just that, he's a member of the Oculator Council and is the trusted friend of dozens of kings and rulers. Do you have any idea the kinds of state secrets he knows?\"\n\nSing frowned, and I looked up.\n\n\"Why do you think the Council insists that he always keep a Knight of Crystallia around to protect him?\" Bastille asked. \"He complains \u2013 says he doesn't need a Crystin guard. Well, the Council would have conceded to him long ago, if it were just his life that he endangered. But he knows things, Sing. Important things. That's why I'm supposed to keep him out of trouble, why I'm supposed to do my best to protect him.\" She sighed, slumping downs beside the well. \"And I failed.\"\n\nAnd at that moment, I probably said the dumbest thing I ever have.\n\n\"Why you?\" I asked. \"I mean, if he's so important, why \u2013 of all people \u2013 did they choose you to protect him?\"\n\nYes, it was very insensitive. No, it wasn't very helpful. However, it's what slipped out.\n\nYou know you were thinking the same thing anyway.\n\nBastille's eyes widened with anger, but she didn't snap at me. Finally, she just let her head slump against her knees. \"I don't know,\" she whispered. \"They never told me \u2013 they never even explained. I had barely achieved knighthood, but they sent me anyway.\"\n\nWe all fell silent.\n\nFinally, I stood. I walked to the bars of the cell. Then I knelt. I've broken cars, kitchens, and chickens, I thought. I've destroyed the homes and possessions of people who took me in. I've broken the hearts of people who wanted to love me.\n\nI can break the cell that is keeping me a prisoner.\n\nI reached out, gripping the bars, then closed my eyes and focused.\n\nBreak! I commanded. Waves of power washed down my arms, tingling like jolts of electricity. They slammed into the bars.\n\nAnd nothing happened.\n\nI opened my eyes, gritting my teeth in frustration. The bars remained where they were, looking annoyingly unbroken. There wasn't even a crack in them. The lock was made of glass as well, and somehow I knew that it would react the same way to my Talent.\n\nAgain, I feel the need to point out the Popsicle lesson. Desire does not instantly change the world. Sometimes, stories gloss over this fact, for the world would be a much more pleasant place if you could obtain something simply by wanting it badly enough.\n\nUnfortunately, this is a real and true story, not a fantasy. I couldn't escape from the prison simply because I wanted to.\n\nYet I would like to note something else at this point. Determination \u2013 true determination \u2013 is more than simply wanting something to happen. It's wanting something to happen, then finding a realistic way to make certain that what you want to happen, happens.\n\nAnd that happened to be what was happening with the story's current happenings. I ignored the bars, instead laying my palm flat against the stones of the cell floor. They were large, sturdy blocks, plastered together with a smooth mortar. The bars ran directly into holes in the stone.\n\nI smiled. Then closed my eyes again, focusing. I hadn't often used my Talent so intentionally, but I felt that I was gaining some skill with it. I was able to send a wave of power through my arms and into the rocks.\n\nThe mortar cracked quietly beneath my fingers. I focused harder, sending out an even larger wave of breaking power. There was a loud crack. When I opened my eyes, I found that I was kneeling in dust and chips, the stones beneath my knees reduced entirely to rubble.\n\nI stared, a little shocked at just how much of the stone I had broken. Sing stood, looking on with a surprised expression. Even Bastille looked up from her mourning. Cracks in the stone twisted across the floor, spiderwebbing all the way to the back of the cell.\n\nThey keep saying that my Talent is powerful, I thought. How much could I really break, if I set my mind to it? Eagerly, I reached up, grabbing a bar and trying to pull it free from its now-rubbled mountings.\n\nIt remained firm. It didn't even budge a bit.\n\n\"Did you really think that would work?\" an amused voice asked.\n\nI looked up at the dungeon guard, who had walked over to watch me. He wore the clothing one might have expected of a Librarian \u2013 an unfashionable knit vest pulled tight over a buttoned pink shirt, matched by a slightly darker pink bow tie. His glasses even had a bit of tape on them.\n\nOnly one thing about him deviated from what I would have expected: He was huge. He was as tall as Sing, and easily twice as muscular. It was like a bodybuilder supersoldier had beaten up an unfortunate nerd and \u2013 for some inconceivable reason \u2013 stolen his clothing.\n\nThe guard punched a fist into his palm, smiling. He wore a sword tied at his waist, and his glasses \u2013 the taped ones \u2013 were dark, like the ones that Sing and Bastille wore. Once again, I was struck by the unfairness of letting the warriors wear sunglasses, while I was stuck with slightly pink ones.\n\nThat is one complaint, by the way, I still haven't gotten over.\n\n\"The stones are just there for show,\" the Librarian said. \"The entire cage is made from Reinforcer's Glass \u2013 it's a box, with the bars at the front. Breaking the stones won't do any good. You think we aren't familiar with Smedry tricks?\"\n\nHe's too far away to touch, I thought with frustration. But\u2026 what was it Grandpa Smedry said when I destroyed that gunman's weapon?\n\nThe man had threatened me. And my Talent had worked proactively, instinctively.\n\nAt a distance.\n\nI reached down, picking up a few pieces of wood from the broken bucket. The beefy Librarian snorted and turned to walk back to his post. I, however, tossed a piece of wood through the bars, hitting him in the back of the head.\n\nThe guard turned, frowning. I bounced another piece of wood off his forehead.\n\n\"Hey!\" the Librarian snapped.\n\nI threw harder, this time causing the Librarian to flinch as the bit of wood came close to his eyes.\n\n\"Alcatraz?\" Sing asked nervously. \"Are you certain this is wise?\" Bastille, however, stood up. She walked toward the front of the cell.\n\nI threw again.\n\n\"Stop that!\" the Librarian said, stepping forward, raising his fists.\n\nI threw a fifth piece of wood, hitting him in the chest.\n\n\"All right,\" the Librarian said, reaching downs to unsheathe his sword. \"What do you think of this?\" He stuck the sword forward, apparently intending to force me back with it.\n\nBastille, however, moved more quickly. I watched with shock as she grabbed the blade of the sword, somehow managing to keep from cutting herself as she yanked it forward. This threw the Librarian off balance, and he stumbled toward the cell, still holding on to his weapon.\n\nBastille snapped forward, reaching between the bars and grabbing the Librarian guard by the hair. Then she yanked the man's head down and forward, slamming it against the glass bars.\n\nThe sword clanged to the ground. The guard's unconscious body followed a second later. Bastille knelt down, grabbing the guard's arm and pulling him up against the cell bars. Then she began fishing around in his pockets. \"All right, Smedry,\" she admitted, \"that was well done.\"\n\n\"Uh, no problem,\" I said. \"You\u2026 took him down pretty smoothly.\"\n\nBastille shrugged, pulling something out of the man's pocket \u2013 a glass sphere. \"He's just a Librarian thug.\"\n\n\"No match for a trained Knight of Crystallia,\" Sing agreed. \"Yes, that was indeed quite clever, Alcatraz. How did you know he'd lose his temper and pull out the sword?\"\n\n\"Actually,\" I said, \"I was trying to get him to throw something at me.\"\n\nBastille frowned. \"What good would that do?\"\n\n\"I figured it would engage my Talent if he tried to hurt me.\"\n\nSing rubbed his chin. \"That would probably have broken the thing he threw at you. But\u2026 how was that going to get us out of the cell?\"\n\nI paused. \"I hadn't exactly gotten that far yet.\"\n\nBastille placed the glass sphere against the lock. It clicked; the door swung open.\n\n\"Either way,\" she said, \"we're out.\" She glanced at me, and I could see something in her eyes. Relief, even a bit of gratitude. It wasn't an apology \u2013 but from Bastille, it was virtually the same thing. I took it for what it was worth.\n\nBastille left the cell and stopped down beside the unconscious Librarian. She pulled off his sunglasses, removed the tape \u2013 which was apparently there just for show \u2013 then slipped the glasses on her own face. After that, she grabbed the guard by one arm and pulled him into the cell. She quickly patted him down, pulling out a wallet and a dagger as Sing and I left the cell. Then she closed the door, using the glass sphere to lock it again.\n\nShe grinned and held up the sphere to me. \"Would you mind?\"\n\nI smiled as well, then reached out with one finger and touched the sphere. It shattered.\n\nShe dug in the wallet for a moment. \"Nothing useful in here,\" she noted. \"Except maybe this.\" She pulled out a small card.\n\n\"A library card?\" I asked.\n\n\"What else?\" she said. I took it from her fingers, turning it over.\n\n\"Hey, they're gone,\" Sing said. He was peeking into the room beside the dungeon, the one where Grandpa Smedry, Ms. Fletcher, and the Dark Oculator had gone.\n\nBastille and I joined him. The room was indeed empty, except for our possessions, which had been carefully set out on a table.\n\n\"Thank the First Sands,\" Bastille said with relief, tossing aside the guard's sword in favor of her handbag. \"I was worried that I'd be stuck with those common weapons. I'd almost rather have had some guns.\"\n\n\"Now, that's not very nice,\" Sing said, waddling forward to inspect his guns, which sat on the table beside the gym bag.\n\nI joined the two of them at the table as Bastille replaced her silver jacket. \"There, Smedry,\" she said. My three pairs of glasses sat on the table. I grabbed the Oculator's Lenses eagerly, slipping them on.\n\nOf course, nothing really changed. And yet, it did. Even though I wasn't used to wearing glasses, I found myself comforted to feel their weight on my face. I grabbed the other two pairs, the Firebringer's Lenses still inside their small pouch.\n\n\"We have to move quickly,\" Bastille said.\n\nSing nodded, checking the clip on a handgun. He tucked several uzis into the front of his kimono belt, threw on four separate handgun holsters, then strapped the shotgun onto his back. He soon looked like some bizarre fat Rambo samurai.\n\n\"We have to find the room where they took your grandfather,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"No problem,\" I said, slipping off my Oculator's Lenses, then putting on the Tracker's Lenses. Though Blackburn's footprints had disappeared, Grandpa Smedry's prints blazed a fiery white, still present. They led out the door on the far side of the room. Ms. Fletcher's diverged from them, heading in a different direction.\n\nWe'll have to worry about her later, I thought, nodding toward the other two. Sing slung the gym bag over his shoulder \u2013 it was still filled with ammunition \u2013 and we set off, moving quickly out after Grandpa Smedry's footprints.\n\nAnd so, I managed to escape from my first dungeon. Determination can actually take you quite far \u2013 though, admittedly, you sometimes have to rely on the thirteen-year-old girl to knock out the guards."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "You're very clever. You noticed a problem.\n\nIn the last chapter, Sing, Bastille, and I escaped from prison, then immediately rushed off to save Grandpa Smedry. But, of course, Grandpa Smedry was being tortured by the very same man who had captured Sing and Bastille and me in the first place.\n\nThat meant we were in vaguely the same position as before. How did we intend to defeat a master Oculator \u2013 a dark, powerful man with more experience than all of us combined? Well, the answer is simple.\n\nWhile imprisoned, we had gained a newfound wisdom. We came to a greater understanding of the world around us and of our place in it. We gained insight regarding our\u2026\n\nOh, all right. None of us paused to think about what we were doing. In our defense, we were a little bit flustered at the time. Plus, two of us were Smedrys.\n\nThat ought to explain it.\n\n\"This way,\" I said, pointing down another castlelike corridor, following Grandpa Smedry's footprints. And as we ran, something occurred to me. (No, not the fact that we were running after the man who had so easily captured us previously. Something else.)\n\n\"These corridors look familiar,\" I said.\n\n\"That's because all the corridors in this place look the same,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"It's not just that. That lantern bracket looks like a cantaloupe.\"\n\n\"They're all designed to look like one fruit or another,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"And we've passed this one before,\" I said.\n\n\"You think we're going in circles?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"I think we passed it while chasing down Blackburn that first time. That's the lantern I saw that made me ask you about electric lights. That means \u2013\"\n\nSing tripped.\n\nI stood for just a brief moment. Then I dove for the ground. Sing didn't even try to keep his balance, and he toppled like a felled tree. Bastille also threw herself down with a vengeance, as if determined to get to the floor first. All three of us hit, dropping as fast as a group of pathological martyrs at a grenade testing ground.\n\nNothing happened.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked, glancing around.\n\n\"I don't see anything,\" Bastille whispered. \"Sing?\"\n\n\"I think I bruised something,\" he muttered, rubbing his side. \"One of these pistols jammed me in the tummy!\"\n\nI snorted quietly. \"Be glad it didn't go off. Now, why did you trip?\"\n\n\"Because my foot hit something,\" Sing said. \"That's usually how it works, Alcatraz.\"\n\n\"But there was nothing in this hallway to trip on!\" I said. \"The floor is perfectly level.\"\n\nSing nodded. \"You have to have a real Talent to trip like I do.\"\n\n\"Which returns us to my original question,\" I said. \"Is there a reason why we all had to hit the deck like that? This floor isn't very comfortable.\"\n\n\"Floors rarely are,\" Sing said.\n\n\"Hush!\" Bastille said, scanning the corridor. \"I thought I heard something.\"\n\nWe fell silent for a moment. Finally, Sing shrugged. \"Sometimes a trip is just a trip, I guess. Maybe I \u2013\"\n\nThe wall exploded.\n\nIt really exploded. Rubble flew across the corridor, bits of shattered rock spraying against the wall just above me. I cried out, covering my head with my arms as chips and pebbles showered down.\n\nThe explosion opened up a large section in the wall to my left. I could see through the opening to where a hulking shadow stood in the clearing dust.\n\n\"An Alivened!\" Bastille yelled, scrambling up.\n\nI stood, bits of broken stone tumbling off my clothing. The creature obviously wasn't human. It was misshapen \u2013 its arms were far too wide and long, and they jutted out of the body in a threatening posture. In a way, the upper half of its body looked like an enormous \"M,\" though I had rarely seen a letter of the alphabet look quite so dangerous.\n\nAs the dust settled, I could see that the thing was pale white, with patterns of gray and black peppering its wrinkled skin. In fact, it looked like\u2026\n\n\"Paper?\" I asked. \"That think is made of wadded-up pieces of paper?\"\n\nBastille cursed, then grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me down the corridor. \"Run!\" she said.\n\nThe urgency in her voice made me obey, and I took off. Sing ran behind, and Bastille backed away from the broken wall, looking on warily as the lumbering paper monster pulled its way through the hole and into the corridor.\n\n\"Bastille!\" I yelled.\n\n\"Come on lad!\" Sing said from beside me. \"Regular Aliveneds are bad enough \u2013 but a Codexian\u2026 well, they're the most power of the lot.\"\n\n\"But Bastille!\"\n\n\"She'll follow, lad. She's just giving us a head start!\"\n\nI let myself get pulled along. However, I watched over my shoulder as I ran, keeping an eye on Bastille. She ducked a few swings from the massive creature. Then finally, she turned and began to run.\n\nFast.\n\nYou Hushlanders likely have never seen a Knight of Crystallia use her abilities to her fullest potential. People like Bastille spend years practicing inside of their city kingdom, training their bodies, bonding to their swords, learning to use Warrior's Lenses, and finally being implanted with a certain magical crystal. (Though, again, the Free Kingdomers consider this to be technology, rather than magic.) Only the best trainees are given the title of knight. To this day, Bastille holds the record for attaining the rank at the youngest age.\n\nRegardless, all of this training and special preparation means that when Crystins want to run, they can really run. I was shocked as I saw Bastille take off after us, dashing with a speed that would have made any Olympic sprinter give up and become an accountant.\n\nSing yelled suddenly, lurching to a halt. I, unfortunately, was following right behind him, and, as I turned, I was met by a chestful of Mokian posterior. Sing wasn't a Crystin, but he was wearing Warrior's Lenses, which probably helped him keep his balance as I bounced off of him and fell back into the hallway.\n\n\"Sing?\" I said. \"What \u2013\"\n\nThe large anthropologist reached to his waist, pulling out a pair of handguns. And then \u2013 with the flair of a man who had watched too many action movies \u2013 he began to unload them at something farther down the corridor. I twisted to the side and was met by the sight of another Alivened \u2013 also made completely from wadded-up pieces of paper \u2013 lumbering down the hallway in front of us.\n\nSing's guns had little effect on the creature. Bits of paper flipped into the air as the bullets tore through the Alivened's body. Each impact seemed to slow it a bit, but it still continued to move toward Sing at an unsteady pace.\n\nBastille Pulled up beside me. \"Shattered Glass!\" she cursed, turning. The Alivened behind us was quickly approaching. \"You'd better do something, Smedry,\" she said, whipping her handbag off her shoulder. \"I don't know if I can handle these things on my own.\"\n\nWith that, she reached into the purse and grabbed something inside. She whipped her hand out, throwing the bag aside as she drew forth a massive crystalline sword.\n\nI blinked. Yes, the thing Bastille had pulled from her purse was, indeed, a sword. It was nearly as tall as Bastille was, and it glittered in the lantern light, refracting a spray of rainbow colors across the corridor.\n\nThe handbag, of course, couldn't have held something so long. However, if the pulling of a sword from a handbag is the thing in this story that stops you, then you likely need therapy. I could recommend a good psychologist. Of course, he's Librarian controlled. They all are.\n\nIt's a union thing.\n\nBastille jumped forward, her sword glistening as she charged the Alivened. It swung at her, and she rolled, just barely ducking beneath its massive arm. Then she sliced, shearing the thing's arm completely free.\n\nThe arm fell off, its wrinkled pates suddenly straightening and bursting into the air \u2013 like those of a book that had suddenly had its binding torn free. They fluttered as they fell. The Alivened, however, didn't seem to mind the missing limb \u2013 and I soon saw why. The lumps of paper in its body surged forward, forming a new arm to replace the one that Bastille had cut free.\n\nI finally shook myself from my daze, scrambling to me feet. Behind me, Sing pulled out twin uzis. He knelt, holding the weapons with meaty hands, and automatic weapon fire echoed in the corridor. His Alivened paused from the shock, a flurry of paper scraps exploding from its body. It stumbled for a moment, then continued on despite the rain of bullets.\n\n\"Alcatraz!\" Sing yelled over the gunfire. \"Do something!\"\n\nI ran to the side of the corridor, grabbing a lantern off the wall. The cantaloupe-shaped holder broke free easily beneath my Talent, and I turned, hurling it at Sing's Alivened as Sing ran out of bullets.\n\nThe lantern crashed into the Alivened, then bounced free. The creature did not catch on fire.\n\n\"Not like that!\" Sing said, reloading his uzis. \"Nobody would build an Alivened out of paper without also making it resistant to a little fire!\"\n\nSing raised the uzis and fired another spray of bullets. The thing slowed but pressed on, continuing its inevitable march.\n\nNow, if you are ever writing a story such as this, you should know something. Never interrupt the flow of a good action scene by injecting needless explanations. I did this once, in Chapter Fourteen of an otherwise very exciting story. I regret it to this day.\n\nAlso, if you are ever attacked by unstoppable monsters created entirely from bad romance novels, you should do exactly what I did: Quickly reach into your pocket and pull free your Firebringer's Lenses.\n\nResistant to a little fire, eh? I thought, yanking open the velvet pouch. What about a lot of fire?!\n\nI reached into the pouch with desperate fingers, whipping out the Lenses \u2013 yet, as before, my touch was too unpracticed, and I was too powerful for my own good. The Lenses activated as soon as I touched them.\n\nThen began to glow dangerously.\n\n\"Gak!\" I said. I tried to get the Lenses turned around. However, I fumbled, spinning the Lenses so they pointed backward at me instead.\n\nAt that moment, my Talent proactively broke the spectacles' frames. Both Lenses fell to the ground, one shattering as it hit the stones, the other bouncing away and falling facedown. It fired, blasting a stream of concentrated light into the stones beneath it.\n\n\"Alcatraz!\" Sing said desperately as his uzis ran out of bullets again. He dropped them, reaching over his shoulder to pull out the shotgun. He fired it with a loud boom. The Alivened's chest exploded with a burst of paper, spraying confetti across the corridor.\n\nThe creature stumbled, nearly falling as Sing hit it again. However, it righted itself and continued to walk toward him.\n\nI reached for the intact Firebringer's Lens, but shied back from the heat. The Lens itself wasn't hot, of course \u2013 that would make it fairly difficult to wear on the face. However, it was superheating the stones around it, and I couldn't get close.\n\nI turned urgently to check on Bastille, and I was just in time to see her ram her crystal sword directly into her opponent's chest. The Alivened, however, slammed its bulky arm into her, tossing her backward. The sword remained jutting ineffectively from its chest, and Bastille crashed into the stone wall of the corridor, crumpling.\n\n\"Bastille!\" I shouted.\n\nShe did not move. The creature loomed over her.\n\nNow, as I've tried to explain, I wasn't a particularly brave boy. But it has been my experience that doing something brave is much like saying something stupid.\n\nYou rarely plan on it happening.\n\nI charged the Alivened monster. It turned toward me, stepping away from Bastille, and raised its arm to swing. I somehow managed to duck the blow. Stumbling, I reached up and grabbed the sword in the creature's chest. I pulled it free.\n\nOr, rather, I pulled the hilt free.\n\nI stumbled back, raising the hilt to swing before I realized that the crystal blade was still sticking in the monster's chest.\n\nBehind me, Sing's shotgun began to click, out of ammunition.\n\nI lowered my hand, staring at the hilt. My Talent, unpredictable as always, had broken the sword. I stood for a long moment \u2013 far longer, undoubtedly, that I should have in those circumstances. I gripped the broken hilt.\n\nAnd began to grow angry.\n\nAll my life, my Talent had ruled me. I'd pretended to go along with it, pretended that I was the one in control, but that had been a sham. I'd purposely driven my foster families away because I'd known that sooner or later, the Talent would do it for me \u2013 no matter what I wanted.\n\nIt was my master. It defined who I was. I couldn't be myself \u2013 whoever that was \u2013 because I was too busy getting into trouble for breaking things.\n\nGrandpa Smedry and the others called my Talent a blessing. Yet I had trouble seeing that. Even during the infiltration, it seemed like the Talent had been only accidentally useful. Power was nothing without control.\n\nThe Alivened stepped forward, and I looked up, teeth clenched in frustration. I gripped the sword hilt tightly.\n\nI don't want this, I thought. I never wanted any of this! Bastille wanted to be an Oculator\u2026 well, I just wanted one thing.\n\nTo be normal!\n\nThe hilt began to break in my hand, the carefully welded bits of steel falling free and clinking to the ground. \"You want breaking?\" I yelled at the Alivened. \"You want destruction?\"\n\nThe creature swung at me, and I screamed, slamming my hand palm-forward to the floor. A surge of Talent electrified my body, focusing through my chest and then down my arm. It was a jolt of power like I'd never summoned before.\n\nThe floor broke. Or perhaps shattered would be a more appropriate word. Exploded would have worked, except that I just used that one a bit earlier.\n\nThe stone blocks shook violently. The Alivened stumbled, the floor beneath it surging like waves on an ocean. Then the blocks dropped. They fell away before me, tumbling toward the level beneath. Bookshelves in the massive library room below were smashed as blocks of stone rained down, accompanied by an enormous paper monster.\n\nThe Alivened hit the ground, and there was a distinct shattering noise. It did not rise.\n\nI spun wildly, dropping the last bits of the sword hilt. Sing was furiously reloading the shotgun. I brushed by him, charging the second Alivened. I reached to touch the ground, but the massive beast jumped, moving quickly out of the way. It was obviously smart enough to see what I had just done to its companion.\n\nI raised a hand, slamming it into the jumping creature's chest. Then I released my Talent.\n\nThere was a strange, instant backlash \u2013 like hitting something solid with a baseball bat. I was thrown backward, my arm blazing with sudden pain.\n\nThe Alivened landed in a stumble. It stood for a moment, teetering. Then it exploded with a whooshing sound, a thousand crumpled sheets of paper erupting in an enormous, confetti-like burst.\n\nI sat for a moment, staring. I blinked a few times, then lifted my arm, wincing. Paper filled the corridor, bits fluttering around us.\n\n\"Wow,\" Sing said, standing up. He turned around, looking at the massive pit I had created. \"Wow.\"\n\n\"I\u2026 didn't really do that intentionally,\" I said. \"I just kind of let my power go, and that's what happened.\"\n\n\"I'll take it, either way,\" Sing said, resting the shotgun on his shoulder.\n\nI climbed to my feet, shaking my arm. It didn't seem broken. \"Bastille,\" I said, stumbling over to her. She was moving, fortunately, and as I arrived she groaned, then managed to sit up. Her jacket looked\u2026 shattered. Like the windshield of a car after it collides with a giant penguin.\n\nBlasted giant penguins.\n\nI tried to help Bastille to her feet, but she shook off my hands with annoyance. She stumbled a bit as she stood, then pulled off her jacket, looking at the spiderweb of lines. \"Well, I guess that's useless now.\n\n\"Probably saved your life, Bastille,\" Sing said.\n\nShe shrugged, dropping it to the floor. It crackled like glass as it hit the stones.\n\n\"Your jacket was made of glass?\" I asked, frowning.\n\n\"Of course,\" Bastille said. \"Defender's Glass. Yours isn't?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026 no,\" I said.\n\n\"Then why wear something so atrocious?\" she said, stumbling over to the hole in the floor. \"You did this?\" she asked, looking over at me.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"And\u2026 is that my sword down there, broken and shattered in a pile of books?\"\n\n\"Afraid so,\" I said.\n\n\"Lovely,\" she grumbled.\n\n\"I was trying to save your life, Bastille,\" I said. \"Which, I might point out, I succeeded in doing.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, next time try not to bring down half the building when you do.\"\n\nBut I detected the barest hint of a smile on her lips when she said it."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "Moron.\n\nIt has been my experience that most problems in life are caused by a lack of information. Many people just don't know the things they need to know. Some ignore the truth; others never understand it.\n\nWhen two friends get mad at each other, they usually do it because they lack information about each other's feelings. Americans lack information about Librarian control of their government. The people who pass this book on the shelf and don't buy it lack information about how wonderful, exciting, and useful it is.\n\nTake, for instance, the word that started this chapter. You lacked information when you read it. You likely assumed that I was calling you an insulting name. You assumed wrong. Moron is actually a village in Switzerland located near the Jura mountain range. It's a nice place to live if you hate Librarians, for there is a well-hidden underground rebellion there.\n\nInformation. Perhaps you Hushlanders have read about Bastille and the others referring to guns as \"primitive,\" and have been offended. Or, perhaps, you simply thought the text was being silly. In either case, maybe you should reevaluate.\n\nThe Free Kingdoms moved beyond the use of guns many centuries ago. The weapons became impractical for several reasons \u2013 some of which should be growing apparent from this narrative. Smedry Talents and Oculator abilities are not the only strange powers in the Free Kingdoms \u2013 and most of these abilities work better on items with large numbers of moving parts or breakable circuits. Using a gun against a Smedry, or one similarly talented, is usually a bad idea.\n\n(This comes down to simply probability. The more that can go wrong with an item, the more that will. My computer \u2013 when I used to use one \u2013 was always about one click away from serious meltdown. My pencil, however, remains to this day remarkable virus-free.)\n\nAnd so, many of the world's soldiers and warriors have moved on from guns, instead choosing weapons and armors created from Oculatory sands or silimatic technology. They don't often associate these items with their ancient counterparts \u2013 the people of the Free Kingdoms never got much beyond muskets before they moved on to using sand-based weapons \u2013 and so they think that guns are the primitive weapons. It makes sense, if you look at it from their prospective.\n\nAnd anyone who's not willing to do that\u2026 well, they might just be a moron. Whether or not they live there.\n\n\"Sing, put those primitive guns away!\" Bastille snapped, stepping away from the hole in the floor. \"Those shattering things are so loud that half the library must have heard your racket!\"\n\n\"They're effective, though,\" Sing said happily, changing the clips in a pair of his pistols. \"They stopped that Alivened long enough for Alcatraz to take it down. I didn't see your sword doing half as well.\"\n\nBastille grumbled something, then paused, frowning. \"Why is it so hot in here?\"\n\nI cursed, turning toward the glowing, smoking stones around the Firebringer's Lens. The floor looked dangerously close to becoming molten.\n\n\"I still can't believe old Smedry gave you a Firebringer's Lens,\" Bastille said. \"That's like\u2026\"\n\n\"Giving a bazooka to a four-year-old?\" I asked. I edged as close to the heated stones as I could stand. \"That's kind of what I feel like when I pick the thing up.\"\n\n\"Well, turn it off!\" Bastille said. \"Quickly! You think Sing's guns were loud \u2013 using an Oculatory Lens that powerful will draw Blackburn's attention for certain. They longer you leave it on, the more loud it will seem!\"\n\nThe reference to loudness probably doesn't make much sense to non-Oculators. After all, the Lens didn't make any noise. However, as I tried to figure out a way to turn off the Firebringer's Lens, I realized that I could feel it. Even though I'd only been aware of my Oculatory abilities for a short time, I was already getting in synch with them enough to sense when a powerful Lens was being used nearby.\n\nThe point is, I knew Bastille was right. I needed to turn that Lens off quickly. If Blackburn hadn't heard the gunfire, then he's certainly notice the Lens \"noise.\"\n\n\"Sing, loan me that shotgun,\" I said urgently, waving with my hand.\n\nSing reluctantly relinquished the weapon. As soon as I touched it, the barrel fell off \u2013 but I was ready for that. I grabbed the tube of steel and used it to flip the Firebringer's Lens over. The Lens was convex, meaning it bulged out on one side, and now that it was flipped over it looked like a translucent eyeball staring up out of the ground. It continued to fire its superhot ray of light, which was now directed at the ceiling. I used the barrel of the gun to scoot the Lens away from the heated section of the floor, then carefully reached out. I gritted my teeth \u2013 expecting to get burned \u2013 and touched the side of the Lens.\n\nRemarkably (as I've mentioned before) the glass wasn't even hot. As soon as I touched it, the Lens shut off, the ray of light dwindling. I stepped back, surprised at how cold and dark the corridor now seemed by comparison.\n\n\"My shotgun,\" Sing said despondently as I handed back the barrel. \"This was an antique!\"\n\nThat's what happens when you stay around me, Sing, I thought with a sigh. Things you love get broken. Even when I don't do it on purpose.\n\n\"Oh, get off it, Sing,\" Bastille said. \"I lost my sword \u2013 you can't even understand how much trouble I'll be in for that. I was already bonded to the shattering thing; now I'll have to start the process all over, if they even let me. Next to that, your gun is nothing.\"\n\nSing sighed but nodded as Bastille reached into her handbag and pulled out a large, crystalline knife. You may, by the way, have noticed the connection between the word Crystin and the weapons made of crystal that Bastille uses. This is actually just a coincidence. Crystin is the Vendardi word for \"grumpy,\" which all Crystins tend to be. And I think\u2026\n\nNay, I'm just kidding. They got the name because they use crystal swords. Plus, they live in a big castle (dubbed Crystallia) made of \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 crystals. That clear enough? Crystal clear?\n\nAhem.\n\n\"I'm out of bullets for the Uzis too,\" Sing said, looking in his bag. \"Small weapons for us both, I guess.\"\n\nI knelt down and tentatively poked the Firebringer's Lens, still trying to pick it up off the floor. It began to glow. Blast! I thought and touched it again. The glow dissipated.\n\n\"Try being dumb,\" Bastille suggested.\n\n\"Excuse me?\" I asked, frowning.\n\n\"Think dumb thoughts,\" Bastille said. \"Or try not to think very much at all. The Lenses react to information and intelligence. So, it's easiest to handle them when there isn't much of either one around.\"\n\nI paused. Then I frowned and looked at the Lens trying my best to be\u2026 well, stupid. I would like to note that this is quite a bit more difficult that it might sound. Particularly for a person like me, who can be (has this been mentioned?) rather clever.\n\nNot only is it against a rashional purson's nature to try and convince himself that he is more stoopid that he thinks he is, it is quite dificult to not think about anything when one has been told not to. Only the trooly most briliant of peeple can purrtend stoopidity so sucessfuly.\n\nButt eet kan bee dun.\n\nI closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. Then I reached for the Lens. It started to glow. I frowned, then tapped it before it could go off. \"Maybe we should just leave it,\" Sing said nervously. \"Before someone sees us.\"\n\n\"Too late,\" Bastille said, nodding down the hallway, to where a group of robed Librarians had just appeared around a corner. They looked quite anxious, and I suspected that Bastille had been right in her earlier comment. The gunfire had been heard.\n\nBastille glanced at them through her sunglasses, then flipped her knife in her hand, raising it to throw.\n\n\"No!\" I said. \"Wait!\"\n\nDutifully, she paused. The Librarians scattered, several racing back the way they had come.\n\n\"Why did you stop me?\" Bastille asked testily.\n\n\"Those aren't paper monsters, Bastille,\" I said. \"Those are unarmed people. We can't just kill them.\"\n\n\"We're at war, Alcatraz. Those people are the enemy. Plus, they're going to alert Blackburn!\"\n\nI shrugged. \"It just didn't feel right. Besides, there were too many for you to kill them all. We can't keep our escape secret any longer.\"\n\nBastille snorted but otherwise fell silent. Either way, I didn't have any more time for acting stupid. I grabbed the Lens \u2013 it began to glow \u2013 and quickly shoved it back inside its velvet pouch. Then I reached in and tapped it off with a finger. I pulled the bag shut, then stuffed it in my pocket.\n\nLet's go, then,\" I said.\n\nBastille nodded. Sing, however, had moved over to the pile of ripped, shredded papers that were the remnants of the Alivened. \"Alcatraz,\" he said. \"There's something here you should see.\"\n\n\"What?\" I asked, hurrying over. As I approached, I could see that in the center of the pile, Sing had found what appeared to be a portion of the Alivened that was still\u2026 well, alivened.\n\nIt sat up as I arrived, causing Sing to point a pistol at it. The creature was smaller now, and it was much more human-shaped. However, it was still made of crumpled-up paper, and now that I was close, I could see that it had two beady, glasslike eyes.\n\nI frowned, looking at Sing. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Sing said. \"Of course, I don't know a lot about Alivening. It's Dark Oculary.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked, watching the three-foot-tall paper man with suspicious eyes.\n\n\"Bringing an inanimate thing to life this way is evil,\" Bastille said. \"To do it, the Oculator has to give up a bit of his own humanity and store it in Glass of Alivening. That's what those eyes are made of. Shoot it, Sing. If you hit it in the eye, you may be able to kill it.\"\n\nThe little paper creature cocked its head, quizzically staring down the barrel of the gun.\n\nI looked back at Bastille. \"They give up a bit of their own humanity? What does that mean?\"\n\n\"They let the glass drain them of things,\" Bastille explained.\n\n\"Things? That's specific.\"\n\nFrom the side, I could see Bastille narrow her eyes behind her sunglasses, staring at the little creature with suspicion. \"Human things, Alcatraz. Things like the capacity to love, protect others, and have mercy. Each time an Oculator creates an Alivened, he makes himself a little less human. Or, at least, he makes himself a little less like the kind of human the rest of us would want to associate with.\"\n\nSing nodded. \"Most Dark Oculators think the transformation is an advantage.\" He reached down with his free hand, still keeping his gun leveled at the small Alivened. He held up a ripped bit of paper.\n\n\"You'd think that by giving up part of his humanity,\" the anthropologist said, \"the Dark Oculator would create a creature that possessed good emotions. But that's not the way it works. The process twists the emotions, creating a creature that has just enough humanity to live, but not enough of it to really function.\"\n\nI accepted the scrap of paper. I could read the text \u2013 it appeared to be prose. The title line at the top right corner read The passionate fire of Fiery Passion.\n\n\"You can make an Alivened out of virtually anything,\" Sing said. \"But substances that soak up emotion tend to work the best. That's why a lot of Dark Oculators prefer bad romance novels, since the object used determines the Alivened's temperament.\n\n\"Romance novels make an Alivened very violent,\" Bastille said. \"But rather dense in the intelligence department.\"\n\n\"Go figure,\" I said, dropping the scrap of paper. They give up their own humanity\u2026. And this was the monster that had my grandfather held captive. \"Come on,\" I said, standing. \"We've wasted too much time already.\"\n\n\"And this thing?\" Sing asked.\n\nI paused. The Alivened looked up at me, its paper face somehow managing to convey a look of confusion.\n\nI\u2026 broke it somehow, I thought. I thought I'd killed it \u2013 but that's not the way my Talent works. I don't destroy, not when the Talent is in full form. I just break and transform. \"Leave it,\" I said.\n\nSing looked up in surprise.\n\n\"We don't want any more gunshots,\" I said. \"Come on.\"\n\nSing shrugged, rising. Bastille moved down the hallway, checking the intersection. I quickly swapped my Oculator's Lenses for my Tracker's Lenses \u2013 fortunately, my grandfather's footprints were still glowing.\n\nI didn't think I knew him that well, I thought.\n\nI met Bastille at the intersection, pointing to the right branch. \"Grandpa Smedry went that way.\"\n\n\"The same way the Librarians went,\" she said. \"After they discovered us.\"\n\nI nodded, glancing in the other direction. I pointed. \"I see Ms. Fletcher's footprints that way.\"\n\n\"She turned away from the others?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"She didn't go with Grandpa Smedry from the dungeons. Those footprints I can see now are the original ones we followed \u2013 the ones that led us to the place where we got captured. I told you we were close to where we started.\"\n\nBastille frowned. \"How well do you know this Ms. Fletcher?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"It's been hours,\" Bastille said. \"I'm surprised her footprints are still flowing.\"\n\nI nodded. As I did, I noticed something else odd.\n\n(If you haven't noticed, this is the chapter for noticing weird things. A opposed to the other chapters, in which only normal things were ever noticed. There is a story I could tell about that, but as it involves eggbeaters, it not appropriate for young people.)\n\nThe normalcy-challenged thing that I had noticed was actually not all that odd, all things considered. It was a lantern holder \u2013 the ornate bracket that I'd ripped free when I'd thrown the lantern at the Alivened.\n\nThere was nothing all that unusual about this lantern bracket, except for the already-noted fact that it was shaped like a cantaloupe. For all I knew, cantaloupe-shaped library lanterns were quite normal. Yet the sight of this one sparked a memory in my head. Cantaloupe, fluttering paper makes a duck.\n\nI glanced back at the hallway behind me, with its broken wall, more broken floor, and piles of paper that shuffled in the draft.\n\nIt's probably nothing, I thought.\n\nYou, of course, know better that that."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "If you are anything like me \u2013 clever, fond of goat cheese, and devilishly handsome \u2013 then you have undoubtedly read many books. And, while reading those books, you likely have thought that you are smarter than the characters in those books.\n\nYou're just imagining things.\n\nNow, I've already spoken about foreshadowing (a meddling literary convention of which Heisenberg would uncertainly be proud). However, there are other reasons why you only think that you're smarter than the characters in this book. First off, you are likely sitting somewhere safe as you read the story. Whether it be a classroom, your bedroom, your aquarium, or even a library (but we won't get into that right now\u2026), you have no need to worry about Alivened monsters, armed soldiers, or straw-fearing Gaks. Therefore, you can examine the events with a calm, unbiased eye. In such a state of mind, it is easy to find faults.\n\nSecondly, you have the convenience of holding this story in book form. It is a complete narrative, which you can look through at your leisure. You can go back and reread sections (which, because of the marvelous writing the book contains, you have undoubtedly done). You could even scan to the end and read the last page. Know that by doing so, however, you would violate every holy and honorable story-telling principle known to man, thereby throwing the universe into chaos and causing grief to untold millions.\n\nYour choice.\n\nEither way, since you can reread anytime you want, you could go back and find out exactly where I first heard cantaloupes mentioned. With such an advantage, it is very easy to find and point out things that my friends and I originally missed.\n\nThe third reason you think you are smarter that the characters is because you have me to explain things to you. Obviously, you don't fully appreciate this advantage. Suffice it to say that without me, you would be far more confused about this story that you are. In fact, without me, you'd probably be very confused as you tried to read this book.\n\nAfter all, it would be filled with blank pages.\n\nTwo soldiers stood in the hallway, chatting with each other, obviously guarding the door that sat between them. Sing, Bastille, and I crouched around a corner just a short distance away, unnoticed. We'd followed Grandpa Smedry's footprints all the way here. His prints went through the door \u2013 and that, therefore, was the way we needed to go.\n\nI nodded to Bastille, and she slipped quietly around the corner, moving with such grace that she resembled an ice-skater on the smooth stone floor. The guards looked over as she approached, but she was so quick that they didn't have time to cry out. Bastille elbowed one in the teeth, then caught his companion in a grip around the neck, choking him and keeping him quiet. The first guard stumbled, holding his mouth, and Bastille kicked him in the chest.\n\nThe first guard fell to the ground, hitting his head and going unconscious. She dropped the second guard a moment later, after he'd passed out from being choked. She hadn't even needed the dagger.\n\n\"You really are good at this,\" I whispered as I approached.\n\nBastille shrugged modestly as I moved up to the door. Sing followed me, looking over his shoulder down the hallway, anxious.\n\nI knew it wouldn't be long before the entire library was on alert. We didn't have much time. I didn't care about the Sands of Rashid. I just wanted to get my grandfather back.\n\n\"His footprints go under the door,\" I whispered.\n\n\"I know,\" Bastille whispered as she peeked through a crack in the door. \"He's still in there.\"\n\n\"What?\" I said, kneeling beside her.\n\n\"Alcatraz!\" Bastille hissed. \"Blackburn's in there too.\"\n\nI paused beside the door, peeking through an open-holed knot in the wood. That was one thing that old-style wooden doors had over the more refined American versions. In fact, Bastille would probably have called this door more 'advanced,' since it had the advantage of holes you could look through.\n\nThe view in the room was exactly what I had feared. Grandpa Smedry lay strapped to a large table, his shirt removed. Blackburn stood in his suit a short distance away, an angry expression on his face. I twisted a bit, looking to the side. Quentin was there too, tied to a chair. The short, dapper man looked like he'd been beaten a bit \u2013 his nose was bleeding, and he seemed dazed. I could hear him muttering.\n\n\"Bubble gum for the primate. Long live the Jacuzzi. Moon on the rocks, please.\"\n\nThe walls of the room were covered with various nasty-looking torture implements \u2013 the kinds of things one might find in a dentist's office. If that dentist were an insane torture-hungry Dark Oculator.\n\nAnd there were also\u2026 \"Books?\" I whispered in confusion.\n\nBastille shuddered. \"Papercuts,\" she said. \"The worst form of torture.\"\n\nOf course, I thought.\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Bastille said. \"You have to leave. Blackburn will see your aura again!\"\n\n\"No he won't,\" I said, smiling.\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because he made the same mistake I did before,\" I said. \"He's not wearing his Oculator's Lens.\"\n\nIndeed he wasn't. In his single, monocle eye, Blackburn was not wearing his Oculator's Lens. Instead, as I had anticipated, he was wearing a Torturer's Lens \u2013 it was easy to distinguish, with its dark green and black tints.\n\nPerhaps I wasn't as stupid as you thought.\n\n\"Ah,\" Bastille said.\n\nBlackburn turned, focusing on Grandpa Smedry. Even though I wasn't wearing my Oculator's Lenses, I could feel a release of power \u2013 the Dark Oculator was activating the Torturer's Lens. No! I thought, feeling helpless, remembering the awful pain.\n\nGrandpa Smedry lay with a pleasant expression on his face. \"I say,\" he said. \"I don't suppose I could bother you for a cup of milk? I'm getting a bit thirsty.\"\n\n\"Turtlenecks look good when the trees have no ears,\" Quentin added.\n\n\"Bah!\" Blackburn said. \"Answer my questions, old man! How do I bypass the Sentinel's Glass of Ryshadium? How can I grow the crystals of Crystallia?\" He released another burst of torturing power into Grandpa Smedry.\n\n\"I really need to get going,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I'm late \u2013 I don't suppose we could call it a day?\"\n\nBlackburn screamed in frustration, taking off his Torturer's Lens and looking at it with an annoyed eye. \"You!\" he snapped to a guard that I couldn't see.\n\n\"Uh\u2026 yes, my lord?\" a voice asked.\n\n\"Stand right there,\" Blackburn said, putting on the monocle. I sensed another wave of power.\n\nThe guard screamed. I couldn't see him crumple, but I could hear it \u2013 and I could hear the pain, the utter agony, in the poor man's voice. I cringed, closing my eyes and gritting my teeth against the awful sound as I remembered that brief moment when I had felt Blackburn's fury.\n\nI had to work hard to keep myself from fleeing right then. But I stayed. I'll point out that now, looking back, I don't consider this bravery \u2013 just stupidity.\n\nThe guard stopped screaming, then began to whimper.\n\n\"Hmm,\" Blackburn said. \"The Lens works perfectly. Your Talent is stronger than I had anticipated, old man. But it can't protect forever! Soon you'll know the pain!\"\n\nBastille suddenly grabbed my arm \u2013 she was still watching through the crack beside me. \"He's arriving late for the pain!\" she said in an excited whisper. \"Such power\u2026 to put off an abstract sensation. It's amazing.\"\n\nI noted the look of relief in Bastille's face. She does care, I realized. Despite all the grumbling, despite all the complaints. She really was worried about him.\n\n\"What's going on?\" Sing whispered. He was too big to fit beside the door with the two of us.\n\n\"Old Smedry is handling the torture with poise,\" Bastille said. \"But Quentin looks like he's had a hard time.\"\n\n\"Is he babbling?\" Sing asked.\n\nBastille nodded.\n\n\"Then he's gone into anti-information mode,\" Sing said. \"He can engage his Talent so that it translates everything he says into gibberish. He can't turn it off, even if he wants to \u2013 not until it wears off a day later.\"\n\n\"That's why he makes such a good spy,\" I realized. \"He can't betray secrets \u2013 they can't force him to talk, no matter how hard they try!\"\n\nSing nodded.\n\nInside the room, Blackburn stomped around the table. He grabbed a knife from a rack of torturing implements, then rammed it toward Grandpa Smedry's leg. It missed, sliding just to the side, and Blackburn swore in frustration. He held the knife up, steadied his hand, then carefully plunged it down again.\n\nThis time, it hit Grandpa's leg and jabbed directly into the flesh.\n\n\"Shattered Glass,\" Bastille cursed. \"The knife is too advanced a weapon \u2013 it can get past old Smedry's Talent.\"\n\nI stared in shock at the cut in my grandfather's leg. No blood came out, however.\n\n\"It's a good thing I don't need to go to the bathroom,\" Grandpa Smedry said in a cheerful voice. \"That would be embarrassing, wouldn't it?\"\n\n\"We have to do something,\" Bastille said urgently. \"He's powerful, but he can't hold back the pain \u2013 or the wounds \u2013 forever.\"\n\n\"But we can't fight a Dark Oculator,\" Sing said. \"Especially not without your sword, Bastille.\"\n\nI stood. \"Then we'll have to get him to leave Grandpa alone. Come on!\" With that, I rushed down the hallway. Bastille and Sing followed in a dash.\n\n\"Alcatraz!\" Bastille said as soon as we were a safe distance from the torture room. \"What are you planning?\"\n\n\"We need a distraction,\" I said. \"Something that will draw Blackburn away long enough for us to get in and rescue Grandpa Smedry. And I think I know of one.\"\n\nBastille was about to object, but at that moment Sing tripped. Bastille and I ducked to the side just as a pair of bow-tied, sword-carrying Librarian soldiers came up out of the stairwell ahead. Bastille cursed, dashing toward them with a sudden burst of Crystin speed.\n\nThe stairs they had come up were the very same stairs that we ourselves had come up a few hours before. That meant the door I wanted was \u2013\n\nI threw my weight against it, pushing open the door and stepping into a room filled with caged dinosaurs.\n\n\"Good day!\" said Charles. \"I see that you have not ended up dead. What a pleasant surprise!\"\n\n\"Did you bring us something to eat? The Tyrannosaurus asked hopefully.\n\n\"Better,\" I said, then rushed into the room, touching the cage locks as I moved. Each one my fingers brushed against snapped open, the complicated gears inside breaking easily before my Talent.\n\n\"Why, what a good chap you are!\" Charles said. The group of twenty dinosaurs agreed with eager, loud voices.\n\n\"I've freed you,\" I said. \"But I need something in return. Can you cause a disturbance downstairs for me?\"\n\n\"Of course, my good fellow!\" Charles said. \"We're excellent at creating disturbances, aren't we George?\"\n\n\"Indeed, indeed!\" said the Stegosaurus.\n\nWith that, I stepped aside, waving eagerly, trying to begin a stampede of undersized dinosaurs. They, of course, filed out of the room in a very gentlemanly manner \u2013 for, as everyone knows, all British are refined, calm, and well-mannered. Even if they are a bunch of dinosaurs.\n\nI followed the group out of the room, trying to whip them into a frenzy \u2013 or at least a mild agitation.\n\n\"That's your plan?\" Bastille asked flatly, standing above two unconscious Librarians.\n\n\"They'll make a disturbance,\" I said. \"I mean, they're dinosaurs.\"\n\nBastille and Sing shared a look.\n\n\"What?\" I said. \"Don't you think it'll work?\"\n\n\"You know very little about dinosaurs, Alcatraz,\" Bastille said as the dinosaurs went down the stairs to the first floor.\n\nWe waited. We waited for painful minutes, hiding in the Forgotten Language room. We heard no cried of panic. No yells for help. No sounds of people being chewed up by rampaging bloodthirsty reptiles.\n\n\"Oh, for goodness' sake!\" I said, rushing from the room and running over to the hallway with the broken floor. I got on my hands and knees and peered through the opening, hoping to catch a glimpse of chaos below.\n\nInstead, I saw the dinosaurs sitting in a group, several stacks of books settled around them. One of them \u2013 the Stegosaurus \u2013 appeared to be reading to the others.\n\n\"Dinosaurs,\" Bastille said. \"Useless.\"\n\n\"They are easily distracted by books, Alcatraz,\" Sing said. \"I don't think they're going to help much.\"\n\n\"Hey!\" I called with an annoyed voice. \"Charles.\"\n\nThe little Pterodactyl looked up. \"Ah, my good friend!\"\n\n\"What about the chaos?\" I demanded.\n\n\"Done!\" Charles said.\n\n\"We each moved six books out of their proper places,\" called George the Stegosaurus. \"It will take them days to find them all and put them back.\"\n\n\"Though we did put them into place backward,\" Charles said. \"You know, so they could be seen more easily. We wouldn't want it to be too hard.\"\n\n\"Too hard?\" I asked, stupefied. \"Charles, these are the people who were going to kill you and bury your bones in an archaeological dig!\"\n\n\"Well, that's no reason to be uncivilized!\" Charles said.\n\n\"Indeed!\" called a duck-billed dinosaur.\n\nI knelt, blinking.\n\n\"Dinosaurs,\" Bastille said again. \"Useless.\"\n\n\"Don't worry, my Oculator friend!\" Charles called. \"We gave them a little extra kick! We had Douglas eat the entire science fiction section!\"\n\n\"Well,\" admitted Douglas the T. Rex, \"I only ate the 'C' section. Honestly \u2013 claiming that Velociraptors were the smartest dinosaurs? I knew a Velociraptor in college, and he failed chemistry. Plus, resurrecting a character just because he didn't die in the movie? Poppycock, I say!\"\n\nI sat back. Bastille had the dignity not to say, \"I told you so.\" Or, at least, she had the dignity not to say it a third time.\n\nWe need another plan. Another plan. Can't stop to think about the failure. We need to draw the Dark Oculator away. Need to\u2026\n\nI stood, steeling my nerves.\n\n\"Another idea?\" Sing asked, clearly a little apprehensive.\n\nI took off again. Sing and Bastille followed reluctantly. But they hadn't come up with anything better. My failure with the dinosaurs had come from relying on misinformation. In most books, two dozen rampaging dinosaurs would have been a distraction worth of even a Dark Oculator's attention.\n\nThat's why most books aren't true. Sorry, kids.\n\nI dashed back toward the torturing room. The guards still lay unconscious in the hallway where Bastille had left them. I checked the knothole \u2013 Blackburn was still there inside, and he had apparently decided to rough up Grandpa Smedry with slaps to the face.\n\n\"I think I'll go for a walk\u2026\" Grandpa Smedry said cheerfully.\n\n\"Wasing not of wasing is,\" Quentin added.\n\nI gritted my teeth. Then I pulled the velvet pouch out of my pocket and looked inside.\n\n\"Alcatraz\u2026\" Bastille said carefully. \"You can't defeat him. You might have a powerful Lens, but that's not everything. Blackburn will be able to deflect that Firebringer's Lens with his Oculator's Lens.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I said. \"Sing, take these two unconscious men and hide them \u2013 with yourself \u2013 in the Forgotten Language room.\"\n\nMy cousin opened his mouth as if to object, but then paused. Finally, he nodded. He easily lifted the two unconscious men, then left down the hallway.\n\n\"Alcatraz,\" Bastille said. \"I know you want to protect your grandfather. But this is suicide.\"\n\nI waited a few moments for Sing to complete his task. Then I knelt down beside the door and looked through the knothole. Blackburn was raising a mallet, as if to break Grandpa Smedry's arm.\n\n\"You can't resist forever, old man,\" Blackburn said.\n\nI activated the Firebringer's Lens."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "Immediately, the Dark Oculator looked up.\n\nI smiled, watching Blackburn turn with a confused expression on his face. At that moment, he was sensing a very powerful Oculatory Lens coming in from the hallway outside. He took a step toward the door.\n\n\"Now,\" I hissed. \"Run!\"\n\nBastille didn't need further command. She took off down the hallway, as did I. However, she obviously held back so that she didn't outstrip me.\n\nI held the Firebringer's Lens before me, and it spewed forth it's powerful line of light. I ran on, aiming it at the side of the corridor.\n\n\"You're leading him away!\" Bastille said. \"You're using us as bait.\"\n\n\"Hopefully, bait that escapes,\" I said, ducking around a corner, then pausing to wait. The Firebringer's Lens continued to blast. A door slammed in the distance. \"Smedry!\" a voice bellowed. \"You can't run from me! Don't you realize that I can sense your power?\"\n\n\"Go!\" I said, taking off at a dash. Within seconds, we were at the section of the corridor with the broken floor.\n\n\"Charles!\" I yelled down through the hole. \"Trouble is coming your way! I'd run if I were you!\"\n\nAnd then I took the Firebringer's Lens and tossed it through the hole. It bounced against a few books, then came to rest on the floor, still shooting a piercing-hot laser of heat up into the air, burning the ceiling, threatening to start several of the bookshelves on fire.\n\nI grabbed Bastille by the arm, tugging her around the corner and into the Forgotten Language room. Sing jumped as we entered. He had \u2013 for some reason that he never explained \u2013 propped both of the unconscious men in chairs at the desks.\n\nAnthropologists are funny that way.\n\nNow, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I didn't take the opportunity to point out anything at the beginning of this chapter. Never fear; my editorial comments were simply delayed for a few moments.\n\nYou see, that last chapter ended with a terribly unfair hook. By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry.\n\nRegardless, because of how exciting things were, I didn't feel comfortable interjecting my normal comments at the beginning of this chapter. So, I shall put them here instead. Prepare yourself.\n\nBlah, blah, sacrifice, altars, daggers, sharks. Blah, blah, something pretentious. Blah, blah, rutabaga. Blah, blah, something that makes no sense whatsoever.\n\nNow back to the story.\n\n(And whoever put in that cliff-hanger at the end of the last chapter needs to be reprimanded. It's growing quite late here, and I really should be getting to bed, rather than writing this book.)\n\nI crouched inside the Forgotten Language room with Bastille and Sing. I kept my Oculator' Lenses off, hoping that without them I wouldn't have as strong an aura. Sure enough, watching under the door, we saw a dark shadow pass by, and I felt a slight surge of power as an activated Oculatory Lens passed by. (Fortunately, Blackburn didn't appear to have a Tracker's Lens of his own.) His shadow didn't stop to check the Forgotten Language room, but instead continued on toward the stairwell.\n\n\"We have very little time,\" I said, looking back at the other two.\n\nWe burst from the room and ran back toward the torture chamber. By the time we arrived, I was feeling a little out of breath. Having never had to rescue anyone from torture before, I wasn't accustomed to so much running. Fortunately, Sing wasn't exactly in shape either, and so I didn't feel too bad lagging behind Bastille.\n\nOnce I reached the guard chamber, I noticed Bastille standing beside the door with the peephole. She gave the handle a good rattle. \"Locked,\" she said.\n\n\"Move aside,\" I said, walking up to the door. I rested a hand on the lock, jolting it with a bit of Breaking Talent. Nothing happened.\n\n\"Glass lock,\" I said. I moved my hand up to the door's hinges, but they resisted too.\n\nBastille cursed. \"The whole door will be warded against your Talent. We'll have to try to break it down manually.\"\n\nI eyed the thick wooden door with a skeptical eye. Then, from behind me, there was a click. I turned to see Sing leveling one of the biggest, baddest handguns I'd ever seen. It was the kind of gun that took most men two hands to hold \u2013 the type of gun that used bullets so big that they could have doubled as paperweights.\n\nSing pulled out another gun, identical to the first, in his other hand. Then he took aim at the door handle \u2013 which sat directly between Bastille and me.\n\n\"Oh, put those antiques away,\" Bastille said testily. \"This isn't the time for \u2013 Gak!\"\n\nThis last part came as I grabbed her by the shoulder, yanking her with me as I took cover behind a table.\n\nSing pulled the triggers.\n\nWood chips sprayed across the room, mixing with shards of dark black glass. The booming sound of gunshots echoed in the small chamber \u2013 or, at least, the booming sound of three gunshots echoed in the small chamber. By the time Sing fired the fourth shot, I'd been deafened and couldn't tell whether or not the rest of the shots made any noise.\n\nI couldn't hear any trees fall either.\n\nWhen it was over, I peeked out from behind my table. Bastille remained stunned on the floor beside me. The door stood shattered and splintered, the remnants of its handle and lock hanging pitifully, surrounded by bullet holes. As I watched, the broken, bullet-shattered lock finally dropped to the floor, and the door quietly swung open \u2013 as if in surrender.\n\nNow, after all our discussions of \"advanced\" weapons and the like, you probably weren't expecting the guns to do much good. I certainly wasn't. One thing to remember is this: Primitive doesn't always mean useless. An old flintlock pistol may not be as advanced as a handgun, but both could kill you. Sitting there, I realized why Sing was insistent upon bringing the guns along, and why Grandpa Smedry had let him do so.\n\nIt seems to me that some people underestimate good, old-fashioned Hushlander technology a little too much. It was good to see something from my world prove so effective. Locks made from Oculator's Glass might be resistant to physical damage, but they certainly aren't completely indestructible.\n\n\"Nice shooting,\" I said.\n\nSing shrugged, then said something.\n\n\"What?\" I asked, still feeling a bit deaf.\n\n\"I said,\" Sing said, speaking louder, \"even antiques have their uses every once in a while. Come on!\" He waddled over to the door, pushing it open the rest of the way.\n\nBastille stumbled to her feet. \"I feel like a thunderstorm went off inside my head. Your people really use those things on the battlefield?\"\n\n\"Only when they have to,\" I said.\n\n\"How can you hear what your commanders are saying?\" she asked.\n\n\"Uh\u2026 helmets?\" I said. The answer, of course, didn't make any sense. But I didn't care at the moment. I rose to my feet, rushing after Sing into the room. Inside, we found one guard on the ground, unconscious from Blackburn's use of the Torture's Lens. Grandpa Smedry still lay tied to the table, Quentin in his chair.\n\n\"Alcatraz, lad!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You're late!\"\n\nI smiled, rushing to the table. Bastille saw to Quentin, cutting the ropes that tied him to the chair.\n\n\"The manacles on my wrists are made of Enforcer's Glass, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You'll never break it. Quickly, you have to leave! The Dark Oculator sensed you using the Firebringer's Lens!\"\n\nI know,\" I said. \"That was intentional. We distracted him with the Lens, then came in to get you.\"\n\n\"You did?\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Whooping Williams, lad, that's brilliant!\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, placing two hands against the wood of the table. Then I closed my eyes and channeled a blast of Talent into it. Fortunately, it wasn't warded as well as the door had been, even if the manacles were. Nails sprang free, boards separated, and legs fell off. Grandpa Smedry collapsed in the middle of it, crying out in surprise. Sing quickly rushed over to help him to his feet.\n\n\"Muttering Modesitts,\" Grandpa Smedry said quietly, looking at the remnants of the table. The manacles and their chains now hung freely from his wrists and ankles, for the other ends had been affixed to the now-defunct table. Grandpa Smedry looked up at me. \"That's some Talent, lad. Some Talent indeed\u2026\"\n\nQuentin walked over, rubbing his wrists. He had a few budding bruises on his face, but otherwise looked unharmed. \"Churches,\" he said. \"Lead, very small rocks, and ducks.\"\n\nI frowned.\n\n\"Oh, he won't be able to say anything normal for the rest of the day,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Sing, my boy, would you help me with\u2026\" He nodded downward, toward his leg \u2013 which, I now noticed, was still impaled by the torturing knife.\n\n\"Grandpa!\" I said with concern as Sing reached down gingerly and pulled the knife free.\n\nThere was no blood.\n\n\"Don't worry, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I'll arrive late to that wound.\"\n\nI frowned. \"How long can you keep that up?\"\n\n\"It depends,\" Grandpa Smedry said, accepting his tuxedo shirt from Sing. He put it on, then began doing up the front. \"Arriving late to wounds requires a bit of effort \u2013 holding this one back, along with all the pains Blackburn gave me with his Torture's Lenses, is already fatiguing. I can hold on for a little while longer, but I'll have to start letting the pain through eventually.\"\n\nIndeed, Grandpa Smedry looked far less spry now that he had earlier in the day. The torture might not have broken him, but it had certainly produced an effect.\n\n\"Oh, don't look at me like that,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I can arrive at the pain in small, manageable amounts, once we're free. Bastille, dear, any luck?\"\n\nI turned. Bastille had apparently done a quick search of the room's tables and cabinets. She looked up from the last one and shook her head. \"If he took you Lenses, he didn't stash them in here, old man.\"\n\n\"Ah, well,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Good work anyway, dear.\"\n\n\"I only searched the room,\" she said, slamming the door, \"because I was so furious at you for getting yourself captured. I figured that if I walked over to help you, I'd end up punching you instead. That didn't seem fair in your weakened state.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry raised a hand, whispering to me, \"This would probably be a bad time to remind her that she got captured too, eh?\"\n\n\"My capture was a different Smedry's fault,\" Bastille snapped, flushing. \"And that doesn't matter. We need to get out of here before that Dark Oculator comes back.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Follow me \u2013 I know the way to a stairwell up.\"\n\n\"Up?\" Bastille asked incredulously.\n\n\"Of course,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"We came for the Sands of Rashid \u2013 and we're not leaving until we have them!\"\n\n\"But they know we're here,\" Bastille said. \"The entire library is on alert!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But we know where the sands are.\"\n\n\"We do?\" I asked.\n\nGrandpa Smedry nodded. \"You don't think Quentin and I got ourselves captured for nothing, do you? We got close to the sands, lad. Very close.\"\n\n\"But?\" Bastille asked, folding her arms.\n\nGrandpa Smedry blushed slightly. \"Snarer's Glass. Blackburn has that room so well trapped that it's a wonder he doesn't catch himself every time he walks into it.\"\n\n\"And how are we going to get past the traps now, then?\" Bastille asked.\n\n\"Oh, we won't have to,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Quentin and I couldn't think of a way to get by the traps, so we just fell into them! The room should be completely free now. Each square of Snarer's Glass can only go off once, you know!\"\n\nBastille huffed at him. \"You could have gotten yourself killed, old man!\"\n\n\"Yes, well,\" he said. \"I didn't! Now, let's get moving! We're going to be late.\"\n\nWith that, he rushed out of the room. Bastille gave me a flat look. \"Next time, let's just leave him.\"\n\nI smiled wryly, moving to follow her out of the room. However, something caught my attention. I stopped beside it.\n\n\"Sing?\" I asked as the large man walked past.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nI pointed at a lantern holder on the wall. \"What does this lantern holder look like to you?\"\n\nSing paused, scratching his chin. \"A coconut?\"\n\nCoconut, I thought. \"Do you remember what Quentin said downstairs, just after we entered the library?\"\n\nSing shook his head. \"What was it?\"\n\n\"I can't quite remember,\" I said. \"But it sounded like gibberish.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Sing said. \"Quentin speaks in gibberish sometimes. It's a side effect of his Talent \u2013 like me tripping when I get startled.\"\n\nOr me breaking things I don't want to, I thought. But this seemed different. Coconuts\u2026 pain don't hurt. That's what it was.\n\nI glanced back at the broken table. The pain of torture hadn't hurt Grandpa Smedry.\n\n\"Come on Alcatraz,\" Sing said urgently, pulling on my arm. \"We have to keep moving.\"\n\nI allowed myself to be led from the room, but not before I took one last look at the wall bracket.\n\nI had the feeling I was missing something important."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "The book is almost done.\n\nThe ending of a book is, in my experience, both the best and the worst part to read. For the ending will often decide whether you love or hate the book.\n\nBoth emotions lead to disappointment. If the ending was good, and the book was worth your time, then you are left annoyed and depressed because there is no more book to read. However, if the ending was bad, then it's too late to stop reading. You're left annoyed and depressed because you wasted so much time on a book with a bad ending.\n\nTherefore, reading is obviously worthless, and you should go spend your time on other, more valuable pursuits. I hear algebra is good for you. Kind of like humility, plus factoring. Regardless, you will soon know whether to hate me for not writing more, or whether to hate me for writing too much. Please confine all assassination attempts to the school week, as I would rather not die on a Saturday.\n\nNo need to spoil a good weekend.\n\n\"This is it,\" Grandpa Smedry said, leading us through another hallway. \"That door at the end.\"\n\nThe third floor was a little more lavish than the second floor: Instead of stark, unpleasant stones and blank walls, the third floor was lined with stark, unpleasant rugs and blank tapestries. The door had a large glass disc set into its front, and at first I thought the disc had a lightbulb in the middle. It certainly glowed sharply enough. Then I remembered my Oculator's Lenses and realized that the disc was glowing only to my eyes.\n\nThere had to be Lenses beyond that door \u2013 powerful ones.\n\nBastille caught Grandpa Smedry on the shoulder as he reached the door, then shook her head sharply. She pulled him back, moved up to the door, and tried to get a good look through the glass disc. Then she raised her crystal dagger to the ready and pushed open the door.\n\nLight burst from the room, as if that door were the gate to heaven itself. I cried out, closing my eyes.\n\n\"Focus on your Lenses, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You can dim the effect if you concentrate.\"\n\nI did so, squinting. I managed, with some effort, to make the light dim down until it was a low glow. No longer blinded, I was awed by what I saw.\n\nWhat I felt at this point is a little bit hard to describe. To Bastille and my cousins, the room would have been simply a medium-sized, circular chamber with little shelves built into the walls. The shelves held Lenses \u2013 hundreds of them \u2013 and each one had its own little stand, holding it up to sparkle in the light. It must have been a pretty sight, but nothing spectacular.\n\nTo me, the room looked different.\n\nPerhaps you've owned something in your life to which you ascribed particular pleasure. A treasured toy, perhaps. Some photographs. The bullet that killed your archnemesis.\n\nNow, imagine that you'd never before realized how important that item was to you. Imagine that your understanding of it \u2013 your feelings of love, pride, and satisfaction \u2013 suddenly hit you all at once.\n\nThat was how I felt. There was something right about all of those Lenses. I'd never been in the room before, but to me, it felt like home. And to a boy who had lived with dozens of different foster families, home was not a word to be used lightly.\n\nSing, Grandpa Smedry, Bastille, and Quentin moved into the room. I walked up to the doorway, where I stood for a few moments, basking in the beauty of the Lenses. There was a majesty to the room. A warmth.\n\nThis is what I was meant to be, I thought. This is what I was always meant to be.\n\n\"Hurry, lad!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"You have to find the sands. I don't have my Oculator's Lenses! I'll try to find a pair in here, but you need to start looking while I do!\"\n\nI shocked myself into motion. We were still being chased. This wasn't my home \u2013 this was the stronghold of my enemies. I shook my head, forcing myself to be more realistic. Yet I would always retain a memory of that moment \u2013 the first moment when I knew for certain that I wanted to be an Oculator. And I would treasure it.\n\n\"Grandfather, everything in here is glowing,\" I protested. \"How can I find the sands in all of this?\"\n\n\"They're here,\" Grandpa Smedry said, furiously looking through the room. \"I swear they are!\"\n\n\"Golf the spasm of penguins!\" Quentin said, pointing to a table at the back of the circular room.\n\n\"He's right!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"That's where the sands were before. Aspiring Asimovs! Where did they go?\"\n\n\"Typically,\" a new voice said, \"one uses sands to make Lenses.\"\n\nI spun. Blackburn stood in the hallway behind us. For some reason, the man's aura of darkness was far less visible that it had been before.\n\nMy Oculator's Lenses, I realized. I turned them down.\n\nBlackburn smiled. He was accompanied by a large group of Librarians \u2013 not the skinny, robe-wearing kind but the bulky, overmuscled kind in the bow ties and sunglasses, as well as a couple of sword-wielding women wearing skirts, their hair in buns.\n\nBlackburn had something in his hand. A pair of spectacles. Even with my Oculator's Lenses turned down, these spectacles glowed powerfully with a brilliant white light.\n\n\"Back away, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said quietly.\n\nI did so, slowly backing into the room. There are no other exits, I thought. We're trapped!\n\nBastille growled quietly, raising her crystal dagger, stepping between Grandpa Smedry and the smiling Blackburn. Librarian thugs fanned into the room, moving to surround us. Sing watched warily, cocking a pair of handguns.\n\n\"Nice collection you have here, Blackburn,\" Grandpa Smedry said, walking around the perimeter of the room.\n\n\"Frostbringer's Lenses, Courier's Lenses, Harrier's Lenses\u2026 Yes, impressive indeed.\" I noticed that my grandfather's hand was glowing slightly.\n\n\"I have a weakness for power, I'm afraid,\" Blackburn said.\n\nGrandpa Smedry nodded, as if to himself. \"Those Lenses in your hand. They come from the Sands of Rashid?\"\n\nBlackburn smiled.\n\n\"Why a pair? Why not just a monocle?\" Grandpa Smedry asked.\n\n\"In case I choose to share these Lenses with others. Not everyone has realized the value of focusing power, as I have.\"\n\n\"The torture, the chasing us,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I was worried that we were taking too long \u2013 that you were just trying to distract us long enough for your lackeys to forge those Lenses.\"\n\n\"Not just,\" Blackburn said. \"I was sincerely hoping that I'd be able to break you with the torture, old man, and find the secret to the Smedry Talents that way. But you do have a point. I assumed that when I had these lenses, I could beat you for certain.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled. \"They don't do what you thought they would, do they?\"\n\nBlackburn shrugged.\n\nGrandpa Smedry finally stopped strolling. He reached up and selected a Lens off of a shelf, then slipped it into his hands with several others he's pilfered. He turned to look directly at Blackburn. \"Shall we, then?\"\n\nBlackburn's smile deepened. \"I'd like nothing better.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry whipped his hand up, raising something to his eye \u2013 an Oculator's Lens. Blackburn raised his own hand, placing a monocle over the one he already wore.\n\nSing, of course, tripped.\n\n\"Shattering Glass!\" Bastille swore, grabbing me by the arm and towing me to the side. The Librarian thugs all stooped down, bracing themselves.\n\nAnd the air suddenly began to crackle with energy. My hair raised up on its ends, and each footstep zapped me slightly with a static charge.\n\n\"What's going on?\" I cried to Bastille.\n\n\"Oculator's Duel!\" she cried.\n\nI noticed Grandpa Smedry raise another Lens to his eye. He kept his left eye closed, placing both lenses together over his right eye. The first Lens he had placed \u2013 the reddish pink Oculator's Lens \u2013 remained in place, hovering in front of his eye.\n\nBlackburn raised a third Lens to his eye. The room surged with power, and Lenses on the walls started to rattle. I recognized this one \u2013 it was a Torturer's Lens. I could feel that it had been activated, yet it seemed to have no effect on Grandpa Smedry.\n\n\"Those Oculator's Lenses you wear,\" Bastille said over the noise. \"They're the most basic Lenses for a good reason. A well-trained Oculator can use them to negate his enemy's attacks.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry slowly raised a third Lens to his eye. All three remained hovering in the air in front of him. The new one made a screeching sound that hurt my ears, though most of the noise seemed directed at Blackburn.\n\n\"Why are they using multiple Lenses at once?\" I said as Blackburn added a fourth Lens. The room grew colder and a line of frosty ice shot forward toward Grandpa Smedry.\n\nBastille crouched down farther. Wind began to churn in the room, ruffling my hair, whipping at my jacket.\n\n\"They're countering each other's attacks,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Adding Lens after Lens. However, it gets increasingly hard to focus your power through all those Lenses at once. The first one who loses control of his Lenses \u2013 or who fails to block an attack \u2013 will lose.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry, arm beginning to shake, raised a fourth Lens to his eye. The hovering line of Lenses trembled in the wind. Grandpa Smedry was no longer smiling \u2013 in fact, he had one arm up, steadying himself against the wall.\n\nBlackburn added a fifth Lens \u2013 one that I recognized. It didn't have a little monocle frame like the others, and it had a red dot at the center.\n\nMy Firebringer's Lens! I thought. He did recover it.\n\nSure enough, this Lens began to spit out a line of fire.\n\nThe beam shot forward, moving alongside the line of ice. But, like the ice line, the Firebringer's line puffed into non-existence near Grandpa Smedry, as if hitting an invisible shield. Grandpa Smedry grunted quietly at the impact.\n\nI could see Sing a short distance away, struggling to his knees. The large man raised a gun, then fired at Blackburn. I could barely hear the gunshots over the sound of wind.\n\nFlashes of lightning shot from Blackburn's body, moving more quickly that I could track. I'm still not certain what happened to those bullets, but they obviously never reached their mark. I glanced at Sing, who sat cradling a burned hand, his gun smoking slightly on the floor.\n\nGrandpa Smedry finally managed to place his fifth Lens. My ears popped, and it felt like the air was growing more pressurized \u2013 as if some force were pushing out from Grandpa Smedry, most of it slamming into Blackburn.\n\nThe Dark Oculator grunted, stumbling. However, I could see a glistening spot appear near the knife-hole on Grandpa Smedry's tuxedo pants, and a small pool of blood began forming at his feet.\n\nThe wound from the torture chamber, I thought. He's too tired to hold it back any longer. \"We have to do something!\" I yelled over the wind. Lenses were toppling from their pedestals, some shattering to the ground, and scraps of paper were churning inside the vortex of the room.\n\nBastille shook her head. \"We can't interfere!\"\n\n\"What?\" I asked. \"Some stupid code of honor?\"\n\n\"No! If we get too close to either of them, the power will vaporize us!\"\n\nOh, I thought. Blackburn, whose arm had begun to tremble with strain, raised a sixth Lens to his eye. In his hand, he still held the spectacles he'd had forged from the Sands of Rashid. Why doesn't he use those? I wondered. Is he saving the best for last?\n\nSing managed to pull himself over to Bastille and me. \"Lord Leavenworth can't win this fight, Bastille! He's only using single-eye Lenses. Blackburn's trained on those \u2013 he put his eye out to increase his power with them. But Leavenworth is accustomed to two eyes. He can't \u2013\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry suddenly let out a defiant yell. He raised his hand, gripping his sixth Lens in rigid fingers. He wavered for a moment.\n\nThen dropped the Lens.\n\nThere was a flash of light and a blast of power. I cried out in shock as I was thrown backward.\n\nAnd the winds stopped.\n\nI opened my eyes to the sound of laughter. I rolled over, desperately looking for Grandpa Smedry. The old man lay on the ground, barely moving. Blackburn had been thrown backward as well, but he picked himself up without much trouble.\n\n\"Is that it?\" Blackburn asked, brushing off his suit. He smiled, looking down at Grandpa Smedry through his single eye, an eye that now bore no Lenses. They had all dropped to the ground at his feet. \"You barely gave a fight, old man.\"\n\nSing reached for another gun. Two beefy Librarians tackled him from behind. Bastille jumped the first one. Six more soldiers rushed at her.\n\nBlackburn continued to chuckle. He walked slowly across the room, his feet crunching on shattered glass. He shook his head. \"Do you realize how much trouble it's going to be to gather up all these broken Lenses, have the shards sorted, then have them all reforged? My Librarians will spend months remaking my collection!\"\n\nI have to do something, I thought. Bastille continued to fight, but more and more Librarian thugs were surrounding her. They already had Quentin and Sing pinned. Nobody, however, seemed to notice me. Perhaps they thought me unthreatening because I had been knocked down.\n\nI scanned the room. There, a short distance away, I saw them \u2013 the Lenses of Rashid, lying temptingly in the middle of a pile of discarded monocles. They had fallen to the ground during the blast along with the other Lenses Blackburn had held during the fight.\n\nI gritted my teeth.\n\nI have to use the Lenses of Rashid, I thought, crawling forward slowly. I have to \u2013\n\nWait. I want you to do something for me. Try to recall the very first part of my story. It was way back in Chapter One, before I even told you about my name. Back then, I spoke about life-and-death situations, and how they make people think about some very odd subjects. The prospect of dying \u2013 or, in this case, watching someone dear to you die \u2013 does strange things to the mind. Makes it think along tangents.\n\nMakes it remember things that it might have otherwise thought unimportant.\n\nGrandpa Smedry was going to die. And, strangely, at that very moment, I noticed the lantern that still stood on a pole at the very center of the room. The lantern holder\u2026 it looked something like a rutabaga.\n\nRutabaga, I thought. I've heard that word recently. Rutabaga\u2026 fire over the inheritance!\n\nI scrambled forward. Blackburn spun. I threw myself toward the Lenses of Rashid \u2013 but I didn't grab them. I grabbed a Lens sitting next to them.\n\nThe Firebringer's Lens.\n\nBlackburn's foot came down on my arm. I cried out, dropping the Lens, and a pair of Librarian soldiers quickly grabbed me. They yanked me to my feet and pulled me backward, one holding each of my arms.\n\nBlackburn shook his head. From the corner of my eye, I could barely make out a Librarian finally tackling Bastille. She struggled, but three others helped him hold her.\n\n\"My, my, my,\" Blackburn said. \"And here you all are, captured again.\" He looked over at Grandpa Smedry, but the old man was obviously no threat. Grandpa Smedry was dazed, his leg bleeding, his face puffing up from bruises he'd apparently been putting off since his torture.\n\nBlackburn bent down, picking up the Firebringer's Lens. \"A Firebringer's Lens,\" He said. \"You should have known better than to try and use one of these against me, boy. I'm far more powerful that you.\"\n\nBlackburn turned the Lens over in his fingers. \"I'm glad you brought me one, however. There weren't any in my collection \u2013 they're quite rare.\" Then he picked up the Lenses of Rashid. \"And these. Supposedly the most powerful Lenses ever forged. Didn't your son spend his entire life gathering the sands to make these, old Smedry?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry didn't answer.\n\n\"What a waste,\" Blackburn said, shaking his head. Then he raised the Firebringer's Lens to his eye. \"Now, we're going to do this one more time. You are going to start answering my questions, old man. You're going to tell me the secrets of your order, and you're going to help me conquer the rest of the Free Kingdoms.\"\n\nBlackburn smiled. \"If you don't, I'm going to kill every one of your friends.\" He looked around the room. My companions stood, held by Librarian thugs. Only Bastille still struggled \u2013 Sing and Quentin looked like they had been punched a few good times in the stomach to keep them quiet.\n\n\"No,\" Blackburn said, \"not one of the Smedrys. Your blasted Talents are too protective. Let's start with the girl.\" He smiled, focusing his single eye on Bastille.\n\n\"No!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Ask your questions, monster!\"\n\n\"Not yet, Smedry,\" Blackburn said. \"I have to kill one of them first, you see. Then you will understand how serious this all is.\"\n\nThe Firebringer's Lens began to glow.\n\n\"NO!\" Grandpa Smedry screamed.\n\nThe Firebringer's Lens fired\u2026\n\n\u2026directly back into Blackburn's eye.\n\nTaking advantage of the moment, I twisted with a sudden motion, raising my hands and grabbing the arms of my captors. I sent out shocks of Talent and felt bones snap beneath my fingers. My captors cried out, jumping back and cradling broken limbs. Blackburn fell to his knees, and the Firebringer's Lens fell free, leaving a smoking socket behind. He screamed in pain.\n\nI stepped toward the now powerless Dark Oculator. \"When I grabbed the Firebringer's Lens, Blackburn, I wasn't trying to use it on you,\" I said. \"You see, I only needed to touch it for a moment \u2013 just long enough to break it.\n\n\"It shoots backward now.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "I apologize for that last chapter. It was far too deep and ponderous. At this rate, it won't be long before this story departs speaking of evil Librarians, and instead turns into a terribly boring tale about a lawyer who defends unjustly accused field hands.\n\nWhat do mockingbirds have to do with that, anyway?\n\nI scooped up the Firebringer's Lens, spinning toward the thugs who still held my grandfather. The Librarians looked down at the fallen Oculator, then back up at me. I raised the Lens.\n\nThe two men dashed away. In the fury of the moment, I didn't even realize that I'd finally been able to pick up the Lens without it going off.\n\nGrandpa Smedry slumped back against the wall in exhaustion. However, he smiled at me. \"Well done, lad. Well done. You're a Smedry for certain!\"\n\nThe other thugs in the room backed away, towing their hostages. \"There are two of us now,\" Grandpa Smedry said, righting himself, staring down at the Librarians. \"And your Oculator has fallen. Do you really want to make us mad?\"\n\nThere was a moment of hesitance, and Bastille seized it. She swung up and slammed her feet into the back of the Librarian in front of her. Then she pulled herself free from her surprised captors.\n\nThe other thugs dropped Quentin and Sing, then dashed away. Bastille chased after them, cursing and kicking at one as he rushed out the door. But she let him go, grumbling quietly as she turned to make certain Sing and Quentin were all right. Both seemed well enough.\n\nBlackburn groaned. Grandpa Smedry shook his head, looking down at the Dark Oculator.\n\n\"Should we\u2026 do something with him?\" I asked.\n\n\"He's no threat now, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"An Oculator without eyes is about as dangerous as a little girl.\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\" Bastille huffed, rolling over one of the Librarian thugs that she'd knocked out before. She pulled off his sword belt and tied it around her waist.\n\n\"I apologize, dear,\" Grandpa Smedry said in his tired voice. \"It was just a figure of speech. Sing, would you do me a favor\u2026?\"\n\nSing rushed over, steadying Grandpa Smedry. \"Ah, very nice,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Quentin, gather up any unbroken Lenses you can find. Bastille, be a dear and watch for danger at the door \u2013 there are others in this library who won't be as easily intimidated as those thugs.\"\n\n\"And me?\" I asked.\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled. \"You, lad, should recover your inheritance.\"\n\nI turned, noticing the glasses that still lay on the ground. I walked over, picking them up. \"Blackburn seemed disappointed in these.\"\n\n\"Blackburn was a man who focused only on one kind of power,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"For a man whose abilities depended on seeing, he was remarkable shortsighted.\"\n\n\"So\u2026 what do these do?\" I asked.\n\n\"Try them on,\" Grandpa Smedry suggested.\n\nI took off my Oculator's Lenses and put on the Rashid Lenses instead. I couldn't see any difference \u2013 no release of power, no amazing revelations.\n\n\"What am I looking for?\" I asked.\n\n\"Quentin,\" Grandpa Smedry said, turning toward the small grad student. \"What do you think?\"\n\n\"I really wouldn't know,\" Quentin said. \"The legends are all so contradictory.\"\n\nI started. \"Hey! I understood him!\"\n\n\"That's impossible,\" Quentin said, still gathering Lenses off the ground. \"I have my Talent on. I'm gibberish for the whole day.\"\n\n\"Actually, you're not,\" I said. \"And you weren't truly gibberish those other times either. Did you know that your Talent can predict the future?\"\n\nQuentin's jaw dropped. \"You can understand me?\"\n\n\"That's what I just said. Thanks for the hint about the rutabaga, by the way.\"\n\nQuentin turned toward Grandpa Smedry, who was smiling. \"No, Quentin,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I still can't understand you.\"\n\nI stood, shocked. What in the world\u2026?\n\nThen I turned, rushing over to Sing's gym bag, which lay on the side of the room. I unzipped it, digging through the ammunition to find a particular object: the book I'd swiped from the Forgotten Language room.\n\nI opened it up to the first page. The mechanics of forging a Truefinder's Lens is complex, it read, but can be understood by one who takes the proper time to study.\n\nI looked up, staring over at Grandpa Smedry. The old man smiled. \"There are a lot of different theories about what the Sands of Rashid do, lad. Your father, however, believed in a specific theory. Translator's Lenses, they were once called \u2013 they gave the power to read, or understand, any language, tongue, or code.\"\n\nI looked back at the book.\n\n\"Yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said tiredly. Just wait until we show these to your father \u2013 if we can ever find him.\"\n\nI spun. \"So you do think he's alive?\"\n\n\"Perhaps, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Perhaps. Now that we have those Lenses, perhaps we can find out for sure. I wish I'd had a way to discover sooner. If I'd known for certain whether he was dead or not, do you think I'd have let you get raised by foster parents?\"\n\nI paused. Well, I guess the Lenses won't help me when he makes no sense.\n\nI opened my mouth to demand more, but Bastille cut me off. \"Trouble coming! Librarian \u2013 the blond one.\"\n\nI rushed over to the corridor and saw Ms. Fletcher striding toward the room, a troop of at least fifty soldiers marching behind her. These men and women were armored with shiny breastplates. A few Alivened lumbered in the background.\n\n\"Time to go, I think,\" I said, pushing Bastille back. Then I slammed my hand into the ground.\n\nThe floor just in front of me fell away, blocks tumbling down to the story below us. I backed away from the hole with Bastille.\n\n\"Oh, very clever Alcatraz,\" Ms. Fletcher said, stopping at the pit's edge. \"Now you've trapped yourself.\"\n\nI smiled, raised an eyebrow, then pressed my hand against the back wall of the room. The bricks separated, mortar cracking. Sing came over and gave the wall a hefty push, topping the bricks into the next room.\n\nI winked at Ms. Fletcher, then reached down to slide a sword from the sheath of a fallen soldier. Ms. Fletcher stood with arms crossed, regarding Blackburn with a sour expression as I ducked out the broken wall after Sing, who was carrying Grandpa Smedry.\n\n\"Quickly, now!\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"We're late!\"\n\n\"For what?\" I asked, running beside Sing and Quentin. Bastille, of course, ran ahead of us, watching for danger.\n\n\"Why, for our dramatic exit, of course!\" Grandpa Smedry said, sounding a bit tired. \"Ms. Surly back there will try and cut us off at the front doors of the library.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll just make us another door,\" I said. \"We'll bust out the back wall.\"\n\n\"Ah, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Haven't you realized? This entire building is inside a box of Expander's Glass \u2013 just like the gas station. Expander's Glass is very hard to break, even with a Talent. Besides, if you did, we'd be crushed as the entire library tried to burst out of the hole you'd made.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said as we reached a stairwell. \"Well, then, I have another idea.\"\n\n\"What?\" Grandpa Smedry asked.\n\nI smiled, then reached into my pocket. I pulled out a small white rectangle: the library card we had taken off of the dungeon guard.\n\nThe main lobby of the library was unusually busy for a weekday evening. People milled about, perusing stacks of books, completely unaware \u2013 of course \u2013 that everything they saw was filled with Librarian fabrications.\n\nThey knew nothing of Alivened, of Librarian cults, of Smedrys, or of Lenses. They just wanted a good book to read. (None of them were, unfortunately, able to check out this volume. Not because it was banned \u2013 which it is \u2013 but because it simply hadn't been written yet. Those poor people may never know the joy they missed out on.)\n\nSmall children looked through the fantasy section. Parents checked out the latest thrillers. The rebellious, trouble-making types looked through the fantasy section. A few unfortunate kids ended up with meaningful books about dysfunctional families.\n\nFew of the people noticed the large number of Librarians gathering behind the front desk. Fewer still noticed that these Librarians were oddly muscular. What nobody noticed, however, were the weapons carefully stashed behind the counter. Ms. Fletcher stood at the front of the group. She wished to avoid making an incident \u2013 but when incidents were necessary, they could be contained. Smedrys were far more difficult.\n\nDespite buildup of Librarian troops, most of the people in the room went about their libraryish activities. All in all, there was a sense of peace about the room. It was the joy and simple contentment that comes from being around books, Librarian sanctioned or not.\n\nThat peace ended abruptly as a door at the back of the room burst open, and a group of dinosaurs rushed in.\n\nIt didn't matter that the dinosaurs carried books. It didn't matter that they were smaller than one might expect. It didn't matter that most of them wore clothing. They were dinosaurs \u2013 and they were very, very realistic.\n\nThe screaming started a second later.\n\nMothers grabbed children. Men cursed, demanding to know if this was \"some kind of a joke!\" Librarians stood, shocked. Their hesitation cost them greatly, for within seconds there was an air of general chaos in the room.\n\nThat was when I burst through the door, carrying a sword (something I still figured I should have had all along). I was followed by Bastille Crystin, dressed in her stylish silver clothing. Quentin followed in his tuxedo, carrying Sing's gym bag, now filled with Oculator's Lenses. Sing came last, wearing his blue kimono and carrying Grandpa Smedry.\n\nThe dinosaurs dashed ahead of us, inadvertently crowding the people against the checkout counters. A few librarian thugs broke through, but the others got trapped behind the desk, blocked by a horde of frightened people and excited dinosaurs.\n\nBastille met the first Librarian thug. She ducked his sword swing, then shoved him aside. He fell as she hopped over him, waving her sword toward the crowd. The people shied back in confused fear.\n\nA Librarian behind the counter raised a crossbow.\n\nThat's new, I thought, moving between the man and Bastille. I stared down the crossbow bolt, thinking about just how dangerous it was. This last bit was, of course, to convince myself. I was beginning to get the hang of my Talent. It only worked at a distance when \u2013\n\nThe crossbow's bowstring snapped free, flipping the crossbow bolt uselessly into the air. The Librarian watched it, dumbfounded, and I smiled, leaving Bastille to intimidate the people \u2013 and therefore keep the Librarians trapped. I rushed over to pull open the front library door.\n\nI held it for Sing and Quentin. Bastille left next, and I paused, turning and smiling at the packed room. One of the dinosaurs \u2013 the T. Rex \u2013 finally reached the checkout desk. He slammed down his pile of books, then placed the library card on top of it.\n\n\"I'd like to check these out!\" he said eagerly.\n\nMs. Fletcher stood, arms folded as her soldiers tried to push through the crowd. She met my eyes, and I could see from her expression that she knew she was beaten.\n\nI raised my sword to her in a gesture of farewell. The blade immediately fell free and dropped to the ground.\n\nI stared at it for a moment. What? I thought I was finally figuring out how to control my Talent!\n\nMs. Fletcher gave me a curious expression, as if confused by my gesture, and I sighed, flipping the broken bit into the room. Then I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Sing (still carrying my grandfather) and Quentin ran ahead, moving toward Grandpa Smedry's little black car, which still waited where it had been parked.\n\nBastille still stood by the door. She met my eyes. \"All right, all right,\" she said. \"You were right about the dinosaurs. This time.\"\n\nI stepped aside as some brave library patrons finally pushed past me out onto the street.\n\n\"Your dinosaur friends are just going to get caught again,\" Bastille said.\n\n\"Charles said he'd try to get them to leave in the confusion,\" I said, joining her as we ran across the street. \"It's the best we can do.\"\n\nAnd it really was. Honestly, you have no idea how hard it is to work with dinosaurs. It's no wonder the Librarians made up the myth about them going extinct \u2013 pretty much everyone in the Free Kingdoms wishes that one were true.\n\nSing set Grandpa Smedry in the passenger seat of the car, and Quentin squeezed into the backseat. Then Sing took the driver's seat \u2013 holding the useless steering wheel as the car took off. Bastille's silver sports car pulled up just a second later. She climbed in, but I paused. My door had no handle. Finally, Bastille opened the door by rapping on the inside dash. \"The inner door handle is gone,\" she said, frowning.\n\n\"That's very strange,\" I said sliding into the car. \"Now, can we get going?\"\n\nShe smiled, throwing the car into gear, then she slammed down on the pedal. I turned, watching out the back window. Behind us, a bunch of Librarians had finally managed to push their way out of the building. They watched in dismay as Bastille's car squealed away.\n\nI smiled, turning back around. \"I assume you have ways of making sure that the Librarians don't just have some of their police pick us up?\"\n\n\"They don't work that way,\" Bastille said. \"The Librarians keep as few people as possible informed about the true nature of the world. Most governments don't know that they're being manipulated. Now that we're outside of the Librarian central base, we should have a little breathing room. Especially since we neutralized their Oculator.\"\n\nI nodded, resting back in my chair. \"That's good to hear. I think I've had enough sneaking, chasing, and other ridiculousness for one day.\"\n\nBastille smiled, taking a sharp corner. \"You know, Alcatraz, you're a bit less annoying than most Smedrys.\"\n\nI smiled. \"Guess I'll just have to practice some more, then.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "All right. It's true. I lied to you.\n\nYou have undoubtedly figured out that there is no altar made of outdated encyclopedias in this book. There is no harrowing situation where I lay, strapped to said altar, about to be sacrificed. There is no dagger-wielding Librarian about to slice me open and spill my blood into the void to complete a dark ritual. No sharks, no pit of acidic magma.\n\nThat's all in the sequel. You didn't really think I'd be able to tell my entire story in one book, did you?\n\nGrandpa Smedry's car puttered along the street. It was dark out \u2013 after escaping the library, we had evacuated the gas station, then spent the night and entire next day recovering in the team's safe house (a mock hamburger stand called Sand-burgers).\n\n\"Grandfather?\" I asked as we drove.\n\n\"Yes, lad?\"\n\n\"What do we do now?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry sat for a moment, turning the wheel in random directions. He looked far better after a night's rest \u2013 he had gained back enough strength to begin arriving late to his pain again, and now he was doling it out in very small amounts. He looked almost like his chipper old self.\n\n\"Well,\" he finally said, \"there is a great deal to be done. The Free Kingdoms are losing the battle against the Librarians. Most of the outright fighting is happening in Mokia right now, though the work behind the scenes in other kingdoms is just as dangerous.\"\n\n\"What will happen if Mokia does fall?\" I asked.\n\n\"The Librarians will fold it into their empire,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"It will take a decade or two before it's fully integrated \u2013 the Librarians will have to begin changing the history books across the entire world, making up a new history for the region.\"\n\nI nodded. \"And\u2026 my parents are part of this war?\"\n\n\"Very big parts,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"They're very important people.\"\n\n\"So important,\" I asked quietly, \"that they couldn't be bothered to raise me?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry shook his head. \"No, lad. That's not it at all.\"\n\n\"Then why?\" I asked, frustrated. \"What was this all about? Why leave me to the Librarians all these years?\"\n\n\"It will make sense if you think about it, lad.\"\n\n\"I don't really want to think about it at the moment,\" I snapped.\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled. \"Information, Alcatraz. It was all about information. Perhaps you've noticed, but the rest of us don't quite fit into your world.\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"You have information, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Important information. You understand the lies the Librarians are teaching \u2013 and you understand their culture. That makes you important. Very important.\"\n\n\"So, my parents gave me up so that they could make a spy out of me?\" I asked.\n\n\"It was a very hard decision, my boy,\" Grandpa Smedry said quietly. \"And they did not make it lightly. But even when you were a baby, they knew you would rise to the challenge. You are a Smedry.\"\n\n\"And there was no other way?\" I demanded.\n\n\"I know it's hard to understand, lad. And, truth be told, I often questioned their decision. But\u2026 well, how many people from other countries have you known who could speak your language perfectly?\"\n\n\"Not many.\"\n\n\"The more different a language is from your own,\" Grandpa Smedry said, \"the more difficult it is to sound like a native. For some languages, I'm convinced it's impossible. The difference between our world and yours isn't as much a matter of language as it is a matter of understanding. I can see that I don't quite fit in here, but I can't see why. It's been the same for all of our operatives. We needed someone on the inside \u2013 someone who understood the way Librarians think, the way they live.\"\n\nI sat quietly for a long moment. \"So,\" I finally said, \"why aren't my parents here? Why did you have to come get me?\"\n\n\"I can't really answer that, Alcatraz. You know we lost track of your father some years ago, just after you were born. I kind of hoped I'd find him here, on your thirteenth birthday, come to deliver the sands himself. That obviously didn't happen.\"\n\n\"You have no idea where he is, then?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry shook his head. \"He is a good man \u2013 and a good Oculator. My instincts tell me that he's alive, though I have no real proof of that. He must be about something important, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is!\"\n\n\"And my mother?\" I asked.\n\nGrandpa Smedry didn't reply immediately. So, I turned to a light tangent \u2013 something that had been bothering me for some time. \"When I wore the Tracker's Lenses back in the library, I was able to see your footprints for a long, long time.\"\n\n\"That's not surprising,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"And,\" I said, \"when you came into my house, you identified my room with the Tracker's Lenses because you saw so many footprints leading into it. But I'd only walked out there once that day. So, the other sets of footprints must have been hours \u2013 or even days \u2013 old.\"\n\n\"True,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"So,\" I said, \"the Tracker's Lenses work differently for family.\"\n\n\"Not differently, lad.\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Family members are part of you, and so they're a part of what you know best. Their tracks tend to hang around for a long time, no matter how little you think you know them.\"\n\nI sat quietly in my seat. \"I saw Ms. Fletcher's footprints hours after she'd made them.\" I finally said.\n\n\"Not surprising.\"\n\nI closed my eyes. \"Why did she and my father break up?\"\n\n\"He fell in love with a Librarian, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Marrying her wasn't the wisest decision he ever made. They thought they could make it work.\"\n\n\"And they were wrong?\"\n\n\"Apparently,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"Your father saw something in her \u2013 something that I've never been able to see. She isn't exactly the most loyal of Librarians, and your father thought that would make her more lenient to our side. But\u2026 I think she's only interested in herself. She married your father for his Talent, I'm convinced. Either way, I think that she was another reason that your father agreed to let you be raised in Librarian lands. That way, your mother could see you. He still loved her, I'm afraid. Probably still does, poor fool.\"\n\nI closed my eyes. She sold the Sands of Rashid to Blackburn. My father's life's work, my inheritance. And\u2026 Blackburn implied that she would sell me too. I didn't know how to think about what I felt. For some reason, all the danger \u2013 all the threats \u2013 I'd been through during the last few days hadn't felt as disturbing to me as the knowledge that my mother lived.\n\nAnd that she was on the wrong side.\n\nGrandpa Smedry's car puttered to a stop. I opened my eyes, looking out the window with a frown. I recognized the street we were on. Joan and Roy Sheldon \u2013 my latest foster family, the one whose kitchen I had burned \u2013 lived just a few houses down.\n\n\"Why are we here?\" I asked.\n\n\"You remember when I first gave you your Oculator's Lenses, lad?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"I asked you a question then,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I asked you why you had burned down your family's kitchen. You didn't answer.\"\n\n\"I thought about it, though,\" I said. \"I'm figuring things out. I'm getting better with my Talent.\"\n\n\"Alcatraz, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, laying a hand on my shoulder. \"That question wasn't just about your Talent. You keep asking about your parents, keep wondering why they were so willing to abandon you. Well, did you ever think to wonder why you abandoned so many families?\"\n\n\"I have thought about it,\" I said. \"Or, at least, I have recently. And perhaps I was a little hard on them. But it wasn't only my fault. They couldn't handle it when I broke things.'\n\n\"Maybe some of them,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But how many of them did you really give a chance?\"\n\nI knew he was right, of course. And yet, knowing something is very different from feeling it. And at that moment, I was feeling all the same emotions I felt every time parents gave me away.\n\nI felt a twist in my gut. It was happening again, and this time it wasn't my fault. I'd tried. I'd tried not to push Grandpa Smedry away. And now it was happening anyway.\n\n\"You're trying to get rid of me,\" I whispered.\n\nGrandpa Smedry shook his head. \"Information, lad! It's all about information. You thought those families were going to give you up, so you acted first. You made them get rid of you. But you had bad information.\n\n\"I'm not trying to abandon you. We have a lot of work to do, you and I. However, you need to go back and spend some time with those who have loved you. You need to make your peace with them if you're ever going to understand yourself well enough to help us win this war.\"\n\n\"Blackburn didn't think information was all that important,\" I snapped.\n\n\"And how'd he end up?\" Grandpa Smedry said, smiling.\n\n\"But he beat you,\" I said. \"In the Oculator's Duel. He was stronger.\"\n\n\"Yes, he was,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"He worked very hard to be able to beat a person like me in a contest like that. He put out his eye so that he would be stronger with offensive Lenses, and he collected other Lenses that would let him fight effectively.\n\n\"But, in doing so, he gave up the ability to see as well. Alcatraz, everything we do is about seeing! If he'd seen just a little better, he would have noticed your trick. If he'd seen a little better, he'd have realized that by putting out his eye and focusing on the powers that let him win battles, he handicapped himself in larger, far more important ways. Perhaps if he'd seen a little more, he'd have realized that those Translator's Lenses you have are far more powerful that any Firebringer's Lens.\"\n\nI sat back, trying to sort out my thoughts \u2013 and my emotions. It was hard to focus on any one feeling \u2013 regret, anxiety, anger, confusion. I still couldn't believe that Grandpa wanted me to stay with Joan and Roy. I glanced at the house. \"Hey, there's no hole in the side of it!\"\n\n\"The Librarians would have fixed that before your foster parents got home,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"They try to keep things quiet, work on the underground \u2013 something like that hole would have attracted too much attention to this house, and therefore to you.\"\n\n\"Won't it be dangerous for me to be here?\" I asked.\n\n\"Probably,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"But it will be dangerous for you everywhere. And, we have some\u2026 means of keeping you safe here, for a little while, at least.\"\n\nI nodded slowly.\n\n\"They'll be happy to see you, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"I don't know about that,\" I said. \"I burned down their kitchen.\"\n\n\"Try them.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"I still can't control it, Grandfather,\" I said quietly. \"My Talent. I thought I was getting the hang of it, but I still break things all the time \u2013 things I don't wasn't to.\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry smiled. \"Perhaps. But when it counted, you broke that Firebringer's Lens in exactly the right way. You didn't just shatter it or make it stop working. You made it work wrong, but made it work right for you. That shows real promise, lad.\"\n\nI looked over at the Sheldons' house again. \"You'll\u2026 come for me, won't you?\"\n\n\"Of course I will, lad!\"\n\nI took a deep breath. \"All right, then. Do you want to take the Translator's Lenses with you?\"\n\n\"They're your inheritance, lad. It wouldn't be right. You keep them.\"\n\nI nodded. Grandpa Smedry smiled, then reached over to give me a hug. I held on tight \u2013 tighter than I'd probably intended.\n\nGrandfather, cousins, perhaps even my father, I thought. I have family.\n\nFinally, I let go, then got out of the car. I looked up at the house again. I've always had family, I thought. Not always the Sheldons, but someone. People willing to give me a home. I guess it's about time I admitted that.\n\nI closed the door, then looked in through the window.\n\n\"Don't break anything!\" Grandpa Smedry said.\n\n\"Just come for me,\" I said. \"Don't be late.\"\n\n\"Me?\" Grandpa Smedry asked. \"Late?\"\n\nThen he rapped on the dash of the car, and it began to hum. I watched it pull away, watched it until it was gone. Then I walked up the street to the house. I paused on the doorstep. I could still faintly smell smoke.\n\nI knocked on the door. Roy opened it. He stood, stupefied, for a moment. Then he yelled in surprise, grabbing me in a hug. \"Joan!\" he cried.\n\nShe rushed around the corner. \"Alcatraz?\"\n\nRoy handed me over to her. She grabbed me in a tight embrace.\n\n\"When the caseworker called,\" Roy said, \"asking where you'd gone\u2026 well, we assumed you'd run off for good, kiddo.\"\n\n\"You didn't get into trouble, did you?\" Joan asked, looking at me sternly.\n\nI shrugged. \"I don't know. I knocked down two floors, one wall, and a few doors, I think. Nothing too bad.\"\n\nJoan and Roy shared a look, then smiled, and took me in.\n\nHours later, after giving them some reasonable lies about where I'd been, after having a good meal, and after accepting their pleas that I stay with them for at least a little while longer, I walked up to my room.\n\nI sat down on my bed, trying to think through the things that had happened to me. Oddly, I didn't find the Librarians, the Alivened, or the Lenses to be the most strange of the recent events. The strangest things to me were the changes I saw in myself.\n\nI cared. And it had all happened because of a simple package in the mail\u2026\n\nMy head snapped up. There, sitting on my desk, was the empty box, beside its brown wrapper. I stood and walked across the room. I flattened out the packaging noting the stamp that I'd investigated, the address written in faded ink\u2026 and the scribbles up the side of the paper. The ones I'd assumed had come from someone trying to get the ink in his pen to flow.\n\nWith trembling hands, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Translator's Lenses \u2013 the Lenses of Rashid. I slipped them on. The scribble immediately changed into legible words.\n\nSon,\n\nCongratulations! If you can read this, then you have managed to craft Lenses of Rashid from the sands I sent you. I knew you'd be able to do it!\n\nI must tell you that I am afraid. I fear that I've stumbled on something powerful \u2013 something more important, and more dangerous, than any of us expected. The Lenses of Rashid were only the beginning! The Forgotten Language leads to clues, stories, legends about the Smedry Talents and \u2013\n\nWell, I can't say more here. By the time you get this package, much time will have passed. Thirteen years. Perhaps I'll have solved the problem by then, but I suspect not. The Lenses that let me see where you will be living at age thirteen have also given me a warning that my task will not be done by then. But I can only see vaguely into the future \u2013 the Oracle's Lenses are far from perfect! What I see makes me even more worried.\n\nOnce I have confirmation that this box reached you without being intercepted, I will send you further information. I have the other set of Rashid Lenses \u2013 with them, I can write in the Forgotten Language, and only you will be able to read my messages.\n\nFor now, simply know that I'm proud of you, and that I love you.\n\nYour father,\n\nAttica Smedry\n\nI put the paper down, stunned. It was at that moment that I heard a rapping on my window. Instead of a raven outside, however, I saw the mustached face of Grandpa Smedry.\n\nI frowned, walking over and opening the window. Grandpa Smedry stood on a ladder that appeared to have extended from the back of his little black automobile.\n\n\"Grandpa?\" I asked. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"What?\" he asked. \"I came for you, as promised.\"\n\n\"As promised?\" I asked. \"But you only left me a few hours ago.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" Grandpa Smedry said. \"I know, I'm late. Come on, lad! We've got work to do. Are you packed yet?\"\n\nGrandpa Smedry began to climb back down the ladder.\n\n\"Wait,\" I said, sticking my head out the window. \"Packed? I thought I was staying here with Joan and Roy!\"\n\n\"What?\" Grandpa Smedry said, looking back up. \"Edible Eddings, boy! This city is crawling with Librarians. It was dangerous enough to give you a chance to come back and say good-bye!\"\n\n\"But you said I had to spend some time with them!\"\n\n\"A few hours, lad,\" Grandpa Smedry said, \"to apologize for the trouble you'd given them. What did you expect? That I'd leave you here all summer, in the exact place where your enemies know where to look? With people that aren't even your family? In a place you don't really like, and that is depressing normal compared to the world you've grown to love? Doesn't that sound a little stupid and contrived to you?\"\n\nI raised my hand to my head. \"Yeah,\" I noted, \"now that you mention it, who would do something silly like that? Let me go get my things and write a note to Joan and Roy. Oh, and you have to see what's written on this package!\"\n\nI rushed back into the room, pulling out a gym bag to begin packing. Outside, I heard Grandpa Smedry's car hum quietly to life.\n\nI smiled. Everything felt right. Weird, true, but right.\n\nIt was about time.\n\n[ Epilogue ]\n\nSO, THAT'S HOW IT BEGAN. NOT AS SPECTACULAR AS SOME HAVE CLAIMED, I KNOW, BUT IT FELT INCREDIBLE ENOUGH TO ME AT THE TIME.\n\nNOW, I'LL BE THE FIRST TO ADMIT THAT THOSE FIRST COUPLE OF DAYS HAD A PROFOUND EFFECT ON ME, SHAKING ME SLIGHTLY OUT OF THE SELF-INDULGENT REBELLIOUSNESS THAT I HAD FALLEN INTO. THE THING IS, IF I COULD GO BACK, I'D STILL TELL MYSELF NOT TO GO WITH GRANDPA SMEDRY ON THAT STRANGE, UNFORTUNATE DAY.\n\nTHE THINGS I LEARNED DURING THAT FIRST INFILTRATION \u2013 TRUST, SELF-CONFIDENCE, BRAVERY \u2013 MIGHT SEEM GOOD AT FIRST GLANCE. HOWEVER, THE CHANGES I EXPERIENCED WERE JUST SETTING ME UP FOR MY EVENTUAL FALL. YOU'LL SEE WHAT I MEAN.\n\nFOR NOW, I HOPE THIS NARRATIVE WAS ENOUGH TO SHOW THAT EVEN SUPPOSED HEROES HAVE FLAWS. LET THIS BE YOUR WARNING \u2013 I'M NOT THE PERSON THAT YOU THINK I AM. YOU'LL SEE.\n\nWITH REGRET,\n\nALCATRAZ SMEDRY\n\nAnd so, untold millions screamed out in pain, and then were suddenly silenced. I hope you're happy.\n\n(This last was included for anyone who skipped forward to read the last page of the book. For the rest of you \u2013 the ones who reached the last page in the proper, honorable, and Smedry-approved manner \u2013 those untold millions are cheering in praise of your honesty.\n\nThey'll probably throw you a party.)"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Inkheart",
        "author": "Cornelia Funke",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "books about books",
            "Inkworld"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "A Stranger in the Night",
                "text": "\u2002'The moon shone in the rocking horse's eye, and in the mouse's eye, too, when Tolly fetched it out from under his pillow to see. The clock went tick-tock, and in the stillness he thought he heard little bare feet running across the floor, then laughter and whispering, and a sound like the pages of a big book being turned over.' -L.M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe\n\nRain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later, Meggie had only to close her eyes and she could still hear it, like tiny fingers tapping on the windowpane. A dog barked somewhere in the darkness, and however often she tossed and turned Meggie couldn't get to sleep.\n\nThe book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages. 'I'm sure it must be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular thing like that under your head,' her father had teased, the first time he found a book under her pillow. 'Go on, admit it, the book whispers its story to you at night.'\n\n'Sometimes, yes,' Meggie had said. 'But it only works for children.' Which made Mo tweak her nose. Mo. Meggie had never called her father anything else.\n\nThat night \u2013 when so much began and so many things changed for ever \u2013 Meggie had one of her favourite books under her pillow, and since the rain wouldn't let her sleep she sat up, rubbed the drowsiness from her eyes, and took it out. Its pages rustled promisingly when she opened it. Meggie thought this first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another, depending on whether or not she already knew the story it was going to tell her. But she needed light. She had a box of matches hidden in the drawer of her bedside table. Mo had forbidden her to light candles at night. He didn't like fire. 'Fire devours books,' he always said, but she was twelve years old, she could surely be trusted to keep an eye on a couple of candle flames. Meggie loved to read by candlelight. She had five candlesticks on the windowsill, and she was just holding the lighted match to one of the black wicks when she heard footsteps outside. She blew out the match in alarm \u2013 oh, how well she remembered it, even many years later \u2013 and knelt to look out of the window, which was wet with rain. Then she saw him.\n\nThe rain cast a kind of pallor on the darkness, and the stranger was little more than a shadow. Only his face gleamed white as he looked up at Meggie. His hair clung to his wet forehead. The rain was falling on him, but he ignored it. He stood there motionless, arms crossed over his chest as if that might at least warm him a little. And he kept on staring at the house.\n\nI must go and wake Mo, thought Meggie. But she stayed put, her heart thudding, and went on gazing out into the night as if the stranger's stillness had infected her. Suddenly, he turned his head, and Meggie felt as if he were looking straight into her eyes. She shot off the bed so fast the open book fell to the floor, and she ran barefoot out into the dark corridor. This was the end of May, but it was chilly in the old house.\n\nThere was still a light on in Mo's room. He often stayed up reading late into the night. Meggie had inherited her love of books from her father. When she took refuge from a bad dream with him, nothing could lull her to sleep better than Mo's calm breathing beside her and the sound of the pages turning. Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper.\n\nBut the figure outside the house was no dream.\n\nThe book Mo was reading that night was bound in pale blue linen. Later, Meggie remembered that too. What unimportant little details stick in the memory.\n\n'Mo, there's someone out in the yard!'\n\nHer father raised his head and looked at her with the usual absent expression he wore when she interrupted his reading. It always took him a few moments to find his way out of that other world, the labyrinth of printed letters.\n\n'Someone out in the yard? Are you sure?'\n\n'Yes. He's staring at our house.'\n\nMo put down his book. 'So what were you reading before you went to sleep? Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?'\n\nMeggie frowned. 'Please, Mo! Come and look.'\n\nHe didn't believe her, but he went anyway. Meggie tugged him along the corridor so impatiently that he stubbed his toe on a pile of books, which was hardly surprising. Stacks of books were piled high all over the house \u2013 not just arranged in neat rows on bookshelves, the way other people kept them, oh no! The books in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There were books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the wardrobe, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages, they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fell over them.\n\n'He's just standing there!' whispered Meggie, leading Mo into her room.\n\n'Has he got a hairy face? If so, he could be a werewolf.'\n\n'Oh, stop it!' Meggie looked at him sternly, although his jokes made her feel less scared. Already, she hardly believed any more in the figure standing in the rain \u2013 until she knelt down again at the window. 'There! Do you see him?' she whispered.\n\nMo looked out through the raindrops running down the pane, and said nothing.\n\n'Didn't you promise burglars would never break into our house because there's nothing here to steal?' whispered Meggie.\n\n'He's not a burglar,' replied Mo, but as he stepped back from the window his face was so grave that Meggie's heart thudded faster than ever. 'Go back to bed, Meggie,' he said. 'This visitor has come to see me.'\n\nHe left the room before Meggie could ask what kind of visitor, for goodness' sake, turned up in the middle of the night? She followed him anxiously. As she crept down the corridor she heard her father taking the chain off the front door, and when she reached the hall she saw him standing in the open doorway. The night came in, dark and damp, and the rushing of the rain sounded loud and threatening.\n\n'Dustfinger!' called Mo into the darkness. 'Is that you?'\n\nDustfinger? What kind of a name was that? Meggie couldn't remember ever hearing it before, yet it sounded familiar, like a distant memory that wouldn't take shape properly.\n\nAt first, all seemed still outside except for the rain falling, murmuring as if the night had found its voice. But then footsteps approached the house, and the man emerged from the darkness of the yard, his long coat so wet with rain that it clung to his legs. For a split second, as the stranger stepped into the light spilling out of the house, Meggie thought she saw a small furry head over his shoulder, snuffling as it looked out of his rucksack and then quickly disappearing back into it.\n\nDustfinger wiped his wet face with his sleeve and offered Mo his hand.\n\n'How are you, Silvertongue?' he asked. 'It's been a long time.'\n\nHesitantly, Mo took the outstretched hand. 'A very long time,' he said, looking past his visitor as if he expected to see another figure emerge from the night. 'Come in, you'll catch your death. Meggie says you've been standing out there for some time.'\n\n'Meggie? Ah yes, of course.' Dustfinger let Mo lead him into the house. He scrutinised Meggie so thoroughly that she felt quite embarrassed and didn't know where to look. In the end she just stared back.\n\n'She's grown.'\n\n'You remember her?'\n\n'Of course.'\n\nMeggie noticed that Mo double-locked the door.\n\n'How old is she now?' Dustfinger smiled at her. It was a strange smile. Meggie couldn't decide whether it was mocking, supercilious, or just awkward. She didn't smile back. 'Twelve,' said Mo.\n\n'Twelve? My word!' Dustfinger pushed his dripping hair back from his forehead. It reached almost to his shoulders. Meggie wondered what colour it was when it was dry. The stubble round his narrow-lipped mouth was gingery, like the fur of the stray cat Meggie sometimes fed with a saucer of milk outside the door. Ginger hair sprouted on his cheeks, too, sparse as a boy's first beard but not long enough to hide three long, pale scars. They made Dustfinger's face look as if it had been smashed and stuck back together again. 'Twelve,' he repeated. 'Of course. She was... let's see, she was three then, wasn't she?'\n\nMo nodded. 'Come on, I'll find you some dry clothes.' Impatiently, as if he were suddenly in a hurry to hide the man from Meggie, he led his visitor across the hall. 'And Meggie,' he said over his shoulder, 'you go back to sleep.' Then, without another word, he closed his workshop door.\n\nMeggie stood there rubbing her cold feet together. Go back to sleep. Sometimes, when they'd stayed up late yet again, Mo would toss her down on her bed like a bag of walnuts. Sometimes he chased her round the house after supper until she escaped into her room, breathless with laughter. And sometimes he was so tired he lay down on the sofa and she made him a cup of coffee before she went to bed. But he had never ever sent her off to her room so brusquely.\n\nA foreboding, clammy and fearful, came into her heart as if, along with the visitor whose name was so strange yet somehow familiar, some menace had slipped into her life. And she wished \u2013 so hard it frightened her \u2013 that she had never fetched Mo, and Dustfinger had stayed outside until the rain washed him away.\n\nWhen the door of the workshop opened again she jumped.\n\n'Still there, I see,' said Mo. 'Go to bed, Meggie. Please.' He had that little frown over his nose that appeared only when something was really worrying him, and he seemed to look straight through her as if his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. The foreboding in Meggie's heart grew, spreading black wings.\n\n'Send him away, Mo!' she said as he gently propelled her towards her room. 'Please! Send him away. I don't like him.'\n\nMo leaned in her open doorway. 'He'll be gone when you get up in the morning. Word of honour.'\n\n'Word of honour \u2013 no crossed fingers?' Meggie looked him straight in the eye. She could always tell when Mo was lying, however hard he tried to hide it from her.\n\n'No crossed fingers,' he said, holding both hands out to show her.\n\nThen he closed her door, even though he knew she didn't like that. Meggie put her ear to it, listening. She could hear the clink of china. So the man with the sandy beard was getting a nice cup of tea to warm him up. I hope he catches pneumonia, thought Meggie... though he needn't necessarily die of it. Meggie heard the kettle whistling in the kitchen, and Mo carrying a tray of clattering crockery back to the workshop. When that door closed she forced herself to wait a few more seconds, just to be on the safe side. Then she crept back out into the passage.\n\nThere was a notice hanging on the door of Mo's workshop, a small metal plaque. Meggie knew the words on it by heart. When she was five she had often practised reading the old-fashioned, spindly lettering:\n\n\u2003Some books should be tasted\n\n\u2003some devoured,\n\n\u2003but only a few\n\n\u2003should be chewed and digested thoroughly.\n\nBack then, when she still had to climb on a box to read the plaque, she had thought the chewing and digesting were meant literally and wondered, horrified, why Mo had hung on his workshop door the words of someone who vandalised books. Now, she knew what the plaque really meant, but tonight she wasn't interested in written words. Spoken words were what she wanted to hear, the words being exchanged in soft, almost inaudible whispers by the two men on the other side of the door.\n\n'Don't underestimate him!' she heard Dustfinger say. His voice was so different from Mo's. No one else in the world had a voice like her father's. Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone.\n\n'He'd do anything to get hold of it.' That was Dustfinger again. 'And when I say anything, I can assure you I mean anything.'\n\n'I'll never let him have it.' That was Mo.\n\n'He'll still get his hands on it, one way or another! I tell you, they're on your trail.'\n\n'It wouldn't be the first time. I've always managed to shake them off before.'\n\n'Oh yes? And for how much longer, do you think? What about your daughter? Are you telling me she actually likes moving around the whole time? Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.'\n\nIt was so quiet behind the door that Meggie scarcely dared breathe in case the two men heard her.\n\nFinally her father spoke again, hesitantly, as if his tongue found it difficult to form the words. 'Then what do you think I ought to do?'\n\n'Come with me. I'll take you to them.' A cup clinked. The sound of a spoon against china. How loud small noises sound in a silence. 'You know how much Capricorn thinks of your talents. He'd be glad if you took it to him of your own free will, I'm sure he would. The man he found to replace you is useless.'\n\nCapricorn. Another peculiar name. Dustfinger had uttered it as if the mere sound might scorch his tongue. Meggie wriggled her chilly toes and wrinkled her cold nose. She didn't understand much of what the two men were saying, but she tried to memorise every single word of it.\n\nIt was quiet again in the workshop.\n\n'Oh, I don't know,' said Mo at last. He sounded so weary that it tore at Meggie's heart. 'I'll have to think about it. When do you think his men will get here?'\n\n'Soon!'\n\nThe word dropped like a stone into the silence.\n\n'Soon,' repeated Mo. 'Very well. I'll have made up my mind by tomorrow. Do you have somewhere to sleep?'\n\n'Oh, I can always find a place,' replied Dustfinger. 'I'm managing quite well these days, although it's still all much too fast for me.' His laugh was not a happy one. 'But I'd like to know what you decide. May I come back tomorrow? About midday?'\n\n'Yes, of course. I'll be picking Meggie up from school at one-thirty. Come after that.'\n\nMeggie heard a chair being pushed back, and scurried back to her room. When the door of the workshop opened she was just closing her bedroom door behind her. Pulling the covers up to her chin, she lay there listening as her father said goodbye to Dustfinger.\n\n'And thank you for the warning anyway,' she heard him add as Dustfinger's footsteps moved away, slowly and uncertainly as if he were reluctant to leave, as if he hadn't said everything he'd wanted to say. But at last he was gone, and only the rain kept drumming its wet fingers on Meggie's window.\n\nWhen Mo opened the door of her room she quickly closed her eyes and tried to breathe as slowly as you do in a deep, innocent sleep. But Mo wasn't stupid. In fact, he was sometimes terribly clever.\n\n'Meggie, put one of your feet out of bed,' he told her. Reluctantly, she stuck her toes out from under the blanket and laid them in Mo's warm hand. They were still cold.\n\n'I knew it!' he said. 'You've been spying. Can't you do as I tell you, just for once?' Sighing, he tucked her foot back underneath the nice warm blankets. Then he sat down on her bed, passed his hands over his tired face and looked out of the window. His hair was as dark as moleskin. Meggie had fair hair like her mother, who she knew only from a few faded photographs. 'You should be glad you look more like her than me,' Mo always said. 'My head wouldn't look at all good on a girl's neck.' But Meggie wished she did look more like him. There wasn't a face in the world she loved more.\n\n'I didn't hear what you were saying anyway,' she murmured.\n\n'Good.' Mo stared out of the window as if Dustfinger were still standing in the yard. Then he rose and went to the door. 'Try to get some sleep,' he said.\n\nBut Meggie didn't want to sleep. 'Dustfinger! What sort of a name is that?' she asked. 'And why does he call you Silvertongue?'\n\nMo did not reply.\n\n'And this person who's looking for you \u2013 I heard what Dustfinger called him. Capricorn. Who is he?'\n\n'No one you want to meet.' Her father didn't turn round. 'I thought you didn't hear anything. Goodnight, Meggie.'\n\nThis time he left her door open. The light from the passage fell on her bed, mingling with the darkness of the night that seeped in through the window, and Meggie lay there waiting for the dark to disappear and take her fear of some evil menace away with it. Only later did she understand that the evil had not appeared for the first time that night. It had just slunk back in again."
            },
            {
                "title": "Secrets",
                "text": "'What do these children do without storybooks?' Naftali asked.\n\nAnd Reb Zebulun replied: 'They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them.'\n\n'I couldn't live without them,' Naftali said.\n\n\u2014Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller and his Horse Sus\n\nIt was early dawn when Meggie woke up. Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment. The alarm clock said just before five, and Meggie was going to turn over and go back to sleep when she suddenly sensed someone else in the room. Startled, she sat up and saw Mo standing by her open wardrobe.\n\n'Hello,' he said, putting her favourite sweater in a case. 'I'm sorry, I know it's very early, but we have to leave. How about cocoa for breakfast?'\n\nStill drowsy with sleep, Meggie nodded. Outside, the birds were twittering loudly as if they'd been awake for hours. Mo put two more pairs of jeans in her case, closed it and carried it to the door. 'Wear something warm,' he said. 'It's chilly outside.'\n\n'Where are we going?' asked Meggie, but he had already disappeared. She looked out of the window, feeling confused. She almost expected to see Dustfinger, but there was only a blackbird in the yard hopping over the stones, which were wet after the rain. Meggie put on her jeans and stumbled into the kitchen. Two suitcases, a travelling bag and Mo's toolbox stood out in the hall.\n\nHer father was sitting at the kitchen table making sandwiches for the journey. When she came into the kitchen he looked up briefly and smiled at her, but Meggie could see he was worried about something. 'Mo, we can't go away now!' she said. 'The school holidays don't start for another week!'\n\n'Well, it won't be the first time I've had to go away on business in your term-time.'\n\nHe was right about that. In fact, he went away quite often, whenever an antique dealer, a book collector or a library needed a bookbinder and commissioned Mo to restore a few valuable old books, freeing them of dust and mould or dressing them in new clothes, as he put it. Meggie didn't think the word 'bookbinder' described Mo's work particularly well, and a few years ago she had made him a notice to hang on his workshop door saying 'Mortimer Folchart, Book Doctor'. And the book doctor never called on his patients without taking his daughter too. They had always done that and they always would, never mind what Meggie's teachers said.\n\n'How about chicken-pox? Have I used that excuse already?'\n\n'Yes, last time. When we had to go and see that dreary man with the Bibles.' Meggie scrutinised her father's face. 'Mo. Is it... is it because of last night we have to leave?'\n\nFor a moment she thought he was going to tell her everything \u2013 whatever there was to tell. But then he shook his head. 'No, of course not,' he said, putting the sandwiches he had made in a plastic bag. 'Your mother has an aunt called Elinor. We visited her once, when you were very small. She's been wanting me to come and put her books in order for a long time. She lives beside a lake in the north of Italy, I always forget which lake, but it's a lovely place, a day's drive away.' He did not look at her as he spoke.\n\nMeggie wanted to ask: but why do we have to go now? But she didn't. Nor did she ask if he had forgotten that he was meeting someone at midday. She was too afraid of the answers \u2013 and she didn't want Mo to lie to her again.\n\n'Is this aunt as peculiar as the others?' was all she said. Mo had already taken her to visit various relations. Both he and Meggie's mother had large families whose homes, so far as Meggie could see, were scattered over half of Europe.\n\nMo smiled. 'Yes, she is a bit peculiar, but you'll get on with her all right. She has some really wonderful books.'\n\n'So how long are we going to be away?'\n\n'It could be quite some time.'\n\nMeggie sipped her cocoa. It was so hot that she burned her lips, and had to quickly press the cold blade of a knife to her mouth.\n\nMo pushed his chair back. 'I have to pack a few more things from the workshop,' he said. 'It won't take long. You must be very tired, but you can sleep once we're in the van.'\n\nMeggie just nodded and looked out of the kitchen window. It was a grey morning. Mist drifted over the fields at the foot of the nearby hills, and Meggie felt as if the shadows of the night were still hiding among the trees.\n\n'Pack up the food and take plenty to read!' Mo called from the hall. As if she didn't always! Years ago he had made her a box to hold her favourite books on all their journeys, short and long, near and far. 'It's a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place,' Mo always said. He himself always took at least a dozen.\n\nMo had painted the box poppy-red. Poppies were Meggie's favourite flower. They pressed well between the pages of a book, and you could stamp a star-shaped pattern on your skin with their pepper-pot seed capsules. He had decorated the box and painted Meggie's Treasure Chest in lovely curly lettering on the lid. The box was lined with shiny black taffeta, but you could hardly see any of the fabric because Meggie had a great many favourite books, and she always added another whenever they travelled anywhere. 'If you take a book with you on a journey,' Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, 'an odd thing happens: the book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice-cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypapers. Memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.'\n\nHe was probably right, but there was another reason why Meggie took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange \u2013 familiar voices, friends that never quarrelled with her, clever, powerful friends, daring and knowledgeable, tried and tested adventurers who had travelled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad, and kept her from being bored while Mo cut leather and fabric to the right size, and re-stitched old pages that over countless years had grown fragile from the many fingers leafing through them.\n\nSome of her books always went away with Meggie. Others were left at home because they weren't right for where she was going, or to make room for new, unknown stories that she hadn't yet read.\n\nMeggie stroked their curved spines. Which books should she take this time? Which stories would help to drive away the fear that had crept into the house last night? I know, thought Meggie, why not a story about telling lies? Mo told her lies. He told terrible lies, even though he knew that every time he told one she looked hard at his nose. Pinocchio, thought Meggie. No, too sinister. And too sad. But she wanted something exciting, a story to drive all other thoughts out of her head, even the darkest. The Witches, yes. She'd take the bald-headed witches who turn children into mice \u2013 and The Odyssey, with the Cyclops and the enchantress who transforms his warriors into pigs. Her journey could hardly be more dangerous than his, could it?\n\nOn the left-hand side of the box there were two picture books that Meggie had used when she was teaching herself to read \u2013 five years old, she'd been, and you could still see where her tiny forefinger had moved over the pages \u2013 and right at the bottom, hidden under all the others, were the books Meggie had made herself. She had spent days sticking them together and cutting up the paper, she had painted picture after picture, and Mo had to write what they were underneath them. An Angel With a Happy Face, from Meggi for Mo. She had written her name herself, although back then she always left the 'e' off the end. Meggie looked at the clumsy lettering and put the little book back in the box. Mo had helped her with the binding, of course. He had bound all her home-made books in brightly patterned paper, and he had given her a stamp for the others so that she could print her name and the head of a unicorn on the title page, sometimes in black ink and sometimes in red, depending how she felt. But Mo had never read aloud to her from her books. Not once.\n\nHe had tossed Meggie up in the air, he had carried her round the house on his shoulders, he had taught her how to make a bookmark of blackbird's feathers. But he had never read aloud to her. Never once, not a single word, however often she put books on his lap. Meggie just had to teach herself how to decipher the black marks and open the treasure chest.\n\nShe straightened up. There was still a little room in the box. Perhaps Mo had a new book she could take, a specially big, fat, wonderful book...\n\nThe door to his workshop was closed.\n\n'Mo?' Meggie pressed the handle down. The long table where he worked had been swept clean, with not a stamp, nor a knife in sight. Mo had packed everything. Had he been lying after all?\n\nMeggie went into the workshop and looked around. The door to the Treasury was open. The Treasury was really just a lumber-room, but Meggie had given the little cubby-hole that name because it was where her father stored his most precious materials: the finest leather, the most beautiful fabrics, marbled paper, stamps to print patterns in gold on soft leather... Meggie put her head round the open door and saw Mo covering a book with brown paper. It was not a particularly large book, and not especially fat. The green linen binding looked worn, but that was all Meggie could see, because Mo quickly hid the book behind his back as soon as he noticed her.\n\n'What are you doing here?' he snapped.\n\n'I\u2014' For a moment Meggie was speechless with shock, Mo's face was so dark. 'I only wanted to ask if you had a new book for me. I've read all the ones in my room, and...'\n\nMo passed his hand over his face. 'Yes, of course. I'm sure I can find something,' he said, but his eyes were still saying: go away, go away, Meggie. And the brown paper crackled behind his back. 'I'll be with you in a moment,' he said. 'I have a few more things to pack. OK?'\n\nA little later he brought her three books, but the one he had been covering with brown paper wasn't one of them.\n\nAn hour later, they were taking everything out into the yard. Meggie shivered when she stepped out of doors. It was a chilly morning after the night's rain, and the sun hung in the sky like a pale coin lost by someone high up in the clouds.\n\nThey had been living in the old farmhouse for just under a year. Meggie liked the view of the surrounding hills, the swallows' nests under the roof, the dried-up well that yawned darkly as if it went straight down to the Earth's core. The house itself had always been too big and draughty for her liking, with all those empty rooms full of fat spiders, but the rent was low and Mo had enough space for his books and his workshop. There was a hen-house outside, and the barn, which now housed only their old camper van, would have been perfect for a couple of cows or a horse. 'Cows have to be milked, Meggie,' Mo had said when she suggested keeping a couple. 'Very, very early in the morning. Every day.'\n\n'Well, what about a horse?' she had asked. 'Even Pippi Longstocking has a horse, and she doesn't have a stable.'\n\nShe'd have been happy with a few chickens or a goat, but they too had to be fed every day, and she and Mo went away too often for that. So Meggie had only the ginger cat who sometimes came visiting when it couldn't be bothered to compete with the dogs on the farm next door. The grumpy old farmer who lived there was their only neighbour. Sometimes his dogs howled so pitifully that Meggie put her hands over her ears. It was twenty minutes by bike to the nearest village, where she went to school and where two of her friends lived, but Mo usually took her in the van because it was a lonely ride along a narrow road that wound past nothing but fields and dark trees.\n\n'What on earth have you packed in here? Bricks?' asked Mo as he carried Meggie's book-box out of the house.\n\n'You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them,' said Meggie, making him laugh for the first time that morning.\n\nThe camper van, standing in the abandoned barn like a solid, multicoloured animal, was more familiar to Meggie than any of the houses where she and Mo had lived. She never slept more deeply and soundly than in the bed he had made in it for her. There was a table too, of course, a kitchen tucked into a corner and a bench to sit on. When you lifted the seat of the bench there were travel guides, road maps and well-worn paperbacks under it.\n\nYes, Meggie was fond of the van, but this morning she hesitated to get in. When Mo finally went back to the house to lock the door, she suddenly felt that they would never come back here, that this journey was going to be different from any other, that they would drive further and further away, in flight from something that had no name. Or at least none that Mo was about to tell her.\n\n'Very well, off we go south,' was all he said as he got behind the steering wheel. And so they set off, without saying goodbye to anyone, on a morning that still seemed much too early and smelled of rain.\n\nBut Dustfinger was waiting for them at the gate."
            },
            {
                "title": "Going South",
                "text": "'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or to me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.'\n\n\u2014Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows\n\nDustfinger must have been waiting in the road beyond the wall. Meggie had picked her precarious way along the top of that wall hundreds of times, up to the rusty hinges of the gate and back again, eyes tightly closed so that she could get a clearer view of the tiger she'd imagined waiting in the bamboo at the foot of the wall, his eyes yellow as amber, or the foaming rapids to her right and her left.\n\nOnly Dustfinger was there now, but no other sight could have made Meggie's heart beat faster. He appeared so suddenly that Mo almost ran him down. He wore only a sweater, and he was shivering, with his arms folded over his chest. His coat was probably still damp from last night's rain, but his hair was dry now \u2013 a ruffled, sandy mop above his scarred face.\n\nMo swore under his breath, switched off the engine and got out of the van.\n\nSmiling his strange smile, Dustfinger leaned back against the wall. 'Where are you going in such a hurry, Silvertongue? Didn't we have a date?' he asked. 'You stood me up like this once before, remember?'\n\n'You know why I'm in a hurry,' replied Mo. 'For the same reason as last time.' He was still standing by the open door of the van, looking tense, as if he couldn't wait for Dustfinger to get out of the way. But Dustfinger pretended not to notice Mo's impatience.\n\n'Then may I know where you're going?' he enquired. 'It took me four years to find you last time, and if luck hadn't been on your side Capricorn's men would have got to you first.' When he glanced at Meggie she stared back icily.\n\nMo was silent for a while. 'Capricorn is in the north,' he answered at last. 'So we're going south. Or has he taken up residence somewhere else now?'\n\nDustfinger looked down the road. Last night's rain shone in the potholes. 'No, no,' he said. 'No, he's still in the north. Or so I hear, and since you've obviously made up your mind to go on refusing him what he wants I'd better go south myself as fast as I can. Heaven knows I don't want to be the one to give Capricorn's men the bad news. So, if you'd give me a lift part of the way?... I'm ready to leave.' The two bags he picked up from where they stood by the wall looked as if they'd been all round the world a dozen times. Apart from the bags, Dustfinger had nothing but his rucksack with him.\n\nMeggie compressed her lips.\n\nNo, Mo, she thought, no, let's not take him! But she had only to look at her father to know that his answer would be different.\n\n'Oh, come on, Silvertongue!' said Dustfinger. 'What am I going to tell Capricorn's men if I fall into their hands?'\n\nHe looked lost, standing there like a stray dog. And hard as Meggie tried to see something sinister about him she couldn't, not in the pale morning light. All the same, she didn't want him to go with them. Her face showed that very clearly, but neither of the two men took any notice of her.\n\n'Believe me, I couldn't keep the fact that I've seen you from them for very long,' Dustfinger continued. 'And anyway...' he hesitated before completing his sentence, 'you still owe me, don't you?'\n\nMo bowed his head. Meggie saw his hand closing more firmly round the open door of the van. 'If you want to look at it like that,' he said, 'yes, I suppose I do still owe you.'\n\nThe relief was plain to see on Dustfinger's scarred face. He quickly hoisted his rucksack over his shoulders and came over to the van with his bags.\n\n'Wait a minute!' cried Meggie, as Mo moved to help him. 'If he's coming with us then I want to know why we're running away. Who is this man called Capricorn?'\n\nMo turned to her. 'Meggie,' he began in the tone she knew only too well: Meggie, don't be so silly, it meant. Come along now, Meggie.\n\nShe opened the van door and jumped out.\n\n'Meggie, for heaven's sake! Get back in! We have to leave!'\n\n'I'm not getting back in until you tell me.'\n\nMo came towards her but Meggie slipped away, and ran through the gate into the road.\n\n'Why won't you tell me?' she cried.\n\nThe road was deserted, as if there were no other human beings in the world. A slight breeze had risen, caressing Meggie's face and rustling in the leaves of the lime tree that grew by the roadside. The sky was still wan and grey, and refused to clear.\n\n'I want to know what's going on!' cried Meggie. 'I want to know why we had to get up at five o'clock, and why I don't have to go to school. I want to know if we're ever coming back, and I want to know who this Capricorn is!'\n\nWhen she spoke the name Mo looked round as if the man with the strange name, the man he and Dustfinger obviously feared so much, might step out of the empty barn next moment as suddenly as Dustfinger had emerged from behind the wall. But the yard was empty, and Meggie was too furious to feel frightened of someone when she knew nothing about him other than his name. 'You've always told me everything!' she shouted at her father. 'Always.'\n\nBut Mo was still silent. 'Everyone has a few secrets, Meggie,' he said at last. 'Now, come along, do get in. We have to leave.'\n\nDustfinger looked first at Mo, then at Meggie, with an expression of incredulity on his face. 'You haven't told her?' Meggie heard him ask in a low voice.\n\nMo shook his head.\n\n'But you have to tell her something! It's dangerous for her not to know. She's not a baby any more.'\n\n'It's dangerous for her to know too,' said Mo. 'And it wouldn't change anything.'\n\nMeggie was still standing in the road.\n\n'I heard all that!' she cried. 'What's dangerous? I'm not getting in until you tell me.'\n\nMo still said nothing.\n\nDustfinger looked at him, uncertain for a moment, then put down his bags. 'Very well,' he said. 'Then I'll tell her about Capricorn myself.'\n\nHe came slowly towards Meggie, who involuntarily stepped back.\n\n'You met him once,' said Dustfinger. 'It's a long time ago, you won't remember, you were so little.' He held his hand at knee-height in the air. 'How can I explain what he's like? If you were to see a cat eating a young bird I expect you'd cry, wouldn't you? Or try to help the bird. Capricorn would feed the bird to the cat on purpose, just to watch it being torn apart, and the little creature's screeching and struggling would be as sweet as honey to him.'\n\nMeggie took another step backwards, but Dustfinger kept advancing towards her.\n\n'I don't suppose you'd get any fun from terrifying people until their knees were so weak they could hardly stand?' he asked. 'Nothing gives Capricorn more pleasure. And I don't suppose you think you can just help yourself to anything you want, never mind what or where. Capricorn does. Unfortunately, your father has something Capricorn has set his heart on.'\n\nMeggie glanced at Mo, but he just stood there looking at her.\n\n'Capricorn can't bind books like your father,' Dustfinger went on. 'In fact, he's not much good at anything except terrifying people. But he's a master of that art. It's his whole life. I doubt if he himself has any idea what it's like to be so paralysed by fear that you feel small and insignificant. But he knows just how to arouse that fear and spread it, in people's homes and their beds, in their heads and their hearts. His men spread fear abroad like the Black Death, they push it under doors and through letterboxes, they paint it on walls and stable doors until it infects everything around it of its own accord, silent and stinking like a plague.' Dustfinger was very close to Meggie now. 'Capricorn has many men,' he said softly. 'Most have been with him since they were children, and if Capricorn were to order one of them to cut off your nose or one of your ears he'd do it without batting an eyelid. They like to dress in black like rooks \u2013 only their leader wears a white shirt under his black jacket \u2013 and should you ever meet any of them then make yourself small, very small, and hope they don't notice you. Understand?'\n\nMeggie nodded. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could scarcely breathe.\n\n'I can see why your father has never told you about Capricorn,' said Dustfinger, looking at Mo. 'If I had children I'd rather tell them about nice people too.'\n\n'I know the world's not just full of nice people!' Meggie couldn't keep her voice from shaking with anger, and more than a touch of fear.\n\n'Oh yes? How do you know that?' There it was again, that mysterious smile, sad and supercilious at the same time. 'Have you ever had anything to do with a real villain?'\n\n'I've read about them.'\n\nDustfinger laughed aloud. 'Yes, of course that almost comes to the same thing!' he said. His mockery hurt like stinging nettles. He bent down to Meggie and looked her in the face. 'All the same, I hope reading about them is as close as you ever get,' he said quietly.\n\nMo was stowing Dustfinger's bags in the back of the van.\n\n'I hope there's nothing in there that might come flying round our heads,' he said as Dustfinger got in the back seat behind Meggie. 'With your trade I wouldn't be surprised.'\n\nBefore Meggie could ask what trade that was, Dustfinger opened his rucksack and carefully lifted out an animal. It was blinking sleepily. 'Since we obviously have quite a long journey ahead of us,' he told Mo, 'I'd like to introduce someone to your daughter.'\n\nThe creature was almost the size of a rabbit, but much thinner, with a bushy tail now draped over Dustfinger's chest like a fur collar. It dug its slender claws into his sleeve while inspecting Meggie with its gleaming beady black eyes, and when it yawned it bared teeth as sharp as needles.\n\n'This is Gwin,' said Dustfinger. 'You can tickle him behind the ears if you like. He's very sleepy at the moment, so he won't bite.'\n\n'Does he usually?' asked Meggie.\n\n'Yes,' said Mo, getting back behind the wheel. 'If I were you I'd keep my fingers away from that little brute.'\n\nBut Meggie couldn't keep her hands off any animal, however sharp its teeth. 'He's a marten or something like that, right?' she asked.\n\n'Something of that nature.' Dustfinger put his hand in his trouser pocket and gave Gwin a piece of dry bread. Meggie stroked his little head as he chewed \u2013 and her fingertips found something hard under the silky fur: tiny horns growing beside his ears. Surprised, she took her hand away. 'Do martens have horns?'\n\nDustfinger winked at her and let Gwin climb back into the rucksack. 'This one does,' he said.\n\nBewildered, Meggie watched him do up the straps. She felt as if she were still touching Gwin's little horns. 'Mo, did you know that martens have horns?' she asked.\n\n'Oh, Dustfinger stuck them on that sharp-toothed little devil of his. For his performances.'\n\n'What kind of performances?' Meggie looked enquiringly, first at Mo, then at Dustfinger, but Mo just started the engine and Dustfinger, who seemed to have come far, judging by his bags, took off his boots and stretched out on Mo's bed in the van with a deep sigh. 'Don't give me away, Silvertongue,' he said before he closed his eyes. 'I have my own secrets, you know. And for those I need darkness.'\n\nThey must have driven fifty kilometres, and Meggie was still trying to work out what he could possibly have meant.\n\n'Mo?' she asked, when Dustfinger began snoring behind them. 'What does this Capricorn want from you?' She lowered her voice before she spoke the name, as if that might remove some of the menace from it.\n\n'A book,' replied Mo, without taking his eyes off the road.\n\n'A book? Then why not give it to him?'\n\n'I can't. I'll explain soon, but not now, all right?'\n\nMeggie looked out of the van window. The world they were passing outside already looked unfamiliar \u2013 unfamiliar houses, unfamiliar roads, unfamiliar fields, even the trees and the sky looked unfamiliar \u2013 but Meggie was used to that. She had never really felt at home anywhere. Mo was her home, Mo and her books, and perhaps the camper van that carried them from one place to the next.\n\n'This aunt we're going to see,' she said, as they drove through an endless tunnel. 'Does she have any children?'\n\n'No,' said Mo, 'and I'm afraid she doesn't particularly like children either. But as I said, I'm sure you'll get on well with her.'\n\nMeggie sighed. She could remember several aunts, and she hadn't 'got on' particularly well with any of them.\n\nThey were driving through mountains now, the slopes on both sides of the road rose ever more steeply, and there came a point where the houses looked not just unfamiliar but really different. Meggie tried to pass the time by counting tunnels, but when the ninth swallowed them up and the darkness went on and on she fell asleep. She dreamed of martens in black jackets and a book in a brown-paper cover."
            },
            {
                "title": "A House Full of Books",
                "text": "\u2003There is a sort of busy worm,\n\n\u2003That will the fairest book deform.\n\n\u2003Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint\n\n\u2003The poet, patriot, sage or saint,\n\n\u2003Nor sparing wit nor learning.\n\n\u2003Now, if you'd know the reason why,\n\n\u2003The best of reasons I'll supply:\n\n\u2003'Tis bread to the poor vermin.\n\n\u2014J. Doraston, quoted by W. Blades\n\nMeggie woke up because it was so quiet. The regular sound of the engine that had lulled her to sleep had stopped. The driver's seat beside her was empty. It took Meggie a little while to remember why she wasn't in bed at home. Tiny dead flies were stuck to the windscreen, and the van was parked outside an iron gate. It looked alarming, with sharp ashen-grey spikes, a gate made of spearheads just waiting to impale anyone who tried to clamber over. It reminded Meggie of one of her favourite stories, the tale of the Selfish Giant who wouldn't let children into his garden. This was exactly how she had imagined his garden gate.\n\nMo was standing in the road with Dustfinger. Meggie got out and went over to them. On the right of the road a densely wooded slope fell steeply to the bank of a wide lake. The hills on the other side rose from the lake like giants emerging from the depths. The water was almost black, and pale twilight, darkly reflected in the waves, was already spreading across the sky. The first lights were coming on in the houses on the bank, looking like glow-worms or fallen stars.\n\n'A lovely place, isn't it?' Mo put his arm round Meggie's shoulders. 'I know you like stories about robbers. See that ruined castle? A notorious robber band once lived there. I must ask Elinor about them. She knows everything about this lake.'\n\nMeggie just nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. She was so tired that she felt quite dizzy, but for the first time since they had set off Mo's face wasn't looking grim with anxiety. 'Where does she live, then?' asked Meggie, stifling a yawn. 'Not behind that spiky gate?'\n\n'Actually, yes. This is the entrance to her property. Not very inviting, is it?' Mo laughed and led Meggie across the road. 'Elinor is very proud of this gate. She had it specially made. It's copied from a picture in a book.'\n\n'A picture of the Selfish Giant's garden?' murmured Meggie, peering through the intricately twining iron bars.\n\n'The Selfish Giant?' Mo laughed. 'No, I think it was another story. Although that one would suit Elinor pretty well.'\n\nTall hedges grew on both sides of the gate, their thorny branches hiding any view of what lay beyond. But even through the iron bars Meggie could see nothing promising except for tall rhododendron bushes and a broad gravel drive that soon disappeared between them.\n\n'Looks like you have rich relations,' Dustfinger whispered in her ear.\n\n'Yes, Elinor is quite rich,' said Mo, drawing Meggie away from the gate. 'But she'll probably end up poor as a church mouse because she spends so much money on books. I think she'd sell her soul to the Devil without thinking twice if he offered her the right book for it.' He pushed the heavy gate open with a single movement.\n\n'What are you doing?' asked Meggie in alarm. 'We can't just drive in.' For there was a notice beside the door, still clearly legible even if some of the letters were partly hidden by the leaves of the hedge:\n\n\u2002PRIVATE PROPERTY.\n\n\u2002NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY.\n\nMeggie didn't think it sounded very inviting.\n\nMo, however, only laughed. 'Don't worry,' he said, opening the gate wider. 'The only thing Elinor guards with a burglar alarm is her library. She couldn't care less who walks through this gate. She's not what you'd call a nervous woman, and she doesn't have many visitors anyway.'\n\n'What about dogs?' Dustfinger peered anxiously into the strange garden. 'That gate suggests at least three ferocious dogs to me. Big ones, the size of calves.'\n\nBut Mo just shook his head. 'Elinor hates dogs,' he said, going back to the van. 'Right, get in.'\n\nElinor's grounds were more like a wood than a garden. Once they were through the gateway the drive curved, as if taking a deep breath before going on up the slope, then lost itself among dark firs and chestnut trees which grew so close together that their branches made a tunnel. Meggie was just thinking it would never end when the trees suddenly receded, and the drive brought them to an open space covered with gravel and surrounded by carefully tended rose beds.\n\nA grey estate car stood on the gravel in front of a house that was bigger than the school Meggie had been attending for the last year. She tried to count the windows, but soon gave up. It was a very beautiful house but looked just as uninviting as the iron gate. Perhaps it was only the evening twilight that made the ochre-yellow of the plaster look so dirty. And perhaps the green shutters were closed only because night was already falling over the surrounding mountains. Perhaps. But Meggie would have bet her last book they were seldom open even in the daytime.\n\nThe dark wooden front door looked as forbidding as a tightly closed mouth, and Meggie involuntarily reached for Mo's hand as they approached it.\n\nDustfinger followed warily, with his battered rucksack over his shoulder. Gwin was probably still asleep inside it. When Mo and Meggie went up to the door he kept a couple of steps behind them, looking uneasily at the closed shutters as if he suspected that the mistress of the house was watching them from one of the windows.\n\nThere was a small barred window beside the front door, the only one not hidden behind green shutters. Below it was another notice:\n\n\u2002IF YOU INTEND TO WASTE MY TIME\n\n\u2002ON TRIVIA, YOU'D BETTER GO AWAY NOW!\n\nMeggie cast Mo an anxious glance, but he only made an encouraging face at her and pressed the bell.\n\nMeggie heard it ringing inside the big house, but nothing happened for quite a while. A magpie fluttered out of one of the rhododendron bushes growing near the house, and a couple of fat sparrows pecked busily at invisible insects in the gravel, but that was all. Meggie was just throwing them the breadcrumbs she had found in her jacket pocket \u2013 left over from a picnic on some long-forgotten day \u2013 when the door suddenly opened.\n\nThe woman who came out was older than Mo, quite a lot older \u2013 although Meggie could never be quite sure how old grown-ups were. Her face reminded Meggie of a bulldog, but perhaps that was more her ferocious expression than its features. She wore a mouse-grey sweater and an ash-grey skirt, with a pearl necklace round her short neck and felt slippers on her feet, the kind of slippers Meggie had once had to wear when she and Mo had visited an historic castle. Elinor's hair was grey too. She had pinned it up, but strands were hanging down everywhere as if she had done it impatiently and in a hurry. She didn't look as if she spent much time in front of a mirror.\n\n'Good heavens, Mortimer! What a surprise!' she said, without wasting time on further greetings. 'Where did you spring from?' Her voice sounded brusque, but her face couldn't entirely hide the fact that she was pleased to see Mo.\n\n'Hello, Elinor,' said Mo, putting his hand on Meggie's shoulder. 'Do you remember Meggie? As you can see, she's grown up quite a bit now.'\n\nElinor cast Meggie a brief, irritated glance. 'Yes, so I see,' she said. 'It's only natural for children to grow, wouldn't you say? As far as I remember, it's been some years since I last set eyes on either you or your daughter, so to what do I owe the unexpected honour of your visit today? Are you finally going to take pity on my poor books?'\n\n'That's right.' Mo nodded. 'One of my library commissions has been postponed \u2013 you know how libraries are always short of money.'\n\nMeggie looked at him uneasily. She hadn't realised he could lie quite so convincingly.\n\n'And because it was so sudden,' Mo continued, 'I couldn't find anywhere for Meggie to go, so I brought her with me. I know you don't like children, but Meggie won't leave jam on your books or tear out pages to wrap up dead frogs.'\n\nElinor muttered something suspicious, and scrutinised Meggie as if she thought her capable of any kind of disgraceful conduct, whatever her father might say. 'When you last brought her we could at least put her in a playpen,' she remarked coldly. 'I don't suppose that would do now.' Once again, she looked Meggie up and down as if she were being asked to admit a dangerous animal to her house.\n\nMeggie felt her anger make the blood rise to her face. She wanted to go home, or get back in the camper van and go somewhere else, anywhere, so long as she didn't have to stay with this horrible woman whose cold pebble eyes were boring holes in her face.\n\nElinor's gaze moved from Meggie to Dustfinger, who was still standing in the background looking awkward. 'And who's this?' She looked enquiringly at Mo. 'Do I know him?'\n\n'This is Dustfinger, a... a friend of mine.' Perhaps only Meggie noticed Mo's hesitation. 'He wants to go on south, but maybe you could put him up for a night in one of your many rooms?'\n\nElinor folded her arms. 'Only on condition his name has nothing to do with the way he treats books,' she said. 'And he'll have to put up with rather Spartan accommodation in the attic, because my library has grown a great deal over the last few years. Nearly all my guest bedrooms are full of books.'\n\n'How many books do you have?' asked Meggie. She had grown up among piles of books, but even she couldn't imagine there were books behind all the windows of this huge house.\n\nElinor inspected her again, this time with unconcealed contempt. 'How many?' she repeated. 'Do you think I count them like buttons or peas? A very, very great many. There are probably more books in every single room of this house than you will ever read \u2013 and some of them are so valuable that I wouldn't hesitate to shoot you if you dared touch them. But as you're a clever girl, or so your father assures me, you wouldn't do that anyway, would you?'\n\nMeggie didn't reply. Instead, she imagined standing on tiptoe and spitting three times into this old witch's face.\n\nHowever, Mo just laughed. 'You haven't changed, Elinor,' he remarked. 'A tongue as sharp as a paper-knife. But I warn you, if you harm Meggie I'll do the same to your beloved books.'\n\nElinor's lips curled in a tiny smile. 'Well said,' she answered, stepping aside. 'You obviously haven't changed either. Come in. I'll show you the books that need your help, and a few others as well.'\n\nMeggie had always thought Mo had a lot of books. She never thought so again, not after setting foot in Elinor's house.\n\nThere were no haphazard piles lying around as they did at home. Every book obviously had its place. But where other people have wallpaper, pictures, or just an empty wall, Elinor had bookshelves. The shelves were white and went right up to the ceiling in the entrance hall through which she had first led them, but in the next room and the corridor beyond it the shelves were as black as the tiles on the floor.\n\n'These books,' announced Elinor with a dismissive gesture as they passed the closely-ranked spines, 'have accumulated over the years. They're not particularly valuable, mostly of mediocre quality, nothing out of the ordinary. Should certain fingers be unable to control themselves and take one off the shelf now and then,' she added, casting a brief glance at Meggie, 'I don't suppose the consequences would be too serious. Just so long as once those fingers have satisfied their curiosity they put every book back in its right place again and don't leave any unappetising bookmarks inside.' Here, Elinor turned to Mo. 'Believe it or not,' she said, 'I actually found a dried-up slice of salami used as a bookmark in one of the last books I bought, a wonderful nineteenth-century first edition.'\n\nMeggie couldn't help giggling, which naturally earned her another stern look. 'It's nothing to laugh about, young lady,' said Elinor. 'Some of the most wonderful books ever printed were lost because some fool of a fishmonger tore out their pages to wrap his stinking fish. In the Middle Ages, thousands of books were destroyed when people cut up their bindings to make soles for shoes or to heat steam baths with their paper.' The thought of such incredible abominations, even if they had occurred centuries ago, made Elinor gasp for air. 'Well, let's forget about that,' she said, 'or I shall get overexcited. My blood pressure's much too high as it is.'\n\nShe had stopped in front of a door which had an anchor with a dolphin coiled around it painted on the white wood. 'This is a famous printer's special sign,' explained Elinor, stroking the dolphin's pointed nose with one finger. 'Just the thing for a library door, eh?'\n\n'I know,' said Meggie. 'Aldus Manutius. He lived in Venice and printed books the right size to fit into his customers' saddlebags.'\n\n'Really?' Elinor wrinkled her brow, intrigued. 'I didn't know that. In any case, I am the fortunate owner of a book that he printed with his own hands in the year 1503.'\n\n'You mean it's from his workshop,' Meggie corrected her.\n\n'Of course that's what I mean.' Elinor cleared her throat and gave Mo a reproachful glance, as if it could only be his fault that his daughter was precocious enough to know such things. Then she put her hand on the door handle. 'No child,' she said, as she pressed the handle down with almost solemn reverence, 'has ever before passed through this door, but as I assume your father has taught you a certain respect for books I'll make an exception today. However, only on condition you keep at least three paces away from the shelves. Is that agreed?'\n\nFor a moment Meggie felt like saying no, it wasn't. She would have loved to surprise Elinor by showing contempt for her precious books, but she couldn't do it. Her curiosity was too much for her. She felt almost as if she could hear the books whispering on the other side of the half-open door. They were promising her a thousand unknown stories, a thousand doors into worlds she had never seen before. The temptation was stronger than Meggie's pride.\n\n'Agreed,' she murmured, clasping her hands behind her back. 'Three paces.' Her fingers were itching with desire.\n\n'Sensible child,' said Elinor, so condescendingly that Meggie almost went back on her decision. But then they entered Elinor's holy of holies.\n\n'You've had the place renovated,' Meggie heard Mo say. He added something else, but she wasn't listening any more. She was just staring at the books. The shelves on which they stood smelled of freshly sawn wood. They went all the way up to a sky-blue ceiling with tiny lights in it, hanging there like stars. Narrow wooden stepladders on castors stood by the shelves, ready to help any reader up to the top shelves. There were reading desks with books lying open on them, held in place by brass chains that shone like gold. There were glass display cases containing books with pages stained by age but showing the most wonderful pictures. Meggie couldn't resist moving closer. One step forward, a quick glance at Elinor, who luckily had her back turned, and she was right beside the display case. She bent lower and lower over the glass until her nose was touching it.\n\nPrickly leaves twined around pale brown letters. A tiny red dragon's head was spitting out flowers over the stained paper. Riders on white horses looked at Meggie as if scarcely a day had passed since someone painted them with tiny marten-hair brushes. A man and woman stood beside them, perhaps a bridal couple. A man with a bright red hat was looking angrily at them.\n\n'You call that three paces?'\n\nMeggie spun round in alarm, but Elinor didn't seem too angry. 'Yes, the art of illumination,' she said. 'Once only rich people could read, so the pictures painted round the letters were to help the poor to understand the stories too. Of course no one planned to give them pleasure \u2013 the poor were put into the world to work, not to have a nice time or look at pretty pictures. That kind of thing was only for the rich. No, the idea was to instruct the poor. Usually the stories came from the Bible and everyone knew them anyway. The books were put in churches, and a page was turned every day to show a new picture.'\n\n'What about this book?' asked Meggie.\n\n'I shouldn't think this one was ever in a church,' replied Elinor. 'More likely it was made for a very rich man to enjoy. It's almost six hundred years old.' There was no missing the pride in her voice. 'People have committed murder for such a book. Luckily, I only had to buy it.'\n\nAs she spoke these last words she turned abruptly and looked at Dustfinger, who had followed them into the library, soundless as a prowling cat. For a moment Meggie thought Elinor would send him back into the corridor, but Dustfinger stood in front of the shelves looking so impressed, with his hands behind his back, that he gave her no reason to turn him out, so she just cast him a final distrustful glance and turned back to Mo.\n\nHe was standing at one of the reading desks with a book in his hand. Its spine hung only by a couple of threads. He held it very carefully, like a bird with a broken wing.\n\n'Well?' asked Elinor anxiously. 'Can you save it? I know it's in terrible shape, and I'm afraid the others aren't in a much better way, but...'\n\n'Oh, that can all be put right.' Mo put the book down and inspected another. 'But I think it will take me at least two weeks. If I don't have to get hold of more materials, which could mean I need more time. Will you put up with us that long?'\n\n'Of course.' Elinor nodded, but Meggie noticed the glance she cast at Dustfinger. He was still standing beside the shelves near the door and seemed entirely absorbed in looking at the books, but Meggie sensed that he had missed none of what was said behind his back.\n\nThere were no books in Elinor's kitchen, not one, but they ate an excellent supper there at a wooden table that came, so Elinor assured them, from the scriptorium of an Italian monastery. Meggie doubted it. As far as she knew, the monks had worked at desks with sloping tops in the scriptoria of their monasteries, but she kept this information to herself. Instead, she took another slice of bread, and was just wondering how nice the cheese standing on the supposed scriptorium table would be when she noticed Mo whispering something to Elinor. Since Elinor's eyes widened greedily, Meggie concluded that they could only be discussing a book, and she immediately thought of brown paper, a pale green linen binding, and the anger in Mo's voice.\n\nBeside her, Dustfinger surreptitiously slipped a slice of ham into his rucksack for Gwin's supper. Meggie saw a round nose emerge from the rucksack, snuffling in the hope of more delicacies. Dustfinger smiled at Meggie when he noticed her looking at him and gave Gwin some more ham. He didn't seem to find anything odd about Mo and Elinor's whispering, but Meggie was sure the two of them were planning something secret.\n\nAfter a short time Mo rose from the table and went out. Meggie asked Elinor where the bathroom was \u2013 and followed him.\n\nIt was a strange feeling to be spying on Mo. She couldn't remember ever doing it before \u2013 except last night, when Dustfinger had arrived. And the time when she had tried to find out whether Mo was Father Christmas. She was ashamed of stealing after him like this, but it was his own fault. Why was he hiding the book from her? And now he might be going to give it to this Elinor \u2013 a book Meggie wasn't allowed to see! Ever since Mo had hurriedly hidden it behind his back, Meggie hadn't been able to get it out of her head. She had even looked for it in Mo's bag before he loaded his things into the van, but she couldn't find it.\n\nShe just had to see it before it disappeared, maybe into one of Elinor's display cases! She had to know why it meant so much to Mo that, for its sake, he would drag her all the way here.\n\nHe looked round once more in the entrance hall before leaving the house, but Meggie ducked down behind a chest just in time. The chest smelled of mothballs and lavender. She decided to stay in hiding there until Mo came back. He'd be sure to see her if she went out of doors. Time passed painfully slowly, as it always does when you're waiting for something with your heart thumping hard. The books in the white bookcases seemed to be watching Meggie, but they said nothing to her, as if they sensed that there was only one book Meggie could think about just now.\n\nFinally, Mo came back carrying a package wrapped in brown paper. Perhaps he's just going to hide it here, thought Meggie. Where could you hide a book better than among ten thousand others? Yes, Mo was going to leave it here and then they'd drive home again. But I would like to see it, thought Meggie, just once, before it's put on one of those shelves I'm supposed to stay three paces away from.\n\nMo passed her so close that she could have touched him, but he didn't notice her. 'Meggie, don't look at me like that!' he sometimes told her. 'You're reading my thoughts again.'\n\nNow he looked anxious \u2013 as if he wasn't quite sure he was doing the right thing. Meggie counted slowly to three before following her father, but a couple of times Mo stopped so suddenly that Meggie almost ran into him. He didn't return to the kitchen but went straight to the library. Without looking back once, he opened the door with the Venetian printer's mark on it, and closed it quietly behind him.\n\nSo, there stood Meggie among all the silent books, wondering whether to follow him and ask him to show her the book. Would he be very angry? She was just about to summon up all her courage and go after him when she heard footsteps \u2013 rapid, firm footsteps, quick and impatient. That could only be Elinor. Now what?\n\nMeggie opened the nearest door and slipped through it. A four-poster bed, a wardrobe, silver-framed photographs, a pile of books on the bedside table, a catalogue lying open on the rug, its pages full of pictures of old books. She was in Elinor's bedroom. Heart thudding, she listened for noises outside; she could hear Elinor's energetic footsteps and then the sound of the library door closing for the second time. Cautiously, she slipped out into the corridor again. She was still standing outside the library, undecided, when she felt a hand suddenly laid on her shoulder from behind. Another hand stifled her cry of alarm.\n\n'It's only me!' breathed Dustfinger into her ear. 'Keep quiet or we're both in trouble, understand?'\n\nMeggie nodded, and Dustfinger slowly took his hand away from her mouth. 'Your father's going to give the old witch that book, right?' he whispered. 'Has he taken it out of the van? Tell me. He did have it with him, didn't he?'\n\nMeggie pushed him away. 'I don't know!' she snapped. 'Anyway, what business is it of yours?'\n\n'What business is it of mine?' Dustfinger laughed quietly. 'Well, perhaps I'll tell you some time. But just now all I want to know is whether you've seen it.'\n\nMeggie shook her head. She didn't know herself why she was lying to Dustfinger. Perhaps because he had pressed his hand over her mouth a little too hard.\n\n'Meggie, listen to me!' Dustfinger looked at her intently. His scars were like pale lines that someone had drawn on his cheeks: two slightly curved marks on the left cheek, a third and longer line on the right cheek running from ear to nostril. 'Capricorn will kill your father if he doesn't get that book!' hissed Dustfinger. 'Kill him, do you understand? Didn't I tell you what he's like? He wants the book, and he always gets what he wants. It's ridiculous to believe it will be safe from him here.'\n\n'Mo doesn't think so!'\n\nDustfinger straightened up and stared at the library door. 'Yes, I know,' he murmured. 'That's the trouble. And so,' he said, putting both hands on Meggie's shoulders and propelling her towards the closed door, 'so now you're going to go in there, the picture of innocence, and find out what the pair of them are planning to do with that book. OK?'\n\nMeggie was about to protest, but before she knew it Dustfinger had opened the door and pushed her into the library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Only a Picture",
                "text": "\u2002For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.\n\n\u2002Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails... and when at last he goeth to his last punishment, let the flames of hell consume him for ever.\n\n\u2014Curse on book thieves, from the monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain\n\nThey had unwrapped the book. Meggie saw the brown paper lying on a chair. Neither of them noticed that she had come in; Elinor was bending over one of the reading desks with Mo beside her. They both had their backs to the door.\n\n'Amazing. I thought there wasn't a single copy left,' Elinor was saying. 'There are strange stories about this book going around. A second-hand dealer from whom I buy quite often told me that three copies were stolen from him a few years ago. All on the same day too. And I've heard much the same story from two other booksellers.'\n\n'Really? Yes, very strange,' said Mo, but Meggie knew his voice well enough to know that he was only pretending to be surprised. 'Well, anyway, even if this wasn't a rare book it means a lot to me, and I'd like to be sure it's in safe hands for a while. Just till I come back for it.'\n\n'All books are in safe hands with me,' replied Elinor, sounding cross. 'You know that. They're my children, my inky children, and I look after them well. I keep the sunlight away from their pages, I dust them and protect them from hungry bookworms and grubby human fingers. This one shall have a place of honour, and no one will see it until you want it back. I don't really welcome visitors to my library. They just leave fingerprints and stray hairs in my poor books. Anyway, as you know, I have a very expensive burglar alarm system.'\n\n'Yes, that's extremely reassuring!' Mo's voice sounded relieved. 'Thank you, Elinor! I really am most grateful. And if anyone comes knocking at your door in the near future asking about the book, please will you make out you've never heard of it, all right?'\n\n'Of course. I'd do anything for a good bookbinder, and anyway you're my niece's husband. I really do miss her sometimes, you know. I expect you feel the same. Your daughter seems to be getting on all right without her, though.'\n\n'She hardly remembers her mother,' said Mo quietly.\n\n'Well, that's a blessing, wouldn't you say? Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do. But for them we probably wouldn't know anything for very long. It would all be forgotten: the Trojan War, Columbus, Marco Polo, Shakespeare, all the amazing kings and gods of the past...' Elinor turned round \u2013 and froze.\n\n'Did I fail to hear you knock?' she asked, staring so angrily that Meggie had to summon up all her courage not to turn round and slip quickly back out into the passage.\n\n'How long have you been there, Meggie?' asked Mo.\n\nMeggie stuck her chin out. 'She can see it, but you hide it away from me!' she said. Attack, she knew, is the best form of defence. 'You never hid any book from me before! What's so special about this one? Will I go blind if I read it? Will it bite my fingers off? What terrible secrets are there in it that I mustn't know?'\n\n'I have my reasons for not showing it to you,' replied Mo. He looked very pale. Without another word he went over and tried to lead her to the door, but Meggie tore herself away.\n\n'Pig-headed, isn't she?' remarked Elinor. 'It almost makes me like her! Her mother was just the same, I remember. Come here.' She stepped aside and beckoned Meggie over. 'Look, you can see there's nothing very exciting about this book, at least not to you. But see for yourself. We're always most likely to believe the evidence of our own eyes. Or doesn't your father agree?' She cast Mo an enquiring glance.\n\nMo hesitated, then resigned himself and nodded.\n\nThe book was lying open on the reading desk. It didn't seem particularly old. Meggie knew what really old books looked like. She had seen books in Mo's workshop with their pages spotted like leopard-skin and almost as yellow. She remembered one with a binding that had been attacked by woodworm. The traces of their jaws had looked like tiny bullet holes, and Mo had got out his book block, carefully fixed the pages back together, and then, as he put it, gave them a new dress. Such a dress could be made of leather or linen, it might be plain, or Mo might imprint a pattern on it with his tiny decorative stamps.\n\nThis book was bound in linen, silvery green like willow leaves. The edges of the pages were slightly roughened, and the paper was still so pale that every letter stood out clear and black. A narrow red bookmark lay between the open pages. The right-hand page had an illustration on it, showing women in magnificent dresses, a fire-eater, acrobats, and a man who looked like a king. Meggie turned the pages. There weren't many illustrations, but the first letter of each chapter was itself a little decorative picture. Animals sat on some of these initial letters, plants twined round others, one 'F' burned bright as fire. The flames looked so real that Meggie touched them with one finger to make sure they weren't hot. The next chapter began with an 'N'. An animal with a furry tail sat perched in the angle between the second and third strokes of the letter. No one saw him slip out of town, read Meggie, but before she could get any further with the story Elinor closed the book in her face.\n\n'I think that'll do,' she said, tucking it under her arm. 'Your father's asked me to put this book somewhere safe for him, and so I will.'\n\nMo took Meggie's hand again, and this time she followed him. 'Please forget that book, Meggie!' he whispered. 'It's an unlucky story. I'll get you a hundred others.'\n\nMeggie just nodded. Before Mo closed the door behind them, she caught a last glance of Elinor standing there looking at the book lovingly, the way Mo sometimes looked at her when he put her to bed in the evening.\n\nThen the door was closed.\n\n'Where will she put it?' asked Meggie as she followed Mo down the corridor.\n\n'Oh, she has some very good hiding-places for such things,' replied Mo evasively. 'But they're secret, as hiding-places ought to be. Suppose I show you your room now?' He was trying to sound carefree, and not succeeding particularly well. 'It's like a room in an expensive hotel. No, much better.'\n\n'Sounds good,' murmured Meggie, looking round, but there was no sign of Dustfinger. Where had he gone? She had to ask him something. At once. That was all she could think of while Mo was showing her the room and telling her that everything was all right now; he just had to do his bookbinding work, then they'd go home. Meggie nodded and pretended to be listening, but her mind was full of the question she wanted to ask Dustfinger. It burned on her lips so fiercely that she was surprised Mo didn't see it there.\n\nWhen Mo left her to go and fetch their bags from the camper van Meggie went into the kitchen, but Dustfinger wasn't there either. She even looked for him in Elinor's bedroom, but however many doors in the huge house she opened there was no sign of him. Finally, she was too tired to go on searching. Mo had gone to bed long ago, and Elinor had disappeared into her own bedroom. So Meggie went to her room and lay down in the big bed. She felt very lost in it, like a dwarf, as if she had shrunk. Like Alice in Wonderland, she thought, patting the flowered bed linen. Otherwise she liked the room. It was full of books and pictures, and there was even a fireplace, although it looked as if no one had used it for at least a hundred years. Meggie swung her legs out of bed again and went over to the window. Outside, night had fallen long ago, and when she pushed the window shutters open a cool breeze blew on her face. The only thing she could make out in the dark was the gravel forecourt in front of the house. A lamp cast pale light over the grey and white pebbles. Mo's stripey van stood beside Elinor's grey estate car like a zebra lost in a horse's stable. Meggie thought of the house they had left in such a hurry, and her room there, and school, where her desk would have been empty today. She wasn't sure whether she felt homesick or not.\n\nShe left the shutters open when she went back to bed. Mo had put her book-box beside her. Wearily, she took a book out and tried to make herself a nice nest in its familiar words, but it was no good. Again and again the thought of that other book blurred the words, again and again Meggie saw the big initial letters before her \u2013 large, colourful letters surrounded by figures whose story she didn't know because the book hadn't had time to tell it to her.\n\nI must find Dustfinger, she thought sleepily. He must be here somewhere. But then the book slipped from her fingers and she fell asleep.\n\nThe sun woke her next morning. The air was still cool from the night before, but the sky was cloudless, and when Meggie leaned out of the window she could see the lake gleaming in the distance beyond the branches of the trees. The room Elinor had given her was on the first floor. Mo was sleeping only two doors further along, but Dustfinger had to make do with an attic room. Meggie had seen it when she was looking for him yesterday. It held nothing but a narrow bed surrounded by crates of books towering up to the rafters.\n\nMo was already sitting at the table with Elinor when Meggie came down to the kitchen for breakfast, but Dustfinger wasn't there. 'Oh, he's had breakfast already,' said Elinor sharply, when Meggie asked about him. 'Along with some animal like a Pomeranian dog. It was sitting on the table and it spat at me when I came into the kitchen. I wasn't expecting anything like that. I made it clear to your peculiar friend that flies are the only animals I'll allow anywhere near my kitchen table, and so he took the furry creature outside.'\n\n'What do you want him for?' asked Mo.\n\n'Oh, nothing special. I \u2013 I just wanted to ask him something,' said Meggie. She hastily ate half a slice of bread, drank some of the horribly bitter cocoa Elinor had made, and went out.\n\nShe found Dustfinger behind the house, standing on a lawn of short, rather rough grass where a solitary deckchair stood next to a plaster angel. There was no sign of Gwin. A few birds were quarrelling among the red flowers of the rhododendron, and there stood Dustfinger looking lost to the world, and juggling. Meggie tried to count the coloured balls \u2013 four, six, eight. He plucked them out of the air so swiftly that it made her dizzy to watch him. He stood on one leg to catch them, casually, as if he didn't even have to look. Only when he spotted Meggie did a ball escape his fingers and roll at her feet. Meggie picked it up and threw it back.\n\n'Where did you learn to do that?' she asked. 'It looked \u2013 well, wonderful.'\n\nDustfinger made her a mocking bow. There was that strange smile of his again. 'It's how I earn my living,' he said. 'With the juggling and a few other things.'\n\n'How can you earn a living that way?'\n\n'At markets and fairs. At children's birthday parties. Did you ever go to one of those fairs where people pretend they're still living in Medieval times?'\n\nMeggie nodded. Yes, she had once been to a fair like that with Mo. There had been wonderful things there, so strange that they might have come from another world, not just another time. Mo had bought her a box decorated with brightly coloured stones, and a little fish made of shiny green and gold metal, with its mouth wide open and a jingle in its hollow body that rang like a little bell when you shook it. The air had smelled of freshly baked bread, smoke and damp clothes, and Meggie had watched a smith making a sword, and had hidden behind Mo's back from a woman in witch's costume.\n\nDustfinger picked up his juggling balls and put them back in his bag which was standing open on the grass behind him. Meggie went over to it and looked inside. She saw some bottles, some white cotton wool and a carton of milk, but before she could see any more Dustfinger closed the bag.\n\n'Sorry, trade secrets,' he said. 'Your father's given the book to this Elinor, hasn't he?'\n\nMeggie shrugged her shoulders.\n\n'It's all right, you can tell me. I know anyway. I was listening. He's mad to leave it here, but what can I do?' Dustfinger sat down on the deckchair. His rucksack was on the grass next to him, with a bushy tail spilling out of it.\n\n'I saw Gwin,' said Meggie.\n\n'Did you?' Dustfinger leaned back, closing his eyes. His hair looked even paler in the sunlight. 'So did I. He's in the rucksack. It's the time of day when he sleeps.'\n\n'I mean I saw him in the book.' Meggie didn't take her eyes off Dustfinger's face as she said this, but it didn't move a muscle. His thoughts couldn't be read on his brow, in the same way as she could read Mo's. Dustfinger's face was a closed book, and Meggie had the feeling that if anyone tried reading it he would rap their knuckles. 'He was sitting on a letter,' she went on. 'On a capital N. I saw his horns.'\n\n'Really?' Dustfinger didn't even open his eyes. 'And do you know which of her thousands of shelves that book-mad woman put it on?'\n\nMeggie ignored his question. 'Why does Gwin look like the animal in the book?' she asked. 'Did you really stick those horns on him?'\n\nDustfinger opened his eyes and blinked up at the sun.\n\n'Hm, did I?' he enquired, looking at the sky. A few clouds were drifting over Elinor's house. The sun disappeared behind one of them, and its shadow fell across the green grass like an ugly mark.\n\n'Does your father often read aloud to you, Meggie?' asked Dustfinger.\n\nMeggie looked at him suspiciously. Then she knelt down beside the rucksack and stroked Gwin's silky tail. 'No,' she said. 'But he taught me to read when I was five.'\n\n'Ask him why he doesn't read aloud to you,' said Dustfinger. 'And don't let him put you off with excuses.'\n\n'What do you mean?' Meggie straightened up, feeling cross. 'He doesn't like reading aloud, that's all.'\n\nDustfinger smiled. Leaning out of the deckchair, he put one hand into the rucksack. 'Ah, that feels like a nice full stomach,' he commented. 'I think Gwin had good hunting last night. I hope he's not been plundering a nest again. Perhaps it's just Elinor's rolls and eggs.' Gwin's tail twitched back and forth almost like a cat's.\n\nMeggie looked at the rucksack with distaste. She was glad she couldn't see Gwin's muzzle. There might still be blood on it.\n\nDustfinger leaned back in Elinor's deckchair. 'Shall I give you a performance this evening \u2013 show you what the bottles, the cotton wool and all the other mysterious things in my bag are for?' he asked without looking at her. 'It has to be dark for that, pitch dark. Are you scared to be out of doors in the middle of the night?'\n\n'Of course not!' said Meggie, offended, although really she was not at all happy to be out in the dark. 'But first, tell me why you stuck those horns on Gwin! And tell me what you know about the book.'\n\nDustfinger folded his arms behind his head. 'Oh, I know a lot about that book,' he said. 'And perhaps I'll tell you some time, but first the two of us have a date. Here at eleven o'clock tonight. OK?'\n\nMeggie looked up at a blackbird singing its heart out on Elinor's rooftop. 'OK,' she said. 'Eleven o'clock tonight.' Then she went back to the house.\n\nElinor had suggested that Mo set up his workshop next door to the library. There was a little room where she kept her collection of old books about animals and plants (for there seemed to be no kind of book that Elinor didn't collect). She kept this collection on shelves of pale, honey-coloured wood. On some of the shelves the books were propping up glass display cases of beetles pinned to cardboard, which only made Meggie dislike Elinor all the more. By the only window was a handsome table with turned legs, but it was barely half as long as the one Mo had in his workshop at home. Perhaps that was why he was swearing quietly to himself when Meggie put her head round the door.\n\n'Look at this table!' he said. 'You could sort a stamp collection on it but not bind books. This whole room is too small. Where am I going to put the press and my tools? Last time I worked up in the attics, but now they're filled with crates of books too.'\n\nMeggie stroked the spines of the books crammed close together on the shelves. 'Just tell her you need a bigger table.' Carefully, she took a book off the shelf. It contained pictures of the strangest of insects: beetles with horns, beetles with probosces, one even had a proper nose. Meggie passed her forefinger over the pastel-coloured pictures. 'Mo, why haven't you ever read aloud to me?'\n\nHer father turned round so abruptly that the book almost fell from her hand. 'Why do you ask me that? You've been talking to Dustfinger, haven't you? What did he tell you?'\n\n'Nothing. Nothing at all.' Meggie herself didn't know why she was lying. She put the beetle book back in its place. It felt almost as if someone were spinning a very fine web around the two of them, a web of secrets and lies closing in on them all the time. 'I think it's a good question, though,' she said as she took out another book. It was called Masters of Disguise. The creatures in it looked like live twigs or dry leaves.\n\nMo turned his back to her again. He began laying out his implements on the table, even though it was too small: his folding tool on the left, then the round-headed hammer he used to tap the spines of books into shape, the sharp paper-knife... He usually whistled under his breath as he worked, but now he was perfectly quiet. Meggie sensed that his thoughts were far away. But where?\n\nFinally, he sat on the side of the table and looked at her. 'I just don't like reading aloud,' he said, as if it was the most uninteresting subject in the world. 'You know I don't. That's all.'\n\n'But why not? I mean, you make up stories. You tell wonderful stories. You can do all the voices, and make it exciting and then funny...'\n\nMo crossed his arms over his chest as if hiding behind them.\n\n'You could read me Tom Sawyer,' suggested Meggie 'or How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin.' That was one of Mo's favourite stories. When she was smaller they sometimes played at having crumbs in their clothes, like the crumbs in the rhino's skin.\n\n'Yes, an excellent story,' murmured Mo, turning his back to her again. He picked up the folder in which he kept his endpapers and leafed absent-mindedly through them. 'Every book should begin with attractive endpapers,' he had once told Meggie. 'Preferably in a dark colour: dark red or dark blue, depending on the binding. When you open the book it's like going to the theatre. First you see the curtain. Then it's pulled aside and the show begins.'\n\n'Meggie, I really do have to work now,' he said without turning round. 'The sooner I'm through with Elinor's books the sooner we can go home again.'\n\nMeggie put the book about creatures who were masters of disguise back in its place. 'Suppose he didn't stick the horns on?' she asked.\n\n'What?'\n\n'Gwin's horns. Suppose Dustfinger didn't stick them on?' 'Well, he did.' Mo drew a chair up to the table that was not long enough for him. 'By the way, Elinor's gone shopping. If you feel faint with hunger before she gets back, just make yourself a couple of pancakes, OK?'\n\n'OK,' murmured Meggie. For a moment she wondered whether to tell him about her date with Dustfinger that night, but then she decided against it. 'Do you think I can take some of these books to my room?' she asked instead.\n\n'I'm sure you can. So long as they don't disappear into your box.'\n\n'Like that book thief you once told me about?' Meggie put three books under her left arm and four under her right arm. 'How many was it he stole? Thirty thousand?'\n\n'Forty thousand,' said Mo. 'But at least he didn't kill the owners.'\n\n'No, that was the Spanish monk whose name I've forgotten.' Meggie went over to the door and opened it with her toe. 'Dustfinger says Capricorn would kill you to get hold of that book.' She tried to make her voice sound casual. 'Would he, Mo?'\n\n'Meggie!' Mo turned round with the paper-knife, pretending to point it at her threateningly. 'Go and lie in the sun or bury your pretty nose in those books, but please let me get some work done. And tell Dustfinger I shall carve him into very thin slices with this knife if he goes on telling you such nonsense.'\n\n'That wasn't a proper answer!' said Meggie, making her way out into the passage with an armful of books.\n\nOnce in her room, she spread the books out on the huge bed and began to read. She read about beetles who moved into empty snail-shells as we might move into an empty house, about frogs shaped like leaves and caterpillars with brightly coloured spines on their backs, white-bearded monkeys, stripy anteaters, and cats that dig in the ground for sweet potatoes. There seemed to be everything here, every creature Meggie could imagine, and even more that she could never have dreamed existed at all. But none of Elinor's clever books said a word about martens with horns."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fire and Stars",
                "text": "\u2002So along they came with dancing bears, dogs and goats, monkeys and marmots, walking the tightrope, turning somersaults both backwards and forwards, throwing daggers and knives and suffering no injury when they fell on their points and blades, swallowing fire and chewing stones, doing tricks with magic goblets and chains under cover of cloak and hat, making puppets fence with each other, trilling like nightingales, screaming like peacocks, calling like deer, wrestling and dancing to the sound of the double flute...\n\n\u2014Herzt, Book of Minstrelsy\n\nThe day passed slowly. Meggie saw Mo only in the afternoon, when Elinor came back from doing her shopping and half an hour later gave them spaghetti with some kind of ready-made sauce. 'I'm afraid I've no patience with toiling over a stove,' she said as she put the dishes on the table. 'Perhaps our friend with the furry animal can cook?'\n\nDustfinger merely shrugged his shoulders apologetically. 'Sorry, I'm no use to you that way.'\n\n'Mo cooks very well,' said Meggie, stirring the thin, watery sauce into her spaghetti.\n\n'Mo's here to restore my books, not to cook for us,' replied Elinor sharply. 'What about you, though?'\n\nMeggie shrugged. 'I can make pancakes,' she said. 'Why don't you get some cookery books? You have books of every other kind. I'm sure you'd find cookery books a help.'\n\nElinor didn't even deign to reply to this suggestion.\n\n'And by the way, there's a rule for night-time,' she said, when they had all been eating in silence for a while. 'I won't have candlelight in my house. Fire makes me nervous. It's far too greedy for paper.'\n\nMeggie gulped. She felt caught in the act, for of course she had brought candles with her. They were on her bedside table upstairs, where Elinor must have seen them. However, Elinor was looking not at Meggie but at Dustfinger, who was playing with a box of matches.\n\n'I hope you'll take that rule to heart,' she said to him. 'Since we're obviously going to have the pleasure of your company for another night.'\n\n'Yes, if I may impose on your hospitality a little longer. I'll be off first thing in the morning, I promise.' Dustfinger was still holding the matches. He didn't seem bothered by Elinor's distrustful gaze. 'I'd say someone here has the wrong idea about fire,' he added. 'It bites like a fierce little animal, admittedly, but you can tame it.' And with these words he took a match out of the box, struck it, and popped the flame into his open mouth.\n\nMeggie held her breath as his lips closed around the burning matchstick. Dustfinger opened his mouth again, took out the spent match, smiled and left it on his empty plate.\n\n'You see, Elinor?' he said. 'It didn't bite me. It's easier to tame than a kitten and almost as easy as a dog.'\n\nElinor just wrinkled her nose, but Meggie was so amazed that she could hardly take her eyes off Dustfinger's scarred face. She looked at Mo. The little trick with the burning match didn't seem to have surprised him. He shot a warning glance at Dustfinger, who meekly put the box of matches away in his trouser pocket.\n\n'But of course I'll keep the no-candles rule,' he was quick to say. 'That's no problem. Really.'\n\nElinor nodded. 'Good,' she said. 'And one more thing: if you go out again as soon as it's dark this evening, the way you did last night, you'd better not be back too late, because I switch the burglar alarm on at nine-thirty on the dot.'\n\n'Ah, then I was in luck yesterday evening.' Dustfinger slipped some spaghetti into his bag. Elinor didn't notice, but Meggie did. 'Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world's more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded and a good deal more mysterious. But I wasn't planning to walk this evening. I have other plans for tonight, and I'll have to ask you to switch this wonderful system of yours on a bit later than usual.'\n\n'Oh, indeed. And why, may I ask?'\n\nDustfinger winked at Meggie. 'Well, I've promised to put on a little show for this young lady,' he said. 'It begins about an hour before midnight.'\n\n'Oh yes?' Elinor dabbed some sauce off her lips with her napkin. 'A little show. Why not in daylight? After all, the young lady's only twelve years old. She should be in bed at eight o'clock.'\n\nMeggie tightened her lips. She hadn't been to bed as early as eight since her fifth birthday, but she wasn't going to the trouble of explaining that to Elinor. Instead, she admired the casual way Dustfinger reacted to Elinor's hostile gaze.\n\n'Ah, but you see the tricks I want to show Meggie wouldn't look so good by day,' he said, leaning back in his chair. 'I'm afraid I need the black cloak of night. Why don't you come and watch too? Then you'll understand why it all has to be done in the dark.'\n\n'Go on, accept his offer, Elinor!' said Mo. 'You'll enjoy the show. And then perhaps you won't think fire's so sinister.'\n\n'It's not that I think it's sinister. I don't like it, that's all,' remarked Elinor, unmoved.\n\n'He can juggle!' Meggie burst out. 'With eight balls.'\n\n'Eleven,' Dustfinger corrected her. 'But juggling is more of a daylight skill.'\n\nElinor retrieved a string of spaghetti from the tablecloth and glanced first at Meggie and then at Mo. She looked cross. 'Oh, very well. I don't want to be a spoilsport,' she said. 'I shall go to bed with a book at nine-thirty as usual and put the alarm on first, but when Meggie tells me she's going out for this private performance I'll switch it off again for an hour. Will that be time enough?'\n\n'Ample time,' said Dustfinger, bowing so low to her that the tip of his nose collided with the rim of his plate.\n\nMeggie bit back her laughter.\n\nIt was five to eleven when she knocked at Elinor's bedroom door.\n\n'Come in!' she heard Elinor call, and when she put her head round the door she saw her aunt sitting up in bed, poring over a catalogue as thick as a telephone directory. 'Oh, too expensive, too expensive!' she murmured. 'Take my advice, Meggie: never develop a passion you can't afford. It'll eat your heart away like a bookworm. Take this book here, for instance.' Elinor tapped her finger on the left-hand page of her catalogue so hard that it wouldn't have surprised Meggie if she had bored a hole in it. 'What a fine edition \u2013 and in such good condition too! I've been wanting it for fifteen years, but it just costs too much money. Far too much.'\n\nSighing, she closed her catalogue, dropped it on the rug and swung her legs out of bed. To Meggie's surprise, she was wearing a long, flowered nightdress. She looked younger in it, almost like a girl who has woken up one morning to find her face wrinkled. 'Ah, well, you'll probably never be as crazy as I am!' she muttered, putting a thick pair of socks on her bare feet. 'Your father's not inclined to be crazy, and your mother never was either. Quite the opposite \u2013 I never knew anyone with a cooler head. My father, on the other hand, was at least as mad as me. I inherited over half my books from him, and what good did they do him? Did they keep him alive? Far from it. He died of a stroke at a book auction. Isn't that ridiculous?'\n\nWith the best will in the world, Meggie didn't know what to say to that. 'My mother?' she asked, instead. 'Did you know her well?'\n\nElinor snorted as if she had asked a silly question. 'Of course I did. It was here that your father met her. Didn't he ever tell you?'\n\nMeggie shook her head. 'He doesn't talk about her much.' 'Well, probably better not. Why probe old wounds? And you're not particularly like her. She painted that sign on the library door. Come on, then, or you'll miss this show of yours.'\n\nMeggie followed Elinor down the unlit corridor. For a moment she had the odd feeling that her mother might step out of one of the many doors, smiling at her. There was hardly a light on in the whole vast house, and once or twice Meggie bumped her knee on a chair or a little table that she hadn't seen in the gloom. 'Why is it so dark everywhere here?' she asked as Elinor felt around for the light switch in the entrance hall.\n\n'Because I'd rather spend my money on books than unnecessary electricity,' replied Elinor, looking at the light she had turned on as if she thought the stupid thing should go easy on the power. Then she made her way over to a metal box fixed to the wall near the front door and hidden behind a thick, dusty curtain. 'I hope you switched your light off before you knocked on my door?' she asked, as she opened the box.\n\n'Of course,' said Meggie, although it wasn't true.\n\n'Turn round!' Elinor told her before setting to work on the alarm system. She frowned. 'Heavens, all these knobs! I hope I haven't done something wrong again. Tell me as soon as the show's over \u2013 and don't even think of seizing your chance to slink into the library and take a book off the shelves. Remember that I sleep right next door, and my hearing is keener than a bat's.'\n\nMeggie bit back the answer on the tip of her tongue. Elinor opened the front door. Without a word, Meggie pushed past her and went outside. It was a mild night, full of strange scents and the chirping of crickets. 'Were you always as nice as this to my mother?' she asked as Elinor was about to close the door behind her.\n\nElinor looked at her for a moment as if turned to stone. 'Oh yes, I think so,' she said. 'Yes, I'm sure I was. And she was always as cheeky as you, too! Have fun with your fire-eater!' Then she shut the door.\n\nAs Meggie was going through the dark garden behind the house she suddenly heard unexpected music. It filled the night air as if it had been only waiting for Meggie's footsteps: strange music, a carnival mixture of bells, pipes and drums, both boisterous and sad. Meggie wouldn't have been surprised to find a whole troop of fairground entertainers waiting for her on the lawn behind Elinor's house, but only Dustfinger stood there.\n\nHe was waiting where Meggie had found him that afternoon. The music came from a cassette recorder on the grass beside the wooden deckchair. Dustfinger had placed a garden bench on the edge of the lawn for his audience. Lighted torches were stuck into the ground to the right and left of it, and two more were burning on the lawn, casting quivering shadows in the night. The shadows danced across the grass like servants conjured up by Dustfinger from some dark world for this occasion. He himself stood there bare-chested, his skin as pale as the moon, which was hanging in the sky right above Elinor's house as if it too had turned up especially for Dustfinger's show.\n\nWhen Meggie emerged from the darkness Dustfinger bowed to her. 'Sit down, pretty lady!' he called over the music. 'We were all just waiting for you.'\n\nShyly, Meggie sat down on the bench and looked around her. The two dark glass bottles she had seen in Dustfinger's bag were standing on the deckchair. Something whitish shimmered in the bottle on the left, as if Dustfinger had filled it with moonlight. A dozen torches with white wadding heads were wedged between the wooden rungs of the chair, and beside the cassette recorder stood a bucket and a large, big-bellied vase, which if Meggie remembered correctly came from Elinor's entrance hall.\n\nFor a moment, she let her eyes wander to the windows of the house. There was no light in Mo's bedroom \u2013 he was probably still working \u2013 but one floor below Meggie saw Elinor standing at her lighted window. The moment Meggie looked her way she drew the curtain, as if she had felt Meggie watching her, but she still stayed at the window. Her shadow was a dark outline against the pale yellow curtain.\n\n'Do you hear how quiet it is?' Dustfinger switched the recorder off. The silence of the night fell on Meggie's ears, muffled as if by cotton wool. Not a leaf moved; there was nothing to be heard but the torches crackling and the chirping of the crickets.\n\nDustfinger switched the music back on. 'I had a private word with the wind,' he said. 'There's one thing you should know: if the wind takes it into its head to play with fire then even I can't tame the blaze. But it gave me its word of honour to keep still tonight and not spoil our fun.'\n\nSo saying, he picked up one of the torches from Elinor's deckchair. He sipped from the bottle with the moonlight in it and spat something whitish out into the big vase. Then he dipped the torch he was holding into the bucket, took it out again, and held its dripping head of wadding to one of its burning sisters. The fire flared up so suddenly it made Meggie jump. However, Dustfinger put the second bottle to his lips, filling his mouth until his scarred cheeks were bulging. Then he took a deep, deep breath, arched his body like a bow, and spat whatever was in his mouth out into the air above the burning torch.\n\nA fireball hung over Elinor's lawn, a bright, blazing globe of fire. It ate away at the darkness like a living thing. And it was so big, Meggie felt sure everything around it would go up in flames: the grass, the deckchair, and Dustfinger himself. But he just spun round and round on the spot, exuberant as a dancing child, breathing out more fire. He made the fire climb high in the air, as if to set the stars alight. Then he lit a second torch and ran its flame over his bare arms. He looked as happy as a child playing with a pet animal. The fire licked his skin like something living, a darting, burning creature that he had befriended, a creature that caressed him and danced for him and drove the night away. He threw the torch high in the air where the fireball had just been blazing, caught it as it came down, lit more, juggled with three, four, five torches. Their fire whirled around him, danced with him but never hurt him: Dustfinger the tamer of flames, the man who breathed sparks, the friend of fire. He made the torches disappear as if the darkness had devoured them, bowed to the speechless Meggie with a smile, before once more spitting fire out into the night's black face.\n\nAfterwards, she could never say what had distracted her attention from the whirling torches and the showers of sparks, making her look up once more at the house and its windows. Perhaps you feel the presence of evil on your skin like sudden heat or cold... or perhaps it was just that the light now seeping through the library shutters caught her eye, the light falling on the rhododendron bushes where their leaves pressed close to the wood. Perhaps.\n\nShe thought she heard voices rising above Dustfinger's music, men's voices, and a terrible fear rose inside her, as dark and strange as the terror she had felt on the night when she first saw Dustfinger standing out in the yard. As she jumped up, a burning torch slipped from his hands and fell on the grass. He quickly trod the fire out before it could spread any further, then followed the direction of Meggie's eyes, and he too looked at the house without a word.\n\nMeggie began to run. Gravel crunched under her feet as she raced towards the house. The front door stood ajar, there was no light in the entrance hall, but Meggie heard loud voices echoing down the corridor that led to the library. 'Mo?' she called, and there was the fear back again, digging its curved beak into her heart, taking her breath away.\n\nThe library door was open too. Meggie was about to rush in when two strong hands grasped her by the shoulders.\n\n'Quiet!' breathed Elinor, pulling her into her bedroom. Meggie saw that her fingers were shaking as she locked the door.\n\n'Don't!' Meggie dragged Elinor's hand away, and tried to turn the key. She wanted to shout that she must help her father, but Elinor put a hand over her mouth and pulled her away from the door, hard as Meggie struggled, hitting and kicking. Elinor was strong, much stronger than Meggie.\n\n'There are too many of them!' Elinor whispered as Meggie tried to bite her fingers. 'About four or five, big strong men, and they're armed.' She hauled the struggling Meggie over to the wall by the bed. 'I've told myself a hundred times \u2013 oh, a thousand times! \u2013 I ought to buy a revolver!' she muttered, pressing her ear to the wall.\n\n'Of course it's here!' The voice carried through the wall without Meggie's having to strain to hear it, rasping like a cat's tongue. 'Shall we fetch your little daughter from the garden to show us just where? Or would you rather find it for us yourself?'\n\nMeggie tried to pull Elinor's hand away from her mouth. 'Stop it, for goodness' sake!' Elinor hissed in her ear. 'You'll only put him in more danger, do you understand?'\n\n'My daughter! What do you know about my daughter?' That was Mo's voice.\n\nMeggie sobbed aloud, and Elinor's fingers were instantly back over her face. 'I tried to call the police,' she whispered in Meggie's ear. 'But the lines are all down.'\n\n'Oh, we know all we need to know.' The other voice again. 'So where's the book?'\n\n'I'll give it to you!' Mo's voice sounded weary. 'But I'm going with you, because I want that book back as soon as Capricorn has finished with it.'\n\nGoing with them? What did he mean? He couldn't leave just like that! Meggie tried making for the door again, but Elinor held her fast. Meggie did her best to push her away, but Elinor simply wrapped her strong arms around her and pressed her fingers to Meggie's lips once more.\n\n'All the better. We were told to bring you anyway,' said a second voice. It had a broad, coarse accent. 'You've no idea how Capricorn longs to hear your voice. He's got great faith in your abilities, Capricorn has.'\n\n'That's right \u2013 the replacement Capricorn found for you makes a terrible hash of it.' The rasping voice again. 'Look at Cockerell there.' Meggie heard feet scraping on the floor. 'He's limping, and Flatnose's face has seen better days. Not that he was ever much of a beauty.'\n\n'Don't just stand there talking, Basta, we haven't got for ever. How about it \u2013 do we take the kid as well?' Another voice. That one sounded as if the speaker's nose were being pinched.\n\n'No!' Mo snapped at him. 'My daughter stays here or I won't give you the book!'\n\nOne of the men laughed. 'Oh yes, Silvertongue, you'd give it to us all right, but don't worry. We weren't told to bring her. A child would just slow us down, and Capricorn's been waiting for you long enough already. So where's that book?'\n\nMeggie pressed her ear against the wall so hard that it hurt. She heard footsteps, and then a sound like something being pushed aside. Elinor, beside her, held her breath.\n\n'Not a bad hiding-place!' said the cat-like voice. 'Wrap it up, Cockerell, and take good care of it. After you, Silvertongue. Let's go.'\n\nThey left the library. Meggie tried desperately to wriggle out of Elinor's arms. She heard the sound of the library door closing, and then steps moving away, getting fainter and fainter. After that, all was still. Quite suddenly, Elinor let go of her. Meggie rushed to the door, unlocked it, sobbing, and ran down the corridor to the library. It was deserted. No Mo. The books stood ranged tidily on their shelves, except in one place where there was a wide, dark gap. Meggie thought she saw a hinged flap, well hidden, standing open among the books.\n\n'Incredible!' she heard Elinor saying behind her. 'They really were after just that one book.' But Meggie pushed her aside and ran along the corridor.\n\n'Meggie!' Elinor called after her. 'Wait!'\n\nBut what was there to wait for? For the strangers to take her father away? She heard Elinor running after her. Elinor's arms might be stronger, but Meggie's legs were faster.\n\nThere was still no light in the entrance hall. The front door stood wide open, and a cold wind blew in Meggie's face as she stumbled breathlessly out into the night.\n\n'Mo!' she shouted.\n\nShe thought she saw car headlights come on where the drive disappeared into the trees, and an engine started. Meggie ran that way. She tripped and fell, grazing her knee on the gravel, which was wet with dew. Warm blood trickled down her leg, but she took no notice. She ran on and on, limping and sobbing, until she had reached the big wrought iron gate. The road beyond it was empty. Mo was gone."
            },
            {
                "title": "What the Night Hides",
                "text": "\u2003A thousand enemies outside the house\n\n\u2003are better than one within.\n\n\u2014Arab proverb\n\nDustfinger was hiding behind a chestnut tree when Meggie ran past him. He saw her stop at the gate and look down the road. He heard her calling her father's name in a desperate voice. Her cries, as faint as the chirping of a cricket in the vast black night, were lost in the darkness. And when she gave up it was suddenly very quiet, and Dustfinger saw Meggie's slim figure standing there as if she would never move again. All her strength seemed to have forsaken her, as if the next gust of wind might blow her away.\n\nShe stood there so long that Dustfinger eventually closed his eyes so as not to have to look at her, but then he heard her weeping and his face turned hot with shame. He stood there without a sound, his back to the tree trunk, waiting for Meggie to go back to the house. But still she didn't move. At last, when his legs were quite numb, she turned like a marionette with some of its strings cut and went back towards the house. She was no longer crying as she passed Dustfinger, but she was wiping the tears from her eyes, and for a terrible moment he felt an urge to go to her, comfort her, and explain why he had told Capricorn everything. But Meggie had already passed him, and had quickened her pace as if her strength were returning. Faster and faster she walked, until she had disappeared among the black trees.\n\nOnly then did Dustfinger come out from behind the tree, put his rucksack on his back, pick up the two bags containing all his worldly goods, and stride off towards the gate, which was still open.\n\nThe night swallowed him up like a thieving fox."
            },
            {
                "title": "Alone",
                "text": "\u2002'My darling,' she said at last, 'are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?'\n\n\u2002'I don't mind at all,' I said. 'It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.'\n\n\u2014Roald Dahl, The Witches\n\nElinor was standing in the brightly lit doorway of the house when Meggie came back. She had put a coat on over her nightdress. The night was warm, but a cold wind was blowing from the lake. How desperate the child looked \u2013 and lost. Elinor remembered the feeling. There was nothing worse.\n\n'They've taken him away!' Meggie's voice almost choked in her helpless rage. She glared angrily at Elinor. 'Why did you hold me back? We could have helped him!' Her fists were clenched as if she wanted to hit out blindly.\n\nElinor remembered that feeling too. Sometimes you wanted to lash out at the whole world, but it did no good, none at all. The grief remained. 'Don't talk such nonsense!' she said bluntly. 'How could we have helped him? They'd just have taken you too, and how would your father have liked that? Would it have done him any good? No. So don't stand around out here any longer \u2013 come indoors.'\n\nBut Meggie didn't move. 'They're taking him to Capricorn!' she whispered, so softly that Elinor could hardly make out what she was saying.\n\n'Taking him where?'\n\nMeggie just shook her head and wiped her sleeve over her tear-stained face.\n\n'The police will be here any minute,' said Elinor. 'I called them on your father's mobile. I never wanted one of those, but now I think I'd better get one after all. They simply cut my phone line.'\n\nMeggie still hadn't moved. She was trembling. 'They'll be well away by now anyway,' she said.\n\n'Good heavens, I'm sure no harm will come to him!' Elinor wrapped her coat more closely around her. The wind was getting up. There would be rain soon, she felt sure.\n\n'How do you know?' Meggie's voice was trembling with anger.\n\nHeavens, thought Elinor, if looks could kill I'd be pushing up the daisies. 'Because he went with them of his own free will,' she said crossly. 'You heard him too, didn't you?'\n\nMeggie bowed her head. Of course she'd heard him.\n\n'Yes,' she whispered. 'He was more worried about the book than me.'\n\nElinor had no answer to that. Her own father had been firmly convinced that books deserved more attention than children, and when he suddenly died she and her two sisters had barely noticed his absence. It was as if he was just sitting in the library as usual, dusting his books. But Meggie's father wasn't like that.\n\n'Nonsense, of course he was worried about you!' she said. 'I don't know any father who's more besotted with his daughter than yours. You wait and see, he'll soon be back. Now, do come in!' She reached out her hand to Meggie. 'I'll make you some hot milk with honey. Isn't that what children get when they're really miserable?'\n\nBut Meggie ignored the hand. She turned suddenly and ran away as if something had occurred to her.\n\n'Here, wait a minute!' Muttering crossly, Elinor slipped her feet into her gardening shoes and stumbled after her. The silly girl was running round behind the house to the place where the fire-eater had given his performance. But of course there was no one on the lawn now, just the burnt-out torches still stuck in the ground.\n\n'Well, well, so Master Matchstick-Swallower seems to be gone too,' said Elinor. 'At least, he's not in the house.'\n\n'Perhaps he followed them!' The girl went up to one of the burnt-out torches and touched its charred head. 'That's it! He saw what happened and followed them!' She looked hopefully at Elinor.\n\n'Of course. That's what must have happened.' Elinor really did try hard not to sound sarcastic. How do you think he followed them she added silently in her mind. On foot? But instead of saying so out loud she put a hand on Meggie's shoulder. Heavens above, the girl was still shaking. 'Come on!' she said. 'The police will soon be here, and there's nothing we can do just now. Your father will surely turn up again in a few days' time, and perhaps your fire-breathing friend will be with him. You'll just have to put up with me in the meantime.'\n\nMeggie merely nodded, and unresistingly let Elinor lead her back to the house.\n\n'On one condition, though,' said Elinor, as they reached the front door.\n\nMeggie looked at her suspiciously.\n\n'While we're here on our own, do you think you could stop looking at me as if you wanted to poison me all the time? Could that be arranged?'\n\nA small, sad little smile stole over Meggie's face. 'I should think so,' she said.\n\nThe two policemen whose car drew up on the gravel forecourt a little later asked a lot of questions, to which neither Elinor nor Meggie had many answers. No, they had never seen the men before. No, they hadn't stolen money or anything else of value, just a book. The two men exchanged amused glances when Elinor said that. She immediately gave them an angry lecture on the value of rare books, but that only made things worse. When Meggie finally said they'd be sure to find her father if they tracked down a bad man called Capricorn, they looked at each other as if she had seriously claimed that Mo had been carried off by the big bad wolf. Then they drove away again, and Elinor took Meggie to her room. The silly child had tears in her eyes once more, and Elinor hadn't the faintest idea how you set about comforting a girl of twelve, so she just told her, 'Your mother always slept in this room,' which was probably the worst thing she could have said. She quickly added, 'Read a story if you can't get to sleep,' cleared her throat twice, and then went back through the dark, empty house to her own room.\n\nWhy did it suddenly strike her as so big and so empty? In all the years she had lived alone here it had never troubled her to know that only her books awaited her behind all the doors. It was a long time since she and her sisters had played hide-and-seek in the many rooms. How quietly they always had to slip past the library door...\n\nOutside, the wind rattled the shutters of the windows. Heavens, I won't be able to sleep a wink, thought Elinor. And then she thought of the book waiting beside her bed, and with a mixture of anticipation and a very guilty conscience she disappeared into her bedroom."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Poor Exchange",
                "text": "A strong and bitter book-sickness floods one's soul. How ignominious to be strapped to this ponderous mass of paper, print and dead man's sentiment. Would it not be better, finer, braver to leave the rubbish where it lies and walk out into the world a free untrammelled illiterate Superman?\n\n[ Solomon Eagle ]\n\nMeggie didn't sleep in her own bed that night. As soon as Elinor's footsteps had died away she ran to Mo's room. He hadn't unpacked yet, and his bag stood open beside the bed. Only his books were on the bedside table, and a partly eaten chocolate bar. Mo loved chocolate. Even the mustiest old chocolate Santa Claus wasn't safe from him. Meggie broke a square off the bar and put it in her mouth, but it tasted of nothing. Nothing but sadness.\n\nMo's quilt was cold when she crept under it, and the pillow didn't yet smell of him either, only of washing powder. Meggie put her hand under the pillow. Yes, there it was: not a book, a photograph. Meggie drew it out. It was a picture of her mother; Mo always kept it under his pillow. When she was little she believed that Mo had simply invented a mother for her one day because he thought she'd have liked to have one. He told wonderful stories about her. 'Did I like her?' Meggie always asked. 'Yes, very much.' \u2013 'Where is she?' \u2013 'She had to go away when you were just three.' \u2013 'Why?' \u2013 'She just had to go away.' \u2013 'A long way away?' \u2013 'Yes, a very long way.' \u2013 'Is she dead?' \u2013 'No, I'm sure she isn't.' Meggie was used to the strange answers Mo gave to many of her questions. By the time she was ten she no longer believed in a mother made up by Mo, she believed in one who had simply gone away. These things happened. And as long as Mo was there she hadn't particularly missed having a mother.\n\nBut now he was gone, and she was alone with Elinor and Elinor's pebble eyes.\n\nShe took Mo's sweater out of his bag and buried her face in it. It's the book's fault, she kept thinking. It's all that book's fault. Why didn't he give it to Dustfinger? Sometimes, when you're so sad you don't know what to do, it helps to be angry. But then the tears came back again all the same, and Meggie fell asleep with the salty taste of them on her lips.\n\nWhen she woke all of a sudden, her heart pounding and her hair damp with sweat, it all came back to her: the men, Mo's voice, the empty road. I'll go and look for him, thought Meggie. Yes, that's what I'll do. Outside the sky was just turning red. Not long now and the sun would rise. It would be better if she was gone before it got really light. Mo's jacket was hanging over the chair under the window, as if he'd only just taken it off. Meggie took his wallet out of it \u2013 she'd need the money. Then she crept back to her room to pack a few things, only the essentials: a change of clothing and a photograph of herself and Mo, so that she could ask people if they'd seen him. Of course she couldn't take her book-box. She thought of hiding it under the bed, but she decided to write Elinor a note instead:\n\nDear Elinor, she wrote, although she didn't really think that was the correct way to address an aunt. I have to go and look for my father, she went on. Don't worry about me. Well, Elinor wasn't likely to do that anyway. And please don't tell the police I've gone or they'll be sure to bring me back. My favourite books are in my box. I'm afraid I can't take them with me. Please look after them. I'll come and fetch them as soon as I've found my father. Thank you. Meggie.\n\nP.S.: I know exactly how many books there are in the box.\n\nShe crossed out that last sentence. It would only annoy Elinor, and who knew what she might do with the books then? Sell them, probably. After all, Mo had given them all particularly nice bindings. None of them was bound in leather, because Meggie didn't like to think of a calf or a pig losing its skin for her books. Luckily, Mo understood how she felt. Many hundreds of years ago, he had once told Meggie, people made the bindings for particularly valuable books from the skin of unborn calves, charta virginea non nata, a pretty name for a terrible thing. 'And those books,' Mo had told her, 'were full of the most wonderful words about love and kindness and mercy.'\n\nWhile Meggie was packing her bag she did her best not to think, because if she did she knew she'd have to ask herself where she was going to search for Mo. She kept pushing the thought away, but all the same her hands slowed down, and at last she was standing beside her packed bag, no longer able to ignore the cruel little voice inside her. 'Well then, where are you going to look, Meggie?' it whispered. 'Are you going to turn left or right when you reach the road? You don't even know that. How far do you think you'll get before the police pick you up? A twelve-year-old girl carrying a bag, with a wild story about a father who's disappeared, and no mother they can take her back to.'\n\nMeggie put her hands over her ears, but what use was that when the voice was inside her head? She stood like that for quite a long time. Then she shook her head until the voice stopped, and dragged her bag out into the corridor. It was heavy. Much too heavy. Meggie opened it again and put almost everything back in her room. She kept only a sweater, a book (she had to have at least one), the photo and Mo's wallet. Now she could carry the bag as far as she had to.\n\nShe slipped quietly downstairs with the bag in one hand and the note for Elinor in the other. The morning sunlight was already filtering through the cracks of the shutters, but it was as silent in the big house as if even the books on the shelves were sleeping. Only the sound of quiet snoring came through Elinor's bedroom door. Meggie really meant to push the note under the door, but it wouldn't fit. She hesitated for a moment and then pressed the door-handle down. It was light in Elinor's bedroom, even though the shutters were closed. The bedside lamp was switched on, so obviously Elinor had gone to sleep while she was reading. She was lying on her back with her mouth slightly open, snoring at the plaster angel on the ceiling above her. And she was clutching a book to her chest. Meggie recognised it at once.\n\nShe was beside the bed in an instant. 'Where did you get that?' she shouted, tugging the book out of Elinor's arms, which were heavy with sleep. 'That's my father's!'\n\nElinor woke as suddenly as if Meggie had tipped cold water over her face.\n\n'You stole it!' cried Meggie, beside herself with rage. 'And you brought those men here, yes, that's what happened. You and that Capricorn are in this together! You had my father taken away, and who knows what you did with poor Dustfinger? You wanted that book from the start! I saw the way you looked at it \u2013 like something alive! It's probably worth a million \u2013 or two million or three million...'\n\nElinor was sitting up in bed, staring at the flowers on her nightdress and saying not a word. She didn't move until Meggie was struggling to get her breath back.\n\n'Finished?' she asked. 'Or are you planning to stand there yelling your head off until you drop dead?' Her voice sounded as brusque as usual, but it had another note in it too \u2013 a touch of guilt.\n\n'I'm going to tell the police!' cried Meggie. 'I'll tell them you stole the book and they ought to ask you where my father is.'\n\n'I saved you \u2013 and this book!'\n\nElinor swung her legs out of bed, went over to the window and opened the shutters.\n\n'Oh yes? And what about Mo?' Meggie's voice was rising again. 'What's going to happen when they realise he gave them the wrong book? It's all your fault if they hurt him. Dustfinger said Capricorn would kill him if he didn't hand over the book. He'll kill him!'\n\nElinor put her head out of the window and took a deep breath. Then she turned round again. 'What nonsense!' she said crossly. 'You think far too much of what that matchstick-eater says. And you've obviously read too many bad adventure stories. Kill your father? Heavens above, he's not a secret agent or anything dangerous like that! He restores old books! It's not exactly a life-threatening profession! I just wanted to take a look at the book in peace. That's the only reason I swapped it round. How could I guess those villains would come here in the middle of the night to take your father away along with their precious book? All he told me was that some crazy collector had been badgering him for that book for years. How was I to know this collector wouldn't shrink from breaking and entering, not to mention kidnapping? Even I wouldn't think up an idea like that. Well, maybe for just one or two books in the world I might.'\n\n'But that's what Dustfinger said. He said Capricorn would kill him!' Meggie was clutching the book tightly, as if that were the only way of preventing yet more misfortunes from creeping out of it. It was as if she suddenly remembered Dustfinger's voice again. 'And the little creature's screeching and struggling,' she whispered, 'would be as sweet as honey to him.'\n\n'What? Who are you talking about now?' Elinor perched on the edge of the bed and made Meggie sit down beside her. 'You'd better tell me everything you know about this business. Begin at the beginning.'\n\nMeggie opened the book and leafed through the pages until she found the big 'N' with the animal that looked so like Gwin sitting on it.\n\n'Meggie! I'm talking to you!' Elinor shook her roughly by the shoulders. 'Who were you talking about just now?'\n\n'Capricorn.' Meggie just whispered the name. Danger seemed to cling to it \u2013 to every single letter of it.\n\n'Capricorn. Go on. I've heard you mention that name a couple of times before. But who, for goodness' sake, is this Capricorn?'\n\nMeggie closed the book, stroked the binding, and looked at it from all sides. 'It doesn't give the title on the cover,' she murmured.\n\n'No, not on the cover or inside.' Elinor rose and went to her wardrobe. 'There are a good many books where you can't find the title straight away. After all, it's a relatively modern habit to put it on the cover. When books were still bound so that the spines curved inwards the title might be on the side, if anywhere, but in most cases you found it out only when you opened the book. It wasn't until bookbinders learned to make rounded spines that the title moved to the front of the book.'\n\n'Yes, I know!' said Meggie impatiently. 'But this isn't an old book. I know what old books look like.'\n\nElinor looked at her ironically. 'Oh, I apologise! I was forgetting you're a real little expert. But you're right, yes, this book isn't very old. It was published almost exactly thirty-eight years ago. Ridiculously young for a book!' She disappeared behind her open wardrobe door. 'But of course it has a title all the same. It's called Inkheart. I suspect your father intentionally bound it so that no one could identify it just from looking at the cover. You don't even find the title on the first page, and when you look carefully you see that he's removed it \u2013 the title page.'\n\nElinor's nightdress landed on the carpet, and Meggie saw a pair of tights being put on over her bare legs.\n\n'We have to go to the police again,' said Meggie.\n\n'What for?' Elinor threw a sweater over the wardrobe door. 'What are you going to tell them? Didn't you notice the way those two policemen looked at us last night?' Elinor imitated them: '\"Oh yes, what was that again, Signora Loredan? Someone broke into your house after you'd been kind enough to switch off the burglar alarm? And then this amazingly cunning burglar stole just one book, although there are books worth millions in your library, and they took this girl's father away after he'd offered to go with them in any case? Yes, very interesting. And it seems that these men were working for a man called Capricorn. Doesn't that mean goat or something?\" Heavens above, child!' Elinor emerged from behind the wardrobe door. She was wearing an unattractive check skirt and a caramel-coloured sweater that made her look as pale as dough. 'Everyone living around this lake thinks I'm crazy, and if we go back to the police with this story, then the news that Elinor Loredan has finally flipped will be all over the place. Which just goes to show that a passion for books is extremely unhealthy.'\n\n'You dress like an old granny,' said Meggie.\n\nElinor looked down at herself. 'Thank you very much,' she said, 'but comments on my appearance are uncalled-for. Anyway, I could be your granny. With a little stretch of the imagination.'\n\n'Have you ever been married?'\n\n'No, why would I want to? And could you now kindly stop making personal remarks? Hasn't your father ever taught you that it's bad manners?'\n\nMeggie did not reply. She wasn't sure herself why she had asked the question. 'This book is very valuable, isn't it?' she asked.\n\n'What, Inkheart?' Elinor took it from Meggie's hand, stroked the binding and then gave it back. 'I think so. Although you won't find a single copy in any of the catalogues or lists of valuable books. But I'm sure that many collectors would offer your father a very great deal of money if word got around that he has what may be the only copy. Actually, I found out quite a lot about it, and I believe it's not just a rare book but a good one too. I can't give an opinion on that. I scarcely managed a dozen pages last night. When the first fairy appeared I fell asleep. I never was particularly keen on stories full of fairies and dwarves and all that stuff.'\n\nElinor went round behind the wardrobe door again, obviously to look at herself in a mirror. Meggie's comment on her clothes seemed to be bothering her after all. 'Yes, I think it is very valuable,' she repeated thoughtfully. 'Although it's almost forgotten now. Hardly anyone seems to remember what it's about, hardly anyone seems to have read it. You can't even find it in libraries. But now and then these strange stories about it do crop up: they say it's been forgotten only because all the copies that still existed were stolen. I expect that's nonsense. Although it's not just plants and animals that die out, so do books. Quite often, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure you could fill a hundred houses like this one to the roof with all the books that have disappeared for ever.' Elinor closed the wardrobe door again, and pinned up her hair with clumsy fingers. 'As far as I know the author's still alive, but obviously he's never done anything about getting his book reprinted \u2013 which strikes me as odd. I mean, you write a story so that people will read it, don't you? Well, perhaps he doesn't like his own story any more, or perhaps it just sold so badly that no publisher was willing to bring it out again. How would I know?'\n\n'All the same, I don't think they stole it just because it's valuable,' muttered Meggie.\n\n'You don't?' Elinor laughed out loud. 'My word, you really are your father's daughter! Mortimer could never imagine people doing something bad for money, because money has never meant much to him. Do you have any idea what a book can be worth?'\n\nMeggie looked at her crossly. 'Yes, I do. But I still don't think that's the reason.'\n\n'I do. And Sherlock Holmes would think so too. Have you ever read those books, by the way? Wonderful stuff. Specially on rainy days.' Elinor slipped her shoes on. She had strangely small feet for such a sturdily built woman.\n\n'Perhaps there's some kind of secret in it,' murmured Meggie, thoughtfully caressing the close-printed pages.\n\n'You mean something like invisible messages written in lemon juice, or a map hidden in one of the pictures showing where to find treasure?' Elinor sounded so sarcastic that Meggie felt like wringing her short neck.\n\n'Why not?' Meggie closed the book again and put it firmly under her arm. 'Why else would they take Mo too? The book would have been enough.'\n\nElinor shrugged her shoulders.\n\nOf course she can't admit she never thought of that, Meggie told herself scornfully. She always has to be right!\n\nElinor looked at Meggie as if she had guessed her thoughts. 'Listen, I tell you what, why don't you read it?' she said. 'You really might find something that you don't think belongs in the story. A few extra words here, a couple of unnecessary letters there \u2013 and there's your secret message. The signpost pointing to the treasure. Who knows how long it will be before your father comes back? You'll have to do something to pass the time here.'\n\nBefore Meggie could answer that one, Elinor bent to pick up a piece of paper lying on the carpet beside her bed. It was Meggie's goodbye note. She must have dropped it when she saw the book in Elinor's arms.\n\n'What on earth's this?' asked Elinor, when she had read it, frowning. 'You were planning to go and look for your father? Where, for heaven's sake? You're even more foolish than I thought.'\n\nMeggie pressed Inkheart close to her. 'Who else is going to look for him?' she said. Her lips began to tremble, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.\n\n'Well then, we'll just have to go and look for him together!' replied Elinor, sounding annoyed. 'But first let's give him a chance to come back. Do you think he'll be pleased to get back here only to find you've disappeared, gone looking for him in the big wide world?'\n\nMeggie shook her head. Elinor's carpet was swimming before her eyes. A tear ran down her nose.\n\n'Right, that's all settled, then,' growled Elinor, offering Meggie a cotton handkerchief. 'Blow your nose and then we'll have breakfast.'\n\nShe wouldn't let Meggie out of the house before she had eaten a roll and swallowed a glass of milk.\n\n'Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,' she announced, buttering her own third slice of bread. 'And what's more, when your father gets back I don't want you telling him I've been starving you. Like the wicked stepmother in the fairy tale, you know.'\n\nAn answer sprang to the tip of Meggie's tongue, but she swallowed it along with the last of her roll, and took the book outside."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Lion's Den",
                "text": "\u2002Look. (Grown-ups skip this paragraph.) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending, I already said in the very first line how it was my favourite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming.\n\n\u2014William Goldman, The Princess Bride\n\nMeggie sat on the bench behind the house. Dustfinger's burnt-out torches were still stuck in the ground beside it. She didn't usually hesitate so long before opening a book, but she was afraid of what was waiting for her inside this one. That was a brand-new feeling. She had never before been afraid of what a book would tell her. Far from it. Usually, she was so eager to let it lead her into an undiscovered world, one she had never been to before, that she often started to read at the most unsuitable moments. Both she and Mo often read at breakfast and, as a result, he had more than once taken her to school late. And she used to read under the desk at school too, and late at night in bed until Mo pulled back the covers and threatened to take all the books out of her room so that she'd get enough sleep for once. Of course he would never have done such a thing, and he knew she knew he wouldn't, but for a few days after such a threat she would put her book under her pillow around nine in the evening and let it go on whispering to her in her dreams, so that Mo could feel he was being a really good father.\n\nShe wouldn't have put this book under her pillow, for fear of what it might whisper to her. For the very first time in her life Meggie wasn't sure that she wanted to enter the world waiting for her between the covers of a book. All the bad things that had happened over the last three days seemed to have come out of this book, and perhaps they were only a faint reflection of what still awaited her inside it.\n\nAll the same, she had to begin. Where else was she to look for Mo? Elinor was right; there was no point in simply running off at random. She had to look for Mo's trail among the printed letters in Inkheart. But she had hardly opened it at the first page when she heard footsteps behind her.\n\n'You'll get sunstroke if you carry on sitting in the full sunlight,' said a familiar voice. Meggie spun round.\n\nDustfinger made her a bow. Of course his face wore its usual smile. 'Well, what a surprise!' he said, leaning over her shoulder and looking at the open book on her lap. 'So it's here after all. You've got it.'\n\nMeggie was still looking uncomprehendingly at his scarred face. How could he stand there acting as if nothing had happened? 'Where've you been?' she snapped. 'Didn't they take you too? And where's Mo? Where have they taken him?' She couldn't get the words out fast enough.\n\nBut Dustfinger took his time over answering. He examined the bushes all around as if he had never seen anything like them before. He was wearing his coat, although the day was so hot that perspiration stood out in gleaming little beads on his forehead. 'No, they didn't take me too,' he said at last, turning to face Meggie again. 'But I saw them drive off with your father. I ran after them, right through the undergrowth, a couple of times I thought I'd break my neck going down that wretched slope, but I got to the gate just in time to see them driving off south. Naturally I recognised them at once. Capricorn had sent his best men. Even Basta was with them.'\n\nMeggie was staring at his lips as if she could make the words come out of them faster. 'Do you know where they've taken Mo?' Her voice shook with impatience.\n\n'To Capricorn's village, I think. But I wanted to be sure,' said Dustfinger, taking off his coat and draping it over the bench, 'so I ran after them. I know it sounds silly to run after a car,' he added, when Meggie frowned in disbelief, 'but I was so furious. It had all been for nothing \u2013 me warning you, the three of us coming here... Well, I managed to hitch a lift to the next village. They'd filled up the fuel tank there, four men in black, not very friendly. And they hadn't been gone long. So I... er... borrowed a moped and tried to go on after them. Don't look at me like that \u2013 you can set your mind at rest \u2013 I took the moped back later. It wasn't particularly fast, but luckily the roads are very, very winding here, and I eventually saw them again far down in the valley, while I was still making my way round the bends above them. Then I was sure they were taking your father to Capricorn's headquarters. Not to one of his hideouts further north, but straight to the lion's den.'\n\n'The lion's den,' Meggie repeated. 'Where is it?'\n\n'About three hundred kilometres south of here, I'd say.' Dustfinger sat down on the bench beside her and blinked as he peered at the sun. 'Not far from the coast.' Once again, he looked at the book still lying on Meggie's lap. 'Capricorn's not going to be pleased when his men bring him the wrong book,' he said. 'I only hope he doesn't take his disappointment out on your father.'\n\n'But Mo didn't know it was the wrong book! Elinor swapped them round in secret.' There they came again, those infuriating tears! Meggie wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Dustfinger wrinkled his brow, looking at her as if he wasn't sure whether to believe her.\n\n'She says she just wanted to look at it! She had it in her bedroom. Mo knew the secret place where she'd hidden it, and because the book they took was wrapped in brown paper he never noticed it was the wrong one! And Capricorn's men didn't check either.'\n\n'Of course not. How could they?' Dustfinger's voice was full of scorn. 'They can't read. One book is much like any other to them, just printed paper. Anyway, they're used to being given anything they want.'\n\nMeggie's voice was shrill with fear. 'You must take me to that village! Please!' She looked pleadingly at Dustfinger. 'I'll explain everything to Capricorn, and give him the book, and then he'll let Mo go. All right?'\n\nDustfinger blinked up at the sun again. 'Yes, of course,' he said, without looking at Meggie. 'That's probably the only solution...'\n\nBut before he could say any more they heard Elinor's voice calling from the house. 'Well, well, what have we here?' she cried, leaning out of her open window. Its pale yellow curtain flapped in the wind as if a ghost were caught in it. 'If it isn't our friend the matchstick-swallower!'\n\nMeggie jumped up and ran over the lawn towards her. 'Elinor, he knows where Mo is!' she cried.\n\n'Does he indeed?' Elinor leaned on the windowsill and scrutinised Dustfinger through narrowed eyes. 'Put that book down!' she snapped at him. 'Meggie, take the book away from him.'\n\nTaken aback, Meggie turned round. Dustfinger really was holding Inkheart, but when Meggie looked at him he quickly put it back down on the bench. Then, with a nasty glance in Elinor's direction, he beckoned her over. Hesitantly, Meggie went to him.\n\n'Yes, all right, I'll take you to your father, even though it may be dangerous for me,' whispered Dustfinger when she was beside him. 'But she stays here, understand?' He slyly nodded his head in Elinor's direction.\n\nMeggie looked uncertainly at the house.\n\n'Like me to guess what he whispered to you?' called Elinor across the lawn.\n\nDustfinger cast Meggie a warning glance, but she ignored it. 'He's going to take me to Mo!' she called back.\n\n'A good idea,' called Elinor, 'but I'm coming too. Even if the pair of you might prefer to do without my company!'\n\n'We certainly might!' muttered Dustfinger, smiling guilelessly at Elinor. 'But who knows, perhaps we can swap her for your father? I dare say Capricorn could do with another maidservant. I know she's no good at cooking, but perhaps she can do the laundry \u2013 even if that's not something you learn from books.'\n\nMeggie had to laugh \u2013 although she couldn't tell from Dustfinger's face if he was joking or meant it seriously."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Coward",
                "text": "\u2002Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.\n\n\u2014Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows\n\nDustfinger did not steal into Meggie's room until he was quite sure she was asleep. She had locked her door. Undoubtedly Elinor had persuaded her to do that, because she didn't trust him and because Meggie had refused to give Inkheart back to her. Dustfinger couldn't help smiling as he inserted the thin wire into the lock. What a stupid woman she was, in spite of all those books she'd read! Did she really think such an ordinary lock was any obstacle? 'Well, perhaps it might be for fat fingers like yours, Elinor!' he whispered to himself as he opened the door. 'But my fingers play with fire, and it's made them quick and skilful.'\n\nHis liking for Silvertongue's daughter was a more serious obstacle, and his guilty conscience didn't make matters any easier. Yes, Dustfinger did have a guilty conscience as he crept into Meggie's room, although he hadn't come to steal the book. Naturally Capricorn still wanted it \u2013 the book and Silvertongue's daughter too, those were his new orders. But that must wait. Tonight, Dustfinger was there for a different reason. Tonight, something that had been gnawing at his heart for years drove him to Meggie's room.\n\nHe stood thoughtfully beside the bed, looking at the sleeping girl. Betraying her father to Capricorn had not been particularly difficult, but with her it would be different. Her face reminded Dustfinger of another one, although no grief had yet left dark shadows on Meggie's childish features. Strange, every time the girl looked at him he felt a wish to show her that he didn't deserve the distrust he always saw in her eyes, even when she was smiling at him. She looked at her father in a very different way \u2013 as if he could protect her from all the dark and evil in the world. What a stupid, stupid idea! No one would be able to protect her from that.\n\nDustfinger stroked the scars on his face and frowned. Enough of such useless thoughts. He would take Capricorn what he wanted: the girl and the book. But not tonight.\n\nGwin moved on his shoulder, trying to wriggle out of his collar, which he liked as little as he liked the dog's leash Dustfinger always carried with him. He wanted to go hunting, but Dustfinger wasn't letting him out. Last night the marten had run away from him while he was talking to Basta. The furry little devil was still afraid of Basta. Dustfinger couldn't blame him.\n\nMeggie was sleeping soundly, her face buried in a grey sweater, probably her father's. She murmured something in her sleep but Dustfinger couldn't make out what. Once again his guilty conscience stirred, but he pushed the tiresome feeling away. He couldn't do with that kind of thing, not now and not later. The girl was nothing to do with him, and he was quits with her father now. Yes, quits. He had no reason to feel like a miserable double-dealing villain.\n\nHe looked round the dark room, in search of something. Where would Meggie put the book? There was a red box beside her bed. Dustfinger lifted the lid. Gwin's chain clinked softly as he leaned forward.\n\nThe box was full of books \u2013 wonderful books. Dustfinger took out the torch from under his coat and shone it on them. 'Look at that!' he murmured. 'What beauties! Like a party of ladies dressed in their best to go to a prince's ball.' Silvertongue had probably rebound them after Meggie's little fingers had worn out the old bindings. Yes, of course, there was his sign, the unicorn's head. Each book bore it, and each was bound in a different colour. All the hues of the rainbow were gathered together in that box.\n\nThe book Dustfinger was looking for was right at the bottom. With its silvery green binding it looked plain, a poor thing among all the other grand and lordly volumes.\n\nIt didn't surprise Dustfinger that Silvertongue had given this book such a plain dress to wear. Very likely Meggie's father hated it as much as he loved it. Dustfinger carefully extracted it from the other books. It was almost nine years since he last had it in his hands. At the time it had still had a cardboard binding and a torn paper dust-jacket.\n\nDustfinger raised his head. Meggie sighed, and moved until her sleeping face was turned his way. How unhappy she looked. She must be having a nightmare. Her lips quivered, and her hands clutched the sweater as if she were looking for something \u2013 or someone \u2013 to give her security. But you are usually alone in nightmares, dreadfully alone. Dustfinger remembered many of his own bad dreams and, for a moment, he was tempted to put out his hand and wake Meggie. What a soft-hearted fool he was!\n\nHe turned his back to the bed. Out of sight, out of mind. Then he opened the book hastily before he could think better of it. His breathing was heavy \u2013 as if he had filled his mouth with liquid in preparation for breathing fire. He leafed through the first few pages, and began to read, slowly turning page after page after page. But with every page his fingers hesitated a little longer, until suddenly he closed the book. Moonlight was seeping through the cracks in the shutters. He had no idea how long he had been standing there, his eyes lost in the labyrinth of letters. He had always been a very slow reader...\n\n'Coward!' he whispered. 'Oh, what a coward you are, Dustfinger!' He bit his lips until they hurt. 'Come on!' he told himself. 'This may be your last chance, you fool! Once Capricorn has the book he'll never let you look at it again.' Once more, he opened the book, leafed rapidly through to about the middle \u2013 and closed it again, with a sound loud enough to make Meggie give a little start in her sleep and bury her head under the covers. Dustfinger waited motionless beside the bed until she was breathing regularly again, then leaned over her treasure chest with a deep sigh and put the book back under the others.\n\nSoundlessly, he closed the lid.\n\n'Did you see that, Gwin?' he whispered to the marten. 'I just dare not look. Wouldn't you rather find a braver master? Think it over.' Gwin chattered softly in his ear, but if that was an answer Dustfinger didn't understand it.\n\nFor a moment he went on listening to Meggie's quiet breathing, then stole back to the door. 'Well, what does it matter?' he muttered when he was out in the corridor. 'Who wants to know the end of a story in advance?'\n\nHe climbed up to the attic bedroom Elinor had given him and lay down on the narrow bed with the crates of books towering around it. But he could not sleep until morning came."
            },
            {
                "title": "Going Further South",
                "text": "\u2003The Road goes ever on and on\n\n\u2003Down from the door where it began.\n\n\u2003Now far ahead the Road has gone,\n\n\u2003And I must follow, if I can,\n\n\u2003Pursuing it with weary feet,\n\n\u2003Until it joins some larger way\n\n\u2003Where many paths and errands meet.\n\n\u2003And whither then? I cannot say.\n\n\u2014J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring\n\nAfter breakfast next morning Elinor spread a crumpled road map out on the kitchen table. 'Right, three hundred kilometres south of here,' she said with a wary glance at Dustfinger. 'So show us exactly where we have to look for Meggie's father.'\n\nMeggie looked at Dustfinger, her heart thudding. There were dark shadows round his eyes, as if he had slept very badly. Hesitantly, he came over to the table, rubbing his stubbly chin. He bent over the map, scrutinised it for what seemed an eternity, and finally pointed with his finger.\n\n'There,' he said. 'Capricorn's village is just there.'\n\nElinor looked over his shoulder. 'Liguria,' she said. 'Aha. And what is the name of this village, if I may ask? Capricornia?' She was examining Dustfinger's face as if tracing his scars with her eyes.\n\n'It doesn't have a name.' Dustfinger responded to her gaze with unconcealed dislike. 'I expect it had one once, but the name was already forgotten before Capricorn settled there. You won't find it on this map, or any other either. To the rest of the world the village is just a collection of tumbledown houses reached along what can hardly be called a road.'\n\n'Hmm.' Elinor bent closer to the map. 'I've never been in that region. I was in Genoa once. I bought a very fine edition of Alice in Wonderland there, in good condition and for half what it was worth.' She looked enquiringly at Meggie. 'Do you like Alice in Wonderland?'\n\n'Not particularly,' said Meggie, staring at the map. Elinor shook her head at such childish folly, and turned back to Dustfinger.\n\n'What does this Capricorn do when he's not stealing books and abducting people's fathers?' she asked. 'If I understand Meggie correctly, you know him pretty well.'\n\nDustfinger avoided her eyes and ran his finger along a blue river winding its way through the green and pale brown of the map. 'We come from the same place,' he said. 'But apart from that we don't have much in common.'\n\nElinor looked at him so penetratingly that Meggie would not have been surprised to see a hole suddenly appear in his forehead. 'There's one thing that strikes me as strange,' she said. 'Meggie's father wanted to keep Inkheart safe from this Capricorn. So why bring the book here to me? He was practically running into Capricorn's arms!'\n\nDustfinger shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, perhaps he just thought your library would be the safest hiding-place.'\n\nA memory stirred in Meggie's mind. At first, she couldn't identify it, but then it all came flooding back to her, perfectly clearly, as vivid as a picture in a book. She saw Dustfinger standing beside their camper van at the gate of the farmhouse, and it was almost as if she heard his voice again...\n\nShe looked at him in horror. 'You told Mo that Capricorn was in the north!' she said. 'He specially asked, and you said you were sure of it.'\n\nDustfinger examined his fingernails.\n\n'Well, yes... yes, that's right,' he admitted, without looking at Meggie or Elinor. He just went on staring at his nails. Finally, he rubbed them on his sweater as if to remove an ugly mark. 'You don't trust me,' he said hoarsely, still without looking at them. 'Neither of you trust me. I\u2014I can understand that, but I wasn't lying. Capricorn has two main headquarters, and several smaller hideouts in case things get too hot for him, or one of his men needs to disappear for a while. He usually spends the summer months in the north and doesn't come south until October, but this year he's obviously spending the summer down in the south. How would I know why? Perhaps he had trouble with the police in the north? Perhaps he has business of some kind in the south and wants to see to it personally?' His voice sounded injured, like the voice of a child unjustly accused. 'In any case, his men drove south with Meggie's father, I saw them go myself, and when Capricorn is in the south he always does anything of importance in that village. He feels safe in it, safer than anywhere else. He's never had any trouble with the police there, he can act like a king, as if the whole world belonged to him. He makes the laws, he decides what happens, he can do or not do anything he likes. His men take care of that. Believe you me, I understand these things.' Dustfinger smiled. It was a bitter smile. It seemed to be saying: if only you knew! But you don't know anything. You don't understand anything.\n\nMeggie felt unease spread through her again. It was not caused by what Dustfinger said, but by what he wasn't saying. Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.\n\nElinor seemed to be feeling the same. 'For heaven's sake, don't make such a mystery of it!' she snapped. 'I'm asking you again, what does this Capricorn do? How does he earn his money?'\n\nDustfinger crossed his arms. 'You won't get any more information out of me. Ask him yourself. Even taking you to his village could cost me dear, so am I going to tell you about Capricorn's business? Not likely!' He shook his head. 'I warned Meggie's father. I advised him to take Capricorn the book of his own free will, but he wouldn't listen. If I hadn't warned him, Capricorn's men would have found him much sooner. Ask Meggie! She was there when I warned him. Right, I didn't tell him everything I knew. So what? I talk about Capricorn as little as possible, I try not even to think of him, and you take my word for it, once you know him you'll feel the same.'\n\nElinor wrinkled her nose as if such an idea were too ridiculous for her to waste a single word on it. 'So I assume you can't tell me why he's so keen to get hold of this book?' she asked, folding up the road map. 'Is he some kind of collector?'\n\nDustfinger ran his finger along the edge of the table. 'All I'm going to tell you is that he wants this book. And that's why you'd better give it to him. I once knew his men to stand outside a man's house for four nights running just because Capricorn took a fancy to the man's dog.'\n\n'Did he get the dog?' asked Meggie quietly.\n\n'Of course,' replied Dustfinger, looking at her thoughtfully. 'Believe me, no one sleeps soundly with Capricorn's men standing outside the door looking up at their window \u2013 or their children's window. Capricorn usually gets what he wants within a couple of days, maximum.'\n\n'Disgusting!' said Elinor. 'He wouldn't have got my dog.'\n\nDustfinger examined his fingernails again, smiling.\n\n'Stop grinning like that!' snapped Elinor. And, turning to Meggie, she added, 'You'd better pack a few things! We set off within the hour. It's about time you got your father back. Even if I don't like having to leave the book with this Capri-what's-his-name. I hate to see books fall into the wrong hands.'\n\nThey were going in Elinor's estate car, although Dustfinger would have preferred to travel in Mo's camper van.\n\n'Nonsense, I've never driven anything like that,' said Elinor, dumping in Dustfinger's arms a cardboard box full of provisions for the journey. 'Anyway, Mortimer's locked the van.'\n\nMeggie saw that Dustfinger had an answer on the tip of his tongue, but chose to keep it to himself. 'Suppose we have to spend the night somewhere?' he asked, carrying the box over to Elinor's car.\n\n'Heavens above, who said anything about that? I intend to be back here tomorrow morning at the latest. I hate leaving my books on their own for more than a day.'\n\nDustfinger rolled his eyes up at the sky, as if more sense might be expected there than in Elinor's head, and began clambering into the back seat, but Elinor stopped him. 'No, wait, you'd better drive,' she said, handing him her car keys. 'You're the one who knows where we're going.'\n\nBut Dustfinger gave her back the keys. 'I can't drive,' he said. 'It's bad enough sitting in a car, never mind driving it.'\n\nElinor got behind the steering wheel, shaking her head. 'Well, you're an oddity and no mistake!' she said as Meggie climbed into the passenger seat beside her. 'And I hope you really do know where Meggie's father is, or you'll find out that this Capricorn of yours isn't the only person to be frightened of around here!'\n\nMeggie wound down her window as Elinor started the engine. She looked back at Mo's van. It felt bad leaving it behind here, worse than leaving a house, even this one. Strange as a place might be, the camper van meant that Mo and she always had a bit of home with them. Now that was gone too, and nothing was familiar any more except the clothes in her travelling bag in the boot of the estate car. She had also packed a few things for Mo \u2013 and two of her books.\n\n'Interesting choice!' Elinor had commented when she lent Meggie a bag for the books, an old-fashioned one made of dark leather that you could sling over your shoulder. 'These stories about the ill-made knight, and people with hairy feet going on a long journey to dark places. Have you read them both?'\n\nMeggie had nodded. 'Lots of times,' she smiled at Elinor's descriptions, stroking the bindings before she put the books in the bag. She could remember every detail of the day when Mo had rebound them.\n\n'Oh dear, don't look so dismal!' Elinor had said, looking at her with concern. 'You just wait \u2013 our journey isn't going to be half as bad as those hairy-footed people's quest. It will be much shorter too.'\n\nMeggie would have been glad to feel as sure of that herself. The book that was the reason for their own journey was in the boot, under the spare tyre. Elinor had put it in a plastic bag. 'Don't let Dustfinger see where it is!' she urged Meggie, before putting it into her hands. 'I still don't trust him.'\n\nBut Meggie had decided to trust Dustfinger. She wanted to trust him. She needed to trust him. Who else could lead her to Mo?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Capricorn's Village",
                "text": "\u2002'But to the last question,' Zelig replied, 'he probably flew to beyond the Dark Regions, where people don't go and cattle don't stray, where the sky is copper, the earth iron, and where the evil forces live under roofs of petrified toadstools and in tunnels abandoned by moles.'\n\n\u2014Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller\n\nThe sun was already high in the cloudless sky when they set off. Soon the air was so hot and muggy in Elinor's car that Meggie's T-shirt was sticking to her skin with sweat. Elinor opened her window and passed a bottle of water round. She herself was wearing a knitted jacket buttoned up to her chin, and when Meggie wasn't thinking of Mo or Capricorn she wondered whether Elinor might melt away inside it.\n\nDustfinger sat on the back seat, so silent that you could almost have forgotten he was there. He had put Gwin on his lap. The marten slept while Dustfinger's hands restlessly stroked his fur, passing over it again and again. Now and then Meggie turned to look at him. He was usually gazing out of the window indifferently, as if he were looking straight through the mountains and trees, houses and rocky slopes passing by outside. His expression seemed perfectly empty, as if he were thinking of something far away, and once, when Meggie glanced round, there was such sadness on his scarred face that she quickly turned to look out of the windscreen ahead of her.\n\nShe would have liked to have an animal on her own lap during this long, long journey. Perhaps it would have driven away the dark thoughts that insisted on coming into her mind. Outside, the world was a place of gently unfolding mountains rising higher and higher. Sometimes it seemed as if they would crush the road between their grey and rocky sides. But worse than the mountains were the tunnels. Pictures seemed to lurk in them that not even Gwin's warm body could have kept at bay. They seemed to be hiding there in the darkness, waiting for Meggie: pictures of Mo in some dark, cold place, and of Capricorn... Meggie knew it must be Capricorn, although his face was different every time.\n\nShe tried reading for a while, but soon noticed that she wasn't taking in a word of what she read, so she gave it up and stared out of the window like Dustfinger. Elinor chose minor roads without much traffic on them. 'Otherwise the driving gets so boring,' she said. It made no difference to Meggie. She just wanted to arrive. She looked impatiently at the mountains, and the houses where other people lived. Sometimes, through the window of a car coming the other way, she caught a glimpse of a stranger's face, and then it was gone, like a book you open then close at once. When they were driving through one village she saw a man by the roadside sticking a plaster on the grazed knee of a tearful little girl. He was stroking her hair comfortingly, and Meggie couldn't help remembering how often Mo had done that for her, how he sometimes chased all round the house, cursing when he couldn't find a plaster in time. The memory brought tears to her eyes.\n\n'Heavens above, it's quieter in here than in a Pharaoh's burial chamber!' said Elinor at some point. (Meggie thought she said 'Heavens above' rather a lot.) 'Couldn't one of you at least say something now and then? \"Oh, what a lovely landscape!\", for instance, or, \"That's a very fine castle!\" If you keep as deathly quiet as this I'll be falling asleep at the wheel any minute now.' She still hadn't undone a single button of her knitted jacket.\n\n'I don't see any castle,' muttered Meggie, but it wasn't long before Elinor spotted one. 'Sixteenth century,' she announced as the ruined walls appeared on a mountainside. 'Tragic story. Forbidden love, pursuit, death, grief and pain.' And as they passed between the strong and silent rock walls Elinor told the tale of a battle that had raged in this very place over six hundred years ago. 'To this day, if you dig among the stones you'll still find bones and dented helmets.' She seemed to know a story about every church tower. Some were so unlikely that Meggie wrinkled her brow in disbelief, and Elinor, without taking her eyes off the road, always responded, 'No, really, that's just what happened!' She seemed to be particularly fond of bloodthirsty stories: tales of the beheading of unhappy lovers, or princes walled up alive. 'Yes, everything looks very peaceful now,' she remarked when Meggie turned a little pale at one of these stories. 'But I can tell you there's always a sad story somewhere. Ah, well, times were more exciting a few hundred years ago.'\n\nMeggie didn't know what was so exciting about times when, if Elinor was to be believed, your only choice was between dying of the plague or getting slaughtered by invading soldiers. But Elinor's cheeks glowed pink with excitement at the sight of some burnt-out old castle, and whenever she told tales of the warrior princes and greedy bishops who had once spread terror and death abroad in the very mountains through which they themselves were now driving on modern paved roads, a romantic gleam lit her usually chilly pebble eyes.\n\n'My dear Elinor, you were obviously born into the wrong story,' said Dustfinger at last. These were the first words he had spoken since they set out.\n\n'The wrong story? The wrong period, you mean. Yes, I've often thought so myself.'\n\n'Call it what you like,' said Dustfinger. 'Anyway, you should get on well with Capricorn. He likes the same kinds of stories as you.'\n\n'Is that supposed to be an insult?' asked Elinor, offended. The comparison seemed to trouble her, for after that she kept quiet for almost an hour, which left Meggie with nothing to distract her from her miserable thoughts and the frightening pictures they conjured up for her in every tunnel.\n\nTwilight was beginning to fall when the mountains drew back from the road and the sea suddenly appeared beyond green hills, a sea as wide as another sky. The sinking sun made it glisten like the skin of a beautiful snake. It was a long time since Meggie had seen the sea, and then it had been a cold sea, slate-grey and pale from the wind. This sea looked different, very different.\n\nIt warmed Meggie's heart just to see it, but all too often it disappeared behind the tall, ugly buildings covering the narrow strip of land that lay between the water and the encroaching hills. Sometimes, the hills reached all the way down to the sea, and in the light of the setting sun they looked as if they were giant waves that had rolled up on to the land.\n\nAs they followed the winding coastal road Elinor began telling stories again: tales of the Romans who, she said, had built the road they were on, and how they feared the savage inhabitants of this narrow strip of land. Meggie was only half listening. Palm trees grew beside the road, their fronds dusty and sharp-edged. Giant agaves flowered among the palms, looking like spiders squatting there with their long spiny leaves. The light behind them turned pink and lemon-yellow as the sun sank further down towards the sea, and dark blue trickled down from the sky like ink flowing into water. It was so beautiful a sight that it almost hurt to look at it. Meggie had thought the place where Capricorn lived would be quite different. Beauty and fear make uneasy companions.\n\nThey drove through a small town, past houses as bright as if a child had painted them. They were colour-washed orange and pink, red and yellow. A great many were yellow: pale yellow, brownish yellow, sandy yellow, dirty yellow, and they had green shutters and red-brown roofs. Even the gathering twilight couldn't drain them of their brightness.\n\n'It doesn't seem so very dangerous here,' remarked Meggie, as they drove past another pink house.\n\n'That's because you keep looking to your left,' said Dustfinger behind her. 'But there's always a light side and a dark side. Look to your right for a change.'\n\nMeggie did as he said. At first she saw nothing but the brightly coloured houses there too. They crowded close to the roadside, leaning against each other as if they were arm in arm. But then the houses were suddenly left behind, and steep hills with the night already settling among their folds lined the road instead. Yes, Dustfinger was right. It looked sinister over there, and the few houses left seemed to be drowning in the gathering dusk.\n\nIt quickly grew darker, for night falls fast in the south, and Meggie was glad that Elinor was driving along the well lit coastal road. But all too soon Dustfinger told her to turn off along a minor road leading away from the coast, away from the sea and the brightly coloured houses, and into the dark.\n\nThe road wound further and further into the hills, going up and down as the slopes by the roadside grew steeper and steeper. The light of the headlamps fell on gorse, on vines run wild, and olive trees crouching like bent old men beside the road.\n\nOnly twice did they meet another vehicle coming towards them. Now and then the lights of a village emerged from the darkness. But the roads along which Dustfinger guided Elinor led away from the lights and deeper and deeper into the night. Several times the beam of the headlights fell on ruined houses, but Elinor didn't know stories about any of them. No princes had lived in those wretched hovels, no red-robed bishops, only farmers and labourers whose stories no one had written down, and now they were lost, buried under wild thyme and fast-growing gorse.\n\n'Are we still going the right way?' asked Elinor in a muted voice, as if the world around her were too quiet for anyone to speak out loud. 'Where on earth do we find a village in this God-forsaken wilderness? We've probably taken at least two wrong turnings already.'\n\nBut Dustfinger only shook his head. 'We're going the right way,' he replied. 'Once we're over that hill you'll be able to see the houses.'\n\n'I certainly hope so!' muttered Elinor. 'I can hardly make out the road. Heavens above, I had no idea anywhere in the world was still so dark. Couldn't you have told me what a long way it was? Then I'd have filled up the tank again. I don't even know if we have enough fuel to make it back to the coast.'\n\n'So whose car is this?' Dustfinger snapped back. 'Mine? I told you I don't know the first thing about cars. Now, keep your eyes on the road. We'll be coming to the bridge any moment.'\n\n'Bridge?' Elinor drove round the next bend and suddenly stamped on the brake. Right across the road, lit by two builders' lamps, was a metal barrier. It looked rusty, as if it had stood there for years.\n\n'There!' said Elinor, clapping her hands on the steering wheel. 'We have gone the wrong way. I told you so.'\n\n'No, we haven't.' Dustfinger took Gwin off his shoulder and got out of the car. He looked round, listening intently as he approached the barrier, then dragged it over to the side of the road.\n\nElinor's look of disbelief almost made Meggie laugh out loud. 'Has the man gone right out of his mind?' she whispered. 'He doesn't think I'm going to drive down a closed road in this darkness, does he?'\n\nAll the same, she started the engine when Dustfinger impatiently waved her on. As soon as she was past him he pulled the barrier back across the road.\n\n'No need to look at me like that!' he said, climbing back into the car. 'The barrier's always there. Capricorn had it put up to keep unwanted visitors away. Not that people often venture up here. Capricorn spreads stories about the village that keep most of them at a distance, but\u2014'\n\n'What sort of stories?' Meggie interrupted him, although she didn't think she really wanted to know.\n\n'Blood-curdling stories,' said Dustfinger. 'Like most folk, the locals round here are superstitious. The most common tale is that the Devil himself lives on the far side of that hill.'\n\nMeggie was cross with herself for being scared, but now she just couldn't take her eyes off the dark hilltop. 'Mo says human beings invented the Devil,' she said.\n\n'Well, maybe.' Dustfinger's mysterious smile was hovering round his mouth again. 'But you wanted to know about the stories. They say no bullet can kill the men who live in that village, they can walk through walls, they kidnap three boys every month when the moon is new, and Capricorn teaches them to commit theft, arson and murder.'\n\n'Good heavens, who thought all that up? The folk of these parts or this man Capricorn himself?' Elinor was leaning right over the steering wheel. The road was full of potholes, and she had to drive very slowly so as not to get stuck.\n\n'Both.' Dustfinger leaned back and let Gwin nibble his fingers. 'Capricorn rewards people who think up new stories. The one man who never joins in that game is Basta. He's so superstitious himself he even goes out of his way to avoid black cats.'\n\nBasta. Meggie remembered the name, but before she could ask any more questions Dustfinger was speaking again. He seemed to enjoy telling these tales. 'Oh yes, I almost forgot!\n\nOf course everyone living in the village of the damned has the Evil Eye, even the women.'\n\n'The Evil Eye?' Meggie looked at him.\n\n'That's right. One glance and you fall mortally ill. Three days after that, at the latest, and you're dead as a doornail.'\n\n'Who'd believe a thing like that?' murmured Meggie, turning to look ahead of her again.\n\n'Idiots would.' Elinor stamped on the brake again. The car skidded over gravel on the road. The bridge Dustfinger had mentioned lay ahead, its grey stone pale in the headlights.\n\n'Go on, go on!' said Dustfinger impatiently. 'It'll hold, though you might not think so.'\n\n'It looks as if the ancient Romans built it,' muttered Elinor. 'But for donkeys, not cars.'\n\nAll the same, Elinor drove on. Meggie squeezed her eyes tight shut, and didn't open them until she could hear the gravel under the car tyres once more.\n\n'Capricorn likes this bridge a lot,' said Dustfinger quietly. 'A single well-armed man is enough to make it impassable. But luckily he doesn't post a guard here every night.'\n\n'Dustfinger.' Meggie turned hesitantly to look at him as Elinor's car laboured up the last hill. 'What are we going to say when they ask us how we found the village? I mean, it's not going to be a good idea for Capricorn to know that you showed us the way, is it?'\n\n'No, you're right,' muttered Dustfinger, avoiding Meggie's eyes. 'Although we are bringing him the book.' He picked up Gwin, who was clambering around the back seat, held him so that he couldn't snap, and then lured him into the rucksack with a piece of bread. The marten had been restless ever since darkness fell. He wanted to go hunting.\n\nThey had reached the top of the hill. The world around them had disappeared from view, swallowed up by the night, but not far away a few pale rectangles glowed in the dark. Lighted windows.\n\n'There it is,' said Dustfinger. 'Capricorn's village. Or the Devil's village, if you prefer.' He laughed softly.\n\nElinor turned to him crossly. 'For heaven's sake, will you stop that!' she snapped at him. 'You really seem to like these stories. Who knows, perhaps they're all your own invention, and this Capricorn is just a rather eccentric book collector!'\n\nDustfinger made no reply, but only looked out of the window with the strange smile that Meggie sometimes wanted to wipe off his face. Yet again it seemed to be saying: how stupid you two are!\n\nElinor had switched off the engine. The silence surrounding them was so absolute that Meggie hardly dared to breathe. She looked down at the lighted windows. Usually, she thought brightly lit windows were an inviting sight in the dark, but these seemed far more menacing than the darkness all around.\n\n'Does this village have any normal inhabitants?' asked Elinor. 'Harmless old grannies, children, people who don't have anything to do with Capricorn?'\n\n'No. Nobody lives there but Capricorn and his men,' whispered Dustfinger, 'and the women who cook and clean and so on for them.'\n\n'\"And so on\"... oh, wonderful!' Elinor snorted with distaste. 'I like the sound of this Capricorn less and less! Right, let's get this over and done with. I want to go home to my books, proper electric light and a nice cup of coffee.'\n\n'Really? I thought you were longing for a little adventure?'\n\nIf Gwin could speak, thought Meggie, he'd do so in Dustfinger's voice.\n\n'I prefer adventures in the sunlight,' replied Elinor curtly. 'Heavens, how I hate this darkness! Still, if we sit around here until dawn my books will be mildewed before Mortimer can do anything about them. Meggie, go round to the back of the car and fetch that bag. You know the one.'\n\nMeggie nodded, and was just about to open the passenger door when a glaring light blinded her. Someone whose face she couldn't make out was standing beside the driver's door, shining a torch into the car. He tapped it commandingly against the pane.\n\nElinor jumped in such alarm she hit her knee on the steering wheel, but she quickly pulled herself together. Cursing, she rubbed her hurt leg and opened the window.\n\n'What's the idea?' she snapped at the stranger. 'Do you have to frighten us to death? A person could easily get run over, skulking about in the dark like that.'\n\nBy way of answer the stranger pushed the barrel of a shotgun through the open window. 'This is private property!' he said. Meggie thought she recognised the rasping cat's-tongue voice from Elinor's library. 'And a person can very easily get shot trespassing on private property at night.'\n\n'I can explain.' Dustfinger leaned over Elinor's shoulder.\n\n'Well, well, who have we here? If it isn't Dustfinger!' The man withdrew the barrel of his gun. 'Do you have to turn up in the middle of the night?'\n\nElinor turned and cast Dustfinger a glance that was more than suspicious. 'I'd no idea you were on such friendly terms with these people!' she commented. 'You called them devils!'\n\nBut Dustfinger was already out of the car. And Meggie didn't like the familiar way the two men were talking. She remembered exactly what Dustfinger had said to her about Capricorn's men. How could he talk to one of them like this? However hard Meggie strained her ears, she couldn't make out what the pair were saying. She caught only one thing. Dustfinger called the stranger Basta.\n\n'I don't like this!' whispered Elinor. 'Look at the pair of them. They're talking to each other as if our matchstick-eating friend can come and go here as he likes!'\n\n'He probably knows they won't hurt him because we're bringing them the book!' Meggie whispered back, never taking her eyes off the two men. The stranger had a couple of dogs with him. German shepherds. They were sniffing Dustfinger's hands and nuzzling him in the ribs, wagging their tails.\n\n'See that?' hissed Elinor. 'Even those dogs treat him as an old friend. Suppose\u2014'\n\nBut before she could say any more Basta opened the driver's door. 'Get out, both of you,' he ordered.\n\nReluctantly, Elinor swung her legs out of the car. Meggie got out too and stood beside her. Her heart was thudding. She had never seen a man with a gun before. Well, on TV she had, but not in real life.\n\n'Look, I don't like your tone!' Elinor informed Basta. 'We've had a strenuous drive, and we only came to this God-forsaken spot to bring your boss or whatever you call him something he's been wanting for a long time. So let's have a little more civility.'\n\nBasta cast her such a scornful glance that Elinor drew in a sharp breath, and Meggie involuntarily squeezed her hand.\n\n'Where did you pick her up?' enquired Basta, turning back to Dustfinger, who was standing there looking as unmoved as if none of this had anything at all to do with him.\n\n'She owns that house \u2013 you know the one I mean.' Dustfinger had lowered his voice. but Meggie heard him all the same. 'I didn't want to bring her, but she insisted.'\n\n'I can imagine that.' Basta scrutinised Elinor once again, then turned to Meggie. 'So this is Silvertongue's little daughter? Doesn't look much like him.'\n\n'Where's my father?' asked Meggie. 'How is he?' These were the first words she had managed to utter. Her voice was hoarse, as if she hadn't used it for a long time.\n\n'Oh, he's fine,' replied Basta, glancing at Dustfinger. 'Although he's saying so little at the moment that Leaden-tongue would be more like it.'\n\nMeggie bit her lip. 'We've come for him,' she said. Now her voice was high and thin, although she was trying as hard as she could to sound grown-up. 'We have the book, but we won't give it to Capricorn unless he lets my father go.'\n\nBasta turned to Dustfinger again. 'Something about her does remind me of her father after all. See her lips tighten? And that look! Oh yes, anyone can see they're related.' His voice sounded as if he were joking, but there was nothing funny about his face when he looked at Meggie again. It was thin, sharply angular, with close-set eyes. He narrowed them slightly as if he could see better that way. Basta was not a tall man, and his shoulders were almost as narrow as a boy's, but Meggie held her breath when he took a step towards her. She was afraid of him. She had never been so afraid of anyone before, and it wasn't because of the shotgun in his hand. He had an aura of fury about him, of something keen and biting\u2014\n\n'Meggie, get the bag out of the boot.' As Basta was about to grab Meggie, Elinor pushed herself between them. 'There's nothing dangerous in it,' she said crossly. 'Just what we came here to hand over.'\n\nBy way of answer, Basta pulled the dogs aside, pulling so harshly on their leashes that they yelped out loud.\n\n'Meggie, listen to me!' whispered Elinor, as they left the car and followed Basta down a steep pathway leading to the lighted windows. 'Don't hand over the book until they let us see your father, understand?'\n\nMeggie nodded, clutching the plastic bag firmly to her chest. How stupid did Elinor think she was? On the other hand, how was she going to hang on to the book if Basta decided to take it away from her? She preferred not to follow this line of thinking through to its conclusion.\n\nIt was a hot, sultry night. The sky above the black hills was sprinkled with stars. The path down which Basta was leading them was stony, and so dark that Meggie could hardly see her own feet, but whenever she stumbled there was a hand to catch her. The hand belonged either to Elinor, walking beside her, or to Dustfinger, who was following as silently as if he were her shadow. Gwin was still in his rucksack, and Basta's dogs kept raising their noses and sniffing, as if they had picked up the sharp scent of the marten.\n\nSlowly, they came closer to the lighted windows. Meggie saw old houses of grey, rough-hewn stone, with a pale church tower rising above the rooftops. Many of the houses looked empty as they passed, going down alleys so narrow that Meggie felt they could close in on her. Some of the houses had no roofs, others were little more than a couple of walls partly fallen in. It was dark in Capricorn's village. Only a few lamps were on in the streets, hanging from masonry arches above the alleyways. At last they reached a small square. The church with the tower they had seen from a distance stood on one side of the square, and not far away, divided from it by a narrow passage, there was a large, two-storey house which did not look at all derelict. This square was better lit than the rest of the village, with four lanterns casting menacing shadows on the paving stones. Basta led them straight to the big house, where more light showed behind three windows on the upper floor. Was Mo in there? Meggie listened to herself as if she could find the answer there, but all her heart would tell her was a tale of fear. Fear and grief."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Mission Accomplished",
                "text": "\u2002'The reason there's no use looking,' said Mr Beaver, 'is that we know already where he's gone!' Everyone stared in amazement.\n\n\u2002'Don't you understand?' said Mr Beaver. 'He's gone to her, to the White Witch. He has betrayed us all.'\n\n\u2014C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\n\nHundreds of times since Dustfinger had first told her about him, Meggie had tried to picture Capricorn's face. She'd thought about it on the way to Elinor's house when Mo was sitting beside her in the van, and in the huge bed there, and finally on the drive here. Hundreds of times? No, she had tried to imagine it thousands of times, drawing on her ideas of all the villains she had ever read about in books: Captain Hook, crooked-nosed and thin; Long John Silver, a false smile always on his lips; Injun Joe, who had haunted so many of her bad dreams with his knife and his greasy black hair... But Capricorn looked quite different. Meggie soon gave up counting the doors they passed before Basta finally stopped outside one. But she did count the black-clad men. Four of them were standing in the corridors, looking bored. Each man had a shotgun propped against the whitewashed wall beside him. Dustfinger had been right: in their close-fitting black suits they really did look like rooks. Only Basta wore a snow-white shirt, just as Dustfinger had said, with a red flower in the buttonhole of his jacket, a red flower like a warning.\n\nCapricorn's dressing gown was red too. He was seated in an armchair when Basta entered the room with the three new arrivals, and a woman was kneeling in front of him cutting his toenails. The chair seemed too small for him. Capricorn was a tall man, and gaunt, as if the skin had been stretched too tight over his bones. His skin was pale as parchment, his hair cut short and bristly. Meggie couldn't have said if it was grey or very fair.\n\nHe raised his head when Basta opened the door. His eyes were almost as pale as the rest of him, as if the colour had drained out of them, but bright as silver coins. The woman at his feet glanced up when they came in, then bent over to resume her work.\n\n'Excuse me, but the visitors we were expecting have arrived,' said Basta. 'I thought you might want to speak to them at once.'\n\nCapricorn leaned back in his chair and cast a brief glance at Dustfinger. Then his expressionless eyes moved to Meggie. She was clutching the plastic bag containing the book to her chest, her arms firmly wrapped around it. Capricorn stared at the bag as if he knew what was in it. He made a sign to the woman at his feet. Reluctantly, she straightened up, smoothed down her black dress, and glared at Elinor and Meggie. She looked like an old magpie, with her grey hair scraped back and a pointed nose that didn't seem to fit her small, wrinkled face. Nodding to Capricorn, she left the room.\n\nIt was a large room, only sparsely furnished: a long table with eight chairs, a cupboard and a heavy sideboard. There were no lamps in the room, only candles, dozens of them in heavy silver candlesticks. It seemed to Meggie that they filled the room with shadows rather than light.\n\n'Where is it?' asked Capricorn. When he scraped back his chair Meggie flinched involuntarily. 'Don't tell me you've only brought the girl this time.' His voice was more impressive than his face. It was dark and heavy, and the moment she heard him speak Meggie hated it.\n\n'She's got it with her. In that bag,' replied Dustfinger before Meggie could say so herself. His eyes wandered restlessly from candle to candle as he spoke, as if only their dancing flames interested him. 'Her father really didn't know he had the wrong book. This woman who says she's a friend of his,' added Dustfinger, pointing to Elinor, 'changed the books round without telling him. She's a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books \u2013 looks as if she likes them better than human company.' The words came spilling out of Dustfinger's mouth as if he wanted to be rid of them. 'I didn't like her from the first, but you know our friend Silvertongue. He always thinks the best of everyone. He'd trust the Devil himself if Old Nick gave him a friendly smile.'\n\nMeggie looked at Elinor. She was standing there as if tongue-tied. Anyone could see she had a guilty conscience.\n\nCapricorn merely nodded at Dustfinger's explanations. He tightened the belt of his dressing gown, clasped his hands behind his back, and came slowly over to Meggie. She did her best not to flinch, to look firmly and undaunted into those colourless eyes, but fear constricted her throat. What a coward she was after all! She tried to think of some hero out of one of her books, someone whose skin she could slip into, to make her feel stronger, bigger, braver. Why could she remember nothing but stories of frightened people when Capricorn looked at her? She usually found it so easy to escape somewhere else, to get right inside the minds of people and animals who existed only on paper, so why not now? Because she was afraid. 'Because fear kills everything,' Mo had once told her. 'Your mind, your heart, your imagination.'\n\nMo... where was he? Meggie bit her lip to stop herself shaking, but she knew the fear showed in her eyes, and she knew that Capricorn saw it. She wished she had a heart of ice and a clever smile, not the trembling lips of a child whose father had been stolen away.\n\nNow Capricorn was very close to her. He scrutinised her. No one had ever looked at her like that. She felt like a fly stuck to a flypaper just waiting to die.\n\n'How old is she?' Capricorn looked at Dustfinger as if he didn't trust Meggie to know the answer herself.\n\n'Twelve!' she said in a loud voice. It wasn't easy to speak with her lips quivering so hard. 'I'm twelve. And I want to know where my father is.'\n\nCapricorn acted as if he hadn't heard the last sentence. 'Twelve?' he repeated in the dark voice that weighed so heavily on Meggie's ears, 'Three or four more years and she'll be a pretty little thing, useful to have around the place. We'll have to feed her up a bit, though.' He felt her arm with his long fingers. He wore gold rings on them, three on each hand. Meggie tried to pull away, but Capricorn was gripping her tightly as his pale eyes examined her. Just as he might have looked at a fish. A poor little fish wriggling on a hook.\n\n'Let the girl go!' For the first time Meggie was glad Elinor's voice could sound so sharp. And Capricorn actually did let go of her arm.\n\nElinor stepped up behind Meggie and put her hands protectively on her shoulders. 'I don't know what's going on here,' she snapped at Capricorn. 'I don't know who you are, or what you and all these men with guns are doing in this God-forsaken village, and I don't want to know either. I'm here to see that this girl gets her father back. We'll leave you the book you're so keen to have \u2013 although that's enough to give me heart-ache, but you'll get it as soon as Meggie's father is safe in my car. And if for any reason he wants to stay here we'd like to hear it from his own lips.'\n\nCapricorn turned his back to her without a word. 'Why did you bring this woman?' he asked Dustfinger. 'Bring the girl and the book, I said. Why would I want the woman?'\n\nMeggie looked at Dustfinger.\n\nThe girl and the book. The words kept repeating inside her head, like an echo. The girl and the book, I said. Meggie tried to look Dustfinger in the eye, but he avoided her gaze as if it would burn him. It hurt to feel so stupid. So terribly, terribly stupid.\n\nDustfinger perched on the edge of the table and pinched out one of the candles, gently and slowly as if waiting for the pain, the sharp little stab of the candle flame. 'I've told Basta already: our dear friend Elinor couldn't be persuaded to stay behind,' he said. 'She didn't want to let the girl go with me alone, and she was very reluctant to give up the book.'\n\n'And wasn't I right?' Elinor's voice rose to such a pitch that Meggie jumped. 'Listen to him, Meggie, listen to that fork-tongued matchstick-eater! I ought to have called the police when he turned up again. He came back for the book; that was the only reason.'\n\nAnd for me, thought Meggie. The girl and the book.\n\nDustfinger pretended to be preoccupied with pulling a loose thread from his coat-sleeve. But his hands, usually so skilful, were shaking.\n\n'And as for you!' said Elinor, jabbing Capricorn in the chest with her forefinger. Basta took a step forward, but Capricorn waved him away. 'I've had a lot of experience with books. I myself have had a number of books stolen from me, and I can't claim that all the books on my shelves got there exactly as they should have done \u2013 perhaps you know the saying that all book collectors are vultures and hunters? But you really seem to be the craziest of us all. I'm surprised I've never heard of you before. Where's your collection?' She looked enquiringly round the big room. 'I don't see a single book.'\n\nCapricorn put his hands in his dressing-gown pockets and signed to Basta. Before Meggie knew what was happening, Basta had snatched the plastic bag from her hands. He opened it, peered inside suspiciously as if he thought it could contain a snake or something else that might bite, then reached in and brought out the book.\n\nCapricorn took it from him. Meggie couldn't see on his face any of the tenderness with which Elinor and Mo looked at books. No, there was nothing but dislike on Capricorn's face \u2013 dislike and relief. That was all.\n\n'These two know nothing?' Capricorn opened the book, leafed through it, then closed it again. It was the right book. Meggie could tell from his face. It was exactly the book he had been looking for.\n\n'No, they know nothing. Even the girl doesn't know.' Dustfinger was looking out of the window very intently, as if there were more to be seen there than the pitch dark. 'Her father hasn't told her, so why should I?'\n\nCapricorn nodded. 'Take these two round behind the house,' he told Basta, who was still standing there holding the empty bag.\n\n'What do you mean?' Elinor began, but Basta was already hauling her and Meggie away.\n\n'It means we're going to shut you two pretty birds in one of our cages overnight,' said Basta, prodding them roughly in the back with his shotgun.\n\n'Where's my father?' shouted Meggie. Her own voice was shrill in her ears. 'You've got the book now! What more do you want of him?'\n\nCapricorn strolled over to the candle that Dustfinger had pinched out, passed his forefinger over the wick and looked at the soot on his fingertip. 'What do I want of your father?' he said, without turning to look at Meggie. 'I want to keep him here, what else? You don't seem to know about his extraordinary talent. Up to now he's been unwilling to use it in my service, hard as Basta has tried to persuade him. But now Dustfinger has brought you here he'll do anything I want. I'm confident of that.'\n\nMeggie tried to push Basta's hands away when he reached for her, but he took her by the back of the head like a chicken whose neck he was going to wring. Elinor tried coming to her aid, but he casually pointed the shotgun at her chest and forced Meggie over to the door.\n\nWhen Meggie turned round again she saw Dustfinger still leaning against the big table. He was watching her, but this time he wasn't smiling. Forgive me, his eyes seemed to say. I had to do it. I can explain everything! But Meggie didn't want to know, and she certainly wasn't about to forgive him. 'I hope you drop dead!' she screamed as Basta hauled her out of the room. 'I hope you burn to death! I hope you suffocate in your own smoke!'\n\nBasta laughed as he closed the door. 'Just listen to this little wildcat!' he said. 'I think I'll have to watch my step with you around!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Good Luck and Bad Luck",
                "text": "\u2002It was the middle of the night, and Bingo couldn't sleep. The ground was hard, but he was used to that... His blanket was dirty and smelled disgusting, but he was used to that too. A tune kept going through his head, and he couldn't get it out of his mind. It was the Wendels' victory song.\n\nMichael de Larrabeiti, The Borribles Go for Broke\n\nThe cages, as Basta had called them, kept ready by Capricorn for unwelcome guests were behind the church, in a paved area where rubbish containers stood next to mountains of building rubble. There was a slight smell of petrol in the air, and even the glow-worms whirling aimlessly through the night didn't seem to know what had brought them to this place. A row of tumbledown houses stood behind the bins and the rubble. The windows were just holes in the grey walls, and a couple of rotten shutters hung from their hinges at such an angle they looked as if a sudden gust of wind would blow them right off. Only the doors on the ground floor had obviously been given a fresh coat of paint fairly recently, in a dull brown shade with numbers painted on them clumsily, as if by a child, one for each door. As far as Meggie could see in the dark the last door had a number 7 on it. Basta propelled her and Elinor towards number 4. For a moment Meggie was relieved that he hadn't really meant a cage, although the door in the blank wall looked anything but inviting.\n\n'This is ridiculous!' said Elinor furiously, as Basta unlocked and unbolted the door. He had brought reinforcements with him from the house in the form of a skinny lad who wore the same black uniform as the grown men in Capricorn's village, and who obviously liked to menace Elinor by pointing his gun at her whenever she opened her mouth. But that didn't keep her quiet for long.\n\n'What do you think you're playing at?' she said angrily, without taking her eyes off the muzzle of the gun. 'I've heard that these mountains were always a paradise for robbers, but for heaven's sake, we're living in the twenty-first century! These days people don't go pushing visitors around at gunpoint \u2013 certainly not a youngster like him.'\n\n'As far as I'm aware people in this fine century of yours still do exactly as they always did,' replied Basta. 'And that youngster is just the right age to be apprenticed to us. I was even younger when I joined.' He pushed the door open. The darkness inside was blacker than night itself. Basta shoved first Meggie, then Elinor in, and slammed the door behind them.\n\nMeggie heard the key turn in the lock, then Basta saying something which made the boy laugh, and the sound of their footsteps retreating. She reached her hands out until her fingertips touched a wall. Her eyes were useless; she might as well have been blind, she couldn't even see where Elinor was. But she heard her muttering, letting off steam somewhere over to her left.\n\n'Isn't there at least a bloody light switch somewhere in this hole? Oh, to hell with it, I feel as if I've fallen into some farfetched adventure story where the villains wear black eye-patches and throw knives. Damn, damn, damn!' Meggie had already noticed that Elinor swore a lot, and the more upset she was the worse her language became.\n\n'Elinor?' The voice came from somewhere in the darkness, and that one word expressed delight, horror and surprise.\n\nMeggie spun round so suddenly she almost fell over her own feet. 'Mo?'\n\n'Oh no! Meggie, not you too! How did you get here?'\n\n'Mo!' Meggie stumbled through the darkness towards Mo's voice. A hand took her arm and fingers felt her face.\n\n'Ah, at last!' A naked electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling came on, and Elinor, looking pleased with herself, took her finger off a dusty switch. 'Electric light is a wonderful invention!' she said. 'That at least is an improvement on past centuries, don't you agree?'\n\n'What are you two doing here, Elinor?' demanded Mo, holding Meggie very close. 'I trusted you to look after her at least as well as your books! How could you let them bring her here?'\n\n'How could I let them?' Elinor's indignant voice almost cracked. 'I never asked to baby-sit your daughter! I know how to look after books, but children are something else, dammit! And she was worried about you \u2013 wanted to go looking for you. So what does stupid Elinor do instead of staying comfortably at home? I mean, I couldn't let the child go off on her own, I told myself. And what do I get for my noble conduct? Insults, a gun held to my chest, and now I'm here in this hole with you carrying on at me too!'\n\n'All right, all right!' Mo held Meggie at arm's length and looked her up and down.\n\n'I'm fine, Mo!' said Meggie, although her voice shook just a little. 'Honestly.'\n\nMo nodded and glanced at Elinor. 'You brought Capricorn the book?'\n\n'Of course! You'd have given it to him yourself if I hadn't...' said Elinor, going red and looking down at her dusty shoes.\n\n'If you hadn't swapped them round,' Meggie ended her sentence for her. She reached for Mo's hand and held it very tightly. She couldn't believe he was back with her, apparently perfectly all right except for the scratch on his forehead, almost hidden by his dark hair. 'Did they hit you?' She felt the dried blood anxiously with her forefinger.\n\nMo had to smile, although he couldn't have been feeling much like it. 'That's nothing. I'm fine too. Don't worry.'\n\nMeggie didn't think that was really much of an answer, but she asked no more questions.\n\n'So how did you come here?' asked Mo. 'Did Capricorn send his men back again?'\n\nElinor shook her head. 'No need for that,' she said bitterly. 'Your slimy-tongued friend fixed it. A nice kind of snake you brought to my house, I must say. First he gives you away, then he serves up the book and your daughter to this man Capricorn. \"Bring the girl and the book.\" We heard Capricorn say so himself. That was our little matchstick-eater's mission, and he carried it out to his master's complete satisfaction.'\n\nMeggie put Mo's arm round her shoulders and buried her face against him.\n\n'The girl and the book?' Mo held Meggie close again. 'Of course. Now Capricorn can be sure I'll do what he wants.' He turned round and went over to the pile of straw lying on the floor in a corner of the room. Sighing, he sat down on it, leaned his back against the wall, and closed his eyes for a moment. 'Well, now we're quits, Dustfinger and I,' he said. 'Although I wonder how Capricorn is going to pay him for his treachery. Because what Dustfinger wants is something Capricorn can't give him.'\n\n'Quits? What do you mean?' Meggie sat down beside him. 'And what are you supposed to do for Capricorn? What does he want you for, Mo?' The straw was damp, not a good place to sleep, but still better than the bare stone floor.\n\nMo said nothing for what seemed an eternity. He stared at the bare walls, the locked door, the dirty floor.\n\n'I think it's time I told you the whole story,' he said at last. 'Although I would rather not have had to tell you in a grim place like this, and not until you're a little older.'\n\n'Mo, I'm twelve!' Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?\n\n'Sit down, Elinor,' said Mo, making space. 'It's quite a long story.'\n\nElinor sighed, and sat down unceremoniously on the damp straw. 'This can't be happening!' she murmured. 'This really can't be happening!'\n\n'That's what I thought for nine years, Elinor,' said Mo. And then he began his story."
            },
            {
                "title": "Once Upon a Time",
                "text": "\u2002He held up the book then. 'I'm reading it to you for relax.'\n\n\u2002'Has it got any sports in it?'\n\n\u2002'Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.'\n\n\u2002'Sounds okay,' I said, and I kind of closed my eyes.\n\nWilliam Goldman, The Princess Bride\n\nYou were just three years old, Meggie,' Mo began. 'I remember how we celebrated your birthday. We gave you a picture book \u2013 you know, the one about the sea-serpent with toothache winding itself round the lighthouse...'\n\nMeggie nodded. It was still in her book-box \u2013 Mo had twice given it a new dress. 'We?' she asked.\n\n'Your mother and I...' Mo picked some straw off his trousers. 'I could never pass by a bookshop. The house where we lived was very small \u2013 we called it our shoebox, our mouse-hole, we had all sorts of names for it \u2013 and that very day I'd bought yet another crate full of books from a second-hand bookseller. Elinor would have liked some of them,' he added, glancing at her and smiling. 'Capricorn's book was there too.'\n\n'You mean it belonged to him?' Meggie looked at Mo in surprise, but he shook his head.\n\n'No, but... well, let's take it all in order. Your mother sighed when she saw all those new books and asked where we were going to put them, but then of course she helped me to unpack the crate. I always used to read aloud to her in the evenings\u2014'\n\n'You? You read aloud?'\n\n'Yes, every evening. Your mother enjoyed it. That evening she chose Inkheart. She always did like tales of adventure \u2013 stories full of brightness and darkness. She could tell you the names of all King Arthur's knights, and she knew everything about Beowulf and Grendel, the ancient gods and the not-quite-so ancient heroes. She liked pirate stories too, but most of all she loved books which had at least a knight or a dragon or a fairy in them. She was always on the dragon's side, by the way. There didn't seem to be any of them in Inkheart, but there was any amount of brightness and darkness, fairies and brownies. Your mother liked brownies as well: hobgoblins, bugaboos, the Fenoderee, the folletti with their butterfly wings, she knew them all. So we gave you a pile of picture books, sat down on the rug beside you, and I began to read.'\n\nMeggie leaned her head against Mo's shoulder and stared at the blank wall. She saw herself against its dirty white background as she had looked in old photos: small, with plump legs, very fair hair (it had darkened a little since then), her little fingers turning the pages of big picture books.\n\n'We enjoyed the story,' her father went on. 'It was exciting, well written, and full of all sorts of amazing creatures. Your mother loved a book to lead her into an unknown land, and the world into which Inkheart led her was exactly what she liked. Sometimes the story took a very dark turn, and whenever the suspense got too much, your mother put a finger to her lips, and I read more quietly, although we were sure you were too busy with your own books to listen to a sinister story which you wouldn't have understood anyway. I remember it as if it were yesterday; night had fallen long ago. It was autumn, with draughts coming in through the windows. We had lit a fire \u2013 there was no central heating in our shoebox of a house, but it had a stove in every room \u2013 and I began reading the seventh chapter. That's when it happened\u2014'\n\nMo stopped. He stared ahead of him as if lost in his own thoughts.\n\n'What?' whispered Meggie. 'What happened, Mo?'\n\nHer father looked at her. 'They came out,' he said. 'There they were, all of a sudden, standing in the doorway to the corridor outside the room, as if they'd just come in from out of doors. There was a crackling noise when they turned to us \u2013 like someone slowly unfolding a piece of paper. I still had their names on my lips: Basta, Dustfinger, Capricorn. Basta was holding Dustfinger by the collar, as if he were shaking a puppy for doing something forbidden. Capricorn liked to wear red even then, but he was nine years younger and not quite as gaunt as he is today. He wore a sword, something I'd never seen at close quarters before. Basta had one hanging from his belt too, while Dustfinger...' Here Mo shook his head. 'Well, of course the poor fellow had nothing but the horned marten whose tricks earned him a living. I don't think any of the three of them realised what had happened. Indeed, I didn't understand it myself until much later. My voice had brought them slipping out of their story like a bookmark forgotten by some reader between the pages. How could they understand what had happened? Basta pushed Dustfinger away so roughly that he fell down, then he tried to draw his sword, but his hands were white as paper and they obviously didn't yet have the strength for it. The sword slipped from his fingers and fell on the rug. Its blade looked as if there were dried blood on it, but perhaps it was only the reflection of the fire. Capricorn stood there, looking round. He seemed dizzy; he was staggering on the spot like a dancing bear that has been made to turn round too often. And that may well have saved us, or so Dustfinger has always claimed. If Basta and his master had been in full command of their powers, they'd probably have killed us outright, but they hadn't fully arrived in this world yet, and I picked up the terrible sword lying on the rug among my books. It was heavy, much heavier than I'd expected. I must have looked absolutely ridiculous holding the thing. I probably clutched it like a vacuum cleaner or a walking stick, but when Capricorn staggered towards me and I held the blade between us he stopped. I stammered something, tried to explain what had happened, not that I understood it myself, but Capricorn just stared at me with those pale eyes, the colour of water; while Basta stood beside him with a hand on the hilt of his dagger. He seemed to be waiting for his master to tell him to cut all our throats.'\n\n'And what about Dustfinger?' Elinor's voice sounded hoarse too.\n\n'He was still where he'd fallen on the rug, sitting there as if paralysed, not making a sound. I didn't stop to think about Dustfinger. If you open a basket and see two snakes and a lizard crawl out, you're going to deal with the snakes first, right?'\n\n'What about my mother?' Meggie could only whisper. She wasn't used to saying that word.\n\nMo looked at her. 'I couldn't see her anywhere. You were still kneeling among your books, staring wide-eyed at the strange men standing there with their heavy boots and their weapons. I was terrified for you, but to my relief both Basta and Capricorn ignored you. \"That's enough talk,\" Capricorn said finally, as I became more and more entangled in my own words. \"Never mind how we arrived in this miserable place, just send us back at once, you accursed magician, or Basta here will cut the talkative tongue out of your mouth.\" Which didn't sound exactly reassuring, and I'd read enough about those two in the first chapters of the book to know that Capricorn meant what he said. I was wondering so desperately how to end the nightmare that I felt quite dizzy. I picked up the book. Perhaps if I read the same passage again, I thought... I tried. I stumbled over the words while Capricorn glared at me and Basta drew the knife from his belt. Nothing happened. The two of them just stood there in my house, showing no sign of going back into their story. And suddenly I knew for certain that they meant to kill us. I put down the fatal book and picked up the sword I'd dropped on the rug. Basta tried to get to it before me, but I moved faster. I had to hold the wretched thing with both hands; I still remember how cold the hilt felt. Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed to drive Basta and Capricorn out into the passage. There were several breakages because I was brandishing the sword so clumsily. You began to cry, and I wanted to turn round and tell you it was all just a bad dream, but I was fully occupied keeping Basta's knife away from me with Capricorn's sword. So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected. The two of them would certainly have killed me if they hadn't still been rather weak at the knees. Capricorn cursed me, his eyes almost bursting out of his head with fury. Basta swore and threatened, giving me a nasty cut on my upper arm, but then, suddenly, the front door was thrown open and they both disappeared into the night, still reeling like drunks. My hands were trembling so much I could scarcely manage to bolt the door. I leaned against it and listened for sounds outside, but all I heard was my own racing heart. Then I heard you crying in the living room, and remembered that there had been a third man. I staggered back, still holding the sword, and there stood Dustfinger in the middle of the room. He had no weapon, just the marten sitting on his shoulders. He flinched, face white as a sheet, when I came towards him. I must have been a terrible sight with the blood running down my arm, and I was shaking all over, whether from fear or anger I couldn't have said. \"Please,\" he kept whispering, \"don't kill me! I'm nothing to do with those two. I'm only a juggler, just a harmless fire-eater. I can show you.\" And I said, \"Yes, yes, all right, I know who you are, you're Dustfinger \u2013 I even know your name, you see.\" At which he cowered in awe before me \u2013 a magician, he thought, who seemed to know all about him and who had plucked him out of his world as easily as picking an apple off a tree. The marten scampered along his arm, jumped down on the carpet and ran towards you. You stopped crying and put out your hand. \"Careful, he bites,\" said Dustfinger, shooing him away from you. I took no notice. I suddenly realised how quiet the room was, that was all. How quiet and how empty. I saw the book lying open on the carpet where I had dropped it, and I saw the cushion where your mother had been sitting. And she wasn't there. Where was she? I called her name again and again, I ran from room to room. But she had gone.'\n\nElinor was sitting bolt upright, staring at him in horror. 'For heaven's sake, Mortimer, what are you saying?' she cried. 'You told me she went away on some stupid adventure holiday and never came back!'\n\nMo leaned his head against the wall. 'I had to think up something, Elinor,' he said. 'I mean, I could hardly tell the truth, could I?'\n\nMeggie stroked his arm where his shirt hid the long, pale scar. 'You always told me you'd cut your arm climbing through a broken window.'\n\n'Yes, I know. The truth would have sounded too crazy, don't you think?'\n\nMeggie nodded. He was right; she would just have thought it was another of his stories. 'So she never came back?' she whispered, although she knew the answer already.\n\n'No,' replied Mo softly. 'Basta, Capricorn and Dustfinger came out of the book and she went into it, along with our two cats who were curled up on her lap as usual while I read aloud. I expect some creature from here changed places with Gwin too, maybe a spider or a fly or a bird that happened to be flying round the house. Oh, I don't know...' Mo fell silent.\n\nSometimes, when he had made up such a good story that Meggie thought it was true, he would suddenly smile and say, 'You fell for that one, Meggie!' Like the time on her seventh birthday when he told her he'd seen fairies among the crocuses in the garden. But the smile didn't come this time.\n\n'I searched the whole house for your mother. No sign of her,' he went on, 'and when I came back to the living room, Dustfinger had vanished and so had his friend with the horns. But the sword was still there, and it felt so real that I decided not to doubt my sanity. I put you to bed \u2013 I think I told you your mother had already gone to sleep \u2013 and then I began reading Inkheart out loud again. I read the whole damn book until I was hoarse and the sun was rising, but nothing came out of it except a bat and a silken cloak, which I used later to line your book-box. I tried again and again during the days and nights that followed, until my eyes were burning and the letters danced drunkenly on the page. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I kept making up different stories for you to explain where your mother was, and I took good care you were never in the room with me when I was reading aloud, in case you disappeared too. I wasn't worried about myself. Oddly enough, I had a feeling that the person reading the book ran no risk of slipping into its pages. I still don't know whether I was right.' Mo flicked a midge off his hand. 'I read until I couldn't hear my own voice any more,' he went on, 'but your mother didn't come back, Meggie. Instead, a strange little man as transparent as if he were made of glass appeared in my living room on the fifth day, and the postman disappeared just as he was putting the mail into our letterbox. I found his bike out in the yard. After that I knew that neither walls nor locked doors would keep you safe \u2013 you or anybody else. So I decided never to read aloud from a book again. Not from Inkheart or from any other book.'\n\n'What happened to the little glass man?' asked Meggie.\n\nMo sighed. 'He broke into pieces only a few days later when a heavy truck drove past the house. Obviously, very few creatures move easily from one world to another. We both know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all. It broke Dustfinger's heart.'\n\n'Oh, he has a heart, does he?' enquired Elinor bitterly.\n\n'It would be better for him if he didn't,' replied Mo. 'More than a week passed before he was back at my door again. It was night, of course. He prefers night to day. I was just packing. I'd decided it was safer to leave, since I didn't want to be driving Basta and Capricorn out of my house at sword-point again. Dustfinger's reappearance showed that I was right to feel anxious. It was well after midnight when he turned up, but I couldn't sleep anyway.' Mo stroked Meggie's hair. 'You weren't sleeping well then either. You had bad dreams, however much I tried to keep them away with my stories. I was just packing the tools in my workshop when there was a knock on the front door, a very soft, almost furtive knock. Dustfinger emerged from the dark as suddenly as he did when he came to our house four days ago \u2013 heavens, was it really only four days? Well, when he came back that first time he looked as if it had been too long since he'd eaten. He was thin as a stray cat and his eyes were dull. \"Send me back,\" he begged, \"send me back! This world will be the death of me. It's too fast, too crowded, too noisy. If I don't die of homesickness I shall starve to death. I don't know how to make a living. I don't know anything. I'm like a fish out of water,\" he said. And he refused to believe that I couldn't do it. He wanted to see the book and try for himself, even though he could scarcely read, but there was no way I could let him have it. It would have been like giving away the very last part I still had of your mother. Luckily, I'd hidden it well. I let Dustfinger sleep on the sofa, and came down next morning to find him still searching the bookshelves. Over the next few years he kept on turning up, following us wherever we went, until I got sick and tired of it and made off with you in secret like a thief in the night. After that I saw no more of him for five years. Until four days ago.'\n\nMeggie looked at him. 'You still feel sorry for him,' she said.\n\nMo was silent. At last, he said, 'Sometimes.'\n\nElinor's comment on that was a snort of contempt. 'You're even crazier than I thought,' she said. 'It's that idiot's fault we're in this hole, it's his fault if they cut our throats, and you still feel sorry for him?'\n\nMo shrugged his shoulders and looked up at the ceiling, where a few moths were fluttering around the naked light bulb. 'No doubt Capricorn has promised to take him back,' he said. 'Unlike me, he realised that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending!'\n\n'Well, that's no different from real life,' remarked Elinor gloomily. 'You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like coming to a bad end.'\n\nMeggie sat with her arms clasped round her legs, her chin on her knees, staring at the dirty white walls. In her mind's eye she saw the 'N' in front of her, the 'N' with the horned marten sitting on it, and felt as if her mother were looking out from beyond the big capital letter, her mother as she was in the faded photograph under Mo's pillow. So she hadn't run away after all. Did she like it in that other world? Did she still remember her daughter? Or were Meggie and Mo just a fading picture for her too? Did she long to be back in her own world, just as Dustfinger did?\n\nAnd did Capricorn long to be back in his own world as well? Was that what he wanted \u2013 for Mo to read him back again? What would happen when Capricorn realised that Mo simply couldn't do it? Meggie shuddered.\n\n'It seems Capricorn has someone else to read aloud to him now,' Mo went on, as if he had guessed her thoughts. 'Basta told me about the man, probably to show me I'm not by any means indispensable. Apparently he's read several useful assistants for Capricorn out of a book already.'\n\n'Oh yes? Then why does he want you?' Elinor sat up, rubbing her behind and groaning. 'I don't understand any of this. I just hope it's all a bad dream, the kind you wake up from with a stiff neck and a bad taste in your mouth.'\n\nMeggie doubted whether Elinor really had any such hope. The damp straw felt too real, and so did the cold wall behind them. She leaned against Mo's shoulder again and closed her eyes. She was very sorry she had scarcely read a line of Inkheart. She knew nothing at all about the story into which her mother had disappeared. All she knew was Mo's other stories, about the fabulous exploits that had kept her mother away, tales of the adventures she was having in distant lands, of fearsome enemies who kept preventing her from coming home, and of a box she was filling for Meggie, putting something new and wonderful in it at every enchanted place she visited.\n\n'Mo,' she asked, 'do you think she likes being in that story?'\n\nIt took Mo quite a long time to answer. 'She'd certainly like the fairies,' he said at last, 'although they're deceitful little things. And if I know her she'll be putting out bowls of milk for the brownies. Yes, I think she'd like that part of it...'\n\n'So... so what wouldn't she like?' Meggie looked at him anxiously.\n\nMo hesitated. 'The evil in it,' he finally said. 'So many bad things happen in that book, and she never found out that it all ends reasonably well \u2013 after all, I never finished reading her the whole story. That's what she wouldn't like.'\n\n'No, of course not,' said Elinor. 'But how do you know the story hasn't changed anyway? After you read Capricorn and his friend out of it. And now we're lumbered with them here.'\n\n'Yes,' said Mo, 'but they're still in the book too. Believe me, I've read it often enough since they came out of it, and the story's still about them: Dustfinger, Basta and Capricorn. Doesn't that mean everything is still the way it was? Capricorn is still there, and we're only up against a shadow of him in this world.'\n\n'He's pretty frightening for a shadow,' said Elinor.\n\n'Yes, you're right,' agreed Mo. 'Perhaps things have changed there after all. Perhaps there's another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole. Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan; it always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on developing and changing like our own.'\n\nElinor groaned. 'For heaven's sake, Mortimer!' she said. 'Stop it, do. You're giving me a headache.'\n\n'It made my own head feel like bursting when I tried to make sense of it all,' replied Mo gloomily.\n\nAfter that they said nothing for quite a long time, all three of them absorbed in their own thoughts. Elinor was the first to speak again, although it sounded almost as if she were talking to herself. 'Heavens above,' she murmured, taking off her shoes. 'To think of all the times I've wished I could slip right into one of my favourite books. But that's the advantage of reading \u2013 you can shut the book whenever you want.'\n\nGroaning, she wriggled her toes and began walking up and down. Meggie had to suppress a giggle. Elinor looked so funny hobbling from the wall to the door and back again with her aching feet, back and forth like a clockwork toy.\n\n'Elinor, you're driving me bonkers! Do sit down again,' said Mo.\n\n'No, I won't!' she snapped back. 'I'll go mad myself if I stay sitting down.'\n\nMo made a face and put his arm round Meggie's shoulders. 'All right, let's leave her to it!' he whispered. 'By the time she's covered ten kilometres she'll fall down exhausted. But you ought to get some sleep now. You can have my bed. It's not as bad as it looks. If you close your eyes very tight you can imagine you're Wilbur the pig sleeping comfortably in his sty...'\n\n'Or Wart sleeping in the grass with the wild geese.' Meggie couldn't help yawning. How often she and Mo had played this game! 'Which book can you think of? Which part have we forgotten? Oh yes, that one! It's ages since I thought about that story...!' Wearily, she lay down on the prickly straw.\n\nMo pulled his sweater off over his head and covered her up with it. 'You need a blanket all the same,' he said. 'Even if you're a pig or a goose.'\n\n'But you'll freeze.'\n\n'Nonsense.'\n\n'And where will you and Elinor sleep?' Meggie yawned again. She hadn't realised how tired she was.\n\nElinor was still pacing from wall to wall. 'What's all this about sleeping?' she said. 'We're going to keep watch, of course.'\n\n'All right,' murmured Meggie, burying her nose in Mo's sweater. He's back with me, she thought, as drowsiness weighed down her eyelids. Nothing else matters. And then she thought: Oh, if only I could read some more of that book! But Inkheart was in Capricorn's hands \u2013 and she didn't want to think of him now, or she would never get to sleep. Never...\n\nLater, she didn't know how long she had slept. Perhaps her cold feet woke her, or the itchy straw under her head. Her watch said four o'clock. There was nothing in the windowless room to tell her whether it was night or day, but Meggie couldn't imagine that the night was over yet. Mo was sitting near the door with Elinor. They both looked tired and anxious, and they were talking in low voices.\n\n'Yes, they still think I'm a magician,' Mo was saying. 'They gave me that ridiculous name \u2013 Silvertongue. And Capricorn is firmly convinced I can repeat the trick any time, with any book at all.'\n\n'And... and can you?' asked Elinor. 'You weren't telling us the whole story earlier, were you?'\n\nMo didn't answer for a long time. 'No,' he said at last. 'Because I don't want Meggie thinking I'm some kind of a magician too.'\n\n'So you've \u2013 well, read things out of a book quite often?'\n\nMo nodded. 'I always liked reading aloud, even as a boy, and one day, when I was reading Tom Sawyer to a friend, a dead cat suddenly appeared on the carpet, lying there stiff as a board. I only noticed later that one of my soft toys had vanished. I think both our hearts missed a beat, and my friend and I swore to each other, sealing the oath with blood like Tom and Huck, that we'd never tell anyone about the cat. After that, of course, I kept trying again in secret, without any witnesses, but it never seemed to happen when I wanted. In fact, there didn't seem to be any rules at all, except that it only happened with stories I liked. Of course I kept everything that came out of books, except for the snozzcumber I got out of the book about the friendly giant. It stank too much. When Meggie was still very small, things sometimes came out of her picture books: a feather, a tiny shoe. We put them in her book-box, without telling her where they came from, otherwise she'd never have picked up a book again for fear the giant serpent with toothache or some other alarming creature might appear! But I'd never, never managed to bring anything living out of a book, Elinor. Until that night.' Mo looked at the palms of his hands, as if seeing there all the things his voice had lured out of books. 'Why couldn't it have been some nice creature if it had to happen? Something like \u2013 oh, Babar the elephant. Meggie would have been enchanted.'\n\nYes, I certainly would, thought Meggie. She remembered the little shoe, and the feather as well. It had been emerald green, like the plumage of Dr Dolittle's parrot Polynesia.\n\n'Well, it could have been worse.' Typical Elinor! As if it wasn't bad enough to be locked up in a tumbledown house far away from ordinary life, surrounded by black-clad men with faces like birds of prey and knives in their belts. But obviously Elinor really could imagine something worse. 'Suppose Long John Silver had suddenly appeared in your living room, striking out with his wooden crutch?' she whispered. 'I think I prefer this Capricorn after all. You know what? When we're home again \u2013 in my house, I mean \u2013 I'll give you a really nice book. Winnie the Pooh, for instance, or maybe Where the Wild Things Are. I really wouldn't mind one of those monsters. I'll sit you down in my most comfortable armchair, make you a coffee, and then you can read aloud. How about it?'\n\nMo laughed quietly, and for a moment his face didn't look quite so careworn. 'No, Elinor, I shall do no such thing. Although it sounds very tempting. But I swore never to read aloud again. Who knows who might disappear next time? And perhaps there's some unpleasant character we never noticed even in the Pooh books. Or suppose I read Pooh himself out of his book? What would he do here without his friends and the Thousand-Acre-Wood? His poor little heart would break, like Dustfinger's.'\n\n'Oh, for goodness' sake!' Elinor impatiently dismissed this idea. 'How often do I have to tell you that fool has no heart? Very well, then. Let me ask you another question, because I'd very much like to know the answer.' Elinor lowered her voice, and Meggie had to strain her ears to make out what she was saying. 'Who was this Capricorn in his own story? The villain of the piece, I suppose, but can you tell me any more about him?'\n\nMeggie would have liked to know more about Capricorn too, but Mo was suddenly not very forthcoming. All he would say was, 'The less you know about him, the better.' Then he fell silent. Elinor kept on at him for a while, but Mo evaded all her questions. He simply did not seem to want to talk about Capricorn. Meggie could see from his face that his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. At some point Elinor nodded off, curled up on the cold floor as if trying to keep herself warm with her own body. But Mo went on sitting there with his back against the wall.\n\nAs Meggie felt herself drift off to sleep again, Mo's face stayed with her in her slumbers. It emerged in her dreams like a dark moon with figures leaping from its mouth, living creatures \u2013 fat, thin, large, small, they hopped out and ran away in a long line. A woman, scarcely more than a shadow, was dancing on the moon's nose \u2013 and suddenly the moon smiled."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Betrayer Betrayed",
                "text": "\u2002It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed... He wanted... to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls, and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.\n\n\u2014Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451\n\nSome time near daybreak the feeble light from the electric bulb that had helped them through the night flickered out. Mo and Elinor were asleep near the locked door, but Meggie lay in the dark with her eyes open, feeling fear ooze out of the cold walls. She listened to Elinor's breathing, and her father's, and more than anything wished for a candle \u2013 and a book to keep the fear away. It seemed to be everywhere, a malicious, disembodied creature that had just been waiting for the light to go out so that it could steal close to her in the darkness and take her in its cold arms. Meggie sat up, fought for breath, and crawled over to Mo on all fours. She curled up in a ball beside him the way she used to when she was little, and waited for the light of dawn to come in under the door.\n\nWith the light came two of Capricorn's men. Mo had only just sat up, wearily, and Elinor was rubbing her aching back and muttering crossly when they heard the footsteps.\n\nThey weren't Basta's footsteps. One of the two men, a great tall beanpole, looked as if a giant had pressed his face flat with his thumb. The other was small and thin, with a goatee beard on his receding chin. He kept fiddling with his shotgun, and glowered unpleasantly at the three of them, as if he felt like shooting them on the spot.\n\n'Come on, then. Get a move on!' he snapped as they stumbled out into the bright light of day, blinking. Meggie tried to remember whether his voice was one of those she had heard in Elinor's library, but she wasn't sure. Capricorn had many men.\n\nIt was a fine, warm morning. The sky arched blue and cloudless above Capricorn's village, and a couple of finches were twittering in a rose bush growing wild among the old houses, as if there were no danger in the world but a hungry cat or two. Mo took Meggie's arm as they stepped outside. Elinor had to get her shoes on first, and when the man with the goatee tried hauling her roughly out because she didn't move fast enough for him, she pushed his hands away and fired a volley of bad language at him. That simply made the two men laugh, whereupon Elinor tightened her lips and confined herself to hostile glances.\n\nCapricorn's men were in a hurry. They led Mo, Meggie and Elinor back the way Basta had brought them the night before. The flat-faced man went ahead of them and the man with the goatee brought up the rear, shotgun at the ready. He dragged one leg as he walked, but nonetheless he kept urging them on, as if to prove that he could move faster than they could even though he limped.\n\nEven by day Capricorn's village appeared curiously deserted, and not just because of the many empty houses, which looked even more dismal in the sunlight. There was hardly anyone to be seen in the narrow alleys, only a few of the Black Jackets, as Meggie had secretly baptised them, with skinny boys following them like puppies. Meggie only twice saw a woman passing in a hurry. She could see no children playing or running after their mothers, only cats: black, white, ginger, tortoiseshell, tabby cats, lying in the warm sun on top of walls, in doorways, on lintels. It was deathly quiet among the houses of Capricorn's village, and everything that went on seemed to be done in secret. Only the men with the guns didn't hide. They hung around together in gateways and at the corners of buildings, leaning lovingly on their weapons as they talked. There were no flowers outside the houses, like the flowers Meggie had seen in the towns and villages all along the coast, instead roofs had fallen in and wild bushes were in bloom, growing out through glassless windows. Some were so heavy with scent that they made Meggie feel dizzy.\n\nWhen they reached the square outside the church, Meggie thought the two men were taking them to Capricorn's house again, but they passed it on their left and went straight to the big church door. The tower of the church looked as if wind and weather had been wearing the masonry down for a dangerously long time. A rusty bell hung under the pointed roof, and scarcely a metre lower down a seed carried by the wind had grown into a stunted tree that now clung to the sand-coloured stone.\n\nThere were eyes painted on the church door, narrow red eyes, and ugly stone demons the height of a man stood on either side of the entrance, their teeth bared like savage dogs.\n\n'Welcome to the Devil's house!' said the bearded man with a mocking bow before opening the heavy door.\n\n'Don't do that, Cockerell!' the flat-faced man snapped at him, spitting three times on the dusty paving stones at his feet. 'It's bad luck.'\n\nThe man with the goatee just laughed and patted the fat belly of one of the stone figures. 'Oh, come on, Flatnose. You're almost as bad as Basta. Carry on like this and you'll be hanging a stinking rabbit's foot round your own neck too.'\n\n'I like to be on the safe side,' growled Flatnose. 'You hear strange tales.'\n\n'Yes, and who made them up? We did, you fool.'\n\n'Some of them date from before our time.'\n\n'Whatever happens,' Mo whispered to Elinor and Meggie as the two men argued, 'leave the talking to me. A sharp tongue can be dangerous here, believe me. Basta is quick to draw his knife, and he'll use it too.'\n\n'Basta's not the only one here with a knife, Silvertongue!' said Cockerell, pushing Mo into the dark church. Meggie hurried after him.\n\nIt was dim and chilly inside the church. The morning light made its way in only through a few windows, painting pale patches high up on the walls and columns. No doubt these had once been grey like the flagstone floor, but now there was only one colour in Capricorn's church. Everything was red. The walls, the columns, even the ceiling, were vermilion, the colour of raw meat or dried blood. For a moment, Meggie felt as if she had stepped into the belly of some monster.\n\nIn a corner near the entrance stood the statue of an angel. A wing was broken off, and the black jacket of one of Capricorn's men had been hung over the other wing while someone had stuck a pair of fancy dress horns on its head, the kind children wear to parties. Its halo was still there between them. The angel had probably once stood on the stone plinth in front of the first column, now it had had to give way to another statue, whose gaunt, waxen face seemed to look down at Meggie with a supercilious expression. Whoever had carved it wasn't very good at his trade; its features were painted like the face of a plastic doll, with oddly red lips and blue eyes that held none of the cold detachment the colourless eyes of the real Capricorn turned on the world. But, to make up for that, the statue was at least twice the height of its living model, and all who passed it had to tilt their head back to look up at its pale face.\n\n'Is that allowed, Mo?' asked Meggie quietly. 'Putting up a statue of yourself in a church?'\n\n'Oh, it's a very old custom!' Elinor whispered back. 'Statues in churches aren't often the statues of saints. Most saints couldn't have paid the sculptor. In the cathedral of\u2014'\n\nCockerell prodded her in the back so roughly that she stumbled forward. 'Get a move on!' he growled. 'And bow next time you pass him, understand?'\n\n'Bow!' Elinor was going to stand her ground, but Mo quickly made her go on. 'Who on earth can take this circus seriously?' she said crossly.\n\n'If you don't keep your mouth shut,' Mo told her in a whisper, 'you'll soon find out how seriously they take everything here.'\n\nElinor looked at the scratch on his forehead, and said no more.\n\nCapricorn's church contained no pews of the kind Meggie had seen in other churches, just two long wooden tables with benches, one on each side of the nave. There were dirty plates on them, coffee-stained mugs, wooden boards where cheese rinds lay, knives, sausages, empty bread baskets. Several women were busy clearing all this away. Without pausing in their work, they glanced up as Cockerell and Flatnose passed with their three captives. Meggie thought they looked like birds hunching their heads down beneath their wings in case someone might strike them off.\n\nNot only were the pews missing from Capricorn's church, but the altar had gone too. In its place there now stood a massive chair, upholstered in red and with designs carved thickly into its legs and arms. Leading up to it were four shallow steps, carpeted in black. Meggie wasn't sure why she counted them. And crouching on the top step just a few paces away from the chair, his sandy hair ruffled as usual, was Dustfinger, apparently lost in thought as he let Gwin run up and down his outstretched arm.\n\nAs Meggie came down the nave with Mo and Elinor, Dustfinger raised his head briefly. Gwin climbed up to his shoulder, baring his tiny teeth, sharp as splinters of glass, as if he had recognised the hatred in Meggie's eyes as they rested on his master. Now she knew why the marten had horns, and why his twin was shown on the page of a book. She understood it all: why Dustfinger thought the world too fast and too noisy, why he didn't understand cars and often looked as if he were somewhere else entirely. But she felt none of the sympathy Mo had shown for him. His scarred face only reminded her of the lies he had told to lure her out to him, like the Pied Piper in the story. He had played with her as he played with fire, with his brightly coloured juggler's balls: come along, Meggie; this way, Meggie; trust me, Meggie. She felt like running up the steps and striking his lying mouth.\n\nDustfinger must have guessed her thoughts, and was avoiding her eyes. Not looking at Mo and Elinor either, he put a hand in his trouser pocket and brought out a matchbox. As if unconscious of what he was doing, he took out a match, lit it, and gazed at the flame, lost in thought as he passed a finger through it almost caressingly until it singed his fingertip.\n\nMeggie looked away. She didn't want to see him; she wanted to forget he was there. To her left, at the foot of the steps, stood two drum-shaped iron braziers, rusty brown, with wood heaped up in them: pale, freshly cut firewood, log upon log. Meggie was just wondering what the wood was for when more steps echoed through the church. Basta was walking down the nave with a petrol can in his hand. Reluctantly, Cockerell and Flatnose gave way as he pushed past them.\n\n'Ah, so Dustfinger's playing with his best friend again,' he sneered as he climbed the shallow steps. Dustfinger lowered the matchstick and straightened up. 'Here you are,' said Basta, putting the petrol can down at his feet. 'Another toy for you. Light us a fire; that's what you like best.'\n\nDustfinger threw away the spent match and lit another. 'So how about you?' he asked quietly, raising the burning match to Basta's face. 'Still afraid of fire, are you?'\n\nBasta knocked the match out of his hand.\n\n'Oh, you shouldn't do that!' said Dustfinger. 'It means bad luck. You know how quickly fire takes offence.'\n\nFor a moment Meggie thought Basta was going to hit him, and she wasn't the only one. All eyes were turned on the two men. But something seemed to protect Dustfinger. Perhaps it really was the fire.\n\n'You're lucky I've only just cleaned my knife!' spat Basta. 'One more trick like that, though, and I'll carve a few nice new patterns on your ugly face. And make myself a fur collar out of your marten.'\n\nGwin uttered a soft, threatening snarl, and wrapped himself around Dustfinger's neck. Dustfinger bent, picked up the spent matches, and put them back in the matchbox. 'Yes, I'm sure you'd enjoy that,' he said, still without looking at Basta. 'But why would I want to light a fire just now, I wonder?'\n\n'Never you mind that, just do it. Then the rest of us can keep it fed. But make sure it's a large, hungry blaze, not one of the tame little fires you like to play with.'\n\nDustfinger picked up the petrol can and slowly climbed down the steps. He was standing beside the rusty braziers when the church door opened for the second time.\n\nMeggie turned at the sound of the heavy wooden door creaking, and saw Capricorn appear between the red columns. He glanced at his statue, as if to make sure it still gave a flattering enough image of him, then strode quickly down the nave. He was wearing a suit as red as the church walls. Only the shirt beneath it was black, and he had a black feather in his buttonhole. A good half-dozen of his men were following him, like crows following a peacock. Their steps seemed to echo all the way up to the ceiling. Meggie reached for Mo's hand.\n\n'Ah, so our guests are here already,' said Capricorn, stopping in front of them. 'Did you sleep well, Silvertongue?' He had curiously soft, curving, almost feminine lips, and as he spoke he kept running his little finger along them as if to retrace them. They were as bloodless as the rest of his face. 'Wasn't it kind of me to reunite you with your little girl last night? At first I meant it to be a surprise present for you today, but then I thought: Capricorn, you really owe that child something for bringing you what you've wanted so long, and of her own free will too.'\n\nHe was holding Inkheart. Meggie saw Mo's gaze linger on the book. Capricorn was a tall man, but Mo stood a few centimetres taller, which obviously displeased Capricorn. He stood very upright, as if that would make up for the difference.\n\n'Let Elinor take my daughter home with her,' said Mo. 'Let them go and I'll try to read you back again. I'll read you anything you like, but let the two of them go first.'\n\nWhat was he talking about? Meggie looked at him in horror. 'No!' she said. 'No, Mo, I don't want to go away.' But no one was paying any attention to her.\n\n'Let them go?' Capricorn turned to his men. 'Hear that? Why would I do such a crazy thing now they're here?' The men laughed. But Capricorn turned to Mo again. 'You know as well as I do that from now on you'll do whatever I want,' he said. 'Now that she's here, I'm sure you won't go on denying us a demonstration of your skill.'\n\nMo squeezed Meggie's hand so hard her fingers hurt.\n\n'And as for this book,' said Capricorn, looking at Inkheart with as much dislike as if it had bitten his pale fingers, 'this extremely tedious, stupid and extraordinarily long-winded book, I can assure you I have no intention of ever again letting myself be spellbound by its story. All those troublesome creatures, those fluttering fairies with their twittering voices, the swarming, scrabbling stupid beasts everywhere, the smell of fur and dung. All through this book you kept falling over bandy-legged brownies in the market-place, and when you went hunting the giants scared the game away with their huge feet. Talking trees, whispering pools \u2013 was there anything in that world that didn't have the power of speech? And then those endless muddy roads to the nearest town, if town it could be called \u2013 that pack of well-born, finely dressed princes in their castles, those stinking peasants, so poor there was nothing to be got out of them, and the vagabonds and beggars with vermin dropping from their hair \u2013 oh, how sick I was of them all.'\n\nCapricorn made a sign, and one of his men brought in a large cardboard box. You could see from the way he carried it that it was very heavy. The man put it down on the grey flagstones in front of Capricorn with a sigh of relief. Capricorn handed Cockerell, who was standing beside him, the book that Mo had kept from him so long, and bent to open the box. It was full to the brim with books.\n\n'It's been a great deal of trouble finding them all,' said Capricorn as he reached into the box and took out two books. 'They may look different, but the contents are the same. The fact that the story has been printed in several languages made the search even more difficult \u2013 a particularly useless feature of this world, all those different languages. It was simpler in our own world, wasn't it, Dustfinger?'\n\nDustfinger made no answer. He stood there holding the petrol can and staring at the box. Capricorn strolled over to him and threw the two books into one of the braziers.\n\n'What are you doing?' Dustfinger tried to snatch them out, but Basta pushed him away.\n\n'Those stay where they are,' he growled.\n\nDustfinger stepped back, holding the can behind his back, but Basta grabbed it from his hands. 'Why, it looks as if our fire-eater would rather let someone else light the fire today,' he mocked.\n\nDustfinger cast him a glance full of hatred. Face rigid, he watched Capricorn's men throw more and more books into the braziers. In the end there were over two dozen copies of Inkheart on the piles of firewood, their pages crumpled, their bindings wrenched apart like broken wings.\n\n'You know what always got me down back in our old world, Dustfinger?' asked Capricorn as he took the petrol can from Basta's hand. 'The difficulty of lighting a fire. It wasn't any problem to you, of course \u2013 you could even talk to fire, very likely one of those grunting brownies taught you how \u2013 but it was a tedious business for the rest of us. The wood was always damp, or the wind blew down the chimney. I know you long for the good old days, you miss all your chirping, fluttering friends, but I don't shed a tear for any of that. This world is far better equipped than the one we had to be content with for so many long years.'\n\nDustfinger did not seem to hear a word of what Capricorn was saying. He just stared at the petrol and smelled its fumes as it was poured over the books. The pages sucked it up as greedily as if they were welcoming their own end.\n\n'Where did they all come from?' he stammered. 'You always told me there was just one copy left \u2013 Silvertongue's.'\n\n'Yes, yes, I told you all kinds of things.' Capricorn put his hand in his trouser pocket. 'You're such a gullible fellow, Dustfinger. It's fun to tell you lies. Your innocence always amazed me \u2013 after all, you lie very cleverly yourself. But you're too ready to believe what you want to believe, that's your trouble. Well, you can safely believe me now. These,' he said, tapping the petrol-soaked pile of books, 'these really are the last copies of our ink-black home. It's taken Basta and the others years to track them all down in shabby lending libraries and second-hand bookshops.'\n\nDustfinger looked longingly at the books, as a man dying of thirst might look at the last glass of water in existence. 'But you can't burn them!' he stammered. 'You promised to send me back if I found you Silvertongue's book. That's why I told you where he was. That's why I brought you his daughter.'\n\nCapricorn merely shrugged his shoulders and took the book from Cockerell's hands \u2013 the book with the green binding that Meggie and Elinor had been so eager to give him, the book for which he had made his men bring Mo all this way, the book for which Dustfinger had betrayed them all.\n\n'I'd have promised to fetch you down the moon from the sky if that would have done me any good,' said Capricorn, looking bored as he flung the last copy of Inkheart on to the pile with its companions. 'I'm happy to make promises, especially promises I can't keep.' Then he took a lighter from his trouser pocket. Dustfinger was about to leap at him to strike it out of his hand, but Capricorn made a sign to Flatnose.\n\nFlatnose was so tall and broad that beside him Dustfinger looked almost like a child, and indeed the man took hold of him as if he were a badly behaved little boy. Fur bristling, Gwin leaped off Dustfinger's shoulder. One of Capricorn's men kicked out as the marten shot past his legs, but Gwin got away and disappeared behind one of the red columns. The other men stood there laughing at Dustfinger's desperate attempts to free himself from Flatnose's iron grasp. Flatnose thought it greatly amusing to let Dustfinger get just close enough to the petrol-soaked books to touch the top volumes with his fingers.\n\nSuch cruelty made Meggie feel quite ill. Mo took a step forward as if to go to Dustfinger's aid, but Basta barred his way, a knife in his hand. Its blade, narrow and shiny, looked terribly sharp held against Mo's throat.\n\nElinor screamed, and directed a torrent of curses at Basta that Meggie had never even heard before, but she herself could not move. She just stood there, in numb and silent terror, staring at the blade against Mo's bare throat.\n\n'Let me have one of them, Capricorn, just one!' Mo cried, and only then did Meggie realize that he had not been going to help Dustfinger but was thinking of the book. 'I promise never to read aloud a line of it that mentions your name.'\n\n'You! Are you mad? You're the last man I'd give one to,' replied Capricorn. 'One day you might be unable to control your tongue after all, and I'd land back in that ridiculous story again. No thank you very much!'\n\n'Nonsense!' cried Mo. 'I couldn't read you back into it even if I wanted to \u2013 how often do I have to tell you that? Ask Dustfinger. I've explained it to him a thousand times. I myself don't understand how or when these things happen. For heaven's sake, believe me!'\n\nWith a chilling smirk, Capricorn answered merely with a smile, 'I'm sorry, Silvertongue, but the fact is I don't believe anyone. You ought to know that by now. We're all liars when it serves our purpose.' And with those words he flicked the lighter and held its flame to one of the books. The petrol had made the pages almost transparent, like parchment, and they flared up at once. Even the stout cloth bindings caught light immediately, the linen turning black as the flames licked round it.\n\nWhen the third book caught fire, Dustfinger kicked Flatnose's kneecap so hard that the man screamed with pain and let go of him. Nimble as his marten, Dustfinger wriggled out of those powerful arms and stumbled towards the braziers. Without hesitating, he reached into the flames, but the book he plucked out was already burning like a torch. Dustfinger dropped it on the flagstone floor and reached into the fire again, with his other hand this time, but by now Flatnose had already grasped him by the collar and was shaking him so roughly that Dustfinger was gasping for air.\n\n'Look at the lunatic!' sneered Basta as Dustfinger stared at his hands, his face distorted with pain. 'Can anyone explain what he wants so much? Maybe those ugly brownie girls who thought him so wonderful when he juggled in the market-place? Or the filthy hovels where he lived with other vagabonds? They smelled even worse than the rucksack he carries that stinking marten around in.'\n\nCapricorn's men laughed as the books slowly crumpled into ashes. There was still a smell of petrol in the church, such an acrid smell that it made Meggie cough. Mo put a protective arm around her shoulders, as if Basta had threatened her rather than him. But who, thought Meggie, who could protect Mo?\n\nElinor was looking at his neck as anxiously as if she feared Basta's knife might have left its mark there after all. 'These fellows are out of their minds!' she whispered. 'You know what they say: when people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings. Suppose we're the next to find ourselves on a pyre?'\n\nBasta seemed to hear what she was saying. He caught her eye, and with a twisted smile kissed the blade of his knife.\n\nElinor fell silent, as if she had swallowed her tongue.\n\nCapricorn had taken a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket. He cleaned his fingers with it carefully, as if to wipe even the memory of Inkheart off his hands. 'Well, that's done at last,' he remarked with a final nod at the smoking embers. Then, with a satisfied expression on his face, he climbed up to the chair that had replaced the altar. Capricorn sank into its red upholstery with a deep sigh.\n\n'Dustfinger, go to the kitchen and get Mortola to put something on your burns,' he ordered in a commanding voice. 'You'll be no use for anything without the use of your hands.'\n\nDustfinger looked at Mo for a long time before obeying this order. Head bent, with unsteady steps, he walked past Capricorn's men. The way to the church porch seemed endless. For a moment, as Dustfinger opened the door, bright sunlight shone into the building. As it closed behind him, Meggie, Mo and Elinor were left with Capricorn and his men \u2013 and the reek of petrol and burnt paper.\n\n'And now let's come to you, Silvertongue!' said Capricorn, stretching his legs. He was wearing black boots. He examined the gleaming leather with satisfaction, removing a scrap of charred paper from the toe of one boot. 'Until now I, Basta and the unfortunate Dustfinger are the only evidence that you can conjure up extraordinary magic out of little black letters. You yourself don't seem to trust your gift, if we're to believe you \u2013 which, as I was saying just now, I don't. On the contrary, I think you are a master of your craft, and I can scarcely wait for you to give us another taste of your skill at long last. Cockerell!' His voice sounded irritated. 'Where's the reader? Didn't I tell you to bring him?'\n\nCockerell stroked his beard nervously. 'He was still busy choosing books,' he stammered. 'I'll fetch him right away.' And with a hasty bow, he limped off.\n\nCapricorn began drumming his fingers on the arms of his chair. 'No doubt you've already heard that I had to resort to the services of another reader while you were hiding from me so successfully,' he said to Mo. 'I found him by chance five years ago, but he's useless. You only have to look at Flatnose's face.' Flatnose lowered his head, embarrassed, when all eyes turned on him. 'And Cockerell owes him his limp too. As for the girls he read out of his books for me, you should have seen them. It'd give a man nightmares just to see their faces. Finally, I had him read to me only when I felt like amusing myself with his monsters, and I actually found my men in this world of yours, just by recruiting them when they were still young. There's a lonely boy who likes to play with fire in almost every village.' Smiling, he inspected his fingernails like a satisfied cat examining its claws. 'I've told the reader to find the right books for you. At least the poor fool does know his way around books \u2013 he lives in them like one of those pale worms that feed on paper.'\n\n'And just what am I supposed to read out of his books for you?' Mo's voice sounded bitter. 'A few monsters, a couple of human horrors to suit the present company?' He nodded in Basta's direction.\n\n'For heaven's sake, Mortimer, don't put ideas into his head!' whispered Elinor, with a nervous glance at Capricorn.\n\nBut Capricorn merely flicked some ash off his trousers and smiled. 'No, thank you, Silvertongue,' he said. 'I have enough men, and as for the monsters, well, perhaps we'll get around to them later. For the time being we're doing very well with Basta's trained dogs and the local snakes. They make excellent and deadly presents. No, Silvertongue, all I want today as a test of your skill is gold. I have such an appetite for money! My men do their best to squeeze all that can be squeezed out of this part of the country.' At these words from Capricorn, Basta lovingly stroked his knife. 'But it's never enough for all the wonderful things that can be bought in this infinitely wide world of yours. A world of so many pages, Silvertongue, so very many pages, and I want to write my name on every one of them.'\n\n'In what kind of letters?' enquired Mo. 'Is Basta going to scratch them into the paper with his knife?'\n\n'Oh, Basta can't write,' replied Capricorn calmly. 'None of my men can either read or write. I've forbidden them to learn. But I got one of my maidservants to teach me how to read. And when there's something to be written the reader does it. So you see, my dear Silvertongue, I can make my mark on your world.'\n\nThe church door opened as if Cockerell had just been waiting for this cue. The man he ushered in had his head hunched between his shoulders and looked neither right nor left as he followed Cockerell. He was small and thin, and couldn't be any older than Mo, but his back was bent like an old man's, and his arms and legs moved awkwardly, as if he didn't quite know what to do with them. He kept nervously adjusting his glasses. The frame was held together over the bridge of his nose with sticky tape, as if it had often been broken. He was clutching a number of books to his chest with his left arm, as if they offered some protection from the stares turned on him from all sides and the sinister place to which he had been brought.\n\nWhen the two men eventually reached the foot of the steps Cockerell dug an elbow into his companion's ribs, and the man bowed so hurriedly that two of the books fell to the floor. He was quick to snatch them up, and bowed to Capricorn a second time.\n\n'We've been waiting for you, Darius!' said Capricorn. 'I trust you've found what I wanted.'\n\n'Oh yes, yes!' stammered Darius, casting an almost reverent glance at Mo. 'Is that him?'\n\n'Yes. Show him the books you've chosen.'\n\nDarius nodded and bowed again, this time to Mo. 'These \u2013 these are all stories with treasure in them,' he stammered. 'Finding them wasn't as easy as I had expected,' he added, with the faintest note of reproach in his voice. 'After all, there aren't so many books in this village. And however often I ask no one brings me any more, or if they do the books are useless. But never mind that \u2013 here they are. I think you'll be happy with my choice, anyway.' He knelt down on the floor in front of Mo and began setting out the books side by side, so that Mo could read the titles.\n\nThe very first one alarmed Meggie. Treasure Island. She looked uneasily at Mo. Not that one, she thought. Not that book, Mo. But Mo had already picked up another book: Tales From the Thousand and One Nights.\n\n'I think this will do,' he said. 'There's sure to be plenty of gold in those stories. But I'm warning you again, I don't know what will happen. Because it never does happen when I want it to. I know you all think I'm a magician, but I'm not. The magic comes out of the books themselves, and I have no more idea than you or any of your men how it works.'\n\nCapricorn leaned back in his chair looking expressionlessly at Mo. 'How many more times are you going to tell me that, Silvertongue?' he asked in bored tones. 'You can say so as often as you like, but I don't believe it. In the world on which we finally slammed the door today I frequently mingled with magicians, wizards and witches, and I very often had to deal with their obstinacy. I know that Basta has given you a graphic account of the way we used to break their will. But in your case, and now that your daughter is here as our guest, I'm sure such painful methods will not be necessary.' With these words, Capricorn looked pointedly at Basta.\n\nMo tried to hold on to Meggie, but Basta moved faster. Pulling her towards him, he quickly put an arm around her neck and held her in a headlock.\n\n'From now on, Silvertongue,' continued Capricorn, his voice still sounding as indifferent as if he was talking about the weather, 'from now on, Basta will be your daughter's personal shadow. This will provide her with reliable protection from snakes and fierce dogs but not, of course, from Basta himself, who will be kind to her only as long as I say so. And that in turn will depend on whether I am pleased with your services. Have I made myself clear?'\n\nMo looked first at him and then at Meggie. She did her best to look unafraid, so that he would think there was no need to worry about her \u2013 after all, she had always been a better liar than he was. But this time he saw through the lie. He knew that her fear was as great as the fear she saw in his own eyes.\n\nPerhaps all this is just a story too, thought Meggie desperately. And any moment someone will close the book because it's so horrible and scary, and Mo and I will be back at home and I'll make him a coffee. She closed her eyes very tight, as if that would make her thoughts come true, but when she peered through her lashes Basta was still standing behind her, and Flatnose was rubbing his squashed nostrils and turning his dog-like gaze on Capricorn.\n\n'Very well,' said Mo wearily into the silence. 'I'll read aloud to you. But Meggie and Elinor can't stay in here.'\n\nMeggie knew exactly what he was thinking. He was thinking of her mother, and wondering who might disappear this time.\n\n'Nonsense. Of course they stay here.' Capricorn's voice was no longer careless. 'And you'd better get started before the book there in your hand falls to dust.'\n\nMo closed his eyes for a moment. 'Very well, but tell Basta to put his knife away,' he said hoarsely. 'If he hurts a hair of Meggie or Elinor's heads I promise you I'll read the Plague out of a book to infect you and your men.'\n\nCockerell looked at Mo in alarm, and a shadow passed over even Basta's face, but Capricorn just laughed.\n\n'Let me remind you, Silvertongue, that you're speaking of a contagious disease,' he said. 'And it doesn't stop short at little girls. So never mind the empty threats, just start reading. Now. At once. And I want to hear something out of that book first!'\n\nHe pointed to the book that Mo had just laid aside.\n\nTreasure Island."
            },
            {
                "title": "Treasure Island",
                "text": "\u2002Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island... I take up my pen in the year of grace 17\u2014, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.\n\n\u2014Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island\n\nAnd so Meggie heard her father read aloud, for the first time in nine years, in a draughty old church. Even many, many years later the smell of burnt paper would come back to her as soon as she opened one of the books from which he had read that awful morning.\n\nIt was chilly in Capricorn's church \u2013 Meggie was to remember that later, too \u2013 although the sun must have been hot outside and high in the sky by the time Mo began to read. He simply sat down on the floor where he was, legs crossed, one book on his lap and the others beside him. Meggie quickly knelt down close to him before Basta could catch hold of her.\n\n'Here, get up these steps, all of you,' Capricorn told his men. 'And take the woman with you, Flatnose. Only Basta stays where he is.'\n\nElinor resisted, but Flatnose merely seized a handful of her hair and hauled her along after him. Capricorn's men climbed the steps and sat at their master's feet, Elinor among them like a pigeon with ruffled feathers in the middle of a mob of marauding crows. The only person who looked equally out of place was the thin reader, Darius, who was sitting at the very end of the row of black-clad men and kept fiddling with his glasses.\n\nMo opened the book on his lap and began leafing through it, frowning, as if searching the pages for the gold he was to read out of it for Capricorn.\n\n'Cockerell, you will cut out the tongue of anyone who utters the slightest sound while Silvertongue is reading,' said Capricorn, and Cockerell drew a knife from his belt and looked along the row of men as if already selecting his first victim. All was so deathly quiet inside the red church that Meggie thought she could hear Basta breathing behind her. But perhaps it was only the sound of her own fear.\n\nJudging by their faces, Capricorn's men seemed to be feeling far from happy. They were looking at Mo with expressions of apprehension mingled with dislike. Meggie understood that only too well. Perhaps one of them would soon vanish into the book through which Mo was leafing so undecidedly. Had Capricorn told them that such a thing might happen? Did even he know it? What if she herself vanished, as Mo obviously feared? Or Elinor?\n\n'Meggie!' Mo whispered to her, as if he had heard her thoughts. 'Hold on to me tight any way you can.' Meggie nodded, and clutched his sweater. As if that would be any use!\n\n'Yes, I think I've found the right place,' said Mo into the silence. He cast a last glance at Capricorn, looked at Elinor, cleared his throat \u2013 and began to read.\n\nEverything disappeared: the red walls of the church, the faces of Capricorn's men, Capricorn himself sitting in his chair. There was nothing but Mo's voice and the pictures forming in their minds from the letters on the page, like the pattern of a carpet taking shape on a loom. If Meggie could have hated Capricorn any more, she would have done so now. It was his fault that Mo had never once read aloud to her in all these years. To think of the magic he could have worked in her room with his voice, a voice that gave a different flavour to every word, made every sentence a melody! Even Cockerell had forgotten his knife and the tongues he was supposed to cut out, and was listening with a faraway expression on his face. Flatnose was staring into space, enraptured, as if a pirate ship with all sails set were truly cruising in through one of the church windows. The other men were equally entranced.\n\nThere was not a sound to be heard but Mo's voice bringing the letters and words on the page to life.\n\nOnly one of his audience seemed immune to the magic of it. Face expressionless, pale eyes fixed on Mo, Capricorn sat there waiting: waiting for the clink of coins amidst the harmony of the words, for chests of damp wood heavy with gold and silver.\n\nMo did not keep him waiting long. It happened as he was reading what Jim Hawkins \u2013 a boy not much older than Meggie when he embarked on his terrifying adventure \u2013 saw in a dark cave:\n\n...Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck \u2013 nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.\n\nThe maidservants were cleaning the last crumbs off the tables when coins suddenly came rolling over the bare wood. The women stumbled back, dropping their dish-cloths, and pressing their hands to their mouths as the coins tumbled and leaped about their feet. Gold, silver and copper coins jingled over the flagstone floor, clinking as they gathered in heaps under the benches \u2013 more and more and more of them. Some rolled as far as the steps. Capricorn's men came to life, bent to pick up the glittering little things bouncing off their boots \u2013 but then snatched back their hands. None of them dared touch the magic money. For what else could it be? Gold made of paper and printer's ink \u2013 and the sound of a human voice.\n\nAs the shower of gold stopped, at the very moment when Mo closed the book, Meggie saw there was a little sand among all the gleaming, glittering money. A few iridescent blue beetles scuttled away, and the head of an emerald-green lizard emerged from a heap of tiny coins. It stared around with fixed eyes, tongue flicking out of its sharp little mouth. Basta threw his knife at it, as if he could skewer not just the lizard but the cowardice that had seized them all. However, Meggie gave a warning cry, and the lizard darted away so fast that the tip of the blade struck the stones. Basta ran over to his knife, picked it up, and pointed it threateningly in Meggie's direction.\n\nCapricorn rose from his chair, his face still as cold and blank as if nothing worth getting excited about had happened, and clapped his ringed hands graciously. 'Not bad for a start, Silvertongue!' he said. 'See that, Darius? That's what gold looks like \u2013 not the rusty, dented metal you've read out of books for me. But now you've heard how the thing is done I hope you'll have learnt from it. Just in case I ever require your services again.'\n\nDarius did not reply. His eyes were fixed on Mo with such admiration in them that it wouldn't have surprised Meggie had he flung himself at her father's feet. When Mo straightened up, Darius approached him hesitantly.\n\nCapricorn's men were still gazing at the gold as if they didn't know what to do next.\n\n'What are you standing there for, gaping like a lot of sheep?' cried Capricorn. 'Pick it up. Go on.'\n\n'That was wonderful!' Darius whispered to Mo, while Capricorn's men cautiously began shovelling the coins into bags and boxes. His eyes were gleaming behind his glasses like the eyes of a child who has just been given a much-wanted present. 'I've read that book many times,' he said, in a voice that shook, 'but I never saw it all as vividly as I did today. And I didn't just see it... I smelled it, the salt and the tar and the musty odour of the whole accursed island...'\n\n'Treasure Island! Heavens above, I was petrified!' Elinor appeared behind Darius, pushing him impatiently aside. Flatnose had obviously forgotten her for the moment. 'He'll be here any minute, that's what I kept thinking. Long John Silver will be here, lashing out at us with his crutch.'\n\nMo just nodded, but Meggie could see the relief on his face. 'Here, take it!' he told Darius, handing him the book. 'I hope I never have to read out of it again. One shouldn't push one's luck.'\n\n'You said his name not quite right every time,' Meggie whispered.\n\nMo tenderly stroked the bridge of her nose. 'Ah, so you noticed,' he whispered back. 'Yes, I thought that might help. Perhaps the savage old pirate won't feel we're calling to him then, I told myself, and he'll stay where he belongs. Why are you looking at me like that?'\n\n'Why do you think?' said Elinor, answering instead of Meggie. 'Why is she looking so admiringly at her father? Because no one ever read aloud like that \u2013 even apart from the money. I saw it all, the sea and the island, as clear as if I could touch it, and I don't expect it was any different for your daughter.'\n\nMo had to smile. He kicked aside a few of the coins on the floor in front of him. One of Capricorn's men picked them up and surreptitiously pocketed them. As he did so, he looked at Mo as uneasily as if he feared a word from him might turn him into a frog, or one of the beetles still crawling around among the coins.\n\n'They're afraid of you, Mo!' whispered Meggie. She could see the trepidation even on Basta's face, although he was doing his best to hide it by assuming a particularly bored expression.\n\nOnly Capricorn seemed to be left cold by what had happened. Arms folded, he stood there watching his men pick up the last of the coins. 'How much longer is this going to take?' he asked finally. 'Leave the small change where it is and sit down again. And you, Silvertongue, open the next book!'\n\n'The next book!' Elinor's voice almost cracked with indignation. 'What on earth's the idea of that? The gold your men are shovelling up there is enough to last you at least two lifetimes. We're going home now!'\n\nShe was about to turn round, but Flatnose, who had finally remembered he was meant to be guarding Elinor, seized her arm roughly. Mo looked up at Capricorn.\n\nBasta, smiling unpleasantly, laid his hand on Meggie's shoulder. 'Get on with it, Silvertongue!' he said. 'You heard. There are still plenty of books here.'\n\nMo looked at Meggie for a long time before bending to pick up the book he had chosen first: Tales From the Thousand and One Nights.\n\n'The book that goes on and on forever,' he murmured, opening it. 'Did you know the Arabs say no one can read it right through to the end, Meggie?'\n\nShe shook her head as she sat down beside him on the cold flagstones. Basta let her, but he planted himself right behind her. Meggie didn't know much about The Thousand and One Nights, except that it was really a book in many volumes. The copy that Darius had given Mo could only be a small selection. Were Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in it, and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp? Which story would Mo read?\n\nMeggie thought she saw contradictory feelings on the faces of Capricorn's men: fear of what Mo might bring to life and, at the same time, a wish, a yearning almost, to be carried away by his voice once more, transported far away to a place where they could forget everything, even themselves.\n\nThere was no smell of salt and rum when Mo began reading this time. The air in Capricorn's church grew hot. Meggie's eyes began to burn, and when she rubbed them she found sand sticking to her knuckles. Once again, Capricorn's men listened to Mo's voice with bated breath, as if they were turned to stone. Capricorn alone seemed to feel nothing of the magic. But his eyes showed that even he was spellbound. They were fixed on Mo's face, as unmoving as the eyes of a snake. His red suit made his pupils look even more washed out, and his body seemed tense, like a dog scenting its prey. But this time Mo disappointed him.\n\nThe words offered up no riches, none of the treasure chests, pearls and swords set with precious stones that Mo's voice conjured up, shining and sparkling, until Capricorn's men felt as if they could pluck them from the air. Something else slipped out of the pages, though, something breathing, a creature made of flesh and blood.\n\nA boy was suddenly standing between the still smouldering braziers where Capricorn had burned the books. Meggie was the only one to notice him. All the others were too absorbed in the story. Even Mo didn't see him, far away as he was, somewhere in the sand and the wind as his eyes made their way through the labyrinth of letters.\n\nThe boy was some three or four years older than Meggie. The turban round his head was dirty, his eyes dark with fear in his brown face. He blinked and rubbed them as if he could wipe it all away \u2013 the wrong picture, the wrong place. He looked round the church as if he had never seen such a building before, and how could he? There wouldn't be any churches with spires in his story, or green hills like those he would see outside. The robe he wore went down to his brown feet, and in the dim light of the church it shone blue as a patch of the sky.\n\nMeggie wondered: what will happen when they see him? He's certainly not what Capricorn was hoping for.\n\nBut Capricorn had already noticed the boy.\n\n'Stop!' he commanded, so sharply that Mo broke off in mid-sentence and raised his head.\n\nAbruptly, and rather unwillingly, Capricorn's men returned to reality. Cockerell was the first on his feet. 'Hey, where did he come from?' he growled.\n\nThe boy ducked, looked round with a terrified expression, and ran for it, doubling back and forth like a rabbit. But he didn't get far. Three men immediately sprang forward and caught him at the feet of Capricorn's statue.\n\nMo put the book down on the flagstones beside him and buried his face in his hands.\n\n'Hey, Fulvio's gone!' cried one of Capricorn's men. 'Vanished into thin air!' They all stared at Mo. There it was again, the nervousness in their faces, but this time mingled not with admiration but with anger.\n\n'Get rid of that boy, Silvertongue!' ordered Capricorn angrily. 'I have more than enough of his kind. And bring Fulvio back.'\n\nMo took his hands away from his face and stood up.\n\n'For the millionth time, I can't bring anyone back,' he said. 'The fact that you don't believe me doesn't make that a lie. I can't do it. I can't decide who or what comes out of a book, nor who goes into it.'\n\nMeggie reached for Mo's hand. Some of Capricorn's men came closer, two of them holding the boy. They were pulling on his arms as if to tear him in half. Eyes wide with terror, the boy stared into their unfamiliar faces.\n\n'Back to your places!' Capricorn ordered the angry men. A couple of them were already dangerously close to Mo. 'Why all this fuss? Have you forgotten how stupidly Fulvio acted on the last job? We almost had the police down on us. So it's the right man to have gone. And who knows, perhaps this lad will turn out to have a talent for arson. All the same, I want to see pearls now. And gold and jewels. After all, they're what this story is all about, so let's have some!'\n\nAn uneasy murmuring rose among the men. Nonetheless, most of them returned to the steps and perched once more on the worn treads. Only three still stood in front of Mo, staring at him with intense hostility. One of them was Basta. 'Very well, so we can dispense with Fulvio,' he said, never taking his eyes off Mo. 'But who is this wretched wizard going to magic into thin air next time? I don't want to end up in some thrice-accursed desert story and find myself going around in a turban all of a sudden!' The men standing near him nodded in agreement, and looked at Mo so darkly that Meggie almost stopped breathing.\n\n'Basta, I won't tell you again.' Capricorn's voice sounded menacingly calm. 'Let him go on reading, all of you. And anyone whose teeth start chattering with fear had better go outside and help the women with the laundry.'\n\nSome of the men looked longingly at the church door, but none ventured to leave. Finally, even the two who had been standing beside Basta turned without a word and sat down with the others.\n\n'You'll pay for Fulvio yet!' Basta whispered to Mo before he stationed himself behind Meggie again. Why couldn't he have disappeared? she thought.\n\nThe boy still hadn't uttered a sound.\n\n'Lock him up. We'll see if he can be of any use to us later,' ordered Capricorn.\n\nThe boy did not resist as Flatnose led him away. Apparently numb, he stumbled along as if he were still expecting to wake up. When would he realise this dream was never going to end?\n\nWhen the door closed behind the two of them Capricorn returned to his chair. 'Go on reading, Silvertongue,' he said. 'We still have a long day ahead of us.'\n\nBut Mo looked at the books lying at his feet, and shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'You saw. It happened again. I'm tired. Be content with what I've brought you from Treasure Island. Those coins are worth a fortune. I want to go home, and I never want to set eyes on you again.' His voice sounded rougher than usual, as if it had read too many words aloud.\n\nCapricorn looked at Mo appraisingly before turning his eyes to the bags and chests his men had filled with coins. He seemed to be working out how long their contents would keep him in comfort.\n\n'Yes, you're right,' he said at last. 'We'll go on tomorrow. Otherwise we might find a stinking camel turning up here next, or another half-starved boy.'\n\n'Tomorrow?' Mo took a step towards him. 'What do you mean? Aren't you satisfied yet? One of your men has disappeared already. Do you want to be the next?'\n\n'I can live with the risk,' replied Capricorn, unimpressed. His men leaped to their feet as he rose from his chair and walked slowly down the altar steps. They stood there like schoolboys, although some of them were taller than Capricorn, hands clasped behind their backs as if at any moment he would inspect their fingernails for cleanliness. Meggie couldn't help remembering what Basta had said \u2013 how young he himself had been when he had joined Capricorn \u2013 and she wondered whether it was out of fear or admiration that the men bowed their heads.\n\nCapricorn had stopped beside one of the bulging moneybags. 'Oh, I have a great many plans for you, Silvertongue, believe me,' he said, putting his hand into the sack and running the coins through his fingers. 'Today was just a test. After all, I had to convince myself of your talents with my own eyes and ears, right? I can certainly use all this gold, but tomorrow you're going to read something else out of a book for me.'\n\nHe strolled over to the boxes which had contained the books that were now burnt to ashes, and reached into one. 'Surprise!' he announced, smiling as he held up a single book. It didn't look at all like the copy Meggie and Elinor had brought him. It still had a brightly coloured paper dust-jacket with a picture that Meggie couldn't make out from a distance. 'Oh yes, I still have one!' remarked Capricorn, scanning the uncomprehending faces with pleasure. 'My own personal copy, you might say, and tomorrow, Silvertongue, you're going to read to me from it. As I was saying, I like this world of yours very much indeed, but there's a friend from the old days that I miss. I never let your substitute try his skill with my friend \u2013 I was afraid he might fetch him here without a head, or with only one leg. But now I have you, and you're a master of your art.'\n\nMo was staring incredulously at the book in Capricorn's hand as if he expected it to dissolve into thin air at any moment.\n\n'Have a rest, Silvertongue,' said Capricorn. 'Spare your precious voice. You'll have plenty of time for that, because I have to go away, and I won't be back till noon tomorrow. Take these three back to their quarters,' he told his men. 'Give them enough to eat, and some blankets for the night. Oh yes, and get Mortola to bring him tea. That kind of thing works wonders on a hoarse, tired voice. Didn't you always swear by tea sweetened with honey, Darius?' He turned enquiringly to his old reader, who simply nodded, and looked sympathetically at Mo.\n\n'Back to our quarters? Do you mean that hole where your man with the knife put us last night?' Elinor's cheeks were flushed red, whether in horror or indignation Meggie couldn't guess. 'This is wrongful detention! No, worse \u2013 abduction! That's it, abduction. Are you aware how many years in jail you'd get for it?'\n\n'Abduction!' Basta savoured the word. 'Sounds good to me. Really good.'\n\nCapricorn gave him a smile. Then he looked Elinor up and down as if he were seeing her for the first time. 'Basta,' he said. 'Is this lady any use to us?'\n\n'Not that I know of,' replied Basta, smiling like a child who has just been given permission to smash a toy. Elinor went pale, and tried to step backwards, but Cockerell barred her way and held her firmly.\n\n'What do we generally do with useless things, Basta?' asked Capricorn quietly.\n\nBasta went on smiling.\n\n'Stop that!' Mo said angrily to Capricorn. 'Stop frightening her at once, or I'm not reading you another word.'\n\nWith every appearance of indifference, Capricorn turned his back to him. And Basta kept smiling.\n\nMeggie saw Elinor press a hand to her trembling lips, and quickly went over to stand beside her. 'She's not useless. She knows more about books than anyone else in the world!' she said, holding Elinor's other hand very tight.\n\nCapricorn turned round. The look in his eyes made Meggie shudder, as if someone were running cold fingers down her spine. His eyelashes were pale as cobwebs.\n\n'Elinor definitely knows more stories with treasure in them than that spineless reader of yours!' Meggie stammered. 'Definitely!'\n\nElinor squeezed Meggie's fingers hard. Her own hand was damp with sweat. 'Yes. Absolutely, that's true,' she said huskily. 'I'm sure I can think of several more.'\n\n'Well, well,' was all Capricorn said, his curved lips tracing a smile. 'We'll see.' Then he gave his men a signal, and they made Elinor, Meggie and Mo file past the tables, past Capricorn's statue and the red columns, and out through the heavy door that groaned as they pushed it open.\n\nOutside, beyond the shadow of the church on the village square, the sun shone down from a cloudless blue sky, and the air was filled with scents of summer. It was as if nothing unusual had happened."
            },
            {
                "title": "Gloomy Prospects",
                "text": "\u2002The python dropped his head lightly for a moment on Mowgli's shoulders. 'A brave heart and a courteous tongue,' said he. 'They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see.'\n\n\u2014Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book\n\nThey did indeed get enough to eat. Around noon a woman brought them bread and olives, and towards evening there was pasta smelling of fresh rosemary. But the food couldn't cut short the endless hours, any more than full stomachs dispelled their fear of what the next day might bring. Perhaps not even a book would have done it, but there was no point thinking of that, since they had no books, only the blank walls and the locked door. At least a new light bulb was hanging from the ceiling, so they didn't have to sit in the dark the whole time. Meggie kept looking at the crack under the door to see if night was falling yet. She imagined lizards sitting outside in the sun. She'd seen some in the square outside the church. Had the emerald-green lizard that scurried out of the heaps of coins found its way outside? And what had happened to the boy? Meggie saw his frightened expression whenever she closed her eyes.\n\nShe wondered whether the same thoughts were going through Mo's head. He had hardly said a word since they were locked up again, but had flopped down on the pile of straw and turned his face to the wall. Elinor was no more talkative. 'How generous!' was all she had muttered when Cockerell had bolted the door after them. 'Our host has graciously provided two more heaps of mouldy straw.' Then she had sat down in a corner, legs outstretched, and begun staring gloomily at her knees, then at the grubby wall.\n\n'Mo,' asked Meggie at last, when she could no longer stand the silence, 'what do you think they're doing to the boy? And what kind of a friend are you supposed to read out of the book for Capricorn?'\n\n'I don't know, Meggie,' was all he replied, without turning round.\n\nSo she left him alone, made herself a bed of straw beside his, then paced up and down between the bare walls. Perhaps the strange boy was the other side of one of them? She put her ear to the wall. Not a sound came through. Someone had scratched a name in the plaster: Ricardo Bentone, 19.5.96. Meggie ran her finger over the letters. A little further on there was another name, and then another. Meggie wondered what had become of them, Ricardo, Ugo and Bernardo. Perhaps I ought to scratch my name here too, she thought, just in case... but she was careful not to think her way to the end of that sentence.\n\nBehind her, Elinor lay down on her straw bed, sighing. When Meggie turned to her, she forced a smile. 'What wouldn't I give for a comb!' she said, pushing the hair back from her forehead. 'I'd never have thought that in a situation like this I'd miss a comb so much, of all things, but I do. Heavens, I don't even have a hairpin left. I must look like a witch, or a washing-up brush that's seen better days.'\n\n'No, really, you look fine. Your hairpins were always falling out anyway,' said Meggie. 'Actually, I think you look younger.'\n\n'Younger? Hmm. Well, if you say so.' Elinor glanced down at herself. Her mouse-grey sweater was filthy, and there were three ladders in her tights. 'Meggie, it was very kind of you to help me back there in the church,' she said, pulling her skirt down over her knees. My knees were like jelly, I was so scared. I don't know what's come over me. I feel like someone else, as if the old Elinor has driven home and left me here by myself.' Her lips began to tremble, and Meggie thought she was going to cry, but next moment the familiar Elinor was back again. 'Well, there we are!' she said. 'It's only in an emergency that you find out what you're truly made of. Personally, I always thought if I was a wooden statue I'd be carved out of oak, but it seems I'm more like pearwood or something else very soft. It only takes a villain like that to play with his knife in front of my nose and the wood shavings start flaking away.'\n\nAnd now the tears did come, hard as Elinor tried to keep them back. Angrily, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.\n\n'I think you're doing splendidly, Elinor.' Mo was still lying with his face to the wall. 'You're both doing splendidly. And I could wring my own neck for dragging you two into all this.'\n\n'Nonsense. If anyone around here needs his neck wrung it's Capricorn,' said Elinor. 'And that man Basta. My God, I'd never have thought the idea of strangling another human being would give me such enormous satisfaction. But I'm sure if I could just get my hands round that Basta's neck, I\u2014'\n\nOn seeing the shock in Meggie's eyes she fell guiltily silent, but Meggie just shrugged her shoulders.\n\n'I feel the same,' she murmured, and began scratching an 'M' on the wall with the key of her bicycle lock. Weird to think she still had that key in her trouser pocket \u2013 like a souvenir of another life.\n\nElinor ran her finger down one of the ladders in her tights, and Mo turned on his back and stared up at the ceiling. 'I'm so sorry, Meggie,' he said suddenly. 'I'm so sorry I let them take the book away from me.'\n\nMeggie scratched an 'E' in the wall. 'It doesn't make any difference,' she said, stepping back. The Gs in her name looked like nibbled Os. 'You probably couldn't have read her back out of it again anyway.'\n\n'No, probably not,' murmured Mo, and went on staring at the ceiling.\n\n'It's not your fault,' said Meggie. She wanted to add: the main thing is you're with me. The main thing is for Basta never to put his knife to your throat again. I mean, I hardly remember my mother. I only know her from a couple of photographs. But Meggie said none of that, for she knew it wouldn't comfort Mo, it would probably just make him sadder than ever. For the first time, Meggie had some idea of how much he missed her mother. And for one crazy moment she felt jealous.\n\nShe scratched an 'I' in the plaster \u2013 that was an easy letter \u2013 then she lowered the key.\n\nFootsteps were approaching outside. Elinor put her hand to her mouth when they stopped.\n\nBasta pushed open the door, and there was someone behind him. Meggie recognised the old woman she had seen in Capricorn's house. With a dour expression on her face, she pushed past Basta and put a mug and a thermos jug on the floor. 'As if I didn't have enough to do!' she muttered, before going out again. 'So now we have to feed up our fine guests too! They might at least be put to work if you have to keep them here.'\n\n'Tell that to Capricorn,' was all Basta replied. Then he drew his knife, smiled at Elinor, and wiped the blade on his jacket. It was getting dark outside, and his snow-white shirt shone in the gathering twilight.\n\n'Enjoy your tea, Silvertongue,' he said, relishing the discomfort on Elinor's face. 'Mortola's put so much honey in the jug your mouth will probably stick up with the first sip you take, but your throat will be as good as new tomorrow.'\n\n'What have you done with the boy?' asked Mo.\n\n'Oh, I think he's next door to you. Capricorn hasn't decided what's to become of him yet. Cockerell will try him out with a little ordeal by fire tomorrow, then we'll know if he's any use to us.'\n\nMo sat up. 'Ordeal by fire?' he asked, his voice both bitter and mocking. 'Well, you can't have passed that one yourself. You're even afraid of Dustfinger's matches.'\n\n'Watch your tongue!' Basta hissed at him. 'One more word and I'll cut it out, however precious it may be.'\n\n'Oh no, you won't,' said Mo, standing up. He took his time over filling the mug with steaming tea.\n\n'Maybe not.' Basta lowered his voice, as if afraid of being overheard. 'But your little daughter has a tongue too, and hers isn't as valuable as yours.'\n\nMo flung the mug of hot tea at him, but Basta closed the door so quickly that the mug smashed into the wood. 'Sweet dreams!' he called from outside as he shot the bolts. 'See you in the morning.'\n\nNone of them said a word when he was gone, not for a long, long time. 'Mo, tell me a story,' Meggie whispered at last.\n\n'What story do you want to hear?' he asked, putting his arm round her shoulders.\n\n'Tell me the one about us being in Egypt,' she whispered, 'and we're looking for treasure and surviving sandstorms and scorpions and all the scary ghosts rising from their tombs to watch over their precious grave goods.'\n\n'Oh, that story,' said Mo. 'Didn't I make it up for your eighth birthday? It's rather a gloomy tale, as far as I remember.'\n\n'Yes, very!' said Meggie. 'But it has a happy ending. Everything turns out all right, and we come home laden with treasure.'\n\n'I wouldn't mind hearing that one myself,' said Elinor, her voice unsteady. She was probably still thinking of Basta's knife.\n\nSo Mo began to tell his story, without the rustle of pages, without the endless labyrinth of letters.\n\n'Mo, nothing ever came out of a story you were just telling, did it?' asked Meggie at one point, suddenly feeling anxious.\n\n'No,' he said. 'For that to happen, it seems that printer's ink is necessary and someone else needs to have made up the story.' Then he continued, and Meggie and Elinor listened until his voice had carried them far, far away. Finally, they went to sleep.\n\nA sound woke them all. Someone was fiddling with the lock of the door. Meggie thought she heard a muffled curse.\n\n'Oh no!' breathed Elinor. She was the first on her feet. 'They're coming to take me away! That old woman's persuaded them! Why feed us up? You, maybe,' she said, looking frantically at Mo, 'but why me?'\n\n'Go over to the wall, Elinor,' said Mo as he moved Meggie behind him. 'Both of you keep well back from the door.'\n\nThe lock sprang open with a muffled little click, and the door was pushed just far enough open for someone to squeeze through it. Dustfinger. He cast a last anxious glance outside, then pulled the door shut behind him and leaned against it.\n\n'So I hear you've done it again, Silvertongue!' he said, lowering his voice. 'They say the poor boy still hasn't uttered a sound. I don't blame him. I can tell you, it's a horrible feeling suddenly landing in someone else's story.'\n\n'What are you doing here?' snapped Elinor. But the sight of Dustfinger had actually filled her with relief.\n\n'Leave him alone, Elinor,' said Mo, moving her aside and going over to Dustfinger. 'How are your hands?' he asked.\n\nDustfinger shrugged. 'They put cold water on them in the kitchen, but the skin's still almost as red as the flames that licked at it.'\n\n'Ask him what he wants!' hissed Elinor. 'And if he's just come to tell us he can't do anything about the mess we're in, then you might as well wring his lying neck!'\n\nBy way of answer, Dustfinger tossed her a bunch of keys. 'Why do you think I'm here?' he grumbled back, switching off the light. 'Stealing the car keys from Basta wasn't easy, and a word of thanks might not be out of place, but we can think about that later. We don't want to hang about any longer \u2013 let's get out of here.' Cautiously, he opened the door and listened. 'There's a sentry posted up on the church tower,' he whispered, 'but the guards are keeping watch on the hills, not the village. The dogs are in their kennels, and even if we do have to deal with them, luckily they like me better than Basta.'\n\n'Why should we suddenly trust him?' whispered Elinor to Mo. 'Suppose there's some other devilry behind this?'\n\n'I want you to take me with you. That's my only motive!' snapped Dustfinger. 'There's nothing here for me any more. Capricorn's let me down. He's sent the only scrap of hope I still had up in smoke! He thinks he can do what he likes with me. Dustfinger's only a dog you can kick without fearing he may bite back, but he's wrong there. He burned the book, so I'm taking away the reader I brought him. And as for you,' he said, jabbing his burnt finger into Elinor's chest, 'you can come because you have a car. No one gets out of this village on foot, not even Capricorn's men, not with the snakes that infest these hills. But I can't drive, and so...'\n\n'I knew it!' Elinor almost forgot to keep her voice down. 'He just wants to save his own skin. That's why he's helping us! He doesn't have a guilty conscience, oh no. Why should he?'\n\n'I don't care why he's helping us, Elinor,' Mo interrupted her impatiently. 'We have to get away from here, that's what matters. But we're going to take someone else with us too.'\n\n'Someone else? Who?' Dustfinger looked at him uneasily.\n\n'The boy. The one I condemned yesterday to the same fate as you,' replied Mo, making his way past Dustfinger and out of the door. 'Basta said he's next door to us, and a lock is no obstacle to your clever fingers.'\n\n'I burned those clever fingers today!' muttered Dustfinger angrily. 'Still, just as you please. Your soft heart will be the ruin of us yet.'\n\nWhen Dustfinger knocked on the door bearing the number 5 a faint rustling could be heard on the other side of it. 'Seems like they were going to let him live,' he whispered as he got to work on the lock. 'They put people condemned to death in the crypt under the church. Ever since I told Basta for a joke that a White Lady haunts the stone coffins down there, he turns white as a sheet whenever Capricorn sends him into the crypt.' He chuckled quietly at the memory, like a schoolboy who's just played a particularly good practical joke.\n\nMeggie looked across at the church. 'Do they often condemn people to death?' she asked quietly.\n\nDustfinger shrugged. 'Not as often as they used to. But it does happen.'\n\n'Stop telling her such stories!' whispered Mo. He and Elinor never took their eyes off the church tower. The sentry was posted high up on the wall beside the belfry. It made Meggie dizzy just to look up there.\n\n'Those are no stories, Silvertongue, it's the truth! Don't you recognise the truth when you meet it any more? The truth's not pretty, of course. No one likes to look it in the face.' Dustfinger stepped back from the door and bowed. 'After you. I've picked the lock, you can fetch him out.' Even with his burnt fingers it hadn't taken him long.\n\n'You go in,' Mo whispered to Meggie. 'He'll be less afraid of you.'\n\nIt was pitch dark on the other side of the door, but Meggie heard a rustle as she stepped into the room, as if an animal were moving somewhere in the straw. Dustfinger put his arm through the doorway and handed her a torch. When Meggie switched it on, the beam of light fell on the boy's dark face. The straw they had given him seemed even mouldier than the pile on which Meggie had slept, but the boy looked as if he hadn't closed his eyes since Flatnose had locked him in anyway. His arms were tightly clasped round his legs, as if they were all he could rely on. Perhaps he was still waiting for his nightmare to end.\n\n'Come with us!' whispered Meggie, reaching out a hand to him. 'We want to help you! We'll take you away from here!'\n\nHe didn't move, just stared at her, his eyes narrow with distrust.\n\n'Hurry up, Meggie!' breathed Mo through the door.\n\nThe boy glanced at him and retreated until his back was right up against the wall.\n\n'Please!' whispered Meggie. 'You must come! The people here will do bad things to you.'\n\nHe was still looking at her. Then he stood up, cautiously, never taking his eyes off her. He was taller than she was by almost a hand's breadth. Suddenly, he leaped forward, making for the open door. He pushed Meggie aside so roughly that she fell over, but he couldn't get past Mo.\n\n'Here, take it easy!' Mo said under his breath. 'We really do want to help you, but you must do as we say, understand?'\n\nThe boy glared at him with dislike. 'You're all devils!' he whispered. 'Devils or demons!' So he did understand their language, and why not? His own story was told in every language in the world.\n\nMeggie got up and rubbed her knee. She must have grazed it on the stone floor. 'If you want to see some real devils then all you have to do is stay here!' she hissed at the boy as she pushed her way past him. He flinched as if she were a witch.\n\nMo drew the boy to his side. 'See that man on watch up there?' he whispered, pointing to the church tower. 'If he sees us they'll kill us.'\n\nThe boy looked up at the man on guard.\n\nDustfinger went over to him. 'Hurry up, will you?' he said quietly. 'If the lad doesn't want to go with us then he can just stay here. And the rest of you take your shoes off,' he added, glancing at the boy's bare feet, 'or you'll make more noise than a flock of goats.'\n\nElinor grumbled something in a cross voice, but she obeyed, and the boy did follow them, if hesitantly. Dustfinger hurried on ahead as if trying to outstrip his own shadow. The alley down which he led them sloped so steeply that Meggie kept stumbling, and every time Elinor stubbed her toes on the bumpy cobblestones she uttered a quiet curse. It was dark between the close-set houses. Masonry arches stretched from one side of the street to the other, as if to prevent the walls from collapsing. The rusty street lights cast ghostly shadows. Every noise sounded threatening, every cat scurrying out of a doorway made Meggie jump. But Capricorn's village was asleep. They passed only one guard, leaning on the wall in a side street and smoking. Two tom cats were fighting somewhere on the rooftops, and the guard bent to pick up a stone to throw at them. Dustfinger took advantage of the moment. Meggie was very glad he had made them take off their shoes. They slipped soundlessly past the guard whose back was still turned, but Meggie dared not breathe again until they were round the next corner. Once again, she noticed the many empty houses, the blank windows, the dilapidated doors. What had wrecked these homes? Just the course of time? Had the people who once lived here run away from Capricorn, or was the village already abandoned before he and his men took up residence? Hadn't Dustfinger said something like that?\n\nHe had stopped. He raised his hand in a warning gesture, and put a finger to his lips. They had reached the outskirts of the village. Only the car park still lay ahead. Two street lights illuminated the surface of the cracked asphalt, and a tall wire-netting fence rose to their left. 'The arena for Capricorn's ceremonies and festivities is on the other side of that fence,' whispered Dustfinger. 'I suppose the village children once played football there, but these days it's the scene of Capricorn's diabolical celebrations: bonfires, brandy, a few shots fired into the air, fireworks, blackened faces \u2013 that's their idea of fun.'\n\nThey put their shoes on before following Dustfinger into the car park. Meggie kept looking at the wire fence. Diabolical celebrations. She could almost see the bonfires, the blackened faces... 'Come on, Meggie!' urged Mo, leading her on. The sound of rushing water could be heard somewhere in the darkness, and Meggie remembered the bridge they had crossed on the way here. Suppose a guard was stationed there this time?\n\nThere were several cars in the car park, including Elinor's, which was parked a little way from the others. They all kept looking around anxiously as they ran towards it. Behind them the church tower rose high above the rooftops, and there was nothing now to shield them from the sentry's eyes. Meggie couldn't see him at this distance, but she was sure he was still there. From such a height they must look like black beetles crawling over a table. Did he have a pair of binoculars?\n\n'Come on, Elinor!' whispered Mo. It seemed to be taking her forever to unlock the car door.\n\n'All right, all right!' she growled back. 'I just don't have such nimble hands as our light-fingered friend.'\n\nMo put his arm round Meggie's shoulders as he looked around, but apart from a few stray cats he could see nothing moving in the car park or among the houses. Reassured, he made Meggie get into the back seat. The boy hesitated for a moment, examining the car as if it were some strange animal and he couldn't be sure whether it was kindly disposed or would swallow him alive, but finally he got in too. Meggie scowled at him and moved as far away from him as possible. Her knee still hurt.\n\n'Where's the matchstick-eater?' whispered Elinor. 'Dammit, don't tell me the man's disappeared again.'\n\nMeggie was the first to spot him. He was stealing over to the other cars. Elinor clutched the steering-wheel as if resisting only with difficulty the temptation to drive off without him. 'What's he up to this time?' she hissed.\n\nNone of them knew the answer. Dustfinger was gone for an excruciatingly long time, and when he came back he was closing a flick-knife.\n\n'What was the idea of that?' Elinor snapped, when he squeezed into the back seat next to the boy. 'Didn't you say we must hurry? And what were you doing with that knife? Not cutting someone open, I hope!'\n\n'Is my name Basta?' enquired Dustfinger, annoyed, as he forced his legs in behind the driver's seat. 'I was slitting their tyres, that's all. Just to be on the safe side.' He was still holding the knife.\n\nMeggie looked at it uneasily. 'That's Basta's knife,' she said.\n\nDustfinger smiled as he put it in his trouser pocket. 'Not any more. I'd like to have stolen his silly amulet too, but he wears it round his neck even at night, and that would have been too dangerous.'\n\nSomewhere a dog began to bark. Mo wound down his window and put his head out, looking concerned.\n\n'Believe it or not, it's only toads making all that racket,' said Elinor. But what Meggie suddenly heard echoing through the night was nothing like the croaking of toads, and when she looked in alarm through the back window a man was climbing out of one of the parked vehicles, a dusty, dirty white delivery van. It was one of Capricorn's men. Meggie had seen him in the church. He looked around him with a face still dazed by sleep.\n\nBefore Meggie could stop her, Elinor started the engine, and the man snatched a shotgun from his back and stumbled towards the car. For a moment Meggie almost felt sorry for him \u2013 he looked so sleepy and baffled. What would Capricorn do to a guard who fell asleep on duty? But then he aimed the gun and fired it. Meggie ducked her head well below the back of the seat, and Elinor pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator.\n\n'Damn it all!' she shouted at Dustfinger. 'Didn't you see that man when you were slinking about among the cars?'\n\n'No, I didn't!' Dustfinger shouted back. 'Now, drive! Not that way! It's over there. We must get to the road!'\n\nElinor wrenched the steering-wheel around. The boy was huddled down beside Meggie. At every shot he had closed his eyes tight and put his hands over his ears. Were there any guns in his story? Probably not, any more than there were cars. His and Meggie's heads knocked together as Elinor's car bumped over the stony track. When it finally reached the road things weren't much better.\n\n'This isn't the road we came along!' cried Elinor. Capricorn's village loomed over them like a fortress. The houses simply refused to get any smaller.\n\n'Oh yes, it is! But Basta met us further down when we arrived.' Dustfinger was clinging to the seat with one hand and to his rucksack with the other. A furious chattering came from the bag, and the boy cast it a terrified glance.\n\nMeggie thought she recognised the place where Basta had met them when they drove past it \u2013 it was the hill from which she had seen the village for the first time. Then the houses suddenly disappeared, engulfed by the night, as if Capricorn's village had never existed.\n\nThere was no guard posted on the bridge, nor at the rusty barrier across the road cutting off the way to the village. Meggie looked back at it until the darkness had swallowed it up. It's over, she thought. It really is all over.\n\nThe night was clear. Meggie had never seen so many stars. The sky stretched above the black hills like a cloth embroidered with tiny beads. The whole world seemed to consist of hills, like a cat arching its back at the face of the night \u2013 no human beings, no houses. No fear.\n\nMo turned round and stroked the hair back from Meggie's forehead. 'Everything all right?' he asked.\n\nShe nodded and closed her eyes. Suddenly, all Meggie wanted to do was sleep \u2013 if only the pounding of her heart would let her.\n\n'It's a dream,' murmured a toneless voice beside her. 'Only a dream. It's just a dream. What else can it be?'\n\nMeggie turned to the boy, who wasn't looking at her. 'It has to be a dream!' he repeated, nodding vigorously as if to encourage himself. 'Everything looks wrong, false, weird, like in dreams, and now,' he murmured, turning his head to indicate the surroundings outside, 'now we're flying. Or the night is flying past us. Or something.'\n\nMeggie could almost have smiled. She wanted to tell him it wasn't a dream, but she was just too tired to explain the whole complicated story. She looked at Dustfinger. He was patting the fabric of his rucksack, probably trying to soothe his angry marten.\n\n'Don't look at me like that!' he said when he saw Meggie watching him. 'You can't expect me to explain. Your father will have to do that. After all, the poor lad's nightmare is his fault.'\n\nMo's guilty conscience showed clearly on his face when he turned to the boy. 'What's your name?' he asked. 'It wasn't in the\u2014' But there he broke off.\n\nThe boy looked at him suspiciously, then bowed his head. 'Farid,' he said dully. 'My name is Farid, but I believe it's unlucky to speak in a dream. You never find your way back if you do.' He shut his mouth tightly and stared straight ahead, as if to avoid looking at anyone, and said no more. Did he have a mother and father in his story? Meggie couldn't remember. It had just mentioned a boy, a boy without a name who served a band of thieves.\n\n'It's a dream,' he whispered again. 'Only a dream. The sun will rise and it will all disappear. That's what it'll do.'\n\nMo looked at him, unhappy and at a loss, like someone who has handled a young bird, knowing it can never return to the nest. Poor Mo, thought Meggie. Poor Farid. But she was thinking of something else too, and she was ashamed of herself for it. Ever since she had seen the lizard crawl out of the golden coins in Capricorn's church she couldn't help thinking about it. I wish I could do that, her thoughts had kept saying to her, very quietly. The wish had settled like a cuckoo in the nest of her heart, where it kept fluffing up its plumage and making itself at home, no matter how hard she tried to throw it out. I wish I could do that, it whispered. I'd like to bring them out of books, touch them, all those characters, all those wonderful characters. I want them to come out of the pages and sit beside me, I want them to smile at me, I want, I want, I want...\n\nOutside, it was still as dark as if morning would never come.\n\n'I'm going to drive straight on,' said Elinor, 'until we reach my house.'\n\nFar behind them, headlights showed, like fingers probing the night."
            },
            {
                "title": "Snakes and Thorns",
                "text": "\u2002'None of that matters now,' said Twilight. 'Look behind you.'\n\n\u2002The Borribles did and there, just a little beyond the rim of the bridge, they saw a halo of harsh whiteness reflected on the underneath of the dark sky. It was the beam of a car's headlights as it got into position on the north side of the bridge, the side the runaways had left only moments before.\n\n\u2014Michael de Larrabeiti, The Borribles Go For Broke\n\nBehind them the headlights were getting closer, no matter how fast Elinor drove.\n\n'It could be just any old car,' said Meggie, but she knew that was unlikely. There was only one village on the bumpy, potholed road they had been following for almost an hour, and that was Capricorn's. Their pursuers could only have come from there.\n\n'Now what?' asked Elinor. She was in such a state the car was weaving all over the road. 'I'm not letting them lock me up in that hole again. No. No. No.' At each 'No' she struck the steering-wheel with the palm of her hand. 'Didn't you say you'd slit their tyres?' she snapped at Dustfinger.\n\n'Yes, and so I did!' he replied angrily. 'Obviously they've thought of that kind of thing. Ever heard of spare tyres? Go on, step on it! There ought to be a village quite soon. It can't be far away now. If we can make it that far...'\n\n'If, yes. If is the question,' said Elinor, tapping the fuel gauge. 'I've got enough petrol for about another ten kilometres, twenty at the most.'\n\nBut they never got that far. As they swerved round a sharp bend one of the front tyres blew out. Elinor only just managed to wrench the steering-wheel round before the car skidded off the road. Meggie screamed, burying her face in her hands. For a terrible moment she thought they were going to plunge down the steep slope to their left, the bottom of which disappeared in the darkness, but the car skidded to the right, scraped its wing against the low stone wall on the other side of the road, gave a last gasp and came to a halt under the low branches of a chestnut oak that leaned over the road.\n\n'Oh hell, hell, bloody hell!' swore Elinor, undoing her seat-belt. 'Everyone all right?'\n\n'Now I know why I've never trusted cars,' muttered Dustfinger, opening his door.\n\nMeggie sat there trembling all over. Mo pulled her out of the car and looked anxiously at her face. 'Are you all right?'\n\nMeggie nodded.\n\nFarid climbed out on Dustfinger's side. Did he still think he was dreaming?\n\nDustfinger stood in the road, rucksack over his shoulder, listening. The umistakable sound of an engine came purring through the night from far away.\n\n'We must get the car off the road!' he said.\n\n'What?' Elinor looked at him in horror.\n\n'We'll have to push it down the slope.'\n\n'My car!' Elinor was almost screaming.\n\n'He's right, Elinor,' said Mo. 'Perhaps we can shake them off that way. We'll push the car down the slope \u2013 they may not notice it in the dark, and even if they do, they'll think we came off the road. Then we can climb up the hill on the other side and hide among the trees.'\n\nElinor cast a doubtful glance at the hill on their right. 'But it's much too steep! And what about the snakes?'\n\n'I'm sure Basta has a new knife by now,' Dustfinger reminded her.\n\nElinor gave him her darkest look and, without another word, went round to the back of her car to check inside the boot. 'Where's our luggage?' she asked.\n\nDustfinger looked at her with amusement. 'I expect Basta's divided it out among Capricorn's maids. He likes to ingratiate himself with them.'\n\nElinor looked at him as if she didn't believe a word of it, but then quickly closed the boot, braced her arms against the car, and began to push.\n\nThey couldn't do it.\n\nHard as they pushed and shoved, Elinor's car only rolled off the road but would not slide more than a few metres down the slope. Then it stopped with its bonnet stuck in the undergrowth and refused to go any further. Meanwhile, the sound of the engine, so curiously out of place in this desolate wilderness, was getting alarmingly loud. Dustfinger gave the obstinate car a final kick, and they all clambered back up to the road, sweating. After climbing over an ancient wall on the other side they struggled on up the slope. Anything to get away from the road itself. Mo hauled Meggie along behind him whenever she got stuck, and Dustfinger helped Farid. Elinor had her work cut out getting herself up the hillside, which was criss-crossed with low walls that had been built in a laborious attempt to wrest narrow fields and orchards from the poor soil, somewhere to grow a few olive trees and grape vines, anything that would bear fruit here. But the trees had run wild, and the ground was covered with fruit that was no longer harvested, for the people who once lived here had long since left to find an easier life elsewhere.\n\n'Keep your heads down!' gasped Dustfinger, ducking behind one of the ruined walls. 'They're coming!' Mo pulled Meggie down under the nearest tree. The tangled thorn bushes growing among its gnarled roots were just tall enough to hide them.\n\n'What about the snakes?' Elinor whispered as she stumbled after them.\n\n'Too cold for snakes at the moment!' whispered Dustfinger from his hiding-place. 'Haven't you learnt anything from all those clever books of yours?'\n\nElinor was about to snap back an answer, but Mo quickly put a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. The vehicle appeared on the road below them. It was the white delivery van in which the guard had been sleeping. Without slowing down, it drove past the place where they had pushed Elinor's estate car over the slope, and disappeared round the next bend. Relieved, Meggie was about to raise her head above the thorn bushes when Mo pushed her down again. 'Not yet!' he muttered, straining his ears.\n\nThe night was perfectly still. Meggie had never known one like it. It was as if she could hear the trees breathing \u2013 the trees, the grass, the night itself.\n\nThey watched the van headlights emerge on the slope of the next hill: two fingers of light groping their way along an invisible road in the dark. But suddenly they stopped moving.\n\n'They're turning!' whispered Elinor. 'Oh God! Now what?'\n\nShe tried to stand up, but Mo held her back. 'Are you mad?' he hissed. 'It's too late to climb any further. They'd see us.'\n\nMo was right. The delivery van was speeding back up the road. Meggie saw it stop just a few metres from where they had pushed Elinor's car off the road. She heard the van doors open and saw two men get out. Both had their backs to the fugitives, but when one of them turned and looked suspiciously up the slope Meggie thought she recognised Basta's face, though it was little more than a patch of paler colour in the night.\n\n'There's the car,' said the other man.\n\nWas that Flatnose? He was certainly tall and broad enough.\n\n'See if they're in it.'\n\nYes, that was Basta. Meggie would have known his voice among a thousand others.\n\nFlatnose made his way down the slope, clumsy as a bear. Meggie heard him cursing the thorns, the prickles, the darkness and the wretched riff-raff he was having to stumble after in the middle of the night. Basta was still standing in the road. His face was sharply outlined when he lit a cigarette with a lighter. The white smoke drifted up to them until Meggie thought she could almost smell it.\n\n'They're not here,' called Flatnose. 'They must have got away on foot. Hell, do you think we have to follow them?'\n\nBasta went over to the roadside and looked down. Then he turned and looked up at the slope where Meggie was crouching beside Mo, her heart thudding wildly. 'They can't have got far,' he said. 'But it'll be difficult to find their trail in the dark.'\n\n'Exactly!' Flatnose was panting as he appeared back on the road. 'We're not bloody native trackers, are we?'\n\nBasta did not reply. He just stood there, listening and inhaling his cigarette smoke. Then he whispered something to Flatnose. Meggie's heart almost stopped.\n\nFlatnose looked round anxiously. 'Nah, let's get the dogs instead!' Meggie heard him say. 'Even if they're hiding somewhere around here, how do we know whether they climbed up or down?'\n\nBasta glanced at the trees, looked down the road, and trod out his cigarette. Then he went back to the van and took out two shotguns. 'We'll try going down first,' he said, tossing Flatnose one of the guns. 'I'm sure that fat woman would rather climb downhill.' And without another word, he vanished into the darkness. Flatnose cast the van a longing glance, then trudged after him, grumbling.\n\nThe two were barely out of sight before Dustfinger rose to his feet, soundless as a shadow, and pointed up the slope. Meggie's heart was beating in her throat as they followed him. They darted from tree to tree, from bush to bush, constantly looking behind them. Every time a twig cracked underfoot Meggie jumped, but luckily Basta and Flatnose were making a fair amount of noise themselves as they worked their way downhill through the undergrowth.\n\nA time came when they couldn't see the road any more. But their fear did not leave them, the fear that Basta might have turned back already and was now following them uphill. Yet, however often they stopped and listened, all they could hear was their own breathing.\n\n'They'll soon realise they've gone the wrong way,' Dustfinger whispered after a while. 'Then they'll go back for the dogs. We're lucky they didn't bring them in the first place. Basta doesn't think much of those dogs, and he's right. I've fed them cheese often enough, and cheese dulls a dog's nose. All the same, he'll fetch them sooner or later, because even Basta doesn't like taking bad news back to Capricorn.'\n\n'Then we must just go faster,' said Mo.\n\n'Go faster where?' Elinor was still fighting for breath.\n\nDustfinger looked round. Meggie wondered why. She could hardly make anything out, it was so dark. 'We must keep going south,' said Dustfinger. 'Towards the coast. We must hide among other people. That's the only thing that can save us. Down there the nights are bright and nobody believes in the Devil.'\n\nFarid was standing beside Meggie, gazing at the night sky as if he could make morning come, or find the people Dustfinger had mentioned somewhere, but there wasn't a light to be seen in the darkness except for the tangle of stars sparkling cold and distant in the heavens. For a moment, Meggie felt as if those stars were eyes giving their presence away, and imagined she could hear them whispering, 'Look, Basta, there they go, down there! Quick, catch them!'\n\nThey stumbled on, keeping close together so that no one would get lost. Dustfinger had taken Gwin out of his rucksack and put him on his chain before letting him run with them. The marten didn't seem to like it. Dustfinger had to keep hauling him out of the undergrowth, away from all the promising scents that their human noses couldn't pick up. The marten spat and snarled with annoyance, biting and tearing at the chain.\n\n'Curse the little brute, I'm sure to fall over it,' said Elinor crossly. 'Can't you keep it away from my sore feet? I tell you one thing, the moment we're in decent human company again I'm going to take the best hotel room money can buy and put my poor feet up on a big soft cushion.'\n\n'You've still got money on you?' Mo sounded incredulous. 'They took all mine first thing.'\n\n'Yes, Basta took my wallet too,' said Elinor. 'But I think ahead. I have my credit card somewhere safe.'\n\n'Is anywhere safe from Basta?' Dustfinger dragged Gwin away from a tree trunk.\n\n'Oh yes,' replied Elinor. 'Men are never particularly keen to search fat old ladies. Which can be useful. That was how some of my most valuable books came into my\u2014' She interrupted herself abruptly, clearing her throat when her eyes fell on Meggie. But Meggie acted as if she hadn't heard Elinor's last remark, or at least hadn't understood what she meant.\n\n'You're not all that fat!' Meggie said. 'And old is a bit of an exaggeration!' Oh, how her own feet hurt.\n\n'Well, thank you very much, darling!' said Elinor. 'I think I'll buy you from your father so you can say nice things like that to me three times a day. How much do you want for her, Mo?'\n\n'I'll have to think about it,' replied Mo. 'Suppose I lend her to you for a few days now and then?'\n\nThey chatted like this, voices scarcely raised above a whisper, as they struggled through the thorny growth on the hillside. It didn't matter what they talked about, for their hushed conversation had only one purpose: to fend off the fear and exhaustion weighing down all their limbs. On and on they walked, hoping that Dustfinger knew where he was taking them. Meggie kept close behind Mo all the time. At least his back offered some protection from the thorny branches which kept catching at her clothes and scratching her face, like vicious animals with needle-sharp claws lying in wait in the dark.\n\nAt last, they came upon a footpath they could follow. It was littered with empty cartridge cases dropped by hunters who had dealt out death in this silent place. Walking was easier on the trodden earth, although Meggie was so tired she could hardly pick her feet up. When she stumbled against the back of Mo's legs for the second time, he put her on his back and carried her as he used to do before she could keep up with his long legs. He had called her 'Little Flea' in those days, or 'Feather Girl', or 'Tinker Bell' after the fairy in Peter Pan. Sometimes he still called her Tinker Bell.\n\nWearily, Meggie rested her face against his shoulders and tried to think of Peter Pan instead of snakes, or men with knives. But this time her own story was too strong to give way to an invented one. Mo was right: fear, unfortunately, devours everything.\n\nIt was a long time since Farid had said anything. Most of the time he stumbled along after Dustfinger. He seemed to have taken a fancy to Gwin. Whenever the marten's chain got caught up somewhere Farid would rush to free him, even if Gwin only hissed at him in return and snapped at his fingers. Once he sank his teeth into the boy's thumb and made it bleed.\n\n'Well, do you still think this is a dream?' asked Dustfinger ironically as Farid wiped the blood away.\n\nThe boy didn't answer, just examined his sore thumb. Then he sucked it and spat. 'What else could it be?' he asked.\n\nDustfinger looked at Mo, but he seemed so deep in thought that he didn't notice the glance. 'How about another story?' said Dustfinger.\n\nFarid laughed. 'Another story. I like that idea. I've always been fond of stories.'\n\n'Oh yes? And how do you like this one?'\n\n'Too many thorns, and I wish it would get light, but at least I haven't had to work yet. That's something.'\n\nMeggie couldn't help smiling.\n\nA bird called in the distance. Gwin stopped and raised his round muzzle, sniffing the air. The night belongs to beasts of prey, and always has. It's easy to forget that when you're indoors, protected by light and solid walls. Night provides cover for hunters, making it easy for them to creep up and strike their prey blind. Words about the night from one of her favourite books slipped into Meggie's mind: 'This is the hour of pride and power, talon and tush and claw.'\n\nShe snuggled her face against Mo's shoulder once more. Perhaps I ought to walk again, she thought. He's been carrying me for so long. But then she nodded off to sleep still perched on his back."
            },
            {
                "title": "Basta",
                "text": "\u2002This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.\n\n\u2014Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island\n\nMeggie woke up when Mo stopped. The path had brought them almost to the crest of the hill. It was still dark, but the night was growing paler as if lifting her skirts a little way off to let the new morning appear.\n\n'We must take a breather, Dustfinger,' Meggie heard Mo saying. 'The boy can hardly keep up, Elinor's feet must need a rest, and if you ask me this wouldn't be a bad place for one.'\n\n'What feet?' asked Elinor, sinking to the ground with a groan. 'You mean those poor sore objects attached to my legs?'\n\n'That's what I mean,' said Mo, as he pulled her up again. 'But they must go just a little further. We'll rest up there.'\n\nA good fifty metres to their left, at the very top of the hill, there was a house, if you could call it that, huddled among the olive trees. Meggie slipped off Mo's back before they climbed up to it. The walls looked as if someone had piled up a number of stones in a hurry, the roof had collapsed, and where there must once have been a door only a black hole now gaped.\n\nMo had to bend low to make his way in. Broken shingles from the roof covered the floor, there was an empty sack in a corner, some broken earthenware shards, perhaps from a dish or a plate, and a few bones gnawed clean. Mo sighed.\n\n'Not a very comfortable place, Meggie,' he said. 'But try imagining you're hiding out with the Lost Boys, or...'\n\n'Or in Huckleberry Finn's tub.' Meggie looked round. 'I think I'd rather sleep outside, all the same.'\n\nElinor came in. The accommodation didn't seem to appeal much to her either.\n\nMo gave Meggie a kiss and went back to the door. 'Believe me, it'll be safer in here,' he said.\n\nMeggie looked at him in concern. 'Where are you going? You have to get some sleep too.'\n\n'Oh, I'm not tired.' His face gave away his lie. 'Go to sleep now, all right?' Then he went out again.\n\nElinor pushed the broken shingles aside with her foot. 'Come on,' she said, taking off her jacket and spreading it on the floor. 'Let's try to make ourselves comfortable together. Your father's right, we must just imagine we're somewhere else. Why are adventures so much more fun when you read about them?' she murmured, stretching out on the floor.\n\nCautiously, Meggie lay down beside her. 'At least it isn't raining,' remarked Elinor, looking at the collapsed roof. 'And we have the stars above us, even if they're fading. Perhaps I ought to have a few holes knocked in my own roof at home.' With an impatient nod, she told Meggie to lay her head on her arm. 'In case any spiders try crawling into your ears while you're asleep,' she said, closing her eyes. 'Oh Lord,' Meggie heard her add in a murmur, 'I'll have to buy a new pair of feet, I really will. There's no hope for these.' With that she was asleep.\n\nBut Meggie lay with her eyes wide open, listening to the sounds outside. She heard Mo talking quietly to Dustfinger, but she couldn't make out the words. Once she thought she heard Basta's name. The boy Farid had stayed outside too, but he made no sound.\n\nElinor began snoring after only a few minutes, but hard as Meggie tried she couldn't get to sleep, so she got up quietly and slipped outside. Mo was awake, sitting with his back against a tree, watching the morning light drive the night from the sky above the surrounding hills. Dustfinger was sitting a little further off. He raised his head only briefly when Meggie came out of the hut. Was he thinking of the fairies and the brownies? Farid lay beside him, curled up like a dog, and Gwin was sitting at his feet eating something \u2013 Meggie quickly turned her head away.\n\nDawn was breaking over the hills, casting light on summit after summit. Meggie saw houses in the distance, scattered like toys on the green slopes. The sea must lie somewhere beyond them. She put her head on Mo's lap and looked up at his face.\n\n'They won't find us here, will they?' she asked.\n\n'No, of course not!' he said, but his face wasn't half as carefree as his voice. 'Why aren't you asleep in there with Elinor?'\n\n'She snores,' murmured Meggie.\n\nMo smiled. Then, frowning, he looked down the hillside to the place where the path lay, hidden by rockroses, gorse and thorns.\n\nDustfinger never took his eyes off the path either. The sight of the two men on watch made Meggie feel better, and soon she was sleeping as deeply as Farid \u2013 as if the ground outside the tumbledown house were covered with downy feathers instead of thorns.\n\nWhen Mo shook her awake, she thought at first it had all been just a bad dream \u2013 but his hand was over her mouth. He was holding a finger to his lips in warning. Meggie heard the rustle of grass and the barking of a dog. Mo pulled her to her feet and pushed her and Farid into the shelter of the dark hovel. Elinor was still snoring. She looked like a young girl with the light of dawn on her face, but as soon as Mo had woken her all her weariness, anxiety and fear came rushing back.\n\nMo and Dustfinger stationed themselves by the doorway, one to the left and the other to the right, their backs pressed to the wall. Men's voices broke the quiet of the morning. Meggie thought she could hear the dogs sniffing, and wished she could dissolve into thin air, odourless and invisible air. Farid stood beside her, his eyes wide. Meggie noticed for the first time that they were almost black. She had never seen such dark eyes, and his lashes were as long as a girl's.\n\nElinor was leaning against the wall opposite, biting her lips nervously. Dustfinger made a sign to Mo, and before Meggie realised what their plan was they made their way out. The olive trees where they took cover were stunted, with matted branches hanging almost to the ground, as if the weight of their leaves was too much for them. A child could easily have hidden behind them, but did they provide enough shelter for two grown men?\n\nMeggie peered out of the doorway. Her heart was beating so fast that it almost suffocated her. Outside, the sun was rising higher and higher. Daylight crept into every valley, beneath every tree, and suddenly Meggie wished for the night again. Mo was kneeling down so that his head couldn't be seen above the tangled branches. Dustfinger was pressed close to a crooked tree trunk, and there, terrifyingly close, twenty paces at most away from the two of them, was Basta. He was making his way up the slope through thistles and knee-high grass.\n\n'They'll have reached the valley by now!' Meggie heard a rough voice call, and next moment Flatnose appeared beside Basta. They had brought two vicious-looking dogs with them. Meggie saw the dogs' broad skulls pushing through the grass, and heard them snuffling.\n\n'What, with two children and that fat woman?' Basta shook his head and looked round. Farid peered past Meggie \u2013 and flinched back as if something had bitten him when he saw the two men.\n\n'Basta?' Soundlessly, Elinor's lips formed his name. Meggie nodded, and Elinor went even paler than she was already.\n\n'Damn it, Basta, how much longer are you going to trudge around here?' Flatnose's voice echoed a long way in the silence that lay over the hills. 'The snakes will soon be waking up, and I'm hungry. Let's just say they fell into the valley with the car. We'll give it another push and no one will find out! The snakes will probably get them anyway. And if not, then they'll lose their way, starve, get sunstroke \u2013 oh, who cares what happens? But anyway we'll never see them again.'\n\n'He's been feeding them cheese!' Basta furiously hauled the dogs to his side. 'That bloody little fire-eater has been feeding them cheese to ruin their noses. But nobody would believe me. No wonder they whine with joy every time they see his ugly mug.'\n\n'You beat them too much,' grunted Flatnose. 'That's why they won't go to any trouble for you. Dogs don't like being beaten.'\n\n'Nonsense. You have to beat them or they'll bite you! They like the fire-eater because he's like them \u2013 he whines, he's sly and he bites.' One of the dogs lay down in the grass and licked its paws. Angrily, Basta kicked it in the ribs and hauled it to its feet. 'You can go back to the village if you like!' he spat at Flatnose. 'But I'm going to get that fire-eater and cut off all his fingers one by one. Then we'll see how cleverly he can juggle. I always said he couldn't be trusted, but the boss thought his little tricks with fire were so entertaining.'\n\n'OK, OK. Everyone knows you can't stand him.' Flatnose sounded bored. 'But he may have nothing to do with the disappearance of that lot. You know he's always come and gone as he pleased. Maybe he'll turn up again tomorrow knowing nothing about it.'\n\n'Yeah, right,' growled Basta. He walked on. Every step brought him closer to the trees behind which Mo and Dustfinger were hiding. 'And Silvertongue pinched the fat woman's car key from under my pillow, did he? No. This time no excuses will do Dustfinger any good. Because he took something else too \u2013 something of mine.'\n\nInvoluntarily, Dustfinger put his hand to his belt, as if he were afraid that Basta's knife could call out to its master. One of the dogs raised its head and tugged Basta on towards the trees.\n\n'He's found something!' Basta lowered his voice. 'The stupid creature's picked up a scent!'\n\nTen more paces, perhaps fewer, and he would be among the trees. What were they going to do? What on earth were they going to do?\n\nFlatnose was trudging along after Basta with a sceptical expression on his face. 'They've probably scented a wild boar,' Meggie heard him say. 'You want to be careful, they can run you right down. Oh no, I think there's a snake there. One of those black snakes. You've got the antidote in the car, right?'\n\nHe stood there perfectly still, rooted to the spot and staring down at the ground in front of his feet. Basta took no notice of him. He followed the snuffling dog. A few more steps and Mo would only have to reach out a hand to touch him. Basta unslung the shotgun from his shoulder, stopped and listened. The dogs pulled to the left and jumped up at one of the tree trunks, barking.\n\nGwin was up there in the branches.\n\n'What did I say?' called Flatnose. 'They've scented a marten, that's all. Those brutes stink so strong even I could pick up their smell!'\n\n'That's no ordinary marten!' hissed Basta. 'Don't you recognise him?' His eyes were fixed on the ruined hovel.\n\nMo seized his opportunity. He sprang out from behind the tree, seized Basta and tried to wrench the gun from his hands.\n\n'Get him! Get him, you brutes!' bellowed Basta, and obviously the dogs were willing to obey him this time. They leaped up at Mo, baring their yellow teeth. Before Meggie could run to his aid Elinor seized her, and held her tight no matter how hard she struggled, just as she had done before back in her own house. But this time there was someone else to help Mo. Before the dogs could get their teeth into him, Dustfinger had grabbed their collars. Meggie thought they would tear him apart when he dragged them off Mo, but instead they licked his hands, jumping up at him like an old friend and almost knocking him down.\n\nBut there was still Flatnose. Luckily, he wasn't too quick on the uptake. That saved them \u2013 for a brief moment he simply stood there staring at Basta, who was still struggling in Mo's grip.\n\nMeanwhile, Dustfinger had hauled the dogs over to the nearest tree, and he was just winding their leashes round the cracked bark when Flatnose came out of his daze.\n\n'Let them go!' he bellowed, pointing his shotgun at Mo.\n\nWith a suppressed curse, Dustfinger let the dogs loose, but the stone Farid threw moved faster than he did. It hit Flatnose in the middle of the forehead \u2013 an insignificant little stone, but the huge man collapsed in the grass at Dustfinger's feet like a felled tree.\n\n'Keep the dogs off me!' called Mo as Basta fought to get control of his gun. One of the dogs had bitten Mo's sleeve. At least, Meggie hoped it was just his sleeve. Before Elinor could restrain her again she ran to the big dog and seized its studded collar. The dog wouldn't let go, however hard she pulled. She saw blood on Mo's arm, and she almost got hit on the head with the barrel of Basta's shotgun. Dustfinger tried to call the dogs off, and at first they obeyed him, or at least they let go of Mo, but then Basta succeeded in freeing himself. 'Get him!' he shouted, and the dogs stood there growling, not sure whether to obey Basta or Dustfinger.\n\n'Bloody brutes,' shouted Basta, pointing his shotgun at Mo's chest, but at that very moment Elinor pressed the muzzle of Flatnose's gun against his head. Her hands were shaking, and her face was covered with red blotches as it always was when she was worked up, but she looked more than determined to use the gun.\n\n'Drop it, Basta,' she said, her voice unsteady. 'And not another word to those dogs! I may never have used a gun before but I'm sure I can manage to pull the trigger.'\n\n'Sit!' Dustfinger ordered the dogs. They looked uncertainly at Basta, but when he said nothing they lay down in the grass and let Dustfinger tie them to the tree.\n\nBlood was trickling from Mo's sleeve. Meggie felt herself turn faint at the sight of it. Dustfinger bound up the wound with a red silk scarf that soaked up the blood. 'It's not as bad as it looks,' he assured Meggie, as she came closer, feeling weak at the knees.\n\n'Got anything else in your rucksack that we can use to tie him up?' asked Mo, nodding at the still unconscious Flatnose.\n\n'Our friend with the knife here will need some packaging too,' said Elinor. Basta glared at her viciously. 'Don't stare at me like that,' she said, jamming the barrel of the gun into his chest. 'I'm sure a gun like this can do as much damage as a knife, and believe you me, that gives me some very unpleasant ideas.'\n\nBasta twisted his mouth scornfully, but he never took his eyes off Elinor's forefinger, which was still on the trigger.\n\nThere was a length of cord in Dustfinger's rucksack, strong if not particularly thick. 'It won't be enough for both of them,' Dustfinger said.\n\n'Why do you want to tie them up?' enquired Farid. 'Why not kill them? That's what they were going to do to us!'\n\nMeggie looked at him in horror, but Basta laughed. 'Well, fancy that!' he mocked. 'We could have used that boy after all! But who says we were going to kill you? Capricorn wants you alive. Dead men can't read aloud.'\n\n'Oh, really? And weren't you planning to cut off some of my fingers?' asked Dustfinger, tying the cord round Flatnose's legs.\n\nBasta shrugged. 'Since when does a man die of that?'\n\nElinor jabbed the barrel of the gun into his ribs so hard that he stumbled back. 'Hear that? I think the boy's right. Maybe we really ought to shoot these thugs.'\n\nBut of course they didn't. They found a rope in the rucksack that Flatnose had brought with him, and it gave Dustfinger obvious pleasure to tie Basta up. Farid helped him. He clearly knew something about tying up prisoners.\n\nThen they put Basta and Flatnose in the ruined house. 'Nice of us, right? The snakes won't find you quite so soon,' said Dustfinger as they carried Basta through the narrow doorway. 'Of course it'll get pretty hot in here around midday, but maybe someone will have found you by then. We'll let the dogs go. If they have any sense they won't return to the village, but dogs don't often have much sense \u2013 so the whole gang will probably be out searching for you by this afternoon at the latest.'\n\nFlatnose did not come round until he was lying beside Basta under the ruined roof. He rolled his eyes furiously and went purple in the face, but neither he nor Basta could utter a sound because Farid had gagged them both, again very expertly.\n\n'Wait a minute,' said Dustfinger, before they left the two men to their fate. 'There's something else \u2013 something I've always wanted to do.' And to Meggie's horror he drew Basta's knife from his belt and went over to the prisoners.\n\n'What's the idea?' asked Mo, barring his way. Obviously the same thought had occurred to him as to Meggie, but Dustfinger only laughed.\n\n'Don't worry, I'm not going to cut a pattern in his face the way he decorated mine,' he said. 'I only want to scare him a little.'\n\nAnd he bent down to cut through the leather thong that Basta wore round his neck. It had a little bag tied with a red drawstring hanging from it. Dustfinger leaned over Basta and swung the bag back and forth in front of his face. 'I'm taking your luck, Basta!' he said softly straightening up. 'Now there's nothing to protect you from the Evil Eye and the ghosts and demons, black cats and all the other things you're afraid of.'\n\nBasta tried to kick out with his bound legs, but Dustfinger avoided him easily. 'This is goodbye for ever, I hope, Basta!' he said. 'And if our paths should ever cross again, then I'll have this.' He tied the leather thong around his own neck. 'I expect there's a lock of your hair in it, right? No? Well, then perhaps I'll take one. Doesn't burning someone's hair have a terrible effect on him?'\n\n'That's enough!' said Mo, urging him away. 'Let's get out of here. Who knows when Capricorn will realise these two are missing? By the way, did I tell you that he didn't burn quite all the books? There's one copy of Inkheart left.'\n\nDustfinger stopped as suddenly as if a snake had bitten him.\n\n'I thought I ought to tell you,' said Mo. 'Even if it does put stupid ideas in your head.'\n\nDustfinger just nodded. Then without a word he walked on.\n\n'Why don't we take their van?' suggested Elinor when Mo headed back to the path. 'They must have left it on the road?'\n\n'Too dangerous,' said Dustfinger. 'How do we know who might be waiting for us down there? And going back to it would take us longer than going on to the nearest village. A van like that is easily spotted, too. Do you want to set Capricorn on our trail?'\n\nElinor sighed. 'It was just a thought,' she murmured, massaging her aching ankles. Then she followed Mo.\n\nThey kept to the path, because the snakes were already moving through the tall grass. Once a thin black snake wriggled over the yellow soil in front of them. Dustfinger pushed a stick under its scaly body and threw it back into the thorn bushes. Meggie had expected the snakes to be bigger, but Elinor assured her that the smallest were the most dangerous. Elinor was limping, but she did her best not to hold the others up. Mo too was walking more slowly than usual. He tried to hide it, but the dog-bite obviously hurt.\n\nMeggie walked close to him, and kept looking anxiously at the red scarf Dustfinger had used to bandage the wound. At last they came to a paved road. A truck with a load of rusty gas cylinders was coming towards them. They were too tired to hide, and anyway it wasn't coming from the direction of Capricorn's village. Meggie saw the surprised expression of the man at the wheel as he passed them. They must look very disreputable in their dirty clothes, which were drenched with sweat and torn by all the thorn bushes.\n\nSoon afterwards they passed the first houses. There were more and more of them on the slopes now, brightly colour-washed, with flowers growing outside their doors. Trudging on, they came to the outskirts of a fairly large town. Meggie saw multi-storey buildings, palm trees with dusty leaves and suddenly, still far away but shining silver in the sun, a glimpse of the sea.\n\n'Heavens, I hope they'll let us into a bank,' said Elinor. 'We look as if we'd fallen among thieves.'\n\n'Well, so we have,' said Mo."
            },
            {
                "title": "In Safety",
                "text": "\u2002The slow days drifted on, and each left behind a slightly lightened weight of apprehension.\n\n\u2014Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n\nThey did let Elinor into the bank, despite her torn tights. Before that, however, she had disappeared into the ladies' room of the first caf\u00e9 they came to. Meggie never did find out exactly where Elinor hid her valuables, but when she returned her face was washed, her hair not quite as tangled, and she was triumphantly waving a gold credit card in the air. Then she ordered breakfast for everyone.\n\nIt was an odd feeling to be suddenly sitting in a caf\u00e9 having breakfast, watching perfectly ordinary people outside in the street, going to work, shopping, or just standing about chatting. Meggie could hardly believe they had spent just two nights and a day in Capricorn's village, and that all this \u2013 the bustle of ordinary life going on outside the window \u2013 hadn't stood still the whole time.\n\nNonetheless, something had changed. Ever since Meggie had seen Basta hold his knife to Mo's throat it had seemed as if there was a stain on the world, an ugly, dark burn mark still eating its way towards them, stinking and crackling.\n\nEven the most harmless things seemed to be casting suspicious shadows. A woman smiled at Meggie, then stood looking at the bloody display in a butcher's window. A man pulled a child along after him so impatiently that the little boy stumbled, and cried as he rubbed his grazed knee. And why was that man's jacket bulging over his belt? Was he carrying a knife, like Basta?\n\nNormal life now seemed improbable, unreal. Their flight through the night and the terror she had felt in the ruined house seemed more real to Meggie than the lemonade that Elinor passed over to her.\n\nFarid hardly touched his own glass. He sniffed its yellow contents, took a sip, and went back to looking out of the window. His eyes could hardly decide what to follow first. His head moved back and forth as if he were watching an invisible game and desperately trying to understand it rules.\n\nAfter breakfast, Elinor asked at the cash desk which was the best hotel in town. While she paid the bill with her credit card, Meggie and Mo examined all the delicacies behind the glass counter. Then, to their surprise, they turned round and found that Dustfinger and Farid had disappeared. Elinor was very worried, but Mo calmed her fears. 'You can't tempt him with a hotel bed. He doesn't like to sleep under any roof,' he said, 'and he's always gone his own way. Perhaps he just wants to get away from here, or perhaps he's round the next corner putting on a performance for tourists. I can assure you he won't go back to Capricorn.'\n\n'What about Farid?' Meggie couldn't believe he had simply run off with Dustfinger.\n\nBut Mo only shrugged his shoulders. 'He was sticking close to Dustfinger all the time,' he pointed out. 'Though I don't know whether he or Gwin was the real attraction.'\n\nThe hotel recommended to Elinor by the staff in the caf\u00e9 was on a square just off the main street that passed right through the town and was lined with palm trees and shops. Elinor took two rooms on the top floor, with balconies that had a view of the sea. It was a big hotel. A doorman in an elaborate costume stood at the entrance, and although he seemed surprised by their lack of luggage he overlooked their dirty clothes with a friendly smile. The pillows were so soft and white that Meggie had to bury her face in them at once. All the same, the sense of unreality didn't leave her. A part of her was still in Capricorn's village, or trudging through thorns, or cowering in the ruined hovel and trembling as Basta came closer. Mo seemed to feel the same. Whenever she glanced at him there was a distant expression on his face, and instead of the relief she might have expected after all they'd been through, she saw sadness in it \u2013 and a thoughtfulness that frightened her.\n\n'You're not thinking of going back, are you?' she asked at last. She knew him very well.\n\n'No, don't worry!' he replied, stroking her hair. But she didn't believe him.\n\nElinor seemed to share Meggie's fears, for she was to be seen several times talking earnestly to Mo \u2013 in the hotel corridor outside her room, at breakfast, at dinner. But she fell silent abruptly as soon as Meggie joined them. Elinor called a doctor to treat Mo's arm, although he didn't think it necessary, and she bought them all new clothes, taking Meggie with her because, as she said, 'If I choose you something myself you won't wear it.' She also did a great deal of telephoning, and visited every bookshop in the town. At breakfast on the third day she suddenly announced that she was going home.\n\n'I've already hired another car,' she said. 'My feet are better now, I'm dying to see my books again, and if I see one more tourist in swimming trunks I shall scream. But before I leave, let me give you this!'\n\nWith these words she passed Mo a piece of paper across the table. It had a name and address on it in Elinor's large, bold handwriting. 'I know you, Mortimer!' she said. 'I know you can't get Inkheart out of your head. So I've found you Fenoglio's address. It wasn't easy, I can tell you, but after all there's a fair chance that he still has a few copies. Promise me you'll go to see him \u2013 he lives not far from here \u2013 and put the copy of the book still in that wretched village out of your mind once and for all.'\n\nMo stared at the address as if he were learning it off by heart, and then put the piece of paper in his new wallet. 'You're right, it really is worth a try!' he said. 'Thank you very much, Elinor!' He looked almost happy.\n\nMeggie didn't understand any of this. But she knew one thing: she'd been right. Mo was still thinking of Inkheart; he couldn't come to terms with losing it.\n\n'Who's Fenoglio?' she asked uncertainly. 'A bookseller or something?' The name seemed familiar, though she couldn't remember where she had heard it. Mo did not reply, but gazed out of the window.\n\n'Let's go back with Elinor, Mo!' said Meggie. 'Please!'\n\nIt was nice going down to the sea in the morning, and she liked the brightly coloured houses, but all the same she wanted to leave. Every time she saw the hills rising behind the town her heart beat faster, and she kept thinking she saw Basta's face, or Flatnose's, among the crowds in the streets. She wanted to go home, or at least to Elinor's house. She wanted to watch Mo giving Elinor's books new clothes, pressing fragile gold leaf into the leather with his stamps, choosing endpapers, stirring glue, fastening the press. She wanted everything to be as it had been before the night when Dustfinger turned up.\n\nBut Mo shook his head. 'I have to pay this visit first, Meggie,' he said. 'After that we'll go to Elinor's. The day after tomorrow at the latest.'\n\nMeggie stared at her plate. What amazing things you could have for breakfast in an expensive hotel... but she didn't feel like waffles with fresh strawberries any more.\n\n'Right, then I'll see you in a couple of days' time. Give me your word of honour, Mortimer!' There was no missing the concern in Elinor's voice. 'You'll come even if you don't have any luck with Fenoglio. Promise!'\n\nMo had to smile. 'My solemn word of honour, Elinor,' he said.\n\nElinor heaved a deep sigh of relief and bit into the croissant that had been waiting on her plate all this time. 'Don't ask me what I had to do to get hold of that address!' she said with her mouth full. 'And in the end the man doesn't live far from here at all \u2013 about an hour's car journey. Odd that he and Capricorn live so close to one another, isn't it?'\n\n'Yes, odd,' murmured Mo, looking out of the window. The wind blew through the leaves of the palms in the hotel garden.\n\n'His stories are nearly always set in this region,' Elinor went on, 'but I believe he lived abroad for a long time and moved back here only a few years ago.' She beckoned to a waitress and asked for more coffee.\n\nMeggie shook her head when the waitress asked if she would like anything else.\n\n'Mo, I don't want to stay here,' she said quietly. 'I don't want to visit anyone either. I want to go home, or at least back to Elinor's.'\n\nMo picked up his coffee cup. It still hurt when he moved his left arm. 'We'll get it over with tomorrow, Meggie,' he said. 'You heard Elinor \u2013 it's not far away. And by the end of the day after that you'll be back in Elinor's huge bed, the one that a whole school class could sleep in.' He was trying to make her laugh, but Meggie couldn't. She looked at the strawberries on her plate. How red they were.\n\n'I'll have to hire a car too, Elinor,' said Mo. 'Can you lend me the money? I'll pay you back as soon as we meet again.'\n\nElinor nodded, her gaze lingering on Meggie. 'You know something, Mortimer?' she said. 'I don't think your daughter is very keen on books just now. I remember the feeling. Whenever my father got so absorbed in a book that we might have been invisible I felt like taking a pair of scissors and cutting it up. And now I'm as mad about them as he was. Oh well, that's something to think about, eh?' She folded her napkin and pushed her chair back. 'I'm going upstairs to pack, and you can tell your daughter who Fenoglio is.'\n\nThen she was gone, leaving Meggie at the table with Mo. He ordered another coffee, even though he usually drank no more than one cup.\n\n'What about your strawberries?' he asked. 'Don't you want them?'\n\nMeggie shook her head.\n\nMo sighed, and took one. 'Fenoglio is the man who wrote Inkheart,' he said. 'It's possible that as the author he will still have some copies. Indeed, it's more than possible, it's very probable.'\n\n'Oh, come on!' said Meggie scornfully. 'Capricorn's sure to have stolen them long ago! He stole all the copies \u2013 you saw that!'\n\nBut Mo shook his head. 'I don't believe he will have thought of Fenoglio. You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago \u2013 they don't expect to meet them in the street, or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way \u2013 you heard Elinor say it was quite hard for her to get hold of Fenoglio's address. Believe me, it's more than likely that Capricorn has no idea the man who wrote his story lives scarcely two hours' drive away from him.'\n\nMeggie wasn't so sure. She thoughtfully pleated the tablecloth, then smoothed out the pale yellow fabric again. 'All the same, I'd rather we went to Elinor's house,' she said. 'I don't see why...' She hesitated, but then finished what she had been going to say. 'I don't see why you want the book so much. It's no use anyway.' My mother's gone, she added in her thoughts. You tried to bring her back but it doesn't work. Let's go home.\n\nMo helped himself to another of her strawberries, the smallest of all. 'The little ones are always the sweetest,' he said, and put it in his mouth 'Your mother loved strawberries. She couldn't get enough of them, and was always terribly cross if it rained so much in spring that they rotted in her strawberry bed.'\n\nA smile lit up his face as he looked out of the window again. 'Just this one last shot, Meggie,' he said. 'Just this one. And the day after tomorrow we'll go back to Elinor's. I promise.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Night Full of Words",
                "text": "\u2002What child unable to sleep on a warm summer night hasn't thought he saw Peter Pan's sailing ship in the sky? I will teach you to see that ship.\n\n\u2014Roberto Cotroneo, When a Child on a Summer Morning\n\nMeggie stayed in the hotel while Mo went to the hire-car firm to collect the car he had booked. She took a chair out on to the balcony, looked out over its white-painted railing to the sea shining like blue glass beyond the buildings, and tried to think of nothing, nothing at all. The sound of the traffic drifting up to her was so loud that she almost didn't hear Elinor's knock.\n\nElinor was already on her way down the corridor when Meggie opened the door. 'Oh, you are there,' Elinor said, coming back and looking rather embarrassed. She was hiding something behind her back.\n\n'Yes, Mo's gone to fetch the hire car.'\n\n'I've got something for you \u2013 a goodbye present.' Elinor produced a flat parcel from behind her back. 'It wasn't easy to find a book without any unpleasant characters in it, but I absolutely had to find one your father could read aloud to you without doing any damage. I don't think anything can happen with this one.'\n\nMeggie undid the flower-patterned gift wrapping. The cover of the book showed two children and a dog. The children were kneeling on a narrow piece of rock or stone, looking anxiously down at the abyss yawning beneath them.\n\n'They're poems,' explained Elinor. 'I don't know if you like that kind of thing, but I thought that if your father read them aloud they'd sound wonderful.'\n\nMeggie opened the book. She read:\n\n\u2003Oh, if you're a bird be an early bird\n\n\u2003And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.\n\n\u2003If you're a bird, be an early bird\n\n\u2003But if you're a worm, sleep late.\n\nThe words were like a little melody singing to her off the pages. She carefully closed the book. 'Thank you, Elinor,' she said. 'I\u2014I'm sorry I don't have anything for you.'\n\n'Oh, and here's something else you might like,' said Elinor, taking another little parcel out of her new handbag. 'Someone who devours books like you should have this one,' she said. 'But I think you'd better read it on your own. There are any number of villains in it. All the same, I think you'll enjoy it. After all, there's nothing like a few comforting pages of a book when you're away from home, right?'\n\nMeggie nodded. 'Mo's promised we'll join you the day after tomorrow,' she said. 'But you'll say goodbye to him too before you leave, won't you?' She put Elinor's first present on the chest of drawers near the door and unwrapped the second. Meggie was pleased to see that it was a thick book.\n\n'Oh, never mind that. You do it for me!' said Elinor. 'I'm not good at saying goodbye. Anyway, we'll be seeing each other again soon \u2013 and I've already told him to look after you. Oh, and never leave books lying about open,' she added, before turning round. 'It breaks their spines. But I expect your father's told you that a thousand times already.'\n\n'More often than that,' said Meggie, but Elinor had already gone. A little later Meggie heard someone dragging a case to the lift, but she didn't go out into the corridor to see if it was Elinor. She didn't like goodbyes either.\n\nMeggie was very quiet for the rest of the day. Late in the afternoon Mo took her out for a meal in a little restaurant nearby. Dusk was falling when they came out again, and there were a great many people in the darkening streets. In one square the crowds were particularly dense, and as Meggie pushed her way through them with Mo she saw that they were standing round a fire-eater.\n\nIt was very quiet as Dustfinger let the burning torch lick his bare arms. But as soon as he bowed and the audience clapped Farid went round with a little silver dish, which was the only thing that didn't quite seem to belong in these surroundings. Farid, however, looked much the same as the boys who lounged around on the beach nudging each other when girls passed by. His skin was a little darker, perhaps, and his hair a little blacker, but it would never have occurred to anyone looking at him that he had just slipped out of a story-book in which carpets could fly, mountains could open, and lamps granted wishes. He wore trousers and a T-shirt instead of his blue, full-length robe. He looked older in them. Dustfinger must have bought the clothes for him, as well as the shoes in which he walked very carefully, as if his feet weren't quite used to them yet. When he saw Meggie in the crowd he gave her a shy nod and passed on quickly.\n\nDustfinger spat out one last fireball into the air \u2013 its size made even the bravest in the audience step back \u2013 then he put down the torches and picked up his juggling balls. He threw them so high in the air that the spectators had to tilt their heads right back to watch, then caught them and knocked them up in the air again with his knee. They rolled along his arms as if pulled by invisible threads, emerged from behind his back as if he had plucked them out of empty air, bounced off his forehead, his chin, such light, weightless, dancing little things... it would all have seemed easy, cheerful, just a pretty game, if it hadn't been for Dustfinger's face. That remained deadly serious behind the whirling balls, as if it had nothing to do with his dancing hands, nothing to do with their skill, nothing to do with their carefree lightness. Meggie wondered whether his fingers still hurt. They looked red, but perhaps that was just the firelight.\n\nWhen Dustfinger bowed and put his balls back in the rucksack the spectators were slow to disperse, but finally only Mo and Meggie were left. Farid was sitting on the paving stones counting the money he had collected. He looked happy \u2013 as if he had never done anything else in his life.\n\n'So you're still here,' said Mo.\n\n'Why not?' Dustfinger was collecting his props: the two bottles he had used in Elinor's garden, the burnt-out torches, the bowl into which he spat and whose contents he now tipped carelessly out on the pavement. He had got himself a new bag; the old one was probably still in Capricorn's village. Meggie went over to the rucksack, but Gwin wasn't in it.\n\n'I'd hoped you'd be well away by now, going back north or somewhere else. Somewhere Basta can't find you.'\n\nDustfinger shrugged his shoulders. 'I have to earn some money first. Anyway, I like the weather here better, and the people are more likely to stop and watch. They're generous too. Right, Farid? How much did we make this time?'\n\nThe boy jumped when Dustfinger turned to him. Farid had put aside the dish with the money in it and was just about to place a burning matchstick in his mouth. He quickly pinched it out with his fingers. Dustfinger suppressed a smile. 'He's dead set on learning to play with fire. I've shown him how to make little practice torches, but he's in too much of a hurry. He has blisters on his lips all the time.'\n\nMeggie looked sideways at Farid. He seemed to be ignoring them as he packed Dustfinger's things back in the bag, but she felt sure he was listening to every word they said. She met his eyes twice, those dark eyes, and the second time he turned away so abruptly that he almost dropped one of Dustfinger's bottles.\n\n'Hey, go carefully with that, will you?' snapped Dustfinger impatiently.\n\n'I hope there's no other reason why you're still here?' asked Mo as Dustfinger turned back to him.\n\n'What do you mean?' Dustfinger avoided his gaze. 'Oh, that. You think I might go back for the book. You overestimate me. I'm a coward.'\n\n'Nonsense!' Mo sounded irritated. 'Elinor will be home tomorrow,' he said.\n\n'Nice for her.' Dustfinger looked impassively at Mo's face. 'So why aren't you with her?'\n\nMo looked at the buildings around them and shook his head. 'There's someone I have to visit first.'\n\n'Here? Who is it?' Dustfinger put on a short-sleeved shirt, a bright garment with a pattern of large flowers. It didn't suit his scarred face.\n\n'There's someone who might still have a copy.'\n\nDustfinger's face remained unmoved, but his fingers gave him away. They were suddenly having difficulty getting the buttons of his shirt through the buttonholes. 'That's impossible!' he said hoarsely. 'Capricorn would never have overlooked one.'\n\nMo shrugged. 'Maybe not, but I'm going to try all the same. The man I'm talking about doesn't sell books either new or second-hand. Capricorn probably doesn't even know he exists.'\n\nDustfinger looked round. Someone was closing the shutters in one of the surrounding houses, and on the other side of the square a few children were playing about among the chairs of a restaurant until a waiter shooed them away. There was a smell of warm food and the liquid spirits Dustfinger used in his fiery games, but no black-clad man could be seen anywhere, except for the bored-looking waiter who was straightening the chairs.\n\n'So, who is this mysterious stranger?' Dustfinger lowered his voice to little more than a whisper.\n\n'The man who wrote Inkheart. He lives not far from here.'\n\nFarid came over to them, holding the silver dish with the money in it. 'Gwin hasn't come back,' he told Dustfinger. 'And we don't have anything to tempt him. Shall I buy a couple of eggs?'\n\n'No, he can look after himself.' Dustfinger ran a finger over one of his scars. 'Put the money we've taken into the leather bag \u2013 you know, the one in my rucksack!' he told Farid. His voice sounded impatient. Meggie would have given Mo a hurt look if he had spoken to her like that, but Farid didn't seem to mind. He just hurried off purposefully.\n\n'I really thought it was all over, no way to get back ever again...' Dustfinger broke off and looked up at the sky. A plane crossed the horizon, coloured lights blinking. Farid looked up at it too. He had put the money away and was standing expectantly beside the rucksack. Something furry scuttled across the square, dug its claws into his trouser legs and clambered up to his shoulder. With a smile, Farid dug his hand into his trouser pocket and offered Gwin a piece of bread.\n\n'Suppose there really is still a copy?' Dustfinger pushed his long hair back from his forehead. 'Will you give me another chance? Will you try to read me back into it? Just once?' There was such longing in his voice that it went to Meggie's heart.\n\nBut Mo's face was not forthcoming. 'You can't go back, not into that book!' he said. 'I know you don't want to hear me say so, but it's the truth, and you'd better resign yourself to it. Perhaps I can help you some other way. I've got an idea \u2013 rather crazy, but still...' He said no more, just shook his head and kicked an empty matchbox that was lying on the paving stones.\n\nMeggie looked at Mo in surprise. What kind of idea? Did he really have one, or was he just trying to comfort Dustfinger? If so, it hadn't worked. Dustfinger was looking at him with all his old hostility. 'I'm coming,' he said. His fingers had left a little soot on his face when he stroked his scar. 'I'm coming when you go to visit this man. Then we'll see.'\n\nThere was loud laughter behind them. Dustfinger looked round. Gwin was trying to climb on to Farid's head, and the boy was laughing as if there were nothing better than to have a marten's sharp claws digging into his scalp.\n\n'Well, he's not homesick, anyway,' muttered Dustfinger. 'I asked him. Not homesick in the least! All this,' he added, waving a hand at his surroundings, 'all this appeals to him. Even the noisy, stinking cars. He's glad to be here. You've obviously done him a favour.' The look he gave her father as he said these words was so reproachful that Meggie instinctively reached for Mo's hand.\n\nGwin had jumped down from Farid's shoulder and was sniffing curiously at the road surface. One of the children who had been romping among the tables bent down and looked incredulously at the little horns. But before the child could put a hand out to touch, Farid quickly intervened, picked Gwin up and put the marten back on his shoulders.\n\n'So where does he live, this\u2014?' Dustfinger did not finish his sentence.\n\n'About an hour's drive from here.'\n\nDustfinger said nothing. The lights of another plane were blinking up in the sky. 'Sometimes, when I went to the spring to wash early in the morning,' he murmured, 'there'd be tiny fairies flitting about above the water, not much bigger than the butterflies you have here, and blue as violet petals. They liked to fly into my hair. Sometimes they spat in my face. They weren't very friendly, but they shone like glow-worms by night. I sometimes caught one and put it in a jar. If I let it out at night before going to sleep I had wonderful dreams.'\n\n'Capricorn said there were trolls and giants too,' said Meggie quietly.\n\nDustfinger gave her a thoughtful look. 'Yes, there were,' he said. 'But Capricorn wasn't particularly fond of them. He'd have liked to do away with them all. He had them hunted. He hunted anything that could run.'\n\n'It must be a dangerous world.' Meggie was trying to imagine it all: the giants, the trolls, and the fairies. Mo had once given her a book about fairies.\n\nDustfinger shrugged. 'Yes, it's dangerous, so what? This world's dangerous too, isn't it?' Abruptly, he turned his back on Meggie, picked up his rucksack, threw it over his shoulder, then waved to the boy. Farid picked up the bag with the balls and torches, and followed him eagerly. Dustfinger went over to Mo once more.\n\n'Don't you dare tell that man about me!' he said. 'I don't want to see him. I'll wait in the car. I only want to know if he still has a copy of the book, understand?'\n\nMo shrugged his shoulders. 'As you like.'\n\nDustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. 'He might tell me how my story ends,' he murmured.\n\nMeggie looked at him in astonishment. 'You mean you don't know?'\n\nDustfinger smiled. Meggie still didn't particularly like his smile. It seemed to appear only to hide something else. 'What's so unusual about that, princess?' he asked quietly. 'Do you know how your story ends?'\n\nMeggie had no answer to that.\n\nDustfinger winked at her and turned. 'I'll be at the hotel tomorrow morning,' he said. Then he walked off without turning back. Farid followed him, carrying the heavy bag, happy as a stray dog who has found a master at last.\n\nThat night the full moon hung round and orange in the sky. Before they went to bed, Mo pulled back the curtains so that they could see it \u2013 a brightly coloured Chinese lantern among all the white stars.\n\nNeither of them could sleep. Mo had bought a couple of well-worn paperbacks that looked as if they had already passed through the hands of several people. Meggie was reading the book full of unpleasant characters that Elinor had given her. She liked it, but at last her eyes closed with weariness and she fell asleep. Beside her, Mo read on and on while the orange moon shone in the foreign sky outside.\n\nWhen a confused dream woke her with a start some time in the night, Mo was still sitting up in bed, an open book in his hand. The moon had disappeared long ago, and there was nothing but darkness to be seen through the window.\n\n'Can't you sleep?' asked Meggie, sitting up.\n\n'It was my left arm that stupid dog bit \u2013 and you know I sleep best on my left side. Anyway, there's too much going around in my head.'\n\n'There's a lot going around in my head too.' Meggie turned to the bedside table and picked up the book of poems that Elinor had given her. She stroked the binding, passed her hand over the curved spine, and traced the letters on the jacket with her forefinger. 'You know something, Mo?' she said hesitantly. 'I think I'd like to be able to do it too.'\n\n'Do what?'\n\nMeggie stroked the binding of the book again. She thought she could hear the pages whispering, very quietly. 'Read like that,' she said. 'Read aloud the way you do, and make everything come to life.'\n\nMo looked at her. 'You're out of your mind!' he said. 'That's what has caused all the trouble we're in.'\n\n'I know.'\n\nMo closed his book, leaving his finger between the pages.\n\n'Read me something aloud, Mo!' said Meggie quietly. 'Please. Just for once.' She offered him the book of poems. 'Elinor gave me this as a present. She said nothing much could happen if you did.'\n\n'Oh, did she?' Mo opened the book. 'Suppose it does, though?' He leafed through the smooth white pages.\n\nMeggie put her pillow close to his.\n\n'Do you really have any idea how you might be able to read Dustfinger back into his story? Or were you making it up?'\n\n'Nonsense. I'm useless at telling lies, as you know.'\n\n'Yes, I do.' Meggie couldn't help smiling. 'Well, what's your idea?'\n\n'I'll tell you when I know if it works.'\n\nMo was still leafing through Elinor's book. Frowning, he read a page, turned it over and read another.\n\n'Please, Mo!' Meggie moved closer to him. 'Just one poem. A tiny little poem. Please. For me.'\n\nHe sighed. 'Just one?'\n\nMeggie nodded.\n\nOutside the noise of the cars had died down. The world was as quiet as if it had spun itself into a cocoon, like a moth preparing itself to slip out in the morning, young again and good as new.\n\n'Please, Mo, read to me!' said Meggie.\n\nSo Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained-glass pictures, tickling the skin. Even when Meggie nodded off she could still hear them, although Mo had closed the book long ago. Words that explained the world to her, its dark side and its light side, words that built a wall to keep out bad dreams. And not a single bad dream came over the wall for the rest of that night.\n\nNext morning, a bird flew down and perched on Meggie's bed, a bird as orange as the light of last night's moon. She tried to catch it, but it flew away to the window where the blue sky was waiting for it. It collided with the invisible glass again and again, bumping its tiny head, until Mo opened the window and let it out.\n\n'Well, do you still wish you could do it?' asked Mo when Meggie had watched the bird fly away until it merged with the blue of the sky.\n\n'It was beautiful!' she said.\n\n'Yes, but will it like this world?' asked Mo. 'And what's gone to replace it in the world it came from?'\n\nMeggie stayed by the window as Mo went downstairs to pay their bill. She remembered the last poem that Mo had read before she fell asleep. She picked up the book from her bedside table, hesitated for a moment \u2013 and opened it.\n\n\u2003There is a place where the sidewalk ends\n\n\u2003And before the street begins,\n\n\u2003And there the grass grows soft and white,\n\n\u2003And there the sun burns crimson bright,\n\n\u2003And there the moon-bird rests from his flight\n\n\u2003To cool in the peppermint wind.\n\nMeggie whispered the words aloud as she read them, but no moon-bird flew down from the lamp. And she must be just imagining the smell of peppermint."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fenoglio",
                "text": "\u2002You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.\n\n\u2014Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\n\nDustfinger and Farid were waiting for them in the car park when they left the hotel. Over the nearby hills, a warm wind was slowly driving rain-clouds towards the sea. Everything seemed grey today, even the houses with their bright colour-washed walls and the flowering shrubs in the streets. Mo took the coastal road, which Elinor had said was built by the Romans, and followed it further west.\n\nAll through the drive the sea lay to their left, its water stretching to the horizon, sometimes hidden by houses, sometimes by trees, but this morning it didn't look half as inviting as it had on the day when Meggie had come down from the mountains with Elinor and Dustfinger. The grey of the sky cast a dull reflection on the blue waves, and the sea-spray foamed like dirty dishwater. Several times, Meggie found her gaze wandering to the hills on her right. Capricorn's village was hidden somewhere among them. Once she even thought she saw its pale church tower in a dark fold of the hills, and her heart beat faster, although she knew that it couldn't possibly be Capricorn's church. Her feet remembered all too well how long that endless journey down the mountainside had been.\n\nMo was driving faster than usual, much faster. He could obviously hardly wait to reach their destination. After a good hour they turned off the coast road and followed a narrow, winding lane through a valley grey with buildings. Glasshouses covered the hills here, their panes painted white for protection against the sun that was now hidden behind clouds. Only when the road went uphill did the country on both sides turn green again. The buildings gave way to natural meadowland, and stunted olive trees lined the road, which forked unexpectedly a couple of times. Mo had to keep consulting the map he had bought, but finally the right name appeared on a sign.\n\nThey drove into a small village, little more than a square, a few dozen houses, and a church that looked very much like Capricorn's. When Meggie got out of the car she saw the sea far below. The waves were so rough on this overcast day that, even from this distance, she could see the breakers. Mo had parked in the village square beside the memorial for the dead of two world wars. The list of names was long for such a small place. Meggie thought there were almost as many names as the village had houses.\n\n'You can leave the car unlocked. I'll keep an eye on it,' said Dustfinger, as Mo was about to lock up. He threw his rucksack over his shoulder, put the sleepy Gwin on his chain, and sat on the steps in front of the war memorial. Farid sat down beside him without a word. Meggie looked uneasily at them both as she followed Mo.\n\n'Remember, you promised not to mention me!' Dustfinger called after them.\n\n'Yes, all right!' replied Mo.\n\nFarid was playing with matches again. Meggie caught him at it when she looked round once more. By now he could extinguish the burning matches with his mouth quite well, but all the same Dustfinger took the box of matches away from him, and Farid looked sadly at his empty hands.\n\nMeggie had met many people who loved books, sold them, collected them, printed them or, like her father, prevented them from falling apart, but she had never before met anyone who wrote the words that filled all a book's pages. She didn't even know the names of the authors of some of her favourite stories, let alone what they looked like. She had seen only the characters who emerged from the words to meet her, never the writer who had made them up. It was just as Mo had said: in general one thought of writers as dead or very, very old. But the man who opened the door to them, after Mo had rung the bell twice, was neither. That is, he was certainly quite old, at least in Meggie's eyes: in his mid-sixties or even older. His face was wrinkled like a turtle's, but his hair was black, without a trace of grey (she was to find out later that he dyed it), and he didn't look at all fragile. On the contrary: he planted himself so impressively in the doorway that Meggie was instantly tongue-tied. Luckily Mo was not.\n\n'Signor Fenoglio?' he asked.\n\n'Yes?' The face looked less forthcoming than ever. There was disapproval in every line of it. But Mo seemed undaunted.\n\n'I'm Mortimer Folchart,' he introduced himself, 'and this is my daughter Meggie. I'm here about one of your books.'\n\nA boy appeared at the door beside Fenoglio, a little boy of about five, and a small girl joined them on the other side of the doorway. She stared curiously, first at Mo, then at Meggie. 'Pippo's picked the chocolate chips out of the cake,' Meggie heard her whisper as she looked anxiously up at Mo. When his eyes twinkled at her she disappeared behind Fenoglio's back, giggling. But Fenoglio himself still looked anything but friendly.\n\n'All the chocolate chips?' he growled. 'Very well, I'm coming. You go and tell Pippo he's in serious trouble.' The little girl nodded and ran away, obviously happy to be the bearer of bad news. The small boy clung to Fenoglio's leg.\n\n'A very particular book,' Mo went on. 'Inkheart. You wrote it quite a long time ago, and unfortunately I can't buy a copy anywhere now.' With the man's icy stare still resting on her father, Meggie could only marvel that the words didn't freeze on Mo's lips.\n\n'Oh yes. So?' Fenoglio crossed his arms. The girl appeared on his left again. 'Pippo's hiding,' she said.\n\n'That won't do him any good,' said Fenoglio. 'I can always find him.' The little girl scurried off again. Meggie heard her in the house, calling to the chocolate thief. Fenoglio, however, turned back to Mo. 'So what do you want? If you're planning to ask me clever questions of some kind about the book, forget it. I don't have time for that sort of thing. Anyway, as you said yourself, I wrote it ages ago.'\n\n'No, there's only one question I was going to ask. I'd like to know if you still have any copies, and if so may I buy one from you?'\n\nThe old man's expression was no longer quite so forbidding as he inspected Mo. 'How extraordinary. You must be really keen on the book,' he murmured. 'I'm flattered. Although,' he added, and his face darkened again, 'I hope you're not one of those idiots who collect rare books just because they're rare, are you?'\n\nMo couldn't help smiling. 'No,' he said. 'I want to read it, that's all. I just want to read it.'\n\nFenoglio braced an arm against the door frame and looked at the house opposite as if he feared it might collapse at any moment. The street where he lived was so narrow that Mo could have touched both sides at once if he stretched his arms out. Many of the houses were built of coarse blocks of sandy grey stone, like the houses in Capricorn's village, but here there were flowers in window boxes and pots of plants on the steps, and many of the shutters looked as if they had been freshly painted. There was a pram outside one house, a moped leaning against the wall of another, and voices floated into the street from open windows. Capricorn's village probably looked like this once, thought Meggie.\n\nAn old woman passing by looked suspiciously at the strangers. Fenoglio nodded to her, murmured a brief greeting, and waited until she had vanished behind a green-painted front door. 'Inkheart,' he said. 'That really is a long time ago. And it's odd that you should be asking about that one, of all my books.'\n\nThe girl came back. She tugged Fenoglio's sleeve and whispered something in his ear. Fenoglio's turtle face twisted in a smile. Meggie liked him better that way. 'Oh, that's where he always hides, Paula,' he told the little girl softly. 'Perhaps you should advise him to try a better hiding-place.'\n\nPaula ran off for the fourth time, but not before gazing curiously at Meggie first.\n\n'Well, you'd better come in,' said Fenoglio. Without another word he showed Mo and Meggie into the house, went down a dark, narrow passage ahead of them, limping because the little boy was still clinging to his leg like a monkey, and pushed open the door to the kitchen, where the ruins of a cake stood on the table. Its brown icing was as full of holes as the binding of a book when bookworms have been gnawing at it for years.\n\n'Pippo?' Fenoglio bellowed so loud that even Meggie jumped, although she didn't feel guilty of any naughtiness. 'I know you can hear me. And I warn you I shall tie a knot in your nose for every hole in this cake. Understand?'\n\nMeggie heard a giggle. It seemed to come from the cupboard next to the fridge. Fenoglio broke a piece off the cake with the holes still in it. 'Paula,' he said, 'give this girl a slice if she doesn't mind the missing chocolate.' Paula emerged from under the table and looked enquiringly at Meggie.\n\n'I don't mind,' said Meggie, whereupon Paula took a huge knife, cut an enormous piece of cake, and put it on the table in front of her.\n\n'Pippo, let's have one of the rose-patterned plates,' said Fenoglio, and a hand stuck out of the cupboard holding a plate in its chocolate-brown fingers. Meggie was quick to take the plate before it dropped, and put the piece of cake on it.\n\n'What about you?' Fenoglio asked Mo.\n\n'I'd prefer the book,' said Mo. He was looking rather pale.\n\nFenoglio removed the little boy from his leg and sat down. 'Go and find another tree to climb, Rico,' he said. Then he looked thoughtfully at Mo. 'I'm afraid I can't help you,' he said. 'I don't have a single copy left. They were stolen, all of them. I lent them to an exhibition of old children's books in Genoa: a lavishly illustrated special edition, a copy with a signed dedication by the illustrator, and the two copies that belonged to my own children with all their scribbled comments \u2013 I always asked them to mark the bits they liked best \u2013 and finally my own personal copy. Every last one of them was stolen two days after the exhibition opened.'\n\nMo ran a hand over his face as if he could wipe the disappointment off it. 'Stolen,' he said. 'Of course.'\n\n'Of course?' Fenoglio narrowed his eyes and looked at Mo with great curiosity. 'You'll have to explain. In fact I'm not letting you out of my house until I find out why you're interested in this of all my books. In fact, I might set the children on you \u2013 and you wouldn't like that!'\n\nMo tried for a smile, without much success. 'My copy was stolen as well,' he said at last. 'And that was a very special edition too.'\n\n'Extraordinary.' Fenoglio raised his eyebrows, which were like hairy caterpillars creeping above his eyes. 'Come on, let's hear your story.' All the hostility had vanished from his face. Curiosity, pure curiosity, had won out. In Fenoglio's eyes Meggie saw the same insatiable hunger for a good story that overcame her at the sight of any new and exciting book.\n\n'There's not much to tell,' said Mo. Meggie heard in his voice that he didn't intend to tell the old man the truth. 'I restore books. That's how I make my living. I found yours in a second-hand bookshop some years ago, and I was going to give it a new binding and then sell it, but I liked it so much I kept it instead. And now it's been stolen and I've been trying in vain to buy another copy. A friend who knows a great deal about rare books and how to get hold of them finally suggested I might try the author himself. She was the person who found me your address. So I came here.'\n\nFenoglio wiped a few cake crumbs off the table. 'Fine,' he said, 'but that's not the whole story.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\nThe old man scrutinised Mo's face until he turned his head away and looked out of the narrow kitchen window. 'I mean I can smell a good story miles away, so don't try keeping one from me. Out with it! And then you can have a piece of this magnificently perforated cake.'\n\nPaula clambered up on to Fenoglio's lap, nestled her head under his chin, and looked at Mo as expectantly as the old man himself.\n\nBut Mo shook his head. 'No, I think I'd better say no more. You wouldn't believe a word of it anyway.'\n\n'Oh, I'd believe all manner of things!' Fenoglio assured Mo, cutting him a slice of cake. 'I'd believe any story at all just so long as it's well told.'\n\nThe cupboard door opened a crack, and Meggie saw a boy's head emerge. 'What about my punishment?' he asked. Judging by the fingers, which were sticky with chocolate, this must be Pippo.\n\n'Later,' said Fenoglio. 'I have something else to do now.'\n\nDisappointed, Pippo came out of the cupboard. 'You said you were going to tie knots in my nose.'\n\n'Double knots, seaman's knots, butterfly knots, any knots you fancy, but I have to hear this story first. So go and fool about with something else until I have time for you.'\n\nPippo stuck his lower lip out sulkily and disappeared into the corridor. Rico, the little boy, ran after him.\n\nMo remained silent, pushing cake crumbs off the worn table-top, drawing invisible patterns on the wood with his forefinger. 'There's someone in this story, and I've promised not to tell you about him,' he said at last.\n\n'Keeping a bad promise makes it no better,' said Fenoglio. 'Or at least so a favourite book of mine says.'\n\n'I don't know if it was a bad promise.' Mo sighed, and looked up at the ceiling as if the answer might be found there. 'Very well,' he said. 'I'll tell you. But Dustfinger will murder me if he finds out.'\n\n'Dustfinger? I once called a character that. Oh yes, of course, the poor trickster in Inkheart. I killed him off in the last chapter but one. A very touching scene. I cried while I was writing it.'\n\nMeggie almost choked on the piece of cake she had just put in her mouth, but Fenoglio went on calmly. 'I haven't killed off many of my characters, but sometimes it just happens. Death scenes aren't easy to write \u2013 they can too easily get sentimental \u2013 but I thought I did pretty well with Dustfinger's death.'\n\nHorrified, Meggie looked at Mo. 'He dies? Did \u2013 did you know that?'\n\n'Yes, of course. I've read the whole story, Meggie.'\n\n'But why didn't you tell him?'\n\n'He didn't want to know.'\n\nFenoglio was following this exchange with a puzzled look on his face \u2013 and with great curiosity.\n\n'Who kills him?' asked Meggie. 'Basta?'\n\n'Ah, Basta!' Fenoglio smiled. Each of his separate wrinkles expressed self-satisfaction. 'One of the best villains I ever thought up. A rabid dog, but not half as bad as my other dark hero, Capricorn. Basta would let his heart be torn out for Capricorn, but his master is a stranger to such loyalty. He feels nothing, nothing at all, he doesn't even enjoy his own cruelty. Yes, I really did think up some pretty dark characters for Inkheart, and then there's the Shadow, Capricorn's hound, as I always called him to myself. Though of course that's far too friendly a name for such a monster.'\n\n'The Shadow?' Meggie's voice was hardly more than a whisper. 'Does he kill Dustfinger?'\n\n'No, no. I'm sorry, I'd quite forgotten your question. Once I begin talking about my characters it's hard to stop me. No, one of Capricorn's men kills Dustfinger. It was a very successful scene. Dustfinger has some kind of tame marten. Capricorn's man wants to kill it because he enjoys killing small animals, so Dustfinger tries to save his furry friend and dies in the attempt.'\n\nMeggie said nothing. Poor Dustfinger, she thought. Poor, poor Dustfinger. She couldn't think of anything else. 'Which of Capricorn's men does it?' she asked. 'Flatnose? Or Cockerell?'\n\nFenoglio looked at her in surprise. 'Well, fancy that. You know all their names? I usually forget them soon after I've made them up.'\n\n'It's neither of them, Meggie,' said Mo. 'The murderer's name isn't even mentioned in the book. A whole pack of Capricorn's men is hunting Gwin, and one of them draws a knife and uses it. A man who's probably still waiting for Dustfinger.'\n\n'Waiting for him?' Fenoglio looked at Mo, confused.\n\n'That's terrible!' whispered Meggie. 'I'm glad I didn't read any more.'\n\n'What do you mean? Are you talking about my book?' Fenoglio's voice sounded hurt.\n\n'Yes,' said Meggie. 'I am.' She looked at Mo, a question in her eyes. 'And Capricorn? Who kills him?'\n\n'No one.'\n\n'No one!'\n\nMeggie stared at Fenoglio so accusingly that he rubbed his nose awkwardly. It was an impressive nose. 'Why are you looking at me like that?' he cried. 'Yes, I let him get away with it. He's one of my best villains. How could I kill him off? It's the same in real life: notorious murderers get off scot-free and live happily all their lives, while good people die \u2013 sometimes the very best people. That's the way of the world. Why should it be different in books?'\n\n'What about Basta? Does he stay alive too?' Meggie remembered what Farid had said back in the ruined hovel: 'Why not kill them? That's what they were going to do to us!'\n\n'Basta stays alive too,' replied Fenoglio. 'I remember toying for some time with the idea of writing a sequel to Inkheart, and I didn't want to do without those two. I was proud of them! And the Shadow was quite a success too, yes, he really was, but I'm always most attached to my human characters. You know, if you were to ask me which of those two I was prouder of, Basta or Capricorn, I couldn't tell you! Even though some critics said they were just too nasty!'\n\nMo stared out of the window again. Then he looked at Fenoglio. 'Would you like to meet them?' he asked.\n\n'Meet who?' Fenoglio looked at him in surprise.\n\n'Capricorn and Basta.'\n\n'Good God, no!' Fenoglio laughed so loud that Paula, quite frightened, put her hand over his mouth.\n\n'Well, we did,' said Mo wearily. 'Meggie and I \u2013 and Dustfinger.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Ending",
                "text": "\u2002Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.\n\n\u2002BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR\n\n\u2002per\n\n\u2002G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE\n\n\u2014Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\n\nFenoglio said nothing for a long time after Mo had finished his story. Paula had gone off long ago in search of Pippo and Rico. Meggie heard them running over the wooden floorboards above her, back and forth, jumping, sliding, giggling and squealing. But in Fenoglio's kitchen it was so quiet you could hear the tick of the clock on the wall by the window.\n\n'Does he have those scars on his face? I expect you know what I mean? The fairies treated the cuts \u2013 that's why there are only slight scars left, little more than three pale lines on the skin, is that right?' Fenoglio looked enquiringly at Mo, who nodded.\n\nFenoglio looked out of the window again, brushing a few crumbs off his trousers. 'Basta scarred him,' he said. 'They both fancied the same girl.'\n\nMo nodded. 'Yes, I know.'\n\nA window was open in the house opposite, and you could hear a woman scolding a child inside. 'I suppose I ought to feel very, very proud,' murmured Fenoglio. 'Every writer wants to create lifelike characters \u2013 and mine are so lifelike they've walked straight off the page!'\n\n'That's because my father read them out of the book,' said Meggie. 'He can do it with other books too.'\n\n'Yes, of course.' Fenoglio nodded. 'A good thing you reminded me. Otherwise I might start taking myself for a minor god, mightn't I? But I'm sorry about your mother \u2013 although depending on how you look at it, that wasn't really my fault.'\n\n'It's worse for my father,' said Meggie. 'I don't remember her.'\n\nMo looked at her, startled.\n\n'Of course not. You were younger than my grandchildren,' said Fenoglio thoughtfully. 'I'd really like to see him,' he added. 'Dustfinger, I mean. Naturally I'm sorry now that I thought up such an unhappy ending for the poor fellow, but it somehow seemed right for him. As Shakespeare puts it so well, \"Everybody plays his part, and mine is a sad one.\"' He looked out into the street. Something fell and broke on the floor above them, but Fenoglio didn't seem particularly interested.\n\n'Are those your children?' asked Meggie, pointing up at the ceiling.\n\n'Heaven help us, no. My grandchildren. One of my daughters lives in this village too. They're always visiting me, and I tell them stories. I tell half the village stories, but I don't feel like writing them down any more.' He turned to Mo with an enquiring look. 'Where is he now?'\n\n'Dustfinger? I can't tell you. He doesn't want to see you.'\n\n'He got quite a shock when my father told him about you,' added Meggie. But Dustfinger must be told what happens to him, she thought, he must. Then he'll understand why he really can't go back. And all the same, she thought next, he'll still be homesick. Homesick for ever.\n\n'I must see him! Only once. Don't you understand?' Fenoglio looked pleadingly at Mo. 'I could just follow you, inconspicuously. How would he know who I am? I want to find out if he really looks the way I imagined him, that's all.'\n\nHowever, Mo shook his head. 'I think you'd better leave him alone.'\n\n'Nonsense. Surely I can see him whenever I like. After all, I invented him!'\n\n'And you killed him off,' Meggie pointed out.\n\n'Well.' Fenoglio raised his hands helplessly. 'I wanted to make the story more exciting. Don't you like exciting stories?'\n\n'Only if they have happy endings.'\n\n'Happy endings!' Fenoglio snorted scornfully, and then listened to what was going on upstairs. Something or someone had landed heavily on the wooden floorboards. Loud howls followed the thud. Fenoglio strode to the door. 'Wait here! I'll be back in a minute!' he called, disappearing into the corridor.\n\n'Mo!' whispered Meggie. 'You've got to tell Dustfinger! You've got to tell him he can't go back.'\n\nBut Mo shook his head. 'He won't want to listen, I promise you. I've tried more than a dozen times. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring him together with Fenoglio after all. He might well be more likely to believe his creator than me.' With a sigh, he brushed a few cake crumbs off Fenoglio's kitchen table. 'There was a picture in Inkheart,' he murmured, raising the palm of his hand over the table-top as if to conjure up the picture itself. 'It showed a group of women standing under an arched gateway, in splendid clothes as if they were going to a party. One of them had hair as fair as your mother's. You can't see the woman's face in the picture, she has her back turned, but I always imagined it was her. Crazy, isn't it?'\n\nMeggie placed her hand on his. 'Mo, promise you won't go back to the village!' she said. 'Please! Promise me you won't try to get the book back.'\n\nThe second hand on Fenoglio's kitchen clock was dividing time into painfully small segments.\n\nAt last Mo answered. 'I promise,' he said.\n\n'Look at me and say it!'\n\nHe did. 'I promise!' he repeated. 'There's just one more thing I want to discuss with Fenoglio, and then we'll go home and forget about the book. Happy now?'\n\nMeggie nodded. Although she wondered what else there could be to discuss.\n\nFenoglio returned with a tearful Pippo on his back. The other two children followed their grandfather, looking crestfallen. 'Holes in the cake and now a dent in his forehead too. I think I ought to send the lot of you home!' Fenoglio told them crossly as he put Pippo down on a chair. Then he rummaged around in the big cupboard until he found a plaster, which he stuck none too gently on his grandson's cut forehead.\n\nMo pushed his chair back and stood up. 'I've changed my mind,' he said. 'I'll take you to Dustfinger after all.'\n\nFenoglio turned to him in surprise.\n\n'Perhaps you can make it clear to him once and for all that he can't go back,' Mo continued. 'Goodness knows what he might do next! I'm afraid it could be dangerous for him \u2013 and I do have this idea, rather a weird idea, but I'd like to talk to you about it.'\n\n'Weirder than what I've heard already? I'd say that's hardly possible!' Fenoglio's grandchildren had disappeared into the cupboard again. Giggling, they closed the doors. 'Very well, I'll listen to your idea,' said Fenoglio. 'But I want to see Dustfinger first!'\n\nMo looked at Meggie. It wasn't often that he broke a promise, and he clearly felt far from comfortable about it. Meggie could understand that only too well. 'He's waiting in the square,' said Mo hesitantly. 'But let me talk to him first.'\n\n'In the square here?' Fenoglio's eyes widened. 'That's wonderful!' With one stride he was standing in front of the little mirror hanging next to the kitchen door, running his fingers through his black hair almost as if he were afraid Dustfinger might be disappointed by his creator's appearance. 'I'll pretend I don't see him until you call me,' he said. 'Yes, that's the thing to do.'\n\nThere was a clattering in the cupboard, and Pippo stumbled out in a jacket that came down to his ankles and a hat so large that it had slipped right over his eyes.\n\n'Of course!' Fenoglio took the hat off Pippo's head and put it on his own. 'That's it! I'll take the children with me. A grandfather with three grandchildren \u2013 nothing about that sight to make anyone uneasy, is there?'\n\nMo just nodded and pushed Meggie out into the narrow passage.\n\nAs they walked down the street leading back to the square and their car, Fenoglio followed a few metres behind them, with his grandchildren running and jumping around him like three puppies."
            },
            {
                "title": "Shivers Down the Spine and a Foreboding",
                "text": "\u2002And that's when she put her book down. And looked at me. And said it: 'Life isn't fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it's a terrible thing to do. It's not only a lie, it's a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it's never going to be.'\n\n\u2014William Goldman, The Princess Bride\n\nDustfinger sat on the chilly stone steps, waiting. He felt sick with fear; but he wasn't quite sure of what. Perhaps the war memorial behind him reminded him too much of death. He had always been afraid of death, which he imagined as cold, like a night without fire. Now, however, he dreaded something else even more. Its name was sorrow, and it had been stalking him like a second shadow ever since Silvertongue lured him into this world. Sorrow that made his limbs heavy and turned the sky grey.\n\nBeside him, the boy was running up and down the steps. Up and down, tirelessly, with light feet and a cheerful face, as if Silvertongue had read him straight into Paradise. What could be making him so happy? Dustfinger looked round at the narrow houses, pale yellow, pink, peach, the dark green shutters at the windows and the rust-red tiles on the roofs, an oleander flowering in front of a wall as if its branches were on fire, cats stalking past the warm walls. Farid stole up to one of them, stroked its grey fur and put it on his lap, although it dug its claws into his thighs.\n\n'You know what people do to keep the numbers of cats down around here?' Dustfinger stretched his legs and blinked up at the sun. 'When winter comes they take their own cats indoors for safety, then they put out dishes of poisoned food for the strays.'\n\nFarid still fondled the grey cat's pointed ears. But his face was rigid and grim, not a trace left of the happiness that had just made it look so soft and open. Dustfinger glanced quickly aside. Why had he said that? Had the happiness on the boy's face upset him so much?\n\nFarid let the cat go and climbed the steps to the memorial.\n\nHe was still sitting there on the wall, legs drawn up, when the other two came back. Silvertongue had no book with him, and he looked strained \u2013 his guilty conscience was clearly visible on his face.\n\nWhy? What could have made Silvertongue look so guilty? Dustfinger glanced suspiciously around without knowing quite what he was looking for. Silvertongue's face always showed his feelings; he was an open book that any stranger could read. His daughter was different. It wasn't so easy to make out what was going on in her mind. But now, as she came towards him, Dustfinger thought he saw something like concern in her eyes, perhaps even pity... What had that writer fellow said to make the girl look at him like that?\n\nHe got up and brushed the dust off his trousers.\n\n'No copies left, am I right?' he asked, when the two of them had reached him.\n\n'You're right. They've all been stolen,' Silvertongue replied. 'Years ago.'\n\nHis daughter never took her eyes off Dustfinger.\n\n'Why are you staring at me like that, princess?' he snapped. 'Do you know something I don't?'\n\nBull's-eye. An accidental one, too. He hadn't wanted to score a bull's-eye at all, certainly not a direct hit on an uncomfortable truth. The girl bit her lip, still looking at him with that same mixture of pity and concern.\n\nDustfinger rubbed his hand over his face, feeling his scars on it like a picture postcard saying 'Greetings from Basta'. He could never forget Capricorn's rabid dog for a single day even if he wanted to. 'To help you please the girls even better in future!' Basta had hissed in his ear before wiping the blood off his knife.\n\n'Oh, curse it all!' Dustfinger kicked the nearest wall so hard that he felt the pain in his foot for days to come. 'You've told that writer about me!' he accused Mo. 'And now even your daughter knows more about me than I do! Very well, out with it! I want to know now too. Tell me. You always wanted to tell me, after all. Basta hangs me, is that it? Strings me up and tightens the noose until I'm dead as a doornail, right? But why should that bother me? Basta's in this world now, isn't he? The story's changed \u2013 it must have changed. Basta can't hurt me if you just send me back there where I belong!'\n\nDustfinger took a step towards Silvertongue as if to grab him, shake him, take out on him all that had been done to himself, but Meggie came between them. 'Stop it! It's not Basta!' she cried, pushing him away. 'It's one of Capricorn's men, and he's waiting for you in the book. They want to kill Gwin and you try to help him, so they kill you instead! Nothing about that has changed! It will simply happen and there's nothing you can do about it. Do you understand? You must stay here, you can't go back, ever!'\n\nDustfinger stared at the girl as if he could shut her up that way, but she held his gaze. She even tried to take his hand.\n\n'You should be glad to be here!' she faltered as he retreated from her. 'You can escape from them here. You can go away, far away, and...' Her voice quivered. Perhaps she had seen the tears in Dustfinger's eyes. Angrily, he wiped them away with his sleeve, and looked round like an animal in a trap, searching for some way out. But there was no way out. No going forward and, even worse, no going back.\n\nA trio of women standing at the bus stop glanced curiously in his direction. Dustfinger often attracted such glances; anyone could see he didn't belong here. A stranger for ever.\n\nThree children and an old man were playing football with a tin can on the other side of the square. Farid looked at them. The Arab boy had Dustfinger's rucksack over his narrow shoulders, and grey cat hairs clung to his trousers. He was deep in thought, wriggling his bare toes into the gaps between the paving stones. He was always taking off the trainers Dustfinger had bought him and going about barefoot, even on hot tarmac, with his shoes tied to the rucksack like loot he was taking home.\n\nSilvertongue looked at the playing children too. Had he given some sign to the old man with them? The old fellow left the children and came over. Dustfinger took a step back. A shiver ran down his spine.\n\n'My grandchildren have been admiring the tame marten that boy has on a chain,' said the old man, as he approached.\n\nDustfinger took another step backwards. Why was the dark-haired man looking at him like that? In quite a different way from the women at the bus stop. 'The children say the marten can do tricks and the boy's a fire-eater. Perhaps we could come to the show and watch at close quarters?'\n\nThe cold shiver spread right through Dustfinger, although the sun was shining down on him. The way the old man looked at him \u2013 as if he were a dog who had run away long ago and was now back, tail between his legs, perhaps with lice in his coat, but definitely his, the old man's dog.\n\n'Nonsense, we don't do tricks!' he managed to say. 'There's nothing to see here!' He retreated again, but the old man followed him \u2013 as if they were linked by an invisible thread.\n\n'I'm sorry,' said the old man, raising a hand as if to touch Dustfinger's scarred face.\n\nDustfinger's back came up against a parked car. Now the old man was standing right in front of him, and still staring, staring\u2014\n\n'Go away!' Dustfinger pushed him roughly back. 'Farid, bring me my things!' The boy hurried to his side. Dustfinger snatched the rucksack from his hand, picked up the marten and stowed him in the rucksack, taking no notice of the animal's sharp, snapping teeth. The old man stared at Gwin's horns. Fingers flying, Dustfinger slung the rucksack over his shoulder and tried to push past him.\n\n'Please. I only want to talk to you.' The old man barred his way, reaching for his arm.\n\n'Well, I don't want to talk to you.' Dustfinger tried to free himself from the bony fingers. They were surprisingly strong, but Dustfinger had the knife, Basta's flick-knife. He took it out of his pocket, snapped it open and held it under the old man's chin. His hand was trembling, he had never enjoyed threatening anyone with a knife, but the old man let go. And Dustfinger ran.\n\nHe ignored whatever Silvertongue was calling after him. He just ran for it, as he had often done in the past. He could trust his legs even if he didn't yet know where they were taking him. He left the village and the road behind, dodged under some trees, ran through wild grass, plunged in among the mustard-yellow gorse bushes, let the silvery foliage of the olive trees hide him... he had to get away from the houses, away from the paved roads. Wild country had always protected him. Only when every breath he drew hurt him did he throw himself down into the long grass behind an abandoned cistern where frogs croaked and the rainwater that had collected among the grey stones steamed in the sun. He lay there gasping, listening to his own heartbeat and staring at the sky.\n\nHe jumped. 'Who's that?'\n\nThe boy stood there. Farid had followed him.\n\n'Go away!' shouted Dustfinger.\n\nThe boy crouched down among the wild flowers that grew everywhere \u2013 blue and yellow and red splashes of bright colour in the grass.\n\n'I don't want you!' snapped Dustfinger.\n\nThe boy said nothing, but picked a wild orchid and examined the bloom. It looked like a bumble-bee on the tip of a flower stem. 'What a strange flower!' he murmured. 'I've never seen one like that before.'\n\nDustfinger sat up and leaned against the side of the cistern. 'You'll be sorry if you keep running after me,' he said. 'I'm going back. You know where to.'\n\nOnly when he said it did he realise that he had made up his mind \u2013 long ago. Yes, he was going back. Dustfinger the coward was going back into the lion's den. Never mind what Silvertongue said, or what his daughter thought \u2013 there was only one thing he wanted. He had never wanted anything else. And if he couldn't have it now, then at least he could hope that one day his wish would come true.\n\nThe boy stayed sitting there.\n\n'Go away, will you? Go back to Silvertongue! He'll look after you.'\n\nFarid sat there unmoved, his arms round his knees. 'You're going back to that village?'\n\n'Yes, the village where the devils and demons live. Believe me, they'll kill a boy like you and eat you for breakfast. They'll enjoy their coffee all the more afterwards.'\n\nFarid stroked his cheeks with the orchid. He made a face as the petals tickled his skin. 'Gwin wants to get out,' he said.\n\nHe was right. The marten was biting the fabric of the rucksack and sticking his muzzle out of it. Dustfinger undid the straps and freed him. Gwin blinked up at the sun, chattered crossly, presumably complaining that it was the wrong time of day, and scurried over to the boy. Farid picked him up, put him on his shoulder, and looked earnestly at Dustfinger. 'I've never seen flowers like this,' he repeated. 'Or such green hills or such a clever marten. But I know a lot about the kind of men you mean. They're the same everywhere.'\n\nDustfinger shook his head. 'These are particularly bad.'\n\n'No, not particularly.'\n\nThe defiance in Farid's voice made Dustfinger laugh; he himself didn't know why.\n\n'We could go somewhere else,' said the boy.\n\n'No, we couldn't.'\n\n'Why not? What are you planning to do in that village?'\n\n'Steal something,' said Dustfinger.\n\nThe boy nodded, as if stealing were the most natural plan in the world, and carefully put the orchid in his trouser pocket. 'Will you teach me a little more about fire first? Before we go there.'\n\n'Before?' Dustfinger couldn't help smiling. The boy was a clever lad, and no doubt he knew there wouldn't be any after.\n\n'Of course,' he said. 'I'll teach you everything I know. Before we go there.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Good Place To Stay",
                "text": "\u2002I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew);\n\n\u2002Their names are What and Why and When\n\n\u2002and How and Where and Who.\n\n\u2014Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child\n\nThey did not set off to join Elinor after Dustfinger had left them. 'Meggie, I know I promised we would,' said Mo, as they stood in the square in front of the war memorial, feeling rather at a loss. 'But I'd like to leave the journey until tomorrow. As I told you before, there's something else I have to discuss with Fenoglio.'\n\nThe old man was still standing where he had been when he spoke to Dustfinger, staring down the road. His grandchildren were pulling at him and talking to him, but he didn't seem to notice them.\n\n'What exactly do you want to discuss with him?'\n\nMo sat on the steps in front of the memorial and made Meggie sit down beside him. 'Do you see those names?' he asked, pointing up at the chiselled letters listing people no longer alive. 'There's a family behind every name \u2013 a mother or father, brothers and sisters, perhaps a wife. If one of them were to find out that letters can be brought to life, that someone who's only a name now could become flesh and blood again, don't you think he or she would do anything, anything at all, to make it happen?'\n\nMeggie looked at the long list. Someone had painted a heart next to the name at the top, and there was a bunch of dried flowers on the stone steps in front of the memorial.\n\n'No one can bring back the dead, Meggie,' Mo went on. 'Perhaps it's true that death is only the beginning of a new story, but no one has ever read the book in which it's written, and the writer of that book certainly doesn't live in a little village on the coast playing football with his grandchildren. Your mother's name isn't on a stone like this but hidden somewhere in a book, and I have an idea which just might make it possible to alter what happened nine years ago.'\n\n'You're going back!'\n\n'No, I'm not. I gave you my word. Have I ever broken it?'\n\nMeggie shook her head. You broke your word to Dustfinger, she thought, but she didn't say so out loud.\n\n'There you are, then,' said Mo. 'I want to talk to Fenoglio. That's the only reason why I want to stay.'\n\nMeggie looked at the sea. The sun had broken through the clouds, and all of a sudden the water was glistening and shining as if someone had poured paint into it.\n\n'It's not far from here,' she murmured.\n\n'What isn't?'\n\n'Capricorn's village.'\n\nMo looked eastward. 'Yes, it's odd that he felt drawn here of all places, don't you think? As if he were looking for somewhere resembling the countryside of his own story.'\n\n'Suppose he finds us?'\n\n'Nonsense. Do you know how many villages there are along this coast?'\n\nMeggie shrugged her shoulders. 'He found you before, even when you were far, far away.'\n\n'He found me with Dustfinger's help, and you can be sure Dustfinger isn't going to help him again.' Mo rose and drew Meggie to her feet. 'Come on, let's go and ask Fenoglio where we can stay the night. He looks as if he could do with some company.'\n\nFenoglio did not tell them whether Dustfinger looked as he had imagined him. He said very little as they walked back to his house. But when Mo told him that he and Meggie would like to stay there another day his face brightened slightly. He even offered them a place to spend the night: an apartment he sometimes rented out to tourists. Mo gratefully accepted.\n\nHe and the old man talked far into the evening, while Fenoglio's grandchildren chased Meggie all over the nooks and crannies of the house. The two men sat in Fenoglio's study. It was next to the kitchen, and Meggie kept trying to listen at the closed door, but Pippo and Rico always caught her in the act and dragged her away to the next flight of stairs before she had heard more than a few words. Finally, she gave up. She let Paula show her the kittens scampering about with their mother in the tiny garden behind the house, and followed the three children to the house where they lived with their parents. They didn't stay long, just long enough to persuade their mother to let them stay at their grandfather's for supper.\n\nSupper was pasta with sage. Pippo and Rico picked the bitter-tasting green bits out of their sauce with disgusted expressions on their faces, but Meggie and Paula enjoyed the flavour of the leaves. After the meal Mo and Fenoglio drank a whole bottle of red wine between them, and when the old man finally saw Mo and Meggie to the door he said goodnight and added, 'So you'll look at my books as we agreed, Mortimer, and I'll get down to work first thing tomorrow.'\n\n'What kind of work, Mo?' asked Meggie as they walked along the dimly lit alleys together. Night had hardly cooled the air at all; a strangely foreign wind blew through the village, hot and sandy, as if it were carrying the desert itself across the sea.\n\n'I'd rather you didn't ask me that,' said Mo. 'Let's just act as if we were on holiday for a few days. This looks a good place for a holiday, don't you think?'\n\nMeggie answered only with a nod. Mo really knew her very well \u2013 he could often tell what she was thinking before she put it into words \u2013 but he sometimes forgot she wasn't five years old any more, and these days it took rather more than a few kind words to distract her from her worries. Very well, she thought as she silently followed Mo through the sleeping village, if he doesn't want to tell me what Fenoglio's supposed to do for him I'll ask old turtle-face himself. And if he won't say either, then one of his grandchildren can find out for me! Paula was just the right size for a spy. It didn't seem all that long ago since Meggie herself had been able to hide unnoticed under a table."
            },
            {
                "title": "Going Home",
                "text": "\u2002My library was dukedom large enough.\n\n\u2014William Shakespeare, The Tempest\n\nIt was almost midnight by the time Elinor finally saw her garden gate beside the road. The lights down by the banks of the lake stood side by side like a caravan of glow-worms, trembling as they were reflected in the black water. It was good to be home again. Even the wind that blew on Elinor's face as she got out to open the gate felt familiar. It was all familiar, the scent of the hedges and the earth and the air, so much cooler and moister than in the south. It didn't taste of salt any more either. I might even miss that saltiness, thought Elinor. The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.\n\nThe iron gate creaked quietly as she pushed it open, almost as if it were welcoming her home. But no other voice would greet her. 'What a silly notion, Elinor!' she muttered crossly as she got back into the car. 'Your books will welcome you home. That's good enough, surely.'\n\nShe had been in a strange mood even during the drive. She had taken her time on the way home, avoiding major roads, and had spent the night in a tiny place in the mountains, the name of which she had already forgotten. She had enjoyed being alone again, for that, after all, was what she was used to, yet the silence in her car had suddenly begun to trouble her, and she had gone into a caf\u00e9 in a sleepy little town which didn't even have a bookshop, just to hear other human voices. She hadn't spent much time there, staying only long enough to gulp down a cup of coffee, because she was annoyed with herself. 'What's all this in aid of, Elinor?' she had muttered when she was back in the car. 'Since when did you long for human company? High time you were home again, before you go right round the bend.'\n\nHer house looked so dark and deserted as she drove up to it that it seemed curiously strange to her. Only the scents of her garden made her feel a little better as she went up the steps to the front door. The light over the door which usually came on automatically at night wasn't working, and it took Elinor a ridiculous amount of time to get her key into the lock. As she pushed the door open and stumbled into the pitch dark hall she quietly cursed the man who usually kept an eye on the house and garden whenever she went away. She had tried phoning him three times before she set out, but she supposed he'd gone to see his daughter again. Didn't anyone realise what treasures this house contained? Of course, if they'd been made of gold... but they consisted only of paper and printer's ink.\n\nIt was very quiet, and for a moment Elinor thought she heard Mortimer's voice as it brought life into the church with the red walls. She could have listened to him for a hundred years. No, two hundred. At least. 'I must get him to read aloud to me when he arrives,' she murmured, taking the shoes off her tired feet. 'There must be some books he can read safely.'\n\nWhy had she never before noticed how quiet her house could be? It was silent as the grave, and the pleasure Elinor had expected to feel as soon as she was back within her own four walls was slow in coming.\n\n'Hello, here I am again!' she cried into the silence, as she felt along the wall for the light switch. 'Now you shall all be dusted and tidied again, my dears!'\n\nThe ceiling light came on, very bright, and as Elinor stumbled back in alarm she fell over her own handbag, which she had put down on the floor. 'Oh heavens!' she whispered, getting to her feet again. 'Oh, dear heavens! Oh no!'\n\nThe custom-made bookshelves were empty. The books that had stood on them so safely, spine beside spine, now lay in untidy heaps on the floor, crumpled, dirty, and trampled underfoot, as if heavy boots had been performing a wild dance on them. Elinor began to tremble all over. She stumbled through her desecrated treasures as if she were wading through a muddy pond, pushed them aside, picked one up and let it drop, staggered on down the long corridor that led to her library.\n\nThe corridor was no better. Great disorderly piles of books were heaped so high that Elinor could hardly make her way through the ruins. At last she reached the library door. It had not been locked. Elinor stood there for an eternity, weak at the knees, before she finally dared to open it.\n\nHer library was empty.\n\nNot a book in sight, not a single book, not on the shelves or beneath the broken glass of the display cases. There wasn't a book on the floor either. They were all gone. Instead, a red rooster dangled from the ceiling, stone dead.\n\nElinor's hand flew to her mouth. The rooster's head was hanging down, its red comb flopped over its staring eyes. Its plumage was still glossy, as if all the life in it had fled there, into the fine russet breast feathers, the darkly patterned wings and the long deep-green tail feathers that shimmered like silk.\n\nOne of the windows was open. A black arrow had been drawn in soot on the white paint of the windowsill, and pointed the way to the garden outside. Elinor staggered towards the window, numb with fear. The night was not dark enough to hide what lay on the lawn outside: a shapeless mound of ashes, pale grey in the moonlight, grey as moth wings, grey as burnt paper.\n\nThere they were. Her most valuable books. Or all that was left of them.\n\nElinor knelt down on the floorboards, on the wood she had so carefully chosen. The wind wafted in through the open window and over her, the familiar wind, and it smelled almost like the air in Capricorn's church. Elinor wanted to scream, she wanted to curse, rage, cry out in fury, but not a sound came out of her mouth. All she could do was weep."
            },
            {
                "title": "Only an Idea",
                "text": "\u2002'Don't have a mother,' he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated persons.\n\n\u2014J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan\n\nThe apartment that Fenoglio rented to tourists was only two streets away from his own house. It had two rooms plus a tiny bathroom and kitchen. Since it was on the ground floor it was rather dark, and the beds creaked when you lay down in them. All the same, Meggie slept well or, anyway, better than on Capricorn's damp straw or in the hovel with the ruined roof.\n\nMo slept only fitfully. Meggie was woken twice on that first night by tom cats fighting out in the street, and both times she saw him lying there with his eyes open, arms folded behind his head, looking at the dark window.\n\nHe got up very early in the morning and went to buy food for breakfast in the little shop at the end of the street. The bread rolls were fresh and warm, and Meggie really did almost feel as if they were on holiday when Mo and she drove to the nearest town of any size to buy the basic tools of his trade: brushes, knives, fabric, stout cardboard \u2013 and truly gigantic ice-creams which they ate together in a caf\u00e9 by the sea. Meggie still had the taste of the ice-cream in her mouth as they knocked on the door of Fenoglio's house. The old man and Mo drank another coffee in his green kitchen before he took Mo and Meggie up to the attic where he kept his books.\n\n'I don't believe it!' said Mo, outraged, standing in front of Fenoglio's dusty bookshelves. 'They ought all to be removed from you on the spot! When did you last come up here? I could scrape the dust off their pages with a trowel.'\n\n'I had to put them up here, said Fenoglio defensively, signs of a guilty conscience lurking among his wrinkles. 'I was getting so short of space downstairs with all those shelves, and anyway my grandchildren were always pulling them about.'\n\n'They could hardly have done as much damage as the damp and dirt up here,' said Mo.\n\nFenoglio went downstairs again looking crestfallen. 'You poor child. Is your father always so strict?' he asked Meggie as they climbed down the steep staircase.\n\n'Only about books,' she said.\n\nFenoglio disappeared into his study before she could ask him any questions, and his grandchildren were at school or playgroup, so she fetched the books that Elinor had given her and sat down with them on the flight of steps leading into Fenoglio's tiny garden. Wild roses grew so thickly there that you could hardly take a step without feeling their shoots twine round your legs, and from the top step you could see the sea, far away yet looking very close.\n\nMeggie opened the book of poems. She had to narrow her eyes because the sun was shining in her face so brightly, and before beginning to read she looked over her shoulder to make quite sure Mo hadn't followed her down. She didn't want him to catch her at what she was planning to do. She was ashamed of it, but the temptation was just too great.\n\nWhen she was perfectly sure no one was coming she took a deep breath, cleared her throat \u2013 and began. She shaped every word with her lips the way she had seen Mo do it, almost tenderly, as if every letter were a musical note and any words spoken without love were a discord in the melody. But she soon realised that if she paid too much attention to every separate word the sentence didn't sound right any more, and the pictures behind it were lost if she concentrated on the sound alone and not the sense. It was difficult. So difficult. And the sun was making her drowsy, until at last she closed the book and held her face up to its warm rays. It was silly of her to try anyway. Very silly...\n\nLater that afternoon Pippo, Paula and Rico came back and Meggie walked round the village with them. They bought things in the shop where Mo had gone in the morning, sat on a wall on the outskirts of the village, watched ants carrying pine needles and flower seeds over the rough stones, and counted the ships sailing by on the distant sea.\n\nA second day passed like this. Now and then Meggie wondered where Dustfinger could be, and whether Farid was still with him, how Elinor was, and if she was beginning to wonder where they were.\n\nThere was no answer to any of these questions, and Meggie didn't find out what Fenoglio was doing behind his study door either. 'Chewing his pencil,' Paula told her when she had managed to hide under her grandfather's desk. 'Just chewing the end of his pencil and walking up and down.'\n\n'Mo, when are we going to Elinor's house?' Meggie asked on their second night, when she sensed that, yet again, he couldn't sleep. She perched on the edge of his bed. The bed creaked just like hers.\n\n'Soon,' he said. 'Go to sleep again now, OK?'\n\n'Do you miss her \u2013 my mother, I mean?' Meggie herself didn't know why she asked that question out of the blue. All of a sudden it was there, on the tip of her tongue, and had to be spoken aloud.\n\nIt was a long time before Mo answered.\n\n'Sometimes,' he said at last. 'In the morning, at midday, in the evening, at night. Almost all the time.'\n\nMeggie felt jealousy digging its little claws into her heart. She knew that feeling; she felt it every time Mo had a new girlfriend. But how could she be jealous of her own mother? 'Tell me about her,' she said quietly. 'I don't mean the made-up stories you used to tell.'\n\nShe used to search her books for a suitable mother, but there were hardly any mothers in her favourite stories. Tom Sawyer? No mother. Huck Finn? Ditto. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys? Not a mother in sight. Jim Button was motherless too \u2013 and all you found in fairy tales were wicked stepmothers, heartless, jealous stepmothers... the list could go on for ever. That had often comforted Meggie in the past. It didn't seem particularly unusual not to have a mother, or at least not in the books she liked best.\n\n'What do you want me to tell you?' Mo looked at the window. The tom cats were fighting outside again. Their yowls sounded like babies crying. 'You look more like her than me, I'm glad to say. She laughs like you, and she chews a strand of hair while she's reading exactly the way you do. She's shortsighted, but too vain to wear glasses\u2014'\n\n'I can understand that.' Meggie sat down beside him. His arm hardly hurt him now. The bite from Basta's dog had almost healed up, but there would always be a scar, pale as the scar Basta's knife had left nine years ago.\n\n'What do you mean? I like glasses,' said Mo.\n\n'I don't. Go on.'\n\n'She loves stones, flat, smooth stones that fit comfortably into the hand. She always has one or two of them in her pocket, and she weights down books with them, specially paperbacks. She doesn't like the covers to stick up in the air, but you were always taking the stones away and rolling them over the wooden floor.'\n\n'And then she was cross.'\n\n'Oh, I don't know. She tickled your fat little neck until you let go of the stones.' Mo turned round to look at her. 'Do you really not miss her, Meggie?'\n\n'I don't know. Well, only if I'm feeling angry with you.'\n\n'About a dozen times a day, then?'\n\n'Don't be so silly!' Meggie dug her elbow into his ribs.\n\nThey both listened for any sounds in the night. The window was open just a crack, and it was quiet outside. The tom cats had fallen silent, probably licking their wounds For a moment Meggie thought she could hear the sea breaking in the distance, but perhaps it was only the traffic on the nearby motorway.\n\n'Where do you think Dustfinger has gone?' The darkness enveloped them like a soft cloth. I'll miss this warmth, she thought, I really will.\n\n'I don't know,' said Mo. His voice sounded absent. 'A long way off, I hope, but I'm not sure.'\n\nNor was Meggie. 'Do you think that boy's still with him?' Farid. She liked his name.\n\n'I expect so. He was running after Dustfinger like a dog.'\n\n'He likes Dustfinger. Do you think Dustfinger likes him?'\n\nMo shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't know who or what Dustfinger likes.'\n\nMeggie rested her head against his chest, the way she always used to at home when he was telling her a story. 'He still wants the book, doesn't he?' she whispered. 'Basta will make mincemeat of him if he catches him. He must have got a new knife by now.'\n\nSomeone was coming along the narrow alley. A door opened and was closed again, a dog barked.\n\n'If it wasn't for you,' said Mo, 'I'd go back too.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Talkative Pippo",
                "text": "\u2002'We were told there was a village nearby that might enjoy our skills.'\n\n\u2002'You were misinformed,' Buttercup told him. 'There is no one, not for many miles.'\n\n\u2002'Then there will be no one to hear you scream,' the Sicilian said, and he jumped with frightening agility toward her face.\n\nWilliam Goldman, The Princess Bride\n\nNext morning, at around ten o'clock, Elinor rang Fenoglio's house. Meggie was sitting upstairs with Mo, watching him remove a book from its mildewed binding as carefully as if he were releasing an injured animal from a trap.\n\n'Mortimer!' Fenoglio called up the stairs. 'Come down at once, will you? There's some hysterical female on the phone, shouting in my ear. I can't make head nor tail of it. Says she's a friend of yours.'\n\nMo put the book to one side, minus its cover, and went downstairs. Fenoglio handed him the receiver with a gloomy expression on his face. Elinor's voice was pouring rage and despair into the peaceful study. Mo himself had some difficulty in making sense of what she was saying.\n\n'But how did he know... oh, of course...' Meggie heard him saying. 'Burnt? All of them?' He passed a hand over his face and glanced in Meggie's direction, but she had a feeling that he was looking straight through her. 'All right,' he said. 'Yes, of course, though I'm afraid they won't believe a word of it. And the police down here aren't responsible for what's happened to your books... yes, of course. Naturally... I'll pick you up. Yes.'\n\nThen he rang off.\n\nFenoglio could not conceal his curiosity. He scented a new story in the offing. 'What was all that about?' he asked impatiently as Mo just stood there staring at the telephone. Rico was clinging to Fenoglio's back like a little monkey. It was Saturday, but the other two children hadn't turned up yet. 'What's the matter, Mortimer? Aren't you talking to us any more? Look at your father, Meggie! Standing there like a stuffed dummy!'\n\n'That was Elinor,' said Mo. 'Meggie's mother's aunt. I told you about her. Capricorn's men broke into her house. They swept the books off the shelves all over the house and trampled on them, and the books in Elinor's library...' He hesitated for a moment before going on. 'Her most valuable books \u2013 they took them out into the garden and burned them. All she found in her library was a dead rooster.'\n\nFenoglio let his grandson slide off his back. 'Rico, go and look for the kittens,' he said. 'This is not for your ears.' Rico protested, but his grandfather pushed him out of the room and closed the door after him. 'What makes you so sure Capricorn is behind this?' he asked, turning back to Mo.\n\n'Who else would do such a thing? Anyway, as far as I remember the red rooster is his emblem. Forgotten your own story, have you?'\n\nFenoglio was looking downcast. 'No, no, I remember that,' he murmured.\n\n'What about Elinor?' Meggie's heart beat anxiously as she waited for Mo's answer.\n\n'Luckily, she wasn't back yet when it happened. She took her time going home. Thank heavens. But you can imagine how she feels. Her finest books \u2013 my God!'\n\nFenoglio was picking up some toy soldiers from his rug with trembling fingers. 'Yes, Capricorn likes fire,' he said huskily. 'If it was really his doing, your friend can think herself fortunate he didn't burn her too.'\n\n'I'll tell her.' Mo picked up a matchbox lying on Fenoglio's writing-desk, opened it and slowly closed it again.\n\n'What about my books?' Meggie hardly dared to ask. 'My book-box \u2013 I hid it under the bed.'\n\nMo put the matchbox back on the desk. 'That's the one piece of good news,' he said. 'No one touched your book-box. It's still under the bed. Elinor looked.'\n\nMeggie took a deep breath. Was it Basta who had set fire to the books? No, Basta was afraid of fire; she remembered only too well how Dustfinger had mocked him for it. But in the last resort it made no difference which of the Black Jackets it had been. Elinor's treasures were gone, and not even Mo could bring them back.\n\n'Elinor is flying back down here. I'm to pick her up at the airport,' said Mo. 'She's taken it into her head to set the police on Capricorn. I told her I didn't think she'd have much luck. Even if she had evidence that it was his men who broke into her house, how can she prove he gave the order? But you know Elinor.'\n\nMeggie nodded gloomily. Oh yes, she knew Elinor \u2013 and she understood her rage only too well.\n\nBut Fenoglio laughed. 'The police! You don't get anywhere by setting the police on Capricorn!' he said. 'He makes his own rules, his own laws\u2014'\n\n'Oh, be quiet! This isn't a book you're writing!' Mo interrupted him. 'Very likely it's amusing to invent a character like Capricorn, but believe you me, it's not in the least bit funny to cross his path. I'm off to the airport. I'll leave Meggie here. Look after her.'\n\nAnd he was out of the door before Meggie could protest. She ran after him, but Paula and Pippo met her coming down the street. They caught hold of her, trying to make her play with them. They wanted her to be a cannibal, a witch, a six-armed monster \u2013 the characters from their grandfather's stories with which they populated their games. By the time Meggie had finally managed to shake off their little hands, Mo had long since gone. The place where he had parked the hire-car was empty, and Meggie stood in the square, alone with the war memorial and a few old men gazing out to sea with their hands in their trouser pockets.\n\nRestlessly, she wandered over to the steps in front of the memorial and sat down. She didn't feel like chasing Fenoglio's grandchildren round his house or playing hide-and-seek with them. She just wanted to sit there and wait for Mo's return. The hot wind that had blown through the village overnight had left fine sand on all the windowsills. The air was cooler than it had been for the last few days. The sky above the sea was still clear, but grey clouds were forming above the hills, and every time the sun disappeared behind them a shadow fell over the village rooftops, making Meggie shiver.\n\nA cat stalked towards her, stiff-legged, tail erect. It was a skinny little creature with ticks in its grey fur, and ribs showing through its thin coat like stripes. Meggie enticed it over, speaking to it gently, until it put its head under her arm and purred, asking to be petted. It didn't look as if it belonged to anyone: no collar, not an ounce of fat on it, nothing to suggest it had a caring owner. Meggie scratched its ears and chin and stroked its back as she looked down the road that went round a sharp bend as it left the village and disappeared from sight beyond the houses.\n\nHow far was it to the nearest airport? Meggie propped her chin on her hands. The clouds above her were massing more and more ominously. They loomed overhead, close-packed and grey with rain.\n\nThe cat rubbed against her knee, and as Meggie's fingers stroked its dirty fur an awful thought suddenly occurred to her. Suppose Elinor's house wasn't all Dustfinger had told Capricorn about? Suppose he'd told him where she and Mo had been living too? Would they find a heap of ashes waiting for them at the farmhouse? No, she wouldn't think about that. He doesn't know, she whispered. He has no idea! Dustfinger didn't tell him. She kept whispering it like a magic charm.\n\nAfter a while she felt a raindrop on her hand, then another. She looked up at the sky. There wasn't so much as a speck of blue to be seen. How quickly the nearby sea could make the weather change! All right, I'll just wait in the apartment, she thought. We might even have some milk there for the cat. The poor thing weighed no more than a small damp towel. Meggie was afraid of breaking something when she picked it up.\n\nIt was pitch dark in the apartment. Mo had closed the shutters that morning so that the sun wouldn't make it too hot. Meggie was shivering and wet from the fine drizzle when she entered the cool bedroom. She put the cat down on her unmade bed, slipped on Mo's sweater, which was much too big for her, and went into the kitchen. The milk carton was almost empty, but if she diluted what was left with a little warm water there was just enough for a saucerful.\n\nThe cat jumped down so quickly when Meggie put the milk on the floor beside the bed that it almost fell over its own paws. Rain was falling harder and harder outside. Meggie listened to it drumming on the paving stones. She went over to the window and opened the shutters. The narrow strip of sky visible between the rooftops was as dark as if the sun were about to set. Meggie went over to Mo's bed and sat down on it. The cat was still licking the saucer, its little tongue greedily rasping over the flower-patterned china, hoping for a last delicious drop. Meggie heard footsteps out in the street, and then a knock at the door. Who was that? Mo couldn't possibly be back yet. Or had he forgotten something? The cat had disappeared, probably to hide under the bed. 'Who's there?' called Meggie.\n\n'Meggie!' a child's voice called back. Of course, Paula or Pippo. Yes, it must be Pippo. They probably wanted to go looking for ants with her again, even though it was raining. A grey paw emerged from under the bed and patted her shoelace. Meggie went out into the tiny hall. 'I don't have time to play just now!' she called through the closed door.\n\n'Please, Meggie!' begged Pippo's voice.\n\nSighing, Meggie opened the door \u2013 and found herself looking straight into Basta's face.\n\n'Well, well, who do we have here?' he asked in a menacingly soft voice, his fingers around Pippo's thin little neck. 'What do you say to that, Flatnose? She doesn't have time to play.' Basta pushed Meggie roughly aside and came through the door with Pippo, followed, of course, by Flatnose, whose broad shoulders would hardly fit through the doorway.\n\n'Let go of him!' Meggie snapped at Basta, although her voice shook. 'You're hurting him.'\n\n'Am I indeed?' Basta looked down at Pippo's pale face. 'Not very nice of me, is it, especially since he showed us where you were hiding?' With these last words he squeezed Pippo's neck even more firmly.\n\n'Do you know how long we lay in that filthy hovel?' he snarled at Meggie.\n\nShe took a step backwards.\n\n'A very long time!' Basta emphasised the word, putting his foxy face so close to Meggie's she could see herself reflected in his eyes. 'Isn't that right, Flatnose?'\n\n'Those damn rats almost nibbled my toes off,' growled the giant. 'Wouldn't I just love to twist this little witch's nose until it's pointing the wrong way round!'\n\n'Later, maybe.' Basta pushed Meggie into the dark bedroom. 'Where's your father?' he asked. 'This little lad,' he said, letting go of Pippo's throat and prodding him in the back so roughly that he stumbled against Meggie, 'told us he's gone out. Gone out where?'\n\n'Shopping.' Meggie could hardly breathe, she was so frightened. 'How did you find us?' she whispered, but instantly knew the answer. Dustfinger. Of course. Who else? But why had he betrayed them this time?\n\n'Dustfinger,' replied Basta, as if he had read her thoughts. 'It's just too easy to find that fellow. There aren't so many crazy jugglers in this world who go around breathing fire and who have a tame marten, not to mention one with horns. So we only had to ask around a bit, and once we were on Dustfinger's trail we were also on your father's, of course. We arrived just in time to see you drive away from the hotel car park, and we'd certainly have paid you a visit before now if this fool,' he said, digging his elbow so hard into Flatnose's stomach he let out a grunt of pain, 'hadn't lost sight of you on our way here. We searched almost a dozen villages, wore our voices out asking questions, ran ourselves off our feet, until we finally got here, and one of those old fellows who spend all day staring out to sea remembered Dustfinger's scarred face. Where is he? Is he \u2013 er \u2013 out shopping too?' asked Basta, with a scornful twist of his mouth.\n\nMeggie shook her head. 'He went away,' she replied tonelessly. 'Ages ago.' So Dustfinger hadn't given them away after all. Not this time. And he'd slipped through Basta's fingers. Meggie could almost have smiled.\n\n'You burned Elinor's books!' she said, holding Pippo close. He was still speechless with terror. 'You'll be sorry you did that.'\n\n'Oh, will we?' Basta smiled unpleasantly. 'I wonder why? As far as I know Cockerell had a lot of fun with those books. But that's enough talk. We don't have for ever. That boy,' he said, pointing at Pippo, who retreated as if Basta's forefinger were a knife, 'has told us some strange stories about a grandfather who writes books, and a book in which your father took a particular interest.'\n\nMeggie swallowed. Stupid Pippo. Stupid, talkative little Pippo.\n\n'Lost your tongue?' asked Basta. 'Shall I squeeze the boy's skinny neck again?'\n\nPippo began crying and buried his face in Mo's sweater. Meggie stroked his curly head comfortingly.\n\n'His grandfather doesn't have the book you're thinking of any more,' she told Basta. 'You and your friends stole it long ago!' Her voice sounded hoarse with hatred, and her own thoughts sickened her. She wanted to kick Basta, hit him, stab him in the stomach with his own knife, the brand-new knife he wore stuck in his belt.\n\n'Stole it. Just fancy!' Basta grinned at Flatnose. 'I think we'd better make sure of that for ourselves, don't you?'\n\nFlatnose nodded distractedly, looking around him. 'Hey, hear that?'\n\nThere was a scratching sound under the bed. Flatnose knelt down, pushed the hanging edge of the sheet aside, and poked around under the bed with the barrel of his gun. Spitting, the grey cat shot out of hiding, and when Flatnose tried to grab it the cat raked his ugly face with its claws. He leaped to his feet with a yelp of pain. 'I'll wring its neck!' he bellowed. 'I'll break that cat's neck!'\n\nMeggie was about to stand in his way as he lunged for the cat, but Basta got in first. 'You'll do no such thing!' he spat at Flatnose, as the grey cat disappeared under the wardrobe. 'Killing cats is unlucky. How often do I have to tell you?'\n\n'Nonsense! Superstitious garbage! I've wrung several of the brutes' necks already!' said Flatnose angrily, pressing one hand to his bleeding cheek. 'And has my luck been worse than yours? You could send a man crazy, the way you carry on: don't walk in that shadow, it's unlucky; oh, watch out, you put your left boot on first, that's unlucky; oh my, someone yawned \u2013 mercy me, that means I'll fall down dead tomorrow!'\n\n'Shut up!' snapped Basta. 'If anyone around here is talking nonsense it's you. Get those children to the door!'\n\nPippo clung to Meggie as Flatnose forced them out into the corridor. 'Why are you bawling like that?' he growled at the little boy. 'We're off to see your grandfather now.'\n\nPippo never let go of Meggie's hand once as they stumbled after Flatnose. He was clutching it so hard that his stubby fingernails dug into her skin. Oh, she thought, why didn't Mo listen to me? We could have gone home. It was still raining heavily. Raindrops ran over Meggie's face and down her neck. The streets were empty; there was no one around to help them. Basta was walking just behind her, and she heard him quietly cursing the rain. When they reached Fenoglio's house Meggie's feet were wet through, and Pippo's curls were plastered to his head. Perhaps he won't be at home, Meggie hoped. She was just thinking about what Basta would do then, when the red door opened and Fenoglio stood facing them.\n\n'What on earth do you children think you're doing, running around in weather like this?' he said angrily. 'I was just going out to look for you. Come on in, and hurry up.'\n\n'May we come in too?'\n\nBasta and Flatnose had been standing either side of the door with their backs to the wall, so that Fenoglio wouldn't see them immediately, but now Basta moved up behind Meggie and put his hands on her shoulders. Fenoglio stared at him in surprise as Flatnose stepped forward and planted a foot in the open doorway. Pippo scurried past him, nimble as a weasel, and disappeared into the house.\n\n'Who are these people?' Fenoglio looked at Meggie as crossly as if she had brought the two strangers there of her own free will. 'Friends of your father's?'\n\nMeggie mopped the rain off her face and looked back at him with equal reproach. 'You ought to know them better than I do!' she said. Basta's fingers were digging into her shoulders.\n\n'Know them?' Fenoglio looked at her blankly. Then he studied Basta. His face froze. 'Great heavens above!' he murmured. 'I don't believe it!'\n\nPaula peered out from behind his back. 'Pippo's crying!' she announced. 'He's hidden in the cupboard.'\n\n'Well, you go back to him,' said Fenoglio, never taking his eyes off Basta. 'I'll be with you in a minute.'\n\n'How much longer are we going to stand out here, Basta?' growled Flatnose. 'Until we shrink in this rain?'\n\n'Basta!' repeated Fenoglio without stepping aside.\n\n'Yes, that's my name, old man.' Basta's eyes always narrowed when he smiled. 'We're here because you have something that interests us a great deal \u2013 a book.'\n\nOf course. Meggie almost burst out laughing. He didn't know! Basta didn't know who Fenoglio was. How could he? How could he know that this old man had invented him, made him up out of paper and ink, made up his face, his knife, his evil nature?\n\n'That's enough talk!' growled Flatnose. 'The rain's running into my ears.' He brushed Fenoglio aside like a troublesome fly as he pushed past him into the house. Basta followed, with Meggie. Pippo was still sobbing inside the kitchen cupboard. Paula was standing in front of it, talking to him soothingly through the closed door. When Fenoglio came into the kitchen with the strangers she spun round and looked at Flatnose's face nervously. It was as dark and dismal as ever.\n\nSitting down at the table, Fenoglio beckoned Paula over without a word.\n\n'Well, where is it?' Basta was looking round, scanning the room, but Fenoglio was too deeply absorbed in the sight of his two creations to reply. He couldn't take his eyes off Basta in particular, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.\n\n'I told you: there's no copy of it here!' Meggie replied for him.\n\nBasta acted as if he hadn't heard her, and gestured impatiently to Flatnose. 'Look for it!' he ordered. Grumbling, Flatnose obeyed. Meggie heard him trampling up the narrow wooden staircase that led to the attic.\n\n'Right, little witch, how did you and your father find the old man?' Basta prodded her in the back. 'How did you know he still has a copy?'\n\nMeggie cast Fenoglio a warning glance, but unfortunately he was as ready to talk as Pippo, who had so willingly told Basta all about her and his grandfather.\n\n'How did they find me? I wrote the book!' announced the old man proudly. Perhaps he expected that Basta would instantly fall on his knees before him, but Basta only gave a pitying smile.\n\n'Oh yes, of course you did!' he said, taking the knife from his belt.\n\n'He really did write it!' Meggie couldn't resist saying so. She wanted to see the fear that had turned Dustfinger pale when he heard about Fenoglio appear on Basta's face too, but Basta just smiled again and began carving notches in Fenoglio's kitchen table.\n\n'Who thought up that story?' he asked. 'Your father? You think I look stupid? Everyone knows that stories in books are as old as the hills and were written by people dead and buried long ago.' He jabbed the blade of the knife into the wood, pulled it out and jabbed it in again. Flatnose was trampling about overhead.\n\n'Dead and buried. How interesting.' Fenoglio sat Paula on his lap. 'Did you hear that, Paula? This young man believes all books were written in the distant past by dead people who picked up the stories from heaven knows where. Plucked straight from the air, maybe?' Paula couldn't help giggling. It had gone very quiet in the cupboard. Pippo was probably listening at the door, holding his breath.\n\n'What's so funny about that?' Basta reared up like a snake when someone has trodden on its tail. Fenoglio ignored him. Smiling, he looked down at his hands \u2013 as if remembering the day when they had begun to write Basta's story. Then he looked straight at him.\n\n'You always wear long sleeves, don't you?' he said. 'Shall I tell you why?'\n\nBasta narrowed his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. 'Damn it all, why is it taking that idiot so long to find a book?'\n\nFenoglio looked at him, his arms folded. 'Easy: he can't read!' he said quietly. 'You can't read either \u2013 unless you've learnt by now? None of Capricorn's men can read, any more than Capricorn himself can.'\n\nBasta drove the knife so far into the surface of the table that he had difficulty pulling it out again. 'Of course he can read. What are you going on about?' He leaned threateningly over the table. 'I don't like the way you talk, old man. Why don't I carve a few more wrinkles in your face?'\n\nFenoglio smiled. Perhaps he thought Basta couldn't hurt him because he, Fenoglio, had made him up. Meggie wasn't so sure of that. 'You wear long sleeves,' Fenoglio continued very slowly, as if giving Basta time to take in every single word, 'because your master likes playing with fire. You burned both arms right up to the shoulders when you obeyed his orders and set fire to the house of a man who had dared to refuse his daughter to Capricorn. Ever since then, someone else has laid the fire, and you confine yourself to playing games with knives.'\n\nBasta jumped up so suddenly that Paula slid off Fenoglio's lap and hid under the table. 'Like to make yourself out clever, do you?' he growled, holding his knife under Fenoglio's chin. 'When all you've done is read the wretched book. Well?'\n\nFenoglio looked him in the eye. The knife under his chin didn't seem to scare him half as much as it did Meggie. 'Oh, I know all about you, Basta,' he said. 'I know you'd give your life for Capricorn any day, and you're always hungry for his praise. I know you were younger than Meggie when his men picked you up, and ever since you've loved him like a father. But shall I tell you something? Capricorn thinks you're stupid, and despises you for it. He despises you all, his devoted black-clad sons, although it's his own doing that you're still so ignorant. And he wouldn't hesitate to set the police on to any one of you if it was to his advantage. Are you quite clear about that?'\n\n'Hold your filthy tongue, old man!' Basta's knife came alarmingly close to Fenoglio's face and, for a moment, Meggie thought he would slit his nose. 'You don't know anything about Capricorn. Only what you read in the stupid book. I think I ought to cut your throat \u2013 now!'\n\n'Wait!'\n\nBasta whirled round to look at Meggie. 'And you keep out of this! I'll deal with you later, you little toad,' he said.\n\nFenoglio's hands were pressed to his own throat. He was staring blankly at Basta, having at last realised he was by no means safe from the man's knife.\n\n'But you can't kill him. Really you can't!' cried Meggie. 'If you do\u2014'\n\nBasta's thumb stroked the blade of his knife. 'If I do, then what?'\n\nDesperately, Meggie searched for the right words... what should she say? Oh, what? 'Because... because Capricorn would die too,' she managed. 'Yes. That's it. You'd all die, you and Flatnose and Capricorn. If you kill this old man you'll all die, because he made you up.'\n\nBasta's lips twisted in a scornful smile, but he lowered his knife and, for a moment, Meggie even thought she saw a hint of fear in his eyes.\n\nFenoglio cast her a relieved glance.\n\nBasta stepped back, examined the blade of his knife closely as if he had discovered a mark on it, and then rubbed it clean on the hem of his black jacket. 'I don't believe a word of it!' he said. 'But this is such a weird story, I think Capricorn might like to hear it too. So,' he added, giving the shiny blade a last polish before snapping the knife shut and putting it back in his belt, 'we won't take only the book and the girl, we'll take you too, old man.'\n\nMeggie heard Fenoglio draw in a sharp breath. She herself was so scared she wasn't sure if her heart was beating at all. Take them away. Basta was going to take them away. No, she thought, oh please, no!\n\n'Take us away where?' asked Fenoglio.\n\n'Ask the girl here!' Basta pointed mockingly at Meggie. 'She and her father have had the honour of being our guests already. Bed and board thrown in.'\n\n'But this is nonsense!' cried Fenoglio. 'I thought it was the book you wanted.'\n\n'Then you thought wrong. We didn't even know there was supposed to be another copy. No, we were just sent to bring Silvertongue back. Capricorn doesn't like his guests to leave without saying goodbye, and Silvertongue's a very special guest, isn't that right, sweetheart?' Basta winked at Meggie. 'But he isn't here, and I have better things to do than hang around waiting for him. So I'll take his daughter \u2013 and he'll come chasing after her of his own accord.' Basta went up to Meggie and pushed her hair back behind her ears. 'She makes pretty bait, wouldn't you say?' he asked. 'Oh yes, old man, take it from me: if we have this little creature we'll have her father too. He'll come like a dancing bear led by a ring in his nose.'\n\nMeggie struck his hand aside, trembling with fury.\n\n'Don't you do that again!' Basta whispered in her ear.\n\nMeggie was glad that Flatnose came trudging downstairs at this moment. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, breathless and with several books under his arm. 'Here!' he said, dumping them on the table. 'They all begin with this single upright stroke followed by the three up-and-down lines. Just the way you drew it.' He put a stained piece of paper down beside the books. The letters I and N were clumsily traced on it, and looked as if the hand that set them down had found the task very difficult.\n\nBasta spread the books out on the table and pushed them apart from each other with his knife. 'These are no good,' he said, pushing two off the table so that they landed on the floor, with crumpled pages. 'Nor are these.' Two more landed on the floor, and finally Basta swept the rest off the table too. 'Are you quite sure there isn't another one beginning like that?' he asked Flatnose angrily.\n\n'Yes, I'm sure!'\n\n'You'd better not be wrong. Because I do assure you, you'll be the one to pay for it, not me!'\n\nFlatnose cast a worried look over the books at his feet.\n\n'Oh, and another little change of plan: we're taking him with us as well.' Basta pointed his knife at Fenoglio. 'So he can tell the boss his amazing stories. Very entertaining they are too, believe you me. And just in case he's hidden a book somewhere \u2013 well, we'll have plenty of time to ask him about that once we get back. You keep your eye on the old man and I'll watch the girl.'\n\nFlatnose nodded, and hauled Fenoglio up from his chair. But Basta reached for Meggie's arm. Back to Capricorn \u2013 she had to bite her lip to stop herself bursting into tears as Basta dragged her to Fenoglio's kitchen door. No. Basta wouldn't see her weep, she wasn't going to give him that satisfaction. At least they haven't got Mo, she thought. And suddenly there was only one thought in her head: suppose he crossed their path before they left the village? Suppose he came to meet them, on his way back with Elinor?\n\nAll at once she couldn't wait to get away, but Flatnose had paused in the doorway. 'What about the little girl and that cry-baby in the cupboard?' he asked.\n\nPippo's sobs died away, and Fenoglio's face turned even whiter than Basta's shirt.\n\n'Right, old man, what do you think I'm going to do with them?' asked Basta scornfully. 'You say you know all about me.'\n\nFenoglio couldn't utter a word. Every cruel deed with which he had ever credited Basta was probably going through his head. Basta relished the fear on his face for a few delicious minutes, then he turned to Flatnose. 'The other children stay behind,' he said. 'Our little madam here will do.'\n\nWith difficulty, Fenoglio recovered his powers of speech. 'Paula, go home!' he said as Flatnose forced him down the hall. 'Do you hear? Go home at once. Tell your mother I've gone away for a few days, all right?'\n\n'We'll just look in at that apartment again,' Basta said as they were standing in the street outside. 'I quite forgot to leave a message for your father. I mean, he ought to know where you are, don't you think?'\n\nWhat kind of message will it be, thought Meggie, when you can scarcely put two letters together? But of course she didn't say so out loud. She was terrified the whole time that Mo might come to meet them. But when they reached the front door of the apartment there was only an old lady walking down the street.\n\n'One word out of you and I'll go back and wring both children's necks!' Basta whispered to Fenoglio as the old lady slowed down.\n\n'Hello, Rosalia,' said Fenoglio huskily. 'Guess what \u2013 I have new tenants for my apartment. How about that, then?'\n\nThe suspicion vanished from Rosalia's face, and a moment later she had disappeared round a corner of the street. Meggie opened the door, and for the second time let Basta and Flatnose into the apartment where she and Mo had felt so safe.\n\nIn the hall she remembered the grey cat, and looked around anxiously, but it was nowhere to be seen. 'The cat has to go out,' she said when they were in the bedroom. 'Or it'll starve to death. That's unlucky.'\n\nBasta opened the window. 'Right, it can get out now,' he said.\n\nFlatnose snorted scornfully, but this time he made no comment on Basta's superstitious nature.\n\n'Can I take some clothes?' asked Meggie.\n\nFlatnose just grunted, and Fenoglio looked unhappily down at himself. 'I could do with a change of clothes too,' he said, but no one took any notice. Basta was busy with his message. Carefully, with the tip of his tongue between his teeth, he was gouging his name in the wood of the wardrobe with his knife. BASTA. Mo would understand that only too well.\n\nMeggie hastily stuffed a few things in her rucksack. She kept Mo's sweater on. She was about to put Elinor's two books in with the clothes but Basta knocked them out of her hand.\n\n'Those stay here,' he said.\n\nMo did not return in time to meet them as they walked to Basta's car. All that long, endless way, he didn't appear."
            },
            {
                "title": "In the Hills",
                "text": "\u2002'Let him alone,' said Merlin. 'Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come and easy-go.'\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone\n\nDustfinger looked across to Capricorn's village. It seemed close enough to touch. Some of the windows reflected the sky, and one of the Black Jackets was repairing a couple of broken tiles on a roof. Dustfinger saw him wipe the sweat from his brow. The fools never took their jackets off even in this heat \u2013 as if they were afraid of falling apart without that black uniform. Not that crows take off their feathers in the sun either, and these men were just a flock of crows: robbers, carrion-eaters who liked to plunge their sharp beaks into dead flesh.\n\nThe boy had been uneasy when he saw how close Dustfinger's chosen hiding-place was to the village, but Dustfinger had explained why there couldn't be anywhere safer to lie low among the surrounding hills. The charred walls were hardly visible, camouflaged as they were by the gorse and wild thyme that had taken root among the soot-blackened stones. Capricorn's men had set fire to the house soon after taking over the deserted village. The old woman who had lived there had refused to leave, but Capricorn wouldn't tolerate prying eyes so close to his new hideout and gave his followers a free hand. His crows, his black vultures, had set fire to the home-made chicken run and the one-roomed cottage. They had trampled over the carefully tended beds in the garden, and shot the donkey that was almost as old as its mistress. They came under cover of darkness as usual, and the moon, so one of Capricorn's maidservants had told Dustfinger, shone particularly brightly that night. The old woman had tottered out of the house, weeping and screaming. Then she'd cursed them. She cursed them all, but her eyes were turned on only one of them. Basta, who was standing a little way from the others because he feared the fire, his shirt very white in the moonlight. Perhaps she had hoped that shirt might conceal something like innocence or a kind heart. On Basta's orders, Flatnose had put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. The others had laughed \u2013 until, unexpectedly, she fell down dead and lay there lifeless among her trampled garden beds. Ever since that day, Basta had feared this place more than anywhere else in the hills. No, there could be nowhere better to keep watch on Capricorn's village.\n\nDustfinger spent most of the time perched in one of the oaks that had once given the old woman a shady place to sit outside her cottage. Its branches hid him from the curious eyes of anyone who might stray up the hillside. He perched there motionless for hour upon hour, watching the car park and the houses through his binoculars. He had told Farid to stay further away, in the hollow behind the house. The boy had reluctantly obeyed. He was sticking close to Dustfinger, close as a burr, and he didn't like the gutted cottage. 'Her ghost is still here, for sure,' he kept saying. 'That old woman's ghost. Suppose she was a witch?' But Dustfinger just laughed at him. There were no ghosts in this world, or if there were they never showed themselves. The hollow was so well sheltered that he had even risked lighting a fire the previous night. The boy had snared a rabbit; he was good at setting traps and more ruthless than Dustfinger. When Dustfinger caught a rabbit he didn't take it out of the trap until he was quite sure the poor thing had stopped wriggling. Farid had no such scruples. Perhaps he had gone hungry too often.\n\nAbove all he loved to watch with wonder and admiration whenever Dustfinger took a few little sticks and lit a fire. The boy had already burnt his fingers playing games with matches. The flames had bitten his nose and his lips, yet Dustfinger kept finding him making torches of cotton wool and thin twigs. Once he set light to the dry grass, and Dustfinger grabbed him and shook him like a disobedient dog until tears came into his eyes. 'Listen hard, because I'm not telling you again! Fire is a dangerous creature!' he had shouted at Farid. 'Fire is not your friend. It will kill you if you don't respect it. And its smoke will give you away to your enemies!'\n\n'But it's your friend!' the boy had stammered defiantly.\n\n'Nonsense! I'm not careless, that's all. I take note of the wind! You let it play with the fire. I've told you a hundred times: never light a fire when it's windy. Now go and look for Gwin.'\n\n'It is your friend, though!' the boy had muttered before running off. 'Or anyway, it obeys you better than the marten does.'\n\nHe was right there, though that didn't mean much, for a marten obeys only itself, and even fire didn't obey Dustfinger in this world as well as in his own, where the flames turned to flower shapes whenever he told them to. They had forked up in the air for him, like trees branching in the night, and rained down sparks. They had roared and whispered with their crackling voices, they had danced when he said the word. The flames here were both tame and mutinous, strange, silent beasts which sometimes bit the hand that fed them. Only occasionally, on cold nights when there was nothing but the flames to stave off his loneliness, did he think he heard them calling to him, but they whispered words he didn't understand.\n\nHowever, the boy was probably right. Yes, fire was his friend, but it was also the reason why Capricorn had summoned him back in that other life. 'Show me how to play with fire!' he had said when his men dragged Dustfinger before him, and Dustfinger had obeyed. He still regretted teaching him so much, for Capricorn loved to give fire free rein, catching it again only when it had eaten its fill of crops and stables, houses and anything that couldn't run fast enough.\n\n'Is he still away?' Farid was leaning against the rough bark of the tree. The boy was as quiet as a snake. Dustfinger always jumped when he appeared so suddenly.\n\n'Yes,' he said. 'Luck's on our side.' On the day they came to this hideout Capricorn's car had been standing in the parking place, but that afternoon two of the boys had begun polishing its silver paintwork until they could see their reflections in it, and shortly before it was dark it had driven off. Capricorn often had himself driven around the countryside, to the villages further down the coast or to one of his other bases, as he liked to call them, although these so-called bases were often little more than a hut in the woods with a couple of bored men guarding it. Like Dustfinger, he couldn't drive a car, but some of his men had mastered the art of it. Hardly any of them held a driving licence, though, because to pass the test they would have to be able to read.\n\n'Yes, I'll go over there again tonight,' murmured Dustfinger. 'He won't be away much longer, and Basta is sure to be back soon too.' Basta's car had not been in the car park at all since they'd come here. It was unusual for it to be gone so long, because Basta didn't like to be away from the village for any length of time. Were he and Flatnose still lying in the ruined cottage, bound and gagged?\n\n'Good! When do we start!' Farid sounded as if he wanted to get moving at once. 'After sunset? They'll all be in the church eating then.'\n\nDustfinger shooed a fly away from his binoculars. 'I'm going alone. You're to stay here and keep an eye on our things.'\n\n'No!'\n\n'Yes. This will be dangerous. There's someone I want to visit, and to do that I have to get into the yard behind Capricorn's house.'\n\nThe boy gazed at him with eyes full of astonishment. Eyes that sometimes looked as if they had seen too much already.\n\n'Surprised, are you?' Dustfinger suppressed a smile. 'You wouldn't have thought I had any friends in Capricorn's house!'\n\nThe boy shrugged his shoulders and looked over to the village. A vehicle was driving into the car park, a dusty truck with two goats tethered on the open loading platform.\n\n'Look at that \u2013 another farmer's lost his goats!' muttered Dustfinger. 'Wise of him to give them up freely, or there'd have been a note pinned to his stable door this evening.'\n\nFarid looked at him, an unspoken question in his eyes.\n\n'The red rooster crows tomorrow, that's what the note would say. It's the only thing Capricorn's men know how to write. But sometimes they just hang a dead rooster above the door. Anyone can understand that.'\n\n'Red rooster?' The boy shook his head. 'Is it a curse or something?'\n\n'No! Good heavens, you sound like Basta.' Dustfinger laughed quietly. Capricorn's men were getting out of the truck. The smaller of them was carrying two plastic bags filled to bursting; the other was hauling the goats off the loading platform. 'The red rooster means fire, the fire they'll light in the farmer's outhouses or olive groves. And sometimes the rooster crows in the attic of the house or, if a farmer has been particularly stubborn, in his children's bedroom. We almost all have something we love dearly.'\n\nThe men were leading the goats into the village. Dustfinger knew by his limp that one of them was Cockerell. He had often wondered whether Capricorn knew about all the little deals his men did, or whether they were working for themselves on the side now and then.\n\nFarid caught a grasshopper in the hollow of his hand and watched it through his fingers. 'I'm going with you all the same,' he said.\n\n'No.'\n\n'I'm not afraid!'\n\n'That makes it worse.'\n\nCapricorn had had floodlights installed after the escape of his captives \u2013 outside the church, on the roof of his house and in the car park. They didn't exactly make it easier to walk the streets unobserved. The first night after their arrival here Dustfinger had stolen into the village, his scarred face blackened with soot because it was too easily recognisable. Capricorn had also reinforced the guards on sentry duty, probably because of all the treasure Silvertongue had brought him. By now, of course, that treasure had disappeared into the cellars of his house and was carefully locked in the heavy safes that Capricorn had fitted there. He didn't care to spend money; like the dragons of legend, he hoarded it. Sometimes he placed a ring on his finger, or put a necklace round the neck of a maid who happened to take his fancy. Or he sent Basta out to buy him a new sporting gun.\n\n'Who are you going to meet?'\n\n'None of your business.'\n\nThe boy let the grasshopper go again. It hopped rapidly away on its spindly olive-green legs.\n\n'A woman,' said Dustfinger. 'One of Capricorn's maids. She's helped me a couple of times before.'\n\n'The one in the photo in your rucksack?'\n\nDustfinger lowered his binoculars. 'How do you know what's in my rucksack?'\n\nThe boy hunched his head down between his shoulders, like someone used to being beaten for every thoughtless remark. 'I was looking for matches.'\n\n'If I catch you with your fingers in my rucksack again I'll tell Gwin to bite them off.'\n\nThe boy grinned. 'Gwin never bites me.'\n\nHe was right. The marten was crazy about Farid.\n\n'Where is that faithless animal anyway?' Dustfinger peered through the branches. 'I haven't seen him since yesterday.'\n\n'I think he's found a female.' Farid picked up a stick and poked at the dead leaves that lay everywhere under the trees. By night the rustling leaves would give away anyone trying to steal up to their camp in silence. 'If you don't take me with you tonight,' said the boy, without looking at Dustfinger, 'I'll just follow you anyway.'\n\n'If you follow me I shall beat you black and blue.'\n\nFarid lowered his head and gazed inscrutably at his bare toes. Then he glanced at the ruined walls where they had made their camp.\n\n'And don't start on about the old woman's ghost again!' said Dustfinger crossly. 'How often do I have to tell you? All the danger is over in those houses. Light a fire in the hollow if you're afraid of the dark.'\n\n'Ghosts don't fear fire.' The boy's voice was hardly more than a whisper.\n\nSighing, Dustfinger clambered down from his look-out post. The boy was almost as bad as Basta. He wasn't afraid of curses, ladders or black cats, but he saw ghosts everywhere, and not just the ghost of the old woman now sleeping buried somewhere in the hard ground. Farid saw other ghosts and spirits too, whole armies of them: malignant, all-powerful beings who tore the hearts out of poor mortal boys and ate them. He refused to believe it when Dustfinger told him they hadn't come with him, he had left them behind in a book along with the thieves who used to beat and kick him. He might well die of fear if he stayed here alone all night. 'Oh, very well then, you'd better come,' said Dustfinger. 'But not a squeak out of you, understand? The men down there aren't ghosts. They're real people, and they have knives and guns.'\n\nGratefully, Farid flung his thin arms around him.\n\n'Yes, all right, that'll do!' said Dustfinger, pushing him away. 'Come on, let's see if you can stand on one hand yet.'\n\nThe boy immediately obeyed. Bright red in the face, he balanced first on his right hand and then on his left, bare legs up in the air. After three wobbly seconds he landed in the prickly leaves of a rockrose, but he promptly got up, pulled a few thorns out of his foot, and tried again.\n\nDustfinger sat down under a tree.\n\nIt was high time to get rid of the boy, but how? You could throw stones at a dog, but a boy... Why hadn't he stayed with Silvertongue, who knew more about looking after young people? And it was Silvertongue, after all, who had brought him here. But no, the boy had to run after him, Dustfinger.\n\n'I'm going to look for Gwin,' said Dustfinger, getting to his feet.\n\nWithout a word Farid trotted after him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Back Again",
                "text": "\u2002She spoke to the King, hoping he would forbid his son to go, but he said: 'Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.'\n\n\u2014Eva Ibbotson, The Secret of Platform 13\n\nCapricorn's village didn't look like a dangerous place on the grey rainy day when Meggie set eyes on it again. The houses standing among the green hills were a miserable sight, with not a ray of sunlight to brighten their ruins. Meggie could hardly believe these same houses had looked so menacing on the night of their escape.\n\n'Interesting,' whispered Fenoglio as Basta drove into the car park. 'Do you know, this village is very like one of the settings I thought up for Inkheart? Well, there's no fortress, but the landscape around is similiar, and the age of the village would be about right. Did you know that Inkheart is set in a world not unlike our own medieval times? Of course I added some things \u2013 the fairies and the giants.'\n\nMeggie wasn't really listening to him now. She remembered how, after their flight from the sheds where Capricorn had held them captive, she had stumbled towards Elinor's car, and the man had shot at them. She had hoped she would never again have to see this car park, the church and these hills.\n\n'Come on, get moving!' grunted Flatnose, opening the car door. 'I expect you remember the way.'\n\nOh yes, Meggie could remember \u2013 even though it did all seem rather different today. Fenoglio looked round the gloomy alleys like a tourist, staring at windows and open doors as if he'd paid for entry. 'I know this village!' he whispered to Meggie. 'I mean, I've heard of it. There's more than one sad story about the place. That earthquake in the last century, and then in the last war there was\u2014'\n\n'Save your tongue for later, scribbler!' Basta interrupted. 'I don't like whispering.'\n\nFenoglio shot him an angry glance but fell silent, and did not utter another sound until they had reached the church.\n\n'Well, go on, open the door. What are you waiting for?' growled Flatnose.\n\nWith Fenoglio's help, Meggie opened the heavy wooden door. The cool air that met them smelled as musty as on the day she had entered the church with Mo and Elinor. Nothing much had changed inside. The red walls looked even more threatening on this overcast day, and the expression on the doll-like face of Capricorn's statue seemed rather more malevolent than before, if that were possible. The braziers in which the books had been burned still stood in the same place, but there was no sign of Capricorn's chair at the top of the steps. Two of his men were just carrying a new chair up them. The old woman who looked like a magpie and whom Meggie didn't really like to remember was standing beside them, impatiently giving directions.\n\nBasta pushed aside two women who were kneeling in the middle of the nave cleaning the floor, and strode towards the altar steps. 'Where's Capricorn, Mortola?' he called to the old woman as he approached. 'I have news for him. Important news.'\n\nThe old woman didn't even turn towards him. 'Further to the right, you fools!' she ordered the two men who were still struggling with the heavy armchair. 'Yes, there, that'll do.' Then she turned towards Basta, her face expressionless.\n\n'We expected you back before this,' she said.\n\n'What do you mean?' Basta had raised his voice, but Meggie caught the uncertainty it revealed. It sounded almost as if he were afraid of the old woman. 'Do you know how many villages there are down this damn coast? And we weren't even sure whether Silvertongue was still in the area. But I can rely on my nose, and as you see,' he said, nodding in Meggie's direction, 'I've done the job.'\n\n'You have?' The Magpie looked past Basta to where Meggie and Fenoglio were standing with Flatnose. 'All I see is the girl and an old man. Where's her father?'\n\n'He wasn't there, but he'll come after her. The girl's the best bait we could have.'\n\n'And how will he know she's here?'\n\n'I left him a message.'\n\n'Since when can you write?'\n\nMeggie saw Basta's shoulders tense with anger. 'I left him my name. He won't need more than that to know where to find his precious little daughter. Tell Capricorn I'm shutting her in one of the cages.' With these words he turned on his heel and stalked back to Meggie and Fenoglio.\n\n'Capricorn's not here and I don't know when he'll be back!' Mortola called after him. 'But I'm in charge until then, and in my view you've not been doing your job recently as well as we expect.'\n\nBasta swung round as if he had been bitten in the back of the neck, but Mortola continued unmoved.\n\n'First, you let Dustfinger steal a set of keys from you, then you lose our dogs and we have to send a search party out into the mountains for you, and now this! Give me your keys.' The Magpie put out her hand.\n\n'What?' Basta went white, like a boy being punished in front of the whole class.\n\n'You heard. I'm going to look after them: the keys to the cages, the crypt and the fuel store. Bring them here.'\n\nBasta didn't move. 'You've no right to them!' he snapped. 'Capricorn gave them to me, and he's the only one who can take them away again.' He turned away once more.\n\n'And so he will!' Mortola called after him. 'And he'll expect your report as soon as he gets back. Maybe he'll understand better than I do why you didn't bring Silvertongue.'\n\nBasta did not reply. Seizing Meggie and Fenoglio by the arm, he hauled them towards the church door. Mortola the Magpie called something after him, but Meggie couldn't make out what it was. And Basta did not turn back this time.\n\nHe locked her and Fenoglio in the shed marked number 5, the one where Farid had been imprisoned. 'Right, you can wait here till your father arrives!' he said before pushing Meggie inside.\n\nShe felt as if this were a nightmare and she was dreaming it all over again. Only here there wasn't even musty straw to sit on, and the light bulb hanging from the ceiling didn't work. However, a little daylight did come in through a narrow hole in the wall.\n\n'Oh, wonderful!' said Fenoglio, sitting down on the cold floor with a sigh. 'A cowshed. How unimaginative. I really would have expected Capricorn at least to have a proper dungeon for his prisoners.'\n\n'Cowshed?' Meggie leaned her back against the wall. She heard the rain pattering against the locked door.\n\n'Well, yes, what did you think it was? They always built houses like this in the old days: room for the livestock on the ground floor and living quarters for the family above them. They still keep their goats and donkeys like that in many mountain villages. Haven't you noticed when they've driven the animals out to pasture in the morning there are steaming heaps of dung left lying in the streets, and you tread in them when you go to buy your breakfast rolls?' Fenoglio plucked a hair from one nostril, looked at it as if he couldn't believe anything quite so bristly grew in his nose, and flicked it away. 'This is really rather uncanny,' he murmured. 'That's exactly how I imagined Capricorn's mother \u2013 that nose, the eyes set close together, even the way she folds her arms and her chin juts forward.'\n\nMeggie looked at him incredulously. 'Capricorn's mother! The Magpie?'\n\n'Magpie! Is that what you call her?' Fenoglio laughed softly. 'She has exactly the same nickname in my story. How amazing. Be careful of her. She's not a very pleasant character.'\n\n'I thought she was his housekeeper.'\n\n'That's probably what you're supposed to think. So keep our little secret to yourself for now, all right?'\n\nMeggie agreed, although she didn't really understand. What did it matter who the old woman was? It all came to the same thing. This time there was no Dustfinger to open the door in the night. It had all been for nothing \u2013 as if they had never run away at all. She went over to the locked door and pressed her hands against it. 'He'll come,' she whispered. 'Mo will come, and then they'll lock us up here for ever and ever.'\n\nFenoglio got up and went over to her. 'There, there!' he said, putting his arms round her and letting her bury her face in his jacket. It was made of rough fabric and smelled of pipe tobacco. 'I'll think of something!' he whispered to Meggie. 'After all, I invented these villains. It'll be an odd thing if I can't get rid of them. Your father had an idea, but...'\n\nMeggie raised her face, wet with tears, and looked at him hopefully, but the old man shook his head. 'Later. Now, tell me what makes Capricorn so interested in your father. Is it something to do with the way he reads aloud?'\n\nMeggie nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes. 'He wants Mo to read aloud to him here, to bring someone out of a book, an old friend.'\n\nFenoglio gave her a handkerchief. A few crumbs of tobacco fell from it when she blew her nose. 'A friend? Capricorn has no friends.' The old man frowned. Then Meggie felt him suddenly take a deep breath.\n\n'Who is it?' she asked, but Fenoglio just mopped a tear off her cheek.\n\n'Someone I hope you'll never meet except between the covers of a book,' he said evasively. Then he turned and began pacing up and down. 'Capricorn will be back soon,' he added. 'I must think how best to confront him.'\n\nBut Capricorn did not come. Darkness fell outside, and still no one had fetched them from their prison. They weren't even brought anything to eat. It grew cold when the night air came in through the hole in the wall, and they huddled side by side on the hard floor to keep warm.\n\n'Is Basta still very superstitious?' Fenoglio asked at some time in the night.\n\n'Yes, very,' replied Meggie. 'Dustfinger likes winding him up about it.'\n\n'Good,' murmured Fenoglio. But he would say no more."
            },
            {
                "title": "Capricorn's Maid",
                "text": "\u2002As I never saw my father or my mother... my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription 'Also Georgiana Wife of the Above' I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.\n\n\u2014Charles Dickens, Great Expectations\n\nDustfinger set out when the night could grow no darker. The sky was overcast, with not a single star shining. Only the moon showed occasionally between the clouds, as thin as a slice of lemon.\n\nDustfinger was glad of such darkness, but the boy jumped whenever a twig brushed his face.\n\n'For heaven's sake, I should have left you with the marten after all!' Dustfinger snapped as Farid clutched his arm in fright yet again. 'You'll give us away yet with your teeth chattering like that. Look ahead of you. That's what ought to scare you \u2013 guns, not ghosts.'\n\nBefore them, only a little way off now, lay Capricorn's village. The new floodlights poured light as bright as day over the grey houses.\n\n'And they say that this electricity of theirs is a blessing!' whispered Dustfinger as they skirted the car park. A bored-looking guard was strolling round among the parked vehicles. Yawning, he leaned against the truck in which Cockerell had brought the goats back that afternoon, and put on a pair of earphones.\n\n'Excellent! An army could march up now and he wouldn't hear it!' muttered Dustfinger. 'If Basta were here he'd discipline the man for that \u2013 shut him up in Capricorn's cowsheds for three days with nothing to eat.'\n\n'Why don't we go over the rooftops?' All the fear had gone from Farid's face. The guard with his shotgun didn't alarm the boy half as much as his imaginary ghosts. Dustfinger could only shake his head over such foolishness. But the rooftop idea wasn't stupid. A vine that hadn't been pruned for years grew up one of the houses beside the car park. As soon as the guard wandered over to the other side of the area, swaying in time to the music that was filling his ears, Dustfinger clambered up its woody branches. The boy climbed even better than he did, and proudly offered him a hand once he was up on the roof. They moved on stealthily like stray cats, past chimneys, aerials and Capricorn's floodlights, which were angled downwards and left everything behind them in the cover of darkness. Once, a shingle came loose under Dustfinger's boots, but he managed to catch it just in time, before the terracotta tile could fall and break in the street below.\n\nWhen they reached the square where the church and Capricorn's house stood they let themselves down from a gutter. For a few breathless moments Dustfinger ducked behind a stack of empty fruit crates, looking out for guards. Both the square itself and the narrow alley to one side of Capricorn's house were bathed in light. A black cat was sitting on the edge of the well outside the church. Basta's heart would probably have missed a beat at the sight of it, but Dustfinger was much more concerned about the guards outside Capricorn's house. Two of them were lounging by the entrance. It was one of these, a small, sturdy man, who had found Dustfinger four years ago in a town up in the north, just as he was about to give his last show. He and two companions had dragged the fire-eater back here, where Capricorn had, in his own characteristic way, questioned him about Silvertongue and the book.\n\nThe two guards were arguing, and as they were so absorbed Dustfinger plucked up his courage, took a few rapid steps, and disappeared down the alley beside Capricorn's house. Farid followed him, as soundless as his own shadow come to life.\n\nCapricorn's house was a large, bulky building which might once have been the village hall, a disused monastery or a school. All the windows were dark, and there were no other guards to be seen in the alley. But Dustfinger remained watchful. He knew the guards liked to lurk in dark doorways, invisible as ravens at night in their black suits. Indeed, Dustfinger knew almost everything about Capricorn's village. He had walked these streets often enough since Capricorn brought him here to look for Silvertongue and the book. Whenever he felt the sharp pangs of homesickness he had come back here to his old enemies, where he didn't feel quite so out of place. Even his fear of Basta's knife couldn't keep him away.\n\nDustfinger picked up a flat stone, beckoned Farid to his side, and threw the stone down the alley. Nothing moved. As he had hoped, the guard was doing his rounds. Dustfinger hurried to the high wall behind which Capricorn's garden lay: vegetable beds, fruit trees and herbs, protected by the wall from the cold wind that sometimes blew from the nearby mountains. Dustfinger had often entertained the maids as they hoed the beds. There were no floodlights in the garden, no guards either \u2013 who'd steal vegetables? \u2013 and only a door with a grating over it, a door that was locked at night, that led from the yard into the house. The dog kennels lay beyond the wall too, but when Dustfinger swung himself up and over they were empty. The dogs had not come back from the hills. They'd shown more sense than Dustfinger expected, and Basta obviously hadn't got new dogs yet. Stupid of him. Stupid Basta.\n\nDustfinger signalled to the boy to follow him, and stole past the carefully tended beds until he had reached the back door with the grating. The boy looked at him questioningly when he saw the solid bars, but Dustfinger just laid a finger to his lips and looked up at one of the windows on the second floor. The shutters, black as night, were open. Dustfinger mewed in so lifelike a fashion that several cats answered, but nothing moved behind the window. Dustfinger cursed under his breath, listened to the sounds of the night for a moment, then imitated the shrill cry of a bird of prey. Farid jumped and pressed close to the wall of the house. This time, something did move behind the upstairs window. A woman leaned out of it. When Dustfinger waved to her she waved back \u2013 and then quickly disappeared.\n\n'Don't look like that!' whispered Dustfinger, seeing Farid's anxious glance. 'We can trust her. Quite a few of the women aren't too fond of Capricorn and his men \u2013 many of them didn't even come here of their own free will. But they're all afraid of him: afraid they'll lose their job, afraid he'll burn the roofs over the heads of their families if they talk about what goes on here, or perhaps send Basta to call on them with his knife. Resa doesn't have to worry about that kind of thing. She has no family.' Not any more, he added to himself silently.\n\nThe door behind the grating opened, and Resa's anxious face appeared behind the bars. It looked pale beneath her dark blonde hair.\n\n'How are you?' Dustfinger went over to the grating and put his hand through the bars. Smiling, Resa pressed it, and nodded at the boy.\n\n'This is Farid.' Dustfinger lowered his voice. 'You could say he's adopted me. But you can trust him. He doesn't care for Capricorn any more than we do.'\n\nResa nodded, looked at him reproachfully and shook her head.\n\n'Yes, I know it wasn't sensible to come back. You heard what happened?' Dustfinger couldn't prevent something like pride creeping into his voice. 'They thought I'd put up with anything, but they were wrong. There's still one copy of the book left, and I'm going to get my hands on it. Don't look at me like that. Do you know where Capricorn keeps it?'\n\nResa shook her head. There was a rustling behind them and Dustfinger spun round, but it was only a mouse scurrying over the quiet yard. Resa took a pencil and a piece of paper out of her dressing-gown pocket. She wrote slowly and neatly, knowing that Dustfinger found it easier to read capital letters. She had taught him to read and write so that they could communicate with one another.\n\nAs usual, it took some time for the letters to make sense to Dustfinger. He felt a fresh sense of pride every time those spindly symbols finally fitted together into words and he could prise their secret out of them. 'I'll look around,' he read softly. 'Good. But be careful. I don't want you risking your pretty neck.' He bent over the paper again. 'What do you mean, The Magpie has Basta's keys now?'\n\nHe gave her the note back. Farid watched Resa writing, as spellbound as if he were watching someone work magic. 'I think you'll have to teach him too!' Dustfinger whispered through the bars. 'See how he's staring at you?'\n\nResa looked up and smiled at Farid. Awkwardly, he looked away. Resa passed her finger round her face.\n\n'You think he's a nice boy?' Dustfinger twisted his mouth in a teasing smile, while Farid felt so embarrassed he didn't know where to look. 'And what about me? Beautiful as the moon, am I? Hmm, what am I to make of that as a compliment? You mean I have almost as many craters?'\n\nResa pressed her hand over her lips. It was easy to amuse her; she laughed like a young girl. That was the only time you could hear her voice.\n\nShots rang out in the night. Resa clung to the bars, and Farid, terrified, crouched down at the foot of the wall. Dustfinger pulled him to his feet again. 'It's nothing!' he whispered. 'Just the guards taking pot-shots at cats. They always do that when they're bored.'\n\nThe boy looked at him with disbelief, but Resa went on writing. 'She took the keys away to punish him,' Dustfinger read. 'Basta won't like that at all. The way he acted with those keys, you'd have thought he was looking after Capricorn's most treasured possession.'\n\nResa mimed taking a knife from her belt, looking so grim that Dustfinger almost laughed out loud. He quickly glanced around, but the yard was silent as the grave between its high walls. 'Oh yes, I can well imagine that Basta's furious,' he whispered. 'In that mood he'll do anything to please Capricorn \u2013 slit throats, gash faces open, anything.'\n\nResa reached for the paper again, and once more it took him a painfully long time to decipher her clear, neat writing. 'Oh, so you've heard about Silvertongue. You want to know who he is? Well, but for me he'd still be locked up in Capricorn's sheds. What else? Ask Farid. Silvertongue plucked the boy out of his own story, too, like a ripe apple. Luckily, he didn't bring out any of the ghouls the boy keeps carrying on about. Yes, he reads aloud very well indeed, much better than Darius. As you can see, Farid doesn't limp, his face probably always looked the way it does now, and he still has his voice too \u2013 even if you might not think so at the moment.'\n\nFarid cast him a angry glance.\n\n'What does Silvertongue look like? Well, I can at least tell you that Basta hasn't decorated his face yet.'\n\nA shutter creaked above them. Dustfinger pressed close to the grating. Only the wind, he thought, nothing but the wind. Farid was staring at him, eyes wide with fear. No doubt the creaking sounded to him like a demon, but the figure who leaned out of the window above them was a creature of flesh and blood: Mortola, or the Magpie as she was secretly nicknamed. She was in charge of all the maids, and nothing was safe from the Magpie's eyes and ears, not even the secrets the women whispered to each other in their bedrooms at night. Even Capricorn's strongboxes had better accommodation than his maidservants. They all slept in his house, four to a room, crammed in like sardines (except for those who had struck up a relationship with one of his men and moved to another house).\n\nThe Magpie leaned over the windowsill and breathed in the cool night air. She stayed there for what seemed an endless time, so long that Dustfinger could happily have wrung her neck, but finally she appeared to have filled every inch of her body with fresh air and closed the window.\n\n'I must go, but I'll be back tomorrow evening. Maybe you'll have found out something about the book by then.' Dustfinger squeezed Resa's hand. Her fingers were rough from laundry work and cleaning. 'I know I've said it before, but all the same \u2013 be careful, and keep away from Basta.' Resa shrugged her shoulders. How else could she respond to such unnecessary advice? Almost all the women in the village kept away from Basta, but he didn't keep away from them.\n\nDustfinger waited outside the grating until Resa was back in her room. She signalled to him through the window with a candle.\n\nThe guard in the car park still had his earphones on. Deep in his own thoughts, he was dancing among the cars, shotgun in his outstretched arms as if he were dancing with a girl. By the time he finally looked their way, the night had already swallowed up Dustfinger and Farid.\n\nThey met no one on the way back to their hiding-place, only a fox who slunk away with hunger in his eyes. Gwin was eating a bird inside the walls of the burnt-out cottage. Its feathers were shadows in the darkness.\n\n'Has she always been mute?' asked the boy as Dustfinger lay down under the trees to sleep.\n\n'As long as I've known her,' replied Dustfinger, turning his back to the boy. Farid lay down beside him. He had made this his habit from the first, and however often Dustfinger moved away the boy was always close beside him when he woke up.\n\n'The photograph in your rucksack,' he said. 'It is her.'\n\n'So?'\n\nThe boy did not reply.\n\n'If you've taken a fancy to her,' Dustfinger mocked him, 'forget it. She's one of Capricorn's favourite maids. She's even allowed to take his breakfast and help him get dressed.'\n\n'How long has she been with him?'\n\n'Five years,' said Dustfinger. 'And in all that time Capricorn has never once let her leave the village. She can't even go out of the house very often. She ran away twice, but she never got far. One of those times a snake bit her. She never told me how Capricorn punished her, but I know she never tried to run away again.'\n\nThere was a rustling behind them. Farid jumped, but it was only Gwin. The marten was licking his muzzle as he leaped and landed on the boy's stomach. Laughing, Farid plucked a feather out of his fur. Gwin snuffled busily around the boy's chin and nose, as if he had missed him, and then he disappeared into the night again.\n\n'He really is a nice marten!' whispered Farid.\n\n'No, he's not,' said Dustfinger, pulling his thin blanket up to his chin. 'He probably likes you because you smell like a girl.'\n\nFarid's only answer was a long silence.\n\n'She looks like her,' he said at last, just as Dustfinger was dropping off to sleep. 'Silvertongue's daughter, I mean. She has the same mouth and the same eyes, and she laughs in the same way.'\n\n'Nonsense!' said Dustfinger. 'There's not the slightest resemblance. They both have blue eyes, that's all. It's not unusual here. Hurry up and go to sleep.'\n\nThe boy obeyed. He wrapped himself in the sweater that Dustfinger had given him and turned his back to his companion. Soon he was breathing as peacefully as a baby. But Dustfinger lay awake all night, staring at the stars."
            },
            {
                "title": "Capricorn's Secrets",
                "text": "\u2002'If I were to be made a knight,' said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, 'I should... pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.'\n\n\u2002'That would be extremely presumptuous of you,' said Merlin, 'and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.'\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone\n\nCapricorn received Meggie and Fenoglio in the church. About a dozen of his men were with him. He was sitting in the new black leather armchair they had installed under Mortola's supervision, and this time, for once, his suit was not red but pale yellow, like the morning daylight filtering in through the windows. He had them brought to him early, while the mist still hung above the hills, with the sun swimming in it like a ball floating in murky water.\n\n'By all the letters of the alphabet!' whispered Fenoglio as he and Meggie walked down the nave of the church with Basta close behind them. 'He really does look exactly the way I imagined him. \"Colourless as a glass of milk.\" I think that's how I put it.'\n\nHe began walking faster, as if he couldn't wait to see his creation at close quarters. Meggie could hardly keep up with him, and Basta held him back before he had reached the steps. 'Here, what's the idea?' he hissed. 'Not so fast \u2013 and bow, understand?'\n\nFenoglio merely glanced scornfully at him and remained perfectly upright. Basta raised his hand, but when Capricorn almost imperceptibly shook his head he lowered it again like a rebuked child. Mortola was standing beside Capricorn's chair, her arms folded like wings behind her back.\n\n'You know, Basta, I still wonder what you were thinking of not to bring her father too!' said Capricorn, letting his gaze wander from Meggie to Fenoglio's turtle-like face.\n\n'He wasn't there. I told you.' Basta sounded injured. 'Was I supposed to sit about waiting for him like a toad beside a pond? He'll soon be here of his own accord! We all know how besotted he is with his daughter. I'll bet my knife he'll be here by tomorrow at the latest!'\n\n'Your knife? But you've already mislaid your knife once recently.' The mockery in Mortola's voice made Basta grind his teeth.\n\n'You're slipping, Basta!' remarked Capricorn. 'Your hot temper clouds your judgement. But let's move on to this other souvenir of yours.'\n\nFenoglio had never taken his eyes off Capricorn. He was looking at him like a painter seeing one of his pictures again after many long years, and judging by the expression on his face what he saw pleased him. Meggie couldn't see a trace of fear in his eyes, just incredulous curiosity, and satisfaction \u2013 with himself. She also saw that Capricorn did not care for that expression at all. He wasn't used to being inspected as fearlessly as this old man was scrutinising him now, not even by his men.\n\n'Basta has told me some strange things about you, Signor...?' 'Fenoglio.'\n\nMeggie was watching Capricorn's face. Had he ever read the name on the cover of Inkheart just below the title itself?\n\n'Even his voice sounds the way I imagined!' Fenoglio whispered to her. She thought he was captivated, like a child looking at a caged lion \u2013 except that Capricorn wasn't in a cage. At a signal from him Basta jammed his elbow into the old man's back so roughly that Fenoglio was left gasping for air.\n\n'I don't like whispering in my presence,' Capricorn said softly, while Fenoglio was still struggling to get his breath back. 'As I said, Basta has told me a strange story \u2013 he says you claimed to be the man who wrote a certain book \u2013 what was its name again?'\n\n'Inkheart.' Fenoglio rubbed his aching back. 'Its title is Inkheart because it's about a man whose wicked heart is black as ink, filled with darkness and evil. I still like the title.'\n\nCapricorn raised his eyebrows \u2013 and smiled. 'And how am I supposed to take that? As a compliment, maybe? After all, it's my story you're talking about.'\n\n'No, no, it's mine. You just appear in it.'\n\nMeggie saw Basta look enquiringly at Capricorn, but he shook his head again very slightly, and Fenoglio's back was spared for the time being.\n\n'How interesting. So you're sticking to your lies.' Capricorn uncrossed his legs and rose from his chair. With slow strides, he came down the steps.\n\nFenoglio smiled conspiratorially at Meggie.\n\n'What are you grinning for?' Capricorn's voice was as sharp as Basta's knife now. He stopped right in front of Fenoglio.\n\n'Oh, I was only thinking that vanity is one of the qualities I gave you, vanity and \u2013' Fenoglio paused for effect before continuing \u2013 'and a few other weaknesses that I expect you'd rather I didn't mention in front of your henchmen.'\n\nCapricorn examined him in silence, a silence that seemed to last an eternity. Then he smiled. It was a faint, thin smile, little more than a lift at the corners of his mouth, while his eyes scanned the church as if he had entirely forgotten Fenoglio. 'You're a shameless old man,' he said. 'And a liar into the bargain. But if you hope to impress me with your bare-faced lying and boasting the way you've impressed Basta, I must disappoint you. Your claims are ridiculous, just as you are, and it was more than stupid of Basta to bring you here, because now we have to get rid of you somehow.'\n\nBasta turned pale. He hurried over to Capricorn, head lowered in submission. 'But suppose he isn't lying?' Meggie heard him whisper to Capricorn. 'They both say we shall all die if we touch the old man.'\n\nCapricorn gave him a look of such contempt that Basta flinched backwards as if he had been struck.\n\nFenoglio, however, looked as if he were enjoying himself hugely. It seemed to Meggie that he was watching the whole scene as if it were a play performed especially for him. 'Poor Basta!' he said to Capricorn. 'You're doing him a great injustice again, for he's right. Suppose I'm not lying? Suppose I really did invent you both \u2013 you and Basta? Will you simply dissolve into thin air if you do anything to me? It seems very likely.'\n\nCapricorn laughed, but Meggie sensed he was thinking over what Fenoglio had said, and it made him uneasy \u2013 even if he was taking great pains to hide his concern under a mask of indifference.\n\n'I can prove that I'm what I say I am!' said Fenoglio, so quietly that apart from Capricorn only Basta could hear his words. 'Shall I do it here, in front of your men and those women? Shall I tell them about your parents?'\n\nAll was quiet in the church now. No one moved, neither Basta nor the other men waiting at the foot of the steps. Even the women cleaning the floor under the tables straightened up to look at Capricorn and the strange old man. Mortola was standing beside his chair, her chin jutting as if that would help her to hear what they were whispering about.\n\nCapricorn inspected his cufflinks in silence. They were like drops of blood on his pale shirt. Then, at last, he turned his colourless eyes to Fenoglio's face again.\n\n'Say what you like, old man! But if you value your life say it so that only I can hear.' He spoke softly, but Meggie heard the fury in his voice, suppressed with difficulty but lurking behind every word. She had never felt more afraid of him.\n\nCapricorn signed to Basta, who reluctantly took a few steps backwards.\n\n'I suppose the child can hear what I have to say?' asked Fenoglio, putting his hand on Meggie's shoulder. 'Or are you afraid of her too?'\n\nCapricorn did not even look at Meggie. He had eyes only for the old man who had invented him. 'Well, come on, let's hear you, even if you have nothing to say! You're not the first person to try saving his skin in this church with a few lies, but if you hedge your bets any longer I shall tell Basta to wrap a pretty little viper around your neck. I always keep a few around the place for such occasions.'\n\nEven this threat didn't particularly impress Fenoglio. 'Very well,' he said, looking all round him as if sorry not to have a larger audience, 'where shall I begin? First, something basic: a storyteller never writes down everything he knows about his characters. There's no need for readers to know everything. Some of it is better kept secret between the author and his creations. Take him, for instance,' he added, pointing to Basta. 'I always knew he was a very unhappy boy before you picked him up. As it says in a another very fine book, it's terribly easy to persuade children that they are worthless. Basta was convinced of it. Not that you taught him any better, oh no! Why would you? But suddenly here was someone to whom he could devote himself, someone who told him what to do \u2013 he'd found a god, Capricorn, and if you treated him badly, well, who says that all gods are kindly? Most of them are stern and cruel, wouldn't you agree? I didn't write all this in the book. I knew it, that was enough. But never mind Basta now, let's move on to you.'\n\nCapricorn's eyes did not move from Fenoglio. His face was as rigid as if it had turned to stone.\n\n'Capricorn.' Fenoglio's voice sounded almost tender as he spoke the name. He gazed over Capricorn's shoulder as if he had forgotten that the man he was talking about was standing right in front of him, and no longer existed only in an entirely different world between the covers of a book. 'He has another name too, of course, but even he doesn't remember it. He has called himself Capricorn since he was fifteen, after the star sign under which he was born. Capricorn the unapproachable, unfathomable, insatiable, who likes to play God or the Devil as the fancy takes him. The Devil doesn't have a mother, though, does he?' Fenoglio then looked Capricorn in the eye. 'But you do.'\n\nMeggie looked up at the Magpie. She had come to the edge of the steps, listening, her bony hands clenched into fists.\n\n'You like to spread the rumour that she was of noble birth,' Fenoglio went on. 'Indeed, it sometimes even pleases you to say she was a king's daughter, and your father, you claim, was an armourer at her father's court. A very nice story too. Shall I tell you my version?'\n\nFor the first time, Meggie saw something like fear on Capricorn's face, a nameless fear without beginning or end, and behind it hatred rose like a vast black shadow.\n\nMeggie felt sure that Capricorn wanted to strike Fenoglio to the ground, but his fear was too strong, leaving him helpless to act.\n\nDid Fenoglio see that too?\n\n'Go on, tell your story. Why not?' Capricorn's eyes were unblinking, like a snake's.\n\nFenoglio smiled as mischievously as one of his grandsons. 'Very well, let's go on. The tale of the court armourer was all lies, of course.' Meggie still had a feeling that the old man was enjoying himself enormously. He might have been teasing a kitten. Did he know so little about his own creation? 'Capricorn's father was an ordinary blacksmith,' he went on, refusing to let the cold rage in Capricorn's eyes distract him. 'He made his son play with hot coals, and sometimes he beat him almost as hard as he beat the iron he forged. There were blows if the boy ever showed pity, and more blows for shedding tears and for every time the lad said, \"I can't\" or \"I'll never do it\". \"Power is all that counts,\" he taught his son. \"Rules are made by the strongest, so be sure that you're the one who makes them.\" Capricorn's mother thought that was the only real truth in the world, and she told her son day in, day out that one day he would be the strongest of all. She was no princess but a serving maid, with coarse hands and roughened knees, and she followed her son like a shadow, even when he began to be ashamed of her and invented a new mother and new father for himself. She admired him for his cruelty; she loved to see the terror he spread abroad. And she loved his ink-black heart. Your heart is a stone, Capricorn, a black stone with about as much human sympathy as a lump of coal, and you are very, very proud of that.'\n\nCapricorn went on playing with his cufflink, turning it round and looking at it as intently as if he were giving all his attention not to Fenoglio's words but to the little red piece of metal. When the old man fell silent, Capricorn carefully pulled the sleeve of his jacket down over his wrist and brushed a speck of fluff off his arm. With it, he seemed to have brushed off his anger \u2013 his pale, indifferent eyes no longer showed rage, hatred or fear.\n\n'That really is an amazing story, old man,' he said in a quiet voice. 'I like it. You're a born liar, so I shall keep you here \u2013 for the time being \u2013 until I tire of your stories.'\n\n'Keep me here?' Fenoglio stood very straight. 'I've no intention of staying here! What on earth\u2014'\n\nBut Capricorn put a hand over his mouth. 'Not another word!' he hissed. 'Basta has told me about your three grandchildren.\n\nIf you give me any trouble, or tell your lies not to me but to my men, I shall get Basta to gift-wrap a few young vipers and leave them outside your grandchildren's door. Do I make myself clear, old man?'\n\nFenoglio's head drooped as if Capricorn had broken his neck with nothing but a few softly spoken words. When he looked up again, fear showed in every wrinkle of his face.\n\nWith a satisfied smile, Capricorn put his hands in his trouser pockets. 'Yes, you all love something, soft-hearted as you are,' he said. 'Children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, parents, dogs, cats, canary birds... There are no exceptions: farmers, shopkeepers, even policemen have families or at least keep a dog. You have only to look at her father!' Capricorn pointed at Meggie so suddenly, she jumped. 'He'll come here even though he knows I shan't let him go again, any more than I shall let his daughter go. He'll come all the same. Isn't this world an amazing place?'\n\n'Amazing indeed,' murmured Fenoglio, and for the first time he looked at his creation with revulsion rather than admiration. Capricorn seemed to prefer that.\n\n'Basta!' he called, beckoning him. Basta strolled over deliberately slowly. He was still looking sulky. 'Take the old man to the room where we once locked Darius,' Capricorn ordered. 'And post a guard outside the door.'\n\n'You want me to take him into your house?' Basta sounded surprised.\n\n'Yes, why not? After all, he claims to be almost like a father to me. Anyway, his tales amuse me.'\n\nBasta shrugged and grasped Fenoglio's arm. Meggie looked at the old man, horrified. She would soon be all alone with nothing but the windowless walls and a locked door. But Fenoglio reached for her hand before Basta could haul him away. 'Leave the girl with me,' he said to Capricorn. 'You can't shut her up in that hole again all by herself. And I promised her father I'd look after her.'\n\nCapricorn turned his back, looking indifferent. 'As you like. Her father will be here soon in any case.'\n\nYes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm round her shoulders as if he really could protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn't. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn't come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won't be able to find the way again! He mustn't come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world."
            },
            {
                "title": "Different Aims",
                "text": "Faber sniffed the book. 'Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy.'\n\n\u2014Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451\n\nIt was Farid who saw the car. Dustfinger was lying under the trees as it came along the road. He was trying to think clearly, but since learning that Capricorn was back he couldn't pull his thoughts together. He still didn't know where to look for the book. The leaves of the trees cast shadows on his face, the sun sent white-hot needles down through the branches, and his forehead felt feverish. Basta and Flatnose were back too, of course. What had he expected? Had he thought they'd stay away for ever? 'Why get so agitated, Dustfinger?' he whispered up at the leaves. 'You didn't have to come back here. You knew it would be dangerous.' Then he heard footsteps approaching, rapidly.\n\n'A grey car!' Farid had run so fast that he was gasping for breath as he flung himself down on the grass beside Dustfinger. 'I think it's Silvertongue!'\n\nDustfinger jumped up. The boy knew what he was talking about. He really could tell those stinking metal beetles apart from each other. He himself had never got the knack of it.\n\nHe quickly followed Farid to where there was a view of the bridge. The road wound away from it towards Capricorn's village like a slow-moving snake. They didn't have much time if they wanted to stop Silvertongue. At top speed, they stumbled down the hillside. Farid was the first to reach the road. Dustfinger had always been proud of his own agility, but the boy was far nimbler, fast as a deer and with legs just as agile. And he was getting better at playing with fire now too, as fascinated as a boy with a puppy.\n\nSilvertongue braked sharply when he saw Dustfinger and Farid in the road. He looked tired, as if he had slept badly for the last few nights. Elinor was in the car beside him. Where had she sprung from? Hadn't she gone home to her book-lined tomb? And where was Meggie?\n\nSilvertongue's face darkened when he saw Dustfinger. As he got out of the car he was rigid with anger. 'Of course! You told them!' he cried, coming towards him. 'You told them where we were! Who else? What did Capricorn promise you this time?'\n\n'I told who what?' Dustfinger retreated. 'I never told anyone anything! Ask the boy.'\n\nBut Silvertongue didn't so much as glance at Farid. The bookworm woman had got out too. She stood beside the car looking grim.\n\n'The only person who told anyone anything was you!' Dustfinger accused him. 'You told the old man about me even though you promised you wouldn't.'\n\nSilvertongue stopped in his tracks. It was so easy to make him feel guilty.\n\n'Better hide the car under the trees there.' Dustfinger pointed to the side of the road. 'One of Capricorn's men could pass at any time, and they don't like to see strange cars here.'\n\nSilvertongue turned and looked down the road.\n\n'Surely you don't believe him?' cried Elinor. 'Of course he's given you away, who else could? The man starts telling lies the moment he opens his mouth.'\n\n'Basta took Meggie away.' Silvertongue sounded hoarse, quite unlike himself, as if when he lost his daughter he had lost the sound of his voice too. 'They took Fenoglio as well \u2013 yesterday morning when I went to meet Elinor at the airport. We've been looking for the wretched village ever since. I had no idea how many deserted villages there are in these hills. It wasn't until we came to the barrier over the road that I felt sure we were on the right track at last.'\n\nDustfinger said nothing, but looked up at the sky. A few birds as black as Capricorn's men were flying south. He had not seen them bringing the girl in, but then he hadn't spent the whole day watching that accursed village.\n\n'Basta was gone for several days. I thought he must be looking for the two of you,' he said. 'You're lucky he didn't get hold of you too.'\n\n'Lucky?' Elinor was still standing beside the car. 'Tell him to get out of the way!' she told Silvertongue. 'Or I'll run him down myself! He's been hand in glove with those miserable fire-raisers all along.'\n\nSilvertongue was still looking at Dustfinger as if he couldn't decide whether or not to believe him. 'Capricorn's men broke into Elinor's house,' he said at last. 'They took all the books from her library into the garden and burned them.'\n\nDustfinger had to admit that for a split second he felt something almost like satisfaction. What had the silly bookworm woman expected? Did she think Capricorn would simply forget her? He shrugged his shoulders and looked at Elinor, his face unreadable. 'Only to be expected,' he said.\n\n'Only to be expected!' Elinor's voice almost cracked. Belligerent as a bull terrier, she marched up to him. Farid tried to bar her way, but she pushed him aside so roughly that he fell on the hot asphalt of the road. 'Maybe you can fool the boy with your fire-breathing and your coloured balls, matchstick-eater!' she snapped at Dustfinger. 'But it won't work with me! There's nothing left of the books in my library but a load of ash. The police were full of admiration for what those villains had done. \"At least they didn't burn your house down, Signora Loredan! Even your garden is all right except for the scorch mark on the lawn.\" What do I care for the house? What do I care for the wretched lawn? They burned my most valuable books!'\n\nDustfinger saw the tears in her eyes, although she quickly turned her face aside, and suddenly something like sympathy did awake in him. Perhaps she was more like him than he'd thought: her home too had consisted of paper and printer's ink. She probably felt as lost as he did in the real world. He didn't let her see his sympathy, of course, but hid it behind a mask of mockery and indifference, just as she hid her despair behind rage. 'What did you expect? Capricorn knew where you lived. Anyone could foresee that he'd send his men out when you've escaped him. He always takes revenge.'\n\n'Oh yes, and who told him where I live? You did!' Elinor swung her arm back with her fist clenched, but Farid caught it. He had grazed his knee on the road. 'He didn't give anything away!' he cried. 'Nothing at all. He's only here to steal something.'\n\nElinor lowered her arm.\n\n'So that's it!' Silvertongue went up to them. 'You're here to get hold of the book. That's crazy!'\n\n'Well, how about you? What are you planning to do?' Dustfinger looked at him scornfully. 'You're just going to walk into Capricorn's church and ask for your daughter back, are you?'\n\nSilvertongue did not reply.\n\n'He won't hand her over and you know it!' Dustfinger went on. 'She's only the bait, and as soon as you've swallowed it the pair of you will be Capricorn's prisoners \u2013 for the rest of your lives, most likely.'\n\n'I wanted to call the police!' Elinor freed her arm crossly from Farid's brown hands. 'But Mortimer was against it.'\n\n'Sensible of him! Capricorn would have abandoned Meggie up in the mountains and you'd never have seen her again.'\n\nSilvertongue looked up at the nearby mountains looming dark behind their foothills. 'Wait until I've stolen the book!' said Dustfinger. 'I'm going to creep into the village again tonight. I won't be able to get your daughter out the way I did last time, because Capricorn has trebled the guards, and the whole village is lit up at night now, brighter than a jeweller's shop window, but perhaps I can find out where they're keeping her prisoner. Then you can do what you like with the information. And in return for my trouble you could try reading me back into the book. What about it?'\n\nDustfinger considered this a very reasonable proposition, but Silvertongue thought it over only briefly before shaking his head. 'No,' he said. 'No, I'm sorry, I can't wait any longer. Meggie needs me.' With these words he turned and went back to the car, but before he could get in Dustfinger barred his way.\n\n'I'm sorry too,' he said, snapping open Basta's knife. 'You know I don't like these things, but sometimes people have to be protected from their own stupidity. I'm not going to let you stumble into the village like a rabbit into a trap, just for Capricorn to shut you and your magic voice away. It won't help your daughter and it certainly won't help me.'\n\nAt Dustfinger's signal, Farid had drawn his knife too. Dustfinger had bought it for him in the village by the sea; it was a ridiculous little thing, but Farid pressed it into Elinor's ribs so hard that she grimaced. 'Good God, are you planning to slit me open, you little wretch?' she snapped at him. The boy jumped, but he did not remove his knife.\n\n'Move the car off the road, Silvertongue!' ordered Dustfinger. 'And don't get any silly ideas: the boy will keep his knife pressed at your bookworm friend's chest until you're back here with us.'\n\nSilvertongue obeyed. Of course. What else could he do? They tied him and Elinor to the trees just behind the burnt-out cottage, only a few paces from their own makeshift camp. Elinor scolded even louder than Gwin when he was pulled out of the rucksack by his tail.\n\n'Stop that!' Dustfinger told her. 'It won't do any of us any good for Capricorn's men to find us here.' That worked. She fell silent at once, as if she had swallowed her tongue. Silvertongue had leaned his head back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. Farid checked all the knots again carefully, but then Dustfinger beckoned him over.\n\n'I want you to keep a watch on those two when I go down to the village tonight,' he whispered. 'And don't start carrying on about ghosts again. After all, you won't be alone this time.'\n\nThe boy looked at him with an injured expression, as if Dustfinger had taken his hand and thrust it into the fire. 'But they're tied up!' he protested. 'So what is there to watch? No one's ever managed to undo my knots. Word of honour. Please. I want to go with you! I can be your look-out or distract the guards. I can even get into Capricorn's house! I'm quieter than Gwin!'\n\nBut Dustfinger shook his head. 'No,' he said firmly. 'Tonight I'm going alone. If I want someone following me wherever I go I'll get myself a dog.' And with that he left the boy.\n\nIt was a hot day. The sky above the hills was blue and cloudless, and there were hours yet to pass before darkness fell."
            },
            {
                "title": "In Capricorn's House",
                "text": "\u2002'It's the place that worries you,' said Hazel. 'I don't like it myself, but it won't go on for ever.'\n\n\u2014Richard Adams, Watership Down\n\nTwo narrow metal bunks, one above the other against a whitewashed wall, a cupboard, a table by the window, a chair, an empty shelf with nothing but a candle on it. Meggie had hoped to be able to see the road or at least the car park through the window, but the only view was of the yard below. A couple of Capricorn's maids were bending over the vegetable patch pulling out weeds, and chickens were pecking about in a wire-netting run in one corner. The walls surrounding the kitchen garden were high enough for a prison.\n\nFenoglio was sitting on the lower bed, staring gloomily at the dusty floor. The wooden floorboards creaked whenever they stepped on them. Outside the door, Flatnose was protesting to Basta.\n\n'You want me to do what? No, find someone else for the job, dammit! I'd rather go over to the next village, put petrol-soaked rags outside someone's door or hang a dead rooster from the window-frame. Or run round outside the house with a devil mask on, like Cockerell had to do last month, but I'm not cooling my heels here just to keep watch on an old man and a little girl! Get one of the lads. They'll be glad to have a change from cleaning cars.'\n\nBut Basta wasn't open to persuasion. 'You'll be relieved after supper,' he said, and then he was gone. Meggie heard his footsteps retreating down the long corridor. There were five doors to pass, then go down the staircase, at the foot of the stairs turn left for the front door... She had carefully taken note of the way. But how was she to get past Flatnose? She went over to the window again and opened it. Just looking out made her feel dizzy. No, she couldn't climb down. She'd break her neck.\n\n'Leave the window open,' said Fenoglio behind her. 'It's so hot in here I feel as if I might melt.'\n\nMeggie sat down on the bed beside him. 'I'm going to run away,' she whispered. 'As soon as it gets dark.'\n\nThe old man looked at her incredulously, shaking his head very firmly. 'Are you mad? It's much too dangerous!'\n\nOut in the corridor, Flatnose was still muttering angrily to himself.\n\n'I'll say I have to go to the loo.' Meggie was clutching her rucksack. 'Then I'll just run off.'\n\nFenoglio took her by the shoulders. 'No!' he whispered emphatically. 'No, you won't! We'll think of something. Thinking up ideas is my job, remember?'\n\nMeggie tightened her lips. 'Yes, all right,' she murmured, getting up to go back to the window. Dusk was already falling outside. I'm going to try, all the same, she thought as Fenoglio stretched out with a sigh on the narrow bed behind her. I'm not just going to sit here like bait! I shall run away before they catch Mo too.\n\nAnd for the hundredth time, as she waited for darkness, she tried to push away the question that kept coming into her head: where was Mo? Why hadn't he come?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Carelessness",
                "text": "\u2002'You think this is a trap, then?' the Count asked.\n\n\u2002'I always think everything is a trap until proven otherwise,' the Prince answered. 'Which is why I'm still alive.'\n\n\u2014William Goldman, The Princess Bride\n\nIt was still hot when the sun had gone down. There was not a breath of wind in the darkness, and the glow-worms were dancing above the dry grass as Dustfinger crept back to Capricorn's village.\n\nTwo guards were strolling around the car park, and neither of them was wearing earphones, so Dustfinger took a different route to Capricorn's house this time. The streets at the far end of the village had been so utterly destroyed by the earthquake which drove out the last villagers that Capricorn had not had them rebuilt. These streets were still blocked by the rubble of ruined walls, and it wasn't very safe to walk there. Even after so many years, loose stones might fall. So Capricorn's men avoided that part of the village, where dirty dishes left by its long-gone inhabitants still stood on many tables behind dilapidated front doors. There were no floodlights here, and even the guards seldom came this way.\n\nTumbled heaps of broken tiles and stones stood more than knee-high in the street that Dustfinger chose. They slipped beneath his feet as he clambered over them, and when he listened to the nocturnal sounds again, afraid the noise might have attracted someone's attention, he saw a guard appear among the ruined houses. His mouth was dry with terror as he ducked behind the nearest wall. Swallows' nests clung to it, one above another. The guard was humming as he came closer. Dustfinger knew him; he had been with Capricorn for many years. Basta had recruited him from a village in another country. For Capricorn had not always lived among these hills. There had been other places, remote villages like this one, houses, abandoned farms, even a fortified castle once. But a day had always come when the web of fear so expertly spun by Capricorn tore, and the attention of the police was drawn to his men and what they were up to. Eventually the same thing would happen here.\n\nThe guard stood still to light a cigarette. Its smoke drifted to Dustfinger's nostrils. Turning his head, he saw a thin white cat perched among the stones. It sat there perfectly still, its green eyes staring at him. 'Sssh!' he wanted to whisper. 'Do I look dangerous? No, but that man there will shoot first you, then me.' The green eyes went on staring. The white tail began twitching back and forth. Dustfinger looked at his dusty boots, at a twisted iron bar lying among the stones, anywhere but at the cat. Animals don't like you to look them in the eye. Gwin bared his sharp teeth whenever Dustfinger looked straight at him.\n\nThe guard began humming again, the cigarette between his lips. At last, just as Dustfinger was beginning to feel he would be crouching behind this ruined wall for the rest of his life, the guard turned and strolled off. Dustfinger dared not move until the sound of his footsteps had died away. When he straightened up, feeling stiff, the cat raced away, spitting, and he stood there for a long time among the empty houses, waiting for his heartbeat to slow.\n\nNo other guard crossed his path, and soon he was vaulting over Capricorn's wall. The scent of thyme greeted him, a heavy scent that usually filled the air only by day. But everything seemed to be aromatic this hot night, even the tomato plants and lettuces. Poisonous plants grew in the bed just outside the house. These the Magpie tended herself. Many a dead body in the village had smelled of oleander or henbane.\n\nThe window of the room where Resa slept was open, as usual. When Dustfinger imitated Gwin's angry chattering a hand waved from the open window, and then quickly disappeared. He leaned against the grating over the door and waited. The sky above him was sprinkled with so many stars there hardly seemed to be any space left for the darkness. She's sure to have found out something, he thought, but suppose she tells me Capricorn has locked the book in one of his safes?\n\nThe door behind the grating opened. It always squealed, as if complaining of being disturbed at night. Dustfinger turned, and looked into a strange girl's face. She was young, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, her cheeks still chubby like a child's.\n\n'Where's Resa?' Dustfinger clutched the grating. 'What's happened to her?'\n\nThe girl seemed to be transfixed by terror. She was staring at him as if she had never seen a scarred face before.\n\n'Did she send you down here?' Dustfinger wished he could put his hands through the grating and shake this silly little goose. 'Tell me! I don't have all night.' He ought not to have asked Resa to help him. He ought to have gone searching for the book himself. How could he have endangered her? 'Have they shut her up somewhere? Tell me!'\n\nThe girl looked at something over his shoulders, and took a step back. Dustfinger spun round, to see whatever she had seen \u2013 and found himself looking into Basta's face.\n\nDustfinger's mind raced. Why hadn't he heard anything? Basta was notorious for his silent tread, but Flatnose, who was with him, was no master of the art of stalking. And Basta had brought someone else too: Mortola was standing beside him. So it wasn't just fresh air that she had been enjoying last night. Or had Resa betrayed him to her? The idea hurt.\n\n'I really didn't expect you to venture here again,' purred Basta, pushing him against the grating with the flat of his hand. Dustfinger felt the iron bars pressing into his back.\n\nFlatnose was grinning as broadly as a child at Christmas. He always grinned like that when he was allowed to put the fear of death into someone.\n\n'And what have you to do with the lovely Resa?' Basta snapped his knife open, and Flatnose's smile widened as fear brought out beads of sweat on Dustfinger's forehead. 'I always said so!' continued Basta as he slowly brought the tip of the knife closer to Dustfinger's chest. 'The fire-eater's in love with Resa, I said, he'd devour her with his eyes if he could, but the others wouldn't believe me. All the same \u2013 to think of a lily-livered coward like you venturing here!'\n\n'Ah, but he's in love,' said Flatnose, laughing.\n\nBut Basta merely shook his head. 'No, our dirty-fingered friend wouldn't have come here for love, he's far too cold a fish. He's here for the book. Am I right? You're still homesick for those fluttering fairies and stinking trolls.' Almost tenderly, Basta ran the knife across Dustfinger's throat.\n\nDustfinger forgot how to breathe. The trick of it seemed to have escaped him.\n\n'Back to your room!' the Magpie snapped at the girl behind him. 'Why are you still standing around?'\n\nDustfinger heard the rustle of a dress, and a door closed abruptly.\n\nBasta's knife was still at his throat, but just as he was about to let the tip of it wander a little higher the Magpie seized his arm. 'That's enough!' she commanded. 'You can stop your little game now, Basta.'\n\n'That's right, the boss said we were to bring him in uninjured.' Flatnose's voice made it clear how little he thought of this order.\n\nBasta let the knife wander over Dustfinger's throat one last time. Then, with a swift movement, he snapped it shut again.\n\n'What a shame!' said Basta.\n\nDustfinger felt the man's breath on his own skin. Basta's breath smelled of mint, fresh and sharp. Apparently a girl he'd once wanted to kiss had told him he had bad breath. The girl had regretted it, but ever since then Basta chewed peppermint leaves from morning to night. 'You've always given good sport, Dustfinger,' he said as he stepped back, still holding the closed flick-knife.\n\n'Take him to the church!' Mortola ordered. 'I'll go and tell Capricorn.'\n\n'Did you know the boss is very angry with your mute girlfriend?' whispered Flatnose to Dustfinger as he and Basta dragged him between them. 'She was always quite a favourite of his.'\n\nFor a split second Dustfinger felt almost happy.\n\nSo Resa hadn't given him away.\n\nAll the same, he never ought to have asked her for help. Never."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Quiet Voice",
                "text": "She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.\n\nHer voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.\n\n\u2014J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan\n\nMeggie did try her plan. As soon as it was dark she hammered on the door with her fist. Fenoglio woke with a start, but before he could stop her Meggie had called to the guard outside the door that she had to go to the loo. The man who had relieved Flatnose was a short-legged fellow with jug ears, who was amusing himself by swatting moths with a rolled-up newspaper. Over a dozen insects were already smeared on the white wall when he let Meggie out into the corridor.\n\n'I need to go too!' cried Fenoglio, perhaps intending to dissuade Meggie from carrying out her plan, but the guard closed the door in his face. 'One at a time!' he grunted at the old man. 'And if you can't wait, you'll just have to pee out of the window.'\n\nTaking his newspaper with him as he escorted Meggie to the lavatory, he killed three more moths and a butterfly that was fluttering helplessly from wall to bare wall. Finally, he pushed a door open, the last door before the staircase to the ground floor. Just a few more steps, thought Meggie. I'm sure I can run downstairs faster than he can.\n\n'Please, Meggie, you must forget about running away!' Fenoglio had kept whispering in her ear. 'You'll get lost. There's nothing outside but wild country for miles! Your father would be furious if he knew what you were planning.'\n\nOh no, he wouldn't, Meggie had thought. But when she was in the little room which contained nothing but a lavatory and a bucket her courage almost failed her. It was so dark outside, so terribly dark. And it was still a long way to the door of Capricorn's house.\n\nI must try, she whispered to herself before she opened the door. I must, I must!\n\nThe guard caught up with her on the fifth stair. He carried her back over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. 'And next time I'll take you to the boss!' he said before pushing her back into the room. 'He'll think up a good punishment for you.'\n\nShe cried for almost half an hour, while Fenoglio sat beside her staring unhappily into space. 'It's all right,' he kept murmuring, but nothing was all right, nothing at all.\n\n'We don't even have a light in here,' she finally sobbed. 'And they've taken my books away.'\n\nAt that Fenoglio reached under his pillow and put a torch on her lap. 'I found it under my mattress,' he whispered. 'With a few books too. Who would have thought someone had hidden them there?'\n\nDarius, the reader. Meggie could remember how the thin little man had come hurrying up the nave of Capricorn's church with his pile of books. The torch must surely be his. How long had Capricorn kept him prisoner in this bare little room?\n\n'There was a blanket in the cupboard as well,' whispered Fenoglio. 'I put it on the top bunk for you. Can't get up there myself, I'm afraid \u2013 when I tried the whole thing swayed like a ship at sea.'\n\n'I'd rather sleep in the top bunk anyway,' murmured Meggie, rubbing her sleeve over her face. She didn't want to cry any more. It was no good anyway.\n\nFenoglio had put some of Darius's books on the bunk along with the blanket for her. Meggie carefully laid them out side by side. They were almost all books for grown-ups: a well-worn thriller, a book about snakes, another about Alexander the Great, the Odyssey. The only books for children were a collection of fairy tales and Peter Pan \u2013 and she had read Peter Pan at least half a dozen times already.\n\nOutside, the guard struck out with his newspaper again, and below her Fenoglio tossed and turned restlessly on the narrow bunk. Meggie knew she wouldn't be able to sleep, so there was no point even trying. Once again she looked at the strange books. Closed doors, all of them. Which should she open? Behind which of them would she forget all of this, Basta and Capricorn, Inkheart, herself, everything? She put aside the thriller and the book about Alexander the Great, hesitated \u2013 and picked up the Odyssey. It was a worn little volume; Darius must have liked it very much. He had even underlined some passages, one of them so hard that his pencil had almost gone through the paper: But hard as he tried, he could not save his friends. Undecidedly, Meggie leafed through the worn pages, then closed the book and put it down. No. She knew the story well enough to realise that she was almost as afraid of the Greek heroes as she was of Capricorn's men. She wiped a lingering tear away from her cheek, and let her hand hover over the other books. Fairy tales. She wasn't particularly fond of fairy tales, but the book looked attractive. The pages rustled as Meggie browsed through them. They were thin as tracing paper and covered with tiny print. There were wonderful illustrations of dwarves and fairies, and the stories told tales of mighty beings tall as giants, strong as bears, even immortal, but they were all malignant: the giants ate human beings, the dwarves were greedy for gold, the fairies were malicious and bore a grudge. No. Meggie turned the torch on the last book. Peter Pan.\n\nThe fairy in that book wasn't very nice either, but at least Meggie knew the world awaiting her between its covers very well. Perhaps it was just the thing for such a dark night. An owl screeched outside, but otherwise all was still in Capricorn's village. Fenoglio murmured something in his sleep and began to snore. Meggie snuggled down under the scratchy blanket, took Mo's sweater out of her rucksack and put it under her head.\n\n'Please,' she whispered as she opened the book, 'please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away.' Outside, the guard muttered something to himself. He was probably bored to death. The floorboards creaked under his tread as he paced up and down outside the locked door.\n\n'Take me away from here,' whispered Meggie, 'please take me away from here.'\n\nShe let her finger run along the lines, over the rough, sandy paper, while her eyes followed the letters to another, colder place, in another time, to a house without locked doors and black-jacketed thugs. A moment after the fairy's entrance the window was blown open, whispered Meggie, hearing the sound of the window creaking as it opened, blown open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in. He had carried Tinker Bell part of the way, and his hand was still messy with the fairy dust. Fairies, thought Meggie. I can see why Dustfinger misses the fairies. No, that was not allowed. She mustn't think of Dustfinger, only of Tinker Bell and Peter Pan, and Wendy lying in her bed, knowing nothing yet of the strange boy who had flown into her room dressed in leaves and cobwebs. 'Tinker Bell,' he called softly, after making sure that the children were asleep. 'Tink, where are you?' She was in a jug for the moment, and liking it extremely; she had never been in a jug before. Tinker Bell. Meggie whispered the name twice; she had always liked the sound of it, you clicked your tongue against your teeth, and then there was the soft B sound slipping out of your lips like a kiss. 'Oh, do come out of that jug, and tell me, do you know where they put my shadow?' The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before. If I could fly like Tinker Bell, thought Meggie, I could simply climb out on the windowsill and fly away. I wouldn't have to worry about the snakes, and I'd find Mo before he gets here. He must have lost the way. Yes, that must be it. But suppose something had happened to him... Meggie shook her head as if to drive away the bad thoughts that had wormed their way into her mind yet again. Tink said that the shadow was in the big box, she whispered. She meant the chest of drawers, and Peter jumped at the drawers, scattering their contents to the ground with both hands...\n\nMeggie stopped. There was something bright in the room. She switched the torch off, but the light was still there, a thousand times brighter than the night-lights... and when it came to rest for a second, whispered Meggie, you saw it was a... She did not speak the word aloud. She just followed the light with her eyes as it flew round the room, very fast, faster than a glow-worm and much larger.\n\n'Fenoglio!' She couldn't hear any sound from the guard outside the door. Perhaps he'd gone to sleep. Meggie leaned over the side of the bunk until she could touch Fenoglio's shoulder. 'Fenoglio, look!' She shook him until he finally opened his eyes. Suppose the little creature flew out of the window?\n\nMeggie slid down from the top bunk, and shut the window so quickly that she almost caught one of the shimmering wings in it. The fairy, alarmed, whirred away. Meggie thought she heard an indignant chirrup.\n\nFenoglio stared at the shining little creature, his eyes heavy with sleep. 'What is it?' he asked hoarsely. 'A mutated glow-worm?'\n\nMeggie went back to the bed without taking her eyes off the fairy, who was darting faster and faster round the little room like a lost butterfly, up to the ceiling, back to the door, over to the window again. She kept returning to the window. Meggie put the book on Fenoglio's lap.\n\n'Peter Pan.' He looked at the book, then at the fairy, then at the book again.\n\n'I didn't mean to do it!' whispered Meggie. 'Really I didn't.'\n\nThe fairy kept colliding with the window again and again.\n\n'No!' Meggie hurried over to her. 'You mustn't go out! You don't understand.' It was a fairy, no longer than your hand, but still growing. It was a girl called Tinker Bell, exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf.\n\n'Someone's coming!' Fenoglio sat up in such a hurry that he hit his head on the top bunk. He was right. Out in the corridor footsteps were approaching, rapid, firm footsteps. Meggie retreated to the window. What did it mean? It was the middle of the night. Perhaps Mo's arrived, she thought, Mo is here. Although she didn't want to feel glad of it, her heart leaped with joy.\n\n'Hide her!' whispered Fenoglio. 'Quick, hide her!'\n\nMeggie looked at him, confused. Of course. The fairy. They mustn't find her. Meggie tried to catch Tinker Bell, but the fairy slipped through her fingers and whirred up to the ceiling, where she hovered like a light made of invisible glass.\n\nThe footsteps were very close now. 'Call that keeping watch?' It was Basta's voice. Meggie heard a hollow groan; he had probably woken the guard with a kick. 'Unlock that door, and get a move on. I don't have forever.'\n\nSomeone put a key in the lock. 'That's the wrong one, you dozy idiot! Capricorn wants to see the girl, and I shall tell him why he's had to wait so long.'\n\nMeggie climbed up on her bed. The bunk swayed alarmingly as she stood on it. 'Tinker Bell!' she whispered. 'Please! Come here!' But as she reached out her hand, the fairy flew back to the window \u2013 and Basta opened the door.\n\n'Hey, where did that come from?' he asked, standing in the doorway. 'It's years since I saw one of those fluttery things.'\n\nMeggie and Fenoglio said nothing \u2013 what was there to say?\n\n'You needn't think you can wriggle out of telling me!' Basta took off his jacket and went slowly over to the window, holding it in his left hand. 'You stand in the doorway in case it gets away from me!' he told the guard. 'And if you let it get past you I shall slice off your ears.'\n\n'Leave her alone!' Meggie slid hastily down from the bed again, but Basta moved faster. He threw his jacket. Tinker Bell's light disappeared, snuffed out like a candle. There was a faint twitching under the jacket as it fell to the floor. Basta picked it up carefully, holding it together like a sack, went over to Meggie and stopped in front of her. 'Well, sweetheart, let's hear your story,' he said in a menacingly quiet voice. 'Where did that fairy come from?'\n\n'I don't know!' uttered Meggie without looking at him. 'She \u2013 she was just suddenly here.'\n\nBasta looked at the guard. 'Ever seen anything like a fairy in these parts?' he asked.\n\nThe guard raised the newspaper, to which a couple of dusty moth wings were still clinging, and slapped the door frame with it, smiling broadly. 'No, but if I did I'd know what to do about it!' he said.\n\n'You're right, those little creatures are as troublesome as midges. But they're supposed to bring luck.' Basta turned back to Meggie. 'Now then, out with it! Where did she come from? I'm not asking you again.'\n\nMeggie couldn't help it: her eyes strayed to the book that Fenoglio had dropped. Basta followed her glance, and picked it up.\n\n'Well, fancy that!' he murmured as he looked at the picture on the cover. The artist had produced a good likeness of Tinker Bell. In real life she was a little paler and a little smaller than the picture suggested, but of course Basta still recognised her. He whistled softly through his teeth, then held the book close to Meggie's face. 'Don't try telling me the old man read her out of this!' he said. 'You did it. I'll bet my knife you did it. Did your father teach you how, or have you just inherited the knack from him? Well, it comes to the same thing.' He stuck the book in his waistband and grasped Meggie's arm. 'Come along, we're going to tell Capricorn about this. I was really supposed to fetch you just to meet an old acquaintance, but I'm sure Capricorn will have no objection to hearing such interesting news.'\n\n'Has my father come?' Meggie did not resist as he forced her out of the door.\n\nBasta shook his head and looked ironically at her. 'Him? No, he hasn't turned up yet,' he said. 'Obviously he thinks more of his own skin than yours. I wouldn't be best pleased with him if I were you.'\n\nMeggie felt two emotions at once \u2013 disappointment as sharp as a prickle, and relief.\n\n'I'll admit I'm rather disappointed in him,' Basta continued. 'I swore he'd come looking for you, but I guess we don't need him any more. Right?' He shook his jacket, and Meggie thought she heard a quiet, desperate tinkling.\n\n'Lock the old man in,' Basta told the guard. 'And if you're snoring again when I get back it will be the worse for you!'\n\nThen he hauled Meggie down the corridor."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Punishment for Traitors",
                "text": "\u2002'What about you?' enquired Lobosch. 'You're not afraid, are you, Krabat?'\n\n\u2002'More than you guess,' said Krabat. 'And not for myself alone.'\n\n\u2014Otfried Preussler, The Satanic Mill\n\nMeggie's shadow followed her like an evil spirit as she and Basta crossed the square outside the church. The glaring floodlights made the moon look faded.\n\nIt was not so bright inside the church. Capricorn's statue, looking down on them in the gloom, was pale and half swallowed up by the shadows. Between the columns it was as dark as if night had fled there to escape the floodlights. Only the place where Capricorn sat, leaning back in his armchair with a contemptuous expression and wrapped in a silk dressing gown that shimmered like peacock feathers, was illuminated by a single lamp. The Magpie stood behind him, appearing little more than a washed-out face above a black dress in the dim light. A fire was burning in one of the braziers at the foot of the steps. The smoke stung Meggie's eyes, and the flickering firelight danced on the red walls and columns as if the whole church were ablaze.\n\n'Hang the rags outside his children's window as a final warning.' Capricorn's voice echoed in Meggie's ears, although he kept it lowered. 'And soak them with petrol until it's seeping out,' he told Cockerell, who was standing at the foot of the steps with two other men. 'When that smell reaches the fool's nostrils first thing in the morning, perhaps he'll finally realise that my patience is at an end.'\n\nCockerell received the order with a brief nod, turned on his heel and signalled to the other two to follow him. Their faces were blackened with soot, and each of the three wore a red rooster's feather in his buttonhole. 'Ah, Silvertongue's daughter!' growled Cockerell sarcastically as he limped past Meggie. 'Well, well, hasn't your father come for you yet? Doesn't seem very keen to see you, does he?' The other two laughed, and Meggie couldn't help the hot blood rising to her face.\n\n'At last!' cried Capricorn, as Basta stopped at the foot of the steps with his prisoner. 'What kept you so long?' Something like a smile passed over the Magpie's face. She had pushed her lower lip out slightly, which gave her thin face a look of great satisfaction. It troubled Meggie much more than Capricorn's mother's usual dark looks.\n\n'The guard couldn't find the right key,' replied Basta irritably. 'And then \u2013 well, I had to catch something.' The fairy began moving again as he held up his jacket, and its fabric bulged with her frenzied attempts to struggle free.\n\n'What's that?' Capricorn's voice sounded impatient. 'Have you taken to catching bats these days?'\n\nBasta's lips quivered with annoyance, but he bit back his reply and, without a word, put his hand under the black cloth. Suppressing a curse, he produced the fairy. 'Devil take these flickery little things!' he said angrily. 'I'd quite forgotten how hard they can bite!'\n\nOne of Tinker Bell's wings was fluttering frantically, the other was held between Basta's fingers. Meggie couldn't watch. She was terribly ashamed of herself for luring this fragile little creature out of her book.\n\nCapricorn looked at the fairy with an expression of distaste. 'Where did that come from? And what kind is it? I never saw one with wings like that before.'\n\nBasta took Peter Pan out of his waistband and put the book down on the steps. 'I think it comes out of here,' he said. 'Look at the picture on the cover. There are more pictures of her inside. And guess who read her out of it.' He squeezed Tinker Bell so hard that she gulped silently for air, while he laid his other hand on Meggie's shoulder. She tried to shake his fingers off, but Basta merely tightened his grip.\n\n'The girl?' Capricorn sounded incredulous.\n\n'Yes, and it seems as though she's as good at it as her father. Look at this fairy.' Basta grabbed Tinker Bell's slender legs and dangled her up in the air. 'Seems perfectly all right, doesn't she? She can fly and scold and make tinkling sounds, all the things those stupid fairies do.'\n\n'Interesting. Yes, very interesting indeed.' Capricorn rose from his chair, tightened the belt of his dressing gown and came down the steps. He stopped beside the book that Basta had put down on them. 'So it runs in the family!' he murmured as he bent to pick it up. Frowning, he looked at the cover. 'Peter Pan,' he read. 'Why, that's one of the books my old reader Darius particularly liked. Yes, now I remember. He once read to me from it. The idea was to lure out one of those pirates, but he failed miserably. He fetched a load of stinking fish and a rusty grappling iron into my bedroom instead. Didn't we punish him by making him eat the fish?'\n\nBasta laughed. 'Yes, but he was even more upset that you had his books taken away. He must have hidden this one.'\n\n'So he must.' Capricorn went over to Meggie, looking thoughtful. She would have liked to bite his fingers when he put his hand under her chin, turning her face so that she had to look straight into his lifeless eyes. 'See how she looks at me, Basta?' he remarked mockingly. 'Just as obstinate as her father always was. Better save that look for him, sweetheart. You're very angry with your father, I'm sure. But I couldn't care less where he is. Because from now on I have you, my new, my wonderfully talented reader \u2013 whereas you, well, you must hate him for abandoning you, right? Don't be ashamed of it. Hatred can be very inspiring. I never liked my own father either.'\n\nMeggie turned her head aside when Capricorn finally let go of her chin. Her face was burning with shame and fury, and she could still feel his fingers as if they had left marks on her skin.\n\n'Did Basta tell you why he was to bring you here so late at night?'\n\n'To meet someone.' Meggie tried to make her voice sound bold and unafraid, but she didn't succeed. The sobs in her throat would let only a whisper emerge.\n\n'That's right!' Capricorn gave the Magpie a signal. She came down the steps and disappeared into the dark beyond the columns. A little later there was a creaking sound above Meggie's head, and when she looked up to the roof in alarm she saw something being lowered from the darkness: a net, no, two nets such as she had seen in fishing boats. They stopped and hung there about five metres above the floor, just over Meggie's head, and only then did she see human figures caught in the coarse ropes \u2013 like birds entangled in the netting over a fruit tree. Meggie was feeling dizzy just from looking up. What must it be like to be dangling there, held only by a few cords?\n\n'Well, don't you recognise your old friend?' Capricorn put his hands in his dressing-gown pockets. Tinker Bell was still held in Basta's fingers like a broken doll. Her faint tinkling was the only sound to be heard. 'Yes, I see you do!' There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Capricorn's voice. 'That's what happens to filthy little traitors who steal keys and set prisoners free.'\n\nMeggie refused to look at Capricorn. She had eyes only for Dustfinger.\n\n'Hello, Meggie! You look rather pale!' he called down. He was trying very hard to sound light-hearted, but Meggie heard the terror in his voice. She knew what voices meant. 'I'm to give you love from your father! He'll come for you soon, he says, and he won't come alone.'\n\n'You'll make a teller of fairy tales yet if you carry on like that, fire-eater!' Basta called up. 'But even the girl here doesn't believe that tale. You'll have to think up something better!'\n\nMeggie stared up at Dustfinger. She so wanted to believe him.\n\n'Basta, let go of that poor fairy!' he called to his old enemy. 'Send her up to me. It's far too long since I saw one of those.'\n\n'Oh, I bet you'd like that. No, I'm keeping her for myself!' replied Basta, flicking Tinker Bell's tiny nose with his finger. 'I've heard that fairies keep bad luck away if you keep them in your house. I'll put her in one of those big glass wine jugs. You were always so keen on fairies \u2013 what do they eat? Do I feed her flies, or what?'\n\nTinker Bell braced her arms against his fingers and tried desperately to free her second wing. She managed it too, but Basta had a strong grip on her legs, and hard as she fluttered she couldn't break free. At last, with a quiet tinkle, she gave up. Her light was hardly any brighter now than a candle flickering out.\n\n'Do you know why I had the girl brought here, Dustfinger?' Capricorn called up to his prisoner. 'She was to persuade you to tell us something about her father and where he is \u2013 if you really know anything, which I begin to doubt. But now I don't need the information any more. The daughter can take her father's place, and just at the right time too! For I've decided that we must think up something really special for your punishment. Something impressive, something memorable! After all, that's only right for a traitor, isn't it? Can you guess what my idea is? No? Then let me give you a clue. In your honour, my new reader will read aloud to us from Inkheart. It's your favourite book, after all, even though I know you're not very fond of the character I want her to bring out of it. Her father would have fetched that old friend for me long ago if you hadn't helped him to escape, but now his daughter will do it. Can you guess who it is I mean?'\n\nDustfinger laid his scarred cheek against the net. 'Oh yes, indeed I can. How could I ever forget him?' he said, so quietly that Meggie could hardly make out the words.\n\n'Why are you talking only about the fire-eater's punishment?' The Magpie had appeared between the columns again. 'Have you forgotten our little mute pigeon Resa? Her treachery was at least as bad as his.' She looked up at the second net with a disdainful expression.\n\n'Yes, to be sure!' There was something almost like regret in Capricorn's voice. 'Ah, what a waste \u2013 but there's nothing else for it.'\n\nMeggie couldn't see the face of the woman dangling in the second net just beyond Dustfinger. She saw only the dark blonde hair, a blue dress, and slender hands clinging to the ropes.\n\nCapricorn sighed heavily. 'It really is a shame,' he said, turning to Dustfinger. 'Why did you have to pick on her, of all people? Couldn't you have persuaded one of the others to go nosing around for you? I really have had a weakness for her, ever since that useless Darius read her out of the book for me. It never bothered me that she lost her voice in the process. No, far from it, I stupidly assumed that meant I could trust her more. Did you know her hair used to look like spun gold?'\n\n'Yes, I remember that,' said Dustfinger hoarsely. 'But in your presence it's turned darker.'\n\n'Nonsense!' Capricorn frowned with annoyance. 'Maybe we should try fairy dust. Sprinkled with a little fairy dust, they say, even brass will look like gold. Perhaps it works on a woman's hair as well.'\n\n'Hardly worth the trouble!' said the Magpie mockingly. 'Unless you want her to look particularly beautiful for her execution.'\n\n'Oh, never mind.' Capricorn turned abruptly and went back to the steps. Meggie hardly noticed. She was looking up at the strange woman. Capricorn's words were working away feverishly in her mind: hair like spun gold... that useless reader Darius... no, it couldn't be true. She stared up, narrowing her eyes to see the face better through the ropes, but it was hidden in dark shadows.\n\n'Good.' Capricorn dropped into his chair again with another heavy sigh. 'How long shall we need for the preparations? It all ought to be done properly, I think.'\n\n'Two days.' The Magpie climbed the steps and took up her position behind him. 'If you want to summon the men from the other bases, that is.'\n\nCapricorn frowned. 'Yes, why not? It's time to set everyone a little example. Discipline has left much to be desired recently.' He looked at Basta as he said this, and Basta bowed his head as if all the misdemeanours of the last few days weighed heavily on him. 'The day after tomorrow, then,' Capricorn went on. 'When darkness falls. I want Darius to carry out another experiment with the girl first. Get her to read something out of a book, anything \u2013 I just want to make sure that fairy didn't turn up by pure chance.'\n\nBasta had wrapped Tinker Bell in his jacket again. Meggie wanted to put her hands over her ears so as not to hear the feeble tinkling sounds the fairy was making. She pressed her lips together to stop them trembling, and looked up at Capricorn.\n\n'But I won't read aloud for you!' she said. Her voice rang out through the church at twice its usual volume. 'Not a word! I won't read you out any treasure, and I certainly won't read out some kind of \u2013 of executioner!' She spat the word into Capricorn's face.\n\nBut Capricorn only toyed with the belt of his dressing gown, looking bored. 'Take her away,' he told Basta. 'It's late. The child must get some sleep.'\n\nBasta prodded Meggie in the back. 'You heard. Go on, get moving.'\n\nMeggie looked up at Dustfinger one last time, and then walked uncertainly down the nave ahead of Basta. When she had passed below the second net she looked up again. The unknown woman's face was still hidden, but she thought she could make out her eyes, and a slender nose... and if she imagined the hair rather lighter in colour\u2014\n\n'Go on, I said!' snapped Basta.\n\nMeggie obeyed, but she kept looking back. 'I won't do it!' she cried when she had almost reached the church porch. 'I swear! I won't read anyone here. Ever!'\n\n'Oh, don't swear oaths you can't keep!' whispered Basta as he pushed the door open and led her out into the brightly floodlit square."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Black Horse of the Night",
                "text": "\u2002He bent down and lifted Sophie from his pocket... She was still in her nightie and her feet were bare. She shivered and stared around her at the swirling mists and ghostly vapours.\n\n\u2002'Where are we?' she asked.\n\n\u2002'We is in Dream Country,' the BFG said. 'This is where all dreams is beginning.'\n\n\u2014Roald Dahl, The BFG\n\nFenoglio was lying on his bed when Basta pushed Meggie in through the door.\n\n'What have you done to her?' he demanded of Basta, swiftly getting to his feet. 'She's white as a sheet!'\n\nBut Basta had already closed the door behind him. 'You'll be relieved in two hours,' Meggie heard him tell the guard. Then he was gone.\n\nFenoglio put his hands on Meggie's shoulders and looked into her face with concern. 'Come on, tell me. What did they want you for? Is your father here?'\n\nMeggie shook her head. 'They've caught Dustfinger,' she said. 'And a woman.'\n\n'What woman? Heavens, what a state you're in!' Fenoglio drew her over to the bed, and Meggie sat down beside him.\n\n'I think she's my mother,' she whispered.\n\n'Your mother?' Fenoglio looked at her in astonishment. His eyes were bloodshot from his sleepless night.\n\nDistractedly, Meggie smoothed down her skirt. It was dirty and crumpled. No wonder, she'd been sleeping in it for days. 'Her hair's darker now,' she stammered, 'and of course Mo's photo of her is nine years old... Capricorn has her in a net, and Dustfinger too. He's going to have them both executed in two days' time, and I'm supposed to read someone out of Inkheart to do it \u2013 that friend, as Capricorn calls him. I told you. Mo was supposed to be going to do it. You wouldn't tell me who the friend was, but now you must!' She looked pleadingly at Fenoglio.\n\nThe old man closed his eyes. 'Merciful heaven!' he murmured.\n\nOutside, it was still dark. The moon hung in the sky in front of their window, with a cloud drifting past it like a tattered dress.\n\n'I'll tell you tomorrow,' said Fenoglio. 'That's a promise.'\n\n'No! Tell me now.'\n\nHe looked at her thoughtfully. 'It's not a story for this hour of the night. You'll have bad dreams afterwards.'\n\n'Tell me!' Meggie repeated.\n\nFenoglio sighed. 'Oh dear. I know that look from my grandchildren,' he said. 'Very well, then.' He helped her up to her bunk, put Mo's sweater under her head and pulled the blanket up to her chin. 'I'll tell it to you the way I wrote it in Inkheart,' he said quietly. 'I know that passage almost by heart. I was very proud of it at the time.' He cleared his throat before he began, whispering the words into the night. 'But one being was feared even more than Capricorn's men. He was known as the Shadow, and he appeared only when Capricorn called him. Sometimes he was red as fire, sometimes as grey as the ashes into which fire turns all that it devours. He leaped from the ground like flame flickering up from wood. His touch and even his breath brought death. He rose up at his master's feet, soundless and faceless, scenting the air like a dog on the trail, waiting to be shown his victim.' Fenoglio swept a hand over his forehead and looked at the window. It was some time before he went on, as if he were recalling the words to mind from long ago. 'They say,' he continued at last, 'that Capricorn had the Shadow made from his victims' ashes by a troll, or by the dwarves who know all that fire and smoke can do. No one was certain, for it was said that Capricorn had those who had brought the Shadow to life killed afterwards. But everyone knew one thing: the Shadow was immortal and invulnerable, and as pitiless as his master.'\n\nFenoglio fell silent. And Meggie, her heart beating fast, gazed out at the night.\n\n'Yes, Meggie,' Fenoglio said at last in a low voice. 'I think Capricorn wants you to fetch him the Shadow. And God have mercy on us if you succeed. There are many monsters in this world, most of them human and all of them mortal. I would not like to have an immortal monster on my conscience, a monster spreading fear and terror here for all time. Your father had an idea when he came to see me \u2013 I've already mentioned it to you, and it may be our only chance, but I just don't know how it will work yet. I must think hard. We don't have much time, and you ought to get some sleep now. When did you say this is to happen \u2013 the day after tomorrow?'\n\nMeggie nodded. 'As soon as dusk falls,' she whispered.\n\nFenoglio passed a weary hand over his face. 'Don't worry about the woman,' he said. 'You may not want to hear this, but I don't think she can possibly be your mother, much as you may wish she were. How could she have come here?'\n\n'It was Darius!' Meggie buried her face in Mo's sweater. 'The stupid man who can't read aloud well enough. Capricorn said so: he read her back out of Inkheart and she lost her voice coming out of the book. She's back, I'm sure she is, and Mo doesn't know! He thinks she's still stuck in the story.'\n\n'Well, if you're right, then I wish she really were still there,' muttered Fenoglio, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders again with a sigh. 'I still think you're wrong, but believe what you like! And now go to sleep.'\n\nBut of course Meggie couldn't sleep. She lay there with her face to the wall, listening to her own heart. Fear and joy mingled there like two colours running into each other. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw the nets and the two faces there among the cords, Dustfinger's and the other face, blurred as an old photograph. Hard as she tried to see it more clearly, it always faded again.\n\nDawn was breaking outside by the time she finally fell asleep, but the nightmares hadn't finished with her yet. They grew especially fast in the grey time between night and day, spinning an eternity out of seconds. One-eyed ogres and giant spiders stole into Meggie's sleep, hounds of hell, witches who ate children, all the bugbears she had ever met in stories. They crept out of the box that Mo had made her and jumped from the pages of her favourite books. Even the monsters came out of the picture books that Mo had given her before she knew the alphabet. They danced through Meggie's dream, brightly coloured and shaggy, their wide mouths smiling, baring their pointed little teeth. There was the Cheshire Cat she had always been so afraid of, and here came the Wild Things that Mo liked so much he had hung a picture of them in his workshop. How huge their teeth were! Dustfinger would be crunched between those fangs like crispbread. But just as one of them was stretching out his claws, the one with eyes as big as saucers, a new figure came out of the grey void, hissing like a flame, ashen-grey and faceless, seized the Wild Thing and tore it into scraps of paper.\n\n'Meggie!'\n\nThe monsters vanished, and the sun was shining on Meggie's face. Fenoglio was standing beside her bed. 'You were dreaming.'\n\nMeggie sat up. The old man's face looked as if he hadn't closed his eyes all night and he had several new wrinkles. 'Where's my father, Fenoglio?' she asked. 'Oh, why doesn't he come?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Farid",
                "text": "Ali Baba... was surprised to see a well-lighted and spacious chamber... filled with all sorts of provisions, rich bales of silks, embroideries, and valuable tissues, piled upon one another, gold and silver ingots in great heaps, and money in bags. The sight of all these riches made him suppose that this cave must have been occupied for ages by robbers, who had succeeded one another.\n\n\u2014'The Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves', from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, tr. Edward William Lane\n\nFarid stared at the dark until his eyes hurt, but Dustfinger did not return. Sometimes Farid thought he saw his scarred face among the low-growing branches. Sometimes he thought he heard his almost silent footsteps on the dead leaves, but he was always wrong. Farid was used to listening to the sounds of the night. He had spent endless hours doing so back in his other life, when the world around him was not green but brown and yellow; his eyes had often let him down, but he had always been able to rely on his ears.\n\nAll the same, Farid listened in vain that night, the longest night of his life. Dustfinger didn't come back. When day began to dawn above the hills Farid went to the two captives, gave them water, a little of the dry bread they still had left, and a few olives.\n\n'Come on, Farid, untie us!' said Silvertongue as Farid put the bread in his mouth. 'Dustfinger should have been back by now, you know he should.'\n\nFarid said nothing. He loved to hear Silvertongue's voice. It had lured him out of his old, wretched life, but it seemed that Dustfinger didn't like it any more, he didn't know why \u2013 and Dustfinger had told him to keep watch on the prisoners. He had said nothing about untying them.\n\n'Look, you're a clever lad,' said the woman, 'so use your head for a moment, will you? Are you going to sit here until Capricorn's men come and find us? What a sight we'll be: a boy watching two captives who can't lift a finger to help him. They'll fall about laughing.'\n\nWhat was she called again? Eli-nor. Farid had difficulty remembering the name. It was awkward as a pebble on his tongue, and sounded like the name of an enchantress from a far-distant land. He thought her unnatural; she looked at him as a man might look, without timidity or fear, and her voice could be very loud and as angry as a lion's roar.\n\n'We have to get down to the village, Farid!' said Silvertongue. 'We must find out what's happened to Dustfinger \u2013 and where my daughter is.'\n\nYes, the girl \u2013 the girl with the clear, bright eyes, little pieces of sky fallen to the earth and caught in her dark lashes. Farid poked the ground with a stick. An ant was carrying a breadcrumb bigger than itself past his toes.\n\n'Perhaps he doesn't understand what we're saying,' said Elinor.\n\nFarid raised his head and cast her a glance of annoyance. 'Yes, I do. I understand everything.' And so he had, from the first moment, as if he had never heard any other language. He remembered the red church. Dustfinger had explained that it was a church, although Farid had never seen such a building before. He also remembered the man with the knife. There had been a great many such men in his old life. They loved their knives and did terrible things with them.\n\n'You'll run off if I untie you.' Farid looked uncertainly at Silvertongue.\n\n'No, I won't. Do you think I'd leave my daughter down there with Basta and Capricorn?'\n\nBasta and Capricorn. Yes, those had been the names. The knife-man and the man with the eyes as colourless as water. A robber, a murderer... Farid knew all about him. Dustfinger had told him a great deal as they sat together by the fire in the evening. They had exchanged sad stories, although both of them longed for one with a happy ending.\n\nNow this story, too, was growing darker with each day that passed.\n\n'It'll be better if I go alone.' Farid dug the stick so hard into the ground that it broke in his fingers. 'I'm used to slinking into strange villages, strange palaces and houses \u2013 it was my job in the old days. If you know what I mean.'\n\nSilvertongue nodded.\n\n'They always sent me,' Farid went on. 'Who'd be afraid of a thin young boy? I could sniff around everywhere without arousing suspicion. When did the guards change? Which was the best way of escape? Where did the richest man in the village live? If all went well they gave me enough to eat. If it did not they beat me like a dog.'\n\n'They?' asked Elinor.\n\n'The thieves,' replied Farid.\n\nThe two adults fell silent. And Dustfinger still wasn't back. Farid looked towards the village and saw the first rays of the sun rising above its rooftops.\n\n'Very well. You may be right,' said Silvertongue. 'You go down alone and find out what we need to know, but first untie us. If you don't we won't be able to help you if they do catch you. And I don't fancy sitting here tied up like this when the first snake wriggles past.'\n\nThe woman looked as frightened as if she already heard it rustling through the dead leaves. But Farid looked thoughtfully at Silvertongue's face, trying to decide whether his eyes could trust him as his ears already did. Finally he stood up without a word, took the knife Dustfinger had given him from his belt, and cut them both free.\n\n'My God, I'm never letting anyone tie me up like that again!' said Elinor, rubbing her arms and legs. 'I feel as numb as a rag doll. How are you, Mortimer? Can you still feel your feet?'\n\nFarid looked at her curiously. 'You don't look like his wife. Are you his mother?' he asked, nodding in Silvertongue's direction.\n\nElinor's face came out in more red blotches than a toadstool. 'Good Lord above, no! What makes you think that? Do I really look so old?' Glancing down at herself, she sighed. 'Yes, I probably do. All the same, I'm not his mother. I'm not Meggie's mother either, in case that's your next question. My children were all made of paper and printer's ink, and that man,' she said, pointing to the rooftops of Capricorn's village shining through the trees, 'that man down there destroyed a great many of them. Believe me, he'll regret it.'\n\nFarid looked at her doubtfully. He couldn't imagine Capricorn being afraid of a woman, certainly not one who got out of breath when she climbed a hill and was scared of snakes. No, if the man with the pale eyes feared anything it would be what most people feared \u2013 death. And Elinor didn't look as if she knew much about killing. Nor did Silvertongue.\n\n'The girl...' Farid hesitated before asking, 'Where is her mother?'\n\nSilvertongue went over to the cold fireplace and took a piece of the bread lying among the soot-blackened stones. 'She went away long ago,' he said. 'Meggie was just three. What about your own mother?'\n\nFarid shrugged his shoulders and looked up at the sky. It was as blue as if the night had never been. 'I'd better go now,' he said, putting his knife away and picking up Dustfinger's rucksack. Gwin was sleeping close to it, curled up between the roots of a tree. Farid picked him up and put him in the rucksack. The marten sleepily protested, but Farid tickled his head and strapped the rucksack up.\n\n'Why are you taking that marten?' asked Elinor in surprise. 'The smell of him could give you away.'\n\n'He may come in useful,' replied Farid, pushing the tip of Gwin's bushy tail into the rucksack too. 'He's clever. Cleverer than a dog or a camel, anyway. He understands what you say to him, and maybe he'll find Dustfinger.'\n\n'Farid.' Silvertongue was searching his pockets, and took out a piece of paper. 'I don't know whether you'll be able to find out where they're keeping Meggie prisoner,' he said, hastily scribbling something with the stump of a pencil, 'but if possible can you try to see she gets this note?'\n\nFarid took the piece of paper and looked at it. 'What does it say?' he asked.\n\nElinor took the note from his hand. 'Heavens above, Mortimer, what's this?' she asked.\n\nSilvertongue smiled. 'Meggie and I have often sent secret messages in this writing \u2013 she's much better at it than I am. Don't you recognise it? It comes from a book. We're not far away, it says. Don't worry. We'll soon get you out. Mo, Elinor and Farid. Meggie will be able to read the message, but no one else will.'\n\n'Aha!' murmured Elinor, giving Farid the note back. 'Yes, if it falls into the wrong hands it's better that way. After all, perhaps some of those fire-raisers can read.'\n\nFarid folded the note until it was about the size of a coin, then put it in his trouser pocket. 'I'll be back when the sun is above those hills at the latest,' he said. 'Or if I'm not\u2014'\n\n'If you're not, I'll come and look for you,' Silvertongue ended the sentence.\n\n'And so will I, of course,' added Elinor, looking fierce.\n\nFarid did not think that was a good idea, but he didn't say so. He left, going the same way that Dustfinger had gone the night before, disappearing as if the ghosts who lurked in the darkness had eaten him alive."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Furry Face on the Windowsill",
                "text": "\u2002It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.\n\n\u2014Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass\n\nFlatnose brought Meggie and Fenoglio their breakfast, and this morning it was more than bread and a few olives. He put a basket of fruit on the table for them, and a plate of small, sweet cakes. But Meggie didn't at all like the smile he served up at the same time.\n\n'All for you, princess!' he grunted, pinching her cheek with his clumsy fingers. 'To strengthen your little voice. There's been a lot of excitement since Basta told us about the execution. Well, like I always said, there has to be more to life than hanging up a few dead roosters and shooting cats.'\n\nMeggie exchanged a glance with Fenoglio. The old man was staring at Flatnose with an expression of disgust which suggested that he couldn't believe such a creature had slipped from his pen.\n\n'Yes, to be sure, it's a terribly long time since we had a nice execution!' continued Flatnose, on his way back to the door. 'It'd attract too much attention, they always said. And when someone really had to disappear \u2013 well, the word was to go carefully! Make it look like an accident. Is that any fun? You bet it isn't. Not like it used to be, a good execution with eating and drinking and dancing and music, that's the way to do it in style! And so we will this time \u2013 just like we did back in the good old days!'\n\nFenoglio took a sip of the black coffee that Flatnose had brought him, and choked.\n\n'Don't you fancy that kind of thing, grandpa?' Flatnose looked at him sneeringly. 'Take my word for it, Capricorn's executions are something to remember!'\n\n'Who do you think you're telling?' muttered Fenoglio unhappily.\n\nAt that moment someone knocked on the door. Flatnose had left it ajar, and Darius the reader put his head round it.\n\n'Sorry!' he breathed, looking at Flatnose as anxiously as a bird obliged to get close to a hungry cat. 'I \u2013 er \u2013 I'm to get the girl to read something aloud. Capricorn's orders.'\n\n'Really? Well, let's just hope she reads something useful out of a book this time. Basta showed me the fairy. She doesn't even sprinkle any fairy dust, however hard you shake her.' Flatnose looked at Meggie with a mixture of dislike and respect. Perhaps he thought she was some kind of a witch. 'Knock when you want to come out again,' he grunted, pushing past Darius.\n\nDarius nodded and stood there for a moment before sitting down at the table with Meggie and Fenoglio, looking embarrassed. He stared greedily at the fruit until Fenoglio pushed the basket over to him. Tentatively, he took an apricot, and put it into his mouth as if he thought he would never in his life taste anything so delicious again.\n\n'Good heavens, it's only an apricot!' laughed Fenoglio. 'Not exactly a rare fruit in these latitudes.'\n\nDarius spat the apricot stone out into his hand, still looking awkward. 'Whenever they shut me up in this room,' he said timidly, 'they gave me nothing but dry bread. And they took my books away too, but I managed to hide some of them, and when the hunger got too bad I looked at the pictures in them. The best was a picture of apricots. I sometimes sat for hours staring at the painted fruit with my mouth watering. Ever since then I just can't control myself when I see apricots.'\n\nMeggie took another apricot from the basket and put it into his hand. 'Did they often shut you up?' she asked.\n\nThe thin little man shrugged. 'Yes, whenever I didn't read something out of a book properly,' he replied evasively. 'Well, that meant all the time, really. Then they finally gave up because they realised that my reading didn't exactly improve when they frightened me. On the contrary. Take Flatnose, for instance.' He lowered his voice, casting a nervous glance at the door. 'I read Flatnose out while Basta was standing beside me with his knife. Well...' He raised his narrow shoulders regretfully.\n\nMeggie looked at him sympathetically. Then she asked, hesitantly, 'Did you ever read any women out of that story?' Fenoglio looked at her uneasily.\n\n'Certainly,' Darius replied. 'I read Mortola out of the book! She says I made her older, and rickety as a chair cobbled together badly, but I really don't think I got too much wrong with her. Luckily Capricorn agreed.'\n\n'Any younger women?' Meggie was looking at neither Darius nor Fenoglio.\n\n'Oh yes,' Darius sighed. 'On the same day as I read Mortola out. I remember it very well. Capricorn was living up in the north then, at a lonely, half-ruined farm in the mountains, and there weren't many local girls around. I myself was living not far away, in my sister's house. I worked as a teacher, but in my free time I read aloud now and then in libraries and schools, or for children's parties, and sometimes on warm summer evenings, I even read in a square or caf\u00e9. I loved reading aloud.'\n\nHis gaze wandered to the window, as if he could catch a glimpse there of those long-forgotten, happier days. 'I think Basta noticed me when I was reading aloud at a party in the village \u2013 a passage from Dr Dolittle \u2013 and all of a sudden there was a bird flying around. I really didn't know I had the gift \u2013 perhaps it was something to do with Basta being there. Anyway, when I went home Basta caught me as if I were a stray dog and took me to Capricorn. First he made me read gold out of books, like your father did,' he said, smiling sadly at Meggie, 'but then I had to read Mortola out for him, and after that he told me to read his maidservants out too. It was terrible.' Darius pushed his glasses up on his nose with trembling fingers. 'I was so scared. How can you read aloud well when you're terrified? He made me try three times. Oh, I felt so sorry for them, I don't want to talk about it!' He buried his face in his hands, which were bony as an old man's. Meggie thought she heard him sob, and for a moment she hesitated to ask her next question, but then she did.\n\n'The maid they call Resa,' she said, her heart beating in her mouth. 'Was she one of them?'\n\nDarius took his hands away from his face. 'Yes, she came out quite by chance,' he said huskily. 'Capricorn had really wanted another of them, but suddenly there was Resa, and at first I thought I'd got it right for once. She looked so beautiful, almost improbably beautiful with her golden hair and her sad eyes. But then we realised she couldn't speak. Well, that didn't bother Capricorn, in fact I think he liked it.' He searched his trouser pocket and brought out a crumpled handkerchief. 'I really could read better once,' he said, sniffing. 'But this constant fear... May I?' With a sad smile he took another apricot and bit into it. Then he wiped the juice from his mouth with his sleeve, cleared his throat, and gazed straight at Meggie. His eyes looked curiously large behind the thick lenses of his glasses.\n\n'At the \u2013 er \u2013 festivities that Capricorn's planning,' he said, lowering his gaze and running his finger awkwardly along the edge of the table, 'the idea, as you probably know, is for you to read from Inkheart. The book's being kept in a secret place until that time comes. Only Capricorn knows where it is. So you won't see it before the \u2013 er \u2013 occasion. Which means that we're to use another book for the latest test Capricorn wants of your talents. Luckily, there are a few other books in this village, not many, but anyway I've been told to choose something suitable.' He raised his head again and gave a small, slight smile. 'Fortunately I didn't have to look for gold and such treasures this time. All Capricorn wants is proof of your skill, and so,' he said, pushing a small book over the table, 'so I chose this one.'\n\nMeggie bent over the cover. 'Collected Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen,' she read aloud. She looked at Darius. 'They're beautiful stories.'\n\n'Yes,' he breathed. 'Sad, but very, very beautiful.' Reaching over the table, he opened the book for Meggie at a place which he had marked with a couple of long blades of grass slipped between the yellowed pages. 'First I thought of my favourite story, the one about the nightingale. Maybe you know it?' Meggie nodded.\n\n'But the fairy you read out of the book yesterday isn't happy in the jug where Basta has put her,' Darius went on, 'so I thought it might be better if you tried the tin soldier.'\n\nThe tin soldier. Meggie did not reply at once. The brave tin soldier in his little paper boat... she imagined him suddenly appearing beside the fruit basket. 'No!' she said. 'No. I've told Capricorn already, I won't read anything out of a book for him, not even as a test. Tell him I can't do it any more. Just tell him I tried and nothing came out of the story!'\n\nDarius gave her a sympathetic look. 'Oh, I would,' he said quietly. 'Really I would. But it's the Magpie\u2014' he said, quietly putting his hand to his mouth as if he had said too much. 'Sorry, I mean the housekeeper, of course, Signora Mortola \u2013 it's her you have to read aloud to. I've only chosen the story.'\n\nThe Magpie. An image of her flashed into Meggie's mind, watching her with her birdlike eyes. Suppose I bite my tongue, she thought. Very hard. She had done that a few times by mistake, and once her tongue had swelled up so much she had to talk to Mo in sign language for two days. She looked at Fenoglio for help.\n\n'Do it!' he said, to her surprise. 'Read aloud to the old woman, but make it a condition that you can keep the tin soldier. Tell her anything you like \u2013 say you want to play with him because you're bored to death \u2013 and then ask for something else: some sheets of paper and a pencil. Say you want to draw pictures, understand? If she agrees we'll take it from there.'\n\nMeggie didn't understand a word of this, but before she could ask Fenoglio what he was planning the door opened, and there was the Magpie herself.\n\nDarius leaped to his feet so quickly at the sight of her that he pushed Meggie's plate off the table. 'Oh, I'm sorry, so sorry!' he stammered, picking up the broken pieces in his bony fingers. He cut his thumb so deeply on the last piece that blood dripped to the wooden floorboards.\n\n'Get up, you fool!' snapped Mortola. 'Have you shown her what she's to read from?'\n\nDarius nodded, and looked unhappily at his bleeding thumb.\n\n'Then get out. You can help the women in the kitchen. There are chickens to be plucked.'\n\nDarius made a face, looking disgusted, but he bowed and disappeared into the corridor, but not without casting Meggie a last sympathetic glance.\n\n'Right!' said the Magpie, waving to her impatiently. 'Start reading \u2013 and put your mind to it.'\n\nMeggie read the tin soldier out of the story. It was as if he simply fell from the ceiling. 'He dropped down three storeys to the street and his bayonet stuck in the earth between two cobblestones.' The Magpie reached for him before Meggie could, and stared at him as if he were just a painted toy, while he looked back at her with horror in his eyes. Then she put him in the pocket of her coarse-knit woollen jacket.\n\n'Please can I have him?' stammered Meggie, just as the Magpie reached the doorway. Fenoglio placed himself behind her as if to cover her back, but the Magpie just looked at Meggie with her sharp-nosed gaze. 'I \u2013 I mean, there's nothing you'd want to do with him,' Meggie went on uncertainly, 'and I'm so bored. Please.'\n\nThe Magpie looked at her, unmoved. 'You can have him back when Capricorn has seen him,' she said, and then she was gone.\n\n'The paper!' cried Fenoglio. 'You forgot to ask for paper and pencil!'\n\n'I'm sorry,' murmured Meggie. She hadn't forgotten, it was just that she didn't dare ask the Magpie for anything else.\n\n'Ah, well, I'll just have to get it by other means,' said Fenoglio. 'The only question is, how?'\n\nMeggie went over to the window, rested her forehead on the pane and looked down at the garden, where a couple of Capricorn's maids were busy tying up tomato plants. What would Mo say, she wondered, if he knew I can do it too? 'Who did you read out, Meggie? Poor Tinker Bell and the Steadfast Tin Soldier?'...'Yes,' murmured Meggie, tracing an invisible 'M' on the pane with her finger. Poor fairy, poor tin soldier, poor Dustfinger and \u2013 she thought again of the woman with the dark blonde hair. 'Resa,' she whispered. TeResa. Teresa was her mother's name.\n\nShe was about to turn away from the window when out of the corner of her eye she saw something appearing above the sill outside \u2013 a small furry face. Meggie retreated in alarm.\n\nDo rats climb walls? Yes, but that wasn't a rat, the animal's muzzle wasn't pointed enough. She quickly ran back to the windowpane.\n\nGwin.\n\nThe marten was sitting on the narrow sill, looking in at her with sleepy eyes.\n\n'Basta!' muttered Fenoglio behind her. 'Yes, Basta will get me the paper. That's a good idea.'\n\nMeggie opened the window very slowly, so that Gwin wouldn't take fright and perhaps fall off the sill. Even a marten would break all his bones if he fell into the paved yard from this height. She put out her hand, still very slowly. Her fingers trembled as she stroked Gwin's back. Then she grabbed him before his little teeth could snap at her, and quickly lifted him into the room. She looked anxiously down, but none of the maids had noticed anything. They were all bending over the vegetable patch, their clothes drenched with perspiration from the heat of the sun burning down on their backs.\n\nThere was a note under Gwin's collar. It was dirty, and had been folded very small and tied in place with a piece of tape.\n\n'Why are you opening the window? The air outside is even hotter than in here. We\u2014' Fenoglio broke off and stared in amazement at the animal in Meggie's arms. She quickly put a warning finger to her lips. Then, holding the struggling Gwin tight, she removed the note from under his collar. The marten chattered crossly and snapped at her fingers again. He didn't like being held too long, and would even bite Dustfinger if he tried it.\n\n'What have you got there \u2013 a rat?' Fenoglio came closer. Meggie let go of the marten, and Gwin immediately leaped back to the windowsill.\n\n'A marten!' cried the astonished Fenoglio. 'Where did that come from?' Meggie looked anxiously at the door, but obviously the guard outside had heard nothing. Fenoglio pressed his hand to his mouth, and looked again at Gwin in such amazement that Meggie almost laughed. 'He's got horns!' he whispered.\n\n'Of course! That's the way you wrote him!' she whispered back.\n\nGwin was still sitting on the windowsill, blinking uncomfortably at the sun. He didn't like bright light and preferred to sleep through the day. So how had he got here?\n\nMeggie put her head out of the window, but there were still only the maids down in the yard. Hastily, she moved back into the room and unfolded the note.\n\n'A message?' Fenoglio leaned over her shoulder. 'Is it from your father?'\n\nMeggie nodded. She had recognised the writing at once, although it wasn't as steady as usual. Her heart began dancing inside her. She traced the letters with her eyes as longingly as if they were a path with Mo waiting for her at the end of it.\n\n'What on earth does it say? I can't make out a word of it!' whispered Fenoglio.\n\nMeggie smiled. 'It's elvish writing!' she whispered. 'Mo and I have been using it as our secret writing ever since I read The Lord of the Rings, but he's probably rather out of practice. He's made quite a lot of mistakes.'\n\n'Well, what does it say?'\n\nMeggie read it to him.\n\n'Farid \u2013 who's he?'\n\n'A boy. Mo read him out of The Thousand and One Nights, but that's another story. You saw him \u2013 when Dustfinger ran away from you Farid was with him.' Meggie folded the note up again and looked out of the window once more. One of the maids had straightened up. She was brushing the earth off her hands and looking up at the high wall as if she dreamed of flying away over it. Who had brought Gwin here? Mo? Or had the marten found his way by himself? That was most unlikely. He certainly wouldn't be wandering round in broad daylight unless someone else had a hand in it.\n\nMeggie hid the note in the sleeve of her dress. Gwin was still sitting on the windowsill. Sleepily, he stretched his neck and sniffed at the wall outside. Perhaps he could smell the pigeons who sometimes settled outside the window. 'Feed him some bread so he won't run away!' Meggie whispered to Fenoglio, and then went over to the bed and got her rucksack down. Where was that pencil? She was sure she had a pencil. Yes, there it was, although it was only a small stump. Now, what about paper? She took one of Darius's books out from under the mattress and carefully tore out one of the endpapers. She had never done such a thing before \u2013 fancy tearing a page out of a book! \u2013 but now she had to. Kneeling on the floor, she began to write in the same curly script that Mo had used for his message. She knew the letters off by heart: We're all right and I can do it too, Mo! I read Tinker Bell out of her book, and when it gets dark tomorrow Capricorn wants me to bring the Shadow out of 'Inkheart' to come and kill Dustfinger. She didn't mention Resa. Not a word to show that she thought she had seen her mother, and if Capricorn had his way that she too had only two days to live. A message like that wouldn't fit on a piece of paper no matter how large it was.\n\nGwin was greedily nibbling the bread Fenoglio had given him. Meggie folded up the endpaper and tied it to his collar. 'Take care!' she whispered to Gwin, and then threw the rest of the bread down into Capricorn's yard. The marten scurried down the wall of the house as if it was the easiest thing in the world. One of the maids screamed as he scampered between her legs, and called out to the others. She was probably alarmed for Capricorn's chickens, but Gwin had already disappeared over the wall.\n\n'Good. Excellent. So your father's here,' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie, standing beside her by the open window. 'Somewhere out there. Very good indeed. And you'll get the tin soldier back. Who was it said that all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds?' He rubbed the tip of his nose and blinked out at the dazzling sunlight. 'So the next thing to do,' he murmured, 'is to play on Basta's superstitions. What a good thing I gave him that little weakness. It was a clever move.'\n\nMeggie had no idea what he was talking about, but that didn't matter to her. She had only one thought in her head: Mo was here."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Dark Place",
                "text": "\u2002'Jim, old boy,' said Lukas... in a rough voice. 'That was a short journey. I'm sorry that you must share my fate now.'\n\n\u2002Jim swallowed.\n\n\u2002'We're friends,' he said quietly, biting his lower lip to keep it from trembling so hard.\n\n\u2002The scribes chuckled again, and the bonzes nodded at each other, grinning.\n\n\u2002'Jim Button,' said Lukas, 'you really are the best little fellow I ever met in all my life.'\n\n\u2002'Take them to the place of execution!' commanded the Head Bonze, and the soldiers seized Lukas and Jim to drag them away.\n\n\u2014Michael Ende, Jim Button and Lukas the Engine Driver\n\nDustfinger had expected Capricorn to leave him and Resa dangling in those dreadful nets until their execution, but they spent only a single if very long night there. In the morning, as soon as the sun cast its bright light on the red walls inside the church, Basta had them brought down. For a few horrible moments Dustfinger thought Capricorn had decided to put an end to them in some quick and inconspicuous way instead, and when he felt solid ground under his feet again he didn't know which made him weaker at the knees \u2013 that fear or his night in the net. Whichever it was, he could hardly stand upright.\n\nBasta set his mind at rest for the time being, although that was certainly not his intention. 'Personally, I'd have liked to leave you dangling up there a while longer,' he said as his men dragged Dustfinger out of the net. 'But for some reason or other Capricorn's decided to lock the two of you in the crypt for what's left of your miserable lives.'\n\nDustfinger did his best to hide his relief. So death was still a little way off. 'I expect it bothers Capricorn to have an audience when he's discussing his filthy plans with the rest of you,' he said. 'Or perhaps he just wants us to be able to walk to our execution on our own two legs.' One more night in that net and Dustfinger wouldn't even have known he still had legs. His bones ached so much after that first night that he was moving like an old man as Basta took him and Resa down to the crypt. Resa stumbled once or twice on the stairs, and seemed to be feeling even worse than he was, but she made not a sound, and when Basta took her arm after she had slipped on one step she shook herself free, giving him such an icy look that he let her go on by herself.\n\nThe crypt below the church was a damp, cold place even on days like this when the sun was practically melting the tiles on the houses outside. It smelled of mould and mouse droppings and other things Dustfinger didn't want to think about. Soon after arriving in the deserted village Capricorn had had gratings fitted over the narrow niches where long-dead priests slept in their stone tombs. 'What could be more fitting than to make the condemned sleep on coffins?' he had said at the time, with a laugh. He had always had his own peculiar sense of humour.\n\nImpatiently, Basta pushed them down the last few steps. He was in a hurry to get back to the light of day, away from the dead and their ghosts. His hand shook as he hung his lantern on a hook and opened the grating over the first cell. There was no electric light down here, no heating either, or any other comforts, only the quiet tombs and the mice scurrying over the cracked flagstones of the floor.\n\n'Oh, aren't you going to give us the pleasure of your company a little longer?' asked Dustfinger as Basta pushed them into the cell. They had to duck. They couldn't stand upright under the old vaults here. 'We could tell ghost stories. I know some nice new ones.'\n\nBasta growled like a dog. 'We won't be needing any coffin for you, dirtyfingers!' he said as he closed the grating again.\n\n'No, indeed! An urn perhaps, a jam jar, but no coffin.' Dustfinger took a step back from the bars so as to be out of reach of Basta's knife. 'I see you have a new amulet,' he called. Basta had almost reached the steps. 'Another rabbit's foot, is it? Didn't I tell you they attract White Ladies? You could see the White Ladies in our old world. You don't see them here, which isn't very practical, but of course they're still around with their whispering and their icy fingers.'\n\nBasta was standing at the foot of the steps with his fists clenched, his back still turned. Dustfinger was always surprised to find how easily you could scare the man with a few words. 'Remember how they come for their victims?' he went on softly. 'They whisper your name, \"Bastaaa!\" and next thing you know you're freezing cold, and then\u2014'\n\n'They'll soon be whispering your name, dirtyfingers!' Basta interrupted, his voice shaking. 'Yours and yours alone.' And he hurried up the steps as if the ghosts of the White Ladies were already after him.\n\nThe sound of his footsteps died away, and Dustfinger was alone \u2013 with the silence, with death, and with Resa. They were obviously the only prisoners. Now and then Capricorn had some poor fellow locked in the crypt just to give him a good fright, but most of those who came here and wrote their names on the tombs disappeared some dark night and were never seen again.\n\nTheir own departure from this world was going to be rather more spectacular.\n\nMy last performance, in a way, thought Dustfinger. Perhaps it will turn out that all this was only a bad dream, and I just had to die to get home again? A nice idea, if only he could have believed in it.\n\nResa had seated herself on a sarcophagus. It was a plain stone coffin, with a cracked lid, and the name that was once on it could no longer be deciphered. It didn't seem to frighten Resa to be so near the dead. Dustfinger felt differently. He was not afraid of ghosts and White Ladies, like Basta. If a White Lady had appeared he would have passed the time of day with her. No \u2013 he was afraid of death. He thought he heard death itself breathing down here, breathing so deeply that no air was left for anyone else. His chest felt as if a huge and ugly animal were sitting on it. Perhaps it hadn't been so bad up there in the net after all. At least they'd had air to breathe.\n\nHe sensed Resa watching him. She beckoned him over and patted the lid of the coffin. Hesitantly, he sat down beside her. She put her hand into the pocket of her dress, brought out a candle and held it up to him with an enquiring look. Dustfinger had to smile. Yes, of course he had matches on him. It was child's play to conceal something as small as a few matches from Basta and the other idiots.\n\nResa fixed the flickering candle to the coffin with a little of its own wax. She loved candles \u2013 coloured candles and stones. She always had both in her pockets. But perhaps today she had lit the candle just for him, because she knew how he loved fire.\n\n'I'm sorry. I should have looked for the book on my own,' he said, passing a finger through the bright flame. 'Forgive me.'\n\nShe put her fingers on his mouth. Presumably she was saying there was nothing to forgive. What a sweet, silent lie. She took her hand away, and Dustfinger cleared his throat. 'You \u2013 you didn't find it, did you?' Not that it would make any difference now, but he had to know.\n\nResa shook her head and shrugged her shoulders regretfully.\n\n'That's what I thought.' He sighed. The silence was terrible, worse than a thousand voices. 'Tell me a story, Resa!' he said quietly, moving closer to her. Please, he added in his thoughts. Chase my fear away. It's crushing my chest. Take us somewhere else, somewhere better.\n\nResa could do that. She knew endless numbers of stories, just how she knew them she had never told him, but of course he knew. He knew exactly who had once read her those stories, for he had recognised her face the instant he first saw her in Capricorn's house. After all, Silvertongue had shown him the photograph often enough.\n\nResa took a piece of paper out of her inexhaustible pockets. They contained more than just candles and stones. Just as Dustfinger always carried the means of lighting a fire, she always had a number of things with her: candle stumps, a few pebbles, some paper and a pencil \u2013 her wooden tongue, she called it. Obviously none of these things had seemed to Capricorn's men dangerous enough to be taken away from her. When Resa told one of her stories she sometimes wrote only half a sentence, and Dustfinger had to finish it. It went faster that way, and the story developed surprising twists and turns. But this time it seemed she didn't want to tell him a story, although he had never needed one so badly.\n\n'Who is the girl?' wrote Resa.\n\nOf course. Meggie. Should he lie? Why not? But he didn't, although he didn't know why not. 'She's Silvertongue's daughter \u2013 How old? \u2013 Twelve, I think.'\n\nIt was the right answer. He saw that in her eyes. They were Meggie's eyes. Perhaps rather wearier.\n\n'What does Silvertongue look like? I think you've asked me that before. Well, he isn't scarred like me.' He tried to smile, but Resa remained grave. The candlelight flickered on her face. You know his face better than you know mine, thought Dustfinger, but I'm not going to say so. He's taken a whole world from me, why shouldn't I take his wife from him?\n\nRising to her feet, she put her hand in the air above her head.\n\n'Yes, he's tall. Taller than you, taller than me.' Why didn't he lie to her? 'Yes, he has dark hair, but I don't want to talk about him now!' He heard the petulance in his own voice. 'Please!' Reaching for her hand, he drew her down beside him. 'Tell me a story. The candle will soon go out, and the light Basta's left us is enough to see these wretched coffins but not to read letters.'\n\nShe looked at him thoughtfully, as if she were trying to guess at his thoughts and uncover the words he didn't say. But Dustfinger could guard his face better than Silvertongue, much better. He could make it impenetrable, a shield to keep his heart from prying eyes. What business was it of anyone else to know what was in his heart?\n\nResa bent over the paper again and began to write.\n\n'Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild,' she wrote.\n\nDustfinger smiled. 'The Dog was wild,' he whispered. 'And the Horse was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild \u2013 as wild as wild could be \u2013 and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.'\n\nResa always knew what story he needed at any given moment. She was a stranger in this world, just like him. It couldn't be that she belonged to Silvertongue."
            },
            {
                "title": "Farid's Report",
                "text": "\u2002'All right,' said Spiff. 'Now this is what I say, anyone who thinks they've got a better plan can say so afterwards.'\n\n\u2014Michael de Larrabeiti, The Borribles Go for Broke\n\nWhen Farid came back Silvertongue was waiting for him. Elinor was asleep under the trees, her face flushed by the midday heat, but Silvertongue was still standing where Farid had left him. Relief spread over his face as he saw the boy coming up the hill.\n\n'We heard shots!' he called. 'I thought we'd never see you again.'\n\n'They were shooting at cats,' replied Farid, letting himself drop on to the grass. Silvertongue's concern made Farid feel awkward. He wasn't used to people being concerned for his safety. What kept you? Where have you been all this time? That was the kind of reception he was used to. Even Dustfinger's face had always been closed to him, as uncommunicative as a barred door. But with Silvertongue's face it was different. Anxiety, joy, anger, pain, love \u2013 it was all plain to see, written on his brow, even when he tried to hide it, just as he was now trying not to ask the question that must have been on the tip of his tongue ever since he saw Farid approaching.\n\n'Your daughter's all right,' said Farid. 'And she got your message, though she's shut up on the top floor of Capricorn's house. But Gwin is a wonderful climber, even better than Dustfinger, and that's saying something.' He heard Silvertongue breathe a sigh of relief, as if all the cares in the world had been lifted from his shoulders.\n\n'I've even brought an answer.' Farid took Gwin out of the rucksack, held him firmly by the tail and untied Meggie's note from his collar. Silvertongue unfolded the paper as carefully as if he feared his fingers might wipe away the words. 'An endpaper,' he murmured. 'She must have torn it out of a book.'\n\n'What does she say?'\n\n'Have you tried to read it?'\n\nFarid shook his head and took a piece of bread out of his trouser pocket. Gwin had earned a reward. But the marten had disappeared, probably to catch up on his long overdue daytime sleep.\n\n'You can't read, is that it?'\n\n'No.'\n\n'Well, not many people could read this anyway. It's the same secret writing that I used. As you saw, not even Elinor can decipher it. 'Silvertongue smoothed out the paper. It was a dull yellow like desert sand. He read \u2013 and then suddenly raised his head. 'Good heavens!' he murmured. 'Imagine that!'\n\n'Imagine what?' Farid bit into the bread he had been keeping for the marten. It was stale; they'd have to steal some more soon.\n\n'Meggie can do it too!' Silvertongue shook his head incredulously and stared at the note in his hand.\n\nFarid propped one elbow on the grass. 'I know. They're all talking about it \u2013 I heard them. They say she can work magic like you, and now Capricorn doesn't have to wait for you any more. He doesn't need you now.'\n\nSilvertongue looked at him as if this idea hadn't yet crossed his mind. 'True,' he murmured. 'Now they'll never let her go. Not of their own accord.' He stared at the words his daughter had written on the paper. To Farid they looked like the tracks left by snakes slithering across the sand.\n\n'What else does she say?'\n\n'They've caught Dustfinger, and Meggie is to read someone out of the book to come... and kill him. Tomorrow, when it gets dark.' He lowered the note and ran his hand through his hair.\n\n'Yes, I heard about that too.' Farid pulled up a blade of grass and tore it into tiny pieces. 'It seems they've locked him in the crypt under the church. What else is in that note? Doesn't your daughter say who it is she's to fetch out for Capricorn?'\n\nSilvertongue shook his head, but Farid saw that he knew more about it than he was saying.\n\n'Come on, you can tell me! Some kind of executioner, am I right? A man who knows all about cutting off heads.'\n\nSilvertongue acted as if he hadn't heard him.\n\n'I saw something like that once,' said Farid, 'so it's all right for you to tell me about it. If the executioner is good with a sword it's all over quite fast.'\n\nSilvertongue looked at him for a moment, astonished, and then shook his head. 'It's not an executioner,' he said. 'At least, not a man with a sword. Not a man at all.'\n\nFarid turned pale. 'Not a man?'\n\nSilvertongue shook his head. It was some time before he went on. 'They call him the Shadow,' he said in an expressionless voice. 'I don't remember the exact words describing him in the book, all I know is that I pictured him to myself as a figure made completely of burning ashes, red and grey. And without a face.'\n\nFarid stared at him. For a moment he wished he hadn't asked.\n\n'They \u2013 they're all looking forward to this execution,' he said in a faltering voice. 'Those Black Jackets are in a really good mood. They're going to kill the woman Dustfinger was visiting as well. Because she tried to find the book for him.' He burrowed his bare toes into the earth. Dustfinger had tried to get him used to wearing shoes because of the snakes, but when you wore shoes you felt as if someone was pinching your toes, so in the end he'd thrown them on the fire.\n\n'What woman? One of Capricorn's maids?' Silvertongue looked at him with a gleam in his eyes.\n\nFarid nodded. He rubbed his toes. They were covered with ant bites. 'She can't talk. Dumb as a sand-fly. Dustfinger has a photo of her in his rucksack. She's probably helped him quite often. And I think he's in love with her.'\n\nIt hadn't been difficult for Farid to explore the village. There were lots of boys there no older than him. They washed the cars for the Black Jackets, cleaned their boots and their guns, delivered love letters. He'd delivered love letters himself in that other life. He hadn't had to clean boots, but weapons, yes \u2013 and he'd had to shovel camel dung. Polishing cars was much lighter work.\n\nSilvertongue looked up at the sky. Tiny clouds were drifting by, pale as a heron's feathers, ruffled like acacia flowers. Clouds often passed across this sky. Farid liked that. The desert sky he had known before was always empty.\n\n'Tomorrow,' murmured Silvertongue. 'What am I to do? How am I going to get her out of Capricorn's house? Perhaps I can get in somehow by night. I'd need one of those black suits the\u2014'\n\n'I've brought you one.' Farid took first the jacket, then the trousers out of the rucksack. 'Stole them off a washing line. And a dress for Elinor.'\n\nSilvertongue looked at him with such obvious admiration that Farid blushed. 'What an extraordinary fellow you are! Perhaps I should ask you how I'm going to get Meggie out of this village?'\n\nFarid smiled awkwardly and looked at his toes. Ask him? No one had ever asked him for his ideas before. He had always been the scout, the tracker dog. Others had made the plans for robberies, raids, revenge. You didn't ask the dog's opinion. You beat the dog if he didn't obey. 'There are only two of us, and there are at least twenty of them down there,' he said. 'It won't be easy...'\n\nSilvertongue looked over at their camp site and the woman asleep under the trees. 'Aren't you counting Elinor? You should! She's much fiercer than I am, and just at the moment she is very, very angry.'\n\nFarid had to smile. 'All right, three!' he said. 'Three against twenty.'\n\n'Yes, I know, that doesn't sound good.' Silvertongue stood up, sighing. 'Come on, let's tell Elinor what you've found out,' he said, but Farid stayed where he was in the grass. He picked up one of the dry branches lying everywhere. First-class firewood. There was any amount of it here. In his old life, people would have gone a long, long way for wood like this. They'd have given good money for it. Farid looked at the wood, rubbed his finger over the rough bark, and looked at Capricorn's village.\n\n'We could get fire to help us,' he said.\n\nSilvertongue looked at him blankly. 'What do you mean?'\n\nFarid picked up another stick, and another. He heaped them all up, all the dry twigs and branches. 'Dustfinger showed me how to tame fire. It's like Gwin: it bites if you don't know how to handle it, but if you treat it properly it does as you want. That's what Dustfinger taught me. If we use it at the right time, in the right place...'\n\nSilvertongue bent down, picked up one of the branches and weighted it in his hand. 'And how are you going to control it once you've got a fire going? It hasn't rained for ages. The hills will be ablaze before you know it.'\n\nFarid shrugged. 'Only if the wind blows the wrong way.'\n\nBut Silvertongue shook his head. 'No,' he said firmly. 'I won't play with fire in these hills unless I can't think of anything else. Let's steal into the village tonight. Maybe we can get past the guards. Maybe they know each other so little they'll think I'm one of them. After all, we managed to slip through their fingers once, so maybe we can do it again.'\n\n'That's a lot of maybes,' said Farid.\n\n'I know!' replied Silvertongue. 'I know.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Telling Lies to Basta",
                "text": "\u2002'If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest and master, wife, miss, or bairn \u2013 black, black be their fall.'\n\n\u2014Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped\n\nIt took Fenoglio only a few words to persuade the guard outside the door that he had to speak to Basta at once. The old man was a gifted liar. He could spin stories out of thin air faster than a spider spins its web.\n\n'What do you want, old man?' asked Basta when he was standing in the doorway. He had brought the tin soldier. 'Here, little witch!' he said to Meggie, handing her the soldier. 'I'd have thrown it on the fire, but nobody here listens to me these days.'\n\nThe tin soldier started at the word 'fire'. His moustache bristled, and his eyes looked so alarmed it touched Meggie's heart. When she put her hands protectively round him she thought she felt his heart beating. She remembered the end of his story: The soldier melted. The next day when the maid emptied the stove, she found a little tin heart, which was all that was left of him.\n\n'That's right, no one listens to you any more. I can see that for myself!' Fenoglio looked sympathetically at Basta, as a father might look at his son \u2013 which in a way he was. 'And that's why I wanted a word with you.' He lowered his voice and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. 'I'm offering you a deal.'\n\n'A deal?' Basta scrutinised him with a mixture of wariness and arrogance.\n\n'Yes, a deal,' repeated Fenoglio softly. 'I'm bored here! I'm a scribbler, as you so aptly put it. I need paper to live on much as other people need bread and wine and so forth. Bring me some paper, Basta, and I'll help you to get those keys back. You remember \u2013 the keys that the Magpie took away from you.'\n\nBasta took out his knife. When he snapped it open the tin soldier began trembling so much that the bayonet slipped from his tiny hands. 'How?' asked Basta, cleaning his fingernails with the tip of the knife.\n\nFenoglio bent down to him. 'I'll write you a magic charm to put a hex on Mortola. A hex that will keep her in bed for weeks and give you time to show Capricorn you are the rightful keeper of the keys. Of course that kind of charm doesn't work instantly, it needs time, but believe you me, when it does start to take effect...' Fenoglio raised his eyebrows meaningfully.\n\nBut Basta only wrinkled his nose in scorn. 'I've already tried with spiders. And parsley and salt. The old woman's proof against them all.'\n\n'Parsley and spiders!' Fenoglio laughed quietly. 'What a fool you are, Basta! I'm not talking about children's magic. I mean the magic of the written word. Nothing is more powerful for good or evil, I do assure you.' Fenoglio lowered his voice to a whisper. 'I made you yourself out of words and letters, Basta! You and Capricorn.'\n\nBasta flinched. Fear and hatred are closely linked, and Meggie saw both on his face. He believed the old man. He believed every word of it. 'You're a sorcerer!' he muttered. 'You and the girl alike \u2013 you both ought to be burned like those accursed books, and her father too.' He quickly spat three times at the old man's feet.\n\n'Ah, spitting! What's that supposed to prevent? The Evil Eye?' Fenoglio mocked him. 'That notion of burning us isn't a very new idea, Basta, but then you never were fond of new ideas. Well, are we in business or aren't we?'\n\nBasta stared at the tin soldier until Meggie hid him behind her back. 'Very well!' he growled. 'But I shall check what you've been scribbling every day, understand?'\n\nHow are you going to do that, thought Meggie, when you can't read? Basta looked at her as if he had heard her thoughts. 'I know one of the maids,' he said. 'She'll read it to me, so don't try any tricks, right?'\n\n'Of course not!' Fenoglio nodded energetically. 'Oh yes, and a pen would be a good idea too. A black one if possible.'\n\nBasta brought the pen and a whole stack of white typing paper. Fenoglio sat down at the table with a purposeful look, put the first sheet of paper in front of him, folded it and then tore it neatly into nine parts. He wrote five letters on each piece. They were ornate, barely legible, and always the same. Then he carefully folded these notes, spat once on each, handed them to Basta and told him to hide them as he told him. 'Three where she sleeps, three where she eats, and three where she works. Then, after three days and three nights, the desired effect will set in. But should the accursed woman find even one of the notes, the magic will instantly turn against you.'\n\n'What's that supposed to mean?' Basta stared at Fenoglio's notes as if they would strike him with plague on the spot.\n\n'Best to hide them where she won't find them!' was all that Fenoglio replied as he propelled Basta towards the door.\n\n'If it doesn't work, old man,' growled Basta before he closed the door behind him, 'I shall decorate your face to match Dustfinger's.' Then he was gone, and Fenoglio leaned against the closed door with a satisfied smile.\n\n'But it won't work!' whispered Meggie.\n\n'So? Three days are a long time,' replied Fenoglio, sitting down at the table again. 'And I hope we shan't need that long. After all, we want to prevent an execution tomorrow evening, don't we?'\n\nHe spent the rest of the day alternately staring into space and writing like a man possessed. More and more of the white sheets were covered with his large handwriting, scrawled impatiently over the paper. Meggie didn't disturb him. She sat by the window with the tin soldier, looking at the hills and wondering exactly where Mo was hiding among all the branches and leaves there. The tin soldier sat beside her, his leg stretched straight out in front of him, looking with fear in his eyes at the world that was so entirely new to him.\n\nPerhaps he was thinking of the paper ballerina he loved so much, or perhaps he wasn't thinking at all. He said not a single word."
            },
            {
                "title": "Woken in the Dead of Night",
                "text": "'Let us use our magic and enchantments to conjure up a woman out of flowers.'... Math and Gwydyon took the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet and from these conjured up the loveliest and most beautiful girl anyone had seen; they baptized her with the form of baptism that was used then, and named her Blodeuedd.\n\n\u2014'Math Son of Mathonwy', from The Mabinogion, translated by Jeffrey Gantz\n\nNight had fallen long ago, but Fenoglio was still writing. Under the table lay the sheets of paper he had crumpled up or torn. He had discarded many more pages than he had laid aside, collecting those few pages very carefully, as if the words themselves might slip off the paper. When one of the maids, a skinny little thing, brought their supper Fenoglio hid the written sheets he had kept beneath the covers of his bed. Basta did not return that evening. Perhaps he was too busy hiding Fenoglio's magic charms.\n\nMeggie did not go to bed until everything outside was so dark that she couldn't distinguish the hills from the sky. She left the window open. 'Good-night,' she whispered into the dark, as if Mo could hear her. Then she took the tin soldier and clambered up to her bed. She put the little soldier by her pillow. 'You're better off than Tinker Bell, honestly!' she whispered to him. 'Basta has her in his room because he thinks fairies bring good luck, and if we ever get out of here I promise I'll make you a ballerina just like the one in your story.'\n\nThe tin soldier said nothing in reply to that either. He just looked at her with his sad eyes, then, barely perceptibly, he nodded. Has he lost his voice too, wondered Meggie, or could he never speak? His mouth did look as if he had never once opened it. If I had the book here, she thought, I could read the story and find out, or I could try to bring the ballerina out of it for him. But the Magpie had the book. She had taken all the books away.\n\nThe tin soldier leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. No, the ballerina would only break his heart, thought Meggie before she fell asleep. The last sound she heard was Fenoglio's pen scribbling over the paper, writing word after word as fast as a weaver's shuttle turning threads into colourfully patterned cloth...\n\nMeggie did not dream of monsters that night \u2013 not even a spider scurried through her dream. Even though she dreamed of a room that appeared to be the bedroom in Elinor's house, she knew that she was at home. Mo was there, too, and so was her mother. She looked like Elinor, but Meggie knew she was the woman who had been in the net hanging beside Dustfinger in Capricorn's church. You know a great many things in dreams, often despite the evidence of your eyes. You just know them. She was about to sit down next to her mother on the old sofa surrounded by Mo's bookshelves when someone suddenly whispered her name. 'Meggie!' Again and again: 'Meggie!' She didn't want to hear it, she wanted the dream to go on and on, but the voice kept calling to her. Meggie recognised it. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Fenoglio was standing by her bed, his ink-stained fingers as black as the night beyond the open window.\n\n'What's the matter? Let me sleep.' Meggie turned her back to him. She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind? The tin soldier was still asleep, with his head sunk on his chest.\n\n'I've finished!' Fenoglio whispered. Even with the guard's snores reverberating through the door, she couldn't ignore it.\n\nMeggie yawned and sat up.\n\nA thin pile of handwritten sheets of paper lay on the table in the light of the flickering candle.\n\n'We're going to try an experiment!' whispered Fenoglio. 'Let's see whether your voice and my words can change what happens in a story. We're going to try to send the little soldier back.' He quickly picked up the hand-written sheets and put them on her lap. 'It's not the best of ideas to try the experiment with a story I didn't write myself, but that can't be helped. What do we have to lose?'\n\n'Send him back? But I don't want to send him back!' said Meggie, horrified. 'He'll die if he goes back. The little boy throws him into the stove and he melts. And the ballerina burns up.' Among the ashes lay the metal spangle from the ballerina's dress; it had been burned as black as coal.\n\n'No, no!' Fenoglio impatiently tapped the sheets of paper on her lap. 'I've written him a new story with a happy ending. That was your father's idea: changing what happens in stories! He just wanted to get your mother back, he wanted Inkheart rewritten to give her up again. But if the idea really works, Meggie \u2013 if you can change the fate of a character you read out of a book by adding new words to his story, then maybe you can change everything about it: who comes out, who goes in, how it ends, who's happy and who's unhappy afterwards. Do you understand? It's just a trial run, Meggie! If the tin soldier disappears, then believe me, we can change Inkheart too! I still have to work out just how, but for now, will you read this aloud. Please!' Fenoglio took the torch out from under the pillow and put it in Meggie's hand.\n\nHesitantly, she turned the beam on the first densely written page. Suddenly her mouth went dry. 'Does it really end well?' She ran her tongue over her lips and looked at the sleeping tin soldier. She thought she heard a tiny snore.\n\n'Yes, yes, I've written a truly sentimental happy ending.' Fenoglio nodded impatiently. 'He moves into the toy castle with the ballerina and they live happily ever after \u2013 no melted heart, no burnt paper, nothing but their blissful love.'\n\n'Your writing is difficult to read.'\n\n'What? I went to endless trouble!'\n\n'It's difficult all the same.'\n\nThe old man sighed.\n\n'Oh, all right,' said Meggie. 'I'll try.'\n\nEvery letter, she thought, every single letter matters! Let the words echo, ring out, whisper and rustle and roll like thunder. Then she began to read.\n\nAt the third sentence the tin soldier sat bolt upright. Meggie saw him out of the corner of her eye. For a moment she almost lost the thread of the story, stumbled over a word and re-read it. After that she dared not look at the little soldier again \u2013 until Fenoglio put his hand on her arm.\n\n'He's gone!' he breathed. 'Meggie, he's gone!'\n\nHe was right. The bed was empty.\n\nFenoglio squeezed her arm so hard that it hurt. 'You truly are a little enchantress!' he whispered. 'And I didn't do so badly myself, did I? No, definitely not.' He looked with some awe at his ink-stained fingers. Then he clapped his hands and danced round the cramped room like an old bear. When he finally stopped beside Meggie's bed again he was rather breathless. 'You and I are about to prepare a most unpleasant surprise for Capricorn!' he whispered, a smile lurking in every one of his wrinkles. 'I'll set to work at once! Oh yes, he'll get what he wants: you'll read the Shadow out of the book for him. But his old friend will be slightly changed! I guarantee that! I, Fenoglio, master of words, enchanter in ink, sorcerer on paper. I made Capricorn and I shall destroy him as if he'd never existed \u2013 which I have to admit would have been better! Poor Capricorn! He'll be no better off than the magician who conjured up a flower maiden for his nephew. Do you know that story?'\n\nMeggie was staring at the place where the tin soldier had been. She missed him. 'No,' she muttered. 'What flower maiden?'\n\n'It's a very old story. I'll tell you the short version. The long one is better, but it will soon be light. Well \u2013 there was once a magician called Gwydyon who had a nephew. He loved his nephew better than anything in the world, but his mother had put a curse on the young man.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'It would take too long to tell that part now. Anyway, she cursed him. If he ever touched a woman he would die. This broke the magician's heart \u2013 must his favourite nephew be condemned to being sad and lonely for ever? No. Was he not a magician? So he shut himself up in the chamber where he worked magic for three days and three nights and made a woman out of flowers \u2013 the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet, to be precise. There was never a more beautiful woman in the world, and Gwydyon's nephew fell in love with her at first sight. But Blodeuedd, for that was her name, was his undoing. She fell in love with another man, and the two of them killed the magician's nephew.'\n\n'Blodeuedd!' Meggie savoured the name like an exotic fruit. 'How sad. What happened to her? Did the magician kill her too as a punishment?'\n\n'No. Gwydyon turned her into an owl, and to this day all owls sound like a weeping woman.'\n\n'That's beautiful! Sad and beautiful,' murmured Meggie. Why were sad stories often so beautiful? It was different in real life. 'Right, so now I know the story of the flower maiden,' she said. 'But what does it have to do with Capricorn?'\n\n'The point is that Blodeuedd didn't do what was expected of her. And that's our own plan: your voice and my words, beautiful, brand-new words, will see to it that Capricorn's Shadow does not do what's expected of him!' Fenoglio looked as pleased as a tortoise who has found a fresh lettuce leaf somewhere entirely unexpected.\n\n'Then what exactly is he to do?'\n\nFenoglio wrinkled his brow. His satisfaction was all gone. 'I'm still working on that,' he said crossly, tapping his forehead. 'In here. It takes time.'\n\nVoices were raised outside \u2013 men's voices. They came from the other side of the wall. Meggie slipped quickly off her bed and ran to the open window. She heard footsteps, rapid, stumbling, fleeing footsteps \u2013 and then shots. She leaned out of the window so far that she almost fell out, but she could see nothing. The noise seemed to come from the square outside the church.\n\n'Careful!' whispered Fenoglio, grasping her shoulders. More shots were heard. Capricorn's men were calling to each other. Their voices sounded angry and excited \u2013 oh, why couldn't she make out what they were saying? She looked at Fenoglio, her eyes full of fear. Perhaps he had been able to understand some of the shouting \u2013 words, names?\n\n'I know what you're thinking, but it certainly wasn't your father,' he soothed her. 'He wouldn't be crazy enough to creep into Capricorn's house at night!' Gently, he drew her back from the window. The voices died away. The night became still again as if nothing had happened.\n\nHer heart beating fast, Meggie went back to bed. Fenoglio helped her up.\n\n'Make him kill Capricorn!' she whispered. 'Make the Shadow kill him.' Her own words frightened her, but she did not take them back.\n\nFenoglio rubbed his forehead. 'Yes, I suppose I must, mustn't I?' he murmured.\n\nMeggie took Mo's sweater and held it close. Doors slammed somewhere in the house; the sound of footsteps echoed up to them. Then all was silent again. It was a menacing silence. A deathly silence, thought Meggie. The word kept going through her mind.\n\n'Suppose the Shadow doesn't obey you?' she asked. 'Like the flower maiden. Then what?'\n\n'We had better not even think of that,' replied Fenoglio slowly."
            },
            {
                "title": "Alone",
                "text": "'Why, O why did I ever leave my hobbit-hole!' said poor Mr Baggins bumping up and down on Bombur's back.\n\n\u2014J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit\n\nWhen Elinor heard the shots she jumped up so fast that she stumbled over her blanket in the dark and fell full length in the coarse grass. It pricked her hands as she got up. 'Oh God, oh God, they've caught them!' she stammered, groping round in the night looking for the stupid dress the boy had stolen for her. It was so dark that she could scarcely see her own feet. 'Oh, it serves them right,' she kept repeating to herself. 'Why didn't they take me with them, the stupid idiots? I could have kept watch, I'd have been on the alert.' But when she had finally found the dress and pulled it over her head with trembling fingers she suddenly stood still.\n\nHow quiet it was. Deathly quiet.\n\nThey've shot them, something whispered inside her. That's why it's so quiet. They're dead. Dead as mutton. They're lying bleeding in that square outside the house, both of them. Oh, my God! Now what? She sobbed. No, Elinor, no tears now. What use are tears? You must look for them, come on. She stumbled off. Was she going the right way?\n\n'No, you can't come too, Elinor,' Mortimer had said. He had looked so different in the black suit Farid had stolen for him \u2013 like one of Capricorn's men, which of course was the point of the masquerade. The boy had even found him a shotgun.\n\n'Why not?' she had replied. 'I'll even put that silly dress on!'\n\n'A woman would be conspicuous, Elinor! You've seen for yourself \u2013 there are never any women in the streets at night. Only the guards. Ask the boy.'\n\n'I don't want to ask him! Why didn't he steal a suit for me too? Then I could have disguised myself as a man.'\n\nThey had no answer to that.\n\n'Elinor, please, we need someone to stay with our things!'\n\n'Our things? You mean Dustfinger's dirty rucksack?' She was so angry she had kicked it. How clever they'd thought themselves, but their disguise had done them no good! Who had recognised them? Basta, Flatnose, the man with the limp? 'We'll be back by dawn, Elinor, with Meggie,' Mo had said. Liar! She could tell from his voice that he didn't believe it himself. Elinor stumbled over a tree root, grabbed at something prickly, and fell to her knees sobbing. Murderers! Murderers and fire-raisers. What had she to do with people like that? She should have known better when Mortimer suddenly turned up at her door, asking her to hide the book. Why hadn't she just said no? Hadn't she thought instantly that the matchstick-eater looked like someone with the word trouble written all over him in red? But the book \u2013 ah, the book. Of course she hadn't been able to resist the book.\n\nThey took that stinking marten with them, she thought as she picked herself up again, but not me. And now they're dead. 'Let's go to the police!' How often she'd said that! But Mortimer had always given the same answer. 'No, Elinor, Capricorn would get Meggie well out of the way as soon as the first police officer set foot in the village. And believe me, Basta's knife is faster than all the police in the world.' As he spoke she had seen that little frown above his nose, and she knew him well enough to know what it meant.\n\nWhat was she going to do? She was alone, after all.\n\nDon't make such a fuss, Elinor, she told herself. You've always been alone, remember. Now, use your head. Whatever's happened to her father, you must help the girl \u2013 get her out of this thrice-accursed village. There's no one left but you to do it. If you don't, she'll end up as one of those timid maidservants who scarcely dare to raise their heads and whose only purpose is to clean and cook for their ghastly master. Perhaps she'll be allowed to read aloud to Capricorn now and then, when he feels like it, and then, when she's older... she's a pretty little thing. Elinor felt sick. 'I need a shotgun,' she whispered, 'or a knife, a big sharp knife. I'll slip into Capricorn's house with it. Who's going to recognise me in this unspeakable dress?' Mortimer had always thought she couldn't cope with the world except between the covers of a book, but she'd show him!\n\nJust how will you do that? asked the little whispering voice inside. He's gone, Elinor, gone like your books.\n\nShe wept, so loudly that she alarmed even herself and put a hand to her mouth. A twig cracked under her feet, and the light went out behind one of the windows in Capricorn's village. She had been right. The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live in. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness \u2013 and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return, they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. Love, truth, beauty, wisdom and consolation against death. Who had said that? Someone else who loved books, she couldn't remember the author's name, only the words. Words are immortal \u2013 until someone comes along and burns them.\n\nShe stumbled on, getting closer all the time. Pale light seeped from Capricorn's village, like milky water running into the night. Three of the murderers were standing among the vehicles in the car park with their heads together. 'Talk away!' whispered Elinor. 'Boast, why don't you, with your bloodstained fingers and black hearts \u2013 you'll be sorry yet for killing them.' Would it be better to go down straight away or wait until daylight? Both were mad ideas; she wouldn't get beyond the third house in the village. One of the three men looked round, and for a moment Elinor thought he could see her. She scrambled back, slipped, and grabbed at a branch before she lost her footing again. Then came a rustling behind her, and a hand covered her mouth before she could look round. She wanted to scream, but the fingers were pressing so hard on her lips that she couldn't utter a sound.\n\n'So here you are. Any idea how long I've been looking for you?'\n\nIt couldn't be true. She had been so sure she would never hear that voice again.\n\n'Mortimer!'\n\n'Sorry, but I knew you'd scream! Come on!' Mortimer took his hand away from her mouth and gestured to her to follow him. She wasn't sure which she wanted to do most, fling her arms round his neck or hit him hard enough to hurt.\n\nOnly when the houses of Capricorn's village were almost out of sight behind the trees did he stop. 'Why didn't you stay at the camp? Staggering round here in the dark \u2013 have you any idea how dangerous it is?'\n\nThis was too much. He had walked so fast that Elinor was still gasping for breath. 'Dangerous?' In her fury she found it difficult to keep her voice down. 'You're a fine one to talk about danger! I thought you were both dead! I thought they'd stabbed you or shot you or...'\n\nHe rubbed a weary hand over his face. 'Some of them are pretty poor shots,' he said. 'Luckily.'\n\nHis calm tone made Elinor want to shake him. 'Really? And what about the boy?'\n\n'He's all right too, except for a scratch on his forehead. When they started firing the marten ran away and Farid went after him. That's when a ricochet caught him. I've left him up at the camp.'\n\n'The marten? Is that all you can think about, that vicious, stinking animal? Tonight has aged me by ten years!' Elinor's voice was rising again, and she forced herself to lower it. 'I put on this horrible dress,' she hissed.' And I could see you in my mind's eye, lots of blood and terrible wounds... oh, must you look at me like that?' she snapped. 'It's a wonder you're not both dead. I should never have listened to you. We should have gone to the police. This time they must believe us, they\u2014'\n\n'It was bad luck, Elinor, that's all,' Mo interrupted. 'Honestly. It just happened to be Cockerell on guard outside the house. The others wouldn't have recognized me.'\n\n'And what about tomorrow? Perhaps it'll be Basta or Flatnose then. How's it going to help your daughter if you're dead?'\n\nMo turned his back to her. 'But I'm not dead, Elinor,' he said evenly. 'And I'm going to get Meggie out of there before she has to play the leading role at an execution.'\n\nWhen they reached their camp Farid was asleep. The bloodstained bandage Mortimer had tied round his head looked almost like the turban he had been wearing when he first appeared among the columns of Capricorn's church.\n\n'It looks worse than it is,' Mo whispered. 'But if I hadn't held him back he'd have chased half-way round the village after that marten. And if they hadn't caught us I expect he'd have slipped into the church too, to see how Dustfinger was doing.'\n\nElinor only nodded and wrapped her blanket round her. It was a mild night; anywhere else it could have been called peaceful.\n\n'How did you shake them off?' she asked.\n\nMortimer sat down beside the boy. Only now did Elinor see that he was carrying the shotgun Farid had stolen for him. He took it off his shoulder and put it down in the grass beside him. 'They didn't follow us for long,' he said. 'Why bother? They know we'll be back. All they have to do is wait.'\n\nAnd this time Elinor would be with them, she promised herself. She never again wanted to feel as utterly deserted as she had this night. 'What are you planning to do next?' she asked.\n\n'Farid's idea was to start a fire. I thought that would be too dangerous, but we're running short of time.'\n\n'Fire?' Elinor felt as if the word would burn her tongue. Ever since she had found the ashes of her books, the mere sight of a matchstick had caused her to panic.\n\n'Dustfinger's taught the boy something about handling fire, and anyway, as we know, even the biggest fool can start one. If we were to send Capricorn's house up in flames\u2014'\n\n'Are you crazy? Suppose it spreads to the hills?'\n\nMo bowed his head and stroked his hand over the barrel of the gun. 'I know,' he said, 'but I can't see any other way. The fire will create a diversion, Capricorn's men will be kept busy putting it out, and in all the confusion I'll try to get through to Meggie while Farid releases Dustfinger.'\n\n'You're mad!' This time Elinor couldn't help her voice rising. Farid muttered something in his sleep, put his hand nervously to the bandage round his head, then turned over.\n\nMo straightened the boy's blanket and leaned back against the tree trunk. 'That's our plan, all the same, Elinor,' he said. 'Believe me, I've been racking my brains till I thought I'd go crazy. But there's no other way. And if none of that is any use I'll set fire to his damn church as well. I'll melt down his gold and reduce his whole damned village to dust and ashes, but I'll have my daughter back.'\n\nElinor had no answer to that. She lay down and pretended to be asleep even though she couldn't sleep a wink. When day dawned, she persuaded Mortimer to get a little rest himself while she kept watch. Before long he was fast asleep. As soon as his breath sounded peaceful and regular, Elinor took off the stupid dress, got into her own clothes, combed her tousled hair and wrote him a note. Gone to get help. Back around midday. Please don't do anything until then. Elinor.\n\nShe put the note into his half-opened hand, so that he would see it as soon as he woke up. As she tip-toed past the boy she saw that the marten was back. He was curled up beside Farid, licking his paws. His black eyes stared at Elinor as she bent over the boy to adjust his bandage. Uncanny little beast, she could never take to him, but Farid loved him like a dog. Sighing, she straightened up. 'Look after them both, will you?' she whispered, then set off. The car was still where she had hidden it under the trees. It was a good hiding-place; the branches hung so low that she missed the car herself at first. The engine caught immediately. Elinor listened anxiously to the sounds of the morning for a moment, but there was nothing to be heard apart from the birds greeting the day as exuberantly as if it were their last.\n\nThe nearest village, the last village through which she and Mortimer had driven, was scarcely half an hour's drive away. There was sure to be a police station there."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Magpie",
                "text": "But they woke him with words, their cruel, bright weapons.\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Book of Merlin\n\nIt was still quite early when Meggie heard Basta's voice out in the corridor. She hadn't touched the breakfast one of the maids brought them. When she had asked what had happened last night, what the shots meant, the girl had just stared at her, terrified, shook her head and scurried out of the door. She probably thought Meggie was a witch.\n\nFenoglio hadn't eaten any breakfast either. He was writing. He wrote and wrote without stopping, filling sheet after sheet of paper, tearing up what he'd written, beginning again, putting one sheet aside and starting another, frowning, crumpling up the paper \u2013 and starting once more. Hours and hours passed like this, until there were only three sheets of paper he hadn't torn up. Just three. At the sound of Basta's voice he hastily hid them under his mattress, kicking the crumpled pieces of paper under the bed with his foot. 'Quick, Meggie! Help me get them under the bed!' he whispered. 'He mustn't find any \u2013 not a single one.' Meggie obeyed, but all she could think about was why Basta was here. Was he going to tell her something? Did he want to see her face when he told her not to expect Mo any more?\n\nFenoglio had sat down at the table again in front of a blank sheet of paper and was rapidly scribbling a few words on it when the door opened.\n\nMeggie held her breath as if that would hold back the words which were about to come out of Basta's mouth and stab her in the heart. Fenoglio put down his pen and went to stand beside her. 'What is it?' he asked.\n\n'I'm to fetch her,' said Basta. 'Mortola wants to see her.' He sounded angry, as if it were beneath his dignity to carry out such a trivial task.\n\nMortola? The Magpie? Meggie looked at Fenoglio. What did this mean? But the old man only shrugged his shoulders, at a loss.\n\n'This little pigeon's to take a look at what she's to read this evening,' Basta explained. 'So she won't stumble over the words like Darius and spoil everything.' He beckoned impatiently to Meggie. 'Come on.'\n\nMeggie took a step towards him but then stopped. 'First, I want to know what happened last night,' she asked. 'I heard shots.'\n\n'Oh, that!' Basta smiled. His teeth were almost as white as his shirt. 'I've an idea your father was planning to visit you, but Cockerell wouldn't let him in.'\n\nMeggie stood there as if rooted to the spot. Basta took her arm and pulled her roughly away with him. Fenoglio tried to follow them, but Basta slammed the door in his face. Fenoglio called something after her, but Meggie couldn't hear what it was. There was a rushing sound in her ears as if she were listening to her own blood running far too fast through her veins.\n\n'He managed to get away, if that makes you feel any better,' said Basta, shoving her towards the staircase. 'Not that that means much, come to think of it. When Cockerell shoots at the cats, they seem to dodge the bullets too. He's such a useless shot. But they're usually found dead in a corner somewhere later.'\n\nMeggie kicked his shin with all her might, and raced away down the stairs, but Basta soon caught up with her. His face distorted with pain, he grabbed her by the hair and hauled her back in front of him. 'Don't you try that again, sweetheart!' he hissed. 'You can think yourself lucky you're the main attraction at our festivities this evening, or I'd wring your skinny little neck here and now.'\n\nMeggie did not try it again. Even if she had wanted to she wouldn't have had the chance. Basta kept hold of her hair, pulling her along behind him as if she were a disobedient dog. The pain brought tears to Meggie's eyes, but she kept her face turned away so that Basta couldn't see them. He took her down to the cellars. She hadn't been in this part of Capricorn's house before. The ceiling was even lower than the one in the shed where she, Mo and Elinor had first been imprisoned. The walls were whitewashed, like the walls in the upper storeys of the house, and there were just as many doors. Most of them looked as if it was a long time since they'd been opened, and heavy padlocks hung in front of some of them. Meggie thought of the safes Dustfinger had talked about, and the gold Mo had brought tumbling into Capricorn's church. They didn't get him, she thought. Of course not. The man with the limp doesn't shoot well. Basta said so himself.\n\nAt last, they stopped outside a door. It was made of different wood from the other doors down here, wood with a beautiful grain like a tiger's coat that shimmered with a tinge of red under the naked electric bulbs that lit the cellars.\n\n'And let me tell you,' Basta whispered to Meggie before he knocked on the door, 'if you're as impertinent to Mortola as you are to me she'll sling you in one of those nets in the church until you're so hungry you'll be gnawing at the ropes. Compared to her heart, mine's as soft as a little girl's cuddly toy.' His peppermint-scented breath wafted into Meggie's face. She would never again be able to eat anything smelling of peppermint.\n\nThe Magpie's room was large enough to hold a dance in. The walls were red, like the walls in the church, but you couldn't see much of them. They were covered with photographs in gold frames, photographs of houses and people crammed close together on the walls like a crowd in a space too small for it. In the middle, framed in gold like the photos but much larger, hung a portrait of Capricorn. Even Meggie could see that whoever had painted it was no more skilled at his trade than the sculptor who had carved the statue in the church. Capricorn's features in the picture were rounder and softer than in real life, and his curiously feminine mouth lay like a strange fruit below the nose, which was a little too short and broad. It was only his eyes that the painter had caught perfectly. As cold as they were in the flesh, they looked down on Meggie like the eyes of a man examining a frog he is about to slit open to see what it looks like inside. No face, she had learned in Capricorn's village, is as terrifying as a face without pity.\n\nThe Magpie sat, curiously rigid, in a green velvet armchair directly below her son's portrait. She looked unaccustomed to sitting down \u2013 like a constantly busy woman who resented having to stop, but whose body forced her to rest. Meggie saw that the old woman's legs were swollen above her ankles. They bulged formlessly below her bony knees. Noticing her glance, the Magpie pulled her skirt well down over those knees.\n\n'Have you told her what she's here for?' She found standing up difficult. Meggie watched her support herself with one hand on a little table, her lips pressed together. Basta seemed to enjoy her frailty; a smile played round his mouth until the Magpie looked at him, wiping it away with a single icy glance. Impatiently, she beckoned Meggie over. Basta prodded her in the back when she didn't move.\n\n'Come here. I want to show you something.' With slow but firm steps, the Magpie walked over to a chest of drawers that looked much too heavy for its gracefully curved legs. Two lamps stood on it, their shades patterned with flowery tendrils. Between them was a wooden casket, decorated all the way round with a pattern of tiny holes. When the Magpie opened its lid Meggie flinched back. Two snakes, thin as lizards and not much longer than Meggie's lower arm, lay in the casket.\n\n'I always keep my room nice and warm so that this pair don't get too sleepy,' explained the Magpie, opening the top drawer of the chest and taking out a glove. It was made of stout black leather, and was so stiff that she had difficulty forcing her gnarled hand into it. 'Your friend Dustfinger played a nasty trick on poor Resa when he asked her to look for that book,' she continued, reaching into the box and grasping one of the snakes firmly behind its flat head.\n\n'Come here!' she ordered Basta, and held the wriggling snake out to him. Meggie saw from his face that everything in him felt revulsion, but he came closer and took the creature. He held the scaly body well away from him as it wound and twisted in the air.\n\n'As you see, Basta doesn't care for my snakes!' said the Magpie, with a smile. 'He never did, not that that means much. As far as I know Basta doesn't like anything but his knife. He also believes that snakes bring bad luck, which of course is pure nonsense.' Mortola handed Basta the second snake. Meggie saw the viper's tiny poison fangs when it opened its mouth. For a moment, she almost felt sorry for Basta.\n\n'Well, don't you think this is a good hiding-place?' asked the Magpie, reaching into the casket yet again. This time she brought out a book. Meggie would have known what book it was even if she hadn't recognised the coloured jacket. 'I've often kept valuables in this casket,' continued the Magpie. 'No one knows about it and its contents apart from Basta and Capricorn. Poor Resa searched high and low for this book \u2013 she's a brave creature \u2013 but she didn't get as far as my casket. As it happens, she likes snakes. I've never met anyone who feels less fear of them than Resa, although she's been bitten now and then, isn't that so, Basta?' The Magpie took off her glove and looked scornfully at him. 'Basta likes to use snakes to scare women who reject his advances. It didn't work with Resa. How did it go exactly \u2013 didn't she finally put the snake outside your door, Basta?'\n\nBasta did not reply. The snakes were still twisting and turning in his hands. One of them had wound its tail around his arm.\n\n'Put them back in the casket,' the Magpie ordered. 'But be careful not to hurt them.' Then she returned to her armchair with the book. 'Sit down!' she said, pointing to the footstool beside her.\n\nMeggie obeyed. Surreptitiously, she looked around her. Mortola's room reminded her of a fairy-tale treasure chest filled to the brim. But there was too much of everything \u2013 too many golden candlesticks, too many lamps, rugs, pictures, vases, china ornaments, silk flowers, gilded bells.\n\nThe Magpie looked at her smugly. In her plain black dress she sat there like a cuckoo that has forced its way into another bird's nest. 'A fine room for a domestic servant, don't you think?' she said with satisfaction. 'Capricorn knows how to value me.'\n\n'But he still makes you live in the cellar!' replied Meggie. 'Even though you're his mother.' If only words could be swallowed \u2013 caught and slipped quickly back between your lips.\n\nThe Magpie looked at her with such hatred that Meggie almost felt the woman's bony fingers on her throat. But Mortola just sat there, her birdlike eyes looking fixedly at Meggie. 'Who told you that? The old sorcerer?'\n\nMeggie clamped her lips together and looked at Basta. He probably hadn't heard a word; he was just putting the second snake back in the casket. Did he know Capricorn's little secret? Before she could wonder about that any more Mortola put the book on her lap.\n\n'A word about this to anyone here, or indeed anywhere else,' hissed the Magpie, 'and I personally shall prepare your next meal. A little extract of monkshood, a few shoots of yew or perhaps a couple of hemlock seeds in the sauce, how do you fancy that? I can assure you you'd find it a hard meal to digest. Now, start reading.'\n\nMeggie stared at the book on her lap. When Capricorn held it up in the church she hadn't been able to make out the picture on the jacket. Now she had a chance to see it at close quarters. There was a landscape in the background that looked like a slightly different version of the hills surrounding Capricorn's village. But the foreground showed a heart, a black heart surrounded by red flames.\n\n'Go on, open it!' snapped the Magpie.\n\nMeggie obeyed. She opened the book at the page beginning with the N and the horned marten perched on it. How long ago was it since she had stood in Elinor's library looking at the same page? An eternity, a whole lifetime?\n\n'Wrong page. Go on,' the Magpie told her. 'Find the page with the corner turned down.'\n\nWordlessly, Meggie obeyed. There was no picture on that page or the one opposite it. Without thinking she smoothed the corner out with her thumbnail. Mo hated to see dog-eared pages.\n\n'What's the idea? Do you want to make it difficult for me to find the place again?' hissed the Magpie. 'Begin with the second paragraph, but mind you don't read aloud. I don't want to find the Shadow here in my room.'\n\n'How far shall I go? I mean, how far am I to read this evening?'\n\n'How should I know?' The Magpie leaned over and rubbed her left leg. 'How long does it usually take you to read your fairies and tin soldiers and so forth out of their stories?'\n\nMeggie lowered her head. Poor Tinker Bell. 'I can't say,' she murmured. 'It depends. Sometimes it happens soon, sometimes not until after many pages, or not at all.'\n\n'Well, read the whole chapter, that ought to be enough! And you can leave out the \"not at all\" business.' The Magpie rubbed her other leg. They were both wrapped in bandages that could be seen through the dark stockings she wore. 'What are you staring at?' she hissed at Meggie. 'Can you read me something out of a book to do my legs good? Do you know a story with a cure for old age and death in it, little witch that you are?'\n\n'No,' whispered Meggie.\n\n'Then don't gawp so stupidly, look at the book. Mind you notice every word. I don't want to hear you stumble once tonight, no stammering, no mispronunciations, understood? This time Capricorn is to get exactly what he wants. I shall see to that.'\n\nMeggie let her eyes wander over the letters. She wasn't taking in a word of what she read; she could think of nothing but Mo and the shots fired in the night. But she pretended to be reading, on and on, while Mortola never took her eyes off her. Finally, she raised her head and closed the book. 'Finished,' she said.\n\n'What, already?' The Magpie looked at her suspiciously.\n\nMeggie did not reply. She glared at Basta. He was leaning on Mortola's armchair looking bored. 'I'm not going to read that aloud this evening,' she said. 'You shot my father last night. Basta told me. I won't read a word.'\n\nThe Magpie turned to Basta. 'What was the idea of that?' she asked angrily. 'Do you think the child will read better if you break her silly heart? Tell her you missed him and get on with it.'\n\nBasta lowered his head like a boy caught doing wrong by his mother. 'I did tell her, well... almost,' he growled. 'Cockerell's a terrible shot. Your father didn't suffer so much as a scratch.'\n\nMeggie closed her eyes with relief. She felt warm and wonderful. Everything was all right, or at least what wasn't all right soon would be.\n\nHappiness made her bold. 'There's something else,' she said. Why should she be afraid? They needed her. She was the only one who could read their wretched Shadow out of the book for them, no one else could do it \u2013 except Mo, and they hadn't caught him yet. They would never catch him now, ever.\n\n'What is it?' The Magpie smoothed her sternly pinned-up hair. What had she looked like when she was Meggie's age? Had her lips been so mean even then?\n\n'I shall only read if I can see Dustfinger again. Before he...' She did not end the sentence.\n\n'What for?'\n\nBecause I want to tell him we're going to try to save him, and because I think my mother is with him, thought Meggie, but naturally she did not say so out loud. 'I want to tell him I'm sorry,' she replied instead. 'After all, he helped us.'\n\nMortola's mouth twisted mockingly. 'How touching!' she said.\n\nI only want to see her once, close to, thought Meggie. Perhaps it isn't her after all. Perhaps...\n\n'Suppose I say no?' The Magpie was watching her like a cat playing with a young and inexperienced mouse.\n\nBut Meggie had been expecting that question. 'Then I shall bite my tongue!' she said. 'I shall bite it so hard that it swells right up and I won't be able to read aloud this evening.'\n\nThe Magpie leaned back in her chair and laughed. 'Hear that, Basta? The child is no fool!' Basta only grunted. But Mortola studied Meggie, almost benevolently. 'I'll tell you something: yes, you can have your silly little wish. But about this evening: before you read, I want you to have a good look at my photographs.'\n\nMeggie glanced round.\n\n'Look at them closely. Do you see all those faces? Every one of those people made an enemy of Capricorn, and none of them was ever heard of again. The houses you see in the photographs are no longer standing either, not one of them, they have all been burnt down. Think of those photos when you're reading, little witch. Should you stumble over the words, or get any silly notions about simply holding your tongue, then your face will soon be looking out of one of these pretty gold frames too. But if you do well we'll let you go back to your father. Why not? Read like an angel tonight, and you'll see him again! I've been told that his voice clothes every word in silk and satin, turns it into flesh and blood. And that's how you are to read aloud, not uncertainly and stammering like that fool Darius. Do you understand?'\n\nMeggie looked at her. 'I understand!' she said quietly, although she knew for certain that the Magpie was lying.\n\nThey would never let her go back to Mo. He would have to come and fetch her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Basta's Pride and Dustfinger's Cunning",
                "text": "'Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: \"Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring!\" And they'll say: \"Yes, that's one of my favourite stories.\"'\n\n\u2014J.R.R. Tolkien, 'The Two Towers' from The Lord of the Rings\n\nBasta was grumbling to himself non-stop as he escorted Meggie over to the church. 'Bite her tongue, would she? Since when has the old woman fallen for that kind of thing? And who has to take this little madam to the crypt? Basta, of course! What am I supposed to be \u2013 the only male maidservant in the place?'\n\n'Crypt?' Meggie had thought the prisoners were still in the nets, but she could see no trace of them when she and Basta entered the church, and Basta had impatiently pushed her past the columns.\n\n'Yes, the crypt,' he spat. 'Where we put the dead and those who soon will be. Down here. Get on with it. I've got better things to do today than baby-sit Miss Silvertongue.'\n\nThe stairs to which he was pointing were steep and led down into darkness. The treads were worn, and so uneven that Meggie stumbled at every other step. Down below it was so dark that at first she didn't realise the staircase had come to an end, and she was feeling for the next step with her foot when Basta pushed her roughly forward. 'What's the idea now?' she heard him say, with a curse. 'Why's the damn lantern out again?' A match flared, and Basta's face appeared out of the darkness.\n\n'Visitor for you, Dustfinger,' he announced derisively as he lit the lantern. 'Silvertongue's little girl wants to say goodbye. Her father brought you into this world and his daughter will make sure you leave it again tonight. I wouldn't have let her come, but the Magpie's going soft in her old age. The child actually seems fond of you. It can hardly be your pretty face, can it?' Basta's laugh echoed unpleasantly back from the damp walls.\n\nMeggie went up to the grating behind which Dustfinger stood. She looked at him only briefly, and then gazed over his shoulder. Capricorn's maid was sitting on a stone coffin. The lantern Basta had lit gave only a dim light, but it was enough for Meggie to recognise her face. It was the face from Mo's photograph, except that the hair surrounding it was darker now, and there was no sign of any smile.\n\nAs Meggie came closer to the grating her mother lifted her head, and was now looking at her as if nothing else in the world existed.\n\n'Mortola let her come here?' said Dustfinger. 'That's hard to believe.'\n\n'The girl threatened to bite her own tongue.' Basta was still standing on the stairs, playing with the rabbit's foot he wore round his neck as a lucky charm.\n\n'I wanted to say I'm sorry.' Meggie was speaking to Dustfinger, but as she spoke she looked at her mother, who was still sitting on the stone coffin.\n\n'What for?' Dustfinger smiled his strange smile.\n\n'For what I must do this evening. For reading aloud from the book.' If only she could have let the two of them know Fenoglio's plan.\n\n'Right, now you've said your piece!' barked Basta impatiently. 'Come on, the air down here could make your voice hoarse.'\n\nBut Meggie did not turn. She clung to the bars of the grating as firmly as she could. 'No,' she said, 'I want to stay a bit longer.' Perhaps she could think of some way to tell them, some apparently innocent remark. 'I read something else out of a story,' she told Dustfinger. 'A tin soldier.'\n\n'Did you, though?' Dustfinger was smiling again. It was odd, but this time his smile seemed to her neither mysterious nor supercilious. 'Well, nothing can go wrong this evening, then, can it?'\n\nHe was looking at her thoughtfully, and Meggie tried to tell him with her eyes: We're going to rescue you. It won't work out the way Capricorn expects, believe me! Dustfinger was still looking at her, trying to understand. He raised his eyebrows enquiringly, and then turned to Basta.\n\n'And how's that fairy, Basta?' he asked. 'Still alive, is she, or has your company done for her?'\n\nMeggie saw her mother get up and come towards her, walking tentatively, as if she were treading on broken glass.\n\n'She's still alive,' said Basta sullenly. 'Tinkling all the time. I can't get a wink of sleep. If she carries on like that I'm going to tell Flatnose to wring her neck, the way he does the pigeons when they poo on his car.' Meggie saw her mother take a piece of paper from the pocket of her dress and surreptitiously press it into Dustfinger's hand.\n\n'That would mean at least ten years' bad luck for you both,' said Dustfinger. 'Take my word for it \u2013 I know about fairies. Oh, watch out, what's that in front of you?'\n\nBasta leaped back as if something had bitten his toes. Quick as a flash, Dustfinger's hand came through the grating and gave Meggie the note.\n\n'Dammit, there's nothing there!' swore Basta. 'Don't try that again, you hear me?' He turned just as Meggie's fingers were closing round the paper. 'A note, eh? Well, well!'\n\nMeggie tried in vain to keep her hand closed, but it was easy enough for Basta to prise her fingers apart. Then he stared at her mother's tiny writing.\n\n'Read it, go on!' he growled, holding the note in front of her eyes.\n\nMeggie shook her head.\n\n'Read it!' Basta's voice was dangerously low. 'Or do you want me to carve a pretty pattern on your face like your friend's here?'\n\n'Go on, read it, Meggie,' said Dustfinger. 'He knows I like a good drop of wine anyway.'\n\n'Wine?' Basta laughed. 'You wanted the child to get you some wine? How did you think she'd do that?'\n\nMeggie stared at the real note. She concentrated on every word until she knew it by heart.\n\nNine years are a long time. I celebrated all your birthdays. You're even lovelier than I imagined you.\n\nShe heard Basta laughing.\n\n'Just like you, Dustfinger!' he said. 'You think you could drown your fears in drink, but a whole cask of wine wouldn't be enough for that.'\n\nDustfinger shrugged his shoulders. 'It was worth a try.'\n\nPerhaps he looked a little too pleased when he said that, for Basta frowned and looked thoughtfully at his scarred face. 'On the other hand,' he said slowly, 'you always were a crafty dog. And there are rather a lot of letters there just for a bottle of wine. What about it, sweetheart?' He held the note in front of Meggie again. 'Are you going to read it to me now, or shall I show it to the Magpie?'\n\nMeggie snatched the note from him so fast that she had crumpled it behind her back while Basta was still wondering where it had gone.\n\n'Give it here, you little brat!' he hissed at her. 'Give me that note or I'll cut off your fingers.'\n\nBut Meggie retreated from him until her back was up against the grating. 'No!' she said, clinging to the bars with one hand and pushing the note through them with the other. Dustfinger caught on at once. She felt him taking the paper from her fingers.\n\nBasta hit her in the face so hard that her head struck the grating. Immediately, a hand stroked her hair, and when she looked round, dazed, she was gazing into her mother's face. He'll notice any moment, she thought, he'll understand it all, but Basta had eyes only for Dustfinger, who was waving the note back and forth behind the grating as if he were brandishing a worm in front of a hungry bird's beak.\n\n'Well, how about it?' enquired Dustfinger, taking a step back. 'Do you dare come in here with me, or would you rather go on hitting little girls?'\n\nBasta stood there motionless, like a child whose ears have suddenly and unexpectedly been boxed. Then he seized Meggie's arm and dragged her towards him. She felt something cold on her throat. She didn't have to see it to know what it was. Her mother screamed and pulled at Dustfinger's hand, but he only held the note higher in the air. 'I knew it!' he said. 'What a coward you are, Basta! You'd rather put a knife to a child's throat than venture in here. Of course if Flatnose were here to back you up, too, with his broad back and his great fat fists \u2013 but he isn't. Come along, you're the one with the knife! I've got nothing but my hands, and you know how I hate to misuse them for fighting.'\n\nMeggie felt Basta's grip relax. The blade was no longer pressing into her skin. She swallowed, and put a hand to her throat. She almost expected to feel warm blood, but there was none. Basta pushed her away so hard that she stumbled and fell on the damp, cold floor. Then he put his hand into his trouser pocket and brought out a bunch of keys. He was panting with rage like a man who had run too far and too fast. Fingers trembling, he put a key into the lock of the cell. Dustfinger watched him, his face impassive. He gestured to Meggie's mother to step back from the grating, and retreated himself, nimble as a dancer. You couldn't tell from his scarred face whether he was afraid or not, but the scars looked darker than usual.\n\n'What's that for?' he said, when Basta came into the cell and held out his knife. 'You might as well put it away. If you kill me you'll spoil Capricorn's fun. He won't forgive you for that in a hurry.'\n\nYes, he was afraid. Meggie could hear it in his voice. The words were spilling out of his mouth a little too fast.\n\n'Who said anything about killing?' growled Basta as he closed the cell door behind him.\n\nDustfinger retreated as far as the stone coffin. 'Ah, you were thinking of adding a few more decorations to my face?' He was almost whispering. There was something else in his voice now \u2013 hatred, scorn, rage. 'Don't expect it to be so easy this time,' he said softly. 'I've learned a few useful tricks since then.'\n\n'Have you indeed?' Basta was standing barely a pace away from him. 'And what may they be? Your friend fire isn't here to help you. You don't even have that stinking marten.'\n\n'It was words I had in mind.' Dustfinger placed a hand on the coffin. 'You see, the fairies have taught me how to lay a curse on someone. They were sorry for my cut face, and they knew how bad I am at fighting. So... I curse you, Basta \u2013 I curse you by the bones of the dead man lying in this coffin. I'll bet there's no old priest in it now, but someone you disposed of. Isn't that right?'\n\nBasta did not answer, but his silence was more eloquent than any words.\n\n'Of course. An old coffin like this makes a wonderful hiding-place.' Dustfinger caressed the cracked lid with his fingers as if trying to call the dead back to life with the warmth of his hand. 'May his spirit haunt you, Basta!' he said in a solemn voice. 'May he breathe my name in your ear at every step you take, may he\u2014'\n\nMeggie saw Basta's hand leap to his rabbit-foot.\n\n'That thing won't help you!' Dustfinger's hand was still on the coffin. 'Poor Basta! Are you feeling hot already? Do your limbs begin to tremble?'\n\nBasta lunged at him with the knife, but Dustfinger, light on his feet as he was, avoided the blade. 'Fire is faster than you, Basta!' he whispered. 'Much faster.'\n\n'Give me the note you handed her!' Basta screamed in his face.\n\nDustfinger just put the note in his trouser pocket.\n\nMeggie stood motionless as a doll. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother put her hand in the pocket of her dress. When she brought it out again she was holding a stone in it, a grey stone not much bigger than a bird's egg.\n\nDustfinger passed his hands over the lid of the coffin, then held them out to Basta. 'Shall I touch you?' he asked. 'What happens when you touch a murdered man's coffin? Tell me. You know all about such things.'\n\nHe took another step aside, like a dancer circling round his partner.\n\n'I'll cut your filthy fingers off if you try to touch me!' yelled Basta, his face red with rage. 'Every one of them, and your tongue into the bargain.' He lunged with the knife again, cutting through the air with the bright blade, but Dustfinger avoided it. He was leaping around Basta faster and faster, ducking, retreating, advancing, but suddenly he found that his fearless dance had trapped him. He had only the bare wall behind him now, the grating cut off his retreat to the right \u2013 and Basta was coming straight at him.\n\nAt that moment Meggie's mother raised her hand. The stone hit Basta on the head. Astonished, he spun round, looked at her as if trying to remember who she was, and put his hand to his bleeding face. She never knew how Dustfinger did it, but suddenly he had Basta's knife in his hand. Basta was staring at its familiar blade in amazement, as if he couldn't grasp the fact that the faithless thing was pointing at his own chest.\n\n'Well, how's this, then?' Dustfinger slowly brought the tip of the knife close to Basta's stomach. 'Do you feel how soft your flesh is? The human body is a fragile thing, and you can't get a new one. What is it you and your friends do to cats and squirrels? Flatnose likes describing it\u2014'\n\n'I don't hunt squirrels.' Basta's voice cracked. He was trying not to look at the blade, now scarcely a hand's breadth from his snow-white shirt.\n\n'No, so you don't. I remember now. It doesn't amuse you as much as it does the others.'\n\nBasta's face was white. All the furious red had ebbed out of it. Fear is not red. Fear is pale as a dead man's face. 'What are you going to do now?' he gasped. He was breathing hard, as if he were drowning. 'You don't think you'll get out of this village alive, do you? They'll shoot you down before you're across the square.'\n\n'Well, I'd prefer that to a meeting with the Shadow,' replied Dustfinger. 'Anyway, none of you are very good shots.'\n\nMeggie's mother came up to him, and mimed writing with her finger in the air. Dustfinger put his hand in his trouser pocket and gave her the note. Basta followed the paper with his eyes as if the strength of his gaze would draw it to him. Resa wrote something on it and handed it back to Dustfinger, who read what she had written, frowning. 'Wait until dark? No, I won't wait. But perhaps the girl had better stay here.' He looked at Meggie. 'Capricorn won't harm her. After all, she's his new Silvertongue, and some time her father will try to rescue her.' Dustfinger put the note away again and ran the tip of the knife down Basta's shirt buttons. They clinked as the metal touched them. 'You go to the stairs, Resa,' he said. 'I'll finish this business off, and then we'll stroll across Capricorn's square and walk away like an innocent pair of lovers.'\n\nCautiously, Resa opened the cell door. She came out past the grating and took Meggie's hand. Her fingers were cold and rather rough, a stranger's fingers, but her face was familiar, although it had looked younger and less anxious in the photograph.\n\n'Resa! We can't take her with us!' Dustfinger seized Basta's arm and forced him back against the wall. 'Her father will murder me if she gets shot out there. Now, turn round and cover her eyes, unless you want her to watch...' The knife was trembling in his hand. Resa looked at him, horrified, and shook her head vigorously, but Dustfinger acted as if he didn't see her.\n\n'You must thrust hard, Dirtyfingers!' hissed Basta as he pressed his hands against the stone behind him. 'Killing isn't easy. You have to practise to do it well.'\n\n'Nonsense!' Dustfinger grabbed him by the jacket and held the knife under his chin, the way Basta had pulled his knife on Mo that time in the church. 'Any fool can kill. It's easy \u2013 as easy as throwing a book on the fire, breaking down a door, or frightening a child.'\n\nMeggie began to tremble, she didn't know why. Her mother took a step back towards the grating, but when she saw Dustfinger's stony face she stopped. Then she turned, drew Meggie's face against her breast, put her arms round her and held her tight. Her smell seemed familiar to Meggie, like something long forgotten; she closed her eyes and tried not to think of anything, not Dustfinger or the knife or Basta's white face. And then, for a terrible moment, there was only one thing in the world she wanted \u2013 to see Basta lying dead on the floor, limp as a doll thrown away, an ugly, stupid toy which always seemed a little scary.\n\nThe knife was barely a finger's breadth from Basta's white shirt, but suddenly Dustfinger plunged his hand into Basta's trouser pocket, took out the keys to the cells and stepped back. 'No, you're right, I don't know much about killing,' he said as he made his way backwards out of the cell, 'and I'm not about to learn just for you.'\n\nA scornful smile spread over Basta's face, but Dustfinger paid no attention. He locked the barred door, took Resa's arm and led her to the stairs.' Let go of her!' he begged, when he saw that she was still holding Meggie tightly. 'Believe me, nothing will happen to her, and we can't take her with us!'\n\nBut Resa just shook her head and put her arm round Meggie's shoulders.\n\n'Hey, Dustfinger!' called Basta. 'I knew you couldn't do it. Give me my knife back. You don't know what to do with it anyway!'\n\nDustfinger ignored him. 'They'll kill you if you stay,' he told Resa, but he let go of her hand.\n\n'Hey, you up there!' bellowed Basta. 'Help! Help! The prisoners are escaping!'\n\nMeggie looked at Dustfinger in alarm. 'Why didn't you gag him?'\n\n'What with, princess?' asked Dustfinger. Resa held Meggie close and stroked her hair.\n\n'They'll shoot you, they'll shoot you!' Basta's voice rang out. 'Hey there! Help!' he shouted again, shaking the bars of the grating.\n\nFootsteps were heard overhead. Dustfinger swore quietly, cast Resa one last glance, then turned and ran up the worn steps. Meggie couldn't hear whether or not he got the door open at the top. She could hear nothing but Basta's shouting, and she ran back towards him, helpless but wanting to strike him through the bars, right in his bellowing face. Once again, she heard footsteps overhead, muffled cries. What were they to do? Someone came crashing down the stairs. Was Dustfinger coming back? No, it wasn't his face but Flatnose's that emerged from the darkness. Another of Capricorn's men was stumbling down the stairs behind him. He looked very young, round-faced and beardless, but he immediately pointed his gun at Meggie and her mother.\n\n'Hello there, Basta! What are you doing behind those bars?' asked Flatnose, surprised.\n\n'Open up, you damn fool!' snapped Basta through the grating. 'Dustfinger's gone.'\n\n'Dustfinger?' Flatnose wiped his face on his sleeve. 'Then the lad here was right. Came to me just now and said he'd seen the fire-eater up there behind a column.'\n\n'And you didn't give chase? Are you really as big a fool as you look?' Basta pressed his face to the bars as if he could make his way through them.\n\n'Hey, watch what you say, right?' Flatnose came up to the grating and studied Basta with obvious pleasure. 'So that dirty-fingered fellow has outwitted you again! Capricorn won't like that.'\n\n'Send someone after him!' roared Basta. 'Or I'll tell Capricorn it was you who let him go!'\n\nFlatnose took a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and noisily blew his nose. 'Oh yes? So who's behind bars, you or me? He won't get far. There are two guards in the car park, another three in the square, and his face is easy to recognise, you made good and sure of that, right?' His laughter sounded like a dog barking. 'Tell you what, I could really get used to this sight! Your face looks good behind bars. They're just the thing to stop you waving your knife about under anyone's nose.'\n\n'Will you unlock this damn door?' bellowed Basta. 'Or I'll cut off your ugly nose. Open up!'\n\nFlatnose folded his arms. 'Sadly, I can't,' he smirked in a mock-serious voice. 'Our dirty-fingered friend seems to have taken the keys. Or do you see them anywhere?' he enquired of the boy who was still pointing his gun at Meggie and her mother. When he shook his head, Flatnose grinned all over his squashed-in face. 'No, he can't see them either. Well, I suppose I'll just have to go to Mortola. Maybe she has a master key.'\n\n'Wipe that grin off your face!' shouted Basta. 'Or I'll carve it off!'\n\n'You don't say! I can't see your knife anywhere. Has Dustfinger stolen another one? If this goes on he'll soon have a whole collection.' Flatnose turned his back on Basta and pointed to the cell next to him. 'Shut the woman in there and guard her till I get back with the keys,' he said. 'I'll just take little Miss Silvertongue back to her room first.'\n\nMeggie resisted as he pulled her away, but Flatnose simply picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. 'What was the girl doing down here anyway?' he asked. 'Does Capricorn know about it?'\n\n'Ask the Magpie!' spat Basta.\n\n'No fear!' Flatnose muttered as he marched towards the stairs with Meggie. She had time to see the boy push her mother into the other cell with the barrel of his gun, then she saw only the steps and the floor of the church and the dusty square as Flatnose carried her across it like a sack of potatoes.\n\n'Let's hope your voice isn't as thin as you,' he grunted as he put her down on her feet outside the room. 'Or the Shadow will be rather narrow-chested if he really does turn up this evening.'\n\nMeggie did not answer.\n\nWhen Flatnose unlocked the door, she walked past Fenoglio without a word, climbed up on her bed and buried her head in Mo's sweater."
            },
            {
                "title": "No Luck for Elinor",
                "text": "\u2002Having described the precise situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious directions how he was to walk straight up the passage, and when he got into the yard take the door up the steps on the right-hand side, and pull off his hat as he went into the room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on alone, and promised to bide his return on the spot of their parting.\n\n\u2014Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist\n\nElinor had been driving for more than an hour before she finally reached a town with its own police station. The sea was still some way off, but the hills were lower, and vines covered the slopes rather than the undergrowth and trees that grew on the hills around Capricorn's village. It was terribly hot, even hotter than the day before, and when Elinor got out of the car she heard a distant rumble of thunder that sounded as if a great beast were lurking somewhere beyond the hills. The sky above the houses was a blue as dark as deep water \u2013 an ominous blue...\n\nDon't be silly, Elinor, she told herself as she made for the pale yellow building which was the police station. There's a storm coming, that's all. Not getting as superstitious as that man Basta, are you?\n\nThere were two officers in the small police station. They had hung their uniform jackets over their chairs. Despite the big fan whirring round under the ceiling, the air was so muggy it could have been bottled.\n\nThe younger of the two men, who was broad and snub-nosed like a pug dog, laughed at Elinor when she told her story, and asked whether she looked so red in the face, perhaps, because she liked the local wine a little too much. Elinor would have tipped him off his chair if his companion hadn't calmed her down. The second officer was a tall, thin man with a melancholy expression and dark hair thinning above his forehead. 'Stop that,' he told the other policeman. 'At least let her finish her story.' He listened unmoved as Elinor told them about Capricorn's village and the Black Jackets, frowned when she started talking about fire-raising and dead roosters, and when she came to Meggie and the planned execution he raised his eyebrows. She said nothing, of course, about the book and just how the execution was to be carried out. Only two weeks ago she wouldn't have believed a word of it herself.\n\nWhen she had finished, the tall man said nothing for a while. He rearranged the pencils on his desk, tidied some papers, and finally looked at her thoughtfully. 'I've heard about that village before,' he said.\n\n'Naturally, everyone's heard of it!' mocked the other officer. 'The Devil's village, the accursed village, even the snakes avoid it. The walls of the church are painted with blood and Black Jackets, who are really ghosts and carry fire in their pockets, haunt the streets. You only have to get near them and you go up in smoke \u2013 whoosh!' He raised his hands and clapped them above his head.\n\nElinor looked at him icily. His colleague smiled, but then rose with a sigh, laboriously put on his jacket and signed to Elinor to follow him. 'I'm going to take a look at this,' he said over his shoulder.\n\n'Might as well, if you've nothing better to do!' the other man called after him, laughing so uproariously that Elinor felt like going back to tip him off his chair after all. A little later she was in the passenger seat of a police car, and the road along which she had come was winding its way through the hills. Why on earth, she kept thinking, didn't I do this before? Everything will be all right now, everything. No one will be shot or executed, Meggie will get her father back and Mortimer will be reunited with his daughter. Yes, everything will be all right, thanks to Elinor! She could have sung and danced (not that she was much of a dancer, and she was sitting in a car). She had never in her life felt so pleased with herself. Now who could say she didn't know how to cope with the real world?\n\nThe policeman beside her said nothing. He just kept his eyes on the road, taking bend after bend at a speed that made Elinor's heart beat painfully fast. Occasionally, he absent-mindedly kneaded his right earlobe. He seemed to know the way, and never hesitated when the road branched or passed any turning. Elinor could not help thinking how long it had taken her and Mo to search for the village. Suddenly a disturbing thought came into her mind.\n\n'There are quite a lot of them,' she said in an uncertain voice, just as they were taking another bend so fast that they came alarmingly close to the abyss yawning on her left. 'I mean, this Capricorn has rather a lot of men. And they're armed, even if they're not particularly good shots. Might it be a good idea to ask for reinforcements?' That was what people did in stupid films about cops and robbers \u2013 the police were always asking for reinforcements.\n\nThe policeman here with her ran his hand through his sparse hair and nodded as if he had already thought of that. 'Yes, of course,' he said, reaching for his radio. 'Reinforcements won't hurt, but they'd better keep in the background. The first thing is to ask a few questions.'\n\nOver the radio, he asked for five men. Not many against Capricorn's Black Jackets, thought Elinor, but better than nothing, certainly better than a desperate father, an Arab boy, and an overweight book collector.\n\n'There it is!' she said as Capricorn's village appeared in the distance, grey and insignificant-looking amidst all the dark green.\n\n'Yes, that's what I thought,' replied the policeman, after which he was silent again. When he just nodded to the guard in the car park Elinor simply refused to believe the worst. Only when they were standing in front of Capricorn, and he was handing her over like lost property being restored to its rightful owner, was she forced to admit to herself that nothing was going to turn out well after all. Everything was ruined now \u2013 and oh, how stupid she had been, how dreadfully stupid.\n\n'She's spreading slander about you,' he heard the policeman tell Capricorn, avoiding Elinor's eyes. 'Something about child abduction. And there was talk of fire-raising...'\n\n'All nonsense!' replied Capricorn, answering the unspoken question in a bored voice. 'I love children \u2013 as long as they don't come too close to me. Children and business don't mix.'\n\nThe policeman nodded, and looked unhappily at his hands. 'And she said something about an execution...'\n\n'Did she indeed?' Capricorn looked Elinor up and down as if amazed by such fantasies. 'Well, as you know, I have no call for anything of that nature. People do as I say without my having to resort to such drastic measures.'\n\n'Of course,' murmured the policeman, nodding. 'Of course.'\n\nHe couldn't wait to leave. As his rapid, clipped footsteps died away Cockerell, who had been sitting on the steps, laughed. 'He has three small children, right? It ought to be compulsory for all policemen to have small children. That one was a pushover! Basta just had to stand outside the school twice. What about it \u2013 should we pay him another visit, to refresh his memory?'\n\nCapricorn shook his head. 'I don't think that will be necessary. Let's just think what to do with our guest here. How should we deal with someone who tells such shocking lies about us?'\n\nElinor felt weak at the knees as he turned his colourless eyes on her. If Mortimer offered to read me into some book now, any book, she thought, I'd accept. I wouldn't even want to pick and choose.\n\nThree or four black-clad men were standing behind her, so trying to run away was pointless. All you can do is submit to your fate with dignity, Elinor, she told herself. But reading about such a thing was much easier than doing it.\n\n'The crypt or the sheds?' asked Cockerell, strolling up to her. The crypt, thought Elinor. Dustfinger said something about that. And it was nothing nice.\n\n'The crypt? Why not? We have to dispose of her, or who might she bring here next?' Capricorn hid a yawn behind his hand. 'Very well, we'll give the Shadow a little more work to do this evening. He'll like that.'\n\nElinor wanted to say something \u2013 something bold and heroic \u2013 but her tongue wouldn't work. It just lay there in her mouth, numb. Cockerell had already hauled her as far as that ridiculous statue when Capricorn called him back.\n\n'I quite forgot to ask her about Silvertongue!' he cried. 'Ask her if she happens to know where he is at the moment.'\n\n'Well, come on, out with it!' growled Cockerell, seizing her by the nape of the neck as if to shake the answer out of her. 'Where is he?'\n\nElinor tightened her lips. Quick, Elinor, quick, she told herself, think of a good answer. And suddenly her tongue was working again.\n\n'Why ask me?' she said to Capricorn, who was still sitting in his chair as pale as if he had been left in the wash too long, or the sun burning down out in the square had bleached him. 'You should know! He's dead. Your men shot him \u2013 and the boy.' Look at him, Elinor, she thought. Look him straight in the face the way you used to look at your father when he caught you with the wrong book. A few tears would come in useful too. Go on, just think of your books, all your burnt books! Think of last night, the fear, the despair \u2013 and if none of that works pinch yourself!\n\nCapricorn was gazing at her thoughtfully.\n\n'There!' Cockerell called to him. 'I knew we'd hit him!'\n\nElinor was still looking at Capricorn, a blurred sight through the veil of her false tears.\n\n'We'll see,' he said slowly. 'My men are searching the hills for an escaped prisoner. I don't suppose you're going to tell me where they should look for the two bodies?'\n\n'I buried them, and I'm certainly not saying where.' Elinor felt a tear running down her nose. By all the letters of the alphabet, Elinor, she told herself, there's a great actress lost in you!\n\n'Buried them. Well, well.' Capricorn played with the rings on his left hand. He was wearing three at once, and he adjusted them, frowning, as if they had got out of line without his permission.\n\n'That's why I went to the police,' said Elinor. 'To avenge them. And my books.'\n\nCockerell laughed. 'You didn't have to bury those books, right? They burned beautifully, like the very best firewood, and their pages \u2013 ah, they quivered like pale little fingers.' He raised his hands and imitated the movement. Elinor hit him in the face with all her might, and she was quite strong. Blood flowed from Cockerell's nose. He wiped it away with his hand, and looked at it as if he were surprised to see something so red coming out of him. 'Look at that!' he said, showing Capricorn his bloodstained fingers. 'You wait, she'll give the Shadow more trouble than Basta.'\n\nWhen he led her away Elinor walked beside him with her head held high. Only when she saw the steep stairway disappearing into a bottomless black hole did her courage forsake her for a moment. The crypt, of course, now she remembered \u2013 the place where they put the condemned. That was what it smelled like, anyway, damp and mouldy, just as one imagines the odour of death.\n\nAt first Elinor couldn't believe her eyes when she saw Basta's wiry figure pressed up against the iron bars. She had thought she must have misheard Cockerell's last remark, but sure enough, there was Basta shut up in the cage like an animal, with all the fear and hopelessness of a trapped beast in his eyes. Even the sight of Elinor did not cheer him. He looked straight through her and Cockerell, as if they were two of the ghosts he feared so much.\n\n'What's he doing here?' asked Elinor. 'Have you taken to locking each other up now?'\n\nCockerell shrugged. 'Shall I tell her?' he asked Basta, who responded with nothing but the same glazed stare. 'First he let Silvertongue escape, and now Dustfinger. That's a sure way to ruin your chances with the boss, even if you do think you're his personal pet. And of course it's years since you managed to light a decent fire.' He smiled maliciously at Basta.\n\nSignora Loredan, it's time to think about making a will, Elinor told herself as Cockerell pushed her further into the crypt. If Capricorn intends to kill his most faithful dog, he's certainly not going to stop short at you.\n\n'Hey, you might look a bit more cheerful!' Cockerell told Basta as he fished a bunch of keys out of his jacket pocket. 'You've got two women for company now!'\n\nBasta pressed his forehead against the grating. 'Haven't you caught the fire-eater yet?' he croaked. His voice sounded as if he had shouted himself hoarse.\n\n'No, but the fat woman here says we did hit Silvertongue. Says he's dead as a doornail. Sounds like I winged him after all. Well, I have had plenty of practice on the cats.'\n\nBehind the door with the grating that Cockerell unlocked for her something moved. A woman was sitting there in the dark, leaning back against something that looked suspiciously like a stone coffin. Elinor could not see the woman's face, but then the figure straightened up.\n\n'Company for you, Resa!' called Cockerell as he pushed Elinor through the open door. 'You two can have a nice chat!'\n\nHe was laughing uproariously as he trudged away.\n\nAs for Elinor, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She would rather have seen her favourite niece again anywhere but here."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Narrow Escape",
                "text": "\u2002'I don't know what it is,' answered Fiver wretchedly. 'There isn't any danger here, at this moment. But it's coming \u2013 it's coming.'\n\n\u2014Richard Adams, Watership Down\n\nFarid heard footsteps just as they were making the torches.\n\nThe torches had to be larger and more solid than those Dustfinger used in his shows, for they would have to burn a long time. Farid had already cut Silvertongue's hair with the knife Dustfinger had given him. It was short and bristly now, and at least that made Silvertongue look slightly different. Farid had also shown him the kind of earth he needed to rub on his face to darken his skin. No one must recognise them, not this time\u2014but then he heard the footsteps.\n\nAnd voices: one was speaking angrily, the other laughed and called out. But they were still too far away for him to make out the words.\n\nSilvertongue picked up the torches, and Gwin snapped at Farid's fingers as the boy pushed him roughly into the rucksack. 'Where can we hide, Farid? Where?' whispered Silvertongue.\n\n'I know a place.' Farid threw the rucksack over his shoulder and led Silvertongue over to the charred wall. He climbed over the blackened stones where there had once been a window, jumped down in the dry grass behind the wall, and crouched low. The metal cover he now pushed aside had buckled in the fire and was overgrown by alyssum. Its tiny white flowers rambled like snow over the opening. Farid had found the metal plate while he was exploring during the long hours he spent here with the silent and ever-reserved Dustfinger. He had jumped off the wall and noticed the hollow sound. Perhaps the space under it had originally been a store for perishable foodstuffs, but at least once before it had also been used as a hiding-place.\n\nSilvertongue recoiled when he touched the skeleton in the darkness. It looked small, scarcely big enough for an adult, and it lay there in the cramped, underground space quite peacefully, curled up as if it had lain down to sleep. Perhaps it was because it looked so peaceful that Farid was not afraid of it. If there was a ghost down here, he felt sure, it could be only a sad, pale creature, nothing to be frightened of.\n\nThere wasn't much space when Farid drew the metal cover across again. Silvertongue was tall, almost too tall to hide here, but it was reassuring to have him close, even if his heart was beating just as fast as Farid's own. The boy could feel every single beat of it as they crouched there side by side, listening for sounds from above.\n\nThe voices were coming closer, but it was difficult to make them out, for the ground muffled them as if they came from another world. Once a foot stepped on the metal cover, and Farid dug his fingers into Silvertongue's arm and wouldn't let him go until all was quiet again overhead. It was a long time before they dared trust the silence, such a very long time that once or twice Farid turned his head because he imagined that the skeleton had moved.\n\nWhen Silvertongue cautiously raised the metal cover and looked out it did seem as if they really had gone. Only the grasshoppers were chirping tirelessly, and a bird, startled, flew up from the charred wall.\n\nWhoever it was had taken everything with them: the blankets, the sweater that Farid had curled up in at night like a snail going into its shell, even the bloodstained bandages that Silvertongue had tied round the boy's forehead the night they'd been shot at.\n\n'Never mind,' said Silvertongue, as they stood beside their cold fireplace. 'We shan't be needing our blankets tonight.' Then he ran his fingers through Farid's dark hair. 'What would I do without you, master scout, rabbit-catcher, finder of hiding-places?' he asked.\n\nFarid stared at his bare toes and smiled."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Fragile Little Thing",
                "text": "When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her, he said, 'Who is Tinker Bell?'\n\n'O Peter,' she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember.\n\n'There are such a lot of them,' he said. 'I expect she is no more.'\n\nI expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.\n\n\u2014J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan\n\nCapricorn's men were looking for Dustfinger in the wrong place. He hadn't left the village. He hadn't even tried. Dustfinger was in Basta's house.\n\nIt was in an alley just behind Capricorn's yard, surrounded by empty houses inhabited only by cats and rats. Basta did not want neighbours. Indeed, he wanted no other company but Capricorn's. Dustfinger knew Basta would have slept on the threshold of Capricorn's room if he had been allowed to, but none of the men lived in the main house. They stood guard there, that was all. They ate in the church and slept in one or other of the many abandoned houses in the village, that was the rule and it could not be broken. Most of the men kept moving round, living in one house and going on to another when the roof began to leak. Only Basta had lived in the same place ever since they came to the village. Dustfinger suspected he had chosen that house because St John's wort grew beside the door, and there is no other plant with such a reputation for keeping away evil \u2013 leaving aside the evil in Basta's own heart.\n\nLike most of the buildings in the village the house was built of grey stone, with black-painted shutters that Basta usually kept closed and on which he had painted the signs he believed would keep bad luck away, just like the yellow flowers of St John's wort. Sometimes Dustfinger thought Basta's constant fear of curses and sudden disaster probably arose from his terror of the darkness within himself, which made him assume that the rest of the world must be exactly the same.\n\nDustfinger had been lucky to make it as far as Basta's house. He had run into a whole crowd of Capricorn's men almost as soon as he stumbled out of the church. Of course they had recognised him instantly, Basta had long ago made that a certainty. But their surprise had given Dustfinger just enough time to disappear down one of the alleys. Fortunately, he knew every nook and cranny of this accursed village. He had meant to make for the car park and go on into the hills, but then he'd thought of Basta's empty house. He had forced his way through holes in walls, crawled through cellars, and ducked down behind the parapets of balconies that were no longer used. When it came to hiding, even Gwin had nothing to teach Dustfinger. A strange sense of curiosity had always driven him to explore the hidden, forgotten corners of this and any other place, and all that knowledge had now come in useful.\n\nHe was out of breath when he finally reached Basta's house. Basta was probably the only man in Capricorn's village who locked his front door, but the lock was no great obstacle to Dustfinger. He let himself in and hid in the attic until his heart had slowed down, even though the wooden planks were so rotten that he feared he would go through the floor at every step. Downstairs, he found enough food in Basta's kitchen to quell the hunger that had been gnawing like a worm at the walls of his stomach. Neither he nor Resa had been given anything to eat since they were put in those nets, so it was doubly satisfying to fill his belly with Basta's food.\n\nWhen he had partially satisfied his hunger he opened one of the shutters just a crack, so that he could have warning in good time of any approaching footsteps, but the only sound that met his ears was a tinkling, so faint that he could hardly hear it. Only then did he remember the fairy that Meggie had read into this world that normally had no fairies.\n\nHe found her in Basta's bedroom. The room contained nothing but a bed and a chest of drawers on which a number of bricks lay carefully arranged side by side, all of them covered with soot. They said in the village that whenever Capricorn had a house set on fire Basta took away a brick or stone, even though he feared fire at other times, and clearly that story was true. On one of the bricks stood a glass jug with a faint light coming from it, not much brighter than a glow-worm would have made. The fairy was lying at the bottom of the glass, crumpled up like a butterfly just out of the cocoon. Basta had put a plate over the top of the jug, but the fragile little thing didn't look as if she had the strength to fly.\n\nWhen Dustfinger took the plate away the fairy didn't even raise her head. Dustfinger put his hand into her glass prison and carefully took the little creature out. Her limbs were so delicate he was afraid his fingers would break them. The fairies he knew had looked different, smaller but stronger, with fair blue skin and four shimmering wings. This one had skin the same colour as a human, a very pale human, and her wings were more like butterfly than dragonfly wings. But would she like the same things to eat as the fairies he knew? It was worth a try. She looked half dead.\n\nDustfinger took the pillow off Basta's bed and put it on the kitchen table, which was scrubbed clean. (Everything in Basta's house was scrubbed clean, as spotless as his snow-white shirt.) He laid the fairy on the pillow, then filled a dish with milk and put it on the table beside her. She immediately opened her eyes \u2013 so in having a good sense of smell and a taste for milk she seemed no different from the fairies he knew. He dipped his finger in the milk and let a white drop fall on her lips. She licked it up like a hungry little cat. Dustfinger trickled drop after drop into her mouth until she sat up and feebly beat her wings. Her face had a little colour in it now, but although he spoke three fairy languages he understood not a word of what she finally said in her faint tinkling voice.\n\n'What a pity!' he whispered, as she spread her wings and flew, rather unsteadily, up to the ceiling. 'That means I can't ask you if you could make me invisible, or so small that you could carry me to Capricorn's festivities.'\n\nThe fairy looked down at him, tinkled something that he couldn't understand, and settled on the side of the kitchen cupboard.\n\nDustfinger sat down on the only chair by Basta's kitchen table and looked up at her. 'All the same,' he said, 'it's good to see someone like you again. If only the fire in this world had more of a sense of humour, and a troll or a glass man would look out of the trees now and then \u2013 well, perhaps I could get used to the rest of it after all, the noise, the speed, the crowds \u2013 and the way the nights are so much lighter...'\n\nHe sat there in his worst enemy's kitchen for quite a long time, watching the fairy flying round the room investigating everything, for fairies are naturally inquisitive, and this one was obviously no exception. Every now and then she stopped to sip her milk, and he filled the dish a second time. Once or twice, footsteps approached, but each time they passed by the house. What a good thing Basta had no friends. The air that came in through the window was sultry; it made Dustfinger drowsy. The narrow strip of sky showing above the houses would stay light for many hours yet \u2013 long enough for him to make up his mind whether or not to go to Capricorn's festivities.\n\nWhy should he go? He could get hold of the book later, some time when all the excitement in the village had died down and everything was back to normal. And what about Resa? What was going to happen to her? The Shadow would come for her. There was nothing to be done about that, not by anyone, not even Silvertongue if he were really so mad as to try. But Silvertongue didn't know about her, or about his daughter, and at least there was no need to worry about Meggie \u2013 not now that she was Capricorn's favourite toy. Capricorn wouldn't let the Shadow hurt her.\n\nNo, I won't go, thought Dustfinger, I'll hide here for a while. Tomorrow, there'll be no more Basta, that's one good thing. And perhaps I shall go away from here, go away for ever... No. He knew he wouldn't do that. Not while the book was here.\n\nThe fairy had flown over to the window, and was peering curiously out at the alley.\n\n'Forget it. Stay here,' said Dustfinger. 'Please. Believe me, it's no place for you out there.'\n\nShe looked at him quizzically, then folded her wings and knelt on the windowsill. And there she stayed, as if she couldn't decide between the hot room and the strange freedom on offer outside."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Right Words",
                "text": "\u2002This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.\n\n\u2014Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde\n\nFenoglio wrote and wrote, but the number of pages he had hidden under the mattress was no greater. He kept taking them out, fiddling with them, tearing up one and adding another. 'No, no, no!' Meggie heard him muttering crossly to himself. 'No, that's not it yet.'\n\n'It will be dark in a few hours,' she said at last, anxiously. 'Suppose you don't finish it in time?'\n\n'I have finished!' he snapped, irritated. 'I've finished a dozen times already, but I'm not happy with it.' He lowered his voice to a whisper before he went on. 'There are so many questions. Suppose the Shadow turns on you or me or the prisoners once he's killed Capricorn? And is killing Capricorn really the only solution? What's going to happen to his men afterwards? What do I do with them?'\n\n'What do you think? The Shadow must kill them all!' Meggie whispered back. 'How else are we ever going to get home or rescue my mother?'\n\nFenoglio did not like this reply. 'Good heavens, what a heartless creature you are!' he whispered. 'Kill them all! Haven't you seen how young some of them are?' He shook his head. 'No! I'm not a mass murderer, I'm a writer! I'm sure I can think of some less bloodthirsty ending.' And he began writing again... and crossing words out... and writing more, while outside the sun sank lower and lower until its rays were gilding the hilltops.\n\nEvery time steps came along the corridor Fenoglio hid what he had been writing under his mattress, but no one came in to see what the old man kept scribbling on his blank sheets of paper. For Basta was down in the crypt.\n\nThe bored guards on duty outside their door had several visitors that afternoon. Men had obviously come into the village from Capricorn's outposts to watch the execution. Putting her ear to the door, Meggie eavesdropped on their conversations. They laughed a lot, and their voices sounded excited. They were all looking forward to the night's spectacle. Not one of them seemed to feel sorry for Basta. Far from it. Knowing Capricorn's former favourite was to die that night just seemed to add to their fun. Of course they discussed Meggie too. That little witch, they called her, that little madam the enchantress, and not all of them seemed to be convinced of her powers.\n\nAs for Basta's executioner, Meggie learned no more than what Fenoglio had already told her and what she remembered of the passage that the Magpie had made her read. It wasn't much, but she heard the fear in those voices outside the door, and the horrified awe that overcame them all at the mention of his name, which was not a real name at all. Only those who, like Capricorn himself, had come out of Fenoglio's book had ever seen the Shadow \u2013 but they had all obviously heard about him \u2013 and they painted pictures in the darkest tones of the way he would deal with the prisoners. There were evidently several opinions about how he actually killed his victims, but the suggestions Meggie overheard grew more and more horrible the closer evening came, until she could bear it no longer. She went to sit by the window with her hands over her ears.\n\nIt was six o'clock \u2013 the church clock was just beginning to strike \u2013 when Fenoglio suddenly put down his pen and looked over what he had written with a satisfied expression. 'Got it!' he whispered. 'Yes, that's it. That's how it will be. It will turn out splendidly.' Impatiently, he beckoned Meggie over and gave her the paper.\n\n'Read it!' he whispered, glancing nervously at the door. Out in the corridor, Flatnose was just boasting of the way he had poisoned a farmer's stocks of olive oil.\n\n'Is that all?' Meggie looked incredulously at the single sheet of paper.\n\n'Yes, that's all. No more is needed. As you'll see. The words just have to be the right ones. Go on, read it!'\n\nMeggie did as he said.\n\nThe men outside were laughing, and she found it difficult to concentrate on Fenoglio's words. Finally, she did it. But she had no sooner finished the first sentence than the men outside fell utterly silent. The Magpie's voice echoed down the corridor. 'What's all this? A coffee morning?'\n\nFenoglio hastily took the precious paper and put it under his mattress. He was just readjusting the bedspread when the Magpie opened the door.\n\n'Your supper,' she told Meggie, putting a steaming plate down on the table.\n\n'What about me?' enquired Fenoglio in a deliberately cheerful voice. The mattress had slipped slightly when he hid the paper under it, and he had to lean against his bed to hide it from Mortola, but luckily she had no eyes for him. Meggie felt sure she thought he was merely a liar, and very likely it annoyed her that Capricorn did not agree with her.\n\n'Eat it all up!' she ordered Meggie. 'And then get changed. Your clothes look dreadful, and stiff with dirt too.' She signalled to the maid who had come with her, a young girl at most only four or five years older than Meggie herself. The rumours of Meggie's supposed powers of witchcraft had obviously reached this girl's ears too. A snow-white dress was draped over her arm, and she avoided looking at Meggie as she made her way past her to hang it in the wardrobe.\n\n'I don't want that dress!' Meggie spat at the Magpie. 'I want to wear this.' She took Mo's sweater off her bed, but Mortola snatched it from her hands.\n\n'Nonsense. Do you want Capricorn to think we've been keeping you in a sack? You'll wear that dress. Either you put it on yourself or we'll put it on you. I shall come for you as soon as darkness falls. Wash your face and comb your hair. You look like a stray cat.'\n\nThe maid scurried past Meggie again, looking as frightened as if any contact might burn her. The Magpie impatiently pushed the girl out into the corridor.\n\n'Lock the door,' she told Flatnose. 'And send your friends away. You're supposed to be on guard.'\n\nFlatnose strolled casually towards the door. Meggie saw him make a face at the Magpie behind her back before he closed it.\n\nShe went over to the dress and touched the white material. 'White!' she murmured. 'I don't like white things. Death has white hounds. Mo once told me a story about them.'\n\n'Ah yes, the white, red-eyed hounds of Death.' Fenoglio came over to her. 'Ghosts are white too, and the thirst of the ancient gods for blood was quenched only by white sacrificial animals, as if the gods liked the taste of innocence best. Oh no, no!' he added quickly, seeing Meggie's terrified eyes. 'No, believe me, Capricorn certainly wasn't thinking of any such thing when he sent you that dress. How would he know such stories? White is the colour of the beginning too, and of the end. And,' he added, lowering his voice, 'remember, both you and I, Meggie, are going to make sure it is Capricorn's end and not ours.' Gently, he led Meggie to the table and made her sit down. The smell of roast meat rose to her nostrils.\n\n'What do you think it is?' she asked.\n\n'Looks like veal. Why?'\n\nMeggie pushed the plate away. 'I'm not hungry,' she murmured.\n\nFenoglio looked at her with great sympathy. 'You know, Meggie,' he said, 'I think I ought to write a story about you next, you and how you save us all with your voice. It would be a very exciting story.'\n\n'But would it have a happy ending?' Meggie looked out of the window. Only another hour, two at the most, and it would be dark. Suppose Mo came then? Suppose he made another attempt to free her? He didn't know what she and Fenoglio were planning. Suppose they shot at him again? Suppose they really did hit him last time? Meggie put her arms on the table and buried her face in them.\n\nShe felt Fenoglio stroking her hair. 'It will be all right, Meggie!' he whispered. 'Believe me, my stories always have happy endings. If I want them to.'\n\n'That dress has very tight sleeves!' she whispered. 'How am I to hide the paper in my sleeve without the Magpie noticing?'\n\n'I'll distract her attention. Don't worry.'\n\n'But later? They'll all see me take the paper out.'\n\n'Nonsense, you'll manage.' Fenoglio put a hand under her chin. 'It will be all right, Meggie!' he said again, wiping a tear off her cheek with his forefinger. 'You're not alone, even if you may feel you are tonight. I'm here, and Dustfinger is somewhere out there. I know him as well as I know myself, and I can assure you he'll come, if only to see the book and perhaps get it back \u2013 and then there's your father, and that boy who was looking at you in such a lovesick way back in the square in front of the memorial when I first saw Dustfinger.'\n\n'Oh, stop it!' Meggie dug her elbow into his stomach, but she had to laugh, even though her tears were still blurring everything, the table, her hands, Fenoglio's wrinkled face. She felt as if she had used up enough tears for a whole lifetime in these last few weeks.\n\n'Why? He's a good-looking lad. I'd put in a good word for him with your father like a shot.'\n\n'I said stop it!'\n\n'Only if you'll eat something.' Fenoglio pushed the plate back towards her. 'And that lady, your friend, what was her name?'\n\n'Elinor.' Meggie put an olive in her mouth and chewed it until she could feel the stone between her teeth.\n\n'Exactly. Perhaps she's out there too, with your father. Good Lord, when I come to think of it we're almost in the majority.'\n\nMeggie almost choked on the olive stone. Fenoglio smiled, pleased with himself. Mo always raised his eyebrows when he had managed to make her laugh, looking both surprised and serious as if he had no idea what she was laughing at. Meggie could see his face before her so clearly that she might almost have reached out to touch it.\n\n'You'll soon see your father again!' whispered Fenoglio. 'And then you can tell him how you found your mother along the way and rescued her from Capricorn. That's quite something, don't you think?'\n\nMeggie just nodded.\n\nThe dress felt scratchy on her throat and arms. It was more like a dress for a grown-up than a child, and it was rather too big for Meggie. When she took a few steps in it she trod on the hem. The sleeves fitted tightly, but she had no difficulty in pushing the sheet of paper up inside one of them; it was as thin as a dragonfly's leg. She practised a couple of times \u2013 pushing it in, pulling it out. Finally, she left it up her sleeve. It crackled slightly when she moved her hands or raised that arm.\n\nThe moon hung pale in the sky above the church tower, and the night wore a veil of moonlight when the Magpie came back to fetch Meggie.\n\n'You haven't combed your hair!' she said crossly. This time she had another maid with her, a stocky woman with a red face and red hands who was obviously not afraid of Meggie's powers of witchcraft. She pulled the comb so brutally through Meggie's hair that she almost cried out.\n\n'Shoes!' said the Magpie, seeing Meggie's bare toes peep out from under the hem of the dress. 'Didn't anyone think of shoes?'\n\n'She could put those on.' The maid pointed to Meggie's worn-out trainers. 'The dress is long enough, no one will see them. Anyway, don't witches always go barefoot?'\n\nThe Magpie gave her such a look that her voice died on her lips.\n\n'Exactly!' cried Fenoglio, who had been watching the two women get Meggie ready, with an ironic expression on his face. 'That's what they do, they always go barefoot. Do I have to change for this festive occasion too? What does one wear to attend an execution? I imagine I shall be sitting beside Capricorn?'\n\nThe Magpie stuck her chin out. It was a small, soft chin and looked as if it came from another, gentler face.\n\n'You can stay as you are,' she said, putting a slide set with pearls in Meggie's hair. 'Prisoners don't have to change.' The mockery dripped from her voice like poison.\n\n'What do you mean, prisoners?' Fenoglio pushed his chair back.\n\n'I mean prisoners, what else?' The Magpie stepped back and looked critically at Meggie. 'That will have to do,' she said. 'It's odd, but with her hair back she reminds me of someone.' Meggie quickly lowered her head, and before the Magpie could give this observation more thought Fenoglio diverted her attention.\n\n'But I am no ordinary prisoner, madam, let's get that quite clear!' he roared. 'Without me none of this would exist at all, your own less than delightful self included.'\n\nThe Magpie cast him a final contemptuous glance and took hold of Meggie's arm, luckily not the one with Fenoglio's precious words inside its sleeve. 'The guard will come for you when it's time,' she said to Fenoglio, leading Meggie to the door.\n\n'Remember what your father told you!' called Fenoglio when Meggie was out in the passage. 'Words don't come to life until you can taste them on your tongue.'\n\nThe Magpie nudged Meggie in the back. 'Get moving!' she said, and closed the door behind them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fire",
                "text": "\u2002'And then \u2013 I have it!' said Bagheera, leaping up. 'Go thou down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.'\n\n\u2002By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it.\n\n\u2014Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book\n\nThey set out when dusk fell over the hills, leaving Gwin at their camp. After what had happened on their last night-time visit to Capricorn's village, even Farid could see it was better that way. Silvertongue made him go first. He knew nothing of the boy's fear of ghosts and other nocturnal terrors. Farid had hidden it from him more successfully than he had from Dustfinger. Silvertongue did not mock his fear of the dark either, as Dustfinger had, and curiously enough that made the fear less, shrinking it as only daylight usually did. But now Farid was going to use something else that Dustfinger thought him too foolhardy to handle.\n\nFire. They had decided to start a fire next to Capricorn's house, so that it would not spread to the hills so fast but would threaten the only thing Capricorn cared about: his treasure chambers.\n\nThis time, the village was not quiet and empty as it had been on the previous nights, but was buzzing like a wasps' nest. Four armed guards were patrolling the car park, and cars were parked all round the wire-netting fence that surrounded the former football field. Their headlights bathed the area in glaring light, as if a bright cloth had been spread out in the dark.\n\n'So that's where the show's to take place,' whispered Silvertongue as they approached the houses. 'Poor Meggie.'\n\nA kind of rostrum had been set up in the middle of this arena with a cage opposite it, perhaps for the monster that Silvertongue's daughter was to read out of the book, perhaps for the prisoners. On the left-hand side of the field, facing away from the wire fence and the village, stood long wooden benches. A few of the Black Jackets were already sitting on them, like ravens that had found a bright, warm place to spend the night.\n\nThey had thought of stealing into the village from the car park. With so many strangers around, perhaps no one would notice them. But then they decided on a longer, darker route. Farid went ahead again, using every tree as cover, always keeping uphill from the houses until they were above the uninhabited part of the village that looked as if a giant had trodden on it. Even there, more guards than usual were patrolling. They had to keep retreating into the shadows of a gateway, ducking down behind a wall, or climbing through a window and waiting with bated breath for the guard to pass by. Luckily there were many dark corners in Capricorn's village, and the guards strolled through the alleys with an air of boredom, as men do when they are sure there is no threat of danger.\n\nFarid had Dustfinger's rucksack with him, containing all they would need to kindle a quick, hot fire. Silvertongue carried the wood they had collected, in case the flames did not find enough to feed on among the stones. And there were Capricorn's stocks of petrol too. Farid still had the smell of it in his nostrils from the night when they had shut him up in the sheds. The tanks were seldom guarded, but they might not need them. It was a windless night; the flames would burn quietly and steadily. Farid remembered Dustfinger's warning: 'Never light a fire when it's windy. The wind will catch hold of it and it will forget you, it will fan the flames until they leap up and bite you and lick the skin from your bones.' But the wind was sleeping tonight, and still air filled the alleyways, like warm water in a bucket.\n\nThey had hoped to find the square outside Capricorn's house empty, but as they were about to enter it from one of the alleys they saw half a dozen men standing outside the church.\n\n'Why are they still here?' whispered Farid, as Silvertongue drew him into the shadow of a doorway. 'The festivities are about to begin.'\n\nTwo maids came out of Capricorn's house, each with a pile of plates. They were taking them to the church. Obviously the successful execution was to be celebrated there later. When the maids passed the guards the men whistled at them. One of the women almost dropped the crockery when one of them tried to lift her skirt with the barrel of his gun. It was the man who had recognised Silvertongue when they slipped into the village the night before. Farid touched his forehead, which was still bloodstained, and cursed him with the worst curses he knew. Why did he have to be the one there? But even if they got past him unrecognised, how were they going to start a fire while the others were still standing around?\n\n'Take it easy!' Silvertongue whispered to him. 'They'll soon go away. The first thing we have to do is make sure Meggie really has left the house.'\n\nFarid nodded, looking at the big house. There were still lights on in two of the windows, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. 'I'll sneak down to the football field and see if she's there,' he whispered to Silvertongue. Perhaps they had already fetched Dustfinger from the church, perhaps he was in the cage they had set up, and he could whisper to him that they had brought his best friend, fire, to save him.\n\nNight shadows filled many of the nooks and crannies among the houses, despite the brightness of the street lights. Farid was about to set off, using their shelter, when the door of Capricorn's house opened. The old woman with a face like a vulture came out. She was dragging Silvertongue's daughter along behind her. Farid hardly recognised Meggie in the long white dress she wore. After them, gun in hand, came the man who had shot at him and Silvertongue. He looked round, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, locked the door, and beckoned to one of the men standing outside the church. He was obviously telling him to guard the house. So only one man would stay on guard when the others went off to see the show.\n\nFarid felt Silvertongue tensing every muscle \u2013 as if he wanted to run to his daughter, who looked almost as pale as her dress. The boy clutched his arm in a warning gesture, but Silvertongue seemed to have forgotten him. He had eyes only for the girl. One reckless step and he would be out of the shelter of the shadows.\n\n'Don't!' Farid pulled him back in alarm \u2013 as best he could, for he scarcely came up to Silvertongue's shoulder. Luckily, Capricorn's men were watching the old woman as she crossed the square, walking so fast the girl stumbled over the hem of her dress a couple of times.\n\n'She looks so pale!' whispered Silvertongue. 'Heavens, do you see how frightened she is? Perhaps she'll look this way, perhaps we can give her a signal\u2014'\n\n'No!' Farid was still hanging on to him with both hands. 'We must start the fire. That's the only way we can help her. Please, Silvertongue \u2013 they'll see you!'\n\n'Don't keep calling me Silvertongue. It gets on my nerves.'\n\nThe old woman disappeared among the houses with Meggie. Flatnose was following them, lumbering like a bear in a black suit, and at last the other men left too. They went down the street, laughing, looking forward to what the night promised them: death spiced with fear, and the appearance of a new terror in this accursed village.\n\nOnly the guard outside Capricorn's house was left. He watched the others go, his face gloomy as he kicked an empty cigarette packet and struck the wall with his fist. He was the only one who was going to miss the fun. Even the guard at the top of the church tower could at least watch the show from a distance.\n\nThey had expected a guard to be posted outside the house. Farid had explained the best way to get rid of him, and Silvertongue had nodded and agreed to the plan. When the footsteps of Capricorn's men had died away and they could hear nothing but the noise from the direction of the car park, they moved out of the shadows, acting as if they had only just emerged from the alley, and openly approached the guard side by side. He looked at them suspiciously, pushed himself away from the wall against which he had been leaning, and took the gun from his shoulder. Alarmed, Farid involuntarily put his hand to his forehead, but at least the guard was not one of the men who might have recognised them, not the man with the limp, or Basta, or any of Capricorn's other personal henchmen.\n\n'Hey, lend us a hand!' called Silvertongue, ignoring the gun. 'Those fools forgot Capricorn's armchair. We've been sent to fetch it.'\n\nThe guard was holding his gun in front of his chest. 'Oh, for heaven's sake! That thing's so heavy it'd break your back. Where are you from?' He scrutinised Silvertongue's face, as if trying to remember whether he had seen it before. He took no notice of Farid at all. 'You from the north, then? I heard you have a lot of fun up there.'\n\n'That's right.' Silvertongue went so close to the guard that the man took a step back. 'Come on, you know Capricorn doesn't like to be kept waiting.'\n\nThe guard nodded sullenly. 'Yes, yes, all right,' he muttered, looking over to the church. 'There's no point standing guard here anyway. What do they think will happen? Do they expect the fire-eater to come and steal the gold? That fellow was always lily-livered, he'll be well away by now, he\u2014' But suddenly, while the guard was still looking at the church, Silvertongue seized the gun and hit him on the head with the butt. Then he dragged him round behind Capricorn's house where it was pitch dark.\n\n'Did you hear what he said?' Farid had quickly gagged the guard and was expertly tying a rope round the man's legs. 'Dustfinger must have escaped! He said \"he'll be well away\". He can't have meant anyone else!'\n\n'Yes, I heard. But my daughter is still here.' Silvertongue gave him the rucksack and looked round, but the square was now so deserted and quiet it was as if they were the only people left in Capricorn's village. Not a sound was heard from the guard up in the church tower. No doubt tonight he had eyes for nothing but the events taking place on the brightly lit football field.\n\nFarid took two torches and the bottle of inflammable liquid from Dustfinger's rucksack. He got away, he was thinking, he got away! He could almost have laughed out loud.\n\nSilvertongue went back to Capricorn's house, peered into several windows, and finally broke one of them, taking off his jacket and pressing it against the glass to muffle the sound when it broke. Laughter and music drifted up from the car park.\n\n'The matches! I can't find them!' Farid rummaged among Dustfinger's things until Silvertongue took the rucksack from his hand.\n\n'Give it to me!' he whispered. 'You get the torches ready.'\n\nFarid did as he was told. He carefully soaked the cotton wool in the acrid-smelling spirits. Dustfinger will come back, he thought, he'll come back to look for Gwin, and then he'll fetch me. Voices came from one of the alleys. Men's voices. For a few terrible moments they seemed to be coming closer, but they died away again, swallowed up by the music coming from the car park and filling the night like a foul smell.\n\nSilvertongue was still looking for the matches. 'Ugh!' he said, swearing softly and removing his hand from the rucksack. Marten droppings were smeared over his thumb. He wiped them off on the nearest wall, put his hand in the rucksack again and threw Farid a box of matches. Then he took something else out \u2013 the little book that Dustfinger kept in a side pocket he had sewn inside. Farid had often looked at it. It had pictures stuck in it, cut-out pictures of fairies and witches, trolls and dragons, brownies, nymphs and ancient trees. Silvertongue flicked through it while Farid was soaking the second torch. A photograph was lying between the pages \u2013 the photograph of Capricorn's maid, the woman who had tried to help Dustfinger and was to die for it tonight! Or had she escaped with him? Silvertongue was staring at the photograph and suddenly it was as if nothing else in the world existed.\n\n'What's the matter?' Farid put the match to the dripping torch. The flame flared up, hissing and hungry. How beautiful it was! Farid licked his finger and passed it through the flame. 'Here, take this.' He held the torch out to Silvertongue. It would be best for him, as the taller of them, to throw it through the window. But Silvertongue just stood there gazing at the photo.\n\n'That's the woman who helped Dustfinger,' said Farid. 'The one they caught too. I think he's in love with her. Here.' Once again he held the burning torch out to Silvertongue. 'What are you waiting for?'\n\nSilvertongue looked at him as if he had been woken from a dream. 'In love... in love,' he murmured as he took the torch from Farid's hand. Then he put the photograph in the breast pocket of his shirt, cast another glance at the empty square, and threw the torch through the broken window into Capricorn's house.\n\n'Give me a leg up! I want to see it burning!' cried Farid. Silvertongue did as he asked. The room seemed to be some kind of office. Farid saw paper, a desk, a picture of Capricorn on the wall. Someone here could write after all. The burning torch lay among the sheets of paper covered with writing, it licked and gulped, it whispered with delight at such a feast, flared up and leaped on, from the desk to the curtains at the window. Greedily, it consumed the dark fabric. The whole room was filled with red and yellow. Smoke billowed out of the broken window, stinging Farid's eyes.\n\n'I must go!' Silvertongue put him down abruptly. The music had stopped. Suddenly it was eerily quiet. Silvertongue ran off along the street leading down to the car park. Farid watched him go. He had something more to do. He waited until the flames were shooting out of the window, then he began shouting. 'Fire! Capricorn's house is on fire!' His voice echoed over the empty square.\n\nHeart thudding, he ran to the corner of the big house and looked up at the church tower. The guard there had leaped to his feet. Farid lit the second torch and threw it at the church porch. The air began to smell of smoke. The guard froze, turned, and \u2013 at last \u2013 he rang the bell.\n\nAnd Farid ran off to follow Silvertongue."
            },
            {
                "title": "Treachery, Loose Talk, and Stupidity",
                "text": "Then he said, 'Without a doubt, I must perish; there is no way I can get out of this narrow prison.'\n\n[ Tales from the Thousand and One Nights ]\n\nElinor thought she was showing considerable courage. Of course she still did not know exactly what fate awaited her \u2013 and if her niece knew more than she did, she hadn't told her \u2013 but she could be sure it would be nothing pleasant. Nor did Teresa give the men who came to take them up from the crypt the satisfaction of seeing her shed tears. She couldn't curse them or shout at them anyway; her voice was gone, like a garment she no longer wore. Luckily, she had two pieces of paper with her, crumpled, dirty scraps, much too small for all the words unspoken over nine years. She had filled the paper with tiny writing until there wasn't space for a single word more. She didn't want to say anything about herself and what had happened to her, and just waved Elinor's whispered questions impatiently away. There were questions of her own she wanted to ask, question after question about her daughter and her husband. Elinor whispered the answers into her ear, very quietly so Basta in the adjoining cell would not realise that the two women who were about to die with him had known each other ever since the younger one had learned to walk holding on to Elinor's endless bookshelves.\n\nBasta was not in a good way. Whenever they looked at him they saw his hands clinging to the bars, knuckles white under his sun-tanned skin. Once, Elinor thought she heard him weeping, but when they were taken out of the cells his face was as vacant as a dead man's, and when their guards locked them up in that unspeakable cage he crouched on the floor in a corner, and sat as motionless as a doll that no one wants to play with.\n\nThe cage smelled of dogs and raw meat, and indeed it did look like a dog pound. Several of Capricorn's men ran the butts of their shotguns along the silvery grey bars before sitting down on the benches that had been made ready for them. Basta in particular was the object of enough scorn and derision for ten men, and from his failure to react at all one could only guess at the depths of his despair. All the same, Elinor and Teresa kept as far away from him as they could in the same cage. They also kept away from the bars, from all the fingers poking through, the faces the men made at them, and the burning cigarettes flicked at them. They stood close together, both glad and sorry to be with one another.\n\nOn the outskirts of the arena, right beside the entrance and carefully segregated from the men, sat the women who worked for Capricorn. They showed none of the men's ghastly excitement. Most of their faces were downcast, but again and again their glances strayed to Resa with expressions of pity \u2013 and dread.\n\nCapricorn arrived when the long benches were full. There were no seats for the boys, so they squatted on the ground in front of the Black Jackets. His face emotionless, Capricorn strode past them all as if they were nothing but a flock of crows that had assembled at his command. Only in front of the cage containing his prisoners did he slow his pace to examine each of the three with a small, satisfied glance. For the fraction of a second life came back into Basta as his former lord and master stopped by the bars; he raised his head, his eyes pleading silently, like a dog begging for forgiveness, but Capricorn walked on without a word. When he had seated himself in his black leather armchair Cockerell placed himself behind it, legs planted wide apart. Obviously, he was the new favourite now.\n\n'For heaven's sake, stop looking at him like that!' Elinor snapped at Basta when she realised that his eyes were still following Capricorn. 'He's planning to feed you to his friend like a fly to a frog, so how about a little indignation? You were always so ready with a choice selection of threats: \"I'll cut your tongue out, I'll slice you to pieces...\" What's happened to all that, then?'\n\nBut Basta only bowed his head and stared at the floor beneath his boots. Elinor thought he looked like an oyster with the flesh and life sucked out of it.\n\nWhen Capricorn was sitting down the blaring music fell silent, and they brought Meggie forward. They had put a horrible dress on her, but she held her head high, and the old woman whom they all called the Magpie had difficulty dragging her up on to the rostrum which the Black Jackets had set up in the middle of the field. A single chair stood on the rostrum, looking as forlorn as if someone had left it there and forgotten it. Elinor thought a gallows and a rope would have looked more suitable. Meggie looked down at them as the Magpie forced her up the wooden steps.\n\n'Hello, darling!' called Elinor when Meggie's frightened gaze recognised her. 'Don't worry, I'm only here because I didn't want to miss hearing you read!'\n\nEverything had fallen so still on Capricorn's arrival that her voice echoed over the whole arena. It sounded brave and fearless. Fortunately, no one could hear how hard her heart was hammering against her ribs. Nor did anyone notice that she was almost choking with fear, for Elinor had put on her armour, the impenetrable and extremely useful armour behind which she had always hidden at times of need. It had become a little harder with every grief she felt, and lately there had been grief enough in Elinor's life.\n\nOne of the Black Jackets laughed at her words, and a faint smile even flitted over Meggie's face. Elinor put her arm round Teresa's shoulders and held her close. 'Look at your daughter,' she whispered. 'As brave as... as...' She wanted to compare Meggie to a hero from some story, but all the heroes she could think of were men, and anyway none of them seemed to her brave enough for a comparison with the girl standing there perfectly straight, scrutinising Capricorn's Black Jackets with her chin jutting defiantly.\n\nThe Magpie had brought not only Meggie but an old man. Elinor guessed that this was the writer who had caused them so much trouble \u2013 Fenoglio, the creator of Capricorn, Basta and all the other monsters, including the terrible creature Meggie was to bring to life tonight. Elinor had always thought more of books than their authors, and she looked at the old man without much goodwill as Flatnose led him past their cage. There was a seat ready for him only a little way from Capricorn's armchair. Elinor wondered whether that meant Capricorn had found a new friend, but when Flatnose placed himself behind the grim-faced old man she concluded that Fenoglio was more likely a prisoner himself.\n\nCapricorn rose as soon as the old man was seated. Without a word, he let his gaze pass slowly over the long line of his men, as if recalling every one of them, remembering what good and what bad service each had done him. The silence in the arena smelled of fear. All the laughter had died away, and not a whisper could be heard.\n\n'There is no need,' Capricorn finally began, raising his voice, 'for me to explain to most of you why the three prisoners you see here are to be punished. For the rest, it is enough for me to say it is for treachery, loose talk, and stupidity. One may argue, of course, over whether or not stupidity is a crime deserving of death. I think it is, for it can have exactly the same consequences as treachery.'\n\nAs he said this there was a restless stir on the benches. At first Elinor thought Capricorn's words had set it off, but then she heard the bell. Even Basta raised his head as its tolling sounded through the night. At a sign from Capricorn, Flatnose beckoned to five men and strode off with them. Those left behind put their heads together uneasily, and some even jumped up and turned to look at the village. However, Capricorn raised his hand to quell the murmur that had arisen. 'It is nothing!' he called in so loud and cutting a tone that everything immediately fell still again. 'A fire, that's all. And we know how to deal with fire, don't we?'\n\nThere was laughter, but some of the crowd, both men and women, were still looking anxiously at the houses.\n\nSo they'd done it. Elinor bit her lips so hard that they hurt. Mortimer and the boy had started a fire. No smoke yet showed above the rooftops, and, reassured, all the faces turned back to Capricorn who was saying something about deceit and falsehood, discipline and negligence, but Elinor only half heard him. She kept looking at the houses of the village, though she knew it was dangerous to do so.\n\n'So much for the prisoners we have here!' cried Capricorn. 'Now for those who got away.' Cockerell picked up a sack that had been lying behind Capricorn's chair and gave it to him. Smiling, Capricorn put his hand into it and held something up: a piece of fabric from a shirt or dress, torn and bloodstained.\n\n'They are dead!' called Capricorn to his audience. 'I'd rather have seen them here, of course, but unfortunately there was nothing for it: they were trying to escape and had to be shot. Well, no one will miss the treacherous little fire-eater \u2013 almost all of you knew him \u2013 and fortunately Silvertongue has left us his daughter, who has inherited his gifts.'\n\nTeresa looked at Elinor, her eyes glazed with horror.\n\n'He's lying!' Elinor whispered to her, although she too could not take her eyes off the bloodstained rags. 'He's using my lies, my tricks! That's not blood, it's paint, or some kind of dye.' But she saw that her niece did not believe her. She believed in the bloodstained cloth, just as her daughter did. Elinor could read this on Meggie's face, and she longed to call out to her that Capricorn was lying, but she wanted him to believe his own story for a little longer \u2013 to believe that they were all dead, and no one would come to disturb his festivities.\n\n'That's right, boast of a bloodstained rag, you miserable fire-raiser!' she shouted through the bars. 'That's really something to be proud of. Why do you need another monster? You're all monsters! Every one of you sitting there! You murder books, you abduct children...!'\n\nNo one took any notice of her. A couple of the Black Jackets laughed. Teresa moved closer to the bars, clutching their cold metal with her fingers, never taking her eyes off Meggie.\n\nCapricorn left the bloodstained fabric lying over the arm of his chair. I know that rag, thought Elinor. I've seen it somewhere before. They're not dead. Who else would have started the fire? The matchstick-eater, something inside her whispered, but she refused to listen. No, the story must have a happy ending. It wouldn't be right otherwise! She had never liked sad stories."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Shadow",
                "text": "\u2003My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay\n\n\u2003My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapour of death in the night.\n\n\u2014William Blake, Enion's Second Lament\n\nIn books hatred is often described as hot, but at Capricorn's festivities Meggie discovered it was cold \u2013 an ice-cold hand that stops the heart and presses it like a clenched fist against the ribs. Hatred made her freeze, in spite of the mild air wafting around her telling her that the world was a good, safe place. She knew it was not \u2013 as the bloody cloth on which the smiling Capricorn had laid his ringed hand showed all too clearly.\n\n'Well, so much for that!' he cried. 'And now for the real reason we are all gathered here tonight. Not only are we about to punish the traitors but we're also going to celebrate a reunion with an old friend. Some of you may remember him, and as for the others, I promise that once you have met him you will never forget him.'\n\nCockerell twisted his thin face into a sour smile. He was obviously not looking forward to the reunion and, at Capricorn's words, alarm showed on several other faces.\n\n'But that's enough talking. Now let's hear something read aloud to us.'\n\nCapricorn leaned back in his chair and nodded to the Magpie. Mortola clapped her hands, and Darius came hurrying across the arena with the casket that Meggie had last seen in the Magpie's room. He clearly knew what it contained. His face was even more haggard than usual as he opened the casket and held it out to the Magpie, his head bowed humbly. The snakes seemed to be drowsy, and this time Mortola did not put on a glove before she lifted them out. She even draped them over her shoulders while she took the book out of its hiding-place. Then she put the snakes back as carefully as if they were precious jewels, closed the lid, and handed the casket back to Darius. He stayed on the rostrum, looking awkward. Meggie caught him looking sympathetically at her as the Magpie made her sit down on the chair and placed the book on her lap.\n\nHere it was again, the unlucky thing, in its brightly coloured paper jacket. What colour was the binding under it? Raising the dust-jacket with her finger, Meggie saw the dark red cloth, as red as the flames surrounding the ink-black heart. Everything that had happened had begun between the pages of this book, and only the words of its author could save them now. Meggie stroked its binding as she always did before opening a book. She had seen Mo doing the same. Ever since she could remember she had known that movement \u2013 the way he would pick up a book, stroke the binding almost tenderly, then open it as if he were opening a box full to the brim with precious things. Of course, the marvels you hoped to find might not be waiting inside the covers, so then you closed the book, sorry that its promise had not been kept. But Inkheart was not a book of that kind. Badly told stories never come to life. There are no Dustfingers in them, not even a Basta.\n\n'I am told to tell you something!' The Magpie's dress smelled of musty lavender, its fragrance enveloping Meggie in a suffocating threat. 'Should you fail to do what Capricorn asks, should it occur to you to stumble over the words on purpose, or distort them so that the guest Capricorn is expecting does not come, then...' Mortola paused and Meggie felt the old woman's breath on her cheek, 'then Cockerell will cut the old man's throat. Capricorn may not give the order himself, because he believes the stupid lies the old man told him, but I don't, and Cockerell will do as I say. Understand me, my little cherub?' She pinched Meggie's cheek with her bony fingers. Meggie shook off her hand and looked at Cockerell. He moved up behind Fenoglio, smiled at her, and ran a finger across the old man's throat. Fenoglio pushed him away, and looked at Meggie as if one look could convey everything he wanted to say to her and give her: encouragement, comfort, and maybe even a little amusement in the face of all the horrors surrounding them.\n\nWhether or not their plan worked depended on him and his words \u2013 and Meggie's reading.\n\nMeggie felt the paper in her sleeve, scratching her skin. Her hands seemed like the hands of a stranger as she leafed through the pages of the book. The place where she was to begin was no longer marked by a folded corner. A bookmark as black as charred wood lay between the pages. 'Push your hair back from your forehead,' Fenoglio had told her. 'That will be the signal to me.' But just as she raised her left hand the crowd on the benches became restless again.\n\nFlatnose was back, with soot marks on his face. He hurried to Capricorn's side and whispered something to him. Capricorn frowned and looked towards the houses. Now Meggie saw two plumes of smoke rising into the sky from behind the church tower.\n\nCapricorn rose quickly from his chair. He tried to sound composed, ironic, like a man amused at some childish prank, but his face told a different story. 'I am sorry to have to spoil the fun for a few more of you, but tonight the red rooster is crowing here too. A feeble little rooster, but its neck must be wrung all the same. Flatnose, take another ten men back with you.' Flatnose obeyed and marched off with his reinforcements. The benches now looked a good deal emptier. 'And don't any of you show your faces back here before you've found the fire-raiser!' Capricorn called after them. 'Whoever it is, we'll teach him not to start fires in the Devil's own domain \u2013 we'll teach him a lesson, right here and now!'\n\nSomeone laughed, but most of those who had stayed behind were looking uneasily in the direction of the village. Some of the maids had actually risen to their feet, but the Magpie called their names in a sharp voice, and they were quick to sit back down with the others, like schoolchildren unfairly slapped on the hand. Nonetheless, the restlessness persisted. Scarcely anyone was looking at Meggie, almost all the members of her audience had turned their backs to her, and were pointing at the smoke and whispering to one another. A red glow was creeping up the church tower, and grey smoke formed a dense cloud above the rooftops.\n\n'What is all this? Why are you staring at that little wisp of smoke?' There was no missing the anger in Capricorn's voice now. 'A bit of smoke, a few flames \u2013 so what? Are you going to let that spoil our festivities? Fire is our best friend, have you forgotten?'\n\nMeggie saw the doubting faces turn back towards him. Then she heard a name. Dustfinger. A woman's voice had called it out.\n\n'What does that mean?' Capricorn's voice was so sharp that Darius almost dropped the casket of snakes. 'There is no Dustfinger any more. He's lying up there in the hills with his mouth full of earth and that marten of his on his breast. I never want to hear his name again. He is forgotten as if he had never been\u2014'\n\n'That's not true.'\n\nMeggie's voice rang out over the arena so loud and clear that she herself was alarmed. 'He's here!' She held up the book.' Never mind what you do to him. Everyone who reads this story will see him \u2013 you can even hear his voice, and see the way he laughs and breathes fire.'\n\nAll went perfectly quiet. A few feet scraped uneasily on the red clinkers of the old football field \u2013 then, suddenly, Meggie heard something behind her. It was a ticking like the sound of a clock, yet not quite the same; it sounded like a human tongue imitating a clock: tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.\n\nThe sound was coming from among the cars parked behind the wire fence with their dazzling headlights on. Meggie couldn't help it \u2013 she looked round, in spite of the Magpie and all the suspicious eyes turned on her. She could have kicked herself for being so stupid. Suppose they had seen it too \u2013 the thin figure rising among the cars and quickly ducking down again. But no one seemed to have noticed her glance any more than the ticking.\n\n'A very fine speech!' said Capricorn slowly. 'But you're not here to make funeral orations for dead traitors. You're here to read aloud, and I am not going to tell you so again.'\n\nMeggie forced herself to look at Capricorn. She mustn't look at the cars again. Suppose that really had been Farid? Suppose she hadn't imagined the ticking?\n\nThe Magpie was watching her suspiciously. Perhaps she had heard it too, that soft, harmless ticking, nothing but a tongue clicking against someone's teeth. What did it mean, unless you knew the story of Captain Hook and his fear of the crocodile with the ticking clock inside it? The Magpie wouldn't have read it, but Mo knew that Meggie would understand his signal. He had woken her up often enough with that ticking sound, right beside her ear, so close that it tickled. 'Breakfast time, Meggie!' he used to whisper. 'The crocodile's here!'\n\nThat was it. Mo knew she would recognise the ticking that helped Peter Pan to go aboard Captain Hook's ship and rescue Wendy. He couldn't have given her a better signal.\n\nWendy, thought Meggie. What had happened next? For a moment she almost forgot where she was, but the Magpie reminded her. She slapped Meggie's face with the flat of her hand.\n\n'Start reading, will you, little witch!' she hissed. And so Meggie obeyed.\n\nHastily, she removed the black bookmark from the pages where it lay. She must hurry, she must read before Mo did anything silly. He didn't know what she and Fenoglio were planning.\n\n'I'm going to start now, and I don't want anyone disturbing me!' she cried. 'Anyone! Is that understood?' Oh please, let Mo understand, she thought, please!\n\nA few of Capricorn's remaining men laughed, but Capricorn himself leaned back and folded his arms in anticipation. 'Yes, just you take heed of what the girl said!' he called. 'Anyone who disturbs her will be given to the Shadow to welcome him here.'\n\nMeggie put two fingers up her sleeve. There they were, Fenoglio's words. She looked at the Magpie. 'Well, she's disturbing me!' she said out loud. 'I can't read with her standing so close behind me.'\n\nCapricorn gestured impatiently to the Magpie. Mortola's face looked sour, as if he had told her to eat a bar of soap, but she took two or three reluctant steps back. That would have to do.\n\nMeggie raised her hand and pushed the hair back from her forehead.\n\nThe signal for Fenoglio.\n\nHe instantly launched into his performance. 'No, no, no! She's not to read!' he cried, moving towards Capricorn before Cockerell could stop him. 'I can't allow it! I am the author of this story, and I didn't write it to be misused for purposes of violence and murder!'\n\nCockerell tried to put his hand over Fenoglio's mouth, but Fenoglio bit his fingers and side-stepped him with more agility than Meggie would ever have expected of the old man.\n\n'I invented you!' he bellowed as Cockerell chased him round Capricorn's chair. 'And I'm sorry I did, you stinking devil of a villain.' Then he ran off. Cockerell didn't catch up with Fenoglio until he reached the cage containing the prisoners, and in revenge for the mockery and laughter coming from the benches he twisted the old man's arm behind his back so viciously that Fenoglio let out a cry of pain. Yet when Cockerell dragged him back to Capricorn's side Fenoglio was looking quite pleased, because he knew he had given Meggie plenty of time. They had rehearsed it often enough. Her fingers had been shaking as she took the sheet of paper out of her sleeve, but no one noticed anything when she slipped it into the pages of the book. Not even the Magpie.\n\n'How the old man boasts!' cried Capricorn. 'Do I look as if an old fellow like that invented me?'\n\nThere was more laughter. The smoke above the rooftops seemed to have been forgotten. Cockerell put his hand over Fenoglio's mouth.\n\n'Once again, and I hope this will be the last time,' said Capricorn to Meggie, 'start reading! The prisoners have waited long enough for their executioner.'\n\nSilence fell again, and once more it smelled of fear.\n\nMeggie bent over the book on her lap. The letters seemed to dance on the pages.\n\nCome out, thought Meggie, come out and save us! Save us all: Elinor and my mother, Mo and Farid. Save Dustfinger if he's still alive, and save Basta too for all I care.\n\nHer tongue felt like a little animal that had found refuge in her mouth, and was now butting its head against her teeth.\n\n'Capricorn had many men,' she began. 'And every one of them was feared in the surrounding towns and villages. They stank of cold smoke, they stank of sulphur and everything that reminds you of fire. Whenever one of them passed by people closed their doors and hid under the stairs with their children. They called them Firefingers and Bloodhounds; Capricorn's men had many names. They were feared by day, and by night they made their way into dreams and poisoned them. But there was one who was feared even more than Capricorn's villains.' Meggie felt as if her voice was growing stronger with every word she read. It seemed to grow until it filled the arena. 'Folk called him the Shadow.'\n\nTwo more lines at the bottom of the page, then turn it over. Fenoglio's words were waiting. 'Look at this, Meggie!' he had whispered when he showed her the sheet of paper. 'What an artist I am, eh? Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth... all those glorious words.'\n\nTaste every word, Meggie, whispered Mo's voice inside her, savour it on your tongue. Do you taste the colours? Do you taste the wind and the night? The fear and the joy? And the love. Taste them, Meggie, and everything will come to life. 'Folk called him Capricorn's Shadow.' How the sh hissed as it passed her lips, how darkly the sound of the 'o' formed in her mouth.\n\n'He came only when Capricorn called him,' she read. 'Sometimes he was red as fire, sometimes grey as the ash to which fire turns all that it devours. He darted out of the earth as fast as flames lick their way up wood. His fingers and even his breath brought death. He rose before his master's feet, soundless, faceless, scenting his way like a hound on the trail and waiting for his master to point to the victim. It was said that Capricorn had commanded one of the trolls who understand the whole art of fire and smoke to create the Shadow from the ashes of his victims. No one was sure, for it was also said that Capricorn had ordered those who called the Shadow to life to be killed. All that everyone knew was that he was immortal, invulnerable and pitiless, like his master.'\n\nMeggie's voice died away as if the wind had blown it from her lips.\n\nSomething was rising from the gravel that covered the football pitch. It grew taller, it stretched its ashen limbs. The night air suddenly stank of sulphur. That stench burned Meggie's eyes so that the letters blurred, but she must go on reading while the eerie creature grew taller and taller.\n\n'Yet one night, a mild and starlit night, the Shadow heard not Capricorn's voice when it was called forth, but the voice of a girl, and when she called his name he remembered; he remembered all those from whose ashes he was made, all the pain and all the grief\u2014'\n\nThe Magpie reached over Meggie's shoulder. 'What's this? What are you reading?' But Meggie jumped up and backed away before the old woman could snatch the sheet of paper from her. 'He remembered,' she read on in a loud, clear voice, 'and he determined to be avenged \u2013 avenged upon those who were the cause of all this misfortune, whose cruelty poisoned the whole world.'\n\n'Make her stop!'\n\nWas that Capricorn's voice? Meggie almost fell off the rostrum as she tried to keep away from the Magpie. Darius stood there, staring at her in astonishment, the casket in his hands. Then suddenly but deliberately, as if he had all the time in the world, he put down the casket and wrapped his thin arms firmly around the Magpie from behind. Nor did he let go, no matter how hard she struggled and cursed. And Meggie read on as the Shadow stood, watching her. The figure had no face, that was true, but it had eyes, terrible eyes, red as the embers of a hidden fire.\n\n'Get the book away from her!' shouted Capricorn. He was standing in front of his chair, bent double as if he feared his legs would refuse to obey him if he took so much as a step towards the Shadow. 'Get it away from her!'\n\nBut none of his remaining men moved, none of the boys and none of the women came to his aid. They had eyes for nothing but the Shadow as he stood there listening to Meggie's voice, as if she were telling him a long-forgotten tale.\n\n'Indeed, he wanted revenge,' Meggie read on. If only her voice weren't shaking so much, but it wasn't easy to kill, even if someone else was going to do it for her. 'So the Shadow went to his master, and reached out to him with ashen hands...'\n\nHow soundlessly it moved, that terrible, gigantic figure!\n\nMeggie stared at Fenoglio's next sentence. And Capricorn fell down on his face, and his black heart stopped beating\u2014She couldn't say it. She couldn't. It had all been in vain.\n\nThen, suddenly, someone else was standing behind her. She hadn't even noticed him climbing up on to the rostrum. The boy was there too, holding a shotgun aimed at the benches \u2013 but no one sitting there stirred. No one so much as lifted a finger to save Capricorn. And Mo took the book from Meggie's hands, ran his eyes over the lines Fenoglio had added, and in a firm voice read to the end of what the old man had written.\n\n'And Capricorn fell down on his face, and his black heart stopped beating, and all those who had gone burning and murdering with him disappeared \u2013 blown away like ashes in the wind.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Deserted Village",
                "text": "\u2003In books I meet the dead as if they were alive,\n\n\u2003in books I see what is yet to come...\n\n\u2003All things decay and pass with time...\n\n\u2003all fame would fall victim to oblivion\n\n\u2003if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.\n\n\u2014Richard de Bury, The Philobiblon\n\nSo Capricorn died, just as Fenoglio had written, and Cockerell disappeared at the same moment as his master fell to the ground, and with him more than half the men left on the benches. The rest ran away, all of them, the boys and women too. Those heading towards the village met some of Capricorn's men running back from extinguishing the fire. Their faces were smeared with soot and full of horror, and not because of the flames that had been licking around Capricorn's house, for they had put these out. No. They had seen Flatnose and several other men vanish into thin air before their very eyes. They were gone, as if the darkness had swallowed them up, as if they had never existed. And perhaps that was the truth of it. The man who had made them had now destroyed them, erased them like mistakes in a drawing, like marks on white paper. They were gone, and the others, the men who had not been born of Fenoglio's words, were hurrying back to tell Capricorn what had happened. But Capricorn lay on his face with gravel clinging to his red suit, and never again would anyone tell him anything \u2013 about fire and smoke, about fear and death. Never again.\n\nOnly the Shadow still stood there, a figure so tall that the men running across the car park saw him from afar, grey before the black night sky, his eyes two blazing red stars, and they forgot the master they had been going to serve. Every one of them ran for the cars. They wanted only to get away, far away, before the being who had been summoned like a dog turned and devoured them all.\n\nMeggie did not come to her senses properly until they had all gone. She had nestled her head under Mo's arm, as she always did when she simply didn't want to see the world. Mo put the book under the jacket which had almost made him look like one of Capricorn's henchmen. And he held her tight while all about them people were running and screaming. Only the Shadow stood perfectly still, as if killing his master had sapped all his power.\n\n'Farid,' Meggie heard Mo say, 'can you get that cage open?'\n\nOnly then did she bring her head out from under Mo's arm, and saw that the Magpie was still there. Why hadn't she disappeared too? Darius was still holding on to her as if he were afraid of what would happen if he let go. But she was no longer kicking and struggling. She was just looking at Capricorn, with tears running down her sharp-boned face, over her small soft chin, and falling like rain on her dress.\n\nAgile as Gwin, Farid jumped down from the rostrum and ran over to the cage, without once taking his eyes off the Shadow. However, the Shadow just stood there frozen, as if he would never move again.\n\n'Meggie,' whispered Mo. 'Let's go over to the prisoners, shall we? Poor Elinor looks exhausted, and there's someone else I want to introduce to you.' Farid was already busy with the door of the cage, but the two women inside were watching them.\n\n'You don't need to introduce her,' said Meggie, squeezing his hand. 'I know who she is. I've known for ages. I wanted so much to tell you, but you weren't here, and now there's something else we have to read first. The last few sentences.' She took the book out from under Mo's jacket and leafed through it until she found Fenoglio's sheet of paper still among the pages. 'He wrote them on the other side, there wasn't any space left on the first page,' she said. 'He just can't make his handwriting small.'\n\nFenoglio!\n\nMeggie lowered the sheet of paper and looked round, searching for him, but she couldn't see him anywhere. Had Capricorn's men taken him with them, or\u2014?\n\n'Mo, he's gone!' she said, dismayed.\n\n'I'll go and look for him in a moment,' Mo reassured her. 'But now read the rest, quick! Or shall I do it?'\n\n'No, I will.'\n\nThe Shadow was beginning to move again. He took a step towards the dead Capricorn, staggered back and turned as clumsily as a dancing bear. Meggie thought she heard a groan. Farid ducked down behind the cage when the red eyes looked his way. Her mother and Elinor flinched, too, but Meggie read in a firm voice:\n\n'There stood the Shadow, and his memories hurt so much that they almost tore him apart. He heard them in his head, all those screams and sighs, he thought he could feel tears on his grey skin. Their fear burned his eyes like smoke. Then, quite suddenly, he felt something different, something that made him shudder and forced him to his knees. Then his whole terrible figure disintegrated, and suddenly they were all back again, all the beings from whose ashes the Shadow had been made: men, women and children, dogs and cats, brownies, fairies, and many others as well.'\n\nMeggie saw the arena filling up with them. More and more of them were gathering in a throng where the Shadow had collapsed, all looking around as if they'd just woken from a deep sleep. She read Fenoglio's last sentence.\n\n'They woke as if from a bad dream and then, at last, everything was all right again.'\n\n'He isn't here any more!' said Meggie when Mo took Fenoglio's sheet of paper from her and put it back in the book. 'Fenoglio's gone, Mo! He's in the story now. I know he is.'\n\nMo looked at the book and tucked it back under his jacket. 'Yes, I think you're right,' he said. 'But if so, there's nothing we can do about it for the moment. Perhaps the story now goes on beyond the book.' He led Meggie away with him down from the rostrum, past all the people and the strange creatures crowding into the arena outside Capricorn's village as if they had always been there. Darius followed them. He had finally let go of the Magpie, who was now standing with her bony hands gripping the back of the chair where Meggie had been sitting. She was weeping soundlessly, her face crumpled, as if her whole being were made of tears.\n\nA tiny, blue-skinned fairy apologised profusely when it fluttered into Meggie's hair as she and Mo went towards the cage containing her mother and Elinor. Then a shaggy creature who looked half human, half animal stumbled across her path, and finally she almost trod on a tiny little man who seemed to be made entirely of glass. Capricorn's village had acquired some strange new inhabitants.\n\nFarid was still trying to get the lock open when they reached the cage. He was picking at it, looking angry, and muttering something to the effect that Dustfinger had shown him just how to do it and this must be a very special sort of lock.\n\n'Oh, wonderful!' said Elinor sarcastically, pressing her face to the bars from inside. 'So the Shadow didn't eat us after all, but we'll be left to starve in a cage. Well, well! What do you think of your daughter, Mo? Isn't she a brave little thing? I couldn't have uttered a word myself, not a single word. My God, my heart almost stopped when that old woman tried to get the book away from her.'\n\nMo put his hand on Meggie's shoulder and smiled, but he was looking at someone else. Nine years are a long, long time.\n\n'I've done it! I've done it!' cried Farid, pulling the door of the cage open. But before the two women could take a step, a figure rose in the darkest corner of their prison, leaped towards them, and seized the first person he could lay his hands on \u2013 Meggie's mother.\n\n'Wait!' spat Basta. 'Stop, stop, not so fast. Where are you off to, then, Resa? To join your beloved family? You think I didn't understand all that whispering down in the crypt? Well, I did.'\n\n'Let go of her!' cried Meggie. 'Let go of her!' Why hadn't she noticed the dark heap lying so still in the corner? She had just assumed Basta was as dead as Capricorn. And indeed, why wasn't he? Why hadn't he disappeared like Flatnose and Cockerell and all the others?\n\n'Let her go, Basta!' Mo spoke very quietly, as if he had no strength for anything else. 'You won't get out of here, even by using her as a shield. No one will help you. They're all gone.'\n\n'Oh, I'll get out!' replied Basta unpleasantly. 'I shall choke her if you don't let me pass. I'll break her scrawny neck. Did you know she can't talk? She can't make a sound because that useless Darius read her out of the book. She's as silent as a fish, a pretty, mute fish. But if I know you, you'll want her back all the same, am I right?'\n\nMo made no reply, and Basta laughed.\n\n'Why aren't you dead?' Elinor shouted at him. 'Why didn't you fall down dead like your master, or vanish? Why not?'\n\nBasta merely shrugged. 'How should I know?' he growled, keeping his hand round Resa's neck. She tried to kick him, but he only tightened his grip. 'After all, the Magpie's still here too, but she always made other people do her dirty work for her, and as for me \u2013 perhaps I'm one of the good characters in the story now because they put me in the cage? Perhaps I'm still here because it's a long time since I set fire to anything, and Flatnose got much more fun out of killing people? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... but anyway here I am, so let me pass, you old book-bag!'\n\nBut Elinor did not budge.\n\n'No,' she said. 'You don't get out of here until you let her go! I'd never have expected this story to have a happy ending, but it has \u2013 and a creature like you isn't going to spoil that at the last moment, as sure as my name's Elinor Loredan!' Looking very determined, she placed herself in front of the cage door. 'You don't have your knife with you this time,' she went on in a dangerously soft voice. 'You have nothing but your filthy tongue, and believe you me, that'll be no use to you now. Poke your fingers into his eyes, Teresa! Kick him, bite him, the beast!'\n\nBut before Teresa could do as she said Basta thrust her away from him so violently that she fell against Elinor and brought her down \u2013 her and Mo, for both of them had been coming to her aid. As for Basta, he raced for the open door of the cage, pushed the startled Farid and Meggie aside \u2013 and ran away past all the people and creatures still wandering like sleepwalkers around the scene of Capricorn's festivities. Before Farid or Mo could give chase he had disappeared.\n\n'Oh, great!' muttered Elinor, stumbling out of the cage with Teresa. 'Now that wretched fellow will haunt me in my dreams, and every time I hear something rustling out in my garden at night I shall feel his knife at my throat.'\n\nNot only had Basta gone, but the Magpie also disappeared without trace that night. And when, wearily, they set off to find a vehicle of some kind to get them away from Capricorn's village, they found that all the cars had gone too. Not a single one was left in the car park, which was dark now.\n\n'Oh no, tell me it isn't true!' groaned Elinor. 'Does this mean we have to go the whole wretched way on foot again?'\n\n'Unless you happen to have a mobile phone with you,' said Mo. He had not moved from Teresa's side since Basta had made his escape. He had looked with concern at her neck, where the red marks left by Basta's fingers were still visible, and he had run a strand of her hair through his fingers and said he almost liked it better now it was darker. But nine years are a long time, and Meggie saw how careful they were with each other, like people on a narrow bridge crossing a wide, wide void.\n\nOf course Elinor did not have her mobile. Capricorn had had it taken away from her, and although Farid immediately offered to go and search Capricorn's fire-blackened house for it, it did not turn up. So they finally decided to spend one last night in the village, along with all the creatures that Fenoglio had brought back to life. It was still a beautiful, mild night, and sleeping under the trees would be quite comfortable. Meggie and Mo found plenty of blankets in the now deserted houses. But they did not go back into Capricorn's house. Meggie never wanted to set foot inside it again, not because of the acrid smell of burning seeping out of its windows, or the charred doors, but because of the memories that leaped out at her like fierce animals at the mere sight of the place.\n\nSitting between Mo and her mother under one of the old oaks surrounding the car park, Meggie thought for a moment of Dustfinger, and wondered whether perhaps Capricorn had been telling the truth after all. Maybe he really was dead and buried somewhere in the hills. I may never find out what's happened to him, she thought, as one of the blue fairies rocked back and forth on a twig above her, its face bland and happy.\n\nThe whole village seemed to be enchanted that night. The air was full of buzzing and murmuring, and the figures wandering round the car park looked as if they had escaped from the dreams of children and not the words of an old man. That was something else Meggie kept asking herself during the night: where was Fenoglio now, and did he like it in his own story? She so much hoped so. But she knew he would miss his grandchildren and their games of hide-and-seek in his kitchen cupboard.\n\nBefore Meggie's eyes closed, she saw Elinor walking about among the trolls and fairies, looking happier than she had ever seen her. And her own parents were sitting to the left and right of Meggie, her mother was writing and writing, on leaves from the trees, on the fabric of her dress, in the sand. There were so many words, so many tales to tell."
            },
            {
                "title": "Homesickness",
                "text": "\u2002Yet Bastian knew he couldn't leave without the book. It was clear to him that he had only come to the shop because of this book. It had called him in some mysterious way, because it wanted to be his, because it had somehow always belonged to him.\n\n\u2014Michael Ende, The Neverending Story\n\nDustfinger watched it all from a rooftop far enough from the scene of Capricorn's festivities for him to feel safe from the Shadow, but close enough for him to see everything through the binoculars he had found in Basta's house. At first he had meant to stay in hiding. He had seen the Shadow kill too often already. Yet a strange feeling, as irrational as Basta's good-luck charms, had driven him out: a feeling that he could protect the book just by his presence. When he slipped into the alley he felt something else too. He didn't like to admit it to himself, but he wanted to see Basta die through the same binoculars that Basta himself had so often turned on his future victims.\n\nSo he sat on the tiles of a dilapidated roof, his back against the cold chimney, his face blackened with soot (for the face is treacherously pale by night), and watched smoke rise into the sky from Capricorn's house. He saw Flatnose set out with several men to extinguish the fire. He saw the Shadow emerge from the ground, he saw the old man disappear with an expression of infinite amazement on his face, and he saw Capricorn die the death he himself had summoned. Unfortunately Basta did not die as well, which was really annoying. Dustfinger saw him running away. And he saw the Magpie follow him.\n\nHe, Dustfinger the spectator, saw it all.\n\nHe had often been just a spectator, and this was not his story. What were they to him, Silvertongue and his daughter, the boy, the bookworm, and the woman who was another man's wife once more? She could have escaped with him, but she had stayed in the crypt with her daughter, so he had thrust her out of his heart as he always did with anyone who tried to stay there too long. He was glad that the Shadow hadn't taken them all, but they were none of his business any more. From now on Resa would be telling Silvertongue all the wonderful stories that drove away loneliness and homesickness and fear again. Why should it bother him?\n\nBut what about the fairies and the brownies suddenly stumbling around the scene of Capricorn's festivities? They were as out of place in this world as he was \u2013 and they too wouldn't let him forget that he was still here for one reason alone. He was interested only in the book, nothing but the book, and when he saw Silvertongue hide it under his jacket he decided to get it back. The book at least would be his. It must be his. He would stroke the pages, and if he closed his eyes at the same time he would be home again.\n\nThe old man was there now, the old man with the wrinkled face. Crazy. If only you hadn't been so afraid, Dustfinger, he thought bitterly. But you're a coward and you always will be. Why wasn't it you standing beside Capricorn? Why didn't you venture down? Then perhaps you would have disappeared back into the book instead of the old man.\n\nThe fairy with the butterfly wings and milky white face had flown after him. She was a vain little thing. Whenever she caught sight of her reflection in a window she lingered, smiling in front of it, oblivious to all else. She turned and preened in the air, ran her fingers through her hair and examined herself as if delighted by her own beauty all over again. The fairies he had known had not been particularly vain. On the contrary, sometimes they positively enjoyed smearing their tiny faces with mud or pollen, and then asked him, giggling, to guess which of them it was behind all the muck.\n\nPerhaps I ought to catch myself one, thought Dustfinger. They could make me invisible. It would be wonderful to be invisible now and then. Or a troll \u2013 I could make him part of my show. Everyone would think he was just a little human being in a furry suit. No one can stand on his head as long as a troll, no one can make faces so well either, and those funny little dances they do \u2013 yes, why not?\n\nWhen the moon had travelled half-way across the sky and Dustfinger was still sitting on the roof, the fairy with the butterfly wings grew impatient. Her tinkling sounded shrill and angry as she flew round him. What did she want? Did she want him to take her back where she came from, back to the place where all fairies had butterfly wings and people understood their language?\n\n'You've picked the wrong man here,' he told her quietly. 'See that girl down there, and the man beside the woman with the dark blonde hair? They're what you need, but I might as well warn you: they're very good at luring people into their world, and not so good at sending them home again. Still, you can try! Maybe you'll have better luck than me.'\n\nThe fairy turned in the air, looked down, cast him a final injured glance and flew away. Dustfinger saw her brightness mingle with the light of the other fairies flying around and chasing each other through the branches of the trees. They were so forgetful. No grief or sorrow lived longer than a day in their little heads \u2013 and, who knows, perhaps the mild night air had already made them forget that this was not their own story.\n\nFaint light was coming into the sky by the time they were all asleep down there. Only the boy kept watch. He was a suspicious boy, always on his guard, always careful except when he played with fire. Dustfinger couldn't help smiling when he thought of Farid's eager face, and the way he had burned his lips when he secretly took the torches from his rucksack. The boy would be no problem, no, none at all.\n\nSilvertongue and Resa were asleep under a tree with Meggie between them, sheltered like a young bird in a warm nest. Elinor was sleeping not far away, and smiling in her sleep. Dustfinger had never seen her look so happy. One of the fairies was lying curled up like a caterpillar on her breast, with Elinor's hand around it. The fairy's face was not much bigger than the ball of her thumb, and her fairy light shone between Elinor's strong fingers like the light of a captive star.\n\nFarid stood up as soon as he saw Dustfinger coming. He had a shotgun in his hand. It must have belonged to one of Capricorn's men.\n\n'You\u2014you're not dead?' Farid breathed incredulously. He still wore no shoes, which was hardly surprising, for he had always been falling over the shoelaces, and tying a bow had presented him with problems.\n\n'No, I'm not.' Dustfinger stopped beside Silvertongue and looked down on him and Resa. 'Where's Gwin?' he asked the boy. 'I hope you've been looking after him!'\n\n'He ran away after they shot at us, but he came back.' There was pride in the boy's voice.\n\n'Ah.' Dustfinger crouched down beside Silvertongue. 'Well, he always knew when it was time to run, just like his master.'\n\n'We left him at our camp up by the burnt-out cottage last night, because we knew it was going to be dangerous,' the boy went on. 'But I was going to fetch him as soon as I came off watch.'\n\n'Well, I can do that now. Don't worry, he's sure to be all right. A marten like Gwin will always survive.' Dustfinger reached out his hand and put it under Silvertongue's jacket.\n\n'What are you doing?' The boy's voice sounded uneasy.\n\n'Just taking what's mine,' replied Dustfinger.\n\nSilvertongue did not stir as Dustfinger slipped the book out. He was sleeping well and soundly, and what was there now to disturb his sleep? He had everything his heart desired.\n\n'It's not yours!'\n\n'Yes, it is.' Dustfinger stood up. He looked up at the branches. There were three fairies asleep up there. He'd always wondered how they could sleep perched in the trees without falling to the ground. Carefully, he took two of them off the spindly branch where they were lying, blew gently into their faces as they opened their eyes and yawned, and put them in his pocket.\n\n'Blowing at them makes them sleepy,' he explained to the boy. 'Just a little tip in case you ever have anything to do with fairies. But I think it only works on the blue sort.'\n\nHe didn't bother to wake a troll. They were an obstinate lot; it would take a long time to persuade one of them to go with him, and very likely it would disturb Silvertongue.\n\n'Let me come too!' The boy barred his way. 'Here, I've got your rucksack.' He held it up, as if to buy Dustfinger's company with it.\n\n'No.' Dustfinger took the rucksack from him, slung it over his shoulders and turned his back on the boy.\n\n'Yes!' Farid ran after him. 'You must let me come too! Or what am I going to tell Silvertongue when he realises the book is gone?'\n\n'Tell him you fell asleep. It happens to a lot of sentries keeping watch.'\n\n'Please!'\n\nDustfinger stopped. 'What about her?' he pointed to Meggie. 'You like the girl, don't you? Why not stay with her?'\n\nThe boy blushed, and stared at the girl for a long time, as if to commit the sight of her to memory. Then he turned back to Dustfinger. 'I don't belong with them.'\n\n'You don't belong with me either.' Dustfinger walked away again, but when he was a good way from the car park the boy was still behind him. He was trying to walk so quietly that Dustfinger wouldn't hear him, and when Dustfinger turned he stopped like a thief caught in the act.\n\n'What's the idea? I'm not going to be here much longer anyway!' snapped Dustfinger. 'Now I have the book I shall look for someone who can read me into it again, even if it's a stammerer like Darius who sends me home with a lame leg or a squashed face. What will you do then? You'll be left alone.'\n\nThe boy shrugged his shoulders and looked at him with his black eyes. 'I can breathe fire well now,' he said. 'I practised and practised while you were gone. But I'm not so good at swallowing it yet.'\n\n'That's more difficult. You go at it too fast. I've told you so a thousand times.'\n\nThey found Gwin in the ruins of the burnt-out house, sleepy and with feathers round his muzzle. He seemed pleased to see Dustfinger, and even licked his hand, but then he ran after the boy. They walked until it was light, always heading south towards the sea. At last, they stopped for a rest and ate the food Dustfinger had brought from Basta's larder: some red spicy sausage, a piece of cheese, bread, olive oil. The bread was rather hard, so they dipped it in the oil, ate in silence sitting side by side on the grass, and then went on. Blue and dusty-pink wild sage flowered among the trees. The fairies moved in Dustfinger's pocket \u2013 and the boy walked behind him like a second shadow."
            },
            {
                "title": "Going Home",
                "text": "\u2003And [he] sailed back over a year\n\n\u2003and in and out of weeks\n\n\u2003and through a day\n\n\u2003and into the night of his very own room\n\n\u2003where he found his supper waiting for him\n\n\u2003and it was still hot.\n\n\u2014Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are\n\nIn the morning, when Mo found that the book had gone, Meggie's first thought was that Basta had taken it, and she felt sick with fear at the thought of his prowling round them while they slept. But Mo had a different explanation.\n\n'Farid has gone too, Meggie,' he said. 'Do you think he'd have gone with Basta?'\n\nNo, she didn't. There was only one person Farid would have gone with. Meggie could well imagine Dustfinger emerging from the darkness, just as he had on the night when it all began.\n\n'But what about Fenoglio?' she said.\n\nMo only sighed. 'I don't know whether I'd have tried to read him back anyway, Meggie,' he said. 'So much misfortune has come from that book already, and I'm not a writer who can make up the words he wants to read aloud for himself. I'm only a kind of book doctor. I can give books new bindings, rejuvenate them a little, stop the bookworms eating them, and prevent them losing their pages over the years like a man loses his hair. But inventing the stories in them, filling new, empty pages with the right words \u2013 I can't do that. That's a very different trade. A famous writer once wrote, \"An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher or a magician \u2013 but the magician, the enchanter is in the ascendant.\" I always thought he was right about that.'\n\nMeggie didn't know what to say. She only knew that she missed Fenoglio's face. 'And Tinker Bell,' she said. 'What about her? Will she have to stay here too now?' When she'd woken up the fairy had been lying in the grass beside her. Now she was flying around with the other fairies. If you didn't look too closely they might have been a cloud of moths. Meggie couldn't imagine how she had escaped from Basta's house. Hadn't he been planning to keep her in a jug?\n\n'As far as I remember, Peter Pan himself once forgot she'd ever existed,' said Mo. 'Am I right?'\n\nYes, Meggie remembered it too. 'All the same!' she murmured. 'Poor Fenoglio!'\n\nBut as she said that, her mother shook her head vigorously. Mo searched his pockets for paper, though all he could find was a shopping receipt and a felt-tip pen. Teresa took both from him, smiling. Then, while Meggie crouched in the grass beside her, she wrote: Don't be sorry for Fenoglio. It's not a bad story he's landed in.\n\n'Is Capricorn still in it? Did you ever meet him there?' asked Meggie. How often she and Mo had wondered that. After all, he was one of the main characters in Inkheart. But perhaps there really was something behind the printed story, a world that changed every day just like this one.\n\nI only heard of him there, her mother wrote. They spoke of him as if he had gone away for a while. But there were others just as bad. It's a world full of terror and beauty (here her writing became so small that Meggie could hardly make it out) and I could always understand why Dustfinger felt homesick for it.\n\nThe last sentence worried Meggie, but when she looked anxiously at her mother, Teresa smiled and reached for her hand. I was far, far more homesick for you two, she wrote on the palm of it, and Meggie closed her fingers over the words as if to hold them fast. She read them again and again on the long drive back to Elinor's house, and it was many days before they faded.\n\nElinor hadn't been able to reconcile herself to the idea of another walk all the way down through the thorny hills where the snakes lived. 'Do you think I'm crazy?' she said crossly. 'My feet hurt at the mere thought of it.' So she and Meggie had set off again in search of a telephone. It was a strange feeling to walk through the village \u2013 a truly deserted village now \u2013 past Capricorn's smoke-blackened house and the half-charred church porch. Water lay in the square outside. The blue sky was reflected in it, and made it look almost as if the square had turned into a lake overnight. The hoses Capricorn's men had used to save their master's house lay like huge snakes in the pools of water. In fact the fire had ravaged only the ground floor, but all the same Meggie would not go in, and when they had searched over a dozen other houses in vain Elinor bravely went through the charred door on her own. Meggie told her where to find the Magpie's room, and Elinor took a gun just in case the old woman had come back to save what she could of her own and her robber son's treasures. But the Magpie was long gone, just like Basta, and Elinor came back with a triumphant smile on her lips, carrying a cordless phone.\n\nThey called a taxi. It was rather difficult to persuade the driver that he must ignore the road barrier when he came to it, but luckily he had never believed any of the sinister stories that were told of the village. They arranged to wait for him by the roadside, so he wouldn't see any of the fairies and trolls. Meggie and her mother stayed in the village while Mo and Elinor went in the taxi to the nearest town, and came back a few hours later driving the two small buses they had hired. For Elinor had decided to offer a home, or 'asylum', as she put it, to all the strange creatures who had landed in her world. 'After all,' she said, 'many people here have little enough patience or understanding for their fellow human beings who are only superficially different to them \u2013 so how would it be for little people with blue skins who can fly?'\n\nIt took some time for them all to understand Elinor's offer \u2013 which was, of course, also made to the men, women and children out of the book \u2013 but most of them decided to stay in Capricorn's village. It obviously reminded them of a home that their earlier death had almost made them forget, and of course they could use the treasure that Meggie told the children must still be lying in the cellars of Capricorn's house. It would probably be enough to keep them all for the rest of their lives. The birds, dogs and cats who had emerged from the Shadow had not hung about, but had long ago disappeared into the surrounding hills, while a few fairies and two of the little glass men, enchanted by the broom blossoms, the scent of rosemary, and the narrow alleys where the ancient stones whispered their stories to them, decided to make the once sinister village their home.\n\nIn the end, however, forty-three blue-skinned fairies with dragonfly wings fluttered into the buses and settled on the backs of the grey-patterned seats. Capricorn had obviously swatted fairies as carelessly as other people swat flies. Tinker Bell was among those who didn't come, which did not particularly trouble Meggie, for she had realised that Peter Pan's fairy was very self-centred. Her tinkling really got on your nerves, too, and she tinkled almost all the time if she didn't get what she wanted.\n\nIn addition to four trolls who looked like very small and hairy human beings, thirteen little glass men and women climbed into Elinor's buses \u2013 and so did Darius, the unhappy stammering reader. There was nothing to keep him in the village with its new inhabitants, and it held too many painful memories for him. He offered to help Elinor build up her library again, and she accepted. Meggie suspected that she was secretly toying with the idea of getting Darius to read aloud again, now that Capricorn's malevolent presence no longer left him tongue-tied.\n\nMeggie looked back for a long time as they left Capricorn's village behind them. She knew she would never forget the sight of it, just as you never forget many stories even though \u2013 or perhaps because \u2013 they have scared you.\n\nBefore they left Mo had asked her, with concern in his voice, whether she minded if they drove to Elinor's first. Meggie did not mind at all. Oddly enough, she felt more homesick for Elinor's house than for the old farmhouse where she and Mo had lived for the last few years.\n\nThe scar left by the bonfire was still to be seen on the lawn behind the house, where Capricorn's men had piled up the books and burned them. But before Elinor had the ashes taken away, she had filled a jam jar with the fine grey dust, and it stood on the bedside table in her room.\n\nMany of the books that Capricorn's men had only swept off the shelves were already back in their old places, others were waiting on Mo's workbench to be rebound, but the library shelves were empty, and as they stood looking at them Meggie saw the tears in Elinor's eyes, even though she was quick to wipe them away.\n\nElinor did a great deal of buying over the next few weeks. She bought books. She travelled all over Europe in search of them. Darius was always with her, and sometimes Mo went with them too. But Meggie stayed in the big house with her mother. They would sit together at a window looking out at the garden where the fairies were building themselves nests, gently glowing globes that hung among the branches of the trees. The glass men and women settled into Elinor's attic, and the trolls dug caves among the big old trees which grew in abundance in Elinor's garden. She told them all that if possible they should never leave her property, warning them urgently of the dangers of the world beyond the hedges that enclosed it, but soon the fairies were flying down to the lake by night, the trolls were walking along its banks and stealing into the sleeping villages, and the little glass people would disappear into the tall grass that covered the slopes of the mountains around the lake.\n\n'Don't worry too much,' said Mo, whenever Elinor bewailed their stupidity. 'After all, the world they came from wasn't without its dangers.'\n\n'But it was different!' cried Elinor. 'There were no cars \u2013 suppose the fairies fly into a windscreen? And there were no hunters with rifles shooting at anything that moves, just for the fun of it.'\n\nBy now Elinor knew everything about the world of Inkheart. Meggie's mother had needed a great deal of paper to write down her memories of it. Every evening Meggie asked her to tell more stories, and then they sat together while Teresa wrote and Meggie read the words, and sometimes even tried to paint pictures of what her mother described.\n\nThe days went by, and Elinor's shelves filled up with wonderful new books. Some of them were in poor condition, and Darius, who had begun to draw up a catalogue of Elinor's printed treasures, kept interrupting his own work to watch Mo at his. He sat there wide-eyed as Mo freed a badly worn book from its old cover, fixed loose pages back, glued the spines in place and did whatever else was necessary to preserve the books for many more years to come.\n\nLong after all this, Meggie couldn't have said exactly when they had decided to stay on with Elinor. Perhaps not for many weeks, or perhaps they had known from the first day they were back. Meggie was given the room with the bed that was much too big for her, and which still had her book-box standing under it. She would have loved to read aloud to her mother from her own favourite books, but of course she understood why Mo very seldom did so, even now. And one night when she couldn't get to sleep, because she thought she saw Basta's face out in the dark, she sat down at the desk in front of her window and began to write, while the fairies played in Elinor's garden and the trolls rustled in the bushes. For Meggie had a plan: she wanted to learn to make up stories like Fenoglio. She wanted to learn to fish for words so that she could read aloud to her mother, without worrying about who might come out of the stories and look at her with homesick eyes. So Meggie decided that words would be her trade.\n\nAnd where better could she learn that trade than in a house full of magical creatures, where fairies built their nests in the garden and books whispered on the shelves by night? As Mo had said: writing stories is a kind of magic, too."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Unbound",
        "author": "Jim C. Hines",
        "genres": [
            "urban fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "magic",
            "Magic Ex Libris"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Ted Boyer\u2014hunter, fisherman, vampire, and general pain in my ass\u2014was gone.\n\nDirt and gravel crunched beneath my sneakers as I crossed the empty lot where his yellow doublewide trailer once stood. A rectangle of flattened earth, striped by old, cracked cement, marked the site of Boyer's former home.\n\nThere was no sign of the secret basement he had dug to hide his coffin and store his blood supply. Wherever Boyer had fled to, he wasn't planning to come back.\n\n\"There are weeds starting to poke through the dirt.\" Short, heavyset, and stronger than five humans combined, Lena Greenwood looked as tired as I felt. She crouched on the cement and touched one of the tiny green shoots. \"He left at least a week ago.\"\n\nThere had been a time, back when I was a field agent for the Porters, when I would have been thrilled to see Ted gone from Marquette, and preferably gone from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Let someone else take on the responsibility of checking in on him and blowing the bomb in his skull if his blood tests ever showed he had gone back to feeding on Boy Scouts.\n\nBut Ted was a lifelong Yooper, stubborn as hell and determined to live out his afterlife here in Marquette. I had resigned myself to sharing the peninsula with him until one of us was dead and buried for good.\n\n\"Do you think he left willingly?\" Lena asked.\n\nI shrugged. Ted didn't exactly have a lot of friends, and he had collected a decent list of enemies over his lifetimes. If one of them had used the chaos last month as cover to come after Ted, he could be dead by now. Deader. But why would they bother to haul away his trailer and his truck? More likely, he simply wanted to get away before all hell broke loose.\n\nSome would say hell had broken a month earlier, when my home town of Copper River ended up in the crossfire of a three-way magical battle between the Porters, the B\u00ec Sheng de d\u00fa zhe\u2014a group thought to have been wiped out more than five hundred years ago by the aforementioned Porters\u2014and an army of mindless ghosts fighting to return to this world to kill... well, pretty much everything.\n\nAt least thirty-four of my friends and neighbors had died in that battle. Then there were the Porters and werewolves who had fallen trying to protect Copper River in a conflict that promised to be merely the precursor of things to come.\n\n\"Keep looking.\" Fossilized beagle shit, half-hidden by weeds, turned much of the grass into a minefield. I crouched by one pile and stared as though I could use the droppings to divine where Ted had gone, but all they told me was that we were too late.\n\nI continued to search. Cigarette butts littered the ground by the woods beyond the driveway, where Ted used to work during the night, skinning and butchering whatever game he brought back. I found a couple of old beer cans by the trees.\n\n\"Isaac...\" Lena studied my face, then shook her head. \"Never mind.\"\n\nAnger tightened my jaw. I knew what she was going to say, and I didn't want to hear it.\n\nThe manager of the trailer park said Ted had simply vanished. He had left an envelope full of cash to pay off his bills, which was more than I would have expected from Ted. More likely, he had simply messed with the manager's mind to make him believe everything was squared away. That would better fit Ted's style and budget. \"I need to find him.\"\n\n\"How? By staring at dog crap all day? This must be a new school of magic I hadn't heard about. My lover, the fecomancer.\"\n\nOn another day, I would have smiled. That was before I had lost a fourteen-year-old girl to the Ghost Army. A girl who was potentially more powerful than any libriomancer in history, with the possible exception of Johannes Gutenberg.\n\nA girl who had been under my care and protection.\n\nJeneta Aboderin had the ability to perform libriomancy using electronic media. The rest of us needed printed books to shape our magic. We could reach into the pages to create anything from futuristic laser pistols to fizzy lifting drinks from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as long as we had a physical copy of the book.\n\nJeneta could pull the mockingjay pin from The Hunger Games out of her smartphone, and carried an entire library around on her e-reader. Nobody fully understood how she did it, nor did we know the limits of her power.\n\nI searched the dirt driveway next. This was my third time studying the dark patches of oil that had leaked from Ted's old Ford Bronco. I knew a Porter who could have used that stain not only to track Ted's truck, but to bring it to a screeching halt wherever he might be. Or there were books whose magic could help me to find him myself... if I had still been a member of the Porters.\n\nIf Johannes Gutenberg hadn't locked my mind to prevent me from ever using magic again.\n\nI closed my eyes and fought off a now-familiar surge of despair.\n\n\"There's nothing here,\" Lena said softly.\n\n\"I know.\" I took a long, slow breath, trying to ease the walnut-sized lump in my throat. \"We'll have to find someone else to help me. Ted isn't the only one who can touch people's minds.\"\n\n\"Would you really want that man messing around in your nightmares?\"\n\n\"I saw her, Lena.\" Two nights before, I had jerked awake, my body dripping with sweat, my hands reaching helplessly for power I no longer possessed. For two days that memory had stalked me, taunting me from every corner.\n\n\"Jeneta?\"\n\n\"The woman who took her.\" The name darted into view like a dragonfly and vanished again before I could grasp it. \"I know who she is, but something's blocking the memory. I need help. Someone who can help me remember.\"\n\nWisps of black hair hung over Lena's red-veined eyes. Her lips pressed together with worry and helplessness, along with a dash of skepticism. It was an expression I had come to know well over the past month.\n\nShe wore a snug green T-shirt with the sleeves and collar cut off. The words \"Tree Hugger\" were written in yellow block letters across her chest. She was armed with a pair of curved wooden swords\u2014Japanese bokken\u2014thrust through the belt of her cutoff jeans.\n\nHeat flared at my hip. From inside the rectangular metal cage clipped to my belt, Smudge watched the road like he was expecting a horde of zombies to claw up through the pavement and devour us. Faint red flames rippled across the fire-spider's back. A layer of fire-resistant black fiberglass on the side of the cage prevented him from burning holes through my pants.\n\nLena moved to the opposite side of the lot while I returned to the relative safety of my car. The protective enchantments on the black TR-6 convertible were stronger than anything I could have prepared myself, even when I could still manipulate magic. I waited by the passenger door and searched for whatever had set Smudge off this time.\n\nThere were no zombies, only a lone man carrying an aluminum baseball bat. He had a good five inches and fifty pounds on me, and a scowl like I'd just pissed in his Budweiser. \"What are you folks snooping around for?\"\n\nNormally I would have tried to talk my way around this guy, making up a story that explained our presence without raising suspicions. But I no longer had any reason to care about keeping a low profile, and in the words of a coworker, my give-a-shit gauge was stuck on Empty these days. \"Ted Boyer. Have you seen him?\"\n\nHe rested the bat on his shoulder, wrapping both hands around the black-taped handle. \"Ted said there might be people nosing around in his business, looking to give him a hard time.\"\n\n\"Do you know where we could find him?\" Lena hadn't touched her weapons. Against a man armed with a bat, she wouldn't need them.\n\n\"What I know is that you'd better get the hell out of here by the time I count to five.\"\n\nI reached into the car, popped the glove box, and pulled out a gun. The man's eyes went huge. \"Do you know where Ted Boyer went?\" I repeated.\n\nHe shook his head. \"He wouldn't say.\"\n\n\"And did Ted ask you to threaten anyone who came along, or was that your idea?\" I pulled the trigger without waiting for an answer. Lightning spat from the barrel, spinning a cocoon of electricity around his body. He collapsed face-first in the grass, the bat dropping to the ground beside him.\n\n\"Isaac, what the hell?\" Lena ran toward him.\n\n\"The gun was on setting one.\" I blinked away the afterimage of jagged light. Ozone bit my nostrils. \"He'll be fine.\"\n\nI had created my sidearm from a novel called Time Kings, back before Gutenberg locked my magic. Disguised to look like an ordinary revolver, the shock-gun had a two-stage firing mechanism. First, it shot a tiny ionized pellet toward the target. A split second later, it brought the lightning, which could deliver anything from a light stunning burst to a full-on, Earth-shattering kaboom.\n\n\"You're sure about that?\" Lena was checking the man's pulse and respiration. \"You checked to make sure he didn't have a pacemaker before you electrocuted him? Reviewed his medical records for any preexisting conditions?\"\n\nI felt like she had reached into my gut and tied my intestines in a knot. \"He looked healthy...\" That was a stupid excuse, and I knew it. \"Is he all right?\"\n\n\"He seems to be, considering you just shot him with a lightning bolt.\" She brushed her fingers over the singed spot on his shirt. \"What were you thinking?\"\n\n\"That he didn't know anything, and we didn't have time for this.\"\n\n\"Oh, do you have plans tonight? Another exciting evening of hiding in your office with your books and shutting away the rest of the world?\"\n\nI wanted to apologize and I wanted her to keep arguing with me and I wanted her to leave me the hell alone. I didn't know what I wanted anymore, except to find Jeneta and fix the things that had gone so damned wrong.\n\nI circled around to the driver's seat. \"There's nothing here. Let's go.\"\n\nLike a paroled felon, Ted was supposed to let the Porters know if he moved, but I no longer had access to the Porter database. He might not have bothered, trusting them to be too preoccupied with the Ghost Army to worry about a lone vampire. If so, he'd better pray he found a black-market magic-user to deactivate the bomb in his skull before anyone else noticed he was missing.\n\nI unclipped Smudge's cage and let him climb onto the dashboard. A stone trivet protected the dash from his heat. He watched me closely, his body low against the trivet. For a big black-and-red spider with a penchant for setting things on fire, Smudge could be surprisingly expressive. He wasn't worried about random strangers with baseball bats anymore. I was the one making him anxious.\n\nTension drained from my body, guilt and exhaustion replacing anger. I let my head thump against the steering wheel. I should apologize. For scaring Smudge. For snapping at Lena.\n\nFor a lot of things.\n\n\"We'll find someone else.\" Lena sat down beside me. \"You've got other vampires who owe you favors, not to mention the Porters\u2014\"\n\n\"None of the Porters are allowed to talk to me,\" I reminded her. \"I'm not exactly on the best of terms with the undead, either. The last time I asked them for help, I got several of their people dusted, including a rather powerful ghost-talker.\"\n\n\"The Porters are searching for Jeneta, too.\" She didn't say anything more, but those seven words carried the weight of hours of previous arguments.\n\nWhat could one librarian with no magic of his own do that Gutenberg's people couldn't? The Porters had magic and a worldwide network of hundreds of libriomancers and other magic-users to help them track Jeneta down.\n\nTo which I always replied, \"Then why haven't they found her yet?\"\n\nI gunned the engine and got the hell out of there.\n\nDriving into Copper River meant passing one reminder after another of the damage the Ghost Army had done to my home. The Porters had repaired much of the destruction, hoping to bury evidence of werewolves and wendigos and magic. They couldn't bring back the dead, but they had rebuilt homes and rewritten memories.\n\nSometimes I wished they had rewritten mine. To the right was the drugstore, where Becky Luhtala's body had been found behind the counter. A block away was the intersection where Phil Gutzman had died when his truck collided with a metal dragon made of magically animated mining equipment.\n\nEvery road conjured memories of metal insects, their serrated pincers tearing my skin, or white-furred monsters smashing through doors and windows. I remembered every detail save the identity of the one responsible.\n\nBy the time I reached my street, my neck and shoulders were tense as steel. I felt like I was driving through a war zone. This was where the trees had turned against my neighbors, crushing roofs and ripping through homes. A dryad named Deifilia, another servant of the Ghost Army, would have tortured and murdered everyone on my block if Lena hadn't killed her.\n\nDespite everything the Porters had done to erase the damage, \"For Sale\" signs had appeared in five different yards.\n\nMy own home was untouched. From the outside, the dirty aluminum siding and metal roof showed no sign of anything unusual.\n\nIt was another story entirely once you stepped inside. Books, maps, and haphazardly organized printouts covered the kitchen table. My laptop sat in the center, a single orange LED blinking wearily. It looked like the laptop had gotten drunk and vomited up a copious amount of paperwork and sticky notes.\n\nI returned Smudge to his tank, a large terrarium sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter. I dropped a pair of crickets in with him, replaced the lid, and turned on the heat lamp. He raced over to dig a little nest in the obsidian gravel in the center of the light.\n\nLena grabbed a package of Twinkies from the freezer. She took the majority of her sustenance through her tree, and as far as anyone could tell, her human diet had absolutely no effect on her health or physique. She took shameless advantage of that fact. Though why she preferred her Twinkies frozen was a mystery. She tore open the package and held one out to me.\n\n\"I'm not hungry.\" At the edge of my vision, a red light blinked at me from my phone's base unit, signaling a waiting message.\n\nLena followed my attention, and her forced cheer vanished. \"You don't have to listen right now.\"\n\n\"Yes, I do.\" We both knew who the message was from. I considered deleting it, but I owed them at least this much. And the longer I waited, the longer that blinking light would taunt me. I jabbed the button.\n\nThe machine beeped, and then a woman began to speak in a British accent. It was a voice I had come to know as well as my own. \"Mister Vainio, this is Paige Aboderin again. I know you said you'd call if you learned anything more about Jeneta, but it's been weeks since we last heard from you.\"\n\nBuried somewhere on the kitchen table was a copy of the paperwork Paige and Mmadukaaku Aboderin had signed earlier this year, giving their daughter permission to spend the summer at Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe. Another form allowed Jeneta to work with me as part of a \"summer internship\" at the Copper River Library, an internship that had mostly involved sitting around in my backyard practicing magic while I tried to understand her power.\n\n\"We've hired a private investigator to look for Jeneta. He has copies of everything you've shared with us, but he might be calling you to follow up.\"\n\nJeneta should have been safe. Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe was far enough from Copper River to keep her out of the fighting, and the Porters had assigned a field agent named Myron Worster to keep an eye on her, just in case.\n\nThey had found Worster a day later, wandering aimlessly through the Detroit Metro Airport with no memory of who Jeneta was or where she might have gone. He recalled picking someone up from the camp, but the details were wiped so thoroughly from his mind that not even the strongest Porters had been able to retrieve them.\n\n\"I'm hoping to come back to Michigan by the end of the month,\" continued Paige Aboderin. \"We think... we hope the police might do more to find her if we meet with them in person again.\"\n\nThey had flown out immediately following Jeneta's disappearance. Paige stayed in Detroit, while Mmadukaaku rented a hotel room here in Copper River so he could talk to everyone who had seen or interacted with Jeneta in the days before her disappearance.\n\nEvery time I spoke to them, it got harder to lie, to pretend I knew nothing about what had happened to their daughter, or to try to reassure them that Jeneta would be all right.\n\nThey never blamed me. Even though I was the reason Jeneta had come to Copper River. I was the Porter assigned to work with her, to try to understand her magic and teach her to control it.\n\nI was the reason the Ghost Army had found her. Whatever she became, whatever they did with her power...\n\n\"The investigator thinks Jeneta is still in Michigan. We know she didn't get on any departing flights.\"\n\nNo, we didn't. We knew only that the airport had no record of Jeneta boarding a flight. Given her magic, and the power our enemies commanded, that meant nothing. She could be anywhere in the world.\n\nI forced myself to listen to Paige's slow, precise words. I could easily imagine her standing at the front of a classroom, lecturing her college seniors about poetry.\n\n\"Mmadukaaku believes\u2014\" Her voice broke. \"He said there could have been a mistake when the coroner was identifying the bodies in Copper River last month. He thinks our daughter might have been buried. I'm planning to look through all of their reports and photographs. I hoped you might be willing to help. You're familiar with... with what happened, and Mmadukaaku said you read faster than anyone he's met.\"\n\nShe sounded as determined as ever to find her daughter, but the strength in her words had grown brittle. I couldn't imagine how hard it must be to go to bed each night without knowing. To pour every resource you had into trying to find your child, knowing it might not be enough to bring her home. To admit it might be too late to save her.\n\nThis was the first time I had heard either of them acknowledge the possibility that Jeneta could be dead. They might be right. But if so, it hadn't happened during the attack on Copper River.\n\n\"Please call if you learn anything at all.\" She left her number. I had memorized it weeks before.\n\nThe message ended. The machine saved it automatically, along with the rest.\n\n\"It's not your fault,\" said Lena.\n\nI sat down at the table, started up the laptop, and dug out a wrinkled list of all departing flights from Detroit Metro Airport on the day Jeneta vanished. Tiny check marks covered the list, along with notes about my conversations with flight attendants, pilots, and a handful of passengers I had managed to track down.\n\nThere were too many possibilities, particularly when you looked at connecting flights. I had no way of knowing the Ghost Army's plans, and without more information, no destination was any more or less likely than the rest. All I really had was an eight-second clip from a security camera, showing Jeneta swiping an enormous cinnamon roll from the Starbucks shop in the airport.\n\nI studied one of the printouts, a grainy photo showing Jeneta reaching for the roll. She wore the same clothes she had at camp, and I didn't see that she had brought any luggage, though it could have been outside of the camera's field of vision.\n\nJeneta had her phone in her other hand. The people around her appeared dazed, staring in random directions at nothing in particular, suggesting she had used magic. Or that whatever had taken her was able to use her magic, which was far more frightening.\n\n\"How long since you've eaten?\" asked Lena.\n\nI looked at an airline map, trying to match the location of the Starbucks to terminals with flights that departed after these images were taken. \"I grabbed a sandwich at lunch.\"\n\n\"You mean this sandwich?\" She picked up an abandoned plate from beside the sink and poked at a sad, barely-touched stack of bologna, cheese, and lettuce on wheat bread. \"I'm ordering pizza. You're going to eat some. End of discussion.\"\n\nWith a sigh, I set the map aside and pulled a book on self-hypnosis from another stack. I had picked it up yesterday morning from the library. Torn scraps of paper\u2014makeshift bookmarks\u2014protruded from the top like tiny white feathers, each one marking a technique I thought might help me to retrieve the elusive memory from my dreams. None had worked yet.\n\nI needed to hack my own brain. I knew I had seen the face of our enemy, the person or thing behind the Ghost Army, but that image had been cut out of my thoughts, leaving only a ragged-edged pit filled with frustration.\n\nHad our enemy hidden themselves from me, or was this a side effect of the invisible padlock Gutenberg had snapped through my mind to stop me from using my magic? I was only aware of one person who had successfully bypassed one of Gutenberg's locks, and I wasn't quite ready to try that technique. Not yet. I preferred to save do-it-yourself trepanning for a last resort.\n\n\"Did you want bread sticks?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Whatever.\" I stood and fetched Smudge from his tank. \"I'll be out back.\"\n\nIf I stayed inside, I'd end up taking my frustrations out on her. Better for both of us if I spent this time alone. I would have left Smudge behind too, if not for the fact that his presence repelled the mosquitoes.\n\nA ring of oak trees transformed the ground into a wrinkled tangle of roots and dirt. If they grew much more, the roots would start to undermine the foundation of the house. Lena's oak stood at the center of the circle, a queen protected by her guardsmen.\n\nHer tree bore the scars of last month's battle in the form of broken branches, gouges in the bark, and blackened streaks of dead, cracked wood.\n\nIt was here Lena had killed the dryad she called her sister. She had stabbed Deifilia with her sword, pinning her to the central oak. She stayed with Deifilia as she died, as the tree slowly enveloped her body, a reclamation that was simultaneously touching and horrifying.\n\nAnd it was here that rabid minds of things long gone from our world had clawed at my thoughts. Where I had lost the ability to distinguish fiction from reality. Where I had seen... something. Someone.\n\nI stepped between the outer trees. The air within was warm and still. The grove muffled the sounds of the outside world, though I had never figured out exactly how or why that worked. The leaves turned the sky a deep green.\n\nWhat had the Porters been doing for the past month? They had all but vanished after completing their repairs to the town. I wasn't exactly getting their newsletter anymore, and the few friends I had tried to contact said Gutenberg was threatening to personally turn anyone who spoke to me into a garden gnome. I suspected they had somebody keeping an eye on Lena and me, possibly from one of the now-vacant homes on my street, but beyond that, I knew nothing.\n\nGiven the letter Bi Wei had written to the world, revealing the existence of magic and the Porters, they were probably busy increasing security on their archives or transferring the books to other locations. How many Porters were busy working damage control when they could have been out looking for Jeneta, or coming up with ways to stop the rest of the Ghost Army from entering our world?\n\nI understood Bi Wei's reasoning. The Porters weren't just hunting Jeneta and the ghosts. They were looking for her as well, and for every surviving student of Bi Sheng. The more Bi Wei did to divert the Porters' energies, the safer they would be.\n\nI touched a pale scar running down the side of Lena's oak. The bark peeled back, revealing a red cloth-bound book. I gently slid the book free, then sat with my back against the trunk of her tree. Smudge scurried from my shoulder to stalk a purple-tinged moth.\n\nWith a sigh, I opened the book and began to read. The first section of the book was in Mandarin, and had been block-printed onto the rice paper pages centuries ago. Lena had penned the rest by hand.\n\nBi Wei and her fellow students had used books like this to preserve themselves after Gutenberg's attack five hundred years earlier. Bi Wei had given this one to Lena in the hope that it might preserve her as well.\n\nLena Greenwood was literally magic brought to life, having been \"born\" from the pages of a lousy fantasy novel called Nymphs of Neptune. The nymphs in that book were little more than sexual wish fulfillment for overly hormonal teenaged boys. The nymphs were written to mold their personalities to the desires of their lovers.\n\nYears after her creation, Lena had found and fallen in love with Doctor Nidhi Shah. They were together for years before they learned the truth about Lena's origins. By then, Lena had become exactly what Nidhi fantasized about: a magical superheroine, strong and clever and powerful.\n\nEnter Isaac Vainio, magic-using librarian. Lena's relationship with me had introduced an element of conflict into her existence. For the first time, she wasn't defined solely by one lover, but was shaped by us both. Pulled between our overlapping desires, she discovered choice. It was the closest thing she had known to true freedom.\n\nNidhi and I both struggled with the ethical implications of our relationship. Nidhi might not have known Lena's origins in the beginning, but she had been Lena's therapist. She had chosen to begin a romantic relationship with a former patient. Had Lena been human, that choice could have cost Nidhi her license. As it was, she had been severely reprimanded by the Porters, something she hadn't admitted to me until recently.\n\nLena was what she was. Not even Gutenberg could change that. If not Nidhi and myself, she would have no choice but to find someone else, perhaps someone who would use her as cruelly as her first lover had.\n\nLena said she had pursued me deliberately, knowing me well enough to guess at my desires, and choosing to let those desires shape her. But the fact remained, she was bound to the two of us, and when we died, the person she had become would die with us, subsumed by whoever she became next.\n\nThis book from Bi Wei might change that. If it worked, the things Lena had written in these pages would one day define her, allowing her to choose for herself who she would be.\n\nBut the basic tenets of libriomancy still applied. A book had no power without a reader. I had read this book almost every night for the past month, trading it back and forth with Nidhi. We had no way of knowing if our efforts made a difference, or if the book could truly change Lena's nature, but it was the best hope she had found.\n\nI rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. Every time I opened a book, part of me expected to touch the power humming within the text, waiting to be used. Instead, the book was dead, a stiff corpse of paper with dried ink for blood.\n\n\"That image is too damn depressing, even for me.\" I thumped the back of my head against the tree, as if the impact might reset my mood or jar loose my missing memories. When that failed, I turned the page and started reading.\n\nI had gotten through about fifty pages when I heard footsteps beside me. I dropped the book and yanked my shock-gun from its holster, even as my brain pointed out that Smudge would have alerted me to any true threat.\n\n\"A librarian should be more careful with rare and valuable texts.\" Nidhi Shah stopped a short distance before the grove and nodded pointedly at the fallen book. She wore a black blazer over a blue shirt, with a necklace made up of interlinked copper disks the size of silver dollars. The cuffs of her black trousers brushed blue sneakers. She must have come straight from the office. I hadn't realized she was working weekends now.\n\nWhile I picked up the book, she entered the grove and sat down across from me, crossing her feet at the ankles. I could feel her studying my posture, the tension in my neck and jaw, the way I had jumped when I heard her approach. Nidhi had been my psychiatrist for years, and even though that relationship had changed, old patterns continued.\n\n\"Lena told me about Ted,\" she said. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I can't blame him for running. A lot of people\u2014and non-people\u2014have gone into hiding to wait for things to blow over. Trouble is, I don't think it's going to. Not this time.\"\n\n\"Gutenberg likes to say most people have no concept of change. Our 'short-lived perspective and poor intergenerational memory' create the illusion of stability.\" She twisted a braided silver ring on her right hand, a gift from Lena. \"How long do you think you can continue\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't.\" I stared at the dirt, fighting to keep my temper under control. \"I'm not a Porter, and you're not my therapist.\"\n\n\"I know that.\" A hint of pain and reproach edged her next words. \"I don't have any Porter clients anymore, remember?\"\n\nMore than half of Nidhi's client base had been magical, from a werewolf with crippling anxiety disorder to libriomancers who played God so often they started to believe in their own divinity. But in the eyes of the Porters, Nidhi was part of my family. The lover of my lover is my... I don't know exactly how they classified her, but they had kicked her out the same day they did me.\n\n\"If I was your therapist,\" she continued, \"I'd probably talk about how you're grieving for your lost magic. Or point out that your insistence on blaming yourself for what happened to Jeneta suggests an unrealistic sense of power, as well as an overly developed ego. I'd also start you on at least fifty milligrams of Zoloft.\"\n\nThis wasn't our first time through that particular script. \"I'm not suicidal, and if I'm a little depressed, I'd say I've got good reason. Right now, the last thing I need is drugs messing up my brain.\"\n\n\"You think depression hasn't already done that?\" she asked gently.\n\n\"If anything screwed up my head, it was Gutenberg.\"\n\n\"Oh, good. Then we agree your head is screwed up.\" Her delivery was perfectly deadpan. She waited a beat, then sighed. \"How long has it been since you laughed?\"\n\nI shrugged.\n\n\"Lena says you've been having trouble sleeping, and I can see that you've lost weight. How are things going at work?\"\n\n\"I've read the DSM-V. I know the diagnostic criteria for depression, too,\" I snapped. \"This is different.\"\n\n\"I've read Gray's Anatomy. That doesn't make me a surgeon.\" She stood to go. \"Oh, I almost forgot what I came out to tell you. I've found someone who might be able to help you uncover those dream memories.\"\n\nI set Lena's book aside\u2014carefully this time\u2014and jumped to my feet.\n\n\"I haven't worked with her in a while, but I've been keeping up on her research. Best of all, she's only a few hours away.\"\n\n\"Who is it?\" When she didn't answer, I folded my arms. \"Come on, Nidhi.\"\n\n\"First, put that book away and come eat. Then I'll tell you.\" She headed toward the deck.\n\n\"Since when do therapists use blackmail?\" I called out.\n\nShe turned around and cocked her head. \"Like you said, I'm not your therapist anymore. See you at dinner.\"\n\nBEIJING\u2014Additional details are finally being released about what appears to be a burglary three weeks ago at the National Library of China. Authorities have confirmed that six people were killed, and another thirteen hospitalized.\n\nInitial accounts described the perpetrators as \"inhuman.\" One was said to have hair like living snakes, similar to the legendary Medusa. Her companion was allegedly twelve feet tall, strong enough to smash brick with his bare hands. Some eyewitnesses claimed the pair was accompanied by a teenaged girl.\n\nSocial media site X\u0131\u00afnl\u00e0ng We\u00afib\u00f3, a Chinese microblogging Web site similar to Twitter, has been abuzz with speculation. Theories range from terrorist activity to an American CIA mission gone wrong. However, the library is now announcing that the attackers' primary target seems to have been the Rare Books Restoration Center. Most of the books and scrolls stored there are centuries old.\n\nThe library's Web site provides a partial list of missing items, including works of religious, historical, and mythological significance. A fire that began in the rare books section damaged hundreds, perhaps thousands of other works. It's not known whether the attackers deliberately set the fire.\n\nSome are speculating that this break-in and the supernatural appearance of the perpetrators are somehow related to a message that appeared in a popular fantasy novel last week purporting to reveal the existence of a magical secret society headed by Johannes Gutenberg.\n\nThe library is closed indefinitely for repairs. The U.S. Library of Congress has offered to send a team of rare book librarians to Beijing to assist with restoration efforts.\n\n\"Her name is Euphemia Smith,\" said Nidhi. \"She's a siren.\"\n\nI set my pizza crust down on the top of the box. Given the state of my kitchen table, we had elected to eat on the deck instead. Nidhi and I sat on old plastic chairs, while Lena perched on the railing, her bare feet pressed to the wooden post.\n\nNidhi had refused to share any information about her mysterious lead until I finished at least three pieces. She looked pointedly at the crust, and I crammed it into my mouth.\n\n\"A siren?\" I chewed fast. \"As in, Odysseus binding himself to the mast so he could listen to their song, sailors throwing themselves overboard to drown, ships run aground on the rocks, and all that jazz? How is that supposed to help me?\"\n\nMost magical creatures these days were book-born, like Lena. Libriomancy had brought hundreds of new species into our world from the pages of books. Intelligent beings generally couldn't make the transition from fiction to the real world\u2014in part because they simply didn't fit through the pages\u2014but there were other paths. Lena had been created as an acorn that grew into her first oak. Vampires\u2014so many different flavors of vampires\u2014spread to our world when overimaginative readers reached into the stories and got themselves bitten.\n\nOther species had evolved naturally. Or supernaturally. There were ongoing debates among the Porters whether sirens and their cousins the merfolk were a result of natural selection or deliberate magical manipulation from millennia ago.\n\nNidhi sipped her iced tea. \"Euphemia and her husband Carl run a hypnotherapy clinic in Marinette, Wisconsin. Neither mental discipline nor magical barriers are proof against a siren's song. She lulls clients into a trance and helps them face the roots of their problems. She and Carl generally help people to quit smoking, lose weight, things like that. I was one of three Porter therapists assigned to supervise the first five hundred hours of her work while they were getting licensed. Nicola wanted to be sure there was Porter oversight.\"\n\nNicola Pallas was the Midwest Regional Master of the Porters, responsible for keeping tabs on all things magical for much of the United States and a chunk of Canada. \"Marinette isn't that far,\" I said. \"Why haven't I heard of this siren?\"\n\n\"Because Euphemia works very hard to keep quiet and out of sight. The Porters have a long file on her, of course, but as long as she doesn't hurt anyone or openly use her power, they consider her harmless. She has a speech impediment that limits the more dangerous aspects of her power. She's not strong enough to lure ships to their death anymore. But she and her husband have an impressive success rate. I believe she could help you recover your fragmented memories.\"\n\nI downed the last of my Pepsi. \"I'll grab my keys.\"\n\n\"You'll want to grab your checkbook, too.\" Nidhi didn't move from her chair. \"The Smiths aren't cheap, and I doubt your insurance covers this. I made you an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.\"\n\nI was already in the doorway. \"Tomorrow? But\u2014\"\n\n\"If we left now, it would be close to eleven when we arrived,\" Nidhi said. \"I'm sure you'd happily pay extra for a late-night session, but they have concert tickets tonight. Carl is taking Euphemia to see Big Daddy Kane in Green Bay. They'll be exhausted, and Carl tells me his wife's song gets rather intense after two hours of live rap.\"\n\nI wondered briefly if Euphemia and Nicola had ever done a duet. Nicola was a bard with a preference for jazz-based magic. I had once seen her knock a man unconscious with a single bar of music sung over a cell phone.\n\n\"Is it dangerous?\" Lena asked.\n\nNidhi hesitated. \"It shouldn't be. Usually, Carl does the intake. He meets with Euphemia afterward, and she tailors a recording for him to use in follow-up sessions. But given the nature of Isaac's mind, the magical and psychological barriers he's dealing with, we both agreed this needed to be a 'live' session with Euphemia present.\"\n\nI slid the door closed and turned around, resting my back against the glass. \"You're saying you don't know what will happen?\"\n\n\"Lena and I will be there to keep an eye on things.\"\n\nMy boss wouldn't be happy about me calling in sick again. I'd used up most of my leave time over the past month. Jennifer had pulled me aside on Friday to discuss my less than stellar job performance. I should check the schedule to see if anyone was available to cover. Alex might be willing to pick up the extra hours. He was trying to save up for a new electric guitar. \"I'll see you both tomorrow. What time do we leave?\"\n\nLena and Nidhi looked at one another, and I saw pages of unspoken discussion pass silently between them. \"I thought I'd stay here tonight,\" said Lena.\n\n\"But you normally stay with Nidhi on Sundays.\" I hesitated, double-checking my mental calendar. This wouldn't be the first time I had lost track of the date.\n\n\"Not tonight.\" Lena gestured at the pizza box. \"I'm not going to let half a deep-dish sausage and pepperoni go to waste.\"\n\nI should have been happy. Instead, I found myself resenting that they believed I needed a babysitter. Guilt immediately followed resentment. They were only trying to help.\n\nIt might be better for all of us if they left me alone. Given Lena's nature, what was my recent mood doing to her? How much had I dragged her down with me? It was one more reason she should go with Nidhi tonight, to get away from my negativity. It wasn't like I was going to drive to Marinette to track Euphemia down myself, showing up on her doorstep at midnight to demand she dig the answers out of my brain.\n\nProbably.\n\nI rubbed my eyes. Maybe Nidhi was right about the Zoloft.\n\nThe laptop baked my thighs as I sat on the couch, searching the Internet while Star Trek reruns played in the background. Online, librarian circles were buzzing with speculation about the attack on the National Library of China. I found plenty of theories, but not a single photograph of the attackers.\n\nA gorgon, a giant, and a teenage girl. No mention was made of the girl's appearance, but who else could it have been?\n\nOn another day, I would have been fascinated by the prospect of a living gorgon, a creature thought to exist only in myth. I would have loved to see an MRI scan of her head. I had always been curious about how the serpentine hair might work. Each snake presumably had a brain of its own. Did they have independent thought, or was it more of a hive mind? And did the snakes eat? If so, what happened to their meals? Either their intestinal system needed to link into the gorgon's, or else the gorgon would need some truly potent shampoo.\n\nI switched Internet windows and pulled up a list of my preprogrammed search spiders. I had customized more than a hundred automatic searches, monitoring the web for any information about the Porters, the students of Bi Sheng, or Jeneta Aboderin.\n\nI found two more reports of people digging up the sites of old Porter archives, working from the information in Bi Wei's letter, but in both cases the excavations turned up nothing. The Porters must have either cleared out the contents or found a way to trick the searchers into forgetting what they found.\n\nLena settled onto the couch beside me and studied the screen. \"What are you looking for?\"\n\n\"Anything I can find.\" Almost as bad as losing my magic was being shut out of that community, cut off from every reliable source of information and gossip. I might have been sent to the sidelines, but I still wanted to know what was happening in the game, dammit.\n\nI switched to a report from South Africa. \"A lightning storm two weeks ago fried every electronic device in a five-mile radius near the edge of Polokwane. That sounds like a magical EMP, one of the tricks the Porters use to avoid being recorded. But I have no idea what they might have been doing there.\"\n\nI was more certain about the next thing I showed her, an e-mail from one of six publishing-related lists I was on. I opened the attached press release and read, \"'Rose Hoffman takes over as CEO at one of the top UK publishing houses.' I don't know the name, but the photo is familiar. I'm pretty sure I met her three years ago. She's a Porter researcher. She was trying to prove the existence of magical resonance between different translations of the same books. Her findings suggested there could be some minimal resonance, but it wasn't conclusive, and she wasn't able to point to the mechanism that would explain it.\"\n\nLena's smile made me realize I was beginning to ramble.\n\n\"Sorry. The point is, she's almost certainly a plant.\" The Porters had always had people in New York and other publishing hubs, but it sounded like they were working to take more control of what books\u2014and what potential magic\u2014got into readers' hands. How many books made the bestseller lists not because they were particularly original or well written, but because they included something the Porters wanted to use?\n\nAnother open folder contained copies of scholarly articles I had downloaded for review, primarily about the development of printing technology in Asia. Gutenberg's press and the invention of libriomancy had launched a new era in magic, at least in Europe, but China had been working with book magic for centuries before Gutenberg came along. If I could uncover more of that history, I might find clues as to where Bi Wei and her fellow students had disappeared to. If the Porters wouldn't help me, maybe they would.\n\n\"Time for emergency measures.\" Lena bounced to her feet and grabbed the remotes. A minute later, the opening notes of Christopher Franke's Babylon 5 soundtrack blasted from the television speakers, making me jump.\n\nLena yanked the laptop away from me, set it on the coffee table, and plopped down beside me. She turned sideways, leaning her body against mine and crossing her legs on the arm of the couch.\n\nAnnoyance and amusement fought it out and decided to call it a draw. That alone should have been enough to make me realize how far gone I was. When a bright, fun, beautiful woman resting against me was a source of frustration, I had a problem.\n\nI wrapped my arm around her and tried to relax, to ignore the part of my brain that refused to stop obsessing. We were five minutes into the episode when I realized how tightly Lena was holding my arm. With my other hand, I combed the thick, black hair from her face.\n\nShe caught my hand and kissed my palm, never taking her eyes from the show.\n\nI ended up drifting off about halfway through the episode. But I jolted awake when Lena switched off the TV and set the remote on the table.\n\n\"Damn,\" she whispered. \"I was trying not to wake you.\"\n\nI smothered a yawn. The sky outside was black. \"How long did I sleep?\"\n\n\"Two and a half episodes.\"\n\nI slid my hand around her waist, feeling the warm skin of her back. She tilted her head to kiss my chin. A second kiss, this one to the base of my neck, carried an unspoken question. I kissed the top of her head in response, but nothing more. After that, neither of us moved for a long time.\n\nI mentally checked off another box on the list of diagnostic criteria for depression: anhedonia, a decrease in enjoyment of most day-to-day activities, including a loss of interest in sex.\n\nEventually, she stirred enough to ask, \"Walk me out to my tree?\" Her breath tickled my neck.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nThe air outside had cooled, and the night was quiet save for the whisper of leaves. We walked hand-in-hand to her grove. I tensed as we approached. Memories of sharp-featured metal constructs and white-furred monsters flashed through my thoughts.\n\n\"We're alone here,\" Lena said.\n\nShe would have known had anyone violated her grove. I knew that, but it didn't help my heightened sense of wariness. We were safe tonight. How long would that last?\n\nJeneta knew about Lena's grove, as did the Ghost Army. Even if Lena transferred herself into another oak tree, a process that was a hell of a lot harder than moving into a new apartment, they had found her tree once before.\n\nI had watched one dryad devastate an entire block. If they took Lena away, turned her into another Deifilia...\n\n\"I'm sorry about Deifilia,\" I said suddenly. I couldn't recall if I had ever spoken the words.\n\n\"Thank you.\" She pulled away, her movements tight. One hand touched her tree where Deifilia had died. \"I can still hear her sometimes. Only whispers and shadows, impressions of who she was, preserved in the wood like insects in amber.\"\n\nI wasn't sure how to react to the revelation that Lena's oak contained the echoes of a woman who had been prepared to kill us both.\n\nShe must have seen my concern. \"They're little more than memories, Isaac.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you have them.\"\n\nIt was the right thing to say. She smiled and kissed me. \"Do me a favor,\" she said as she pulled away. \"Don't stay up until three in the morning again searching for answers that might not exist.\"\n\n\"There are always answers,\" I said automatically.\n\n\"That doesn't mean you'll be able to find them,\" she shot back. \"Or that the cost of those answers is worth paying.\" She pulled me in for another kiss, ending the argument quite effectively, and in a way that left me with no complaints.\n\n\"Promise me?\" she asked when we broke away. \"If you can't sleep, fine, but no reading anything related to ghosts, Jeneta, Gutenberg, Bi Sheng, or the imminent end of the world.\"\n\n\"I promise.\" I waited while she entered her tree, her flesh merging into the wood like the bark was clay molding itself around her. I put a hand on the tree once she had disappeared, but felt nothing of Lena or the power in her oak. \"Good night, love.\"\n\nAfter a brief debate the following morning, we ended up taking my pickup truck to Wisconsin. Neither my convertible nor Lena's motorcycle could comfortably carry three, and the last time we used Nidhi's car to do something magic-related, wendigos had pretty well totaled it. Nidhi was still fighting the insurance company over that one.\n\nLena drove, giving me time to read. I had kept my word the night before, trying to lose myself in an old Terry Pratchett novel and finally falling asleep around two in the morning. But I hadn't made any such promise about today. I leaned against the passenger door, books and papers around my feet, trying to track down any references to the Ghost Army from the past five hundred years.\n\nNidhi sat in the back, working on what I guessed to be case notes, though I couldn't be certain since I didn't read Gujarati. Smudge rode on the dashboard, contentedly watching the passing scenery.\n\nI doubt any of us said more than a dozen words until we reached Marinette. Nidhi guided us to a large house less than two miles from the Michigan/Wisconsin border and even closer to the waters of Green Bay. Twin spruce trees stood in the middle of a circular driveway. The American flag flew from a pole in the front yard.\n\n\"Euphemia and Carl work out of their home,\" Nidhi said.\n\nThere were no signs to distinguish it from the other extravagant houses along the road. Most people who worked a magical day job tended to do most of their business through word of mouth, since it wasn't the kind of thing you could advertise.\n\nThey seemed to be doing quite well for themselves. A brick walk led past beautifully precise landscaping, full of purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. To either side of the house, decorative spruce trees grew along the front of a brown privacy fence, blocking the backyard from view.\n\nI could see Lena studying the flowers and taking mental notes. Her garden had been destroyed by the oak grove in our backyard, but she had hinted about plans to turn my front lawn into a floral jungle.\n\nTall, etched windows framed the storm door, which was a single rectangle of stained glass showing a sailing ship on the waves. A disproportionate amount of the glass was devoted to the water, showing plants and fish of every color imaginable. The ship appeared cramped in its relatively small rectangle of sky at the top.\n\nNidhi rang the doorbell. A silhouetted head peeked through the blue glass, and then the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged man in plastic flip-flops and a green Speedo. His wet hair was slicked back, and water dripped down his well-rounded stomach, creating random swirls in his graying chest hair. He grinned at Nidhi. \"Doctor Shah! How long has it been?\"\n\n\"A little over a year.\" Nidhi stepped to the side. \"Carl, this is Lena Greenwood and Isaac Vainio.\"\n\nI shook his hand, then dried my palm on my jeans.\n\nHe beckoned us to enter. \"Euphemia's been in the pool all morning. How was the drive? Can I get you anything to drink?\"\n\n\"Cherry Coke?\" Lena was staring unabashedly at our host. He was hardly swimsuit model material, but then, neither was I. Lena had much broader standards of beauty than most.\n\n\"You got it. Isaac, if you need privacy, you can change in the sauna.\"\n\nI blinked. \"Change into what?\"\n\n\"Your swimsuit.\" He paused. \"Didn't Doctor Shah tell you?\"\n\nI folded my arms and turned toward Nidhi. \"No, Doctor Shah forgot to mention anything about needing a suit.\"\n\nNidhi looked like she couldn't decide whether to apologize or laugh. \"Euphemia didn't say anything...\"\n\n\"No sweat,\" said Carl. \"I used to be closer to Isaac's size. I'm sure I can find him something that will fit.\"\n\nHe ducked through an arched doorway. As soon as his back was turned, Nidhi mouthed the words, I'm sorry.\n\nI debated making a run for it. \"If he comes back with another Speedo\u2014\"\n\n\"I like him,\" Lena announced, grinning merrily at my discomfort. \"If he can't find anything that meets your standards, I get the feeling he'd be okay with letting you go skinny dipping instead.\"\n\nAnything I said to that would only dig me in deeper. Instead, I studied the three long aquariums that lined the hallway, their filters and pumps humming quietly. The closest looked like someone had carved a chunk out of the Great Barrier Reef. Another brimmed with goldfish. The third held guppy-sized fish in neon colors.\n\n\"Go on out back,\" Carl shouted. \"Through the hall, then take a right. I'll be right there.\"\n\nA door to the left opened into what appeared to be Carl's office, judging by the license and diplomas framed on the far wall. To the right, a glass door led onto a small patio.\n\nLena took one step outside, pointed to the pool, and said, \"I want one.\"\n\n\"Where would we put it?\" Larger trees and the privacy fence surrounded what was more a lagoon than a pool. Enormous orange carp swam lazily along the algae-green bottom, and a turtle sunned itself on a log near the edge. Flowers and plants, mostly tropical in appearance, bordered the pool. I spotted hibiscus and some kind of stunted palm, along with large red and yellow blooms I couldn't identify.\n\n\"Isaac Vainio?\" The question came from a woman on the far end of the pool, her face partially shaded by an overhanging palm. I wondered briefly how they maintained these plants in the distinctly nontropical climate of the Midwest.\n\n\"Doctor Euphemia Smith?\" I guessed.\n\nThe way she glided through the water reminded me of a swimming serpent. She swam not with her arms or legs, but with her body. One look, and I understood the speech impediment Nidhi had mentioned. An inch-wide strip of scar tissue slashed the left side of her neck, vivid pink against the deep tan of her skin. The scar thinned in the middle, and the raggedness made me suspect some kind of bite. Given the angle, I was amazed the wound hadn't killed her.\n\nThe gray in her hair and the lines on her face made her look a good ten years older than her husband, though for all I knew she could have been Gutenberg's age. Her hair was thick and matted, like seaweed. Or feathers. Sirens were sometimes said to have had birdlike characteristics.\n\n\"I'm not a doctor.\" Her words rasped, reminding me of my grandmother in her last days after a lifetime of smoking. \"I dropped out midway through my first semester.\"\n\n\"Here you go, son.\" Carl emerged from the house, and I was relieved to see him holding a thigh-length pair of red-and-white Hawaiian-print trunks. He pointed me toward the wood-walled sauna a short distance away.\n\n\"Let me know if you need help,\" Lena offered.\n\nThe sauna was spacious, clean, and utterly lacking in personality. It looked like a kit built from a box. The slats of the walls and benches were too perfect, too identical. The electric heater with its uniform gray stones caged atop the heating elements could have come out of a Sears catalog. There was even a small flat-screen TV built into the wall behind a layer of glass or plastic to protect it from the steam. My father, proud Finn that he was, would have refused to dignify it with the name \"sauna.\"\n\nI turned the heater on low and set Smudge's cage atop the grate, then stripped down and folded my clothes on the wooden bench. I should have been excited. Anxious. I was about to experience a form of magic I'd never seen or heard before. Instead, there was only impatience.\n\nI yanked on the old swimsuit. It hung a bit loosely, even after I tightened the drawstring, but that shouldn't matter. When I emerged, Carl had joined his wife in the water, dragging an inflated yellow raft behind him.\n\nLena grinned when she saw me. \"I like the look, but we have got to get you outside more often. You're so pale there's a very real danger you'll get yourself staked as a vampire.\"\n\nCarp shot away as I eased into the warm water. Algae turned the bottom slick. I grabbed the edge to keep my footing. Carl took my other arm and helped me climb onto the raft.\n\n\"You just lay back and relax,\" he said. \"Euphemia's going to sing you a little lullaby, that's all. You should be thankful. Few people get to hear her sing in person these days.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" I asked.\n\n\"My voice isn't what it once was.\" The water barely rippled as Euphemia ducked and swam beneath the raft, emerging to my left. \"But the unfiltered song of a siren, even a crippled one, can be disturbing.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'disturbing'?\" Lena asked sharply.\n\n\"She's talking about the yearning,\" Carl said. \"Her song cuts deep into your heart and dreams, digging up the things you most desire. It's how her kind lured men and women back in the old days. Euphemia sings promises. The first time I heard her, I wept for a week.\"\n\n\"Is it dangerous?\" I asked.\n\n\"Eighteen years, and we've never lost a patient.\"\n\nNidhi frowned. \"That's not an answer.\"\n\n\"It's the best I can give you,\" Carl replied, uncharacteristically serious. \"I'm not gonna lie. There will be aftereffects, and they won't be pleasant. But if you really want to find those answers buried in his thoughts, Euphemia can guide him there.\"\n\n\"Do it.\" I rested my head on the gently bobbing raft and closed my eyes.\n\n\"Nidhi told me about the rumble in Copper River. What's the last thing you remember about your fight with that other dryad?\" Carl's words were calm but strong. It was much easier to take him as a professional with my eyes shut.\n\n\"Lena tried to... to connect with her.\" Seduce would have been a more accurate word, but I didn't want to get into that. \"Deifilia resisted.\"\n\n\"This isn't going to be fun, but I need you to relive that day,\" said Carl. \"Play it back in your thoughts and tell me what happens next.\"\n\nMetal creatures swarm down the trunk of the oak\u2014magically created rats and insects with clicking legs and gleaming teeth. Some jump onto Lena, biting her skin. Wooden weapons slam together as Lena and Deifilia duel. The impacts crack like gunshots.\n\nThe students of Bi Sheng look on helplessly, bound in the tangled roots of the new-grown grove. All save two who have been corrupted by Deifilia's ghosts, the spirits Jeneta had named devourers. Their magic stretches toward Lena, ripping her apart from within.\n\nLena collapses, dying as I watch. The possessed students remind me of vampires, draining Lena of the magic that defines her. Soon there will be nothing left but a desiccated corpse.\n\n\"I took control of the oak. Lena's oak, I mean.\" Deifilia had seized it for her own, but she was distracted by the battle, allowing me to act.\n\n\"No shit? How'd you manage\u2014\" I heard a splash and a sputter from Carl, and a murmured chastisement from Euphemia. His voice turned smooth once more. \"Right. Nidhi said you were injured.\"\n\n\"My knee. I dislocated it.\"\n\nMy leg throbs, pumping agony through my body with every heartbeat. I shift my body, trying to ease the pressure. Roots pin my leg in place, holding me trapped.\n\n\"Focus on the sensations of that battle. The pain. The noise. The sweat dripping down your face and back. The way your perception of time stretches out when you're frightened.\"\n\nAs I recalled the details, Euphemia began to sing.\n\nI recognized the language as Greek, though I couldn't understand the words. Haunting was the first word that came to mind. It was what whale song might have sounded like, if the whale was suicidal and her song was being performed by Stevie Nicks.\n\nTension drained from my muscles. My body grew warm, as if the shade had been burned aside and the sunlight was baking my muscles from within. The raft cradled my body. Small movements in the water made me feel like I was flying.\n\n\"You grabbed hold of Lena's oak,\" Carl prompted.\n\nLena is dying. So is Bi Wei, the first of the students of Bi Sheng to be restored to the world. The Ghost Army is fighting to claim her. They're too strong. I don't know how to fight them.\n\nBut Deifilia's power, like Lena's, comes from books. I know the book that gave birth to them. I look beyond the tree to the magic flowing through it, layer upon layer of familiar text. I reach for that story.\n\nMy hand sinks into the roots. I use Lena's roots to trap Deifilia in place, just as she had done to me.\n\n\"I pushed too far.\" My throat was dry. Pain throbbed through my leg as I remembered my senses stretching through the roots, the branches, even the individual leaves. I had manipulated the magic of Nymphs of Neptune, and when I did, that magic sank its roots into my thoughts. \"The air was cold.\"\n\n\"You heard voices?\"\n\n\"Characters from the book, yah.\"\n\n\"I am yours now, John Rule of Earth.\" A nymph kneels on the ice, blonde hair flowing like a golden river over the voluptuous curves of her body. Arousal pounds through my veins, and I forget about the pain.\n\n\"I was hallucinating. It happens sometimes, when libriomancy goes wrong.\" I shivered, remembering the chill of the Neptunian caves, the ice beneath my body. \"They told me there was no returning from this place.\"\n\n\"They were wrong.\" Carl sounded like a father soothing a child after a nightmare. \"You're safe here, Isaac. But this is where the ride gets a little bumpy. So far, Euphemia's just been helping you relax, settling you into a nice trance. You're in control, and everything that happens next is up to you. The answers are in your mind, but you have to want them.\"\n\n\"I do.\" Euphemia's song couldn't completely suppress my annoyance.\n\n\"What happened next, Isaac? You saw someone else. Not a character from a book. Someone real.\"\n\nMy muscles tightened. My breath caught. It was as if I had fallen from the raft and plunged not into the warmth of the pool, but a frozen lake. Swirling currents seized my body, tugging me down.\n\nEuphemia's song grew louder. The rhythm was uncomfortably sexual, an erotic melody sinking its hooks into my bones. My months with Lena had taught me a great deal about desire, but this was different, more primal. I had felt sensations like this only once before, when Lena demonstrated what her unfiltered power could do. It was like a shot of adrenaline directly to the libido.\n\nEuphemia sang of mystery and promise and dreams fulfilled. I could no more turn away than I could stop my own heart from beating. I imagined her swimming through my memories. I followed, desperate to reach her, but she kept just out of reach.\n\n\"What do you hear, Isaac?\" Carl pressed.\n\nI swallowed. \"Gutenberg was there.\" He stands over me, his anger palpable even in my delusional state. He and Lena are arguing.\n\n\"He's lost,\" Gutenberg insists.\n\n\"None shall harm him while I live.\" Lena's words blur with those of the book.\n\n\"Even if I wanted to help the man who betrayed the Porters, he's too far gone.\"\n\nI knew what came next. The tip of a golden fountain pen pressing against my brow like a scalpel, cutting away my magic. Tears slipped down my face, rolling past my ears to the sides of my neck. \"Please don't.\"\n\nMy words sounded distant. I reached for happier memories. Using magic to transport myself to the surface of the moon. Making love to Lena for the first time. Watching Smudge play in the glowing coals of a barbeque grill, jumping about and flinging ash into the air with his forelegs.\n\nEuphemia slowed her song, calling me back to that moment of loss. Her words promised me everything I dreamed of, all of the joy of those memories and more, if only I swam deeper.\n\n\"There was another voice,\" said Carl. \"The book wasn't the only thing trying to get inside your head.\"\n\nThe Ghost Army. In fighting Deifilia, I had opened myself to their assault. The ghosts rode the currents of magic, and I was channeling a hell of a lot of it. \"I can't see her.\"\n\n\"Her?\" he repeated. \"It's a woman?\"\n\nMemories rushed past, swirling too quickly and violently to grasp. If I tried, they would tear me apart. This was a place of death, a place where something had burned my thoughts to ash and salted the ground to make sure I would never remember her attempt to drown me.\n\n\"Listen to Euphemia. She can't read your thoughts, but her song can lead you to what you most desire.\"\n\nHer voice whispered to me from beneath the ash, offering knowledge, magic, love. I could have it all. I could reverse the spell Gutenberg had carved into me and restore my magic. I could move beyond the limits of libriomancy, figure out exactly how magic made the universe work, manipulate the gears of creation.\n\nLena was there as well. Beyond her waited treasured memories and moments from my past. Christmas morning. My mother baking brownies. Seeing Star Wars for the first time. Helping take my eighth grade Knowledge Bowl team to nationals, where we placed third. Anything I had ever loved or desired.\n\n\"Focus, Isaac.\" Carl sounded far away.\n\nThat wasn't right. We had won second place at nationals. Silver medals, not bronze. Yet it was bronze that edged my vision, framing my thoughts. My focus narrowed with each word of Euphemia's song. Stone walls shut me out of my own memories, but her music pulled me irresistibly through the cracks.\n\nI heard myself whispering, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Would you like me to show you, Isaac?\"\n\nPinpricks grip my chin, turn my head to one side then the other, as if I'm a prize poodle at a dog show.\n\n\"She wore a metal mask. Bronze, I think.\"\n\nThe stones crushed together, sealing memories and cauterizing thought. Euphemia's song grew stronger in response, dragging me downward. Euphemia hammered the shell of my prison, every word ringing through my thoughts. New fissures appeared, and through the gaps I saw a woman clad in bronze armor. She was short and inhumanly beautiful, though I wasn't sure how I could know that, since the armor hid every inch of her skin. Even her eyes were shielded by thin shells of bronze.\n\nThe bronze woman stretches out a hand. Through her eyes I see an empire of the dead. I watch her slaughter half of humanity to build her army. Jeneta is the key to her victory. Libriomancy transforms every book into a potential weapon, and Jeneta's e-reader holds all those weapons in a single device.\n\nI couldn't breathe. Cold fingers tightened around mine, pulling me closer. My heart felt like a balloon about to burst. Panic clawed within my chest like a trapped animal. I was no longer flying, but falling\u2014\n\nI landed hard on stone tile, coughing and gagging. Strong hands rolled me onto my side. I vomited water from my mouth and nose.\n\n\"Don't struggle.\" Lena held me in place while I fought to breathe. \"You rolled off the raft. Carl said it was the final step in the process, that when you came back up, you'd have the memory you needed.\" Her face was pale. \"You didn't come back up.\"\n\nI blinked at her. Memory and reality blurred. I saw a ghost trapped in bronze, the living cut down by the dead. Most of humanity knew nothing of magic. We were unprepared to fight such a one-sided war. She would rip her ranks from our corpses.\n\n\"Isaac!\" Lena's cry pulled me back. Water streamed from her hair onto my chest. Goose bumps tightened my skin. She pulled me up and wrapped her arms around me. I could barely force my arms to return the embrace. I felt like I had finished a marathon on a planet with twice Earth's gravity.\n\nEuphemia lay unconscious on the edge of the pool, a short distance away. Carl sat beside her, his eyes wide.\n\n\"What happened?\" I asked hoarsely.\n\n\"I told her to stop singing.\" Lena's body was tense. \"She didn't.\"\n\n\"She was helping him.\" Carl started to rise, looked at Lena, and apparently thought better of it.\n\n\"You said you've never lost a patient.\" Nidhi stood beside me. Unlike Lena, she neither raised her voice, nor was her body language in any way threatening, but the clipped intensity of her words made Carl flinch. \"If Lena hadn't stopped your wife and brought Isaac up, he would have died.\"\n\n\"You don't know that for certain.\" Carl swallowed. \"Look, that was no simple repressed memory. It's like you asked us to heal a cut, then brought us a patient with terminal cancer. The only way to treat that sort of thing is to burn it out.\"\n\n\"Even if you kill the patient?\" Nidhi turned to me. \"Isaac, I didn't know. I swear to you. I've consulted on their cases. Carl promised you would be safe.\"\n\n\"It's all right.\" I closed my eyes and rested my head on Lena's shoulder. A part of me didn't care about drowning. I wanted Euphemia's song back, yearned to return to that place of memory and hope and desire, and to escape the vision of a world where the living were enslaved to the dead. \"It worked. I remember her name.\"\n\n\"There you go.\" Carl stretched his hands toward me, like a magician's flourish after a grand trick. \"Exactly what you asked for. No harm, no foul.\"\n\nNidhi silenced him with a look. \"This man was your patient, and you almost killed him.\" She crouched beside me and touched my wrist, checking my pulse. More quietly, she added, \"He's also family.\"\n\nIt was the first time she had used that word to describe me. I turned to look at her, to respond, but the words wouldn't come. Nor did she give me the chance to speak. Her attention and anger were utterly focused on Carl.\n\n\"When Isaac fell into the water, you told us this was normal. You've done this before.\"\n\n\"Sometimes recordings aren't enough,\" he said defensively. \"Some patients need a more immersive treatment.\"\n\n\"Why wasn't that included in your reports?\" She slashed a hand through the air, cutting off his reply. \"When I get home, I will pull up every patient record you ever signed. I will follow up with each and every one of those people. If I find a single person who suffered thanks to your negligence, you're through.\"\n\nCarl glanced down at his wife, then scowled. \"Who the hell do you think you are? You think the state will yank my license because you tell them fairy tales about magic songs?\"\n\n\"Why would I waste my time reporting you to the state?\" Nidhi countered quietly.\n\n\"You don't work for the Porters anymore,\" Carl said. \"You can't\u2014\"\n\nNidhi continued as if he hadn't spoken. \"I've worked with many powerful, dangerous people over the years. I helped them through traumas nobody should have to endure. I taught them to rebuild relationships torn by magic and secrets. I fought for them, helped them find hope, helped them to retain their humanity.\" Her voice dropped even lower. \"And I have most of those people on speed dial.\"\n\nI had never seen Nidhi like this. Carl looked like he was the one who had almost drowned. His eyes were round, and the color had faded from his cheeks.\n\n\"Thank you for your assistance.\" Nidhi joined Lena in helping me to my feet. We started toward the house, pausing only long enough for Lena to fetch Smudge and my clothes from the sauna.\n\nI made it to the driveway before the tears began. Carl had warned me about the yearning, but words couldn't convey the sense of loss. I was hollow, as though everyone I loved had been ripped away from me, killed without warning. Every dream crushed, every possession stolen, every hope turned to dust. It was ridiculous and irrational and I couldn't control it any more than I could hold back the sunset.\n\nBut one memory remained. Through the tears and the grief, I saw the woman who had taunted me that day in Lena's grove. I saw the one who commanded the Ghost Army, who had taken Jeneta. I saw her, and I remembered.\n\nMeridiana."
            },
            {
                "title": "WEREWOLVES VS. BIGFOOT",
                "text": "\u2002Summary: Viral video claims to show shotgun-wielding werewolves hunting Bigfoot from the back of a pickup truck.\n\n\u2002Status: Inconclusive.\n\n\u2002Sample E-mail:\n\n\u2002Hey, check out this cell phone video, captured by a 17-year-old girl in Copper River, Michigan.\n\n\u2002You can't see the driver, but look at the two shotgun-toting hicks in the back. And before you say it's just a couple of hairy guys in masks, wait for the 0:42 mark, when a white-furred giant streaks across the road.\n\n\u2002A good makeup artist can create a convincing werewolf, but that dude in the back jumps at least ten meters FROM A MOVING TRUCK to tackle what looks like an albino sasquatch. Both of them bounce back from the impact like it was nothing.\n\n\u2002Copies of this video have already been pulled from YouTube and other sites for \"copyright violation.\" Screen caps are below, in case they yank this link, too.\n\n\u2002Background: Many rumors have been spread about the recent tragedy in Copper River. At least 34 people are known to have died, but initial reports of property damage appear to have been wildly exaggerated. The official cause of most deaths was listed as accidental, according to police reports. [Sources: Associated Press, Copper River Journal, CBS News]\n\n\u2002The video in question first appeared on the Internet on August 5 of this year. On August 8, Reddit user BlackCapsFan12 posted a detailed analysis of the background motion to demonstrate that the \"impossible\" jump was a result of camera trickery. Other users argued the video was genuine, and submitted evidence suggesting BlackCapsFan12 was a sockpuppet account.\n\n\u2002Another theory is that the video is part of a viral marketing campaign for an upcoming movie or television show. (See also \"Vampire Photobombs Live News Report.\") Hollywood is certainly capable of producing a video of this quality. However, no studio has claimed responsibility, nor has anyone been able to connect the video to a specific forthcoming release.\n\n\u2002Conclusion: While most people scoff at the idea of magic and monsters, there is no conclusive proof that the video was faked. In addition, materials such as the George R. R. Martin Letter suggest that we must at least consider the possibility of such things being genuine. Therefore, ChainBusters.com has given this story a verdict of INCONCLUSIVE.\n\nRelated Stories:\n\n\u2022 Iron Dragon Escapes from Copper River Mine, Attacks Local Library\n\n\u2022 Secret Government Drug Testing Goes Horribly Wrong in Michigan's Upper Peninsula?\n\nI called Nicola Pallas from the truck. Whatever the Porters might think of me, we were all working toward the same goal, and they needed to know what we'd learned. Nicola's phone went straight to voice mail.\n\n\"I got a name. Meridiana. That's who's trying to raise the Ghost Army. That's who took Jeneta. And this whole process would be a lot easier if we could share resources.\" I glared at the screen, willing her to pick up. When nothing happened, I added a bitter, \"You're welcome,\" and hung up.\n\nNicola Pallas was one of the most powerful people in the country. More importantly, she had argued for letting me keep my magic. Granted, she hadn't argued as loudly or strenuously as I might have liked, but it was more than most had done, and made her a potential ally.\n\n\"You know the Porters are keeping an eye on you,\" Lena said. \"Just stick a note to the front door and they'll get it.\"\n\n\"I know. You think they're living in the Mileskis' old place?\" The Mileskis had moved out a week ago, and while I'd miss the family, I didn't mind being rid of their dog, an elderly mutt who had barked nonstop for three days following the assault on our block. I felt bad for the trauma the poor thing had suffered, but she had apparently taken it as an excuse to start sneaking out to use Lena's new grove as a bathroom. My sympathy dried up the third time I stepped in one of her \"presents\" in the backyard.\n\n\"Probably. If I was going to take over an abandoned house, I'd want one with a hot tub.\"\n\nThere was one other person I could ask for help. I checked my contacts list, but Ponce de Leon's information had disappeared. No surprise there. His number only showed up when he wanted something from me, which had been rare even when I had been a Porter. Fortunately, I had memorized his number years ago.\n\nJuan Ponce de Leon, former conquistador and ex-Porter, was perhaps the strongest sorcerer alive. While the rest of us needed books or song to control our magic, he could manipulate that power through his will alone. To say he and Gutenberg had a complicated history was putting it mildly, but if the Porters wouldn't help me, maybe he could.\n\nAssuming he wasn't still pissed at me for stealing his car.\n\nPonce de Leon didn't answer, either. He had been sticking to the shadows for months, but knowing him, he'd be keeping tabs on events in the magical world. I left a message giving him just enough information to whet his curiosity.\n\nI could feel Nidhi watching me as I hung up. \"Thank you,\" I said quietly. \"For what you said and did back there.\"\n\n\"How much do you remember from Euphemia's spell?\" she asked.\n\n\"Too much.\" I swallowed and looked out the window, watching the grass and trees pass by in a blur of green. My legs bounced with restless energy. The aftermath of the siren's song was like reliving every missed opportunity, every wrong choice I had made in my life.\n\nI leaned forward to grab the GPS. If I stopped moving, stopped doing something, I would shatter. I programmed a new destination, then returned the unit to its mount. \"We need to stop at Brown County Central Library in Green Bay.\"\n\nThere was magic, and there was magic. Thanks to Gutenberg, I could no longer pull wands, potions, and light sabers out of books, but when it came to research, give me a well-stocked library and I was a goddamned Merlin.\n\nI climbed out of the truck and hurried toward the library, leaving Lena and Nidhi to search for a parking spot. The moment I stepped inside, a little of the hollow pain from Euphemia's magic began to ease. I had never set foot in this particular library, but this place felt right. From the familiar conversations behind the circulation desk to the tapping of keyboards. The slightly sweet, papery smell of cellulose. The sight of row upon row of books, the colorful chaos of their spines unified by the white tags affixed to each. I was home.\n\nAn arched skylight made the whole place feel warmer and more welcoming. I smiled at a woman behind the desk and headed for the public computers.\n\nBy the time Lena and Nidhi found me, I had scribbled half a page of notes on the back of a flyer, and was well into my fourth search. \"I knew I'd heard the name Meridiana before.\"\n\nLena looked over my shoulder. \"Pope Sylvester II?\"\n\n\"Born Gerbert d'Aurillac, in France. They called him the scientist pope. According to legend, he ascended to the papacy in 999 AD with the help of a demon named Meridiana. Other stories say the name referred to a bronze head, an oracle of some kind that provided him with supernatural advice.\"\n\nLena pulled out a chair and sat down beside me. \"How does a pope's thousand-year-old oracular head end up kidnapping Jeneta Aboderin from northern Michigan? Assuming there's any truth to the stories.\"\n\n\"We know d'Aurillac practiced magic,\" I said. \"He believed a deeper knowledge of the universe was the key to seeing the mind of God. He studied mathematics, astronomy, rhetoric, music, and more. Including magic. He did his apprenticeship at al-Karaouine in Morocco.\"\n\n\"That's all in the article you're reading?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"All but the magic part. That's up here.\" I tapped my temple. \"Gutenberg took my libriomancy, but he didn't take the years I spent studying Porter records and histories.\"\n\nUnfortunately, whereas the life of Pope Sylvester II had been well-documented, Meridiana was little more than rumor and superstition. One author linked her to a secret cult of Mary Magdalene, while another described her as a succubus sent by Lucifer to corrupt and destroy the pope.\n\nI tried and failed to pin down the origin of the name. Meridiana could be Italian or Latin, possibly Spanish. It could also be a corruption of the word \"Meridian.\" As far as I could tell, it had never seen popular use as a proper name.\n\nA librarian named Louanne was kind enough to set me up with an account to use the printer. The library had little information about Sylvester II or Meridiana, but she jotted down the address and phone number of the Archdiocese of Green Bay and suggested we try there.\n\n\"What I really need are his firsthand writings,\" I muttered as Louanne returned to the front desk. \"D'Aurillac's collected letters, his work on the nature of man and God.\" Though if he had written anything directly about magic, the Porters would have snatched those documents and hidden them away in one of their archives. Probably in Rome or France.\n\nI printed out a timeline of d'Aurillac's life and career and studied the dates. \"Bi Sheng would have been a child at the time of Sylvester II's reign.\"\n\n\"Five thousand miles away,\" Lena pointed out.\n\n\"Right, but there was contact between continents back then. Commercial as well as magical.\" Meridiana had survived for a thousand years. Centuries later, Bi Sheng's students had preserved themselves by using specially prepared books to anchor their thoughts and memories.\n\n\"You think Bi Sheng got the idea from Meridiana?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"I don't know. They could have both learned from an older source, or maybe they developed similar magic independently, a parallel evolution of ideas.\" I pulled up an academic article on the history of brazen heads and sent it to the printer. \"When I saw Meridiana, she was encased in bronze.\"\n\n\"If it exists, the head might be a kind of prison,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"Or it's the equivalent of the book Bi Wei and the others used to preserve themselves. Either way, it explains how she endured all these centuries. If we could find it first...\" Assuming Jeneta hadn't already done so.\n\n\"From the obnoxious grin, I take it you have a plan for how to find it first?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Yep.\" And neither Lena nor Nidhi was going to like it. I sat back and brushed my hands together. \"I figure the quickest way to get the answers we need is to ask Gerbert d'Aurillac directly.\"\n\nOnly a handful of vampire species had the ability to speak with the dead. A ghost-talker named Nicholas had helped us talk to a deceased Porter earlier this year. Unfortunately, Nicholas hadn't survived the attack that followed, making it unlikely that the vampires would be willing to help me out a second time. Especially now that I lacked the ability to make it worth their while.\n\nI called Deb DeGeorge, who had been a friend back in the days when she had a pulse and didn't snack on bugs. When I told her what I needed, she spent the next thirty seconds laughing at me.\n\n\"Isaac, the first time you got involved with us, a madman bombed the shit out of our Detroit nest,\" she said when she recovered. \"Then you got a very expensive ghost-talker killed. If I so much as mention your name, they're likely to feed me to the ferals. Unless you're interested in converting\u2014\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" I said quickly.\n\n\"Then I'm sorry, hon. You're on your own.\" Deb sighed. \"Be careful, okay? Try not to get yourself killed.\"\n\nThe phone went dead before I could answer. I leaned my head against the window and sorted through my remaining options. There were books with the power to show limited glimpses of the past, but nothing that would let me contact a man who died a thousand years ago. Even if they could, the Porters were forbidden from working with me.\n\nThe students of Bi Sheng could probably help. Assuming I could find them. Given that they seemed to be successfully hiding from Gutenberg and his automatons, the odds of me tracking them down were slim.\n\nOur next stop was the archdiocese. I pretended to be a graduate student in theology, and came away with several photocopied references about Pope Sylvester II, but nothing new about Meridiana.\n\nBy now, frustration and the aftereffects of Euphemia's magic had thoroughly darkened my mood. It had been all I could do to keep from snapping at the priest, let alone Lena and Nidhi. So when Lena asked where else we could look for answers, I said only, \"Tamarack.\"\n\nNidhi wasn't the only one with friends who owed her favors.\n\nEvening found us driving through Tamarack, home of the majority of the Upper Peninsula's werewolf population. Those who weren't living in the wild, at least. Tamarack was a broken-down, half-empty, ex-mining town, and made Copper River look like the big city. We pulled to a stop at the home of Jeff and Helen DeYoung.\n\nJeff was an arthritic werewolf with a take-no-shit attitude and a penchant for flamboyant dress. More importantly, after the events of a month before, he considered me a member of his pack.\n\nWe found Jeff and Helen sitting together on an antique wooden porch swing. Jeff took a swallow from a half-empty beer bottle as he watched us climb out of the truck. Both he and Helen visibly relaxed when they saw who we were.\n\nJeff removed his right hand from the revolver holstered to his hip. Helen slipped a knife back into a sheath beneath the bottom of her sweater. With magic's veil of secrecy beginning to unravel, every sentient nonhuman was on edge. At least a quarter of Tamarack's werewolves had retreated to the woods over the past month.\n\nJeff greeted me with a back-cracking hug and a quick sniff of my neck. \"You smell like algae.\"\n\n\"Long story.\" I turned to hug Helen, who finished the spinal rearrangement her husband had begun on me. \"We need a favor.\"\n\n\"Beer first. You look like you could use one.\" Jeff finished hugging Lena, then scooped up Nidhi. \"Favors after, eh?\"\n\nHe disappeared into the century-old house, returning with three beers and a plate of what appeared to be bacon-chip cookies. Given the choice, I grabbed one of the bottles and leaned against the railing, waiting impatiently as Jeff and Helen filled us in on the latest werewolf gossip, most of which centered around who was sneaking into bed\u2014or into the woods, or the backseat, or in one case the middle of the gas station parking lot\u2014with whom. Werewolves treated sex like a professional sporting event, occasionally with spectators and cheerleaders.\n\nI held my silence for as long as I could, which turned out to be approximately half a bottle. \"Jeff, I need you to hook me up with some black-market magic.\"\n\nThe wrinkles in his forehead furrowed like fresh-plowed farmland. Helen turned dagger eyes toward her husband.\n\n\"Don't start,\" he said to Helen. \"You know I haven't run in those circles for decades. Isaac, this is a bad idea. Even for you.\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\" I shook my head. \"Never mind. This is important. I have to talk to a ghost. A man who died a thousand years ago.\"\n\nHelen set her beer on the porch. \"Why?\"\n\nI was ready for this. \"To find whoever took Jeneta. She was my student. My responsibility. My pack.\"\n\nJeff rolled his eyes. \"You throw that damn pack thing at me every time you want something.\"\n\n\"Only because it works.\"\n\nHe flipped me off, but he was chuckling, too. \"Do you have any idea what you're getting into? If these people suspect for one second that you're still with the Porters, they'll kill you. Not to mention what the Porters will do if they catch you going after underground magic.\"\n\n\"I did my time as a field agent,\" I reminded him. \"I know what's out there.\"\n\n\"Didn't the Porters have to pull you out of the field?\" Helen asked. \"The Mackinac Island incident, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"First of all, I stopped those zombie horses, didn't I? Second, that's beside the point. Jeff, what did it cost you to get your moonstone?\" I was referring to the magical crystal he used to control his transformations into wolf form. It had come from one of Kristen Britain's Green Rider novels, meaning he must have gotten it from a libriomancer.\n\n\"They asked me for a favor.\" He stared at the porch. \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\"That should tell you everything you need to know,\" said Helen. \"I've been married to this mutt for forty years, and I can count on one hand the number of times he didn't want to talk.\"\n\n\"Look, I hate to ask, but isn't this something the Porters should be doing instead of you?\" Jeff continued to avoid eye contact.\n\nI took a drink before answering, using the beer to force back the anger his words triggered. The despair was stronger than before, no doubt a side effect of Euphemia's song. \"Yah, it is. But they've had a month to search, and haven't found her. They haven't stopped the Ghost Army. Far as I can tell, they haven't accomplished shit. I've learned who we're hunting, and I've seen what she means to do. I can track her down, but I need more information.\"\n\n\"What happens when you find her?\" asked Helen. \"You make a citizen's arrest? Blow your bad guy whistle?\"\n\nJeff leaned close. \"How far are you willing to go, Isaac Vainio?\"\n\n\"You saw what they did to Copper River. Not to mention that Meridiana has done her best to strip away my sanity on two separate occasions.\"\n\n\"Did a pretty good job from the look of it,\" Jeff muttered.\n\nI let that pass. \"Jeneta called the Ghost Army 'devourers,' and the name fits. They're not true ghosts, just shadows of hunger and rage and charred magic. Lena and I fought one in Detroit. The two of us together could barely stop the damned thing. We had to drop an entire building on its head, and even that only stunned it. Meridiana's planning to use Jeneta's magic to create a true army.\"\n\n\"You're telling me this Meridiana and her ghosts whupped your ass twice when you had magic. What do you think's gonna happen this time around?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"That depends on whether or not the dead pope can help us.\"\n\n\"Idiot,\" Jeff muttered.\n\n\"No more than you were at his age,\" Helen said.\n\n\"Which is why he should listen to me.\" Jeff walked to the corner of the porch and stared out at the empty street. \"My libriomancer contact died eight years ago, but I know a black-market troll living in Niagara who deals in architectural magic. I might be able to bargain a name out of her. But if you mess up, these people will eat you alive. Some of them literally. Do you understand what I'm saying?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Go home. I'll make some calls.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Jeff.\"\n\nHe snorted. \"Thank me by coming back with your body and soul in one piece.\"\n\nFor the next two days, I read everything I could find about Pope Sylvester II, taking shameless advantage of our interlibrary loan system and the library's access to various online collections.\n\nI heard nothing from Nicola or the Porters, nothing from Ponce de Leon, and nothing from Jeff DeYoung. The news outlets were all but useless for updates on anything magical. Beijing had clamped down on information about the library, and so far, it looked like the Porters were continuing to stay ahead of efforts by the public to uncover their archives. The only interesting thing I found was a rumor about a biology teacher who captured and dissected a bunyip in Australia, but after spending half an afternoon tracking the story down, it turned out to be a hoax.\n\nThe hardest thing was finding the energy to care about my day-to-day responsibilities at the library. Today, Jennifer had me working on one of my least favorite duties: culling our collection. Books that hadn't been checked out for at least three years had to go, and Jennifer had preemptively forbidden me from checking them out myself to save them.\n\nI had pulled more than a hundred so far. Those in reasonable condition would be sold at our fall library fair next month, while the rest were supposed to be recycled.\n\nPersonally, I thought \"brought back to Isaac's house to be repaired and donated to kids at the local high school\" qualified as recycling. I wasn't all that good at bookbinding and restoration, but you could add years to a book's life with a plastic jacket cover, book repair tape, and the right adhesives.\n\nJennifer leaned out from her office. \"Isaac, did you take care of those subscription renewals I left in your box last week?\"\n\n\"Shit.\" A father sitting with his preteen son at the computers gave me a death stare. \"I mean, shoot. Sorry.\"\n\nI rubbed my eyes, abandoned the half-sorted piles of books, and headed for the break room. Employee mailboxes lined the wall opposite the old fridge. My cell phone went off before I could retrieve the papers stuffed into mine. When I saw who was calling, I spun around and called out, \"Alex, could you watch the desk for a few minutes?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" he said. \"I did your job all day Monday. Why stop now?\"\n\nI ignored him and ducked back into the break room. \"What have you found, Jeff?\"\n\n\"Hello to you, too. Rocky\u2014that's the troll I mentioned\u2014didn't know anyone who could talk to the dead directly. But she put me in touch with someone who might be able to help. You're not gonna like it.\"\n\n\"What else is new?\"\n\n\"I called in a lot of favors for this, Isaac.\"\n\n\"Understood. What exactly am I getting into?\"\n\n\"A little late to ask that question, don't you think?\" His chuckle sounded forced. \"Do not trust this guy. He's the next best thing to a vampire ghost-talker, but he's slimy as six-month-old meat. He won't do anything that puts him on the Porters' radar if he can avoid it, but he will screw you over six ways from Sunday, and I don't mean in a good way.\"\n\n\"What is he, and what's the price?\"\n\n\"His name is Mahefa. He's a Ramanga.\"\n\n\"No kidding?\" Ramanga had originally been servants whose duties to the nobles of Madagascar included consuming nail clippings and spilled blood to prevent such things from being used for evil magic. Considering I knew at least one Porter who could knock you unconscious with a single hair from your head, it seemed a wise precaution. Ironically, the Ramanga had spent generations learning to do exactly what their masters feared, developing and refining a type of magic that drew power from the blood of others. From all I had read, they were few in number, and their magic was limited in both strength and duration. \"Last I checked, Ramanga weren't known for chatting up the dead.\"\n\n\"He's also a drug dealer, not to mention a smuggler, a thief, and a vindictive little snake. Rocky says he has something that should fit the bill.\"\n\n\"And the cost?\"\n\nA male voice with an unfamiliar accent answered from behind me. \"The cost is simple. You're going to do me a favor.\"\n\nJeff growled. \"He's there, isn't he?\"\n\n\"Yep.\" I had left my shock-gun at the house. I casually checked the room for potential weapons as I turned around, just in case. The dirty bread knife in the sink was probably my best bet.\n\n\"Isaac, be careful. Rumor has it Mahefa once cut a customer's heroin with basilisk blood after a fight over a woman. It took three days for the poor bastard to die as his veins and organs petrified.\"\n\n\"Good to know. And thank you.\" I hung up the phone and examined the new arrival. He was stout but strong, one of those men whose mass was more breadth than height. He had a close-trimmed beard, walnut skin, and sunken, bloodshot eyes. His lips were ashen, as were the tips of his fingers. His fingernails were ragged, bitten to the quick. He wore a black suit over a pink shirt with no tie.\n\nI extended my hand. \"Isaac Vainio.\"\n\n\"Mahefa Issoufaly.\" His hands were soft-skinned, but thick with muscle. His temperature felt normal enough for a human.\n\n\"Bienvenu \u00e0 Copper River.\" French was one of Madagascar's two official languages, and I didn't speak Malagasy.\n\n\"Merci.\" He smiled. \"Your friend tells me you need to speak to a dead man.\"\n\nI checked to make sure nobody would overhear. \"That's right.\"\n\nMahefa opened the fridge and helped himself to a bottle of water. \"I believe I can get what you need, yes.\"\n\n\"And the favor?\"\n\nHis smile grew. His teeth were perfect, bleached bone white. \"There are three. To begin with, I want a sample of your blood\u2014250 milliliters should suffice.\"\n\nI wasn't thrilled, but neither was I particularly surprised. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Why does an oenophile seek new varieties of wine?\" His words dripped condescension. He shut the fridge with a sniff of displeasure. \"I am the world's finest connoisseur of blood, Isaac. Just as the lover of grapes can discern the subtlest flavors, I can taste the life contained within your blood, your memories and experiences, even your magic. For more than a hundred years, I've sampled kings and paupers, sea serpents and sorcerers. All blood has power. With mundane blood, I can heal my body, extend my life, and more. But the blood of a libriomancer is potent indeed.\"\n\nI almost told him Gutenberg had locked my magic, so my blood was likely to be disappointing. But why undercut my own bargaining position? \"What else?\"\n\n\"An equal amount of your dryad's blood.\"\n\n\"No deal.\" I tried and failed to keep the anger from my tone, but that only seemed to amuse him. \"I can't pay you what's not mine to give. I'll give you 400 milliliters of mine instead.\"\n\n\"I've tasted libriomancers before, but the dryad would be a new flavor. I'm told she's book-born?\" He nibbled a hangnail on his thumb. \"Very well. What can you offer me in her place?\"\n\nWithout magic, it was a painfully short list. I assumed money wouldn't interest him, and I didn't have all that much anyway. I wondered if he'd ever tried siren blood. But I couldn't in good conscience barter Euphemia's blood any more than I could Lena's.\n\nThere was Smudge, resting in his cage behind the front desk. Though he probably wasn't resting anymore. Hopefully Mahefa's presence hadn't upset Smudge enough to set him alight. The lack of shouting was a good sign.\n\nSmudge had been hurt last month, and the fluid from his wound looked and behaved much like kerosene. But I wasn't about to jab a needle into him and let Mahefa have a taste.\n\nMahefa's eyes narrowed as the silence grew. A bead of blood swelled from his hangnail. His tongue flicked out to capture it. \"How badly do you need this, Isaac?\"\n\n\"Lena isn't a possession to be bargained.\"\n\nAmusement lightened his reply. \"That's not what I've heard.\"\n\nAll things considered, it was probably a good thing I wasn't armed. He watched me, obviously enjoying my struggle.\n\n\"Shouldn't this be Lena's decision, not yours?\" he pressed. \"If you truly consider her a person, why are you making the choice for her?\"\n\nI definitely wanted to shoot this guy. Yet there was truth to his barb. Was it my place to refuse on her behalf? Reluctantly, I said, \"I could ask her.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" He wiped his thumb on his suit jacket. \"Shall we?\"\n\n\"Right now?\"\n\nHe looked surprised. \"I thought this was important.\"\n\n\"What about the third favor?\"\n\n\"All things in time.\" He gestured toward the doorway.\n\nDammit, Jennifer was going to kill me. I headed for her office, where she was sorting through budget paperwork. \"I have an emergency I need to take care of.\"\n\n\"Another one?\" she asked without looking up.\n\n\"This is Mahefa. He's my insurance adjuster. He's finally getting around to assessing the damage to my house from last month.\"\n\n\"Your house looked fine the last time I drove past,\" she said. \"That would be two weeks ago, by the way. When you hadn't called or come in for two days, I decided to swing by and make sure you weren't dead.\"\n\nMahefa cleared his throat. \"Isaac, would you like me to\u2014\"\n\n\"No!\" I didn't know what powers he might have to manipulate minds, but I didn't want any of them in my library. \"Jennifer, I'll make up the hours.\"\n\n\"No, you won't.\" Her shoulders slumped. With a sigh, she pushed her paperwork aside and focused her attention on me. \"You've been with this library longer than I have, and you're good at your job. One of the best people I have. When you're here. I've tried to be flexible, and I've cut you as much slack as I could.\n\n\"I was happy to fight to get you a full-time position, but this isn't working. Even when you show up, your mind is elsewhere. I'm not the only one who's noticed. I don't want to be the bad guy, but I have to think of what's best for the library, and for the staff as a whole.\"\n\n\"Are you firing me?\" Before, I had always had a salary from the Porters to fall back on. A grant through one of their dummy companies had funded my position here, guaranteeing my job security. Now that grant was gone, along with the bulk of my income. If I lost this job, I was well and truly screwed.\n\nShe hesitated only a few seconds, but they stretched out like hours. \"I'm willing to keep you on, but I'm cutting you back to part time. Twenty hours a week.\" She held up a hand before I could speak. \"Show me you want this job, and we'll revisit things in three months.\"\n\nPart time meant reduced income and no benefits. Health insurance hadn't been a concern when I could pull Lucy's healing cordial out of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to fix anything from a cold to a severed limb, but without magic or insurance, a simple broken bone could bankrupt me.\n\n\"Or I can let you go altogether,\" Jennifer added.\n\n\"No.\" I hated myself for how quickly I answered. For the desperation, and for needing this job. I should be out in the world reading and discovering the true power of books, not reshelving and recycling them. Music echoed in my thoughts, the siren's song weighing me down with yearning and despair. I had to grip the doorframe to keep from falling.\n\n\"Go home,\" Jennifer said wearily. \"Take care of your house. I'll talk to you about scheduling tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" I grabbed Smudge's cage on the way out. He scooted into a corner, crouched in the gravel that lined the bottom, and watched Mahefa closely.\n\nAlex called after me to ask where I was going, but I couldn't bring myself to explain. Let Jennifer fill him in.\n\nOnce we were outside, Mahefa reached into his inside jacket and produced a circuit board encased in clear plastic, about the size of a business card. A tangle of ribbon cables emerged from one end. \"I got this from a libriomancer in Mozambique,\" he said. \"It should be able to hack just about any electronic lock.\"\n\nI didn't like where this was going. \"It sounds like you have a particular lock in mind.\"\n\n\"I do.\" He squinted up at the clouds. \"And it should be passing over the Midwest later today.\"\n\n\u2002Bookstore Owner Hospitalized After Attack\n\nAnn Arbor, Michigan\u2014Clarissa Andress, owner of Drumming Goddess New Age Bookstore, was hospitalized yesterday following the alleged firebombing of her store.\n\nFlames broke out near the front of the bookstore at approximately 6:15 PM. Andress was quick to usher customers out of the building, but went back inside to attempt to find the store cat. Andress apparently collapsed from smoke inhalation. Firefighters pulled her from the building and administered oxygen. She regained consciousness at the hospital, and is expected to make a full recovery.\n\n\"Never go back into a burning building,\" said Edward Hubbard of the Ann Arbor Fire Department. \"Get outside and leave the window or door open behind you so your pets have an escape route. They'll find their own way out. Call to them, and let the firefighters know your pets are still inside, but don't go in after them. People don't realize how quickly smoke can overcome you, or the flames can spread and trap you.\"\n\nWitnesses claim to have seen two youths fleeing the scene immediately after the fire began. The police have no suspects in custody, but say they are following up on several leads, including a number of threatening letters delivered to the store in recent days.\n\n\"There have always been people who see 'New Age' and immediately think of witches and incense and weed, but it's getting worse,\" said Annette Botke, a University of Michigan sophomore and employee at Drumming Goddess. \"Our sidewalk sign was vandalized twice last week. One commenter on our Web site said people like us should be burned at the stake.\"\n\nThe fire department was unable to save the twenty-year-old store. The area is cordoned off for safety, and the site will be bulldozed later this week. The stores to either side, an antiques shop and an Indian restaurant, sustained minor damage, but should reopen soon.\n\nPadfoot, the store cat, was found huddling beneath a car in a nearby parking lot. He was checked out and found to be in perfect health. Padfoot is staying with a friend until he can be reunited with his owner.\n\nI found Lena in the backyard, pulling up the poison ivy vines that had begun to encroach from the edge of the woods. She yanked them from the dirt bare-handed, unaffected by the oils that would have transformed me into a miserable mass of red, itchy bumps and blisters.\n\nMost days during the week, she would have been out doing odd landscaping jobs or volunteering around town, but lately she had been spending more time near her grove. She brightened when she saw me, and then her gaze moved to Mahefa. She grabbed a wood-handled rake and walked toward us.\n\nI wondered if Mahefa had any idea how quickly Lena could grow that handle into a spear, or how many bones she could break with it. A part of me hoped he'd get the chance to find out.\n\n\"You're home early.\" Lena kissed me, careful to keep her oil-covered hands away from my skin. \"What's wrong?\"\n\n\"This is Mahefa Issoufaly. Jeff said he could help us to speak with Gerbert d'Aurillac.\"\n\nShe frowned and looked at my arm. I didn't try to hide the Band-Aid near the elbow. There was almost no bruising. He had hit the vein on the first try. The remaining warmth evaporated from Lena's expression.\n\n\"He's not a vampire,\" I said. \"He's... you could probably call him a hematophile.\"\n\n\"You make it sound like a medical condition,\" Mahefa complained. \"Blood magic is just as real and valid an art as your libriomancy.\"\n\n\"You let him drink your blood?\" Lena's fingertips pressed into the rake's handle like it was clay. \"And then you brought him here.\"\n\n\"His price for helping was a sample of my blood.\" I rubbed my arm. I should have said no. Should have told him to go to hell the second he said Lena's name. Let Jeff find someone else who could help us. \"And yours.\"\n\nShe took a step back. \"I see.\"\n\n\"You don't have to say yes.\"\n\n\"What's wrong, Isaac?\" Mahefa asked. \"You'll share your dryad with your friend Doctor Shah, but not with me?\"\n\n\"She's not\u2014\"\n\n\"Not what?\" He circled Lena, studying her up and down. \"She's certainly not human. Isn't this why she was created? For men like you and me?\"\n\nForget saving the world; right now I wanted my magic back so I could turn this loathsome man into a cockroach and drop him in a cage with Smudge. But since I couldn't do magic, I settled for punching him in the nose.\n\nHe staggered back, eyes watering. Blood dripped from his nostrils. He snarled and started forward, only to find the sharpened tip of the rake handle barring his way.\n\n\"I told you I would ask her,\" I said. \"I didn't say anything about letting you come to my home and insult the woman I love. You have until the count of five to get off my property.\"\n\n\"If you want to speak to your dead man, you'll let me sample your woman's blood.\"\n\n\"If you want to join my dead man, you'll keep standing there.\" I folded my arms. \"One.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" said Lena. \"Isaac, tell me why you need to do this.\"\n\n\"Jeneta\u2014\"\n\n\"The Porters know about Meridiana and Jeneta,\" she interrupted. \"You're not the only person in the world clever enough to make the connection to a dead pope. Why do you need to be the one to go chasing answers?\"\n\nIt was arrogant as hell to believe I could succeed where the Porters had failed. But then, being one of the few who could use magic to rewrite the universe tended to reinforce both ego and arrogance.\n\nThe problem was that I wasn't just risking my life. If I died, who and what Lena was could be lost as well. We hoped the book Bi Wei had given her would help to stabilize her identity, to end her dependence on her lovers, but we had no way of knowing it would work.\n\nThere were hundreds of Porters, all better prepared to protect themselves against magic. Was I truly the best person to find Jeneta, or was that the twin brain weasels of guilt and depression pulling my strings?\n\nWhy not simply stop? Let the Porters worry about Meridiana. Focus on my job at the library. Visit the cemetery and finally pay my respects to those who had died the month before.\n\nI couldn't do it. I had been suspended from the field for two years after Mackinac Island, forbidden from using magic except in emergencies, but I had still been a part of that world. I had touched the magic of books every day. I had clung to the hope of returning to the Porters as a field agent or researcher. From the moment I discovered magic, I had been unable to imagine a life without it. \"Because this is who... this is what I am.\"\n\nLena turned to Mahefa. \"Fine. How do we know you'll keep your word?\"\n\n\"I've never cheated a customer,\" Mahefa said indignantly. He held a handkerchief to his nose to slow the bleeding. \"It's bad for business. I will procure what Isaac needs. When he goes to his friend's final resting place, he'll be able to have his little chat.\"\n\nLena nodded. \"You can have my blood, but not until Jeneta is safe.\"\n\nAir hissed through Mahefa's teeth. \"Given that Isaac is very likely to end up dead, I'm afraid\u2014\"\n\nLena stabbed the end of the rake through the edge of Mahefa's leather shoe, pinning him to the earth. He reached for her, and she casually thumped him in the face with the other end.\n\n\"And you drink it in front of me,\" Lena continued as if nothing had happened. \"I'm not risking you magically cloning yourself a dryad, or whatever else you might want to do with my blood.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"A counteroffer, then. I take your blood when Jeneta is safe, or when Isaac gets himself killed, whichever comes first. I promise I'll do nothing to facilitate the latter possibility.\"\n\n\"Good. Because if you do, I'll take an acorn from my tree, ram it down your throat, and start it growing. Do we understand one another?\"\n\nHe lowered the bloody handkerchief. His tongue cleaned the remaining blood from his upper lip. \"We do.\"\n\nLena yanked the handle free and gripped his hand, sealing the deal. From the look on his face, she squeezed quite a bit harder than necessary.\n\n\"I'll meet you out front, Isaac. Don't take too long.\" Mahefa whistled as he strolled away.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said as soon as he was gone. \"He wouldn't accept anything else.\"\n\nLena didn't look at me. \"Promise me you'll give me an hour's notice before he comes to take my blood.\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\n\"Good. I'll wait until then to finish pulling up the poison ivy. The work is relaxing, and my skin soaks up the oils like aloe.\" She glanced over her shoulder, giving me a crooked smile that didn't touch her eyes. \"I can even absorb it into my bloodstream.\"\n\nMahefa insisted we take his car, a freshly-waxed black BMW that smelled like antiseptic and Chinese food. He also strongly advised against taking Smudge. On the other hand, he hadn't objected at all to my bringing my shock-gun along. If anything, he seemed amused, which made me nervous.\n\nI studied him more closely as we drove. I couldn't be certain, but I thought the blackening of his lips and fingers was a form of magical charring. With my magic locked, I shouldn't have been able to see it. How much power had burned through his blood to leave visible damage?\n\nHis veins were swollen. One mapped a dark, jagged line down the side of his forehead. Others bulged along his arms and the backs of his hands.\n\nHe swerved around curves at speeds I wouldn't have attempted without magic, finally pulling off near the old railroad bridge about five miles south of town. He parked in the grass and popped the trunk. \"Time for favor number three. You're going to help me break into a satellite.\"\n\nWe climbed out, and Mahefa pulled a pair of metallic silver suits from the trunk. My mouth went dry.\n\n\"Relax, it's not a CIA spy satellite or anything like that. Nothing to tie you up in any ethical conundrums. Just your everyday illegal vampire-built space junk.\"\n\n\"When you said this thing would be passing over the Midwest, I assumed we'd be meeting it at an airport somewhere.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"The only way to override one of these things from the ground is to fight our way into the Chernobyl vampire nest and take over their system. I don't think either one of us are up for that.\" He tossed me one of the suits. \"Put this on.\"\n\nI held the ridiculously flimsy fabric. A deflated transparent bubble topped the one-piece jumpsuit. \"What the hell is it?\"\n\n\"Some old sci-fi writer's idea of what a futuristic space suit would look like. I bought them off a libriomancer in the early eighties. They hold twelve hours of compressed air, and there's a radio unit in the collar.\"\n\nI couldn't process the idea of going into space in a thirty-year-old magic spacesuit, so I tried to focus my thoughts elsewhere. \"Are you saying the vampires have their own satellite?\"\n\n\"More than one. This is blood bank number six, out of ten that I know about. I've been wanting to get into this one for years.\"\n\nTen blood banks in orbit, and the Porters had no idea. What else had we\u2014had they missed? And why satellites? The cold of space would provide cheap, effective refrigeration, but as far as food storage went, it was ridiculously impractical. You couldn't just fly into orbit every time you wanted a snack. What a satellite did provide was secrecy and security. \"They're storing samples.\"\n\n\"Very good. They've built up a library of blood from every known species and hybrid of vampire. It's all treated with glycerol to preserve the cells, which does nasty things to the flavor, but it's worth it.\"\n\nAnd we were going to steal from them. To break into a blood bank. In orbit. Wearing tinfoil jumpsuits. \"All right, next question.\"\n\n\"Why do I need you?\" Mahefa guessed.\n\n\"I was going to ask how the hell we're supposed to reach this satellite, since I didn't see a rocket ship in your back seat. But sure, let's start with that.\"\n\n\"The damn vampires put a bomb in my head last year. I get within a hundred meters of one of their vaults, and boom.\" He pantomimed the explosion.\n\n\"Sounds unpleasant.\" It also sounded similar to what I had done to Ted Boyer a few years back. I wondered if they had used the same hardware. \"So you need someone who can get inside and loot the satellite without getting atomized in the process.\"\n\nHe shoved a pair of fire extinguishers into a beat-up canvas backpack. A coil of nylon rope followed, along with an oversized metal thermos. He zipped the whole thing up, then grabbed a laminated index card from his rear pocket. He handed me the card and an empty cooler. \"I got my hands on a copy of their cataloguing system. This card lists the samples you'll need. One of these will let you talk to your dead pope. Bring them all back, and I'll tell you which one.\"\n\n\"Wait, let me talk to him?\"\n\nMahefa paused. \"Is that a problem?\"\n\n\"I'm not a Ramanga. I can't use blood magic.\"\n\n\"Which is why I'll be prepping your drink, cutting it with a bit of my own. Your body is used to channeling magic, so it shouldn't burn your guts out or anything like that.\"\n\n\"This is vampire blood we're talking about. What if I drink it and then burst into flames the first time the sun hits me?\"\n\n\"This particular strain shouldn't turn you,\" he assured me. \"You might have a nasty migraine for a few hours, but that's all. If you're scared, trick someone else into taking it. I'm sure Lena would drink it if you told her to, yes?\"\n\nGutenberg's spell had locked my magic, but that shouldn't interfere with the effects of the blood. Euphemia had demonstrated quite well that magic could still affect me.\n\n\"It goes without saying that if you tell anyone about this, I'll rip out your throat.\" Mahefa clapped me on the back. \"Go ahead and put on your suit. Don't seal it yet, though. Sealing the helmet starts the airflow, and there's no need to waste oxygen.\"\n\nFlying\u2014heights in general, really\u2014ranked right up with do-it-yourself root canals on my list of things I'd rather avoid. Maybe Lena had been right. Let the Porters find a way to speak with the dead. Once they dug up the pope's secrets, they could hunt Meridiana.\n\nAssuming they took my vision seriously enough to pursue it. And what would they do to Jeneta if they found her? Gutenberg had done his best to destroy the students of Bi Sheng, and Meridiana was a far greater threat. They would kill Jeneta without a second thought.\n\nIt might come to that, if I couldn't save her. If I couldn't pry Meridiana out of her mind. But I intended to make damn sure that was a last resort.\n\nI sat down on the hillside and pulled the suit over my legs. Following Mahefa's lead, I didn't worry about removing my shoes. The material felt like heavy satin. It clung to my jeans, outlining every fold and wrinkle. A pair of thin silver canisters on the back presumably held my air. There were no gauges to verify whether they were full.\n\nMahefa was already sealing the front of his suit, using a zipper-like tab that left no visible seam. The plastic bubble hung down behind him like a sweatshirt hood. These suits were far simpler and more maneuverable than anything NASA had. I imagined most astronauts would kill for something like this... assuming they worked.\n\nMahefa opened a second cooler in the back of the car and pulled out a plastic packet of blood, the kind of thing you might find hanging from an IV stand in a hospital. He jabbed a metal straw into the top and sucked it down like a child's juice box.\n\nI started to seal my suit, then changed my mind. This thing had no built-in plumbing, and I had no idea how long our flight would be. I hiked to the base of the bridge to relieve myself. When I finished, I glanced back to make sure Mahefa wasn't paying attention, then tucked my shock-gun into the bag, along with the laminated list.\n\nHe tossed the empty pouch onto the ground, strapped on an oversized harness, and slammed the BMW's trunk shut. \"You ready?\"\n\nI thought about Jeneta, about the hate and hunger I had sensed from Meridiana and her minions, and about my friends and neighbors who had died without understanding why. With a sigh, I stepped into the harness.\n\nMahefa might be an ass, but he was all business as he cinched the straps around my chest, shoulders, and thighs. Heavy steel rings locked us together like tandem skydivers, my back to his front. I resisted the urge to seal my helmet to block the foulness of his breath. \"How long does the blood last?\"\n\n\"Depends. The stuff I downed should be enough to get us there and back. The kind you'll be stealing will give you several hours of talking to the dead.\" He wrapped his arms around my chest. \"Relax. Flying is as easy as falling, only backward.\"\n\nBefore I could stammer a response, he jumped hard enough to make me bite my tongue. I spat blood and gripped his arms, trying to stop the pressure of the harness from cutting off the circulation to my legs. I had no clue how fast we were accelerating. The average human being passed out around five gees, and I could feel the blood in my body draining downward. I clenched my muscles and tried to hold on.\n\n\"It will take a few minutes to escape the atmosphere,\" he shouted. \"I'll let you know when to seal your helmet.\"\n\nFor as long as I could remember, I'd had nightmares about tumbling out of airplanes, off cliff sides, or over the edge of the Mackinac Bridge. This was worse. I was falling away from the Earth, significantly faster than terminal velocity. The wind dried my eyes and tore the breath from my mouth.\n\nAlready the air was getting colder. When I looked down, I could make out the outlines of the Great Lakes, the mitten and rabbit shapes of Michigan's lower and upper peninsulas. My neck cramped, and my jaw was clenched so tightly I expected my teeth to shatter.\n\n\"If you need to puke, do it before you close your helmet,\" Mahefa yelled.\n\nThe Earth's curve was clearly visible, which would have been awe-inspiring if I had been looking at a photograph from the safety of my desk. Shadows stained my vision, congealing from the edges. Passing out might be a blessing, but I had no faith that Mahefa would bother to seal my helmet.\n\nWe were through the upper clouds now. The sun was brighter, and when I wrenched my head up, I could just begin to make out the stars overhead.\n\nMahefa let go.\n\nI shouted and clawed at his arms as the harness took my full weight. My fingers were numb, little more than useless stubs.\n\n\"Helmet,\" he yelled, his voice tinny.\n\nI fumbled to pull the clear bubble over my head. After three attempts, Mahefa snatched it from between us and yanked it into place. He grabbed a tab at the collar and pulled it around my neck. I heard hissing, and the bubble expanded, filling with cold, stale air.\n\nThe plastic wasn't as clear as I had thought, or perhaps it was designed to polarize in direct sunlight. The world below took on a smoky tint.\n\n\"Radio check.\" Mahefa's words crackled through a speaker by my neck. \"You done screaming yet?\"\n\nMy suit bulged outward. Rings of stiffer fabric kept it from bubbling too much. I looked like a shiny Michelin Man. I forced myself to breathe slowly. \"Yah. Starting to hate you a lot, though.\"\n\nI tried to distract myself by figuring out the physics of our magical flight. There was no visible propulsion\u2014at least, I was 99 percent certain Mahefa wasn't somehow shooting rocket exhaust out of his ass. The state of my stomach meant his vampiric blood-magic hadn't completely excused us from the normal rules of acceleration and momentum.\n\nHow much energy did it take to fly the two of us at this rate? Call it 350 pounds total, guesstimate our speed at several hundred miles per hour and climbing... by my off-the-cuff calculations, we should have caught fire five minutes ago.\n\nOne way or another, movement obeyed Newton's Third Law. Mahefa could fly upward by basically jumping off the Earth, but how could he change directions, especially once we reached the vacuum of space? What was he pushing against? Everything in the solar system was chained to the sun's gravitational pull, but gravity was a relatively weak force for the speed and power of this flight. On the other hand, once you escaped Earth's atmosphere and gravity, you should need far less energy to maneuver.\n\nWith adequate blood supplies, could we send a vampire out to explore Jupiter?\n\nThat thought summoned a new fear. What if somebody already had?\n\n\"Hold on,\" Mahefa said over the radio. \"Let me get my bearings.\"\n\nWe coasted higher, rotating at a slow speed that was perfect for inducing vomiting. I tried to focus on the sun, using it as a fixed\u2014if moderately blinding\u2014point on the horizon. My inner ear kept trying to tell me I was falling in every direction at once.\n\nThe cold was unpleasant, but no worse than a typical November morning in the U. P. I gripped the harness straps and waited.\n\n\"We're early,\" he said. \"You're lighter than I expected. Looks like we made better time.\"\n\nWe sped higher, angling away from the sun. The stars were so much sharper than I was used to, without the Earth's atmosphere to distort their light and color. I tried to engrave the sight in my memory for later, when I might be able to appreciate it.\n\n\"There we are.\" Mahefa changed course again, moving slower this time.\n\nWe headed for a rectangular shadow that blotted the stars from view. \"All this needs is Also sprach Zarathustra playing in the background,\" I muttered.\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\" Save the 2001: A Space Odyssey reference for someone who might appreciate it.\n\nThe orbiting blood bank made me think of a stealth bomber. The skin was matte black, and the closer we got, the more I could make out the irregular angles of its surface. It seemed to hang motionless in the darkness, hiding in the edge of the Earth's shadow.\n\nBefore I realized what was happening, Mahefa unbuckled the harness holding us together. I tried to twist around, but he slipped free before I could grab him.\n\nMy efforts had started me rotating. I spread out my arms and forced myself not to panic. Slowly, my body and brain realized I wasn't plummeting to my death. Though given our current vector, the Earth's gravity would pull me back down eventually, which meant I was plummeting. I was just plummeting very, very slowly.\n\nI brought my arms in, and my body spun faster. I extended my legs, testing how each change affected my movement. I slowly stretched out both arms and pinwheeled them backward, trying to visualize the different angles and their effects in a frictionless environment.\n\n\"Your maneuvering jets.\" Mahefa caught my shoulder and handed me the two fire extinguishers from his backpack. \"Don't overdo it. Your instincts will make you overreact. A little thrust goes a long way up here.\"\n\nI took one extinguisher in each hand. Mahefa pulled the pins and tossed them aside. They tumbled end over end until they vanished from sight.\n\n\"Once you reach the satellite, plug the card into the console by the door. There's no air inside, so do not remove your helmet. The computer system should come up automatically.\" He seized my harness. \"You have the list?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Gather everything on that list, then get the hell out of there and jump toward me. You get your long-distance phone call to your dead pope. I get my new vintages. Everybody wins.\"\n\nI raised the extinguisher in my right hand, lining it up on a path that should take me to the satellite.\n\n\"Save your fuel until you need it.\" Mahefa spun me around and gripped the back of my harness. Before I could react, he hefted me overhead like a javelin and hurled me at the distant satellite.\n\nMy muscles went utterly rigid, as if the cold of space had turned my body to ice. My mind was little better, stuck on an infinitely repeating loop of oh shit oh shit oh shit. Then my radio crackled, breaking the spell.\n\n\"Veer up and to the right, or you're going to miss it.\"\n\nI positioned the extinguisher in my left hand and gently squeezed the handle. Mahefa was right about the thrust. A split-second burst corrected my course and started me rotating backward like a slow-motion boomerang.\n\n\"A little higher. There you go.\"\n\nI did my best to stay on target and minimize my body's excess motion. Half of my corrections made things worse, but I managed to keep the satellite in sight.\n\nI was glad I had left Smudge behind. He might have enjoyed zero gravity, but he had a severe phobia when it came to fire extinguishers.\n\nI guessed that our flight into space had covered at least a thousand miles, but these last hundred meters seemed to stretch out the longest. My hands cramped from holding the extinguishers. Sweat burned my eyes, and I had no way of wiping them. My jaw and neck were locked like rusted steel.\n\nOne moment I was flying through space. The next, my brain rebooted my perspective, and I was falling headfirst toward a satellite the size of a semi-truck trailer. At this speed, I'd bounce like a basketball, breaking who knew how many bones in the process. I brought both fire extinguishers around and tried to slow my approach.\n\nIt wasn't enough. My left arm struck the satellite first, hard enough to bruise the elbow. The satellite's black skin felt like brick. One of the fire extinguishers bounced from my grip and tumbled free.\n\nMahefa's voice blasted my ears. \"Watch it! You screw up and get stuck out there, I can't come save you.\"\n\nI used my remaining extinguisher to shoot myself back toward the satellite at a more oblique angle. I skipped along the wall twice more before reaching the end my mind insisted on calling the bottom, as it was facing the Earth. I made my way around the corner and looked up at a black computer screen alongside the outline of a small rectangular door.\n\nThere were no handholds. Flying vampires wouldn't need them. I floated in front of the door and pulled the bag off of my shoulder to retrieve the electronic lockpick. The interface looked like an ATM machine, with oversized plastic buttons, a curved glass screen, and a single data port.\n\nThe first time I attempted to plug the cable into the port, all I managed to do was shove myself away from the satellite. I tried not to look at the Earth stretched out beneath me. \"How did they get this thing into orbit without anyone noticing the launch, anyway?\"\n\n\"They carried it,\" Mahefa said.\n\nVampires. Right.\n\nI made my way to the console and tried again. This time, I managed to align and insert the cable without knocking myself away. The circuit board lit up, and a blinking cursor appeared on the screen. \"Now what?\"\n\n\"Don't touch anything. Just cross your fingers and hope they haven't upgraded their security.\"\n\nSeconds later, oversized text scrolled across the screen, welcoming me to Satellite Theta. The doorway\u2014little more than an oversized doggie door, really\u2014cracked open, and lights flickered on inside.\n\n\"Here goes.\" I left the lockpick in place and squeezed inside.\n\nGlass-fronted storage cabinets ran the length of the satellite. Orange text scrolled down the computer screen on the far side. I grabbed my list and pulled myself toward the screen. The cabinets took up most of the space, and the remaining crawlspace was perfectly sized for inducing claustrophobia.\n\n\"Hurry up.\" Mahefa sounded antsy, like a getaway driver waiting for his partner to finish robbing a bank safe.\n\nEach sample on his shopping list was coded by wall, cabinet, tray, and position. I left the list floating in front of me and searched for the first one: 2-8-3-E4, 2007.03.18\u2014Burtley6.\n\nThe satellite was clearly labeled and organized, at least. I turned to wall number two, slid open the glass door to cabinet eight, and pulled out the third tray. Each aluminum tray was segmented like a checkerboard, and each square held the gleaming steel hybrid of a thermos and test tube, roughly three inches in diameter. I pulled out E4. A black plastic label from an old-fashioned label maker confirmed this was the Burtley6 sample from March of 2007.\n\nOne by one I raided trays and began to fill my bag with frozen vampire blood. There was little room to maneuver, and I banged my knees and elbows repeatedly. When I was about a third of the way through the list, I noticed black smoke leaking from beneath the monitor.\n\nMy first thought was a computer failure of some sort. My second was that it would be too much of a coincidence for the computer to break down just when I was robbing the place. Though it was possible Mahefa's hack had somehow damaged the system.\n\nMy third thought was that gas in a zero-gravity vacuum should diffuse into an ever-expanding cloud, not twist and branch out, condensing into what appeared to be a man. \"Mahefa, I may have a problem here.\"\n\nI moved toward the exit, but a hand clamped around my ankle. A pale, emaciated man, little more than a skeleton, slammed me against the nearest cabinet.\n\n\"You're human.\"\n\nI heard his words inside my head. \"Mahefa, you didn't say anything about an undead rent-a-cop!\"\n\n\"What exactly do you expect me to do from out here, Isaac? Scold it?\"\n\nBlue-black lips peeled back from the vampire's fangs. Cloudy, frozen eyes seemed to peer through my body. His tongue was a pale, desiccated lump of flesh. He moved stiffly, as if his joints were continually freezing and had to be broken loose. \"It's been four years since I've fed. Shall I drain you now, or wait for your blood to freeze, then chew you up like a popsicle?\"\n\nI had used up a month's worth of fear on the way here, and I had nothing but anger and impatience left. I reached into my bag for the shock-gun. The lightning bolt normally required a path of ionized air, which wouldn't work here, but direct contact with the barrel should conduct the charge into his body. The gun's insulation would hopefully prevent it from frying me as well.\n\nThe vampire yanked me closer, seized the bag with his other hand, and tossed it behind him. Canisters of frozen blood tumbled loose, bouncing soundlessly off the walls. So much for that plan. His reaction suggested he could probably read minds as well as project, and I had no defense against telepathy anymore, dammit.\n\nWhat else did I know about him? He could dissolve into mist and didn't need a spacesuit. Or clothes of any kind. That narrowed down the list of possible species, but not enough to figure out how to fight him. The oversaturated market in vampire fiction had led to countless new book-born species of vampire, each with their own customized\u2014and far too short\u2014list of vulnerabilities.\n\nI kicked him in the face, but he didn't release my leg. His claws pressed harder. Hunger hadn't robbed him of his strength, which made sense. If you were going to leave a guard in space for years at a time, you'd want someone who could take out an intruder after four years of hibernation.\n\nI grabbed for the fire extinguisher and slammed it against the side of his head.\n\nHe smiled. The tip of his tongue poked between his teeth like a swollen blue slug emerging from a cave of yellow bone.\n\nI tried the fire extinguisher again, this time bringing it down on the back of his hand. I bruised my own leg, but his fingers loosened enough for me to pull free.\n\nFour years since he last fed. Four years of starvation, surrounded by blood. What had he done to earn such a punishment, and how did they stop him from gorging himself on bloodsicles? I could feel his hunger pressing into my mind. There was no way he had voluntarily refrained from sampling the merchandise.\n\nI threw the extinguisher at his face and snatched one of the blood canisters. I tried to unscrew the lid, but the gloves of my suit made it difficult, and then he was on me. We flew against a wall hard enough to crack the glass. I hoped it was the glass. It might have been my shoulder.\n\n\"Too late, Porter.\" He wrenched his jaw open and brought his fangs toward my neck. I could see his thoughts, his eagerness to bite through my suit and into my neck, to rip me open and gorge himself.\n\nI wedged the metal canister into his mouth. It barely fit, popping into place behind his fangs with what I'm sure would have been a gruesome scraping sound. He jerked back. For a moment he reminded me of a dog with a metal bone. He let go of me and reached for the canister.\n\nI grabbed the top of his head with both hands and slammed my knee into his jaw. Fear and desperation gave me strength, and I felt his fangs punch through the side of the tube.\n\nHis mental agony was like a blowtorch to my senses, searing my eyes and forcing acid into my throat. The flesh of his cheeks and jaw eroded like a crumbling sand sculpture. The pattern of dissolution would have probably given me another clue to his species, had I cared enough to watch.\n\nI dragged myself away. Whatever they had added to the blood to turn it toxic, it worked quickly. It would need to be something that could be easily filtered out later. Silver, maybe? You could probably rig up a way to separate out the silver using electrolysis.\n\nThe broken tube tumbled past me. Blood sprayed from the holes like morbid little geysers, boiling away in the vacuum.\n\nWhen I looked back, nothing remained but a slightly pitted skeleton drifting in a slowly expanding cloud of gray dust.\n\nI brought the skeleton out with me. The idea of leaving his bones trapped in a floating vault in space was too horrific, no matter what he had tried to do to me. Bracing myself in the open doorway, I shoved his remains toward the Earth. He shot away like a torpedo from a submarine. Between the sunlight and the heat of reentry, he should be gone soon enough.\n\nI double-checked my bag and fire extinguisher, pulled myself through the doorway, and yanked the electronic lockpick loose. The door slid shut. I tucked the lockpick into the bag and made sure my gun was at the top where I could reach it.\n\nMahefa shone a light in my direction to orient me. I crawled to the side of the satellite, braced myself, and jumped. I was a little off course, but Mahefa had no trouble intercepting me. He caught my harness with one hand and reached for the bag.\n\n\"Not yet.\" I yanked it out of his reach. \"Tell me which sample will let me talk to the dead.\"\n\nHe looked genuinely saddened by my mistrust, like a disappointed parent. \"S\u00f8ndergaard18.\"\n\nThe name sounded familiar. I prayed it wasn't the one I had sacrificed fighting the vampire. I dug through the bag, checking one tube at a time. I found it near the bottom. According to the label, this sample was twenty-seven years old.\n\n\"Go ahead and hold on to that if you'd like,\" said Mahefa. \"I'll carry the rest\u2014\"\n\n\"Not until we're on the ground.\" I kept my hand in the bag, gripping my shock-gun.\n\nHe laughed. It was an ugly sound, heavy with mockery. \"You think I plan to double-cross you? Perhaps to 'accidentally' drop you on the way down?\"\n\n\"Most criminals don't like letting witnesses go free,\" I said warily.\n\n\"You're not a witness, Isaac.\"\n\nHe was too damned confident. \"How do you figure?\"\n\nHe pointed to the satellite. \"If this was simply a matter of bypassing a lock and fighting a single guard, I'd have gotten myself a magical signal dampener and helped myself to their stock years ago.\"\n\nIt was like the vacuum of space had seeped into my chest. \"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"I needed someone with no connection to me,\" Mahefa continued. \"Someone who could have plausibly discovered the vampires' secrets.\" He smiled. \"Someone who would appear to be acting alone when the controllers in Chernobyl reviewed the video feed.\"\n\nOh, shit. \"And it never occurred to you to wear a damn mask?\"\n\n\"A mask wouldn't block the scanner you passed through on the way in. They peeked right through your suit to record every wrinkle and birthmark on your body.\" He pulled me closer, until our helmets touched. \"You're not a witness, Isaac. You're a scapegoat.\"\n\nI can't decide whether to kill him or commit him.\n\nI don't pretend to know what Isaac is going through. The entire town mourned the loss of so many innocent people, but Isaac hasn't allowed himself to grieve. He blames himself. I don't know if he's searching for punishment or redemption. And then Gutenberg took away the thing that most defined him. I watch him fight to hold on to that world and that purpose, clinging like his life depends on it. He's lost and angry and terrified.\n\nIsaac isn't the only one in pain. I lost most of my career. I lost clients and colleagues I worked with for years. Lena was forced to kill Deifilia, the only blood-family she's ever known. Lena has been spending far more time in her tree than she used to, and grief blunts her joy. Whether that grief is her own or Isaac's, or even mine, I couldn't say.\n\nI worry about them both, but if Isaac continues on like this, with the depression eating away at him, his pain could smother Lena as well.\n\nIn some ways, his reaction tracks closely to the grief and anger that follow an unexpected amputation. So far, he's turned most of that pain inward or tried to focus it through action. His tunnel vision keeps him pursuing a vanished child and a thread of hope.\n\nIt was a mistake to bring him to Euphemia. The aftereffects of her song have driven his loss deeper, like shrapnel seeking his heart. I want to help Jeneta, too, but not at the cost of Isaac's life.\n\nI can't force him to get help. I can't stand by and watch him self-destruct. And I can't leave, not without tearing Lena apart. I love her, but that love chains the three of us together, and if Isaac's downward spiral goes on...\n\nHe bargained his blood and Lena's for a chance. What was he thinking? And what else will he sacrifice?\n\nIf things don't improve soon, I may call Jeff and Helen and have them lock Isaac in a damn kennel until he gets his head together.\n\n\u2014From the personal journal of Doctor Nidhi Shah\n\nI had made enemies of an entire species in exchange for a single vial of blood.\n\nHow long before they discovered the theft? Whatever alert had triggered the release of the guard within the satellite had likely signaled the vampires on Earth as well. They had an impressive security database, which presumably included records of known Porters and ex-Porters. All they had to do was match the video and scan from the satellite to their information on Isaac Vainio.\n\nTrying to explain Mahefa's part in it wouldn't change the evidence. Whatever my reasons, I had broken into their secret satellite. Simply knowing the thing existed was probably enough to earn me a death sentence.\n\nIt was almost enough to distract me from our headfirst dive back to Earth.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" My helmet muffled the wind rushing past.\n\n\"Copper River.\" Mahefa sounded as happy as a kid going to Disney World. A drink of dryad blood would be the cherry on top of his bloody sundae.\n\n\"Not yet. First you're taking me to Rome.\" The bastard had made me a target for every vampire in the world. The least he could do was give me a lift.\n\n\"Do I look like a fucking taxi cab?\" he snarled.\n\n\"How do I know the blood will work?\" I shot back. \"Once I've tested it, then we can go home.\"\n\nI half-expected him to drop me. It would be a simpler death than waiting around for the vampires. At this speed, I'd probably fall another hour, but I wouldn't have time to feel the pain of impact.\n\n\"Sure, why not?\" he said cheerfully, his annoyance seemingly forgotten. We veered to the right. \"I haven't been to Italy in years. It's a beautiful country, full of beautiful, delicious women.\"\n\nLower and lower we flew over the blackness of the Atlantic. My stomach lurched as Mahefa flattened out his path, skimming the waves so closely the spray hit my helmet. We had slowed a bit, but the air still battered my suit and helmet, and the harness felt like it was about to sever my legs.\n\nWe sped across the water for another hour, with nothing but the waves below and the stars overhead. Monotony dulled my thoughts. I was half asleep when Mahefa struck my shoulder and pointed to lights illuminating the coastline ahead. \"Wake up, and welcome to Ostia Beach!\"\n\nHe unclipped my harness from his, and I went from flying to falling. It was like being on a swing set and feeling the chains snap. I braced my head with my hands and doubled over. The first time I struck the water, I bounced like a stone skipping across a lake. The second time, my arm and shoulder sank beneath the surface. I flipped heels-over-head and ended up underwater.\n\nMahefa hauled me to the surface. \"Better to be seen swimming than flying. You can swim, yes?\"\n\nYou didn't grow up in the northern part of the U.P. without learning to swim. I pulled free of his grip. \"Shouldn't you have asked before you dropped me in the ocean?\"\n\nHotels, nightclubs, and bars illuminated the beach ahead. Folded umbrellas lined the sand like soldiers at attention, guarding the nightlife against marine invasion.\n\nBy the time I was close enough to shore for my feet to touch bottom, I could hardly feel my legs, and my arms and chest felt like they were on fire. I staggered toward dry sand, one hand fumbling uselessly with the helmet seal.\n\n\"Be careful with that,\" Mahefa snapped. \"It's practically an antique.\"\n\nI considered shooting him, but firing a waterlogged lightning gun while soaking wet probably wasn't the wisest idea. It wouldn't be the dumbest one I had ever had, either. But that said more about me than it did about the idea in question.\n\nI finally got the helmet off. The beach smelled of salt and sunscreen. I peeled the suit from my body and grabbed my phone.\n\n\"Damn.\" The screen was cracked. I doubted the warranty covered getting tossed around a satellite by a starving vampire.\n\nAn older couple waved as they strolled past, probably thinking we were out for some late-night scuba diving.\n\n\"Where do you need to go to talk to your corpse?\" Mahefa asked.\n\n\"The Basilica of St. John Lateran.\" But not like this. My clothes were wrinkled and reeked of sweat. Now that I was back on solid ground, exhaustion was battering me from all sides. I needed a bed, a good meal, and a hot shower.\n\nMost of all, I desperately needed to pee.\n\nMahefa accompanied me only long enough to deposit his blood in the hotel fridge. He examined each vial closely, opened one, and used a Swiss Army Knife to cut a frozen chip from the end.\n\n\"What's that for?\"\n\nAfter licking the blood from the blade, he sealed the vial and returned it to the fridge. \"Blood magic is all about absorbing the strength of the donor. In this case, the vampire's strength and endurance. As long as I'm here, I'm going to party like the undead.\" As he left, he called over his shoulder, \"You understand what will happen to you if you touch a single drop of my stock, yes?\"\n\n\"Whatever. Just be back by morning.\" I collapsed on the bed, kicked off my shoes, and reached for my cell phone before remembering it was dead. Groaning, I rolled out of bed and stumbled over to grab the phone on the desk. Lena would be asleep in her oak, so I called Nidhi. She answered after the second ring. She sounded alert and awake, despite it being past midnight in Copper River.\n\n\"It's Isaac. Are you and Lena all right?\"\n\n\"We're fine. What the hell have you done, Isaac? Lena said you sold her blood?\"\n\nA dozen excuses and justifications clambered through my thoughts. I stomped them down. \"I did,\" I said flatly. After a long silence, I added, \"I may have also pissed off some vampires.\"\n\n\"How many vampires?\"\n\n\"I can't give you an exact number, but I'd estimate roughly... all of them. You should probably stay with Lena until I get back. If they can't find me, they might come after one of you. I'm sorry, Nidhi. If I'd known this would put the two of you in danger\u2014\"\n\n\"Isaac, stop.\"\n\n\"I got the blood. I'm about twenty miles from the tomb of the man who can answer our questions about Meridiana.\" I rubbed my eyes. \"No, wait. Don't stay with Lena. The vampires know where I live. The two of you should get a hotel room somewhere. I promise I'll find a way to\u2014\"\n\n\"Isaac, Elne Cathedral in France was destroyed tonight. Two Porters were killed, along with six civilians. Eleven others were hospitalized.\"\n\nMy fingers tightened around the handset. \"Was Jeneta involved?\"\n\n\"All I have are the public news reports and secondhand rumors. From the photos, it looks like a sinkhole swallowed the entire cathedral, and then a bomb leveled anything that remained. They're calling it terrorism, but if the Porters were there...\"\n\n\"Elne Cathedral.\" Fatigue blurred my memory, but I remembered the name from one of the books I'd skimmed at the archdiocese in Green Bay. \"Miro Bonfill.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"He was a friend of Gerbert d'Aurillac. Probably a mentor as well. There's a stone at Elne\u2014was a stone\u2014with their names carved into it.\" Nobody knew what purpose it served. It couldn't have been a magical artifact, or else the Porters would have confiscated it years ago.\n\n\"You think I should come home and let the Porters take it from here,\" I said. If Meridiana was going after sites connected to d'Aurillac, there was a good chance she'd be watching his tomb as well.\n\nNidhi said nothing.\n\n\"Answer me one question. Given everything we know about the Porters, everything we've learned about Gutenberg and his history, do you trust them to take care of Meridiana? Are you certain there's nothing I could accomplish here that they can't?\" I rested my head against the back of the chair. \"Tell me that there's no chance of me digging up some fact the Porters missed or making a connection that might help us save Jeneta. Tell me there's nothing I can do here, and I'll come home.\"\n\nNidhi hesitated. \"I ought to lie to you.\"\n\n\"Probably.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"I also know that with your magic gone, a part of you feels as though you have nothing left to lose. I worry that you'll continue to take more dangerous risks.\"\n\n\"That's not why\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" she said calmly. \"Your life has changed tremendously over the past year. Magic or no, you have a great deal to lose. And so do we. Remember that.\"\n\nShe hung up before I could answer.\n\nI left the hotel hours later, clothed in knee-length shorts and a bright blue T-shirt from the gift shop in the lobby. A shoulder bag with the hotel logo held my clothes, shock-gun, and stolen blood. I bought an enormous croissant and a caff\u00e8 latte on the way out.\n\nI found Mahefa sleeping on a bench outside, nursing what looked like a grande-sized magical hangover. When he opened his eyes, blackened lines spread like lightning from the irises: charred blood vessels, inflamed by whatever power he had burned last night. He snatched the caff\u00e8 latte from my hand without a word and downed the whole thing before we were halfway to the metro station.\n\nThe subway got us to Rome, and from there we hiked to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the resting place of Pope Sylvester II. What was left of him, at any rate. When his tomb was opened during the seventeenth century, Gerbert d'Aurillac's body had crumbled to dust like a staked vampire. I just hoped enough of that dust remained for us to communicate.\n\nWhen we reached the basilica, I had to stop to absorb the sheer grandeur of the place. Reading about the cathedral hadn't prepared me to stand on the stone steps looking up at pillars eight times my height. A statue of Christ stood atop the highest point of the fa\u00e7ade. To either side, statues of various saints looked out at the tourists.\n\n\"While we're young?\" Mahefa muttered.\n\n\"Right.\" I scanned the crowd for anything or anyone out of the ordinary, wishing I had Smudge along to warn of danger. I saw nothing unusual, nor did anyone appear to be paying undue attention to us.\n\nMahefa was already heading inside. I followed, then stopped again once I passed through the entrance. \"I have got to start traveling more.\"\n\nI gawked openly, trying to absorb 1700 years' worth of history. Every inch of the cathedral was a work of art, from the intricate patterns of the stone tile floor to the fluted pillars and statues on either side of the nave. Gold leaf covered sculptures on the ceiling, which had to be a hundred feet high. Framed paintings hung on the walls above giant statues of the apostles.\n\nReluctantly, I quickened my pace and made my way past tourists posing for photographs or reading travel guides on their phones. A small crowd had already gathered around the cenotaph of Pope Sylvester II.\n\nMarble framed a stone inscription and a sculpture depicting Sylvester II. I watched an older man press forward to touch the stone. According to legend, the monument wept to foretell the death of a pope. If the stone was merely damp, it predicted the death of a bishop or cardinal.\n\nI pulled the blood from my bag and carefully unscrewed the lid. Chilled air rose from the opening.\n\n\"Dumbass. You didn't let it thaw overnight?\" Mahefa snatched the canister away from me. He took a test tube from his shirt pocket and popped the rubber stopper loose.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" I whispered. We were attracting some very odd looks.\n\nMahefa spread his arms in mockery of a crucifix. \"This is my blood, which I give up for you.\" He poured the contents of the tube over the frozen blood like a dessert topping. \"Blood and saliva both, actually. They help release the magic. Relax, this isn't the first time I've whipped up a mixed drink for a mundane.\"\n\nPeople had begun to move away from us. I hoped none of them called security.\n\n\"Don't drink it all at once. You don't want to overdose. I'd hate to have to put a stake in your heart after all this.\"\n\nI brought the canister to my lips, at which point I discovered another problem. The interior was cold as dry ice. Mahefa's blood had frozen to the rest, and none of it was budging. I cupped the mouth and exhaled onto the blood, trying to warm it. When that failed, I whacked the bottom with one hand until a dark red cylinder began to slowly slide free.\n\nAn older couple stared in horror and disgust. I don't know if they were more upset about the noise I was making in church or the contents of my thermos. I offered them a weak smile. \"Cherry smoothie. I must have left it in the freezer too long.\"\n\nThe woman said something in Italian, and they both turned back to the papal cenotaph. Mindful of Mahefa's warning about overdosing, I brought the frozen bloodsicle to my mouth and bit down.\n\nI don't know what was worse: the metallic syrup that coated my mouth and tongue like paint as it melted, or the icy pain that started in my teeth and raced like electricity up my nerves, giving me the worst case of brain freeze I could remember. I hadn't thought to bring anything to wash down the blood. I wondered if they had a font for holy water, and whether anyone would object to me using it as a drinking fountain. Though given that I was trying to absorb vampire magic, using holy water as a chaser probably wasn't a great idea.\n\n\"How is it?\" Mahefa whispered.\n\n\"Foul.\" I forced myself to take another bite and did my best to keep from vomiting. \"How much do I have to eat before it starts working?\"\n\n\"Depends on body mass and sensitivity. You'll need more than those two swallows, though.\"\n\nI had just finished my fourth bite of blood slushee when magic jolted my bones. My gasp drew more annoyed glares. I made my way to a wooden bench, sat down, and closed my eyes, concentrating on the whispers in my mind. They were too faint to understand, but they were real.\n\nI chomped more blood, swallowing so quickly I started to gag. I covered my mouth with both hands until the coughing fit passed, then licked the melting droplets from my palm. The taste was no less repulsive, but the return of magic after a month of being unable to reach into a single book overwhelmed all other sensations.\n\n\"I think he likes it,\" Mahefa said dryly.\n\nWith libriomancy, I needed to concentrate, to deliberately forge a connection between my will and the belief anchored within the books. But aside from an ashen aftertaste and what felt like the start of heartburn, the blood's magic was effortless. It was like the blood had reawakened something dormant within me.\n\nMy coughs turned to giddy laughter. Through tear-blurred eyes, I saw a man approach, heard him ask if I was all right. Mahefa waved him off. By now, half the people here probably thought I was stoned out of my mind.\n\nReluctantly, I sealed the canister and tucked the rest of the blood away. I felt more awake and alert than I had for weeks.\n\n\"Good stuff, no?\"\n\nI nodded. Despicable he might be, but Mahefa had delivered exactly what he promised. He took my elbow and guided me back to the marker of Pope Sylvester II.\n\n\"Keep your eyes open,\" I said. The whispers grew clearer as the blood continued to pump magic through my body. I heard multiple voices now, a veritable choir of dead popes and other ghosts. And not one of them spoke English.\n\n\"Dammit.\" I didn't realize I had spoken out loud until a new wave of glares turned my way. \"Sorry. Mi dispiace.\"\n\nWhat language would d'Aurillac speak? Latin? French? I knew several romance languages well enough to get by, but the French of today was very different than that spoken a thousand years ago. \"Gerbert d'Aurillac?\"\n\nThe response was incomprehensible. I felt their disorientation, but the words were foreign. After so long, was anything of Gerbert d'Aurillac even left for me to contact?\n\nMy mouth had gone dry as cotton. I ran my tongue over my teeth, tasting the faint traces of blood in the crevasses where tooth and gum met. My fingers tightened around the stolen blood. If I consumed it all, would I better understand the voices of the dead? Would I be able to distinguish d'Aurillac from the rest?\n\n\"Je suis Isaac Vainio,\" I whispered. Modern French might be too different for d'Aurillac to understand, but maybe he would at least recognize the language. \"O\u00fa est Gerbert d'Aurillac?\"\n\nNothing but confusion and fear. Latin might be a better choice, assuming these were true ghosts. I couldn't even be certain I was communing with the afterlife. This could just as easily be a hallucination brought on by bad blood.\n\nI thought back to Nicholas, the ghost-talker who had communicated with a murdered Porter earlier this year. Nicholas hadn't spoken in English. But when he first made contact, he had described not the Porter's words, but his emotions.\n\nEver since my \"session\" with Euphemia, I had been trying to wall away my fear. But perhaps fear would work where words failed. I opened those walls to all who might be listening, remembering the terror of a woman in bronze dragging me down into a world ruled by the dead. \"Meridiana is here.\"\n\nOne voice grew louder, honed by despair and grief. I concentrated, separating him from the noise. \"Gerbert d'Aurillac?\"\n\nWariness supplanted fear. He neither recognized nor trusted me, but at least he heard me. From him, I felt the pain of betrayal. His emotions carried flashes of thought and memory. Hopelessness showed me a teacher and scientist who found himself thrust instead into a world of politics. He had watched so many allies die or turn against him. His fears stemmed from those memories of betrayal: was I a man, or the Devil sent to tempt him?\n\nFor a moment, I saw his dreams. I saw a world in which science and magic and religion were one and the same, tools to better understand the mind of God. I saw him happily sketching out a clever poetic puzzle, or working with a friend to find the formula for calculating the area of a circle.\n\n\"Pi times radius squared,\" I said automatically, visualizing the equation in my head.\n\nFear vanished, replaced by joy and disbelief. Gerbert d'Aurillac, the man who had helped bring Arabic numerals to Europe, who had designed an abacus capable of near-infinite calculations, had never uncovered the concept of pi.\n\n\"Volume equals four-thirds pi times radius cubed,\" I said, sensing his next question.\n\nSilent laughter followed. I felt his delight that humanity had mastered such knowledge and understanding of God's most perfect shape. He pulled the value for pi from my thoughts and marveled at its mysteries.\n\nThis was who Gerbert d'Aurillac had been. Not a politician, nor a master of dark magic as legend once painted him, but a man of learning and dreams. A man who had lived to see those dreams broken.\n\nGerbert had hoped to bring about the renaissance of the Holy Roman Empire, an empire built upon knowledge and wisdom and faith. Like him, Meridiana dreamed of an empire, but her ambitions were grander than anything Gerbert could have imagined.\n\nI showed him what I could of my encounters with Meridiana. How she had first become aware of Jeneta Aboderin when I asked for Jeneta's help in fighting off an infestation within Lena's tree. I remembered Jeneta screaming in fear as darkness and death reached through her e-reader, devouring her magic and seeking to do the same to her.\n\nI was the one who had brought Jeneta and her power to Meridiana's attention. \"What is she?\" I asked. \"Where is the mask, the bronze head?\"\n\nConfusion. He knew of no mask.\n\n\"Who was Meridiana?\"\n\nThe name conjured the image of a child, a little girl named Anna, twin sister to the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. Gerbert's memories carried fear and regret, even love.\n\n\"I don't understand.\" I had read only a single reference to Otto III's twin, a girl who had died before her first birthday.\n\nGerbert's memories gave lie to the history. When Anna was born, the navel cord had encircled her throat like a noose. Her tiny body lay blue and dying, despite Gerbert's prayers. When God's mercy failed to save the child, he turned to magic.\n\nMillennium-old guilt and regret made me stagger. Gerbert knew God had chosen to let Anna die, but in his arrogance, he had ignored God's will. He conjured spirits from the air\u2014jinn\u2014and sent them into Anna's lungs, forcing her to breathe. His power warmed her blood and restored life to her body.\n\nHer spirit was another matter, one Gerbert wouldn't discover for years to come.\n\nAnna grew to be a plain child, smaller than her brother, with slurred speech that fooled many into thinking her dimwitted. But she was oh so clever. She often spoke to the shadows, preferring her imagined companions to family and playmates. I could feel Gerbert's fondness for the girl he had saved, his joy at her childlike questions and unexpected insights.\n\nAnna was raised in the background of her brother, all but invisible. By the time Otto III was crowned king of Germany at the age of three, Anna had begun to recite lines of age-old poetry or repeat seemingly-random phrases in Latin or Greek. Gerbert dismissed these things as signs of Anna's eager mind and brilliant memory. He assumed she was merely mimicking what she had heard.\n\nAs the twins grew, Anna remained close to their mother Theophanu, who served as regent. Anna watched and whispered, sharing advice both keen and ruthless. In time, her quiet intensity and unnatural knowledge came to disturb even her mother. Anna's demeanor was more that of an aged empress and scholar than a young girl. Knowing Gerbert's skill in things magical, Theophanu begged him to help her daughter.\n\nHe began by preparing a detailed horoscope. Initially, he assumed he had made a mistake. He had misread a chart, or perhaps his algebra contained an error. Gerbert repeated his calculations. When they returned the same results, he consulted with a former instructor in Spain, who confirmed his reading several months later.\n\nAnna had been born a medium, able to commune with the dead. With her strength, she could have heard their voices alongside her mother's while still in the womb.\n\nGerbert had brought Anna back from the dead on the day of her birth, but she hadn't returned alone. She had clung instinctively to those that comforted her: not her living parents, but the spirits of her ancestors. Her horoscope revealed fragmented lives and histories, all of which Anna had incorporated into her own being. Her mind was a monstrous patchwork of life and death and power.\n\nGerbert tried to save her, to heal her scarred soul and pacify the dead. For a time, he thought he was succeeding.\n\nAnna had absorbed the lessons of politics and empire. Watching her brother struggle to expand his kingdom, she came to believe herself better suited to rule. She had the power of her magic and the experience of the dead.\n\nAt the age of twelve, Otto led a campaign to retake the city of Brandenburg. Gerbert couldn't be certain, but he thought it was this defeat that pushed Anna to begin laying the groundwork for the murder of her brother and her own ascension to power.\n\nShe began with Gerbert. In all of Rome, his magic was second only to Anna's own. But to truly take advantage of Gerbert's potential, he needed to be moved into a new role.\n\nShe began by stirring instability in the papacy, encouraging the tensions that resulted in the torture and removal of Pope John XVI, who later came to be known as antipope. His successor was Anna's cousin Bruno of Carinthia, who sat as pope for only a year before disease\u2014or poison\u2014took him. With his death, young Anna cleared the way for her mentor to ascend to the papal throne.\n\nBut Gerbert had taken notice of her machinations. When confronted, she confided her plans to Gerbert, whom she had come to love as a father. She planned to make him the spiritual leader of her empire. With Gerbert's help, she would succeed where her brother and her ancestors had failed. Not only would she restore the Holy Roman Empire, she would unite Heaven and Earth, the living and the dead, and rule over both worlds as Empress Meridiana I.\n\nI caught Gerbert's bitter appreciation for the wordplay. \"Meridiana,\" from the Latin for midday, that moment when morning was left behind and the world began its journey toward nightfall. The beginning of the end.\n\n\"How did you stop her?\" I whispered.\n\nWhen I saw what Gerbert had built, I could have wept. I had seen armillary spheres before, series of metal rings and bands designed to show the orbits of the planets and the positions of the stars, but this was a masterpiece.\n\nA bronze model of the Earth sat at the center, affixed to a slender rod through the poles. A series of vertical and horizontal rings and bands gave the impression of a spherical cage. Curved rods held polished metal marbles representing the moon and five other planets.\n\nThrough his memories, I saw the working of the sphere, though I didn't understand it all. I recognized the horizontal rings that represented circles of latitude. The flat band intersecting the equatorial ring was broken into the twelve signs of the zodiac. The armillary sphere could be adjusted to show the motion of the Earth and moon, the movement of the stars, or both.\n\nHe must have used magic to achieve that level of detail: etchings of the constellations so precise they appeared alive, fittings with less than a hair's width between them. The whole thing was perhaps eighteen inches in diameter, and rested within a plain wooden cradle. A brass sighting tube jutted from the sphere like a drinking straw.\n\nGerbert lured Anna with news of an armillary sphere so perfect it could be enchanted to reveal the mind of God. They ventured outside, where he had aligned the sighting tube and brought his metal stars into symmetry with the Heavens.\n\nHe had constructed a model of the known universe, lacking only one thing: a true model of Gerbert d'Aurillac's universe required the presence of God.\n\nAnna was that final piece. Gerbert invited her to look through the sighting tube, not from the bottom, as a mere mortal gazing up at the sky, but from the top, like God peering down at his creation. When she placed her eye to the end of the tube, her soul was drawn into that bronze universe, bringing completion to Gerbert's masterpiece. The entire model began to move on its own. Planets rotated through their orbits. Stars began their inexorable seasonal journeys.\n\nMeridiana wanted the universe. Gerbert had given it to her.\n\nShare Your Comments About Our Article:\n\n\u2002\"JACKSONVILLE COACH SUSPENDED FOR ALLEGED USE OF MAGIC,\"\n\n\u2002by Laura Mckinsey\n\n\u2002The Jacksonville Journal is not responsible for the views expressed in the comments section of our articles. We reserve the right to delete any comments that violate our terms of service.\n\n\u2002\"This whole story is bullshit! Magic? What is this, the 18th century? Even if you believed the accusations, they can't fire Coach Lutz without proof. That's the very definition of a witch hunt! So much for innocent until proven guilty.\"\n\n\u2014J. Davies: August 8, 2:15 p.m.\n\n\u2002\"J. Davies\u2014Did you even read the article? Nobody's been fired. Lutz was placed on administrative leave with pay while they investigate the accusations. The police have three different witnesses. What if three people had witnessed him molesting kids? Would you still want him around your son or daughter? Shut up and let the system work.\"\n\n\u2014WildcatsFan31: August 8, 2:44 p.m.\n\n\u2002\"Gandalf would make an awesome football coach, especially on defense. NONE SHALL PASS!\"\n\n\u2014FrodoLives: August 8, 3:51 p.m.\n\n\u2002\"I've read some shoddy stories in the Jacksonville Urinal before, but this is the worst. McKinsey should be fired, along with whatever editor approved this garbage. It's yellow journalism at its worst, nothing but sensationalism at the cost of a man's career and reputation. There are no facts, no proof, nothing but rumors. Shame on you all!\"\n\n\u2014Carla Clark: August 8, 4:01 p.m.\n\n\u2002\"The mainstream media is a dinosaur.\"\n\n\u2014DFG: August 8, 4:22 p.m.\n\n\u2002This comment has been flagged for review. Click Here to Show Flagged Comments.\n\n\u2002\"@Carla Clark\u2014Did you see the video of the last game? It's on YouTube. Look at the 5:02 mark and watch the pass Johnson makes to Hayes. They say the wind made that ball shift direction, but I was at the game. THERE WAS NO WIND.\"\n\n\u2014T.L., Former Referee: August 8, 4:50 p.m.\n\n\u2002\"Coach Lutz should sue the district, the parents, the school board, the newspaper, and everyone else spreading these lies.\"\n\n\u2014Diane Rodgers: August 8, 6:24 p.m.\n\n\u2002\"Check out the YouTube video I made: Hitler weighs in on accusations of football witchcraft.\"\n\n\u2014Steven P: August 8, 6:41 p.m.\n\n\u2002This comment has been flagged for review. Click Here to Show Flagged Comments.\n\n\u2002\"I don't know about Coach Lutz, but I'm pretty sure Mrs. Black who teaches seventh grade math is a zombie.\"\n\n\u2014Jason: August 8, 8:40 p.m.\n\nGerbert d'Aurillac was too late to undo the damage Meridiana had begun. She had manipulated kings and queens, bishops and popes, planting the seeds for what would come to be known as the Dark Ages. And though d'Aurillac could never prove it, he believed her final act had been to curse him for his betrayal. Or perhaps it was God punishing him for his mistakes and his arrogance.\n\nHis life began to crumble. King Robert of France burned two of Gerbert's students as heretics. A rebellion drove Gerbert and Otto III from Rome. Rumors spread that Gerbert d'Aurillac was a sorcerer in league with the devil.\n\n\"Meridiana is searching for the sphere,\" I said. She hadn't been able to free herself from her metal prison, but nothing was eternal. Over time, Gerbert's magic would have weakened enough for her to begin building her army of the dead, and eventually, to reach out and take Jeneta.\n\nThrough Gerbert's memories, I watched him prepare a poem in careful Latin. It was a work that took three months to finish, a puzzle with layer upon layer of meaning. He laid the letters out in the shape of a triangle. Within the triangle was a wheel of text. A second, smaller circle sat within the first. A cross divided both circles, and three additional lines connected the inner circle to the outer one.\n\nWhen at last the poem was complete, he removed the bronze sphere from its wooden frame and set it atop the poem. He spoke to the sphere as if Meridiana\u2014as if Anna\u2014might yet hear him. He prayed over her for a full day and night, then recited an incantation I couldn't understand.\n\nThe sphere melted into the text.\n\nI had dissolved magical items into books using libriomancy, transforming them back into potential magical energy, but this was different. Both the prison and Meridiana had survived the transition. Gerbert had simply transferred the sphere to somewhere else, or perhaps transformed it into the text itself. A prison within a prison.\n\nIt was an amazing work of magic, and I would have loved to understand how he had done it. I pushed the yearning aside, and tried to focus on Gerbert d'Aurillac. \"What did you do with the poem that held the sphere?\"\n\n\"He sent it away,\" came a familiar voice.\n\nOh, shit. I tore myself away from the cenotaph. I blinked, trying to focus on the real world. People were whispering and backing away. To my left, Mahefa rummaged through his bag of blood.\n\nJeneta Aboderin stood in the center of the aisle about twenty feet away, flanked by two large bodyguards. One was clad head to toe in an emerald green burqa. A matching veil hid the eyes from view. The other was clearly inhuman, eight feet tall and covered in orange fur. Some kind of sasquatch?\n\n\"He's a yeren, not a sasquatch.\" The unspoken \"Duh\" beneath her words was so familiar, I felt an instant of hope that she had somehow thrown off Meridiana on her own. Hope that died when I saw the arrogance and disdain in her expression.\n\nJeneta looked much as she had the last time I saw her. Her hair hung in tightly braided cornrows. Blue polish on her nails matched the plastic frames of her sunglasses. She had lost weight. Her cheekbones were more defined beneath her brown skin. She wore loose cargo pants with oversized pockets, and clutched a black e-reader with both hands.\n\nI glared at Mahefa. \"I told you to keep an eye out.\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Mahefa. \"But I spotted this hot little bambolina, and then your friend showed up with her pet gorilla, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop talking.\" Jeneta tapped her screen, and Mahefa's left hand turned to stone. The canister he had been holding slipped from his fingers and spilled blood across the floor.\n\nThe only person I'd ever seen perform magic like that was Johannes Gutenberg, and even Gutenberg needed the physical book.\n\n\"What the hell did you do?\" Mahefa's fingers were perfectly sculpted obsidian. His arm muscles tightened from the weight.\n\n\"Get everyone out of here.\" I kept my voice calm and tried not to do anything remotely threatening.\n\n\"Fuck this.\" Mahefa gripped his bag in his good hand and bolted for the closest exit. Neither Jeneta nor I tried to stop him.\n\nI studied Jeneta's shrouded companion. Beneath the veil, her scalp bulged and shifted like boiling molasses. If this wasn't the gorgon who had helped Jeneta break into the library in Beijing, I was betting it was another of her kin. All she had to do was pull back her veil, and this church would have a lot more statues.\n\n\"Where'd you get the muscle?\" I nodded toward the yeren and the gorgon.\n\n\"I made them.\"\n\nWhispers and questions surrounded us. The tourists hadn't switched over to full-on panic yet. Few of them had seen or understood the transformation of Mahefa's hand, and the yeren was alien enough that they weren't yet certain how to react. For now, they kept a safe distance and snapped pictures.\n\n\"Jeneta...\" I had spent the past month searching for her, and here she was, ready to kill me with a flick of her fingers. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nShe looked around. \"I expected to find more of your Porters here.\"\n\n\"The Porters lost you at the airport. Your parents haven't stopped searching for you.\" I hoped Jeneta could hear me, that she understood we hadn't given up. \"I'll find a way to fix this.\"\n\nShe drummed her fingers on the e-reader's screen. \"Do I need to turn your limbs to stone to get your attention? I could transform you to gold or a pillar of salt. I've an entire library of possibilities at my fingertips.\"\n\nI fell back on the oldest defense I knew: smart-assery. \"When I get home, I'm firing my travel agent. I specifically asked for a monster-free vacation. All I wanted was a few days to relax and enjoy my retirement. You do know I'm retired, right?\"\n\nJeneta and her monsters moved closer, stepping in eerie synchronicity that reminded me of the children of Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time, bouncing balls and jumping rope in perfect unison.\n\n\"What have you learned, Isaac?\"\n\n\"Well, the basilica's fa\u00e7ade was built by Alessandro Galilei in the eighteenth century, and\u2014\"\n\nThe yeren growled, a sound so low I could feel it. More and more people were scurrying from the church. Those who remained gawked like this was some new form of street theater. How long before the police showed up, or had Meridiana taken steps to make sure no one stopped her from interrogating me?\n\n\"Where did he send the poem?\" she continued. \"Not to his colleague in Beijing. Nor to Miro Bonfill. He certainly didn't hide it here.\"\n\n\"Why don't you ask him yourself?\"\n\nShe made a brushing-off motion with one hand, a gesture both regal and utterly foreign to Jeneta. \"He won't speak to me, or to anyone under my control. Dead for a thousand years, and still he thwarts me. But he shared his poem with you. I can see the design in your thoughts.\"\n\nOther voices tugged at my awareness: fragmented whispers that seemed to come from Meridiana's monsters. The yeren's lips were pulled into a taut snarl. Even if that muzzle was capable of producing human speech, there was no way it was speaking Mandarin without moving its jaw or\u2014\n\nThe realization was like ash in the back of my throat. The blood I had consumed let me hear the dead, and whoever these two people used to be, Meridiana had killed them to create her inhuman guardians. She had likely picked up the yeren during her attack on the Beijing library. I wondered if he had been one of the students of Bi Sheng.\n\nThe gorgon\u2014rather, the woman whose body Meridiana had transformed into a gorgon\u2014called to me in English. Her name was Deanna Fuentes-McDowell, and she had been a Porter. She told me how Meridiana had tracked her like an animal, following the scent of her magic and exhausting her until she fell, then turning her body into a vessel for one of her ghosts.\n\nI started to reach for my shock-gun. The gorgon touched a slender hand to the corner of her veil. I spread my hands and did my best to look harmless.\n\n\"Now that we're all acquainted, it's time for you to choose,\" said Meridiana. \"Help me, and I'll restore you in return. I'll remove the spell Gutenberg carved into you.\"\n\n\"Sure, why not? That kind of bargain always ends well.\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes, and once again, I saw flashes of the teenager who had gotten so exasperated while trying to talk to me about poetry.\n\nThe yeren leaped into the air, coming to land atop the head and shoulders of a statue. His next jump took him past me, cutting off any escape. The impact cracked the tile floor.\n\n\"An angel waits for you outside,\" whispered the dead Porter, Deanna.\n\nI could tell she was trying to help, but I had no idea what she meant. I was standing in front of a would-be destroyer of worlds, and the ghost decided it was time to play it cryptic?\n\nOne of Deanna's memories floated like smoke across my vision. I saw Jeneta standing in a Porter archive. I didn't recognize the facility, but the layout and contents were unmistakably ours. Deanna lay powerless and exhausted on the ground. Meridiana used her e-reader to pull up a book on Greek mythology. I saw her reach into the screen and fling something toward Deanna, like an inky cobweb made of words.\n\nThat was how Jeneta had transformed her servants. Instead of reaching into the text and pulling out a fully-formed object, she had seized the pattern of belief, using it as a template to reshape living bodies. It was as if she had inverted libriomancy.\n\nMeridiana reached out, fingers curved like claws. I doubled over. My stomach convulsed, and I coughed up blood. The same blood I had swallowed to speak with Gerbert d'Aurillac. \"You think to hide your conversations with the dead from me? Your thoughts are as simple to read as a children's book, Isaac Vainio.\"\n\nThe whispers in my head fell away. Gerbert d'Aurillac shared one last memory, and then he was gone.\n\nI continued to heave. My mouth tasted of blood and ash.\n\nThe sight of me puking blood pretty well emptied the church. By the time I managed to stand, we were alone. My skin was clammy, and my stomach spasmed. \"I finally get some magic back, and you had to steal it away.\"\n\nIf Meridiana could read my thoughts, I'd just have to act without thinking. Lena would say that was one of my strengths. I concentrated on d'Aurillac's final message, letting that memory fill my mind.\n\nMeridiana gave an anguished cry as she saw Gerbert d'Aurillac holding his poem to the flames. \"Damn him. He didn't send the poem away. He destroyed it.\"\n\nI was already moving. I lunged at the gorgon and seized her veil. With my eyes squeezed shut, I pulled hard. Cloth tore in my grip. Angry hissing and the snapping of tiny, fanged jaws told me I had successfully unveiled one of the most dangerous creatures in Greek mythology. Way to go, Isaac.\n\nI turned my back on the gorgon to face the yeren. The yeren who had maneuvered around behind me, putting himself directly in the path of the gorgon's gaze. He had one enormous paw over his eyes, like an oversized \"See no evil\" monkey. I yanked out my shock-gun and pulled the trigger. Lightning crackled over his body, and he fell to the ground with a whimper.\n\nI sent my next shot into the ceiling. The gold leaf conducted the charge, and the light momentarily blinded everyone who remained. Droplets of molten gold rained down, searing my skin like acid. I hoped Jeneta would forgive me for any scars, but hopefully the pain would distract her for a few seconds.\n\nI heard shouts behind me, but didn't dare turn to see what had happened. I sprinted toward the closest exit, emerging into a crowded stone courtyard where the church walls joined the Lateran Palace.\n\nThe crowd's panic and confusion would give me a little cover. It looked like the commotion had caused at least one accident in the street beyond. Traffic had come to a halt. So much for catching a taxi.\n\nI slowed when I realized most of the people weren't looking at the church itself, but at the roof. A large figure wielding a double-edged broadsword stood atop the church between the statues. Broad wings stretched from his shoulders. He jumped from the edge, and his wings turned the fall into a glide. Long, ragged red hair framed a face twisted with righteous fury. He swooped past me, cutting me off from the street.\n\nAn angel waits outside. This was what Deanna had tried to warn me about. I shot at the angel, but the lightning died before it touched him. I feinted left, then sprinted to the right, keeping close to the wall of the palace. On foot, his wings slowed him down as he fought through the crowd to try to intercept me. My feet hit the blacktop. I wove between parked cars. Two seconds later, I heard the slap of his sandals behind me.\n\nWhen I reached the other side of the road, I turned the shock-gun up to level six and blasted the blacktop directly in front of him.\n\nThe angel was moving too fast to stop. His sandals sank into half-melted tar, and he fell hard. His sword slipped away and clanged against the sidewalk.\n\nI cringed at the sight of so many cameras and cell phones. Hopefully I wouldn't end up on the news or online. I turned a corner and searched for a place to hide. I didn't have much time before\u2014\n\nI didn't see who cast the spell, but I felt it encase my body like quickly hardening mud. The road swelled toward me as if I was falling, though I had stopped moving. I reached out to catch my balance. My arms were little more than swollen stubs of slick flesh. My shouts of alarm emerged as gurgling cries.\n\nI fell to all fours. My clothing tightened around my shrinking body, turning a bright orange. My skin was the same shade. Weirdest of all was the sensation of a tail growing out of my backside.\n\nA gloved hand scooped me from the pavement and dropped me unceremoniously into a jacket pocket that smelled like spearmint gum. \"Don't struggle.\"\n\nLike I had a choice. I tried to climb out, but the swift, uneven strides of my captor bounced his jacket against his body with every step. I squirmed and twisted until my tail was curled comfortably around my body, then settled down to wait. I wasn't dead, and the way today was going, that was probably more than I had a right to expect.\n\nA crack of light appeared overhead, and oversized fingers dropped a wriggling worm in with me. I pounced without thinking, devouring half of it in one gulp. The worst part of my instinctive response was that the thing tasted so good. I could feel the worm twitching in my throat, trying to escape. I wanted to vomit, but I also wanted to chomp down the rest, to feel its juices sliding down my gullet.\n\nWe were moving again. I crouched as low as I could, waiting for the danger to pass. There were noises nearby. Loud and sharp and dangerous. I tried to burrow, but wherever I was, I couldn't dig.\n\nThe worm twitched in my mouth. I gobbled it down in a single movement. Had anything seen me? My eyes flitted to and fro, searching the darkness. My skin was too dry, and this hole constricted my body. Fear held me motionless.\n\nI don't know how much time passed before my own thoughts started to return. My captor was no longer walking. From the steady growl of an engine and the vibrations passing through my body, we were in a vehicle.\n\nMy body was covered in some sort of slime or mucus, and the taste of worm lingered in my mouth. I hoped whoever had done this would restore my clothes and gun when he changed me back, because I was going to shoot him in the face.\n\n\"We're almost there, Isaac. Be patient.\"\n\nOn second thought, maybe I would accept my indignities in silence. Gerbert d'Aurillac would be proud. Rather than seek retribution, I chose to turn the other cheek. Because while the sound was muffled and distorted\u2014newts lacked external ears\u2014I recognized that voice.\n\nEven I knew better than to try to shoot Juan Ponce de Leon in the face.\n\nI felt the lopsided gait of my rescuer\u2014or kidnapper, depending on the role he had decided to play today\u2014when he climbed out of the car. As I understood the story, Ponce de Leon had been struck in the leg by a magically poisoned arrow during his conquistador days, and the wound had never fully healed.\n\nMy hearing was distinctly subpar, but my sense of smell had been turned up to eleven. While pipe smoke suffused his clothes, I could have still picked the nutmeg-and-rosewood scent of his cologne out of a lineup. His hard-soled shoes echoed against cement. The smell of oil and exhaust lingered in the air. I guessed we were in a parking garage.\n\nA door opened, and we hurried across carpeted floor, passing voices too muffled for me to make out. We stopped briefly, until an electronic ding announced the arrival of an elevator.\n\nI figured this was either an office building or a hotel, but it was impossible to be certain while trapped in Ponce de Leon's pocket. I waited impatiently as we left the elevator and limped a short way. I smelled wine and cleaning solutions. Another door opened, and we hurried inside.\n\n\"Welcome to the Westin Excelsior.\" His hand dipped gently into his pocket, closing around my body and carrying me to the bathtub. My feet found little purchase on the wet ceramic, and then I was doubling over as my body returned to its normal size. I remained fully clothed, thank Heaven for small favors.\n\nI looked up at the man who had snatched me from Meridiana's grasp. This was the first time I had seen Juan Ponce de Leon in the flesh. He had a long nose and a narrow face, and was more disheveled than I expected. His wrinkled, ivory-colored suit looked like it cost more than I earned in a year. Stubble blurred the edges of his black goatee. He rested heavily on a cane of flawless black wood with an opera-style hooked chrome handle. Veins of gold were spread through the cane's handle and collar.\n\nIt was his eyes that made me nervous. They were constantly searching, examining every corner of the room, even checking the mirrors to make sure nothing could take him by surprise. If Juan Ponce de Leon was jumpy, we were in serious trouble.\n\nI ran my hands through my hair and rested against the tile wall above the tub. \"You turned me into a newt!\"\n\nHe tilted his head and said, deadpan, \"You got better.\"\n\n\"Oh, no. Quoting Monty Python isn't going to make this go away. Why would you\u2014wait, don't tell me. Meridiana could hear my thoughts, right? Forcing me into that form, making me eat a worm, was your way of overriding my human thoughts long enough for us to escape without her finding us.\"\n\nHe brought his hands together in a silent golf clap.\n\n\"Am I confined to your bathtub, or am I allowed to get up?\"\n\nHe stepped back and offered a mocking half-bow, gesturing with both arms. \"Watch your step. Remember, you're walking on two legs again.\"\n\nI pressed the wall for balance. The ground did seem awfully far away, and my butt felt oddly light without a tail. I stepped slowly, determined to make it out of the bathroom without asking for help or falling and breaking my nose.\n\nI emerged into a room that could have swallowed my first apartment. Thick white carpeting covered the floor. Heavy gold curtains hid tall windows. A flat-screen television, fifty-two inches at least, hung flush on the wall opposite a queen-sized bed with a red velvet canopy. The ivory-and-gold wallpaper looked like something out of a mansion, as did the crystal chandelier over the small dining area.\n\nI settled into a leather sofa, the cushions stuffed with softness and extravagance.\n\n\"Make yourself at home,\" Ponce de Leon said dryly. \"Would you care for a drink?\"\n\n\"Anything that will wash the taste of worm out of my mouth.\"\n\nHe retrieved two tulip-shaped glasses and a bottle. \"Scotch, I think.\"\n\nIt was fortunate I was sitting down, because the first swallow would have knocked me on my ass. I blinked hard as the vapors seemed to rise through my head, leaving a layered, smoky taste. \"How old is that bottle, and where can I find one?\"\n\n\"Older than you. Not as old as me. And you couldn't afford it.\"\n\nI took another sip. \"Thank you, by the way. For getting me away from Meridiana.\"\n\nHe raised his glass in acknowledgment. \"Meridiana, is it? I thought the girl was named Jeneta. She's your student, if I'm not mistaken?\"\n\n\"She's going through an identity crisis.\" I set my drink on a marble end table. \"So there I was. Isaac Vainio exits stage right, pursued by an angel. When suddenly one of the world's most powerful sorcerers just happens to wander by. The same sorcerer who refused to answer my calls. What a coincidence, eh?\"\n\nAmusement peeked through the fog of his fatigue. \"I truly had no idea you were in Rome. I was more interested in why both the Porters and your friend Meridiana had set magical wards to watch over an old church.\"\n\nI rubbed my arms. I knew it was all in my head, but I still felt like I was covered in newt slime. \"She's a thousand-year-old princess who consumes and commands ghosts, and plans on killing off half the population and setting herself up as empress of the living and the dead. Gerbert d'Aurillac trapped her in a miniature bronze universe. She's spent the past millennium searching for a way out and working to capture the minds and souls of other magic-users. She's trying to escape into the world, and has been using Porters and the students of Bi Sheng as vessels for her deranged ghosts. Oh, and Gutenberg fired me last month.\"\n\n\"I see.\" He stepped closer and rubbed his thumb gently over my forehead, in exactly the spot where Gutenberg had inscribed his spell. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nHe sounded like he meant it. Only another magic-user would understand what it was like to have that part of yourself ripped away. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"What prompted Johannes to do this?\" he asked.\n\n\"Meridiana was trying to get into my head, to possess me the way she had the others. Locking my magic locked her out, though it obviously wasn't enough to stop her from reading my mind.\" I took another swallow of Scotch. \"Also, Gutenberg was pretty pissed at me. I kind of allowed the students of Bi Sheng to escape.\"\n\n\"Johannes' conflict with Bi Sheng's followers was before my time with the Porters,\" he said. \"He never spoke of it.\"\n\n\"Five hundred years ago, Gutenberg sent his automatons to destroy them,\" I said flatly. \"Only a handful survived, trapped in limbo until earlier this year.\" I stared through my glass at his elongated form. \"Do you know how to counter Gutenberg's spell and restore my magic?\"\n\nI didn't want to ask the question, but I couldn't not ask. Ponce de Leon was the one person who might have both the knowledge and the power to undo Gutenberg's magic.\n\nBut the question was like Schr\u00f6dinger's box. Just as Schr\u00f6dinger's cat was potentially both alive and dead until you opened the box, so was my hope for restoration. One way or another, his answer would collapse the possibilities into unforgiving reality.\n\nThough hope didn't really fit, thematically speaking. Hope had been Pandora's thing. All right, fine. It was like Schr\u00f6dinger opening Pandora's box.\n\nThe weariness and sadness in his eyes told me his answer. \"I'm sorry, Isaac.\"\n\nWith those three words, the damn box imploded, splinters piercing whatever hope I had clung to for the past month.\n\n\"I always believed removing the memory of magic was a kindness,\" he continued. \"Better not to know what you had lost.\"\n\n\"Better for whom?\" I asked.\n\nHe didn't answer. \"I assume Bi Wei is one of the survivors you permitted to escape? Her letter to the world was impetuous and poorly timed. I see why the two of you would have gotten along. I can only imagine Johannes' dismay. Not to mention poor George R. R. Martin. Many of his fans believe the letter is a publicity stunt foreshadowing a new series by Mister Martin. Their reaction has been... passionate, to say the least.\"\n\n\"I understand why she did it,\" I said. \"The students of Bi Sheng are as terrified of the Porters as they are of the Ghost Army. But in the process, Bi Wei gave Meridiana the address of every Porter archive.\"\n\nHe sat down on the other end of the couch. \"From what I've observed, Meridiana would have found them without Bi Wei's help. Though most of Meridiana's energies have been focused elsewhere.\"\n\nHe pointed a finger at the television, which turned on. Apparently his index finger was a magical remote. Nice.\n\nA map of the world filled the screen. Red dots appeared like chicken pox. Not just a television, but a computer monitor as well.\n\n\"The National Library of China,\" he said. \"A museum in Cairo. Three Porter archives, including the Library of Congress. Even the Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, though the French police have kept that out of the media.\"\n\n\"She's searching for a way back into this world,\" I said. \"And creating pet monsters along the way.\"\n\n\"Yes, I wondered how she had recruited an angel into her ranks. They generally prefer not to intervene in mortal affairs so openly.\"\n\nThat comment raised a thousand questions, temporarily derailing my train of thought. Reluctantly, I pushed them aside. \"Libriomancers\u2014even Gutenberg\u2014can only access one book at a time. Jeneta could potentially draw on millions of books through her e-reader. She was just learning to use her magic, but Meridiana was trained by Gerbert d'Aurillac, not to mention what she's learned from the dead.\" I thought about how easily she had petrified Mahefa's hand, then took another drink of scotch.\n\nPonce de Leon's finger twitched, and the screen filled with photos and video feeds showing the chaos at the basilica. Someone had gotten a jumpy three-second clip of the angel leaping to the ground, sword drawn. Another photo showed the yeren stumbling around, one paw covering its eyes.\n\n\"Meridiana knew d'Aurillac wouldn't tell her how to free herself,\" I said. \"She waited for someone else to come along. Someone d'Aurillac would trust with the key to her prison. Someone whose thoughts she could peel open.\"\n\n\"Someone who would charge headlong into the situation, seeking answers without weighing the risks,\" he added dryly.\n\n\"I wasn't\u2014\" I stopped myself. \"I haven't been at my best lately.\"\n\n\"I can imagine. Do you know where to find this key?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" D'Aurillac had destroyed the poem that contained his armillary sphere, but Meridiana was still imprisoned. I closed my eyes, remembering the shape of the poem, the carefully inked letters stretching together to create interwoven shapes on the parchment. Far more than any other memory d'Aurillac had shared, that poem was burned into my thoughts.\n\n\"Good. Then Meridiana should be equally lost.\" He turned back to the map. \"The students of Bi Sheng have done an admirable job of concealing themselves, though I believe them to be hiding somewhere in eastern Asia. I've felt currents of their activities. Instead of openly trying to battle Meridiana or the Porters, they seem to have focused their efforts inward in some way. As for Meridiana, her targets have no obvious geographic pattern. Her base of operations could be anywhere in the world, assuming she has one at all.\"\n\nAnother flick of his hand cleared the screen. \"You've met her gorgon, angel, and sasquatch.\" He snapped his fingers as he spoke, each time pulling up an image of the monster in question.\n\n\"Yeren, not sasquatch,\" I said.\n\n\"Really? I believe that would make this the first verified yeren sighting in history, though I'd need to dig into Johannes' records to be sure.\" Additional pictures and sketches continued to fill the screen. \"Meridiana also has what appears to be an ogre of some kind, as well as a naga, a kitsune, a manticore, and a pair of mermen.\"\n\n\"Nine monsters and one out-of-control libriomancer.\"\n\n\"That we know of. We should assume she hasn't revealed her full hand yet.\" He slashed his fingers through the air, and the screen switched to a men's tennis match. \"How many ghosts do you think she's gathered over the centuries?\"\n\n\"Hundreds,\" I said. \"Maybe thousands.\"\n\n\"Now that you've communed with Pope Sylvester II, she'll be hunting for you.\"\n\n\"I know.\" And if she couldn't find me, she'd go after whatever leverage she could get, starting with Lena. Everything I did lately put them in greater danger. \"Could I borrow your phone?\"\n\n\"I texted Miss Greenwood and Doctor Shah from the car to warn them. They're none too happy with you, by the way.\"\n\n\"Yah, I got that feeling.\" And rightfully so. First vampires, now Meridiana. Lena could protect them from most threats, but not this. \"I need to get home.\"\n\n\"I've already made arrangements, but the flight doesn't depart for another four hours.\" Trust Ponce de Leon to be two steps ahead of me. He watched the tennis game for several minutes. \"There's no suppressing this, Isaac. You can't cram an oak tree back into an acorn. What Meridiana and Bi Wei have begun will change this world.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"I doubt that. No slight intended, but you lack perspective. You've never watched empires rise and fall, nor the chaos that erupts in their death throes. You've not seen intellectual, philosophical, economic, or technological revolutions sweep the globe like ocean waves, each one greater than the last. Do you know what led to my split with Johannes?\"\n\nI tried to keep up with his train of thought as it lurched off the rails. \"No clue.\"\n\n\"Nothing is eternal. Magic could be kept secret for a time, centuries perhaps, but not forever. Johannes and I both knew people would discover the truth, and when that day came, we knew the world would change. We had both seen what such changes could lead to. Fear. War. Genocide.\n\n\"Johannes believed such change could be controlled. That we could minimize the damage and guide the world through its turmoil. His personal texts are full of plans for the revelation. Several such plans involve rather extreme actions.\"\n\n\"What kind of actions?\"\n\nHe waved a hand, dismissing my question. \"What are the three oaths each Porter takes?\"\n\n\"To preserve the secrecy of magic, to protect the world from supernatural threats, and to expand our knowledge and understanding of magic.\" I tried to ignore the hollow feeling the words triggered in me.\n\n\"And what gives them the right?\"\n\n\"I didn't know we needed permission to save people's lives.\" I thought back to an assignment from three years ago. \"Who exactly should I have asked about that smog elemental I fought in Grand Rapids?\"\n\n\"I've tried to change the world before. The Moors. The Indians. I believed\u2014I knew\u2014I was on the side of right. I intended to save them, to spread knowledge and civilization, even if I had to slaughter half the population to enlighten the rest.\" He downed the rest of his Scotch and poured a second glass. \"Countless cultures paid for my arrogance. I vowed never to put myself in a position to make such mistakes again.\"\n\n\"The Porters aren't conquering anyone.\" I wasn't used to being the one to defend Gutenberg and the Porters.\n\n\"Not this week, perhaps. But conquest and control come in many forms, Isaac. Time after time Johannes and I fought over this point. God's plan may be infallible, but ours are not, no matter how well-intentioned. It's not our place to shape the world.\"\n\n\"Is that why you refused to answer my calls? Why you've disappeared and done nothing while Meridiana works to turn this world into a planet ruled by ghosts?\"\n\nHis eyebrows rose. \"I wouldn't call saving your life nothing. But you're correct, the time for hiding is over. Whatever Johannes' plans, Meridiana's are far worse. You can't fight this war alone, Isaac. Nor can he. I will return to America with you, and we will decipher the clues Gerbert d'Aurillac shared.\"\n\nI nodded gratefully. The Porters could ignore my calls, but they couldn't ignore Ponce de Leon. I finished my drink and asked the other question I had been scared to ask. \"I heard the ghosts of the people Meridiana transformed into monsters, but I didn't hear Jeneta. If she was dead, I should have heard her voice, too. Do you think there's a way to free her from Meridiana?\"\n\n\"Perhaps. The best chance might be the same spell Johannes used to protect you from Meridiana and her ghosts.\"\n\nLock Jeneta's magic. She would never forgive me. \"What would that do with Meridiana already rooted in her body?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Isaac. But our first priority is to stop Meridiana. Even if it costs an innocent child her life.\"\n\nThe dude was messed up, mumbling to himself and talking to people who weren't there. I thought about finding a cop, but he wasn't really hurting anything, you know? I'd only been in Rome for two days, so what did I know? Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time there. Plus he had this accent, like he was Canadian or something, so I figured he was probably harmless. Just a tourist who partied too hard and was trying to walk it off. And then he started puking right there in the middle of the church, and there were monsters and s\u2014, and we got out of there.\n\nI looked back through the doors, and that mother\u2014 started waving a gun and flinging lightning bolts out of his hands. Everyone was running and screaming and s\u2014. Next thing you know, some clown in an angel costume with a sword is chasing the guy into the street.\n\nDon't ask me what set it all off. The guy didn't look like a terrorist or anything. He was all skinny and pale, like someone who spends too much time in his mom's basement playing World of Warcraft and downloading porn, know what I mean? But I know what I saw. That nerd was doing magic.\n\nYou've seen the pictures, right? Blackened walls. Melted gold. They're trying to say lightning hit the church. Really? Lightning hit inside the church? In the middle of the day, with the sun shining? I've got two words for that. Bull and s\u2014.\n\nThere is some seriously weird s\u2014 going on. Bad enough we've got to make sure terrorists don't sneak onto another plane and blow our country to hell. Now we've got to worry about magic Canadians, too? That's just not right.\n\n\u2014Excerpt from a CNBC News Interview\n\nIf you have to fly, I strongly recommend taking a sorcerer as a traveling companion.\n\nNo papers? No problem. Ponce de Leon purchased a postcard at one of the shops outside the airport and transformed it into a passport, complete with stamps showing I'd also been to France, Spain, and Austria. The shock-gun became a large digital camera, and the half-empty vial of vampire blood a telephoto lens.\n\n\"The spells will wear off after twenty-four hours,\" he warned. \"Under no circumstances should you try to take anyone's photograph.\"\n\nAn hour later we were waiting on the tarmac while what seemed like the entire Italian commercial air fleet taxied down the runway ahead of us. I leaned over the armrest to whisper, \"I don't suppose you could jump us to the head of the line?\"\n\n\"Even my magic has limits, Isaac.\"\n\nI returned my attention to the brown paper bag spread flat on my seat tray. I had sketched the general shape of Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem from my memory. A large triangle contained two circles, and a series of intersecting lines. The next step was to work Latin characters into each shape.\n\nI drew the letter A in the seven places where the spokes intersected the outer circle. The inner circle was the same, but with Ns instead of As. I moved on to the words within the triangle.\n\n\"Interesting.\" Ponce de Leon studied my work through the thin rectangular lenses of his reading glasses. \"A carmen figuratum, yes?\"\n\n\"Not just a visual poem, but a puzzle.\" Recreating the poem was only the first step. Once I finished, I then had to decipher it.\n\nHe touched the letters. \"Anna. Meridiana's true name.\"\n\nThat name had to be part of the key to understanding d'Aurillac's poem, but the rest of the text seemed to be the Latin equivalent of word salad, as if the author had cut apart every word from the original and flung them into the air with no care for where they landed. I continued to write them out as best I could from memory, taking a brief break for takeoff.\n\nPonce de Leon touched one such fragment. \"This says, 'Temperate bull expires Caesar urine.' I'm a fair poet, but the metaphor eludes me. Unless we're to assume Meridiana is imprisoned by the power of dead bulls and the piss of emperors.\"\n\nI rubbed my eyes. I had filled in only a fraction of the text, and already my head was beginning to throb. Fortunately, we had a long flight ahead of us.\n\nI finished the outer triangle and part of the vertical spoke before my eyes gave out and I surrendered to sleep, but the poem stalked my dreams. Geometric shapes unraveled in my hands, brown-inked letters slipping through my fingers before I could grasp their meaning. I made a little more progress during our layover in New Jersey.\n\nPonce de Leon woke me shortly before our descent into Detroit. I rubbed grit from my eyes. \"Do you ever sleep?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"When I have time.\"\n\nHe had made additional notes on a separate piece of paper, playing with words as if they were anagrams. He had also penciled the first letter of each word in a single column, but if those letters held any hidden meaning, it was beyond me. I folded the sketch and tucked it into my back pocket.\n\nLena and Nidhi waited for us by the baggage claim. My shoulders sagged with relief to see them standing there, unharmed by Meridiana or pissed-off vampires or Mahefa or anyone else I might have crossed in the past week.\n\nLena rested her weight on a thick oak cane that would have gotten her thrown out of the airport or arrested if security had realized what she could do with it. I slowed, uncertain how to greet them.\n\nShe handed her cane to Nidhi and strode toward me, her expression unreadable. She stopped with her face inches from mine and looked me over, as if searching for injuries. Her nose wrinkled. \"We need to get you a shower.\"\n\n\"Hey, I've been stuck on planes for\u2014\"\n\nBefore I could finish, she twisted her hands into my shirt, yanked me close, and kissed me.\n\nI wrapped one arm around her shoulders and slid my other hand up her neck, my fingers combing through her hair. As her arms encircled my waist and her lips pressed against mine, she shared her desire, her anger, her relief, and her pain more effectively than words.\n\nShe kept hold of my shirt when we finally broke away.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said.\n\n\"We saw the reports about the lightning storm inside that church.\" Her nose touched mine. \"Get into a brawl like that without me again, and I will drop Smudge down your pants.\"\n\n\"That seems like an awfully cruel thing to do to an innocent fire-spider.\"\n\nShe flexed her arms ever so slightly, and my ankles lifted from the floor.\n\n\"Right,\" I said hastily. \"No weenie roast necessary.\"\n\nThat earned a crooked smile. She hugged me one more time, then stepped away so I could greet Nidhi. I hugged her, too, which I think surprised us both. \"Are you and Lena okay?\"\n\n\"Yes, thank you. We had one undead visitor, but Lena took care of her.\"\n\n\"What about Mahefa?\" I forced myself to look at Lena. \"Did he show up to claim the rest of his price?\"\n\nShe took her cane back from Nidhi and wrapped her fingers tightly around the wood. \"No sign of him yet.\"\n\nMaybe the petrification of his hand had been enough to scare him away from anyone associated with me, but I doubted it. That wasn't the way my luck had been working lately.\n\n\"What about you, Isaac?\" asked Nidhi. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nI started to give her a flippant response about uncomfortable airline seats and leftover newt slime, then caught myself. At the very least, I owed them honesty. \"No. Not really.\"\n\nOddly enough, that drew a smile from Nidhi. She gave me a small, understanding nod. After glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, she reached into a canvas shopping bag and pulled out Smudge in his traveling cage.\n\nHe skittered around in quick, tight laps when he spotted me. I took his cage and grinned. \"I feel the same way, buddy.\" I searched my pockets for something to feed him, but came up empty.\n\nLena handed me a half-empty package of M&Ms. Smudge reached a bristly leg through the bars to nudge my hand, like a child searching for a prize. I slipped him a yellow one. \"What's the media been saying about Rome?\"\n\n\"It made CNN's roundup of 'Magic Watch,'\" she said. \"There were reports of a magical commotion inside, but the only decent photographs were after the fact. They did have footage of what looked like an angel standing on top of the church.\" Her voice trailed off as she spotted Ponce de Leon, who had stopped a respectful distance behind me. Her stance shifted slightly, and she adjusted her grip on her cane.\n\n\"Who is this?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"He's the reason I survived the attack on that church.\" I stepped to the side. \"Juan Ponce de Leon, this is Doctor Nidhi Shah. You've met Lena once before.\"\n\n\"Not in person.\" He shook their hands, his attention lingering on Lena. \"You are quite the interesting snarl of conflicting magic, aren't you?\"\n\n\"I'm sure you say that to all the dryads.\"\n\n\"Have the news reports come up with anything else?\" I asked.\n\n\"They've connected Bi Wei's list of Porter archives to the fact that both the Michigan State University library and Fort Michilimackinac suffered 'unexplained incidents' this year,\" said Nidhi. \"It's slow, but they're piecing the truth together.\"\n\nPonce de Leon was already walking toward the exit. \"Revelation is a foregone conclusion. Johannes will be working to control the message and minimize the damage to his organization, but Meridiana's actions force him to respond quickly. Men under pressure make mistakes, and he is no exception.\"\n\nLena jerked a thumb at Ponce de Leon's back, her cocked head voicing her silent question. What is he doing here?\n\n\"He's here to help,\" I said quietly. \"I think.\"\n\n\"Did you find the answers you were looking for?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"Not exactly.\" I slowed as we reached the parking lot, but Ponce de Leon seemed to know exactly where he was going. \"I have a better idea what we're up against, and what Jeneta\u2014Meridiana\u2014is searching for. And I know who Meridiana really is.\"\n\nNidhi's car waited for us on the far side of the McNamara Parking Garage. I recognized the car first, then the man standing in the shadows beside it. \"Oh, crap. Hi, John.\"\n\nJohn Wenger was a Porter field agent, tall and slender and dangerous. He held a hardcover book in one hand and a small silver-and-black pistol in the other. \"Lightning in the middle of a church, Isaac? How could you? The artwork you destroyed was irreplaceable.\"\n\n\"In my defense, they started it.\" I saw Lena readying her cane. I put a hand on her arm. John wasn't a bad guy. And even if she took him down, he wouldn't be alone. They wouldn't send a lone field agent after an ex-Porter, especially an ex-Porter whose lover had fought everything from vampires to one of Gutenberg's automatons. \"How goes the effort to protect the archives?\"\n\n\"Not good.\" John grimaced, but the gun never wavered. \"We've kept anyone from getting inside our facilities, but the mundanes have used satellite and radar imaging to confirm the existence of at least two archives we know of. They've halted the reconstruction of the MSU library in East Lansing, and there's a fight brewing over whether or not to reexcavate the site.\"\n\nI folded my arms. \"If you're not too busy worrying about hiding your archives and hunting down a rogue ex-Porter, maybe Gutenberg could spare some people to help me stop a reincarnated empress who wants to make herself a god?\"\n\n\"Rogue ex-Porters, plural.\" John was one of the most polite, easygoing people I knew, but there was violence in his words. \"We've lost seven that I know of, not including yourself. For some it's national or religious loyalties. They're worried about all-out war, and want to make sure their 'side' wins. Others see the secret getting out and figure this is their chance to cash in. There's also a libriomancer who may have gotten herself imprisoned or killed in Pakistan, we're not sure. And the EARM has a team looking for another one who's gone missing in North Korea.\"\n\nI couldn't recall the name of the East Asian Regional Master, but I didn't envy him that job.\n\nJohn pointed his gun toward my bag. \"Where's the blood, Isaac?\"\n\nMoving as slowly as I could, I pulled out the telephoto lens. \"You know about that, too, eh?\"\n\n\"What were you thinking?\" John asked. \"We've already lost one Porter to the vamps this year.\"\n\n\"I'm as human as you are,\" I said.\n\n\"So was Deb DeGeorge, in the beginning.\"\n\nMy hand shook slightly as I remembered the rush of magic surging through my veins and the voices of the dead whispering their secrets. It wasn't magic I could shape and control, but it was magic nonetheless.\n\nMy mouth went dry. I tensed my arm, trying to hide another tremor. I had no real need to hold on to the rest of my stolen blood, but I couldn't force myself to hand it over.\n\nLena tugged the lens from my grip and gave it to John.\n\n\"Thanks,\" I muttered. \"Where are you planning to take me? Porter jail?\"\n\n\"You're to be debriefed and kept under guard until this mess is brought under control. Pallas' orders.\"\n\n\"Good.\" Hopefully this meant I'd actually get the chance to talk to her.\n\nJohn hefted the lens. \"How did you disguise the blood?\"\n\nTo one side, Ponce de Leon cleared his throat. \"When you say we're to be taken in, did you mean all of us?\"\n\nI had almost forgotten he was here. His cane was hooked over his folded arms, and he rested one ankle atop the other. He blended into the background so well I suspected magic. A useful trick for someone who had spent so long trying to stay out of sight.\n\n\"Are you with them?\" John asked. \"What's your name?\"\n\nPonce de Leon said nothing. He didn't have to. John's face paled when he realized who he was pointing his gun at. He stepped back and raised his wrist to his mouth, speaking into what looked like an old-style spy communicator watch. \"Uh, we may have a problem here.\"\n\nPonce de Leon merely smiled.\n\nI would have dearly loved to see what happened next. Unfortunately, that was when someone shot me in the back with some kind of stun beam. Energy seared my nervous system, and everything went black.\n\nI awoke on a ridiculously comfortable bed. I rolled onto my stomach, and my right arm brushed warm flesh.\n\n\"Good morning.\" Lena's voice came from somewhere past my feet. I frowned and opened my eyes.\n\nNidhi Shah was sprawled on the bed next to me, snoring quietly. I planted my face in the pillow. My head was pounding like a flat tire going down a dirt road. \"Where are we?\"\n\nLena understood my muffled question. \"Chicago, I think.\"\n\n\"Ponce de Leon?\"\n\n\"I only woke up a half hour ago. I haven't seen him.\"\n\nI sat up and looked around. Nidhi and I were in a queen-sized bed in the center of a small but well-furnished bedroom. Oak bookshelves lined one wall. To the right, blue curtains covered the windows. A wooden ceiling fan hummed quietly overhead.\n\nNicola Pallas lived in the Chicago area, but I didn't think this was her place. The air lacked the musty blood-and-fur smell of her beloved chupacabra hybrids.\n\nI climbed out of bed, trying not to disturb Nidhi. Smudge was in his cage on an antique bedside table. My shoes sat neatly beside a wooden door, alongside Nidhi's and Lena's. I checked my back pocket and swore. The poem I had been working on was gone.\n\nI tried the door, which was locked, then slid open a small closet with folding doors. An assortment of robes, shirts, and pants hung on wooden hangers. Wherever we were, there was plenty of wood Lena could use for weapons, if it came to that. I started toward the window.\n\n\"Brace yourself,\" Lena warned.\n\nI peered out and swallowed. We were at least thirty stories up, and perhaps a block from the waterfront. You'd think a trip into orbit and back would have made it easier for me to handle heights, but if anything, the vertigo was worse. I forced myself to inspect the windows, but they weren't designed to open. Even if they did, there was no fire escape. We weren't getting out this way. Lena might survive a jump from this height, but it would hurt, and I doubted she'd be getting up and walking away.\n\nI turned to let Smudge out of his cage. He scampered up my arm and perched on my shoulder. He was no warmer than usual, suggesting we were in no immediate danger. \"What happened after they shot me?\"\n\n\"They shot the rest of us.\" Lena shrugged. \"I'm pretty sure Ponce de Leon just laughed it off, but Nidhi and I...\"\n\n\"There's always a silver lining,\" Nidhi said, not opening her eyes. \"Isaac desperately needed the sleep.\"\n\n\"They probably did their initial interrogation while we were out,\" I guessed. Neither Lena nor I had any defenses against mind reading. A tattoo on Nidhi's temple, the Gujarati characters for balance, was supposed to grant her some protection against mental assaults, but since the Porters were the ones who had given her that tattoo, I wasn't counting on it.\n\nI returned to the door and listened, but heard nothing from the other side. I knocked hard. \"I'd like to order room service, please!\"\n\nThere was no answer. I turned around, surveying the room more closely. Lena could fashion those coat hangers into something strong enough to smash the window. A couple of knotted sheets would let us go down one floor and break in through another window. If we were fast enough\u2014and assuming nobody lost their grip and plummeted to their death\u2014we might be able to pull it off. Especially if Lena sealed the door to slow pursuit.\n\nThe door opened before I could share my plan, which was probably for the best. Nicola Pallas stepped inside. She was alone and appeared unarmed, though in her case, appearances were deceptive as hell. Nicola could probably hum a tune and make me run headfirst into the window until it broke or I knocked myself unconscious, whichever came first.\n\nShe looked... twitchy was the best word I could find. Her hands were in constant motion, the fingers dancing to and fro. She shut the door and immediately began pacing the room, like she would collapse if she stopped moving. I couldn't tell whether her manic energy was from overstimulation and stress or simple overuse of magic, if not both.\n\nShe wore an unbuttoned denim shirt over a red turtleneck, with black corduroys. Her black hair was pulled into a short, fat ponytail. The lines by her eyes appeared deeper than the last time I had seen her.\n\n\"Are we prisoners?\" Nidhi asked bluntly.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Nicola.\n\n\"For how long?\" I pointed to Lena. \"She's a dryad, remember? Keeping her away from her tree for too long could kill her. Or are you planning to transplant her oak to the apartment, too?\"\n\n\"We considered it.\"\n\n\"Who is 'we'?\" asked Lena.\n\nShe ignored the question. \"Doctor Karim warned us that you wouldn't be able to let go. Not that I expected you to. But none of us knew how far you would go. Mahefa Issoufaly? That man is a known murderer.\"\n\nDoctor Karim had been my therapist for that too-brief stretch when I worked as a Porter researcher. The last I had heard from her was when she stopped by my house to conduct a half-hour \"exit interview\" after Gutenberg stole my magic and kicked me out. \"Then why haven't the Porters done something about him?\"\n\n\"He's one of many individuals on our watch list, but we have other priorities as of late. Like bringing you in so we could protect you.\"\n\n\"And because you need to know what Gerbert d'Aurillac told me,\" I said.\n\n\"That's correct.\" Nicola sang as she spoke, a weird, wordless undertone that made me wonder if she had given herself a second set of vocal cords. \"Do you know how to use the poem d'Aurillac shared with you?\"\n\n\"You know I don't.\"\n\n\"Not consciously, no.\" She continued to sing. \"I'm trying to help you, Isaac. To sharpen your thoughts and insights.\"\n\nAfter being shot and dragged to Chicago, I wasn't in the mood to cooperate, but Nicola's song didn't give me much choice. The words flowed like water through a cracked dam. \"From what I saw, he used it like some kind of portal. He put the armillary sphere\u2014Meridiana's prison\u2014inside, then burned the poem. Like sealing off a tunnel behind you. I'm hoping that if you rewrite the poem, you can use it to retrieve the sphere. I can't consciously remember all the details. The words just come to me when I write. I think he wanted me to recreate it.\" I studied my hands, remembering the rough brown paper with my careful lines and letters of blue ink. I spoke without thinking. \"But his poem is wrong.\"\n\n\"Wrong how?\" asked Nicola.\n\nWhere had that come from? I examined the memory of my effort, comparing it to the poem d'Aurillac had shared. Every letter matched as perfectly as was possible, given that I had used a ballpoint pen and a paper bag instead of a goose quill and parchment. But the tools shouldn't have mattered. This wasn't libriomancy, where perfect physical resonance would enhance the magic. \"I'm not sure.\"\n\nHer song changed to a minor key. \"How much does Meridiana know?\"\n\n\"That depends on what she plucked out of my brain before Ponce de Leon dropped me in his pocket.\" I caught Lena's expression and added, \"I'll explain later.\"\n\n\"We've had little success pulling the memory of that poem from your mind,\" Nicola said. \"Either it somehow defends itself against prying, or else d'Aurillac provided you with a form of mental armor to guard his secret.\"\n\n\"That's a neat trick, coming from someone who died a thousand years ago.\" I walked to the bookshelves to take a closer look at the titles. Most were hardcovers, ranging from brand-new releases to leather-and cloth-bound works that appeared at least a century old. \"I take it Gutenberg is waiting outside?\"\n\nNicola didn't answer.\n\n\"Half these books are in English, but the rest...\" I dragged my finger along the lacquered edge of the shelf. \"German, Spanish, Middle English, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, and more. Even among the Porters, most of us can't read this many languages without magic.\"\n\n\"We have fourteen polyglots among the Porters,\" Nicola said.\n\n\"But how many of them would have a disproportionate interest in books from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries?\" I tapped the spines one by one. Whatever Nicola was doing to sharpen my mind, I was starting to enjoy it. \"My parents were always listening to seventies music, because it's what they enjoyed as kids. These are the equivalent of Gutenberg's oldies station.\"\n\nNicola stopped singing. \"He thought you'd be more likely to trust me rather than him, given the circumstances.\"\n\n\"You mean the fact that the last time he saw me, he gave me a magical lobotomy?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. \"Come with me.\"\n\nNicola led us past a small kitchen to a hardwood-floored room where Johannes Gutenberg and Juan Ponce de Leon sat arguing over deep-dish pizza and imported German beer. My incomplete poem sat on the glass table in front of them, along with a stack of old books, all safely out of range of their meal. Both fell silent as we entered.\n\nAn old upright piano stood in the corner by two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the water. Gutenberg had sprung for a corner apartment. Nice.\n\nMore bookshelves filled the third wall. A wood-topped bar separated the kitchen from the living room. They'd converted the bar and part of the kitchen into something reminiscent of the Batcave, with oversized computer monitors hooked up to a series of keyboards and laptops. I could hear the computer fans humming from across the room.\n\n\"We need the rest of the poem,\" Gutenberg said without preamble. Ponce de Leon rolled his eyes.\n\n\"That's nice,\" I said. \"I need my magic back.\"\n\n\"Told you so,\" Ponce de Leon murmured.\n\nGutenberg shot him an annoyed look. \"Given your role in releasing Meridiana in the first place, Isaac, I would have thought you'd be eager to help.\"\n\n\"I've been trying to help. I'm the one who figured out who we're fighting, remember? I'm the one who went to chat with the dead pope.\"\n\nGutenberg started to respond, and then Ponce de Leon touched him gently on the forearm. Gutenberg sighed and sat back. \"That's true enough,\" he conceded.\n\nHe looked and sounded... older, which I didn't think was possible. Gutenberg wasn't truly immortal, but he came as close as anyone. One of his first printed works had been an edition of the Latin Vulgate Bible, which he used to create a Holy Grail.\n\nThe Bible didn't explicitly reference the grail as providing eternal life, but by that point in time, belief in the grail legend had grown powerful. When Gutenberg reached into the pages and pulled out the chalice from the Last Supper, the faith and belief of those readers came with it. It was quite the trick, but Gutenberg had been bending the rules of libriomancy from day one.\n\nThe grail's magic was supposed to keep him young and healthy, but he had lost weight, and his eyes were shadowed. Thick, unkempt hair and a beard framed a narrow face with tired eyes that made me think of a cranky, burned-out schoolteacher.\n\n\"This is your place?\" I asked.\n\n\"It's where I stay when I'm in the Midwest.\"\n\nI walked to the low table and picked up what appeared to be a bound manuscript of an unpublished novel. \"John Porter. Isn't that one of your aliases? You're ghost-writing fantasy novels now?\" The answer clicked into place as soon as the words left my mouth. \"You're putting weapons into production.\"\n\n\"We've had a number of stories prepared for quite some time,\" Gutenberg said. \"They're updated as needed to keep the language and references fresh. We even have a trunk novel from H. G. Wells that we revised to meet our needs. The problem, as always, is one of timing. Publishing is anything but quick, and until we learn how Jeneta mastered e-books, self-publishing our texts electronically remains unfeasible.\"\n\nI realized my mouth was hanging open. \"Do you, um, happen to have a copy of that Wells novel here?\"\n\n\"Priorities,\" Lena whispered.\n\nRight. The end of the world took precedence over an unpublished H. G. Wells. Barely. \"Nicola said we were prisoners.\"\n\n\"For your own safety,\" said Gutenberg.\n\nPonce de Leon's sigh conveyed volumes, as did Gutenberg's answering glare. They seemed capable of carrying on entire conversations without words.\n\n\"We need the sphere,\" Gutenberg continued. \"As we've been unable to draw the details from your mind, you will remain here to complete Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem. Once you've done so, Juan and I will activate its magic and retrieve Meridiana's prison.\"\n\n\"What then?\" asked Lena. \"What's to stop Meridiana from breaking down your door and taking it away?\"\n\nGutenberg leaned forward and pulled out three thick books. \"The armillary sphere acts as a miniature world. Many religions have powerful stories about the end of the world. It's simply a matter of finding and unlocking the appropriate texts and applying them to Meridiana's prison. We will end her world, and her along with it.\" He gestured to the shelves. \"I've brought reference books on Latin and medieval poetry, as well as works about d'Aurillac himself to help Isaac in his work.\"\n\n\"Restoring my magic would help more,\" I said.\n\nPonce de Leon's lips twitched in what might have been a smile.\n\n\"It's not that simple, Isaac. Even if I trusted you with your magic, it's far easier to remove someone's abilities than it is to restore them. Not to mention that my lock gives you an additional layer of protection against Meridiana.\"\n\n\"So it is possible to undo your lock,\" I pressed.\n\n\"You know perfectly well that it is,\" he snapped. I thought I saw him scowl in Nicola's direction, but it happened too quickly to be certain. \"Given our current situation, are you suggesting I neglect the various magical crises breaking out across the world and devote my energies to returning the magic of a single overly-reckless libriomancer?\"\n\nI said nothing.\n\n\"I know you, Isaac. Hate me if you wish, but you won't hold the fate of the world hostage for your own personal needs. You will work to complete Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem.\"\n\nRarely had I been so pissed about someone else being right.\n\nRio de Janeiro, Brazil\u2014authorities are reporting the discovery of a secret subbasement in the Royal Portuguese Reading Room, believed to be one of the Porter archives described in the \"Bi Wei Revelation,\" a message that appeared as if by magic in a fantasy novel by American author George R. R. Martin.\n\nThe governor of Rio de Janeiro praised the efforts of Colonel Raimundo Azevedo, who organized the raid. Shaped explosives were used to open a passageway to the hidden basement. While the contents of the archive are still being catalogued, one source claims that it held more than a thousand books, mostly Portuguese titles. There are conflicting reports that at least one prisoner was escorted from the building following the raid.\n\nThe damage to the approximately 130-year-old library has created anger among the people of Brazil and throughout the world. Within minutes of the operation, images of shattered windows and smoke pouring from the Gothic-style building began circulating online.\n\nThe Royal Portuguese Reading Room holds more than 350,000 books, and has been described as one of the most breathtaking libraries in the world. Only authorized military personnel are currently being allowed in and out of the building, making it impossible to estimate the damage.\n\nThis is the first conclusive verification of the information provided in Bi Wei's letter to the world. Authorities have been quick to stress that this archive does not prove the existence of magic or any secret society...\n\nGutenberg's Chicago apartment was roughly the same size as Ponce de Leon's luxury hotel suite, but even if it had been twice as large, that wouldn't have been enough space to contain the stress and tension\u2014not to mention the egos\u2014stuck inside.\n\nNicola spent most of her time monitoring the computers and video chatting with various Regional Masters around the world. Her head and hands were usually moving in time to music playing through the wireless earbuds she wore at all times. As far as I could tell, she never switched them off; she simply lowered the volume a bit when she had to converse with others.\n\nGutenberg and Ponce de Leon acted like they couldn't decide whether they wanted to kiss or kill one another. One moment they were arguing over the future of the world, the next they were laughing about some obscure magical misadventure from three hundred years ago.\n\nI had been given a large wooden drawing desk, which was set up uncomfortably close to the windows. So far, I'd sketched out more than half of the poem, though the words made no more sense than before. I jotted the translation onto a separate piece of paper as I went.\n\nNidhi pulled a folding chair over and sat down beside me. She skimmed over my notes. \"This looks like the writing of an unmedicated schizophrenic.\"\n\n\"D'Aurillac wasn't crazy.\" I stared at the poem. \"He might be making me crazy, though. Him and Gutenberg. I can't even use the phone to call Copper River.\" I hadn't spoken to Jennifer at the library since I left with Mahefa. I was so fired.\n\n\"Nicola says the Porters have assigned a second field agent to guard your house and Lena's oak. All of Gutenberg's automatons are awake and alert. If anything happens in Copper River...\"\n\nI twirled my pencil through my fingers. \"Will that be enough? How many Porters has Meridiana killed? We know she's taken at least one of Bi Sheng's followers, too.\"\n\nI spun the pencil again, then slid it behind my ear. I massaged my eyes and temples with my fingertips. \"Meridiana doesn't even need to attack. Just drop a spy into the neighborhood and wait for us to return. She knows Lena has to go back to her oak.\"\n\n\"Not for a while,\" Lena said, strolling across the room. In one hand, she carried what looked like an ice cream float made of Neapolitan ice cream and Mountain Dew. \"When Nidhi told me you had started a war with all vampkind, I figured we might be taking a vacation soon, so I took a few precautions.\"\n\nLena's grin was almost smug. I glanced at Nidhi, who shrugged.\n\n\"Another graft?\" I hadn't seen her carrying a branch from her oak, but I had been knocked unconscious before getting into Nidhi's car, so who knew what they had packed in the trunk.\n\n\"Not exactly.\" Lena sipped her float, licked foam from her upper lip, then extended her left hand toward us.\n\nA blister bulged along the length of her palm like a swollen tendon. A long sliver darkened the skin. It stretched, tenting almost a centimeter before a slender spike of wood punched through.\n\nThere was no blood. Clear fluid coated the bark, giving it a dark shine. The twig grew faster now, stretching upward and thickening until it was roughly the size of a chopstick. Delicate green buds uncurled into tiny oak leaves.\n\nI reached for her arm, then hesitated. She nodded permission, and I gently probed the skin of her forearm, feeling the hard bulge of the wood. I traced it back to the elbow, where it seemed to merge into the bone and joint. I imagined roots stretching through her arm, twining with her veins, digging into the muscle fibers. \"You're carrying a graft inside of you?\"\n\n\"Grafts, plural.\" She turned her hand to admire the leaves. \"My tree is my flesh. It contains me. Why can't I do the same for it? Do you remember when I smuggled a wooden knife in my arm?\"\n\n\"Yah.\" I touched the skin where the branch emerged from her hand. It gave slightly, sliding around the wood.\n\nShe smiled and touched the leaves. \"This is easier. More natural.\"\n\n\"How much do you have?\" asked Nidhi. \"How long can it survive inside of you?\"\n\n\"The wood doesn't do as well without sunlight, but it's thrived for two days so far. It helps when I'm able to get outside and spread my leaves, so to speak.\" She flexed her hand, and the leaves turned brown. The wood slowly shrank back into her skin. \"The thickest segment is near my spine, with thinner, softer branches stretching along my limbs.\"\n\n\"I would love to see an X-ray of that,\" I whispered.\n\nNidhi touched Lena's palm. \"Does this mean you no longer need your oak?\"\n\n\"No. I'll need to go back eventually. This body isn't big enough to fully contain that part of me. But I'll have more freedom to wander. The idea seemed insane at first, but I've grown to appreciate a little insanity from time to time.\" She winked at me.\n\nThe tip of the branch disappeared, leaving only a trio of dried leaves that had broken from the branch. A tiny pearl of blood welled from the cut in her skin.\n\n\"Please don't do that again.\" Gutenberg clutched an electronic cigarette between two fingers. The light in the end glowed a soft, steady blue. \"This place is as secure as I can make it, but we're keeping magic use to a minimum.\"\n\n\"Save it for the necessities,\" I said. \"Like prying into our memories?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nLena broke in before I could pursue that argument. \"If we're stuck here, could someone bring in a grow light? I'm not used to spending so much time inside with incandescents and fluorescents. It's like trying to live on a diet of plain toast and tepid water.\"\n\n\"Nicola should be able to arrange\u2014\" He scowled and spun away, tapping a Bluetooth earpiece. \"I don't care what the Brazilian authorities are saying, you need to get her out of there.\" He paused. \"Absolutely not. Humans only. Babs can send reinforcements if you need, but I'm not risking a single photo getting out that could be used to suggest Porters are in league with monsters.\"\n\n\"Monsters?\" Lena said softly.\n\nGutenberg didn't notice. He finished his conversation, jabbed the earpiece, and turned back to us. \"I'll talk to Nicola about your lights, but in the meantime, no magic. For similar reasons, the phone won't work unless Nicola or I key in an access code. Your cell phones have been disabled and the batteries removed. The Internet is likewise off limits. Meals and supplies will be delivered to the apartment as needed. The windows are reflective from outside, so you can sightsee to your heart's content so long as you stay within this apartment. Until we have Meridiana, none of you are leaving.\"\n\nI started to ask if we'd be issued orange prison jumpsuits, but the gentle pressure of Lena's hand on the center of my back calmed me enough to hold my tongue.\n\n\"We know,\" said Lena. \"Nicola already explained the rules.\"\n\n\"My phone was a cracked brick anyway,\" I added.\n\n\"Yes, I repaired that for you. You'll need it if we're forced to evacuate.\" Gutenberg turned toward the window and took a long drag from his cigarette. When he spoke next, he was almost apologetic. \"Meridiana has declared war on my people. I'm trying to protect you.\"\n\nI sat back. \"I thought I stopped being your people when you kicked me out of the Porters.\"\n\n\"I can understand why you would think that.\" He still hadn't turned to face me. \"This isn't exactly falling out the way I had hoped.\"\n\n\"How bad is it?\" I asked.\n\n\"That depends on what the followers of Bi Sheng do next.\" He glanced over his shoulder, but said nothing about my choice to allow Bi Wei and the others to escape. \"Their letter to the world was probably the most helpful gift they could have given Meridiana, forcing the Porters to split our attention, to react instead of act. If they continue to aid her\u2014\"\n\n\"They're not trying to help Meridiana,\" I protested.\n\nGutenberg turned his full attention on me, making it feel like the gravity had just doubled. \"You know this for a fact? I know you consider Bi Wei an ally, but even if you're right about her, can you be certain about her compatriots?\"\n\n\"Bi Wei and her friends were terrified of the Porters,\" Nidhi said. \"They're refugees from a battle they fought and lost five hundred years ago. You're their bogeyman. That letter forced you to prioritize, to devote your people to other crises instead of searching for them. For now, as long as they don't feel threatened by you, I doubt they'll do anything that might draw your attention.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" Gutenberg brought the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, then scowled at the glowing blue tip. \"But the sooner Isaac can figure out that poem, the better off we'll all be. Doctor Shah, I'd appreciate it if you could work with Nicola. Look over her shoulder at the reports from the field. Anyone showing the slightest hint of instability needs to be pulled out immediately. Lena, would you please join Juan and me in the other room?\"\n\n\"What for?\" she asked warily.\n\n\"As we manage the various revelations taking place throughout the world, the existence of magical beings will become known. There's no avoiding that now. Your perspective would be helpful.\"\n\nLena didn't answer right away. Given Gutenberg's long prohibition against nonhumans joining the Porters, I suspected \"Juan\" had been the one pushing for Lena's participation.\n\nShe raised her glass. \"All right. But I'm going to need a refill.\"\n\nI was up past midnight, but I had filled in everything save the central circle and inner cross of the poem. When I collapsed on the sofa, visions of Latin swirled through my dreams.\n\nSunlight woke me at what my body instinctively recognized as a ridiculously early hour. Gutenberg was standing in front of the windows, arguing with someone on his phone in what sounded like Swahili. I groaned and pulled the throw pillow over my face while he finished his call. His footsteps approached, stopping at the end of the couch.\n\n\"Isaac, good, I had something I wanted you to see.\"\n\n\"Isaac's not here right now,\" I said through the pillow. \"He's home in Copper River having a nightmare, probably brought on by bad Cudighi. Leave a message, and he'll get back to you as soon as he wakes up.\"\n\nI waited on the off chance that reality might respond to my wishful thinking, then sat up and tossed the pillow aside. Fatigue vanished when I spotted the book Gutenberg had set on the coffee table. Large, bound in brown leather, with vellum pages. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"Selected Writings on the Mind of God. By Gerbert d'Aurillac.\" He sat down and opened the front cover. \"Mostly mathematics and magic, with a smattering of astronomy and music.\"\n\nI hardly dared to breathe. \"How old is this?\"\n\nGutenberg smiled, one of the first times I had seen such an unshielded expression on his face. It made him appear almost human. \"It's an original manuscript, penned mostly by d'Aurillac himself. From my private library.\"\n\nI stared at the pages, imagining Gerbert at his writing desk, dipping a sharpened quill into his inkpot to trace each letter. He would have left blank spaces for the lines of red text that denoted the word of God, and for the larger, decorated drop caps. Sketched constellations filled the margins, along with bisected circles that could have been exercises in geometry or an attempt to map the orbit of the moon. \"You just happened to have this sitting around?\"\n\n\"It was back home in Mainz. I had it delivered last night.\" He sat back, clearly enjoying my appreciation. In that moment, he wasn't the master of the Porters, nor was he the man who had stolen my magic. He was simply a book collector showing off one of his prizes. \"I've had a long time to accumulate old tomes. I've got an early draft of Frankenstein you should read someday. Shelley's original ending changes the entire message of the story.\"\n\n\"Why are you sharing this with me?\"\n\n\"Because I knew what it would mean to you to see it. And because I hoped it might provide additional insight into d'Aurillac's mind. He says nothing of Meridiana or her prison, but he does discuss the structure of magical spells, along with certain principles he learned from an Arabic master.\" He grabbed a spiral-bound document and set it alongside the book. \"I also printed out one of d'Aurillac's known puzzle poems and its solution. He prepared this one as a gift to Otto II. The structure is simpler, and I don't believe there's anything magical about it, but it should help.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Whatever his intentions, the presence of the thousand-year-old book had burned through my fatigue, leaving eagerness and excitement in its wake. I brought the book and printout to my writing desk and sat down to study Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem to Otto II, comparing it to my own notes. This was simpler, yes, but both poems shared some of the same basic structure.\n\nThe first page of the solution looked like a word search, only instead of straight lines, the words were hidden in the shapes of Arabic numerals and Greek letters. \"'From Gerbert to Otto,'\" I read, tracing the loops of a Celtic knot. The puzzle used the letters of Otto's name just as the poem in my mind used Anna's. Each of those letters marked the beginning of a line of text to be stacked one atop the next, creating the grid for the word search.\n\n\"Breakfast should be here in an hour,\" Gutenberg said. \"If you and your companions have any preferences...\"\n\nI shooed him away and turned the page, then snatched up my pencil and began to write.\n\nAccording to the notes Gutenberg had provided, Gerbert d'Aurillac's original poem to Otto II would have come with thirty-two pages of instructions.\n\nThe poem d'Aurillac had planted in my head came with a total of zero.\n\nOnce the raw poem was complete, I copied out each line of text to create the word search grid, starting each line with the larger letters from Anna's name. But how to arrange them? Did I work from the inside out or vice versa? Clockwise or counterclockwise? There were fourteen As and Ns, breaking the poem into a total of twenty-six segments, most of which had two or three lines of text. With sixty-four lines in total, there were too many possibilities to simply guess.\n\nI tried following the pattern used to translate Otto II's poem, but after three hours of rearranging and staring, I had yet to find a single hidden word or phrase.\n\nI cut each line onto its own strip of graph paper, which kept the letters evenly spaced and allowed me to move them about. In order to search for word shapes, I borrowed one of Nicola's computers to scan, enlarge, and print the \"answer key\" to d'Aurillac's older poem. Squares of clear plastic cut from a large freezer bag, plus a black permanent marker, let me trace templates of the shapes from that poem. But no matter how I slid them around, I found nothing in his poem for Anna.\n\nEither the shapes were wrong, or else I hadn't found the proper sequence for putting the text together. I considered asking Gutenberg if he could yank a magic code-breaker out of a book, but if it was that simple, I'm sure he would have done it by now.\n\nGutenberg and Ponce de Leon crossed the room, heading for Nicola and the computers. Gutenberg was talking sharply into his phone. \"Tell Mohamed an automaton will be there in two minutes. He needs to\u2014 No, that's what Meridiana wants. Karim is already dead. If he tries to rescue the body, she'll take him, too.\" He peered over Nicola's shoulder at one of the screens and muttered to himself what sounded like a Middle High German curse. \"If Mohamed so much as cracks a book before the automaton arrives, you take him down yourself, understand?\"\n\n\"Won't work,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Mohamed and Karim were siblings, and he's too skilled a fighter. Tell her to throw up a sandstorm if she can. It will hold him back and buy them time.\"\n\n\"A sandstorm against a kishi?\" Gutenberg snapped. \"The damned thing has two faces. Blind the human face, and the hyena will track them by scent.\"\n\n\"Mohamed... isn't he the one who likes to use the Guinness Book of Records?\"\n\nGutenberg nodded.\n\nPonce de Leon grinned. \"Trinidad Scorpion Pepper.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" Gutenberg spun away. \"Tell Mohamed to rip open his Guinness and hit that thing with the essence of the Trinidad Scorpion Pepper. Whatever you do, make sure the wind is blowing away from you both.\"\n\nI found myself holding my breath along with them and counting the seconds. How long had it been since Gutenberg sent the automaton?\n\n\"Good.\" Gutenberg stepped back and ran a finger through his hair. \"Now get the hell out of there.\"\n\nPonce de Leon clapped Gutenberg's back. Gutenberg waited a moment longer, then ended the call.\n\n\"Meridiana?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"She's hunting us like animals.\" Gutenberg fumbled his electronic cigarette out of his pocket. \"She captured Karim, allowed her ghosts to seize control of the body, and used it as bait. I'm sending Barbara Palmer down there to clean up the mess. Mohamed needs a firm hand to keep him from doing anything stupid, and it will get Babs off my back.\"\n\nBabs was a Regional Master from down south. Other Porters called her the \"Tex-Mex Libriomancer,\" but never to her face. I didn't know her background, but if she was giving Gutenberg a hard time, I liked her.\n\n\"If Meridiana is chasing random Porters, it means she hasn't found our location yet,\" Ponce de Leon pointed out.\n\n\"So instead she's taunting us,\" Gutenberg snapped. \"Showing the Porters I can't protect them. Pushing them until they burn themselves out trying to fight her with magic, and once that happens, she crawls into their thoughts and seizes control.\"\n\n\"You can't fight every battle yourself,\" Ponce de Leon said.\n\nGutenberg shrugged him off. \"Meridiana's ghosts unravel our magic faster than we can create it. Unless we find a better means to fight her, she'll continue to eliminate us one by one.\"\n\n\"You saved two lives today.\"\n\n\"And I lost a third.\" Gutenberg flung his electronic cigarette at the window so hard I was amazed it didn't break.\n\n\"How long has it been since you slept?\" Nidhi yawned as she entered the living room. Lena followed behind her.\n\n\"Years,\" snapped Gutenberg. \"Not since Nancy Kress released Beggars in Spain. I don't have time to sleep. You'd think immortality would give you more time to accomplish things. Instead, every year lengthens the list of what must be done, and time slips past ever faster.\" He strode over to retrieve his cigarette. \"My apologies. Did we wake you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Nidhi walked up to Gutenberg and poked him in the chest. \"You're still human. More or less. Maybe your body doesn't need to sleep, but your mind needs a break. Go watch a movie. Read a book. Play Monopoly. Nicola will let you know if there's another emergency.\"\n\nHe played with his beard, twisting it into a point. \"I complain of having too little time, and your advice is to play Monopoly?\"\n\n\"When was the last time you checked in with your therapist?\" Nidhi asked.\n\nGutenberg frowned. \"The network connection isn't secure enough, and the bandwidth\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't ask for excuses, I asked how long?\"\n\nHe blinked, and his lips quirked upward. \"Two months,\" he admitted. \"Maybe three.\"\n\nPorter gossip suggested Gutenberg's therapist was a 130-year-old woman whose mind had been transferred to a computer system in the late seventies. Gutenberg's comments about connectivity suggested there might be truth to the story. I would have loved to learn how that had all come about.\n\n\"That's the reason I'm here, right?\" Nidhi circled around the bar and dug through the fridge. She surfaced with a small bottle of orange juice. \"To protect me and prevent me from being used against Lena and Isaac, sure. But also because you know you need someone keeping an eye on your mental health. You've always known.\"\n\nPonce de Leon looked back and forth between them, as if he were appreciating a particularly exciting game of ping pong.\n\n\"It is my professional opinion that you are physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted,\" Nidhi continued. \"If you don't take a break, you're going to get your people killed.\"\n\nGutenberg retrieved his cigarette from the floor and sighed. \"Damned therapists,\" he muttered. \"One hour. That's all I can give you.\"\n\n\"One hour?\" Ponce de Leon pulled a deck of cards from his suit pocket. \"That should give me plenty of time to trounce you in Noddy.\"\n\n\"I'm not playing with any deck you've had your hands on,\" Gutenberg said sharply.\n\n\"You didn't seem to object when I\u2014 Oh, I'm sorry. Did you say deck?\" He limped into the hallway, cutting the cards one-handed as he walked. Gutenberg shook his head, but followed.\n\nI coughed to hide my laughter. On a whim, I turned back to my work and tried searching for patterns of letters that would correspond to the pips on various playing cards. I did find the word \"muria,\" which meant to pickle, but I was pretty sure that was just coincidence.\n\nLena had brought Smudge out with her. She grabbed a banana and offered him a chunk, but he refused. With a shrug, she popped the piece into her mouth and came over to study my work. She stopped several feet from the table. Smudge was calm for the moment, but neither of us were about to risk him getting close to a thousand-year-old book.\n\n\"It's still wrong,\" I said.\n\n\"Everyone makes mistakes.\"\n\n\"That's not it. I wrote the poem exactly as he did, and it was right when he used it. But it's not anymore.\"\n\n\"Maybe you need to take an hour to play a little naughty,\" she said.\n\n\"Noddy, not naughty. It was an early version of cribbage from the sixteenth cent\u2014oh.\"\n\nShe chuckled sadly. \"What are we going to do with you?\" Before I could respond, her eyes fell upon an antique-looking floor lamp that hadn't been there the day before. A post-it note with Lena's name on it was stuck to the stained glass hood.\n\nShe dragged a chair over, turned on the lamp, and stretched like a cat in a sunbeam. \"Mm. We are definitely getting one of these at your house. And another for Nidhi's apartment.\"\n\nI pulled my attention back to my crumbled and discarded notes. What was I missing?\n\n\"Do you think the poem is somehow keyed to the user?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"I thought about that. I searched for permutations of Gerbert d'Aurillac and Sylvester, thinking maybe the letters of his name were the answer, and I'd have to rewrite the poem with my own name. I couldn't find anything.\"\n\n\"It's a shame you don't want a lover who's smarter than you.\"\n\n\"What?\" I stared at her. Her expression was unreadable.\n\n\"I'm what my lovers make me, remember? If you fantasized about being with a super-genius, I might be able to see something you'd missed.\" She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. \"It's all right. Being with you and with Nidhi, this is the smartest I've ever been, and I'm grateful for that.\"\n\nI rubbed my eyes. \"I'm sorry. You deserve more.\"\n\n\"I know.\" This time her smile was genuine. \"We all have limitations, and you can't help your insecurities.\"\n\n\"I'm not\u2014\"\n\nShe laughed. \"I'm satisfied with who I am and what I have. At least for the moment.\"\n\n\"What about the future?\"\n\n\"You mean after you and Nidhi get old and gray and wrinkly and die peacefully in your sleep at the age of a hundred and eleven? I plan to find a kind, brilliant, passionate Michelle Rodriguez lookalike and live a life of shameless, hedonistic luxury.\"\n\n\"Good to know you've thought this through.\"\n\nShe shifted Smudge to her other shoulder and leaned back in her chair. \"Just thinking about Rodriguez in that Resident Evil film...\" She shivered. \"If you're not careful, I might have to physically drag you away from those books.\"\n\n\"If you could find the answers in this thing, I'd take you right here.\"\n\n\"On the table?\" she asked playfully. \"Gutenberg wouldn't be happy if anything happened to his antique book.\"\n\n\"Fine, we could move to the couch.\"\n\nShe walked over and studied the poem. For a moment I thought she had been setting me up, that she was about to point out some pattern I had missed. Instead, she pursed her lips and shook her head. \"Sorry. I guess I'll have to somehow make it through the day without your manly touch. Alas and woe.\"\n\n\"Laying it on a little thick, eh?\"\n\nShe grinned. \"Just trying to cope with my disappointment. The pain may force me to seek solace in the arms of another woman.\"\n\nI didn't respond right away.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Lena. \"That wasn't\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all right.\" I wasn't sure I would ever be one hundred percent comfortable with my girlfriend having a girlfriend of her own, but they say with time you can adjust to anything. Nidhi had described us as family, and in a way, she was right. I certainly spent more time with the two of them than I did my brother or my parents, and the things we had seen and survived created a powerful sense of connection. This might not be the family I had imagined building when I was younger, but when had the universe ever listened to my plans?\n\nNidhi and I would never be in love with one another. On the other hand, she was a friend and a good person, and I had gotten used to her being a part of my life.\n\n\"Tell you what.\" Lena circled around behind me and kissed my ear. \"You solve this thing, and then we'll celebrate together.\"\n\nThe erotic tingles racing down my neck were squashed a second later when Smudge decided Lena had bent down for his convenience, allowing him to jump from her shoulder to the top of my head. Spider feet tickling my scalp turned out to be a powerful mood-killer. I yelped and tried not to make any sudden moves that might cost me my hair.\n\nLena laughed and lured him away with an M&M. \"Gerbert d'Aurillac designed this so people could retrieve the sphere if they needed to. He wanted you to figure it out.\" She kissed me again, then pulled away before Smudge could return. \"Let me know when you do.\"\n\nThis is a photo of my nine-year-old daughter Klara.\n\nThree days ago, she was in the ICU waiting for the tumors that had colonized her body to finish killing her.\n\nToday we brought her home.\n\nThe doctors can't or won't explain how a terminal patient, a little girl who spent the majority of her young life fighting a losing battle with cancer, could overnight become the model of health. I'm terrified this is a dream, that I'll wake up tomorrow morning and be back in that hell, listening to my princess struggle to breathe.\n\nKlara says the night she got better, she woke up to see a teacher standing over her. Her mother and I asked why she thought it was a teacher. She told us, \"Because she had lots of books, and she smelled like coffee.\"\n\nWhoever it was, she gave Klara a drink of something sweet. Something that \"tasted like magic honey.\"\n\nThe next morning, Klara was literally bouncing in her hospital bed.\n\nGo ahead. Tell me it wasn't a miracle. Tell me how else but magic the tumors that riddled her body could literally vanish overnight.\n\nA week ago, I lived in a world where I had to watch my dying child fade one day at a time. Today, I live in a world where Klara won't stop pestering us to go to Disney World in the United States so she can get Peter Pan's autograph.\n\nKlara's magic teacher healed two other children that night. The best medical care in the country had failed our angels. Magic saved them.\n\nThere are no words for the relief, or for the terror that it will somehow be yanked away. I prayed for so long, bargained with God and screamed at him, offered my life for hers. I've broken down crying ten times a day since Klara got better.\n\nMost of the time, they're tears of joy. Other times...\n\nWhen your child is seriously ill, you get to know other families struggling through the same thing. You share their triumphs, and you mourn with them when their child finally escapes the pain. When they earn their wings, as one mother described it.\n\nWhere was the magic for those children? How many of them could have been saved? Why were we blessed when so many other parents had to bury their little ones?\n\nI don't have the answers, and the questions haunt me every night. But tonight we watched Klara devour an ice cream sundae the size of her head, watched her run through the house like a miniature tornado in Reksio pajamas, and finally tucked her in to her own bed.\n\nI don't understand. I don't know who Klara's magical teacher was, or whether she'll ever see this note. But whoever you were, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.\n\nGutenberg set a stack of books on the coffee table and settled down on the sofa with the topmost book. Grateful for the excuse, I abandoned my ever-growing hill of notes to see what he was reading. Though \"reading\" wasn't precisely correct, given that Gutenberg didn't bother to open the books, let alone look at the text inside. He simply held each one, stared at it for several seconds to absorb the contents, and set it aside.\n\nLearning how he did that was high on my To Do List if I ever got my magic back.\n\nI picked up the book he had just discarded and turned it over, skimming the summary on the back cover. \"You never struck me as a Nora Roberts fan.\"\n\n\"I prefer Jude Deveraux for romance,\" he said. \"In this case, however, Miss Roberts had the better preorder numbers, meaning a stronger pool of reader belief.\"\n\nThere was no particular theme to the books, save that all were brand new, and all were by popular authors. I spotted two thrillers, three more romance novels, a fantasy, a tell-all, and a political memoir. I snatched up the fantasy. \"I didn't think Simon Green's new one was coming out until next month.\"\n\n\"We manipulated the release schedule.\" Gutenberg scowled and tossed another book onto the table. \"The official publication date isn't for another week and a half. We arranged to delay printing of the 'corrected' versions as long as possible in order to minimize the chances of anyone noticing our changes and pulling them from production.\"\n\n\"What was corrected?\" I asked.\n\nHe pointed to the Green. \"Chapter nine now introduces a magic wristwatch that allows line-of-sight teleportation. Patterson's novel includes a thumb drive with a program that hacks into every camera in the world\u2014cell phones, satellites, streetlights, security feeds\u2014to locate and track a particular individual. Roberts' book is set out west. In chapter three, we added an old six-shooter that supposedly belonged to Billy the Kid. According to legend, the gun always hits its target dead center in the heart, no matter how far away.\" For a moment, he almost looked embarrassed. \"As this is supposed to be a romance novel, I tried to write it as a metaphor for love, a kind of Old West version of Cupid's arrow.\"\n\nI stared. \"You wrote these books?\"\n\n\"Only some of them, and only the extra scenes.\" He opened one and touched the first page of the prologue. \"None of which do us a damned bit of good until people read the bloody things.\"\n\n\"Tell him about the Rowling,\" said Ponce de Leon. He and Lena were darting to and fro by the window, bokken and cane clacking together as they fenced. His bad leg didn't slow him down much. His technique was far more precise than Lena's, but her strength and endless energy was balancing that out.\n\n\"You have a new book by J. K. Rowling?\" I scanned the pile.\n\nHe pulled out an oversized hardcover. \"Harry Potter and the Goblin's Scepter.\"\n\nI stared open-mouthed and fought the urge to snatch the book from his hands and barricade myself in the bedroom for the rest of the day. \"No. Fucking. Way.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. Several years ago, we enlisted a popular fanfiction author to pen a plausible eighth book in Rowling's universe. We needed something that would guarantee instant, worldwide readership.\"\n\nA new Harry Potter would certainly do that. \"When is it coming out?\"\n\n\"In two days. There will be an immediate backlash, of course. I expect the lawsuits and the negative publicity may utterly destroy a good publishing house. I have eight people working full-time to keep the book's release a secret, even from the printers and publishing staff. Nobody should know anything until the book arrives simultaneously in bookstores throughout the world. The stores will be confused, naturally. Some will contact the publisher for clarification, but once they realize what they have, most will begin selling, unwilling to delay and risk losing out to their competitors.\"\n\nA sharp, triumphant cry pulled my attention to Lena, who had driven Ponce de Leon into the corner where the bookshelves met the windows. She jabbed her bokken at his leg.\n\nHe slapped her weapon aside with his cane while reaching with his other hand to grab a book from the shelf. He flung the book toward her face.\n\nLena lowered her head, taking the impact on her brow, but it distracted her long enough for him to tag her thigh with the tip of his cane.\n\nGutenberg coughed. \"If you two idiots want to bash each other's brains out, fine. But I'll thank you to leave my books out of it.\"\n\nPonce de Leon backed away and mopped his brow with his sleeve. \"I believe that's one point to me,\" he said calmly. To Gutenberg, he added, \"They deserve the whole truth, Johannes.\"\n\nThe Porters were using other authors' work to create tools and weapons for their war against Meridiana. To forge a Rowling book suggested they needed something stronger, something that required the belief of millions. \"What does the Goblin's Scepter do?\"\n\n\"It's a last resort,\" Gutenberg said wearily. \"In the story, the goblins of Rowling's universe design a doomsday weapon for use against the wizarding world. One with the power to end magic.\"\n\nLena shoved her bokken through her belt. Nidhi lowered the e-book reader she had curled up with. Even Nicola turned away from her computers.\n\n\"What do you mean 'end magic'?\" I asked softly.\n\nGutenberg pointed to my forehead. \"What was done to you would be done to the world. It would be irreversible, and it would put an end to the threat Meridiana and the Ghost Army present.\"\n\nWhen I recovered enough to speak, I could only whisper. \"You're insane.\"\n\nHe took the book from my hand. \"Was Hamlet mad, or merely desperate? I won't use the scepter until all other options fail. I'm not keen on the idea of ending my own immortality. But Meridiana could destroy this world, Isaac. If we eliminate magic, we eliminate her power. The mere threat of this weapon may be enough to persuade her to surrender.\"\n\n\"What happens to Lena if you use that thing?\" I asked. \"To Smudge?\"\n\n\"That's a fascinating question.\" Ponce de Leon leaned more heavily than usual on his cane as he joined us. Sparring with Lena had winded him. \"Where's the line between natural and supernatural? My body is healthy flesh and blood, which suggests I could live another sixty years without magic, assuming good diet and exercise. But what of your average vampire? What traits are bound to their flesh and blood, and what relies on magic? The truth is, we don't know.\"\n\n\"I never imagined myself saying this, but I vote we continue on in ignorance.\" I couldn't conceive of how such a spell would operate, let alone the impact it would have. The power required would likely destroy whoever tried to cast the spell. \"You can't know what kind of impact that would have on the world. Twenty-six years ago, a Porter researcher theorized that sentience itself was an evolutionary adaptation to magic. It was a crackpot theory, but if there was any truth to it\u2014if intelligence and consciousness are dependent in any way on magic\u2014\"\n\n\"None of us can foresee the consequences of such a step.\" Ponce de Leon ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back into place. \"Though after centuries of watching mankind, I sometimes suspect intelligence is overrated.\"\n\nGutenberg returned the last of the books to the table. \"As the truth emerges, bookstores and publishers will pulp their remaining stock of our altered titles. Their power will wane. We have only a limited window during which this option will be open to us.\"\n\nPonce de Leon cleared his throat. \"I believe that's his not-so-subtle way of telling you to get back to work, Isaac.\"\n\n\"Yah, I got that, thanks.\" Like I hadn't been under enough pressure already.\n\nI paced the length of the bookshelves, shoving another bite of cinnamon raisin bagel into my mouth without tasting it. Nidhi had insisted I stop and eat something. I was finishing up the last few bites when it hit me.\n\n\"Two-dimensional thinking!\"\n\nMy exclamation was loud enough to make Nicola jump. She turned from her computers, searching the room for whatever had made me cry out.\n\n\"Sorry.\" I held up my hands. \"It's a line from Star Trek II. Spock points out that Khan's pattern 'indicates two-dimensional thinking.'\"\n\nNicola frowned. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"I've been thinking like a twenty-first-century librarian. Gerbert d'Aurillac was brilliant, but he was also a product of his age. He lived in a time when Arabic numerals were the hot new thing in Europe, and the zero hadn't caught on.\"\n\nI swallowed the last of the bagel and returned to my desk. D'Aurillac had been fluent in multiple languages, but he had written his poem in Latin, the language of the church. He would have wanted it to be understood by another educated man. Back then, that meant someone familiar with Latin, along with the trivium\u2014grammar, logic, and rhetoric\u2014and the more advanced quadrivium\u2014arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. He would also have assumed that whoever found his poem would have a grounding in magical theory.\n\nI stared at the poem until my vision blurred. I tried to focus not on words, but shape. Geometry and mathematics. Circles and angles and spokes. Seven spokes. That was a deliberate choice. Every stroke of the pen had been drawn for a reason. Seven... seven days of creation in the Old Testament. Seven musical notes in a scale. Seven deadly sins.\n\nOn a whim, I searched for \"septem,\" the Latin word for seven. In order to help me find potential words, I had jotted down a table showing the frequency with which each letter appeared in the poem. The P was the least-used letter in the word septem, so I scanned for Ps, looking for anywhere they connected to E and T.\n\nI didn't notice Ponce de Leon approaching until he sat down across from me.\n\n\"The last time, it was a lost book of the Bible,\" he said quietly.\n\nLetters crawled across my vision like tiny insects. I blinked and sat back, mentally marking my place in the word puzzle. \"Huh?\"\n\n\"The atomic bomb terrified him.\" He turned to watch Gutenberg, who had emerged to check one of the computer screens. \"The Cold War was before your time. You didn't live through the fear. What could magic do against the power that had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki? For years, we watched the sky and waited for the scream of the sirens that would herald the end of everything.\n\n\"So Gutenberg prepared his lost book. He knew some would accept it at face value while others denounced it as a forgery, but they would all read the alleged prophecies of Christ. Their belief and imagination would fuel those prophecies. Including one in which 'the sword of the archangel Michael, commander of God's armies, shall lay waste to the wicked and their tools of destruction. The angelic blade shall rip the sky asunder and rain brimstone upon those who would wage war.'\"\n\nMost swords fit easily through the pages of a book. \"He wanted to create a superweapon.\"\n\n\"A preemptive superweapon. In order for his plan to work, Johannes had to strike first. He couldn't watch over the entire Earth, nor could he sit back and wait for the first missiles to launch. We didn't have satellite television or instant social media updates back then. By the time we learned of a nuclear launch, it would be too late to save the world.\"\n\n\"This is what you were talking about in Rome,\" I said quietly. \"The split between you and Gutenberg.\"\n\n\"What gives any of us the right to play God over humanity? To judge and punish?\"\n\nI thought about the phrasing of Gutenberg's Biblical prophecy. \"What counts as 'those who would wage war'?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\" Ponce de Leon nodded slowly. \"Had Johannes gone through with his plan, he would have eliminated the world's nuclear stockpile, but slaughtered half the globe in the process. The power of such magic would have certainly killed him as well. We fought for so long over that book. Over his need for control and his lack of faith.\"\n\n\"You stopped him.\"\n\n\"I did.\" He didn't elaborate. He didn't have to. The haunted emptiness in those two words conveyed how much his actions had cost him. \"But this time is different. Even if I wished to do so again, Johannes will have taken steps to prevent me.\"\n\n\"Maybe he's right,\" I said.\n\nBoth black eyebrows rose. \"Not a sentiment I expected to hear from you, Isaac. If you're considering the end of magic to be a good thing, perhaps Doctor Shah was right about your depression.\"\n\nI scowled. \"Look at how many people Meridiana has corrupted or killed using magic.\"\n\n\"That has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the nature of man. Or woman, in this case. Eliminate magic, and perhaps you stop this threat. What of the next?\" He reached past me to pick up a crumpled sketch I had done. \"What's this?\"\n\nI had to stop myself from trying to snatch it away. My cheeks burned. \"It started as a picture of the poem's geometry... but then I got frustrated and turned it into a plan for a tiny steam-powered airship for Smudge. He'd provide the heat for a tiny, fireproof dirigible, and there would be eight little straps he could use to steer.\" I had even drawn tiny goggles over his eyes.\n\nAn odd smile played over Ponce de Leon's mouth. Slowly and carefully, he smoothed out the picture, as if it was a lost Van Gogh rather than a silly pencil sketch. \"This is where magic is born. No matter what happens, nobody can take that from you.\" He returned the drawing to me and stood. \"On that note, I should leave you to your work.\"\n\n\"I need copies of tenth-and eleventh-century star charts and constellations!\" I had lost track of where everyone was, so I shouted loudly enough for the whole apartment to hear.\n\nLena was the first to reach me, followed closely by Nicola and Gutenberg.\n\n\"You have something?\" Gutenberg asked.\n\n\"Maybe.\" I jabbed a finger at the poem. \"The triangle is the outermost shape. That's the number three, the trinity. At first I thought it was symbolic, a way of suggesting that God contains all things, only that's not what d'Aurillac was getting at. It's a matter of perspective. Two-dimensional thinking. God isn't surrounding the poem. He's above it.\"\n\nThey simply stared. Nidhi had come up behind Lena, and I heard Ponce de Leon limping toward me from the bedroom. None of them understood.\n\n\"D'Aurillac created this poem to house his celestial sphere.\" I grabbed another piece of paper and drew a quick set of intersecting ovals. \"This is how we'd illustrate a sphere today to show it as a three-dimensional shape, but most artwork from his time didn't use forced perspective the way we do. This poem is the sphere. This central circle is the Earth. The seven spokes connect us to the sun, the moon, and the five planets.\"\n\nI pointed triumphantly. \"Look where the top spoke connects to the outer ring. There's the large A for Anna. To the left is the word fortuna, which means fortune. To the right, lucis, or daylight. Combine the last and first two letters of those two words, and you get Luna, the Latin name for Selene, the goddess of the moon.\"\n\n\"But the two pieces of the word are on the wrong side,\" said Nidhi. \"That would make 'nalu,' not Luna.\"\n\n\"Exactly!\" I beamed as I drew a faint loop from the end of fortuna to the beginning of lucis. \"It's not enough to simply connect the two parts. The letters have to circle around the A. Just as the moon orbits round the Earth.\"\n\nI slammed the pencil down. \"The heavens are all here, just as Gerbert crafted them. All except the stars.\" I pointed to the transcribed lines of text. \"I'm betting the constellations will unlock his message. I need illustrations by Ptolemy and al-Sufi, and for that I need access to either a library or the Internet.\"\n\n\"It's not safe for you to leave,\" said Nicola. \"Meridiana is searching for you. As are several teams of vampires, if our intelligence is correct.\"\n\n\"Great. Internet it is.\"\n\nGutenberg left without a word. He returned carrying an old brick of a laptop. \"Nicola?\"\n\nShe ran a network cable from behind the bar to the laptop, then sat down and began typing. \"I'm routing him through the same proxy servers and firewalls we're using on the main system.\"\n\nTen minutes later, I was downloading excerpts and images of The Book of Constellations of the Fixed Stars, by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi. I had no idea whether Gerbert d'Aurillac had been familiar with his work, but al-Sufi was a tenth-century astronomer, so his illustrations should be similar to what d'Aurillac had used and observed. There was only one problem with the pages filling the screen. \"Does anyone here read Persian? I can't\u2014wait, never mind.\"\n\nI clicked on the thumbnail view option and skimmed through the pages, searching for illustrations.\n\n\"Big, smart librarian, and all he wants to do is look at the pictures,\" Lena murmured.\n\nI enlarged a page with a chart and picture of Ursa Minor. \"Printer?\"\n\n\"Behind the bar,\" said Nicola.\n\nI printed the first of al-Sufi's constellations and clicked to the next. The scale wouldn't necessarily match my grid of nonsense words, but the stars and lines would show me what patterns to search for. Depending on how obsessive d'Aurillac had been about accuracy\u2014and given what I had seen so far, I wasn't about to underestimate him\u2014finding one constellation should give me a relative idea of the size and positions for the rest.\n\nUrsa Major, Draco, Cepheus, Bo\u00f6tes, Hercules. I sent them all to the printer, then hurried to the bar, unwilling to wait. I grabbed the finished pages and brought them back as the printer continued to spit forth illustrations.\n\nI started with the circumpolar constellations, those that would have been visible year-round from the northern hemisphere. Ursa Major was the most memorable. I traced circles onto clear plastic to use as a template, then attacked the text. Holding the template at varying heights allowed me to expand or shrink the scale.\n\n\"How do you know which way is 'up'?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"It would depends on the season. Logically, the pole star should be in the center of the map, which means Ursa Major would rotate around that fixed point.\" I scooted my chair back and stood, slowly circling the table to examine the text from different angles. I bumped into someone and muttered an apology without looking up.\n\n\"Shall we leave Isaac alone to finish transcribing the universe?\" Amusement colored Ponce de Leon's words.\n\nI barely noticed as they moved away. One step at a time, I was decoding a message Gerbert d'Aurillac had left more than a millennium ago. It had all the excitement of being a kid and making up secret codes with your friends, only this code had been created by one of the smartest men of his age.\n\nSix hours later, the thrill had pretty much disappeared, replaced by a throbbing headache and dry, aching eyes. The constellations hadn't turned up a single usable word. Either I had wasted most of the day racing down the wrong path, or I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle.\n\nI knew the dangers of getting too attached to unproven theories. If I was wrong about the constellations, I needed to walk away and find a new angle. But this felt right. The shapes, the numbers, the sphere, everything fit.\n\nI pushed back from the table and stretched. A plate sat untouched beside the laptop. I picked up the sandwich and called out, \"Thanks to whoever made dinner.\"\n\n\"That was Ponce de Leon,\" said Nicola. \"Two hours ago.\"\n\nA conquistador and sorcerer had made me turkey, lettuce, tomato, and cheese on a poppy-seed bagel. Nice. I crunched down and went in search of something to drink. The bundled cords and cables Nicola had strung through the kitchen were as bad as tripwires. \"How did you end up being Gutenberg's personal network guru?\"\n\nShe didn't look up from her screens. \"I have experience with this kind of setup. It's similar to what I used when I recorded my last album.\"\n\nI stared at her through the gaps between the monitors. \"You made an album?\"\n\n\"Three. I only made a hundred copies of each. They're experiments, mostly. Exploring the limits of voice.\" She turned to another screen, typed a command, and frowned. \"Also, Gutenberg trusts me more than most of the other Regional Masters.\"\n\n\"Why is that?\"\n\n\"Because I can't stand politics. And because I told him he was wrong to kick you out of the Porters. Most of the others either don't question his decisions or else they keep their disagreement to themselves. He prefers to know where people stand.\"\n\nI grabbed a Coke and made my way out of the kitchen. \"What's that screen on the left?\"\n\n\"Our best assessment of Meridiana's powers and limitations. Every attack tells us more about what she can do. All of her magic has been channeled through e-books, suggesting she's limited by Jeneta's own potential.\"\n\n\"That's a lot of potential.\"\n\n\"True, and the fact that we don't understand her power complicates things. In addition to Jeneta's libriomancy, Meridiana maintains her connection to the Ghost Army. She's able to use the dead to possess and control her transformed monsters. The transformation is book-based magic, but the ghosts are something else entirely.\" Nicola pointed to another monitor. \"By the way, someone scoped out your house last night.\"\n\nI froze, my drink halfway to my mouth. \"Lena's tree?\"\n\n\"They didn't hurt anything this time. They were using magic to shield themselves, but they tripped one of the infrared beams Whitney set up. As far as she can tell, nothing was touched or disturbed, but we can't be certain. They may have just been checking to see if you were home, or they may have wanted a way to track you down.\"\n\nDepending on the power of the hunter, a single leaf from Lena's oak could be enough to find her. Or a hair from my brush. For the right kind of magic, a sweaty sock was as good as a compass. \"How good are the protections on this place?\"\n\n\"The best we can make.\" She sang a quick verse in Greek, and two of the monitors changed views. \"You should be safe for now. Meridiana wasn't able to steal d'Aurillac's secrets from your mind. That means her best plan is to wait for you to unlock his magic. That's when she'll try to kill us all and take the poem and the sphere.\"\n\nI snorted. \"If she's waiting for me to crack this thing, we could be stuck here for years.\"\n\n\"The constellations haven't worked?\" She continued to watch the monitors as she spoke, rarely making eye contact. She was too busy keeping an eye on the rest of the world.\n\n\"No, they haven't.\" I stepped back, turning that image over in my thoughts. Nicola sat on her padded bar chair like a goddess on her throne, looking down at the mortals below. \"But that's because I'm an idiot.\"\n\nShe didn't say anything. Which was a little insulting, actually. It would have been nice if she'd argued.\n\n\"Tenth-century thinking.\" I swallowed. \"There are two perspectives for showing the stars. One is to draw the sky as we see it. That's what I printed out from al-Sufi's text.\"\n\nI hurried back to the table, snatched up the transparency of Ursa Major, and held it toward the ceiling. \"This is what we see when we look up at the stars. But there's a second perspective.\" I flipped the transparency and held it over the poem. \"God sits above the stars, looking down! From God's perspective, the stars and constellations would appear backward.\"\n\nFive minutes later, I had it\u2014the first word of Gerbert d'Aurillac's message. \"Octavian,\" I shouted triumphantly. The seven stars in Ursa Major aligned perfectly. The O and the C were linked together, the C hooked through the circle of the O. I even recognized the reference. \"The treasures of Octavian were a legend, a story of hidden caverns full of bones and gold. Historians assumed the stories were about old Etruscan tombs, but according to William of Malmesbury, d'Aurillac knew the secret of entering those hidden caverns. William's account is more myth and superstition than fact, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But we know d'Aurillac hid the armillary sphere somewhere it would be safe,\" said Gutenberg. I hadn't even heard him enter. Lena and Ponce de Leon were with him.\n\n\"Somewhere inaccessible to mortal man,\" said Ponce de Leon.\n\n\"The elements of the story would seem to fit.\" Gutenberg stared at the poem as if he could peer right into those shadow realms. \"Valuables secreted away, protected from discovery, with dire warnings against disturbing them.\"\n\n\"If Ursa Major is here...\" I circled the letters on the page and penciled in the lines to complete the constellation. \"Someone pass me Virgo.\"\n\nIf Virgo was on the map, it would mean d'Aurillac had used the spring sky as his guide. That was why the poem felt wrong. He had prepared it beneath a different sky. If the magic was attuned to the stars, I would need to adjust it to align with the autumn constellations. That meant uncovering the rest of the hidden words, then reverse engineering the overall grid and the original poem.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\nI realized I was grinning. \"I was thinking about Jeneta. She used to laugh at me when I struggled with poetry. She would love this.\" My smile faded. \"I hope I get the chance to share it with her.\"\n\nStormy Knight Publishing would like to apologize to our readers and to author Stuart Pan for the errors in this week's release of The Foretelling. While all of our titles are reviewed by multiple editors and proofreaders, it would appear that the file sent to the printer contained portions of another, as-yet-unidentified story, which was somehow inserted into the manuscript.\n\nWe are posting the corrected versions of chapters six and seven of The Foretelling on our Web site for download, and we have pulped all remaining copies from our warehouse. Bookstores have been instructed to pull the title from their shelves and return it to us. If you have already purchased this book, you can return it for a full refund or a replacement, which should be available within two weeks. If you bought the book electronically, we will be working with e-book vendors to push a corrected file to your device.\n\nAfter reviewing the inserted text, we have determined that it did not come from any of the books in our catalog, nor does it appear to be from a known published work. We are investigating the possibility that this was deliberate hacking and sabotage.\n\nHere is a paragraph from the affected chapters. If anyone recognizes the excerpt in question, please contact us at editor@skpub.net.\n\nThe JG-367 was the pinnacle of military magic, a wand mounted on a handgun's grip, fully programmable through its cutting-edge touch-telepathy interface. The wand was titanium, infused with more than twenty firing modes, including sleep spells, transformation, and temporary or permanent petrification. More importantly, this new model included an exorcism mode, capable of tearing spirits and demons from their human hosts and trapping them in a sphere of magical energy.\n\nFor eight years, Stormy Knight Publishing has worked to bring you the best books by some of the most popular authors of our day. We would like to thank our readers for their support and understanding. We look forward to sharing exciting and amazing stories with you for many years to come.\n\nGerbert d'Aurillac had used not the spring constellations, but the winter. Canis Major, Orion, Ursa Minor\u00b8 Draco... each revealed another piece of his message. The name Meridiana was worked into the poem, along with Anna. The next word I found was paeniteo, which meant repent. The names made sense. The significance of repentance was less clear. Was d'Aurillac asking for forgiveness, or commanding Meridiana to confess and atone for her sins?\n\nShadow. Bridge. Spirit. The constellation of Gemini, the twins, revealed the name Gerbertus twice, but the second was spelled backward. I stared at that for a time, trying to understand. Was the duplication a play on the image of the twins? And why backward? Twins weren't mirror images of one another, any more than Otto III and Anna had been.\n\nGoose bumps spread up my arms. What if the poem itself was the mirror? Then d'Aurillac's reflection was whoever found and deciphered this poem. I crossed out the letters of the reversed name and inserted my own.\n\nGutenberg and Lena walked into the room. I took one look and jumped to my feet. \"What happened?\"\n\nGutenberg tossed my holstered shock-gun through the air. \"Put that on.\"\n\nHe carried a sword, a short, thick-bladed weapon with a flared pommel and a simple Sshaped guard. A Katzbalger, if I remembered my history correctly. The blade was made of a dull gray metal. Tiny lines of black text were etched along the edges. He scanned the room, then sheathed his sword.\n\nLena's twin bokken had flattened into wooden blades, sharp and strong as the best steel. \"Jeneta is in Chicago. They attacked Nicola's home.\"\n\nThe chairs by the computer were empty. \"Where's Nicola?\"\n\n\"Bathroom,\" Lena said. \"Gutenberg won't let her leave. The friend who was taking care of her animals called a few minutes ago. When he showed up today, he found four of them dead and the rest escaped.\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\" Nicola's chupacabras and the hybrids she crossbred with poodles were as dear to her as family. They were also dangerous as hell. For someone to take down four of them...\n\n\"How close are you to deciphering the spell?\" asked Gutenberg.\n\n\"I've got most of it worked out. The next step is to update it with the current constellations.\" Starting with the keywords, then working those letters into the proper patterns. \"I'll need another day to finish the poem. Maybe two. As for infusing it with magic and retrieving the sphere\u2014\"\n\n\"You complete the poem. I'll perform the magic,\" he said.\n\nIt made sense. Gutenberg knew more about libriomancy than anyone, and given my lack of magic, it wasn't as though I could do it myself. But logic did nothing to stop the crush of disappointment that someone else would finish my work.\n\n\"We're out of time.\" Nidhi hurried out carrying Smudge's cage in one hand. Nicola followed a moment later. Nicola's face was dry, but she was fidgeting more than normal, and she wouldn't look at anyone.\n\nInside the cage, Smudge was blazing away. I adjusted my shock-gun to level six, which should be enough to make even a sandworm from Dune decide to go elsewhere.\n\nGutenberg gathered the books from the table, shoving them into a brown carpet bag that should have been far too small to hold them all. \"Juan?\" he shouted. \"Sorry to cut your shower short, but we may be receiving guests.\"\n\nNicola slid into her customary place in front of the computers and began pulling up what looked like video feeds from the building's perimeter. \"One of the cameras is damaged.\" She turned the monitor off and on again. \"Wait, it's not the camera. The screen is partially burnt out.\"\n\n\"Where?\" Nidhi looked over Nicola's shoulder. \"I don't see it.\"\n\n\"Second monitor from the right. The entire top-left quadrant is blacked out.\"\n\nI moved to join them, anxiety worming through my gut. I pointed to an irregular blob of dead pixels. \"You can't see that?\"\n\nNidhi shook her head.\n\nIf this was what I thought it was, I shouldn't have been able to see it either. It looked like black-and-gray smoke had seeped into the screen. Lighter gray circles bulged and popped, as if the plastic was melting. \"Is that\u2014\"\n\n\"Char, yes.\" Gutenberg touched the corner of the screen with one hand and jumped back as if it had given him an electric shock.\n\nMagical charring was invisible to mundanes. \"Are you using magic in your network?\"\n\nNicola shook her head. \"Low-level security, nothing more.\"\n\n\"Get away from it.\" Ponce de Leon raced out of the bathroom. He had thrown on a pair of trousers without bothering to dry himself.\n\n\"The manifestation reminds me of a report Isaac filed about his first encounter with one of Meridiana's ghosts,\" said Gutenberg. \"In an abandoned warehouse in Detroit. I believe you called them 'devourers.'\"\n\n\"We had to drop the whole building on that thing to stop it,\" Lena said. \"I'd prefer to not go through that again. Especially with us inside the building.\"\n\nGutenberg stepped around the bar and began yanking power cables from the battery-powered surge protectors. The screens flickered and died, but the ashen stain continued to grow.\n\n\"Whatever they are, they're searching.\" Ponce de Leon gripped his cane in one hand. With his other, he slicked his wet hair back from his face.\n\n\"They?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"I can hear others throughout the city. If we use magic to fight them, we'll give our position away to Meridiana.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said Gutenberg. Nicola surrendered her seat, and he sat down to examine the spreading char. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a gold fountain pen.\n\nMy mouth went dry. The sight of the pen brought back memories of magical cold, of losing myself to Meridiana and her ghosts. I remembered the sharp pressure of that pen against my skin. The tip had felt like it was cutting my skull, slicing through the bone, though it hadn't left a visible mark. When he pulled it away, he had taken my magic with it.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Nidhi touched my elbow.\n\n\"I'm all right.\" I unclenched my hands and took a deep, slow breath. \"How many are there?\"\n\nPonce de Leon shook his head. \"Dozens. This one is exploring a hundred computers and phones in this building alone. They know we're in the area, and I suspect even the residual magic in your network is enough to attract attention.\"\n\n\"We knew this location was temporary.\" Gutenberg pressed the pen to the monitor and began to write. I couldn't make out the words. \"Anything?\"\n\n\"Whatever it is, it's still coming through. I believe it has abandoned its assault on the other residences, however.\" Ponce de Leon pointed his cane toward the monitor. \"Step aside, mi coraz\u00f3n.\"\n\nI couldn't see what he did, but a web of cracks spread from the center of the screen. He stabbed his cane forward, and the screen bowed inward like a trampoline with a weight in the center. The invisible weight sank deeper, though the cane never appeared to touch the screen. The smoke and ash began to slide inward, pulled into whatever mystical singularity Ponce de Leon was creating.\n\nGutenberg tucked his pen away and drew his sword. He ran one finger over the flat of the blade. The text in the metal responded to his touch, letters rearranging themselves along the edge. He extended the tip and cut sharply down and to the right, slashing a rift through the air in front of the monitor. Flame flickered from the edges, and the smell of sulfur drifted into the room.\n\n\"Ready?\" asked Ponce de Leon.\n\nGutenberg cut a second line across the first, opening an X. Triangles of reality flapped like flags, offering glimpses into a cavern of burning, dripping rock. \"Bring it through.\"\n\nPonce de Leon spun, yanking his cane with both hands like a fisherman reeling his catch into the boat. The monitor exploded, and a creature of glass and ash and electricity flew out, directly into whatever hellgate Gutenberg had opened.\n\nHe sheathed his sword, and the rift vanished, taking the devourer with it. Bits of broken glass and plastic fell to the floor.\n\nPonce de Leon flashed Gutenberg a lopsided smile. Gutenberg raised two fingers to his brow in salute. Neither one was even breathing hard.\n\nI looked at Lena, remembering what it had taken for the two of us to destroy one of those things.\n\nShe folded her arms and asked, \"Where can the rest of us get swords like that?\"\n\nI shoved the printed constellations and the rest of my notes into an old leather briefcase, along with a Latin dictionary. Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem and my initial efforts to update it were folded and crammed into my rear pocket. I didn't want to keep everything in one place, just in case Meridiana got her hands on the briefcase. Or on me.\n\nNicola was singing 80s techno to the computers. Each one sparked and smoked in response to what I assumed was a musical self-destruct command.\n\nI clipped Smudge's cage to my belt and looked around. Lena had taken up sentry duty at the door. Nidhi was ready and waiting, watching nervously out one of the windows. Given the nature of our arrival, the three of us didn't have much to pack.\n\nGutenberg was another matter. This was his home. He had emptied almost a quarter of the shelves, and was tossing more into his bottomless carpet bag. He moved too quickly for me to see which titles he chose to save, though the Gerbert d'Aurillac manuscript was one of the first ones he took.\n\nThe telltale whoosh of a spider bursting into flames made me jump. The fiberglass lining on the side protected my jeans, but I had to hold my arm away to avoid burning my hand or wrist.\n\n\"We need to go, Johannes.\" Ponce de Leon joined Lena at the door and peered into the hallway.\n\nGutenberg looked at the remaining books on the shelves and sighed. \"Nicola, please let the other Regional Masters know this location has been compromised.\" His sheathed sword bounced against his hip as he hefted his carpet bag and strode toward the door. \"The elevator is to the left, ladies and gentlemen.\"\n\nWe were halfway down the hallway when I noticed Smudge's reaction. \"Stop!\"\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"The closer we get to the elevators, the hotter Smudge burns.\"\n\nPonce de Leon jogged ahead. \"He's right. There's a great deal of magic coming up over here.\" He touched the doors to both elevators. A series of electronic chimes rang out. \"I've shut one down. The other is on its way. The ghosts are blocking my efforts to stop them, but I'll do what I can.\"\n\nGutenberg pulled his sword. \"Lena, would you assist me, please?\"\n\nI followed them to the elevator, where Lena wrenched open the doors. Gutenberg leaned out to press his blade against the moving cables.\n\n\"Wait,\" said Nidhi. \"What if there are innocent people inside?\"\n\n\"Nothing in that elevator qualifies as 'people' anymore,\" Ponce de Leon said quietly.\n\nThe text on Gutenberg's blade burned orange, and individual filaments of twisted steel cable began to snap. He pressed harder, slicing through the rest like flame through ice. A deafening screech echoed up the elevator shaft. The emergency mechanisms on the car would prevent it from falling, but it wasn't climbing anymore, either.\n\nPonce de Leon dug his fingers into the edge of the carpet in front of the elevator and peeled it back. \"Lena, I could use your magic here.\"\n\nThey conferred together, and moments later, a thick tangle of black tendrils began to rise from the floor. It reminded me of cotton candy, if cotton candy came in tar flavor.\n\n\"Mold,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Strengthened with Lena's power as well as my own. It won't stop them from climbing up the elevator shaft, but it should give us an additional minute or two.\"\n\n\"If any of Meridiana's thugs have asthma, it might scare them off completely.\" I heard pounding from within the elevator shaft, along with the ring of an alarm. A particularly loud thump echoed through the building, and the alarm went dead.\n\n\"Stairs?\" I wasn't looking forward to descending thirty-plus stories on foot.\n\n\"They'll have someone on the ground to watch the stairs as well.\" Gutenberg's sleeve was ripped and bloody. The metal strands must have lashed out like whips. One side of his face was bleeding, and his ear was torn.\n\nHis magic started to heal the damage as I watched. The gouge down his face zipped together, leaving a single line of blood. He noticed me staring and grimaced. \"It still hurts like hell.\"\n\n\"Take the stairs,\" said Nicola. \"Get out on the second floor, break into one of the apartments, and go out through the window.\"\n\nGutenberg nodded and hurried past, leading us toward the end of the hallway.\n\nA door opened behind us. I spun, one hand going to my shock-gun as an older man peered out and shouted, \"What the devil is going on out here?\"\n\n\"Emergency drill, Mr. Bennett.\" Gutenberg strode past the door toward the stairs. \"Best to stay inside. Things will soon quiet down, one way or another.\"\n\nAnother door opened. Gutenberg sighed. \"Juan?\"\n\nPonce de Leon tapped his cane on the floor. Mr. Bennett yelped as the door swung shut in his face. Up and down the hallway, I heard deadbolts click into place.\n\nGutenberg pushed open the door to the stairs, peered down, and swore. \"They're coming up. Back to the apartment.\"\n\n\"We could do that newt thing again,\" I suggested.\n\n\"That's unlikely to work this time,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Particularly now that Johannes and I have vanquished one of her devourers. She knows we're here. If she can't find us, she might decide to destroy the entire building to prevent us from escaping.\"\n\nOnce we were back inside Gutenberg's apartment, Lena shut the door, locked it, and sank her fingers into the wood. Roots began to grow into the frame and the walls.\n\nGutenberg and Ponce de Leon were arguing in low tones. Gutenberg glanced at me long enough to say, \"I believe the window now offers our best escape. Isaac, if you would?\"\n\nI fired the shock-gun, leaving a smoldering hole in the curtains and an empty frame with bits of jagged, semi-molten glass dropping from the edges.\n\nGutenberg tilted his head to one side. \"Dramatic, but effective.\" He reached into his carpet bag to produce an umbrella with a carved head in the shape of a parrot.\n\n\"That's from Mary Poppins,\" I said. \"I knew I recognized that bag!\"\n\n\"The umbrella's magic should carry us safely to the street, so long as everyone holds tight.\"\n\n\"Will it support all of our weight?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"That won't be an issue. The umbrella's magic creates a field of near-weightlessness.\" Gutenberg yanked open the curtains. \"Poppins wasn't clinging for dear life as she flew about, after all.\"\n\n\"There are people on the street,\" said Nidhi. \"I can't tell whether they're with Meridiana or if they're trying to see why lightning just shot out of somebody's window.\"\n\nI looked past her. \"How close is the nearest automaton? We could try to set up an ambush, or they could teleport us away...\" I trailed off when I saw the grim expression on Ponce de Leon's face.\n\n\"He doesn't feel them,\" said Gutenberg.\n\n\"Doesn't feel what?\" I asked.\n\n\"The Ghost Army.\" Ponce de Leon traced a symbol onto the door with his cane. \"If Meridiana had simply brought the same handful of warriors she had in Rome, we might have a chance. But the presence of additional ghosts complicates both our defenses and our escape. Teleportation is dangerous at the best of times, but I'd risk it now if not for the ghosts. The slightest interference, and we could end up rematerializing in the sun or scattered across a three-mile stretch. Assuming we reappeared at all.\"\n\n\"And what stops the ghosts from sucking the magic from that umbrella and dropping us in mid-flight?\" I did my best to match their calm, though I suspect I failed.\n\nPonce de Leon twirled his cane. \"Me.\"\n\nGutenberg opened the umbrella and approached the window. \"There's a parking garage across the road, close enough for us to reach.\"\n\nSomething smashed against the door. Books fell from the shelves, and dishes rattled in the kitchen cabinets.\n\n\"Television!\" Lena shouted.\n\nPonce de Leon spun toward the flat-screen, which had begun to bulge outward. He pinned the struggling, partially-formed devourer in place with his cane. \"Johannes?\"\n\nGutenberg pulled a book from his back pocket, opened it one-handed, sank his thumb into the text, and tossed the book to Ponce de Leon, who caught it and thrust it into the screen. Creature and television both imploded into nothingness.\n\nPonce de Leon touched the end of his cane and grimaced. \"Almost took the tip with it.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Gutenberg. \"Next time I'll look for a gentler black hole. Now get over here.\"\n\nWe each grabbed the umbrella's handle, pressing together like we were part of the world's weirdest maypole dance. Lena kicked shards of cooling glass from the window frame. People were shouting and pointing from the ground below.\n\n\"Don't look,\" Nidhi whispered.\n\nI nodded and held tighter.\n\nWind filled the apartment, rustling fallen books and tugging the umbrella. Then, as if we were standing on an invisible platform, we rose gently out the window.\n\n\"Here they come,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Brace yourselves.\"\n\nThe instant we were out of reach of the building, we dipped like an airplane hitting turbulence. I wrapped both hands around the handle. I didn't know which was worse, the potential fall or the fact that I was helpless to do anything about it.\n\nNot that my magic would have been effective. Meridiana's incorporeal soldiers weren't ghosts in the traditional sense, but beings of magic who had lost their sanity and sense of self long ago. Trying to fight them with spells was like using a squirt gun against a giant squid.\n\nPonce de Leon simply grinned. The winds around us grew stronger, pulling trash from the street and books from the apartment into a cyclone. \"They feed on magic. Let's see how much they can swallow.\"\n\nUnder other circumstances, I would have loved to watch Ponce de Leon command the wind, but right now, I was more interested in not plummeting to my death.\n\n\"Incoming.\" Lena drew one of her bokken and pointed it toward the roof.\n\nA familiar angel loomed from the edge like a gargoyle, wings spread wide, sword in one hand.\n\nEven if his bones were hollow as a bird's, basic physics meant there should be no way for him to truly fly in this gravity and atmosphere. As was often the case, magic just chuckled and kicked physics in the balls, leaving it groaning and wondering what just happened.\n\nThe angel jumped from the roof and swooped toward us. Lena twisted to parry his first strike. The impact spun the umbrella like a merry-go-round.\n\nI pried my right hand from the umbrella and reached for the shock-gun. I needed an angle that didn't risk me shooting through a window and killing innocent people if I missed. \"Can you get us below him?\"\n\n\"Unfortunately, his maneuverability is better than ours,\" said Gutenberg. We pulled to the left to dodge the next attack. We were halfway to the parking garage.\n\nI heard a siren in the distance. Traffic below had stopped. Horns blared, and people shouted at us and at one another. All I cared about was the glorious rooftop ahead.\n\nThe angel curved around to block our way. He hovered in front of us, holding his sword in both hands. He didn't need to take us down. He just needed to keep us here long enough for the rest of Meridiana's brute squad to arrive.\n\nWe dipped lower. I adjusted my aim and fired. Lightning stabbed the air, only to dissipate into smoke when it reached the angel. He smiled.\n\n\"I see,\" said Ponce de Leon. His cyclone slowed. \"Perhaps if we try a less direct approach.\"\n\nI couldn't tell what he did, but about five seconds later, a pigeon dive-bombed the angel. Its claws and beak left tiny red scratches on his face.\n\nGutenberg chuckled as two more pigeons attacked. Others followed, fluttering and pecking as if our attacker was a pi\u00f1ata stuffed with discarded fast food.\n\nThe angel fought back against the birds the best he could, but the pigeons were surprisingly difficult targets. For every one he grabbed, another pecked his fingers. His sword slipped away, and Ponce de Leon blasted it into oblivion before it could strike the ground.\n\n\"Dumpster?\" said Gutenberg.\n\n\"Excellent choice.\" Ponce de Leon twisted to point his cane at the street. A metal dumpster lurched into the air and tumbled end over end. The ghosts might have tried to intercept his magic, but by then, momentum had taken over. Pigeons fled in all directions, giving me a brief glimpse of one royally pissed-off angel wiping away blood, feathers, and pigeon crap. I don't think he even saw the dumpster that slammed him into the building. Angel and dumpster dropped onto the street with a deafening clang.\n\nWe landed on the top level of the parking garage and immediately ducked behind a van.\n\nGutenberg watched the broken window of his apartment. \"Nicola, Juan, find us transportation. My own vehicle is parked below my building, regrettably out of reach. Meridiana's ghosts are still here, so be cautious and use as little magic as necessary. Lena, please go with them. I believe your strength might be useful.\"\n\nLeaving Nidhi and me to hide and wait. Not that I really wanted to confront whatever else Meridiana sent after us, but I hated feeling useless.\n\nA resounding crack came from inside the broken window across the street, followed by a puff of dust and smoke. They had broken through the door. It felt like we had stepped out of that window an hour ago, but it couldn't have been more than a minute or two.\n\nIn Jeneta's body, Meridiana looked down at us, flanked by the gorgon from Rome\u2014still wearing her burqa, thankfully\u2014and an enormous, misshapen man with yellow skin.\n\nMeridiana clutched her e-reader close to her body. I couldn't make out her facial expression, but from here, she looked like any other kid. Right up until she reached into her e-reader and pulled out a writhing yellow serpent, which she hurled toward us. The snake lengthened and split again and again, until a swarm of indignant and presumably venomous serpents were raining down at us.\n\nGutenberg was ready with a book of his own. I backed away, wishing my gun had a wide-field setting.\n\nMeridiana's magic must have cushioned the snakes' landing, because they immediately started hissing and slithering when they hit the ground. But they didn't attack. To the last snake, they darted into the shadows, fleeing whatever Gutenberg was doing.\n\n\"The legend of Saint Patrick,\" he said calmly, holding up his book. \"If he can drive the serpents from Ireland, I can banish these from a parking garage. We'll send an automaton into the sewers later to gather them up.\"\n\nMeridiana's next assault created what looked like streams of silver glitter falling from the sky. She directed them not toward us, but to the onlookers below. It wasn't until the screams began that I realized what it was.\n\n\"Burn them,\" I shouted. \"Don't let it reach the ground!\"\n\nGutenberg swapped books and launched a jet of flame, but the ghosts must have intercepted his assault. The fire sputtered and died before reaching its target: deadly spores known as Thread, from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider series. Watching it fall from Earth's sky was like reliving the first time I read Dragonflight, and the horror I felt at wave after wave of deadly Thread that consumed all organic life it touched.\n\n\"Give me d'Aurillac's poem, and I'll end this.\" Meridiana's words cut through the screams, as if she stood directly in front of us.\n\nThe quick beep of a horn announced the arrival of our ride.\n\n\"We can't leave,\" I said. \"The Thread will start to burrow.\" Most of the ground below was blacktop or sidewalk, but there were strips of green, grassy soil where Thread could thrive.\n\n\"We both know I'll find you wherever you go,\" Meridiana continued. \"The only question is how many people you'll sacrifice in the meantime.\"\n\nGutenberg tucked his book away and pulled out his cell phone.\n\n\"I could summon Thread down upon Lena's grove,\" she said. \"This is but one of a thousand plagues I can\u2014\"\n\nGutenberg tapped a button on his phone, and the apartment exploded."
            },
            {
                "title": "DIET OF THE DAMNED",
                "text": "A popular new diet plan could soon put a stake through Jenny Craig's heart.\n\nNutritionist Jamie Bergren of Los Angeles, California announced earlier this week that she will be launching her exclusive blood-based weight-loss program online. Doctor Bergren says she has been using this plan with select clients for years, with incredible results.\n\nHer Web site features photographs of slender, attractive men and women drinking blood from wine glasses, but Bergren is quick to point out that human beings can't survive on blood alone.\n\n\"Healthy arterial blood is used as a dietary supplement only,\" she explained in a press release. \"Every client's needs are different, depending on weight, gender, physical activity, and other factors.\"\n\nHow did she discover this unusual diet? That's simple. According to Bergren, her father was a vampire.\n\n\"He was turned when I was eleven years old,\" Bergren explains. \"Before that, he had always been obese. He couldn't play with me or my brother without getting out of breath. We watched him try one fad diet after another, but nothing worked.\n\n\"Within a year of becoming a vampire, he was down to a hundred and seventy pounds. The most significant change to his lifestyle, aside from having to avoid sunlight, was his diet.\"\n\nThe California Department of Public Health is currently investigating Doctor Bergren's practice, and has not yet issued a statement.\n\n\"You don't know it, but you've seen several of my success stories in the movies and on television,\" claimed Bergren. \"They look better, and more importantly, they feel better. They're healthier, happier, and, if I say so myself, hotter.\"\n\nBergren's Web site advises people not to begin the vampire diet on their own. Potential risks include blood-borne illnesses, iron overdose, dehydration, and more. \"My clinic takes every precaution to guarantee the safety of donors, the cleanliness of the blood, and the health of the recipients.\" A one-month trial will cost $250. Everyone who signs up will receive sealed packets of blood-based salad dressing, drink additives, and a flavored syrup said to go great with pancakes.\n\nWe want to know what you think. Visit our Facebook page to share your thoughts on this article.\n\nSmoke billowed from the shattered windows. People in the streets screamed and fled. Fire alarms buzzed through Gutenberg's building, audible even over the ringing in my ears. Torn and burning books fell like confetti.\n\nBy the time I recovered from my shock, Gutenberg had resumed his assault on the Thread. He burned it from the sky, then turned his efforts to the street below.\n\n\"You killed her,\" I whispered.\n\n\"Doubtful.\" Gutenberg flicked his fingers, and a sweet-smelling rain began to fall on the wounded, healing the worst of their injuries. \"I can't imagine Meridiana would enter my domain without precautions, and even if her physical host was destroyed, her spirit remains bound within the sphere.\"\n\n\"Her physical host? Jeneta Aboderin was\u2014is\u2014fourteen years old! She's a kid, a victim.\"\n\n\"You think I want to kill her? She was one of ours, Isaac. One of mine. But if you ask me to choose between the life of one girl and the safety of this world, I will make that choice. Be grateful you don't have to.\"\n\nI understood the logic. I wanted to deck him anyway. It wasn't just the choice he had made, but the coldness with which he made it. There had been no hesitation, no doubt. When I looked at him, I saw not the slightest trace of regret for what he had done.\n\nI looked at the apartment. The interior had caught fire, and smoke continued to pour out the windows. If Jeneta and her monsters had survived, I couldn't see them.\n\n\"If you want to save lives,\" said Gutenberg, \"the best thing you can do is finish that poem.\"\n\nBehind us, Lena stepped out of a red four-door Jeep with oversized mud tires. She looked at the three of us, then to the apartment beyond. Her jaw tightened.\n\n\"The ghosts remain, though they appear disorganized,\" Ponce de Leon said from the driver's seat. \"We should be going.\"\n\nI told myself Gutenberg was right. Meridiana would have taken precautions. Jeneta was still alive.\n\n\"Interesting choice,\" said Gutenberg as he joined us. He took the passenger's seat.\n\n\"It looked like a fun car to drive,\" said Ponce de Leon.\n\nI stared out the window at the column of black smoke.\n\n\"Who buys a Jeep this size for Chicago traffic?\" Ponce de Leon slid his fingertip along the top of the window, leaving tiny etched characters in the glass. They looked similar to some of the enchantments in my convertible.\n\n\"Is everyone all right?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"For the moment.\" Gutenberg went silent while Ponce de Leon paid the parking attendant. \"We'll be safer once we leave the city.\"\n\nTraffic made that an even slower process than usual, thanks to the damage we had caused. I split my attention between Smudge and the windows, waiting for the next monster to attack. People continued to pour out of the building, but they all appeared human from here. I wouldn't say we had won this battle, but we hadn't lost, and it looked like Gutenberg had disrupted Meridiana's plans enough for us to get away.\n\n\"Isaac, can you work while we drive?\" Gutenberg asked.\n\nI nodded tightly and pulled my notes from my pocket. Setting the briefcase on my lap, I began to write.\n\nWe spent the next two days at a bed and breakfast outside of Green Bay. It was rather crowded for six, but the owners were friendly enough. More importantly, it was outside of the city and a far cry from the kind of accommodations anyone would expect two of the world's wealthiest and most powerful magic-users to use.\n\nThe owners put us in the third-floor suite of their converted farmhouse. The old hayloft ceiling curved overhead, the naked timbers an odd contrast to the nineteenth-century wallpaper. The main window looked out on maple trees and fenced-in fields where sheep wandered about, grazing lazily or napping in the shade. Lena spent much of her time outside, sunbathing on the balcony or resting within the trees. At the moment, she and Nidhi were playing chess behind the barn while Smudge hunted grasshoppers.\n\nThe sleeping arrangements were, if anything, even more awkward than they had been in Gutenberg's apartment. The owners lent us several extra cots, but there was little privacy. And it turned out that Nicola sang in her sleep.\n\nDuring the day, Nicola and Gutenberg continued to coordinate with the other Regional Masters while I updated Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem. Nidhi's job, when she wasn't with Lena, was to keep the rest of us from killing one another.\n\nBetween being driven from his own apartment and news of additional Porter casualties, Gutenberg was a magical time bomb searching for an excuse to explode. For Ponce de Leon, it was being stuck in the middle of nowhere that was slowly chipping away at his sanity. His latest complaint was the lack of \"a single real Vietnamese restaurant.\"\n\nPersonally, I preferred the B&B to the cramped, crowded feel of the city. If you had to stack people's homes and workplaces on top of one another to make it all fit, you officially had too many people crammed into too little space.\n\nI tried to ignore their griping. As much as I despised feeling helpless, how much worse was it for the two of them, who had spent so long at the top of the magical food chain?\n\nGutenberg slammed through the French doors from the balcony and announced, \"The state of literacy in this world is shameful.\"\n\n\"Waiting on your Potter fans?\" Ponce de Leon sat in a rocking chair, reading Harry Potter and the Goblin's Scepter. He had begun the book last night. Every reader helped build the book's magic, after all.\n\nI, on the other hand, had been forbidden from touching the book until I finished the damn poem, for fear\u2014not entirely unjustified\u2014that I would lose focus on my work.\n\nGutenberg waved his own copy in the air. \"Twenty-three bookstores held surprise midnight release parties last night. The rest put the books out this morning when they opened. Tens of thousands of copies should be in people's hands by now, but what are they doing?\"\n\n\"Some people work on Tuesdays.\" I wondered if Jennifer had officially fired me yet, or if she would wait to do it in person.\n\nHe ignored me, turning instead to what looked like a kind of miniature phonograph. An engraved brass disk began to spin, and Gutenberg peered at the marble-sized black jewel at the center of the disk. This was one of the tools he used to monitor his automatons, who were hunting without success for Meridiana and her army. \"I assumed the other books would require an additional day or two, but the Rowling?\"\n\n\"The fake Rowling.\" Ponce de Leon picked up his smart phone from beside the chair. \"You've done a marvelous job of blowing up the Internet today, Johannes. The lack of a decent signal makes it difficult to keep up with the fallout, but your readers may simply be too busy yelling at one another online to actually finish the book.\"\n\nGutenberg grumbled something unintelligible and turned toward me. \"Aren't you done yet? You were supposed to have this worked out yesterday.\"\n\n\"I had to adjust the spokes.\" Only when I was rewriting my poem had I spotted another layer of meaning in the original work. The letters within the vertical spoke were decorated slightly differently than the rest, with additional horizontal strokes. After staring at it for three hours, I had finally recognized them as meridian lines. Each of the twelve horizontal lines in those letters extended to the left or right of the center spoke. Tracing the endpoints created an elongated figure eight. If the poem were laid out as a sundial, the shadow would fall on those marks at noon on the first day of each month. Which meant recalculating each one of the lines for our current latitude. \"It will be done by dinnertime.\"\n\n\"Assuming you haven't missed anything else.\"\n\n\"Give the boy a break, Johannes,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Do you want it now, or do you want it right? You know he's almost there. You can feel it as well as I can.\"\n\nI hunched my shoulders and continued working. Whatever magic simmered within the poem, I couldn't feel it, nor would I be able to touch it once I finished. Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon would be the ones to infuse the text with their own magic and\u2014if nothing went wrong\u2014retrieve Meridiana's prison.\n\nThe experience had given me eyestrain, a throbbing headache, and tremendous respect for Gerbert d'Aurillac's mind. He had buried so much meaning within these lines. I wasn't about to admit it to Gutenberg, but I was terrified I had overlooked something vital.\n\nGutenberg dragged a chair across the floor and sat down beside Ponce de Leon. They reminded me of grumpy cats sharing a sunbeam. Gutenberg glared at the book as if he could intimidate it into producing the scepter.\n\nPonce de Leon turned a page. \"I enjoyed the scene where Harry consults the paintings of former headmasters. The description of the artwork was quite striking, and his interaction with Snape hit just the right balance of snark and grudging respect.\"\n\nGutenberg grunted.\n\n\"The Quidditch scene dragged on a bit, though. And on page sixty-seven, you've got Neville going out alone to the forbidden forest, but then suddenly he's with Ron and Luna. This is why you need proofreaders, Johannes.\"\n\nI stared, poetry forgotten. \"You wrote that book?\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" snapped Gutenberg.\n\n\"You have a distinctive voice,\" Ponce de Leon continued. \"Even after all these years. You've gotten much better. I thought the ongoing romance between Ron and Hermione was particularly well done.\"\n\nI had to be one of the only living people who had ever seen Johannes Gutenberg blush. \"You told me you had hired a fanfic writer, a woman\u2014\"\n\nGutenberg lowered his head, ignoring us and pretending to read. I knew perfectly well that he could see and manipulate a book's magic without ever opening the cover, but he buried himself in the pages, his eyes darting to and fro.\n\n\"He did,\" Ponce de Leon said. \"In a manner of speaking. Check online for work by 'Darcy Nacht.' That's the alias you've been using lately, isn't it?\"\n\nI jumped out of my chair and headed toward Nicola's computers.\n\n\"If you so much as touch that keyboard, I will turn you into a caterpillar and feed you to your own fire-spider,\" Gutenberg said.\n\n\"Don't worry.\" Ponce de Leon winked at me. \"I'll change you back before Smudge eats you.\"\n\nGutenberg's expression convinced me I was better off not pressing my luck. I clamped my jaw, pressed my lips together, and returned to my work.\n\n\"There's nothing shameful about fanfiction,\" Ponce de Leon said. \"That piece you did about Shakespeare and Elton John\u2014\"\n\n\"Not now, Juan.\" Gutenberg had picked up his copy of Harry Potter. \"It's ready.\"\n\nPonce de Leon's face darkened. \"Johannes...\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said without looking. \"But Meridiana has been fighting to return to our world for a thousand years. We've always known something was working to claw its way back and destroy us all. This is why I created Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re. Twelve Doorkeepers to guard the way. We cannot allow her to succeed.\"\n\n\"Meridiana wants to supplant God,\" Ponce de Leon said. \"If you attempt to eliminate magic, to rewrite the world as you see fit, how are you different?\"\n\n\"False equivalency? You're better than that, Juan. Besides, if it comes to that and I do use this spell, wouldn't that prove it was all part of your God's plan?\"\n\nI turned toward Ponce de Leon. \"You believe in God?\"\n\n\"You sound surprised.\"\n\nI was, a little. \"Everything in the Bible can be explained by magic. With all you've done, all you've seen, how can you still believe?\"\n\nHe smiled at me. A little sadly, I thought. \"With all you've done and seen, how can you not?\"\n\n\"Proselytize later.\" Gutenberg's fingertips sank into the paper. He grimaced. \"Never attempt libriomancy with your own work. It's like repeatedly slamming your brain in a toilet seat, then flushing it away.\"\n\n\"Lovely simile,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"You should use that for your next story.\"\n\nGutenberg reached deeper, burying his hand and forearm in the book. He blinked sweat from his eyes. I couldn't tell if his exertion was from the mental dissonance of working with his own book, or the relatively small pool of belief empowering that book.\n\nGutenberg stiffened as though he had been hit by an electric shock. At the same time, Ponce de Leon jumped from his chair. He turned in a slow circle, searching the room. \"We're not alone.\"\n\n\"I feel it,\" said Gutenberg through gritted teeth. \"Isaac, fetch Nicola.\"\n\nI ran onto the balcony. Nicola was already sprinting toward the farmhouse. She must have sensed it, too.\n\n\"She's on her way,\" I said.\n\nGutenberg began to drag the Goblin's Scepter from the book. From the description he had shared, the scepter was supposed to be a thing of beauty, made of carved gold inlaid with silver and jewels, and topped with a magical sapphire. The handle Gutenberg struggled to pull free looked like a blackened stick from a burnt-out campfire. Thin metal prongs grasped his wrist like burnt fingers.\n\nPonce de Leon stood opposite Gutenberg, his hands stretched out like he was holding an invisible glass dome over the book. \"Isaac, gather the poem and get out of here.\"\n\nI nodded and began scooping up my pages and notes.\n\n\"How did she find you?\" Ponce de Leon sounded calm, but his hands were trembling.\n\nGutenberg grimaced. \"I couldn't say. Either she sensed my attempt to use the book, or more likely, she heard rumors about its release and correctly surmised this was a Porter-sponsored publication.\"\n\nNicola burst through the door, breathing heavily. She took one look and began to sing.\n\nI had heard her sing before. I realized now that I had only heard a fraction of her power. Her voice flooded the room, every word pounding through my body, shaking the bones from within.\n\nIt was also the first time I had heard Billie Holiday's \"Ill Wind\" sung in the style of a professional opera singer.\n\n\"Thank you, Nicola.\" Ponce de Leon relaxed whatever it was he had been doing, snatched his cane from the air, and pressed the tip to the scepter.\n\nI wasn't sure how I could hear him over the sound of Nicola's singing. Perhaps it was something deliberate on her part, to make sure we could still communicate.\n\n\"It's digging into my flesh,\" Gutenberg said tightly. \"And it appears to be growing. Severing it from the book won't\u2014\"\n\n\"You'd prefer I remove your arm?\" Ponce de Leon put a hand on the side of Gutenberg's head. For a second, I saw the ghost of a long, silver blade extending from his cane. He slashed downward, cutting through the scepter. Gutenberg stumbled back, the broken artifact still clinging to his wrist.\n\nA shadow squeezed up from the book, tearing pages loose from the spine. Blackened paper swirled through its body. It flew past me to slam the door, then paused as if assessing the room. Charred pages continued to rip from the book, flowing after the shadow as it moved toward Nicola.\n\nI pulled my shock-gun and brought the lightning. The gun's magic didn't hurt the ghost, but if nothing else, maybe magic lightning would keep the damn thing preoccupied while it countered my attack. For a few seconds, at least.\n\n\"I had hoped going print-only would allow us to escape Meridiana's notice.\" Gutenberg grabbed the blackened stump of the scepter and tried to pry it from his arm. \"She didn't try to stop me from creating the scepter. She simply redirected its power to try to use it against me. I should have anticipated this.\"\n\n\"She does have twice your experience,\" said Ponce de Leon. He had set his cane aside and was probing the skin of Gutenberg's wrist, like a doctor examining a wound.\n\nA second shadow started to climb from the book. Nicola walked toward us, her song a palpable force hammering the ghost back.\n\n\"Johannes...\"\n\n\"I know.\" Gutenberg grimaced. \"Give me the book. I might be able to reshape the scepter back to its proper form and salvage this mess.\"\n\nThe false Harry Potter book fluttered through the air like a bird, alighting in Ponce de Leon's outstretched hand. I couldn't see what he did, but the second ghost vanished through the pages like it had fallen into a pit.\n\n\"She redirected the scepter's power?\" I asked. The scepter was designed to lock away the world's magic. Meridiana had turned it against Gutenberg. \"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"It means she's unraveling my spells, one by one,\" said Gutenberg.\n\nPonce de Leon stepped around behind Gutenberg. With one hand he held the open book steady. With his other, he guided Gutenberg's hand and the scepter back toward the pages. \"Read, dammit.\"\n\nI heard pounding from the other side of the door. The ghost must have locked or reinforced it. Moments later, Lena's fist punched through the wall beside the doorframe.\n\nPonce de Leon helped Gutenberg press the broken scepter against the page. \"If you can't separate it, I may need to temporarily remove the forearm.\"\n\nI waited for the scepter to vanish back into the book, but all that happened was the jagged metal tore a hole in the page.\n\n\"I can't. She's locked away too much of my magic.\" Gutenberg looked toward me and started to laugh, a sound that blended despair and genuine amusement at the irony. \"It seems I need another libriomancer to assist me.\"\n\nPonce de Leon was powerful, but he had never learned or mastered libriomancy. Nicola was a bard. I didn't know if the Porters had a single libriomancer in all of Wisconsin. Even if they did, by the time someone got here...\n\nGutenberg's hand was pale. The scepter had cut off the circulation. He looked up and nodded. \"Do it.\"\n\nPonce de Leon tossed the book aside. His belt slid loose like a snake and coiled around Gutenberg's arm: a makeshift tourniquet. Ponce de Leon lowered him gently to the ground. He grabbed a ballpoint pen and used it to draw a blue ring around Gutenberg's arm below the elbow.\n\n\"Modified fairy ring?\" asked Gutenberg.\n\nPonce de Leon nodded. \"Infused with fire, so this will hurt. I'm hoping to cauterize the wound as much as possible.\"\n\nI continued my attack on the remaining ghost. Lightning seared the wallpaper behind it and started a small fire on the wall, but the ghost itself was still strong, diverting or dissolving every shot.\n\nI glanced down, both horrified and fascinated, as Ponce de Leon prepared his spell. I had read of fairy rings being used as a form of gateway. In this case, the ring would open a gate through Gutenberg's arm, which should instantly and cleanly sever flesh and bone.\n\nPonce de Leon kissed the back of Gutenberg's head, and then the blue ink flashed orange. Gutenberg cried out. The flames died instantly, but the smoke remained, filling the air with the smell of burnt meat.\n\nPonce de Leon was already dressing the stump with bandages he seemed to have pulled out of the air. \"Hold still, mi amor.\"\n\nGutenberg's head sagged against Ponce de Leon's chest. His face and lips were pale and covered in sweat. His remaining hand shook uncontrollably.\n\nI had cataloged countless books with the power to regrow an amputated limb, but the physical loss would be secondary. I kept shooting, trying to keep the ghost at a distance. \"What about his magic?\"\n\nPonce de Leon looked over as though he had forgotten I was here. \"Gone. Locked in a fashion similar to your own.\"\n\nGutenberg opened his eyes. \"It's a remarkably unpleasant sensation.\" His voice trembled. \"I've not felt this vulnerable for centuries.\"\n\n\"It can be reversed?\" asked Ponce de Leon.\n\n\"Possibly.\" He looked over at the book. \"I can't see the damage. How bad is it?\"\n\n\"The book is charred beyond use, and continuing to ooze raw magic.\" Ponce de Leon picked up his cane. \"Don't move.\"\n\nHe stood and walked toward the remaining ghost. I stopped firing.\n\nThe ghost attacked, but Ponce de Leon was faster. His cane impaled the thing through what might have been its heart. He didn't break stride, pushing it backward until he pinned it against the wall. He twisted the cane, and the shadow writhed in pain. Blue and green flame crackled outward.\n\nGutenberg looked over at me and tried to sit up. \"It looks like we'll need to find you another libriomancer to assist with the poem.\"\n\n\"Be still,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Don't make me use magic to force you to rest.\"\n\nGutenberg grimaced. \"It stings. All those words, melting away.\"\n\nA month ago, I would have called this justice. I was the final entry on a long list of people Gutenberg had robbed of their magic. Wasn't it right that he finally understand what he had done?\n\nBut knowing what he was going through made it impossible to feel any kind of satisfaction over his loss. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nHe pressed his lips together, then sighed. \"As am I.\"\n\nNicola had stopped singing at some point. I hadn't even noticed. She crouched beside Gutenberg to examine the bandaged stump and began a new song. A little of the tightness eased from his body.\n\n\"Thank you,\" he said. \"Isaac, would you and Nicola please help me to my feet?\"\n\n\"You need rest, dammit,\" said Ponce de Leon.\n\n\"Meridiana now knows we're here,\" he said, reaching for Nicola's hand. \"We have little time.\"\n\nPonce de Leon shouted something in Spanish, and the last remnants of the ghost disappeared. The fire from my lightning died as well. At the same time, Lena finished ripping through the wall. She stepped inside, swords raised. Smudge crouched on her shoulder. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg tried to create the scepter.\" I stared at the man who had revolutionized the world of magic. He could barely stand. His pale, damp face and trembling body suggested he was slipping into shock. \"Meridiana\u2014\"\n\nPonce de Leon raised a hand. \"Don't move.\"\n\n\"I hear it, too,\" said Nicola.\n\nThe room was silent. Ponce de Leon gripped his cane with both hands. I readied my shock-gun, though I didn't know where to aim.\n\nPonce de Leon spun, his eyes wide. \"Johannes, get away from\u2014\"\n\nWhat remained of Harry Potter and the Goblin's Scepter opened of its own accord. A broken shaft of blackened gold shot through the air to embed itself in Gutenberg's chest.\n\nThe impact knocked him to the floor. His dead eyes stared in surprise and confusion."
            },
            {
                "title": "UNLIKELY ALLIES",
                "text": "Washington, D. C.\u2014The National Rifle Association has joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to protest a bill proposed yesterday in the United States Senate.\n\nThe proposed bill, which sponsor Susan Brown called the \"Magical Security Act,\" would set restrictions on the use of magic within the United States of America. The law would make all magic illegal for anyone under the age of eighteen. Individuals eighteen years and older would have to apply for a license to practice magic.\n\nA national poll earlier this week suggested that roughly fifty percent of U.S. citizens were somewhat skeptical or very skeptical about recent reports of magic throughout the world. The other half believed something supernatural was indeed happening, though theories ranged from magic to aliens to religious miracles.\n\n\"I have seen proof of magic with my own eyes,\" said Brown. \"If I'm wrong\u2014if the growing body of evidence turns out to be a hoax\u2014then we lose nothing by passing this law. But if magic is real, and if it presents as serious a threat as recent events suggest, then we must act immediately to protect the safety of the American people.\"\n\nDwayne Williams of the NRA disagreed. \"This is a clear Second Amendment issue.\" Williams appeared at a press conference wearing a T-shirt showing a bearded wizard in robes and a pointy hat, along with the words, \"You can take my wand when you pry it from my cold dead hands.\"\n\n\"Every American has the right to self-defense. I don't believe in witchcraft, but the truth is, we don't know what's out there. If magic is real, this legislation would cripple our ability to protect ourselves. We've been down this road before. They imprisoned Japanese citizens in World War II because people were afraid. They impose burdensome regulations on law-abiding gun owners because people are afraid. Now Susan Brown wants to lock up magic-users, not for any violation of the law, but because they're afraid.\"\n\nKarla Henson of the ACLU had a slightly different view. \"This bill is a blatant attack on religious freedom. Will Wiccans, Pagans, Vodouisants, and others whose belief involves the practice of magic be expected to register with the U.S. Government? Magic, if it exists, isn't a weapon any more than my hand or foot are weapons. A martial artist can kill with a single strike, but we don't require them to be licensed by the government. Magic is a part of who these people are, as much as their blood and bones. This is a critical junction in our history. We have the opportunity to set an example for the world, to show that we value freedom over fear.\"\n\nWilliams encouraged NRA members to rally at both the state and national level. \"The choices we make today will shape our country and the world for decades to come. Let's make sure our leaders do the right thing.\"\n\nBlood seeped from the wound in Gutenberg's chest. Nicola crouched beside him and sang a low hymn. \"There's no pulse. No mental activity. He's dead.\"\n\nWith all the experiences I'd had since the Porters found me, those two words marked this as the most unreal. It was like she had announced the sun would no longer rise each morning.\n\n\"He died almost instantly,\" she continued. \"He would have felt the impact, perhaps a split second of pain, but nothing more. The scepter is no longer magically active. I'm not sure about the book.\"\n\nPonce de Leon raised his cane. \"Get back.\"\n\nHis words were utterly cold. We scrambled out of the way. He pointed his cane at the book, and death poured forth. White fire disintegrated a three-foot hole through the floor, but the book floated in the air, pinned by magic. Another ghost tried to crawl from the pages. The light seared it to nothingness as it emerged.\n\nThe air smelled of salt and ice. Floorboards crumbled like sand. The lamps flickered and died. I backed away and shielded my eyes from the light of Ponce de Leon's assault. It was like looking into the heart of a star.\n\nWhen the flames finally disappeared, nothing remained of the book. White hoarfrost covered Ponce de Leon's cane, though why frost should be a side effect of such intense heat was beyond me. Perhaps some sort of backlash.\n\nMagic could cheat death, as Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon had done for all these years, but no spell could reverse it. Ponce de Leon turned toward the body, raising his cane as if he was determined to try anyway.\n\nI turned so that my shock-gun was hidden behind my body and adjusted it down to setting four, hoping I wouldn't have to use it. He knew what would happen if you tried to restore function to a corpse, but he wasn't thinking rationally. At best, he would probably just create a host for another of Meridiana's ghosts. At worst...\n\n\"He's gone,\" said Nidhi. I hadn't noticed her joining us. Her face was drawn. She watched Ponce de Leon like he was a pacing tiger.\n\nSlowly, he lowered his cane. He limped to Gutenberg, moving more heavily than I had ever seen him do. He gripped the bar in Gutenberg's chest. Metal scraped bone as he pulled it free. He tossed the inert bar aside. It struck the floor with a dull clunk. \"I know.\"\n\nNobody else moved. He opened Gutenberg's jacket and pulled the fountain pen from the inside pocket. I expected him to give it to Nicola, but instead he handed it to me. \"You'll need this, I suspect.\"\n\nThe pen was heavier than I had imagined. From the weight, it had been carved and shaped from real gold. It was as thick as my index finger, polished mirror-smooth. I pulled the cap free and studied the tip. The curved diamond nib was etched with precisely flowing lines, tiny letters engraved into the metal. I would need a magnifying glass to read them. \"What for?\"\n\nHe ignored me, instead retrieving Gutenberg's wallet, phone, keys, and a small leather-bound notebook. He offered all but the last to Nicola.\n\n\"We can't stay here,\" said Nicola. \"Meridiana knows where we are, and the police will be coming.\"\n\nNone of us moved. I couldn't stop replaying the last few minutes in my mind, imagining everything I might have done to stop this from happening. If I had finished deciphering d'Aurillac's poem sooner... if I had kept Smudge inside where he could have warned us instead of letting him go with Lena...\n\n\"Nidhi, please get Gutenberg's carpet bag,\" said Nicola. \"Lena, would you carry the body? We can't leave it behind.\"\n\nLena nodded and fetched a blanket from the bed, which she used to wrap Gutenberg's body. Nidhi retrieved the carpet bag from atop the dresser.\n\nPonce de Leon brought both hands to his face and wept.\n\nLena sat next to me in the Jeep, her hand tight around mine. Nidhi sat on Lena's other side. Nobody had said much since leaving the B&B.\n\nNicola had gathered or destroyed any magically-incriminating evidence, then herded us outside. She stopped long enough to sing excuses to the owners, making sure they wouldn't remember any details about who we were or what had happened.\n\nI kept thinking about the body in the back of the Jeep, the corpse of the man who had invented libriomancy. All that knowledge and experience, gone.\n\nWe stopped at a red light, and Nicola twisted around to pass her cell phone to me. \"In the contacts list, you'll find an entry for 'Handbasket, Helena.' Call that number and tell whoever answers that it's February of 1468, then hang up.\"\n\nThe month and year Gutenberg was supposed to have died. I dialed the number and delivered the message. The woman on the other end was silent for several seconds before asking, \"Are you sure about that date?\"\n\nI looked at the spots of blood speckling my shirt. \"Yes.\" I hung up and returned the phone. \"What happens now? With Gutenberg gone...\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Nicola said flatly. \"Gutenberg prepared for this, but many of his preparations were magical in nature. The senior masters will form a temporary council to lead the Porters and assess the situation. The automatons will go into a kind of magical standby mode for now.\"\n\n\"Word will spread quickly,\" said Ponce de Leon. He sat in the front, still as a statue, save for the slight movement of his jaw. \"Johannes' death will embolden the enemies of the Porters. Creatures hidden for centuries will venture into the light.\"\n\n\"What exactly happened back there?\" Nidhi asked.\n\n\"Meridiana twisted Johannes' spell.\" Ponce de Leon stared out the window. \"She turned the scepter against him, stripped him of his protection. She's stronger than we realized.\"\n\n\"We'll need another libriomancer to retrieve Meridiana's prison,\" said Lena.\n\nNicola shifted lanes. \"The nearest libriomancer is Heather over in Minneapolis. I'll tell her to meet us at\u2014\"\n\n\"We don't need a libriomancer.\" I rolled Gutenberg's pen back and forth on my palm.\n\n\"You have an alternative?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"Maybe.\" My thoughts were beginning to break free of their shock. \"We'll need to stop at a bookstore.\"\n\n\"Who?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Bi Wei.\" Her power over books was as great as Gutenberg's had been, if not stronger. The magic that had helped her to escape Gutenberg's assault on her home and kept her alive for so long was similar in many respects to Gerbert d'Aurillac's spell. Unfortunately, she was also an avowed enemy of the Porters.\n\nI guess it was a good thing I wasn't a Porter anymore.\n\nThe first bookstore we found didn't have A Dance with Dragons on the shelves. According to the man working behind the counter, it was currently their hottest seller. Nobody could keep the book in stock, thanks to the mysterious message in the front. As if George R. R. Martin needed the additional royalties.\n\nHe directed us to the local library, where the librarian explained there was a two-page waiting list. Back in the parking lot, I called two more bookstores and three other libraries, with similar results. \"That's everything in a forty-mile radius,\" I said, disgusted.\n\nLena cleared her throat. \"Does it have to be that particular book?\"\n\n\"We need something the students of Bi Sheng will be watching.\" I didn't know for certain that Bi Wei would see a message in A Dance with Dragons, but since she had used it to send her own, it made sense that they would have a copy on hand, if only to see whether the Porters were able to dispel or modify her letter.\n\nLena twisted around and dug into her bag, eventually producing a familiar red book. \"What about this?\"\n\nI immediately shook my head. \"We can't\u2014\"\n\n\"My book. My decision.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Nicola.\n\nI didn't answer. Bi Wei had given this book to Lena. Its magic was identical to the books the students of Bi Sheng used. This copy held Lena's story, her sense of who she was and who she wanted to be. It was also a secret we had kept from the Porters, one which had come directly from the hands of their enemy.\n\n\"It's a book that might help us communicate with Bi Wei,\" said Lena.\n\nNicola studied the book. Everything about it announced its origins, from the cloth binding to the rice-paper pages. But instead of arguing, she simply asked, \"What makes a student of Bi Sheng a better ally than another Porter?\"\n\n\"They've known about the Ghost Army for longer than the Porters have existed,\" I said. \"Meridiana is as much a threat to them as she is to us. And I trust Bi Wei.\" I had shared Wei's memories. I knew her to be both strong and cautious. More importantly, she understood book magic and the nature of these ghosts well enough to combat them, better even than Ponce de Leon.\n\nI waited for Nicola to point out that Bi Wei was also an avowed enemy of the Porters. She said only, \"You get started on that while I coordinate with the Porters. I'll find us a hotel for the night.\"\n\nI paused, repeating her words in my head and comparing it to the script I had expected. \"Oh. Okay, right. Thanks.\"\n\nA half hour later, we were checked into a room with two queen beds. Our accommodations had been going steadily downhill over the past week. The furnishings reeked of cigarette smoke. A faded painting of a triple-masted sailing ship hung over the small desk in the corner. Peeling wallpaper and a brown water damage stain in the corner announced that maintenance and upkeep were low on the priorities list, but all in all, it wasn't much worse than my first apartment.\n\nI turned on the television and found a nature documentary for Smudge. He was warier than usual as he emerged from his cage, but soon he was darting to and fro, trying to catch wild lemurs. I was a little worried he would melt holes in the screen, but he seemed content to play.\n\nI needed to find food for him. A tarantula could survive on a few crickets a week, but Smudge had a much hotter metabolism. I'd have to slip out tonight and hunt for worms and bugs to go with his candy treats.\n\nPonce de Leon remained with the Jeep, keeping watch over Gutenberg's body. Nidhi had disappeared into the shower. Nicola sat on a folding luggage stand in the closet, arguing on the phone with what sounded like at least three other Regional Masters. I wasn't sure if she had chosen the closet for privacy or for the relative security of the enclosed space. From the bits I overheard, she wasn't happy.\n\nI brought Lena's book to the desk and opened the cover.\n\nLena sat on the bed, her back against the mounded pillows, her legs folded. \"Do you think she'll be able to do it?\"\n\n\"Bi Wei isn't exactly a libriomancer, but her magic is all about the essence of books. If anyone can make this work...\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant.\" She tapped her forehead. \"Your magic. That's the other reason you wanted to bring Bi Wei into this. You're hoping she'll be able to undo whatever Gutenberg did to you.\"\n\n\"Even if she can, there's no guarantee that she will. Stopping Meridiana and the Ghost Army is one thing, but helping an ex-Porter?\" I twirled the pen through my fingers. \"I'm trying not to think about it. Every time I touch something magical\u2014the shock-gun, the vampire blood, even this pen\u2014it's like ripping open a scab, and it keeps getting harder. Getting more difficult,\" I amended before she could make any lewd comments.\n\nShe smirked, but let it pass. \"We'll keep trying. Bi Wei, Ponce de Leon, Nicola... someone should be able to help you. And if they can't, I want you to remember something.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\nShe kissed me hard enough to make my skin tingle from my neck to the base of my spine. \"I didn't fall in love with you for your magic.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" I nodded and turned back to her book.\n\n\"How do you know that pen will write something she'll be able to see?\"\n\n\"I don't,\" I said. \"But Gutenberg used this pen to lock books. That means whatever he did had to carry through to all copies of those books.\" I turned the page, uncapped Gutenberg's pen, and began to write.\n\nEvery surviving student of Bi Sheng had a book like this, and every one of those books included the same block-printed pages in the front. It was those pages I defaced, though the ink left no visible mark. I had to trust Bi Wei would see my message. I angled the desk lamp to help me see the faint indentations in the paper where I had penned her name.\n\nI hesitated. I needed to be circumspect, since I had no idea who else might read this. That meant no mention of Gutenberg's death or what specifically I was asking for.\n\n\"Writer's block?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Something like that.\" How could I reassure her this wasn't a Porter trick? Bi Wei knew what the Porters had done to me. I believed she trusted me, to an extent. But I couldn't even prove I was the one writing the message. Anyone could have taken Lena's book and used it to lure Bi Wei into a trap.\n\nNicola's voice cut through my thoughts as she argued with the other Regional Masters. She was louder than usual, as if anger or frustration or simple grief had adjusted her volume. \"Gutenberg said a show of force should be the last resort. We need to build goodwill. We can't do that with automatons.\"\n\nI looked at Lena, who shrugged.\n\n\"Suppose your plan worked,\" Nicola said a moment later. \"Say we wiped out a terrorist organization or overthrew a dictator. Imagine we somehow managed to do so without a single civilian casualty. Any such action will still create enemies. Even those who approve of the results will fear our power and the potential threat we pose. We need to tread carefully. In time, we can\u2014\" She paused. \"Then what about Weronika? She's been visiting hospitals and healing terminal patients. If more Porters could\u2014no, I understand. Miss Palmer has made that quite clear.\"\n\n\"Who's in charge with Gutenberg gone?\" Lena asked softly.\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" I had never paid enough attention to politics within the Porters. I had no interest in working my way up the ranks, or being anything except a researcher. Magical bureaucracy was still bureaucracy, and I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I had unconsciously started thinking of Nicola in Gutenberg's place as head of the Porters, but she was one of many Regional Masters. Not necessarily the most senior or the most powerful, either.\n\nAlthough the whole question could be moot soon. Between the world discovering magic and Meridiana doing her best to destroy... well, pretty much everything, there was a real possibility that the Porters wouldn't survive. Gutenberg had been the pin holding the organization together, and even he had struggled to keep things from fragmenting.\n\n\"What would you do?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"If you were in charge. Say Nicola and the rest decide to promote Isaac Vainio to be Gutenberg's replacement. What's the first thing you'd do?\"\n\n\"Order Nicola and everyone else involved to check in with their therapists, because that would mean they'd lost their damn minds. Then I'd probably resign with extreme prejudice.\"\n\nShe folded her arms.\n\n\"Okay, fine. I'd start by offering an olive branch to the students of Bi Sheng.\" I looked down at Lena's book. \"To be honest, I don't know how the Porters fit in a world where magic is out in the open. Are we scholars? A global police force? Saviors or conquerors or both?\"\n\nLena smiled. \"I'm surprised you wouldn't immediately set out to colonize Mars.\"\n\n\"I'd save that for the second month, along with getting Fox to put Firefly back into production.\" I glanced over at Nicola, who was still listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. \"How do you map the future of the world?\"\n\n\"You don't,\" Lena said softly. \"Not alone.\"\n\nNicola drummed her hand against the wall of the closet. She spoke more slowly, deliberately choosing each word. \"I agree, which is why our first priority is to retrieve the armillary sphere. As the senior Porter on site, I intend to\u2014\" She straightened. \"I don't believe you have the authority to do that.\"\n\nLena and I had given up any pretense of not listening in.\n\n\"Naturally. I trust you'll inform me once the vote is complete.\" Nicola hung up a moment later, but remained seated. When she saw us watching, she said, \"They believe I'm responsible for Gutenberg's death.\"\n\n\"The hell you are,\" I said.\n\n\"Who believes that?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Cameron Howes, and at least two other Regional Masters.\" She stared straight ahead. \"If enough others agree, they can appoint another person to oversee this region.\"\n\n\"Cameron Howes is a pretentious, narcissistic, ignorant pustule of a man.\" I was surprised by my own vehemence.\n\n\"I know,\" Nicola said, so matter-of-factly that I had to grin. \"He sees Gutenberg's death as an opportunity, and he's not alone. He wants me replaced by someone he can control.\"\n\nI stood up and started toward her, intending to offer comfort, but she flinched when I got close. I stopped moving.\n\n\"You need to reach Bi Wei and finish your poem,\" she said. \"I... need you to leave me alone. Please.\" She sounded brittle, as if that flat monotone contained within it a scream of rage and grief. Nicola was at her breaking point. She had lost not only Gutenberg, but four of her animals, creatures she cared about as if they were family.\n\n\"Of course,\" I said softly. \"Sorry.\"\n\nShe nodded and left the room.\n\nLena took my hand. \"It's not you.\"\n\n\"I know.\" I stared at the closed door, listening to the fading sound of Nicola's humming. Eventually, I returned to the desk and Lena's book. \"If Howes and the others find out we're reaching out to Bi Wei, it will give them one more reason to get rid of Nicola.\"\n\n\"People like Howes don't need reasons,\" said Lena. \"All they want are excuses and justifications. If you hold back to try to protect Nicola, he'll just find them elsewhere.\"\n\nI squinted at the page, trying to reread the few lines I had written. There was no need to share our location. Bi Wei should be able to find us through her connection to Lena's book. But how to prove it was us...\n\nI thought about the first time I had read Bi Wei's own book, before her return to this world. Bi Wei had written of her first experience with magic, a story whose power and joy resonated with my own discovery. She had hiked into the hills with her great grandaunt, where they read an old star chart and used its magic to study the sky, to see beyond what was visible to the naked eye.\n\nI remembered her joy, preserved all those years by the magic of her readers. I picked up Gutenberg's pen, jotted down three more sentences, and began to sketch the constellations.\n\nI traced the final letters of Gerbert d'Aurillac's poem at about one in the morning, then sat back to try to stretch the cramps from my hand.\n\nLena had slipped out an hour before to search for a suitable tree for the night, and I hadn't seen Ponce de Leon since we arrived. Nicola had paid for a second room, saying she needed solitude. Nidhi was currently sleeping on one of the beds, leaving the other for me.\n\nI turned off the desk lamp, stripped down to my jeans, and prepared for bed as quietly as I could. Despite my exhaustion, it took forever to fall asleep. The unfamiliar bed only made things worse. Throughout the night, I jerked up at the slightest sounds: a door opening or closing down the hallway, a car door slamming in the parking lot. Even the noise of Nidhi's breathing seemed amplified.\n\nI gave up around six in the morning and made my way, bleary-eyed, to the shower. Nidhi was still snoring when I finished. I picked up my T-shirt, sniffed, and grimaced. Everything smelled of smoke. Gutenberg had provided us with extra clothes that almost fit, but those had blown up with his apartment. I should have just jumped into the shower fully clothed.\n\nNow where had Smudge gotten off to? I hadn't remembered to put him back into his travel cage last night. \"Please tell me you stayed in the room,\" I whispered.\n\nI kept the bathroom light on with the door cracked as I searched the room. Smudge could creep through surprisingly tight cracks and gaps. I didn't think he could have squeezed beneath the door, but I wasn't certain. Maybe he had gone on a midnight raid to see if anyone had left food in the hallway. Worse, he might have found the vending machine and crawled inside to stuff himself with sugar.\n\nI checked the corners of the room, behind the desk and my bed, and the curtains before stopping to think. He would want somewhere warm and dry. He wasn't by the heater. I bit my lip and checked Nidhi to make sure Smudge hadn't curled up with her for warmth.\n\nI finally found him behind the mini-fridge, pulled into a fuzzy ball and enjoying the heat of the compressor. I scooped him into his cage and set him on the windowsill, grabbed my shock-gun, and snuck out of the room.\n\nThe hotel offered a complimentary continental breakfast. My first thought upon seeing it was rather less than complimentary. A young man with unkempt hair to the middle of his back was setting out a bowl of questionable-looking apples beside a cafeteria-style cereal dispenser. I grabbed the best of the fruit and a bowl of technicolor sugar puffs and made my way to the table closest to the television on the wall.\n\nA morning news host was interviewing Randall Nickles, a noted skeptic who had spent the past decade debunking the claims of psychics, ghost-hunters, alien abductees, and other stories of the supernatural. He wore a simple navy suit with no tie, and appeared utterly relaxed as he deflected one question after another. To listen to him talk, the various reports of magic were the result of overeager Internet rumormongering, human gullibility, and wishful thinking.\n\nI imagined what would happen if word got out that Randy was a high-level field agent for the Porters.\n\n\"That doesn't look like food.\"\n\nThe soft, worried voice made me jump. \"You got here faster than I expected.\"\n\nBi Wei sat down on the opposite side of the table. \"Your message implied that this was an urgent matter.\"\n\nBi Wei had changed since I last saw her. Now, only a month after her rebirth, her English was flawless. She was dressed in a red-and-white floral dress with matching flip-flops. Black-framed designer sunglasses were pushed up on her brow.\n\n\"You could say that.\" I scooped a spoonful of stale cereal into my mouth. \"You look like you're adjusting well to the twenty-first century.\"\n\n\"Your world is amazing and terrifying, but the people are much the same.\"\n\n\"That sounds like something Gutenberg would say.\"\n\nShe tilted her head to one side. \"What happened to him?\"\n\nI hesitated, but if I wanted her help, I needed to tell her the truth. She was strong enough to pull the details from my thoughts anyway. The fact that she hadn't already done so was another point in her favor.\n\nI told her about the attack, about Meridiana's prison and the Ghost Army, and about Jeneta.\n\n\"The si gui ju\u00afn du\u00ec, Meridiana and her army, exist in the river of magic that runs through the Land of Midday Dreams.\" She smiled at me and added, \"I remember your distaste for the poetic, but our poetry helps us to see and understand that river, as if through a glass-bottomed boat. Meridiana has clouded the purity of those waters, but we felt the ripples of Gutenberg's death.\"\n\nI could hear her fighting to control conflicting emotions. Gutenberg's automatons had killed her peers. Her teachers. Her own brother. What would Nidhi say if she were here? Something gentle and nonjudgmental. \"After five hundred years, I imagine that was hard to process. Overwhelming.\"\n\n\"For all of us, yes. We wept. We raged that Gutenberg would never be called to account for his actions. And we grieved. Not for the man, but for...\" She brought her hands together. \"For the waste, perhaps.\"\n\nShe studied me more closely. \"Your magic remains buried by Gutenberg's spell. How did you contact us?\"\n\nI pulled the gold pen from my pocket.\n\nShe took it and turned it in the light. \"This pen belonged to Johannes Gutenberg.\"\n\n\"How can you tell?\"\n\n\"His magic is distinctive.\"\n\nThe hotel doors swung open, and Lena strode into the lobby, yawning. \"Good morning, lover. Hello, Wei. Ooh, donuts!\" She hurried to the counter, returning with a bowl of cereal and a glazed donut that looked far too plastic for my liking. \"There's a lovely maple in the park a block from here,\" she said. \"Eighty years old, give or take. Strong and sweet. Is Nidhi awake yet?\"\n\n\"She was sleeping when I left,\" I said.\n\n\"She's not a morning person.\" She tore the donut in half, took a bite, and turned toward Bi Wei, who was watching with a bemused expression. \"How's Guan Feng?\"\n\n\"Very well, thank you. Feng has been staying with us. She's served as a guide to your world.\"\n\nGuan Feng was a \"reader,\" and had guarded Bi Wei's book for years before her restoration. Not only did she act as Bi Wei's protector, it was her duty to read the book each day. The belief\u2014the faith, really\u2014of such readers was what had helped Bi Wei and others like her to survive for so long. I suspected most readers possessed some form of low-level magic as well.\n\n\"Last week, she taught us how to 'Google' things,\" Bi Wei continued. \"It's amazing. A living library, eternally growing, all contained within your computers.\" She fixed her attention on me. \"With Gutenberg gone, who commands the Porters? Will they leave us in peace?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said, answering both questions at once. \"Between Meridiana, Gutenberg's death, and your letter, the Porters are scrambling to stay on top of things. That letter was like setting off a firecracker in a hornet's nest.\"\n\n\"Familiarity with the field of battle is worth more than a thousand swords,\" she said. It sounded like a proverb, but I didn't recognize it. \"The Porters know this world. It gave them an advantage. Thanks to our letter, the battlefield is changing.\"\n\n\"Confusion and chaos give Meridiana an advantage, too,\" I pointed out. \"If you help us\u2014\"\n\n\"The B\u00ec She ng de d\u00fa zhe prefer to fight our enemies in our own way.\" She picked a tiny red ball of fruit-flavored crunch from my bowl and studied it.\n\n\"What way is that?\" asked Lena.\n\nShe hesitated before answering. \"Meridiana's pollution spreads through all who drink from the river of magic. We lost four of our number to her poison.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Alone, we would have all fallen in time, but together we can stand against the current.\"\n\n\"Less metaphor, please,\" I said.\n\n\"Our individual stories are now one. I share the senses of my fellow students. When one of us weakens, the rest of us cleanse his or her story.\"\n\nI shifted in my chair and casually dropped my hand toward my shock-gun. \"What does that mean, exactly? Am I talking to Bi Wei, or to all of the students of Bi Sheng?\"\n\n\"Both.\" She smiled. \"For so long we were alone. Five hundred years of solitude. I am still Bi Wei. I remember my life, my family, and my ancestors. I have a voice.\"\n\n\"What happens if they overrule your voice?\" I had read countless books about group minds. They rarely ended well.\n\n\"They wouldn't do that. But they share their thoughts and experiences, and I would be foolish to ignore them.\" She popped the cereal into her mouth and grimaced. \"This is not food.\"\n\n\"Don't mock the Sugar Fruit Puffs,\" I snapped. Her answering grin eased my tension slightly.\n\n\"We didn't choose this path lightly, Isaac. Not only does our bond help us to resist Meridiana, but as the magic flows through us, we're able to purify it of Meridiana's influence. Like the wetlands cleansing the river.\"\n\n\"Can you stop her?\"\n\n\"She will weaken in time, but it will take centuries for us to undo the damage she's caused. And if she escapes her prison, our combined strength may not be enough.\"\n\n\"Then help us,\" said Lena.\n\n\"The B\u00ec Sheng de d\u00fa zhe don't trust the Porters.\" Before I could respond, she added, \"But I will help the two of you if I can.\"\n\nI sat back in my chair, wondering what exactly I had gotten us into. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"It's good to see you again, Isaac Vainio. What is it you need?\"\n\n\"I've translated the poem Gerbert d'Aurillac used to hide Meridiana's prison. Without magic, there's no way for me to reach into that poem and retrieve it.\"\n\nBi Wei set the pen on the table between us. \"This isn't the kind of magic Bi Sheng taught.\"\n\n\"It's not libriomancy, either. I'm not completely sure how it works. I hoped that together, we would be able to figure it out. Assuming you're willing to try...\"\n\n\"Of course she'll try.\" Lena looked at me like I had asked whether the Earth was round. \"She geeks out about this stuff as much as you do. A thousand-year-old word puzzle that reeks of forgotten magic? Do you think for an instant Wei is going to turn her back on that?\"\n\nBi Wei grinned. \"When do we begin?\"\n\nMesaCon, Arizona's premier fantasy convention, is proud to announce the addition of an exciting new programming track to this year's schedule.\n\n\"Magic: Busting the Myths\" will feature discussion about the apparent emergence of magic in the world today. We have three popular fantasy authors, a historian, a professor of mythology, and an ordained minister who have all signed on to participate.\n\nSome of the panels we're hoping to present include:\n\nJohannes Gutenberg: Man or Magician? A fifteenth-century court record describes Gutenberg as the master of \"a secret art.\" For generations, we assumed this referred to the printing press, but the Bi Wei Revelation suggests otherwise. Could the father of the printing press have been a sorcerer? Panelists review known facts about Gutenberg's life and discuss who he really was.\n\nThe Future of Fantasy. What happens to the fantasy genre when magic becomes real? Does The Name of the Wind get moved to \"alternate history\"? Should Dracula go into the biography section? How will readers suspend disbelief when they know an author got the magic wrong? Does true magic mark the death of fantasy?\n\nMagic is Real. Now What? If magic is real, what does that mean for the world? What new problems are we going to face, and what problems will become a thing of the past, solved with a wave of a wand? Are we headed for a grimdark dystopian future or an era of unimagined peace and prosperity?\n\nMagical Myth Busting. In an age when a single click can forward rumors across the globe, how are we supposed to separate truth from hoax? Our panel discusses popular hoaxes of the past and presents tips on filtering out the junk. From manipulated photos to paranoid conspiracy theories, learn how to check your sources and find the facts.\n\nI, For One, Welcome Our New Wizard Overlords. For every Gandalf, there's a Sauron. For every Harry Potter, a Lord Voldemort. What's to stop these dark forces from seizing power? Assuming they haven't done so already!\n\nIf you're interested in being on programming or have suggestions for panels or guests, please e-mail program@mesacon.biz.\n\nBi Wei grudgingly accepted a cup of apple juice, though she refused to try the tea, calling prepackaged teabags \"abominations against civilization.\"\n\nBy now, a handful of other people had joined us in the dining room, so we tried to keep the conversation light as Lena and I finished eating.\n\n\"The show is called Pi l\u00ec,\" Bi Wei was saying. \"The puppetry is amazing. Magical, in its way. Feng also introduced us to the work of Jim Henson.\"\n\n\"Has she shown you Labyrinth?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not yet, but we'll ask her about it. Her favorite is The Dark Crystal.\" She looked more closely at Lena. \"You seem different.\"\n\nLena held out an arm. Bi Wei touched her index finger to Lena's inner elbow and traced an invisible line. I guessed she was sensing the branches Lena carried within her.\n\n\"Interesting.\" She touched Lena's palm. \"How long can they survive inside of you?\"\n\n\"Almost a month so far. They're stronger when I grow the shoots and let the leaves absorb the sun.\"\n\n\"If the tree grows too strong, it could overpower the flesh,\" Bi Wei warned. \"Are you certain this is safe?\"\n\n\"They haven't hurt me yet.\" She tilted her head toward me. \"If you want to talk about dangerous, ask Isaac about his trip into space to break into a vampire-owned satellite.\"\n\nThere really wasn't any good response to that. I looked around to see if anyone had overheard, then downed the last of my juice and brought the Styrofoam dishes over to the garbage. When I came back, Lena was talking to Bi Wei about the optimal environment for growing bamboo. \"I can make a lot of things grow, but northern Michigan gets nasty in the winter. I don't imagine bamboo would survive.\"\n\n\"You might try m\u00e1ozh\u00fa bamboo,\" Bi Wei said. \"If you lent the new shoots your strength to protect them from frost...\"\n\nThey were still discussing Lena's plans for her new garden when we returned to the rooms. We found Nicola waiting in the hallway in front of our door. Her wet hair had dripped dark spots onto the shoulders of her shirt. I had a hard time reading her expression, but she seemed calmer than yesterday. A pair of black earbuds was looped around her neck. She studied the three of us, devoting most of her attention to Bi Wei.\n\nBi Wei bowed slightly from the head and shoulders.\n\nNicola pressed the left earbud into place and began to sing. Bi Wei merely waited, her hands clasped in front of her. I got the impression of a silent conversation passing between them, or perhaps it was a test.\n\nWhatever it was, Bi Wei apparently passed. Nicola pursed her lips, stepped to the side, and opened the door to our room. Without a key. Damn, I missed magic.\n\nInside, Nidhi was awake and dressed, and was brushing her hair in front of the mirror.\n\n\"I grabbed you breakfast, love,\" said Lena, tossing a cinnamon raisin bagel her way.\n\nI dropped a piece of cereal into Smudge's cage and checked the temperature of the air above him. He seemed cool enough. A bit nervous, but certainly not scared of Bi Wei. I caught Lena watching us, and gave her a small, reassuring nod.\n\n\"Is this the poem?\" Bi Wei whispered, moving toward the desk.\n\n\"Gerbert's original is on the left.\"\n\n\"Wa,\" she breathed.\n\nA month ago, I would have understood the word. My magically-powered universal translator might be gone, but I could still recognize her excitement and awe. \"It's amazing, isn't it?\"\n\n\"It is.\" Her forehead crinkled. \"But it's also wrong.\"\n\n\"It's outdated.\" I turned on the lamp, then pointed to the second, larger poem I had finished last night. \"This version should be accurate for at least the next two weeks. Maybe longer, depending on how precise the spells are.\"\n\n\"It's beautiful.\" She sat down and pulled the lamp closer. \"I can't read the words, but we can see ideas. The stars within the pages.\"\n\nI did my best to stifle the envy those words roused, but it wasn't easy. I could appreciate the cleverness of d'Aurillac's work, but I couldn't truly see it. Not like Bi Wei could.\n\nShe sorted through my notes until she found the translation, complete with the various constellations highlighted in different colors. She grinned up at me. \"I'll expect you to provide such gorgeous puzzles every time you call for my help.\"\n\n\"I'll do my best.\"\n\nShe read as fast as I did. Maybe a tiny bit faster. \"This was a man who found beauty in structure and order,\" she said. \"Despite his grief and fear, you can feel his love for this work. The satisfaction of fitting each letter into its proper place.\"\n\n\"D'Aurillac saw no boundary between science and religion, math and magic,\" I said. \"He tried to incorporate them all.\"\n\n\"The poetry of the stars.\" She touched one of the constellations. \"The letters of her name are the heart of the poem\u2014this triangle here, and the base of these two spokes. The rest of the poem is structured around her.\"\n\n\"Can she do it?\" Ponce de Leon stood in the doorway, looking like he had aged ten years overnight. He had changed into a gray pinstripe suit with a silk tie the color of arterial blood. But he leaned against the door like a man exhausted beyond endurance.\n\n\"I think so,\" said Bi Wei. She looked from me to Lena.\n\n\"Bi Wei, this is Juan Ponce de Leon,\" I said.\n\nShe stared. \"Who?\"\n\nPonce de Leon almost smiled. \"Thank you. That's the most refreshing thing I've heard in years.\"\n\n\"I spoke with Babs Palmer earlier this morning,\" said Nicola. \"She has instructed me to bring the poem to her so she can supervise a team of Porter researchers, who will retrieve the sphere in a safe, controlled environment. She's also ordered me to cease all contact with 'potential enemies' who might attempt to use Meridiana against us.\"\n\n\"Potential enemy?\" Ponce de Leon made a face. \"It lacks panache. I prefer to be called 'rogue' or 'outlaw.'\"\n\n\"What gives Babs the right to tell you what to do?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Nothing, which is why I'm currently ignoring her orders.\" Nicola's chin rose slightly. \"But she's correct about the danger. Meridiana murdered Gutenberg through a magically active book. We don't know what she might be able to do through the poem or the sphere. We can't risk retrieving it here.\"\n\nWe needed somewhere we could hide out and study Gerbert's creation without being disturbed. Somewhere Meridiana and her ghosts would have a harder time reaching. The werewolves would probably take us in, but I didn't want to put Jeff and his pack in that kind of danger. \"Oh, crap.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" Lena reached for her bokken.\n\n\"I never called Jeff. He probably thinks Mahefa Issoufaly tossed my body into a ditch somewhere.\" I grabbed my phone and sent a quick text: STILL ALIVE. BLOOD WORKED, THANK YOU! ALSO, MAHEFA IS AN ASSHOLE.\n\nBi Wei was scanning the poem again. Back and forth her hands moved, touching letters like a musician playing an instrument. I saw the movement, but I couldn't hear the music.\n\n\"Babs also wants Gutenberg's body turned over to her,\" said Nicola.\n\n\"Is that so?\" Ponce de Leon rested both hands on his cane. \"I've tended to Johannes' remains. Please tell the Regional Master that she's welcome to bring any requests or complaints to me personally.\"\n\nMy phone buzzed with Jeff's reply: GLAD UR NOT DEAD. TRY 2 STAY THAT WAY.\n\nI was sick of running and hiding, and judging from the frustration charging the air like an overloaded power line, I wasn't alone. But we needed that sphere before we could act against Meridiana. Like Dorian Gray's painting, the sphere held her true life, keeping her safe from anything we could do. \"What about Fort Michilimackinac?\"\n\n\"Meridiana knows of the Porter archive beneath the fort,\" said Bi Wei.\n\n\"The whole world knows, thanks to your letter.\" Nicola didn't sound angry, but then, she rarely did.\n\n\"Michilimackinac has Porter magic protecting it,\" I said. \"Along with the spells left there by French traders. It's only a day's drive.\" Before I could say more, Smudge scurried to the top of his cage, bits of brightly-colored sugar melted to his mandibles. I lowered a hand to check his temperature. \"Wherever we're going, we should leave now. The fire-spider just went to yellow alert.\"\n\nLena moved to the window and peeked through the curtains. \"Nothing out here.\"\n\nNobody spoke as we gathered our things. I tucked my notes into the briefcase and checked my shock-gun. Nicola pressed her earbuds into place. Lena sharpened her wooden blades.\n\nPonce de Leon's knuckles were white around his cane. He waited impatiently at the door, as if he couldn't wait to confront Meridiana. Bi Wei was right behind him, sorting through books in her leather handbag.\n\nWe were checked out of the hotel within five minutes. I scanned the parking lot, searching for whatever was worrying Smudge. Waves of red fire rippled over his back.\n\n\"We should switch vehicles,\" said Nidhi. \"Preferably to something that isn't stolen.\"\n\n\"Nobody will notice us.\" Ponce de Leon gestured toward the Jeep. \"I saw to that in Chicago. The police will see us, but the memories will slip away like ice melting through their fingers. I use the same spell on my own cars. I prefer not to worry about speeding tickets when I drive.\"\n\nBi Wei slowed. \"That truck...\"\n\nA U-Haul truck sat beside our Jeep. Through the window, I made out the silhouette of a man. I checked Smudge, whose flames jumped higher, confirming my wariness.\n\n\"It wasn't there earlier this morning,\" said Lena.\n\nThe door opened, and the driver climbed out. He wore a dark green trench coat, and a black baseball cap shielded his face, but the skin of his neck sparkled where the sun touched it, marking him as Sanguinarius Meyerii.\n\nSparklers were tough to beat, even with magic. On any other day, I'd have braced myself for a fight that would almost certainly have ended with me broken and bleeding on the pavement. But I was surrounded by some of the most powerful people I knew, and after bracing myself to face Meridiana, a vampire was such a relief I laughed out loud.\n\nHe scowled and pounded the side of the truck. The back slid open. Three more people emerged, all muffled against the sun.\n\n\"This won't take long,\" said the driver. \"We just want the blood-thief.\"\n\nI raised my hand and smiled. \"That would be me. How did you find us?\"\n\n\"We heard about your little adventure in Rome, so we reviewed the videos and photos online. When we spotted Mahefa in the background, we decided to pay him a visit. He told us everything... after a little persuasion. He had some of your blood left, which he handed over to us.\"\n\nI checked the other three vampires, wondering which one had tasted my blood and used it to track me down. It was an unusual gift among vampires, but not unheard of.\n\nThey spread out as they approached. Nidhi tapped my shoulder and pointed to the roof of the hotel, where two more vampires waited. When they saw us looking, they flew down behind us. One landed on the roof of a Mini Cooper, denting it inward. The other dropped lightly to the blacktop between us and the hotel door.\n\n\"Tell your Porter friends not to try anything.\" The driver blurred closer. \"I can rip out your throat before any of you can crack open one of your magic books. But we've been instructed to make your death... memorable.\"\n\n\"They're not Porters. Aside from her, I mean.\" I cocked a thumb at Nicola. \"Look, we're in a hurry, and this is a really bad idea. Any chance we could reschedule for next week? I promise I'll come down to Detroit to clear things up with your queen. Alice Granach is still running things in the salt mines, right?\"\n\nLena had her bokken. Nicola's hands twitched to a rhythm only she could hear. Ponce de Leon held his cane in one hand, a cold smile on his face. And then there was Bi Wei.\n\n\"Take him,\" said the sparkler. \"If he resists, kill his friends.\"\n\nBy my estimate, the fight lasted no more than twenty seconds.\n\nPonce de Leon burned the sparkler to ash where he stood. One of the flying vampires tackled Lena, only to scream and roll away with a bokken through her leg. A single swipe of the second bokken separated her head from her neck. Nicola's song lulled a third to sleep.\n\nThe rest were unfortunate enough to reach Bi Wei.\n\nWind swirled around us, tossing the screaming vampires into the air. The sky turned gray, and dust choked the air.\n\nOf those twenty seconds, half were spent watching a miniature tornado carry the undead trio out of sight.\n\nBi Wei removed her sunglasses and wiped the dust from the lenses. \"I was reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz yesterday before I received your message. It was inspirational.\"\n\nThe Porters had transferred their Midwest archive to Fort Michilimackinac after the destruction of the MSU Library in East Lansing. Located at the tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, the fort was a moderately popular tourist attraction, as well as the site of an ongoing archaeological dig. The latter presented a challenge at times, as there were certain artifacts and discoveries the Porters preferred remain hidden, but a little judiciously-applied magic prevented anyone from digging too deep in the wrong spot.\n\nI spent part of the drive on hold with the Detroit vampire nest. Deb DeGeorge had given me the number for one of Alice Granach's fledglings who apparently doubled as her administrative assistant. After twenty minutes of waiting, the fledgling picked up again and said, \"Mistress Granach will be with you shortly. If you would just\u2014\"\n\n\"Keep waiting while you try to trace the call? That's not going to happen.\" Not with the amount of magic shielding the Jeep. \"Look, we just dusted half the team you sent to kill me and sent the rest off to Oz. I know you're pissed about the blood thing, and you're right. That was rude of me. I don't have time for this right now, and so far, I haven't told the Porters or anyone else the details about your orbiting blood banks. Tell Granach if she wants a war, I'll tell the whole damn world, and we can make bets as to which agency shoots them out of the sky first. Or, she can call off the hunt, and we can talk about reparations like civilized beings.\"\n\n\"I... will pass your message along to Mistress Granach.\"\n\n\"Threatening the head of the Detroit nest,\" Lena said once I had hung up. \"You're quite the diplomat.\"\n\n\"Granach isn't stupid. They got Mahefa, so by now they know he set me up. Killing me anyway to send a message makes sense, but not if it costs them more than they gain.\"\n\n\"You hope,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"Yah.\"\n\nNicola glanced back. \"What is this about other blood banks?\"\n\n\"Ask me again once I've heard back from Alice Granach. In the meantime, I want to study that poem.\"\n\nThankfully, she didn't press the matter, and we spent the rest of the drive in relative quiet.\n\nThe fort was smaller than I remembered. I hadn't been here since I was fifteen. My parents had spent that summer trying to show my brother and me as many Michigan historical landmarks as possible. It hadn't been my most thrilling summer vacation.\n\nNicola had an annual pass, while the rest of us had to purchase tickets in the gift shop. We could have climbed the chain-link fence that surrounded the grounds, but there was no reason to risk attracting attention.\n\nTo the right, the Mackinac Bridge stretched across the water, dividing Lake Michigan from Lake Huron. To the left was a refreshment stand and a small playground built like a miniature fort, complete with a tiny toy cannon pointing out at the water. A woman in Ojibwe garb was working around a small campfire up ahead, beside the sidewalk that led to the wooden walls of the fort. A man dressed as a fur trader welcomed us when we reached the northern entrance.\n\nThe wooden palisade enclosed a scattering of buildings and open grass. Tourists wandered through reconstructed homes, barracks, and other structures, while park employees in period costumes answered questions, chopped wood, tended the small gardens, and tried not to look bored out of their minds.\n\nEverything we saw was a reconstruction. The fort had been burned to the ground in the late 1700s, when the British relocated to Mackinac Island. But the spells laid by the French traders and soldiers who originally built the fort had survived the flames.\n\n\"You've got that look on your face,\" Lena said fondly.\n\n\"What look?\"\n\n\"You're mentally reading this whole place like it's a history textbook.\"\n\nI gave an offended harrumph. \"Just for that, I won't tell you how the Ojibwe took control of the fort in 1763.\"\n\nLena touched each building in turn as we walked. Wasps crawled over many of the wooden shingles, but they left her alone.\n\n\"Who's working the archive?\" I asked.\n\n\"Jackson Chapin transferred up from East Lansing four weeks ago.\" Nidhi turned toward a small wooden cabin beside a grassy hill, near the southwest corner of the fort.\n\nChapin had been the archivist at the MSU library before it was destroyed. He had minimal magic, barely strong enough to earn a place among the Porters, but he knew the title of every book on his shelves by memory. He was brilliant, stern, and likely to be of very little help in a magical battle.\n\nA sign on the cabin named it the Chevalier House. Inside, a narrow stairway led down into the old powder magazine. This was one of the few areas to have survived the British torches. It was here that the original magic was strongest, and here that the Porters had quietly moved in.\n\nGlass walls protected the blackened stumps of the original palisade, displayed for tourists. Nicola waited for another family to move along to the next exhibit, then took a silver key from her pocket. She studied the cylindrical steel lock on the glass. The key was the wrong shape, but when she touched the tip to the lock, the cylinder melted aside to reveal a second, older-looking keyhole. She inserted the key and turned it a full three hundred and sixty degrees. To the left of the display case, a section of wall swung open.\n\nCool, dry air drifted out. The hallway beyond was built of wood, caulked with what looked like white mud or plaster. A pair of flickering fluorescent bulbs hummed overhead. Nicola replaced the lock and led us inside. Ponce de Leon pulled the door shut behind us.\n\nA small video camera was mounted in the corner above a second door at the end of the hall. Patches of green moss covered much of the wooden door. On the ceiling directly in front of us was a steel pipe and what looked like a sprinkler head. \"What do they run through the pipes? Lethe-water?\"\n\n\"I think so,\" said Nicola. \"Though I'm not certain which type.\"\n\nVarious authors had written about the memory-wiping properties of the river Lethe, each one giving it his or her own twist, and in the process providing the Porters with a range of forgetfulness potions. Should anyone manage to make it this far without authorization, they would soon find themselves back in the parking lot with no recollection of how they had gotten there.\n\nNicola pressed her hand to the largest patch of moss, which rippled and molded itself to her fingers. The door opened inward to reveal the business end of an eighteenth-century blunderbuss. The brass barrel lowered a moment later, and Jackson Chapin stepped aside to welcome us in.\n\nJackson looked like he would be more at home on the rugby field than in a library. Tall and broad, with a rectangular head and a quarter-inch buzz cut, he appeared even more imposing in the cramped confines of the archive. An ID badge hung from a lanyard around his neck. \"Master Pallas? What's going on?\"\n\nNicola stepped past him. \"We need to use this facility. Isaac and Bi Wei will be working at your desk.\"\n\nThe archive was less than half the size of our former facility in East Lansing, and had an odd blend of modern and colonial furnishings. The gleaming white floor and walls reminded me of a laboratory, but the wooden writing desk in the corner was two hundred years old if it was a day. Fluorescent light fixtures hung from old square timbers overhead.\n\nSealed crates filled the room, stacked from floor to ceiling. There were no shelves here, but each crate was meticulously labeled. They looked strong enough to safely transport high explosives.\n\n\"Is there a problem?\" asked Jackson.\n\n\"Not yet.\" Nicola turned on the desk lamp. Every power cord in the room ran to a single silent generator in the corner, roughly the size of a home dehumidifier.\n\nHanging from the wall above the desk was a six-inch wide image of a white rabbit, created with porcupine quills. I hadn't seen this particular piece, but I recognized Jane Oshogay's work. She was Jackson's predecessor, and had been killed when Meridiana's ghosts attacked the archive earlier this year.\n\nI spread the finished poem on the desk, weighing down the edges with a stapler, a pencil holder shaped like a wooden barrel, and a dog-eared copy of Charlotte Bront\u00eb's Villette.\n\n\"Interesting.\" Jackson peered over my shoulder. \"The Latin reads like gibberish. I take it this is some form of code?\"\n\n\"Something like that.\" With a sigh, I surrendered my chair to Bi Wei.\n\n\"When you free the sphere, Meridiana will know.\" Ponce de Leon moved to stand on the opposite side of the chair. \"I believe the passive enchantments in this place should prevent her from locating us immediately, but she will devote all of her energy to finding us.\"\n\n\"Whoever she is, she'll have her work cut out for her,\" said Jackson. \"The old underground timbers are like heat sinks. Any escaping magical energy within the fort is absorbed and masked as part of a constant low-level emanation. It's ingenious. From what we can tell, the original runes were carved into the heartwood using some species of powderpost beetle, though nobody knows how the beetles were controlled.\"\n\nLena coaxed a branch from one of the rafters, growing it until it was strong enough to hold Smudge's cage.\n\n\"Can you do it?\" asked Nicola.\n\nBi Wei chewed her lip. \"Meridiana stole the lives of our fellow students. We will do this, not for your Porters, but for them and the rest of the world.\"\n\n\"That works for us,\" I said before anyone else could answer.\n\nShe scanned the pages again. Her eyes followed the outer triangle, then worked inward along each spoke. She whispered to herself, pronouncing the Latin words without hesitating or stumbling. At the beginning of each seemingly nonsensical stanza, she repeated the name \"Anna.\"\n\n\"Be careful,\" I said quietly. I didn't think Meridiana could strike through the poem, not without a copy of her own, but I had been wrong before. Both Nicola and Ponce de Leon stood ready to act. I split my attention between Bi Wei and Smudge, trusting the fire-spider to warn me if everything went to hell.\n\nAfter about five minutes, Ponce de Leon leaned closer. \"Remarkable. The letters are changing.\"\n\n\"Changing how?\" I asked.\n\n\"They shine in the light,\" said Jackson. \"Like metal or glass.\" He adjusted his glasses. \"Master Pallas, what precisely is this woman attempting to accomplish? If this presents any kind of risk to the books preserved here\u2014\"\n\n\"Life is risk, Mister Chapin,\" Ponce de Leon interrupted. \"At least, any life worth living.\"\n\nBi Wei's fingertips slipped through the page. She jerked back, and now even I could see gleaming threads clinging to her nails like liquid bronze.\n\n\"Be ready.\" She reached into the poem again.\n\nThe sound of ripping paper made me cringe. Threads of smoke rose from the paper where Bi Wei's fingers disappeared. Metal letters climbed her hands, gradually fading into invisibility on her tan skin.\n\n\"We can feel the sphere,\" she said through clenched teeth. \"It's hot. Almost too hot to touch.\"\n\n\"If I may?\" Ponce de Leon touched her arm. I couldn't tell what he did, but Bi Wei visibly relaxed.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nThe paper around her fingers blackened and curled upward. I wondered if Jackson had a fire extinguisher tucked away in here. If we burned down the Porters' new archive, Gutenberg would\u2014\n\nThe thought of Gutenberg's name conjured the memory of his final, surprised grunt. The sound in my mind was so real, it was as if I was back in the room watching him fall. I swallowed and focused on Bi Wei's efforts.\n\nThe paper continued to burn, though there was no visible flame. I watched my own handwriting melt into Bi Wei's skin, one metal pen stroke at a time. It didn't seem to hurt her, but it was a disconcerting sight after a very disconcerting week.\n\n\"It's heavy.\" Bi Wei flinched. \"This is like pulling a wasp nest from a branch, feeling the insects buzzing inside.\"\n\n\"Meridiana can't hurt you from within the sphere,\" I said.\n\n\"You're certain?\"\n\nI hesitated. Gerbert d'Aurillac hadn't believed Meridiana would be able to escape at all, but she had learned to reach beyond her prison. \"She won't do anything to stop you from retrieving the sphere.\"\n\nBits of ash fell away like carbonized confetti. I double-checked Smudge for signs of anxiety or fear. He was preoccupied with grooming the bristles on the top of his head, rubbing his forelegs over his scalp like he was trying to fix a stubborn cowlick.\n\nLike a magician revealing a final trick, Bi Wei lifted her hands. The remnants of the poem dropped onto the desk, leaving her holding the bronze globe I had seen during my conversation with Gerbert d'Aurillac.\n\nShe set the sphere on the desk, moving as slowly and carefully as if it were a bomb primed to explode.\n\nI reached out to touch the sphere. Despite the heat Bi Wei had described, the metal was cool to the touch. The rings were polished and utterly clean of dust or corrosion. I might not be able to sense the magic, but I could still appreciate the craftsmanship that had gone into this sphere: the precisely drilled holes, the rings mounted to various axes, the images etched into the metal.\n\nI peered at the model of the Earth, suspended at the center like an oversized olive on a bronze toothpick. \"Hello, Meridiana.\"\n\nThe Egyptian government has declared a state of emergency following the apparent assassination of three high-ranking officials, including the vice president.\n\nA group calling themselves the Shadows of Liberation claimed responsibility for the deaths in a video posted shortly after the assassinations. The video was released in English as well as Arabic, and warns that all who would disrupt the dream of a peaceful Egypt through greed and corruption will meet the same end.\n\n\"For many years Egypt has suffered the tyranny of evil men, but the instruments of man cannot stop us,\" proclaimed a hooded man holding a small, colored cap in his hands. \"We stand on equal terms with the hidden powers of this world, and we will seize from them the reins of the nation.\"\n\nThe man then placed the cap upon his head and vanished, as if by magic.\n\nThe reference to standing on equal terms with hidden powers, as well as several other quotes, appear to have been drawn from the novel Arabian Nights and Days, a modern retelling of the tales of Scheherazade, by Nobel-laureate Naguib Mahfouz. One of the tales in Mahfouz's 1979 work describes an invisibility cap that matches the appearance of the cap used in the video.\n\nThe Shadows of Liberation have published a list of future targets, whom they describe as traitors to the Egyptian people.\n\nEgypt's president was quick to denounce the Shadows of Liberation as a terrorist organization, and dismissed their apparent magic as simple camera trickery.\n\nPonce de Leon pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and draped it over the sighting tube. \"According to Isaac, this tube was how His Holiness trapped Meridiana. Best not to risk anyone accidentally looking through the eyepiece and joining her.\"\n\nBi Wei pushed the outermost ring to the right. When she removed her hands, it crawled slowly back to its prior position.\n\n\"Do you think Meridiana can feel you messing with her rings?\" I asked.\n\nBefore anyone could answer\u00b8 the rest of the metal rings scraped into motion. The sighting tube rose, lifting the handkerchief like a flag. The small spheres of the sun and moon inched along their orbits. When everything came to rest, the sphere was in an entirely different configuration.\n\nI looked up, trying to imagine the position of the sun. Whatever the sphere was showing, it wasn't the current position of the heavens.\n\nBi Wei poked the rings again, but the sphere didn't react.\n\n\"Perhaps it's miscalibrated,\" Jackson suggested.\n\nI pointed to the azimuth, the flat, vertical ring. \"It's adjusted for forty-six degrees latitude, which runs through the northern part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.\"\n\n\"But we're not in\u2014\"\n\nI clapped a hand to Jackson's mouth. \"Important safety tip. The sphere has a wannabe goddess inside, and she'd like nothing more than to squash us all, just as soon as she can figure out where we are.\"\n\nHe was right, though. We were south of the bridge, putting us several degrees lower than the sphere indicated. I touched the flat band of the ecliptic ring, which was divided into months and days, and marked with the signs of the zodiac. I looked at the sun, projecting where it would intersect the ecliptic at sunrise and sunset.\n\nLena pulled me back from the sphere. \"What's wrong, Isaac?\"\n\nI rubbed my arms against a chill that started deep inside my body. I pointed to the position of the sun. \"If I'm reading this right, the sphere is set for about ten in the morning on January fourth.\"\n\n\"That date means something?\" Bi Wei asked.\n\n\"My birthday.\" But the sphere was moving again, faster than before. Metal hummed as the rings spun and slid into position. I waited for it to stop. \"Anyone here born at eleven at night on the twentieth of June, around thirty-five degrees latitude?\"\n\nThe sphere spun to life.\n\n\"I was born in early summer, hours after the sun had set,\" whispered Bi Wei.\n\nI found it reassuring that the sphere seemed to recognize Bi Wei as an individual.\n\n\"It's returned to January fourth.\" Ponce de Leon touched the metal rings, but nothing happened. \"The sphere seems to like the two of you.\"\n\n\"It's listening to us,\" said Bi Wei.\n\nI thought back to the mythology of Gerbert d'Aurillac, scraps of rumor and legend I had read over the past week. \"It's doing more than that.\" I dropped to one knee, bringing my face level with the sphere. \"It reacted every time one of us asked a question.\"\n\n\"I asked you what was wrong,\" Lena pointed out. \"The rings didn't move.\"\n\n\"Every time we asked a yes/no question,\" I amended. \"The stories said d'Aurillac possessed a brazen head, a bronze oracle that would answer any question.\" I imagined the small orbs of the sun and moon as eyes peering through wild, tangled rings of metal hair. \"Did Gerbert d'Aurillac use you as an oracle?\"\n\nNothing. I sat back on my heels, glaring at the sphere. Why would it react to some questions but not this one?\n\n\"Did Nidhi eat the last of my Mackinac Island Fudge ice cream last week?\" asked Lena.\n\nThe sphere moved again, coming to rest in early December. Lena's jaw tightened. \"I don't know the exact date of my birth, but I first stepped from my tree in the winter, several weeks before Christmas.\"\n\n\"This is wrong.\" Bi Wei reached into the sphere to touch the moon. \"The moon should be new on this date.\"\n\n\"How can you tell?\" asked Nidhi.\n\nShe stared through the sphere. \"We can see it.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's not equipped to guess the birthday of a dryad,\" said Jackson.\n\n\"That's not it.\" I grimaced. \"It's because I ate Lena's ice cream, not Nidhi. Sorry about that, by the way. I bet the sphere shows the proper configuration for a yes, but introduces a mistake for no.\" Which would explain why it hadn't moved when I asked if it was an oracle. The answer was yes, but the sphere had already adjusted itself to my birth date. \"Can Meridiana hear and remember the questions we ask?\"\n\nThe rings and planets whirled through time, returning to the positions of my birth. Yes.\n\n\"Can Jeneta be saved?\" I asked. \"Restored to who she was, free of Meridiana's influence?\"\n\nNothing happened, but when Bi Wei repeated the question, the sphere moved back to June 20. Yes.\n\n\"Assuming it's answering honestly,\" Nidhi pointed out.\n\n\"It's impossible to be certain, but we don't believe she has a choice,\" said Bi Wei.\n\n\"Are they ever going to have a woman play the Doctor on Doctor Who?\" I asked.\n\nNothing happened. Either the sphere didn't consider my question worth answering, or else it couldn't answer questions about the future, perhaps as a built-in protection against paradox.\n\nIt was Lena's turn. \"If we chuck you into a smelting furnace, will that destroy Meridiana?\"\n\nThis time, the moon was in the correct position, but the date was off. No.\n\n\"If anything, that would release her,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"I believe Johannes had the right approach. He intended to end Meridiana's miniature universe, to bring about the end of days. Would this put an end to Meridiana?\"\n\nThe sphere moved again. We looked to Ponce de Leon for confirmation. For once, he appeared unsettled. \"I didn't think that through. I... don't know the precise date of my birth,\" he admitted.\n\n\"Ask it a question you know the answer is yes,\" I said.\n\n\"Right, of course.\" He paused a moment. \"Am I wearing shoes?\"\n\nWe all reflexively looked at his feet, but the sphere didn't move. Meaning the answer to both of his questions was yes.\n\n\"Looks like your birthday is March thirteenth,\" I said. \"I'll have to remember to send you a card.\"\n\n\"Does Meridiana know where we are?\" asked Nicola.\n\nThe sphere spun to August 5, only a few weeks ago. \"Happy late birthday,\" I said.\n\nNicola looked to Bi Wei, who shook her head. \"It should be a first quarter moon.\"\n\n\"How can you know that without knowing the year of my birth,\" said Nicola.\n\n\"The configuration is just wrong. Like a poem with one character out of position.\"\n\nAssuming Bi Wei's reading was correct, we were safe for the moment. To the sphere, I said, \"Gerbert trapped Meridiana\u2014you\u2014in this thing. How did you start to escape?\"\n\nIt didn't respond, of course. I needed a yes/no question, which meant I had to figure it out myself, then ask for confirmation.\n\nHad Gerbert d'Aurillac made mistakes in his spellcasting? Or perhaps Meridiana was simply too strong to remain contained forever. She could have worked for centuries, a prisoner chipping away at the walls of her cell, until she punched a hole to the outside world. Gutenberg had been aware of her presence more than five hundred years ago, and of the ghosts she had drawn to herself. \"Is the Ghost Army trapped in the sphere with you?\"\n\nNo.\n\n\"Has Meridiana altered the magic of her prison?\" asked Nicola.\n\nYes.\n\n\"How the hell did she do that?\" I asked. Neither Nicola nor the sphere responded. \"Can you be disassembled without freeing Meridiana?\"\n\nSilence.\n\nThe Porters had experimented with oracular magic before, but it was tricky to say the least. Anything connected to libriomancy ran the risk of distorting its answers to align with the originating text rather than the real world. Ask a crystal ball about your future, and likely as not it would show you spoilers from the story it came from. But d'Aurillac's work had no libriomantic component.\n\nI sat down at the desk and held my hand behind my back. \"Can you perceive how many fingers I'm holding up on my right hand?\"\n\nYes.\n\n\"Cool. What about the individual cells of my body? Can you perceive them?\"\n\nYes.\n\n\"Can you distinguish between healthy and sick or dying cells?\"\n\nYes.\n\nI turned to Lena. \"You could use this thing as a medical scanner to screen for cancer and disease. I bet it would do instant pregnancy testing, too. If we could\u2014\"\n\nPonce de Leon coughed quietly. \"Perhaps we should get on with it before the temptation to play with the oracle distracts us from our true goals.\"\n\n\"Too late,\" I said. \"I'm distracted.\"\n\n\"Jeneta Aboderin.\" Nidhi rested a hand on my shoulder. \"The Ghost Army. Gutenberg. Focus, Isaac.\"\n\nJackson straightened. \"Wait, what about Gutenberg?\"\n\n\"The Regional Masters haven't shared that news yet.\" Nicola paced the length of the room. \"They believed it would be 'too disruptive.'\"\n\nPonce de Leon reached toward the sphere, stopping with his hand an inch from the surface. \"Meridiana is a thousand-year-old sorceress trapped within that armillary sphere. Yesterday, she murdered Johannes Gutenberg.\"\n\n\"I don't know who you are, sir,\" said Jackson, \"but you must be mistaken. Gutenberg\u2014\"\n\n\"I apologize for my rudeness. My name is Juan Ponce de Leon.\"\n\nJackson stared at Ponce de Leon, then at the sphere. He stepped back from both, as if he wasn't sure which was the greater threat. \"I don't understand. You were banished. The Porters...\" He swallowed, then looked at Bi Wei. \"I know Doctor Shah and her bodyguard, and I'm familiar with Isaac. Who are you?\"\n\n\"My name is Bi Wei. We are the B\u00ec She\u00afng de d\u00fa zhe\u02c7.\"\n\nHe turned to Nicola, silently pleading for an explanation.\n\n\"I'll need you to provide details on all of the fort's enchantments,\" she said flatly.\n\n\"I... I should go.\"\n\n\"No, you really shouldn't,\" said Ponce de Leon without looking up.\n\n\"The fort,\" Nicola repeated.\n\nJackson chewed the side of his lower lip, then nodded. \"I have a copy of Jane Oshogay's instructions in the file cabinet beside the desk. It's basically a user guide for the whole fort.\"\n\nWhile they reviewed the defenses, I returned my attention to the armillary sphere. All magic had limits. What were Meridiana's? \"If I took you outside in the daytime, would you be able to see the stars?\"\n\nYes.\n\n\"But you don't know where you are right now?\"\n\nNo.\n\nI silently thanked those paranoid French traders. \"What about planets? Can you see them?\"\n\nYes.\n\nD'Aurillac had created so much more than a simple prison. This would have been an unimaginably important tool. While it couldn't describe the skies to him, it could confirm or deny his observations and theories. \"Can you see planets outside of our solar system?\"\n\nNo.\n\nSo much for using Meridiana to prove the existence of alien civilizations.\n\nNidhi sat down on the edge of the desk beside me. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You physically pulled away when I mentioned Jeneta's name, before. Your shoulders are tight as rock, and you're talking faster than usual.\"\n\n\"I'm okay. I'm just\u2014\"\n\n\"You haven't been okay for a while now.\" She reached out to touch one of the sphere's rings. \"You remind me of a story I read a year or so back, about a village in Kenya. A pair of cheetahs had been eating the villagers' goats. Cheetahs are unbeatable sprinters, but they can't run forever. The men waited until the hottest part of the day, then chased the cheetahs on foot. Eventually, both animals collapsed from exhaustion.\"\n\n\"We don't have time for this, Nidhi.\"\n\n\"You never have time,\" she said firmly. \"Ever since Gutenberg took your magic, you've been too busy running. You can't run forever.\"\n\nMy vision blurred. I looked away, but I knew she'd seen me blinking back tears. Guilt and loss and grief battered through walls already weakened by exhaustion. I pressed my palms against my head, as if I could physically force everything back. I was painfully aware of everyone in the room watching me\u2014or in Jackson's case, deliberately not watching.\n\n\"Gutenberg carved out a piece of your soul,\" Ponce de Leon said gently. \"He believed it was for the best, but such losses leave deep scars. You've nothing to be ashamed of.\"\n\nI knew they meant well, but his words just made me angry. Like I was a broken animal to be pitied. Wasn't I one of the lucky ones? Unlike too many people who had died without knowing why, I had survived. \"I don't need to run forever. Just long enough to bring Meridiana down.\"\n\n\"All right. But when this is over, I want you to talk to someone.\" Nidhi raised a hand before I could object. \"It doesn't have to be a therapist. Take a walk with Lena. Go out drinking with Jeff if you want to.\"\n\nI turned back to the sphere. \"What I don't understand is why d'Aurillac hid this away in a poem. This sphere could have done so much for his work and research. Sending it away would be like... like permanently cutting off your Internet connection.\"\n\n\"The horror,\" Lena said, giving a mock-shudder.\n\n\"Maybe he felt guilty,\" Nidhi suggested. \"Gutenberg enslaved others to power his automatons, but he was forever conflicted about them. Gerbert d'Aurillac might have felt the same about using his former student.\"\n\n\"Let's ask her.\" To the sphere, I said, \"Did Gerbert d'Aurillac enchant this intentionally to allow you to indicate yes or no, but with no other voice?\"\n\nYes.\n\n\"A true voice might have allowed her to use magic,\" Nidhi suggested. \"Or to persuade someone to free her.\"\n\nAs a precaution, it made sense to limit Meridiana's ability to communicate with the outside world, but I couldn't see Gerbert d'Aurillac forcing her to serve as his own personal oracle. The man whose memories I had touched had never been cruel. Imprison a murderess, certainly, but this? He would have been revolted by such enslavement. There had to be another reason, something we were missing.\n\nI unhooked Smudge's cage from the ceiling as I thought. He had been squeezed in that flattened rectangle for too long. I opened the door and let him scurry up my arm. He crouched on my shoulder to watch the sphere, as if it was a metal monster ready to pounce.\n\n\"Rotting hell!\" Lena staggered backward into the wall, both hands clutching her ribs.\n\nNidhi and I were at her side a moment later, each of us grabbing one of her elbows to support her.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Nicola.\n\nLena jerked free of my grip and slammed a fist against the wall behind us. The blow left a foot-long crack. Through gritted teeth, she said, \"That really hurts.\"\n\nShe appeared uninjured. \"Your tree?\" I guessed.\n\nLena nodded.\n\nWhatever was happening, it had to be in response to us retrieving Meridiana's prison. \"There should be Porters near the house. Nicola can contact them\u2014\"\n\n\"Meridiana has a message for us.\" Sweat beaded Lena's brow, and her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.\n\n\"You can hear her?\" Ponce de Leon asked sharply.\n\n\"She's carving the words into my oak.\" Lena took several quick, tight breaths. \"She wants to meet to discuss a truce.\"\n\n\"The question isn't whether or not it's a trap,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"It's whether or not we can turn the trap to our advantage.\"\n\n\"I can't allow it.\" Nicola was insisting the only safe choice was to ignore Meridiana's offer and proceed as planned. \"The moment any of us approach Meridiana, she'll rip the location of the sphere from our memories and send her forces to take it and kill the rest of us.\"\n\n\"There are ways of shielding those memories,\" said Bi Wei.\n\nNidhi and I sat with Lena. Sweat drenched her skin. Dark lines twitched and bulged on her arms as the grafts inside of her responded to the ongoing assault on her tree. Her lips parted. Through clenched teeth, she said, \"Meridiana is threatening to release the Ghost Army if we refuse to talk.\"\n\n\"Can she do that?\" asked Jackson.\n\nBehind him, the armillary sphere reconfigured itself in response to his question. A brief exchange between Jackson and Bi Wei over the date of Jackson's birth confirmed the answer: Yes.\n\n\"She's desperate,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"We know Lena can survive the death of her oak. If we strike quickly enough\u2014\"\n\n\"Are you that confident you can destroy the sphere before she looses her army?\" I asked. \"And what about Jeneta?\" I spun to face the desk. \"If we destroy the sphere, will Jeneta Aboderin be harmed?\"\n\nYes.\n\n\"Will she die?\" I pressed.\n\nThe sphere didn't respond.\n\n\"Jeneta is one child.\" Ponce de Leon raised his cane like a baseball bat, and for a second I thought he meant to physically smash the sphere. Instead, he rested it on his shoulder and sighed. \"We might yet find another way to rescue her, but if we can't, she's too dangerous a weapon to leave in Meridiana's hands.\"\n\n\"She's not a weapon,\" I shot back. Nobody answered. They didn't have to. With the exception of Jackson, we all knew what Meridiana had accomplished with Jeneta's magic.\n\n\"Is Meridiana's offer of a truce genuine?\" Nidhi spoke so quietly I almost missed it, but the sphere heard.\n\nYes.\n\n\"If Meridiana releases the Ghost Army now, will she be able to control them?\" I didn't know which possibility was more frightening.\n\nNo.\n\nPonce de Leon swore under his breath.\n\n\"We're at a stalemate,\" I said. \"We've got Meridiana's life in our hands, and she has the Ghost Army.\" As well as Jeneta and Lena's oak. To the sphere, I asked, \"Can you hear us if we move into the hallway and shut the door?\" The archive was both physically and magically soundproofed, but we didn't know the sphere's full abilities.\n\nNo.\n\nI kissed Lena on the forehead and stood up, leaving her with Nidhi. I tapped Ponce de Leon and Nicola, who followed me out of the room.\n\n\"You have an idea?\" asked Ponce de Leon once the door was closed behind us.\n\n\"Maybe.\" I turned to Nicola. \"Who took over tech support for the Porters after Victor died?\"\n\n\"Kirsten LaMontagne.\"\n\nI didn't know the name. \"Meridiana is using Jeneta's magic. Together, they're working libriomancy beyond anything I've seen, but it's still done through e-books and other electronics. Her monsters? Transformed using books from her e-reader. The devourers she sent through the television in Chicago? She probably uploaded them somehow.\"\n\n\"Where are you going with this?\" asked Ponce de Leon.\n\nI smiled. \"Ask Kirsten how close I'd have to get to hack Jeneta's e-reader.\"\n\nIf I hadn't known how much trouble was waiting at my house, Smudge would have warned me. The closer Lena and I got, the more he flattened himself against the floor of his cage, red flames rippling over his back like the northern lights.\n\n\"What the hell?\" Parked cars lined my street, most of them clustered directly in front of my place. A few had pulled onto the grass, and a white news van blocked the driveway. I had to drive to the end of the block to park the Jeep. \"This doesn't look good.\"\n\n\"Meridiana is in my grove.\" Lena had stopped sweating, but her face remained pale. \"There's a crowd. I can feel their feet on my roots.\"\n\n\"The Ghost Army?\" I checked my shock-gun out of habit, reached for Smudge's cage, then changed my mind. Bringing Smudge along wouldn't warn us of anything we didn't already know. It would simply put him in danger, too.\n\n\"I can't tell.\"\n\nAs we walked back to the house, I searched the street for the Porters who were supposed to be watching the place. I didn't find them.\n\nLena readied a single bokken, leaving the second thrust through her belt. I switched my gun to a lower setting, one that would stun but not kill. None of our weapons were likely to do much against Meridiana herself, but hopefully it wouldn't come to that.\n\nA familiar, shrouded figure approached us on the street. I fought the urge to look away. So long as the burqa hid the gorgon's gaze, we were safe. Lena and I spread apart as we walked, wordlessly preparing to hit the gorgon from both sides should things go wrong.\n\n\"Hello, Deanna,\" I said.\n\n\"Deanna?\" Lena repeated.\n\n\"That was her name, back when she was a Porter. Before Meridiana killed her. Deanna tried to warn me about Meridiana's angel, back in Rome.\"\n\nThe gorgon turned to me. \"Meridiana asked me to give you this.\" Her slender, jaundiced hand offered an old e-reader.\n\nI checked the monochrome display, but didn't touch it. \"Douglas Adams?\"\n\n\"This is for your protection.\" Her words were like honey and tea, sweet and seductive, with a thick Texan drawl. You barely noticed the shifting and hissing of her hair. \"I'm told the effect is called a 'somebody else's problem' field. Stay close to the reader, and nobody else should pay any attention to your presence.\" She stood motionless for several seconds, like she was listening. \"Your phone. Please turn it off.\"\n\n\"No way. I've got an open connection to Nicola Pallas. If that call goes dead, so does Meridiana.\"\n\n\"All right.\" She motioned for me to take the e-reader.\n\nI hesitated, but if Meridiana wanted to kill us, she didn't need to trick me into taking an e-book to do it. My fingers brushed Deanna's. Her skin was hot and dry. I wondered if she was warm or cold-blooded. Between the sun and the burqa, she couldn't have been comfortable.\n\n\"Do you remember who you were?\" asked Lena.\n\nShe stopped in midstep and studied Lena closely. \"Do you?\"\n\nDeanna led us around the house. A little over a month ago, Jeneta Aboderin and I had sat on the deck discussing dreams and magic and poetry. Now Meridiana waited before a crowd in front of the oaks. Her angel perched twenty feet up, white wings outstretched among the branches.\n\nMeridiana looked much as she had the last time I saw her. She wore a pink-and-white leather jacket with fake jewels decorating the sleeves. I assumed they were fake, at least. Colorful plastic beads clicked at the end of her braids. She stood upon a tangle of roots, giving her an extra foot of height over the crowd. Her own e-reader was clutched in her left hand.\n\n\"There are forty or so people here,\" I muttered for Nicola's benefit. \"Including a news crew near the front.\" Their camera was rolling. Jeneta's parents would see this. What was I supposed to tell them when they called?\n\nLena and I each held one end of the older e-reader, but that didn't stop Jeneta\u2014Meridiana\u2014from spotting us. She gave a brief nod of acknowledgment, then addressed the crowd. \"If you had a plentiful supply of water and came across a man dying of thirst, would you refuse to offer him a drink? Would you stand by and watch him expire?\"\n\nThe angry muttering made me suspect Meridiana had been working them for a while, stoking their emotions. I couldn't tell if she was using magic to strengthen her influence.\n\nDeanna wove through the crowd and slipped between the trees of the grove, disappearing into the shadows.\n\n\"Magic is not a thing to be feared,\" Meridiana continued. \"The world is sick, starving for hope. How many people have died in conflicts that could have been solved with magic? How many loved ones have you lost to disease and death? There is a vacuum, an emptiness in the world where magic was always meant to exist. Thanks to those who hoard their secret power, that void has come to be filled by suffering and despair.\"\n\nThe worst part was that I couldn't entirely disagree. Obviously, things weren't as simple as she made it sound. Magic brought new dangers of its own. And yet the Porters had the ability to help so many people...\n\nI glanced down at my phone and activated the app Kirsten had e-mailed me. It immediately began pinging for other devices. It picked up a number of other smartphones as well as the neighbors' wireless modem, but I didn't see Jeneta's e-reader on the list yet.\n\nMeridiana raised her hands to quiet the crowd's anger. \"The men and women who kept this secret are human, just as you and me. We are all flawed beings under God. But their flaws have brought the world to the edge of damnation. You know of the Porters, I assume?\"\n\nShouts of affirmation and accusation. By now, everyone had seen or heard about Bi Wei's letter.\n\n\"The Porters have unearthed an artifact from a thousand years ago, a prison for unimaginably powerful souls, ghosts who would devour this world.\"\n\nShe looked at me when she said \"devour.\" My nails dug into my skin. Jeneta was the one who had coined the term \"devourers\" for the Ghost Army, during a conversation here in my backyard.\n\n\"I can protect this town. I can prevent another massacre like the one you suffered before.\" Meridiana pointed to the angel. \"This is Binion, a friend who found the courage to leave the Porters to help me do what's right. He, Deanna, and a handful of other courageous souls will do everything in their power to stop an even greater threat.\"\n\nWhat I wanted was to send a bolt of lightning into Meridiana's lying mouth. But their magic was strong enough to deflect or dissolve anything I could throw their way, and in the unlikely chance something did get through, it would hurt Jeneta more than Meridiana. Binion hadn't chosen to leave the Porters. Meridiana would have battled him to exhaustion, transformed his body, and ripped out his mind, replacing him with one of her ghosts. Whoever he had once been was gone, either dead or sent to join Meridiana's ghosts, to be tormented in his afterlife until nothing remained but power and madness.\n\n\"The Porters hope to use this prison on me, to bind me with the mindless souls of the dead. And then they would destroy it.\" She raised her voice, and her next words sounded like she was standing right beside me. \"I brought you here to warn you. If the Porters destroy the sphere, they will release an army of ghosts upon the world with no one to control them. Whatever your fears, nothing would be worse than such unchecked chaos and death. They will destroy everything and everyone they touched.\"\n\n\"Do you think she's right?\" Lena whispered. \"Would destroying the sphere free the Ghost Army?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Meridiana knew her prison better than anyone. She might be bluffing, but she had to know we'd use the sphere to confirm anything she said. Which suggested she was telling the truth. I raised my phone. \"Nicola, could you relay that question to the sphere?\"\n\n\"What is that angel thing?\" asked a man near the front of the crowd. \"Is it safe?\"\n\n\"He is exactly what he appears to be.\" Meridiana extended a hand.\n\nBinion's wings stirred powerful gusts of air as he dropped to the ground beside Meridiana. He towered over the girl like a god. People near the back shoved to try to get a better view.\n\n\"Magic is real.\" Meridiana tilted her e-reader and tapped the screen. \"If Binion's presence doesn't convince you, perhaps this will.\"\n\nShe began to read. I couldn't understand the language\u2014Italian, maybe?\u2014nor could I sense the magic itself. But I felt its effects. Her spell stirred a sense of longing, reminiscent of the siren's song, though thankfully not as potent. Her intonation changed, and now laughter spread through us all. I found myself grinning as well.\n\nWithout magic of my own, there wasn't a damned thing I could do to fight it. Plugging my ears didn't stop her spells from penetrating my body and manipulating my emotions. Bi Wei and Ponce de Leon had shielded my memories of their location, nothing more.\n\nThe next spell evoked rage. Meridiana cut it off after only a few seconds, but it was enough to bring several people to blows. I realized I had turned my shock-gun to maximum and brought it to bear on Meridiana.\n\n\"That was no sleight of hand,\" said Meridiana. To the camera, she added, \"Those of you watching on your televisions will have felt only an echo of my power.\"\n\nAn echo which hadn't entirely faded, or maybe the angry thudding of my pulse was the aftermath of adrenaline. I slowed my breathing, trying to calm myself enough to think clearly. I needed to get close enough for my phone to connect to Meridiana's primary e-reader.\n\nMeridiana bowed her head. \"Isaac Vainio was given the gift of libriomancy, the magic of books. He could have used that magic to help you all. Instead, he brought the Porters' war to Copper River. How many of you lost friends and family to the monsters that fought in your streets?\"\n\nToo damned many. I handed the e-reader to Lena and pressed into the crowd. \"Why don't you tell them where those monsters came from?\"\n\nMeridiana folded her arms. The creak of her leather jacket was the only sound. I could see confusion on people's faces\u2014friends and neighbors squinting at me as I stepped out of range of the old e-reader's magic.\n\n\"You spent a thousand years gathering the broken shells of the dead,\" I said. \"Building your army. You sent them to attack Copper River. I did everything I could to stop them.\" My voice cracked. \"I was the one who found Loretta Trembath after one of your creatures killed her.\"\n\nI remembered every detail: the web of cracks in the smashed windshield, the flattened metal, the wide, frozen eyes of a woman I had known and joked with for years. I hadn't told anyone about finding her body, or how she and others haunted my nightmares.\n\n\"You blame me for that attack?\" asked Meridiana. \"I thought your war was against the students of Bi Sheng. Another innocent group the Porters tried to destroy. Or was it a battle against one of your own, a father who turned against the Porters after the death of his son? You have so many enemies, so many secrets, it's difficult for me to keep track.\"\n\nI snuck another peek at my phone. Bingo. We had the signal.\n\n\"I asked for a truce,\" Meridiana continued. \"And you brought a weapon to kill me.\"\n\nIn my anger, I had forgotten about the damned shock-gun holstered at my hip. \"Tell them whose body you've taken. How you violated Jeneta Aboderin's mind and infected her thoughts.\"\n\nMeridiana looked to the camera. \"Jeneta Aboderin was a brilliant, gifted, trusting child. The Porters lied to her family and lured her here under false pretenses so they could study her magic. They failed to protect her from the darker side of magic, the things that live and wait in the shadows. Isaac and his brethren used her, until her mind was damaged beyond repair. I saved her, and she welcomed me.\"\n\n\"That's a lie.\" Only it wasn't, not entirely. I had failed to protect Jeneta, and Meridiana knew it.\n\nThe crowd moved with restless energy, and I heard my name muttered over and over, growing louder and angrier with each repetition. I had no proof of Meridiana's actions, and they saw me as a liar who had betrayed their trust.\n\nI had lived most of my life in Copper River, but suddenly I was no longer one of them. I was an outsider. I picked Lizzie Pascoe out of the crowd. If I couldn't get the crowd to listen to me, maybe I could reach them as individuals. \"Lizzie, you would have died in that attack on Copper River if I hadn't gotten you inside. I pulled you off the street...\"\n\nShe stared at me like I was a stranger. Dammit, the Porters had erased her memories to try to cover their tracks. She didn't remember how close she had come to dying. The Porters had effectively eliminated anything I could use to defend myself.\n\n\"You know me,\" I said. \"You knew my parents. I've never done anything to hurt any of you, or to endanger this town.\"\n\n\"How many werewolves live in Tamarack?\" Meridiana's words were soft, but her power carried them to every ear within a hundred feet. \"Or should we discuss the vampire you befriended in Marquette? The one who was so fond of the blood of young Boy Scouts. What other threats have you concealed from your friends and neighbors?\"\n\nShit. The longer she kept me on the defensive, the more I looked like a criminal and a liar. I spread my hands. \"You told me you wanted a truce.\"\n\n\"I do. Bring me the sphere, and I promise to protect you from the Ghost Army. I will make sure Copper River is safe. Or do you care so little for your home that you would sacrifice it to protect your own power?\"\n\n\"What the hell are you, Isaac Vainio?\" shouted Jaylee Parker.\n\nWalt Derocher shoved me from behind. \"We buried my cousin after that attack. The cops tried to tell us it was a bear what did that to her.\"\n\nMy bowels and gut clenched as I realized what was about to happen. I shoved the phone into my pocket and tried to back away, but I was too late. A stone glanced off of my temple, making me stagger. I reached for my shock-gun, but before I could draw it, they closed around me, grabbing and punching and kicking.\n\nI fell to the ground and rolled to the side. A boot smashed into my upper arm. Someone else stomped on my hand. I kicked a heel into the stomper's groin and tucked my other arm over my head for protection.\n\nEveryone had grieved for the loss of friends and family. They had watched, afraid, as stories of magic and monsters spread. And Meridiana had brought me here to be a target for their anger and their fear.\n\nI saw my boss, Jennifer Latona, standing a short way back. She wasn't attacking, but neither did she do anything to try to stop the others. Our eyes met, and she turned away.\n\nPain jolted my lower back. Hands seized my shirt and hair, hauling me brutally to my feet.\n\nI heard the crack of wood against bone, and thought for a second someone else had struck me. Instead, Jaylee Parker cried out in pain and staggered back. Lena's bokken hummed through the air and another man fell, clutching a broken knee. She grabbed me with one hand, sweeping her bokken through the air with the other as she dragged me toward the street.\n\nJaylee held her arm and wept, but nobody followed us. Already the old e-reader's magic was working, causing them to forget about me, just as I had forgotten Lena's presence until she stepped in. They looked around in confusion, seeking another outlet for their anger.\n\nMeridiana said nothing. She simply watched as the mob turned toward my house. They didn't know I was here, but they remembered me. They remembered Meridiana's accusations, and the deaths of their loved ones.\n\nI tried to get up, but Lena's grip was unbreakable. \"They'll kill you.\"\n\nThe fire started on the deck. I had to believe it was more of Meridiana's magic. No matter how hurt and afraid they were, I couldn't accept that the people I had lived with my entire life would deliberately set my house ablaze. But as the flames began to spread, they did nothing to stop it, either.\n\nBlack smoke rose from the deck. Siding warped and cracked. A window shattered. The fire crept inside, consuming the faded blue curtains my father had hung in that room when I was eight years old.\n\nThe mob fell back. Some looked frightened. Others shocked, as if they were beginning to realize what they had been a part of. Nobody looked at one another. Nobody spoke. The news van backed out of the driveway and sped away.\n\nI raised my weapon. I couldn't stop this, but Meridiana could.\n\nShe smirked and tapped the screen of her tablet. When she pulled her finger away, a tiny orange flame perched on the tip. She gave a meaningful glance toward the trees of the grove.\n\nI holstered the gun and shouted, \"This is your truce?\"\n\nHer smile grew, and she curled her fingers into a fist, extinguishing the threat. \"This is a warning. A preview of things to come should you release the Ghost Army.\"\n\n\"You're assuming nobody else can command them,\" I said.\n\n\"If the children of Johannes Gutenberg and Bi Sheng could control my army, don't you think they would have done so by now?\" She walked toward us, flanked by Deanna and Binion. \"I've stood with one foot in the land of the dead since my birth. Thanks to my teacher's betrayal, I spent most of my life in the liminal state between reality and nonexistence. The dead are more real to me than you are, Isaac Vainio. What makes you believe you or anyone else could take them away from me?\"\n\n\"My boundless hope and optimism,\" I said flatly.\n\nShe smirked. \"Life is an ephemeral, fragile thing. Even to those such as Johannes Gutenberg. You're children, terrified of what waits in the shadows. You saw how quickly fear turned your friends and neighbors against you. This is what the rule of the living has brought about: a world fragmented by petty, shortsighted men who rule over mindless sheep.\n\n\"I mean to make this world whole. To unite the living and the dead. You can accept that and live, or you can try to fight. Destroy me, and you damn this world to the mercy of the dead.\"\n\n\"Free Jeneta, and I'll talk to the others about your sphere.\"\n\n\"I offered to spare Copper River, and you demand more?\" She cocked her head to the side so the plastic beads in her hair clicked together. \"Bring me Gerbert d'Aurillac's armillary sphere, and I will give you back Jeneta Aboderin. I will restore your magic. And I will find a place for you in my empire. It's a generous offer, Isaac Vainio. But if you continue to fight, Jeneta will be the first to die upon my rebirth. Her body will burn, and her soul will serve me forever.\"\n\nMeridiana's ghosts were little more than animals, beaten and tormented into madness, until nothing remained but hatred and power. One way or another, I couldn't let her do that to Jeneta.\n\n\"It's no longer a question of winning,\" said Meridiana. \"Letting the Ghost Army ravage your world unchecked will be far worse than anything you fear I might do.\"\n\nThe wind shifted, slamming a wall of smoke and heat into my body. I retreated until I could breathe again, if uncontrolled coughing qualified as breathing. Meridiana and the others backed away and disappeared in the darkness.\n\nThe flames spread through my house like hatred. Smoke detectors wailed pitifully, their voices smothered by the cracking sound of my home being consumed. I tried not to think about the books I could have used to stop this. Books to slow time. Books to extinguish even magical flames.\n\nSirens screamed in the distance. Lena dragged me to the road, then ran to her grove. She sank her hands into the closest of the oaks. Overhead, branches shied away from the house, pulling their leaves out of reach. I lost sight of her when she moved to the next.\n\nThe first to arrive was a pair of police officers. Within minutes, they had been joined by a fire department SUV, fire truck, and ambulance.\n\nBy then, there was no saving the house. The fire chief interrogated me as his team fought to drown the flames and keep the fire from spreading. His questions felt unreal, like a voice from a dream.\n\nAre you the homeowner? Was anyone else inside? Is there anything dangerous or explosive in the home? Were you here when the fire broke out?\n\nI kept my responses short and as truthful as I could, but I could tell he wasn't buying it.\n\nHe crouched in front of me and checked my eyes with a flashlight. \"You're saying you just came home and your house was on fire? There were no candles, no forgotten cigarettes, no dying appliances you forgot to shut off before you left?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"How'd you get that black eye?\" he asked. \"Your hand looks pretty busted up, too. What happened?\"\n\n\"Got into a fight at work.\"\n\n\"Any chance the other fellow did this?\" He pointed to the fire.\n\n\"No, he\u2014he doesn't know where I live.\" Dammit. I could see him getting more and more suspicious.\n\n\"Have you been drinking?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" I looked toward the house as gouts of water assaulted the flames. \"I'll probably start soon enough, though.\"\n\n\"I've been doing this job twenty-three years, Isaac. I've seen a lot of houses burn. There's always a reason.\"\n\nMy phone buzzed, making me jump. The text message said LET ME SPEAK TO HIM. I had forgotten Nicola was still listening on the other end. I gave the chief an apologetic look, exchanged a few quick words with Nicola, then handed him the phone. \"This woman says she saw something.\"\n\nI heard the faint, metallic echo of Nicola Pallas' song from the speaker, and then he was returning my phone. He stared at me for a moment longer, brows furrowed like he was struggling to remember, then shrugged. \"Thanks, Mister Vainio. The EMTs will be around to check you over. I'm sorry about your home.\"\n\nI returned the phone to my pocket and watched as my roof caved in, sending geysers of sparks into the sky. As water gradually turned the earth to swamp. As smoke and ash smothered everything in gray.\n\nFive hours I waited, while Lena hid within her trees. The closest oaks had been singed, but they had survived. The fire crew inspected the wreckage, soaking every potential hot spot.\n\nIt was a long time to think. Meridiana's offer might have been genuine, but she knew the Porters couldn't go along with it. There had to be another reason for her so-called truce. To warn us about the Ghost Army going free if we destroyed the sphere? She could have carved that warning into Lena's tree.\n\nA second fire truck had arrived at some point during the night, this one out of Tamarack. I hadn't even noticed. One of the EMTs had me sign a form officially refusing a ride to the hospital. I signed left-handed, keeping my right arm as still as I could. They had splinted two of the fingers and bandaged a cut on my leg.\n\nThe chief returned a while later to go through a well-rehearsed but sympathetic checklist of things to do and not to do. Call my insurance company. Don't go into the wreckage. Call if I remembered anything about how the fire might have started.\n\nI nodded and thanked him and spoke whatever words would send them away the soonest. Once the last truck finally left, Lena emerged from the oaks to join me. She looked unreal, untouched by the gray and black that had leached the color from the rest of the world.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said.\n\nI dug out my phone. The battery was almost dead, but we were still connected to Nicola. I put her on speaker and asked, \"Did we get Meridiana's e-reader?\"\n\n\"We have a snapshot of its contents, and we'll be able to see any time she downloads something new.\"\n\n\"Good. We'll be back soon.\" I hung up. Lena had to help me to my feet. My limbs had stiffened, and I could feel each punch and kick my neighbors had landed. \"I need one thing before we go.\"\n\nMost of the house was a sinkhole, the wreckage having collapsed into the basement. But the garage was built on solid ground, having been added on when I was in elementary school. Lena was strong enough to pry the worst of the debris aside, using blackened timbers as enormous levers.\n\nBeneath it all sat the car I had stolen from Ponce de Leon years ago, a black Triumph convertible, four decades old and laced with magical enchantments that had protected it from the flames. The exterior was filthy, but the damage hadn't touched the inside. I opened the door, shifted it into neutral, and released the parking brake. Together, we rolled the car down the driveway and into the street.\n\nI fetched Smudge from the Jeep and brought him back to the Triumph. I sat down in the driver's seat and gasped. At a minimum, a couple of my ribs were out of place, if not broken. Half of my face felt heavy and swollen. My lower lip was cut, and blood oozed every time I spoke.\n\nI closed my eyes. \"On second thought, maybe you should drive.\"\n\n\u2002Dear Isaac,\n\n\u2002I saw the newscast out of Copper River. You're really one of them, aren't you? One of those book-wizards, the Porters.\n\n\u2002I remember the weirdness before you went away to college. I thought I was imagining things. Where would my brother get a stack of real gold coins? And that pet spider of yours, the one you kept insisting was some kind of mutant tarantula?\n\n\u2002You lied to me.\n\n\u2002I can't blame you for that. I know we didn't exactly get along in those days. And you needed to keep your secrets, I get it. The Porters probably had rules and oaths and all that.\n\n\u2002But we grew up. You graduated and got your job at the library. I married Angie and had kids. You and I stopped fighting over stupid stuff.\n\n\u2002And then the accident happened. Lexi was five years old. Do you know what it's like trying to explain to your five-year-old daughter that if we don't let the doctors cut off her leg, the infection will kill her? Or to know that even the amputation might not save her?\n\n\u2002She's had four surgeries to try to repair the damage from the crash. To pin her pelvis back together. To ease the pressure on her brain. Depending on the results of her next MRI, we may have to go back for number five before the end of the summer.\n\n\u2002I never said how much it meant to us that you flew out here after the accident. That you watched Lexi's brother and brought us badly-cooked meals and did everything you could to help.\n\n\u2002Only you didn't, did you? You didn't do everything.\n\n\u2002Maybe you had good reasons. Maybe your precious secret was more important than your niece. Well, the secret's out now, and Lexi deserves better. She deserves the chance to be a kid, and she shouldn't have to go through life like this because some drunk blew through a stop sign.\n\n\u2002People tell Angie and me how strong we are to take care of Lexi. How she's such a special girl, and we're amazing parents. How God never gives anyone more than they can handle.\n\n\u2002This has nothing to do with God. This is about a fifty-two-year-old woman who was too wasted to drive, and a brother who chose not to use his magic to help his niece.\n\n\u2002I haven't said anything about this to Angie or the kids, but I can't hide it from them forever. Sooner or later, they're going to see the story. They're going to know what you are.\n\n\u2002I don't imagine you can go back in time and stop the accident, but there's got to be something you can do. Lexi is in pain every day. Her hips, her back, her knee... some days it takes hours for her to fall asleep, even with her meds.\n\n\u2002Isaac, if you don't help that little girl, I swear to Christ I'll never forgive you.\n\n\u2002Your brother,\n\n\u2002Toby\n\nI had grown up in that house. It could be rebuilt, but so much of what it held was gone forever.\n\nOld novels, many of which had been autographed and personalized by authors now dead. The crooked tile floor my parents had installed in the bathroom more than ten years ago. Memories of helping to haul ruined carpet and old boxes out of the basement one spring after the sump pump failed, and later launching paper boats into the three inches of standing water from the bottom step.\n\nThe loss hurt, but not as much as the way the crowd had turned on me. It was like something from Lord of the Flies, primitive savagery summoned to the fore by fear. I had known many of them for most of my life. Played with them as kids.\n\nI glanced in the rearview mirror and wished I hadn't. Dirt and blood crusted the side of my swollen, bruised face. A bloody gash crossed my forehead. I hadn't even felt that one.\n\n\"You know she's probably following us,\" Lena said. \"Hoping we'll lead her to the sphere.\"\n\nI hadn't even thought of that. I was more tired than I thought. I rested my head against the window and watched the grassy dunes and the lake beyond. Clouds obscured the moon and stars, and the waves were all but invisible in the blackness.\n\nMy phone buzzed. I glanced at the text message. \"Nidhi says they're ready to destroy the sphere, but they won't do it until we have a way to contain the Ghost Army. She also said the Porters saw the footage of us and Meridiana. They're preparing a press release of their own.\"\n\nMeridiana wanted to build an empire of the dead, and the Porters were worried about public relations.\n\n\"We should take the scenic route,\" I said. Paradoxically, we were probably safer right now than we had been in weeks. If Meridiana was hoping we'd lead her to the sphere, she couldn't exactly kill us. She could damn well wait as long as it took for us...\n\nI sat up, barely noticing the pain in my side.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Meridiana didn't have to meet with us in person. What did she gain by dragging us out to Copper River and burning down my house?\"\n\n\"Beyond stopping the Porters from killing her, trying to tail us back to the sphere, and beating you half to death?\"\n\n\"She was stalling.\" Meridiana was jerking us around like puppets. I checked the time. The sun would be coming up soon. \"Several hours to drive here. Longer to wait with the fire department.\"\n\n\"Why? What is she waiting for?\"\n\n\"Hell if I know.\" As long as we held the sphere, we had the better hand. The moment we figured out how to neutralize the Ghost Army, Meridiana was done. Logically, she should be putting all of her energy into getting the sphere back, not wasting time manipulating the people of Copper River or tormenting an individual librarian. Unless she had another way of nullifying our advantage.\n\nLena pursed her lips. \"When Master Sarna taught me stick fighting, he said that nine times out of ten, the one who wins the fight will be the one who acts instead of reacts.\"\n\n\"Did he have any advice on what action to take when you were outnumbered and outgunned?\"\n\n\"Run away. Failing that, figure out who presents the biggest threat and focus your attack on her. Take that one down, and the rest might decide to leave you alone.\"\n\n\"I like it.\" More importantly, I was pretty sure I knew where to start.\n\nWe were halfway back to the fort when Lena adjusted the door mirror and said, \"There seems to be an angel following us.\"\n\nThe Triumph was enchanted to prevent magical spying, but it wouldn't help against a flying minion. We had kept the top up, so I had to roll down the window to spot him. He didn't appear to have any trouble keeping up, despite the fact that we were averaging ninety-five on the highway.\n\n\"Who do you think he used to be?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Meridiana called him Binion.\" I sat back and grimaced. Twisting like that had aggravated the throbbing in my side. \"There was a libriomancer by that name who lived out west. I didn't know him personally. From what I've read, he was a bit of an asshole. Way too full of himself and his own power. But that doesn't mean he deserved this.\"\n\nShe switched gears and pushed the needle past a hundred. I opened the glove box. From the back, behind a box of Band Aids and an old tire gauge that doubled as a wand for jumping dead batteries, I pulled out a miniature disco ball the size of a golf ball.\n\n\"Should I ask?\"\n\n\"Nope. Merge with that line of cars up ahead.\" I hung the disco ball on the rearview mirror. It began to rotate back and forth. \"You might want to shield your eyes.\"\n\nThe tiny square mirrors brightened. Beams of light stabbed out in all directions. The light passed through us with no effect, but every vehicle it touched changed appearance, taking on the compact, glossy black body of a 1973 TR-6 convertible. Which was, I suspected, particularly distressing for the parents in the minivan, whose three screaming children now appeared to be riding in the open trunk.\n\nA second burst of light rendered the kids invisible. Duplicates of Lena and me appeared in our vehicular doppelgangers.\n\nCars screeched and swerved. Horns blared. Several convertibles pulled over to the side of the road. Others continued on. I heard one driver\u2014he sounded like a teenager, though it was hard to tell, since he looked exactly like Lena\u2014screaming excitedly about his new sports car.\n\n\"Ponce de Leon used this trick years ago when the Porters were after him,\" I said. \"The write-up was funny as hell. One of the vehicles he hit with his illusion was hauling cattle. The field agent wasted five minutes trying to interrogate a cow.\"\n\nOur pursuer circled overhead, clearly uncertain. Even if Binion had been tracking us by our magic, spells now clung to every one of the dozen or so vehicles on this stretch of the road. He swooped lower, arms outstretched. One of the cars reverted to its proper appearance as he stripped the illusion away. We followed two more Triumphs off the next exit ramp, driving slowly and casually, like we had no idea what had just happened.\n\nA half mile down the road, I peered out the window and searched for Binion. He was staying with the cars on the highway, probably assuming we had chosen that route for a reason, and would therefore keep going after tossing out our magical distraction. One by one he tore their magic away, but he couldn't catch them all. I held out my fist toward Lena, who grinned and bumped it with her own.\n\nDamn, I missed being able to do this stuff on my own.\n\nI texted Nidhi to let her know we were in the clear, then tried to find a position that would let me rest. I closed my eyes, but every time I began to drift off, pain jolted me from half-formed dreams of Gerbert d'Aurillac's armillary sphere and the smell of smoke.\n\n\"Paeniteo,\" I whispered.\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"One of the words from the poem d'Aurillac used to hide Meridiana away. It means repent.\" I thought about the connection I had shared with Gerbert, and his guilt for not recognizing Meridiana's evil sooner.\n\nHe felt responsible for the damage she had caused, the pain she had inflicted through her lies. He had known how dangerous she was. But he also pitied her. She was without mercy, but Gerbert d'Aurillac wasn't. He could be flawed and vengeful and petty, but he strove to do better. He had also been close to Anna's family. He even loved her, in his way.\n\nI couldn't be certain, but my gut\u2014or else the lingering memories from Gerbert's mind\u2014told me I was on the right track. \"That's why he gave Meridiana the ability to speak from her prison. He wanted her to be able to repent. He could ask her if she atoned for her sins, and she was forced to answer honestly. I'd bet that if she were ever able to answer yes, it would free her.\"\n\nHow long had he waited and prayed before realizing Meridiana would never feel guilt for her actions? What he had intended as a chance for redemption had only added to her never-ending torment. Meridiana could have freed herself at any time, if only she had been able to lie, something she had done so effortlessly in life.\n\nI shifted in my seat, and fresh pains pierced my body.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Maybe I should have gone to the hospital after all.\" I breathed through clenched teeth. I couldn't fully inhale. On the right side, my lung felt like someone was jabbing it with a jagged stick. I pulled up my shirt to see that much of the skin over my ribs had turned purple.\n\nLena swore and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. I dug my fingers into the seat as we zipped through traffic. I hoped Ponce de Leon's magic would protect us from the police, and Lena's reflexes would keep us from smashing into cars and trucks that might as well have been parked.\n\nBy the time we reached Fort Michilimackinac, I could no longer focus on anything but the pain. I needed help just getting out of the car.\n\nNicola was waiting for us in the parking lot. The moment her song reached my ears, the pain eased somewhat, enough for me to walk without gasping.\n\nShe didn't bother buying tickets this time. Her song turned every eye away as we passed through the gift shop. My ribs ground together with each step.\n\nPonce de Leon and Bi Wei met us on the other side of the gate. I sagged to the ground and closed my eyes as they used their magic to begin repairing damage. A man dressed like a British soldier approached, asking if I was all right.\n\n\"Low blood sugar,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"He'll be fine.\" He waited for the man to leave, then added, \"We all heard your confrontation with Meridiana. That was an interesting strategy, Isaac. Walking toward the angry mob. I take it American schools don't teach self-preservation?\"\n\n\"I was out sick that day.\" I worked my jaw back and forth, then touched my forehead. The swelling was gone, and there was only a dull ache as I rubbed away the dried blood, all that remained of the scabbed cut.\n\n\"I'm sorry about your home,\" said Nicola.\n\n\"Thanks.\" I gasped as my ribs moved beneath my skin. When I could speak again, I asked, \"Any progress on the sphere?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg's plan will work,\" said Bi Wei. She and Lena helped me to my feet. \"He locked most religious texts, but we've torn through his locks before. We can apply them to Meridiana and bring her to an end.\"\n\nThe students of Bi Sheng could open any text in the archive, but they couldn't restore my magic. At least not directly...\n\nI set that idea aside for the moment. \"If we kill Meridiana, we unleash the Ghost Army. We have to find another way to contain or destroy them first, and we don't have much time. I think she's been stalling. With her prison restored to the world, she might have found another way out.\"\n\n\"Right now, Meridiana's power is limited,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"And still she was able to use Jeneta to kill a five-hundred-year-old libriomancer. If she escapes and regains her full strength, she could be unstoppable. If she's stalling, that's all the more reason to act now.\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" I wondered if anyone else noticed the hitch in his voice when he spoke of Gutenberg's death, or the way he avoided his name? \"You fought her ghosts one at a time, with help. If we destroy the sphere, how much destruction will they cause while we hunt them down? And once it comes out that the Porters were responsible for releasing the Ghost Army, we'll turn the whole world against us.\"\n\n\"Does that matter, Isaac?\" Ponce de Leon's words were flat, as if to relax his hold on his emotions would unleash them all in a single catastrophic eruption. \"Those forced to make impossible choices are rarely loved. If it's approval and reputation you care about, then you have no place here.\"\n\nI thought back to the blows crashing into my body, to my friends doing their best to break me. \"This isn't about reputation. It's about turning every one of us into a target for angry, frightened people.\"\n\n\"People like us have always been targets,\" he said. \"You've lived in an era of unprecedented safety and security. Locked away in your magical tower with your books and your research.\"\n\n\"When I wasn't out fighting madmen or trying to stop a magical war, you mean?\" I shot back.\n\nNidhi cleared her throat. \"Yelling at one another probably isn't the best way to deal with your grief and exhaustion. Isaac, if you don't like the plan, focus on finding a better one.\"\n\nShe had the habit of being right at the most annoying times. \"I've got a better one,\" I said. \"But I need to ask the sphere a couple of questions first.\"\n\n\"And then what?\" asked Ponce de Leon.\n\n\"Research, just like you said.\" I stood up and tested my limbs. My body was bruised and sore, but I could move without screaming. It was enough. I started toward the fort. \"I'll peer into that sighting tube, climb into Gerbert d'Aurillac's contraption, and figure out how Meridiana's been controlling her ghosts.\"\n\nThe armillary sphere seemed heavier than before, as if it had somehow doubled in mass since I left. I tapped one of the rings. The cold metal hummed like a tuning fork.\n\nFolklore described d'Aurillac's creation as a brazen head. Standing here, I could feel Meridiana watching me from within her prison.\n\nI fixed my attention on the central sphere. \"If I look through the sighting tube, will I be drawn in and trapped with Meridiana?\"\n\nThe sphere shifted slowly into the configuration of my birth. Yes.\n\n\"Isaac, I can't pull you back from this,\" said Bi Wei. \"If we can't get you out, you'll be destroyed along with Meridiana.\"\n\nI yanked Ponce de Leon's handkerchief off the end of the sighting tube. \"All you have to do is ask me if I repent. That's the magical escape pod d'Aurillac worked into his prison. Isn't that right?\"\n\nYes.\n\nOh, good. I would have been embarrassed as hell if I'd been wrong about that. \"Will my entering or leaving the sphere help Meridiana to free herself?\"\n\nNo.\n\n\"That's it?\" asked Lena. \"Just ask if you repent? Or does it have to be specific to work?\"\n\nThe sphere moved back and forth, unable to answer three simultaneous and contradictory questions at once. I was reminded of old episodes of Star Trek, where Captain Kirk logic-bombed various evil supercomputers into destroying themselves. Somehow I doubted that would work here. \"Will repenting for a specific sin, like stealing my brother's Easter candy when I was nine, work?\"\n\nNo.\n\nI had to repent for everything. To acknowledge and ask forgiveness for all my sins. Dammit, I hadn't set foot inside a church for two years, and now I'd have to go to confession.\n\n\"What if you're unable to truly repent?\" asked Bi Wei.\n\n\"Then I'll have a lot more time to look around inside this thing and figure out how it works.\"\n\n\"This isn't your fault,\" Nidhi said gently.\n\nI blinked. \"What isn't?\"\n\n\"What happened to Jeneta. To your home and the people of Copper River. None of this is your fault.\"\n\nI took another slow breath. \"Don't play therapist with me, Nidhi. Not now.\"\n\n\"Looking into that thing could kill you,\" she pressed. \"It's a stupid risk.\"\n\n\"Stupid risks are what I do,\" I countered. \"I'm good at them. As long as you're here to pull me back\u2014\"\n\n\"You're assuming there will be anything left for us to rescue,\" Ponce de Leon pointed out. \"You will be entering a universe where Meridiana is a literal god. She might destroy you.\"\n\n\"Will you kill me if I join you in there?\"\n\nNothing. Another question the sphere couldn't answer.\n\n\"What about the block on your memories?\" asked Nicola. \"If she can bypass that spell, she'll know where we are.\"\n\nPonce de Leon picked up his cane. \"Erasure is probably the safer path.\"\n\n\"Wait.\" I turned back to the sphere. \"If I look into this tube, will Meridiana have access to my thoughts and memories?\"\n\nYes.\n\nDamn. \"All right, but I want Bi Wei to do it, not you.\"\n\nHe stepped back with an amused smile and waved his arm in a \"Be my guest\" motion to Bi Wei.\n\nI did my best to relax as Bi Wei approached. She circled me twice, then stopped. Her fingers stretched out like a conductor preparing to direct a full orchestra.\n\n\"I'm ready,\" I said.\n\nHer mouth quirked. \"It's done.\"\n\nI looked around, trying to reconstruct the past few minutes. I couldn't recall what it was she had done to my memory, only that it was important Meridiana not find out. \"I do not like this. How long was I out?\"\n\n\"She spent fifteen minutes pulling thoughts from your head,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Delicate work, but she did well, considering her lack of experience. You should know within the next day or two whether there were any unfortunate side effects. Hopefully you won't need to be toilet trained all over again.\"\n\nI scratched my cheek with my middle finger, and he smirked.\n\n\"Will Isaac survive?\" asked Lena.\n\nThe sphere didn't move. \"Too many variables,\" I said. \"We've got to find out the old-fashioned way.\"\n\nI looked to the ceiling, imagining the sky beyond. I needed to align the sighting tube with the pole star. It would be easier if I knew where we were, but that shouldn't matter. \"Which way is north?\"\n\nBi Wei rotated the sphere about thirty degrees to the right. \"It's ready.\"\n\nLena cupped my face and kissed me. When she finally broke away, I held her close. Home and magic came in many forms. Our noses brushed together, and I rested my forehead on hers. \"I'm sorry for being such an asshole lately.\"\n\n\"Don't worry.\" Her lips tickled mine when she spoke. \"Once this is over, I expect you to make it up to me. With interest.\"\n\n\"We'll check in with you every five minutes,\" said Nicola. \"Simple yes/no questions. Meridiana may try to answer as well. With Lena and Nidhi's help, we'll try to select questions only you could answer.\"\n\n\"Give me half an hour, then ask if I repent.\" That should give me enough time to explore Meridiana's prison, and if I needed more time, I always had the option of looking into the tube again.\n\nI moved to the other side of the desk and folded my arms tight, as if I could physically contain the anxiety expanding within my chest. There was excitement as well, eagerness to see the inside of d'Aurillac's masterpiece, but excitement wasn't even in the same weight class as the fear. \"Allons-y.\"\n\nI saw Lena grin as she recognized the Doctor Who reference. Before I could change my mind, I leaned forward, and peered down into the sighting tube.\n\nThe interior of the tube was polished to a mirror finish, perfect despite its age. Light reflected from the sides, elongated like I was racing through space in an old SF film. Colors stretched toward me. As I fell, I found myself thinking this was the effect Kubrick had tried to achieve in 2001: A Space Odyssey.\n\nI saw the Earth first, a bronze sphere so dark it appeared black. Violent clouds swirled beyond the globe, their edges lit with metallic flame. They spun like a hurricane, with the Earth floating above the eye.\n\nWithout a physical form, I had no sense of scale. My awareness plummeted toward the metal world that could have been as small as a single molecule or as large as the Virgo Cluster. But the magic flowing through it\u2014\n\nI could feel magic.\n\nLaughter echoed through space. My laughter. Gutenberg had carved his spell into my flesh, and I had left that flesh behind. I was complete again.\n\nOther spheres entered into my awareness. A bronze moon orbited the Earth. Silhouetted metal flames ringed an enormous sun. All the celestial landmarks of d'Aurillac's time were here, separated by the vastness of space yet so close you could stand on the surface of the Earth and press your palm to the rust-red metal of Mars.\n\nBeyond it all, an enormous wall of bronze circled the sky, setting the boundaries of existence. A second wall intercepted the first, constellations chasing one another along a never-ending metal trail. The stars were abstractions, artistic renderings that formed bulls and lions and hunters, with points of metal fire scattered over the outlines.\n\nMagic held each world in its proper place. Magic was light and gravity and momentum and perspective. I felt myself drawn into the pattern of Gerbert d'Aurillac's spell, like I was a being of liquid iron and this place a nexus of finely balanced magnetic fields.\n\nI explored the emptiness between the metal bands. I saw nothing to represent the sighting tube which had pulled me in. Nor did I find Meridiana herself, which was troubling.\n\nHow had this thing endured for so long? I couldn't get a damn toaster to last more than a few years, but d'Aurillac's work had outlasted nations. Books lost their magic over time, as did most libriomantic spells. What kept this place going?\n\n\"I do.\"\n\nI searched for the source of the voice that filled all of existence. I found it at the intersection of the two enormous metal bands. Seated with her back against a bronze wall as high as a city block was the woman who had invaded my thoughts to taunt me when Gutenberg took my magic, the woman I had glimpsed from the bottom of Euphemia Smith's pond. Meridiana sat upon a throne built into the wall behind her, the back melting into the metal, leaving her seated over the emptiness of space. The horizontal wall rippled outward like a riverbed. Light green corrosion spread like mold where the back of the throne joined the wall.\n\nMeridiana's arms and legs were fused to the chair, as if she had fallen partway into the molten bronze, only to have it harden around her. Even her skin was bronze, cold and perfect.\n\nHer eyes were empty pits to the stars, though these stars didn't twinkle like those in the real world, nor were they the stylized etchings of the constellations. These were the stars as seen from space, with no atmosphere to block your vision. Pinpoints of slowly shifting light, like an entire galaxy whirled within her.\n\nShe must have been aware of me, but she gave no physical sign. I crept closer, feeling the power pouring from her to the rest of the universe.\n\nMost of the brazen heads I had seen in museums were cast as solid works of bronze, but Meridiana's features had been welded together from more pieces than I could count. She looked like d'Aurillac's memories of Anna, with a rounded face and a strong, cleft chin. Her nose had been broken, and appeared flattened and bent to the left. Lashes like scimitars shone in the orange light that bathed this world. Rippling layers of metal hair cascaded past her shoulders like a waterfall, each lock sharp enough to cut flesh.\n\nWhy would she have a metal body while I was formless? Was this part of d'Aurillac's magic, or something she had constructed for herself over the centuries?\n\nLooking into her eyes, I saw her memories as if they were my own. Meridiana was the heart of this universe. Her magic powered this prison, keeping the lifeless worlds and stars in motion.\n\nI could sense it drawing strength from me as well, using my magic and will to maintain a delicate, never-ending balance. It was nothing, a single mosquito drinking my blood, but that drain would never end.\n\nMeridiana was strong enough to survive such a drain for years. Decades, perhaps. Not centuries. Not a thousand years. Not alone. But then, Meridiana had never been alone.\n\nIn her memories, I saw her begin to lose herself. I shared her desperation as she joined with her prison, adopting the bronze skin as her own and praying it would help her to hold on. I watched her reach out to the dead...\n\nI pulled back from her thoughts before they could drown me. How long had it been since I looked into the tube? I had no sense of time here, but surely five minutes had passed by now.\n\nI tried to focus on the problem at hand. I turned back to study the storm raging beyond Earth. Everything else I had seen related in some way to the armillary sphere d'Aurillac had constructed, but that was different, distinct from his plan. I flew toward it, but like a reflection in a window, it remained beyond my reach.\n\n\"Isaac, do you remember the first time you touched the life in my oak?\"\n\nThe words reverberated between brass worlds. Trust Lena to come up with a question only I could answer.\n\nBeyond the bronze sky, I saw Lena looking down at us. I saw not her physical body, but the entirety of her existence. I saw her oak and her flesh and the branches growing within her all at once. I saw Nidhi and myself, our desires twined through Lena's core.\n\nI also saw the effects of the book Bi Wei had given her. Its magic had grown like a lattice of spun glass, a skeletal tree within Lena's skin. Its power was fragile, but it was real, stabilizing her identity and personality.\n\nI could have wept with relief, if I had possessed a body with which to do so. The book had worked. If I died, that book would help her to remain herself.\n\nI saw Lena's birth, those hours before she emerged from her tree, when her mind first stirred. And I remembered our hands intertwined, pressing against rough bark, feeling the water flowing through the trunk and into the branches, the roots sunk into the earth, the leaves rustling in the wind. Instinctively, I reached out to bring this world into balance with the moment of her awakening. Stars crawled through the sky. Planets whirled past one another, until I had given Lena her answer. Yes.\n\nMeridiana was watching me now, though her head hadn't turned. Her eyes had faded, a patina of brass dimming the distant stars. The hinged jaw opened. \"Welcome to Purgatory.\"\n\n[ Clowning Around for Books ]\n\nWhen: This Sunday at 1:00 p.m.\n\nWhere: The corner of 21st and Yale St., across from the West Branch Baptist Church.\n\nWhat: A clown-themed counterprotest to celebrate books and piss off closed-minded idiots.\n\nOur local bigots are at it again, this time adding book-burning to their list of \"wholesome Christian\" activities for the family.\n\nYou probably know them for their lawsuit-trolling ways, including picketing funerals and other public events, but it didn't take the Neanderthals at the WBBC long to jump on the anti-magic bandwagon with a \"Bonfire of Books\" this coming Sunday.\n\nThey've announced a long list of titles to be burned for promoting \"sins\" like homosexuality, premarital sex, false religions, profanity, promiscuity, adultry [sic], birth control, transgenderism, polyamory, interracial marriage, abortion, alcoholism, feminism, socialism, welfare, and magic.\n\nWe all know Pastor Tom Briggs is a walking skidmark in a bad suit, and his congregation is a stain on Christians everywhere. The police are looking into whether or not the church has filed for the proper permits for this event, but given the number of lawyers in Briggs' flock, there's unlikely to be any legal reason to stop them.\n\nAnd that's as it should be. Freedom of speech is easy when it's speech we approve of. The true test of freedom is what we do when people like Briggs and his ilk mount their soapboxes and show their asses to the world.\n\nFortunately, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from mockery and other consequences. So grab your wigs and your oversized shoes, your makeup and your juggling clubs, and join us this Sunday for a circus-themed counterprotest. We'll have readings all day from the most outrageously \"offensive\" books we can find, including a special event at 3:00 with Leslie Bliss, a local author of popular lesbian erotica. The library will be selling refreshments, with all profits going to the purchase of banned books for their shelves.\n\nDon't have clown garb? No problem! Show up early for free face painting.\n\nGeorge Bernard Shaw once said, \"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.\" Well, we're not going to fight these illiterate pustules of humanity. We're going to ridicule them into total and utter irrelevance.\n\n\"Nice universe you've got here.\" I wasn't certain how I spoke without a physical body, but I seemed to be able to vocalize as long as I didn't think about it too hard. \"Any leaks I should know about?\"\n\nMeridiana didn't answer, but I could feel her attention vibrating through my core, like speakers with the bass maxed out. I silently thanked Bi Wei for erasing the pertinent pages of my memory.\n\nI could sense the planets, the flow of Meridiana's magic, the enormous metal bands that bordered our universe, everything except the glowing hurricane below. Was it illusory? But even an illusion required magical energy. I studied the individual clouds, each one distinct in shape and color, distended like toffee. There were hundreds. Thousands. \"That's the Ghost Army, isn't it?\"\n\nI couldn't feel them because they weren't really here within the armillary sphere. They existed in the real world, trapped in Meridiana's orbit.\n\nShe'd been telling the truth. Destroying this place wouldn't destroy the Army of Ghosts. It would set them free. \"How did you find them all, let alone control them?\"\n\nHer cold stare gave no answers. I returned to her throne. I could feel her magic, but I couldn't interpret it, any more than I could read ancient Sanskrit. I studied the hammered bronze, wishing I could peel it back to expose the spells within. I could almost see the words etched into the metal.\n\nWith that thought, the words grew clearer. Each one carried memories. Stories.\n\nI had forgotten none of this was real. We weren't truly floating within the armillary sphere. The planets, the rings, these were simply manifestations of Gerbert d'Aurillac's spell. I was like a character from a computer game seeing the world's code for the first time.\n\nIf I could see it, could I manipulate it as well? I envisioned the word sleep joining the text beneath Meridiana's skin, but nothing happened. That was probably for the best. If I could control her, she could certainly do the same to me, and she had spent a lot more time learning how to function in this place.\n\nBut I could still read. I looked past the rippled sheen of metal to the text beneath. It was something I had managed a few times before, seeing the spells that lived in Gutenberg's skin, or the magic of Lena's tree, but those examples had all involved libriomancy.\n\nAt its heart, libriomancy was no different than any other magic. Nicola used music to wield and shape her spells. Ponce de Leon was powerful enough to use little more than will alone, aided by that cane he carried. Libriomancers tapped into the same power; we just used books to understand and control it.\n\nI had said before that all stories were magic. It had never occurred to me that all magic was stories.\n\nWords flew past too quickly to read, but I absorbed them anyway. I read Meridiana's rage at Gerbert d'Aurillac's betrayal, and beneath her fury, her grudging respect for how well he had prepared his final trap.\n\nI looked beyond Meridiana to where bands of celestial text told the story of the stars as d'Aurillac had understood them. I saw the names of the constellations, written in Arabic but melting into English as I read. Beneath the constellations lay the writing that had informed his work, including the very text from al-Sufi I had referred to when trying to decipher his poem.\n\nI read of his interactions with Meridiana\u2014Anna\u2014as well. He had tutored Anna and her brother both, but Otto had never been a magical or intellectual match for his sister. And so Gerbert d'Aurillac had favored Anna. I read of his pride in her abilities, and his horror when he realized he had helped to empower a monster. And I read his hope.\n\nGerbert d'Aurillac's faith flowed through every line of this prison. Faith in God's plan for Meridiana and the world, and faith in Meridiana herself, that she would one day turn from the darkness and seek redemption.\n\n\"Isaac, does anything of Jeneta Aboderin survive?\"\n\nPonce de Leon's question hurled me downward. I dove through the bronze Earth, seeing both the molded wrinkles of land and water and the story of the world's creation, translated through d'Aurillac's theology and education. I could have stayed there for hours, but the question compelled me to seek out the answer.\n\nMy vision split apart. I saw Jeneta walking through the woods, flanked by mythological creatures. At the same time, I looked beyond the armillary sphere to the Army of Ghosts, to a single wisp in the storm, battered about like a handkerchief in a dryer. Within that swath of thinned life and memories, I glimpsed a swirl of text.\n\n\u2003I know why the caged bird beats his wing\n\n\u2003Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;\n\n\u2003For he must fly back to his perch and cling\n\n\u2003When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;\n\nJoy and relief flowered from my core, pulling the worlds into alignment in response to Ponce de Leon's question. I recognized the snippet of \"Sympathy\" from my time working with Jeneta. It was from The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. I searched my memory, then called out what I could remember of the final stanza.\n\n\u2003It's not a carol of joy or glee,\n\n\u2003But a prayer he sends from his heart's deep core,\n\n\u2003But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings.\n\n\u2003I know why the caged bird sings!\n\nI thought I sensed a change within the storm, a tiny flicker of recognition. I silently thanked Ponce de Leon for choosing that question, for helping and forcing me to find Jeneta.\n\nShe slipped away, lost in the clouds despite my attempts to hold on. But she had heard me. Given centuries, I might have learned to communicate with the rest of the ghosts, and to control them as Meridiana had done.\n\nReluctantly, I turned away from Jeneta and the other trapped souls to face Meridiana. As I did, the metal wall behind her rippled like air over the blacktop in midsummer. I moved closer. What had caused the corrosion around her throne and wrinkled the wall?\n\nThough the metal face never moved, I felt Meridiana's smile. Words flowed beneath her mask, a palimpsest of text, layer upon layer superimposed over the figure before me. I peered deeper.\n\nThat was a mistake. Those words\u2014her magic\u2014entangled my thoughts like seaweed and dragged me deeper. The armillary sphere faded to blackness, and I began to drown.\n\n\"Isaac, do you repent?\"\n\nNidhi's question saved my life.\n\nThe magical foundations of Meridiana's prison seized us both, forced us to respond. Trapped within this universe, unable to lie to myself, I realized how difficult a question it truly was. A few days earlier, I would have answered no. I would have justified and rationalized everything, from running off to outer space to bargaining Lena's blood to risking my life and those of my loved ones.\n\nAfter all, that first trip into space and the deal that went with it had given us the key to finding Meridiana's prison. If I had been short with the people around me, it was because I was so intent on saving Jeneta's life. How was that a bad thing?\n\nOnly that wasn't what I had been doing. I had been running away, both figuratively and literally. From my own failure to protect my friends and neighbors. From the fear of a life without magic. From guilt and helplessness. And from the people who wanted to help... people who needed my help.\n\nYes.\n\nThe planets moved without conscious thought, and then I was tearing free, even as Meridiana shouted her own answer. No.\n\nLena caught my arms and kept me from hitting the floor. I was rigid as steel and acutely aware of every physical sensation. The pressure of Lena's hands on my muscles. The smell of my own sweat. The way my clothes rubbed my skin as my body seized.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Lena.\n\nNidhi shoved something soft under my head. Nicola was singing, and Ponce de Leon was doing something with his cane. Darkness clouded my eyes. I felt like a dinosaur had stepped on my chest.\n\n\"He's not breathing,\" said Nidhi.\n\nBi Wei pressed a hand over my chest. My heart spasmed, sending blood through my stiffened limbs. I lurched onto my side and vomited. Silty water spewed from my stomach and lungs, and then I screamed.\n\nI felt like I was being flayed from within as the life slowly spread through my body, but the next breath was slightly easier. Sweat covered my body. I tried to move, but my limbs were like softened clay.\n\nEveryone was watching me. Ponce de Leon held his cane ready. Nicola's head bobbed to unheard melodies. How much magic had they prepared in case something else escaped with\u2014or within\u2014me?\n\n\"What happened?\" asked Lena.\n\nMy teeth were chattering too hard to answer.\n\n\"It's Isaac,\" said Bi Wei. \"Just Isaac.\" The others relaxed.\n\n\"Meridiana did something to you,\" guessed Ponce de Leon.\n\nI managed a nod. My mouth was a desert, and my sinuses felt like water balloons squeezed to the bursting point. \"Thirsty.\"\n\nJackson fetched me a Vernors. The carbonation burned my throat, and I coughed up the first swallow, which triggered another bout of vomiting. Water spilled out of my mouth and nose.\n\nWhen the upheavals subsided, I reached for the desk. Lena helped me stand. I touched the sphere first, then one of the books stacked beside it. I felt nothing. Magic was once again lost to me. \"Somebody box that thing up,\" I croaked. \"I don't want her listening, or jumping in to answer our questions.\"\n\nNicola emptied a crate of books and lifted the sphere into it. She sang a spell as she sealed the crate. I didn't recognize the song, but hopefully it would give us some semblance of privacy.\n\nI took another drink of Vernors, then collapsed into the chair. \"Gerbert d'Aurillac's sphere was designed to hold a single human soul. But the dead were a part of her from birth. When she was locked away, they remained free. They sustained her, and over the centuries, she learned to control them.\" I took a deep breath. \"I need to know exactly what's on Jeneta's e-reader.\"\n\nJackson tapped the keyboard of his laptop to pull up the program they had used to remote view the e-reader.\n\n\"Can you sort them by date?\"\n\n\"What are you looking for?\" asked Nidhi.\n\nI scanned the list. \"In the beginning, it was all Meridiana could do to survive. She had to consume the power of the dead to maintain her universe. Over time, she learned to send her ghosts out to gather others, particularly those with magical abilities. She used them not just for sustenance, but for their knowledge. And for the past five hundred years, the majority of her victims have been libriomancers.\"\n\n\"Are you suggesting she can do libriomancy?\" asked Jackson.\n\n\"Through Jeneta, yes. And Meridiana knows more about libriomancy than anyone alive today.\" I grabbed a pencil and began jotting down titles. \"That's how she created the monsters that follow her around. Imagine libriomantic possession turned inside out. Instead of a character from a book worming his way into your mind and taking control, Meridiana takes that character's story and uses it to reshape a living being, to turn them into extensions of her own mind and will.\"\n\n\"What about Jeneta?\" asked Nidhi. \"If Meridiana's ghosts and the people they possess are a part of her\u2014\"\n\n\"Meridiana silences the voices of those she consumes, but she can't destroy Jeneta without losing her libriomancy. And Jeneta is her way out.\" I stabbed my pen at the list of books. \"Look at what she's been checking out. The Magician's Nephew. The Looking-Glass Wars. Princess Nevermore.\"\n\nNobody reacted.\n\n\"All portal fantasies, about gateways between one world and another. And in each one, the magic portal was a body of water.\" I gestured to the puddles on the floor. \"That's how she means to escape. The metal around her throne was corroded. The bronze rippled like waves on a pool. She intends to use these books to create a portal to herself.\"\n\n\"How close is she to completing this portal?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"I didn't have much time to study her plan before she tried to drown me, but I think she'll need to bring the sphere to whatever portal she's preparing in our world.\" I sat back and grinned. \"Now ask me how we're going to stop her.\"\n\nLena sighed. \"How?\"\n\n\"The same way we free Jeneta. By separating their stories.\" I could see they didn't understand. I wasn't sure I did. I turned to Ponce de Leon. \"How do you experience magic? What do you see and feel when you command those energies?\"\n\n\"Wind.\" His expression changed, losing a little of the tension he had carried since Gutenberg's death. \"It's like being at sea. You learn to sense the air, to anticipate every change and adjust your sails to capture the breeze. I've always been able to feel it.\"\n\nI turned to Nicola. \"I'm guessing you don't see magic at all. You hear it.\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" she said. \"It's... there's a pressure inside me. I don't hear the magic as much as I feel it pounding through my body. The music is how I get it out.\"\n\nThat left Bi Wei. Of all of us here, her magic was closest to my own. She had spent centuries clinging to existence through her book. She carried the imprint of that book within her, helping her to resist Meridiana's call. \"Look at Lena and tell me what you see.\"\n\n\"A being of magic,\" she said slowly. \"The strength of her tree within her body, flowing through her weapons. The ties linking her to you, and to Doctor Shah. The power of the books of Bi Sheng growing inside of her. And the threads of the book that bore her, woven through it all.\"\n\n\"Good. Now, can you read it?\" I pressed. \"Can you read her?\"\n\nHer eyes and mouth compressed. \"We can make out the words of her book.\"\n\n\"Not the book, her.\" I jumped up and pointed toward Smudge. \"You're not looking the right way. Try to read Smudge. Stop thinking of him and his book as separate things.\"\n\nShe blinked. \"I don't understand what you're saying.\"\n\n\"Slow down.\" Nidhi had slipped into clinical mode, calm and soothing. Her hand circled my wrist, her fingers pressing to check my pulse. \"You're manic. What else happened in there?\"\n\nI set the list on the desk. She was right about the mania. I was exhausted and my throat felt like I had swallowed a cheese grater, but I didn't care. \"When I was inside the sphere, I saw Meridiana. I read her. Her history, her power... I saw magic in a way I've never experienced before. I can't explain it, but I know how to fight her.\"\n\n\"How?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Bi Wei, what did you do to unlock Nymphs of Neptune?\"\n\n\"I forced the lock.\" She shook her head. \"I've already told you we can't do the same for you. It was unpleasant and inelegant, and would likely destroy your mind.\"\n\n\"I know, I know. I don't need you to unlock my mind. I just need\u2014\" I looked around. \"What I really need is to get to the archive at Fort Michilimackinac. The books there would let me... why are you staring at me like I just turned back into a newt?\"\n\n\"Our apologies. We forgot.\" Bi Wei tapped my forehead, sharing her own memories with mine.\n\nI shivered as I realized where we were. I had been seeing this place all along without recognizing it. \"Wow. That's just creepy.\"\n\nI grabbed one of the crates and brought it to the desk. This room held the books taken from the Porter archive at Michigan State University. The books that had survived its destruction, at any rate. That made it my archive, the place where the books I had reviewed and recommended for locking would have ended up, back when I was working as a cataloger for the Porters.\n\n\"What are you searching for?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Robert Jordan.\" Packets of desiccant were positioned in each one to absorb moisture. Thin, sturdy plastic sheets separated layers of books. I pawed through all three layers, then shoved the box aside. \"The Wheel of Time series. Where is it?\"\n\nJackson pointed to a crate near the bottom of the center pile.\n\nLena lifted the three boxes on top and set them aside without straining. Jackson opened the crate. I pressed close as he pulled out stacks of books.\n\n\"There,\" I said. \"Towers of Midnight.\" There were at least ten different editions, paperback and hardcovers in various languages. I snatched the English mass market paperback.\n\nPonce de Leon wrinkled his nose. \"Modern fantasy is little more than juvenile escapism and anachronistic longing for a time that never existed. I've never understand the appeal.\"\n\n\"That's because you suck.\" I sat down at the desk, skimming for the reason the Porters had locked these books in the first place. I jabbed a finger at the pages. \"Balefire.\"\n\n\"What does it do?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Burns things out of existence. When it's strong enough, the effect extends backward through time. It makes it so that something never existed at all.\"\n\n\"If you unmake the sphere, you'll just set Meridiana free,\" said Bi Wei. \"And the ghosts are capable of diffusing and deflecting every spell we throw at them. We have no reason to believe this balefire would be an effective weapon.\"\n\n\"Let me worry about Meridiana.\" I pulled out Gutenberg's gold pen and slammed it onto the desk. \"Use the balefire on this.\"\n\nNobody moved. Ponce de Leon was the first to speak. \"Isaac, think this through.\"\n\n\"I have.\"\n\n\"You'd have your magic back.\" Nidhi's face and her tone were equally unreadable.\n\n\"That's right,\" I said. \"And we'll have the resources of every book Gutenberg locked with that pen.\"\n\n\"These books are dangerous.\" Jackson stepped sideways, moving closer to the door and the blunderbuss he had set in the corner.\n\n\"More dangerous than Meridiana?\" I countered.\n\n\"If you alter the past, don't you risk erasing us all from existence?\" Nidhi was a fan of comics, meaning she had a decent understanding of how messed up things could get when you started trying to unravel and rebraid different timelines.\n\nI shook my head. \"It won't really change the past. Every experiment the Porters have tried suggests you can't alter history. It takes too much power to even try.\"\n\n\"Then why bother with the pen?\" asked Ponce de Leon.\n\nBi Wei picked up the pen, holding it between us. She appeared to be looking through the pen into my eyes. \"To change the present.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" I said triumphantly. \"Every spell that thing created should dissolve.\"\n\n\"Even if this works,\" said Nicola, \"think of what you could unleash.\" Her hands were twitching again. \"Plagues, superweapons, predators who could be worse than Meridiana. All available to any fool of a libriomancer who decided it was worth the risk.\"\n\n\"Fools like me, yes,\" I said impatiently.\n\n\"Like anyone who has left or been thrown out of the Porters,\" she continued. \"There are others whose magic and memories were taken from them, Isaac. People whose true loyalties lay elsewhere. Will you be responsible for opening the way to all-out magical war?\"\n\n\"Every lock can be broken,\" I said. \"The Students of Bi Sheng exposed the Porters, but they haven't tried to use these books against us. If... when Meridiana escapes, she will.\"\n\n\"You're risking an awful lot on theories,\" said Nicola.\n\n\"They're good theories. Better than anything else we've got.\" Into the silence that followed, I added, \"If it's any consolation, I think I should be able to lock the books again once we're done.\"\n\nIt was probably wrong to enjoy the way they stared.\n\n\"You know how to lock books?\" asked Ponce de Leon. \"Even without the pen I made for Johannes?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg was locking books before you gave him that pen, right? All I need is one locked book. I should be able to read that lock, to peel back its magic and duplicate it. It's the same concept I'm talking about with Meridiana's ghosts, just a slightly different application.\"\n\n\"This is the worst excess of conjecture and wishful thinking,\" snapped Jackson. \"We don't know if Isaac is capable of any of this.\"\n\n\"He believes he is,\" said Bi Wei.\n\n\"I once met a woman who believed she was abducted by aliens who looked like the Teletubbies,\" Jackson shot back. \"That doesn't make it true.\"\n\n\"Enough.\" Nicola raised a hand, and Jackson fell silent. \"Doctor Shah, what is your assessment of Isaac's current mental state?\"\n\n\"I'm not his doctor,\" said Nidhi. \"I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" I said quietly. \"Tell them the truth.\"\n\nShe looked at me, then nodded. \"Isaac has been depressed since he lost his magic. He blames himself for the deaths of his friends and neighbors in Copper River, and for the loss of Jeneta Aboderin. He has isolated himself from others. The combination of guilt and depression has made him significantly more reckless than usual.\n\n\"His judgment is questionable. Last night, he was physically assaulted, and his home was destroyed. He is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. If he were a Porter agent, I would order him pulled from the field immediately.\"\n\nLena took my hand and squeezed.\n\n\"Isaac has pinned his guilt, desperation, and powerlessness on one thing: regaining his magic.\" Nidhi turned toward Nicola. \"And you should help him.\"\n\n\"He's unstable,\" Jackson protested. \"You just said so!\"\n\n\"Yes, I did.\" Nidhi's voice hardened ever so slightly. \"And even in the depths of that instability, he successfully discovered Meridiana's identity, learned of her origin from Pope Sylvester II, and figured out how to retrieve her prison. Isaac's focus and performance in other areas of his life have been erratic, but when it comes to Meridiana, he's been more effective than anyone within the Porter organization. If he says he can stop Meridiana and her ghosts, then it's my professional opinion that you should trust him.\"\n\nI felt simultaneously exposed, humbled, and grateful. \"Thank you.\"\n\nNicola picked up Towers of Midnight. \"Thank her by making sure Meridiana doesn't conquer the world and kill us all.\"\n\n\u2002From: Whitney Spotts\n\n\u2002To: Nicola Pallas\n\n\u2002Subject: FWD: Real-Life Superhero Busts Drug Dealers\n\n\u2002Ms. Pallas,\n\n\u2002This story has been making the rounds online today:\n\n\u2002A man calling himself \"The Wizard\" is claiming responsibility for the capture of four alleged drug dealers on the streets of New York City. Dressed in a black trench coat and carrying a staff that could have come straight out of Middle Earth, The Wizard describes himself as a modern-day superhero who uses magic to make his city safer for everyone.\n\n\u2002A fedora and black mask cover his head and eyes, and a long gray beard obscures his face, making identification difficult. However, authorities do have a recording from a 911 call in which The Wizard let the city know where they could \"pick up their trash.\" Assuming his voice hasn't been altered, the accent suggests he's a local from the Brooklyn area.\n\n\u2002While real-life superheroes aren't a new phenomenon, The Wizard appears to be the real thing. Witnesses describe him using a spellbook to conjure a maelstrom of garbage, a \"trashnado,\" that attacked the suspects, subduing them with only moderate injuries.\n\n\u2002Many people applaud The Wizard's efforts, but the police have announced a zero-tolerance policy for vigilantism. More importantly, if magical superheroes are now patrolling our streets, can supervillains be far behind?\n\n\u2002Between the accent and the \"trashnado,\" this sounds like Jerry Howze. I thought he was restricted to cataloging. Jerry's got to be what, a hundred years old by now?\n\n\u2002Will someone please yank him off the street before he gets his ass killed?\n\n\u2002Thanks,\n\n\u2002Whit\n\nI sorted through one book after another, setting most aside. Some were simply too destructive. Others might be able to stop Meridiana, but would probably take out the rest of Copper River along with her.\n\nI hesitated over Pearl North's The Boy from Ilysies. A magical pen capable of literally rewriting the world had potential, but a single careless word could unintentionally kill us all, and Nicola had just asked me not to do that. Not to mention the amount of power it would take to use such an artifact. I could char myself into ash with the first spell. On the other hand, the conclusion to the series, The Book of the Night, contained a library of pretty much every book on Earth. That would be handy.\n\nBi Wei pored through Jordan's brick of a novel, unraveling Gutenberg's lock. Jackson and Ponce de Leon watched over her shoulders. I longed to do the same, but for the moment, I remained blind to the manipulation of magic.\n\nI wiped my hands on my shirt and tried to swallow. If this didn't work... It should work, according to everything I knew about magical theory, but what we didn't know far outweighed what we did. And it wasn't like anyone had ever tried this before.\n\n\"We're ready,\" said Bi Wei a short time later. Too short. I had picked out only three books that might help. \"You'll want to back away.\"\n\nJackson had already cleared the desk of everything save Gutenberg's pen. We pressed together on the far side of the room as Bi Wei reached into the pages of Towers of Midnight. She tilted it toward the desk, and what looked like droplets of blinding light spilled from the edge.\n\nThis was magic Gutenberg himself had deemed too dangerous to use. I looked toward Nidhi, who shrugged as if to say, It was your idea.\n\nI felt like I was back on my very first roller coaster with my mother and brother. I could almost hear the clacking of the wheels as we climbed higher and higher toward the top of what she described as \"Shit Peak.\" I had no idea what awaited us on the other side. All I knew was that there was no going back, and to fail at this point was to fall off the tracks and die. And that whatever happened, it was better than turning back.\n\nLight sprayed forth to envelop the pen. Its afterimage burned purple on my retinas.\n\nThe room spun around me. I dropped to one knee and pressed my hands to the floor. I could feel Gutenberg's pen burning its invisible tattoo into my skull all over again, only this time my skin felt inflamed, blistered by fire and smoke that tried to burst free, as if Bi Wei had poured the balefire directly into my flesh.\n\nMaybe this hadn't been the best plan after all.\n\nI closed my eyes and clutched my head, physically trying to keep my skull from exploding.\n\nI heard the angry words Gutenberg had spoken that day in Lena's grove a month before, as Meridiana dug her way into my mind like a mining drill crushing through stone. I remembered his pen carving a single word into my being.\n\nSileo.\n\nFor the past month, I'd been unable to accept the silence, the emptiness where there had once been magic. I'd spent every waking moment trying to flee from it.\n\nI looked to where Bi Wei continued to send balefire onto the pen. Beyond them, Smudge was burning like a highway flare. Ponce de Leon was working to keep Smudge from setting the room on fire. The archive had protections from normal fire, but it was best not to take chances with the magical variety.\n\nJackson was shouting. Nicola was singing. Lena was saying my name. Their voices battered my senses. I pressed my hands to my ears, but it didn't help. I couldn't shut them out.\n\nI sank to the floor. I felt like I was back in Wisconsin, drowning in Euphemia's pool.\n\n\"Stop fighting it.\" Ponce de Leon's voice, cutting through the noise.\n\nMy breath huffed through my nostrils. My heartbeat battered my chest. I closed my eyes and thought about a night on a lake months before, the paddles tucked inside the canoe as Lena and I drifted lazily through the water, looking up at stars and the cloud-misted moon.\n\nSileo.\n\nI relaxed my hands and turned inward, seeking stillness. Seeking silence. Not an empty void, but acceptance. This would work or else it wouldn't. There was nothing I could do to change that.\n\nFor the first time since Gutenberg's pen touched my scalp, I heard the magic. A humming, like the buzz of insects, crept into the silence to rouse my nerves.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Lena sat beside me, her arms circling my waist.\n\n\"I'm all right.\" I opened my eyes and touched a hand to my face. My cheeks were wet.\n\nI pushed myself up and hobbled toward the desk. The balefire had burned a hole a foot wide through the antique wood. It had taken out the floor as well, leaving a deep crater in the dirt below.\n\nBi Wei was pale, but otherwise appeared okay. The Jordan novel, on the other hand, was black with magical char. The balefire must have channeled enough magic to burn out the book in a single use.\n\n\"How are you feeling, Isaac?\" asked Nidhi.\n\nI touched the three books I had set aside. Only one was unlocked: a large, thin hardcover, its power warm to the touch. Decades of untapped belief begged for release. The others must have been locked with some other magic than the pen Bi Wei had erased from existence.\n\nI turned to the end of the book, where the magical items descriptions were laid out. Skimming these pages conjured memories of the clatter of plastic dice on the dining room table from years ago, the last time I had read an earlier edition of this particular role-playing manual. I scanned a paragraph, and my fingertips slid into the pages.\n\n\"Whole,\" I whispered. \"I feel whole.\"\n\n\"All the books in the Porter archive, and you created a headband?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"That's right.\" I carefully tied the silk band around my forehead. \"It gives me plus six to intelligence, which should boost my IQ about twenty to thirty percent, not to mention helping with spellcasting.\" The magic headband couldn't impart new knowledge, but it would help me to process the information I had.\n\nTo Ponce de Leon, I asked, \"Could I borrow your cane?\"\n\nHe pursed his lips, then shrugged and tossed it to me. It was heavier than I expected. I held the cane horizontally in both hands and thought back to what I had learned in Gerbert d'Aurillac's prison, how I had looked past Meridiana's appearance to the magic underneath. Words woven together at a subatomic level.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"Making sure I know what I'm doing.\"\n\n\"Better late than never,\" Lena murmured.\n\nThe cane was beautiful, but nothing about its appearance shouted magic. There were no carved runes, no magical jewels tucked into the wood. The tip was hard black rubber, textured for traction. I tried twisting the handle, but it didn't budge. No sword or wand hidden away, either.\n\nI slowed my breathing, searching for the calm silence I had touched only minutes earlier. I had done this before. I remembered touching the roots of Lena's oak and reading the words of her book. I had reached into those words to seize control of her grove's magic. But Lena was a creation of libriomancy, and Nymphs of Neptune was a book I had read and remembered. This cane was neither.\n\nBut it was magic, and like everything else, it had a story of its own. A story that began with the death of a tree and the shaping of the wood. The cane was older than I realized. Ponce de Leon's magic kept it looking new and perfect.\n\nWords flitted past my vision. I let them go. Trying to chase them would break my focus. I waited in silence as each brushstroke of text outlined the cane's history.\n\n\"Gutenberg gave this cane to you.\" It had been the early part of the twentieth century. They were in Petra, Jordan.\n\n\"That's right,\" he said quietly.\n\nBut it was Ponce de Leon who had enchanted it. I watched him wrapping spells around the wood and metal, but I didn't truly understand how the power fit together, any more than I understood how a sculptor transformed a lump of marble into a masterpiece. I saw him strip the polish and rub a thick, dark oil into the wood. He hardened the metal in flames so hot they couldn't be seen. And then he raised the cane to the sky and captured the wind.\n\nThe cane showed me another story, one that threatened to pull me back down into despair. Ponce de Leon's blood dripped down the wood, absorbed into the cane before it reached the end. The power of the Fountain of Youth healed his body, just as it always had before. I read his hopelessness, the emotions and passion he rarely let the world see.\n\n\"You tried to kill yourself.\" I spoke without thinking.\n\n\"Yes,\" he answered in the same neutral tone. \"It was after my banishment. After my final split from\u2014from the Porters.\" When he spoke again, it was with morbid humor. \"I didn't try particularly hard, and as you know, I'm rather difficult to kill.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" I hadn't intended to violate his privacy, only to confirm that I could read magic.\n\n\"It would seem you've mastered a new aspect of your art,\" he said mildly.\n\nNot mastered. Not yet. Reading wasn't enough. I had to be able to control that magic.\n\n\"How does that work?\" asked Lena. \"He spends a few minutes in a metal ball and comes out with new magic?\"\n\n\"Not new,\" I said. \"A better understanding of what I can do. It's like spending your whole life looking up at the night sky from the city, then finally seeing the stars from space, without lights or atmosphere to distort your view. There's so much more...\"\n\n\"It's not unheard of,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"My master called it baptism. The apprentice would meditate for days, fasting until his body weakened enough for him to leave it behind. The goal was to become one with magic itself. When he returned to himself\u2014if he returned\u2014he often brought new insight and abilities back with him.\"\n\n\"Like the students of Bi Sheng,\" I said, thinking of everything I had seen Bi Wei and her fellow refugees do. They had existed in that magical limbo for five hundred years, and it had changed them. They were far stronger now than when Gutenberg attacked their temple.\n\n\"The Land of Midday Dreams,\" said Bi Wei. \"Great grandaunt told me about a river made of the dreams and fears of every man, woman, and child. Where even the strongest soul could lose herself and wander forever, or be consumed by the demons that swam within the dreams. The Ghost Army.\"\n\n\"The practice of baptism was mostly abandoned when I began my study.\" Ponce de Leon crouched in front of me, peering into my eyes like a doctor. \"We thought it a myth.\"\n\nNot a myth, but a technique made far more dangerous once Meridiana had been trapped within the river, waiting to drown whoever passed by.\n\nI wanted more than anything to sit down with Ponce de Leon and Bi Wei and mine every magical rumor and legend from their memories. If they were correct, Meridiana's existence had fundamentally altered the study and practice of magic. What else had we lost or forgotten over the centuries?\n\nI looked at the cane. This was the knowledge I needed right now. Reading the cane's story was one thing. Manipulating it was another. The magic in that cane was unlike any I had performed.\n\nBut what was libriomancy, truly? Jeneta had proven it wasn't the ink and paper that held the magic. Laser-etch a story into ten-thousand hockey pucks and hand them out to fans, and I could theoretically use those pucks as easily as a midlist mass-market paperback.\n\nThis cane was unique, but its story was stronger than any book. It had been \"written\" by Juan Ponce de Leon, after all. I reached for the words and let them flow past in silence. I found myself again in that moment of despair and loneliness. Ponce de Leon had believed nothing could truly split the bond between him and Gutenberg. They might have fought over the years, but each relied on the other for support and comfort. The betrayal tore at my chest. They were strangers from another time, the only two people on Earth who understood where the other had come from, and what they had left behind.\n\n\"Isaac...\" Lena pointed to the cane.\n\nBlood seeped from the wood like sap.\n\nI drew my fingers through illusory words that clung to my hand like cobwebs. I could do it. I could pull them apart, separate the layers and undo at least some of what Ponce de Leon had done to this cane over the years.\n\nInstead, I carefully stroked the text back into place, laying it down like stain on wood. The blood followed, until nothing remained but the unbroken ebony surface.\n\nI sat back, shaken by the magic I had done and the power of Ponce de Leon's despair.\n\n\"Nothing is eternal,\" Ponce de Leon said at last. \"That doesn't stop us from longing for permanence and security.\" He took the cane and kissed the metal handle. \"You've given us quite the demonstration, Isaac. Can you do the same when faced with Meridiana and her creations?\"\n\n\"I hope so.\" My stomach grumbled. It had to be getting close to lunchtime, and I hadn't eaten since yesterday. \"But first, do you have any snacks around here?\"\n\nMeridiana had protected herself from magical spying. Not even Ponce de Leon could snoop on her that way. But she hadn't thought to block more mundane approaches, like hacking into her e-reader to monitor her Wi-Fi usage. We had tracked her to a one-mile area near Copper River. Given that her planned escape involved a water-based portal, she had to be along the river.\n\nNicola, Jackson, and Bi Wei would remain at the fort to guard the armillary sphere and monitor her e-reader. That left me, Lena, Nidhi, and Ponce de Leon to spearhead the attack.\n\n\"We'll need a second vehicle,\" I said as we made our way out of the fort, passing a family posing for photos with a man in the red uniform of a British soldier. \"I kind of left the Jeep in Copper River, and the Triumph only seats two. Sorry, I didn't think that through.\"\n\nI wasn't happy about stealing another car, but short of creating a flying carpet or taking our chances with teleportation\u2014\n\nThe smell of burning fire-spider rose from my hip, and I stopped walking. Bright lights, like a trio of flashbulbs, heralded the arrival of three wood-and-metal goliaths in the parking lot ahead. Each one carried a man or woman in its arms. The size difference made their passengers look like children.\n\n\"We might also need a new plan,\" I said quietly.\n\nThe automatons stood like statues, eight-foot-tall golems with metal skin and glassy eyes, polished to capture the light. Their armor was made up of metal keys, possibly the same blocks Gutenberg had used in his early experiments with printing. Those blocks imprinted libriomantic spells into the wooden flesh of the automatons, drawing on the magic of the Latin Vulgate Bible, just as Gutenberg himself had done.\n\nI could read those spells from here, a tightly-woven mesh of Biblical verse protecting them from assault and diverting the attention of people walking past. Any camera pointed in that direction would show only a blurred shadow.\n\nThe people they were carrying\u2014two women and a man\u2014moved to inspect my car. I recognized Babs Palmer and Cameron Howes. The other woman looked like Sarieha Ward, a researcher from the east coast. She clutched a stack of books in her arms. Babs spotted us and pointed.\n\nI could see Babs' silent command to the automatons. The closest of the golems tore through a section of fence, opening the way for Babs and the others.\n\nCameron, a stocky man with a bush of dark curls and an eye-searing magical green cloak, looked me up and down. \"Nice cape.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" In addition to my magic headband, I had created a small wand, a ring, and a red-and-yellow cape, which I had safety-pinned to one side of my shirt to keep it away from Smudge's flames. \"I like your cloak. We should talk cosplay some time.\"\n\n\"We're not here to fight you, Isaac.\" Babs was a muscular woman, and her accent made me imagine her roping cattle from horseback like a caricature from a bad western, despite the fact that she was a practicing lawyer with a known distaste for animals. Some kind of personal shield protected her body, humming like an old refrigerator and giving her skin a glassy shine in the sunlight.\n\n\"Jackson called you?\" I guessed.\n\n\"It wasn't him,\" said Cameron. \"But when he failed to return home, his wife grew worried. Her phone calls were eventually forwarded to us.\" He gestured to Ward, who began walking toward the fort. One of the automatons followed like an overeager half-ton puppy.\n\nPonce de Leon had vanished. If he was smart, he'd gotten out of here the instant the automatons popped into view. Right now, the Porters were probably trigger-happy enough to attack him on sight if they realized who he was.\n\n\"Automatons won't help against Meridiana,\" I said. \"You have to know that, which means you brought them to use on us.\"\n\n\"Not unless you force us.\" Babs stopped a short distance away. \"What the hell have you done? Every archive on the planet is reporting books suddenly unlocking themselves.\"\n\n\"Spells all over the world go haywire, and you automatically assume I was involved? I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted.\" I saw no visible weapons, but when I squinted, I could read the faint text of the magic worked into her skin. \"Do you have enchanted tattoos? That's so cool. What do they do?\"\n\nShe folded her arms. \"Where is the armillary sphere, Isaac?\"\n\nI played out one scenario after another in my head. Lena and I had fought automatons before, but even if we managed to stop these three, we were also facing two Regional Masters, both of whom would have prepared themselves before coming here. I didn't recognize Cameron's cloak, but I suspected it would protect him from most attacks, and I would need time to read and understand Babs' tattoos.\n\n\"It's in the archive,\" I said cheerfully. \"Which you already knew, right? You're just starting with the easy stuff to see how cooperative I'll be?\"\n\nShe tilted her head in acknowledgment.\n\n\"I've been inside the sphere,\" I continued. \"I got a nice, good look at Meridiana and the Ghost Army. I know how to stop them. I can free Jeneta and the others, then lure the ghosts into the sphere with her before we destroy it.\"\n\n\"We've put together a different plan.\" Cameron was smiling. It made me nervous.\n\nBabs touched a jeweled cuff on her left ear and cocked her head, like she was listening to voices we couldn't hear. \"We have Nicola,\" she said to Cameron a moment later. \"Jackson is with her.\"\n\nNothing about Bi Wei. I kept my face neutral as Cameron stepped forward. \"Please hand over any weapons or magical items you're carrying. Including the spider.\"\n\nI thought back to the books Sarieha Ward had been carrying. \"Sarieha had a copy of Damon Knight's A for Anything.\"\n\n\"So she did.\" Babs touched her forearm, and I saw the power within those tattoos building. One passage looked like it would create a web of magical energy. Another had something to do with diverting attacks back on her enemies.\n\nBabs had claimed the automatons weren't here to fight us. I thought she was just trying to play nice, but she meant it. They weren't here to fight at all. Their purpose was much worse. \"You can't do this.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"A for Anything was written back in the late fifties.\" I didn't take my attention from Babs. \"It opens with the introduction of a 'gismo,' a small, simple device capable of duplicating anything it touches. Money, machines, human beings.\"\n\n\"Or automatons,\" said Nidhi.\n\nI scoured my memory. It had been so long since I read the book. \"It was a simple wooden cross with a pair of glass and metal cubes, kind of like three-dimensional circuits. Hook one up to whatever you want to duplicate, flip the switch, and then there are two. Gutenberg locked that book the day it came out. I must have unlocked it when I destroyed his pen.\"\n\nOnly a handful of Gutenberg's original automatons still survived. He was said to have hated the things and what it cost to create them: a broken human mind, trapped within wood and metal, acting as the magical battery to give each automaton life.\n\n\"They're going to erase one of the automatons,\" I said, watching Babs' expression. \"Like wiping a hard drive. Then they'll use Knight's gismo to build an army, a thousand empty soldiers. Each one nigh invulnerable. Each one lacking only a mind to animate it.\"\n\n\"Why destroy the Ghost Army,\" Nidhi asked, \"when you can enslave them instead?\"\n\n\"Enslave them how?\" asked Lena.\n\nShe and I had come across the broken remains of an automaton months before. I remembered piecing together broken metal disks from the automaton's \"brain.\" Engraved on the disks had been the name Johann Fust, a competitor of Gutenberg's from the 1400s. I assumed the name was part of the spell binding Fust's spirit to the automaton, but from what I had seen of the Ghost Army, most of them were so far gone they didn't remember their own names.\n\nBabs shrugged. \"As I recall, Isaac was able to hitch a ride in one of these things and control it without engraving his autograph on its brain. And there are plenty of books about trapping and controlling ghosts.\"\n\nInstead of an army of ghosts led by a thousand-year-old parasite and wannabe goddess, we would have an army of unstoppable warriors under the control of a splintering magical organization, one with a history of aggression and paranoia, not to mention a power vacuum at the very top.\n\nTourists and mock historical figures were streaming out of the fort. A spell trailed from Babs' hands, leading them away like sheep.\n\n\"This is a really, really bad idea,\" I said. \"The students of Bi Sheng think of the Porters as conquerors and destroyers. They've already outed us to the world. Now you want to escalate things by unveiling your own magical army?\"\n\n\"Your President Roosevelt was fond of saying, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,'\" said Cameron.\n\n\"The problem with carrying a big stick is the temptation to use it,\" I said. \"Like Gutenberg did, when he tried to wipe out the students of Bi Sheng. The instant they find out about your automatons, it will be all-out war.\" And Bi Wei was likely still hiding within the fort. She'd see what they were up to the minute they began.\n\n\"To those who survived, that attack happened only a month ago,\" Nidhi said, adding her urgency to my own. \"They watched their friends and family die. The memories are open wounds. Do this, and you'll destroy any chance of peace.\"\n\n\"Automatons are more than capable of hiding until they're needed,\" Cameron said dismissively.\n\nHe might have been right, if not for Bi Wei. She had lost her brother when the automatons destroyed her temple. That she had been able to trust me at all was a miracle, as was the fact that the arrival of Babs and Cameron with automatons in tow hadn't triggered an instant and violent response.\n\nI tried to calculate my odds against Babs, Cameron, and automatons. They weren't good.\n\nBabs must have seen my intentions on my face. \"Don't do anything hasty, Isaac. Take off the cape and whatever other magic you're carrying, and we'll talk.\"\n\nI considered warning them about Bi Wei, but I couldn't see that helping. Babs and Cameron were pushing for control of the Porters. They couldn't back down. Even if they managed to subdue her, all of her fellow students were tapped into her mind and senses. They would see what happened, and they would know the Porters remained an active threat to them all.\n\nSlowly, I removed the cape and tossed it onto the ground between us. Testing my abilities on Ponce de Leon's cane in the safety of the archive had been one thing. Now it was time for the field test.\n\nI stared at the cape, reading the magic and belief woven through the garishly-colored fabric. I saw both the rules from the book and the belief of countless gamers who had used this particular artifact. Not to mention the arguments between rules-lawyers who wanted to push the cape's capabilities to the very edge. And beyond, if the game-master let them get away with it.\n\n\"Do the other Regional Masters know about this?\" Lena asked.\n\nCameron snorted. \"They'd spend a month arguing and forming committees to study the problem, and we'd be dead of old age before they made a decision. Why do you think Gutenberg bypassed them so often?\"\n\n\"Look how that worked out for him,\" Nidhi said quietly.\n\nScreams from within the fort gave me the distraction I needed. I tore the cape's magic free and wrapped it around myself. I stretched the web of words to embrace Lena as well, then reached for Nidhi...\n\nThe magic buckled. Three people were too much. The rules could only be pushed so far. Hoping Nidhi would understand, I refocused the cape's power.\n\nLena and I disappeared.\n\n\u2002FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION\n\n\u2002FILE NO: 16824-17\n\n\u2002New File\n\n\u2002Update to Existing File\n\n\u2002NAME: Isaac Samuel Vainio\n\n\u2002ALIASES: None\n\n\u2002PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION\n\n\u2002SEX: M\n\n\u2002RACE: Caucasian\n\n\u2002HEIGHT: 5'9\"\n\n\u2002WEIGHT: 155 lbs\n\n\u2002HAIR COLOR: Blond\n\n\u2002HAIR LENGTH: Short\n\n\u2002EYE COLOR: Brown\n\n\u2002SCARS/MARKS/TATTOOS: None\n\n\u2002Family: Unmarried, no children. Cohabitates with Lena Greenwood. One brother: Toby. Parents: Erik and Heidi Vainio.\n\n\u2002CRIMINAL HISTORY: Member of the magical organization known as the Porters. Suspected involvement with the disappearance of Ted Boyer (Marquette, MI). Suspected involvement with the murder of Ray Walker (East Lansing, MI). Suspected involvement with multiple, unexplained deaths in Copper River, Michigan (see case file C89626.)\n\n\u2002KNOWN ASSOCIATES: Nicola Pallas (File 16821-23). Nidhi Shah.\n\n\u2002Property of the U.S. Government. For internal use only.\n\n\u2002LENA AND I REMATERIALIZED within the Chevalier House's basement, just outside of the archive. The inner door was open. Nicola and Jackson were slumped unconscious against the wall. Nicola had been gagged and bound as well, presumably to keep her from using magic if she recovered. Ward and her automaton must have caught them by surprise.\n\nI could see the spells laid over them like blankets, keeping them asleep. Given time, I could probably reverse them, but we didn't have time. \"Where did they go?\"\n\nLena jogged to the end of the hallway and opened the outer door. \"No sign of her here. What the hell did you do, by the way?\"\n\n\"That cape is what's called a Wondrous Item. Once per day, it allows your character to open a dimensional doorway. I used to play a dwarf rogue who caused all sorts of mischief with one of those capes.\"\n\nI found the armillary sphere in the crate where we had left it. Nothing else had been touched, as far as I could tell. I checked Nicola and Jackson more closely. Both were breathing normally, and had no obvious injuries.\n\nShouts from aboveground gave me a good idea where Ward had gone. Lena snatched the armillary sphere, and seconds later we were running up the stairs and out of the house.\n\nWe found Sarieha Ward facedown on the ground in front of Damon Knight's magical gismo. Her automaton lay beside her, its head separated from the torso. Sarieha had removed several metal disks from the head, presumably \"wiping\" it of its current occupant in preparation for the magical cloning process.\n\nIt wasn't the automaton that made Smudge burst into anxious flames. It was Bi Wei. Power swirled around her, raw and unformed and terrifying. I couldn't tell whether or not Sarieha was still alive, but if she was, Bi Wei intended to change that. \"Wei, stop!\"\n\nThe eyes that turned toward me were wide with rage and terror. Bi Wei stood in the eye of a magical maelstrom. I could see Meridiana's tendrils stretching toward her, seeking her heart and mind. Meridiana fed on those who channeled too much magical power. But Bi Wei didn't stand alone. Shadows surrounded her: the other students of Bi Sheng, lending her strength.\n\n\"The Porters are not going to do this!\" I gestured to the automaton. \"I won't let it happen.\"\n\nCameron and his automaton materialized atop the north wall.\n\n\"Oh, shit.\" The automaton reached toward me, and I saw a line of familiar Latin flare to life. Pluit ignem et sulphur de caelo et omnes perdidit. \"Incoming!\"\n\nSulfurous flames poured forth. Cameron wasn't playing around anymore. Neither was Bi Wei, who diverted the attack and spun, carrying the fire like a dancer twirling her partner, then launching it back at Cameron.\n\nLena tossed the sphere to me and sprinted toward the wall. I dropped to one knee and checked Sarieha. Her legs were broken, but she was alive. I turned my attention to the automaton's head. With its inner workings exposed and its defenses down, I could have destroyed it, but Babs and Cameron had two others they could use to build their army. And since Sarieha had gone to the trouble of opening this one up for me...\n\nI twisted the ring on my hand, another of the items I had pulled from the gaming manual. I hadn't planned on using the ring's three wishes until I faced Meridiana. Then again, when had any of my plans worked out the way I wanted? I crafted my first wish in my mind, examining every word for loopholes before speaking it aloud.\n\nWhile I worked on the automaton's head, Lena plunged her hands deep into the northern wall. Branches sprouted from the palisade, twining around Cameron's arms and legs. Lena directed other branches to attack his automaton, while Bi Wei countered the automaton's magic.\n\nI finished my work on the automaton's head and turned my attention to the armillary sphere. Magic poured forth from the ring, and the second of the three jewels disappeared. The sphere vanished from the grass.\n\nBabs and her automaton appeared on the eastern wall. I yanked out my shock-gun, adjusted it to the highest level, and fired at the platform beneath her. It collapsed under their weight.\n\nAnother branch trapped Cameron's arm. Bi Wei raised her hands. Dozens of shadows moved with her, preparing to finish him off.\n\nI switched to a nonfatal setting and shot her in the back. Electricity fragmented over her body, and she fell.\n\n\"Come on!\" I shouted.\n\nLena left Cameron fighting to free himself. Babs and her automaton were already getting back to their feet. Lena scooped Bi Wei into her arms, and we ran toward the southern gate. Smudge's cage banged against my hip with every stride.\n\nFire washed through the gate behind us, but they didn't chase us. Why bother? Their first priority would be to find the sphere, and they could see neither of us had it.\n\nPonce de Leon waited for us in the parking lot, leaning against the Triumph with his arms folded. I was a little surprised. With Gutenberg gone and the Porters crumbling, I had half-expected him to do the pragmatic thing and get the hell out of here. Instead, he got in and started the engine, leaving the door open.\n\n\"Do you have Nidhi?\" Lena shouted.\n\n\"They put her into an enchanted sleep. She's resting comfortably in the passenger's seat.\"\n\n\"We could have used a hand back there,\" I said.\n\n\"I've squared off with automatons before. I'd prefer not to do so again.\"\n\nI didn't have time to argue. \"We have to get to Copper River. The Triumph isn't big enough to\u2014\"\n\nPonce de Leon didn't move. \"How long has it been since you stole my car, Isaac?\"\n\n\"Technically, I didn't steal it from you. It was in storage. Confiscated after you snuck into France back in seventy-nine. All I did was fudge some paperwork.\"\n\n\"You were clever enough to forge Porter requisitions, but you've yet to uncover everything this car can do.\" He tucked his cane behind the seats. \"You'll want to stand back.\"\n\nHe pulled the choke out as far as it would go, sealed the air vents, then turned on the hazard lights. With a satisfied smile, he turned on the radio and pressed the fourth station button.\n\nThe transformation was too swift for me to follow, though scraps of magical text taunted me as they flew past. The car's body spread outward. Paint melted into the metal, leaving the appearance of hammered steel. The door slammed shut, locking Nidhi and Ponce de Leon inside.\n\nLena and I fell back. The car was now three times as wide as before and almost twice as long. Portholes the size of dinner plates spread equidistantly around the upper portion. A ramp hissed down to the pavement, and Ponce de Leon beckoned us inside.\n\nI didn't move. \"Are you telling me I've had my own flying saucer all this time?\"\n\n\"It's a shame you didn't steal the manual. It will be cramped, but we should all fit, and this form makes much better time. We may need to stop for gas, though.\" He sat in a padded metal-backed swivel chair at the exact center of the ship. A curved control panel arced in front of his lap, studded with toggle switches and bright lights in primary colors. \"What do you think? One of your libriomancers helped me with the layout.\"\n\nThe ramp lifted, leaving only the low illumination from the lights hidden in the base of the walls. A chrome control stick, two-handed and reminiscent of something you'd find in the cockpit of a jumbo jet, rose from the instrument panel. Lena set Bi Wei on the floor, then moved to sit with Nidhi.\n\n\"You turned your car into a UFO,\" I said.\n\nHe looked over his shoulder at me. \"How do you know I didn't turn my UFO into a car?\"\n\nThere were no chairs or seatbelts, only metal plating for the floor and a circular bench that ringed most of the ship, with a gap for the ramp. The walls curved up around us, suggesting that the engines and electronics were all locked away in the lower half.\n\nThe floor buzzed as we rose into the air. The wall in front of Ponce de Leon turned transparent, a viewscreen showing the Mackinac Bridge stretched out before us.\n\n\"This is awesome,\" I whispered.\n\nHe glanced over his shoulder. \"You should see my DeLorean.\"\n\nAnd then we were off, streaking through the sky toward Copper River. I couldn't tell if the ship somehow knew where it was going, or if Ponce de Leon had a hidden GPS on that console. Most of the lights and switches were unlabeled and incomprehensible, though they looked extremely cool.\n\n\"I feel like we should stop to burn a crop circle,\" I said. Instead, I turned to study the spell keeping Nidhi asleep. After a few minutes, I was able to peel the magic away. I did my best to preserve the spell, transferring it like a sheet of gold leaf and laying it over Bi Wei. Her legs twitched, and her breathing deepened.\n\nI dug out my phone to begin putting the rest of my plan into effect. \"Can you fly lower? I can't get a signal up here.\"\n\nPonce de Leon dropped the ship through the clouds, taking us lower and lower until we were skimming over the treetops. I stared at the phone, but I couldn't bring myself to use it.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" Lena asked. She sat with one arm around Nidhi's shoulders.\n\nI closed my eyes, but when I did, I saw the graves from a month before. \"Meridiana knows we're coming. We need help. But anyone I drag into this fight might not walk away.\"\n\n\"Don't drag them,\" said Nidhi. \"Tell them the truth. Let them choose for themselves.\"\n\nMy heart was pounding as hard as it had during the fighting at Fort Michilimackinac. In some ways, I was more scared of this phone call than I had been to enter Gerbert d'Aurillac's sphere. At least with the sphere, I had only been risking my own life and sanity.\n\nI started with Jerry Beauchamp, who answered after the fourth ring. I hadn't seen Jerry or his family among the mob at my house, but given the speed of gossip in this town, he would have heard about it by now. And about me.\n\n\"This is Isaac Vainio. I\u2014yah, I know you're at work.\" I hadn't, but I should have realized.\n\n\"What do you want?\" Jerry asked warily.\n\n\"It's not what I want. It's what I need.\" I wiped my other hand on my jeans. \"I need to tell you the truth. And I need your help.\"\n\nPonce de Leon hadn't lied about the ship's speed. We reached the northern coast of the U.P. in a half hour, and the Copper River Public Library five minutes later.\n\nWe landed on the side of the road across from the library. The ship blocked both the sidewalk and one lane of traffic. I crept down the ramp, shock-gun in one hand. I neither saw nor felt magic aside from our own, and Smudge was relatively unworried.\n\nA man stopped on the far side of the road with an overweight toy poodle on a leash. My jaw tightened. Andy Rosten had been part of the mob that attacked me and stood by while my home burned.\n\nHe didn't move. The sight of me emerging from a flying saucer with what looked like a revolver in my right hand might have had something to do with that.\n\nI strode purposefully toward the library's back door, stopping only to nod in his direction. \"Good afternoon.\"\n\nI could see him trying to say my name, but no sound emerged.\n\nThere were only a few people inside, and they stayed out of my way as I stocked up on books. Alex was working the main desk. \"Isaac, what are you doing? You know you need to check those out first.\"\n\nI turned around.\n\nHe raised his hands. \"Or you could do it later.\"\n\nWhen I emerged, more people had gathered to stare at the UFO. Andy hadn't moved at all, though his dog was pulling impatiently at the leash. He flinched when I glanced his way.\n\n\"How are the twins?\" I asked.\n\n\"Good.\" His voice squeaked a little. \"They're... they're good.\"\n\n\"Did they ever pick up those Justice League books they reserved?\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"Glad to hear it. Tell Cindy I said hi.\"\n\nJust down the street was a small flower garden surrounding a set of copper statues commemorating the original miners of our town. I pulled out a wand, and seconds later the miners and their full cart of ore were shrinking to the size of children's toys. I tucked the wand away, scooped the three statues and cart into my hand, and turned to go.\n\nAndy was practically a statue himself. I gave him a quick salute with the wand, and he flinched.\n\nOnce inside the saucer, I sat down beside Lena, who had been watching through one of the portholes.\n\n\"I think he might have soiled himself,\" she commented, putting a hand on my thigh. \"You look like you enjoyed that.\"\n\n\"Damn right.\" I tossed one of the statues in my hand.\n\n\"And you needed miniature statues why?\"\n\nI grinned. \"It's a surprise.\"\n\nLena and Nidhi exchanged a look of exasperation.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" asked Ponce de Leon as we lifted off.\n\n\"She's at the river. Fly north.\"\n\nHe turned in his seat and raised a single dark eyebrow.\n\nI winced inside. \"Please.\"\n\nWe landed in a picnic area about a half mile from the river. Nidhi stayed with the ship. Or the car. Whatever you wanted to call it. If it transformed into a flying saucer, what other modes might it have? Assuming we all survived, I needed to see if I could read the different layers of magic worked into the body.\n\nFlames rippled over Smudge's back as we climbed out. Ponce de Leon had been kind enough to conjure me a passable imitation of the old leather duster I used to wear as a field agent. The extra pockets allowed me to better stock up on books. It also gave Smudge a leather-insulated shoulder to cling to instead of being confined to his cage.\n\nWe had gone only a few steps when a shadow flew toward us. Meridiana's warrior angel, Binion, cut through the sky like an overgrown owl. He crashed into Lena with an impact that would have shattered the bones of an ordinary human. They rolled through the grass together. I concentrated, intending to strip his angelic story away, but before I could act, he cinched an arm around Lena's neck. The other pinned her arms to her sides, preventing her from drawing her weapons.\n\nI raised my gun. Bodies conducted electricity well enough for me to stun them both. But when I pulled the trigger, the lightning dissipated before reaching them.\n\n\"Buzzing the town in a UFO isn't subtle.\" Binion pressed Lena's head sideways, straining to crack her neck.\n\n\"I wasn't going for subtle,\" I said. \"Let her go.\"\n\nPonce de Leon readied his cane. I forced myself to relax, to read the currents of Binion's strength and power.\n\nLena wedged her chin down, trying to force it into Binion's elbow to create a gap so she could breathe. She bent her knees and sank lower, then rammed her elbows backward.\n\nIt shouldn't have worked. Binion was as strong as Lena. Probably stronger. But he gasped and released his grip. His hands went to his sides, where blood darkened his robe.\n\nLena spun to face him. Six-inch wooden spikes had grown from her elbows. Binion drew his sword and swung at her head. She blocked the blow with a forearm now covered in thick bark. The thunk of steel hitting oak echoed over the grass.\n\nLena continued to transform as she fought. Plates of bark grew over her exposed flesh. Wooden spikes jutted from her knees. Sharp wooden spurs slid from the backs of her hands, reminding me of Wolverine's claws from the X-men and making me suspect Lena had been reading Nidhi's comics again.\n\nBinion tried to take flight, but she caught his leg. He reached down to grab her hair. She rammed the spurs on her left fist through his forearm and slammed him to the ground.\n\nHe bellowed a most unangelic curse as he bounced to his feet. His right fist snapped out to strike Lena's face, rocking her head back. But even as blood dripped from her nose, she lunged again, slicing and stabbing.\n\nI could see Binion trying to drain her magic, but there was too much, and Lena was striking too quickly.\n\nThe crack of a hunting rifle made me jump. Binion staggered, his left arm hanging uselessly.\n\nLizzie Pascoe stepped out from the woods, rifle raised to her shoulder. Binion moved sideways, trying to keep Lena between himself and Lizzie. He thrust his sword. Lena knocked it aside and punched him in the sternum, driving wooden spurs into his chest. She ripped them free and dodged to one side, allowing Lizzie to put a bullet into his chest.\n\nThe sword slipped from his bloody fingers, and he fell face-first to the ground.\n\nLena hadn't even needed to use her bokken. This was an aspect of her magic I had never imagined. If she could stretch her power like this, what else could she do?\n\nLizzie turned her weapon toward Lena.\n\n\"Wait!\" I waved my arms and ran to stand between them. I could understand Lizzie's fear. Aside from the brown rings of her eyes, nothing human remained of my lover. She was a being of wood, with overlapping plates of bark for armor. Even her teeth had grown thicker, encased in fine-grained cellulose. The blood dripping from her nose was thick as syrup. \"That's Lena.\"\n\nThe rifle didn't move, and I realized that putting myself in the line of fire of a woman who had recently helped burn down my house and beat the shit out of me was, perhaps, a poor tactical choice.\n\n\"Yah, I... I know,\" Lizzie said at last. She lowered her rifle. \"I saw her fighting before... before all that.\" She looked from Lena to me to Ponce de Leon, and then to the flying saucer behind us. \"Is there anything more you want to tell us?\"\n\n\"Sure. That's not a real UFO, the gentleman there is five hundred years old, and there's a woman trying to break out of a prison built by a pope a thousand years ago. And thank you.\"\n\nShe shook her head and glanced at the grass by her feet. \"Isaac, I don't know what the hell's going on, or what you and your girlfriend really are. But about what happened before...\"\n\nAnother monster bounded out of the woods before she could finish. Grotesque and scarred, with yellowed skin. I remembered seeing him in Gutenberg's apartment building, right before it exploded. Up close, the misshapen features helped me to finally place why he looked so familiar.\n\n\"You're Frankenstein's monster!\" I fished one of the shrunken statues from my pocket. \"Awesome!\"\n\nLike the rest of Meridiana's puppets, he had both the physical strength of his distorted body and the magical powers of her ghosts. I could see that magic reaching toward me, seeking to disarm whatever spells or weapons I might have prepared.\n\nWith a grin, I hurled the tiny statue straight at him.\n\nUnder normal circumstances, the wand I had used should have kept the statue miniaturized for up to eighteen hours, depending on the roll of the die. But with his magic stripping my spell away like a swarm of hungry piranha, the statue returned to its normal size\u2014and mass\u2014in midair.\n\nIts velocity, on the other hand, was unchanged. I saw the monster's rheumy eyes turn round, and then the full-sized metal mining cart knocked him flat onto his back. He lay staring up at the clouds, simultaneously moaning and gasping for breath.\n\nI wanted to stop to study how his body worked, how the muscle and bone from different corpses grafted together so powerfully. Not to mention what an EEG of his brain activity might show. How did magic compensate for the body's automatic rejection of foreign blood and organs? Or was the immune system dead as well, its functioning replaced by Meridiana's magic?\n\nInstead, I turned to Lizzie. \"Stay behind us.\"\n\nShe stared at me, then at the monster on the ground, then back at me. \"Damn right I'm staying behind you!\"\n\nIn my peripheral vision, I saw Smudge slip from my shoulder. I caught him instinctively. My fingers closed not around the body of a hot, bristling spider trying to pretend he meant to do that, but a small stone statue, perfect in every detail. His petrified forelegs were raised as if in protest.\n\nI felt sick. Smudge had been my companion since high school. I cupped his body in my hands, too stunned to speak.\n\n\"What happened?\" Lizzie raised her rifle and searched the woods.\n\n\"Don't look!\" I jumped in front of her. Which way had Smudge been facing when he fell? I grabbed a copy of Heart of Stone from my pocket. I had catalogued this book myself, and had taken it from the library on the chance that we'd face Meridiana's gorgon again.\n\nI carefully slipped Smudge into an inner pocket, then opened the book and pulled out a pair of mirrored sunglasses. The glasses were enchanted to show magic and to protect the wearer from visual-based attacks.\n\nDeanna Fuentes-McDowell\u2014the gorgon\u2014strode toward us, her burqa thrown back. I glimpsed skin like sandalwood, black serpentine hair, and brown eyes full of unimaginable sorrow. I dropped the book and reached for my shock-gun.\n\nThrough the darkened lenses, I saw the ghost controlling her. It stretched toward me, devouring the magical discharge from my weapon, then stripping the protection from my glasses.\n\nThe transformation began with my own eyes. My vision clouded as lens, cornea, and ocular fluid solidified. My lids blinked once over gritty stone, and I had just long enough to swear silently at my own stupidity.\n\nAuthor Margaret Stone died at 3:15 this afternoon at Providence Portland Medical Center, two hours after being shot by a gunman who broke into her home.\n\nStone is best known as the author of the Red Death series, set in a post-apocalyptic plague world inhabited by humans and vampires. The third book, Red Night, was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, and Stone recently announced that the books had been optioned by a major film studio.\n\nEric Crocker, the alleged killer, was arrested at the scene and is being held for psychiatric evaluation. Crocker's online presence paints a picture of a longtime genre fan, a man whose love of science fiction and fantasy border on the obsessive. His recent posts describe his growing alarm over the revelation of the supernatural, particularly the magic known as libriomancy.\n\n\"It's real,\" Crocker shouted as he was forced into a waiting police car. \"I've always known it was real. Witches and ghosts and aliens. She was one of them, spreading poison through her words. We have to fight back. We have to stop them before it's too late!\"\n\n\u2002Margaret Stone's first book was Time Wyrm, a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful adventure published in 1991. She went on to write twenty-six more novels, two of which were finalists for the Nebula Award, one of science fiction's highest honors.\n\n\u2002Stone was also an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty. Her work often featured the rescue of abused animals, and for the past five years, she ran an annual fundraising auction for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.\n\n\u2002Stone is survived by her husband Christopher Hooks and their three children. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Stone's memory to the ASPCA at http://www.aspca.org/donate.\n\nIn a way, the loss of sight saved my life. Blindness helped eliminate the distractions of the real world, letting me concentrate on the magic racing through my body, petrifying every cell. My thoughts translated that magic into Greek text, excerpts from stories and myths thousands of years old.\n\nMy lungs felt like they were filling with sand. Silence closed around me as my inner ears hardened. I tried to peel back the words, to chip them away and free my heart to beat, my lungs to expand once more.\n\nI was used to touching a book to manipulate its magic. In this case, the gorgon had sent her stories through me. I captured the words, the belief and terror that had grown up around the myth of Medusa and her sisters. Athena's curse transforming the gorgon's beauty to this monstrous form. The battle between Perseus and Medusa. The blood that was both deadly poison and healing elixir. And of course, the gaze that turned her victims to statues.\n\nMuch of the text was irrelevant. The venom of her hair, the tale of her birth. All that mattered were the passages fighting to fossilize my body.\n\nOne word at a time, I chiseled them back.\n\nStone rasped through my throat. I blinked, and the darkness changed to a grainy mess of clouds and shadows. Cold, numb fingers curled. My palm felt like dried plaster. Skin flaked away, the pain jolting my nerves. I stopped trying to move for fear I'd accidentally snap off a limb.\n\nThe gorgon was running toward me, little more than a slash of gray through the static of my vision. Other figures moved awkwardly to intercept her, their heads turned away to protect them from her curse. I focused not on the gorgon's body, but on the magic flowing through her, the words that stretched out like tendrils of stone to my body. I seized those words in my mind and hurled them back.\n\nShe stumbled, her feet turned heavy and unresponsive. My blood pounded so hard that my still-healing veins threatened to split from the pressure. Like a mirror to a laser, I turned her own curse against her.\n\nShe stopped moving. The last of my petrified body melted back to flesh as the gorgon's power rebounded through her. Much of her body was already stone. The serpents of her hair moved sluggishly, like snakes in a torpor from cold. Two ghosts swirled around her, seeking to dissolve my counterspell as it spun muscle and bone into rock.\n\nI reached for the stories Meridiana had used to remake Deanna's body. As I unraveled them, her hair fell limp. Scales dropped away, leaving thick-curled black locks. The curse died along with the gorgon's form, and Deanna slumped to the ground.\n\nFor a moment, I thought I had saved her, but her body was still. You couldn't restore life to the dead, and I had spoken to Deanna's ghost in Rome.\n\nSweat stung my eyes. I dropped to one knee and took Smudge from my pocket. As quickly and carefully as I could, I peeled away the spells that had come from Deanna.\n\n\"Meridiana knows we're here,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"We need to\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up.\" How long since Smudge had been petrified? Sixty seconds? Maybe more. I flung my useless sunglasses aside and squinted at the tangle of magic that defined the little fire-spider. I hadn't read his book in ages, but I could see the individual passages crumbling. \"Come on, dammit!\"\n\nI had restored his body, but he wasn't moving. I snatched one of the dying fragments of magical text, a passage in which Smudge accidentally set fire to his owner's oil-slick fingers. I knew these books. I remembered the scene. I clung to that memory, used it to restore the broken text, and wrapped it around Smudge's body.\n\nSweat stung my eyes. Line by line, I raced to repair my friend. I felt someone crouch beside me\u2014Lena, from the sound of creaking wood.\n\nMy eyes were dry from my time as an almost-statue. My vision hadn't completely returned either. Black clouds fogged the edges of my sight. I restored another scene, this one a fight between Smudge and a zombie.\n\nOne of Smudge's legs twitched. Slowly, he began to stir.\n\nI wanted to jump to my feet and shout, Holy shit, did you see that? This was Gutenberg-level libriomancy, and I had done it! I had stopped a gorgon and saved Smudge\u2014and myself as well.\n\n\"This sort of thing is normal for you, eh?\" asked Lizzie, gesturing toward Frankenstein's monster and the ex-gorgon.\n\n\"No, that was new.\" My clothes still felt gritty, but I didn't care. I was alive, as was Smudge. Though he had curled into a tight, glowing ball, like a lone ember in the smoldering grass. I pulled a jellybean from my pocket and offered it to him.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" asked Lena.\n\nI rubbed my eyes. It didn't help my vision. \"Good enough.\"\n\n\"Then we should be going,\" said Ponce de Leon.\n\nI nodded. Once Smudge cooled enough for me to return him to my shoulder, we walked down the trail toward the river.\n\nMeridiana stood knee-deep in the water on the far side, gathering magic from her e-reader. Behind her was a naga, an enormous seven-headed serpent that had twined three of those heads around a fat birch tree. An ogre of some sort stood beside Meridiana, with fists like moldy sacks of meat hanging in the water. A winged monkey straight out of Oz perched in the branches overhead, along with what could have been a harpy, or maybe a fury. And standing in the darkness beyond was Death personified, a tall black-robed figure with a scythe.\n\n\"I know you took the sphere from the fort, Isaac.\" Meridiana's attention remained fixed on the water. Ghosts swirled around her, ready to intercept any magical assault. \"You should have left it in Gerbert's poem.\"\n\nThe water in front of her was a circle of perfect blackness. I tried to decipher the magic in the portal, but where the water itself was smooth as glass, the spells Meridiana had poured from her e-reader were like swirls of ink, diffusing through one another and rendering the whole thing unreadable. I pulled out my phone and tapped the screen. The wireless signal here was faint, but I didn't need much. \"And you shouldn't have saved all of your books on one device.\"\n\nHer ghosts moved to counter my assault, but this had nothing to do with magic. This was all about Kirsten LaMontagne's skills as a hacker. The dead had no way of blocking the wireless command that reset Meridiana's e-reader to factory default settings.\n\nShe screamed. Had any of her books remained in its memory, I had no doubt she would have killed me on the spot. But it would take time to restore her electronic library.\n\nUnfortunately, the loss of her e-reader didn't undo the spells she had already cast. The portal remained, as did her ghosts and her monsters.\n\n\"Bring him to me,\" she shouted.\n\nThe flying monkey and the harpy\u2014definitely a harpy, now that I could see her better\u2014launched themselves from the trees. When they were halfway across the river, a series of gunshots rang out like firecrackers. The monkey splashed down into the water, while the harpy managed to wing her way to a pine tree, where she clung to the branches and nursed her bleeding shoulder.\n\nThe smell of gunpowder drifted through the air. I had counted five shots, and they had come from both sides of the river. Tee Jandron stepped into view holding a pump-action shotgun. Walt Derocher was with him, dressed in camo and holding the rifle he used for hunting bear. I spotted Jaylee Parker a little way down, one arm in a sling, the other extending a black revolver toward the naga.\n\nMeridiana flung her e-reader away and yanked out her cell phone. Magic shimmered into existence from whatever books she had stored on her phone, shielding her and her creatures from the bullets.\n\nMore shots rang out, and the world turned to chaos. The ogre waded toward us. The bullets only seemed to annoy him. Behind me, Ponce de Leon leaned forward to jab his cane into the edge of the river. The water froze around the ogre's legs, trapping him in place.\n\nThe kitsune had drawn a pair of chrome-plated pistols and was returning fire against my reinforcements. Death and the naga were both coming toward me.\n\nLena scaled an old maple tree like she was Spider-Man, her fingers sinking into the wood. Twenty feet up, she plunged both hands into the maple. The entire tree shuddered. Thick roots punched free of the dirt and reached for the naga.\n\nMeridiana's ghosts were everywhere. They freed the ogre from Ponce de Leon's magic, weakened Lena's hold on her tree, and turned my shock-gun into a useless paperweight. I concentrated on Death, trying to rip the myth and magic from its mortal frame, but something struck me from behind.\n\nI hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. When I looked up, the cloaked skeleton stood at my feet. I knew he was a construct of myth and magic, but it was profoundly disturbing to look up and see Death himself looming over you. Fingers of yellowed bone tightened around the old, curved wood of his scythe.\n\nBranches from Lena's tree reached for his neck. He caught the closest with one hand. Lena screamed as the branch dried and crumbled.\n\nI scooted back. \"You know, in some stories, Death lets his victims challenge him for their lives. I don't suppose I can interest you in a game of Monopoly?\"\n\nHe raised his scythe.\n\nA lopsided grin crept over my face. \"Before you kill me, you might want to check your cloak. It seems to be on fire.\"\n\nThe skull tilted in what I assumed was confusion. He twisted around to see flames creeping up his back. Smudge raced higher, leaving a trail of fire behind. Death tried to strip off his cloak, but he couldn't do that while holding the scythe. By the time he tossed the flaming cloak away, leaving a naked and somewhat less imposing skeleton standing in shin-deep water, Smudge had managed to hop onto his shoulder.\n\nDeath reached for the fire-spider. Smudge was quicker, darting up the jawbone and then disappearing into the left eye socket.\n\nDeath's skull lit up like a jack-o'-lantern.\n\nI wasn't sure the skeleton could feel pain, but he was certainly upset. He dropped his scythe and stumbled back. Thin, yellowed fingers dug into his eyes, but judging by the flickering red flames, Smudge had squeezed through the back of the eye into the larger brain cavity.\n\nI studied the skeleton for a moment, but my vision wouldn't focus. Black smoke obscured the words of his enchantment. He was doubled over now, gripping his own head like a bowling ball.\n\nI crawled to retrieve the discarded scythe.\n\nLena would have reminded me that this was a victim, just like Jeneta. And she would be right. But whoever he had been before, that person was already dead.\n\nI swept the scythe's blade through the neck. It was an awkward strike, but it worked. Death collapsed in a clattering pile of bone. I snatched the skull before it could roll into the water.\n\nSmudge crawled out of the skull onto my arm, turned to survey his work, and began cleaning his forelegs.\n\n\"Show-off,\" I said.\n\nThe staccato cracking of gunfire had mostly died down. Ponce de Leon was struggling against a swarm of ghosts, and it looked like he was losing. Lena had knocked the kitsune's guns away, and they were battling hand-to-hand. Lizzie Pascoe was slumped against the base of a tree. She wasn't moving.\n\nI concentrated on Meridiana, searching for the stories I had seen within the celestial sphere. Meridiana's stories, binding her to Jeneta Aboderin.\n\nThe harpy tackled me from behind. The naga struck my legs. I saw Smudge fall, but I couldn't catch him this time. Talons gripped my head, grinding my face into the pebbled riverbed. I tried to get my mouth above the water, but the harpy was too strong. I clawed at her wrists as they dragged me toward Meridiana. I tried to fight, but I couldn't think, couldn't concentrate on anything but the need for air.\n\nI felt Meridiana's magic crawling through my thoughts, searching for the location of the sphere. I heard her cry of triumph as she uprooted the memory she needed. The water's distortion made it sound far away.\n\nThe harpy wrenched my head up. I gasped for breath and searched for Smudge. I had no idea whether or not the fire-spider could swim.\n\nPonce de Leon hurled a spell, but Meridiana deflected it into a nearby tree, which shrank to little more than a sapling. Some sort of reverse aging magic. Nice.\n\n\"You thought you could hide the sphere from me?\" she asked.\n\nI coughed and spat river water. \"I won't fetch it back.\"\n\n\"I didn't ask you to.\" She stepped to the edge of the portal.\n\n\"How did you overcome the problem of textual misalignment?\" This kind of libriomancy risked sending things into the world of the book, which essentially destroyed whatever you were trying to teleport. Maybe blending the magic of multiple books somehow canceled out the effect? For an instant, I could almost see how she had layered the different stories into the water, and then the harpy's fist thudded against my temple.\n\nMeridiana ignored me. I saw her guiding the portal's magic toward the memory she had stolen from me. Ripples spread from the center, rebounding from the edge as if trapped by an invisible barrier. She looked at me, either making sure I had no final tricks, or else wanting to be sure I saw her triumph. Grinning wildly, she plunged her hands into the river.\n\nTriumph turned to shouts of rage and pain. Bubbles and steam roiled from the portal. A cracking sound like the snapping of giant bones filled the air as the water tried to freeze and boil at the same time.\n\nMeridiana screamed, her hands and forearms trapped in the ice. Unearthly cold spread outward, and fog obscured normal vision.\n\nI twisted around, reaching for the stories within the naga and the kitsune. I didn't have time to destroy them, but I tugged at their magic long enough to make them let go. They staggered away from me. I crawled through the water, following Meridiana's cries until I reached her side. Once there, I pressed a hand to her side, searching for what remained of Jeneta Aboderin. For the girl who had rolled her eyes at my obtuseness and fed raisins to Smudge and taught minnows to dance to the magic of her words.\n\n\"'For he must fly back to his perch and cling,'\" I muttered, quoting the fragmented Dunbar poem I had shared with her from within Meridiana's prison. \"'When he fain would be on the bough a-swing.'\"\n\nWhat Meridiana had done to her monsters was crude and clumsy compared to the magic smothering Jeneta's mind. The gorgon had been a human body wearing a mask of story; with Jeneta, the transformation was internal. Meridiana's thoughts were welded to her own.\n\n\"Jeneta would have known better than to reach into that portal.\" I tugged harder.\n\n\"Stop,\" Meridiana snarled. \"I'll kill her.\" I saw her power turn inward. Deep within the tangle of text and magic, Jeneta cried out in pain.\n\n\"No, you won't.\" A shadow moved through the fog, coalescing into the shape of Nidhi Shah. She gripped an oddly shaped pistol with both hands.\n\n\"What took you so long?\" I sagged back in the water. \"I told you that as soon as she reached into the portal, I'd need you to get out here and save my ass!\"\n\n\"There was a harpy in the way,\" said Nidhi. \"I had to wait for Lena to take care of it.\"\n\n\"You're going to shoot us?\" Meridiana sneered. \"Go ahead. Murder the poor girl.\"\n\n\"You don't know what that is, do you?\" I grinned. \"You knew about Harry Potter and the Goblin's Scepter. But you missed the other books the Porters put together. That's a JG-367 from The Foretelling. I made it for Nidhi on the way over. It's locked in exorcism mode. She's not going to shoot Jeneta. Just you.\"\n\nNidhi pulled the trigger, and a line of crackling amethyst light speared Meridiana's chest. I saw her summon her ghosts to disrupt the JG-367's magic. With her attention distracted, I reached for the ambition, the hatred, the stories Meridiana had donned over the centuries, the legends she had built and fed upon. Her dreams and her hunger. One story at a time, I added my efforts to the JG-367 to pull her out of Jeneta's body.\n\nNidhi's gun crumbled away, but it had given me enough. I felt Jeneta fighting back from within. Her assault was desperate and instinctive, but between the two of us, we finished what the JG-367 had begun. She collapsed onto the ice, her forearms still frozen in place.\n\nI crouched beside her. \"Can you hear me?\"\n\nJeneta nodded, a movement which transformed into shudders. I tried to undo the portal's magic, but I had overexerted myself. My eyes refused to focus.\n\nPonce de Leon strode across the river. His cane rapped the ice, and Jeneta's hands pulled free. I felt the portal's magic start to dissolve.\n\nJeneta's fingers were frozen claws. She was crying and shaking, and it was all I could do to hold her as Ponce de Leon worked a second spell. Slowly, warmth flowed through her flesh.\n\nI tried to rise, but she clung to my arm. Together, Nidhi and I half-dragged, half-carried her to shore while Ponce de Leon continued to dispel the portal. Soon, all that remained was a frigid berg of ice in the middle of the river.\n\nI saw the naga pinned beneath a tangle of roots. There was no sign of the kitsune or the harpy.\n\nThe three of us collapsed on the dirt. \"Has anyone seen Smudge?\"\n\nJeneta pointed a shaking finger behind me.\n\n\"Huh.\" I cocked my head to the side. \"That's new.\"\n\nSmudge stood atop the water, burning as hot as I'd ever seen him and floating on a cushion of steam like a tiny, pissed-off hovercraft. He was trying to crawl to shore, but his legs simply passed through the steam. Ponce de Leon dipped his cane beneath Smudge and carefully lifted him free.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Jeneta whispered.\n\nI looked at Nidhi. She was the therapist. If anyone was supposed to know what to say to a teenager who had just regained control of her body and mind from a psychotic millennium-old sorceress... But she simply nodded at me and walked away, leaving the two of us alone.\n\n\"I'm... I'm sorry about your hands,\" I said. \"And your e-reader. And, you know, everything.\"\n\nJeneta didn't answer. She was shuddering so hard she could barely speak.\n\n\"Come on.\" I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her skin was cold. Sweat beaded her brow. Her teeth chattered.\n\nSmudge scrambled up my leg, steam rising from his back. I scooped him into Jeneta's lap. She brought her hands over his body for warmth.\n\n\"Is she gone?\" Jeneta balled her fingers into a fist.\n\n\"Sort of. She's still trapped in the sphere, and\u2014\"\n\nBefore I could say more, Jeneta punched me in the face.\n\n\"You told me I was safe at camp!\" Her tears spattered my shirt as she continued hitting me. The blows were wild, but strong enough to bruise. \"I told you about the nightmares and the devourers, how they hated me. You said I'd be safe. You lied to me!\"\n\n\"I didn't know\u2014\" I caught myself. I might not be a therapist, but I knew this wasn't the time to argue. \"I'm sorry. I thought you'd be safe. I'm so sorry. I've been searching for you every day since you were taken.\"\n\nShe landed one last punch to the center of my chest, then collapsed against me.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I whispered again, holding her as she sobbed.\n\nI'm pretty sure I was crying as well."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "\u2002FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE\n\n\u2002Speculative Fiction Writers Guild Supports Authorial Freedom\n\n\u2002The Speculative Fiction Writers Guild (SFWG) was founded in 1974 for two purposes:\n\n\u20021. To support, educate, and promote our authors.\n\n\u20022. To promote speculative literature in all its forms.\n\n\u2002Our membership has struggled with the revelation that magic exists\u2014particularly the school of magic known as libriomancy. The idea that products of our imagination could be made real and brought forth into the world has shaken our entire community. Some of our members have cosigned a letter pledging never again to write stories that could be used to create new tools of destruction. Others have begun working on books with which they hope to improve the world. (Although like any community, we don't always agree on the best way to do that.)\n\n\u2002As writers of speculative fiction, our job is to imagine the possibilities. We see the potential risks of libriomancy as well as the potential hope, and we understand the backlash against our genre. We understand the fear of the unknown.\n\n\u2002It's important to remember that speculative storytelling has been with us for millennia. The Epic of Gilgamesh is more than four thousand years old. Lucian's True History introduced aliens and space travel in the second century AD. Stories of powerful sorcerers and futuristic technology have entertained, inspired, and enlightened. What these stories have not done is cause the fall of civilization, despite the existence of magic.\n\n\u2002The official position of SFWG has always been that authors should be free to write without fear of censorship. But as authors, we also recognize that words have power. The role of the storyteller is an important one, and carries great responsibility.\n\n\u2002Some publishers and editors are working to revise their submission guidelines, asking that stories not include new and potentially deadly elements. SFWG is collaborating with several other writers' organizations to develop \"Best Practice\" guidelines that would ease fears for publishers while allowing authors the freedom that is essential to creativity and art.\n\n\u2002However, SFWG strongly protests the legislation proposed today in the Canadian House of Commons that would allow the government to ban and destroy books based on arbitrary criteria and uninformed fears. The false sense of security such measures might bring about are not worth the price we would pay in freedom of expression and thought.\n\n\u2002In short, Fahrenheit 451 was never meant to be an instruction manual.\n\n\u2002Connie Allen\n\n\u2002President, SFWG"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "\"It looks like most of Meridiana's minions bolted when you pulled her out of Jeneta,\" said Lena. She and Ponce de Leon had been searching the immediate surroundings.\n\n\"Thanks.\" None of us were up for a prolonged hunt, but if I told Jeff what had happened, he could probably find some werewolves who would be eager to track the remnants of Meridiana's forces.\n\n\"How's your vision?\" asked Ponce de Leon. He was sweating hard, and blood soaked his left sleeve. \"Black spots floating around the edges?\"\n\nHis question chilled me more than the icy water soaking my clothes. \"How did you know?\"\n\n\"I've seen it before. You think magical charring only happens to books?\" He tapped the side of his head. \"I saw how you were working your magic. Almost entirely visual, which suggests where the damage would begin.\"\n\nI had charred books before, pouring too much power through the pages and reducing them to supernaturally blackened ash. Imagining the same thing happening to my eyes and optic nerves made me shudder.\n\n\"Why do you think sorcerers use wands and staves?\" He raised his cane. \"Better to char a piece of wood than your own body. It's not a perfect solution, of course. The sorcerer still channels and controls the magic, but it helps.\"\n\nLena kicked a chunk of floating ice. \"Would you like to explain what the hell just happened? How did you freeze her portal?\"\n\n\"I couldn't destroy the sphere, and no matter where I sent it, I figured there was a good chance she'd rip the location out of my head and retrieve it. So I sent it somewhere that would bite back. According to the rules, the three wishes I pulled out of the gaming manual can duplicate the effects of any spell. But the teleportation spell I used requires the caster to be familiar with the destination.\" I grinned. \"Fortunately, I've been to the moon.\"\n\nPonce de Leon chuckled. \"The question is, can you get the sphere back?\"\n\n\"Not at the moment, unfortunately. I used up all three wishes.\" I rubbed my hand. \"That may be a moot point by now, though.\"\n\n\"Did you say you've been to the moon?\" asked Walt Derocher.\n\nI hadn't heard him approach. I tensed as others from Copper River closed around me. One hand moved toward my gun before I caught myself. Last time, the mob had tried to kill me, but there was no anger on their faces now. Only shock and exhaustion and pain. \"Yah, that's right. It was just the one time, and I didn't get to do much sightseeing.\"\n\nI searched the crowd. Where was Lizzie? I didn't see Tee Marana, either. My gut knotted tighter. \"How many...?\"\n\nWalt knew what I couldn't bring myself to ask. \"Two dead, and we've got three people in dire need of a hospital. Tee's in the worst shape, and nobody's been able to find Rusty Isham. Is there anything your... your magic can do to help?\"\n\nDammit. That was fewer casualties than I had feared, but it was still too many. \"I think so. I can\u2014\"\n\n\"Allow me,\" said Ponce de Leon. \"Isaac has seriously overexerted himself, and his work is only beginning.\"\n\n\"These people helped us because I asked them,\" I said. \"Don't tell me I can't help them. I owe them at least that much.\"\n\n\"You helped to save their town and their world.\" He turned to accompany Walt. My gut told me once he finished whatever healing spells he had planned, he wasn't coming back.\n\n\"Nidhi, could you stay with Jeneta?\"\n\nShe folded her arms, and I got the sense she was more than willing to tie me to a tree to prevent me from further burning myself out, magically.\n\n\"No magic. I promise.\" I looked after Ponce de Leon. \"There's something I need to do.\"\n\nThe rest of my things were scattered outside the UFO where I had left them. I dug through my bag and pulled out a metal canister. I found Ponce de Leon sitting beside Tee Marana. Tee was alive, and the bullet wounds in his chest and gut slowly healed as I watched. Ponce de Leon was doing something to a compass and a cigarette butt. He handed the compass to Walt. \"This will take you to Rusty Isham.\"\n\nI waited for them to go. \"I have something for you.\"\n\nHe blinked in surprise. \"As we discovered earlier, it's not even my birthday.\"\n\n\"This is what's left of the vampire blood I stole.\" I offered it to him. \"I thought you could use it to talk to Gutenberg. To say good-bye.\"\n\nHe stared at the canister. His lips parted, but he didn't speak. He reached out to take the canister, holding it as carefully as if it were porcelain instead of heavily insulated steel. Tears dripped down the sides of his nose, but he didn't bother to wipe them away. \"Thank you, Isaac.\"\n\n\"You're welcome.\" I looked over my shoulder toward the river. \"And thank you.\"\n\nHe stood and raised his cane in salute. \"Good luck.\"\n\nBabs Palmer arrived two hours later, accompanied by about twenty automatons. Their arrival created a strobe light effect powerful enough to trigger seizures. In my case, it simply added to the throbbing pain in my skull.\n\n\"Took you long enough,\" I said. Lena and I were resting at the base of a pine tree. Everyone else had cleared out as soon as they found Rusty, who had lost an arm to Death's scythe. He would have died if he hadn't been able to get his belt tightened around his shoulder as a makeshift tourniquet. Ponce de Leon had healed the stump, and I'd promised to restore his arm as soon as I got a good night's sleep.\n\nI pointed to the clearing. \"Would you believe that asshole Ponce de Leon stole my car?\"\n\n\"You stole it from him first,\" Lena said. Her appearance was human once more, soft and warm and beautiful.\n\n\"The Porters will be reviewing your history and actions,\" Babs said after a long pause. \"I know you were able to save Jeneta.\"\n\nI yawned and rested my head on Lena's shoulder. Her arm snaked around my waist, her thumb hooking through the belt loop of my jeans. I waved a hand at the automatons. \"I take it you found the sphere and built your army of toy soldiers.\"\n\n\"We sensed the magic of Meridiana's portal when it activated, and were able to trace its power to the moon. You're fortunate we were able to retrieve it before she did.\"\n\n\"Well, Meridiana was suffering from brain freeze.\" I clamped back laughter at my own bad joke. If I started giggling, exhaustion and giddiness would make it impossible to stop. \"I knew you'd be searching for it. I figured you'd have an automaton hop up for a quick moonwalk within minutes of Meridiana trying to grab it.\"\n\n\"And if you'd been wrong?\" Babs asked. \"If she'd gotten her mitts on the sphere first?\"\n\n\"This wasn't exactly how I'd intended things to go,\" I admitted. \"I had to improvise a bit when you and your friends showed up at the fort.\"\n\nBabs straightened, visibly trying to get back on script. \"Based on your results, we might be able to overlook your other actions and restore your position in research. We'll also be assigning Jeneta to a Porter psychiatrist. I know you've been concerned about her. However, you need to tell us everything you know about Ponce de Leon and Bi Wei, and where they might have gone.\"\n\n\"They left.\" Bi Wei had slipped away during the battle. I had no idea where Ponce de Leon had gone. All I knew was that I would be unlikely to find him unless and until he wanted me to.\n\n\"How many of those things did you make?\" Lena asked, waving lazily at the automatons.\n\n\"We weren't able to capture all of the Ghost Army,\" Babs admitted. \"Some escaped. But we have five hundred new automatons.\"\n\nIt was the first thing she'd said that truly bothered me. \"You had the sphere. How could they just escape?\"\n\n\"We miscalculated the amount of magic it would take to duplicate a thousand automatons.\"\n\nAt least half of the Ghost Army was still out there. Damn their ambition. \"I guess that makes you king of a pretty big magical hill, eh? What about the sphere itself?\"\n\n\"Destroyed, along with Meridiana.\"\n\n\"You hope.\" It saddened me to know Gerbert d'Aurillac's masterpiece was no more.\n\n\"The ghosts aren't the only threat,\" Babs continued. \"The Porters are splintering. The students of Bi Sheng are out there, waiting for us to drop our guard. And there are other rogues to worry about, like your Spanish friend. Christ only knows what the rest of the world's going to want to do to us as the truth spreads.\"\n\n\"Where's Nicola Pallas?\" I asked.\n\nBabs must have heard some unspoken threat in my tone. She frowned, and the two closest automatons stepped forward. \"She'll be given a fair hearing. Most likely, she'll be dismissed from the Porters with strict rules limiting her use of magic.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" I dragged the word out. \"I don't think that's going to work for me. How about instead you give Cameron a ring. Tell him to let Nicola go. I don't know if she'll want to stay with the Porters or not, but I think we should let her make that choice.\"\n\nAutomaton magic surged to life, preparing to counter any spells I might attempt. As if I had the energy for that.\n\n\"Oh, please. I'm too damn tired to fight you.\" I raised my hands in surrender. \"I'll tell you what, though. I can understand why Gutenberg locked some of those gaming manuals I found at the fort.\" I waved my fingers, admiring my ring with its three now-empty settings. \"The craziest campaign I ever ran, my brother's dwarf wizard got hold of a ring of three wishes. There are limits to what you can use wishes for, of course. Let's say, in theory, you wanted to wish all the automatons out of existence. A direct assault like that is just too much. You probably couldn't use it to destroy Meridiana or prevent her from ever being born, or anything like that, either. It would take too much power.\"\n\nI slid the ring from my finger and tossed it to Babs. \"On the other hand, you could use a wish to transport an object to another location, like the moon. Or to create a moderately powerful, single-use magical item. Something like a silver tack enchanted with a pair of spells. Maybe a maximized dispel magic and a force orb. Automatons have defenses against that sort of thing, so the trick would be to plant it inside the head. Difficult, unless you already have a partially disassembled automaton to work with. Then you could get within its protective spells. If all went well, the first spell would dispel and destroy the ghost, and the second would blow the automaton apart from the inside out.\"\n\nI tilted my head. \"But even then, you've only managed to sabotage a single automaton. Unless someone was using a magical gismo to duplicate that automaton... and everything inside of it.\"\n\nBabs was three shades paler by the time I finished my monologue. Power shot from a beaded bracelet around her left wrist. My body went rigid. I couldn't move or speak. She forced her way into my thoughts, searching to find whether or not I was telling the truth.\n\nI was. I let her see the memory of how I had rammed the enchanted tack into the inside of their decapitated automaton, hiding it in the shadow behind the metal neck joint. And then I let her find my third and final wish. The one I had used to create a magical remote that would trigger those spells. I had shaped it into a silver ring in the shape of an oak leaf.\n\n\"Where is the remote?\" she demanded.\n\n\"Oh, that? I figured you'd try to stop me, so I gave it to Lena.\"\n\nBeside me, Lena twisted the ring on her middle finger. Twenty automaton heads exploded in unison. The concussive force toppled me onto my back. As I waited for my ears to stop ringing, I studied the magic Babs had used to trap my body and peeled it back, one story at a time.\n\nBabs groaned. Wood and metal shrapnel had pelted her body. She was alive, but in no condition to fight. I had gotten a few cuts and bruises myself, but my jacket had protected me from the worst of it.\n\nI walked over to remove the bracelet from her wrist. I also took a magic wristwatch, a sidearm, her cell phone, and three books tucked away in her purse. Once she was magically defenseless, I checked her pulse and made sure none of her injuries were life-threatening.\n\nDecapitated automatons fell all around us, their magical armor clinking to the ground in pieces. I saw no sign of active magic, or of the ghosts Babs had imprisoned within them.\n\n\"I was really hoping that would finish off all of the Ghost Army.\" I sat down in front of Babs and crossed my legs. \"Congratulations. In your rush to set yourself up as the next Gutenberg, you let half those things loose in our world. I wonder what the other Regional Masters are going to say about that.\"\n\n\"You destroyed our only means of fighting them,\" she replied.\n\n\"The only means? A libriomancer should have more imagination than that.\" I slid her phone through the dirt. \"Now how about you make that phone call to Cameron and tell him to turn Nicola loose? I suspect he'll also want to know why the rest of your mechanical army just exploded.\"\n\nTwenty-four hours later, I was sitting in the Detroit Metro Airport with Lena, Nidhi, and Jeneta, watching the flow of arriving and departing passengers.\n\nJeneta glanced up from her book\u2014a paperback collection of late twentieth-century poetry\u2014and frowned. \"Those things make you look like a nerd.\"\n\nI pushed the black-framed glasses higher up on my nose. The earpieces weren't adjusted quite right, and the lenses weren't perfect, being designed to help correct damage from cataracts, but they were better than nothing.\n\nThe charring of my vision continued to give me trouble, especially when reading or trying to drive at night. Not that driving was much of an issue, since my truck had burned up with my house and Ponce de Leon had taken the Triumph. Sure, it was technically his car, but I really, really liked it.\n\n\"They're not nerdy,\" said Lena. \"They're 'geek-chic.'\"\n\nJeneta's feet tapped anxiously against the floor. She scanned the crowd again. To distract her, I set Smudge's cage atop her duffel bag and offered her a packet I had been saving for the right occasion.\n\nBefore, she would have lit up. Now, it was as if everything about her had been dimmed. But her crooked smile as she accepted the gift was progress. \"For Smudge?\"\n\n\"He's never tried Pop Rocks before. Don't give him more than three to start with until we see how he does.\"\n\nShe tore open the packet and poured a pile of irregular pink crystals into her hand. She took her time selecting three, then offered them to Smudge.\n\nSmudge carefully plucked the crystals from her fingertip and gobbled them down. Jeneta tossed the rest of the handful into her own mouth.\n\nSpiders had far less saliva than human beings, and if it wasn't enough to dissolve the candy and release the pressurized bubbles of CO2, this could be rather anticlimactic. If the candy didn't break down until it was in his stomach, I'd just have a belching fire-spider. Which could also be entertaining.\n\nThirty seconds passed. A minute.\n\nThere was a faint crackling sound, and Smudge jumped back as if he was trying to escape from his own mouth. A puff of red fire passed over his back, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. He turned to glare accusingly at Jeneta. A second puff of flame followed the first.\n\nJeneta giggled. \"I think they gave him hiccups.\"\n\nSmudge flamed one more time, groomed his face, and trotted back to the side of the cage to beg for more.\n\n\"I think he likes it,\" said Lena.\n\nJeneta nodded, but kept her attention on Smudge. I wondered again whether bringing her here had been a good idea. The last time she was in this airport, Meridiana had been in control of her body. We could have arranged to meet her parents anywhere. But she had insisted, and Nidhi said it was important to let Jeneta make her own choices, to help her start to regain a sense of control.\n\n\"Do you think Meridiana is really gone?\" Jeneta asked quietly.\n\nMuch as I wanted to lie, I owed her more than that. \"I'm not sure. Nicola confirmed that the sphere was destroyed, and the pieces are magically inert. We know the remnants of the Ghost Army are still out there. I've heard of two attacks since last night, but they weren't planned or coordinated the way they were when Meridiana was around.\"\n\nI was pretty sure Nicola hadn't slept at all since leaving Fort Michilimackinac. In addition to helping organize a response to the ghosts, she was also reviewing Gutenberg's notes to try to catalog everything I had undone when I destroyed his pen. They would be months or years cleaning up that mess.\n\n\"I've also spoken with Bi Wei,\" I continued. \"She's agreed to meet with Nicola. I'm hoping the Porters and the students of Bi Sheng will be able to work together to hunt down the surviving ghosts.\"\n\n\"Meridiana let me see what was happening sometimes,\" Jeneta said. \"What she\u2014what we were doing. Like when those people tried to kill you and burned down your house. We manipulated their emotions, pushed them into turning on you, but they were already scared. They're going to be scared of me, too.\"\n\n\"Some of those same people helped us save you,\" Nidhi said gently. \"Despite their fear.\"\n\nLena pointed to the gates. \"There they are.\"\n\nMmadukaaku and Paige Aboderin raced through the crowd toward their daughter. The sight of them shattered every wall Jeneta had built up. By the time they reached each other, Jeneta was sobbing. The three of them sat down right there on the floor, heads together, arms around one another, like a rock in a river of people.\n\nNidhi, Lena, and I all stood, but none of us wanted to interrupt this reunion. Lena positioned herself \"upstream,\" forcing others to veer around. Nidhi and I followed suit, trying to give Jeneta and her parents a modicum of space.\n\nJeneta had spoken to them on the phone, but I got the feeling they hadn't truly believed until this moment, when they could see and touch and hear their daughter in person.\n\nWhen they finally rose, Jeneta's parents stood close together, keeping her between them. They turned toward us, and I suppressed the urge to wipe my palms on my jeans. No words could undo the pain I had caused them.\n\nMmadukaaku was a large man in a rumpled brown suit. Sweat darkened the collar of his green shirt. He stood like a statue, appearing to neither blink nor breathe as his brown eyes berated me.\n\nPaige was almost as tall as her husband. She stood with her chin raised. One arm clasped her daughter. The other pressed tightly to her own chest.\n\nThe silence bored deeper into my guts, like a spindle knotting my intestines. I was the one who had met them back at the beginning of summer to explain how their daughter would be spending one day a week at a \"library internship.\" I was the one who had repeatedly lied to them after Jeneta disappeared. Who had stopped answering their calls.\n\nI tightened my jaw and clenched my teeth, bracing for whatever came next.\n\nStill they did nothing. Said nothing. I was tempted to punch myself in the face, just to break the tension. They were going to make me speak first. So be it. \"I'm\u2014\"\n\nMy throat turned to stone, and my eyes blurred. I shook my head furiously, fighting for control. I heard Lena and Nidhi moving closer, not speaking, but offering their strength.\n\n\"Your daughter,\" I said, trying a different approach, \"is amazing.\"\n\n\"Yes, she is,\" said Paige.\n\n\"She saved my friend's life.\" I nodded toward Lena. \"Earlier this year.\"\n\n\"With magic.\" The anger in Paige's words made it clear this wasn't a question, but a challenge. She knew the truth. They both did. They wanted me to acknowledge that truth.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nI wouldn't have thought Mmadukaaku's body could tighten any more. If he had been stone before, now he was wrought iron, hard and immovable and glowing with fury.\n\n\"You took her from us to teach her magic,\" Mmadukaaku said quietly.\n\n\"That's right. Jeneta is a libriomancer. She can manipulate the magic of stories, though she prefers poetry.\"\n\nA muted smile flashed over Paige's features.\n\n\"You're one of those Porters,\" Mmadukaaku continued. \"We saw you on the news.\"\n\n\"Not anymore. The Porters aren't happy with me right now, either.\"\n\n\"Papa.\" Jeneta's whisper silenced us as effectively as magic. She pulled her parents toward the bench and picked up the small cage. \"This is Smudge. I e-mailed you about him, before.\"\n\n\"I remember. He's beautiful.\" Mmadukaaku actually smiled. Right up until Jeneta offered another Pop Rock to Smudge, causing him to backfire again. Mmadukaaku stepped back. \"God have mercy.\"\n\n\"He's not dangerous,\" Jeneta said. Which wasn't entirely true, but I held my tongue. \"The first time Isaac showed him to me, I thought of the Anansi stories you used to tell. Smudge is a trickster at heart. Yesterday he fought a skeleton to help Isaac and Lena rescue me.\"\n\nHer parents turned to me, their skepticism and confusion palpable.\n\nI shrugged. \"Smudge is... he's spunky. Very loyal, too. And he likes Jeneta a lot. Mostly because she spoils him with junk food.\"\n\n\"I wonder where she learned that,\" Lena commented.\n\n\"What happens next, Mister Vainio?\" Paige asked.\n\nIt was Nidhi who stepped forward to respond. \"Now you take your daughter home. Let her adjust to her old life. Try not to pressure her. Don't expect her to do everything she used to do right away. Give her time. She'll let you know what she's up for. Have a close friend visit her at home before she tries going out. When she's ready, have her go out with one or two people before she starts going to any parties.\"\n\n\"Jeneta doesn't go to parties,\" Mmadukaaku said.\n\nI don't think he noticed Jeneta's reaction. I did my best to keep a straight face so as not to give her away.\n\n\"She'll probably have nightmares,\" Nidhi continued. \"Certain sounds, smells, and sights might trigger panic. This isn't something you can fix. All you can do is to be there for her.\" She handed a business card to Mmadukaaku. \"Any of you can call me at any time.\"\n\n\"You're a doctor?\" asked Paige.\n\n\"A psychiatrist. I've worked with people who've had bad experiences with magic, though I have no magical abilities myself.\"\n\nMmadukaaku was visibly relieved at that last part.\n\nTo Jeneta, Nidhi said, \"The fact that you're standing here proves how strong you are. But that doesn't mean you have to do this alone. You're not alone, and I meant what I said. Call me any time, day or night. If I'm with a client, I'll get back to you within an hour.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" Jeneta mumbled.\n\n\"Will she be safe?\" asked Paige. \"We saw the video of those people attacking Isaac and his house. What's to stop others from doing the same to our daughter? She was on television, too. The whole world saw her. The news people have already discovered who she is. Someone posted our home address on the Internet. We're talking about moving, but what happens when they find her?\"\n\n\"Getting an unlisted address and number is a good start,\" I said. \"There are things I can do to help you stay off the public's radar, if you'll let me. The Porters have done witness protection-type work before.\"\n\n\"You said you weren't part of the Porters,\" Mmadukaaku said sharply.\n\n\"I'm not. But one of the Regional Masters owes me a pretty big favor.\" I moved toward the pile of luggage and other belongings. \"In the meantime, I have a gift that might help.\"\n\nJeneta looked almost as wary as her parents. Lena winked at her as I uncovered a small traveling cage, identical to the one Smudge used.\n\nJeneta's mouth and eyes turned to near-perfect circles when she saw the small red-spotted spider inside the cage. She brought both hands to her mouth and looked at Smudge, as if to make sure I hadn't pulled some sleight-of-hand. \"Is that...?\"\n\nI held out the cage. \"The second book in Smudge's series included an encounter at a fire-spider nest. This was one of the spiders written into the background. She wasn't given a name or much of a personality, which I think eased her transition to our world. I was up all morning helping her to adjust. But being a fire-spider, she should have the same basic potential as Smudge.\"\n\nJeneta extended trembling hands to take the cage. The fire-spider backed into a corner, the bristles on her back glowing like tiny matchsticks.\n\nI passed Jeneta a plastic bag full of chocolate-covered ants. \"Feed her these, and you'll be her best friend forever.\" To her parents, I said, \"Fire-spiders can sense danger. Smudge has saved my life more than once. You'll need to keep her somewhere that isn't flammable, but if you install a smoke detector over her cage, she'll be able to alert you to any threat. I hope she never has to, but if she does, get out of there and call me.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Mmadukaaku, though I wasn't sure he meant it.\n\n\"She'll need crushed stone to line her cage. You can buy crickets to feed her from any pet store.\" I frowned at Jeneta. \"Don't let her just eat sweets all the time.\"\n\n\"I won't,\" she promised.\n\n\"If you have other pets, keep them away from her for their own safety, at least until she gets used to them.\" I pulled a small carry-on sized cooler from below the bench. A printed label on the top read, Contains Live, Harmless Invertebrate for Scientific Research. \"I've taken care of the paperwork. You'll need to leave her in the cooler for the flight, but you can take her on the plane with you.\"\n\nThe inside of the cooler was lined with obsidian gravel and contained a pair of small hand-warmers for heat. \"Crack the lid before you board and after you land. She'll have plenty of air for the flight.\"\n\n\"Does this mean my fire-spider and Smudge could\u2014\"\n\n\"There will be no breeding of the fire-spiders,\" I said firmly.\n\nJeneta pouted, but it couldn't smother the excitement in her eyes. That left only one other matter. I faced Jeneta's parents. \"Many of the stories you've heard are true. There are vampires, werewolves, and more. The woman who took Jeneta did so using what she called the Ghost Army. Some of those ghosts are still out there. It would help us find and stop them if we could work with Jeneta and ask her about the things she experienced. But if you or she say no, we'll find another way.\"\n\nThey didn't answer immediately, which was encouraging. Mmadukaaku and Paige looked at one another, carrying on a silent conversation. Finally, Paige put her hand on Jeneta's shoulder.\n\nJeneta stared at her fire-spider. \"They'll be coming for me. For all of us who do magic. I want to help.\"\n\nMmadukaaku looked at Nidhi.\n\n\"It would help her regain a sense of control over her own life,\" Nidhi said quietly.\n\nHe pressed his lips together like he wanted to stop the words from escaping. \"All right.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" I smiled as Jeneta offered an ant to her spider. \"What are you going to call her?\"\n\n\"Nkiruka.\" She raised her head. \"It means a good and hopeful future.\"\n\nMy name is Isaac. I've been a libriomancer for most of my adult life. Until recently, I was a member of the organization known as the Porters.\n\nI've seen these people sacrifice their lives to protect you from monsters that would haunt you for the rest of your days. I've also seen them commit the pettiest acts of greed and selfishness.\n\nBoth of these extremes remind me that they're human. The Porters aren't gods. None of us are. We're simply people who have learned new ways of poking the universe and making it react.\n\nI recently got some advice from a... I guess you'd call him a friend. (Though if he was a real friend, he'd return my car!) Anyway, he's lived through this kind of world-altering change before, and he says it's going to be a bumpy ride. He also reassures me that we'll get through it. Empires rise and fall. Human beings live and die, but humanity survives. It's what we're best at.\n\nNone of which is all that comforting when you discover a nest of vampires living a half mile below your local supermarket, eh? Or see winged monsters terrorizing ancient churches.\n\nYou're going to hear that magic is a dangerous threat that needs to be eradicated, and that it's the salvation of mankind. There's truth to both sides. Magic is powerful, dangerous, and potentially deadly.\n\nSo was the printing press. So was language for that matter, and nuclear power and gunpowder and the Internet and so much more.\n\nMagic is amazing. I've walked on the moon. I've spoken with men who died centuries before I was born. I've seen treasures that were thought lost to history, and I've met beings who taught me that there's no limit to the variety and imagination of our universe.\n\nAccording to myth, Prometheus stole fire from the gods, and was sentenced to eternal torment for his crime. Well, the Porters aren't gods. Nor should humanity have to steal the magic you've helped to create.\n\nMagic is a gift. Like fire, it can burn. And like fire, it's going to change everything.\n\nYou're gonna love it."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Pagemaster",
        "author": "David Kirchner",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy",
            "magic",
            "books about books",
            "childrens"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\ufeff[ Midnight ]\n\nThe wind howled. *WOOSH!*\n\nThunder exploded. *BOOM!*\n\nLightning streaked across the dark night sky. *CR-RAACK!*\n\nRichard Tyler leaped back from his window and gasped. That lightning came awfully close, he thought. He had once read of a man who had been struck by lightning. The man was saved only because of the rubber soles in his shoes.\n\nBut Richard wasn't wearing any shoes. He wasn't even wearing any slippers. He was in his pajamas and ready for bed. His feet were completely bare.\n\nRichard shivered with fear. His large hornrimmed glasses rattled on his nose. He stumbled backwards and bumped into his desk. Then he reached for the doorknob and scrambled out of the room.\n\nRichard was scared. After all, he was only ten and a half years old and didn't want to get struck by lightning.\n\nRichard ran down the hall. He hurried to his parents' bedroom. There he knew he would be safe. He was just about to knock on the door when he heard his father's voice coming from inside the room.\n\n\"Claire, how can you say that?\" he heard his father, Alan Tyler, say. \"Richard is not a normal kid.\"\n\n\"Alan, please,\" came another voice. It was Richard's mother, Claire Tyler. \"Every ten year old is afraid of something.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" replied Alan. \"But every ten year old isn't afraid of everything. Claire, the kid's afraid of tuna.\"\n\nMercury levels in some tuna, Richard thought to himself. He had read up on how too much could be bad for you.\n\n\"Alan,\" said Claire. \"The world is a frightening place for Rich right now. I think we could be a little more supportive.\"\n\n\"Supportive?\" replied Alan. \"I'm the most supportive father on earth. I'm running out of supportive things to do. I signed him up for Little League. He drove the team crazy with statistics about getting hurt from being hit in the head with a ball. I agreed to coach soccer, a sport I detest, if they would please let him on the team. Did you know that getting kicked in the knee could cause shin splints in the legs? Claire, he brought in medical evidence. Three of my best players quit after that. So much for sports. And now I'm building him a treehouse. But he refuses to climb up to it.\"\n\n\"You know he hates heights,\" said Claire.\n\n\"I just want to be a good father.\" Richard heard his father sigh.\n\n\"You are a good father,\" Claire said reassuringly. \"Maybe you're trying too hard. For now, let's just say that Richard is 'cautious' and see where it goes.\"\n\n\"Cautious?\" Richard heard his father say with a disapproving voice. \"Claire, this is way past cautious.\"\n\nRichard had heard enough. He returned to his room and climbed back into his bed. He turned off his bed lamp and clicked on a flashlight.\n\nHe aimed the flashlight beam across his room and did a spot check. He saw his fire extinguisher and his complete set of disaster almanacs. He also saw his earthquake kit and his poster describing exactly what to do in case you were choking on your food. Everything was in its proper place.\n\nFinally, he saw his special glow-in-the-dark sign over the door. It spelled Exit in easy-to-read green letters. It was so Richard could find his way out in case of an emergency.\n\nAs he crawled under the covers, he began to think about his dad again. Richard really didn't want to be a disappointment to him. Starting tomorrow he'd try to act more like a normal kid. But it wasn't going to be easy!"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Dangerous Mission",
                "text": "The next morning Richard looked out the window. To his amazement the storm hadn't destroyed a single house on his block. Some of the other neighborhood kids were racing their bicycles down the street. They weaved daringly from the sidewalk to the street and back to the sidewalk.\n\nRichard calculated that they were running a high risk of having an accident. He was all ready to call 911.\n\nRichard could hear the sound of hammering in the backyard. His dad was building him a treehouse. Richard didn't want a treehouse. But he didn't want to hurt his father's feelings, either. So he thought he should act as if he liked the treehouse.\n\nAfter a few more minutes Richard followed the hammering sounds out into the backyard. Pieces of lumber were scattered around a large oak tree. There was a ladder leaning against the tree and extension cables were snaked around it. In the branches of the tree sat a four-walled wooden house. It even had windows and a doorway. Alan was inside the treehouse hammering some floorboards together. He was a handsome-looking man in his early thirties with blond hair and broad shoulders.\n\n\"Hey, Rich!\" he called. He was surprised to see Richard. \"Well? You like it?\"\n\n\"Uh, yeah,\" replied Richard. \"It looks great, Dad.\" He was trying to sound excited, but he really didn't feel that way.\n\n\"Hey, how 'bout bringing up that bag of nails?\" asked Alan.\n\nRichard grabbed a paper bag full of nails from a worktable. Then he walked over to the tree and stretched to hand the bag to his dad.\n\n\"Nah, come on up,\" his father prodded. \"The view is terrific up here.\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" said Richard.\n\n\"But it's solid as a rock!\"\n\n\"Dad, eight percent of all household accidents involve ladders,\" explained Richard. \"Another three percent involve trees. You're talkin' about an eleven percent probability here.\"\n\nRichard took a step back, but accidentally bumped into a long piece of lumber that had been propped next to the worktable. The piece of lumber swung around and knocked a bucket of paint off the table. The bucket fell into a wagon. Then the wagon rolled into the ladder that was leaning against the tree. The ladder slid away from the tree, snagging an extension cord. The extension cord caught around Alan's leg and yanked him off balance. Alan came flying out of the treehouse and landed on the grassy ground below.\n\n\"You can't argue with statistics, Dad,\" Richard said to his father in an \"Ltold-you-so\" tone of voice.\n\nJust then Claire came out of the house.\n\n\"How's it goin' guys?\" she asked. \"Alan, your treehouse looks terrific.\"\n\n\"Richard's treehouse,\" said Alan insistently. He rose to his feet and brushed the dirt off his back. Then he opened his hand and presented Richard with a single nail. \"Rich, you want to help?\" he asked his son. \"Here's something you can do. Go down to Guttman's Hardware and pick up a pound of these nails.\"\n\nRichard froze.\n\n\"B-but, Dad\u2014\" he started nervously.\n\n\"No buts,\" Alan said firmly. \"I intend to finish this treehouse before dark if it kills us.\"\n\n\"Us?\" Richard asked, swallowing hard. He looked over at Claire. \"Mom?\"\n\nClaire walked over to Richard. \"Richie,\" she said. \"Guttman's is just a short bike ride to town.\"\n\n\"Most traffic accidents happen within three blocks of the home,\" Richard reminded his mother.\n\n\"Rich, you can't base your whole life on statistics,\" said Alan. \"You've got to take some chances.\" Then he stuffed a five-dollar bill into Richard's shirt pocket. \"You can do this, son.\"\n\nRichard realized that he had little choice. He would have to run the errand. It would be a dan-gerous mission.\n\nHe went into the garage. First he put on a helmet that had a special rearview mirror at-tached to it. Then he put on his bicycle jacket with the reflective safety tape attached to its back.\n\nNext he checked the safety features on his bi-cycle. Lights, reflectors, mirrors. Fenders, horns, bells, fire extinguisher, and first aid kit. Everything was where it should be.\n\nWhen he was certain that he was as prepared as he possibly could be he climbed onto his bike. He fastened his helmet tightly and slowly wheeled himself down the driveway. He looked up at the sky. Some dark clouds were forming on the ho-rizon. He knew he would have to get to town and back before it started to rain. He looked down the street. The neighborhood kids were now taking turns jumping their bikes off a ramp.\n\nWhen he felt ready Richard took a deep breath.\n\n\"Hey, look guys, it's Richard Tyler,\" he heard a voice call out. One of the neighborhood kids had spotted him.\n\nBefore he knew it Richard was surrounded as the kids skidded to a stop and blocked his way.\n\n\"Get a load of his outfit,\" one of the kids laughed. \"Where you goin', Tyler, the moon?\"\n\n\"C'mon!\" another kid shouted, egging Richard on. \"Catch some air!\"\n\n\"Go for it!\" said another kid.\n\nRichard looked over at the ramp the kids had made. It was a simple sheet of plywood propped up against a garbage can that had been laid on its side. He didn't have to do much calculating to know what the odds of an accident on that thing were. Without saying a word he turned his bike in the opposite direction and took off.\n\nThe sky overhead grew thicker with dark clouds. Thunder was beginning to rumble in the sky.\n\nRichard began pedaling faster. He did not want to get caught in the rain. That would only increase his chances of having an accident. He saw a nar-row tunnel up ahead and rode into it. The tunnel was lined with a row of dim yellow lights. One by one the lights exploded as Richard raced through.\n\nWhen he came out of the other side of the tunnel the sky had become even darker. It seemed almost like the dead of night. Richard brought his bike to a stop and looked up at the sky. Suddenly a bolt of lightning streaked across the horizon. Thunderclaps exploded all around. Then thick droplets of rain began to spike Richard in the face.\n\nBefore long the drops had grown into a downpour.\n\nRichard screamed. He wanted to turn back. He wanted to return to the safety of his room.\n\nThen he wondered: what would be worse? His father's reaction when he returned home without the bag of nails? Or going on to Guttman's Hardware store in pouring rain?\n\nRichard realized that no amount of calculating was necessary in this case. It was too late to turn back.\n\nSo he braced himself for the worst.\n\nThen he began pumping his bike pedals as hard as he could.\n\nHe rode forward into the raging storm."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Librarian",
                "text": "The sidewalks were deserted as Richard turned the corner and rode into town.\n\nThe streets were becoming flooded. Richard could barely push his bicycle forward through the water. He was blinded by sheets of rain.\n\nSuddenly a gust of wind caused a tree branch to fall directly into Richard's path. Richard swerved his bicycle out of the way. Another gust of wind caught his helmet and yanked it off his head.\n\nRichard knew he needed shelter fast. He squinted through the sheets of pouring rain. He could make out a single, warm yellow light. It was coming from a building just down the street.\n\nRichard steered his bicycle toward the building. It was a large brick building with white columns in the front. He skidded to a halt and ran up a long flight of stairs that led to the entrance. As he opened the door, a gust of wind pushed him forward.\n\nRichard was out of breath and completely soaked. At least now he was safe from the raging storm outside. He looked around. The strange place seemed even bigger on the inside. The ceilings were very high. A marble staircase led to other floors. A row of statues cast huge eerie shadows across the walls.\n\nRichard felt that he had come upon a very mysterious place.\n\n\"Welcome to the library, young man,\" said a deep voice excitedly Richard jumped. The voice had come from a narrow aisle. Richard rubbed the rain from his eyes and looked down the aisle. That's when he noticed that there were many aisles. Each one held a row of shelves. And each shelf was filled with books.\n\nThere were rows upon rows of books. Shelves of books. Walls of books. Richard had never seen so many books in one place.\n\n\"Til be right with you,\" came the voice again.\n\nRichard looked down another aisle. This time he saw a tall ladder. He looked up the ladder and saw a rumpled old man standing at its top. The man returned a book to a shelf. Then the man pushed off with his foot. The ladder shot up the aisle along a thin rail. The man's wispy white hair blew back as he rode the ladder. When he reached the spot where Richard stood, he brought the ladder to a sharp and sudden stop.\n\n\"Tm Mr. Dewey, the librarian.\"\n\nSo that's where he was, Richard realized. The library!\n\n\"Don't tell me,\" said Mr. Dewey. His eyes were sparkling with excitement. \"You're in need of a special book.\"\n\n\"M-mister,\" began Richard nervously. \"I j-just \u2014 \"\n\n\"Stop, stop, stop,\" said Mr. Dewey as he climbed down the ladder. \"Allow me to guess. I have this talent for sensing what people need.\"\n\nMr. Dewey stuck his chest out and raised his arm in a gallant pose. \"You're in need of... a fantasy!\" he said. \"Brave knights, mythical fairies, ferocious dragons, damsels in distress!\"\n\n\"No, l-look,\" said Richard. \"I need \u2014 \"\n\n\"Adventure!\" interrupted Mr. Dewey. He began to wave a pretend sword through the air. \"Of course! You're a boy who loves adventure. You must be, to have braved nature's worst. Adventure! Brimming with wicked villains, buried treasure, and loathesome pirates who'd just as soon cut your throat as tip their hats.\"\n\n\"N-no,\" insisted Richard. \"That's not what I need.\"\n\nJust then, a flash of lightning flooded the tall windows. Richard gasped. The sudden shadows made Mr. Dewey look frightening.\n\n\"Horror!\" exclaimed Mr. Dewey. He hunched his back and raised his arms. \"That's it! Horror!\n\nWretched monsters, haunted houses, graveyards. Yes, it's horror for you, boy. I'm sure of it! Your library card, please?\"\n\nMr. Dewey held out his hand.\n\n\"I don't have one,\" said Richard.\n\nAt that a light sparkled in Mr. Dewey's hand. When it was gone a library card appeared in his palm. \"Now you do,\" said Mr. Dewey. Then he slid behind a desk and handed Richard a pen. \"Sign the bottom of the card, last name first.\"\n\nRichard took the pen and signed his name. Mr. Dewey took a rubber stamp and pressed it onto the card. Then he handed the card back to Richard.\n\n\"Mr. Tyler,\" he said, reading Richard's signature. \"Consider this card your passport through the wonderful, and quite unpredictable, world of books.\"\n\n\"But, I'm not here for any books,\" said Richard finally. \"That's what I've been trying to tell you. I just came in because of the storm.\"\n\n\"You mean you don't need \u2014?\" Mr. Dewey began with surprise. \"Oh. I see.\" Mr. Dewey seemed very disappointed. It was his job to make sure that all who came into the library found the books they wanted.\n\n\"Is there a phone where I can call my parents?\" Richard asked the librarian.\n\nMr. Dewey sighed and pointed to a wall beyond the aisles of books. \"Through there,\" he explained. \"Proceed in a northeasterly direction and continue on to the rotunda. From the rotunda you will head west through the fiction section. There you will find the public telephone. You can't miss it.\"\n\nRichard moved toward the aisles cautiously. There were so many rows. Suppose he made a wrong turn? Would he ever find his way back?\n\n\"Don't be afraid, boy,\" said Mr. Dewey. \"If you lose your way merely direct yourself back to the Exit sign.\"\n\nRichard looked up. A glowing green Exit sign was perched high over the entrance in front of him. It was just like the one in his bedroom.\n\nRichard walked along the rows of books. It was like a maze. Every so often, just to be sure, he turned and glanced back at the Exit sign. As long as he could see it he knew he would be all right.\n\nThen Richard came upon a series of aisles that were arranged like the spokes of a big wheel. Above him the ceiling gave way to a high dome. The dome was decorated with paintings of people Richard recognized as characters from famous books.\n\nThere was Captain Ahab tossing a harpoon at the giant whale from Moby Dick. There was the peg-legged pirate Long John Silver holding an empty treasure chest like the one he found in Treasure Island. There was a brave knight fighting a dragon. There was the two-faced scientist from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One side of his face was handsome, the other hideous.\n\nIn the very center of the dome was the face of a wizened old man with a long white beard and a flowing velvet robe. He seemed to be looking straight down at Richard.\n\n\"Geez,\" said Richard with awe. He took a step backwards. He didn't notice that some raindrops were still falling from the bottom of his coat. They had formed a small puddle around his shoes.\n\n*THUMP!* Richard slipped in the puddle and hit his head on the cold marble floor of the library.\n\nSuddenly everything went dark."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Pagemaster",
                "text": "T\\rip, drip, drip. Richard felt something wet Usplash beside him. He reached over and touched the drops with his fingers. Each finger was covered with a different color drop.\n\nSuddenly a blast of lightning lit the room. Richard looked up at the ceiling and gasped in horror. The painted characters had begun to melt. Colored paint was raining all about him and turning everything it touched into a painted backdrop.\n\nRichard screamed and did his best to dodge the liquid. Before he knew it, though, he was completely splattered with color. No longer was he a human boy of bones and flesh. He had become just like the characters from the ceiling.\n\n\"I'm a cartoon!\" Richard exclaimed with astonishment.\n\n\"You are an illustration,\" came a voice from the shadows.\n\nRichard wheeled around. A robed figure stepped out of the shadows. He, too, was an illustration.\n\n\"W-who are you?\" asked Richard with a gulp.\n\n\"I am the Pagemaster,\" said the man. \"Keeper of the books and guardian of the written word.\"\n\nThe Pagemaster looked familiar to Richard.\n\n\"You're the guy from up there!\" he exclaimed and pointed to the now empty ceiling. \"Where're the others?\"\n\nThe Pagemaster pointed to the rows of books in the room. \"Why, they're here, of course,\" he said with a grand gesture. \"And all around.\"\n\nRichard was scared. He looked back the way he had come and tried to see the Exit sign, but it wasn't there.\n\n\"M-maybe you could show me the way out?\" he asked the Pagemaster.\n\n\"If that is what you truly want,\" answered the Pagemaster.\n\nRichard nodded.\n\n\"Splendid!\" exclaimed the Pagemaster. He seemed very pleased. \"Follow me.\"\n\nThe Pagemaster led Richard toward the book stacks.\n\n\"Is that the way?\" asked Richard.\n\n\"Oh,\" replied the Pagemaster. \"It is the only way.\"\n\nThere was a sign posted above the book stacks.\n\n\"Fiction azzT' Richard read, confused.\n\n\"Fiction A to Z!\" corrected the Pagemaster.\n\n\"Where all is possible. Where a boy's imagination can take root and grow to incredible heights. Where a boy's fear is sometimes the road that leads to his own confidence. Where's a boy's courage is the wind that moves him to discovery. And where your journey is about to begin!\"\n\nThen, with a grand gesture the Pagemaster magically produced a book page in his hand. He flicked the page upward. As it rose to the ceiling Richard heard the thunderous sound of a giant's footsteps.\n\nThe Pagemaster produced another page. He sent this one sailing down the aisle. Suddenly, Richard heard the sound of a horse galloping.\n\nThen to illustrate his point further the Page-master flung yet another page down the aisle. A strong wind began to blow. Richard heard the sound of a pounding drum. A huge Viking ship came sailing straight toward him. He quickly ducked behind the Pagemaster for safety.\n\nFinally, the Pagemaster raised his staff. A book cart that had been sitting against the wall came to life. It scooped Richard up on its top. Richard screamed.\n\n\"Godspeed to you, boy!\" shouted the Pagemas-ter as the book cart turned and carried Richard down the aisles at a dizzying speed. \"And remember this: when in doubt, look to the books!\"\n\nThey were the last words that Richard could hear the Pagemaster say. For by now he was being carried deeper and deeper into the library, speeding faster and faster between the bookshelves. All around him he heard voices coming from the books. \"Once upon a time...\" he heard a voice say. \"Long ago and far away...\" came another voice. \"All for one and one for all...\" said another.\n\nUp ahead Richard could see a wooden telephone booth. BAM! The book cart slammed into the booth, spilling Richard on top of a pile of books.\n\nSuddenly the books beneath him began to quiver and shake. Richard looked down just as a six-inch saber lashed up between the books. He screamed and leaped back.\n\n\"Where's the son of a rum puncheon that knocked the wind from me sails,\" came a voice from beneath the pile of books. \"Where's he be? Where's he be?\"\n\nThen something pushed up from under the pile of books. Richard was amazed. It was an old book of adventure stories. In one hand it held the saber. Its other hand was nothing but a metal hook. It had a peg for a leg, a bandanna, and an eyepatch over one of its eyes. It was a book that looked like a pirate!\n\n\"Arrrrr!\" roared the book as it slashed its saber at Richard. \"So here be the lubber 'at scuffed me covers and with no apologies, too. You fiction or nonfiction?\"\n\n\"Tm R-R-R-Richard,\" Richard answered nervously. \"R-Richard Tyler.\"\n\nThe book scratched its top corner. \"What kind of book would that be?\" he asked.\n\n\"Tm not a book,\" replied Richard.\n\n\"Got any proof?\"\n\nRichard didn't know how to go about proving that he was a boy and not a book. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his library card. At least that would have his signature on it.\n\nThe book snatched the library card away from Richard. \"A library card!\" he said reading apologetically. \"Beggin' yer pardon, lad. Didn't know ye was a customer. Allow me to introduce myself. They call me Adventure!\"\n\n\"Look,\" said Richard. \"I just want to get out of here.\"\n\n\"Of course ya do, matey,\" said Adventure. \"We all do!\"\n\n\"J-just stay away from me,\" Richard cried.\n\nWith that he did an about face and stepped right through a hole in the library floor!"
            },
            {
                "title": "Adventure",
                "text": "Richard plummeted downward through the hole.\n\n\"EEEOOOWWW!\" Richard screamed as he tumbled down into a deep, dark pit with a pool of black water at the bottom.\n\nJust in time a ship's anchor and chain swung in and caught him. Richard held the chain tightly as he looked down. Below him the water stirred. Then an alligator leaped up and tried to take a bite out of Richard.\n\nRichard felt a tug from the top of the chain. He looked up and saw Adventure pulling on it. Soon Richard felt himself slowly being lifted out of the hole and back onto the library floor.\n\n\"This is a library, mate,\" warned Adventure. \"Not everything's as it seems.\"\n\n\"This place is dangerous \" said Richard breath-lessly. \"You said you knew the way out?\"\n\n\"I know these waters like the back o' me hand,\" replied Adventure, holding up his metal hook to prove it.\n\n\"Okay,\" said Richard. \"Let's just go!\"\n\n\"Sure, mate,\" said Adventure. \"I'd be happy t' navigate ye outta here. But there is one small favor I might be askin' in return.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Well,\" began Adventure. \"Fm afeared I've been dry-docked in this library far longer than I'd like t' remember. Need t' breathe the open air, feel a fair wind against me pages and the good earth beneath me, er... foot. As I sees it, you an' yer library card are me ticket outta here. Is it a deal, mate?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" agreed Richard anxiously. He was will-ing to do anything to find the exit. And he really didn't mind checking out the book.\n\nAdventure spun around on his peg leg. \"That's the spirit, lad!\" he exclaimed happily. \"Once we're outta here you an' me'll have many fine adventures. We'll search for buried treasure on lush green tropical islands, whar warm breezes blow \u2014 \"\n\n\"I have allergies,\" interrupted Richard.\n\n\"Exotic ports with dirty double-crossin' scoundrels,\" continued Adventure. \"And more fightin' than ye could ever ask fer!\"\n\n\"Fighting?\" Richard cringed.\n\n\"You'll never have to comb yer hair or brush yer teeth again!\" promised Adventure.\n\n\"But that's unsanitary,\" Richard reminded him.\n\n\"Sounds too good to be true, don't it?\"\n\n\"The exit?\" asked Richard impatiently. \"Can we get going now?\"\n\n\"Aye-aye,\" agreed Adventure. He pointed to a ladder that was leaning against a wall of bookshelves. \"First let's scale this mast and get our bearings.\"\n\n\"Mast?\" asked Richard. \"That's a ladder. I kind of have this thing about heights,\" he gulped.\n\nAdventure squinted his unpatched eye at Richard. Then he reached over and pulled out a book from a shelf. It was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Adventure opened the book to the chapter entitled \"The Squid\" and threw the book to the floor. Suddenly a huge tentacled squid popped out of the book. Richard screamed with fear and scurried to the very top of the ladder where Adventure was waiting.\n\n\"What'd you do that for?\" cried Richard fearfully. \"You're supposed to be helping me!\"\n\n\"I am helpin' ya,\" insisted Adventure. \"Tm helpin' ya find the exit.\"\n\nAnd with that Adventure reached down and pulled his peg leg off at the knee. Then he extended it to three times its length and held it up to his eye. His peg leg was now a telescope.\n\nClinging tightly to the ladder Richard slowly raised up to look over the top of the bookcases. He was scared. Suddenly a foghorn sounded in the distance. He squinted hard. Between the aisles of books Richard could see some misty images take shape. Far in the distance was a mysterious island shrouded in fog. In the center of the island was a smoldering volcano.\n\nRichard could hardly believe his eyes. Before him the greatest stories of all time had come to life. Amazing sights and sounds were coming from every direction.\n\nAll at once a bolt of lightning caught Richard's attention. Beyond it he saw a tall gabled tower with bats flying in and out of its windows. Richard ducked as the bats swooped low around his head and then flapped off into the distance.\n\nHe saw a mountain rising up from the island. The mountain was engulfed in low, misty clouds. And through the clouds Richard could just make out a dim green light.\n\nRichard snatched Adventure's eyeglass and focused it on the green light. It was the Exit sign.\n\n\"Look!\" exclaimed Richard. \"Look! There it is!\n\nI see the way out!\"\n\nJust then the ladder began to shake. Adventure and Richard looked down to see what was happening. The giant squid was climbing toward them.\n\n\"Jump, boy!\" Adventure cried, thinking fast. \"It's jump er yer life!\"\n\nAdventure leaped off of the ladder and grabbed the opposite bookshelf with his hook.\n\nRichard was frozen in fear. But just then the squid wrapped its tentacles around the rung of the ladder near his foot. It yanked the ladder away from the shelf and Richard found himself soaring, face first, into a wall of books.\n\nRichard scrambled to catch hold of something so he wouldn't fall to the ground. Panicking, he grabbed the edge of a book entitled Fantasy. But the book slipped off the shelf and both Richard and the book plummeted toward the ground!"
            },
            {
                "title": "Fantasy",
                "text": "Richard closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact. But suddenly he felt himself slowly being lowered to the ground.\n\nRichard opened his eyes. The book he was holding had sprouted wings. And it looked very cross.\n\n\"What do you think you're doing grabbing me like that?\" asked the book.\n\n\"W-well, I just \u2014 \" Richard stuttered, embarrassed. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Tm Fantasy,\" replied the book. She waved a magic wand and curtsied. Then she noticed that Richard's library card had fallen on the floor.\n\n\"What have we here?\" she asked, stepping on the card so Richard couldn't pick it up.\n\n\"It's a library card,\" answered Richard.\n\n\"I'm a book, honey,\" Fantasy snapped back. \"I can read. Why, I haven't seen one of these in a while.\" Then she handed the card back to Richard. \"Tell me, kid. What's the one thing you wish for more than anything else in the world?\"\n\n\"Anything in the world?\" asked Richard. \"Well, right now I'd settle for just getting out of here.\"\n\n\"I'll grant you your wish, child,\" Fantasy said, raising her wand. \"But you must do me one small kindness in return. You gotta check me outta here!\"\n\n\"That's it?\" Richard asked brightly. \"Okay! Let's go! Should I click my heels or something?\"\n\nFrom his spot on the bookcase high above them Adventure didn't like what he was hearing. \"Hold on there, sister,\" he shouted. \"The lad's with me!\"\n\n\"You know that short story?\" Fantasy asked Richard.\n\n\"Yeah,\" said Richard. \"He's Adventure.\"\n\n\"That's what they all say,\" quipped Fantasy.\n\n\"I heard that!\" yelled Adventure. \"I'll have ye know I'm a classic!\"\n\n\"A classic misprint,\" said Fantasy with a sneer.\n\n\"Why, you old sea hag,\" Adventure said angrily. \"Tll rip out yer pages and use 'em fer \u2014 \"\n\nBut before he could finish he teetered and fell, screaming \"Mateeey!\" as he tumbled to the ground.\n\nRichard turned to Fantasy. \"Quick, do something!\" he said.\n\nFantasy tried to save Adventure with a flick of her wand, but nothing happened. Adventure hit the ground. SPLAT!\n\n\"Oops,\" said Fantasy with a sheepish smile. \"I forgot. My wand only works in the fantasy section.\"\n\n\"You mean you can't wish us to the exit?\" asked Richard. He was disappointed.\n\n'Til bet Flint's gold she's never even seen the exit,\" said Adventure as he stumbled to his feet and rubbed his spine.\n\n\"More than you have, shorty,\" said Fantasy. \"In fact, the exit's just beyond my fantasy section. I see it all the time from Rapunzel's tower.\"\n\n\"Then what're you doin' in these parts?\" asked Adventure. \"There's a witches' convention 'round here, maybe?\"\n\n\"I was misshelved,\" explained Fantasy. \"But that's all over now that young Prince Charming has come to check me out.\" She batted her eyelashes at Richard.\n\nRichard blushed.\n\n\"My good eye, he is,\" said Adventure, pulling Richard by the arm. \"The lad's checkin' me out! C'mon, boy. It's on to the exit for us!\"\n\nFantasy grabbed Richard's other arm and pulled him in the opposite direction. \"If he thinks the exit's in that direction, it must be in this direction,\" she told Richard.\n\n\"Don't listen to her, mate,\" Adventure said as he pulled Richard back. \"She's not sailin' with a full crew.\"\n\nAt that Fantasy fluttered her wings and a hand ful of sparkling fairy dust blew into Adventure's face. Adventure sneezed and fell back against a bookcase.\n\n\"Let's leave him,\" she told Richard. \"He doesn't even know where we are now.\"\n\n\"Bilge water!\" said Adventure. \"Of course I know where we are.\" Adventure reached up and pulled a book down from a shelf. The book was entitled Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle. \"We're in Baskervilles,\" said Adventure. \"Have a look-see.\"\n\nAdventure handed the book to Richard. Without thinking, Richard opened it. Suddenly the head of a wild hound dog lunged out with a growl. Richard screamed and tossed the book away.\n\nThen Richard, Adventure, and Fantasy headed down the aisle as fast as they could. Behind them was the wild hound, who by now had jumped completely out of its book. It had big, sharp teeth and was growling ferociously.\n\nRichard, Adventure, and Fantasy reached a wall that was completely lined with bookshelves. There was no place else for them to run.\n\nJust then Richard leaned back and accidentally bumped a book off a shelf. He heard a click. The whole wall of books swung around and swept them inside to safety. Or so they thought.\n\nAll three let out a sigh of relief now that they were at least safe from that hound.\n\nRichard noticed that they were in a new and strange part of the library. It appeared they were standing at the entrance of a dark, eerie graveyard. In the sky above them was a full moon shrouded by clouds. Behind them the wall was covered with thorny vines.\n\nAll at once the three heard a sound that sent shivers down their spines. It was the howl of a wolf.\n\nAnd it didn't sound that far away."
            },
            {
                "title": "Horror",
                "text": "\" A re we still in the library?\" asked Richard with ll.a shudder.\n\n\"Aye, lad,\" whispered Adventure. \"The horror section.\"\n\n\"It looks pretty scary,\" said Richard.\n\n\"That it does, mate,\" said Adventure. \"Jest stick close to me an' ye got nothin' to worry 'bout.\" He didn't sound too sure.\n\nWith that Adventure pulled out his sword and cautiously led the way into the fog-covered graveyard, past some headstones. Now Richard spotted something floating in the sky. It was the exit sign.\n\n\"There it is!\" Richard said, pointing excitedly. \"The exit!\"\n\nBut as Richard got closer he saw an old, spooky house blocking the way. The house stood at the edge of a steep cliff. Waves could be heard crashing against jagged rocks below.\n\n\"Looks like the only way to reach the exit is through that thar house,\" said Adventure.\n\nRichard swallowed hard. \"No way I'm goin' in there,\" he said.\n\n\"Td fly you over, but I'm afraid you're too heavy,\" said Fantasy.\n\n\"It's yer only chance, boy,\" said Adventure. \"It's only a house.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but seventeen percent of all accidents happen in or near the house,\" Richard warned them.\n\nRichard, Adventure, and Fantasy slowly approached a mangled iron gate that stood in front of the house. A nameplate on the gate read: Dr. Jekyll. But beneath it someone had scratched in the name: Mr. Hyde.\n\nRichard cautiously pushed open the gate and walked up the front steps of the house. With a trembling hand he pulled the doorbell rope.\n\n*CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!*\n\nSuddenly a shadowy, horribly disfigured book fell from above the bell tower and crashed onto the ground.\n\nRichard, Adventure, and Fantasy leaped backwards with a scream.\n\nThe strangely shaped book screamed, too. Terrified, it scrambled and climbed back up the rope.\n\n\"Come on down, ya dog-eared scalawag,\" shouted Adventure, waving his sword.\n\n\"Oh, put that thing away,\" Fantasy told Adventure. \"You're frightening him.\" And with that she flew up after the little book. \"Come out, come out, wherever you are,\" she sang.\n\nThe misshapen book peeked out from behind its hiding place in the bell tower above the door of the house. Across the book's cover was written the word Horror.\n\n\"I know why you screamed,\" said Horror. \"It's because I'm horrible. I scared you!\"\n\n\"Do I look scared?\" asked Fantasy.\n\n\"You mean you're not scared?\" asked Horror.\n\n\"Of course not,\" said Fantasy. \"Come on down.\"\n\nHorror reached out to take Fantasy's outstretched hand. Slipping, he missed and fell right past Fantasy and into Richard's arms below. Arrgh! Richard thrust Horror back toward Fantasy, but she didn't take him.\n\n\"You mustn't judge a book by its cover,\" Fantasy said to Richard.\n\nThat made Horror feel so good he smiled his crooked smile.\n\n\"All right,\" interrupted Adventure. He was tired of waiting. \"Tea time's over. Let's start nav-igatin' this house.\" He took a step closer to the haunted house.\n\nSuddenly Horror leaped out of Richard's arms. \"No!\" he warned Adventure, blocking his way. \"Don't go in there! It's scary inside!\"\n\n\"Ha!\" laughed Adventure. \"I ain't a-feared o' nothin'!\"\n\n\"Tm afraid,\" said Horror timidly.\n\n\"Of what?\" asked Richard.\n\nHorror began to list his fears one by one on his crooked, triple-jointed fingers. \"Tm afraid of the dark,\" he began. \"And dentists, butterflies, cucumbers\u2014\"\n\n\"I know just how you feel,\" Richard said.\n\n\"Horror always has sad endings,\" the hunchbacked book explained.\n\n\"I come from a world of happy endings,\" said Fantasy with a warm smile. \"Why don't you come with us?\"\n\n\"Th-through the house? I don't know...\" Horror said nervously.\n\n\"You can do it,\" said Fantasy.\n\nSuddenly Horror began to feel a little braver. He straightened his hunched back as best he could and thrust his chest out. Then he slowly walked up to the front door of the house and turned the doorknob. The door made a creaky sound as Horror pushed it open. He and his new-found friends peered into the blackness and slowly stepped inside.\n\nThe house was as old inside as it was out. Spiders and creepy crawlers scurried from view. Out of nowhere a black raven swooped down over their heads crying \"Nevermore!\" as it flew off.\n\n\"He-hello?\" Richard called out. \"Is anybody home?\"\n\nJust then every single window and door in the house slammed shut. Richard and his friends scrambled to get out of the house. As they struggled to open the front door, the doorknob came off in their hands and fell to the floor.\n\nThey were trapped!\n\nThey watched the doorknob as it rolled away from them. It came to a sudden stop. A big, shadowy figure had blocked its way. The figure stepped forward. In its hand was an oil lamp that cast a dim yellow light.\n\nAs the figure walked toward them Richard and his friends could see the face of a kind-looking middle-aged gentleman in the light of the lamp."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Two-Faced Terror",
                "text": "\"May I assist you in some way?\" asked the gentleman. Suddenly Richard and his friends weren't so frightened anymore.\n\n\"Hello there, Mr. \u2014\" began Fantasy.\n\n\"Doctor Jekyll,\" said the man.\n\n\"Well, sir,\" Richard began to explain, \"we did ring the bell...\"\n\n\"It's all my fault,\" explained Horror. \"I was trying to help them find their way to the other side of the house.\"\n\n\"The other side?\" asked Dr. Jekyll. Richard nodded. Dr. Jekyll placed his arm around Richard and led him deeper into the house. \"My boy,\" he said, \"I derive no pleasure in telling you that you are in extreme danger.\"\n\n\"Danger?\" asked Richard.\n\n\"Even as we speak, lurking in this room,\" continued Dr. Jekyll, \"are forces of evil.\"\n\n\"Evil?\" Richard asked. By this time his knees were shaking.\n\nDr. Jekyll led Richard past a broken mirror and beyond a musty staircase. Then they came upon a laboratory table filled with test tubes and flasks of bubbling potions.\n\n\"Every man is possessed of both good and evil,\" explained Dr. Jekyll. \"But enough of that. Anyone care for a drink?\"\n\nAnd with that Dr. Jekyll poured a test tube of bubbling potion into a wine glass. Then he gulped it down in a single swallow.\n\nA second later Dr. Jekyll let out a loud, bloodcurdling scream. He clutched his throat in pain. He threw his glass on the floor and the remaining potion spilled out. It was so powerful it burned a large hole right through the wooden planks of the floor. Dr. Jekyll stumbled and grabbed Richard for support.\n\nRichard tried to break free, but Dr. Jekyll's grip was too strong. Now Dr. Jekyll's hands were beginning to change. They were growing bigger and hairier.\n\n\"Dr. Jekyll?\" said Fantasy with concern.\n\nDr. Jekyll let go of Richard. Then he turned around. Fantasy gulped. Dr. Jekyll's face had also changed. His nice white teeth had become long, yellow fangs. His skin had turned gray. His eyes had turned a fiery red.\n\n\"The name,\" he said in a deep, raspy voice, \"is Mr. Hyde!\"\n\nSuddenly Mr. Hyde took a swipe at them with his cane. Everyone was terrified. Horror leaped to the top of a hanging chandelier for safety. But his weight caused the chandelier to pull off the ceiling and crash toward Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde swiped at Horror, but stumbled backwards and plummeted through the hole that had been burned in the floor, dragging the chandelier and Horror along with him.\n\n\"The stairs, mateys!\" Adventure shouted. It was their only chance to escape.\n\n\"Help, Master!\" called Horror. \"Don't leave me!\"\n\nHorror was trapped in the chandelier. The chandelier was being pulled deeper and deeper into the hole by Mr. Hyde, who was dangling at the end of its chain.\n\n\"You've got to help Horror,\" Fantasy said to Richard.\n\nBut Richard was too scared to move. So Fantasy flew over to Horror and using her wand like a crowbar, untangled him from the chandelier.\n\nRichard felt ashamed. When his friend was in trouble, he was too scared to help. Horror, however, ran up to him and grabbed his hand.\n\n\"It's okay, Master,\" Horror said in a forgiving voice. \"If it were me I'da' been twice as scared!\"\n\nRichard followed his friends up the flight of stairs. All around him were sounds of clanking chains, moanings, and wailings.\n\n\"What's going on?\" asked Richard breathlessly.\n\n\"Ghost stories!\" explained Horror.\n\nThey finally reached a landing with four doors on it. Adventure yanked open one of the doors. A huge axe swung down and nearly sliced him in two.\n\nFantasy opened another door. This time a huge hairy green hand reached out and tried to grab her.\n\nHorror opened the next door and, screaming, he quickly slammed it shut again.\n\n\"What was it?\" asked Richard.\n\n\"It's dark in there,\" shivered Horror.\n\n\"Get in there!\" said Adventure. He was anxious to find a way out and that room seemed the least dangerous. He pushed Horror through the door.\n\nInside was a laboratory. In the middle of the room stood a table covered with a long white sheet. All around it huge electrical machines buzzed underneath a skylight in the ceiling.\n\n\"Up there!\" said Fantasy. She pointed to a staircase that led to a trap door in the skylight.\n\nEveryone started toward the staircase, passing the sheet-covered table as they went. Suddenly a huge green hand slipped out from under the sheet and pulled it aside. Underneath was a giant with green skin that had been stitched together.\n\nIt was Frankenstein's monster. And he wasn't in a very good mood at all.\n\n\"Aaaarrrrggghhhh!\" groaned the monster.\n\nEverybody screamed and ran for the stairs. But the monster got there first and grabbed Richard. Richard tried to save himself by hanging on to a rope.\n\nAdventure saw that the rope was attached to the skylight. He had an idea. He quickly began to hack at it with his sword. Horror and Fantasy held on to the rope as well.\n\nFinally the rope snapped, pulling Richard free of the monster and hurtling him, with his three friends, up through the trapdoor of the skylight.\n\nOne by one Richard and his friends landed on an observation tower on the roof of the house. Then Fantasy closed and bolted the door behind them.\n\n\"This way, mateys!\" said Adventure as he leaped onto the outer wall of the deck.\n\nRichard looked over the wall. Waves crashed in the darkness below them.\n\n\"Down there?\" asked Richard. \"I can't!\"\n\n\"Come on, boy!\" prodded Adventure. \"Even books have spines!\"\n\nAnd with that Adventure began climbing down the side of the tower.\n\n*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!* Suddenly a pounding came from behind the skylight door. CRACK! The door burst open and the monster crashed its way through.\n\nFantasy pulled a torch down from its holder and created a wall of fire in front of the monster. Hating fire, the monster cringed. Then Fantasy and Horror scurried over the wall and joined Adventure on a ledge below.\n\n\"Move it!\" Fantasy called up to Richard.\n\n\"Come, Master!\" shouted Horror.\n\nRichard looked over the side of the tower. His friends seemed safe on the ledge, but the ledge looked so far away.\n\nBehind him, the monster roared and was trying to push through the wall of flames.\n\nRichard swallowed hard. He knew what he had to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Land of Adventure",
                "text": "Ican do this, Richard said to himself. He climbed up and stood on top of the wall. Suddenly the stones where he stood crumbled under his feet. Richard fell screaming.\n\n\"The vine, boy!\" Adventure called up. \"Grab the vine!\"\n\nRichard now noticed that there were vines hanging over the side of the wall. He grabbed one. And started to climb down. All of a sudden the vine snapped and Richard fell.\n\n*THUMP!* He landed on the ledge right next to his friends. Richard was surprised to find he wasn't hurt at all. \"Wow!\" he exclaimed. He had made it by himself.\n\nJust then Adventure took a deep breath. \"Do ye smell it?\" he asked. \"Breathe it in, mateys.\"\n\nEveryone looked up. The Exit sign was hanging in the distance over the horizon.\n\nSuddenly the dark sky turned bright. The sun rose over a shimmering ocean. The sun was so bright it caused the Exit sign to disappear.\n\n\"The land of Adventure!\" said Adventure. He was pointing out toward the sea.\n\nAdventure bounded down the side of the ledge to the rocks below. Horror, Fantasy, and Richard followed right behind. Waves were crashing on the beach where he stood.\n\nA small boat was anchored next to the rocks. Adventure jumped in and then told everyone to climb aboard. Richard eyed the boat suspiciously.\n\n\"Is it safe?\" he asked. It didn't look too sturdy, he thought to himself.\n\n\"I've set to sea in worse,\" said Adventure. Then the book stomped his peg leg into the boat. It splintered right through the bottom and water gushed through the gaping hole.\n\n\"I'm impressed,\" said Fantasy sarcastically.\n\nNow, thinking fast, Richard pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it into the hole. The water stopped gushing.\n\n\"Shove off, lads,\" Adventure ordered.\n\nAnd with that Richard and Horror each took an oar and began to row.\n\nNo sooner had they taken off across the ocean than a wind began to blow. The water became choppy and uneven. The little boat rose and fell with each wave.\n\nFour other small boats appeared. Each one was filled with rough-looking men. Standing at the bow of the first boat was a man who had a peg leg just like Adventure's!\n\n\"It's Captain Ahab, it is,\" said Adventure.\n\n\"Did you see it?\" Captain Ahab called out from his boat.\n\n\"See what?\" asked Richard.\n\n\"The devil of the deep,\" Adventure explained. \"The white whale Moby Dick!\"\n\n\"Thar she blows!\" shouted Captain Ahab. He was pointing out to sea.\n\nEverybody turned to look. Sure enough, just ahead of them, a great white whale pushed up from beneath the waves. It was Moby Dick.\n\nCaptain Ahab steered his boat toward the huge whale.\n\n\"I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!\" he shouted with a crazed laugh. Then he grabbed a harpoon and flung it at Moby Dick.\n\nThat made Moby Dick terribly angry. The great white whale shot up out of the water, splintering Captain Ahab's boat in a thousand pieces.\n\n\"He's coming for us now!\" cried Richard.\n\nMoby Dick dove back into the ocean. For a moment all was quiet. Then, all of a sudden, the whale exploded up through the water again. This time its jaws were open wide.\n\n\"Row!\" shouted Adventure. \"Row fer yer lives!\"\n\nHorror and Richard began to row frantically. Moby Dick caught their boat between its huge teeth and chomped down. The boat broke in two.\n\nRichard hit the water and sank into the ocean. Quickly, he grabbed hold of an empty barrel that had been knocked out of the boat. He and the barrel rose up to the ocean's surface.\n\nRichard gasped for air. Then he looked around. There was nothing to be seen, except the splintery remains of his boat.\n\nBut where were his friends?\n\n\"Guys?\" he called out weakly. \"Where are you?\"\n\nNo one answered. Richard was all alone in the middle of the vast blue sea.\n\nSuddenly the water around Richard began to stir. Richard grew frightened and dogpaddled over to a raftlike plank. He grabbed onto the wooden plank and climbed aboard.\n\nThen something popped out of the water and grabbed the plank as well. It was Adventure.\n\n\"Adventure!\" said Richard with glee. \"Boy, am I ever glad to see you.\"\n\nRichard hugged Adventure tightly. But all Adventure could do was sputter and cough.\n\n\"Where're Horror and Fantasy?\" asked Richard.\n\n\"I searched for 'em as much as I could, mate,\" said Adventure once he had caught his breath. His voice was filled with sadness. \" 'Fraid they've gone down below with Davy Jones.\"\n\n\"No!\" exclaimed Richard. He didn't want to believe that his friends were gone forever. \"Horror!\" he called out to the sea. \"Fantasy!\"\n\nRichard called out in all directions. Suddenly his eyes went wide. Heading right for them was a bunch of hungry-looking sharks!\n\nThe sharks surrounded Richard and Adventure. They snapped their razor-sharp teeth at them. Richard and Adventure shook with fear.\n\nJust then a boat appeared in the distance.\n\n\"Help!\" Richard shouted to the boat. \"Over here!\"\n\nThe boat turned and headed toward Richard and Adventure. Once it reached them a group of scruffy-looking sailors helped them aboard and to safety. They all were unshaven and filthy. Many were missing most of their teeth. And each one had a gun tucked into his belt.\n\nAdventure didn't trust them at all.\n\n\"It's a good thing you guys came along,\" said Richard. \"We're missing two others. Have you seen them?\"\n\nOne of the sailors spit. \"Ye's all the catch we had t'day,\" he said in a menacing voice.\n\nAs he said this another boat pulled up beside them. It was ten times as big as the smaller one. Its huge sails blew in the wind. A flag flew at the top of its mast. The flag had a picture of a skull and crossbones on it.\n\nIt was the Jolly Roger. The ship was a pirate ship!"
            },
            {
                "title": "Buried Treasure",
                "text": "The next thing they knew Richard and Adventure were tossed roughly onto the deck of the pirate ship. All around them were mangy, laughing pirates. One of them pulled out a knife and pointed it at Richard. Another raised his sword to Richard's throat.\n\n\"Give the word, Cap'n Silver, sir,\" said the pirate with the knife, \"and I'll show ye the color of his insides.\"\n\n\"Stow yer cutlass, Tom Morgan,\" a voice bellowed. \"I want a better look at his outsides first!\"\n\nRichard looked up, his knees shivering with fear. The biggest pirate on the deck limped over on his peg leg. Richard knew who he was. He had read about him in the book Treasure Island.\n\n\"Long John Silver?\" asked Richard in astonishment.\n\n\"Aye, lad,\" said John Silver. \"The very same.\" John Silver looked Richard up and down.\n\n\"Well, seein' as how me men plucked ye out of the water like a drownin' bilge rat,\" he said, \"you'll be joinin' our happy family as our new cabin boy.\"\n\n\"Uh, thanks,\" said Richard apologetically. \"But I already have a family. And I really should be getting home now.\"\n\nJust then all the pirates pulled out their swords and guns and aimed them at Richard.\n\n\"I think ye are home,\" said John Silver with a grin.\n\nSeeing his friend in danger made Adventure mad. He jumped on to the railing and pulled out his saber.\n\n\"Touch one hair on the boy's head and you'll be answering to me!\" he shouted.\n\nAll the pirates laughed at Adventure. They weren't afraid of him. After all, he was only about as big as a book.\n\nWhile they were talking, one of the sailors snuck up behind Adventure and pushed him onto the deck. Long John Silver bent over and picked up the feisty book by its pages.\n\n\"Well, well,\" Silver said to Adventure. \"Ye wouldn't happen to be goin' after me treasure, would ye now?\"\n\nAdventure laughed. He already knew the ending of Treasure Island.\n\n\"You ain't got any treasure worth goin' after,\" he told Silver.\n\nSilver's men began to murmur with concern. After all, they had signed aboard only to find treasure.\n\n\"He's lyin',\" Silver said to his men. \"There's plenty o' treasure for all of ye! Search 'im \u2014 and the boy, too.\"\n\nThe pirates grabbed Adventure and Richard by the feet and shook them upside down. Richard's library card popped out of his pocket.\n\n\"My library card!\" Richard exclaimed, grabbing for the card.\n\nBut Silver snatched it away. \"A cabin boy don't need no library card,\" he said. And with that he threw the card into the ocean.\n\nRichard and Adventure watched the card disappear, along with their only hope of getting out of the library.\n\n\"Land ho!\" one of the pirates shouted.\n\nEverybody rushed to the other side of the ship and looked out toward the horizon. Not far away was an island with a rocky point in the shape of a skull.\n\n\"There she be, mateys,\" said Silver. \"Treasure Island!\"\n\nAll the pirates let out a cheer. Then they rushed to their posts and began to steer the ship in the direction of the island.\n\nOnce on shore the pirates eagerly climbed onto the beach. Tom Morgan unfolded a map, but nobody was sure how to read it. Then one of the pirates saw some skeleton bones laid out on the sand. The bones were pointing to a tree directly ahead of them.\n\n\"What sort of way is that for bones t'lie?\" asked one of the pirates. \"T'ainT natural.\"\n\n\"This island's haunted,\" said Tom Morgan. \"It's accursed, it is.\"\n\n\"Ah, yer all yellow dogs,\" bellowed John Silver. \"Open yer eyes. The bones is a compass pointin' t'way to the treasure!\"\n\nAll at once the pirates charged toward the tree. When they got there they let out a sigh of disappointment.\n\nSomeone had dug a big hole where the treasure should have been. In the hole sat a huge treasure chest, but it was completely empty.\n\n\"It's gone!\" exclaimed Tom Morgan.\n\nOne of the other pirates scrambled about the ditch. He found a single gold coin.\n\n\"This is your treasure, is it?\" the pirate said, showing the coin to John Silver.\n\n\"Stand by for trouble,\" Adventure whispered to Richard.\n\n\"We mighta known you'd double-cross us,\" said another pirate.\n\nJohn Silver went for his gun, but the other pirates beat him to the draw.\n\n\"Throw down yer weapons, John Silver,\" said one of the pirates.\n\n\"You'll regret this,\" said John Silver.\n\n\"Save yer speeches,\" said the pirate. \"Dead men don't bite.\" And with that all the pirates took aim at their captain and prepared to fire.\n\nRichard swallowed. Adventure shut his eye.\n\nJust then a horrifying moan came from up above. It sounded like a ghost. The pirates became frightened.\n\n\"Evil spirits!\" exclaimed Tom Morgan.\n\nSuddenly something dropped from the branches of a tree.\n\nIt was Horror!\n\n\"Horror!\" exclaimed Richard with surprise. \"You're alive!\"\n\n\"Not for long!\" said one of the pirates. The pirate raised his musket and aimed it at Horror. But just as the pirate was ready to fire he was hit in the face with a blast of fairy dust.\n\nThe pirate sneezed as he pulled the trigger. The shot exploded upward, hitting some coconuts in a tree. The coconuts fell and knocked the pirates out cold.\n\n\"Fantasy!\" said Richard, looking up. Indeed, Fantasy was alive and well, fairy dust and all.\n\n\"At your service,\" she said with a polite curtsy.\n\nRichard noticed that Long John Silver was standing right across from him. His eye was on a sword that lay on the ground.\n\n\"The sword, kid,\" Fantasy whispered to Richard. \"Get the sword.\"\n\n\"Don't even think of it, boy!\" warned John Silver. \"Ye ain't got the heart!\"\n\nRichard eyed the sword and gulped. John Silver was inching his way toward it. Richard knew he had to get the weapon first or he and his friends would never make it to the exit.\n\nThat's when Richard closed his eyes and made a jump for the sword."
            },
            {
                "title": "True Friends",
                "text": "Richard opened his eyes. Much to his surprise Long John Silver was standing over him, empty-handed. That was because Richard had gotten hold of the sword first.\n\n\"Stay back!\" Richard commanded. His trembling hand pointed the sword at the pirate captain.\n\n\"Avast there, laddie,\" said John Silver. \"Somebody could get hurt with that blade ye got there.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Richard. \"Twenty-three percent of all injuries are caused by knives or other sharp objects.\"\n\nJohn Silver had no idea what Richard was talking about.\n\n\"You're not gonna make me get on that thar ship and sail away, are ye?\" he asked Richard.\n\n\"I'm not?\" asked Richard nervously. Then he thought better. \"I mean, I am! That's exactly what I'm gonna do.\"\n\nLong John Silver could tell that Richard meant business. He backed himself down the beach and climbed into one of the small boats.\n\n\"Ye be a hard lad, Richard Tyler,\" said the captain as he shoved off. \"Good sailin' to ye, shipmate.\"\n\nAnd with that Long John Silver rowed himself back to his ship and sailed away to sea.\n\nHorror and Fantasy cheered as soon as the pirate had gone.\n\n\"Wow!\" Richard said with relief. \"I wish my Dad coulda seen me! And I thought you two were goners!\"\n\n\"We almost were,\" said Fantasy, slipping her arm through Horror's. \"That is, until this enchanting fellow discovered he could float.\"\n\nHorror knocked on his hump. \"It's hollow,\" he explained.\n\nTHUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Suddenly everyone heard a loud pounding. It was coming from the treasure chest.\n\n\"Who's there?\" Horror asked the chest.\n\n\"Adventure!\" came a voice from inside.\n\n\"Adventure who?\" called Horror, jumping on the chest.\n\n\"Whaddaya mean, 'Adventure who?' \" yelled Adventure. \"Lemme outta here you dogeared \u2014 \"\n\nHorror opened the trunk and Adventure popped out. He had been accidentally trapped inside during the fight with the pirates.\n\n\"I was just thanking these guys for saving us,\" Richard told Adventure.\n\nAdventure wrinkled his brow. \"I coulda taken the lot of 'em with one hand tied behind me back!\" he grumbled. Then he wheeled around and stomped off in a huff.\n\n\"That's just his way of saying thanks,\" Richard explained to Horror and Fantasy.\n\nHorror ran after Adventure. Along the way he picked up a bandanna from one of the unconscious pirates and wrapped it around his head.\n\n\"Ahoy, matey!\" Horror called to Adventure. He was trying his best to look and sound just like Adventure. \"Aye, we're brave, adventurous men.\"\n\nBut Adventure was still angry. \"Go away,\" he told the hunchback. \"Ye don't know what yer talkin' about.\"\n\n\"I know I'm not your favorite kind of book,\" said Horror. \"But I could be just like you.\"\n\nAdventure laughed at Horror. \"You'll never be Adventure,\" he said. \"You ain't got the spine fer it.\"\n\nWith that Adventure stomped off down the beach, grumbling to himself all the way. Horror felt sad as he watched Adventure walk away. He wanted to be friends with Adventure. He wished he could be more like Adventure, too. Adventure was brave and courageous while Horror was scared of even the sound of a pin dropping.\n\nAdventure had walked only a few yards down the beach when a piece of paper blew up on shore and became stuck to his peg leg. He tried to shake it off, but it was stuck tight. So he reached down and peeled it off with his hook.\n\nA wide smile came over his face when he saw what the piece of paper was. He wheeled around and clomped hurriedly back to Richard and Fantasy.\n\n\"Pick one,\" said Adventure. He was holding out his clenched hand and his hook.\n\nRichard pretended to think for a minute. Then he picked Adventure's hand. Adventure opened his fingers. The piece of paper was sitting in his palm.\n\nRichard recognized the piece of paper instantly. \"My library card!\" he exclaimed with glee.\n\n\"Library card?\" asked Fantasy.\n\n\"Wrestled it away from three sharks who was eyein' it fer breakfast,\" fibbed Adventure. \"At no small threat to me life, neither.\"\n\nRichard looked around. \"Where's Horror?\" he asked. \"Wasn't he with you?\"\n\n\"He was,\" said Adventure. \"But he \u2014 I mean I sort of \u2014 he kinda \u2014 \"\n\n\"What did you say to him now?\" asked Fantasy. She knew that Horror was very sensitive.\n\n\"Well, I \u2014 uh \u2014 \" Adventure said with embarrassment. \"Fll go find him.\" Then he turned around and ran back down the beach.\n\n\"Horror!\" Adventure called. \"Horror! Where are you?\"\n\nAdventure heard a commotion coming from be-hind a sand dune. He quickly climbed to the top of the dune. Down below he saw that Horror was being tied to the ground by an army of six-inch-high people. Adventure recognized the people as Lilliputians. They had captured Horror just as if he were the giant from the book Gulliver's Travels. A series of ropes tied his lifeless looking body to the ground.\n\n\"Hang on, mate!\" shouted Adventure. \"I'm cornin'!\"\n\nImmediately, Adventure charged over the sand dune. The Lilliputians filed into formation and let loose a flurry of arrows when they saw him.\n\nAdventure flipped open his covers like a shield. The arrows simply bounced off him. Then he pulled out his sword and charged the Lilliputians. The army of tiny people fled in a panic. When they were out of sight Adventure untied Horror.\n\n\"Speak t'me, matel\" said Adventure. Horror seemed lifeless. Adventure lowered his head in sadness. \"Ye had a good heart,\" he said softly. \"And ye was braver than ye knew. I'd walk t'plank if I thought it would bring you back.\"\n\nJust then Horror opened his eyes. \"Ya would?\" he asked with a big smile. Adventure's eyes widened with surprise. Horror was alive after all!\n\nAt that same moment Richard and Fantasy came climbing over the sand dune.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Richard asked Horror.\n\n\"Thanks to my friend here,\" said Horror. Then he gave Adventure a big hug.\n\n\"Get off me!\" grumbled Adventure as he pushed Horror away. Richard and Fantasy smiled. They knew that Adventure was as happy as they were to see that Horror was all right.\n\nBut before anybody could say another word Fantasy's wand began to blink on and off.\n\n\"Did you see that?\" asked Fantasy. \"My wand! It's blinking! That can only mean one thing!\"\n\n\"The exit!\" exclaimed Richard.\n\n\"The checkout!\" shouted Adventure.\n\n\"A happy ending!\" clapped Horror.\n\nSoon Fantasy's wand began to vibrate. Then, all by itself, it gently led Fantasy toward a lush tropical forest that lay just ahead.\n\nRichard, Adventure, and Horror followed. They really weren't sure where they were going or why. They only knew they had to follow the magic wand to find out."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fantasy Land",
                "text": "Richard and his friends followed the wand into the forest. The forest was dark with tropical foliage. Trees hung heavy with buds. As Richard walked past, the buds unfolded, offering not flowers, but books. The ground was wet and mossy, but it made a pattern that reminded Richard of the library floor.\n\nSoon the dark colors of the forest began to change. Many new and more brilliant colors fanned out before them. The spectacle filled Richard with awe. He pushed through a flower-lined thicket into a magical meadow. Fairy dust shimmered everywhere.\n\n\"Wow,\" said Richard with wonder. \"Look at this place!\"\n\nIn the distance Richard saw a handsome prince climbing a long yellow rope to a tower. As he got closer Richard realized that the rope was really the braided hair of the prince's true love. Her name was Rapunzel.\n\nGlancing in another direction Richard saw a horse and carriage rush by. Suddenly the carriage transformed itself into a pumpkin. The horses be-came mice.\n\nRichard was still looking at the mice when a cluster of tiny fairies surrounded him and the others. One of the fairies mischievously plucked Richard's glasses off his nose. Another took Adventure's sword. Richard and Adventure chased the fairies up a hill. The fairies split up at the entrance of a small cave. Some carried Richard's glasses up to a ledge over the cave. The others took Adventure's sword into the cave itself.\n\nRichard climbed to the ledge above the cave and took his glasses back from the fairies. When he looked up he let out a gasp. Beyond where he was standing was a high mountain made of books. At the top of the mountain light radiated in all directions. Above the light was the Exit sign.\n\n\"Geez!\" said Richard, half aloud. \"There it is!\"\n\nMeanwhile, Adventure had just reached the entrance to the cave. He hesitated before going in after his sword. After all it was a cave. And caves were kind of dark.\n\n\"Whatsa' matter?\" Fantasy asked him. \"Is 'Adventure' afraid to go in?\"\n\n\"Are you kiddin', sister?\" replied Adventure. \"I live for moments like this.\"\n\nAnd with that Adventure cautiously entered the cave.\n\nThe cave was slimy and damp inside. Pointed mineral formations hung from the ceiling and rose from the ground.\n\nAdventure saw his sword on the floor and quickly snatched it up. He was happy to have it back and slashed it through the air to make sure it was all right. In doing so he accidentally sliced off one of the formations.\n\nSuddenly the ground began to rumble. Adventure's eyes went wide as he was nearly thrown off his feet. It was an earthquake!\n\nOutside Richard was flung from side to side as the top of the cave shook. He grabbed hold of a thick tree trunk for safety.\n\nAll at once two huge boulders began to shake loose in front of him. But instead of rolling toward him the boulders split open from the middle. Behind them were two giant-sized glowing red eyes!\n\nThat's when Richard realized he wasn't on top of a cave at all. The eyes were those of a fierce, fire-breathing dragon. What he thought was a tree trunk was the horn on the nose of the terrible dragon. And Richard was standing on the snout of the dragon itself!\n\nInside the cave Adventure had come to the same conclusion himself. That wasn't a pointed rock he sliced off with his sword. It was one of the dragon's teeth! Now the dragon was really angry.\n\nAdventure ran as fast as he could to get out of the dragon's mouth. But a fireball was close on his heels. Adventure tripped. Just then a hand reached into the dragon's mouth and plucked Adventure to freedom.\n\nIt was Horror!\n\nNo sooner had Horror pulled Adventure free than the dragon belched and a raging flame shot out of its mouth. Horror and Adventure would have been burned to a crisp had they not made it to the ground below in time.\n\nMeanwhile Richard was hanging on to the dragon's horn for dear life. The dragon shook its head and sent Richard hurtling through the air.\n\nFantasy spun around to Horror. \"Quick!\" she said, pointing to her pages. \"Find page one thousand and one.\"\n\nHorror licked his finger and flipped through Fantasy's pages until he found the one she was looking for. It was the first page of a story called Tales From the Arabian Nights.\n\nSlamming her cover shut, Fantasy quickly took the page from Horror. Then she tossed it into the air and tapped it with her magic wand. The page became a flying carpet.\n\n\"Get the boy!\" Fantasy commanded the carpet.\n\nThe carpet obeyed. It dipped and swirled and swooped up Richard just before he hit the ground.\n\n\"C'mon!\" Richard said to the others. \"The exit's up there!\" he said pointing to the top of the mountain.\n\nEverybody jumped onto the flying carpet. The carpet zoomed into the sky toward the Exit sign, with the dragon trailing not far behind.\n\nHigher and higher the carpet soared. It passed vast cloud cities and flying camels. It even flew by Aladdin and his magic genie.\n\n\"We're gonna make it!\" exclaimed Richard as the carpet approached the top of the mountain.\n\nHorror was so excited he jumped for joy. In doing so, however, he knocked Fantasy's magic wand out of her hand. The wand fell over the edge of the carpet and down through the clouds. There the dragon was, flying upward after the carpet. The dragon quickly snapped up the wand and swallowed it.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" moaned Fantasy. \"I wish that hadn't happened.\"\n\nJust then the dragon let out another fireball. This one hit the carpet and sent it reeling into the side of the mountain. Everybody tumbled off onto a ledge.\n\nRichard shook the rubble out of his hair and, looking up, saw that they were very close to the top of the mountain.\n\nAnd the exit.\n\nRichard began to climb hurriedly toward the sign. As Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure started to follow, a giant shadow fell over them. Their spines began to shake.\n\nThe dragon!\n\nMeanwhile, Richard was hurriedly making his way up the side of the mountain unaware that his friends were in danger.\n\n\"We're almost there!\" he said as he moved from one ledge to another. Soon the Exit sign was within reach. \"We made it! C'mon! Guys?\"\n\nThat's when Richard looked down and saw that no one was following him. His friends were trapped in a crevice on the ledge below and the dragon was hovering over them. Out of its mouth came a searing burst of flame.\n\nHorror, Fantasy, and Adventure flattened themselves against the side of the mountain. The dragon's burst of fire missed them only by inches.\n\nRichard watched from above. He saw that his friends needed his help below. Up above him, though, was the exit and his way home. Richard could not decide which way to go.\n\n\"Help, Master!\" he heard Horror call out to him.\n\nRichard hesitated. The exit was only a few feet away. Just a few more steps and he would be free.\n\nBut he couldn't do it. They were his friends and he wasn't going to let them down this time. He spun around and started back down the mountain.\n\nHalfway down he came upon a soldier's skeleton. He took the skeleton's sword and shield. Then he put on its helmet. Now he was ready to face the dragon.\n\n\"I'm coming!\" Richard called down to his friends. He bravely ran up behind the dragon and swung at its tail with his sword.\n\nThe dragon roared, releasing a funnel of fire. Richard blocked it with his shield.\n\n\" 'At's it, boy!\" shouted Adventure. \"Go fer t'gizzard!\"\n\n\"Watch out for its tail!\" warned Fantasy.\n\n\"Bite 'im!\" yelled Horror. \"Bite 'im!\"\n\nRichard raised his sword and aimed for the dragon's huge stomach. But before Richard could strike, the dragon whipped its tail around and snatched Richard up. The sword and shield were shaken from Richard's hands. Then the dragon held Richard with its tail and dangled the boy in front of its face.\n\n\"Put me down, you ugly lizard!\" Richard yelled angrily.\n\nJust then the dragon smacked its lips and opened its mouth. It slowly raised Richard high into the air. With a blink of an eye it tossed Richard down its throat, swallowing him with one swift gulp."
            },
            {
                "title": "Belly of the Beast",
                "text": "Richard tumbled downward and downward along the cushiony insides of the dragon's throat. Then he landed on the slimy, but soft pit of the dragon's stomach. THUMP!\n\nAll around Richard were various library items that the dragon had swallowed for one meal or another. Old bones and seashells were scattered about. There were tree branches with books for buds. There was even an old, broken book cart and many, many books.\n\n\"This must be the dragon's stomach,\" Richard said aloud. \"I gotta get outta here.\"\n\nThen Richard recognized a long, thin object glistening next to some fish bones. It was Fantasy's wand!\n\nRichard quickly waved the wand and wished himself out of the dragon's belly. But when he looked around he saw that he hadn't moved. The wand didn't work for him. Disappointed, he slipped it into his back pocket.\n\nNext he crawled on top of the book cart and tried to climb up out of the dragon's stomach. The sides of the dragon's throat were so slippery, though, that Richard kept sliding back down.\n\nSuddenly he remembered the words the Page-master had said to him before he became lost.\n\n\"'Look to the books,'\" he repeated to himself. So he began looking at some of the books that lay around him.\n\nThe first one he grabbed was Alice in Wonderland. He opened it up and the Queen of Hearts popped out.\n\n\"Off with his head!\" screamed the Queen of Hearts. Richard quickly snapped the book shut.\n\nThen he found another book called Jack and the Beanstalk. Yeah, this is it, he thought. A beanstalk was just what he needed to climb out of the dragon's throat. He opened the book eagerly.\n\nA giant beanstalk thrust up from the book's pages. Richard clung tightly to its branches as it lifted him higher and higher up through the dragon's throat.\n\nMeanwhile, the dragon felt a strange tickle and opened its mouth wide. Out shot the giant beanstalk, Richard and all!\n\nAdventure, Horror, and Fantasy were happy to see that Richard was alive. As Richard passed, all three jumped on to the rising beanstalk and joined the ride to the top of the mountain.\n\n\"Jump!\" shouted Richard. \"Everybody jump!\"\n\nThe four of them leaped off the beanstalk and onto the mountaintop. When they were sure they were safe they sighed with relief.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" Fantasy asked Richard. Richard was too dazed to answer.\n\n\"Master, you saved us,\" said Horror.\n\n\"That ye did, matey,\" added Adventure.\n\nRichard smiled. Then he took the wand out of his back pocket and proudly handed it to Fantasy.\n\n\"My hero,\" said Fantasy as she kissed Richard on the cheek.\n\nRichard pushed his glasses back up on his nose and looked upward. An ancient dome-roofed observatory stood before them. Hovering over it were the glowing green letters of the Exit sign.\n\nOne by one they entered through the great door of the observatory. In the center of the room a large crystal dome glowed with a magnificent whirlwind of white light.\n\nSuddenly a shadow shifted across the room.\n\n\"Who's there?\" asked Richard.\n\nSlowly the mysterious figure stepped into the light. Adventure respectfully removed his bandanna. Horror stood at attention. Fantasy curtsied. Richard instantly recognized the white-bearded face and flowing robe of the figure.\n\nIt was the Pagemaster, of course.\n\n\"Hey,\" said Richard. \"How'd you get here?\"\n\n\"Now, now,\" Fantasy said to Richard in a very humble voice. \"We're in the presence of the Pagemaster.\"\n\n\"I know who he is,\" said Richard. \"He's the guy who did all this to me.\" Then he walked right up to the Pagemaster and looked him straight in the eye. \"Do you have any idea what I've been through?\" he asked.\n\n\"Tell me,\" said the Pagemaster.\n\n\"I was nearly torn apart by a madman. I was made a slave by a bunch of mangy pirates. And eaten, got that, eaten by a fire-breathing dragon. Not to mention being tossed, squashed, and scared practically to death!\"\n\n\"Yet you stand before me,\" the Pagemaster pointed out.\n\nRichard didn't know what to say. \"Well... yeah,\" he finally agreed.\n\nHorror crawled up to the Pagemaster. \"He don't mean nothin' by it, my Pagemaster,\" he said apologetically. \"He don't mean nothin'.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" said the Pagemaster. \"The boy is right. I purposely sent him through the fiction section.\"\n\n\"So you admit it!\" said Richard.\n\n\"Of course,\" the Pagemaster laughed. \"Think, boy! What kind of adventure would you have had if I'd brought you here with a turn of the page.\"\n\nWith a wave of his hand the Pagemaster sud denly made all the characters that Richard had encountered on his search for the exit appear in the funnel of light.\n\n\"You prevailed over evil,\" said Dr. Jekyll.\n\n\"Ye looked Moby Dick in the eye, boy!\" said Captain Ahab.\n\n\"Ye had pirate stuff, m'lad,\" said Long John Silver. \"And don't no one speak any different.\"\n\n\"If I had brought you here from the start,\" said the Pagemaster, \"you never would have found the courage to face your own fears. And in doing so, you triumph here and always.\"\n\nRichard realized that the Pagemaster was right. At first he had been frightened of practically everything. Now he wasn't afraid of anything.\n\nAdventure lifted his sword in honor of Richard.\n\nHorror smiled his horrible smile.\n\nFantasy cast a halo of fairy dust over Richard's head.\n\nThe Pagemaster drew his arm over the crystal dome. Looking into the dome Richard saw the rotunda room of the library. Lying on the floor, the real-life Richard, was still out cold.\n\n\"Hey, that's me!\" said Richard.\n\n\"That was you,\" said the Pagemaster. \"The world awaits.\"\n\nAnd with that Richard, Horror, Adventure, and Fantasy were swept into the swirling whirlwind of light and sucked back through it into the library below."
            },
            {
                "title": "Exit",
                "text": "Richard opened his eyes and realized he was back in his old body lying on the rotunda floor. Above him was the painted dome. Once again he saw the paintings of the classic characters of fiction. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Captain Ahab and Long John Silver stared back at him.\n\nRight in the center was the painting of the wizened old Pagemaster.\n\nRichard looked down at his hands. They were no longer the bright colors of a cartoon. Now they were real flesh and bone.\n\n\"You took quite a spill, young man,\" came a voice.\n\nRichard looked up. Mr. Dewey was picking up three books that had fallen next to Richard. Beyond Mr. Dewey, Richard spotted the glowing green Exit sign. Jumping to his feet, he sprinted toward the sign.\n\nSuddenly he skidded to a stop. He turned around and ran back to Mr. Dewey.\n\n\"Wait!\" he told the old librarian. \"I forgot something.\"\n\nHe quickly plucked the three books out of Mr. Dewey's arms. In their place he handed Mr. Dewey his now torn and tattered library card.\n\nThe librarian took one of the books away from Richard. \"Tm afraid you can only check out two today,\" said Mr. Dewey.\n\n\"But I promised him,\" said Richard sadly.\n\n\"Promised whom?\"\n\nRichard pointed to the book Mr. Dewey had taken. It was Horror, Richard realized that promising a book to take it out of the library must have sounded pretty silly.\n\n\"Look,\" he explained. \"I need... I mean... you think just this once \u2014?\"\n\nMr. Dewey smiled. He handed the book back to Richard.\n\n\"Just this once,\" he said.\n\nRichard clutched the three books and ran through the doors of the library. His bicycle was sitting right where he had left it.\n\nRichard pedaled home as fast as he could. He crossed the main avenue of town and turned down the side streets. He rode through the tunnel that led back to his neighborhood. As he turned a tree-lined corner he slowed down and came to a full stop. Dead ahead was the ramp. It was the one the neighborhood kids had challenged him to jump.\n\nRichard's heart pounded. He steered his bike toward the ramp. Faster and faster he went, faster than he had ever gone before. He hit the ramp at full speed and the bike lifted into the air, higher than any kid had ever gone. He landed safely on the ground and pedaled on, never looking back once.\n\nRichard rode home as fast as he could. As he parked his bike he caught sight of the treehouse his father had built for him. Somehow the tree-house didn't seem as high as it once had. It certainly wasn't as high as the top of the dragon's head. And the ladder was certainly not as tall as a beanstalk.\n\nExhausted from his adventure, Richard used the little energy he had left and crawled up the ladder into the treehouse. Then Richard fell asleep with his books safely tucked in his arms.\n\nRichard was still sleeping when his parents arrived home and found him in the treehouse. They were so happy to see that he was safe that they didn't want to wake him up. So they quietly turned off the lantern and went into the house.\n\nWhen they had gone one of the books stood up on its own and looked around.\n\n\"Aye, this be the land of Adventure,\" said the familiar voice of Adventure. \"You can lay to that.\"\n\nHorror rustled its pages nervously. \"It's dark out here,\" he said timidly. \"I wish there was a nightlight.\"\n\n\"Honey, wish granted,\" said the third book whose title was Fantasy. Then she fluttered her wings and twirled her magic wand.\n\nThe lantern's light popped brightly on as fairy dust shimmered to the floor around it."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Paper and Fire",
        "author": "Rachel Caine",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "dystopia",
            "The Great Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt from a report delivered via secure message to the Archivist Magister, from the hand of the Artifex:\n\n\u2002I thought that you were being soft when you ordered us to keep the boy alive, but he's been incredibly useful already. As you said, a brilliant mind. When we allow him access to books and papers, which we do as a reward, his observations on engineering are quite groundbreaking. After compelling him using the usual means, we provided him with chalk, and on the walls of his cell he began to write some unusual calculations and diagrams. These I have enclosed for your review.\n\n\u2002He also had observations, which he confided to a guard I had ordered to be friendly to him, about the maintenance of the automata within the prison. Clever boy. And dangerous. He might have succeeded in turning one of them to his own uses if we hadn't kept a constant watch.\n\n\u2002I know you want to keep him alive, but even after this long, he continues to be outwardly cooperative and inwardly quite stubborn. I haven't seen the like since... well, since his mentor, Scholar Christopher Wolfe.\n\n\u2002As bright as he is, I don't know how we can ever control him completely. It would be far kinder to kill him now.\n\n\u2002Reply from the Archivist Magister, via secure message\n\n\u2002Under no circumstances are you to kill the boy.\n\n\u2002I have great plans for him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Every day, Jess Brightwell passed the Spartan warrior statue on his way to and from his quarters. It was a beautifully made automaton, fluid and deadly, with a skin of burnished copper. It stood in a dynamic pose on its pedestal, with a spear ready to thrust, and was both a decoration and a protection against intruders.\n\nIt wasn't supposed to be a threat to those who belonged here.\n\nNow, as he passed it, the shadowed eyes under the helmet flickered and flared red, and the Spartan's head turned to track his passage. Jess felt the burn of those eyes, but he didn't return the stare. It would take only an instant for that form to move and that spear to drive right through him. He could feel the very spot the point would enter like a red, tingling target on his back.\n\nNot now! Jess sweated, terribly aware of the leather smuggling harness strapped to his chest, and the slender original book hidden inside. Calm. Be calm. It was incredibly difficult, not only because of the threat of the automaton but because of the anger that burned inside him. As he walked away, the tingle in his back rose to a hot burn, and he waited for the rush of movement and the horrible invasion of the spear stabbing through his body... But then he was a step past, two steps, and the attack didn't come.\n\nWhen he looked back, the statue had gone back to resting mode, staring straight ahead blindly. It seemed safe. It wasn't. Jess Brightwell lived on sufferance and luck at the Great Library of Alexandria. If he'd been half as clever as his friend Thomas Schreiber, he would have figured out how to disable these things by now...\n\nDon't think about Thomas. Thomas is dead. You have to keep that thought firm in your head or you'll never make it through this.\n\nJess paused in the dark, cool tunnel that led from the Spartan's entrance into the wider precincts of the complex where he was quartered. There was no one here to watch him, no fellow travelers at either end of the tunnel. The automaton couldn't see him. Here, for this one sheltered moment, he could allow himself to feel.\n\nAnger sparked red and violent inside, heated his skin and tensed his muscles, and the tears that stung his eyes were driven by rage as much as grief. You lied, Artifex, he thought. You lying, cruel, evil bastard. The book in the harness on his chest was proof of everything he'd hoped for the past six months. But hope was a malicious, jagged thing, all spikes and razors that churned and cut deep in his guts. Hope was a great deal like fear.\n\nJess bounced his head against the stones behind him, again, again, again, until he could get control of the anger. He forced it back into a black box, buried deep, and secured it with chains of will, then wiped his face clear. It was morning, still so early that dawn blushed the horizon, and he was tired out of his skin. He'd been chasing the book he smuggled now for weeks, giving up meals, giving up rest, and finally he'd found it. It had cost him an entire night's sleep. He'd not eaten, except for a quick gyro from a Greek street vendor nearly eight hours past. He'd spent the rest of the time hiding in an abandoned building and reading the book three times, cover to cover, until he had every single detail etched hot into his memory.\n\nJess felt gritty with exhaustion and trembled with hunger, but he knew what he had to do.\n\nHe had to tell Glain the truth.\n\nHe didn't look forward to that at all, and the idea made him bounce his skull off the stones one more time, this time more gently. He pushed off, checked his pulse to be sure it was steady again, and then walked out of the tunnel to the inner courtyard\u2014no automata stationed here, though sphinxes roamed the grounds on a regular basis. He was grateful not to see one this time and headed to his left, toward his barracks.\n\nAfter a brief stop to wolf down bread and drink an entire jug of water, he moved on and avoided any of the early risers in the halls who might want to be social. He craved a shower and mindless sleep more than any conversation.\n\nHe got neither. As he unlocked his door and stepped inside, he found Glain Wathen\u2014friend, fellow survivor, classmate, superior officer\u2014sitting bold as brass in the chair by his small desk. Tall girl, made sleek with muscle. He'd never call her pretty, but she had a comfortable, easy assurance\u2014hard won these past months\u2014that made her almost beautiful in certain lights. Force of personality if nothing else.\n\nThe Welsh girl was calmly reading, though she closed the Blank and returned it to his shelf when he shut the door behind him.\n\n\"People will talk, Glain,\" he said. He had no temper for this right now. He needed, burned, to tell her what he'd learned, but at the same time he was on the precarious edge of emotion, and he didn't want her of all people to see him lose control. He wanted to rest and face her fresh. That way, he wouldn't break into rage, or just... break.\n\n\"One thing you learn early growing up a girl\u2014people always talk, whatever you do,\" Glain said. \"What bliss it must be to be male.\" Her tone was sour, and it matched her expression. \"Where have you been? I had half a mind to call a search party.\"\n\n\"You damn well know better than to do that,\" he said, and if she was going to stay, fine. He had no qualms about stripping off his uniform jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. They'd seen each other in all states as postulants struggling to survive Wolfe's class, and the High Garda wasn't a place that invited modesty, either.\n\nHe really must have been too tired to think, because his fingers were halfway down the buttons on his shirt when he realized she'd see the smuggling harness, which was a secret he didn't feel prepared to share just yet. \"A little privacy?\" he said, and she raised her dark eyebrows but got up and turned her back. He didn't take his eyes off her as he stripped off the shirt and reached for the buckles of the leather harness that held the book against his chest. \"I need sleep, not conversation.\"\n\n\"Too bad. You won't get any of the former,\" she told him. \"We're due for an exercise in half an hour. Which is why I was looking for you. The orders came after you'd gone sneaking into the night. Where exactly did you go, Jess?\"\n\nJess. So they weren't on military footing now, not that he'd really thought they were. He sighed, left the harness on, and replaced the old shirt with a fresh one. \"You can turn,\" he said, as he finished the buttons. She did, hands clasped behind her back, and stared at him with far too much perception.\n\n\"If that bit of false-modesty theater was meant to distract me from the fact you're wearing some kind of smuggling equipment under that shirt, it failed,\" she said. \"Have you gone back into the family business?\"\n\nThe Brightwells had a stranglehold on the London book trade, and had fingers in every black market across the world, one way or another; he had never told her that, but somehow, he also wasn't surprised she knew. Glain liked to learn everything she could about those close to her. It was a smart strategy. He'd done the same with her, the only daughter of a moderately successful merchant who'd nearly bankrupted himself to earn her a place at the Library. She'd been raised with six brothers. None of them, despite sharing her strong build and height, had been inclined at all to military life. Glain was exactly what she seemed: a strong, capably violent young woman who cared about her abilities, not her looks.\n\n\"If you're a Brightwell, you're never really out of the family business,\" he said, and sat down on his bed. The mattress yielded, and he wanted to stretch out and let it cradle him, but if he did, he knew he'd be asleep in seconds. \"You didn't just barge in here to make sure I was still alive, did you?\"\n\n\"No.\" She sounded amused and completely at ease again. \"I needed to ask you a question.\"\n\n\"Well? As you said, we've got only half an hour\u2014\"\n\n\"Somewhat less now,\" she said. \"Since we're having this conversation. What do you know about the Black Archives?\"\n\nThat stopped him cold. He'd expected her to ask something else, something more... military. But instead, it took his tired brain a moment to scramble to the new topic. He finally said, \"That they're a myth.\"\n\n\"Really.\" Scorn dripped from that word, and she leaned back against the wall behind her. \"What if I told you that I heard from someone I trust that they're not?\"\n\n\"You must have slept through your childhood lessons.\" He switched to a childish singsong. \"'The Great Library has an Archive, where all the books they save\u2014'\"\n\n\"'Not fire or sword, not flood or war, will be the Archive's grave,'\" Glain finished. \"I memorized the same childhood rhymes you did. But I'm talking about the other Archives. The forbidden ones.\"\n\n\"The Black Archives are a story to frighten children\u2014that's all. Full of dangerous books, as if books could be dangerous.\"\n\n\"Some might be,\" she said. \"And Dario doesn't think it's a myth.\"\n\n\"Dario?\" Jess said. \"Since when do you believe anything Dario Santiago says? And why is he talking to you at all?\"\n\nShe gave him a long unreadable smile. \"Maybe he just wants to keep track of what you get up to,\" she said. \"But back to the subject. If it's where they keep dangerous information, then I say that's a place that we need to look for any hints about what happened to send Thomas to his death. And who to go after for it. Don't you?\"\n\nThomas. Hearing his best friend's name said aloud conjured up his image behind Jess's eyes: a cheerfully optimistic genius in the body of a German farm boy. He missed Thomas, who'd had all the warmth and understanding of others that Jess lacked. I can't think about him. For a wild instant, he thought he'd either shout at her or cry, but somehow he managed to keep his voice even as he said, \"If such a place as the Black Archives even exists, how would we go about getting into it? I hope Dario has an idea. I don't.\"\n\n\"You know Dario\u2014he's always got an idea,\" Glain said. \"Something to think on, anyway. Something we can do. I know you want to find out how and why Thomas died as much as I do.\"\n\n\"The Archivist told us why,\" he said. \"Thomas was convicted of heresy against the Library.\" Tell her what you know, for God's sake. The thought beat hard against his brain, like a prisoner battering at a door, but he just wasn't ready. He couldn't tell what saying the words out loud, making them real, might do to him.\n\n\"I don't believe that for a moment,\" Glain said softly. Her dark eyes had gone distant and the look in them sad. \"Thomas would never have done anything, said anything to deserve that. He was the best of us.\"\n\nJust tell her. She deserves to know!\n\nHe finally scraped together just enough courage and drew in a deep, slow breath as he looked up to meet her eyes. \"Glain, about Thomas\u2014\"\n\nHe was cut off by a sudden hard rapping on the door. It sounded urgent, and Jess bolted up off the bed and crossed to answer. He felt half relieved for the interruption... until he swung it open, and his squad mate Tariq Oduya shouldered past Jess and into the room. He held two steaming mugs, and thrust one at Jess as he said, \"And here I thought you'd be still lagging in bed...\" His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Glain standing against the wall. She had her arms crossed, and looked as casual as could be, but Tariq still grinned and raised his eyebrows. \"Or maybe you just got up!\"\n\n\"Stuff it,\" Glain said, and there was no sign of humor in her expression or voice. She moved forward to take the second cup from Tariq and sipped it, never mind that it was probably his own. \"Thanks. Now be about your business, soldier.\"\n\n\"Happy to oblige, Squad Leader,\" he said, and mock saluted. Technically, they were off duty, but he was walking a tightrope, and Jess watched Glain's face to see if she intended to slice through it and send him falling into the abyss for the lack of respect.\n\nShe just sipped the hot drink and watched Tariq without blinking until he moved to the door.\n\n\"Recruit Oduya,\" she said as he stepped over the threshold. \"You do understand that if I hear a whisper of you implying anything about this situation, I'll knock you senseless, and then I'll see you off the squad and out of the High Garda.\"\n\nHe turned and gave her a proper salute. His handsome face was set in a calm mask. \"Yes, Squad Leader. Understood.\"\n\nHe closed the door behind him. Jess took a gulp of the coffee and closed his eyes in relief as the caffeine began its work. \"He's a good sort. He won't spread rumors.\"\n\nGlain gave him a look of utter incredulity. \"You really don't know him at all, do you?\"\n\nIn truth, Jess didn't. The squad had bonded tightly, but he'd held himself apart from that quite deliberately; he'd formed deep friendships in his postulant class and seen some of those friends dismissed, injured, and dead. He wasn't about to open himself up to the same pain again.\n\nStill, he considered Tariq the closest he had to a friend, except for Glain. Glain he trusted.\n\nHis uniform jacket was still clean, and he put it on as he finished the coffee. Glain watched in silence for a moment before she said, \"You were about to tell me something.\"\n\n\"Later,\" he said. \"After the exercise. It's going to be a longer conversation.\"\n\n\"All right.\" As he stopped to check his uniform in front of the mirror, she rolled her eyes. \"You're pretty enough for both of us, Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Charmed you think so, Squad Leader. You're quite handsome yourself today.\" Handsome was a good description. Glain had chopped her dark hair closer for convenience; it suited her, he decided, and fit well with the solid curves of a body made for endurance and strength. There was no attraction between them, but there was respect\u2014more now than before, he thought. Some, like Oduya, might mistake it for something else. She might be right to be concerned. Jess met her eyes in the mirror. \"That compliment stops at the doorway, of course.\"\n\nShe nodded. It seemed brisk, but there was a look in her eyes that he thought might be some form of gratitude. \"Stop preening and let's go.\"\n\nThey left his room together, but, thankfully, no one was in the hall to see it. The squad had gathered toward the end, talking casually, but all that stopped as Glain approached. Jess silently took position with the rest of the squad, and Glain led them out at a fast walk for the parade ground. Despite his sweaty weariness, he looked forward to this; it was a chance to let a little of his anger out of that locked, chained box. There wouldn't be any real surprises. It was just an exercise, after all.\n\nHe was dead wrong about that, and it cost him.\n\nThey were in the tenth long hour on the exercise ground when Jess saw a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and tried to turn toward it, but he was hampered by thick layers of cloth and the flexible armor, and just simply too slow, too tired, and too late.\n\nA shot hit him squarely in the back.\n\nThen he was on the ground, looking up at a merciless Alexandrian sky scratched white by the heat, and he couldn't breathe. The pain crushed all the air out of his chest, and for a split second he wondered if something had gone badly wrong, if all the safety measures had failed, if he was going to die... And then his frozen solar plexus unlocked and he gulped in a raw, whooping mouthful of air.\n\nA shadow blocked out the burning sun, and he knew her by the short-cropped halo of hair that bristled up. After blinking a few times, he saw that Glain was holding out a hand to him. He bit down on his pride and took it, and she hauled him to unsteady feet.\n\n\"What the hell did you do wrong, Brightwell?\" she asked him. There was no sympathy in her voice. He shook his head, still intent on getting breath back in his lungs. \"I told you all to watch your backs. You didn't listen. If these weapons had been loaded with real ammunition, you'd be a mess to clean up right now.\"\n\nHe felt halfway dead, anyway. The training weapons that the High Garda of the Great Library used were not toys; they delivered real jolts and very real bruises. \"Sorry,\" he muttered, and then, a second too late, \"sir.\"\n\nNow that she wasn't just a silhouette against the sun, he could see the warning flash in her eyes. We're not equals here. Forgetting that was a stupid, personal issue he needed to overcome, and quickly; she couldn't afford to let it slip for long without seeming to encourage a lack of discipline in the ranks of their squad.\n\nHard habit to break, friendship.\n\nThe rest of the squad gathered together now from around the corners of the mock buildings that served as their training ground. It was mercilessly hot, as it always was, and each of his fellow Garda soldiers now looked as exhausted and sweat streaked as he did. Glain wiped her face with an impatient swipe of her sleeve and barked, loud enough for the rest of the squad to hear, \"Report what you did wrong, soldier!\"\n\n\"Squad Leader, sir, I failed to watch my back,\" Jess said. His voice sounded strained, and he knew from the still-burning ache in his back that he was going to have a spectacular sunset of a bruise. \"But\u2014\"\n\nHer face set like concrete. \"Are you about to excuse your failure, Brightwell?\"\n\n\"No, sir!\" He cut a look at Tariq, who was openly grinning. \"It was friendly fire, sir!\"\n\n\"Oh, be fair. I'm not that friendly,\" Tariq said. \"And I did it on orders.\"\n\n\"Orders?\" Jess looked at Glain, whose face was as unreadable as the wall behind her. \"You ordered him to shoot me in the back?\"\n\nGlain's expression never flickered. \"In the real world, you'd better watch your friends as much as your enemies. Allies can turn on you when you least expect it. I hope the bruises remind you.\"\n\nHe hardly needed the tip and she knew it. He wasn't a fool; he'd grown up never trusting people. Trust, for him, was a recently acquired skill that had developed in the company of his friends and fellow postulants. Like Glain. Who was trying to remind him not to rely on it.\n\nJess swallowed a bitter mouthful of anger and said, \"No excuses, sir. Tariq always struck me as shifty, anyway.\"\n\n\"Then why'd you let your guard down, you bright spark?\" Tariq said. \"I admit, I like playing the heinous villain, sir.\"\n\n\"Playing?\" someone else in the squad muttered, and Tariq mimed a finger shot in her direction as he swigged from his canteen. Jess would have laughed if it didn't hurt so much, but Glain's lesson had been pointed... and on point. I can't afford to relax, he thought. I knew as much from the beginning. Glain's just trying to remind me. With, unfortunately, Glain's typical subtlety.\n\n\"Settle,\" Glain said flatly, and the squad did. Instantly. Nobody questioned her\u2014not for long. Jess certainly didn't. \"We're nearly at the end of training,\" she told them, and paced back and forth in front of them with a lithe, restless energy that never seemed to go away, no matter how long the day. \"We will finish in the lead. Screw that up, any of you, and I'll slap you out of service hard enough to brand my palm print on your grandmother's face. Clear?\"\n\n\"Clear, sir!\" they all responded, instantly and in perfect chorus. They'd learned how to move and speak in concert long, painful months ago. That was Glain's doing. She'd end up High Garda commander one day... or dead. But she'd never settle for less than perfection.\n\n\"I'm tempted to make you run it again,\" Glain was saying, and there was a barely perceptible moan that ran through the group she didn't acknowledge, \"but you've bled enough for one day. You weren't terrible, and next time had better be an improvement. Shower, drink, eat, rest. Dismissed.\"\n\nThat, Jess thought, is why she's good at this. She'd pushed them all very hard, to the point of breaking, but she knew when to give just a touch of encouragement. And, most of all, she knew when to stop. None of them, not even him, were being carried to the Medica tents, which couldn't be said for a lot of other squads who weren't as highly ranked as Glain's.\n\nAround them, this section of the High Garda training ground was almost deserted; it was reserved for trainee testing. Everyone else had called it a day long ago, since the mess bells had pealed half an hour back, and now that Jess had the chance to think about it, his stomach growled fiercely. He'd burned off the light breakfast hours ago.\n\nHe fell into step with Shi Zheng and Tariq, but stopped when Glain said, \"Brightwell. A word.\"\n\nOthers gave him sympathetic looks but didn't pause; they walked around him as he halted and turned back. Glain was still pacing, and doing it in full sun; she never minded the scorching Alexandrian heat. The sun loved her just as much, and her skin had darkened to a warm, woody brown over the months of exposure. Jess, who'd been in the climate precisely the same amount of time, had managed to achieve only a light coating of translucent tan over layers of memorable burns. \"Sir?\"\n\nShe fixed a stare somewhere over his shoulder, toward the horizon. \"Message came in earlier to me from Captain Santi. He says to tell you... no.\" She suddenly shifted to fix her gaze right on his. \"No to what, Jess?\"\n\n\"Glain\u2014\"\n\n\"That's Squad Leader Wathen to you, and no to what?\"\n\n\"I asked to talk to Wolfe. Sir.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nIt was the coward's way out, but he gave her the second reason he wanted a meeting with their old Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who'd pushed them through a memorable period of hell as postulants. \"I wanted to know if he knew anything of the Black Archives.\"\n\nShe blinked, and her look shifted\u2014still suspicious and dark, but a good deal more concerned. \"You told me you thought they were a myth just this morning. You must have asked days ago.\"\n\n\"I did. For the same reasons you gave. Seemed to me that if the Black Archives existed\u2014and I never said I thought they did\u2014then it might be a place to look into Thomas's death.\" He looked down. \"I got a letter from his father, thanking me for being his friend. He asked if I knew exactly how his son died.\"\n\nGlain said nothing to that, but after a moment, she nodded. \"You didn't want me looking into the subject because you already were.\"\n\n\"And they watch us, Glain,\" he said. \"All of us.\" It was burning his tongue to tell her the truth, but he knew, knew how she'd take it. And he was too tired. He wanted to tell her in better circumstances, when the clock wasn't ticking down. If there was an exercise, she needed her focus more than he did... or, at least, that was what he told himself.\n\n\"Which brings us to the point: stay away from Wolfe. You know it's not safe, for him or you.\"\n\n\"I won't ask again.\"\n\n\"Dismissed, then, Brightwell. We'll talk later.\"\n\nHe nodded and jogged away to put space between them. Curious that Captain Niccolo Santi had passed the message, and Wolfe hadn't sent it himself. But, then, their teacher had been a barbed puzzle since the start.\n\nWolfe was not a kind man or a natural teacher, but he'd tried his best to save his students. That didn't make him a friend, exactly, but Wolfe would want to know the truth about Thomas, too. Once he did... No wonder Captain Santi wants to keep me away from him, Jess thought. Wolfe wouldn't let it go. No more than Jess could. Or Glain, once he told her. Good that he had a little more time to think. He needed a plan before he set that particular cat among the pigeons, didn't he?\n\nHis back ached, and his head pounded from the heat and exertion. Dinner was as fast as breakfast, fuel he ate without really noting it, and afterward Jess fell into bed for a few short hours\u2014far less than he needed\u2014before dragging himself up. He still had things to do that couldn't be done in the open.\n\nHe showered, changed into civilian clothing, shoveled down food in the common dining hall, and slipped away from the High Garda compound into the embrace of a rich, sea-cooled Alexandrian evening, beneath a blue-black sky scattered with hard stars.\n\nThis was work better done in the dark."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt from report from Obscurist Gregory Valdosta to Obscurist Magnus Keria Morning:\n\n\u2002...regarding our new problem child, Morgan Hault, I have seen little improvement and much to worry me. I'd have thought six months of intensive training and supervision here in the Iron Tower would have wrought some changes in her, but she remains stubborn, sly, and dreadfully smart. Only this morning I found that when I put her to work writing out standard representational formulae for changes to the Codex, she instead came up with a system to disguise entries\u2014in effect, to hide them. I gave her a simple task of alchemical preparation of a calix of gold, and instead she seized the opportunity to try combining mercury, vitriol, common salt, and sal ammoniac to create a virulent mixture to melt the thinnest part of her collar. She was unsuccessful, of course, and is being treated for a burn, but the concern is that she came very close to discovering a compound that might work.\n\n\u2002I've set her to work, supervised, on the boring task of transcribing official messages into the books, but I don't dare put anyone with her for long. The little criminal can be quite disarming. I realize that giving her access to some of the messages might be dangerous; she still retains her allegiance, as far as I can determine, to Scholar Wolfe and all her fellow students. But, believe me, she'll do far less damage with pen and paper than with alchemical preparations.\n\n\u2002And for the love of Horus, keep her well away from anything to do with translation. I shudder to think how we could hold on to the girl if she was able to translate herself away from here.\n\n\u2002She continues her resistance to the rules of the Tower, but I have determined, through the proper charts and analysis, that her ideal time for propagation will come soon. I have not warned her of this. Gods know what she would do to avoid doing her duty.\n\n\u2002I know you are sensitive on this subject, Obscurist, so forgive me for my frankness, but I still feel you give the girls too much freedom in this matter, allowing them three refusals before they undergo the compulsory procedure.\n\n\u2002She has, of course, already used up all three of these refusals.\n\n\u2002Your faithful servant, Gregory"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "The Alexandrian black market had two obvious faces. The more public one, known as the shadow market, sold illegal but harmless copies of common Library volumes\u2014punishable, at worst, with fines and short prison stays. It catered to those who wanted a book purely for the criminal thrill of it, even if the book was shoddily transcribed and incomplete, as they often were.\n\nA smuggler called Red Ibrahim presided over the darker, more private end of the trade, and he was legendary well beyond the city; his reputation was spoken of even in Jess's house back in London. He was a cousin, someone in the trade you could rely on in a pinch and for a price. Jess had actual blood cousins in the trade, but the main tests to becoming a trade cousin were long-term success and a certain ruthless loyalty to fellow smugglers. They were bound\u2014pun intended, he supposed\u2014by the business of books, of history set in leather and paper.\n\nForbidden fruits.\n\nFor months, Jess had steadily dealt with a succession of Red Ibrahim's subordinates\u2014he had a network of at least thirty\u2014and found them all cold-eyed and capable. His Brightwell bona fides had been checked again and again at every stage; he was, after all, a High Garda soldier, wearing the copper band of service to the Library, even if he was a smuggler by birth. Reconciling that and earning trust, even with the Brightwell name, had been a tricky job.\n\nTonight, as he walked, his initial directions wrote themselves out into his Codex in the Brightwell family code, and he immediately erased them. He visited a market stall, where he was told verbally to go to another shop, and then to a third, a darkened bar where sailors cursed at one another over dice games and a proprietor slipped him a paper note. The route took him halfway across the city, and his legs were truly aching by the time five words scribed themselves in his Codex: Knock on the blue door.\n\nHe stopped, put the book away, and looked at the houses on the street where he stood. They were neat rectangles painted in pale shades, with Egyptian decorations at the roofs and fluted columns in miniature on the porticos. Respectable homes for modestly well-off families, something a silver-band Scholar might own, perhaps.\n\nThere was a house with a dark blue door on the right, and he stepped through the square gate and passed through a garden of herbs shaded by a spreading acacia tree. An ornamental pond cradled lazy fish and large lotus plants. It was a traditional household, with Egyptian household god statues in a niche by the door, and he made the required respect to them before he knocked.\n\nThe man who opened the door was nondescript\u2014not young, not old, not tall or short or thin or fat. A native Egyptian, almost certainly, with sharp, dark eyes and skin with a rich coppery sheen. The local fashion was to shave all body hair, even eyebrows, and this man clearly abided by it.\n\n\"Jess Brightwell,\" he said, and smiled. \"I'm honored. Be welcome to my home.\" He stepped back to allow Jess entry, and closed the door behind him. It had a significant lock, and Red Ibrahim engaged it immediately. \"We've heard much about each other, I'm sure.\"\n\n\"I expected you to be ginger,\" Jess said. The man raised what would have been his eyebrows. \"Sorry. English term. Red haired, I mean.\"\n\n\"I am not called Red for that.\"\n\n\"Then for what?\"\n\nIbrahim smiled, just enough to send a chill down Jess's back. \"A story for another time, I think. Please.\" The man\u2014Jess placed him at about forty, but he could have been younger, or even older\u2014gestured to a small, dainty divan, and Jess sat. A young girl with straight black hair worn in a shoulder-length cut walked in with a tray of delicate coffee cups and a silver urn. She was maybe fourteen years old, petite and pretty, and smiled at Jess as she poured for both of them.\n\nShe took a seat on the divan at the other end from Jess, to his surprise.\n\n\"This is my daughter, Anit. The gods have smiled upon my house, and she is an intelligent girl who wishes to study the trade. Do you mind if she listens?\"\n\n\"No objection,\" Jess said. He remembered his father doing the same for him and his twin brother, Brendan, though he didn't recall either of them having much of a choice. \"It took quite a while to arrange to see you.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course, and I mean no offense by my caution. Does your father, the excellent Callum, receive every stranger claiming to be in the trade?\" Red Ibrahim handed him a cup so small it felt like a child's toy in Jess's fingers, but the coffee inside was sweet and potent enough to make his heart race after only a sip. \"Or does he ensure his business's\u2014and his family's\u2014safety by being wary?\"\n\n\"He's a careful man,\" Jess agreed, though he remembered his father ruthlessly risking him, and his brothers, without much thought for the consequences. His older brother, Liam, had swung from a gallows for the careful way his father did business. \"He wants to obtain some information, and you're the best positioned to have it at your fingertips. It's a delicate matter, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Ibrahim agreed. \"Naturally.\" He waited with polite attention.\n\n\"Automata,\" Jess said.\n\n\"There are no truly rare versions of Heron's work, as you no doubt know\u2014\"\n\n\"Not interested in rare volumes,\" Jess said. \"We're looking for books that describe the inner workings of the creatures. And how to disable them.\"\n\nRed Ibrahim was in the act of drinking his coffee, and though he hesitated an instant, he finished so smoothly Jess almost missed the reaction. Almost. Then he laughed, and it sounded completely natural. \"Do you know how often this request is made, young Brightwell? The automata are the enemies of both smugglers and Burners in every city on earth! Do you not think that if such information was available, we would have obtained it and made an incredible fortune with it by now?\"\n\n\"A unique treasure like that is more useful when employed strategically, for your own purposes.\" Jess put an edge on his voice. \"This is the most dangerous place in the world to smuggle a book, and yet you've made a career of it\u2014an empire, of sorts. You'd make it a mission to have that information at your disposal.\"\n\n\"No one can disable these creatures. It's impossible.\"\n\n\"Nothing's impossible,\" Jess said. \"They're mechanical creatures. They're made. Someone knows their secrets, and secrets are always for sale to those who look hard enough. And if I know anything about you, sir, it's that you would look very hard.\"\n\n\"At everyone,\" Red Ibrahim agreed. He put down his coffee cup with precise control. \"What does your father offer in exchange for this gift of all gifts? Presuming such a thing exists at all.\"\n\nJess tried to keep his face as calm as Ibrahim's, his pulse as slow. He didn't blink. \"I have a copy of The First Book of Urizen by William Blake.\"\n\nIbrahim's expression was just as still. \"There are eight copies of such a book in the world,\" he said. \"I would need something a great deal more rare. It is, as you say, precious treasure indeed, this information.\"\n\n\"There were eight copies,\" Jess said. \"Six of them were purchased by ink-lickers, who ate them in some sort of sick ritual four months back. As I'm sure you already know. That leaves two: the one in my father's vaults... and the one I have stashed here in Alexandria. Which can be yours, if you have what I want.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Ibrahim said softly. \"Now we come to it, I believe. What you want. It is not your father who asks. He'd never let you trade away such an important, valuable volume. He's gotten along well enough without such information, despite the best efforts of the London Garda. No, I think it is you who needs it so badly.\"\n\nJess didn't answer that. He felt sweat break out hotly on the back of his neck, but he hoped his face remained unreadable. After a moment, he said, \"One of two copies left in the world. I'm offering it in a fair exchange. It's a prince's ransom.\"\n\nIbrahim shared a look with his daughter. Anit said, \"It is a good price, is it not?\"\n\n\"It is,\" Ibrahim agreed. \"But that isn't the point. The point is that young Brightwell here is trading against his family's interests, for personal reasons. Tell me, does it have to do with the book you spent so much time and geneih tracking down, and bought only yesterday, perhaps? The one about the prisoners of the Archivist?\"\n\nThis was dangerous. Very dangerous. Jess said nothing. Ibrahim sat back against the cushions and rested his chin on one hand. He wore a ruby ring on one finger, and it looked like a drop of fresh blood. \"I want no involvement in Library affairs,\" he continued. \"Nor in the private crusade of a brash young man. This is not our trade.\"\n\n\"I'm asking for information, and that is your trade,\" Jess shot back. \"Do we have a deal or not?\"\n\nIbrahim continued to stare at him with those unsettling dark eyes for so long Jess felt words bubbling up and trying to escape\u2014angry words. He swallowed them down and waited. Finally, the man stirred, rose to his feet, and looked at his daughter, who still sat quietly watching. \"Anit. I leave it to you.\"\n\n\"What?\" Jess shot to his feet, but Red Ibrahim was already going, heading for the doorway that led to the interior of the house. For a hot moment, Jess thought about chasing after him, but he also knew a man like that didn't survive by being careless. If he'd turned his back, there were plenty of knives ready to protect him.\n\n\"Sit,\" Anit said, and there was an unexpected layer of steel to her voice. \"Sit down, Jess.\" Young and tender she might be, but she was something else, too. Hard in a way that he had never seen before\u2014not unless he saw it in the mirror. She put her hand to a chain around her neck, one that held a ring dangling from it\u2014a large carved ring, with an Egyptian hieroglyph of a bird.\n\nHe stared after her father as the man closed the door, but he sank onto the cushions again. \"What's he training you in tonight? How to refuse to help and still keep the Brightwells as allies?\"\n\n\"He meant what he said. It is my decision. He has left it to me.\" Jess moved his gaze to her, and found her nearly as unreadable as her father, but there was a little lift at the corners of her mouth. Amusement. \"I imagine you're thinking what a cruel fate it is, being left to the whims of a mere girl.\"\n\n\"Something like that.\"\n\nShe played idly with the ring on the chain. \"We are survivors, Jess,\" she said. \"You and I. We come from the same dark places. If you think I don't understand you... But tell me: why didn't you go to your brother for this instead? Surely it would have been simpler and cheaper?\"\n\n\"Brendan?\" Jess felt his brows lower in a frown. \"He's not in Alexandria. He's gone. Back to London.\"\n\n\"No,\" Anit said. \"You should perhaps keep better track of your twin. I don't wish to offend you, but he can be a nasty piece of work.\"\n\n\"Sounds like my brother, all right. Why is he still here?\"\n\nShe lifted both palms. \"Ask him. I'll tell you where he stays.\"\n\n\"And you'd like to be rid of him, is that it?\"\n\n\"One Brightwell in Alexandria is more than sufficient. We would rather that be you.\" She lowered her hands to her lap and cocked her head, with a real smile dancing on her lips now. \"I had two brothers myself. I know how difficult they can be.\"\n\nJess cleared his throat. \"So what's your decision? Your father left it up to you.\"\n\n\"He did.\" She studied him for a long moment, then said, \"Will you swear you will never betray where you got this information?\"\n\n\"I swear on\u2014what would you like me to swear on?\"\n\n\"The soul of your firstborn.\" She outright grinned this time. \"It's traditional.\"\n\n\"The rate I'm going, it may be an empty promise. All right. I swear on the soul of my firstborn that I won't tell anyone where I got this information. Not my friends, not my family. I'll never betray the house of Red Ibrahim.\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" she said. \"And if you break that oath, Egyptian curses are cruel, Jess. And quick. Remember that.\" She rose to her feet and headed for the door.\n\n\"Wait! Where are you going?\"\n\n\"To get the book you asked for,\" she said.\n\n\"I didn't bring\u2014\"\n\n\"I trust you,\" Anit said. \"If I didn't, you'd be dead already.\"\n\nIt wasn't a long wait, which surprised him; they must have kept this incredibly dangerous information here, in their home. His father would have been scandalized. The Brightwell business was always kept completely separate from the Brightwell residence, though Jess had sneaked in plenty of illegal books in his time\u2014to read, not trade.\n\nShe was back in only moments, casually carrying a little leather-bound volume. It looked worn and plain, obviously someone's personal notebook. As he took the volume from her, his fingers felt a rougher patch on the leather, and when he looked closer, there were dark stains soaked into it. Blood.\n\nHe opened it to look at the contents, stared, and then raised his gaze to hers. \"It's in code.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said. \"And I will give you the cipher to read it when you bring me the payment you promised. I said I trusted you. I'm not a complete fool.\" She hesitated for a moment. \"Jess, I said I had two brothers.\"\n\nHe was busy flipping pages, trying to see a pattern in the cipher\u2014a useless effort, of course, but better than giving in to frustration. \"Are you threatening to set them on me if I don't deliver? I will.\"\n\n\"I had two brothers,\" Anit said, and put her hand to the chain around her neck and the engraved ring that hung there. \"They're dead. The reason they are dead is the book you are holding in your hands.\" The ring, Jess realized, was sized for larger fingers. A young man's fingers.\n\nIt stopped him cold, along with the realization that the dark stains on the cover could have been her brother's blood. He looked up and into her eyes. They were as unreadable as her father's.\n\n\"If you try to use this information,\" she said, \"you'll be killed. I would hate to see that happen. It's a fool's bargain, Jess. My father paid a great deal to get this book, and it's cost us more than it could ever be worth. I'm only giving you fair warning.\"\n\nHis throat felt suddenly tight, and he forced a smile as he said, \"I'll be back with the Blake in an hour.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"I will be waiting.\" Somewhere in the back of the house, a bird began to sing loudly and musically, and Anit turned her head toward it with a smile. \"It's our pet skylark,\" she said. \"My younger brother built a house for it. The song is so beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\nJess held the bloodstained book in one hand and said, \"It is.\"\n\nIf this ended badly, at least he could enjoy the bright, familiar song of a bird he'd grown up hearing back home."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a message from the Artifex Magnus, head of the Artifex school of the Great Library, to an unnamed recipient:\n\n\u2002Greetings and fair wishes, brave soldier. You have already been made aware of your mission, and I know you have doubts of the morality of such an action. You need have no fear. In firing this shot, you will remove from the ranks of the Library one of our most difficult and dangerous traitors, one for whom there is no cure but death.\n\n\u2002I do not give this order lightly, and I know you do not take it so. The Burners cry that a life is worth more than a book, but we know the truth: knowledge lives on. No single life can claim so much.\n\n\u2002And so a man who threatens knowledge must be dealt with\u2014by persuasion, by force, or, if all else fails, by death.\n\n\u2002Blessings upon you from your god or gods, and from the hands of the Archivist Magister himself, who has approved this action.\n\n\u2002HIS SEAL."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "By the time he'd retrieved the Blake from his personal stash of rare books and delivered it to Anit in exchange for the cipher, it had been well into the dark hours of early morning. Then Jess spent hours poring over the contents of the book, writing out a translation page by careful page.\n\nThe results were startling, and he'd ached to keep going, but by the time his clock showed three in the morning, his eyes were too grainy to focus, his brain too numb to think. Jess finally admitted defeat and fell into bed, where he slept the sleep of the dead... until a pounding on his door resurrected him.\n\n\"Mup,\" he mumbled, and rolled sideways off his bunk. He desperately wanted to flop down again and die; his body felt nine kinds of sore from the trauma of the exercise the day before and the night's adventures. He hadn't had nearly enough sleep. The book, he thought, and grabbed for it and the sheaf of translated pages. He stuffed it into the smuggling harness, which was getting a good deal too crowded for safety, then threw on a robe to answer the summons.\n\nGlain stood there, crisply uniformed, and she said, \"Unplanned exercise. Get ready. It's our last one. Thirty minutes.\"\n\n\"Glain\u2014\" But she was already moving on to knock at another door. He'd hoped to find a moment to talk. But this wasn't the right one. Maybe that was better saved for after, when all this was done, and he could guide her more gently through the levels of shock, grief, and anger that he'd already experienced.\n\nDressed and fortified with a cup of sweet Egyptian coffee, he jogged with his squad to the training grounds and their assigned place to form up on the field. Other squads were coming, too, but none, Jess saw, had beaten them there.\n\nGlain hadn't made the run with them.\n\nShe isn't here.\n\nHe realized that only as they formed their rank and stood at attention. It wasn't just unusual for Glain to be missing, it had never happened, and he exchanged a sidelong glance with the young man to his right\u2014Tariq, who'd shot him the day before\u2014without moving another muscle. Tariq seemed calm, but he was already sweating. The loud morning tone sounded from the top of the High Garda watchtower, and... Glain still didn't appear. Other squads were inspected and dismissed. Jess's group stood silent in the hot sun, at attention. If the others worried as much as he did, they were too well trained to speak.\n\nFinally, Jess saw one of the Garda's armored carriers speeding across the ground; his eyes tracked it as it approached them. Glain Wathen jumped out almost before the hissing steam-powered vehicle came to a halt. She was followed by someone Jess recognized only slightly: High Garda Captain Feng, who was smiling this morning, though his eyes were like chips of cold black ice. Feng had never appeared on the parade ground before. Never interacted with their squad at all. He had quite a reputation as a hard man to please.\n\nFrom the rank behind him, Jess heard someone take in a startled breath, but he concentrated on staying as still as he could. Feng's gaze\u2014cold and impersonal\u2014swept over each of them as he walked the rank. He gave Jess exactly the same assessment as the others, no longer or shorter, and said nothing until he reached the end of his inspection and returned, with Glain, to stand before them. He and the young squad leader were silhouetted by the merciless glow of the rising sun. It effectively hid their expressions.\n\n\"Scores,\" Feng said to Glain. She briskly unhooked the small waterproof box on her belt and snapped it open. Inside lay a Blank, a book connected to the Great Library's vast archives, though this was one whose cover shimmered with the Library's gold seal and the feather of Ma'at\u2014her recording journal, which copied itself daily into a mirroring Blank on the shelves somewhere in the distant bowels of the High Commander's offices. Military issue.\n\nGlain presented it to Feng with both hands, and he took it the same way\u2014a sign of respect for the book itself, not for her. He paged through, reading her reports and notes, and then handed it back with the same care. \"Well done, Sergeant Wathen,\" he said. \"Well done, squad. Take ease.\"\n\nThat was a relief, and Jess heard a quiet sigh as they all spread their feet and relaxed their spines a bit. That was a mistake, as Feng continued, \"You lead the roster in points, and, as such, we have decided to issue you a special test today, one that will challenge you to the level we wish you to achieve. Are you ready to excel, recruits?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" they all responded at once and as one. Nobody had to feed them that response. Every member of Glain Wathen's squad was driven to excel, and their gods preserve them if they weren't. Glain added her own voice. She stood even taller, even straighter. She was in her element here.\n\nJess envied that. Right now, he desperately missed the quiet comfort of his books. This, he thought, is going to be hard. Feng hadn't set up a special challenge for them for the fun of it, and Jess had no doubt at all that it was going to be a brutal affair.\n\n\"Squad!\" Glain called, and they all gave back a deep-chested \"Sir,\" in response. Even Jess. \"We lead by two points in the rankings. This is not enough. We will bring in this exercise with a comfortable five-point lead, and we will finish with the top score! Is that understood?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" Jess barked, in unison with the rest. He wanted to finish this bloody training in first position as much as Glain did, but having attracted the attention of Captain Feng was a mixed blessing at best.\n\nFeng walked slowly up and down the row, but he looked into the blank middle distance as he said, \"Your assignment today is a confiscation. Your job will be to enter and search a home for contraband books, and, if found, tag and recover them for the Library. You may meet resistance. Be ready.\"\n\nThat sounded deceptively easy. Glain and Jess had been on real book-confiscation missions as postulants competing for their current positions; every person in the squad had qualified on situations much harder than this. In fact, it sounded so remedial that it was utterly out of place, given where they were in their training.\n\nJess shot a look to his right, where a Scandinavian girl named Helva stood at rigid attention. Helva's glancing look told him his unease was shared. Not right at all. If Glain thought the same, she gave no indication of it, but, then, she'd always had the best face for secrets that Jess had ever seen.\n\nGlain swiveled to face her squad. \"In the carrier,\" she said. \"Move!\"\n\nThey scrambled in. It was a tight fit, but the carrier was designed for a full squad and gear. Jess found his seat as the steam engine hissed and gears engaged to rattle the carrier forward. It picked up speed on the flat ground. No windows, so Jess couldn't tell where they were going except far and fast. The parade ground itself was enormous, and held close to twenty different environments and set pieces around the edges. He'd been in most of them during training, including one that doubled as a set for an Alexandrian street. He assumed that was where they were being driven.\n\nHe was wrong.\n\nWhen the carrier jolted to a stop and the squad jumped out, Jess found they were at the farthest western edge of the High Garda compound: a restricted area near the edge of the field where trainees were not allowed to venture. Jess's misgivings twinged again as the squad lined up behind Glain's rod-straight form. Not right, he thought. The entire area was surrounded by a high stone wall with just one visible gate.\n\nBehind them, the carrier's bubbling hiss rose to a gusting sigh as gears engaged again and it raced away. The tracks spat a long plume of sand over the squad. As Jess blinked grit away, a solid man in High Garda uniform with two Horus eyes on his collars\u2014a full centurion in rank\u2014looked them over with a bleak, unforgiving gaze. \"All right,\" he said. \"Gear to your right. Get it on. You have sixty seconds.\"\n\nJess joined the rush to the equipment piles off to the side. A High Garda flexible armored coat emblazoned on the back with the Library symbol, and a heavy black weapon. No reloads for it. Jess was all too familiar with the gun; he'd carried one in Oxford, when he was still a postulant. Even after all the practice he'd had with it over the past few months, it felt like a hot alien creature in his hands, unfamiliar and hostile.\n\nIt brought back such bad memories.\n\n\"Live rounds?\" someone behind him asked as Jess checked his weapon.\n\n\"You have live stunning rounds and half-strength regular rounds,\" the centurion said. His accent had the lilt of southern Africa, Jess thought, and it matched with the burnished darkness of his skin. \"They're still dangerous, so pick your targets and try not to kill each other.\"\n\nJess shook his head; they weren't beginners. They were a tight, trained squad now, and they'd all gotten to know how the others moved. He could pick up cues from body language through peripheral vision. They hadn't had a targeting mistake since the first week together. Well, except for that incident with Tariq, but that had been orders, not accident.\n\nHalf-strength rounds were not normal. These would leave real, lasting damage, and if they hit in the right places outside of armor, could even break bones, damage organs. Why use them today? Another piece that didn't fit in place. The assigned job was too easy, the location too remote, the ammunition too odd. There was something not right about this, and though Glain had an excellent, impassive mask of a face, he could see the tension in the sharp way she moved. She knew something she wasn't sharing. He was tempted to confront her, but he knew better; here, in front of the rest of the squad, she'd just slap him down.\n\nHe silently checked his weapon and nodded readiness, and once the others signaled, the squad moved to the door. The centurion creaked it open, and a puff of sand blew out in a smothering wave. It's not real, he told himself. Just a mock-up of a street, some actors thrown in for color and sound. It's safe enough. But he'd never been in this particular standing-exercise set before. He didn't know what it would be like, and it made him itch all over to have it as a final challenge.\n\n\"You have thirty minutes to complete the assignment,\" the centurion said. \"This is your only exit, so remember where it is. Heads on a swivel, and good luck.\"\n\nHe seems a good enough sort, Jess thought. More than that, he seemed competent. He had another, more silent and nondescript comrade standing in the shadows. A skeleton crew, Jess thought, and wondered what resources they had in case something went wrong. Not many, he thought.\n\nAnother wrong piece to an unreadable puzzle.\n\nHe didn't have time to try to put it together, because his squad was moving into danger.\n\n\"All right, it's simple enough,\" Glain told them as the door creaked shut behind them. \"I want perfection. Watch yourselves. Assume nothing is safe. Understood?\"\n\nJess always assumed the world was dangerous, however it appeared, because... well, it was. He knew that very well, had from the time he was old enough to be sent running across London with a contraband book strapped to his chest. Why would she bother to remind any of them? They weren't careless. When the instructors had taken away points, it had been for small things\u2014form, speed\u2014never lack of awareness. She must be as nervous as he was.\n\nIf I were any more paranoid, I'd never function, he thought. The amusement tasted bitter and strange on his tongue, like metal, and he swallowed hard and followed Glain into the barren, twisting streets.\n\nThe exercise set wasn't at all what he'd expected. These were not Alexandrian streets\u2014which were wide, clean, and beautifully planned\u2014but architecture that spoke more, to Jess, of England. Weathered, cramped buildings. Shadows and rubble. Shopwindows filmed with grime, and what he glimpsed behind them seemed chaotic and cheap. A rail-thin dog with ribs showing under fur stood like an automaton in the shade of a narrow alley, and Jess felt a pang of pity for the poor creature. Was it supposed to be here? If this hadn't been a serious test, he'd have stopped to toss it a bit of food, but even as he thought of it, the dog flinched and silently turned to run into darkness.\n\nHe didn't see any actors playing parts here. He didn't see anyone at all.\n\nGlain, on point, was methodically checking the stops and doorways, while Jess and the young woman on his right, Helva, watched the dark windows that overlooked the street. There was no need to assign the jobs; each of their squad understood their roles in this action. They proceeded smoothly and quietly down the street, and at the end of it, Jess saw a lone figure standing at the corner. The man wore a sand-colored Library Scholar's robe that floated on the harsh wind, and beneath, practical clothing showed black. Shoulder-length hair blew in a tangled mix of black and gray, and even before they got close enough to make out features, Jess knew who was waiting for them.\n\nScholar Christopher Wolfe.\n\nJess read the sudden tension in Glain's body as she processed this new information; no one, he sensed, had warned her that they'd have a Scholar to escort, and certainly not that it would be Wolfe. The man was supposed to be lying low somewhere. After all, the Library's highest levels wanted Scholar Wolfe gone or dead, and for Wolfe to put himself out in public like this, in a training exercise... Yet another thing that felt madly wrong.\n\nThe reason three of their class of thirty had died, Jess remembered, had been because the Library so earnestly wanted Christopher Wolfe silenced. It wasn't a comfortable memory. Well, perhaps even Wolfe hadn't had a choice in this. There had been no sign of his partner, Captain Santi, today on the parade grounds. Where was he? A threat to Santi's safety would make Wolfe do a great many things. It had before.\n\nIf Wolfe was here under duress, it didn't show. He presented nothing but bitter strength to the world, just as he always did, as demonstrated by the dismissive look he swept over them. Even Jess and Glain.\n\n\"You move like you're strolling down the boulevard,\" Wolfe said to Glain, who nodded to him as if that was a normal greeting. \"I thought you were meant to be High Garda soldiers. Are they training you to walk elderly ladies across busy streets?\"\n\n\"Better safe than dead, sir,\" she said. \"As you well know.\"\n\n\"Do I?\" His face, Jess thought, looked more set and grim than ever, and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes that hadn't been there before. He looked thin and haunted. \"Well, then. Do try to keep me alive, and let's finish your mission, Corpse Squad.\"\n\nJess shot a look right and saw Helva flinch at the words. She wasn't used to Wolfe's humor, which verged on cruel; new recruits were commonly called Corpse Squads by the veterans, but it was never said to their faces. Trust Wolfe to flick it at them like a lash, to keep them on their toes.\n\n\"You're in no danger, Scholar. Stay behind me, and between Brightwell and Svensdotter.\" Glain, if disturbed by his jibe, didn't show it a bit. She's learned much since her early days, Jess thought. There was even a glint of humor in her eyes, but it died in a second as she turned to scan the street. Wolfe pushed in between Jess and Helva. Jess cast a quick look at him and verified that not only was the Scholar unarmed, but he was also without armor beneath that silk robe. If he took even a half-round straight on, he'd go down hard and risk serious injury, even death. Why hadn't they kitted him out with the same gear the squad was wearing?\n\nThis isn't right, he thought again, but he couldn't fire questions at Wolfe, not the ones he wanted to ask, like Who ordered you to do this? and Did you have a choice? Because as a soldier, it wasn't his place to demand that information. He had a job. He simply had to do it perfectly. There was no margin for error.\n\nGlain led them down the street at a steady, calm pace, checking doorways and shops. Jess and Helva watched the upper stories and rooftops, and, thus far, except for the skinny, starving dog, the place seemed deserted. Nothing moved except cloth whipped by the wind and sand over cobbles. The place smelled dead and deserted.\n\nIt startled Jess when Wolfe said, \"The house is on the right, the third on the block. That's where we'll find your prizes. The faster we finish this, the better, I think.\" Jess had an almost irresistible urge to turn and look where Wolfe indicated, but instead he kept his gaze locked high and let the others do the gawking. \"There's likely to be some resistance to your confiscation.\" His tone was so dry it nearly evaporated on the air. Of course there would be resistance. Original books were highly illegal. Coveted, traded, sold, and smuggled, nevertheless. People rarely let them go with a shrug.\n\nThis was one of Jess's least favorite High Garda duties: taking books out of the hands of those who loved them\u2014unless, of course, they were perverted ink-lickers, who delighted in consuming rare and original works in some orgy of possession. In that case, he was happy to slap them in restraints and haul them off to the Library's prison cells. Confiscation was the aspect of the Library that Jess felt the most uneasy about in general, the lengths to which the Library went to ensure all knowledge, all learning flowed through its doorways. It was not a sign of confidence to him. Nor of a pure heart.\n\nWolfe went quietly, and Jess wondered if he'd been told more than they had. As little as the Library trusted him these days, perhaps he'd been given the exact same information they had. He was used to thinking of Wolfe as the holder of secrets, but for all his confidence and ability to seem all knowing, Wolfe operated at just as much of a disadvantage as Jess, and likely always had. Seeing Wolfe as merely human was an unpleasant reminder of just how fragile all their safety could be.\n\nThey proceeded down the street, and though she might not have realized it, Glain quickened the pace; she'd not been told that they'd have Wolfe to protect\u2014he could see that in the increased tension in her shoulders. She didn't like the silence of these streets any more than Jess did.\n\nWhen the attack came, it came very fast and from above. Jess almost missed it; the attacking force had positioned itself very cannily to take advantage of the morning glare, and he registered only a telltale flicker of movement that might have been a bird but in his gut he knew was not, before he shouted, \"On our left!\" at the same moment that he heard Helva ring out, \"On our right!\" just as the first shots rained down at them. Both of them began firing up at the shadows on top of the rooftops, the clattering noise of bullets drowning out any other shouts.\n\nSomeone grabbed Jess by the back of his uniform coat and yanked him hard enough to make him stumble three steps; his aim went wild, but the action saved his life. From the new angle, he saw a glass bottle tumbling toward them, catching the light in a flash of green liquid inside.\n\nThe bottle shattered on the street as they scattered, with Glain herself covering Wolfe and shoving him toward a doorway as she fired upward. Jess felt the sudden, strange feeling of an indrawn breath on the back of his sweating neck, and then the thick, clinging substance known as Greek fire that had been contained within the bottle ignited with a hissing roar. The heat flashed over him, and for a moment he feared he was caught in the flames, but when he turned to look he saw a huge, burning column rising to the sky.\n\nThis is not a test. That was not half-strength. A million questions raced through Jess's mind, but all useless now. Surely Santi couldn't have known and hadn't agreed to this. Wolfe wouldn't have, if he'd been able to refuse.\n\nDidn't matter. The force on the roof had weapons of their own, besides the shock tactic of Greek fire. That attack seemed to have missed all of them, and now Jess's squad had taken the meager shelter available in doorways, and bullets\u2014not half-strength, either\u2014shattered holes in the bricks near them. Glain broke the dirty glass of a wide shopwindow and ordered Helva through to check the room while she covered Wolfe, who crouched to present a smaller target. He looked, as always, focused. Tense. Ready.\n\nUnarmed and completely vulnerable.\n\nJess tried to control his shaking. Though he knew he ought to be frightened, his trembles were more from adrenaline, eagerness to take the fight to the enemy. He was angry, he realized. Angry that he'd been dumped, once again, into a situation beyond his control, and with utter disregard for his survival. Angry that Glain, Wolfe, and these comrades he'd tried so hard not to care about might pay the price again.\n\nHe saw a target on the rooftop, aimed, and fired, and saw the impact. Someone went down, just a dim shape against the glare. Good. He aimed again, fired, and missed, but got a hit on the next shadow that appeared.\n\nHe cast a quick glance toward Glain and Wolfe, just to be certain they were still secure; Glain was in perfect form, face calm, eyes bright as she aimed and fired, and every shot counted. The sheen of the greenish Greek fire against her skin made her look almost like an automaton herself... except for the slight contented smile on her face.\n\nGlain had found her perfect moment, it seemed.\n\nJess ignored Tariq's movement from his post nearby at first, thinking his comrade was looking for a better firing angle up. But he watched him, anyway, out of instinct and the sense memory of getting shot in the back. Tariq wasn't looking up at their attackers, he realized after a second. His squad mate was staring straight at Glain and Wolfe, and the steps he took from cover were angled to put him clear of Glain and give him an open shot on Wolfe's unprotected body.\n\nJess didn't believe it, not instantly. He comprehended, but belief came a second later, as Tariq raised his weapon. Wolfe, without armor, without protection, wouldn't be as lucky as Jess had been in the same situation\u2014and this was no shock-weapons exercise. Half-strength rounds could maim and kill... If Tariq was armed with half-strength at all. Somehow, Jess knew in a flash that he wasn't.\n\nTariq had been ordered to kill Wolfe.\n\nJess felt it in his gut, a conviction so strong he didn't question where it came from. Tariq, who'd been given orders to fire on his own squad before, might not even know what he was doing was wrong. He might be completely innocent.\n\nHe would still be the instrument of a Scholar's death.\n\nJess realized he didn't have enough time to reach Tariq and warn him or spoil his shot. There were no good options.\n\nHe raised his weapon, aimed, and fired before Tariq pulled his own trigger.\n\nHis squad mate, his friend, collapsed against the wall with his mouth a dark O of surprise, and the weapon slid out of his hands to crash on the cobbles.\n\nThen Tariq sagged down to a sitting position, hunched and breathless from the shot Jess had placed right in the center of his chest, and his face turned a terrible creamy shade just as his eyes fluttered shut. Not dead. Please, God, don't let him be dead. If the Greek fire was real, maybe all the ammunition was real as well. But he'd put it into armor, not flesh. Jess didn't see blood, which was one small mercy. I didn't have a choice. It was either Tariq or Wolfe.\n\nJess scrambled from his position to Tariq's side and pressed his fingers to the young man's neck. He found a pulse, and pulled the young man to the shelter of a doorway before taking a zigzag pattern toward Glain and Wolfe.\n\nGlain had seen the whole thing, and she swung the barrel of her gun toward him as he neared. \"Stop!\"\n\n\"I saved Wolfe's life, you idiot!\" he shouted back, and ignored her to hug the wall beside the Scholar. Jess faced out, blocking Wolfe from any more possible friendly fire from that angle. \"This isn't just an exercise!\"\n\n\"Really?\" Glain snapped. She sounded lightly annoyed, as if someone had taken the last croissant from the tray at breakfast before she could reach it. \"I saw what happened. Tariq was aiming straight for Wolfe. Did you kill him?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Good. Then he can answer questions and get a taste of my boot.\" She sounded extraordinarily good-natured about it, which was a little chilling. She cast a lightning-quick look over her shoulder into the darkened interior of the shop and called, \"Helva! Is it clear in there?\" No answer. She glanced at Jess, then said, \"Take him in. Carefully.\"\n\n\"You're sure?\"\n\n\"Whatever's in there, it's safer than here. They're moving to new positions. They'll have us soon.\"\n\nTwo of their comrades\u2014not counting Tariq, who might not be part of their squad at all\u2014were down, not moving, and as he scanned the rooftop opposite, Jess realized she was right: the firing from up there had stopped, though they'd thrown another container of Greek fire that was belching gouts of flames and toxic smoke toward the cloudless sky. Distraction, while the attackers gained new firing positions. Inside the shop was safer.\n\nJess grabbed Wolfe's shoulder, but the older man shook himself free with an acidic look Jess remembered all too well from classes. \"I'm fine, Brightwell,\" he said.\n\nJess drew his small sidearm and handed it over. Wolfe looked at the weapon with what Jess was almost sure was longing, then shook his head. \"If I'm not armed, my death's much harder to explain,\" he said. He turned and scrambled lithely through the broken window, avoiding the sharp edges, and dropped inside. Jess cursed under his breath and shoved the hand weapon back in place before following. He didn't manage to avoid all the shards, and felt the hot kiss of a cut along one cheek as he plunged after Wolfe.\n\nHe found Wolfe only a step inside, standing very still, and Wolfe's arm went up to block his path when he would have pushed forward. \"No,\" he said quietly. \"Wait.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Jess was acutely aware that his back, Wolfe's back, was to the open street, and took a step slightly toward the man, to try to block a shot if one was coming. \"Get to cover!\"\n\n\"Listen.\"\n\nJess heard it then: the soft moan of someone in pain. It had been Helva who'd come in here, he remembered; he hadn't heard her signal clear. \"Get down!\" Jess barked, and shoved Wolfe behind the fragile shelter of an overturned table. \"Stay there! Glain, Helva's down!\"\n\nGlain's voice from outside sounded clipped and calm. \"Secure the Scholar first.\"\n\n\"Secured,\" he said, and fixed Wolfe with a look. \"Stay that way. Sir.\"\n\nJess took out a small sealed bottle, twisted the cap, and shook it, and a soft yellow glow formed inside as chemicals mixed. A milder version of Greek fire\u2014a reaction that produced light but not explosion. He held it up and off to the side, in case someone should be aiming at the glow, but though a few bullets still flew outside, nothing came his way.\n\nHe saw Helva down near the back of the small, cluttered room. Her eyes were open and she was still breathing; he could see the rise and fall of her chest. \"Helva!\" She didn't move, not even to turn her head toward him, though he thought her gaze shifted his way. Whatever was wrong with her, it was serious. Jess pointed at Wolfe. \"Stay here.\"\n\nWolfe nodded. Jess moved carefully through the clutter in the way\u2014broken, dusty furniture; bolts of rotten cloth; unidentifiable bits of shattered lives that had been dumped here for show and to make their job harder. He didn't see any enemies lurking; there wasn't room for them. One door at the back, still closed, though he supposed someone might have shot Helva through it, then shut it again. He rattled it, to be thorough. It was securely locked.\n\nHe knelt down next to her, put the light down, and checked her for signs of trauma. No blood. No, wait\u2014a small trickle of it running down her hand...\n\nSomething moved in the crook of Helva's arm, and for a bizarre, insane moment Jess thought she'd grown a third arm, until some screaming, instinctive wisdom in the back of his mind recognized the sinuous way the thing moved as it glided over her chest.\n\nCobra.\n\nJess involuntarily flinched and the cobra reacted, rearing up to eye level and flaring its hood wide around its sleek head. Black eyes glittered in golden light, and for an eerie moment the thing looked like a ghost of ancient pharaohs risen again. It swayed slightly, watching him.\n\nFrom somewhere behind him, Wolfe whispered, \"Don't move,\" and Jess didn't. He stayed as still as he could, exchanging stares with the reptile that swayed slowly in front of him. He didn't know much about snakes\u2014there weren't many in England, and none like this deadly creature\u2014but he knew sudden moves were a terrible idea, even if all he wanted to do was throw himself backward. Cobras, he remembered his friend Khalila telling him, could strike the length of their body, and this one looked as long as Jess was tall. At least Egyptian cobras didn't spit. He was remembering a surprising amount of information from new-minted Scholar Khalila Seif's lecture, to which he'd only half listened. Most critically, he remembered that the venom could easily be fatal without immediate treatment.\n\n\"Move back very slowly,\" Jess heard Wolfe say. The Scholar hadn't moved, thankfully. \"Very deliberate movements. Native Egyptian cobras are not overly territorial; it wants escape, not confrontation. Give it a chance to go.\"\n\n\"It had a chance,\" Jess said. \"It didn't go.\"\n\n\"It was attracted by her body heat. And stop talking and do as I say!\"\n\nHelva's eyes were fixed on him, too. Her face was a dirty gray, covered in sweat, and he didn't like the labored way she was breathing. The cobra continued to focus on Jess, which he supposed was the best outcome; if it turned on Helva again, she'd have no chance at all. I could try to shoot it, he thought. If he fired accurately, he might kill it. If he didn't, it could bite him or Helva, and shooting Helva even with half-strength rounds might kill her, anyway.\n\n\"Back away,\" Wolfe said again. \"Do it, Brightwell!\"\n\nIt was the snap of command in Wolfe's voice that made Jess finally comply. He'd grown so used to following the Scholar's orders as a student that before his forebrain could argue with the order, his hindbrain had already begun to move him backward, one slow scrape of his knees at a time. The snake shivered, as if considering a strike, but it held back and watched him shuffle in retreat.\n\nThe hood slowly deflated, and the snake\u2014sleek and fast now\u2014slid off of Helva and made for a darker corner of the room. Jess watched it without moving until he was certain it was set on escape, and then breathed a burning sigh of relief and lunged forward to Helva. She struggled to sit up, but he held her down. \"How long?\" he asked her. She gave him a weak, pale-lipped smile.\n\n\"A few minutes,\" she said. \"I was afraid he'd bite me again, so I didn't dare call out. Thanks.\"\n\n\"For what? I didn't even kill the thing.\" I should have, he thought, looking down at his comrade's sweating, pallid face. He should have killed it. What if it came back?\n\nThe cobra had been shocking enough that he'd all but forgotten the shooting until he became aware it had stopped, and then alarm spread a net over his body, pricking every nerve to alert. He looked back to see Glain stepping through the broken window into the store. She kept her attention fixed on the street outside, but for the moment, at least, it was quiet.\n\n\"How is she?\" she asked Jess without turning.\n\n\"Cobra bite,\" he said, which he knew would tell her everything. They should have had a Medica officer with them, if this had been a real mission, but for training all they had were basic first-aid kits, and nothing that would help against that venom. \"We need to get her out of here.\"\n\n\"No,\" Glain said. She sounded calm but grim. \"Jess, I need you to bring help. Get Santi. Bring back Medica for Helva and anybody else who needs it.\"\n\n\"You think we're under real attack.\"\n\nGlain nodded sharply but he saw the set of her jaw, the line of her shoulders. She was angry. \"Get to the gates,\" she said. \"Get Santi here and not Feng. Watch your back. Go, Jess.\"\n\nHe didn't like leaving her here, all but alone to protect Wolfe, but, then again, there was no one he'd trust more with that job. And, he thought with a bitter spike of awareness, no one she would trust more to risk this. He'd grown up running books for his father through the mazelike, dangerous streets of London. She knew that.\n\n\"Here.\" Jess pitched her his weapon. \"I won't need it, and it'll just slow me down.\"\n\nGlain caught it one-handed and promptly handed it to Wolfe. When he tried to protest, she fixed him with a straight glare and said, \"Take it. We're beyond all that now, I think.\" In Wolfe's hands, it looked entirely out of place, but Jess well knew the Scholar was no stranger to fighting or killing, if it came to it.\n\nHe cast one look down at Helva, who managed a smile. She was holding her own weapon now\u2014a smaller sidearm\u2014and said, \"Run fast.\"\n\n\"Always,\" he said, and\u2014mindful of the cobra lurking in the dark corner\u2014moved to the closed back door. He opened it and checked. It seemed clear. The alleyway was bright after the dimness of the shop, and he took a breath to let his eyes adjust, then stepped out and turned to scan the roofs. No one in view, which meant he might have a chance.\n\nRunning for his life was a feeling that settled on him like old, familiar clothes. He wasn't frightened by it: he'd played keep-away with the local London Garda all his childhood, and running in that vast labyrinth of a city was much harder than in these straight lines and clean angles. It meant, though, that there was less cover, less chance to lose pursuers in blind corners and narrow passages. He'd have to make up for that with sheer speed.\n\nJess took in three deep, stomach-straining breaths, oriented himself by the sun and memories of how far they'd come from the entrance, and ran. At the next alley, he cut around to the main road\u2014it was, as the centurion at the gate had warned, the only way out. No point in wasting time.\n\nThe first block was easy; he'd caught their attackers by surprise, and when he exited the back of the alley at a flat run, he was moving like a blur. He heard the shouts rise like smoke, and a scramble up on the roofs, but they were nowhere near the right position. Someone shot at him, but it went wild. Five steps farther down, there were more shots flung his way, but with the same lack of accuracy.\n\nSomeone up there made good time or was in a lucky spot, and he saw a bottle of Greek fire arc toward the ground two body lengths away from him. No good choices: if he swerved, he'd lose momentum, and there was no telling which way the fire would splash. Going through it wasn't an option. The thick goo would cling to skin and fabric and couldn't be wiped or washed away. He'd burn.\n\nAs the bottle hit the ground and the fire rushed to life, Jess ran straight at the nearest wall. He put more energy into his stride and ran two gravity-defying steps sideways on the wall, then pushed off hard and launched himself like an arrow past the roiling green blaze in the middle of the path. He landed hard on the cobbles on his shoulder, and close enough that the toxic smoke crawled hot into his lungs, but he coughed it out and rolled to his feet and kept running. Shots scattered behind him, but they all missed, and now the inferno behind him was also\u2014usefully\u2014cover.\n\nOnly another block to the exit gates, and Jess made the turn and poured on even more speed. His heart was pumping furiously now, his lungs rebelling from the effort and the smoke, but the goal was within sight.\n\nThat was when a shot hit him squarely in the back with enough force against the flexible armor beneath his Library coat to knock him off stride and stun his lungs into paralysis. Deprived of breath, blazing with pain, Jess tumbled to the ground, rolled helpless as a beached fish, and convulsed as he tried to pull in air. Right in the same spot Tariq hit me. He saw black and red spots, and the pain came in waves as hot as Greek fire. I'm going to die, he thought, and it seemed incomprehensible to him, because the gates were right there. Rescue for Wolfe, Glain, Helva\u2014all of them. It depended on him.\n\nHe wasn't going to make it.\n\nYou will, he told himself over the screaming, mindless fear he felt. You have to! Get up. Get up! Do it!\n\nHis lungs released suddenly, and he sucked in a breath so fast it burned, then coughed it out and tasted bloody copper. The pain didn't matter; he had air, and the pain couldn't stop him. Wouldn't stop him.\n\nJess crawled to his knees, then his feet. He was bitterly aware of seconds slipping by and pursuers catching up as he lunged forward. Half a block to go\u2014hardly anything; just a few steps. Go. Just go.\n\nAnother half-strength bullet (he thought they must have been half-strength, or he wouldn't have been able to get up the first time) raced past him, so close he felt the heat of it score his cheek. The hot desert sand hissed up into his face as if the street itself tried to hold him back, but he plunged on, only half coordinated now, step after pounding, uncertain step. He was leaving a trail of bloody drops behind him, and for a panicked second he was back in the streets of London, worried about leaving a trail for the Library lions to follow...\n\nFocus.\n\nHe put his head down and forced his muscles to ignore the pain and managed one last, desperate burst of speed.\n\nHe made it to the closed gate at the end of the street where they'd entered and collided with the wood. His fist pounded weakly on it, but his lungs still felt too traumatized to shout.\n\nExposed. Pinned like a bug to a board. This was his greatest moment of vulnerability; he was a perfect target for anyone who cared to aim a well-placed shot.\n\nJess pulled in a painful breath and shouted, \"On the gate! Open! Open now!\"\n\nTo his sweet and unexpected relief, it swung wide in the next few seconds. He nearly toppled out, but the centurion who'd let them in caught him. The man barked, \"What in Ra's name is going on in there? Did you idiots start a war?\"\n\n\"Santi,\" Jess gasped out. \"Captain Santi. Get him. Now.\"\n\n\"Look, recruit, you don't request the presence of an elite captain of the High Garda just because\u2014\"\n\nJess grabbed the centurion's collar and yanked him close enough to smell his morning breakfast. \"Get him! We have wounded, and our Scholar will be killed if you don't shift your arse right now!\"\n\n\"Scholar? What Scholar? You don't give orders, you little\u2014\" The soldier stopped talking. Jess had pulled his utility knife and now it pressed gently on the man's abdomen, right where it could do its worst.\n\n\"Someone betrayed us,\" Jess said. \"Tell me it wasn't you.\"\n\nThe centurion's face was hard to read, but he seemed more angry than guilty. \"You'd better use that toy if you think I'd put baby soldiers at risk. Betrayed you how?\"\n\n\"Greek fire. Real bullets. You heard it. That was no exercise.\"\n\nThe centurion's expression didn't change, but something did around the edges of Jess's awareness; a slight shift of his feet, tightness around his eyes. \"Drop the knife, boy. Before my comrade gets upset.\"\n\nComrade. Jess felt the movement at his back and knew the other soldier was there, ready to shoot.\n\n\"Tell me you're not with them,\" Jess said quietly.\n\n\"I'm not.\" The centurion looked past him and nodded. \"Stand down.\" His gaze locked back on Jess. \"You, too.\"\n\nThere wasn't any other play to make. Jess stepped back and put his knife away. He said, more quietly, \"I need cobra antivenin for one of our squad. Get that, too.\"\n\nFor a terrible second, the centurion didn't move, and then he looked at the soldier behind Jess. \"Send a message. We need Captain Feng.\"\n\n\"Not Feng,\" Jess said. \"Santi.\"\n\n\"Santi's not in charge of this\u2014\"\n\n\"Get Santi!\"\n\nThe centurion might not have believed him, but he was willing to play along for now. Jess thought there would be plenty of reprimands in his immediate future, but he no longer cared. And that, most of all, must have gotten through to the centurion, who abruptly nodded. \"Antivenin is in my pack. Let me get it.\"\n\n\"Don't move,\" Jess said. \"I don't trust you.\"\n\n\"Boy, I could have got that knife from you like taking a toy from an infant,\" the man said. \"I'm getting the pack.\"\n\nWith the pounding surge of adrenaline starting to recede, Jess figured the soldier probably could have taken him down easily, and he nodded. The soldier reached down, grabbed a field pack, and snugged it on. Then he took up his heavy black weapon\u2014more powerful than Jess's, and not loaded half-strength, for certain.\n\n\"Well?\" he said, when Jess stared back. \"Go on, then. You're taking me inside. I need to assess the situation.\"\n\n\"I'll need a weapon.\"\n\n\"Where's yours?\"\n\n\"I gave it to the Scholar.\"\n\nThe soldier gave him a sharp look, then took out his sidearm and handed it over. \"Shoot me and I'll end you,\" he said. \"I'm Centurion Thabani Botha, in case I die.\"\n\n\"Brightwell, sir.\"\n\n\"Good. Now we're mates. Move.\"\n\nJess was still winded and hurting, but he didn't protest; he just turned and led Botha back through the gates and watched the rooftops. It was eerily quiet now, no more shots coming their way, though the Greek fire still blazed away in a snapping fury. Looking at it now, Jess was shocked he'd managed to get around it, since it occupied all but a small strip of safety against the farthest wall. He and Botha squeezed past as quickly as possible. Once they were out, Botha said, with quiet grimness, \"I wasn't told there'd be a Burner simulation along with your confiscation assignment.\"\n\n\"What if it wasn't a simulation? Could Burners get in here?\"\n\nBotha didn't answer. Maybe he didn't know, or maybe he just didn't want to say. But Jess doubted that the enemy who'd attacked them was really part of the Burner movement. This came from inside the High Garda itself, he thought. Tariq had turned on them, after all. There would be questions to be asked in the wake of this, hard ones.\n\nBotha put up a fist and Jess came to an instant halt. They were just at the corner, and Botha looked around, then back at Jess. His eyes had gone narrow and cold. \"How many out there?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Just saw shadows on rooftops. Maybe ten?\"\n\n\"Armed with Greek fire?\"\n\n\"And guns,\" Jess added, though he knew Botha hadn't forgotten. He just felt a little defensive. He swallowed and said, \"If you see any of my squad, watch them, too. I think some of them may be...\" He trailed off, because he didn't want to come right out and say traitors, but the implication hung heavy in the air between them.\n\nBotha shrugged. \"I always keep an eye on recruits. They might shoot me in a panic.\"\n\nJess decided then that he liked the man. \"Better follow me, then. I trust your aim, at least.\" He stepped out into the street. For a second, he felt dizzy, waiting for the inevitable bullet to hit, but nothing did. Silence, except for the hiss of sand stirring in the wind, and the roar of the fire behind. The blaze that had kicked off the whole mess was dying down in the middle of the street ahead, and Jess used that as a guide to look for Tariq. There he was, still lying where he'd fallen. Jess wanted to stop, but Glain, Wolfe, and Helva had to be his first priority. He'd find out the rest later.\n\nGlain stepped out of the shadows of the broken window and pointed her weapon past Jess, at Botha. \"Halt,\" she snapped, and Jess felt Botha coming to alert. \"Drop it!\"\n\n\"He's here to help,\" Jess said. \"He's got antivenin for Helva, and Santi's on the way.\"\n\n\"You bring it in, Jess,\" Glain said. \"I don't know that one.\"\n\nBotha laughed. It sounded genuinely amused. \"Smart,\" he said. His pack thumped the ground by Jess's feet. \"Take it in, recruit.\"\n\nGlain's posture stiffened just a little more. \"Check the pack,\" she told Jess. He crouched down, opened the flaps, and looked in. Standard field equipment, with a full Medica kit inside. He looked back over his shoulder at the centurion.\n\n\"You're Medica?\"\n\n\"Cross-trained,\" Botha said. \"I do field medicine. You don't need me for this, though. Just give her the injection.\"\n\n\"Do it,\" Glain said. \"Hurry.\"\n\nJess found the antivenin and eased by Glain, who kept a sharp watch on the centurion. He found Scholar Wolfe beside Helva, taking her pulse. Wolfe held up his hand without even looking up, and Jess handed the shot over and watched as Wolfe slid the needle in. The injector hissed a little as the gas capsule triggered, and the clear liquid contents pushed into Helva's vein. She was still and quiet, and Jess would have thought his fellow soldier dead if not for the flutter of her pale eyelids. Her color was bad\u2014as bad as it could get, Jess thought, without Anubis appearing to personally drag her to the underworld. \"Is it too late?\" Jess asked. He didn't want to care. He'd tried hard not to care about any of them.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" Wolfe said. He put his hand on the young woman's forehead and held it there for a moment\u2014Not medically useful; just comfort, Jess thought. The action of a kind man, though Wolfe wouldn't like being thought of in that way. He went out of his way to be seen as a hard, uncaring bastard. \"I've seen this stuff revive those worse off.\"\n\nHow often? Jess wanted to ask, but didn't. He didn't want to know. Instead he turned back to Glain, who was still aiming her weapon squarely at Botha. Botha was watching her with a smile, but had dead-serious eyes above the upturned lips. \"I'm going to check the others,\" Jess said, and stepped through the broken window with a crush of glass under his boot. \"Centurion, come with me. She probably won't shoot you in the back.\"\n\n\"Probably,\" Glain agreed, deadpan. She didn't relax her vigilance until he'd led the centurion away to Tariq.\n\nBotha rolled the younger man over and checked his pulse. He sat back and shook his head. \"He's gone,\" he said. It staggered Jess, but he steadied himself quickly. Tariq was aiming at the Scholar. I had to do it. I had to.\n\n\"They said we had half-strength rounds,\" Jess said, and that got a look from the other man. A pitying one.\n\n\"This wasn't you, recruit.\" Botha rolled Tariq's limp body over to the side, and Jess saw the red-rimmed hole in his ribs. \"The shot punched straight through and came out the other side\u2014armor-piercing. From the angle, this came from above while he was already slumped down. Definitely wasn't you.\" Botha, while he talked, kept his gaze up on the area above them. Jess looked up, too. Nothing but sky and blazing morning sun. \"Decent shot from that angle. Your squad mate would have been gone in an instant, never knew what hit him. Come on. Let's find your other lost lambs.\"\n\nJess hoped they weren't, like Tariq, lambs to the slaughter.\n\nThey found one inside another storefront, well concealed and unhurt; the others were grouped together in a defensive position down the street. Unlike Tariq's, the worst wounds were bruises and cracked ribs from half-strength rounds. Tariq had been deliberately executed, Jess thought, for failing in his mission to kill Wolfe.\n\n\"What in Allah's name happened?\" That was from Zelalem, one of their squad who was taller than Botha, and cadaverously thin. \"What kind of test was that?\"\n\n\"Pass or fail,\" Botha said. \"Fall in, all of you.\" The three of them groaned as they stood up from their meager cover of a fallen block, and Zelalem swayed like a reed in the wind before Jess braced him. \"I said fall in, not fall over. Move it. I want all my ducklings together.\"\n\nLambs; now ducklings. Botha must have been a farmer in a previous life. Jess thought about mentioning it, but he didn't think the man was in a particularly joking mood. As they moved back toward the storefront, there was a storm of movement at the far end of the street, and all of them, with their weapons out, drew instinctively to the cover of doorways.\n\nIt wasn't necessary, because the movement turned out to be Captain Niccolo Santi, leading a half century of his troops down the street, all at high alert.\n\nThe centurion stepped out to flag Santi. \"All clear here, sir,\" Botha shouted. \"Coming out!\"\n\nHe gestured to the rest of them, and Jess fell in as they jogged their way to the main force. Glain stepped out of the wrecked window with an arm around Helva to prop her up, while Wolfe took the other side.\n\nNiccolo Santi held up a closed fist to halt the advance of the troops, and the look he gave Wolfe was long and unreadable. \"Scholar,\" he said. \"Any damage?\"\n\n\"Not to me,\" Wolfe said. \"This one needs Medica. Cobra bite. We've given her antivenin.\"\n\nSanti gestured, and two of his command stepped out of formation and rushed to take Helva. Some of the pressure in Jess's chest lifted. She'll be all right.\n\nJess expected a barrage of questions from Santi, at the very least, or an outpouring of concern for Wolfe's safety.\n\nSo it came as something of a shock when Niccolo Santi, longtime partner and lover to Scholar Christopher Wolfe, turned to Botha and said, \"Put Scholar Wolfe in restraints. He's under arrest.\"\n\nThe strangest thing of all was that Wolfe didn't seem at all surprised."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "From the personal journal of Scholar Christopher Wolfe (interdicted to Black Archives):\n\n\u2002There are mornings when I wake and I am back in the cell, and I see nothing but the dark. Feel nothing but the pain. On those mornings, I am convinced I never escaped that place, and the life I have had since never existed at all, except as a fantastic illusion.\n\n\u2002I should leave you, Nic. I know that, because I'm not really here at all. I should vanish and never come back, because one day either I will break and fail you or I will make you break your own vows to the Library to save me from myself.\n\n\u2002But I can't. Leaving you would destroy everything in me that remains true and good. Leaving you means giving up on a better world.\n\n\u2002I'm sorry, Nic. I love you more than you can ever understand. I wish I could be strong enough to protect you from my own stupidity."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "Jess got no answers all the way back to the barracks, where he was put in a waiting room with the rest of the squad. They were all exhausted and confused, drenched with rank sweat, and though they were allowed to strip away their armor and were given food and water, the bare room offered no other comforts but wooden chairs. They had a watchful guard who, when Jess posed a question to Glain, snapped, \"Quiet. No talking.\"\n\nHe leaned back against the cool wall and closed his eyes. At least they couldn't keep him from resting.\n\nHis Codex gave a small, strange tingle, like a tiny shock; it was a sign someone had written him a personal message, and it pulled him out of a slow slide toward dreams. He straightened and fumbled for the book in its case at his side. Every time he opened it, he remembered his parents gifting it to him before he'd left to train at the Library\u2014a rich gift, leather bound, with his name inscribed in gold Egyptian hieroglyphs on the front. It had suffered some from hard use, and the scratched, roughened, battered surface looked nothing like the crisp new thing he'd brought just a year ago to Alexandria.\n\nFelt like his, though. A part of him now.\n\nThe first section of the Codex held the standard Library listing of volumes available for reading and research\u2014constantly updated by means of a science that was the secretive work of Obscurists, but that wouldn't have triggered the shock\u2014and, behind that, the contents of the latest reading he'd requested, which happened to be a history of the ancient Romans in the time of Julius Caesar. For all his faults, the man had put aside his quarrels with Cleopatra and Antony to save the Library. In many ways, the modern world owed its whole existence to him.\n\nBehind his reading, on a separate tabbed page, were messages that came in handwritten directly to him. Normally they were from his family\u2014innocuous questions about his progress and health, deep coded with requests from his father for information about books. Nothing new from family, though. Today, on a new, blank page, a message had come from a nameless source, and he recognized the neat, precise writing immediately as being from an invisible pen moved over the paper on the other end of the connection.\n\nIs Wolfe all right?\n\nHe stared at those words hard for a moment as they faded from view. The message was from Morgan Hault, locked up in the Iron Tower of the Obscurists; the girl could not leave and had no chance of escape, and yet every time he saw her handwriting, he remembered the silken feel of her skin and the heat of her body against his. The scent of her hair washed over him in a warm wave. He'd told himself to forget her; she was trapped, and she must still blame him for that. He'd been the one to hand her over. He hadn't fought to keep her free.\n\nShe didn't ask how he was. Only about Scholar Wolfe. That said volumes. And stung more than a little.\n\nHe wrote back, He's fine. Are you all right?\n\nThe words faded, and there was no immediate reply. He hated that she didn't tell him what was happening to her inside the Tower. Still, she had to be safe enough: Obscurists were rare. Valuable. Necessary to the continued operation of the Great Library and the entire system of the Codex, and Serapeum. They'd have no reason to hurt her. And surely she wasn't yet old enough for them to be demanding a child from her, to continue the Obscurist line. That would be in her future, but not yet. Surely not yet.\n\nAt long last, as he watched, a pen moved over paper somewhere in a room far away. Does that matter?\n\nAs simple as that was, it ripped a piece of his soul away. She hadn't forgiven him.\n\nOf course it matters. Are you?\n\nIs anyone? she replied. As long as the Library rules us?\n\nShe was right, of course, but he wished, futile as it was, that the Library could be what he'd always believed it to be as a child: the light of knowledge, the protector of science, arts, history\u2014a force for great and eternal good.\n\nThe terrible truth was that the Library still was all those things. It was a force for good. It did protect what would otherwise have been lost in wars and chaos and disasters. It did encourage scholarship and knowledge across the world, across religious and national lines. It did set knowledge and learning in a place of honor above all other considerations.\n\nIt was just how it went about it that turned his stomach and made it all wrong.\n\nThe Library will change, Morgan wrote, and he could hear the whisper of her voice saying it, too. It has to change. We must make it change. Is that still our bargain?\n\nAs if they had the power to do that. Jess's optimism had guttered out months ago, and whatever embers remained were fast losing their heat. He took up his pen and hesitated. He knew what he needed to write to her; it was the same information he needed to give to Glain, and to Wolfe, about Thomas. But, as with Glain, he couldn't think of the words.\n\nMorgan's pen moved one last time, to write, I will have more information soon. Look after Wolfe.\n\nHe wrote, Don't take unnecessary chances.\n\nShe didn't reply to that last, only marked down a final X to let him know she was finished, and then the words vanished from the page as the Codex scrubbed any trace that she'd ever written to him at all.\n\nHe didn't understand how she could do this\u2014cover her traces so thoroughly from other Obscurists who should have been watching them both. Morgan was clever and resourceful; she'd concealed her abilities as an Obscurist for most of her life without being detected. Still... he knew it was a risk every time she sent him a message, and yet he still craved any contact from her like a drug. One day, she'd let something slip, some sign she was letting go of her anger and bitterness.\n\nOne day in the distant future, she might even forgive him.\n\nHe returned his Codex to the case on his belt and saw Glain looking at him from across the way. She might have suspected Morgan was still in contact with him, though he'd not been completely forthright about it. Glain knew too many of his secrets as it was.\n\nJess was just about to shut his eyes again when Santi strode into the room, swept all of them with a look, and pointed to Glain, then to Jess. \"You two,\" he said. \"With me.\"\n\nHe executed a crisp turn and left, leaving Jess and Glain to scramble up and after with as much decorum as their battle-sore bodies could manage, while the rest of their squad stared holes in their backs. Santi didn't pause as the door shut behind them. He continued a quick march down the long, plain corridor, then up a flight of stairs decorated with Anubis statues in alcoves, and to an office door with an armed guard beside it. Santi accepted the soldier's salute with one of his own.\n\n\"Dismissed,\" he told the guard, and watched the man leave. Then he opened the door and led the way inside.\n\nChristopher Wolfe sat on one side of a large solid table. He was shackled at the wrists.\n\n\"Sit down,\" Santi said to Glain and Jess as he shut the door, and gestured to a wooden bench at the side of the room. He was still wearing that cool military expression, and it gave Jess a creeping sense of unease. Wolfe in chains, Santi acting utterly unlike himself... And the four of them in a locked room.\n\nGlain slowly eased herself down on the bench and glared at Jess until he sat next to her. Santi dragged a wooden chair, a noisy slide over the stone floor, and thumped it in place across from Wolfe at the table.\n\nWolfe finally looked up. He seemed drawn and exhausted and\u2014so wrong to Jess\u2014vulnerable. He lifted his bound wrists silently, and, when Santi shook his head, dropped them back with a heavy clank of metal to the table.\n\nThough he'd brought the chair over, Santi didn't sit. \"You're still under arrest, Scholar Wolfe,\" he said in a quiet, calm voice that raised the hackles on the back of Jess's neck. \"You're going to stay that way. You know why.\"\n\n\"Nic\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" Santi cut Wolfe off clean. \"I don't want to hear it. Don't you understand the consequences? One of my recruits is dead. Another may never regain the use of her arm. That's you. That was your choice to put yourself at risk when you damn well knew better, and I told you to stay away!\" There was a flare of emotion at the end of that small speech, and Santi paused, as if he hadn't meant to let it out. When he started again, his voice was once again pressed flat. \"Tell me why I should ever let you roam around unmonitored again.\"\n\nWolfe hadn't looked away from Santi's face the entire time. Hadn't blinked. Hadn't displayed the slightest flicker of guilt or anger. There was a strange light in his eyes that Jess couldn't reckon. \"Because hiding me away isn't working.\"\n\n\"It's keeping you alive. That's what I care about.\"\n\n\"Then you care too much,\" Wolfe said. There was a tremor in his voice now, and in his hands, too. Something broken behind his stare. \"You've locked me up. I don't take well to that. As you know.\"\n\nSanti sat down slowly, as if he didn't even realize he was ceding ground. \"It was necessary. You haven't been yourself.\"\n\n\"You tried to get a message to me,\" Wolfe said, looking past Santi at Jess and Glain. \"What did you have to tell me?\"\n\nSanti quickly leaned forward and grabbed the chain of his manacles tightly to pull Wolfe toward him. \"No,\" he said flatly. \"Stop. For the love of the gods, don't you understand that someone just tried to kill you out there? The Archivist wants you dead. I trust today finally hammered the point home, since it was written in the blood of others this time instead of your own!\"\n\n\"Captain,\" Jess said, and Santi actually flinched, as if he'd forgotten them in his intensity. \"Why did you bring us here if you won't let me answer?\"\n\n\"Because I want you to understand, too,\" he said, and turned to stare at them. \"Leave Wolfe alone. Don't contact him. Don't try. You see what happens\u2014you're the reason he came out of seclusion, to talk to you. He could have been killed. The Archivist is burning for an excuse to see him dead.\"\n\nWolfe's smile this time was strangely warm. It nearly looked normal. \"The Archivist needs no scrap of an excuse to do that. No, Nic, be honest: you brought them here because you thought they'd take one look at me and leave me alone out of sheer pity.\"\n\n\"Chris...\"\n\nWolfe didn't appear to regard his lover at all. He kept looking right at Jess and Glain. \"I'm not insane,\" he said. \"I'm not on the verge of it. I may be stretched to my limits\u2014my limits being admittedly lower than they should be\u2014but you have something to tell me, and that thing is important enough that despite all the well-meaning captivity Nic has put around me, I will continue to risk my life until you tell me. He can't stop that, and he knows he can't.\"\n\nSanti gave a wordless shout of frustration and fury, knocked his chair over backward, and stalked around the room. His face was tense and pallid, and there was something else there\u2014real fear, Jess thought.\n\n\"All right,\" Wolfe said. \"Ask.\"\n\n\"It isn't so much a question as something I need to tell you. All of you, I suppose, though I hadn't thought it would go quite this way.\" He swallowed, because he'd drawn Santi's attention now, too. The weight of their stares felt heavy as an elephant on his chest. And speaking of his chest, the harness beneath his shirt seemed to pull even tighter on his bruised skin.\n\nHe silently unbuttoned his uniform jacket and shirt beneath. Both were sodden with sweat, and the kiss of cooler air on damp skin made him shiver. No one said a word as he pulled aside the fabric to reveal the smuggling harness, and then unsnapped the pocket to pull out one of the two books inside.\n\n\"Your life is on a thin edge right now,\" Santi told him softly. \"I'm still an oath-sworn member of the Library High Garda. That contraband had better be worth your risk, Brightwell.\"\n\nJess's hand felt cold and sweaty as he gripped the battered, flexible leather of the cover, and for a long moment he said nothing. Couldn't think how to begin to tell them. Then he said, \"This is the last confession of one of the Archivist's personal guards. The man killed himself a couple of months ago. In it, the man gives detailed records about who he arrested, who was tortured, who was released. Who was executed and how.\" He swallowed. \"Your name is in here, Scholar Wolfe.\"\n\nNo one moved. Jess raised his gaze from the book to meet each of theirs in turn.\n\n\"There's another name in here. Thomas Schreiber's.\"\n\nGlain took in a breath, then slowly let it out, and bowed her head. \"Does it say how he died?\" she asked. \"What they did to him?\"\n\n\"It has a record of Thomas's arrest,\" Jess said. \"And they did... they did hurt him.\" He didn't want to think about that. He'd read the entries, forced himself to do it, and he'd hurt for days after, like his mind and body had been cut and torn by it. \"But Thomas wasn't executed.\"\n\nNone of them seemed to quite grasp what he'd said at first. Not even Wolfe, who was usually so quick off the mark. The silence stretched, and Glain finally said, in a hushed and muffled voice, \"Then how did Thomas die?\"\n\n\"He hasn't died at all,\" Jess said. \"He's still alive. Our friend is still alive. And that means... That means we still have a chance to save him.\"\n\nHe should have predicted that Glain would be angry, but, for some reason, he underestimated the speed of it, and when her fist hit him square on the left side of his jaw, he didn't have time to duck. It was a solid punch, with considerable muscle behind it, and when the red haze faded, he was lying on the floor on his back, and Santi was holding Glain from behind by the elbows. From the absolute fury on her face, she was ready to haul Jess off the floor and give it another go.\n\n\"Thomas is dead!\" Glain shouted, and it sounded raw and full of anguish. Tears glittered hard in her eyes. \"They took him from our house, they tortured him, and they killed him! They told you to your face!\" She launched into a blistering stream of Welsh that he was sure called everything from his manhood to his parentage into question, and didn't stop until Santi whipped her around and shook her.\n\n\"Calm down, Squad Leader! That's an order!\" Maybe it was his stern presence or her awareness that she couldn't hit a superior officer, but Glain stopped cursing and went still. She breathed fast and hard, but after a moment of silence, she nodded sharply. Santi let her go. Glain sank back down on the bench and balled her hands into hard fists that Jess watched warily as he got up.\n\nSanti turned on him, and there was violence in him, too. Just better controlled. \"Jess. How do you know this book isn't a fake?\"\n\n\"Because absolutely no one wanted me to have it,\" he said. \"I stumbled over the existence of it only because I was working my way through\"\u2014he caught himself in time; regardless of how much he trusted these three, his family's business matters weren't to be shared\u2014\"through an errand for my father. I overheard a reference to this book, and when I tried to follow up, I was blocked at every turn. It took me months just to verify the news of the guard's suicide, and even longer to make contact with his family to finally pay for the book. They've got no love for the Archivist, believe me.\"\n\n\"Or that could all be the signs of a very well-baited trap,\" Santi said. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. No help from him, Jess saw. He concentrated on Wolfe.\n\n\"Sir, it's authentic. I've investigated.\" He swallowed and held Wolfe's stare, somehow. \"I have sources you can check.\"\n\n\"And I will.\" Wolfe's voice was as soft and dry as the desert sands. \"I'll expect a full accounting of them before I believe a word of this.\" But he glanced at Captain Santi, and there was something in it that made Jess play a guess.\n\n\"You already knew this, didn't you?\" That got both Wolfe and Santi's attention, and though Wolfe was hard to read, Santi, in that moment, wasn't. \"God. You did know Thomas was alive.\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said. \"We didn't. Not for certain.\"\n\nWolfe removed all doubts when he said, \"I believed that he was. And no, before you scream at me, I had no real proof, not like this book of yours. The pattern follows what they did to me: arrest, torture, prison, erasing me as if I never existed. The Archivist doesn't like to waste talent. Thomas Schreiber is gifted, and he knows that. He'll want to... use him, if he can. The greater good of the Library and all that.\"\n\nThere was a bleak sound to that, and Jess felt chilled as he remembered the entries in the journal, the shock he'd felt on seeing the name Scholar Christopher Wolfe written there, early on in the book. The guard had seen Wolfe arrested and taken for questioning, but had never seen him executed.\n\nWolfe had simply disappeared from the records.\n\nJust like Thomas had disappeared, taken from the safety of their student housing. Gone in a whisper.\n\nDead, they'd been told.\n\n\"Is Thomas being kept here in Alexandria?\" Glain's voice had gone hard and cold. She leaned forward to put her weight on elbows braced on knees. \"Where did they hold you, Scholar? What happened to you when they\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop,\" Santi said. It was just one word, but the force behind it\u2014not a shout, just pure menace\u2014made her look at him in surprise. \"He doesn't need to relive any of this.\"\n\n\"He does if it's the same place Thomas might be held.\" Jess stood up, and Wolfe's gaze followed him. It seemed black and remote, but there was something behind it Jess couldn't understand. \"Where are they keeping him? Here?\"\n\n\"No. They wouldn't keep him in Alexandria, knowing he has friends such as us.\" Wolfe leaned forward, and his shackles dragged across the wood. \"Let me see it.\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said.\n\nWolfe's voice stayed warm. Almost kind. \"I know you are trying to protect me, but, Nic, I see all this every night in dreams. You can't protect me from memories.\"\n\nSanti finally gave up. The anger and frustration radiated off him like waves of heat. He wanted to act, and Jess understood that; he'd felt the same for the past months, knowing about this tantalizing book, hearing of its list of prisoners and executions. He'd intended only to punish himself by finding out exactly how Thomas had died, but instead... instead he'd found hope. And hope hurt.\n\nJess held out the book, and Wolfe took it. They were all silent a moment while he flipped the pages. Jess found himself watching the man's face, waiting to see him react, but he might have been perusing some dusty academic work instead of reading about his own darkest hours. When he was done, he closed the book and sat back with a sigh.\n\n\"I suppose I should begin with what Glain doesn't know,\" Wolfe said. \"Three years ago, I invented and built a device\u2014something that threatened the entire foundations of the Library, though I didn't see it at the time. My device was destroyed, and I was charged with heresy. My work was erased. I was made to disappear, too.\" He glanced at Santi, who was still staring hard at the floor. \"Nic was a fool and risked himself trying to find me. He nearly died himself in the attempt. At any rate, I was finally released, under the condition that I never again publish or pursue any lines of research that the Library deems dangerous. I live on sufferance.\"\n\nJess knew all this; he'd learned it from Santi and Wolfe when Thomas had disappeared. He'd never breathed a word of it to the others, and it jolted him that Wolfe was speaking of it now.\n\n\"But you got out!\" Glain said. \"That means there's hope for Thomas.\"\n\nWolfe was already shaking his head. \"My mother is the Obscurist Magnus, and her influence and power meant that the Archivist couldn't execute me out of hand, no matter how badly he wanted to. Even so, I didn't just get out, though I was a man of high standing, of many accomplishments, with honors and friends. Thomas was just a student. A postulant.\" Wolfe paused a moment, and Jess thought he was censoring himself about what to tell them. \"If Thomas is still alive, it's because the Archivist recognizes his worth to the Library. That means they'll keep him until his will and spirit are thoroughly broken, and then they'll put him to work in some secret corner. Eventually. It won't be a life, but he will still be breathing.\"\n\nThat was a horrible thought, but it was one Jess had already experienced. Thomas wouldn't simply be held. It would be far worse than that. He didn't want to imagine how much worse, but he could see from the lightless look in Wolfe's eyes that the Scholar remembered. There was something not quite right in that stare, and Jess shivered. Maybe Santi had been right: maybe involving Wolfe in this was a mistake.\n\nBut we need him, Jess thought. For the first time since he'd held that book and read the account of Thomas's arrest and questioning, he felt less alone. Less helpless. He knew Glain wouldn't let it go; despite Santi's reluctance, the captain wouldn't, either.\n\nAnd with Wolfe's guidance, Thomas's fate seemed more and more like something they could change. Together. He'd never once, since realizing Thomas still lived, thought about leaving him where he was, to whatever mercy the Library might have.\n\nThomas was his friend. And he would find him. It was as simple, and dangerous, as that.\n\nGlain, in the silence, turned to Santi. \"Captain. Do you really think Thomas is dead? Or are you more afraid that Jess is right and it sends us all down a dangerous path?\"\n\nThat was a pointed and perfect question, and Jess had to give Glain credit: she was much more clearheaded about this than he could be. For him, it was a raw, personal wound; he'd loved Thomas like a brother, and he still felt responsible, in no small part, for what had happened to him.\n\nSanti chose his words carefully\u2014too carefully, maybe. \"I don't want Christopher dragged back under this threshing machine. The book could be faked. They might be waiting to draw us in. There's every reason to believe Thomas is dead, and almost none to believe he's alive.\"\n\n\"Almost none,\" Glain repeated, still in that calm, quiet voice. \"Which means there is, in fact, some. Do you really think we wouldn't want to know that? That we wouldn't want to find out?\"\n\n\"It may get us all killed,\" Santi said. \"Think what you're doing.\"\n\nJess exchanged a look with Glain. A long one. And in it, he could see they were perfectly in agreement. \"We have thought about it. We need to rescue Thomas,\" he said.\n\n\"No matter what it costs,\" Glain said. \"We don't abandon our own.\"\n\nSanti and Wolfe exchanged a look. Wolfe inclined his head a little to the side, with a strange, crooked smile. \"You see? They're as bad as we are.\"\n\n\"Worse,\" Santi sighed. He rose and unlocked Wolfe's restraints, and packed the flexible cuffs back into the holder on his belt. \"They haven't even got a proper sense of fear. But that will come.\"\n\nHadn't got a proper sense of fear? They'd survived the bloodbath of Wolfe's choosing of his postulants to the Library; they'd survived Oxford. They'd just this morning survived ambush, attack, and the death of one of their own, even if he'd been a traitor to them. They definitely knew fear. Jess just didn't intend to let it stop them. \"So, where did they hold you when they were questioning you?\" he asked Wolfe.\n\nWolfe sighed. \"That, you see, is the problem. I don't remember. Can't. Believe me, I've tried. I can see pieces, but not... not anything significant. And I will admit, it's not a memory I'm eager to relive in detail.\"\n\n\"Even for Thomas?\"\n\nWolfe looked away. \"I'll do what I can,\" he said. \"But you'd best try to find another way to get the information you need.\"\n\n\"Do it carefully,\" Santi said. \"Unless you want it to be buried along with you.\"\n\nJess spent the rest of the evening locked in his room with Anit's little coded book about the automata. It wasn't much, he realized: hastily written notes, likely a simple memory aid for someone in the Artifex division of the Library who'd worked on the design or repair of the machines. Some of it was utterly incomprehensible to him, even when he'd translated it from the code. Much of it would take an engineer of Thomas's caliber to understand.\n\nThere was a notation of some kind of script that had to be changed when orders were altered, but it was a passing mention that noted the change could only be done with the help of an Obscurist. Interesting. Not helpful.\n\nThe one golden fact that he picked from the volume was that there was a way to turn an automaton off. In hindsight, it was obvious; anyone who had to work on these devices would need to shut them off for safety. But somehow, Jess had always thought of automata as having a sinister, independent, immortal life of their own. In the end, they were mechanical marvels... but still mechanical.\n\nMaddeningly, the book didn't give specifics; it wasn't so much of a manual as an aide-m\u00e9moire, and it assumed the reader already knew most of the inner workings. All it said was that there would be a manual override located on the exterior of the automaton. Not terribly helpful. Jess could suddenly understand how Anit's brothers had come to a bad end if they'd experimented with this particular, tantalizing clue: a Library sphinx wouldn't simply stand there while you ran your hands over it, looking for the hidden switch. It would claw you to death for taking liberties.\n\nNot to mention the fact that there were many kinds of automata: sphinxes, lions, the Spartan that watched Jess balefully in the courtyard. Surely different models had different locations for such an override. Morgan might be of some help, he thought, but he had to wait until she contacted him; there was no way he could write directly to her. Frustrating.\n\nWhat would Thomas do? Jess closed his eyes and imagined the automaton that was most common to Alexandria: the sphinx. From pharaoh's head to lion's tail, it was a fearsomely intimidating creature the size of an actual lion, and armed with the claws and power of one, too. He'd never seen one with an open mouth; did they have lion's fangs, too? Or human teeth? Somehow, imagining them with an open mouth and human teeth to bite with made them more frightening. Where would Thomas put an off switch?\n\nThomas had never built automata like the Library's versions\u2014his had been toys, dolls, chess sets\u2014but one thing he'd said seemed significant now. You never put the activation button on top, Thomas had said when he was constructing a miniature horse. You see? Anywhere it could be accidentally pressed would be bad design. It must go underneath.\n\nUnderneath. But what engineer in his right mind would want to slither underneath a sphinx to turn it off? Has to be somewhere the average-sized person can reach, Jess thought. He was imagining the sphinx so vividly now, he could see its blank eyes staring straight into his own. A pharaoh's stiff headdress. A human face with a nose and mouth. A chin. A neck flowing down into the broad, muscular body of a lion.\n\nDoes that mouth open? Would Thomas have put a switch inside? Not if there was a risk the jaws might close, Jess thought. The idea was efficiency and safety.\n\nHe just didn't know, and he thought, with a tired shudder, that Anit's brothers had likely done this same mental exercise and gotten it wrong. When it had come to their final test, they'd lost their lives. No wonder Red Ibrahim didn't use this information. He'd sacrificed enough to it. And Anit gave it to me to let me try, at a considerable profit. Clever girl. No risk to her family, and if Jess managed where her own brothers had failed, she'd probably buy that information back from him.\n\nJess tucked the book and translation back into his smuggling harness, curled up, and fell asleep for a blissfully quiet night. His dreams, though, were not so restful, full of blood, fire, death, Thomas's screams as Jess ran down an endless tunnel toward him, never quite arriving.\n\nHe woke up with the bitter taste of ashes coating his tongue, and realized it was well before dawn. Good, he thought. He'd told Glain, Wolfe, and Santi what he knew about Thomas. There were others who needed to know, too.\n\nAnd he needed the feeling of motion, even if it was only an illusion of progress.\n\nBreakfast came from a sleepy street vendor with a tray full of warm almond pastries, and he ate one on the long walk down gently sloping streets to the harbor. Alexandria was a breathtakingly beautiful city, and no matter how long he'd been here, it never failed to grab his attention. This morning, ships floated in shadow, while the tallest point of the pyramid of the Serapeum flared with the brilliant glow of sunrise. It was promising to be a clear morning, and the sea looked as calm as milk.\n\nA long, straight road ran to the far end across the bay to the island of Pharos, and there, covering a huge part of that island, stretched the massive Lighthouse of Alexandria. It was shaped like a graduated stack of three square buildings, one atop another, tapering to a graceful tower in the upper third of its height. It sparked golden at the tallest point, where a statue of Hathor lifted her hands to the sun, and the dawn's color shaded down the tower from soft orange into twilight blue at the base. Even at this early hour, figures moved in the large, open courtyard in flowing robes: no doubt they were Scholars and attendants, heading to their work. There were four main entrances, one on each side of the square\u2014open, but with automaton sphinxes standing guard.\n\nHe had no particular reason to think the sphinxes would attack, but he also didn't want a record of his visit here, in case someone was watching his movements. No one doubted he was High Garda, after all; he wore the bracelet of service, prominently visible on one wrist, and a crisp, official uniform. He wasn't actually sneaking in or evading security. Merely... blending.\n\nAll it really took was a stack of five pastry boxes high enough to conceal his face, and to wait for a group of uniformed High Garda soldiers to arrive for duty. He fell in with them and kept his walk and posture as relaxed as he could.\n\nThe sphinxes turned their heads to track him, but with his face blocked by the boxes, they quickly lost interest and began scanning the rest of the incoming rush of Scholars, guards, and assistants. The automata were trained to detect Greek fire and the delicate scent of original books, but the pastries would have more than covered any hint that escaped the smuggling harness's pouch.\n\nThe pastries smelled delicious enough to make his stomach rumble again.\n\nJess paused in the courtyard to get his bearings. It was still night-shaded inside the thirty-foot walls that served as defense both from sea and enemies, though some glowing lamps hung in alcoves. The outer edges were furnished with long marble benches and expertly maintained little contemplation gardens, each overseen by a god statue with some connection to scholarship. There, in the far corner, Athena lifted her spear with her familiar owl on her shoulder. Saraswati had her own quiet garden, where her statue sat with lute in hand by a little fountain. Nabu of Babylon and Thoth of Egypt presided over their own groves, each a patron of the written arts. The Lighthouse courtyard had the feel of something incredibly ancient, and, at the same time, something vital and alive, walked and enjoyed by thousands every day. Antique and modern together.\n\nThe Lighthouse rose in a stacked spire toward the heavens. It had looked large at a distance, but it was truly massive\u2014and, more than most things he'd seen in Alexandria, it had the look of ancient wear. It had been rubbed by so many hands and shoulders that the corners at the base to the height of his head were almost rounded away. The stone steps leading inside dipped in the center, the mark of hundreds of thousands\u2014if not millions\u2014of feet.\n\nJess began the long trip up the winding stairs. There was a steam-powered lifting device in the center, but it seemed slow and crowded, and he didn't altogether trust mechanical things today. By the time he reached the twenty-second floor, he was only a little out of breath. Brutal as it might be, the High Garda's conditioning certainly worked.\n\nHe rapped on the closed door, balancing the boxes in one hand, and heard a muffled voice invite him to enter. He stepped in, closed the door, and put the stack of pastry boxes on the desk, careful to avoid any of the loose pages littering the top.\n\nThen he looked up into the wide, startled eyes of Scholar Khalila Seif.\n\nShe was just as he remembered, as if the months had never passed: pretty, composed, modestly dressed in a loose floral-patterned dress beneath her sweeping Scholar's robe. Her pale pink hijab lay neat and perfect and framed her face to accentuate her large brown eyes.\n\nAfter that shocked, frozen stare, Khalila let out a girlish squeal and launched herself around the desk and into his arms, hugging him with a ferocity that was surprising for a girl her size. \"Jess! It's so good to see you! What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Bringing breakfast,\" he said, and gestured to the tower of pastry. \"I thought you might be hungry.\"\n\n\"Did you think they starve me? Or are you expecting a famine?\" She swatted at him with a small, elegant hand and pushed him toward a pair of chairs near the windows. Her view was of the city of Alexandria, and it was spectacular. Seabirds glided at eye level, while the streets and buildings climbed up the hill around the harbor. The giant structure of the Alexandrian Serapeum dominated the sky, along with the black, rounded gloom of the Iron Tower. She ignored the sights. Her smile was full of delight, and she leaned forward toward him with her hands clasped together in her lap. \"Whatever are you doing? Really?\"\n\n\"I wanted to see you,\" he said. It was true and it was untrue at the same time. Khalila was a friend. A brilliant mind. A rising star of the Library. When they'd all been together in Wolfe's class, she'd been as much a part of the team as any of them, and more than some, but now... now she was fast-tracked to the highest levels of scholarship. One day, she'd rise to greatness. Power. Maybe even fill the chair of the Archivist.\n\nIf he didn't get her killed. I shouldn't do this, he thought. I'll ruin everything for her. Everything.\n\nBut he knew Khalila well enough to know that she'd find out, and when she did, she wouldn't thank him for that protection.\n\nJess slowly reached over and took one of her hands in his, and said, in a very low voice, \"Is it safe to talk here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said at the same quiet level. \"They don't monitor my conversations. Still, we should be careful. And fond of you as I am, you should not stay here long.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Jess said. \"I'll be brief.\" There was, he realized, no easy way to tell her; the shock wouldn't be kind. Better to do it in one go. \"I have proof that Thomas wasn't executed, as the Archivist told us he was. There's every reason to believe Thomas is still alive, in prison.\"\n\nKhalila's smile faltered, then died, and her dark eyes fixed on his for so long and so silently that he wondered if she'd really heard him. Then she stood up; walked to the door with brisk, firm steps; and turned the lock. \"That will put on a privacy signal. My assistant could arrive at any moment,\" she told him. \"I shouldn't wish for her to hear this.\" Her voice sounded completely normal, as if he'd told her that there might be rain in the afternoon, or that the price of saffron could go up in the markets. \"I would ask how you are taking this, but I think I can guess.\"\n\n\"You seem very calm,\" Jess said.\n\nKhalila turned to face him. Tears glittered in her eyes, on the verge of falling. \"Do I? Who told you he might be alive?\"\n\n\"No one,\" Jess said, and told her a shortened story about the illegal book and his confession to Wolfe, Santi, and Glain. \"Santi's worried we'll all do something stupid now. To be fair, he's probably right about that.\"\n\nShe crossed back to her chair and sat, then absently dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. A few blinks, and the tears vanished, leaving a hard, luminous shine. \"And you believe this? You're sure?\"\n\nShe was asking him to be logical, not emotional. Jess took a moment to order his thoughts. \"Devil's advocate? It's exactly the kind of ruse the Archivist would love to try,\" he admitted. \"And maybe he'd be careful enough to make me work for months to lay hands on this information. So I'm not completely sure, not yet. We might never be completely sure. Maybe we'll have to take a chance.\"\n\n\"You must be sure,\" she told him. \"If it's a trap...\"\n\nShe wasn't saying how much she'd lose for it, but he was acutely aware. \"We need to find records of where the Library likes to keep its most dangerous prisoners,\" he said. \"I'm just not sure how to get to them\u2014and that's where you come in, I think. You're the best researcher I know, Khalila.\"\n\n\"Without a doubt.\" She had the sweetest smile, one that dimpled just at the corner to let him know she was silently mocking him. \"And you want me to proceed?\"\n\n\"Carefully. Khalila, I mean it: carefully.\"\n\n\"Of course. I understand the risks.\" She paused for a moment, then came to sit next to him again, hands folded in her lap. \"Jess\u2014having been here in the Lighthouse for the past few months, I have heard... disturbing things about Scholar Wolfe. That he may not be himself, or\u2014\"\n\n\"A few books short of a full library?\" Jess finished, and was rewarded with a nod. \"It's true: he went through terrible things before we met him, and they left scars. But I don't think he's broken beyond repair, and I think we can count on him. All this makes sense. Thomas had\u2014has\u2014too good a mind for the Library to just discard. They'll want to use him. Isn't that logical?\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" she said. \"Or it's just difficult for us to believe the arrogance that would destroy such a beautiful mind. Such a... such a beautiful person as Thomas.\" That thought killed another of her lovely smiles, and Jess hurt to see it.\n\n\"We have two choices,\" he said. \"We can choose to believe he's dead or choose to believe he's alive. Believing he's dead is safer, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But so cruel,\" she whispered. \"What if he's alive? Suffering? Thinking we will come for him, and we never do?\"\n\nJess nodded. It never left his mind for long, the idea that somewhere, Thomas Schreiber was counting on him for rescue. \"That's why I can't let this go, Khalila, trap or no trap. I just can't. I won't ask you to do anything more than a little research\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't be stupid,\" she interrupted, and that smile returned, more certain\u2014and more devilish\u2014than before. \"Of course I will do everything I can; it's the only honorable thing to do. It might take time. I say that not because I am afraid to jeopardize myself, but because wrong moves will only get me locked away from key information. It will have to be done slowly, for all our sakes. But when it's time to get him out, Jess, I will go with you, of course. You don't even have to ask.\"\n\nThere had been a tightly tied knot of stress in his chest, and he felt it give way under a wave of relief. And then another tension set in. Worry. \"I mean it: be careful. Thomas\u2014I don't want to explain why they took him; that would only put you at more risk. But they'll do anything to keep what he discovered from being known. I don't want you joining him somewhere in the dark, being\u2014\"\n\n\"Convinced?\" she finished for him, with a sharp arch to her brows. \"Yes, I would like to avoid that, too. I don't think I'd be very brave.\"\n\nHe doubted that. Khalila had a soul like a diamond\u2014fiery, brilliant, and difficult to scratch. Even diamonds could shatter, though, and he didn't want to be the cause of such an awful thing. \"I mean it,\" Jess said. \"Don't trust anyone. Someone tried to kill Wolfe yesterday, and they didn't care how many others died with him. Just like when we were postulants.\"\n\n\"Someone?\" she asked, and gave him a slight tilt of her head. \"Jess. Don't treat me like a fool. We both know who would be behind a thing like that.\"\n\n\"The Archivist,\" he said. \"Not that we'd ever manage to prove it. There'll be a whole chain of disposable puppets, and he'll already have cut any strings that lead back to him.\"\n\nShe was silent for a moment, staring out the window at the view\u2014at the towering pyramid of the Serapeum, he realized, whose gold top caught the morning light and blazed like a second sun. \"Such a tragedy. The Library was meant to be a light lifted against the darkness,\" she said. \"But we've lost our way. We're wandering in the shadows. That has to change.\"\n\nIt has to change. Morgan had said the same thing many times, and he heard the echo of her frustration in Khalila's voice. \"Well, if that's going to change,\" he said, \"then we're the ones who will have to see it done.\"\n\n\"Because revolution rarely comes from those in charge.\" She turned her head back to him, and the smile was firmly back in place. \"Yes. I read history. But we shouldn't be talking in abstracts and philosophy, Jess. How have you been? It's an injustice, you being wasted in the High Garda. You deserve so much more!\"\n\nHe grinned. \"I've done all right,\" he said. \"You know me. I survive.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't have to simply survive!\"\n\n\"They tell me suffering builds character,\" he said. \"Glain's turned out to be a right good leader, by the way. She'll climb the ranks fast, I've no doubt.\"\n\n\"And you?\"\n\nHe laughed outright. \"No, thanks.\"\n\n\"I wish I knew a way to get you back here. I think you miss this.\" She gestured at her office. It was a plain affair, with a desk, shelves, Blanks. A few precious originals carefully shelved behind a panel of glass. His gaze fixed on them, and instantly he felt that sensation: longing. He wanted to take those books in his hands and experience the texture of the covers, the smell of the pages. Books spoke mind to mind, soul to soul across the abyss of time and distance.\n\nHe did miss all this. Desperately. \"I'm fine, I tell you. How's Dario? Are you two still... friendly?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Dario is an arrogant ass.\"\n\n\"So you're still seeing him, then.\"\n\nThat made her laugh outright, and he liked seeing happiness on her face. \"We understand each other.\" She blinked, and the amusement faded fast. \"Speaking of understandings... Have you heard from Morgan?\"\n\nHe didn't want to lie to her again, but he did. Effortlessly, to protect Morgan, if nothing else. \"Morgan isn't likely to ever leave the Iron Tower again. You know that.\" And I did that to her. She could have run. Maybe she would have made it.\n\n\"I'm so sorry. I know\u2014\" She seemed to search for just the right words. \"I know how much she meant to you, though you try not to show it.\"\n\nHe said nothing to that. The compassion in her voice made the half-truth hurt as if it were true. And it could be true, despite what he wanted to believe. Morgan might forever be nothing more than words on a page to him, like those originals safe from his touch behind glass.\n\n\"Jess.\" Khalila drew his gaze back to her. \"What is it Scholar Wolfe used to tell us? 'Anything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.'\"\n\n\"Stupid saying.\"\n\n\"Surprisingly true, though. How should I contact you? Not by Codex, I assume.\"\n\n\"Paper messages,\" he said. \"Put nothing down that you wouldn't want the Archivist reading. And give your notes only to those you trust completely. Nobody else.\"\n\n\"I've missed you. We can be friends again, finally. I've missed you so much, Jess.\" She hugged him once more, and he hugged her back. In some ways, the bonds he'd formed with her, Dario, Glain, Morgan, Thomas... those had been more important to him than the ties he had by birth to his twin. I let Morgan down, he thought. But not them. Not this time. \"Do you want me to tell Dario about Thomas?\"\n\n\"No, I'll do it. Is he here? In the Lighthouse?\"\n\n\"Yes, he's three floors down, in Scholar Prakesh's offices. He's working as her assistant. You're going to see him?\"\n\n\"Does that surprise you?\"\n\n\"A little. I admit, I never thought you two would pay each other visits like reasonable adults. Tell him. He'll want to help as much as I do.\" She patted his cheek in an almost motherly way. \"The two of you are so alike.\"\n\n\"Oh, so now I'm an arrogant ass, too?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said, and her smile grew deep enough to reveal that dimple again. \"A fiercely smart, ridiculously brave one. My favorite kind. Now, take some of these pastries away before I eat all of them and make myself sick!\"\n\nHe took most of the boxes with him and went down three flights. He'd never heard the name, but Scholar Prakesh's offices took up an impressive expanse, and when Jess pressed the bell to the side, he was surprised to find the door opened not by Dario, but by an elderly woman in a violently pink sari with gold trim at the edges under her black Scholar's robe. \"Scholar Prakesh?\" he asked, and bowed to her. She smiled and gave him a slight nod. \"Please forgive me for disturbing you. Do you like almond pastries?\"\n\nShe watched his face intently as he spoke, and to his surprise, began to move her hands in fluid, rapid motions. He recognized it, though he didn't speak it: sign language. He tried to look uncomprehending without seeming stupid, and must have failed, because she sighed and clapped her hands.\n\nAs if she'd summoned him out of thin air, Dario Santiago appeared from a side room. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Jess and the pastry boxes. Scholar Prakesh repeated her gestures, and Dario watched her hands, then said, \"Scholar Prakesh says, 'Young man, your charm is wasted on me, but your pastries are not. You are...?'\"\n\nHe knew enough to address his words to the Scholar and not to her translator, and bowed to her. \"Jess Brightwell, Scholar, a soldier in the High Garda. I am very honored to meet you.\"\n\nDario watched the exchange that followed and spoke for her again. \"'That is only because you do not know me yet, of course. Come in. I expect you are here to see my exasperated young assistant.'\" Dario laughed. \"She means me.\"\n\n\"I am, Scholar. Thank you.\"\n\nPrakesh signed again. \"You might have to dig him free of the work I've piled on him this morning. Try not to listen to his complaints.\" She reached for the boxes, and the conversation between them was clearly over. She moved with impatient speed back to her desk, leaving him and Dario to sort things out. It gave Jess a moment to take in Scholar Prakesh's office. If Khalila's room had been stacked with papers and books, this one had the feeling of order, but ancient layers of it, built one atop another. Chalkboards lined the room, filled with jottings and notes in tiny, precise writing, some of it written in a rounded, beautiful language he didn't recognize. It was an oddly restful place, and, best of all, it was steeped in the crisp, autumnal scent of books. I just want to take this all in, Jess thought. It seemed like... home.\n\nDario gestured impatiently for him to follow, and Jess left home behind. He trailed Dario to the door of the office on the left. Dario sat down behind a desk, leaned back, and folded his arms. \"What are you doing here, Brightwell?\" Unlike Khalila, Dario seemed to have changed quite a bit. He'd put on a little muscle, and cultivated a Spanish-style shadow of beard that made him seem older. Even a little wiser. His hair had grown longer, too.\n\nThe attitude, though, hadn't changed at all.\n\n\"I see you've missed me.\"\n\nDario gave him an incredulous look. \"Were you gone? My goodness. The time seemed to fly by, not seeing you.\"\n\nJess took a seat in the chair across from the desk. \"Still charming,\" he said. \"Just for that, you don't get any pastries.\" It seemed odd to switch from this comfortably contemptuous banter to news about Thomas, so he offered, \"I didn't know you knew sign language.\"\n\n\"My baby sister was born deaf,\" Dario said, which surprised Jess to the bone. First, that Dario had a baby sister, and second, that he'd be considerate enough to go out of his way to communicate with her. \"That was one of the reasons I was assigned to Prakesh, besides being so handsome and charming.\"\n\n\"So, this is working well for you?\"\n\n\"As well as I could have dreamed. The Scholar's a wonder. I learn so much every day.\" Dario's expression turned serious, and he leaned forward in his chair to stare at Jess. \"Why do I have the feeling you've come here to ruin all that?\"\n\nHe kept the story short, if not sweet. Dario's face took on a blank masklike expression while he spoke, and his eyes went narrow and very dark. No smiles. No sarcasm.\n\n\"So,\" Dario said, once he'd told him everything he knew, \"we go and get Thomas. When?\"\n\nIn that moment, Jess liked him very much.\n\n\"No idea yet. Stay in touch with Khalila\u2014I'll send word through her. Help her with research.\"\n\n\"If you need to question anyone, let me know. I'll come along.\"\n\n\"You mean, you'll hold them while I beat them?\"\n\n\"No,\" Dario said. \"You'll hold them while I cut the truth out of them. This is for Thomas.\"\n\n\"I didn't think you\u2014\"\n\n\"Liked him?\" Dario waved that away impatiently. \"He's one of us.\"\n\nSimply said and plainly heartfelt. Jess nodded. \"Dario. Be careful. Keep your wits sharp.\"\n\n\"And my dagger sharper? Yes, scrubber, I do have a brain. I know what we face here.\" Dario pulled a piece of paper closer and picked up a pen. His fingers were shaking. He put the pen down again and flexed them, as if they troubled him. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Enjoy the pastries.\"\n\nHe was opening the door and preparing to leave when Dario said quietly, \"Jess.\" It was rare that Dario called him by his first name. \"Do you think they're hurting him?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. \"And I think they'll keep hurting him until we get him back. So let's get him back.\"\n\nHe closed the door, said a polite farewell to Scholar Prakesh\u2014that sign, at least, he knew\u2014and headed back down the stairs. He was halfway down when his Codex chimed for attention, and he paused in the middle of the stairs to open it and check, as others moved around him with impatient looks.\n\nIt was from Glain, written in her sharp, impatient printing. Get your bum back to the barracks before someone misses you. NOW. That last was underlined with vicious black pen strokes. He could almost feel the anger and worry smoking off the page.\n\nHe reached for the stylus and replied, On the way."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a treatise from Heron of Alexandria on the uses of automata in Library service, in the second century of the Library, in response to minor damage made to the \u2014 Alexandrian Serapeum by vandals:\n\n\u2002...insofar as the mechanical sentries are concerned, I see no reason that such devices cannot be used to frighten away evildoers bent on mischief inside the grounds of the Library precincts, and those of the museum, university, and zoo. It would be whimsical to fashion these automata on the shapes of creatures both familiar and fabulous to us. Lions have long been seen as noble beasts of tremendous power and cruelty; I should imagine a mechanical lion would turn away any casual vandal in search of easier targets, and it reflects well on the ideals of our Library.\n\n\u2002There might also be made use of the sphinx, for this wise and legendary creature is everywhere a symbol of royal power and strength. To go a bit more fanciful, serpent automata might coil on columns, and perhaps such devices in the shapes of horses could one day even carry our soldiers to battle. Think of the possibilities!\n\n\u2002I shall establish herewith a new field of study into this matter, with the express purpose of developing such methods of defense for the Library and those who understand and support our noble purpose. Of course, this will need to be done in secret. Such devices are of no possible use if their inner workings are made public.\n\n\u2002May the gods bless our struggles, and our light ever push back the darkness."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "Getting out of the Lighthouse meant, in the end, waiting for a whole flock of Scholars to leave at once, and striding along with them as if he were one of them. Jess quickly offered to carry a heavy load of equipment for the small, overweight man leading the party, and that had earned him instant friendship\u2014at least, until he handed it back at the end of the road and headed for the High Garda compound at a run. Running felt good on such a bright and perfect morning.\n\nWhen he arrived back, he searched for Glain. Her quarters were empty, but he finally spotted her walking the halls in the company of Captain Feng. He couldn't read her expression, but he doubted she was with the man by her own choice. The conversation seemed one-sided.\n\nDespite Glain's worries, no one seemed intent on ordering him today, so Jess indulged in some much-needed sleep, then rose with the intention of doing some reading. As he stepped into the hall, he realized that the door at an angle to his on the other side\u2014Tariq's room\u2014was standing open. He'd gotten halfway across the hall to say hello before the memory caught up with him of Tariq slumped against the wall. Tariq was dead, and someone was in his room. He stopped in his tracks.\n\nInside the room, Tariq's closest friends, Wu and Bransom, packed up his few belongings. Jess felt it like a hammer to the chest as he watched Recruit Bransom\u2014as sturdy and muscular a young woman as Glain\u2014wipe away tears as she picked up Tariq's personal journal, embossed with his name. The cover, even at the distance from which Jess observed, was smeared with dried blood, and she scrubbed restlessly at it with the sleeve of her own shirt. Her hands were shaking.\n\nSomeone will write the final lines in that journal, he thought, detailing the dates and circumstances of Tariq's death. Jess might even be mentioned by name. Then Tariq's family would read it, weep over it, hold a memorial to read aloud from it, and finally send it on to the Library's archives, where he would become a permanent part of the knowledge of humanity. Immortality, of a kind.\n\nWe're just paper on a shelf, in the end. Jess felt an unexpected surge of anger, because no matter how honest and forthright Tariq had been in his journal, it couldn't encompass him\u2014the sharp humor, the way he'd cleverly cheated at dice, the shady jokes he'd loved and often told. The way he'd died. And for what? Tariq was gone, and Jess still felt the tension and release of pulling the trigger and sending Tariq sprawling against that wall where he'd died. Never mind that his shot hadn't been fatal in itself; it had left his friend helpless for the slaughter that came after.\n\nBransom looked up unexpectedly and saw Jess. She looked wounded and vulnerable, and tears glided down her cheeks... And then he saw the flare of real rage.\n\nShe slammed the door in his face.\n\nIn a subdued, sour mood, Jess spent the rest of the day in the barracks Serapeum\u2014a small offshoot that contained a few dozen shelves of permanently loaded Blanks that held books most often requested, and a wall of ones waiting to be filled. He took one from that section and sat down to page through his Codex to find what he wanted. He remembered\u2014thanks to Scholar Wolfe's ruthless grilling about the vast list of books in the public collection of the Great Library\u2014that there were one or two extremely obscure histories of crimes against the Library. Maybe someone, somewhere, had included clues to secret prisons. The research might be useful.\n\nBest of all, though he knew someone, somewhere was watching what he ordered to read, he had a long history of reading historical texts. Even if the Archivist had a watch on what he read, this wouldn't appear out of the ordinary.\n\nJess missed handling originals. He'd grown so addicted to the feel of those books\u2014the individual differences in the bindings, the leather or fabric covers, the weight of papers, the smell. They were a very different experience than these Blanks, which all felt so... sterile, somehow. Words that could be readily dismissed and replaced didn't have the same moral heft to them, to him, but he recognized he was a rebel and an outcast, even here among those who loved the Library.\n\nAnother reason to never lower his guard.\n\nHe was immersed in text and making handwritten notes to himself on a separate sheet when he sensed someone standing close by. He looked up to see the faces of Garrett Wu and Violet Bransom, and instantly knew it wasn't a social visit.\n\nJess put the book aside and his pen down before he stood up to face them. \"I didn't do it,\" he said. \"Tariq was shot from above. Ask Sergeant Botha.\"\n\n\"You shot him first,\" Bransom\u2014they never called her Violet, and Tariq had coined her official nickname, Violent, the first day\u2014said, and with one shove, she put him back down in the chair. He didn't resist. It gave him excellent leverage to kick knees and break bones. \"I saw it. He went down when you shot him.\"\n\n\"He was aiming at a Scholar. You know, the one we're sworn to protect at all costs? Are you actually telling me you wouldn't have done the same?\"\n\n\"You're lying,\" Wu said. He wasn't a bad guy, and Jess normally got along with him, but seeing that stiff, angry expression, he knew getting along wasn't in the cards today. \"Tariq would never betray us. And he'd never shoot a Scholar. That's sick!\"\n\nThey'd never accept the truth, and Jess didn't blame them. Tariq had been a friendly sort, likable. Jess had taken pains not to be part of the group. He'd wanted to stay apart, after the pain of losing his friends from his Postulant class.\n\nAnd this distrust was what caution and distance had earned him.\n\n\"I'm telling the truth, and Botha backs me up about how Tariq died. Whether I shot him or not makes no real difference. I didn't kill him. A sniper from the rooftops did.\"\n\n\"And you think you did your duty,\" Wu said. The boy's fists were clenched hard at his sides, his stare very dark and fixed. Jess knew the look. He'd faced it before. He kept his attention split, because Bransom would be the one to make the first move, if one was coming. \"You'd do it again, wouldn't you? To any one of us.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'd do it again, to save a Scholar's life. And so would you!\" He was getting angry now, could feel it like a sunburn blooming under his skin. \"Tariq was working with them. Maybe he wasn't the only one.\"\n\nWu's face went a dangerously dark shade. \"You saying we're Burners?\"\n\nThere was, Jess knew, no insult he could have given that would be greater, but there was no taking it back, and it didn't matter. Neither of the two facing him was listening anyway; they had their minds well made up about what they thought. He was wasting breath.\n\nThe area had quietly cleared of other soldiers. Disputes between people of equal rank weren't prohibited, unless officers were present. Bransom was about to kick it off, he thought, and he prepared to shatter her left kneecap, but just then a calm voice from the doorway said, \"Is this a private two-on-one fight, or can anyone join?\"\n\nGlain Wathen stood there, looking dangerously still, despite the mild tone. A superior officer.\n\nIt broke the tension like a hammer on glass, and Wu and Bransom stepped back. \"Squad Leader,\" Wu said, but the look he gave Glain was chilly. \"Just working something out.\"\n\n\"Then do it where I can't see you,\" she said. \"If any of you start something here in the Serapeum, you're all on report, and I promise you, you do not want to see my temper just now. Are we understood?\"\n\nHer fingers tapped the seam of her trousers, and Jess knew that particular tic of hers; it meant she really was spoiling for a fight. The others must have known it, too, or at least they were aware of the dangerous light in her eyes. Bransom nodded and stepped away from Jess, and after a slight hesitation, Wu followed. \"No problem, Sergeant,\" Bransom said. \"We'll... catch up later.\" When Wathen's not around was strongly implied, but Jess didn't much care. At least they gave fair warning.\n\nJess watched the other two walk out, and when they were out of earshot, he said, \"Do I really look so feeble I need help, Squad Leader?\" As he said it\u2014snarled it, really\u2014he realized that he'd been ready to fight. Eager, even.\n\nSo was she, because in three long strides Glain was across the room, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him upright from the chair. He knocked the Blank off the table, and the thump of impact froze them both for a moment as they looked down.\n\nThen she shook him. Hard. \"Go on, Brightwell, test me today. See how far you get!\" He looked into her eyes, and his own restless anger and frustration faded because he saw it mirrored in hers. He slowly held up his hands, and she let go and stalked a few steps away. Paced. After a moment, she bent and picked up his book to pass it back to him.\n\n\"Should I even ask what's put you in this mood?\" he said. She cut him a look so sharp it had edges on it.\n\n\"Captain Feng. He made it abundantly clear that I have some choices to make,\" Glain said. \"Hard ones.\"\n\n\"Your career or your friends,\" he said. \"You knew that was coming, didn't you?\"\n\n\"I never wanted any of you as friends! I came here to succeed, and that requires focus. You know that. I know you do.\"\n\nHe did. He was capable of the same ruthlessness when required. Achievement here at the Library was an altar on which one sacrificed many things... friendship being the least of them. To go on up the ranks, knowing what he did now\u2014that would require sacrificing his morals. Ethics. His soul.\n\nHe also knew that Glain wanted\u2014no, needed\u2014to succeed. She tried not to show how much it meant to her, but it was as clear as the Lighthouse's beacon. \"Do what you have to do,\" he told her quietly. \"No one will blame you. Least of all me. I'm a selfish bastard, anyway.\"\n\nShe let out a strange, pressurized little laugh, and then caught her breath. Fought for control for a moment, and when she'd achieved it, deliberately relaxed. \"We can't talk here,\" she said. \"Come on.\"\n\nShe led him back to his quarters, and waited until he was inside and the door shut again before saying, \"You went to the Lighthouse, didn't you? Were you seen?\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" he said. \"I talked to Khalila. She's willing to help.\" Out of habit, they both kept their voices low. Best to assume unfriendly ears were everywhere, especially now.\n\nGlain frowned. \"I don't like involving her,\" she said. \"Of all of us, she's the one with the most to lose. And what about Dario? Do you trust him?\"\n\n\"I don't always like him, but trusting him is another matter, and of course I do. Fair warning: he'll still give us grief just because it's his nature,\" Jess said. \"He's angry about Thomas, though. I trust him to do whatever's required.\"\n\nShe nodded and sat down on Jess's bed, leaving him to pull his desk chair close. \"What were you and the others clashing about back there?\"\n\n\"Tariq.\"\n\nShe hadn't been expecting that, and he saw the shift in her body language. Some might have seen it as defensive, but he knew it was more self-defense against her own pain. \"I should have realized that they'd blame you and said something first. Sorry.\"\n\nHe shrugged a little and kept silent. Nothing much to say.\n\n\"I've sent the death notification to his family,\" she said. \"It was my place, as his commanding officer. I suppose I had to learn how that felt sooner or later. Would rather it had been later, and for a better cause.\"\n\n\"What did you tell them?\"\n\n\"Not the truth, of course. I said it was a training accident, very regrettable, and that he performed his duties with great integrity and concern for his fellow recruits.\"\n\nHe let that sit for a moment before he said, \"Did you suspect him at all?\"\n\n\"Not really. I knew he had questionable friends. I certainly didn't expect him to try to put a bullet in a Scholar!\"\n\n\"And here I thought you automatically suspected everyone of the worst.\"\n\n\"Let's just say I never assume the best. But Tariq's dead, and it seems likely he was killed by those who paid him, for failing in his mission. Agreed?\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" Jess said. \"Do you suspect anyone else in the squad?\"\n\n\"I have to suspect everyone. Including you, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Well, that's fair.\" Jess cleared his throat. \"About Thomas... Feng said you had to make a choice\u2014\"\n\n\"He did,\" Glain said, and met his eyes squarely. \"And I have. You know what it is.\"\n\nShe and Dario have something in common after all, Jess thought. They didn't agonize about a decision. They just made it, and damn the consequences.\n\n\"Khalila and Dario are trying to find us more information about the secret prison,\" he told her. \"What you said earlier, about the Black Archives... do you think there's a chance that information about Thomas might be there?\"\n\n\"It's where the Library keeps anything secret, so of course.\"\n\n\"I'll ask Dario to look into it. We need to move faster than this,\" Jess said. \"I can't get Thomas out of my head. What if\u2014\"\n\n\"If you're thinking about what he might be going through\"\u2014she let in a breath and blew it out slowly\u2014\"don't. There is nothing you can do to stop it, and guilt is a useless emotion.\"\n\nHe laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. Or in him. \"What else should I think about? Our bright future here?\"\n\n\"No need, because we don't have one. Wouldn't, even if it had nothing to do with Thomas. I lost one soldier for good and another to serious injury. I almost lost a Scholar. That was Feng's point to me today: how poorly I'd performed, and how much of a favor it would be for him to recommend me for advancement. If I accept that favor, he'll own me. Nothing's worth that.\" It hurt her to say it\u2014Jess knew that\u2014but he saw no sign of it in her expression. Tough girl, Glain. And now she faced losing her dreams, and did it with the same courage as always.\n\nHe felt a tug of deep respect for her in that moment. Perhaps even a little love.\n\n\"At least we'll be able to meet with Khalila and Dario easily, if we're not constantly on duty.\"\n\nHer eyebrows rose. \"You want to put me face-to-face with Dario? I might have to punch him before I trust him.\"\n\n\"You can trust him.\" At her look, he shrugged. \"I know. Still surprises me, too.\"\n\nGlain sat back with a creak of wood and crossed her arms. She was out of uniform now, in a simple loose white shirt over formfitting trousers, with the same boots she always seemed to favor. If she's lost her place, she's lost her world, Jess thought. \"You know, our odds are so bad as to be worthless. You and me, Khalila, Dario, Wolfe, Santi\u2014if we can rely on Santi, who'll have to choose his own loyalties\u2014against the Library? It's ridiculous.\"\n\nShe was right. Even corrupted, the Library still commanded the absolute loyalty of tens of thousands of good men and women, and had the reverence of billions. That was a testament to what it should be, though. Not what it was. That was the dream that Jess loved, really\u2014the dream of the Library as a shining beacon of knowledge to the world.\n\nBut a light that cast so many shadows.\n\n\"It's getting late,\" Glain said, which jerked him out of his musings and, as he blinked, back to the cool evening of the room. Dinnertime was fast approaching. \"You'll talk to Dario? About the Black Archives?\"\n\n\"I will.\" He groaned as he stood. His body was sore again, and all the older bruises and cuts clamored for attention. \"Are you going to the dining hall?\"\n\nGlain smiled very briefly. It was a rare enough event, and it made her almost human. Almost pretty. \"Are you asking to escort me, like some girl you're romancing? Jess. Don't waste your time. I'm extremely unavailable.\"\n\n\"Tragic,\" he shot back. \"Be serious. You know I've got\u2014\"\n\n\"Morgan,\" she finished for him, when he stopped. \"Yes. You do enjoy a challenge. Now she's a princess locked in a tower. That makes you want her even more, doesn't it? I think you've read too many tales of knighthood, Jess.\"\n\nThat effectively silenced him while he processed the words; a flush of anger ran through him, followed by a chill of something like understanding. Was that why he loved Morgan? Because of the challenge? He couldn't deny that it might be a part of it. Damn Glain and her sharp eyes. Challenge and guilt.\n\n\"I'm not saying that because I'm jealous,\" Glain continued, still with that maddening, calm smile. \"You and me? No. Agreed?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Good. Now there's no confusion.\"\n\nHow like Glain, to take action to dispel any uncertainty that might exist, however awkward that might be. The cold blast of it was shocking, but it did clear the air.\n\n\"Remind me never to be polite to you again,\" he said, and she laughed this time, came around, and draped a comrade's arm around his shoulders.\n\n\"Of course I will.\"\n\nDays passed, and other squads finished their final tests. Recruits were dismissed or assigned to new duties, and their wing of the barracks emptied and filled with another quota of aspiring High Garda soldiers.\n\nBut there was no word on their future. That was worrying, and Jess inquired\u2014carefully\u2014among other soldiers. There were a few examples of squads whose fate had been held in suspense for a while, but only a few, and almost all of those had ended up dismissed. The delays, Jess thought, had to do with debates within the higher ranks.\n\nMaybe Captain Santi was fighting for them. And losing.\n\nJess was just as glad, because he spent his days chasing down obscure information through the Codex, and nights with Red Ibrahim and Anit, looking through rare volumes for anything that might give small details about what happened to the enemies of the Archivist. What he did find wasn't heartening; almost everyone accused of heresy was recorded as executed, though those executions were done privately now, rather than as the vast spectacle they'd once been. The Alexandrian prisons that had once existed in the early, brutal days of the Library were long torn down. There might be a few cells beneath the Serapeum, but Khalila's work had turned up guard rosters, and by matching up those assigned to duties, she'd been able to create a dizzying map of assignments that accounted for every one of the High Garda guards assigned to the Archivist. There would have to be some whose duties remained unaccounted for, if they actually guarded a secret prison.\n\nWherever Thomas was, he wasn't being kept in Alexandria.\n\n\"We should press Wolfe,\" Khalila said as she, Jess, Glain, and Dario sat together in a small caf\u00e9 near the water. Twilight dyed the sky a rich teal, though Jess couldn't much appreciate the beauty. All the information she and Dario had unearthed was proving to be useless. No nuggets of gold had turned up. The inaction drove Jess mad. \"Surely he must remember more than he's telling.\"\n\n\"He might not,\" Dario mumbled around a mouthful of curried chicken; Jess had already cleaned his own plate. \"There are Medica techniques and potions to block memories. If they treated him with those, it's not likely he can remember on his own.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that? Can he remember with help?\" Glain asked. She'd long finished her meal, and now sat idly watching the white-sailed Egyptian fishing ships glide in the harbor toward home. \"More potions?\"\n\n\"More likely it would require the help of a Mesmer,\" Dario said.\n\n\"Mesmer,\" Glain groaned. \"Don't tell me you believe that tripe.\"\n\n\"Mesmerism is a scientific fact,\" Dario said. \"Anyone can learn to do it. Doesn't take ability, like being an Obscurist. But Mesmers' skills are closely guarded secrets. We had one at court.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me you learned how to Mesmerize,\" Khalila said. \"I can never trust you again.\"\n\n\"I tried, but, lucky for you, he refused to teach me. It is a real skill, though. It can recover memories in some subjects.\"\n\n\"Mesmers are one step away from illegal,\" Khalila said. \"Even if you found a Mesmer you could trust to undertake it, the outcome's doubtful. If the memories are there, they've been locked up tight. Breaking that lock could be dangerous.\"\n\n\"We'll save that for a last resort,\" Jess said. \"I've found references in some black-market books to a Library prison in Rome. Ancient references, though. Nothing recent.\"\n\n\"Rome would be logical,\" Khalila said. \"After all, next to Alexandria, it's the city most loyal to the Library. The Basilica Julia is almost as large as the Serapeum here.\"\n\n\"You've been to Rome?\"\n\n\"Once,\" she admitted. \"My family toured the Forum and other famous sites. It was overwhelming. I've never seen anything like it. To be honest, I would think we'd have a better chance of rescuing him from Alexandria than Rome.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Jess said, \"it was just a reference, ages old. Might mean nothing. The Artifex could have him anywhere. Anywhere the Library has a foothold.\"\n\nIt was a depressing thought, and silence fell heavy. A breeze blew cool off the water, ruffling Khalila's scarf and dress, and Dario said, \"We're not going to find him this way. The Archivist isn't a fool. He won't leave clues right out in the open. We have to dig deeper.\"\n\n\"Where? It's a large world, Dario.\"\n\nThe Spaniard looked away, out toward the harbor, and said, \"I applied for a position with the Artifex Magnus. We all know he's the Archivist's right-hand man.\"\n\n\"You what?\" Glain barked, and she'd gotten it out a bare instant before Jess would have said the same. \"Are you mad?\"\n\n\"Someone has to get close to him. Gain his trust. I can do that.\" Dario shifted his stare back to each of them in turn. \"I'm the best suited\u2014bright enough to be useful; not enough to be a threat. I'm ruthless. I have wealth and excellent family connections. And I have a certain charm.\"\n\n\"I give you credit for leaving that to last,\" Jess said. It was a surprisingly accurate and unflinching self-assessment. He hadn't thought Dario quite so insightful about his own gifts and flaws. \"What about your post with Scholar Prakesh? I thought you were happy there.\"\n\n\"I am. But I thought we all agreed: this is for Thomas. I assume I'm not the only one willing to sacrifice.\"\n\n\"You are not,\" Khalila said, and looked down at her folded hands. \"I confess, I already applied to the Artifex as well.\"\n\n\"You what?\" Dario turned on her with a stare, which she met squarely.\n\n\"Don't look so shocked,\" she said. \"I am capable of just as much folly as you, you know!\"\n\n\"I don't want you to\u2014\"\n\n\"Dario. What you do or do not want applies to you, not me. I didn't ask your permission, and I don't seek your approval!\" Khalila's voice had taken on a hard edge, and Dario was the first to look away.\n\n\"Congratulations,\" Glain said. \"You're both wildly independent, and now the Archivist has to be wondering why both of you would want to get close to him at the same time. Clearly, neither of you are cut out to be spies.\"\n\n\"Forgive us\u2014we didn't grow up criminals and self-made adventurers!\"\n\n\"Dario, you know nothing about me,\" Glain said. She didn't sound angry, just a touch amused.\n\n\"I meant the criminal part for Jess.\"\n\n\"Yes, I got that,\" Jess said. \"It's not a bad idea, getting close to the Artifex, but I doubt he'll take either of you up on it. He's not a stupid man.\"\n\n\"Just a cruel one,\" Glain said. \"We need more. Much more than this.\"\n\n\"What about...\" Jess hesitated, then plunged in. \"What about the Black Archives?\"\n\nThey were all silent. He expected at least one of them to scoff, to dismiss them as rumor, but Khalila finally said, \"I'll look into it.\"\n\n\"Carefully,\" Glain told her.\n\n\"I know. I should go,\" she said. \"I have more work to do tonight. Dario?\"\n\n\"Go on,\" he told her. \"I'm drinking.\"\n\n\"I'm not,\" Glain said. \"Khalila, I'll walk you back.\"\n\nJess started to get up, but Dario kicked him in the shins under the table, hard enough to make him wince. \"I'll have a cup,\" Jess said, and gave the other young man a sharp-edged smile. \"See you later.\" Glain and Khalila walked away into the early evening, and Jess stared at Dario. \"Well?\"\n\n\"Something for the two of us. I didn't want them involved.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\nDario shrugged. \"It's a job for two, not four, and I know Glain. She'll push her way in if we let her.\"\n\n\"And you don't like her.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't like either of you, to be fair. But you're the one with the skill I need.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\n\"Smuggling,\" Dario said, and gestured to the waiter. \"That's why we both need a drink.\"\n\n\"You can't be serious,\" Jess said, and looked up at the tomb of Alexander the Great.\n\nDario hadn't told him where they were going, or he'd have refused outright back at the caf\u00e9. Maybe the wine had lulled him too much, because he'd agreed to at least take a look. And now, here he was. Looking.\n\nNext to the Lighthouse and the Serapeum, the tomb of Alexander was the single most recognizable structure in Alexandria... a memorial that had survived in all its original gaudy glory. It crouched in the center of the lush park square, looking exactly like what it was: an overdone tribute to an oversized legend. Marble clad, of course, with statues of gold at each corner on each of four levels. The other statues that lined each level were stone, or looked to be, at least\u2014warriors, horses, gods. On top, Alexander's chariot was drawn by mighty warhorses frozen in midcharge, and the boy king's statue showed him as handsome and glorious as the gods themselves.\n\nA pretty dark-eyed girl strolled past the two of them, and gave Dario a bright smile as she trailed a hand over the flowers planted on the path. The Spaniard smiled back and bowed to her, which elicited a giggle. Jess sighed. \"Tell me we aren't here just so you can peacock to the ladies.\"\n\n\"It's an added benefit,\" Dario said. \"I'm supposed to meet someone here who may have a book for us.\"\n\n\"Meet who, exactly?\"\n\n\"Am I supposed to ask for formal introductions when buying illegal things? I was under the impression it was more of a casual acquaintance.\"\n\n\"Where did you meet this person?\"\n\n\"I inquired,\" Dario said. \"I'm not without skills, you know. If you must know, he's a sailor out of Rome. He said he has a stolen logbook from a prison there.\"\n\n\"Every city has a prison!\"\n\n\"This one is run by the High Garda. Not local police.\"\n\nJess didn't like it. \"Do you know him at all?\"\n\n\"No. Which is why I want you here, with your long history of... questionable things. I'll pay for the book, you take it away from here, and we will all live to read whatever it is I'm spending a ruinous amount of my savings to get.\"\n\n\"Dario, buying black market is not your strength. You should have told me. I could have\u2014\"\n\n\"There wasn't time,\" Dario cut in. \"Are you going to help or not?\"\n\nThis wasn't the spot Jess would have chosen for such an exchange, either: too many casual strollers in this park, some with families. Too many ears to bear witness, and he hadn't missed the fact that there were two sphinxes roaming the park, too.\n\nThe sphinxes weren't the only threats. One of the golden corner statues\u2014Hera, he thought, the queen of the Greek gods\u2014turned her head and tilted it down to regard them as they passed, though if she was holding up a corner of the building, she probably couldn't step away. Jess didn't care for even that much attention. And then he saw out of the corner of his eye that one of the sphinxes had padded down the path and stretched out in a long, low crouch not far away. It wasn't directly watching them, but the nearness of the thing made his instincts scream with alarm. It wasn't so much that he was afraid they were following him\u2014though he had to admit, he was more than a little haunted by the idea they were\u2014but that he didn't care for their closeness during such a highly illegal activity.\n\nNot that Dario would even think of that. He seemed to take automata as just part of the landscape.\n\n\"I don't like this,\" Jess said. \"It's too open, too obvious. Sphinxes. Call it off. We can meet somewhere safer.\"\n\n\"I can't call it off, and I didn't pick the spot,\" Dario said. \"This is my one chance to get this book. Go if you're too afraid. But I'd think someone so well versed in criminality would have a little backbone.\"\n\n\"There's a difference between courage and blind arrogance,\" Jess said sourly. \"Where is this contact of yours?\"\n\n\"He'll be here soon.\" Dario seemed oblivious to the threats. Jess's throat tightened as they neared the sphinx, and it turned that pharaoh's head toward them. The eyes gleamed dull red, then brightened.\n\n\"Dario, we should go.\"\n\n\"Ah, there he is.\" The idiot waved, and Jess spotted a man in plain working clothes trudging down a path toward them.\n\nSomewhere in the bushes, Jess heard a rustle. He turned his head toward the noise, and saw that another sphinx watched them through the hedge. The human-shaped face stared with eerie concentration, and the eyes burned bloody red.\n\nJess forced Dario's arm down. \"Inside. Get inside.\"\n\n\"No, he's right there\u2014\"\n\n\"Follow me. Now!\"\n\nJess turned and launched into a run back toward the tomb's entrance. He heard the crack of breaking branches and didn't look back. Dario was just a step behind, and caught up as the sphinx let out a sound like the high shriek of a hawk. It was coming for them. Jess put on a burst of speed, digging into his strides and lengthening them, and within four long steps he was past the hedges, and in another ten, halfway around the tomb building, with Dario struggling to keep pace. Screams rose as the pursuing sphinx rounded the corner at a lion's lope, and people who'd been casually enjoying the park dove out of its path and ran for the exits. Jess tried not to think about the damage it could do to innocent bystanders. He'd seen the raw, red destruction left by automaton lions in London. He and Dario were risking not just their own lives, but those of everyone caught in this place.\n\nJess and Dario darted up the marble steps. \"Why are they chasing us?\" Dario demanded, gasping for breath. Jess hadn't even felt the run. Dario needed to get out from behind his desk more. \"We're Library! We're wearing the bands! What in the name of God\u2014\"\n\n\"They already knew! Your contact sold us out. Or someone sold him out,\" Jess shot back. \"Did you think you could just stroll over and get handed something the Library kills people for? With no experience and no training, in a public place? Idiot!\"\n\nDario was utterly out of his element, all his composure shaken. For all that he'd survived Oxford and the disasters that came after, he'd never, until this moment, truly seen the Library as his enemy. He'd never understood what it meant to come face-to-face with its dark side. Jess almost envied him that. And almost pitied him.\n\nBut there wasn't time for either.\n\nHe'd never been inside this tomb before, but Jess knew the first level was a kind of museum, showing artifacts from Alexander's time\u2014his armor, his sword, and more. With any luck, the sphinx's instructions wouldn't allow it to enter these precincts, where it could damage and destroy priceless history. But in case that wasn't true, Jess led Dario up another, interior set of stairs, two at a time, to a shadowy landing. His heart was pumping, but not completely in fear; there was a kind of exhilaration to this that was addictive. A deadly game. But still a game.\n\nOutside, the sphinx shrieked again. The other answered, and somewhere mingled with it was the bone-shattering scream of a human being in mortal pain and distress\u2014a scream that cut off abruptly.\n\nDario's eyes were wild as he said, \"Did they\u2014\"\n\n\"Kill your contact? Probably. Or some innocent who got in the way.\" Jess wanted to punch him for his deadly ignorance. \"What did you think you were playing at, Dario? Were you trying to impress me?\"\n\nDario swallowed hard, opened his mouth, then closed it. \"Maybe I was.\" Some awareness crept back into his expression, and he looked around. \"I've never been in here. Have you?\"\n\n\"No.\" Another idiocy, Jess thought; Dario should have scouted this place thoroughly, on many occasions, at different times of day. He should have known how to get in, out, every possible route of escape. \"Come on. We're going up.\"\n\nThe next level held the glass coffin of Alexander, and though he knew he shouldn't, Jess found his steps slowing. There was a sense of terrible reverence here. Alexander's withered, leathery body\u2014embalmed and dressed in a set of gilded armor\u2014lay under thick, ancient glass... or crystal, maybe. The body was smaller than Jess would have guessed. Alexander had conquered most of the known world as little more than a boy, and Jess wondered what he'd have thought of all this\u2014of the tomb, the honors, the Library that had conquered the rest of the world in his name. Had he really wanted to be displayed like this, as his own museum piece?\n\nSurrounding the coffin, inset in alcoves in the walls, stood statues of weeping men and women, their hands covering their faces. Lifelike and frightening.\n\nDario's voice came hushed, but it still made Jess flinch. \"Are those...\"\n\n\"Automata? Yes. Don't touch the coffin. They're probably guardians.\"\n\nJess stayed well away from Alexander's corpse and took the next set of stairs up again, with Dario at his heels. They emerged into a large, empty veranda open to night breezes, furnished with stone benches and seats. It afforded a fine view of the sights of Alexandria, but no way up to the small roof or out. When Jess looked down on the gardens below, it didn't surprise him to see that all casual visitors had vanished into the night. It was just him, Dario, and two pacing sphinxes below, staring up with intense red eyes. Terrible odds.\n\n\"Where are we going to go?\" Dario asked. He sounded justifiably worried.\n\n\"Go down,\" Jess said.\n\n\"The sphinxes\u2014\"\n\nJess took in a deep breath. \"You go this way. I'll draw the sphinxes to the other side of the building. Stay here and watch. When it's clear, climb down.\"\n\n\"Excuse me\u2014climb down?\"\n\n\"Swing over the edge, grab hold of a statue, shinny down to the next level. Repeat. You can make it.\" It never occurred to him that it might be terrifying; he'd grown up seeing that kind of activity as normal. From the look that Dario shot him, clearly he didn't share that idea. \"Do you want to try to outrun the sphinxes instead?\"\n\nDario silently shook his head and moved to the edge. \"Are you sure none of these statues I'm supposed to grab onto are automata?\"\n\n\"I can't guarantee it,\" Jess admitted. \"Best of luck.\"\n\nDario glared. Jess didn't really blame him. \"Go with God,\" Dario said. \"And also to the devil, scrubber, for making me do this.\"\n\n\"I'll take whichever of them will make me faster,\" Jess said. \"Give me two minutes to lead them off. Good luck. I mean it.\"\n\nDario nodded and offered his hand. They shook, and Jess backed up and ran down the steps they'd ascended. The sphinxes would be expecting him to emerge from the tomb's only door. He wouldn't want to disappoint them, but he did want a good head start, so he stopped a floor up, in the area lined with glass cases, and eased between them to reach the statues beyond. This was the layer with rearing horses and warriors, and, luckily, they all were stone, or he'd have been dead in seconds. The sphinxes hadn't seen him yet and were crouched at the tomb doorway.\n\nIt would be a long jump and hard fall, but he'd had worse. Jess took in four lung-expanding breaths, then launched himself forward into a flat dive. He had a terrifyingly good view of the sphinxes' twitching tails as he sailed over them, but he'd done it well enough; the dive carried him to a landing point several feet behind them, and he curled into a ball before impact, rolled up, and was digging feet into the gravel and running before the sphinxes even knew he'd arrived.\n\nIt didn't last more than a couple of fast heartbeats. He heard the twin shrieks of the automata, and didn't need to look back to know they'd risen to join the chase.\n\nGo, Dario. Get out. That was the only good wish he could spare for his friend, because he had to concentrate on angling his body just right to take advantage of the footing, the breeze at his back, the way his feet rose and fell. He needed every possible fraction of a second to live through this... And then he saw the corpse lying ahead of him in the path. It was the body of the man they'd been set to meet\u2014a sailor fresh from a boat, or so Dario had said. Didn't matter now; he was just a sad heap of meat and crushed bones, but lying next to him was a leather drawstring bag.\n\nDon't risk it, Jess thought. You don't have the time.\n\nBut it was impossible to resist the impulse. He veered close to the body and reached down just enough to snag his fingers in the bag's strings. He lost a half second and could feel the sphinxes gaining on him. I won't make it, he thought, and had a vision of himself crushed on the ground like that nameless sailor.\n\nThe bag he'd grabbed was unexpectedly heavy and it would slow him down. The knowledge\u2014if there was any to be had from whatever was inside it\u2014wouldn't help him if the sphinxes caught him, but it might give him an advantage if he used it right.\n\nJess turned and threw the bag as far as he could the way he'd come, into the park. The twist of his body gave him a heart-stopping view of the sphinxes loping just a body's length behind him, and then he was facing forward again and running with real desperation, breath pumping faster and faster as he spotted the park exit ahead.\n\nOne of the sphinxes peeled off and chased the thrown bag; he saw the flash out of the corner of his eye.\n\nBut one stayed on him.\n\nThere was nothing to do but pray that once he'd passed the boundary of the tomb's precincts, the sphinx would let him go. They were made to be territorial, after all. Not even the Library wanted the monsters tearing through crowded streets in pursuit.\n\nHe could feel the sphinx gaining behind him and realized, with a sudden horror, that all his best speed, his finest running, wouldn't put him through the exit before it reached him.\n\nHe was going to be caught.\n\nSo Jess did the only thing he could. He threw himself flat and hoped momentum would force the thing to miss him.\n\nHe was lucky rather than good\u2014the sphinx had just leaped as he flung himself down, and as he curled into a protective ball, the back feet crashed down on gravel just a handbreadth away from his head. He could see cables flexing under the metallic flank of the thing and scrambled up, hoping to be away before it could adjust and turn.\n\nHe slipped. The loose gravel betrayed him, and before he could recover he was on his knees and the sphinx had turned to him. It padded toward him. Unhurried. Remorseless. The human face held no expression at all. The sinuous copper skin seemed to stretch and mold to the simulated muscles beneath as it moved, and Jess thought, Do something, but there was nothing he could do.\n\nHe held still, hardly daring to breathe. The human-faced head of it was on a level with his eyes, and utterly, unsettlingly alien, and he was reminded of the cobra, swaying in the darkness as it considered biting.\n\nThe sphinx parted thin metal lips and revealed razor-sharp teeth behind\u2014the teeth of a lion in a man's face. Deadly sharp.\n\nDon't. Move.\n\nHe felt a whisper of air as it drew in a bellows of breath, and he realized he was doubly dead now\u2014he was wearing the smuggling harness with not one but two illegal books inside. The harness's coatings should have masked the smell of bindings and papers, but if the Archivist wanted him dead, this creature needed no further excuse.\n\nThe switch, he remembered from the book. He also knew that those razor-sharp teeth, and the massive lion paws with equally pointed claws, ensured that one wrong guess would absolutely be his last. Anit's brothers had both faced this moment.\n\nThey'd both died.\n\nJess didn't allow himself the luxury of doubt, because he knew that he was seconds away from death if he did nothing; the automaton's mouth was already opening wider and the eyes burning hotter, and this chance was his only chance.\n\nHe reached under the chin of the human face and felt a small depression. As the sphinx's head whipped sideways to bite his arm, he pressed down hard.\n\nThe head slowed its turn, but the teeth still closed around his arm.\n\nPressed down.\n\nHe felt the slicing sting of metal and knew it was too late\u2014he'd lose his arm at the very least. God, no...\n\nBut then the sphinx just... stopped, with a sound of gears grinding to a halt. The jaws still pressed down, but the bite was shallow, just a little blood and pain that he made worse by having to pull himself free. Jess was panting now, shaking, pouring sweat, and as he watched the sphinx's face, he saw the eyes flicker red, then black, and then go a dead, leaden gray.\n\nIt stood still as the statue it resembled. Frozen on the spot.\n\nJess heard the shriek of the other sphinx returning, and launched himself around the frozen automaton. Hedges snapped and flailed at him until he achieved gravel again, and then was running, running, with the gardens falling behind him, and the lonely, angry shriek of a sphinx chasing to the borders of the tomb's park.\n\nThe scream followed him like a vengeful ghost as he lost himself in the streets of Alexandria.\n\nSweating and staggering with weariness, Jess made his way back to the port and the Lighthouse. He avoided the guardian automata by climbing the wall\u2014another exertion he didn't savor\u2014and dropping down into the meditation grotto for some god or goddess lost in the dark.\n\nHe found Scholar Prakesh's offices closed and locked. Dario hadn't come back there, and he didn't know where he bunked.\n\nKhalila was in. He pounded on the door, and it opened to spill him in. He found a chair and fell into it, still breathing hard. \"Dario,\" he gasped out. \"Is he back yet?\"\n\n\"What happened?\" Khalila sank down next to him to catch his eyes. \"Jess! You're bleeding!\"\n\n\"It's fine.\" He brushed off her attempt to roll up the sleeve of his jacket. \"Where is he?\"\n\nShe frowned. \"I don't know. In his room, I suppose. You know where that is?\" Jess shook his head. \"I'll take you. And you can tell me what put you in this state along the way.\"\n\nShe wouldn't take no for an answer, so Jess did tell her, and didn't spare Dario's folly in the telling, either. She stopped in the middle of a flight of steps to turn and stare at him. \"You're saying that you outran a sphinx?\"\n\n\"No, I'm saying I couldn't outrun a sphinx,\" he corrected. \"I'm lucky to be alive, and no thanks to our little Spanish prince.\"\n\n\"Jess...\" Her lips were parted, but she clearly didn't know what to say to him. \"Allah must love a fool.\"\n\n\"Let's hope that extends to Dario, too.\"\n\nShe took him down four flights of stairs to what proved to be a residential floor, thickly carpeted and boasting carved doors of cedar that gave the whole hallway a rich, woody smell. She rapped on one of the doors, and it almost immediately swung open.\n\nDario was still alive. Injured, Jess saw, but alive. Relief flashed in his eyes when he saw Jess, but he quickly buried it. \"Scrubber,\" he said, and stood aside to let them come in. \"Happy to see you still standing.\"\n\n\"What happened to your leg?\" Khalila asked, and helped Dario limp to the bed.\n\n\"I twisted my ankle falling off the damned tomb of Alexander,\" Dario said. \"I challenge you to find anyone else who can say that. What happened to your arm?\" That last, Jess realized, was directed to him.\n\n\"Sphinx,\" he said.\n\n\"You just always have to win, don't you?\" The joke was almost a reflex, because Dario stared at the blood and rips on his jacket with real concern. \"Is that a bite?\"\n\n\"Their teeth are like razors, in case you ever wondered,\" Jess replied. \"But I learned something important.\"\n\n\"That I'm a fool?\" Dario asked bitterly. \"I'd have thought you already knew. You've said it often enough.\"\n\n\"You're not a fool, just a dilettante at what I've been doing all my life,\" Jess said. \"Never mind. We're both alive. That counts.\"\n\n\"Did you get the book?\" Jess shook his head, and Dario's expression set into a grim mask. \"Then it was all for nothing. I got a man killed for nothing.\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" Jess said. \"I know how to turn off an automaton.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a coded, self-deleting Codex exchange between Morgan Hault and Jess Brightwell:\n\n\u2002How could you be so stupid?\n\n\u2002Don't blame me. I said it was a bad idea. I'd give you two guesses whose idea it was, but you won't need them.\n\n\u2002I know you could have said no. You can't take these kinds of risks! The High Garda commander nearly caught you. I saw the report. I knew it had to be you.\n\n\u2002Not every foolish thing in Alexandria is my fault.\n\n\u2002Please tell me you got something out of it.\n\n\u2002Nothing I want to tell you this way, even if you're erasing these messages. Too dangerous.\n\n\u2002Try not to let him talk you into any more of this.\n\n\u2002Careful. I might begin to think you care.\n\n\u2002I always have.\n\n\u2002Morgan, tell me what I need to do to make it right between us. Please.\n\n\u2002There's nothing you can do. I'll do what I can for you.\n\n\u2002I want to help you!\n\n\u2002...\n\n\u2002Morgan?\n\n\u2002-X-"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "It was the heavy middle of the next night when Jess's Codex chimed, bringing him groggily awake. He turned on a glow and paged open the book to see a new message writing itself out in round, professionally inked letters. Recruit Jess Brightwell to report to the Office of the High Commander in fifteen minutes.\n\nNow? He felt a lurch of unease. People disappeared conveniently in these barren hours. He remembered finding the disarranged state of Thomas's room back at Ptolemy House at a similar time of night, a smear of blood on the floor. Easy to be just... gone. But avoiding the summons would be inadvisable at best, impossible at worst, and he couldn't let them see fear. What if they know? What if we've been identified from the park?\n\nIt felt like dressing for his own funeral, but Jess donned a clean uniform and stepped into the hall... to find Wu, Bransom, and Glain already there, as well as the remaining members of their squad. Helva was still in the infirmary, and Tariq\u2014his absence echoed loudly between them just now.\n\n\"High Commander's office?\" Wu asked. Jess nodded. His eyes met Glain's for a moment, and he knew she was just as unsettled as he was. She'd taken the news of his near death with calm, but had also known, just as he did, that it might have been a temporary escape.\n\n\"Form up,\" Glain said. \"If this is our last time together, then we do it right.\" She meant it both for them as a squad and as a personal message to him. Jess appreciated the sentiment.\n\nThe squad fell into stride through the long, clean hallways, past the turn that led to their quarters and off into wider, more lush spaces, and then into the courtyard where the Spartan turned his head sharply to focus on Jess as he passed. Jess refused to look at the thing. Instead he kept his concentration on keeping stride with Wu and Bransom and trying not to think why the squad\u2014the whole squad\u2014had been so summarily summoned.\n\nThe High Commander's office was in a tightly guarded central building, one that required presentation of their official Library bracelets to a seated sphinx automaton twice Jess's height\u2014an eerie thing that stared at Jess from the lifeless simulation of a human face with utterly alien eyes as it examined his credentials. A growl of discontent rumbled somewhere deep inside the thing as it stared at him, a vague and terrifying dislike that might, at any moment, break into a full-throated shriek and baring of those needle teeth. Did it know? Could it? Do the sphinxes communicate somehow?\n\nEvidently they did not, because the sphinx turned its attention to Bransom, the next in line. It took a real effort of will for Jess to turn his back on the thing and walk. Glain, having her own bracelet examined last, caught up to him in several long strides and whispered, \"Near thing.\"\n\n\"But still a miss. I'm beginning to believe that they just like me.\"\n\n\"Automata don't like or dislike anyone. They're machines!\"\n\n\"Not completely,\" he said. \"Thomas once told me that they... think. It's not just gears and steam in there. It's something else.\" He itched to open one up now that he'd read that coded volume, full of tantalizing hints about how the thing worked inside. Thomas would have had exactly the same impulse; the German boy was an expert at mechanical things, constantly breaking down and building up their inner workings. He'd been fascinated with automata. Still is fascinated, Jess corrected himself. He isn't dead.\n\nThe group marched together at a brisk pace down clean stone hallways, inset with alcoves filled with warrior deities from around the world\u2014African, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Roman, Japanese, Russian. Finally, at the end of the hallway, in pride of place, outsized golden statues of Horus and Menhit, the local Egyptian war gods. The floor beneath their boots, shining and clean, was a mosaic design of sphinxes, and at the end, in the rounded vestibule of the High Commander's office, the Great Library's seal shone gold, inset in the marble. The place smelled of metal and oil, with a faint, acrid smell of chemicals and gunpowder floating above like fog. The smell of war. Jess still preferred the crisp, dry scent of paper and leather.\n\nThis is the end, he thought, and wondered if the others were thinking the same thing. This is the end of my time at the Library. We've been held hanging, and now the sword is about to fall and cut us loose.\n\nMy father will never take me back.\n\nGlain stepped forward to knock on the huge ebony doors, but she didn't need to do so; they swung open without a sound, and after a bare instant of hesitation, she squared her shoulders and led the way in.\n\nIt was a long march through a very large room. Displays of arms and armor and vast shelves of Blanks lined the walls. At the far end of the space, in front of a wall inscribed with rows of hieroglyphs that looked millennia old, sat a desk with crouched lions for legs.\n\nAn old man sat behind it.\n\nHe watched as the four of them snapped to attention, and as he stared at them, Jess revised his judgment. The High Commander wasn't that old; his hair had gone a glossy gray, with black threading through, but it was like a layer of snow on concrete. His shoulders were still broad, his body straight, and he had large, scarred hands that had seen plenty of hard use. The High Commander was of African heritage, with skin so dark it held overtones of blue in the lamplight, and startling hazel eyes that looked as sharp and clever as Scholar Wolfe's.\n\n\"Recruits,\" he said. There was nothing but a Codex and a single folded paper on his desk. \"Until your final test, your squad demonstrated an outstanding amount of potential.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Glain said. \"Permission to speak?\"\n\nThe High Commander's gaze fixed on her, and Jess was very glad it wasn't aimed at him. \"Denied,\" he said. \"You are here to listen, Recruit Wathen, and not to provide me with excuses. To continue: this squad had a great amount of potential. The last test was, in fact, designed to simulate an ambush of your squad by hostile forces while you were in the performance of regular duties. In the course of that exercise, one of your squad was killed, and another injured. Is that accurate? You may now answer, Wathen. Briefly.\"\n\n\"That description is accurate, sir,\" Glain said. There was no emotion to it. She stared into the distance, somewhere over the High Commander's squared shoulders.\n\n\"The exercise was designed to test your innovativeness, your toughness, your responsiveness, your team's bonds. How do you feel that you performed in light of this, Recruit Wathen?\"\n\n\"Sir, our progress toward our goal was steady and careful, and when presented with the unexpected challenge of Greek fire, we took cover and returned fire. We followed procedure. We defended our Scholar at all costs.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" the High Commander said, and leaned back in his chair. \"The Scholar. There comes the interesting twist in this tale: you were not assigned a Scholar or anyone representing one. Scholar Wolfe's intrusion into this space was unauthorized and introduced random factors that call the entire exercise into doubt.\"\n\n\"Permission to ask a question, sir,\" Jess said, and pushed forward before he could be told no. \"If Scholar Wolfe wasn't authorized to be there, then how did he get in?\"\n\nIt was a simple and revealing question, and the High Commander stared at him unblinkingly for a moment. Jess could almost feel the rest of his squad trying to shift away from him without moving a muscle.\n\n\"Scholar Wolfe forged credentials to allow himself access. We are still investigating the matter.\" Clearly, he wasn't happy about Wolfe's refusal to cooperate further. The closed Codex on his desk hummed for attention, and he paused to consult it, then closed it again.\n\nGlain took advantage of the distraction to say, \"The Greek fire wasn't at exercise strength, sir. It was fully dangerous. And we are well aware that one of our own was meant to take out Scholar Wolfe, and died for failing. It's a testament to our squad's determination and training that this ambush did not succeed. Sir.\"\n\n\"Your argument is that your squad succeeded, Sergeant? At the cost of one dead recruit and one seriously impaired, possibly unable to return to duty?\"\n\n\"We are sworn to fight and die in service to the Library. Recruit Oduya tried to shoot our Scholar\u2014a Scholar who, whether supposed to be there or not, was nevertheless our responsibility. So yes, sir. We did succeed.\"\n\n\"Do you then accept responsibility for a traitor within your own squad?\"\n\nIt was a trap, and in the hard silence that fell, Jess struggled with an impulse to blurt out a defense. Glain wouldn't thank him.\n\nAfter letting the stillness weigh on the room for a moment, she said, \"I do, sir. If Recruit Oduya was compromised, I should have seen that and acted before he was able to commit such a crime. His death is on my hands, and I accept all responsibility.\"\n\n\"I would expect nothing less of someone in command.\" The man's voice had a low, rumbling timbre to it, and Jess could well imagine how it would echo across a messy battleground, rasping orders and shouting encouragement to his troops. Like Glain, a born leader. Don't throw her away, Jess thought desperately. She deserves better. \"At least you understand your duty, even if you failed to adequately perform it. Recruit Oduya did indeed receive additional payment from an unknown source, no doubt to act as Wolfe's assassin. He was backed up in his heinous crime by another, as yet unknown individual who was responsible for the shot that killed him. The same individual no doubt substituted full-strength Greek fire for the exercise formulation.\"\n\nDespite their training, Jess felt the squad shifting around him, exchanging glances. Glain stayed still and focused. Waiting for the ax to fall.\n\n\"After much consideration and debate, it has been determined that this squad was not at fault for the outcome of this exercise, and no punishment shall be assigned to the team as a whole. Recruit Brightwell, you first spotted the danger to the Scholar and protected his life. You also risked your own life to fetch assistance for fallen colleagues. Few of the regular ranks could have done better under the same circumstances. You are to be commended for your actions.\"\n\nJess blinked. This had taken him entirely by surprise. He wasn't used to open praise.\n\n\"Squad Leader Wathen, you commanded your team well under difficult circumstances, but because of your failure to spot this traitor within your team, you are hereby lowered in rank. You will no longer enter the High Garda at the rank of sergeant as was originally contracted, but as a common soldier. Nevertheless, I do not feel your failure warrants dismissal from the High Garda.\"\n\nGlain let out a breath, a slow and trembling one. She didn't relax, but Jess could feel the wave of relief coming from her all the same. She'd have to give it all up if they went after Thomas, but that would be her choice. Failure would have been humiliating.\n\nFor the first time, the High Commander smiled. It only made him more daunting. \"Your squad kept a Scholar\u2014whether he should have been present or not\u2014alive. That matters. That is everything, except for the protection of original books, which would take precedence even over the life of a Scholar. And for that, I have decided to accept this exercise as your final test.\"\n\nJess didn't dare speak this time, but after a long pause, he heard Wu say tentatively, \"So... we passed, sir?\"\n\n\"You passed,\" the High Commander replied. \"You will each receive your individual assignment soon via Codex. Squad dismissed.\"\n\nIn a way, passing the test was more of a shock than failing; at least Jess had been properly prepared to be sent on his way, without a future. He couldn't process the moment fast enough to really comprehend what had just happened. He'd gotten so used to assuming the worst that having the best actually arrive was somehow wrong, coming on the heels as it did of the escape from the tomb\u2014and what had almost been his own tomb\u2014in the park.\n\n\"Brightwell,\" the High Commander said, and caught Jess in midturn. He spun back to face front. \"A moment.\"\n\nHe heard Glain's footsteps hesitate, but only for an instant, and then she was gone. The door shut behind his friends, and he was alone with a man who could destroy his future in a breath.\n\nAt least he was used to that, after Scholar Wolfe and his harsh postulant training. And before that, life with his own father.\n\nJess stood perfectly still, perfectly at attention, while the man regarded him. Finally, the High Commander reached for a folded sheet of paper on his desk. It was sealed with gold, and stamped with the symbol of the Library. Jess opened it. His hands were steady, though his heartbeat jumped faster when he saw the name written at the bottom\u2014a personal signature, not just a scribe's notation.\n\nThe Artifex Magnus, head of the Artifex division of the Great Library. One of the members of the Curia, who advised the Archivist. But, in reality, the Archivist's bullyboy and henchman. A villain with elegant handwriting, it seemed.\n\nThe message read, Our eyes are on you. Nothing else. But on the heels of that unsettling mess at Alexander's tomb, it seemed even more ominous.\n\n\"Bad news?\"\n\nJess's head snapped up, and he met the High Commander's eyes. He couldn't read the man at all and he couldn't trust him. So he folded up the note, put it in his coat, and said, \"No, sir.\"\n\nHe half-expected the man to ask harder questions, but it was late, and he was of too insignificant a rank. The High Commander brushed a hand toward him. \"Go.\"\n\n\"Sir.\"\n\nHe walked out on legs that felt less steady than those he'd walked in on, and once he was out and the door boomed shut behind him, he still felt eyes on his back, as if gravity had increased its pull.\n\nAs he stood for a moment in the round vestibule, getting his mind together, for the first time Jess realized that there were no guards. The man in charge of the most feared army on earth had no guards. That was a stunning statement of his power.\n\nThat was when he looked up at the flanking statues of Horus and Menhit. The hawk-headed Horus and lion-headed Menhit stared back, and, as he watched, Menhit shifted her weight from the traditional pose. She held a flail in one hand, and the flexible metal strips dangling from it whispered against each other as she moved.\n\nHe tore his gaze from Menhit back to Horus, who carried a spear.\n\nHorus cocked his head, birdlike, to stare harder at Jess.\n\nOur eyes are on you.\n\nHe jumped when a hand fell on his shoulder and pulled him back a step.\n\n\"Cachu,\" Glain breathed. \"What is it about you they don't like? Did you kill their pets? Come on!\"\n\nThey walked fast, and Jess became horribly aware that all of the war-god statues they passed were turning their heads to stare. Behind them, Horus stepped down from his pedestal in the alcove on the wall and took a long stride down the hall. Then another. Behind him, Menhit descended, that hissing, sharp flail cutting the air before her.\n\nIt was all bluff. When Jess attained the end of the corridor, he looked back to see Horus stepping back up to his pedestal in an eerily smooth, flowing motion. Threats, he thought. Intimidation. The Artifex's stock in trade\u2014and the Archivist's. Extremes of emotion colliding inside him made him feel sick.\n\nThe rest of the squad stood clumped at the end of the hall, looking one step from running as Glain and Jess caught up.\n\n\"Why did they do that?\" Violet Bransom sounded utterly shaken. \"Why would automata come for you?\"\n\n\"They didn't,\" Glain said. She sounded brisk and matter-of-fact, and if he hadn't known her well, he might have believed she hadn't been frightened at all. \"It was likely some malfunction. If they'd meant us harm, someone would be mopping our remains off the floor right about now.\"\n\n\"Then why\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Glain said, cutting Bransom off, with the definite subtext of and I don't care. \"You heard the High Commander. The squad passed. We'll receive individual commissions by Codex. This may be my last opportunity to say it to all of you, but I'm proud of you. Very proud.\" Her gaze touched each of them in turn, and last of all, Jess. He nodded.\n\n\"Thank you, sir,\" Wu said, and Jess echoed it. \"Oh hells, Bransom, stop cringing like a child. You're a soldier now!\"\n\n\"I wasn't cringing!\" she said, and glared at Jess, as if it were somehow his fault. \"What about Helva?\"\n\n\"Helva will be on Medica duty until she's well enough, but I imagine she'll pass, too. They say she'll make a full recovery eventually.\"\n\nJess drifted slowly away and let the group talk, as their good fortune slowly began to sink in. He continued to stare back down the hall, where the eight-foot goddess Menhit relentlessly swished her golden flail, her leonine jaws baring in a grin that showed sharp, cutting teeth.\n\nJess went back to his room and tried to go back to sleep, but his heart was pounding, his hands clammy, and he couldn't shake the feeling that the jaws of a trap were slowly, slowly closing around him. He couldn't lie still. Finally, he rose, dressed in common clothes, and paced his room restlessly as he tried to still the anxiety inside. He didn't want to wake up Glain, and Dario and Khalila didn't deserve to be rattled awake at this terrible hour, either, but he felt more alone than he ever had.\n\nHe sat down and picked up his Codex and turned to the page where Morgan's messages appeared. He knew it was useless, but he took up his pen and wrote, I need to talk to you. Please. I need you.\n\nHe watched the page, waiting for her familiar handwriting to appear, but it didn't come. Of course it wouldn't. She could reach out to him, but he couldn't do the same to her. He didn't even know if she was reading it. So he kept writing, almost against his will. I feel very alone tonight. And I miss you. It's stupid, I know, but I miss the touch of your skin, the smell of your hair. The weight of you in my arms. Horus help me, I sound like a lovesick poet. I should thank the God of Scribes you'll never read this, because I don't deserve to write it. You still hate me. You might not ever want to see me again, and, even if you do, you might never feel the same as you did before. I know that. I just... I miss you, Morgan.\n\nThen he reversed the stylus and brushed it all out, erased as if it had never been, and felt more alone than before.\n\nHe needed the comfort of someone familiar. I want to go home, he thought, which was strange; he had few happy memories of London, really. And it had hardly ever been safe. Still, in this moment, he desperately wanted to walk in the door of his family's town house, to see the wan smile of his mother and see his father busy at his massive desk.\n\nA bit of home.\n\nAfter a moment of debate, and knowing it was bound to backfire on him, Jess gave in to temptation and went in search of his twin brother, Brendan.\n\nThe sentries posted at the gate asked where he was going, and he told the truth: visiting relatives. I'm not a child running for comfort, he told himself. Father's been pestering me to find out what Brendan's up to, anyway. Because Brendan should have left Alexandria long ago, headed back to London, but Jess had learned his brother had taken up residence in the city instead.\n\nMaybe his brother had broken with the family business. Maybe they were both outcasts now.\n\nLeaving the compound this time felt like shedding a giant load from his shoulders; he wasn't on a mission, wasn't under pressure to dodge, avoid, not be found out. He had been allowed off the grounds without argument, and now he walked into the cool, misty night of Alexandria with his hands in his pockets.\n\nIt felt, for the first time in a long time, like freedom, even with the weight of the copper bracelet of the Library still clasped around his wrist.\n\nAlexandria at this hour was a relatively quiet place, except near the docks, where lights and noise and activity continued as ships loaded and unloaded and sailors found leisure. He avoided that; pubs here in Egypt were far different from the friendly, cozy places he'd grown up with at home. Add sailors to the mix, and they were almost always dangerous places, especially at this dark hour.\n\nHe knew the way to his brother's rented home; he'd walked past it a few times, studying it. But it occurred to him that along the way, he needed to make a stop at the shadow markets.\n\nGrowing up in the book-market trade, he'd been dragged along to these sorts of places since he was old enough to understand what went on there and the risks. He remembered, at ten years old, carrying a satchel of rare books for his father as they followed warrenlike alleys into a particularly wretched little shop near Cricklewood. It had not, of course, sold books; it sold pens, journals, Codices\u2014all the products of the Library. The old man who ran it had opened up a trapdoor to a tunnel that ran below the shop, and well beneath the city, they'd found London's Graymarket, a moving, ever-changing feast of illegal books and those who craved them. There were always two or three clumps of nervous newcomers who'd found caches of books in dead relatives' homes and looked to sell them off for a quick profit; those, his father always targeted first. He bought cheap, and relieved those otherwise upright citizens to scamper home with their guilty money.\n\nThen he'd set up at a table all his own, and sell the real beauties to true collectors.\n\nThe Alexandrian market was nothing like that, of course; there were no tunnels here, or if there were, Jess had never found them, except for sewer drains. It meant that the Alexandrian smugglers had to be even cleverer and a good deal bolder.\n\nHe found Red Ibrahim's daughter, Anit, minding a table. There was absolutely nothing on it, not even a hint of what was for sale; everyone knew it was a matter of requests and fees, not options. She looked up at him as he approached and gave him a calm look. \"I have nothing else for you,\" she said. \"I heard about your adventures at Alexander's tomb. Clever of you to escape.\"\n\n\"Clever had help,\" he said, and handed her a paper drawing of a sphinx, and the location of the switch he'd found. \"In memory of your brothers, Anit. Thank you.\"\n\nShe said nothing for a moment, just stared at the page hard, then folded it up and slipped it into a pocket of her skirt. \"You're not negotiating for this?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe pulled the chain from beneath the neck of her dress and held the embossed ring that hung on it like a talisman. \"Then I'm in your debt.\"\n\n\"If you mean that, there's something you could do for me. I'm trying to locate someone who can tell me about the fate of a boy who was arrested at Ptolemy House about six months ago, taken to the Serapeum, and questioned. I want to find out where he was sent after that.\"\n\nAnit sat back in her chair. \"This is not what we do, Jess Brightwell. We sell books. Not information.\" Then she looked down, and said quietly, \"But I will ask.\"\n\nHe nodded and almost walked away... but then came back, leaned over the table, and said, \"Be careful how you go. I don't want to bring anything down on you.\"\n\nShe actually laughed like a little girl. Genuinely amused. \"My father is the most wanted man in all of Alexandria; I am quite used to being careful. But thank you for your concern.\"\n\nShe was right, of course\u2014not that it made him feel any better about having involved her.\n\nThen he went about his real business of the night, to a deserted street on the outskirts of the University district. It held spacious homes built in a modern style, but with bows to Egyptian design and sensibility. Expensive, this area. Well-known for being the home of several prestigious Scholars. There was even a statue of the great inventor Heron on one corner, though, to Jess's great relief, it was only made of stone and was not an automaton.\n\nHe still hesitated in the shadow of Heron's statue as he studied the house in front of him. It was large and comfortable, with Egyptian fluted columns and red-and gold-painted decoration. A small fountain whispered in the courtyard, sending a little silver mist into the air. It was a private sort of place. He liked it.\n\nJess moved quietly up the shallow front steps and knocked.\n\nHis brother opened the door.\n\nFor a moment, they stood there staring at each other\u2014still eerily similar mirror images, even now, though Brendan's hair had grown long and messy around his face and he'd gained a few pounds. Egyptian life either did not agree with him or agreed with him too much. Hard to say which at the moment.\n\n\"You're supposed to have left town months ago,\" Jess said. \"Idiot.\"\n\nBrendan was wearing a loose silk sleeping robe, and he stepped back, rubbed his face, and said, \"Get in before someone sees you.\"\n\nJess stepped into a darkened entry hall. He had the impression of expensive tastes, beautiful decorations and furniture, but it was a strangely empty sort of display, as though an expert decorator had done everything. No real personality to it. And, of course, no books. Not even a Library shelf of Blanks. Brendan wasn't much of a reader.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" Brendan asked. Jess shrugged, and got a hard-eyed glare from his brother in response. \"For God's sake, do you know what time it is, Jess?\"\n\n\"I've passed training,\" he said, because he realized he had to say something, and Brendan gave him a disbelieving stare.\n\n\"What do you want? Congratulations? A nicely wrapped gift? Weren't you supposed to be a full Scholar by now?\"\n\n\"Aren't you supposed to be back home?\" Because Brendan wasn't supposed to still be in Alexandria. \"The last letter from Mother almost seemed worried about you.\"\n\n\"Almost,\" Brendan said. \"Well. That's something.\"\n\nA girl of about Jess's own age appeared in the doorway. She was dressed neatly in a loose white gown belted with gold, and her hair was swept back smoothly in a braided queue. Pretty features, sharp cheekbones, skin the color of blushed copper. She met Brendan's eyes with remarkable ease to say, \"I see you have a visitor. May I bring you anything, sir?\"\n\nBrendan said, \"Coffee, please, Neksa. Jess?\"\n\n\"Coffee,\" he said. \"Thank you.\" Jess watched the girl go her way and waited until she was out of earshot before he said, \"You know, you don't have to pretend with me.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"She's no servant.\"\n\nBrendan, to his credit, didn't give it away if Jess's observation surprised him. He sat down in a gilt-framed chair with lion-head arms and covered a healthy yawn. \"What if she isn't?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Jess said, and took a chair across from him, with a wide black table between them, \"that would explain why you haven't gone home. She's pretty.\"\n\n\"My personal life's none of your business.\"\n\nJess grinned. \"Scraps, it's always been my business. So, what's the difficulty? Father doesn't like her? Mother wants you married off to some bloodless girl with twelfth-removed royal connections?\"\n\n\"Jess,\" Brendan said, and rubbed at his forehead, \"why are you here? Please God, tell me, so I can get back to bed again before dawn arrives.\"\n\nI needed you. And I worried, Jess thought, but he could never say that. He and his brother had never been close, not nearly as close as he felt to his friends, but they were brothers. And he did worry. \"Father sent a letter. You were supposed to be home long ago. I know you're not staying in Alexandria to look after me.\"\n\n\"And this isn't a question you could ask me in the daytime?\"\n\n\"We aren't daytime people,\" Jess replied, to which truth his brother had to give a smile of acknowledgment. More of a grimace, but still. \"You can't be staying this long in Alexandria for entertainment. It's business.\"\n\n\"Why would I tell you? You'd just run back to your real Library masters and tell all.\"\n\n\"Scraps.\"\n\nThe flash of temper surprised Jess, as his brother leaned forward and all but shouted, \"Stop calling me that!\"\n\nIt never failed to get a rise out of him. \"You don't trust me\u2014I know that. I even understand why. What happened? Why didn't you go home?\"\n\nHe didn't really think his brother would answer, but Brendan finally looked away and said, \"I lost a shipment. A large one. Rare books.\"\n\n\"Lost it\u2014\"\n\n\"To the Library. It was a mistake, and, yes, I should have known better, and Father's never going to let me forget it until I make up for it. So, yes, you're right. I'm after something big. Big enough to make him forget his disappointment.\"\n\nJess shrugged. \"Cost of the business, isn't it? Father already wrote me off as a lost cause; he won't take the chance of losing the only son he's got left.\"\n\n\"You're dreaming. Do you actually remember our father?\"\n\nBrendan might have been right about that. Eerie. In some ways, talking to his twin was a bit like having a conversation with himself. \"Maybe the books are better off with the Library. It's a long, dangerous trip for them all the way to London.\"\n\n\"I knew it,\" he said. \"You've gone over to the other side, haven't you? Trouble with being a spy: sometimes, you start believing your own lies.\"\n\n\"Just the opposite,\" Jess said. \"The Library's shown me very thoroughly that I can never be part of it at all. And I know I won't be welcome back home, either\u2014not with a price on my head from the Archivist. Da would rather see me dead than on the run from that.\"\n\n\"Well, then, he'd have to include me, too,\" Brendan said, and pointed at his face. \"If your face is on a wanted poster, we're easily mistaken for each other, and I'd hate to end up on the bad end of a lion with poor eyesight.\"\n\nThe girl, Neksa, brought a tray with small cups of coffee\u2014three cups, not two. She put one each in front of Jess and Brendan, then put one at an empty spot beside Brendan and sat down. \"Oh, don't bother,\" she said when Brendan started to speak. \"He already knows I'm not a servant.\" She offered her hand across the table to Jess, and he took it. She had a remarkably firm handshake. \"Neksa Darzi.\" She was wearing a Library bracelet, Jess realized, and it was a silver one\u2014which outranked his by a considerable, easy margin. Not the gold band of a Scholar with a lifetime appointment and all her needs supplied, but a silver contract guaranteeing a comfortable career ahead of her. \"I am a Librarian here in the city. This is actually my house; I inherited it from an uncle. I have no real use for it, so I've rented it to your brother.\"\n\nJess couldn't get his bearings for a moment. Brendan, who was a born-in-blood book thief, was snuggling up to... a Librarian?\n\n\"So you're his... landlady?\"\n\nShe laughed and took a sip of her coffee as she gave his brother a sidelong look, and there was no mistaking Brendan's smile or the sudden light in his eyes. \"Among other things.\"\n\nHe wanted to ask if she knew what it was his brother did for a living, but he couldn't, seeing that silver bracelet on her arm. Either she knew and was playing an extremely dangerous game for which she couldn't possibly be prepared, or else she didn't know at all, which... was worse. Maybe this really is why he's stayed so long, Jess thought. Because of her. And that was a tragedy waiting to happen.\n\n\"I see,\" Jess said, and managed a good impersonation of a smile. \"Always happy to meet someone my brother likes so well. Better than he likes me, anyway. He can't stand being around me for more than a day or two.\"\n\n\"Damn well true,\" Brendan said, and drained his coffee in a gulp. \"Neksa, I'm sorry, but private family matters. You understand?\"\n\nShe finished her coffee, sighed, and rose to put a slender hand on Brendan's shoulder. He reached up to cover it with his own, and didn't meet Jess's stare. \"I'll see you in bed,\" she said, and bent to kiss him very lightly and sweetly. \"Don't stay up all night. Jess, you are welcome here anytime, of course.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Neksa,\" he said, and watched as she disappeared through the doorway. Jess stood quietly and moved to the hallway.\n\nEmpty. She was gone.\n\nHe closed the door with as much care as he could before rounding on his brother to say, \"Are you mad? She's wearing a silver band!\"\n\nBrendan grabbed his wrist and twisted it up to put Jess's copper bracelet at eye level between them. \"I don't think you've got much cause to throw stones at me!\"\n\nJess pulled free. It wasn't hard. \"Does she know?\"\n\n\"About what?\" Brendan's bland denial was maddening. Jess outright glared at him this time, until his brother finally shook his head. \"She knows I'm a trader. Nothing more.\"\n\n\"You understand that this\"\u2014Jess gestured at the fine house, at the girl who'd left the room\u2014\"this is why our parents keep writing to me! You're going to drag her down with you. There's no possibility she comes out of this unhurt, and if you really care about her\u2014\"\n\n\"Who says I do care about her?\"\n\nThat stopped Jess cold. He stared at his brother with an unpleasant churn in his stomach. \"What in the hell are you doing?\"\n\n\"My job,\" Brendan said. \"Unlike you. Father pinned his hopes and a large part of his fortune on you coming here and excelling, and instead you're just a spear carrier. A nothing, dead in battle a year from now. What use are you to us?\"\n\n\"What use is she to us?\"\n\n\"We need someone inside, in a position of real authority and access. It obviously won't be you. So she's a present to Father to salve the vast fortune I lost here\u2014a direct way into the highest levels of the Library.\"\n\n\"You're not planning to abduct the girl!\"\n\n\"Of course not!\" Brendan seemed to be honestly puzzled why Jess would think of it. \"She's in love with me. Through her I can gain access to information you never could.\"\n\nIt was a cold plan, and it felt dishonest in ways that had nothing to do with mere theft. His brother had always been a schemer, but Jess didn't think he'd ever been this bitter cold before. \"Brendan,\" he said. \"Where does Neksa work?\"\n\nHis brother gave him a slow, cold smile. \"She works for the Archivist. Oh, not a trusted adviser, obviously; merely a clerk. But she sees things. Knows things that could be of huge benefit to the Brightwell business.\"\n\n\"I don't\u2014\" Hard to believe he was saying this. \"I don't think you should do this.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because it's\u2014\" Because it's a filthy betrayal of a woman you've pretended to love. \"Because it's wrong.\" Even to his own ears, that was weak.\n\nHis brother laughed. It sounded bitter. \"Everything we do is wrong. Haven't you noticed?\" He regarded Jess for a moment and sat back, pushing his hair from his eyes. \"You've gone soft here in the heart of luxury. You've forgotten that everything has a cost.\"\n\nJess shut his eyes for a moment. The hard jolt of caffeine in his bloodstream had started a dull headache, and he felt his blood pulsing in his neck. The sickly sweet taste of the coffee fueled a roiling in his stomach that had less to do with the drink than with his own disgust. \"She loves you. Even I can see that. Don't you feel anything for her?\"\n\nHis brother's face, a mirror of his own, was as hard and unforgiving as the face of an automaton. \"She's a means to an end, Jess. The sooner you learn to shed your sentimentality, the better off you'll be. Now. You didn't come here to check on me\u2014I know you better than that. Why did you? And don't tell me Father sent you.\" He looked, just for a moment, less cynical. Almost concerned. \"Jess? You look... troubled.\"\n\nI'm taking on a battle I know I can't win. I felt trapped and desperate, and I thought my brother would tell me everything would be all right. I wanted to feel... safe. Just for a while.\n\nBut he should have known better. The Brightwells weren't a family. They were a business\u2014first, last, always.\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" he told his brother, and made for the door. \"Never mind.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "From a personal journal by Brendan Brightwell, written in family code. Burned in Alexandria on departure.:\n\n\u2002I know how this will sound, but Jess\u2014my brother\u2014and I, we've never been right. It's as if we compete for the same breaths even out of the womb, and he's always been just a little bigger, a little stronger, a little older. I've always run just a half step behind in his shadow, and God knows there have been times when I hated him just for existing. Like he's stolen something from me.\n\n\u2002So how can that excuse what I'm doing to Neksa? I don't know. Maybe because Jess has to be the hero, I have to be the villain. The dark to his light. Or maybe I'm just trying, for once, to prove that I'm better at something than he is, even if that something is cruelty. Leaves a bloody taste in my mouth and ashes in my stomach every time I think what could happen\u2014no, will happen\u2014to Neksa if all this comes off. She's just a key to a lock, is all. That's what I keep telling myself. Access to the Archivist himself\u2014isn't that worth any cost, any price? In one stroke, I'll eclipse my brother, earn my father's undying respect, become a legend in our black-market world. People will fear and respect me.\n\n\u2002Surely it's everything I've ever wanted.\n\n\u2002And yet I'm sitting awake tonight, writing this down, because I lied to Jess, and he believed me. I told him I didn't care about Neksa, and, God help me, that was the biggest lie of my life. She's not just a key, not just a tool, not just another woman I can push away. She's... I don't know. Everything.\n\n\u2002I never meant to fall in love with any girl, much less a good, true Library girl who trusts me not to hurt her. I've spent months telling myself that I'm just biding my time, building her trust until it's time to use her as I see fit, but tonight, looking into my twin's eyes, I realized that the only person I've really been lying to is myself.\n\n\u2002I can't do this. I can't hurt Neksa. I love her too much to do that, and now that I've faced it, seen the full extent of my failure here in Alexandria, I have to go home and beg my father for forgiveness. I have to leave Neksa and never look back, because I'll do her far greater harm if I stay with her.\n\n\u2002I blame Jess for making me finally see it.\n\n\u2002Well, I have to blame someone. Can't blame myself, can I?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "Three more days passed. Their compatriots received commissions and were folded into High Garda companies, but no word of any future for Glain and Jess. It was worrying for a day, and quietly terrifying after that. Glain constantly asked what it could mean, and Jess had no answers, only fears he refused to speak aloud and tried to bury under other concerns. Surely, Glain would find a good home in one of the elite companies.\n\nHe was not so confident of his own prospects.\n\nWhile they waited, the two of them were rarely out of each other's company. To fill the time, they researched the Library's secret prisons and met with Dario and Khalila to discuss their findings.\n\nThe problem was, proof was thin on the ground. Thomas might be in one of three different places where secret prisons were strongly rumored to be hidden: Rome, Paris, Moscow. If Jess had to place a bet, he'd have put his money on Paris\u2014the country of France was, after all, a Library territory, fully owned after the rebellion against the Library that failed in the late 1700s. What few of the French people were allowed to live in Paris were required by law to perform in the historical reenactments\u2014the rebellion, the Library's conquest, the executions. It was a perfect place, in Jess's opinion, to hide prisoners. Who'd dare to even go look?\n\nTrouble was, every new location led to impassioned speculation but no definitive answers to tip the scales toward one of the choices.\n\n\"Well,\" Glain said over strong coffee in their usual caf\u00e9, \"we can't go looking for him blind. We need more information than we have. Much more. Somehow we have to find it.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Jess said, and to his surprise, Dario was saying the same thing at the same time. They exchanged looks, and Jess let Dario continue.\n\n\"We need someone with more access than we can have. What about Morgan?\"\n\n\"What about her?\" Jess shot back, suddenly on his guard.\n\n\"She can access hidden information, can't she? It's the whole reason they're called Obscurists.\"\n\n\"I can't contact Morgan. I have to wait for her to write to me.\"\n\n\"And she hasn't? Maybe your charm's finally wearing off,\" Dario observed. \"Maybe she's found some lucky man to fill her days inside the Iron Tower.\"\n\nJess's hand tightened on his fork, and for a brief, bloody moment he imagined that\u2014or worse, that she hadn't found someone else, that someone else had been found for her. He didn't want to talk about that. At all. \"Morgan can't help us,\" he snapped. \"Move on, Dario.\"\n\n\"I have, actually. I think we should involve someone else who can\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Khalila said. Her tone sounded flat and a little angry. \"Dario. We discussed this. You can't involve anyone else inside the Library!\"\n\n\"And anyone outside it is of no use\u2014Jess has proved that. All his fancy criminal connections can't get us what we need, and every day, every day we wait, Thomas suffers.\" Dario glared at Khalila, a thing Jess had never seen him do, and Khalila held the stare firmly. She might be a quiet girl, but shy? No. She didn't back away from a fight. \"It's three cities\u2014we've narrowed it to that. We just need confirmation. If it's someone we can trust\u2014\"\n\nSickly, Jess thought of his brother and Neksa. He could ask Brendan to use Neksa to verify the information. If she really did work for the Archivist, she might not have to do anything but look in a book and say yes or no. Easy. But that would make him complicit in ruining the girl, and that... that was a bridge he couldn't cross.\n\nHe didn't have to, because Dario said, \"I didn't wait to get your approval. I told Scholar Prakesh everything we know about Thomas. I asked for her help.\"\n\nThere was a breathless silence, and Khalila's eyes widened. She tried to speak, failed, and finally managed to say, \"You what?\"\n\n\"Without asking us?\" Glain jumped in.\n\n\"I'm tired of waiting for someone to drop an answer into our laps,\" Dario said. His cheeks had an angry red tinge now, and he met Jess's eyes. \"Well? Aren't you going to join the outrage?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"You know Scholar Prakesh; I don't. I know she's highly placed and very well respected. She'll be hard for the Archivist to dismiss and harder to make disappear. It might well be the best choice we have.\"\n\nGlain kicked him under the table for breaking ranks, but the fact was, Dario was right. Except for that one guilty thought about Neksa, which Jess knew he had to hold as a last resort, he'd pulled every lever available to him.\n\n\"I don't like this,\" Khalila said. \"What if she's discovered? She's a Scholar, not a spy!\"\n\n\"She's been close friends with the Archivist since he was a postulant, and she was once the Artifex's lover,\" Dario said, and refilled his coffee cup from the small pot on the table. At Jess's gesture, he filled his cup, too. \"She knows the Library in and out. Even better, she knows the people we need to investigate. Who better to find out what we need to know?\"\n\n\"She's an old woman, and you put her at risk,\" Khalila insisted. \"What if something happens to her? Our duty is to\u2014\"\n\n\"Our duty is to our friend,\" Jess said. \"If you don't believe that, Khalila\u2014\"\n\n\"I never said that! Of course I want to save him!\"\n\n\"Doesn't sound like it. Are you having doubts?\" Glain gave her a stony look and sat back in her chair. \"Thinking of your own future inside the Library, are you?\"\n\nKhalila stood up, color high in her own cheeks now, and yanked her silken Scholar's robe on over her long dress. \"I'm thinking that you have put an innocent old woman at risk. I'll be late for prayers. And I'd better say a prayer for all of us.\" She walked away quickly in the direction of the neighborhood's mosque, and though Dario leaned back in his chair and watched her, he didn't rise to escort her.\n\nJess started to get up, and Dario said, \"Let her go.\" His face was set and unreadable. \"She'll feel better after she prays.\"\n\n\"Well, wouldn't we all?\" Glain said. \"So there's no point in protesting\u2014you've already done this without us. Right?\"\n\n\"Right,\" Dario said. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He was still watching Khalila as she moved down the street, and Jess could sense the desire in him to follow. \"Scholar Prakesh is careful and she's good. She's willing to help. There's no reason not to accept that. We've done our best and gotten as far as we can on our own, haven't we? Sooner or later, we have to admit we need assistance. You idiots weren't going to do it. Someone had to.\"\n\nHe isn't wrong, Jess thought, but he still had a terrible, sick feeling. This was moving beyond their control, quickly. Too many people, too many emotions. But if it gets Thomas back...\n\n\"Next time you want to run off on your own, count to ten and come talk to me,\" Glain said. \"You're a hothead, Dario. At least let someone else give you a chance to convince you it's not a good idea.\"\n\n\"I did,\" he said, still staring after Khalila. \"She didn't.\" When Jess checked over his shoulder, he saw that the girl had disappeared around the corner.\n\nGlain drank her coffee without another word, threw money on the table, and nodded to Jess. He stood up with her. \"We'd best get back,\" he told Dario. \"You'll be all right?\"\n\nDario gave them a bright, entirely shallow smile. \"Aren't I always?\"\n\nWhen Jess looked back at the end of the street, he saw Dario still sitting at the table, toying with his coffee cup, staring off toward the corner where Khalila had disappeared.\n\nJust one day later, Jess read the terrible news in the Alexandrian Times. He always kept a copy of the thin sheet in his quarters and checked it twice a day for the updated news as the articles changed and were written in fresh. It was the evening edition that carried the bold headline PROMINENT SCHOLAR DEAD IN CARRIAGE ACCIDENT. The hand-drawn illustration showed an old woman in Scholar's robes stepping off the curb in front of a steam carriage, utterly unaware of the death hurtling toward her.\n\nScholar Prakesh was dead. He read the news over twice, letting the details sink in slowly; she had been walking to the Lighthouse late in the evening and evidently had not seen the carriage approaching before she stepped out into its path. She couldn't have heard it coming, Jess realized, since she was deaf. But she's walked this city all her life, he thought. She'd know by instinct to constantly check around her. He felt a horrible, sinking sense of guilt and anger. This hadn't been a random street accident; Scholar Prakesh had been out asking questions, trying to help them.\n\nHe carried the paper with him on the way to Glain's room, but she wasn't there. Not in the common rooms or the gymnasium or the Serapeum or the target range. He sent her a Codex message and got no reply.\n\nSo he set out for the Lighthouse.\n\nScholar Prakesh's office lights were on, and Jess pressed the button that would have alerted someone inside, but there was no answer. He knocked. Still nothing. When he tried the door handle, it opened, and he stepped inside. Prakesh's office was just as he remembered: a warm combination of clutter and organization. Her handwritten notes were still on the chalkboards that lined the room.\n\nHe walked to the left, to Dario's office.\n\nDario sat behind the desk. He had a glass in front of him full of a dark red liquid, and a bottle beside it. He looked up when Jess appeared in the doorway, lifted the glass, and downed half of it in a gulp. \"Sit down,\" he said. \"Join me.\" He put out another glass from a desk drawer and unsteadily poured it full. Jess took it and sniffed. Not wine. It had an interesting herbal, fruity smell. \"It's Pachar\u00e1n, from Spain. Gift from my father.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Alcoholic,\" Dario said. \"Come on. We're drinking to my vast stupidity. Where's Glain? Surely she wouldn't miss the chance to rub it in.\"\n\nJess said nothing. He sipped the liquid. Strong, all right, with a deceptively fruity taste. Dario had been crying; that was clear from the red, swollen state of his eyes. He'd also had a fit of temper. Papers littered the floor, no doubt brushed off the desk to make room for the drink.\n\n\"I was wrong,\" Dario said. \"Say it.\"\n\n\"You took a chance,\" Jess replied. \"We've all taken them. I'm sorry it came out this way. She was\u2014\"\n\n\"She was brilliant. Brilliant.\" Dario's voice broke, and tears beaded in his eyes. He tried to blink them away, but they broke free and he had to angrily wipe them away. \"She liked me. She trusted me. I got her killed.\"\n\n\"It might have been an accident,\" Jess said, but it sounded hollow even to his own ears.\n\nDario tossed off the rest of his drink and refilled the glass. \"Shut up and drink.\"\n\nIt took some time, but Jess finished what he'd been served, and before he was halfway through he was feeling the effects. Dario had two glasses to his one, and no doubt more before that. He tried to pour another out for Jess, but Jess quickly pulled the glass back. \"That's enough,\" he said, and reached over to stopper the bottle. \"You've had enough, believe me.\"\n\n\"It wasn't an accident,\" Dario blurted, and drained the last of his drink. \"She never walked in front of a carriage in her life. It was murder, and it was because of what I did. Her blood is on my hands\u2014don't try to tell me anything else.\"\n\nJess didn't. He let silence set for a moment, then said, \"We all knew this would cost lives. Ours, our friends', maybe our families'. Going against the Archivist is a blood sport.\"\n\n\"He killed a Scholar,\" Dario said. It was almost a whisper, and his voice shook and nearly broke again. \"Me cago en todos los santos, he killed one of the best of us, and for what? To hide his dirty secrets? No. Khalila's right. This has to stop.\"\n\n\"I never said to give up.\" Khalila's voice came from behind Jess in the open doorway. \"I never will. Dario, I'm so sorry.\" The gentle sadness in her voice made Jess take in a breath, and as he turned his head, she moved past him, around the desk to open her arms. Dario lunged up and into them, and put his head on her shoulder to cry in quiet, wrenching sobs. It lasted only a moment, and he murmured a quiet apology as he pulled back.\n\nShe kissed him. It was a sweet, gentle kiss, and Jess found himself looking away to give them some privacy. She stepped away first and took in a slow breath as Dario sank down again in the chair. \"What have you been drinking? I think I might be intoxicated on the fumes.\"\n\n\"It's not haram for me,\" Dario said, and reached for the bottle. She moved it out of his reach. \"Khalila. Please.\"\n\n\"You're beyond drunk enough,\" she said. \"And this is the end of your mourning. If they've killed a Scholar, we are all in danger, and you need to be alert. I need you at your best. We all do.\"\n\nHe leaned back in his chair, staring at her, and then nodded. \"You're right. From now on, we stay together.\"\n\nKhalila turned to Jess. \"The same for you. Stay with Glain. Watch your backs.\"\n\n\"Thomas\u2014\"\n\n\"There's nothing we can do for Thomas if we're dead,\" she said. \"Stop asking about him, about secret prisons, about the Black Archives, about all of it. In a month, we may be able to start again, but they are watching. It will take only a stroke of the Archivist's pen to kill us all. You know that.\"\n\nHe did. He hated it with a cold, aching fury, but Khalila's words were wise. Any sane person would pull in their head and proceed with caution.\n\nJess stood up. The Pachar\u00e1n had worked all too well, and he felt his head spin a little. The Archivist won't have to push me in front of a carriage, he thought. I'm liable to stumble in front of one all on my own.\n\n\"Stay safe,\" he told them, and embraced Khalila first, then Dario.\n\nThen he left the Lighthouse.\n\nHe'd lied. He didn't intend to proceed with caution. It was far too late for that.\n\nHe intended to make sure Scholar Prakesh hadn't died in vain. If that meant selling his soul to his brother, then he'd pay the price. However high it was.\n\nWhen he knocked on Brendan's door, it was late for most in the area, but hardly too late for a Brightwell. Still, he got no answer. Jess stepped back and studied the high windows. All dark. He didn't believe that his twin, of all people, would be so early to bed, whether Neksa was in it or not.\n\nCalling out for him was a stupid idea. Jess moved down to the far end of the wall, which surrounded a garden, and effortlessly swarmed over it and dropped down on the other side. Darker there, though a fountain whispered in the corner, and lotus flowers drifted on the surface of a pond.\n\nHe found the side door, quickly touched his fingers to the household god next to it, and got out his tools. Not a bad lock, but, then, thieves always bought the best. It took him more than a minute to open it, and then he stepped inside, into the soft shadows and the smell of sandalwood incense. Quiet.\n\nToo quiet, he thought, for Neksa and Brendan to be here. And then he sensed movement and ducked instinctively into a crouch. Just in time for the club to crash into the wall behind where his head would have been. Jess lunged forward in the next second and found himself pushing a strong, lithe, curved body back against the wall.\n\nHe immediately moved his hands to more neutral territory and said, \"Neksa? Neksa, it's Jess! Jess! I'm not going to hurt you!\"\n\nShe went still for a few seconds, and then he heard the sound of the club hitting the tiled floor and a trembling intake of breath. \"Jess?\" Then he actually felt her steady herself and her voice grew firm. \"Let me go!\"\n\n\"All right,\" he said, and made sure to kick the club away into the dark before he did let her loose. That had been a very respectable attempt to kill him. \"I'm looking for my brother.\"\n\n\"By sneaking in the side door?\"\n\n\"You didn't answer the front.\"\n\n\"He's not here,\" she said, and turned a switch on the wall at her back. Lights hissed on, gradually brightening. She left them low, for which Jess was thankful, and he saw the swollen redness of her eyes and nose. For all her bravado, she looked devastated. \"He left this morning.\"\n\n\"Left,\" Jess repeated. \"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"I found this when I got up this morning.\" She silently reached into a pocket of her dress and handed him a folded sheet of paper. Jess took it and held it up to the light. He recognized his brother's hand, the jagged points and long loops. It was a terse message, saying he'd had enough, he was going home, and that he'd send for the rest of his things soon. No affection. Only the vaguest of good-byes. Even for Brendan, it seemed abrupt and cold.\n\n\"It's from him, isn't it?\" she asked, and he slowly nodded. \"Why? Why would he leave so suddenly? Why would he not talk to me first? I would have gone with him. I love him! He knows that!\"\n\nHe doesn't love you, Jess wanted to tell her, but that seemed cruel. He wanted to be relieved, but the timing couldn't have been worse; he needed Brendan. No, you don't, the old cold part of him told him. You need her. And you can still use her. His father wouldn't have hesitated. He'd have threatened exposure, pushed past Neksa's shock and anger and tears, and made her into a tool to be used as needed. That was what Brendan had been intent on doing. That was the Brightwell way.\n\nShe can help you get to Thomas! Scholar Prakesh died for this. The least you can do is do what has to be done.\n\nHe stood there for a long moment, the note in his hand, and just looked at her. At the undeniable heartbreak in her, and the dignity and the vulnerability.\n\nThen he pressed the note into Neksa's hand and said, \"Lesson learned. You shouldn't trust either of us.\"\n\nHe was gone before she spoke again.\n\nCaptain Niccolo Santi answered his door on the third volley of knocks with an expression Jess could only identify as irritated. Out of uniform, he still looked tall and imposing. \"Are you insane? Go home.\"\n\n\"No. I need to talk to you.\" Jess heard the hard, bitter edge in his voice and the determination, and the captain must have, too. He stepped back and swung the door wider as he turned away.\n\n\"Close it behind you,\" Santi said over his shoulder. \"And lock it.\" Which Jess would have done, anyway. \"What happened? You look like something hell spit out.\"\n\nHard to choose what to give him for an answer. My brother's fled town without a word to me. Or, We caused the death of a Scholar. He couldn't quite bring himself to say any of it.\n\nInside, the small house was clean, orderly, and comfortable. The main feature of the room was a table, with four chairs and bare of plates or glasses but loaded with a stack of Blank books, all open. Christopher Wolfe sat at that table in a dark red silk dressing gown with small reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he compared one book to another. \"Good evening. It is evening, isn't it?\"\n\n\"It's the black middle of the night,\" Santi said. \"But close, I suppose.\"\n\nWolfe folded the glasses, slotted them into the centerfold of an open book, and said, \"You were told to stay away from us, I believe, Brightwell. It was very good advice.\"\n\nSanti sat down at the table beside Wolfe and put his head in his hands. \"He's as bad as you. Tell him to stay away, and he'll do just the opposite. I don't know why you pretend to be surprised. You should know them all better by now.\"\n\nWhen Wolfe didn't answer, Jess did. \"Captain, you heard about Scholar Prakesh?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Santi said, and looked aside at Wolfe. \"I meant to tell you, but you were busy, and\u2014\"\n\n\"What about Prakesh?\"\n\n\"She's dead,\" Jess said, before Santi could reply. \"It's our fault. We asked her for information that could have led us to Thomas.\"\n\nParalysis lasted for a few heartbeats, and then Wolfe angrily shoved the books in front of him off the table, onto the floor. Santi winced, and Jess quickly bent and rescued the volumes. He found Wolfe's glasses and put them on the top of the stack.\n\nBy the time he'd finished, Wolfe had gotten to his feet and turned away to pace the end of the room. \"I hope you realize what you've done. You've not just sacrificed Aadhya Prakesh, but yourselves as well. Every one of you will be picked off before you know what's coming. What were you thinking?\"\n\n\"We were thinking about Thomas!\" Jess shouted back. \"The longer we hide from this, the more he'll be hurt! Broken! You\u2014of all people, you know that!\"\n\nSanti looked at Wolfe with a stilled expression. His long fingers curled too tightly around the edge of the table, and then he nodded. \"I know, too,\" he said. \"I was there when Wolfe crawled bloody to this door. I'm the one who saw what was done to him. And we are not taking this risk blindly.\"\n\n\"That's the point, sir. That's why I'm here. We're all going to die if we don't take action now. We need to get Thomas and get out!\"\n\n\"Not without more definitive information.\"\n\nJess swallowed, and said, \"I think part of that answer is locked up in your memories, Scholar. You were taken, just like Thomas. You were even taken for the same reasons. Maybe they took you to the same place.\" He spread his hands. \"We've tried everything else.\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said.\n\nWolfe ignored that. \"There's no guarantee that anything I recall will help,\" he said. \"Still less will it be real proof that's where they're holding Thomas.\"\n\n\"It's more than what we've got right now, isn't it?\"\n\nWolfe looked at him for a moment without any expression, and then shook his head. \"I can't recall any useful details. What they did to me was very effective.\"\n\n\"Leave it, Jess,\" Santi said. \"I'm sorry, but this has gone far enough. I have to look after Christopher's safety now.\"\n\n\"There is no safety\u2014you said so yourself.\"\n\n\"I told you, leave it alone. This isn't some adventure; it's a bloody war. They pay me to be a tactician, and I can tell you this: we can't win. We don't have the numbers or the weapons or the knowledge. We're defeated before we start, and, yes, I will look after the one I love before all else, and devil take the rest of you if it comes to that!\"\n\nWolfe didn't seem to hear any of that as he paced, but suddenly he said, \"Brightwell. Can you secure a Mesmer who knows his business and can be trusted?\"\n\nMesmers weren't common in Alexandria, but there were a few, and some who plied a trade more in the shadows than in the light. The entertainers\u2014the ones who made volunteers dance like chickens or pretend to fly\u2014those had been certified by the Library. There were others whose motives were more purely profit driven. \"I think so,\" Jess said.\n\nSanti said, \"No. Under no circumstances will I allow it.\"\n\nWolfe said, in the same mild tone, \"Ignore that. He doesn't want me to remember more, of course. He thinks I'll shatter like a dropped vase if I do.\"\n\n\"Will you?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"Yes!\" Santi said, and it was a shout compressed beneath an artificial calm. \"He'll destroy himself. And you've got a target on your back, Jess. Don't forget it.\"\n\nJess shrugged. \"I grew up with the Garda chewing at my heels. Business as usual.\"\n\n\"The Archivist's assassins aren't bound by the same laws as the London Garda or even my own soldiers. You should be afraid. He's killed far better than you.\"\n\n\"Stop, Nic. Jess is right.\" Wolfe stopped pacing and looked at Santi. The two men faced each other, and Wolfe seemed quiet, clear-eyed, and steady. He didn't look like the fragile, shaking man Jess had seen at the High Garda compound after the ambush. Nor did he look like the driven, angry man who'd taken on the role of teacher for Jess's class. The man had too many secrets, buried too deep, for Jess's comfort. Ironic, some sliver of Jess's mind whispered, considering how much you keep from him. From everyone.\n\nThey were alike, Jess realized: both mistrustful, prone to hide emotions from others. Both with scars they hated to show. The difference was that Wolfe had Niccolo Santi. They'd braided their lives tightly together, and it would take a sharp sword to cut that tie.\n\nHe envied them that love. He might have hoped for it once.\n\nBut she was gone.\n\n\"Don't do this,\" Santi said. \"I'm begging you, Chris, don't. You'll kill yourself.\"\n\n\"Better I kill myself in a good cause than let the Library simply erase me. The Archivist has already destroyed my work. We both know he won't allow me to live on much longer. If dying is my fate, at least I can try to change Thomas Schreiber's before it comes.\" He reached out for Santi's hand. \"I will happily remember every cut, every burn, every blow if it helps set that boy free. Please don't stand in my way.\"\n\nSanti bowed his head for a moment, stepped forward, and rested his forehead against Wolfe's. \"You fool,\" he said, and kissed him, sweet and slow. \"Don't ask me to watch you tear yourself to pieces.\"\n\nHe let go of Wolfe, went into the bedroom, and closed the door behind him.\n\nWolfe said, \"I can't blame him for that; he remembers how I was after. But I'm stronger now. I will manage.\"\n\n\"Sir\u2014\" Jess's voice went cold in his throat, and he couldn't finish for a long, struggling moment. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Don't thank me.\" The look in his dark eyes was chilling now, lightless, the same as when he'd been the unwilling proctor for their class of innocent postulants, knowing so many would fail or die. \"I'm not your hero. It was my doing that made you all targets in the first place. If you'd never met me, your life would have been happier. It surely would be longer.\" His smile was awful\u2014full of bitterness and heartbreak. \"Now go find me a suitable Mesmer, and let's get this over with before Nic comes to his senses.\"\n\nFinding a Mesmer wasn't hard; finding one who didn't have ties to the Library was much more difficult, and, in the end, Jess had to settle for one, on the advice of smuggler friends, who was known for conducting under-the-table thefts from wealthy clients, some of whom he convinced to rob themselves and forget they'd done it. A gifted man, no doubt about it.\n\nJust not a very nice one.\n\nIn person, Elsinore Quest was a rabbity little fellow who hunched his shoulders and ducked his head and almost never met Jess's eyes. But when he did, Jess realized why. There was a certain steeliness to his gaze that would certainly have put some of his victims off too soon. Better to seem inoffensive and incapable of violence, particularly if someone wanted to entrust mind and will to you.\n\nQuest kept up a steady stream of chatter on the carriage ride back, which was unbearably annoying, since all he talked about was the weather. It was typical for the time of year\u2014warm and humid\u2014and Quest seemed to think that it would be the death of him.\n\nIf only it were true, at least it would stop his endless droning.\n\n\"You understand what I'm paying you to do?\" Jess interrupted, when he recognized the streets they were crossing. They were close to Wolfe's house. \"And what I'm paying you to forget?\"\n\nQuest's flow of complaints shut off as if someone had closed a valve inside him, and he raised his gaze to meet Jess's. The man was in his forties, most likely, with weathered, ill-kept, dry skin and graying, thinning hair, but his eyes\u2014blue as the faded Alexandrian sky\u2014were still vital and powerful. \"Don't worry about me, young master,\" he said, and smiled. \"I've forgotten more deadly secrets than you can ever imagine existed. One more is no bother, especially at the price you're paying. Though I should point out\u2014just for business purposes\u2014that I sent a message off to a colleague about where I'd be and who you are. In case some... mishap occurs.\"\n\nIn other words, he wasn't a fool and he knew the risks. Jess nodded. He didn't take offense. Everyone in the shadow trades had to watch his own back.\n\n\"Half now,\" Jess said. \"Half when you're done.\"\n\n\"Reasonable,\" Quest said, and turned to look out the carriage window. The steam powering it puffed white and wispy behind them on the still, quiet night air; the streets were deserted, which Jess thought was a good thing. The fewer witnesses to Quest's visit, the better. \"Ah. We must be close.\"\n\nThe carriage slowed, and Jess jumped out to offer the driver the standard fare of five geneih. Quest climbed down slowly, as if he was old and fragile, and shuffled after Jess to Santi's door.\n\nWolfe opened it and stood aside. He was fully dressed now in a loose black shirt and trousers and boots. There was no sign of Santi, and the bedroom door was still shut.\n\n\"Elsinore Quest, Mesmer,\" Jess said. \"Scholar Wolfe, who'll be your subject.\"\n\n\"Very pleased to meet you,\" Quest said, and weakly offered a handshake. Wolfe ignored it until the hand dropped awkwardly back to Quest's side. \"We will need relative quiet. Ah, this corner chair will do. Please sit down, sir. Make yourself quite comfortable. It's very important that you be quite comfortable and let all your cares fall away, let them blow away like sand on the wind...\"\n\nThere is a certain strange rhythm to the man's voice, Jess thought, and tried to pinpoint what it was that so unsettled him\u2014and, at the same time, what soothed him. He'd already started his work, then. Odd; Jess recognized that the man had used the same tones in the carriage, during that endless flow of weather observations. Had Quest tried to use his talents on him? Had it worked? No, surely he'd have known if it had. Wouldn't I? The doubt made his mouth go dry.\n\nMaybe this hadn't been such a good idea.\n\nWolfe sank down in the chair that Quest indicated, and as the Mesmer pulled another chair close, Jess saw the bedroom door silently open. Santi stepped out. The captain moved to stand beside Jess and said, in a low voice that couldn't have carried to Wolfe, \"If this goes badly, I will stop it.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Jess said. \"It might not even work\u2014sometimes it doesn't...\" His voice faded because Wolfe had already closed his eyes. Quest's voice dropped to a low, calm rhythm, and Jess couldn't catch what he was saying now as he bent close to Wolfe. The Scholar's head slowly tipped forward.\n\nWolfe raised one hand\u2014or, at least, the hand rose. There was no corresponding shift of balance from Wolfe's body, no sign that the movement of that hand and arm had been directed from a conscious mind. The rest of him stayed completely still.\n\nQuest reached out and pushed on the top of the floating hand. It hardly moved at all. He nodded in satisfaction and looked over to Jess. \"He's ready. What do you want me to ask?\"\n\nThat fast? Jess blinked. \"Ask him about his time in the cells\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Santi said. He sighed. \"I hate that you've forced him into this, but at least we can spare him some agony. Ask him about being taken to prison, then ask about any time he was taken out of a cell. Nothing about what happened to him\u2014only locations and surroundings. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Quest said blandly. \"You're looking only for where he was being held. I understand.\"\n\n\"Good.\" Santi's gaze bored into the man. \"You'd better.\"\n\n\"Trust in me, friend. I know my business.\" Quest leaned forward and rested his hand briefly on Wolfe's shoulder. \"Now go back. Go back to the day that you were taken into custody. Do you remember?\"\n\nThe reaction was immediate and terrible. Wolfe's whole body tensed, shifted, and seemed to pull inward. His head did not rise, but Jess heard the change in his breathing from across the room. His skin went cold listening to that harsh, painful panting. But they couldn't stop now. Wolfe had agreed to this.\n\n\"Tell me about the day you were taken to the prison,\" Quest said. His voice was gentle, rising and falling in those faint, odd rhythms. \"There is nothing to fear. You are only seeing, watching a play of light and shadow. You are an outside observer of what occurs. There is no pain. You feel no pain at all.\"\n\nThe harsh breathing eased, just a little, but when Wolfe's voice came, it sounded rough and uneven and utterly unlike him. \"I was... here,\" he said. \"They came for me here.\"\n\n\"Here, in this house?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And where did they take you?\"\n\n\"The Archivist's office at the Serapeum,\" Wolfe said. \"He asked questions\u2014\"\n\n\"Let that go. Where were you taken after he finished with you?\"\n\nWolfe didn't answer. Beside him, Jess felt Santi's muscles tensing, as if bracing for a blow.\n\n\"Scholar? Where were you taken?\"\n\n\"Below.\"\n\n\"Below where?\"\n\n\"Serapeum. To a cell.\"\n\n\"Stop,\" Santi quickly said. \"Skip over that. Ask him where he was taken after that.\"\n\nQuest gave Jess another questioning look, and he nodded. Santi was right. Asking Wolfe to recount whatever happened to him in the cells below the Serapeum in Alexandria wouldn't help them at all. Thomas wasn't there.\n\nParis, Jess thought. They'll have taken him to Paris.\n\nBut when Wolfe answered the question, he said, \"The Basilica Julia.\"\n\nRome. Jess swallowed hard as he remembered how passionately he'd argued for Paris with his friends; he'd nearly persuaded them it was the only logical choice and to go tearing off in pursuit of Thomas there. Thank you, Khalila. Thank you for holding out for more information. They wouldn't have more than one chance at this.\n\nAnd even this information, he cautioned himself, wasn't true proof. An indicator, certainly. But not proof.\n\n\"How were you taken there?\" Quest asked.\n\n\"By Translation.\"\n\nQuest leaned back, frowning, and looked at Captain Santi. \"There isn't a Translation Chamber inside the Basilica Julia proper, is there?\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said. \"It's in another building altogether, about a mile away. He can't be recalling it right.\"\n\n\"Scholar Wolfe, when you came out of the Translation Chamber, where were you? Can you describe it?\"\n\n\"Hallway,\" Wolfe murmured. \"Inside the Basilica Julia.\"\n\n\"How do you know you were in the Basilica Julia?\"\n\n\"I saw the Forum from the windows. I know Rome.\" Of course he did. A traveling Scholar like Wolfe would recognize a great city like that from even the briefest glance. \"A long, straight hallway. A door at the end.\"\n\n\"Tell me what you could see from these windows,\" Quest said, and Jess grabbed a piece of paper and a pen that Wolfe had left on the table. He wrote as Wolfe described his view. Jess made a quick, rough sketch, marking exact things he'd seen. \"All right. This door at the end of the hallway: was it guarded?\"\n\n\"Automaton,\" Wolfe said dully. \"A Roman lion.\"\n\n\"And was this door locked as well?\" Quest asked. That was an excellent question Jess wouldn't have thought to ask. The Mesmer obviously had some experience at this sort of thing.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nFrom there, Wolfe spoke of being led down steps, beside a long, sloping corridor of ancient stone, with cells built along one side. Turn after turn. Jess wrote it all down, and Quest continued his steady, passionless questions: how many soldiers did he see? How many Library automata? It was important, even critical, but Wolfe's distress grew ever more visible the further they delved into this particular piece of the past. He moved back and forth now, a constant rocking motion, and his arms had closed over his stomach. Protecting himself, Jess realized. He felt sick himself, watching. Next to him, Santi was as still as a statue.\n\n\"Did anyone ever come to take you out of your cell while you were inside it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And where did they take you?\" Quest asked, which seemed an innocent enough question. He was only trying to map the rest of the prison, which was smart.\n\nWolfe let out a sound that raised the hair on the back of Jess's neck, and Santi almost lunged forward, but Quest's gaze flicked to him and the Mesmer shook his head. \"Breathe, Scholar Wolfe. Relax,\" Quest said. \"You feel no pain, remember? There is no pain now; you are merely watching this from a distance. It isn't happening to you at all. Step back. Just step away and let it go.\"\n\nThe terrible keening sound went on and grew sharper, and even the Mesmer seemed taken aback by it now. He reached out and put his hand on Wolfe's shoulder. \"Scholar,\" he said. \"Scholar. You are now outside of the cell, do you hear me? You are standing outside the cell. There is no pain at all. You feel peaceful. Calm.\"\n\nIt was no good. Wolfe's buried scream was growing louder and he wasn't listening.\n\n\"That's enough,\" Santi shouted, and lunged forward. \"Bring him out! Now!\" He sounded as shaken as Jess felt.\n\n\"All right,\" Quest said. \"Scholar Wolfe! Scholar!\" He briskly tapped Wolfe's forehead, then his shoulder, then the back of his hand. \"Exeunt!\"\n\nWolfe's cry stopped cleanly, and he slumped back in his chair, utterly limp. Santi shoved Quest out of the way and sank down to a crouch beside Wolfe to take his hand. He was checking the other man's pulse, Jess realized, as much as holding his hand.\n\nWolfe slowly raised his head. His color was terrible and his eyes looked dull and strange, but they were open, and after a blank moment that seemed to stretch forever, he looked directly at Santi and said, \"It must have been terrible if you look so worried.\"\n\nJess saw the intense relief flash over the captain's face before his expression closed again. \"Not so bad,\" Santi lied. \"And now you're back.\"\n\nWolfe put his hand over Santi's, and there it was again: a little flash of gentleness, sorrow, love. Jess looked away, and when he turned back, Santi was rising to his feet and turning to Quest. \"You, Mesmer,\" Santi said. \"Get out. If there's any whisper about any of this, I'll kill you.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Quest said, \"I am a professional. There is no need to threaten.\" He hesitated for a moment and then said, \"And as a professional, I would be wrong not to tell you that something terrible was done to your friend, and that will fester inside if the wound isn't lanced. I am willing to offer my continued services at a reasonable\u2014\"\n\n\"It's none of your business,\" Santi said. \"Jess. Get rid of him. Now.\"\n\nJess nodded and grabbed Quest's arm to tow him to the door. He handed over the second, heavier sack of geneih coins\u2014the half Quest was due, plus a hefty bonus. \"Leave,\" he said. \"Forget about this. He's quite serious about killing you if you don't.\"\n\n\"Risk of the trade,\" Quest sighed. \"But take my advice for your poor Scholar. Find someone who can guide him through that pain. He needs help. I've seen it kill stronger men.\" He seemed earnest in that moment and not at all trying to make another fee. As if he was actually, genuinely worried.\n\n\"Thanks,\" Jess said, and meant it. He hailed the little man a carriage. \"Don't make me find you again.\"\n\nQuest grinned suddenly. His teeth were surprisingly white. \"If I didn't want to be found, you'd never manage it. One street rat to another, you know that's truth.\"\n\nThen he was gone.\n\nJess went back inside. \"Is he all right?\"\n\n\"Still here, Brightwell. Thanks for your concern,\" Wolfe said. His voice sounded unnaturally low and hoarse as he cradled his head in both hands. \"Did you find out what you needed?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. \"I think so.\"\n\n\"Then get out.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry you had to do this\u2014\"\n\n\"For the love of all the gods, get out!\" Wolfe raised his head, and his eyes were wet and streaming with blinding tears of pain and fury. He grabbed for a book and hurled it at Jess with great force. It was only a Blank, but Jess understood just how out of control the man was to fling it.\n\n\"Jess,\" Santi said. \"Go. You have what you wanted. Now I have to help him live through the consequences.\"\n\nJess swallowed hard, nodded, and rolled up the notes he'd made. He closed the door at his back and leaned against it for a long moment with his eyes shut. He tried to forget the awful, tortured sound of Wolfe's keening.\n\nOn the way back to the barracks, he sent coded messages using people he trusted to alert Khalila and Dario to what he'd found out. It was only fair to tell everyone at once. Everyone but Glain, who'd probably deck him hard for what he'd done to Wolfe. Her, he could leave for last.\n\nHe was halfway to the barracks when he turned a corner and saw a person lurking ahead, wearing a coat too warm for the weather with the hood raised. His instincts pricked him hard as needles, and he slowed his steps. The shadowy figure melted into an alcove halfway down the block; there weren't many people out in these dark hours, and the moon was half-hidden behind high, thin clouds. Perfect conditions, he realized, for an assassination, if the Archivist meant to launch one.\n\nJess moved with deliberate, casual confidence, and eased his knife free of the sheath at his belt as he walked on. He had to use his left hand to keep the knife from view of his would-be killer, who lurked on the right. He wondered whether he should whistle. Might seem too much.\n\nHe kept his speed calm and steady as he drew near the alcove, then past it, and when he felt movement behind him, he turned, grabbed hold of the person rushing at him, and jabbed the point of his dagger up under a soft chin.\n\nThe hood fell away. The moon whispered out of the clouds overhead and threw a soft, pale light over both of them.\n\nJess's lips parted and he let go, because the girl facing him, the girl he'd almost killed, was Morgan Hault."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "From On Further Nature of the Elements, a late work of the great Archimedes, collected from that master Scholar in the first years of the Great Library. Available on the Codex:\n\n\u2002I have many times been asked to explain the nature of the divine fluid of quintessence, the unseen barrier through which all things must pass to change form. I direct your study to the minerals of the earth. The baser metals are found below the surface, in the darkness and silence, and are lumpen and unformed. The finer metals and minerals\u2014silver, gold, all precious ores and gems\u2014are found in an organic structure of life. They grow, treelike, slowly through many years, rising up through the invisible richness of quintessence, and are transmuted from the base to the precious as they rise toward heaven.\n\n\u2002All things live. That which begins as inorganic becomes organic through the divine power of quintessence. And so we must learn to control this unknowable element, to discover how to make metals, minerals, the organic and inorganic alike transmute and transfigure, above and below the earth.\n\n\u2002This knowledge is obscure, but it must be sought. It must be codified, taught, and revered, for only through this great work will the secrets of the world be revealed.\n\n\u2002And those who seek it, I call Obscurists, who will cast the light of quintessence upon the darkness.\n\n\u2002Let us now discuss how the principle of First Matter may be used to create new forms, with the help and guidance of the gods."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "Morgan seemed too pale, he thought, and at the same time she seemed ethereally beautiful. Her unpinned hair cascaded down over her shoulders in messy, springy curls, and she was dressed in a plain dark dress that reached down to the tops of leather boots. The only jewelry she wore glittered in the moonlight: the gaudy, engraved collar that circled her throat. The golden collar of an Obscurist.\n\nHe dropped his knife to his side and wanted badly to put his arms around her; everything in him said it was the right thing to do.\n\nBut he knew it was wrong from the tension in her body, the flash in her eyes. Still, for one dizzying instant he imagined holding her and kissing her, and the feeling of her lips under his seemed as real as breath. The smell of her, roses and spices, washed over him in a flood.\n\nJess took an indrawn breath that seemed to fill him with her presence, her reality.\n\n\"You're here,\" he said. \"You're really... here.\" It seemed impossible. No, it was impossible, by any imagining; she couldn't leave the Iron Tower. If she could have, surely she'd have run away, not come here.\n\nBut then her hand brushed his, and he knew it wasn't a dream or a trance or anything but real. She was here. Alive. Morgan smiled, and his heart shattered into pieces, because it was a guarded smile, not a happy one. \"I won't be here long,\" she said. \"I've managed to stay out for almost a full day, trying to find you. You do hide yourself well.\"\n\n\"Then you can stay out longer? Get far from here?\"\n\nShe was already shaking her head. \"No, I'll never make it out of Alexandria. They'll find me soon. I haven't found a way to take this off yet, and until I do, they can track me.\" She withdrew her hand and traced fingers over her collar, the symbol of her enslavement to the Library. Some sanity came back to him, and with it, doubt. Maybe they'd turned Morgan. Maybe she was a lure meant to distract him from another, more serious threat. He didn't see anyone or feel anything, but she was a stunning distraction. He couldn't take his gaze away from her for long enough to keep a good watch.\n\nSo many things he wanted to ask her, but he settled for, \"You must have had some great reason to come now. What's wrong?\"\n\nSomething clouded her face for a moment, and it almost looked like... fear. \"There were other reasons, but mostly... mostly, it's about Thomas. Jess, I think he could be held in Rome! I found reference to an ancient, very secret prison\u2014\"\n\n\"Below the Basilica Julia. I know,\" Jess finished. \"I'm sorry. I just found that out. But... do you have proof that Thomas is actually there?\"\n\nMorgan seemed shocked and then a little angry. He didn't blame her. \"Proof? No. But I thought\u2014 I thought you'd want to know, that it would give you something more to investigate. And instead I risked my neck to come here to give you information you already had?\"\n\nShe really does seem pale, he thought. Even in the Iron Tower, there must be sun somewhere for them to enjoy, and she hadn't gotten enough. She seemed thinner, too. And even discounting the deceptive shadows of the night, he read the weariness on her face. The frustration.\n\n\"Did you find records about him? Is he all right?\" Jess asked, when all he really wanted to ask about in that moment was her. What she was enduring in the Iron Tower. Whatever it was, he knew it was his fault she was there. They both knew it, and it stood between them like a dark, brooding shadow.\n\n\"I know he's still alive,\" she said. \"The Artifex seems to believe he has a use for him. Something about the design of the Library automata. From the reports, Thomas had notes in his Codex that might help improve the automata against the Burner attacks. They'll want to get that from him, at least. If he proves useful, they'll keep him alive. And if they think they can trust him, they might even...\"\n\n\"Let him go?\"\n\n\"No. But move him somewhere not as terrible. It must be terrible, Jess. From what I've read...\" Her voice faltered, and it took a heartbeat for it to return. \"Wolfe suffered horribly there. They were going to kill him before his mother finally intervened. I didn't know human beings could be so... cold. So cruel. And especially not... not in service to the Library.\"\n\nJess did, unfortunately, though it seemed to him there were always more terrible surprises left in the world. \"How long before they find you?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. They'll have searched for me inside the Tower first, probably most of the day. If the Obscurist is involved, it won't be long now.\"\n\n\"Then we don't have much time.\" His body felt hot and cold at once, and the feeling in his stomach was like that of standing in a very high spot, looking down at the drop. He took her hand and held it. \"Morgan, please. I need to know if you can ever forgive me.\"\n\n\"For sending me to the Tower?\" she asked, which was blunt and painful, but he nodded. \"Most days I don't blame you. Some days I do. I tell myself they would have caught me eventually, that you just spared me pain and injury and maybe even death fighting the inevitable. But it still hurts. As long as it does, I can't...\"\n\n\"Can't feel the way you used to,\" he finished for her, and she slowly nodded. And there it was, the drop he was falling off of, a long spiral down to an inevitable painful impact. \"All right. That's fair enough.\" All the nerves in his fingers seemed uncomfortably aware of the feel of her skin, the softness, the warmth. The way her hand curled around his and held on.\n\n\"No, it isn't fair at all,\" she said. \"I'm sorry, Jess. It isn't that I don't care for you\u2014I do. I just\u2014\"\n\n\"Let me make it up to you. Come with me,\" he said. It was an impulse, a wild thing he couldn't quite control. \"I'll take you away somewhere.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Away. Anywhere.\"\n\n\"Jess, they'll find me.\"\n\n\"Then we'll run.\"\n\n\"They'll find me. Until I can get this collar loose, it's no use even trying!\"\n\n\"And if you do get it off?\"\n\n\"Then maybe things will be different,\" she said. There were tears glittering sharply in her eyes. \"This isn't easy. I'm sorry.\"\n\nJess stepped closer, and she didn't back away. He eased hair back from her face and let his fingertips linger. After imagining her for so long, having her here seemed more like a dream, except for the velvet evidence of her skin. Easy. Nothing about how he felt for her was that. He knew he loved her, but it was shot through with dangerous thorns: guilt, jealousy, fear.\n\nIt occurred to him in that moment that for all his missing Morgan before, he'd missed nothing but a fantasy. As Glain had said: a challenge, distant and safe. But this girl, standing in front of him now, was far more real, honest, and complicated.\n\nAnd he wanted her more than he ever had.\n\nThey were so close, too close, and Morgan's eyes widened. She stepped back and brought their conversation back to the practical. \"I almost forgot. There's a Translation Chamber in the Basilica Julia; it's private, only used for access to the prison, and only to and from the Alexandrian Serapeum.\"\n\n\"Wolfe remembered a Translation Chamber,\" Jess said. \"Nic didn't believe him.\"\n\n\"It's very secret. But I think I might be able to change the destination and take us somewhere besides Alexandria. If I can get free of the Iron Tower again and join you.\"\n\n\"You're free now.\"\n\n\"You're not ready to rescue him yet. Are you?\"\n\n\"No,\" he admitted. \"We're not even completely sure he's there. We keep looking for proof.\"\n\n\"I wish I had more to tell you,\" she said. \"I'll keep looking. I'm sure I can crack some more of the codes that the Artifex uses\u2014\" She broke off with a gasp and touched the collar at her neck. Her gaze met his and held.\n\n\"They're coming,\" he said. She nodded.\n\n\"I can't let them see you with me, or you'll be arrested. If I escaped and ran on my own, that's one thing, but the penalty for you...\"\n\n\"Maybe they'd put me in the cell beside Thomas. That's one way to do research.\"\n\n\"It's not funny! Jess\u2014\" He kissed her. After a second of surprise, she kissed him back, warmth and sweetness and a frantic kind of passion that said more than words. And then she pushed him away. Hard. \"Go now. They can't find you with me. Please, just go!\"\n\nHe turned and ran. When he looked back, he saw Morgan walking calmly to the opposite end of the block, where a steam carriage glided to a halt and armed High Garda poured out to surround her. She didn't fight them.\n\nLook back at me. Just look back, Morgan.\n\nShe didn't.\n\nJess waited all night for a Codex message from Morgan or Khalila or Dario.\n\nNo messages came.\n\nBy dawn, he was desperate enough to use his Codex to try to send a message himself, despite the fact that he knew it would be monitored. He tried Khalila first, then Dario, but neither replied. Something's happened, he thought, and the fear climbed his spine as if it were a ladder, to lodge cold in the back of his brain. They've been taken away. Or... or worse. Would the Archivist risk another tragic accident in a matter of days? Or would he simply have them vanish, and make up whatever story he needed to pacify their loved ones?\n\nJess imagined how that polite, pretty fiction would sound in his case. The Archivist's sorrowful letter would arrive in formal calligraphy, and it wouldn't tell the truth, like, Your son was dismembered by an automaton\u2014so sorry, but talk of some quiet, mundane death. Illness, probably. He morbidly pictured the scene back at home, where his mother and father would receive news of his death with the same quiet stoicism they'd used to greet the death of his older brother, Liam. Maybe Brendan would actually be sorry to lose him.\n\nJust as he was trying to decide whether his father would shed any tears, his Codex flashed a message. His High Garda orders had arrived. This morning, he was to report to Captain Niccolo Santi's company, which would become his permanent assignment for the next year. He stared at it for a long, strange moment, wondering what in God's name the Archivist intended by granting him what he'd wanted, and was startled out of his chair when someone knocked loudly on his door.\n\nGlain stood outside, and when he opened up, she thrust her open Codex in his face. \"Santi,\" she said. He silently held up his own orders. \"What does this mean?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" he said. \"Nothing good.\" He told her about Dario and Khalila, and Glain paled under the deep tan she'd acquired. \"We need to go to the Lighthouse.\"\n\n\"We can't,\" she said, and pointed to his orders again. He'd stopped reading after seeing Santi's name, but she was right: there was more. \"We're ordered to report for duty. Now.\"\n\nHe and Glain made it to the parade ground just in time and were intercepted by someone Jess recognized: the centurion who'd helped them on the exercise ground, when Helva had been hurt and Tariq killed. Centurion Botha.\n\nThere was no recognition or even interest on Botha's face as he stepped into their path. \"Orders,\" he snapped, and Glain briskly flipped her Codex open to show them. Jess followed a second after. Botha examined them and the imprint of seals embossed under, and shoved the books back into their hands. \"Century Two, Blue Squad. Report to your squad leader.\"\n\nOver Botha's shoulder, Jess saw Captain Santi, who was listening to a lieutenant intently. He looked very different now from the man who'd been defending Wolfe; all traces of that emotion had vanished, and he wore command like an invisible crown. No time for mere new recruits.\n\nGlain had already saluted Botha and turned away, and Jess quickly followed suit and moved off at a lope after her. They both knew the standard configurations of a company, and finding Century Two, then Blue Squad, was simple enough. The squad leader there watched the two of them step into formation with cool, judgmental eyes. \"Nice new uniforms, recruits,\" he said. \"Don't worry. We'll beat the creases right out of them. Welcome to Blue Squad.\"\n\nAround them, the other members of the squad gave a deep-throated bark in unison. The squad leader smiled. \"Also known as the Blue Dogs. I've looked at your scores. Not bad. We'll expect better, of course.\"\n\nThe young man\u2014two or three years ahead of us, Jess thought, but with the air of someone twice his age\u2014turned with that very brief greeting and walked to take his place in the rank, at the far right of their squad. Jess, standing on the end of the line, had a good view of the platform where Santi stood. He was gathered now with his centurions, and at his nod, the centurions jumped down to walk the ranks.\n\nBotha had a voice loud enough to carry halfway to China, and he used it to full effect to shout, \"Century Two, report by squad to supply wagon and reform! Fast and orderly!\"\n\nInstantly, the first squad in the century peeled off and ran to a supply carrier that was parked not far away; Jess tried to watch them without turning his head, but got little but a headache for his trouble. It took just under five minutes for each squad to run over and return, and he realized that they were picking up weapons and travel packs.\n\nTravel packs.\n\nAs they jogged to the supplies, he managed to whisper to Glain, \"We're on the move. Did you know\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" she snapped. \"Shut up.\"\n\n\"But what about Dario and Khalila\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up!\"\n\nIt was the work of seconds to grab weapons from the hands of the armorers, plus a travel pack; Jess wasn't used to putting one on quite so quickly, but he managed to get the buckles fastened and be back in the Blue Dog line with only a slight delay. It earned him a lean-out stare from the squad leader. He kept himself at perfect attention until the other young man looked away.\n\nHe burned to ask where they were going, but he was now, officially, High Garda, and High Garda soldiers didn't ask. Glain had done him a favor by insisting he pack his personal journal and wear his smuggling harness with his stolen books inside. He'd never go back to his room in the recruit barracks. When he came back, the few belongings he had left would be moved to new quarters in the regular company barracks. He was, finally, in his place. Everything to this point, Jess realized, had still felt like preparation\u2014like schoolwork, not life. But now, in full battle uniform, wearing the heavy weight of the pack and loaded down with weapons he knew he would have to use, it all felt... different. More ominously real. This is my place. This is my life. The weapons were live and lethal, and he would be expected to use them.\n\nDario and Khalila. We've lost them. He couldn't leave Alexandria without knowing where they were, what had happened. He'd thought they would have time to find out, but now... now they were being sent out without warning. Maybe to battle.\n\nHard not to flash back to Oxford and the terrible war that had overtaken them there as they rescued books and librarians. Jess had spent months fighting back nightmares in which he saw the slaughter, the desperation, saw his fellow postulant Joachim Portero die. It had been a cruel and terribly real introduction to the chaos that the Great Library had been built to guard against. During that chaos, it had been hard to see the Library as a villain, though he knew very well that the Library was no stranger to death, oppression, and cruelty. The Library had taken Thomas. Walled up Morgan. Separated him from everything he'd come to care about. Now they might have stolen away two of his remaining friends, too.\n\nThe idea that he was supposed to fight for it was obscene. He wondered how Santi stood it, knowing what he knew.\n\nA line of carriers rolled up in a hiss of white steam, and one by one, Blue Dog squad received an inspection not from Santi himself, but from one of his top lieutenants, a round-faced woman with startling greenish eyes in a very dark face. Those eyes missed nothing, and when they lingered over Jess and his pack, he felt a chill. \"You,\" the lieutenant said, and gestured to him. \"Come with me.\"\n\nGlain broke from her rigid attention to send Jess a startled glance as he followed the lieutenant out of ranks to a spot at the back of the carrier. A thick white wisp of steam left a damp streak across his face as it drifted past, and the lingering smell of bitter metal. \"Is there a problem, sir?\"\n\nThe lieutenant fixed those intimidating eyes on him. \"You're Brightwell,\" she said. \"Correct?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" He felt sweat trickle down the side of his face. \"Problem, sir?\"\n\nShe leaned forward suddenly, and it was all he could do not to flinch. She didn't blink as she stared into his eyes from a distance close enough that their noses nearly brushed. \"You're acquainted with Captain Santi.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\"\n\n\"Then know this: if you presume on prior acquaintance, I will end you. Is that understood? You speak to Captain Santi when spoken to by him. You will not approach him. You will not send him messages. There is a chain of command, and you are the link at the ass end of it.\" Every word was as bright and sharp as a razor, and she never blinked. \"If I catch a whisper of a rumor to the contrary, I will destroy you. Understood, Brightwell?\"\n\nHe sucked in a breath and said, \"Understood, sir!\"\n\n\"Good.\" She held there another beat, then drew back and nodded. \"I've been instructed to tell you to stop looking for your friends. They're safe. That comes directly from the captain himself, and if I hear you've stepped over that line, I'll destroy you twice over. Now fall in.\" She gestured sharply to the squad leader, and he counted off as each of the squad members lunged up into the carrier. Jess climbed in, as promised, last. The ass end of the chain, just as the lieutenant had said, but he couldn't shake the other part of her message.\n\nThey're safe. Santi had said so. What did that mean? Had Dario and Khalila gone into hiding? Had they come under some kind of threat? Can't ask. It was going to kill him to resist.\n\nHe tried to focus on the other soldiers in the carrier. Apart from Glain, he knew none of them, and not a single face seemed familiar or even friendly. The seats were arrayed facing each other in two rows, with space between for packs, and Jess struggled to unbuckle his and lay it in the assigned space between his boots.\n\nThe carrier lurched into motion, throwing him against the deep, padded seat. Circulating cool air only cut the heat but didn't defeat it, and didn't hide the smell embedded in this vehicle: sweat, blood, a whiff of old fear. The smell of battle. It took him back to Oxford, and he felt cold despite the heat.\n\n\"What did the gold band want?\" Glain asked, and Jess realized that she was right: the lieutenant had been wearing a gold band, a career appointment. He hadn't noticed until Glain brought it to mind.\n\n\"Nothing.\" He couldn't tell her, not here. She seemed to accept that and nodded.\n\n\"Well, you do know a good deal about nothing, so that makes sense.\"\n\n\"Where do you think we're going?\" There had been enough carriers pulled up to move Santi's entire company\u2014and that, he thought, wasn't normal. Usually squads were sent out, or, more rarely, centuries. Even heading to Oxford, Santi had taken only a half century as escort. Taking the whole company meant real trouble.\n\n\"The hot spots are in England,\" the man across from Jess said. He was older, with a dust of gray in his dark blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. The accent was familiar\u2014English, Jess thought. Manchester, maybe. \"The Welsh are still pushing up toward London.\"\n\n\"We're not going to England,\" said a shorter man next to him. \"We're heading to Rome.\"\n\nRome. Jess felt his heartbeat speed up and he couldn't stop a look at Glain, who maintained her usual mask of cool indifference. \"Why?\" she asked. \"Is Rome about to fall to the Welsh, too?\" She made sure, in saying it, that her native Welsh accent was on full display.\n\nThere was a ripple of laughter. The Englishman across from Jess didn't crack a smile, and there was a dark look in his eyes. Easy, Jess thought. These aren't our friends. They're trained killers.\n\n\"I heard the Artifex Magnus is inspecting the Serapeum there,\" someone else offered. There were nods and more serious expressions; they all knew the Artifex was a prime target for the Burners, who were the principal enemy they had to fear these days.\n\nThe Artifex was also the red right hand of the Archivist. He might not be the second most powerful in the Library\u2014that honor went to Wolfe's mother, the Obscurist Magnus\u2014but the Artifex ran a close third. If the Archivist ordered someone dead, it was the Artifex who arranged for the murder.\n\nAnd they would be guarding him from threats. Ironic.\n\nJess shut his eyes for a moment, ignoring the chatter around him, and then reached in his bag and pulled out his Codex. He opened it to a specific page, the page where Morgan's messages appeared, and took out a stylus. He wrote down, in flowing, tight letters, They're sending us to Rome. Is it a trap? Please answer. I need you to answer. Please.\n\nThe words stayed for a moment and then faded away. The page was blank.\n\nThe page stayed blank.\n\n\"Put that away,\" the man across from him said. \"No messages on missions.\"\n\nJess should have known that. He nodded and put the Codex away, and tried to hope that being sent to Rome was just some lucky, happy coincidence.\n\nHe was too cynical to believe it for long.\n\n\"On your feet!\"\n\nJess hadn't realized he'd slept until the squad leader's shout roared over him, amplified by the very suddenness of it; he jerked awake and was up fast enough that he banged his head on the low ceiling of the carrier. It had stopped moving, though he could feel the faint vibration of the steam engine still working. The impact was hard enough to make his vision spark, and the pain radiated through the top of his head like an acid bath, but he grimly stumbled out after Glain, into what proved to be a heavily walled courtyard large enough to hold all the vehicles and the soldiers disembarking from them, but only just. Overhead, the sky had turned a teal that told him twilight was approaching, the day well gone. He'd slept a long time. He supposed he'd needed it, but he'd missed meals and\u2014most important now\u2014a latrine.\n\nWherever they were, it wasn't Rome, but it also didn't feel like Alexandria. On the smooth surface of the courtyard there were drifts of fine dirt that crunched under his boots as he turned to see the soaring structure of a pyramid-shaped building. A Serapeum, a daughter branch of the Library. This one was made of searingly white stone, with a slice of gold at the top that he realized, on squinting, was a spire holding up the Library's seal. The shadows drowning half the courtyard seemed deeper than usual.\n\nHe formed up with the squad, and the Blue Dog squad leader\u2014he still didn't know the young man's name\u2014moved quickly down the line to inspect them. He was shorter than Jess but radiated a commanding presence that made Jess straighten just a bit more.\n\n\"Where are we, sir?\" That was Glain, surprisingly.\n\nEven more surprisingly, the squad leader seemed willing to answer. \"We're at the port city of Darnah. Ships are waiting to take most of the company, but we lucky few will be going on with the captain directly.\"\n\n\"Directly,\" Glain said. \"You mean by Translation.\"\n\nThe squad leader grinned, dispelling all his years and authority in one flash of teeth... and then getting it back in the next instant as he said, \"Exactly what I mean. Move. Consider this an honor. We're in the advance guard of the Artifex Magnus today.\"\n\nThe arrogant old man was making Niccolo Santi guard him. It was a deliberate insult; there was no doubt of that. The Artifex had been the one to take Wolfe to prison and oversee his... conversion, just as he'd taken Thomas. It had to be a constant struggle for Santi not to shoot the bastard in the back.\n\nIf Santi can stand it, I can, Jess told himself. He tightened the straps on his pack and followed Glain down the wide tunnel that ran at a slant beneath the Serapeum.\n\nNo doubt parts of this vast pyramid were devoted to spacious, beautiful areas where the public could browse the Codex and load up Blanks with texts; librarians would be working, serene and helpful. A Scholar or two might be conducting his own research in a secret archive of local documents. There would be reading spaces, light, and beautiful views from the windows. That would be the public face of the Library, the one that even Jess had always known.\n\nThat was not the Library he saw here in the tunnels. As the majority of Santi's troops continued down the stone-walled hall beneath the pyramid and headed for the docks, Santi led them off to the right, down a narrower passage lit by flickering glows above. The glows were chemical, an older style, and sputtered unsteadily with a greenish cast to them. It made all the faces of Jess's companions seem eerily lifeless.\n\nNot a thing to think about before Translation. The last time he'd been through this, he'd seen a classmate die and one broken by it. But he'd survived it once, and knew he could again. I am a soldier now, he told himself. Soldiers take risks.\n\nThe group accompanying Santi consisted of the green-eyed lieutenant whom he'd sent to intimidate Jess, their squad, and another, more seasoned group of veterans who seemed totally at ease with the situation. One of them, a man who seemed ancient to Jess but was in reality about his father's age, caught sight of Jess's face and laughed. \"Don't worry, boy, you'll come through in one piece,\" the soldier said, and shoved him ahead through an open set of double doors. \"Might not enjoy the trip, but at least we travel in style here. Seen a lot worse!\"\n\nThe old soldier was right. This was far different from the Translation Chambers Jess had seen in Alexandria and in their last arrival point in England. The one in Alexandria had seemed chaotically full of machinery, steam, pipes, gears, sparks. It had felt at once ancient, untidy, and unfinished. Maybe it had been under repair.\n\nThe one in England had seemed bare and grubby. He'd have expected Alexandria to have the best of everything, but as he stepped into this Translation room in Darnah, he was struck by how sleek it was. The floor was bare stone, cool beneath his boots. The ceiling stretched high, and what machinery was visible was only glimpsed behind barriers or rafters above. A single bronzed cable dropped down from the unseen machinery to hang down in a circle of light, in which lay a curved, reclining chair made of the same stone as the floor, with a metal helmet next to it.\n\n\"I wish I understood this better,\" Jess said to Glain, who gave him a quelling look. \"What? It would make me feel better knowing if I'm to be torn to pieces and put together again.\"\n\n\"Didn't you pay attention at all in alchemy classes in school?\"\n\n\"My schooling was more... practical.\"\n\n\"The principle's simple enough. The Obscurist uses the element of quintessence to pass you through a fluid that rectifies your form in one place and purifies it in another. The quintessence exists everywhere at once. All things pass through it in creation and destruction.\"\n\n\"Are you quoting a textbook?\" he asked her, and she smirked.\n\n\"Why not? You never read it.\"\n\n\"I was wrong. This little lecture didn't help at all.\" He paused and looked around. \"The Artifex. Is he here?\"\n\n\"He arrives later. We go first to secure the arrival point,\" she said. \"I'd think you would have already figured that out.\"\n\nOf course the evil old man would think of his own safety first; he'd wait until Santi's security was in place, then join him. Then be escorted directly to whatever it was he found it so important to do in Rome. Was it to see Thomas? Was that why he was heading there? Jess had a flash of the Artifex Magnus's severe, bearded face, and felt his fists clench. He deliberately relaxed them. Ironic that he'd been chosen to protect someone he most wanted to see dead. He wouldn't find himself shedding a lot of tears if the Artifex suffered a heart attack during Translation, but he'd do his duty. He had to.\n\nDidn't mean he had to like it.\n\nAhead, Captain Santi was speaking to his lieutenant, who listened with perfect focus, nodded, and turned toward the rest of them. \"Attention!\" Her voice cut clean through the chatter, and they all stiffened into inspection stance. \"We'll be traveling by Translation, which means that when your name is called, you will sit in the chair, fit the helmet on your head, and follow instructions. To answer any questions you have: yes, it will damn well hurt. Yes, you are allowed to scream if you feel the need. Yes, we are allowed to mock you for it later.\" She smiled, and there was a ripple of laughter from the veterans. \"We have two new recruits in the Blue Dogs.\"\n\nThe squad made that chesty barking sound again, and this time, Jess and Glain both joined in. Without being ordered, they stepped forward in unison.\n\n\"Show these dogs how it's done, new dogs. You first.\" The lieutenant pointed to Jess. Of course. He stared at her for a beat, then saluted silently and walked toward the chair. Glain said quietly, \"Do us proud.\"\n\nJess didn't give any sign he'd heard. He sat on the cool, hard surface of the reclining chair and swung his legs up. The pack on his back was bulky and uncomfortable, but he ignored that and reached for the Translation helmet, which was surprisingly light. Compared to the one in Alexandria, this one seemed more finished, more integrated, though it still had protruding tubes that glowed with a strange light. It fit snugly around his head, and as the padding pressed down, he felt cold metal points touch his scalp, not quite sharp enough to pierce. They felt like chips of ice against his sweating skin.\n\nA man in gold Library robes stepped forward. He was younger than Jess expected, of Chinese heritage, and around his neck he wore the wide golden collar of an Obscurist. \"You've done this before,\" he said to Jess in a conversational tone as he reached for the bronze cable descending from the roof and connected it to the top of the helmet. The snap of it clicking into place seemed to echo through Jess's bones. \"Good\u2014you know what to expect. Deep breaths.\"\n\n\"In bocca al lupo,\" Captain Santi said.\n\n\"In bocca al lupo,\" Jess replied, and nodded to the Obscurist. \"I'm ready.\"\n\nThe phrase meant \"in the mouth of the wolf,\" and that was what it felt like when the Obscurist put his hands on Jess's helmet and the machines powered up around them. It felt like the wolf had him in its jaws as power surged down into the conductors in the helmet and ate him from within, like a wild storm, like a hungry animal, ripping him to pieces in a slow, torturous explosion of blood and bone, organ and flesh, and he heard himself give a short, agonized cry...\n\nAnd then darkness, and the slow waves of sick pain, and he compulsively sucked in a breath as if he'd never breathed before. Everything felt wrong; every nerve burned with fire and salt, and he rolled on his side with his stomach lurching violently. He was lying on a reclining chair similar to the one he'd been on before, but instead of a helmet beside him, there was a metal bucket.\n\nHe grabbed it and vomited up his breakfast. A Medica professional in Library robes was there to steady him, and she checked him over with brisk efficiency. \"You'll be fine,\" she said. \"Water's over there. If you have headaches later, report them. Oh, and take the bucket. There's a sink over there. Empty and wash.\"\n\nShe set down another bucket by the chair, stepped back, and waited, dismissing Jess from her concern. He staggered over to the sink, dumped the bucket, and washed it, and by the time he was done with that task, he heard Glain behind him, gasping for air. He put down the bucket and turned. She looked sick and blank for a moment, then controlled her breathing and sat up. She didn't quite vomit, but he could see from the press of her lips that she was seriously considering the option. The Medica helped her up, and Glain almost immediately shook free. \"Brightwell?\" She blinked, and he knew she was having trouble focusing her blurry eyes.\n\nHe stepped into the light. \"Here, Glain.\"\n\n\"Good.\" She tried for a smile, but it didn't look right. \"You only half screamed. You're getting better at this.\"\n\n\"You, too,\" he said. \"Fast recovery.\"\n\nIt wasn't protocol, but no one else except the Medica was in the room, so when she held up her hand, he clapped it in salute. \"Dario and Khalila,\" he told her in a whisper. \"Santi's lieutenant told me they're safe.\"\n\n\"Safe how?\"\n\nHe shrugged in answer. \"Don't know. But there's more: Wolfe remembered. The secret prison is in Rome. Morgan confirmed that. We just don't have final proof that Thomas is inside.\"\n\nGlain had a thousand questions, he could see it, but this wasn't the time. They took up an at-ease position against the wall and waited for the rest to arrive.\n\nWatching arrivals was almost as sickening as going through it himself. Jess stood stoically as one after another, the other members of their squad formed in swirls of blood and bone from the air, solidifying into themselves in the support of the stone chair. Most of the other soldiers made it without giving in to the nausea.\n\nSanti's lieutenant arrived and swung her legs off to push herself to her feet after just a bare few seconds, as if she'd only sat down for a rest. Santi came right behind her, and with even less time for adjustment. Neither of them seemed impaired in the least.\n\n\"Form up!\" the lieutenant barked, as Santi walked on. She followed, and the rest of them fell in behind in perfect order.\n\nThen they boarded carriers again. Jess remembered Santi's observation that the Translation Chamber in Rome was at least a mile from the basilica, and he'd been right, but at least it was a short ride. Jess hardly had time to get uncomfortable before they were ordered out again, formed up, and walked down a long stone-and-column hallway to an arched entrance that glowed with the light of sunset. Beyond was a long, steep fall of worn stone steps; on the steps lounged an entire pride of Library lion automata. They sat still, like the statues they resembled, and they were different from the English versions. These had larger manes that stood out stiffly and curled down in ringlets on broader chests. Magnificent and huge. Beyond a doubt, deadly.\n\nSanti opened his Codex and scrawled something in it, and Jess saw all ten of the lions turn their heads in a smooth, eerie motion to look back at them. Their eyes flickered from dark to red, and one by one, they rose to their feet and began to pace the perimeter. Five remained on the steps, while the others patrolled farther.\n\nBeyond the steps stretched Rome, and though Jess had thought the wonders of Alexandria had numbed him to everything else, the sight of the city stopped him cold. The square\u2014no, this corner of the Forum\u2014was surprisingly small and crowded with marvels. Temples of white marble blushed now with pink and gold by the sunset, and giant golden statues of the Roman gods stood, with citizens passing beneath their feet without any thought for the splendor above. Pigeons lined the broad shoulders of Jupiter and the outstretched arm of Juno, both statues taller than any of the other monuments. The famous hills of the city rolled above, and the spreading palaces and homes of the rich beyond that, growing larger and more lavish the farther up they went.\n\nIt even smelled richer here than in Alexandria\u2014fresh pines, lush soil, sweat, the sharp pickling vinegar of the fish being sold across the way in a food stall. That last made Jess's stomach roil with hunger.\n\nEverywhere he looked, there was the shimmer of marble and gold in the fading light, ancient wonders and modern marvels, and it was so beautiful it didn't seem possible it had been built by the hands of men.\n\n\"Done gawking?\" one of the veterans asked him, and he jerked back to awareness of who, and what, he was. Not a visitor who could take his time admiring the sights, but a soldier on duty. The veteran gave him a wide, sudden grin. \"Nothing like Rome, boy. Gets us all the first time.\"\n\n\"And every time after,\" said Santi's lieutenant from behind them. She didn't sound impressed or amused. \"Green Squad, you are down below, on the square. Blue Dogs, up here. Anything gets past Green Squad and the automata, it's yours to deal with. Stay alert. Rome's Burners always are.\"\n\nThe idea that majestic, ancient Rome had Burners lurking in its shadows made Jess feel an actual pain in his chest. He'd seen what Burners could do with their bottles of Greek fire and the destruction they could cause. A small bottle was enough to burn a man to bones. Large glass bombs of it could reduce beauty to ruins, melt the gods, destroy one of the world's greatest sights.\n\nHe hated what the Library did to protect itself, but there were times when he understood why it did it. So much could be lost, so easily, to such hate.\n\nJess was ordered to a post quite near the arched doorway where they'd come out. It had a thick metal door that Santi's lieutenant closed behind her as she went inside, and Jess heard the heavy chunk of locks engaging.\n\nIt occurred to him then to turn and look back and up at the large, square structure they were guarding. It took a moment to come into focus, and when it did, he felt his body go hot as adrenaline flooded in.\n\nHe was standing on the steps of the Basilica Julia, facing the Forum. Though they had no proof, Thomas's prison might, even now, be only a few feet below where Jess stood. The realization of that made him take a step back and look down at the ancient stone under his boots.\n\n\"Focus,\" Glain said. She knew what he was thinking. \"We do our jobs. Consider this reconnaissance for the mission.\"\n\nShe was right, and he needed to get his bearings again and put Thomas, and any possibilities, out of mind. This could well be the place, but it was definitely not the time.\n\nHe took a breath to wrench his mind away from the possibilities and analyze the situation in front of him. They were out in the open, with no retreat behind, and ten automaton Roman lions stalking among them. Jess knew how the lions worked, how they thought, and he also knew that they weren't particular about innocent victims when something rang their alarms. The automata in Alexandria had been alerted to watch him; had these? So far, none had so much as glanced his direction. The citizens passing through the square below, coming from and going to temples, government buildings, businesses, courts, shops, restaurants, didn't seem to notice the increase in security, but Jess saw a pattern nevertheless. The area around the Basilica Julia cleared, and those who might have crossed in front instead took a longer route around. No one looked at the lions or at the soldiers or even at the basilica itself.\n\nIt was fear he was seeing. No one was quite allowing it to rule them, but all were conscious of the danger.\n\nYou're not guarding the Artifex or a prison, he told himself. You're guarding your fellow soldiers. The Scholars inside the basilica. You're guarding original books that need protection. That helped steady him.\n\nJess remembered his encounters with Burners\u2014sadly, too many in his young life\u2014and began to scan the crowds below. In his experience, the fanatics had a certain purposeful look to them; it wasn't easy to work yourself up to self-immolation, and every Burner had to accept that his or her mission would probably end in death. They had a common look.\n\nHis gaze swept back and forth, back and forth, and then snagged on something he couldn't quite identify. He wasn't even sure why he'd noticed that particular group of people clustered together, apparently consulting a map. When he focused, they seemed like typical tourists, attempting to find their way to a landmark.\n\nThen he realized that one by one\u2014and not all together\u2014they were stealing glances at the basilica. After each look, the one who'd taken it would lean in and say something to the others. Then another would take a brief look.\n\nThere were five of them, four men and one woman, most older than Jess but not by much. Young, idealistic, and perfectly suited to be recruited to a cause.\n\nJess's skin shivered into warning goose bumps, and he heeded it and signaled to Glain, who drifted his way. She covered ground but didn't seem to move quickly. It was a gift she had that he never could quite master. \"What?\" she asked him, and stood apparently at ease, though her eyes were never still.\n\n\"By the feet of Mercury,\" he said. \"That group of five. I don't like it.\"\n\nShe studied the men and said, \"Neither do I. Watch them.\"\n\nShe moved off, heading for the squad leader. She is good at this, Jess thought; she made it seem like a natural stop, just a standard check-in, and neither of them gave away any alarm.\n\nGlain took out her Codex and wrote something, then snapped it shut. Alerting Santi's lieutenant, Jess thought, that there might be trouble. He didn't know if the Artifex Magnus had arrived or if he was keeping Santi waiting; probably the latter. The Artifex had always seemed a man too full of his own importance.\n\nThe group of five was joined by more. Seven now. Eight. Each had some kind of carrying pack, and they were careful with them. How much Greek fire could they have? Too much, if those backpacks were full of bottles and containers.\n\nBelow him, pacing in front of the stairs, one of the Roman lions paused and turned its head with smooth grace to stare at the group standing next to Mercury, and Jess saw the articulated body crouch lower.\n\nBehind them, the door into the basilica opened. He didn't turn to look. All his attention was on the lion, which took an elegant, smooth step down, then another. Others of its pride took notice and began to descend toward the Forum.\n\n\"Run,\" Jess heard Glain whisper. \"Run, you idiots.\"\n\nBut the group of eight standing in the shadow of the statue of Mercury, very near the golden wings on his sandals, just stayed where they were. Watching the lions come closer.\n\nThey'd be slaughtered.\n\n\"Something's not right,\" Jess said. \"Glain\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" she said. \"They should have run.\"\n\nIt was a plan.\n\nAnd he sensed it was working.\n\nJess took it all in at a glance: the lions clustering together as they advanced to circle the eight in the square; the soldiers still on the steps, watching as the pride of automata stalked their prey.\n\nNo one was looking anywhere else.\n\nIt was only because he turned that he saw the first attack coming: an arcing bottle that came not from the group in the Forum, but coming from above, from the statue of Jupiter on the opposite side of the Forum, closest to the basilica. \"Greek fire!\" Jess shouted, and realized the bottle was tumbling end over end. The liquid bubbled inside the glass as it passed over his head, and he ducked instinctively, but it would miss them by a good margin.\n\nThe bottle slammed to the steps twenty feet away, landing where a grouping of others from Blue Squad had been standing just a second earlier. But Jess's call had done its work, and they'd scattered. Only one was hit by cast-off drops; he went down, and another of their new squad mates yanked an emergency kit from her pack and dumped powder on the flames before they could bore through his coat.\n\nRemarkable, how cool Jess felt, how focused. He calmly brought up his weapon, thumbed the switch to turn it on, and waited an instant until he felt the shiver of power run through it. The weapon fired in regular mode for closer range, but the bottle-throwing Burner was high up on Jupiter's shoulder, well out of range of the normal setting of the weapon.\n\nBut not for this one. It took a steady hand and good eyes, but Jess had both, and as he sank down to one knee for stability, he aimed the gun sights directly on the man perched on the shoulder of a god, preparing another bottle to throw.\n\nBelow in the Forum, the lions were roaring and alarmed screams went up. More guns barked behind him, but Jess had one singular focus: this man. He could see the Burner's sweating face\u2014reddened from heat and exertion and excitement\u2014and could see the large bottle he had in his hand, ready for a second throw.\n\nJess's shot took him in the shoulder. The bottle tumbled out of the Burner's hand, not toward the Library troops, but down, plummeting past the god's muscled back and toga-draped legs to smash on the ancient Forum stones. It created a huge green blaze and a wave of sickly black smoke, but no innocents were in the way. They now scrambled to avoid the toxic spread.\n\nThe Burner stood up on Jupiter's shoulder. His right arm was a bloody mess, but he held up his personal journal in his left hand\u2014the same personal journal they all kept. The same as the worn little volume in Jess's pack. \"Tell your precious Artifex! A life is worth more than a book!\" he shouted. \"Vita hominis plus libro valet!\"\n\nJess, sickened, watched him deliberately fall backward and disappear into the hissing flames below. If he wasn't dead from the fall, the Greek fire would eat him to the bones.\n\n\"Down!\" Glain yelled, and she shoved him forward as she hit the marble steps next to him. A leaping shadow passed over them, and Jess looked up to see that one of the giant Roman automaton lions had taken a position in front of them, facing the Forum. It set its metallic bronze paws and roared with such volume, it nearly deafened Jess.\n\nWhen he raised his head, the entire incident was over.\n\nThe Forum was deserted\u2014a suddenly blank stretch of old stone littered with belongings and packages that people had abandoned in their haste to be gone. The Greek fire behind Jupiter burned brilliantly, stretching halfway up his legs, and in the flickering, sickly light, it looked as if the god might be melting, but no, it was a trick of shadows. Jupiter was made of hardy stuff.\n\nThere were eight bodies near the feet of Mercury across the way, crushed and lifeless. Jess swept the area with a long, straight look, but he didn't see anyone else who'd been hurt or killed.\n\n\"Nine dead,\" he said to Glain. \"For what?\"\n\n\"For what it always is,\" she said. \"A statement.\" She was already on her feet and offered him a hand up, which he was happy to take. Strange; he seemed weak and a little shaky now, where he'd been ice-cold and focused before. \"They knew the Artifex was coming. This message is meant for him.\"\n\n\"Thrown right at us, though. Seems more personal than that,\" their squad leader remarked, coming up to them. He looked them over. \"Good job, new dogs. Didn't have a chance to acquaint ourselves earlier. I'm Tom Rollison, but most call me Troll.\"\n\n\"Glain Wathen, sir. Jess Brightwell.\" Glain answered for both of them.\n\n\"I know who you are. Wolfe's puppies. Word was you'd be trouble.\" He looked beyond them at the blaze of fire behind the statue. \"Word was wrong. That was well done.\"\n\n\"Brightwell's a better shot than most,\" Glain said.\n\n\"Not bad,\" Troll agreed. He glanced over Jess's shoulder and frowned just a bit. \"Seems you've made a new friend.\"\n\nJess turned.\n\nThe Roman lion, standing taller than his head while on all four paws, was right behind him, staring at him with unholy red eyes. It lowered its bronze-maned head and seemed to smell him, and a low rumble of a growl rattled deep inside the thing.\n\n\"Jess?\" Glain said, and took a step backward. \"Step away. Slowly.\"\n\nWhen he tried, the lion took a step forward.\n\n\"What the hell did you do to them?\" Troll asked from behind him. Their squad leader sounded unnerved. Jess didn't blame him. He didn't dare look away from the lion's set metallic face, from the sickening red eyes. \"Wathen! Get out of the way if it's malfunctioning!\"\n\nShe didn't want to go, Jess realized; she was standing next to him even though every instinct told her to retreat. \"Get away,\" he told her. \"This is my trouble. Move!\"\n\nShe backed away and down five steps to join their squad leader. If I follow them, I put them in danger, he thought, though it took everything he had not to seek the comfort of a group. Every cell of his body remembered running from the London lions outside of St. Paul's. Those had a stone look to them, more muscular and brutal; these Roman lions had a leaner, sleeker build, and a bronze gleam that made their manes shimmer in the sun. Beautiful... and deadly.\n\nI could turn it off. If the switch is in the same place.\n\nHe desperately didn't want to have to try.\n\n\"More coming up!\" called someone from below, and Jess risked a glance to see that the pride of lions that had been down in the square was returning to the steps, flowing up in leaps and bounds past the other soldiers.\n\nComing toward him. Surrounding him.\n\nThis is it, he thought. This is how I die. Somehow that felt like a fate he'd always known was coming.\n\nThe lion facing him deepened its low, rumbling growl, and he felt rather than saw the others of the pride moving in around him. He heard Glain shouting something, but she was somewhere outside the closing circle. Jess felt the hot burn of air from the lion's nostrils as it moved forward and nudged his chest.\n\nIt wanted him to run. Of course. If he reacted, if he ran, then there'd be an excuse for the slaughter. They were on high alert during the Burner attack. Unfortunate miscalculation; if only the recruit hadn't lost his nerve...\n\nThis was the Artifex's doing, just like the Egyptian gods outside the High Commander's office. Jess realized in a blinding flash, like a bottle of Greek fire dropping on his brain, that if he ran, it would all be over.\n\nAnd the Artifex wanted him to panic.\n\nHe leaned down and stared into the lion's savage eyes and said, \"Come on, then, if you're coming. Take a bite. But if you do, everybody will know it wasn't an accident.\"\n\nHe heard Glain's shocked intake of breath and felt that hot, brassy stench of the lion's insides wash over him as the creature opened its wide jaws to display bloody teeth... in a yawn.\n\nIt closed its mouth, stared at Jess for another long, horrible second, and then turned and padded away to stroll restlessly up and down the steps.\n\nGuarding the building as if nothing had happened.\n\nJess straightened. He didn't say anything because, in truth, he wasn't sure he could at the moment. Better to look strong and silent than have his voice go as unsteady as his legs.\n\nTroll stared at him as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. \"I don't know if you're mad or lucky,\" he said, \"but you've got brass guts\u2014I'll give you that.\"\n\nJess nodded and took up his post. One by one the other lions broke off and went about their business. When the last left him, he finally felt a sweet, cold wave of relief.\n\nThe Artifex wanted him dead, that much was certain, but he wasn't quite ready to make it a public execution. Not yet. He needed Jess to give him some excuse, however minor, to explain away the behavior of the automata. Today would have been a fine one, in the chaos of the Burners, and Jess knew if he'd made the wrong move, he'd be another stain to clean up on the steps tonight.\n\nRome is a trap. It was too neat, too convenient, that suddenly they'd been dispatched here just after finding the information about the secret prison. The Artifex must have known their plans, or at least strongly suspected them. Khalila and Dario had gone missing. Maybe already locked away.\n\nDisposing of Glain, Jess, and Santi would just be a sensible precaution. Get rid of the fighters; keep the Scholars out of the group who\u2014in the Artifex's counting, maybe\u2014could be controlled and used. It made a sickening kind of sense.\n\nBelow, Medica attendants came to claim the bodies, and a squad of firefighters put out the Greek fire blaze. People began to filter back into the Forum in ones and twos, and then suddenly it was full again, as if nothing had happened at all. Only the blackened chemical stains on the stones behind Jupiter and the bloodstains on those near Mercury showed anything at all had interrupted a normal day.\n\nTroll stopped next to him and scanned the people below with distant, cold eyes. \"Seems useless, doesn't it?\" he asked. \"They put us out here, and the Burners take their shot at us, and they die.\"\n\n\"It's a waste on both sides,\" Jess said. \"But we can't let them win. They want to destroy the Library.\"\n\nHe knew that wasn't strictly true; he'd been among the Burners once, had spoken to a local leader. They wanted the Library to change, just as Jess did... but their tactics were unacceptably violent.\n\nTroll shifted his weight just a little. \"Any idea why the lions hate you so much?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\" Troll surely didn't believe it for a moment. \"You know I have to report it. Even if I didn't, there's another squad leader who will. They might pull you out and try to find out what about you alerts them.\"\n\nTroll seemed to be fishing for something, and Jess didn't like it. He turned and looked at the young man directly to say, \"I'm not a Burner, if you're thinking it.\" But I knew some. That was a secret the Artifex held in reserve, too. Guillaume, his classmate, had come from a Burner family; his bereaved father had taken Jess prisoner in France. If the Artifex wanted to make it seem Jess had become an agent, it would be child's play to make that appear reasonable. \"No offense, sir, but why do you care? I'm a one-day-in recruit. You should shed me and get someone else, according to any kind of logic.\"\n\n\"Not that simple,\" Troll said. \"Believe me, I wish it were.\"\n\nHe moved off, stopping to check each of his squad members like any good commander. Jess didn't know what to make of him. Or any of this.\n\nHe was still considering the ramifications of it when he realized sometime in the chaos of the Burner attack, his Codex had received a new message.\n\nIt was gibberish. He frowned at the text, and then a second later realized he knew this code. It was his own family's highly secure emergency code, used only for the most urgent information. He'd memorized the keys to it when he'd been just a boy.\n\nIt read, Your friend lives in the city of seven hills. There was no signature, but one hieroglyphic bird sketched at the end of the code string. Not part of his family's code at all, and it reminded him of the engraving on the ring that Anit, Red Ibrahim's daughter, wore on a chain around her neck\u2014the ring of one of her brothers.\n\nThe message was from her. His free gift of the information about the automata had done some good after all, because this was confirmation, at long last, that Thomas was alive.\n\nAnd here, beneath Jess's feet, in Rome."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "From a speech by a masked Burner leader, given in the territory of America, 1789. Held strictly in the Black Archives:\n\n\u2002You hesitate now to lift your hands and weapons against your oppressors? We have the eyes of nations upon us, all eager to see us break these chains and rise, stand firm, be free of this dire and smothering control that has, year by year, been laid upon us.\n\n\u2002We have been told that paper in a binding, ink on a page, is worth more than the life of any man, woman, or child. We have been pressed into the service of this false idol we call Knowledge for far too long; we have forgotten how to be free of it, how to think for ourselves and believe we, in ourselves, are worth the breath we take, the land we walk.\n\n\u2002I say it openly and plainly: the Library is a cruel and evil oppressor. For long have we pretended it is not so.\n\n\u2002It is time, it is time, it is long past time to rise and take knowledge in our own hands, rather than have it dripped out in cautious doses by an institution long ago rendered moot and lame, cowering behind a wall of power.\n\n\u2002We will prevail.\n\n\u2002Rise! Though we die, though our stories are lost and never placed on the shelves of the Great Library, though we lose our lives and our very nation, we will never give up one great truth: a life is worth more than a book.\n\n\u2002So be it, whatever may come."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "Santi's lieutenant reappeared and called in Jess's squad just as darkness took hold, though the Forum continued a brisk trade under the light of lamps. He was a bit sorry. Rome was just as lovely at night, with the glow of illuminated marble and household lights glittering from windows.\n\nThough leaving the lions behind was a relief.\n\nFor the first time, Jess entered the Basilica Julia. They came in on the private side of it, away from the public Serapeum, and as they were led to the area where they were to eat and rest, Jess tried to place the corridor that Wolfe had described during his Mesmer session. Has to be here, he thought. Wolfe could see the Forum from windows as he passed. But instead of windows, they were led along a hallway that held alcoves and Roman statues. The way had to be hidden, he realized. Somewhere, behind one of these statues, there would be an entrance to a concealed hallway. Go left, it would take you to the Translation Chamber. Right, and a sentry automaton and a prison door.\n\nHe was so preoccupied with imagining it that it came as a shock when they suddenly arrived in the Basilica Julia's common hall.\n\nIt was teeming with people\u2014Scholars, assistants, librarians. The addition of Santi's advance guard packed the place to bursting, but as the lieutenant led them toward the back corner, he saw it had been cleared for them. Several long dining tables and a private alcove. He expected to see Santi and his officers inside, but it was occupied by an old, white-haired man with pale European skin, arrayed in the very finest of Scholar robes and a purple sash to show his importance.\n\nThe Artifex Magnus.\n\nJess went cold inside for an instant, seeing him; the last time he'd laid eyes on the man, he'd been hearing him talk about Thomas's death. The red right hand of the Archivist. The old man, seated in a comfortable chair, conversed with two Scholars he kept standing, and, as Jess watched, one of them\u2014a young Indian woman\u2014bowed respect and moved away. She seemed thrilled to have been in his presence, and as she joined a table of others, he saw how they admired her.\n\nAs if she'd accomplished something noteworthy.\n\nThat made Jess want to vomit. It was all show. The Artifex was a cruel, power-hungry man who thought nothing of breaking and destroying anyone who threatened his power, but these poor innocents saw him as a mentor, a sponsor, a man of great scholarship.\n\nSomething to which they should aspire.\n\nThe Artifex looked up as the last Scholar left his presence, and his sharp gaze moved around the room, snagged on Jess, and stopped. He blinked slowly, then turned his attention to a cup an assistant delivered, as if Jess didn't matter at all. Which, Jess thought, he likely didn't. But the Artifex had recognized him. No doubt of that.\n\nJess found a seat with some of his Blue Squad mates, and they ate with typical High Garda speed. Even so, he'd gotten only a few bites before he felt a hand press down on his shoulder.\n\nIt was the squad leader, Troll. \"Brightwell,\" he said. \"With me.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" Jess stood up.\n\n\"The Artifex wants a report. I want you with me.\"\n\nTroll turned and led the way across the room. Jess caught sight of Captain Santi; the captain sat at a table near one of the exterior walls and gave Jess and Troll a look as they passed that Jess couldn't read at all.\n\nThe noisy room fell away. It seemed as if the Artifex sat in a bubble of silence, far from the others, though it wasn't far at all, and then Jess was standing just a few feet away from him, from the man who'd coldly engineered the ruin of Scholar Wolfe, killed who knew how many, sent his best friend to a prison. And for what?\n\nPower.\n\nThe Artifex's bright blue eyes fixed on him.\n\nJess wanted to curl his hands into fists and beat the smile off of him, but he forced himself to stay still as Troll said, \"Artifex, sir, you asked for a report on the Burner encounter outside. I'm pleased to say that we had no Library casualties, and no apparent civilian involvement in our response. Nine Burners died. Their information is being retrieved and forwarded to your Codex.\" He turned toward Jess. \"Brightwell is a new addition to our squad, and was the one to alert us to the Burner attack on our flank. He saved many lives today.\"\n\nIt dawned on Jess that the Artifex hadn't requested his presence; his squad leader was trying to do him a favor. Troll had no idea how wrong that was.\n\nThe Artifex's cold gaze fixed on Jess, and that smile deepened. It looked real enough. \"Well done, Squad Leader. You continue to show great promise, by all reports. I'm sure you will rise high in the ranks. Captain Santi has an eye for talent.\" There was a slight change in his voice as he said Santi's name, as if he couldn't quite keep the distaste at bay. \"Brightwell, Brightwell... Ah yes. You studied under Scholar Wolfe, did you not?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Jess had to force that out. His teeth ground together hard enough to hurt. As if you don't remember, you bastard. \"I was in his most recent class. The one you sent to the Battle of Oxford.\"\n\nNo reaction from the old man. None. Even his smile stayed warm. \"Ah yes, of course. Exemplary work, though the challenges were far beyond what we thought you'd face when we dispatched you there. Your class has proven quite exceptional.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he said. \"Those of us who survived.\" If the Artifex read that as a challenge, so be it. \"You may want to have a look at the automata outside, sir. They might be malfunctioning. Seems like they almost attacked me. By accident, of course.\"\n\n\"How unusual,\" the Artifex replied blandly. \"I'll have my staff look into it. We certainly wouldn't want any accidents.\"\n\n\"Sir.\" Jess nodded slightly, which was all the respect he could stomach showing the man. He didn't intend to push his luck any further. But then the Artifex leaned forward in his chair, and there was a cold fire in his eyes that made Jess's stomach tighten.\n\n\"Have you said hello to my new assistants?\" he said. \"They asked to be added to my research staff some time ago, and, of course, I could not say no to such excellent candidates once I realized their worth.\" There was a vicious humor in the Artifex's eyes that was meant only for Jess. \"Friends of yours, I think.\"\n\nFor an instant, Jess couldn't think what he was talking about. Not Wolfe, surely, and Santi was here in his capacity as High Garda captain. He's insane, Jess thought, and then he realized, as the Artifex gestured somewhere behind him, what the old man meant.\n\nJess turned, and Khalila Seif and Dario Santiago stood up from the table where they'd been sitting nearby. He hadn't seen them there; he hadn't been looking for them. Khalila gave him a tentative smile, but there was fear in her eyes. Dario\u2014more handsome and well-dressed than ever\u2014stepped forward and offered Jess his hand. \"Brightwell,\" he said. \"Still just a recruit, I see. Nice to see you continue to keep to your natural level.\" It was just the kind of insult Dario had always given him, but there was a warning flash in Dario's eyes and his handshake felt painfully firm. \"Maybe I'll request you as a special guard detail when I go shopping.\"\n\nEven for Dario, that was laying it on thick, no doubt for the benefit of the Artifex. He watched them like a vulture from the comfort of his overstuffed chair.\n\n\"As you wish, Scholar Santiago. I'll try not to accidentally shoot you.\"\n\n\"Only on purpose, eh? You haven't changed, scrubber. I suppose that will do for a fond reunion. I have work to do. Scholar Seif?\" Dario gestured to the table where they'd been working and took his seat with a thump. He made a fine show of ignoring Jess altogether.\n\nKhalila walked toward him. \"It's good to see you, Jess. You're well?\"\n\n\"I am. You?\"\n\n\"Very well. I... had no idea you'd be here.\"\n\n\"I could say the same of you,\" Jess said, and what he really wanted to ask was, Was it your choice? But he couldn't. And, besides, he knew.\n\n\"The work being done here in the basilica is truly exciting,\" Khalila said. \"Dario is studying the very pillars of history, you know. It is a field that has always interested me as well.\"\n\nEverything interested Khalila, which was one of the lovely things about her. \"I'm glad you find it rewarding.\"\n\n\"Oh, I do. The basilica is amazing, isn't it? So much history. Rome's roots go deep.\"\n\n\"The feet of its moldy old gods may go deep, but I still prefer Alexandria,\" Dario said, without looking up. \"Rome's too damp for me, and too chilly this time of year. Like living in a tunnel. Khalila, we have work to do. I'm sure Jess needs to... patrol. Clean his gun. Something equally important.\"\n\nKhalila turned on him to give him a sharp look. \"Dario. He's our friend.\"\n\n\"He's High Garda. Not our level, dear lady, if he ever was,\" Dario replied. \"Let the scrubber be about his business. You're under no obligation to be nice.\"\n\nTroll suddenly stepped up to Jess's side, then moved past him to lean over Dario's shoulder. \"Did you have something to say about your feelings toward the High Garda, Scholar?\"\n\nDario looked up, and his natural arrogance came out in a smirk that Jess wanted to punch. \"The High Garda has its place,\" he said, and looked pointedly at Troll's boots. \"That place is not here, blocking my light.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you should allow my assistants to proceed with their tasks,\" the Artifex said, and sat back. He picked up his coffee once more. \"You're dismissed, both of you. Thank you for your service.\"\n\nTroll snapped a salute that wasn't at all necessary\u2014the Artifex wasn't generally entitled to salutes\u2014and strode away. Jess followed, minus the honor; he wasn't about to give the man more credit than he was due, even if it was interpreted as an insult.\n\n\"Unbelievable,\" Troll said. \"Did you hear that? 'Thank you for your service'\u2014as if he cared. He didn't even reprimand that arrogant puppy Scholar. You came through postulant class with Santiago? Impressive. I'd have thrown the smug bastard off a bridge halfway through the first day.\"\n\n\"I'd have helped,\" Jess said. \"He's smart, though. Worse, he's clever.\"\n\n\"The other one seemed nice enough.\"\n\n\"Khalila Seif is the smartest person in this room.\"\n\n\"A good friend to have, then. Not to mention attractive,\" Troll said. \"You wouldn't mind if I struck up a conversation?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't. Dario might.\"\n\n\"I was afraid of that. Too bad. Killing him would wipe out my good conduct today.\"\n\n\"Don't hold back on my account,\" Jess said, but his mind was elsewhere. That display from Santiago had been classic, but it had also been out of place; the young Spaniard hadn't given him that particularly sour reception since their first days with Wolfe. They weren't exactly the best of friends, but they weren't enemies. Or, at least, they hadn't been when last they'd spoken.\n\nEither something had changed for Dario or Dario was trying to tell him something. Dario and Khalila, working together. Had they planned to be here? No, surely not, or Khalila would have found time to warn him. The Artifex made it sound as if they'd asked to be added to his staff, but somehow, Jess doubted that; they'd applied, certainly, but he'd heard nothing of either being accepted. They'd been given no choice, and no time to tell anyone.\n\nRome's roots go so deep, Khalila had said, and veiled it in a cloud of compliments. Dario had added his own clues: The feet of its moldy old gods. And tunnel.\n\nMaybe, just maybe, they were trying to tell him they'd found something. A way into the prison.\n\nJess sat down at the squad's crowded table, but he hardly saw their faces or heard the chatter. His thoughts were far away, locked on possibilities. On an insane and desperate possibility.\n\nWe're all here now except for Wolfe and Morgan, he thought. Thomas's rescue was almost within their reach. If Khalila and Dario really had discovered a way in, that was all they needed\u2014an advantage. Get Thomas, get out, disappear.\n\nGlain was staring at him from across the table, clearly worried. She waited for a few moments, smiling and talking to others, and then moved to a seat next to him when one became vacant. She bent close and said, \"I saw. Khalila and Dario.\"\n\n\"I think they may have information that can help with Thomas\u2014\"\n\n\"Jess. We're all here because he wants us here,\" Glain whispered. \"The Artifex can't touch Wolfe directly because of his mother, but us? Getting rid of us will isolate Wolfe. Destroy him.\"\n\nShe was right. He'd been looking down the wrong end of the telescope.\n\nThis wasn't a chance for them to rescue a friend.\n\nIt was a threat to kill them all.\n\nThe rest of Santi's company arrived by ship the next morning. As early arrivals, Blue Squad got their pick of spots in the barracks built on the secured side of the basilica\u2014which was, Jess realized, far larger than he'd ever imagined. An enormous building on a truly monumental scale, though only two stories in height. It took nearly an hour to walk from one end to the other, and that was at a brisk pace. A solid two hours, then, to travel both floors end to end.\n\nNot even Egypt built on such a scale.\n\nMost of the Library's side of the basilica was a warren of offices and laboratories, with long, straight halls running the length of the structure. Jess began a map while he waited for the lights to dim and his squad mates to fall asleep. He planned to slip away once it was quiet and the snoring started, but the comfort of the bunk and the stress of the long days before pulled him down fast.\n\nHe woke up hard at the touch of a hand on his arm and found himself reaching for a knife with the speed of the criminal he'd once been... But he stopped when the scent of the girl crouched next to his bunk hit him. A light cinnamon perfume with a hint of dark amber. He connected that to Khalila even before her whisper said, \"Quietly. Come.\"\n\nJess slipped out of his bunk, pulled on a pair of uniform trousers and a loose black shirt, put his boots on without bothering to tie them, and followed the drifting sweep of her dress through the shadows to the hallway. She hardly made a sound, and for a strong moment he wondered if he was wrong; maybe this wasn't Khalila. Maybe it was a vengeful Roman ghost whispering down the hallway, leading him to some terrible death.\n\nShe looked back at him with an impatient raise of her eyebrows, and he had to grin. Not a ghost. Though a terrible death is still on the table, some dour part of him said. He tried to ignore it.\n\nKhalila led him down the hall to a closed door, which she opened with a key. It led to a small, enclosed atrium, open to the night sky, crowded with clipped hedges and a spreading olive tree. In the center of the tiny garden, a graceful statue of a winged woman balanced on one foot with her drapes flowing in an invisible wind and a hand holding up a laurel wreath\u2014Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory. Not an automaton, thankfully.\n\nIn the shadow of Victoria sat Dario, Captain Santi, and Glain. A pitifully small crew, Jess thought, to go to war with the Library.\n\n\"I'm sorry about earlier,\" Khalila said, and gave Jess a quick embrace. \"We had to be careful.\"\n\n\"Of course you did.\" He nodded to Dario. \"I'd say it was an impressive display of arrogance you put on, but\u2014\"\n\nDario laughed, stood, and gave him an embrace as well\u2014a quick one, with a heavy slap on his back that stung hard enough to remove any sentimentality from it. \"But it comes naturally, of course.\"\n\n\"Did the Artifex force you to come, or was it your own idea to ride along?\"\n\nDario and Khalila exchanged a quick look, and she said softly, \"Something of both, I'm afraid. We did apply to be on his staff, you remember. But he rejected us as applicants.\"\n\n\"Until yesterday,\" Dario added. \"When suddenly our presence was not just desired, but required.\"\n\n\"He means to kill us here,\" Glain said. \"That's why he brought us all. Death, or we join Thomas in the cells under here. Why else would he do this?\"\n\nSanti, Jess noticed, hadn't spoken. His head was bowed, as if he were lost in thought. \"Captain?\" Jess asked. \"Do you agree?\"\n\n\"I think he means this as a show of strength,\" he said. \"And as intimidation. I don't think he'd quite dare to make all of us vanish at once.\"\n\n\"He couldn't make you disappear. You're too prominent.\"\n\n\"You think too small, Jess. High Garda soldiers die in combat. A nicely staged Burner attack, some conveniently destroyed bodies, and no one but Christopher will ever doubt the story.\" His hands, which had been resting on the bench on either side of him, clenched the lip of the marble and tightened, until his knuckles were almost the same pale shade. \"We're hostages for Wolfe's good behavior, at best. And through him, his mother's. I don't think this is so much about us or him as it is a power struggle between those two.\"\n\nWolfe's mother, the Obscurist Magnus, was a formidable woman, but trapped by her own power. Her influence didn't extend to freeing herself or those locked away with her. At the same time, the Obscurists had a fragile hold over the Library; without them, the essential components\u2014the Codex, the Blanks, even the automata\u2014ceased to operate properly.\n\nThe Artifex would use Wolfe to keep her in check\u2014and the rest of them as leverage against Wolfe.\n\n\"I suppose you were assigned the honor of escorting the Artifex at the last minute, too,\" Khalila said to Santi. He nodded. \"I'm sorry. I know it's difficult for you.\"\n\n\"I've defended Scholars I loved and Scholars I hated. Just part of the job,\" he said. \"I defend an idea, not an individual.\"\n\n\"None of that matters now,\" Dario said. \"The Artifex sees us as chess pieces he can move as he wishes, and, eventually, he'll knock us off the board one by one, if not all at once. Are we just waiting to be killed?\"\n\nSanti said nothing. Did nothing. Jess stayed quiet as he watched him; he could see the man thinking, weighing, calculating odds and tactics. This was Santi's specialty, the art of war. Surprise and defense.\n\n\"No,\" he finally said. \"We can't wait. Dario's correct. We're in a position of great weakness\u2014away from home, easily disposed of. I think bringing us here was a demonstration of his power. He can't know we've found out anything.\"\n\n\"We haven't,\" Khalila murmured. \"Not for certain.\"\n\n\"We have,\" Jess said. He took a deep breath and told them about the information he'd received from Anit. \"Thomas is here. He is definitely here. Now.\"\n\n\"Do you trust her?\" Khalila asked.\n\n\"She wouldn't have any reason to betray me,\" Jess said. \"Our families are old trading partners. Throw me to the lions, and she has the Brightwell clan to deal with after. Her father wouldn't want that.\"\n\nSanti nodded slowly. He looked up at them, and the anger in his face was chilling. \"Then we can't wait. We must get Thomas and get out of here. I'll send word to Christopher to join us, and we'll have to go into hiding, immediately. Jess? Can you arrange that with your family?\"\n\nLeave the Library. He saw Khalila and Dario exchange looks. They'd had to know this was coming, but it was all happening\u2014and Jess surely felt it, too\u2014so fast. \"Not Khalila,\" Dario said. \"Surely no one would suspect her of anything. She could go back afterward...\"\n\nKhalila cut him off. \"Dario. You don't decide on my behalf. I love the Library. I grew up believing I would spend my life serving it. But that ideal, the one they made us believe, it doesn't exist. I would rather spend my life fighting to change it. I can't continue to pretend to be loyal to it, not if all of you are gone!\"\n\n\"Maybe that Library, the one we all believed in, maybe that could exist after all,\" Jess said. \"It's not the idea that's bad; it's thousands of years of bad decisions and desperation. We could change that, but we can't do it from Alexandria.\" He swallowed hard and glanced at Santi before he took the last step. The last risk. \"The reason Thomas was taken was that he invented a machine to cheaply and easily reproduce books. If we can get him, if we can build it and start distributing private books, it will change everything.\"\n\nGlain, Khalila, and Dario all looked blank. \"I can call up any book I like from the Codex,\" Dario said. \"What use is something to make them, except to benefit smugglers like... well, like you, who can sell them to hoarders?\"\n\n\"Sounds like a Burner invention,\" Glain added, frowning.\n\n\"It isn't. And you think the Codex is your doorway into the Library? It's a little box they hand you\u2014a curated, careful selection. They tell you what you can read. The Library shows you a fraction of what they have\u2014trust me, I've seen tens of thousands of books go through my family's hands that never appeared on the Codex and never will. If we believe in the existence of the Black Archives, then we must believe that the Library hides what they think is dangerous\u2014and it's old and conservative, and it believes anything can be misused.\"\n\nKhalila stared at him, but her mind was flying; he could almost see the thoughts and connections colliding. \"That explains a lot,\" she said. \"There are holes in the progress being made, the science, if you look hard enough. And I have been gently warned away from certain questions. It explains everything if that research disappears into the Black Archives.\"\n\n\"That's why Thomas is so dangerous. His invention inks print on paper, using precut letters. No alchemy, no Obscurists. It prints an entire page at a time. You can make your own books and no one\u2014especially not the Library censors\u2014can stop you from making more, spreading ideas, changing minds.\"\n\nHe watched them think through that, and was impressed, again, by how quick Khalila was to grasp the implications. Pallor settled over her face. \"It would destroy the Library's power,\" she said. \"If everyone could print and keep their own...\"\n\n\"Then the Library can't choose what we learn, can't decide which science can and can't be pursued, and can't place books above human lives, because books wouldn't be irreplaceable,\" he said. \"Books could be reproduced in the hundreds of copies. Even in the thousands. Everyone could have them. It changes everything about what they do, from that one simple idea.\"\n\nShe looked sick. \"But, Jess... I don't know what the world looks like once that's done. Do you?\"\n\n\"No,\" he admitted. \"But if the Library overcomes its fears and uses that invention first, it can still be a force for good. It's been fighting the Burners for centuries, but Burners could be silenced simply by giving them what they want\u2014the chance to freely own books without criminal penalties. Thomas's press allows for that. It sets the Obscurists free from the Iron Tower, too; they would go back to being Scholars, not slaves, because the whole basis of the Library wouldn't rest on them. The world... The world might be better in so many ways. If the Library agrees to change. But it won't, if the Archivist has anything to say about it.\"\n\n\"This is... Jess, this doesn't just challenge the Library. It changes the entire world. What gives us the right to make that choice?\" Dario asked.\n\n\"Nothing,\" Jess admitted. \"Except someone has to. The Library's leaders made the choice for us again and again and again. It's time someone else had a try.\"\n\nSanti had watched the discussion silently, with bleak, calm eyes. Finally, he said, \"I don't think less of any of you if you want to take your chances with the Artifex. He's a powerful man, and behind him stands the Archivist, who makes the Artifex look as friendly as a pet. If you decide to rescue Thomas, if you even help rescue him, you forfeit everything you've worked toward. I won't lie about that. They will do anything to keep this invention secret. They have already killed, and will kill again.\"\n\n\"I'm in,\" Glain said. \"I'm a fighter at heart. I'll fight for what the Library should be.\"\n\n\"It's the only logical way the Library itself can survive.\" Khalila nodded. \"I value the future. That means I must do it or live a lie. Dario?\"\n\nHe looked sorely tempted to back away, but the young man sighed, shook his head, and said, \"All right. But if you get me killed, I'll never let any of you rest. My ghost will be very persistent.\"\n\nJess looked at Santi. \"You know where I stand. And yes. My family can hide us.\" He didn't know that, but he knew that he would make it happen somehow. No matter what it cost him. His father was cold, but he was not completely cruel. Promise him anything, anything at all. Promise him Thomas's press. Just get him on our side.\n\n\"This is all well and good, but we still don't know how to get to Thomas,\" Glain said. Khalila, in answer, dug in a satchel that she wore over her shoulder and pulled out loose sheets of paper that she passed to Glain, Jess, and Santi.\n\n\"I may not be able to get you in, but I can help with the exit from the prison. You remember what we said to you before?\"\n\n\"Something about the old gods having deep roots in Rome?\"\n\nShe moved next to Jess and tapped a spot on the drawing. It was a carefully inked diagram of the Forum, and each of the buildings and statues within the precincts. \"Here,\" she said, and pointed. \"Below Jupiter's throne\u2014\"\n\n\"These are ancient tunnels,\" Santi said, and looked up. \"How did you find this?\"\n\nKhalila nodded at Dario with a little smile. He raised his eyebrows. \"I didn't,\" he said. \"It wasn't me. It was Scholar Prakesh; she left the information for me before she was killed. Both the records and the tunnels are ancient and very obscure, dating from early Roman religious practices. Unused for a thousand years, at least, but one thing about the Romans\u2014\"\n\n\"They built things to last,\" Santi finished. \"You know how to access them?\"\n\n\"I found references. I think I could figure it out.\" Dario grinned humorlessly at Jess. \"Or our resident criminal could. The tunnels are a warren below, but from all the best information I could find, they connect to a sewer that is just below the prison. Not a working sewer, mind you\u2014I'm not that dedicated. Its position in the Forum gives us a chance to melt into a crowd.\"\n\nThis was, Jess thought, a fair and interesting idea, but he put little faith in millennia-old records without a firsthand scouting expedition. That might be difficult, since anyone tinkering with an ancient statue of a god in the middle of the Forum might be noticed.\n\nThey wouldn't notice at night, he thought. And not if I'm wearing a High Garda uniform. If I'm seen, I could just say that I noticed suspicious activity and went to check it.\n\n\"The prison itself has human guards, and three automata on patrol within,\" Santi said. \"Sphinxes and a Spartan. I'm not worried about the Garda. The automata...\"\n\nThe automata were another matter altogether, and they all knew it. Glain had seen the ones surrounding Jess on the steps. They were already alert to him, ready to pounce in an instant. One wrong move and they would all be dead.\n\n\"We won't solve that tonight. We've already been out too long,\" Santi said. \"Go back before someone discovers you're missing. Especially you two.\" He nodded at Dario and Khalila.\n\nDario laughed. \"They won't worry. I made sure they knew I wanted to show Scholar Seif the beauties of Rome in the moonlight.\"\n\n\"Dario,\" Khalila said, \"tells everyone he's trying to seduce me. It does make a very good cover story.\"\n\n\"Not that it's working,\" he said gloomily. \"The best I've managed is a kiss. Not even a long one.\"\n\n\"It was long enough.\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"For me to tell if you knew what you were doing.\"\n\n\"You see how she treats me?\" Dario said to Jess. \"I don't know why I bother.\"\n\n\"Then you're even more of an idiot than I imagined,\" Jess said. \"Be careful. Both of you. This isn't a game.\"\n\n\"Spoken like someone who always loses when it is,\" Dario said. \"Cheer up, English. We're survivors.\"\n\nJess wished he hadn't said it. It sounded like a bad omen.\n\nGoing back to bed was impossible now. He told Glain what he planned to do\u2014she argued, of course\u2014and exited silently down the hall and through a secured door that led out into the public space of the Basilica Julia: the daughter library, the Serapeum.\n\nLike all similar institutions, it never closed, but just now it was utterly empty of visitors. It was flanked on all sides by steady rows of tall white columns and shelves upon shelves of Blanks. At regular intervals around the floor stood marble podiums, upon which large volumes of the Codex waited.\n\nNothing in the Codex will help me with automata, Jess thought. There might be other books, restricted from public view that would hold hints and pieces of a key. He'd need a Scholar like Khalila to gain access. Being just a copper-banded High Garda had its disadvantages.\n\nHe ran his fingers over the smooth leather spine of a book. It was more of a talisman than a comfort; he just needed to remind himself of why the Library was so important. Books had become a symbol of trust and libraries places of peace and stability. In all the chaos of the world that counted people as different levels of worthy, the Library served all equally. All genders, races, levels of ability. It was the one place they could all be safe.\n\nIt was a fragile idea, and the safety was a fiction; the existence of the Burners proved that. Armies didn't always obey the accords. Kingdoms fell. But the ideal was worth preserving.\n\nI don't want to bring an end to this, Jess thought, and was suddenly afraid that was exactly what he'd be doing if they succeeded.\n\nBut there wasn't much choice. Not if Thomas was to be free.\n\nJess moved out through the outer Serapeum doors to the moonlight-washed steps.\n\nDario was right: Rome was magical at night. The marble glittered soft as snow, and the stars above were hard and bright, set in a deeply black sky. A breeze moved down from the hills and brought with it the smell of dusty olive trees and sun-warmed stones. He descended quickly. The lions were clustered together near the other end of the building, the end where the Artifex would be sleeping in peace, no doubt. If the old man thought about Thomas at all, it was probably only with satisfaction that he'd stopped what he saw as the downfall of the Library.\n\nThat thought strengthened Jess as he moved through the deserted Forum, past empty temples and the shadowy forms of gods. There were no patrols out that he could see, not in this direction, but he went quickly anyway, moving from shadow to shadow, checking constantly in all directions.\n\nThen he was at the statue of Jupiter. It towered far up, and from this foreshortened view it looked massive and monstrous. What if it's an automaton? The thought struck him with real unease. A colossus like this could crush buildings, destroy armies. He put a hand on the metal. It felt warm, but a natural kind of warmth, residue from the day's sun.\n\nThe foot looked ancient and solid, and Jess ran his hands over the pitted surface, worn by time, and realized that ancient as it was, Jupiter couldn't have been here for more than a thousand years. This Forum had been a meeting place far longer than that. Roots run deep. Jupiter sat over the entrance.\n\nHe found the opening between the statue's feet, shrouded beneath the falling golden drapes of the toga. Just enough room to squirm under into the hollow spaces, and send a large rat squeaking away in alarm. Set into the cobbles lay an old iron grate. Jess pried it up with his knife and carefully put it aside. The opening was hardly large enough to fit through, but he managed, and dropped into a damp, echoing darkness that smelled of mold and the faint, pungent whisper of rot.\n\nJess shook a chemical light to life, and the yellowish glow washed over rough stones built in a strong, arched structure only a little taller than his head. It had a shallow trough in the middle, through which ran a slow trickle of moisture. And though\u2014as Dario had promised\u2014these sewers were long disused, except to channel rainwater, the smell of old waste lingered. The tunnel seemed sound, and he went carefully, tossing the light ahead as he went to be sure nothing dangerous waited. The darkness was complete and claustrophobic. It felt like an almost physical weight against his shoulders, and he tried not to think about the old stones pressing down. It'll collapse someday, he thought. But not today. Keep your nerve. It reminded him of the old tunnels beneath Oxford, but these were far older. He found engraved stones inset in the walls depicting a group of toga-wearing men gathered around a bull. The tunnel angled down. He felt the strain of it in the backs of his legs, and had to be careful not to slip on mold, but then it leveled again and twisted in two directions. The basilica would be to the right, but just in case, he dropped one of the portable glows at the tunnel entrance before going on.\n\nThere was no sound here except for the faint rustling of rats and insects running from the light and the trickle of water in the tunnel's center. He passed another engraving in the left-hand wall, then another, and then, finally, the tunnel split again. One side veered right and up. The other went down.\n\nHe dropped another glow and followed the left-hand path into the dark. It seemed to be a long journey, and then, suddenly, he heard something that didn't belong here. Something up ahead, a scraping noise that sounded deliberate. A faint whirring.\n\nHe doused the glow and blinked, because an afterimage of it remained printed on his eyes. No, the glow he saw was a faint red.\n\nGrowing brighter now.\n\nSpilling over ridges and curves that he didn't understand at first, and then suddenly, chillingly, did.\n\nThere was a lion in the tunnel.\n\nJess stopped. Running would be useless; even at his best speed he doubted he could outrun the stride of a Roman lion in these cramped confines. The growling rumble of the thing echoed off the bricks, and he realized that he'd stopped breathing, as if that might hide him. It wouldn't. Stay ready. Stay calm. Running would be death.\n\nThe lion padded toward him at a slow, inexorable pace. He backed away, moving one slow step at a time, and as if in a terrible dance, the lion paced him move for move, gliding forward as he retreated.\n\nJess stopped cold in his tracks, staring at the lion. He wasn't looking at the ferocious, crushing jaws now, or the huge paws ready to smash the life out of him. The sphinx's switch had been hidden just behind the thin beard, under the chin. The design of Roman lions, though different, would follow the same logic. Pick a spot no one in their right mind would reach for. Either inside the mouth, or...\n\nOr just underneath it, beneath the lion's bearded chin. The challenge was that it was much harder to reach.\n\nHe heard the low, rumbling growl grow louder and echo in a continuous, angry pulse from the tunnel walls. The lion paused, very still, only a short distance from Jess, and the red illumination of its eyes turned everything bloody. It must have been confused, Jess realized; his High Garda uniform, the band he wore on his wrist must have made it pause and wait to see what he'd do. Any casual intruder would have already been dead.\n\nThat didn't mean the lion wouldn't decide at any moment that High Garda or not, Library band or not, he needed to die. Don't hesitate. Just keep moving.\n\nJess slowly raised his right hand. His fingers were trembling and twitching with the need not to go near this thing, but he controlled that and his natural desire to run for his life. His fingertips touched warm, slightly rough metal: the underside of the lion's jaw. A jaw that could open at any instant and bite off his entire arm. A mouth that held razor-sharp teeth longer than his fingers and so much more terrifying than the sphinx he'd faced in Alexandria. This is a bad idea. So very bad.\n\nJess's sweating, shaking fingers slid along the creature's jawline. The lion's eyes sparked as red as blood, and a rumble built inside. The jaws parted, an instant away from clamping onto his arm and ripping it from his body in a spray of blood and torn bone.\n\nHis fingers brushed a slightly depressed area in the metal. It could have been a dent, since the beast was battle-scarred, cast-off, consigned here to lonely tunnel guard. But he pushed hard, knowing it was his last chance, and felt something click sharply inside.\n\nThe lion didn't stop all at once. First, the rumbling died off, and then the glow faltered and flickered in its eyes. There was a ticking inside, like something very hot cooling off slowly, and then it was just... still.\n\nA statue.\n\nJess pulled his hand back, still careful. Still wary. As the red glow died in its eyes the dark closed in and landed on him with the weight of real panic. What if he'd gotten it wrong? What if it was still moving in the dark and those jaws were opening? He fumbled for the glow he'd put aside and shook it back to life with so much enthusiasm, he almost dropped it.\n\nThe lion stared straight ahead, eyes dull gray now. One paw was slightly lifted and the body was tense, as if ready to lunge forward, but it stood utterly motionless.\n\nThere were still sounds from inside the body\u2014ticks, pops, scratches. A spring slowly hissing as it uncoiled. Jess's mouth was dry, and he felt giddy with relief. He tried to slow his breathing and had to stop himself from laughing aloud. After a few seconds, the exhilaration faded.\n\nMainly because he asked himself, Why did they put it here? Why in this spot? Surely it would have been a simple matter to position one right below the grate under Jupiter's feet, the better to catch intruders before they even had a chance to discover any secrets.\n\nIf the lion had been put here, set to guard this spot, it meant it was important.\n\nJess squeezed past the bulk of the lion, moving carefully in case it should suddenly come back to life, and just beyond it lay the end of the tunnel. It emptied into a huge, rounded room lined with ancient mosaics dulled by time. But it was empty. This had once been some kind of ritual chamber, and on one wall Jess found a display of masks cast out of greenish bronze in frightening shapes.\n\nHe heard something directly overhead and looked up. Footsteps. They rang on metal, and as he raised the glow, he realized that there was a rounded, metal plate in the ceiling above. It looked solid and very old, and it was exactly where he would imagine a drainage grate would have gone. And who would remove a drainage grate and cover it with solid metal instead?\n\nSomeone who didn't want anyone coming or going through it.\n\nThere it is. The prison.\n\nJess stood for a long moment, gaze fixed on that metal barrier, and then he turned and retraced his steps past the frozen lion, up the tunnel, out from under Jupiter's robes, and back to the Serapeum."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the Archivist Magnus to the Artifex Magnus, interdicted to the Black Archives by order of the Archivist:\n\n\u2002It was a true tragedy to lose Scholar Prakesh in such a useless fashion; she was an extraordinarily bright woman. Just more proof that Wolfe's toxic influence has spread on to his students as well. Without her exposure to Santiago, no doubt she would have served the Library faithfully for the rest of her life.\n\n\u2002We are reaching an impasse with the Obscurist Magnus as well. It might be necessary to bring her to heel one last time, by whatever means necessary. Her son might be broken, but he can still turn and bite. If you see any reason to suspect such might happen, make it clear to him that we have gathered up all those he cares for.\n\n\u2002That should keep him in check, and, through him, his mother.\n\n\u2002If not... well. You know my thoughts."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "He arrived back just as his fellow soldiers were starting to wake, and except for the fact that he was already wearing his uniform, no one gave him a second look. He sat on his bunk and ate a pressed fruit from his pack, and wondered how to tell the others what he'd found. Too many ears. They needed privacy.\n\nGlain could see he had news. She was clever enough not to ask, but he saw the level stare and the tilt of her head. What is she seeing? He had no idea. He was usually better at hiding in plain sight than that. Maybe it was the flush of triumph he couldn't quite shake. He just hoped that turning off the sentry lion hadn't triggered some alarms that would make exiting that way harder.\n\n\"You look happy,\" she said to him, and took half his ration bar.\n\n\"Help yourself,\" he said mildly. \"It's going to be a long day.\"\n\nShe gave him a narrow look, which he answered with a grin, and then it was too late to play question games, as their squad leader called them to order. Jess fell into line beside Glain. Squad Leader Rollison walked down the line and fixed them each with a direct yet impersonal stare.\n\n\"Good work yesterday,\" he said. \"So said the Artifex himself. We don't get to earn that praise again today, because today, the Artifex leaves the basilica and visits the Roman Senate, and we're staying here. The rest of our century arrived overnight and will be guarding the route and the Senate. Our job today is to keep the basilica safe, and, to that end, we'll be conducting roving patrols. Those of you who don't like sunshine, Burners, or those damned Roman lions, here's some happy news for you: we'll be staying inside. Those who were hoping for more glory today\u2014and I mean you, Brightwell\u2014you'll have to live with disappointment.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Jess said. \"I'll try to contain myself, sir.\"\n\nLucky. Too lucky. He sensed some hand behind yet another windfall of good fortune, but he didn't know where to look. Could be the Artifex, setting him\u2014setting all of them\u2014up for a disaster. Or, rather more unlikely, it could be a better angel looking out for them.\n\n\"Routes,\" Troll said, and all of them got out their Codices. He scribbled down a map and labeled their names on hallways, and it appeared in rapid, neat strokes on the page in Jess's Codex assigned for orders. Jess had been paired with Glain, which seemed natural enough; Troll would have recognized they worked well together.\n\nThe hall they'd been given to patrol ran the length of the first floor on the Forum side of the building. Jess remembered the maps he sketched out last night and the one that he'd drawn from Wolfe's Mesmer session, and stacked them one atop another in his mind to see the differences.\n\nWolfe's secret hall, the one that led from a concealed inner portal to the door that led down to the prisons, was on the other side of the wall from where they'd been assigned. Convenient, that. Too damned convenient. His feeling that they'd just so happened to be assigned here today and that they'd just so happened to be given a patrol so near to the secret prison entrance... it raised an itch on the back of his neck.\n\nBetter angels, or conniving demons. Something nipped at his heels.\n\nHe silently kitted up with the armored Library coat and his weapons, and found Glain\u2014of course\u2014ready before him. Rollison was checking off his squad as they left the room, and held out a hand to keep Glain and Jess back. They were the last out of the room.\n\nTroll turned to Glain and Jess, closed his Codex, and said, \"Follow me.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" Glain said, but complied. He didn't explain, just set off at a quick pace. They fell in behind him as he led the way through a maze of doors that finally ended in a blind storage area lined with shelves.\n\n\"What is this?\" Glain asked, and added only as an afterthought, \"Sir.\"\n\n\"It's where you wait,\" he said. \"Captain Santi and the others are coming. Don't worry, I'm\u2014 I can't say I'm one of you, but I've known Captain Santi a long time. He and my father were friends back in training. After my father died, he and Wolfe made sure I had a place to live, enough to eat. I owe him this much.\"\n\nHe turned to go. Glain grabbed his shoulder. \"Wait,\" she said. \"Do you know what\u2014\"\n\nTroll brushed her hand away with a move so smooth it almost seemed effortless. \"No. I don't want to know. It's a favor for a friend, and that's where it ends. When you're done here, make your patrols.\"\n\nHe left without a backward glance and shut the door. Glain frowned after him and said, \"Do you trust him?\"\n\n\"Do we have a choice?\" Jess leaned against the wall. \"I found the tunnel Dario talked about. It's clear all the way down. I could hear footsteps above, and they weren't from the basilica. They had to be from inside the prison.\"\n\n\"No guards?\"\n\n\"There was an automaton lion,\" he said. \"I took care of it.\" He tried to sound offhand about it.\n\n\"You what?\"\n\n\"Off switch,\" he said. \"I told you, I did it to a sphinx the night everything went wrong with Dario.\"\n\nShe thought about it and shuddered. \"That was a sphinx. I've seen the size of these lions. Not sure I'd have tried facing one down there in the dark. And you should have let me know what you were doing! If you hadn't come back...\"\n\nShe was right, of course. He should have left word. It had been a stupid risk; that fact had finally registered with the rising of the sun, and he could have disappeared without a trace into the dark, crushed and rotting beneath the prison. Worse than that, he could have destroyed any chance they had of finding Thomas. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Do it again and I'll kill what the automaton doesn't eat.\" She meant it\u2014or thought she did. Her Welsh lilt came out strong when she said it. He didn't have time to reply\u2014if he'd thought of anything to say to that\u2014because there was a noise beyond the door, and as they both turned that direction, it swung open.\n\nSanti. Khalila. Dario. Santi wore his uniform and carried a full pack and weapons. Khalila had opted for a dark gray dress with her robe thrown over the top and a head scarf, and carried a pack of her own. Dario was in plain, sturdy clothes and his Scholar's robe. They all looked tense.\n\n\"Someone tried to kill Captain Santi,\" Khalila blurted.\n\nGlain, who'd been about to speak, was stunned into silence, so Jess jumped in.\n\n\"What? How?\"\n\n\"Poison in the fruit in my room,\" he said. \"No way to know who put it there, but I think we can guess.\"\n\n\"The Artifex.\"\n\n\"He's done toying with us, and I think he'll close his trap now... He deliberately left us all behind while he went off to the Senate. We're out of time.\"\n\n\"But we didn't bring all our things,\" Khalila said. \"Can we go back for them?\"\n\n\"No. You can't. If you turn back, you stay behind. Are you staying?\"\n\n\"Don't rush us,\" Dario snapped. \"It's a big decision, you know, to turn our backs on our futures. Our families. Everything we've ever believed.\"\n\n\"No, it isn't,\" Khalila said, and took in a deep breath. \"We've been thinking about this for a long time, Dario. I thought we'd already decided where our loyalty had to lie. Mine is with them. Is yours?\"\n\n\"Sweet flower...\"\n\n\"Don't. If you want to go, just go. This isn't the time for your charm.\"\n\nDario studied her and then slowly nodded. \"All right,\" he said. \"All right. Yes. We go.\"\n\nSanti looked grim, and never more in command. \"We go. Now.\"\n\nThe timing is terrible, Jess thought; he had everything he would carry for a duty patrol, but no extras. The rest of his kit was still back stowed beneath his bunk. It will have to stay there. He'd abandoned more things than he'd kept in his life, anyway.\n\n\"The hallway Wolfe talked about is on the other side of the far wall, the one with the statues,\" Jess said. \"Probably some access. I'd guess behind the statues, through one of the alcoves.\"\n\n\"According to Wolfe, there will be guards and an Obscurist on duty in the Translation Chamber on the other side of the wall; Glain and I will take care of that. At the end of the hall, there's an automaton and a door. I have Greek fire for the automaton...\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"I can get us past it.\" Santi looked at him and frowned. Jess met his gaze and held it. \"I can, sir. We both know using Greek fire in a confined space is risky at best.\"\n\n\"All right.\" Santi didn't sound convinced. \"Jess will get us past the automaton. After that, the locked door.\" Jess nodded at that, too. \"And then we go down into the tunnel. There will be more automata. Three of them, according to Christopher. Two sphinxes and a Spartan. Can you disarm those as well?\"\n\n\"I can get the sphinxes,\" Jess said. \"I don't know about the Spartan, sir.\"\n\n\"That'll have to do. There are four High Garda on duty in the prison. If I know any of them, I'm going to try to save them, but if not... If not, we may have to fight. If it comes to that, let me, Glain, and Jess take the lead.\" He turned to Jess. \"You scouted the tunnel exit that Khalila and Dario discovered,\" Santi said. \"Is it clear?\"\n\n\"How did you know I\u2014\"\n\n\"I know you. Is it clear?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nSanti took in a breath. \"Then we go.\"\n\nAs simply as that, they were abandoning all they'd planned for their lives, all they'd worked toward. For Santi, it meant throwing away an entire career spent gathering honor and trust within the Library. For Glain, the destruction of a dream she'd held since childhood. For Khalila, a future so bright, Jess couldn't bear to think of snuffing it out. Even Dario was giving up something priceless.\n\nI'm the only one who has nothing much to lose, he thought. He'd already lost all the illusions that had brought him to this moment. What he had left now was just a hope that whatever came after this would prove to be better.\n\nOne by one, they nodded.\n\nAnd they headed for the hallway that Jess and Glain had been assigned to patrol.\n\n\"What about Wolfe?\" Jess asked. \"He's alone in Alexandria. Anything could happen to him there, especially once they know what we've done. He'll be executed.\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said. \"It's taken care of. Now spread out and find the entrance.\" He stepped up to the nearest statue\u2014the one of Minerva\u2014and felt around behind her in the alcove. Jess held back, letting his gaze move over the gods in succession... and settling on one in particular. Pluto. Roman god of the underworld.\n\nHe stepped up and felt behind, along the smooth plaster of the alcove. Nothing. But as he did, he braced himself on Pluto's marble arm, and it moved beneath the black toga the statue wore.\n\nThe alcove clicked open.\n\n\"Here,\" Jess said. \"Come on.\"\n\n\"Dario, bring up the rear. Keep watch,\" Santi said. He had his weapon ready, and, Jess realized, so did Glain. Jess quickly followed their lead and waited at the opening. \"Jess, go right and see to the automaton. Glain and I go left. Dario, Khalila, stay here until we signal.\"\n\nJess ducked through and immediately turned right. The hallway was just as Wolfe had described it in his Mesmeric trance\u2014a long, straight run with windows that overlooked the Forum. Not glass, certainly, because that would make them easy targets for vandals or Burners. These would be made of something harder and unbreakable. No use giving a desperate captive the chance to throw himself out and escape, either.\n\nJess heard the lion's rumbling growl before he'd taken three running steps in its direction and slowed to a fast walk. The lion wasn't waiting for him; it was pacing toward him, the cabled length of its tail twitching side to side and slamming into walls and windows. It left gouges where it hit. The creature was a big thing, the same size as the one he'd faced down in the tunnels. Seeing it coming at him in harsh daylight was chilling indeed.\n\nYou know this. You can do this. The problem was that this lion was in motion, and very probably about to break into a run; it didn't have the same confusion the one in the tunnel had shown, and it was not undecided about the situation. It had been built to respond to intruders, no matter what uniforms they wore.\n\nJess broke into a run again, closing the distance fast, and ten steps from it, he threw himself into a slide on the slick marble floor. The lion, confused, tried to slow, but momentum wouldn't allow it to check so quickly. Jess slid right underneath its open jaws, which hit the floor with a heavy clang just as his head cleared the space, and grabbed one of the thick metal legs to stop his slide. At the same time, he reached up for the depression beneath the lion's jaw, found it, and pressed as hard as he could.\n\nHe heard the roar that had been building inside the thing skew to a strange whining noise and die. The lion took another step forward and froze.\n\nJess pushed himself out from behind it and cut his arm on the tail when he grabbed hold to stand up; the barbed end of it, he realized, was razor sharp. Even standing still, the thing was capable of harm.\n\nThe door lay just beyond\u2014locked, as Wolfe had said. Jess never left without his handy set of picklocks\u2014the lesson of a devious childhood\u2014and pulled them out of the pack and set to work as quickly as he could. He heard the sounds of fighting behind him. Wolfe and Glain must have met with resistance.\n\nHe'd just pushed the last tumbler in the lock when Khalila dropped down beside him and said, \"How can I help?\"\n\n\"You can get out of the light,\" he said. \"Are they coming?\"\n\n\"Yes. Dario went to help them.\" She stood up and looked back over the lion's shoulder. \"How did you know to do this?\"\n\n\"What, lock picking? Comes naturally. I'm a criminal, remember?\"\n\n\"I meant the lion, Jess.\" She was waving now, giving urgent hurry signals. \"Get the door open\u2014they're coming!\"\n\nThey were. He heard the footsteps. Glain, ever the athlete, chose to throw herself under the lion, as Jess had, and slid neatly through, then rolled back to her feet and leaned on the still metallic body to aim her weapon back down the hallway. She fired, and Jess recognized the sound: stunning rounds, not lethal. She didn't intend to kill her fellow High Garda soldiers, no matter what their orders might be.\n\nDario came next, and behind him... behind him came Santi, and... Scholar Wolfe. Wolfe, like Dario, wore Scholar's robes, and his shoulder-length hair had been tied back in a tight knot. \"Wolfe?\" Jess spared a precious, astonished second to stare at him. Khalila jabbed him in the shoulder to remind him to keep working. \"How did he get here?\"\n\n\"Translation,\" she said. \"Santi wouldn't leave him alone in Alexandria. That would have been a death sentence. Jess, are you sure you can\u2014\"\n\n\"Got it,\" Jess said, as the last tumbler clicked and fell away. \"Is he all right to be here, do you think? Wolfe?\" He couldn't shake the memory of Wolfe's swallowed screams as the Mesmer tried to calm him. Whatever was buried under that calm, Elsinore Quest had been right: it was poisonous and powerful. Must have been hard to keep it locked away.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Khalila admitted, as Jess rose and pulled on the door's handle. \"I can't imagine how it would feel to... go down there. But it's Wolfe. We can't leave him behind for the Archivist, can we?\"\n\nShe was right. They were all in it together and would rise or fall together. And Santi was staying close to Wolfe, only a step or two away, as if well aware of the risks.\n\nJess slammed the metal door back against the wall and took the lead, heading down a ramp into the dark. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there were lights, just low ones that blazed brighter as he approached\u2014sensing his presence somehow. There'll be three more automata, he remembered. The Alexandrian sphinxes would be smaller than the lions, though no less dangerous. The Spartan...\n\nHe didn't know what to do about the Spartan.\n\nThe tunnel twisted to the left, and he looked back before he took the turn. Khalila and Glain were behind him, then Dario and Wolfe with Santi. As Jess turned the curving corner, he saw steps going down. The smooth plaster of the walls gave way to old Roman stone. The lights continued to brighten around them, and Jess moved as fast as he could.\n\nA High Garda soldier stepped out into his path, and Jess prepared to shoot, but Santi put a hand on his shoulder. \"No,\" he said. \"Sergeant Reynolds?\"\n\nThe soldier lowered his weapon\u2014not completely, just enough to ease Jess's mind a little. \"Captain Santi? Sir, you're not supposed to be here.\"\n\n\"Let me pass.\"\n\n\"I can't do that, sir.\"\n\nGlain shot him. It was a quick, economical movement, and the stun round dropped the man to his knees. A second put him completely down. Santi checked the man's pulse and nodded. He wasn't happy, but Glain had done the right thing. Talking would get them killed.\n\nThe second soldier who came rushing in fired. Glain shot back, but he was wearing armor, and the stunning shot had no effect.\n\nJess had his weapon set to full strength and fired. He put two rounds into the armor, which was enough to knock the man down and unconscious, but\u2014he hoped\u2014not enough to kill.\n\nA chorus of high-pitched shrieks split the air. There was another blind corner ahead, and beyond it would be the cells... and the sphinxes were between them and Thomas. Two of them. How do I stop two of them at once? It seemed impossible now that he was here, listening to the screams coming closer.\n\n\"Khalila,\" he said. \"When the sphinx comes, there's a depression underneath the jaw, behind the pharaoh's beard. You need to press it. They should hesitate, seeing you in a Scholar's robe and a gold band. I'll get the other one.\"\n\nShe stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes for an instant, then nodded. No discussion, no questions. She stood beside him, ready, as the two sphinxes rounded the corner together, loping out of rhythm with each other but with the same deadly grace. The one making for Jess screamed again and bared needle teeth, but the one on Khalila's side of the hallway seemed confused. She held her hand up to show her gold band. It slowed, cocking its inhuman head.\n\nJess feinted to his left, and when the sphinx on his side lunged, he jammed his gun crosswise into the fearsome jaws. One of the paws swiped for him, and he heard Glain shout a warning even as he twisted to avoid it. He didn't dare risk a glance at Khalila. This sphinx wasn't going to hesitate to kill him, and he didn't dare take even a second of attention away. It moved like a snake, like something unnaturally fluid, and his sweaty fingers slipped as he tried for the switch beneath the jaw. He missed, ducked a swipe, and heard metal crunching as the sphinx bit down on the gun. He tried for the switch again and got knocked off balance by a metallic head butt hard enough to send him flying backward. A massive paw armed with razor claws raked a path through the floor where he'd been. He hit, rolled off the wall, and came back low and fast.\n\nThis time, he flung himself around with one arm over the lion's head and swung onto the beast's back. The heat coming from it at this angle felt intense even through the layers of his uniform, but he ignored that, ignored the blood dripping from fingers that had grazed sharp claws on the way up, and wrapped both arms around the thing's neck as it reared to try to throw him off. When it crashed down to four paws again, the mangled gun fell from the sharp-toothed mouth, and the sphinx's head whipped around at an impossible angle to bite.\n\nHe got to the switch, somehow, just before it sank those teeth into his neck.\n\nAs he slid down, leaving the sphinx frozen in that unnatural, twisted position, he realized that Khalila's sphinx was equally still... in a crouch, at her feet, like a particularly dangerous pet.\n\n\"Maybe I should let you do this from now on,\" he said with a grin that felt half-mad, and she let out a laugh at least as uncontrolled. \"We've still got one soldier and a Spartan to deal with. Reinforcements will come.\"\n\n\"Then we should hurry.\"\n\nThat was a new voice coming from behind them, and as Jess turned, he saw Glain and Santi had beaten him to it with impressive speed. They leveled weapons at the newcomer making her way down the steps, and Santi lowered his weapon first.\n\nMorgan.\n\nGlain said, \"It can't be. How in Hades did you...\"\n\nMorgan smiled, but it wasn't for Glain at all. She was looking through the rest of them, straight to Jess, and the smile was for him.\n\n\"I brought what I could,\" she said. \"But we have to go quickly. I disabled the Translation Chamber to keep reinforcements from coming through from Alexandria, but Captain Santi's troops will respond soon, and we don't want to have to kill anyone.\"\n\n\"Morgan?\" Khalila said, and then repeated it with more force. \"Morgan!\" She rushed to her and clasped her in an embrace\u2014one that the English girl returned full force. \"I didn't think you could leave the Iron Tower!\"\n\n\"That's a story for later,\" Morgan said. Jess couldn't take his eyes from her. How is she here? The Translation Chamber, obviously, but... It hit him then that the collar around her neck was gone.\n\nShe was free. Free. Just as she'd said she'd be.\n\nHe couldn't quite believe his eyes, until she pushed past the others and wrapped her arms around him, and then he had to believe it\u2014her familiar, remembered warmth, the scent of her hair, her skin. It felt right, having her in his embrace again.\n\nDario, of course, was the one to say, \"Not that I'm not delighted to see you, too, Morgan, but can the welcomes wait? We're on a schedule.\"\n\nHe was right, of course, and Jess stepped away. Not without regret.\n\nGlain wasn't smiling. She was watching Morgan with cool, assessing eyes, and now she said, \"This is strangely opportune timing. I thought it was impossible to escape the Iron Tower.\"\n\n\"That's what they want us to believe,\" Morgan said. \"There are several ways, actually, but getting the collar off was half the battle. I've spent months searching for a way to get out and stay out. When I found it, I waited until Scholar Wolfe made his move to join you. So the timing is exact. Not opportune.\"\n\n\"You can understand her doubts,\" Dario said, which was weaselly of him, sympathizing while still not agreeing. \"We haven't seen you since you were driven off by the Obscurist Magnus, apparently never to be seen again. One thing we know about the Library: it's fully capable of turning us against each other.\"\n\n\"You think you can't trust me?\" Morgan's face set hard and she returned Glain's stare, not Dario's. \"While you were being pampered and groomed, free to do as you liked, I was locked away. You have no idea where I've been.\" She touched the skin at her throat: too pale, from long months of being circled by the collar. But the collar was gone. \"I left my chains back in the Tower. And I'm not going back. If you don't think you can trust me, fine\u2014I'll go my own way. But I'm not leaving until I see all of you safely out of here.\"\n\nJess silently moved to her side, because suddenly there were sides, and at the very worst time. It lasted only a second, a terrible second, because Santi snapped, \"No time for this. We trust her because we have to trust her. Now go.\"\n\nHe moved past them, and Glain went with him. Dario and Khalila were next, with Wolfe, who was also\u2014to Jess's slight surprise\u2014armed. The gun blended in with his black robes.\n\nHe seemed to falter a little, as if the memories had overwhelmed him. Morgan held out her hand to him. Wolfe looked at it as if he'd never seen such a thing and walked on.\n\n\"Well,\" she said, \"he's not changed at all.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" Jess said. \"Dario's right. There's still Thomas to find.\"\n\n\"I was so worried you'd move faster than I could and I'd be too late,\" she said, and her grip on his hand grew stronger. Almost painful. \"I knew you'd left Alexandria. I was afraid\u2014afraid something terrible would happen to you.\"\n\n\"To me?\" He forced a smile he didn't quite feel. \"Nothing ever happens to me.\"\n\n\"Oh, I remember you collapsing with a wound that almost killed you after Oxford. You don't fool me.\"\n\n\"Shh.\" He'd heard a scrape, and his instincts had spiked hard enough to hurt. There was a blind corner just ahead, and Wolfe was already passing the turn.\n\nThe noise had come from behind them.\n\nJess pushed Morgan ahead of him, toward Wolfe, and\u2014though he'd sworn seconds ago he never would\u2014let go of her hand. His shove sent her stumbling into the wall at the corner, and she turned back with a surprised expression that turned to horror, and Jess knew.\n\nHe did the only thing he could: he threw himself hard to the side, into the old stone wall, and a sharp-tipped bronze spear stabbed hard down into the floor where he'd been standing.\n\nThe Spartan automaton pulled the spear back with economical grace, turned its head, and the red eyes blazed at Jess from a distance of only an arm's length away. This was no sphinx, no lion; it was in the form of a man, muscled and lean. Upright.\n\nIt slammed its left forearm toward him, and Jess ducked. He didn't quite move fast enough, and the blow that grazed the top of his head made the world go soft and strange. Not pain, exactly, but he knew it was there somewhere, floating like a cloud that hadn't quite rained yet.\n\n\"Jess!\" Morgan's scream pierced the fog like the Lighthouse's focused beam, and he scrambled out of the way as the Spartan thrust down again. The spear tore through the leg of his uniform trousers and grazed his flesh; he felt skin part, but again, no pain. The spear's tip was too sharp to hurt, like a Medica's scalpel. He was seconds from dying and he knew it. All he could do was scramble and try to estimate where an engineer, a good engineer like Thomas, would have placed the safety switch for this particular design. He didn't know. It looked like a man, taller and broader and faster than a man. The face under the Spartan helmet was unmoving, as uncaring as any beast. It won't bite, at least, he thought. The mouth was half-hidden under the helmet...\n\nThe helmet? No, too high up. He'd never reach it. If he tried any approach from the front, he'd be killed before he could even try a switch, if one even existed in a spot he could find.\n\nHe was going to die. Maybe he'd known that from the first moment he'd seen the Spartan automaton on the High Garda grounds. He remembered feeling a shiver of premonition about it.\n\nHis brain was racing like a river in full flood, uncontrollable in its search for some way to survive. It directed his body without conscious thought, rolling, diving, scrambling on all fours like a crab, and when the Spartan lifted one sandaled foot to crush him, he remembered something.\n\nSomething from a favorite book he'd read a dozen times as a child. Talos, the bronze titan who fought Jason and his men aboard the Argo. A metal man who could not be hurt, could not be defeated.\n\nTalos had been stopped by the removal of a plug at his heel, which had drained away the vital fluid that moved him. So the story went.\n\nThe engineers who'd designed the Spartan had read the same stories, dreamed the same dreams.\n\nJess hit the ground behind the Spartan and reached out blindly for the backs of the statue's legs with both hands, sliding fingers down the unnaturally warm bronze. It twisted around, shifting position to spear him like a fish. He saw the head tilting down toward him. The spear lifting.\n\nHis hand found a slight depression in the metal of the automaton's heel on the left side, and he pressed in with his thumb and rolled aside, gasping for breath, hoping he'd not just killed himself.\n\nIt was just as well he moved, because the Spartan retained enough power to bring the spear down one last time, hard enough to pierce the stone where Jess had been lying. It would have pierced his skull just as easily. He heard the whine of the gears inside grinding to a stop, the springs unwinding, and felt a surge of weakness that nearly put him down flat again. Then he felt giddy. He'd just become the world's foremost criminal expert in stopping Library automata. That was worth something on the open market, surely.\n\n\"You're bleeding,\" Morgan said, and reached down a hand. He checked the floor around him, and, yes, he was, but not badly. A rain, not a flood. He grabbed hold and let her haul him to his feet, and then hung on to her for steadiness as the hallway rocked and spun around them. \"Can you walk, Jess?\"\n\n\"I can walk.\" He wasn't sure, but it was something to aspire to. \"I'm all right.\" He wasn't. Definitely wasn't. \"Let go.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, and there was no arguing with the way she said it. \"Why is it that you're always hurt when I find you? Is that my fault?\"\n\nHe wanted to laugh, but the fog was clearing, and in its place pain had taken up a steady, red throb. Laughter would split his skull in two. \"We need to find Thomas.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Morgan said, and her strong arm around his waist helped him find his balance again. \"Come on.\"\n\nThe third High Garda soldier they'd expected was down by the time Jess and Morgan arrived. Santi glanced at them, but then his gaze locked on Jess and the blood. \"Are you all right?\" It was only half concern. The other half of the question had to do with the viability of their escape if he wasn't.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" Jess said, though he knew he wasn't. \"I won't hold you back.\"\n\n\"Stop chattering,\" Wolfe said, his tone as cold and bitter as winter. \"Jess. Locks.\"\n\nFor a blank second, Jess didn't understand his order, and then he fumbled for his picklocks and moved past the men to the door of the cell.\n\n\"Jess,\" said a quiet voice from beyond the bars. It sounded rough and strange, somehow familiar, and when he finally looked straight into the cell, he saw his best friend, Thomas Schreiber, sitting on the floor of the stone room. He was shackled to a metal ring in the wall. The big, young man had lost weight, which somehow made him seem larger without that comfortable layer of padding. He no longer looked as young and innocent as Jess remembered. He'd grown a beard, and his hair was a matted mess down to his shoulders. He was dressed in a plain oatmeal-colored shirt and trousers that were much worse for wear.\n\nJess wrapped his hands around the bars, partly to keep himself from falling as dizziness hit him, and said, \"Got yourself in a mess, haven't you, Thomas?\"\n\n\"Jess,\" Thomas whispered. Even with the beard, the hair, the changes in him, his smile remained gentle and kind. His eyes had an odd shine to them, and it took Jess a moment to realize it was tears. \"They took our machine. They destroyed it.\"\n\n\"Never mind. You can build another,\" Jess said. His throat felt tight and his eyes burned until he blinked his own tears away. No time for that nonsense now. \"Let's get you out of there.\"\n\nHe bent to the lock, but his fingers felt clumsy and his reasoning felt suspiciously slow. I have to do this, he thought. I have to get him out.\n\nAnd then Khalila tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a ring of keys. \"From the last guard,\" she said.\n\nMaybe I do have a cracked skull, he thought, and almost laughed. Three tries before he slid the key into the lock, and then the catch clicked open with a crisp sound that seemed to echo around the stones. Jess heard his friends letting out held breaths, and grinned despite the ache in his head and shoulder. He swung the door open and rushed in to kneel next to Thomas.\n\nHe had to pause, because Thomas was looking down at him, holding out his shackled hand. \"It's good to see you, Jess,\" Thomas said, and his voice faltered. It sounded different now. Tears blurred his eyes. \"Mein Gott, I thought\u2014I never thought you'd really come. I didn't think any of you knew. They told me...\"\n\nHis voice faded away. Jess ignored the hand and grabbed him into a hard, fast hug. Best Thomas couldn't see his face. Then he went back to the work of freeing him from the chains.\n\nScholar Wolfe was still outside the bars, and Jess realized he probably couldn't bear the idea of stepping inside ever again. Wolfe said, \"They told you we were all dead, didn't they?\"\n\nJess felt Thomas nod wearily, and blotted moisture from his eyes with the back of his sleeve as he worked the stubborn lock. Until this moment, he'd thought of Thomas in the abstract, just as he'd last seen him. Unchanged. Seeing what they'd made of him brought things home in ways imagination couldn't.\n\n\"They described it,\" Thomas said. \"For every one of you. How you died. I tried not to believe it, but... but it's hard not to here. This becomes all you know.\"\n\n\"They lie.\" Wolfe's voice sounded low and silky, dark as midnight. \"It's their favorite tactic\u2014I know it well\u2014to break your mind and your spirit. I'm sorry it took so long to get to you.\"\n\n\"If we'd tried to come earlier, the lies might well have become true,\" Santi said, just as Jess clicked the last shackle open. He winced when he saw how raw Thomas's ankle was beneath.\n\n\"Can you walk?\" Jess asked. Thomas, for answer, stood up. And even though Jess knew how tall his friend was, it surprised him to see him towering over them again.\n\n\"Of course,\" Thomas said, and then tried to take a step and had to grab Jess for balance. \"Slowly.\"\n\nSanti's expression didn't change, but it was clear slowly wasn't an answer he wanted to hear in strategic terms. Their time was running out fast. \"Then let's go,\" he said. \"As fast as we can.\"\n\n\"Wait!\" Thomas turned to look at the walls of his room, and for the first time, Jess realized they were densely covered with small, scratched drawings in Thomas's precise hand. Machines. Automata. He'd drawn what looked like one of the Roman lions, then drawn it as if it had exploded into pieces, each one shown in context with the skeletal frame. \"I need to remember these! I have to remember. I didn't have anything else to work with\u2014they wouldn't give me any paper...\"\n\n\"No time, Thomas. We need to move,\" Glain said. \"They're coming.\" There was a note of tension in her voice that convinced Jess instantly, and he pulled Thomas toward the door. There would be no moving the young man if he really wanted to resist, but Thomas went, although reluctantly, still turned to memorize his drawings. Once out of the cell, though, Thomas turned to the front, put his back against the bars, and sucked down a deep, trembling breath, as though for the first time it was dawning on him that they were here, it was not a dream, and he was actually free.\n\nAll of Jess's pulling wouldn't move him.\n\n\"Thomas?\" He kept his voice quiet, firm, and calm. \"We can't stop here. The Garda are coming, and they will put us all in those cells. We have to go.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Thomas said. He closed his eyes and then opened them, and they'd taken on a blind, hard shine. \"It isn't an illusion, is it? You're here. This is real.\"\n\n\"Yes. It's real.\"\n\nThomas was silently weeping, and Jess wanted to hurt someone responsible for that. Badly.\n\n\"Keep going,\" Jess called to Santi, who was taking the lead with Glain. \"There's a round metal plate in the floor that used to be a drain. Find it and burn through. That puts us in the sewer underneath. I've marked the way for once we're down there. Oh, and there's a lion. I hope it's still stopped. I took care of it last night.\" Strange that it seemed the least of their worries at the moment.\n\n\"Another one?\" Khalila turned, eyes wide. \"How long have you known how to do that?\"\n\n\"Since the night Dario almost got me killed at Alexander's tomb,\" he said. \"Ask him.\"\n\nShe whipped around to do just that, but Dario held up his hand to stop her. \"Later, desert flower, for mercy's sake,\" Dario said before she could begin the interrogation. \"I know your curiosity is stronger than your sense of self-preservation, but I still don't know how he did it, by the way. I ran for my life like any sensible person.\"\n\n\"Jess didn't run!\"\n\n\"And that proves my point.\"\n\nWolfe turned on them in a storm of black robes and bitter, angry eyes. He was, Jess thought, all but shattering down here, in this place where he couldn't shut out the memories of his time behind these bars. \"Do you think this is a game?\"\n\nEven Dario fell silent at the vicious tone and, more than that, the way Wolfe's voice broke in the middle. He was trembling. Sweat shone hot on his face, though it was cave-cool down here. Santi\u2014still on alert\u2014reached back and put a hand on his arm, and Wolfe dragged in a tortured breath and nodded.\n\n\"Are there others?\" Jess asked Thomas. \"More prisoners here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said quietly. He was watching Wolfe as if he understood him perfectly. As if he was watching himself. \"A few. Most don't stay long. They\u2014they're taken away.\"\n\n\"Released?\" Morgan asked.\n\nThomas shook his head. Jess didn't want to ask any more.\n\nThey were hurrying along now and keeping their voices low. Jess heard nothing behind them yet, but he was sure pursuit would be coming fast. The prison was larger than he'd thought and stretched in a long, straight hallway of cells, some occupied, and he couldn't look inside, couldn't, for fear he'd see the face of someone he knew staring out. Khalila had, just ahead of him. She'd stopped, grabbed the bars of a cell, and was looking inside. When she turned to Jess, her eyes were blind with tears. \"We have to let them out,\" she said. \"Please. Help\u2014\"\n\nHe took out the keys, but his hands were trembling. Nearly useless. Focus, he told himself, but he wasn't sure he could. It was all too much, too fast. Dario silently took the keys and tried them, one after another. The desperate person behind the bars didn't seem to care. It was impossible for Jess to tell the gender or age; it was just a dark shape huddled in a corner against the wall, chained as Thomas had been.\n\nThe keys didn't work.\n\n\"Maybe they're on one of the other guards. I'll get them,\" Dario said, and went back the way they'd come. He didn't get far before he reversed course and came back fast. \"No time,\" he said. \"They're coming. Go. Go!\"\n\n\"But\u2014\" Khalila looked absolutely tormented. Dario took her by the arms and pulled her away from the cell. \"No, we can't\u2014\"\n\n\"We must.\" He held on when she tried to yank away. \"Khalila. Querida. Look at me. We can't help them if we're all dead!\"\n\nHe was right. It hurt, and he was right, and Jess finally dared to look into the cell, into the face of the one they were leaving behind.\n\nHe didn't know the man. That was a terrible relief, and then a terrible guilt, too. \"I'm sorry,\" he said, and helped Thomas as they followed Dario and Khalila down the hall.\n\nHe didn't look in any of the other cells. Wasn't sure he could stand it.\n\nThe left turn ahead dumped them into a large, circular room with age-scrubbed frescoes on the walls. It was lined with... What were these things? Mechanical devices. Jess tried not to think what they were intended to do, but the spikes, straps, wheels, gears made it all too evident once he focused on the evil things.\n\nIt was a torture chamber.\n\nThere were no exits.\n\nJess froze for a moment, thinking, What did I just do? But then he pushed past the others into the center of the room. This was the right place; he knew it was. This chamber was a perfect round replica of the one below their feet, off the sewers. But there was no sign of any metal plate in the floor.\n\nIt has to be here, he thought, and pushed aside the thudding headache to concentrate. His eyes fixed on a device in the middle of the room.\n\n\"Here! Move this!\" he said, and pushed at a particularly large construction that looked like a bed, but with gears and ropes and straps stained with old blood. The stench of it\u2014of the whole room\u2014made his throat close up, but he gritted his teeth and shoved, and Santi and Dario joined him. The machine moved with a long, agonizing screech of metal on metal\u2014because it had been partially blocking the round metal plate set in the center of the floor. The plate was stamped with the screaming face of a monster with snakes for hair\u2014a Gorgon. Ancient work. It had been sealed for a very long time.\n\nSanti removed the Codex from his belt and\u2014to Jess's surprise\u2014dropped it on the ground before he took a sealed, padded bottle from his pack and said, \"Leave your Codices here. Stand back.\"\n\nJess hadn't thought of it, but Santi was right, of course; the Codex that was so familiar a tool to him could be used against them. It could be tracked, couldn't it? The Archivist would have Obscurists on it in moments. Morgan had already dropped hers, and so had Wolfe. Jess put his down on the floor, obscurely careful about it, and watched as Glain did the same. It took Khalila and Dario far longer to decide to let go of this last tangible symbol of the Library; Khalila put hers down reverently, as if it might break, and whispered something that sounded to him like a prayer as she pressed her fingertips to the cover.\n\nThen Santi opened the bottle and poured the thick greenish contents over the stack of books. They flared up into a brilliant pyre, and Jess pulled Thomas and Morgan back from the billowing toxic smoke. We're Burners, Jess thought, stricken. Now we're Burners.\n\nThrough the hanging pall of smoke, as he started to cough, he saw Santi take out two more bottles and pour them over the Gorgon face of the metal plate. This time it didn't burn; it bubbled as it distorted the Gorgon's snarl into a slack-mouthed scream, and then hissed and melted it away altogether. The plate was thick, but the chemicals would do the job... if they had time.\n\nJess heard sounds from the hallway. He moved toward the opening, and what started as distant running footsteps rapidly came closer. They were still in the other corridor, fast approaching the sharp corner. He exchanged a look with Glain, and without a word spoken, they moved to take up positions. He was, by common consent, the better shot, and before anyone appeared at the intersection, let loose a short burst of lethal projectile fire that chewed head-high holes in the old stonework. An explicit warning to the troops around the corner. In the next second, before the echoes died, he switched the weapon back to a stun setting\u2014enough to put someone down, he hoped, if he scored a good shot. From his angle, he'd get the first pick of targets, and Glain would clean up.\n\nThe first man to the corner was Blue Squad leader Rollison. Troll threw himself into the opening with fearless disregard for his own safety, maybe hoping that Jess would hesitate to fire, but Jess didn't: he planted his shot precisely on target, into the armor just above Troll's stomach. It would, he vividly remembered, knock the wind right out of a man.\n\nTroll dropped like a suit of empty clothes, mouth open as he gagged for air. Glain got the next soldier to appear, Jess the third. The rest hesitated and dragged their injured comrades back to cover.\n\n\"We're through,\" Santi said from behind them. \"Glain, get down to the next level. Go. Now.\"\n\n\"I'd rather hold this position, sir.\"\n\n\"I need you to be sure our escape route's secure. Take Wolfe with you and don't let him resist.\"\n\nBefore either of them could protest, Santi walked right past them into the opening. Into the hallway. Glain hesitated, then\u2014as she would, being Glain\u2014followed orders, grabbing Wolfe and pushing him toward the open dark hole in the floor.\n\nJess took in a deep breath and focused on Santi, who was putting his own life on the line to buy time. He raised his weapon to provide what cover he could, though if anyone on the other end decided to rain fire, Santi wouldn't survive.\n\nCaptain Santi strode halfway down the hall and called out, \"Zara?\"\n\nThere was a short silence, and then Santi's lieutenant\u2014the green-eyed woman\u2014stepped around to face him, with her gun pointed squarely at his chest. \"Sir,\" she said. \"What do you think you're doing?\"\n\n\"You know what I'm doing. You saw the cells. Don't tell me you agree with what they do here. What we do here. The Library is us. We allow this to happen, Zara.\"\n\n\"Whether I agree with it or not, I can't let you take prisoners out of custody! There are ways we can make protests. Channels for\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you really think that the people who made this place care about protests or channels or laws? Come here and look, Zara. Look at what they do.\"\n\nThe woman didn't answer. She stared at Santi for a long moment, and Jess couldn't tell what she was thinking. Not at all.\n\nThen she said, \"Nic, please. Don't make me do this. We can make a story that you were forced into helping them. I don't know, but we'll make something work. You can't throw away your career. Your life! I know this is\u2014it looks bad. But it can be fixed. It will be fixed!\"\n\n\"It won't,\" he told her. \"I'm sorry. They'd never believe I didn't know what I was doing. And I did know. I went into this knowing full well how it would go.\" Santi's voice was gentle but firm. \"Zara, I'm not asking you to join me. I'm just asking you to come with me and look. If you don't agree once you've seen what is in this room, then shoot.\"\n\nShe blinked slowly, looking at him, then at the troops surely queued up behind her, just around the corner. \"I'm going with him,\" she said. \"Give me one minute. If I don't return, shoot to kill. Is that understood? They may be wearing Scholar's robes, but they are traitors to the Library. No mercy.\"\n\n\"Sir.\" The echoing voices sounded dark and sure. Wolfe and Glain were already gone, as was Morgan. Dario and Khalila were helping Thomas through the opening and struggling with his weight. He dropped out of sight. Dario quickly gestured at Khalila to follow, and she let him take her hands and lower her down. With one last glance at Jess\u2014Almost an apology, Jess thought\u2014Dario jumped through and disappeared.\n\nSanti walked his lieutenant down the hall toward Jess. \"I don't want to fight my own people,\" he said. \"No more than you want to fight me.\"\n\n\"Why are you doing this? Just tell me that.\"\n\n\"Just look.\"\n\nSanti walked her into the round room filled with machines\u2014machines built to cut, to tear, to pull, to cause suffering and anguish. There was no other use for them. The stained walls and floor told the story without any words. The smell of pain and blood and despair was louder than screams.\n\nZara stopped in her tracks. She stared at the room, the gruesome equipment, the floor... and then back at Santi. She started to speak, then shook her head.\n\n\"Christopher was here,\" Santi said. \"He was here. Do you understand now? This is what they don't tell us. This is who we serve. Who those people have made us.\"\n\n\"No. It's not\u2014\" She took in a trembling breath. \"Someone has to keep order,\" she said. \"Our hands aren't clean, either.\"\n\n\"The High Garda fights wars; we don't torture the innocent or the guilty. This is what they made us into. I'm asking you to say you arrived too late to stop us, Zara. That's all I'm asking.\"\n\nThe woman stood very still, looking at the room, hearing the silent screams trapped here, and Jess saw tears glitter in her eyes.\n\nThen she lifted her gun and trained it directly on Captain Santi. From where Jess stood, he couldn't tell if she had set it for lethal force or stun, but the look in her eyes said she meant to kill. \"Surrender now, and maybe the Archivist will show you mercy.\"\n\n\"Mercy?\" Santi's voice was as dark as the dried blood on the walls. \"Look around. Does it appear to you the Library has an abundance of that? Shoot me. You'll have to, to stop me.\"\n\nShe would, Jess realized. She wasn't like Santi. Like Jess.\n\nShe couldn't admit her world was a lie and everything she'd done had been in the service of something dark.\n\nJess fired, but he was too late. She fired at exactly the same moment his bullet hit her armor.\n\nZara and Santi fell at the same time."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Pharaoh Ptolemy II to the Archivist Callimachus, in the time of his reign, long may his name be known:\n\n\u2002From the scribe of Pharaoh Ptolemy II, to his most excellent servant Callimachus, Archivist of the Great Library, in the twelfth year of his glorious reign:\n\n\u2002Great King Ptolemy, Light of Egypt, has wishes to endow you with his great wisdom on the subject of the loyalty of the Great Library, this sacred endeavor, to the throne of Egypt, as has been blessed by the gods from the first rays of dawn on the eternal Nile.\n\n\u2002It is his wisdom that always must the Library exist to cast glory upon Egypt and the pharaoh, and any thought that the Library shall be a power unto itself is a dangerous and heretical whisper that must be crushed out.\n\n\u2002Knowledge is not a pure goal. All that you gather together shall lift the pharaoh, sacred be his duty to the gods and the people of Egypt.\n\n\u2002So speaks he, in his great and divine wisdom.\n\n\u2002A notation to this document from Archivist Callimachus, sent to the Scholars of the Great Library\n\n\u2002A great decision is now upon us. Will we be nothing but a mirror for Pharaoh to gaze into, to see himself as beautiful and powerful? Or do we follow our truest calling, that of benefit for all who seek to learn, and gather up this knowledge in the name of the seekers, the scholars, the teachers, the students? Is what we do nothing but a prop for a king, or is it a lever by which we move the world?\n\n\u2002It falls to us to decide this. It will be difficult. It will be dangerous. Pharaoh has power and strength, and if we declare ourselves independent from his power, we must defend that independence with our blood. More, we must seek that same hard course of independence from every kingdom, every philosophy, every religion that would take us as its own prop, its own polished mirror in which to gaze.\n\n\u2002I say, let us throw the bones and see what fortune brings us. Knowledge is power, so they say.\n\n\u2002If so, then we have more than any king."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "He's dead, Jess thought, and felt a wave of sick horror. My fault. She'd been aiming for a killing shot, and he should have been, too. He'd tried to save her, and she'd killed Captain Santi...\n\nAnd then Santi pulled in a long, ragged breath. He gasped for air as the flexible armor in the center of his chest smoked, damaged by the shot. But it was over the plate. It had protected him.\n\nShe must have chosen her target as carefully as Jess had.\n\nZara still breathed, but his own shot had knocked her completely unconscious. Wouldn't last long. They'd have to move fast; the clock was ticking down for her soldiers as well.\n\nJess grabbed Santi's arm and dragged him to the hole, yelled, \"Catch him,\" and slid the captain through feetfirst. Then he gritted his teeth, got on the other side of the torture device that had been blocking the hole, and shoved with all his might. It grated a few inches\u2014enough to disguise the opening, at least for a few moments. There was just enough of a gap left for him to skin through, if he didn't mind the scrapes.\n\nJess sucked in his breath and wriggled down just as he heard the other soldiers yelling for the lieutenant. He landed hard\u2014no one caught him\u2014and rolled right into the metal bulk of the lion still blocking the tunnel.\n\nIt was still stopped, thank all the old and new gods.\n\nDario yanked him to his feet. \"Move!\" Dario said, and squeezed by the frozen automaton lion. Just beyond, Glain and Wolfe were holding Santi upright and Khalila was helping Thomas, nearly buckling under his weight. Jess hurried over to help. Glain had used one of the portable lights from her pack and they all glowed an unearthly yellow-green. In that light, Thomas looked like a corpse newly risen from the grave.\n\nSanti looked almost as bad, but he was moving on his own, clumsily.\n\n\"You were supposed to watch out for him,\" Wolfe said to Jess with a poisonously angry glare.\n\n\"I did,\" he snapped back. \"Come on. This way. Thomas, can you make it?\"\n\n\"I will have to,\" Thomas said. \"Did you shoot someone?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Was that in the plan?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"We're well off the plan now,\" Glain said. \"And we've got no map to guide us.\"\n\nShe didn't mean the path; that was distinct. Jess's markers were still clearly visible. She meant the soldiers on their trail, and the hue and cry that was sure to run faster than they could. Zara would wake up soon, and if they hadn't already discovered their way out, she'd tell them where to look.\n\n\"We need a diversion,\" Jess said.\n\n\"We need an army,\" Glain corrected. \"And last I looked, we're about a hundred short of even a small one.\"\n\n\"Shut up and run,\" Dario told her as he replaced Glain on Santi's left side. \"You haven't changed at all. Still a gloomy girl with a bitter disposition. Cheer up\u2014we're together again!\"\n\nIf he hadn't been wearing Scholar's robes, she probably would have flattened him for that, but Glain settled for a scorching look and took the lead at an easy, long-legged lope. Jess broke out his light and took more and more of Thomas's weight, especially as the tunnel began to incline upward\u2014strong he might be, but the German had been chained in place for too long. As they approached the upper exit of the tunnel and the grate, Jess boosted Glain up, then Thomas. Thomas helped pull up Khalila, Morgan, and Dario, and Wolfe and Santi came last. Jess grabbed Glain's hold to avoid Wolfe, who still looked at him with blank anger, and climbed quickly up.\n\nThey all crouched in the shadows beneath Jupiter's robes. The Forum beyond was busy, which was a gift; Jess sent a silent prayer up to his Christian god, who must have called in a favor or two for this small miracle in a land loyal to other deities. The Library hadn't sent the word out yet to clear the Forum.\n\n\"How far behind us are they, sir?\" Glain asked Santi. He was still breathing raggedly and favoring his side, but he seemed better. Functional, at least.\n\nHe was checking over his weapon, and didn't look up as he replied, \"Fifteen minutes until they're in the tunnels, if we're lucky, and I wouldn't count on luck.\"\n\n\"We have to get back to the Translation Chamber in the basilica,\" Morgan said. \"It's our only way out. It's how we planned to leave!\"\n\n\"The devil of battle is that plans change,\" Santi said. \"And if we go that way, we'll have to go to ground somewhere and let the beehive settle before we try anything. Either that or risk the public exits.\"\n\n\"They'll be waiting at every one,\" Wolfe said. \"Rome isn't an easy city to enter or leave. They can make sure we don't slip away. Morgan's right: Translation is our only way out.\"\n\n\"Then we use the High Garda chamber, where I arrived.\"\n\n\"Nic. It'll be guarded and on high alert, and you know it. We must go back into the basilica.\"\n\n\"I'd far rather deal with High Garda than a pack of automaton lions hunting just for us, with orders to rip us apart.\"\n\n\"I'd rather not die,\" Dario said flatly. \"So perhaps we should think on it.\"\n\n\"If the problem is with the automata...\" Thomas's voice came quietly, tentatively, and they all hushed to look at him. He almost seemed to flinch from the sudden attention and looked away. \"If that's what you need to fight, I might have a way. There's an inventor in Rome, Glaudino. I visited his store on Via Baccina a time or two when I was younger. We should go there.\"\n\n\"Do you think you can trust him?\" Wolfe asked, and Thomas shook his head.\n\n\"No, of course not,\" he said. \"He's very loyal to the Library. He'd never help us.\"\n\n\"Then I don't see how this helps\u2014\"\n\n\"Because he works with the lions,\" Thomas said. \"I'll need Morgan with me. And Jess.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Santi demanded. He caught and held his gaze, and Jess saw a visible tremor run through his friend. Santi must have seen it, too, because he paused and softened his tone. \"I'm sorry, Schreiber. We're all on edge. What will you do there to help us?\"\n\n\"I can make one work for us.\"\n\n\"One what?\"\n\nIt was Morgan who answered for Thomas. She'd gotten it far quicker than Jess. \"An automaton lion,\" she said. \"Oh, Thomas, brilliant. Brilliant. Do you think we can do it?\"\n\n\"Glaudino's workshop repairs the Library's automata,\" Thomas said. \"We should be able to fix one and make it work for us instead.\"\n\nSanti's mind gears were turning again\u2014Jess could see that\u2014and he waited while the captain reconfigured plans, calculated odds, came up with an answer. \"How long would you need?\" Santi asked.\n\n\"I don't know. A few hours,\" Thomas said. \"Not much more. The workshop won't be guarded, I think.\"\n\nYou think. Jess didn't voice his doubts. It was still a good chance, and he knew Santi thought so, too. Glain looked more grim about it, but, then, she usually did.\n\n\"We're too noticeable as a group,\" Dario said.\n\n\"I do need Morgan,\" Thomas said. \"It takes an Obscurist to do some of this. And I'll need Jess.\"\n\n\"Fine. Brightwell and Hault, go find the workshop; Glain, go with them. Wolfe and I will take Seif and Santiago with us. We'll meet you there on Via Baccina as soon as we can.\"\n\nIt seemed equitable, and it separated the ones most hunted\u2014Thomas and, conceivably, Morgan\u2014from the rest, and Jess and Glain provided trained protection, even if Jess didn't exactly feel his best. Jess nodded and helped Thomas up. \"Morgan, you come with me. We have to scout and see where they've sent the lions out in the Forum.\"\n\nShe nodded and gave Thomas a quick hug before going with Jess to peek under Jupiter's robes. They had to get on hands and knees to crawl under, and as Jess helped her up, he spotted a High Garda soldier walking toward them. On impulse, he turned to her and said, \"Run.\"\n\nIt wasn't a good plan, and she had a much better one. She melted against him, kissed him, and he entirely forgot what he'd been about to say, because the feel of her, the taste, the rich and wonderful reality of Morgan pressed against him drove any thought of imminent danger away, just for a few critical seconds.\n\nBy the time he pushed her back, the soldier had passed them by, shaking his head. Why wouldn't he? Just another boy kissing a girl.\n\n\"Don't do that again,\" he told her, but he was still pressed against her, mouth hovering too close. It felt like the world had tilted under his boots to keep him there. \"This is dangerous work, you know.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she said, and her eyes burned into his with real intensity. \"Go buy me a scarf. Hurry.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"A scarf. I need to cover my face.\"\n\nHe realized that she was right, and hurried off to the nearest stall. It was floating with colorful silken ribbons fluttering on the breeze. He caught one that he thought would bring out her eyes, passed over geneih, and then spotted hats. He bought three of them.\n\n\"Thanks,\" she said, as he handed her scarf and hat, and wound the silk high enough to conceal part of her face. \"Get Thomas.\"\n\nJess bent down to motion for Thomas to come forward. He scrambled out, clumsy and breathless. Someone\u2014Wolfe, Jess realized\u2014had given him a black Scholar's robe. It was too short on him, but voluminous enough to hide his prison-eroded clothing. Jess clapped a hat on Thomas. It looked a little ridiculous, but that was the point: it hid his matted blond hair and cast so much shade, it was hard to make out his features. Many tourists here wore sun hats. He put his on as well.\n\nGlain came last and fell into step with Jess. They looked for all the world like two guards escorting a visiting Scholar and his companion on a pleasant day out in Rome. They were halfway across the Forum when Jess said, \"Do any of us have an idea which way we're going?\" He was eyeing the Library's lions, which were restlessly, aggressively patrolling the Basilica Julia. So far, they'd not been sent out hunting. They needed to be away from the Forum before that happened.\n\n\"This way,\" Glain said. \"Lucky for you, I study maps of a city I'm being sent to defend instead of napping in the transport.\"\n\nShe led them quickly and calmly out of the Forum and to the Via Baccina, while Morgan walked arm in arm with Thomas, subtly supporting him when he faltered. There were no lions following yet, but Jess imagined they'd be fanning out through the Forum now, searching for the fugitives. Every High Garda soldier in the city and every local Roman Garda would be alerted soon, if they hadn't been already.\n\nBehind them, distant screams. The lions had been loosed, and when Jess looked back, he saw crowds of people moving fast away from the direction of the Forum. Panic would be spreading quickly.\n\n\"Do you think they got out?\" Morgan asked.\n\nThomas patted her hand gently. \"With Santi and Wolfe leading? They got out. Don't worry.\" He was panting, Jess saw. Not much energy left. He hoped this workshop Thomas had mentioned was close.\n\n\"What's waiting for us at the workshop?\" Glain asked Thomas as they walked up the next hill, away from the chaos of the Forum. Thomas slowed with every step as they made the climb, and crowds were thinner here. They'd be more easily noticed by anyone trained to look. \"Don't tell me wait and see, or I'll forget I'm your friend, Thomas Schreiber.\"\n\n\"I'm your friend, even if you forget that, too,\" Thomas said. \"I won't lead you into too much danger, and I won't keep you in the dark. Signor Glaudino's workshop is the primary repair shop for the automata of Rome.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" she said, and turned to face him, still walking backward. \"Are you telling me you're dragging us into a shop full of lions?\"\n\n\"I don't know if they're all lions,\" he said. \"Most, probably. There are a few made in the shape of Roman gods, and, of course\u2014\"\n\n\"Are they working?\"\n\n\"Oh, some of them will be, since Glaudino will have fixed them.\"\n\n\"We can't fight automata, Thomas!\"\n\n\"We won't have to,\" Thomas said. \"They'll be switched off. How else would Signor Glaudino even begin work on them? Jess, you and Glain have to take the master and his apprentices and lock them away, and give Morgan and me time to repair and change one. Do you think you can do that?\"\n\n\"We can do our jobs,\" Glain said. Then she sent Jess a look, and he knew exactly what it meant.\n\nIs he really capable of doing anything after spending all that time in a cell?\n\nJess lifted one shoulder in a very small, almost invisible shrug.\n\nBecause they had no real choice.\n\nGlaudino's workshop turned out to be a large building, but not well secured. Jess assumed that nobody in their right mind would want to steal from the man who repaired Library lions, though, and so it was an easy matter for him and Glain to slip in the side gate. Stepping inside the building through an open sliding door, Jess came face-to-face with his own worst nightmare: an entire pride of Library lions.\n\nBut as Thomas had promised, they were all switched off, frozen in whatever pose they'd had when the button had been pressed. He heard Glain's sharp intake of breath when she moved in beside him, and felt her shudder as she fought, and conquered, the urge to retreat. \"Are they dead?\" she asked him.\n\n\"They were never really alive,\" he said. \"And they're shut off.\"\n\nGlain sent him a sharp look. \"How did you learn that trick, by the way? I've never heard of anyone managing it before.\"\n\n\"Desperation. Luck. Free exercise of my illegal trade. Take your pick. Come on\u2014I hear voices this way.\" Jess followed a clear space between the lions toward the back of the room, to a separate workroom where voices conversed easily in Italian. Stepping through the door, he found three men sitting at worktables and on benches. There was a lion crouched in the middle of the floor, motionless, and it had a pathetic air to it; someone had removed part of its bronzed hide and pulled out bundles of cables that spilled over the floor like wiry intestines. The lion's face was frozen in a strange expression, as though it didn't much like what was being done to it.\n\nThe oldest of the three men\u2014Signor Glaudino, at a guess\u2014looked up at Jess's arrival, frowned, and switched from Italian to the more standard Greek that was the common Library language. \"She's not ready yet, this one. Tell your master we will deliver as agreed tomorrow. Yes?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said, and raised his gun. Glain stepped in beside him and mirrored the action. \"Apologies, signori, but I need you all to move into that closet, please.\"\n\n\"Why? What is this?\" Signor Glaudino was a peppery little man, and he puffed out his chest and stood up to face them squarely. \"You are ignorant people, to think you can do this to us! I have a commission from the Artifex himself for my work! The High Garda will hunt you down as soon as I tell them\u2014\"\n\n\"You won't,\" Glain said. She stepped forward, grabbed Glaudino's shoulder, and marched him firmly to the open door of the closet. After checking it, she pushed him inside and gestured for his two employees to follow. Neither of them looked ready to put up a fight. \"Codices, please. Now.\"\n\nAll of them handed over their Codex volumes, which she stacked neatly on the nearest table, and then she searched each of the men with quick, efficient slaps. Glaudino squawked like a plucked chicken, but he was no match for Glain, who shoved them in one by one.\n\nGlaudino began banging on the door almost immediately. She sighed and shook her head. \"I tried to be nice,\" she said to Jess, and then hit the outside of the door hard enough to make it shiver on the hinges. \"Shut up, or I'll tie you up and feed you to your lions!\"\n\nThat got them blessed quiet. Jess fetched Morgan and Thomas, who'd been waiting in the shadows, and when he walked them into the workroom, Thomas's blue eyes burned as if someone had lit a lamp in him. \"Yes!\" he said. \"Perfect! You poor, lovely thing. What have they done to you, now?\" He sat down on the bench, leaning over the lion, and Jess crouched down with him. Morgan took a seat nearby and watched with fascination as Thomas put his hands on the metal skin, very much as if he were petting a very live, friendly animal. \"We will make you well. No, better. Much better.\"\n\nBut then, in the next few seconds, the muted joy drained out of Thomas's eyes and he began to shake. He sank down to sit next to the lion, put his head in his hands, and began quietly to cry.\n\n\"He needs to work,\" Glain said, but at least she had the decency to mutter it to Jess, not to Thomas.\n\n\"He will,\" Jess said, and sent her a warning look. \"Leave him alone.\"\n\n\"Do something,\" she whispered back. But Jess felt helpless. He put one hand on Thomas's shoulder and felt him shiver at the contact, then relax. Morgan took Thomas's hand. Neither of them said a word, and Jess listened as Thomas's ragged, labored breathing slowly steadied. He lowered his hands from his face but didn't look up at them.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he whispered. \"I\u2014 Scheisse. I didn't think I would do that. Why did I do that?\"\n\nMorgan started to speak but then couldn't seem to find the words. She looked up helplessly at Jess, and he finally nodded and crouched down until he and Thomas were on a level. \"I've never been through what you have, but I've been in the dark a few times. Sometimes the light's just too bright.\"\n\n\"What if I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Can't adjust? You can. You will.\" Jess nodded to the lion. \"Even in the dark, you dreamed about your automata. They're nothing to be afraid of.\"\n\nThomas sucked in a slow breath and then quietly let it out. He nodded and opened his eyes, and put his hand back on the lion's metal skin. It seemed to steady him this time. \"All right,\" he said. \"All right. I just wish I had more references.\"\n\nJess unbuttoned his uniform shirt and pulled it off. Beneath was his smuggling harness, dark with sweat. It had practically molded to his body, and he unbuckled it and peeled it off with a relieved sigh. The cool air on his damp skin felt as good as a bath.\n\nThey were all staring at him with varying degrees of fascination. Thomas finally asked, \"What are you doing, Jess?\" He had opened the skin of the lion through latches Jess would never have seen, and was now restlessly running a length of cable through his fingers, testing it for flaws. \"Put your clothes on.\"\n\n\"I will,\" he said, and opened the smuggling pouch and took out the book and the folded translation sheets that lay inside. The book felt cool and dry, and he handed it over to Thomas. \"Here. This might help you.\"\n\nThomas dropped the cable and began to leaf through the book\u2014slowly at first, then with increasing eagerness as he compared the translations to the contents. Jess strapped the harness back on and put his shirt on again.\n\n\"What is that?\" Morgan leaned forward to watch Thomas read, and glanced at Jess for the answer when Thomas didn't seem to heed her at all.\n\n\"It's research notes from someone\u2014someone with inside knowledge,\" Jess said. \"A mechanical study of the automata\u2014parts, how they work, all the details the Library never wanted out. I expect this is all that remains of the poor sod who wrote it down. They wouldn't want him spreading this particular word, would they? Thomas? Can you use it?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas whispered, and then again, stronger, \"Yes! And you see here, the metal ball, the container? That Morgan will need to open; it is an Obscurist's creation. You know how to write scripts, yes? They taught you that?\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Morgan blinked, and then nodded. \"Well, yes. But I'll need some starting point. There should be a script inside there. If I can retrieve it and alter it\u2014\"\n\n\"Exactly. It's simply a matter of\u2014a matter of\u2014\" Thomas, who'd been doing so well, stuttered like an automaton powering down and dropped the book from suddenly clumsy hands. He was trembling, Jess saw. No, not trembling. Shaking. Badly. His teeth chattered and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut.\n\n\"It's no use,\" Glain said quietly. \"Part of him's still in that prison.\"\n\nWe don't have time to let him recover was left unsaid. They all knew it. Thomas was doing his best, with all his good heart, but he'd been through a horrible ordeal.\n\n\"Then we help him,\" Jess said, and looked at Morgan, who nodded. \"Thomas. I've read the book; I translated it. Let me do this, and you just rest and tell me what to do. Can you do that?\"\n\nThomas said nothing, but after a long moment, he finally nodded in a movement so abrupt it must have hurt him. More like a convulsion, Jess thought, than agreement. He seemed pale as milk now, and the bruises stood out like fading tattoos on his cheeks.\n\nMorgan yanked a thick blanket down from a shelf and wrapped it around Thomas's trembling body. He huddled into the warmth, and she rested her hands on his shoulders and looked at Jess.\n\n\"I'm sure they have scissors somewhere in this workshop; I'll find some and cut his hair. Then I'll find him something better to wear. Jess. Be his hands.\"\n\nWhen Thomas opened his eyes, he whispered, \"Thank you,\" and Morgan bent to gently kiss his forehead.\n\n\"I still have the little automaton bird you gave me,\" she told him. \"It still sings. It kept me singing, too, Thomas. You helped me. Let me help you.\"\n\nHe managed a smile for her, and Jess avoided looking at him too closely as he knelt down next to the huge Roman lion. There was some similarity, he suddenly realized, between this machine and his friend. Both had damage.\n\nBoth needed to be healed.\n\nMaybe by helping to repair one, he could fix the other.\n\nJess had mechanical aptitude, but next to Thomas, he was a rank beginner; he had to work slowly, laying out parts according to the book's instructions, and just over an hour into the work, he caught a glimpse of a closed bronze sphere where the heart of a normal beast would have been. It was the size of Thomas's fist and looked seamless, held in place by a complex series of clamps and a net of something that looked like gold. By that time, when he looked back to ask Thomas how to proceed, Morgan had succeeded in clipping back the hedge of Thomas's unruly blond hair, and with it trimmed closer, his face looked leaner and older than Jess remembered. She trimmed his bushy beard, too, which helped make him less of a Viking from the old stories. From some closet she retrieved a pair of workman's oversized pants and a shirt that was too large even for him. He undressed beneath the blanket\u2014shy with the girls, even now\u2014and once he was out of his prison rags, he seemed... better. Not himself, exactly. It was possible he wouldn't be the Thomas Jess remembered, but any Thomas at all would be better than none.\n\n\"I think I've found the container for the script,\" Jess said. He reached in, and Thomas's hand flashed out to grab his arm and hold it back.\n\n\"Don't. It would kill you,\" he said. \"Glaudino would never touch it himself. Only Obscurists can open those containers. Work around it for now, and loosen the clamps. Be careful.\"\n\nJess nodded. He didn't like the idea of working near something that might kill him with a touch, but he liked the idea of Thomas's unsteady hands in there even less. He worked the clamps loose until he heard the ball shift inside the flexible mesh net, and then sat back. \"Morgan? I think this is your job now.\"\n\nShe squeezed in beside him, and he showed her how to unfasten the clamps before moving back. She loosened the fastenings and the ball dropped into her hands, wrapped in its mesh net, which she peeled away and put aside. It looked harmless in her hands, like a shiny toy, but there was a shimmer to it that made him move well back. Morgan turned it in her fingers curiously, but she wasn't looking for a seam\u2014wasn't looking at it at all, he realized\u2014and the heat-wave shimmer on the ball suddenly leaped off the surface and into a haze around it, with shadowy shapes forming. Not letters he recognized in any language he knew, or even numbers; these were alchemical symbols and figures that only Obscurists knew. She stared at the swirling orb of symbols and slowly reached out to pluck out a few.\n\nJess moved closer again, but not too close, and paused when he saw her warning glance. \"It looks like magic.\"\n\n\"It isn't,\" she said. \"Well, not exactly. Alchemy is a science, but a science that acknowledges certain principles of magic. This... this is a mathematical expression of quintessence, Archimedes' fifth element, which binds all things together.\"\n\n\"It's glowing letters hanging in midair!\"\n\nShe laughed a little breathlessly. \"Think of it this way: alchemists of old relied on the energy provided by tides, the moon, sun, planets in alignment. Every experiment was delicate and had to be balanced just so, or there couldn't be a proper result. Obscurists have an inborn talent to provide that energy from within and not from the world around us; we are born with quintessence. And the letters are only glowing in front of you because I'm cheating. I like to see what I'm doing.\"\n\n\"And what are you doing?\"\n\n\"This ball has a seal on it. It is a code of structures that must be passed through quintessence and altered, in order. This is how I read the code.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Jess. Let me work! This isn't like solving a child's puzzle.\"\n\nHe sat back, watching as her slender hands touched, spun, and changed symbols in the air. Finally, she took in a breath and said, \"There. That feels right,\" and pushed her hands together. The letters vanished, and she reached out to place her fingers on the ball.\n\nThe ball seemed to vibrate and then folded back with a sharp hiss. Jess expected to see a tangle of wires and cables and gears, but it was empty except for a small rolled scroll of paper.\n\n\"What is that?\" Glain asked. She seemed as fascinated as Jess.\n\n\"The script,\" Thomas answered. \"The instructions that set the boundaries for the lion and give it the rules it must follow.\"\n\nMorgan nodded. \"Exactly. What do you want the lion to do?\" She reached for a pen that Glaudino had left on a stack of papers on the table.\n\n\"I want it to be our champion,\" Thomas said.\n\nIt took another hour to puzzle out how to put the lion back together, but they managed. Jess was proud of his handiwork\u2014or Thomas's, really; he'd just donated his hands to the job. He sat back on his heels and looked at Thomas, Morgan, and Glain, and said, \"Ready?\"\n\n\"Ready,\" Thomas said. \"Let's see if she works.\"\n\nGlain's head suddenly turned in the direction of the outer workshop, and she took a step toward the door, then back. \"Santi and the others,\" she said. \"They're coming in.\"\n\nJess nodded and reached the switch beneath the lion's jaw just as the others crowded into the small workshop.\n\n\"What in the hell are you doing?\" Wolfe asked. He sounded exhausted and, of course, irritable. He would be. They'd been a long time getting here, and no doubt there was a story to it Jess wanted to hear... but not now.\n\nWolfe was probably shocked when Thomas turned to him and shushed him, but Jess didn't look up. He was sweating and feeling uncomfortably close to this creature now that it was no longer in pieces. \"Here it goes.\"\n\nHe pressed the switch and quickly backed up to stand next to Thomas and Morgan. \"This will work, won't it?\" he asked Thomas. \"A little reassurance would be nice. We don't have room to run in here.\"\n\nReassurance didn't come from Thomas, but from the lion. The dull eyes took on a shimmer, then a baleful red shine. It turned its head to fix those unblinking eyes on Jess, and... made a sound low in that metallic throat that sounded almost like a purr.\n\nJess was used to hearing them growl, but he'd never heard that sound before. Before he could ask Thomas if that was a good sign, the lion's head pushed forward and pressed against his chest, and the mechanical purring grew so loud, it vibrated through Jess's body. He awkwardly patted the thing's head. His whole body still felt tight and nervous. \"Good girl,\" he said. \"Is it a girl?\"\n\n\"Jess,\" Thomas said. \"It's a machine. But I think I will call her Frauke. Do you like that name, Frauke?\"\n\n\"It's an automaton. It can't like\u2014\" But the lion was turning from him to nudge her nose against Thomas's chest now. Purring. It seemed beyond odd.\n\nMorgan came next, and she smiled when the lion's massive nose pushed at her. \"Frauke,\" she said. \"It means 'little lady,' doesn't it? It suits her.\" She stroked the metal ears.\n\n\"If you're finished making a pet out of this monster\u2014\" Wolfe said, and stopped as Frauke's head snapped in the direction of his voice and the purring switched to a low, ominous rumble.\n\n\"No, no, Frauke. He's one of us.\" Thomas gestured to Wolfe, who looked back as if he thought they'd all gone mad. \"Come, Scholar, she needs to learn who you are.\"\n\nWolfe didn't like it\u2014at all\u2014and that didn't change even when Frauke's growls changed to purrs. He suffered the nuzzling with a bitter expression of distaste before he moved well back, and pushed Santi forward in his place.\n\n\"Brilliant,\" Santi said, and patted Frauke on the head. No hesitation there; he clearly liked the creature. Santi stepped aside to let Khalila crowd forward, and then Dario. \"She'll not only confuse our enemies, but confront them, too. No one questions a party of Scholars and High Garda walking with an official lion as escort, do they?\"\n\nThe only one Frauke hadn't nuzzled was Glain, who still watched the door. When they all turned toward her, she shook her head. \"I'm not coming near that thing.\"\n\nMorgan tried. \"Glain. It's safe. You saw\u2014\"\n\n\"It's wrong. It's wrong that you just... changed it. Is it just that easy for you? Just rewrite a killer into a pet?\" She glared straight at Morgan finally. \"It's Obscurists who make all this possible, you know. Without them, things would be different, wouldn't they? Without the automata, the Translation Chamber, the Library wouldn't have nearly the advantage, and we'd be fighting fair.\"\n\n\"I'm trying to help!\" Morgan said. \"And you know I never wanted this! I never wanted to be\u2014\"\n\n\"Whatever you wanted, you're one of them. Doing this proves it more than anything else you've ever done,\" Glain said. \"And that's why we shouldn't trust you. How hard would it be for you to give us away?\"\n\n\"She won't,\" Jess said, and got the full, scorching weight of Glain's scorn.\n\n\"Says someone who can't ever be rational on the subject of Morgan Hault. We shouldn't do this. What if some other Obscurist rewrites this creature into a killer again?\"\n\n\"It can't be done without the same process I went through,\" Morgan said. \"It doesn't work that way. You can order them to do a limited number of things by Codex commands, but not change their loyalty\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't trust you,\" Glain said flatly, and looked Morgan right in the eyes. \"I have no idea what happened to you in that tower. What might have been done to you. All I know is, you've shown up here and we've all just accepted that you're safe, like this lion. You aren't. You're even more dangerous.\"\n\nSanti stepped in the way, facing Glain, and said, \"Glain. She's given you no reason to distrust her, has she?\"\n\nGlain didn't want to answer that, but she finally muttered, \"Not as yet.\"\n\n\"Then the matter's settled. Keep your eyes open and not just on Morgan, all right? We have enough enemies without inventing more.\" She nodded but didn't change her position from the door. \"Go introduce yourself to the lion. That's an order.\"\n\nShe looked at him for so long, Jess was afraid she'd refuse, but then she pushed past him and stood in front of Frauke to be nudged and cataloged like the rest of them. She didn't touch the lion. Didn't stand it for one second longer than she was forced to before she stalked away.\n\nFrauke tried to follow, then checked herself as Thomas said, \"Frauke. Stay.\" She padded back to Thomas's side and sat down, as obedient as a dog on a leash. \"Frauke, you obey our commands now, yes?\"\n\nHard to tell if she understood that, but Thomas had been right: there was an eerie simulation of thought in these creatures. Even intention. It was impossible, looking at Frauke now, to see the relentless killing machine she'd been before. Glain was also right: Morgan had, with a few simple, powerful strokes of the pen, made a killer into a pet. That kind of power shouldn't exist, and it made him cold to think what could be done with it in the service of the Archivist. This is how they've kept power. Frighten us with monsters. Kill us when all else fails.\n\nMaybe that was the nature of power. Jess didn't know, but he didn't like to think of himself as being part of it.\n\nHe held to one thought: if they could change Frauke, maybe... maybe they could also, eventually, change the Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a message from the Artifex Magnus to the Archivist Magister, marked URGENT:\n\n\u2002They are together. Free. They have the young Obscurist.\n\n\u2002If they get away as a group, if Wolfe and Schreiber together can make their machine and teach others how to make it, then we lose everything. Knowledge becomes a common currency, as cheap as paper and ink, and all of the sanctity of the Library is lost.\n\n\u2002It is what I told you from the beginning: there is no compromise with rebellion. You coddled Wolfe for Keria's sake, and now it has led to this.\n\n\u2002We have no choice. This is a threat we must deal with, quickly and decisively, whatever it costs."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "Reply from the Archivist Magister, marked URGENT:\n\n\u2002You were right from the beginning, and I regret I was too cautious.\n\n\u2002Kill them all."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "The delay in the arrival of Santi's party had simply been caution; they'd stayed well away from any areas where they might have been noticed, and ate a long lunch instead\u2014a fact that made Jess realize he was starving. Glain silently passed out rations and water, and let Thomas have three times as much as anyone else; it wasn't as good as the cold meats and cheeses that the others had enjoyed, but it'd do for now.\n\nGlaudino, clearly out of patience with his confinement\u2014understandably; he and his workers had been locked in a small space for better than three hours now, and even with the food and water Glain gave them, they were likely miserable\u2014began banging on the door again and threatening them with dire punishment. Frauke, crouching in the corner, swung her head that direction and growled. Despite knowing it was wrong, Jess felt a guilty spike of pleasure. Nice having something deadly on their side. \"So, what about them?\" Glain asked Santi.\n\n\"Tie them, but leave them without gags. They can yell for help as much as they like once they wake up.\"\n\n\"Wake up\u2014 Oh.\" Glain nodded. He walked with her to the closet door, aimed, and gestured for her to open it. He dropped Glaudino first with a well-placed stun shot, then the other two, and dragged them out to tie their limp arms and ankles together. He and Glain settled the prisoners against the wall, and while they were at it, Jess turned to Wolfe.\n\n\"We still don't have an exit plan,\" he said. \"Do we?\"\n\n\"You do,\" Morgan said, and moved to stand beside him. She put her hand on Frauke's stiff metal mane. \"If you get me to Rome's Translation Chamber, I can send you where you want to go. Let me help you. This is why I came, to make sure you could get away safely.\"\n\n\"And to run away from the Iron Tower,\" Wolfe said. She gave him a look, and he shrugged. \"I am not blaming you. I, of all people, understand.\"\n\n\"There's a problem with that plan: no doubt the High Garda will be thick as fleas in the Translation Chamber by now, not to mention on every road leading to it. They'll know that's our best escape,\" Dario said. \"We'd be playing right into their hands. Maybe Jess's illegal cousins would be a better idea, grubby criminals that they are. I'd rather have a long, tiring ride in the back of a wagon than a cell under the basilica.\"\n\n\"It's too late for that,\" Jess said. \"My cousins generally aren't in the business of being heroes. Our code is: Get caught, count yourself dead.\"\n\n\"Pleasant folk you come from,\" Dario observed. \"All right. Maybe we can buy our way out of the city. There must be someone who wants a fat purse and no questions asked.\"\n\n\"There's another option,\" Santi said, rising from where he'd finished tying up their unconscious captives. \"We can go where they don't expect us. Rome doesn't just have one Translation Chamber. It has two. Morgan? You came in that way. So did Wolfe. Did you destroy it or only disable it?\"\n\nSanti was right: they had a decent chance, if all of the basilica guards were out looking, of walking right into the heart of the enemy's stronghold and using it for escape.\n\n\"And what then?\" Khalila asked. \"Say we get away. Where do we go? Where's our safe haven? What chance do we have of staying free of the Library for any length of time at all?\"\n\n\"None,\" Dario said. \"Not unless we find allies, quickly. Jess isn't willing to put his neck on the block, so someone has to.\" He looked across at Santi, and nodded toward the men unconscious on the floor. \"How long are they good for?\"\n\n\"An hour, at most,\" Santi said. \"What are you thinking?\"\n\n\"I don't want to explain. Give me half that time,\" Dario said. \"If I'm not back, then let Jess try to enlist his criminal brethren or run for the basilica. But I might be able to help with allies and a safe haven.\"\n\n\"Dario!\" Khalila grabbed for him, but he was quick, the arrogant Spaniard. He grabbed her hand instead, raised it to his lips, and then pressed the back of it to his forehead as he bowed. \"Don't go.\"\n\n\"Why should Jess always be the one to run off on his adventures?\" Dario sent Jess a wide, confident grin. \"Half an hour, scrubber. Start the clock.\"\n\nThen he was gone.\n\n\"We can't\u2014\" Khalila looked at Santi, then Wolfe. \"We can't just let him go!\"\n\nBut they did.\n\nDario Santiago didn't come back.\n\nThe hour slipped away, and they waited as long as they could. Glain quietly suggested stunning Glaudino and his workers again, but Santi shook his head. Another shot risked real injury, possibly even death, and he didn't intend to leave bodies in his wake today unless they had no choice in the matter.\n\n\"He knows the plan,\" Santi said. \"We head for the basilica. Twilight is our best time; people will be heading home or out to take the evening air. It'll be harder to recognize us.\"\n\n\"No!\" Khalila pulled away from him, from all of them, and backed toward the open door of the workshop. \"No, I'm not going to leave Dario behind. Jess\u2014\" She tried to get him to look at her, but he couldn't. Wouldn't. \"Jess!\"\n\n\"The captain's right,\" Jess said, and hated himself for it. \"We can't wait. I'm sorry. He didn't say where he was going, and we don't even know where to start to look for him.\"\n\n\"Then we try! We came back for Thomas! We can't just abandon Dario!\"\n\nShe read their faces, and then, without warning, dashed for the door. Jess had seen that coming, though, and he was faster. He wrapped her in his arms, and she fought him surprisingly hard, with sharp, precise blows that almost made him let go. Almost. He protected himself as best he could. \"Stop. Stop. He'll be all right, Khalila!\" He looked to Glain for help. She folded her arms. Traitor.\n\n\"No, he won't. You know he won't! He's not like you! He wants to show you that he can be just as clever, just as fast, just as...\" She hit him again, this time a knee square to his family jewels, and he did let go. \"Just as ruthless! And if you ever lay hands on me again, I will kill you, Jess Brightwell!\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" he gasped, and struggled not to double over. Failed. He'd done his best, and when Khalila moved to the door again, this time it was Scholar Wolfe who got in her way.\n\nShe didn't attack Wolfe the way she had Jess. Maybe she didn't have the stomach for it when Wolfe put his hand on her shoulder and said, in that dark, strangely gentle voice, \"We'll find him, Khalila. But not now. Now we have to look after ourselves.\"\n\n\"Scholar\u2014\" Khalila's voice was shaking. \"I can't abandon him.\"\n\n\"You aren't. He knew the risks. He wouldn't want you to act impulsively, he'd want you to think. It's your defining feature. Your grace. Your strength.\"\n\nShe took in a slow, shaking breath, and turned away. Her face was set and terrible, her eyes like dark pits, and she met no one else's gaze as she nodded. \"Then let us run,\" she said, in a voice drained of anything but anger. \"Run and hide, like frightened rabbits. How does this change the world, cowering in the dark? They'll pick us off one by one. Dario is only the first.\"\n\n\"We'll get him back,\" Santi said. \"Dario's smart. He's tough. He will survive this.\"\n\nMaybe he'll survive because he never meant to come back. It was a sickening thought, but Jess was a practical young man. He didn't have Khalila's idealism, or her love-distorted view of Dario. Maybe he's selling us out. In which case, we'd better move even faster.\n\nThere was nothing else to say. Jess pushed pain to the background. He'd need to be ready to run or fight; this was still not guaranteed escape. And if we get to the Translation Chamber, what then? Where do we go? London, he thought. It was half instinct, going home, but it was also practical. His family resources could be commandeered from there, and his family had plenty of hiding places and bolt-holes; if he and Thomas showed Callum Brightwell the plans for the press, his father would be the first to recognize the potential. Reproducing books had the potential to increase his black-market business ten thousandfold.\n\nNo more black sheep of the family. Jess would be welcomed with open arms, and the Library would never lay a hand on any of them. Callum didn't hold with Burner theories, but he wasn't a man to despise a good alliance, either; the Burners would be equally interested in the press, and what it meant for them to break the Library's stranglehold. It could be done.\n\nIf they got away from Rome.\n\n\"Frauke,\" Thomas said, and the lion immediately climbed to four paws, razor-barbed tail twitching. \"Follow.\"\n\nJess took one last look back at Glaudino's workshop as they threaded their way through the outer room full of silent, still automata. It was an eerie sight, seeing Frauke ghosting silently along behind Thomas between her identical dead automaton twins. It was going to give him nightmares the next time he closed his eyes.\n\nThen they were outside and pushing the door shut, and heading for the last place Jess wanted to face again. The logic of the plan was sound enough: the High Garda truly would be searching for them on the roads leading out of town, stopping carriages and transports, heavily guarding the central Roman Translation Chamber.\n\nBut not the heart of their own power. Besides, they'd already have realized that Morgan had disabled the secret Translation Chamber. It was likely they'd consider it totally useless.\n\nUseless things weren't guarded at a time like this.\n\n\"We'll have to enter through the public side,\" Scholar Wolfe said. \"There's a staff door at the back of the Serapeum that leads into the basilica; it might be guarded, but not heavily. They won't expect us there.\"\n\n\"What about the lions on the steps? They would have been alerted to us by now,\" Morgan said.\n\nThomas sighed and looked back at Frauke, pacing steadily behind them with her eyes glowing bright, her head held high. \"I'm sorry, Frauke. But we will all have to do our part, I think.\" He looked scarecrow thin, all large bones and angles, and with his hair and beard cut close he seemed so much older than Jess remembered him. But still gentle.\n\nHow he managed that, Jess couldn't imagine. He'd lost his optimism so long ago, he could hardly remember how it felt, and he'd never been locked in that terrible, dark place. Never been dragged into that torture room.\n\nThomas seemed all right, but Jess could tell it was a fragile kind of strength, floating on a river of adrenaline and hope. That tide would turn, and then the weight of the darkness would press on him, as it did on Wolfe. Jess knew he'd need to keep good watch on his friend when the shadows came for him.\n\nRome seemed utterly normal as evening fell, and the sky faded from blue to a greenish teal. Stars emerged in shy peeks, then gaudy sprays. Their little party passed brightly lit restaurants, and Jess's stomach growled from the scent of roasting meats and fish.\n\nHaving Frauke with them made a difference. People made way for them, some with respectful bows, since Glain, Jess, and Santi were all clearly armed High Garda, and the others, except Morgan, wore Scholar's robes. Morgan walked next to Wolfe, like a favored student or a fond daughter.\n\nAnd the lion, Frauke, paced behind them, a silent and watchful guardian that warned off even Burner sympathizers from any confrontation. Strange, how good it felt to have that power at his back, at his command. Jess didn't entirely like it. Too easy to become dependent on it.\n\nBut it did make their walk to the Forum efficient.\n\nStanding in the shadow of Mercury's feet, in virtually the same spot where Burners had died only two days before, Wolfe and Santi assessed the situation of the basilica. As they'd predicted, it did seem quiet. People proceeded in and out of the public area of the Serapeum, and most of the pride of automata patrolled farther down. There was a lion crouched beside the open Serapeum door, scanning those who entered.\n\n\"Can you turn it off?\" Santi asked Jess, and he nodded.\n\n\"I can if it's distracted.\"\n\n\"That's my job,\" Santi said.\n\n\"Nic\u2014,\" Wolfe protested, but Santi cut him off.\n\n\"No. I'm the better option. They'll all have me first on the list; after all, I'm the one who betrayed my own company.\" Even as he said it, Jess saw the pain that flashed through him, quickly banished to some dark corner inside. Captain Santi loved the High Garda; he loved the men and women under his command, and the responsibility he held for the lives of Scholars.\n\n\"Jess, your job is to turn it off. Let me handle the distraction.\"\n\nJess nodded. Thomas said quietly, \"Frauke can help.\" That meant Frauke could go in single combat against the other lion, but Jess was well aware that if that happened, things would get much worse, much faster. The rest of the pride would come, and Frauke wouldn't last long against numbers.\n\nNeither would they.\n\n\"Stay together until we get close. I'll draw the lion off,\" Santi said. \"Jess, you know what to do then. The rest of you, just head straight inside. Don't wait for us.\"\n\nJess nodded and turned to Thomas. \"Keep Frauke with you. Of all of us, you may be the one they want most.\"\n\nThomas knew that. His face was thin and pale under his new-cut hair and beard, and underneath his surface calm, he looked like he was fighting an urge to curl into a ball. He put a hand on Frauke's mane, and she purred that metallic, singing purr, and it seemed to help. \"I know,\" he said. I won't go back, Jess. I can't do that.\"\n\nHe'd rather die. Wolfe would be the same, Jess thought.\n\n\"We're going to make it. Trust me.\" Jess tried to make himself sound positive of that and cheerful, and might have even succeeded, because Thomas pulled in a deep breath and nodded.\n\n\"I do. Of course.\"\n\nAs Santi started to take the lead, Morgan suddenly grabbed his arm. \"No,\" she said. \"Let me. It will know me as an Obscurist, but that means it will also be under strict instructions not to harm me.\"\n\n\"You're sure of that?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. It won't dare.\"\n\nJess hoped she was right as they mounted the marble steps. She looked confident and bold, all right, with her head held high. The ends of the silk scarf Jess had bought her floated like dreams on the cooling breeze. She looked beautiful and fragile and brave, and Jess couldn't take his eyes off of her as they climbed.\n\nThe lion tilted its head down to regard their approaching group.\n\nMorgan took in a breath and hurried up ahead of the rest of them, and the lion rose from a crouch to a standing position.\n\nA mother with three young children ahead of them was startled by the movement and rushed her brood inside the Serapeum; Jess was grateful she did, because in the next second, the lion's eyes flickered red. It growled.\n\n\"Move!\" Santi called, and Glain grabbed Wolfe and hustled him inside fast, acting\u2014once again\u2014on her built-in priority to protect a Scholar. Khalila stayed with Thomas, and Jess glanced back to see that Thomas wasn't following the plan; he was waiting, ignoring Khalila's pulls on his arm to try to rush him to the entrance. Frauke paced restlessly near them, growling now herself.\n\nThe Library lion paced down toward Morgan now, with his growl ratcheting up to an intimidating snarl. She backed slowly away from it, and Jess ghosted sideways, trying to work his way around it while it stayed focused on her. She circled and went backward up the stairs, and it paced to follow her. She let it back her up against the wall, and it pressed forward, snarling jaws inches from her face as it boxed her in.\n\nThen it let out a curious roaring sound that he'd never heard before. That must have been a signal to summon help, and Jess realized that they were out of time and luck. He darted in to get his fingers on the switch under the lion's jaw, but it saw him coming and shifted its weight sideways to block him. It was like running into a stone wall, and he was knocked into a sliding fall on the marble. As soon as he slowed, he rolled to his feet and tried again, slipping in under the swiping paw. The lion yanked its head aside as he tried to get to the switch, and this time, a batting blow connected squarely.\n\nIt sent him rolling down the steps in a breathless heap of pain.\n\nAs he blinked away bloody afterimages, he saw a shadow pass over him and heard the heavy crunch of a lion's body landing on the steps, then leaping away again. No, no\u2014it's going after Thomas. But it wasn't the lion that had sent him tumbling down the stairs. It was their lion.\n\nFrauke let out a wild, full-throated cry of rage and slammed into the Library lion with so much force, it sounded like two steam trains colliding. Jess tried to get to his feet and managed it, though everything seemed wavy and blurred. Someone was helping him\u2014Khalila. Thomas rushed to take his other side. No, don't, Jess tried to say but couldn't. He couldn't quite grasp what was happening now. Morgan was crouched in a heap near the doorway, covering her head as the two massive lions battled and tore at each other above her. He saw movement and realized more lions were coming, drawn to the fight.\n\nThomas and Khalila half carried him toward the door. The battling lions thrashed and roared next to them, bits of metal flying off as claws shredded bronze skin, then a sharp snap as a cable was bitten through, the smell of spraying fluids, a metallic roar that was almost one of pain as one of the lions lurched unevenly, one leg useless.\n\n\"Frauke,\" Jess said, and the wounded lion turned her head toward him. \"Kill.\"\n\nHer eyes blazed an intense, bright white, and she roared and threw herself into the fight, a fight she couldn't possibly win, and he knew he was killing her as well. He felt like a monster.\n\nThomas pulled him through the doorway, and he lost sight of Frauke just as her jaws closed around the paw of the other lion and yanked; metal ripped, cables shredded, gears scattered. Dark fluids spilled like blood. She's winning, he thought, but in the next instant, another Library lion, red eyes glowing hellishly bright, landed on Frauke's back and dug claws in.\n\nThe embattled first lion closed its jaws over Frauke's throat.\n\nJess looked away, but he couldn't help but hear the heavy crunch of the bite or the hissing spray of liquids, or the high-pitched metallic shriek that couldn't have been one of pain, but that was how it sounded to him, like pain, as Frauke died.\n\nThen he was across the threshold and couldn't see anymore. He heard screaming and panic, and realized that the Serapeum was full of innocent people and more lions were coming.\n\nWolfe rushed for a control lever by the door and pulled it. The doors began to crank shut, and almost closed before a lion got a paw between them. Metal shrieked and bent. The doors didn't quite close. They shuddered as a lion's body hit, and then another.\n\n\"Stay out of the way!\" Santi shouted to the bystanders. \"Get against the walls! Don't get in the way when they come in. You're in no danger if you stay out of the way!\"\n\nThe civilians were already following that wise advice, cowering in corners or near bookcases. The sound of the lions battering at the door, clawing, screaming echoed from the marble walls and floors as Wolfe took the lead, running across the broad, open central hall toward the far end of the Serapeum. The building passed in a blur for Jess, who finally was feeling his body again\u2014not that it was a blessing\u2014and got his feet working to move under his own power. Nothing was broken, at least, though he'd be aching badly tomorrow. He had an impression of a vast, columned hall lined with row upon row of shelves\u2014a whole section of precious originals sealed under glass, available only to authorized Scholars, but open shelves lined with prefilled Blanks, or ones ready to be filled. Podiums held giant, permanently affixed Codex volumes. Roman statues graced alcoves, and for a bad moment he imagined those marble maidens and lads stepping down to grab them, but they were just statues, after all.\n\nWolfe made it to the door, but it was fixed with a heavy lock. Jess pushed forward and fumbled for his tools; his head wasn't clear, and it seemed to take forever for his fingertips to begin to sense the vibrations of the metal pins.\n\nSomehow, despite the tension, the others managed not to yell at him, and he was grateful for the concentration. At last he felt the lock snap under his fingers and the door sag open. He moved through and held it open for the others, and at the far end of the Serapeum, one of the double doors shrieked and fell and a Roman lion bounded through and skidded on the marble floor, roaring.\n\n\"Go!\" Jess shouted, though they hardly needed encouragement. Santi came through first, ready to shoot any opposition, but the hall was empty for the moment. Glain stepped through last, still facing back toward the Serapeum's hallway as the lions crowded in. Jess slammed the door shut and locked it as the first of the pride fixed a red gaze in their direction.\n\nThen they were running through the empty halls of the basilica. Jess managed to keep up without help, though he felt Morgan next to him, anxiously steadying him when he faltered. \"I'm fine,\" he told her, and she sent him a breathless, disbelieving look. \"You were right about the lion. I'm sorry I couldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"It wasn't your fault,\" she said, and her hand slipped into his. The warm touch of her hand pushed back the pain a little. \"Come on, Jess. Just a little farther.\"\n\nSanti led them through a maze of corridors, avoiding High Garda patrols responding to the summons from the Serapeum, and Jess recognized where they were now: the hallways close to where he and Glain, a lifetime ago, had begun their patrol. \"It'll be guarded,\" he told Glain, and she nodded. \"Don't hesitate to shoot, no matter who it is.\"\n\n\"I won't,\" she said, and moved up to run with Santi. They rounded a last corner, and there, halfway down the long hall, lay the statue of Pluto with the hidden entrance behind him, and a group of five soldiers in front.\n\nBlue Dogs\u2014their own squad. Jess recognized the Englishman with the beard and a few of the others, and it hit him like a sick jolt.\n\nSomeone shouted, and the Blue Dog soldiers all turned to face them. One of them fired, but it was a wild shot and dug gouges from the stone above and behind them. Santi and Glain fired back, and Jess managed to get his own weapon up, too. Two of the soldiers dropped immediately, and another one followed in the next second, but the two on the left abandoned the open hallway and took cover. \"Glain, Jess, with me!\" Santi shouted, and they pelted forward. Another shot came their way, and this one wasn't wild at all; it was well-placed, accurate, and hit Glain in the meaty part of her thigh. She cried out and went down, and Jess blinked at the splash of bright red blood left on the wall where she'd been. He dragged her up and pressed her behind the statue of Juno, then ran after Santi, who'd activated the secret entrance behind Pluto. He skidded to a halt and aimed at the soldiers who had already lined up on Santi's back.\n\nOne shot, and missed, but Jess didn't. He placed his shots carefully, and both men dropped.\n\nSanti looked angry and ill with it. \"Get them in,\" he said. \"Look after Glain. We still have to take the Translation Chamber, and there may be more guarding it...\" His voice trailed off, and his eyes fixed somewhere beyond Jess, toward the other end of the tunnel.\n\nJess heard a ringing, echoing roar.\n\nHe turned his head to see the Roman lion\u2014the one he'd turned off on their way to rescue Thomas\u2014racing toward them in a flat-out run, claws digging into the stone floor of the hallway as it ran, and flinging up chips behind it. His weapon wouldn't matter to it, not at all, and from the tenor of the roar and the red shine of its eyes, it didn't intend to take them prisoner. It would crush them, rip them, leave them bloody rags on the stones.\n\nHe heard Santi's quiet sigh behind him and recognized the resignation in it. Santi was giving up.\n\nJess damn well wasn't.\n\nHe dropped his gun and, as Morgan and Khalila ducked through the opening, with Glain held up between them, he went straight at the lion at a run. Not this time, he thought. This time I won't miss. He couldn't. They were in the path now, and the lion would crush them all, Scholars and Obscurists and High Garda alike. They were now enemies, and enemies had no safety.\n\nNow.\n\nHe flung himself forward into a tight ball and rolled, slammed his legs down flat to stop himself as the lion passed over him, and then he was up, behind it, as it passed him.\n\n\"Jess!\" Morgan screamed. She thought it had trampled him, and, near enough, he'd felt one paw graze his shoulder and leave a massive bruise, but he was alive. And now he grabbed hold of the automaton's whipping tail, careful of the barb at the end, and swung himself up on the broad, muscular back.\n\nIt was like riding a storm. The lion reacted instantly to the pressure, twisting and writhing, slamming against the wall; he dodged the barbed tail that tried to spear him from behind and locked his arms around the massive neck before he swung his legs off and let momentum throw him forward. For a second he was dangling from the lion, and his head wedged in under the lion's jaw, preventing it from biting.\n\nNow.\n\nHe let go, and as he fell, he stabbed his fingertips up onto the switch. It gave with a sharp click, and then he hit the floor and scrambled backward as the lion lunged at him, snapping its jaws.\n\nIt came to a frozen halt a handbreadth from his face.\n\n\"Dio mio!\" Santi said, lapsing just for a moment into his native Italian, and then recovered a second later to lunge forward, grab Jess, and drag him backward to his feet. For just a moment, the captain looked at him with silent approval, and then he turned and said, \"We have to get to the Translation Chamber. Move.\" As the others began to go, he said to Jess, \"I thought we were dead.\"\n\n\"So did I,\" Jess admitted. \"I just thought I'd rather go out fighting.\"\n\nSanti slapped him on the same shoulder the lion had bruised. \"I've decided I like you, boy.\"\n\nJess somehow found himself grinning. \"Everybody likes me. I'm charming.\"\n\n\"Shut up and move.\"\n\nMorgan embraced him with wild strength when he reached her, but it was only a moment's pause before they began running down the corridor after Wolfe and Khalila. \"Where's Glain?\" he asked, and looked back. Thomas was helping Glain limp along; he'd ripped a strip from the black Scholar's robe to bind the hole in her leg, but she was still leaving a bloody trail of footprints behind.\n\n\"We need to get her help,\" Morgan said. \"She's losing too much blood.\"\n\n\"Glain's too damned tough to die,\" he said, but Morgan didn't smile. She looked grim and scared, and he thought she ought to be. Their chances of surviving this day were looking smaller and smaller. They'd lost Dario; Glain was badly hurt. It had been a matter of seconds between his neck and a lion's jaws.\n\nThe odds were good that someone was going to die before they got out.\n\nThe Translation Chamber lay at the end of the hallway, a simple open alcove and a round room like the others Jess had seen; he realized only now that it had much in common with the round room below them, in the prison, where torture equipment had been set up. The difference was simply in usage. This room, too, was lined with tiled mosaics of gods and monsters, kings and warriors. In the center of it lay a marble couch in the old Roman style, and a helmet that reminded him of the ancient legions. It was connected by a thick, flexible metal cable that descended from a hole in the ceiling. Like the Translation Chamber at Darnah, it was otherwise empty\u2014no, even more barren. Not even a bucket and sink for those who might get sick.\n\nAnd, more meaningfully, no guards. No Obscurist.\n\n\"Can you do this?\" he asked Morgan, and pointed to the couch, the helmet. \"Turn it back on?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\"London,\" Jess said, and looked at Santi and Wolfe for confirmation. Wolfe shook his head sharply.\n\n\"Word is that the Welsh are already there,\" Santi said. \"They're making quick work of English defenses. We could be trapped in the fighting, and how do you know your family hasn't already pulled out?\"\n\nJess turned to Morgan. \"Can you send a message to my father on the Codex, and make sure no one else sees it? I can give it to you in code.\"\n\n\"I think so. What do you want to say?\"\n\n\"Tell him I'll meet him at the warehouse. He'll understand. If he's not still in town, he'll warn us off.\"\n\n\"I'll need a Codex,\" Morgan said. Khalila ran back down the hall and retrieved one from a fallen soldier. Jess wrote out the words in code on a scrap of Glaudino's note pages, and Morgan quickly copied it into the message page. Her words, Jess realized, didn't even show on the page at all, as if the ink erased itself as soon as she put it to paper.\n\nThey waited tensely for a moment, and then the reply was written out in Callum Brightwell's spiky, urgent hand: Go careful.\n\n\"He's still there,\" Jess said. \"In London.\"\n\n\"We still have a problem. The Serapeum is guarded,\" Wolfe said.\n\n\"Not as much of a problem as you would think,\" Santi replied. \"The High Garda will be out defending the perimeter; London Garda will be engaged with the Welsh. There are three of us in uniform\u2014that's enough to cause confusion until we can win our way free. I know where the Translation Chamber is. We can make it outside, if your father can send us to safety after.\" Santi studied Jess with cold intensity. \"Will he? No half-truths this time.\"\n\n\"He will,\" Jess said, and then swallowed hard. \"For a price. He'll need something in trade.\"\n\n\"Something,\" Santi repeated. \"Such as?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Jess said. \"I'll think of something.\" But he already knew. His father would highly value the information about how to switch off the automata, but if it wasn't enough, Jess could offer the precious volume he'd translated for Thomas about the creatures. That was enough to buy all their lives ten times over. \"We don't have much choice, do we?\"\n\nSanti didn't look happy about it, but he nodded. They were well committed now, and any delays might mean capture, imprisonment, death.\n\nJess stretched out on the marble couch. \"I'll go first,\" he said. \"I'll distract them with a story about fleeing a sneak attack on the High Garda in Rome. Send Glain after me.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure that's wise,\" Khalila said. \"She's injured.\"\n\n\"That's why she has to go next,\" he said. \"If I'm alone telling the story and she arrives...\"\n\n\"It's confirmation.\" Santi nodded. \"All right. Morgan, if you can do this, you'd better do it now.\"\n\nThere wasn't much choice. Morgan fitted the helmet over Jess's head. He muttered the standard good-luck phrase under his breath and waited for the mouth of the wolf to close over him... But those jaws never shut. He felt the pressure of Morgan's hands on the helmet, but there was no surge of energy. No power ripping him apart.\n\nHe tilted his head to look back at her. \"What's happening?\"\n\nHer eyes were round and shocked, and she said, \"I don't know! It's as if\u2014as if I'm blocked from that path. It won't let me send you to London!\"\n\n\"Is it malfunctioning?\" Wolfe demanded. \"Because we can't stay here, Morgan.\"\n\n\"I know! It's not... The power's there, but it's only letting me go...\" Morgan closed her eyes a moment, and Jess felt something this time\u2014a slight tingle, like a surge of static electricity. She caught her breath and whispered, \"No. Oh God, no!\"\n\n\"What is it? What's wrong?\" Jess sat up and stripped the helmet off. Morgan's eyes were filled with tears, her hands trembling as she raised them to cover her mouth. When she met his eyes, the tears spilled over. \"Morgan!\"\n\nShe gulped back what seemed like sheer panic, and looked from him to Wolfe as she dragged her hands back down and balled them into fists.\n\n\"I'm so sorry. They must have\u2014 They must have known we'd try this. I can take you only one place from here,\" she said. \"Just one.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Alexandria,\" she whispered. \"Into the Iron Tower.\"\n\nWolfe stared for a moment, black eyes gone blank, and then shifted to send Santi a look. \"This is my mother's doing.\"\n\nJess dumped the helmet on the floor with a crash. \"We can't go back to Alexandria. We have to fight.\"\n\n\"Then we'll die,\" Santi said flatly. \"And Glain won't survive that injury unless she gets help quickly. We can give up, or we can take a chance. The Obscurist isn't pledged to be loyal to the Archivist. She's loyal to the Library. There's a difference.\"\n\n\"Hairsplitting,\" Wolfe said, but then shook his head. \"It doesn't matter. Nic is right. We must chance it. It's that, die fighting, or\u2014\" He didn't need to state the alternative. They'd all seen it below in the cells. The torture chamber.\n\n\"Not the Tower,\" Morgan whispered, and it was just for Jess. \"I can't go back there. Jess\u2014\"\n\nHe grabbed her hand and held fast. \"Yes, you can,\" he said. \"I'll be with you. I promise, I'm not leaving you.\"\n\n\"Jess!\" The wordless plea in her face hurt him, because he knew he had no way to answer it. He shook his head and saw the light go out in her eyes. He'd just betrayed her. Again.\n\n\"We're agreed?\" Santi asked, and one by one they nodded. Even Morgan, though the pallor on her face spoke louder than words. \"Go.\"\n\nJess settled the helmet over his head and felt Morgan's trembling, powerful hands come down on it. And this time, in bocca al lupo, the lightning came, and struck him apart into pieces and sent him shrieking into the dark."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "An excerpt from the personal journal of Obscurist Magnus Keria Morning (interdicted to Black Archives):\n\n\u2002I have always tried to believe. Always.\n\n\u2002When I learned that, as late as three hundred years ago, Obscurists were allowed the same freedom as other Scholars, that the Iron Tower was only a place of work and study, and not our gilded prison, I accepted that these changes were made purely for our own protection.\n\n\u2002Then I read in the Black Archives that two hundred years ago, the Library ruthlessly crushed a revolt by the families of those kept here with us\u2014our children, our lovers, our husbands and wives. Those we loved were killed or exiled. The Archivist set new rules. Crueler rules. We could no longer keep our families or even our children, unless the children were gifted as Obscurists.\n\n\u2002My great-great-grandmother remembered a time when her husband lived here, and her children. She lost the ungifted in the revolt. It was not so very long ago, this change. This terrible, cruel desperation of our Archivists, striving to cling to power that is slipping away from them.\n\n\u2002Maybe if I had not read so much, did not know so much, I wouldn't see how we live now as a horror. But I think it is just that. The Library, in its terror of losing a grip on us, has crushed us instead. Maybe the dwindling number of children born with quintessence is a sign that the Library's stranglehold is destroying us, and that the Library's days are numbered.\n\n\u2002For myself, I should have never let them take my son away from me, or allowed them to take all those sons and daughters we still mourn. I hate every moment of my life as the jailor of this prison. I hate even more the necessity to follow these rules or be replaced by someone much, much crueler.\n\n\u2002I am resigned to my fate. No matter what it costs, I will try to make it right in the end.\n\n\u2002Keria Morning\n\n\u2002Obscurist Magnus\n\n\u2002In what I pray will be the last days of the Iron Tower."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 27",
                "text": "Arriving in the Iron Tower was not what Jess expected, though he hadn't known what to expect, really. Guards seizing him? A sphinx pinning him down with a crushing paw? He did not expect to find himself coming awake in a garden of fresh, flowering plants: English roses, tulips from Holland, a blooming cherry tree from Japan gently shading the low, padded couch on which he lay. The rich, gentle scent of flowers and herbs filled the air, and he breathed it in over and over. It settled his stomach and filled him with a kind of calm he hadn't ever known before.\n\nJess rolled off the couch and to his feet, and felt only a little unsteady\u2014mostly from the beating he'd taken back in Rome\u2014and saw an Obscurist sitting on a nearby folding chair. He was an older man, with handsome, sharp features that spoke of Eastern Europe, possibly Russia, and he nodded calmly at Jess. \"Put the weapon down, please,\" he said. \"You may, of course, keep it if it makes you comfortable. Just don't point it at me.\"\n\nJess was still clutching his weapon in a nervous grip, but the man's quiet assurance made him feel a little ashamed of that. He angled the gun down. The Obscurist nodded in satisfaction. \"Good. Now sit down. There's tea.\"\n\nThe garden room stretched high in an arch, but it wasn't open to the sun; light poured in from windows that circled the round walls, and from them Jess saw the familiar layout of the city of Alexandria\u2014this time from a very great height. The only building that rose higher was the Serapeum, and he could see the tip of the pyramid stretching up another giant's reach above this place.\n\nThe garden around him spread out huge and bursting with colors, and it gave him a sense of the incredible scale of this tower. He'd always known it was huge, but never quite this large.\n\nA city in its own right, surely.\n\nJess sat down on a bench and poured himself a cup of hot tea from the waiting pot; his hands were steady enough to hold it now, at least. As he drank, Glain came through. She arrived unconscious, and blood leaked in thick drips from the sodden cloth of her uniform's trouser leg onto the couch. The Obscurist stood up, suddenly very tall and active, and went to her side. He pressed a silver symbol on his collar and said, \"I need Medica here in the Translation Chamber. Now.\" He picked Glain up\u2014and she was not a light burden, Jess knew\u2014and moved her to a clear spot on the floor, then clamped a strong hand over the wound in her leg to slow the loss of blood. \"You'll need to assist your other friends,\" he told Jess. \"I'm Gregory, by the way.\"\n\n\"Jess Brightwell, sir,\" Jess said. \"Thank you.\" This all seemed so strange. He'd expected to arrive in a dark, forbidding world filled with angry soldiers ready to take them down, or, at least, in a place no better than the torture chamber beneath the basilica. But there was a kindly man and tea, flowers, and a Medica team hurrying now into the garden to tend to Glain. Maybe they had no idea they were welcoming fugitives, sworn enemies of the Archivist. Maybe word hadn't come here at all, and once it did, the bars would finally close in on them.\n\nHe drank all the tea quickly, just in case. It was the first liquid he'd had in what seemed like hours, and he was severely thirsty. His uniform hung heavy with sweat and bloody from cuts. The one on his palm had split open again, and he took out his field kit and wrapped it in a fresh bandage. He was tying it off as Khalila came through. She seemed as dazed as he still felt by their new surroundings, and he got up to help her to the bench and pour her a cup of tea.\n\n\"What is this?\" she asked, as if she truly couldn't comprehend it. Her head scarf had come askew, and strands of her glossy, dark hair showed around her face. She dragged it off and repinned it without the slightest self-consciousness, as if he were family. He appreciated that. \"Where are we? Is this the Iron Tower? I thought\u2014\"\n\n\"You thought it would be grimmer,\" said Gregory, the Obscurist, as he got to his feet and came to them. \"Well, you wouldn't be alone in that, I'm sure. But it is our home, and we make it as pleasant as we can. How many of you will there be?\"\n\n\"If we all make it through? Four more.\" Dario's loss seemed greater now, their decision to leave without him even worse. He knew that was what Khalila was thinking, too. He could see it in the miserable hunch of her shoulders. \"Dario will be all right, Khalila. He's clever.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she said. \"And he does know Rome. He spent time there when he was younger. His father was an ambassador for Spain.\" Jess had always known Dario came from wealth and influence, but not quite that much influence. \"I think, if he were in real trouble, he would go to the embassy. They would hide him, at the very least, and get him back to Spain, where his family could find him a safe place. But I think he'll want to find us again.\"\n\n\"You mean, find you again,\" Jess said. \"I doubt he gives a rusty geneih about my future.\"\n\n\"You wrong him. You always do.\" He put an arm around her, and she sighed and relaxed against him, just a little. \"I missed this. Being together. You've always been like a brother to me, from the moment I met you.\"\n\n\"Ouch,\" he said, but eased it with a smile. \"I never had designs on you, Khalila. I like being someone you can rely on, as much as I rely on you.\"\n\n\"Jess. You don't rely on anyone.\"\n\n\"I do,\" he said. \"It comes as a surprise to me, too.\"\n\nThomas came through, and was promptly and violently sick\u2014no surprise, since he'd been struggling with so much, for so long. Gregory calmly went for a mop and bucket to clean up after him, and Jess and Khalila moved the boy to the bench, poured him tea, and helped him lie flat when it seemed he needed that more than the restorative. By the time they'd gotten Thomas settled, Wolfe arrived, then Santi immediately after.\n\nJess stared hard at the couch, so hard he could feel a vein pulsing in his temple. Come on, he begged her. Come on, don't dally around. Don't let them take you!\n\nWhen Morgan's form coalesced in a red cloud of blood, bone, and muscle, he was instantly on his feet and moving toward her. By the time she was gasping her first breath, he was at her side. Holding her hand.\n\nShe jackknifed up into his embrace with a horrible, choking cry and locked her arms around him like she expected to be dragged away. \"No,\" she whispered into the fabric of his shirt. \"No.\"\n\nHe smoothed her hair and pressed his lips to the salty skin of her temple. \"Morgan. I'm here. You're not alone.\"\n\n\"You don't understand,\" she said, and her whole body shook with the force of her gasp for breath. \"I can't do it again. There's no other way out. They'll lock me here for good, and I can't, I can't...\"\n\n\"Nobody's locking you in,\" he told her, and he meant it. \"But we need to find out what the Obscurist wants from us. Trust me? I won't let you down, Morgan. Not this time.\"\n\nShe shuddered and relaxed, just a little\u2014enough that he was able to loosen her panicked grip on him. Jess helped her to the bench, the tea, and then turned to Santi and Wolfe, who were standing and talking to Gregory. Glain's leg had been efficiently bandaged and she was being carried off to a surgery for repair of the torn muscle and blood vessels; on the way out, Jess reached out to brush her fingers, and she gave him a brisk, almost normal nod.\n\n\"You're in charge until I get back,\" she told him. It was half a joke, and half not.\n\nHe nodded back. \"Not sure what I'm in charge of,\" he said, \"but I'll do what I can. Glain. Don't die on me.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she said, and managed a weak, strange smile. \"As long as it's an order, sir.\"\n\nAs they carried Glain away, the Obscurist Magnus appeared from a staircase, trailing an entourage of more than a dozen others who all wore the golden collars of service to the Iron Tower.\n\nWolfe's mother. She wore her age well and was beautiful in her own striking way. She also wore power like a crackling cloak, and Jess could feel the snap of it halfway across the room. Every head bowed as she passed, and even Niccolo Santi took a step back and nodded in tribute as she approached.\n\nNot her son, though. Wolfe stared at her as if she were a stranger, and said, \"What is this? Are you planning to bargain with the Archivist? Use us as your chips?\"\n\nIt was a sharp observation. After all, the Iron Tower now had something the Archivist wanted very badly, and all neatly tied with a gift ribbon: Wolfe, Santi, the young rebel Scholars, and an escaped Library prisoner. Quite a lever, if she chose to use it to move the man who ruled the Library. And the Obscurist surely hadn't gained, or held, her position by being politically inept all these years.\n\nThe Obscurist put a hand against his cheek. It was a contact that lasted less than a second, because he quickly stepped back. \"Do you really think I would do that, Christopher? Do you think so little of me?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"I think so much of your sense of responsibility to the people in this tower. I'm a secondary concern at best. As ever.\"\n\nHe couldn't have hurt her worse if he'd stabbed her, but it was visible for only a moment. Her expression stayed the same, except for a slight chill in her eyes. \"Everyone in this tower is my family,\" she said. \"You, of all people, know that. They're your family. You were born here. Raised here. And, yes, it hurt to send you away, but you know why it had to be done. I've never stopped watching over you. I never will.\"\n\nJess tried to imagine those words coming from his own parents and failed. He knew other families loved on that level; he'd seen it, like glimpses into a warm room from a cold street. But it was an alien thing to him, caring so much. He'd never experienced it until he'd\u2014all unwillingly\u2014begun to care about these people here in Alexandria.\n\nHis... family.\n\n\"You won't hide us from the Archivist,\" Wolfe told his mother, and then, after a brief pause, asked, \"Will you?\"\n\n\"That would be impossible. I can delay him for a bit,\" she said. \"Enough time to plan for what you will do next. I'm not the Archivist's creature. I know that everything you've done has been for the good of the Library's mission. For its soul. No matter how you feel about me as a mother, I love you as my son.\"\n\nWolfe walked over to inspect something in the garden\u2014mostly, Jess thought, to hide a sudden vulnerability. The Obscurist watched him with a gentle, sad expression, then turned from him to Santi and gave him a wan smile. \"Nic,\" she said. \"I'm sorry. Seeing you here means you've given up so much today. You've worked so hard to secure your place in the High Garda.\"\n\nSanti shrugged. \"I always said, if it comes to a choice between him and the Library, I'd choose him,\" he said. \"I love him. That means I protect him, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"It means everything. I'm glad you're all right. You're nearly as dear to me as he is.\" Her words must have offended Wolfe, because he gave her a black look and moved farther away. His mother's gaze followed him. Worried. \"You took him into the basilica? What were you thinking?\"\n\n\"I had to bring him with us,\" Santi said quietly. \"If I'd left him behind, he'd have been arrested and ended up dead, or worse. At least it kept him alive.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, but it's certainly taken a toll,\" she said. \"I can see it, though he's hiding it well. I hope time here can help heal that.\"\n\nSanti considered that for a moment, then said, in the same level voice as before, \"Lady Keria, I respect you, but if you try to betray him in any way, I'll kill you. You understand? He's had enough pain from this place, too. And from you.\"\n\nHe'd finally pierced her calm, at least a little, and her eyes\u2014so like her son's\u2014flashed. \"Do you think it's easy, watching your son suffer while you stand by doing nothing? Don't you think I want him to understand\u2014\" The Obscurist stopped herself, let a beat of silence go by, and then said, \"Very well. If I ever betray him again, or you, then by all means, kill me.\"\n\nSanti blinked, but said nothing. She managed to surprise him, Jess thought. And then the Obscurist's gaze turned to their little group: Khalila, Jess, Morgan, Thomas occupying the whole of a second bench. Morgan kept her gaze fixed down on her feet as the Obscurist approached, until the woman's fingers under her chin forced her head up again. Morgan didn't flinch, and she didn't look away once their eyes had locked, even while the Obscurist reached for the silk scarf around her neck and tugged it loose to reveal the fish-pale skin of her throat.\n\n\"Incredible,\" the Obscurist said. \"I've never met anyone with your power or your blind foolishness. If you think it gives you some kind of invulnerability, you don't understand the stakes.\"\n\nMorgan slapped the Obscurist's hand away from her scarf. The collared guards nearby tensed, hands closing tight around knives, but the Obscurist gave them a shake of her head. \"I won't be caged up here! I won't be made into some slave\u2014no, worse than that. Some mindless part in a machine, replaced when it breaks.\"\n\n\"You're far more than an automaton,\" the Obscurist told her. \"You're worth more than most people who will ever be born on this earth, Morgan. Archimedes taught that of all the five elements, quintessence is the most rare, the most valuable, the one that transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary. We are quintessence. It's a divine gift, and like all gifts, we must use it for the Library's greater glory.\"\n\nJess wanted to push her away, but it was\u2014oddly\u2014Khalila who spoke in that moment, clear and calm as glass. \"Archimedes said mathematics reveals its secrets only to those who approach it with pure love for its own beauty. But the Archivist has no love for knowledge. He wants only power. You are the club he swings to get it.\"\n\n\"Archivists come and go,\" the Obscurist said. \"The next will be better. You're no more than children. You can't possibly understand.\"\n\nJess glared at her. \"We aren't children, and you don't need Morgan. You have a tower full of your quintessence already.\"\n\n\"Not like her.\" The Obscurist touched Morgan's cheek, and Morgan jerked away, eyes burning with anger.\n\nKhalila stood up. It was a swift, controlled motion, and although it wasn't threatening, there was a cold look in her eyes that made the Obscurist's focus shift.\n\n\"You are Scholar Seif, if I am correct.\"\n\n\"Yes, Obscurist Magnus.\"\n\n\"I have heard great things of you. And I have a name. Please call me Keria.\"\n\n\"I would not presume to be so informal. But if you touch Morgan again, if you try to take her away and lock her up, then you'll have to kill me. I won't make it easy.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the Obscurist said. \"I can see that. You, Jess? Are you also determined to be foolish?\"\n\n\"It's my finest quality,\" he said blandly. Her smile had the power of a lightning strike.\n\n\"So I see. We'll settle Morgan's status later. For now, permit me to offer our help to the young inventor,\" she said, moving to Thomas. \"Don't fear, Thomas. We'll see you are well cared for here.\"\n\n\"Hypocrite,\" Jess said. \"You knew where he was the whole time. As Scholar Wolfe said, we're all just pieces on your game board. You'll sacrifice any of us to get what you want.\"\n\nShe had the same severe look as Wolfe, when she wanted to use it. \"Do, please, tell me what my plans are, young man. I'm sure it will be very informative.\" He could just hear Wolfe saying that, in exactly the same tone, and though Jess didn't mean to, it made him laugh. Bitterly.\n\n\"Oh, leave them alone,\" Wolfe said without turning. \"I know exactly what your plans are. Mother. And I can promise you, we won't cooperate in the least.\"\n\nThere was a breathless silence for a moment, and then the Obscurist walked away, toward the stairs where she'd entered. \"Gregory will see to your accommodations,\" she said without looking back. \"Morgan. Your collar will be replaced. It has to be done, so please don't injure yourself resisting.\"\n\nMorgan stared at the woman's back as if she wanted to plant a knife in it. Her hand gripped Jess's again tightly. He was lucky it was the one without a bandage.\n\nGregory walked over to stand in front of the two of them and said with a calm smile, \"Now, let's be reasonable about this. You can either submit gracefully or submit when you lose the fight, and your friends end up suffering for it. All right?\"\n\nHe held up his hand, and another Obscurist moved forward to put a wooden box in his palm. When Gregory opened it, Jess saw it held one of the golden collars. He felt Morgan's bone-deep shiver of revulsion and took in a slow breath. \"You don't have to,\" he told her. \"Just tell me the word.\"\n\n\"No,\" she whispered. \"It won't do any good, Jess. I don't want any of you hurt.\"\n\nMorgan stood up, closed her eyes, and stayed very still as Gregory clasped the collar around her neck and the symbols on the golden surface shimmered and shifted, and the latch just... disappeared.\n\nMorgan sank down again beside him as if all the strength had drained out of her, and he put his arm around her waist. \"Easy,\" he whispered to her. \"I'm right here.\"\n\nHe turned his head and was suddenly, intensely aware that she was here, next to him, real. Being separated for months hadn't dulled the impact of her presence on him, or\u2014he thought\u2014of his on her. A burning wave of hot and cold swept over him, and he thought, I can't let them have her. I can't. It had been different before, but here, seeing the mute, horrible misery in her eyes and the defeat... He understood how much she hated this place, rich and splendid as it seemed to be. He didn't altogether understand why, but there was no denying it.\n\nGregory casually poured himself another cup of tea from the pot, sipped, and made a face. \"Gone cold,\" he said. \"Too bad. You know, Morgan, you'd do well to be cautious. Keria Morning is the most powerful woman in the world.\"\n\n\"I don't care who she is,\" Jess said. \"Morgan is coming with us when we leave this place. And we will be leaving.\"\n\nGregory laughed so hard, he slopped tea from the side of his cup. \"You, boy, are one to watch. I might watch you end very badly, but at least it will be a good show.\" He put the cup aside. \"Come on. I'll show you to your quarters. The good news is that there is plenty of space here, so you each get your own room.\"\n\n\"What's the bad news?\"\n\n\"I wish I could even begin to guess the extent of it.\" Gregory sounded dry and uninterested, but Jess couldn't imagine that the man wasn't some kind of important personage within the Iron Tower. He did notice that as they stood up, Morgan kept tight hold of Jess's hand, and moved quickly away from Gregory as soon as the chance presented itself. She doesn't like him. That's telling.\n\n\"I hope Glain will be all right,\" Khalila said, as she helped Thomas up.\n\n\"She's in good hands,\" Wolfe said, turning in a storm of black robes to stride back to them. \"The Tower gets the best of everything the Library has to offer.\"\n\n\"Except freedom,\" Morgan said. He turned to look at her, and she dropped her gaze.\n\n\"Except that,\" he agreed.\n\nGregory said, \"Come on, then,\" and led the way out.\n\nJess supposed he shouldn't have been astonished by the interior of the Iron Tower, but he was, and felt as much of a bumpkin gone to market as he had on his first day in Alexandria.\n\nThe tower's central core held rooms. The garden room and Translation Chamber\u2014which sat atop everything else\u2014stretched across the entire expanse from side to side. Beneath that, stairs wound in a flat spiral around the outer walls of the tower, and Jess could feel the warmth of the Alexandrian sun radiating through the metal skin\u2014muted, but not completely gone. Nevertheless, it was cool inside, an artificial sort of coolness that puzzled him, until he felt a breeze from a grate blowing unnaturally cool air. He mentioned it to Thomas, who nodded. \"It's like the heated air we use in the winter,\" he said. \"Here, heat is as much the enemy as our cold.\"\n\n\"I can understand heat, but how do you cool air down? Ice?\"\n\n\"Chemicals,\" Thomas said. \"There are some that freeze things. I suppose blowing air over a mixture of them might do the trick. I never thought of it before.\" He seemed thoughtful, distracted by the question. That was good. He even seemed strong enough to take the stairs alone, though with Santi's watchful support at the ready.\n\nThe cool air wasn't the only marvel. The lights were made of clear glass globes with glowing centers that seemed like trapped starlight. And they were everywhere... hanging from chains overhead, powering lamps sitting on tables. When he reached out to touch the nearest lit glass, it scorched his fingers as if he'd put them in an open flame. He felt like an idiot.\n\n\"It's powered by electricity,\" Morgan said. \"The heat's a by-product.\"\n\n\"I didn't think electricity could be used for illumination! I thought it was just a party trick, of no real useful application.\"\n\n\"One of a great many things we've been taught that isn't true,\" she said. \"Don't be fooled by all the wonders. It's a pretty prison. Still a prison.\"\n\nGregory was already proceeding down another round of stairs ahead of them, and they had to hurry to catch up. Khalila seemed as fascinated as Jess with what they were seeing, though far less willing to risk skin in experimentation. She dropped back to chat with Thomas, and they had an animated conversation about the wonders of the square lifting device, quite like a small room on tracks, that rose and fell, carrying people from one floor of the tower to another. Electrical as well, Jess gathered from the densely technical discussion. Jess was used to the ever-present sound of steam pumps; it had been the constant heartbeat of London, and even in Alexandria the hiss of them was never far away. But here... here the power they used gave it an eerie, calm silence.\n\nThey arrived at a floor near the middle of the tower, and Gregory led them through a closed door. A central hallway ran straight through, bisecting the circle, and on each side of it lay more closed doors. \"There,\" he said. \"One for everyone. Choose your own; they're all equally well appointed, with full baths and fine beds. You've even got a window in each, though I would recommend against trying to open them. Or break them.\"\n\n\"Are we to be locked in?\" Santi asked.\n\n\"Certainly not. You're free to come and go as you like. Explore the Tower. Just don't try to leave.\" His gaze swept over them and fixed on Jess. \"We have sphinx guards downstairs. Ours do not turn off. Nor are they susceptible to rewritten scripts. Their behavior is etched into their metal bones.\" He checked an elaborately gilded clock that graced an alcove in the center of the hall, between two of the rooms. \"Dinner will be downstairs in an hour. Morgan can show you the way. There are bells in your rooms. Pull them if you require anything. Someone will be on duty no matter the hour.\" Gregory smiled, and for the first time he looked less than friendly. It was not a pleasant change. \"Morgan. After dinner, I will expect you back in your own room.\"\n\nShe nodded, but said nothing. They watched as the Obscurist left and made his way down the stairs, and waited until he was gone before Jess walked to the door they'd entered and shut it. There was no lock to keep Gregory out. He wasn't overly surprised.\n\n\"Morgan?\" Wolfe was looking at the girl now, turning her to face him. \"I know Gregory. I know what he does. Do you want to talk to me?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"You can't help me, can you?\"\n\nHe seemed to consider that for a moment. \"We'll see about that. Nic? Do you have a preference for a room?\"\n\n\"One that isn't inside this damned tower?\" Santi chose a door at random and swung it open. Stopped and seemed to reconsider. \"Or... I suppose I might grow accustomed.\" The room, Jess realized as he craned to look, was enormous and luxurious, and the bed looked more lushly comfortable than anything he'd ever seen. Surely even kings didn't sleep that well.\n\nJess opened the door across the hall. It was a mirror image, just as rich. The fabrics were muted golds and crimsons, and the floor was covered with a carpet so soft it felt like stepping on pillows.\n\nMorgan said, \"The rooms are all fine. He wasn't lying about that.\"\n\nHe turned and found that she was already inside and closing the door behind her.\n\nAlone. Alone. It suddenly hit him like a fist to the gut that he had Morgan to himself and their friends would, perhaps, understand enough to leave them their privacy.\n\nBut probably not.\n\nThere were no locks on the doors. That was going to bother him a great deal, he realized. He searched for some way to jam his door shut, but found nothing.\n\nWhen he turned back, Morgan silently came into his arms. She didn't speak, so he didn't, either, afraid to break this fragile truce between them. And then she began to cry.\n\nHe held her closer, wrapped in a protective hug. Her grief was a storm, and it sounded agonizing and hopeless to him, and went on until he worried she might be lost in it. \"Hey. Hey. You're safe, understand? Morgan!\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, and grabbed the inner edge of the gold collar around her neck. She pulled at it with sudden viciousness, and he winced as he saw it bite into her skin. \"I'm trapped here, don't you see it? Of course you don't. All you can see are the pretty flowers and the beautiful rooms, but that's just paint over something rotten. I'd rather die than lose my will and be one of them, Jess. I'm not afraid of dying!\"\n\nShe meant it, and it stunned him. He kept holding her, not sure how thin the ice was he was standing on. \"Do you want to tell me what scares you so badly?\"\n\n\"They\u2014\" She seemed to want to answer, but he could feel the frustration, too. As if she couldn't find the words. \"I don't think you'd understand.\"\n\n\"Try.\"\n\n\"They give us examinations,\" she said then, and he felt her shudder from the memory. \"Chart our monthly cycles. And when they think we are ready to conceive, they...\"\n\nHis throat felt dry now and hot with anger. She was right: this was unfamiliar territory to him. He'd not grown up with sisters, and his mother had always been a distant visitor in his life. He had no real reference for these things. \"They match you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She looked up at him. \"When I ran away to see you, I avoided the day they'd marked out for me to be matched. But, Jess, I won't be able to avoid that again now.\"\n\n\"Then you can fight!\" he told her. \"You've never been afraid to fight!\"\n\n\"I've seen what happens when you fight. My friend...\" She took in a deep breath, held it, and let it out. \"I'm sorry, Jess. I didn't mean to... I'm just so angry. And frightened.\"\n\n\"I won't let anything happen to you,\" he said, which was a foolish thing to say, and from the look she gave him\u2014half-grateful and half-pitying\u2014she knew it.\n\n\"Don't,\" she said, and put her hand on his cheek. \"Don't. Just say you'll be here for me now.\"\n\n\"I will. I am.\"\n\n\"Then kiss me.\"\n\nHe did, and tasted tears and sweetness on her lips. It was a long, gentle kiss, and not entirely innocent of passion.\n\nMorgan suddenly broke the kiss and put her forehead against his. The moment snapped him back to reality and it physically hurt inside, like something stabbing deep. She leaned back and her eyes met his and held, and it hurt worse. He didn't move. They had a history of this, of finding each other and being torn apart by words or deeds, and he didn't want it to happen. Not now. Not tonight.\n\nHe rested his fingertips on her Obscurist's collar, this awful, beautiful thing, and it felt warm as blood to the touch; heat from her body or some kind of process within the gold, he didn't know. \"Morgan,\" he said. \"You don't have to make this choice. It's not me or the Iron Tower. You don't have to\u2014to pretend to love me to make me help you get out of here.\"\n\n\"Is that what you think about me? That I'm paying you off?\" She was angry. Hot spots of color darkened her cheeks, and now she pulled away from him completely and stood up with her hands clenched at her sides. \"That I'm selling myself to you? I thought you understood me, Jess. I thought you understood how I felt!\"\n\nHe held up both hands in a plea for peace. \"I meant only that it doesn't have to end with you settling for something you don't really want. Even if I want it.\"\n\n\"You're an idiot!\" She grabbed a pillow from the bed and flung it at him.\n\nHe caught it. \"Apparently!\"\n\n\"I'm not going to sleep with you just to get out of being matched in the Tower, if that's what you're thinking!\"\n\nThere was a ringing moment of silence after that, and he stared into her suddenly wide eyes.\n\n\"Would that work?\" he asked her. \"If you did, would it\u2014\"\n\n\"Get out!\" she yelled at him, and picked up another pillow.\n\n\"Morgan, it's my room\u2014\"\n\n\"Out!\"\n\nHe was too angry, too hurt, too full of stupid pride, to argue with her.\n\nAnd he slammed the door behind him on the way out and went to Thomas's room.\n\nThomas was standing in his doorway, and with one look at Jess, stepped back and let him inside.\n\n\"I propose chess,\" he said. \"There's a board in the room.\"\n\nThat was nearly as perfect an answer to his problems as Jess could imagine."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "From the personal journal of Morgan Hault:\n\n\u2002I've done everything wrong. Everything. It's all coming apart. It's all my fault. I thought I could make everyone safe, and I thought that Jess... that we could patch our differences and find each other again. Even if most of that separation was from me, because I was afraid to be hurt again.\n\n\u2002But he doesn't understand me at all. And I hurt Sybilla. I left her behind when I'd promised to help her, too. I ran without even thinking about what that would mean for her. I ran to Jess, and then I didn't dare get close to him, and now... now everything is in ruins.\n\n\u2002I'll be trapped here. Maybe I should accept what fate writes down for me. Maybe Dominic will be a kind partner to me. Maybe one day I'll be as contented and bland as Rosa, and believe every lie shoveled into my face.\n\n\u2002I hope they kill me before I become just another broodmare for the Library's futile attempt to cling to its past.\n\nDamn you, Jess, for making me hope it could be any different.\n\n\u2002And thank you, too.\n\n\u2002I still love you. As unwise as that is."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 29",
                "text": "\"Mate,\" Thomas said, and moved his knight into position. Jess groaned and tipped his king. It was his third straight game lost, but he at least felt somewhat steadier and a good deal more levelheaded.\n\n\"Let's not use that term anymore,\" Jess said. \"Just say, I win.\"\n\nThomas raised his eyebrows and smiled a little\u2014the best that Jess had seen from his friend since finding him in that cell. \"All right. You know, as much as I enjoy this strange new feeling of winning against you, you should go back and talk to Morgan.\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" Jess said. \"She'd only throw another pillow at me. Or something more damaging.\"\n\n\"I understand why she's angry. What are you angry about?\"\n\nWhat was it, exactly? He didn't know, except that he was angry at everything suddenly. Angry for Morgan, but angry at her, too. Stupidly. It didn't even make sense. \"She thinks I'm taking advantage.\"\n\nThomas's eyebrows rose to a ridiculous level, wrinkling his forehead like an old man's. \"Are you, Jess?\"\n\n\"How can you even ask me?\"\n\n\"Your motives are completely pure, then?\"\n\nJess glared at him. \"Set the board, Thomas.\"\n\n\"You sound like Dario just now, you know.\"\n\n\"Are you trying to insult me?\"\n\n\"Only a little.\" He outright grinned this time, and Jess smiled back. With months of grime washed down the drain and his hair drying to puffball brightness, Thomas looked almost like his old self. He had some spark back in his eyes. But the grin faded too quickly. \"She's trapped here. I know how that feels. Now you begin to see it, too, how being helpless twists us around.\"\n\n\"It didn't twist you,\" Jess said. \"You've done very well.\"\n\nThomas's expression didn't alter. \"It seems so, maybe. But I'm not the same. She's not. Her confinement isn't like mine, but don't let the soft bars fool you. Taking someone's will, someone's freedom... it kills the heart and then the soul.\"\n\n\"It didn't kill yours.\"\n\nThomas said nothing this time. He set up the board, white and black, and waited for Jess to make a move.\n\nJess didn't have a chance, because a knock came at the door. He was hoping for Morgan, but when Thomas swung it open, Khalila stood on the other side. She glanced quickly at them both and said, \"We have to attend dinner now. I don't think they gave us a choice.\"\n\n\"See?\" Thomas said to Jess. \"So it begins. The little deaths of freedom.\"\n\nThey stepped out into the hall. Khalila stood quite alone, and Jess wasn't sure if her arms were simply crossed or if she was hugging herself for comfort. He knew what she was thinking and feeling, because he'd felt it himself when Morgan had been taken away. At least he'd known where she was and who'd taken her.\n\nDario was just... gone. Vanished. And there was no way to know if he was alive, free, imprisoned, dead. All Khalila could do was hope... and hope was difficult, knowing what they all knew about the Library now. He's a smart one, Jess told himself again. Connections, money, friends... he'll be all right. He wanted to say that to Khalila but knew how useless it would sound.\n\nWhen she looked up and saw him, she forced a smile and said, \"I was just thinking about my family.\"\n\nThat stopped him. Why had he just assumed she'd be pining uselessly after Dario? Was it because he was so caught up in his own thoughts of Morgan? \"Your family?\" He knew he sounded surprised. \"Why? Are they all right?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said. \"I've betrayed everything they believe in. Worse than that, I've so many Scholars in the family. Will they be all right, Jess? Do you think the Library will punish them for what I've done?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"Of course not.\"\n\n\"I hope not.\" The desolation in her voice hurt. He remembered her proud uncle, escorting her on the train to Alexandria, and the constant messages she'd received from her father and mother and siblings and cousins. Khalila's life was full of love, and the decisions she'd made may have cut her off from that love. Would she have done that if he hadn't come to her with his mad speculations and schemes?\n\nAnother knife cut of guilt slicing a piece of his heart away. He had no answers for her, nothing but a whispered, \"I'm sorry,\" which was no comfort. He wished she had been thinking of Dario. It would have been a simpler subject, an easier answer. This cut to the core of who Khalila was.\n\nShe made the choice, some part of him said, but he hated that he thought it. Of course she had. That didn't make it all right. In some ways, it only made it worse.\n\nWhile Jess stood helpless, Thomas walked directly to Khalila and wrapped her in a hug that lifted her off her feet. After a second of surprise, she put her arms around him\u2014as far as they would stretch\u2014and put her head on his broad shoulder.\n\n\"I would be dead if not for you,\" he told her. \"I would be dead to everything and everyone I knew if you hadn't come for me. All of you. Don't think I will ever forget what you've done for me.\"\n\n\"I had to,\" she said. \"I was glad to.\"\n\n\"Even so,\" he said. \"If you lose your family, I will be your family. Always.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath and said, \"Thank you. Now put me down, you lumbering bear.\"\n\nHe laughed a little and put her back on her feet. \"Sorry. It's like picking up a tiny bird. You should eat more.\"\n\n\"So should you,\" she said. Her smile was back. So was the light in her eyes. It's remarkable, Jess thought, that Thomas can do that. He had so much light inside him that it warmed those around him. \"Will you be my escort to dinner?\"\n\n\"I will,\" Thomas said gravely, and offered her his arm, like an ancient country gentleman. She put her hand lightly on it.\n\nJess was laughing at them, but it stopped quickly as Morgan opened the door of his room and their eyes met. He nodded to her warily. She nodded back. Her eyes looked red and swollen, but there were no tears now. And no forgiveness, either.\n\nHe was still considering what to say to her when the door to Wolfe and Santi's room opened and the two men stepped out. Wolfe gave them all a dour glance and said, \"What are you waiting for?\" as he pushed past and opened the door at the end of the hallway. Santi followed, and then Khalila and Thomas.\n\nJess cleared his throat and gestured, and Morgan preceded him out.\n\nIt didn't really feel like peace.\n\nSomehow Jess had expected a small, private room that would have been set aside for them, but instead the dining room of the Iron Tower was a large, open space filled with many, many tables and groups gathered at nearly every one. Most of those in the room fell silent and turned toward them as they entered, and Jess had an instinctive defensive reaction until Morgan murmured, \"They never see new faces here. You're novelties.\"\n\nNovelties. He felt Thomas flinch, saw Morgan avert her eyes, and it made him even angrier. We're not your entertainment, Jess wanted to shout. He began to have a small inkling of what Morgan's life might be like here, being the rebellious outcast in what seemed to be a group of true believers.\n\nMorgan, gaze down, wasn't looking at any of the other tables, but they were all staring... and whispering and pointing. A young girl rose from a nearby table and walked toward them. She couldn't have been more than sixteen and had an unpleasantly smug look on her face, but what drew Jess's attention was the rounded swell of her stomach beneath her dress. It took him a long moment to comprehend what that meant, and then he shot a fast, unguarded look at Morgan. Her face\u2014what he could see from this angle\u2014had set into a bland mask.\n\n\"Sister Morgan!\" the girl almost purred, and extended both hands as if she expected Morgan to grasp them in welcome. \"We're so glad you decided to rejoin us. We missed you!\"\n\nShe managed to make it look like her own idea to clasp her hands in excitement and pull them back when Morgan didn't take the hint. Her smile turned brittle and a little vile. The silence stretched... and then Morgan said, \"Rosa, we're tired and hungry. Please excuse us.\"\n\nIt was bare courtesy, and Rosa couldn't have missed it, but she somehow managed to hang on to that smile and put both hands now on the curve of her stomach. \"The baby's started to kick. Do you want to feel it?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid we are all far too tired this evening,\" Khalila said, which sounded brusque but, in the way that only Khalila could manage, also sounded warm and kind. \"Rosa, is it?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Rosa said, and turned to her. She took in Khalila in one sweeping glance, head to toe. \"You're not one of us.\"\n\n\"I am a Scholar,\" Khalila said. \"How does that make me alien to you?\"\n\nRosa dismissed her and went back to Morgan. \"Don't worry,\" she said, and pitched her voice a little louder to carry. \"I know you missed your time, but Dominic is a patient young man. I'm sure you look forward to it.\"\n\nDominic. Jess felt something dark settle into the pit of his stomach, because now he had a name for the Obscurist Morgan was expected to bed. Dominic. He scanned the room, wondering which of them it was. The puffy, pale one at the back with his attention fixed on his plate? The lean one watching them with silvery eyes? It would drive him mad, not knowing which one of them to hate.\n\nRosa started back toward her table but then turned around, as if she'd just thought of something. Pure, petty theater. \"Oh,\" she said to Morgan. \"I don't suppose you've heard about poor Sybilla?\"\n\nThat, for the first time, broke through Morgan's mask, and she quickly looked up. \"What about her?\"\n\n\"She had a... misadventure,\" Rosa said. \"Perhaps you should visit her on the hospital floor.\"\n\nThis time, Gregory stood up from one of the tables not far away, and though he said nothing, Rosa quickly ducked her head and went back to her seat without another word. Gregory sank down, too, but Jess could feel his gaze on them.\n\nOn Morgan.\n\n\"Well,\" Khalila said as they took chairs at one of the few empty tables. \"I can see how the charm of this place might wear very thin. Morgan? All right?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Morgan said, but in a toneless way that made Jess think the opposite. \"Fine.\" She swallowed and forced a little cheer. \"The food's very good. The servers will bring what you want.\"\n\nThomas, settling uneasily into a chair too small for him, said, \"Is there a list of choices?\"\n\n\"No. You just tell them what you'd like. Wolfe was right; Obscurists are pampered. The best food, prepared just the way we want it; that's just one of many ways they try to make us forget we're\u2014\"\n\n\"Prisoners,\" Jess finished.\n\n\"No,\" Morgan said, and didn't look at him. \"Prisoners eventually get out.\"\n\nA servant wearing a gold band\u2014didn't that go against the entire structure of the Library?\u2014came to ask politely what they wanted for food and drink. With no slate of choices, Jess was too tired to think creatively; longing a bit for home, though he didn't know why, he just ordered roast beef and mash. Thomas must have felt the same, since he ordered schnitzel. Morgan asked for chicken; Khalila for roasted mutton. It was all very normal. As soon as the servant walked away, Thomas said, \"The servants are pledged here for life as well?\"\n\nMorgan nodded. \"The difference is that they do get to leave the Tower from time to time. Obscurists can only leave under the strictest rules and controls.\"\n\n\"What about the ones who operate the Translation Chambers?\"\n\n\"Our lowest caste,\" she said. \"They have the least talent for writing scripts; they can only interpret what's already been written and infuse it with the quintessence to make it work.\"\n\nJess thought it must be a strange blessing here to be a disappointment; it held the chance to take the outside air, see the world, at least a bit. \"Lucky devils,\" he said, and got a look of agreement from her. Just a brief one, but it made him feel less cold. He'd lost his anger, he realized, and partly because it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that none of this had to do with a choice Morgan had made. She'd not chosen to be born with this talent; in fact, she'd done everything in her power to avoid coming here in the first place. She'd never sought out being an Obscurist.\n\nOr children, he thought before he could stop himself. Rosa, with her self-satisfied glow and pointed jibes, made it clear just how Morgan was being taunted.\n\n\"Morgan,\" he said quietly. \"Who's Sybilla?\"\n\nShe froze for an instant in the act of reaching for her water glass, then completed the motion, drank, and set it down before she said, \"A friend.\"\n\n\"And she's ill?\"\n\nMorgan said nothing, but Wolfe did. He looked angry. \"Not ill. Leave it, Brightwell.\"\n\nAnother awkward silence, one Thomas moved to fill with a patently false cheer.\n\n\"Do you know the Tower already?\" Thomas asked Wolfe. \"You lived here. Such wondrous inventions they have here, I'd love to hear about all\u2014\"\n\n\"My mother determined I was without significant talent as an Obscurist when I was five years old,\" Wolfe broke in. \"At ten, I was removed to the Library orphanage, where I received my training. I've never been back. So I know little about the inventions, Thomas.\"\n\n\"A lot of time between visits from your mother,\" Santi said. He was watching Wolfe closely, a cup of poured wine forgotten in his hand.\n\n\"Not long enough. I saw her the day they released me from the Basilica Julia prison,\" Wolfe said. \"She brought me home. To you. She left before you found me.\"\n\nSilence at the table. Santi opened his mouth and closed it again, as if he couldn't decide what to ask or what to say; he finally just drank his wine. Wolfe followed suit.\n\nThe mood had fallen a little dark, and grew darker with the sudden approach of Gregory, who smiled at them as if they were old friends. \"Obscurist Hault,\" he said. \"Your presence is requested. Dominic has missed you during your absences. Please come with me.\"\n\nDominic, Jess realized, must be the red-haired young man who stood a few paces back. He was small, compact, and covered in a spray of freckles... and miserable. Jess had been prepared to hate him, but seeing how he avoided even so much as looking in Morgan's direction, he understood with blinding speed it wasn't the boy's choice, either.\n\nJust a duty to be done.\n\nJess was rising to his feet to do something violent\u2014to Gregory, if not to Dominic\u2014when Wolfe quickly stood, faced Gregory, and said, \"I'd have thought you'd have learned some manners at your age, but you're as bad as you were when I was a child. You'll have her the rest of her life. Isn't that enough?\"\n\nGregory straightened to face Scholar Wolfe, and Jess realized there was real dislike between these two. It bordered on hate. For all Gregory's droll observations, he wasn't remotely friendly. There was something dark underneath his smile\u2014more like a smirk now. Unpleasant and superior. \"Keria's always favored you,\" he said. \"Her precious little boy, born a disappointment. She fought to keep you long past the age when you should have been sent away, and when you finally were, she still never forgot you. All her love was reserved for you, and you can't even give her a kind word in return.\"\n\n\"She doesn't look to me for kind words. She has you for that. You were ever the politician. And the predator.\"\n\nGregory's smile froze in place, and shattered into a compressed, hard line. \"What are you implying?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Wolfe said. \"Except that you take a special, unseemly delight in your job.\"\n\n\"And what do you think I do?\"\n\n\"Play God with the lives of children.\"\n\n\"Obscurist Hault is not a child. She is a young woman of tremendous potential who might one day prove as important as, if not more important than, your own mother. It's in the best interests of the Iron Tower to\u2014\"\n\n\"To match her with an appropriate sire for her children? Oh yes. I know the game. I grew up with a mother who loathed the very sight of my father, and he hated her in turn. Odd, isn't it, that your forced inbreeding has created generations of progressively less powerful Obscurists? It's as if it doesn't actually work to force people into loveless unions!\"\n\n\"You know nothing\u2014\"\n\n\"As one of your more notable failures, I'd say I know everything,\" Wolfe said flatly. \"Go away, Gregory. Morgan stays with us.\"\n\nJess stood up. Didn't say or do anything; just stood up. Khalila stood, too. Thomas. Santi. Wolfe stood still with deliberate calm.\n\nDominic at last raised his head, and the relief on his face was very plain.\n\n\"This is a foolish waste of our charity,\" Gregory said. \"We've offered you safety. Refuge. Care for your wounded. And you're throwing it back in our faces, and for what? You can't keep her. She belongs to us. To the Tower and the Library.\"\n\n\"She belongs to no one. Let me be clear: the girl makes her own choices, for as long as she's with us. If my mother disagrees with that, tell her to come herself. I don't listen to self-important lackeys.\"\n\nGregory's face turned an alarming shade of red. \"As you wish,\" he said. \"Scholar Wolfe.\"\n\nHe walked back to his table, anger in every stiff motion, and pointedly turned his back to them. Jess didn't want to do the same. He didn't trust Gregory not to stick a knife in it.\n\nDominic was still there. The young man looked scared as a rabbit, but he stayed long enough to say, to Morgan, \"I'm sorry,\" before he went back to his own table.\n\nNot everyone in the Iron Tower was as content and smug as Rosa.\n\n\"Morgan?\" Khalila settled back down in her chair and reached for Morgan's hand. \"They haven't forced you\u2014\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" Morgan said. \"Thank you, Scholar Wolfe.\"\n\nHe shook his napkin out and dropped it in his lap. \"Don't thank me,\" he said. \"I did it to annoy Gregory.\"\n\n\"Watch him,\" Morgan said. \"He's a snake.\"\n\n\"I'm immune to his particular poison. We knew each other as children, and he was five years older. You can imagine how that appealed to his cruelty.\"\n\nShe shuddered. \"I'd rather not. And thank you, whatever you meant by it.\"\n\nHe shrugged as if it didn't matter. And then the food arrived, and Jess was pleasantly surprised to find his roast beef and mash were as good as a Sunday feast at home\u2014one of the few consistently pleasant things he could recall about his childhood. They'd even mushed his peas. For a while, the five of them concentrated on their food. Someone had wisely allotted Thomas a double portion, and he ate it at an alarming speed that worried Jess for a moment; maybe the young German's stomach couldn't handle such a sudden rush of rich food. But Thomas seemed happy, and at the moment that was all that mattered.\n\n\"Glain!\" Thomas suddenly put down his fork\u2014he was more than halfway done with his second large schnitzel\u2014and looked around at the rest of them. \"What is Glain eating? Is she allowed visitors yet?\"\n\n\"You're free to ask,\" Wolfe said. \"The Medica floor is below this one.\"\n\n\"Soup,\" Thomas said. \"I'll take her soup.\" Without waiting for anyone else, he stood up and stopped a server, ordered a bowl to go, and quickly left with it. Santi, done with his meal, leaned back to watch him go.\n\n\"He's making a quick recovery,\" he said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Wolfe agreed. He didn't look happy. \"Seems so.\"\n\nThey exchanged looks\u2014significant ones, Jess thought. \"He's strong,\" he said, out of some impulse to defend his friend. Santi sighed.\n\n\"He wouldn't have survived without that,\" he said. \"But strength won't keep the darkness away, and being on his own in a hostile place isn't good for him. Go. Find him.\"\n\nJess didn't hesitate to take that suggestion. And it led him to the Medica floor.\n\nThe floor, instead of having individual chambers, had been built open, with only suspended curtains sectioning off one patient from another. Most of the curtains had been tidily drawn back and secured, the beds empty. The Medica attendant on duty rose from her station to study him as he entered, then nodded toward one of the curtained areas. \"Your companions are there,\" she said. \"You can stay a few minutes. No longer. The patient needs rest.\"\n\nJess nodded and continued on, and found Thomas sitting at Glain's bedside. He seemed fine, and so did Glain; she'd been propped up with cushions, and was trying to spoon up soup, but without much appetite that Jess could see. He pulled a chair closer and straddled it. \"I've been told that the Iron Tower gets the best of everything,\" he said.\n\nGlain swallowed her mouthful and reached for the water glass. \"Soup is soup. But they've treated me well enough.\" She shot Jess a guarded look. \"How is everyone else?\"\n\n\"All right so far,\" he said. He knew she was asking mostly about Morgan, and he didn't want to answer that question. \"So, you're not going to die on us, then.\"\n\n\"Don't you just wish? No. You're not so lucky, Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Good.\" He extended a hand and she clasped it, but quickly, and then dug back into her soup. Personal emotion always made her uncomfortable. \"Thomas thought of the food.\"\n\n\"It was kind,\" Glain said, and gave the German boy a brief, full smile. \"Did you eat?\"\n\n\"Schnitzel,\" Thomas said. \"But I almost regret it. I\u2014 My stomach can't take so much rich food so quickly, I think.\" He'd paled again and his fingers drummed in agitation. Trying, Jess figured, to distract himself from thoughts of what he'd eaten in the cells, or the times he'd had to endure hunger. Even the good things are tainted for him, Jess thought, and it enraged him all over again. But it would get better, wouldn't it? Given time? It hasn't for Wolfe. Against his will, he recalled Elsinore Quest's advice: damage like this couldn't be buried safely.\n\n\"We should leave you,\" Jess said, \"unless you need something?\"\n\n\"I'll harass the staff if I do. That's what they're here for,\" Glain replied. \"You concentrate on finding a way out of this. I'll join you tomorrow.\"\n\n\"If the physicians say you can.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" she said, and ate another mouthful of soup with grim determination.\n\nThomas seemed reluctant to leave despite his restlessness, and Jess had to convince him that they weren't abandoning Glain; he seemed eager for her not to feel alone, but to Jess it appeared to be more about Thomas's experiences shadowing the situation. Eventually, Glain persuaded him by rolling her eyes and said, \"Oh, for the sake of Heron, just leave me to get some rest, Thomas! I'm fine!\" And as blunt as it was, it did the job of convincing him to follow Jess out.\n\nAs they left, though, Jess caught sight of a familiar figure slipping into another private curtained-off area across the way, and put his hand on Thomas's arm to hold him back. \"Wait here for me,\" he said. \"I'll just be a moment.\"\n\n\"Jess?\"\n\n\"One moment.\"\n\nHe didn't go into the private space, but he pulled the curtain aside, just enough to see Morgan sitting down at the bedside of another young woman. It took him a moment to recall it, but hadn't the snide girl Rosa mentioned something about Morgan's friend? Sybil... No. Sybilla.\n\nSybilla couldn't have been much older than Rosa\u2014fifteen or sixteen, best guess. She was a slip of a thing, swallowed up by blankets and pillows, wan, pale, and unconscious.\n\nAs he watched, Morgan put her hand on the girl's shoulder, bowed her head, and began to cry. Silent, wrenching tears.\n\n\"Sir,\" the Medica attendant said sharply from behind him. \"Come away. Now.\"\n\nJess jumped and turned and followed her away. \"Wait,\" he said. \"What happened to her? The girl in the bed?\"\n\n\"I can't discuss that.\"\n\n\"Wait.\" Jess drew her to a stop and met her eyes. \"What happened?\"\n\nShe looked away all too quickly. \"I told you, I can't discuss it.\" But she hadn't pulled away, either, and after a pause whispered, \"She took poison. She's not the first.\"\n\nHe kept his voice as low as hers. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Not everyone is happy with their fate,\" she said, and then did pull away. \"Or suited to it. You should go. Now.\"\n\nJess looked back over his shoulder at the closed curtains. Morgan must not have heard; he could see her shadow against the cloth, still bent forward. Still lost in her grief and fear.\n\nI won't let it happen to you, he told her. Whatever you feel about me now, that doesn't matter. I don't ever want to see you like Sybilla.\n\nHe walked Thomas back to the safety of the others and waited on the stairs until Morgan walked out onto the landing in front of the Medica doors. She didn't look up to where he stood; she seemed tired and lonely, and she turned and took the stairs down. Away from him. Away from the rest of them.\n\nJess followed quietly and at a distance.\n\nShe descended two floors and went down a hallway, and as he stepped through and into sudden, thick darkness, he felt a knife prick the skin of his throat, and he immediately froze.\n\nThen she sighed. \"Oh, Jess. Please go away.\" Her voice sounded thick and unsteady, and he knew she was still crying or on the verge of it. The knife moved away, and he heard her start to turn.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said quietly. That earned another sigh, even more quiet.\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"For not understanding. Staying away from this place should always have been your choice. Not mine.\" He hesitated for a second. \"Your friend. Will she live?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Morgan said. \"And that's almost worse. You see, they now consider her a danger to herself, so what little freedom she did have left will be taken away. She can't bear that. Yet she'll have to somehow.\"\n\n\"Is he so bad? Her match?\"\n\n\"No. Iskander is perfectly fine. But Sybilla... she was in love with someone else.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nMorgan turned and put her hand on his cheek. The contact was sweet and warm and unexpected, and he resisted the urge to put his arms around her.\n\nAnd then she said, \"Me.\"\n\nHe couldn't comprehend that for a moment, and then his stomach lurched and dropped two floors. \"You\u2014 You and Sybilla?\"\n\n\"No, Jess, that's not what I mean at all.\" Morgan's hand dropped away and he felt terribly, icily cold now. He felt her move away. The hallway was starting to reveal itself to him in shadows and highlights of dark gray, and he could see her now, just a shape. A cipher. \"She was kind to me. She was the only one, at first, and we spent time together. She liked me. I didn't realize\u2014I didn't realize at first that she felt more for me than that.\" The pain of that was still there in her voice, and he almost winced. \"And when I did, I didn't know what to say, except that I\u2014I couldn't be with her. I felt awful about it; I think she saw me as... as a refuge from Iskander. But it was never... I never...\" This time there was no doubt she was crying; he could hear the agonized hitch of her breath. \"Oh God, Jess. I didn't tell her I was running. I left her here alone. You betrayed me, and I betrayed her. I should have at least tried to help her get out of here, too. I knew she was just as desperate!\"\n\nHe still felt light-headed; his heart was pounding so hard it hurt. \"It wasn't your fault. You felt you had to help us with Thomas. You know that.\"\n\n\"It was more than that. I was running away from Dominic, too, that night,\" she said. \"We both try to do the right thing, don't we? But no matter what we do, it keeps coming out wrong.\"\n\nHe put his arms around her, and after a second of stiffness, she collapsed against him. He kissed her cheek, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tightly. \"I love you,\" she whispered to him. \"I never stopped, Jess\u2014I want you to know that. I just\u2014I just felt so alone here, and the only person I could blame was you.\"\n\nShe loves me. She still loves me. That brought him a stunned kind of peace. \"Forgive me?\"\n\nShe kissed him gently on the lips. Sweet and a little sad. \"I did already,\" she said. \"Now go to bed. I'll see you in the morning.\"\n\nHe was unexpectedly tired, he realized as he headed back to his room, but there was no chance to rest yet. Wolfe's door was open, and Khalila, Thomas, and Santi were in with him. They all looked up when he passed, and Wolfe said, \"Brightwell. In.\"\n\nJess took up a leaning spot on the wall. Wolfe paced, of course, as was his usual habit. Khalila and Thomas sat, quietly watching him. Santi poured Jess a cup of wine, and Jess took a sip before he asked, \"So, what's this?\"\n\n\"This is us planning what to do,\" Santi said. \"It's not going very well. Considering that no matter what we do, there's very little chance we can break free of this tower, and none at all we will get out of Alexandria alive if we do.\"\n\n\"Nic.\"\n\n\"There's no point in planning when we're too tired to think,\" he said quite reasonably. \"Your mother's not likely to hand us over immediately, is she? Or have us knifed in our beds?\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said. He kept pacing, hands restlessly tugging at his robe. \"Hardly her style.\"\n\n\"In that case, I have some news,\" Santi said. \"Zara might not be a friend to me any longer, but I do have some in the High Garda I can rely on. I asked them to let me know if anyone matching Dario's description was captured either in Rome or elsewhere. There have been no arrests. He made it out of Rome safely, I believe.\"\n\nKhalila let out a trembling breath and whispered a prayer of thanks.\n\n\"Glain's doing well,\" Jess said. \"She should be strong enough to join us tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Or will join us, anyway?\" Wolfe asked. \"Yes, I know the girl. She won't stay in that bed long.\"\n\n\"And Morgan?\" Thomas looked at Jess and raised his eyebrows. \"She's all right?\"\n\n\"Yes. She's all right. I saw her to her room.\"\n\n\"Morgan's in no danger at all here, at least not the kind we're in,\" Wolfe said. \"Her problem is more desperate, but less violent. We have a day, two at most, before the Archivist himself arrives at the Tower, and once he does, my mother won't have a choice but to hand us over. She can turn the Artifex away. Not the head of the Great Library.\"\n\n\"Then we need to leave,\" Thomas said. \"Perhaps the Obscurist will send us away to safety?\"\n\n\"She says she will,\" Wolfe said. \"I don't know if I believe her. My mother's ever been in pursuit of her own agenda. Sentiment doesn't often enter the equation.\"\n\nLike mother, like son, Jess thought, but had the sense not to say it. \"Any other way out of here?\" he asked, but he already knew the answer. If there had been, Morgan wouldn't have been here as long as she had.\n\n\"It's possible,\" Khalila said slowly. \"I've been researching the Iron Tower for months. I was doing it for Morgan, in case I could find any way to get her out safely. Just before we left, I found something strange in the records. Very strange. I took notes, but I didn't have a chance to verify the research.\"\n\n\"And?\" Wolfe asked, and she blushed a little.\n\n\"Just a moment.\" She turned, and Jess thought she was retrieving something from a hidden pocket in her dress. Or under it. She handed over a single sheet of paper to Wolfe. \"It's coded. Dario created the cipher for me. Do you need the key?\"\n\nJess gestured for the page, and Wolfe passed it along. Jess blinked. \"When did he make the code for you?\"\n\n\"When? Just a few days ago. He said we'd be better off that way. Why?\"\n\nJess felt himself smiling tightly; how like Dario to do something smart and at the same time demonstrate his arrogance. \"Because I recognize it. It's my family's code.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me Dario's a long-lost cousin!\"\n\n\"Just an ass,\" Jess said. \"He asked me about the code once. I told him it was unbreakable. So of course he broke it. And now he's using it. Idiot.\"\n\n\"The contents?\" Wolfe prompted impatiently. Santi, who'd said nothing, pushed himself off the wall he'd been holding up to stand next to them.\n\n\"There's a hidden section in the Iron Tower. Several floors unaccounted for in all of the records that exist. What's above the garden level, where the Translation comes in?\"\n\nWolfe frowned. \"Nothing. That's the top of the Tower.\"\n\n\"No, that isn't true,\" Thomas said. His eyes turned blank, the way they did as he performed calculations Jess couldn't even fathom inside his head. \"There must be at least four more floors above it. Possibly five.\"\n\n\"Morgan would have found it by now. She's had nothing but time to look!\"\n\nJess sent Wolfe a warning look. \"If Thomas says it's there, it's there. Perhaps we could hide in these hidden floors. Perhaps there's even an escape of some kind there.\"\n\n\"Don't you think if there was a way upstairs, someone else would have found it by now?\"\n\nWolfe hadn't said anything, but he looked over their heads at Santi, who raised his eyebrows.\n\n\"We can try,\" he said. \"But I have a feeling that anything that's secret inside the Iron Tower may be a great deal deadlier than it looks.\"\n\nJess slept poorly, even as tired as he was. All the day's events kept jumping through his mind, and the knowledge that Morgan was here, within reach, left him feeling restless. When he rose at the first light of dawn the next day, his first thought as he looked out the narrow, unbreakable window was, This is the last time I'll see Alexandria. One way or another, they'd either leave this place for good or die here.\n\nNot surprising to him that Wolfe and Santi were already up and dressed. Wolfe still wore a Scholar's robe over his plain shirt and trousers. Santi had put on his uniform. Khalila emerged just a few minutes after, fresh and lovely in a dark blue dress and head scarf.\n\nShe smiled at Jess. \"I couldn't sleep,\" she said. \"You?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"I haven't seen Thomas yet. Maybe he's the late riser among us.\"\n\nBut he wasn't. Glain was true to her word and appeared just a moment later, with Thomas walking at her side as she climbed the stairs. They were talking with an ease and animation that seemed vaguely surprising to Jess, given their circumstances.\n\nAnd then Morgan. She'd changed into a practical costume: trousers and a gray jacket. Against the plain fabric, her gold collar seemed far too bright. She'd pulled her brown hair back in a twist. All business.\n\n\"The Artifex came to the gates just before dawn,\" she said. \"I saw him arrive with soldiers. The Obscurist ordered him to leave. Very tense. I'm surprised there wasn't a fight.\"\n\n\"There will be,\" Santi said. \"Soon. He's not going to take no for an answer.\"\n\n\"He won't have to,\" Wolfe said. \"He'll send for the Archivist, and that's an end to it. And us.\" He nodded to Khalila. \"We'll need to explore Khalila's information. Quickly.\"\n\n\"About that,\" Santi said. \"Wathen. How do you judge your ability to run today?\"\n\nQuick on the uptake, Glain. Her dark eyes flashed around at each of them, and she raised her chin and said, \"Whatever the day requires, sir.\"\n\nSanti nodded. \"Packs and weapons. Our time's running out. Either we find a way out this morning or we fight.\"\n\nAnd our odds aren't good, either way, Jess thought. He reached out for Morgan's hand and her fingertips felt chilled in his. She knew, too. She had to know. This idea of Khalila's might be a useless effort, but it was all they had left.\n\n\"Where are you going?\" Morgan asked, and Jess explained it as quickly as he could. She caught on immediately. \"Of course. There was something that always bothered me. The Obscurist would lock the garden entrance every few days. I thought she was conducting secret work via Translation. I didn't think it could be anything else.\"\n\n\"You've never heard of any hidden floors above it?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"Never. Not even a rumor.\"\n\n\"Maybe they don't actually exist,\" Thomas said.\n\n\"Then we'll have a nice garden stroll before we're taken out to be killed,\" Santi said. \"I don't see any drawbacks.\"\n\nThey took the strange moving room\u2014it was, Jess learned, called a lift, which made quite a bit of sense, given its function\u2014up to the garden floor, a floor that, he realized, could only be accessed by Morgan's hand resting on the panel, while other choices were clearly visible with switches. \"Not everyone is allowed use of the garden,\" she told them. \"Only the most senior in the Tower.\"\n\n\"And you're one of them?\" Wolfe gave her a look that said he clearly doubted that, and, of course, he was right.\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"I changed the script inside the elevator months ago. It thinks I'm Gregory. So far, none of them have figured that out, though they've found other changes I made. I suppose this is the last time I'll be able to use this one, too.\"\n\n\"With any luck, it's the last time you'll need to,\" Jess said. \"Can you use the Translation Chamber?\"\n\nBut Morgan shook her head this time. \"Not after I used it to escape last time. They'll have made sure to lock it off from me this time. But I'll check, just to be sure.\"\n\nWhen the lift slid to a stop and the doors opened, they stepped out into the lush, warm garden. It was deserted except for the flutters of butterflies among the flowers and a subtle hum of bees that drowsily roamed the room near a hive at the far end. The Translation couch and helmet occupied the central gazebo of the room, but outside morning stretched toward noon beneath a bleached-pale sky, and the dizzy patchwork of Alexandria heaved with motion in the streets.\n\nEerily quiet here.\n\n\"They might already know we've come here,\" Wolfe said. \"Morgan, see if you can use the Translation equipment.\"\n\nIt was immediately obvious she couldn't; as she came close to the helmet and couch, a low humming sound rose and spiked, and a harsh blue spark stabbed out toward her. She yelped and jumped back, rubbing at the spot on her arm where it had struck. It left a burn.\n\n\"And that's our answer,\" Santi said. \"Work quickly. Spread out. Find anything that might be a concealed staircase, a switch.\"\n\nThey'd all been well trained in how to suss out hidden alcoves, floor tiles, concealed safes and shelves. Common practice among those who possessed book contraband to hide it from view. Scholars and soldiers learned how to pry those secrets out early in their training.\n\nBut Jess had experience at hiding things, not just finding them. The Brightwell family expertise lent itself to a search like this, and instead of doing what the others were, he stood very still, looking around the large round room. Those who built this place weren't trying to hide something completely. They'd want it accessible. No Obscurist is going to want to grub around in flower beds, looking for a switch or a panel.\n\nHe let his eyes unfocus and wander, and suddenly, he was looking at a statue. The largest statue, in fact, in the room: an image of hawk-headed Horus, from whose bowl flowed a continuous stream of water that snaked among the flowers and plants.\n\nHorus, God of Scribes. Patron of the Great Library.\n\nJess grabbed Thomas as he passed and pulled him over to the statue. \"Look for any kind of switch,\" he said. They both began running hands over the cool marble, and then Jess felt a scarab ornament on the arm of the statue give to his touch. \"Here! It's here!\"\n\nHe pressed it, and above them something hissed. What had seemed like just another part of the ceiling proved to be a plate\u2014the bottom of a black iron staircase that screwed down from the ceiling, turning so smoothly that it must have been powered by steam or hydraulics. The whole thing was silent enough that it seemed as eerie as a dream.\n\n\"Incredible,\" Thomas murmured, and ran his hand over the smooth black railing. \"We go up?\"\n\n\"We go up,\" Santi said. \"But I go first.\"\n\nJess hung back to take rear guard. The staircase turned in a tight spiral around a central iron core, and above him Thomas said, reverently, \"Look at this. It's the same as the Iron Tower! No one remembers how this metal was created; it has the same properties as the Iron Pillar of Delhi, but\u2014\"\n\n\"You must be feeling better,\" Glain said from just below him. \"Since you're lecturing again.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't be. I'm happy to hear it.\"\n\nAt the top of the steps, Santi paused and said, \"There's a door. No lock and no handle, so I assume it takes an Obscurist. Morgan?\"\n\nShe squeezed her way past the others to the top. Jess craned his neck, wishing he'd put himself farther ahead, so he could see what was going on. Someone has to bring up the rear, scrubber. He could almost hear Dario's mocking voice. When had he started missing Dario, of all people?\n\nIt seemed to take forever, and Jess faced outward, toward the garden room. How long before someone\u2014Gregory, perhaps\u2014came looking for them? How long before he realized they'd gone missing and began to search? Not long, surely. He wasn't the trusting sort. I should be up there, he thought. I'm the one who's good with closed doors.\n\nBut Santi did know best, after all. Above there was a hollow clunk, and Santi said, \"We're moving!\" Khalila, just ahead of Jess, glanced over her shoulder at him and gave him an encouraging smile.\n\n\"Come on,\" she said. \"At least we can brag to Dario later that we saw something he didn't.\"\n\nJess backed his way up the winding stairs, training his weapon on the room below until the last twist hid it all from view. Then he turned and hurried up after Khalila, across a shallow landing, and toward a black iron door that stood open.\n\nBehind him he heard another hiss, and looked back to see the staircase moving again, this time spiraling back into the ceiling. Counterweights. It had been only their weight on the staircase that had kept it down after the initial descent. The design reminded him of Heron of Alexandria and all the marvelous bellows and gears that had driven the wonders of the temples in the early days of the Library.\n\nKhalila had stopped in the doorway, and Jess stepped up beside her and stopped as well. He couldn't help it.\n\nA vast, circular Serapeum spread out in front of them, but not like any he'd ever seen before. The Library's daughter facilities were always, always orderly, clean, well maintained.\n\nThis was like the ghostly wreck of one.\n\nThe Black Archives rose in a hollowed-out tower within the tower, ring after ring of shelves and cabinets crowding every available level, with an ancient, dusty flat lift on a track that must have been designed to spiral up from one level to another. The number of books, scrolls, tablets... it was staggering and chaotic. The smell of the place overwhelmed him\u2014old paper, mold, neglect. A thick, choking patina of dust.\n\nIt made his father's warehouse of contraband in London, the largest that Jess had ever heard of, look like a modest rural shelf. There had to be tens of thousands of volumes here\u2014no, hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The books had long ago overflowed the shelves, and towering stacks of them leaned against corners and tottered atop the bookcases themselves. The shelves, Jess realized, were thickly stacked with multiple layers of volumes, too.\n\nWithout even meaning to, Jess took a step inside the hidden tower, then another, as he tilted his head to look up. The levels of shelves reached up and up, spiraling to what seemed like infinity. This isn't the Archives, he thought. This is something else.\n\nWolfe's voice was hushed as he said, \"The Black Archives. I don't know what's worse\u2014the number of things they've kept from us or the incredible hubris of the idea.\"\n\nThe Black Archives. A story, a rumor, a fable. The place where the Library kept everything too dangerous to circulate, too damaging to allow out to the public.\n\nHow could so many books be dangerous? And by whose standards?\n\nKhalila walked to a shelf, reached for a book. Morgan got there fast and grabbed her wrist before she could touch the leather spine. \"Wait,\" she said. \"There could be traps or alarms. Before you touch anything, let me look first. That goes for everyone.\" In truth, she looked shaken. So did Wolfe, for that matter. Even Santi kept turning in place, staring in shock and a mixture of wonder and horror.\n\nTraps. The word finally penetrated Jess, and he swallowed. There could be traps on books. Jess tried to comprehend that and failed. The scale of the place continued to overwhelm him. So many books abandoned here. Criminal works walled up to die.\n\nThey waited while Morgan made the rounds of the shelves, looking, occasionally brushing her fingers across a shelf or a case. Finally, she said, \"It's safe. You can touch them now.\"\n\nKhalila took the book from the shelf. Her voice trembled as she read the title. \"Generation of a Magnetic Field by Use of Electric Currents,\" she said. \"Hans Christian \u00d8rsted, 1820.\" She put it back and pulled another. \"The Law of Reciprocity of the Magneto-Electric and Electromagnetic Phenomena and Applications for the Reversibility of Electric Generators. Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz, 1833.\"\n\nWolfe moved around the shelves, not touching, just looking. He said, \"This whole level has to do with applications of electrical fields. Heat, light, machines\u2014all powered by electrical fields. These are things that I've only seen here within this tower. I thought it was an Obscurist's trick, powered by alchemy. It isn't. It's something engineers discovered centuries back. And they kept it from us.\"\n\n\"But why?\" Thomas's eyes had gone very wide. He went to Khalila's side and pulled more books, searching the titles. \"Why would they keep these amazing things from us? Can you even imagine how bright the world would be if we had these lights? What about using this electromagnetic phenomenon to power trains or carriages? Could it be better than steam? Why would they\u2014\"\n\n\"Because someone, when this work was first submitted to the Library, decided the very idea of it was dangerous. Uncontainable.\" Wolfe's voice sounded weary, and angry. \"They looked into that future and decided it couldn't be controlled, and, above all, the Library wants control. Look around you. Look at what the Library kept from us. We all knew it was true. Thomas and I, we both have experience of what they won't allow to be known.\"\n\n\"The press,\" Thomas whispered.\n\n\"The what?\" Khalila asked it absently, still fascinated by the titles of the books on the shelves, all the knowledge that they had never seen. Never imagined.\n\nWolfe was the one to answer. \"He means a letterpress, ink blocks arranged in letters and pages. It allows books to be easily reproduced. The Library can't allow that, because then all this\u2014all this banned knowledge\u2014could be distributed without having an arbiter of what is good or bad, dangerous or helpful.\" He clutched the book he was holding in both hands, and the line of his jaw was so tight, Jess could see the bone beneath it.\n\n\"And the authors?\" Khalila asked. \"What would have happened to these authors?\"\n\n\"Dead,\" Wolfe said. \"Silenced. Either when their work was placed here, or soon after. The Library would have seen to that. A candle can make a bonfire. So it's snuffed out quickly.\" The silence hung heavy with the smell of old paper and leather, dampness and neglect. \"This is the graveyard where they buried our future.\"\n\nKhalila pulled in a breath and carefully, reverently replaced the book she'd removed. These were, Jess realized, not just forbidden works; they were the only remaining memories of brilliant people\u2014Scholars, librarians, maybe even just amateur inventors\u2014who'd discovered things the Library wanted to keep hidden. There would be no personal journals celebrating their lives in the Archives. No scholarly papers. No record of their births or deaths. They had been erased.\n\nThese books were all that remained of a vast collection of lost souls, and instead of being cared for, being loved, they were jumbled and rotting like a child's abandoned toys. Jess felt it like a hot spear through his chest.\n\nThen he got angry.\n\nThomas cleared his throat. \"All this is only for the development of electricity,\" he said. \"What else is there?\"\n\n\"There must be a Codex,\" Wolfe said. \"Even the forbidden needs to be cataloged.\"\n\n\"Here,\" Santi said. He moved to a vast book, thick as a builder's block, with pages large enough to hold a thousand entries each. The book was chained to a podium with links of the same black iron as the staircase and the tower itself. It sat open to the center. Morgan moved her hand over it and nodded. Santi flipped pages to where in a normal Codex there would have been a summary of categories and coding. He stared, then slowly looked up at the stacked levels upon levels of books. \"It's\u2014it's as long as the Codex for the Archive. Inventions. Research. Art. Fiction. Printing\u2014\"\n\n\"Printing,\" Wolfe repeated, and he and Thomas exchanged a sharp look. \"Where?\"\n\n\"The seventh circle,\" Santi said. He seemed shaken. \"It's an entire section. I thought\u2014\"\n\nNone of them wanted to finish that sentence.\n\nThey all crowded on the flat lifting device, and a blank panel rose out of the iron plate. Morgan hesitated, then pressed her palm down to it. She gasped a little, and Jess moved toward her, but she flung out a hand to stop him. \"No. No, it has to be me. This place, it only obeys Obscurists.\" She closed her eyes and focused, and the lift lurched into movement on the track. It rose as it circled, level upon level, and Jess tried not to look down. So easy to fall from this thing, he thought. The thin railings bordering it were no kind of reassurance at all.\n\nThe lift slowed and stopped, and Morgan stepped off. She touched the old wood of the bookcase that circled around, and in a moment said, \"It's safe enough. But be careful.\"\n\nThomas moved next to her, facing a bookcase seven shelves high and at least twenty paces wide. \"All of this? Surely it can't all be about what Thomas dreamed up, and Wolfe before him.\" Morgan plucked the first book from the bottom corner. \"Chinese. I don't read it\u2014\"\n\n\"I do,\" Wolfe said, and took it to open to the flyleaf. \"The Printing of Ink to Paper Using Characters Carved in Wood by Ling Chao.\"\n\n\"What year?\" Thomas asked. Wolfe didn't answer. \"Sir? What year?\"\n\n\"Translated from the Chinese calendar? Year eight hundred sixty-eight,\" he whispered at last. \"They've robbed us of this for more than a thousand years.\" His voice shook, and he thrust the book back at Thomas to turn away and stare at the shelves that marched around the level. \"How many? How many times was this created and cut down? They've been destroying it over and over, all this time. All this time.\"\n\nSanti had walked away, all the way toward the end of the shelves, and suddenly he stopped, backed up, and reached out to pluck a volume out of the rest. \"Ah, Dio mio,\" Santi murmured, and put his hand on the cover as if trying to hide the title. The name. He turned and looked back at them, and they went to him, as if he'd asked for help. Maybe he had, silently.\n\nThomas took the book gently and opened it. \"On the Uses of Pressed Metal Type and Ink on Paper...\"\n\n\"For the Safeguarding, Archiving, and Reproduction of Written Works,\" Wolfe said. \"It's mine. I was told it was destroyed. All destroyed. Everything I ever wrote. But it wasn't. They kept it.\" Santi put his hand on Wolfe's shoulder and held on, head bowed, but Wolfe didn't seem to feel the offered comfort. \"They kept our work and let it rot.\"\n\n\"So you see,\" a voice rose from far below them. \"Every one of these is a life snuffed out. You see the burden I've carried, every day since taking my post. I'm the caretaker of a graveyard of ghosts.\"\n\nJess, Glain, and Santi all reacted at the same time, and all with military precision\u2014spreading out, bringing their slung weapons into line to point down. There was nothing obvious to shoot, just the Obscurist Magnus, fragile and alone, standing in the rounded area below, beside the open Codex.\n\nShe stared up at them, and from here, so far above, Jess couldn't read her expression at all. \"Don't worry,\" she said. \"I'm alone. Careless of you to leave the door open, though. I would have thought you'd have closed it, at the very least.\"\n\nJess's fault. He'd been so distracted by what was in front of him that for that one moment, he'd forgotten what lay behind.\n\n\"Come here to gloat?\" Wolfe's voice was bleak and empty now, as if something inside him had burned down to the very ashes. \"Well played, Mother.\"\n\n\"Not gloat,\" she said, and without anyone's command, the iron lift glided back down to her level and she stepped on. It carried her all the way up to where they stood, and as she walked toward them, Jess saw the pallor of her face, the strain. \"All my life I thought I knew the Library and what we were. What we stood for in the world... until I was passed the key to this room. For the past three hundred years, every Obscurist Magnus has been shown this place, and it breaks them. It broke me. The weight of all this waste... it's too much.\"\n\n\"And yet you did nothing,\" her son said. \"Nothing. Even when\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I did nothing! What can any one person do to stop this?\" The Obscurist pulled in a breath and looked away. \"When your book came here... I knew. I knew I couldn't continue this way. I tried to save you, you know. I tried to protect you.\"\n\n\"Protect him? Do you have any idea what was done to him?\" Santi crossed the distance to her in three long strides, and Jess didn't know what he would have done\u2014hit her, flung her over the railing\u2014but he didn't have the chance, because Wolfe caught up and got between them. Santi checked his rush forward and stared into Wolfe's eyes, and whatever he saw there, he turned away.\n\n\"I don't blame you for your anger, any of you. This is a horror. It's the worst sin of all the Library's many evils. I did my best to minimize it.\"\n\n\"You mean, your least,\" Wolfe shot back. \"Your best would have been to say no to all this. To stop it!\"\n\n\"I couldn't stop it. Not without risking the punishment of everyone I hold dear. But you can, my son. You all can.\"\n\nJess couldn't keep quiet any longer; his anger boiled over and he heard himself saying, \"You're the most powerful woman in the world, by all accounts. We're just outcasts. Criminals. Traitors. They're likely to kill us today. Why would you think we can change anything?\"\n\n\"Because you've already started.\" The Obscurist had always looked mysteriously young to Jess's eyes, though clearly she was old enough to have a son Wolfe's age. But just now she looked every year of her true age, if not older. \"I spent most of my life believing that I could change things eventually; I would never have been able to continue as I did if I hadn't. I gathered up the power I could, and I forced the Archivist to take some of what was stored here and let it out in the Archives, bit by bit. But I sacrificed\"\u2014her gaze fell on Wolfe and held\u2014\"too much. I told myself that things would change eventually, that I could make it happen. But I know the truth. The Library can't be changed from within. We're all too... too afraid. Or too cynical.\"\n\n\"All you have to do is dump all of this into the Archive Codex!\" Khalila said. \"You have the power to do it!\"\n\n\"No. I don't.\" The Obscurist touched her collar, the thick gold traced with alchemical symbols. \"There are things even I can't change, or I would have done it when I was young. When I was still brave.\"\n\n\"So you want us to do it,\" Glain said. It was the first thing she'd said, and she was absolutely white with rage. \"You coward. You ask us to bring down a giant with a\u2014a pebble!\"\n\n\"The Jewish king David did,\" Khalila said. \"Or so the stories tell us. Goliath fell to a slingshot and a stone. And the Library is a lumbering giant, dying of its own arrogance; it has to change or fall. We have the tools. The will. The knowledge.\" She nodded to the book Wolfe still held in his hands. \"We'll have your printing press.\"\n\nOf all people, Jess had never expected Khalila Seif to propose such a thing. It was such a radical betrayal of the Library that Jess's head spun from the whole idea. \"Well, we couldn't do it here, in Alexandria,\" he said. \"Certainly not here in the Iron Tower. And we're out of time. The Archivist is coming, isn't he?\"\n\n\"He is,\" the Obscurist agreed. \"My delays in handing you over have already been noted; that will lead to my demotion, most likely today. Gregory has been wriggling to make himself the new Obscurist, and he'll get his wish, for all the joy it will bring him. No, it's inevitable. It's already done,\" she said, as Wolfe started to speak. \"But I can get you out of here. Sending you on your way is the last gift I can ever give you, Christopher.\" Her voice dropped lower, to a pitch Jess hardly even heard. \"Except my love.\"\n\nWolfe said nothing. He stared at her as if she were a stranger, and maybe she was. Families so often are, Jess thought. The silence stretched, and then he said, \"What you're suggesting we do\u2014it's like cutting loose a wild tiger. All this unchained knowledge will cause chaos and destruction, and what will happen can't be managed. I can't guess what will come of it. Can you?\"\n\n\"No,\" his mother said, and looked around the room. \"But it will be better than this sad place.\"\n\n\"We'll need a safe haven, somewhere to build these machines,\" Morgan said. \"Allies to hide us and help us distribute the books we print. Most of all, we'll need these.\" She gestured at the Black Archives, the forbidden knowledge. \"With the right books, we can change everything.\"\n\n\"Then take them,\" the Obscurist said. \"Take as much as you can carry. I'll erase them from the records, and no one will ever know they disappeared. You'll have to carry them with you, and you can never come back here. Not as long as the Library controls the Iron Tower.\"\n\n\"Go where?\" Jess asked, but then he answered his own question. \"London.\"\n\n\"Yes. Your family\u2014blood and bonded by trade\u2014is powerful and wealthy enough to hide you,\" the Obscurist agreed. \"You'll need more than that, but it's a start.\"\n\n\"Did you plan this?\"\n\n\"I'm not gifted with so much foresight. But when I saw you together the day I came to get Morgan, and saw how much you all cared for one another, I hoped you would be the ones to finally, finally have the skills and the courage to do this. I knew you wouldn't let Thomas just vanish into the dark. You'd poke and dig, until you found him, and... this.\"\n\nThomas's eyes were bright now, and very strange as he stared at the older woman. Was it anger? Jess couldn't tell, but it unnerved him. Badly. \"You didn't want them to have a choice, did you? Betray the Library or die. So you let them take me away. To motivate my friends.\"\n\n\"I did what I needed to do,\" Keria said. \"I always have.\"\n\nWolfe was still between Santi and his mother, but in that moment, he looked like he might go for her throat himself. \"I thought I understood how cold you were,\" he said. \"But there's no calculation for that. Mother.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not,\" Keria Morning said, and turned away. \"Choose the books you want to take. You won't get another chance.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from the Artifex Magnus to the Archivist Magister, secured and coded at the highest level of security. Destroyed upon reading:\n\n\u2002Are you sure you want to take this step? I don't normally question your directives, but this is a thing we can't undo. It crosses a boundary that we have never before broken. If anyone learns what we've done... You understand that it will destroy not just us, but everything we have given our lives to build and protect.\n\n\u2002I must ask you to verify that this is exactly what you want. That there will be no last-minute changes of heart. No reprieves. Because once the thing is begun, it can't be stopped, and it can't ever be repaired or replaced.\n\n\u2002What we're doing... I have a strong stomach.\n\n\u2002This, I will tell you frankly, sickens me.\n\n\u2002I need your order here on this paper. I need proof.\n\n\u2002Reply from the Archivist. Destroyed upon reading.\n\n\u2002I don't order this lightly. I have agonized over this decision. The weight of generations of my predecessors, who avoided it, rests solely on me, but we live in a far more dangerous world than any of them ever did. A world of increasing risk. Increasing dissent.\n\n\u2002You have your orders, and I want them carried out to the letter.\n\n\u2002Destroy it all."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 31",
                "text": "This is like old times, Jess thought, stuffing illegal volumes into packs, and once the packs were full, into thick canvas bags that the Obscurist brought from somewhere in a storage room. He'd been born running rare, valuable books. The only difference was that this smuggling was done much more clumsily and more openly than he'd prefer. And was vastly more important.\n\nJess left the others to the frantic work of choosing what to take\u2014arguments, he saw, were fierce and passionate between Wolfe, Khalila, and Thomas\u2014and went instead with Morgan to a small table in a corner. She'd borrowed a Codex from the Obscurist Magnus, and now she placed it on the table between them.\n\n\"What do we need that for?\" he asked her.\n\n\"You'll need to let your father know what happened and that we're coming through soon,\" she said. \"The Obscurist can send us all to the London Serapeum, just as we originally planned. He'll have to help us get free of the guards there.\"\n\n\"My father's not going to fight the High Garda! My father doesn't fight anyone. He's a smuggler, not some mercenary captain.\"\n\nShe dismissed that with a wave of her hand. \"You're his son. He'll fight for you, Jess.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said grimly. \"He won't.\"\n\nThat froze Morgan for a moment, but she shook her head. \"Then we have to offer him good reason. Surely what we're carrying will be enough of an incentive.\" She used a thin-bladed knife that Wolfe had given her to carefully slit the endpaper of the Codex and peel it back; beneath that lay inked symbols that shimmered like metal in the dim late-afternoon light. She touched them and lifted her fingertips, and a three-dimensional column of symbols appeared, floating on the air as if they were made of burning fragments of paper. She studied them for a moment, then reached in and pinched one of them between her thumb and forefinger. As she pulled it out of the column, it dissolved into ash and smoke. She put her hand over the top of the shivering column and pushed it back down until her palm lay flat against the backing.\n\nWhen she took her hand away, it looked exactly the same. \"That takes care of anyone trying to read anything written in this particular Codex,\" she said. \"Now I'll link it directly to your father's. Give me your hand.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I don't have a link to your father, but you do. It's necessary for it to be a personal connection.\"\n\nJess shrugged and held out his hand, and before he could blink, she'd drawn that sharp little knife across his finger. The cut was shallow and he hardly felt it at all, but a line of blood welled up. Morgan grabbed a quill and dipped the end into the red, and he frowned at her as he sucked the wound closed. \"Shouldn't do that,\" she said as she wrote a line in a blank page of the Codex\u2014more symbols, then his father's name: Callum Brightwell. \"I might need more blood.\"\n\n\"Make do with that,\" he said. \"Have you ever heard of vampires?\"\n\nShe gave him a wild sort of smile, put down the quill, and reached for a bottle of silvery ink she'd brought with her. She shook it, then uncapped it and dipped the quill into it. \"What I write here, only your father will see. By using your blood, I've mirrored this Codex to his. The ink will disappear in about a minute after I write, and it'll leave no trace on either book. So tell me what to say.\"\n\nJess sank down beside her on the small bench. \"Say it's me. Tell him no one else can read it. It's safe.\"\n\nShe did, writing quickly. There was a short delay. What if his father didn't answer? Would the message wait or disappear? Disappear, apparently, because as he watched, the letters began to fade away.\n\nThen, suddenly, his father's pen moved in response, writing out words. This isn't my son's handwriting. How do I know he's even there?\n\n\"Does it matter who writes?\" Jess asked her.\n\n\"Yes. I have to hold the pen or it doesn't work. Sorry.\"\n\n\"That's inefficient. All right. Tell him... Tell him I still have nightmares about the ink-licker. He'll remember.\"\n\nHe must have, because as soon as she wrote it, his father's response came fast. Is Jess all right?\n\nYes, Morgan wrote. Jess is here. None but the three of us can see this exchange. My name is Morgan. I'm his\u2014 Her quill stuttered a little, and then she wrote, friend.\n\nThis must be important, Callum Brightwell wrote. Got yourself in trouble, Jess?\n\n\"He assumes the worst,\" Morgan observed.\n\n\"He's usually right,\" Jess said. \"Tell him what we need.\"\n\nShe wrote quickly, in pieces, explaining first that they were wanted by the Library, and next\u2014at Jess's suggestion\u2014that they were bringing incredibly valuable rare books with them. Last, what they needed as far as safe passage and hiding places. It was quite a bit for his father to take in, Jess thought; maybe too much for even native greed to overcome. The page went blank. Nothing appeared. After a moment went by, Morgan looked over at him and tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ears. \"Should I try again?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"Let him think.\"\n\nIt took a torturously long time for Callum's words to appear again. When they did, it wasn't about Jess's needs at all. Your brother is here, the words read. Word's been put about in Alexandria that you and your friends died in Rome. You understand my concern.\n\n\"Concern?\" Morgan frowned at the page and raised her voice, as if his father could hear her. \"Concern? He thought you were dead, and he takes it so calmly?\"\n\n\"I told you,\" Jess said. \"He's not sentimental.\"\n\nShe gave him a disbelieving look. He pointed at the page where more words were written. Your brother's nickname. Now. Or we disappear and you won't reach us again.\n\n\"He means it,\" Jess said. \"Write Scraps.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Scraps. Leftovers. You know. Just write it.\"\n\nShe looked mystified but obeyed. Another blank space, and then Callum wrote, He still hates that name. He says to tell you that. I'm glad you're all right, son.\n\n\"That,\" Jess said, \"is probably all the sentimentality you'll ever see from my family. Cherish it.\"\n\nMorgan refreshed her quill and frowned at the level of ink left. She wrote, Message back when you have everything arranged. We won't have much time.\n\nDone, his father wrote, and Jess could almost hear the clap of the book closing. His father would be on his feet now, tugging down his expensive silk waistcoat, pacing the thick Turkish carpet of his office. Brendan would be slouched in a chair nearby, listening to every word. He felt curiously reassured by that vision, and by knowing that though he wouldn't trust his family to save his life, he could trust them to see the profit in what he was bringing them. His life was just part of the deal.\n\nMorgan capped the ink. \"I'll need more before we go,\" she said. \"It's the one thing I can't make any other place.\" She wiped the quill clean on a scrap of cloth and tucked it in the holder on the side of the Codex.\n\n\"You're taking the Codex? Won't they miss it?\"\n\n\"Hardly anyone here bothers to request new books. We get almost everything mirrored to our Serapeum downstairs as it is.\" She hesitated, stroking the cover of the Codex, and asked, \"Are you sure we can trust him? Your father?\"\n\nHe wished he could say yes. More than anything, he wanted to believe he could. But what he said was, \"You can trust he'll see the profit in rescuing us and the books. Once he realizes the opportunities of building the press, I doubt he'll have a second of hesitation in throwing the full weight of the black markets behind this.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said. \"That sounds like a harsh kind of love.\"\n\nIt was a perfect description for his childhood. He'd not known anything else until he'd come here to Alexandria, and now he could look back on it and see how dry and arid it was.\n\nBut useful nevertheless. I might be just as bad, he thought. I can't see my brother and father as anything but tools to be used. I should be better than that. He'd not even spared a moment to think about his mother\u2014not that he wasn't fond of her in the abstract, but she'd never been present for him. Would she have cried over his death? Probably. But he had the awful feeling that it would have just been for herself and not for him.\n\n\"Don't,\" Morgan said. She turned toward him and put her hand on his chin to turn his face toward her. \"Don't go into your head and leave me. I'm just as frightened as you are, you know.\"\n\n\"You? The girl who defies the Iron Tower and wins? I doubt you understand what fear means to the rest of us.\" He removed her hand from his chin, but only to raise it to his lips. He kissed the soft skin while looking into her eyes and saw her shiver. Felt her skin rise in chill bumps under his touch. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\nHe pointed to the Codex. \"For reminding me there's more to life than what I grew up knowing.\"\n\nWolfe, Khalila, and Thomas were still arguing. Morgan sighed and tilted her head in their direction. \"I suppose\u2014\"\n\n\"That we should help? Yes. We'll be out of time soon.\"\n\nMorgan proved to be a calming influence, and Jess interrupted arguments when it became clear both sides had points, and within another hour, they'd scraped together a good deal more than a hundred volumes. Too many to carry. Jess and Santi took charge of weighing the bags and removing what couldn't be taken, though every one they abandoned put a cut on Jess's heart. It's all right, he thought. Maybe we can come back later for more. She'll help us. She'd said she couldn't, but Jess was seeing quite a bit of Wolfe in his mother's character, including the steel-hard stubbornness.\n\nKeria Morning hadn't survived all these years as an enemy of the Archivist by giving up, giving in.\n\nThe Codex that Morgan carried must have changed, because she quickly drew it out and opened it. Then she frowned.\n\n\"Is it from my father?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"No,\" she said, and went to the Obscurist. She showed her the entry. \"It's from Gregory, to you.\"\n\nThe Obscurist read the message, closed the book, and nodded. \"We're out of time,\" she told him. \"The Archivist's guards have entered the Tower. Gregory let them in, and I'm being ordered to surrender you all immediately. You must Translate to London. Now.\"\n\n\"My father's not sent back a reply yet,\" Jess said. \"Until we know it's safe\u2014\"\n\n\"It won't be safe here,\" she interrupted him. \"They're coming. Now.\"\n\nSilence settled in with grim weight, and Santi said, \"Then we go.\" It sounded like a death sentence. Jess swallowed hard.\n\nThomas silently took Glain's pack and added it to his own. She didn't say she was grateful, but Jess could see she was. Her leg was still painful and no doubt would slow her down in a running battle, but she bore the pain stoically. He expected nothing less. Glain would always do her best, until her best wasn't good enough.\n\nJess found himself missing Dario; the Spaniard's sharp humor would have been a nice addition just now. Khalila was steady and calm and as cheerful as she could be, but there was no doubt she understood this was a one-way step into total darkness. What they'd find on the other side... none of them truly knew. Jess certainly didn't.\n\nThe Obscurist stopped at the iron door and said, \"Morgan. I can do one last service for you, at least.\"\n\nMorgan flinched as Keria reached out and brushed her fingertips in a line across the gold collar circling her throat.\n\nIt unlocked with a sudden, dry snap.\n\nMorgan gasped and reached up to pull it off. Once she had, she stared at it as if she had no conception of what it was, until suddenly she let it fall to the floor with a heavy thud. The skin beneath was pale and moist. She didn't seem to know what to say, but finally she whispered, \"Thank you.\"\n\nWolfe's mother nodded. She seemed very calm. Very... resigned. \"They would be able to track you through it if you'd kept it on. Morgan, I'll leave it to you to remove any tracking scripts that they try to link to the Library bracelets the others wear. It might help to leave them on for now. People hesitate to kill librarians.\" She hesitated and closed her eyes. \"I've failed you in many things, Christopher. I won't fail you in this. You must trust me now.\"\n\nIt was a leap Jess thought might be impossible for Wolfe, but he stared at her for a long moment and then crossed to her. He took her hand in his. \"I do,\" he said.\n\n\"I don't deserve that, do I?\" Her smile was broken and beautiful and very real. \"A mother should always protect her child. And I haven't.\"\n\nHe stood for a moment holding her hand, and then suddenly pulled her forward into an embrace. It was fierce and fast, and then he turned away, head down. The Obscurist blinked away tears, took a breath, and said, \"It's time to go.\"\n\nShe summoned the spiral stairs, and they descended quickly. The garden seemed deserted as they arrived, but Jess heard the sound of shouting echoing up from below. The Archivist's troops must have already arrived. They were searching.\n\n\"There's no time left,\" the Obscurist said. \"I'll have to take the risk.\"\n\n\"What risk?\" Wolfe pushed forward, Santi just a step behind.\n\n\"I'll have to send you all at once. If I send you one at a time, half of you won't make it.\"\n\n\"You can't do that! Even you\u2014\" Morgan stopped, looking at the others. \"It's too much for anyone. It will\u2014\"\n\n\"Kill me?\" The Obscurist looked around at the beautiful, peaceful garden and sighed. \"So be it. I'll need you all to put your hands on the helmet\u2014\"\n\nJess felt the warning hiss of instincts coming alive, and his head jerked up and around, looking for the threat.\n\nIt was all around them.\n\nThe Artifex Magnus himself stepped out of the shadow of a spreading plum tree, pale blossoms brushing his long white hair. Behind him, around him, all around the room, more soldiers rose from concealment. Aiming their weapons.\n\nSanti trembled on the edge of raising his own gun, then raised one hand, bent, and carefully placed the weapon on the floor by his feet. \"Disarm,\" he said. His voice sounded flat and dead already. \"There's no point.\"\n\nGlain raised her weapon and sighted on the Artifex. \"There's every damn point.\"\n\nBut she didn't fire, because the Artifex pushed someone unexpected out into the path of any of her bullets.\n\nDario.\n\nHe wasn't bound or restrained. He hadn't been wounded or beaten. He looked rested, well nourished. Well dressed.\n\nAnd he couldn't look any of them in the eyes.\n\n\"Dario?\" Khalila's whisper was full of stunned relief, and she took a step forward... and then he looked up and met her gaze. \"Dario.\" All the life drained out of her voice. \"What is this?\"\n\n\"Traitor.\" Glain's hands were white around her gun, but she'd lowered it now to stare at the face of their friend. \"Y mochyn diawl.\"\n\nHe opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, \"I didn't have a choice.\"\n\nArrogant, clever Dario Santiago had sold them out. Of course he had. Maybe he'd been doing it all along; he hadn't had a chance to report their plans to rescue Thomas at the last moment because they had moved too quickly. But he'd tried to sell them out.\n\nIt came to Jess in a cold wave that if they'd actually escaped to London, it would have probably been a trap. Dario would have seen to it. He'd survived in Rome alone because he'd never been in any real danger.\n\nHe'd gone to report to his spymaster.\n\nGlain threw down her weapon with an angry snarl.\n\nJess thought coldly and seriously about putting a bullet in Dario. It would have been murder, absolutely and clearly murder. He very nearly did it, anyway.\n\nThen he bent and put his gun on the floor, and as he straightened, the soldiers rushed in and grabbed each of them. No, not all of them. Not Morgan. Not the Obscurist Magnus. He supposed they'd been told to leave them alone.\n\nThomas hadn't said anything at all. Neither had Wolfe. They had identical expressions, Jess realized, as if something had drained out of them. As if their souls had already left their bodies behind.\n\nIt can't end this way. It can't. But it had, he realized, for so many others. The Black Archives were full of failures who believed they'd survive.\n\nHe'd end up on the shelves, too. All of them would.\n\n\"Don't!\" Dario said sharply to a soldier who put his hands on Khalila. \"Don't touch her.\"\n\n\"I don't want your protection!\" she shouted at him. \"Traitor!\"\n\n\"Maybe not,\" he said. \"But you've got it, anyway.\" He held out his hand. \"Come with me. Come away from here. You don't need to see this.\"\n\n\"You're not going anywhere,\" the Artifex said. \"Bring them. All of them.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\" Dario looked confused and angry. A flush deepened the color of his cheeks, and he rounded on the old man with clenched fists. \"You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"On orders of the Archivist himself, I can,\" he said. \"You're all fools. None of you understand the consequences of what you've done.\" The Artifex, Jess realized, was angry, and it wasn't just because of their rebellion. It was something else.\n\nHe walked straight to the statue of Horus, pressed the hidden switch, and watched the staircase descend. Then he led the way upstairs to the Black Archives.\n\n\"Bring them,\" he said. \"They should see the price of their meddling.\"\n\nBack in the hidden rooms, they were pushed against the back wall and held there by the armed High Garda soldiers, who must have been the Artifex's hand-picked personal guard. Santi didn't appeal to them for help, and Jess didn't, either. They stood silently against the rough wall of the Iron Tower and watched as the Artifex stepped out to crane his head up, up, to look at the seemingly infinite spiral of shelves.\n\n\"So much,\" he murmured. \"So much wasted.\" He turned to them, and his old, seamed face was grim with anger. \"You've forced this. All of you, with your pushing and questioning and disbelief. You don't know how much we've saved you from: war, famine, pestilence, a thousand kinds of death. We've raised humanity from the mud, and you still chase after phantoms instead of appreciating the peace all around you.\"\n\n\"Save us the speeches,\" Wolfe said. \"Kill us, if you intend to do it.\"\n\n\"I will,\" he said. \"But first I have to do what I've been ordered. May all the gods damn you for it.\"\n\nHe took a small leather case from a pocket of his robe and opened it.\n\nA glass globe filled with green fluid rolled into his outstretched palm.\n\nJess pulled in a breath, but Wolfe was the first to understand, fully, the impossible. \"No,\" he said. \"You can't. You can't.\"\n\n\"I don't want to,\" the Artifex said. He was crying. Tears streamed from his reddened eyes and lost themselves in the canyons of wrinkles beneath. \"But you did this, Wolfe. You.\"\n\nHe threw the Greek fire into the shelves of delicate, flammable books.\n\nJess screamed and threw himself forward, but it was too late, too late. The glass broke, the thick greenish liquid splashed over vulnerable spines and fragile paper, over faded ink and lost dreams.\n\nAnd then, with the sound of a sickening, indrawn breath, it ignited.\n\nJess lunged at the soldier in front of him and slammed his forehead into the man's nose with a muscular crunch and a corresponding blackness that radiated through his skull like a ringing bell. He didn't pause, just put his shoulder into the staggering man's stomach and heaved up to toss the soldier off his feet.\n\nThe restraints tightened around his wrists like snakes constricting, and he felt a hideous whine inside his head. The first shelf of books was fully on fire with licks of greenish-white flame. The second above it smoked, and Jess could see paper blackening and curling at the edges.\n\nSanti had put down a soldier, too. Glain hadn't; she was hobbled by her bad leg and had fallen herself. Together, he and Santi rushed at the Artifex. Jess didn't have a clue what the good of it was, but he had to do something.\n\nThey never made it, of course. Jess felt something hit him in the back and pitch him forward, off balance, and fell to the floor hard. Santi fell just a breath behind him, and before Jess could scramble back to his feet, someone was pinning him down.\n\nJess raised his head and watched the shelves of the first level smoke, warp, spark, and burn. Book after book.\n\nLevel after level.\n\nWhen the smoke became thick and choking and Jess could no longer see for the tears streaming out of his eyes, he felt himself being pulled backward by his legs, out into the sweeter air.\n\nThe Black Archives were gone.\n\nAnd now all that remained was for the Artifex to finish them off.\n\nHe was being rolled toward the steps; Santi had already been pushed down them, to roll in an awkward ball. Jess would be next. The others had already been sent down, and he saw Khalila's stark, blank face staring up. Morgan beside her. Thomas was crouched on the floor in the open space of the garden, beside the Translation equipment they wouldn't have a chance to use. It would take too long, even if Morgan could operate it. What remained would be a quick, ugly death for most of them, and prison inside this tower for Morgan and Wolfe's mother. Forever.\n\nThen he was tumbling down the steps, and tucked himself into as tight a ball as he could. He landed badly and cried out when his face hit the tiled floor. Fresh red blood dripped from cuts on his face like tears, brilliant even in the dim light. He coughed and coughed, trying to get the taste of bitter ashes out of his lungs, and between the retching spasms he realized he was still weeping for all the books he'd just seen die.\n\nHe felt fingertips brush the restraints holding him, just a quick touch, and the numbing pain of them loosed. Someone was kneeling over him. He heard the Obscurist Magnus say, in a strange and distant tone, \"You've given me no choice, Artifex. You know that. And I am a very bad enemy.\"\n\n\"Not for long.\" The Artifex was a blur on the edges of Jess's vision. He turned his head and blinked to clear his eyes. Wolfe's mother was kneeling beside him, and under the smudge of smoke and ashes, the look in her eyes was something so terrible, he didn't want to stare at it for long.\n\n\"You've killed so much of the past today,\" she told him. \"Generations and generations of brilliance. But you know what you'll never kill?\"\n\nThe soldiers of the Artifex were just as affected by the smoke as Jess; they were coughing, their eyes streaming and red.\n\nSo they missed seeing Thomas flex his wrists and break the restraints holding him. They missed seeing Dario, who'd been flung to his hands and knees on the tile next to Khalila\u2014still unbound, both of them\u2014pick up the weapon that Glain had thrown down at the edge of the open space, near the bench.\n\nMissed seeing Morgan draw her fingers over Wolfe's restraints and then over Santi's. Hers were already loose.\n\n\"You will never kill our future,\" Wolfe's mother said, and as if it was a signal, as if they'd planned this, Thomas came up with a roar and lunged forward, taking down three guards at once, and Dario aimed and fired one perfect shot at the Artifex Magnus.\n\nThe Artifex fell. Dead or only wounded, Jess couldn't tell. He ripped his wrists free and grabbed for another fallen weapon, and in seconds he was firing, too, targeting one High Garda uniform after another. It was bloody chaos, and he couldn't see where his friends were, couldn't see anything except Wolfe's mother laying hands on both Wolfe and Santi and somehow, without the Translation equipment, unmaking them into a spiraling whirlwind of flesh and bone and blood. She reached Dario and Khalila, and they, too, vanished into a bloody mist. Gone.\n\nMorgan and Glain, gone. It was just Jess and Thomas left, and Thomas had rushed back toward them. The Obscurist touched the piled mess of packs that the guards had left nearby, and that, too, vanished. Jess felt something hit him, but there wasn't any pain. A near miss.\n\nKeria Morning grabbed hold of Jess and Thomas. The last two.\n\nThe one thing Jess was sure he saw was a High Garda soldier taking aim at her, and the ringing sound of a shot, and a vivid red hole in the woman's chest. A fatal wound.\n\nBut not quickly enough to stop what she'd already set in motion.\n\nJess pitched into a red, shrieking darkness that ate him whole."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Callum Brightwell to Kate Hannigan, sent in code. Burned on receipt:\n\n\u2002We both know we're on opposite sides of this thing, but one thing's certain: this oncoming war, and the chaos it will bring, will only help us both. Let the Welsh have the city and claim their victory; the king and his court and all the ministers will be well away before they come. They'll leave the city to us: the rebels, the criminals, the ones they think aren't worth saving.\n\n\u2002It's a fat target, and we can both enrich ourselves. Your movement needs money, and I've already sent your leader in France a tidy sum in trust\u2014you can check with him if you like. Whatever riches you gather, you keep.\n\n\u2002Allies are more important than politics these days, wouldn't you agree?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 33",
                "text": "Jess opened his eyes on a dark, windowless room that stank of mold and the river.\n\nRiver. Not the ocean. He knew this smell. It was even stronger than the vile stench of burned books that still clung to his skin and clothes.\n\nIt smelled like... home.\n\nThe next second brought memory and a sharp stab of fear. Was he alone? Had the others been lost somewhere in that terrible, screaming silence? But no, he heard a scrape of movement and a moan and rattling, phlegmy coughing, all from different spots around him in the dark.\n\nHe heard Morgan whisper, \"Jess?\" and flung his hand out toward her. He missed and slapped wet stone, then tried again. His fingers brushed cloth with hard edges beneath. A pack. A pack full of books. He rolled over, every muscle seizing in pain, and managed to crawl another foot closer. This time, he touched Morgan's skin. Her arm. \"Jess?\"\n\n\"I'm here,\" he croaked. His mouth tasted like sewage, and he desperately needed water to wash it clean. \"All right?\"\n\nShe burst into frantic tears and threw herself into his arms, and he held on. He didn't know which of them trembled harder. It didn't matter. They'd seen something so terrible, neither of them would ever forget.\n\nAll that knowledge, lost. Wolfe's mother. So much gone.\n\nSomeone was upright, stumbling in the dark, and fell over something in the way.\n\n\"Scheisse!\" Thomas. Thomas was alive. \"Jess? Jess!\" He sounded desperate. Of course he would be. Alone in the dark again.\n\n\"Here,\" Jess gasped. He let go of Morgan, though he kept tight hold of her hand. \"Thomas?\"\n\n\"Here,\" the other boy said faintly. \"I fell on something.\"\n\nJess reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out a glow; he shook it and held it out, and there was Thomas, sitting spread-legged on a damp concrete floor. What he'd tripped over was the mound of bags\u2014packs, canvas duffel sacks.\n\nThe books. The Black Archive books.\n\nThe last ones. The survivors.\n\n\"Easy,\" Morgan said, and knelt beside Thomas with her hand on his back. \"We're here. We're all right.\" She looked up at Jess with a panicked question in her wide eyes. \"Aren't we?\"\n\nHe didn't answer. \"Khalila? Glain?\"\n\n\"Here,\" Glain groaned, and Khalila responded a few seconds later.\n\n\"I'm here, too,\" Dario said, very quietly. Jess swung the light around and saw the Spaniard against the wall, shivering. The light reflected weirdly in his eyes.\n\nTears.\n\n\"Jess. Jess, stop,\" Morgan said, and Jess realized he'd been moving toward Dario with a deadly serious intent. \"Leave him! He helped us!\"\n\n\"Leave a traitor to put a knife in our backs again?\" Jess still had the gun he'd been firing in the Iron Tower, and the deadly weight of it felt good in his hands as he stared at Dario. \"Khalila?\"\n\n\"Leave him for now,\" she said. \"We'll watch him closely. Where are we?\"\n\n\"Smells like London,\" Jess said.\n\n\"London smells very bad.\" Thomas's voice was choked but a little steadier now. \"This isn't a Serapeum.\"\n\n\"No. It's\u2014\" Jess raised the glow and looked around. \"Where are Wolfe and Santi?\"\n\n\"Here,\" Wolfe said. \"Nic?\"\n\n\"It's not a Translation Chamber.\" Santi, Jess realized, was already on his feet and shaking another glow to life. The sickly yellowish light revealed an empty hall with a high, arching ceiling like a church, but no windows to let in the light. Underground, Jess thought. Somewhere near the river.\n\nA symbol up high in chalk caught his eye, and Jess held his glow closer. \"Smuggling route,\" he said. \"Belongs to the Riverrun Boys.\"\n\n\"Yours?\"\n\n\"Competitors,\" Jess said. \"My father's not the only smuggler in town. The Riverrun Boys specialize in things other than books. Drugs, mostly. Nasty bunch.\"\n\n\"Charming,\" Wolfe said. His voice was as low and raspy as Jess's. He'd breathed in a lot of smoke. \"Why would she send us here?\"\n\n\"There wouldn't have been any chance for us at the Serapeum,\" Jess said. \"Dario's betrayal would have seen to that. She must have known about this place. Maybe she's even been here.\"\n\n\"Unlikely,\" Wolfe said. \"My mother\u2014 Did you see\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. \"I did. I'm sorry.\"\n\nWolfe said nothing. His eyes looked flat, lightless, utterly unreadable. The silence stretched a moment, and then he said, \"We should find a way out.\"\n\nJess broke out a glow of his own, and Glain had one, and they separated into teams to explore the room. It was wide and bare, and the exit that the Riverrun Boys must have once used had been blocked up with stones. Solid ones. London Garda had found this place. If she brought us all this way only for us to die in a trap...\n\n\"Over here,\" Glain called. She was leaning half her weight on Thomas, but she had a look of elation on her face. \"I think these are steam tunnels.\"\n\nJess felt a wave of disquiet. \"Did you find a way out?\"\n\n\"There's a staircase leading up. It's barred with a grate,\" Thomas said. \"Welded shut, with the symbol of the English lion on it. London Garda?\"\n\n\"Find something to force it,\" Jess said, and began looking himself. \"We may not have much time.\"\n\n\"Why not? What is it?\" That was Dario, who'd finally gotten up from his spot against the wall. Jess picked up a piece of rotten wood and tossed it aside without answering. \"Jess, wait. I can explain\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not listening,\" Jess interrupted. \"Look for something to break those welds. Hurry.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Santi asked.\n\n\"Because if Glain's right, these tunnels vent scalding steam off of the city boilers. We need to break out of here. Quickly.\"\n\n\"How often does it vent?\" Wolfe asked.\n\n\"I don't bloody well know! Every day? Every hour? The point is, we need to move. Now!\"\n\nThat ended the questioning.\n\nIt was Khalila who came up with the solution, when a search failed to turn up anything else. She made an impatient sound, grabbed Jess's weapon, and said, \"Make it safe. Quickly.\"\n\nHe did, sliding the safety switches and removing the cartridge, and she jammed it into the grate. \"Now, Thomas. You've got the best leverage, I think.\"\n\n\"I'll try.\" He sounded doubtful. His best effort popped half the weld loose, but then he stepped away, panting, flexing his arms. \"I'm sorry. I'm still too weak.\"\n\nSanti stepped up and took a try and almost got it. One last try with both of them shattered the last of the welding, and the grate swung open with a rusty, stubborn shriek of hinges.\n\n\"Stairs,\" Glain said gloomily. \"Better let me go last. I'll just hold you up.\"\n\nKhalila shook her head. \"You come with me,\" she said, and put her shoulder under Glain's. \"We're not leaving you behind, so don't start.\"\n\nThey climbed up. When Dario moved toward the stairs, Jess shoved him back. Hard. \"Not yet,\" he said. \"Why did you do it?\"\n\nDario coughed, spat out black ashes, and wiped his mouth. \"Do what? I went to the embassy. I thought I'd get help for us from my father. Instead the embassy called the Artifex.\"\n\n\"And you sold us out. Just that easy. Coward.\"\n\n\"No.\" Dario wiped angrily at his eyes. \"I would have given my life. But he had Khalila's family, Jess. I couldn't let him... I told him where you would have gone, to London, but you didn't show up there. He asked me where else you would go. I said you would try to find the Black Archives. Jess, I didn't know they were in the Iron Tower.\"\n\nJess was silent. He'd effortlessly believed that Dario had turned on them. Why was that? What had Dario done to deserve that, really? Would he have done any differently with Khalila's family at stake?\n\nDario gulped in an uneven breath. \"I led him to you, is that what you want to hear? It's true! I didn't mean to do it or want to, but I did.\" He was weeping, sobs hitting him like blows. \"Go ahead. Hit me. Hit me!\"\n\nJess might have, if only to stop the other young man's self-pity, but he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and lifted the glow to check.\n\nThe opening in the ceiling had a thin curl of white mist coming out of it, like a lazy whisper. Something hissed far in the distance.\n\nSomething rattled. The hiss grew louder.\n\n\"I'll hit you later!\" Jess said, and shoved Dario up the steps ahead of him. He felt a wave of sudden heat wash over him, damp as clammy skin. He scrambled up and nearly slipped on the foggy stairs; the steam boiling up from beneath came faster now, a hot white cloud that seared his lungs when he gasped.\n\nDario grabbed him and towed him up the last few steps into the open air, and as Jess fell to his knees, a geyser of solid white steam shot up into the air behind him and climbed into the sky in a towering explosion.\n\nThen it blew away in a hiss of hot droplets on the wind, and all that was left was a spray of water on the street where it had fallen.\n\nJess looked up at Dario, and for just a moment, he wasn't angry anymore. Maybe that would come again later. Didn't matter.\n\nHe nodded. Dario returned it and walked away.\n\nSanti crouched next to Jess. \"Can you breathe?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said. It hurt a little, but he didn't think it was as bad as he'd feared. His skin was tender from the steam, but no worse than an Alexandrian sunburn. \"I'm all right, sir.\"\n\n\"Good.\" Santi leaned back on his heels and looked around. \"Where are we?\" The day was cloudy, a typical enough London day, and the gray pall made everything look dim and ancient. Jess had no trouble placing the outlines of buildings and the expanse of the bridge, but it seemed darker than it should. Smoky.\n\n\"London. Close to the bank of the River Thames,\" Jess said. \"Near Blackfriars Bridge.\"\n\n\"How far to the Serapeum?\"\n\n\"Walking? Not close enough.\" He looked around. The bridge was some distance, but he saw it was full of people streaming across. Odd, that. There normally wasn't such congestion in the middle of the day to cross the river. He heard the distant honking of steam-carriage horns.\n\nMorgan took out the Codex she'd put in the pocket of her dress. The quill had survived, and she unwrapped the padded bottle of ink and quickly dipped the pen into it to scribble on the open page. \"I'm telling your father where we are,\" she said. \"And to call off his men at the Serapeum. There's no sense in risking them there if we aren't coming.\"\n\nSomewhere in the distance, Jess heard the sonorous noon strikes of Big Ben. \"What does he say?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\" Morgan chewed anxiously on her lip, and he saw the moment writing began to appear in the sudden relaxation of her posture. \"Ah, there\u2014he says go to the warehouse. You know where that is?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" That didn't lessen Jess's sense of unease, not in the least. His father kept the warehouse utterly secure, and the eight of them were walking targets. Why would he send the Library's most wanted fugitives to his most sacred hiding spot?\n\nHe wouldn't. Not with any good intent.\n\n\"Ask him where Liam is,\" he said.\n\n\"What? Who's Liam?\"\n\n\"Just ask.\"\n\nAfter a pause, she read off the reply. \"He says he's at the warehouse,\" she said. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Liam's my older brother,\" Jess said. \"He's dead. That means you're not talking to my father anymore. And we're not going to the warehouse.\"\n\nJess sat in the shadows outside his family's town house, eating a hot pie and watching the doorway. He'd been there for two hours, slouched in stinking rags with a nearly empty bottle of gin between his feet. It was cold and misty, and he now understood what the crush of traffic on Blackfriars Bridge had been about; it was all over the street corners, with urchins crying the news. The flexible sheet they sold him had constantly updating stories, war stories, written out quickly by scribes somewhere in a London office. There was a cleverly drawn illustration of soldiers in what looked to be Camden Town, judging by the street signs and shopwindows. They were carrying the Welsh dragon flag and setting fire to buildings as Londoners ran in fear. A few uniformed London Garda were being overrun near the edges of the picture. It was stylized but effective. Chaos, it seemed, had moved on from Oxford and was spreading fast. London was a vast city, but in some ways it was also curiously small, and Jess felt the prickles of unease on seeing those familiar street names and shops burning.\n\nIf the Welsh had come this far, they weren't likely to be stopped now. Street by street, they kept up a relentless push toward Buckingham Palace, though likely the king and the rest of the royals had already sped off to safer strongholds farther north. Parliament would be just as deserted. It would be an empty victory, but an important symbolic one, for Wales.\n\nThe Library would be following standard procedure and evacuating all but essential personnel from St. Paul's. But in the Serapeum there was a major holding spot for confiscated original manuscripts, and there were many volumes on loan there, too. Those would need evacuation. The Library would have to divert troops away from chasing them.\n\nIn some very important ways, the chaos of war was a boon to them.\n\nSo Jess slouched on the cold pavement, looking like an anonymous soul lost to drink, and watched for any sign of his father. He saw none, nor any trace of his mother or brother or even the servants. The Brightwell household was quiet and cold, though the lights were on inside, and from time to time shadows seemed to pass the windows.\n\nAfter another hour, just as it slipped toward night, the front door opened and Brendan stepped out. He looked as Jess remembered him from Alexandria, but back in English clothing as finely made as what their father liked to boast, even down to the fancy silk waistcoat. He turned to survey the skyline, maybe tracking signs of fire, and then turned and stretched. He looked very tired.\n\nJess took off his cap and stepped forward into the light. Brendan looked around, up and down the street, then made a sharp movement for Jess to cross the street. Once he had, Brendan grabbed him and shoved him inside with such force, it almost seemed desperate. He closed and locked the town house door behind them.\n\nInside, the place was just the way Jess remembered it, down to the wear on the curled banister and the flower arrangement his mother replaced daily on the hall table. It seemed oddly smaller, though, for all the luxurious little touches spread around. He turned on Brendan, intending to let loose a flood of questions, but before he could, his brother embraced him hard.\n\n\"Idiot,\" Brendan said. \"You bloody idiot!\" He shoved him back almost as quickly. \"What corpse did you pick those rags off of? They smell foul.\"\n\n\"They're supposed to,\" Jess said. He looked over Brendan's shoulder. \"Where's Father?\"\n\n\"I don't know. He vanished and we haven't heard anything from him. Whoever has his Codex\u2014\"\n\n\"Is impersonating him, I know. Garda?\"\n\n\"The Garda have bigger problems than the Brightwells. Must be some Library spy. Welsh troops are burning through the city from one end to the other, you know, and half the city's either running in panic or planning to join the Garda to fight. He'd been working on clearing the best pieces out for days.\"\n\n\"We'll have to find him.\"\n\n\"I was working on it,\" Brendan said. \"I didn't even know you'd survived, Jess.\"\n\n\"I see you're in full mourning.\"\n\n\"Well, I didn't fully believe it,\" Brendan said. \"You're a bad penny, Jess. Can't get rid of you. What happened?\"\n\nJess explained it as briefly as he could. He didn't want to tell Brendan about the disaster at the Black Archives quite yet. He couldn't stomach talking about it. When he blinked, he could still see those books dying.\n\nSee himself watching them die.\n\n\"Your friends? Where are they?\" Brendan asked. \"I'm assuming you didn't do the sensible thing and leave them.\"\n\n\"They're close,\" Jess said. Funny. He trusted his twin just so far and not a step more. \"Where should I take them?\"\n\n\"The warehouse for now,\" his brother said. \"Mother's carried off the family treasures with her to cousin Frederick. The warehouse is just a gathering spot for the men. The plan was that we'll join them there once we have cargo on wagons and safely away. But now that Father's gone, we probably should be gone from here soon, in case the High Garda come looking.\"\n\n\"Brendan. About Neksa\u2014\"\n\n\"She's all right?\" His brother looked at him, and it was an unguarded kind of dread. Jess had hit rather harder than he expected.\n\n\"She's fine. Brokenhearted, but last I saw, she was fine. You did a good thing, Scraps. Maybe you're not so bad at heart after all.\"\n\n\"Shut up before I punch you,\" Brendan said. \"Let's go.\" He hesitated, then swept Jess with a disgusted look, head to toe. \"After you change and get rid of the lice.\"\n\n\"This city,\" Khalila said, \"looks like something a madman dreamed up. Didn't your architects ever hear of straight lines?\"\n\nJess, looking at London with the eyes of experience, had to admit the girl had a point. The narrow, twisting streets, the blind alleys, the buildings jammed together on whatever plot of land had become available... it had no plan to it. Big Ben wasn't as tall as he remembered; some of the newer buildings reached much higher, though they somehow still had a look of weariness to them. The golden gleam of St. Paul's in the distance was the only thing Jess could think would have been easily transplanted to Alexandria. Everything else was uniquely... English.\n\n\"At least it means slow going for the Welsh,\" he pointed out. \"London's probably the hardest city to conquer in the world.\"\n\n\"Yet they are managing,\" Dario observed. It wasn't smug, just practical. He was watching the southwest, where the muddy glow of buildings on fire made the night shimmer. Jess could hear the sound of fighting, very dim and distant. Khalila gave him a glare. She still wasn't speaking to him, not at all. \"I hope this hiding place isn't far.\"\n\n\"Just up there,\" Jess said. Their group kept to the shadows; other London citizens hurried by in the opposite direction, many carrying suitcases or bags full of belongings, dressed in thick layers of clothing to lighten their loads. \"Stay out of sight of the Garda if you see any.\"\n\nThey'd picked up the others a few blocks back, but now Morgan eased by Dario to take a place at Jess's side. She took his hand and looked him up and down, then over at his brother. \"Remarkable,\" she said. \"It's hard to tell you apart.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Jess asked.\n\n\"Well. Not for me, of course.\"\n\n\"That's better. I wouldn't like you mistaking the two of us at a critical moment.\"\n\nJess adjusted his heavy burden of books. It felt larger with every step, or maybe it was just that he was growing tired.\n\n\"The fighting looks to be moving closer,\" Santi said from behind them. \"We should go as quick as we can. I'd rather not renew our acquaintance with our friends from Wales. They let us go once; I doubt they'd feel any obligation to do it again.\"\n\n\"And we're not even Library anymore,\" Khalila said. \"We've got the same protection as anyone else on these streets.\"\n\n\"Welcome to the rest of the world,\" Brendan said. \"We rely on ourselves out here. Always have done, since the Library told us a book was worth more than we are.\"\n\n\"But it is,\" Khalila said quietly. \"A book outlives us all.\"\n\n\"That's a legacy,\" Brendan said. \"I'd rather have a life, if you don't mind.\"\n\n\"Philosophy later,\" Wolfe said. \"Run now.\"\n\nIt was more of a walk, and though Jess worried their stuffed packs might attract attention, the growing chaos of the Welsh invasion worked to their advantage. Almost every person on the street carried something\u2014a bag, a pack\u2014and some even trundled carts. The wealthy, of course, steamed by in carriages loaded with all manner of valuables. He considered the merits of waylaying one of them and forcing the owners out at gunpoint, but that might set off a tinderbox of rioting. In the distance, looters broke windows and carried off abandoned goods. That was tragic, but would they fare better if left to burn? Probably not.\n\nThe only bad moment came when they rounded a corner four blocks from the warehouse and faced a troop of perhaps a hundred London Garda. The redcoats looked exhausted and filthy, and huddled in groups as they shared food and water. Fresh from the fight, it looked like there were plenty of wounded stretched in a row on the sidewalk, and Medica attending to them. Jess kept his gaze down as they moved around the soldiers, and hoped that nobody had thought to circulate their descriptions; together in a group, they were hard to miss.\n\nBrendan, on the other hand, walked right up to an officer crouching against a brick wall, eating dried meat. \"Brightwell,\" the soldier said, and glanced at Jess. \"I stand corrected. Brightwells. And I thought this day couldn't get worse.\"\n\n\"Captain Harte,\" Brendan said. He reached in his pocket and slipped out a silver flask that assuredly didn't hold water and passed it over. \"How goes the war?\"\n\n\"We're trying to hold them at the bridges, but, to be honest, I don't think we have a hope. Bloody citizens are running like scared rabbits, and the army got themselves cut off in another battle. I'm surprised to find you lot still here.\" He uncapped the flask and took a long pull, sighed in satisfaction, and handed it back. \"Look to your people. Get them out of here. I doubt we have more than an hour or two before this district's overrun.\"\n\n\"Anything about my father?\"\n\n\"Aye. Your da was almost taken, but he got clean away. Not surprised, really; old Callum's always been able to slither right out of a trap. I expect you'll meet up with him again sometime.\"\n\n\"All right. Luck to you.\"\n\n\"You as well.\"\n\nBrendan led them a step or two on. Harte called after him. \"Brendan. Library Garda's looking for your friends. Offering rewards.\"\n\n\"Are you tempted?\"\n\nHarte shrugged. \"I know you'll make it worth my while to forget.\"\n\n\"That I will.\" Brendan touched his forehead in a mock salute and led them on.\n\nThe warehouse was an entirely unassuming structure at the end of a blind alley, hard to see and harder to find. It was usually guarded with lurkers out on the main streets and deadly bruisers at the doors. Not today, though. Today the doors stood open, and Brendan led them straight on inside.\n\nIt was empty.\n\nJess had never seen his father's warehouse empty before; there were always bolts and bundles of imported silk, pieces of fine furniture, boxes of expensive trinkets. His father had expensive tastes, but his real treasures had been concealed behind false walls and up high in the rafters\u2014boxes and stacks of rare, original books. Beauties that ranged into antiquity, from the hands of the original authors or the most accurate copies. His father always sold quality, whether the items were legal or criminal.\n\nThere was nothing there now except a squad of hard men. Most were armed with knives and some with stolen guns liberated from either Garda or the army. Finding weapons wasn't a challenge for someone well-known in the shadow markets.\n\n\"Come out, Da,\" Brendan said. \"I know you're here. They would have already run to the hills if you weren't.\"\n\nThere was a laugh from the shadows, and then Callum Brightwell stepped out\u2014grimy, thinner, with a cut on one cheek that had barely begun to heal. \"My boys. Come here to me.\"\n\nBrendan walked over and received a bear hug. Jess didn't move.\n\n\"I think I'll stay where I am,\" Jess said. \"I can see you're overcome with joy that I'm alive.\"\n\n\"I am,\" Callum said, though there was no real sign of it.\n\n\"How did you get away from the Garda?\"\n\n\"Hard fighting, boy. They got my Codex and twelve of my men. But they lost me. And you, apparently. Clever lad.\" His father had lost his smile. \"Stop dithering. Your place is with us. I didn't send you to the damned Library to become a rebel. There's no profit in it.\"\n\n\"There might be,\" Jess said. \"If you'll listen to what we have to say.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Callum said. \"But first I have a job for you. Tell your High Garda friends to lower their weapons or I'll have my men shoot and use the ones who survive it.\"\n\nThat was a cold, clear threat, and Jess turned to look at Santi. Santi shifted his aim to rest on Callum Brightwell's forehead. \"I don't think so,\" he said. \"Shoot me, I'll still pull the trigger. You know that.\"\n\n\"I have two fine sons to carry on for me. Do you think I'm worried, Captain Santi? Yes, I know who you are; I like to know who has influence over my son. Including you, Scholar Wolfe.\"\n\n\"Stop this,\" Jess said, and took another step toward his father\u2014but not far enough to interfere with Santi's aim. \"I'm not some Brightwell asset. I make my own decisions.\"\n\n\"Yet you come running to me for help.\"\n\n\"I'm bringing you an opportunity you'll never see again. It's business.\"\n\n\"And we thought you didn't have the Brightwell heart,\" Brendan said. He was smiling and his eyes were bright, and in that moment Jess knew his instincts had been right. He couldn't trust his family. Ever. \"We've got business for you to do first. Show us you're trustworthy, and then we'll look at this opportunity of yours. Or don't, and we'll kill some of your friends, if not all of them. Your choice.\"\n\n\"Jess?\" Santi said. \"I'd like very much to shoot this man, but he's your blood. You decide.\"\n\n\"Don't.\" His heart was pounding and he felt sick to his stomach. The air still smelled of that faint trace of spices and old books that were so much a part of his childhood, but overlaying them now was the muffling scent of smoke. London was burning. So was his past. \"What do you want from us, Callum?\"\n\n\"Callum, now, is it?\" Two years ago, his father's glare would have cowed him. Not today. He met it with one of his own.\n\n\"It is,\" Jess said. \"I'm not going to call you Father anymore. Be grateful I don't call you worse.\" He turned to Santi and Wolfe. \"You could kill them, maybe a few of the men, but they'll get some of us, too. It's not worth it.\"\n\nIt took a long, tense moment, but their guns went down. So, unwillingly, did Glain's.\n\n\"Good,\" Callum Brightwell said. \"Glad we sorted out our particulars. Come with us. We need the help of a Scholar.\"\n\nIt was a long ride in an uncomfortable freight wagon to St. Paul's, and while they rattled around inside the hard, empty space, Brightwell explained what he wanted. It was ominous and daring, and Jess could unwillingly agree that it might well be the chance of any self-respecting smuggler's lifetime.\n\nSt. Paul's Serapeum had long been an unattainable target, though it contained some of the rarest, choicest volumes on display. But in the growing chaos, with the High Garda fanning out across the city searching for Jess and his friends, it was as vulnerable as it would ever be.\n\n\"It'll take a Scholar's robes to get us past the Garda barricades,\" Brightwell explained. \"And a bright, shiny bracelet. Once you're in the building, they're busy boxing up things to send them to the Archives. A few liberated volumes might find their way clear with an enterprising thief in a black robe.\"\n\n\"You expect us to help you rob the Library?\" Santi asked. He looked at Jess's father as if he were a particularly unpleasant sort of bug he'd found in his stew. \"Are you completely mad?\"\n\n\"You're no longer part of the Library, is what I'm hearing. You're on the run from it, like the rest of us poor criminals, so don't play the proper High Garda captain with me. I could turn you in as easy as dropping a handkerchief. You're lucky I'm generous, and you can be of some real use.\"\n\n\"Nic,\" Wolfe said. He was staring at Brightwell with flat, dark eyes, like he wanted to take a bite out of him, but his voice was calm enough. \"I'll do it.\"\n\n\"No, you won't!\" Santi shot back. \"You're too recognizable. One look at you, and you're in the hands of the Artifex.\"\n\n\"Of course it's got to be me. You don't have another gold-banded Scholar to\u2014\" Wolfe realized his mistake, but it was too late. Khalila held up her wrist, and her sleeve slipped down to reveal the gold bracelet. \"No.\"\n\n\"I'm not as recognizable as you, and there are plenty of female librarians wearing hijabs. I will be fine.\" She managed a smile. \"Of all of us, which one looks least like a thief?\"\n\n\"No!\" It wasn't just Wolfe this time objecting; it was all of them, talking over each other. Khalila looked at Jess, who wasn't objecting. He just nodded at her. She nodded back.\n\n\"Quiet, all of you,\" she said, and opened her pack to dig out her black Scholar's robe. It was a little wrinkled and worse for wear, but in the current conditions of London, Jess doubted anyone would notice. \"Tell me what you want me to find.\"\n\n\"Oh, use your best judgment,\" Brightwell said with a deceptively kind smile. \"Something lucrative and rare. Two at least. Three if you can manage it.\"\n\n\"You're not going alone,\" Dario said, and grabbed his own robe from his bag. \"Jess, weapon?\"\n\nJess ignored him. Glain glared but silently offered a knife, and Dario nodded and slipped it into the back of his trousers, under the cover of the robe. \"Once it's done, we'll meet you back here in the freight hauler.\"\n\n\"Oh no,\" Jess's father said. \"We're all going in. While you steal the books, we will be opening a way out.\"\n\n\"Way out?\" Jess echoed, and then he understood, just before Callum pointed a thick finger at Morgan.\n\n\"She,\" he said, \"is the magic key to our escape. She'll send us to Lancaster, or as close as can be managed. Then we'll talk about opportunities, if you like, once we're safe in family territory.\"\n\n\"I can't,\" Morgan said. \"I'm just a student. I'm not\u2014\"\n\n\"You're an Obscurist, and by all accounts that I've heard, you're far more powerful than the ones trying to teach you anything useful. Imagine what we could do with you, Morgan. You're going to open many doors for us, all over the world.\"\n\nThe bad taste in Jess's mouth went sour. Morgan, too. She'd only just escaped from the Iron Tower, and already his own family wanted to put another chain on her, make her their pet Obscurist. Maybe she'd been right to run and hide before. Even from him.\n\n\"All right,\" Morgan said, with a calm that surprised him. \"I'll send you to safety, if you let me send the others first.\"\n\n\"I'm not as naive as I look, sweeting. You'd get them through and refuse to send the rest of us.\" He took on a calculating look, glancing from Morgan to Jess and back. \"But I'll compromise. Never let it be said I'm not a fair man. You can send all of them ahead except Jess. Then you send me, Brendan, and my men. You and Jess leave last.\"\n\nIt was a clever way to exploit the two of them again, and Jess knew it would work. It couldn't fail. She knew it, too, and nodded.\n\n\"You two Scholars, your job is to get inside and get the books without being noticed. Never mind what the rest of us do. Make your way to the Serapeum's chamber\u2014what do you call it?\"\n\n\"Translation Chamber,\" Morgan said quietly. \"It's hidden behind a statue of Queen Elizabeth toward the back of the Scholar's Reading Room.\" She caught Jess's eye. \"I studied ahead, in case we needed to escape.\"\n\nHe loved her for that. For many things, just now. \"And how do you plan to get past the lions?\" he asked his father, whose grin never slipped.\n\n\"With help,\" he said. \"You don't need to know.\"\n\nJess exchanged a quick glance with Thomas. His father had a frightening amount of inside knowledge, but he clearly didn't know that Jess could turn off the lions or that they could potentially convert them to their own cause.\n\nSomething to keep in reserve.\n\nThere was a rap on the front of the freight wagon, and Callum nodded. \"Get up,\" he said, and rose, grabbing for a handhold as the truck lurched. \"Don't cross us. Trust me, this is the best deal you're going to get.\"\n\n\"I'm sure it is,\" Wolfe replied. \"You strike me as such an honest man.\" The sarcasm is heavy enough to drown in, Jess thought, and in looking between the two men, he knew in his heart he'd choose Wolfe over his own father anytime. As difficult and prickly as the man could be, at least he was honest.\n\nThe wagon wheezed to a lurching halt, throwing them against one another, and Jess all but lost his footing when Thomas bumped him. But then the back of the wagon clanked down and his father's men were rushing out with a purpose, shouting.\n\nThey were nosed against the Garda barrier, and the Brightwell bullies made quick work of the two London Garda soldiers on duty. There was almost no one at the barricades, but those who were there ran. By the time the second Garda soldier hit the ground unconscious, the area was all but deserted.\n\nJess heard screaming from somewhere frighteningly close, and as he turned that way, he saw a distant pinpoint of greenish light arcing through the dark, growing larger. It was a ballista pot of Greek fire, and it hit no more than five blocks away, exploding and splashing the rooftops with luminescent liquid that began to burn instantly.\n\n\"The Welsh army is coming close,\" Wolfe said. Brightwell nodded. \"Well?\"\n\n\"We're waiting,\" he said.\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"For them.\" A group of men and women ran toward them from a side street\u2014ten of them, by Jess's quick count. They looked grimly serious as they exchanged nods with Callum. \"You're late,\" he said. \"Go on, then. You've been paid well enough for it.\"\n\nThe leader\u2014a woman with black hair twisted in a thick braid to one side of her head, with features and skin that reminded Jess a bit of Joachim Portero\u2014flashed him a smile, but without humor. \"We don't do this for money, criminal. We do it for principles.\"\n\n\"I don't care why you do it,\" Brightwell said blandly. \"So long as you succeed.\"\n\nShe led her small force up the street toward the Scholar Steps, where Jess had once run for his life from lions\u2014and those lions, he realized, were still there, crouched, waiting. They were the massively muscled English sort\u2014shorter manes than the Italian version, without barbed tails. Designed to crush and tear. One rose to all four paws, turned red eyes toward the intruders, and let out a chilling roar.\n\nThe woman let out a bloody cry of challenge that was almost as chilling, reached into a bag at her waist, and drew out a glass globe.\n\nBurners. My father's working with Burners.\n\nHe felt Morgan's hand closing hard around his arm and reached out to hold her closer. \"Nothing we can do,\" he said.\n\nThe leader's throw landed accurately right on the lion's head and spread caustic chemicals down the metal face and into the red eyes. Glass popped and sizzled, blinding it as the chemicals ignited and began to burn with a fierce intensity. The lion shook its head, trying to throw it off, but the thick stuff clung and melted, turning the automaton's face into a hideous, twisted mask of skeletal cables and clockwork.\n\nThe other Burners were throwing now, too, targeting the other lions. One automaton managed to dodge the rain of bottles and landed hard on a screaming victim\u2014man, woman, Jess couldn't tell, and in the next instant it didn't much matter, because the scream cut off quickly. Some of the Burners weren't much older than him. Jess shut his eyes as the lions thrashed and roared, the bottles of Greek fire flew and broke, and another Burner yelled in fear and pain.\n\nThen Morgan said, in an unsteady, hushed voice, \"It's over.\"\n\nHe opened his eyes again to see the last of the lions had collapsed on its side. It was melting into a tangled mess, cables twisting and snapping, gears and springs deforming. The metallic roaring faded to a strange, distorted whimper, and then... nothing.\n\nFour lions lay dead\u2014did automata die?\u2014in a shimmering pool of Greek fire, with two Burners bloody and crushed nearby. It was a terrible sight, and the street and steps scorched black from the rippling heat.\n\n\"Well,\" Callum said from behind him. \"That was well worth the price.\"\n\nJess didn't even think. He rounded on his father, fist pulled back, and as Morgan shouted his name, his brother grabbed his arm and held it while Jess shouted and struggled. \"Let go! Let me go!\"\n\n\"Be smarter,\" Brendan said quietly. \"He'll kill you.\"\n\n\"I could have\u2014\" Stopped this without people dying, he almost blurted out, but he could see Thomas's warning stare over Brendan's shoulder. \"I could have done this differently. Burners, Brendan. Since when do we work with Burners?\"\n\n\"When it's smart to do it,\" he said. \"Profit, not philosophy, remember? Relax, brother. We have it under control.\"\n\nKhalila and Dario, with Thomas and Glain, moved up the Scholar Steps; they were meant to go straight to the Scholar's Reading Room and grab as many books as they could. Each of them had their packs already loaded with originals, but Jess couldn't tell his family that now. He didn't trust them with that rare, precious knowledge. Or with the idea of the press. Then where will we turn? He didn't know. He felt sick, having led his friends here, to a safety that vanished like fog under the sun.\n\nOnce inside the columned entrance, Callum Brightwell led his sons to the left, where a statue of Queen Elizabeth in battle armor stood guard. There was no obvious entrance, and Brightwell gestured impatiently for Morgan to catch up. Just beyond them, Khalila and Dario had gone into the Reading Room, and Dario had already picked up an original volume to add to a small crate. Khalila passed him another. Her hands, Jess saw, were shaking badly.\n\nGlain and Thomas hovered at the corner, watching over them in case of trouble, but so far, the room was much too busy for them to be noticed. Black-robed Scholars hurried from one table to another, stacking books with haste that spoke of real fear, while a second set in sand-colored librarian robes brought over more crates and helped with packing. It looked like barely controlled chaos.\n\nHe froze as he saw a face he knew, one eerily familiar to him. It was a librarian named Naomi Ebele, who had not so very long ago been head of the Oxford Serapeum. She'd barely escaped with her life, along with the rest of them that day. He liked her. She was a strong, good woman, with a devout belief in what she was doing.\n\nShe'd recognize Dario and Khalila.\n\nJust as he realized it, she did look up, and her eyes locked on Khalila and Dario and widened. She put down the crate she was packing and immediately walked in their direction.\n\nJess couldn't guess what they would have done or could have, but it didn't matter in the next moment, because Naomi never quite made it. There was a strange sound outside, like an impact on the roof overhead, and everyone looked up. Movement stopped.\n\nJess heard hissing and smelled the unmistakable reek, and as the first Scholar screamed it out, he realized what had happened.\n\nGreek fire.\n\nThe Serapeum was burning.\n\nThere was no greater sin in war than to destroy a Serapeum. The Welsh would later point fingers at the Burners or claim it was a mistake; Jess knew that. The Burners would be happy to claim a victory for their side whether they actually did the job or not. But St. Paul's was burning. He saw the first licks of fire clawing at the ceiling above the Scholars' heads.\n\n\"Save the books!\" Naomi Ebele shouted, and began slapping Translation tags on the boxes. She touched one and activated it, and the script buried inside it\u2014like the scripts inside the lion, Jess realized now\u2014drained a little energy from her to activate itself and dissolve the crate of the books, to reform in the Archives in Alexandria. Safe.\n\nKhalila looked at Dario, face gone far too pale, and reached for one of the tags that Naomi held out. Around the room, Scholars were dumping books into crates, attaching Translation tags, and hurrying them to safety.\n\nDario took a handful of tags from the table and began attaching them to boxes. Khalila put one on the box that they'd already filled.\n\n\"The devil is she doing?\" Brightwell asked, and started to move for a better angle. Wolfe's hand held him back.\n\n\"She's doing her work,\" he said. \"Not yours. Leave her alone.\"\n\nDario attached tags and sent five before he staggered with the familiar weakness Jess remembered so well. Khalila managed four before she had to stop. It was enough. There were only a few boxes left now, and other Scholars were sending the last.\n\nDario palmed two extra discs and slipped them into a pocket, a move so practiced and sleek that Jess only noticed it because of his angle. Then he grabbed Khalila's arm and pulled her toward the door.\n\nNaomi got in the way. The librarian was a tall, strong woman, beautiful, and she didn't seem cowed by the fire now undulating across the ceiling above them. The other Scholars were using leftover Translation tags to send themselves home to the Archives. It was a last-resort escape, and some looked desperately reluctant, but, one by one, they dissolved in swirls and screams and blood.\n\nNo tags left.\n\nNaomi didn't move. She stared at Khalila and Dario, and they stared back.\n\n\"Kill her,\" Brightwell said to one of his men, and, quick as lightning, Santi had his forearm across the man's throat and the muzzle of his weapon pressed to the side of his head.\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"You don't.\" The man muttered an agreement, and Santi let him go, then turned the gun on Brightwell when Jess's father tried to approach. \"You brought us here to get through the Translation Chamber. That can still happen, but we need to go. Now.\"\n\nWolfe stepped into the doorway, and said, \"Naomi.\" Ebele turned and saw him, and for a moment Jess saw her smile in relief... and then the smile faded when she realized he wasn't alone. It wasn't just Brightwell's people now; the Burners had crowded in behind them, stinking of chemicals and smoke. The hard-eyed woman who led them had a triumphant grin on her face.\n\n\"Naomi, please come with us,\" Khalila said. \"You can't stay here, and all the tags are gone. Please.\" She held out her hand to Naomi, who looked at her with real distaste and took a step away.\n\n\"In all my days,\" she said, \"I never thought I would see Scholars standing with Burners. Ever. I would rather burn myself here than go with you.\"\n\nDario sighed and reached in his pocket. He handed her a Translation tag. \"Don't do that,\" he said, and coughed; the smoke was flooding in now, black and greasy. \"Save yourself, Naomi.\"\n\n\"Come with me!\"\n\n\"We can't,\" Khalila said. \"Go.\" She looked around at the reading room, the empty tables, the Blanks still sitting on shelves and burning like torches. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nThis time when Dario grabbed her and moved her on, she went willingly. Naomi met Wolfe's eyes as she pressed the Translation tag, and said, \"May God forgive you, Scholar.\" Then she was gone, in a spray of blood and bone.\n\nSafe, somewhere else.\n\nMorgan had pushed past Jess, and now she put a hand on the center of Queen Elizabeth's statue; it triggered a hiss, and the statue moved aside to reveal a short corridor. It was smoky, but the flames hadn't reached it yet. Brightwell plunged in first, followed by Brendan, and Morgan followed, reaching back for Jess's hand. The hall opened into a rounded room with a couch and helmet. The same as in all the other chambers he'd seen.\n\nSmoke was already beginning to filter in and fog the air with a thick, chemical reek, and Jess coughed and began to realize that there wasn't time to send all of them, even if his father intended to keep his word.\n\nHe's going to kill them, Jess realized with a jolt of real horror. Everybody but me and Morgan. He needs Morgan. It was plain to him, the way that his father's men were positioned, isolating Thomas, Glain, Wolfe, Santi, and now Khalila and Dario.\n\n\"There's not time to send all of you!\" Morgan shouted. The Burners had crowded in behind them and were pushing forward now.\n\n\"Oh, don't worry about that,\" said the woman who led the Burners, and she nodded to her men and women. \"There won't be as many as you think.\"\n\nAt her signal, her people quickly, efficiently, and brutally swung into motion... and caught the Brightwell bullies by surprise. Ten men were quickly taken down with blows from behind. Fast deaths, so fast Jess hardly even comprehended them. Now it was just the eight Burners who'd survived\u2014plus Brightwell, Brendan, Jess, and his friends.\n\n\"Kate, you backstabbing piece of\u2014\"\n\n\"Manners, Master Brightwell. We're all friends here,\" the woman said. Kate. It sounded too nice a name for her. Jess heard a crash from overhead; something had collapsed. The fire would get to them soon, and the smoke was already thickening. Harder to breathe. \"I'm sparing your lives. Get out. Now. Run. You're resourceful. And I'm giving you your son as a bonus.\"\n\n\"I have two,\" Brightwell said. \"I'll be taking both.\"\n\nShe put a knife to his throat. \"The Library rebels belong to us,\" she said. \"Go or die\u2014I don't care which you choose.\"\n\nJess's father hesitated for a long moment, then turned his head and said, \"Good luck, Jess.\"\n\n\"Da! No!\" Brendan shouted, and tried to break free. Callum Brightwell held him tight. \"Jess\u2014\"\n\n\"Kill them,\" Kate said, \"if they don't leave now.\" One of her Burners pulled a weapon and pointed it, and Brendan finally stopped fighting. He and Jess's father ran.\n\nJess tried to acknowledge that it was the smart thing to do, the Brightwell thing, but all he could think was, You left us. You left me.\n\nAnd it hurt.\n\nKate sat on the couch, put the helmet on her head, and looked at Morgan. \"Take us to the Philadelphia Serapeum,\" she said. \"We are going to the City of Freedom.\"\n\nPhiladelphia. The stronghold of the Burners.\n\nJess looked at Wolfe, at Santi. \"We can't do this,\" he said. \"We can't.\"\n\nWolfe said, \"I don't think they've left us any choice.\"\n\nThey were going to America."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Neverending Story",
        "author": "Michael Ende",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy",
            "adventure",
            "young adult"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plate-glass door.\n\nOutside, it was a gray, cold, rainy November morning. The rain ran down the glass and over the ornate letters. Through the glass there was nothing to be seen but the rain-splotched wall across the street.\n\nSuddenly the door was opened so violently that a little cluster of brass bells tinkled wildly, taking quite some time to calm down. The cause of this hubbub was a fat little boy of ten or twelve. His wet, dark-brown hair hung down over his face, his coat was soaked and dripping, and he was carrying a school satchel slung over his shoulder.\n\nHe was rather pale and out of breath, but, despite the hurry he had been in a moment before, he was standing in the open doorway as though rooted to the spot.\n\nBefore him lay a long, narrow room, the back of which was lost in the half-light. The walls were lined with shelves filled with books of all shapes and sizes. Large folios were piled high on the floor, and on several tables lay heaps of smaller, leather-bound books, whose spines glittered with gold. The far end of the room was blocked off by a shoulder-high wall of books, behind which the light of a lamp could be seen. From time to time a ring of smoke rose up in the lamplight, expanded, and vanished in darkness. One was reminded of the smoke signals that Indians used for sending news from hilltop to hilltop. Apparently someone was sitting there, and, sure enough, the little boy heard a cross voice from behind the wall of books: \"Do your wondering inside or outside, but shut the door. There's a draft.\"\n\nThe boy obeyed and quietly shut the door. Then he approached the wall of books and looked cautiously around the corner. There, in a high worn leather wing chair sat a short, stout man in a rumpled black suit that looked frayed and somehow dusty. His paunch was held in by a vest with a flower design. He was bald except for outcroppings of white hair over his ears. His red face suggested a vicious bulldog. A gold-rimmed pince-nez was perched on his bulbous nose. He was smoking a curved pipe, which dangled from one corner of his mouth and pulled his whole cheek out of shape. On his lap he held a book, which he had evidently been reading, for in closing it he had left the thick forefinger of his left hand between the leaves as a kind of bookmark.\n\nWith his right hand he now removed his spectacles and examined the fat little boy, who stood there dripping. After a while, the man narrowed his eyes, which made him look more vicious than ever, and muttered: \"Goodness gracious.\" Then he opened his book and went on reading.\n\nThe little boy didn't know quite what to do, so he just stood there, gaping. Finally the man closed his book\u2014as before, with his finger between the pages\u2014and growled: \"Listen, my boy, I can't abide children. I know it's the style nowadays to make a terrible fuss over you\u2014but I don't go for it. I simply have no use for children. As far as I'm concerned, they're no good for anything but screaming, torturing people, breaking things, smearing books with jam and tearing the pages. It never dawns on them that grown-ups may also have their troubles and cares. I'm only telling you this so you'll know where you're at. Anyway, I have no children's books and I wouldn't sell you the other kind. So now we understand each other, I hope!\"\n\nAfter saying all this without taking his pipe out of his mouth, he opened his book again and went on reading.\n\nThe boy nodded silently and turned to go, but somehow he felt that he couldn't take this last remark lying down. He turned around and said softly: \"All children aren't like that.\"\n\nSlowly the man looked up and again removed his spectacles. \"You still here? What must one do to be rid of you? And what was this terribly important thing you had to tell me?\"\n\n\"It wasn't terribly important,\" said the boy still more softly. \"I only wanted... to say that all children aren't the way you said.\"\n\nReally?\" The man raised his eyebrows in affected surprise. \"Then you must be the big exception, I presume?\"\n\nThe fat boy didn't know what to say. He only shrugged his shoulders a little, and turned to go.\n\n\"And anyway,\" he heard the gruff voice behind him, \"where are your manners? If you had any, you'd have introduced yourself.\"\n\n\"My name is Bastian,\" said the boy. \"Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\n\"That's a rather odd name,\" the man grumbled. \"All those B's. Oh well, you can't help it. You didn't choose it. My name is Carl Conrad Coreander.\"\n\n\"That makes three C's.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" the man grumbled. \"Quite right.\"\n\nHe puffed a few clouds. \"Oh well, our names don't really matter, as we'll never see each other again. But before you leave, there's just one thing I'd like to know: What made you come bursting into my shop like that? It looked to me as if you were running away from something. Am I right?\"\n\nBastian nodded. Suddenly his round face was a little paler than before and his eyes a little larger.\n\n\"I suppose you made off with somebody's cashbox,\" Mr. Coreander conjectured, \"or knocked an old woman down, or whatever little scamps like you do nowadays. Are the police after you, boy?\"\n\nBastian shook his head.\n\n\"Speak up,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"Whom were you running away from?\"\n\n\"The others.\"\n\n\"What others?\"\n\n\"The children in my class.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"They won't leave me alone.\"\n\n\"What do they do to you?\"\n\n\"They wait for me outside the schoolhouse.\"\n\n\"And then what?\"\n\n\"Then they shout all sorts of things. And push me around and laugh at me.\"\n\n\"And you just put up with it?\"\n\nMr. Coreander looked at the boy for a while disapprovingly. Then he asked: \"Why don't you just give them a punch on the nose?\"\n\nBastian gaped. \"No, I wouldn't want to do that. And besides, I can't box.\"\n\n\"How about wrestling?\" Mr. Coreander asked. \"Or running, swimming, football, gymnastics? Are you no good at any of them?\"\n\nThe boy shook his head.\n\n\"In other words,\" said Mr. Coreander, \"you're a weakling.\"\n\nBastian shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"But you can still talk,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"Why don't you talk back at them when they make fun of you?\"\n\n\"I tried...\"\n\n\"Well...?\"\n\n\"They threw me into a garbage can and tied the lid on. I yelled for two hours before somebody heard me.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" Mr. Coreander grumbled. \"And now you don't dare?\"\n\nBastian nodded.\n\n\"In that case,\" Mr. Coreander concluded, \"you're a scaredy-cat too.\"\n\nBastian hung his head.\n\n\"And probably a hopeless grind? Best in the class, teacher's pet? Is that it?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian, still looking down. \"I was put back last year.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" cried Mr. Coreander. \"A failure all along the line.\"\n\nBastian said nothing, he just stood there in his dripping coat. His arms hung limp at his sides.\n\n\"What kind of things do they yell when they make fun of you?\" Mr. Coreander wanted to know.\n\n\"Oh, all kinds.\"\n\n\"For instance?\"\n\n\"Namby Pamby sits on the pot. The pot cracks up, says Namby Pamby: I guess it's 'cause I weigh a lot!\"\n\n\"Not very clever,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"What else?\"\n\nBastian hesitated before listing: \"Screwball, nitwit, braggart, liar...\"\n\n\"Screwball? Why do they call you that?\"\n\n\"I talk to my self sometimes.\"\n\n\"What kind of things do you say?\"\n\n\"I think up stories. I invent names and words that don't exist. That kind of thing.\"\n\n\"And you say these things to yourself? Why?\"\n\n\"Well, nobody else would be interested.\"\n\nMr. Coreander fell into a thoughtful silence.\n\n\"What do your parents say about this?\"\n\nBastian didn't answer right away. After a while he mumbled: \"Father doesn't say anything. He never says anything. It's all the same to him.\"\n\n\"And your mother?\"\n\n\"She\u2014she's gone.\"\n\n\"Your parents are divorced?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian. \"She's dead.\"\n\nAt that moment the telephone rang. With some difficulty Mr. Coreander pulled himself out of his armchair and shuffled into a small room behind the shop. He picked up the receiver and indistinctly Bastian heard him saying his name. After that there was nothing to be heard but a low mumbling.\n\nBastian stood there. He didn't quite know why he had said all he had and admitted so much. He hated being questioned like that. He broke into a sweat as it occurred to him that he was already late for school. He'd have to hurry, oh yes, he'd have to run\u2014but he just stood there, unable to move. Something held him fast, he didn't know what.\n\nHe could still hear the muffled voice from the back room. It was a long telephone conversation.\n\nIt came to Bastian that he had been staring the whole time at the book that Mr. Coreander had been holding and that was now lying on the armchair. He couldn't take his eyes off it. It seemed to have a kind of magnetic power that attracted him irresistibly.\n\nHe went over to the chair, slowly held out his hand, and touched the book. In that moment something inside him went click!, as though a trap had shut. Bastian had a vague feeling that touching the book had started something irrevocable, which would now take its course.\n\nHe picked up the book and examined it from all sides. It was bound in copper-colored silk that shimmered when he moved it about. Leafing through the pages, he saw the book was printed in two colors. There seemed to be no pictures, but there were large, beautiful capital letters at the beginning of the chapters. Examining the binding more closely, he discovered two snakes on it, one light and one dark. They were biting each other's tail, so forming an oval. And inside the oval, in strangely intricate letters, he saw the title:\n\nThe Neverending Story\n\nHuman passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasures of the table. Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice every thing for a dream that can never come true. Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people.\n\nBastian Balthazar Bux's passion was books.\n\nIf you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger\u2014\n\nIf you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early\u2014\n\nIf you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless\u2014\n\nIf such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.\n\nStaring at the title of the book, he turned hot and cold, cold and hot. Here was just what he had dreamed of, what he had longed for ever since the passion for books had taken hold of him: A story that never ended! The book of books!\n\nHe had to have this book\u2014at any price.\n\nAt any price? That was easily said. Even if he had had more to offer than the bit of pocket money he had on him\u2014this cranky Mr. Coreander had given him clearly to understand that he would never sell him a single book. And he certainly wouldn't give it away. The situation was hopeless.\n\nYet Bastian knew he couldn't leave without the book. It was clear to him that he had only come to the shop because of this book. It had called him in some mysterious way, because it wanted to be his, because it had somehow always belonged to him.\n\nBastian listened to the mumbling from the little back room. In a twinkling, before he knew it, he had the book under his coat and was hugging it with both arms. Without a sound he backed up to the street door, keeping an anxious eye on the other door, the one leading to the back room. Cautiously he turned the door handle. To keep the brass bells from ringing, he opened the glass door just wide enough for him to slip through. He quietly closed the door behind him.\n\nOnly then did he start running.\n\nThe books, copybooks, pens and pencils in his satchel jiggled and rattled to the rhythm of his steps. He had a stitch in his side. But he kept on running.\n\nThe rain ran down his face and into his collar. The wet cold passed through his coat, but Bastian didn't feel it. He felt hot all over, but not from running.\n\nHis conscience, which hadn't let out a peep in the bookshop, had suddenly woken up. All the arguments that had seemed so convincing melted away like snowmen under the fiery breath of a dragon.\n\nHe had stolen. He was a thief!\n\nWhat he had done was worse than common theft. That book was certainly the only one of its kind and impossible to replace. It was surely Mr. Coreander's greatest treasure. Stealing a violinist's precious violin or a king's crown wasn't at all the same as filching money from a cash drawer.\n\nAs he ran, he hugged the book tight under his coat. Regardless of what this book might cost him, he couldn't bear to lose it. It was all he had left in the world.\n\nBecause naturally he couldn't go home anymore.\n\nHe tried to imagine his father at work in the big room he had furnished as a laboratory. Around him lay dozens of plaster casts of human teeth, for his father was a dental technician. Bastian had never stopped to ask himself whether his father enjoyed his work. It occurred to him now for the first time, but now he would never be able to ask him.\n\nIf he went home now, his father would come out of his lab in a white smock, possibly holding a plaster cast, and he would ask: \"Home so soon?\" \"Yes,\" Bastian would answer. \"No school today?\" He saw his father's quiet, sad face, and he knew he couldn't possibly lie to him. Much less could he tell him the truth. No, the only thing left for him was to go away somewhere. Far, far away. His father must never find out that his son was a thief. And maybe he wouldn't even notice that Bastian wasn't there anymore. Bastian found this thought almost comforting.\n\nHe had stopped running. Walking slowly, he saw the schoolhouse at the end of the street. Without thinking, he was taking his usual route to school. He passed a few people here and there, yet the street seemed deserted. But to a schoolboy arriving very, very late, the world around the schoolhouse always seems to have gone dead. At every step he felt the fear rising within him. Under the best of circumstances he was afraid of school, the place of his daily defeats, afraid of his teachers, who gently appealed to his conscience or made him the butt of their rages, afraid of the other children, who made fun of him and never missed a chance to show him how clumsy and defenseless he was. He had always thought of his school years as a prison term with no end in sight, a misery that would continue until he grew up, something he would just have to live through.\n\nBut when he now passed through the echoing corridors with their smell of floor wax and wet overcoats, when the lurking stillness suddenly stopped his ears like cotton, and when at last he reached the door of his classroom, which was painted the same old spinach color as the walls around it, he realized that this, too, was no place for him. He would have to go away. So he might as well go at once.\n\nBut where to?\n\nBastian had read stories about boys who ran away to sea and sailed out into the world to make their fortune. Some became pirates or heroes, others grew rich and when they returned home years later no one could guess who they were.\n\nBut Bastian didn't feel up to that kind of thing. He couldn't conceive of anyone taking him on as a cabin boy. Besides, he had no idea how to reach a seaport with suitable ships for such an undertaking.\n\nSo where could he go?\n\nSuddenly he thought of the right place, the only place where\u2014at least for the time being\u2014no one would find him or even look for him.\n\nThe attic of the school was large and dark. It smelled of dust and mothballs. Not a sound to be heard, except for the muffled drumming of the rain on the enormous tin roof. Great beams blackened with age rose at regular intervals from the plank floor, joined with other beams at head height, and lost themselves in the darkness. Here and there spider webs as big as hammocks swayed gently in the air currents. A milky light fell from a skylight in the roof.\n\nThe one living thing in this place where time seemed to stand still was a little mouse that came hobbling across the floor, leaving tiny footprints in the dust\u2014and between them a fine line, a tailprint. Suddenly it stopped and pricked up its ears. And then it vanished\u2014whoosh!\u2014into a hole in the floor.\n\nThe mouse had heard the sound of a key in a big lock. The attic door opened slowly, with a loud squeak. For a moment a long strip of light crossed the room. Bastian slipped in. Then, again with a squeak, the door closed. Bastian put the big key in the lock from inside and turned it. Then he pushed the bolt and heaved a sigh of relief. Now no one could possibly find him. No one would look for him here. The place was seldom used\u2014he was pretty sure of that\u2014and even if by chance someone had something to do in the attic, today or tomorrow, he would simply find the door locked. And the key would be gone. And even if they somehow got the door open, Bastian would have time to hide behind the junk that was stored here.\n\nLittle by little, his eyes got used to the dim light. He knew the place. Some months before, he had helped the janitor to carry a laundry basket full of old copybooks up here. And then he had seen where the key to the attic door was kept\u2014in a wall cupboard next to the topmost flight of stairs. He hadn't thought of it since. But today he had remembered.\n\nBastian began to shiver, his coat was soaked through and it was cold in the attic. The first thing to do was find a place where he could make himself more or less comfortable, because he took it for granted that he'd have to stay here a long time. How long? The question didn't enter his head, nor did it occur to him that he would soon be hungry and thirsty.\n\nHe looked around for a while. The place was crammed with junk of all kinds; there were shelves full of old files and records, benches and ink-stained desks were heaped up every which way, a dozen old maps were hanging on an iron frame, there were blackboards that had lost a good deal of their black, and cast-iron stoves, broken-down pieces of gymnasium equipment\u2014including a horse with the stuffing coming out through the cracks in its hide\u2014and a number of soiled mats. There were also quite a few stuffed animals\u2014at least what the moths had left of them\u2014a big owl, a golden eagle, a fox, and so on, cracked retorts and other chemical equipment, a galvanometer, a human skeleton hanging on a clothes rack, and a large number of cartons full of old books and papers. Bastian finally decided to make his home on the pile of old gym mats. When he stretched out on them, it was almost like lying on a sofa. He dragged them to the place under the skylight where the light was best. Not far away he found a pile of gray army blankets; they were dusty and ragged but that didn't matter now. He carried them over to his nest. He took off his wet coat and hung it on the clothes rack beside the skeleton. The skeleton jiggled and swayed, but Bastian had no fear of it, maybe because he was used to such things at home. He also removed his wet shoes. In his stocking feet he squatted down on the mats and wrapped himself in the gray blankets like an Indian. Beside him lay his school satchel\u2014and the copper-colored book.\n\nIt passed through his mind that the rest of them down in the classroom would be having history just then. Maybe they'd be writing a composition on some deadly dull subject.\n\nBastian looked at the book.\n\n\"I wonder,\" he said to himself, \"what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut up in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.\"\n\nSuddenly an almost festive mood came over him.\n\nHe settled himself, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Neverending Story",
                "text": "ll the beasts in Howling Forest were safe in their caves, nests, and burrows.\n\nIt was midnight, the storm wind was whistling through the tops of the great ancient trees. The towering trunks creaked and groaned.\n\nSuddenly a faint light came zigzagging through the woods, stopped here and there, trembling fitfully, flew up into the air, rested on a branch, and a moment later hurried on. It was a glittering sphere about the size of a child's ball; it moved in long leaps, touched the ground now and then, then bounded up again. But it wasn't a ball.\n\nIt was a will-o'-the-wisp. It had lost its way. And that's something quite unusual even in Fantastica, because ordinarily will-o'-the-wisps make others lose their way.\n\nInside this ball of light there was a small, exceedingly active figure, which ran and jumped with all its might. It was neither male nor female, for such distinctions don't exist among will-o'-the-wisps. In its right hand it carried a tiny white flag, which glittered behind it. That meant it was either a messenger or a flag-of-truce bearer.\n\nYou'd think it would have bumped into a tree, leaping like that in the darkness, but there was no danger of that, for will-o'-the-wisps are incredibly nimble and can change directions in the middle of a leap. That explains the zigzagging, but in a general sort of way it moved in a definite direction.\n\nUp to the moment when it came to a jutting crag and started back in a fright.\n\nWhimpering like a puppy, it sat down on the fork of a tree and pondered awhile before venturing out and cautiously looking around the crag.\n\nUp ahead it saw a clearing in the woods, and there in the light of a campfire sat three figures of different sizes and shapes. A giant, who looked as if the whole of him were made of gray stone, lay stretched out on his belly. He was almost ten feet long. Propped up on one elbow, he was looking into the fire. In his weather-beaten stone face, which seemed strangely small in comparison with his powerful shoulders, his teeth stood out like a row of steel chisels. The will-o'-the-wisp recognized him as belonging to the family of rock chewers. These were creatures who lived in a mountain range inconceivably far from Howling Forest\u2014but they not only lived in the mountain range, they also lived on it, for little by little they were eating it up. Rocks were their only food. Luckily a little went a long way. They could live for weeks and months on a single bite of this\u2014for them\u2014extremely nutritious fare. There weren't very many rock chewers, and besides it was a large mountain range. But since these giants had been there a long time\u2014they lived to a greater age than most of the inhabitants of Fantastica\u2014those mountains had come, over the years, to look very strange\u2014like an enormous Swiss cheese, full of holes and grottoes. And that is why they were known as the Cheesiewheezies.\n\nBut the rock chewers not only fed on stone, they made everything they needed out of it: furniture, hats, shoes, tools, even cuckoo clocks. So it was not surprising that the vehicle of this particular giant, which was now leaning against a tree behind him, was a sort of bicycle made entirely of this material, with two wheels that looked like enormous millstones. On the whole, it suggested a steamroller with pedals.\n\nThe second figure, who was sitting to the right of the first, was a little night-hob.\n\nNo more than twice the size of the will-o'-the-wisp, he looked like a pitch-black, furry caterpillar sitting up. He had little pink hands, with which he gestured violently as he spoke, and below his tousled black hair two big round eyes glowed like moons in what was presumably his face.\n\nSince there were night-hobs of all shapes and sizes in every part of Fantastica, it was hard to tell by the sight of him whether this one had come from far or near. But one could guess that he was traveling, because the usual mount of the night-hobs, a large bat, wrapped in its wings like a closed umbrella, was hanging head-down from a nearby branch.\n\nIt took the will-o'-the-wisp some time to discover the third person on the left side of the fire, for he was so small as to be scarcely discernible from that distance. He was one of the tinies, a delicately built little fellow in a bright-colored suit and a top hat.\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp knew next to nothing about tinies. But it had once heard that these people built whole cities in the branches of trees and that the houses were connected by stairways, rope ladders, and ramps. But the tinies lived in an entirely different part of the boundless Fantastican Empire, even farther away than the rock chewers. Which made it all the more amazing that the mount which had evidently carried the tiny all this way was, of all things, a snail. Its pink shell was surmounted by a gleaming silver saddle, and its bridle, as well as the reins fastened to its feelers, glittered like silver threads.\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp couldn't get over it that three such different creatures should be sitting there so peacefully, for harmony between different species was by no means the rule in Fantastica. Battles and wars were frequent, and certain of the species had been known to feud for hundreds of years. Moreover, not all the inhabitants of Fantastica were good and honorable, there were also thieving, wicked, and cruel ones. The will-o'-the-wisp itself belonged to a family that was hardly reputed for truthfulness or reliability.\n\nAfter observing the scene in the firelight for some time, the will-o'-the-wisp noticed that each of the three had something white, either a flag or a white scarf worn across his chest. Which meant that they were messengers or flag-of-truce bearers, and that of course accounted for the peaceful atmosphere.\n\nCould they be traveling on the same business as the will-o'-the-wisp?\n\nWhat they were saying couldn't be heard from a distance because of the howling wind in the treetops. But since they respected one another as messengers, mightn't they recognize the will-o'-the-wisp in the same capacity and refrain from harming him? It had to ask someone the way, and there seemed little likelihood of finding a better opportunity at this hour in the middle of the woods. So plucking up courage, it ventured out of its hiding place and hovered trembling in mid-air, waving its white flag.\n\nThe rock chewer, whose face was turned in that direction, was first to notice the will-o'-the-wisp.\n\n\"Lots of traffic around here tonight,\" he crackled. \"Here comes another one.\"\n\n\"Hoo, it's a will-o'-the-wisp,\" whispered the night-hob, and his moon eyes glowed. \"Pleased to meet you!\"\n\nThe tiny stood up, took a few steps toward the newcomer, and chirped: \"If my eyes don't deceive me, you are here as a messenger.\"\n\n\"Yes indeed,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp.\n\nThe tiny removed his red top hat, made a slight bow, and twittered: \"Oh, do join us. We, too, are messengers. Won't you be seated?\"\n\nAnd with his hat he motioned toward an empty place by the fire.\n\n\"Many thanks,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp, coming timidly closer.\n\n\"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Blubb.\"\n\n\"Delighted,\" said the tiny. \"Mine is Gluckuk.\"\n\nThe night-hob bowed without getting up. \"My name is Vooshvazool.\"\n\n\"And mine,\" the rock chewer crackled, \"is Pyornkrachzark.\"\n\nAll three looked at the will-o'-the-wisp, who was wriggling with embarrassment.\n\nWill-o'-the-wisps find it most unpleasant to be looked full in the face.\n\n\"Won't you sit down, dear Blubb?\" said the tiny.\n\n\"To tell the truth,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp, \"I'm in a terrible hurry. I only wanted to ask if by any chance you knew the way to the Ivory Tower.\"\n\n\"Hoo,\" said the night-hob. \"Could you be going to see the Childlike Empress?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp. \"I have an important message for her.\"\n\n\"What does it say?\" the rock chewer crackled.\n\n\"But you see,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp, shifting its weight from foot to foot, \"it's a secret message.\"\n\n\"All three of us\u2014hoo\u2014have the same mission as you,\" replied Vooshvazool, the night-hob. \"That makes us partners.\"\n\n\"Maybe we even have the same message,\" said Gluckuk, the tiny.\n\n\"Sit down and tell us,\" Pyornkrachzark crackled.\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp sat down in the empty place.\n\n\"My home,\" it began after a moment's hesitation, \"is a long way from here. I don't know if any of those present has heard of it. It's called Moldymoor.\"\n\n\"Hoo!\" cried the night-hob delightedly. \"A lovely country!\"\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp smiled faintly.\n\n\"Yes, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Is that all you have to say, Blubb?\" Pyornkrachzark crackled. \"What is the purpose of your trip?\"\n\n\"Something has happened in Moldymoor,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp haltingly, \"something impossible to understand. Actually, it's still happening. It's hard to describe\u2014the way it began was\u2014well, in the east of our country there's a lake\u2014that is, there was a lake\u2014Lake Foamingbroth we called it. Well, the way it began was like this. One day Lake Foamingbroth wasn't there anymore\u2014it was gone. See?\"\n\n\"You mean it dried up?\" Gluckuk inquired.\n\n\"No,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp. \"Then there'd be a dried-up lake. But there isn't.\n\nWhere the lake used to be there's nothing\u2014absolutely nothing. Now do you see?\"\n\n\"A hole?\" the rock chewer grunted.\n\n\"No, not a hole,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp despairingly. \"A hole, after all, is something. This is nothing at all.\"\n\nThe three other messengers exchanged glances.\n\n\"What\u2014hoo\u2014does this nothing look like?\" asked the night-hob.\n\n\"That's just what's so hard to describe,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp unhappily. \"It doesn't look like anything. It's\u2014it's like\u2014oh, there's no word for it.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" the tiny suggested, \"when you look at the place, it's as if you were blind.\"\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp stared openmouthed.\n\n\"Exactly!\" it cried. \"But where\u2014I mean how\u2014I mean, have you had the same. ..?\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" the rock chewer crackled. \"Was it only this one place?\"\n\n\"At first, yes,\" the will-o'-the-wisp explained. \"That is, the place got bigger little by little. And then all of a sudden Foggle, the father of the frogs, who lived in Lake Foamingbroth with his family, was gone too. Some of the inhabitants started running away. But little by little the same thing happened to other parts of Moldymoor. It usually started with just a little chunk, no bigger than a partridge egg. But then these chunks got bigger and bigger. If somebody put his foot into one of them by mistake, the foot\u2014or hand\u2014or whatever else he put in\u2014would be gone too. It didn't hurt\u2014it was just that a part of whoever it was would be missing. Some would even fall in on purpose if they got too close to the Nothing. It has an irresistible attraction\u2014the bigger the place, the stronger the pull. None of us could imagine what this terrible thing might be, what caused it, and what we could do about it. And seeing that it didn't go away by itself but kept spreading, we finally decided to send a messenger to the Childlike Empress to ask her for advice and help. Well, I'm the messenger.\"\n\nThe three others gazed silently into space.\n\nAfter a while, the night-hob sighed: \"Hoo! It's the same where I come from. And I'm traveling on the exact same errand\u2014hoo hoo!\"\n\nThe tiny turned to the will-o'-the-wisp. \"Each one of us,\" he chirped, \"comes from a different province of Fantastica. We've met here entirely by chance. But each one of us is going to the Childlike Empress with the same message.\"\n\n\"And the message,\" grated the rock chewer, \"is that all Fantastica is in danger.\"\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp cast a terrified look at each one in turn.\n\n\"If that's the case,\" it cried, jumping up, \"we haven't a moment to lose.\"\n\n\"We were just going to start,\" said the tiny. \"We only stopped to rest because it's so awfully dark here in Howling Forest. But now that you've joined us, Blubb, you can light the way.\"\n\n\"Impossible,\" said the will-o'-the-wisp. \"Would you expect me to wait for someone who rides a snail? Sorry.\"\n\n\"But it's a racing snail,\" said the tiny, somewhat miffed.\n\n\"Otherwise\u2014hoo hoo\u2014\" the night-hob sighed, \"we won't tell you which way to go.\"\n\n\"Who are you people talking to?\" the rock chewer crackled.\n\nAnd sure enough, the will-o'-the-wisp hadn't even heard the other messengers' last words, for it was already flitting through the forest in long leaps.\n\n\"Oh well,\" said the tiny, pushing his top hat onto the back of his head, \"maybe it wouldn't have been such a good idea to follow a will-o'-the-wisp.\"\n\n\"To tell the truth,\" said the night-hob, \"I prefer to travel on my own. Because I, for one, fly.\"\n\nWith a quick \"hoo hoo\" he ordered his bat to make ready. And whish! Away he flew.\n\nThe rock chewer put out the campfire with the palm of his hand.\n\n\"I, too, prefer to go by myself,\" he crackled in the darkness. \"Then I don't need to worry about squashing some wee creature.\"\n\nRattling and grinding, he rode his stone bicycle straight into the woods, now and then thudding into a tree giant. Slowly the clatter receded in the distance.\n\nGluckuk, the tiny, was last to set out. He seized the silvery reins and said: \"All right, we'll see who gets there first. Geeyap, old-timer, geeyap.\" And he clicked his tongue.\n\nAnd then there was nothing to be heard but the storm wind howling in the treetops.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck nine. Reluctantly Bastian's thought turned back to reality. He was glad the Neverending Story had nothing to do with that.\n\nHe didn't like books in which dull, cranky writers describe humdrum events in the very humdrum lives of humdrum people. Reality gave him enough of that kind of thing, why should he read about it? Besides, he couldn't stand it when a writer tried to convince him of something. And these humdrum books, it seemed to him, were always trying to do just that.\n\nBastion liked books that were exciting or funny, or that made him dream. Books where made-up characters had marvelous adventures, books that made him imagine all sorts of things.\n\nBecause one thing he was good at, possibly the only thing, was imagining things so clearly that he almost saw and heard them. When he told himself stories, he sometimes forgot everything around him and awoke\u2014as though from a dream\u2014only when the story was finished. And this book was just like his own stories! In reading it, he had heard not only the creaking of the big trees and the howling of the wind in the treetops, but also the different voices of the four comical messengers. And he almost seemed to catch the smell of moss and forest earth.\n\nDown in the classroom they were starting in on nature study. That consisted almost entirely in counting pistils and stamens. Bastian was glad to be up here in his hiding place, where he could read. This, he thought, was just the right book for him!\n\nA week later Vooshvazool, the little night-hob, arrived at his destination. He was the first. Or rather, he thought he was first, because he was riding through the air.\n\nJust as the setting sun turned the clouds to liquid gold, he noticed that his bat was circling over the Labyrinth. That was the name of an enormous garden, extending from horizon to horizon and filled with the most bewitching scents and dreamlike colors.\n\nBroad avenues and narrow paths twined their way among copses, lawns, and beds of the rarest, strangest flowers in a design so artful and intricate that the whole plain resembled an enormous maze. Of course, it had been designed only for pleasure and amusement, with no intention of endangering anyone, much less of warding off an enemy. It would have been useless for such purposes, and the Childlike Empress required no such protection, because in all the unbounded reaches of Fantastica there was no one who would have thought of attacking her. For that there was a reason, as we shall soon see.\n\nWhile gliding soundlessly over the flowery maze, the night-hob sighted all sorts of animals. In a small clearing between lilacs and laburnum, a group of young unicorns was playing in the evening sun, and once, glancing under a giant bluebell, he even thought he saw the famous phoenix in its nest, but he wasn't quite certain, and such was his haste that he didn't want to turn back to make sure. For at the center of the Labyrinth there now appeared, shimmering in fairy whiteness, the Ivory Tower, the heart of Fantastica and the residence of the Childlike Empress.\n\nThe word \"tower\" might give someone who has never seen it the wrong idea. It had nothing of the church or castle about it. The Ivory Tower was as big as a whole city.\n\nFrom a distance it looked like a pointed mountain peak twisted like a snail shell. Its highest point was deep in the clouds. Only on coming closer could you notice that this great sugarloaf consisted of innumerable towers, turrets, domes, roofs, oriels, terraces, arches, stairways, and balustrades, all marvelously fitted together. The whole was made of the whitest Fantastican ivory, so delicately carved in every detail that it might have been taken for the latticework of the finest lace.\n\nThese buildings housed the Childlike Empress's court, her chamberlains and maidservants, wise women and astrologers, magicians and jesters, messengers, cooks and acrobats, her tightrope walkers and storytellers, heralds, gardeners, watchmen, tailors, shoemakers and alchemists. And at the very summit of the great tower lived the Childlike Empress in a pavilion shaped like a magnolia blossom. On certain nights, when the full moon shone most gloriously in the starry sky, the ivory petals opened wide, and the Childlike Empress would be sitting in the middle of the glorious flower.\n\nRiding on his bat, the little night-hob landed on one of the lower terraces, where the stables were located. Someone must have announced his arrival, for five imperial grooms were there waiting for him. They helped him out of his saddle, bowed to him, and held out the ceremonial welcome cup. As etiquette demanded, Vooshvazool took only a sip and then returned the cup. Each of the grooms took a sip, then they bowed again and led the bat to the stables. All this was done in silence. On reaching its appointed place, the bat touched neither food nor drink, but immediately rolled up, hung itself head-down on a hook, and fell into a deep sleep. The little night-hob had demanded a bit too much of his mount. The grooms left it alone and crept away from the stable on tiptoes.\n\nIn this stable there were many other mounts: two elephants, one pink and one blue, a gigantic griffon with the forequarters of an eagle and the hindquarters of a lion, a winged horse, whose name was once known even outside of Fantastica but is now forgotten, several flying dogs, a few other bats, and several dragonflies and butterflies for especially small riders. In other stables there were still other mounts, which didn't fly but ran, crawled, hopped, or swam. And each had a groom of its own to feed and take care of it.\n\nOrdinarily one would have expected to hear quite a cacophony of different voices: roaring, screeching, piping, chirping, croaking, and chattering. But that day there was utter silence.\n\nThe little night-hob was still standing where the grooms had left him. Suddenly, without knowing why, he felt dejected and discouraged. He too was exhausted after the long trip. And not even the knowledge that he had arrived first could cheer him up.\n\nSuddenly he heard a chirping voice. \"Hello, hello! If it isn't my good friend Vooshvazool! So glad you've finally made it!\"\n\nThe night-hob looked around, and his moon eyes flared with amazement, for on a balustrade, leaning negligently against a flower pot, stood Gluckuk, the tiny, tipping his red top hat.\n\n\"Hoo hoo!\" went the bewildered night-hob. And again: \"Hoo hoo!\" He just couldn't think of anything better to say.\n\n\"The other two haven't arrived yet. I've been here since yesterday morning.\"\n\n\"How\u2014hoo hoo\u2014how did you do it?\"\n\n\"Simple,\" said the tiny with a rather condescending smile. \"Didn't I tell you I had a racing snail?\"\n\nThe night-hob scratched his tangled black head fur with his little pink hand.\n\n\"I must go to the Childlike Empress at once,\" he said mournfully.\n\nThe tiny gave him a pensive look.\n\n\"Hmm,\" he said. \"I put in for an appointment yesterday.\"\n\n\"Put in for an appointment?\" asked the night-hob. \"Can't we just go in and see her?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" chirped the tiny. \"We'll have a long wait. You can't imagine how many messengers have turned up.\"\n\n\"Hoo hoo,\" the night-hob sighed. \"How come?\"\n\n\"You'd better take a look for yourself,\" the tiny twittered. \"Come with me, my dear Vooshvazool. Come with me!\"\n\nThe two of them started out.\n\nThe High Street, which wound around the Ivory Tower in a narrowing spiral, was clogged with a dense crowd of the strangest creatures. Enormous beturbaned djinns, tiny kobolds, three-headed trolls, bearded dwarfs, glittering fairies, goat-legged fauns, nixies with wavy golden hair, sparkling snow sprites, and countless others were milling about, standing in groups, or sitting silently on the ground, discussing the situation or gazing glumly into the distance.\n\nVooshvazool stopped still when he saw them.\n\n\"Hoo hoo,\" he said. \"What's going on? What are they all doing here?\"\n\n\"They're all messengers,\" Gluckuk explained. \"Messengers from all over Fantastica. All with the same message as ours. I've spoken with several of them. The same menace seems to have broken out everywhere.\"\n\nThe night-hob gave vent to a long wheezing sigh.\n\n\"Do they know,\" he asked, \"what it is and where it comes from?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\"What about the Childlike Empress?\"\n\n\"The Childlike Empress,\" said the tiny in an undertone, \"is ill, very ill. Maybe that's the cause of this mysterious calamity that's threatening all Fantastica. But so far none of the many doctors who've been conferring in the Magnolia Pavilion has discovered the nature of her illness or found a cure for it.\"\n\n\"That,\" said the night-hob breathlessly, \"is\u2014hoo hoo\u2014terrible.\"\n\n\"So it is,\" said the tiny.\n\nIn view of the circumstances, Vooshvazool decided not to put in for an appointment.\n\nTwo days later Blubb, the will-o'-the-wisp, arrived. Of course, he had hopped in the wrong direction and made an enormous detour.\n\nAnd finally\u2014three days after that\u2014Pyornkrachzark, the rock chewer, appeared.\n\nHe came plodding along on foot, for in a sudden frenzy of hunger he had eaten his stone bicycle.\n\nDuring the long waiting period, the four so unalike messengers became good friends. From then on they stayed together.\n\nBut that's another story and shall be told another time.\n\necause of their special importance, deliberations concerning the welfare of all Fantastica were held in the great throne room of the palace, which was situated only a few floors below the Magnolia Pavilion.\n\nThe large circular room was filled with muffled voices. The four hundred and ninety-nine best doctors in Fantastica had assembled there and were whispering or mumbling with one another in groups of varying sizes. Each one had examined the Childlike Empress\u2014some more recently than others\u2014and each had tried to help her with his skill. But none had succeeded, none knew the nature or cause of her illness, and none could think of a cure for it. Just then the five hundredth doctor, the most famous in all Fantastica, whose knowledge was said to embrace every existing medicinal herb, every magic philtre and secret of nature, was examining the patient. He had been with her for several hours, and all his assembled colleagues were eagerly awaiting the result of his examination.\n\nOf course, this assembly was nothing like a human medical congress. To be sure, a good many of the inhabitants of Fantastica were more or less human in appearance, but at least as many resembled animals or were even farther from the human. The doctors inside the hall were just as varied as the crowd of messengers milling about outside.\n\nThere were dwarf doctors with white beards and humps, there were fairy doctoresses in shimmering silvery-blue robes and with glittering stars in their hair, there were water sprites with big round bellies and webbed hands and feet (sitz baths had been installed for them) . There were white snakes, who had coiled up on the long table at the center of the room; there were witches, vampires, and ghosts, none of whom are generally reputed to be especially benevolent or conducive to good health.\n\nIf you are to understand why these last were present, there is one thing you have to know:\n\nThe Childlike Empress\u2014as her title indicates\u2014was looked upon as the ruler over all the innumerable provinces of the Fantastican Empire, but in reality she was far more than a ruler; she was something entirely different.\n\nShe didn't rule, she had never used force or made use of her power. She never issued commands and she never judged anyone. She never interfered with anyone and never had to defend herself against any assailant; for no one would have thought of rebelling against her or of harming her in any way. In her eyes all her subjects were equal.\n\nShe was simply there in a special way. She was the center of all life in Fantastica.\n\nAnd every creature, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, merry or solemn, foolish or wise\u2014all owed their existence to her existence. Without her, nothing could have lived, any more than a human body can live if it has lost its heart.\n\nAll knew this to be so, though no one fully understood her secret. Thus she was respected by all the creatures of the Empire, and her health was of equal concern to them all. For her death would have meant the end of them all, the end of the boundless Fantastican realm.\n\nBastian's thoughts wandered.\n\nSuddenly he remembered the long corridor in the hospital where his mother had been operated on. He and his father had sat waiting for hours outside the operating room. Doctors and nurses hurried this way and that. When his father asked about his wife, the answer was always evasive. No one really seemed to know how she was doing.\n\nFinally a bald-headed man in a white smock had come out to them. He looked tired and sad. Much as he regretted it, he said, his efforts had been in vain. He had pressed their hands and mumbled something about \"heartfelt sympathy.\"\n\nAfter that, everything had changed between Bastion and his father. Not outwardly. Bastion had everything he could have wished for. He had a three-speed bicycle, an electric train, plenty of vitamin pills, fifty-three books, a golden hamster, an aquarium with tropical fish in it, a small camera, six pocketknives, and so forth and so on. But none of all this really meant anything to him.\n\nBastian remembered that his father had often played with him in the past. He had even told him stories. No longer. He couldn't talk to his father anymore. There was an invisible wall around his father, and no one could get through to him. He never found fault and he never praised. Even when Bastian was put back in school, his father hadn't said anything. He had only looked at him in his sad, absent way, and Bastian felt that as far as his father was concerned he wasn't there at all. That was how his father usually made him feel. When they sat in front of the television screen in the evening, Bastian saw that his father wasn't even looking at it, that his thoughts were far away. Or when they both sat there with books, Bastian saw that his father wasn't reading at all. He'd been looking at the same page for hours and had forgotten to turn it.\n\nBastian knew his father was sad. He himself had cried for many nights\u2014sometimes he had been so shaken by sobs that he had to vomit\u2014but little by little it had passed. And after all he was still there. Why didn't his father ever speak to him, not about his mother, not about important things, but just for the feel of talking together?\n\n\"If only we knew,\" said a tall, thin fire sprite, with a beard of red flames, \"if only we knew what her illness is. There's no fever, no swelling, no rash, no inflammation. She just seems to be fading away\u2014no one knows why.\"\n\nAs he spoke, little clouds of smoke came out of his mouth and formed figures.\n\nThis time they were question marks.\n\nA bedraggled old raven, who looked like a potato with feathers stuck onto it every which way, answered in a croaking voice (he was a head cold and sore throat specialist):\n\n\"She doesn't cough, she hasn't got a cold. Medically speaking, it's no disease at all.\" He adjusted the big spectacles on his beak and a cast a challenging look around.\n\n\"One thing seems obvious,\" buzzed a scarab (a beetle, sometimes known as a pill roller): \"There is some mysterious connection between her illness and the terrible happenings these messengers from all Fantastica have been reporting.\"\n\n\"Oh yes!\" scoffed an ink goblin. \"You see mysterious connections everywhere.\"\n\n\"My dear colleague!\" pleaded a hollow-cheeked ghost in a long white gown.\n\n\"Let's not get personal. Such remarks are quite irrelevant. And please\u2014lower your voices.\"\n\nConversations of this kind were going on in every part of the throne room. It may seem strange that creatures of so many different kinds were able to communicate with one another. But nearly all the inhabitants of Fantastica, even the animals, knew at least two languages: their own, which they spoke only with members of their own species and which no outsider understood, and the universal language known as High Fantastican. All Fantasticans used it, though some in a rather peculiar way.\n\nSuddenly all fell silent, for the great double door had opened. In stepped Cairon, the far-famed master of the healer's art.\n\nHe was what in older times had been called a centaur. He had the body of a man from the waist up, and that of a horse from the waist down. And Cairon was furthermore a black centaur. He hailed from a remote region far to the south, and his human half was the color of ebony. Only his curly hair and beard were white, while the horselike half of him was striped like a zebra. He was wearing a strange hat plaited of reeds. A large golden amulet hung from a chain around his neck, and on this amulet one could make out two snakes, one light and one dark, which were biting each other's tail and so forming an oval.\n\nEveryone in Fantastica knew what the medallion meant. It was the badge of one acting on orders from the Childlike Empress, acting in her name as though she herself were present.\n\nIt was said to give the bearer mysterious powers, though no one knew exactly what these powers were. Everyone knew its name: AURYN.\n\nBut many, who feared to pronounce the name, called it the \"Gem\" or the \"Glory\".\n\nIn other words, the book bore the mark of the Childlike Empress!\n\nA whispering passed through the throne room, and some of the doctors were heard to cry out. The Gem had not been entrusted to anyone for a long, long time.\n\nCairon stamped his hooves two or three times. When the disorder subsided, he said in a deep voice: \"Friends, don't be too upset. I shall only be wearing AURYN for a short time. I am merely a go-between. Soon I shall pass the Gem on to one worthier.\"\n\nA breathless silence filled the room.\n\n\"I won't try to misrepresent our defeat with high-sounding words. The Childlike Empress's illness has baffled us all. The one thing we know is that the destruction of Fantastica began at the same time as this illness. We can't even be sure that medical science can save her. But it is possible\u2014and I hope none of you will be offended at what I am going to say\u2014it is possible that we, we who are gathered here, do not possess all knowledge, all wisdom. Indeed it is my last and only hope that somewhere in this unbounded realm there is a being wiser than we are, who can give us help and advice. Of course, this is no more than a possibility. But one thing is certain: The search for this savior calls for a pathfinder, someone who is capable of finding paths in the pathless wilderness and who will shrink from no danger or hardship. In other words: a hero. And the Childlike Empress has given me the name of this hero, to whom she entrusts her salvation and ours. His name is Atreyu, and he lives in the Grassy Ocean beyond the Silver Mountains. I shall transmit AURYN to him and send him on the Great Quest. Now you know all there is to know.\"\n\nWith that, the old centaur thumped out of the room.\n\nThose who remained behind exchanged looks of bewilderment.\n\n\"What was this hero's name?\" one of them asked.\n\n\"Atreyu or something of the kind,\" said another.\n\n\"Never heard of him,\" said the third. And all four hundred and ninety-nine doctors shook their heads in dismay.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck ten. Bastian was amazed at how quickly the time had passed. In class, every hour seemed to drag on for an eternity. Down below, they would be having history with Mr. Drone, a gangling, ordinarily ill-tempered man, who delighted in holding Bastian up to ridicule because he couldn't remember the dates when certain battles had been fought or when someone or other had reigned.\n\nThe Grassy Ocean behind the Silver Mountains was many days' journey from the Ivory Tower. It was actually a prairie, as long and wide and flat as an ocean. Its whole expanse was covered with tall, juicy grass, and when the wind blew, great waves passed over it with a sound like troubled water.\n\nThe people who lived there were known as \"Grass People\" or \"Greenskins\". They had blue-black hair, which the men as well as the women wore long and often in pigtails, and their skin was olive green. They led a hard, frugal life, and their children, girls as well as boys, were brought up to be brave, proud, and generous. They learned to bear heat, cold, and great hardship and were tested for courage at an early age. This was necessary because the Greenskins were a nation of hunters. They obtained everything they needed either from the hard, fibrous prairie grass or from the purple buffaloes, great herds of which roamed the Grassy Ocean.\n\nThese purple buffaloes were about twice the size of common bulls or cows; they had long, purplish-red hair with a silky sheen and enormous horns with tips as hard and sharp as daggers. They were peaceful as a rule, but when they scented danger or thought they were being attacked, they could be as terrible as a natural cataclysm. Only a Greenskin would have dared to hunt these beasts, and moreover they used no other weapons than bows and arrows. The Greenskins were believers in chivalrous combat, and often it was not the hunted but the hunter who lost his life. The Greenskins loved and honored the purple buffaloes and held that only those willing to be killed by them had the right to kill them.\n\nNews of the Childlike Empress's illness and the danger threatening all Fantastica had not yet reached the Grassy Ocean. It was a long, long time since any traveler had visited the tent colonies of the Greenskins. The grass was juicier than ever, the days were bright, and the nights full of stars. All seemed to be well.\n\nBut one day a white-haired black centaur appeared. His hide was dripping with sweat, he seemed totally exhausted, and his bearded face was haggard. On his head he wore a strange hat plaited of reeds, and around his neck a chain with a large golden amulet hanging from it. It was Cairon.\n\nHe stood in the open space at the center of the successive rings of tents. It was there that the elders held their councils and that the people danced and sang old songs on feast days. He waited for the Greenskins to assemble, but it was only very old men and women and small children wide-eyed with curiosity who crowded around him. He stamped his hooves impatiently.\n\n\"Where are the hunters and huntresses?\" he panted, removing his hat and wiping his forehead.\n\nA white-haired woman with a baby in her arms replied: \"They are still hunting.\n\nThey won't be back for three or four days.\"\n\n\"Is Atreyu with them?\" the centaur asked.\n\n\"Yes, stranger, but how can it be that you know him?\"\n\n\"I don't know him. Go and get him.\"\n\n\"Stranger,\" said an old man on crutches, \"he will come unwillingly, because this is his hunt. It starts at sunset. Do you know what that means?\"\n\nCairon shook his mane and stamped his hooves.\n\n\"I don't know, and it doesn't matter. He has something more important to do now. You know this sign I am wearing. Go and get him.\"\n\n\"We see the Gem,\" said a little girl. \"And we know you have come from the Childlike Empress. But who are you?\"\n\n\"My name is Cairon,\" the centaur growled. \"Cairon the physician, if that means anything to you.\"\n\nA bent old woman pushed forward and cried out: \"Yes, it's true. I recognize him. I saw him once when I was young. He is the greatest and most famous doctor in all Fantastica.\"\n\nThe centaur nodded. \"Thank you, my good woman,\" he said. \"And now perhaps one of you will at last be kind enough to bring this Atreyu here. It's urgent. The life of the Childlike Empress is at stake.\"\n\n\"I'll go,\" cried a little girl of five or six.\n\nShe ran away and a few seconds later she could be seen between the tents galloping away on a saddleless horse.\n\n\"At last!\" Cairon grumbled. Then he fell into a dead faint. When he revived, he didn't know where he was, for all was dark around him. It came to him only little by little that he was in a large tent, lying on a bed of soft furs. It seemed to be night, for through a cleft in the door curtain he saw flickering firelight.\n\n\"Holy horseshoes!\" he muttered, and tried to sit up. \"How long have I been lying here?\"\n\nA head looked in through the door opening and pulled back again. Someone said:\n\n\"Yes, he seems to be awake.\"\n\nThen the curtain was drawn aside and a boy of about ten stepped in. His long trousers and shoes were of soft buffalo leather. His body was bare from the waist up, but a long purple-red cloak, evidently woven from buffalo hair, hung from his shoulders. His long blue-black hair was gathered together and held back by leather thongs. A few simple white designs were painted on the olive-green skin of his cheeks and forehead. His dark eyes flashed angrily at the intruder; otherwise his features betrayed no emotion of any kind.\n\n\"What do you want of me, stranger?\" he asked. \"Why have you come to my tent? And why have you robbed me of my hunt? If I had killed the big buffalo today\u2014and my arrow was already fitted to my bowstring\u2014I'd have been a hunter tomorrow. Now I'll have to wait a whole year. Why?\"\n\nThe old centaur stared at him in consternation. \"Am I to take it,\" he asked, \"that you are Atreyu?\"\n\n\"That's right, stranger.\"\n\n\"Isn't there someone else of the same name? A grown man, an experienced hunter?\"\n\n\"No. I and no one else am Atreyu.\"\n\nSinking back on his bed of furs, old Cairon gasped: \"A child! A little boy! Really, the decisions of the Childlike Empress are hard to fathom.\"\n\nAtreyu waited in impassive silence.\n\n\"Forgive me, Atreyu,\" said Cairon, controlling his agitation with the greatest difficulty. \"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but the surprise has been just too great. Frankly, I'm horrified. I don't know what to think. I can't help wondering: Did the Childlike Empress really know what she was doing when she chose a youngster like you? It's sheer madness! And if she did it intentionally, then... then...\"\n\nWith a violent shake of his head, he blurted out: \"No! No! If I had known whom she was sending me to, I'd have refused to entrust you with the mission. I'd have refused!\"\n\n\"What mission?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"It's monstrous!\" cried Cairon indignantly. \"It's doubtful whether even the greatest, most experienced of heroes could carry out this mission... and you!... She's sending you into the unfathomable to look for the unknown... No one can help you, no one can advise you, no one can foresee what will befall you. And yet you must decide at once, immediately, whether or not you accept the mission. There's not a moment to be lost. For ten days and nights I have galloped almost without rest to reach you. But now\u2014I almost wish I hadn't got here. I'm very old, I'm at the end of my strength. Give me a drink of water, please.\"\n\nAtreyu brought a pitcher of fresh spring water. The centaur drank deeply, then he wiped his beard and said somewhat more calmly: \"Thank you. That was good. I feel better already. Listen to me, Atreyu. You don't have to accept this mission. The Childlike Empress leaves it entirely up to you. She never gives orders. I'll tell her how it is and she'll find someone else. She can't have known you were a little boy. She must have got you mixed up with someone else. That's the only possible explanation.\"\n\n\"What is this mission?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"To find a cure for the Childlike Empress,\" the centaur answered, \"and save Fantastica.\"\n\n\"Is she sick?\" Atreyu asked in amazement.\n\nCairon told him how it was with the Childlike Empress and what the messengers had reported from all parts of Fantastica. Atreyu asked many questions and the centaur answered them to the best of his ability. They talked far into the night. And the more Atreyu learned of the menace facing Fantastica, the more his face, which at first had been so impassive, expressed unveiled horror.\n\n\"To think,\" he murmured finally with pale lips, \"that I knew nothing about it!\"\n\nCairon cast a grave, anxious look at the boy from under his bushy white eyebrows.\n\n\"Now you know the lie of the land,\" he said. \"And now perhaps you understand why I was so upset when I first laid eyes on you. Still, it was you the Childlike Empress named. 'Go and find Atreyu,' she said to me. 'I put all my trust in him,' she said. 'Ask him if he's willing to attempt the Great Quest for me and for Fantastica.' I don't know why she chose you. Maybe only a little boy like you can do whatever has to be done. I don't know, and I can't advise you.\"\n\nAtreyu sat there with bowed head, and made no reply. He realized that this was a far greater task than his hunt. It was doubtful whether the greatest hunter and pathfinder could succeed; how then could he hope...?\n\n\"Well?\" the centaur asked. \"Will you?\"\n\nAtreyu raised his head and looked at him.\n\n\"I will,\" he said firmly.\n\nCairon nodded gravely. Then he took the chain with the golden amulet from his neck and put it around Atreyu's.\n\n\"AURYN gives you great power,\" he said solemnly, \"but you must not make use of it. For the Childlike Empress herself never makes use of her power. AURYN will protect you and guide you, but whatever comes your way you must never interfere, because from this moment on your own opinion ceases to count. For that same reason you must go unarmed. You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise, just as it is in the eyes of the Childlike Empress. You may only search and inquire, never judge. Always remember that, Atreyu!\"\n\n\"AURYN!\" Atreyu repeated with awe. \"I will be worthy of the Glory. When should I start?\"\n\n\"Immediately,\" said Cairon. \"No one knows how long your Great Quest will be. Every hour may count, even now. Say goodbye to your parents and your brothers and sisters.\"\n\n\"I have none,\" said Atreyu. \"My parents were both killed by a buffalo, soon after I was born.\"\n\n\"Who brought you up?\"\n\n\"All the men and women together. That's why they called me Atreyu, which in our language means 'Son of All'!\"\n\nNo one knew better than Bastion what that meant. Even though his father was still alive and Atreyu had neither father nor mother. To make up for it, Atreyu had been brought up by all the men and women together and was the \"son of all\", while Bastian had no one\u2014and was really \"nobody's son\". All the same, Bastian was glad to have this much in common with Atreyu, because otherwise he resembled him hardly at all, neither physically nor in courage and determination. Yet Bastian, too, was engaged in a Great Quest and didn't know where it would lead him or how it would end.\n\n\"In that case,\" said the old centaur, \"you'd better go without saying goodbye. I'll stay here and explain.\"\n\nAtreyu's face became leaner and harder than ever.\n\n\"Where should I begin?\" he asked.\n\n\"Everywhere and nowhere,\" said Cairon. \"From now on you will be on your own, with no one to advise you. And that's how it will be until the end of the Great Quest\u2014however it may end.\"\n\nAtreyu nodded.\n\n\"Farewell, Cairon.\"\n\n\"Farewell, Atreyu. And\u2014much luck!\"\n\nThe boy turned away and was leaving the tent when the centaur called him back.\n\nAs they stood face to face, the old centaur put both hands on Atreyu's shoulders, looked him in the eye with a respectful smile, and said slowly: \"I think I'm beginning to see why the Childlike Empress chose you, Atreyu.\"\n\nThe boy lowered his head just a while. Then he went out quickly.\n\nHis horse, Artax, was standing outside the tent. He was small and spotted like a wild horse. His legs were short and stocky, but he was the fastest, most tireless runner far and wide. He was still saddled as Atreyu had ridden him back from the hunt.\n\n\"Artax,\" Atreyu whispered, patting his neck. \"We're going away, far, far away. No one knows if we shall ever come back!\"\n\nThe horse nodded his head and gave a brief snort.\n\n\"Yes, master,\" he said. \"But what about your hunt?\"\n\n\"We're going on a much greater hunt,\" said Atreyu, swinging himself into the saddle.\n\n\"Wait, master,\" said the horse. \"You've forgotten your weapons. Are you going without your bow and arrow?\"\n\n\"Yes, Artax,\" said Atreyu. \"I have to go unarmed because I am bearing the Gem.\"\n\n\"Humph!\" snorted the horse. \"And where are we going?\"\n\n\"Wherever you like, Artax,\" said Atreyu. \"From this moment on we shall be on the Great Quest.\"\n\nWith that they galloped away and were swallowed up by the darkness.\n\nAt the same time, in a different part of Fantastica, something happened which went completely unnoticed. Neither Atreyu nor Artax had the slightest inkling of it.\n\nOn a remote night-black heath the darkness condensed into a great shadowy form.\n\nIt became so dense that even in that moonless, starless night it came to look like a big black body. Its outlines were still unclear, but it stood on four legs and green fire glowed in the eyes of its huge shaggy head. It lifted up its great snout and stood for a long while, sniffing the air. Then suddenly it seemed to find the scent it was looking for, and a deep, triumphant growl issued from its throat.\n\nAnd off it ran through the starless night, in long, soundless leaps.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck eleven. From the downstairs corridors arose the shouts of children running out to the playground.\n\nBastian was still squatting cross-legged on the mats. His legs had fallen asleep. He wasn't an Indian after all. He stood up, took his sandwich and an apple out of his satchel, and paced the floor. He had pins and needles in his feet, which took some time to wake up.\n\nThen he climbed onto the horse and straddled it. He imagined he was Atreyu galloping through the night on Artax's back. He leaned forward and rested his head on his horse's neck.\n\n\"Gee!\" he cried. \"Run, Artax! Gee! Gee!\"\n\nThen he became frightened. It had been foolish of him to shout so loud. What if someone had heard him? He waited awhile and listened. But all he heard was the intermingled shouts from the yard.\n\nFeeling rather foolish, he climbed down off the horse. Really, he was behaving like a small child!\n\nHe unwrapped his sandwich and shined the apple on his trousers. But just as he was biting into it, he stopped himself.\n\n\"No,\" he said to himself aloud. \"I must carefully apportion my provisions. Who knows how long they will have to last me.\"\n\nWith a heavy heart he rewrapped his sandwich and returned it to his satchel along with the apple. Then with a sigh he settled down on the mats and reached for the book.\n\nairon, the old black centaur, sank back on his bed of furs as Artax's hoofbeats were dying away. After so much exertion he was at the end of his strength. The women who found him next day in Atreyu's tent feared for his life. And when the hunters came home a few days later, he was hardly any better, but he managed nevertheless to tell them why Atreyu had ridden away and would not be back soon. As they were all fond of the boy, their concern for him made them grave. Still, they were proud that the Childlike Empress had chosen him for the Great Quest\u2014though none claimed to understand her choice.\n\nOld Cairon never went back to the Ivory Tower. But he didn't die and he didn't stay with the Greenskins in the Grassy Ocean. His destiny was to lead him over very different and unexpected pathways. But that is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nThat same night Atreyu rode to the foot of the Silver Mountains. It was almost morning when he finally stopped to rest. Artax grazed a while and drank water from a small mountain stream. Atreyu wrapped himself in his red cloak and slept a few hours.\n\nBut when the sun rose, they were already on their way.\n\nOn the first day they crossed the Silver Mountains, where every road and trail was known to them, and they made quick progress. When he felt hungry, the boy ate a chunk of dried buffalo meat and two little grass-seed cakes that he had been carrying in his saddlebag\u2014originally they had been intended for his hunt.\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Bastian. \"A man has to eat now and then.\"\n\nHe took his sandwich out of his satchel, unwrapped it, broke it carefully in two pieces, wrapped one of them up again and put it away. Then he ate the other.\n\nRecess was over. Bastian wondered what his class would be doing next. Oh yes, geography, with Mrs. Flint. You had to reel off rivers and their tributaries, cities, population figures, natural resources, and industries. Bastian shrugged his shoulders and went on reading.\n\nBy sunset the Silver Mountains lay behind them, and again they stopped to rest.\n\nThat night Atreyu dreamed of purple buffaloes. He saw them in the distance, roaming over the Grassy Ocean, and he tried to get near them on his horse. In vain. He galloped, he spurred his horse, but they were always the same distance away.\n\nThe second day they passed through the Singing Tree Country. Each tree had a different shape, different leaves, different bark, but all of them in growing\u2014and this was what gave the country its name\u2014made soft music that sounded from far and near and joined in a mighty harmony that hadn't its like for beauty in all Fantastica. Riding through this country wasn't entirely devoid of danger, for many a traveler had stopped still as though spellbound and forgotten everything else. Atreyu felt the power of these marvelous sounds, but didn't let himself be tempted to stop.\n\nThe following night he dreamed again of purple buffaloes. This time he was on foot, and a great herd of them was passing. But they were beyond the range of his bow, and when he tried to come closer, his feet clung to the ground and he couldn't move them.\n\nHis frantic efforts to tear them loose woke him up. He started out at once, though the sun had not yet risen.\n\nThe third day, he saw the Glass Tower of Eribo, where the inhabitants of the region caught and stored starlight. Out of the starlight they made wonderfully decorative objects, the purpose of which, however, was known to no one in all Fantastica but their makers.\n\nHe met some of these folk; little creatures they were, who seemed to have been blown from glass. They were extremely friendly and provided him with food and drink, but when he asked them who might know something about the Childlike Empress's illness, they sank into a gloomy, perplexed silence.\n\nThe next night Atreyu dreamed again that the herd of purple buffaloes was passing. One of the beasts, a particularly large, imposing bull, broke away from his fellows and slowly, with no sign of either fear or anger, approached Atreyu. Like all true hunters, Atreyu knew every creature's vulnerable spot, where an arrow wound would be fatal. The purple buffalo put himself in such a position as to offer a perfect target. Atreyu fitted an arrow to his bow and pulled with all his might. But he couldn't shoot. His fingers seemed to have grown into the bowstring, and he couldn't release it.\n\nEach of the following nights he dreamed something of the sort. He got closer and closer to the same purple buffalo\u2014he recognized him by a white spot on his forehead\u2014but for some reason he was never able to shoot the deadly arrow.\n\nDuring the days he rode farther and farther, without knowing where he was going or finding anyone to advise him. The golden amulet he wore was respected by all who met him, but none had an answer to his question.\n\nOne day he saw from afar the flaming streets of Salamander, the city whose inhabitants' bodies are of fire, but he preferred to keep away from it. He crossed the broad plateau of the Sassafranians, who are born old and die when they become babies. He came to the jungle temple of Muwamath, where a great moonstone pillar hovers in midair, and he spoke to the monks who lived there. And again no one could tell him anything.\n\nHe had been traveling aimlessly for almost a week, when on the seventh day and the following night two very different encounters changed his situation and state of mind.\n\nCairon's story of the terrible happenings in all parts of Fantastica had made an impression on him, but thus far the disaster was something he had only heard about. On the seventh day he was to see it with his own eyes.\n\nToward noon, he was riding through a dense dark forest of enormous gnarled trees. This was the same Howling Forest where the four messengers had met some time before. That region, as Atreyu knew, was the home of bark trolls. These, as he had been told, were giants and giantesses, who themselves looked like gnarled tree trunks. As long as they stood motionless, as they usually did, you could easily mistake them for trees and ride on unsuspecting. Only when they moved could you see that they had branchlike arms and crooked, rootlike legs. Though exceedingly powerful, they were not dangerous\u2014at most they liked to play tricks on travelers who had lost their way.\n\nAtreyu had just discovered a woodland meadow with a brook twining through it, and had dismounted to let Artax drink and graze. Suddenly he heard a loud crackling and thudding in the woods behind him.\n\nThree bark trolls emerged from the woods and came toward him. A cold shiver ran down his spine at the sight of them. The first, having no legs or haunches, was obliged to walk on his hands. The second had a hole in his chest, so big you could see through it. The third hopped on his right foot, because the whole left half of him was missing, as if he had been cut through the middle.\n\nWhen they saw the amulet hanging from Atreyu's neck, they nodded to one another and came slowly closer.\n\n\"Don't be afraid,\" said the one who was walking on his hands, and his voice sounded like the groaning of a tree. \"We're not exactly pretty to look at, but in this part of Howling Forest there's no one else left who might warn you. That's why we've come.\"\n\n\"Warn?\" Atreyu asked. \"Against what?\"\n\n\"We've heard about you,\" moaned the one with the hole in his chest. \"And we've been told about your Quest. Don't go any further in this direction, or you'll be lost.\"\n\n\"The same thing will happen to you as happened to us,\" sighed the halved one.\n\n\"Would you like that?\"\n\n\"What has happened to you?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"The Nothing is spreading,\" groaned the first. \"It's growing and growing, there's more of it every day, if it's possible to speak of more nothing. All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn't want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us.\"\n\n\"Is it very painful?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"No,\" said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. \"You don't feel a thing. There's just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won't be anything left of us.\"\n\n\"In what part of the woods did it begin?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"Would you like to see it?\" The third troll, who was only half a troll, turned to his fellow sufferers with a questioning look. When they nodded, he said: \"We'll take you to a place where there's a good view of it. But you must promise not to go any closer. If you do, it will pull you in.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Atreyu. \"I promise.\"\n\nThe three turned about and made for the edge of the forest. Leading Artax by the bridle, Atreyu followed them. For a while they went this way and that way between enormous trees, then finally they stopped at the foot of a giant tree so big that five grown men holding hands could scarcely have girdled it.\n\n\"Climb as high as you can,\" said the legless troll, \"and look in the direction of the sunrise. Then you'll see\u2014or rather not see it.\"\n\nAtreyu pulled himself up by the knots and bumps on the tree. He reached the lower branches, hoisted himself to the next, climbed and climbed until he lost sight of the ground below him. Higher and higher he went; the trunk grew thinner and the more closely spaced side branches made it easier to climb. When at last he reached the crown, he turned toward the sunrise. And then he saw it:\n\nThe tops of the trees nearest him were still green, but the leaves of those farther away seemed to have lost all color; they were gray. A little farther on, the foliage seemed to become strangely transparent, misty, or, better still, unreal. And farther still there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a bare stretch, not darkness, not some lighter color; no, it was something the eyes could not bear, something that made you feel you had gone blind.\n\nFor no eye can bear the sight of utter nothingness. Atreyu held his hand before his face and nearly fell off his branch. He clung tight for a moment, then climbed down as fast as he could. He had seen enough. At last he really understood the horror that was spreading through Fantastica.\n\nWhen he reached the foot of the great tree, the three bark trolls had vanished.\n\nAtreyu swung himself into the saddle and galloped as fast as Artax would carry him in the direction that would take him away from this slowly but irresistibly spreading Nothing. By nightfall he had left Howling Forest far behind him; only then did he stop to rest.\n\nThat night a second encounter, which was to give his Great Quest a new direction, awaited him.\n\nHe dreamed\u2014much more distinctly than before\u2014of the purple buffalo he had wanted to kill. This time Atreyu was without his bow and arrow. He felt very, very small and the buffalo's face filled the whole sky. And the face spoke to him. He couldn't understand every word, but this is the gist of what it said:\n\n\"If you had killed me, you would be a hunter now. But because you let me live, I can help you, Atreyu. Listen to me! There is, in Fantastica, a being older than all other beings. In the north, far, far from here, lie the Swamps of Sadness. In the middle of those swamps there is a mountain, Tortoise Shell Mountain it's called. There lives Morla the Aged One. Go and see Morla the Aged One.\"\n\nThen Atreyu woke up.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck twelve. Soon Bastian's classmates would be going down to the gym for their last class. Today they'd probably be playing with the big, heavy medicine ball which Bastian handled so awkwardly that neither of the two teams ever wanted him. And sometimes they played with a small hard rubber ball that hurt terribly when it hit you. Bastian was an easy mark and was always getting hit full force. Or perhaps they'd be climbing rope\u2014an exercise that Bastian especially detested. Most of the others would be all the way to the top while he, with his face as red as a beet, would be dangling like a sack of flour at the very bottom of the rope, unable to climb as much as a foot. They'd all be laughing their heads off. And Mr. Menge, the gym teacher, had a special stock of gibes just for Bastian.\n\nBastian would have given a good deal to be like Atreyu. He'd have shown them.\n\nHe heaved a deep sigh.\n\nAtreyu rode northward, ever northward. He allowed himself and his little horse only the most necessary stops for sleep and food. He rode by day and he rode by night, in the scorching sun and the pelting rain. He looked neither to the left nor the right and asked no more questions.\n\nThe farther northward he went, the darker it grew. An unchanging, leaden-gray twilight filled the days. At night the northern lights played across the sky.\n\nOne morning, when time seemed to be standing still in the murky light, he looked out from a hilltop and finally glimpsed the Swamps of Sadness. Clouds of mist drifted over them. Here and there he distinguished little clumps of trees. Their trunks divided at the bottom into four, five, or more crooked stilts, which made the trees look like great many-legged crabs standing in the black water. From the brown foliage hung aerial roots resembling motionless tentacles. It was next to impossible to make out where there was solid ground between the pools of water and where there was only a covering of water plants.\n\nArtax whinnied with horror.\n\n\"Are we going in there, master?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu. \"We must find Tortoise Shell Mountain. It's at the center of those swamps.\"\n\nHe urged Artax on and Artax obeyed. Step by step, he tested the firmness of the ground, but that made progress very slow. At length Atreyu dismounted and led Artax by the bridle. Several times the horse sank in, but managed to pull himself loose. But the farther they went into the Swamps of Sadness, the more sluggish became his movements.\n\nHe let his head droop and barely dragged himself forward.\n\n\"Artax,\" said Atreyu. \"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"I don't know, master. I think we should turn back. There's no sense in all this. We're chasing after something you only dreamed about. We won't find anything. Maybe it's too late even now. Maybe the Childlike Empress is already dead, and everything we're doing is useless. Let us turn back, master.\"\n\nAtreyu was astonished. \"Artax,\" he said. \"You've never spoken like this. What's the matter? Are you sick?\"\n\n\"Maybe I am,\" said Artax. \"With every step we take, the sadness grows in my heart. I've lost hope, master. And I feel so heavy, so heavy. I can't go on!\"\n\n\"But we must go on!\" cried Atreyu. \"Come along, Artax!\"\n\nHe tugged at the bridle, but Artax stood still. He had sunk in up to his belly. And he made no further effort to extricate himself.\n\n\"Artax!\" cried Atreyu. \"You mustn't let yourself go. Come. Pull yourself out or you'll sink.\"\n\n\"Leave me, master,\" said the little horse. \"I can't make it. Go on alone. Don't bother about me. I can't stand the sadness anymore. I want to die!\"\n\nDesperately Atreyu pulled at the bridle, but the horse sank deeper and deeper.\n\nWhen only his head emerged from the black water, Atreyu took it in his arms.\n\n\"I'll hold you, Artax,\" he whispered. \"I won't let you go under.\"\n\nThe little horse uttered one last soft neigh.\n\n\"You can't help me, master. It's all over for me. Neither of us knew what we were getting into. Now we know why they are called the Swamps of Sadness. It's the sadness that has made me so heavy. That's why I'm sinking. There's no help.\"\n\n\"But I'm here, too,\" said Atreyu, \"and I don't feel anything.\"\n\n\"You're wearing the Gem, master,\" said Artax. \"It protects you.\"\n\n\"Then I'll hang it around your neck!\" Atreyu cried. \"Maybe it will protect you too.\"\n\nHe started taking the chain off his neck.\n\n\"No,\" the little horse whinnied. \"You mustn't do that, master. The Glory was entrusted to you, you weren't given permission to pass it on as you see fit. You must carry on the Quest without me.\"\n\nAtreyu pressed his face into the horse's cheek. \"Artax,\" he whispered. \"Oh, my Artax!\"\n\n\"Will you grant my last wish?\" the little horse asked.\n\nAtreyu nodded in silence.\n\n\"Then I beg you to go away. I don't want you to see my end. Will you do me that favor?\"\n\nSlowly Atreyu arose. Half the horse's head was already in the black water.\n\n\"Farewell, Atreyu, my master!\" he said. \"And thank you.\"\n\nAtreyu pressed his lips together. He couldn't speak. Once again he nodded to Artax, then he turned away.\n\nBastion was sobbing. He couldn't help it. His eyes filled with tears and he couldn't go on reading. He had to take out his handkerchief and blow his nose before he could go on.\n\nAtreyu waded and waded. For how long he didn't know. The mist grew thicker and he felt as if he were blind and deaf. It seemed to him that he had been wandering around in circles for hours. He stopped worrying about where to set his foot down, and yet he never sank in above his knees. By some mysterious means, the Childlike Empress's amulet led him the right way.\n\nThen suddenly he saw a high, steep mountain ahead of him. Pulling himself up from crag to crag, he climbed to the rounded top. At first he didn't notice what this mountain was made of. But from the top he overlooked the whole mountain, and then he saw that it consisted of great slabs of tortoise shell, with moss growing in the crevices between them.\n\nHe had found Tortoise Shell Mountain.\n\nBut the discovery gave him no pleasure. Now that his faithful little horse was gone, it left him almost indifferent. Still, he would have to find out who this Morla the Aged One was, and where she actually lived.\n\nWhile he was mulling it over, he felt a slight tremor shaking the mountain. Then he heard a hideous wheezing and lip-smacking, and a voice that seemed to issue from the innermost bowels of the earth: \"Sakes alive, old woman, somebody's crawling around on us.\"\n\nIn hurrying to the end of the ridge, where the sounds had come from, Atreyu had slipped on a bed of moss. Since there was nothing for him to hold on to, he slid faster and faster and finally fell off the mountain. Luckily he landed on a tree, which caught him in its branches.\n\nLooking back at the mountain, he saw an enormous cave. Water was splashing and gushing inside, and something was moving. Slowly the something came out. It looked like a boulder as big as a house. When it came into full sight, Atreyu saw that it was a head attached to a long wrinkled neck, the head of a turtle. Its eyes were black and as big as ponds. The mouth was dripping with muck and water weeds. This whole Tortoise Shell Mountain\u2014it suddenly dawned on Atreyu\u2014was one enormous beast, a giant swamp turtle; Morla the Aged One.\n\nThe wheezing, gurgling voice spoke again: \"What are you doing here, son?\"\n\nAtreyu reached for the amulet on his chest and held it in such a way that the great eyes couldn't help seeing it.\n\n\"Do you recognize this, Morla?\"\n\nShe took a while to answer: \"Sakes alive! AURYN. We haven't seen that in a long time, have we, old woman? The emblem of the Childlike Empress\u2014not in a long time.\"\n\n\"The Childlike Empress is sick,\" said Atreyu. \"Did you know that?\"\n\n\"It's all the same to us. Isn't it, old woman?\" Morla replied. She seemed to be talking to herself, perhaps because she had had no one else to talk to for heaven knows how long.\n\n\"If we don't save her, she'll die,\" Atreyu cried out. \"The Nothing is spreading everywhere. I've seen it myself.\"\n\nMorla stared at him out of her great empty eyes.\n\n\"We don't mind, do we, old woman?\"\n\n\"But then we shall all die!\" Atreyu screamed. \"Every last one of us!\"\n\n\"Sakes alive!\" said Morla. \"But what do we care? Nothing matters to us anymore. It's all the same to us.\"\n\n\"But you'll be destroyed too, Morla!\" cried Atreyu angrily. \"Or do you expect, because you're so old, to outlive Fantastica?\"\n\n\"Sakes alive!\" Morla gurgled. \"We're old, son, much too old. Lived long enough. Seen too much. When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away, whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything's empty. Nothing is real. Nothing matters.\"\n\nAtreyu didn't know what to answer. The Aged One's dark, empty, pond-sized eyes paralyzed his thoughts. After a while, he heard her speak again:\n\n\"You're young, son. If you were as old as we are, you'd know there's nothing but sadness. Why shouldn't we die, you and I, the Childlike Empress, the whole lot of us? Anyway, it's all flim-flam, meaningless games. Nothing matters. Leave us in peace, son.\n\nGo away.\"\n\nAtreyu tensed his will to fight off the paralysis that flowed from her eyes.\n\n\"If you know so much,\" he said, \"you must know what the Childlike Empress's illness is and whether there's a cure for it.\"\n\n\"We do, we do! Don't we, old woman?\" Morla wheezed. \"But it's all the same to us whether she's saved or not. So why should we tell you?\"\n\n\"If it's really all the same to you,\" Atreyu argued, \"you might just as well tell me.\"\n\n\"We could, we could! Couldn't we, old woman?\" Morla grunted. \"But we don't feel like it.\"\n\n\"Then it's not all the same to you. Then you yourself don't believe what you're saying.\"\n\nAfter a long silence he heard a deep gurgling and belching. That must have been some kind of laughter, if Morla the Aged One was still capable of laughing. In any case, she said: \"You're a sly one, son. Really sly. We haven't had so much fun in a long time. Have we, old woman? Sakes alive, it's true. We might just as well tell you. Makes no difference. Should we tell him, old woman?\"\n\nA long silence followed. Atreyu waited anxiously for Morla's answer, taking care not to interrupt the slow, cheerless flow of her thoughts. At last she spoke:\n\n\"Your life is short, son. Ours is long. Much too long. But we both live in time.\n\nYou a short time. We a long time. The Childlike Empress has always been there. But she's not old. She has always been young. She still is. Her life isn't measured by time, but by names. She needs a new name. She keeps needing new names. Do you know her name, son?\"\n\n\"No,\" Atreyu admitted. \"I never heard it.\"\n\n\"You couldn't have,\" said Morla. \"Not even we can remember it. Yet she has had many names. But they're all forgotten. Over and done with. But without a name she can't live. All the Childlike Empress needs is a new name, then she'll get well. But it makes no difference whether she gets well or not.\"\n\nShe closed her pond-sized eyes and began slowly to pull in her head.\n\n\"Wait!\" cried Atreyu. \"Where can she get a name? Who can give her one? Where can I find the name?\"\n\n\"None of us,\" Morla gurgled. \"No inhabitant of Fantastica can give her a new name. So it's hopeless. Sakes alive! It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.\"\n\n\"Who then?\" cried Atreyu in despair. \"Who can give her the name that will save her and save us all?\"\n\n\"Don't make so much noise!\" said Morla. \"Leave us in peace and go away. Even we don't know who can give her a name.\"\n\n\"If you don't know,\" Atreyu screamed even louder, \"who does?\"\n\nShe opened her eyes a last time.\n\n\"If you weren't wearing the Gem,\" she wheezed, \"we'd eat you up, just to have peace and quiet. Sakes alive!\"\n\n\"Who?\" Atreyu insisted. \"Tell me who knows, and I'll leave you in peace forever.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" she replied. \"But maybe Uyulala in the Southern Oracle knows. She may know. It's all the same to us.\"\n\n\"How can I get there?\"\n\n\"You can't get there at all, son. Not in ten thousand days' journey. Your life is too short. You'd die first. It's too far. In the south. Much too far. So it's all hopeless. We told you so in the first place, didn't we, old woman? Sakes alive, son. Give it up. And most important, leave us in peace.\"\n\nWith that she closed her empty-gazing eyes and pulled her head back into the cave for good. Atreyu knew he would learn no more from her.\n\nAt that same time the shadowy being which had condensed out of the darkness of the heath picked up Atreyu's trail and headed for the Swamps of Sadness. Nothing and no one in all Fantastica would deflect it from that trail.\n\nBastian had propped his head on his hand and was looking thoughtfully into space.\n\n\"Strange,\" he said aloud, \"that no one in all Fantastica can give the Childlike Empress a new name.\" If it had been just a matter of giving her a name, Bastian could easily have helped her. He was tops at that. But unfortunately he was not in Fantastica, where his talents were needed and would even have won him friends and admirers. On the other hand, he was glad not to be there. Not for anything in the world would he have ventured into such a place as the Swamps of Sadness. And then this spooky creature of darkness that was chasing Atreyu without his knowing it. Bastian would have liked to warn him, but that was impossible. All he could do was hope, and go on reading.\n\nire hunger and thirst pursued Atreyu. It was two days since he had left the Swamps of Sadness, and since then he had been wandering through an empty rocky wilderness. What little provisions he had taken with him had sunk beneath the black waters with Artax. In vain, Atreyu dug his fingers into the clefts between stones in the hope of finding some little root, but nothing grew there, not even moss or lichen.\n\nAt first he was glad to feel solid ground beneath his feet, but little by little it came to him that he was worse off than ever. He was lost. He didn't even know what direction he was going in, for the dusky grayness was the same all around him. A cold wind blew over the needlelike rocks that rose up on all sides, blew and blew.\n\nUphill and downhill he plodded, but all he saw was distant mountains with still more distant ranges behind them, and so on to the horizon on all sides. And nothing living, not a beetle, not an ant, not even the vultures which ordinarily follow the weary traveler until he falls by the wayside.\n\nDoubt was no longer possible. This was the Land of the Dead Mountains. Few had seen them, and fewer still escaped from them alive. But they figured in the legends of Atreyu's people. He remembered an old song:\n\nBetter the huntsman\n\nShould perish in the swamps,\n\nFor in the Dead Mountains\n\nThere is a deep, deep chasm,\n\nWhere dwelleth Ygramul the Many,\n\nThe horror of horrors.\n\nEven if Atreyu had wanted to turn back and had known what direction to take, it would not have been possible. He had gone too far and could only keep on going. If only he himself had been involved, he might have sat down in a cave and quietly waited for death, as the Greenskin hunters did. But he was engaged in the Great Quest: the life of the Childlike Empress and of all Fantastica was at stake. He had no right to give up.\n\nAnd so he kept at it. Uphill and down. From time to time he realized that he had long been walking as though in his sleep, that his mind had been in other realms, from which they had returned none too willingly.\n\nBastion gave a start. The clock in the belfry struck one. School was over for the day.\n\nHe heard the shouts and screams of the children running into the corridors from the classrooms and the clatter of many feet on the stairs. For a while there were isolated shouts from the street. And then the schoolhouse was engulfed in silence.\n\nThe silence descended on Bastian like a great heavy blanket and threatened to smother him. From then on he would be all alone in the big schoolhouse\u2014all that day, all that night, there was no knowing how long. This adventure of his was getting serious.\n\nThe other children were going home for lunch. Bastian was hungry too, and he was cold in spite of the army blankets he was wrapped in. Suddenly he lost heart, his whole plan seemed crazy, senseless. He wanted to go home, that very minute. He could just be in time. His father wouldn't have noticed anything yet. Bastian wouldn't even have to tell him he had played hooky. Of course, it would come out sooner or later, but there was time to worry about that. But the stolen book? Yes, he'd have to own up to that too.\n\nIn the end, his father would resign himself as he did to all the disappointments Bastian had given him. Anyway, there was nothing to be afraid of. Most likely his father wouldn't say anything, but just go and see Mr. Coreander and straighten things out.\n\nBastian was about to put the copper-colored book into his satchel. But then he stopped.\n\n\"No,\" he said aloud in the stillness of the attic. \"Atreyu wouldn't give up just because things were getting a little rough. What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.\"\n\nHe felt very lonely, yet there was a kind of pride in his loneliness. He was proud of standing firm in the face of temptation.\n\nHe was a little like Atreyu after all.\n\nA time came when Atreyu really could not go forward. Before him lay the Deep Chasm.\n\nThe grandiose horror of the sight cannot be described in words. A yawning cleft, perhaps half a mile wide, twined its way through the Land of the Dead Mountains. How deep it might be there was no way of knowing.\n\nAtreyu lay on a spur at the edge of the chasm and stared down into darkness which seemed to extend to the innermost heart of the earth. He picked up a stone the size of a tennis ball and hurled it as far as he could. The stone fell and fell, until it was swallowed up in the darkness. Though Atreyu listened a long while, he heard no sound of impact.\n\nThere was only one thing Atreyu could do, and he did it. He skirted the Deep Chasm. Every second he expected to meet the \"horrors of horrors\", known to him from the old song. He had no idea what sort of creature this might be. All he knew was that its name was Ygramul.\n\nThe Deep Chasm twisted and turned through the mountain waste, and of course there was no path at its edge. Here too there were abrupt rises and falls, and sometimes the ground swayed alarmingly under Atreyu's feet. Sometimes his path was barred by gigantic rock formations and he would have to feel his way, painfully, step by step, around them. Or there would be slopes covered with smooth stones that would start rolling toward the Chasm as soon as he set foot on them. More than once he was within a hairbreadth of the edge.\n\nIf he had known that a pursuer was close behind him and coming closer by the hour, he might have hurried and taken dangerous risks. It was that creature of darkness which had been after him since the start of his journey. Since then its body had taken on recognizable outlines. It was a pitch-black wolf, the size of an ox. Nose to the ground, it trotted along, following Atreyu's trail through the stony desert of the Dead Mountains. Its tongue hung far out of its mouth and its terrifying fangs were bared. The freshness of the scent told the wolf that its prey was only a few miles ahead.\n\nBut suspecting nothing of his pursuer, Atreyu picked his way slowly and cautiously.\n\nAs he was groping through the darkness of a tunnel under a mountain, he suddenly heard a noise that he couldn't identify because it bore no resemblance to any sound he had ever heard. It was a kind of jangling roar. At the same time Atreyu felt that the whole mountain about him was trembling, and he heard blocks of stone crashing down its outer walls. For a time he waited to see whether the earthquake, or whatever it might be, would abate. Then, since it did not, he crawled to the end of the tunnel and cautiously stuck his head out.\n\nAnd then he saw: An enormous spider web was stretched from edge to edge of the Deep Chasm. And in the sticky threads of the web, which were as thick as ropes, a great white luckdragon was struggling, becoming more and more entangled as he thrashed about with his tail and claws.\n\nLuckdragons are among the strangest animals in Fantastica. They bear no resemblance to ordinary dragons, which look like loathsome snakes and live in deep caves, diffusing a noxious stench and guarding some real or imaginary treasure. Such spawn of chaos are usually wicked or ill-tempered, they have batlike wings with which they can rise clumsily and noisily into the air, and they spew fire and smoke.\n\nLuckdragons are creatures of air, warmth, and pure joy. Despite their great size, they are as light as a summer cloud, and consequently need no wings for flying. They swim in the air of heaven as fish swim in water. Seen from the earth, they look like slow lightning flashes. The most amazing thing about them is their song. Their voice sounds like the golden note of a large bell, and when they speak softly the bell seems to be ringing in the distance. Anyone who has heard this sound will remember it as long as he lives and tell his grandchildren about it.\n\nBut the luckdragon Atreyu saw could hardly have been in a mood for singing. His long, graceful body with its pearly, pink-and-white scales hung tangled and twisted in the great spider web. His bristling fangs, his thick, luxuriant mane, and the fringes on his tail and limbs were all caught in the sticky ropes. He could hardly move. The eyeballs in his lionlike head glistened ruby-red.\n\nThe splendid beast bled from many wounds, for there was something else, something very big, that descended like a dark cloud on the dragon's white body. It rose and fell, rose and fell, all the while changing its shape. Sometimes it resembled a gigantic long-legged spider with many fiery eyes and a fat body encased in shaggy black hair; then it became a great hand with long claws that tried to crush the luckdragon, and in the next moment it changed to a giant scorpion, piercing its unfortunate victim with its venomous sting.\n\nThe battle between the two giants was fearsome. The luckdragon was still defending himself, spewing blue fire that singed the cloud-monster's bristles. Smoke came whirling through the crevices in the rock, so foul-smelling that Atreyu could hardly breathe. Once the luckdragon managed to bite off one of the monster's long legs. But instead of falling into the chasm, the severed leg hovered for a time in mid-air, then returned to its old place in the black cloud-body. And several times the dragon seemed to seize one of the monster's limbs between its teeth, but bit into the void.\n\nOnly then did Atreyu notice that the monster was not a single, solid body, but was made up of innumerable small steel-blue insects which buzzed like angry hornets. It was their compact swarm that kept taking different shapes.\n\nThis was Ygramul, and now Atreyu knew why she was called \"the Many\".\n\nHe sprang from his hiding place, reached for the Gem, and shouted at the top of his lungs: \"Stop! In the name of the Childlike Empress, stop!\"\n\nBut the hissing and roaring of the combatants drowned out his voice. He himself could barely hear it.\n\nWithout stopping to think, he set foot on the sticky ropes of the web, which swayed beneath him as he ran. He lost his balance, fell, clung by his hands to keep from falling into the dark chasm, pulled himself up again, caught himself in the ropes, fought free and hurried on.\n\nAt last Ygramul sensed that something was coming toward her. With the speed of lightning, she turned about, confronting Atreyu with an enormous steel-blue face. Her single eye had a vertical pupil, which stared at Atreyu with inconceivable malignancy.\n\nA cry of fear escaped Bastian.\n\nA cry of terror passed through the ravine and echoed from side to side. Ygramul turned her eye to left and right, to see if someone else had arrived, for that sound could not have been made by the boy who stood there as though paralyzed with horror.\n\nCould she have heard my cry? Bastion wondered in alarm. But that's not possible.\n\nAnd then Atreyu heard Ygramul's voice. It was very high and slightly hoarse, not at all the right kind of voice for that enormous face. Her lips did not move as she spoke. It was the buzzing of a great swarm of hornets that shaped itself into words.\n\n\"A Twolegs,\" Atreyu heard. \"Years upon years of hunger, and now two tasty morsels at once! A lucky day for Ygramul!\"\n\nAtreyu needed all his strength to keep his composure. He held the Gem up to the monster's one eye and asked: \"Do you know this emblem?\"\n\n\"Come closer, Twolegs!\" buzzed the many voices. \"Ygramul doesn't see well.\"\n\nAtreyu took one step closer to the face. The mouth opened, showing innumerable glittering feelers, hooks, and claws in place of a tongue.\n\n\"Still closer,\" the swarm buzzed.\n\nHe took one more step, which brought him near enough to distinguish the innumerable steel-blue insects which whirled around in seeming confusion. Yet the face as a whole remained motionless.\n\n\"I am Atreyu,\" he said. \"I have come on a mission from the Childlike Empress.\"\n\n\"Most inopportune!\" said the angry buzzing after a time. \"What do you want of Ygramul? As you can see, she is very busy.\"\n\n\"I want this luckdragon,\" said Atreyu. \"Let me have him.\"\n\n\"What do you want him for, Atreyu Twolegs?\"\n\n\"I lost my horse in the Swamps of Sadness. I must go to the Southern Oracle, because only Uyulala can tell me who can give the Childlike Empress a new name. If she doesn't get one, she will die and all Fantastica with her\u2014you too, Ygramul.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" the face drawled. \"Is that the reason for all the places where there is nothing?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu. \"So you too know of them. But the Southern Oracle is too long a journey for a lifetime. That's why I'm asking you for this luckdragon. If he carries me through the air, I may get there before it's too late.\"\n\nOut of the whirling swarm that made up the face came a sound suggesting the giggling of many voices.\n\n\"You're all wrong, Atreyu Twolegs. We know nothing of the Southern Oracle and nothing of Uyulala, but we do know that this dragon cannot carry you. And even if he were in the best of health, the trip would take so long that the Childlike Empress would die of her illness in the meantime. You must measure your Quest, Atreyu, in terms not of your own life but of hers.\"\n\nThe gaze of the eye with the vertical pupil was almost unbearable.\n\n\"That's true,\" he said in a small voice.\n\n\"Besides,\" the motionless face went on, \"the luckdragon has Ygramul's poison in his body. He has less than an hour to live.\"\n\n\"Then there's no hope,\" Atreyu murmured. \"Not for him, not for me, and not for you either, Ygramul.\"\n\n\"Oh well,\" the voice buzzed. \"Ygramul would at least have had one good meal. But who says it's Ygramul's last meal? She knows a way of getting you to the Southern Oracle in a twinkling. But the question is: Will you like it?\"\n\n\"What is that way?\"\n\n\"That is Ygramul's secret. The creatures of darkness have their secrets too, Atreyu Twolegs. Ygramul has never revealed hers. And you too must swear you'll never tell a soul. For it would be greatly to Ygramul's disadvantage if it were known, yes, greatly to her disadvantage.\"\n\n\"I swear! Speak!\"\n\nThe great steel-blue face leaned forward just a little and buzzed almost inaudibly.\n\n\"You must let Ygramul bite you.\"\n\nAtreyu shrank back in horror.\n\n\"Ygramul's poison,\" the voice went on, \"kills within an hour. But to one who has it inside him it gives the power to wish himself in any part of Fantastica he chooses.\n\nImagine if that were known! All Ygramul's victims would escape her.\"\n\n\"An hour?\" cried Atreyu. \"What can I do in an hour?\"\n\n\"Well,\" buzzed the swarm, \"at least it's more than all the hours remaining to you here.\"\n\nAtreyu struggled with himself.\n\n\"Will you set the luckdragon free if I ask it in the name of the Childlike Empress?\" he finally asked.\n\n\"No!\" said the face. \"You have no right to ask that of Ygramul even if you are wearing AURYN, the Gem. The Childlike Empress takes us all as we are. That's why Ygramul respects her emblem.\"\n\nAtreyu was still standing with bowed head. Ygramul had spoken the truth. He couldn't save the white luckdragon. His own wishes didn't count.\n\nHe looked up and said: \"Do what you suggested.\"\n\nInstantly the steel-blue cloud descended on him and enveloped him on all sides.\n\nHe felt a numbing pain in the left shoulder. His last thought was: \"To the Southern Oracle!\"\n\nThen the world went black before his eyes.\n\nWhen the wolf reached the spot a short time later, he saw the giant spider web\u2014but there was no one in sight. There the trail he had been following broke off, and try as he might, he could not find it again.\n\nBastian stopped reading. He felt miserable, as though he himself had Ygramul's poison inside him.\n\n\"Thank God I'm not in Fantastica,\" he muttered. \"Luckily, such monsters don't exist in reality. Anyway, it's only a story.\"\n\nBut was it only a story? How did it happen that Ygramul, and probably Atreyu as well, had heard Bastian's cry of terror?\n\nLittle by little, this book was beginning to give him a spooky feeling.\n\nver so slowly Atreyu awoke to the world. He saw that he was still in the mountains, and for a terrible moment he suspected that Ygramul had deceived him.\n\nBut these, he soon realized, were entirely different mountains. They seemed to consist of great rust-red blocks of stone, piled in such a way as to form strange towers and pyramids. In between these structures the ground was covered with bushes and shrubbery. The air was blazing hot. The country was bathed in glaring sunlight.\n\nShading his eyes with his hand, Atreyu looked around him and discovered, about a mile away, an irregularly shaped arch, perhaps a hundred feet high. It too appeared to consist of piled stone blocks.\n\nCould that be the entrance to the Southern Oracle? As far as he could see, there was nothing behind the arch, only an endless empty plain, no building, no temple, no grove, nothing suggesting an oracle.\n\nSuddenly, while he was wondering what to do, he heard a deep, bronzelike voice:\n\n\"Atreyu!\" And then again: \"Atreyu!\"\n\nTurning around, he saw the white luckdragon emerging from one of the rust-red towers. Blood was pouring from his wounds, and he was so weak he could barely drag himself along.\n\n\"Here I am, Atreyu,\" he said, merrily winking one of his ruby-red eyes. \"And you needn't be so surprised. I was pretty well paralyzed when I was caught in that spider web, but I heard everything Ygramul said to you. So I thought to myself: She has bitten me too, after all, so why shouldn't I take advantage of the secret as well? That's how I got away from her.\"\n\nAtreyu was overjoyed.\n\n\"I hated leaving you to Ygramul,\" said. \"But what could I do?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" said the luckdragon. \"You've saved my life all the same\u2014even if I had something to do with it.\"\n\nAnd again he winked, this time with the other eye.\n\n\"Saved your life,\" Atreyu repeated, \"for an hour. That's all we have left. I can feel Ygramul's poison burning my heart away.\"\n\n\"Every poison has its antidote,\" said the white dragon. \"Everything will turn out all right. You'll see.\"\n\n\"I can't imagine how,\" said Atreyu.\n\n\"Neither can I,\" said the luckdragon. \"But that's the wonderful part of it. From now on you'll succeed in everything you attempt. Because I'm a luckdragon. Even when I was caught in the web, I didn't give up hope. And as you see, I was right.\"\n\nAtreyu smiled.\n\n\"Tell me, why did you wish yourself here and not in some other place where you might have been cured?\"\n\n\"My life belongs to you,\" said the dragon, \"if you'll accept it. I thought you'd need a mount for this Great Quest of yours. And you'll soon see that crawling around the country on two legs, or even galloping on a good horse, can't hold a candle to whizzing through the air on the back of a luckdragon. Are we partners?\"\n\n\"We're partners,\" said Atreyu.\n\n\"By the way,\" said the dragon. \"My name is Falkor.\"\n\n\"Glad to meet you,\" said Atreyu, \"but while we're talking, what little time we have left is seeping away. I've got to do something. But what?\"\n\n\"Have luck,\" said Falkor. \"What else?\"\n\nBut Atreyu heard no more. He had fallen down and lay motionless in the soft folds of the dragon's body.\n\nYgramul's poison was taking effect.\n\nWhen Atreyu\u2014no one knows how much later\u2014opened his eyes again, he saw nothing but a very strange face bent over him. It was the wrinkliest, shriveledest face he had ever seen, and only about the size of a fist. It was as brown as a baked apple, and the eyes in it glittered like stars. The head was covered with a bonnet made of withered leaves.\n\nAtreyu felt a little drinking cup held to his lips.\n\n\"Nice medicine! Good medicine!\" mumbled the wrinkled little lips in the shriveled face. \"Just drink, child. Do you good.\"\n\nAtreyu sipped. It tasted strange. Kind of sweet and sour.\n\nAtreyu found it painful to speak. \"What about the white dragon?\" he asked.\n\n\"Doing fine!\" the voice whispered. \"Don't worry, my boy. You'll get well. You'll both get well. The worst is over. Just drink. Drink.\"\n\nAtreyu took another swallow and again sleep overcame him, but this time it was the deep, refreshing sleep of recovery.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck two.\n\nBastian couldn't hold it in any longer. He simply had to go. He had felt the need for quite some time, but he hadn't been able to stop reading. Besides, he had been afraid to go downstairs. He told himself that there was nothing to worry about, that the building was deserted, that no one would see him. But still he was afraid, as if the school were a person watching him.\n\nBut in the end there was no help for it; he just had to go!\n\nHe set the open book down on the mat, went to the door and listened with pounding heart. Nothing. He slid the bolt and slowly turned the big key in the lock. When he pressed the handle, the door opened, creaking loudly.\n\nHe padded out in his stocking feet, leaving the door behind him open to avoid unnecessary noise. He crept down the stairs to the second floor. The students' toilet was at the other end of the long corridor with the spinach-green classroom doors. Racing against time, Bastian ran as fast as he could\u2014and just made it.\n\nAs he sat there, he wondered why heroes in stories like the one he was reading never had to worry about such problems. Once\u2014when he was much younger\u2014he had asked his religion teacher if Jesus Christ had had to go like an ordinary person. After all, he had taken food and drink like everyone else. The class had howled with laughter, and the teacher, instead of an answer, had given him several demerits for \"insolence\". He hadn't meant to be insolent.\n\n\"Probably,\" Bastian now said to himself, \"these things are just too unimportant to be mentioned in stories.\"\n\nYet for him they could be of the most pressing and embarrassing importance.\n\nHe was finished. He pulled the chain and was about to leave when he heard steps in the corridor outside. One classroom door after another was opened and closed, and the steps came closer and closer.\n\nBastian's heart pounded in his throat. Where could he hide? He stood glued to the spot as though paralyzed.\n\nThe washroom door opened, luckily in such a way as to shield Bastian. The janitor came in. One by one, he looked into the stalls. When he came to the one where the water was still running and the chain swaying a little, he hesitated for a moment and mumbled something to himself. But when the water stopped running he shrugged his shoulders and went out. His steps died away on the stairs.\n\nBastian hadn't dared breathe the whole time, and now he gasped for air. He noticed that his knees were trembling.\n\nAs fast as possible he padded down the corridor with the spinach-green doors, up the stairs, and back into the attic. Only when the door was locked and bolted behind him did he relax.\n\nWith a deep sigh he settled back on his pile of mats, wrapped himself in his army blankets, and reached for the book.\n\nWhen Atreyu awoke for the second time, he felt perfectly rested and well. He sat up.\n\nIt was night. The moon was shining bright, and Atreyu saw he was in the same place where he and the white dragon had collapsed. Falkor was still lying there. His breathing came deep and easy and he seemed to be fast asleep. His wounds had been dressed.\n\nAtreyu noticed that his own shoulder had been dressed in the same way, not with cloth but with herbs and plant fibers.\n\nOnly a few steps away there was a small cave, from which issued a faint beam of light.\n\nTaking care not to move his left arm, Atreyu stood up cautiously and approached the cave. Bending down\u2014for the entrance was very low\u2014he saw a room that looked like an alchemist's workshop in miniature. At the back an open fire was crackling merrily. Crucibles, retorts, and strangely shaped flasks were scattered all about. Bundles of dried plants were piled on shelves. The little table in the middle of the room and the other furniture seemed to be made of root wood, crudely nailed together.\n\nAtreyu heard a cough, and then he saw a little man sitting in an armchair by the fire. The little man's hat had been carved from a root and looked like an inverted pipe bowl. The face was as brown and shriveled as the face Atreyu had seen leaning over him when he first woke up. But this one was wearing big eyeglasses, and the features seemed sharper and more anxious. The little man was reading a big book that was lying in his lap.\n\nThen a second little figure, which Atreyu recognized as the one that had bent over him, came waddling out of another room. Now Atreyu saw that this little person was a woman. Apart from her bonnet of leaves, she\u2014like the man in the armchair\u2014was wearing a kind of monk's robe, which also seemed to be made of withered leaves.\n\nHumming merrily, she rubbed her hands and busied herself with a kettle that was hanging over the fire. Neither of the little people would have reached up to Atreyu's knee.\n\nObviously they belonged to the widely ramified family of the gnomes, though to a rather obscure branch.\n\n\"Woman!\" said the little man testily. \"Get out of my light. You are interfering with my research!\"\n\n\"You and your research!\" said the woman. \"Who cares about that? The important thing is my health elixir. Those two outside are in urgent need of it.\"\n\n\"Those two,\" said the man irritably, \"will be far more in need of my help and advice.\"\n\n\"Maybe so,\" said the little woman. \"But not until they are well. Move over, old man!\"\n\nGrumbling, the little man moved his chair a short distance from the fire.\n\nAtreyu cleared his throat to call attention to his presence. The two gnomes looked around.\n\n\"He's already well,\" said the little man. \"Now it's my turn.\"\n\n\"Certainly not!\" the little woman hissed. \"He'll be well when I say so. It'll be your turn when I say it's your turn.\"\n\nShe turned to Atreyu.\n\n\"We would invite you in, but it's not quite big enough, is it? Just a moment. We shall come out to you.\"\n\nTaking a small mortar, she ground something or other into a powder, which she tossed in the kettle. Then she washed her hands, dried them on her robe, and said to the little man: \"Stay here until I call you, Engywook. Understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, Urgl, I understand,\" the little man grumbled. \"I understand only too well.\"\n\nThe female gnome came out of the cave and looked up at Atreyu from under knitted brows.\n\n\"Well, well. We seem to be getting better, don't we?\"\n\nAtreyu nodded.\n\nThe gnome climbed up on a rocky ledge, level with Atreyu's face, and sat down.\n\n\"No pain?\" she asked.\n\n\"None worth mentioning,\" Atreyu answered.\n\n\"Nonsense!\" the old woman snapped. \"Does it hurt or doesn't it?\"\n\n\"It still hurts,\" said Atreyu, \"but it doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"Not to you, perhaps, but it does to me! Since when does the patient tell the doctor what matters? What do you know about it? If it's to get well, it has to hurt. If it stopped hurting, your arm would be dead.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Atreyu, who felt like a scolded child. \"I only wanted to say... that is, I wanted to thank you.\"\n\n\"What for?\" said Urgl impatiently. \"I'm a healer, after all. I've only done my professional duty. Besides, Engywook, that's my old man, saw the Glory hanging on your neck. So what would you expect?\"\n\n\"What about Falkor?\" Atreyu asked. \"How's he getting along?\"\n\n\"Falkor? Who's that?\"\n\n\"The white luckdragon.\"\n\n\"Oh. I don't know yet. Took a little more punishment than you. But then he's bigger and stronger, so he ought to make it. Why not? Needs a little more rest. Where did you ever pick up that poison? And where have you come from all of a sudden? And where are you going? And who are you in the first place?\"\n\nEngywook was standing in the mouth of the cave. He listened as Atreyu answered Urgl's questions. When Urgl opened her mouth to speak again, he shouted: \"Hold your tongue, woman! Now it's my turn.\"\n\nRemoving his pipe-bowl hat, he scratched his bald head, and said: \"Don't let her tone bother you, Atreyu. Old Urgl is a little crude, but she means no harm. My name is Engywook. We are the well-known Gnomics. Ever hear of us?\"\n\n\"No,\" Atreyu confessed. Engywook seemed rather offended.\n\n\"Oh well,\" he said. \"Apparently you don't move in scientific circles, or someone would undoubtedly have told you that you couldn't find a better adviser than yours truly if you're looking for Uyulala in the Southern Oracle. You've come to the right address, my boy.\"\n\n\"Don't give yourself airs,\" Urgl broke in. Then she climbed down from her ledge and, grumbling to herself, vanished into the cave.\n\nEngywook ignored her comment.\n\n\"I can explain everything,\" he went on. \"I've studied the question all my life. Inside and out. I set up my observatory just for that. I'm in the last stage of a great scientific work on the Oracle. \"The Riddle of Uyulala, solved by Professor Engywook.\"\n\nThat's the title. Sounds all right, doesn't it? To be published in the very near future.\n\nUnfortunately a few details are still lacking. You can help me, my boy.\"\n\n\"An observatory?\" asked Atreyu, who had never heard the word.\n\nEngywook nodded and, beaming with pride, motioned Atreyu to follow him.\n\nA narrow path twined its way upward between great stone blocks. In some places where the grade was especially steep, tiny steps had been cut out of the stone. Of course, they were much too small for Atreyu's feet and he simply stepped over them. Even so, he had a hard time keeping up with the gnome.\n\n\"Bright moonlight tonight,\" said Engywook. \"You'll see them all right.\"\n\n\"See who?\" Atreyu asked. \"Uyulala?\"\n\nEngywook only frowned and shook his head.\n\nAt last they came to the top of the hill. The ground was flat, but on one side there was a natural stone parapet. In the middle of this wall there was a hole, obviously the work of gnomian hands. And behind the hole, on a stand made of root wood, stood a small telescope.\n\nEngywook looked through the telescope and made a slight adjustment by turning some screws. Then he nodded with satisfaction and invited Atreyu to look. To put himself on a level with it, Atreyu had to lie down on the ground and prop himself on his elbows.\n\nThe telescope was aimed at the great stone arch, or more specifically at the lower part of the left pillar. And beside this pillar, as Atreyu now saw, an enormous sphinx was sitting motionless in the moonlight. The forepaws, on which she was propped, were those of a lion, the hindquarters were those of a bull; on her back she bore the wings of an eagle, and her face was that of a human woman\u2014in form at any rate, for the expression was far from human. I was hard to tell whether this face was smiling or whether it expressed deep grief or utter indifference. After looking at it for some time, Atreyu seemed to see abysmal wickedness and cruelty, but a moment later he had to correct his impression, for he found only unruffled calm.\n\n\"Don't bother!\" he heard the gnome's deep voice in his ear. \"You won't solve it. It's the same with everyone. I've observed it all my life and I haven't found the answer.\n\nNow for the other one.\"\n\nHe turned one of the screws. The image passed the opening of the arch, through which one saw only the empty plain. Then the right-hand pillar came into Atreyu's view.\n\nAnd there, in the same posture, sat a second sphinx. The enormous body shimmered like liquid silver in the moonlight. She seemed to be staring fixedly at the first, just as the first was gazing fixedly at her.\n\n\"Are they statues?\" asked Atreyu, unable to avert his eyes.\n\n\"Oh no!\" said Engywook with a giggle. \"They are real live sphinxes\u2014very much alive! You've seen enough for now. Come, we'll go down. I'll explain everything.\"\n\nAnd he held his hand in front of the telescope, so that Atreyu could see no more.\n\nNeither spoke on the way back.\n\nalkor was still sound asleep when Engywook brought Atreyu back to the gnomes' cave. In the meantime Urgl had moved the little table into the open and put on all sorts of sweets and fruit and herb jellies.\n\nThere were also little drinking cups and a pitcher of fragrant herb tea. The table was lit by two tiny oil lamps.\n\n\"Sit down!\" Urgl commanded. \"Atreyu must eat and drink something to give him strength. Medicine alone is not enough.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Atreyu. \"I'm feeling fine already.\"\n\n\"No back talk!\" Urgl snapped. \"As long as you're here, you'll do as you're told. The poison in your body has been neutralized. So there's no reason to hurry, my boy. You've all the time you need. Just take it easy.\"\n\n\"It's not on my account,\" said Atreyu. \"But the Childlike Empress is dying. Even now, every hour may count.\"\n\n\"Rubbish!\" the old woman grumbled. \"Haste makes waste. Sit down! Eat! Drink!\"\n\n\"Better give in,\" Engywook whispered. \"I know the woman from A to Z. When she wants something, she gets it. Besides, you and I have a lot to talk about.\"\n\nAtreyu squatted cross-legged at the tiny table and fell to. Every bite and every swallow made him feel as if warm, golden life were flowing into his veins. Only then did he notice how weak he had been.\n\nBastion's mouth watered. It seemed to him that he could smell the aroma of the gnomes' meal. He sniffed the air, but of course it was only imagination.\n\nHis stomach growled audibly. In the end he couldn't stand it any longer. He took his apple and the rest of his sandwich out of his satchel and ate them both. After that, though far from full, he felt a little better.\n\nThen he realized that this was his last meal. The word \"last\" terrified him. He tried not to think of it.\n\n\"Where do you get all these good things?\" Atreyu asked Urgl.\n\n\"Ah, sonny,\" she said. \"It takes lots of running around to find the right plants. But he\u2014this knuckleheaded Engywook of mine\u2014insists on living here because of his all-important studies. Where the food is to come from is the least of his worries.\"\n\n\"Woman,\" said Engywook with dignity, \"how would you know what's important and what isn't? Be off with you now, and let us talk.\"\n\nMumbling and grumbling, Urgl withdrew into the little cave and a moment later Atreyu heard a great clatter of pots and pans.\n\n\"Don't mind her,\" said Engywook under his breath. \"She's a good old soul, she just needs something to grumble about now and then. Listen to me, Atreyu. I'm going to let you in on a few things you need to know about the Southern Oracle. It's not easy to get to Uyulala. In fact, it's rather difficult. But I don't want to give you a scientific lecture. Maybe it will be better if you ask questions. I tend to lose myself in details. Just fire away.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Atreyu. \"Who or what is Uyulala?\"\n\nEngywook gave him an angry look. \"Botheration!\" he spluttered. \"You're so blunt, so direct. Just like my old woman. Couldn't you start with something else?\"\n\nAtreyu thought a while. Then he asked:. \"That big stone gate with the sphinxes. Is that the entrance?\"\n\n\"That's better,\" said Engywook. \"Now we'll get somewhere. Yes, that gate is the entrance, but then come two more gates. And Uyulala's home is behind the third\u2014if one can speak of her having a home.\"\n\n\"Have you yourself ever been with her?\"\n\n\"Don't be absurd!\" replied Engywook, again somewhat nettled. \"I am a scientist. I have collected and collated the statements of all the individuals who have been there. The ones who have come back, that is. Very important work. I can't afford to take personal risks. It could interfere with my work.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Atreyu. \"Now what about these three gates?\"\n\nEngywook stood up, folded his hands behind his back, and paced.\n\n\"The first,\" he lectured, \"is known as the Great Riddle Gate; the second is the Magic Mirror Gate; and the third is the No-Key Gate...\"\n\n\"Strange,\" Atreyu broke in. \"As far as I could see, there was nothing behind that stone gate but an empty plain. Where are the other gates?\"\n\n\"Be still!\" Engywook scolded. \"How can I make myself clear if you keep interrupting? It's very complicated: The second gate isn't there until a person has gone through the first. And the third isn't there until the person has the second behind him. And Uyulala isn't there until he has passed through the third. Simply not there. Do you understand?\"\n\nAtreyu nodded, but preferred to say nothing for fear of irritating the gnome.\n\n\"Through my telescope you have seen the first, the Great Riddle Gate. And the two sphinxes. That gate is always open. Obviously. There's nothing to close. But even so, no one can get through\"\u2014here Engywook raised a tiny forefinger\u2014\"unless the sphinxes close their eyes. And do you know why? The gaze of a sphinx is different from the gaze of any other creature. You and I and everyone else\u2014our eyes take something in. We see the world. A sphinx sees nothing. In a sense she is blind. But her eyes send something out. And what do her eyes send out? All the riddles of the universe. That's why these sphinxes are always looking at each other. Because only another sphinx can stand a sphinx's gaze. So try to imagine what happens to one who ventures into the area where those two gazes meet. He freezes to the spot, unable to move until he has solved all the riddles of the world. If you go there, you'll find the remains of those poor devils.\"\n\n\"But,\" said Atreyu, didn't you say that their eyes sometimes close? Don't they have to sleep now and then?\"\n\n\"Sleep?\" Engywook was shaken with giggles. \"Goodness gracious! A sphinx sleep? I should say not. You really are an innocent. Still, there's some point to your question. All my research, in fact, hinges on that particular point. The sphinxes shut their eyes for some travelers and let them through. The question that no one has answered up until now is this: Why one traveler and not another? Because you mustn't suppose they let wise, brave, or good people through, and keep the stupid, cowardly, and wicked out. Not a bit of it! With my own eyes I've seen them admit stupid fools and treacherous knaves, while decent, sensible people have given up after being kept waiting for months. And it seems to make no difference whether a person has some serious reason for consulting the Oracle, or whether he's just come for the fun of it.\"\n\n\"Haven't your investigations suggested some explanation?\" Atreyu asked.\n\nAngry flashes darted from Engywook's eyes.\n\n\"Have you been listening or haven't you? Didn't I just say that so far no one has answered that question? Of course, I've worked up a few theories over the years. At first I thought the sphinxes' judgment might be guided by certain physical characteristics\u2014size, beauty, strength, and so on. But I soon had to drop that idea. Then I toyed with numerical patterns. The idea, for instance, that three out of five were regularly excluded, or that only prime-numbered candidates were admitted. That worked pretty well for the past, but for forecasting it was no use at all. Since then I've come to the conclusion that the sphinxes' decision is based on pure chance and that no principle whatever is involved.\n\nBut my wife calls my conclusion scandalous, un-Fantastican, and absolutely unscientific.\"\n\n\"Are you starting your old nonsense again?\" came Urgl's angry voice from the cave. \"Shame on you! Such skepticism only shows that the bit of brain you once had has dried up on you.\"\n\n\"Hear that?\" said Engywook with a sigh. \"And the worst of it is that she's right.\"\n\n\"What about the Childlike Empress's amulet?\" Atreyu asked. \"Do you think they'll respect it? They too are natives of Fantastica, after all.\"\n\n\"Yes, I suppose they are,\" said Engywook, shaking his apple-sized head. \"But to respect it they'd have to see it. And they don't see anything. But their gaze would strike you. And I'm not so sure the sphinxes would obey the Childlike Empress. Maybe they are greater than she is. I don't know, I don't know. Anyway, it's most worrisome.\"\n\n\"Then what do you advise?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"You will have to do what all the others have done. Wait and see what the sphinxes decide\u2014without hoping to know why.\"\n\nAtreyu nodded thoughtfully.\n\nUrgl came out of the cave. In one hand she held a bucket with some steaming liquid in it, and under her other arm she was carrying a bundle of dried plants. Muttering to herself, she went to the luckdragon, who was still lying motionless, fast asleep. She started climbing around on him and changing the dressings on his wounds. Her enormous patient heaved one contented sigh and stretched; otherwise he seemed unaware of her ministrations.\n\n\"Couldn't you make yourself a little useful?\" she said to Engywook as she was hurrying back to the kitchen, \"instead of sitting around like this, talking rubbish?\"\n\n\"I am making myself extremely useful,\" her husband called after her. \"Possibly more useful than you, but that's more than a simple-minded woman like you will ever understand!\"\n\nTurning to Atreyu, he went on: \"She can only think of practical matters. She has no feeling for the great overarching ideas.\"\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck three.\n\nBy now Bastian's father must have noticed\u2014if he was ever going to\u2014that Bastian hadn't come home. Would he worry? Maybe he'd go looking for him. Maybe he had already notified the police. Maybe calls had gone out over the radio. Bastian felt a sick pain in the pit of his stomach.\n\nBut if the police had been notified, where would they look for him? Could they possibly come to this attic?\n\nHad he locked the door when he came back from the toilet? He couldn't remember. He got up and checked. Yes, the door was locked and bolted.\n\nOutside, the November afternoon was drawing to a close. Ever so slowly the light was failing.\n\nTo steady his nerves, Bastian paced the floor for a while. Looking about him, he discovered quite a few things one wouldn't have expected to find in a school. For instance, a battered old Victrola with a big horn attached\u2014God only knew when and by whom it had been brought here. In one corner there were some paintings in ornate gilt frames. They were so faded that hardly anything could be made out\u2014only here and there a pale, solemn-looking face that shimmered against a dark background. And then there was a rusty, seven-armed candelabrum, still holding the stumps of thick wax candles, bearded with drippings.\n\nBastian gave a sudden start, for looking into a dark corner he saw someone moving. But when he looked again, it dawned on him that he had only seen himself, reflected in a large mirror that had lost half its silvering. He went closer and looked at himself for a while. He was really nothing much to look at, with his pudgy build and his bowlegs and pasty face. He shook his head and said aloud: \"No!\"\n\nThen he went back to his mats. By then it was so dark that he had to hold the book up to his eyes.\n\n\"Where were we?\" Engywook asked.\n\n\"At the Great Riddle Gate,\" Atreyu reminded him.\n\n\"Right. Now suppose you've managed to get through. Then\u2014and only then\u2014the second gate will be there for you. The Magic Mirror Gate. As I've said, I myself have not been able to observe it, what I tell you has been gleaned from travelers' accounts. This second gate is both open and closed. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It might be better to say: neither closed nor open. Though that doesn't make it any less crazy. The point is that this gate seems to be a big mirror or something of the kind, though it's made neither of glass nor of metal. What it is made of, no one has ever been able to tell me. Anyway, when you stand before it, you see yourself. But not as you would in an ordinary mirror. You don't see your outward appearance; what you see is your real innermost nature. If you want to go through, you have to\u2014in a manner of speaking\u2014go into yourself.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Atreyu. \"It seems to me that this Magic Mirror Gate is easier to get through than the first.\"\n\n\"Wrong!\" cried Engywook. Once again he began to trot back and forth in agitation. \"Dead wrong, my friend! I've known travelers who considered themselves absolutely blameless to yelp with horror and run away at the sight of the monster grinning out of the mirror at them. We had to care for some of them for weeks before they were even able to start home.\"\n\n\"We!\" growled Urgl, who was passing with another bucket. \"I keep hearing 'we'.\n\nWhen did you ever take care of anybody?\"\n\nEngywook waved her away.\n\n\"Others,\" he went on lecturing, \"appear to have seen something even more horrible, but had the courage to go through. What some saw was not so frightening, but it still cost every one of them an inner struggle. Nothing I can say would apply to all. It's a different experience each time.\"\n\n\"Good,\" said Atreyu. \"Then at least it's possible to go through this Magic Mirror Gate?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, of course it's possible, or it wouldn't be a gate. Where's your logic, my boy?\"\n\n\"But it's also possible to go around it,\" said Atreyu. \"Or isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes indeed,\" said Engywook. \"Of course it is. But if you do that, there's nothing more behind it. The third gate isn't there until you've gone through the second. How often do I have to tell you that?\"\n\n\"I understand. But what about this third gate?\"\n\n\"That's where things get really difficult! Because, you see, the No-Key Gate is closed. Simply closed. And that's that! There's no handle and no doorknob and no keyhole. Nothing. My theory is that this single, hermetically closed door is made of Fantastican selenium. You may know that there's no way of destroying, bending or dissolving Fantastican selenium. It's absolutely indestructible.\"\n\n\"Then there's no way of getting through?\"\n\n\"Not so fast. Not so fast, my boy. Certain individuals have got through and spoken with Uyulala. So the door can be opened.\"\n\n\"But\n\nhow?\"\n\n\"Just listen. Fantastican selenium reacts to our will. It's our will that makes it unyielding. But if someone succeeds in forgetting all purpose, in wanting nothing at all\u2014to him the gate will open of its own accord.\"\n\nAtreyu looked down and said in an undertone: \"If that's the case\u2014how can I possibly get through? How can I manage not to want to get through?\"\n\nEngywook sighed and nodded, nodded and sighed.\n\n\"Just what I've been saying. The No-Key Gate is the hardest.\"\n\n\"But if I succeed after all,\" Atreyu asked, \"will I then be in the Southern Oracle?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the gnome.\n\n\"But who or what is Uyulala?\"\n\n\"No idea,\" said the gnome, and his eyes sparkled with fury. \"None of those who have reached her has been willing to tell me. How can I be expected to complete my scientific work if everyone cloaks himself in mysterious silence? I could tear my hair out\u2014if I had any left. If you reach her, Atreyu, will you tell me? Will you? One of these days my thirst for knowledge will be the death of me, and no one, no one is willing to help. I beg you, promise you'll tell me.\"\n\nAtreyu stood up and looked at the Great Riddle Gate, which lay bathed in moonlight.\n\n\"I can't promise that, Engywook,\" he said softly, \"though I'd be glad to show my gratitude. But if no one has told you who or what Uyulala is, there must be a reason. And before I know what that reason is, I can't decide whether someone who hasn't seen her with his own eyes has a right to know.\"\n\n\"In that case, get away from me!\" screamed the gnome, his eyes literally spewing sparks. \"All I get is ingratitude! All my life I wear myself out trying to reveal a secret of universal interest. And no one helps me. I should never have bothered with you.\"\n\nWith that he ran into the little cave, and a door could be heard slamming within.\n\nUrgl passed Atreyu and said with a titter: \"The old fool means no harm. But he's always running into such disappointments with this ridiculous investigation of his. He wants to go down in history as the one who has solved the great riddle. The world-famous gnome Engywook. You mustn't mind him.\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" said Atreyu. \"Just tell him I thank him with all my heart for what he has done for me. And I thank you too. If it's allowed, I will tell him the secret\u2014if I come back.\"\n\n\"Then you're leaving us?\" Urgl asked.\n\n\"I have to,\" said Atreyu. \"There's no time to be lost. Now I shall go to the Oracle. Farewell! And in the meantime take good care of Falkor, the luckdragon.\"\n\nWith that he turned away and strode toward the Great Riddle Gate.\n\nUrgl watched the erect figure with the blowing cloak vanish among the rocks and ran after him, crying: \"Lots of luck, Atreyu!\"\n\nBut she didn't know whether he had heard or not. As she waddled back to her little cave, she muttered to herself: \"He'll need it all right\u2014he'll need lots of luck.\"\n\nAtreyu was now within fifty feet of the great stone gate. It was much larger than he had judged from a distance. Behind it lay a deserted plain. There was nothing to stop the eye, and Atreyu's gaze seemed to plunge into an abyss of emptiness. In front of the gate and between the two pillars Atreyu saw only innumerable skulls and skeletons\u2014all that was left of the varied species of Fantasticans who had tried to pass through the gate but had been frozen forever by the gaze of the sphinxes.\n\nBut it wasn't these gruesome reminders that stopped Atreyu. What stopped him was the sight of the sphinxes.\n\nHe had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest\u2014he had seen beautiful things and horrible things\u2014but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.\n\nThe two monsters were bathed in moonlight, and as Atreyu approached them, they seemed to grow beyond measure. Their heads seemed to touch the moon, and their expression as they looked at each other seemed to change with every step he took.\n\nCurrents of a terrible, unknown force flashed through the upraised bodies and still more through the almost human faces. It was as though these beings did not merely exist, in the way marble for instance exists, but as if they were on the verge of vanishing, but would recreate themselves at the same time. For that very reason they seemed far more real than anything made of stone.\n\nFear gripped Atreyu.\n\nFear not so much of the danger that threatened him as of something above and beyond his own self. It hardly grazed his mind that if the sphinxes' gaze should strike him he would freeze to the spot forever. No, what made his steps heavier and heavier, until he felt as though he were made of cold gray lead, was fear of the unfathomable, of something intolerably vast.\n\nYet he went on. He stopped looking up. He kept his head bowed and walked very slowly, foot by foot, towards the stone gate. Heavier and heavier grew his burden of fear.\n\nHe thought it would crush him, but still he went on. He didn't know whether the sphinxes had closed their eyes or not. Would he be admitted? Or would this be the end of his Great Quest? He had no time to lose in worrying. He just had to take his chances.\n\nAt a certain point he felt sure that he had not enough will power left to carry him a single step forward. And just then he heard the echo of his footfalls within the great vaulted gate. Instantly every last shred of fear fell from him, and he knew that whatever might happen he would never again be afraid.\n\nLooking up, he saw that the Great Riddle Gate lay behind him. The sphinxes had let him through.\n\nUp ahead, no more than twenty paces away, where previously there had been nothing but the great empty plain, he saw the Magic Mirror Gate. This gate was large and round like a second moon (for the real moon was still shining high in the sky) and it glittered like polished silver. It was hard to imagine how anyone could pass through a metal surface, but Atreyu didn't hesitate for a moment. After what Engywook had said, he expected a terrifying image of himself to come toward him out of the mirror, but now that he had left all fear behind him, he hardly gave the matter a thought.\n\nWhat he saw was something quite unexpected, which wasn't the least bit terrifying, but which baffled him completely. He saw a fat little boy with a pale face\u2014a boy his own age\u2014and this little boy was sitting on a pile of mats, reading a book. The little boy had large, sad-looking eyes, and he was wrapped in frayed gray blankets.\n\nBehind him a few motionless animals could be distinguished in the half-light\u2014an eagle, an owl, and a fox\u2014and farther off there was something that looked like a white skeleton.\n\nHe couldn't make out exactly what it was.\n\nBastian gave a start when he realized what he had just read. Why, that was him!\n\nThe description was right in every detail. The book trembled in his hands. This was going too far. How could there be something in a book that applied only to this particular moment and, only to him? It could only be a crazy accident. But a very remarkable accident.\n\n\"Bastian,\" he said aloud, \"you really are a screwball. Pull your self together.\"\n\nHe had meant to say this very sternly, but his voice quavered a little, for he was not quite sure that what had happened was an accident.\n\nJust imagine, he thought. What if they've really heard of me in Fantastica!\n\nWouldn't that be wonderful?\n\nBut he didn't dare say it aloud.\n\nA faint smile of astonishment played over Atreyu's lips as he passed into the mirror image\u2014he was rather surprised that he was succeeding so easily in something that others had found insuperably difficult. But on the way through he felt a strange, prickly shudder. He had no suspicion of what had really happened to him.\n\nFor when he emerged on the far side of the Magic Mirror Gate, he had lost all memory of himself, of his past life, aims, and purposes. He had forgotten the Great Quest that had brought him there, and he didn't even know his own name. He was like a newborn child.\n\nUp ahead of him, only a few steps away, he saw the No-Key Gate, but he had forgotten its name and forgotten that his purpose in passing through it was to reach the Southern Oracle. He had no idea why he was there or what he was supposed to do. He felt light and cheerful and he laughed for no reason, for the sheer pleasure of it.\n\nThe gate he saw before him was as small and low as a common door and stood all by itself\u2014with no walls around it\u2014on the empty plain. And this door was closed.\n\nAtreyu looked at it for a while. It seemed to be made of some material with a coppery sheen. It was nice to look at, but Atreyu soon lost interest. He went around the gate and examined it from behind, but the back looked no different than the front. And there was neither handle nor knob nor keyhole. Obviously this door could not be opened, and anyway why would anyone want to open it, since it led nowhere and was just standing there. For behind the gate there was only the wide, flat, empty plain.\n\nAtreyu felt like leaving. He turned back, went around the Magic Mirror Gate, and looked at it for some time without realizing what it was. He decided to go away,\n\n\"No, no, don't go away,\" said Bastian aloud. \"Turn around. You have to go through the No-Key Gate!\"\n\nbut then turned back to the No-Key Gate. He wanted to look at its coppery sheen again.\n\nOnce more, he stood in front of the gate, bending his head to the left, bending it to the right, enjoying himself. Tenderly he stroked the strange material. It felt warm and almost alive. And the door opened by a crack.\n\nAtreyu stuck his head through, and then he saw something he hadn't seen on the other side when he had walked around the gate. He pulled his head back, looked past the gate, and saw only the empty plain. He looked again through the crack in the door and saw a long corridor formed by innumerable huge columns. And farther off there were stairs and more pillars and terraces and more stairs and a whole forest of columns. But none of these columns supported a roof. For above them Atreyu could see the night sky.\n\nHe passed through the gate and looked around him with wonderment. The door closed behind him.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck four.\n\nLittle by little, the murky light was failing. It was getting too dark to read by.\n\nBastian put the book down.\n\nWhat was he to do now?\n\nThere was bound to be electric light in this attic. He groped his way to the door and ran his hand along the wall, but couldn't find a switch. He looked on the opposite side, and again there was none.\n\nHe took a box of matches from his trouser pocket (he always had matches on him, for he had a weakness for making little fires), but they were damp and the first three wouldn't light. In the faint glow of the fourth he tried to locate a light switch, but there wasn't any. The thought of having to spend the whole evening and night here in total darkness gave him the cold shivers. He was no baby, and at home or in any other familiar place he had no fear of the dark, but this enormous attic with all these weird things in it was something else again.\n\nThe match burned his fingers and he threw it away.\n\nFor a while he just stood there and listened. The rain had let up and now he could barely hear the drumming on the big tin roof.\n\nThen he remembered the rusty, seven-armed candelabrum he had seen. He groped his way across the room, found the candelabrum, and dragged it to his pile of mats.\n\nHe lit the wicks in the thick stubs\u2014all seven\u2014and a golden light spread. The flames crackled faintly and wavered now and then in the draft.\n\nWith a sigh of relief, Bastian picked up the book.\n\nladness buoyed Atreyu's heart as he strode into the forest of columns which cast black shadows in the bright moonlight. In the deep silence that surrounded him he barely heard his own footfalls. He no longer knew who he was or what his name was, how he had got there or what he was looking for. He was full of wonder, but quite undismayed.\n\nThe floor was made of mosaic tiles, showing strange ornamental designs or mysterious scenes and images. Atreyu passed over it, climbed broad steps, came to a vast terrace, descended another set of steps, and passed down a long avenue of stone columns. He examined them, one after another, and it gave him pleasure to see that each was decorated with different signs and symbols. Farther and farther he went from the No-Key Gate.\n\nAt last, when he had gone heaven knows how far, he heard a hovering sound in the distance and stopped to listen. The sound came closer, it was a singing voice, but it seemed very, very sad, almost like a sob at times. This lament passed over the columns like a breeze, then stopped in one place, rose and fell, came and went, and seemed to move in a wide circle around Atreyu.\n\nHe stood still and waited.\n\nLittle by little, the circle became smaller, and after a while he was able to understand the words the voice was singing:\n\n\"Oh, nothing can happen more than once,\n\nBut all things must happen one day.\n\nOver hill and dale, over wood and stream,\n\nMy dying voice will blow away...\"\n\nAtreyu turned in the direction of the voice, which darted fitfully among the columns, but he could see no one.\n\n\"Who are you?\" he cried.\n\nThe voice came back to him like an echo: \"Who are you?\"\n\nAtreyu pondered.\n\n\"Who am I?\" he murmured. \"I don't know. I have a feeling that I once knew. But does it matter?\"\n\nThe singing voice answered:\n\n\"If questions you would ask of me,\n\nYou must speak in poetry,\n\nFor rhymeless talk that strikes my ear\n\nI cannot hear, I cannot hear...\"\n\nAtreyu hadn't much practice in rhyming. This would be a difficult conversation, he thought, if the voice only understood poetry. He racked his brains for a while, then he came out with:\n\n\"I hope it isn't going too far,\n\nBut could you tell me who you are?\"\n\nThis time the voice answered at once:\n\n\"I hear you now, your words are clear,\n\nI understand as well as hear.\"\n\nAnd then, coming from a different direction, it sang:\n\n\"I thank you, friend, for your good will.\n\nI'm glad that you have come to me.\n\nI am Uyulala, the voice of silence.\n\nIn the Palace of Deep Mystery.\"\n\nAtreyu noticed that the voice rose and fell, but was never wholly silent. Even when it sang no words or when he was speaking, a sound hovered in the air.\n\nFor a time it seemed to stand still; then it moved slowly away from him. He ran after it and asked:\n\n\"Oh, Uyulala, tell me where you're hid.\n\nI cannot see you and so wish I did.\"\n\nPassing him by, the voice breathed into his ear:\n\n\"Never has anyone seen me,\n\nNever do I appear.\n\nYou will never see me,\n\nAnd yet I am here.\"\n\n\"Then you're invisible?\" he asked. But when no answer came, he remembered that he had to speak in rhyme, and asked:\n\n\"Have you no body, is that what you mean?\n\nOr is it only that you can't be seen?\"\n\nHe heard a soft, bell-like sound, which might have been a laugh or a sob. And the voice sang:\n\n\"Yes and no and neither one.\n\nI do not appear\n\nIn the brightness of the sun\n\nAs you appear,\n\nFor my body is but sound\n\nThat one can hear but never see,\n\nAnd this voice you're hearing now\n\nIs all there is of me.\"\n\nIn amazement, Atreyu followed the sound this way and that way through the forest of columns. It took him some time to get a new question ready:\n\n\"Do I understand you right?\n\nYour body is this melody?\n\nBut what if you should cease to sing?\n\nWould you cease to be?\"\n\nThe answer came to him from very near:\n\n\"Once my song is ended,\n\nWhat comes to others soon or late,\n\nWhen their bodies pass away,\n\nWill also be my fate.\n\nMy life will last the time of my song,\n\nBut that will not be long.\"\n\nNow it seemed certain that the voice was sobbing, and Atreyu, who could not understand why, hastened to ask:\n\n\"Why are you so sad? Why are you crying?\n\nYou sound so young. Why speak of dying?\"\n\nAnd the voice came back like an echo:\n\n\"I am only a song of lament,\n\nThe wind will blow me away.\n\nBut tell me now why you were sent.\n\nWhat have you come to say?\"\n\nThe voice died away among the columns, and Atreyu turned in all directions, trying to pick it up again. For a little while he heard nothing, then, starting in the distance, the voice came quickly closer. It sounded almost impatient:\n\n\"Uyulala is answer. Answers on questions feed.\n\nSo ask me what you've come to ask,\n\nFor questions are her need.\"\n\nAtreyu cried out:\n\n\"Then help me, Uyulala, tell me why\n\nYou sing a plaint as if you soon must die.\"\n\nAnd the voice sang:\n\n\"The Childlike Empress is sick,\n\nAnd with her Fantastica will die.\n\nThe Nothing will swallow this place,\n\nIt will perish and so will I.\n\nWe shall vanish into the Nowhere and Never,\n\nAs though we had never been.\n\nThe Empress needs a new name\n\nTo make her well again.\"\n\nAtreyu pleaded:\n\n\"Oh, tell me, Uyulala, oh, tell me who can give\n\nThe Childlike Empress the name,\n\nwhich alone will let her live.\"\n\nThe voice replied:\n\n\"Listen and listen well\n\nTo the truth I have to tell.\n\nThough your spirit may be blind\n\nTo the sense of what I say,\n\nPrint my words upon your mind\n\nBefore you go away.\n\nLater you may dredge them up\n\nFrom the depths of memory,\n\nRaise them to the light of day\n\nExactly as they flow from me.\n\nEverything depends on whether\n\nYou remember faithfully.\"\n\nFor a time he heard only a plaintive sound without words. Then suddenly the voice came from right next to him, as though someone were whispering into his ear:\n\n\"Who can give the Childlike Empress\n\nThe new name that will make her well?\n\nNot you, not I, no elf, no djinn,\n\nCan save us from the evil spell.\n\nFor we are figures in a book\u2014\n\nWe do what we were invented for,\n\nBut we can fashion nothing new\n\nAnd cannot change from what we are.\n\nBut there's a realm outside Fantastica,\n\nThe Outer World is its name,\n\nThe people who live there are rich indeed\n\nAnd not at all the same.\n\nBorn of the Word, the children of man,\n\nOr humans, as they're sometimes called,\n\nHave had the gift of giving names\n\nEver since our worlds began,\n\nIn every age it's they who gave\n\nThe Childlike Empress life,\n\nFor wondrous new names have the power to save.\n\nBut now for many and many a day,\n\nNo human has visited Fantastica,\n\nFor they no longer know the way.\n\nThey have forgotten how real we are,\n\nThey don't believe in us anymore.\n\nOh, if only one child of man would come,\n\nOh, then at last the thing would be done.\n\nIf only one would hear our plea.\n\nFor them it is near, but for us too far,\n\nNever can we go out to them,\n\nFor theirs is the world of reality.\n\nBut tell me, my hero, you so young,\n\nWill you remember what I have sung?\"\n\n\"Oh yes!\" cried Atreyu in his bewilderment. He was determined to imprint every word on his memory, though he had forgotten what for. He merely had a feeling that it was very, very important. But the singsong voice and the effort of hearing and speaking in rhymes made him sleepy. He murmured:\n\n\"I will remember. I will remember every word.\n\nBut tell me, what shall I do with what I've heard?\"\n\nAnd the voice answered:\n\n\"That is for you alone to decide.\n\nI've told you what was in my heart.\n\nSo this is when our ways divide,\n\nWhen you and I must part.\"\n\nAlmost half asleep, Atreyu asked:\n\n\"But if you go away,\n\nWhere will you stay?\"\n\nAgain he heard the sobbing in the voice, which receded more and more as it sang:\n\n\"The Nothing has come near,\n\nThe Oracle is dying.\n\nNo one again will hear\n\nUyulala laughing, sighing.\n\nYou are the last to hear\n\nMy voice among the columns,\n\nSounding far and near.\n\nPerhaps you will accomplish\n\nWhat no one else has done,\n\nBut to succeed, young hero,\n\nRemember what I have sung.\"\n\nAnd then, farther and farther in the distance, Atreyu heard the words:\n\n\"Oh, nothing can happen more than once,\n\nBut all things must happen one day.\n\nOver hill and dale, over wood and stream,\n\nMy dying voice will blow away.\"\n\nThat was the last Atreyu heard.\n\nHe sat down, propped his back against a column, looked up at the night sky, and tried to understand what he had heard. Silence settled around him like a soft, warm cloak, and he fell asleep.\n\nWhen he awoke in the cold dawn, he was lying on his back, looking up at the sky.\n\nThe last stars paled. Uyulala's voice still sounded in his thoughts. And then suddenly he remembered everything that had gone before and the purpose of his Great Quest.\n\nAt last he knew what was to be done. Only a human, a child of man, someone from the world beyond the borders of Fantastica, could give the Childlike Empress a new name. He would just have to find a human and bring him to her.\n\nBriskly he sat up.\n\nAh, thought Bastion. How gladly I would help her! Her and Atreyu too. What a beautiful name I would think up! If I only knew how to reach Atreyu. I'd go this minute. Wouldn't he be amazed if I were suddenly standing before him! But it's impossible. Or is it?\n\nAnd then he said under his breath: \"If there's any way of my getting to you in Fantastica, tell me, Atreyu. I'll come without fail. You'll see.\"\n\nWhen Atreyu looked around, he saw that the forest of columns with its stairways and terraces had vanished. Whichever way he looked there was only the empty plain that he had seen behind each of the three gates before going through. But now the gates were gone, all three of them.\n\nHe stood up and again looked in all directions. It was then that he discovered, in the middle of the plain, a patch of Nothing like those he had seen in Howling Forest. But this time it was much nearer. He turned around and ran the other way as fast as he could.\n\nHe had been running for some time when he saw, far in the distance, a rise in the ground and thought it might be the stony rust-red mountains where the Great Riddle Gate was.\n\nHe started toward it, but he had a long way to go before he was close enough to make out any details. Then he began to have doubts. The landscape looked about right, but there was no gate to be seen. And the stones were not red, but dull gray.\n\nThen, when he had gone much farther, he saw two great stone pillars with a space between them. The lower part of a gate, he thought. But there was no arch above it. What had happened?\n\nHours later, he reached the spot and discovered the answer. The great stone arch had collapsed and the sphinxes were gone.\n\nAtreyu threaded his way through the ruins, then climbed to the top of a stone pyramid and looked out, trying to locate the place where he had left the Gnomics and the luckdragon. Or had they fled from the Nothing in the meantime?\n\nAt last he saw a tiny flag moving this way and that behind the balustrade of Engywook's observatory. Atreyu waved both arms, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted: \"Ho! Are you still there?\"\n\nThe sound of his voice had hardly died away when a pearly-white luckdragon rose from the hollow where the gnomes had their cave and flew through the air with lazy, sinuous movements. He must have been feeling playful, for now and then he turned over on his back and looped-the-loop so fast that he looked like a burst of white flame. And then he landed not far from the pyramid where Atreyu was standing. When he propped himself on his forepaws, he was so high above Atreyu that to bring his head close to him, he had to bend his long, supple neck sharply downward. Rolling his ruby-red eyeballs for joy, stretching his tongue far out of his wide-open gullet, he boomed in his bronze-bell voice: \"Atreyu, my friend and master! So you've finally come back! I'm so glad! We had almost given up hope\u2014the gnomes, that is, not I.\"\n\n\"I'm glad too!\" said Atreyu. \"But what has happened in this one night?\"\n\n\"One night?\" cried Falkor. \"Do you think it's been only one night? You're in for a surprise. Climb on, I'll carry you.\"\n\nAtreyu swung himself up on the enormous animal's back. It was his first time aboard a luckdragon. And though he had ridden wild horses and was anything but timid, this first short ride through the air took his breath away. He clung fast to Falkor's flowing mane, and Falkor called back with a resounding laugh: \"You'll just have to get used to it.\"\n\n\"At least,\" Atreyu called back, gasping for air, \"you seem to be well again.\"\n\n\"Pretty near,\" said the dragon. \"Not quite.\"\n\nThen they landed outside the gnomes' cave, and there in the entrance were Engywook and Urgl waiting for them.\n\nEngywook's tongue went right to work: \"What have you seen and done? Tell us all about it! Those gates, for instance? Do they bear out my theories? And who or what is Uyulala?\"\n\nBut Urgl cut him off. \"That'll do! Let the boy eat and drink. What do you think I've cooked and baked for? Plenty of time later for your idle curiosity.\"\n\nAtreyu climbed down off the dragon's back and exchanged greetings with the gnomes. Again the little table was set with all sorts of delicacies and a steaming pot of herb tea.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck five. Bastian thought sadly of the two chocolate nut bars that he kept in his bedside table at home in case he should be hungry at night. If he had suspected that he would never go back there, he could have brought them along as an iron ration. But it was too late to think of that now.\n\nFalkor stretched out in the little gully in such a way that his huge head was near Atreyu and he could hear everything.\n\n\"Just imagine,\" he said. \"My friend and master thinks he was gone for only one night.\"\n\n\"Was it longer?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"Seven days and seven nights,\" said Falkor. \"Look, my wounds are almost healed.\"\n\nThen for the first time Atreyu noticed that his own wound too was healed. The herb dressing had fallen off. He was amazed. \"How can it be? I passed through three magic gates. I talked with Uyulala, then I fell asleep. But I can't possibly have slept that long.\"\n\n\"Space and time,\" said Engywook, \"must be different in there. Anyway, no one had ever stayed in the Oracle as long as you. What happened? Are you finally going to speak?\"\n\n\"First,\" said Atreyu, \"I'd like to know what has happened here.\"\n\n\"You can see for yourself,\" said Engywook. \"The colors are all fading. Everything is getting more and more unreal. The Great Riddle Gate isn't there anymore. It looks as if the Nothing were taking over.\"\n\n\"What about the sphinxes? Where have they gone? Did they fly away? Did you see them go?\"\n\n\"We saw nothing,\" Engywook lamented. \"We hoped you could tell us something.\n\nSuddenly the stone gate was in ruins, but none of us saw or heard a thing. I even went over and examined the wreckage. And do you know what I found? The fragments are as old as the hills and overgrown with gray moss, as if they had been lying there for hundreds of years, as if the Great Riddle Gate had never existed.\"\n\n\"It was there, though,\" said Atreyu under his breath, \"because I went through it. And then I went through the Magic Mirror Gate and the No-Key Gate.\"\n\nAnd then Atreyu reported everything that had happened to him. Now he remembered every last detail.\n\nAs Atreyu told them his story, Engywook, who at first had impatiently demanded further information, became more and more subdued. And when Atreyu repeated almost word for word what Uyulala had told him, the gnome said nothing at all. His shriveled little face had taken on a look of deepest gloom.\n\n\"Well,\" said Atreyu in conclusion. \"Now you know the secret. Uyulala is just a voice. She can only be heard. She is where she sings.\"\n\nFor a time Engywook was silent. When he spoke, his voice was husky: \"You mean she was.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu. \"She herself said no one else would ever hear her speak. I was the last.\"\n\nTwo little tears flowed down Engywook's wrinkled cheeks.\n\n\"All for nothing!\" he croaked. \"My whole life work, all my research, my year-long observations. At last someone brings me the last stone for my scientific edifice, finally I'm in a position to complete my work, to write the last chapter\u2014and it's absolutely futile and superfluous. It's no longer of the slightest interest to anyone, because the object under investigation has ceased to exist. There go my hopes. All shattered.\"\n\nHe seemed to break into a fit of coughing, but actually he was shaken with sobs.\n\nMoved to sympathy, Urgl stroked his bald little head and mumbled: \"Poor old Engywook! Poor old Engywook! Don't let it get you down. You'll find something else to occupy you.\"\n\n\"Woman!\" Engywook fumed at her. \"What you see before you is not a poor old Engywook, but a tragic figure.\"\n\nOnce again he ran into the cave, and again a door was heard slamming within.\n\nUrgl shook her head and sighed. \"He means no harm,\" she muttered. \"He's a good old sort. If only he weren't plumb crazy!\"\n\nWhen they had. finished eating, Urgl stood up and said: \"I've got to pack now. We can't take much with us, but we will need a few things. I'd better hurry.\"\n\n\"You're going away?\" Atreyu asked.\n\nUrgl nodded. \"We have no choice,\" she said sadly. \"Where the Nothing takes hold, nothing grows. And now, my poor old man has no reason to stay. We'll just have to see how we make out. We'll find a place somewhere. But what about you? What are your plans?\"\n\n\"I have to do as Uyulala told me,\" said Atreyu. \"Try and find a human and take him to the Childlike Empress to give her a new name.\"\n\n\"Where will you look for this human?\" Urgl asked.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Atreyu. \"Somewhere beyond the borders of Fantastica.\"\n\n\"We'll get there!\" came Falkor's bell-like voice. I'll carry you. You'll see, we'll be lucky.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" Urgl grunted, \"you'd better get started.\"\n\n\"Maybe we could give you a lift,\" Atreyu suggested. \"For part of the way.\"\n\n\"That's all I need,\" said Urgl. \"You won't catch me gallivanting around in the air. A self-respecting gnome keeps his feet on the ground. Besides, you mustn't let us delay you. You have more important things to do\u2014for us all.\"\n\n\"But I want to show my gratitude,\" said Atreyu.\n\n\"The best way of doing that is to get started and stop frittering the time away with useless jibber-jabber.\"\n\n\"She's got something there,\" said Falkor. \"Let's go, Atreyu.\"\n\nAtreyu swung himself up on the luckdragon's back. One last time he turned back and shouted: \"Goodbye!\"\n\nBut Urgl was already inside the cave, packing.\n\nWhen some hours later she and Engywook stepped out into the open, each was carrying an overloaded back-basket, and again they were busily quarreling. Off they waddled on their tiny, crooked legs, and never once looked back.\n\nLater on, Engywook became very famous, in fact, he became the most famous gnome in the world, but not because of his scientific investigations. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nAt the moment when the two gnomes were starting out, Atreyu was far away, whizzing through the skies of Fantastica on the back of Falkor, the white luckdragon.\n\nInvoluntarily Bastian looked up at the skylight, trying to imagine how it would be if Falkor came cutting through the darkening sky like a dancing white flame, if he and Atreyu were coming to get him.\n\n\"Oh my,\" he sighed. \"Wouldn't that be something!\"\n\nHe could help them, and they could help him. He would be saved and so would Fantastica.\n\nigh in the air rode Atreyu, his red cloak flowing behind him. His blue-black hair fluttered in the wind. With steady, wavelike movements, Falkor, the white luckdragon, glided through the mists and tatters of clouds...\n\nUp and down and up and down and up and down...\n\nHow long had they been flying? For days and nights and more days\u2014Atreyu had lost track. The dragon had the gift of flying in his sleep. Farther and farther they flew.\n\nSometimes Atreyu dozed off, clinging fast to the dragon's white mane. But it was only a light, restless sleep. And more and more his waking became a dream, all hazy and blurred.\n\nShadowy mountains passed below him, lands and seas, islands and rivers... Atreyu had lost interest in them, and gave up trying to hurry Falkor as he had done on first leaving the Southern Oracle. For then he had been impatient, thinking it a simple matter, for one with a dragon to ride, to reach the border of Fantastica and cross it to the Outer World.\n\nHe hadn't known how very large Fantastica was.\n\nNow he had to fight the leaden weariness that was trying to overpower him. His eyes, once as keen as a young eagle's, had lost their distant vision. From time to time he would pull himself upright and try to look around, but then he would sink back and stare straight ahead at the dragon's long, supple body with its pearly pink-and-white scales.\n\nFalkor was tired too. His strength, which had seemed inexhaustible, was running out.\n\nMore than once in the course of their long flight they had seen below them spots which the Nothing had invaded and which gave them the feeling that they were going blind. Seen from that height, many of these spots seemed relatively small, but others were as big as whole countries. Fear gripped the luckdragon and his rider, and at first they changed direction to avoid looking at the horror. But, strange as it may seem, horror loses it's power to frighten when repeated too often. And since the patches of Nothing became more and more frequent, the travelers were gradually getting used to them.\n\nThey had been flying in silence for quite some time when suddenly Falkor's bronze-bell tone rang out: \"Atreyu, my little master. Are you asleep?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Atreyu, though actually he had been caught up in a terrifying dream.\n\n\"What is it, Falkor?\"\n\n\"I've been wondering if it wouldn't be wiser to turn back.\"\n\n\"Turn back? Where to?\"\n\n\"To the Ivory Tower. To the Childlike Empress.\"\n\n\"You want us to go to her empty-handed?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't call it that, Atreyu. What was your mission?\"\n\n\"To discover the cause of her illness and find out what would cure it.\"\n\n\"But,\" said Falkor, \"nothing was said about your bringing her the cure.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Maybe it's a mistake, trying to cross the border of Fantastica in search of a human.\"\n\n\"I don't see what you're driving at, Falkor. Explain yourself.\"\n\n\"The Childlike Empress is deathly sick,\" said the dragon, \"because she needs a new name. Morla the Aged One told you that. But only a human, only a child of man from the Outer World can give her this name. Uyulala told you that. So you've actually completed your mission. It seems to me you should let the Childlike Empress know it as soon as possible.\"\n\n\"But it won't do her a bit of good,\" Atreyu protested, \"unless I bring her the human who can save her.\"\n\n\"Don't be so sure,\" said Falkor. \"She has much greater power than you or I. Maybe she would have no difficulty in bringing a human to Fantastica. Maybe she has ways that are unknown to you and me and everyone else in Fantastica. But to do so she needs to know what you have found out. If that's the way it is, there's no point in our trying to find a human on our own. She might even die while we're looking. But maybe if we turn back in time, we can save her.\"\n\nAtreyu made no answer. The dragon could be right, he reflected. But then he could be wrong. If he went back now with his message, the Childlike Empress might very well say: What good does that do me? And now it's too late to send you out again.\n\nHe didn't know what to do. And he was tired, much too tired to decide anything.\n\n\"You know, Falkor,\" he said, hardly above a whisper, \"you may be right. Or you may be wrong. Let's fly on a little further. Then if we haven't come to a border, we'll turn back.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by a little further?\" the dragon asked.\n\n\"A few hours,\" Atreyu murmured. \"Oh well, just one hour.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Falkor, \"just one hour.\"\n\nBut that one hour was one hour too many.\n\nThey hadn't noticed that the sky in the north was black with clouds. In the west the sky was aflame, and ugly-looking clouds hung down over the horizon like seaweed.\n\nIn the east a storm was rising like a blanket of gray lead, and all around it there were tatters of cloud that looked like blue ink blots. And from the south came a sulfur-yellow mist, streaked with lightning.\n\n\"We seem to be getting into bad weather,\" said Falkor.\n\nAtreyu looked in all directions.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"It looks bad. But what can we do but fly on?\"\n\n\"It would be more sensible,\" said Falkor, \"to look for shelter. If this is what I think, it's no joke.\"\n\n\"What do you think?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"I think it's the four Wind Giants, starting one of their battles. They're almost always fighting to see which is the strongest and should rule over the others. To them it's a sort of game, because they have nothing to fear. But God help anyone who gets caught in their little tiffs.\"\n\n\"Can't you fly higher?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"Beyond their reach, you mean? No, I can't fly that high. And as far as I can see, there's nothing but water below us. Some enormous ocean. I don't see any place to hide in.\"\n\n\"Then,\" said Atreyu, \"we'll just have to wait till they get here. Anyway, there's something I want to ask them.\"\n\n\"What?!\" cried the dragon, so terrified that he jumped, in a manner of speaking, sky-high.\n\n\"If they are the four Wind Giants,\" Atreyu explained, \"they must know all four corners of Fantastica. If anyone can tell us where the borders are, it's them.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" cried the dragon. \"You think you can just stop and chat with Wind Giants?\"\n\n\"What are their names?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"The one from the north,\" said Falkor, \"is called Lirr, the one from the east is Baureo, the one from the south is Sheerek, and the one from the west is Mayestril. But tell me, Atreyu. What are you? Are you a little boy or a bar of iron? How come you're not afraid?\"\n\n\"When I passed through the sphinxes' gate,\" Atreyu replied, \"I lost all my fear. And besides, I'm wearing the emblem of the Childlike Empress. Everyone in Fantastica respects it. Why shouldn't the Wind Giants?\"\n\n\"Oh, they will,\" cried Falkor, \"they will. But they're stupid, and nothing can make them stop fighting one another. You'll see.\"\n\nMeanwhile the storm clouds from all four directions had converged. It seemed to Atreyu that he was at the center of a huge funnel, which was revolving faster and faster, mixing the sulfur-yellow, the leaden gray, the blood-red, and the deep black all together.\n\nHe and his white dragon were spun about in a circle like a matchstick in a great whirlpool. And then he saw the Wind Giants.\n\nActually all he saw was faces, because their limbs kept changing in every possible way\u2014from long to short, from clear-cut to misty\u2014and they were so knotted together in a monstrous free-for-all that it was impossible to make out their real shapes, or even how many of them there were. The faces too were constantly changing; now they were round and puffed, now stretched from top to bottom or from side to side. But at all times they could be told apart. They opened their mouths and bellowed and roared and howled and laughed at one another. They didn't even seem to notice the dragon and his rider, who were gnats in comparison to the Wind Giants.\n\nAtreyu raised himself as high as he could. With his right hand he reached for the golden amulet on his chest and shouted at the top of his lungs: \"In the name of the Childlike Empress, be still and listen.\"\n\nAnd the unbelievable happened!\n\nAs though suddenly stricken dumb, they fell silent. Their mouths closed, and eight gigantic goggle-eyes were directed at AURYN. The tempest stopped and the air was deathly still.\n\n\"Answer me!\" cried Atreyu. \"Where are the borders of Fantastica? Do you know, Lirr?\"\n\n\"Not in the north,\" said the black cloud face.\n\n\"And you, Baureo?\"\n\n\"Not in the east,\" said the leaden-gray cloud face.\n\n\"You tell me, Sheerek!\"\n\n\"There is no border in the south,\" said the sulfur-yellow cloud face.\n\n\"Mayestril, do you know?\"\n\n\"No border in the west,\" said the fiery-red cloud face.\n\nAnd then they all spoke as with one mouth: \"Who are you, who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress and don't know that Fantastica has no borders?\"\n\nAtreyu made no reply. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him that Fantastica might have no borders whatsoever. Then his whole Quest had been for nothing.\n\nHe hardly noticed it when the Wind Giants resumed their war game. He had given up caring what would happen to him. He clung fast to the dragon's mane when they were hurled upward by a whirlwind. The lightning played around them, they were spun in a circle and almost drowned in a downpour of rain. They were sucked into a fiery wind that nearly burned them up, but a moment later a hailstorm, consisting not of stones but of icicles as long as spears, flung them downward. So it went: up and down, down and up, this way and that. The Wind Giants were fighting for power.\n\nA gust of wind turned Falkor over on his back. \"Hold tight!\" he shouted.\n\nBut it was too late. Atreyu had lost his hold and fell. He fell and fell, and then he lost consciousness.\n\nWhen he came to, Atreyu was lying on white sand. He heard the sound of waves, and when he looked around he saw that he had been washed up on a beach. It was a gray, foggy day, but there was no wind. The sea was calm and there was no sign that the Wind Giants had been fighting a battle only a short time before. The beach was flat and there were no hills or rocks in sight, only a few gnarled and crooked trees which, seen through the mist, looked like great clawed hands.\n\nAtreyu sat up. Seeing his red buffalo-hair cloak a few steps away he crawled over to it and threw it over his shoulders. To his surprise, it was almost dry. So he must have been lying there for quite a while.\n\nHow had he got there? Why hadn't he drowned?\n\nDimly he remembered arms that had carried him, and strange singing voices. Poor child, beautiful child! Hold him! Don't let him go under!\n\nPerhaps it had only been the sound of the waves.\n\nOr could it have been sea nymphs and water sprites? Probably they had seen the Glory and that was why they had saved him.\n\nInvoluntarily, he reached for the amulet\u2014it was gone. There was no chain around his neck. He had lost the Gem.\n\n\"Falkor!\" he shouted as loud as he could. He jumped up and ran back and forth, shouting in all directions: \"Falkor! Falkor! Where are you?\"\n\nNo answer came\u2014only the slow, steady sound of the waves breaking against the beach.\n\nHeaven only knew where the Wind Giants had driven the white dragon. Maybe Falkor was looking for his little master in an entirely different place, miles and miles away. Maybe he wasn't even alive.\n\nNo longer was Atreyu a dragon rider, and no longer was he the Childlike Empress's messenger. He was only a little boy. And all alone.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck six.\n\nBy then it was dark outside. The rain had stopped. Not a sound to be heard. Bastian stared into the candle flames.\n\nThen he gave a start. The floor had creaked.\n\nHe thought he heard someone breathing. He held his breath and listened. Except for the small circle of light shed by the candles, it was dark in the big attic.\n\nDidn't he hear soft steps on the stairs? Hadn't the handle of the attic door moved ever so slowly?\n\nAgain the floor creaked.\n\nWhat if there were ghosts in this attic!\n\n\"Nonsense!\" said Bastian none too loudly. \"There's no such thing! Everyone knows that.\"\n\nThen why were there so many stories about them?\n\nMaybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do.\n\nAtreyu wrapped himself up tight in his red cloak, for he was cold, and started inland. The country, as far as he could see through the fog, was flat and monotonous. The only change he noticed as he strode along was the appearance among the stunted trees of bushes which looked as if they were made of rusty sheet metal and were almost as hard.\n\nYou could easily hurt yourself brushing against them if you weren't careful.\n\nAbout an hour later, Atreyu came to a road paved with bumpy, irregularly shaped stones. Thinking it was bound to lead somewhere, he decided to follow it but preferred to walk on the soft ground beside the bumpy paving stones. The road kept twisting and turning, though it was hard to see why, for there was no sign of any hill, pond, or stream.\n\nIn that part of the country everything seemed to be crooked.\n\nAtreyu hadn't been skirting the road for very long when he heard a strange thumping sound. It was far away but coming closer. It sounded like the muffled beat of a big drum. In between beats he heard a tinkling of bells and a shrill piping that could have been made by fifes. He hid behind a bush by the side of the road and waited to see what would happen.\n\nSlowly the strange music came closer, and then the first shapes emerged from the fog. They seemed to be dancing, but it was a dance without charm or gaiety. The dancers jumped grotesquely, rolled on the ground, crawled on all fours, leapt into the air, and carried on like crazy people. But all Atreyu could hear was the slow, muffled drumbeats, the shrill fifes, and a whimpering and panting from many throats.\n\nMore and more figures appeared, the procession seemed endless. Atreyu looked at the dancers' faces; they were ashen gray and bathed in sweat, and the eyes had a wild feverish glow. Some of the dancers lashed themselves with whips.\n\nThey're mad, Atreyu thought, and a cold shiver ran down his spine.\n\nThe procession consisted mostly of night-hobs, kobolds, and ghosts. There were vampires as well, and quite a few witches, old ones with great humps and beards, but also young ones who looked beautiful and wicked. If he had had AURYN, he would have approached them and asked what was going on. As it was, he preferred to stay in his hiding place until the mad procession had passed and the last straggler vanished hopping and limping in the fog.\n\nOnly then did he venture out on the road and look after the ghostly procession.\n\nShould he follow them? He couldn't make up his mind. By that time, to tell the truth, he didn't know if there was anything that he should or should not do.\n\nFor the first time he was fully aware of how much he needed the Childlike Empress's amulet and how helpless he was without it. And not only or even mainly because of the protection it had given him\u2014it was thanks to his own strength, after all, that he had stood up to all the hardships and terrors and the loneliness of his Quest\u2014but as long as he had carried the emblem, he had never been at a loss for what to do. Like a mysterious compass, it had guided his thoughts in the right direction. And now that was changed, now he had no secret power to lead him.\n\nHe had no idea what to do, but he couldn't bear to stand there as though paralyzed. So he made himself follow the muffled drumming, which could still be heard in the distance.\n\nWhile making his way through the fog\u2014always careful to keep a suitable distance between himself and the last stragglers\u2014he tried to put his thoughts in order.\n\nWhy, oh, why hadn't he listened when Falkor advised him to fly straight to the Childlike Empress? He would have brought her Uyulala's message and returned the Gem.\n\nWithout AURYN and without Falkor, he would never be able to reach her. She would wait for him till her last moment, hoping he would come, trusting him to save her and Fantastica\u2014but in vain.\n\nThat in itself was bad enough, but still worse was what he had learned from the Wind Giants, that Fantastica had no borders. If there was no way of leaving Fantastica, then it would be impossible to call in a human form across the border. Because Fantastica was endless, its end was inevitable.\n\nBut while he was stumbling over the bumpy paving stones in the fog, Uyulala's gentle voice resounded in his memory, and a spark of hope was kindled in his heart.\n\nLots of humans had come to Fantastica in the past and given the Childlike Empress glorious new names. That's what she had sung. So there was a way from the one world to the other!\n\n\"For them it is near, but for us too far,\n\nNever can we go out to them.\"\n\nYes, those were Uyulala's words. Humans, the children of man, had forgotten the way. But mightn't just one of them, a single one, remember?\n\nHis own hopeless situation mattered little to Atreyu. What mattered was that a human should hear Fantastica's cry of distress and come to the rescue, as had happened many times before. Perhaps, perhaps one had already started out and was on his way.\n\n\"Yes! Yes!\" Bastian shouted. Then, terrified of his own voice, he added more softly: \"I'd go and help you if I knew how. I don't know the way, Atreyu. I honestly don't.\"\n\nThe muffled drumbeats and the shrill piping had stopped. Without noticing it, Atreyu had come so close to the procession that he almost ran into the last stragglers.\n\nSince he was barefoot, his steps were soundless\u2014but that wasn't why those creatures took no notice of him. He could have been stomping with hobnailed boots and shouting at the top of his lungs without attracting their attention.\n\nBy that time the procession had broken up and the spooks were scattered over a large muddy field interspersed with gray grass. Some swayed from side to side, others stood or sat motionless, but in all their eyes there was a feverish glow, and they were all looking in the same direction.\n\nThen Atreyu saw what they were staring at in fascinated horror. On the far side of the field lay the Nothing.\n\nIt was the selfsame Nothing that he had seen from the bark trolls' treetop, or on the plain where the Magic Gates of the South Oracle had stood, or looking down from Falkor's back\u2014but until then he had always seen it from a distance. This time it was close by. It cut across the entire landscape and was coming slowly but irresistibly closer.\n\nAtreyu saw that the spooks in the field ahead of him were twitching and quivering. Their limbs were convulsed and their mouths were wide open, as though they had wanted to scream or laugh, though not a sound came out of them. And then all at once\u2014like leaves driven by a gust of wind\u2014they rushed toward the Nothing. They leapt, they rolled, they flung themselves into it.\n\nThe last of the ghostly crowd had just vanished when Atreyu felt to his horror that his own body was beginning to take short, convulsive steps in the direction of the Nothing. He felt drawn to it by an unreasoning desire, and braced his will against it. He commanded himself to stand still. Slowly, very slowly, he managed to turn around and step by step, as though bucking a powerful current, to struggle forward. The force of attraction weakened and he ran, ran with all his might over the bumpy paving stones. He slipped, fell, picked himself up, and ran on. He had no time to wonder where this foggy road would lead him.\n\nHe followed the senseless twists and turns of the road until high pitch-black ramparts appeared in the fog ahead of him. Behind them several crooked towers jutted into the gray sky. The heavy wooden wings of the town gate were rotting away and hung loose on rusty hinges.\n\nAtreyu went in.\n\nIt was growing colder and colder in the attic. Bastion's teeth were chattering.\n\nWhat if he should get sick\u2014what would become of him then? He might come down with pneumonia, like Willy, a boy in his class. Then he would die all alone in this attic. There'd be no one to help him.\n\nHe'd have been very glad just then to have his father come and save him.\n\nBut go home? No, he couldn't. He'd rather die.\n\nHe took the rest of the army blankets and wrapped them around him.\n\nAfter a while he felt warmer.\n\nn the endless sky, somewhere above the roaring waves, Falkor's voice rang out like a great bronze bell:\n\n\"Atreyu! Where are you, Atreyu?\" The Wind Giants had long finished their war game and had stormed apart. They would meet again in this or some other place, to continue their battle as they had done since time immemorial. They had already forgotten the white dragon and his little rider, for they remembered nothing and knew nothing except their own enormous power.\n\nWhen Atreyu fell, Falkor tried to reach him and catch him. But a sudden whirlwind had driven the dragon upward and far away. When he returned, the Wind Giants were raging over another part of the sea. Falkor tried desperately to find the place where Atreyu had fallen, but even a white luckdragon can't possibly find anything as tiny as a little boy in the seething foam of an angry ocean.\n\nBut Falkor wouldn't give up. He flew high into the air to get a better view, then he skimmed the waves or flew in larger and larger circles, all the while calling Atreyu by name.\n\nBeing a luckdragon, he never doubted for a moment that everything would come out all right in the end. And his mighty voice resounded amid the roaring of the waves: \"Atreyu! Atreyu, where are you?\"\n\nAtreyu wandered through the deathly stillness of a deserted city. The place seemed to be under a curse, a city of haunted castles and houses, inhabited only by ghosts. Like everything else in this country, the streets were crooked. Enormous spider webs were suspended over them, and a foul smell rose from the cellars and well shafts.\n\nAt first Atreyu darted from wall to wall for fear that someone would see him, but after a while he didn't even bother to hide. The streets and squares were deserted, and nothing stirred in the houses. He went into some of them, but found only overturned furniture, tattered curtains, broken china and glassware\u2014signs of devastation but no inhabitants. On one table there was still a half-eaten meal, dishes with black soup in them, and some sticky chunks of something that may have been bread. He ate some of both. The taste was disgusting, but he was very hungry. It struck him as almost fitting that he should end up in this town. Just the place, he thought, for someone who had given up hope.\n\nBastian was weak with hunger.\n\nFor some strange reason his thoughts turned to Anna's apple strudel\u2014the best apple strudel in the whole world.\n\nAnna came three times a week. She would do a bit of typing for Bastian's father and put the house in order. And usually she would cook or bake something. She was a strapping, bouncy woman with an unrestrained, cheery laugh. Bastian's father was polite to her but seemed hardly aware of her presence. She was seldom able to bring a smile to his worried face. But when she was there, the place was a little more cheerful.\n\nThough unmarried, Anna had a little daughter. Her name was Christa, she was three years younger than Bastian, and she had beautiful blond hair. At first Anna had brought Christa with her almost every time. Christa was very shy. Bastian spent hours telling her his stories, and she would sit there still as a mouse, watching him wide-eyed. She looked up to Bastian, and he was very fond of her.\n\nBut a year ago Anna had sent her daughter to a boarding school in the country. Since then she and Bastian had seldom seen each other.\n\nBastian had been rather cross with Anna. She had tried to explain why it was better for Christa, but he wasn't convinced.\n\nEven so, he could never resist her apple strudel.\n\nHe wondered in his distress how long a person could go without eating. Three days? Two? Maybe you'd get hallucinations after twenty-four hours. On his fingers Bastian counted the hours he had been there. At least ten. Maybe more. If only he had saved his sandwich, or at least his apple.\n\nIn the flickering candlelight the glass eyes of the fox, the owl, and the huge eagle looked almost alive. Their moving shadows loomed large on the attic wall.\n\nAtreyu went out into the street again and wandered aimlessly about. He passed through neighborhoods where all the houses were small and so low that he could reach up to the eaves, and others lined with mansions many stories high, the fronts of which were adorned with statues. But all these statues were of skeletons or demons, which grimaced down at the forlorn wanderer.\n\nThen suddenly he stopped stock-still.\n\nFrom not far away he heard a raucous wailing that sounded so plaintive, so hopeless that it cut him to the heart. All the despair, all the desolation of the creatures of darkness was in that lament, which echoed back from the walls of distant buildings, until in the end it sounded like the howling of a scattered wolf pack.\n\nAtreyu followed the sound, which gradually grew weaker and ended in a hoarse sob. He had to search for some time. He passed a gateway, entered a narrow, lightless court, passed through an arch, and finally came to a damp, grimy backyard. And there, chained, lay a gigantic, half-starved werewolf. Each rib stood out separately under its mangy fur, the vertebrae looked like the teeth of a saw, and its tongue dangled from its half-open mouth.\n\nSlowly Atreyu approached him. When the werewolf noticed him, it raised its great head with a jerk. A greenish light flared up in its eyes.\n\nFor a time the two looked at each other without a word, without a sound. Finally the wolf let out a soft, dangerous-sounding growl: \"Go away. Let me die in peace.\"\n\nAtreyu didn't stir. Just as softly he answered: \"I heard your call. That's why I came.\"\n\nThe werewolf's head sank back. \"I didn't call anyone,\" he growled. \"I was singing my own dirge.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" Atreyu asked, taking a step closer.\n\n\"I am Gmork, the werewolf.\"\n\n\"Why are you lying here chained?\"\n\n\"They forgot me when they went away.\"\n\n\"Who are they?\"\n\n\"The ones who chained me.\"\n\n\"Where did they go?\"\n\nGmork made no answer. He watched Atreyu from under half-closed lids. After a long silence, he said: \"You don't belong here, little stranger. Neither in this city, nor in this country. What have you come here for?\"\n\nAtreyu bowed his head.\n\n\"I don't know how I got here. What is the name of this city?\"\n\n\"It is the capital of the most famous country in all Fantastica,\" said Gmork. \"More stories are told about this country and this city than about any other. Surely you've heard of Spook City and the Land of Ghosts?\"\n\nAtreyu noded slowly.\n\nGmork hadn't taken his eyes off the boy. He was amazed that this green-skinned boy should look at him so quietly out of his black eyes and show no sign of fear.\n\n\"And who are you?\" he asked.\n\nAtreyu thought a while before answering.\n\n\"I'm Nobody.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"I mean that I once had a name. It can't be named anymore. That makes me Nobody.\"\n\nThe werewolf bared his hideous fangs for a moment in what was no doubt intended as a smile. He was familiar with mental anguish of every kind and sensed a certain kinship in the boy.\n\n\"If that's the case,\" he said, \"then Nobody has heard me and Nobody has come to me, and Nobody is speaking to me in my last hour.\"\n\nAtreyu nodded again. Then he asked: \"Can Nobody free you from your chain?\"\n\nThe greenish light in the werewolf's eyes flickered. He began to growl and to lick his chops.\n\n\"You'd really do that?\" he blurted out. \"You'd really set a hungry werewolf free? Do you know what that means? Nobody would be safe from me.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Atreyu. \"But I'm Nobody. Why should I be afraid of you?\"\n\nHe wanted to approach Gmork. But again the wolf uttered his deep, terrifying growl. The boy shrank back.\n\n\"Don't you want me to set you free?\" he asked.\n\nAll at once the werewolf seemed very tired.\n\n\"You can't do that. But if you come within my reach, I'll have to tear you to pieces, my boy. That would delay my end a little, an hour or two. So keep away from me and let me die in peace.\"\n\nAtreyu thought it over.\n\n\"Maybe,\" he said finally. \"Maybe I can find you something to eat. I'll look around.\"\n\nSlowly Gmork opened his eyes. The greenish fire had gone out of them.\n\n\"Go to hell, you little fool! Do you want to keep me alive until the Nothing gets here?\"\n\n\"I thought,\" Atreyu stammered, \"that maybe if I brought you food and you were full, I could get close enough to take off your chain...\"\n\nGmork gnashed his teeth.\n\n\"Do you think I wouldn't have bitten through it myself if this were an ordinary chain?\"\n\nAs though to prove his point, he clamped his jaws on the chain. The chain jangled as he tugged and pulled at it. After a while he let it go.\n\n\"It's a magic chain. Only the person who put it on can take it off. But she will never come back.\"\n\n\"Who is that?\"\n\nGmork whimpered like a whipped dog. It was some time before he was calm enough to answer.\n\n\"It was Gaya, the Dark Princess.\"\n\n\"Where has she gone?\"\n\n\"She has leapt into the Nothing\u2014like everyone else around here.\"\n\nAtreyu remembered the mad dancers he had seen outside the city in the foggy countryside.\n\n\"Why didn't they run away?\" he murmured.\n\n\"Because they had given up hope. That makes you beings weak. The Nothing pulls at you, and none of you has the strength to resist it for long.\"\n\nGmork gave a deep, malignant laugh.\n\n\"What about yourself?\" Atreyu asked. \"You speak as if you weren't one of us?\"\n\nGmork watched him out of the corner of his eye.\n\n\"I am not one of you.\"\n\n\"Then where are you from?\"\n\n\"Don't you know what a werewolf is?\n\nAtreyu shook his head.\n\n\"You know only Fantastica,\" said Gmork. \"There are other worlds. The world of humans, for instance. But there are creatures who have no world of their own, but are able to go in and out of many worlds. I am one of those. In the human world, I appear in human form, but I'm not human. And in Fantastica, I take on a Fantastican form\u2014but I'm not one of you.\"\n\nAtreyu sat down on the ground and gazed at the dying werewolf out of great dark eyes.\n\n\"You've been in the world of humans?\"\n\n\"I've often gone back and forth between their world and yours.\"\n\n\"Gmork,\" Atreyu stammered, and he couldn't keep his lips from trembling, \"can you tell me the way to the world of humans?\"\n\nA green spark shone in Gmork's eyes. He seemed to be laughing deep inside.\n\n\"For you and your kind it's easy to get there. There's only one hitch: You can never come back. You'll have to stay forever. Do you want to?\"\n\n\"What must I do?\" Atreyu asked. His mind was made up.\n\n\"What everyone else around here has done before you. You must leap into the Nothing. But there's no hurry. Because you'll do it sooner or later in any case, when the last parts of Fantastica go.\"\n\nAtreyu stood up.\n\nGmork saw that the boy was trembling all over. Not knowing why, he spoke reassuringly: \"Don't be afraid. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid,\" said Atreyu. \"But I never expected to get my hope back in a place like this. And thanks to you!\"\n\nGmork's eyes glowed like two thin green moons.\n\n\"You have nothing to hope for, sonny\u2014whatever your plans may be. When you turn up in the world of humans, you won't be what you are here. That's the secret that no one in Fantastica can know.\"\n\nAtreyu stood there with his arms dangling. \"What will I be? Tell me the secret.\"\n\nFor a long time Gmork neither spoke nor moved. Atreyu was beginning to fear that the answer would never come, but at length the werewolf breathed heavily and spoke:\n\n\"What do you think I am, sonny? Your friend? Take care. I'm only passing the time with you. At the moment you can't even leave here. I hold you fast with your hope.\n\nBut as I speak, the Nothing is creeping in from all sides and closing around Spook City.\n\nSoon there will be no way out. Then you will be lost. If you stay and listen, your decision is already made. But you can still escape if you choose.\"\n\nThe cruel line around Gmork's mouth deepened. Atreyu hesitated for just a moment. Then he whispered: \"Tell me the secret. What will I be in the world of humans?\"\n\nAgain Gmork sank into a long silence. His breath came in convulsive gasps. Then suddenly he raised himself on his forepaws. Atreyu had to look up at him. And then for the first time he saw how big and terrifying the werewolf was. When Gmork spoke, his voice was like the jangling of chains.\n\n\"Have you seen the Nothing, sonny?\"\n\n\"Yes, many times.\"\n\n\"What does it look like?\"\n\n\"As if one were blind.\"\n\n\"That's right\u2014and when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You'll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. Do you know what you and your kind are called there?\"\n\n\"No,\" Atreyu whispered.\n\n\"Lies!\" Gmork barked.\n\nAtreyu shook his head. All the blood had gone out of his lips.\n\n\"How can that be?\"\n\nGmork was enjoying Atreyu's consternation. This little talk was cheering him up.\n\nAfter a while, he went on:\n\n\"You ask me what you will be there. But what are you here? What are you creatures of Fantastica? Dreams, poetic inventions, characters in a neverending story. Do you think you're real? Well yes, here in your world you are. But when you've been through the Nothing, you won't be real anymore. You'll be unrecognizable. And you will be in another world. In that world, you Fantasticans won't be anything like yourselves.\n\nYou will bring delusion and madness into the human world. Tell me, sonny, what do you suppose will become of all the Spook City folk who have jumped into the Nothing?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Atreyu stammered.\n\n\"They will become delusions in the minds of human beings, fears where there is nothing to fear, desires for vain, hurtful things, despairing thoughts where there is no reason to despair.\"\n\n\"All of us?\" asked Atreyu in horror.\n\n\"No,\" said Gmork, \"there are many kinds of delusion. According to what you are here, ugly or beautiful, stupid or clever, you will become ugly or beautiful, stupid or clever lies.\"\n\n\"What about me?\" Atreyu asked. \"What will I be?\"\n\nGmork grinned.\n\n\"I won't tell you that. You'll see. Or rather, you won't see, because you won't be yourself anymore.\"\n\nAtreyu stared at the werewolf with wide-open eyes.\n\nGmork went on:\n\n\"That's why humans hate Fantastica and everything that comes from here. They want to destroy it. And they don't realize that by trying to destroy it they multiply the lies that keep flooding the human world. For these lies are nothing other than creatures of Fantastica who have ceased to be themselves and survive only as living corpses, poisoning the souls of men with their fetid smell. But humans don't know it. Isn't that a good joke?\"\n\n\"And there's no one left in the human world,\" Atreyu asked in a whisper, \"who doesn't hate and fear us?\"\n\n\"I know of none,\" said Gmork. \"And it's not surprising, because you yourselves, once you're there, can't help working to make humans believe that Fantastica doesn't exist.\"\n\n\"Doesn't exist?\" the bewildered Atreyu repeated.\n\n\"That's right, sonny,\" said Gmork. \"In fact, that's the heart of the matter. Don't you see? If humans believe Fantastica doesn't exist, they won't get the idea of visiting your country. And as long as they don't know you creatures of Fantastica as you really are, the Manipulators do what they like with them.\"\n\n\"What can they do?\"\n\n\"Whatever they please. When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts. That's why I sided with the powerful and served them\u2014because I wanted to share their power.\"\n\n\"I want no part in it!\" Atreyu cried out.\n\n\"Take it easy, you little fool,\" the werewolf growled. \"When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded...\"\n\nFor a time Gmork peered at the boy out of half-closed eyes. Then he added: \"The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist. Maybe they will be able to make good use of you.\"\n\nAtreyu stood there with bowed head.\n\nNow he knew why humans had stopped coming to Fantastica and why none would come to give the Childlike Empress new names. The more of Fantastica that was destroyed, the more lies flooded the human world, and the more unlikely it became that a child of man should come to Fantastica. It was a vicious circle from which there was no escape. Now Atreyu knew it.\n\nAnd so did someone else: Bastian Balthazar Bux.\n\nHe now realized that not only was Fantastica sick, but the human world as well. The two were connected. He had always felt this, though he could not have explained why it was so. He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: \"Life is like that,\" but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.\n\nAnd now he knew that someone would have to go to Fantastica to make both worlds well again.\n\nIf no human knew the way, it was precisely because of the lies and delusions that came into the world because Fantastica was being destroyed. It was these lies and delusions that made people blind.\n\nWith horror and shame Bastian thought of his own lies. He didn't count the stories he made up. That was something entirely different. But now and then he had told deliberate lies\u2014sometimes out of fear, sometimes as a way of getting something he wanted, sometimes just to puff himself up. What inhabitants of Fantastica might he have maimed and destroyed with his lies?\n\nOne thing was plain: He too had contributed to the sad state of Fantastica. And he was determined to do something to make it well again. He owed it to Atreyu, who was prepared to make any sacrifice to bring Bastian to Fantastica. He had to find the way.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck eight.\n\nThe werewolf had been watching Atreyu closely.\n\n\"Now you know how you can get to the human world,\" he said. \"Do you still want to go, sonny?\"\n\nAtreyu shook his head.\n\n\"I don't want to turn into a lie,\" he said.\n\n\"You'll do that whether you like it or not,\" said Gmork almost cheerfully.\n\n\"But what about you? Why are you here?\"\n\n\"I had a mission,\" Gmork said reluctantly.\n\n\"You too?\"\n\nAtreyu looked at the werewolf with interest, almost with sympathy.\n\n\"Were you successful?\"\n\n\"No. If I had been, I wouldn't be lying here chained. Everything went pretty well until I came to this city. The Dark Princess, who ruled here, received me with every honor. She invited me to her palace, fed me royally, and did everything to make me think she was on my side. And naturally the inhabitants of this Land of Ghosts rather appealed to me, they made me feel at home, so to speak. The Dark Princess was very beautiful in her way\u2014to my taste at least. She stroked me and ran her fingers through my coat. No one had ever caressed me like that. In short, I lost my head and let my tongue get out of hand. She pretended to admire me; I lapped it up, and in the end I told her about my mission. She must have cast a spell on me, because I am ordinarily a light sleeper. When I woke up, I had this chain on me. And the Dark Princess was standing there. 'Gmork,' she said. 'You forgot that I too am one of the creatures of Fantastica. And that to fight against Fantastica is to fight against me. That makes you my enemy, and I've outsmarted you. This chain can never be undone by anyone but me. But I am going into the Nothing with all my menservants and maidservants, and I shall never come back.' Then she turned on her heel and left me. But all the spooks didn't follow her example. It was only when the Nothing came closer that more and more of them were unable to resist its attraction.\n\nIf I'm not mistaken, the last of them have just gone. Yes, sonny, I fell into a trap, I listened too long to that woman. But you have fallen into the same trap, you've listened too long to me. For in these moments the Nothing has closed around the city like a ring.\n\nYou're caught and there's no escape.\"\n\n\"Then we'll die together,\" said Atreyu.\n\n\"So we will,\" said Gmork, \"but in very different ways, you little fool. For I shall die before the Nothing gets here, but you will be swallowed up by it. There's a big difference. Because I die first, my story is at an end. But yours will go on forever, in the form of a lie.\"\n\n\"Why are you so wicked?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"Because you creatures had a world,\" Gmork replied darkly, \"and I didn't.\"\n\n\"What was your mission?\"\n\nUp until then Gmork had been sitting up. Now he slumped to the ground. He was plainly at the end of his strength, and he spoke in raucous gasps.\n\n\"Those whom I serve decided that Fantastica must be destroyed. But then they saw that their plan was endangered. They had learned that the Childlike Empress had sent out a messenger, a great hero\u2014and it looked as if he might succeed in bringing a human to Fantastica. They wanted to have him killed before it was too late. That was why they sent me, because I had been in Fantastica and knew my way around. I picked up his trail right away, I tracked him day and night\u2014gradually coming closer\u2014through the Land of the Sassafranians\u2014the jungle temple of Muwamath\u2014Howling Forest\u2014the Swamps of Sadness\u2014the Dead Mountains\u2014but then in the Deep Chasm by Ygramul's net, I lost the track, he seemed to have dissolved into thin air. I went on searching, he had to be somewhere. But I never found his trail again, and this is where I ended up. I've failed. But so has he, for Fantastica is going under! I forgot to tell you, his name was Atreyu.\"\n\nGmork raised his head. The boy had taken a step back.\n\n\"I am Atreyu,\" he said.\n\nA tremor ran through the werewolf's shrunken body. It came again and again and grew stronger and stronger. Then from his throat came a panting cough. It grew louder and more rasping; it swelled to a roar that echoed back from the city's walls. The werewolf was laughing.\n\nIt was the most horrible sound Atreyu had ever heard. Never again was he to hear anything like it.\n\nAnd then suddenly it stopped.\n\nGmork was dead.\n\nFor a long time Atreyu stood motionless. At length he approached the dead werewolf\u2014he himself didn't know why\u2014bent over the head and touched the shaggy black fur. And in that moment, quicker than thought, Gmork's teeth snapped on Atreyu's leg. Even in death, the evil in him had lost none of its power.\n\nDesperately Atreyu tried to break open the jaws. In vain. The gigantic teeth, as though held in place by steel clamps, dug into his flesh. Atreyu sank to the grimy pavement beside the werewolf's corpse.\n\nAnd step by step, soundless and irresistible, the Nothing advanced from all sides, through the high black wall surrounding the city.\n\nust as Atreyu passed through the somber gateway of Spook City and started on the exploration that was to end so dismally in a squalid backyard, Falkor, the luckdragon, was making an astonishing discovery.\n\nWhile searching tirelessly for his little friend and master, he had flown high into the clouds. On every side lay the sea, which was gradually growing calmer after the great storm that had churned it from top to bottom. Suddenly, far in the distance, Falkor caught sight of something that puzzled and intrigued him. It was as though a beam of golden light were going on and off, on and off, at regular intervals. And that beam of light seemed to point directly at him, Falkor.\n\nHe flew toward it as fast as he could, and when he was directly over it he saw that the light signal came from deep down in the water, perhaps from the bottom of the sea.\n\nLuckdragons, as we know, are creatures of air and fire. Not only is the liquid element alien to them; it is also their enemy. Water can extinguish them like a flame, or it can asphyxiate them, for they never stop breathing in air through their thousands of pearly scales. They feed on air and heat and require no other nourishment, but without air and heat they can only live a short time.\n\nFalkor didn't know what to do. He didn't even know what the strange blinking under the sea was, or whether it had anything to do with Atreyu.\n\nBut he didn't hesitate for long. He flew high into the sky, turned around, and head down, pressing his legs close to his body, which he held stiff and straight as a telegraph pole, he plummeted. The water spouted like a fountain as he hit the sea at top speed. The shock was so great that he almost lost consciousness, but he forced himself to open his ruby-red eyes. By then the blinking beam was close, only a few body lengths ahead of him. Air bubbles were forming around his body, as in a saucepan full of water just before it boils. He felt that he was cooling and weakening. With his last strength he dived still deeper\u2014and then the source of light was within reach. It was AURYN, the Gem. Luckily the chain of the amulet had got caught on a coral branch growing out of the wall of an under-sea chasm. Otherwise the Gem would have fallen into the bottomless depths.\n\nFalkor seized it and put the chain around his neck for fear of losing it\u2014for he felt that he was about to faint.\n\nWhen he came to, he didn't know where he was, for to his amazement he was flying through the air, and when he looked down, there was the sea again. He was flying in a very definite direction and very fast, faster than would have seemed possible in his weakened condition. He tried to slow down, but soon found that his body would not obey him. An outside will far stronger than his own had taken possession of his body and was guiding it. That will came from AURYN, the amulet suspended from a chain around his neck.\n\nThe day was drawing to a close when at last Falkor sighted a beach in the distance. He couldn't see much of the country beyond, it seemed to be hidden by fog. But when he came closer, he saw that most of the land had been swallowed up by the Nothing, which hurt his eyes and gave him the feeling of being blind.\n\nAt that point Falkor would probably have turned back if he had been able to do as he wanted. But the mysterious power of the gem forced him to fly straight ahead. And soon he knew why, for in the midst of the endless Nothing he discovered a small island that was still holding out, an island covered with high-gabled houses and crooked towers. Falkor had a strong suspicion whom he would find there, and from then on it was not only the powerful will of the amulet that spurred him on but his own as well. It was almost dark in the somber backyard where Atreyu lay beside the dead werewolf. The luckdragon was barely able to distinguish the boy's light-colored body from the monster's black coat. And the darker it grew, the more they looked like one body.\n\nAtreyu had long given up trying to break loose from the steel vise of the werewolf's jaws. Dazed with fear and weakness, he was back in the Grass Ocean. Before him stood the purple buffalo he had not killed. He called to the other children, his companions of the hunt, who by then had no doubt become real hunters. But no one answered. Only the giant buffalo stood there motionless, looking at him. Atreyu called Artax, his horse, but he didn't come, and his cheery neigh was nowhere to be heard. He called the Childlike Empress, but in vain. He wouldn't be able to tell her anything. He hadn't become a hunter, and he was no longer a messenger. He was Nobody.\n\nAtreyu had given up.\n\nBut then he felt something else: the Nothing. It must be very near, he thought. Again he felt its terrible force of attraction. It made him dizzy. He sat up and, groaning, tugged at his leg. But the fangs held fast.\n\nAnd in that he was lucky. For if Gmork's jaws had not held him, Falkor would have come too late.\n\nAs it was, Atreyu suddenly heard the luckdragon's bronze voice in the sky above him: \"Atreyu! Are you there, Atreyu?\"\n\n\"Falkor!\" Atreyu shouted. And then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: \"Falkor! Falkor! I'm here. Help me! I'm here!\"\n\nAnd then he saw Falkor's white body darting like a living streak of lightning through the square of darkening sky, far away at first, then closer. Atreyu kept shouting and Falkor answered in his bell-like voice. Then at last the dragon in the sky caught sight of the boy down below, no bigger than a bright speck in a dark hole.\n\nFalkor prepared for a landing, but the backyard was small, there was hardly any light left, and the dragon brushed against one of the high-gabled houses. The roof collapsed with a roar. Falkor felt an agonizing pain; the sharp edge of the roof had cut deep into his body. This wasn't one of his usual graceful landings. He came tumbling down on the grimy wet pavement next to Atreyu and the dead Gmork.\n\nHe shook himself, sneezed like a dog coming out of the water, and said: \"At last!\n\nSo this is where you are! Oh well, I seem to have got here on time!\"\n\nAtreyu said nothing. He threw his arms around Falkor's neck and buried his face in the dragon's silvery-white mane.\n\n\"Come!\" said Falkor. \"Climb on my back. We have no time to lose.\"\n\nAtreyu only shook his head. And then Falkor saw that Atreyu's leg was imprisoned in the werewolf's jaws.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" he said, rolling his ruby-red eyeballs. \"We'll fix that in a jiffy.\"\n\nHe set to with both paws, trying to pry Gmork's teeth apart. They didn't budge by a hairbreadth.\n\nFalkor heaved and panted. It was no use. Most likely he would never have set his young friend free if luck hadn't come to his help. But luckdragons, as we know, are lucky, and so are those they are fond of.\n\nWhen Falkor stopped to rest, he bent over Gmork's head to get a better look at it in the dark, and it so happened that the Childlike Empress's amulet, which was hanging from the chain on the dragon's neck, touched the werewolf's forehead. Instantly the jaws opened, releasing Atreyu's leg.\n\n\"Hey!\" cried Falkor. \"What do you think of that?\"\n\nThere was no answer from Atreyu.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" cried Falkor. \"Atreyu, where are you?\"\n\nHe groped in the darkness for his friend, but Atreyu wasn't there. And while the dragon was trying to pierce the darkness with his glowing red eyes, he himself felt the pull that had snatched Atreyu away from him. The Nothing was coming too close for comfort. But AURYN protected the luckdragon from the pull.\n\nAtreyu was free from the werewolf's jaws, but not from the pull of the Nothing. He tried to fight it, to kick, to push, but his limbs no longer obeyed him. A few feet more, and he would have been lost forever.\n\nIn that moment, quick as lightning, Falkor grabbed him by his long blue-black hair, and carried him up into the night-black sky.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck nine.\n\nNeither Atreyu nor Falkor could say later how long they had flown through the impenetrable darkness. Had it been only one night? Perhaps time had stopped for them and they were hovering motionless in the limitless blackness. It was the longest night Atreyu had ever known; and the same was true for Falkor, who was much older.\n\nBut even the longest and darkest of nights passes sooner or later. And when the pale dawn came, they glimpsed the Ivory Tower on the horizon.\n\nHere it seems necessary to pause for a moment and explain a special feature of Fantastican geography. Continents and oceans, mountains and watercourses, have no fixed locations as in the real world. Thus it would be quite impossible to draw a map of Fantastica. In Fantastica you can never be sure in advance what will be next to what. Even the directions\u2014north, south, east, and west\u2014change from one part of the country to another. And the same goes for summer and winter, day and night. You can step out of a blazing hot desert straight into snowfields. In Fantastica there are no measurable distances, so that \"near\" and \"far\" don't at all mean what they do in the real world. They vary with the traveler's wishes and state of mind. Since Fantastica has no boundaries, its center can be anywhere\u2014or to put it another way, it is equally near to, or far from, anywhere. It all depends on who is trying to reach the center. And the innermost center of Fantastica is the Ivory Tower.\n\nTo his surprise Atreyu found himself sitting on the luckdragon's back. He couldn't remember how he had got there. All he remembered was that Falkor had pulled him up by the hair. Feeling cold, he gathered in his cloak, which was fluttering behind him. And then he saw that it was gray. It had lost its color, and so had his skin and hair. And Falkor, as Atreyu discovered in the rising light, was no better off. The dragon looked unreal, more like a swath of gray mist than anything else. They had both come too close to the Nothing.\n\n\"Atreyu, my little master,\" the dragon said softly. \"Does your wound hurt very badly?\" About his own wound he said nothing.\n\n\"No,\" said Atreyu. \"I don't feel anything anymore.\"\n\n\"Have you a fever?\"\n\n\"No, Falkor. I don't think so. Why do you ask?\"\n\n\"I can feel you trembling,\" said the dragon. \"What in the world can make Atreyu tremble now?\"\n\nAfter a short silence Atreyu said: \"We'll be there soon! And then I'll have to tell the Childlike Empress that nothing can save her. That's harder than anything else I've had to do.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Falkor even more softly. \"That's true.\"\n\nThey flew in silence, drawing steadily nearer to the Ivory Tower.\n\nAfter a while the dragon spoke again.\n\n\"Have you seen her, Atreyu?\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"The Childlike Empress. Or rather, the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. Because that's how you must address her when you come into her presence.\"\n\n\"No, I've never seen her.\"\n\n\"I have. That was long ago. Your great-grandfather must have been a little boy at the time. And I was a young cloud-snapper with a head full of foolishness. One night I saw the moon, shining so big and round, and I tried to grab it out of the sky. When I finally gave up, I dropped with exhaustion and landed near the Ivory Tower. That night the Magnolia Pavilion had opened its petals wide, and the Childlike Empress was sitting right in the middle of it. She cast a glance at me, just one short glance, but\u2014I hardly know how to put it\u2014that glance made a new dragon of me.\"\n\n\"What does she look like?\"\n\n\"Like a little girl. But she's much older than the oldest inhabitants of Fantastica. Or rather, she's ageless.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu. \"But now she's deathly sick. How can I tell her that there's no hope?\"\n\n\"Don't try to mislead her. She can't be fooled. Tell her the truth.\"\n\n\"But suppose it kills her?\"\n\n\"I don't think it will work out that way,\" said Falkor.\n\n\"You wouldn't,\" said Atreyu, \"because you're a luckdragon.\"\n\nFor a long while nothing was said.\n\nWhen at last they spoke together for the third time, it was Atreyu who broke the silence.\n\n\"Falkor,\" he said, \"I'd like to ask you one more thing.\"\n\n\"Fire away.\"\n\n\"Who is she?\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"AURYN has power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica, the creatures of both light and darkness. It also has power over you and me. And yet the Childlike Empress never exerts power. It's as if she weren't there. And yet she is in everything. Is she like us?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Falkor, \"she's not like us. She's not a creature of Fantastica. We all exist because she exists. But she's of a different kind.\"\n\n\"Then is she...\" Atreyu hesitated. \"Is she human?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Falkor, \"she's not human.\"\n\n\"Well then...\" And Atreyu repeated his question. \"Who is she?\"\n\nAfter a long silence Falkor answered: \"No one in Fantastica knows, no one can know. That's the deepest secret of our world. I once heard a wise man say that if anyone were to know the whole answer, he would cease to exist. I don't know what he meant. That's all I can tell you.\"\n\n\"And now,\" said Atreyu, \"she'll die and we'll die with her, and we'll never know her secret.\"\n\nThis time Falkor made no answer, but a smile played around the corners of his leonine mouth, as though to say: Nothing of the kind will happen.\n\nAfter that they spoke no more.\n\nA little later they flew over the outer edge of the \"Labyrinth,\" the maze of flower beds, hedges, and winding paths that surrounded the Ivory Tower on all sides. To their horror, they saw that there too the Nothing had been at work. True, it had touched only small spots in the Labyrinth, but those spots were all about. The once bright-colored flower beds and shrubbery in between were now gray and withered. The branches of once graceful little trees were gnarled and bare. The green had gone out of the meadows, and a faint smell of rot and mold rose up to the newcomers. The only colors left were those of swollen giant mushrooms and of garish, poisonous-looking blooms that suggested nothing so much as the figments of a maddened brain. Enfeebled and trembling, the innermost heart of Fantastica was still resisting the inexorable encroachment of the Nothing.\n\nBut the Ivory Tower at the center still shimmered pure, immaculately white.\n\nOrdinarily flying messengers landed on one of the lower terraces. But Falkor reasoned that since neither he nor Atreyu had the strength to climb the long spiraling street leading to the top of the Tower, and since time was of the essence, the regulations and rules of etiquette could reasonably be ignored. He therefore decided on an emergency landing. Swooping down over the ivory buttresses, bridges, and balustrades, he located, just in time, the uppermost end of the spiraling High Street, which lay just outside the palace grounds. Plummeting to the roadway, he went into a skid, made several complete turns, and finally came to a stop tail-first.\n\nAtreyu, who had been clinging with both arms to Falkor's neck, sat up and looked around. He had expected some sort of reception, or at least a detachment of palace guards to challenge them\u2014but far and wide there was no one to be seen. All the life seemed to have gone out of the gleaming white buildings roundabout.\n\n\"They've all fled!\" he thought. \"They've left the Childlike Empress alone. Or she's already...\"\n\n\"Atreyu,\" Falkor whispered. \"You must give the Gem back to her.\"\n\nFalkor removed the golden chain from his neck. It fell to the ground.\n\nAtreyu jumped down off Falkor's back\u2014and fell. He had forgotten his wound. He reached for the Glory and put the chain around his neck. Then, leaning on the dragon, he rose painfully to his feet.\n\n\"Falkor,\" he said. \"Where must I go?\"\n\nBut the luckdragon made no answer. He lay as though dead.\n\nThe street ended in front of an enormous, intricately carved gate which led through a high white wall. The gate was open.\n\nAtreyu hobbled through it and came to a broad, gleaming-white stairway that seemed to end in the sky. He began to climb. Now and then he stopped to rest. Drops of his blood left a trail behind him.\n\nAt length the stairway ended. Ahead of him lay a long gallery. He staggered ahead, clinging to the balustrade for support. Next he came to a courtyard that seemed to be full of waterfalls and fountains, but by then he couldn't be sure of what he was seeing. He struggled forward as in a dream. He came to a second, smaller gate; then there was a long, narrow stairway, which took him to a garden where everything\u2014trees, flowers, and animals\u2014was carved from ivory. Crawling on all fours, he crossed several arched bridges without railings which led to a third gate, the smallest of all. He dragged himself through it on his belly and, slowly raising his eyes, saw a dome-shaped hall of gleaming-white ivory, and on top of it the Magnolia Pavilion. There was no path or stairway leading up to it.\n\nAtreyu buried his head in his hands.\n\nNo one who reaches or has reached that pavilion can say how he got there. The last stretch of the way must come to him as a gift.\n\nSuddenly Atreyu was in the doorway. He went in\u2014and found himself face to face with the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes.\n\nShe was sitting, propped on many cushions, on a soft round couch at the center of the great round blossom. She was looking straight at him. She seemed infinitely frail and delicate. Atreyu could see how ill she was by the pallor of her face, which seemed almost transparent. Her almond-shaped eyes, the color of dark gold, were serene and untroubled. She smiled. Her small, slight body was wrapped in an ample silken gown which gleamed so white that the magnolia petals seemed dark beside it. She looked like an indescribably beautiful little girl of no more than ten, but her long, smoothly combed hair, which hung down over her shoulders, was as white as snow.\n\nBastian gave a start.\n\nSomething incredible had happened.\n\nThus far he had been able to visualize every incident of the Neverending Story. Some of them, it couldn't be denied, were very strange, but they could somehow be explained. He had formed a clear picture of Atreyu riding on the luckdragon, of the Labyrinth and the Ivory Tower.\n\nThese pictures, however, existed only in his imagination. But when he came to the\n\nMagnolia Pavilion, he saw the face of the Childlike Empress\u2014if only for a fraction of a second, for the space of a lightning flash. And not only in his thoughts, but with his eyes! It wasn't his imagination, of that Bastian was sure. He had even seen details that were not mentioned in the description, such as her eyebrows, two fine lines that might have been drawn with India ink, arching over her golden eyes, or her strangely elongated earlobes, or the way her head tilted on her slender neck. Bastion knew that he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this face. And in that same moment he knew her name: Moon Child. Yes, beyond a doubt, that was her name.\n\nAnd Moon Child had looked at him\u2014at him, Bastian Balthazar Bux.\n\nShe had looked at him with an expression that he could not interpret. Had she too been taken by surprise? Had there been a plea in that look? Or longing? Or... what could it be?\n\nHe tried to remember Moon Child's eyes, but was no longer able to.\n\nHe was sure of only one thing: that her glance had passed through his eyes and down into his heart. He could still feel the burning trail it had left behind. That glance, he felt, was embedded in his heart, and there it glittered like a mysterious jewel. And in a strange and wonderful way it hurt.\n\nEven if Bastian had wanted to, he couldn't have defended himself against this thing that had happened to him. However, he didn't want to. Oh no, not for anything in the world would he have parted with that jewel. All he wanted was to go on reading, to see Moon Child again, to be with her.\n\nIt never occurred to him that he was getting into the most unusual and perhaps the most dangerous of adventures. But even if he had known this, he wouldn't have dreamed of shutting the book.\n\nWith a trembling forefinger he found his place and went on reading.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck ten.\n\nnitting his brow, powerless to utter a single word, Atreyu stood gazing at the Childlike Empress. He had no idea how to begin or what to do. He had often tried to imagine this moment, he had prepared words and phrases, but they had all gone out of his head.\n\nAt length she smiled at him. Her voice when she spoke was as soft as the voice of a bird singing in its sleep.\n\n\"You have returned from the Great Quest, Atreyu.\"\n\nAtreyu hung his head.\n\n\"Yes,\" he managed to say.\n\nAfter a short silence she went on: \"Your lovely cloak has turned gray. Your hair is gray and your skin is like stone. But all that will be as it was, or better. You'll see.\"\n\nAtreyu felt as if a band had tightened around his throat. All he could do was nod his head. Then he heard the sweet soft voice saying: \"You have carried out your mission...\"\n\nWere these words meant as a question? Atreyu didn't know. He didn't dare look up to read the answer in her face. Slowly he reached for the golden amulet and removed the chain from his neck. Without raising his eyes, he held it out to the Childlike Empress. He tried to kneel as messengers did in the stories and songs he had heard at home, but his wounded leg refused to do his bidding. He fell at the Childlike Empress's feet, and there he lay with his face to the floor.\n\nShe bent forward, picked up AURYN, and let the chain glide through her fingers.\n\n\"You have done well,\" she said, \"and I am pleased with you.\"\n\n\"No!\" cried Atreyu almost savagely. \"It was all in vain. There's no hope.\"\n\nA long silence followed. Atreyu buried his face in the crook of his elbow, and his whole body trembled. How would she react? With a cry of despair, a moan, words of bitter reproach or even anger? Atreyu couldn't have said what he expected. Certainly not what he heard. Laughter. A soft, contented laugh. Atreyu's thoughts were in a whirl, for a moment he thought she had gone mad. But that was not the laughter of madness. Then he heard her say: \"But you've brought him with you.\"\n\nAtreyu looked up.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Our savior.\"\n\nHe looked into her eyes and found only serenity. She smiled again.\n\n\"Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes,\" he stammered, now for the first time using the official words of address that Falkor had recommended. \"I... no, really... I don't understand.\"\n\n\"I can see that by the look on your face,\" she said. \"But whether you understand or not, you've done it. And that's what counts, isn't it?\"\n\nAtreyu said nothing. He couldn't even think of a question to ask. He stood there openmouthed, staring at the Childlike Empress. \"I saw him,\" she went on, \"and he saw me.\"\n\n\"When?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"Just as you came in. You brought him with you.\"\n\nInvoluntarily Atreyu looked around.\n\n\"Then where is he? I don't see anyone but you and me.\"\n\n\"Oh, the world is full of things you don't see. You can believe me. He isn't in our world yet. But our worlds have come close enough together for us to see each other. For a twinkling the thin wall between us became transparent. He will be with us soon and then he will call me by the new name that he alone can give me. Then I shall be well, and so will Fantastica.\"\n\nAs the Childlike Empress was speaking, Atreyu raised himself with difficulty. He looked up to her as she lay on her bed of cushions. His voice was husky when he asked: \"Then you've known my message all along? What Morla the Aged One told me in the Swamps of Sadness, what the mysterious voice of Uyulala in the Southern Oracle revealed to me\u2014you knew it all?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"I knew it before I sent you on the Great Quest.\"\n\nAtreyu gulped.\n\n\"Why,\" he finally managed to ask, \"why did you send me then? What did you expect me to do?\"\n\n\"Exactly what you did,\" she replied.\n\n\"What I did...\" Atreyu repeated slowly. His forehead clouded over. \"In that case,\" he said angrily, \"it was all unnecessary. There was no need of sending me on the Great Quest. I've heard that your decisions are often mysterious. That may be. But after all I've been through I hate to think that you were just having a joke at my expense.\"\n\nThe Childlike Empress's eyes grew grave.\n\n\"I was not having a joke at your expense, Atreyu,\" she said. \"I am well aware of what I owe you. All your sufferings were necessary. I sent you on the Great Quest\u2014not for the sake of the message you would bring me, but because that was the only way of calling our savior. He took part in everything you did, and he has come all that long way with you. You heard his cry of fear when you were talking with Ygramul beside the Deep Chasm, and you saw him when you stood facing the Magic Mirror Gate. You entered into his image and took it with you, and he followed you, because he saw himself through your eyes. And now, too, he can hear every word we are saying. He knows we are talking about him, he knows we have set our hope in him and are expecting him. Perhaps he even understands that all the hardship you, Atreyu, took upon yourself was for his sake and that all Fantastica is calling him.\"\n\nLittle by little the darkness cleared from Atreyu's face.\n\nAfter a while he asked: \"How can you know all that? The cry by the Deep Chasm and the image in the magic mirror? Did you arrange it all in advance?\"\n\nThe Childlike Empress picked up AURYN, and said, while putting the chain around her neck: \"Didn't you wear the Gem the whole time? Didn't you know that through it I was always with you?\"\n\n\"Not always,\" said Atreyu. \"I lost it.\"\n\n\"Yes. Then you were really alone. Tell me what happened to you then.\"\n\nAtreyu told her the story.\n\n\"Now I know why you turned gray,\" said the Childlike Empress. \"You were too close to the Nothing.\"\n\n\"Gmork, the werewolf, told me,\" said Atreyu, \"that when a Fantastican is swallowed up by the Nothing, he becomes a lie. Is that true?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is true,\" said the Childlike Empress, and her golden eyes darkened. \"All lies were once creatures of Fantastica. They are made of the same stuff\u2014but they have lost their true nature and become unrecognizable. But, as you might expect from a half-and-half creature like Gmork, he told you only half the truth. There are two ways of crossing the dividing line between Fantastica and the human world, a right one and a wrong one. When Fantasticans are cruelly dragged across it, that's the wrong way. When humans, children of man, come to our world of their own free will, that's the right way. Every human who has been here has learned something that could be learned only here, and returned to his own world a changed person. Because he had seen you creatures in your true form, he was able to see his own world and his fellow humans with new eyes. Where he had seen only dull, everyday reality, he now discovered wonders and mysteries. That is why humans were glad to come to Fantastica. And the more these visits enriched our world, the fewer lies there were in theirs, the better it became. Just as our two worlds can injure each other, they can also make each other whole again.\"\n\nFor a time both were silent. Then she went on: \"Humans are our hope. One of them must come and give me a new name. And he will come.\"\n\nAtreyu made no answer.\n\n\"Do you understand now, Atreyu,\" she asked, \"why I had to ask so much of you? Only a long story full of adventures, marvels, and dangers could bring our savior to me. And that was your story.\" Atreyu sat deep in thought. At length he nodded. \"Yes, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes, now I understand. I thank you for choosing me. Forgive my anger.\"\n\n\"You had no way of knowing these things,\" she answered. \"And that too was necessary.\"\n\nAgain Atreyu nodded. After a short silence he said: \"But I'm very tired.\"\n\n\"You have done enough, Atreyu. Would you like to rest?\"\n\n\"Not yet. First I would like to see the happy outcome of my story. If, as you say, I've carried out my mission, why isn't the savior here yet? What's he waiting for?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the Childlike Empress softly. \"What is he waiting for?\"\n\nBastian felt his hands growing moist with excitement.\n\n\"I can't do it,\" he said. \"I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. Maybe the name I've thought of isn't the right one.\"\n\n\"May I ask you another question?\" said Atreyu.\n\n\"Of course,\" she answered with a smile.\n\n\"Why do you need a new name to get well?\"\n\n\"Only the right name gives beings and things their reality,\" she said. \"A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.\"\n\n\"Maybe the savior doesn't yet know the right name to give you.\"\n\n\"Oh yes he does,\" she assured him.\n\nAgain they sat silent.\n\n\"I know it all right,\" said Bastian. \"I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her. But I don't know what I have to do.\"\n\nAtreyu looked up.\n\n\"Maybe he wants to come and just doesn't know how to go about it.\"\n\n\"All he has to do,\" said the Childlike Empress, \"is to call me by my new name, which he alone knows. Nothing more.\"\n\nBastian's heart pounded. Should he try? What if he didn't succeed? What if he was wrong? What if they weren't talking about him but about some entirely different savior? How could he be sure they really meant him?\n\n\"Could it be,\" said Atreyu after a while, \"that he doesn't know it's him and not somebody else we're talking about?\"\n\n\"No,\" said the Childlike Empress. \"Not after all the signs he has had. He can't be that stupid.\"\n\n\"I'll give it a try,\" said Bastian. But he couldn't get a word out of his mouth.\n\nWhat if it actually worked? Then he would somehow be transported to Fantastica. But how? Maybe he would have to go through some sort of change. And what would that be like? Would it hurt? Would he lose consciousness? And did he really want to go to Fantastica? He wanted to go to Atreyu and the Childlike Empress, but he wasn't at all keen on all those monsters the place was swarming with.\n\n\"Maybe he hasn't got the courage,\" Atreyu suggested.\n\n\"Courage?\" said the Childlike Empress. \"Does it take courage to say my name?\"\n\n\"Then,\" said Atreyu, \"I can think of only one thing that may be holding him back.\"\n\n\"And what would that be?\"\n\nAfter some hesitation Atreyu blurted out: \"He just doesn't want to come here. He just doesn't care about you or Fantastica. We don't mean a thing to him.\"\n\nThe Childlike Empress stared wide-eyed at Atreyu.\n\n\"No! No!\" Bastion cried out. \"You mustn't think that! It's not that at all. Oh, please, please, don't think that! Can you hear me? It's not like that, Atreyu.\"\n\n\"He promised me he would come,\" said the Childlike Empress. \"I saw it in his eyes.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's true. And I will come soon. I just need time to think. It's not so simple.\"\n\nAtreyu hung his head and the two of them waited a long while in silence. But the savior did not appear, and there wasn't the slightest sign to suggest that he was trying to attract their attention.\n\nBastian was thinking of how it would be if he suddenly stood before them in all his fatness, with his bowlegs and his pasty face. He could literally see the disappointment in the Childlike Empress's face when she said to him: \"What brings you here?\"\n\nAnd Atreyu might even laugh.\n\nThe thought brought a blush to Bastion's cheeks.\n\nObviously they were expecting a prince, or at any rate some sort of hero. He just couldn't appear before them. It was out of the question. He would do anything for them. Anything but that!\n\nWhen at last the Childlike Empress looked up, the expression of her face had changed. Atreyu was almost frightened at its grandeur and severity. He knew where he had once seen that expression: in the sphinxes.\n\n\"There is one more thing I can do,\" she said. \"But I don't like it, and I wish he wouldn't make me.\"\n\n\"What is that?\" Atreyu asked in a whisper.\n\n\"Whether he knows it or not, he is already part of the Neverending Story. He can no longer back out of it. He made me a promise and he has to keep it. But by myself I can't make him.\"\n\n\"Who in all Fantastica,\" Atreyu asked, \"can do what you cannot?\"\n\n\"Only one person,\" she replied. \"If he wants to. The Old Man of Wandering Mountain.\"\n\nAtreyu looked at the Childlike Empress in amazement.\n\n\"The Old Man of Wandering Mountain?\" he repeated, stressing every word. \"You mean he exists?\"\n\n\"Did you doubt it?\"\n\n\"The old folk in our tent camps tell the children about him when they're naughty. They say he writes everything down in a book, whatever you do or fail to do, and there it stays in the form of a beautiful or an ugly story. When I was little, I believed it, but then I decided it was only an old wives' tale to frighten children.\"\n\n\"You never can tell about old wives' tales,\" she said with a smile.\n\n\"Then you know him?\" Atreyu asked. \"You've seen him?\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"If I find him,\" she said, \"it will be our first meeting.\"\n\n\"Our old folk also say,\" Atreyu went on, \"that you never can know where the Old Man's mountain will be at any particular time. They say that when he appears it's always unexpectedly, now here, now there, and that you can only run across him by accident, or because the meeting was fated.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" said the Childlike Empress. \"You can't look for the Old Man of Wandering Mountain. You can only find him.\"\n\n\"Does that go for you too?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"for me too.\"\n\n\"But what if you don't find him?\"\n\n\"If he exists I'll find him,\" she said with a mysterious smile.\n\nHer answer puzzled Atreyu. Hesitantly he asked: \"Is he\u2014is he like you?\"\n\n\"He is like me,\" she replied, \"because he is my opposite in every way.\"\n\nAtreyu saw that with such questions he would get nothing out of her. And another thought weighed on him.\n\n\"You are deathly sick, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes,\" he said almost sternly. \"You won't go far by yourself. All your servants and courtiers seem to have abandoned you. Falkor and I would be glad to take you wherever you wish, but, frankly, I don't know if Falkor has the strength. And my foot\u2014well, you've seen that it won't carry me.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Atreyu,\" she said. \"Thank you for your brave and loyal offer. But I'm not planning to take you with me. To find the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, one must be alone. And even now Falkor is not where you left him. He has been moved to a place where his wounds will be healed and his strength renewed. And you too, Atreyu, will soon be in that same place.\"\n\nHer fingers played with AURYN.\n\n\"What place is that?\"\n\n\"There's no need for you to know that now. You will be moved in your sleep. And one day you will know where you were.\"\n\n\"But how can I sleep?\" cried Atreyu, so shaken that he lost his sense of tact. \"How can I sleep when I know you may die any minute?\"\n\nThe Childlike Empress laughed softly.\n\n\"I'm not quite as forsaken as you think. I've already told you that there are some things you can't hope to understand. I have my seven Powers, which belong to me as your memory or courage or thoughts belong to you. They cannot be seen or heard, and yet they are with me at this moment. I shall leave three of them with you and Falkor to look after you, and I shall take the other four with me as my escort. You needn't worry, Atreyu. You can sleep easy.\"\n\nAt these words, all the accumulated weariness of the Great Quest descended on Atreyu like a dark veil. Yet it was not the leaden weariness of exhaustion, but a gentle longing for sleep. He still had many questions to ask the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes, but he felt that her last words had vanquished all his wishes but one, the wish for sleep. His eyes closed and, still in a sitting position, he glided into the darkness.\n\nThe clock in the steeple struck eleven.\n\nAs though far in the distance, Atreyu heard the Childlike Empress give an order in a soft voice. Then he felt powerful arms lifting him gently and carrying him away.\n\nFor a long time, all was dark and warm around him. Much later he half awoke when a soothing liquid touched his parched lips and ran down his throat. He had a vague impression that he was in a great cave with walls of gold. He saw the white luckdragon lying beside him. And then he saw, or thought he saw, a gushing fountain in the middle of the cave, encircled by two snakes, a light one and a dark one, which were biting each other's tail.\n\nBut then an invisible hand brushed over his eyes. The feel of it was infinitely soothing, and again he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.\n\nAt that moment, the Childlike Empress left the Ivory Tower. She lay bedded on soft silken cushions in a glass litter, which seemed to be moving under its own power, but was actually being carried by four of the Empress's invisible servants.\n\nThey crossed the Labyrinth garden, or rather, what was left of it, making frequent detours, since many of the paths ended in the Nothing.\n\nWhen at length they left the Labyrinth, the invisible carriers stopped. They seemed to be waiting for a command.\n\nThe Childlike Empress sat up on her cushions and cast a glance back at the Ivory Tower.\n\nThen, sinking back, she said: \"Keep going! Just keep going\u2014no matter where.\"\n\nBlown by the wind, her snow-white hair trailed behind the glass litter like a flag.\n\nong-thundering avalanches descended from the heights, snowstorms raged between towering ice-coated summits, dipped into hollows and ravines, and swept howling onward over the great white expanse of the glaciers. Such weather was not at all unusual for this part of the country, for the Mountain of Destiny\u2014that was its name was the highest in all Fantastica, and its peaks literally jutted into the heights of heaven.\n\nNot even the most intrepid mountain climbers ventured into these fields of everlasting ice. It had been so very, very long since anyone had succeeded in climbing this mountain that the feat had been forgotten. For one of Fantastica's many strange laws decreed that no one could climb the Mountain of Destiny until the last successful climber had been utterly forgotten. Thus anyone who managed to climb it would always be the first.\n\nNo living creature could survive in that icy waste\u2014except for a handful of gigantic ice-glumps\u2014who could barely be called living creatures, for they moved so slowly that they needed years for a single step and whole centuries for a short walk. Which meant, of course, that they could only associate with their own kind and knew nothing at all about the rest of Fantastica. They thought of themselves as the only living creatures in the universe.\n\nConsequently, they were puzzled to the point of consternation when they saw a tiny speck twining its way upward over perilous crags and razor-sharp ridges, then vanishing into deep chasms and crevasses, only to reappear higher up.\n\nThat speck was the Childlike Empress's glass litter, still carried by four of her invisible Powers. It was barely visible, for the glass it was made of looked very much like ice, and the Childlike Empress's white gown and white hair could hardly be distinguished from the snow roundabout.\n\nShe had traveled many days and nights. The four Powers had carried her through blinding rain and scorching sun, through darkness and moonlight, onward and onward, just as she had ordered, \"no matter where.\" She was prepared for a long journey and all manner of hardship, since she knew that the Old Man of Wandering Mountain could be everywhere or nowhere.\n\nStill, the four invisible Powers were not guided entirely by chance in their choice of an itinerary. As often as not, the Nothing, which had already swallowed up whole regions, left only a single path open. Sometimes the possibilities narrowed down to a bridge, a tunnel, or a gateway, and sometimes they were forced to carry the litter with the deathly ill Empress over the waves of the sea. These carriers saw no difference between liquid and solid.\n\nTireless and persevering, they had finally reached the frozen heights of the Mountain of Destiny. And they would go on climbing until the Childlike Empress gave them another order. But she lay still on her cushions. Her eyes were closed and she said nothing. The last words she had spoken were the \"no matter where\" she had said on leaving the Ivory Tower.\n\nThe litter was moving through a deep ravine, so narrow that there was barely room for it to pass. The snow was several feet deep, but the invisible carriers did not sink in or even leave footprints. It was very dark at the bottom of this ravine, which admitted only a narrow strip of daylight. The path was on a steady incline and the higher the litter climbed, the nearer the daylight seemed. And then suddenly the walls leveled off, opening up a view of a vast white expanse. This was the summit, for the Mountain of Destiny culminated not, like most other mountains, in a single peak, but in this high plateau, which was as large as a whole country.\n\nBut then, surprisingly enough, a smaller, odd-looking mountain arose in the midst of the plateau. It was rather tall and narrow, something like the Ivory Tower, but glittering blue. It consisted of innumerable strangely shaped stone teeth, which jutted into the sky like great inverted icicles. And about halfway up the mountain three such teeth supported an egg the size of a house.\n\nBehind the egg large blue columns resembling the pipes of an enormous organ rose in a semicircle. The great egg had a circular opening, which might have been a door or a window. And in that opening a face appeared. The face was looking straight at the litter.\n\nThe Childlike Empress opened her eyes.\n\n\"Stop!\" she said softly.\n\nThe invisible Powers stopped.\n\nThe Childlike Empress sat up.\n\n\"It's the Old Man of Wandering Mountain,\" she said. \"I must go the last stretch of the way alone. Whatever may happen, wait here for me.\"\n\nThe face in the circular opening vanished.\n\nThe Childlike Empress stepped out of the litter and started across the great snowfield. It was hard going, for she was bare-footed, and there was an icy crust on the snow. At every step she broke through, and the ice cut her tender feet. The wind tugged at her white hair and her gown.\n\nAt last she came to the blue mountain and stood facing the smooth stone teeth.\n\nThe dark circular opening disgorged a long ladder, much longer than there could possibly have been room for in the egg. It soon extended to the foot of the blue mountain, and when the Childlike Empress took hold of it she saw that it consisted of letters, which were fastened together. Each rung of the ladder was a line. The Childlike Empress started climbing, and as she climbed from rung to rung, she read the words:\n\nTURN BACK! TURN BACK AND GO AWAY!\n\nFOR COME WHAT WILL AND COME WHAT MAY,\n\nNEVER IN ANY TIME OR PLACE\n\nMUST YOU AND I MEET FACE TO FACE.\n\nTO YOU ALONE, O CHILDLIKE ONE,\n\nTHE WAY IS BARRED, TO YOU ALONE.\n\nTURN BACK, TURN BACK, FOR NEVER SHALL\n\nBEGINNING SEEK THE END OF ALL.\n\nTHE CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR INTRUSION\n\nCAN ONLY BE EXTREME CONFUSION.\n\nShe stopped to rest and looked up. She still had a long way to go. So far she hadn't even gone halfway.\n\n\"Old Man of Wandering Mountain,\" she said aloud. \"If you don't want us to meet, you needn't have written me this ladder. It's your disinvitation that brings me.\"\n\nAnd she went on climbing.\n\nWHAT YOU ACHIEVE AND WHAT YOU ARE\n\nIS RECORDED BY ME, THE CHRONICLER.\n\nLETTERS UNCHANGEABLE AND DEAD\n\nFREEZE WHAT THE LIVING DID AND SAID.\n\nTHEREFORE BY COMING HERE TO ME\n\nYOU INVITE CATASTROPHE.\n\nTHUS IS THE END OF WHAT YOU ONCE BEGAN.\n\nYOU WILL NEVER BE OLD, AND I, OLD MAN\n\nWAS NEVER YOUNG. WHAT YOU AWAKEN\n\nI LAY TO REST. BE NOT MISTAKEN:\n\nIT IS FORBIDDEN THAT LIFE SHOULD SEE\n\nITSELF IN DEAD ETERNITY.\n\nAgain she had to stop to catch her breath.\n\nBy then the Childlike Empress was high up and the ladder was swaying like a branch in the snowstorm. Clinging to the icy letters that formed the rungs of the ladder, she climbed the rest of the way.\n\nBUT IF YOU STILL REFUSE TO HEED\n\nTHE WARNING OF THE LADDER'S SCREED,\n\nIF YOU ARE STILL PREPARED TO DO\n\nWHAT IN TIME AND SPACE IS FORBIDDEN YOU,\n\nI WON'T ATTEMPT TO HOLD YOU BACK,\n\nTHEN WELCOME TO THE OLD MAN'S SHACK.\n\nWhen the Childlike Empress had those last rungs behind her, she sighed and looked down. Her wide white gown was in tatters, for it had caught on every bend and crossbar of the message-ladder. Oh well, she had known all along that letters were hostile to her. She felt the same way about them.\n\nFrom the ladder she stepped through the circular opening in the egg. Instantly it closed behind her, and she stood motionless in the darkness, waiting to see what would happen next.\n\nNothing at all happened for quite some time.\n\nAt length she said softly: \"Here I am.\" Her voice echoed as in a large empty room\u2014or was it another, much deeper voice that had answered her in the same words?\n\nLittle by little, she made out a faint reddish glow in the darkness. It came from an open book, which hovered in midair at the center of the egg-shaped room. It was tilted in such a way that she could see the binding, which was of copper-colored silk, and on the binding, as on the Gem, which the Childlike Empress wore around her neck, she saw an oval formed by two snakes biting each other's tail. Inside this oval was printed the title:\n\nThe Neverending Story\n\nBastian's thoughts were in a whirl. This was the very same book that he was reading! He looked again. Yes, no doubt about it, it was the book he had in his hand. How could this book exist inside itself?\n\nThe Childlike Empress had come closer. On the other side of the hovering book she now saw a man's face. It was bathed in a bluish light. The light came from the print of the book, which was bluish green.\n\nThe man's face was as deeply furrowed as if it had been carved in the bark of an ancient tree. His beard was long and white, and his eyes were so deep in their sockets that she could not see them. He was wearing a dark monk's robe with a hood, and in his hand he was holding a stylus, with which he was writing in the book. He did not look up.\n\nThe Childlike Empress stood watching him in silence. He was not really writing. His stylus glided slowly over the empty page and the letters and words appeared as though of their own accord.\n\nThe Childlike Empress read what was being written, and it was exactly what was happening at that same moment: \"The Childlike Empress read what was being written...\"\n\n\"You write down everything that happens,\" she said.\n\n\"Everything that I write down happens,\" was the answer, spoken in the deep, dark voice that had come to her like an echo of her own voice.\n\nStrange to say, the Old Man of Wandering Mountain had not opened his mouth. He had written her words and his, and she had heard them as though merely remembering that he had just spoken. \"Are you and I and all Fantastica,\" she asked, \"are we all recorded in this book?\"\n\nHe wrote, and at the same time she heard his answer: \"No, you've got it wrong. This book is all Fantastica\u2014and you and I.\"\n\n\"But where is this book?\"\n\nAnd he wrote the answer: \"In the book.\"\n\n\"Then it's all a reflection of a reflection?\" she asked.\n\nHe wrote, and she heard him say: \"What does one see in a mirror reflected in a mirror? Do you know that, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes?\"\n\nThe Childlike Empress said nothing for a while, and the Old Man wrote that she said nothing.\n\nThen she said softly: \"I need your help.\"\n\n\"I knew it,\" he said and wrote.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"I supposed you would. You are Fantastica's memory, you know everything that has happened up to this moment. But couldn't you leaf ahead in your book and see what's going to happen?\"\n\n\"Empty pages,\" was the answer. \"I can only look back at what has happened. I was able to read it while I was writing it. And I know it because I have read it. And I wrote it because it happened. The Neverending Story writes itself by my hand.\"\n\n\"Then you don't know why I've come to you?\"\n\n\"No.\" And as he was writing, she heard the dark voice: \"And I wish you hadn't. By my hand everything becomes fixed and final\u2014you too, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. This egg is your grave and your coffin. You have entered into the memory of Fantastica. How do you expect to leave here?\"\n\n\"Every egg,\" she said, \"is the beginning of new life.\"\n\n\"True,\" the Old Man wrote and said, \"but only if its shell bursts open.\"\n\n\"You can open it,\" cried the Childlike Empress. \"You let me in.\"\n\n\"Your power let you in. But now that you're here, your power is gone. We are shut up here for all time. Truly, you shouldn't have come. This is the end of the Neverending Story.\"\n\nThe Childlike Empress smiled. She didn't seem troubled in the least.\n\n\"You and I,\" she said, \"can't prolong it. But there is someone who can.\"\n\n\"Only a human,\" wrote the Old Man, \"can make a fresh start.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she replied, \"a human.\"\n\nSlowly the Old Man of Wandering Mountain raised his eyes and saw the Childlike Empress for the first time. His gaze seemed to come from the darkest distance, from the end of the universe. She stood up to it, answered it with her golden eyes. A silent, immobile battle was fought between them. At length the Old Man bent over his book and wrote: \"For you too there is a borderline. Respect it.\"\n\n\"I will,\" she said, \"but the one of whom I speak, the one for whom I am waiting, crossed it long ago. He is reading this book while you are writing it. He hears every word we are saying. He is with us.\"\n\n\"That is true!\" she heard the Old Man's voice as he was writing. \"He too is part and parcel of the Neverending Story, for it is his own story.\"\n\n\"Tell me the story!\" the Childlike Empress commanded. \"You, who are the memory of Fantastica\u2014tell me the story from the beginning, word for word as you have written it.\"\n\nThe Old Man's writing hand began to tremble.\n\n\"If I do that, I shall have to write everything all over again. And what I write will happen again.\"\n\n\"So be it!\" said the Childlike Empress.\n\nBastian was beginning to feel uncomfortable.\n\nWhat was she going to do? It had something to do with him. But if even the Old Man of Wandering Mountain was trembling...\n\nThe Old Man wrote and said: \"If the Neverending Story contains itself, then the world will end with this book.\"\n\nAnd the Childlike Empress answered: \"But if the hero comes to us, new life can be born. Now the decision is up to him.\"\n\n\"You are ruthless indeed,\" the Old Man said and wrote. \"We shall enter the Circle of Eternal Return, from which there is no escape.\"\n\n\"Not for us,\" she replies, and her voice was no longer gentle, but as hard and clear as a diamond. \"Nor for him\u2014unless he saves us all.\"\n\n\"Do you really want to entrust everything to a human?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\nBut then she added more softly: \"Or have you a better idea?\"\n\nAfter a long silence the Old Man's dark voice said: \"No.\"\n\nHe bent low over the book in which he was writing. His face was hidden by his hood.\n\n\"Then do what I ask.\"\n\nSubmitting to her will, the Old Man of Wandering Mountain began telling the Neverending Story from the beginning.\n\nAt that moment the light cast by the pages of the book changed color. It became reddish like the letters that now formed under the Old Man's stylus. His monk's habit and the hood also took on the color of copper. And as he wrote, his deep, dark voice resounded.\n\nBastian too heard it quite clearly.\n\nYet he did not understand the first words the Old Man said. They sounded like: \"Skoob dlo rednaeroc darnoc Irac.\"\n\nStrange, Bastian thought. Why is the Old Man suddenly talking a foreign language? Or was it some sort of magic spell?\n\nThe Old Man's voice went on and Bastian couldn't help listening.\n\n\"This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plate-glass door.\n\n\"Outside, it was a gray, cold, rainy November morning. The rain ran down the glass and over the ornate letters. Through the glass there was nothing to be seen but the rain-splotched wall across the street.\"\n\nBastian was rather disappointed. I don't know that story, he thought. That's not in the book I've been reading. Oh well, it only goes to show that I've been mistaken the whole time. I really thought the Old Man would start telling the Neverending Story from the beginning.\n\n\"Suddenly the door was opened so violently that a little cluster of brass bells tinkled wildly, taking quite some time to calm down. The cause of this hubbub was a fat little boy of ten or twelve. His wet, dark-brown hair hung down over his face, his coat was soaked and dripping, and he was carrying a school satchel slung over his shoulder. He was rather pale and out of breath, but, despite the hurry he had been in a moment before, he was standing in the open doorway as though rooted to the spot.\"\n\nAs Bastian read this and listened to the deep, dark voice of the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, a roaring started up in his ears and he saw spots before his eyes.\n\nWhy, this was all about him! And it was the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, was a character in the book which until now he had thought he was reading. And heaven only knew who else might be reading it at the exact same time, also supposing himself to be just a reader.\n\nAnd now Bastian was afraid. He felt unable to breathe, as though shut up in an invisible prison. He didn't want to read anymore, he wanted to stop.\n\nBut the deep, dark voice of the Old Man of Wandering Mountain went on,\n\nand there was nothing Bastian could do about it. He held his hands over his ears, but it was no use, because the voice came from inside him. He tried desperately to tell himself\u2014though he knew it wasn't true\u2014that the resemblance to his own story was some crazy accident,\n\nbut the deep, dark voice went on,\n\nand ever so clearly he heard it saying:\n\n\" 'Where are your manners? If you had any, you'd have introduced yourself.'\"\n\n\" 'My name is Bastian,' said the boy. 'Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\"\n\nIn that moment Bastian made a profound discovery. You wish for something, you've wanted it for years, and you're sure you want it, as long as you know you can't have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing.\n\nThat is exactly how it was with Bastian.\n\nNow that he was in danger of getting his wish, he would have liked best to run away. But since you can't run \"away\" unless you have some idea where you're at, Bastian did something perfectly absurd. He turned over on his back like a beetle and played dead. He made himself as small as possible and pretended he wasn't there.\n\nThe Old Man of Wandering Mountain went on telling and writing the story of how Bastian had stolen the book, how he had fled to the schoolhouse attic and begun to read. And then Atreyu's Quest began all over again, he spoke with Morla the Aged One, and found Falkor in Ygramul's net beside the Deep Chasm, and heard Bastian's cry of fear. Once again he was cured by old Urgl and lectured by Engywook. He passed through the three magic gates, entered into Bastian's image, and spoke with Uyulala. And then came the Wind Giants and Spook City and Gmork, followed by Atreyu's rescue and the flight to the Ivory Tower. And in between, everything that Bastian had done, how he had lit the candles, how he had seen the Childlike Empress, and how she had waited for him in vain. Once again she started on her way to find the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, once again she climbed the ladder of letters and entered the egg, once again the conversation between her and the Old Man was related word for word, and once again the Old Man of Wandering Mountain began to write and tell the Neverending Story.\n\nAt that point the story began all over again\u2014unchanged and unchangeable\u2014and ended once again with the meeting between the Childlike Empress and the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, who began once again to write and tell the Neverending Story...\n\n. . .and so it would go on for ever and ever, for any change in the sequence of events was unthinkable. Only he, Bastian, could do anything about it. And he would have to do something, or else he too would be included in the circle. It seemed to him that this story had been repeated a thousand times, as though there were no before and after and everything had happened at once. Now he realized why the Old Man's hand trembled. The Circle of Eternal Return was an end without an end.\n\nBastian was unaware of the tears that were running down his cheeks. Close to fainting, he suddenly cried out: \"Moon Child, I'm coming!\"\n\nIn that moment several things happened at once.\n\nThe shell of the great egg was dashed to pieces by some overwhelming power. A rumbling of thunder was heard. And then the storm wind came roaring from afar.\n\nIt blew from the pages of the book that Bastian was holding on his knees, and the pages began to flutter wildly. Bastian felt the wind in his hair and face. He could scarcely breathe. The candle flames in the seven-armed candelabrum danced, wavered, and lay flat. Then another, still more violent wind blew into the book, and the candles went out.\n\nThe clock in the belfry struck twelve.\n\noon Child, I'm coming!\" Bastian repeated in the darkness. He felt something indescribably sweet and comforting flow into him from the name and fill his whole being. So he said it again and again: \"Moon Child! Moon Child! I'm coming! Moon Child, here I am.\"\n\nBut where was he?\n\nHe couldn't see the slightest ray of light, but this was no longer the freezing darkness of the attic. This was a warm, velvety darkness in which he felt safe and happy.\n\nAll fear and dread had left him, ceased to be anything more than a distant memory. He felt so light and gay that he even laughed softly.\n\n\"Moon Child, where am I?\" he asked.\n\nHe no longer felt the weight of his body. He groped about and realized that he was hovering in mid-air. The mats were gone, and there was no ground under his feet.\n\nIt was a wonderful feeling, a sense of release and boundless freedom that he had never known before. He was beyond the reach of all the things that had weighed him down and hemmed him in.\n\nCould he be hovering somewhere in the cosmos? But in the cosmos there were stars and here there was nothing of the kind. There was only this velvety darkness and a wonderful, happy feeling he hadn't known in all his life. Could it be that he was dead?\n\n\"Moon Child, where are you?\"\n\nAnd then he heard a delicate, birdlike voice that answered him and that may have answered him several times without his hearing it. It seemed very near, and yet he could not have said from what direction it came.\n\n\"Here I am, my Bastian.\"\n\n\"Is it you, Moon Child?\"\n\nShe laughed in a strangely lilting way.\n\n\"Who else would I be? Why, you've just given me my lovely name. Thank you for it. Welcome, my savior and my hero.\"\n\n\"Where are we, Moon Child?\"\n\n\"I am with you, and you are with me.\"\n\nDream words. Yet Bastian knew for sure that he was awake and not dreaming.\n\n\"Moon Child,\" he whispered. \"Is this the end?\"\n\n\"No,\" she replied, \"it's the beginning.\"\n\n\"Where is Fantastica, Moon Child? Where are all the others? Where are Atreyu and Falkor? And what about the Old Man of Wandering Mountain and his book? Don't they exist anymore?\"\n\n\"Fantastica will be born again from your wishes, my Bastian. Through me they will become reality.\"\n\n\"From my wishes?\" Bastian repeated in amazement.\n\nHe heard the sweet voice reply: \"You know they call me the Commander of Wishes. What will you wish?\"\n\nBastian thought a moment. Then he inquired cautiously: \"How many wishes have\n\nI got?\"\n\n\"As many as you want\u2014the more, the better, my Bastian. Fantastica will be all the more rich and varied.\"\n\nBastian was overjoyed. But just because so infinitely many possibilities had suddenly been held out to him, he couldn't think of a single wish.\n\n\"I can't think of anything,\" he said finally.\n\nFor a time there was silence. And then he heard the birdlike voice: \"That's bad.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because then there won't be any more Fantastica.\"\n\nBastian made no answer. He felt confused. His sense of unlimited freedom was somewhat marred by the thought that everything depended on him.\n\n\"Why is it so dark, Moon Child?\" he asked.\n\n\"The beginning is always dark, my Bastian.\"\n\n\"I'd awfully like to see you again, Moon Child. The way you were when you looked at me.\"\n\nAgain he heard the soft lilting laugh.\n\n\"Why are you laughing?\"\n\n\"Because I'm happy.\"\n\n\"Happy? Why?\"\n\n\"You've just made your first wish.\"\n\n\"Will you make it come true?\"\n\nHe held out his hand and felt she was putting something into it. Something very small but strangely heavy. It was very cold and felt hard and dead.\n\n\"What is it, Moon Child?\"\n\n\"A grain of sand,\" she replied. \"All that's left of my boundless realm. I make you a present of it.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Bastian, bewildered. What on earth could he do with such a gift? If at least it had been something living.\n\nAs he was mulling it over, he felt something wriggling in his hand. He raised his hand to see what it was.\n\n\"Look, Moon Child,\" he whispered. \"It's glowing and glittering. And there\u2014look!\u2014a little flame is coming out of it. No, it's not a grain of sand, it's a seed. It's a luminous seed and it's starting to sprout!\"\n\n\"Well done, my Bastian!\" he heard her say. \"You see how easy it is for you.\"\n\nBarely perceptible at first, the glow of the speck in Bastian's palm grew quickly, making the two child faces, so very different from each other, gleam in the velvety darkness.\n\nSlowly Bastian withdrew his hand, and the glittering speck hovered between them like a little star.\n\nThe seed sprouted so quickly that one could see it grow. It put forth leaves and a stem and buds that burst into many-colored, phosphorescent flowers. Little fruits formed, ripened, and exploded like miniature rockets, spraying new seeds all around them.\n\nFrom the new seeds grew other plants, but these had different shapes. Some were like ferns or small palms, others like cacti, bullrushes, or gnarled trees. Each glowed a different color.\n\nSoon the velvety darkness all around Bastian and Moon Child, over and under them and on every side, was filled with rapidly growing luminous plants. A globe of radiant colors, a new, luminous world hovered in the Nowhere, and grew and grew. And in its innermost center Bastian and Moon Child sat hand in hand, looking around them with eyes of wonder.\n\nUnceasingly new shapes and colors appeared. Larger and larger blossoms opened, richer and richer clusters formed. And all this in total silence.\n\nSoon some of the plants were as big as fruit trees. There were fans of long emerald-green leaves, flowers resembling peacock tails with rainbow-colored eyes, pagodas consisting of superimposed umbrellas of violet silk. Thick stems were interwoven like braids. Since they were transparent, they looked like pink glass lit up from within. Some of the blooms looked like clusters of blue and yellow Japanese lanterns. And little by little, as the luminous night growth grew denser, they intertwined to form a tissue of soft light.\n\n\"You must give all this a name,\" Moon Child whispered. Bastian nodded.\n\n\"Perilin, the Night Forest,\" he said.\n\nHe looked into the Childlike Empress's eyes. And once again, as at their first exchange of glances, he sat spellbound, unable to take his eyes off her. The first time she had been deathly ill. Now she was much, much more beautiful. Her torn gown was whole again, the soft-colored light played over the pure whiteness of the silk and of her long hair. His wish had come true.\n\nBastian's eyes swam. \"Moon Child,\" he stammered. \"Are you well again?\"\n\nShe smiled, \"Can't you see that I am?\"\n\n\"I wish everything would stay like this forever,\" he said.\n\n\"The moment is forever,\" she replied.\n\nBastian was silent. He didn't understand what she had said, but he was in no mood to puzzle it out. He wanted only to sit there looking at her.\n\nLittle by little the thicket of luminous plants had formed a thick hedge around them. As though imprisoned in a tent of magic carpets, Bastian paid no attention to what was happening outside. He didn't realize that Perilin was growing and growing, that each and every plant was getting big or bigger. Seeds no bigger than sparks kept raining down and sprouted as they hit the ground.\n\nBastian sat gazing at Moon Child. He had eyes for nothing else.\n\nHe could not have said how much time had passed when Moon Child put her hand over his eyes.\n\n\"Why did you keep me waiting so long?\" he heard her ask. \"Why did you make me go to the Old Man of Wandering Mountain? Why didn't you come when I called?\"\n\nBastian gulped.\n\n\"It was because,\" he stammered, \"I thought\u2014all sorts of reasons\u2014fear\u2014well, to tell you the truth, I was ashamed to let you see me.\"\n\nShe withdrew her hand and looked at him in amazement.\n\n\"Ashamed? Why?\"\n\n\"B-because,\" Bastian stammered, \"you\u2014you must have expected somebody who was right for you.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with you?\" she asked. \"Aren't you right for me?\"\n\nBastian felt that he was blushing. \"I mean,\" he said, \"somebody strong and brave and handsome\u2014maybe a prince\u2014anyway, not someone like me.\"\n\nHe couldn't see her, for he had lowered his eyes, but again he heard her soft lilting\n\nlaugh.\n\n\"You see,\" he said. \"Now you're laughing at me.\"\n\nThere was a long silence, and when Bastian finally brought himself to look up, he saw that she was bending very close to him. Her face was grave.\n\n\"Let me show you something, my Bastian,\" she said. \"Look into my eyes.\"\n\nBastian obeyed, though his heart was pounding and he felt dizzy.\n\nIn the golden mirror of her eyes, he saw, small at first as though far in the distance, a reflection which little by little grew larger and more distinct. It was a boy of about his own age; but this boy was slender and wonderfully handsome. His bearing was proud and erect, his face was noble, manly\u2014and lean. He looked like a young prince from the Orient. His turban was of blue silk and so was the silver-embroidered tunic which reached down to his knees. His high boots, made of the softest red leather, were turned up at the toes. And he was wearing a silver-glittering mantle which hung down to the ground. But most beautiful of all were the boy's hands, which, though delicately shaped, gave an impression of unusual strength.\n\nBastian gazed at the image with wonder and admiration. He couldn't get enough of it. He was just going to ask who this handsome young prince might be when it came to him in a flash that this was his very own self\u2014his reflection in Moon Child's golden eyes.\n\nIn that moment he was transported, carried out of himself, and when he returned, he found he had become the handsome boy whose image he had seen.\n\nHe looked down, and saw exactly what he had seen in Moon Child's eyes: the soft, red-leather boots, the blue tunic embroidered with silver, the resplendent long mantle. He touched his turban and felt his face. His face was the same too.\n\nAnd then he turned toward Moon Child.\n\nShe was gone!\n\nHe was alone in the round room which the glowing thicket had formed.\n\n\"Moon Child!\" he shouted. \"Moon Child!\" There was no answer.\n\nFeeling utterly lost, he sat down. What was he to do now? Why had she left him alone? Where should he go\u2014that is, if he was free to go anywhere, if he wasn't caught in a trap?\n\nWhile he was wondering why Moon Child should have vanished without a word of explanation, without so much as bidding him goodbye, his fingers started playing with a golden medallion that was hanging from his neck.\n\nHe looked at it and let out a cry of surprise.\n\nIt was AURYN, the Gem, the Childlike Empress's amulet, which made its bearer her representative. Moon Child had given him power over every creature and thing in Fantastica. And as long as he wore that emblem, it would be as though she were with him.\n\nFor a long while Bastian looked at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other's tail, and formed an oval. Then he turned the amulet over and to his surprise found an inscription on the reverse side. It consisted of four words in strangely intricate letters:\n\nDo\n\nWhat You\n\nWish\n\nThere had been no mention of such an inscription in the Neverending Story. Could it be that Atreyu hadn't noticed it?\n\nBut that didn't matter now. What mattered was that the words gave him permission, ordered him in fact, to do whatever he pleased.\n\nBastian approached the wall of luminous plants to see if he could slip through somewhere. To his delight he found that the wall could easily be thrust aside like a curtain. Out he stepped.\n\nIn the meantime, the night plants had kept on growing, gently but irresistibly, and Perilin had become a forest such as no human eye had ever beheld.\n\nThe great trunks were now as high and thick as church towers, and still growing. In places these shimmering, milky-white pillars were so close together that it was impossible to pass between them. And seeds were still falling like a shower of sparks.\n\nOn his way through the luminous forest, Bastian tried hard not to step on the glittering seeds that lay on the ground, but this soon proved impossible. There simply wasn't a foot's breadth of ground from which nothing was sprouting. So he stopped worrying and went wherever the giant trees left a path open for him.\n\nBastian was delighted at being handsome. It didn't bother him that there was no one to admire him. On the contrary, he was glad to have the pleasure all to himself. He didn't care a fig for being admired by the lugs who had always made fun of him. If he thought of them at all, it was almost with pity.\n\nIn this forest, where there were no seasons and no alternation of day and night, the feeling of time was entirely different from anything Bastian had ever known. He had no idea how long he had been on his way. But little by little his pleasure in being handsome underwent a change. He began to take it for granted. Not that he was any less happy about it; but now he had the feeling that he had never been any different.\n\nFor this there was a reason which Bastian was not to discover until much later. The beauty that had been bestowed on him made him forget, little by little, that he had ever been fat and bowlegged.\n\nEven if he had known what was happening, he would hardly have regretted the loss of this particular memory. As it happened, he didn't even realize that he had forgotten anything. And when the memory had vanished completely, it seemed to him that he had always been as handsome as he was now.\n\nAt that point a new wish cropped up. Just being handsome wasn't as wonderful as he had thought. He also wanted to be strong, stronger than anybody! The strongest in the world!\n\nWhile going deeper and deeper into the Night Forest, he began to feel hungry. He picked off a few of the strangely shaped luminous fruits and nibbled gingerly to see if they were edible. Edible was no word for it; some were tart, some sweet, some slightly bitter, but all were delicious. He ate as he walked, and felt a miraculous strength flowing into his limbs.\n\nIn the meantime the glowing underbrush around him had become so dense that it cut off his view on all sides. To make matters worse, lianas and aerial roots were becoming inextricably tangled with the thicket below. Slashing with the side of his hand as if it had been a machete, Bastian opened up a passage. And the breach closed directly behind him as if it had never been.\n\nOn he went, but the wall of giant tree trunks blocked his path. Bastian grabbed hold of two great tree trunks and bent them apart. When he had passed through, the wall closed soundlessly behind him.\n\nBastian shouted for joy.\n\nHe was the Lord of the Jungle!\n\nFor a while he amused himself opening paths for himself, like an elephant that has heard the Great Call. His strength did not abate, he had no need to stop for breath. He felt no stitch in his side, and his heart didn't thump or race.\n\nBut after a while he wearied of his new sport. The next thing he wanted was to look down on his domain from above, to see how big it was.\n\nHe spat on his hands, took hold of a liana, and pulled himself up hand over hand, without using his legs, as he had seen acrobats do in the circus. For a moment a vision\u2014a pale memory of the past\u2014came to him of himself in gym class, dangling like a sack of flour from the bottommost end of the rope, while the rest of the class cackled with glee. He couldn't help smiling. How they would gape if they saw him now! They'd be proud to know him. But he wouldn't even look at them.\n\nWithout stopping once he finally reached the branch from which the liana was hanging, climbed up and straddled it. The branch gave off a red glow. He stood up and, balancing himself like a tightrope walker, made his way to the trunk. Here again a dense tangle of creepers barred his way, but he had no difficulty in opening up a passage through it.\n\nAt that height the trunk was still so thick that five men clasping hands could not have encircled it. Another, somewhat higher branch, jutting from the trunk in a different direction, was beyond his reach. So he leapt through the air, caught hold of an aerial root, swung himself into place, made another perilous leap, and grabbed the higher branch. From there he was able to pull himself up to a still higher one. By then he was high above the ground, at least three hundred feet, but the glowing branches and foliage still obstructed his view.\n\nNot until he had climbed to twice that height were there occasional spaces through which he could look around. But then the going became difficult, because there were fewer and fewer branches. And at last, when he had almost reached the top, he had to stop, for there was nothing to hold on to but the smooth, bare trunk, which was still as thick as a telegraph pole.\n\nBastian looked up and saw that the trunk or stalk ended some fifty feet higher up in an enormous, glowing, dark-red blossom. He didn't see how he could ever reach it, but he had to keep going, for he couldn't very well stay where he was. He threw his arms around the trunk and climbed the last fifty feet like an acrobat. The trunk swayed and bent like a blade of grass in the wind.\n\nAt length he was directly below the blossom, which was open at the top like a tulip. He managed to slip one hand between two of the petals and take hold. Then, pushing the petals wide apart, he pulled himself up.\n\nFor a moment he lay there, for by then he was somewhat out of breath. But then he stood up and looked over the edge of the great, glowing blossom, as from the crow's nest of a ship.\n\nThe tree he had climbed was one of the tallest in the whole jungle and he was able to see far into the distance. Above him he still saw the velvety darkness of a starless night sky, but below him, as far as he could see, the treetops of Perilin presented a play of color that took his breath away.\n\nFor a long time Bastian stood there, drinking in the sight. This was his domain! He had created it! He was the lord of Perilin.\n\nAnd once again he shouted for joy!\n\never had Bastian slept so soundly as in that glowing red blossom. When at last he opened his eyes, the sky overhead was still a velvety black. He stretched and was happy to feel miraculous strength in his limbs.\n\nOnce again, there had been a change in him. His wish to be strong had come true.\n\nWhen he stood up and looked out over the edge of the great blossom, Perilin seemed to have stopped growing. The Night Forest looked pretty much the same as when he had last seen it. He didn't know that this too was connected with the fulfillment of his wish, and that his memory of his weakness and clumsiness had been blotted out at the same time. He was handsome and strong, but somehow that wasn't enough for him. He also felt the need to be tough and inured to hardship like Atreyu. But how was he to come by that quality in this luminous garden, where all manner of fruit was to be had for the picking?\n\nThe first pearly streaks of dawn appeared over the eastern horizon. And with the rising of the light the phosphorescence of the night plants paled.\n\n\"High time!\" said Bastian aloud. \"I thought the day would never come.\"\n\nHe sat down on the floor of the blossom and wondered what he should do. Climb down again and keep going? Of course, since he was lord of Perilin, no one could stop him from wandering around in it for days, if not for months or years. This jungle was so enormous he would never find his way out of it. But beautiful as he found the night plants, he didn't think this prospect would suit him in the long run. Exploring a desert\u2014that would be something else again. The biggest desert in Fantastica. Yes, that would be something to be proud of.\n\nIn that same moment, a violent tremor shook the giant tree. The trunk bent, and a crackling, groaning sound could be heard. Bastian had to hold tight to keep from rolling out of his blossom, the stem of which tilted more and more, until at last it lay flat.\n\nThe sun, which had risen in the meantime, disclosed a vision of devastation. Hardly anything was left of all the enormous night plants. More quickly than they had sprung up they crumbled under the glaring sunlight into dust and fine, colored sand. Gigantic tree trunks collapsed as sand castles do when they dry out. Bastian's tree seemed to be the last still standing. But when he tried to steady himself by grasping at the petals of his flower, they crumbled in his hands and blew away like a cloud of dust. Now that there was nothing to obstruct the view, he saw how terrifyingly high up he was. He knew he would have to climb down as fast as possible, for the tree was likely to collapse at any moment.\n\nCautiously, he climbed out of the blossom and straddled the stem, which was now bent like a fishing pole. No sooner had he left the blossom than it broke off behind him and crumbled into dust in falling.\n\nEver so gingerly Bastian proceeded downward. Many a man would have panicked on seeing the ground so very far below, but Bastian was free from dizziness and his nerves were steel. Knowing that any abrupt movement might reduce the whole tree to dust, he crept along the bough and finally reached the place where the trunk became vertical. Hugging it, he let himself slide, inch by inch. Several times, great clouds of colored dust fell on him from above. There were no branches left, and what towering stumps remained crumbled when Bastian tried to use them for support. As he continued downward, the trunk became too big for him to hold. And he was still far above the ground. He stopped to think; How was he ever going to get down?\n\nBut then another tremor passed through the giant stump and relieved him of the need for further thought. What was left of the tree disintegrated and settled into a great mound of sand; Bastian rolled down the side of it in a wild whirl, turning a number of somersaults on the way, and finally came to rest at the bottom. He came close to being buried under an avalanche of colored dust, but he fought his way clear, spat the sand out of his mouth, and shook it out of his ears and clothes.\n\nWherever he looked, the sand was moving in slow streams and eddies. It collected into hills and dunes of every shape and size, each with a color of its own. Light-blue sand gathered to form a light-blue hill, and the same with green and violet and so on. Perilin, the Night Forest, was gone and a desert was taking its place; and what a desert!\n\nBastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that recurred in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermilion, lapis lazuli. And so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hills, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand.\n\n\"This,\" said Bastian aloud, \"is Goab, the Desert of Colors.\"\n\nThe sun rose higher and higher and the heat became murderous. The air over the colored sand dunes shimmered, and Bastian realized that he was in a tight spot. He could not stay in this desert, that was certain. If he didn't get out of it soon, he would die of hunger and thirst.\n\nHe took hold of the Childlike Empress's emblem in the hope that it would guide him. And then staunchly he started on his way.\n\nHe climbed dune after dune; hour after hour he plodded on, never seeing anything but hill after hill. Only the colors kept changing. His fabulous strength was no longer of any use to him, for desert distances cannot be vanquished with strength. The air was a searing blast from hell. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth and his face streamed with sweat.\n\nThe sun was a whorl of fire in the middle of the sky. It had been in the same place for a long time and didn't seem to move. That day in the desert was as long as the night in Perilin.\n\nBastian's eyes burned and his tongue felt like a piece of leather. But he didn't give up. His body had dried out, and the blood in his veins was so thick it could hardly flow. But on he went, slowly, with even steps, neither hurrying nor stopping to rest, as if he had had years of experience at crossing deserts on foot. He ignored the torments of thirst. His will had become as hard as steel, neither fatigue nor hardship could bend it.\n\nHe recalled how easily he had been discouraged in the past. He had begun all sorts of projects and given up at the first sign of difficulty. He had always been afraid of not getting enough to eat, or of falling ill, or having to endure pain. All that was far behind him.\n\nNo one before him had dared to cross Goab, the Desert of Colors, on foot, nor would anyone undertake to do so in the future. And most likely no one would ever hear of his exploit.\n\nThis last thought saddened Bastian. Goab seemed to be so inconceivably large he felt sure he would never come to the end of it. Despite his phenomenal endurance he was bound to perish sooner or later. That didn't frighten him. He would die with calm dignity like the hunters in Atreyu's country. But since no one ever ventured into this desert, the news of his death would never be divulged. Either in Fantastica or at home. He would simply be reported missing, and no one would ever know he had been in Fantastica or in the desert of Goab. All Fantastica, he said to himself, was contained in the book that the Old Man of Wandering Mountain had written. This book was the Neverending Story, which he himself had read in the attic. Maybe his present adventures and sufferings were in the book even now. And maybe someone else would read the book someday\u2014maybe someone was reading it at that very moment. In that case, it must be possible to give that someone a sign.\n\nThe sand hill where Bastian was standing just then was ultramarine blue. And separated from it by a narrow cleft there was a fiery-red dune. Bastian crossed over to it, gathered up sand in both hands and carried it to the blue hill. Then he strewed a long line of red sand on the hillside. He went back, brought more red sand, and repeated the operation. Soon he had fashioned three enormous red letters against the blue ground:\n\nB B B\n\nHe viewed his work with satisfaction. No reader of the Neverending Story could fail to see his message. So whatever happened to him now, someone would know where he had been.\n\nHe sat down to rest on the red hilltop. The three letters glittered bright in the desert sun.\n\nAnother piece of his memory of the old Bastian had been wiped out. He forgot that he had once been a namby-pamby, something of a crybaby, in fact. And he was ever so proud of his toughness. But already a new wish was taking form.\n\n\"It's true that I fear nothing,\" he said aloud, \"but what I still lack is true courage. Being able to endure hardships is a great thing. But courage and daring are something else again. I wish I could run into a real adventure, something calling for great courage. How grand it would be to meet some dangerous creature\u2014maybe not as hideous as Ygramul, but much more dangerous. A beautiful, but very, very dangerous creature. The most dangerous creature in all Fantastica. I'd step right up to it and...\"\n\nBastian said no more, for in that same moment he heard a roaring and rumbling so deep that the ground trembled beneath his feet.\n\nBastian turned around. Far in the distance he saw something that looked like a ball of fire. Moving with incredible speed, it described a wide arc around the spot where Bastian was sitting, then came straight toward him. In the shimmering desert air, which made the outline of things waver like flames, the creature looked like a dancing fire-demon.\n\nBastian was stricken with terror. Before he knew it, he had run down into the cleft between the red dune and the blue dune. But no sooner had he got there than he felt ashamed and overcame his fear.\n\nHe took hold of AURYN and felt all the courage he had wished for streaming into his heart.\n\nThen again he heard the deep roar that made the ground tremble, but this time it was near him. He looked up.\n\nA huge lion was standing on the fiery-red dune. The sun was directly behind him, and made his great mane look like a wreath of fire. This lion was not a tawny color like other lions, but as fiery red as the dune on which he was standing.\n\nThe beast did not seem to have noticed the boy, so much smaller than himself, who was standing in the cleft between the two dunes, but seemed to be looking at the red letters on the opposite hill. The great rumbling voice said: \"Who did this?\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"It's my initials,\" said Bastian. \"My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\nThen for the first time the lion turned toward Bastian, who for a moment expected to be burned to a crisp by the flames that seemed to surround the lion. But his fear soon passed and he returned the lion's gaze.\n\n\"I,\" said the huge beast, \"am Grograman, Lord of the Desert of Colors. I am also known as the Many-Colored Death.\"\n\nBastian felt the deadly power that flowed from the lion's eyes. But he did not avert his own.\n\nWhen they had measured their strength for some time, the lion looked down. With slow, majestic movements he descended from the dune. When he stepped onto the ultramarine sand, he too changed color, his coat and mane became blue. For a moment the huge beast stood facing Bastian, who had to look up at him as a mouse might look up at a cat. Then suddenly Grograman lay down and touched his head to the ground.\n\n\"Master,\" he said. \"I am your servant, I await your commands.\"\n\n\"I'd like to get out of this desert,\" said Bastian. \"Can you manage that?\"\n\nGrograman shook his mane.\n\n\"No, master, that I cannot do.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because I carry the desert with me.\"\n\nNot knowing what to make of this, Bastian asked: \"Isn't there somebody who can get me out of here?\"\n\n\"How could that be, master?\" said Grograman. \"Where I am no other living creature can exist. My presence alone would suffice to reduce everybody\u2014even the most powerful of creatures\u2014into ashes for thousands of miles around. That's why I'm called the Many-Colored Death and Lord of the Desert of Colors.\"\n\n\"That's not so,\" said Bastian. \"Everybody doesn't get burned up in your desert. Look at me.\"\n\n\"Because you are bearing the Gem, master. AURYN protects you\u2014even from me, the deadliest creature in Fantastica.\"\n\n\"You mean that if I didn't have the Gem, I'd be reduced to ashes?\"\n\n\"That's how it is, master. That's what would happen, though personally I'd regret it. Because you're the first and only being who has ever spoken to me.\"\n\nBastian touched the amulet. \"Thank you, Moon Child,\" he said under his breath.\n\nGrograman stood up to his full height and looked down at Bastian.\n\n\"I believe, master, that we have things to discuss. Perhaps I can acquaint you with certain secrets. And perhaps you can clear up the riddle of my existence for me.\"\n\nBastian nodded. \"But first,\" he said. \"Could you possibly get me something to drink? I'm very thirsty.\"\n\n\"Your servant hears and obeys,\" said Grograman. \"Will you deign to sit on my back? I shall carry you to my palace, where you will find everything you need.\"\n\nBastian climbed up on the lion's back and clutched the flaming mane in both hands. Grograman looked back at his passenger.\n\n\"Hold on tight, master, I'm a swift runner. And one more thing: as long as you are in my domain and especially when you are with me\u2014promise me that you will never for any reason lay down the amulet that protects you.\"\n\n\"I promise,\" said Bastian.\n\nThe lion started off, at first at a slow, dignified gait, then faster and faster. To Bastian's amazement, the lion's coat and mane changed color with every new sand hill. But soon Grograman was making great leaps from hilltop to hilltop, and his coat changed color faster and faster. Bastian's eyes swam, and he saw all the colors at once as in a rainbow. The hot wind whistled around Bastian's ears and tugged at his mantle, which fluttered behind him. He felt the movements of the lion's muscles and breathed the wild, heady smell of the shaggy mane. The triumphant shout that escaped him resembled the cry of a bird of prey, and Grograman answered with a roar that made the desert tremble. For the moment these two different creatures were one. Bastian's heart and mind were in the clouds. He didn't come to himself until he heard Grograman saying: \"We have arrived, master! Will you deign to alight?\"\n\nBastian jumped down from the lion's back and landed on the sandy ground. Before him he saw a cleft mountain of black rock. Or was it a ruined building? He didn't know, for the stones which made up the doorframes, walls, columns, and terraces of the building, as well as those that were lying about half buried in colored sand, were deeply creviced and smooth, as though the sandstorms of time had smoothed away all sharp edges and roughness.\n\n\"This, master, is my palace\u2014and my tomb,\" Bastian heard the lion's voice saying. \"You are Grograman's first and only guest. Enter and make yourself at home.\"\n\nThe sun hung low over the horizon, a great pale-yellow disk, shorn of its searing heat. Apparently the ride had taken much longer than it had seemed to Bastian. The truncated columns or spurs of rock, whichever they might be, cast long shadows. It would soon be night.\n\nAs Bastian followed the lion through a dark doorway leading into the palace, he had the impression that Grograman's steps sounded tired and heavy.\n\nAfter passing a dark corridor and up and down a number of stairways, they came at last to a large double door which seemed to be made of black rock. As Grograman approached, it opened of its own accord, and when they had both gone through, it closed behind them.\n\nNow they were in a large hall, or rather a cave, lit by hundreds of lamps whose flames resembled the play of colors on Grograman's coat. The floor was of colored tiles. At the center was a circular platform surrounded by steps, and on the platform lay an enormous black rock. Grograman seemed spent as he turned to Bastian.\n\n\"My time is close at hand, master,\" he said, hardly above a whisper. \"There won't be time for our talk. But don't worry, and wait for the day. What has always happened will happen once again. And perhaps you will be able to tell me why.\"\n\nThen he pointed his head in the direction of a little gate at the other end of the cave.\n\n\"Go in there, master. You will find everything in readiness. That room has been waiting for you since the beginning of time.\"\n\nBastian went to the gate, but before opening it, he glanced back. Grograman had sat down on the black rock. He was as black as the stone. In a faint, far-off voice, he said: \"Quite possibly, master, you will hear sounds that will frighten you. Don't be afraid. As long as you carry the emblem, nothing can happen to you.\"\n\nBastian nodded and passed through the gate.\n\nThe room he entered was magnificent. The floor was laid with soft, richly colored carpets. The graceful columns supporting the vaulted ceiling were covered with gold mosaic, which fragmented the varicolored light of the lamps. In one corner Bastian saw a broad divan covered with soft rugs and cushions of all kinds, surmounted by a canopy of azure-blue silk. In the opposite corner the stone floor had been hollowed to form a pool\n\nfilled with golden liquid. On a low table stood bowls and dishes of food, a carafe full of some ruby-red drink, and a golden cup.\n\nBastian squatted down at the table and fell to. The drink had a tart, wild taste and was wonderfully thirst-quenching. The dishes were unknown to Bastian. Some looked like cakes or nuts, others like squash or melons, but the taste was entirely different. Sharp and spicy. Everything was delicious, and Bastian ate his fill.\n\nThen he took his clothes off\u2014but not the amulet\u2014and stepped into the pool. For a while he splashed about, washed himself, dived under, and came up puffing like a walrus. Then he discovered some strange-looking bottles at the edge of the pool. Thinking they must be bath oils, he poured a little of each into the water. Green, red, and yellow flames darted hissing over the surface, and a little smoke went up. It smelled of resin and bitter herbs. And then the flames died.\n\nAfter a while Bastian got out of the water, dried himself with the soft towels that lay ready, and put his clothes on. Suddenly he noticed that the lamps were not burning as brightly as before. And then he heard a sound that sent the cold shivers down his spine: a cracking and grinding, as though a rock were bursting under the pressure of expanding ice.\n\nBastian's heart pounded. He remembered that Grograman had told him not to be afraid.\n\nThe sound softened to a moan and soon stopped. It was not repeated, but the stillness was almost more terrible.\n\nDetermined to find out what had happened, Bastian opened the door of the bedchamber. At first he saw no change in the great hall, except that the lamplight now seemed somber and was pulsating like a faltering heartbeat. The lion was still sitting in the same attitude on the black rock. He seemed to be looking at Bastian.\n\n\"Grograman!\" Bastian cried. \"What's going on? What was that sound? Was it you?\"\n\nThe lion made no answer and didn't move, but when Bastian approached him, the lion followed him with his eyes.\n\nHesitantly Bastian stretched out his hand to stroke the lion's mane, but the moment he touched it he recoiled in horror. It was hard and ice-cold like the black rock. And Grograman's face and paws felt the same way.\n\nBastian didn't know what to do. He saw that the black stone doors were slowly opening. He left the hall, but it wasn't until he had passed through the long dark corridor and was on his way up the stairs that he started wondering what he would do when he was outside. In this desert there couldn't be anyone capable of saving Grograman.\n\nBut it wasn't a desert anymore!\n\nWhichever way Bastian looked, he saw glittering dots. Millions of tiny plants were sprouting from the grains of sand which had become seeds again. Perilin the Night Forest was growing once more.\n\nBastian sensed that Grograman's rigidity was somehow connected with this transformation.\n\nHe went back to the cave. The light in the lamps was barely flickering. He went over to the lion, threw his arms around the huge neck, and pressed his face to the beast's face.\n\nThe lion's eyes were black and as dead as the rock. Grograman had turned to stone. The lights flared for an instant and went out, leaving the cave in total darkness.\n\nBastian wept bitterly. The stone lion was wet with his tears. In the end, the boy curled up between the great paws and fell asleep!\n\nmaster,\" said the rumbling lion's voice. \"Have you spent the whole night like this?\"\n\nBastian sat up and rubbed his eyes. He had been lying between the lion's paws, and Grograman was watching him with a look of amazement. His fur was still as black as the rock he was sitting on, but his eyes sparkled. The lamps in the cave were burning again.\n\n\"Oh!\" Bastian cried. \"I thought you had turned to stone.\"\n\n\"So I had,\" the lion replied. \"I die with every nightfall, and every morning I wake up again.\"\n\n\"I thought it was forever,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"It always is forever,\" said Grograman mysteriously.\n\nHe stood up, stretched, and trotted about the cave. His fur shone more and more brightly in the colors of the mosaic floor. Suddenly he stopped still and looked at the boy.\n\n\"Did you shed tears over me?\" he asked.\n\nBastian nodded.\n\n\"Then,\" said the lion, \"you are not only the only being who has ever slept between the paws of the Many-Colored Death, but also the only being who has ever mourned his death.\"\n\nBastian looked at the lion, who was trotting about again, and finally asked him in a whisper: \"Are you always alone?\"\n\nAgain the lion stood still, but this time he did not turn toward Bastian. He kept his face averted and repeated in his rumbling voice: \"Alone!\"\n\nThe word echoed through the cave.\n\n\"My realm is the desert, and it is also my work. Wherever I go, everything around me turns to desert. I carry it with me. Since I am made of deadly fire, must I not be doomed to everlasting solitude?\"\n\nBastian fell into a dismayed silence.\n\n\"Master,\" said the lion, looking at the boy with glowing eyes. \"You who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress, can you tell me this: Why must I always die at nightfall?\"\n\n\"So that Perilin, the Night Forest, can grow in the Desert of Colors,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"Perilin?\" said the lion. \"What's that?\"\n\nThen Bastian told him about the miraculous jungle that consisted of living light. While Grograman listened in fascinated amazement, Bastian described the diversity and beauty of the glimmering phosphorescent plants, their silent, irresistible growth, their dreamlike beauty and incredible size. His enthusiasm grew as he spoke and Grograman's eyes glowed more and more brightly.\n\n\"All that,\" Bastian concluded, \"can happen only when you are turned to stone. But Perilin would swallow up everything else and stifle itself if it didn't have to die and crumble into dust when you wake up. You and Perilin need each other.\"\n\nFor a long while Grograman was silent.\n\n\"Master,\" he said then. \"Now I see that my dying gives life and my living death, and both are good. Now I understand the meaning of my existence. I thank you.\"\n\nHe strode slowly and solemnly into the darkest corner of the cave. Bastian couldn't see what he did there, but he heard a jangling of metal. When Grograman came back, he was carrying something in his mouth. With a deep bow he laid this something at Bastian's feet.\n\nIt was a sword.\n\nIt didn't look very impressive. The iron sheath was rusty, and the hilt might have belonged to a child's wooden sword.\n\n\"Can you give it a name?\" Grograman asked.\n\nBastian examined it carefully.\n\n\"Sikanda,\" he said.\n\nIn that same moment the sword darted from its sheath and flew into his hand. The blade consisted of pure light and glittered so brightly that he could hardly bear to look at it. It was double-edged and weighed no more than a feather.\n\n\"This sword has been destined for you since the beginning of time,\" said Grograman. \"For only one who has ridden on my back, who has eaten and drunk of my fire and bathed in it like you, can touch it without danger. But only because you have given it its right name does it belong to you.\"\n\n\"Sikanda!\" said Bastian under his breath as, fascinated by the gleaming light, he swung the sword slowly through the air. \"It's a magic sword, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Nothing in all Fantastica can resist it,\" said Grograman, \"neither rock nor steel. But you must not use force. Whatever may threaten you, you may wield it only if it leaps into your hand of its own accord as it did now. It will guide your hand and by its own power will do what needs to be done. But if your will makes you draw it from its sheath, you will bring great misfortune on yourself and on Fantastica. Never forget that.\"\n\n\"I will never forget it,\" Bastian promised.\n\nThe sword flew back into its sheath and again it looked old and worthless. Bastian grasped the leather belt on which the sheath hung and slung it around his waist.\n\n\"And now, master,\" Grograman suggested, \"let us, if you wish, go racing through the desert together. Climb on my back, for I must go out now.\"\n\nBastian mounted, and the lion trotted out into the open. The Night Forest had long since crumbled into colored sand, and the morning sun rose above the desert horizon. Together they swept over the dunes\u2014like a dancing flame, like a blazing tempest. Bastian felt as though he were riding a flaming comet through light and colors.\n\nToward midday Grograman stopped.\n\n\"This, master, is the place where we met.\"\n\nBastian's head was still reeling from the wild ride. He looked around but could see neither the ultramarine-blue nor the fiery-red hill. Nor was there any sign of the letters he had made. Now the dunes were olive-green and pink.\n\n\"It's all entirely different,\" he said.\n\n\"Yes, master,\" said the lion. \"That's the way it is\u2014different every day. Up until now I didn't know why. But since you told me that Perilin grows out of the sand, I understand.\"\n\n\"But how do you know it's the same place as yesterday?\"\n\n\"I feel it as I feel my own body. The desert is a part of me.\"\n\nBastian climbed down from Grograman's back and seated himself on the olive-green hill. The lion lay beside him and now he too was olive-green. Bastian propped his chin on his hand and looked out toward the horizon.\n\n\"Grograman,\" he said after a long silence. \"May I ask you a question?\"\n\n\"Your servant is listening.\"\n\n\"Is it true that you've always been here?\"\n\n\"Always!\"\n\n\"And the desert of Goab has always existed?\"\n\n\"Yes, the desert too. Why do you ask?\"\n\nBastian pondered.\n\n\"I don't get it,\" he finally confessed. \"I'd have bet it wasn't here before yesterday morning.\"\n\n\"What makes you think that, master?\"\n\nThen Bastian told him everything that had happened since he met Moon Child.\n\n\"It's all so strange,\" he concluded. \"A wish comes into my head, and then something always happens that makes the wish come true. I haven't made this up, you know. I wouldn't be able to. I could never have invented all the different night plants in Perilin. Or the colors of Goab\u2014or you! It's all much more wonderful and real than anything I could have made up. But all the same, nothing is there until I've wished it.\"\n\n\"That,\" said the lion, \"is because you're carrying AURYN, the Gem.\"\n\n\"But does all this exist only after I've wished it? Or was it all there before?\"\n\n\"Both,\" said Grograman.\n\n\"How can that be?\" Bastian cried almost impatiently. \"You've been here in Goab, the Desert of Colors, since heaven knows when. The room in your palace was waiting for me since the beginning of time. So, too, was the sword Sikanda. You told me so yourself.\"\n\n\"That is true, master.\"\n\n\"But I\u2014I've only been in Fantastica since last night! So it can't be true that all these things have existed only since I came here.\"\n\n\"Master,\" the lion replied calmly. \"Didn't you know that Fantastica is the land of stories? A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.\"\n\n\"Then Perilin, too, must always have been there,\" said the perplexed Bastian.\n\n\"Beginning at the moment when you gave it its name,\" Grograman replied, \"it has existed forever.\"\n\n\"You mean that I created it?\"\n\nThe lion was silent for a while. Then he said: \"Only the Childlike Empress can tell you that. It is she who has given you everything.\"\n\nHe arose.\n\n\"Master, it's time we went back to my palace. The sun is low in the sky and we have a long way to go.\"\n\nThat night Grograman lay down again on the black rock, and this time Bastian stayed with him. Few words passed between them. Bastian brought food and drink from the bedchamber, where once again the little table had been laid by an unseen hand. He seated himself on the steps leading to the lion's rock, and there he ate his supper.\n\nWhen the light of the lamps grew dim and began to pulsate like a faltering heartbeat, he stood up and threw his arms around the lion's neck. The mane was hard and looked like congealed lava. Then the gruesome sound was repeated. Bastian was no longer afraid, but again he wept at the thought of Grograman's sufferings, for now he knew they would endure for all time.\n\nLater that night Bastian groped his way into the open and stood for a long while watching the soundless growth of the night plants. Then he went back into the cave and again lay down to sleep between the petrified lion's paws.\n\nHe stayed with Grograman for many days and nights, and they became friends. They spent many hours in the desert, playing wild games. Bastian would hide among the sand dunes, but Grograman always found him. They ran races, but the lion was a thousand times swifter than Bastian. They wrestled and there Bastian was the lion's equal. Though of course it was only in fun, Grograman needed all his strength to hold his own. Neither could defeat the other.\n\nOnce, after they had been wrestling and tumbling, Bastian sat down, somewhat out of breath, and said: \"Couldn't I stay with you forever?\"\n\nThe lion shook his mane. \"No, master.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Here there is only life and death, only Perilin and Goab, but no story. You must live your story. You cannot remain here.\"\n\n\"But how can I leave?\" Bastian asked. \"The desert is much too big, I'd never get to the end of it. And you can't carry me out of it, because you take the desert with you.\"\n\n\"Only your wishes can guide you over the pathways of Fantastica,\" said Grograman. \"You must go from wish to wish. What you don't wish for will always be beyond your reach. That is what the words \"far\" and \"near\" mean in Fantastica. And wishing to leave a place is not enough. You must wish to go somewhere else and let your wishes guide you.\"\n\n\"But I can't wish to leave here,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"You must find your next wish,\" said Grograman almost sternly.\n\n\"And when I find it,\" Bastian asked, \"how will I be able to leave here?\"\n\n\"I will tell you,\" said Grograman gravely. \"There is in Fantastica a certain place from which one can go anywhere and which can be reached from anywhere. We call it the Temple of a Thousand Doors. No one has ever seen it from outside. The inside is a maze of doors. Anyone wishing to know it must dare to enter it.\"\n\n\"But how is that possible if it can't be approached from outside?\"\n\n\"Every door in Fantastica,\" said the lion, \"even the most ordinary stable, kitchen, or cupboard door, can become the entrance to the Temple of a Thousand Doors at the right moment. And none of these thousand doors leads back to where one came from. There is no return.\"\n\n\"And once someone is inside,\" Bastian asked, \"can he get out and go somewhere?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the lion. \"But it's not as simple as in other buildings. Only a genuine wish can lead you through the maze of the thousand doors. Without a genuine wish, you just have to wander around until you know what you really want. And that can take a long time.\"\n\n\"How will I find the entrance?\"\n\n\"You've got to wish it.\"\n\nBastian pondered a long while. Then he said: \"It seems strange that we can't just wish what we please. Where do our wishes come from? What is a wish anyway?\"\n\nGrograman gave the boy a long, earnest look, but made no answer.\n\nSome days later they had another serious talk.\n\nBastian had shown the lion the inscription on the reverse side of the Gem. \"What do you suppose it means?\" he asked. \"'DO WHAT YOU WISH.' That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so?\"\n\nAll at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed.\n\n\"No,\" he said in his deep, rumbling voice. \"It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.\"\n\n\"What I really and truly want? What do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't know it.\"\n\n\"How can I find out?\"\n\n\"By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.\"\n\n\"That doesn't sound so hard,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"It is the most dangerous of all journeys.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Bastian asked. \"I'm not afraid.\"\n\n\"That isn't it,\" Grograman rumbled. \"It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.\"\n\n\"Do you mean because our wishes aren't always good?\" Bastian asked.\n\nThe lion lashed the sand he was lying on with his tail. His ears lay flat, he screwed up his nose, and his eyes flashed fire. Involuntarily Bastian ducked when Grograman's voice once again made the earth tremble: \"What do you know about wishes? How would you know what's good and what isn't?\"\n\nIn the days that followed Bastian thought a good deal about what the Many-Colored Death had said. There are some things, however, that we cannot fathom by thinking about them, but only by experience. So it was not until much later, after all manner of adventures, that he thought back on Grograman's words and began to understand them.\n\nAt this time another change took place in Bastian. Since his meeting with Moon Child he had received many gifts. Now he was favored with a new one: courage. And again something was taken away from him, namely, the memory of his past timidity.\n\nSince he was no longer afraid of anything, a new wish began, imperceptibly at first, then more distinctly, to take shape within him: the wish to be alone no longer. Even in the company of the Many-Colored Death he was alone in a way. He wanted to exhibit his talents to others, to be admired and to become famous.\n\nAnd one night as he was watching Perilin grow, it suddenly came to him that he was doing so for the last time, that he would have to bid the grandiose Night Forest goodbye. An inner voice was calling him away.\n\nHe cast a last glance at the magnificently glowing colors. Then he descended to the darkness of Grograman's palace and tomb, and sat down on the steps. He couldn't have said what he was waiting for, but he knew that he could not sleep that night.\n\nHe must have dozed a little, for suddenly he started as if someone had called his name.\n\nThe door leading to the bedchamber had opened. Through the cleft a long strip of reddish light shone into the dark cave.\n\nBastian stood up. Had the door been transformed for this moment into the entrance of the Temple of a Thousand Doors? Hesitantly he approached the cleft and tried to peer through. He couldn't see a thing. Then slowly the cleft began to close. In a moment his only chance would pass.\n\nHe turned back to Grograman, who lay motionless, with eyes of dead stone, on his pedestal. The strip of light from the door fell full on him.\n\n\"Goodbye, Grograman, and thanks for everything,\" he said softly. \"I'll come again, I promise, I'll come again.\"\n\nThen he slipped through the cleft, and instantly the door closed behind him.\n\nBastian didn't know that he would not keep his promise. Much much later someone would come in his name and keep it for him.\n\nBut that's another story and shall be told another time.\n\nurple light passed in slow waves across the floor and the walls of the room. It was a hexagonal room, rather like the enlarged cell of a honeycomb. Every second wall had a door in it, and on the intervening walls were painted strange pictures representing land scapes and creatures who seemed to be half plant and half animal. Bastian had entered through one of the doors; the other two, to the right and left of it, were exactly the same shape, but the left-hand door was black, while the right-hand one was white. Bastian chose the white door.\n\nIn the next room the light was yellowish. Here again the walls formed a hexagon. The pictures represented all manner of contrivances that meant nothing to Bastian. Were they tools or weapons? The two doors leading onward to the right and left were the same color, yellow, but the left-hand one was tall and narrow, while the one on the right was low and wide. Bastian chose the left-hand one.\n\nThe next room was hexagonal like the others, but the light was bluish. The pictures on the walls were of intricate ornaments or characters in a strange alphabet. Here the two doors were the same color, but of different material, one of wood, the other of metal. Bastian chose the wooden door.\n\nIt is not possible to describe all the doors and rooms through which Bastian passed during his stay in the Temple of a Thousand Doors. There were doors that looked like large keyholes, and others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors and rusty iron doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned. The two doors leading out of a room always had something in common\u2014the shape, the material, the size, the color\u2014but there was always some essential difference between them.\n\nBastian had passed many times from one hexagonal room to another. Every decision he made led to another decision that led to yet another decision. But after all these decisions he was still in the Temple of a Thousand Doors. As he went on and on, he began to wonder why this should be. His wish had sufficed to lead him into the maze, but apparently it was not definite enough to enable him to find the way out. He had wished for company. But now he realized that by company he had meant no one in particular. This vague wish hadn't helped him at all. Thus far his decisions had been based on mere whim and involved very little thought. In every case he might just as well have taken the other door. At this rate he would never find his way out.\n\nJust then he was in a room with a greenish light. Three of the six walls had variously shaped clouds painted on them. The door to the left was of white mother-of-pearl, the one on the right of ebony. And suddenly he knew whom he wished for: Atreyu!\n\nThe mother-of-pearl door reminded Bastian of Falkor the luckdragon, whose scales glistened like mother-of-pearl. So he decided on that one.\n\nIn the next room one of the two doors was made of plaited grass, the other was an iron grating. Just then Bastian was thinking of the Grassy Ocean where Atreyu was at home, so he picked the grass door.\n\nIn the next room he found two doors which differed only in that one was made of leather and the other of felt. Bastian chose the leather one.\n\nThen he was faced with two more doors, and again he had time to think. One was purple, the other olive green. Atreyu was a Greenskin and his cloak was made from the hide of a purple buffalo. A symbol such as Atreyu had had on his forehead and cheeks when Cairon came to him was painted in white on the olive-green door. But the purple door had the same symbol on it, and Bastian didn't know that Atreyu's cloak had been ornamented with just such symbols. That door, he thought, must lead to someone else, not to Atreyu.\n\nHe opened the olive-green door\u2014and then he was outside.\n\nTo his surprise he found himself not in the Grassy Ocean but in a bright springtime forest. Sunbeams shone through the young foliage and played their games of light and shade on the mossy ground. The place smelled of earth and mushrooms and the balmy air was filled with the twittering of birds.\n\nBastian turned around and saw that he had just stepped out of a little forest chapel. For that moment its door had been the way out of the Temple of a Thousand Doors. Bastian opened it again, but all he saw was the inside of a small chapel. The roof consisted only of a few rotten beams, and the walls were covered with moss.\n\nBastian started walking. He had no idea where he was going, but he felt certain that sooner or later he would find Atreyu. The thought made him so happy that he whistled to the birds, who answered him and sang every merry tune that entered his head.\n\nA while later he caught sight of a group of figures in a clearing. As he came closer, they proved to be four men in magnificent armor and a beautiful lady, who was sitting on the grass, strumming a lute. Five richly caparisoned horses and a pack mule were standing in the background. A white cloth laid with all manner of viands and drink was spread out on the grass before the company.\n\nBefore joining the group, Bastian hid the Childlike Empress's amulet under his shirt. He thought it best to see what these people were up to before allowing himself to be recognized.\n\nThe men stood up and bowed low at his approach, evidently taking him for an Oriental prince or something of the kind. The fair lady nodded, smiled at him, and went on strumming her lute. One of the men was taller than the rest and more magnificently clad. He had fair hair that hung down over his shoulders.\n\n\"I am Hero Hynreck,\" he announced, \"and this lady is Princess Oglamar, daughter of the king of Luna. These men are my friends Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn. And what may your name be, young friend?\"\n\n\"I may not say my name\u2014not yet,\" Bastian replied.\n\n\"A vow?\" Princess Oglamar asked on a note of mockery. \"So young, and you've already made a vow?\"\n\n\"Have you come a long way?\" Hero Hynreck inquired.\n\n\"A very long way,\" Bastian replied.\n\n\"Are you a prince?\" asked the princess with a gracious smile.\n\n\"That I may not reveal,\" said Bastian\n\n\"Well, welcome in any case to our gathering!\" cried Hero Hynreck. \"Will you honor us by partaking of our repast?\"\n\nBastian accepted with thanks, sat down, and began to eat.\n\nFrom the conversation between the lady and the four knights Bastian learned that a tournament was to be held in the large and magnificent Silver City of Amarganth, which was not far distant. From far and near the boldest heroes, the most skillful hunters, the bravest warriors, and all manner of adventurers as well, had come to take part. Only the three bravest and best, who defeated all the others, were to have the honor of joining in a long and perilous expedition, the aim of which was to find a certain person, the so-called Savior, who was known to be somewhere in one of the numerous regions of Fantastica. Thus far no one knew his name. It appeared that at some time in the past Fantastica had been struck by disaster, but that this Savior had appeared on the scene and saved it in the nick of time by giving the Childlike Empress the name of Moon Child, by which she was now known to everyone in Fantastica. Since then he had been wandering about the country unknown, and the purpose of the expedition was to find him and keep him safe by serving him as a kind of bodyguard. Only the bravest and ablest men would be chosen for the mission, since it seemed more than likely that formidable adventures awaited them.\n\nThe tournament at which the three were to be chosen had been organized by Querquobad, the Silver Sage\u2014the city of Amarganth was always ruled by its oldest man or woman, and Querquobad was a hundred and seven years old. The winners, however, would not be selected by him, but by one Atreyu, a young Greenskin, who was then visiting Sage Querquobad. This Atreyu was to lead the expedition. For he alone was capable of recognizing the Savior, since he had seen him once in his magic mirror.\n\nBastian listened in silence. It wasn't easy for him, for he soon realized that this Savior was his very own self. And when Atreyu's name came up, his heart laughed within him, and he found it very hard not to give himself away. But he was determined to keep his identity a secret for the present.\n\nHero Hynreck, as it turned out, was not so much concerned with the expedition as with the heart of Princess Oglamar. Bastian had seen at a glance that he was head over heels in love with the young lady. For no apparent reason he kept sighing and casting mournful glances at her. And she would pretend not to notice. As Bastian learned later on, she had vowed to marry no one but the greatest of all heroes, who proved himself able to defeat all others. She wouldn't be satisfied with less. But how could Hero Hynreck prove that he was the greatest? After all, he couldn't just go out and kill someone who had done him no harm. And as for wars, there hadn't been any for ages. He would gladly have fought monsters or demons, he would gladly have brought her a fresh dragon's tail for breakfast every morning, but far and wide there were no monsters, demons, or dragons to be found. So naturally, when the messenger from Querquobad, the Silver Sage, had invited him to the tournament, he had accepted forthwith. But Princess Oglamar had insisted on coming along, for she wanted to see his performance with her own eyes.\n\n\"Everybody knows,\" she said with a smile, \"that heroes are not to be believed. They all tend to exaggerate their achievements.\"\n\n\"Exaggeration or not,\" said Hero Hynreck, \"I can assure you that I'm a better man than this legendary Savior.\"\n\n\"How can you know that?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"Well,\" said Hero Hynreck, \"if the fellow was half as strong and brave as I am, he wouldn't need a bodyguard to take care of him. He sounds kind of pathetic to me.\"\n\n\"How can you say such a thing!\" cried Oglamar with indignation. \"Didn't he save Fantastica from destruction?\"\n\n\"What of it!\" said Hero Hynreck with a sneer. \"That didn't take much of a hero.\"\n\nBastian decided to teach him a little lesson at the first opportunity.\n\nThe three other knights had merely fallen in with the couple en route. Hykrion, who had a bristling black moustache, claimed to be the most powerful swordsman in all Fantastica. Hysbald, who had red hair and seemed frail in comparison with the others, claimed that no one was quicker and more nimble with a sword than he. And Hydorn was convinced that he had no equal for endurance in combat. His exterior seemed to support his contention, for he was tall and lean, all bone and sinew.\n\nAfter the meal they prepared to resume their journey. The crockery and provisions were packed into the saddlebags. Princess Oglamar mounted her white palfrey and trotted off without so much as a backward look at the others. Hero Hynreck leapt on his coal-black stallion and galloped after her. The three other knights offered Bastian a ride on their pack mule, which he accepted. Whereupon they started through the forest on their splendidly caparisoned steeds, while Bastian brought up the rear. Bastian's mount, an aged she-mule, dropped farther and farther behind. Bastian tried to goad her on, but instead of quickening her pace, the mule stopped still, twisted her neck to look back at him, and said: \"Don't urge me on, sire, I've lagged behind on purpose.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"Because I know who you are.\"\n\n\"How can that be?\"\n\n\"When a person is only half an ass like me, and not a complete one, she senses certain things. Even the horses had an inkling. You needn't say anything, sire. I'd have been so glad to tell my children and grandchildren that I carried the Savior on my back and was first to welcome him. Unfortunately mules don't get children.\"\n\n\"What's your name?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"Yikka, sire.\"\n\n\"Look here, Yikka. Don't spoil my fun. Could you keep what you know to yourself for the time being?\"\n\n\"Gladly, sire.\"\n\nAnd the mule trotted off to catch up with the others.\n\nThe group were waiting on a knoll at the edge of the forest, looking down with wonderment at the city of Amarganth, which lay gleaming in the sunlight before them. From the height where they stood, the travelers had a broad view over a large, violet blue lake, surrounded on all sides by similar wooded hills. In the middle of this lake lay the Silver City of Amarganth. The houses were all supported by boats, and the larger palaces by great barges. Every house and every ship was made of finely chiseled, delicately ornamented silver. The windows and doors of the palaces great and small, the towers and balconies, were all of finely wrought silver filigree, unequaled in all Fantastica. The lake was studded with boats of all sizes, carrying visitors to the city from the mainland. Hero Hynreck and his companions hastened down to the shore, where a silver ferry with a magnificently curved prow was waiting. There was room in it for the whole company, horses, pack mule, and all.\n\nOn the way over, Bastian learned from the ferryman, whose clothes were of woven silver, that the violet-blue water of the lake was so salty and bitter that only silver, and a special kind of silver at that, could withstand its corrosive action for any length of time. The name of this lake was Moru, or Lake of Tears. In times long past the people of Amarganth had ferried their city to the middle of the lake to protect it from invasion, since ships of wood or iron were quick to disintegrate in the acrid water. And at present there was yet another reason for leaving Amarganth in the middle of the lake, for the inhabitants had got into the habit of regrouping their houses and moving their streets and squares about when the fancy struck them. Suppose, for instance, that two families, living at opposite ends of town, made friends or intermarried. Why, then they would simply move their silver ships close together and become neighbors.\n\nBastian would gladly have heard more, but the ferry had reached the city, and he had to get out with his traveling companions.\n\nTheir first concern was to find lodgings for themselves and their mounts\u2014no easy matter, since Amarganth was literally overrun by visitors who had come from far and near for the tournament. At length they found lodgings in an inn.\n\nAfter taking the she-mule to the stable, Bastian whispered in her ear: \"Don't forget your promise, Yikka. I'll be seeing you soon again.\"\n\nYikka nodded.\n\nThen Bastian told his traveling companions that he didn't wish to be a burden to them any longer and would look about the town on his own. After thanking them for their kindness, he took his leave. Actually he was intent on finding Atreyu.\n\nThe large and small boats were connected by gangplanks, some so narrow that only one person could cross them at a time, others as wide as good-sized streets. There were also arched bridges with roofs over them, and in the canals between the palace-ships hundreds of small boats were moving back and forth. But wherever you went or stood, you felt a gentle rise and fall underfoot, just enough to remind you that the whole city was afloat.\n\nThe visitors, who had literally flooded the city, were so varied and colorful that it would take a whole book to describe them. The Amarganthians were easy to recognize, for they all wore clothes of a silver fabric that was almost as fine as Bastian's mantle. Their hair too was silver; they were tall and well-built, and their eyes were as violet-blue as Moru, the Lake of Tears. Most of the visitors were not quite so attractive. There were muscle-bound giants with heads that seemed no larger than apples between their huge shoulders. There were sinister-looking night-rowdies, bold, solitary individuals whom, as one could see at a glance, it was best not to tangle with. There were flimflams with shifty eyes and nimble fingers, and berserkers with smoke coming out of their mouths and noses. There were topsy-turvies who spun like living tops and wood-goblins who trotted about on gnarled, crooked legs, carrying stout clubs over their shoulders. Once Bastian even saw a rock chewer, with teeth like steel chisels jutting out of his mouth. The silver gangplank bent under his weight as he came stomping along. But before Bastian could ask him if by any chance he was Pyornkrachzark, he had vanished in the crowd.\n\nAt length Bastian reached the center of the city, where the tournament was already in full swing. In a circular open space that looked like a giant arena, hundreds of contestants were measuring their strength, showing their mettle. Around the edges a crowd of onlookers egged the participants on, and the windows and balconies of the surrounding palace-ships were packed with enthusiasts. Some had even managed to climb up on the filigree-ornamented roofs.\n\nAt first Bastian paid little attention to the tournament. He was looking for Atreyu, feeling sure that he must be somewhere in the crowd. Then he noticed that the onlookers kept turning expectantly toward one of the palaces\u2014especially when a contestant had performed some particularly impressive feat. But before he could get a good look at the palace, Bastian had to thrust his way across one of the bridges and climb a sort of lamppost.\n\nTwo silver chairs had been set up on a wide balcony. In one sat an aged man whose silver beard and hair hung down to his waist. That must be Querquobad, the Silver Sage. Beside him sat a boy of about Bastian's age. He was wearing long trousers made of soft leather, but he was bare from the waist up, and Bastian saw that his skin was olive green. The expression of his lean face was grave, almost stern. His long, blue-black hair was gathered together and held back by leather thongs. Over his shoulders he wore a purple cloak. He was looking calmly and yet somehow eagerly down at the arena.\n\nNothing seemed to escape his dark eyes. Who could it be but Atreyu!\n\nAt that moment an enormous face appeared in the open balcony door behind Atreyu. It looked rather like a lion's, except that it had white mother-of-pearl scales instead of fur, and long white fangs jutted out of the mouth. The eyeballs sparkled ruby red, and when the head rose high above Atreyu, Bastian saw that it rested on a long, supple neck, from which hung a mane that looked like white fire. Of course, it was Falkor the luckdragon, and he seemed to be whispering something in Atreyu's ear, for Atreyu nodded.\n\nBastian slid down the lamppost. He had seen enough. Now he could watch the tournament.\n\n\"Tournament\" was hardly the right word. The contests that were in progress added up to something more like a big circus. There was a wrestling match between two giants, who twined their bodies into one huge knot that kept rolling this way and that; individuals of like or divergent species vied with one another in swordsmanship or in skill at handling the club or the lance, but none had any serious intention of killing his adversary. The rules called for fair fighting and the strictest self-control. Any contestant so misled by anger or ambition as to injure an opponent seriously would have been automatically disqualified.\n\nMany defeated combatants had left the arena when Bastian saw Hykrion the Strong, Hysbald the Swift, and Hydorn the Enduring make their appearance. Hero Hynreck and Princess Oglamar were not with them.\n\nBy then there were scarcely more than a hundred contestants left. Since these were a selection from among the best and strongest, Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn had a much harder time of it than they may have expected. It took all afternoon for Hykrion to prove himself the strongest among the strong, Hysbald the swiftest among the swift, and Hydorn the most enduring among the enduring. The onlookers applauded with a will and all three bowed in the direction of the balcony, where Silver Sage Querquobad and Atreyu were sitting. Atreyu was getting up to say something when yet another contestant appeared\u2014Hynreck. An expectant silence fell and Atreyu sat down. Since only three men were to accompany him on his expedition, there was one too many in the field. One would have to withdraw.\n\n\"Sires,\" said Hynreck in a loud voice, \"I would not suggest that your strength can have been impaired by the little display you have just made of your abilities. Under the circumstances, however, it would be unworthy of me to challenge you singly. Since I have thus far seen no adversary up to my standards, I have not participated in the contests. Consequently, I am still fresh. If any of you should feel too exhausted, he is free to stand aside. Otherwise, I am prepared to face all three of you at once. Any objections?\"\n\n\"No!\" replied all three in unison.\n\nA furious battle followed. Hykrion's blows had lost none of their force, but Hero Hynreck was stronger. Hysbald assailed him from all sides like streaks of lightning, but Hynreck was quicker. Hydorn tried to wear him down, but Hero Hynreck had greater endurance. After barely ten minutes all three were disarmed and all three bent their knees to Hero Hynreck. He looked proudly about him, evidently hoping for an admiring glance from his lady, who must have been somewhere in the crowd. The cheers of the onlookers swept over the arena like a hurricane and could no doubt be heard on the farthermost shore of Lake Moru.\n\nWhen the applause died down, Querquobad, the Silver Sage, stood up and asked in a loud voice: \"Does anyone wish to oppose Hero Hynreck?\"\n\nA hush fell on the crowd. Then a boy's voice was heard: \"Yes! I do!\"\n\nAll eyes turned toward Bastian. The crowd opened a path for him and he strode into the arena. Cries of amazement and pity were heard. \"How handsome he is!\" \"What a shame!\" \"This must be stopped!\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" asked Silver Sage Querquobad.\n\n\"I will reveal my name afterward,\" said Bastian.\n\nHe saw that Atreyu had narrowed his eyes and was studying him closely, but had not yet made up his mind.\n\n\"Young friend,\" said Hero Hynreck. \"We have eaten and drunk together. Why do you want me to put you to shame? I pray you, withdraw your challenge and go away.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian. \"I meant what I said.\"\n\nHero Hynreck hesitated a moment. Then he said: \"It would be wrong of me to measure myself in combat with you. Let us first see who can shoot an arrow higher.\"\n\n\"Very well!\" said Bastian.\n\nA stout bow and an arrow were brought for each of them. Hynreck drew the bowstring and shot the arrow so high that the eye could not follow. At almost the same moment Bastian pulled his bowstring and shot his arrow after it.\n\nIt was some time before the arrows came down and fell to the ground between the two archers. Then it became evident that Bastian's red-feathered arrow had struck Hero Hynreck's blue-feathered arrow at its apogee with such force as to split it open and wedge itself into it.\n\nHero Hynreck stared at the telescoped arrows. He had turned rather pale, but his cheeks had broken out in red spots.\n\n\"That can only be an accident,\" he muttered. \"Let's see who does better with the foils.\"\n\nHe asked for two foils and two decks of cards. Both were brought. He shuffled both decks of cards carefully.\n\nThen he threw one deck high into the air, drew his blade with the speed of lightning, and thrust. When all the other cards had fallen to the ground, it could be seen that he had struck the ace of hearts in the center of its one heart. And holding up his foil with the card spitted on it, he again looked about for his lady.\n\nThen Bastian tossed the other deck into the air and his blade flashed. Not a single card fell to the ground. He had pierced all fifty-two cards of the deck exactly in the middle and moreover in the right order\u2014though Hero Hynreck had shuffled them ever so carefully.\n\nHero Hynreck looked at the cards. He said nothing, but his lips trembled.\n\n\"But you won't outdo me in strength,\" he stammered finally.\n\nA number of weights were still lying about from the previous contests. He seized the heaviest and slowly, straining every muscle, lifted it. But before he could set it down, Bastian had grabbed hold of him and lifted him along with the weight. Hero Hynreck's face took on a look of such misery that some of the onlookers could not repress a smile.\n\n\"Thus far,\" said Bastian, \"you have chosen the nature of our contests. Will you allow me to suggest something?\"\n\nHero Hynreck nodded in silence. \"Nothing can daunt my courage.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said Bastian, \"I propose a swimming race. Across the Lake of\n\nTears.\"\n\nA breathless silence fell on the assemblage.\n\nHero Hynreck turned red and pale by turns.\n\n\"That's no test of courage,\" he expostulated. \"It's madness.\"\n\n\"I'm ready,\" said Bastian.\n\nAt that Hero Hynreck lost his self-control.\n\n\"No!\" he shouted, stamping his foot. \"You know as well as I do that the water of Moru dissolves everything. It would be certain death.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid,\" said Bastian calmly. \"I've crossed the Desert of Colors. I've eaten and drunk the fire of the Many-Colored Death and bathed in it. I'm not afraid of any water.\"\n\n\"You're lying!\" roared Hero Hynreck, purple with rage. \"No one in all Fantastica can survive the Many-Colored Death. Any child knows that.\"\n\n\"Hero Hynreck,\" said Bastian slowly. \"Instead of calling me a liar, why not admit that you're just plain scared?\"\n\nThat was too much for Hero Hynreck. Beside himself with rage, he drew his big sword from its sheath and flung himself on Bastian. Bastian stepped back. He was about to say a word of warning, but Hero Hynreck didn't leave him time. He struck out in earnest, and in that same moment the sword Sikanda leapt from its rusty sheath into Bastian's hand, and began to dance.\n\nWhat happened next was so amazing that not one of the onlookers would forget it as long as he lived. Luckily Bastian couldn't let go of the hilt and was obliged to follow all Sikanda's lightning-like movements. First it sliced Hero Hynreck's lovely armor into little pieces. They flew in all directions, but his skin was not even scratched. Hero Hynreck swung his sword like a madman in a desperate effort to defend himself, but he was blinded by Sikanda's whirling light, and none of his blows struck home. At length he was stripped to his underclothes, but still he went on fighting. And then Sikanda cut his weapon into little bits so quickly that what had been a whole sword only a moment before fell tinkling to the ground like a pile of coins. Hero Hynreck stared aghast at the useless hilt, dropped it, and hung his head. Sikanda left Bastian's hand and flew back into its rusty sheath.\n\nA cry of admiration rose from a thousand throats. The onlookers stormed the arena, seized Bastian, lifted him onto their shoulders, and carried him around in triumph. From his lofty perch Bastian looked for Hero Hynreck. He felt sorry for the poor fellow and wanted to give him a kind word; he hadn't intended to make such a fool out of him. But Hero Hynreck was nowhere to be seen.\n\nThen silence fell. The crowd moved aside. There stood Atreyu, smiling up at Bastian. Bastian smiled back. His bearers let him down from their shoulders. For a long while the two boys looked at each other in silence. Then Atreyu spoke:\n\n\"If I still needed someone to accompany me on the search for the Savior of Fantastica, I would content myself with just this one, for he is worth more than a hundred others. But I need no companion, because there will be no expedition.\"\n\nA murmur of surprise and disappointment was heard.\n\n\"The Savior of Fantastica has no need of our protection,\" Atreyu went on, raising his voice, \"for he can defend himself better than all of us together could defend him. And we have no need to look for him, because he has already found us. I didn't recognize him at first, for when I saw him in the Magic Mirror Gate of the Southern Oracle, he was different from now\u2014entirely different. But I didn't forget the look in his eyes. It's the same look that I see now. I couldn't be mistaken.\"\n\nBastian shook his head and said with a smile: \"You're not mistaken, Atreyu. It was you who brought me to the Childlike Empress to give her a new name. And for that I thank you.\"\n\nAn awed whisper passed over the crowd like a gust of wind.\n\n\"You promised,\" Atreyu replied, \"to tell me your name, which is known to no one in Fantastica except the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. Will you tell us now?\"\n\n\"My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\nAt that the onlookers could contain themselves no longer. Their rejoicing exploded in a thousand cheers. Many of them started dancing. Bridges and gangplanks, the whole square for that matter, began to sway.\n\nLaughing, Atreyu held out his hand to Bastian. Bastian took it, and so\u2014hand in hand\u2014they went to the palace. Silver Sage Querquobad and Falkor the luckdragon were waiting on the palace steps.\n\nThat night the city of Amarganth staged the finest celebration in all its history. All who had legs, long or short, straight or crooked, danced, and all who had voices, sweet or sour, high or low, sang and laughed.\n\nWhen night fell, the Amarganthians lit thousands of colored lamps on their silver ships and palaces. And at midnight there were fireworks such as had never been seen in Fantastica. Bastian stood on the balcony with Atreyu. To the left and right of them stood Falkor and Silver Sage Querquobad, watching as sheaves of many-colored light and the Silver City's thousands of lamps were reflected in the dark waters of Moru, the Lake of Tears.\n\nerquobad, the Silver Sage, had slumped down in his chair asleep, for already the hour was late. Consequently, he missed an experience more beautiful and more extraordinary than any he had known in the hundred and seven years of his life. And so did many others in Amarganth, citizens as well as visitors, who, exhausted by the festivities, had gone to bed. Only a few were still awake, and those few were uniquely privileged: Falkor, the white luckdragon, was singing.\n\nHigh in the night sky, he flew in circles over the Lake of Tears, and let his bell-like voice ring out in a song without words, a simple, grandiose song of pure joy. The hearts of all those who heard it opened wide.\n\nAnd so it was with Bastian and Atreyu, who were sitting side by side on the broad balcony of Querquobad's palace. Neither had ever heard the song of a luckdragon before. Hand in hand, they listened in silent delight. Each knew that the other shared his feeling, a feeling of joy at having found a friend. And they took care not to spoil it with idle words.\n\nThe great hour passed. Falkor's song grew faint and gradually died away.\n\nWhen all was still, Querquobad woke up and excused himself: \"I'm afraid,\" he said, \"that old men like me need their sleep. I'm sure you youngsters will forgive me, I must really be off to bed.\"\n\nThey wished him a good night and Querquobad left them.\n\nAgain the two friends sat for a long while in silence, looking up at the night sky, where the luckdragon was still flying in great slow circles. From time to time he passed across the full moon like a drifting cloud.\n\n\"Doesn't Falkor ever sleep?\" Bastian asked finally.\n\n\"He's asleep now,\" Atreyu replied.\n\n\"In the air?\"\n\n\"Oh yes. He doesn't like to stay in houses, even when they're as big as Querquobad's palace. He feels cramped. He's just too big and he's afraid of knocking things over. So he usually sleeps way up in the air.\"\n\n\"Do you think he'd let me ride him sometime?\"\n\n\"Of course he would,\" said Atreyu. \"Though it's not so easy. You've got to get used to it.\"\n\n\"I've already ridden Grograman,\" said Bastian.\n\nAtreyu nodded and looked at him with admiration.\n\n\"So you said during your contest with Hero Hynreck. How did you tame the Many-Colored Death?\"\n\n\"I have AURYN,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"Oh!\" said Atreyu. He seemed surprised, but he said nothing more.\n\nBastian took the Childlike Empress's emblem from under his shirt and showed it to Atreyu. Atreyu looked at it for a while. Then he muttered: \"So now you are wearing the Gem.\"\n\nThinking he detected a note of displeasure, Bastian hastened to ask: \"Would you like to have it back?\"\n\nHe started undoing the chain.\n\n\"No!\"\n\nAtreyu's voice sounded almost harsh, and Bastian wondered what was wrong. Atreyu smiled apologetically and repeated gently: \"No, Bastian, I haven't worn it in a long while.\"\n\n\"As you like,\" said Bastian. Then he turned the amulet over. \"Look,\" he said. \"Have you seen the inscription?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu. \"I've seen it, but I don't know what it says.\"\n\n\"How come?\"\n\n\"Greenskins can read tracks in the forest, but not letters.\"\n\nThis time it was Bastian who said: \"Oh!\"\n\n\"What does it say?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\" 'DO WHAT YOU WISH,'\" Bastian read.\n\nAtreyu stared at the amulet.\n\n\"So that's what it says.\" His face revealed nothing, and Bastian couldn't guess what he was thinking.\n\n\"If you had known,\" he asked, \"would it have changed anything for you?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Atreyu. \"I did what I wanted to do.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" said Bastian, and nodded.\n\nAgain they were both silent for a time.\n\n\"There's something I have to ask you,\" said Bastian finally. \"You said I looked different from when you saw me in the Magic Mirror Gate.\"\n\n\"Yes, entirely different.\"\n\n\"In what way?\"\n\n\"You were fat and pale and you were wearing different clothes.\"\n\nBastian smiled. \"Fat and pale?\" he asked incredulously. \"Are you sure it was me?\"\n\n\"Wasn't it?\"\n\nBastian thought it over.\n\n\"You saw me. I know that. But I've always been the way I am now.\"\n\n\"Really and truly?\"\n\n\"I should know. Shouldn't I?\" Bastian cried.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu, looking at him thoughtfully. \"YOU should know.\"\n\n\"Maybe it was a deforming mirror.\"\n\nAtreyu shook his head.\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Then how do you explain your seeing me that way?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Atreyu admitted. \"I only know that I wasn't mistaken.\"\n\nAfter that they were silent for a long while, and at length they went to sleep.\n\nAs Bastian lay in his bed, the head and foot of which were made of the finest silver filigree, his conversation with Atreyu ran through his head. Somehow it seemed to him that Atreyu was less impressed by his victory over Hero Hynreck and even by his stay with Grograman since he heard that he, Bastian, was wearing the Gem. And true enough, he thought, maybe his feats didn't amount to much, considering that he had the amulet to protect him. But he wanted to win Atreyu's wholehearted admiration.\n\nHe thought and thought. There had to be something that no one in Fantastica could do, even with the amulet. Something of which only he, Bastian, was capable.\n\nAt last it came to him: making up stories.\n\nTime and time again he had heard it said that no one in Fantastica could create anything new. Even the voice of Uyulala had said something of the kind. And just that was his special gift. He would show Atreyu that he, Bastian, was a great storyteller.\n\nHe resolved to prove himself to his friend at the first opportunity. Maybe the very next day. For instance, there might be a storytelling contest, and he would put all others in the shade with his inventions!\n\nOr better still: suppose all the stories he told should come true! Hadn't Grograman said that Fantastica was the land of stories and that even something long past could be born again if it occurred in a story.\n\nAtreyu would be amazed!\n\nAnd while picturing Atreyu's amazement, Bastian fell asleep.\n\nThe next morning, as they were enjoying a copious breakfast in the banquet hall of the palace, Silver Sage Querquobad said: \"We have decided to hold a very special sort of festival for the benefit of our guest, the Savior of Fantastica, and his friend, who brought him to us. Perhaps, Bastian Balthazar Bux, it is unknown to you that in keeping with an age-old tradition we Amarganthians have always been the ballad singers and storytellers of Fantastica. From an early age our children are instructed in these skills. When they grow to adulthood they journey from country to country for several years, practicing their art for the benefit of all. Everywhere they are welcomed with joy and respect. But we have one regret: Quite frankly, our stock of stories is small. And many of us must share this little. But word has gone round\u2014whether true or not, I don't know\u2014that you, in your world, are famous for your stories. Is that the truth?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Bastian. \"They even made fun of me for it.\"\n\nSilver Sage Querquobad raised his eyebrows in disbelief.\n\n\"Made fun of you for telling stories that no one had ever heard? How is that possible? None of us can make up new stories, and we, my fellow citizens and I, would all be infinitely grateful if you would give us a few. Will you help us with your genius?\"\n\n\"With pleasure,\" said Bastian.\n\nAfter breakfast Bastian, Atreyu, and the Silver Sage went out to the steps of Querquobad's palace, where Falkor was already waiting for them.\n\nA large crowd had gathered, but on this occasion it included few of the outsiders who had come for the tournament and consisted largely of Amarganthians, men, women, and children, all comely and blue-eyed, and all clad in silver. Most were carrying stringed instruments, harps, lyres, guitars, or lutes, all of silver. For almost everyone there hoped to display his art in the presence of Bastian and Atreyu.\n\nAgain chairs had been put in place. Bastian sat in the middle between Querquobad and Atreyu, and Falkor stood behind them.\n\nQuerquobad clapped his hands. When the crowd fell silent, he announced: \"The great storyteller is going to grant our wish and make us a present of some new stories. Therefore, friends, give us your best, to put him in the right mood.\"\n\nThe Amarganthians all bowed low. Then the first stepped forward and began to recite. After him came another and still others. All had fine, resonant voices and told their stories well.\n\nSome of their tales were exciting, others merry or sad, but it would take us too long to tell them here. In all, there were no more than a hundred different stories. Then they began to repeat themselves. Those who came last could only tell what their predecessors had told before them.\n\nBastian grew more and more agitated while waiting for his turn. His last night's wish had been fulfilled to the letter, and he could hardly bear the excitement of waiting to see whether everything else would come true as well. He kept casting glances at Atreyu, but Atreyu's face was impassive, showing no sign of what he might be thinking.\n\nAt length Querquobad bade his compatriots desist and turned to Bastian with a sigh: \"I told you, Bastian Balthazar Bux, that our stock of tales was small. It's not our fault. Won't you give us a few of yours?\"\n\n\"I will give you all the stories I've ever told,\" said Bastian, \"For I can always think up new ones. I told many of them to a little girl named Kris Ta, but most I thought up only for myself. No one else has heard them. But it would take weeks and months to tell them all, and we can't stay with you that long. So I've decided to tell you a story that contains all the others in it. It's called 'The Story of the Library of Amarganth,' and it's very short.\" Then after a moment's thought he plunged in: \"In the gray dawn of time, the city of Amarganth was ruled by a Silver Sagess named Quana. In those long-past days Moru, the Lake of Tears, hadn't been made yet, nor was Amarganth built of the special silver that withstands the water of Moru. It was still like other cities with houses of stone and wood. And it lay in a valley among wooded hills.\n\n\"Quana had a son named Quin, who was a great hunter. One day in the forest Quin caught sight of a unicorn, which had a glittering stone at the end of its horn. He killed the beast and took the stone home with him. His crime (for it is a crime to kill unicorns) brought misfortune on the city. From then on fewer and fewer children were born to the inhabitants. If no remedy were found, the city would die out. But the unicorn couldn't be brought back to life, and no one knew what to do.\n\n\"Quana, the Silver Sagess, sent a messenger to consult Uyulala in the Southern Oracle. But the Southern Oracle was far away. The messenger was young when he started out, but old by the time he got back. Quana had long been dead and her son Quin had taken her place. He too, of course, was very old, as were all the other inhabitants. There were only two children left, a boy and a girl. His name was Aquil, hers was Muqua.\n\n\"The messenger reported what Uyulala's voice had revealed. The only way of preserving Amarganth was to make it the most beautiful city in all Fantastica. That alone would make amends for Quin's crime. But to do so the Amarganthians would need the help of the Acharis, who are the ugliest beings in Fantastica. Because they are so ugly they weep uninterruptedly, and for that reason they are also known as the Weepers. Their stream of tears wash the special silver deep down in the earth, and from it they make the most wonderful filigree.\n\n\"All the Amarganthians went looking for the Acharis, but were unable to find them, for they live deep down in the earth. At length only Aquil and Muqua were left. They had grown up and all the others had died. Together they managed to find the Acharis and persuade them to make Amarganth the most beautiful city in Fantastica.\n\n\"First the Acharis built a small filigree palace, set it on a silver barge, and moved it to the marketplace of the dead city. Then they made their streams of underground tears well up in the valley among the wooded hills. The bitter water filled the valley and became Moru, the Lake of Tears. On it the first silver palace floated, and in the palace dwelt Aquil and Muqua.\n\n\"But the Acharis had granted the plea of Aquil and Muqua on one condition, namely, that they and all their descendants should devote their lives to ballad singing and storytelling. As long as they did so, the Acharis would help them, because then their ugliness would help to create beauty.\n\n\"So Aquil and Muqua founded a library\u2014the famous library of Amarganth\u2014in which they stored up all my stories. They began with the one you have just heard, but little by little they added all those I have ever told, and in the end there were so many stories that their numerous descendants, who now inhabit the Silver City, will never come to the end of them.\n\n\"If Amarganth, the most beautiful city in Fantastica, is still in existence today, it is because the Acharis and the Amarganthians kept their promise to each other\u2014though today the Amarganthians have quite forgotten the Acharis and the Acharis have quite forgotten the Amarganthians. Only the name of Moru, the Lake of Tears, recalls that episode from the gray dawn of history.\"\n\nWhen Bastian had finished, Silver Sage Querquobad rose slowly from his chair.\n\n\"Bastian Balthazar Bux,\" he said, smiling blissfully. \"You have given us more than a story and more than all the stories in the world. You have given us our own history. Now we know where Moru and the silver ships and palaces on it came from. Now we know why we have always, from the earliest times, been a people of ballad singers and storytellers. And best of all, we know what is in that great round building in the middle of the city, which none of us, since the founding of Amarganth, has ever entered, because it has always been locked. It contains our greatest treasure and we never knew it. It contains the library of Amarganth.\"\n\nBastian himself could hardly believe it. Everything in his story had become reality (or had it always been? Grograman would probably have said: both!). In any event he was eager to see all this with his own eyes.\n\n\"Where is this building?\" he asked.\n\n\"I will show you,\" said Querquobad, and turning to the crowd, he cried: \"Come along, all of you! Perhaps we shall be favored with more wonders.\"\n\nA long procession, headed by the Silver Sage, Bastian, and Atreyu, moved over the gangplanks connecting the silver ships with one another and finally stopped outside a large building which rested on a circular ship and was shaped like a huge silver box. The outside walls were smooth, without ornaments or windows. It had only one large door, and that door was locked.\n\nIn the center of the smooth silver door there was a stone set in a kind of ring. It looked like a piece of common glass. Over it the following inscription could be read:\n\nRemoved from the unicorn's horn, I lost my light.\n\nI shall keep the door locked until my light\n\nis rekindled by him who calls me by name.\n\nFor him I will shine a hundred years.\n\nI will guide him in the dark depths\n\nof Yor's Minroud.\n\nBut if he says my name a second time\n\nfrom the end to the beginning,\n\nI will glow in one moment\n\nwith the light of a hundred years.\n\n\"None of us can interpret this inscription,\" said Querquobad. \"None of us knows what the words 'Yor's Minroud' mean. None of us to this day has ever discovered the stone's name, though we have all tried time and again. For we can only use names that already exist in Fantastica. And since these are all names of other things, none of us has made the stone glow or opened the door. Can you find the name, Bastian Balthazar Bux?\"\n\nA deep, expectant silence fell on the Amarganthians and non-Amarganthians\n\nalike.\n\n\"Al Tsahir!\" cried Bastian.\n\nIn that moment the stone glowed bright and jumped straight from its setting into Bastian's hand. The door opened.\n\nA gasp of amazement arose from a thousand throats.\n\nHolding the glowing stone in his hand, Bastian entered the building, followed by Querquobad and Atreyu. The crowd surged in behind them.\n\nIt was dark in the large circular room and Bastian held the stone high. Though brighter than a candle, it was not enough to light the whole room but showed only that the walls were lined with tier upon tier of books.\n\nAttendants appeared with lamps. In the bright light it could be seen that the walls of books were divided into sections, bearing signs such as \"Funny Stories,\" \"Serious Stories,\" \"Exciting Stories,\" and so on.\n\nIn the center of the circular room, the floor was inlaid with an inscription so large that no one could fail to see it:\n\nLIBRARY\n\nOF THE COLLECTED WORKS\n\nOF BASTIAN BALTHAZAR BUX\n\nAtreyu looked around in amazement. Bastian saw to his delight that his friend was overcome with admiration.\n\n\"Is it true,\" asked Atreyu, pointing at the silver shelves all around, \"that you made up all those stories?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Bastian, slipping Al Tsahir into his pocket.\n\nAtreyu could only stand and gape.\n\n\"I just can't understand it,\" he said.\n\nThe Amarganthians had flung themselves on the books and were leafing through them or reading to one another. Some sat down on the floor and began to learn passages by heart.\n\nNews of the great event spread through the whole city like wildfire.\n\nAs Bastian and Atreyu were leaving the library, they ran into Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn.\n\n\"Sir Bastian,\" said the red-haired Hysbald, evidently the deftest of the three not only with the sword but with his tongue as well, \"we have heard about your incomparable gifts, and humbly pray you: Take us into your service and let us accompany you on your further travels. Each one of us longs to acquire a story of his own. And though you surely have no need of our protection, you may derive some advantage from the service of three such able and willing knights. Will you have us?\"\n\n\"Gladly,\" said Bastian. \"Anyone would be proud of such companions.\"\n\nThe three knights wished to swear fealty by Bastian's sword, but he held them back.\n\n\"Sikanda,\" he explained, \"is a magic sword. No one can touch it without mortal peril, unless he has eaten, drunk, and bathed in the fire of the Many-Colored Death.\"\n\nSo they had to content themselves with a friendly handshake.\n\n\"What has become of Hero Hynreck?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"He's a broken man,\" said Hykrion.\n\n\"Because of his lady,\" Hydorn added.\n\n\"Perhaps you can do something to help him,\" said Hysbald.\n\nAll five of them went to the inn where they had stopped on their arrival in Amarganth and where Bastian had brought Yikka to the stable.\n\nWhen they entered, one man was sitting there, bent over the table, his hands buried in his fair hair. The man was Hynreck.\n\nEvidently he had had a change of armor in his luggage, for the outfit he was now wearing was rather simpler than the one that had been cut to pieces the day before.\n\nIn response to Bastian's greeting, he merely stared. His eyes were rimmed with red.\n\nWhen Bastian asked leave to sit down with him, he shrugged his shoulders, nodded, and sank back in his chair. Before him on the table was a sheet of paper, which looked as if it had been many times crumpled and smoothed out again.\n\n\"Can you forgive me?\" said Bastian.\n\nHero Hynreck shook his head.\n\n\"It's all over for me,\" he said mournfully. \"Here. Read it.\"\n\nHe pushed the note across the table, and Bastian read it.\n\n\"I want only the best. You have failed me. Farewell.\"\n\n\"From Princess Oglamar?\" Bastian asked.\n\nHero Hynreck nodded.\n\n\"Immediately after our contest, she mounted her palfrey and rode off to the ferry. God knows where she is now. I'll never see her again.\"\n\n\"Can't we overtake her?\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"Maybe she'll change her mind.\"\n\nHero Hynreck gave a bitter laugh.\n\n\"You don't know Princess Oglamar,\" he said. \"I trained more than ten years to acquire my different skills. With iron discipline I avoided everything that could have impaired my physique. I fenced with the greatest fencing masters and wrestled with the greatest wrestlers, until I could beat them all. I can run faster than a horse, jump higher than a deer. I am best at everything\u2014or rather, I was until yesterday. At the start she wouldn't honor me with a glance, but little by little my accomplishments aroused her interest. I had every reason to hope\u2014and now I see it was all in vain. How can I live without hope?\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Bastian suggested, \"you should forget Princess Oglamar. There must be others you could love just as much.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Hero Hynreck. \"I love Princess Oglamar just because she won't be satisfied with any but the greatest.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Bastian. \"That makes it difficult. What could you do? Maybe you could take up a different trade. How about singing? Or poetry?\"\n\nHynreck seemed rather annoyed. \"No,\" he said flatly. \"I'm a hero and that's that. I can't change my profession and I don't want to. I am what I am.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Bastian.\n\nAll were silent for a time. The three knights cast sympathetic glances at Hero Hynreck. They understood his plight. Finally Hysbald cleared his throat and turned to Bastian.\n\n\"Sir Bastian,\" he said. \"I think you could help him.\"\n\nBastian looked at Atreyu, but Atreyu had put on his impenetrable face.\n\n\"A hero like Hynreck,\" said Hydorn, \"is really to be pitied in a world without monsters. See what I mean?\"\n\nNo, Bastian didn't see. Not yet at any rate.\n\n\"Monsters,\" said Hykrion, winking at Bastian and stroking his huge moustache, \"monsters are indispensable if a hero is to be a hero.\"\n\nAt last Bastian understood.\n\n\"Listen to me, Hero Hynreck,\" he said. \"When I suggested giving your heart to another lady, I was only putting your love to the test. The truth is that Princess Oglamar needs your help right now, and that no one else can save her.\"\n\nHero Hynreck pricked up his ears.\n\n\"Is that true, Sir Bastian?\"\n\n\"It's true, as you will soon see. Only a few minutes ago Princess Oglamar was seized and kidnapped.\"\n\n\"By whom?\"\n\n\"By one of the most terrible monsters that have ever existed in Fantastica. The dragon Smerg. She was riding across a clearing in the woods when the monster saw her from the air, swooped down, lifted her off her palfrey's back, and carried her away.\"\n\nHynreck jumped up. His eyes flashed, his cheeks were aglow. He clapped his hands for joy. But then the light went out of his eyes and he sat down.\n\n\"That's not possible,\" he said. \"There are no more dragons anywhere.\"\n\n\"You forget, Hero Hynreck, that I come from far away. From much farther than you have ever been.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" said Atreyu, joining in for the first time.\n\n\"And this monster really carried her away?\" Hero Hynreck cried. Then he pressed both hands to his heart and sighed: \"Oh, my adored Oglamar! How you must be suffering! But never fear, your knight is coming, he is on his way. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I go?\"\n\n\"Far, far from here,\" Bastian began, \"there's a country called Morgul, or the Land of the Cold Fire, because flames there are colder than ice. How you are to reach that country, I can't tell you, you must find out for yourself. In the center of Morgul there is a petrified forest called Wodgabay. And in the center of that petrified forest stands the leaden castle of Ragar. It is surrounded by three moats. The first is full of arsenic, the second of steaming nitric acid, and the third is swarming with scorpions as big as your feet. There are no bridges across them, for the lord of the leaden castle is Smerg, the winged monster. His wings are made of slimy skin and their spread is a hundred feet. When he isn't flying, he stands on his hind legs like a gigantic kangaroo. He has the body of a mangy rat and the tail of a scorpion, with a sting at the end of it. The merest touch of that sting is fatal. He has the hind legs of a giant grasshopper. His forelegs, however, which look small and shriveled, resemble the hands of a small child. But don't let them fool you, there's a deadly power in those hands. He can pull in his long neck as a snail does its feelers. There are three heads on it. One is large and looks like the head of a crocodile. From its mouth he can spit icy fire. But where a crocodile has its eyes, it has two protuberances. These are extra heads. One resembles the head of an old man. With it he can see and hear. But he talks with the second head, which has the wrinkled face of an old woman.\"\n\nWhile listening to this description, Hero Hynreck went pale.\n\n\"What was this monster's name?\" he asked.\n\n\"Smerg,\" Bastian repeated. \"He has been wreaking his mischief for a thousand years. Because that's how old he is. It's always a beautiful maiden that he kidnaps, and she has to keep house for him until the end of her days. When she dies, he kidnaps another.\"\n\n\"Why haven't I ever heard of this dragon?\"\n\n\"Smerg flies incredibly far and fast. Up to now he has always chosen other parts of Fantastica for his raids. Besides, they only happen once in every fifty years or so.\"\n\n\"Hasn't any of these maidens ever been rescued?\"\n\n\"No, that would take a very special sort of hero.\"\n\nThese words brought the color back to Hero Hynreck's cheeks. And remembering what he had learned about dragons, he asked: \"Has this Smerg a vulnerable spot?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Bastian, \"I almost forgot. In the bottommost cellar of Ragar Castle there's a lead ax. It's the only weapon Smerg can be killed with, so naturally he guards it well. You have to cut off the two smaller heads with it.\"\n\n\"How do you know all this?\" asked Hero Hynreck.\n\nBastian didn't have to answer, for at that moment cries of terror were heard in the\n\nstreet.\n\n\"A dragon!\" \u2014 \"A monster!\" \u2014 \"Up there in the sky!\" \u2014 \"Horrible!\" \u2014 \"He's coming this way!\" \u2014 \"Run for your lives!\" \u2014 \"No, he's already got somebody!\"\n\nHero Hynreck rushed out into the street, and all the others followed.\n\nUp in the sky something that looked like a giant bat was flapping its enormous wings. For a moment, as it came closer, he looked exactly as Bastian had just made him up. And in his two shriveled, but oh so dangerous little arms, he was clutching a young lady, who was screaming and struggling with all her might.\n\n\"Hynreck!\" she screamed. \"Hynreck! Hynreck, my hero! Help!\"\n\nAnd then they were gone.\n\nHynreck had already brought his black stallion from the stable and boarded one of the silver ferries that crossed to the mainland.\n\n\"Faster! Faster!\" he could be heard shouting at the ferryman. \"I'll give you anything you ask! But hurry!\"\n\nBastian looked after him and muttered: \"I only hope I haven't made it too hard for him.\"\n\nAtreyu cast a sidelong glance at Bastian. Then he said softly: \"Maybe we should get going too.\"\n\n\"Going where?\"\n\n\"I brought you to Fantastica,\" said Atreyu. \"I think I ought to help you find the way back to your own world. You mean to go back sooner or later, don't you?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Bastian. \"I hadn't thought about it. But you're right, Atreyu. Yes, of course you are.\"\n\n\"You saved Fantastica,\" Atreyu went on. \"And it seems to me you've received quite a lot in return. I have a hunch that you're aching to go home and make your own world well again. Or is there something that keeps you here?\"\n\nBastian, who had forgotten that he hadn't always been strong, handsome, and brave, replied: \"No, I can't think of anything.\"\n\nAtreyu gave his friend a thoughtful look, and said: \"It may be a long, hard journey. Who knows?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Bastian agreed. \"Who knows? We can start right now if you like.\"\n\nThen the three knights had a short friendly argument, because each claimed the privilege of giving Bastian his horse. Bastian soon settled the matter by asking them for Yikka, their pack mule. Of course, they thought her unworthy of Bastian, but he insisted, and in the end they gave in.\n\nWhile the knights were making ready for the journey, Bastian and Atreyu went to Querquobad's palace to thank the Silver Sage for his hospitality and bid him goodbye. Falkor the luckdragon, who was waiting for Atreyu outside the palace, was delighted to hear they were leaving. Cities just didn't appeal to him\u2014even if they were as beautiful as Amarganth.\n\nSilver Sage Querquobad was deep in a book he had borrowed from the Bastian Balthazar Bux Library.\n\n\"I'm sorry you can't stay longer,\" he said rather absently. \"It's not every day that a great author like you comes to see us. But at least we have your works to console us.\"\n\nWhereupon they took their leave.\n\nAfter seating himself on Falkor's back Atreyu asked Bastian: \"Didn't you want to ride Falkor?\"\n\n\"Later,\" said Bastian. \"Now Yikka is waiting for me. And I've given her my promise.\"\n\n\"Then we'll wait for you on the mainland,\" cried Atreyu. The luckdragon rose into the air and was soon out of sight.\n\nWhen Bastian returned to the inn, the three knights were ready. They had taken the pack saddle off Yikka and replaced it with a richly ornamented riding saddle. Yikka didn't learn why until Bastian came over and whispered in her ear: \"You belong to me now, Yikka.\"\n\nAs the ferry carried them away from the silver city, the old pack mule's cries of joy resounded over the bitter waters of Moru, the Lake of Tears.\n\nAs for Hero Hynreck he actually succeeded in reaching Morgul, the Land of the Cold Fire. He ventured into the petrified forest of Wodgabay, crossed the three moats of Ragar Castle, found the lead ax, and slew the dragon Smerg. Then he brought Oglamar back to her father. At that point she would gladly have married him. But by then he didn't want her anymore. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nain was coming down in buckets. The black, wet clouds hung so low they seemed almost to graze the heads of the riders. Then big, sticky snowflakes began to fall, and in the end it was snowing and raining in one. The wind was so strong that even the horses had to brace themselves against it. The riders' cloaks were soaked through and flapped heavily against the backs of the beasts.\n\nFor the last three days they had been riding over a desolate high plateau. The weather had been getting steadily worse, and the ground was a mixture of mud and sharp stones that made for hard going. Here and there the monotony of the landscape was broken by clumps of bushes or of stunted wind-bowed trees.\n\nBastian, who rode in the lead on his mule Yikka, was fairly well off with his glittering silver mantle, which, though light and thin, proved to be remarkably warm and shed water like a duck. The low-slung body of Hykrion the Strong almost vanished in his thick blue woolen coat. The delicately built Hysbald had pulled his great loden hood over his red hair. And Hydorn's gray canvas cloak clung to his gaunt frame.\n\nYet in their rather crude way the three knights were of good cheer. They hadn't expected their adventure with Sir Bastian to be a Sunday stroll. Now and then, with more spirit than art, they sang into the storm, sometimes singly and sometimes in chorus. Their favorite song seemed to be one that began with the words:\n\n\"When that I was a little tiny boy,\n\nWith hey, ho, the wind and the rain...\"\n\nAs they explained, this had been sung by a human who had visited Fantastica long years before, name of Shexper, or something of the sort.\n\nThe only one in the group who didn't seem to mind the cold and the rain was Atreyu. On Falkor's back he rode high above the clouds, flying far ahead to reconnoiter and rejoining the company from time to time to report on what he had seen.\n\nThey all, even the luckdragon, believed they were looking for the road that would take Bastian back to his world. Bastian thought so too. He himself didn't realize that he had agreed to Atreyu's suggestion only to oblige his friend and that wasn't what he really wanted. But the geography of Fantastica is determined by wishes, which may or may not be conscious. And since it was Bastian who led the way, they were actually going deeper and deeper into Fantastica, heading for the Ivory Tower at its very center. What the consequences for him would be, he wouldn't learn until much later. For the present, neither he nor his companions had any idea where they were going.\n\nBastian's thoughts were busy with a different problem.\n\nOn the second day of their journey, in the forests surrounding the Lake of Tears, he had seen unmistakable traces of the dragon Smerg. Some of the trees had been turned to stone, no doubt by contact with the monster's ice-cold fire. And the prints of the giant grasshopper feet were clearly discernible. Atreyu, who was skilled in woodcraft, had seen other tracks as well, those of Hero Hynreck's horse. Which meant that Hynreck was close on the dragon's heels.\n\n\"That doesn't really thrill me,\" said Falkor, rolling his ruby-red eyes. \"Monster or not, this Smerg is a relative of mine\u2014a distant one, to be sure, but a relative all the same.\" He was only half in jest.\n\nThey had not followed Hero Hynreck's track but had taken a different direction, since their supposed aim was to find Bastian's way home.\n\nAnd now Bastian was asking himself: Had it really been such a good idea to invent a dragon for Hero Hynreck? True, Hynreck had needed a chance to show his mettle. But was it certain that he would win? What if Smerg killed him? And what about Princess Oglamar? Yes, of course, she had been haughty, but was that a reason for getting her into such a fix? And on top of all that, how was he to know what further damage Smerg might do in Fantastica? Without stopping to think, Bastian had created an unpredictable menace. It would be there long after he was gone and quite possibly kill or maim any number of innocents. As he knew, Moon Child drew no distinction between good and evil, beautiful and ugly. To her mind, all the creatures in Fantastica were equally important and worthy of consideration. But had he, Bastian, the right to take the same attitude? And above all, did he wish to?\n\nNo, Bastian said to himself, he had ho wish to go down in the history of Fantastica as a creator of monsters and horrors. How much finer it would be to become famous for his unselfish goodness, to be a shining model for all, to be revered as the \"good human\" or the \"great benefactor.\" Yes, that was what he wanted.\n\nThe country became mountainous, and Atreyu, returning from a reconnaissance flight, reported that a few miles ahead he had sighted a glen which seemed to offer shelter from the wind. In fact, if his eyes had not deceived him, there were several caves round about where they could take refuge from the rain and snow.\n\nIt was already late afternoon, high time to find suitable quarters for the night. So all the others were delighted at Atreyu's news and spurred their mounts on. They were making their way through a valley, possibly a dried-out riverbed, enclosed in mountains which grew higher as the travelers advanced. Some two hours later they reached the glen, and true enough, there were several caves in the surrounding cliffs. They chose the largest and made themselves as comfortable as they could. The three knights gathered brushwood and branches that had been blown down by the storm, and soon they had a splendid fire going in the cave. The wet cloaks were spread out to dry, the beasts were brought in and unsaddled, and even Falkor, who ordinarily preferred to spend the night in the open, curled up at the back of the cave. All in all, it wasn't such a bad place to be in.\n\nWhile Hydorn the Enduring tried to roast a big chunk of meat over the fire and the others watched him eagerly, Atreyu turned to Bastian and said: \"Tell us some more about Kris Ta.\"\n\n\"About what?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"You friend Kris Ta, the little girl you told your stories to.\"\n\n\"I don't know any little girl by that name,\" said Bastian. \"And what makes you think I told her stories?\"\n\nOnce again Atreyu had that thoughtful look.\n\n\"Back in your world,\" he said slowly, \"you used to tell lots of stories, some to her and some to yourself.\"\n\n\"How do you know that, Atreyu?\"\n\n\"You said so yourself. In Amarganth. And you also said that people made fun of you for it.\"\n\nBastian stared into the fire.\n\n\"That's true,\" he muttered. \"I did say that. But I don't know why. I can't remember.\"\n\nIt all seemed very strange.\n\nAtreyu exchanged glances with Falkor and nodded gravely as though something one of them had said had now been proved true. But he said nothing more. Evidently he didn't wish to discuss such matters in front of the three knights.\n\n\"The meat's done,\" Hydorn announced.\n\nHe cut off a chunk for each one and they all began to eat. \"Done\" was a gross exaggeration. The meat was charred on the outside and raw on the inside, but under the circumstances there was no point in being picky and choosy.\n\nFor a while they were all busy chewing. Then Atreyu said to Bastian: \"Tell us how you came to Fantastica.\"\n\n\"You know all about that,\" said Bastian. \"It was you who brought me to the Childlike Empress.\"\n\n\"I mean before that,\" said Atreyu. \"In your world. Where did you live and how did it all happen?\"\n\nThen Bastian told how he had stolen the book from Mr. Coreander, how he had carried it off to the schoolhouse attic and begun to read. When he came to Atreyu's Great Quest, Atreyu motioned him to stop. He didn't seem interested in what the book said about him. What interested him in the extreme was the how and why of Bastian's visit to Mr. Coreander and of his flight to the attic of the schoolhouse.\n\nBastian racked his brains, but about those things he could remember nothing more. He had forgotten everything connected with the fact that he had once been fat and weak and cowardly. His memory had been broken into bits, and the bits seemed as vague and far away as if they had concerned an entirely different person.\n\nAtreyu asked for other memories, and Bastian spoke about the days when his mother was still alive, about his father and his home, about school and the town he lived in\u2014as much as he remembered.\n\nThe three knights had fallen asleep, and Bastian was still talking. It surprised him that Atreyu should take such an interest in the most everyday happenings. Maybe it was because of the way Atreyu listened that these everyday things took on a new interest for Bastian, as though they contained a secret magic that he had never noticed before.\n\nAt last he ran out of memories. It was late in the night, the fire had died down. The three knights were snoring softly. Atreyu sat there with his inscrutable look, as though deep in thought.\n\nBastian stretched out, wrapped himself in his silver mantle, and had almost fallen asleep when Atreyu said softly: \"It's because of AURYN.\"\n\nBastian propped his head on his hand and looked sleepily at his friend.\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"The Gem,\" said Atreyu, as though talking to himself, \"doesn't work the same with humans as with us.\"\n\n\"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\"The amulet gives you great power, it makes all your wishes come true, but at the same time it takes something away: your memory of your world.\"\n\nBastian thought it over. He didn't feel as if anything had been taken away from him.\n\n\"Grograman told me to find out what I really wanted. And the inscription on AURYN says the same thing. But for that I have to go from one wish to the next without ever skipping any. That's why I need the Gem.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu. \"It gives you the means, but it takes away your purpose.\"\n\n\"Oh well,\" said Bastian, undismayed. \"Moon Child must have known what she was doing when she gave me the amulet. You worry too much, Atreyu. I'm sure AURYN isn't a trap.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Atreyu. \"I don't think so either.\"\n\nAnd after a while he added: \"Anyway, it's good we're looking for the way back to your world. We are, aren't we?\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" said Bastian, already half asleep.\n\nIn the middle of the night he was awakened by a strange sound. He had no idea what it was. The fire had gone out and he was lying in total darkness. Then he felt Atreyu's hand on his shoulder and heard him whisper: \"What's that?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Bastian whispered back.\n\nThey crept to the mouth of the cave and listened.\n\nA great many creatures seemed to be trying to fight back their sobs. There was nothing human about it, and it didn't sound like animals in pain. Starting as a whisper, it swelled to a sigh, then ebbed and rose, ebbed and rose. Never had Bastian heard anything so mournful.\n\n\"If at least we could see something,\" Atreyu whispered.\n\n\"Wait,\" said Bastian. \"I've got Al Tsahir.\"\n\nHe took the glittering stone from his pocket and held it high. It gave hardly more light than a candle, but in its faint glow, the friends saw enough to make their skin crawl with horror.\n\nThe whole glen was alive with hideous, foot-long worms, who looked as if they had been wrapped in soiled rags. Slimy little limbs protruded from the folds in their skin. At one end, two lidless eyes peered out from under the rags, and from every eye flowed tears. Thousands of tears. The whole glen was wet with them.\n\nThe moment the light from Al Tsahir hit them, the creatures froze, and the friends were able to see what they had been doing. At the center of the glen stood a tower of the finest silver filigree\u2014more beautiful and more valuable than any building Bastian had seen in Amarganth. Some of the wormlike creatures had evidently been climbing about on the tower, joining its innumerable parts. But at present they all stood motionless, staring at the light of Al Tsahir.\n\nA ghoulish whisper passed over the glen: \"Alas! Alas! What light has fallen on our ugliness? Whose eye has seen us? Cruel intruder, whoever you may be, have mercy, take that light away.\"\n\nBastian stood up.\n\n\"I am Bastian Balthazar Bux. Who are you?\"\n\n\"We are the Acharis. We are the unhappiest beings in all Fantastica.\"\n\nBastian said nothing and looked in dismay at Atreyu.\n\n\"Then,\" he said, \"it's you who created Amarganth, the most beautiful city in Fantastica?\"\n\n\"Yes!\" the creatures cried. \"But take that light away! And don't look at us! Have mercy!\"\n\n\"And with your weeping you made Moru, the Lake of Tears?\"\n\n\"Master,\" they groaned, \"it's true. But we'll die of shame and horror if you make us stand in this light. Why must you add to our torment? We've never done anything to you.\"\n\nBastian put Al Tsahir back in his pocket and again the night was as black as pitch.\n\n\"Thank you!\" cried the mournful voices. \"Thank you for your merciful kindness.\"\n\n\"I want to talk with you,\" said Bastian. \"I want to help you.\"\n\nHe was almost sick with disgust, but he felt very sorry for the poor things. It was clear to him that they were the creatures he had mentioned in his story about the origin of Amarganth, but here again he couldn't be sure whether they had always been there or whether they owed their existence to him. In the latter case, he was responsible for their misery. But either way he was determined to help them.\n\n\"Oh, oh!\" the plaintive voices whimpered. \"No one can help us.\"\n\n\"I can,\" said Bastian. \"I have AURYN.\"\n\nAt that, they all seemed to stop weeping at once.\n\n\"Where have you come from?\" Bastian asked.\n\nA chorus of many voices whispered: \"We live in the lightless depths of the earth to hide our ugliness from the sun, and there we weep all day and all night. Our tears wash the indestructible silver out of the bedrock, and from it we spin the filigree you have seen. On the darkest nights we mount to the surface, and these caves are our coming-out places. Up here we join together the sections we've made down below. We've come tonight because it was dark enough for us to work without seeing one another. We work to make amends to the world for our ugliness, and that comforts us a little.\"\n\n\"But you're not to blame for your ugliness,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"Oh, there are different ways of being to blame,\" the Acharis replied. \"In what you do. In what you think... We're to blame for just living.\"\n\n\"How can I help you?\" Bastian asked. He felt so sorry for them that he could hardly hold back his own tears.\n\n\"Ah, great benefactor!\" the Acharis cried. \"You've got AURYN. With AURYN you can save us\u2014we have only one thing to ask of you. Give us different bodies!\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Bastian. \"I will. Here's my wish: That you shall fall asleep. That when you wake up, you shall crawl out of your skins and turn into bright-colored butterflies. That you shall be lighthearted and happy. And that, beginning tomorrow, you shall no longer be the Acharis, the Everlasting Weepers, but the Shlamoofs, the Everlasting Laughers.\"\n\nBastian awaited their answer, but no sound came from the darkness.\n\n\"They've fallen asleep,\" Atreyu whispered.\n\nThe two friends went back into their cave. Hysbald, Hydorn, and Hykrion were still snoring gently. They had slept through the whole incident.\n\nBastian lay down. He was extremely pleased with himself.\n\nSoon all Fantastica would learn of the good deed he had done. It had really been unselfish, since no one could claim that he had wished anything for himself. There would be nothing to mar the glory of his goodness.\n\n\"What do you think, Atreyu?\" he whispered.\n\nAtreyu was silent for a while. Then he replied: \"I only wonder what it may have cost you.\"\n\nNot until somewhat later, after Atreyu had fallen asleep, did it dawn on Bastian that his friend had been referring, not to his self-abnegation, but to his loss of memory. But he gave the matter no further thought and fell asleep in joyful anticipation of the morrow.\n\nThe next morning the three knights woke him up with their cries of amazement.\n\n\"Would you look at that! My word, even my old mare is giggling.\"\n\nThey were standing in the mouth of the cave, and Atreyu was with them. But Atreyu wasn't laughing.\n\nBastian got up and went out.\n\nThe whole glen was crawling and flitting and tumbling with the most comical little creatures he had ever seen. They all had bright-colored butterfly wings on their backs and were wearing the weirdest outfits\u2014some checkered, some striped, some ringed, some dotted. All their clothes looked either too loose or too tight, too big or too small, and they were pieced together every which way. Nothing was right and there were patches all over, even on the wings. No two of these creatures were alike. They had faces like clowns, splotched with every imaginable color, little round red noses or absurdly long ones, and enormous rubbery mouths. Some wore top hats, others peaked caps. Some had only three brick-red tufts of hair, and some had shiny bald heads. Most were sitting or hopping about on the delicate filigree tower, or dangling from it, doing gymnastics, and in general doing their best to wreck it.\n\nBastian ran out to them.\n\n\"Hey, you guys!\" he shouted. \"Cut that out! You can't do that!\"\n\nThe creatures stopped and looked down at him.\n\nOne at the very top of the tower asked: \"What did he say?\"\n\nAnd one from further down replied: \"The whatchamaycallim says we can't do\n\nthis.\"\n\n\"Why does he say we can't do it?\" asked a third.\n\n\"Because you just can't!\" Bastian screamed. \"You can't just smash everything up!\"\n\n\"The whatchamaycallim says we can't smash everything up,\" the first butterfly-clown informed the others.\n\n\"We can too!\" said another, tearing a big chunk out of the tower.\n\nHopping about like a lunatic, the first called down to Bastian: \"We can too!\"\n\nThe tower swayed and creaked alarmingly.\n\n\"Hey, what are you doing?\" Bastian shouted. He was angry and he was frightened, but at the same time he had all he could do to keep from laughing.\n\nThe first butterfly-clown turned to his companions. \"The whatchamaycallim wants to know what we're doing.\"\n\n\"What are we doing?\" asked another.\n\n\"We're having fun,\" said a third.\n\n\"But the tower will collapse if you don't stop!\" Bastian screamed.\n\n\"The whatchamaycallim,\" the first clown informed the others, \"says the tower will collapse if we don't stop.\"\n\n\"So what?\" said another.\n\nAnd the first called down: \"So what?\"\n\nBastian was speechless, and before he could find a suitable answer, all the butterfly-clowns on the tower began to do a sort of aerial round dance. But instead of holding hands they grabbed one another by the legs or collars, while some simply whirled head over heels through the air. And all bellowed and laughed.\n\nThe act that the winged creatures were putting on was so lighthearted and comical that Bastian gave up trying to hold back his laughter.\n\n\"But you can't do that,\" he called to them. \"The Acharis made it and it's beautiful.\"\n\nThe first butterfly-clown turned back to the others. \"The whatchamaycallim says we can't do it.\"\n\n\"We can do anything that's not forbidden!\" cried another, turning somersaults in the air. \"And who's going to forbid us? We're the Shlamoofs!\"\n\n\"Who's going to forbid us anything?\" all cried in chorus. \"We're the Shlamoofs!\"\n\n\"I am!\" cried Bastian.\n\n\"The whatchamaycallim,\" the first clown explained to the others, \"says 'I'.\"\n\n\"You?\" said the others. \"How can you forbid us anything?\"\n\n\"No,\" said the first. \"Not I. The whatchamaycallim says 'he'.\"\n\n\"Why does the whatchamaycallim say 'he'?\" the others wanted to know. \"And who is he saying 'he' to in the first place?\"\n\n\"Who are you saying 'he' to?\" the first butterfly-clown called down to Bastian.\n\n\"I didn't say 'he',\" Bastian screamed, half fuming, half laughing. \"I said I forbid you to wreck this tower.\"\n\n\"He forbids us,\" said the first clown to the others, \"to wreck this tower.\"\n\n\"Who does?\" inquired one who had just turned up from the far end of the glen.\n\n\"The whatchamaycallim,\" the others replied.\n\n\"I don't know any whatchamaycallim,\" said the newcomer. \"Who is he anyway?\"\n\nThe first sang out: \"Hey, whatchamaycallim, who are you anyway?\"\n\n\"I'm not a whatchamaycallim,\" said Bastian, who by then was moderately angry. \"I'm Bastian Balthazar Bux, and I turned you into Shlamoofs so you wouldn't have to cry and moan the whole time. Last night you were still miserable Acharis. It wouldn't hurt to show your benefactor some respect.\"\n\nThe Shlamoofs all stopped hopping and dancing at once and stood gaping at Bastian. A breathless silence fell.\n\n\"What did the whatchamaycallim say?\" whispered a butterfly-clown at the edge of the crowd, but his next-door neighbor cracked him on the head so hard that his hat slid down over his eyes and ears, and all the others went: \"Psst!\"\n\n\"Would you be so kind as to repeat all that very slowly and distinctly,\" the first butterfly-clown requested.\n\n\"I am your benefactor!\" cried Bastian.\n\nThis threw the Shlamoofs into an incredible state of agitation. One passed the word on to the next and in the end the innumerable creatures, who up until then had been scattered all over the glen, gathered into a knot around Bastian, shouting in one another's ears.\n\n\"Did you hear that? He's our bemmafixer! His name is Nastiban Baltebux! No, it's Buxian Banninector. Rubbish, it's Saratit Buxibem! No, it's Baldrian Hix! Shlux! Babeltran Billy-scooter! Nix! Flax! Trix!\"\n\nBeside themselves with enthusiasm, they shook hands all around, tipped their hats to one another, and raised great clouds of dust by slapping one another on the back or belly.\n\n\"We're so lucky!\" they cried. \"Three cheers for Buxifactor Zanzibar Bastelben!\"\n\nScreaming and laughing, the whole great swarm shot upward and whirled away. The hubbub died down in the distance.\n\nBastian stood there hardly knowing what his right name was. By that time he wasn't so sure he had really done a good deed.\n\nunbeams were fighting their way through the cloud cover as the travelers started out that morning. At last the rain and wind had let up. In the course of the morning the travelers ran into two or three sudden showers, but then there was a marked improvement in the weather, and it seemed to grow warmer by the minute.\n\nThe three knights were in a merry mood; they laughed and joked and played all sorts of tricks on one another. But Bastian seemed quiet and out of sorts as he rode ahead on his mule. And the knights had far too much respect for him to break in on his thoughts.\n\nThe rocky high plateau over which they were riding seemed endless. But little by little the trees became larger and more frequent.\n\nAtreyu had noticed Bastian's bad humor. When he and Falkor started on their usual reconnaissance flight, he asked the luckdragon what he could do to cheer his friend up. Falkor rolled his ruby-red eyeballs and answered: \"That's easy\u2014didn't he want to ride on me?\n\nWhen some time later the little band rounded a jutting cliff, they found Atreyu and the luckdragon lying comfortably in the sun.\n\nBastian looked at them in amazement.\n\n\"Are you tired?\" he asked.\n\n\"Not at all,\" said Atreyu. \"I just wanted to ask if you'd let me ride Yikka for a while. I've never ridden a mule. It must be wonderful, because you never seem to get sick of it. I'll lend you my old Falkor in return.\"\n\nBastian flushed with pleasure.\n\n\"Is that true, Falkor?\" he asked. \"You wouldn't mind carrying me?\"\n\n\"Of course not, all-powerful sultan,\" said the dragon with a wink. \"Hop on and hold tight.\"\n\nWithout touching the ground, Bastian vaulted directly from mule to dragon back and clutched the silvery-white mane as Falkor took off.\n\nBastian hadn't forgotten how Grograman had carried him through the Desert of Colors. But riding a white luckdragon was something else again. If sweeping over the ground on the back of the fiery lion had been like a cry of ecstasy, this gentle rising and falling as the dragon adjusted his movements to the air currents was like a song, now soft and sweet, now triumphant with power. Especially when Falkor was looping the loop, when his mane, his fangs, and the long fringes on his limbs flashed through the air like white flames, it seemed to Bastian that the winds were singing in chorus.\n\nToward noon they sighted the others and landed. The ground party had pitched camp beside a brook in a sunlit meadow. There was a flatbread to eat and a kettle of soup was cooking over a wood fire. The horses and the mule were grazing nearby.\n\nWhen the meal was over, the three knights decided to go hunting, for supplies, especially of meat, were running low. They had heard the cry of pheasants in the thicket, and there seemed to be hares as well. Knowing the Greenskins to be great hunters, they asked Atreyu to join them, but he declined. Thereupon the knights took their long bows, buckled on their quivers full of arrows, and went off to the woods.\n\nAtreyu, Falkor, and Bastian stayed behind.\n\nAfter a short silence, Atreyu suggested: \"How about telling us a little more about your world, Bastian?\"\n\n\"What would interest you?\" Bastian asked.\n\nAtreyu turned to the luckdragon: \"What do you say, Falkor?\"\n\n\"I'd like to hear something about the children in your school,\" said the dragon.\n\nBastian seemed bewildered. \"What children?\" he asked.\n\n\"The ones who made fun of you,\" said Falkor.\n\n\"Children who made fun of me?\" Bastian repeated. \"I don't know of any children\u2014and I'm sure no child would have dared to make fun of me.\"\n\nAtreyu broke in: \"But you must remember that you went to school.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Bastian thoughtfully. \"I remember school. Yes, that's right.\"\n\nAtreyu and Falkor exchanged glances.\n\n\"I was afraid of that,\" Atreyu muttered.\n\n\"Afraid of what?\"\n\n\"You've lost some more of your memory,\" said Atreyu gravely. \"This time it came of changing the Acharis into Shlamoofs. You shouldn't have done that.\"\n\n\"Bastian Balthazar Bux,\" said the luckdragon\u2014and his tone seemed almost stern\u2014\"if my advice means anything to you, stop using the power that AURYN gives you. If you don't, you're likely to lose your last memories, and without memory how will you ever find your way back to where you came from?\"\n\n\"To tell the truth,\" said Bastian, \"I don't want to go back anymore.\"\n\nAtreyu was horrified. \"But you have to go back. You have to go back and straighten out your world so humans will start coming to Fantastica again. Otherwise Fantastica will disappear sooner or later, and all our trouble will have been wasted.\"\n\nAt that point Bastian felt rather offended. \"But I'm still here,\" he protested. \"It's been only a little while since I gave Moon Child her new name.\"\n\nAtreyu could think of nothing to say. But then Falkor spoke up. \"Now,\" he said, \"I see why we haven't made the slightest progress in finding Bastian's way back. If he himself doesn't want to...\"\n\n\"Bastian,\" said Atreyu almost pleadingly. \"Isn't there anything that draws you? Something you love? Don't you ever think of your father, who must be waiting for you and worrying about you?\"\n\nBastian shook his head.\n\n\"I don't think so. Maybe he's even glad to be rid of me.\"\n\nAtreyu looked at his friend in horror.\n\n\"The way you two carry on!\" said Bastian bitterly. \"You almost sound as if you wanted to get rid of me too.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\" asked Atreyu with a catch in his voice.\n\n\"Well,\" said Bastian. \"You seem to have only one thing on your minds: getting me out of Fantastica as quickly as possible.\"\n\nAtreyu looked at Bastian and slowly shook his head. For a long while none of them said a word. Already Bastian was beginning to regret his angry words. He himself knew they were unjust.\n\nThen Atreyu said softly: \"I thought we were friends.\"\n\n\"You were right!\" Bastian cried. \"We are and always will be. Forgive me. I've been talking nonsense.\"\n\nAtreyu smiled. \"You'll have to forgive us, too, for hurting your feelings. We didn't mean it.\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" said Bastian. \"I'm going to take your advice.\"\n\nAfter a while the three knights returned with several partridges, a pheasant, and a hare. When the party started out again, Bastian was riding Yikka.\n\nIn the afternoon, they came to a forest consisting entirely of tall, straight evergreens, which formed, high overhead, a green roof so dense that a ray of sunlight seldom reached the ground. That may have been why there was no underbrush.\n\nThe soft, smooth forest floor was pleasant to ride on. Falkor had resigned himself to trotting along with the company, because if he had flown above the treetops with Atreyu, he would undoubtedly have lost sight of the others.\n\nAll afternoon they rode through the dark-green twilight. Toward nightfall they spied a ruined castle on a hilltop. They climbed up to it and in the midst of all the crumbling walls and turrets, halls and passageways, they found a vaulted chamber that was in fairly good condition. There they settled down for the night. It was redheaded Hysbald's turn to cook, and he proved to be much better at it than his predecessor. The pheasant he roasted over the fire was as tasty as you please.\n\nThe next morning they resumed their journey. All day they rode through the forest, which looked the same on all sides. It was late in the day when they noticed that they must have been riding in a great circle, for ahead of them they saw the ruins of the castle they had left in the morning, but this time they were approaching it from a different direction.\n\n\"This has never happened to me before!\" said Hykrion, twirling his black moustache.\n\n\"I can't believe my eyes!\" grumbled Hysbald, stalking through the ruins on his long, thin legs.\n\nBut so it was. The remains of yesterday's dinner left no room for doubt.\n\nAtreyu and Falkor said nothing, but their thoughts were hard at work. How could they have made such a mistake?\n\nAt the evening meal\u2014this time it was roast hare, prepared more or less competently by Hykrion\u2014the three knights asked Bastian if he would care to impart some of his memories of the world he came from. Bastian excused himself by saying he had a sore throat, and since he had been very quiet all that day, the knights believed him. After suggesting a few effective remedies, they lay down to sleep.\n\nOnly Atreyu and Falkor suspected what Bastian was thinking.\n\nEarly in the morning they started off again. All day they rode through the forest, trying their best to keep going in a straight line. But at nightfall they were back at the same ruined castle.\n\n\"Well, I'll be!\" Hykrion blustered.\n\n\"I'm going mad!\" groaned Hysbald.\n\n\"Friends,\" said Hydorn disgustedly, \"we might as well throw our licenses in the trash bin. Some knights errant we turned out to be!\"\n\nOn their first night at the castle, Bastian, knowing that Yikka liked to be alone with her thoughts now and then, had found her a special little niche. The company of the horses, who could think of nothing to talk about but their distinguished ancestry, upset her. That night, after Bastian had taken her back to her place, she said to him: \"Master, I know why we're not getting ahead.\"\n\n\"How can you know that, Yikka?\"\n\n\"Because I carry you, master. And because I'm only half an ass, I feel certain things.\"\n\n\"So, according to you, why is it?\"\n\n\"You don't want to get ahead, master. You've stopped wishing for anything.\"\n\nBastian looked at her in amazement.\n\n\"You are really a wise animal, Yikka.\"\n\nThe mule flapped her long ears in embarrassment.\n\n\"Do you know which way we've been going?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian. \"Do you?\"\n\nYikka nodded.\n\n\"We've been heading for the center of Fantastica.\"\n\n\"For the Ivory Tower?\"\n\n\"Yes, master. And we made good headway as long as we kept going in that direction.\"\n\n\"That's not possible,\" said Bastian. \"Atreyu would have noticed it, and certainly Falkor would have. But they didn't.\"\n\n\"We mules,\" said Yikka, \"are simple creatures, not in a class with luckdragons. But we do have certain gifts. And one of them is a sense of direction. We never go wrong. That's how I knew for sure that you wanted to visit the Childlike Empress.\"\n\n\"Moon Child...\" Bastian murmured. \"Yes, I would like to see her again. She'll tell me what to do.\"\n\nThen he stroked the mule's white nose and whispered: \"Thanks, Yikka. Thanks.\"\n\nNext morning Atreyu took Bastian aside.\n\n\"Listen, Bastian. Falkor and I want to apologize. The advice we gave you was meant well\u2014but it was stupid. We just haven't been getting ahead. Falkor and I talked it over last night. You'll be stuck here and so will we, until you wish for something. It's bound to make you lose some more of your memory, but that can't be helped, there's nothing else you can do. We can only hope that you find the way back before it's too late. It won't do you any good to stay here. You'll just have to think of your next wish and use AURYN's power.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said Bastian. \"Yikka said the same thing. And I already know what my next wish will be. Let's go, I want you all to hear it.\n\nThey rejoined the others.\n\n\"Friends,\" said Bastian in a loud voice. \"So far we have been looking in vain for the way back to my world. Now I've decided to go and see the one person who can help me find it. That one person is the Childlike Empress. Our destination is now the Ivory Tower.\"\n\n\"Hurrah!\" cried the three knights in unison.\n\nBut then Falkor's bronze voice rang out: \"Don't do it, Bastian Balthazar Bux. What you wish is impossible. Don't you know that no one can meet the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes more than once? You will never see her again.\"\n\nBastian clenched his fists.\n\n\"Moon Child owes me a lot,\" he said angrily. \"I'm sure she won't keep me away.\"\n\n\"You'll see,\" Falkor replied, \"that her decisions are sometimes hard to understand.\"\n\nBastian felt the color rising to his cheeks. \"You and Atreyu,\" he said, \"are always giving me advice. You can see where your advice has got us. From now on I'll do the deciding. I've made up my mind, and that's that.\"\n\nHe took a deep breath and went on a little more calmly: \"Besides, you always speak from your point of view. You two are Fantasticans and I'm a human. How can you be sure that the same rules apply to me as to you? It was different when Atreyu had AURYN. And who else but me is going to give the Gem back to Moon Child? No one can meet her twice, you say. But I've already met her twice. The first time we saw each other for only a moment, when Atreyu went into her chamber, and the second time when the big egg exploded. With me everything is different. I will see her a third time.\"\n\nAll were silent. The knights because they didn't know what it was all about, Atreyu and Falkor because they were beginning to have doubts.\n\n\"Well,\" said Atreyu finally, \"maybe you're right. We have no way of knowing how the Childlike Empress will deal with you.\"\n\nAfter that they started out, and before noon they reached the edge of the forest.\n\nBefore them lay sloping meadows as far as the eye could see. Soon they came to a winding river and followed its course.\n\nAgain Atreyu and Falkor explored the country, describing wide circles around their slow-moving companions. But both were troubled and their flight was not as light and carefree as usual. Looking ahead, they saw that the country changed abruptly at a certain point in the distance. A steep slope led from the plateau to a lowlying, densely wooded plain and the river descended the slope in a mighty waterfall. Knowing that the riders couldn't hope to get that far before the next day, the two scouts turned back.\n\n\"Falkor,\" Atreyu asked, \"do you suppose the Childlike Empress cares what becomes of Bastian?\"\n\n\"Maybe not,\" said Falkor. \"She draws no distinctions.\"\n\n\"Then,\" said Atreyu, \"she is really....\"\n\n\"Don't say it,\" Falkor broke in. \"I know what you mean, but don't say it.\"\n\nFor a while Atreyu was silent. Then he said: \"But he's my friend, Falkor. We've got to help him. Even against the Childlike Empress's will, if we have to. But how?\"\n\n\"With luck,\" the dragon replied, and for the first time the bronze bell of his voice seemed to have sprung a crack.\n\nThat evening the company chose a deserted log cabin on the riverbank as their night lodging. For Falkor, of course, it was too small, and he preferred to sleep on the air. The horses and Yikka also had to stay outside.\n\nDuring the evening meal Atreyu told the others about the waterfall and the abrupt change in the country. Then he added casually: \"By the way, we're being followed.\"\n\nThe three knights exchanged glances.\n\n\"Oho!\" cried Hykrion, giving his black moustache a martial twirl. \"How many are they?\"\n\n\"I counted seven behind us,\" said Atreyu. \"But even if they ride all night they can't be here before morning.\"\n\n\"Are they armed?\" asked Hysbald.\n\n\"I couldn't tell,\" said Atreyu, \"but there are more coming from other directions. I saw six in the west, nine in the east, and twelve or thirteen are coming from up ahead.\"\n\n\"We'll wait and see what they want,\" said Hydorn. \"Thirty-five or thirty-six men would hardly frighten the three of us\u2014much less Sir Bastian and Atreyu.\"\n\nOrdinarily Bastian ungirt the sword Sikanda before lying down to sleep. But that night he kept it on and slept with his hand on the hilt. In his dreams he saw Moon Child smiling at him and her smile seemed full of promise. If there was any more to the dream, he forgot it by the time he woke up, but his vision encouraged him in his hope of seeing her again.\n\nGlancing out of the door of the cabin, he saw seven blurred shapes through the mist that had risen from the river. Two were on foot, the others mounted on different sorts of steeds. Bastian quietly awakened his companions.\n\nThe knights unsheathed their swords, and together they stepped out of the cabin. When the figures waiting outside caught sight of Bastian, the riders dismounted and all seven went down on their left knees, bowed their heads and cried out: \"Hail and welcome to Bastian Balthazar Bux, the Savior of Fantastica!\"\n\nThe newcomers were a weird-looking lot. One of the two who had come on foot had an uncommonly long neck and a head with four faces, one pointed in each of the four directions. The first was merry, the second angry, the third sad, and the fourth sleepy. All were rigid and unchanging, but he was able at any time to face forward with the one expressing his momentary mood. This individual was a four-quarter troll, sometimes known as a moody-woody.\n\nThe second pedestrian was what is known in Fantastica as a head-footer. His head was connected directly with his long, thin legs, there being neither neck nor trunk. Headfooters are always on the go and have no fixed residence. As a rule, they roam about in swarms of many hundreds, but from time to time one runs across a loner. They feed on herbs and grasses. The one that was kneeling to Bastian looked young and red-cheeked.\n\nThe three creatures riding on horses no larger than goats were a gnome, a shadowscamp, and a blondycat. The gnome had a golden circlet around his head and was obviously a prince. The shadowscamp was hard to recognize, because to all intents and purposes he consisted only of a shadow cast by no one. The blondycat had a catlike face and long golden-blond curls that clothed her like a coat. Her whole body was covered with equally blond shaggy fur. She was no bigger than a five-year-old child.\n\nAnother, who was riding on an ox, came from the land of the Sassafranians, who are born old and die when they have grown (that is, dwindled) to infancy. This one had a long white beard, a bald head, and a heavily wrinkled face. By Sassafranian standards, he was a youngster, about Bastian's age.\n\nA blue djinn had come on a camel. He was tall and thin and was wearing an enormous turban. His shape was human, but his bare torso with its bulging muscles seemed to be made of some glossy blue metal. Instead of a nose and mouth, he had a huge, hooked eagle's beak.\n\n\"Who are you and what do you want?\" Hykrion asked rather brusquely. Despite the ceremonious greeting, he wasn't quite convinced of the visitors' friendly intentions. He still had his hand on his sword hilt.\n\nThe four-quarter troll, who up until then had been keeping his sleepy face foremost, now switched to the merry one. Ignoring Hykrion, he addressed himself to Bastian:\n\n\"Your Lordship,\" he declared, \"we are princes from many different parts of Fantastica, and we have all come to welcome you and ask for your help. The news of your presence has flown from country to country, the wind and the clouds speak your name, the waves of the sea proclaim your glory, and every last brooklet is celebrating your power.\"\n\nBastian cast a glance at Atreyu, but Atreyu looked at the troll unsmilingly and almost severely.\n\n\"We know,\" the blue djinn broke in, and his voice sounded like the rasping cry of an eagle, \"we know that you created Perilin, the Night Forest, and Goab, the Desert of Colors. We know you have eaten and drunk the fire of the Many-Colored Death and bathed in it, something that no one else in Fantastica could have done and still lived. We know that you passed through the Temple of a Thousand Doors, and we know what happened in the Silver City of Amarganth. We know, my lord, that there is nothing you cannot do. When you make a wish, your wishes come to pass. And so we invite you to come and stay with us and favor us with a story of our own. For none of our nations has a story.\"\n\nBastian thought it over, then shook his head. \"I can't do what you ask of me just yet. I'll help you later on. But first I must go to the Childlike Empress. I hope you will join us and help me to find the Ivory Tower.\"\n\nThe creatures didn't seem at all disappointed. After brief deliberation they agreed to accompany Bastian on his journey. Whereupon the procession, which by now had the look of a small caravan, started out again.\n\nThroughout the day they were joined by new adherents, not only those Atreyu had sighted the day before, but many more. There were goat-legged fauns and gigantic night-hobs, there were elves and kobolds, beetle riders and three-legses, a man-sized rooster in jackboots, a stag with golden antlers who walked erect and wore a Prince Albert. Many of the new arrivals bore no resemblance whatsoever to human beings. There were helmeted copper ants, strangely shaped wandering rocks, flute birds, who made music with their long beaks, and there were three so-called puddlers, who moved by dissolving into a puddle at every step and resuming their usual form a little farther on. But perhaps the most startling of all was a twee, whose fore-and hindquarters had a way of running about independently of one another. Except for its red and white stripes it looked rather like a hippopotamus.\n\nSoon the procession numbered at least a hundred. And all had come to welcome Bastian, the Savior of Fantastica, and beg him for a story of their own. But the original seven told the others that they would first have to go to the Ivory Tower, and all were agreed.\n\nHykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn rode with Bastian in the lead of the now rather impressive procession.\n\nToward evening they came to a waterfall. Leaving the plateau, they made their way down a winding mountain trail, at the end of which they found themselves in a forest of tree-sized orchids with enormous spotted blossoms. These blossoms looked so frightening that when the travelers stopped for the night, they decided to post sentries.\n\nBastian and Atreyu gathered some of the deep, soft moss that lay all about and made themselves a comfortable bed. Falkor protected the two friends by lying down in a circle around them. The air was warm and heavy with the strange and none too pleasant scent of the orchids. That scent seemed fraught with evil.\n\nhe dewdrops on the orchids glistened in the morning sun as the caravan started out again. The night had been uneventful except that more and more emissaries kept trailing in. The procession now numbered close to three hundred.\n\nThe farther they went into the orchid forest, the stranger grew the shapes and colors of the flowers. And soon Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn discovered that the fears which had led them to post sentries had not been entirely groundless. For many of the orchids were carnivorous and big enough to swallow a whole calf. True, they could not move of their own volition\u2014it hadn't been really necessary to post sentries\u2014but if something or someone touched them, they snapped shut like traps. And several times when a blossom seized the hand, foot, or mount of a fellow traveler the knights were obliged to draw their swords and hack the blossom to pieces.\n\nThroughout the ride Bastian was besieged by all sorts of fantastic creatures who tried to attract his attention or at least get a look at him. But Bastian rode on in withdrawn silence. A new wish had come to him, and for the first time it was one that made him seem standoffish and almost sullen.\n\nHe felt that despite their reconciliation, Atreyu and Falkor were treating him like a child, that they felt responsible for him and thought he had to be led by the nose. But come to think of it, hadn't they been that way from the start? Oh yes, they were friendly enough, but they seemed to feel superior to him for some reason, to regard him as a harmless innocent who needed protecting. And that didn't suit him at all. He wasn't innocent, he wasn't harmless, and he'd soon show them. He wanted to be dangerous, dangerous and feared. Feared by all\u2014including Atreyu and Falkor.\n\nThe blue djinn\u2014his name, incidentally, was Ilwan\u2014elbowed his way through the crush around Bastian, crossed his arms over his chest, and bowed.\n\nBastian stopped.\n\n\"What is it, Ilwan? Speak!\"\n\n\"My lord,\" said the djinn in his eagle's voice. \"I've been listening in on the conversations of our new traveling companions. Some of them claim to know this part of the country and their teeth are chattering with fear.\"\n\n\"What are they afraid of?\"\n\n\"This forest of carnivorous orchids, my lord, belongs to Xayide, the wickedest and most powerful sorceress in all Fantastica. She lives in Horok Castle, also known as the Seeing Hand.\"\n\n\"Tell the scaredy-cats not to worry,\" said Bastian, \"I'm here to protect them.\"\n\nIlwan bowed and left him.\n\nA little later Falkor and Atreyu, who had flown far ahead, returned to Bastian. The procession had stopped for the noon-day meal.\n\n\"I don't know what to make of it,\" said Atreyu. \"Three or four hours' journey from here, in the middle of the orchid forest, we saw a building that looks like a big hand jutting out of the ground. There's something sinister about it, and it's directly in our line of march.\"\n\nBastian told them what he had heard from Ilwan.\n\n\"If that's the case,\" said Atreyu, \"wouldn't it be more sensible to change our direction?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"But there's no reason why we should tangle with this Xayide. I think we should steer clear of her.\"\n\n\"There is a reason,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"What reason?\"\n\n\"Because I feel like it,\" said Bastian.\n\nAtreyu looked at him openmouthed. The conversation stopped there because Fantasticans were crowding in from all sides to get a look at Bastian. But when the meal was over, Atreyu rejoined Bastian. Trying to make it sound casual, he suggested: \"How about taking a ride with Falkor and me?\"\n\nBastian realized that Atreyu wanted a private talk with him. They hoisted themselves up on Falkor's back, Atreyu in front, Bastian behind him, and the dragon took off. It was the first time the two friends had flown together.\n\nOnce they were airborne, Atreyu said: \"It's been hard seeing you alone these days. But we have to talk things over, Bastian.\"\n\n\"Just as I thought,\" said Bastian with a smile. \"What's on your mind?\"\n\nAtreyu began hesitantly. \"Have we come to this place and are we heading where we are because of some new wish of yours?\"\n\n\"I imagine so,\" said Bastian rather coldly.\n\n\"That's what Falkor and I have been thinking,\" said Atreyu. \"What kind of wish is it?\"\n\nBastian made no answer.\n\n\"Don't get me wrong,\" said Atreyu. \"It's not that we're afraid of anything or anyone. But we're your friends, and we worry about you.\"\n\n\"No need to,\" said Bastian still more coldly.\n\nFalkor twisted his neck and looked back at them.\n\n\"Atreyu,\" he said, \"has a sensible suggestion. I advise you to listen to him, Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\n\"Some more of your good advice?\" said Bastian with a sardonic smile.\n\n\"No, Bastian,\" said Atreyu. \"No advice. A suggestion. You may not like it at first. But think it over before you turn it down. We want to help you, and we've been wondering how. The whole trouble is the way the Childlike Empress's amulet affects you. Without AURYN's power you can't wish yourself ahead, but with AURYN's power you're losing yourself and forgetting where you want to go. Pretty soon, unless we do something about it, you won't have any idea where you're going.\"\n\n\"We've already been through that,\" said Bastian. \"So what?\"\n\n\"When I was wearing the Gem,\" said Atreyu, \"it was entirely different. It guided me and it didn't take anything away from me. Maybe because I'm not a human and I have no memory of the human world to lose. In other words, it helped me and did me no harm. So here's what I suggest: Let me have AURYN and trust me to guide you. What do you say?\"\n\nBastian replied instantly: \"I say no!\"\n\nAgain Falkor looked back.\n\n\"Couldn't you at least think it over for a moment?\"\n\n\"No!\" said Bastian.\n\nFor the first time Atreyu grew angry.\n\n\"Bastian,\" he said, \"think sensibly! You can't go on like this! Haven't you noticed that you've changed completely? You're not yourself anymore.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" said Bastian. \"Thank you very much for minding my business all the time. But frankly, I can get along without your advice. In case you've forgotten, I saved Fantastica, and Moon Child entrusted her power to me. She must have had some reason for it, because she could have let you keep AURYN. But she took it away from you and gave it to me. I've changed, you say. Yes, my dear Atreyu, you may be right. I'm no longer the harmless innocent you take me for. Shall I tell you the real reason why you want me to give up AURYN? Because you're just plain jealous. You don't know me yet, but if you go on like this\u2014you'll get to know me.\"\n\nAtreyu did not reply. Falkor's flight had suddenly lost all its buoyancy, he seemed to be dragging himself through the air, sinking lower and lower like a wounded bird.\n\nAt length Atreyu spoke with difficulty.\n\n\"Bastian,\" he said. \"You can't seriously believe what you've said. Let's forget about it. As far as I'm concerned, you never said it.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Bastian, \"let's forget it. Anyway, I didn't start the argument.\"\n\nFor a time they rode on in silence.\n\nIn the distance Horok Castle rose up from the orchid forest. It really did look like a giant hand with five outstretched fingers.\n\n\"But there's something I want to make clear once and for all,\" said Bastian suddenly. \"I've made up my mind. I'm not going back at all. I'm going to stay in Fantastica for good. I like it here. So I can manage without my memories. And if it's the future of Fantastica you're worried about, I can give Moon Child thousands of new names. We don't need the human world anymore.\"\n\nFalkor banked for a U-turn.\n\n\"Hey!\" Bastian shouted. \"What are you doing? Fly ahead! I want to see Horok close up!\"\n\n\"I can't,\" Falkor gasped. \"I honestly can't go on!\"\n\nOn their return to the caravan they found their traveling companions in a frenzy of agitation. They had been attacked by a band of some fifty giants, covered with black armor that made them look like enormous two-legged beetles. Many of the traveling companions had fled and were just beginning to return singly or in groups; others had done their best to defend themselves, but had been no match for the armored giants. The three knights, Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, had fought heroically, but without making a dent in any of their assailants. In the end they had been disarmed and dragged away in chains. One of the armored giants had shouted in a strangely metallic voice:\n\n\"Xayide, the mistress of Horok Castle, sends greetings to Bastian Balthazar Bux, the Savior of Fantastica, and makes the following demands: \"Submit to me unconditionally and swear to serve me with body and soul as my faithful slave. Should you refuse, or should you attempt to circumvent my will by guile or stratagem, your three friends Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn will die a slow, shameful, and cruel death by torture. You have until sunrise tomorrow to make up your mind.\" That is the message of Xayide, the mistress of Horok Castle. It has been duly delivered.\"\n\nBastian bit his lips. Atreyu and Falkor had wiped all expression off their faces, but Bastian knew exactly what they were thinking. What he minded most was their mask of secrecy. But this was hardly the time to have it out with them. That could wait. Instead, he addressed the company in a loud voice: \"I will never give in to Xayide's blackmail! We must set the prisoners free, and without delay.\"\n\n\"It won't be easy,\" said Ilwan, the blue djinn with the eagle beak. \"All of us together are no match for those black devils. And even if you, my lord, and Atreyu and his luckdragon were to lead us into battle, it would take us too long to capture Horok Castle. The lives of the three knights are in Xayide's hands. She will kill them the moment she finds out that we are attacking.\"\n\n\"Then we mustn't let her find out,\" said Bastian. \"We must take her by surprise.\"\n\n\"How can we do that?\" asked the four-quarter troll, putting forward his angry face, which was rather terrifying. \"Xayide is crafty. I'm sure she has an answer for anything we can think up.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" said the prince of the gnomes. \"There are too many of us. If we move on Horok Castle, she's sure to know it. Even at night so large a troop movement can't be kept secret. She has her spies.\"\n\n\"Good,\" said Bastian. \"We'll fool her with the help of her spies.\"\n\n\"How can we do that, my lord?\"\n\n\"The rest of you will start off in a different direction, to make her think we've given up trying to free the prisoners and we're running away.\"\n\n\"And what will become of the prisoners?\"\n\n\"I'll attend to that with Atreyu and Falkor.\"\n\n\"Just the three of you?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Bastian. \"That is, if Atreyu and Falkor agree to come with me. If not, I'll go alone.\"\n\nThe traveling companions looked at him with admiration. Those closest to him passed his words on to those further back in the crowd.\n\n\"My lord,\" the blue djinn cried out, \"regardless of whether you conquer or die, this will go down in the history of Fantastica.\"\n\nBastian turned to Atreyu and Falkor. \"Are you coming, or have you got some more of your suggestions?\"\n\n\"We're coming,\" said Atreyu.\n\n\"In that case,\" Bastian decreed, \"the caravan must start moving while it's still light. You must hurry\u2014make it look as if you were in flight. We'll wait here until dark. We'll join you tomorrow morning\u2014with the three knights or not at all. Go now.\"\n\nAfter taking a respectful leave of Bastian, the traveling companions started out. Bastian, Atreyu, and Falkor hid in a clump of orchid trees and waited for nightfall.\n\nIn the late afternoon a faint jangling was heard and five of the black giants approached the abandoned camp. They seemed to be all of black metal, even their faces were like iron masks, and their movements were strangely mechanical. All stopped at once, all looked in the direction where the caravan had gone. Then without a word, all marched off in step.\n\n\"My plan seems to be working,\" Bastian whispered.\n\n\"There were only five,\" said Atreyu. \"Where are the others?\"\n\n\"The five are sure to communicate with the rest,\" said Bastian.\n\nAt length, when it was quite dark, Bastian, Atreyu, and Falkor crept from their hiding place, and Falkor rose soundlessly into the air with his two riders. Flying as low as possible over the orchid forest to avoid being seen, he headed in the direction they had taken that afternoon. The darkness was impenetrable, and they wondered how they would ever find the castle. But a few minutes later Horok appeared before them in a blaze of light. There seemed to be a lamp in every one of its thousand windows. Evidently Xayide wanted her castle to be seen. But that was only reasonable, for she was expecting Bastian's visit\u2014a different sort of visit, to be sure.\n\nTo be on the safe side, Falkor glided to the ground among the orchids, for his pearly-white scales would have reflected the glow of the castle.\n\nUnder cover of the trees they approached. Outside the gate, ten of the armored guards were on watch. And at each of the brightly lit windows stood one of them, black, motionless, and menacing.\n\nHorok Castle was situated on a rise from which the orchid trees had been cleared. True enough, it was shaped like an enormous hand. Each finger was a tower, and the thumb was an oriel surmounted by yet another tower. The whole building was many stories high, and the windows were like glittering eyes looking out over the countryside. It was known with good reason as the Seeing Hand.\n\n\"The first thing we have to do,\" Bastian whispered into Atreyu's ear, \"is locate the prisoners.\"\n\nAtreyu nodded and told Bastian to stay there with Falkor. Then he crawled soundlessly away. He was gone a long time.\n\nWhen he returned, he reported: \"I've been all around the castle. There's only this one entrance, and it's too well guarded. But I've discovered a skylight high up at the tip of the middle finger that seems to be unguarded. Falkor could easily take us up there, but we'd be seen. The prisoners are probably in the cellar. At any rate, I heard a long scream of pain that seemed to come from deep down.\"\n\nBastian thought hard. Then he whispered: \"I'll try to reach that skylight. Meanwhile you and Falkor must keep the guards busy. Make them think we're trying to get in by the gate. But don't do any more. Don't get into a fight. Keep them here as long as you can. Give me a few minutes' time before you do anything.\"\n\nAtreyu pressed his friend's hand in silence. Then Bastian took off his silver mantle and slipped away through the darkness. He had almost circled the castle when he heard Atreyu shouting:\n\n\"Attention! Bastian Balthazar Bux, the Savior of Fantastica, is here. He has come not to beg Xayide for mercy, but to give her a last chance to release the prisoners. If she sets them free, her miserable life will be spared!\"\n\nLooking around the corner of the castle, Bastian caught a glimpse of Atreyu, who had put on the silver mantle and coiled his blue-black hair into a kind of turban. To anyone who didn't know the two boys very well there was a certain resemblance between them.\n\nFor a moment the armored giants seemed undecided. Then Bastian could hear in the distance the metallic stamping of their feet as they rushed at Atreyu. The shadows in the windows also began to move as the guards left their posts to see what was going on. And many more of the armored giants poured out through the gate. When the first had almost reached Atreyu, he slipped nimbly away and a moment later appeared over their heads, riding Falkor. The armored giants brandished their swords and leapt high in the air, but they couldn't reach him.\n\nBastian started climbing the wall. Here and there he was helped by outcroppings and window ledges, but more often he had to hold fast with his fingertips. Higher and higher he climbed; once the jutting stone he had set his foot on crumbled away and left him hanging by one hand, but he pulled himself up, found a hold for his other hand, and kept climbing. When at last he reached the towers he made better progress, for they were so close together that he could push himself up by bracing himself between them.\n\nAt length he reached the skylight and slipped through. True enough, there was no guard in the tower room, heaven knows why. Opening a door, he came to a narrow winding staircase and started down. When he reached the floor below, he saw two black guards standing at a window watching the excitement outside. He managed to pass behind them without attracting their notice.\n\nOn he crept, down more stairways, through passages and corridors. One thing was certain. Those armored giants might have been great fighters, but they didn't amount to much as guards.\n\nAt last the cold and the musty smell told him he was in the cellar. Luckily all the guards seemed to have raced upstairs in pursuit of the supposed Bastian Balthazar Bux. Torches along the walls lit the way for him. Lower and lower he went. He had the impression that there were as many floors below the ground as above. Finally he came to the bottommost cellar and soon found the dungeon where Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn were languishing. It was a pitiful sight.\n\nThey were hanging by their wrists over what seemed to be a bottomless pit. The\n\nlong iron chains that held them were connected by way of overhead rollers with a winch, but the winch was fastened with a great padlock and couldn't be budged. Bastian stood perplexed.\n\nThe three prisoners' eyes were closed. They seemed to be asleep or unconscious. Then Hydorn the Enduring opened his left eye and sang out: \"Hey, friends. Look who's here!\"\n\nThe others managed to open their eyes and a smile crossed their lips.\n\n\"We knew you wouldn't leave us in the lurch!\" cried Hydorn.\n\n\"How can I get you down?\" Bastian asked. \"The winch is locked.\"\n\n\"Just take your sword and cut the chains,\" said Hysbald.\n\n\"And drop us into the pit?\" said Hykrion. \"That's not such a good idea.\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" said Bastian, \"I can't draw my sword. I can't use Sikanda unless it jumps into my hand.\"\n\n\"That's the trouble with magic swords,\" said Hydorn. \"When you need them, they go on strike.\"\n\n\"Hey!\" Hysbald whispered. \"The guards had the key to that winch. Where could they have put it?\"\n\n\"I remember a loose stone,\" said Hykrion. \"But I couldn't see very well while they were hoisting me up here.\"\n\nBastian looked and looked. The light was dim and flickering, but after a while he discovered a stone flag that was not quite even with the rest. He lifted it cautiously, and there indeed was the key.\n\nHe opened the big padlock and removed it from the winch. Then slowly he began to turn. It creaked and groaned so loud that the armored giants must have heard it by then if they weren't totally deaf. Even so, there was nothing to be gained by stopping. Bastian went on turning until the three knights were level with the floor, though still over the pit. Then, after swinging them to and fro until their feet touched the ground, he let them down. They stretched out exhausted and showed no inclination to move. Besides, they still had the heavy chains on their wrists.\n\nBastian had little time to think, for metallic steps came clanking down the stone stairs. The guards! Their armor glittered in the torchlight like the carapaces of giant insects. All with the same movement, they drew their swords and rushed at Bastian.\n\nThen at last Sikanda leapt from the rusty sheath and into his hand. With the speed of lightning the blade attacked the first of the armored giants and hacked him to pieces before Bastian himself knew what was happening. It was then that he saw what the giants were made of. They were hollow shells of armor. There was nothing inside! He had no time to wonder what made them move.\n\nBastian was in a good position, for only one giant at a time could squeeze through the narrow doorway of the dungeon, and one at a time Sikanda chopped them to bits. Soon their remains lay piled up on the floor like enormous black eggshells. After some twenty of them had been disposed of, the rest withdrew, evidently in the hope of waylaying Bastian in a position more favorable to themselves.\n\nTaking advantage of the breathing spell, Bastian let Sikanda cut the shackles from the knights' wrists. Hykrion and Hydorn dragged themselves to their feet and tried to draw their swords, which strangely enough had not been taken away from them, but their hands were numb from the long hanging and refused to obey them. Hysbald, the most delicate of the three, wasn't even able to stand by himself. His two friends had to hold him up.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said Bastian. \"Sikanda needs no help. Just stay behind me and don't get in my way.\"\n\nThey left the dungeon, slowly climbed the stairs, and came to a large hall. Suddenly all the torches went out. But Sikanda shone bright.\n\nAgain they heard the heavy metallic tread of many armored giants.\n\n\"Quick!\" cried Bastian. \"Back to the stairs! This is where I'm going to fight!\"\n\nHe couldn't see whether the three knights obeyed his order and there was no time to find out, because Sikanda was already dancing in his hand. The entire hall was ablaze with its sharp white light. The assailants managed to push Bastian back from the top of the stairs and to attack him from all sides, yet not one of their mighty blows touched him. Sikanda whirled around him so fast that it looked like hundreds of swords. And a few moments later he was surrounded by a heap of shattered black armor in which nothing stirred.\n\n\"Come on up!\" Bastian cried to his companions.\n\nThe three knights stood gaping on the stairs. Hykrion's moustache was trembling. \"I've never seen anything like it!\" he cried.\n\n\"Something to tell my grandchildren!\" Hysbald stammered.\n\n\"The only trouble,\" said Hydorn mournfully, \"is that they won't believe you.\"\n\nBastian stood there with sword in hand, wondering what to do next. Suddenly it sprang back into its sheath.\n\n\"The danger seems to be over,\" he said.\n\n\"At least the part that calls for a sword,\" said Hydorn. \"What do we do now?\"\n\n\"Now,\" said Bastian, \"I want to make this Xayide's acquaintance. I've got a bone to pick with her.\"\n\nAfter climbing several more flights of stairs, Bastian and the knights reached the ground floor, where Atreyu and Falkor were waiting for them in a kind of lobby.\n\n\"Well done, you two!\" cried Bastian, slapping Atreyu on the back.\n\n\"What's become of the armored giants?\" asked Atreyu.\n\n\"Hollow shells!\" said Bastian contemptuously. \"Where's Xayide?\"\n\n\"Up in her magic throne room,\" answered Atreyu.\n\n\"Come along,\" said Bastian, taking the silver mantle which Atreyu held out to him. And all together, including Falkor, they climbed the broad stairway leading to the upper floors.\n\nWhen Bastian, followed by his companions, entered the magic throne room, Xayide arose from her red-coral throne. She was wearing a long gown of violet silk, and her flaming red hair was coiled and braided into a fantastic edifice. Her face and her long, thin hands were as pale as marble. There was something strangely disturbing about her eyes. It took Bastian a few moments to figure out what it was\u2014they were of different colors, one green, one red. She was trembling, evidently in fear of Bastian. He looked her straight in the face and she lowered her long lashes.\n\nThe room was full of weird objects whose purpose it was hard to determine. There were large globes covered with designs, sidereal clocks, and pendulums hanging from the ceiling. There were costly censers from which rose heavy clouds of different-colored smoke, which crept over the floor like fog.\n\nThus far Bastian hadn't said a word. That seemed to shatter Xayide's composure, for suddenly she threw herself on the floor in front of him, took one of his feet and set it on her neck.\n\n\"My lord and master!\" she said in a deep voice that sounded somehow mysterious. \"No one in Fantastica can withstand you. You are mightier than the mighty and more dangerous than all the demons together. If you wish to take revenge on me for being too stupid to recognize your greatness, trample me underfoot. I have earned your anger. But if you wish once again to demonstrate your far-famed magnanimity, suffer me to become your obedient slave, who swears to obey you body and soul. Teach me to do what you deem desirable and I will be your humble pupil, obedient to your every hint. I repent of the harm I tried to do you and beg your mercy!\"\n\n\"Arise, Xayide!\" said Bastian. He had been very angry, but her speech pleased him. If she had really acted out of ignorance and really regretted it so bitterly, then it was beneath his dignity to punish her. And since she even wished to learn what he deemed desirable, he could see no reason to reject her plea.\n\nXayide arose and stood before him with bowed head. \"Will you obey me unconditionally,\" he asked, \"however hard you may find it to do my bidding? Will you obey me without argument and without grumbling?\"\n\n\"I will, my lord and master,\" said Xayide. \"You will see there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we combine my artifices and your power.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Bastian. \"Then I will take you into my service. You will leave this castle and go with me to the Ivory Tower, where I am expecting to meet Moon Child.\"\n\nFor a fraction of a second Xayide's eyes glowed red and green, but then, veiling them with her long lashes, she said: \"I am yours to command, my lord and master.\"\n\nThereupon all descended the stairs. Once outside the castle, Bastian observed: \"The first thing to do is find our traveling companions. Goodness knows where they are.\"\n\n\"Not very far from here,\" said Xayide. \"I've led them slightly astray.\"\n\n\"For the last time,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"For the last time,\" she agreed. \"But how will we get there? Do you expect me to walk? Through the woods and at night?\"\n\n\"Falkor will carry us,\" said Bastian. \"He's strong enough to carry us all.\"\n\nFalkor raised his head and looked at Bastian. His ruby-red eyes glittered.\n\n\"I'm strong enough, Bastian Balthazar Bux,\" boomed the bronze bell-like voice. \"But I will not carry that woman.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, you will,\" said Bastian. \"Because I command it.\"\n\nThe luckdragon looked at Atreyu, who nodded almost imperceptibly. But Bastian had seen that nod.\n\nAll took their places on Falkor's back, and he rose into the air.\n\n\"Which way?\" he asked.\n\n\"Straight ahead,\" said Xayide.\n\n\"Which way?\" Falkor asked again, as if he hadn't heard.\n\n\"Straight ahead!\" Bastian shouted. \"You heard her.\"\n\n\"Do as she says,\" said Atreyu under his breath. And Falkor complied.\n\nHalf an hour later\u2014already the dawn was graying\u2014they saw innumerable campfires down below and the luckdragon landed. In the meantime many more Fantasticans had turned up and a lot of them had brought tents. The camp, spread out on a wide, flower-strewn meadow at the edge of the orchid forest, looked like a tent city.\n\n\"How many are you now?\" Bastian asked.\n\nIlwan, the blue djinn, who had taken charge of the caravan in Bastian's absence, replied that he had not yet been able to make an exact count, but that he guessed there were close to a thousand. \"And there's something else to report,\" he added. \"Something rather strange. Soon after we pitched camp, shortly before midnight, five of those armored giants appeared. But they were peaceful and they've kept to themselves. Of course, no one dared to go near them. They brought a big litter made of red coral. But it was empty.\"\n\n\"Those are my carriers,\" said Xayide in a pleading tone to Bastian. \"I sent them ahead last night. That's the pleasantest way to travel. If it does not displease you, my lord.\"\n\n\"I don't like the look of this,\" Atreyu interrupted.\n\n\"Why not?\" said Bastian. \"What's your objection?\"\n\n\"She can travel any way she likes,\" said Atreyu drily. \"But she wouldn't have sent her litter here last night if she hadn't known in advance that she'd be coming here. She had planned the whole thing. Your victory was really a defeat. She purposely let you win. That was her way of winning you over.\"\n\n\"Enough of this!\" cried Bastian, purple with anger. \"I didn't ask for your opinion. You make me sick with your lecturing. And now you question my victory and ridicule my magnanimity.\"\n\nAtreyu was going to say something, but Bastian screamed at him: \"Shut up and leave me be! If the two of you aren't satisfied with what I do and the way I am, go away. I'm not keeping you. Go where you please! I'm sick of you!\"\n\nBastian folded his arms over his chest and turned his back on Atreyu. The Fantasticans who had gathered around were dumbfounded. For a time Atreyu stood silent. Up until then Bastian had never reprimanded him in the presence of others. He was so stunned he could hardly breathe. He waited a while, then, when Bastian did not turn back to him, he slowly walked away. Falkor followed him.\n\nXayide smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile.\n\nIn that moment, Bastian's memory of having been a child in his world was effaced.\n\nninterruptedly, new emissaries from all parts of Fantastica poured in to swell the army of those accompanying Bastian on his march to the Ivory Tower. It proved impossible to take a count, because new ones kept arriving while the counting was in progress. Each morning an army several thousand strong got under way. And each night it set up the strangest tent city imaginable. Since Bastian's traveling companions varied enormously in shape and size, some of their night lodgings might have been mistaken for circus tents, while others, at the opposite end of the scale, were no bigger than a thimble. Their vehicles also showed astonishing variety, ranging from common covered wagons and diligences to the most extraordinary rolling barrels, bouncing balls, and crawling containers with automotive legs.\n\nOf all the tents the most magnificent was the one that had been procured for Bastian. The shape and size of a small house, it was made of lustrous, many-colored silk, embroidered with gold and silver. A flag affixed to the roof was decorated with Bastian's coat of arms, a seven-armed candelabrum. The inside was furnished with soft blankets and cushions. Bastian's tent was always set up at the center of the camp. And the blue djinn, who had become his factotum, stood guard at the entrance.\n\nAtreyu and Falkor were still among the host of Bastian's companions, but since the public reprimand he hadn't exchanged a word with them. Secretly, he was waiting for Atreyu to give in and apologize. But Atreyu did nothing of the kind. Nor did Falkor show any inclination to humble himself before Bastian. And that, said Bastian to himself, was just what they must learn to do. If they expected him to back down they had another thing coming; his will was of steel. But if they gave in, he'd welcome them with open arms. If Atreyu knelt down to him, he would lift him up and say: Don't kneel to me, Atreyu, you are and remain my friend...\n\nBut for the time being Atreyu and Falkor brought up the rear of the procession. Falkor seemed to have forgotten how to fly; he trudged along on foot and Atreyu walked beside him, most of the time with bowed head. A sad comedown for the proud reconnaissance flyers. Bastian wasn't happy about it, but there was nothing he could do.\n\nHe began to be bored riding the mule Yikka in the lead of the caravan, and took to visiting Xayide in her litter instead. She received him with a great show of respect, gave him the most comfortable seat, and squatted down at his feet. She could always think of something interesting to talk about, and when she noticed that he disliked speaking of his past in the human world, she stopped questioning him about it. Most of the time she smoked her Oriental water pipe. The stem looked like an emerald-green viper, and the mouthpiece, which she held between her marble-white fingers, suggested a snake's head. She seemed to be kissing it as she smoked. The clouds of smoke which poured indolently from her mouth and nose changed color with every puff, from blue to yellow, to pink, to green, and so on.\n\n\"Xayide,\" said Bastian on one of his visits, looking thoughtfully at the armored giants who were carrying the litter. \"There's something I've been wanting to ask you.\"\n\n\"Your slave is listening,\" said Xayide.\n\n\"When I fought your guards,\" said Bastian, \"I discovered that there was nothing inside their shell of armor. So what makes them move?\"\n\n\"My will,\" said Xayide with a smile. \"It's because they're empty that they do my will. My will can control anything that's empty.\"\n\nShe turned her red and green gaze on Bastian. For a moment it gave him a strangely eerie feeling, but quickly she lowered her lashes.\n\n\"Could I control them with my will?\" he asked.\n\n\"Of course you could, my lord and master,\" she replied. \"You could do it a hundred times better than I. I am as nothing beside you. Would you care to try?\"\n\n\"Not now,\" said Bastian, who was rather frightened at the idea. \"Maybe some other time.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" said Xayide. \"Do you really enjoy riding an old mule? Wouldn't you rather be carried by beings you can move with your will?\"\n\n\"But Yikka likes to carry me,\" said Bastian almost peevishly. \"It gives her pleasure.\"\n\n\"Then you do it to please her?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" said Bastian. \"What's wrong with that?\"\n\nXayide let some green smoke rise from her mouth.\n\n\"Oh, nothing at all, my lord. How can anything you do be wrong?\"\n\n\"What are you driving at, Xayide?\"\n\nShe bowed her head of flaming red hair.\n\n\"You think of others too much, my lord and master,\" she whispered. \"No one is worthy to divert your attention from your own all-important development. If you promise not to be angry, I will venture a piece of advice: Think more of your own perfection.\"\n\n\"What has that got to do with Yikka?\"\n\n\"Not much, my lord. Hardly anything. Just this: she's not a worthy mount for someone as important as you. It grieves me to see you riding such an undistinguished animal. All your traveling companions are surprised. You alone, my lord and master, seem unaware of what you owe to yourself.\"\n\nBastian said nothing, but Xayide's words had made an impression.\n\nNext day, as the procession with Bastian and Yikka in the lead was passing through lush rolling meadows, interspersed here and there by small copses of fragrant lilac, he decided to take Xayide's advice.\n\nAt noon, when the caravan stopped to rest, he patted the old mule on the neck and said: \"Yikka, the time has come for us to part.\"\n\nYikka let out a cry of dismay. \"Why, master?\" she asked. \"Have I done my job so badly?\" And tears flowed from the corners of her dark eyes.\n\n\"Not at all,\" Bastian hastened to reassure her. \"You've been carrying me so gently all this time, you've been so patient and willing that I've decided to reward you.\"\n\n\"I don't want any other reward,\" said Yikka. \"I just want to go on carrying you. How could I wish for anything better?\"\n\n\"Didn't you once tell me it made you sad that mules can't have children?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Yikka, \"because when I'm very old I'd like to tell my children about these happy days.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Bastian. \"Then I'll tell you a story that will come true. And I'll tell it only to you, to you and no one else, because it's your story.\"\n\nThen he took hold of one of Yikka's long ears and whispered into it: \"Not far from here, in a little lilac copse, the father of your son is waiting for you. He's a white stallion with the white wings of a swan. His mane and his tail are so long they touch the ground. He has been following you secretly for days, because he's immortally in love with you.\"\n\n\"With me?\" cried Yikka, almost frightened. \"But I'm only a mule, and I'm not as young as I used to be.\"\n\n\"In his eyes,\" said Bastian in an undertone, \"you're the most beautiful creature in all Fantastica just as you are. And also perhaps because you've carried me. But he's very bashful, he doesn't dare approach you with all these creatures about. You must go to him or he'll die of longing for you.\"\n\n\"Myohmy!\" Yikka sighed. \"Is it as bad as all that?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Bastian whispered in her ear. \"And now, goodbye, Yikka. Just run along, you'll find him.\"\n\nYikka took a few steps, but then she looked back again.\n\n\"Frankly,\" she said. \"I'm kind of scared.\"\n\n\"There's nothing to worry about,\" said Bastian with a smile. \"And don't forget to tell your children and grandchildren about me.\"\n\n\"Thank you, master,\" said Yikka, and off she went.\n\nFor a long while Bastian looked after her as she hobbled off. He wasn't really happy about sending her away. He went to his luxurious tent, lay down on the soft cushions, and gazed at the ceiling. He kept telling himself that he had made Yikka's dearest wish come true. But that didn't make him feel any better. A person's reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself.\n\nBut that made no difference to Yikka, for she really did find the white, winged stallion. They married and she had a son who was a white, winged mule. His name was Pataplan and he made quite a name for himself in Fantastica, but that's another story and shall be told another time.\n\nFrom then on Bastian traveled in Xayide's litter. She even offered to get out and walk alongside so as to give him every possible comfort, but that was more than Bastian would accept. So they sat together in the comfortable red-coral litter, which from then on led the procession.\n\nBastian was still rather gloomy and felt a certain resentment toward Xayide for persuading him to part with his mule. He kept answering her in monosyllables, so that no real conversation was possible. Xayide soon realized what the trouble was.\n\nTo guide his thoughts into different channels, she said brightly: \"I would like to make you a present, my lord and master, if you deign to accept one from me.\"\n\nShe rummaged under her cushions and found a richly ornamented casket. As Bastian tingled with eagerness, she opened it and took out a belt with chain links. Each link as well as the clasp was made of clear glass.\n\n\"What is it?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"It's a belt that makes its wearer invisible. But if you want it to belong to you, my lord, you must give it its name.\"\n\nBastian examined it. \"The belt Ghemmal,\" he said then.\n\nXayide nodded. \"Now it is yours,\" she said with a smile. Bastian took the belt and held it irresolutely in his hand.\n\n\"Would you like to try it now?\" she asked. \"Just to see how it works?\"\n\nTo Bastian's surprise, the belt was a perfect fit. But it gave him a most unpleasant feeling not to see his own body. He wanted to take the belt off, but that wasn't so easy since he could see neither the buckle nor his own hands.\n\n\"Help!\" he cried in a panic, suddenly afraid that he would never find the buckle and would remain invisible forever.\n\n\"You have to learn to handle it,\" said Xayide. \"I had the same trouble at first. Permit me to help you, my lord and master.\"\n\nShe reached into the empty air. A moment later she had unfastened the belt and Bastian was relieved to see himself again. He laughed, while Xayide drew smoke from her water pipe and smiled.\n\nIf nothing else, she had cheered him up.\n\n\"Now you are safe from harm,\" she said gently, \"and that means more to me than you can imagine.\"\n\n\"Harm?\" asked Bastian, still slightly befuddled. \"What sort of harm?\"\n\n\"Oh, no one can contend with you,\" Xayide whispered. \"Not if you are wise. The danger is inside you, and that's why it's hard to protect you against it.\"\n\n\"Inside me? What does that mean?\"\n\n\"A wise person stands above things, he neither loves nor hates. But you, my lord, set store by friendship. Your heart should be as cold and indifferent as a snow-covered mountain peak, and it isn't. That's why someone can harm you.\"\n\n\"Someone? What someone?\"\n\n\"Someone you still care for in spite of all his insolence.\"\n\n\"Speak more plainly.\"\n\n\"That rude, arrogant little savage from the Greenskin country, my lord.\"\n\n\"Atreyu?\"\n\n\"Yes, and that outrageous, impertinent Falkor!\"\n\n\"You think they'd want to harm me?\" Bastian could hardly keep from laughing.\n\nXayide bowed her head and said nothing.\n\n\"I'll never believe that,\" said Bastian. \"I won't listen to another word.\"\n\nXayide still said nothing. She bowed her head still lower.\n\nAfter a long silence Bastian asked: \"What do you suppose Atreyu is plotting?\"\n\n\"My lord,\" Xayide whispered. \"I wish I hadn't spoken.\"\n\n\"Well, now that you've started,\" Bastian cried, \"tell me everything. Stop beating about the bush. What do you know?\"\n\n\"I tremble at your anger, my lord,\" Xayide stammered, and true enough, she was all atremble. \"But even if it costs me my life, I will tell you. Atreyu is plotting to take the Childlike Empress's amulet away from you, by stealth or by force.\"\n\nFor a moment Bastian could hardly breathe.\n\n\"Can you prove it?\" he asked.\n\nXayide shook her head.\n\n\"My knowledge,\" she murmured, \"is not of the kind that can be proved.\"\n\n\"Then keep it to yourself,\" said Bastian, the blood rising to his face. \"And don't malign the truest, bravest boy in all Fantastica.\"\n\nWith that he jumped out of the litter and left her.\n\nXayide's fingers played with the snake's head and her green-and-red eyes glowed. After a while she smiled again. Violet smoke rose from her mouth and she whispered: \"You will see, my lord and master. The belt Ghemmal will show you.\"\n\nWhen the camp was set up that night, Bastian went to his tent. He ordered Ilwan, the blue djinn, not to admit anyone, and especially not Xayide. He wanted to be alone and to think.\n\nWhat the sorceress had told him about Atreyu hardly seemed worth troubling his head about. He had something else on his mind: those few words she dropped about wisdom.\n\nHe had been through so much; he had known joy and fear, discouragement and triumph; he had rushed from wish fulfillment to wish fulfillment, never stopping to rest. And nothing had brought him calm and contentment. To be wise was to be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and humiliation. It was to hate nothing and to love nothing, and above all to be utterly indifferent to the love and hate of others. A truly wise man attached no importance to anything. Nothing could upset him and nothing could harm him. Yes, to be like that would be his final wish, the wish that would bring him to what he really wanted. Now he thought he understood what Grograman had meant by those words. And so he wished to become wise, the wisest being in Fantastica.\n\nA little later he stepped out of his tent.\n\nThe moon cast its light on a landscape that he had scarcely noticed up until then. The tent city lay in a hollow ringed about by strangely shaped mountains. The silence was complete. The hollow was fairly well wooded, while on the mountain slopes the vegetation became more sparse and farther up there was none at all. The peaks formed all manner of figures, almost as though a giant sculptor had shaped them. No breeze was blowing and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The stars glittered and seemed nearer than usual.\n\nAt the top of one of the highest peaks Bastian made out a sort of cupola. It seemed to be inhabited, for it gave off a faint light.\n\n\"I've noticed it too, my lord,\" said Ilwan in his rasping voice. He was standing at his post by the entrance to the tent. \"What can it be?\"\n\nHe had no sooner spoken than Bastian heard a strange cry in the distance. It suggested the long-drawn-out hooting of an owl, but it was deeper and louder. It sounded a second and then a third time, but now there were several voices.\n\nOwls they were indeed, six in number, as Bastian was soon to find out. Coming from the direction of the cupola, they glided at an incredible speed on almost motionless wings. Soon they were close enough for Bastian to see how amazingly large they were. Their eyes glittered, and their erect ears were capped with bundles of down. The flight was soundless, but as they landed, a faint whirring of their wings could be heard.\n\nThen they were sitting on the ground in front of Bastian's tent, swiveling their heads with their great round eyes in all directions. Bastian went up to them.\n\n\"Who are you?\" he asked, \"and who are you looking for?\"\n\n\"We were sent by Ushtu, the Mother of Intuition,\" said one of the six owls. \"We are messengers from Ghigam, the Star Cloister.\"\n\n\"What sort of cloister is that?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"It is the home of wisdom,\" said another of the owls, \"where the Monks of Knowledge live.\"\n\n\"And who is Ushtu?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"One of the Three Deep Thinkers who direct the cloister and instruct the monks,\" said a third owl. \"We are the night messengers, which puts us in her department.\"\n\n\"If it were daytime,\" said the fourth owl, \"Shirkry, the Father of Vision, would have sent his messengers, who are eagles. And in the twilight hours between day and night, Yisipu, the Son of Reason, sends his messengers, who are foxes.\"\n\n\"Who are Shirkry and Yisipu?\"\n\n\"They are the other Deep Thinkers, our Superiors.\"\n\n\"And what are you doing here?\"\n\n\"We are looking for the Great Knower,\" said the sixth owl. \"The Three Deep Thinkers know he is in this tent city and have sent us to beg him for illumination.\"\n\n\"The Great Knower?\" asked Bastian. \"Who's that?\"\n\n\"His name,\" replied all six owls at once, \"is Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\n\"You've found him,\" said Bastian. \"It's me.\"\n\nThey bowed low, which because of their jerky movements looked almost comical in spite of their great size.\n\n\"The Three Deep Thinkers,\" said the first owl, \"beg you humbly and respectfully to visit them. They hope you will solve a problem they have been trying in vain to solve all their long lives.\"\n\nBastian stroked his chin thoughtfully.\n\n\"Very well,\" he answered after a while. \"But I must take my two disciples with me.\"\n\n\"There are six of us,\" said the owl. \"Two of us will carry each one of you.\"\n\nBastian turned to the blue djinn.\n\n\"Ilwan,\" he said. \"Bring me Atreyu and Xayide.\"\n\nThe djinn bowed and went his way.\n\n\"What is this problem they want me to solve?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"O Great Knower,\" said one of the owls, \"we are only poor ignorant messengers. We don't even belong to the lowest rank of the Monks of Knowledge. How could we possibly have cognizance of the problem which the Deep Thinkers in all their long lives have been unable to solve?\"\n\nA few minutes later Ilwan came back with Atreyu and Xayide. On the way he had told them what it was all about.\n\nAs he stood before Bastian, Atreyu asked in an undertone: \"Why me?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Xayide. \"Why him?\"\n\n\"You will find out,\" said Bastian.\n\nWith admirable foresight, the owls had brought trapezes, one for every two owls. Bastian, Atreyu, and Xayide sat on the bars, and the great night birds, each holding a trapeze rope in its claws, rose into the air.\n\nWhen the travelers reached the Star Cloister of Ghigam, they round that the great cupola was only the uppermost part of a large building composed of many cubical compartments. It had innumerable little windows and its outer wall might have been taken for the continuation of a sheer cliff. An unbidden visitor could hardly have gained admittance to the place.\n\nThe cubical compartments contained the cells of the Monks of Knowledge, the libraries, the refectories, and the lodgings of the messengers. The meeting hall, where the Three Deep Thinkers delivered their lectures, was situated under the cupola.\n\nThe Monks of Knowledge were Fantasticans of all kinds, from every part of the realm. But anyone wishing to enter the cloister had to break off all contact with family and country. The lives of these monks were hard and frugal, devoted exclusively to knowledge. The community was far from accepting all applicants. The examinations were difficult and the Three Deep Thinkers set the highest standards. Thus there were seldom more than three hundred monks in the cloister at one time, but these were by far the most intelligent persons in all Fantastica. Occasionally the community dwindled to seven members, but even then there was no thought of relaxing the entrance requirements. At the moment the monks and monkesses numbered roughly two hundred.\n\nWhen Bastian, followed by Atreyu and Xayide, was led into the large lecture hall, he saw a motley assortment of Fantasticans, who differed from his own retinue only in that they all were dressed in rough dark-brown monk's robes. A wandering cliff or a tiny must have looked very strange in such an outfit.\n\nThe Superiors of the order, the Three Deep Thinkers, were built like humans except for their heads. Ushtu, the Mother of Intuition, had the head of an owl; Shirkry, the Father of Vision, the head of an eagle; and Yisipu, the Son of Reason, the head of a fox. They sat in raised stone chairs and looked enormous. The sight of them seemed to intimidate Atreyu and even Xayide. But Bastian stepped right up to them.\n\nWith a motion of his head, Shirkry, who was evidently the oldest of the three and was sitting in the middle, indicated an empty chair facing the Deep Thinkers. Bastian sat down in it.\n\nAfter a prolonged silence, Shirkry spoke. He spoke softly, but his voice sounded surprisingly deep and full.\n\n\"Since time immemorial we have been pondering the enigma of our world. Yisipu's reasonings in the matter are different from Ushtu's intuitions, and Ushtu's intuitions differ from my vision, which in turn is different from Yisipu's reasonings. This is intolerable and must not be allowed to go on. That is why we have asked the Great Knower to come here and instruct us. Are you willing?\"\n\n\"I am,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"Then, O Great Knower, hear our question: What is Fantastica?\"\n\nAfter a short silence Bastian replied: \"Fantastica is the Neverending Story.\"\n\n\"Give us time to understand your answer,\" said Shirkry. \"Let us meet again here tomorrow at the same hour.\"\n\nSilently the Three Deep Thinkers and the Monks of Knowledge arose, and all left the hall.\n\nBastian, Atreyu, and Xayide were led to guest cells, where a simple meal awaited them. Their beds were wooden planks covered with rough woolen blankets. Though this didn't matter to Bastian and Atreyu, Xayide would have liked to conjure up a more comfortable bed. But she soon found to her dismay that her magic powers were without effect in this cloister.\n\nLate the following night the monks and the Three Deep Thinkers met again in the great meeting hall. Once again Bastian occupied the high seat. Xayide and Atreyu sat to the left and right of him.\n\nThis time it was Ushtu, the Mother of Intuition, who scrutinized Bastian with her great owl's eyes and said: \"We have meditated on your answer, O Great Knower. But a new question has occurred to us. If, as you say, Fantastica is the Neverending Story, where is the Neverending Story to be found?\"\n\nAfter a short silence Bastian replied: \"In a book bound with copper-colored silk.\"\n\n\"Give us time to understand your words,\" said Ushtu. \"Let us meet again tomorrow at the same hour.\"\n\nWhen they had gathered in the meeting hall the following night, Yisipu, the Son of Reason, took the floor.\n\n\"Again we have meditated on your answer, O Great Knower,\" he said. \"And again a new question comes to perplex us. If our world, Fantastica, is a Neverending Story and if this Neverending Story is in a book bound in copper-colored silk\u2014where then is this book?\"\n\nAfter a short silence Bastian replied: \"In the attic of a schoolhouse.\"\n\n\"O Great Knower,\" said the fox-headed Yisipu, \"we do not doubt the truth of what you say. But now we would like to ask you to let us see this truth. Can you do that?\"\n\nBastian thought it over. Then he said: \"I believe I can.\"\n\nAtreyu looked at Bastian with surprise. Xayide too had a questioning look in her red-and-green eyes.\n\n\"Let us meet again tomorrow night at the same hour,\" said Bastian. \"But not here. Let us meet on the roof of the Star Cloister. And then you must keep your eyes fixed on the heavens.\"\n\nThe following night was as clear as the three before it. At the appointed hour the Three Deep Thinkers and all the Monks of Knowledge were gathered on the roof of the Star Cloister. Atreyu and Xayide, who had no idea what Bastian was up to, were there too.\n\nBastian climbed to the top of the great cupola and looked around. For the first time he saw the Ivory Tower far off on the horizon, shimmering in the moonlight.\n\nHe took the stone Al Tsahir from his pocket. It sent out a soft glow. He then called to mind the inscription he had seen on the door of the Amarganth Library:\n\n....ut if he says my name a second time\n\nfrom the end to the beginning,\n\nI will glow in one moment\n\nwith the light of a hundred years.\n\nHe held the stone up high and cried out: \"Rihast-la!\"\n\nAt that moment there came a flash of lightning so bright that the stars paled and the dark cosmic space behind them was illumined. And that space was the schoolhouse attic with its age-blackened beams. In a moment the vision passed and the light of a hundred years was gone. Al Tsahir had vanished without a trace.\n\nIt was some time before the eyes of those present, including Bastian's, became accustomed to the feeble light of the moon and the stars.\n\nShaken by what they had seen, all gathered in the great lecture hall. Bastian was the last to enter. The Monks of Knowledge and the Three Deep Thinkers arose from their seats and bowed low to him.\n\n\"I have no words,\" said Shirkry, \"with which to thank you for that flash of illumination, O Great Knower. For in that mysterious attic I glimpsed a being of my own kind, an eagle.\"\n\n\"You are mistaken, Shirkry,\" said the owl-faced Ushtu with a gentle smile. \"I saw the creature plainly. It was an owl.\"\n\n\"You are both mistaken,\" cried Yisipu, his eyes aflame. \"That being is a relative of mine, a fox.\"\n\nShirkry raised his hands in horror.\n\n\"Here we are back where we started!\" he said. \"You alone, O Great Knower, can answer this new question. Which of us is right?\"\n\nSmiling serenely, Bastian replied: \"All three.\"\n\n\"Give us time to understand your answer,\" said Ushtu.\n\n\"All the time you wish,\" Bastian replied, \"for we shall be leaving you now.\"\n\nBitter disappointment could be read on the faces of the Three Deep Thinkers and of the Monks of Knowledge. They implored Bastian to stay longer, or better still, forever, but with a rather disrespectful shrug he declined.\n\nWhereupon the six messengers carried him and his two disciples back to the tent city.\n\nThat night the usual harmony of the Three Deep Thinkers was disturbed by a first radical difference of opinion, which years later led to the breakup of the community. Then Ushtu the Mother of Intuition, Shirkry the Father of Vision, and Yisipu the Son of Reason each founded a cloister of his own. But that is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nThat night Bastian lost all memory of having gone to school. The attic and the stolen book bound in copper-colored silk vanished from his mind. And he even stopped asking himself how he had come to Fantastica.\n\nigilant scouts returned to camp, reporting that the Ivory Tower was not far off and could be reached in two or at the most three days' marches.\n\nBut Bastian seemed irresolute. He kept ordering rest stops, but before the troops were half settled he would make them start out again. No one knew why he was behaving so strangely, and no one dared ask him. Since his great feat at the Star Cloister he had been unapproachable, even for Xayide. All sorts of conjectures were rife, but most of the traveling companions were quite willing to obey his contradictory orders. Great wise men, they thought, often strike the common run of people as unpredictable. Atreyu and Falkor were equally at a loss. The incident at the Star Cloister had baffled them completely.\n\nWithin Bastian two feelings were at war, and he was unable to silence either one. He longed to meet Moon Child. Now that he was famous and admired throughout Fantastica, he could approach her as an equal. But at the same time he was afraid she would ask him to return AURYN to her. And what then? Would she try to send him back to the world he had almost forgotten? He didn't want to go back. And he wanted to keep the Gem. But then he had another idea. Was it so certain that she wanted it back? Maybe she would let him have it as long as he wished. Maybe she had made him a present of it and it was his for good. At such moments he could hardly wait to see her again. He rushed the caravan on. But then, assailed by doubts, he would order a stop and think it all over again.\n\nAfter alternating forced marches and prolonged delays, the procession finally reached the edge of the famous Labyrinth, the immense flower garden with its winding avenues and pathways. On the horizon the Ivory Tower gleamed white against the gold-shimmering evening sky.\n\nAwed by the splendor and beauty of the sight, the army of Fantasticans stood silent. And so did Bastian. Even Xayide's face showed a look of wonderment, which had never been seen before and which soon vanished. Atreyu and Falkor, who were in the rear of the procession, remembered how different the Labyrinth had looked the last time they had seen it: wasted with the ravages of the Nothing. Now it was greener and more flourishing than ever before.\n\nBastian decided to go no farther that day and the tents were pitched for the night. He sent out messengers to bring greetings to Moon Child and let her know that he would be arriving at the Ivory Tower next day. Then he lay down in his tent and tried to sleep. He tossed and turned on his cushions, his worries left him no peace. But he was far from suspecting that this would be his worst night since coming to Fantastica.\n\nToward midnight, soon after falling into a restless sleep, he was awakened by excited whisperings outside his tent. He got up and went out.\n\n\"What's going on?\" he asked sternly.\n\n\"This messenger,\" replied Ilwan, the blue djinn, \"claims he is bringing you news so important that it can't wait until tomorrow.\"\n\nThe messenger, whom Ilwan had picked up by the collar, was a nimbly, a creature bearing a certain resemblance to a rabbit, except that its coat was of bright-colored feathers instead of fur. Nimblies are among the swiftest runners in Fantastica, and can cover enormous distances with incredible speed. When running they become almost invisible except for the trail of dust clouds they leave behind them. That is why the nimbly had been chosen as messenger. After running to the Ivory Tower and back in next to no time, he was desperately out of breath when the djinn set him down in front of Bastian.\n\n\"Forgive me, sire,\" he said, bowing and panting. \"Forgive me if I make so bold as to disturb your rest, but you would have every reason to be displeased with me if I failed to do so. Moon Child is not in the Ivory Tower; she has not been there for a long, long time, and no one knows where she is.\"\n\nSuddenly Bastian felt cold and empty inside. \"You must be mistaken. That can't be.\"\n\n\"The other messengers will tell you the same thing when they get back, sire.\"\n\nAfter a long silence Bastian said tonelessly: \"Thank you. Dismissed.\"\n\nHe went back into his tent, sat down on his bed, and buried his head in his hands. This seemed impossible. Moon Child must have known he was on his way to her. Could it be that she didn't want to see him again? Or had something happened to her? No, how could anything happen to her in her own realm?\n\nBut the fact remained: she was gone, which meant that he didn't have to return AURYN to her. At the same time he felt bitterly disappointed that he wouldn't be seeing her again. Whatever her reasons may have been, he found her behavior unbelievable, no, insulting.\n\nThen he remembered what Falkor and Atreyu had told him: that no one could meet the Childlike Empress more than once.\n\nThe thought made him so unhappy that he suddenly longed for Atreyu and Falkor. He needed someone to talk to, to confide in.\n\nThen he had an idea: If he put on the belt Ghemmal and made himself invisible, he could enjoy their comforting presence without mentioning the humiliation he felt.\n\nHe opened the ornate casket, took out the belt, and put it on. Then, after waiting until he had got used to the unpleasant sensation of not seeing himself, he went out and wandered about the tent city in search of Atreyu and Falkor. Wherever he went he heard excited whispers, figures darted from tent to tent, here and there several creatures were huddled together, talking and gesticulating. By then the other messengers had returned, and the news that Moon Child was not in the Ivory Tower had spread like wildfire.\n\nAtreyu and Falkor were under a flowering rosemary tree at the very edge of the camp. Atreyu was sitting with his arms folded, looking fixedly in the direction of the Ivory Tower. The luckdragon lay beside him with his great head on the ground.\n\n\"That was my last hope,\" said Atreyu. \"I thought she might make an exception for him and let him return the amulet. Now all is lost.\"\n\n\"She must know what she's doing,\" said Falkor. At that moment Bastian located them and sat down invisibly nearby.\n\n\"Is it certain?\" Atreyu murmured. \"He mustn't be allowed to keep AURYN!\"\n\n\"What will you do?\" Falkor asked. \"He won't give it up of his own free will.\"\n\n\"Then I'll have to take it from him,\" said Atreyu.\n\nAt those words Bastian felt the ground sinking from under him.\n\n\"That won't be easy,\" he heard Falkor saying. \"But if you do take it, I trust that he won't be able to get it back.\"\n\n\"That's not so sure,\" said Atreyu. \"He'll still have his great strength and his magic sword.\"\n\n\"But the Gem would protect you,\" said Falkor. \"Even against him.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Atreyu. \"I don't think so. Not against him.\"\n\n\"And to think,\" said Falkor with a grim laugh, \"that he himself offered it to you on your first night in Amarganth.\"\n\nAtreyu nodded. \"I didn't realize then what would happen.\"\n\n\"How are you going to take it from him?\" Falkor asked.\n\n\"I'll have to steal it,\" said Atreyu.\n\nFalkor's head shot up. With glowing ruby-red eyes he stared at Atreyu, who hung his head and repeated in an undertone: \"I'll have to. There's no other way.\"\n\nAfter a long silence Falkor asked: \"When?\"\n\n\"It will have to be tonight. Tomorrow may be too late.\"\n\nBastian had heard enough. Slowly he crept away. His only feeling was one of cold emptiness. Everything was indifferent to him now, just as Xayide had said.\n\nHe went back to his tent and took off the belt Ghemmal. Then he bade Ilwan bring him the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn. As he paced the ground waiting, it came to him that Xayide had foreseen it all. He hadn't wanted to believe her, but now he was obliged to. Xayide, he now realized, was sincerely devoted to him. She was his only true friend. But there was still room for doubt. Perhaps Atreyu wouldn't actually carry out his plan. Maybe he had already repented. In that case Bastian wouldn't ever mention it\u2014though friendship now meant nothing to him. That was over and done with.\n\nWhen the three knights appeared, he told them he had reason to believe that a thief would come to his tent that night. When they agreed to keep watch and lay hands on the thief whoever he might be, he went to Xayide's coral litter. She lay sound asleep, attended by her five giants in their black armor, who stood motionless on guard. In the darkness they looked like five boulders.\n\n\"I wish you to obey me,\" Bastian said softly.\n\nInstantly, all five turned their black iron faces toward him.\n\n\"Command us, master of our mistress,\" said one in a metallic voice.\n\n\"Do you think you can handle Falkor the luckdragon?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"That depends on the will that guides us,\" said the metallic voice.\n\n\"It is my will,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"Then there is no one we cannot handle,\" was the answer.\n\n\"Good. Then go close to where he is.\" He pointed. \"That way. As soon as Atreyu leaves him, take him prisoner. But keep him there. I'll have you called when I want you.\"\n\n\"Master of our mistress,\" the metallic voice replied, \"it shall be done.\"\n\nThe five black giants marched off in step. Xayide smiled in her sleep.\n\nBastian went back to his tent. But once in sight of it, he hesitated. If Atreyu should really attempt to steal the Gem, he didn't want to be there when they seized him.\n\nHe sat down under a tree nearby and waited, wrapped in his silver mantle. Slowly the time passed, the sky paled in the east, it would soon be morning. Bastian was beginning to hope that Atreyu had abandoned his project when suddenly he heard a tumult in his tent. And a moment later Hykrion led Atreyu out with his arms chained behind his back. The two other knights followed. Bastian dragged himself to his feet and stood leaning against the tree.\n\n\"So he's actually done it,\" he muttered to himself.\n\nThen he went to his tent. He couldn't bear to look at Atreyu, and Atreyu too kept his eyes to the ground.\n\n\"Ilwan,\" said Bastian to the blue djinn. \"Wake the whole camp! I want everyone here. And tell the black giants to bring Falkor.\"\n\nThe djinn hurried off with the rasping cry of an eagle. Wherever he went, the denizens of the tents large and small began to stir.\n\n\"He didn't defend himself at all,\" said Hykrion, with a movement of his head toward Atreyu, who was standing there motionless with eyes downcast. Bastian turned away and sat down on a stone.\n\nBy the time the five armored giants appeared with Falkor, a large crowd had gathered. At the approach of the stamping metallic steps, the crowd opened up a passage. Falkor was not chained, and the armed guards were not holding him, but merely marching to the left and right of him with drawn swords.\n\n\"He offered no resistance, master of our mistress,\" said one of the metallic voices.\n\nFalkor lay down on the ground at Atreyu's feet and closed his eyes.\n\nA long silence followed. Creatures poured in from the camp and craned their necks to see what was going on. Only Xayide was absent. Little by little the whispering died down. All eyes shuttled back and forth between Bastian and Atreyu, who stood motionless, looking like stone statues in the gray morning light.\n\nAt length Bastian spoke.\n\n\"Atreyu,\" he said. \"You tried to steal Moon Child's amulet and take it for yourself. And you, Falkor, were an accomplice to his plan. Not only have you both been untrue to our old friendship, you have also been guilty of disobedience to Moon Child, who gave me the Gem. Do you confess your wrong?\"\n\nAtreyu cast a long glance at Bastian; then he nodded.\n\nBastian's voice failed him. It was some time before he could go on.\n\n\"I have not forgotten, Atreyu, that it was you who brought me to Moon Child. I have not forgotten Falkor's singing in Amarganth. So I will spare your lives, the lives of a thief and of a thief's accomplice. Do what you will. Just so you go away, the farther the better, and never let me lay eyes on you again. I banish you forever. I have never known you.\"\n\nHe bade Hykrion remove Atreyu's chains. Then he turned away.\n\nAtreyu stood motionless for a long while. Then he cast another glance at Bastian. It looked as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. He bent down to Falkor and whispered something in his ear. The luckdragon opened his eyes and sat up. Atreyu jumped on his back and Falkor rose into the air. He flew straight into the brightening morning sky, and though his movements were heavy and sluggish, he soon vanished in the distance.\n\nBastian went to his tent and threw himself down on his bed.\n\n\"At last you have achieved true greatness,\" said a soft voice. \"Now you've stopped caring for anything; now nothing can move you.\"\n\nBastian sat up. It was Xayide. She was squatting in the darkest corner of the tent.\n\n\"You?\" said Bastian. \"How did you get in?\"\n\nXayide smiled.\n\n\"O my lord and master, no guards can shut me out. Only your command can do that. Do you wish to send me away?\"\n\nBastian lay back and closed his eyes. After a while he muttered: \"It's all the same to me. Go or stay!\"\n\nFor a long while she watched him from under her half-lowered lids. Then she asked: \"What are you thinking about, my lord and master?\"\n\nBastian turned away and did not reply.\n\nIt was plain to Xayide that this was no time to leave him to himself. In such a mood he was capable of slipping away from her. She must comfort him and cheer him up\u2014in her own way. For she was determined to hold him to the course she had planned for him\u2014and for herself. And she knew that in the present juncture no magical belts or tricks would suffice. It would take stronger medicine, the strongest medicine available to her, namely, Bastian's secret wishes. She sat down beside him and whispered in his ear: \"When, O lord and master, will you go to the Ivory Tower?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Bastian. \"What can I do there if Moon Child is gone?\"\n\n\"You could go and wait for her.\"\n\nBastian turned to face Xayide.\n\n\"Do you think she'll be back?\"\n\nHe had to repeat his question more insistently before Xayide replied: \"No, I don't believe so. I believe she has had to leave Fantastica forever, and that you, my lord and master, are her successor.\"\n\nSlowly Bastian sat up and looked into Xayide's red-and-green eyes. It was some time before he grasped the full meaning of her words.\n\n\"I!?\" he gasped. And his cheeks broke out in red spots.\n\n\"Do you find the idea so frightening?\" Xayide whispered. \"She gave you the emblem of her power. Now she has left you her empire. Now, my lord and master, you will be the Childlike Emperor. It is only your right. You not only saved Fantastica by your coming, you also created it! All of us\u2014I too!\u2014are your creatures. Why should you, the Great Knower, fear to take the power that is rightfully yours?\"\n\nBastian's eyes glowed with a cold fever. And then Xayide spoke to him of a new Fantastica, a world molded in every detail to Bastian's taste, where he could create and destroy just as he pleased, where every creature, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, wise or foolish, would be the product of his will alone, and he would reign supreme and inscrutable, playing an everlasting game with the destinies of his subjects.\n\n\"Then alone,\" she concluded, \"will you be truly free, free from all obstacles, free to do as you please. Weren't you trying to find out what you really and truly want? Well, now you know.\"\n\nThat same morning they broke camp, and led by Bastian and Xayide in the coral litter, the great procession set out for the Ivory Tower. A well-nigh endless column moved along the twining paths of the Labyrinth. In the late afternoon, when the head of the column reached the Ivory Tower, the last stragglers had barely entered the great flowering maze.\n\nBastian could not have wished for a more festive reception. On every roof and battlement stood elves with gleaming trumpets, blaring away at the top of their lungs. The jugglers juggled, the astrologers proclaimed Bastian's greatness and good fortune, the bakers baked cakes as big as mountains, the ministers and councilors escorted the coral litter through the teeming crowd on the High Street, which wound in an ever-narrowing spiral up the conical tower to the great gate leading into the palace. Followed by Xayide and the dignitaries, Bastian climbed the snow-white steps of the broad stairway, traversed halls and corridors, passed through a second gate, through a garden full of ivory animals, trees, and flowers, mounted higher and higher, crossed a bridge, and passed through the last gate. He was heading for the Magnolia Pavilion at the very top of the tower. But the blossom was closed and the last stretch of the way was so steep and smooth that no one could climb it.\n\nBastian remembered that the wounded Atreyu had not been able to climb that slope, not by his own strength at least, because no one who has ever reached the Magnolia Pavilion can say how he got there. For this victory must come as a gift.\n\nBut Bastian was not Atreyu. If anyone was now entitled to bestow the gift of this victory, it was he. And he had no intention of letting anything stop him.\n\n\"Bring workmen,\" he commanded. \"I want them to cut steps in this smooth surface. I wish to make my residence up there.\"\n\n\"Sire,\" one of the oldest councilors ventured to object, \"that is where our Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes lives when she is here.\"\n\n\"Do as you're told!\" Bastian roared at him.\n\nThe dignitaries turned pale and shrank back from him. But they obeyed. Workmen arrived with mallets and chisels. But try as they might, they couldn't so much as chip the smooth surface of the dome. The chisels leapt from their hands without\n\nleaving the slightest dent.\n\n\"Think of something else,\" said Bastian angrily. \"My patience is wearing thin.\"\n\nThen he turned away, and while waiting for the Magnolia Pavilion to be made accessible, he and his retinue, consisting chiefly of Xayide, the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn, and Ilwan, the blue djinn, took possession of the remaining rooms of the palace.\n\nThat same night he summoned all the ministers and councilors who had served Moon Child to a meeting in the large, circular hall where the congress of physicians had once met. There he informed them that the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes had left him, Bastian Balthazar Bux, power over the endless Fantastican Empire, and that he was now taking her place. In conclusion he demanded perfect obedience.\n\n\"Even, or I might say especially,\" he added, \"when my decisions are beyond your understanding. For I am not of your kind.\"\n\nHe then announced that in exactly seventy-seven days he would crown himself Childlike Emperor of Fantastica and that the event would be celebrated with such splendor that it would outshine anything ever done in Fantastica. And he ordered the councilors to send messengers forthwith to every part of the realm, for he wished every nation of the Fantastican Empire to be represented at his coronation.\n\nThereupon Bastian withdrew, leaving the councilors and other dignitaries alone with their bewilderment.\n\nThey didn't know what to do. What they had heard sounded so monstrous that for a long while they could only stand there silently, hanging their heads. Then they began to deliberate. And after many hours, they came to the conclusion that they would have to obey Bastian's commands, for he bore the emblem of the Childlike Empress, and that that entitled him to obedience regardless of whether Moon Child had really abdicated in his favor or whether this was just another of her unfathomable decisions. And so the messengers were sent and all Bastian's orders were carried out.\n\nHe himself took no further interest in the coronation, but left all the details to Xayide, who kept the whole court so busy that hardly anyone had time to think.\n\nDuring the next days and weeks Bastian spent most of his time in the room he had chosen, staring into space and doing nothing. He would have liked to wish for something or make up a story to amuse himself, but nothing occurred to him. He felt hollow and empty.\n\nAt length he hit on the idea of wishing for Moon Child to come to him. If he was really all-powerful, if all his wishes came true, she would have to obey him. For whole nights he sat there whispering: \"Moon Child, come! You must come! I command you to come!\" He thought of her glance, which had lain in his heart like a glittering treasure. But she did not come. And the more he tried to make her come, the fainter became his memory of that glitter in his heart, until in the end all was darkness within him.\n\nHe convinced himself that everything would come right again if only he could be in the Magnolia Pavilion. Time and again, he went up to the workmen and tried to spur them with promises or threats, but all to no avail. Ladders broke, nails bent, chisels split.\n\nHykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, with whom Bastian would gladly have chatted or played games, were as good as useless. In the deepest cellar of the Ivory Tower they had discovered wine. There they sat day and night, drinking, playing dice, bellowing silly songs, or quarreling, and as often as not attacking one another with their swords.\n\nSometimes they staggered up and down the High Street, molesting the fairies, elves, and other female denizens of the Tower.\n\n\"What do you expect, sire?\" they said when Bastian found fault with them. \"You must give us something to do.\"\n\nBut Bastian couldn't think of anything and bade them wait until his coronation, though he himself couldn't have said what difference that would make.\n\nLittle by little the weather changed for the worse. Sunsets of liquid gold became more infrequent. Almost always the sky was gray and overcast, not a breeze stirred, the air grew sultry and lifeless.\n\nThe day appointed for the coronation was near. The messengers returned. Some brought delegates from remote corners of Fantastica. But others arrived empty-handed, for many of the nations refused out of hand to be represented at the ceremony. And in some countries there had been veiled or open rebellion.\n\nBastian stared into space.\n\n\"Once you are emperor,\" said Xayide, \"you will put the house in order.\"\n\n\"I want them to want what I want,\" said Bastian.\n\nBut already Xayide had hurried off to make new arrangements.\n\nAnd then came the day of the coronation that did not take place. It went down in the history of Fantastica as the day of the bloody battle for the Ivory Tower.\n\nThere was no dawn that morning; the sky was too covered with thick, leaden-gray clouds. The air was almost too heavy to breathe.\n\nWorking hand in hand with the Ivory Tower's fourteen masters of ceremony, Xayide had drawn up an elaborate program for the celebration.\n\nBeginning early in the morning, bands on all the streets and squares played music such as had never been heard in the Ivory Tower\u2014strident yet monotonous. None who heard it could help jiggling his feet and dancing. The musicians wore black masks. No one knew who they were or where Xayide had found them.\n\nEvery roof and housefront was decorated with bright-colored flags and pennants, but they hung sadly limp, for there was no wind. Along the High Street and on the wall around the palace hundreds of pictures had been set up, ranging in size from small to enormous, and all showed the same face\u2014Bastian's.\n\nSince the Magnolia Pavilion was still inaccessible, Xayide had prepared another site for the coronation. The throne was to be installed at the foot of the ivory steps near the palace gate where the winding High Street ended. Thousands of golden censers were smoldering, and the smoke, with its lulling yet exciting fragrance, drifted slowly up the steps and down the High Street, finding its way into every last nook and cranny. The armored giants were everywhere. Only Xayide knew how she had managed to multiply the five she had left into such an army. And as if that were not enough, fifty of them were mounted on gigantic horses, which were also made of black metal and moved in perfect unison.\n\nThe armored horsemen escorted a throne up the High Street in a triumphal procession. It was as big as a church door and consisted entirely of mirrors of every size and shape. Only the cushion on the seat was covered with copper-colored silk. Strangely, this enormous glittering object glided up the spiral street unaided, without being pushed or pulled; it seemed to have a life of its own.\n\nWhen it stopped at the great ivory gate, Bastian stepped out of the palace and sat\n\ndown on it. In the midst of all that glitter and splendor he looked like a tiny doll. The crowd of onlookers, who were held back by a cordon of armored giants, burst into cheers, but for some inexplicable reason their cheers sounded thin and shrill.\n\nThen began the most tedious and wearisome part of the ceremony. The messengers and delegates from all over the Fantastican Empire had to form a line, which extended from the mirror throne down the entire spiraling High Street and deep into the labyrinthine garden. Every single delegate, when his turn came, had to bow down before the throne, touch the ground three times with his forehead, kiss Bastian's right foot, and say: \"In the name of my nation and my species I beseech you, to whom we all owe our existence, to crown yourself Childlike Emperor of Fantastica.\"\n\nThis had been going on for two or three hours when a sudden tremor passed through the crowd. A young faun came dashing up the High Street, reeled with exhaustion, pulled himself together, ran till he reached Bastian, and threw himself on the ground, gasping for breath. Bastian bent down to him.\n\n\"How dare you interrupt this august ceremony!\"\n\n\"War, sire!\" cried the faun. \"Atreyu has gathered a host of rebels and is on his way here with three armies. They demand that you give up AURYN. If you will not, they mean to take it by force.\"\n\nThe rousing music and the shrill cries of jubilation gave way to a deathly silence. Bastian turned pale.\n\nThen the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn, appeared on the run. They seemed to be in a remarkably good humor.\n\n\"At last there's something for us to do, sire,\" all three cried at once. \"Leave it to us. Just get on with your celebration. We'll round up a few good men and get after those rebels. We'll teach them a lesson they won't forget so soon.\"\n\nAmong the thousands of creatures present quite a few were utterly useless for military purposes. But most were able to handle some weapon or to fight with their teeth or claws. All these gathered around the three knights, who led their army away. Bastian remained behind with the not-so-martial multitude, to complete the ceremony. But his heart was no longer in it. Time and again his eyes veered toward the horizon, which he could see from his throne. Great clouds of dust showed him that Atreyu's army was no joke.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Xayide, who had stepped up to Bastian. \"My armored giants haven't begun to fight yet. They'll defend your Ivory Tower. No one can stand up to them, except for you and your sword.\"\n\nA few hours later the first battle reports came in. Atreyu had enlisted almost all the Greenskins, at least two hundred centaurs, eight hundred and fifty rock chewers, five luckdragons led by Falkor, who kept attacking from the air, a squadron of giant eagles, who had flown from the Mountains of Destiny, and innumerable other creatures, even a sprinkling of unicorns.\n\nThough far inferior in numbers to the troops led by the knights Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, Atreyu's army fought so vigorously that they were soon approaching the Ivory Tower.\n\nBastian wanted to go out and lead his army in person, but Xayide advised against it.\n\n\"O lord and master,\" she said, \"it is unseemly for the Emperor of Fantastica to take up arms. Leave that to your faithful subjects.\"\n\nAll day the battle raged. The entire Labyrinth became a trampled, blood-soaked battlefield. By late afternoon, despite the stubborn resistance of Bastian's army, the rebels had reached the foot of the Ivory Tower.\n\nThen Xayide sent in her armored giants, both mounted and on foot, and they wrought havoc among Atreyu's followers.\n\nA detailed account of the battle for the Ivory Tower would take us too far. To this day Fantasticans sing countless songs and tell innumerable stories about that day and night, for everyone who took part saw it in his own way. Certain of the stories have it that Atreyu's army included several white magicians, who had the power to oppose Xayide's black magic. Of this we have no certain knowledge, but that would explain how, in spite of the armored giants, Atreyu and his followers were able to take the Ivory Tower. But there is another, more likely explanation: Atreyu was fighting not for himself, but for his friend, whom he was trying to save by defeating him.\n\nThe night of the battle was starless, full of smoke and flames. Fallen torches, overturned censers, and shattered lamps had set the Tower on fire in many places. The fighters cast eerie shadows. Weapons clashed and battle shouts resounded. Everywhere, through the flames and the darkness, Bastian searched for Atreyu.\n\n\"Atreyu!\" he shouted. \"Atreyu, show yourself! Stand up and fight! Where are you?\"\n\nBut the sword Sikanda didn't budge from its sheath.\n\nBastian ran from room to room of the palace, then out on the great wall, which at that point was as wide as a street. He was heading for the outer gate where the mirror throne stood\u2014now shattered into a thousand pieces\u2014when he saw Atreyu, sword in hand, coming toward him.\n\nThey stood face to face, and still Sikanda did not budge.\n\nAtreyu put the tip of his sword on Bastian's chest.\n\n\"Give me the amulet,\" he said. \"For your own sake.\"\n\n\"Traitor!\" cried Bastian. \"You are my creature! I created the whole lot of you! Including you! So how can you rebel against me? Kneel down and beg forgiveness.\"\n\n\"You're mad!\" cried Atreyu. \"You didn't create anything! You owe everything to Moon Child! Give me AURYN!\"\n\n\"Take it if you can.\"\n\nAtreyu hesitated.\n\n\"Bastian,\" he said. \"Why do you force me to defeat you in order to save you?\"\n\nBastian tugged at the hilt of his sword. He tugged with all his might and finally managed to draw Sikanda from its sheath. But it did not leap into his hand of its own accord, and at the same moment a sound was heard, a sound so terrible that even the warriors on the High Street outside the gate stood as though frozen to the spot, looking up at the two adversaries. Bastian recognized that sound. It was the hideous cracking and grinding he had heard when Grograman turned to stone. Sikanda's light went out. And then Bastian remembered how the lion had predicted what would happen if someone were to draw the sword of his own will. But by then it was too late to turn back.\n\nAtreyu tried to defend himself with his own sword. But wielded by Bastian, Sikanda cut it in two and struck Atreyu in the chest. Blood spurted from a gaping wound. Atreyu staggered back and toppled from the wall. But at that moment a white flame shot through the swirling smoke, caught Atreyu in his fall, and carried him away. The white flame was Falkor, the luckdragon.\n\nBastian wiped the sweat from his brow with his mantle and saw that its silver had turned black, as black as the night. Still with the sword Sikanda in hand, he left the wall and went down to the palace courtyard.\n\nWith Bastian's victory over Atreyu, the fortunes of war shifted. The rebel army, which had seemed sure of victory a moment before, took flight. Bastian felt as if he were caught in a terrible dream and could not wake up. His victory left him with a bitter taste in his mouth, but at the same time he felt wildly triumphant.\n\nWrapped in his black mantle, clutching the bloody sword, he passed slowly down the High Street. The Ivory Tower was blazing like an enormous torch. Hardly aware of the roaring flames, Bastian went on till he reached the foot of the Tower. There he found the remnants of his army waiting for him in the devastated Labyrinth\u2014now a far-flung battlefield strewn with the corpses of Fantasticans. Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn were there too, the last two seriously wounded. Ilwan, the blue djinn, was dead. Xayide, holding the belt Ghemmal, was standing beside his corpse.\n\n\"He saved this for you, O lord and master,\" she said.\n\nBastian took the belt, folded it up, and put it in his pocket.\n\nSlowly he passed his eyes over his companions. Only a few hundred were left. More dead than alive, they looked like a conclave of ghosts in the flickering light of the fires.\n\nAll had their faces turned toward the Ivory Tower, which was collapsing piece by piece. The Magnolia Pavilion at the top flared, its petals opened wide, and one could see that it was empty. Then it too was engulfed by the flames.\n\nBastian pointed his sword at the heap of flaming ruins and his voice cracked as he declared: \"This is Atreyu's doing! For this I will pursue him to the ends of the world!\"\n\nHoisting himself up on one of the gigantic metal horses, he cried: \"Follow me!\"\n\nThe horse reared, but he bent it to his will and galloped off into the night.\n\nhile Bastian was racing through the pitch-black night miles ahead, his companions were still making preparations for departure. Most were exhausted and none had anything approaching Bastian's strength and endurance. Even the armored giants on their metallic horses had a hard time getting started, and the foot sloggers couldn't manage to fall into their mechanical tramp-tramp-tramp. Xayide's will, which moved them, seemed to have reached the limits of its power. Her coral litter had been devoured by flames. A new conveyance had been built out of shattered weapons and charred planks from the Ivory Tower, but it looked more like a gypsy wagon than a litter. The rest of the army hobbled and shuffled along as best they could. Even Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, who had lost their horses, had to hold one another up. No one spoke, but they all knew they would never be able to overtake Bastian.\n\nOn he galloped through the darkness, his black mantle flapping wildly in the wind, the metallic limbs of his gigantic horse creaking and grinding at every movement as the great hooves pounded the earth.\n\n\"Gee up!\" cried Bastian. \"Gee up! Gee up!\"\n\nThe horse wasn't running fast enough for him. He was determined to overtake Atreyu and Falkor at all costs, even if it meant riding this metallic monster to its death.\n\nHe wanted vengeance! He would have attained the goal of all his wishes if Atreyu hadn't interfered. Bastian had not become Emperor of Fantastica. And for that he would make Atreyu repent.\n\nThe joints of Bastian's metallic steed ground and creaked louder and louder, but still it obeyed its rider's will.\n\nBastian rode for hours and hours through the endless night. In his mind's eye he saw the flaming Ivory Tower. Over and over he lived the moment when Atreyu had set the point of his sword to his chest. And then for the first time he asked himself why Atreyu had hesitated. Why, after all that had happened, couldn't he bring himself to strike Bastian and take AURYN by force? And suddenly Bastian thought of the wound he had inflicted on Atreyu and the look in Atreyu's eyes as he staggered and fell.\n\nBastian put Sikanda, which up until then he had been clutching in his fist, back into its rusty sheath.\n\nIn the first light of dawn he saw he was on a heath. Dark clumps of juniper suggested motionless groups of gigantic hooded monks or magicians with pointed hats.\n\nAnd then suddenly, in the midst of a frantic gallop, Bastian's metal steed burst into pieces.\n\nBastian lay stunned by the violence of his fall. When he finally picked himself up and rubbed his bruised limbs, he found himself in the middle of a juniper bush. He crawled out into the open. The fragments of the horse lay scattered all about, as though an equestrian monument had exploded.\n\nBastian stood up, threw his black mantle over his shoulders, and with no idea where he was going, started walking in the direction of the rising sun.\n\nBut a glittering object was left behind in the juniper bush: the belt Ghemmal. Bastian was unaware of his loss and never thought of the belt again. Ilwan had saved it from the flames for nothing.\n\nA few days later Ghemmal was found by a blackbird, who had no suspicion of what this glittering object might be. She carried it to her nest, but that's the beginning of another story that shall be told another time.\n\nAt midday Bastian came to a high earthen wall that cut across the heath. He climbed to the top of it. Behind it, in a craterlike hollow, lay a city. At least the quantity of buildings made Bastian think of a city, but it was certainly the weirdest one he had ever seen.\n\nThe buildings seemed to be jumbled every which way without rhyme or reason, as though they had been emptied at random out of a giant sack. There were neither streets nor squares nor was there any recognizable order.\n\nAnd the buildings themselves were crazy; they had \"front doors\" in their roofs, stairways which were quite inaccessible and ended in the middle of nowhere; towers slanted, balconies dangled vertically, there were doors where one would have expected windows, and floors in the place of walls. Bridges stopped halfway, as though the builders had suddenly forgotten what they were doing. There were towers bent like bananas and pyramids standing on their tips. In short, the whole city seemed to have gone mad.\n\nThen Bastian saw the inhabitants\u2014men, women, and children. They were built like ordinary human beings, but dressed as if they had lost the power to distinguish between clothing and objects intended for other purposes. On their heads they wore lampshades, sand pails, soup bowls, wastepaper baskets, or shoe boxes. Their bodies were swathed in towels, carpets, big sheets of wrapping paper, or barrels.\n\nMany were pushing or pulling handcarts with all sorts of junk piled up on them, broken lamps, mattresses, dishes, rags, and knick-knacks. Others were carrying enormous bales slung over their shoulders.\n\nThe farther Bastian went into the city, the thicker became the crowd. But none of the people seemed to know where they were going. Several times Bastian saw someone dragging a heavily laden cart in one direction, then after a short time doubling back, and a few minutes later changing direction again. Everybody was feverishly Active.\n\nBastian decided to speak to one of these people.\n\n\"What's the name of this place?\"\n\nThe person let go his cart, straightened up, and scratched his head for a while as though thinking it over. Then he went away, abandoning his cart, which he seemed to have forgotten. But a few minutes later, a woman took hold of the cart and started off with it. Bastian asked her if the junk was hers. The woman stood for a while, deep in thought. Then she too went away.\n\nBastian tried a few more times but received no answer.\n\nSuddenly he heard someone giggling. \"No point in asking them,\" said the giggler. \"They can't tell you anything. One might, in a manner of speaking, call them the Know-Nothings.\"\n\nBastian turned toward the voice and saw a little gray monkey sitting on a window ledge, or rather on what would have been a window ledge if the window hadn't been upside down. The animal was wearing a mortarboard with a dangling tassel and seemed to be busy counting something on his fingers and toes. When he had finished, he grinned and said: \"Sorry to keep you waiting, sir, but there was something I had to figure out.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"My name is Argax,\" said the little monkey, lifting his mortarboard. \"Pleased to meet you. And with whom have I the pleasure?\"\n\n\"My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\n\"Just as I thought,\" said the monkey, visibly pleased.\n\n\"And what is the name of this city?\" Bastian inquired.\n\n\"It hasn't actually got a name,\" said Argax. \"But one might, in a manner of speaking, call it the City of the Old Emperors.\"\n\n\"Old Emperors?\" Bastian repeated with consternation. \"Why, I don't see anybody who looks like an Old Emperor.\"\n\n\"You don't?\" said the monkey with a giggle. \"Well, believe it or not, all the people you've seen were Emperors of Fantastica in their time\u2014or wanted to be.\"\n\nBastian was aghast.\n\n\"How do you know that, Argax?\"\n\nThe monkey lifted his mortarboard and grinned.\n\n\"I, in a manner of speaking, am the superintendent here.\"\n\nBastian looked around. Not far away an old man had dug a pit. He put a lighted candle into it, then shoveled earth over the candle.\n\nThe monkey giggled. \"What would you say to a little tour of the town, sir? To get acquainted, in a manner of speaking, with your future residence.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian. \"What are you talking about?\"\n\nThe monkey jumped up on his shoulder. \"Let's go,\" he whispered. \"It's free of charge. You've already paid the admission fee.\"\n\nBastian obeyed the monkey's orders, though he would rather have run away. He grew more miserable with every step. He watched the people and was struck by the fact that they didn't talk. They were all so busy with their own concerns that they didn't even seem to see one another.\n\n\"What's wrong with them?\" Bastian asked. \"Why are they so odd?\"\n\n\"Nothing odd about them!\" said Argax. \"They're just like you, in a manner of speaking, or rather, they were in their time.\"\n\nBastian stopped in his tracks. \"What do you mean by that? Do you mean that they're humans?\"\n\nArgax jumped up and down on Bastian's shoulder. \"Exactly!\" he said gleefully.\n\nBastian saw a woman in the middle of the street trying to spear peas with a darning needle.\n\n\"How did they get here? What are they doing here?\"\n\n\"Oh, there have always been humans who couldn't find their way back to their world,\" Argax explained. \"First they didn't want to, and now, in a manner of speaking, they can't.\"\n\nBastian looked at a little girl who was struggling to push a doll's carriage with square wheels.\n\n\"Why can't they?\" he asked.\n\n\"They'd have to wish it. And they've stopped wishing. They used up their last wish for something else.\"\n\n\"Their last wish?\" said Bastian, going deathly pale. \"Can't a person go on wishing as long as he pleases?\"\n\nArgax giggled again. Then he tried to take off Bastian's turban and pick lice out of his hair.\n\n\"Stop that!\" Bastian cried. He tried to shake the little monkey off, but Argax held on tight and squealed with pleasure.\n\n\"No! No!\" he chattered. \"You can only wish as long as you remember your world. These people here used up all their memories. Without a past you can't have a future. That's why they don't get older. Just look at them. Would you believe that some of them have been here a thousand years and more? But they stay just as they are. Nothing can change for them, because they themselves can't change anymore.\"\n\nBastian watched a man who had lathered a mirror and was starting to shave it. Once that might have struck him as funny; now it made him break out in gooseflesh.\n\nHe hurried on and soon realized that he was going deeper into the city. He wanted to turn back, but something drew him onward like a magnet. He began to run and tried to get rid of the bothersome gray monkey, but Argax clung fast and even spurred him on: \"Faster! Faster!\"\n\nBastian stopped running. He realized that he couldn't escape. \"You mean,\" he asked, gasping for breath, \"that all these people here were once Emperors of Fantastica, or wanted to be?\"\n\n\"That's it,\" said Argax. \"All the ones who can't find their way back try sooner or later to become Emperor. They didn't all make it, but they all tried. That's why there are two kinds of fools here. Though the result, in a manner of speaking, is the same.\"\n\n\"What two kinds? Tell me, Argax! I have to know!\"\n\n\"Easy does it,\" said the monkey, giggling as he tightened his grip on Bastian's neck. \"The one kind gradually used up their memories. And when they had lost the last one, AURYN couldn't fulfill their wishes anymore. After that, they came here, in a manner of speaking, automatically. The others, the ones who crowned themselves emperor, lost all their memories at one stroke. So the same thing happened: AURYN couldn't fulfill their wishes anymore, because they had none left. As you see, it comes to the same thing. Here they are, and they can't get away.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that they all had AURYN at one time?\"\n\n\"Naturally!\" said Argax. \"But they forgot it long ago. And it wouldn't help them anymore, the poor fools!\"\n\n\"Was it...\" Bastian hesitated. \"Was it taken away from them?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Argax. \"When someone crowns himself emperor, it simply vanishes. Obviously, because how, in a manner of speaking, can you use Moon Child's power to take her power away from her?\"\n\nBastian felt wretched. He would have liked to sit down somewhere, but the little gray monkey wouldn't let him.\n\n\"No, no, our tour isn't done yet. The best is yet to come! Keep moving!\"\n\nBastian saw a boy with a heavy hammer trying to drive nails into a pair of socks. A fat man was trying to paste postage stamps on soap bubbles. They kept bursting, but he went on blowing new ones.\n\n\"Look!\" Bastian heard the giggling voice of Argax and felt his head being twisted by the monkey's little hands. \"Look over there! It's so amusing!\"\n\nBastian saw a large group of people, men and women, young and old, all in the strangest clothes. They didn't speak, each one was alone with himself. On the ground lay a large number of cubes, and there were letters on all six sides of the cubes. The people kept jumbling the cubes and then staring at them.\n\n\"What are they doing?\" Bastian whispered. \"What sort of game is that?\"\n\n\"It's called the jumble game,\" answered Argax. He motioned to the players and cried out: \"Good work, children! Keep at it! Don't give up!\"\n\nThen, turning back to Bastian, he whispered in his ear: \"They can't talk anymore. They've lost the power of speech. So I thought up this game for them. As you see, it keeps them busy. It's very simple. If you stop to think about it, you'll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories. Now take a look. What do you see there?\"\n\nBastian read:\n\nH.......................................... U\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" said Argax with a giggle, \"it usually makes no more sense than that. But if you keep at it for a long time, words turn up now and then. Not very brilliant words, but still words. 'Spinachcramp,' for instance, or 'sugarbrush,' or 'nosepolish.' And if you play for a hundred years, or a thousand or a hundred thousand, the law of chances tells us that a poem will probably come out. And if you play it forever, every possible poem and every possible story will have to come out, in fact every story about a story, and even this story about the two of us chatting here. It's only logical, don't you think?\"\n\n\"It's horrible,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"I wouldn't say that,\" said Argax. \"It depends on your point of view. It keeps these people, in a manner of speaking, busy. And anyway, what else can we do with them in Fantastica?\"\n\nFor a long time Bastian watched the players in silence. Then he asked under his breath: \"Argax, you know who I am, don't you?\"\n\n\"Of course I do. Is there anyone in Fantastica who doesn't?\"\n\n\"Tell me one thing, Argax. If I had become emperor yesterday, would I already be here now?\"\n\n\"Today or tomorrow,\" said the monkey. \"Or next week. One way or another, you'd have ended up here.\"\n\n\"Then Atreyu saved me?\"\n\n\"You've got me there,\" the monkey admitted.\n\n\"But if he had succeeded in taking the Gem away from me, what would have happened then?\"\n\nThe monkey giggled again.\n\n\"You'd have ended up here, in a manner of speaking, all the same.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you need AURYN to find the way back. But frankly, I don't believe you'll make it.\"\n\nThe monkey clapped his little hands, lifted his mortarboard, and grinned.\n\n\"Tell me, Argax, what must I do?\"\n\n\"Find a wish that will take you back to your world.\"\n\nAfter a long silence Bastian asked: \"Argax, can you tell me how many wishes I have left?\"\n\n\"Not very many. In my opinion three or four at the most. And that will hardly be enough. You're beginning rather late, and the way back isn't easy. You'll have to cross the Sea of Mist. That alone will cost you a wish. What comes next I don't know. No one in Fantastica knows what road you people must take to get back to your world. Maybe you'll find Yor's Minroud, that's the last hope for people like you. But I'm afraid that for you it's, in a manner of speaking, too far. Be that as it may, you will, just this once, find your way out of the City of the Old Emperors.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Argax,\" said Bastian.\n\nThe little gray monkey grinned.\n\n\"Goodbye, Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\nWith one leap Argax vanished into one of the crazy houses. He had taken Bastian's turban with him.\n\nFor a while Bastian stood motionless. He was so stunned by what he had just heard that he couldn't decide what to do. All his plans had collapsed at one stroke. His thoughts seemed to have been stood on end\u2014like the pyramid he had seen. What he had hoped was his ruin and what he had feared his salvation.\n\nAt the moment only one thing was clear to him: he must get out of this insane city. And never come back!\n\nHe started through the jumble of crazy buildings. He soon discovered that it was much harder to get out than to get in. Time and time again he lost his way and found himself back in the center of the city. It took him all afternoon to reach the earthworks. Then he ran out into the heath and kept going until black night\u2014as black as the night before\u2014forced him to stop. Exhausted, he collapsed under a juniper tree and fell into a deep sleep. And while he slept, the memory that he could once make up stories left him.\n\nAll night he had the same unchanging vision before his eyes: Atreyu, with the gaping wound in his chest, stood there looking at him in silence.\n\nAwakened by a thunderclap, Bastian started up. Deep darkness lay all around him, but the massive clouds that had been gathering for days had been thrown into wild disorder. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the earth, the storm wind howled over the heath and the juniper trees were bowed to the ground. Rain fell in dense sheets.\n\nBastian arose and stood there wrapped in his black mantle; the water ran down his face.\n\nLightning struck a tree directly in front of him and split the gnarled trunk. The branches went up in flames, the wind blew a shower of sparks over the heath. In a moment they were doused by the rain.\n\nThe crash had thrown Bastian to his knees. He dug into the earth with both hands. When the hole was big enough, he unslung the sword Sikanda and put it in.\n\n\"Sikanda,\" he said. \"I am taking leave of you forever. Never again shall anyone draw you against a friend. No one shall find you here, until what you and I have done is forgotten.\"\n\nHe filled in the hole and covered it over with moss and branches, lest anyone should discover it.\n\nAnd there Sikanda lies to this day. For not until far in the future will one come who can wield it without danger\u2014but that is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nBastian went his way through the darkness.\n\nToward morning the storm abated, the wind died down, and there was no other sound than the rain dripping from the trees.\n\nThat night was the beginning of a long, lonely journey for Bastian. He no longer wished to return to his traveling companions or Xayide. Now he wanted to find the way back to the human world\u2014but he didn't know how or where to look for it. Was there somewhere a gate, a bridge, a mountain pass that would take him back?\n\nHe had to wish for it, that he knew. But he had no power over his wishes. He felt like a diver who is searching the bottom of the sea for a sunken ship, but keeps being driven to the surface before he can find anything.\n\nHe also knew that he had few wishes left, so he was careful not to use AURYN. He was determined to sacrifice his last few remaining memories only if he felt sure that this would help him get back to his world.\n\nBut wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.\n\nAnd so, before he knew it, a new wish arose within him and little by little took form.\n\nFor days and nights he had been wandering all alone. And because of being alone, he yearned to belong to some sort of community, to be taken into a group, not as a master or victor or as any special sort of person, but merely as one among many, perhaps as the smallest or least important, provided his membership in the community was unquestioned.\n\nAnd then one day he came to a seacoast. Or so he thought at first. He was standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, and before him lay a sea of congealed white waves. It was some time before he realized that these waves were not really motionless, but were moving very slowly, that there were currents and eddies that moved as imperceptibly as the hands of a clock.\n\nHe had come to the Sea of Mist!\n\nBastian walked along the cliff. The air was warm and slightly damp. There was not the slightest breeze. It was early morning and the sun shone on the snow-white surface of the fog, which extended to the horizon.\n\nHe walked for several hours. Toward noon he espied a small town some distance from the shore. Supported by piles, it formed a sort of island in the Sea of Mist. The long, arching bridge connecting the town with the rocky coast swayed gently as Bastian crossed it.\n\nThe houses were relatively small. The doors, windows, and stairways all seemed to have been made for children. And indeed, the people moving about the streets were no bigger than children, though they all seemed to be grown men with beards or women with pinned-up hair. As Bastian soon noticed, these people looked so much alike that he could hardly tell them apart. Their faces were dark brown like moist earth and they looked calm and gentle. When they saw Bastian, they nodded to him, but none spoke. Altogether they seemed a silent lot; the place was humming with activity, yet he seldom heard a cry or a spoken word. And never did he see any of these people alone; they always went about in groups if not in crowds, locking arms or holding one another by the hand.\n\nWhen Bastian examined the houses more closely, he saw that they were all made of a sort of wicker, some crude and some of a finer weave, and that the streets were paved with the same kind of material. Even the people's clothing, he noticed, their trousers, skirts, jackets, and hats were of wickerwork, though these were artfully woven. Everything in the town seemed to be made of the same material.\n\nHere and there Bastian was able to cast a glance into the artisans' workshops. They were all busy weaving, making shoes, pitchers, lamps, cups, and umbrellas of wickerwork. But never did he see anyone working alone, for these things could be made only by several persons working together. It was a pleasure to see how cleverly they coordinated their movements. And as they worked, they usually sang some simple melody without words.\n\nThe town was not very large, and Bastian had soon come to the edge of it. There he saw hundreds of ships of every size and shape. The town was a seaport, but of a most unusual kind, for all these ships were hanging from gigantic fishing poles and hovered, swaying gently, over a chasm full of swirling white mist. These ships, made of wickerwork like everything else, had neither sails nor masts nor oars nor rudders.\n\nBastian leaned over the railing and looked down into the Sea of Mist. He was able to gauge the length of the stakes supporting the town by the shadows they cast on the white surface below.\n\n\"At night,\" he heard a voice beside him say, \"the mists rise to the level of the town. Then we can put out to sea. In the daytime the sun reduces the mist and the level falls. That's what you wanted to know, isn't it, stranger?\"\n\nThree men were leaning against the railing beside Bastian. They seemed gentle and friendly. They got to talking and in the course of his conversation with them Bastian learned that the town was called Yskal or Basketville. Its inhabitants were known as Yskalnari. The word meant roughly \"the partners.\" The three were mist sailors. Not wishing to give his name for fear of being recognized, Bastian introduced himself as \"Someone.\" The three sailors told him the Yskalnari had no names for individuals and didn't find it necessary. They were all Yskalnari and that was enough for them.\n\nSince it was lunchtime, they invited Bastian to join them, and he gratefully accepted. They went to a nearby inn, and during the meal Bastian learned all about Basketville and its inhabitants.\n\nThe Sea of Mist, which they called the Skaidan, was an enormous ocean of white vapor, which divided the two parts of Fantastica from each other. No one had ever found out how deep the Skaidan was or where all this mist came from. It was quite possible to breathe below the surface of the mist, and to walk some distance on the bottom of the sea near the coast, where the mist was relatively shallow, but only if one was tied to a rope and could be pulled back. For the mist had one strange property: it fuddled one's sense of direction. Any number of fools and daredevils had died in the attempt to cross the Skaidan alone and on foot. Only a few had been rescued. The only way to reach the other side was in the ships of the Yskalnari.\n\nThe wickerwork, from which the houses, implements, clothing, and ships of Yskal were made, was woven from a variety of rushes that grew under the surface of the sea not far from the shore. These rushes\u2014as can easily be gathered from the foregoing\u2014could be cut only at the risk of one's life. Though unusually pliable and even limp in ordinary air, they stood upright in the sea, because they were lighter than the mist. That was what made the wickerwork ships mistworthy. And if any of the Yskalnari chanced to fall into the mist, his regular clothing served the purpose of a life jacket.\n\nBut the strangest thing about the Yskalnari, so it struck Bastian, was that the word \"I\" seemed unknown to them. In any case, they never used it, but in speaking of what they thought or did always said \"we.\"\n\nWhen he gathered from the conversation that the three sailors would be putting out to sea that night, he asked if he could ship with them as a cabin boy. They informed him that a voyage on the Skaidan was very different from any other ocean voyage, because no one knew how long it would take or exactly where it would end up. When Bastian said that didn't worry him, they agreed to take him on.\n\nAt nightfall the mists began to rise and by midnight they had reached the level of Basketville. The ships that had been dangling in midair were now floating on the white surface. The moorings of the one on which Bastian found himself\u2014a flat barge about a hundred feet long\u2014were cast off, and it drifted slowly out into the Sea of Mist.\n\nThe moment he laid his eyes on it, Bastian wondered what propelled this sort of ship, since it had neither sails nor oars nor propeller. He soon found out that sails would have been useless, for there was seldom any wind on the Skaidan, and that oars and propellers do not function in mist. These ships were moved by an entirely different sort of power.\n\nIn the middle of the deck there was a round, slightly raised platform. Bastian had noticed it from the start and taken it for a sort of captain's bridge. Indeed, it was occupied throughout the voyage by two or more sailors. (The entire crew numbered fourteen.) The men on the platform held one another clasped by the shoulders and looked fixedly forward. At first sight, they seemed to be standing motionless. Actually they were swaying very slowly, in perfect unison\u2014in a sort of dance, which they accompanied by chanting over and over again a simple and strangely beautiful tune.\n\nAt first Bastian regarded this song and dance as some sort of ceremony, the meaning of which escaped him. Then, on the third day of voyage, he asked one of his three friends about it. Evidently surprised at Bastian's ignorance, the sailor explained that those men were propelling the ship by thought-power.\n\nMore puzzled than ever, Bastian asked if some sort of hidden wheels were set in motion.\n\n\"No,\" one of the sailors replied. \"When you want to move your legs, you have only to think about it. You don't need wheels, do you?\"\n\nThe only difference between a person's body and a ship was that to move a ship at least two Yskalnari had to merge their thought-powers into one. It was this fusion of thought-powers that propelled the ship. If greater speed was desired, more men had to join in. Normally, thinkers worked in shifts of three; the others rested, for easy and pleasant as it looked, thought-propulsion was hard work, demanding intense and unbroken concentration. But there was no other way of sailing the Skaidan.\n\nBastian became the student of the mist navigators and learned the secret of their cooperation: dance and song without words.\n\nLittle by little, in the course of the long voyage, he became one of them. During the dance he felt his thought-power merging with those of his companions to form a whole, and this gave him a strange and indescribable sense of harmony and self-forgetfulness. He felt accepted by a community, at one with his companions\u2014and at the same time he totally forgot that the inhabitants of the world from which he came, and to which he was seeking the way back, were human beings, each with his own thoughts and opinions. Dimly he remembered his home and parents, but nothing more.\n\nHis wish to be no longer alone had come true. But now, deep in his heart, a new wish arose and began to make itself felt.\n\nOne day it struck him that the Yskalnari lived together so harmoniously, not because they blended different ways of thinking, but because they were so much alike that it cost them no effort to form a community. Indeed, they were incapable of quarreling or even disagreeing, because they did not regard themselves as individuals. Thus there were no conflicts or differences to overcome, and it was just this sameness, this absence of stress that gradually came to pall on Bastian. Their gentleness bored him and the unchanging melody of their songs got on his nerves. He felt that something was lacking, something he hungered for, but he could not yet have said what it was.\n\nThis became clear to him sometime later when a giant mist crow was sighted. Stricken with terror, the sailors vanished below deck as fast as they could. But one was not quick enough; the monstrous bird swooped down with a cry, seized the poor fellow, and carried him away in its beak.\n\nWhen the danger was past, the sailors emerged and resumed their song and dance, as though nothing had happened. Their harmony was undisturbed, and far from grieving, they didn't waste so much as a word on the incident.\n\n\"Why should we grieve?\" said one of them when Bastian inquired. \"None of us is missing.\"\n\nWith them the individual counted for nothing. No one was irreplaceable, because they drew no distinction between one man and another.\n\nBastian, however, wanted to be an individual, a someone, not just one among others. He wanted to be loved for being just what he was. In this community of Yskalnari there was harmony, but no love.\n\nHe no longer wanted to be the greatest, strongest, or cleverest. He had left all that far behind. He longed to be loved just as he was, good or bad, handsome or ugly, clever or stupid, with all his faults\u2014or possibly because of them.\n\nBut what was he actually like?\n\nHe no longer knew. So much had been given to him in Fantastica, and now, among all these gifts and powers, he could no longer find himself.\n\nHe stopped dancing with the mist sailors. All day long and sometimes all night as well, he sat in the prow, looking out over the Skaidan.\n\nAt last the crossing was completed and the mist ship docked. Bastian thanked the Yskalnari and went ashore.\n\nThis was a land full of roses, there were whole forests of roses of every imaginable color. A winding path led through the endless rose garden, and Bastian followed it.\n\nayide's end is soon told, but hard to understand and full of contradictions like many things in Fantastica. To this day many scholars and historians are racking their brains for an explanation of what happened, while some deny the whole incident or try to interpret it out of existence. Here we shall simply state the facts, leaving others to explain them as best they can.\n\nJust as Bastian was arriving at the town of Yskal, Xayide and her black giants reached the spot where his metallic horse had collapsed under him. In that moment she suspected that she would never find him, and her suspicions became a certainty when she came to the earthen wall and saw Bastian's footprints on it. If he had reached the City of the Old Emperors, he was lost to her plans, regardless of whether he stayed there or whether he managed to escape. In the first case, he would become powerless like everyone there, no longer able to wish for anything\u2014and in the second, all wishes for power and greatness would die within him. For her, Xayide, the game was over in either case.\n\nShe commanded her armored giants to halt. Strangely, they did not obey but marched on. She flew into a rage, jumped out of her litter, and ran after them with outstretched arms. The armored giants, foot soldiers and riders alike, ignored her commands, turned about, and trampled her with their feet and hooves. At length, when Xayide had breathed her last, the whole column stopped like rundown clockwork.\n\nWhen Hysbald, Hydorn, and Hykrion arrived with what was left of the army, they saw what had happened. They were puzzled, because they knew it was Xayide's will alone that had moved the hollow giants. So, they thought, it must have been her will that they should trample her to death. But knotty problems were not the knights' forte, so in the end they shrugged their shoulders and let well enough alone. But what were they to do next? They talked it over and, deciding that the campaign was at an end, discharged the army and advised everyone to go home. They themselves, however, felt bound by the oath of fealty they had sworn to Bastian and resolved to search all Fantastica for him. That was all well and good, but which way were they to go? They couldn't agree, so deciding that each would search separately, they parted and hobbled off each in a different direction. All three had countless adventures, and Fantastica knows numerous accounts of their futile quest. But these are other stories and shall be told another time.\n\nFor years the hollow, black-metal giants stood motionless on the heath not far from the City of the Old Emperors. Rain and snow fell on them, they rusted and little by little sank into the ground, some vertically, some at a slant. But to this day a few of them can be seen. The place is thought to be cursed, and travelers make a wide circle around it. But let's get back to Bastian.\n\nWhile following the winding path through the rose garden, he saw something that amazed him, because in all his wanderings in Fantastica he had never seen anything like it. It was a pointing hand, carved from wood. Beside it was written: \"To the House of Change.\"\n\nWithout haste Bastian took the direction indicated. He breathed the fragrance of the innumerable roses and felt more and more cheerful, as though looking forward to a pleasant surprise.\n\nAt length he came to a straight avenue, bordered by round trees laden with red-cheeked apples. At the end of the avenue a house appeared. As he approached it, Bastian decided it was the funniest house he had ever seen. Under a tall, pointed roof that looked rather like a stocking cap, the house itself suggested a giant pumpkin. The walls were covered with large protuberances, one might almost have said bellies, that gave the house a comfortably inviting look. There were a few windows and a front door, but they seemed crooked, as though a clumsy child had cut them out.\n\nOn his way to the house, Bastian saw that it was slowly but steadily changing. A small bump appeared on the right side and gradually took the shape of a dormer window. At the same time a window on the left side closed and little by little disappeared. A chimney grew out of the roof and a small balcony with a balustrade appeared over the front door.\n\nBastian stopped still and watched the changes with surprise and amusement. Now he understood why the place was called the House of Change.\n\nAs he stood there, he heard a warm, pleasant voice\u2014a woman's\u2014singing inside.\n\n\"A hundred summers to a day\n\nWe have waited here for you.\n\nSeeing that you've found the way,\n\nIt must certainly be you.\n\nYour hunger and your thirst to still,\n\nAll is here in readiness.\n\nYou shall eat and drink your fill,\n\nSheltered in our tenderness.\n\nRegardless whether good or bad,\n\nYou've suffered much and traveled far.\n\nTake comfort for the trials you've had.\n\nWe'll have you just the way you are.\"\n\nAh! thought Bastian. What a lovely voice! If only that song were meant for me!\n\nThe voice began again to sing:\n\n\"Great lord, I pray, be small again,\n\nBe a child and come right in.\n\nDon't keep standing at the door,\n\nYou are welcome here, and more.\n\nEverything for many a year\n\nHas been ready for you here.\"\n\nBastian felt irresistibly drawn by that voice. He felt sure the singer must be a very friendly person. He knocked at the door and the voice called out:\n\n\"Come in, come in, dear boy!\"\n\nHe opened the door and saw a small but comfortable room. The sun was streaming in through the windows. In the middle of the room there was a round table covered with bowls and baskets full of all sorts of fruits unknown to Bastian. At the table sat a woman as round and red-cheeked and healthy-looking as an apple.\n\nBastian was almost overpowered by a desire to run to her with outstretched arms and cry: \"Mama, Mama!\" But he controlled himself. His mama was dead and was certainly not here in Fantastica. This woman, it was true, had the same sweet smile and the same trustworthy look, but between her and his mother there was little resemblance. His mother had been small and this woman was large and imposing. She was wearing a broad hat covered with fruits and flowers, and her dress was of some sort of bright, flowered material. It was some time before Bastian realized that it consisted of leaves, flowers, and fruits.\n\nAs he stood looking at her, he was overcome by a feeling that he had not known for a long time. He could not remember when and where; he knew only that he had sometimes felt that way when he was little.\n\n\"Sit down, dear boy,\" said the woman, motioning him to a chair. \"You must be hungry. Do have a bite to eat.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon,\" said Bastian. \"You're expecting a guest. I've only come here by accident.\"\n\n\"Really?\" said the woman with a smile. \"Oh well, it doesn't matter. You can have a bite to eat all the same. Meanwhile I'll tell you a little story. Go on, don't stand on ceremony.\"\n\nBastian took off his black mantle, laid it on a chair, and hesitantly reached for a fruit. Before biting into it, he asked: \"What about you? Aren't you eating? Or don't you care for fruit?\"\n\nThe woman laughed heartily, Bastian didn't know why.\n\n\"Very well,\" she said after composing herself. \"If you insist, I'll have something to keep you company, but in my own way. Don't be frightened.\"\n\nWith that she picked up a watering can that was on the floor beside her, held it over her head, and sprinkled herself.\n\n\"Oh!\" she said. \"That is refreshing!\"\n\nNow it was Bastian's turn to laugh. Then he bit into the fruit and instantly realized that he had never eaten anything so good. He took a second fruit and that was even better.\n\n\"You like it?\" asked the woman, watching him closely. Bastian couldn't answer because his mouth was full. He chewed and nodded.\n\n\"I'm glad,\" the woman said. \"I've taken a lot of pains with that fruit. Eat as much as you please.\"\n\nBastian took a third fruit, and that was a sheer delight. He sighed with well-being.\n\n\"And now I'll tell you the story,\" said the woman. \"But don't let it stop you from eating.\"\n\nBastian found it hard to listen, for each new fruit gave him a more rapturous sensation than the last.\n\n\"A long, long time ago,\" the flowery woman began, \"our Childlike Empress was deathly ill, for she needed a new name, and only a human could give her one. But humans had stopped coming to Fantastica, no one knew why. And if she had died, that would have been the end of Fantastica. Then one day\u2014or rather one night\u2014a human came after all. It was a little boy, and he gave the Childlike Empress the name of Moon Child. She recovered, and in token of her gratitude she promised the boy that all his wishes in her empire would come true\u2014until he found out what he really and truly wanted. Then the little boy made a long journey from one wish to the next, and each one came true. And each fulfillment led to a new wish. There were not only good wishes but bad ones as well, but the Childlike Empress drew no distinction; in her eyes all things in her empire are equally good and important. In the end the Ivory Tower was destroyed, and she did nothing to prevent it. But with every wish fulfillment the little boy lost a part of his memory of the world he had come from. He didn't really mind, for he had given up wanting to go back. So he kept on wishing, but by then he had spent all his memories, and without memories it's not possible to wish. So he had almost ceased to be a human and had almost become a Fantastican. He still didn't know what he really and truly wanted. It seemed possible that his very last memories would be used up before he found out. And if that happened, he would never be able to return to his own world. Then at last he came to the House of Change, and there he would stay until he found out what he really and truly wanted. You see, it's called the House of Change not only because it changes itself but also because it changes anyone who lives in it. And that was very important to the little boy, because up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didn't want to change.\"\n\nAt this point she broke off, because her visitor had stopped chewing and was staring openmouthed.\n\n\"If that one doesn't taste good,\" she said with concern, \"just put it down and take another.\"\n\n\"W-what?\" Bastian stammered. \"Oh no, it's delicious.\"\n\n\"Then everything's fine,\" said the woman. \"But I forgot to tell you the name of the little boy, who had been expected so long at the House of Change. Many in Fantastica called him simply 'the Savior,' others 'the Knight of the Seven-armed Candelabrum,' or 'the Great Knower,' or 'Lord and Master.' But his real name was Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\nThe woman turned to Bastian with a smile. He swallowed once or twice and said very softly: \"That's my name.\"\n\n\"Well then!\" said the woman, who didn't seem the least surprised.\n\nSuddenly the buds on her hat and dress burst into bloom.\n\n\"But,\" said Bastian hesitantly. \"I haven't been in Fantastica a hundred years.\"\n\n\"Oh, we've been waiting for you much longer than that,\" said the woman. \"My grandmother and my grandmother's grandmother waited for you. You see, now someone is telling you a story that is new, even though it's about the remotest past.\"\n\nBastian remembered Grograman's words. That had been at the beginning of his journey. And now suddenly it seemed to him that a hundred years had indeed elapsed since then.\n\n\"But by the way, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Dame Eyola.\"\n\nBastian repeated the name, several times before he was able to pronounce it properly. Then he took another fruit. He bit into it, and as usual thought the one he was eating was the most delicious of all. But then he noticed with some alarm that there was only one left.\n\n\"Do you want more?\" asked Dame Eyola, who had caught his glance. When Bastian nodded, she plucked fruit from her hat and dress until the bowl was full again.\n\n\"Does the fruit grow on your hat?\" Bastian asked in amazement.\n\n\"Hat? What are you talking about?\" cried Dame Eyola. But then she understood and broke into a loud, hearty laugh. \"So you think it's a hat I've got on my head? Not at all, dear boy. It all grows out of me. Just as your hair grows out of you. That should show you how glad I am that you've finally come. That's why I'm flowering and bearing fruit. If I were sad, I'd wither. But come now, don't forget to eat.\"\n\nBastian was embarrassed. \"I don't know,\" he said. \"Is it all right to eat something that comes out of somebody?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" asked Dame Eyola. \"Babies drink milk that comes out of their mothers. There's nothing better.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" said Bastian with a slight blush. \"But only when they're very little.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said Dame Eyola, beaming, \"you'll just have to get to be very little again, my dear boy.\"\n\nBastian took another fruit and bit into it. Dame Eyola was delighted and bloomed more than ever.\n\nAfter a short silence she said: \"I think it would like us to move into the next room. I believe it may have arranged something for you.\"\n\n\"Who?\" Bastian asked, looking around.\n\n\"The House of Change,\" said Dame Eyola, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.\n\nAnd indeed a strange thing had happened. The living room had changed without Bastian noticing that anything was going on. The ceiling had moved upward, while three of the walls had come close to the table. There was still room on the fourth side, where there was a door, which now stood open.\n\nDame Eyola rose, and then he saw how big she was.\n\n\"We'd better go,\" she suggested. \"It's very stubborn. Opposition is useless if it has thought up a surprise. We may as well let it have its way. It usually means well.\"\n\nBastian followed her through the door, but took the fruit bowl with him as a precaution.\n\nHe found himself in a large dining room that looked somehow familiar. Only the furniture seemed strange\u2014the table and especially the chairs were so large that he couldn't possibly have sat in them.\n\n\"Fancy that!\" said Dame Eyola with a chuckle. \"The House of Change is always thinking up something new. Now for your benefit it has provided a room as it must look to a small child.\"\n\n\"You mean,\" said Bastian, \"that this room wasn't here before?\"\n\n\"Of course not. The House of Change is very wide-awake, you see. This is its way of taking part in our conversation. I think it's trying to tell you something.\"\n\nThen she sat down in one of the chairs at the table, while Bastian tried in vain to climb up on the other. Dame Eyola had to pick him up and put him on it, but even then his nose was barely level with the tabletop. He was glad he had taken the bowl of fruit, and kept it on his lap. If it had been on the table, it would have been beyond his reach.\n\n\"Do you often have to change rooms this way?\" he asked.\n\n\"Not often,\" said Dame Eyola. \"Never more than three or four times a day. Sometimes the House of Change will have its little jokes, and then the rooms are suddenly reversed, the floor on top and the ceiling at the bottom, that sort of thing. But it's only being bumptious and it stops when I give it a piece of my mind. All in all, it's a well-behaved house and I feel very comfortable in it. We have good laughs together.\"\n\n\"But isn't it dangerous?\" Bastian asked. \"For instance, if you're asleep at night and\n\nthe room gets smaller and smaller?\"\n\n\"What nonsense, dear boy!\" cried Dame Eyola, pretending to be angry. \"It's very fond of me, and it's fond of you too. It's glad to have you here.\"\n\n\"What if it takes a dislike to somebody?\"\n\n\"No idea,\" she replied. \"What questions you ask! There's never been anyone here but you and me.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Bastion. \"Then I'm your first guest?\"\n\n\"Of course!\"\n\nBastian looked around the enormous room.\n\n\"This room doesn't seem to go with the house. It didn't look so big from outside.\"\n\n\"The House of Change,\" said Dame Eyola, \"is bigger inside than out.\"\n\nMeanwhile night was falling, and it was growing darker and darker in the room. Bastian leaned back in his big chair and propped his head on his hands. He felt deliriously sleepy.\n\n\"Why,\" he asked, \"did you wait so long for me, Dame Eyola?\"\n\n\"I always wanted a child,\" she said, \"a child I could spoil, who needed my tenderness, a child I could care for\u2014someone like you, my darling boy.\"\n\nBastian yawned. He felt irresistibly lulled by her sweet voice.\n\n\"But,\" he objected, \"you said your mother and grandmother waited for me.\"\n\nDame Eyola's face was now in the darkness.\n\n\"Yes,\" he heard her say. \"My mother and my grandmother also wanted a child. They never had one but I have one now.\"\n\nBastian's eyes closed. He barely managed to ask: \"How can that be? Your mother had you when you were little. And your grandmother had your mother.\"\n\n\"No, my darling boy,\" said the voice hardly above a whisper. \"With us it's different. We don't die and we're not born. We're always the same Dame Eyola, and then again we're not. When my mother grew old, she withered. All her leaves fell, as the leaves fall from a tree in the winter. She withdrew into herself. And so she remained for a long time. But then one day she put forth young leaves, buds, blossoms, and finally fruit. And that's how I came into being, for I was the new Dame Eyola. And it was just the same with my grandmother when she brought my mother into the world. We Dames Eyola can only have a child if we wither first. And then we're our own child and we can't be a mother anymore. That's why I'm so glad you're here, my darling boy...\"\n\nBastian spoke no more. He had slipped into a sweet half-sleep in which he heard her words as a kind of chant. He heard her stand up and cross the room and bend over him. She stroked his hair and kissed him on the forehead. Then he felt her pick him up and carry him out in her arms. He buried his head in her bosom like a baby. Deeper and deeper he sank into the warm sleepy darkness. He felt that he was being undressed and put into a soft, sweet-smelling bed. And then he heard her lovely voice singing far in the distance:\n\n\"Sleep, my darling, good night.\n\nYour sufferings are past.\n\nGreat lord, be a little child at last.\n\nSleep, my darling, sleep tight.\"\n\nWhen he woke up the next morning, he felt better and happier than ever before.\n\nHe looked around and saw that he was in a cozy little room\u2014lying in a crib. Actually, it was a very large crib, or rather it was as large as a crib must look to a baby. For a moment this struck him as ridiculous, because he certainly wasn't a baby anymore, and he was still in possession of all the powers and gifts that Fantastica had given him. The Childlike Empress's amulet was still hanging from his neck. But in the very next moment he stopped caring whether it was ridiculous or not. No one but him and Dame Eyola would ever find out, and they both knew that everything was just as it should be.\n\nHe got up, washed, dressed, and left the room, A flight of wooden steps took him to the big dining room, which had turned into a kitchen overnight. Dame Eyola had breakfast all ready for him. She too was in high spirits, her flowers were in full bloom. She sang and laughed and even danced around the kitchen table with him. After breakfast she sent him outside to get some fresh air.\n\nIn the great rose garden around the House of Change it was summer, a summer that seemed eternal. Bastian sauntered about, watched the bees feasting on the flowers, listened to the birds that were singing in every rosebush; played with the lizards, which were so tame that they crawled up on his hand, and with the hares, which let him stroke them. From time to time he crept under a bush, smelled the sweet scent of the roses, blinked up at the sun, and thinking of nothing in particular, let the time glide by like a brook.\n\nDays became weeks. He paid no attention. Dame Eyola was merry, and Bastian surrendered himself to her motherly care and tenderness. It seemed to him that without knowing it he had long hungered for something which was now being given him in abundance. And he just couldn't get enough of it.\n\nHe spent whole days rummaging through the House of Change from attic to cellar. He never got bored, because the rooms were always changing and there was always something new to discover. Clearly the house was at pains to entertain its guest. It produced playrooms, railway trains, puppet theaters, jungle gyms. There was even a big merry-go-round.\n\nOr else he would explore the surrounding country. But he never went too far from the House of Change, for suddenly he would be overcome by a craving for Dame Eyola's fruit, and when that happened, he could hardly wait to get back to her and eat his fill.\n\nIn the evening they had long talks. He told her about all his adventures in Fantastica, about Perilin and Grograman, about Xayide and Atreyu, whom he had wounded so cruelly and perhaps even killed.\n\n\"I did everything wrong,\" he said. \"I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica.\"\n\nDame Eyola gave him a long look.\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there.\"\n\nAfter a short silence she added: \"But every way that leads there is the right one.\"\n\nSuddenly Bastian began to cry. He didn't know why. He felt as if a knot in his heart had come open and dissolved into tears. He sobbed and he sobbed and couldn't stop. Dame Eyola took him on her lap and stroked him. He buried his face in the flowers on her bosom and wept until he was too tired to weep anymore.\n\nThat evening they talked no more.\n\nBut next day Bastian brought up the subject again.\n\n\"Do you know where I can find the Water of Life?\"\n\n\"On the borders of Fantastica.\"\n\n\"I thought Fantastica had no borders.\"\n\n\"It has, though. Only they're not outside but inside. In the place where the Childlike Empress gets all her power from, but where she herself cannot go.\"\n\n\"How am I to find the way there?\" asked Bastian. \"Isn't it too late?\"\n\n\"There's only one wish that can take you there: your last.\"\n\nBastian was terrified. \"Dame Eyola\u2014all the wishes that have come true thanks to AURYN have made me forget something. Will it be the same with this one?\"\n\nShe nodded slowly.\n\n\"But if I don't notice it!\"\n\n\"Did you notice it other times? Once you've forgotten something you don't know you ever had it.\"\n\n\"What am I forgetting now?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you at the proper time. If I told you now, you'd hold on to it.\"\n\n\"Must I lose everything?\"\n\n\"Nothing is lost,\" she said. \"Everything is transformed.\"\n\n\"But then,\" said Bastian in alarm, \"I ought to hurry. I shouldn't be staying here.\"\n\nShe stroked his hair.\n\n\"Don't worry. It will take time, but when your last wish is awakened, you'll know it\u2014and so will I.\"\n\nFrom that day on something began indeed to change, though Bastian himself noticed nothing at first. The transforming power of the House of Change was taking effect. But like all true transformations, it was as slow and gentle as the growth of a plant.\n\nThe days in the House of Change passed, and it was still summer. Bastian still enjoyed letting Dame Eyola spoil him like a child. Her fruit still tasted as delicious to him as at the start, but little by little his craving had been stilled. He ate less than before. Dame Eyola noticed, though she never mentioned it. He also felt that he had had his fill of her care and tenderness. And as his need for them dwindled, a longing of a very different kind made itself felt, a desire that he had never felt before and that was different in every way from all his previous wishes: the longing to be capable of loving. With surprise and dismay he recognized that he could not love. And the wish became stronger and stronger.\n\nOne evening as they were sitting together, he spoke of it to Dame Eyola.\n\nAfter listening to him, she said nothing for a long while. She looked at Bastian with an expression that puzzled him.\n\n\"Now you have found your last wish,\" she said finally. \"What you really and truly want is to love.\"\n\n\"But why can't I, Dame Eyola?\"\n\n\"You won't be able to until you have drunk of the Water of Life,\" she said. \"And you can't go back to your own world unless you take some of it back for others.\"\n\nBastian was bewildered. \"But what about you?\" he asked. \"Haven't you drunk of it?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Dame Eyola. \"It's different for me. I only needed someone to whom I could give my excess.\"\n\n\"But isn't that love?\"\n\nDame Eyola pondered a while, then she said: \"It was the effect of your wish.\"\n\n\"Can't Fantasticans love? Are they like me?\" he asked anxiously.\n\nShe answered: \"There are some few creatures in Fantastica, so I'm told, who get to drink of the Water of Life. But no one knows who they are. And there is a prophecy, which we seldom speak of, that sometime in the distant future humans will bring love to Fantastica. Then the two worlds will be one. But what that means I don't know.\"\n\n\"Dame Eyola,\" Bastian asked, \"you promised that when the right moment came you'd tell me what I had to forget to find my last wish. Has the time come?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"You had to forget your father and mother. Now you have nothing left but your name.\"\n\nBastian pondered.\n\n\"Father and mother?\" he said slowly. But the words had lost all meaning for him. He had forgotten.\n\n\"What must I do now?\" he asked.\n\n\"You must leave me. Your time in the House of Change is over.\"\n\n\"Where must I go?\"\n\n\"Your last wish will guide you. Don't lose it.\"\n\n\"Should I go now?\"\n\n\"No, it's late. Tomorrow at daybreak. You have one more night in the House of Change. Now we must go to bed.\"\n\nBastian stood up and went over to her. Only then, only when he was close to her, did he notice that all her flowers had faded.\n\n\"Don't let it worry you,\" she said. \"And don't worry about tomorrow morning. Go your way. Everything is just as it should be. Good night, my darling boy.\"\n\n\"Good night, Dame Eyola,\" Bastian murmured.\n\nThen he went up to his room.\n\nWhen he came down the next day, he saw that Dame Eyola was still in the same place. All her leaves, flowers, and fruits had fallen from her. Her eyes were closed and she looked like a black, dead tree. For a long time he stood there gazing at her. Then suddenly a door opened.\n\nBefore going out, he turned around once again and said, without knowing whether he was speaking to Dame Eyola or to the house or both: \"Thank you. Thank you for everything.\"\n\nThen he went out through the door. Winter had come overnight. The snow lay knee-deep and nothing remained of the flowering rose garden but bare, black thornbushes. Not a breeze stirred. It was bitter cold and very still.\n\nBastian wanted to go back into the house for his mantle, but the doors and windows had vanished. It had closed itself up all around. Shivering, he started on his way.\n\nor, the blind miner, was standing beside his hut, listening for sounds on the snow-covered plain around him. The silence was so complete that his sensitive hearing picked up the crunching of footsteps in the snow far in the distance. And he knew that the steps were coming his way.\n\nYor was an old man, but his face was beardless and without a wrinkle. Everything about him, his dress, his face, his hair, was stone gray. As he stood there motionless, he seemed carved from congealed lava. Only his blind eyes were dark, and deep within them there was a glow, as of a small, bright flame.\n\nThe steps were Bastian's. When he reached the hut, he said: \"Good day. I've lost my way. I'm looking for the fountain the Water of Life springs from. Can you help me?\"\n\nThe miner replied in a whisper: \"You haven't lost your way. But speak softly, or my pictures will crumble.\"\n\nHe motioned to Bastian, who followed him into the hut.\n\nIt consisted of a single small, bare room. A wooden table, two chairs, a cot, and two or three wooden shelves piled with food and dishes were the only furnishings. A fire was burning on an open hearth, and over it hung a kettle of soup.\n\nYor ladled out soup for himself and Bastian, put the bowls on the table, and with a motion of his hand invited his guest to eat. They ate in silence.\n\nThen the miner leaned back. His eyes looked through Bastian and far into the distance as he asked in a whisper: \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"\n\n\"Ah, so you still know your name.\"\n\n\"Yes. And who are you?\"\n\n\"I am Yor; people call me the blind miner. But I am blind only in the daylight. In the darkness of my mine, I can see.\"\n\n\"What sort of mine is it?\"\n\n\"The Minroud Mine, they call it. It's a picture mine.\"\n\n\"A picture mine?\" said Bastian in amazement. \"I never heard of such a thing.\"\n\nYor seemed to be listening for something.\n\n\"And yet,\" he said. \"It's here for just such as you. For humans who can't find the way to the Water of Life.\"\n\n\"What kind of pictures are they?\" Bastian asked.\n\nYor shut his eyes and was silent for a while. Bastian didn't know whether to repeat his question. Then he heard the miner whisper: \"Nothing gets lost in the world. Have you ever dreamed something and when you woke up not known what it was?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Bastian. \"Often.\"\n\nYor nodded. Then he stood up and beckoned Bastian to follow him. Before they left the hut, he dug his fingers into Bastian's shoulders and whispered: \"But not a word, not a sound, understand? What you are going to see is my work of many years. The least sound can destroy it. So tread softly and don't talk.\"\n\nBastian nodded and they left the hut. Behind it there was a wooden headframe, below which a shaft descended vertically into the earth. Passing these by, the miner led Bastian out into the snow-covered plain. And there in the snow lay the pictures, like jewels bedded in white silk.\n\nThey were paper-thin sheets of colored, transparent isinglass, of every size and shape, some round, some square, some damaged, some intact, some as large as church windows, others as small as snuffbox miniatures. They lay, arranged more or less according to size and shape, in rows extending to the snowy horizon.\n\nWhat these pictures represented it was hard to say. There were figures in weird disguise that seemed to be flying through the air in an enormous bird's nest, donkeys in judge's robes, clocks as limp as soft butter, dressmaker's dummies standing in deserted, glaringly lighted squares. There were faces and heads pieced together from animals and others that made up a landscape. But there were also perfectly normal pictures, men mowing a wheat field, women sitting on a balcony, mountain villages and seascapes, battle scenes and circus scenes, streets and rooms and many, many faces, old and young, wise and simple, fools and kings, cheerful and gloomy. There were gruesome pictures, executions and death dances, and there were comical ones, such as a group of young ladies riding a walrus or a nose walking about and being greeted by passersby.\n\nThe longer Bastian looked at the pictures, the less he could make of them. He and Yor spent the whole day walking past row after row of them, and then dusk descended on the great snowfield. Bastian followed the miner back to the hut. After closing the door behind them Yor asked in a soft voice: \"Did you recognize any of them?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian.\n\nThe miner shook his head thoughtfully.\n\n\"Why?\" Bastian asked. \"What are they?\"\n\n\"They are forgotten dreams from the human world,\" Yor explained. \"Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under our earth. There the forgotten dreams are stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer together they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams.\"\n\nBastian was wide-eyed with wonderment. \"Are mine there too?\" he asked.\n\nYor nodded.\n\n\"And you think I have to find them?\"\n\n\"At least one,\" said Yor. \"One will be enough.\"\n\n\"But what for?\" Bastian wanted to know.\n\nNow the miner's face was lit only by the faint glow of the hearth fire. Again his blind eyes looked through Bastian and far into the distance.\n\n\"Listen to me, Bastian Balthazar Bux,\" he said. \"I'm no great talker. I prefer silence. But I will answer this one question. You are looking for the Water of Life. You want to be able to love, that's your only hope of getting back to your world. To love\u2014that's easily said. But the Water of Life will ask you: Love whom? Because you can't just love in general. You've forgotten everything but your name. And if you can't answer, it won't let you drink. So you'll just have to find a forgotten dream, a picture that will guide you to the fountain. And to find that picture you will have to forget the one thing you have left: yourself. And that takes hard, patient work. Remember what I've said, for I shall never say it again.\"\n\nAfter that he lay down on his wooden cot and fell asleep. Bastian had to content himself with the hard, cold floor. But he didn't mind.\n\nWhen he woke up the next morning feeling stiff in all his joints, Yor was gone\u2014to the mine, no doubt, Bastian decided. He took a dish of the hot soup, which warmed him but didn't taste very good. Too salty. It made him think of sweat and tears.\n\nThen he went out into the snow-covered plain and walked past the pictures. He examined one after another attentively, for now he knew how important it was, but he found none that meant anything in particular to him.\n\nToward evening Yor came up from the mine. Bastian saw him step out of the pit cage. In a frame on his back he was carrying different-sized sheets of paper-thin isinglass. Bastian followed him in silence as he went far out into the plain and carefully bedded his new finds in the soft snow at the end of a row. One of the pictures represented a man whose chest was a birdcage with two pigeons in it, another a woman of stone riding on a large turtle. One very small picture showed a butterfly with letters on its wings. And many more, but none meant anything to Bastian.\n\nBack in the hut with the miner, he asked: \"What will become of the pictures when the snow melts?\"\n\n\"It's always winter here,\" said Yor.\n\nThey had no other conversation that evening.\n\nIn the following days Bastian kept searching among the pictures for one with some special meaning for him\u2014but in vain. In the evening he sat in the hut with the miner. Since the miner kept silent, Bastian got into the habit of saying nothing, and little by little he adopted Yor's careful way of moving for fear of making the pictures crumble.\n\n\"Now I've seen all the pictures,\" Bastian said one night. \"None of them is for me.\"\n\n\"That's bad,\" said Yor.\n\n\"What should I do?\" Bastian asked. \"Should I wait for you to bring up new ones?\"\n\nYor thought it over, then he shook his head.\n\n\"If I were you,\" he whispered, \"I'd go down into the mine and dig for myself.\"\n\n\"But I haven't got your eyes,\" said Bastian. \"I can't see in the dark.\"\n\n\"Weren't you given a light for your long journey?\" Yor asked, looking through Bastian. \"A sparkling stone or something that might help you now?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Bastian sadly. \"But I used Al Tsahir for something else.\"\n\n\"That's bad,\" Yor said again.\n\n\"Then what do you advise?\" Bastian asked.\n\nAfter a long silence the miner replied: \"Then you'll just have to work in the dark.\"\n\nBastian shuddered. He still had all the strength and fearlessness AURYN had given him, but the thought of crawling on his belly in the black underground darkness sent the shivers down his spine. He said nothing more and they both lay down to sleep.\n\nThe next morning the miner shook him by the shoulders.\n\nBastian sat up.\n\n\"Eat your soup and come with me,\" said Yor.\n\nBastian obeyed.\n\nHe followed the miner to the shaft and got into the pit cage with him. Together they rode down into the mine. At first a faint beam of light followed them down the shaft, but it vanished as the cage went deeper. Then a jolt signaled that they had reached the bottom.\n\nHere below it was much warmer than on the wintry plain. The miner walked very fast, and trying to keep up for fear of losing him in the darkness, Bastian was soon covered with sweat. They twined their way over endless passages and galleries, which sometimes opened out into spacious vaults, as Bastian could tell by the echo of their footfalls. Several times Bastian bruised himself against jutting stones or wooden props, but Yor took no notice.\n\nOn this first day and for several that followed, the miner, by wordlessly guiding Bastian's hand, instructed him in the art of separating the paper-thin leaves of isinglass from one another and picking them up. There were tools for the purpose, they felt like wooden or horn spatulas, but Bastian never saw them, for when the day's work was done they stayed down in the mine.\n\nLittle by little he learned to find his way in the darkness. A new sense that he could not have accounted for taught him to distinguish one gallery from another. One day Yor told him silently, with the mere touch of his hands, to work alone in a low gallery, which he could enter only by crawling. Bastian obeyed. It was very close and cramped, and above him lay a mountain of stone.\n\nCurled up like an unborn child in its mother's womb, he lay in the dark depths of Fantastica's foundations, patiently digging for a forgotten dream, a picture that might lead him to the Water of Life.\n\nSince he could see nothing in the eternal night of the mine, he could not choose or come to any decision. He could only hope that chance or a merciful fate would eventually lead him to a lucky find. Evening after evening he brought what he had managed to gather from the Minroud Mine into the failing daylight. And evening after evening his work had been in vain. But Bastian did not complain or rebel. He had lost all self-pity. Though his strength was inexhaustible, he often felt tired.\n\nHow long this painful work went on it is hard to say, for such labor cannot be measured in days and months. Be that as it may, one evening he brought to the surface a picture. It moved him so deeply the moment he looked at it that he needed all his self-control to keep from letting out a cry of surprise that would have crumbled the picture to dust.\n\nOn the fragile sheet of isinglass\u2014it was not very large, about the size of a usual book page\u2014he saw a man wearing a white smock and holding a plaster cast in one hand. His posture and the troubled look on his face touched Bastian to the heart. But what stirred him the most was that the man was shut up in a transparent but impenetrable block of ice.\n\nWhile Bastian looked at the picture that lay before him in the snow, a longing grew in him for this man whom he did not know, a surge of feeling that seemed to come from far away. Like a tidal wave, almost imperceptible at first, it gradually built up strength till it submerged everything in its path. Bastian struggled for air. His heart pounded, it was not big enough for so great a longing. That surge of feeling submerged everything that he still remembered of himself. And he forgot the last thing he still possessed: his own name.\n\nLater on, when he joined Yor in the hut, he was silent. The miner was silent too, but for a long while he faced Bastian, his eyes once again seeming to look through him and far into the distance. And for the first time since Bastian had come, a smile passed briefly over the miner's stone-gray features.\n\nThat night, tired as he was, the boy who no longer had a name could not sleep. He kept seeing the picture before his eyes. It was as though this man wanted to say something to him but could not, because of the block of ice he was imprisoned in. The boy without a name wanted to help him, wanted to make the ice melt. As in a waking dream he saw himself hugging the block of ice, trying in vain to melt it with the heat of his body.\n\nBut then all at once he heard what the man was trying to say to him; he heard it not with his ears but deep in his heart.\n\n\"Please help me! Don't leave me! I can't get out of this ice alone. Help me! Only you can help me!\"\n\nWhen they awoke next morning at daybreak, the boy without a name said to Yor: \"I won't be going down into the mine with you anymore.\"\n\n\"Are you going to leave me?\"\n\nThe boy nodded. \"I'm going to look for the Water of Life.\"\n\n\"Have you found the picture that will guide you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Will you show it to me?\"\n\nAgain the boy nodded. They went out into the snow where the picture lay. The boy looked at it, but Yor directed his blind eyes at the boy's face, as though looking through it into the distance. For a long while he seemed to be listening for some sound. At length he nodded.\n\n\"Take it with you,\" he whispered, \"and don't lose it. If you lose it, or if it is destroyed, you will have nothing left in Fantastica. You know what that means.\"\n\nThe boy who no longer had a name stood with bowed head and was silent for a while. Then he said just as softly: \"Thank you, Yor, for what you have taught me.\"\n\nThey pressed each other's hands.\n\n\"You've been a good miner,\" Yor whispered. \"You've worked well.\"\n\nThen he turned away and went to the mine shaft. Without turning around he got into the pit cage and descended into the depths.\n\nThe boy without a name picked the picture out of the snow and plodded out into the snow-covered plain.\n\nHe had been walking for many hours. Yor's hut had long since disappeared below the horizon. On all sides there was nothing to be seen but the endless snow-covered plain. But he felt that the picture, which he was holding carefully in both hands, was pulling him in a certain direction.\n\nRegardless of how far it might be, he was determined to follow this pull, for he was convinced that it would take him to the right place. Nothing must hold him back. He felt sure of finding the Water of Life.\n\nSuddenly he heard a clamor in the air, as though innumerable creatures were screaming and twittering. Looking up into the sky, he saw a dark cloud like a great flock of birds. But when the flock came closer, he saw what it really was and terror stopped him in his tracks.\n\nIt was the butterfly-clowns, the Shlamoofs.\n\nMerciful heavens! thought the boy without a name. If only they haven't seen me! They'll shatter the picture with their screams!\n\nBut they had seen him.\n\nLaughing and rollicking, they shot down and landed all around him in the snow.\n\n\"Hurrah!\" they croaked, opening wide their motley-colored mouths. \"At last we've found him! Our great benefactor!\"\n\nThey tumbled in the snow, threw snowballs at one another, turned somersaults, and stood on their heads.\n\n\"Be still! Please be still!\" the boy without a name whispered in desperation.\n\nThe whole chorus screamed with enthusiasm: \"What did he say?\" \u2014 \"He said we were too still!\" \u2014 \"Nobody ever told us that before!\"\n\n\"What do you want of me?\" asked the boy. \"Why won't you leave me alone?\"\n\nAll whirled around him, cackling: \"Great benefactor! Great benefactor! Do you remember how you saved us, when we were the Acharis? Then we were the unhappiest creatures in all Fantastica, but now we're fed up with ourselves. At first what you did to us was a lot of fun, but now we're bored to death. We flit and we flutter and we don't know where we're at. We can't even plan any decent games, because we haven't any rules. You've turned us into preposterous clowns, that's what you've done. You've cheated us!\"\n\n\"I meant well,\" said the horrified boy.\n\n\"Sure, you meant well by yourself,\" the Shlamoofs shouted in chorus. \"Your kindness made you feel great, didn't it? But we paid the bill for your kindness, you great benefactor!\"\n\n\"What should I do?\" the boy asked. \"What do you want of me?\"\n\n\"We've been looking for you,\" screamed the Shlamoofs with grimacing clown faces. \"We wanted to catch you before you could make yourself scarce. Now we've caught you, and we won't leave you in peace until you become our chief. We want you to be our Head Shlamoof, our Master Shlamoof, our General Shlamoof! You name it.\"\n\n\"But why?\" the boy asked imploringly.\n\nThe chorus of clowns screamed back: \"We want you to give us orders. We want you to order us around, to make us do something, to forbid us to do something. We want you to give us an aim in life!\"\n\n\"I can't do that. Why don't you elect one of your number?\"\n\n\"No, we want you. You made us what we are.\"\n\n\"No,\" the boy panted. \"I have to go! I have to go back!\"\n\n\"Not so fast, great benefactor!\" cried the butterfly-clowns. \"You can't get away from us. You think you can sneak away from Fantastica, don't you? You'd like that, wouldn't you?\"\n\n\"But I'm at the end of my rope,\" the boy protested.\n\n\"What about us?\" the chorus replied.\n\n\"Go away!\" cried the boy. \"I can't bother with you anymore.\"\n\n\"Then you must turn us back!\" cried the shrill voices. \"Then we'd rather be Acharis. The Lake of Tears has dried up, Amarganth is on dry land now. And no one spins fine silver filigree anymore. We want to be Acharis again.\"\n\n\"I can't!\" the boy replied. \"I no longer have any power in Fantastica.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" the whole swarm bellowed, whirling and swirling about, \"we'll kidnap you!\"\n\nHundreds of little hands seized him and tried to lift him off the ground. The boy struggled with might and main and the butterflies were tossed in all directions. But like angry wasps they kept coming back.\n\nSuddenly in the midst of this hubbub a low yet powerful sound was heard\u2014something like the booming of a bronze bell.\n\nIn a twinkling the Shlamoofs took flight and their cloud soon vanished in the sky.\n\nThe boy who had no name knelt in the snow. Before him, crumbled into dust, lay the picture. Now all was lost. Now nothing could lead him to the Water of Life.\n\nWhen he looked up, he saw, blurred by his tears, two forms in the snow. One was large, the other small. He wiped his eyes and took another look.\n\nThe two forms were Falkor, the white luckdragon, and Atreyu.\n\nig-zagging unsteadily, scarcely able to control his feet, the boy who had no name took a few steps toward Atreyu. Then he stopped. Atreyu did nothing, but watched him closely. The wound in his chest was no longer bleeding.\n\nFor a long while they faced each other. Neither said a word. It was so still they could hear each other's breathing.\n\nSlowly the boy without a name reached for the gold chain around his neck and divested himself of AURYN. He bent down and carefully laid the Gem in the snow before Atreyu. As he did so, he took another look at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other's tail and formed an oval. Then he let the amulet go.\n\nIn that moment AURYN, the golden Gem, became so bright, so radiant that he had to close his eyes as though dazzled by the sun. When he opened them again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes.\n\nAtreyu, Falkor, and the boy without a name stood side by side, near the head of the black snake, which held the white snake's tail in its jaws. The rigid eye with its vertical pupil was directed at the three of them. Compared to that eye, they were tiny; even the luckdragon seemed no larger than a white caterpillar.\n\nThe motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain.\n\nBut while holding each other fast, they guarded the Water of Life. For in the center of the edifice they encircled there was a great fountain. Its beam danced up and down and in falling created and dispersed thousands of forms far more quickly than the eye could follow. The foaming water burst into a fine mist, in which the golden light was refracted with all the colors of the rainbow. The fountain roared and laughed and rejoiced with a thousand voices.\n\nAs though parched with thirst, the boy without a name looked at the water\u2014but how was he to reach it? The snake's head did not move.\n\nThen Falkor raised his head. His ruby-red eyeballs glittered.\n\n\"Do you understand what the Water is saying?\" he asked.\n\n\"No,\" said Atreyu. \"I don't.\"\n\n\"I don't know why,\" said Falkor. \"But I understand perfectly. Maybe because I'm a luckdragon. All the languages of joy are related.\"\n\n\"What does the Water say?\" Atreyu asked.\n\nFalkor listened closely, and slowly repeated what he heard:\n\n\"I am the Water of Life,\n\nOut of myself I grow.\n\nThe more you drink of me,\n\nThe fuller I will flow.\"\n\nAgain he listened awhile. Then he said: \"It keeps saying: 'Drink! Drink! Do what you wish!'\"\n\n\"How can we get to it?\" Atreyu asked.\n\n\"It's asking us our names,\" Falkor reported.\n\n\"I'm Atreyu!\" Atreyu cried.\n\n\"I'm Falkor!\" cried Falkor.\n\nThe boy without a name was silent.\n\nAtreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: \"He's Bastian Balthazar Bux!\"\n\n\"It asks,\" Falkor translated, \"why he doesn't speak for himself.\"\n\n\"He can't,\" said Atreyu. \"He has forgotten everything.\"\n\nFalkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain.\n\n\"Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won't let him through.\"\n\nAtreyu replied: \"I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him.\"\n\nFalkor listened.\n\n\"It wants to know by what right?\"\n\n\"I am his friend,\" said Atreyu.\n\nAgain Falkor listened attentively.\n\n\"That may not be acceptable,\" he whispered to Atreyu. \"Now it's speaking of your wound. It wants to know how that came about.\"\n\n\"We were both right,\" said Atreyu, \"and we were both wrong. But now Bastian has given up AURYN of his own free will.\"\n\nFalkor listened and nodded.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"It accepts that. This place is AURYN. We are welcome, it says.\"\n\nAtreyu looked up at the enormous golden dome. \"Each of us,\" he whispered, \"has worn it around his neck\u2014you too, Falkor, for a while.\"\n\nThe luckdragon motioned him to be still and listened again to the sound of the Water. Then he translated:\n\n\"AURYN is the door that Bastian has been looking for. He carried it with him from the start. But\u2014it says\u2014the snakes won't let anything belonging to Fantastica cross the threshold. Bastian must therefore give up everything the Childlike Empress gave him. Otherwise he cannot drink of the Water of Life.\"\n\n\"But we are in her sign!\" cried Atreyu. \"Isn't she herself here?\"\n\n\"It says that Moon Child's power ends here. She is the only one who can never set foot in this place. She cannot penetrate to the center of AURYN, because she cannot cast off her own self.\"\n\nAtreyu was too bewildered to speak.\n\n\"Now,\" said Falkor, \"it's asking whether Bastian is ready.\"\n\nAt that moment the enormous black snake's head began to move very slowly, though without releasing the white snake's tail. The gigantic bodies arched until they formed a gate, one half of which was black and the other white.\n\nAtreyu took Bastian by the hand and led him through the terrible gate toward the fountain, which now lay before them in all its grandeur. Falkor followed. As they advanced, one after another of Bastian's Fantastican gifts fell away from him. The strong, handsome, fearless hero became again the small, fat, timid boy. Even his clothing, which had been reduced almost to rags in the Minroud Mine, vanished and dissolved into nothingness. In the end he stood naked before the great golden bowl, at the center of which the Water of Life leapt high into the air like a crystal tree.\n\nIn this last moment, when he no longer possessed any of the Fantastican gifts but had not yet recovered his memory of his own world and himself, he was in a state of utter uncertainty, not knowing which world he belonged to or whether he really existed.\n\nBut then he jumped into the crystal-clear water. He splashed and spluttered and let the sparkling rain fall into his mouth. He drank till his thirst was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was newborn. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.\n\nAnd much later, long after Bastian had returned to his world, in his maturity and even in his old age, this joy never left him entirely. Even in the hardest moments of his life he preserved a lightheartedness that made him smile and that comforted others.\n\n\"Atreyu!\" he cried out to his friend, who was standing with Falkor at the edge of the great golden bowl. \"Come on in! Come and drink! It's wonderful!\"\n\nAtreyu laughed and shook his head.\n\n\"No,\" he called back. \"This time we're only here to keep you company.\"\n\n\"This time?\" Bastian asked. \"What do you mean by that?\"\n\nAtreyu exchanged a glance with Falkor. Then he said: \"Falkor and I have already been here. We didn't recognize the place at first, because we were asleep when we were brought here and when we were taken away. But now we remember.\"\n\nBastian came out of the water.\n\n\"Now I know who I am,\" he said, beaming.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Atreyu, and nodded. \"And now I recognize you. Now you look the way you did when I saw you in the Magic Mirror Gate.\"\n\nBastian looked up at the foaming, sparkling water.\n\n\"I'd like to bring my father some,\" he shouted. \"But how?\"\n\n\"I don't think you can do that,\" said Atreyu. \"It's not possible to carry anything from Fantastica across the threshold.\"\n\n\"For Bastian it is!\" said Falkor, whose voice had resumed its full bronze resonance. \"He can do it.\"\n\n\"You really are a luckdragon,\" said Bastian.\n\nFalkor motioned him to be still while he listened to the roaring voice of the Water.\n\nThen he said: \"The Water says you must be on your way now and so must we.\"\n\n\"Which is my way?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"Out through the other gate,\" Falkor answered. \"Where the white snake's head is lying.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Bastian. \"But how will I get out? The white head isn't moving.\"\n\nIndeed, the white snake's head lay motionless. It held the black snake's tail in its jaws and stared at Bastian out of its great eyes.\n\n\"The Water asks you,\" Falkor translated, \"whether you completed all the stories you began in Fantastica.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian. \"None of them really.\"\n\nFalkor listened awhile. His face took on a worried look.\n\n\"In that case, it says, the white snake won't let you through. You must go back to Fantastica and finish them all.\"\n\n\"All the stories?\" Bastian stammered. \"Then I'll never be able to go back. Then it's all been for nothing.\"\n\nFalkor listened eagerly.\n\n\"What does it say?\" Bastian wanted to know.\n\n\"Hush!\" said Falkor.\n\nAfter a while he sighed arid said: \"It says there's no help for it unless someone promises to do it in your place. But no one can do that.\"\n\n\"I can! I will!\" said Atreyu.\n\nBastian looked at him in silence. Then he fell on his neck and stammered: \"Atreyu! Atreyu! I'll never forget this!\"\n\nAtreyu smiled.\n\n\"That's good, Bastian. Then you won't forget Fantastica either.\"\n\nHe gave him a brotherly pat on the back, then quickly turned around and headed for the black snake's gate, which was still upraised and open as when they had entered.\n\n\"Falkor,\" said Bastian. \"How will you and Atreyu finish the stories I have left behind?\"\n\nThe white dragon winked one of his ruby-red eyes and replied: \"With luck, my boy! With luck!\"\n\nThen he followed his friend and master.\n\nBastian watched as they passed through the gate on their way back to Fantastica.\n\nThey turned again and waved to him. Then as the black snake's head sank to the ground, Atreyu and Falkor vanished from Bastian's sight.\n\nNow he was alone.\n\nHe turned towards the white snake's head. It had risen and the snake's body now formed a gate just as the black snake's body had done.\n\nQuickly Bastian cupped his hands, gathered as much of the Water of Life as he could hold, ran to the gate, and flung himself into the empty darkness beyond.\n\n\"Father!\" he screamed. \"Father! I\u2014am\u2014Bastian\u2014Balthazar\u2014Bux!\"\n\n\"Father! Father! I\u2014am\u2014Bastian\u2014Balthazar\u2014Bux!\"\n\nStill screaming, he found himself in the schoolhouse attic, which long, long ago he had left for Fantastica. At first he didn't recognize the place, and because of the strange objects around him, the stuffed animals, the skeleton, and the paintings, he thought for a brief moment that this might be a different part of Fantastica. But then, catching sight of his school satchel and the rusty seven-armed candelabrum with the spent candles, he knew where he was.\n\nHow long could it have been since he started on his long journey through the Neverending Story? Weeks? Months? Years? He had once read about a man who had spent just an hour in a magic cave. When he returned home, a hundred years had passed, and of all the people he had known as a child he remembered only one, and he was an old old man.\n\nBastian was aware of the gray daylight, but he could not make out whether it was morning or afternoon. It was bitter cold in the attic, just as on the night of Bastian's departure.\n\nHe disentangled himself from the dusty army blankets, put on his shoes and coat, and saw to his surprise that they were wet as they had been the day when it had rained so hard.\n\nHe looked for the book he had stolen that day, the book that had started him on his adventure. He was determined to bring it back to that grumpy Mr. Coreander. What did he care if Mr. Coreander punished him for stealing it, or reported him to the police? A person who had ridden on the back of the Many-Colored Death didn't scare so easily. But the book wasn't there.\n\nBastian looked and looked. He rummaged through the blankets and looked in every corner. Without success. The Neverending Story had disappeared.\n\n\"Oh well,\" Bastian finally said to himself. I'll have to tell him it's gone. Of course he won't believe me. There's nothing I can do about that. I'll just have to take the consequences. But maybe he won't even remember the book after all this time. Maybe the bookshop isn't even there anymore.\"\n\nHe would soon find out how much time had elapsed. If when he passed through the schoolhouse the teachers and pupils he ran into were unknown to him, he would know what to expect.\n\nBut when he opened the attic door and went down the stairs, there wasn't a sound to be heard. The building seemed deserted. And then the school clock struck nine. That meant it was morning, so classes must have begun.\n\nBastian looked into several classrooms. All were empty. When he went to a window and looked down into the street, he saw a few pedestrians and cars. So the world hadn't come to an end.\n\nHe ran down the steps and tried to open the big front door, but it was locked. He went to the janitor's office, rang the bell and knocked, but no one stirred.\n\nWhat was he to do? He couldn't just wait for someone to turn up. Even if he had spilled the Water of Life, he wanted to go home to his father.\n\nShould he open a window and shout until somebody heard him and had the door opened? No, that would make him feel foolish. It occurred to him that he could climb out of a window, since the windows could be opened from the inside. But the ground-floor windows were all barred. Then he remembered that in looking out of the second-floor window he had seen some scaffolding. Evidently the fa\u00e7ade was being refurbished.\n\nBastian went back up to the second floor and opened the window. The scaffolding consisted only of uprights with boards placed horizontally between them at intervals. He stepped out on the top board, which swayed under his weight. For a moment his head reeled and he felt afraid, but he fought his dizziness and fear. To someone who had been lord of Perilin, this was no problem, even if he had lost his fabulous strength and even though the weight of his little fat body was making things rather hard for him. Calmly and deliberately he found holds for his hands and feet and climbed down. Once he got a splinter in his hand, but such trifles meant nothing to him now. Though slightly overheated and out of breath, he reached the street in good shape. No one had seen him.\n\nBastian ran home. He ran so hard that the books and pens in his satchel jiggled and rattled to the rhythm of his steps. He had a stitch in his side, but in his hurry to see his father he kept on running.\n\nWhen at last he came to the house where he lived, he stopped for a moment and looked up at the window of his father's laboratory. Then suddenly he was seized with fear. For the fast time it occurred to him that his father might not be there anymore.\n\nBut his father was there and must have seen him coming, for when Bastian rushed up the stairs, his father came running to meet him. He spread out his arms and Bastian threw himself into them. His father lifted him up and carried him inside.\n\n\"Bastian, my boy!\" he said over and over again. \"My dear little boy, where have you been? What happened to you?\"\n\nA few minutes later they were sitting at the kitchen table and Bastian was drinking hot milk and eating breakfast rolls, which his father had lovingly spread with butter and honey. Then the boy noticed that his father's face was pale and drawn, his eyes red and his chin unshaven. But otherwise he looked the same as he had long ago, when Bastian went away. And Bastian told him so.\n\n\"Long ago?\" his father asked in amazement. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"How long have I been gone?\"\n\n\"Since yesterday, Bastian. Since you went to school. But when you didn't come home, I phoned your teachers and they told me you hadn't been there. I looked for you all day and all night, my boy. I feared the worst, I put the police on your trail. Oh God, Bastian! What happened? I've been half crazy with worry. Where have you been?\"\n\nThen Bastian began to tell his father about his adventures. He told the whole story in great detail. It took many hours.\n\nHis father listened as he had never listened before. He understood Bastian's story.\n\nAt about midday he interrupted Bastian for a little while. First he called the police to tell them his son had come home and that everything was all right. Then he made lunch for both of them, and Bastian went on with his story. Night was falling by the time Bastian came to the Water of Life and told his father how he had wanted to bring him some but had spilled it.\n\nIt was almost dark in the kitchen. His father sat motionless. Bastian stood up and switched on the light. And then he saw something he had never seen before.\n\nHe saw tears in his father's eyes.\n\nAnd he knew that he had brought him the Water of Life after all.\n\nBastian's father sat him down on his lap and hugged him. When they had sat like that for a long while, his father heaved a deep sigh, looked into Bastian's face, and smiled. It was the happiest smile Bastian had ever seen on his face.\n\n\"From now on,\" said his father, \"everything is going to be different between us. Don't you agree?\"\n\nBastian nodded. He couldn't speak. His heart was too full.\n\nNext morning the winter's first snow lay soft and clean on Bastian's windowsill. The street sounds that came to him were muffled.\n\n\"Do you know what, Bastian?\" said his father at breakfast. \"I think we two have every reason to celebrate. A day like this happens only once in a lifetime\u2014and some people never have one. So I suggest that we do something really sensational. I'll forget about any work and you needn't go to school. I'll write an excuse for you. How does that sound?\"\n\n\"School?\" said Bastian. \"Is it still operating? When I passed through the building yesterday, there wasn't a soul. Not even the janitor was there.\"\n\n\"Yesterday?\" said his father. \"Yesterday was Sunday.\"\n\nBastian stirred his cocoa thoughtfully. Then he said in an undertone: \"I think it's going to take me a little while to get used to things again.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said his father. \"And that's why we're giving ourselves a little holiday. What would you like to do? We could go for a hike in the country or we could go to the zoo. Either way we'll treat ourselves to the finest lunch the world has ever seen. This afternoon we could go shopping and buy anything you like. And tonight\u2014how about the theater?\"\n\nBastian's eyes sparkled. Then he said firmly: \"Wonderful! But there's something I must do first. I have to go and tell Mr. Coreander that I stole his book and lost it.\"\n\nBastian's father took his hand\n\n\"If you like,\" he said, \"I'll attend to that for you.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian. \"It's my responsibility. I want to do it myself. And I think I should do it right away.\"\n\nHe stood up and put on his coat. His father said nothing, but the look on his face was one of surprise and respect. Such behavior in Bastian was something new.\n\n\"I believe,\" he said finally, \"that I too will need a little time to get used to things.\"\n\nBastian was already in the entrance hall. \"I'll be right back,\" he called. \"I'm sure it won't take long. Not this time.\"\n\nWhen he came to Mr. Coreander's bookshop, his courage failed him after all. He looked through the pane with the ornate lettering on it. Mr. Coreander was busy with a customer, and Bastian decided to wait. He walked up and down outside the shop. It was snowing again.\n\nAt last the customer left.\n\n\"Now!\" Bastian commanded himself.\n\nRemembering how he had gone to meet Grograman in Goab, the Desert of Colors, he pressed the door handle resolutely.\n\nBehind the wall of books at the far end of the dimly lit room he heard a cough. He went forward, then, slightly pale but with grave composure, he stepped up to Mr. Coreander, who was sitting in his worn leather armchair as he had been at their last meeting.\n\nFor a long time Bastian said nothing. He had expected Mr. Coreander to go red in the face and scream at him: \"Thief! Monster!\" or something of the kind.\n\nInstead, the old man deliberately lit his curved pipe, screwed up his eyes, and studied the boy through his ridiculous little spectacles. When the pipe was finally burning, he puffed awhile, then grumbled: \"What is it this time?\"\n\n\"I...\" Bastian began haltingly. \"I stole a book from you. I meant to return it, but I can't, because I lost it, or rather\u2014well, I haven't got it anymore.\"\n\nMr. Coreander stopped puffing and took his pipe out of his mouth.\n\n\"What sort of book?\" he asked.\n\n\"The one you were reading the last time I was here. I walked off with it. You were telephoning in the back room, it was lying on the chair, and I just walked off with it.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Mr. Coreander, clearing his throat. \"But none of my books is missing. What was the title of this book?\"\n\n\"It's called the Neverending Story,\" said Bastian. \"It's bound in copper-colored silk that shimmers when you move it around. There are two snakes on the cover, a light one and a dark one, and they're biting each other's tails. Inside it's printed in two different colors\u2014and there are big beautiful capitals at the beginning of the chapters.\"\n\n\"This is extremely odd,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"I've never had such a book. You can't have stolen it from me. Maybe you swiped it somewhere else.\"\n\n\"Oh no!\" Bastian assured him. \"You must remember. It's\u2014\" He hesitated, but then he blurted it out. \"It's a magic book. While I was reading it, I got into the Neverending Story, and when I came out again, the book was gone.\"\n\nMr. Coreander watched Bastian over his spectacles.\n\n\"Would you be pulling my leg, by any chance?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Bastian in dismay. \"Of course not. I'm telling you the truth. You must know that.\"\n\nMr. Coreander thought for a while, then shook his head.\n\n\"Better tell me all about it. Sit down, boy. Make yourself at home.\"\n\nHe pointed his pipe stem at a second armchair, facing his own, and Bastian sat down.\n\n\"And now,\" said Mr. Coreander, \"tell me the whole story. But slowly, if you please, and one thing at a time.\"\n\nAnd Bastian told his story.\n\nHe told it a little more briefly than he had to his father, but since Mr. Coreander listened with keen interest and kept asking for details, it was more than two hours before Bastian had done.\n\nHeaven knows why, but in all that long time they were not disturbed by a single customer.\n\nWhen Bastian had finished, Mr. Coreander puffed for a long while, as though deep in thought. At length he cleared his throat, straightened his little spectacles, looked Bastian over, and said: \"One thing is sure: You didn't steal this book from me, because it belongs neither to me nor to you nor to anyone else. If I'm not mistaken, the book itself comes from Fantastica. Maybe at this very moment\u2014who knows?\u2014someone else is reading it.\"\n\n\"Then you believe me?\" Bastian asked.\n\n\"Of course I believe you,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"Any sensible person would.\"\n\n\"Frankly,\" said Bastian, \"I didn't expect you to.\"\n\n\"There are people who can never go to Fantastica,\" said Mr. Coreander, \"and others who can, but who stay there forever. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both worlds well again.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Bastian, blushing slightly. \"I don't deserve any credit. I almost didn't make it back. If it hadn't been for Atreyu I'd have been stuck in the City of Old Emperors for good.\"\n\nMr. Coreander nodded and puffed at his pipe.\n\n\"Hmm,\" he grumbled. \"You're lucky having a friend in Fantastica. God knows, it's not everybody who can say that.\"\n\n\"Mr. Coreander,\" Bastian asked, \"how do you know all that? I mean\u2014have you ever been in Fantastica?\"\n\n\"Of course I have,\" said Mr. Coreander.\n\n\"But then,\" said Bastian, \"you must know Moon Child.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know the Childlike Empress,\" said Mr. Coreander, \"though not by that name. I called her something different. But that doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"Then you must know the book!\" Bastian cried. \"Then you have read the Neverending Story!\"\n\nMr. Coreander shook his head.\n\n\"Every real story is a Neverending Story.\" He passed his eye over the many books that covered the walls of his shop from floor to ceiling, pointed the stem of his pipe at them, and went on:\n\n\"There are many doors to Fantastica, my boy. There are other such magic books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends on who gets his hands on such books.\"\n\n\"Then the Neverending Story is different for different people?\"\n\n\"That's right,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"And besides, it's not just books. There are other ways of getting to Fantastica and back. You'll find out.\"\n\n\"Do you think so?\" Bastian asked hopefully. \"But then I'd have to meet Moon Child again, and no one can meet her more than once.\"\n\nMr. Coreander leaned forward and lowered his voice.\n\n\"Let an old Fantastica hand tell you something, my boy. This is a secret that no one in Fantastica can know. When you think it over, you'll see why. You can't visit Moon Child a second time, that's true. But if you can give her a new name, you'll see her again. And however often you manage to do that, it will be the first and only time.\"\n\nFor a moment Mr. Coreander's bulldog-face took on a soft glow, which made it look young and almost handsome.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Coreander,\" said Bastian.\n\n\"I have to thank you, my boy,\" said Mr. Coreander. \"I'd appreciate it if you dropped in to see me now and then. We could exchange experiences. There aren't many people one can discuss these things with.\"\n\nHe held out his hand to Bastian. \"Will you?\"\n\n\"Gladly,\" said Bastian, taking the proffered hand. \"I have to go now. My father's waiting. But I'll come and see you soon.\"\n\nMr. Coreander took him to the door. Through the reversed writing on the glass pane, Bastian saw that his father was waiting for him across the street. His face was one great beam.\n\nBastian opened the door so vigorously that the little glass bells tinkled wildly, and ran across to his father.\n\nMr. Coreander closed the door gently and looked after father and son.\n\n\"Bastian Balthazar Bux,\" he grumbled. \"If I'm not mistaken, you will show many others the way to Fantastica, and they will bring us the Water of Life.\"\n\nMr. Coreander was not mistaken.\n\nBut that's another story and shall be told another time."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Book Store Incident",
        "author": "orphan_account",
        "genres": [
            "Good Omens",
            "Buffy",
            "fanfic"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\"We're lost.\"\n\n\"We're not lost.\"\n\n\"We're lost.\"\n\n\"We. Are. Not. Lost.\"\n\nSpike sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. They had been circling the same part of London for about a half an hour, trying to find a certain bookstore. Giles was certain that it was 'around here somewhere', Dawn was complaining about being 'bored Buffy can we go yet?' Buffy was about two seconds from reaching over and forcibly removing Giles from the driver's seat and Spike was ready to stake himself.\n\n\"What's so important about this bookstore that we've spent forever looking for it, again?\" Dawn asked, slumping back in her seat. A young woman of almost twenty now, she had much better things to do in London than search for some mouldy old bookshop.\n\n\"It's rumored to have the largest selection of occult books in the entire country.\" Giles said, turning his map around to match the direction they were pointed in, \"The owner, however, has been quite resistant to dealing with the Watchers Council, so I'm hoping that if we show up looking more like regular customers, we might be able to persuade him into parting with one or two of his books.\"\n\n\"Fat chance of that. I've heard of this guy, he never sells his books.\" Spike pitched in, \"You'd have an easier time yanking teeth out of a live dragon.\"\n\n\"Thank you for your confidence Spike, it's so very helpful.\" Giles grumbled, finally moving the car forward again.\n\n\"Are you sure you want to be finding this place? I know you've got a book-boner, but I've heard some serious rumors about this place.\" Spike said, \"Not to mention that the rumors themselves are about as old as me. The owner is most likely not human.\"\n\n\"You're not human, and we trust you.\" Buffy said, twisting around to grin cheekily at him. He puffed out his cheeks.\n\n\"I'm still dangerous.\" he grumbled, \"I could easily kill two out of three people in this car.\"\n\n\"Sure Spike. I'm so terrified.\" Dawn mumbled, resting her head on his shoulder. The fact that he automatically adjusted his position to accommodate her said nothing about his state as a scary monster, nothing.\n\n\"Oh, there it is.\" Giles gleefully exclaimed, pulling over to the side of the street behind a black Bentley. They all got out of the car and paused to stretch before wandering up to the store front.\n\n\"Is it even open?\" Buffy asked, trying to peer through the window.\n\n\"The sign says it is.\" Dawn commented. There was no noise from inside, and they couldn't see movement through the shutters.\n\n\"Come on, let's not loiter.\" Giles said, reaching for the door, \"It's not locked, so I'm going to assume it's open.\"\n\n\"Because that's never gotten us in trouble before.\" Buffy said sarcastically, following her former Watcher through the door.\n\nGiles rolled his eyes and stepped inside, \"Hello?\" he called into the darkened shop, \"Is anyone there?\"\n\n\"We're paying customers!\" Spike called, \"With money and everything!\"\n\n\"I think I hear something.\" Buffy said, cautiously walking towards the back of the store. Spike heard the shuffles and grunts and fell into step behind Buffy, ready to back her up if things got hairy.\n\nThey approached a door marked 'Employees Only' and stopped. Buffy pressed her ear against the wood, listening for sounds of distress. She looked back at Spike and nodded, signalling for him to be ready. He crouched into a fighting position just as Buffy threw open the door with a crash. They rushed into the room, ready to fight whatever assailant was attacking the proprietor of the bookstore (or fight the bookstore owner who was attacking an innocent bystander, you know, whichever).\n\n\"What the hell!?\" came a shout, \"What are you doing!? Who the hell are you!?\"\n\nThe source of the shout was a stout man with greyish-blonde hair, who was currently standing in the open V of another man's long legs as he reclined backwards over a desk. The state of undress the two men was a dead giveaway of what exactly they had been doing before Buffy had kicked in the door.\n\n\"Oh my God, I'm so sorry.\" Buffy choked out, backtracking through the door ineffectually, crashing into Spike and causing them both to get stuck. The problem was further agitated by Spike attempting to snap a photo of the two men on his phone.\n\n\"As you should be. What the hell are you doing here?\" the blonde man asked, having put himself back together (when had he done that?) and now striding toward the group.\n\n\"We're customers.\" Giles said overtop the heads of the other three, \"It says you're open.\"\n\n\"Bloody hell.\" the man grumbled, \"Well, we're closed now. Goodbye.\"\n\n\"Now now Az, don't be rude.\" the dark man said, finally coming forward. Unlike his counterpart, his shirt was still open, giving everyone a view of his lightly muscled torso and tanned skin (thought oddly enough, he was wearing dark sunglasses), \"It's been a while since you had customers. You wouldn't want to be rude, would you? That would be so bad of you.\" he all but purred.\n\n'Az' all but glared the other man into a fine red mist, \"You'll pay for this, Crowley.\" he hissed, then turned back to the still stunned group crowded into the doorway, \"What can I help you with?\" he asked cheerfully through gritted teeth.\n\nAfter a momentary pause in which they extracted themselves from the door, Giles proceeded to list a few books he was interested in buying. Az only narrowed his eyes further.\n\n\"Oh gracious, you're bloody Watchers, aren't you?\" he asked, treating 'Watchers' like a particularly nasty swear word.\n\n\"He is.\" Spike said, pointing to Giles, \"That's the Slayer, that's the Slayer's brat sister, and I'm a vampire with a soul.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah, I heard you lot were in London. How it treating you? Some weather isn't it?\" the dark man said, leaning against the front counter, looking very much like a satisfied cat.\n\n\"Crowley, stop getting your skank smell all over my desk.\" Az grumbled in a tone that had the ring of being well-practised.\n\n\"It's cologne love, expensive cologne.\" Crowley shot back, though he didn't sound annoyed.\n\n\"You smell like an unwashed rent boy.\" Az said, \"You look like an unwashed rent boy. Fix your shirt.\"\n\n\"I don't mind.\" Dawn chipped in, glancing appreciatively up and down Crowley's chest. He gave her a flirty smile.\n\n\"Don't you have customers to be helping, Aziraphale?\" Crowley said, now switching his attentions to Dawn. Aziraphale huffed and turned back to Giles.\n\n\"What books did you want?\" he asked.\n\nGiles blinked, rather thrown by the conversation, \"Do you have the Grimore of the Grey Hastings?\"\n\n\"Yes, it's not for sale.\" Aziraphale said curtly.\n\nGiles frowned, \"The Chronicles of the Byzantine Y'vennes?\"\n\n\"Yes, it's also not for sale.\"\n\n\"The Scroll of Gash-vwin?\"\n\n\"Yes, not for sale.\"\n\nBy now the two men were outright scowling at one another, \"Do you have anything that actually is for sale?\" Giles growled. Aziraphale narrowed his eyes and pushed a rack of tacky, touristy postcards toward him.\n\n\"Ninety-nine pence each.\" he declared.\n\n\"This better than bloody Christmas.\" Spike said, watching the two men with delight.\n\n\"Isn't it just?\" Crowley hummed, \"He's just so cute when he's an asshole to customers.\"\n\nBuffy sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, \"I need new friends.\""
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Librarians 02",
        "author": "Greg Cox",
        "genres": [],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Washington State",
                "text": "\"Have I mentioned how much I hate toga parties?\"\n\nColonel Eve Baird sprinted across the moonlit college campus, inconveniently draped in a rumpled white bedsheet that had been repurposed to serve as standard-issue frat party attire. A veteran counterterrorism agent formerly assigned to NATO, the statuesque blonde generally preferred more sensible clothing, particularly when in the field, but sometimes undercover work required... flexibility, and never more so than when employed by the Library.\n\n\"A couple of times, yeah.\" Jake Stone raced beside her down a tree-lined path leading away from Fraternity Row. His own makeshift toga made running for his life somewhat more difficult than usual, even as it showed off his equally well-built physique. \"Greek life,\" he snorted in disgust. \"See, this is why I got most of my degrees online.\"\n\nHis rugged good looks and gruff manner belied the fact that Stone was a world-class expert on art history and architecture, albeit under an impressive assortment of pseudonyms and false identities. Truth to tell, Baird knew professional spies who had fewer aliases than Stone, but, despite his abundant academic credentials, she doubted he had ever been a frat boy. A wildcat oil rigger and occasional hell-raiser, sure, but not a frat boy.\n\nThank heaven for small favors, Baird thought.\n\nLoud music and raucous laughter blared behind them as they made tracks from the ill-advised revelry at the Gamma Gamma Rho House. The paved walkway provided a shortcut between Fraternity Row, which was located on a hill overlooking Western Cascade University, and the main academic buildings below. Given that it was Friday night, Baird figured most of the student body would be hitting parties instead of the books at the moment\u2014or so she hoped. The fewer potential casualties, the better.\n\nHeavy hooves pounded the pavement behind them, competing with the clamor from the toga party. A ferocious snort sent a chill down Baird's spine.\n\n\"It's still after us!\" she said. \"Keep running!\"\n\n\"Great,\" Stone muttered, even though that was the plan after all. A gold-trimmed alabaster figurine was cradled in his arms. About two feet tall in height, the statue reeked of beer after having been \"baptized\" in a kegger-fueled fraternity ritual. Lipstick and rouge defaced the figure's formerly pristine features. Stone had personally vouched for the relic's authenticity earlier, confirming that it was a genuine cultic idol from a temple in ancient Greece, which went a long way toward explaining the fix they were currently in.\n\nThe pounding of the hooves grew louder. Glancing back over her shoulder, Baird glimpsed a mountainous shape barreling toward them. Steam rose from a pair of large flared nostrils. Maddened red eyes glowed like hellfire. Ivory tusks gleamed in the night.\n\nAt least we're luring it away from the party, she thought. Lucky us.\n\nReaching the bottom of the hill, they dashed onto a red-brick quad surrounded by various college buildings housing lecture halls, laboratories, and libraries. Newer buildings of glass and steel squatted across from older, ivy-covered brick edifices dating back to the college's founding. A dish-shaped fountain, surrounded by low metal benches, sprayed a plume of water into the air. Canvas banners, advertising everything from a peace rally to a used book exchange, adorned the walls of the buildings. Most of the windows were dark, but a few lighted offices suggested that some of the more industrious students and faculty members were working well into the weekend. And despite all the partying on the hill, a handful of college kids were milling about on the quad, engrossed in their phones, their studies, or each other. They gaped at the sight of the two toga-clad strangers dashing onto the quad.\n\n\"Run!\" Baird shouted at the kids, concerned for their safety. She had thought this part of the campus would be more deserted, but that may have been wishful thinking on her part. \"Vamoose! Scram!\"\n\nShe was used to giving orders, but unfortunately she wasn't dealing with trained soldiers at the moment, or even Librarians. And her ridiculous outfit didn't exactly convey a sense of authority. She tugged the top of her toga farther up onto her shoulder, even though possible wardrobe malfunctions were the least of her worries at the moment.\n\n\"You heard the lady!\" Stone added. \"Get out of here! It's not safe!\"\n\nA studious-looking coed bearing an armload of books peered at them in confusion. Like her fellow students, she made no move to exit the scene, promptly or otherwise.\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" the student asked. \"Who are you anyway?\"\n\n\"We're the Librarians,\" Stone said, even though Baird was technically a Guardian as opposed to an actual Librarian. He held on tightly to the beer-drenched idol in his arms. \"Trust me, you don't want to be here.\"\n\nBefore he could even attempt an explanation, a monstrous beast barreled onto the quad, trampling over an organic herb garden in front of the biology building. The glow from a couple of tall metal lampposts exposed the legendary creature in all its fabled fearsomeness.\n\nThe Calydonian Boar was at least twice the size of any mortal porker, weighing in at more than five hundred pounds at the very least. Piggy red eyes glared balefully from its massive head. Thick black bristles sprouted along its spine, while lethal-looking tusks jutted upward from its lower jaw. Froth spilled from its chomping maw. Its hot breath steamed from its snout. Once employed by the goddess Artemis to punish disrespectful humans back in ancient Greece, the Boar had resumed its mission in modern-day America, thanks to some idiotic frat boys who just had to employ a genuine relic in their drunken rituals.\n\nSome people had no respect for history... or magic.\n\nIntent on avenging the goddess's honor, the Boar charged at Baird and Stone, who had filched the idol from the frat house before the monster could turn the toga party into a massacre. In the bacchanalian bedlam of the party, few revelers had taken note of the narrowly averted rampage. A cast-iron bench got in the monster's way and was reduced to scrap metal beneath its adamantine hooves. The Boar noisily whet its tusks against its stumpy upper chops.\n\nJust another Saturday night, in other words, at least as far as the Librarians were concerned.\n\nPandemonium consumed the quad as terrified students dropped their books and phones and dates to run screaming in every direction. Momentarily distracted by the commotion, the Boar swung its huge head from side to side as though uncertain which annoying mortal to rend to pieces first. Baird instinctively reached for her gun, then remembered that her toga didn't come with a holster. No matter, she thought. The damn thing's hide is probably bulletproof anyway.\n\nAccording to myth, only one weapon had ever brought down the Boar....\n\n\"Sooooo-ie!\" Stone called out. He lifted the besmirched idol above his head. \"Come and get me!\"\n\nFoaming at the mouth, the Boar veered toward Stone, crossing the quad with surprising speed given its bulk. Stone dived out of the way just in time to avoid being gored or trampled, but the Boar was nothing if not persistent. Doubling back, it charged at him again, ignoring the frantic students for the time being.\n\nThat was good for the civilians, Baird observed, but not so great for her cohort.\n\n\"Stone!\" She dashed away from him across the quad. \"Toss me the idol!\"\n\nHe got the idea. \"Catch!\"\n\nThe idol arced through the air before landing heavily in Baird's arms. \"Look who's got the goddess now!\" she yelled at the Boar. \"You got a problem with that, you overgrown reject from a Harryhausen movie?\"\n\nProvoked, the Boar wheeled about and ran at Baird, who suddenly had profoundly mixed feelings about capturing its attention. Its hooves literally tore up the pavement, sending pulverized brick flying. Not wanting to call things too close, she lobbed the idol back over to Stone, who caught it with a greater degree of hand-eye coordination than you might expect from somebody with so many PhDs to his credit. He defied stereotypes, that one.\n\n\"Over here!\" he hollered. \"Wrong way, bacon bits!\"\n\nThe Boar skidded to a halt, trashing more of the quad, and started after Stone again. Baird wondered just how long she and Stone could keep up this death-defying game of keep-away, even as she went long and got ready to receive the idol once more. Her arms were already getting tired. That statue wasn't exactly lightweight....\n\n\"Back to me!\" she yelled. \"Hurry!\"\n\n\"You don't need to tell me twice!\"\n\nHe hurled the idol at her, but the throw fell short, splashing down into the basin of the fountain. Baird held her breath, hoping that the Boar would lunge after the idol, but it kept charging at Stone instead, reminding her that the monster wasn't out to retrieve the idol, but simply to punish those who disrespected it and, by extension, the gods.\n\n\"Crap,\" she muttered.\n\nStone turned and ran, but the frothing razorback was closing in on him. Baird tore one of the canvas banners down from a wall and flapped it loudly to get the Boar's attention. She held it before her like a matador's cape.\n\n\"Hey, Porky! Ol\u00e9!\"\n\n\"That's bulls, not boars!\" Stone corrected her.\n\n\"Not helping!\"\n\nThe flapping cape distracted the Boar anyway. Temporarily abandoning Stone, it thundered toward Baird, who found herself pining for the good old days when all she had to deal with was terrorists and insurgents, not mythological monsters. At the last minute, she swung the banner to one side, so that the Boar plowed into the cape instead of her, slicing it to ribbons. The force of the beast's charge tore the canvas from her grasp even as its bristly hide grazed her side, knocking her off her feet.\n\n\"Baird!\" Stone shouted in alarm.\n\nThe shredded banner was draped over the Boar's head, infuriating it. The monster shook its head violently to rid itself of the annoying encumbrance, and Baird took advantage of the moment to scramble to her feet. She leaned against a tall metal lamppost, catching her breath. Her right leg was raw and sore where the rampaging Boar had scraped against it. It stung like Hades.\n\nNow what? she thought. They couldn't just let the berserk beast keep running amuck. Back in ancient Greece, the Calydonian Boar had terrorized an entire kingdom, laying waste to everything in its path, until it was finally slain by\u2014\n\n\"Watch out!\" Stone hollered. \"Here it comes again!\"\n\nHe wasn't kidding. Baird could practically smell the Boar's rank breath as it bore down on her with murder in its eyes. With nowhere to run, she shimmied up the lamppost to put some distance between her and the monster. As far as she knew, boars\u2014even mythical ones\u2014couldn't climb.\n\nBut that wasn't about to stop the Boar, who slammed into the post hard enough to all but uproot it, with no visible damage to the beast itself. Baird clung to the post for dear life as it tilted precariously at a sixty-degree angle. Snorting, the Boar backed up for another run at the post, which was unlikely to withstand too many blows like that.\n\nWhat the heck is keeping the others? Baird thought impatiently. Anytime now would be good....\n\nAs if on cue, a blinding white flash came from the front door of the college library just across the quad. The door swung open and two more Librarians burst onto the scene. Panting in exhaustion, and looking distinctly worse for wear, Cassandra Cillian and Ezekiel Jones arrived in what Baird desperately hoped was the nick of time. Their clothes were rumpled and torn, their hair was mussed, Ezekiel was missing one shoe, and was Cassandra wearing a pair of... antlers?\n\n\"We've got it!\" Cassandra brandished an antique bow and arrow. The petite redhead waved the weapon enthusiastically. Large blue eyes gleamed with excitement. \"We found it!\"\n\n\"About time!\" Baird clung to the tottering lamppost. \"What took you so long?\"\n\n\"Hey,\" Ezekiel protested. \"You try robbing an ancient Greek temple that's been hidden for thousands of years\u2014and that just happens to be guarded by some very grumpy Harpies.\" He flashed Baird a cocky smile, looking typically pleased with himself. An Australian accent tinged his voice. \"You're welcome, by the way.\"\n\n\"You can tell me all about it... later,\" Baird said. \"At the moment, I could use a little help here.\"\n\nAlthough momentarily distracted by the new arrivals, the Boar rammed its massive skull against the base of the lamppost. Sparks flew where its tusks scored the metal. Baird gulped as the leaning post dropped another fifteen degrees or so, bringing her closer to the frenzied razorback. Gravity tugged on her as she tightened her grip upon the tall iron pole, holding on to it with both arms and legs. Hanging beneath the post, with her back to the demolished pavement, she struggled to get up on top of it instead.\n\n\"Right, sorry,\" Cassandra stammered. She nocked the arrow to the bowstring, but struggled to draw the string back as the sturdy bow resisted her efforts. \"Wow, this is harder than movies make it look!\"\n\nLegend told of how the Calydonian Boar was finally brought down by an arrow loosed by the celebrated Greek heroine Atalanta. Tracking down the long-lost arrow of Atalanta after a couple of millennia had been no easy task, but it was precisely the sort of quest at which the Librarians excelled. Now Baird could only hope that history\u2014and myth\u2014repeated itself.\n\n\"Gimme that.\" Stone ran over and claimed the bow and arrow from Cassandra, pausing for a moment to admire the artifacts. \"A classic recurve bow, as employed in ancient Greece, composed of polished horn per tradition. Craftsmanship and detailing consistent with early Aetolia, fifth century BCE if not earlier...\"\n\nBaird rolled her eyes. Librarians.\n\nAs their Guardian, it was her job to protect her brainy charges, sometimes even from themselves.\n\n\"Less ogling, more shooting!\"\n\n\"Technically, you loose an arrow, you don't shoot it,\" Stone said. \"But... I'm on it.\"\n\nHis upper-body strength proved sufficient to draw back the bowstring. He let fly the arrow, which struck the Boar squarely between the shoulders. It squealed in fury and gnashed its choppers.\n\n\"Nice shot, mate!\" Ezekiel said.\n\nStone shrugged. \"Well, I've done some bow hunting in my time....\"\n\n\"Mind you, I could have made that shot, too,\" Ezekiel said, \"if necessary, that is.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Stone said with a smirk. \"You keep telling yourself that, pal.\"\n\nEzekiel grinned at his friend's disheveled toga. \"Nice look, incidentally. Very Bed, Bath, and Beyond.\"\n\nStone scowled. \"Don't even start....\"\n\n\"Um, guys,\" Baird called. \"We're not done here yet.\"\n\nAlthough wounded, the Boar was still up and about. Snorting and squealing, it furiously rubbed its back against the tottering lamppost, trying to dislodge the wooden arrow jutting from its back. Ichor trickled down its hide, but the monster seemed as preternaturally powerful as ever. The unsteady lamppost shook from the impact of the Boar's frantic activity. An exposed electrical cable, severed and sparking, hissed like an angry serpent.\n\n\"I don't understand.\" Cassandra looked on in confusion. \"Why isn't it working?\"\n\n\"Beats me,\" Stone said. \"In the myth\u2014\" His eyes lit up as he put it together. \"In the myth, the Boar was famously defeated by a woman warrior\u2014after all the male heroes had failed.\" He shouted at Baird. \"You hearing me?\"\n\n\"Loud and clear.\" She sighed in resignation. \"Guess it's up to me.\"\n\nLetting go of the tilting post, she dropped onto the Boar's back. Its spiny bristles scraped her flesh, but she grabbed the jutting arrow shaft with both hands to keep from being thrown off the bucking monster. No way was she falling off the Boar and under its angry hooves. She hadn't survived magical transformations, time travel, and a couple of near apocalypses just to get trampled by an overgrown potbellied pig.\n\n\"Time to put you down for good.\"\n\nGripping the arrow with all her strength, she drove it deeper into the Boar's hefty body, aiming for where she guessed its heart should be. An anguished squeal rewarded her effort as the ancient wooden arrow pierced something soft and vulnerable deep inside the creature. A tremor shook the Boar from head to tail, almost unseating Baird, before the previously solid monster dissolved into a puff of thick gray smoke that smelled vaguely of pork chops. Baird tumbled onto the broken pavement as the beast vanished out from under her.\n\n\"Ouch!\" she exclaimed. \"Remind me to do that over grass next time!\"\n\nThe Librarians rushed to her side. \"You did it!\" Cassandra blurted. \"You bested the Boar... just like Atalanta!\"\n\n\"No, we did it.\" Baird let go of the arrow, which clattered onto the ground. \"It was a team effort all around, just like always.\"\n\nStone helped her to her feet. \"Is that it? Are we done?\"\n\n\"Pretty much.\" She dusted herself off before wading into the fountain to retrieve the idol. \"Now we just need to get this back to the Library so Jenkins can undesecrate it somehow.\"\n\n\"Er, I think the word for that is consecrate,\" Cassandra said. \"Or maybe reconsecrate?\"\n\n\"Whatever,\" Baird said. \"Just so long as it defuses this puppy.\"\n\n\"Hang on.\" Ezekiel turned toward the noise coming from the party on the hill. Fireworks exploded in the air above the raucous celebration. Explosions briefly drowned out the dance music until somebody turned the volume up to eleven. \"What's the rush? Sounds like quite the blast.\" He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. \"Which means we're talking drunk college boys who aren't paying close attention to their valuables.\"\n\nA master thief as well as a Librarian, Ezekiel often had his own, somewhat questionable priorities.\n\n\"Forget it,\" Baird said firmly, laying down the law. Her soggy toga dripped onto the shattered pavement. \"I've had all the Greek-a-palooza I can handle tonight.\"\n\nCassandra retrieved the arrow. \"I'm with Baird. It's been a long day... night... whatever.\" She fought back a yawn. \"I'm getting jet lag from hopping from America to Greece and back again.\"\n\nEzekiel started to protest again. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"No buts.\" Baird held up her hand to forestall any further debate. \"Home it is.\" She took a closer look at Cassandra. \"So what's with the antlers, Red?\"\n\nBlushing, the smaller woman removed the bony tines crowning her head, as though she had forgotten about them.\n\n\"It's a long story,\" she said.\n\n\"Can't wait to hear it.\" Baird herded the Librarians toward the waiting doorway. Beyond the entrance to the college library, another Library awaited.\n\nThe Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Not long before",
                "text": "[ Ohio ]\n\nMary Simon hummed to herself as she rinsed off some dirty dishes in the sink before putting them in the washer. Sunlight shone through the kitchen windows, which offered a pleasant view of the fields and barn outside. Country crafts and floral wallpaper decorated the tidy kitchen of the farmhouse she shared with her husband, Dale. A plump older woman, wearing an apron over a blue gingham dress, Mary marveled at the amount of dirty dishes piled up in the sink. It was hard to imagine that two people could go through so many cups and plates and silverware in just a day or two.\n\nYou'd think we were running a bed-and-breakfast, she thought.\n\nSqueaks and scratches, coming from right behind her, startled her. Spinning around, she was shocked to discover three large, ugly rodents occupying the solid pine kitchen island across from the sink, rooting greedily through her fruit bowl. The mice or rats or gophers or whatsits were the size of tabby cats, with greasy gray fur, twitching noses and whiskers, nasty yellow teeth, tufted ears... and no eyes to speak of.\n\nJust flesh and fur where their beady eyes should have been.\n\nShe gasped in fright. A china saucer slipped from her fingers, crashing down onto the floor, where it shattered loudly, but neither the crash nor Mary's audible reaction scared the monstrous creatures away. Instead they turned their blind faces toward her, grunting and squeaking aggressively. Mary backed up against the kitchen counter, alarmed; she was no shrinking violet when it came to mice and bats and such, but for all she knew these grotesque creatures were diseased. There was no telling what they might do.\n\n\"Shoo!\" she yelled at them. \"Scoot, you filthy vermin!\"\n\nThe rodents sprang at her instead. Vicious little teeth and claws flew at her.\n\nYe Gods!\n\nQuick reflexes saved her from being scratched or bitten. She ducked out of the way just in time, so that the frenzied mice landed in the sink and on the kitchen counter, knocking over plates, dishes, Mason jars, and a coffeepot. The clatter added to the chaos, which would have surely attracted Dale had he not been out doing errands. Mary was on her own against the sightless invaders.\n\nBut not without resources.\n\nShe plucked a large steak knife from the knife rack on the counter and slashed at the nearest rodent as it scrambled out of the sink. Swinging wildly, she missed its head, but managed to slice off the tip of its tail. The creature squealed in protest, then fled in panic.\n\n\"That's right! You'd better run!\" She waved the knife at the other two rodents and charged at them, shouting. \"What about you? You want a piece of me, too?\"\n\nFaced with a knife-wielding Mary, who meant business, the two remaining creatures chose the better part of valor. They leaped from the counter, joining their compatriot on the floor, and all three hightailed it toward a latched screen door leading out to the backyard. The fleeing rodents tore through the wire mesh as though it wasn't there, shredding the screen, before disappearing down the back steps.\n\nGood-bye and good riddance!\n\nHer ire up, she was briefly tempted to chase after them, but the impulse faded before she took more than a step in that direction. Panting, she leaned back against the counter to catch her breath and steady her nerves. The rush of adrenaline subsided, leaving her shaking and still clutching the knife, just in case the nasty little creatures wanted a rematch. Broken china crunched beneath the soles of her sensible shoes, reminding her of the wrecked crockery on the floor. All that was left of the invasion was the mess, the gashed screen door\u2014and a bloody tip of tail resting on the counter. Mary shook her head in bewilderment.\n\nHer husband was not going to believe this.\n\n[ Northumberland, United Kingdom ]\n\nThe weekly farmers' market was just getting under way, but Percy McQueen was optimistic about the day's prospects. Shoppers were already flocking to his vegetable stand, drawn not just by his generous selection of fresh produce but by the prize pumpkin on display in front of the stand. Weighing in at nearly seven hundred kilograms, the mammoth orange pumpkin was eye-catching to say the least. Percy figured it was worth its weight in free advertising.\n\nAnd then it started shaking.\n\nOut of the blue, and for no obvious reason, the pumpkin began rocking back and forth like a Mexican jumping bean. A little boy, who had been admiring the huge gourd up close, jumped backward in alarm, while nearby passersby and browsing shoppers reacted in surprise as well. Percy shared their confusion.\n\n\"What the blooming hell?\" he blurted.\n\nPercy glanced around the market to see if perhaps he'd somehow overlooked a sudden earthquake or underground explosion, but, no, nothing else seemed to be shaking and none of the other fruits and vegetables were acting up.\n\nJust his pumpkin, which appeared to be having a fit of some sort.\n\nPercy scurried out from behind his stand to investigate, even as the pumpkin's antics drew a crowd of puzzled spectators, who looked to him for an explanation, very much in vain, and peppered him with questions he couldn't begin to answer.\n\n\"Make way!\" He shoved his way through the crowd to get closer to the bucking pumpkin. \"Let me through!\"\n\nMuffled shouting reached his ears and he realized in shock that the cries seemed to be coming from inside the pumpkin. Straining his ears, he thought he could almost make out the words:\n\n\"Help! Help me, please!\"\n\n\"Oh my Lord,\" a shopper exclaimed. \"There's someone inside!\"\n\n\"No,\" Percy whispered. \"That's not possible.\"\n\nBy all appearances, the bumpy orange shell of the pumpkin was still intact. There was no way in or out. He had to be hearing things, along with everyone else. Or maybe there was a puckish ventriloquist at work?\n\nA fist, covered in goop, punched its way out of the pumpkin. Frantic fingers clawed at the outside of the shell, trying to tear it open. A woman's voice clearly escaped the punctured gourd.\n\n\"Help me, someone! Get me out of here!\"\n\nGalvanized by her cries, the crowd came to her rescue. Volunteers rushed forward and started tearing apart the shell with their bare hands, tossing great chunks of the shell and pulp aside in their haste to liberate whoever was impossibly trapped inside the giant pumpkin. Percy looked on in amazement as, within a matter of minutes, his prize pumpkin was torn asunder by the crowd and a distressed young woman was pulled from its pulpy innards, almost as though the gourd had given birth to her.\n\n\"Thank you! Thank you so much!\" she said. \"I was kicking and screaming, but I didn't know if anyone could hear me....\"\n\nGooey pumpkin guts coated the woman, obscuring her identity. Pumpkin seeds clung to her hair and skin and clothing. An oversized university T-shirt, now slimed with mashed pumpkin, protected her modesty, while a North Country accent marked her as a local, not that Percy immediately recognized her under all the gunk. Gasping for air, she looked around in confusion.\n\n\"Where am I? How did I get here?\"\n\nShe stared down at the trashed remains of her former prison.\n\n\"A pumpkin? I was inside a pumpkin?\"\n\nShe sounded every bit as flabbergasted as everyone else, if not more so.\n\n\"So you were, miss,\" Percy volunteered. \"I don't suppose you have any notion as to how you came to be in such... an unusual predicament?\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"Not a bloody clue!\"\n\n[ Florida ]\n\nThe cherry picker was parked alongside the busy highway. Up in the bucket, high above the shoulder of the road, George Cole diligently pruned a row of palm trees insulating a suburban neighborhood from the noise and activity of the roadway. A youngish black man in his mid-twenties, he wore a hard hat and work clothes. Old-school rap came over his headphones as he bobbed his head to the beat while sawing away at a dead branch that posed a potential traffic hazard. State law required that palm trees be pruned at least twice a year. Cole appreciated the job security that provided.\n\nThank you, Ma Nature, he thought.\n\nTo be sure, tree trimming was just his day job, to pay his bills until his true vocation brought in serious green, which he figured was any day now. In the meantime, however, he couldn't really complain about his current gig, especially on a beautiful day like today. Sunshine, fresh air, nice weather...\n\nKnock on wood.\n\nHe rapped on the nearest branch, but the precaution came too late. Without warning, and in defiance of this morning's forecast, the weather suddenly went sour. Heavy gray clouds blew in from nowhere, darkening the sky. Violent winds whipped up, rattling the bucket.\n\n\"Whoa!\" he exclaimed. \"Where did this come from?\"\n\nThe crane was built to withstand a little wind, but the elevated bucket was already shaking like a carnival ride, making Cole grateful for the safety straps holding him securely within the bucket. Putting down his pruning saw, for safety's sake, he took off his headphones. Run-D. M. C. went away, replaced by howling winds that sounded like a hyped-up crowd roaring in a packed stadium. To his alarm, the bucket began to sway back and forth at the end of the crane's extendable metal arm.\n\nScrew this, he thought. We're done here.\n\nLeaning over the edge of the bucket, he called down to the crane operator, shouting to be heard over the sudden gale.\n\n\"Hey! Get me down from\u2014\"\n\nBefore he could finish, a sudden gust hit him with the force of a hurricane. The wind ripped him straight out of his safety harness and up into the air, dozens of feet above the pavement. A scream tore itself from his lungs, but was drowned out by the ferocious wind roaring in his ears. He grabbed frantically for a treetop, but he couldn't hold on to it. The wind was just too strong.\n\nOh, crap, he thought. I'm a dead man.\n\nThe capricious wind played with him like a cat with a mouse, batting him about way up high in the air, while cruelly allowing him too much time to think about the hard landing coming up all too soon. There was no way he could survive a fall from this height. His future was... splat!\n\nGood-bye, Miami. You don't know who you're losing.\n\nHe waited for his life to pass before his eyes, but instead he found himself wondering who was going to show up for his funeral and what they were going to say about him. He hoped he got a good turnout at least.\n\nThe wind kept toying with him. Instead of dropping him straight onto the highway, it carried him up and over the fringe of trees toward the residential neighborhood beyond. Tumbling through the air, at least sixty, seventy feet above the ground, he glimpsed rooftops, houses, garages, driveways, lawns, backyards, slides, and swing sets. He offered a silent apology to whatever unsuspecting family he was about to drop in on....\n\nThe wind went away, exiting as quickly as it had arrived. No longer held aloft by the gale, he plunged toward a grassy green yard below. Closing his eyes, he braced for the impact and hoped he wouldn't feel a thing.\n\nWhat a whacked-out way to go....\n\nHe hit a taut surface... and bounced back up in the air again.\n\nAnd bounced some more.\n\nExpecting to be splattered, it took him a few moments to process that he was still alive... unless the Sweet Hereafter was a lot more energetic than he'd expected. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to find himself coming to rest on a kid's trampoline in somebody's backyard.\n\n\"You gotta be kidding me,\" he muttered. \"What are the odds?\"\n\nThere was lucky, and there was lucky, and then there was this, which was off-the-charts miraculous. So much for me ever winning the lottery, he thought. I just used up a lifetime's worth of good karma in one drop.\n\nBut where had that crazy wind come from in the first place?\n\nA scowl crossed his face, despite escaping certain death.\n\nSomething wasn't right here. Not one bit."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "\"That's more like it,\" Baird said.\n\nThe triumphant Guardian looked and felt more like herself, thanks to a quick shower and change of clothes. She strode into the cozy ground-floor office of the Library's Portland Annex, which was connected to the Library proper, as well as to the rest of the world, by various magical doorways bypassing ordinary space. Antique electric lights cast a golden glow over polished wooden bookcases sagging under the weight of countless volumes, whose esoteric subject matter defied the limits of the Dewey Decimal System. A vintage card catalog ran along one side of a sweeping staircase leading up to the mezzanine. Baird was happy to see that the rest of her team had freshened up as well.\n\nNo more togas or antlers, she noted. Works for me.\n\nAs she entered the office, Jenkins was performing some bizarre ablutions over the liberated idol, which now rested atop a cluttered oak conference table. A dapper, silver-haired older gentleman in a conservative gray suit, he chanted in what Baird assumed was ancient Greek while anointing the cleaned-up figure with olive oil. (Extra-virgin, she assumed.) A parchment scroll, held down by a paperweight, was unrolled for easy consultation. Burning incense tickled Baird's nose. She worried briefly about the Annex's smoke detectors and sprinkler system.\n\nBut Jenkins seemed to know what he was doing. A brilliant silver aura flared like moonlight around the idol before swiftly fading away. A strong wind, redolent of forests and fields, wafted through the office, rustling papers and pages. Baird tensed, bracing herself for action, but the unearthly wind departed without leaving any irate swine behind. Strange, ethereal music came out of nowhere, as though from an invisible lute or lyre, then died away.\n\n\"There.\" Jenkins flicked the last of the oil from his fingertips. Drawing a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, he fastidiously wiped his hands clean. \"I believe we can safely pronounce the gods appeased.\"\n\n\"So case closed?\" Baird asked. \"No more 'Release the Kraken' scenarios for the time being?\"\n\n\"I believe so. Rest assured, however, that I will see to it that this sacred idol of Artemis Laphria occupies a place of honor in the Library's Greco-Roman gallery. Hell hath no fury like a goddess disrespected.\" He sighed heavily. \"Trust me, I speak from experience.\"\n\nBaird could believe it. Although Jenkins appeared to be in his sixties, she was well aware that his actual age could be numbered in centuries. Even with all she knew about his past, she guessed that she had still barely scratched the surface.\n\n\"Any word from Flynn?\" she asked him.\n\n\"I'm afraid not, Colonel Baird.\" He checked to make sure his bow tie was not askew. \"But, as you well know, Mr. Carsen often charts his own course.\"\n\n\"Don't I know it,\" she said, sighing.\n\nAt one time, Flynn Carsen had been the only Librarian in modern times, single-handedly guarding arcane knowledge and relics that were too dangerous not to be stored away in the Library. So when the Library had recruited four new Librarians (and a Guardian to look after them), Flynn had struggled to adjust, often preferring to fly solo and disappear on quests of his own. It was hardly out of character, Baird reminded herself, for him to drop off the radar for days or even weeks at a time.\n\nStill, I thought he'd gotten better about checking in with me....\n\n\"Well, keep me posted if you hear from him,\" she instructed Jenkins, trying not to let her disappointment show. She and Flynn had become more than just Guardian and Librarian; they really had something special, or so she liked to think. And then he pulls another vanishing act like this.\n\nJenkins nodded. \"You may rely on it, Colonel.\"\n\nHe carefully lifted the idol from the table and headed off into the deeper reaches of the Library. His footsteps had fully receded into the distance when, without warning, the Clippings Book acted up. A large hardcover tome packed with old-fashioned press clippings, such as newspapers employed back in the predigital era, the Clippings Book was the Librarians' early-alert system when it came to supernatural matters demanding their attention. It thumped atop its stand as an unseen force turned its pages.\n\n\"Uh-oh,\" Baird said. \"No rest for the wicked.\"\n\n\"Who are you calling wicked?\" Ezekiel quipped. He was seated at the far end of the conference table, with his sneakers up on the table. A ringtone came from his phone. \"Hold on, I'm getting an alert, too.\"\n\nEach of the new Librarians had been gifted with their own personal Clippings Book, smaller and more portable than the hefty, leather-bound volume kept at the Annex. Ezekiel, who had little patience with old-school, analog technology, had naturally converted his Clippings Book into an app for his phone.\n\n\"Me, too,\" Stone announced, sitting up straight. He fished a pocket-sized scrapbook from his back pocket. Bound pages flipped themselves.\n\n\"Me, three!\" Cassandra sprang to her feet. \"Or four, I guess, counting the big book.\"\n\n\"That's unusual,\" Baird said, frowning. \"Are we talking four different alerts, or just an all-points bulletin?\"\n\n\"Good question,\" Stone said. \"What have we got here?\"\n\nEzekiel peered at his phone. \"Mine's about some mutant rats\u2014\"\n\n\"A miraculous escape from death,\" Cassandra interrupted, talking over Ezekiel.\n\n\"A giant pumpkin?\" Stone said. \"What the\u2014?\"\n\n\"Whoa there! Not all at once.\" Baird held up her hands to quiet the overlapping voices. \"One at a time, please, starting with the office copy.\"\n\nThe original Clippings Book sat open atop the table. Approaching it, she saw that, as usual, a new clipping had appeared on a previously blank page. She read the headline aloud.\n\n\"No Happy Endings. 'Mother Goose' Theme Park Scheduled for Demolition.\"\n\nA quick scan of the press clipping revealed that a long-abandoned amusement park in New Jersey, Mother Goose's Magic Garden, was soon to be bulldozed over. A black-and-white photo accompanying the article showed a dilapidated fun house in the shape of a giant shoe\u2014as in \"There was an Old Lady,\" presumably. Baird raised an eyebrow at the word magic. She used to think that real magic only existed in fairy tales.\n\nNow she knew better.\n\n\"Your turn,\" she told Ezekiel.\n\n\"Local Woman Assailed by Rodents,\" he read from his phone, before summarizing the rest of the article. \"A woman, who lives in some hick town in Ohio I've never heard of, had a run-in with some bad-tempered rats. Had to fight them off with a knife, actually. But here's the freaky part: according to her, the rats didn't have any eyes. Like they were deformed mutant rats from some pitch-black underground lair or something.\"\n\n\"Ugh.\" Cassandra shuddered. \"Not a big fan of rodents, eyeless or not.\"\n\n\"Can't blame you there.\" Baird made a mental note to read Ezekiel's clipping herself at some point. She nodded at Cassandra. \"What have you got, Red?\"\n\nThe rat-phobic Librarian, whose interests included math, science, and sorcery, glanced down at her own notebook.\n\n\"Lucky Tree Trimmer Survives Unlucky Fall,\" she recited. \"Seems a tree trimmer in Miami was blown off an elevated cherry picker by a freak gust of wind, falling more than eighty feet, but, miraculously, he landed on a kid's trampoline in a neighboring backyard and walked away unharmed.\" She lifted her gaze from the clipping. \"Wow, what are the odds....\"\n\nHer gaze turned inward, and Baird could practically see her starting to calculate exactly what those odds were. Cassandra's brain was like a computer, but sometimes she could get lost inside it as she got carried away by the ideas and equations flooding her mind.\n\n\"Earth to Cassandra.\" Baird snapped her fingers in front of the other woman's eyes. \"Stay with us here, Cassie. We're going to need your help figuring this out.\"\n\nCassandra blinked and her eyes came back into focus. \"Sorry. Little distracted by the various probability factors at play in this scenario, including wind velocity, rate of downward acceleration, the surface tension and structural integrity of the trampoline, and so on. There's a lot to look at here.\"\n\nBaird knew Cassandra was speaking literally. When her brain kicked into full gear, Cassie could actually see mathematical equations and figures swirling before her eyes in the form of visual hallucinations. A grape-sized tumor in her brain gave Cassandra something called synesthesia, which caused her senses to get cross-wired in unique ways. Numbers were colors, math had a smell, science rang in her ears like music... or so Baird understood.\n\n\"I get it,\" Baird said, \"but let's stay focused on the big picture before you go too deep into the specifics.\"\n\nCassandra nodded. \"Don't worry. You have my full attention.\"\n\n\"I never doubted it,\" Baird said. In fact, Cassandra had gained a lot more control over her condition since her early days as a Librarian, only a few years ago. It took a lot to make her go into meltdown mode these days. \"Okay, Stone, you're up. You said something about... a pumpkin?\"\n\n\"A big pumpkin, apparently.\" He read from his notebook: \"Modern-Day Cinderella? Area Woman Wakes Up in Pumpkin.\" He scowled as he reviewed the article. \"According to this, a college professor in England went to bed one night and awoke to find herself trapped inside a prize pumpkin at a nearby farmers' market. She managed to kick and punch her way out, with some help from other shoppers who heard her yelling for help, but... how does something like that even happen?\"\n\n\"You can still ask that?\" Baird said. \"After everything we've seen on this job?\"\n\n\"You got me there,\" Stone conceded. \"But... rats, pumpkins, a trampoline? How does it all add up, and is it even supposed to? Are we talking one big case or four completely unrelated ones?\"\n\n\"My money's on the former,\" Baird said, \"but I'm not seeing the pattern yet. What connects all these incidents?\"\n\n\"The pumpkin and rats point toward Cinderella,\" Cassandra observed, \"but I'm not sure where my lucky tree trimmer fits in.\"\n\nBaird groaned. \"I thought we were done with Cinderella after that business with the fairy tales a couple years ago.\" Embarrassing memories of her morphing into a swooning princess type surfaced from her memory. \"God, I hate reruns.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Cassandra said with a grin. \"Being Prince Charming was kind of fun for a while.\"\n\n\"Easy for you to say. You weren't stuck being a damsel in distress.\"\n\nStone walked over to inspect the primary Clippings Book. \"Forget Cinderella,\" he said. \"I think that's a red herring. I'm guessing that this clipping is the key to the puzzle since it was directed at all of us.\" He pondered the newspaper article newly pasted into the book. \"Mother Goose's Magic Garden.\" He scratched his chin thoughtfully. \"Mother Goose...\"\n\n\"Right!\" Baird sensed they were on the right track; it was the same gut feeling she used to get when she was closing in on a terrorist base or black-market WMDs. \"Mother Goose, not the Brothers Grimm. Nursery rhymes, not fairy tales.\"\n\n\"The eyeless rodents!\" Stone exclaimed. \"The Three Blind Mice.\"\n\n\"Good! Now we're getting somewhere.\" Baird seized on the electricity of the moment, urging her Librarians on. \"And the woman in the pumpkin?\"\n\n\"Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,\" Ezekiel chimed in. \"Had a wife but couldn't keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell... yada, yada, yada.\"\n\n\"Nice!\" Baird was impressed and a little surprised; Ezekiel was great at computers and heists, but was hardly the most literary of Librarians. \"Good work, Jones.\"\n\n\"No problem.\" He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. \"What kid didn't learn those rhymes growing up?\"\n\nBaird turned toward Cassandra. \"What about your skydiving tree trimmer? Any ideas?\"\n\n\"Give me a minute.\" Cassandra closed her eyes, the better to leaf through her photographic memory. Her hands traced odd patterns in the air, as though she was sorting through hallucinatory files only she could see, while using her amazing brain as her own personal search engine. \"Heights, falling, gravity, trees, wind...\" Her eyes snapped open. \"I've got it! Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows\u2014\"\n\nBaird saw where she was going and rushed ahead to the end of the rhyme. \"The cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all!\"\n\n\"Bingo!\" Stone said. \"That's three out of three. This is definitely a Mother Goose thing!\"\n\n\"Mother Goose?\" Jenkins reentered the office. His sober expression grew even more so. \"Please tell me we don't have a Mother Goose situation on our hands.\"\n\nThere was no trace of humor or irony in his voice. If anything, he sounded genuinely dismayed.\n\nThat can't be good, Baird thought. \"Mother Goose situation?\"\n\n\"The details, please,\" Jenkins said urgently, \"with all deliberate speed.\"\n\nBaird quickly briefed him on the clippings and their own ingenious deductions. \"I take it we should be concerned?\"\n\n\"Alarmed would be the better word. Terrified works also.\" Jenkins remained standing, but looked as though he needed to sit down. \"From what you're telling me, I can only conclude that the Mother Goose Treaty has indeed been broken.\"\n\nHis dire tone made it clear that this was no laughing matter.\n\n\"The what again?\" Baird asked. \"Maybe you should start at the beginning, especially for those of us who haven't thought much about Mother Goose since kindergarten.\"\n\n\"That is probably for the best.\" Jenkins assumed a place at the head of the table; the role of lecturer came naturally to him. \"Please pay close attention. I fear there is no time for you to repeat this class.\"\n\nCassandra sat back down at the table, settling in for Jenkins's trademark exposition. Despite his ominous attitude, her eyes were agleam with excitement. \"So Mother Goose is a real person, too? Like Santa Claus?\"\n\n\"Not quite,\" Jenkins said. \"Mother Goose is a not a person, but rather a title and a position: denoting a custodian of ancient wisdom, passed down from generation to generation as seemingly harmless nonsense rhymes. In the right hands, however, they are actually powerful charms and incantations with the ability to shape and alter reality as we know it.\"\n\nBaird tried to wrap her head around that. \"And we've just been casually teaching them to kids since forever?\"\n\n\"The rhymes were never meant to be written down,\" Jenkins said, \"let alone published. They were only to be transmitted as an oral tradition, but back in 1719, the son-in-law of that generation's Mother Goose, one Elizabeth Goose of Boston, Massachusetts, foolishly printed a collection of the rhymes as a children's book, inadvertently creating a spell book of frightening power.\"\n\n\"Only 1719?\" Baird asked. \"I would've thought that the Mother Goose rhymes were much older than that.\"\n\n\"Oh, many of the rhymes, in their original forms, date back to antiquity, but the first bound collection was in fact published as Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose's Melodies a mere three centuries ago. And even today, tourists in Boston flock to what's claimed to be the grave of the 'real' Mother Goose, blithely unaware that she was actually only one in a long line of Mother Gooses, carrying on an ancient tradition.\"\n\n\"Just like us Librarians,\" Ezekiel said, \"but with a much goofier name.\"\n\n\"Not an entirely inapt comparison, Mr. Jones, although I venture to think that the Library has a much broader purview, as well as a somewhat loftier mission.\"\n\n\"Whatever you say, mate.\" Ezekiel didn't exactly do lofty. \"So what came first, the Library or the Goose?\"\n\n\"That is a matter of some dispute... and hardly germane to our present situation. The events leading up to the Mother Goose Treaty truly began in 1719 with the publication of that first unsanctioned volume, which put all the power of the rhymes into print for the first time in recorded history.\"\n\n\"Hold on,\" Stone interrupted. \"This is coming back to me now, from some research I did a few years ago on the subject of early-eighteenth-century book illustration. If I remember right, no known copies of that first Mother Goose collection are known to exist, and there's even some scholarly debate as to whether the book ever truly existed at all.\"\n\n\"Quite right, Mr. Stone.\" Jenkins sounded like a professor doling out a modicum of praise to one of his less ignorant students. \"Indeed, the original 1719 printing of Mother Goose's Melodies has been described as the most elusive 'ghost volume' in American letters. Many have sought it, but it exists today only as a puzzling bibliographical mystery... or so it is commonly believed.\"\n\n\"But it did exist?\" Cassandra asked. \"For real?\"\n\n\"It did, but the Librarian of that era managed to round up and dispose of every copy of the book, except for a single copy, which remained in the possession of Elizabeth Goose and her family, as a professional courtesy as it were. And so the crisis was contained... for a time.\"\n\n\"Let me guess,\" Baird said. \"One copy of the book was still one too many?\"\n\n\"More like it wasn't enough for all of Elizabeth's descendants. Elizabeth Goose ultimately had six children, ten stepchildren, and innumerable grandchildren, and, over time, a dynastic struggle broke out between three rival branches of the family, with each claiming the title of 'Mother Goose' and the spell book as their inheritance. Matters turned ugly. Family turned against family, spells were invoked, livestock went missing, bathtubs were washed out to sea....\"\n\nCome again? Baird thought.\n\n\"Thankfully, for the sake of humanity, all-out magical warfare was averted by the Mother Goose Treaty of 1918, which was negotiated by yet another Librarian. Said treaty called for the book to be split into three parts between the factions, with each branch of the family charged with guarding their portion and keeping it safe.\"\n\n\"Why three?\" Cassandra asked.\n\n\"It's always three,\" Jenkins said archly, as though that went without saying. \"Except when it's seven.\"\n\nBaird took his word for it. She was getting used to Library logic.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" she said. \"Why didn't that Librarian just take possession of the book and bring it back to the Library for safekeeping? Isn't that standard operating procedure?\"\n\n\"Ideally, yes,\" Jenkins admitted, \"but it was a tricky, highly volatile situation and this was judged an acceptable compromise at the time, and all the more so given that the Librarian of 1918 already had her hands full dealing with Rasputin.\"\n\n\"Wait a second,\" Stone said. \"Didn't Rasputin die in 1916?\"\n\nJenkins snorted. \"That's what history wants you to believe....\"\n\nBaird decided to let that one pass for now, but she understood how an overworked Librarian might need to concentrate on an ongoing threat or adversary. A Dulaque, say, or a Prospero.\n\n\"You mentioned the Mother Goose Treaty once before,\" Cassandra recalled. \"You said something about Beatrix Potter not getting it right?\"\n\n\"Forget Beatrix Potter,\" Jenkins said. \"You might as well consult the Disney cartoon for the truth about The Little Mermaid. We're not dealing with cute little cottontail rabbits here. We're talking about spells and incantations of potentially game-changing scope and potency. If someone is truly violating the Treaty, after all these years, these seemingly trivial incidents could be merely the harbingers of a much greater catastrophe.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Ezekiel asked skeptically. \"It's Mother Goose. How bad could it be?\"\n\n\"Need I remind you just how violent and perverse many of those 'childish' nursery rhymes are? They're positively rife with falls, accidents, drownings, amputations, decapitations, hangings, beatings, fires, theft, murder, grave robbing, and every sort of calamity imaginable, short of a meteor hitting the Earth. There's more cracked skulls and severed limbs in Mother Goose than you'll find in an entire season of cable television.\" Jenkins paused to let his words sink in. \"Granted, as with fairy tales, many of the darker verses have been sanitized over the years, but the potential for harm still remains buried within the rhymes, just waiting to be unleashed. Don't take this matter lightly,\" he warned, \"unless you want your tails cut off with a carving knife.\"\n\nOuch, Baird thought. \"Point taken.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "The family tree grew before Cassandra's eyes, shimmering in the air above her desk. Luminous branches, diverging in all directions, rose up and outward from the tree's roots in colonial New England, tracing the ancestral lines of Elizabeth Goose and her myriad offspring. Cassandra could hear the branches rustling and swaying over the course of three centuries; it was like music in her ears that only she was privy to. The smell of plums and pumpkins and freshly baked pies made her mouth water, even though no such foodstuffs were actually in the vicinity. Phantom feathers tickled her skin, giving her, well, goose bumps.\n\n\"Any progress?\" Baird asked, looking over Cassandra's shoulder. Her voice intruded on Cassandra's attempt to track down Elizabeth Goose's far-flung descendants. \"Job one is locating those three scattered pieces of Mother Goose's Melodies to see which one might have fallen into the wrong hands.\"\n\n\"I know, I know,\" Cassandra said a bit sharply. \"Just let me concentrate. I've got three hundred years of genealogy to map, and don't get me started on the stepkids and their kids and their kids' kids' kids....\"\n\nDog-eared birth registries and census reports were piled atop the desk, while multiple windows were open on the screen of her laptop. Virtual marriage licenses and baptism records shared the screen with popular Web sites designed for tracing one's ancestry. Names and dates poured into Cassandra's brain from multiple sources, nourishing the hallucinatory family tree unfolding before her. She reached out to prune one branch that had come to a dead end during the late 1950s. Using her fingers as scissors, she snipped it off.\n\n\"Sorry.\" Baird backed off. \"Just do your thing. I know you've got this.\"\n\nCassandra appreciated the vote of confidence. She did her best to tune out any outside distractions in order to fully immerse herself in the task at hand. The other Librarians were conducting their own research in and around the office, while Jenkins had excused himself to check on various nursery-rhyme-related papers and relics. Her gaze ascended from the base of the family tree to its upper reaches, which had proliferated at a geometric rate over the generations. Malthusian calculations danced around her head, pealing like church bells, as a slow-motion population explosion scattered Mother Goose's descendants hither and yon. Time and circumstances had cropped off a few tree limbs, making her task a little easier, but that still left plenty more branches to account for. Her mind reeling, Cassandra found herself sympathizing with a certain old woman who lived in a shoe; there were just so many children she didn't know what to do.\n\nDid Mother Goose have to take her title quite so literally?\n\n\"Wanna bet I get there first?\" Ezekiel asked. Lounging in an easy chair on the other side of the office, he swiped through various apps and Web sites on his phone. \"My hacking against Cassandra's superbrain?\"\n\n\"You're on.\" Stone leafed through an illustrated collection of Mother Goose rhymes from the nineteenth century as he sat at the conference table. \"Loser has to clean up after the goats on Level Four.\"\n\n\"I'll get in on that action,\" Baird said, joining them. \"No offense, Jones, but this job is right in Cassandra's wheelhouse. Tracing patterns and seeing connections is what she does best.\"\n\n\"Maybe. Probably,\" Ezekiel said breezily, as though his ego wasn't too invested in the wager. \"Just trying to keep things interesting, you know?\"\n\nBoredom was Ezekiel's archenemy, which he often claimed was his only reason for accepting the Library's job offer in the first place.\n\nCassandra wasn't sure she entirely believed that. Despite the attitude he strove to project, Ezekiel always came through when they needed him most. Still, if he really thought he could beat her at unraveling Mother Goose's convoluted family tree, he was fooling himself in a big way. Shaking off her earlier fatigue, Cassandra dove back into the challenge with renewed determination. Her slender hands made rapid passes in the air, picking up the pace.\n\nGame on, Jones.\n\nCassandra felt like a professional tree trimmer as she mercilessly snipped away at dead branches while trying to shape the sprawling family tree into something manageable. Identifying all of Elizabeth Goose's disparate descendants was only half the battle; the really tricky part was finding some kind of worthwhile leads in the ever-expanding family tree. By Cassandra's calculations, Mother Goose's family had multiplied by several orders of magnitude since the 1700s; they could be looking at thousands of potential suspects, assuming there even were specific individuals at fault in this case. Just trying to narrow the names down to a workable list amounted to pruning an immense family tree down to a few particular branches. She was half-tempted to ask that unusually lucky tree trimmer in Miami for some tips....\n\nHang on, she thought. What was that guy's name again?\n\nInspiration rang like cymbals in her head. Playing a hunch, she consulted her personal Clippings Book, then glanced back at the topmost branches of the Goose family tree. A single name suddenly stood out among the others, glowing incandescently now that she knew what to look for.\n\n\"George Cole,\" she whispered. \"Got you!\"\n\nHer excitement did not escape Baird's attention. \"What is it, Red? Have you got something?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" Cassandra called out to the other Librarians. \"Quick, what are the names of the individuals in your clippings?\"\n\nEzekiel answered first, bringing it up on his phone. \"Mary Simon, of Who Cares, Ohio.\"\n\nCassandra scanned the top of the family tree. Another name brightened before her gaze. Her goose bumps got bumpier.\n\n\"Found her!\" She glanced urgently at Stone. \"Next?\"\n\nHe flipped to the end of his pocket-sized scrapbook. \"Dr. Gillian Fell of Northumberland, England.\" He paused and scratched his head. \"Hold on. Where do I know that name from?\"\n\n\"It's right here!\" Cassandra pointed excitedly at an illuminated name, forgetting for a moment that nobody else could see it. \"It all fits. Every one of the 'victims' in the clippings is a direct descendant of Mother Goose!\"\n\n\"And a possible heir to the title?\" Baird theorized. \"Maybe someone is trying to take out the competition?\"\n\n\"Or perhaps hostilities have already broken out between the various factions?\" Stone said. \"The Mother Goose Wars heating up again?\"\n\n\"Also a possibility,\" Baird conceded. \"In any event, great work, Cassandra. I knew we could count on you.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Cassandra powered down. With a sweep of her hand, she collapsed the illusory family tree to give her eyes (and her brain) a rest. Her wayward senses stabilized, falling back into their usual boxes. The ordinary sounds and smells of the Library replaced any more exotic perceptions. \"Sorry I didn't see the connections more quickly.\"\n\n\"No need to apologize, Cassie. You did good.\" Stone smirked at Ezekiel. \"You lose, pal. Get ready to pay up.\"\n\nEzekiel sighed and put away his phone. \"I was almost there, really, but... whatever. Way to go, Cassandra.\" He flashed a disarming smile at her. \"Just wait until next time.\"\n\n\"Oh, I will.\" She grinned back at him. \"Bring it.\"\n\n\"So now what?\" Stone asked. \"Do we split up to investigate all of these incidents?\"\n\n\"That appears to be what the Library has in mind.\" Baird laid out their battle plan. \"Each of you check out your respective clippings. I'll take that defunct Mother Goose amusement park, while Jenkins mans the home front as usual. We can compare notes once we've got some firsthand intel to share.\"\n\nCassandra closed her books and stepped away from the computer. \"Looks like I'm heading to Miami then.\" She generally preferred it when the team stayed together, but it made sense to split up this time. \"Too bad Flynn isn't around to help out on this case.\"\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" Baird said."
            },
            {
                "title": "New Jersey",
                "text": "Once upon a time, Mother Goose's Magic Garden had delighted generations of children and their parents with its shady, sylvan setting and charming, life-sized re-creations of classic nursery rhymes. Researching the bygone park on the Internet, Baird had turned up assorted postcards and family photos of the Garden in its heyday, when the attractions were freshly painted and the paths and gardens scrupulously maintained, and beaming visitors had been able to wander the winding wooded trails past life-sized fiberglass facsimiles of Little Bo Peep, Wee Willie Winkie, the Man in the Moon, and company. Wooden cottages, picket fences, and brightly blooming flower beds added to the colorful tableaux on display.\n\nTimes had changed, however.\n\nDipping attendance, bankruptcy, abandonment, vandalism, and decay had taken its toll on the once-thriving park, which had officially closed its doors over a decade before. Weeds clotted the overgrown paths and gardens. Peeling paint exposed rusty metal and rotting wood. Graffiti defaced crumbling snack bars and picnic tables. Simple Simon's head rested at the foot of his decapitated body. A spray painted \"anarchy\" symbol tagged Little Miss Muffet's tuffet. Broken window shutters had fallen off the House That Jack Built. Old Mother Hubbard's paint job had been stripped as bare as her cupboard. Creeping moss had turned Little Boy Blue green. The Three Little Kittens had lost their footing as well as their mittens, having toppled over into the underbrush. Pond scum coated the stagnant pool surrounding the Three Wise Men of Gotham who had gone to sea in a bowl. Autumn leaves littered the ground, leaving the trees bare and skeletal. Here and there a bright spot of color had survived time and the elements, hinting at the park's once-festive appearance, but the contrast only made the general dilapidation more glaring. An overcast sky added to the melancholy atmosphere. A John Deere bulldozer was parked by the wreckage, awaiting the demolition crew.\n\n\"Nope,\" Baird muttered. \"This isn't creepy at all.\"\n\nThe Annex's Magic Door had allowed her to bypass the chain-link fence enclosing the condemned park. She had merely stepped through the doorway and, accompanied by a flash of white light and the crackle of eldritch energy, emerged from the front door of a gargantuan wooden shoe. Crossing from Portland to New Jersey meant that it was now past noon, local time, making a long night feel even longer. Faded \"No Trespassing\" signs, posted on tree trunks and a few surviving fence posts, had not deterred her from exploring the forlorn remains of the park. Broken bottles and empty beer cans suggested that the deserted locale had inevitably attracted its fair share of partying teenagers over the years, but as far as she could tell she currently had the ruins to herself. She kept her guard up, however, since it never hurt to keep sharp while on a mission. Her surroundings looked safe enough, if a trifle depressing, but the Clippings Book had alerted the Librarians to this site for a reason, so there was bound to be something amiss.\n\nBest not to take chances, she thought. Magic can be a minefield.\n\nAfter taking a few moments to get her bearings, she got down to business and unclipped a device hooked to her belt: a handheld scanner designed to detect magical energy or its residue. The device resembled a steampunk egg beater with four gleaming steel spheres at the end of its probes. Cassandra, who was forever tinkering with the detector to improve its accuracy and reliability, had tried to explain to Baird how exactly the device worked, but most of it had flown over Baird's head. Dirty bombs and tactical maneuvers Baird understood; \"etheric subfrequencies\" and \"transcendental ectoplasmic connectivity\" had not been part of her NATO training.\n\nJust as long as it works in the field, she thought.\n\nShe flipped the On switch and the detector powered up. An analog gauge registered a higher than usual level of background magical radiation. As Baird understood it, there was more \"wild magic\" at loose in the world than there had been a few years ago, thanks to the sinister machinations of a certain Serpent Brotherhood, but she thought the devices had been recalibrated to compensate for that. She reset the counter to zero, just to be sure, but got the same readings again. Mother Goose's Magic Garden was living up to its name.\n\nShe made a mental note to check to see if the park was at a juncture of mystical ley lines when she got back to the Library, where there was a globe charting the placement of the various natural magical \"jet streams.\" In the meantime, she used the scanner like a Geiger counter to try to locate where the ambient magic was strongest. Higher readings to the east led her down an overgrown path heading deeper into the park.\n\nIt was not an easy trek. Nature was busily reclaiming the path, which barely qualified as such anymore, forcing her to duck beneath overhanging tree branches and stomp through thick underbrush at times, so that Baird found herself wishing that she had brought hiking boots\u2014and a machete. Random debris, strewn about the park, further obstructed the way. A quaint wooden cottage, formerly belonging to Jack Sprat and his wife, had collapsed into a heap of rotting timbers and rusty nails. Broken lengths of rebar jutted from the debris. Discarded garden tools\u2014spades, hoes, and rakes\u2014waited to trip the unwary. Baird stepped carefully, leery of potential pitfalls buried in the bushes. She found herself trying to remember the last time she'd had a tetanus shot....\n\nThe detector's probes whirred, spinning ever faster, as climbing readings led her past more evidence of the park's deterioration. The Dish and the Spoon, once posed in the act of running away with each other, now lay on opposite sides of the path, half-buried beneath weeds and fallen leaves. Little Jack Horner's corner had apparently burned to the ground; Baird suspected smoking trespassers or an unauthorized campfire were to blame. All that remained was a charred door frame where a blackened wooden door was barely hanging on by its hinges. Jack and Jill's well had tumbled down its hill, becoming nothing more than a pile of rubble at the bottom of a grassy slope that looked as though it hadn't been mown since MySpace was hot.\n\nThe needle on the gauge edged toward the yellow zone, raising her concern. If the detector had been registering actual radiation, instead of the magical variety, she'd expect to be entering Chernobyl by now. Instead, she rounded a blind corner, pushing past a curtain of hanging branches, to discover... Humpty Dumpty.\n\nAs one might expect, he lay shattered at the bottom of a moldy brick wall. His head, which consisted of a large fiberglass egg with a friendly, smiling face painted on it, had cracked down the middle and was now in two pieces, with one eye and half a smile on each fragment. Both halves had also broken off from the rest of his body, which remained sitting atop the wall. One hand was still raised to greet approaching visitors.\n\nThree pieces, Baird thought to herself with a grunt. It's always three, Jenkins said.\n\nAt first, she wasn't sure if Humpty was supposed to be lying in pieces or not, but then she remembered an old postcard that had shown the figure sitting happily intact on his wall, sometime prior to his celebrated fall. Makes sense, Baird thought. You wouldn't want to upset small children by showing a Humpty after his spill. She wondered if the damage to the mannequin had been caused by time and neglect, or if some visiting vandal had possessed a poetic sense of mischief.\n\n\"All the king's horses and all the king's men,\" she recited, \"couldn't put Humpty together again.\"\n\nThere was no evidence of men or horses, sculpted or otherwise, but the excess magical energy registered as stronger here than anywhere else. Baird slowly circled the shattered egg man, scanning it with the detector. The probes whirred at an alarming rate; the needle swung much farther to the right. The readings she got from Humpty were practically off the charts; he was all but glowing with magic.\n\nGround zero?\n\nShe backed away from Humpty, reluctant to touch him or even get too close. That she had located the heart of the mystery at Mother Goose's Garden she had no doubt; what exactly her discovery meant was anybody's guess. She could only hope that Jenkins or her Librarians could make sense of it. Once again, she wished that Flynn was available. Unlike the new Librarians, each of whom had their own individual specialties, Flynn was more of an all-around genius, who often seemed to know a little bit about everything.\n\nIncluding magical nursery rhymes?\n\nPutting away the detector, she took out her phone to take some photos of the site that she could share with the others. She stepped backward to get a better shot.\n\nSomething crunched beneath her feet.\n\n\"Crap,\" she muttered. Visions of broken glass and rusty metal hinges flashed through her brain. Stooping to investigate, she warily groped through the weeds to see what she had stepped on. Bits of shiny black plastic and metallic silver glinted in the weak sunlight. It took her a moment to identify the object. A gasp escaped her lips. Blue eyes widened in surprise.\n\nIt was another handheld magic detector, similar to the one she had just employed.\n\n\"What the heck?\"\n\nHer first thought was that maybe this was evidence of some weird time-travel shenanigans, and that she was actually retracing the path of her future self who had visited the park sometime in the recent past. It certainly wouldn't be the first time she had stumbled onto a paradox along those lines. But then a simpler explanation presented itself: another Librarian had already checked out this site and left their scanner behind.\n\nFlynn?\n\nWorry creased her brow. Why would Flynn have come here on his own, and, even more distressing to consider, why had he left his scanner behind? That was top-secret Library tech that was probably semimagical itself. Flynn could be manic sometimes, his restless mind taking off in all directions, but he wasn't careless. He wouldn't have left without the device.\n\nUnless he was rudely interrupted?\n\n\"Oh, Flynn, what have you gotten into now?\"\n\nGlancing around the site, she saw no obvious signs of a struggle, only Humpty Dumpy lying broken on the ground, but that didn't mean that Flynn hadn't run into trouble. Risk came with the job, as recently demonstrated by a certain mythological boar, and the Librarians often found themselves contending with ruthless secret societies, rival treasure seekers, and miscellaneous archenemies, any of which might have carried away Flynn against his will. Concerned for his safety, she reminded herself that Flynn had survived on his own as a Librarian for over a decade, which was longer than any other Librarian on the books. He could take care of himself.\n\nWhich didn't make her any less anxious about him.\n\n\"Flynn?\" she called out, raising her voice. \"Flynn? It's me, Eve. Are you still here?\"\n\nHer voice echoed through the desolate park, but received no answer.\n\n\"Flynn! Can you hear me? Answer me, Flynn!\"\n\nIt was no use. There was no immediate way of knowing how long the magic detector had been resting in the weeds, but her gut told her that Flynn was long gone. Frustrated, she tried calling him on her phone, but his voice mail was full, as usual. She cursed under her breath as she put her phone back in her pocket. Flynn's incommunicado status had gone from annoying to alarming.\n\nShe took a closer look at the discarded detector. An embossed plastic label, of the sort made by an old-fashioned label maker, was stuck to the bottom of the device. It read:\n\nPROPERTY OF FLYNN CARSEN. HANDS OFF.\n\nBaird sighed. Still working on that \"team player\" thing....\n\nThe label cinched it, though. Flynn had been here and now he was missing.\n\nShe decided that she had seen enough. It was time to head back to the Library and let the rest of the team know what she'd discovered. With any luck, maybe one of the other Librarians had already crossed paths with Flynn while investigating the other incidents. Taking custody of the forgotten scanner, she started back toward the Old Woman's giant shoe and took her phone back out to dial Jenkins so he could reopen a doorway back to the Annex.\n\n\"You get on your way, young lady!\" a stern voice accosted her. \"Can't you read the signs? No trespassing!\"\n\nBaird spun around to see someone who could only be Mother Goose herself standing atop an oversized fiberglass pumpkin that had once housed a well-known pumpkin eater and his wayward wife. The indignant crone looked as though she had just stepped out of the pages of a storybook. A conical black hat, held on a by ribbon, gave her a distinctly witchy appearance. Tight gray braids peeked out from beneath the brim of the hat, while a pair of antique spectacles rested upon her sharp, pointed nose. She wore a green peasant dress with a ruffled collar and sleeves above a pair of striped stockings and buckled black shoes. A red woolen shawl was draped over her bony shoulders. Her wizened face was craggy, her expression severe.\n\nStartled by the figure's sudden appearance, Baird nonetheless kept her cool. She'd encountered stranger beings since signing on with the Library.\n\n\"Mother Goose, I presume?\"\n\nOr at least a Mother Goose, she thought.\n\n\"The one and only,\" the crone insisted. A pronounced Boston accent bordered on parody. \"No mere pretender am I.\"\n\n\"I didn't say you were,\" Baird said diplomatically. She cautiously approached the older woman, while wondering precisely who or what she was facing. A Fictional like Moriarty, freshly sprung from the actual pages of a book, or one of Elizabeth Goose's descendants, claiming the ancestral title and identity of Mother Goose? Baird couldn't rule out either possibility.\n\n\"That's close enough,\" the woman atop the pumpkin said. She shook a crooked wooden cane at Baird. \"Keep your distance, Guardian. This is no affair of yours, my fine beauty!\"\n\nBaird was caught off guard by being addressed by her title. She paused in her tracks. \"You know who I am?\"\n\n\"Aye, Colonel Eve Baird, and I know your ways. You'll not file me away in your Library, no matter how grand it may be. I have important matters to attend to and I'll brook no interference. You'd be well-advised not to meddle in my business.\"\n\nSorry, Baird thought. Meddling is a big part of my job description.\n\n\"Can't we just talk?\" Baird raised her hands to indicate that she was unarmed. \"I only want to ask you some questions.\"\n\nMother Goose snorted at the idea.\n\n\"I keep my own counsel and do not answer to the likes of you.\" She pointed with her cane. \"Be on your way, Guardian, and trespass in my Garden no more.\"\n\n\"Forget it,\" Baird said, losing her patience. She could play Bad Cop too if she had to. \"I'm not going anywhere until I get some answers.\" She strode toward the immense pumpkin, prepared to scale its faded orange walls as readily as she would a concrete barricade in a war zone. \"Where is Flynn Carsen? What's become of him?\"\n\nMother Goose smirked, as though at a private joke. \"Wouldn't you like to know?\"\n\n\"I would, actually, now that you mention it.\" An automatic pistol was tucked beneath Baird's jacket, but she held off on drawing it just yet; pulling a gun on Mother Goose just felt wrong somehow. \"Are you going to get down from there or I do have to climb up and get you?\"\n\nBaird reminded herself not get overconfident. Under ordinary circumstances, she could take a gray-haired old lady, no problem, but these circumstances were about as far from ordinary as a cow jumping over the moon. And when it came to magic, appearances could be very deceiving.\n\n\"Don't trouble yourself, dearie,\" Mother Goose advised, not seeming at all concerned about the increasingly impatient Guardian. \"I won't be staying long.\"\n\nBefore Baird could ask her what she meant, the crone cupped one hand in front of her mouth, miming a megaphone, and honked as loud as her feathered namesake. Baird fought an urge to clap her own hands over her ears.\n\n\"Not exactly what I wanted to hear!\" she shouted back.\n\n\"I wasn't talking to you, Guardian.\"\n\nAn answering honk came from somewhere overhead. Looking up, Baird gaped at the sight of a gigantic goose\u2014or gander\u2014swooping down from the murky gray sky. The bird's wingspan was at least twelve feet across, making it only slightly smaller than that Native American thunderbird she and Flynn had just barely escaped in the Cascade Mountains last summer. Its snowy white plumage contrasted with its large orange beak\u2014and the long red ribbon dangling from said beak. The wind from the goose's great wings stirred the tree branches as well as the fallen leaves carpeting the ground. Its honk put an air horn to shame.\n\n\"Okay, I didn't see that coming.\" Baird shook her head in disbelief. \"I probably should have, considering, but...\"\n\nMother Goose cackled in glee.\n\n\"Forgotten your nursery rhymes have you, Colonel?\" The huge bird alit atop the phony pumpkin, landing next to Mother Goose, who climbed onto its back as though it was a pony and not the biggest goose ever. Her raspy voice took on a singsong quality as she recited: \"Old Mother Goose, when she wanted to wander, would ride through the air on a very fine gander!\"\n\nGander, not goose, then, Baird noted, although the bird's gender was not particularly pertinent at the moment. No way was she going to let Mother Goose fly out of here, not while Flynn was missing and unaccounted for.\n\n\"Don't even think about it.\" Baird drew her gun and took aim at the other woman. \"Stay right where you are\u2014and that goes for the bird, too.\"\n\n\"Really, Guardian?\" Mother Goose clucked at her. \"You're going to open fire on a harmless old lady who hasn't done you any harm... yet?\"\n\n\"Harmless my foot,\" Baird replied, while balking at the idea of actually pulling the trigger. Despite Jenkins's warnings about the danger posed by a rogue Mother Goose, and the mystery surrounding Flynn's disappearance, she knew the old woman had her number. She couldn't bring herself to shoot Mother Goose purely on suspicion of... what? Trespassing in a condemned theme park? Impersonating a storybook character? Illegal possession and abuse of nursery rhymes? Having a giant goose\u2014that is, gander\u2014on call?\n\nDamn it, she thought. \"Don't test me, Goose... or whoever you are.\"\n\n\"I don't need to test you, Eve Baird. I know you too well. You're a soldier girl, not a murderer.\"\n\nCalling Baird's bluff, Mother Goose took both ends of the red ribbon in her hands and pulled on them as though they were reins. Extending its wings, the gargantuan gander took to the skies. Baird realized that she could try to wing the bird at least, but she hesitated too long. She couldn't risk shooting the gander without causing the old woman to fall from too high up.\n\n\"Come back here!\" Baird hollered. \"What have you done with Flynn?\"\n\n\"Go back to your Library, Eve Baird, and leave me and mine alone!\"\n\nBaird watched in frustration as Goose and gander ascended into the clouds, taking any answers with them. Lacking a flying carpet or air support, there was no way to go after them for now. Baird found herself alone in the deserted park, hoping that Jenkins could shed some light on what had just transpired.\n\n'Cause, frankly, she was stumped."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "\"Humpty Dumpty?\" Jenkins said gravely. \"Oh dear.\"\n\nReturning to the Annex via the Magic Door, Baird had briefed Jenkins on what she had discovered\u2014and encountered\u2014at Mother Goose's Magic Garden. To her surprise, he appeared even more concerned about the wrecked Humpty mannequin than Mother Goose's actual appearance and escape.\n\n\"Is that bad?\" she asked.\n\n\"More than you can possibly imagine, Colonel.\" Jenkins extracted a massive leather-bound tome from a bookshelf and laid it down on the conference table in front of Baird. It appeared to be a general guide to the mythologies of the world as opposed to a collection of nursery rhymes. \"'Humpty Dumpty' is actually one of the oldest and most powerful rhymes in the book... and there's a very good reason why Humpty Dumpty must never be put together again.\"\n\nBaird braced herself for the worst. \"Hit me.\"\n\n\"Humpty Dumpty, or 'Humelken-Pumpelken' as he's known in Germany, or 'Thille Lille' in Sweden, or many other names in many other lands, is more than just a childish storybook character. He is a symbolic representation of the original World Egg, from which all of Creation was hatched according to numerous ancient myths and Gnostic traditions.\" He opened the book and turned the pages until he reached a woodcut illustration of a cosmic egg cracking open to disgorge stars, planets, and swirling nebulae. Leafing through the book revealed similar imagery on pottery shards, temple mosaics, mystic scrolls, and alchemical texts. He paused on a photo of weathered stone hieroglyphics. A pictographic nest cradled a stylized, two-dimensional egg inscribed with mystical runes. \"Interestingly enough, in the ancient Egyptian version of the myth, the Egg is said to have been laid by a divine Goose....\"\n\n\"Where did the goose come from?\" Baird asked.\n\n\"That's another story,\" he said, a trifle evasively. \"The relevant point is that restoring the Egg\u2014in other words, putting Humpty Dumpty back together again\u2014would essentially reverse the Big Bang... and might eventually lead to the birth of a brand-new universe, overwriting the one we know.\"\n\nHe closed the book for emphasis. Loudly.\n\n\"But the Humpty at the park is just a broken fiberglass mannequin,\" she protested, before remembering the excess magical energy it was apparently charged with, according to the detector. \"Isn't it?\"\n\n\"At one time, probably, but magic is all about symbolism. You should know that by now,\" he chided her. \"Power, focus, effect. Let us assume that Mother Goose is providing the power, Humpty Dumpty is the focus, and the effect.... Well, fourteen billion years isn't a bad run for a universe, but I wasn't expecting a reboot quite so soon.\"\n\nBaird tried to grasp the enormity of what Jenkins was implying. The fate of the world was one thing\u2014she was getting used to that\u2014but the entire universe? Because Mother Goose might want to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?\n\nThat was bizarre even by Library standards, which was saying something.\n\nShe held on to her sanity by getting down to brass tacks. \"But that hasn't happened yet? We can still stop it?\"\n\n\"I sincerely hope so,\" Jenkins said. \"The fact that the universe does not, as yet, appear to be collapsing in on itself suggests that the individual you encountered, who claims to be Mother Goose, has yet to fully realize her aims. My current working theory\u2014or best guess, if you prefer\u2014is that she may need to reassemble the entire spell book to perform magic of such magnitude. Furthermore, legend holds that the original text contains lost verses of 'Humpty Dumpty' that may indeed hold the power to unmake reality on a cosmic scale.\"\n\n\"In other words,\" Baird translated, \"we need to find those three fragments of the original book before Mother Goose does.\"\n\n\"If she has not already obtained one or more of them,\" Jenkins added, always the pessimist. \"That ill-advised publication was divided in three for good reason, Colonel. Reassembling the book is a bad idea in general, even without a rogue Mother Goose on the loose.\"\n\nHe winced at the accidental rhyme.\n\n\"Understood,\" Baird said. \"But why is this happening now, after all these years?\"\n\n\"If I may venture a guess, the recent outbreak of wild magic, which has roused many previously dormant magical artifacts and spells, unleashing them anew upon the world, might well be the catalyst here.\"\n\nBaird nodded. \"Like when Prospero got his wizardly mojo back, after being powerless for centuries.\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" Jenkins said. \"And one more thing, Colonel. Magic, once awakened, often wants to express itself, so the magic of Mother Goose, long hidden away and suppressed, may itself be at work here. The fractured spell book may long to be complete again... and is striving to accomplish that end via the individual you encountered at the park.\"\n\n\"Yeah, what about her?\" Baird asked. \"Where does she fit in to this theory? Is she a pawn, an instigator, or what? She can't actually be the Elizabeth Goose, can she?\"\n\n\"Not a chance,\" Jenkins said. \"That particular Mother Goose was a respectable Boston matriarch, not the cackling caricature you described. We're dealing with someone who has adopted the persona of Mother Goose for their own highly imprudent purposes.\"\n\n\"And we have no idea who that person might be?\"\n\n\"Not as yet, Colonel.\"\n\nGreat, Baird thought.\n\n\"Any word from the others yet? Or Flynn?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not, Colonel. You were the first to return from your investigation. And Mr. Carsen remains unaccounted for, aside from your discovery at the park.\"\n\nFlynn's discarded magic detector rested on Baird's desk, reminding her that he was still MIA. Had Mother Goose done something to him, or had he ingeniously escaped her clutches somehow? Flynn was a survivor, despite his many eccentricities. Baird refused to assume the worst until she knew for certain what had become of him.\n\nBaird hoped her Librarians were faring better than she had. She wondered what they were up to now.\n\nAnd what had become of Flynn?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Ohio",
                "text": "\"Sorry. My wife's not here,\" the farmer said. \"She's at work.\"\n\nThis was not what Ezekiel Jones wanted to hear. It was unfair enough that he, an international man of mystery and master thief, had gotten stuck taking the Magic Door to some bucolic backwater in the middle of nowhere, but now the person he was looking for wasn't even home? If he didn't know better, he'd think that the Clippings Book had it in for him.\n\nMary Simon was the Goose descendant who had allegedly run into some hostile blind mice. Ezekiel had hoped to do some digging on that incident and get back to the Library in no time at all. Standing on the front porch of a predictably picturesque Ohio farmhouse, whose address he had gleaned from the Internet, he found himself tragically out of his element. Chickens clucked and pecked in a coop nearby. Barnyard smells wafted on the breeze. A silo was the closest thing to a skyscraper. A dozy hound dog was stretched out on the porch, drooling. There probably wasn't anything worth stealing in the entire county.\n\n\"And where is work?\" he asked.\n\n\"The library, of course.\"\n\n\"Library?\" Ezekiel wasn't sure he'd heard that right.\n\n\"Naturally. She's the children's librarian, isn't she?\"\n\nOf course she is, he thought, amused. Fate definitely seemed to be messing with him today. \"That wasn't in the news clipping.\"\n\nFarmer Simon stood in the doorway, looking Ezekiel over. \"Who did you say you were with again?\"\n\n\"Animal Control,\" he lied easily. \"Looking into reports of a recent mutant rodent sighting.\"\n\n\"Don't know anything about that myself,\" the farmer admitted. \"I was away at the Grange when that happened.\" He continued to regard Ezekiel quizzically. \"You're not with the local outfit, I'm guessing. There's more than a trace of Down Under in your accent if I'm not mistaken.\"\n\n\"You got me, mate.\" Ezekiel lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper while making a show of glancing around to make sure no one else was listening, even though they seemed to have the farm to themselves, aside from the poultry and livestock, and only the dog was close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation. \"Between you and me, and this is strictly off the record, we may have a global infestation on our hands. But keep that under your hat, okay? We wouldn't want to start a panic.\"\n\n\"I imagine not,\" the farmer said. \"But just how serious a problem are we talking about here, if you don't mind me asking?\"\n\n\"Hard to say,\" Ezekiel said with a shrug. \"It's probably nothing, but it needs to be checked out. Better safe than sorry.\"\n\n\"That's for certain.\" The farmer stepped away from the front door. \"Mary won't be home for a couple of hours, but you're welcome to wait inside.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the offer, mate, but I'm on a tight schedule. Where exactly would I find this library?\"\n\n\"Smack dab in the middle of town, just off Main Street.\" The farmer peered at the long dirt driveway leading to a lonely country road several yards away. Cornfields stretched for acres in the distance. \"Say, how did you get here anyway? Where's your car?\"\n\nEzekiel had stepped onto the farm through the doorway of a nearby toolshed, but he could hardly explain how the Magic Door worked to a civilian. Thinking on his feet, he ad-libbed instead.\n\n\"Oh, my partner dropped me off while following up on another lead.\" He took out his phone. \"I'll just call and tell her to come pick me up.\"\n\nWith any luck, Ezekiel thought, Jenkins can fine-tune the settings on the Magic Door to transport me straight from the Library to, er, the library.\n\n\"No need for that,\" the farmer said. \"As it happens, I need to drive into town to pick up some fresh fertilizer at the feed-and-grain store. I can drop you off at the library on the way.\"\n\nEzekiel figured the Magic Door would be faster and less trouble. \"That's nice of you to offer, but\u2014\"\n\n\"No bother,\" the farmer insisted, not taking no for answer. \"You stay right here while I get the keys to the pickup.\" The hound lifted her head. \"Say, you don't mind riding up front with the dog, do you? Bernice does love her car rides.\"\n\nOne slobbery, bumpy ride later, the truck rolled into Banbury, Ohio, a small rural town whose downtown area seemed to mostly consist of a single wide thoroughfare and a few side streets. A canvas banner hanging over the street advertised a country fair. The pickup pulled up to the curb in front of a tidy, one-story building just one block off the main drag. A sign out front identified it as the public library. An outdoor book drop sat by the front entrance, along with a couple of loitering teenagers.\n\n\"Here you are, young man,\" Farmer Simon said. \"Say hello to Mary for me... and don't worry, mum's the word about those rodents of unusual size.\"\n\nEzekiel waited until the truck drove off before wiping a clinging strand of drool off his shoulder and taking a closer look at the library. It didn't look terribly impressive from the outside, but then again, neither did the Annex, which was tucked away under one end of a suspension bridge back in Portland. He started toward the entrance only to be interrupted by his phone. The ringtone identified the caller as Baird, so he figured he should actually answer it.\n\n\"Hello?\" he said. \"Please tell me you've already solved this case so I can catch a one-way trip back to the Library. I'm getting nowhere fast here in Farmville. I don't suppose you have any tips on the best way to wipe drool off silk and cashmere?\"\n\n\"Drool?\" Baird's voice asked.\n\n\"Never mind,\" he said. \"What's up?\"\n\nHe listened as Baird filled him in on her expedition to Mother Goose's Magic Garden, all of which sounded a lot more exciting than anything he'd run into yet. \"So there's an actual Mother Goose running around, making trouble?\"\n\n\"Flying around, actually,\" she confirmed. \"And, according to Jenkins, we can't let her get her hands on all three segments of that original Mother Goose book.\"\n\n\"Or Humpty Dumpty gets put back together, the universe gets unhatched, and it's the end of everything as we know it,\" Ezekiel said glibly. \"Got it.\"\n\n\"You don't sound too freaked out by that,\" she observed.\n\n\"I'm a Librarian. I know the drill by now.\" Freaky was their business. \"But don't worry about it. You've got Ezekiel Jones on the case. No way is some Mary Poppins wannabe on a flying goose going to get to those pages before me.\"\n\n\"Just stay on your toes,\" she said. \"We still don't know entirely who or what we're dealing with.\"\n\n\"Do we ever?\"\n\nGetting bored with the call, he wrapped it up before Baird could remind him one more time of how vital their mission was and how he needed to watch his back. He liked Baird, and appreciated that she took her job as Guardian very seriously, but the whole worried-den-mother thing got old sometimes. He didn't need a babysitter or bodyguard.\n\nEspecially not when dropping in on a small-town librarian.\n\nHe strolled inside the library. To his slight surprise, it actually looked more modern and up-to-date than the Annex, which, in all honesty, was a little too stuffy and retro for his tastes. It was brightly lit and airy, with computer stations instead of dusty wooden card catalogs, and an automated, self-service checkout setup. Sure, there were still plenty of dead trees crammed on the shelves, but he also saw a wide selection of games and movies on display. His opinion of the town rose a notch.\n\nNow this is my kind of library.\n\nHe sauntered up to the front desk where a twenty-something librarian or intern was assisting the patrons too set in their ways to check their books out themselves. He waited impatiently for his turn.\n\n\"Excuse me, I need to talk to Mary Simon. The children's librarian?\"\n\n\"Sssh!\" The young woman at the counter raised a finger to her lips. \"You're going to have to wait. It's story time.\"\n\nShe pointed to the children's section, where an older woman sat in a rocking chair surrounded by a pack of rug rats listening to her with rapt attention. An open storybook rested in her lap. Groaning inwardly, Ezekiel began to wonder if he was ever going to be able to get on with his investigation. Still, with any luck, maybe story time was just wrapping up.\n\n\"Once upon a time...\" Mary Simon began.\n\nEzekiel sighed.\n\nStill, he had to admit that Mary Simon certainly looked as though she was descended from a long line of Mother Gooses. A matronly, rosy-cheeked senior citizen (at least by Ezekiel's standards), she had neatly coifed silver hair, glasses, and a lap large enough to accommodate a grandkid or two. Watching her cast her spell over her underaged audience, as opposed to them squirming impatiently, it was clear that she had inherited a knack for keeping small children entertained. Cassandra's genealogical detective work, it appeared, had been right on the money.\n\nGot to hand it to her, he thought. You never want to bet against that brain grape of hers.\n\nToo restless to sit still for the story, Ezekiel killed time by quietly casing the library and assessing its security measures. He had figured out approximately sixteen different ways to rob the place blind and was working on a few refinements when he heard story time winding down. He wandered back toward the kids' section.\n\n\"The end,\" Mary Simon said, closing the book on her lap.\n\n\"One more story,\" a child pleaded. \"Please, Mrs. Simon.\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"That's enough for today, I think. Run along now. Your parents are waiting for you.\"\n\nThey're not the only ones who've been waiting, Ezekiel thought. As the kids reluctantly dispersed, he approached the librarian. \"Mary Simon?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" She rose from the rocking chair to reshelve the storybook. \"Can I help you, Mr. \u2014?\"\n\n\"Jones,\" he volunteered. \"Ezekiel Jones.\" He held out his hand. \"I'd like to talk to you concerning a certain rodent problem you encountered recently.\"\n\n\"That again?\" A frown transformed her from lovable granny to stern librarian. \"I've already discussed this with the police, Animal Control, and the local paper. How many times do I have to go over this again?\"\n\nHer uncooperative attitude momentarily fazed Ezekiel, but he figured it was nothing he couldn't handle. Heck, he'd once talked his way past the guards at the Tower of London.\n\n\"I understand,\" he said, feigning sympathy. \"You're obviously a very busy woman and I don't want to take up one minute more of your valuable time than I have to, but I'd really appreciate hearing the story in your own words.\" He treated her to his most winning smile. \"As a personal favor?\"\n\nShe saw right through him.\n\n\"Dial it down, buster. I'm a married woman and you're too young for me anyway.\" She inspected him warily. \"Why are you so interested?\"\n\nHe briefly considered mentioning that he was a Librarian as well, albeit of a very different sort, but he figured he needed to stick to his original cover story just in case she compared notes with her husband at some point. \"I'm with a global animal control organization, investigating similar reports from all over the world.\" He lowered his voice. \"You didn't hear this from me, but your case may be only the tip of the iceberg. It's imperative that I get the full scoop... ASAP.\"\n\nShe listened, nodding, then rolled her eyes.\n\n\"Right,\" she said skeptically. \"Tell me another one.\"\n\n\"You don't believe me?\" Ezekiel clasped his hand to his chest, as though wounded to the heart. \"What kind of friendly librarian are you?\"\n\n\"The kind who has heard enough lame excuses about late or lost books to know when I'm being fed a load of bull.\" She crossed her arms atop her chest and looked him squarely in the eyes. \"Look, Mr.... Jones, was it? If you require assistance researching pest control or the natural history of barn mice, I'll be happy to steer you toward the appropriate shelves and reference works. I can even direct you to our neighborhood police station where you can ask to review my previous statements, but, if you don't mind, I've just talked myself hoarse reading aloud to those kids and I've got a lot of administrative paperwork to catch up with. Story time is over, so you'll have to get your jollies elsewhere.\"\n\nLeaving him dumbfounded in the children's section, she walked away from Ezekiel and past the front desk. She was about to disappear into her office when he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.\n\n\"Wait! What do you know about Mother Goose... and the Three Blind Mice?\"\n\nThat got her attention. She froze and looked back at him.\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"We need to talk about... Mother Goose.\"\n\nTheir conversation was starting to draw curious looks from the library's other patrons and staff. Looking slightly uncomfortable, Mary beckoned to Ezekiel.\n\n\"Let's talk about this in my office,\" she suggested. \"That's a... fascinating topic, but we shouldn't bore the other patrons.\"\n\nWorks for me, Ezekiel thought.\n\nHe followed her into an office behind the front counter. She shut the door and took a seat behind her desk. Glancing around, Ezekiel spotted a framed piece of needlework mounted on a wall. Embroidered on the quaint country sampler was a nursery rhyme:\n\n\u2003Simple Simon met a pieman,\n\n\u2003Going to the fair,\n\n\u2003Says Simple Simon to the pieman,\n\n\u2003Let me taste your ware.\n\nEzekiel took the sampler as proof that he was on the right track. He nodded at the decorative needlework. \"How about that?\" he said with a smirk. \"Mother Goose, right?\"\n\n\"An old family heirloom, that's all.\" She shrugged as though it was of no consequence. \"Now then, Mr. Jones, what's all this about Mother Goose?\"\n\nEzekiel didn't feel like wasting any more time beating around the bush. \"You are descended from the Mother Goose, right? The one in Boston way back when?\"\n\nShe stared at him agape. \"That's what we were told, growing up, but it's probably just a colorful family legend, passed down for the generations, the same way most every American claims to have a genuine Cherokee princess as an ancestor. I doubt if there's anything to it.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's no legend... at least not one of those legends that aren't actually true. Believe me, I have it from a very reliable source that you've got plenty of geese in your family tree, going back to Ye Olde Times.\"\n\n\"How... how do you know any of this?\" she stammered. \"And what does this have to do with those ugly vermin anyway?\"\n\n\"Come on,\" he said. \"Mother Goose... the Three Blind Mice. You're a children's librarian. Don't tell me you didn't make the connection?\"\n\n\"The thought crossed my mind,\" she admitted, \"but the very notion is absurd. That business with the mice had nothing to do with an old nursery rhyme. That's just an odd coincidence.\"\n\n\"No such thing,\" Ezekiel stated. \"Not in my line of work.\"\n\n\"Which is?\" she asked. \"And don't give me that line about Animal Control again.\"\n\nEzekiel saw no reason to stick with a cover story that wasn't working. \"I'm a Librarian, actually. Honest.\"\n\n\"A librarian investigating the Three Blind Mice?\"\n\n\"Nailed it in one.\" He sat down across from her. \"Now we're getting somewhere.\"\n\n\"But... but that's insane.\"\n\n\"Why don't you let me be the judge of that,\" Ezekiel suggested. \"What's the real scoop on those mice?\"\n\n\"Fine,\" she relented. \"If you must know, I was in my kitchen at home, doing some dishes, when I heard this loud skittering and squeaking behind me. I spun around and, lo and behold, there were these three hideous creatures scrambling on top of the kitchen island, twitching their whiskers at me.\" She shuddered at the memory. \"They were bigger than any mice or rats I'd ever seen, and, yes, they had no eyes. Just... fur.\"\n\nUgh, Ezekiel thought, glad to have missed them. \"Any idea where they'd come from?\"\n\n\"Not a clue. We've never had any serious vermin problems before, let alone king-sized rodents making themselves at home in my kitchen. They just showed up all of a sudden, bold as brass and ugly as sin.\" Mary's flair for storytelling kicked in as she got caught up in recounting the incident. \"Gave me quite a start, I'm not ashamed to admit. I yelled at them, hoping to chase them away, but they sprang at me instead, all claws and teeth and spitting mad.\"\n\nEzekiel leaned forward in his chair. \"And...?\"\n\n\"I'm spryer than I look, young man. I ducked out of the way and snatched a steak knife from a rack and slashed at them in self-defense. I nicked one of them in the tail and that, thank goodness, was enough to put the fear of God into all three of them. They turned tail, springing off the counter, and scurried out of the kitchen, tearing right through a screen door.\" She grimaced. \"Haven't laid eyes on them since.\"\n\nEzekiel hoped that would remain the case. Freaky mutant mice were not his idea of a fun time. Shiny lost treasures and world-class heists were more to his liking. He was a Librarian, not an exterminator. Pest control was a waste of his talents.\n\n\"But don't you see? The Three Blind Mice, a carving knife, you being a farmer's wife... it all adds up.\"\n\n\"Maybe in whatever fantasy world you're living in, Mr. Jones, but not here in Ohio,\" she said firmly. She sat solidly behind her desk, her tone and attitude rooted squarely in reality. \"Those unpleasant creatures were surely just some deformed, unusually aggressive rodents, no doubt caused by pesticides or fracking or GMOs.\"\n\n\"Or maybe a spell from Mother Goose's lost book of magic rhymes?\"\n\nShe blinked at him in surprise. \"That... that's just a myth. A bedtime story my late grandmother used to tell me.\"\n\n\"About how the book was divided into three parts by three different branches of your family?\" He enjoyed her startled expression. \"I've got news for you. That's no myth, no story, and I really need to find those missing pages. I don't suppose you've got them tucked away somewhere?\"\n\nShe shook her head, looking a bit dazed. \"Not that I know of.\"\n\nFigures, Ezekiel thought. \"I should've known it wouldn't be that easy. These capers almost always involve clues and puzzles and riddles, and clues inside puzzles inside riddles. If you ask me, people in the past had way too much time on their hands....\"\n\n\"You're really serious about this,\" she said incredulously. \"Aren't you?\"\n\n\"Well, as serious as I am about anything.\" He pondered what his next move should be. Grilling witnesses wasn't exactly his specialty; he hoped there'd be a museum or vault to break into at some point. \"You mentioned a grandmother before. She ever drop any hints about where your family's chunk of the book might be hidden?\"\n\n\"Not that I recall,\" Mary said, thinking it over. She glanced up at the sampler on the wall. \"Although that was a legacy from Grandma, and I remember her telling me, more than once, that it must always remain in the family.\" She shrugged again. \"As far as I know, it only has sentimental value.\"\n\n\"Sentiment is for suckers.\" He walked over to examine the sampler. \"What I'm looking for is a clue.\"\n\nAs much as he hated to admit it, Ezekiel found himself wishing that Stone was on hand to help out. This kind of boring, old-timey stuff was more Stone's thing; he could probably tell just by looking at the embroidery and thread when and where it was sewn, right down to the exact year. Ezekiel was tempted to \"borrow\" the sampler long enough to run it past Stone, but balked at the idea of allowing that he was stumped. He had an image to maintain, after all. Ezekiel Jones did not need backup.\n\nMaybe the clue was in the actual rhyme?\n\n\"Pie, fair, wares...\" He looked to Mary Simon for guidance. \"Any of this ringing a bell?\"\n\n\"Well, fairs and markets and pies recur frequently in Mother Goose,\" the librarian said. \"Little Jack Horner, 'to market, to market,' and so on.\"\n\nEzekiel had trouble imaging that an old book could be hidden for generations within a soggy old pie, unless there was some kind of mathematical pun involving pi going on, in which case he might have to call in Cassandra as well, although she was presumably busy investigating that tree trimmer in Miami.\n\n\"What about fairs?\" he asked. \"Are there any actual fairs in the vicinity?\"\n\n\"The annual Banbury Fair is the oldest in the county,\" she said proudly. \"As it happens, it's going on right now... at the fairgrounds outside of town.\"\n\nEzekiel remembered seeing a banner advertising the fair.\n\n\"Well, that's not coincidental at all,\" he said wryly.\n\nMary smirked. \"I thought you said there's no such thing in your line of work.\"\n\n\"Good point.\" He saw another excursion in his future. The sampler wasn't much to go on, but it was the closest thing he had to a lead. \"Guess I'm going to the fair.\"\n\n\"Not without me you aren't.\" She got up from behind her desk. \"If there's anything to any of this, that's my family's legacy you're looking for. Don't think for a minute that I'm not going to be looking over your shoulder the whole time.\"\n\nEzekiel found that prospect less than appealing.\n\n\"Thanks, but I work alone,\" he lied.\n\n\"Tough,\" she said. \"Don't cross me, Mr. Jones. I can be quite contrary when I want to be.\"\n\nA suspicious thought crossed Ezekiel's mind. Was she just being stubborn or did she have an ulterior motive? How much did she really know or believe about the Mother Goose Treaty and all that? For all he knew, she could be in cahoots with that \"Mother Goose\" character Baird ran across in New Jersey.\n\n\"I'm not sure that's a good idea,\" he said. \"Those scary Blind Mice may just be the warm-up act. You'd better let me handle this.\"\n\n\"Not a chance. And don't even think about trying to ditch me. I'd hate to have to alert the local authorities to a con man posing as an Animal Control agent.\" She brushed past him on her way out. \"Car's parked outside. You coming or not?\"\n\nEzekiel sighed. \"There's not a dog in the car, is there?\"\n\nBefore she could reply, frantic squeals and shrieks came from outside the office.\n\n\"What in tarnation?\" Mary exclaimed.\n\nRushing out to investigate, Ezekiel and Mary were shocked to see the Three Blind Mice rampaging through the library. The large, eyeless rodents were even more revolting than Ezekiel had imagined and had, understandably, thrown the library into pandemonium. Hysterical patrons and library staff bolted for the exits, often screaming at the top of their lungs. Books and DVDs, heedlessly dropped in the panic, were strewn across the floor.\n\n\"I don't suppose you have a carving knife handy?\" Ezekiel asked.\n\n\"Does this look like a butcher shop?\" Mary said tartly.\n\nShe stared aghast at the Blind Mice, who, thankfully, seemed more interested in trashing the library than chasing after the terrified patrons. They scampered madly about the premises, knocking books off shelves and shredding newspapers and magazines, while squeaking loudly enough to hurt Ezekiel's ears. He and Mary ducked behind the checkout counter.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" she said. \"What are those awful creatures doing here?\"\n\n\"Best guess? Somebody really doesn't want you to help me find those pages.\"\n\nTheir hurried conversation attracted the Blind Mice, who turned and sniffed in their direction. Ugly pink noses twitched ominously. A low growl emanated from the oversized rodents, one of whom was still missing the tip of its tail. Ezekiel hoped it wasn't holding a grudge.\n\n\"Time to get out of here,\" Ezekiel decided. Any good thief knew when to make a run for it and he had already clocked all the available escape routes. \"Make for the fire exit.\"\n\nMary hesitated. \"But... my library?\"\n\n\"Suit yourself.\" Ezekiel started toward the exit. \"I guess I'll just have to find those hidden pages by myself.\"\n\nMary scoffed at the notion. \"Not if I have anything to say about it.\"\n\nThey darted for the exit, even as the mice came scrambling over the counter after them. Ezekiel hurled a bulky hardcover, which looked as though the author had been paid by the word, at the disgusting creatures to slow them down while Mary yanked open the door, setting off the fire alarm. The blaring siren struck Ezekiel as another good reason to vacate the premises; he resented alarms on principle.\n\nHe hustled Mary out the door. The mice pounced at them, but he slammed the door shut in their faces, so that their heavy bodies smashed into it with force. He heard them squeaking and scratching angrily on the other side of the door.\n\nCould Blind Mice handle doorknobs? Ezekiel wasn't about to stick around to find out, especially since he heard police cars and fire trucks heading their way. He liked dealing with law enforcement as much as he liked noisy alarms.\n\nWhich was to say, not at all.\n\n\"You were saying something about a fair?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Northumberland",
                "text": "\"So you're really Jackson Dennings?\"\n\n\"Guilty as charged,\" Stone said to the woman sitting across from him in a cozy pub in the North Country of England. Exposed oak beams held up the ceiling, while an open fireplace kept the place toasty despite the cool fall weather outside. Rows of bottles lined the shelves of a well-equipped bar, not far from the booth they occupied. Laughter and conversation echoed off the venerable stone walls, but Stone was used to chatting up pretty ladies in bars. \"At least when I'm writing academic papers on the intersectionality of culture and infrastructure. But when I'm not hiding behind a fancy byline and degree I'm just plain Jake Stone, Librarian.\" He smiled engagingly. \"But, please, call me Jake.\"\n\n\"In that case, you must call me Gillian.\" An appealing accent revealed that she was native to the region. She examined Stone by the subdued lamplight of the pub. \"I have to say, you're not exactly as I envisioned you.\"\n\n\"Likewise,\" Stone replied.\n\nDr. Gillian Fell, professor of anthropology at Bede College in Northumberland, was an attractive woman, roughly the same age as Stone, with wavy brown hair, chestnut eyes, and a stylish pair of designer glasses perched upon her nose. A turtleneck sweater showed off her figure. According to Cassandra, she was also yet another descendant of Elizabeth Goose. That Gillian's particular field of study just happened to be folklore and oral traditions had not escaped Stone. The feather, in this case, seemed to have fallen not far from the goose.\n\n\"Is that so?\" She arched a graceful eyebrow while her voice took on a teasing flavor. \"And whom exactly were you anticipating?\"\n\n\"The highly erudite author of Reflections on Mirrors and the Other Self, of course.\" Who had turned out to look more like Moneypenny than M. \"A fascinating piece, really. Some of your insights into the psychological significance of mirrors and reflecting pools, as opposed to their practical uses, really made me think... and reexamine my own assumptions about form versus function.\"\n\nHe was utterly sincere in his appreciation of her scholarly accomplishments. Back at the Annex, it hadn't taken him too long to recall where he knew her name from. He was, in fact, quite familiar with her work, which occasionally overlapped with his own studies of traditional art and architecture. He wasn't sure that he had ever corresponded with her directly as Jackson Dennings, but they had certainly swum in the same circles.\n\n\"High praise,\" she said, returning the compliment, \"from the mind that first postulated a link between Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs and Freemasonry, by way of Pythagorean aesthetics.\"\n\nThat she was acquainted with his own work\u2014as Jackson Dennings\u2014had proved handy when it came to wangling a meeting with the subject of his clipping. He was not above taking advantage of Dennings's academic reputation to get his foot in the door as it were, especially when that turned out to involve meeting a good-looking colleague for drinks at her favorite pub.\n\n\"Thanks again,\" he said, \"for squeezing me in to your busy schedule.\"\n\n\"No worries. Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long.\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" he lied, given the urgency of his quest. In truth, the Library was in a race to beat \"Mother Goose\" to that hidden spell book, but that was hardly something he could just up and explain to Gillian given that he wasn't sure how much she knew about the magical secrets in her family tree. \"But about your recent close encounter with a giant pumpkin...\"\n\nShe winced at the memory. \"I still don't entirely understand why you would be interested in that, beyond the sheer bizarreness of the whole episode, that is. Something about the symbolic use of pumpkins in Anglo-American folk art?\"\n\n\"More or less,\" he said vaguely. \"It's a bit more complicated than that, but I'll spare you the whole song and dance.\" He smiled at her. \"Indulge me.\"\n\n\"I'll bet you say that to all the anthropologists.\" She let out a sigh of resignation. \"All right then. Might as well get it over with, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Whenever you're ready,\" he said.\n\nShe took a sip of ale to fortify herself. \"You have to understand, the whole experience was just so... surreal... that even I have trouble believing that it actually happened, and wasn't simply some phantasmagorical dream or hallucination. I went to bed one night, after a perfectly ordinary evening grading papers, and the next thing I knew I woke up inside something dark and gooey and claustrophobic. I didn't realize at the time that I was curled up inside an unusually capacious pumpkin of all things, only that I was trapped inside an enclosed space with no idea how I'd gotten there.\" She shuddered in recollection. \"I swear to God, I hadn't taken any drugs the night before or drank anything stronger than tea.\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" he said. \"Besides, even if you had been under the influence, that wouldn't explain how you got inside the pumpkin. But I'm still a little fuzzy on one point: were you in any danger of suffocation?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No, not right away at least. The pumpkin was hollowed out on the inside, in a way that nobody has quite been able to explain just yet. From what people tell me, the pumpkin\u2014which was on display at the local farmers' market\u2014appeared entirely untouched from the outside.\" She threw up her hands. \"Tell me, how is that even possible?\"\n\nMagic, Stone thought, wishing there was some way to explain that to Gillian without sounding like a lunatic. \"So what happened next?\"\n\n\"What do you think? I bloody well panicked, kicking and punching hard enough to crack the shell... and raising enough of a ruckus that several Good Samaritans joined in to help liberate me from the pumpkin, much to the dismay and confusion of the fellow whose vegetable stand it was.\" A wry chuckle escaped her lips. \"You should have seen his face. I swear, the poor old gent was almost as gob-smacked as I was.\"\n\n\"I can imagine,\" Stone said. \"That must have been a very disorienting experience.\"\n\n\"That's putting it mildly.\" She stared into her drink as she seemed to open up a bit more, her voice taking on a more troubled, vulnerable tone. \"To be frank, I still experience a certain trepidation every night before I go to bed, wondering if something similar\u2014or worse\u2014is going to happen again. I mean, how do I know that I'm not going to wake up at the bottom of a well some morning?\"\n\nStone was tempted to let her in on the recent outbreak of nursery-rhyme-related magic, but he was afraid to scare her off at this juncture. Maybe later, he thought, after we've got a better handle on the situation.\n\n\"I wish I had some answers for you,\" he said lamely.\n\n\"No reason why you should.\" She adopted a lighter tone to offset the lingering anxieties she had just confessed to. \"So, was my twisted Cinderella moment of any use to you, Mr. Stone?\"\n\n\"Jake,\" he insisted again. \"And not Cinderella... Mother Goose.\"\n\nHer brown eyes widened. \"What did you just say?\"\n\nNow it was his turn to gulp down some ale before speaking. \"Like I said before, it's complicated....\"\n\nHe gave her a carefully edited version of the truth, leaving out the full nature of the Library, the whole Humpty Dumpty business, Mother Goose and her gander, and all the freakier stuff, stressing instead the saga of Elizabeth Goose, her trisected legacy, and the elusive first printing of Mother Goose's Melodies.\n\n\"My associates and I are trying to track down all three pieces of that so-called ghost volume,\" he explained, \"and some timely genealogical research led us to you.\"\n\nConfusion was written on her face. \"But what does that have to do with me waking up inside a pumpkin?\"\n\n\"Good question,\" he said, ducking that conversation for now. \"But you are descended from Elizabeth Goose of Boston?\"\n\n\"So the story goes,\" she conceded. \"As I understand it, my great-great-grandmother served as an army nurse during the First World War, during which duty she met and married a young British soldier and ended up settling down in these parts after the war.\"\n\nWhich was around the time of the Mother Goose Treaty, Stone noted. \"I don't suppose your great-great-grandma passed down one third of the missing book to you?\"\n\n\"Not that I'm aware of,\" she said. \"Although I suspect I owe a good part of my abiding interest in folklore and such to the stories I heard growing up about our family connection to the 'real' Mother Goose.\"\n\n\"Or maybe it's just in your blood,\" he speculated.\n\n\"A fanciful notion, but no more so, I suppose, than finding oneself inexplicably encased in a pumpkin shell.\" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. \"Speaking of which, why do I get the distinct impression that you're not telling me everything?\"\n\nBecause you're clearly nobody's fool, he thought, even as his phone chimed for his attention, using Baird's ringtone.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said, saved by the bell. \"If you'll excuse me for a minute...\"\n\n\"Go ahead,\" she said. \"I'm not going anywhere.\"\n\nWas that a promise or a threat? Stone pondered that mystery as he exited the booth and stepped outside the pub to take the call. It was early evening, Greenwich Mean Time, and the sun was already going down, taking the warmth of the day of with it. The sky was clear, though, making for a pleasant autumn night that was eight hours ahead of the Annex\u2014or wherever Baird was calling from.\n\n\"What's up?\" he asked.\n\n\"Plenty,\" Baird said. \"I just got an update from Jones. Listen up.\"\n\nShe filled him in on what Ezekiel had learned in Ohio so far, including the bit about a nursery rhyme sampler passed down from generation to generation as a family heirloom. The idea of a secret message embroidered into a piece of folk art intrigued him.\n\n\"Interesting,\" he said. \"Let me try following up on that lead on my end.\"\n\n\"Just keep us posted on your progress,\" Baird said.\n\n\"Will do.\"\n\nStone ended the call and stepped back inside the pub. As promised, Gillian was waiting for him in their booth. He took a moment to admire the way the firelight flattered her hair and complexion before he slid back into his seat across from her. Keep your mind on the job, he told himself, despite the fact that he felt some definite chemistry cooking between himself and Gillian. He wondered how many of her students were nursing secret crushes on their highly distracting professor. More than a few, I'm guessing.\n\n\"Anything important?\" she asked him.\n\n\"Possibly.\" He explained about how Ezekiel had found a lead to one-third of the lost book hidden in a sampler bearing a nursery rhyme. \"Is it too much to hope that you inherited something similar?\"\n\n\"Not one bit,\" she said with obvious excitement. \"As it happens, I do have such a sampler proudly displayed on the wall of my flat, not too far from here. But instead of 'Simple Simon,' mine has the first few verses of 'Jack and Jill' embroidered on it.\"\n\nStone leaned forward eagerly. \"As in 'Jack and Jill went up the hill'?\"\n\n\"The very same!\" She pounced on the topic like any true scholar hot on the trail of a new breakthrough or discovery. \"As I recall, there are various competing theories as to the meaning of the rhyme, some more plausible than others. One of the prevailing theories is that the rhyme derives from the Norse myth of Hjuki and Bil, which concerns two children, a brother and sister, who were fetching water from a well, using a pail no less, when they were snatched up by the Man in the Moon.\"\n\nTaking out her own phone, she went online and called up an old woodcut illustration of two children carrying a long pole between them, upon which was suspended a wooden pail. A leering moon gazed down on them.\n\n\"From the Prose Edda?\" Stone guessed. \"The myth I mean, not the illustration.\"\n\n\"Precisely.\" She put away her phone. \"Circa the thirteenth century. That's centuries before the first known references to the Mother Goose rhymes, so there's no way to prove a connection, but, as theories go, it's probably the most convincing.\" She rolled her eyes. \"Don't get me started on the popular notion that the rhyme actually refers to the beheading of King Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette, which is utter balderdash and chronologically impossible to boot.\"\n\nStone took her word for it, as his mind struggled to connect an obscure Norse myth to his quest for the missing volume. According to Jenkins, many of the Mother Goose rhymes had roots deep in antiquity, but the segments of the spell book were not hidden away until 1918 or so, which implied... what? That any clues would date back to the twentieth century, not medieval Scandinavia?\n\n\"I confess that was always my favorite Mother Goose rhyme growing up,\" Gillian said. \"To be honest, I used to think that the 'Jill' in the sampler was named after me... when I was very young, naturally.\"\n\n\"Yeah, about that,\" Stone said. \"Jill... Gillian. Bit of a coincidence, don't you think?\"\n\nStone wondered if the hidden clue was sitting right across from him.\n\n\"Not as much as you might think,\" she said, dismissing the notion. \"Jill\u2014or sometimes Gill\u2014was pretty much a generic term for a young girl or sweetheart in days of yore, dating back to Shakespeare at least. 'Jack shall have Jill; naught shall go ill,' etcetera.\"\n\n\"A Midsummer Night's Dream,\" Stone said, recognizing the quote. \"Act three, scene two, if I remember right.\"\n\n\"Very good.\" She nodded in approval. \"I'm impressed.\"\n\nHe was pleased to hear it, more so perhaps than was strictly necessary. Eyes on the prize, he reminded himself again. \"Getting back to Jack and Jill, what else is there in the rhyme? A hill, a well, a pail...\"\n\nGillian brainstormed along with him. \"Well, wells and hills are recurring themes in folklore in general and Mother Goose in particular. 'Pussy's in the well,' 'the old woman who lived under a hill,' and so forth.\"\n\n\"But a well on top of a hill?\" Stone said, thinking aloud. \"That doesn't really make any sense. Who puts a well on top of a hill you have to climb every day? Unless maybe you're talking about some kind of fortified hilltop stronghold that required a secure source of water.\" Inspiration struck and he smacked his forehead for not seeing it earlier. \"Of course! Look where we are right now.\"\n\n\"In a pub?\" she asked.\n\n\"In Northumberland,\" he clarified. \"Because of its proximity to the Scottish border, and the battles waged back and forth across that border, Northumbria has the highest concentration of old castles and forts of any county in Britain. And those hillside fortresses would have had wells or cisterns.\"\n\n\"Where my great-great-grandmother might have hidden her third of the book?\"\n\n\"That's what I'm thinking,\" Stone said. \"Are there any ancient structures on top of hills around here?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"There are the remains of an old Roman fort atop a hill just outside town, although there's not much left of it and what's there isn't very impressive, not like the bigger, more impressive Roman ruins at Vindolanda or Housesteads. You know, the ones that draw all the tourists.\"\n\n\"All the better to hide something in.\" Stone thought these hilltop ruins were sounding more promising by the minute. \"And that bygone fort would have definitely needed a source of water for drinking and bathing. Hell, the Roman legions didn't set up shop anywhere without building a bathhouse or two. There's bound to be a well of some sort buried amidst those ruins.\"\n\n\"And where there's a well, there's a way?\" she quipped.\n\n\"You're reading my mind.\" He glanced at his watch. The night was not getting any younger. \"Is there any place in this town where I can pick up some hiking and caving gear in a hurry?\"\n\n\"Caving?\" A trace of alarm entered her voice. \"So we can go spelunking in some crumbling, two-thousand-year-old well?\"\n\nHe didn't miss the plural pronoun. \"We?\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" she said. \"You can't tempt me with the possibility of finding the very first printing of Mother Goose's Melodies\u2014and maybe an answer to my Pumpkin Morning nightmare\u2014and then just leave me in the lurch. Besides, do you even know the way to the ruins? Believe me when I tell you that it's a long, difficult hike on a trail that's not exactly designed for sightseeing academics from America. You don't want to go it alone.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the offer, but I can manage outside the ivory towers of academia, thank you very much. I'm not exactly your typical Librarian.\"\n\n\"I'm picking up on that,\" she said, \"and consider me intrigued, in more ways than one. But that doesn't change anything. I'm going with you, period.\"\n\nHer tone, which was enough to put the fear of God into any errant student, brooked no further discussion, but she had no idea what she was letting herself in for if she tagged along on this quest. He couldn't in good conscience let her wander into potentially mortal jeopardy unawares.\n\n\"Look,\" he said, \"it's not that I wouldn't appreciate the company\u2014and your company, specifically\u2014but my colleague and I aren't the only ones looking for those pages. We have competition and, in all honesty, I'm not sure how far they might go to beat us to the pages. We could be talking serious danger to life and limb.\"\n\n\"Even worse than waking up in a pumpkin with no idea how you got there?\"\n\n\"Possibly,\" he said. \"Academic politics may get cutthroat at times, but compared to treasure hunting?\" He tried to get across just how serious this was. \"More than reputations can be destroyed, if you get what I'm saying.\"\n\n\"I see.\" She was silent for a minute, absorbing what he'd told her. \"But you still think this search is worth pursuing?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"It's my job, not yours.\"\n\n\"But according to you, I'm Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaughter Goose or whatever, so this is my business, too.\" She nodded to herself, her decision made. \"Like it or not, you're stuck with me, Jake or Jackson or whatever you're calling yourself at the moment. You're not going up that hill without me.\"\n\nStone realized that there was no winning this battle, short of stuffing her in a pumpkin himself. \"All right then,\" he conceded. \"Every Jack must have his Jill, I guess.\"\n\nShe smiled slyly in a way that promised trouble.\n\n\"Don't get ahead of yourself, Jake Stone.\"\n\nHe was searching for a suitable reply when the overhead lights flickered and went out, throwing the pub into darkness. Startled gasps and exclamations replaced the general hubbub as confused customers and servers reacted to the unexpected blackout, which puzzled Stone as well. It wasn't as though there was any sort of storm going on outside.\n\n\"What the devil?\" Gillian said. \"This doesn't\u2014\"\n\nThe lights returned as abruptly as they left, bringing an unwelcome surprise.\n\nA large orange pumpkin, about the size of a Halloween jack-o'-lantern, had magically appeared on the table between them. Gillian's face went pale at the sight. Stone assumed that this pumpkin was not nearly as enormous as the one she'd woken up inside, but it still had to be a very triggery reminder of her recent ordeal.\n\nWhich is exactly the idea, he guessed.\n\n\"What...?\" she stammered. \"How...?\"\n\nStone reached across the table to take her hand, hoping to comfort her. \"Hang in there,\" he began. \"It's just a pumpkin.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, shaking. \"There's more.\"\n\nShe turned the pumpkin around and he saw writing carved into its shell in a way he recognized from his boyhood. Back home, farmers would sometimes scratch short messages\u2014such as, say, a child's name\u2014into the tender green skin of a freshly sprouted pumpkin. As the pumpkin matured, the message would grow, too, scabbing over to form bumpy white script across the bright orange shell, just like on the pumpkin he was looking at now.\n\nThe message scarring the pumpkin was short and to the point: THE BOOK IS MINE.\n\n\"Damn,\" Stone muttered.\n\nGillian looked understandably freaked out. \"This is insane,\" she protested. \"What's this all about?\"\n\n\"It's a warning,\" Stone said. \"To leave those missing rhymes alone.\"\n\nFrom Mother Goose, no doubt.\n\nShe took a deep breath to steady her nerves. The color began to return to her face.\n\n\"For you or for me?\"\n\n\"Both, I'm guessing.\" He squeezed her hand. \"I'll understand if you want nothing more to do with any of this. You can just walk away.\"\n\n\"Like hell I will!\" Her cheeks flushed with anger, suggesting that the brazen attempt to intimidate her had achieved precisely the opposite result. \"I've had quite enough of being bullied by pumpkins.\"\n\nShe shoved the threatening gourd off the table. It crashed to the floor, splattering pumpkin guts all over the tiles. Startled customers looked on in shock, but Gillian couldn't be bothered to explain or apologize. She rose defiantly to her feet and put on her jacket.\n\n\"Well?\" she asked Stone impatiently. \"Are you coming or not?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Florida",
                "text": "\"Excuse me. Sorry. No, thank you. I'm fine.\"\n\nIt was open mic night at Slant, a hip-hop night club in Miami, and Cassandra found herself adrift in a sea of bodies bobbing and swaying to the rhythmic beats and rhymes coming from the stage. It was hot and crowded and loud and she felt overwhelmed and out of place, not to mention daunted by the challenge of finding George Cole, the unnaturally lucky tree trimmer from her news clipping, in the midst of the densely packed club.\n\nThis was not the kind of \"rock-a-bye baby\" I was expecting, she thought. And is the music supposed to be this loud?\n\nShe had been running around the city for hours trying to track down Cole, and getting nowhere, until one of his neighbors had helpfully steered her toward this club. \"You're looking for Georgie on a Saturday night?\" the woman had volunteered before carrying a heavy bag of groceries into her own place. \"Slant is the place to be.\"\n\nCassandra hoped that advice was on target, as she fruitlessly searched the faces of the crowd, looking in vain for anyone who resembled the news photo of George Cole she'd found online. Random bodies jostled her or protested being jostled. Someone offered her a drink, but she declined without hesitation, recalling her inebriated exploits at Dorian Gray's club in London not too long ago; she needed to keep her wits about her.\n\nAnd I really don't need a hangover tomorrow, she thought. Magical or otherwise.\n\nThe noise and commotion were already giving her a headache. Rapper after rapper took their turn upon the stage, eliciting cheers and jeers from the hyped-up crowd. Cassandra paid little attention to the performances, scanning the crowd instead. Sensory overload threatened to send her head spinning; the percussive four-beat rhythm of the raps intruded on her brain, filling it with mathematical static: four by four by four, sixteen bars to a verse, snares on every second beat, rhyme and cadence forming recurring patterns, syllables synched to a staccato schema that smelled oddly like children's aspirin\u2014\n\nStop it! She shook her head to clear it. Keep it under control.\n\nShe was tempted to turn back and stake out Cole's doorstep until he finally dragged himself back home, but who knew how long that might take, especially if he met somebody at the club. According to Jenkins, time was of the essence; she needed to locate Cole with all due speed, even if she had no idea how.\n\nMaybe I can just step outside for minute to get a little fresh air and quiet?\n\nShe was starting to make her way toward the nearest exit, despite the raucous throng between her and the door, when the MC strode back out onto the stage to introduce the next performer:\n\n\"What's crackin', Miami? You ready for more?\"\n\nThe audience whooped in response, practically shaking the building.\n\n\"All right! Then raise the roof for the slamming stylings of Miami's favorite black sheep, our own homegrown shepherd of swag... Bo-Peeps!\"\n\nBo-Peeps?\n\nCassandra halted her exodus and spun around in time to see George Cole take the stage, decked out in an oversized T-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers. A large gilded candy cane hung on a chain around his neck; it took Cassandra a moment to realize that it represented a shepherd's crook. Claiming the mic from the MC, Cole confidently turned toward the audience and launched into his rap:\n\n\u2003They call me Bo-Peeps 'cause I tend to my flock,\n\n\u2003I walk the walk, not just talk the talk.\n\n\u2003No man is an island. Gotta watch for the strays.\n\n\u2003You mess with my peeps, you best mind your ways!\n\nCassandra was no expert on rap music, but her heart pounded in excitement. She was clearly on the right track: Cole was trumpeting his Mother Goose roots for all the world to see and hear. She didn't need to retrace his ancestry back to Elizabeth Goose to know that she had gotten it right the first time.\n\n\u2003You want a good shepherd, you're talking Bo-Peeps.\n\n\u2003I keep watch in the night; them wolves never sleep.\n\n\u2003No eyes are sharper, my name's in the book.\n\n\u2003I keep my sheep safe... by hook or by crook!\n\nWaiting anxiously for \"Bo-Peeps\" to wrap up his performance, Cassandra caught herself tapping her foot in time to the beat, getting into the rap. She was almost disappointed when he finally surrendered the mic and exited the stage on the right. Bouncing on her tiptoes, she peered over the heads and shoulders of the crowd, desperately trying to keep him in sight.\n\n\"Mr. Cole? George Cole?\" she called out, struggling to be heard over the general hubbub. She shoved her way through the crowd, wishing she had Eve's Amazonian height and physique. Dirty looks and grumbling followed her as she squeezed her way forward, feeling like a salmon fighting its way upstream. \"Mr. Peeps! Bo-Peeps!\"\n\nHer frantic shouting caught his attention. Surrounded by some friends or admirers, with whom he was chilling after his act, he stared at her in curiosity. She couldn't blame him for looking puzzled; she wasn't exactly dressed for clubbing. What with her Peter Pan collar, pink floral dress, and leggings, she appeared neither hip nor hop.\n\n\"Yo!\" he called back. \"You lost, little sheep?\"\n\nNot anymore, she thought. \"If I could please just have a moment of your time...!\"\n\nHe gestured for his fan club to let her through. Gasping in relief, she burst from the pack to get up close to him. Her voice was hoarse from shouting.\n\n\"Mr. Cole?\" she said. \"My name is Cassandra and\u2014\"\n\n\"Call me Georgie,\" he said, grinning broadly. He was a big, muscular guy who made her feel even more petite than usual. His shaved skull gleamed beneath the club lights; an amused expression was less intimidating than his imposing physique. \"As in Georgie Porgie, you know?\" He looked her over again. \"I kiss the girls and make them cry.\"\n\nCassandra feared he might have the wrong idea. She was a Librarian, not a groupie. \"I'm sure you do, but I really need to talk to you about an important matter.\"\n\n\"Are you a talent scout?\" he asked. \"Did you like my flow? 'Cause I've got even crisper rhymes where those came from.\"\n\n\"No, no, nothing like that.\" Cassandra decided to cut to the chase to avoid any further confusion. \"It's about... Mother Goose.\"\n\nHis whole face lit up. \"Hell, girl, why didn't you say so? I'm all about Ma Goose, obviously.\" He patted his chest. \"Where do you think I get my mad rhyming skills from? Cross my heart, you're looking at a genuine descendant of the original Ma Goose, the most old-school rapper of all!\"\n\nHe was obviously proud of his illustrious roots.\n\n\"I know!\" Cassandra said. Elizabeth Goose's luminous family tree flashed briefly before her eyes. \"That's what I need to speak with you about.\" A stray customer shouldered past her, bumping her to one side. She found herself standing in a puddle of spilled beer. \"Any chance we can relocate to someplace a little less... distracting?\"\n\nCole nodded. \"I know just the place.\" He made his goodbyes to his assembled fan club before guiding Cassandra toward a rear exit backstage. \"Let's bail.\"\n\nThe exit led to a crowded parking lot lit up by glowing lampposts. The cool night air came as a relief after the overheated atmosphere of the club. Cole's car\u2014an eggshell-blue convertible\u2014was easily identified by his vanity plates, which spelled out \"BO PEEPS.\" He chivalrously opened the passenger side door. \"Welcome to my crib away from crib. Make yourself at home.\"\n\nCassandra hesitated only briefly. There was a time when she would have never gotten into a car with a strange man, but that was before she became a Librarian. She'd stepped through a dimensional vortex into a Lovecraftian hell dimension and, at various points in her new career, faced off against the likes of Morgan le Fay, Professor Moriarty, and the Big Bad Wolf. She figured she could handle a parked convertible in Miami.\n\nBesides, she was getting a good vibe from Cole.\n\n\"We going somewhere?\" she asked.\n\n\"I don't know. You got any place you need to go?\"\n\n\"That kind of depends on what you can tell me.\" She took a deep breath before diving in. \"I'm a Librarian and I'm looking for a certain book....\"\n\n\"Mother Goose's spell book? The one that got split three ways?\"\n\nCassandra blinked in surprise. \"You know about that?\"\n\n\"Damn straight. Case you didn't figure it out already, I'm all into my family history. Gotta know where you came from if you want to know where you're going, right? I know the whole deal backwards and forwards, and can break it down for you beat by beat: the spells, the book, the Treaty....\" He pointed his thumb at his heart. \"The Goose is strong in this one.\"\n\nCassandra wasn't used to it being this easy. \"You're not all skeptical about... magic?\"\n\n\"Hell, no. The world's full of seriously freaky stuff that can't be explained. All you gotta do is open your eyes and look around.\" He gestured at the glittering sky above them, just as a shooting star streaked by overhead. \"Don't believe it? Just wait until you hear about the totally insane thing that happened to me on my day job.\"\n\n\"Your miraculous fall onto that trampoline?\"\n\nNow it was his turn to be caught off guard. \"You heard about that?\"\n\n\"That's what called you to my attention in the first place,\" she divulged. \"Maybe you can tell me exactly what happened, in your own words?\"\n\n\"My favorite kind,\" he joked. \"Sit back and let me enlighten you, little lamb.\" He held an imaginary mic up before his lips. \"So I've got this tree-trimming gig, just to pay the bills until my raps blow up big, and one day I'm up in the bucket, pruning some limbs, when, right out of the blue, this extreme wind comes out of nowhere\u2014like Auntie Em, it's a twister! \u2014and tears me right out of the bucket and tosses me into the air, up, up, and away.\" He shivered in recollection. \"Now I can handle heights, no problem, but I'm not too proud to admit that I was screaming like a baby, convinced that it was all over for me. Understand, we're talking altitude here, like at least eighty feet above the pavement. I was looking at a hard landing.\"\n\nHe slapped the dashboard for emphasis, making Cassandra jump.\n\n\"But then, just as I was saying my prayers, that same crazy wind carried me away from the road and out over somebody's backyard, then dropped me onto some kid's trampoline.\" He threw up his hands in disbelief, marveling at his own survival. \"Wild, right? Don't tell me there's no such thing as luck or magic in this big, wide world!\"\n\n\"I wouldn't dream of it,\" she said.\n\n\"But what's that got to do with Ma Goose?\" he asked.\n\n\"Rock-a-bye, baby,\" she prompted him. \"When the wind blows...\"\n\nUnderstanding dawned on his face. \"Damn! How did I miss that?\" He stared at her in amazement. \"You saying that somebody whammied me with an honest-to-gooseness curse?\"\n\n\"That's one way to put it, I guess.\" She admired his colorful turn of phrase. \"And you weren't the only target. My colleagues and I have reason to believe that someone posing as Mother Goose\u2014probably one of the other heirs to the title\u2014is trying collect all three sections of the book in order to unlock its full power... and misuse it.\"\n\nShe figured she didn't need to explain the whole Humpty Dumpty business, which was bizarre by several more orders of magnitude. Even she was having trouble wrapping her head around the idea that putting Humpty Dumpty back together again would reboot all of Creation.\n\n\"That's whack,\" Cole said, nodding gravely. \"So one of my distant relations is making a major power play, like on Game of Thrones or something?\"\n\n\"More or less,\" she said. \"Or at least that's our best guess as to what's going on.\"\n\nHe let that sink in for a minute. \"What kind of librarian did you say you were again?\"\n\n\"The kind that tracks down dangerous magical books and that, no offense, doesn't have a lot of time to spare.\" She hoped that Cole's knowledge of his family's past included the location of their share of Elizabeth Goose's legacy. \"You don't happen to know where I can find those missing pages?\"\n\n\"Sorry, lamb chop. According to my folks, that secret was buried six feet deep on purpose. Mother Goose's spell book is like the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark: it's not meant to be found.\"\n\nShe refrained from mentioning that both those relics were currently under glass at the Library. \"Does that mean you're not going to help me locate it?\"\n\n\"Did I say that?\" He laughed at the notion. \"Sounds to me like the ball is already in play and the game is on. Count me in!\"\n\nCassandra was glad to hear it. \"Did you inherit any family heirlooms? Such as samplers perhaps?\"\n\nShe doubted he had any such item in his car, but if he remembered the specific rhyme, that might be all she needed to figure out the clues.\n\n\"Gotta hand it to you, little lamb. You know your business. Get an eyeful of this.\"\n\nHe tugged on the bottom of his T-shirt, pulling it up over his head.\n\n\"Whoa there!\" Cassandra held up her hands to fend him off if necessary, while peeking through her fingers. \"Not where I thought we were going with this!\"\n\n\"Chill, lamb chop.\" He turned his back toward her, revealing a nursery rhyme tattooed across his skin in crooked black script. \"Just wanted to give you a wink at my ink.\"\n\n\"That's the rhyme from your sampler?\" she asked. \"On your back?\"\n\n\"You know it. Like I said before, I never want to forget where I came from... and this is a bit more hardcore than great-granny's needlepoint if you know what I mean.\" He shrugged. \"Got a reputation to maintain after all.\"\n\nCassandra didn't argue the point. Personally, when it came to preserving her family history, she would have gone with a nice scrapbook or photo album, but to each their own. Overcoming her initial surprise, she read the rhyme inked into Cole's back.\n\n\u2003There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,\n\n\u2003He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile,\n\n\u2003He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,\n\n\u2003And they all lived together in a little crooked house.\n\nCassandra searched the familiar verses for clues, but came up blank. \"Crooked man... well, that covers a lot of ground. A sixpence, a stile, a cat, a mouse. Are there any particularly crooked houses in the vicinity?\"\n\n\"Crooked as in felonious,\" he asked, \"or crooked as in askew?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me,\" she said, growing frustrated. \"Ask your tricky ancestors. Did any of them ever live in a house that might be described as... crooked?\"\n\nCole scratched his chin, thinking it over, while Cassandra pondered her next move should Cole be stumped as well. Was there some deeper meaning in the rhyme she was missing? Arts and poetry were more Stone's thing, or Jenkins's, or Flynn's. Why couldn't this branch of the Goose family have left her a nice chewy math puzzle instead?\n\nShe was on the verge of calling Jenkins for help when Cole had a brainstorm. He snapped his fingers loudly.\n\n\"The Puzzle House! My great-grandpa didn't live there, but he sure as hell ran the construction team on the Puzzle House, which is about as crooked a crib as they come.\"\n\nCassandra gave him a blank look. \"Puzzle House?\"\n\n\"Seriously? You've never heard of the Wilshire Puzzle House? Where have you been hanging out, little lamb? Under a rock?\"\n\n\"Under a bridge, to be exact,\" she said. \"But you were saying...?\"\n\n\"Let me lay some wisdom on you.\" Cole pulled his shirt back on before launching into his explanation. \"Ezra Wilshire was this 'crooked' robber baron who swindled a whole lot of people back in the boom years after the First World War. Story is he made a deal with the Devil, selling his soul for wealth and luxury, but there was a catch: the Devil couldn't collect his soul until Old Man Wilshire finished building his mansion. So the sneaky old man tried to keep the construction going forever in order to outsmart the Devil.\"\n\n\"Doable,\" Cassandra said, speaking from experience, \"but probably best left to professionals.\" Memories of a certain infernal contract crackled like hellfire across her brain, smelling distinctly of brimstone. \"I'm guessing this didn't work out well for Mr. Wilshire in the end?\"\n\nCole shook his head. \"You could say that. All they ever found was some ashes in the shape of his shadow.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Cassandra gulped, deciding she didn't need all the grisly details at the moment. \"Anyway, I get that the late Mr. Wilshere was 'crooked' in a way, but, aside from its colorful history, was his house all that crooked, too?\"\n\n\"Crooked, crazy, mondo loco... it's all of that and more. Seems Old Man Wilshire didn't entirely trust the Devil to play fair, so he made his crib as confusing as possible so that even Old Nick couldn't find his way around or tell whether the house was done yet. It's all dead ends and weird angles and secret passages and wacked-out doors and stairways that go nowhere in particular. You have to see it to believe it. It's not a house; it's a six-story Rubik's Cube with no straight edges.\"\n\nAnd possibly an ideal spot to hide those missing pages, Cassandra thought, intrigued and encouraged by what she was hearing. \"You say your great-grandfather used to work there?\"\n\n\"No lie. He was the construction chief on the whole freaking job, or so I always heard growing up. His sweat and blood went into building the Puzzle House, working there day after day for year after year, and his fingerprints are all over it,\" Cole bragged, his pride in his heritage once more evident. \"In fact, my dad snuck me in there a few times back when I was a kid....\"\n\nA crooked man's crooked house, Cassandra thought. And a giant puzzle box built by one of Elizabeth Goose's heirs around the same time that the Treaty went into effect. It all added up, at least according to the peculiar calculations of Library work.\n\nShe eyed Cole speculatively.\n\n\"Just how well do you know this house?\"\n\n\"How well?\" he said boastfully.\" Why I know that house like I know\u2014\"\n\nBut before he could finish, thunder boomed directly overhead, despite the fact that the night sky had been clear only moments before. Stormy black clouds rolled in from nowhere and a howling wind invaded the parking lot as though intent on breaking up the conversation. Violent gusts swept the lot, hurling every nearby scrap of litter into the air. Fast-food wrappers, concert flyers, cigarette butts, and other debris flew about erratically. An empty beer can whizzed past Cole's head, nearly winging him. Cassandra batted away a flapping sheet of newspaper that kept trying to wrap itself around her head, even as she assumed that the grimy paper was the least of their problems. The odds against this sudden change in the weather being a natural occurrence were too small to bother calculating. She knew magic when it wailed in her ears.\n\nWhen the wind blows...\n\n\"D\u00e9j\u00e0 voodoo!\" Cole said, reaching the same conclusion. \"I've bounced to this beat before!\" The convertible began to rock from side to side. Cassandra felt the hostile wind tugging on her, trying to tear her away from Cole and the car.\n\n\"Buckle in!\" she shouted over the gale, securing her seat belt and shoulder strap in hopes of foiling the wind long enough for them to get away. \"And drive!\"\n\n\"You know it!\" Cole buckled in and fired up the convertible. A flying beer bottle crashed into a headlight with great force, shattering both itself and the light. \"Time to ditch this party!\"\n\nCassandra searched the sky, watching out for Mother Goose, but the churning black clouds could have hidden an entire flock of giant geese and ganders. Or maybe Mother Goose was wielding her magic by long distance instead?\n\nSplat!\n\nA ridiculously large bird dropping, as in at least a gallon's worth, hit the windshield. Greenish-white glop smeared all over the glass.\n\nOr not so long distance, Cassandra thought.\n\nCole gaped at his grossly defiled windshield. \"You have gotta be kidding me!\"\n\n\"Just drive!\" she yelled. \"Hit the gas!\"\n\n\"But my windshield's all messed up! I can barely see where I'm going!\"\n\n\"You're just going to have to make do! Get going!\"\n\nMore king-sized droppings fell from the clouds, splattering all around the convertible and despoiling the other cars in the lot. There were going to be a lot of upset drivers when the club let out, but Cassandra couldn't worry about that. The car peeled out of the parking lot, its windshield wipers getting a workout. Cassandra hoped the car was as fast as it looked. They needed to get away from Mother Goose and get to the Puzzle House in time to find the lost pages.\n\nPreferably without being pooped on."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "\"What's this?\" Baird asked.\n\nJenkins had plopped an old color photograph onto her desk at the Annex, where she had been attempting fruitlessly to contact Flynn or at least track down some hint as to his current whereabouts. Texts, e-mails, and social media had proven a bust, while his appointment book and personal planner hadn't yielded any actionable intel either. She knew when his dental appointment was, but not what had led him to Mother Goose's Garden in the first place\u2014and where he had ended up afterward.\n\n\"A souvenir? A mystery? A clue?\" He stood solemnly before the desk, offering little in the way of answers. \"Your guess is as good as mine, Colonel.\"\n\nBaird inspected the photo, which appeared to have been taken at Mother Goose's Magic Gardens back in its heyday. A mop-headed young boy, no older than seven or eight, smiled and waved at the camera as he posed in front of Humpty Dumpy, who was in much better condition than it had been when Baird had visited the park only hours ago. Humpty's fresh paint job was not yet faded or peeling. The lawn and gardens in the background looked neatly trimmed, not overgrown and infested with weeds. A sunny blue sky provided a fine day for a carefree family outing.\n\nA vacation photo from days gone by?\n\nProbably, Baird assumed. She had stumbled onto plenty of such photos online while researching the defunct theme park. \"Where did you find this?\"\n\n\"In a dusty file folder,\" he said, \"where the Library's copy of the Mother Goose Treaty should have been.\" He brushed some lint from his sleeve. \"I thought it best to consult the original document, but when I finally unearthed the correct folder, which required a certain degree of excavation, all it contained was this lone memento.\"\n\nShe squinted at the photo. \"Well, this certainly doesn't look like it was taken in 1918 when the Treaty was drafted.\" The boy in the photo, she noted, was wearing standard kid attire: a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. His face struck her as vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. \"Any idea who the kid is?\"\n\n\"I don't believe so,\" Jenkins said. \"I thought at first that I knew him from somewhere, but I could very well be mistaken. I avoid children on principle, due to their general immaturity and lack of decorum, yet I've encountered enough of them over the years that their raw, unfinished faces tend to blur in my memory.\" A hint of melancholy entered his voice, if only for a moment. \"Aside from that brat Mordred, that is. Now there was a holy terror, even as a child....\"\n\nIt occurred to Baird to wonder if Jenkins had ever been a father and, if so, how many children of his own he might have outlived over the course of his ageless existence. She couldn't think of a polite way to ask, however, that wouldn't risk reopening old wounds and it was none of her business anyway.\n\nPlus, there are more pressing questions facing us at the moment, she thought. \"So where is the actual Treaty?\"\n\n\"I am at a loss to explain its absence,\" he admitted. \"Mind you, given the unusual turbulence of the last few years, with the Library being lost, then found, then losing its memory, then regaining its faculties, it's entirely possible that the document is simply misfiled.\"\n\n\"At the same time that we've got a real-life Mother Goose up to no good?\" Baird didn't buy it and she doubted Jenkins did, either. \"You don't really believe that for a minute, do you?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said dourly. \"I do not.\"\n\n\"Great,\" she said. \"Just what we needed: another mystery.\"\n\nRising from her desk, she paced restlessly around the Annex as she considered her next move. She trusted her Librarians to handle themselves in the field, but she was not content to hold down the fort at the Library during this crisis. That was Jenkins's job.\n\n\"I feel like I ought to head out to assist one of the others,\" she said to Jenkins, \"but which one? Stone? Ezekiel? Cassandra? Or should I be out searching for Flynn? Hard to say who might need backup... or where 'Mother Goose' could pop up next.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\" Jenkins began to straighten up the office, perhaps just to keep busy. \"Might I suggest that\u2014\"\n\nA blaring siren cut him off before he could finish. Baird looked up in alarm, a jolt of adrenaline priming her for action. The siren was a new security measure they'd installed after the Library had been infiltrated one too many times in the last few years. Prospero, Moriarty, the Queen of Hearts, and Frankenstein's monster had been the last straws as far as she'd been concerned.\n\n\"Jenkins,\" she began.\n\n\"On top of it, Colonel.\"\n\nJenkins clapped loudly to silence the piercing siren. Crossing the room, he yanked away the curtain veiling a magic mirror capable of monitoring assorted locations throughout the Library. Instead of his reflection, the image in the standing wood-framed mirror reflected a large chamber furnished with multiple bookcases, tables, and antique desk lamps: the very iconic image of a library. A sepia tone tinged the vision, which was the enchanted equivalent of a closed-circuit TV transmission. Baird had never quite figured out why they couldn't just install some nonmagic security cameras, but Jenkins could be quite set in his ways sometimes. And, in any event, that was a debate for another day. For now, the magic mirror had news for them.\n\n\"The disturbance appears to be in the main Reading Room,\" he reported, surveying the scene. Fallen books and a toppled lamp, strewn across the floor of the Reading Room, suggested that the siren was no false alarm. \"Again,\" he added dryly. \"We may need to consider charging admission.\"\n\nBaird joined him before the mirror. \"Mother Goose?\"\n\n\"A goose,\" he replied \"but not that goose.\"\n\nA large white goose flapped across the silvered glass, flying wildly back and forth around the Reading Room as though searching for the best way out of the spacious chamber. The magic mirror did not provide audio, so Baird could not hear the goose honking, but she could easily imagine the racket the frenzied bird was making. Peering at the screen, it took her a moment to identify the out-of-place avian.\n\n\"Is that\u2014?\"\n\n\"The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs,\" Jenkins confirmed, nodding, \"which, according to the old nursery rhyme, once belonged to Mother Goose and her son Jack.\" He cited the relevant passage from memory:\n\n\u2003Jack found one fine morning,\n\n\u2003As I have been told,\n\n\u2003His goose had laid him\n\n\u2003An egg of pure gold.\n\nBaird watched the fabled goose; the bird had been in the Library's custody for as long as she'd been a Guardian, but had always behaved itself before. \"Never heard that one,\" she admitted.\n\n\"It's like the national anthem,\" Jenkins said. \"Everybody knows the first part, but the rest...?\" He shrugged as though there was nothing to be done about such a lamentable gap in the general public's knowledge. \"In any event, I surmise that this recent spike in Mother Goose magic has agitated our goose, which may be frantic to return to its original mistress.\"\n\n\"Or her gander,\" Baird said.\n\n\"Also a possibility,\" Jenkins conceded. \"She doesn't get out much.\"\n\nOrdinarily, the goose resided placidly in its pen elsewhere in the Library, but something certainly had the goose riled up, as though it had been, well, goosed. Baird winced as the berserk bird knocked over another vintage banker's lamp in its wild flight about the Reading Room. The lamp crashed to the carpeted floor.\n\n\"Great,\" Baird said sarcastically. \"As if we don't already have enough on our plate right now.\"\n\n\"Multitasking is often a prerequisite when it comes to the Library,\" Jenkins said. \"Don't get me started on the turn of the millennium. Having to deal with Y2K, the Seventh Awakening of the Marsupial Lords, and the Omega Comet made for some very long days, believe me.\" He stepped away from the mirror and started toward one of the doors leading deeper into the Library. \"Step lively, Colonel, it seems we have a rogue goose to round up.\"\n\nBaird questioned his priorities. \"Do we really need to deal with that now? Shouldn't we be concentrating on Mother Goose instead of a runaway bird?\"\n\n\"You may be underestimating the severity of this situation, Colonel.\" Jenkins paused in the doorway to expound. \"We cannot risk that goose escaping the Library, not with its propensity for laying golden eggs. Not only does this particular bird pose a major threat to the stability of the gold standard, and ergo to the entire world economy, but magic gold in itself has an unfortunate tendency to provoke bloodshed, betrayal, and even warfare out in the world. Just ask Wagner... or Tolkien.\"\n\nMy precious, Baird thought. \"I get the picture.\"\n\n\"In addition,\" he said, ticking off his points on his fingers, \"a loose goose running amuck throughout the Library is a potentially explosive situation, given that it might well disturb far more dangerous relics, creating yet more chaos and conceivably setting off a chain reaction of escalating disasters... not unlike that time Maxwell's Demon escaped the Theoretical Bestiary, got drunk on the literal Grapes of Wrath, and nearly opened Pandora's Box.\" His somber tone hinted at the most dire of consequences. \"Moreover, I for one have no desire to have to clean goose droppings off the Ark of the Covenant or the actual Mona Lisa.\"\n\n\"Enough,\" Baird said. \"You made your case. Let's get that goose.\"\n\nSorry, gang, she mentally apologized to her Librarians. Looks like you're on your own, while Jenkins and I go on a wild goose chase... literally.\n\nJenkins locked the interior entrance to the Annex behind them, to help ensure that the goose did not escape out into the wild. Baird let Jenkins lead the way to the Reading Room, where the goose had been last spotted. She was starting to know her way around the main sections of the Library, more or less, but Jenkins probably knew its byzantine byways, shortcuts, and subsections better than anyone else on Earth, including Flynn, so Baird was more than willing to let him take point. The sooner they caught up with the misbehaving bird, the better.\n\n\"So does the rhyme say anything about how to catch this goose?\" she asked him as they hustled down long hallways lined with bookshelves and display cases. \"Anything useful, I mean.\"\n\n\"Depends on how you define 'useful,' Colonel.\" He brandished an oversized butterfly net that he had commandeered from the Unnatural History wing. \"In the rhyme, the errant goose is ultimately caught and reclaimed by... Mother Goose, which is probably not the outcome we would prefer.\" He recited the verses:\n\n\u2003Jack's mother came in and caught the goose soon,\n\n\u2003And mounting its back, flew up to the moon.\n\nBaird recalled Mother Goose departing the abandoned theme park atop the back of the giant gander. She decided she didn't want to see the crone launching her own space program anytime soon.\n\n\"Yeah, let's not ask her for help.\"\n\nArriving at the Reading Room, they found that the goose had already flown the coop, leaving behind a frightful mess\u2014and a gleaming ovoid souvenir. A large golden egg rested on the bright-red carpet, reflecting the light from the overhead lamps. It was the size and shape of an ordinary goose egg, but its metallic gold sheen was no mere decoration or trickery. This was the real thing: an actual golden egg, freshly laid.\n\n\"That's our bird all right.\" Baird picked up the egg, which was heavy enough to be solid gold all the way through. It was also, somewhat disturbingly, still warm to the touch. \"And I don't think she's gone far.\"\n\n\"Let us hope not,\" Jenkins said. \"The Library is almost unlimited in its breadth... and I'm not wearing my running shoes.\"\n\nBaird took a moment to admire the lustrous egg. \"Gotta wonder how many of these little beauties Ezekiel has made off with.\"\n\n\"Not a one,\" Jenkins stated with confidence. \"I maintain a tight inventory of the goose's output and there are no discrepancies, at least not in this century. I suspect Mr. Jones considers thieving from the Library insufficiently challenging to excite his interest... thank goodness. My own impression is that, ultimately, his criminal exploits are driven more by ego than avarice.\"\n\n\"In other words, it's all about the bragging rights,\" she said, thinking it over. \"Yeah, that sounds about right.\" She turned her attention back to the task at hand. \"Where do we look next?\"\n\n\"It's quite simple, Colonel.\" Jenkins located a second egg at the other end of the Reading Room, before the far exit. \"We follow the eggs.\"\n\nJenkins knew whereof he spoke. Departing the disordered chamber, they found a trail of eggs leading them on a circuitous path through the Library, with a new egg turning up every hundred feet or so. Baird gave up trying to collect them all, at least for the time being, but they'd soon located enough golden eggs to fill a decent-sized basket, assuming you were strong enough to lift it.\n\n\"This is a lot of eggs,\" Baird observed. \"She usually this... prolific?\"\n\n\"Hardly.\" Jenkins continued to grip the handle of his butterfly net, which had reportedly been used to catch a Mothman or two in the past, although that had been well before Baird's time. \"No doubt the same magical upheaval that excited the goose in the first place has increased her productivity as well. All the more reason to get her safely penned up again before\u2014\"\n\nA worried expression worried Baird as well.\n\n\"Before what?\" Baird asked. \"Everything's cool as long as the eggs stay inside the Library, right?\"\n\n\"Not necessarily.\" His saturnine countenance went from concerned to pained. \"Centuries of unbridled human desire and adoration have imbued gold with a certain mythical cachet that transcends its merely physical beauty and rarity. I'm concerned that the presence of this much scattered gold might... provoke a response... from certain other items in the collection.\"\n\nBaird didn't like the sound of that. \"What items? What kind of responses?\"\n\nBefore he could elaborate, a loud thumping noise came from somewhere up ahead. The clamor, echoing down the corridor toward them, didn't sound remotely like an overstimulated goose in flight, but more like a heavy object being knocked about. Jenkins released a weary sigh.\n\n\"See for yourself,\" he said.\n\nRushing forward to investigate, Baird found herself in a wood-paneled gallery she wasn't sure she had ever stumbled onto before. Shelves and pedestals displayed a variety of arcane relics, but her gaze was instantly drawn to the source of the ruckus: a large eighteenth-century treasure chest rocking back and forth atop an X-shaped pedestal.\n\nAs in X marks the spot?\n\nThe chest, which was built of sturdy oak timbers reinforced by iron, looked like something straight out of Treasure Island or an Errol Flynn movie. A metal padlock held the lid shut, even as the entire chest bounced violently upon its perch as though possessed. The unseen contents of the chest rattled as well, shaken up by the chest's inexplicable perturbations.\n\nBaird eyed the rambunctious chest as cautiously as she might have once viewed a possibly live WMD back in her counterterrorism days. She skidded to a stop, uncertain if she needed to \"defuse\" the chest somehow\u2014or dive for cover.\n\n\"Now what?\" she wondered.\n\nA violent tremor dislodged the chest from the pedestal, causing it to crash down onto the hardwood floor of the gallery. The padlock came loose, clattering onto the floor as well, and the lid sprang open, revealing a treasure of gold doubloons, jewelry, plates, and goblets. The smell of gunpowder emanated from the interior of the chest, evoking images of pirate ships firing broadsides at Spanish galleons, or perhaps the burning fuses Blackbeard was said to have woven into his eponymous facial hair to make himself look even more demonic. As Baird gaped wide-eyed, the lid of the chest opened and closed repeatedly, making it look like a pair of snapping jaws.\n\n\"I was afraid of this.\" Jenkins came up behind her. \"All these loose eggs, scattered carelessly about, have awakened the Dead Man's Chest... and its voracious appetite for gold.\"\n\nBaird spotted another shiny golden egg lying at her feet. She picked it up.\n\n\"It's after these?\" she said. \"But it's just a wooden chest. How can it\u2014?\"\n\nPeg legs sprouted from the base of the chest, lifting it up off the floor.\n\n\"Never mind,\" Baird said, as the chest scuttled toward her like a crab, its \"jaws\" snapping hungrily.\n\n\"Watch out, Colonel!\" Jenkins said. \"It's after that egg!\"\n\nHeeding his warning, she lobbed the heavy egg at the oncoming chest to keep from getting gobbled up with it. \"Here you go, Cap'n Pac-Man.\"\n\n\"Wait!\" Jenkins cried out too late. \"You never want to feed an enchanted treasure chest!\"\n\nNow he tells me, Baird thought. She watched helplessly as the animated chest caught the egg in its open maw. Its lid clamped down. Crunching noises emerged from inside the chest as it apparently chowed down on the golden egg.\n\n\"And why do you never feed a treasure chest?\" Baird asked.\n\n\"The more gold it consumes, the hungrier it gets,\" Jenkins explained. \"Soon the eggs alone will not be enough to satisfy it.\"\n\n\"Can't get enough booty, huh?\" she said. \"Typical.\"\n\nThe lid of the chest sprang open again, revealing no trace of the captured egg. Still hungry, the chest spun about like a hound after a scent and took off into the bowels of the Library as fast as its peg legs could carry it.\n\nWhich turned out to be pretty damn fast.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" Jenkins said. \"What did I say before about escalating crises?\"\n\nBaird braced herself for more bad news. \"Don't hold back. How much does this suck?\"\n\n\"More than Vlad Tepes's family reunion,\" Jenkins replied. \"This is not just about the goose anymore, Colonel, or the eggs. There is no shortage of priceless, irreplaceable relics in the Library's care, and they are all in danger as long as that ravenous chest is on the prowl.\"\n\n\"So how do we stop it?\" she asked. \"A magic cutlass? An old-fashioned ship's cannon?\"\n\nJenkins shook his head. \"I'm afraid it's more complicated than that.\"\n\n\"Isn't it always?\" Baird said.\n\n\"We can't risk destroying the chest,\" he exposited, \"for fear of releasing the evil spirits trapped within it.\"\n\n\"Evil spirits?\"\n\n\"You've heard of the fifteen men on a dead man's chest?\" Jenkins treated the question as rhetorical, continuing, \"Well, it's actually more in than on, and they were very, very bad men....\"\n\nShe took his word for it. \"The fun never stops, does it?\"\n\n\"Not in my experience, no.\" He contemplated the direction in which the ambulatory chest had vanished. \"At the risk of stepping on your toes as our resident strategist, I suggest we divide our forces. I'll continue after the goose while you pursue the chest... and prevent it from consuming any of our more precious treasures.\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" she said.\n\n\"Good luck then, Colonel,\" he said solemnly. \"I can't impress upon you enough the vital importance of the task you've taken on. The Library does not merely hide its collection from the world; we also have the considerable responsibility of preserving it for posterity. The unique documents and relics in our keeping belong to all of humanity and history, even if many of them need to be kept under lock and key for any number of compelling reasons.\"\n\n\"Which is why we don't simply destroy them all just to be safe,\" Baird said, nodding. The rules of engagement were clear: stop the chest without wrecking it, and before it wrecked the Library. \"Any idea where that four-legged luggage is heading?\"\n\n\"The largest concentration of golden artifacts is in the Antiquities section,\" he advised. \"I strongly recommend you get there first.\"\n\n\"But what do I do when\u2014?\"\n\nAn elephant trumpeted somewhere behind them. Whale song inexplicably echoed in the distance. A dinosaur roared.\n\n\"If you'll forgive me, Colonel, I fear the goose has stirred up the specimens in the Large Animals Room.\" He rolled his eyes before rushing off with his next breath. \"I swear, it never rains but it pours....\"\n\nBaird was left alone in the gallery, facing the empty X-shaped pedestal and the unexpected challenge that just had landed squarely in her lap. \"So much for the briefing,\" she muttered. \"This mission is a go.\"\n\nYo, ho, ho, a pirate chest for me."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ohio",
                "text": "The Banbury Fair was in full swing when Ezekiel and Mary arrived at the fairgrounds. Throngs of locals crowded the fair, which was spread out over several acres and buildings. Sawdust carpeted the midway, where food stands hawked corn dogs, caramel apples, cotton candy, and funnel cakes. A Ferris wheel offered a bird's-eye view of the surrounding countryside. Prize cattle, sheep, and other livestock loitered in the stables. Games of skill and chance, almost assuredly rigged, fleeced the suckers, while offering teenage boys an opportunity to impress their dates by winning them an oversized stuffed animal. Fresh fruits and vegetables were displayed in elaborate arrangements. Calliope music issued from a vintage merry-go-round. A sunny afternoon cooperated with the festivities, providing a blue sky and pleasant fall weather. A chainsaw carving exhibition drew a crowd.\n\n\"I figure we can start with the pies.\" Mary strode forward through the crowd, leading the way. \"Baked goods are this way.\"\n\n\"Aye, aye, ma'am.\" Ezekiel had resigned himself to the bossy librarian tagging along for the time being. Who knows, he thought. Maybe a native guide will come in handy.\n\nIt wasn't as though he'd had a lot of experience prowling country fairs. Lost tombs, pricy mansions, world-class museums, and high-security installations, sure, but some dinky small-town jubilee? These were not his usual thieving grounds and for good reason. What was there to heist except piglets, chintzy sideshow prizes, or a blue-ribbon eggplant or whatever?\n\n\"No problems with me leading the way, Mr. Jones? Glad you finally see things my way.\"\n\n\"It's not like you gave me much choice.\" He wondered again about her motives and decided that perhaps there was another good reason to keep her close by. If she is up to something, better that I know where she is. Keep your gooses close, or something like that.\n\nHe lifted a helium balloon from a souvenir stand, just for practice. It bobbed along in the air as he followed Mary to the pie display, which was set up in an open-air pavilion not far from the amusement park rides. Rows of freshly baked pies were arrayed on picnic tables beneath a log roof, while milling fairgoers admired them. Red, white, and blue ribbons singled out certain desserts for special honors. A cool autumn breeze carried the mouth-watering aroma of the pies. Ezekiel's stomach grumbled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten for hours. He saw some individual slices on display as well, protected by plastic wrap. Fancying a particularly tantalizing slice of pumpkin pie, he sidled over to it and positioned his body to block any inconvenient eyes. Deft fingers reached toward the slice.\n\n\"Keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Jones.\"\n\nBusted, he thought, withdrawing his hand. Never underestimate an alert librarian.\n\n\"I was just admiring the fine quality of these baked goods,\" he insisted.\n\n\"Uh-huh, right.\" She steered him away from the tempting treat. \"Refreshments are elsewhere after we find out if there's anything to these crazy theories of yours.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\nGetting down to cases, he scanned the wooden pavilion, which hardly seemed like someplace you'd hide a lost copy of Mother Goose's Melodies or even one-third of it. The structure was solidly built with a concrete floor, sturdy wooden supports, and a log-cabin-type roof. He rapped one of the timbers with his knuckles but heard no answering echoes; it was solid through and through.\n\nSomething's wrong here, he thought. It was possible that there was a hidden compartment somewhere in the pavilion, but his gut was telling him that they were looking in the wrong place\u2014and his instincts about such things were seldom wrong. \"I'm not feeling this.\" He looked beyond the pie pavilion to the rest of the fair. \"Are there any other attractions here that might have something to do with a pie... or a pieman?\"\n\nMary mulled it over. \"Well, there's probably a bake sale or two being put on by some civic group or another. Their booths would be over in the community hall, next to the art show.\"\n\n\"Bake sales?\" Ezekiel shook his head. Those didn't sound permanent enough to hide a magic tome for umpteen years. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Come to think of it, the baking competition used to be held in the old Hobbies & Crafts building, but that burned down in the big fire of '75, along with most everything else.\"\n\nHis ears perked up. \"Fire?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes.\" Mary was apparently a fount of local history. \"A fireworks accident back in 1975 started a blaze that pretty much burned the entire fairgrounds to the ground. About the only thing that survived was the old carousel.\"\n\nEzekiel grinned. Mental tumblers clicked into place.\n\n\"And how old is the carousel?\" he asked.\n\n\"Let me see.\" She gazed upward, not unlike Cassandra, as she peered back into her memory. \"1919? 1920? Sometime shortly after the war.\"\n\nIn other words, Ezekiel thought, around the same time the Mother Goose Treaty went into effect.\n\n\"Come on,\" he said. \"We need to ride that merry-go-round.\"\n\nHe didn't need Mary to guide him. She hurried behind him, struggling to keep up, as he followed the calliope music to an old-fashioned carousel in the center of the amusement park. Carved wooden horses, painted in shining colors, pranced in a circle, accompanied by a few more exotic beasts like whales and lions and unicorns. Laughing children, and more than a few adults, bounced atop the antique ride, which had obviously been kept in first-rate condition. Ezekiel generally preferred more high-tech amusements, but he had to admit that the carousel was pretty impressive. It was practically a collector's item in its own right, which made him wonder just how much he could get for it on the black market... strictly in theory, of course.\n\nFirst things first, he thought. \"This has to be it. If what you're saying is true\u2014\"\n\n\"Are you questioning my command of the facts, Mr. Jones?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" he assured her. \"I'm just saying that this is the only part of the fair that's old enough to be hiding those pages. And the carousel is just the right age for someone to have built a secret compartment into it.\" His eyes widened as he examined the ride. \"And check out that canopy!\"\n\nThe top of the carousel was crowned by a peaked circus tent featuring alternating red and yellow stripes. Or, to be more precise, wedges.\n\n\"What about it?\" Mary asked.\n\n\"Don't you see?\" He felt even more pleased with himself than usual. \"The tent is divided into wedges. Pie slices!\"\n\nShe looked unconvinced. \"You don't think that's a stretch?\"\n\n\"Nope! It's all coming together now.\" He circled the carousel, walking counter to its own rotation. \"Let's see, if I was going to hide a magic book in a merry-go-round, where would I put it?\"\n\nDecorative panels hid the machinery at the heart of the carousel, but seemed too thin and flimsy to hide the missing pages. Ezekiel's eyes zoomed in on the galloping wooden horses on their poles, as well as the other carved beasts populating the ride. Booth-shaped chariots were interspersed among the prancing steeds for younger or more timid riders. One such chariot he observed was in the shape of a goose.\n\nMary also spotted the goose chariot as it spun past them. \"There!\" she said, pointing. \"You think that's where my family's inheritance is hidden? If there's actually anything to the stories, that is.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Ezekiel said. \"But is it just me, or is that just a little too obvious?\"\n\nShe gave him a look. \"Hiding a long-lost book of nursery rhymes inside a carved wooden goose on a century-old carousel is your idea of 'obvious'?\"\n\n\"Compared to some of the tricky treasure hunts I've been on?\" Ezekiel chuckled. \"Absolutely.\" He couldn't resist trying to impress her. \"You think that sounds devious? You should have seen the Book of the Fourth Magi. Every page held a different maze and you physically couldn't turn each page before solving it, but, in the end, it turned out that the actual route to the lost treasure of Prester John wasn't hidden inside the book at all, but stitched into the binding.\" He puffed out his chest. \"I'm not going to say that I'm the Librarian who figured that out, but I absolutely was.\"\n\nMary still looked dubious. \"You'd better not be pulling my leg.\"\n\n\"Who, me?\" He slowed to a stop and watched the carousel rotate past him. \"Is there anything else in that rhyme that might be a clue?\"\n\n\"Just the lines on the sampler,\" she asked, \"or the rest of the rhyme?\"\n\n\"There's more?\"\n\n\"Oh yes! Everybody knows the beginning of 'Simple Simon,' the part about the pieman, but there are actually several more verses.\" She took a deep breath before reciting them.\n\n\u2003Says the pieman to Simple Simon,\n\n\u2003Show me first your penny;\n\n\u2003Says Simple Simon to the pieman,\n\n\u2003Indeed I have not any.\n\nEzekiel had not noticed any coins or coin slots on the carousel. \"Keep going,\" he said to Mary, who continued with the rhyme.\n\n\u2003Simple Simon went a-fishing,\n\n\u2003For to catch a whale\u2014\n\n\"Wait!\" he interrupted her. An ornate chariot fashioned in the shape of a spuming white whale rushed past him. \"Why is there a whale on a merry-go-round? Unless....\"\n\nVery sneaky, he thought, figuratively tipping his hat to some long-dead Goose heir. You need to know the whole rhyme, not just the part on the sampler.\n\n\"You think the pages are hidden in the whale?\" Mary asked.\n\n\"I'd bet the farm on it, or my name's not Ezekiel Jones.\" He congratulated himself for solving the puzzle without any help from the rest of the team. \"Now I just need to check out that whale.\" He glanced up at the sky, which was still inconveniently bright and blue. \"What time does this fair close for the night?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Mary said. \"Ten or eleven, probably.\"\n\n\"That late?\" He frowned and shook his head. \"So much for sneaking in after closing time. Guess I'm going to have to do this in broad daylight.\"\n\nMary looked apprehensive. \"Do what?\"\n\nEzekiel grinned in anticipation. \"Just sit back and watch a master at work.\"\n\nA distracted tween walked by, clutching a long string of paper tickets. Refusing on principle to pay for a ride on the merry-go-round, Ezekiel adeptly detached several tickets from the string without anybody being the wiser, aside from Mary, who frowned in disapproval. As the carousel came to a halt, he handed the tickets over to the ride's pimply-faced teenage operator and made a beeline toward the whale.\n\nThar she blows, he thought. That's a whale thing, right?\n\nUnfortunately, a little girl got there first. Ezekiel was no good at estimating kids' ages, but she looked like a munchkin in pigtails. Freckles peppered her chubby cheeks.\n\n\"Great,\" Ezekiel muttered, wondering why an investigation into Mother Goose had to have so many inconvenient ankle biters getting in the way. \"Excuse me, kid. Are you sure you wouldn't rather ride one of the horses... or the unicorn maybe?\"\n\n\"I like whales.\" She planted herself squarely on the bench inside the chariot.\n\n\"What about the lion?\" he asked. \"Lions are cool.\"\n\n\"I like whales.\"\n\n\"Look, kid. How about I buy you some ice cream or cotton candy if you let me ride the whale instead?\"\n\nShe regarded him suspiciously, her pudgy arms crossed atop her chest.\n\n\"Are you a stranger? 'Cause my mom told me never to talk to strangers.\"\n\nEzekiel realized that he was fighting a losing battle. \"Okay, okay,\" he said, backing off. \"Suit yourself.\"\n\nClaiming a gleaming painted stallion directly behind the whale, Ezekiel was forced to endure one entire ride on the carousel before it finally slowed to a halt again. He spent the time planning his next move, while pocketing the brass ring at the end of a wooden arm suspended alongside the carousel. As the passengers disembarked, he hastily ran forward to claim the whale chariot.\n\nFinally!\n\nMore tickets bought him another ride. Tapping the bench suggested that there was indeed a hollow space beneath the seat. Feeling around beneath the edge of the bench, his expert fingers located what felt suspiciously like a hidden release button. A triumphant grin betrayed his success.\n\nDing, ding. We have a winner.\n\nNow he just needed an opportunity to crack the bench open and inspect its contents. Fortunately, he knew just how to make that happen. Extracting the small brass ring from his pocket, he covertly hurled it through a narrow gap between the wooden panels at the center of the carousel and into the mechanical guts of the ride. As anticipated, a loud grinding noise came from the motor, along with puffs of oily black smoke, as the merry-god-round lurched to a sudden stop. Alarmed passengers, gasping and crying out, hastily disembarked. The carousel's operator pulled back on a lever, shutting the ride down.\n\n\"Nobody panic!\" he called out. \"Please exit the ride in an orderly fashion!\"\n\nEzekiel went into action. \"Excuse me!\" he said, getting in the operator's face. \"I'm a special inspector with the Rides and Attractions Regulatory Commission.\" He held up his phone to display some false credentials from his extensive collection of same. \"I need to conduct an immediate investigation of this incident.\"\n\n\"Hang on,\" the operator said. A name tag on his shirt identified him as \"Jimmy.\" He seemed predictably discombobulated by the sudden crisis. \"Let's not overreact. I'm sure it's nothing.\"\n\n\"I'll be the judge of that!\" Ezekiel hopped back on the ride. \"This ride is shut down until I say so. Secure the perimeter and keep out of my way.\"\n\n\"Hold on there!\" Jimmy started to follow after him. \"You can't just go barging\u2014\"\n\n\"Jimmy Doggle!\" Mary said sharply, running interference. \"You let this nice man do his job. We need to take this matter seriously.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Simon?\" Jimmy sounded cowed by the librarian. He looked young enough to have attended story time not all that many years ago. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"But nothing,\" she said. \"I'll vouch for the inspector here. You just do as you're told and I'm sure we can straighten this whole situation out in no time.\"\n\nShe winked at Ezekiel.\n\nNever mess with a librarian, he thought again. Grateful for her intervention, he ignored the sabotaged motor and headed straight for the whale. The concealed switch yielded to his fingers and he heard a lock click open. A familiar thrill quickened his pulse as he closed in on his prize. Squeaky hinges protested as the top of the bench swung open to reveal a thin leather-bound volume tucked inside the hidden compartment. Embossed golden type on the front cover read:\n\n\"Mother Goose's Melodies, Book One of Three.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Northumberland",
                "text": "The trail up to the ruins was just as rough as Gillian had promised, making for an arduous hike. A brisk autumn wind added a nip to the air now that the sun had gone down, although the strenuous physical activity helped to keep the chill at bay. The dark of night further impeded their progress, forcing them to tread warily, using flashlights to guide their way. Stone liked to think that he was in good shape, but he had worked up a sweat by the time they neared the top of the rocky green hill. Backpacks laden with gear commandeered from the college's geology department weighed both hikers down, although he was impressed by the way Gillian had managed to keep up with him, even leading the way most of the time. She was clearly in good shape, too, as his eyes kept reminding him.\n\nThank you, Clippings Book, he thought. I owe you one.\n\nPausing to take a sip of water from a canteen, he took a moment to enjoy the view of the rugged, rolling countryside below, where the colors of fall added variety to the wild brush and bracken. Leafy trees displayed rustic reds and yellows, while the murky waters of a deep black pool rippled at the base of the hill, reflecting the moonlight. Lifting his gaze, Stone spied the picturesque roofs and towers of the small college town not far away. Some of the older stone buildings looked to date back to the 1600s at least, as he could tell from their design and materials.\n\n\"Beautiful country,\" he observed.\n\n\"Don't I know it,\" she agreed, taking in the view as well. A cheery red scarf kept her neck warm, while adding a spot of color to her outdoor ensemble. The vigorous exercise seemed to have lifted her spirits; if she was still scared or angry about that spooky business with the pumpkin back at the pub, she wasn't letting it show. \"I can't imagine living anywhere else.\"\n\n\"Really?\" he asked out of curiosity. \"Not that I don't see the appeal of this corner of the world, but it seems to me that an individual with your brains and expertise would have no shortage of options and opportunities.\"\n\n\"What can I say?\" she replied. \"I love this place. It's like I'm bound to the land, as silly as that sounds.\"\n\nMaybe not so silly, Stone thought. It was entirely possible, of course, that there was nothing more to what she was saying than a natural affinity for the place where she'd grown up, but could it be that there was also some mystical force or connection keeping her here, not far from the potent spells entrusted to her branch of the family? She was an heir to the legacy of Mother Goose, after all....\n\n\"Can't say I blame you, considering.\" He took another swig from his canteen as he contemplated the steep, irregular, and ill-maintained trail ahead. He estimated that another fifteen minutes of solid effort would get them to where they were going. \"You ready for the final push to the top?\"\n\n\"Try and stop me.\"\n\nA short but strenuous climb brought them to the crest of the hill and what remained of an old Roman fort that once guarded an embattled empire against the fierce \"barbarians\" to the north, some two thousand years ago. As Gillian had warned, time and history had all but wiped away most traces of the former stronghold, leaving behind only a few crumbling stone walls and foundations, none more than knee-high at most. Half-buried stumps were all that were left of a bygone colonnade. Weeds and moss had overgrown the ruins, camouflaging much of the locale. Stone wasn't surprised that few visitors flocked to the site; to the untrained eye, the ruins offered meager rewards after such a demanding hike.\n\n\"Here we are,\" Gillian said. \"Such as it is.\"\n\n\"So I see.\"\n\nStone's own eyes were far from untrained. Although little remained of the once-imposing fort, he could easily reconstruct the ancient frontier outpost in his mind, based on the general layout of the ruins. He walked the perimeter of the site, putting the pieces together.\n\n\"From the look of things, this was a relatively minor outpost, probably dating back to roughly 200 CE or so, with some modifications and additions over the course of the next century.\" He picked up a loose stone and examined it. \"This variety of mortar, made of lime, sand, gravel, and water, allowed the Romans to build the first real stone fortresses in Britain, which endured for centuries.\" He tossed the stone aside. \"During the Dark Ages, many of their abandoned structures were torn apart by stone robbers in need of construction materials.\" He nodded toward the town in the distance. \"I wouldn't be surprised if some of your older college buildings are constructed of stones pillaged from the fort many centuries ago.\"\n\nHe couldn't conjure up actual hallucinations like Cassandra, but in his mind's eye he could see the bustling military base in its prime, superimposed atop its paltry remains. Armored legionnaires, wearing metal breastplates over their woolen tunics, guarded the sturdy stone walls and gates. Watchtowers, long collapsed into rubble and ransacked, had once looked out over the conquered territory below, as well as the thriving shops, taverns, and markets that invariably sprung up outside a fort's walls. Stone traced the outline of the base's defenses and interior structures.\n\n\"Okay,\" he said, conducting a guided tour of the ruins, \"this would have been the commander's house or praetorium, those look like the foundations of the barracks over there, and that used to be the granary. Bathhouses were typically built outside the main walls, because the furnaces used to heat the water posed a fire risk, but a fort would still need a protected well or cistern in the event of a siege, which were often located right about... here!\"\n\nSweeping aside the surrounding weeds and vines, he exposed a rusty metal plate, about twice the size of a modern manhole cover, bolted atop a ring of heavy stone blocks, half-buried in the ground. He rapped the plate with his fist and heard an answering echo.\n\n\"Bingo.\"\n\nGillian, who had lagged behind him, exploring the ruins, hurried to join him. \"Is that it?\" she asked. \"The well?\"\n\n\"I'd stake a couple of my degrees on it.\" He tugged on the metal plate, which refused to budge. \"This is hardly original to the site, of course. I'm guessing somebody ordered the well shaft covered up for safety reasons.\"\n\n\"That sounds familiar,\" Gillian said. \"Now that you mention it, I seem to recall something about that in the papers a few years ago. There was some concern about liability, in case a careless visitor took a tumble down the well....\"\n\n\"All of which makes me think we're on the right track.\" Stone stepped away from the capped well and shrugged off his backpack. \"Good thing this isn't my first rodeo.\" He retrieved a compact acetylene torch from the pack. \"Just the thing for getting past this sort of complication.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" she said dryly. \"I never go anywhere without one.\"\n\nHer sarcastic remark elicited a chuckle from Stone. \"Seriously, the Romans were already employing lead and ceramic pipes in their waterworks by the time this fort was built. Figured it couldn't hurt to be prepared in case we had to cut through some old pipes to get to wherever. Or maybe even an old iron vault.\"\n\n\"All this and a Boy Scout, too.\" Gillian arched an eyebrow. \"You're a man of many dimensions, Jake Stone.\"\n\n\"Don't I know it,\" Stone said. \"But it's been a long time since anybody called me a Boy Scout.\"\n\n\"Duly noted,\" she said. \"I'll bear that mind.\"\n\nHe was enjoying the banter, but there was still work to be done and that plate wasn't removing itself. He donned a pair of tinted safety glasses.\n\n\"Stay back,\" he said before igniting the torch. A steady blue-hot flame issued from the nozzle of the cutting torch as he knelt and got to work on the steel bolts holding the rusty plate in place. A fountain of brilliant sparks spewed from where the flame met the bolts, which heated rapidly to cherry red. The harsh smell of iron oxide let Stone know he was making progress. \"Funny thing,\" he said. \"You can actually make one of these torches in the field, using only an oxygen tank, a cucumber, and some prosciutto.\"\n\n\"And you know this how?\" Gillian asked, maintaining a safe distance.\n\n\"Long story, but I figured why take chances? Can't always count on having some prosciutto on hand at some old Roman ruins....\"\n\nYears of laying pipes in Oklahoma paid off as he worked carefully but efficiently to burn through the bolts. Switching off the torch, he gave the plate sufficient time to cool before wrenching it loose and shoving it to one side. It landed with a clatter onto the rocky soil, exposing a deep shaft descending into the earth. Moonlight penetrated only the top few feet of the shaft, where rotting wooden timbers, which had seen better centuries, reinforced the plunging walls of the well in a manner favored by Roman engineers of the era. Inky darkness concealed the bottom of the shaft.\n\n\"Well, well,\" Gillian quipped. \"How deep do you think it goes?\"\n\n\"Only one way to find out.\"\n\nWatching his step, Stone extracted some rappelling gear from his pack, along with a caving helmet with a built-in headlamp. The prospect of descending into the well did not intimidate him; as a former oil rigger, he had long ago grown accustomed to working underground in excavations, and that was before his new calling as a Librarian routinely led him into long-buried catacombs and hidden temples. Compared to that nasty hell pit in Salem, an abandoned Roman well ought to be a cakewalk.\n\n\"You stay here,\" he said as he anchored a climbing rope to what seemed a fairly sturdy block of stone. \"Just in case I run into trouble.\"\n\n\"You're joking, right?\" she replied. \"Are we seriously having this conversation again?\"\n\n\"Look, I appreciate all your help,\" he said. \"I wouldn't have gotten this far without you, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But nothing. I didn't hike all the way up this bloody hill just to cool my heels while you do all the exploring.\" She rescued a headlamp from her own pack and joined him at the brink of the abyss. \"And I know enough about spelunking to know that going solo is the very definition of foolhardy. Suppose you fall and, well, break your crown way down there, all on your own?\"\n\n\"And suppose you tumble after?\" he countered. \"Then we'd both be stuck down there, with no one to go for help.\"\n\n\"A fair point,\" she conceded. \"Perhaps we should let somebody know what we're doing before we go down there.\" She crossed her arms atop her chest. \"Note emphasis on we.\"\n\n\"Hard to miss.\"\n\nHer insistence of accompanying him provoked unwanted suspicions in his mind. What if she was actually after the spells herself? Another classic nursery rhyme shoved its way into his thoughts:\n\n\u2003I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,\n\n\u2003The reason why I cannot tell,\n\n\u2003But this I know and know full well,\n\n\u2003I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.\n\nThe problem, however, was that he did quite like this Dr. Fell, maybe more than he should, given how little he actually knew about her and her motives. Was she also out to be the next Mother Goose? He couldn't let his growing attraction to her blind him to the possibility that she had her own secret agenda. The long-lost spell book was prize enough to tempt any number of heirs to Mother Goose's legacy and power.\n\n\"Bugger,\" she said, looking at her phone. \"No signal.\" Contemplating their remote surroundings, she sighed and put the phone away. \"Where's an ancient Roman cell tower when you need one?\"\n\nHe checked his own phone. \"Same here.\"\n\n\"So now what?\" she asked.\n\nHe glanced around the ruins. No trace of a doorway remained, so there was nothing for the Annex's Magic Door to latch on to. They were cut off from the Library for the time being.\n\n\"We do this the old-fashioned way... sort of.\" He recorded a brief message into his own voice mail and stuffed his phone into a chink in the ancient masonry, marking the location with Gillian's bright red scarf. \"I left a message with my colleagues letting them know where we're going. They'll be able to track us this far if they have to. If we get trapped, we'll just have to wait for them to come get us.\"\n\n\"But we're not likely to get trapped, correct?\" Gillian asked. \"You know what you're doing?\"\n\nHe tried to strike the right balance between confidence and caution. \"There is an element of risk. Are you sure you wouldn't rather keep watch over things up here instead of poking around down below?\"\n\n\"And if that 'competition' you mentioned earlier comes calling, like maybe whoever snuck that threatening pumpkin onto our table in the dark... what then?\" She glanced back over her shoulder at the way they'd come. \"Under no circumstances are you leaving me alone and exposed on top of this hill. Safety in numbers, I say.\"\n\nStone figured they could keep debating this until they were both as old as the ruins or he could just give in and get on with the expedition.\n\n\"Fine,\" he agreed. \"But I'm going first. No argument.\"\n\nShe peered down into the forbidding depths of the old well. She dropped a loose stone down the shaft. A faint splash came from the darkness far below.\n\n\"Suit yourself,\" she said.\n\nHe rappelled cautiously down the side of the well. It was a tighter squeeze than he would have liked and the neglected timber supports did not exactly fill him with confidence. His descent shook loose bits and pieces of the wall, which raced him to the bottom. Despite his expertise and experience, he held his breath until he touched down in what seemed to be a shallow pool of water, about knee-deep. He mentally kicked himself for not procuring rubber waders as well, although he would have had to lug the heavy boots all the way up the hill. He was going to need some dry socks later.\n\n\"Jake?\" Gillian called down from above, an edge of concern in her voice. Peering upward, he saw her head and shoulders silhouetted against the moonlit sky. \"Are you all right? Is it safe?\"\n\n\"Give me a minute,\" he hollered back to her. \"Just to look around.\"\n\nThe beam of his headlamp exposed what appeared to be a largish underground cistern designed to capture and hold rainwater that could be hauled up via the well shaft, perhaps to replace or supplement a spring that had gone dry at some point during the fort's existence. Scum-coated water filled a half-empty reservoir the size of a private swimming pool. Ceramic tiles and mortar sealed in everything around him, preventing the collected rain from seeping into the earth. Thick wooden beams supported the vaulted ceiling of the cistern, which looked to have been carved out of a preexisting cavern pressed into service by some enterprising Roman engineers. Mold and algae coated the walls and a few fallen timbers. Stale air reeked of mildew, while cobwebs hung like tattered curtains all around the chamber. A narrow paved walkway ran along the edges of the reservoir; Stone clambered up onto it, out of the cold, mucky water. Spiders and bugs scurried away at his approach; Stone counted himself lucky that he hadn't spied any rats yet.\n\nUnlike that one time in Sumatra....\n\nLifting his gaze, he spotted the cracked and crumbling remains of a decorative mosaic border running just below the edge of the ceiling, partially veiled by gray webbing and green slime. Water sloshing in his boots, he stepped forward to get a better look, only to hear something splash down behind him.\n\n\"What is it?\" Gillian asked eagerly, having rappelled down on her own. \"Have you found another clue?\"\n\nHe turned toward her, annoyed. \"I told you to give me a few moments to check things out first.\"\n\n\"I got impatient,\" she said, not at all repentant. \"You didn't think I was going to wait up there forever?\"\n\n\"It was only a couple of minutes!\"\n\n\"Be that as it may, it's water under the bridge... or fort.\" She waded through the stagnant water toward the walkway where Stone was standing. She extended her arm toward him. \"Do be a gentleman and lend a lady a hand.\"\n\nHe helped her up onto the raised walkway, but her foot slipped on the slimy tiles and she started to tumble back into the reservoir. He tugged hard on her arm and pulled her toward him, so that she fell against him as opposed to into the drink. He wrapped an arm around her waist, gripping her tightly... just to help her maintain her balance, of course.\n\n\"My hero,\" she said, catching her breath. She grabbed hold of him to steady herself. \"How very gallant of you.\"\n\n\"Shucks, ma'am,\" he said, playing up his Americanness. \"T'weren't nothin'.\"\n\nTime slowed for a moment as they clung to each other deep beneath the earth. Rippling water cast shifting shadows onto the dismal stone walls surrounding them. The subterranean cistern was hardly the most romantic of settings, but Stone wasn't complaining. Gillian fit very nicely against him.\n\nI do like thee, Doctor Fell....\n\nAfter a moment that felt both too long and too short, she glanced down at his hand which had somehow migrated to the curve of her hip. \"You can probably let go of me now,\" she said, with what he wanted to think was a trace of reluctance.\n\n\"You sure?\" he asked, in no hurry to release her.\n\n\"We are on a treasure hunt, aren't we?\"\n\nRight, he thought. Mother Goose, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, saving the world....\n\n\"Yeah, we are,\" he grumbled. \"Just my luck.\"\n\n\"Luck can be fickle,\" she said teasingly. \"Every folklorist knows that.\"\n\n\"And what's that supposed to mean?\"\n\nShe smiled cryptically. \"I thought you were supposed to be good at figuring out clues?\" She glanced again at his hand on her hip, which had yet to budge. \"In the meantime....\"\n\n\"You first,\" he said.\n\n\"If you insist.\"\n\nLetting go, she pulled away from him and swept her gaze (and headlamp beam) over their unusual surroundings. \"Oh my, I can't believe I've never been down here before. Mind you, I'm no archaeologist, but to think that all this history has just been waiting here, albeit a bit moldy and worse for wear.\"\n\nHer beam fell on a round opening at the far end of the cavern, just above the lip of the reservoir. Thick white cobwebs all but obscured the open gap, which looked to be about fifty inches in diameter. A rusty metal grate, which had probably once guarded the opening, was half-sunken in the reservoir a few feet away.\n\nShe pointed at the opening. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"Probably a storm drain,\" Stone guessed, pulling his head back into the game. \"To keep the chamber from flooding.\"\n\nGillian regarded the drain a tad apprehensively. \"We're not going to have to go crawling around in there, are we?\"\n\n\"I doubt it,\" he said. \"You wouldn't want to hide anything valuable where it might be washed away.\" He turned his attention instead to the fragmented mosaics running along the top of the walls, searching for some sort of clue or hidden message. The mosaics, made up of countless minute shards of stone and glass called tesserae, were in sorry shape, which possibly explained why they had been largely neglected in the modern era. Entire sections of the mosaic were missing more tiles than remained, so that they resembled jigsaw puzzles with most of the pieces gone astray, and what was left of the surviving mosaic was obscured by grime and mold and cobwebs. The art historian in Stone winced at the woeful condition of the mosaic, while the Librarian examined it for clues to the hiding place of the lost spells.\n\n\"Find anything?\" Gillian joined the light of her own lamp to his.\n\n\"Still looking,\" he confessed.\n\nDespite the damage done by time, Stone observed that the mosaic seemed to have a celestial theme, featuring constellations and figures from Greco-Roman mythology: Orion the Hunter, Castor and Pollux, the moon gazing down from the sky with a broad smile on his face....\n\nHis face?\n\n\"Hang on,\" he said excitedly. \"Romans of the imperial era saw the moon as Luna, a goddess, so why does that moon up there look distinctly masculine?\" He turned toward Gillian. \"Didn't you say something earlier about the Man in the Moon?\"\n\n\"That's right,\" she said. \"In the original Norse myth, Hjuki and Bil\u2014aka Jack and Jill\u2014are captured by the Man in the Moon and carried off into the heavens instead of falling down the hill.\" She stared up at the grinning, white moon. \"You think that means something?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Sometimes it's the piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit that you need to look at the most closely.\" It struck him that the moon mosaic appeared to be in slightly better condition than some of the fragments around; unfortunately, it was also at least ten feet above their heads and out of reach. \"The question is, how do we get up there to take that closer look?\"\n\n\"Don't think you're climbing up on my shoulders,\" she said. \"In case you haven't noticed, I'm hale but not husky.\"\n\n\"Not my plan.\" He looked around speculatively. \"Maybe if we can pile up enough rubble and debris...\"\n\nGillian's gaze fell on a fallen wooden beam lying nearby.\n\n\"You know,\" she said, \"there's another verse of 'Jack and Jill' that's often forgotten or omitted. It comes after Jack gets patched up and Jill gets a whipping from their irate mother:\n\n\u2003Now Jack did laugh and Jill did cry,\n\n\u2003But her tears did soon abate,\n\n\u2003Then Jill did say that they should play\n\n\u2003At seesaw across the gate.\"\n\nStone didn't get it. \"So?\"\n\nShe indicated one of the fallen timbers. \"Care for a game of seesaw?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "Florida:\n\nThe Wilshire Puzzle House was a sprawling Victorian mansion crouching at the end of a long private drive lined by a half dozen palm trees. High hedges and shrubberies kept the outside world at bay, but the mansion's various spires and turrets climbed even higher. \"No Trespassing\" signs, faded and weather-beaten, discouraged visitors, but Cassandra and Cole snuck onto the grounds anyway, having parked the soiled convertible a few blocks away. Peering upward, Cassandra noted the clock tower rising above the upper gables. It was past one, but the clock in the tower seemed stuck at midnight. She assumed that wasn't a coincidence.\n\n\"So the house is empty now?\" she asked.\n\nCole nodded. \"Old Man Wilshire died without a will, and his heirs have been squabbling about what to do with the place for generations now. From what I hear, they do just enough maintenance to keep the house from falling down, in order to preserve its value, but otherwise it hasn't changed since the Devil finally caught up with Wilshire back around the Crash of '29.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Cassandra said. \"Not unlike the Goose family feuding over that spell book way back when.\"\n\n\"Word.\" He made a gesture she was unfamiliar with. \"Family fights are the worst fights.\"\n\nCassandra made a mental note to make sure her own will was up to date and in order. \"So how exactly did the late Mr. Wilshire die?\" she worked up the nerve to ask.\n\n\"Spontaneous combustion,\" Cole said, \"or so they say.\"\n\nCassandra gulped. That certainly sounded like the Devil's MO, at least in her experience. Memories of a scorched ceiling and an occult sigil charred into the woodwork elicited a shudder. \"I can believe it.\"\n\nUsing their phones as flashlights, they made their way around to the rear of the mansion, which was shielded from view by dense, overgrown shrubbery. Cassandra almost tripped over a loose paving stone, but she managed to keep her balance. A cool autumn wind gave her goose bumps. She hoped that was a good sign.\n\n\"Are you sure you know the way in?\" she asked.\n\n\"Trust me,\" he replied confidently. \"You came to the right Brother Goose. After my dad showed me how, I used to explore this place all the time as a kid, mostly to prove to my friends that I wasn't afraid of no devils or curses.\"\n\n\"And you never ran into anything particularly... demonic, did you?\"\n\n\"Nope,\" he assured her. \"But I did get lost inside a few times, for reasons you'll understand when you see the place.\"\n\nCassandra didn't find that particularly encouraging.\n\nA flight of rickety wooden stairs led up to an elevated back porch. Following closely behind Cole, she climbed the steps to reach the back door, which was a sturdy oak barrier boasting a brass door knocker that bore the face of a leering demon. She wondered if any entity in particular had posed for the ornament; the face didn't resemble any particular devil she had run into lately, but you never knew....\n\n\"Try the door,\" Cole said with a smirk. \"Ladies first.\"\n\nCassandra didn't understand. \"It's not locked?\"\n\n\"See for yourself.\"\n\nPuzzled, she took hold of the doorknob and tugged. To her surprise, the door swung open easily to reveal a solid red-brick wall identical to the rest of the house's exterior.\n\n\"There... there shouldn't be a wall there,\" she protested.\n\nHe chuckled at her confusion. \"You can't trust the doors in this place. Some of them aren't even doors.\"\n\n\"Then how do we get in?\"\n\nHe pointed down. \"This door's just a decoy. The real entrance is hidden under the porch.\"\n\nHe guided her back down the stairs and into a shadowy space under the porch, where their flashlight beams exposed a large stained-glass window angled like basement doors beneath the stairs.\n\n\"But this doesn't make any sense,\" she said. \"Why put stained glass where the sun can't get to it? That's just crazy.\"\n\n\"Now you're getting the picture.\"\n\nUndoing a small, inconspicuous latch, he swung the window inward, exposing another set of steps leading down below ground level into a basement. He scooted aside to let Cassandra pass.\n\n\"Watch your head,\" he advised. \"And don't take anything for granted.\"\n\nDucking low, Cassandra descended the steps into a murky vestibule facing a third set of stairs leading back up to the first floor. A skylight was improbably installed in the ceiling, some stories beneath where it might let in any sun.\n\n\"See what I mean?\" Cole joined her in the vestibule, sweeping his flashlight beam around. \"The whole place is like this. Wait and see.\"\n\n\"You're the tour guide,\" she said. \"Lead the way.\"\n\nShe followed him upstairs, where she rapidly discovered just how \"crooked\" a house Ezra Wilshire had built. Outdoor windows were installed in indoor walls, making it feel as though the house had been turned inside out. A Persian carpet was nailed to the ceiling. The skylight occupied the center of the floor like a rug. Cassandra detoured around it to avoid crashing through the glass. Zigzagging corridors led off in various directions. Stairways went straight up to the ceiling. Hallways tapered and widened randomly. A trapdoor hung open in front of a fireplace, offering a view of the cellar below. An oil portrait mounted above the fireplace showed a shifty-looking old man with a distinctly haunted expression. Wary eyes seemed to peer anxiously from the painting, watching out for the doom that awaited him. Dark pouches under those eyes hinted at sleepless nights.\n\nEzra Wilshire, Cassandra presumed. Precombustion.\n\nAnd sixes... everywhere, sixes. Wilshire seemed to have been obsessed with the number six and its multiples. Once Cassandra saw it, she couldn't stop seeing it: six panels in each window, six-sided floor titles, six arms per chandelier, six corners to a room, six steps to a stairs or twelve or eighteen or twenty-four. Thinking back, she realized that there had been six palm trees lining the front drive, six gables on the house's facade, six stories, counting the towers....\n\n\"Six, six, six,\" she murmured, her head swimming. Mathematical progressions shimmered before her eyes. Geometry rang in her ears. \"Six squared, six cubed, sing a song of sixpence...\"\n\nShe tottered unsteadily on her feet. The crooked house was disorienting enough without glow-in-the-dark multiplication tables whirling around her head like satellites. Reaching out, she placed a palm against the wallpaper to steady herself.\n\n\"You okay, little lamb?\" Cole asked.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" she lied. \"Just let me get my bearings.\"\n\nShe closed her eyes to block out the house's myriad eccentricities and proliferating sixes. Breathing exercises, taught to her by Baird, gradually brought her cascading synapses and scrambled senses back in line. There had been a time when something like the Puzzle House would have caused her brain to go into full meltdown mode, incapacitating her, but she'd learned to harness her unique gifts rather than fear them. She was a Librarian now and it would take more than a glorified carnival funhouse to throw her off her game.\n\nYou can do this, she thought. You're stronger than this.\n\nThe intrusive equations calmed down. The six-string chorus in her ears faded to background noise. She opened her eyes and let go of the wall.\n\n\"Sorry about that,\" she said. \"Felt a little dizzy for a moment.\"\n\n\"You and everybody else who sets foot in these screwy digs,\" Cole said. \"Don't beat yourself up about it.\"\n\nThey found themselves at a juncture splitting off in six directions. A six-armed chandelier hung unlit above their heads. A dusty parquet floor offered no obvious hints on how to proceed. Cassandra glanced about in bewilderment, at a loss as to where to even begin looking for the missing pages in the rambling old mansion.\n\n\"Just how many weird nooks and crannies are there in this house?\"\n\n\"No way to say, due to the cray-cray.\" Cole shrugged and threw up in his hands. \"Back in the day, Old Man Wilshire had crews working 24/7, 365 days a year. Carpenters, painters, glaziers, decorators... you name it.\" He wandered over to inspect some ornate mahogany wainscoting. \"Good work if you could get it. Our crooked man paid twice the going rate, so people put up with his nuttiness in exchange for a steady paycheck. By the time you add up all the additions and expansions and remodels... the Devil only knows how many rooms and closets and secret compartments there are.\"\n\nCassandra had no idea, that was for sure, but she was willing to bet that the Number of the Beast was involved somehow. The task before them was daunting, but she refused to let that discourage her. Jenkins and the others were counting on her, not to mention reality as they knew it.\n\n\"Well, we are looking for a book,\" she said.\n\n\"So?\" he asked.\n\n\"So we start with the library.\"\n\nCole insisted he knew the way there, despite the house's bewildering layout, but Cassandra soon realized that he might have been overstating matters slightly. The mansion was a maze that made the Library easy to navigate by comparison. Despite her best efforts, Cassandra soon lost track of what floor she was on. Dead ends and trick doors confounded them, forcing them to backtrack and try to figure out where they went astray. By the time they passed what she was pretty sure was the same stained-glass window for the sixth time, she was starting to lose faith in her helpful guide.\n\n\"I thought you knew your way around this madhouse?\"\n\nA disturbing possibility crossed her mind. What if he was deliberately misguiding her for ulterior motives? What if he wanted the book for himself, or was working in cahoots with somebody else? Just because somebody had sicced that rock-a-bye wind on him earlier didn't mean that he couldn't have his own agenda that he wasn't sharing with her.\n\n\"Keep the faith, little lamb,\" he said, looking a trifle abashed. \"This house is a little more off the wall than I remembered, but we're almost there.\" They rounded a corner, which was not remotely built at the right angle, to find another dead end. Two wooden doors faced each other at the end of the corridor. Cole paused for a moment, glancing back and forth between the right and left doors, before nodding to himself and decisively picking the former. He strode forward and took hold of the knob.\n\n\"You want the library? Here's the librar\u2014\"\n\nHe tugged open the door to reveal a three-story drop to a concrete patio below. A cool breeze invaded the hall from outdoors. Cole threw himself backward, away from the precipice, and slammed the door shut again.\n\n\"That didn't look like the library,\" Cassandra observed.\n\n\"My bad.\" He approached the opposite door instead, somewhat more cautiously this time. \"Now that I think of it....\"\n\nThe second time was the charm. The door opened onto a private library that suffered in comparison to the Library, but looked impressive enough in its own right. Cassandra counted six walls boasting six bookcases of six shelves each; she held off on counting how many books were on each shelf, but guessed that those numbers were probably divisible by six as well. The mere thought made her start to feel a little loopy again, but she gritted her teeth and soldiered on.\n\n\"What now?\" Cole asked.\n\n\"Start scanning the shelves for anything Goose-related.\" Cassandra doubted that the missing pages themselves would be readily on display, but who knew? Perhaps they were hidden in plain sight, like Poe's Purloined Letter. \"Maybe we'll get lucky.\"\n\nThey started at opposite ends of the library, working toward each other. Cassandra swept her flashlight beam over the spines of the books, crooking her head to read their titles. No surprise, Wilshire had an extensive collection of occult volumes, on topics ranging from astral projection to necromancy, none of which had apparently saved him in the end. Just reading the titles of some of the books made her skin crawl, while others looked slimy to the touch. A musty smell, laced with something unnamable, turned her stomach.\n\nJust what was Mysteries of the Worm about anyway?\n\nShe suspected that Jenkins would not approve of Ezra Wilshire's collection, and might even want to confiscate a few of the volumes at some point down the road, but that was a matter for another day. She kept on scouring the shelves by the light of her beam, while wishing that Wilshire had been into Beatrix Potter or dirty limericks instead. \"Would it have killed him to have read Little Women once in a while?\"\n\n\"What's that?\" Cole asked from across the room.\n\n\"Nothing,\" she answered. \"Just making an observation.\"\n\n\"Okay then. I thought that maybe you had... hey, look at this!\"\n\nThe excitement in his voice set her pulse racing. Abandoning her own search, she darted across the library to join him.\n\n\"What is it? Did you find something?\"\n\n\"Maybe. Scope this out.\"\n\nThe beam from his phone illuminated a hardcover book resting on a shelf in front of him. Cassandra peered at the title on the spine:\n\nThe Compleat Mother Goose.\n\n\"Yes! Now we're getting somewhere.\" She threw up her hand, uncertain whether a high five or a fist bump was considered cool these day, and somehow managed to make a fumbling attempt at both. \"Good peepers, Bo-Peeps!\"\n\n\"You know it. Told you I had this covered.\"\n\nCassandra pulled the book down from the shelf. A quick glance at the copyright page indicated that this particular volume had been printed in 1916, which meant that this wasn't the Mother Goose book they were looking for, unless maybe the missing pages had been slyly bound into it at some point? She started to flip through it, then noticed that one page, about midway through the book, was jutting out slightly as though it had come loose or perhaps been bound incorrectly, so that it almost resembled a bookmark.\n\n\"What is it?\" Cole asked, noting her interest.\n\n\"This page, it's... crooked.\" She opened the book to the \"marked\" section, where she found two illustrated nursery rhymes sitting beside each other. On the left-hand, or verso, page was that same rhyme about the crooked man, while the right-hand (recto) page\u2014which was the one that was actually set in crookedly\u2014displayed another familiar rhyme:\n\n\u2003Hickory, dickory, dock,\n\n\u2003The mouse ran up the clock,\n\n\u2003The clock struck one,\n\n\u2003The mouse did run,\n\n\u2003Hickory, dickory, dock.\n\nCassandra placed the book down on a desk, the better to examine it. Cole peered over her shoulder, shining his own beam on the pages. Cassandra pulled the cord on an old banker's lamp which, to her surprise, lit up to give them a better view of the book.\n\n\"The crooked man again,\" Cassandra noted, indicating the page on the left. \"That can't be an accident.\"\n\n\"You think that page was messed up on purpose... as a clue?\"\n\n\"I'm sure of it.\" She felt like she was following a trail of bread crumbs, although that was more of a fairy-tale thing. \"Now we just need to figure out what we're supposed to be seeing here.\"\n\n\"What about the other rhyme?\" Cole asked. \"That's the one that's out of whack, like the crooked man is pointing at it.\"\n\n\"Good point.\" She compared the two rhymes to each other, reading from left to right. \"Well, both rhymes mention a mouse. 'Caught a crooked mouse,' 'the mouse ran up the clock,' etcetera. Maybe that means something?\"\n\nA horrifying thought struck her. \"Please tell me we're not looking for a mouse hole in this rat trap. We could be here all night!\"\n\n\"More like all week,\" Cole said. \"We're talking rooms on rooms, remember?\"\n\nCassandra looked for some way to narrow the search. \"What about your great-grandfather?\" she asked. \"He's presumably the one who hid the pages in the first place. Was there any one particular room or section of the house he worked on?\"\n\nCole scoffed at the idea. \"Where didn't he work? Old Man Wilshire was constantly remodeling things. Soon as a room was finished, he'd tear it down to build it back up again, different from before. There's not an inch of this house that wasn't redone a couple of times at least\u2014except for the Hell Room, of course.\"\n\n\"The what?\" Cassandra asked.\n\n\"Forgot to tell you about that part. Story is, Old Man Wilshire had a secret room up in the clock tower where he met with the Devil every night to discuss business.\"\n\n\"I thought he was hiding from the Devil?\"\n\n\"Hey, I'm just passing along what people say. Maybe the Hell Room was a safe space for some reason, where he and the Devil could meet to haggle over the terms of their deal, or exchange stock tips, or play poker, or some crazy shit like that. Nobody knows for sure, since Old Man Wilshere kept that secret to himself, but that's where he died finally, right up there in the clock tower.\"\n\n\"Clock tower!\" Cassandra pointed at the rhyme on the crooked page. \"That's it. 'The mouse ran up the clock.' The crooked man leads us to the mouse which leads us to the only room in the house that your great-grandfather could count on not to be altered.\" Holding on to the book just in case, she hurried back toward the hall. \"Quick! Which way to this Hell Room?\"\n\n\"Your guess is as good as mine.\"\n\n\"Huh?\" Cassandra slowed down. \"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"Supposedly there's a secret stairway hidden somewhere in the house, but if my family ever knew where it was, they never told me.\" He caught up with her. \"Probably didn't want me poking around in any Hell Room... for obvious reasons.\"\n\nCassandra sighed. \"Then I guess I'm going to have to do this the hard way.\"\n\n\"How's that?\" he asked.\n\n\"By working my brain, Librarian-style.\"\n\nUsing her phone to search the Internet, she called up several exterior views of the house, including some handy bird's-eye views that gave her a good look at the layout of the roof around the clock tower. She committed them to memory before putting away the phone and throwing out her hands to summon up a hallucinatory model of the house, which shimmered before her eyes in three dimensions. Ethereal music played in her ears, orchestrated by the brain grape that was bound to kill her one of these days if her risky job didn't do the trick first. Moving her hands as though conducting an orchestra, she rotated the model before her, examining it from every angle.\n\n\"Er, what are you doing, little lamb?\"\n\n\"Trying to solve this Puzzle House, and you can call me Cassandra, by the way. I haven't been a lost little lamb for a long time now.\" Determination steeled her voice. \"Now be quiet and let me concentrate.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Sssh!\" she said, sounding like a proper Librarian in more ways than one. \"This isn't going to be easy.\"\n\nCole got the message and piped down, even as she talked herself through the problem at hand.\n\n\"Despite all the tricks and decoys and distractions, the physical geometry of the house is still a matter of volume, area, and height. Taking into account these practical realities, there are only so many places where that hidden stairwell can be located... unless Old Man Wilshire found a way to warp space itself somehow.\" She made a face. \"I really hate that.\"\n\nBut she'd cross that non-Euclidian bridge if and when she came to it. For the present, she chose to work on the assumption that conventional math and physics applied, because the alternative was just too discouraging to contemplate.\n\n\"We just need to map the interior layout of the house onto its outer shell to determine where the hidden spaces are,\" she said. \"Of course, this would be simpler if the house itself made any sense whatsoever....\"\n\nPart of her brain had been charting the house during their uncertain explorations. Turning her gaze to one side, she attempted to construct a 3-D map of the mansion floor by floor, despite all the confusing irregularities and misleading window dressing. The illusory floor plans were incomplete or fuzzy in places, but they slowly began to come together in a coherent fashion, more or less.\n\n\"Right. Those back stairs connect with the sliding doors hiding that one freaky corridor which doubles back through the upside-down fireplace, crisscrossing itself, to bring you right back where you started....\"\n\nHer outstretched hands manipulated the images glowing before her eyes, allowing her to shift walls and doorways and windows about as needed. Her gestures were hesitant at first, but grew bolder and swifter as the puzzle gradually revealed itself to her. Virtual blueprints smelled like paste and lemon-scented glass cleaner.\n\n\"And this landing goes there... no, here! That's it.\"\n\nShe wondered whether Stone would be better equipped to handle this challenge than she was, or would he be even more confounded by the house's architectural insanity, which didn't conform to any logical design or principles? Which of them would find it the most frustrating, she or Stone?\n\nDoesn't matter, she decided. He's not here. I am.\n\nOnce she had the house's interior mapped out to the best of her abilities, she shifted it to the left, superimposing it onto her immaterial model of the exterior walls and roof, while looking for a concealed route to the upper reaches of the clock tower. The answer to the puzzle practically leaped out at her, chiming red and flashing like cymbals.\n\n\"There it is!\" She pointed eagerly at a diagram Cole couldn't see. \"That negative space. That's where the hidden stairwell has to be!\"\n\nHe stared at her incredulously. \"What are you tripping on, lady? Or are you working some kind of spooky librarian magic here?\"\n\n\"Not magic, math!\" She grabbed hold of his hand. \"I know exactly where to go now. Follow me!\"\n\nHer mental map floated before her eyes like the HUD in one of Ezekiel's video games, keeping pace with her as she used it to navigate the mansion's relentless mysteries with increasing speed and confidence. As she raced through the house, and up and down its winding staircases, she deftly erased its assorted lures and deceptions from the model to create a clearer picture of the way ahead. False doors and detours popped like soap bubbles as she deleted them from view, while dragging Cole along for the ride.\n\n\"Hey, I thought I was conducting this tour?\" he said. \"You sure you know where you're going?\"\n\n\"I can see it all now, bright as day! Just stick with me and try to keep up!\"\n\nTwo floors, three rooms, eight halls, and a cunningly concealed walk-through closet later, Cassandra came to a halt in front of a short flight of irregular wooden steps jutting out into the hall, which climbed straight into a wall, ending right below a large stained-glass portrait of a cat, distorted in the mode of a Cubist painting. No light passed through the colored glass.\n\n\"This is it!\" Cassandra collapsed her shimmering model with a wave of her hand. She squeezed Cole's hand in excitement while pointing eagerly at steps leading up to the art. \"The crooked stile... and the crooked cat... rendered in a crooked style!\"\n\n\"I guess,\" Cole said, trying to keep up. \"So where's the crooked mouse?\"\n\n\"Let's find out.\" She remembered the stained-glass window hiding the entrance to the basement. \"See if this opens up somehow.\"\n\nCole found a latch with little difficulty. He pulled open the window to expose a spiral staircase exactly where Cassandra had calculated it had to be. The stairwell led upward toward the clock tower.\n\n\"Damn, girl,\" Cole said, impressed. \"Your math is magic.\"\n\n\"I like to think so,\" she said, grinning. Take that, Puzzle House.\n\nShe couldn't help counting the steps as they climbed the hidden staircase. Six, twelve, eighteen... ultimately, thirty-six steps brought them to a door at the top of the stairs, which boasted a stained-glass depiction of a crooked mouse, matching the cat at the bottom of the stairs.\n\nThirty-six, Cassandra thought. Six by six..."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "The Large Animals Room was a zoo, in more ways than one. Pens, enclosures, pools, and tanks held a variety of exotic beasts from myth and legend, including myriad leviathans, chimeras, shape-shifters, and hybrids, all of whom appeared to be in an uproar as Jenkins arrived at the menagerie after traversing the Library with unseemly haste. Ordinarily, the animals resided as peacefully as on the Ark, but the goose's erratic antics had clearly stirred them up, as evidenced by the golden egg resting on the floor in front of Nessie's tank. A chorus of roars, howls, barks, wails, trills, chirps, hisses, lows, whinnies, and miscellaneous caterwauling assailed his eardrums and his patience. He hadn't heard such a hubbub since that time the banshee clans had challenged the Sirens to a sing off. It was going to take a considerable quantity of bones, biscuits, sugar cubes, and chew toys to calm this troublesome brouhaha, not to mention precious time that he could ill afford to spare at the present moment. Not for the first time, he wished that the Library's budget allowed for a full-time zookeeper.\n\nBut if wishes were horses, he thought, I'd probably be tending them, too.\n\n\"Hush! HUSH!\" he called out in his most stentorian tone. \"Everyone settle down. Nothing to see here.\" He placed the offending egg in an empty nest while making his way toward the well-stocked feed cabinet. \"Everyone be patient and we'll get this all sorted out in no time. Just wait your turn.\"\n\nA Questing Beast yipped vociferously.\n\n\"I said, patience... and that means you, Glatisant.\"\n\nThe Beast sulked petulantly in its stall. Its elongated neck retracted.\n\n\"That's better.\" Jenkins was wondering where just to begin when he noticed belatedly that two of the pens were missing their occupants. The King of Beasts no longer presided over his regal den, while the Unicorn had vacated his stall, leaving a feed bucket full of oats and honey. Neither animal had been caged, as this had never been necessary before, so Jenkins was at a loss to explain them wandering off\u2014until he remembered another nursery rhyme:\n\nThe lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown...\n\n\"Oh dear.\" He chided himself for not anticipating this; as with the errant goose, the Lion and the Unicorn had clearly been affected by the breaking of the Mother Goose Treaty, which meant that they had almost surely bolted from the Large Animals Room in pursuit of a crown.\n\nNo, he corrected himself, not merely a crown. The Crown.\n\nThere were many priceless examples of royal headgear in the Library's custody, from the helm of Hades to Anastasia Romanov's cursed tiara, but for Jenkins, a one-time Knight of the Round Table, only one crown was truly the Crown:\n\nArthur's Crown.\n\nThe other animals would have to wait. A more immediate priority moved to the top of his to-do list as he hurriedly exited the Large Animals collection and proceeded with all deliberate speed toward another wing of the Library, where the Crown occupied a position of honor.\n\nIf anything happens to that Crown, he fretted.\n\nNo. Not on my watch.\n\nEven before he came within sight of the Crown, the noise from another ruckus confirmed that his fears were well-founded. Furious growls and roars warred with agitated neighs and whinnies. The commotion vexed as well as worried Jenkins; there had been a time, not too long ago, when the Library had largely been a place of quiet contemplation and scholarship... before wild magic was let loose into the world once more.\n\nDamn you, Dulaque. You just had to spoil everything... again.\n\nThe unmistakable din of conflict drew him to the Camelot collection, where he found that the Lion and the Unicorn were indeed fighting for the Crown, which, to his vast relief, still resided on a marble pedestal between the mythical animals. Jenkins's ageless eyes instantly took in the principals of the donnybrook.\n\nThe Lion was the archetypal King of Beasts: the Lion of Androcles and Daniel and Babylon and Judah, the Lion of medieval heraldry and architectural grandiosity. Tawny and majestic, with golden fur and a shaggy black mane, the beast bared his fangs and slashed at the unicorn with his claws. His mighty roar shook the rafters. Some believed him to be the model for the sculpted gold lions guarding the steps at the front entrance of the Library, but their true pedigree was actually a bit more complicated than that....\n\nThe Unicorn was straight out of a medieval bestiary, complete with a spiral horn, a pristine white hide, and cloven hooves. Contrary to spurious rumors, it had indeed made it onto the Ark in days of yore, but the miraculous powers of its horn had caused it to be hunted relentlessly, rendering it something of an endangered species and forcing the Library to provide it sanctuary centuries ago. Rearing up on its hind legs, the Unicorn battled the rampant Lion, pitting its gleaming horn and hooves against the Lion's fearsome fangs and claws, as they chased and feinted with each other around the pedestal bearing their prize.\n\nThe Crown of King Arthur rested beneath a glass dome atop an ermine pillow. The Crown, lost for centuries, had been recovered only a few years ago by Flynn and the Librarians on their first joint mission together. Flawless blue sapphires and bloodred rubies adorned an ornate silver circlet that had once rested upon the very brow of Arthur Pendragon, the Once and Future King. As ever, Jenkins felt a pang of bittersweet nostalgia at the sight of the Crown, but more pressing matters precluded any indulgent trips down memory lane. By all appearances, neither the combatants nor the Crown had been seriously harmed as of yet, but he could not count on that to remain the case for much longer. Both the Lion and the Unicorn were giving no quarter, making bloodshed all but inevitable.\n\nMoreover, the Crown itself was more than just a priceless relic. It was an object of power, imbued with arcane charms and spells that were old when Avalon was young, making it far too dangerous to fall into the possession of any untamed individual\u2014or animal. Should the Lion claim the Crown, adding its mythical potency to his own, it might well become the King of Beasts and Men, threatening humanity's fragile dominion over the planet. And if the Unicorn should take the Crown... well, no virgin would be safe.\n\nBest to avert both eventualities, Jenkins realized, but for that I'm going to require some assistance.\n\nHe placed two fingers to his lips and let out a resounding whistle. Occupied with each other, the quarreling beasts ignored the signal, as Jenkins had expected, but another denizen of the Library did not.\n\nThe Sword in the Stone, on display across from the Crown, awoke from its slumber. Responding to the command, Excalibur yanked itself free from its petrified housing and came flying through the air to Jenkins's aid.\n\nAs well it should, he reflected. What better to defend Arthur's Crown than Arthur's own trusty sword?\n\nGranted, Excalibur was not now what it had once been. Having been destroyed in battle against the Serpent Brotherhood some time ago, the legendary sword had only recently been returned to the world via the abstruse machinations of the Ladies of the Lake and some convoluted time-travel shenanigans. As a result, it was still regaining its strength and skill, but Jenkins judged that even a recuperating Excalibur was better than none.\n\n\"Protect the Crown,\" he ordered, \"in Arthur's name!\"\n\nDefying gravity, the magic sword zipped across the chamber to engage the Unicorn. Bright golden sparks flew as Excalibur fenced with the beast, pitting its shining blade against the Unicorn's equally silvery horn. The clash of the weapons, as they parried and thrust, chimed like a crystal cave.\n\nJenkins was relieved to see that the floating sword was employing the flat of its blade and not attempting any fatal blows, but he fretted that the immature blade might get carried away in the heat of battle. He wasn't sure if a magic sword could slice through a magic horn, but he had no desire to find out.\n\n\"That's Library property,\" he reminded Excalibur. \"Take care not to damage it!\"\n\nA metallic ring acknowledged the caretaker's command.\n\nWith the Unicorn distracted, the Lion pounced for the Crown, but Jenkins was ready for him. In one hand, he held the back of the antique Windsor chair, while his other hand brandished his own leather belt, which he had adroitly removed after summoning Excalibur. The belt was rather longer than he usually cared to admit, but at the moment it made a useful whip. He cracked it like a lion tamer to get the animal's attention.\n\n\"Down, Your Majesty,\" he addressed the King of Beasts. \"That Crown does not belong to you.\"\n\nThe Lion roared defiantly, but Jenkins kept him at bay with the belt and chair, employing a technique he'd taught Clyde Beatty back in the Roaring Twenties during an ill-advised flirtation with circus life. He cracked the belt repeatedly and blocked the Lion's claws with the chair.\n\n\"Back!\" he ordered. \"Mind your manners!\"\n\nA swipe of the Lion's great paw nearly knocked the chair from Jenkins's grip. His arm was already tired from holding it up. He was immortal, but he wasn't indefatigable. A subtle distinction, to be sure, but not an insignificant one.\n\nThis is all Mother Goose's fault, he groused. He pined for the good old days when you could win over the Lion just by removing a thorn from its paw. What would Judson say at a time like this?\n\n\"Hakuna matata?\"\n\nA second swipe reduced the chair to splinters, driving Jenkins backward toward the Crown's royal perch. Claw marks shredded the front of the caretaker's neatly pressed suit and shirt, much to his annoyance.\n\n\"Excuse me, I just ironed those.\"\n\nHis clothes were in worse shape than he was, however. There were precious few things on this Earth that could actually harm him, and a mere scratch from an overgrown tabby cat was not among them. Of much greater concern was the fact that he was making scant progress in resolving this situation and that while he dallied here a certain goose was still running amuck, the Dead Man's Chest was on a feeding frenzy, and, oh yes, there was still the little matter of Mother Goose trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.\n\nI simply do not have time for this nonsense.\n\nSeeking inspiration, he recalled the rest of the rhyme:\n\nThe lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown.\n\nThe lion beat the unicorn all around the town.\n\nSome gave them white bread, some gave them brown.\n\nSome gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town.\n\n\"Well, that does me absolutely no good,\" he muttered. He fancied himself an accomplished cook, with a sophisticated palate honed by generations of fine dining throughout the known and unknown world, but he hardly had time to raid the pantry for the proper ingredients for a plum cake, of all things. By the time he baked said dessert, the Crown would be lost, the Library would be in even greater disarray, and a fresh Creation might very well hatch from the World Egg.\n\nIn other words, it was not a good time for baking.\n\nHis belt cracked loudly against the Lion's snout, forcing the beast to retreat, if only for a moment. Jenkins dared not look over his shoulder to check on Excalibur, but his ears informed him that the sword was still dueling with the Unicorn. The clash of steel against horn (and vice versa) rang out like the music of the spheres.\n\nMusic...\n\nIt was often said, Jenkins reflected, that music had charms to soothe the savage beast. This was actually a mangling of the original Shakespeare, which had instead spoken of a \"savage breast,\" but sometimes there was more truth to be found in a misprint or accident of translation than in the original text, as in the case of, say, Cinderella's famously impractical glass slippers. A frankly brilliant strategy popped into his head.\n\nYes, he thought. That just might work, provided I can somehow find a way to absent myself from my current predicament long enough to secure the necessary relic.\n\nAlas, he doubted that the Lion would be willing to grant him a time-out.\n\nWhich left him only one other option.\n\nWincing at the prospect, he brought his elbow down on the glass dome protecting the Crown, shattering it to pieces. Still wielding his belt as a whip to fend off the Lion, he took hold of the Crown with his free hand while silently apologizing to his late, lamented liege.\n\nForgive the indignity, sire.\n\nHe hurled the Crown with all his strength and shouted to the sword.\n\n\"Excalibur, catch!\"\n\nUnlike Flynn, he could never bring himself to abbreviate the sword's name to Cal, but what was in a name? The sword responded at once, breaking off from its duel with the Unicorn to zip after the Crown like a dog chasing a Frisbee. Catching up with the flying circlet, Excalibur caught the silver hoop on the tip of its blade, skewering it, and tilted itself upward so that the Crown slid farther down the length of the blade.\n\n\"Good catch!\" Jenkins praised the sword. \"Now... run! Keep away!\"\n\nThe Lion and the Unicorn both protested audibly as Excalibur whizzed out of the chamber, taking the Crown with it. The beasts took off after the fleeing sword, leaving Jenkins alone in the now-empty gallery. Broken glass crunched beneath his heels. The splintered remains of the chair also needed to be swept up at some point. The empty pillow offended his sensibilities.\n\n\"Exit... pursued by the Lion and the Unicorn.\"\n\nSo far, so good, Jenkins thought, putting his belt back on. If Fortune was with him, Excalibur would lead the obsessed animals on a merry chase, buying him time enough to find a more efficacious means to remedy the situation. Provided I take brisk advantage of this temporary respite.\n\nLifetimes spent in the service of the Library meant that he knew its ever-expanding layout better than literally anyone alive, so he set off in the right direction without hesitation. The Library had sometimes been compared to a work of origami, folding space itself in ingenious and creative ways. Jenkins took advantage of a few such folds to reach the Music History section in record time. Historic lyres, lutes, war drums, rattles, harps, and theremins occupied wooden racks, alongside shelves of collected sheet music, lost compositions, forbidden librettos, and enough vintage vinyl albums to make any knowledgeable audiophile drool uncontrollably. Ignoring the vast panoply of rare musical artifacts on display, Jenkins headed straight to one specific item in the collection: a set of panpipes dating back to ancient Greece and the glory days of Mount Olympus.\n\nThe age-old instrument hung on a hook beside a foot-tall marble statue of the great god Pan himself, complete with goatish horns and hooves. A basket resting below the pipes held a supply of fresh beeswax collected from an apiary elsewhere in the Library. Jenkins helped himself to two small wads of wax which he used to plug his ears just as Odysseus had once done on his protracted voyage home from Ilium. Suitably prepared, he snapped his fingers and addressed the pipes.\n\n\"Rise and shine,\" he said. \"It's show time.\"\n\nThe pipes stirred and lifted off their hook, levitating much as Excalibur did. Legend had it that Pan's pipes had once been a nymph named Syrinx whom Zeus had transformed into hollow reeds in order to protect her from Pan's lustful advances; that had always struck Jenkins as a trifle extreme, but who was he to judge? That had been rather before his time as well, and he was not inclined to take idle gossip as gospel. All he knew for certain was that the pipes had a personality of their own\u2014and that their music had some very special qualities.\n\nThe pipes danced in the air before him, eager to perform.\n\n\"Let me summon your audience,\" he promised the flute.\n\nHe whistled once more for Excalibur, who soon came racing back toward him, pursued by the Unicorn and the Lion. The former was slightly ahead of the latter, but the Lion was only a few paces behind, bounding between the stacks. Despite his plan, and his immortal constitution, Jenkins experienced a moment of trepidation at the sight of the berserk animals bearing down on him. Holding his breath, he waited until they were solidly within earshot before cueing the pipes to commence playing.\n\n\"A lullaby, Madame Syrinx, if you please.\"\n\nThe mythic pipes obliged readily, playing themselves without need of mortal hands or breath. Even through the wax shielding his ears, Jenkins could still hear the unearthly melody emanating from the flute. The music was preternaturally soothing, almost hypnotic. Jenkins caught his own world-weary eyes beginning to droop, but roused himself before he dozed off entirely.\n\nIn retrospect, perhaps I should have been slightly less stingy with the wax.\n\nThe Lion and the Unicorn lacked any such protection, however, as Syrinx's music truly soothed their savage breasts. Slowing to a halt, the wild animals forgot their rhyme-dictated pursuit of the Crown as they fell under the spell of the irresistible lullaby. Jenkins watched with relief as the beasts settled down onto the floor and drifted off to dreamland, snuggled up against each other. Within moments, they were both sleeping soundly. The Lion's snore also managed to penetrate Jenkins's waxen earplugs to a degree. The caretaker took a moment to admire the tranquil scene. He had to admit it: they did look angelic when they slept.\n\n\"Bravo, bravo.\" He quietly feigned applause to avoid rousing the slumbering wildlife. The pipes flitted about above their captive audience. \"Now if you can just keep playing for the time being, that would be divine, thank you.\"\n\nTo be honest, he hadn't been entirely sure that the pipes' soporific melodies would be enough to overcome Mother Goose's pernicious influence, but it seemed that the pipes' immediate presence had won out in the end. It was a shame, he mused, that he couldn't employ the pipes to tranquilize the runaway goose as well, but he needed Syrinx here, keeping the Lion and the Unicorn dormant, while he dealt with the other urgent items on his agenda.\n\nOne thing at a time, he thought. \"Excalibur, kindly return the Crown to its throne. That's a good sword.\"\n\nThe weapon took off on its errand.\n\nA honk echoed down the endless halls and corridors of the Library, pointedly reminding Jenkins that he still had a goose to catch. As it happened, he had finally formulated a plan of action regarding the elusive waterfowl, but that scheme first required that he borrow a couple of key items from the Library's diverse collections.\n\nAnd the sooner, the better.\n\n\"Play on,\" he whispered to the pipes as he tiptoed away from the sleeping beasts. \"Encore.\"\n\nHe regretted losing so much time to this detour. He could only hope that Colonel Baird was carrying out her own mission with her customary aplomb and efficiency.\n\nNo doubt she has the matter completely under control... or not."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "The Antiquities section was possibly the oldest part of the Library, dating back to its original location in Alexandria millennia ago. Relics and scrolls and tapestries from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon, Sumer, Atlantis, Lemuria, and other bygone realms and empires filled several adjoining rooms, grouped more or less geographically. Dashing into the section, after taking a shortcut in the hopes of beating the Dead Man's Chest to the spot, Baird noted that Jenkins had not been exaggerating when he'd said that Antiquities was home to an impressive amount of gold artifacts, including a pharaoh's golden sarcophagus, a priceless golden Buddha, the Golden Fleece, the Golden Camel of Marrakesh, a pair of golden sandals, and even the transmuted form of King Midas himself. The latter still sat upon his equally auric throne, his very flesh and garments converted to solid gold by his infamous curse. According to Flynn, Midas had once been displayed in the Library's main entrance hall, but he had since been relocated for reasons that didn't really matter at the moment.\n\nThe ancients really liked their bling, Baird thought. Guess not much has changed over the centuries.\n\nA quick survey confirmed that she had indeed reached Antiquities before the hungry treasure chest, but she barely had a moment to catch her breath before she heard wooden legs clattering toward her and the gleaming relics. Turning toward the noise, she spied the chest bearing down on Antiquities, its iron-edged \"jaws\" snapping eagerly. Two pairs of matching peg legs carried it briskly down the hallway toward an open doorway.\n\nGood call, Jenkins, she thought. Wonder if this chest has gone on a feeding frenzy before?\n\nWith no time to lose, she sprinted though the Greco-Roman collection to manually activate a last-ditch security measure. A heavy iron portcullis slammed down into place, blocking the doorway. Baird hoped that would be enough to deter the ravenous pirate chest.\n\nNo such luck.\n\nThe chest started chomping through the metal gate like a woodchuck would chuck wood. Sparks and sharp metal splinters flew in all directions as it tore into the portcullis in its relentless hunger to get to the gold.\n\n\"Crap,\" Baird said.\n\nSnatching a Bronze Age spear from its mount upon a wall, she positioned herself between the chest and King Midas, who was first in line to be devoured. The legendary king may have been famously greedy, but Baird figured he deserved better than to be gobbled up by a glorified foot locker. And then there was the whole unique historical being thing....\n\nShredded iron screeched in protest as the chest made it through the gate into Antiquities and made a beeline for King Midas, despite the determined Guardian barring the way.\n\n\"Not so fast, buster!\"\n\nShe poked at the chest with the spear, frustrated by her adversary's lack of any obvious vital spots. Maybe she couldn't destroy the chest without releasing those fifteen evil spirits, or so Jenkins said, but perhaps she could discourage it from eating the relics?\n\n\"Back off, chesty! Go suck another golden egg.\"\n\nShe had underestimated the chest's stubbornness, however. Springing forward on its peg legs, it caught the point of the spear in its jaws and bit it clean off, leaving Baird holding on to a truncated metal shaft that was steadily being whittled down by the hungry pirate chest. Bronze shavings sprayed onto the floor as the chest advanced on Baird, devouring the remainder of the spear inch by inch.\n\n\"Okay, time for Plan B,\" she muttered. \"Which would be...?\"\n\nLetting go of what was left of the spear, which she hoped hadn't been too valuable, she scanned Antiquities for another option. Clearly, she needed some sort of weapon or defense that operated at a distance, out of reach of the chest's clacking jaws, but what?\n\nJupiter's thunderbolt? No, that was too destructive. Chances were, she'd blow the chest to pieces or else set it on fire. Vulcan's golden net, the one he'd once used to snare his cheating wife and her lover, the God of War? No, that would be nothing but a heap of tasty pasta to the gold-hungry treasure chest. Pluto's helmet? No, invisibility was not going to help her in this crisis. Cupid's arrows? Nope, not going there. Neptune's trident?\n\nA grin broke out on her face.\n\nThat I can work with!\n\nWhile the chest was finishing off the last of the spear, Baird plucked the forged metal trident from its pedestal. It was cold and wet to the touch, as though dredged from the bottom of the sea. The sound of ancient waves crashed in her ears. Getting between the chest and Midas, she aimed the barbed tines of the trident at the chest just as it charged at the golden king and his throne again.\n\n\"Cool it,\" Baird said.\n\nResponding to her will, three high-pressure streams of seawater shot from the trident, converging into a single blast that smashed into the treasure chest, driving it back. The salty smell of the brine filled Baird's nostrils as she kept up the barrage. Water flooded the floor of the section, but that was a small price to pay to keep Midas and the surrounding relics safe from the rampaging chest.\n\nBut would the firehose treatment be enough?\n\nThe chest didn't seem to think so. Despite the punishing salt spray, it pushed forward against the power of the trident. Nothing, it seemed, could douse its appetite, not even the wrath of the Seven Seas. The force of the spray was such that Baird had to hold on to the trident's handle with both hands to keep it under control, but the chest kept advancing, slowly but inexorably, toward the delectable golden figure. King Midas was about to become an entr\u00e9e, followed by who knew how many other courses and desserts.\n\n\"Paging Colonel Baird.\" Jenkins's voice emerged from a nearby lyre, which he was somehow employing as an intercom. The strings of the lyre gave his voice a peculiar twang. \"Have you managed to secure the Dead Man's Chest yet?\"\n\n\"Still working on that,\" she shouted back. \"How about that goose?\"\n\n\"Elusive,\" he confessed, \"but I am taking measures to remedy the situation. I simply wanted to stress once again how imperative it is that you do not damage the structural integrity of that chest....\"\n\n\"Doing my best,\" she said tersely.\n\n\"I'll leave you to it then, Colonel.\" A goose honked noisily in the background. \"Over and out.\"\n\nBaird grunted in exasperation; she was all for the left hand knowing what the right hand was doing, strategically, but not while she was trying to fend off a ravenous treasure chest with a divine trident that was already starting to lose its punch.\n\nTo her dismay, the water pressure began to slacken. Gritting her teeth, she tried to will the trident to keep spraying, but she was only a mortal Guardian, not a sea god. There was a limit to how much water she could summon through the trident and apparently she was nearing it, while the chest was still as hungry and persistent as ever. It seemed you couldn't drown a treasure chest, so how in the name of Robert Louis Stevenson were you supposed to\u2014\n\nThe answer struck her like a broadside from a pirate ship.\n\nOf course, she thought. That has to be it.\n\nShe had a plan. Now she just had to implement it. Still holding the chest at bay with the trident, she swept her gaze over the artifacts at hand, searching for a suitable lure. The Golden Fleece, once stolen by Jason and his Argonauts, glittered a few yards away, occupying a place of honor on the wall. The mythical ram's skin had famously enticed the Argonauts to cross the Black Sea in quest of it; with any luck, the Dead Man's Chest would find it equally irresistible.\n\nTime to play matador again, she thought. Ol\u00e9.\n\nHad it really only been a day or so since she had resorted to the same stunt to distract the Calydonian Boar? She was going to need a long nap, and maybe even a stiff drink, when this Goose business was over, assuming that the universe was still around.\n\nOne last blast of pressurized ocean sent the treasure chest tumbling backward. The effort drained the trident, reducing the spray from the tines to a trickle, but it bought Baird a few precious moments. Discarding the dripping trident, she took advantage of those moments to hurtle over a pedestal and yank the Golden Fleece off the pegs supporting it. The wooly golden sheepskin, shorn from a sacred ram thousands of years ago, was just as heavy as one might expect, but Baird had once carried a wounded comrade across miles of rugged mountainside in Afghanistan after a raid on a terrorist training camp had gone south; she figured she could transport a sparkly gold fleece from one end of the Library to another. The trick was going to be not getting eaten by the chest first.\n\n\"Yo!\" she shouted at the chest. \"Ho, ho!\"\n\nThe treasure chest had landed on its back after being knocked over by the trident's final blast. Its peg legs failed uselessly in the air and, for a moment, Baird dared to hope that maybe it was stuck like an upside-down tortoise, but then it righted itself by using its hinged jaws to flip itself back onto its legs again. Baird flapped the fleece to get the chest's attention.\n\n\"You want this? Sure you do!\" She waved the fleece enticingly. \"Come and get it!\"\n\nThe chest vacillated, torn between Midas and the fleece, but, as Baird had hoped, the glittering skin proved too tempting to ignore. Rum trickled like drool from its jaws. Abandoning Midas and the other treasures for the moment, the chest charged at Baird, who draped the fleece over her shoulder and took off running, with the chest in hot pursuit. Peg legs splashed through large puddles of brine.\n\n\"That's it!\" she shouted back at the chest, urging it on. \"Catch us if you can, you greedy safe-deposit box!\"\n\nShe liked to think she could outrun a treasure chest, even carrying a heavy fleece, but, as it happened, this was not something she had ever really attempted before. History, she suspected, was full of doomed merchant vessels, laden with precious cargo, that had thought they could outpace a relentless pirate ship, only to lose their treasure to greedy buccaneers.\n\nBaird hoped she wouldn't be sunk like those ships. Jenkins was counting on her.\n\nAnd so was the Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ohio",
                "text": "Ezekiel was mildly surprised to find an actual book hidden in the antique carousel, as opposed to a stack of loose pages. Guess the family must have rebound their third of the original volume to help preserve it. He couldn't complain. Makes life easier for me.\n\n\"Oh my Lord.\" Mary appeared behind him, looking over his shoulder. \"That's really it? This isn't some sort of complicated scam?\"\n\n\"Nope. Just another lost relic liberated by Ezekiel Jones... with, okay, a little bit of help,\" he conceded.\n\nHe started to reach for the book but was interrupted by the operator, who chose that moment to check on Ezekiel. The teen gaped at the confusing tableau before him.\n\n\"Wait just one minute,\" he protested. \"What's going on here? What's with that book?\"\n\n\"The inspector has accidentally stumbled onto a bit of town history.\" Mary shoved past Ezekiel to claim the book. \"Which I'm taking custody of on behalf of the Banbury Public Library.\"\n\nEzekiel opened his mouth to protest, then realized that now was not the time. He could use the local librarian's clout to walk the book right out of the fair without too many questions asked. \"Naturally,\" he agreed. \"A find of this nature needs to be handled by someone who knows what they're doing. Good thing you just happened to be on hand.\"\n\nShe smirked at him. \"Yes. I'd call that a fortuitous coincidence, wouldn't you, Mr. Jones?\" Clutching the book to her chest, she strode past Jimmy toward the ride's exit. \"If you'll excuse me, I should get this historically valuable document safely tucked away in the library where it belongs.\"\n\nHey, I thought that was my job, Ezekiel thought. He kept a close watch on the departing volume as he hustled after her, leaving Jimmy and the breached whale chariot behind.\n\n\"Hey,\" the confused operator called out. \"What about the inspection? You didn't even look at the motor.\"\n\n\"Not my department, mate. Get yourself a good mechanic.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\nJimmy's befuddled queries were swallowed up by the general clamor of the fair as Ezekiel caught up with Mary, who was striding decisively back the way they'd come. He eyed the Mother Goose book greedily, while wondering if he was the first Librarian to recover one of the hidden volumes. He hadn't heard anything about Stone or Cassandra finding their targets yet.\n\n\"Good work back there,\" he complimented Mary. The leather-bound tome looked distinctly out of place on the midway, where everyone else was carrying popcorn and sodas and plush cartoon characters. Jubilant throngs pushed past them, heading deeper into the fair; Ezekiel stuck close to Mary to avoid losing her in the crowd. \"But you can let me have the book now.\"\n\nHe reached for the slender volume.\n\n\"Nothing doing.\" She clutched the book more tightly to her chest. \"I certainly hope you don't think that you're just going to gallivant out of here with my family's legacy.\"\n\n\"But you didn't even know it was real until a few hours ago! You thought it was just a bedtime story!\"\n\n\"Well, now I know better, don't I?\" She quickened her pace. \"And I'm not about to hand over this book to a shady, fast-talking hustler who lies as easily as he breathes.\"\n\n\"But I told you, I'm a Librarian. This is what I do.\" His fingers itched to snatch the book from Mary's grasp, but that wasn't his style; he was a thief, not a thug. \"Trust me, that book is too dangerous to be loose in the world.\"\n\n\"Trust you?\" Mary scoffed. \"You're shifty to the core. You think I can't tell that? You're as much a librarian as I'm the Loch Ness Monster.\"\n\n\"Actually, the Loch Ness Monster is much more cooperative, at least when it's not spawning season, but that's another story.\" He shoved some very scaly memories out of his mind to stay focused on the task at hand. \"I promise, I'll see to it that book ends up in the right hands.\"\n\n\"Yours?\" She paused in front of the pie pavilion, the better to give him a piece of her mind. \"Don't make me\u2014\"\n\nA wild cackle coming from somewhere above interrupted their squabble. Glancing up in surprise, Ezekiel was dismayed to see Mother Goose herself, looking like something right out of a kids' book, perched atop the log roof of the pie pavilion. Her appearance drew startled gasps and laughter from the crowd, most of whom seemed to assume that the black-hatted crone was performing for the fairgoers. Parents held up toddlers to get a better look. Scattered applause greeted her arrival. A few scared children hid behind their guardians.\n\nMary's eyes bulged. \"Is that\u2014?\"\n\n\"Yep!\" He figured this had to be the same Mother Goose that Baird had run across earlier. She had made good time getting from New Jersey to Ohio, making him wonder just how fast a magic gander could fly, or if perhaps she had some kind of Magic Door or teleportation spells of her own. He glanced up at the sky but didn't spy any departing wings. \"Give me the book... now!\"\n\nMary still refused to surrender the volume. \"I... I don't understand. What's happening?\"\n\n\"Don't quarrel, children,\" said Mother Goose, gazing down on them. She beckoned for the collection of nursery rhymes while leaning on a gnarled wooden cane. \"I'll be taking my book back now, if you don't mind.\"\n\nEzekiel shook his head. \"Not happening.\" He nudged Mary. \"We need to get out of here. Who knows what that Mother Goose wannabe is capable of.\"\n\nThis was easier said than done, however, with the crowd hemming them in and yet more fairgoers flocking to take in the \"show\" atop the pavilion. \"Excuse me,\" Mary murmured as she and Ezekiel tried to push through the packed men, women, and children. \"Excuse me.\"\n\n\"Coming through!\" Ezekiel said, much less politely.\n\n\"Not so fast, kiddies!\" Mother Goose raised her voice to be heard above the hubbub, like someone accustomed to regaling listeners with stories and rhymes. She shook her cane at the fleeing librarians. \"You'll not be getting away with my book, not if I have anything to say about it.\"\n\nHere it comes, Ezekiel thought, knowing too well how these things almost always went. The freaky magic part.\n\n\"Sing a song of sixpence,\" the crone recited. \"A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie...!\"\n\nEzekiel sighed knowingly as, sure enough, flocks of blackbirds burst from the dozens of pies on the display in a flurry of flapping wings and feathers. The shrill keening of the birds competed with screams and gasps from shocked onlookers as the agitated birds flew out of the pavilion into the crowd, which instantly turned into a panicked mob. Ezekiel was buffeted by the shrieking fairgoers shoving past him. It was like Mother Goose meets Alfred Hitchcock....\n\n\"Watch out for your nose!\" he shouted at Mary, remembering what happened to a certain unlucky maid in the rhyme. Throwing craft and subtlety to the wind, he grabbed for the book, even as a furious cloud of birds enveloped them both, forcing him to throw up his hands to protect what he had always considered to be an exceptionally handsome face. Oodles of small, feathered bodies smacked against him, while the flapping and keening created a deafening racket. Twenty-four birds per pie times a few dozen pies equaled a quantity that Cassandra could have surely calculated by now; all Ezekiel knew was that there were way too many of the bloody birds flapping in his face!\n\nThis is stupid, he thought. Who bakes birds into a pie anyway?\n\nThe storm of birds dispersed as swiftly as it arrived, taking the precious book with them. One minute Ezekiel was being suffocated beneath the avian onslaught, the next he was standing amidst a frightened mob, checking to make sure his nose was still all there and watching helplessly as the blackbirds latched on to Mother Goose's outdated garments with their beaks and lifted her up into the sky. The crone cackled merrily, brandishing the stolen book, as she ascended. Her triumphant voice taunted Ezekiel from on high.\n\n\"Better luck next time, Librarian!\"\n\nEzekiel watched her vanish into the clouds before lowering his gaze to survey the disorderly scene around him. Ruptured pies had sprayed their fruity guts all over the pavilion, creating a sticky mess, even as freaked-out fairgoers fled from the vicinity in droves. As nearly as he could tell nobody's noses had been pecked off; he guessed that he and Mary had been the flock's sole targets. Visibly shaken and shaking, the gray-haired librarian had managed to hang on to her nose as well, although her hair was mussed and tiny black feathers clung to her rumpled attire. She stared in shock at her empty hands.\n\n\"The book,\" she whispered. \"The blackbirds took the book.\"\n\n\"No kidding.\" He was not looking forward to informing Baird and Jenkins that he had lost the prize to the competition. \"This is so not the way this was supposed to go.\"\n\nHe hoped that Stone and Cassandra were having better luck than he was."
            },
            {
                "title": "Northumberland",
                "text": "Working together, Stone and Gillian assembled a crude seesaw out of the wooden beam and a convenient pile of rubble. \"Good thing for us that this fallen beam happened to be here,\" she observed.\n\n\"That might not be by accident.\" Stone adjusted the position of the beam to compensate for Gillian's lighter weight. \"Now that I think of it, any of the original timbers from the Roman era would have long since rotted away, especially in this damp environment. Somebody has replaced and waterproofed the original woodwork, probably in the last century or so.\"\n\n\"Perhaps sometime after 1918, when you say those Mother Goose pages were supposed to be hidden?\" Gillian clearly saw where he was going with this. \"You're thinking that my ancestor left this beam for us to find?\"\n\n\"Could be,\" Stone said. \"I've seen even more elaborate puzzles left for future generations, some dating as far back as Atlantis.\"\n\n\"Atlantis?\" she echoed. \"Now I know you're pulling my leg. Atlantis is just a fable.\"\n\nYou wouldn't say that if you'd been on the business end of Neptune's trident, Stone thought, but he didn't press the point. He was still reluctant to push all the heavy-duty magic stuff on Gillian, for fear of sounding like a nutcase. \"Let's just say that there may be more to that 'fable' than you think.\"\n\nHe sat down at one end of the seesaw, facing the wall where the moon mosaic was. Gillian clambered onto the other end and, sure enough, he was lifted up toward the waiting mosaic.\n\n\"It's working!'\" she said as her end of the seesaw hit the floor of the walkway with a thump. \"I wouldn't have thought that I was heavy enough to lift you.\"\n\n\"Leverage,\" Stone said. \"You just need to provide... leverage.\"\n\nFace-to-face with the mosaic at last, he examined it by the light of his headlamp. \"Okay,\" he called down to Gillian. \"As I suspected this segment of the mosaic is an emblema, a prefabricated panel assembled elsewhere before being inserted into the larger mosaic at this location.\" He took a closer look at the panel containing the leering lunar countenance. \"And this particular emblema... it's a forgery, or at least it's not original to the site and, by all indications, was added to the design centuries later.\"\n\nGillian gaped in surprise. \"How can you tell?\"\n\n\"Little things,\" he explained. \"For one thing, traditional Roman mosaics always featured a thin white outline around the figures.\" He turned the beam of the lamp onto a barely intact portrait of Cassiopeia a few feet to the right. Much of the mosaic had fallen away, exposing bare concrete and patches of dried mortar, but you could still make out the narrow white outline around a surviving arm and foot. \"But there's no outline around the Man in the Moon.\"\n\n\"Maybe because he's already made up of white tiles?\" she suggested. \"Just to play devil's advocate.\"\n\n\"Nope. The Romans were sticklers when it came to form. They would have used two different shades of white to create the mandated outline.\" He turned the beam back on the moon, which gleamed in places just like the real thing. \"And there's another thing. Some of these tesserae are tilted slightly, the better to catch the eye by reflecting any available light. That's a Byzantine technique, developed long after the Roman legions departed from Britain. No way was this panel placed here back when this fort was a going concern. It's a fake, meant to blend in with the actual Roman mosaics\u2014to a degree.\"\n\n\"But what does that mean?\"\n\n\"That's what I want to find out.\" He ran his hand gently over the emblema; even though it was not entirely authentic, he didn't want to damage the artwork if he could help it. And was it just his imagination or was this particular panel placed just a hair lower than the adjacent portions of the border? \"I wonder...\"\n\nHe wasn't the master thief Ezekiel was, but Stone had picked up a few things after a couple of years poking around for hidden manuscripts and secret compartments. Placing his palms against the recessed panel and cautiously exerting a bit of pressure, he tried sliding it left, then right, then...\n\n\"Eureka.\"\n\nThe entire emblema slid beneath the rest of the mosaic, revealing a concealed niche holding a latched cedar box that looked to Stone to be just the right size to hold, say, one-third of a certain ghost volume. Reaching in, he drew the box from its cubbyhole.\n\n\"I've got something!\" he said. \"Let me down... slowly.\"\n\n\"Roger that.\"\n\nShe slid gradually off her end of the seesaw, but not quite gracefully enough. Stone's end dropped abruptly, slamming into the floor with a jolt. The beam bounced against the stone walkway.\n\n\"Hey!\" he protested, along with his indignant tailbone. \"I said slowly!\"\n\n\"Sorry!\" she said. \"That was trickier than I expected.\"\n\n\"Tell that to my bruised behind!\"\n\nShe craned her head. \"I don't know,\" she said with a smirk. \"Looks fine from where I'm standing.\"\n\nHer flirty tone took a lot of the sting out of his bumpy landing. He would've responded in kind, except that he was more anxious to find out what was in the box. Undoing a latch, he lifted the lid to find a slender, leather-bound book inside. An embossed title leaped out at him:\n\nMother Goose's Melodies. Volume Two of Three.\n\n\"Bloody hell, it's real,\" Gillian whispered in awe. \"We found it.\" She looked up at Stone. \"Upon consideration, I may have to rethink my views on Atlantis....\" A note of suspicion entered her voice. \"Unless this is all some sort of scam and you placed the book here for us to find.\"\n\nHe couldn't blame her for considering that possibility, especially after he'd questioned her motives not too long ago. \"You're the one who figured out the seesaw thing,\" he pointed out, \"and brought up the Norse connection.\"\n\n\"Well, that theory's been around since the nineteenth century at least, and I am a folklorist, so it might be reasonable to expect that\u2014\"\n\n\"Look,\" Stone interrupted. \"Trust your gut. Do you really think I'm scamming you?\"\n\nShe looked him in the eyes. \"No, I can't say that I do.\"\n\n\"Then let's get out of this hole.\" He closed the lid on the box for safekeeping. \"We can inspect the goods someplace drier and more hospitable.\"\n\nHe was dying to examine the book, but he didn't want to linger too long at the bottom of the well, especially with Mother Goose still in the wind. Granted, Baird had run into her in New Jersey, thousands of miles away, but magic had a way of making time and space somewhat rubbery, as the Magic Door at the Annex proved every time he stepped through it. If he could make it from the USA to the UK in no time at all, maybe Mother Goose could as well?\n\nLet's clear out of here before company shows up.\n\nGetting back to the well shaft meant hopping back into the reservoir and wading again through the filthy water. Stone kept a tight grip on the box as they approached the exit. He figured he'd let Gillian climb up and out of the well first before following right behind her. The sooner they got back to somewhere he could contact the Library, the better.\n\nThis is one volume Mother Goose is not getting her hands on.\n\n\"After you,\" he began. \"Ladies fir\u2014\"\n\nTo his alarm, the climbing rope, which had been waiting for them, was abruptly yanked upward, disappearing from sight. He grabbed for it, almost dropping the box into the water, but he was too late. Their way out of the well vanished before his eyes.\n\n\"What the\u2014?\"\n\nA mischievous cackle came from high above. Peering upward, Stone saw Mother Goose looking down at him, just like Gillian had earlier.\n\n\"Going somewhere, children?\" the crone taunted them.\n\nStartled, Gillian looked from the stranger to Stone. \"Let me guess,\" she said with admirable coolness. \"The competition?\"\n\n\"Right on the money,\" he said. \"Meet Mother Goose.\"\n\nHer jaw dropped. \"The Mother Goose?\"\n\n\"More like a Mother Goose... we think.\" He shrugged. \"It's a mystery.\"\n\n\"Enough chatter!\" Mother Goose demanded. \"Give me that book. It belongs to me.\"\n\n\"Not according to the Treaty of 1918,\" Stone said, \"or so I've been told.\"\n\n\"To perdition with that treaty! It's null and void!\" She lowered a pail on a rope. \"And I've already claimed the first volume from your friend the thief, so you might as well play nicely, too.\"\n\n\"You mean Jones?\" Stone wanted to believe that the crone was lying, that she hadn't managed to wrest another set of missing pages from Ezekiel, but he feared that was wishful thinking. He'd been a Librarian long enough to know that the bad guys had an irritating tendency to get their hands on what they were after. \"What happened to Jones? Is he all right?\"\n\n\"The thief is hale and hearty, not that it matters,\" Mother Goose said. \"Now be a good Jack and put the book in the bucket.\"\n\n\"Or what, we get the hose?\" He was tempted to grab on to the crone's rope instead, but he doubted that she could support his weight\u2014or wouldn't let go if he tried. \"Worst reboot of The Silence of the Lambs ever,\" he muttered under his breath.\n\n\"Or you stay where you are,\" Mother Goose said. \"Turn over the book and maybe I'll lower your own rope back down to you.\"\n\n\"Sorry. Not happening.\"\n\nIf Jenkins was to be believed, and Stone had no reason to doubt him, letting Mother Goose get another piece of her book could have seriously apocalyptic consequences. And Stone cared too much about history to want to see it end before its time.\n\n\"We'll stay put if you don't mind. We're in no hurry.\"\n\nGillian gave him a look. \"We're not?\"\n\n\"Trust me,\" he said.\n\nStone had faith in Baird and his fellow Librarians. Given time, they'd surely track him down and maybe even find a way to open up the Magic Door to come get him. Plus, there was always that drainage tunnel....\n\n\"Perhaps a little company will change your minds,\" Mother Goose said. \"You know what they say, three's a crowd....\"\n\n\"Company?\" Gillian asked, looking around. \"What does she mean by that?\"\n\nStone wished he knew. \"Stay sharp,\" he warned her. \"Be ready for anything... and I do mean anything.\"\n\nUp above them, the crone began to recite an incantation in a singsong voice:\n\n\u2003The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout,\n\n\u2003Down came the rain and washed the spider out,\n\n\u2003Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,\n\n\u2003And the itsy-bitsy spider came up the spout again!\n\nA loud, scuttling sound came from the drainage tunnel behind them. Stone contemplated all the cobwebs draping the ancient cistern. Glancing up he saw that the night sky was already beginning to lighten high above the well. Dawn was approaching here in the UK.\n\nOut came the sun...\n\n\"Oh, crap,\" Stone said.\n\nGillian clutched his arm, scooting closer to him. \"That doesn't sound very itsy-bitsy.\"\n\n\"Poetic license,\" Mother Goose said with a shrug. \"I'm afraid our eight-legged friend has grown somewhat larger... and hungrier.\" She cackled merrily. \"Are you sure you wouldn't like your climbing rope back?\"\n\nStone was torn. Suddenly, waiting it out underground wasn't looking like such a viable option anymore. The scuttling sounded louder and closer as something climbed up the old drainage tunnel toward them. Turning his light on the entrance, Stone glimpsed a large brown shape through the hanging cobwebs. Some forgotten guardian of the treasure, he wondered, or something conjured up by Mother Goose? Probably the latter, he guessed.\n\n\"The torch!\" he said. \"Get the torch from my pack!\"\n\nGillian nodded, getting it. \"You don't have to ask me twice!\" Hurrying behind him, she extracted the acetylene torch and, showing impressive presence of mind under the circumstances, the safety glasses as well. \"Now what?\"\n\nBefore he could answer, the not-so-itsy-bitsy spider burst through the webbing into the underground chamber. Conditioned by old drive-in movies, Stone had expected some kind of giant tarantula, but then he remembered that those were hardly native to Great Britain. Instead he saw an immense brown house spider roughly the size of a German shepherd. Eight long hairy legs supported its bristling brown thorax and abdomen. Four pairs of eyes fixed on Stone and Gillian. Furry palps twitched ominously. Venom dripped from its oversized fangs as it scurried across the surface of the reservoir toward them.\n\n\"Light it up!\" he shouted, averting his eyes.\n\nGillian ignited the torch. A brilliant blue flame lit up the cistern, deterring the spider, who retreated up a rear wall and onto the ceiling, where it scuttled back toward them with alarming speed.\n\n\"Watch out!\" Stone shouted. \"It's almost on top of us!\"\n\n\"I see it!\"\n\nShe swung the torch upward just in time to keep the spider from dropping down on them. Alas, the cutting torch was not a flamethrower, so it was only good for short-range defense. The spider darted away from the six-inch flame into a shadowy corner of the ceiling before taking another run at them from a different direction. Again Gillian barely managed to ward it off with the torch in time. The spider sprung backward without getting singed.\n\n\"I'm not certain how long I can keep this up,\" she confessed, with a slight quaver in her voice. \"This wretched beast is bloody fast!\"\n\nStone could see that. He also had his doubts about how long the torch would hold out; he had used up much of its fuel cutting through those steel bolts earlier. The torch was by no means a long-term solution, as Mother Goose surely knew as well.\n\n\"Well?\" she asked from atop the well. \"Is my little book worth your life, Librarian? Or your Jill's?\"\n\nFlame or no flame, the hungry spider showed no sign of abandoning its hunt. Spiders were carnivores, and this particular specimen seemed to have its cold, arthropod heart set on gobbling up him and Gillian. Little Miss Muffet, he recalled, simply ran away from her spider, but he guessed that hers hadn't been quite so aggressive. This spider was playing for keeps.\n\n\"Bugger!\" Gillian swore as the monster tried to bypass her to get to Stone instead, forcing her to shift position to defend him. The slippery floor of the reservoir threatened to undo her, dooming them both. \"It gets past me just once and someday they'll be digging up our bones here!\"\n\n\"Damn it,\" Stone swore. His own life was one thing\u2014Librarians weren't known for their long life expectancies\u2014but he wasn't about to let Gillian get turned into spider chow. Scowling, he placed the box in the pail. \"Fine. Have your freaking book!\"\n\n\"There's a good boy!\" Mother Goose tugged the rope up, cackling all the while. \"I knew you'd make the right choice!\"\n\nStone watched, fuming, as the pail ascended, taking the precious volume out of his reach. By now, Gillian's back was pressed against his as she waved the torch back and forth in front of her to buy them more time. The spider's ghastly shadow capered across the walls in accompaniment to its ceaseless attempts to get past their defenses. The determined predator was not letting up, and the torch was going to give up the ghost anytime now.\n\n\"Jake?\" Gillian asked. \"Between you and me, I think we've outstayed our welcome.\"\n\n\"Working on it.\" He shouted up at the crone. \"Hurry it up! You've got your damn book, now throw us that rope!\"\n\n\"Oh, you don't want that boring old rope,\" Mother Goose replied. \"I've got something even better for you!\"\n\nClaiming the book, she placed something else in the pail and lowered it back down to them. Stone grabbed it as soon as it came within reach and hastily inspected its contents. Hoping for something\u2014anything\u2014they could use to escape the spider's lair, he found instead... a bottle of malt vinegar and a roll of brown construction paper?\n\n\"Hey!\" he yelled at Mother Goose. \"What gives?\"\n\nThe crone vanished from sight, but Stone could still hear her chanting up among the ruins:\n\n\u2003Up Jack got and home did trot,\n\n\u2003As fast as he could caper,\n\n\u2003And went to bed and bound his head\n\n\u2003With vinegar and brown paper!\n\nHer voice trailed away, leaving Stone stuck at the bottom of the well with nothing but some useless props from the nursery rhyme. He raised the glass bottle, tempted to hurl it at the spider in frustration, then reconsidered. Perhaps there had been a method to Mother Goose's maddening gift?\n\n\"Vinegar,\" he murmured. \"Of course!\"\n\n\"What did you say?\" Gillian asked as the blue flame from the torch started to sputter. \"Jake?\"\n\n\"Vinegar! It's a natural spider repellent.\" He uncapped the bottle and, without asking, dumped half its contents over her head. Growing up back in Oklahoma, he'd learned a thing or two about warding off brown recluse spiders while enjoying the great outdoors. He splashed the rest of the vinegar over himself. \"Trust me!\"\n\nGillian shook her head, spraying vinegar in his face. She spit the spilled brown liquid from her lips. \"You could've warned me.\"\n\n\"No time!\" He shoved her toward the entrance to the drain tunnel, several feet away. \"Make for the drain... quickly!\"\n\nWith any luck, the reeking vinegar fumes would dampen the spider's appetite for them while they dived down the waterspout. He had no idea what was waiting for them at the end of the tunnel, but it had to beat sticking around to be devoured. He wasn't sure what exactly the brown paper was for, probably just to be true to the rhyme, but he jammed it into his pocket anyway.\n\n\"Move!\" he shouted. \"We're getting out of here!\"\n\nThey clambered out of the water and dashed toward the gaping entrance. Tattered webbing shrouded the opening, making it impossible to see what lay beyond. The spider, seeing its prey on the verge of escaping, shot a thick strand of fresh webbing from its rear, snaring Stone's leg just as he and Gillian reached the top of the drain. He tried to tug his leg free but found it rooted to the spot.\n\n\"Son of a\u2014!\" he exclaimed.\n\nGillian glanced back to see what the problem was. \"Jake?\"\n\n\"Don't wait for me!\" he said. \"Go!\"\n\n\"Rubbish.\" Coaxing one last spurt of flame from the torch, she sliced through the thick white strand holding Stone in place, then hurled the still-hot torch at the spider. Her wild throw missed, but it struck a hanging sheet of cobwebs instead, setting it ablaze. The fire leaped from web to web, spreading quickly through the underground chamber. Chittering in panic, the spider retreated from the flames, even as they began to eat away at the wooden timbers supporting the ceiling. Smoke filled the ancient cistern, hiding the spider from sight. Acrid fumes stung Stone's eyes and throat.\n\n\"Oh my,\" Gillian said. \"I didn't mean to do that.\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter,\" Stone said. \"We're leaving anyway.\"\n\nBetween the fire and the frantic spider, there was no time to dawdle. He shoved Gillian headfirst through the drain opening, then dived in after her.\n\nGeronimo, he thought.\n\nThe tunnel was steeper than he expected, and slimier, too. Muck and algae greased the curved walls of the chute so that he and Gillian shot down the drain as though riding the world's least sanitary waterslide. Their screams echoed in their ears as they hurled faster and faster down the tunnel, tearing through random webs and roots and weeds. The beams from their headlamps danced wildly, doing little to combat the utter blackness of the tunnel, as Stone squeezed his eyes shut and waited tensely for the heart-stopping ride to end.\n\nWhose bright idea was this again?\n\nFor a second, it felt like they were going to go spilling down the pipe forever, but they burst through one last curtain of hanging roots and reeds to splash headlong into the deep, dark pool at the base of the hill. Gillian hit the chilly water first, followed almost immediately by Stone. With no chance to hold his breath, he swallowed a good chunk of the pool before kicking to the surface and gasping for breath. Paddling in the water, he glanced back toward the exposed end of the storm drain to make sure the spider wasn't still pursuing them, but he saw no sign of the creature. With any luck, it was toast or buried alive by now.\n\n\"Gillian?\"\n\n\"Over here!\" she called, making her way toward the tall reeds marking the shore. \"God, this water is cold!\"\n\nHe paddled after her and, within moments, collapsed onto the muddy bank beside her, crushing the damp reeds beneath him. They were both soaked to the skin and shivering. Fall in North England was no time for a refreshing dip outdoors, even with the sun coming up. The cold and damp chilled them to the bone.\n\nOn the bright side, they didn't smell like vinegar anymore.\n\n\"We did that wrong,\" she said, cuddling up to him for warmth. \"I'm supposed to come tumbling after you.\"\n\nHe drew her closer. \"I went off-script... just like Mother Goose.\"\n\n\"Yes, about that...\"\n\n\"Later,\" he promised. \"Preferably in front of a warm fire.\"\n\nShe shivered in agreement. \"My place or yours?\"\n\n\"I'm guessing yours is closer.\"\n\nDespite the appealing prospect of cozying up with Gillian somewhere warm and dry, Stone kicked himself for letting Mother Goose abscond with another third of the book, bringing her one step closer to putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. He hoped his phone had also survived the crone.\n\nSorry, team, he thought. Watch out for that witch."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "The Dead Man's Chest was gaining on Baird.\n\nIntent on devouring the Golden Fleece, the ambulatory treasure chest chased Baird through the Library, practically chomping at her heels. Baird could feel the chest's hot breath, redolent of rum and gunpowder, at her back, even as the fleece thrown over her shoulder felt as though it was getting heavier by the moment. At least the Argonauts had a ship to transport the fleece, she thought crankily, instead of having to schlep it halfway across a magic library.\n\nTo make matters worse, she couldn't even try to get too far ahead of the hungry chest for fear of it abandoning the chase to go after easier, more stationary prey. She needed the chest to keep pursuing her until she had it where she wanted it, assuming she could keep a few steps ahead of the chest until then, despite her aching legs and straining lungs. Sweat glued her clothes to her body. Her feet pounded against the hardwood floor of a seemingly endless corridor deep within the labyrinthine bowels of the Library.\n\nI swear, I do more running as a Guardian than I ever did hunting terrorists.\n\nStill, she was pretty sure she was heading the right way. She might not know the Library as well as Jenkins or Flynn, and she might even still get lost if she strayed into some of the more esoteric, less frequented galleries and collections, but she'd been a Guardian for a couple of years now. As long as she stuck to the areas she knew, she should be able to get where she was going.\n\nIn theory.\n\nShe entered a long hallway lined with closed doors hiding various special sections of the Library, some of which she was actually familiar with. She ticked them off in her head as she sprinted past them.\n\nThe Sun Room... no.\n\nThe Frozen Land of Giants... no.\n\nThe Lost Jungle... no.\n\nThe Hive of Giant Bees... hell, no!\n\nGlancing back over her shoulder, she saw that the chest was only a few yards behind her and showed no sign of slowing. She envied its preternatural persistence; she was running on fumes and adrenaline at this point, all while being acutely aware that this whole sideshow with the runaway goose and the treasure chest was keeping her from finding Flynn and focusing on the larger threat posed by Mother Goose and Humpty Dumpty, as insane as that still sounded to her.\n\nThe chest clattered after her. In a pinch, she could always save herself by ditching the fleece and letting the chest devour it while she got away, but what kind of Guardian threw a literally legendary relic under the bus just to keep from being chomped on? Digging deep, Baird pulled out a fresh burst of speed, increasing her lead on the treasure chest, but not by too much.\n\nJust a little bit farther, she promised herself. Almost there... I think.\n\nHer doubts were dispelled when, moments later, a sealed wooden door came into view at the end of the hallway. A bronze plaque confirmed that she had at last reached her destination:\n\nThe Ozymandias Room.\n\n\"About time,\" she gasped. Despite her relief, an involuntary shudder ran through her as she recalled the time that she and Flynn had gotten trapped in this very same room while desperately attempting to shore up the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. That had been a close one....\n\nBut now was no time to stroll down memory lane (which was actually two floors down on the southeast side of the Library). Reaching the closed door, she turned to face the oncoming treasure chest. Her hand rested tensely on the knob as she waited for the voracious artifact to catch up with her. She took a deep breath to clear her head and steady her nerves. This was going to take split-second timing... and some seriously bad weather.\n\nDrooling rum, the chest scuttled toward her as fast as its ridiculous peg legs could carry it. Iron-edged jaws snapped incessantly, eager to tear into the fleece as well as anything and everybody that got between it and all that yummy gold. Baird remembered the fifteen evil spirits trapped inside the chest and wondered if they were the source of the chest's insatiable lust for gold or its victims or both.\n\nShe'd have to ask Jenkins about that... later.\n\n\"C'mon,\" she muttered. \"Let's get this over with. I've got Librarians to look after.\"\n\nDrawing closer, the chest sprang at the fleece and Baird, who yanked open the door and jumped to one side, shielding herself behind the door as a ferocious sandstorm blew out of the Ozymandias Room into the hallway. A hot, desert wind flung a barrage of sunbaked yellow grit at the startled treasure chest, sandblasting it. Baird could feel the blistering heat and force of the storm even through the sturdy wooden door protecting her. The howling wind drowned out the rapid beating of her heart. Anxious to see if her plan was succeeding, she peered cautiously around the edge of the door to see the beset chest vanishing beneath the sheer accumulation of sand piling up in the hall. More sand blew into the chest's gaping maw, faster and harder than it could possibly swallow.\n\n\"Choke on that,\" Baird said.\n\nWithin moments, the chest had disappeared completely beneath a newly born sand dune. Taking no chances, Baird waited until the chest was entirely covered before, shoving her shoulder against the door with all the strength she could muster, she struggled to push the door shut again. The storm fought her every inch of the way, but finally the door clicked back into place\u2014and the howling winds and flying sand ceased at once.\n\nWhew!\n\nPanting from exertion, she leaned against the closed door while keeping watch over the out-of-place sand dune, just in case the inundated chest tried to dig itself out, but nothing stirred beneath the piled sand. The storm appeared to have been too much for the chest, just as she'd planned.\n\nMakes sense, she thought. How else do you dispose of a treasure chest?\n\nYou bury it.\n\n\"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,\" she murmured before scooting past the dune to head back the way she came, leaving the Dead Man's Chest safely buried behind her. That should hold it for the duration, she hoped, or at least until we have Mother Goose under wraps as well.\n\nNow if only Jenkins had dealt with that other goose in the meantime....\n\nUncertain where to find Jenkins and the goose, she headed back toward the Annex. If the goose was indeed looking to escape the Library, it was bound to find its way there eventually. And if, alternatively, Jenkins had already dealt with the goose situation, the Annex would be the logical place for her to meet up with him and regroup.\n\n\"Jenkins?\" she called out as she retraced her path through the Library, carefully avoiding any potentially confusing detours. \"Jenkins? You within earshot?\"\n\nNobody responded at first, but as she neared the front of the Library, it was hard to miss the strident honking of an upset goose, along with the annoyed utterances of a certain immortal caretaker.\n\n\"Get down from there, you infernal creature! I have better things to do than round up an ungrateful egg-laying machine!\"\n\nSounds like Jenkins still has a goose problem on his hands, Baird thought, and could probably use some backup.\n\nFollowing the commotion to its source, she arrived at the Library's main entrance hall: a vast, cavernous chamber with vaulted barrel ceilings. Dark wooden bookcases and wainscoting lined the walls, while row after row of glass display cases held some of the prizes of the collection, including the Spear of Destiny, the Shroud of Turin, a crystal skull, and the Philosopher's Stone. A pair of life-sized gold lions guarded the stone steps leading up to the frosted glass door barring the way to the Annex. Bird droppings and golden eggs, scattered randomly about the premises, testified to the goose's incursion.\n\nIgnoring the fantastic relics and marvels on display, which were old news to Baird by now, she instead scoped out the chaotic scene playing out in the hall. To her surprise, she saw that Jenkins had traded in his oversized butterfly net for... a squirt gun?\n\nA super-soaker-sized squirt rifle, to be precise, which Jenkins was firing at the squawking goose flying back and forth overhead. Unfortunately, the hall's high ceilings meant that the bird was out of range of the squirt-rifle, so that the pressurized streams of water fell short of their avian target, spilling back down onto the floor and furnishings. Baird had to jump backward to avoid being splattered herself.\n\n\"Watch yourself, Colonel,\" Jenkins warned, noting her arrival. The front of his suit and shirt were shredded as though by fierce claws, making Baird wonder what else he might have run into since they split up. \"Trust me when I say you don't want to get doused with this particular water.\"\n\nBaird attempted to bring herself up to speed. \"And that would be bad because...?\"\n\nBut Jenkins was too busy to offer an explanation, which, given that he lived and breathed exposition, meant he was busy in the extreme. \"Hold this if you please, Colonel,\" he instructed as he thrust the half-empty squirt-rifle into her hands and turned to retrieve another item that Baird had overlooked before: an old-fashioned jet pack (!) resting on the floor at the base of a glass display case containing the Maltese Falcon. The gleaming silver gadget looked like something straight out of an old, pulp-era comic strip, complete with twin gas cylinders mounted to a stainless steel backpack and harness.\n\nWe have one of those? Baird thought. And where on Earth did we get it from? If it is from Earth....\n\nWith his hands now free, Jenkins pulled the jet pack on over his usual gray suit and buckled the straps before reclaiming the squirt-rifle from Baird. \"I'll take that back now, thank you.\"\n\nBaird gaped at the unlikely sight of Jenkins decked out like a pin-striped Buck Rogers. \"A jet pack... seriously?\"\n\n\"Borrowed from the Retro-Futurist collection, naturally,\" he said blandly, as though that went without saying. \"I anticipated that this highly inconvenient interlude might come down to a matter of altitude.\"\n\nShe noticed something missing. \"No crash helmet?\"\n\n\"Immortal, remember?\"\n\n\"Right. As you were.\"\n\n\"If you'll pardon me, Colonel.\" He stepped away from her in the interest of safety. \"All systems, as they say, are go.\"\n\nClutching the plastic yellow squirt-rifle, he activated the jet pack and blasted off from the floor atop a column of swirling orange vapor that smelled like Tang, the one-time drink of astronauts. Coughing on the fumes, Baird blinked and covered her mouth as she tilted her head back to watch Jenkins rocket after the goose.\n\nAlarmed by the blast-off, the soaring bird attempted evasive maneuvers high above the floor of the Library, but Jenkins zipped after it, trailing streamers of citrus smoke. The goose flapped its wings frantically in hopes of escaping its airborne caretaker, but Jenkins had the bird in his sights. Squeezing the trigger, he nailed the goose with a well-aimed stream of water.\n\n\"That should dampen your wanderlust,\" he said. \"And none too soon.\"\n\nThe squirt had an immediate effect. The large white goose shrunk in midflight, its feathers blurring into a soft yellow down, the soaring wings contracting into stubby little limbs that were wildly inadequate for flight, no matter how hard or how fast they were flapping. Booming honks were dialed down to cheeps. As Baird gazed upward in amazement, a full-grown goose transformed into a cute baby gosling\u2014and began to plummet toward the floor.\n\n\"Jenkins!\"\n\n\"Have no fear, Colonel.\" He discarded the empty rifle, letting it fall onto the top of a tall oak bookcase, and dove after the falling bird. \"I have the matter in hand... or soon shall.\"\n\nAccelerating past the terrified gosling, he reached out and caught it with both hands before it could hit the ground. He cradled the chick against his chest as he reversed his orientation in the air and slowly descended to the floor, touching down only a few feet away from Baird, who was still trying to process what she had just seen.\n\n\"How in the\u2014?\" she began, appropriately boggled.\n\n\"Water from the Fountain of Youth.\" Jenkins kept a firm but gentle grip on the squirming gosling. \"I thought it would make the goose easier to manage, at least until it wears off.\"\n\nBaird recalled that the Fountain of Youth gurgled elsewhere in the Library, not far from Noah's Ark, and she thanked her lucky stars that she hadn't been splashed accidentally. She wasn't quite sure how long the water's rejuvenating magic lasted, but the Librarians didn't need a Guardian who was back in diapers again.\n\n\"Creative,\" she said.\n\n\"And the Dead Man's Chest?\" he asked.\n\n\"Buried... outside the Ozymandias Room.\"\n\nHe nodded in approval. \"That should keep it contained for the time being, although I'm not looking forward to sweeping out that corridor at some future date.\"\n\nBaird recalled the flooded Greco-Roman collection. \"Someone's going to need to mop up Antiquities as well.\"\n\nHe arched an eyebrow. \"Neptune's trident?\"\n\n\"Got it in one.\"\n\nHe sighed, but heroically refrained from scolding her. \"Well, I'm sure it couldn't be helped.\" He handed the chirping chick over to her as he shrugged off the jet pack and placed it securely on a nearby shelf. \"Congratulations, Colonel, on a job well done.\"\n\nBaird appreciated the kudos, but she could savor her triumph over the treasure chest later. She had bigger things on her plate.\n\n\"What's going on with our Librarians?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Florida",
                "text": "The door opened readily, admitting Cassandra and Cole into the Hell Room, which turned out to be just as spooky as one might expect. Black curtains shrouded all six walls, while a six-legged table occupied the center of the chamber, where a large pentagram ominously adorned the parquet floor. A silver candelabra holding six black candles rested on the ebony table. A chill ran down Cassandra's spine as she saw that there were two chairs set at the table. One for Ezra Wilshire, and one for... a guest? The upholstery on one of the chairs, she observed, was badly scorched. And was it just her screwball senses or was there still a trace of sulfur lingering in the air?\n\n\"I don't know about you,\" Cole said, \"but I'm having second thoughts about finding this place.\"\n\nCassandra couldn't blame him, but, in her experience, dangerous magic relics weren't always found in cozy settings. More often than not, you had to venture into a forgotten dungeon or dragon's lair.\n\n\"Let's just find those pages and get out of here,\" she said. \"No need to stay here any longer than we have to.\"\n\n\"Amen to that,\" Cole said.\n\nThey swept their beams around the room, searching for another clue. Cassandra was tempted to light the candles on the table, but thought better of it; the last thing they needed was to summon an unwanted visitor. Peering at the floor, she noted that it was charred at one point, breaking the protective seal. That probably hadn't boded well for Ezra Wilshire.\n\n\"Yo!\" Cole said. \"Looks like there's another way in.\"\n\nHis beam spotlighted another door on the opposite side of the room. Because it was painted black, she had almost missed it among the sable drapes.\n\nCassandra's brow furrowed in confusion. \"That's not possible.\" She didn't conjure up her mental model again, but she remembered it well enough. \"There's simply no room, spatially, for another stairwell.\"\n\n\"You sure of that?\" Cole crossed the room and took hold of the doorknob. \"Then where does this go?\"\n\nHe pulled open the door, letting in the wind. A six-story drop to the ground waited beyond the doorway.\n\n\"Nowhere,\" she said. \"Another door to nowhere.\"\n\n\"No lie.\" He shut the door and stepped away from it. \"Guess there's only one way in or out, unless you're in the mood for a one-way trip.\"\n\n\"I don't think we're quite that desperate yet,\" she quipped, as her beam lighted upon an antique grandfather clock resting in one corner of the chamber. As with every other clock she'd spied tonight, its hands were stuck at midnight. Want to bet, she thought, that's the exact time that Ezra Wilshire's luck ran out?\n\nShe forced that sinister supposition from her mind in order to focus on the puzzle at hand. The crooked man rhyme had led them to the Hell Room, but what about the other rhyme they had stumbled onto, the one on the crooked page?\n\n\"Hickory, dickory, dock,\" she recited. \"What does that even mean, anyway? Are they just nonsense words or some sort of code?\" Anxious to solve the mystery, she brainstormed fiercely. \"Hickory, dickory, dock abbreviates to H-D-D, and if we replace each letter with the corresponding number of the alphabetical sequence that gives us 7-4-4, or seven hundred and forty-four, which is the sum of four consecutive prime numbers... or am I overthinking this?\"\n\n\"Maybe a little,\" Cole said.\n\n\"Okay, back to square one,\" she said. \"Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock.\" She drew nearer to the grandfather clock. \"What if that wasn't just referring to the clock tower, but a clock in the tower?\"\n\n\"Like that one?\" Cole strolled over to examine it as well. \"How's the rest of the rhyme go? 'The clock struck one, the mouse did run,' etcetera.\" He contemplated the unmoving hands on the clock face. \"This dinosaur isn't striking one anytime soon.\"\n\n\"You're right. This clock hasn't moved past midnight in decades, if it ever did at all.\" Cassandra's eyes narrowed suspiciously. \"Let's remedy that, why don't we?\"\n\nHolding her breath, she reached out and moved the hour hand from twelve to one. At first nothing happened, and Cassandra feared that she had jumped to the wrong conclusion; then rusty hinges squeaked like a startled mouse, and a wooden panel slid open beneath the clock face revealing a hidden niche nestled in the trunk of the clock. Twin flashlight beams converged on the concealed hiding place, which was found to contain a single hardcover book.\n\n\"Hot damn, little\u2014\"\n\nShe shot him a warning look.\n\n\"I mean, Cassandra,\" he corrected himself. \"Remind me to ring you the next time I misplace my car keys!\"\n\n\"Well, this is my job.\" She rescued the book from the clock and lifted it up to read the title on the front cover:\n\nMother Goose's Melodies. Volume Three of Three.\n\n\"Mission accomplished,\" she said with relief. This was one part of the spell book that wouldn't be ending up in Mother Goose's clutches. \"Now I believe I said something before about not sticking around longer than necessary?\"\n\n\"That was the plan,\" Cole confirmed. \"Let's get the hell out of the Hell Room.\"\n\n\"My thoughts exactly.\"\n\nCassandra tucked the book under her arm as they started for the real exit, as opposed to the suicide door. They only got a few steps, however, before the trick door slammed open behind them, causing them to spin around in surprise. Cassandra's eyes widened and her jaw dropped.\n\n\"Oh no,\" she whispered.\n\nMother Goose stood framed in the open doorway, cackling jubilantly. A cold wind rustled her shawl and skirts. A gnarled wooden cane rested on the floor before her, as though the old woman had just dropped it. Cassandra had not yet met Mother Goose in the flesh, but she recognized her at once from the storybooks.\n\n\"Who the\u2014?\" Cole blurted. \"How?\"\n\nGood question, Cassandra thought. Peering past the crone, she looked for Mother Goose's gander but caught no glimpse of it in the open air beyond. So how exactly had Mother Goose reached the tower room by way of the suicide door?\n\n\"That's her?\" Cole asked. \"Mother Goose?\"\n\n\"Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.\" Cassandra clutched the book to her chest, unwilling to surrender it without a fight. She glared defiantly at the crone. \"If you're here for the book, think again.\"\n\n\"But you did all the thinking for me, Cassandra,\" the older woman said, taunting her. \"Well done, my dear. I knew that if anybody could crack this Puzzle House\u2014and find me the last part of my book\u2014it would be you.\"\n\nThat Mother Goose knew her by name was troubling, and that she seemed to be implying that she already had the other two-thirds of the spell book was even more so, but Cassandra didn't let that rattle her. \"Sorry, I didn't find this for you.\" She nudged Cole toward the door. \"Come on, Georgie. We're leaving.\"\n\n\"That's what you think!\"\n\nMoving surprisingly quickly for an old woman, Mother Goose sprang forward and snatched the silver candelabra from the table. Her voice rose as she chanted:\n\n\u2003Jack be nimble,\n\n\u2003Jack be quick,\n\n\u2003Jack jump over the candlestick!\n\nWith a sudden whoosh, the black candles ignited. Gripping the central column of the candelabra, she pointed it at the open door. Flames sprayed across the room. A wall of fire erupted in the doorway, barring the way to the stairs.\n\n\"Jump over that, children, if you dare!\"\n\nCassandra and Cole looked at each other in dismay. Roaring flames stood between them and escape, trapping them in the Hell Room with Mother Goose, who swung the lighted candelabra toward them, brandishing it like a weapon. Cassandra knew a magical flamethrower when she saw one.\n\n\"Change your mind about giving me my book,\" Mother Goose said menacingly, \"or shall we see how high this Jack can jump?\"\n\nCassandra hesitated, torn between the immediate threat and the greater danger of allowing Mother Goose to get the final piece of the spell book. She suspected she knew what Jenkins would advise, but he wasn't the one facing imminent incineration\u2014and the person responsible for putting Cole in this position in the first place. Her gaze fell upon the scorched chair at the table and she realized she had no choice. Humpty Dumpty was a theoretical threat; George's life was in danger right this very moment.\n\n\"Sorry, universe,\" she murmured as she stepped forward and laid the book on the table in front of Mother Goose. \"Go ahead. Take it. One Librarian or another will outsmart you in the end; scarier bad guys than you have learned that the hard way.\"\n\n\"We'll see about that, dearie.\" Mother Goose snatched the book from the table and held it up victoriously. \"At last! I am complete again... and nothing is beyond the power of my rhymes!\"\n\nCole looked at Cassandra. \"Let me guess. Our goose is cooked?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" she said. \"Sorry.\"\n\nBaird would try to disarm Mother Goose somehow, Cassandra assumed, but hand-to-candlestick combat was not exactly her forte. She was trying to calculate some kind of workable solution to the problem when things got... stranger.\n\n\"Enough dillydallying,\" Mother Goose said, her voice sounding much more hoarse all of a sudden. She hurled the candelabra away from her. \"Time to fly away home!\"\n\nFeathers sprouted from Mother Goose's clothes and face as the crone underwent an abrupt metamorphosis. Her craggy face elongated, forming a large beak, which plucked the book from her fingers a heartbeat before they transformed into the wing tips of an enormous goose, albeit one wearing a hat and shawl. Gripping the stolen book tightly in her beak, while a pair of scaly orange feet took hold of the fallen cane, Mother Goosier turned around and took off through the suicide door into the open air. Immense white wings carried her aloft, taking volume three of the spell book with her. A loud honk taunted Cassandra as the goose flew beyond their grasp.\n\nCole blinked and rubbed his eyes. \"Did I really just see that?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\" Cassandra was a little less floored by the transformation, having witnessed equally miraculous things in the past. She ran forward to stamp out the fallen candles. \"It could be that her spells are getting more and more powerful, especially now that she has all three parts of her book.\"\n\nJust like Prospero grew stronger, she thought, as he reacquired his lost objects of power.\n\nAlthough she managed to extinguish the burning candles, the fire in the doorway was still blazing\u2014and spreading. The flames ignited the thick black drapes on the walls, threatening to turn the chamber into an inferno. The Hell Room was rapidly living up to its name, which meant that she and Cole had to make a hasty exist if they didn't want to go the way of the late Mr. Wilshire.\n\nCole contemplated the wall of flames between them and the stairs. The heat from the blaze drenched his face in perspiration. He took a hesitant step toward the doorway.\n\n\"Maybe if we make a dash for it...?\"\n\nCassandra doubted they could make it through the fire unscathed. She dragged him toward the other door instead, the one that led to nowhere... yet.\n\n\"I may have a better option,\" she said, working her phone, \"if somebody picks up in time.\"\n\nFortunately, she had the Annex on speed-dial. Even still, she anxiously watched the spreading flames while listening impatiently to the ringing at the other end of the line.\n\nCome on, come on, she thought. We haven't got all night here....\n\nSmoke and flames filled the Hell Room, making her grateful for the fresh air blowing in through the suicide door. Any chance of making it through the other doorway had gone up in flames by now, so they had run out of escape routes\u2014unless somebody picked up the damn phone already!\n\nRing after ring chipped away at her odds of surviving. Then, just as she was starting to fear that she would be shunted to voice mail, Baird's voice picked up at the other end of the line.\n\n\"Cassandra? What's up?\"\n\n\"No time to explain!\" Cassandra said, coughing through the smoke. \"I need you and Jenkins to open the Magic Door now.\" She took a moment to visualize a globe, then zeroed in on their exact location in terms of longitude and latitude. \"I'm sending you the coordinates... and a photo of the door, too.\" She snapped the pic and sent it along with specs. The smoke invaded her throat, making it hard to speak. \"Hurry, Eve! \u2014cough\u2014We haven't got a lot of time....\"\n\n\"We?\" Baird asked. \"What's happening? You sound terrible....\"\n\n\"The Door! Please!\"\n\nShe lowered the phone and stared expectantly at the open doorway, which still offered nothing but a straight drop to oblivion. Cole was right beside her, backed up to the brink of the drop-off by the encroaching flames. The wind coming through the doorway slowed the flames, even as it fed them as well.\n\nWhen the wind blows, she thought.\n\n\"What's going on?\" Cole asked urgently. \"What Magic Door were you talking about?\"\n\nShe doubted that a stiff breeze could save Cole this time. \"Wait and see. Any minute now....\"\n\nCaught between the fire and the fall, she prayed that Baird could get the Magic Door open in time\u2014and in the right place. The Magic Door had gotten more reliable over the years, as she and Jenkins had fine-tuned its targeting mechanism, but it was still only approximately accurate sometimes, and the Wilshire Puzzle House had a lot of doorways to latch on to, sensible and otherwise. She really hoped it found the right door this time, before she and Cole not-so-spontaneously combusted.\n\n\"Do we jump?\" he asked, peering over the edge. \"Don't tell me we're jumping.\"\n\n\"Wait for my signal... and believe in magic.\"\n\nThe six-legged table had become a bonfire. The grandfather clock was being burned at the stake. The fire was practically licking the trapped pair's heels when, just in time, a blinding flash of white light illuminated the doorway. Eldritch energy crackled almost as loudly as the flames consuming the chamber.\n\nThank you, Eve. Cassandra took hold of Cole's hand. \"Now! Jump!\"\n\nHe balked at the brink. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"You just saw a woman turn into a goose!\"\n\n\"Good point.\"\n\nEscaping the hungry flames, they leaped through the doorway...."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "...and landed in the Annex.\n\nCassandra gulped in the slightly musty air of the Library, which tasted wonderful after the suffocating inferno of the Hell Room. Soot and a distinctly smoky aroma still clung to her hair and clothing, which were only slightly singed. Cole gasped beside her, no doubt surprised and relieved to find himself alive and well, as opposed to splattered on the ground outside the crooked house. He let go of her hand.\n\n\"Hot damn!\" he exclaimed. \"That's some primo magic!\"\n\nBaird and Jenkins and the rest of the team were already present, along with two strangers whom Cassandra assumed were the Daughters Goose. Everyone was staring at her and Cole as they made their dramatic entrance, reeking of smoke. A chick in a birdcage, which now occupied the office for some reason, cheeped in excitement.\n\n\"Cassandra?\" Baird said anxiously. \"Is everything all right? You sounded like you were in trouble.\"\n\n\"Were,\" Cassandra stressed. \"Not anymore, thanks to you.\"\n\n\"But what was\u2014?\"\n\n\"Just a minute.\" Cassandra dialed Miami on her phone. \"Hello, 911. I'd like to report a fire at the old Wilshire estate.... Oh, you know about that already? The trucks are on their way? Glad to hear it. No, I don't want to leave my name or number.\"\n\nShe hung up and put away her phone. She had done her part; it was up to the Miami Fire Department now. She hoped they could save the Puzzle House, but given the mansion's history of hellfire and brimstone, she wouldn't be surprised if the house suffered the same fate as the late Ezra Wilshire\u2014that is, reduced to ashes. There would, perhaps, be something fitting about that.\n\n\"Sorry,\" she said to Baird and the others. \"Where were we again?\"\n\n\"Forget that.\" Cole gaped at his new surroundings. \"Where the hell are we anyway?\"\n\n\"Oops, where are my manners?\" Cassandra said, sympathizing with his confusion. Mere moments ago, he'd been in a burning clock tower on the other side of the continent. \"Welcome to the Library.\"\n\n\"Oh joy,\" Jenkins said, frowning. \"Another visitor. I was unaware that this was Bring a Goose to Work Day.\" He swept a disapproving gaze over Cole and the other two guests. \"If I'd known we were expecting this much company, I would've straightened up more. Perhaps ordered some light refreshments?\"\n\nHis sarcasm was not lost on Cassandra. \"Jenkins\u2014\"\n\n\"Might I remind you all,\" he said sharply, \"that the Library is not a safe house, let alone a shelter for wayward strays.\"\n\n\"Hey!\" Cole protested. \"Who are you calling a stray, Bow Tie?\"\n\n\"My thoughts exactly,\" said the older of the two women, whom Cassandra deduced to be Mary Simon, the children's librarian from Ohio. \"That's hardly what I call a hospitable attitude, Mr. Jenkins.\"\n\n\"You tell him, Mary,\" added the younger woman, whose English accent pegged her as Dr. Gillian Fell of Northumberland. \"I expected better from a man of your obvious breeding and culture.\"\n\n\"No offense intended, ladies, gentleman,\" Jenkins said. \"My issue is with certain reckless Librarians, not your good selves.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Jenkins,\" Cassandra said, \"but I didn't have any choice. This secret room was on fire and\u2014\"\n\nJenkins wrinkled his nose at the sooty odor emanating from her clothes. \"I appreciate the extremity of the situation, Miss Cillian, but the security of the Library is no small matter. This institution is not open to the public for a reason.\"\n\n\"I'll vouch for Gillian,\" Stone said, standing close enough to her to make Cassandra raise an eyebrow. Something about their body language made her wonder what exactly had gone on between them over in the UK. Certainly, it wouldn't be the first time Stone had his head turned by a pretty face.\n\nNone of my business, Cassandra thought, as long as she doesn't turn out to be a master assassin like Lamia....\n\n\"And Mary is all right by me,\" Ezekiel said, \"for a stubborn old lady, that is.\"\n\n\"I'll take that remark in the spirit in which I hope it was intended,\" Mary Simon said. \"But I've still got my eye on you, you young scamp.\"\n\n\"And you can trust George,\" Cassandra stated, realizing as she said it that she couldn't imagine Cole having any ulterior motives. He had been nothing but straight with her all the way through the crooked house. \"And I'm guessing that the others had good reasons for bringing their guests to the Library, just like I did.\"\n\n\"Be that as it may,\" Jenkins said, \"there is still the matter of security. It's all very well and good that you each trust your respective charges, but\u2014\"\n\nCassandra cringed inside, fearing that he might bring up that one time, back in the beginning, when she had betrayed the Library in a moment of weakness. A great deal of water had flowed under the bridge since then, and she liked to think that she had fully regained her teammate's trust, but Jenkins had a very long memory.\n\n\"\u2014this sets a dangerous precedent,\" he concluded, not mentioning her past treachery at all.\n\nCassandra felt a warm glow of relief. Maybe all was forgiven after all?\n\n\"Look, Jenkins.\" Stone placed a protective arm around Gillian's waist. \"I get that you're just trying to protect the Library, and that we've been double-crossed before, but Mother Goose has already targeted these people once already. We can't leave them unprotected while she's still out there....\"\n\n\"Plus, we might need their help,\" Cassandra argued. \"I couldn't have found that last part of the book without Cole... even if we weren't able to hang on to it.\"\n\n\"Ditto with me and Gillian,\" Stone said.\n\nVarious eyes turned toward Ezekiel, who shrugged.\n\n\"Well, I absolutely could've found it on my own,\" he insisted, \"because I'm just that awesome but, sure, Mary knows her stuff where all this Mother Goose business is concerned.\"\n\n\"Humility is a virtue, Ezekiel Jones,\" she chided him, \"but ours was a successful collaboration, at least up until the end.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" Jenkins conceded, surrendering to the inevitable with a world-weary sigh. \"You're the Librarians. Ultimately, it's your call.\" He wagged a finger at them nonetheless. \"But let's not make a habit of it, shall we?\"\n\n\"That won't be an issue,\" Baird pointed out, \"unless we can stop Mother Goose from putting Humpty Dumpty back together again... and unmaking the universe in the process.\"\n\nCole did a double take. \"Say what?\"\n\n\"I may have left that part out,\" Cassandra admitted. \"Let me try to explain....\"\n\n\"Make no mistake,\" Jenkins said, addressing all present. \"The situation is dire.\"\n\nHe stood facing the Librarians, their Guardian, and the three Goose heirs, who were seated at the conference table. Jenkins was still not entirely happy about the visitors' presence in the Annex, let alone including them in the briefing, but he conceded that they had a stake in the proceedings as well. There was, he reflected, something of precedent in that regard. Past Librarians had worked with Mother Goose and her heirs to resolve previous crises, including the delicate negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of 1918, which had held for nearly a century... until the current unpleasantness put the entire cosmos in jeopardy.\n\n\"Despite our efforts, best or otherwise, the individual purporting to be Mother Goose is in possession of the entire spell book now, granting her the means to reassemble Humpty Dumpty, aka the World Egg, and give birth to a new Creation.\"\n\n\"Yeah, about that,\" Ezekiel interrupted. \"Are we sure we're not overreacting here? I mean, Humpty Dumpty is going to reverse the Big Bang? Even by Library standards, that seems like a stretch.\"\n\n\"Would that it were so, Mr. Jones. Alas, I have been monitoring the situation while you and your confederates were gallivanting about the globe, making new friends, and I can assure you that the evidence increasingly bears out my initial suspicions.\"\n\nTo be more precise, he had been conducting certain investigations since the disturbances at the Library had been dealt with, but Jenkins saw no need to muddle matters by mentioning his earlier difficulties with the amuck goose, the Lion, the Unicorn, and the Dead Man's Chest. Those were not germane to the present crisis, or so he rationalized. Nor was the question of why there was now a caged gosling chirping in the background.\n\n\"What sort of evidence?\" Baird asked.\n\n\"Omens and portents of impending doom, as we were wont to call them back in my salad days.\" He had set up a vintage slide projector on the table to better illustrate his discoveries. \"Lights, please?\"\n\nBaird obligingly lowered the lights even as Ezekiel scoffed at the antiquated device. \"A slide show, mate? You do know we have PowerPoint presentations now?\"\n\n\"I was present at the invention of the printing press, Mr. Jones, so I have some appreciation for the impact of new technologies, but this is no ordinary slide projector. You've heard of magic lanterns? Well, this particular projector more than lives up to that quaint description.\"\n\nHe pressed the clicker on a handheld remote and a holographic projection of the night sky manifested above them, not unlike a celestial light show at a planetarium. Constellations burned bright in the heavens.\n\nToo bright, in fact.\n\n\"This was the sky only a few hours ago,\" he stated. \"Here's what the same sky looks like at this very minute.\"\n\nAnother click brought forth an even brighter sky, in which the stars were noticeably larger and more luminous than before. The difference was enough to provoke gasps from the Librarians and their associates.\n\n\"Damn!\" George exclaimed. \"Twinkle, twinkle, little stars!\"\n\nMary rubbed her eyes and looked again. \"I take it that's no optical illusion or photographic hocus-pocus?\"\n\n\"Hold on.\" Gillian stared at Jenkins. \"I'm still back on the printing press thing. Did he just say that he was there when it was\u2014\"\n\nJenkins moved on with his briefing.\n\n\"As you can see,\" he elaborated, \"the very stars are appearing larger and closer as the universe begins to contract.\"\n\nCassandra raised her hand like a well-mannered schoolgirl.\n\n\"Yes, Miss Cillian?\"\n\n\"That doesn't make any sense,\" she protested. \"It takes millions of years for the light from distant stars to reach us. There's no way we could discern any noticeable changes in their position or luminosity right away.\"\n\n\"And you just crossed from Miami to Portland in a single step,\" he reminded her. \"Your point?\"\n\nCassandra shrunk back into her seat. \"I withdraw the question.\"\n\n\"Nor is this troubling stellar phenomenon the only warning to present itself tonight,\" Jenkins said, picking up where he'd left off. \"I call your attention to the following YouTube video, posted only twenty minutes ago from Racine, Wisconsin.\"\n\nA click replaced the planetarium show with a floating screen roughly the size of a deluxe seventy-inch television set. Captured on the screen was a view of a radiant full moon, which was also disturbingly large and bright for this time of year. Jenkins was briefly reminded of the ominous Skull Moon of 1548 before clearing his mind of those dismal recollections. That tragic victory had no bearing on the present crisis, save as an unwelcome reminder that happy endings were not always in the cards. He prayed no such sacrifice would be required this time.\n\n\"What are we looking at here?\" Stone asked. \"Is it just that the moon is also shining more brightly than usual?\"\n\n\"Wait for it,\" Jenkins advised.\n\nAn object abruptly entered the frame, appearing to arc over the lambent moon. Jenkins froze the image and used the special properties of the projector to zoom in on the UFO, which turned out to have big brown eyes, a patchy brown-and-white hide, cloven hooves, and udders.\n\n\"Whoa!\" Baird blurted. \"Is that actually\u2014?\"\n\n\"A cow jumping over the moon?\" Jenkins said. \"Why, yes, that's precisely what it is, Colonel.\"\n\n\"Oh, man,\" Stone said. \"Just when I think this deal can't get any freakier.\"\n\n\"Keep watching,\" Jenkins said, operating the remote.\n\nThe video resumed, pulling back to its original parameters, as the gravity-defying bovine arced over the moon and out of the frame. A plaintive moo lingered behind on the video's audio track, accompanied by the startled gasps and interjections of whoever was recording the images. Off-screen hilarity joined the hubbub and the camera panned to the right to reveal a small French bulldog gazing up at the sky and laughing uproariously\u2014just like a human being.\n\n\"Oh for Pete's sake!\" Stone exclaimed. \"You've got to be kidding me!\"\n\nJenkins bestowed his most funereal expression on the (much) younger man. \"Do I look as though I am kidding, Mr. Stone?\"\n\n\"'And the little dog laughed to see such sport,'\" Cassandra recited.\n\n\"Exactly, Miss Cillian.\" Jenkins clicked the video away. \"There has also been a marked uptick in reports of dishes and spoons going missing, often in tandem.\"\n\n\"Runaway cutlery,\" Ezekiel said incredulously. \"Okay, that's new.\"\n\nBaird flipped the lights back on. \"So, is that it? Are we too late?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not, Colonel. I believe these are but portents, heralding the restoration of Humpty Dumpty, but not ensuring it. A magic of this magnitude needs must occur at the appointed time and place, when all the essential elements are in conjunction.\"\n\n\"And when is the proper time?\" Baird asked. \"Just how much time do we have left to stop this?\"\n\nAs ever, Jenkins admired her ability to stay on point and focused on the mission at hand. The Library had chosen wisely in recruiting her as a Guardian.\n\n\"The dawn of a new Creation needs to take place at sunrise.\" He consulted his pocket watch. \"Which is at approximately 6 A. M. this time of year.\"\n\nCassandra gazed upward at empty air. \"6:08, to be precise.\"\n\n\"And the place?\" Stone asked. \"I mean, it's always sunrise somewhere on the planet, but you said this spell has to be performed at a specific locale as well?\"\n\n\"That is correct, Mr. Stone.\" Jenkins glanced at Baird. \"Would you care to hazard a guess, Colonel?\"\n\n\"No guessing required,\" she said. \"We're going back to Mother Goose's Gardens. That's where Humpty Dumpty is waiting to be put back together, symbolically, magically, whatever.\"\n\n\"Same difference.\" Jenkins consulted his pocket watch. \"And the sun rises on the East Coast in less than an hour.\"\n\nHe looked at Cassandra, who did not disappoint.\n\n\"Thirty-two minutes, fourteen seconds,\" she clarified. \"Just so you know.\"\n\n\"In other words, the countdown is on.\" Baird struck a resolute tone. \"The time difference would have to be against us, damn it.\"\n\nStone put on his game face. \"Then let's get this over with.\"\n\n\"One more thing,\" Ezekiel said before Jenkins could declare the briefing adjourned. \"Do we have any idea yet who 'Mother Goose' really is?\"\n\nJenkins wished he had an answer to that query.\n\n\"That, Mr. Jones, remains to be determined.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "New Jersey",
                "text": "Unnaturally bright moonlight flooded Mother Goose's Magic Garden as Baird and the Librarians stepped through the front door of the giant shoe into the derelict theme park. It was light enough that there was no need for a flashlight app. She glanced anxiously to the east, relieved to see that they had indeed beaten the sunrise by a brief margin at least. Streaks of red, visible through the denuded trees, were already climbing above the horizon, but the sun had yet to poke its blazing head up.\n\nGood, Baird thought. That meant they still had time to stop Mother Goose, spell book or no spell book. How exactly they were going to do that, however, was still a work in progress. Rushing in without a plan is Flynn's approach, not mine.\n\n\"Wow.\" Cassandra took in the desolate remains of the park. Deteriorating displays and mannequins greeted her. Dead leaves blew past her ankles. \"I can't decide if this is creepy or sad or both.\"\n\n\"I'm voting for creepy,\" Stone said. \"Hard to imagine that people used to bring their kids here for fun.\"\n\nEzekiel made a face. \"What a dump. Just for once, can't we avert an apocalypse on the Riviera or in Monte Carlo?\"\n\n\"Maybe next doomsday,\" Baird said, \"but no promises.\"\n\nIt occurred to her that none of the Librarians had visited the park yet, aside from Flynn at some point in the recent past. At her insistence, they had left the three Goose heirs back at the Annex under Jenkins's watchful eye. Gillian, Mary, and George had protested strenuously at being excluded from the mission, but Baird had overruled them; she trusted the Librarians when it came to their visitors being legit, but there was too much at stake to risk including three unpredictable civilians in the operation. There were enough question marks hanging over her head without adding any more variables to the equation.\n\nBesides, she had reasoned, they're only a Magic Door away if we need them.\n\nDawn was getting closer by the minute, which meant there was no time for sightseeing. She took out the same handheld magic detector she had used before and pointed it in the general direction of Humpty Dumpy. To her alarm, the needle swung all the way to the right, to the far end of the red zone, while the scanner's probes spun like egg beaters on meth. Smoke rose from overheated circuits. Sparks flared as the detector blew a fuse. Baird tossed it away to avoid getting a nasty electrical shock. The device landed in the weeds, where it sputtered briefly before dying.\n\n\"Okay, that's not a good sign,\" she said, \"although it looks like we're definitely in the right place.\"\n\nNot that she had ever really doubted it. According to Jenkins, the Humpty Dumpty ritual required an appropriately symbolic site, imbued with just the right energies, and Mother Goose's Magic Garden fit the bill perfectly. Decades of visitors, all enjoying the park and reciting the rhymes, had charged the grounds with a critical mass of Mother Gooseness, conveniently atop the juncture of some freshly reactivated ley lines. And with wild magic seizing every opportunity to manifest these days, the once-harmless park had become a genuine place of power.\n\n\"This way,\" she said, retracing her path from before. \"And be ready for anything: blackbirds, a giant spider, flame-spewing candles, a hungry pirate chest, whatever.\"\n\nCassandra didn't miss that last bit. \"A hungry pirate chest?\"\n\n\"Tell you later,\" Baird promised. \"The point is, we have no idea what tricks Mother Goose may have up her sleeves, so keep frosty, okay?\"\n\n\"Don't need to tell me,\" Stone said. \"We've all seen what that witch can do.\"\n\nEzekiel flashed a cocky grin. \"She just caught me off guard last time. I'm ready for her now.\"\n\n\"Let's hope so,\" Baird said, \"for all our sakes.\"\n\nThe night was not getting any younger, so they started out across the park. Dilapidated cottages and moldy mannequins marked the overgrown path, contributing to the eerie atmosphere of the ruins. An unsettling feeling came over Baird, raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck.\n\nWe're being watched. I know it.\n\nRather than discount the feeling, Baird trusted her instincts, which had kept her alive through some very hairy situations in hot spots all over the globe. Her gaze swept from side to side, scanning for hostiles, but all she saw were the rotting mannequins posing still and silent alongside the path.\n\nOr maybe not so still?\n\nShe detected a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning quickly in that direction, she saw that all Three Men in a Tub were now looking directly at her, which she could have sworn they weren't doing a moment ago. Their leering expressions also struck her as possibly more malevolent than she remembered. Surely they hadn't always looked so sinister, back when this was a kids' theme park? She doubted that they were supposed to be nightmare material.\n\n\"Um, gang.\" She nodded at the mannequins, which were sharing a mildewed claw-foot tub that now resided in a thick patch of brambles. \"Don't look now, but I think we've been made.\"\n\nAll heads turned toward the mannequins, who turned their own heads to look back at them. Watching the moldy fiberglass figures come alive was one of the creepier things Baird had seen in a while, and that was saying a lot. She had, after all, recently dealt with an outbreak of vampire yogurt.\n\n\"Yeah,\" she muttered. \"Should've seen this coming.\"\n\nOne by one, the Three Men clambered out of the tub and marched toward Baird and the Librarians, clearly looking for trouble. The Butcher, sporting a bloody smock, brandished a gleaming meat cleaver. The Baker, who wore a high chef's hat and flour-white apron, gripped a raised rolling pin. The Candlestick Maker, who, surreally, had a wax candle sprouting from his cap (so visitors could more easily identify him?), was armed with a heavy brass candlestick. All three figures displayed obvious signs of deterioration: scratches, dents, faded and chipped paint, greenish-white splotches of mold that no empty tub could wash away. Dirt and decay gave them a vaguely leprous quality that made Baird's skin crawl. She didn't want to touch them\u2014or let them touch her.\n\n\"Another candlestick?\" Cassandra said. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Just be thankful there aren't any nursery rhymes about chainsaws,\" Stone said, \"or Uzis.\"\n\n\"You know, I never really got this one,\" Ezekiel said. \"Why three men in a tub? Was there a water shortage or something? And why are they fully dressed?\"\n\n\"Originally, the rhyme was about three women sharing a bath,\" Stone informed them, \"but it got cleaned up for the storybooks.\"\n\n\"Too bad,\" Ezekiel said. \"That would have made this a lot more entertaining.\"\n\nMen, Baird thought, rolling her eyes. \"Enough with the chatter. Looks like we're going to have to fight our way to Humpty.\"\n\n\"Fine with me.\" Stone clenched his fists. \"Bring it on.\"\n\nCassandra cringed. \"Not so much for the fighting, actually.\"\n\n\"I can fight,\" Ezekiel maintained, \"but it's a sorry waste of my talents.\"\n\n\"Don't think we've got any choice.\" Baird drew her sidearm. \"But at least we outnumber them.\"\n\nStone stiffened and glanced around. \"Umm, I wouldn't be so sure of that.\"\n\nBushes rustled all around them. Twigs snapped and fallen leaves crackled as more mannequins emerged from the murky woods and gardens. Jack Sprat and his much heftier wife stomped toward the intruders armed with table forks and knives. Little Jack Horner and Little Boy Blue had teamed up to take on the Librarians and their Guardian. Even Little Miss Muffet had abandoned her tuffet... whatever the hell a tuffet was.\n\n\"Ouch!\" Ezekiel yelped as Jack Horner hit him with a fake plum pie that was as hard as a rock. The missile struck Ezekiel in the shoulder. \"That hurt, you dummy!\"\n\nThe mannequins closed in on them.\n\n\"Any tactical advice?\" Stone asked Baird.\n\n\"Retreat is not an option,\" she said grimly. \"Hit 'em hard and try not to get killed.\"\n\nPast experience had taught Baird that bullets were seldom of use against magical menaces, but she figured it was worth a try. A warning shot blasted the candle off the top of the Candlestick Maker's cap, but did nothing to discourage the Three Men, who kept on coming.\n\n\"Back off,\" she said. \"This is your final warning.\"\n\nThe silent mannequins ignored her command, leaving her no choice but to fire again. The sharp report of the second gunshot disturbed the stillness of the morning as she blew a hole in the Candlestick Maker's fiberglass face, but the animated mannequin barely missed a step, keeping pace with his tub-mates, none of whom had anything resembling vital organs to aim at. The head shot hadn't even slowed them down. They appeared impervious to fear or pain.\n\nSo what else is new? Baird thought. God, I miss terrorists sometimes.\n\nA third shot dislodged the candlestick from its Maker's grip, but by then the Three Men were upon her, forcing Baird into close-quarter, hand-to-hand combat. The trick to taking on multiple opponents, she knew, was to keep moving and stay on the offensive; unfortunately, chokes, strikes, pressure points, and other conventional attacks were likely no good where walking mannequins were concerned, so she had to rely on speed and leverage and takedowns instead. Ducking beneath the Butcher's swinging cleaver, she swept the Baker's leg out from under him and tossed him into the unarmed Candlestick Maker, sending them both tumbling to the ground. They landed hard, in a tangle of sculpted limbs.\n\nTwo down, she thought, for the moment.\n\nThat left just the Butcher to deal with. Moving in too close for him to use his weapon, she executed a flawless shoulder throw that hurled the Butcher to the ground as well. He landed on his back, hitting the path with a thud, but almost immediately sat up again\u2014like a hockey-masked madman in a slasher movie.\n\nGreat, Baird thought. Now what?\n\nNone of her martial arts moves were going to slow down the Three Men for long. She liked to think that the mannequins lacked her training and experience in hand-to-hand combat, but there were three of them and they were armed, so she looked about for something to even the odds, even as all three climbed back onto their feet and came at her from different directions. A length of rusty rebar, jutting from a nearby heap of debris, caught her eye and she somersaulted past her foes to wrest it from the trash. The thirty-inch metal rod felt good in her hand; it wasn't a weapons-grade steel baton, but it would do.\n\nI can do some serious damage with this.\n\nRod in hand, she hurled herself back into the fray, employing the improvised weapon for both defense and offense simultaneously. The rebar deflected the Butcher's cleaver, even as she dodged the Baker's rolling pin and shattered the Candlestick Maker's right knee on the back swing. The crippled figure toppled over onto one side and couldn't get back up again. Bits of pulverized leg littered the path.\n\nOkay, Baird thought. Now we're talking.\n\nShe saw how this had to go.\n\n\"You can't kill them or knock them out!\" she shouted to the others. \"You have to smash them to pieces!\"\n\nShe whacked away at her remaining opponents, swinging the rebar like a sledgehammer. The Butcher's cleaver went flying, along with his hand, as she brought the steel rod down on his wrist with all her strength, breaking it off from his arm. Undaunted, he kept coming at her, as did the Baker. This was going to be a workout.\n\nDisarm and demolish, Baird thought. That's the ticket.\n\nBut how long was that going to take? The end of the world was dawning and they had better things to do than take some magic crash dummies apart!\n\nJack Sprat and his wife were the original odd couple. He was a tall, rangy string bean clad in vaguely \"old-timey\" garb while she was short and squat in the extreme. Neither appeared particularly interested in eating fat or lean at the moment, only in stopping Stone and company from getting to Humpty Dumpy in time to save the universe.\n\nNothing doing, Stone thought. He hadn't hopped back and forth across the world and nearly gotten eaten by an \"itsy-bitsy\" spider just to get stalled at the last minute by a couple of nursery rhyme characters with strict dietary restrictions. Hell, I took out the Big Bad Wolf once.\n\nSprat rushed ahead of his lumbering spouse, trying to jab Stone with his pointy cutlery. Stone ducked and weaved, dodging the skinny mannequin's thrusts. Stone's fighting moves weren't as slick as Baird's, but they usually got the job done. He'd won his fair share of bar brawls even before he'd signed on with the Library, even if this fight was more annoyingly ridiculous than most. This wasn't even the first time somebody had come at him with a fork. He still had a scar where that jealous waitress in Tulsa had poked him a few years back.\n\nBut then, I probably had that one coming.\n\nSprat lunged at Stone, but Stone was ready for him. He blocked Sprat's knife arm with his own forearm and seized the fork hand by the wrist, then butted Sprat with his head just like he would with a flesh-and-blood opponent.\n\nBut Sprat wasn't flesh and blood. Stone grunted in pain as he slammed his head into the solid fiberglass head. The impact was enough to stagger Stone for a moment. His head swayed limply atop his neck. An ugly bruise began to blossom on his forehead.\n\nOkay, bad idea, Stone thought. Let's not do that again.\n\nStill grappling with Sprat, he lost track of Mrs. Sprat\u2014until a fork jabbed him in the back. Stone yelped and kicked backward with one leg to fend her off. He hoped to knock her over, but her center of gravity was too large and too low; all he could do was force her back a few steps and keep her from jamming the fork in any deeper. She swung at his leg with her knife, but her chubby arms were too short to reach him. Stone thanked whatever unknown sculptor had molded those arms years ago.\n\nOn second thought, maybe I underestimated these two. I'll take the Big Bad Wolf any day.\n\nTrapped between the Sprats was no place to be; he threw his full weight against Jack Sprat, knocking the less-centered mannequin onto his back. Eerily, Spratt issued no sound\u2014no grunts or groans\u2014as he fell, but stayed utterly silent as he struggled to employ his weapons. Letting go of Sprat's arms, Stone sprang away from the fallen figure while dashing out from under Mrs. Sprat's slashing blade as well.\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Stone said. \"Keep your silverware to yourself.\"\n\nJack Sprat's fingers grabbed his ankle, impeding his escape. Swearing, Stone had to sacrifice his left cowboy boot to break from the mannequin's grasp, yanking his foot free of the boot and hobbling awkwardly away from his foes with one boot on and one boot off, which certainly sounded like something from a nursery rhyme even though it took him a moment to place it.\n\nDiddle, diddle, dumpling... oh, the hell with it.\n\nStaggering away from the Sprats, Stone stumbled into the tangled remains of an untended garden. Instead of silver bells and cockle shells, ragweed, thistles, and brambles had overrun the flower beds. He tripped over something in the dark and swore out loud as he hit the dirt. Glancing back, he saw that he'd run afoul of a long-forgotten garden hoe lying in the weeds. He mentally cursed whatever careless gardener had left it behind.\n\nAs relentless as a bad dream, the Sprats pursued him into the garden. Reaching back, he yanked the fork out of his aching trapezius, which stung like blazes. Scrambling to his feet, he looked from the fork to the oncoming mannequins and wondered how the hell he was supposed to stop them.\n\n\"You can't kill them or knock them out!\" Baird called out. \"You have to smash them to pieces!\"\n\nWith a fork?\n\nRisking a glance at Baird, Stone saw her whaling on the Three Men from the Tub with a sturdy piece of rebar she'd scrounged from somewhere. Fiberglass limbs shattered as easily as bone when hit by rebar as Baird went to town on the mannequins, smashing them to bits. A two-handed swing amputated the Baker's right arm, rolling pin and all. Chips and flakes went flying.\n\nNow there's a sight for sore eyes, he thought.\n\nHe didn't see any rebar in his immediate vicinity, but there was the hoe. Discarding the fork, he dived for the tool and grabbed on to its long aluminum handle just as the Family Sprat caught up with him. A pronged metal blade jutted transversely from the end of the pole. He gripped the hoe like a weapon as he faced off against his lean and not-so-lean opponents.\n\n\"Batter up,\" he muttered.\n\nLittle Miss Muffet skipped merrily toward Cassandra, all molded pigtails and pinafores. Cobwebs clung to the mannequin in a case of life imitating rhyme. It wasn't armed with anything besides a large wooden spoon, but it was still as spooky as could be, Cassandra thought, like a possessed doll or ventriloquist dummy in a horror movie she regretted watching when she tried to get to sleep afterward. Cassandra had no intention of letting the lifelike figure get its clutches on her, and not just because the prospect of being beaten up or worse by Little Miss Muffet of all characters was too embarrassing to contemplate....\n\n\"I don't suppose we can just talk this out,\" she suggested, \"maybe over some yummy curds and whey?\"\n\nMiss Muffet picked up a rock and threw it at her.\n\n\"Hey, watch it!\" Cassandra flinched as the rock whizzed past her ear. \"That's not very nice at all!\"\n\nLooking for a weapon of her own, she ran over to a rickety white picket fence near a picnic area. Braving splinters, she pried loose one of the surviving slats and charged at Miss Muffet, swinging the slat like a club.\n\nNo more nice Librarian, she thought. Tough it, Miss Muffet.\n\nThe slat connected with the mannequin\u2014and broke apart.\n\nThe fencing, that was, not Miss Muffet.\n\nCassandra's face fell. Right, she thought. I should've considered the relative density of rotting plywood versus molded fiberglass....\n\nUndeterred by the blow, Miss Muffet kicked Cassandra in the shin.\n\n\"Oww!\"\n\nA wooden spoon smacked Cassandra repeatedly. Greedy fingers grabbed on to the hem of her skirt. Cassandra threw herself backward, tearing from the mannequin's grip.\n\nNo fair, she thought. I liked that skirt.\n\nBaird may have said \"no retreat,\" but Miss Muffet had Cassandra on the run. Limping, Cassandra retreated to the picnic area, where Miss Muffet chased her around the weathered tables and benches. The bratty mannequin was fast and determined, so Cassandra had to sprint to keep a step or two ahead of it, which wasn't getting her or the other Librarians any closer to Humpty Dumpty, which was what really mattered. Miss Muffet was just a distraction, a delaying tactic on the part of Mother Goose. Cassandra wracked her brain for a way to solve this frustrating story problem.\n\nMaybe this is like fighting a Fictional, she thought, and you have to turn their own narrative against them? She ran through the rhyme in her head:\n\n\u2003Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,\n\n\u2003Eating her curds and whey,\n\n\u2003Along came a spider, who sat down beside her,\n\n\u2003And frightened Miss Muffet away.\n\nCassandra didn't have any spiders on hand, and wasn't inclined to go foraging for one, but maybe she didn't have to. Climbing up onto one of the picnic tables, she feigned horror (which was not too difficult under the circumstances) and pointed frantically past Miss Muffet.\n\n\"Eek!\" Cassandra screamed. \"A spider!\"\n\nThe bluff worked like magic. Just like that, Miss Muffet threw up her arms in fright and ran madly away, vanishing into the premorning gloom as fast her little legs could carry her. Cassandra grinned in satisfaction, feeling very much a Librarian.\n\nWho needs to clobber things when you can research an answer instead?\n\nSurveying the scene from atop the table, she saw that Baird and Stone had almost finished disposing of their own adversaries in their own inimitable styles. Broken pieces of mannequin twitched and vibrated harmlessly upon the ground. Hopping on one foot, Stone retrieved a boot from the rubble and pulled it back on. Baird maintained her grip on a lethal piece of rebar. Cassandra started to look for Ezekiel when Stone called out a warning.\n\n\"Heads up, folks! We're not done with these characters yet... and I do mean 'characters'!\"\n\nMore of Mother Goose's army arrived on the scene, including Wee Willie Winkie in his nightgown, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Old Mother Hubbard, the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the Three Wise Men of Gotham, Little Tommy Tucker, Mary and her Little Lambs, Tom the Piper's Son, clutching a stolen pig under his arm, and several more that Cassandra couldn't immediately identify. The Three Little Kittens, still missing their mittens, extended their claws as they guarded the path leading to Humpty Dumpty. Sharp teeth were bared beneath the Kittens' whiskers. Cassandra found herself wishing that Mother Goose hadn't been quite so prolific.\n\nA little case of rhymer's block would have made our job so much easier.\n\nBut where was Ezekiel? The last she'd seen, Jack Horner and Boy Blue had been converging on him. Fearing for his safety, and knowing that he would never willingly desert them, she raised her voice.\n\n\"Ezekiel? Answer me if you can!\"\n\nAn earsplitting air horn responded to her plea, followed by the unexpected sight of a hot-wired John Deere bulldozer crashing through trees and shrubbery with Ezekiel Jones at the wheel. Leaning on the horn to warn his compatriots, he steered the noisy tractor straight for Mother Goose's reinforcements while Stone and Baird dived out of the way. The 'dozer's heavy metal blade slammed into the mannequins, knocking them over like bowling pins, just as it had done with Jack Horner and Boy Blue earlier, bits of whom were still wedged into the tractor's reinforced steel treads. Yet more fiberglass crunched loudly as the army of figures were also ground to pieces beneath the 'dozer's tread. Ezekiel backed the vehicle over them again, just to play it safe, before shifting the engine into neutral. He leaned out of the cab to shout to the others, who were all gaping at him in surprise.\n\n\"What?\" he asked glibly. \"They were scheduled for demolition anyway.\"\n\n\"Jones?\" Stone asked in disbelief. \"What the hell are you doing in a bulldozer?\"\n\nHe sounded more cranky than grateful; Ezekiel figured Stone was just annoyed that he hadn't thought of it first.\n\n\"Please!\" the thief said, offended. \"I boosted my first construction vehicle before I even got my learner's permit. They're great for carrying off ATMs and soda machines.\"\n\nHe was about to invite the others to climb aboard, or maybe follow behind him, when the tractor's engine started choking loudly. Oily black smoke erupted from the exhaust pipe and steam billowed up from the engine. He frantically worked the gear shift, trying to get the chug-chugging engine running properly again, but it faltered and died. Hissing steam taunted his efforts.\n\n\"Damn it, Jones!\" Stone complained. \"You overheated the engine.\"\n\n\"Did not!\" Ezekiel hit the gas and ignition, but the tractor remained stubbornly inert, like a lock that refused to open no matter how many times you entered the right combination. \"It must be... magical sabotage... or something. From all the bad mojo in the air, you know?\"\n\n\"Bad mojo?\" Stone threw down a garden hoe in exasperation. \"Do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth sometimes?\"\n\nEzekiel got down from the cab. \"Like you could have done any better?\"\n\n\"You bet I could. I've worked more construction sites than you've\u2014\"\n\nBaird whistled loudly to get their attention. \"That's enough, boys. Save the sibling rivalry until after we've saved the universe.\"\n\nTo the east, the sky was getting even brighter and ruddier.\n\nEzekiel knew a red-alert signal when he saw one. This was the part in a heist when the alarms went off and everything went pear-shaped.\n\n\"So what are we waiting for?\" he asked."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "They made good time crossing the grounds without running into any further obstacles along the way. Baird wanted to think that Mother Goose had run out of tricks, but she knew better than to count on that. Too many battles had been lost by underestimating the enemy, so Baird had held on to her rebar. She and the Librarians were almost to the Humpty Dumpty tableau when she signaled the others to stop. She lowered her voice to avoid being overheard\u2014by the mannequins or anyone else.\n\n\"Okay, here's the plan. If Mother Goose is already at ground zero, I'll try to hold her attention while you three circle around behind her and try to get those books away from her. Got it?\"\n\n\"I guess,\" Stone muttered. \"But I don't like the idea of you putting yourself in the line of fire.\"\n\n\"She hasn't attacked anybody directly yet,\" Baird said. \"Frontal assaults don't seem to be her style. I just need to keep her talking long enough for you folks to sneak up on her.\"\n\n\"Er, she did turn a candelabra into a flamethrower,\" Cassandra pointed out, \"and threaten me and Cole with it.\"\n\n\"True,\" Baird said, \"but from what you said, she didn't blast either of you when she had a chance, before or after she got the book. And in any event, I'm the Guardian. Drawing fire while you three pull a rabbit out of the hat is my job, basically, so let's get on with it... before it's too late to argue about it.\"\n\nThe Librarians scattered into the woods and gardens ahead while Baird hurried around the corner and down the path to where Humpty Dumpty still rested in pieces, if only for the moment. The mannequin's decapitated body sat atop the brick wall, while his bisected head rested at its base. A wide gap a few feet across separated the two halves of his face.\n\nSo far, so good, Baird thought. He's not back together again yet.\n\nThere were, of course, other Humpty figures to be found around the world; this particular effigy was not literally the original World Egg, but, according to Jenkins at least, it was a suitably symbolic representation of the same. The way he explained it, they were talking sympathetic magic here, as with, say, a voodoo doll or a cursed waxwork dummy. Baird wondered why Mother Goose had chosen this particular Humpty, but only for a moment, because of a matter of much more immediate concern.\n\nHumpty was not alone.\n\n\"You again, Guardian?\" Mother Goose greeted Baird. \"I thought I warned you to mind your own business and stay away from my Garden!\"\n\nThe crone stood atop the brick wall, next to the headless figure, looking just as she had the last time Baird had encountered her, despite having been last seen in the form of an actual goose. Human once more, Mother Goose held one of the purloined books in each hand, while a third volume hovered in the air before her, levitating. Angry winds whipped up abruptly, roiling the dry, fallen leaves. Tree branches shook and swayed. Thunder rumbled from a clear sky that was growing lighter by the moment. Dawn was almost upon them.\n\n\"Sorry, not happening.\" Baird advanced cautiously. \"Guess you don't know me as well as you think you do.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Eve Baird!\"\n\nWith a dramatic gesture, Mother Goose slammed the three slender books together with a bang. A blinding white flash made Baird blink and look away; when she looked back, the three books had merged into a single large volume floating open in the air. Pages magically flipped themselves until they reached the right spot in the text.\n\n\"Ah, there's the whole rhyme at last,\" Mother Goose said, cackling. Her exaggerated Boston accent grated on Baird's ears. She grinned at the rising dawn as she started in on the spell:\n\n\u2003Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,\n\n\u2003Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...\n\n\"Uh-uh,\" Baird interrupted, dropping the rebar and drawing her gun. Blue spots danced before her watery eyes as they recovered from the flash. \"That's far enough. Turn over the book, Mother Goose, if that's really your name.\"\n\nIt still felt wrong to pull a gun on Mother Goose, even knowing what Baird knew, but the sun was rising and they were running out of time. With any luck, the mere sight of the firearm would be enough to distract Mother Goose long enough for the lurking Librarians to make their move.\n\n\"A gun, truly?\" Mother Goose shook her head sadly. \"I'm disappointed in you, Eve. You're far too clever a girl to resort to such pedestrian means.\"\n\n\"Sorry to let you down,\" Baird said, \"but that doesn't change anything. Surrender the book or\u2014\"\n\nA loud honk came from above, startling her. Glancing up, she saw the giant gander swooping down at her while squawking up a storm. She started to adjust her aim and swing her sidearm toward the diving bird, but the gander was too fast. Its beak bit down on her wrist, causing her to cry out. She lost her grip on the gun, which went flying into the bushes. A flapping wing buffeted her, knocking her to the ground. She punched, trying to get it to release her wrist, but she couldn't get a good blow in. Feathers smacked her in the face.\n\nDamn, Baird thought. Where's a squirt-gun full of magic rejuvenating water when you need one?\n\n\"That's enough, my pet!\" the crone called out. \"No need to damage the poor dear. She's having a bad enough morning as it is!\"\n\nHeeding its mistress's command, the gander let go of Baird's wrist and flapped back up into the trees overlooking the scene. The disheveled Guardian scrambled to her feet and glanced around fruitlessly for her weapons, both of which were lost somewhere in the thick weeds and underbrush. Spitting a small white feather from her mouth, she mentally kicked herself for forgetting about the gander\u2014and for getting disarmed by a bird!\n\n\"You know,\" Baird said, glaring at Mother Goose, \"ordinarily I wouldn't want to get rough with a woman of your advanced years, but you're not getting the senior citizen treatment anymore.\" She clenched her fists, while keeping one eye on the sky in case the gander took another run at her. \"Get ready to cash in on your Medicare benefits.\"\n\n\"Stay back, Eve!\" the crone said menacingly. \"And that goes for the rest of you, too.\" She swept her gaze over the surrounding shrubbery. \"You might as well come out of hiding. This is my Garden and my eyes are everywhere. I have nothing to fear from anyone, least of all an impudent pack of apprentice Librarians!\"\n\n\"Apprentice?\" Ezekiel popped out from behind a nearby tree. \"Who are you calling an apprentice?\"\n\n\"Says the thief who doesn't even know how to use a card catalog,\" Mother Goose mocked him. She spun around atop the wall, pointing here and there. \"And the roughneck, and the waif...\"\n\n\"Waif?\" Cassandra emerged from hiding, her cover obviously blown. \"I haven't been a waif in years....\"\n\n\"You tell her, Cassie.\" Stone rose up from behind a bush across from her. He cracked his knuckles in anticipation of a brawl. \"We've taken on tougher customers than her. Let's cook this Goose.\"\n\nThey converged on her warily, but Mother Goose was quick on the rhyme:\n\n\u2003Ring a ring of roses,\n\n\u2003A pocket full of posies,\n\n\u2003Ashes, ashes,\n\n\u2003You all fall down!\n\nBaird's legs turned to rubber and she collapsed onto the ground, landing facedown a few yards away from Humpty Dumpty's shattered remains. Fallen leaves cushioned her landing, but the impact still knocked the wind out of her. Loud crashes, shouts, and curses signaled that her Librarians had hit the ground as well. She tried to spring back up to her feet, but her limbs failed to respond. It was all she could do to lift her head high enough to see what was happening. Ashes fell from the sky like snowflakes, weighing her down and tickling her nose.\n\n\"Stone?\" she called out. \"Cassandra? Ezekiel?\"\n\n\"I'm down!\" Stone shouted back. \"Trying to get back up again, but I haven't got the strength. Feels like that heavy-gravity trap back in that secret lab outside Peking....\"\n\n\"That was an artificial dark-matter event horizon,\" Cassandra corrected him from a few yards away. \"This feels more like the world's worst case of the flu. I feel too weak and heavy to move.\"\n\n\"Whatever,\" Ezekiel said impatiently, \"we've all face-planted... and we can't get up!\"\n\nBaird remembered hearing somewhere that the \"ring around the rosie\" rhyme actually had to do with the Black Death back in the Dark Ages. A chill ran down her spine.\n\n\"Crap!\" she blurted. \"She gave us the Plague!\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" Mother Goose said. \"My rhyme has nothing to do with the Plague; that's a spurious bit of poppycock no serious scholar believes.\" She turned back to the levitating spell book. \"Now then, if you don't mind, where was I?\" She peered over the top of her spectacles at the page before picking up the rhyme where she left off:\n\n\u2003All the king's horses and all the king's men,\n\n\u2003Couldn't put Humpty together again.\n\nThat should have been the end of the rhyme, but Mother Goose kept going, reciting secret verses Baird had never heard before:\n\n\u2003Humpty Dumpty, together once more,\n\n\u2003Humpty Dumpty, open the door,\n\n\u2003A new day is dawning, happy birthday to you,\n\n\u2003Out with the old world, in with the new!\n\nThe spell kicked in at once. Suddenly, there was something electric in the air, like before an approaching storm. A rosy glow enveloped the two halves of Humpty's head as they began to stir of their own accord, drawn toward each other as though by some magnetic force, while the headless figure on the wall came to life as well, reaching out expectantly for his missing head. Rocking upright, the right and left halves were reunited at last, colliding together to form a large ovoid head with the wide end on the bottom. The egg's painted features awoke. Humpty's wide grin broadened in a way that made Baird's skin crawl. A dish-sized eye winked at her as she looked on helplessly, pinned to the ground by a children's nursery rhyme of all things.\n\n\"Stop this!\" Baird shouted at Mother Goose. \"We know what you're planning and\u2014\"\n\n\"Plan?\" Mother Goose sounded offended. \"I don't plan, I act. I go by rhyme, not reason. I do as the spirit moves me. I am my own muse, the one true Mother Goose. No plans for me, only inspired flights of fancy!\"\n\nSounds like something Flynn would say, Baird thought, then froze upon the ground as the stray observation echoed in her head.\n\nLike something Flynn would say...\n\nHer heart skipped a beat. A wild, utterly crazy idea stampeded across her brain, knocking over all the furniture as it abruptly burst out into the open from wherever it might have been hiding in the back of her mind. She remembered the old vacation photo Jenkins had found in the Mother Goose folder back at the Library, and she suddenly knew in her heart who the little boy in the photo was and why he had looked oddly familiar. She gazed in shock at Mother Goose.\n\n\"Flynn?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "A few days ago",
                "text": "[ Oregon ]\n\nFlynn Carsen ran into the Annex as though the Curse of the Seven Hells was chasing him, which, in fact, it was. A jade dagger whizzed past his head, following him through the Magic Door as he dashed from the Even More Forbidden City, deep in the Jiangsu Province of mainland China, into a cluttered office on the opposite side of the globe. Mystic lightning crackled in the doorway as he left his pursuers and the Far East behind. The flying dagger thwacked into a polished wooden railing across from the entrance, lodging deeply in the wood. Flynn wondered if the esoteric weapon had any historic value in its own right or was just for killing intrepid Librarians venturing into forbidden tombs in search of hazardous magic.\n\nI'll have to consult Dragomiloff's Guide to Lethal Implements with regard to that dagger, he thought, when I have a free moment.\n\nSkidding to a halt, Flynn paused to catch his breath. A lean, slightly gawky fellow whose boyish visage and manner belied his forty-some years, he was dressed for desert grave-robbing in a pith helmet, jodhpurs, knee-high hiking boots, and a rumpled safari jacket that had seen plenty of action over the years. Said jacket was also slightly shredded at the moment, due to the vicious claws of the angry terra-cotta cat currently trapped in the plastic pet carrier Flynn was holding on to with one hand. Furious at its confinement, the ceramic feline hissed and snarled and scratched at the interior of the carrier, despite having been made of fired clay more than two thousand years ago. Its violent tantrum rocked the carrier, making it harder to hold on to.\n\nGood thing terra-cotta cats didn't weigh that much.\n\n\"Bad kitty!\" Flynn scolded. \"Just a few more minutes and you can take a nice long catnap again.\"\n\nHe placed the carrier down on the nearest available surface, which just happened to be the conference table. In his other hand, he clutched an ancient bamboo scroll, which he unrolled with a flick of his wrist. His late Han Dynasty Mandarin was a little rusty, but he could decipher the characters on the ancient scroll without too much difficulty. Clearing his throat, which was as dry as the forgotten tomb he had just escaped from, he recited an arcane incantation that had not been spoken aloud since the Great Wall was just a fence:\n\n[REDACTED PER LIBRARY PROTOCOL]\n\nA flash of azure light lit up the pet carrier from inside. The terra-cotta cat let out one last plaintive meow before going stiff and toppling over onto one side, no longer animated by primordial magic. The unmistakable odor of oolong tea lingered in the air.\n\n\"Whoa.\" Flynn wrested the knife from the door and gave it a quick flip. \"That was trickier than I expected. Who knew ceramic cats wouldn't come when called?\"\n\nHe brushed the dust of ages off his shoulders and hat before stowing the cat and carrier in a supply closet until he had the time and energy to schlep it all the way over to the Artificial Pets and Wildlife collection elsewhere in the Library. He tossed the displaced dagger into the closet as well. He tried not to think about just how closely the knife had whizzed by his head.\n\nOccupational hazard, he thought.\n\nIn retrospect, though, he probably should've recruited some backup for this mission. He was trying to be a better team player these days, out of respect for Eve and the new crop of Librarians, but sometimes he still liked to fly solo on a case just for old time's sake. And a routine, seemingly by-the-numbers tomb excursion had hardly seemed like a job for the whole team.\n\nSpeaking of whom...\n\n\"Hello?\" he called out. \"Anybody home?\"\n\nHe soon discovered that nobody was present to greet him, let alone congratulate him on yet another death-defying job well done, but then he realized that China was fifteen hours ahead of Portland, which meant it was\u2014he did the calculations in his head rather than cheating by looking at a clock\u2014roughly 3:45 in the morning, Pacific time.\n\nNo wonder the place is so deserted.\n\nHe glanced around at the empty office, which was literally quieter than the tomb he had just vacated. Given the lateness of the hour, it was no surprise that nobody else was on hand. Neither the Librarians nor their glamorous Guardian actually lived at the Annex, even though it often felt that way. Flynn assumed that even Jenkins had retired for the night, assuming the ageless caretaker actually required slumber the way mere mortals did.\n\nDoes Jenkins ever sleep? Flynn wondered. Never occurred to me to ask.\n\nFor himself, he was far too wired to turn in, not to mention fifteen hours out of sync with the local clocks, so he figured he might as well take advantage of the peace and quiet to get in a little \"me time\" while he had the Annex to himself. The more he thought about it, in fact, the more this seemed like an ideal opportunity to kick back, chill out, and maybe catch up with the news.\n\nYep, he thought, that's just the ticket.\n\nHe hung his (slightly battered) helmet on a hat rack, next to an industrial hard hat, a deerstalker cap, a red velvet fez, a Native American headdress, a scuba mask, a samurai helmet, a Venetian plague-doctor mask, a bishop's miter, a pair of night-vision goggles, and a stylish black silk top hat, suitable for formal occasions, that had also been known to generate a rabbit or two under certain extraordinary circumstances, before trading his shredded outerwear for a comfortable burgundy smoking jacket.\n\nThat's better, he thought. Less like a doomed archaeologist and more like a scholarly gentleman of leisure, settling in for a relaxing evening.\n\nSlightly ruining the effect was the portable magic detector still clipped to his belt. Flynn didn't like to rely on the gadget too often for fear of losing his edge, but it had come in handy when tracking the ceramic feline through the labyrinthine tunnels and secret passages of that particular cursed tomb. He unhooked the device and laid it down on the table where the cat carrier had briefly rested.\n\n\"And now,\" he loudly informed the Library, \"I am officially off duty.\"\n\nHe peeked apprehensively at the Clippings Book, just in case it had other plans, but apparently it was on the same page, as it were. Reasonably confident that he would not be disturbed, he wandered over to the Annex's well-stocked news stacks, where he picked up the evening edition of The New York Courier. The Library subscribed to pretty much every newspaper and periodical on the planet, including those serving the dragon, leprechaun, and cryptid communities, but Flynn was still a New Yorker at heart and had been reading The Courier since before most kids his age even knew how to read. It was still his hometown paper, even if he was based out of Portland these days.\n\nCould be worse, he reflected. Could have been Antarctica.\n\nPaper in hand, he strolled back to the desk he shared with Eve and sat down to peruse. Ezekiel often mocked Flynn for still reading \"dead tree\" newspapers in the digital area, but Flynn didn't care. He still enjoyed making his way through pages of folded newsprint, just as he still preferred bound paper books to their electronic equivalents. Sometimes it was just more relaxing to read the old-fashioned way.\n\nYou can take the bookworm out of the twentieth century, he thought, but you can't take the twentieth century out of the bookworm.\n\nAlso relaxing? Catching up on current events that had nothing to do with perilous quests and supernatural menaces. Flynn enjoyed his job and wouldn't have traded it for all the Jewels of Opar, but it was nice to take a break now and then, if only to remind himself that life still went on as usual for most of the world, even with all the wild magic running loose these days, reactivating dormant ley lines and long quiescent artifacts. With all due respect to the Clippings Book, he was looking forward to unwinding with some totally mundane news items.\n\nThe more ordinary, the better.\n\nHe skimmed past the front-page news and world affairs in search of more low-key stories. Turning to the local news, he stopped and stared as an unexpected headline caught his eye\u2014and brought a pang to his heart.\n\n\"No Happy Endings. 'Mother Goose' Theme Park Scheduled for Demolition.\"\n\n\"Oh, my,\" he murmured, shaking his head sadly. Bittersweet nostalgia drove him to retrieve an old photo album from the bottom drawer of his desk, where he kept various personal mementos, including twenty-two diplomas, a high school yearbook, and a blue ribbon he won in a spelling bee back in fifth grade. Most people would keep such souvenirs at home, he suspected, but, honestly, the Library had been his only real home for more than a decade now, so he kept his most precious possessions there, along with all the other relics.\n\nHe dusted off the album, feeling vaguely guilty that he hadn't looked at it for so long. Years had elapsed since his mother had passed away, but old memories reminded him how much he still missed her. He flipped through the album until he came to the photo he was looking for: himself as a small boy, grinning in front of a life-sized Humpty Dumpty figure atop a decorative brick wall.\n\nA wistful smile lifted the corner of Flynn's lips. He remembered that afternoon. Located just across the river from Queens, where he'd grown up, Mother Goose's Magic Garden had been a favorite summer excursion back in the day, both before and after his father died. Flynn sighed, recalling how simple life had seemed back then, before he'd grown up and discovered that myths and magic and fairy tales were real, and that Mother Goose was far more than just a storybook character.\n\nMother Goose...\n\nIt occurred to him that the Mother Goose Treaty, which Judson had once told him about, was coming up on its one hundredth anniversary. Flynn had never actually inspected the Treaty, which was the work of a much earlier Librarian, but was it possible that there was an expiration date on the Treaty, or perhaps some special clauses or riders that kicked in after a full century?\n\nCouldn't hurt to check it out, he thought. And I do need to file the Bamboo Sutra anyway....\n\nPutting away the photo album and newspaper, he exited the Annex and made the long trek across the Library to Subsection IX of the Archives, where were kept rare, often one-of-a-kind documents and records that were unlikely to be consulted on a regular basis, such as the Ultra Charta, The Arcturus Compact, The Transubstantiation Proclamation, the original deed to the Library of Alexandria, and, in theory, the celebrated Mother Goose Treaty of 1918.\n\nLook at me, he thought proudly, getting out ahead of a potential situation for once. Eve will be impressed.\n\nActually locating the Treaty proved harder than expected, however. He knew where it was supposed to be, but recent events had resulted in a certain degree of disarray at the Library. Random hallways and wings had rearranged themselves, doors and carpets had changed color without warning, cross-referenced materials had literally crossed over from one collection to another, certain artifacts had gone missing before being recovered. Flynn liked to think that everything was back where it belonged, kinda sorta, but the Library was a big place and sorting through the older Archives had not been a top priority.\n\nSo would the Treaty be under \"Goose, Mother\" or \"Mother Goose\"?\n\nFor the second time today, he found himself playing archaeologist, rooting through dusty old files and folios in search of the elusive Treaty. A lesser Librarian might have given up, but the challenge only invigorated Flynn, increasing his determination to track down the Treaty.\n\nThe game was afoot!\n\nIt wasn't easy, but at last he stumbled onto a neglected filing cabinet tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of the Archives. Riffling through the hanging files, he found a sealed folder filed under \"Pacts, Poultry.\"\n\nSeriously?\n\nA familiar rush of excitement greeted his discovery. Flynn lived for moments like this, when the buried secrets of the past were unearthed. The mouth of the folder had been sealed with wax, but he sliced through the seal with the tip of his pocket knife.\n\n\"Voil\u00e0!\"\n\nOccult energy flared and popped as he broke the seal, startling Flynn, who gasped in surprise as the liberated Treaty shot from the folder into the air, making a break for it. Dropping the folder, he grabbed for the Treaty without success.\n\nThe wild magic, he guessed. There was much more ambient magic in the atmosphere today than there had been when the Treaty had been hermetically sealed away almost a century ago. Breaking the seal had exposed the Treaty to the magic, triggering an immediate reaction, or at least that was the best explanation Flynn could come up with at the moment. Mother Goose's magic has woken up\u2014and it's trying to break free!\n\nThe flying parchment wafted erratically around the Archives like a paper airplane, blown about by an unnatural breeze. Kicking himself for not anticipating any magical complications, Flynn took a running leap and snagged the fugitive Treaty in midair, only to have an electric jolt run down his arm and along his entire nervous system. Landing flat-footed on the floor, he twitched and jerked as the captured Treaty furled itself tightly within his grip, transforming into a gnarled wooden cane. Flynn tried to let go of the cane-slash-treaty, but it was like holding on to a high-voltage electrical cable: his fingers refused to cooperate.\n\nOkay, he deduced, this isn't good.\n\nHe could feel the forbidden magic coursing through him, eagerly seeking expression after being curtailed for so long. He sensed the fractured spell book yearning to be made whole once more. Magic potent enough to reshape reality escaped the Treaty that had bound it for nearly a century. There was great work to be done, and somebody needed to do it....\n\nA blinding flash of light lit up the Archives, hiding what transpired from even the Library's view. When the glare faded, Flynn was no longer to be seen; in his place was a wizened crone clad in a bonnet, shawl, and skirts. She held up her cane in exultation. A gleeful cackle echoed off the walls.\n\n\"High diddle diddle!\" she exclaimed. \"I'm back... and fit as a fiddle!\"\n\nMother Goose basked in her newfound freedom. For too long had her magic and merriment been barred from the world by fainthearted legal quibbles and caveats. For too many generations had her spells and legacy been divided between unworthy pretenders to her title. No longer was she constrained by that picayune Treaty. Mother Goose was reborn, with power enough to restart all of Creation.\n\nOnce she had her book back and in one piece again, of course.\n\nThe time had come to regain what was rightfully hers, and she knew just where to begin. She held out an open hand. Magic flashed and a photo appeared in her hands: a picture of a young boy posing before Humpty Dumpty's wall. The crone contemplated the photo, oddly troubled by the sight of the child, before averting her eyes.\n\nThe boy doesn't matter, she thought. That's my Garden, not his.\n\nAn empty folder lay upon the floor where the Librarian had dropped it. Taking a moment to tidy up, Mother Goose placed the photo in the folder and filed it back where it belonged.\n\n\"A place for everything and everything in its place,\" she said, chuckling. \"And those baby Librarians will be none the wiser!\"\n\nEager to be on her way, she hurried through the sleeping Library to the Annex on her way back to the world. Flynn's magic detector beeped in alarm as she strode past it, much to her annoyance. Scowling, she turned toward the device, ready to banish it to the bottom of the deep blue sea, but paused and thought better of it. The clever contrivance might well prove of use where she was going, if only to trace the unseen currents of magic flowing through the world outside as she went about reclaiming her spells.\n\n\"Waste not, want not.\"\n\nShe tucked the scanner under her arm before heading out the Magic Door.\n\nHer Garden awaited... as did her destiny!"
            },
            {
                "title": "New Jersey",
                "text": "\"Flynn?\" Baird repeated. \"Is that you?\"\n\nThe very idea was insane, but the more she thought about it, the more it added up:\n\nMother Goose knew them all by name, and seemed to have a bit of an attitude regarding the new crop of Librarians... just like Flynn used to.\n\nMother Goose had pedantically corrected her regarding the Black Death... which was just what Flynn might have done.\n\nMother Goose's hammy Boston accent was about as subtle as Flynn's atrocious Elizabethan dialect had been that one time they'd traveled back in time and met Shakespeare.\n\nMother Goose was manic and reckless and out of control... just like Flynn had been when under the pernicious influence of the Apple of the Discord, which had amplified that aspect of his personality. And there was certainly a part of Flynn, the boundlessly curious, wildly foolhardy part, who just loved magic and marvels and arcane lore and secrets for their own sake, who never met a code he didn't want to crack or a forbidden tomb he didn't want to open, and who might not be able to resist putting Humpty Dumpty back together just to see what happened next.\n\nAnd somebody must have left that photo in the Library's files as a clue to Mother Goose's true identity....\n\nCould it be?\n\nShe peered into Mother Goose's eyes, looking for a glint, a trace, of a man she liked to think she knew better than most. And, yes, there it was: an unmistakable intelligence, along with a slightly lunatic spark of genius, that couldn't belong to anyone else.\n\n\"It is you, isn't it? Underneath all that... goosieness.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" the crone replied. \"I'm Mother Goose... as any fool can plainly see.\" She shook her cane at the grounded Guardian. \"Now be a good girl and let me get on with my work. I've no wish to hurt you, Eve.\"\n\n\"That's right!\" she said. \"You've never actually hurt anyone, even as Mother Goose. The 'attacks' on Gillian and Mary and George... those were frightening, but they left your 'victims' alive and well. If you'd really wanted to eliminate the competition, like you thought you were doing, you've been doing a pretty sucky job of it. And later, when you ambushed the other Librarians, you always left them a way out, knowing they'd be able to save themselves.\"\n\nNo wonder I could never bring myself to shoot her, Baird thought. Maybe deep down I always sensed who \"she\" really was.\n\n\"Hell, you even left us a clue to figure out who you really are, so we could free you from whatever spell you're under.\" Typical Flynn, she thought. \"You're still in there somewhere, Flynn, trying to stop this. You know you are!\"\n\n\"I know nothing of the sort,\" Mother Goose insisted, perhaps a bit defensively. She shook her cane at Baird. \"You've clearly taken leave of your senses, Eve Baird! You're mad, mad I say!\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Cassandra interrupted. Like the other Librarians, she remained pinned to the ground by a nursery rhyme. \"Am I following this right? Mother Goose is Flynn?\"\n\nBaird was certain of it. \"He's under a spell or possessed or something, like that time you turned into Prince Charming, or when Shakespeare was accidentally transformed into his own creation!\"\n\nIt had taken the combined efforts of three Librarians to turn the wizard Prospero back into William Shakespeare. She was surely going to need their help to restore Flynn to himself as well.\n\n\"We need to snap him out of this!\" she urged the others. \"All of us, together, before it's too late!\"\n\nShe glanced up at the sky. The sun was rising higher in the east, a rosy glow encroaching on the moon and stars, which were looking ever larger and closer than before. The universe was shrinking, just like Jenkins had predicted. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, she recalled. Isn't that a Mother Goose rhyme, too?\n\nBaird wasn't sure.\n\nWorse yet, Humpty Dumpty was coming together again. She watched in horror as the reformed egg bounced off the ground and back onto the headless mannequin's empty shoulders. Humpty's gloved hands reached up to fit his head back on. Mother Goose cackled and clapped her hands at the sight.\n\n\"That's it, that's a good egg! Pull yourself together!\"\n\nBaird's heart sank.\n\n\"I don't understand, Flynn!\" she said urgently. \"Why are you doing this? The whole universe is collapsing, everything you've fought so hard to protect all these years!\"\n\n\"Can't make a new Creation without breaking an egg.\" The crone cackled at her own joke. \"You see what I did there?\"\n\n\"But think of all that will be lost,\" Baird said. \"The books, the learning, the obscure facts and history, everything you've devoted your life to.\" She looked to the others for assistance. \"Back me up here, people!\"\n\n\"Art, architecture, form, function,\" Stone chimed in. \"The Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, Angkor Wat, Notre Dame, the Sistine Chapel, Impressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dali, Rockwell, Frazetta\u2014\"\n\n\"Algebra, trigonometry, calculus,\" Cassandra called out. \"Differential equations, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, quantum physics, superstrings, brane theory, mathemagics\u2014\"\n\n\"Still not a thing,\" Baird muttered under her breath.\n\n\"The Hope Diamond, Fort Knox, the Crown Jewels,\" Ezekiel added. \"Secret codes and passwords and puzzles and riddles, with shiny prizes just waiting to be found if you're quick and clever enough....\"\n\nVery good, Jones, Baird thought, impressed. You've got Flynn's number all right.\n\nTheir combined efforts seemed to hit a nerve. A look of uncertainty came over Mother Goose's face. The levitating spell book rocked in the air, its pages flipping randomly. Her cane drooped in her grip.\n\n\"No,\" the crone muttered, her fake accent slipping. \"You'll not dissuade me from my course. A new age dawns, the age of Mother Goose... the only true Mother Goose.\" Her conviction faltered. \"Or am I?\"\n\n\"It's working!\" Baird shouted. \"We're getting through to him. Keep it up!\"\n\n\"The Alhambra!\" Stone shouted. \"Hagia Sophia, Stonehenge, the cave paintings at Lascaux!\"\n\n\"Inverse hyperbolic functions!\" Cassandra yelled. \"The double helix, G\u00f6del's theorem, superconductivity!\"\n\n\"Treasure maps!\" Ezekiel said. \"Secret rooms, hidden vaults, booby traps, alarms!\"\n\n\"Hush!\" Mother Goose's cane slipped from her fingers. She clapped her hands over her ears. \"Still your tongues, you insolent brats, or I'll whip you all soundly and send you to bed!\"\n\nThe floating spell book crashed to the ground, as though her power was weakening. Confusion contorted Mother Goose's features. She reeled unsteadily atop the brick wall, clutching her head. A low moan escaped her lips.\n\n\"Listen to me, Flynn,\" Baird pleaded. \"Not just with your brain, but with your heart. Remember all the people and places most dear to you, everyone and everything that wants you back: the Library, Judson, Excalibur... and me.\"\n\nThe crone's face rippled and blurred, growing translucent enough that you could almost see another face behind it. A face Baird knew up close and personal. A familiar voice emerged from Mother Goose's mouth.\n\n\"Eve?\"\n\nHope flared in Baird's heart as she recognized Flynn's voice.\n\n\"That's right, Flynn. You can beat this. Come back to me, to all of us!\"\n\nThe faltering crone looked down at herself in disbelief, as though for the first time. She reached up and felt her own face, exploring its contours with both hands. Startled eyes\u2014Flynn's eyes\u2014bulged behind Mother Goose's wavering, insubstantial countenance.\n\n\"This is all wrong,\" she said. \"This isn't who I\u2014\"\n\nA blazing blue fireball consumed Mother Goose, flaring brighter than the rising sun. A shock wave radiated from the blast, sending Baird and the others tumbling across the ground, rolling over the weeds and underbrush. The impact knocked the wind out of Baird and left her ears ringing.\n\nDamn it, she thought. Why does the big magic always have to be so... pyrotechnic?\n\nBut had it worked?\n\nAlthough battered by the blast, she realized that her arms and legs were no longer weighed down by magic. Scrambling to her feet, despite various scratches and bruises, she looked anxiously at the wall to see:\n\nFlynn Carsen, not Mother Goose.\n\nThe witch was gone, replaced by the restored Librarian, who gazed down at himself with a dazed expression. A burgundy smoking jacket looked much better on him than Mother Goose's shawl and skirts. Unruly brown hair was adorably mussed. He shook his head to clear it of any lingering identity crises.\n\n\"Okay, that was... different.\"\n\nMother Goose's cane had transformed, as well, into a furled sheet of parchment that started to blow away in the breeze.\n\n\"Oh, no you don't!\" Flynn hopped off the wall and stepped on the parchment to keep it from getting away. \"You're not going anywhere except back into the Archives!\"\n\nThe missing Treaty, Baird guessed. So that's what happened to it.\n\nFlynn looked up at Baird, their eyes meeting across the short distance between them. \"Thank you,\" he said softly, even as the other Librarians rushed toward him, now up and about as well.\n\n\"Flynn!\" Cassandra squeed, hugging him. \"It is you! You're back!\"\n\nStone slapped him on the back. \"Good to see you again, man!\"\n\nTypically, Ezekiel played it cool. \"You owe me a drink, mate, for that business with the blackbirds....\"\n\n\"I'm so sorry, everyone!\" Flynn said, contrite. \"You know that wasn't really me, right? It was the spell and the rhymes and... whoa, did I really turn into an actual goose at one point?\"\n\nCassandra nodded. \"And flew off into the sky.\"\n\n\"And, boy, are my arms tired,\" Flynn said with a cheesy grin. \"Sorry, had to say that.\"\n\nBaird wanted to join in the reunion, but their mission wasn't completed yet.\n\n\"No time to celebrate, people. Looks like we're still on the clock.\"\n\nShe had hoped that breaking the spell over Flynn, and exorcising Mother Goose, would end the crisis, but Humpty Dumpty had not gone anywhere. Looking past Flynn and the others, Baird saw that Mother Goose's explosive transformation had failed to dislodge Humpty from his perch atop the wall. His great head rotated east to watch the sunrise. He grinned in anticipation.\n\nMother Goose's big spell is still playing out, Baird realized. If Humpty hatches, it's the Big Bang all over again.\n\nRacing forward, she rescued the fallen spell book from the ground and thrust it at Flynn.\n\n\"Welcome back,\" she said. \"Can you stop this?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" He cracked open the book, but peered down at the pages in confusion, as though he didn't even know where to begin looking for a counterspell. \"The spell has been cast, events have been set in motion, taking on a life of their own, and I'm not Mother Goose anymore. I don't think I can halt this.\"\n\nBaird started to despair until she saw a sudden inspiration light up his eyes. He smiled encouragingly.\n\n\"But I think I know who can!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "New Jersey",
                "text": "The rising sun hurt Flynn's eyes as the Magic Door deposited him, Baird, and the three Goose heirs back in the park, outside Peter the Pumpkin Eater's colossal pumpkin shell of a house. White light filled the doorway behind them, vanishing almost as quickly as it appeared.\n\nBaird looked about, orienting herself. \"The pumpkin, not the shoe?\"\n\n\"This way is faster,\" he replied. Mother Goose's spell book was tucked under his arm. \"Trust me.\"\n\nMary, Gillian, and George, less accustomed to instantaneous cross-continental travel, needed a moment to adjust to their new surroundings. Both wonder and trepidation played across their features.\n\n\"Another pumpkin,\" Gillian said with a shudder. \"Lovely.\"\n\n\"But just a fake,\" George pointed out, \"and more rundown than my first car.\"\n\n\"Just as long as any nasty rodents are purely decorative as well,\" Mary said. \"I left my carving knife at home.\"\n\nFlynn flinched inside, recalling the trials he'd inflicted on Mary and the others as Mother Goose. He'd have to make it up to them somehow, after they saved the universe.\n\nAssuming they were up to the challenge.\n\n\"Come along, come along!\" he urged them. \"Time\u2014and Humpty Dumpty\u2014waits for no man, or woman, or combinations thereof.\"\n\nMary eyed him warily. \"Who exactly are you again?\"\n\n\"Just another Librarian,\" Baird said, ducking the issue to a degree.\n\n\"Well, maybe not just another Librarian,\" Flynn objected.\n\nHe appreciated that Baird wanted to avoid getting into the whole \"temporarily possessed by the magic of Mother Goose\" thing, but he did have a certain degree of seniority where the Library was concerned....\n\n\"You sure we never met before?\" George peered at Flynn. \"'Cause there's something about you....\"\n\nFlynn tugged nervously on his collar. \"Just have that kind of face, I guess.\"\n\n\"No, it's not that,\" Gillian said. \"I feel certain that I know you from somewhere, but I can't quite place\u2014\"\n\n\"We can sort that out later,\" Baird interrupted, coming to Flynn's rescue. \"Flynn's right. There's not a moment to lose!\"\n\nTruer words were never spoken. Arriving back at Humpty Dumpty's wall, they found the other Librarians struggling to keep a teetering Humpty from taking another fall\u2014and cracking open again. Stone had Humpty in a headlock, while Cassandra and Ezekiel shoved against Humpty, trying to hold the animated mannequin in place, despite the fact that Humpty was not making it any easier for them. Unhappy at being restrained, he kicked and swatted at the Librarians. His painted face expressed his displeasure. His smile flipped into a frown. Glossy black eyebrows tilted angrily. Jagged streaks of red painted his big eyes bloodshot.\n\n\"Hey!\" Ezekiel yelped as a gloved hand slapped him in the face. \"Watch it, you crazy... egghead! Do you want to fall and go boom?\"\n\n\"Think that's the general idea,\" Stone said, grunting. \"He's raring to hatch!\"\n\n\"No! This isn't how it's supposed to go.\" Cassandra strained against the weight of the toppling egg man. Her feet skidded backward across the ground. \"It... everything... can't end like this. By every reasonable cosmological hypothesis, our universe still has billions of years left to go. This is too soon. We can't let the whole cosmos die young\u2014because of a stupid nursery rhyme!\" She glanced up at Humpty. \"No offense.\"\n\n\"I'm trying!\" Ezekiel was right beside her, shoulder to shoulder. \"Not sure how long we can keep this up, though. Frankly, we could use all the king's horses and all the king's men at the moment!\"\n\nFlynn appreciated their strenuous efforts, but winced at the sight.\n\n\"Careful there!\" he shouted. \"Don't crack the shell!\"\n\n\"Easier said than done,\" Stone said. \"You try wrestling this thing!\"\n\nNot up to me anymore, Flynn thought. He turned to the Goose heirs, who were gaping at the bizarre scene. They huddled together, united by circumstances as well as blood.\n\n\"Oh my,\" Mary said. \"Am I seeing things?\"\n\n\"I wish.\" George shook his head. \"Man, that is seriously messed up.\"\n\n\"You took the words right out of my mouth,\" Gillian said before looking helplessly at Flynn and Baird. \"I still don't quite understand. What on Earth do you expect of us?\"\n\n\"You said it yourself,\" Flynn answered. \"I need words straight from your mouth, from all three of you. You're the legitimate heirs to the title of Mother Goose. You're the only ones who can reverse this spell... by composing a new rhyme!\"\n\nShock and disbelief registered on their faces.\n\n\"You can't be serious,\" Mary said. \"I can't perform actual magic. I'm just a small-town librarian.\"\n\n\"I'm an academic,\" Gillian said.\n\n\"And I'm just a rapper-slash-tree-trimmer,\" George said. \"You've got the wrong crew, dude.\"\n\nFlynn shook his head. \"Not from what I've seen... I mean, heard. You can absolutely do this if you work together. Forget the Treaty. Forget the old dynastic rivalries that divided your ancestors.\" He held out the reassembled spell book: Mother Goose's Melodies, complete in one volume. \"This book, the power, the legacy... it belongs to you three.\"\n\nEven if I temporarily usurped it when I wasn't quite myself, he thought.\n\n\"So you say,\" Gillian said uncertainly, \"but still...\"\n\n\"Listen to him, Gillian,\" Stone encouraged her. \"You know this stuff better than anyone. You've studied for this for your entire life. If anybody can do it, you can.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the vote of confidence,\" Gillian said. \"I can't deny it's much needed at the moment.\"\n\n\"That goes for you, too, Mary.\" Ezekiel glanced back at her over his shoulder. \"I hate to admit it, but Flynn usually knows what he's talking about and, honestly, we could use some help here.\"\n\n\"Manfully admitted, Mr. Jones,\" Mary said. \"And far be it for me to disagree.\"\n\n\"And you, George... Bo-Peeps,\" Cassandra said. \"You're a born rapper, remember? Rhyming is in your blood.\"\n\n\"Damn straight it is!\" He accepted the book from Flynn and held it out to his long-lost cousins and fellow heirs. \"All right, ladies, let's get our Goose on.\"\n\nHe placed his right hand atop the book, as though being sworn in, and Mary and Gillian placed their hands over his. Magic flared as the embossed golden type on the book's front cover took on a dazzling glow.\n\n\"Well, I'll be damned!\" Gillian gasped. \"Did we do that?\"\n\n\"I do believe we did, dear,\" Mary said, her eyes wide behind her glasses. \"My husband is not going to believe any of this.\"\n\n\"It's just what I'm always saying,\" George said. \"Magic is out there. You just got to look for it!\"\n\nThe spell book cracked open of its own accord. Startled, the heirs yanked their hands away, but the book remained levitating in the air between them. Its pages turned, past rhyme after rhyme, until it reached Humpty Dumpty. Flowing ink rearranged the type on the page, creating an empty space at the bottom, just waiting to be filled with new verses.\n\n\"Well, that's not intimidating at all,\" Gillian said.\n\n\"No time for rhymer's block.\" Flynn fidgeted restlessly behind them, peering over one shoulder after another. \"The clock is ticking... and the egg is hatching.\"\n\nGlancing over at the wall, he saw that, despite the other Librarians' exertions, cracks were appearing in Humpy Dumpty's shell. The light of a new day\u2014and a new Creation\u2014seeped through the cracks, growing brighter by the second. Humpty's eyes took on a manic gleam. He grinned gleefully. The spreading cracks scarred his face, making him look like the Egg of Frankenstein. He was about as cute as doomsday.\n\n\"He's cracking open!\" Cassandra shouted. \"We can't stop it!\"\n\nBaird scanned Humpty with a new and improved magic detector, which was beeping like a Geiger counter on top of a nuclear test ground. Her eyes widened in alarm at the readings she was getting.\n\n\"Anytime now, people!\" she prompted.\n\nGeorge nodded. \"You heard the lady. Let's freestyle the hell out of this egg-pocalypse!\"\n\nHe started them off:\n\n\"Humpty Dumpty, stay in your shell,\" he rapped.\n\n\"Humpty Dumpty, all will be well,\" Mary continued the rhyme.\n\n\"Sleep deep and long, all night and all day,\" Gillian added.\n\nThe words wrote themselves on the page as they were spoken. The trio looked at each other in amazement as the final verse came to them all in unison:\n\n\"Rest safe on your wall until Judgment Day!\"\n\nThe verses lit up on the page, glowing brighter than the dawn, before fading away. A hush fell over the park. The wild winds abated, the thunder muted, swirling leaves settled back onto the trees, flailing trees fell still and silent. The universe stayed right where it was, basking in the morning light. Birdsong started up, welcoming a new day.\n\nNo Big Bang? Flynn thought. That's encouraging.\n\nHe looked at Humpty Dumpty. As hoped, the mannequin was no longer flailing or cracking. Its weathered white shell had been restored, as was its blandly smiling, immobile expression. It sat securely on the wall just as it had back in the good old days, as it did in the snapshot from his childhood. Humpty's right hand was raised again, as though waving to him from the past.\n\nFlynn's throat tightened a little.\n\n\"Is that it?\" Mary asked. \"Did we do it?\"\n\n\"Naturally.\" Flynn suppressed a sigh of relief. \"Never doubted it for a minute.\"\n\nBaird scanned Humpty with her detector just to be sure. \"No more magical energy spikes,\" she reported. \"All clear. You can stand down, folks.\"\n\nThe other Librarians let go of Humpty and cautiously stepped away from the figure, as though afraid that it might be playing possum, but Humpty wasn't going anywhere, not anymore.\n\n\"Whew,\" Stone said, wiping his brow. \"That was one tough egg.\"\n\n\"Eh.\" Ezekiel shrugged. \"I wasn't worried.\"\n\n\"Yeah, right.\" Stone smirked at his friend. \"Tell me another.\"\n\nCassandra looked worriedly at the sky. \"What about the stars? Is the universe still contracting with Humpty Dumpty put together again?\"\n\n\"Nope.\" Flynn said with confidence, walking over to the wall. \"The spell has been broken. That isn't the World Egg anymore\u2014or, to be more precise, it doesn't represent the World Egg anymore. It's just a forgotten old mannequin.\" He rapped it with his knuckles to prove his point. \"Ouch, that's harder than it looks.\"\n\nBaird joined him by the figure. \"Just the same, we should probably cart Humpty off to the Library, wall and all. Why take chances?\"\n\n\"A reasonable precaution,\" Flynn agreed. \"It's not like we don't have the space.\"\n\n\"Good job, everyone,\" Baird said. \"Mission accomplished. And thanks for the timely assist,\" she added, addressing the Goose trio. \"We couldn't have done it without you.\"\n\n\"But what about that other Mother Goose?\" Mary asked, holding on to the spell book for the others. \"Isn't she still on the loose?\"\n\nFlynn gulped and glanced down at his shoes, unsure how to respond. Mother Goose's reign of nursery-rhyme terror weighed on his conscience, even though he wasn't really to blame.\n\nIt could have happened to anyone, he thought, assuming they were messing with a magical peace treaty from a hundred years ago....\n\n\"You don't have to worry about her anymore,\" Baird said diplomatically. \"She's been... dealt with.\"\n\n\"But how?\" George asked. \"What happened to her?\"\n\n\"And who was she anyway?\" Gillian asked. \"Another distant relative... and heir to the title?\"\n\n\"Nothing of the sort,\" Baird assured them. \"She was an imposter, a pretender, but she's out of the picture now.\"\n\n\"How so?\" Mary persisted. \"Where is\u2014?\"\n\n\"I don't think we need to get into that right now,\" Flynn said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Oregon",
                "text": "\"Are you quite certain about this?\" Jenkins asked.\n\n\"Absolutely.\" Mary turned the restored spell book over to Jenkins, while George and Gillian looked on, nodding in agreement. The Goose heirs, along with the Librarians and their Guardian, had returned to the Annex after concluding their business at Mother Goose's Magic Garden. \"We talked it over, the three of us, and concluded that it would be a shame to split the book up again after going to so much trouble to recover the hidden pieces.\" She sighed wistfully as she let go of the book. \"And as much as I would personally love to add this precious volume to my own library back home, I suspect it will be somewhat safer in yours.\"\n\n\"Same with my college,\" Gillian said.\n\n\"And my apartment,\" George joked, \"which isn't exactly Fort Knox.\"\n\nJenkins accepted the book with all due dignity. \"Rest assured that it will be safe in our hands,\" he said, \"and that we fully appreciate the honor and responsibility you're entrusting to us.\"\n\n\"And don't you forget that, Mr. Jenkins.\" Mary stepped back, relieved of her burden, and took a moment to admire the Annex's full shelves and old-fashioned card catalogs. \"You do have quite a nice library here, but I don't suppose you offer story time for the kiddies?\"\n\n\"Heaven forbid.\" Jenkins shuddered at the very idea before looking pointedly at the Librarians. \"I have enough unruly youngsters on my hands.\"\n\nMary shrugged. \"Your loss.\"\n\nWith the final disposition of Mother Goose's Melodies settled, the Librarians and their charges milled about in the Annex, celebrating their last-minute rescue of everything under the sun. Cradling the long-lost \"ghost volume\" in the crook of his arm, Jenkins was equally relieved that a new Creation had been postponed indefinitely. As far as he was concerned, there was still considerable work to be done when it came to tidying up the current model, even if the goose, the lion, and the unicorn were now back to normal and residing peacefully in their respective stalls, while Arthur's Crown was back where it belonged as well.\n\nAll's well that ends well, he thought, for now.\n\nHe looked forward to shelving Mother Goose's Melodies in the appropriate section. Perhaps alongside The Secret Memoirs of Tom Thumb and Rip Van Winkle's Dream Journal?\n\n\"Good job back there at the park,\" Stone congratulated Gillian as they retreated to a secluded corner of the office that was still not as private as Stone would have liked. \"Seems to me that saving the universe deserves a dinner at least, and maybe some drinks and dancing afterward?\"\n\n\"Consider it a date.\" She glanced back over her shoulder at the Magic Door of the Annex. \"And given that handy portal of yours, you have no excuse for being late... unless, of course, you're urgently needed in Atlantis or wherever.\"\n\n\"Thought you didn't believe in Atlantis,\" he teased her.\n\n\"After what I've seen since we met, I'm ready to believe in everything from faeries to Brigadoon.\"\n\n\"Funny you should mention faeries,\" he began. \"As it turns out\u2014\"\n\nShe placed a finger over his lips. \"Save it for the date.\"\n\n\"I was pleased to see you applying yourself at the wall,\" Mary said to Ezekiel. \"Perhaps there's hope for you yet.\"\n\n\"Just another day doing the impossible,\" Ezekiel said, as though it was no big deal. \"And doing it with style.\" He leaned against an overstuffed bookcase as he relished his latest amazing victory. \"And who knew you were such a kick-ass librarian yourself?\"\n\n\"Please,\" she replied, \"I was a librarian while you were still a naughty child shoplifting candy bars or whatever else you surely got up to. Still, I admit that this unlikely adventure has boosted my confidence somewhat, enough so that I'm thinking of writing down my own stories and trying to get them published. Maybe carry on the family tradition by becoming a children's book author as well as a librarian... minus any sightless rodents, of course.\"\n\n\"Go for it,\" Ezekiel said. \"Although I'll wait for the movie version.\"\n\nMary rolled her eyes. \"Young people these days...\" She smiled at him nonetheless. \"You take care of yourself, Ezekiel Jones, and try to stay out of trouble.\"\n\nHe grinned back at her.\n\n\"Where's the fun in that?\"\n\nJenkins raised his voice to get the room's attention.\n\n\"Mrs. Simon, Dr. Fell, Mr. Cole,\" he addressed them from the navigational apparatus by the Magic Door. \"At the risk of calling short these celebrations, the exit is primed and ready to go, per your instructions.\"\n\n\"Looks like Bow Tie is giving us the bum's rush,\" George said to Cassandra. \"Gotta jet, little lamb. Peace out.\"\n\nShe hugged him good-bye. \"You get down with your bad self, Bo-Peeps. And keep slammin' your def phat flows. Represent!\" She cringed at the words coming out of her mouth. \"I really can't pull that off, can I?\"\n\n\"Stick to the brainy science girl talk,\" he advised her. \"It's working for you.\"\n\n\"Well, I like to think so....\"\n\nLetting go of him, she escorted him toward the Magic Door, where the others were converging as well. \"So I guess you're heading back to Miami now?\"\n\n\"Not just yet,\" he said, joining Mary and Gillian before the door. \"The three of us, we're taking a detour to Boston first.\"\n\n\"Boston?\" Baird asked. She stood beside Flynn, holding his hand as though to keep him from running off again anytime soon.\n\nWe'll see how long that works, Cassandra thought.\n\n\"One-time home of Elizabeth Goose,\" Flynn deduced, figuring it out. \"The last true Mother Goose.\"\n\n\"Right on the money,\" Gillian said. \"After all of this, we thought we should make a pilgrimage to her grave and pay our respects... together.\"\n\n\"Something of a family reunion,\" Mary explained, \"as well as a chance to get to know each other under slightly less tumultuous circumstances.\"\n\n\"Just try to avoid igniting any new family feuds,\" Jenkins cautioned. A tinge of melancholy entered his voice. \"Trust me when I say that bonds of blood can break more catastrophically than most.\"\n\n\"Not going to happen, man,\" George said confidently. \"You know what they say, nothing brings kin back together like saving the entire freaking world from one bad egg.\"\n\n\"That's what we thought in Caerleon,\" Jenkins murmured softly before inhaling deeply and returning to the task at hand. \"In any event, ladies, gentleman, I wish you all good fortune and a safe journey. May you carry on the illustrious tradition of your forebears with both wisdom and imagination, jointly or separately as fate will have it.\"\n\n\"And that goes for the rest of us,\" Baird said. \"Big time.\"\n\nJenkins opened the door. Supernaturally white light spilled into the Annex.\n\n\"Brilliant,\" Gillian said in a hushed tone. \"Literally brilliant.\"\n\nGeorge gestured toward the glowing doorway. \"After you, ladies.\"\n\n\"No.\" Mary joined their hands, with her in the middle. \"All at once.\"\n\nThey stepped out the Magic Door together.\n\n\"Finally!\" Jenkins said with visible relief. \"With all due respect to our recent guests, I wish to remind you all again that this Annex, let alone the Library, is for Librarians only.\" He tipped his head toward Baird. \"And their esteemed Guardian, of course.\"\n\nBaird appreciated the nod, as well as his understandable concerns regarding the Library's security. She had no intention of adopting an open-door policy at the Library, except under extreme circumstances. She preferred to run a tight ship, too.\n\n\"Roger that,\" she said. \"And don't worry about it. After running around the globe trying to put out this Mother Goose fire, I doubt that any of us are up to diving into another crisis right away. We could use some time off from relic runs and impending doom.\" She pulled Flynn closer to her. \"And that goes for you, too, Librarian.\"\n\n\"Fine with me,\" he said. \"Unless something comes up, that is.\"\n\nShe gave the Clippings Book a warning look. \"Don't even think about it.\"\n\n\"Amen to that.\" Stone yawned and stretched. \"I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I figured we're entitled to a day off... or three.\"\n\n\"Not going to argue with you there, mate,\" Ezekiel said. \"I've been bouncing around so much I'm not even sure what day it is.\"\n\n\"Sunday morning, 7:12 A. M., Pacific time,\" Cassandra supplied. \"Not that it really matters what time it is. I feel like I could sleep for a week.\"\n\n\"I'm oddly exhausted as well.\" Flynn glanced down at his restored form as though he was still trying to wrap his head around his recent transformations. \"So, I really turned into a goose... not a gander?\"\n\n\"Don't think about it.\" Baird started herding them toward the front door, the one that led to plain old Portland instead of quests on the far side of the globe. \"Lord knows I'm trying my best not to.\"\n\n\"And that's a wrap,\" Stone said. \"See you folks on the other side of some serious R&R.\"\n\n\"Ahem.\"\n\nJenkins cleared his throat loudly. Turning around, Baird and the others saw him emerging from a discreetly unobtrusive supply closet with an assortment of brooms and mops. He regarded their dismayed expressions with bemusement.\n\n\"What?\" he asked. \"We still have to clean up after the goose.\""
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Secret Chapter",
        "author": "Genevieve Cogman",
        "genres": [
            "mystery",
            "steampunk"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "The Invisible Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "To my godparents \u2013 Judy, James, and Angela.\n\nThank you for everything.\n\nThere had to be a heist at some point in the story, didn't there? And there are certain tropes that consistently occur in a heist narrative, whether the protagonists are trying to get away with the Mona Lisa, a casino's earnings, or the entire gold stocks of Turin and Fort Knox...\n\nMany thanks to my editors, Bella Pagan and Rebecca Brewer. Have I said lately that I appreciate you? I appreciate you very much. You're great at helping me work out what needs to be done to improve the book, and how to do it.\n\nThanks also to my agent Lucienne Diver for all her support, and for being constantly in my quarter and 100 per cent behind me. (Which sounds rather like putting your nose to the grindstone and your shoulder to the wheel at the same time, but you know what I mean.)\n\nThanks to all my beta-readers and all the people who supplied information for the story: Beth, Jeanne, Phyllis, Anne, Stuart, Crystal, and everyone else. Your help makes a difference, and I'm very grateful for it.\n\nThank you to all my friends at work and in leisure, who supported my tendency to make marginalia plot notes on minutes and who didn't run away when I spent ten minutes trying to explain the plot to them. It's good to know that everyone understands the significance of Chekhov's shark. (Like the gun, but for some reason less frequently used.)\n\nThank you to the city of Vienna, which I have visited and loved. (I do know The Raft of the Medusa is in the Louvre in Paris \u2013 in this world, at least. Don't shoot me.) Vienna is a beautiful, fascinating place, and really didn't deserve me driving a plot lorry through the middle of it. Any errors in my depiction of a CENSOR-managed Vienna are my fault entirely.\n\nAnd thank you to all the fans of the Library out there. Stories matter \u2013 telling them, sharing them, preserving them, changing them, learning from them, and escaping with and through them. We learn about ourselves and the world that we live in through fiction just as much as through facts. Empathy, perception and understanding are never wasted. All libraries are a gateway into other worlds, including the past \u2013 and the future.\n\n\u2002LIBRARY UPDATE TO ALL OPERATIVES \u2013 TOP PRIORITY\n\n\u2002A truce has finally been agreed between the dragons and the Fae.\n\n\u2002This is neither a hoax nor a test of your intelligence. Nor is it a drill to check whether you are aware of what to do in a crisis. (We note that the Library has not had fire alarm drills for the last two hundred years. This is because we found the two default responses unhelpful. These being 'running away screaming' or 'resigning yourself to death while clutching your favourite books'. Librarians with more useful suggestions should contact Yves via email and attach a full benefit\u2013threat analysis.)\n\n\u2002This formal peace treaty has been signed by his majesty Ao Guang (Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean, representing all eight dragon kings and queens). The signatory for the other side is the Princess, a high-ranking representative among the Fae. This treaty requires non-interference, by each side, in the other's declared territories. It also calls for mutual non-aggression where potentially delicate situations arise.\n\n\u2002(In other words, hands off and no starting fights.)\n\n\u2002This is wonderful news. I would like to remind everyone that we are not here just to obtain books for our personal reading lists. The Library is tasked with maintaining the balance between order and chaos, between the dragons and the Fae, and is bound to protect the alternate worlds they claim, and the humans living in them. Peace is a positive step \u2013 even a very minor and carefully defined peace such as this one. It should cut down on accidental human casualties during larger conflicts. It will save lives.\n\n\u2002Now, I need to make the following point absolutely clear... As a co-signatory, Librarians are bound to act as neutral parties. As such, we are committed to helping resolve disagreements and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 to not stealing books from anyone who's signed up to these accords. (I'm aware that if the owner doesn't know that the book has gone, then consent is not an issue. Under some circumstances I might be sympathetic, but the current political situation is very unstable. Let's not push our luck.) We can't risk breaching the treaty which we ourselves helped organize.\n\n\u2002Technically all dragons are subjects of the eight dragon monarchs and have therefore signed up to the treaty in principle \u2013 which means that it is now out of the question for us to steal from any dragon. Fortunately we have never been caught doing such a thing and would certainly never consider it. If you do remove a book from a place that wasn't listed in the treaty but which turns out to be from a dragon's personal fief, then \u2013 assuming you survive \u2013 the situation can be negotiated and reparations arranged by the Library representative for the treaty. But since the Fae don't have the same rigid hierarchies, it can be much harder to determine whether or not an individual Fae has signed up. In practice, check details first, 'acquire' books second, and be aware that negotiation may be an option. But please be careful.\n\n\u2002The full text of this treaty and a list of all current signatories, and the worlds which they consider to be their personal property, is attached to this message. You are strongly advised to read and memorize it. Be aware that ignorance of the new situation will not be an excuse, unless you are very, very, very lucky. (We have had it pointed out to us that this sort of repetition is poor style. But we feel it's necessary to make our point.)\n\n\u2002All irregularities will be handled by a tripartite commission. The Fae representative has not yet been appointed, but the Library delegate is Irene (local pseudonym Irene Winters), Librarian-in-Residence on world B-395. The dragon representative is Prince Kai, son of his majesty Ao Guang.\n\n\u2002Librarians, please understand that this may be the most significant chance we've ever had to stabilize the alternate worlds we visit. Let's not confuse the means by which we maintain the balance between order and chaos \u2013 collecting books \u2013 with our ultimate ends. Getting hold of a book to cement peace for one world may breach the overall peace treaty for multiple worlds. Now more than ever, we have to maintain our neutrality.\n\n\u2002Times are changing. Let's help them change for the better.\n\n\u2002Coppelia, Senior Librarian\n\n'Smile and circulate,' Irene said through gritted teeth, drawing her skirts back from the blood that had spattered by her feet. She watched the brightly coloured mob in front of her. 'It might be messy, but it was only a duel to first blood. It's not as if anyone was killed.'\n\nServants in spotless white and black had come scuttling out like cockroaches to wipe the floor clean and provide fresh cocktails for the onlookers. The height of London's fashion mingled with the cream of its notoriety, assisted by a wide selection of drink and drugs. The chandeliers, sparkle as they might, did very little to light up the corners of the room. Here, the more serious or depraved of the Fae present smoked opium, sipped absinthe, or even discussed the latest novels.\n\nIt was, in short, one of Lord Silver's best ever parties.\n\n'It's not the duel I'm complaining about, it's the calligraphy challenge that started the quarrel,' Kai muttered. He hadn't left Irene's side so far this evening, and she was grateful for it. This wasn't a party for them to enjoy: it was one where they needed to be seen. It was a political event and a lion's den. But even here, Kai had his sense of aesthetics. 'The choice of ink colours available was completely unsuitable, she should have demanded a steel pen, and frankly the whole thing ought to have been called off until both parties could get better paper. No wonder they came to blows instead of competing as planned. It simply wasn't possible for either to produce work representative of their skills.'\n\n'Yes,' Silver said, sweeping into place behind them. 'I have to admit I'm embarrassed. At one of my parties, anything that a guest demands should be available there and then. I will simply have to lay in better supplies for the future.'\n\n'Well, it is the latest thing,' Irene answered, trying to calm her heartbeat. She had never been comfortable with anyone mysteriously appearing behind her. And running for her life would be a challenge, in her highly expensive but restrictive silk dress. 'I hear it's hit aficionados as badly as the Dutch tulip craze. Remember when everyone had to own the latest bloom? And is it true that there was an ink robbery at Harrods?'\n\n'Your friend the detective would know better than me,' Silver said. He was barely six inches behind Irene, and she was painfully conscious of his presence \u2013 his height, his warmth, the curve of his lips...\n\nFae were dangerous. Even now, when they were technically allies.\n\nShe faced Silver, her dress rustling. 'Lord Silver. When you invited us, we had expected a smaller occasion. Something more...' She considered the word intimate and rejected it hastily. 'Discreet.'\n\n'You aren't enjoying it?' Silver asked, amused. The light from the ether-lamps made a halo of his pale hair, but nobody would have classed him as anything other than the most fallen sort of angel. His shoulders and build \u2013 and overly tight trousers \u2013 were enough to make anyone think of sin. And the lingering curve of his lips, and glint of his eyes, suggested that he was far more interested in debauching mortals than saving them. He fitted perfectly into this alternate Victorian England as a libertine and man about town; like many powerful Fae, he was a personification of certain types of stories. But the ones that involved his sort of character definitely weren't meant for children. 'But you're drinking my champagne...'\n\n'It's very good champagne,' Irene said, in an attempt to find something on which she could honestly compliment him. Also, there hadn't been anything non-alcoholic on offer. 'But as I just said, discreet. There are at least a hundred people here.'\n\nThe music from the string quartet in the corner speeded up, and a space cleared on the floor. Two guests, a man in stark white and a woman in black, began to tango. At least two possible duels and one assignation broke off, as guests turned to watch and applaud.\n\n'My dear little mouse,' Silver said, using the pet name which he knew most annoyed Irene. 'You were aware I was going to show off you and your dragon prince to my kind tonight. It might not have been said, but there was certainly an understanding. And your princeling isn't objecting to any of this.'\n\n'I'm letting her do that for me,' Kai said equably.\n\nIn the dramatic lights and shadows thrown by the trembling chandeliers, Kai had the perfect beauty of a classical statue. His hair was black, with just a touch of blue. His eyes were dark blue, with a hint of underlying fire. And his skin was as pale as marble, but comfortingly warm to the touch. Since his recent selection as dragon representative in the newly built dragon\u2013Fae truce, he had thrown himself into politics. Or at least, he'd thrown himself into choosing the most appropriate clothing for political occasions. Irene had to admit the effort wasn't wasted.\n\n'Agreeable as well as handsome. The perfect partner.' Silver's smile made the implication of in the bedroom as well as out of it quite clear, and Irene felt Kai's arm tense under her hand. 'Nevertheless, if you want my help in a certain matter, you'll stay at this party for at least another couple of hours.'\n\nIrene knew exactly what he meant. She had been named as Library representative for this same truce. She would be the mutual point of contact for both Fae and dragon queries and for any new signatories. Plus \u2013 it was unspoken, but clearly visible in her future \u2013 she'd be the person responsible for sorting out any problems. However, the Fae representative had yet to be chosen. And as Silver was on one faction's selection committee (or whatever mechanism they had for choosing a representative), she wanted his assistance.\n\nShe sipped her champagne. 'I know we're both trying to help each other here. Our presence increases your prestige among your own kind. In return, you could influence the selection of the Fae representative \u2013 choosing someone who won't make our lives a living hell.' She smiled politely. 'However, no one will benefit if Kai or I are killed in a duel on your home ground.'\n\n'That won't happen,' Silver said categorically.\n\nIrene raised an eyebrow.\n\n'Anyone who challenges you will never be invited to one of my parties again,' he clarified. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a tango to interrupt.'\n\nIrene watched him go. 'It really is very good champagne,' she said with a sigh.\n\n'What did Vale say when you asked if he'd show up?' Kai enquired.\n\nIrene couldn't help smiling. 'That he found his current researches into ink-smuggling far more rewarding than another pointless party thrown by Lord Silver. He felt he'd already done his bit for the dragon\u2013Fae peace treaty in Paris. And if he did attend, it would be to search the upstairs rooms for evidence of crimes while everyone else was downstairs. Also, if he had shown up, Mu Dan would have shown up too, an uninvited dragon at a Fae party...'\n\n'I don't know why she's spending so much time in this world,' Kai muttered petulantly. 'As a judge-investigator, surely she's got important business elsewhere. Anywhere elsewhere.'\n\n'It's because she wants to recruit Vale to work on some of her cases.' Mu Dan had helped Vale and Irene catch a murderer during the signing of the peace treaty in Paris. She'd been making veiled offers of employment to Vale ever since. 'You can't blame her for wanting the best. But don't worry. He's not going to agree.' They were both protective of their friend.\n\nKai nodded. 'We should try to relax,' he suggested. 'You're prickly because you thought this might be a polite social occasion among neutrals. I'm less concerned, because I knew we'd be among enemies.'\n\nSo much, Irene thought, for the truce. 'I live in hope,' she said. 'We have to start somewhere. And any other generic platitudes that spring to mind.'\n\nKai's eyes narrowed abruptly. 'I know that face. What's she doing here?'\n\n'Politics too, I imagine,' Irene said. The woman approaching was Fae \u2013 and she was a secretary, minion and catspaw of one of the most powerful of their kind. 'Sterrington, how interesting to see you here.'\n\nSterrington smiled and raised her glass in salute. 'How nice to see you both. Stolen any good books lately?' Her dark hair was smoothed back into a low knot at the base of her neck, and her grey watered silk gown was appropriate to the late Victorian period of this alternate world. Gloves concealed the fact that her right hand was largely cybernetic.\n\n'We've been living quietly lately,' Irene answered. 'It's been very pleasant. I've actually managed to catch up on my reading.'\n\nIt had been a relief to have a few weeks in which she was out of danger and able to do mundane things such as move house, renegotiate her relationship with Kai \u2013 and even brush up on some of her foreign languages. Acquiring works of fiction for the Library from alternate worlds was her vocation, and her job, but it was rarely peaceful or easy.\n\n'I see.' Sterrington's enigmatic smile suggested disbelief, as if Irene had actually been arranging the downfall of monarchs or thefts from imperial fortresses. 'How... surprising.'\n\n'And I'm surprised to see you here,' Kai said. 'I'd thought that your master wasn't on good terms with Lord Silver.'\n\n'If the Cardinal waited to be on good terms with people before dispatching emissaries, he'd never send anyone,' Sterrington countered. 'Why didn't you visit me in Liechtenstein? I sent an invitation.'\n\nLiechtenstein was the major centre of Fae activity on this alternate world. But as such, it was one of the places Irene least wanted to visit. 'I must apologize for that, but I would have been... uncomfortable. You know we Librarians can't tolerate too high-chaos an environment.'\n\n'You managed Venice well enough last year,' Sterrington said.\n\n'Yes,' Kai said. The faint shadow of scale-patterns blossomed across his cheekbones and the back of his hands, like frost-ferns on a window, and a brief flare of draconic red glinted in his eyes. 'Where I was kidnapped by the Guanteses. I believe you were working for them?'\n\n'Water under the bridge,' Sterrington said lightly. 'I thought that under the new peace treaty we were going to be much more understanding \u2013 about little things like that.'\n\nIrene passed her still half-full glass to Kai. 'Please could you fetch me some more champagne?' she said quickly.\n\nKai inclined his head in a gesture not unlike a duellist's salute and stalked off on his errand.\n\n'I seem to have made a strong impression,' Sterrington commented. 'I can't remember him being that easily offended last time we met.'\n\nIrene searched for a way to change the subject. But Sterrington beat her to it. 'Would you care for some cocaine? Locally sourced.'\n\n'I didn't know you took cocaine.'\n\n'I don't, except on rare occasions, but Lord Silver thinks I do. I didn't like to disappoint him.' She winced at a clashing noise that almost drowned out the tango. 'What is that?'\n\n'Russian sabre dancers warming up.' Irene had demanded a look at the bill of entertainments before agreeing to attend. 'With tame Afghan hounds.'\n\n'No white stallions?'\n\n'They were held up at Customs.'\n\n'I'm glad to hear you're not involved in anything more alarming than this sort of affair.' Sterrington's elegant gesture took in the scene.\n\nA little alarm flag raised itself at the back of Irene's mind. 'Is there something more alarming going on, apart from our mutual treaty?' she asked mildly.\n\n'Only the usual,' Sterrington said with a shrug. 'Deaths, violence, bloodshed, assassinations, murders, thefts. You and I should have a get-together to discuss it all. Have your PA call mine \u2013 you do have one, don't you? I can recommend an excellent firm if not.' Her tone didn't change, but her eyes searched the crowd as she went on, 'By the way, Silver did screen the guest list, I hope?'\n\n'He did,' Irene said. She followed Sterrington's gaze as surreptitiously as she could. 'But you were waved through, so clearly whoever's checking names at the door isn't as reliable as they might be. Is there a problem?'\n\n'Possibly. Do you see that Fae, the man with the green cravat?'\n\nThe cravat in question was a particularly toxic shade of emerald, the sort associated with mambas and poisonous frogs. Otherwise, the man looked average enough \u2013 for one of Silver's parties \u2013 and he was within five yards of Kai. 'You know him?'\n\n'Know of him. Of course, I haven't met him personally\u2014'\n\nIrene almost rolled her eyes. 'Get to the point.'\n\n'His name's Rudolf,' Sterrington said. 'He lost his mother in some business involving a dragon takeover of her world. The Cardinal heard he was planning to revenge himself publicly against the new dragon delegate \u2013 and so I dropped by. I suppose desperate people will do desperate things.'\n\nIrene's glance swept the room. There was no sign of Silver. And the general press of guests was thick enough that it'd take her at least five minutes to get round the edge of the dance floor, now occupied by waltzing couples, to reach Kai. 'I need your word that you're being truthful about this,' she said.\n\n'The Fae have as much to lose as you have,' Sterrington said. 'Why else would I have bothered to tell you about this? In fact, I think you might owe me a favour for warning you. Can you stop him?'\n\n'Not from across the room.' The Librarians' private Language could do a great many things. It could boil champagne, redirect electricity, freeze canals, and generally affect reality. But it had to be audible.\n\n'What are you going to do?'\n\nNot what do we do, Irene noted with an inner sigh. 'I'll stop him,' she said, and approached the nearest male. 'Excuse me, but would you care to dance?'\n\nHis eyes widened in surprise. 'Ma'am,' he began, 'this is a most unexpected pleasure, and I can only\u2014'\n\n'Dance,' Irene said and forcibly spun him onto the dance floor \u2013 in Kai's direction.\n\n'I never dared hope for the honour of your acquaintance, ma'am,' her partner began.\n\nRudolf was even closer to Kai now \u2013 and she saw an opening through the crowd. 'You must tell me more about it later.'\n\n'Why not now?'\n\n'Because I'm \u2013' she disengaged smoothly and spun round to the next pair \u2013 'changing partners,' she finished, hooking the woman out of her partner's arms and shifting her path closer towards Kai.\n\n'Thank you,' her new partner breathed, settling against Irene's shoulder. 'I've always dreamed of being rescued like that. Did you see where he was putting his hands?'\n\nIrene looked down at the blonde head trying to nestle itself against her chest. This was the problem with operating in a high-chaos world. Everything kept on trying to resolve into standard narrative patterns. She hadn't meant to be a chivalrous rescuer. 'Don't worry,' she said soothingly. 'Everything will be all right in a moment.' In approximately thirty seconds, when she'd reach Kai. With a final swirl she was at the edge of the dance floor and released the blonde, giving her a pat on the shoulder.\n\nBut her eyes were on Kai. His hands were full \u2013 a champagne glass in each. And Rudolf was behind him, one hand already reaching into his jacket to pull out a pistol.\n\nOne step. Two. Three, and she was grabbing Rudolf's shoulder. As his eyes widened in surprise, she sent a sharp-knuckled jab into his guts with all the strength that anger and fear gave her.\n\nThe gun fell from his hand and clattered onto the floor as he dropped to his knees. He was still struggling to get up, so Irene lifted her skirts and kicked him in the stomach for good measure, wishing for once that she'd worn shoes with a more pointed toe. He collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath.\n\nFighting fair was for exhibition matches and formal competitions.\n\nIrene glanced up to see an expanding ring of gawping onlookers. Especially given the treaty, she needed some sort of excuse for what she'd just done \u2013 and Sterrington had vanished. At least Kai was still holding the champagne. She could do with a drink.\n\nInspiration came as a driving wedge of waiters pushed through the crowd towards her. 'He's not on the guest list,' she said, indicating the groaning Rudolf. 'Lord Silver will wish to deal with him... personally.'\n\n'I will?' Silver said, stepping out of the throng and refastening his cravat.\n\nThere was a crash of drums as the Cossack sabre dancers took to the floor, giving Irene the chance to step closer and mutter, 'Sterrington told me he was here to assassinate Kai. It would have rather dominated your party.'\n\nSilver's eyes sharpened, and he caught her hand to press his lips against it. 'As I have always said, you are my particularly favourite little mouse\u2014'\n\n'Excuse me,' Kai said, detaching Silver's grip \u2013 with what looked like a rather painful twist \u2013 and pressing a champagne flute into Irene's grasp instead. 'Am I missing something?'\n\nIrene resisted the urge to touch her hand where Silver's lips had brushed her skin. He'd lost none of his powers of seduction, unfortunately. 'Just an assassination attempt,' she said. 'As you said, we are among enemies. Let's smile. And circulate.'\n\nIn the carriage on the way back to their lodgings, Irene finally let herself relax. But even through the thick wool and silk of her cape, she could feel Kai next to her, as taut as piano wire.\n\n'You're brooding,' she said.\n\nKai was silent for a while before he finally spoke. 'I can defend you against rational threats,' he said. 'I can even protect you against the Fae, and heaven and earth both know that they're irrational. But how am I supposed to keep you safe from fanatics?'\n\n'It was you he was trying to kill,' Irene pointed out.\n\n'Yes, and you threw yourself into his path to stop him. And how do we know that the next killer won't be after you? Some sort of murderous loon who's sworn vengeance against all Librarians because one of you once stole his favourite book?'\n\n'Well, yes,' Irene had to admit. 'Some people can go in for quite disproportionate vengeances.'\n\n'They are meant to be disproportionate to set an example,' Kai said. 'That's the point.'\n\n'And so it goes throughout history.' She sighed. 'No doubt it would be exactly the same if we could go back to the dawn of time, to the birth of the first Fae, or the first dragons...'\n\nKai seemed glad to be diverted from his brooding. 'That's the sort of historical record you might find in the Library,' he said. 'Less so among my father's histories. Technically he must have had parents himself, of course, but that sort of thing is lost in the distant past. We tend to focus on the future.'\n\nIrene pricked up her ears at Kai discussing his people's past, even in such a guarded way. He almost never did that. 'Do you think that your dragon monarchs inspired Chinese mythology?' she asked. 'Or mythology in general? I couldn't help noticing that the names of the kings are often the same as in fable.'\n\n'Well, obviously,' Kai said. 'There aren't any other dragon monarchs around, after all.'\n\n'But looking to the future, not the past... you're right. We do have a problem. What do we do about assassins? Especially since we're supposed to be available, known to be based here for anyone who wants to talk to us.'\n\nIrene tugged her cloak tighter against the damp cold. Spring might be on the way, but it was taking its time, and London's fogs were wet and bone-chillingly bitter. Her mood was shifting to match the weather. 'Kai,' she said, 'would it sound childish if I said that I wish we were off acquiring books somewhere, rather than trying to be politicians?'\n\nShe felt him relax, and he squeezed her hand through her layers of cloak. 'The word, Irene, is stealing.'\n\n'Oh, semantics. \"I acquire\", \"you borrow\", \"she steals\", \"they invade and loot\"...'\n\nThe carriage drew up outside their new lodgings, a fringe benefit of their positions as representatives of the treaty. Kai stepped out and helped Irene down before paying the driver. Irene looked up at the windows. Light showed round the edge of the lounge curtains. 'Vale may be here,' she said. 'Perhaps he's finished that investigation after all.'\n\nKai perked up and bounded up the steps. Irene followed more slowly.\n\nThe house was quiet and dark, except for a single lamp burning at the end of the hallway, but light was leaking out from underneath the lounge door. It was two in the morning; the housekeeper would long since have gone to bed.\n\nThoughts of the night's earlier events flickered through Irene's mind, and she laid a warning hand on Kai's wrist. The house was currently warded against Fae intrusion (which was going to make matters awkward when they did get a Fae colleague) and a cage had been put around the letterbox to prevent anyone from inserting bombs, globes of poison gas, or giant venomous spiders... Short of a twenty-four-hour armed guard, it was difficult to make the place more secure. However, Vale had a key. Logically, it would be him and nobody else.\n\nYet something made Irene uncertain. Something was... off-balance.\n\nWhoever it was in the main room would have heard them entering the house too. There was no point in trying to hide.\n\nShe opened the lounge door, and froze in the doorway. A man was occupying the sofa; several open reference books lay around him in a detritus of notes and scribblings. The woman, tucked up in the big wingback armchair which Irene herself liked to occupy, was busy doing The Times crossword.\n\n'Irene?' Kai asked, his tone sharp.\n\n'Kai,' Irene said, her voice rather strangled, 'please allow me to introduce my parents.'\n\nKai's reaction was much faster than Irene's. No doubt because they're my parents, she reflected sourly. If it had been his father or mother sitting there, I'm sure he'd still be standing around with his mouth open. He bowed politely, but his eyes were bright with curiosity. 'We're honoured to receive you in this household,' he said. 'I know Irene has been hoping to see you.'\n\n'For a while now, actually,' Irene said, keeping her voice calm but feeling rage focus itself to a needle. 'You didn't write.'\n\nShe sensed Kai stiffening at her tone. She was glad to see them here, safe and well. But a month ago they'd been hostages, in danger of their lives, and there hadn't been a single whisper of communication afterwards. She'd sent emails on the Library system \u2013 even physical letters when she could.\n\nDidn't it mean anything that she was their daughter, and that she cared about them?\n\nExcept... that might be the problem. A huge unanswered question lay between them. She'd found out that she was adopted, and she didn't know how much that changed things. Certainly it had left a lot for her to consider.\n\nHer mother unfolded herself from the big armchair in a confusion of skirts and newspapers. 'You must be Prince Kai,' she said. 'I've heard so much about you! Not from Irene, of course, she never writes...'\n\n'I've written three times in the last month,' Irene cut in.\n\n'Not about Kai here,' her mother said. She smiled. Her hair had been blonde when Irene had last seen her, but it had returned to a more natural grey now and was pinned back in a suitably matronly bun. Her dress was dark green, one of Irene's own favourite colours, and her glasses were set with little crystals in the curves of the frame.\n\nBut there were tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, in the hollow of her throat; the marks of growing age and weariness. Irene looked at her father, who was carefully setting aside the books he'd been using. He looked unchanged, unchangeable, with badger-streaked hair, wide shoulders and gentle eyes. But when Irene scrutinized him as if he was a target, rather than as a child looking at her parent, she could see the same traces on him as well. Concern collided with rage and knotted painfully in her chest.\n\n'Kai,' she said. 'This is my mother, whose chosen name is Raziel. And my father, whose chosen name is Liu Xiang.' Not that either name had anything to do with their origin or nation of birth. Librarians were extreme cultural appropriators when it came to names they liked or found thematically resonant. 'My parents, please allow me to present Prince Kai, son of Ao Guang, Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean.'\n\nShe was wondering what to do next, when Kai politely offered to put together some refreshments. The door shut behind him, leaving the three of them alone.\n\nSomething in Irene snapped. She threw her arms around her mother, conscious of how fragile she felt. 'If you ever,' she muttered, 'ever drop off the radar like that again... for heaven's sake at least let me know you're all right.'\n\nHer mother smelled of cedar. It had always been one of her favourite scents. Irene could shut her eyes and imagine that no time had passed \u2013 except that now she was the taller of the two.\n\n'I am here too,' her father said with a smile.\n\nIrene hugged him tightly. 'Are you both all right? I was told you were hostages at one of the dragon courts during the peace conference \u2013 held to guarantee the negotiators' good behaviour...'\n\n'It was the court of the Queen of the Western Lands,' her father said. 'Terribly nice people, but we were parked at a country house in their equivalent of Texas, with absolutely no books. And a great many apologies for there being no books. They'd been removed in case we tried to use them to escape, no doubt. We had to spend most of our time watching movies instead.'\n\n'Or going for healthy walks,' Irene's mother grumbled. 'I despise healthy walks.'\n\nIrene tried to imagine weeks without books, then took a deep breath. 'We've only a minute or two before Kai comes back, and I have a question I don't want him to hear.'\n\nHer mother settled back down into her chair, shaking out the newspaper again. 'Can anyone think of a good word for double ace, seven letters, last letter e?'\n\nIrene was about to say ambsace, when something about the question penetrated. The newspaper wasn't a distraction for her mother any more; it was a shield. Her mother was trying to distract her.\n\n'There isn't time for questions,' her father said. 'There isn't even time for crosswords. I'm afraid we didn't come for a family catch-up. You're needed at the Library \u2013 now, Irene. Coppelia sent us to pass the message on.'\n\nHer trained reflexes had Irene immediately calculating how she could reach the Library if she left at once. But something made her hesitate. She had so many questions, and she was about to lose the chance to ask them. Again.\n\nUnless she asked them now.\n\n'Why did Coppelia send you to tell me?' she asked. 'A junior Librarian could have done the job. Or she could have sent a physical message.' The Library had ways of getting word through to its agents \u2013 admittedly destructive ways, but Coppelia had used them for emergencies before.\n\nHer mother shrugged. 'We volunteered to take her next message to you. We wanted to make sure you were safe and well. And now we know.'\n\nIrene felt a deep stab of anger at the airiness of the brush-off, and she was about to snap something suitably withering and distant in response... But no, they were both trying to distract her from personal questions, from getting closer to them. Again.\n\nShe bit her lip, determined to stay calm. 'I need to ask this one question,' she said. 'Before I go. While you're still here. I know I'm adopted. You wouldn't have done it if you hadn't wanted me. I accept that. I understand that. I'd just like to know... how. How it happened.'\n\n'Strange,' her mother said, after a long, shocked pause. 'You spend thirty years rehearsing the answer to a question, and then when it comes...'\n\n'...all the words are gone,' her father finished.\n\n'A few simple, straightforward ones would do,' Irene said tartly. 'Was I a random selection from a local state orphanage? Did you find me floating down the river in a basket?'\n\n'Trying to make us feel guilty will not work, Ray,' her mother snapped. It hurt, as always, to hear a childhood pet name used in anger. 'Do you want me to say that I hoped this day wouldn't come? Fine. It's true. I hoped you'd never find out. Is that so strange?'\n\nIrene paced a few steps, listening to the crackling of the fire. 'This would be easier if you hadn't taught me all your tricks,' she said, trying to find the words that would make them understand. 'You were the ones who taught me how to divert a question, how to change a subject. How to answer a question with another question. You taught me all of this, and now you're trying to do it to me. I accept that it really would have been easier for all of us if I'd never suspected. But please, Mother, Father...' She tasted bitterness, and her eyes stung with a childish urge to cry. 'Please understand that now I do know, I have to know the truth.'\n\n'Do you really?' her father asked. It was a sincere question. 'Would it actually make any difference if I were to tell you that... we stole you from a palace and you're actually a princess?'\n\nIrene put aside the image of herself in archetypal dress and coronet. 'No,' she finally said. 'No, it won't really make any difference what you tell me. I just want you to want to tell me. I'm sorry, that probably doesn't make sense.'\n\n'Stop apologizing,' her mother said. 'You're an adult now, Ray. Irene. You shouldn't be apologizing all the time.'\n\n'You forgot to say that we were proud of her,' her father noted quietly.\n\n'Oh.' Irene's mother looked embarrassed. 'Darling, we are extremely proud of everything you've done, and we want you to understand that before we leave. You do understand that?'\n\n'Um, thank you,' Irene said. It was something she'd always wanted to hear from them, but now that her mother was finally saying it, she couldn't think of any better response. 'I'm glad. But you're still not answering my question.'\n\nHer father began to speak, then fell silent as Kai opened the door. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'but may I borrow Irene for a moment?'\n\n'Of course,' her father said, waving her towards the door. 'We aren't going anywhere \u2013 though Irene probably should...'\n\nIrene bit back the urge to ask Kai to leave them for just a moment. Instead she joined him in the corridor, closing the door behind her.\n\nThere was a glint of anger in his dark blue eyes, a flash of dragon-red. 'Someone else has entered this house,' he said. 'Our rooms have been searched.'\n\n'Oh, hells,' Irene said. She realized what must have happened, and flushed. 'Just to check \u2013 was it a serious search, or did whoever it was just turn the place over casually?'\n\n'The second,' Kai said. He frowned. 'But they left my belongings alone.'\n\n'That would be my parents,' Irene admitted, feeling embarrassed as well as angry.\n\n'They searched your room? Why?'\n\n'Probably not in detail,' Irene said, trying to reassure him. 'They'd just want to know what I was up to.'\n\nKai looked at her. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. 'Irene, we've never talked that much about your parents. Is there something you want to tell me?'\n\nIrene wished there was a corner to retreat into. 'I have a complicated relationship with my parents. It's a good relationship, but...' But now she had to hurry back to the Library \u2013 and they'd finally been about to answer her questions about adoption. Why did everything have to happen at once?\n\n'You hardly ever see them!'\n\n'Yes, that's why it's a good relationship.' Somewhere in between her parents wanting to know about everything she did and her not wanting to tell them, they'd started checking her rooms while she wasn't there. Not her rooms at the Library, of course. Those were locked. Those were hers.\n\nWas it that surprising that a daughter of spies had developed trust issues, she thought wryly.\n\n'They do it because they worry about me,' she finally said. 'And they don't actually search in depth... look, this is sounding worse by the minute. Possibly our relationship does have a few problems. All families have issues. I don't ask about what goes on in your family, do I?'\n\nShe saw him recoil as she retaliated, and was meanly satisfied for a moment. 'I've been called to the Library,' she said, trying to smooth over the bad feeling. 'But... I need to ask my parents something urgent before I go. Maybe we can discuss this later?'\n\nThe door opened before Kai could answer \u2013 or disagree \u2013 and her father leaned round it. 'Is anything the matter?'\n\n'We're just discussing the brandy,' Irene said, before Kai could interject.\n\n'There won't be time for brandy,' her father said. 'The thought is appreciated, but you really need to go, so we'll leave you to it.'\n\nIrene couldn't let them get away. 'I need to talk to them,' she said again. 'And I apologize for them intruding like that. Because they won't.'\n\n'I think we need to have a serious talk about a few things,' Kai said, quietly. 'Once your parents have left.'\n\nIrene re-entered the lounge and shut the door behind her with a thud. 'I warded this place,' she said. 'I thought it was safe from enemies. I did not expect to have to defend my privacy from other Librarians.'\n\n'If you're sleeping with a dragon prince, then that's something that concerns us,' her father said mildly. As always, his surface calm was smooth and firm. An Olympic ice-skating team could have used it as a rink. 'I think any parent would be worried about that.'\n\nIrene felt the flush creeping into her cheeks again, but this time it was anger as much as embarrassment. 'And if Kai mentions to his father that Librarians have been going through his belongings? What then?'\n\n'We left his stuff alone,' her mother said. She was shrugging her coat on and doing up the fussy little gilt buttons. 'Irene, you are about as communicative as granite underneath a glacier. So far in the last year, you've faced off against Fae, dragon kings and Alberich himself. You were worried about us? Try to understand that we were worried about you.'\n\n'But I wouldn't go through your belongings!' Irene retorted.\n\n'You would if you had the chance,' her mother said.\n\nIrene would have liked to deny that, but... if it was the only way of making sure they were safe, she wouldn't hesitate. And if it was a choice between their safety and her ethics, her ethics would lose. They might be dysfunctional, but they were still a family. Even if she had to know more about her origins. 'Before you walk out on me \u2013 please answer the question this time. How did you adopt me?'\n\nIt was her father who answered, his words slow and unwilling. 'Other Librarians knew that we wanted a child. We couldn't have one. There was no medical reason...'\n\nAlberich had already told Irene it was impossible for two Librarians to have a child, but she wasn't allowing them to get off topic again. So she simply nodded, willing him to continue.\n\n'Another Librarian was pregnant. It wasn't her fault or her choice \u2013 we don't know the full details, we didn't ask. She was going to bear a child that she didn't want. She offered the child to us. It was that simple.'\n\n'Who was the Librarian?' Irene asked. She stepped forward, her hands clenched on the back of a chair. 'Who was she?'\n\n'Nobody you know,' her mother said, voice raw. 'And I heard that she died since.'\n\nIrene felt a distant shock as the facts were laid out. Anger, rather than grief, surged in her at the way this last link to her 'true heritage' had been snatched away, if she could call it that... for if she'd never known her biological mother, how could she feel genuine grief for her death? And yet shouldn't she feel something for her?\n\nShe didn't even know if her parents were telling the truth.\n\n'And that's all?' she finally said.\n\n'What do you want to hear?' her mother demanded. 'Something more romantic? Everyone tried to do the best they could. Do you blame us for it? Were we that bad as parents?'\n\n'No,' Irene said. She didn't hesitate. 'No, you weren't bad parents. You never were.' It might have been a lie; neither she nor they had ever been perfect. But it was what she wanted to say, what she wanted to believe. They were only human, after all.\n\nSlowly her mother lowered her head. 'Then do you forgive us?'\n\nAgain the words came without thinking. 'There's nothing to forgive. You are my parents. That's all there is.'\n\n'You need to get going \u2013 Coppelia will be waiting.' Her father picked up his hat. He paused to give Irene a hug, but it felt more perfunctory than their first embrace, as though the conversation had drawn an invisible line between them. Was it their past history as spies making them this emotionally unavailable \u2013 and was she in danger of repeating their mistakes? 'Urgent Library business won't go away just because you have personal issues, Irene. You should know that by now. We should talk later...'\n\nRunning off to war like a coward! The words drifted through Irene's mind, a relic of some long-forgotten film, but she bit them back. 'Absolutely,' she agreed. 'We should.'\n\nHer mother looked at them. 'Get in touch when you've had time to think things over, Irene. You know how to reach us.'\n\n'When you have the leisure for it,' Irene said, unable to stop the sarcasm from leaking into her voice. She tried to remember they'd volunteered to see her, to check she was safe, but it was hard.\n\n'If you want leisure, then you shouldn't have become a Librarian,' her mother retorted.\n\n'Fine,' Irene muttered, feeling her teenage years surge back on her in an unstoppable tidal wave. Shoulders hunched defensively, she exchanged a brief hug with her mother before dragging the door open. 'Just... take care.'\n\n'And you, Ray darling,' her mother said briskly, trotting out into the hallway and heading remorselessly for the front door.\n\n'Ah, did I miss something?' Kai enquired.\n\n'Everything,' Irene sighed, repressing the urge to snap. 'Kai, I'm really not good company at the moment, and I have to go. I'll be back as soon as I can.'\n\nFor a moment he looked as though he was about to object, but instead he hugged her. 'I'll be here when you get back,' he said.\n\nAs usual, the Library was haunted by the susurration of night-owl Librarians going about their work. The vast weight of books overhanging Irene rose above her until the ceiling was lost in darkness. A few Librarians were sorting books, high up on the steel steps that criss-crossed the shelves like complicated filigree. Irene could hear their shoes ticking against the metal and the occasional thud of books being extracted. The sound was oddly soothing.\n\nShe hurried along the walkway beneath the rows of shelving, conscious of time passing by. Normally she would have expected Coppelia to issue a transfer shift request, which would allow Irene to travel near-instantaneously across the Library to Coppelia's office. Especially as this was supposed to be urgent. But apparently it wasn't urgent enough to justify the energy expenditure, and instead she was left to make her own way. At what was now three \u2013 no, four o'clock \u2013 in the morning. And Coppelia's office had shifted to a position deeper within the Library, which meant a longer walk.\n\nThe only upside was that it gave Irene time to calm down after meeting her parents. It also gave her a chance to consider the assassination attempt against Kai. She and Kai desperately needed a Fae counterpart on the treaty commission, someone who could keep the Fae in check \u2013 if that was even possible.\n\nShe turned left and sped through a tunnel. Here, the walls were lined with books in Russian, stacked two copies deep, their gilt titles flashing as lamps above swayed in some unseen wind. Irene noted them as she would note any nearby book \u2013 Prisoners of Asteroid, A Planet for Tyrants, Alisa Selezneva and her Lens \u2013 but most of her mind was busy.\n\nThe longer Fae committees spent trying to find the most politically suitable candidate, the more they were risking the treaty \u2013 leaving her and Kai open to rogue Fae threats. It had been a month now. Perhaps, as Library representative, it was her duty to report the vacillating committees to their leaders. If the Cardinal and the Princess, among others, wanted this treaty to last then they needed to do their bit.\n\nAnd she'd saved Lord Silver's party, which meant that he owed her a favour too...\n\nShe turned right three more times, climbed a set of steps so high and narrow as to be practically a ladder, and ducked through a pair of rapidly revolving doors. Finally she reached Coppelia's office.\n\nStrictly speaking, there was neither day nor night in the Library. While the windows in some rooms looked out on an outside world, there was no logic to the time of day beyond the glass panes. Sometimes a Librarian might go from one room to another and find that the view had changed from a stormy mountainside to a sunlit landscape. Or they might see a cityscape under a cloudy night sky, with a foreboding moon beyond.\n\nHowever, owing to the necessity of actually communicating with each other, many of the Library's inhabitants woke and slept at roughly similar hours. While they could certainly stay up all night researching, like the Librarians she'd just passed, studying or simply reading, this didn't absolve them from the next day's work.\n\nOnly senior Librarians were able to set their own hours. Or sleep in. So even though it was the middle of the Library's 'night', Coppelia, Irene's mentor, was still awake. She was wrapped in one of her favourite thick blue velvet robes, like a particularly luxurious nun who was going to do any repenting at a much later date, with a pair of scarves twisted around her throat. Her desk, unusually, was almost clear.\n\nHere in Coppelia's study Irene could finally relax. The night outside the window (for this room looked out onto a city in darkness) was peaceful and quiet. A desk lamp burned between the two of them, illuminating the polished surface of Coppelia's wooden hand and striking gleams of light from the gilded icons on the walls.\n\n'My parents said that it was urgent,' she said, breaking the silence. 'Though I'm assuming there are degrees of urgency, since you didn't authorize a rapid transit.'\n\nCoppelia coughed and took a sip from her steaming mug. Irene was unable to identify the drink, except to note that it smelled herbal and unpleasant. 'Yes,' she said. 'We have a week, perhaps two, before the world under threat moves into a very dangerous phase indeed. But we can't be sure how long we have \u2013 or how long it will take you to get the book needed to stabilize it.'\n\n'Is it a straightforward retrieval mission?' Retrieval was a much friendlier word than theft. Some of Irene's jobs were even legal. Though admittedly not many.\n\nCoppelia took her time before answering, long enough for all Irene's mental alarm bells to go off. 'It's a little different from your usual sort of job. In a way, it's taking advantage of the current political climate.'\n\n'Dancing round the subject isn't going to make me more enthusiastic about it.'\n\n'It's human behaviour. Like being polite to your elders,' Coppelia said pointedly.\n\nIrene considered her tutor's words. Carefully, she said, 'I apologize if I'm a little touchy at the moment. I've just come from speaking with my parents \u2013 and, well, you know that we have some issues.'\n\n'Very good. Apology accepted,' Coppelia said. 'Now, where were we? Yes, the new job. You're looking for a copy of the Egyptian text The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. It's a Middle Kingdom work, which puts it somewhere between 2000 and 1700 BC. Very roughly. Do you know it?'\n\n'The name's vaguely familiar. I think my father probably mentioned it at some point, given his area of expertise.' Her father was one of the Library's specialists in hieroglyphs and Egyptian texts, but Irene herself had never really been interested in the language or the literature. 'Are you sure I'm the best person for this job?'\n\n'In terms of your scholarly areas of expertise, no,' Coppelia said, 'but in practical terms, yes. There are a few wrinkles...'\n\nOf course there are. 'Please go on.'\n\n'The version we are seeking is from Gamma-017,' Coppelia said.\n\nIrene sat bolt upright in her chair. 'That's where I was at school!'\n\n'Yes, that Swiss boarding school with the language specialization. You've told me about it often enough. For reasons we haven't yet managed to confirm, they've had an extreme swing towards chaos over the last week. We urgently need a copy of that book to restabilize the world.'\n\n'My past seems to be coming home to roost,' Irene said drily, thinking of her parental visit. 'Is this the practical reason why I'm getting this job? Because I know the world from personal experience? I'm assuming there isn't already a Librarian-in-Residence.'\n\nThere hadn't been one when she was at boarding school there, after all; and there were never enough Librarians-in-Residence. In fact \u2013 and the thought wasn't a comforting one \u2013 there weren't enough Librarians, full stop. She'd been told that by someone she'd come to distrust, but Coppelia had confirmed it later. They really were that thin on the ground. And they couldn't afford to let it be known. If the Fae or the dragons should suspect that the Library was weak \u2013 well, peace was all fine and good, but weak neighbours were an open invitation to exert political pressure. Or worse.\n\n'No,' Coppelia said. She coughed again and drank some more of her tea. 'That wasn't the reason you were selected. This particular copy of The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor that we're after is insanely rare, which is why it's so vital in terms of its ability to stabilize the world. There's a chapter in the Gamma-017 version which doesn't occur in any other world's editions. All copies of this version have been lost \u2013 except for this one copy that made it off-world. It's possible that with time and effort we might be able to locate another copy on Gamma-017, but we simply don't have time. Our best projections are that in ten days the world will move into the conglomerative stage of chaos \u2013 where it will be irreversibly trapped in that state.'\n\nFlashes of memory twitched through Irene's mind, like the turning pages of a book. People she'd known when she was a child, and then a teenager \u2013 teachers, friends, even enemies \u2013 and places that she remembered. Worlds swallowed up by chaos became places where stories came true. But the human beings who lived in those worlds might as well be dolls, moving through the steps of those stories. Their personalities became nothing but changing masks to suit the whims of the great Fae who ruled them.\n\nShe would not let that happen to people she had known and cared about.\n\n'Well, you clearly see an alternative to eternal chaos,' she said, her voice brisk and very nearly cheerful. 'So what happened to this one copy that went off-world?'\n\n'Nine out of ten for a positive attitude,' Coppelia said. 'Try to keep it that way. We're aware of a particular collector who owns this book, which he somehow acquired from Gamma-017. In keeping with the current new world order of peace and negotiation and all that, we \u2013 the Library, that is \u2013 are giving you clearance to go and negotiate with him.'\n\nIrene considered what that implied. 'It's clearly not someone resident on Gamma-017,' she said, 'or you wouldn't have said the book was \"lost\" on that world. You've mentioned the treaty, so it's a dragon or a Fae aficionado. And you must think it's possible to negotiate with him, or we wouldn't be trying. What's the catch?'\n\n'The Fae in question is eccentric. All powerful Fae are, of course, but this one is even more so than usual.'\n\nIrene nodded. The more powerful a Fae was, the more they fell into narrative tropes and stereotypes. It gave them unpredictable abilities \u2013 a seducer became nearly irresistible, a manipulator could convince anyone of anything, a gunman could pull off impossible shots. But that also made it nearly impossible for them to perceive reality, except through their own specific archetype. The trick, as she'd learned from experience, was to find out what that archetype was and somehow use it against them. 'Do I know him?'\n\n'You may have heard of him, but probably not through Library channels. His name is Mr Nemo.'\n\nIrene searched her memory, and came up blank. 'No, I don't know him,' she said. 'But any Fae who goes round calling themselves Nemo is probably going to be enigmatic and secretive. Even if they don't own a submarine.'\n\n'Correct. Ten out of ten.' Coppelia refilled her cup from the samovar on a corner of her desk. 'Anyhow, this Mr Nemo is a... collector. A billionaire. The sort of person who has their own Caribbean island and fills it with illegally obtained treasures. Who throws around the sort of money that makes governments forget he even exists, causing them to wipe his criminal records clean. Except there aren't any criminal records, because Mr Nemo never existed, and anyone who looks too closely at the evidence \u2013 which also doesn't exist \u2013 will be feeding the fishes. He favours piranhas, I'm told, or sharks. It depends on the climate.'\n\n'Interesting. I can see how that persona might work inside a given world, if he's tied in with organized crime. But if he's a Fae, how does all that translate into influence among his own kind?'\n\n'He's a fixer,' Coppelia said. 'That is the current term, isn't it? He can put person A in touch with person B and takes a commission from both of them in the process. He's not a manipulator like the Cardinal.' She tactfully ignored Irene's grimace. 'But, as they say, he knows people. And he collects things. And people, too. He's also been carefully staying unaligned for several centuries now.'\n\n'And among other things, he obtained this book,' Irene said. 'How did we find out?'\n\n'My dear Irene, there are two sorts of collector. One is satisfied by simply owning the treasured item and doesn't care whether or not the rest of the world knows. But the other sort \u2013 they absolutely have to brag about their possessions. For them, half the pleasure comes from the thought of acquaintances gnawing their guts out with envy. Even if it increases the risk of theft, they can't help themselves.'\n\n'I suppose we do make the ideal audience too,' Irene said. 'So did he brag to a Librarian?'\n\n'Not precisely.' Coppelia slid open a desk drawer, her wooden fingers clicking on the handle, and pulled out a thick pamphlet. 'He sent us a catalogue of part of his collection.'\n\n'Ooh,' Irene said with appreciation, extending her hand for it hopefully.\n\nCoppelia rapped her knuckles with the closed pamphlet. 'Not so fast. I know it's late at night for you, but think it through first.'\n\nIrene pulled her fingers back, considering. 'Does he want his collection stolen for some reason? Or is this a convenient lure for Librarians \u2013 a baited hook with a net at his end?' She frowned. 'Or is it a shopping list specifically aimed at us? Because he really, really wants to have the Library in his little black book of contacts... and he's willing to wait until we can't find a particular text any other way than by coming to him?'\n\n'Partly the second, but mostly the third,' Coppelia said. 'That's why we don't let junior Librarians know about his collection \u2013 they'd get ideas.'\n\n'And have we never dealt with him before?'\n\n'A few times,' Coppelia admitted. 'At very senior levels, and on a very specific quid pro quo basis. No open-ended bargains. It was felt that if we never ever made any deals with him, he'd realize that he had us over a barrel if we finally showed up. Better to have him think that he's one of our many resources rather than an absolute last-ditch option, with the prices that go with it.'\n\n'Right,' Irene said thoughtfully. 'So item one on the list of things not to mention is how much we want The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. As far as Mr Nemo's concerned, it's just another item on a semi-regular shopping list from us?'\n\n'Exactly. And item two on the list is that you never make any open-ended promises. Our deals have always consisted of a book \u2013 or an item of art \u2013 for a book. Or very occasionally, a service, specified and defined with fixed end conditions. Don't let him talk you into anything else.' Coppelia folded her hands \u2013 on top of the pamphlet, Irene noted regretfully. 'Given your new position as treaty monitor, he may even think that this is our way of introducing you to him.'\n\n'Just how much can I promise him?' Irene asked. 'What if he wants a particular book, and we only have a single copy here?'\n\n'That's the nice thing,' Coppelia said cheerfully. 'For the Library's purposes, we only ever need the actual story that's in a book. We don't need the original text. If Mr Nemo does want something from our collection, then we can keep a copy and give him the original.'\n\n'I don't suppose we could offer him a cheaper deal, where we just receive a copy of our target manuscript,' Irene suggested, 'and he keeps the original?'\n\n'If he'll accept that, go for it,' Coppelia said. 'But I suspect he won't. He's going to want to wring the maximum value out of it.'\n\n'I was afraid of that. Oh well.' Irene resigned herself to painful negotiations. 'In that case, you just need to tell me where to find him.'\n\n'The world is Alpha-92 and the local period is the nineteen-eighties. The Library entrance to the world is in Rome, so you'll have a bit of travelling to reach his home. Lair. Private Caribbean island. Whatever you want to call it. I've put together a pack with information and a letter of introduction. The usual.'\n\nThe words private Caribbean island danced in Irene's head. Of course this was an incredibly important mission, vital to the survival of a world she loved, and important to the Library... but it was also an excuse to get away from London in winter. A cold, miserable, wet winter.\n\nAnother thought struck her. 'How high-chaos is Alpha-92, and will it be an issue if Kai comes too? You know that he's going to want to. And it would make the whole \"diplomatic introduction\" excuse more plausible.'\n\n'It's just about the same chaos level as Vale's world. And Kai...' Coppelia frowned. 'I know I don't need to warn you about this, but make sure that he doesn't sign any deals either. I'm sure Mr Nemo would be only too delighted to entangle him in his web.'\n\n'A very dramatic way of putting it,' Irene noted.\n\nCoppelia laughed, a wheezy cackle that dissolved into coughing. She drank more of her tisane, mouth twisting in a grimace. 'This stuff is disgusting.'\n\n'Are you all right?' Irene asked. She knew from experience just how much Coppelia disliked being reminded of age or frailty, but the older Librarian had never coughed this much in the past.\n\n'I still haven't got over winter in Paris,' Coppelia said, her voice creaky. 'All that damn snow. Don't worry about me, Irene. It just takes longer to bounce back when you're older. I'm not going anywhere. You, on the other hand, are off to the Caribbean.' She slid a folder across the desk to Irene. 'Any final questions?'\n\n'If we know he has it, couldn't we just steal it?' Irene asked bluntly.\n\n'Theoretically yes, but in practice probably no. His security is very, very good. And if you did try to steal it and failed, he'd raise the price.'\n\n'Fair enough. I do have one last question \u2013 has he signed up to the treaty?'\n\n'I don't think he's even acknowledged it exists yet,' Coppelia said. 'He's in an interesting position. If he does agree to abide by it, it'll restrict some of his actions, but at the same time, if he doesn't acknowledge it, then he's open to attacks by either side... Be careful. Be diplomatic. Try not to blow anything up.'\n\n'Your trust in me is a constant comfort,' Irene muttered. But she knew it was the closest Coppelia would come to expressing outright concern. 'I'll be as quick as possible. Keep drinking that tea.'\n\nAnd if she was really lucky, perhaps Kai would be so intrigued by this assignment that he would forget all about her parents \u2013 and that talk he'd requested. Then she could get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a very busy day.\n\nKai was positively bounding with enthusiasm in the thin morning light as it filtered through the fog. He had reacted to Irene's news about the world where she'd gone to school with genuine sympathy. However, he was clearly excited at the thought of high-level negotiations \u2013 and the possibility of demonstrating to his father just how efficient he could be in his new position. (Irene's attempt to point out that it wasn't strictly a treaty mission had been shot down on the spot.)\n\nIn addition, the thought of a private island in the Caribbean had much to recommend it. Couple this with the fact that they'd be getting away from assassination attempts and Lord Silver's machinations for a week or two, and Irene could almost share his high spirits. Several cups of coffee had helped. She'd returned at an ungodly hour in the morning, and there had been all the business of updating Kai before she could sleep.\n\nWell, that and the fact that there were far more interesting things she and Kai could do besides sleeping.\n\n'I'm not sure what the most appropriate garb would be, for this season in the Caribbean,' Kai mused as they exited their cab outside the Liechtenstein Embassy. Irene had discussed her thoughts on the Fae treaty representative, and he'd agreed to let her fight it out with Lord Silver. 'You'll want to dress for your new role as a Library representative, of course.'\n\n'We can probably get something in Rome while we're booking our plane tickets,' Irene said. Part of her rebelled against wasting valuable time in shopping. But if she showed up on Mr Nemo's doorstep looking hurried and desperate, his price for the book would go through the roof. Even humans knew how to take advantage of customers who had no other options.\n\nThey were stopped at the Embassy threshold by Johnson, Silver's personal servant. As usual, he was a study in dullness, almost aggressively bland compared to his master's flamboyance, and so very good at fading into the background. 'How may I assist you?' he asked. His tone was so neutral it could have been used for a dictionary definition: first person, uninterested.\n\n'We're here to see Lord Silver,' Irene said, with a coffee-fuelled attempt at a smile. 'And no, we don't have an appointment. I apologize for calling in the morning...'\n\nJohnson hesitated. 'If you'll wait a moment, madame.' He stepped back into the building, closing the door in their faces.\n\n'I'm not sure how our current state of polite truce equates with us being left to wait on the doorstep,' Kai muttered.\n\n'Maybe it depends on what gets tipped on our heads from the windows above,' Irene speculated. 'Full hostilities would be boiling oil, invitation to a party would be a bottle of champagne, and a declaration of minor irritation would be just a pot of tea.'\n\nThen the door swung open and they were escorted reluctantly over the threshold.\n\nThe interior of the Embassy was strewn with debris from the previous night's party. Glasses and dishes still littered the room, licentious pamphlets were scattered across the floor and stockings dangled from the lampshades. A solitary cravat had been nailed to the wall with a gemmed stiletto, and the remnants of a game of cards were splashed with wine and blood.\n\nWhen they passed the main staircase, Kai frowned. 'Isn't Silver in his bedroom?'\n\n'Not at the moment,' Johnson said. 'Will you be wishing to see him in his bedroom, sir?'\n\nKai opened his mouth to say something which would probably have scorched the walls, looked at Irene sidelong, then simply said, 'I'd hate to think we'd dragged the poor fellow out of bed for such a very minor thing as our visit.'\n\n'Fortunately for you, princeling, I never went to bed.' The room they entered was full of feeble morning sunlight, making the furniture and wallpaper look even more expensive and tawdry than usual. Silver was still in last night's dinner wear, sprawled in an armchair, cravat hanging loose and collar open. His jacket lay disconsolately in a corner, and his shirt was stained with lipstick \u2013 at least, Irene hoped it was lipstick. He nursed a glass full of a greenish concoction which was probably not herbal tea.\n\nAcross the card table from him sat Sterrington, upright as a wooden doll, still immaculately dressed and gloved. Scattered across the table between them was an ongoing game of cards. Both players had turned their hands down.\n\n'Gambling, I presume,' Kai said repressively. He raised an eyebrow, much as Irene had seen his father do once before. 'I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. What are your stakes?'\n\n'The souls of men,' Silver said cheerfully. He took a sip from his glass. 'Would you like some?'\n\n'It's a little early for me,' Irene replied, 'and we won't keep you from your game. I called about a business matter. Oh, and to let you know Kai and I will be absent from London for the next few days.'\n\n'You can't just waltz off like that!' Silver protested. 'What if you're needed here?'\n\n'I haven't been needed so far,' Irene pointed out. 'And you Fae have yet to choose a representative from your side. That's the business matter.'\n\nSilver frowned. 'My dear little mouse, do I strike you as some sort of vulgar businessman?'\n\n'You're the Liechtenstein ambassador. You run one of the biggest spy networks in London. You throw parties which tie up half the city's police. All these things keep you very busy.'\n\n'True, but those are all the employments of a gentleman,' Silver scoffed.\n\n'Ah. So you're disclaiming all responsibility for choosing a Fae treaty representative?'\n\nSterrington stiffened like a hound on point, and Silver set his glass down with an abrupt click. 'No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that at all. Why this sudden pressure, Miss Winters?'\n\nThe change in address was a welcome sign that he was taking her seriously. 'We all know now that Rudolf was going to assassinate Kai last night. Kai was vulnerable not just because he was attending the party, but because he is the dragon representative. And sooner or later someone else will take a shot, and they might be better at it than Rudolf. Without an appointed Fae representative on the treaty commission, any Fae may think they can take action against Kai\u2014'\n\n'Or against you,' Kai put in.\n\n'Yes, though I hope that there aren't too many Fae out there who dislike Librarians on principle.'\n\n'You'd be surprised,' Sterrington said unhelpfully.\n\nIrene tried not to stare at the ceiling and pray for strength too obviously. 'Look, we need a Fae treaty representative as soon as possible. Not just for our sakes, either. You are both involved with the treaty's success. I would like to point out in the strongest terms that if something Fae-inspired happens to me or Kai, it's going to go up in flames. And you will be held responsible. I understand that there's been some debate about who to appoint.' Partly caused by the fact that Silver didn't want the job himself but was unwilling to relinquish it to anyone else. 'When we return, I hope there will have been a decision. Without any more disruptions at your parties, Lord Silver.'\n\n'I'm still not happy about you vanishing like this,' Sterrington said, betraying her own interest. 'What if there's an emergency?'\n\nIrene shrugged. 'Let's hope there won't be. Besides, when I was given this post, it was in addition to my duties as a Librarian. Those duties are calling.'\n\n'And Prince Kai?' Sterrington said.\n\n'I'm tagging along,' Kai said, his tone cool. 'Do you have a problem with that?'\n\n'It might be inconvenient.'\n\n'Your convenience is hardly my concern.'\n\nIrene glanced sideways at Kai. She'd asked him to be firm but fair, but he was drifting into the territory of deliberate rudeness. Then she remembered Sterrington had worked for Kai's kidnappers, so she swiftly changed the subject. 'I'm not expecting anything urgent to come up in our absence. Are you?'\n\n'Of course not,' Sterrington said. But her eyes were dark with thought, and Irene wondered if she'd had other reasons for coming to this London besides stopping Rudolf.\n\n'I don't suppose you'd like to tell us where you're going, my dear Irene? And why?' Silver interjected.\n\n'No, I wouldn't. Library business.' Irene smiled at Silver, showing teeth. 'And since we've fulfilled our obligations \u2013 shall we leave, Kai?'\n\n'With pleasure,' he replied.\n\n'Perhaps we'll have some good news for you when you get back,' Silver called after her. 'We are having the most interesting discussions...'\n\nAnd that almost made Irene hesitate in her plan to force Silver to sort out the Fae representative. Leaving those two behind, together, was a little too close to leaving cats in charge of the kitchen while the cook went out shopping.\n\nBut her mission couldn't wait. They had a plane to catch. Several planes.\n\n'Forty-two?' The customs officer looked Irene up and down.\n\n'I've always had people tell me how young I look,' Irene said, smiling helpfully. The Library had provided a couple of fake passports for this world; unfortunately the age on the woman's passport was noticeably higher than Irene's own thirty-something.\n\nThe officer didn't look entirely satisfied, but there was an impatient queue growing audibly more impatient. With a sigh he stamped Irene's passport and waved her in the direction of Customs.\n\nKai fell into step beside her. The crowd of people moving through Miami airport was thick enough to cover up the noise of casual conversation. 'It's good to be able to stretch my legs,' he said.\n\n'Enjoy it while you can,' Irene said gloomily. They joined the crowd by the luggage belt, a jostling mass of padded shoulders and linen jackets, moussed hair and ankle socks. 'I suspect we have more travelling ahead of us. The Library's directions end here \u2013 Mr Nemo wouldn't give them any more information as to his whereabouts.'\n\n'This shows a truly ridiculous level of paranoia.' Kai plucked Irene's case from the belt with casual strength, then his own a moment later. 'If he's really as powerful as his reputation implies, why is this Mr Nemo so secretive?'\n\nIrene thought about it as they headed for a phone booth \u2013 the last instruction she'd been given by Coppelia. The Library's link to this world, Alpha-92, was via the Vatican Library, which meant they'd had to route their trip through Rome. Travelling via the Library was a wonderful thing, but it only had one fixed exit to any given world. 'Maybe it helps build Nemo's reputation. If he was easy to reach, he'd be less sought after. Like designer clothing. It's the mystique that counts, even if you could get a good imitation at a tenth of the price.'\n\n'Well, he is Fae,' Kai said. 'Don't look at me like that, Irene. I will control my tongue in his presence. But if he has agents already watching us, then we might as well give up now.'\n\nThey reached the booth. 'Stand guard, please,' she requested, and lined up a row of change on the top of the phone. This might be a long call.\n\nShe dialled a number \u2013 one she'd memorized from the list of instructions in the Library folder \u2013 and the phone was picked up after a single ring. 'Who is this?' a voice demanded.\n\n'A person seeking an expensive item,' Irene replied.\n\n'Can you give me any identification?'\n\n'I speak for my organization, and our nominated phrase is, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.' She wondered who'd chosen the Hamlet quotation: the Library, or Mr Nemo?\n\nThere was a pause, then the sound of tapping keys and faint murmurs. Irene fed more change into the phone. Finally the voice said, 'And your own name?'\n\n'Irene. Often known as Irene Winters.'\n\nMore murmuring. 'And the item you require?'\n\n'I would rather not discuss that over an open line.'\n\n'Very good.' The voice didn't sound as if it had actually expected her to give details. 'Where are you currently?'\n\n'Miami airport, with one other person.'\n\n'Another Librarian?'\n\n'No. A dragon. Prince Kai, son of Ao Guang, King of the Eastern Ocean.'\n\nAnother pause. 'Very good. Please hold.'\n\nIrene pushed more money into the phone as she waited.\n\n'How's it going?' Kai murmured over his shoulder. He was watching the ebb and swell of the airport crowd, casual in his new designer jacket and linen trousers. Unfortunately the nineteen-eighties in this world didn't have cheap mobile phones and laptops \u2013 but they did at least have Armani.\n\n'All right, I think,' Irene said. 'So far.'\n\nThe voice spoke again. 'Do you have a pen and paper?'\n\nIrene bit back a sigh of relief and propped her notepad against the wall. 'Yes.'\n\n'Take the next available plane to Paradise Island in the Bahamas \u2013 that'll be the ten-thirty on Paradise Island Airlines. Two seats are being held for you under the names Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. When you've arrived, go to the transport desk at the right of the entrance and say you require transport to the Golden House. You'll need to identify yourself again too \u2013 when you're asked why you're there, say it's for the shark-fishing. From there, transport will be arranged to your final destination. Have you got that?'\n\nIrene repeated the instructions.\n\n'We'll be seeing you soon, Miss Winters.'\n\nThe line went dead.\n\nIrene hung the receiver back up and turned to Kai. 'We're in the hands of experts,' she said drily. 'Let's hope we can trust them.'\n\nIt was late night as the small plane descended towards Paradise Island. Irene peered out of the window but was disappointed to see a well-lit but fairly standard casino and resort, rather than anything more Amazonian. Bridges below spanned the ocean, linking Paradise Island to Nassau, their lights strung across the dark waters like jewels. Beside her, in the aisle seat, Kai leafed thoughtfully through a tourist brochure.\n\nIt had taken only a few minutes on the plane to identify half a dozen men and women who were carrying guns, were distinctive enough to be Fae, or who were just plain suspicious. Other visitors for Mr Nemo? A convention of some sort? There was the woman with the black veil, furs and sharpened fingernails, each nail varnished and gleaming. Another man wore formal dinner wear, his only luggage a pack of cards which he dealt out and reshuffled in irritating repetition on his drop-down table. One elderly individual in first class was so withered and wrapped in coats that their gender was impossible to distinguish. But the figure was sipping brandy as though Prohibition would be redeclared tomorrow.\n\nConversation died when the plane began to descend. But that didn't lessen the feeling of danger on the plane, a raw edge that had certain individuals watching their fellow passengers. Perhaps they knew something Irene didn't and were planning countermeasures for when something \u2013 anything \u2013 happened. She and Kai weren't immune from this general scanning for threats; in fact, they might be the most dangerous people there.\n\nIn hindsight, Irene could see she'd made one possible mistake. While she herself was not particularly distinctive, Kai was quite visibly a dragon to anyone who knew how to look. His features went beyond handsome and into beautiful, capturing the perfection of an ink-drawing or a marble statue which had stepped down into life. If you could look into a human's face and see the spirit behind their eyes like a candle flame, then by comparison a dragon was an electric light or a raging conflagration. And that was only their human form. If anyone on the plane had a problem with dragons, then Kai might be a target.\n\nHowever, as the plane's wheels bumped against the tarmac, she knew she had to focus on her mission. She only had nine days now. That might not be enough. Stepping off the plane, she knew that she'd underrated the danger of their companions. The passengers eyed each other like wolves waiting for a moment of weakness. The air was balmy and the distant sound of music echoed across the landing field, but tension sang in the air, twisting tighter with every passing moment.\n\nSomething very bad is going on, she thought, and I don't even know what it is. How embarrassing if we end up getting shot because of someone else's drama...\n\nA man whom Irene had tentatively pegged as Yakuza \u2013 the tattoos showing at his wrists, the line of the gun under his jacket, the Japanese he'd been speaking to his female companion \u2013 politely gestured Irene to go ahead. Irene smiled at him and his partner (who was camouflaging a katana in an apparently innocent golf-club bag) and walked on through, past Customs and into the entrance hall.\n\nAt this time of night, there weren't that many people around, but those who were there were... lurking. There was no other word for it. They lounged on benches, apparently scrutinizing books or checking their watches, but their attention was all on the new arrivals.\n\nWith a surge of relief, Irene realized that the lurkers weren't just watching her and Kai \u2013 they were eyeing all the newcomers. It was as if they knew that there was someone suspicious on the flight but didn't know their identity. In which case, this would be the wrong moment to panic and make a run for it.\n\nShe caught Kai's eye and did her best to communicate, act normally, as she pulled her case over to the transport desk at the right of the entrance.\n\nThe young woman sitting there put down her magazine and looked up. 'Can I help you?' she asked, her tone bored.\n\n'I think so,' Irene said. She kept her voice at a low, conversational pitch, hoping that it wouldn't carry. 'I need transport to the Golden House for two.'\n\nBut her precautions were in vain. As soon as Mr Nemo's directions were out of her mouth, she heard from behind her, 'Make that for three.'\n\nIrene turned round to look into the barrel of a gun.\n\nIrene tried to focus on the face of the man holding the gun, rather than the gun itself. To be fair, it was always difficult in this sort of situation to move one's eyes from the dark circle of the barrel. He hadn't been on the plane with them. A cigarette dangled from the corner of the man's mouth. And while his clothing was expensive \u2013 silk jacket, linen slacks, a Rolex gleaming heavily on his wrist \u2013 his sunglasses were cheap and tacky.\n\nHowever, the gun was the important thing.\n\n'I beg your pardon?' she said, trying \u2013 and failing \u2013 to sound innocent.\n\n'Me. You. Headed for Golden House,' the man said. His cigarette jerked as he spoke. 'And if anyone else gets any smart ideas about coming along\u2014'\n\nThere was the chuff of a silenced gunshot. Irene couldn't tell what direction it had come from, but the gunman abruptly tumbled forward, his pistol clattering against the floor. She stepped back fastidiously as blood began to spread from the fallen body.\n\nFor a moment the room was absolutely silent.\n\nThen figures in black came screaming down from the ceiling, dangling on uncoiling ropes. Their blades gleamed as they unsheathed them mid-drop.\n\nA fusillade of gunfire rattled through the room as innocent-seeming tourist after innocent-seeming tourist pulled out revolvers and automatics \u2013 blasting away at the ninjas and each other. Others drew blades \u2013 swords, daggers and even, to Irene's overtaxed eyes, a metal-edged lasso. They retreated into corners to defend themselves or took advantage of the situation to stab potential opponents from behind. The very few people who were genuinely innocent tourists ran screaming for the exits.\n\nKai caught Irene up in his arms and leapt across the information desk, dropping behind it. Irene found herself shoulder to shoulder with the receptionist. There was just about enough cover for all of them if they crammed in tight.\n\nIrene grabbed the girl's arm. 'What the hell is going on?' she demanded.\n\nThe girl rolled her eyes as if that was the stupidest question since Is water wet? with a side option on Is fire hot? 'Don't ask me, miss, I just do the travel bookings.'\n\nRight. And you're displaying an astonishing lack of panic. If you're not working for Mr Nemo directly, then you know someone who is. Irene pulled her instructions to mind. 'We need transport to the Golden House, as I said. We're here for the shark-fishing. The names are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.' She winced and ducked further down, as what sounded like a machine pistol stitched a row of holes in the wall above their heads. 'Will that be enough?'\n\n'That'll be fine,' the girl said cheerfully. Her clothing was standard travel-agent gear, but her earrings and necklace were \u2013 in Irene's estimation \u2013 solid gold and genuine pearls. The sort of jewellery that cost far more than a desk clerk's salary. Definitely on someone's payroll. 'You'll need to go back out to where the planes are, look for the small seaplane down the end with the green banding and speak to the pilot. He'll ask you\u2014'\n\nHer words were drowned out for a moment by a furious shriek.\n\n'Tourists,' the girl muttered. 'He'll ask you where you want to go, you tell him Denmark, then you get on board and do what he says. You got that? And this lot won't kill you \u2013 until they've tortured you for those directions, that is.'\n\n'This is ridiculous,' Kai snapped.\n\nIrene agreed, but decided to complain about it later. 'Got it,' she said. 'Will you be all right?'\n\n'Nice of you to ask, but don't worry. There's a trapdoor under here.' The girl tapped the floor. 'We get this sort of thing a lot, though I have to say this is worse than usual. Good luck catching your plane!'\n\nThe trapdoor opened with a click, and the girl slid through it like an eel, vanishing into the darkness below. It closed behind her before Irene had managed to do more than think it might be a good idea to follow. She wondered what this crowd wanted with Mr Nemo, and whether she really wanted to find him herself.\n\nBut all she said was, 'So, any ideas how we get through that mob?'\n\n'Can you use the Language?'\n\nIrene grimaced. While the Language could affect reality itself, it wasn't always the right tool for the job. 'I can't tell them not to perceive us; there are too many of them. Bringing the ceiling down would hit us too. I could tell the floor to hold their feet, but so many of them have guns, and they don't need to be able to move to shoot.'\n\nShe checked briefly round the side of the desk: the general brawl had dissolved into individual fights. The weaker participants, and a lot of the ninjas, had fled the scene or died. This was actually an improvement. People focusing on a specific opponent might be less likely to spot her and Kai making a run for it. 'If we move along the back wall here, staying behind the checkin desks as much as possible, that gets us to within twenty yards of the customs hall. Have you noticed the suspicious total lack of security guards?'\n\n'Yes. Have you noticed how fresh the paint is on the walls here? And the bullet scars it's covering up?'\n\n'I have now,' Irene said. 'This must be a regular through-point for anyone visiting Mr Nemo. But is it normal for there to be such a crowd of opportunists? What do they all want?'\n\nKai coughed. 'You know, Irene, usually you're the one telling me to act, not theorize... Besides, we need to go before the chaos level gets any higher.'\n\nThere was indeed a definite sense of chaos in the air, like the tension before a thunderstorm. And if Irene could perceive it, then Kai \u2013 as a dragon, a creature of order \u2013 would be feeling it ten times as much. She glanced up to check the rafters, but there weren't any more ninjas \u2013 or at least, none she could see. They were ninjas, after all.\n\n'Let's get to it, then,' she said. 'Leave the suitcases \u2013 it's only clothing. On three: one, two, three...'\n\nThey bolted sideways, scuttling along with their heads lowered. Irene clutched her small briefcase, leaving Kai with his hands free. She had no delusions about who was more effective in hand-to-hand combat.\n\nThe next checkin desk along had been deserted by its occupant, but the lines of a similar trapdoor in the floor indicated where they'd gone. A knife whipped through the air above them, embedding itself in the wall.\n\n'Damn,' Kai muttered. 'Spotted.'\n\n'As long as nobody yells, \"Stop them, they're getting away...\"' Irene answered, before realizing just how stupid it had been to say that. Another reason to curse Fae powers: once you were in their vicinity, it was far too easy to fall into stereotypical patterns.\n\n'Stop them!' a female voice shrieked on cue. 'They're getting away!'\n\nOne of the surviving ninjas came hurtling over the desk, twin knives gleaming in his hands. Kai straightened and, with a fluidity which came from a life of martial arts training, caught the man's ankle. He swung him into the wall. As the ninja slid to the floor in a tangle of black-clad limbs, they made a dash for it.\n\n'Madame!' A short blond man with a finely waxed moustache threw himself into Irene's path. 'Name of a little blue ox, you must listen! I require your help to obtain an original ikon of St Cyril\u2014'\n\nIrene whacked him in the face with her briefcase and kept running.\n\nSomething \u2013 someone \u2013 came whizzing in from her left in a whirl of silk scarves and gleaming nails. Kai threw himself forward and intercepted a bare-handed strike aimed at Irene's neck. It was the woman from the plane, but now there was blood dripping from her nails, and they glistened with an oily shine that screamed Poison.\n\nThe woman feinted, then lashed out at Kai, and he parried, falling back. 'Keep going,' he said over his shoulder.\n\nIrene didn't argue; she burst into a run, circling round a pair of bare-handed fighters who were busy kicking each other into the nearest desks.\n\nThe room was full of screaming \u2013 and gunshots echoed from the rafters.\n\nA gunman slid along the floor, blasting away at the other side of the room. Irene hiked up her skirt and vaulted over him, before ducking a heavy-set bearded man with grasping hands like hams. He'd somehow lost his shirt in the last ninety seconds and his chest hair was smeared with blood and oil. Do I want to know? No. I don't want to know.\n\nShe'd nearly made it to the baggage area, when she skidded to a halt. Two women in leather trench coats had staked out the area for their personal duel. Their blades \u2013 one a katana, the other a heavy broadsword \u2013 were drawn and they eyed each other with the calm of warriors waiting for the perfect moment to strike.\n\nAnd they were in her way.\n\nThen yet another gun poked into her back. At this rate her jacket was going to develop creases. 'Hey, dame,' a male voice snarled in heavy Brooklyn Gangster, 'you wanna make both our lives easier and tell me how to get to Mr Nemo, or do I have to get nasty?'\n\nPanic helpfully concentrated Irene's mind. 'You perceive that the woman who knows about Mr Nemo is going that way!' she said, pointing between the two swordswomen.\n\nThe Language took hold of his perceptions and adjusted them. With a snort, he pushed Irene aside, stalking up towards the duellists. His shoulders beneath his ill-fitting jacket were as broad as his accent, and the pistol in his hand was a very real thing that would fire very real bullets. The two women both took a step back as he charged between them. Irene sprinted forward, following the big thug's tracks. Once she was past the swordswomen, she put her fingers to her lips and whistled hard. She saw Kai's head turn in her direction. He'd know to follow.\n\nThe baggage hall was now deserted apart from the man who'd preceded her. Luggage carousels rotated, carrying suitcases round and round in an endless quest for their owners. The noise of combat coming from the entrance hall gave Irene a renewed surge of energy, and she headed for the far door.\n\n'Hold it \u2013 right there!' The words alone wouldn't have stopped Irene, but the bullet cracking past her did. She raised her hands and turned to see the thug stalking towards her.\n\nHe was such a truly perfect example of the genus Thug, species American Thirties Gangster, that he had to be Fae. The slicked-back hair, the double-breasted suit, the fedora, the polished wingtip shoes \u2013 and, of course, the ready gun in his hand. 'Now I don't see no one round here who knows a thing,' he said, 'except for you, lady. So you tell me who you're working for. The Cardinal? The Grail King? The Orisha? The Shogun? Or is it someone else?'\n\nThe effect of the Language hadn't worn off yet. That was good. Once he realized that she could affect his mind by talking to him \u2013 well, that was the point when people became nervous. Therefore dangerous. Unfortunately, the Language wouldn't stop a bullet mid-air. 'Powerful names,' she said carefully. 'If you think I work for one of them, then you shouldn't get in my way.'\n\n'Yeah, yeah.' He yawned; gold-capped teeth showed. But his eyes stayed on her, cold and focused. 'I'll make a deal. You were with that other guy, right? So you're travelling as a pair. Drop him, take me instead \u2013 we both get to see Mr Nemo. We both win.'\n\n'He's not the kind of guy who likes to be told \"no\",' Irene said, backing towards the grinding luggage conveyors.\n\n'Neither am I, baby,' the thug answered. He took a step nearer her. 'Now look, I've made you a good offer. Do I need to start shooting a few non-essential bits off you, or should I go to your friend instead?'\n\nHe sounded confident enough, but there was an edge of urgency to his words. It was only a matter of time before someone else found her and made their own offer.\n\nShe opened her mouth as if to agree, then gasped, looking over his shoulder.\n\nIt was one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it had become a clich\u00e9 because it generally worked. He turned, bringing up his gun.\n\nAnd Irene dived for cover behind the conveyor belt. 'Luggage, hit that man!' she shouted in the Language.\n\nShe couldn't see with her head down, but the noises were fairly descriptive. When silence fell and she raised her head, there was just a single shoed foot protruding from underneath a heap of suitcases.\n\nFortunately her own small briefcase, which had been caught up in the Language's effects, was near the top of the pile. She extricated it with a yank, then turned at the sound of footsteps. Kai came skidding through the far doorway. 'Over here!' she called.\n\nThen she saw the people a few paces behind him.\n\nThere were doors between the baggage area and the exit hall. They were the heavy sort of folding metal doors that were saved for emergencies, activated by computer controls rather than by anything as simple as someone swinging them shut. At the moment they were drawn back and locked in place.\n\nIrene set her jaw. That was about to change.\n\nShe braced herself. 'Folding doors between the luggage hall and the exit hall,' she ordered, 'close and lock!'\n\nThat cost her. It was harder work than changing a single person's perception or throwing suitcases. Grinding metal echoed through the room as the doors strained against their current position, screeching against the floor. They slammed together barely a foot behind Kai, shielding him from a fusillade of blows and gunfire.\n\nKai wiped a line of blood from his forehead. He'd lost his jacket somewhere in the brawl. 'Are you all right?' he demanded.\n\n'I'll do,' Irene said, trying to ignore the incipient headache. Really, this was quite a minor use of the Language. It must be the high chaos level getting to her. 'But unfortunately I've made it very clear that the Library's involved. Let's hope that doesn't come back to bite us.'\n\nOut on the tarmac, there was a row of planes \u2013 but only one had a green stripe on it. The fresh air blowing from the sea was a relief after the sweaty atmosphere of the airport interior, and Irene's headache was starting to recede. They ran to the plane, shouting for the pilot; a cockpit window slid open, and an unshaven face peered out. 'What are you wanting, love?' His accent was pure London, incongruous in the middle of the Caribbean.\n\n'A ride. For two passengers!' A sudden burst of noise came from the building, suggesting that the doors had been broken through and people were about to arrive. Irene added, 'And we need it fast!'\n\n'Where to?'\n\n'Denmark!'\n\n'Just you wait a minute, love, I'll be right with you.'\n\n'I'm not sure we have a minute,' Irene said, bouncing from foot to foot.\n\nA hatch in the side of the plane creaked open, and a rope ladder spilled out. 'Here,' another unshaven man said, peering out. 'And make it quick.'\n\nIrene had learned how to climb rope ladders in gym at school \u2013 the other girls had often objected, but she considered it a useful survival skill. Kai swarmed up after her, and the second crew member pulled the ladder in, slamming the hatch shut. A few bullets pinged off the outside of the plane. 'Better belt yourself in,' he recommended, pointing at a row of seats.\n\nIrene dropped into a seat with a sigh of relief, snapping the seatbelt closed. While the seaplane was battered-looking, with pieces of cargo lashed into place on the walls and floor of the passenger area, the seats themselves were surprisingly modern \u2013 presumably a later addition. She peered out of the window, not sure whether she wanted to see what was going on or not.\n\n'Get in here, Jake,' the first man yelled from the cockpit.\n\nThe shouts from outside receded, drowned out by the noise of propellers as the plane lurched off the ground and clambered into the air.\n\nKai leaned back in his chair, ignoring his seatbelt. 'Well,' he said. 'I'm glad that's over.'\n\nIrene had to agree. 'Though it's depressing that being chased out of an airport by a mob of gangsters, ninjas and assorted weaponry experts can be classed as standard operating procedure. It says something about the nature of Library fieldwork. Or about the sort of Library fieldwork we keep getting.'\n\n'They were a very mixed lot.' Kai frowned. 'That woman with the poisoned nails \u2013 no, she didn't scratch me, don't worry \u2013 she wasn't bad at all. But some of them were hopeless fighters. What could have brought them all together in one place?'\n\nThe small plane throbbed with the noise of the propellers and the wind outside. It was oddly soporific, and Irene found herself yawning. 'I think they all wanted to see Mr Nemo,' she offered.\n\n'But why all at once? Is he normally in such demand?' Kai yawned as well, stretching and then relaxing. 'I wonder... My uncle Ao Shun would sometimes conduct job interviews like that, in order to thin out the candidates...'\n\nHis voice was slowing, blurring. The passenger hold was darker now. Irene couldn't keep her eyes open. 'Kai?' she slurred, her voice sounding odd to her own ears.\n\nShe slipped into darkness, with sleep swallowing her up like the ocean.\n\nWhen Irene woke, she found herself laid out like an effigy in a church, her hands folded on her chest. But the softness underneath her was a comfortable bed rather than a cold tombstone, and she could hear another person breathing.\n\nFor the moment she kept her eyes closed, so as not to alert anyone she was awake. The other person was asleep or meditating, judging from the slowness of their breaths. They were right next to her, too \u2013 probably on the same bed. There was a deeper undercurrent of sound in the room; the whisper of an air conditioner. Her shoes were gone and she was barefoot.\n\nAll right. So she'd been drugged on the plane. Probably Kai as well. And they were now somewhere else. Somewhere with good air conditioning.\n\nShe needed more information than she could get with her eyes shut. Simmering anger pushed out immediate fear. If they'd been abducted and were being held for ransom or sale, she was going to make some very dramatic and valid points about why that was a bad idea.\n\nShe sat up, sinking in the deep softness of the bed, and looked around. Kai was indeed fast asleep next to her. He was slumbering so peacefully that he could have been thousands of miles away in his father's court, with nothing to worry about till scurrying servants brought the morning tea. It was a double bed \u2013 an interesting assumption by whoever had put them there \u2013 and the counterpane was silk. The bedroom beyond was luxurious, with abstract paintings hanging on the walls, expensive-looking rugs strewn across the floor, and French windows facing out onto the open sea beyond. Closed French windows. There were two subsidiary doors too. One stood half-open and clearly led into a bathroom, while the other could be... more interesting. And was probably locked. A big television screen covered a solid six feet of wall, but for the moment it wasn't on, and there weren't any obvious controls, remote or otherwise.\n\nThe crook of Irene's right elbow was aching just enough to make itself felt. She rolled up her jacket sleeve and, as she'd suspected, there was the faint red mark of a hypodermic needle. That made sense. Gas her and Kai while they were belted in their seats, then deliver a more specific sedative once they were unconscious.\n\nShe reached across and shook Kai by the shoulder. 'Kai, time to wake up.'\n\nNo reaction.\n\nShe shook harder. 'Kai, wake up. We've been kidnapped.'\n\nHe groaned something, eyelids flickering open for a second before he relaxed back into his doze.\n\n'Kai! There's been a palace revolution and the peasants are attacking!'\n\nKai gave a deep shuddering sigh and finally opened his eyes properly. 'Execute them all in the public square,' he mumbled, clearly still half-asleep.\n\n'Such a pity,' a male voice said. 'I must apologize. We have very little information about the proper dosage for dragons.'\n\nIrene spun towards the source of the voice, her heart slowing as she realized it was coming from the television, which had silently turned itself on. Beside her, Kai shook his head as he tried to throw off the last of his sleep, his eyes clearing.\n\nThe man on the screen was seated in front of a glass pane which either fronted some huge indoor aquarium or was somehow set into the sea itself. A shoal of red and silver fish passed behind him, swooping past like a flight of birds \u2013 but they didn't distract the eye from the man in the chair. He was heavy-set, with drooping jowls, but his small keen eyes watched her intently. His suit was white linen, and he wore a Panama hat tilted sideways on his bald head. A whiskey tumbler and decanter rested on a small table next to him. Irene suspected that he might be powerful enough to present himself in multiple different shapes, as some Fae could, but they would all display the same keynotes of personal overindulgence and wealth. She might never know his real face \u2013 just the image that popular culture associated with manipulators and schemers. 'Mr Nemo, I presume,' she said neutrally.\n\n'And I know your identities, of course. I trust you will forgive this communication by videolink, your highness. I do not wish to meet you in person.'\n\n'Oh, I have nothing against you,' Kai said coldly, 'except for the way you have drugged and kidnapped us.'\n\n'Yes. I should explain.' Mr Nemo fished out a red silk handkerchief and mopped his forehead. 'My situation at the moment is a little awkward. Please believe me when I say that I have absolutely no desire to gain you as an enemy \u2013 either of you, or the organizations which you represent. In fact, I hope you will bear in mind how quickly I arranged your visit, as a token of my goodwill.'\n\nIrene wished she had some way of knowing whether this speech was sincere, or the sort of fast talk which went with unmissable bargains and items for sale off the back of a lorry, no questions asked. 'Why don't you want to meet Kai in person?' she enquired instead.\n\nThe ice cubes in Mr Nemo's glass clinked as he picked it up. 'Miss Winters, I don't like people to be able to find me. I'm sure you know just as well as I do that dragons can locate people whom they've met before. I'd rather not give him that ability. Is that acceptable?'\n\nIrene glanced at Kai. 'Is it?' she asked. She had to get the book off Mr Nemo. But if Kai wasn't prepared to tolerate these conditions, then she'd have to do it without his help.\n\nKai paused. For a moment Irene thought that he was going to say no, but then he shrugged. 'While I prefer to meet people face to face, your caution is understandable. For the moment I accept your conditions. But I am still waiting for an explanation for our situation.'\n\nHe had donned his political, courtly persona, and Irene felt a flash of pride that he was able to behave so politely to a Fae. Of course, he was probably daydreaming about dropping Mr Nemo into the sea from a height of several thousand feet, but that was fair enough. She was having similar thoughts herself.\n\n'Perhaps we could discuss the reasons for your visit first?' Mr Nemo suggested. 'There might even be a minor discount arranged, for the inconvenience you've been caused.'\n\nKai gestured to Irene. 'Miss Winters here is the negotiator. I am simply her escort.'\n\nIrene donned her own best poker face. 'The Library is interested in obtaining a particular book and I've been sent to open negotiations.' She knew she mustn't make her request look too urgent \u2013 even if it was. If Mr Nemo realized just how desperate the situation was, and how far she'd go to get her hands on that book, then he'd charge an unthinkably high price. And she'd have to pay it. There were some people, some places, which she would not lose to chaos.\n\nMr Nemo's eyes glinted, the only sign of animation on his heavy-fleshed face. 'I'm always delighted to oblige the Library. What are you seeking?'\n\n'The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, an Egyptian text, Middle Kingdom period,' Irene said. 'From the world that we classify as Gamma-017. It's in your catalogue.'\n\n'Excuse me just a moment.' Mr Nemo turned to his left and an unobtrusive young man stepped forward, offering him a brochure similar to the one which Coppelia had shown Irene.\n\nMr Nemo flicked through the pages, frowning slightly, then his mouth widened into a smile. It wasn't an encouraging smile \u2013 or rather, it wasn't encouraging if one hoped to negotiate a good deal. It was the sort of expression which went with the poetic tag, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws. 'Ah,' he said. 'That one. May I congratulate you on your excellent taste?'\n\n'You're far too kind,' Irene said guardedly. So far this hadn't gone beyond the normal boundaries of bargaining. In fact, it was refreshingly familiar. She warned herself to be careful. 'Have you read it yourself?'\n\n'I'm afraid not. I really don't have time for that sort of thing. I find it far more interesting to negotiate prices for them.'\n\nIrene felt herself judging him for his slight to her beloved books. But she reminded herself that he was Fae, and that his archetype as a fixer would be shaping his personal tastes and hobbies \u2013 along with the rest of his life. Why would he care about a single story, even if it was unique? 'While I don't wish to seem rude, the whole kidnapping and drugging business has cut into my schedule. If we could discuss the price?'\n\n'I'm sure that a well-known and well-respected Librarian like yourself has a great many resources,' Mr Nemo suggested. 'I'd be glad to sign a contract for some future services or assistance on your part, to be specified at a later date...'\n\n'While that does sound very tempting,' Irene lied, 'I've been given specific instructions to only engage in quid pro quo bargains \u2013 an object for an object, or an object for a specifically defined service. In fact, I've been told that all previous bargains by the Library were made strictly on that basis.'\n\nMr Nemo chuckled. 'Ah well, you can't blame a man for trying.'\n\n'I wouldn't expect any less from a businessman like yourself,' Irene flattered.\n\n'I hope you'll understand that I can't give you an immediate answer,' Mr Nemo continued. 'I need to consider what the Library could give me.'\n\n'Of course,' Irene said. She suppressed her disappointment. This was never going to be resolved in two minutes of conversation, she reminded herself. But she was so close...\n\n'I'm certainly not going to ask you to stay shut up in that suite while I'm reviewing my collection for possible gaps. It could take a few hours,' Mr Nemo said affably. 'Do take a stroll! Look at my aquariums!' He gestured at the wall of glass behind him, where an octopus waved distant tentacles, as if in wiggly semaphore warning. 'Have a snack. My servants will be glad to bring you any food or drink you'd like. Take a swim, even! I have some excellent indoor pools. I understand that you had to leave your luggage behind at the airport, so please feel free to use the wardrobes that I've supplied. I guarantee absolutely no obligation on your part. Call it some small compensation for the inconvenience that you suffered earlier.'\n\n'Yes, about that \u2013 you did say that you were going to explain.'\n\n'I'm hosting a small dinner party tonight,' Mr Nemo said. 'A very exclusive one. Unfortunately word's got out, and a great many people want to invite themselves... You must understand, I'm sure. We have similar problems in that respect. There are many who'd try to access the Library, if they thought they had the slightest chance of succeeding.' His gaze moved to Kai, though he had the tact not to say, Even dragons. 'My usual arrangements for guests have been somewhat compromised, so I'm having to take more precautions than usual.'\n\n'I see.' Irene was sure that there was more to it than that, but Mr Nemo seemed in no mood to share. 'Oh, there is one more thing...'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'I hope this suite you've arranged isn't being monitored.' She waved vaguely at the walls and the microphones almost certainly hidden behind them. 'I wouldn't want to destroy your property while insisting on our right to privacy.'\n\nMr Nemo pursed his lips. 'But imagine my feelings if you had a heart attack and were unable to call for help. Any supervision is purely for the benefit of my guests. If you really want a private conversation, there are plenty of places on my island where you can have one.'\n\nIrene suppressed an image of dolphins with microphones, swimming closer to aquarium windows to pick up conversations. 'I'm afraid this is non-negotiable,' she said. 'The alternative is that I use my abilities to destroy your monitoring systems \u2013 wherever I go here.'\n\n'Oh, very well.' He sighed. 'I give you my word that the suite you are currently occupying will not be monitored. I reserve the right to openly communicate with you while you're in there \u2013 as we're doing now.'\n\nIrene knew that Fae promises were binding, but that he'd stick to the letter of the promise rather than the spirit. Which meant that everywhere else in this island was probably monitored. But it was better than nothing. 'I appreciate your generosity,' she said.\n\n'Excellent. And I'll hope to have an answer for you soon. Possibly even before supper.'\n\n'Surely not that long...' Irene started. Then she realized, with a cold uncertainty, that she wasn't sure what time of day it was, or how long she and Kai had been asleep. All she knew was that the sun was shining outside. She glanced at the watch on her wrist; it was half past three in the afternoon. They'd lost most of a day.\n\n'Oh, I dine early,' Mr Nemo said. 'Any further questions? Are you looking for something from me, Prince Kai?'\n\n'I am not,' Kai said, in the most austerely icy tone Irene had ever heard him use.\n\n'Of course, of course. Very proper. And you, Miss Winters?'\n\n'I'm sure I'll think of half a dozen requests once we've finished this conversation,' Irene admitted, 'but I have nothing right now.'\n\n'Very good. There's a phone by the bed if you need anything brought to your rooms. I'll see you later.'\n\nHe raised his glass in a salute, and the screen dissolved into darkness.\n\n'Well.' Irene took a deep breath. 'This is probably the only place in the entire island where we can talk freely. Do you have any idea where we are?'\n\n'Give me a moment.' A flickering pattern of scales washed across Kai's skin, like fractal images, then dissolved again. For a moment Irene thought she could smell the sea inside the room, even with the air conditioning on and the windows closed. 'We are still within the same waters that we were yesterday. The same chain of islands, I think, the same ocean that washes them. Other than that... no. Sorry.'\n\nIrene shrugged. 'It was worth a try. Don't worry. I don't think it makes much difference that we don't know where we are.'\n\nKai's eyebrows rose. 'That's a reason not to worry?'\n\n'I'm not saying that our situation is exactly good.' Irene swung her legs round and stood up, testing her balance. 'After all, we're in the territory of a powerful Fae, we don't know exactly where we are, we've lost our luggage, anything that we say outside this room is probably going to be overheard \u2013 and we're on a deadline.'\n\nKai lay back and folded his arms behind his head. 'I do enjoy it when you get optimistically fatalistic,' he said. 'So what do you see as the good points?'\n\n'Well, this place isn't too high-chaos, or I'd be sensing it more and you'd be complaining.' She waited for a nod from Kai before she continued. 'And let's be reasonable in our threat assessment: while this is a gilded cage, we can escape from it. From that balcony out there, or maybe this island's beaches: I imagine you could take dragon form and leave that way.'\n\n'I'd need to be sufficiently far away from the centre of this island,' Kai said thoughtfully. 'Here in the middle of it, I'm not sure I could assume my proper form. It may not be very high-chaos... but it is high-chaos.'\n\n'But Mr Nemo doesn't necessarily know that,' Irene pointed out.\n\nWeighing up the situation helped to calm her nerves. Her stomach wanted to tie itself into knots with urgency \u2013 she felt she should be getting hold of the book now, or the world where she'd been to school might be lost past saving \u2013 even if common sense told her that she had at least a week. Mr Nemo had never been going to hand the book over on the spot. However, she still didn't like being at anyone's mercy, least of all someone who might trade in people and promises just as often as he traded in items.\n\n'He's interested in what we can offer, too \u2013 which might keep us safe,' she added. 'And he knows we're under the protection of the Library.'\n\n'Well, he knows you are,' Kai interjected. 'I just tagged along.'\n\n'But you're a political figure now,' Irene said, trying to reclaim the point she'd been making. 'You're formally accompanying me. And...'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'What do you want to bet that dragons have dealt with him in the past?'\n\n'Considering the protocols he's put in place for not meeting me in person, I'd say it's almost certain.' Kai's tone was resigned rather than offended.\n\nIrene nodded. 'All good points. As someone once said, \"After being struck on the head with an axe, it is a positive pleasure to be beaten about the body with a wooden club.\"'\n\n'That doesn't sound like Confucius.'\n\n'No, I think it's actually Kai Lung. Come on. Let's get cleaned up and go for a stroll.'\n\nThe corridors outside were empty. There were no people. There was no dust. There were tactfully unobtrusive monitoring cameras, and occasional television screens set into the wall. But apart from that they were alone in a maze that combined the motifs of expensive hotel and secret villain base. The place didn't feel deserted or barren, but Irene felt like an ant walking through it, a prisoner in someone's vivarium.\n\nThere were stairs up. There were stairs down. There were glass doorways \u2013 closed and impenetrable \u2013 looking out onto the beaches outside. There were a lot of aquariums. After an hour of wandering round and failing to get her bearings, Irene found the fishes a welcome distraction, even if they weren't a useful landmark.\n\nAs they came to the latest set of locked French windows, giving them another beach view, she turned to Kai. 'Why do you think we aren't being allowed to go outside? To make sure you can't identify the location?'\n\n'Without a doubt,' Kai agreed. He looked out at the sea beyond, his eyes yearning. 'There's nothing like the living water. That time in Venice, the water was polluted by chaos. And in Vale's world, it's polluted by... well, pollutants. But here I'm sure it would be better. Mr Nemo couldn't taint the entire ocean. It would wake me from a thousand years of sleep to have the water touch my skin.'\n\n'I wish I could appreciate it the way you do.' There were no planes visible in the sky, no boats on the water: as far as Irene could tell, they could be anywhere in the entire Caribbean, in any world. For dragons, she knew, it was different. Especially to one whose element was water, and who could command it to obey his will. 'But I'm glad that there might be something you could enjoy. I feel a bit guilty about having brought you here.'\n\nHe gave her a sidelong glance. 'I thought that we'd agreed that we were equals now. You didn't order me to come.'\n\n'No,' Irene admitted, 'but you're only here because I am.' That wouldn't count as 'intelligence', to anyone who knew who they were, yet they both automatically glanced around for hidden cameras.\n\n'Let's talk about something non-sensitive,' Kai said. A school of fish flashed through an aquarium at the end of the corridor, their long draping fins like fireworks in shades of orange and blue. They wandered closer to watch. 'Tell me about your schooldays.'\n\nIrene suppressed her immediate reaction to bristle. That was so unfair. She'd never \u2013 well, hardly ever \u2013 asked him about his past. About his father. About why he'd been living with his uncle instead. About his mysterious 'low-born' mother. About anything particularly personal \u2013 unless there was no other choice. 'Must we?' she said drily.\n\n'I thought friendships were supposed to be built on honesty,' Kai said, a little plaintively.\n\n'Maybe,' Irene conceded, 'but not necessarily full disclosure.'\n\nHe shrugged. 'I assumed it was just, well, school.'\n\nIrene reflected for a moment on how sensitive his question really was, in the light of their mission to save that world. After all, everything they said could be overheard. And this was a chapter of her life that she had never really discussed with other Librarians either. The fish beyond the glass circled in aimless patterns, and she wondered if they were aware that they were trapped in a glass tank, or if they assumed that there were always walls and that was simply how life was. 'Kai,' she said, 'I will try to be honest with you.'\n\nAbout some things, at least, she thought.\n\n'The problem is that my parents are \u2013 were \u2013 very good Librarians, which means that they were excellent spies and thieves, and they brought me up to be like them. They needed to have absolute control of information, because of their training, too. They had that need to know everything that was going on around them, in case it could be a danger. They were constantly on their guard. Always watching, always studying, always working, because that's what they were. And they were absolutely certain that whatever they did was for the best reasons \u2013 and that those reasons justified anything at all.'\n\nKai was silent, listening to her, but she knew he understood she was also describing herself at her worst. She couldn't entirely blame her parents if she was just as careful, just as paranoid \u2013 even if she'd learned it from them.\n\nIrene swallowed. Her throat was dry. 'When they sent me to boarding school, at first I was furious. I wasn't good enough to go with them! I had a whole lot of complicated feelings which didn't make me a very pleasant little girl. But the school was good for me. Living full-time with people who weren't Librarians \u2013 who didn't revel in secrecy and have a need to control everything around them... It taught me some things which aren't in the Library code of conduct.'\n\nShe remembered something Melusine had said, a detail from Irene's permanent record: You were educated at boarding school due to parents having growing problems with your behaviour. Had living together with her been as difficult for her parents as it had been for her?\n\n'So, now you know.' She made herself look at him. 'That school gave me something I badly needed. Which is why...' Which is why I'll do whatever's necessary to save it. '...I sometimes find it difficult to talk about it.'\n\nBefore Kai could respond, there was a call from further down the corridor. Irene would have sworn there hadn't been a door there a moment ago. A woman in a floral bikini was waving at them. 'Honoured guests! Mr Nemo requests that you attend for drinks and dinner.'\n\nTheir guide led them on a new route through the maze of passages. Irene wasn't sure whether to ascribe her own difficulty in navigating them to Fae magic, secret behind-the-scenes shifting of panels, or the fact that the twisting turning corridors all looked alike. The woman padded along barefoot, her floral bikini and curling hair incongruous against the futuristic dark metal walls and polished flooring.\n\nIrene and Kai had been allowed time to change their clothing first: their escort, as yet unnamed, had made it clear that it was Mr Nemo's wish. Irene had been ready to comply, but she'd been less enthusiastic when she'd found out that all the evening dresses in the wardrobe \u2013 even the halter-neck Versace catsuit \u2013 were low-cut and showed the Library brand across her shoulders. While technically she knew that Mr Nemo knew who and what she was, it still left her feeling uncomfortably exposed.\n\nWhich is probably all part of the process, she reflected. Now what can I do to set Mr Nemo equally off-balance?\n\nVoices echoed from the room ahead, indistinct but clearly multiple. Irene frowned and raised a hand to stop Kai. Their guide took a few steps, realized she was no longer being followed, and glanced back.\n\n'I wasn't aware that there were going to be so many people at dinner,' Irene said quietly. A number of unpleasant possibilities were coming to mind, with the first and foremost being that she and Kai might be candidates for sale or auction.\n\n'Mr Nemo will explain everything,' the woman said. Her face was carefully neutral, but there was a flicker of fear in her eyes. Of Irene and Kai? Or of what Mr Nemo would do to her if they didn't show up?\n\n'Kai?' Irene queried.\n\nHe knew her well enough to understand the question. 'An acceptable risk, I think,' he said.\n\n'Very well.' Irene turned back to their guide. 'Lead on.'\n\nVisible tension knotted the woman's shoulders as she continued. Irene spared a moment to wonder, When did I become a threat, rather than just being perceived as the minion or the nonentity? Have things changed that much?\n\nBut she was here, the Library's representative under the new peace treaty, negotiating with a powerful Fae on behalf of the Library \u2013 and accompanied by a dragon prince. The answer her mind came up with was Yes, they have.\n\nThe door in front of them swung open, and she and Kai walked in.\n\nThe first thing that caught her eye was the huge glass wall that made up one side of the room. They were below sea level here, and the giant window looked out into the ocean depths, into a spotlit landscape of seaweed and passing fishes. The vista dwarfed the half-dozen people who sat around an oval table, cradling their glasses.\n\nAt the head of the table stood a large television set, again displaying Mr Nemo. He looked exactly as he had done during his earlier conversation with Irene. It was as if the camera had only moved away for a second, even though the previous meeting had been hours ago. 'Our last remaining guests,' he said. 'Welcome to our little get-together. Perhaps I should make introductions?'\n\n'Perhaps you should.' The woman who spoke set down her martini glass. Her long blonde hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders with the sort of casual elegance that took either miraculous coincidence or a team of expert hairdressers. She was in an evening dress, like Irene, and her tailored sheath was blue silk that matched her eyes. But she somehow retained a girl-next-door air \u2013 not really trying to look glamorous yet still emphatically succeeding. 'I'd thought this gathering was much more... exclusive.'\n\n'Well, it's not as if Mr Nemo showed us the guest list.' The man who spoke was on the other side of the screen. His dinner suit said wealthy, but the line of the jacket suggested a shoulder holster. An old scar seamed the line of his jaw, ivory-pale against his black skin. The artificial light gleamed on the gold ring on his right hand and on the cards on the table in front of him. 'And there are two chairs unfilled at this table. Isn't that so?'\n\n'Whatever.' The sturdy woman next to him was emphatically not in evening dress. A faded denim jacket made her bulky shoulders even wider, and her T-shirt and jeans were battered and stained. Her face was tanned, and her dark hair was sun-paled in places to almost the same shade of brown. Someone had broken her axe-blade nose in the past. She slouched in her chair, fidgeting with her glass. 'Can we get on with this? I didn't come here to sit around and be talked at. If you've got a job for me, then give me the details. If not, show me the frigging door.'\n\n'We have been brought together as a crew, surely,' the big man across from her said. His dinner suit didn't fit him. His blond hair was buzz-cut, and his battered hands looked large enough to strangle bulldogs. He cradled a tiny cocktail glass between his fingers. Irene suspected that he might have been seven feet tall if he'd been standing up; seated, he made everyone else at the table look slightly out of proportion. His accent was Russian or Eastern European \u2013 Irene couldn't be sure, especially given the way he dealt out his sentences as though he was being charged by the word. 'And no doubt, given the different skills around this table, we will be paid large amounts of money to steal... something. The crew's membership is at the discretion of the boss.'\n\n'I'm with Ernst, let's get down to business,' the fifth person at the table said. Somehow, even though he was sitting at a table in the centre of a well-lit room, he gave the impression of hunching in a shadowy corner. His hands were manicured and well-kept, long-fingered and precise. His face was harder to see clearly, hidden under a cap of dark hair. However, Irene noted smooth anonymous features and a dark suit that seemed to absorb light. He was sitting next to the man with the playing cards, and there was something in their body language that made Irene think they knew each other.\n\n'And have we no comments from our sixth member?' Mr Nemo asked.\n\nAll eyes turned to the sixth person at the table. Irene felt Kai go tense beside her. For this woman wasn't a Fae like the others. She was a dragon. She was pale-skinned and dark-eyed, with hair so black it went through to the other side of darkness and hit an indigo midnight shade beyond. It was very long and straight, with some coiled up round her head and some falling to puddle on the floor beside her chair. Her clothing was brutally plain, a vest-top and trousers in white silk. A silver cuff round her right wrist was fastened to the arm of her chair. Like Kai \u2013 like all the dragons Irene had ever met \u2013 she had a flamelike quality, a power to her presence which forced the onlooker to reconsider what beauty was.\n\n'No comment,' the dragon said flatly. 'Get on with your offer and let me decide whether or not to take it.'\n\nSomething twitched at the back of Irene's mind. This situation is familiar, and it's not just because it's a narrative trope and I'm in a Fae's private lair. Something here is being deliberately engineered...\n\nShe put the thought aside to consider later, and decided to take the initiative.\n\n'My name is Winters \u2013 Irene Winters,' she said, advancing into the room. 'I work for the Library, and I have no idea what's going on either, but I hope our host will explain shortly.'\n\nKai drew out a chair to allow Irene to seat herself. 'My name is Kai,' he said, taking the remaining place. 'I have the honour to be a recognized son of his majesty Ao Guang, King of the Eastern Ocean. And I am prepared to respect our recent truce \u2013 as is Irene Winters. Even if it means that I must sit at table with that person.' He locked eyes with the other dragon, and they both stared coldly at each other.\n\n'Well, well,' Mr Nemo chuckled, 'it looks as if we may have some problems here with our future collaboration.'\n\n'Collaboration?' the elegant blonde said. 'Are you seriously suggesting that I work with these people?'\n\n'Bets on which people at this table she means,' the gambler said. 'Evens on the dragons, three to one the Librarian, five to one anyone else.'\n\n'Nadia here is the lady who has just expressed her doubts,' Mr Nemo said. 'Going around the table, and continuing with everyone's favourite aliases, we have Ernst, Prince Kai, Miss Irene Winters, Tina, Jerome, Felix, and\u2014'\n\n'Indigo,' the dragon cut in. 'That is the only name I will answer to from the people around this table.'\n\nKai snorted. 'At least you show some vestige of proper behaviour.'\n\n'Big words from someone with your father,' Indigo spat at him. 'I'd think more of you if you boasted about your mother's heritage.'\n\nKai went absolutely still, a red gleam of anger in his eyes. 'Don't push me, madam,' he said. 'Nothing in the truce forbids me from dealing properly with other dragons.'\n\n'Maybe not,' Mr Nemo said cheerfully, 'but as my guests, I hope you'll all refrain from attacking each other. In fact, I must insist on it. Any hostilities or attempts to, ahem, exert undue influence will cause me to withdraw your safe-conduct agreements. Are we all happy with that?'\n\nThe dead silence around the table was not precisely agreement, but it was probably the best that could be hoped for.\n\nMr Nemo clapped his hands together, and the door swung open again. Servants pushed trolleys into the room. 'Dinner!' he said. 'I do hope nobody has any allergies.'\n\n'Only to poison,' Irene remarked. She would have liked to reach out to Kai in reassurance, but that would have been a blatant demonstration of weakness. She would have liked even more to get him alone and find out who 'Indigo' was, and what precisely was going on there. That would have to wait till later. In the meantime, if things became any worse she could always kick him under the table.\n\nNadia put down her glass and pushed back her chair. 'Come on, people,' she said. 'Are we really going to continue with this farce? I'm not complaining about Mr Nemo here \u2013 a great man, I've always said so \u2013 but how can we be expected to work with them?' Her hand gesture took in Kai, Irene and Indigo. With a twitch of her shoulder, her body language shifted from complaining to reasonable. 'I think we should all insist that non-participants get out of this room before the discussion goes any further. Do we really want non-Fae listening in to our private talk? How far can we trust them?'\n\nThe Library brand across Irene's shoulders stung as if it had been freshly applied with hot wires, and she frowned, letting her annoyance show. 'We'll leave if Mr Nemo wants us to leave,' she said curtly. 'After all, we came to see him. I have no idea who you are.' She neglected to mention that two days ago she'd had no idea who Mr Nemo was either. Why spoil a good line?\n\nThe hefty Ernst grunted, and shifted in his chair like a mountain preparing an avalanche. 'Two pretty ladies making speeches. But neither of them's the boss. So don't take it the wrong way if I'm not listening.'\n\nNadia looked around the room for support. When none came, she flounced to her feet. 'Fine. I'm walking out of here, and if the rest of you have any sense, you'll follow me. I'll be ready to talk terms when you've got rid of outsiders.'\n\n'Please go with the man by the door,' Mr Nemo said equably from the television. 'He will show you to your room.'\n\nThe door shut with a bang behind Nadia and her guide. In the newly quiet room, the waiters set down bowls of clear soup and poured wine for Irene and Kai.\n\nJerome \u2013 of the gold ring and cards \u2013 tried the soup first, winning a mental award for bravery from Irene. 'Very nice,' he said politely. 'Shellfish?'\n\n'Conch,' Mr Nemo answered. 'I enjoy the local seafood.'\n\n'The story is that when you visited Russia, you were served meat from the local reindeer,' Ernst put in. He snapped a cracker, scattering crumbs. 'And you insisted it should be grilled on charcoal. Then when a man there tried to betray you, your servants forced the hot coals down his throat.'\n\n'That is a gross exaggeration,' Mr Nemo objected. 'It was nothing like that.'\n\nKai glanced sidelong at Irene, and she could see him struggling not to enquire further.\n\n'Stories do get around,' she said. The soup was extremely good. 'I'm sure that everyone at this table has had a few told about them.'\n\nFelix chuckled, but there was a glint of something unpleasant in his eyes \u2013 a mixture of distrust and dislike that Irene didn't think she'd done anything to deserve. 'You know how these things work... Not surprising, for a Librarian.'\n\nIt was true that powerful Fae accumulated stories about themselves as seabird perches accumulated guano. It helped them sustain their archetypes. She just wished she knew more about these half-dozen people. It'd give her a better idea what to expect \u2013 or what to fear. 'I don't doubt that you're all important ladies and gentlemen. What I don't yet know is what, exactly, this gathering has to do with us.'\n\n'We do have a Fae acquaintance in common,' Jerome said. 'Do you remember Lily?'\n\n'I knew a Lily who was an expert with guns,' Irene said. She recalled the woman vividly. Lily had been a gun-moll, an expert sniper, and quite probably a hitman as well. 'But I wouldn't say that I knew her well. Is she a colleague of yours? Or, if you'll forgive me, an enemy?'\n\n'She was hired to work as my bodyguard once,' Jerome explained. Everyone else at the table had fallen silent to listen. 'Left a trail of corpses until people started taking her seriously. Impressive. I'm sure you know how that works.'\n\n'Yes,' Kai agreed, 'it's a very bad idea not to take Irene seriously.'\n\n'I prefer to handle a situation with minimal damage,' Irene said firmly.\n\n'A very worthy ambition,' Mr Nemo said. 'Now, may I trouble you all to take a look at this screen?'\n\nThe image dissolved into two pictures, separated vertically. Advanced technology for this place and time, Irene noted. And that's just what we've seen. On the left of the screen Mr Nemo still sat placidly; on the right, the camera showed a tanned male attendant in floral trunks, leading Nadia down one of the interchangeable corridors.\n\n'How much further is it to my room?' Nadia demanded. 'If Mr Nemo thinks that he can hoodwink me into returning by walking me in circles, he'd better think again. I am a professional. I don't work with dragons... with people of that type.'\n\n'Actually, Nadia,' Mr Nemo said, and her head tilted on the screen as she heard his voice, 'you do recall that your safe-conduct here was dependent on you not initiating any hostilities? Or trying to exert your \"influence\" on me or my other guests?'\n\nThe camera focused in on Nadia, allowing the viewers to see every moment of her eyes widening, of the colour draining from her cheeks as she made some private calculation and it came to an unwelcome answer. She swallowed. 'Of course. I may have been a little hasty,' she said. She smiled in the direction of the camera, focusing her attention on it. Her golden hair seemed to glow as if she was lit by an inner light, and she shifted on some axis that ran from right shoulder to left hip, arranging herself into the most attractive possible pose. 'I'm sure that we can come to a mutually agreeable arrangement...'\n\nBehind her, in the background, her guide was quietly sidling away down the corridor.\n\n'And that makes twice that you've tried to use your influence,' Mr Nemo said sadly. 'I'm afraid that instead of working as my agent, you're going to have to serve as an object lesson.'\n\nPanels in the floor slid apart beneath Nadia's feet. It wasn't like the sort of cartoon where the victim hung in the air for a moment, before falling. She dropped like a stone, and the panels sealed again above her, cutting off her shriek.\n\n'If you would all care to turn your attention to the glass window opposite,' Mr Nemo suggested.\n\nHeads turned as though the entire room had been hypnotized. Nadia's figure spun through the well-lit waters, struggling in slow motion. Blood trailed from shallow gashes on her hands and legs \u2013 black rather than scarlet in the harsh underwater light.\n\nShadows circled in towards her, drawn by the blood. And Nadia opened her mouth to scream, silent bubbles flooding out, as the sharks closed in on her.\n\nIrene deliberately turned her head away, glad that she couldn't hear the carnage. This was not an overdone rumour about a mysterious crime lord. This was real; this was actually happening. Although she had no reason to like Nadia, and every reason to preserve her own safety, she would not stare at the other woman being killed as though it was a staged performance. 'You've made your point,' she said to Mr Nemo. 'Is that what you consider a useful lesson?'\n\n'No,' Mr Nemo said affably. 'I consider it an avoidable lesson. I do hope that we can all manage to work out our differences \u2013 without resorting to violence.'\n\nIrene glanced around the table. Kai and Indigo both displayed similar looks of frosty disdain; she could practically imagine Kai's comment of What else can you expect from the Fae? Even if there was a peace treaty, some attitudes would take a lifetime to change. And, she had to admit, feeding someone to sharks to make a point was a Fae thing to do. Assuming one was following a crime lord archetype. The others mostly looked at each other thoughtfully. But Ernst was finishing off his soup, his attitude somehow suggesting that if he'd been in Nadia's position, he would have punched the sharks.\n\nThe servants began silently setting out a new course. It involved sliced raw dark meat of a type that Irene couldn't identify, various dips and marinades, and bowls of plain rice. Glasses were refilled. Irene had yet to touch hers.\n\n'Thank you for all being so patient,' Mr Nemo said. 'I'll now be brief. There is a particular item I want. I can give you the details of where it is, and what it is, and some assistance in the set-up, but the actual theft will require... experts. All of you are very well known in your respective fields. Some of you were specifically hired for this job, while others are unexpected but welcome professionals.'\n\n'Professional thieves?' Irene couldn't deny that her job as a Librarian frequently involved removing books without the owner's permission, but she'd rather not have it stated so blatantly. Even if it was true.\n\n'Professionals,' Mr Nemo said soothingly. 'Let's leave it at that, shall we? Now first of all, the reward. I know you all want something specific from me. Even if it's just your liberty.' His eyes strayed to Indigo, who was picking at her rice with the hand that wasn't chained to her chair. 'Believe me when I say that I can and will give it to you. If you bring me the object I want, safe and entire, within the next week, then I will give each of you whatever prize you name. It must be an item from my collection or a deed that I can perform \u2013 there and then \u2013 and I will provide it without hesitation or delay or cheating.'\n\nThe room was silent. Ernst put down his forkful of meat. 'Your word on that?'\n\n'My word,' Mr Nemo said.\n\nAlthough a Fae's promise was only binding to the letter rather than the spirit, Irene couldn't see any obvious flaw in what Mr Nemo had just said. From the abstracted faces of the other people at the table, she suspected they were coming to the same conclusions.\n\n'And allow us to depart safely with our chosen item or items, without delay or endangerment?' Jerome asked casually.\n\n'Yes, as swiftly as you wish, without delay or endangerment,' Mr Nemo agreed. 'Now can we do business?'\n\nThere were nods around the table \u2013 even from Indigo \u2013 except from Irene and Kai.\n\n'Ah,' Mr Nemo said, 'perhaps our two unexpected arrivals have issues they'd like to raise?'\n\nIrene glanced at Kai and received a very definite you-speak-first look in answer. 'Your offer intrigues us,' she said. 'But Prince Kai and I are both bound by the recent peace treaty. To be blunt about it, if you're talking about a theft from someone who's signed up to the treaty, it's out of the question, and we should leave the room here and now.'\n\nHer stomach twisted with nerves. Coppelia had said that any bargains with Mr Nemo should consist of specific exchanges, not open-ended promises. But this job wouldn't be open-ended \u2013 it would just mean getting an item for Nemo, which technically fell within the limits of her authority. This was the perfect chance for her to get The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. If she said no and backed out of this heist, would she have lost the book \u2013 and possibly doomed a world that had helped make her who she was?\n\nBut Mr Nemo knew about the truce and their obligations, so perhaps his job wouldn't infringe it?\n\nAs the seconds drew out, she could only hope that she was right.\n\nMr Nemo took a swallow from his tumbler of whiskey. 'The item I'm after is on a world which has not been claimed as territory in the treaty documents, by any dragon or Fae \u2013 or Librarian, come to think of it. Equally, the item itself has not been stated to be the personal property of any dragon or Fae or Librarian. That's as far as I can go, but I think it means you're free to work for me. And I won't say who procured it for me, afterwards. I'll make that part of the deal.'\n\nIt sounded too good to be true. But it also sounded... do-able.\n\nAgain Irene glanced to Kai, and he gave her a very slight nod.\n\nShe turned back to the television screen. 'I think we can do business.'\n\n'Splendid, splendid,' Mr Nemo said warmly. 'How nice to know that we can all get along. I've always thought individual gain was a much better motivator than racial prejudice, or personal morality. Now I know your price, Miss Winters, just as I do everyone else's at this table \u2013 except for Prince Kai. I'll be glad to discuss it with him later.'\n\nKai made a non-committal noise. He nibbled a fragment of meat and frowned. 'Is this shark?'\n\nIrene suddenly tasted bile. She put down her own fork, unable to stop herself from looking at the huge glass window. Memory replayed the view of Nadia's twisting body, silently screaming as the sharks closed in.\n\n'Indeed, great white shark liver,' Mr Nemo answered. 'It's a delicacy. Did you know that killer whales have a habit of knocking great white sharks unconscious, biting out their livers and leaving them to drown? Very directed, very specific. I do admire that in an orca.'\n\n'I didn't realize that you found killer whales in the Caribbean,' Irene ventured. Diplomacy told her that she needed to finish this meal or risk insulting the host. Common sense told her that if she didn't have something to eat now she'd regret it later. But speculation, impossible to silence, whispered at the back of her mind. She'd been told Mr Nemo enjoyed feeding people to his sharks. Even if this particular shark hadn't eaten Nadia, there was no way to prove that it hadn't eaten other people.\n\nYou can do this, she told herself. You've eaten worse. And in worse company.\n\nIt would help if she could actually remember when, though.\n\n'So,' Felix said, surprising everyone by joining the conversation, 'what's your target item and where is it?'\n\n'The item is a painting,' Mr Nemo said. 'It was created by the French painter Th\u00e9odore G\u00e9ricault \u2013 in 1819 in the world in question \u2013 and it's titled The Raft of the Medusa.'\n\nSilence fell around the table. Irene noted absently that Ernst, Kai and Indigo had gone back to eating their shark liver, that Jerome was following her own tactic of burying it under rice, and Felix had never taken any in the first place.\n\n'You do know about the painting, I hope?' Mr Nemo finally said. 'It's moderately famous.'\n\n'Overblown, oversized early Romanticism,' Indigo said. 'It passes all understanding why different qualities in colour, on a two-hundred-year-old piece of canvas, should be worth going to such trouble to obtain. When you can obtain exactly the same patterns of colour and shading on a computer image...'\n\n'Because the original is the original!' Kai retorted, stung by artistic criticism, whereas personal insults would have left him cold. 'How can you compare a mere machine-read copy to the actual brushstrokes laid down by the painter?'\n\n'Well, what I want is the original,' Mr Nemo cut in. 'To be more specific, I want the canvas, whole and entire. You can leave the frame behind if absolutely necessary.'\n\n'Where is it currently located?' Kai asked.\n\n'By our standards, the world is fourth-by-reticulation and seventh-by-response, with double marking,' Mr Nemo said. 'Tina here knows the world and she'll be organizing transport. Specifically, it's in Vienna, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I know from your dossiers that most of you speak German.'\n\n'That's usually one of the biggest museums in Vienna, if not the biggest,' Irene said thoughtfully. 'What time period are we looking at?'\n\n'Early twenty-first century, where there's some sort of united Europe,' Mr Nemo answered. 'If I may continue?'\n\n'I beg your pardon,' Irene murmured, retreating back to her rice. She had to remember that this wasn't a typical Library mission \u2013 and that she wasn't in charge of this team.\n\nThough, she wondered, who was?\n\nMr Nemo took another gulp of whiskey before continuing and Irene wondered at his stamina. 'I've had a local agent arrange finance, accommodation, identity papers and anything else you may need, which will be handed over when you arrive.'\n\n'Technical equipment?' Indigo demanded. 'If you want me to do my job properly, I'm going to need suitable computers and tools.'\n\n'She's been instructed to obtain local high-end technology. Everything which you could possibly ask for. You're working for me now, Indigo, remember.' His tone towards her was avuncular, but there was a vicious note beneath the pleasant surface. Irene wondered what had happened between them to merit it. 'There are some things which you don't need to worry about any longer.'\n\nIndigo visibly bristled but forced a nod, and Irene marked off another probable role on this team of theirs. Indigo, apparently, was technology and computer systems. Which was interesting. Kai had spent time on a world with a high level of technology and had experience in the area. But not all dragons were interested \u2013 or even enthusiastic \u2013 about that sort of thing. Ernst was obviously muscle. (Too obviously?) Tina was transport. However, what were Jerome and Felix meant to be doing? Or Irene herself?\n\n'Are you going to want reports?' Jerome asked.\n\nMr Nemo shook his head. 'You're all experts in your fields. I intend to sit here in comfort till you return with the painting. Besides, frequent couriers might be... noticed.'\n\nSomething that had been puzzling her resurfaced. 'Mr Nemo,' Irene said, 'when Kai and I came through the airport, at Paradise Island, there were a lot of your... fans there.'\n\n'Fans, my dear?'\n\n'Enthusiasts with weapons, who turned the place into a war zone. They were desperate to find you. The moment they discovered Kai and I were visiting, they targeted us. So I have to ask \u2013 just how secret is this job of yours? Is this public interest in you going to be a problem?'\n\nMr Nemo leaned forward confidingly. His face was damp with sweat and pink from the heat, but it didn't make him look vulnerable. Metaphors flickered through Irene's mind: a poisonous toad squatting in its lair, a great wyrm curled up in its place of power, an octopus extending its tentacles. 'Miss Winters, I assure you that nothing's known about what I'm after. However, while I was recruiting, it did become known that I was looking for people with very specific skills. You saw the results.'\n\n'Indeed,' Jerome said, putting down his chopsticks. 'You ended up with a mob on your doorstep, after the job and the reward. Perhaps you showed your cards too early?'\n\n'They'll never find me. But if they did, they'd get more than they bargained for.' Irene didn't like the look of Nemo's smile as he clapped his hands together. 'And now for the next course. I do hope you all enjoy fugu sashimi.'\n\nThe moon laid a trail of silver across the surface of the sea. Kai stood by the closed windows, sensing the deep pulse of the tides and the movement of the ocean. It was familiar to him in any world and any place, as much a part of him as the blood in his veins. He could always call on the waters to protect himself \u2013 and Irene.\n\nShe slept, but restlessly. He knew how concerned she was for the world where she'd grown up.\n\nBut as he was the one awake, apparently he was doing the worrying for her. He wondered if this was one of those things that nobody ever told you about relationships \u2013 or, at least, the sort that went beyond a single night's pleasure or a brief but passionate affair.\n\nA year ago, he hadn't met Irene. He hadn't known that there could be someone \u2013 outside other dragons \u2013 who would be prepared to risk their own life for him.\n\nIrene had said, truthfully and sincerely, I am responsible for you, and you are under my protection. At first he'd had to suppress a laugh \u2013 after all, how could a human possibly have that sort of a relationship with a dragon? But then he'd realized she'd meant it. And she'd proved it, time and time again. Vale was a human too, but also a stalwart friend. There were even a few Fae who might not be utterly worthless.\n\nKai reflected gloomily that it would be a relief to shed all these thoughts, thoughts that challenged his traditional upbringing at court. However, if he wanted to deserve his father's respect, he had to be an adult, rather than be trapped inside a cage of his own prejudices. But it seemed unfair that such a virtuous, noble resolution should be so hard to keep.\n\nLight flickered in the room behind him and Kai turned to see that the television had switched itself on. Mr Nemo was perched in the same chair, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on him. The glass window in the background revealed an octopus spreading its tentacles across the ocean floor, graceful in its delicate movements. In her bed Irene slept on, unmoving, peaceful at last.\n\nMr Nemo put his finger to his lips, then gestured towards the suite door. A clear invitation for a private discussion. After a moment's hesitation, Kai accepted the challenge and noiselessly left the room.\n\nA screen on the wall opposite flickered on, resolving into yet another image of Mr Nemo. It was as if the man was crawling round behind the walls of his lair, scrambling from screen to screen to keep pace with his guests. 'Prince Kai,' he said, 'I hope I'm not disturbing you.'\n\n'Not at all,' Kai replied warily.\n\nThe light from Mr Nemo's desk lamp carved deep shadows into his face, bringing out the skull beneath the skin. 'Don't worry, this doesn't concern Miss Winters \u2013 or the new truce. I haven't formally signed up to it yet, though I see its possibilities. But it's late, and I'd said we could... chat. Do you have any questions?'\n\nKai had been pondering dozens earlier, but could only think of one now, under Mr Nemo's hooded gaze. 'You've made it clear this job is urgent. But you've insisted we stay overnight, rather than beginning immediately. Why?'\n\n'It's the nature of the transport Tina's arranging. She'll be your driver throughout,' Mr Nemo answered.\n\n'Why couldn't you have had it ready for earlier this evening?'\n\n'I couldn't be sure that you'd all agree to the job: I might have needed to bring someone else in \u2013 and I couldn't have the transport sitting around waiting. Trying to keep Tina in one place is an achievement in itself. Logistics, Prince Kai.'\n\nFor some reason, Kai wasn't entirely convinced, but Mr Nemo had moved on. He leaned forward in his chair, unclasping his fingers. 'You don't have any other questions?'\n\n'Oh?'\n\n'Concerning the other dragon who is my... guest? I thought you might want to air them, while we're in private.'\n\nKai felt the heat of anger in his belly, the prickle of nascent claws at his fingertips. He controlled himself. 'That person is not my concern.'\n\n'Really? I would have thought that Princess Qing Qing is\u2014'\n\nKai cut him off with a single furious gesture. 'Do not refer to her by her original name! She has disobeyed her parents and broken with her family. She does not deserve the name her parents gave her.'\n\n'Dear me.' Mr Nemo chuckled again, his whole body shivering with morbid amusement. 'I must apologize. I know that the lady \u2013 let's call her Indigo, shall we? \u2013 is on the outs with her family, but I hadn't realized it was that bad. It sounds positively criminal.'\n\n'It is,' Kai said curtly. 'And she fled the consequences of her actions.'\n\nHe had never met Qing Qing, but he'd seen pictures of her in his father's palace, before they'd been taken down. She had shamed both her parents \u2013 Kai's father and her mother, the Queen of the Western Lands \u2013 by trying to raise open rebellion against their rule. Now her name was no longer spoken.\n\nMr Nemo nodded understandingly. 'I can imagine that her family might want her back under their control. She might be a danger to them...'\n\nKai had no intention of discussing his family any further with this Fae. He shrugged.\n\nMr Nemo chuckled again at his stubborn silence. 'You should remember, if you help in this retrieval, I will owe you a favour. There might be quite a large favour I could do you \u2013 and your family. One you'll have already paid for.'\n\nKai felt the heat of anger again, and his eyes glinted red. 'We have no need of your services.'\n\n'Then think of yourself,' Mr Nemo said, meeting Kai's furious gaze through the camera. 'Wouldn't your father be pleased if you could place Indigo back in his care? I can help you with that.'\n\nThe offer hung in the air like the shadow of an incoming tide: not yet fully present, but impossible to turn back. 'What is she doing here in the first place?' Kai demanded, hoping for some answer that would allow him to say no.\n\nOr did he really want a reason to say yes?\n\n'The lady was imprisoned by a powerful Fae,' Mr Nemo said. 'I knew of her talents \u2013 her technological talents \u2013 and I took steps to obtain custody. I have assured her that if she carries out my request, I will grant her her freedom. Freedom from me, at least. Freedom from her family... well, that's another question entirely.'\n\nKai bit his lip and tasted blood. He couldn't possibly accept an offer like this from a Fae. It was unthinkable. There was certainly some sort of trick involved. There had to be. Finally he said, 'I have already agreed to cooperate in this theft. This late-night bargaining...'\n\nCaution cut off his last few words before he could definitely say no. What if there was a way to make this happen? If he turned it down here and now, would Mr Nemo hold him to that later? Was it so wrong to make a bargain like this, when everybody stood to gain from it?\n\n'There's no hurry,' Mr Nemo replied. His lips curled in a smile that bared sharp teeth all the way to the gums. 'You can give me your answer when you return.'\n\nIrene had seen dungeons, bloodstained theatres, battlefields and conflagrations \u2013 but now she had truly experienced hell.\n\nAnd it was inside a minibus with four Fae and two dragons.\n\nShe wasn't quite at the point of stepping out onto the motorway to play with the oncoming traffic, but it was close.\n\nThey'd left Mr Nemo's island by private plane, with Tina piloting. Then they'd transferred to the minibus and Tina had taken the wheel. As Irene suspected, her talents lay in transport and motion: she was able to transfer seamlessly from one world to another while travelling, as some Fae could do.\n\nWhat most Fae couldn't do was carry multiple people along with them. However, it seemed Tina could manage half a dozen passengers, including the dragons, with ease. They'd started in America. Now they were approaching Vienna. Roads had reeled by outside the minibus windows \u2013 desert plains, country fields, dark cityscapes, rustic villages \u2013 each of them there for a few minutes and then shifting to something else. The other Fae had treated this as merely a normal method of travel. Indigo had been silent, and Kai had muttered something about feeling travelsick. But they'd been able to cope with the journey itself, as had Irene. The company was another matter. Everyone had retreated into a separate corner of the minibus, and given that there were only four corners, tempers were fraying.\n\nErnst cracked his knuckles. Repeatedly. Then he did it again. Jerome was unable to sit with his hands still: he was constantly practising card draws or dice throws. In the enclosed space the rattling of his dice on the floor competed with Ernst's knuckle-cracking, like two clocks out of synchronization with each other. Irene found herself hoping each time that they would find the same rhythm, and she itched with frustration every time they didn't. Felix sat in his corner, unwilling to talk, even to Jerome. Occasionally he twitched, looked as if he was about to say something, then retreated into silence again. Kai was brooding over something himself and occupied a seat as far as possible across the minibus from Indigo. Indigo herself ignored them all with glorious disdain, fiddling with a small piece of electronics from a locked briefcase which she wouldn't let out of her reach.\n\nAs for Irene, her main source of irritation was that there wasn't anything to read. Not even briefing documents. In fact, it was rather worrying that there weren't any. Possibly she'd been spoiled by her work for the Library, but she was used to having at least some background information when she went out on a job. They'd been given passports, credit cards, cheap burner mobile phones and the address of their base in Vienna \u2013 and that was it.\n\nShe was in the front passenger seat, next to Tina. This wasn't actually a privilege. Tina was not a reassuring driver. She cut across other cars with casual disdain, in pursuit of some distant ideal of speed which existed somewhere beyond the vehicle's speedometer, responding to shouts or horns with a sneer and a gesture. Irene found herself constantly having to bite back gasps of panic. And Tina seemed incapable of any conversation other than the road ahead and how to handle it. She was immersed in her purpose, her mind full of speed and travel, and there was no room for anything else \u2013 no real personality was left. If Irene had needed warning about what happened when the Fae abandoned their humanity for their archetype, then Tina was a living example.\n\n'You will slow down to the speed limit once we reach Vienna?' Irene said finally, trying to sound firm rather than nervously hopeful. 'We'll want to stay under the local cops' radar.'\n\nTina shifted something she was chewing from one cheek to the other. 'Not a problem. I'll be strictly one kilometre under the limit. Maybe half a kilometre? I don't want to overdo it. I'd have been there already, but with people in the back weighing us down like they are, it takes me a longer run-up to change spheres.'\n\n'Relax,' Jerome called from his seat. 'Tina knows her job. I've worked with her before.'\n\nAnd as the passengers either bickered or aligned themselves with old acquaintances, that was a big problem, Irene reflected. She didn't know any of these people. Kai's clear distrust of Indigo was even more worrying. She trusted Kai's opinion and \u2013 more to the point \u2013 his knowledge of other dragons. He hadn't wanted to discuss Indigo's identity, but he had been absolutely clear that she was treacherous.\n\nIt was shaping up to be a wonderful mission.\n\n'Checkpoint ahead,' Tina said, a moment before Irene spotted it. 'You'll handle it?'\n\n'I will,' Irene agreed, readying herself in the passenger seat. It was time for her to prove that she could be useful too.\n\nThe minibus slowed as it drew into the queue for the roadside checkpoint. The uniform wasn't what Irene remembered for the Austrian police. It was grey and utilitarian, and the officers were all wearing cameras mounted on shoulder straps.\n\nIn the back of the minibus the others fell dead silent as Tina drew to a halt, and one of the officers marched across. 'Good day, ladies,' he greeted Irene and Tina in German. 'Sergeant Melzer, CENSOR.' He flashed an identity paper at Tina: Irene could just make out the acronym CENSOR and the organization's name in half a dozen languages. The English was worrying \u2013 Combined European Nations Supernatural Observation and Response. 'Your destination and your reason for travelling, please?'\n\nTina shifted her gum from one cheek to the other, and jerked a thumb at Irene.\n\nIrene leaned forward. 'We're on our way to Vienna \u2013 to join our co-workers,' she said, in her best native-accent German.\n\n'Co-workers?' the sergeant probed. He could see into the back of the minibus from his current angle, and his eyes narrowed at the assorted group.\n\n'We're part of a new software start-up company which will specialize in cloud information gathering and storage, combined with rapid response data retrieval and blockchain implementation, for specific search functions,' Irene rattled off. She saw the man's eyes begin to glaze with boredom and continued with more tech-babble borrowed from marketing brochures, finishing, '...we have recruited pan-globally in order to obtain the most cutting-edge programmers and specialists \u2013'\n\nThe sergeant's brow furrowed. He pointed a thumb at the heavy-set Ernst. 'He's a programmer?'\n\n'That is highly prejudiced comment,' Ernst growled. His German had a noticeable Russian accent. 'I am specialist in open source development and libraries.'\n\n'Indeed,' the sergeant said. He clearly wasn't entirely convinced but was prepared to file it as someone else's problem. 'Now, if you'll please take this disc in your bare hand one by one \u2013 that's right, madam \u2013 and let me observe for a moment. It's just non-allergenic silver.'\n\nSupernatural Observation and Response, the sergeant's papers had said. 'Should we be worried about werewolves?' she asked, passing the disc to the others behind her.\n\n'No more than usual, madam,' the sergeant answered, watching the disc's progress. 'There's no need for you to be alarmed.'\n\nWhich might mean there was every reason to be alarmed. Irene mentally cursed Mr Nemo once again: if there were dangerous supernatural creatures on this world, he should have warned them.\n\nTina finished skipping the disc over her knuckles, and returned it to the sergeant. 'Thank you all,' he said with a curt nod. 'Please return to your business. Oh, and you might want to watch your speed, madam. Not that it's my job to pull you up on it, but there are speed traps nearer the city.'\n\n'We appreciate the warning,' Irene said, as Tina hit the accelerator hard.\n\n'Is this a problem?' Ernst asked, once they were on the move again. The snowy landscape outside sprouted warehouses and car parks as they approached the city, and the traffic clustered around them. Above, the sky was a mass of grey clouds, dismal and unpromising, as dark and ominous as the coats of a thousand massing wolves.\n\n'In which sense?' Irene replied. 'The werewolves? Or the fact that our faces and number plate are now on record?'\n\nIndigo looked up from her tinkering with some gadget. 'That camera he was wearing? Don't worry about it. Once I have my system up and running, I can hack into the police records and do whatever I want.'\n\n'I'd meant to ask you about that,' Felix said, finally speaking. 'How can you be sure that your knowledge will unlock this world's computer systems? This isn't some sort of science-fiction movie, where you can plug a laptop into the alien mothership computer and hack into it.'\n\nIndigo was still for a moment, like a cobra considering the best angle for its strike. 'The basic technology isn't the issue,' she said, speaking slowly as if to a child. 'There are only so many ways that one can create a transistor, or a vacuum tube, or all the other pieces that are used to make a computer or tablet or cell phone. When it comes to computer languages and programming, there's plenty of parallel evolution across different worlds \u2013 just like spoken languages. Have you ever noticed how many worlds develop Windows?'\n\n'I never thought of it that way,' Felix admitted.\n\n'Well, now you know,' Indigo said. Again there was that note of condescension in her voice. 'In my case, here, I have a variety of programs and hacking tools from different worlds. I'll be able to find something which will work with this world's computer systems, or which I can adapt. I know my job.' Indigo glanced at Kai as she spoke, and there was something almost... conspiratorial about it.\n\nHer words to Felix did make sense \u2013 but was it really that easy to transfer technology across worlds? Irene recalled a Library seminar, a year or so back, that had said this simply wasn't possible. Irene didn't like mysteries \u2013 at least outside of detective novels.\n\nShe glanced at Kai. He knew more about technology than Irene, so if there had been a flaw in Indigo's argument, surely he'd have pointed it out. Only Irene had noticed his silent exchange with Indigo, how his eyes had flashed what looked almost like a warning at her. But why should Indigo's skills provoke any reaction at all?\n\n'If there are werewolves and other supernatural creatures here, then it's probably a Gamma world by the Library classification,' she said, turning to more immediate problems. 'By our standards, that means both magic and technology.'\n\n'Does magic appear in high-order worlds like this?' Ernst asked. 'I do not visit them often, but I had not thought to find it here. Will it be a problem?'\n\n'You can get magic in these environments, but it would be very highly organized magic,' Irene said. 'With laws and principles and so on. If there are other supernatural creatures here\u2014'\n\n'Besides us,' Tina interrupted cheerfully.\n\nIrene supposed Librarians counted as a sort of supernatural creature. 'Yes, besides us \u2013 then they'd obey consistent rules. Like silver always burning werewolves and vampires being allergic to garlic... in high-order worlds, you could practically write a guide on how to identify local unnatural creatures.'\n\n'In any case, CENSOR's hunting them,' Indigo said. 'That should keep them busy \u2013 and away from us.'\n\n'There are dragons in this world, by the way,' Kai noted. 'At least one, possibly more.'\n\n'How do you know?' Felix demanded quickly.\n\n'It's a... dragon thing.' Kai's lip curled at the term, but he spread his hands with a shrug. 'I can't tell where they are or how many they are. The fabric of the world sings with it.'\n\n'Do you agree with him?' Jerome asked Indigo.\n\nIndigo raised her wrist. The thick silver cuff round it was still there, even though there was no longer a chain attached. 'While this is on me, I've no way of telling.'\n\n'So you can't do \u2013' Felix waved his hand \u2013 'dragon things?'\n\n'No,' Indigo said, her words as sharp and brittle as volcanic glass. 'I can't do dragon things. However, I can do computer things \u2013 and that's what you need at the moment.'\n\n'As long as these dragons aren't in Vienna, they're not our problem,' Ernst said. Straight to the point, as usual. 'So. On to Vienna.'\n\n'Oh no,' Indigo said, looking around their new headquarters. 'This will not do. It will not do at all.'\n\nHer eyes glittered with fury. Even if she wasn't showing any of the usual signs of a dragon's anger while in human form \u2013 her eyes weren't gleaming red, her skin was unmarked by scales \u2013 her rage was still palpable. Tina showed no sign of recognizing danger on or off the road, but the other Fae had backed away as rapidly as was inhumanly possible (without seeming too visibly intimidated).\n\nIrene looked at the piles of boxed computer equipment on the shabby carpet. Power extension cords lay jumbled in disconnected patterns. A few battered desks had been pushed against walls. The rundown block had been described as having office space to rent on the billboard downstairs, but was empty of other tenants. Maybe that had been a miserable attempt to attract investment \u2013 if so, it had completely failed. Unsurprisingly, given that this was an industrial district on the outskirts of the city.\n\n'On the positive side,' she said out loud, 'we should be undisturbed. And our hotel rooms are just across the street. Indigo, forgive me if I'm being imperceptive, but are you complaining about our base or the equipment?'\n\nIndigo spun to face Irene, her hair floating out behind her like smoke. 'As anyone could see if they bothered to look, I'm complaining about the equipment. This is a complete joke.'\n\nIrene forced herself to stand her ground. She'd faced angry dragons before, but it never became any easier. 'What do you want, and what will it take to get it?'\n\nAs Indigo paused to consider, Jerome fanned out his credit cards as if they were playing cards and sorted through them. 'Is that your role in our team?' he asked her. 'Procurement \u2013 you get what we need?'\n\n'Procurement and organization \u2013 just let me know what you want,' Irene said confidently. She had to get them to trust her somehow, so why not with this? Wishful thinking about locking the lot of them in a hotel room, while she and Kai got the job done, would have to be put on hold. She had to take control of this operation now, while the situation was still fluid and before anyone else could try to assert their authority. There was too much depending on it. 'I suggest we get started, as we're on a deadline.' And the world that I care about, the reason I'm actually doing this, has only a day or two more than that deadline. At best.\n\n'I'm not averse to working as part of a team,' Felix said. 'I've done it before.' He was perched on a desk, brooding like a raven. Irene still found it hard to be absolutely certain what he looked like, as her eyes always slid off him. No doubt he'd be impossible to pick out in an identification parade too. 'I'm not even against working with Librarians or dragons. But I'm also prepared to show you the door, if I think you're not contributing.'\n\n'That seems fair,' Ernst rumbled. 'I, too, am open-minded about cooperation with traditional enemies. But do not disappoint me. You would not like that.'\n\nKai shrugged, as if he hadn't vented about collaborating for an hour to Irene the night before. 'I see no reason why we shouldn't cooperate. If we meet again, we can always pretend we don't know each other.'\n\n'That usually ends up with a gun duel at dawn, after a night trashing a casino then chasing each other across town,' Jerome added.\n\n'That's oddly specific,' Irene said.\n\n'These things happen.'\n\nIndigo had been scribbling a list on a discarded notepad. 'Here,' she said, presenting it to Irene. 'I need these items or their local equivalents. It's going to cost, though. I can start putting this pile of junk together...' She gestured at the boxed equipment. 'But I need better. And the sooner I get it, the sooner I can get our faces off those official computer records.'\n\nIrene took the list and stared at it blankly, then passed it to Kai. 'Right,' she said. 'And I have some suggestions about a possible division of labour...'\n\nIrene was a strong believer that if you could get people accustomed to obeying simple orders under the guise of suggestions, they'd then do what they were told later when in horrible danger. This theory wasn't going to dazzle followers of Sun Tzu's The Art of War any time soon, but the basic principle was sound. Still, would it work on this team, all of whom were experts in their own fields?\n\nA gratifying silence filled the room, as everyone waited for her to speak.\n\n'We have three immediate needs,' she said. 'We need information on the painting and its security; information on the city; and cash. Does that sound reasonable?'\n\nIt was possible to guess at the team's alliances from the way people were glancing at each other for signs of agreement or disapproval. Jerome, Tina and Felix were one axis; she and Kai were another. Ernst was unreadable and Indigo was wholly contemptuous.\n\n'So who should do what?' Tina asked.\n\nIrene resisted the urge to sigh in relief at this sign of agreement. 'I'm making some assumptions about people's skills and knowledge here.' Mostly because you haven't actually told me what they are, she added silently. 'I'd suggest that Felix surveys the Kunsthistorisches Museum. On the cash front, I was thinking Ernst and Jerome might arrange some financing, and possibly check out the local criminal underworld while they're at it.'\n\n'You think I am expert in such things?' Ernst asked. 'You think I am the sort who simply walks into bar, and all local criminals wet themselves and hand over wallets?'\n\n'Nothing so crude,' Irene said hastily. 'But I do think that the two of you will be able to get the pulse of what's going on.'\n\n'You're not doing badly so far,' Jerome said thoughtfully. He flashed a charming smile at her. 'What do you plan to do yourself?'\n\n'I want to find out more about this world,' Irene said firmly. 'Did Mr Nemo say anything about werewolves, or that CENSOR organization?' A general shaking of heads. 'We're operating in the dark here and I don't want us to blow our cover. I'm used to researching this sort of thing, and doing it fast.'\n\n'And I'll be setting up this pile of junk.' Indigo prodded the nearest box with the toe of her boot. 'I want Kai here to assist me. I need another pair of hands, and he has more idea of what he's doing than the rest of you.'\n\n'Kai?' Irene queried, surprised.\n\nKai sighed. 'It makes sense,' he said.\n\n'And me?' Tina asked.\n\n'I was thinking you might like to map out this Vienna,' Irene said. Incomplete knowledge of a city could lead to nasty surprises during a fast getaway. 'Unless you feel you'd be more use doing something else?'\n\n'No, that sounds good.' Tina's eyes had lit up. She flicked another piece of gum into her mouth. 'I can work with this.'\n\n'You are a little silver-tongued charmer.' Ernst prodded Irene squarely on the collarbone with one meaty finger. 'Do not think I will indulge you, just because I like you. But for the moment you talk good sense.'\n\n'Too kind.' Irene rubbed the spot where he'd poked her. If he ever punched her, she wouldn't be getting up again.\n\nMaybe this was actually going to work.\n\nAnd once they were all busy... she could quietly check in with the Library. She had some very urgent questions to ask.\n\nThe Austrian National Library was the biggest library in Austria (in most alternate worlds, at least). Situated in the middle of Vienna, in the former Imperial Palace, it was a glorious work of architecture. The inside was decorated with paintings, frescoes and mosaics which had been known to bring viewers to a standstill in admiration. More relevantly to a Librarian, it had a collection of manuscripts, incunabula and papyri.\n\nPracticality, though, had instead brought Irene to the University of Vienna's library, where she was now sitting. Here she was anonymous, one among hundreds or even thousands of visitors taking advantage of the facilities. She'd been quite honest when she'd told the others that she wanted to make an assessment of this world \u2013 its history, its culture and its current dangers.\n\nBut there had been one other thing she'd wanted to do first.\n\nIt had only taken Irene a few minutes to find a back corridor where she could open a temporary passage to the Library. Once there, she'd sent a desperate email to Coppelia, to check the possible implications of what she was about to do. Mr Nemo might have sworn that they weren't breaching the treaty, but Irene was profoundly uneasy about the whole business.\n\nAs to what she was going to do if this theft turned out to be politically inadvisable... Well, she'd have to improvise.\n\nOutside, the wind whistled along the wide streets. Winter held Vienna in its grip, and while it wasn't actually snowing, it certainly wasn't warm. Grey cloud filled the sky and people walked with their collars turned up and their heads down, eager to escape the cutting edge of the wind.\n\nAnd everywhere, the cameras. That had been an unpleasant surprise. With determined optimism, Irene reassured herself that if Indigo was as good as she claimed, they wouldn't be an issue.\n\nIf. If. If.\n\nInside the library's reading room there was warmth and the silence of shared study. Students and the general public mingled along the long, dark oak tables which stretched the length of the room. Each person had their own nest of papers, laptop or tablet. Everyone was hunched over their work, as if afraid that someone was about to point an accusing finger and blame them for something. There was a sense of nervousness in the air which even Irene, a newcomer, could perceive.\n\nShe had found a corner and was combining web searches on a newly purchased laptop with paper-based research \u2013 leafing through the sheaf of newspapers and magazines she'd also acquired. Even if web searches were monitored, her computer was entirely anonymous.\n\nOne of her main discoveries was the high number of supernatural beings here, which was going to be a problem. The CENSOR organization had adopted a number of aggressive practices when hunting said supernatural beings, which might also be a problem. And The Raft of the Medusa was about sixteen by twenty-three feet, which was definitely going to be a problem when it came to stealing it. That was rather larger than the average book.\n\nShe idly flipped through online photos of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, trying to get a feel for the place. It was built on a large and luxurious scale, displaying the Habsburg dynasty's power just as much as their art collection. It was also well-equipped in terms of electronic security. This was also not one of those places which skimped on guards because it had electronics.\n\nWait. In that stock photo of a gold sculpture by Cellini... was that a dragon in the background?\n\nIrene leaned closer, her nose nearly touching the screen as she squinted at the expanded view. Yes, even though he was in human form, he was unmistakeably a dragon. The lines of the face, the posture, the way he held himself. Here in Vienna, in the same building as their target, only a few years ago, going by the date...\n\nThere was a whisper of air behind her, and a cylindrical metal object poked into her back. It was the third time this week.\n\n'Don't make a disturbance,' Felix said, his voice quiet enough that it was barely a purr in her ear. 'I'd like a word with you, in private.'\n\n'This isn't very private,' Irene replied equally softly. This was bad. She didn't even know what she'd done to trigger this reaction.\n\n'It will be, in a moment. Pack up your stuff. Keep it nice and casual. We're going to walk to the door over there and have a little talk, once we're sure nobody else is listening in.' He didn't add any further warning; the steady firmness of the gun muzzle in her back was quite enough.\n\nIrene shoved her things into her bag. The Language would be no help here: she'd never be able to finish a word, let alone a sentence, before Felix could fire. A crawling unease was forming in her stomach. Just how badly had she underestimated the situation?\n\nNobody looked up as they passed through a side door labelled Staff Only into the unlit corridor beyond. Here, Ernst emerged from the shadows like a looming monolith. His hand clamped around her throat before she could even squeak, and he hoisted her off her feet, pinning her against the wall. Felix shut the door tidily behind them.\n\n'So,' Ernst grunted. 'All those nice speeches, and you turn traitor before we even reach suppertime. I am disappointed in you.'\n\nIrene struggled desperately for breath. She held up her hands, trying to demonstrate peace, harmlessness, anything that might persuade him to release her.\n\n'Careful,' Felix said. 'She's probably trying to use that special language of theirs.'\n\n'It is not her language I'm worried about. It is her silver tongue. If we let her speak, she will no doubt try to persuade us of her innocence.'\n\nSpots flashed in front of Irene's eyes and she kicked at Ernst, but she didn't have the leverage or reach to do any damage.\n\n'I don't know,' Felix mused thoughtfully. 'Perhaps she might have something useful to say.'\n\n'Only one way to find out,' Ernst said. He slackened his grip, letting Irene slide down the wall till her toes touched the ground and she could \u2013 just \u2013 support herself. His fingers remained clenched around her throat, a warning.\n\nIrene sucked in gulps of air. 'Not a traitor,' she gasped, her voice raw.\n\n'This is good,' Ernst said approvingly. 'I like it even better if you can prove it.'\n\nIrene rolled her eyes towards Felix. She guessed he would ask the awkward questions while Ernst applied the physical threats. She had miscalculated somewhere, and she needed to work out how, before it was too late. 'Why say I'm a traitor?' she croaked.\n\n'Because the moment you get away, you go sneaking off to your Library for further orders.' Felix's tone was light and playful, but his eyes were cold. 'Were you arranging to steal the picture with your other friends? Or were you making a deal to sell us out?'\n\nOh damn. He must have been following her from the moment they'd left their base.\n\nIrene looked from Ernst to Felix again. 'All right,' she said. 'I admit I checked in with the Library. I'm not going to deny it.' This was particularly annoying, as she could have told them beforehand and avoided all this. 'I'm under orders to get a certain book from Mr Nemo. That's why I agreed to steal the painting. But I had to confirm it didn't infringe the truce\u2014'\n\n'Ah yes, this so-called Fae\u2013dragon\u2013Librarian truce,' Felix interrupted. 'It's a nice story, but do you really expect us to believe in it?'\n\nFor a moment Irene stared at him. She'd been through hell and back to get the truce signed. 'Mr Nemo himself confirmed it existed!'\n\nHer disbelief must have shown in her voice, but Felix just shrugged. 'I know you Librarians. You're all good liars. And it's not as if Mr Nemo actually gave his word that he'd heard of it.'\n\n'I also know nothing of such a truce,' Ernst rumbled. 'It is good story. It gives you decent alibi. Now, how about we get to real story and facts?'\n\n'Tell me, Irene, which finger do you use least?' Felix asked. 'We don't have to kill you, but we may need to apply some encouragement...'\n\nIrene felt a cold sense of dread. She'd made a really, really bad mistake. She'd grown used to dealing with Fae who accepted that the truce existed, and she'd felt a measure of safety negotiating under its protection. She'd been spoiled, assuming these Fae would also treat her as a neutral, rather than an enemy or a competitor. Now she \u2013 and Kai \u2013 might be about to pay the price.\n\n'Be reasonable. Please. I can answer your questions without all this.' She knew her fear was showing in her voice. Maybe that would help convince them.\n\n'Yes, but how can we trust you?' Felix shook his head sadly and somehow less theatrically than usual. He seemed more human now he'd moved away from his archetype of shadowy thief. Worryingly, this felt like a very personal grudge instead. 'How can we trust any of you Librarians?'\n\nYou Librarians, Irene thought. 'You've met some of us before,' she hazarded. 'And it didn't go well?'\n\n'That's putting it mildly,' Felix said with quiet savagery. 'You people are unprincipled monomaniacs.'\n\n'I'm not denying that,' Irene admitted. 'But if you know about the Language...'\n\n'I do indeed, which is why Ernst is going to squeeze your throat until your head pops off if you try anything.'\n\n'Then you know we can't lie in it?' Irene met his eyes. 'It's like you Fae \u2013 if you bind yourself by your word, then you have to keep it. If I give you my word, in the Language, then I have to speak the truth. I don't know what this other Librarian did to you, but I'm not them. I want this theft to succeed. I have something important at stake too.'\n\nShe felt nervous sweat trickling down her back as Felix and Ernst exchanged glances.\n\n'Ernst?' Felix finally said. 'I'm not sure I trust my judgement here. What do you think?'\n\nErnst shrugged. Irene could feel the vibrations of his movement through his hand round her throat. 'It is true, that if they swear in their Language, they must keep their word?'\n\n'Yes,' Felix said sourly, 'but they're good at working round that.'\n\n'Then she should swear she's not going to betray us. That she will be as honest with us as she is with that dragon boy of hers. That seems fair enough.'\n\n'That's unfair,' Irene said quickly. Her fear was still very real, but if she made the wrong promise the Language could tear her apart. 'I'm prepared to pledge \"one for all and all for one\" \u2013 with one caveat \u2013 but you must do the same.'\n\nErnst's hand tightened. 'Caveat? You demand an exception, just for you?'\n\nIrene coughed and made frantic gestures till he relaxed his grip. 'The Library,' she gasped. 'If they tell me, back off and pull out, then I won't have a choice. But if I do, I'll swear not to interfere with your work on the job.'\n\nEveryone in the main reading room would have their heads down over their work, oblivious to her plight, she thought despairingly. It was like a theatrical farce, but deadly serious. Even if she screamed, nobody would reach her in time to help.\n\nAnd, she wondered with a shiver, what else had she missed? She made a mental vow that she wouldn't be so careless again.\n\n'Let's do this by stages, less room for error,' Felix said slowly. 'Give us your word that you haven't betrayed us \u2013 and that this side trip of yours to your Library was as you claimed. Then maybe we can negotiate what happens next on a more equal basis.'\n\n'All right.' Irene swallowed, and chose her words. 'I swear by my name and power that I have not betrayed you and I do not intend to betray you. I also swear that a truce has been signed between all dragon monarchs and a number of powerful Fae, and the Library is also a signatory.'\n\nShe looked up and Felix's face was set in hard lines. 'And your side trip...' he prompted.\n\n'My main motivation in returning to the Library was to check I wouldn't break the truce because of this theft.'\n\nHer words echoed in the shadowy passageway with a resonance that went beyond the physical and hummed in her bones. The Fae felt it, too. Ernst released her throat and pulled his hand away as though it had been stung, and Felix twitched, glancing up and down the corridor nervously.\n\nIrene wanted very badly to rub her throat, but that might have looked like weakness. 'All right?' she said. 'Convinced?'\n\n'Main motivation?' Felix queried.\n\nThat was the problem with using the Language to swear truthfully: she had to be truthful. 'I also asked if they had any information on this world which they could share. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling dangerously under-informed.'\n\n'So there is a truce,' Ernst mused. 'Maybe I will get work from dragon employers now. That would be amusing. But your problem makes more sense now. If your Library catches you breaking treaty they have signed, then they throw you out or have you publicly executed, or something like that?'\n\n'At the very least,' Irene agreed. She could feel that the balance of power had shifted. Even if Felix wasn't quite convinced, Ernst seemed prepared to believe her. She took a step forward. 'So shall we discuss what you're both after?'\n\n'From Mr Nemo?' Felix asked.\n\nNow that was deliberately obtuse. Irene could spot it half a mile away. 'No,' she said. 'From me. If you'd wanted me dead, I'd already be dead. Which means you want something. Perhaps it's time for all of us to be honest about what we want here?'\n\nFelix hesitated, then nodded. 'All right. You tell me, Irene \u2013 just how many oddities have you spotted in this job, already?'\n\n'You mean things which would be complete deal-breakers if there wasn't some bait I really wanted on the hook?'\n\n'Yes,' Felix murmured. 'Just like that. I don't normally work with other people. Or if I do, I'm the one who picks them. No offence, Ernst.'\n\n'None taken,' Ernst answered gloomily. 'How nice to have such freedom!'\n\n'And I'm not convinced people can hack into computer networks that easily.' It seemed Felix didn't trust Indigo any more than he trusted Irene. 'I'd like a sample or two of what our dragon \"colleague\" can do before I rely on her to back me up.'\n\n'And Mr Nemo didn't mention supernatural creatures \u2013 or that dragons visited this world,' Irene said. 'A minor point which would have been useful to know.' For a moment she thought of pointing a finger of suspicion in Indigo's direction, but rejected it. That sort of accusation could be impossible to take back. And she didn't know enough about Indigo to know whether it was justified or not.\n\nShe didn't know enough about any of them.\n\n'You say dragons, plural,' Ernst noted. 'In the van, dragon boy said he could sense them here. You have more proof?'\n\n'There was a photo of the museum from about two years ago. I saw a dragon in the background. He was in human form. I know it's not current, but...' Irene shrugged. 'I need more information. We need more information.'\n\nFelix had opened his mouth to answer, when suddenly the raucous clamour of alarm bells split the air \u2013 a sound which would have been bad enough in the large reading room, but which was actively painful in the enclosed corridor.\n\nCrashes and thuds came from the room beyond, and the sound of stampeding feet.\n\nThen the noise cut off. Abruptly the gun was in Felix's hand again, pointed squarely at Irene's forehead. 'You have betrayed us,' he snarled, his tone barely controlled.\n\n'Before you jumped me, I didn't even know you were here!' Irene retorted. 'If that was a fire alarm, we should get out of here too!' There was no noise coming from the reading room now.\n\nThere was a crackle and a click as a loudspeaker came on. 'Attention, attention,' a man's voice said in German, harsh and echoing, as the broadcast repeated in other rooms within earshot. 'This is CENSOR. We have a report of a vampire infestation in progress. Everyone is to leave this building immediately and submit to identity checks and blood tests, as required under CENSOR charter. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Any attempt to avoid testing is illegal. Please form an orderly queue and be prepared for your belongings to be searched.' A pause. 'Attention, attention...'\n\nThe barrel of Felix's pistol was still pointed right between Irene's eyes. She swallowed. 'Felix. Pull yourself together.' Why did I use the word pull? It goes far too well with 'trigger'. 'I haven't had time to invite CENSOR to stage a raid. You both know that. I'm on your side \u2013 and I've sworn it, too. But we need to get out of here now.'\n\nFelix's hand didn't shake, but his eyes were unsettlingly wild. 'I knew it,' he crooned, half to himself. 'I knew I couldn't trust you. Well, this time's going to be different\u2014'\n\nErnst had moved in total silence. His hand came down hard across the back of Felix's neck, and the other Fae crumpled like a rag. His pistol went spinning across the floor till Irene stopped it with her foot.\n\n'All right,' she said. 'Whose side are you on?'\n\n'Side of common sense,' Ernst said calmly. 'Only a fool fights in a burning house \u2013 or with the police outside.' He bent down and picked up Felix, swinging him over one shoulder. 'We need the quickest way out of here without meeting police. Or CENSOR people.'\n\nIrene considered. She'd visited this library once, although it was in another world long ago. 'Up's no use. We'd be trapped as they worked through the building. And no, I can't take you into the Library itself from here \u2013 I can't bring Fae inside.'\n\n'Down?'\n\n'If they're hunting for vampires, they'll probably be checking the cellars. No, we need a side door somewhere. Or an excuse to mingle with the crowd.'\n\n'More difficult with a burden,' Ernst remarked, patting the unconscious Felix meaningfully, though his tone was carefully neutral.\n\nIrene considered his statement. 'Is that a subtle moral test to see if I'd leave him behind?' she said. 'Or are you just being pragmatic? Either way, you're the one who's going to be carrying him.'\n\n'Had to check,' Ernst said with a shrug, though she noticed he hadn't committed to either explanation. 'So how do we get out of here \u2013 with him? We may have a problem.'\n\n'We do have a problem. And we don't have identity papers, apart from our passports.' Irene had a nasty suspicion that passports alone might not suffice. She might pass, but who knew whether CENSOR's checks could detect Fae?\n\nThe view outside, from a dusty second-storey window, didn't inspire peace of mind. The street was swarming with a mixture of police and people in CENSOR uniforms. Crowds of civilians were being organized into neat queues, pointing towards checkpoints which looked like a combination of airport X-ray device and MRI scanner. Blood samples were being taken with neat efficiency \u2013 the sort that involved a syringe to the elbow. Nobody objected. Everybody was standing where they'd been told to stand, as if this was routine, and were eyeing the people around them with controlled nervousness. But people were still spilling out of the Library into the street. That was good; it meant that there was still time for them to mingle with the crowd. If they could solve the Felix problem.\n\nAll the CENSOR people had shoulder-cams, just like the one they'd seen earlier, and carried walkie-talkies at their belts. This city runs on fear, Irene thought, and CENSOR seems to have its hand on the throttle... She frowned.\n\n'You have idea?' Ernst queried.\n\n'Yes,' Irene said slowly. 'We'll need an exit where the CENSOR people can intercept us \u2013 without too many other people listening...'\n\nThey were among the last to leave through the exit Irene had picked \u2013 one of the side doors out of the building. Both CENSOR guards stationed here had pistols slung across their backs, and short truncheons (or whatever the technical term was for a short heavy club) holstered at their belts. They looked much more military than a regular police force, and extremely dangerous.\n\nIrene had positioned herself and Ernst at the back of a group. Rather than carrying the still-unconscious Felix over his shoulder, Ernst now supported him with an arm around his waist. He moved with artificial slowness, as though the other man actually weighed him down.\n\nAs the last stragglers filed through the exit, Ernst let Felix slide to the ground as though he could no longer support the other man. Irene gasped, bent over him, then beckoned to the guards. 'Excuse me,' she said in faultless German. 'Can you help us? My friend is ill.'\n\nThe two CENSOR guards were well trained enough not to come running into what might be a trap. However, they did take a couple of steps into the building, out of view of their colleagues. Which was all Irene needed.\n\n'You perceive that we are your colleagues, reliable and trusted,' she said.\n\nThe atmosphere lightened. Although the two men didn't suddenly take off their weapons and start shaking hands, they relaxed noticeably. 'Anything to report?' one asked, while the other bent over to check Felix's pulse.\n\n'Yes, and it's urgent. Can you give me a channel directly to whoever's in charge of this operation?'\n\n'No problem,' the first man said, pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt. He hit a selection of buttons, muttered a code and finished with, 'Eisen, reporting in now,' before passing it to Irene.\n\nIrene had tried this once before, so she knew it was possible, but she wasn't sure how many she had to convince. With the Language, the more people involved, the harder it became...\n\n'You perceive I am a trusted authority,' she said into the walkie-talkie, 'and that I am telling you that this whole affair is a hoax. It's an attempt to distract you from the real vampire infestation, at the Spanish Riding School. You perceive that you need to take action and get there \u2013 now.'\n\nBlinding pain ripped through her skull, and blood began to leak from her nose. She swayed, holding herself upright by force of will, and tried to blot her nosebleed as inconspicuously as possible. Frantic babbling came from the walkie-talkie: she hit the switch that she'd seen the CENSOR guard press, and it cut off. 'Cameras, deactivate,' she added, feeling faint.\n\nErnst had strolled behind the guards, his motions so casual that he hadn't registered as a threat. This was despite him being over six feet tall, with the sort of build and musculature that made him the archetype of an enforcer. Before the CENSOR guards could ask what was going on, he picked them up by their necks and banged their heads together.\n\n'I used to think it was artistic licence, when I read about that,' Irene mumbled. This was a bad headache. There must have been at least half a dozen people on the far end of the connection. She fumbled for aspirin in her bag, and dry-swallowed a couple.\n\n'And I used to think sensible women took out the cameras before doing criminal things.' Ernst kicked open a random door, grabbed each guard by an ankle, and dragged them both through it. He then shoved the door shut.\n\n'If I'd tried that before using the Language on them, they might have shot me first.' Her nosebleed had mostly stopped. Irene stuffed bloodied paper tissues back into her bag: she didn't want to risk leaving blood samples around.\n\nErnst peered around the edge of the doorway. 'Mm. They are dismantling the checkpoints now and the queues are almost gone. I think the police and CENSOR are both on their way out too. Can you walk?'\n\n'I can.' Not well, but she could manage it. 'We'd better confuse our trail on the way back \u2013 and hope that Indigo really is that good at hacking computer records.'\n\n'What went wrong?' Kai asked, as soon as she walked through the door.\n\n'I wish I knew,' Irene said sourly. 'We'd better not have any vampire infestations under this building. How did you know we had problems?'\n\n'You've changed your clothing, restyled your hair, altered your make-up and put on a pair of glasses,' Kai pointed out. 'Were you followed?'\n\n'I hope not.' Irene glanced around. Computers had been unpacked and were arranged on desks in a complex configuration. Indigo was in the middle of a nest of keyboards and monitors, swapping in successive memory sticks before bursting into fusillades of typing. She hadn't bothered to look up.\n\nKai waited for further details with a rather too obvious patience. He might as well have shouted: Hero nobly and patiently waits for the inconsiderate heroine to explain what's going on. But she wasn't about to trigger his protective instincts by actually telling him. That could split the team apart \u2013 just after she'd managed temporarily to glue over the wobbly patches. She rubbed her forehead. Her metaphors were getting mangled, it was that bad. Instead she said, 'Are Ernst and Felix back yet?'\n\nErnst strolled in from the tiny office bathroom next door, dripping wet and with a towel round his waist. His hair had changed colour to a muted brown, which contrasted obviously with the blond mat of hair covering his chest. Apparently he didn't think it necessary to dye that. 'I'm here. Felix went to research the museum. I told dragon boy we'd split up to avoid attention after dodging the CENSOR people. Knew you'd be okay.'\n\nIt was difficult, sometimes, to decide whether to be more irritated by colleagues assuming she could handle anything, or by colleagues fretting over her safety. Irene gave up and sat down. 'Good.' Her headache had gone down too. Sometimes she wondered if she should be taking so many aspirin. But the risks of sudden death tended to take priority. 'Kai, the CENSOR situation has left us with a problem. It's now near-certain that they've caught all three of us on camera. I'm hoping Indigo can sort that out.'\n\n'You have a high opinion of my abilities,' Indigo said, not looking up.\n\n'I hope it's justified. If CENSOR manages to track me down \u2013 track us down,' Irene corrected hastily, in case they thought disposing of her removed the problem, 'then we're going to be severely hampered. We have enough logistical issues as it is.'\n\n'Such as?' Kai handed her a cup of coffee.\n\nErnst leaned against a desk and began to rub his hair dry with another towel. 'If you have a plan already, that is good.'\n\n'If you disturb any of my computers, that is bad,' Indigo replied, an icy expression on her face.\n\n'Bah. You are not one of those fools who does not plug things in properly.'\n\n'Logistics...' Irene said quickly. 'Firstly, the painting's big. It's about five yards high by seven or eight yards long. While I'm not saying it's impossible to get it out of the museum, it's going to take some planning. Secondly, cameras are going to be all over the place, from what I've seen. Thirdly, CENSOR is on the lookout for supernatural business, and its people have guns. While none of us are vampires or werewolves or whatever, if we get spotted doing anything...'\n\n'...inhumanly magnificent,' Kai said with far too much enthusiasm.\n\nIrene looked at him wearily. 'Yes, that could be a problem. Fourthly, a dragon has been on this world \u2013 and in that museum \u2013 within the last couple of years. I saw a photo.'\n\nKai picked up a spare laptop, ignoring Indigo's furious glare, and pushed it towards her. 'Can you find this photo? I might recognize them.'\n\nShe typed in a quick search term and slid it back. So much for any hope that making Kai and Indigo work together might improve their attitude towards each other. 'So. For inconveniences, we have a powerful supra-regional law enforcement body that hunts down the supernatural. We have the supernaturals themselves, if they get in our way. We have standard law and order. We have an extremely large painting that we're going to need a similarly large vehicle to remove. Better add a lorry to our shopping list.'\n\n'Do you think Mr Nemo knew the size of this painting?' Ernst asked thoughtfully. 'He did say that we needn't bring the frame.'\n\n'I'd forgotten that,' Irene said, cheering up a little. 'That'll help.'\n\n'But it'll take hours to remove it from the frame, even for an expert like Felix,' Indigo said. 'An overnight job?'\n\n'If necessary.'\n\n'Ah!' Kai said, frowning at the laptop screen. 'Yes, I do know him.'\n\n'Another relative?' Ernst suggested gloomily.\n\n'No, not at all. It's Hao Chen. He's from a minor family, not connected to me by blood at all \u2013 a lower branch to the Winter Forest family. I don't think he holds any court position.'\n\n'Hao Chen?' Indigo said, looking up from her computers. 'Is he doing something useful?'\n\n'If you were in touch with the family, rather than being hunted for high treason, then you'd know, wouldn't you?'\n\nIndigo shrugged. 'You may be as petty as you please. But me returning to our father, and bowing my head for the axe, is far more likely than Hao Chen finally being useful.'\n\nIrene deliberately forced her mouth shut. Our father? She'd gathered Indigo was part of Kai's family, but for her to be actually a sister \u2013 or half-sister? She suppressed visions of having unknown siblings show up on her own doorstep at some point in the future. Right now, she needed to break the stand-off. 'Indigo. Are dragons still looking for you?'\n\n'They've probably got bored by now,' Indigo answered with a shrug. Her hair quivered in long waves down her back, like a frozen waterfall briefly resettling.\n\n'But are they still actively looking?'\n\nIndigo raised both eyebrows, turning her attention from her computer screen to Irene. Her icy tone rivalled that of her uncle Ao Ji. 'Do you have any justifiable reason to ask that, or are you merely the sort of person who loves to roll in scandal, as a dog does in excrement?'\n\nJust like Kai, the angrier she gets, the more formal her diction becomes. Irene shrugged. 'I do know dragons can track those they've met from world to world. I think that it's only reasonable to worry about a sudden descent by family members hunting you \u2013 especially as this world is aspected towards order rather than chaos.'\n\n'She has point,' Ernst rumbled. 'Me, I do not like to sleep when dragons may be about to rip the roof off. I end up sleeping badly and get wrinkles.'\n\nIrene was starting to wonder just how much of Ernst's persona \u2013 and accent \u2013 were genuine. 'Cucumber slices for the eyelids, perhaps?' she suggested. 'Or used teabags?'\n\n'Neither helps,' Ernst said sadly. 'It is hard, being manly man.'\n\n'I will say this just once,' Indigo snapped, 'and I will not repeat myself. I have a token which shields me from dragon pursuit and observation. He \u2013' she jerked her chin at Kai \u2013 'can confirm that such a thing is possible. Now tell us more about your research, girl.'\n\n'My name is Irene,' Irene said steadily, although her temper seethed. But she'd expected a challenge from Indigo, sooner or later. 'Or Miss Winters, if you prefer. I'll also answer to Librarian. But not girl, or woman.' Memories of C. S. Lewis's Narnia came to mind. 'I'll make an exception for Daughter of Eve... maybe.'\n\n'You think I read such childish fantasies?' Indigo enquired.\n\n'I think you recognized the reference,' Irene returned. 'I'm prepared to assume that you called me girl out of habit. But now I've explained, I expect you to respect my wishes.'\n\n'Are you going to let your concubine speak to me like that?' Indigo demanded of Kai.\n\nKai's eyes flickered with the red of dragon anger, but there was also an element of sheer delight. Was he looking forward to a confrontation \u2013 where Indigo would lose? 'Miss Winters is not my concubine,' he answered, perfectly polished. 'She is a Librarian, she holds the position of a Librarian-in-Residence, and she is also the Library's sole representative on treaty matters. You do yourself no favours by displaying your ignorance and lack of manners.'\n\n'She clearly has you wrapped around her little finger,' Indigo sniped back. 'I could live with that, but she's also managed to get herself in trouble on her very first day here. I can tolerate favouritism, but not incompetence.'\n\n'That's not what happened,' Irene said shortly. 'Ernst, you were there. Did I actually do anything to cause the problem? Or were we \u2013 you, me, Felix \u2013 simply unlucky? Speaking of that mess, was the Spanish Riding School on the news?'\n\nIndigo paused her glaring match with Kai and checked one of her monitors. 'Yes. They found a group of Epona-worshipping cultists among the grooms. All performances have been postponed till further notice.'\n\nThat came as a total surprise. 'Really?'\n\n'Why are you so surprised?'\n\n'Because I invented an incident there to distract the CENSOR officials. If they've actually found something there, it's a very strange coincidence. And if they're not publicizing what I did, then...'\n\n'...then they are trying to hunt you down secretly,' Ernst finished.\n\nAn unpleasant chill knotted Irene's insides. 'What fun,' she said. 'This job gets more and more entertaining.'\n\nOr might there be another reason for them pointing to cultists at the school \u2013 other than covering up her involvement? If CENSOR was investigating, perhaps it had to find a culprit, or it showed fallibility on its part? Either way, CENSOR was a growing problem for the team.\n\n'I think you'd better stay inside from now on,' Kai said seriously. 'If you do go out, it'll need to be under heavy disguise \u2013 at least until Indigo can get into the police records.'\n\nIndigo nodded, grudgingly. 'If you must research, you can do it here.'\n\nStaying inside and not being hunted might be appealing for some, but not Irene. There was too much to do. However, she could use the computer time. 'That sounds a good idea,' Irene agreed. 'Since nobody knows your face yet, Kai, why not check out the Art History Museum?'\n\n'I thought you'd never ask,' Kai said.\n\nKai leapt down the last few stairs and sauntered through the lobby. It was a relief to be doing something, even if it was only preparatory scouting. And getting away from Indigo was delightful in itself.\n\nShe treated him like a low-grade minion and it rankled. Though he wasn't sure whether it was annoying because she had no right to behave as though she was still his older sister and deserved his respect, or because of her low opinion of his technical skills. Either way, it had left him with knotted shoulders from stress and a number of silently drafted poems that had contained very expressive imagery.\n\nStill, at least now he could make progress without the handicap of Fae 'assistance'.\n\nHe glanced around as he stepped into the street, conscious of the ubiquitous cameras, even in this rundown area of Vienna. He was just in time to spot a group of men closing in on Jerome. They were being careful about it; they'd picked a location which wasn't under surveillance and they were quickly herding the Fae into an alleyway.\n\nWas Jerome in trouble already? Those men didn't look like CENSOR officials or police. Without pausing, he readied himself for a fight. He strolled towards the alley, head down and collar turned up like any other passer-by.\n\nHe'd expected a lookout. What he hadn't expected was the lookout to scrutinize him, then call back down the alleyway to where the three others surrounded Jerome, 'Boss, it's another one of them.'\n\n'Send him over,' one of the group responded. 'They can both hear it at once.'\n\nSince he wasn't being manhandled, Kai walked across, assessing the threat. All four men wore clothing that tried to look expensive, but had been made on the cheap, and now only succeeded in looking shabby. The two by Jerome had their hands in their pockets, and was that... Why, yes, it was the outline of a gun. Flat caps and scarves concealed their faces, plausible in the miserable weather. Where they could be seen, their faces were definitely identifiable, with the broken noses and scars that went with a low-grade criminal career.\n\nJerome leaned casually against the wall, with a light in his eyes that seemed almost dreamy, as though he was weighing odds in his head and liked his chances. 'You didn't have to get involved,' he said to Kai.\n\nKai shrugged. 'I walked right into it. What's going on?'\n\n'We're making an offer to your friend,' the leader said. 'And to you, since you're here as well.' He used the impolite Germanic du for 'you', rather than the polite sie usual for strangers.\n\n'I'm listening.' But he could guess what the 'offer' was. They were being shaken down by the local criminal gang for as much as could be gouged out of them. That was what happened when you set up on the cheap side of town \u2013 as he frequently pointed out to Irene, when justifying the cost of five-star hotel suites.\n\n'Don't bother,' Jerome said. 'They just want money.'\n\n'How much money?' Kai asked, out of academic curiosity.\n\n'Two thousand a week.'\n\nKai pursed his lips in a whistle. That was a whole month of rent for their 'offices'. 'High expectations.'\n\n'Yeah,' the heaviest thug said, 'and it'd be a real shame if we were disappointed.'\n\nKai and Jerome exchanged glances. Kai was certain he could take out these men by himself. They might have guns, but he had speed. And Jerome seemed more than capable of handling himself.\n\nBefore they could make a move the leader said, 'And since you're from out of town, I'm thinking you \"entrepreneurs\" never had CENSOR called on you before?'\n\nAt this threat, Kai felt the cold whisper of uncertainty against the back of his neck. 'Explain yourself,' he ordered.\n\n'I don't know where you're from \u2013 America? Hong Kong? Your German's good, but you can hear the accent. Yeah, I know you've got CENSOR or something like it back home \u2013 everyone has, these days. But you don't realize how hard and fast they come down on you here. You better start making payments real soon and regular. Or CENSOR's getting a phone call outing you as vampires \u2013 or werewolves. Or saying you're hiding books of magic. Whatever.'\n\nHe paused, and when neither Kai nor Jerome interrupted, he smirked. 'Yeah. Thought that'd get you thinking. Perhaps you've got something upstairs you don't want CENSOR or the police getting a good look at, huh? Maybe there's a reason why you're here on the cheap, doing your shopping in cash instead of on credit?'\n\nThis was a problem.\n\n'I'd like a word with my colleague,' Kai said quickly.\n\n'You've got five minutes,' the leader said. 'Don't do anything stupid.'\n\nJerome watched the men as they strolled to the alley entrance, their posture making it clear just how confident they were. 'You're the one who's been setting up the computers with Indigo,' he said quietly. 'Just how bad will it be if the cops turn the place upside down? Will they find anything?'\n\n'Well, we are in the middle of planning a theft,' Kai pointed out. 'No raid is a good raid... the more we show up on police files, the more complicated it gets. And the way they're putting it, CENSOR investigates a bit more in depth than the police.'\n\n'So we don't want a police visit. And we definitely don't want a CENSOR visit.'\n\n'No. It would be far too dangerous.' Kai considered their options. These men were an inconvenience; some of his kin would have swept them away without a second thought. Kai wasn't quite that ruthless, but even so...\n\n'We'll need them close up before we make a move,' Jerome said, clearly following the same train of thought.\n\nThen a lightbulb went on at the back of Kai's mind. It was so simple it seemed too good to be true. 'Jerome... what if we just pay them?'\n\n'Seriously?' Jerome seemed personally insulted by the very idea.\n\nSo was Kai. But there were moments in life when one had to lower oneself to practices such as making deals with Fae, drinking poorly made tea \u2013 and paying off thugs. 'It's a stopgap measure,' he said quietly. 'We won't be here the next time they come around. Besides...' There was a practical aspect, after all. 'There'll be someone behind these people. If they all vanish, more will come, and then they'll know we're hiding something.'\n\n'Yes, but the money...'\n\n'Indigo can sort that out.'\n\n'For someone who doesn't like her, you've got a great deal of confidence in her. You seem to think she can hack into anything.'\n\nKai was suddenly wary. There were things about Indigo and her skills that he wasn't willing to share \u2013 not even with Irene, and certainly not with a Fae. 'I don't like her, but she's very good at what she does.'\n\n'You finished over there?' the leader called.\n\n'Just a moment!' Jerome called, before turning back to Kai. 'I'm not asking can she help here, but will she? She's got your attitude.'\n\n'Excuse me,' Kai said, highly offended. 'She is nothing like me.'\n\n'If you say so,' Jerome said. His smile took some of the insolence out of the statement \u2013 or, possibly, added to it. Kai wasn't quite sure. Jerome carried himself like an aristocrat rather than a gambler. It was hard to know how to read him. But Kai had to assume he was at least prepared to follow his plan.\n\nKai signalled the thugs over. 'We're prepared to pay \u2013 or at least, discuss payment.'\n\n'There's nothing to discuss,' the leader said. 'Two thousand a week. Cash. First payment within two days. Or CENSOR gets a phone call.'\n\n'Okay,' Kai said, with an inward sigh. He knew it was what Irene would have done, but having to concede to these petty criminals galled him. 'How do we get it to you?'\n\n'We'll give you a phone number. You ring it. We give you an address. And don't try anything stupid.'\n\n'We wouldn't dream of trying to fool geniuses like you,' Jerome assured them, with a sardonic smile.\n\n'Right. I've had just about enough of you sneering at us. Boys?' The leader jerked his head at the other thugs. 'Let's give these two a little lesson in manners.'\n\nHis hand slid into his overcoat pocket and emerged sheathed in a set of brass knuckles. The others smirked as they pressed in, each with their own favourite props \u2013 more brass knuckles and a flick-knife. The biggest one had no weapon at all, just his own bare hands, his huge fists seamed with old scars. 'Nothing permanent, boys,' he said. 'Just a reminder for next time.'\n\n'You think your bosses will approve, now that we're ready to pay?' Jerome asked.\n\n'A few bruises never hurt anyone, and you've got to learn some... respect.' He swung for Jerome's guts as he spoke.\n\nBut the punch never landed. Jerome caught his wrist, directing the blow into the alley wall. The man yelped in pain and Jerome tripped up the second as he dashed in to help, sending the thug sprawling to the wet pavement.\n\nKai had targeted the flick-knife wielder as the most immediately dangerous. They circled each other warily. Then the thug flourished his blade in what was supposed to be a threatening gesture. It gave Kai great pleasure to block the move and twist his opponent's arm behind his back until he dropped the knife, before shoving him into the wall.\n\nBut while he was busy, the remaining man had grabbed Jerome by his shoulders, moving with surprising speed. The first thug moved in to punch the Fae, blood dripping from his skinned knuckles.\n\n'Hey!' Kai rushed over to help.\n\nJerome simply snorted, and rammed his head backwards into the face of his captor. Then he wrenched free, not even breathing fast, ready to attack.\n\n'Hold it!' the leader gasped, trying to look in control. 'All right. You two can walk away. You've got the message. But it's going to be four thousand now.'\n\n'Worth it,' Kai said smugly, watching them stagger away.\n\n'Worth it to what \u2013 call off my fight?' Jerome said, a dangerous glint in his eyes. Abruptly, Kai remembered Jerome had never agreed to his plan to pay and would clearly have been happier if he'd handled the thugs himself. It would have been... more of a challenge, more of a gamble.\n\n'I didn't want him getting blood on your overcoat,' he answered, trying to keep the tone light. 'I don't care what they say; even with cold water, it never washes out.'\n\n'Fair enough.' Some of the tension between them ebbed away. 'Nice work.'\n\n'You too.'\n\n'Is your sister also that good, if you've had the same training?'\n\nKai bit back the words do me a favour \u2013 highly dangerous when the Fae could take it literally, and demand a price in return. Instead he said, 'I'd be happier if you didn't call her that. And probably, yes, but we've never sparred.'\n\n'Could be interesting,' Jerome mused.\n\n'Save that thought till after this is over.' Kai stared at the gloomy sky without really seeing it. 'Being shaken down by the local gang isn't much of a surprise. But the fact they used CENSOR as a threat \u2013 that means the fear of the supernatural is far more embedded in this world than we realized. Where are these local supernaturals, anyway? Could they help or hinder us?' They began to walk towards the Metro, the quickest way of reaching the museum \u2013 which had, after all, been his original target. Although public transport suddenly felt a bit too public.\n\n'Who knows?' Jerome replied. 'But if CENSOR has stirred up that much suspicion of those with \"powers\" we'll have to be really careful. The last thing we want is to trigger a lynch mob waving stakes, or whatever they do here.'\n\n'Keeping that gang happy, so they don't set CENSOR on us first, will help,' Kai pointed out.\n\n'Looks like we dodged a bullet, then. We only need to pay.'\n\n'It does make me wonder, though.' Kai gestured at the street, the city beyond. 'If we've hit problems already, what's it like for people who actually live here, experiencing this environment of fear on a daily basis?'\n\nJerome's eyes were bleak, and his amused smile vanished. 'There are more ways to control a land, or a world, than by dictatorship. And I think CENSOR's found one of them.'\n\nIrene looked up from her monitor. The two of them were alone. 'Could Hao Chen still be here? Tell me about him.'\n\n'He's worthless.' Indigo was working through another set of computer memory sticks, doing tests of some sort on the contents of each before discarding it. Each had its own little labelled nook in a foam-rubber-lined case. Even when Indigo would have \u2013 by her expression \u2013 preferred to have thrown them across the room, she carefully put each one back in place before trying the next. 'I don't have time for him.'\n\n'Worthless in the incompetent way, the libidinous way, or the frivolous way?' Irene asked, with a wry smile.\n\n'Frivolous. He has no mind \u2013 no, that's not quite correct. He does have a mind, but he chooses not to use it. He spends all his time on gambling and betting and theatres \u2013 and he's led his sister into bad habits too.'\n\n'His sister?'\n\n'Shu Fang. They have the same parents on both sides. They made a binding contract for life, would you believe it? Of course, they're low family, so they can do that sort of thing.'\n\nIrene knew that the royal dragons engaged in what Kai had referred to as 'mating contracts'. They didn't seem to go in for long-term or permanent marriages. It seemed that less powerful dragons had a bit more leeway. 'If Hao Chen is still hanging around this world, does that mean we might expect his sister as well?'\n\n'You should have asked Kai before you sent him out,' Indigo said, unfairly she thought. 'Why are you pestering me for details?'\n\n'Because I thought you might know something useful,' Irene said carefully. She wasn't here to make enemies.\n\n'You seem to have dropped your bad attitude...'\n\n'And you seem to have stopped calling me \"girl\".'\n\n'I needed to know your limits,' Indigo said. She slotted in a new memory stick. 'Fae are manageable, once you've grasped their particular delusion, but humans are less logical. You're associating with Kai, for a start.'\n\n'You do realize that I'm curious about what's going on there with you two,' Irene said, leadingly.\n\n'And you do realize that I'm not going to discuss my private life with you.'\n\nIrene felt disappointed, but she was used to hunting down secrets. Indigo clearly had a few of them \u2013 and again, knowing so little about her teammates felt far too risky for comfort. 'So why did you rebel against your parents?' Irene probed. 'Is the rule of dragons really that bad?'\n\n'No, not if you ask someone who accepts everything they're told by their father,' Indigo countered. 'But if, unlike Kai, you really think about politics, about our monarchs' right to rule, about the gaps in our history... what then?'\n\n'You tell me, Indigo \u2013 you're the one who would know. Is there something to hide?'\n\n'Of course there is,' Indigo said with casual scorn. 'And people would kill to keep those secrets. Our so-called history is a shared fiction, agreed to keep those who are in power where they are. There is no such thing as genuine truth, only received truth. The winners write the history books in all cultures, as it serves their advantage. Parents tell their children the stories which paint them as heroes. Enlightened self-interest is the best that anyone can hope for.'\n\n'And I thought I was cynical.'\n\nIndigo leaned back in her chair. 'Why don't you tell me something instead? This program needs a few minutes to run, so you might as well...'\n\nIrene shrugged inwardly. Maybe if she talked, Indigo would be inclined to share in turn. 'Let's start with CENSOR. It was founded after the second \"world war\" \u2013 which happened in the nineteen-forties here too. It also shared the same standard Axis\u2013Allies split which occurs in a lot of alternate worlds. But after the war, people discovered major-league supernatural interference. Secret cabals of vampires, packs of werewolves roaming the streets, hidden organizations of magi behind the scenes.'\n\n'That's curious,' Indigo said. 'If they were so secret, how did they get found out?'\n\n'It seems new surveillance technology was invented during the war,' Irene answered. 'CENSOR's archives would have more detail. Have you been able to access them?'\n\n'Not yet,' Indigo muttered, irritation in her voice.\n\nCould it be that Indigo wasn't finding the local systems quite as easy to hack as she'd boasted? Probably not helpful to ask. 'Anyhow, after that period there's a constant stream of supernatural incidents. An attempt by vampires to take over the Conservative Party in Great Britain, a rampage by werewolves down Las Ramblas in Barcelona, some sort of cabal of blood sorcerers in Belgium\u2014'\n\n'Something strange always happens in Belgium,' Indigo interrupted.\n\n'Why's that?' Irene asked, distracted.\n\n'I don't know. Go on with the supernatural idiocy.'\n\n'There's an ongoing seething boil of lower-grade problems, too; enough to keep CENSOR busy and everyone else paranoid. What I couldn't find was any public mention of what happened to the arrested supernaturals afterwards.'\n\n'If I was in charge of CENSOR, I'd either use my supernatural captives to test new strategic initiatives, or I'd assemble them into my own private army,' Indigo said. 'Either way, I wouldn't welcome public interest in my activities. When you were researching CENSOR in the library, do you suppose you triggered an alarm that provoked the raid?'\n\n'I don't think so,' Irene said. 'My research didn't suggest someone could be caught by an online search. All the same, we'd better be careful. And I hope you are very good at your job, if they are capable of that level of oversight.'\n\nSomething flashed on one of Indigo's screens and she peered at it. 'The whole thing seems messy. If there are all these supernatural factions, why haven't they seized control? And if CENSOR's so vigilant, why hasn't it stamped them out?'\n\n'It's only been sixty years or so since their rise,' Irene said thoughtfully. 'And it seems to be mostly a Europe-specific problem. America's a theocracy with very strictly controlled travel in and out. China, Russia, the Middle East \u2013 most of them have their own CENSOR equivalents, which seem even more effective than here.'\n\n'The United Kingdom?'\n\n'Very strongly tied to Europe, which is why CENSOR has an English name and acronym. It did attempt to leave the European Union last year, but apparently that was prompted by demonic interference. A lot of politicians were subsequently tried for treason and beheaded at the Tower of London.'\n\nIndigo looked up and seemed to come to a decision. 'Irene, between us, this hacking job may be slightly more difficult than I'd thought.'\n\nIrene's mental alarms went off. They were hardly on 'between us' terms, and she sensed an attempt at manipulation.\n\n'There's all this security. And now CENSOR to consider. What if we can't get the job done on time, with this limiting my powers?' Indigo lifted her right hand. The silver cuff gleamed coldly on her wrist.\n\n'I don't suppose I could be of assistance with that?' Irene offered, to see what she'd say.\n\nIndigo sniffed. 'You honestly think you could do anything with those Librarian tricks, that I couldn't do myself? Please, don't be ridiculous.'\n\nWas that reverse psychology, to get Irene to remove the bracelet? Or was it a test of Irene's commitment to the team? 'As you like,' was all she said.\n\nAnd was the momentary flicker behind Indigo's eyes amusement, or disappointment at a failed gambit?\n\n'So what did Mr Nemo offer you?' Indigo asked, too casually.\n\n'A book for the Library,' Irene answered, equally non-committal.\n\n'Good to know that we can count on you for anything up to and including murder, then, with that bait...' Indigo said, and turned back to her computer.\n\nIrene was still wondering about Indigo's motives when her phone buzzed. A text from Kai.\n\nWe have a problem. Museum closes for renovations in two days.\n\nNight had fallen. The once-empty office was filling up with a detritus of guidebooks, maps, notepads and crumpled bits of paper. If CENSOR did ever manage to find them here, they'd need to torch the place to conceal their plans, or hire an industrial shredder. Outside, lorries groaned and rattled past, following their nocturnal routes through the more industrial parts of Vienna.\n\nErnst rolled his shoulders thoughtfully. 'I think we need more pizza.'\n\n'If you can think at all, then you should be thinking about this,' Felix snapped, marking locations on a tourist map of the museum's second floor.\n\n'At least ordering in food fits our cover as a tech start-up company,' Irene said, leaning over to study the exits. 'Staying up working, living off pizza, coffee and takeaways...'\n\nKai had returned, then been sent out again on a shopping mission by Indigo. He was now installing technical bits and pieces at her direction. Rather to Irene's surprise, he seemed to be enjoying himself. She sometimes forgot that he'd spent time in a high-technology world. 'Night work is essential,' he said doggedly, 'if we only have two days.'\n\n'Two days counting tomorrow, or two days starting from today \u2013 when they shut the place down?' Tina asked. She was scrawling illegible markings on street maps of Vienna. She'd also obtained some miniature cars, which occasionally came whooshing down the main table and into the planning session. She was clearly a woman deeply in touch with her archetype.\n\n'The first, unfortunately,' Jerome said. 'I still think we should go in post-closedown. If there are going to be builders and security people all over the place, it could give us the perfect cover.'\n\n'That's true,' Felix agreed, 'but we don't know exactly how it's going to work. If we move now, we can expect their regular security and guard patrols \u2013 more of a known quantity.'\n\n'But if we move after, we can do as much damage as we like,' Ernst suggested. 'We can have a big fire \u2013 or explosions \u2013 and blame it on terrorists or even evil mages. There will be so much destruction that there will be no evidence we took the painting. Nice and tidy for us. Messy for them.'\n\n'We are not burning down the Kunsthistorisches Museum,' Irene said flatly. The very thought of destroying so many creative works made her flinch. Even if they weren't books. 'Nor are we blowing it up. Overkill is not an option here with the threat of CENSOR hanging over us.' Some Librarians would have considered the cost \u2013 in lives or artworks \u2013 a reasonable price to pay. But while there were still other options, she'd use any excuse to get the others to back down.\n\n'I still can't believe they didn't have the planned closure online,' Indigo muttered. 'It's blatant incompetence.'\n\n'It's certainly odd.' Irene scribbled on a sheet of paper, trying to work out which aspect of the building was most amenable to illegal entry. Unfortunately for their purposes, the museum had wide open spaces all round it: roads on three sides, and a park area facing the Natural History Museum on the fourth. The roads would be convenient for a rapid getaway, but they were well lit and covered by multiple cameras. Having their getaway vehicle park there for half the night wouldn't be an option.\n\n'They're closing because of subsidence,' Kai interjected. 'Isn't that what the notices said?'\n\n'Still, the timing is suspicious,' Irene continued. 'We show up. Later the same day, they announce that the museum's going to be closed for renovations. Maybe I'm being paranoid?'\n\n'No such thing as paranoia when on a job,' Ernst said. 'But at the moment no clear evidence to support it. Let us return to planning. Will computer technology be able to help us?'\n\n'There is a minor problem,' Indigo said, reluctantly.\n\n'Ah, if it is minor, then you can explain it easily.'\n\nIndigo's glare could have been used to polish diamonds. 'I can explain the consequences easily enough, but unless you want to go back to school, not to mention university, I can't explain why it's a problem. Not to you, at least.'\n\nErnst looked amused, but Felix seemed annoyed. Irene hastily said, 'What's the problem?'\n\n'The CENSOR networks have unusually tight safeguards.' Indigo pushed her long hair back irritably. 'The easiest way of getting round them would be to insert physical interrupts into their systems. The problem with that is that it involves breaking in to insert them.'\n\nKai frowned. 'Into the central network systems, under the Vienna International Centre?'\n\n'The UNO-City buildings, yes. North-north-east of the Prater \u2013 the amusement park \u2013 on that curve of land between the Danube and the Danube Canal.' She pointed it out on one of the maps. 'If you thought security around the museum was high, security around CENSOR's own nerve centre is going to be very high indeed.'\n\n'What one man can invent, another can break into and steal,' Irene said thoughtfully. 'Perhaps we could hire locals to arrange a distraction? More hands would be useful.'\n\n'Didn't you have your own crew, Felix?' Tina asked. She sent a car whizzing down the table, to do a ramp jump off an angled pizza box lid.\n\n'Not any more,' Felix said, in tones that shut off any possibility of raising the question again.\n\nIrene decided a change of tactic might be an idea. 'Indigo, is there a particular point where you need to put your physical interrupts, or are there options?'\n\n'Multiple options, but none of them particularly good.'\n\n'What I'm wondering is \u2013 whether any of them are under the river?'\n\n'What does that have to do with it?' Indigo followed Irene's gaze towards Kai. 'Oh,' she said, then with more interest, 'Oh. Well. I didn't know you had that level of control.'\n\nKai sat back. His expression could not be defined, even by the most charitable, as anything less than extremely smug. 'It's not as if you would know, is it?'\n\nFelix sighed. 'Does this mean that we have an option besides scuba diving and wetsuits?'\n\n'It's certainly possible,' Indigo said. 'Though in that case, if Hao Chen is in the city, we might have a problem.'\n\nKai's smirk slipped. 'That's true. His element is also water. While he's certainly not as strong as I am, if I use my strength he might feel something.'\n\nJerome frowned. 'Wait, did you just say Hao Chen?'\n\n'Does the name mean something to you?' Indigo asked.\n\n'I saw it this afternoon.'\n\n'Details, please,' Irene said, trying to repress a groan of frustration.\n\n'I was making the rounds of local casinos, to get the hang of the underground scene here. One of them \u2013 one of the less legal ones \u2013 was touting for a big event tomorrow evening. I managed to see the guest list. One of the names listed was Hao Chen.'\n\nSilence fell briefly as everyone considered this.\n\n'You said he was a gambler,' Irene finally said to Indigo. 'Do you think it's really him?'\n\n'Well, there's an easy way to check. What's the name of the place? I may not be able to hack into CENSOR yet, but I can certainly manage a cheap local casino.'\n\n'An expensive local casino,' Jerome contradicted her. 'And one with an illegal side \u2013 the security's likely to be good.'\n\n'Yes, yes, whatever,' Indigo agreed dismissively. 'The name?'\n\n'Casino Nonpareil. Founded by a French gambler somewhere in the seventeen-fifties.' He shrugged at people's gazes. 'Look, it's my business to know these things. She knows libraries.' He nodded towards Irene. 'I know casinos.'\n\n'Give me a moment.' Indigo lowered her head towards her monitors like a cobra swaying towards its prey.\n\n'Assume a worst-case scenario.' Irene turned back to Kai. 'If Hao Chen's in the area and might notice you messing with the Danube, what would it take to distract him?'\n\n'Being drugged?' Kai suggested. 'Knocked over the head? Or maybe some really intense emotions.'\n\nThe smile that drifted over Jerome's face was a thing of beauty. 'I believe I can arrange some... strong emotions.'\n\n'In that case,' Irene said, 'we need to organize the division of labour \u2013 and agree on our timing.'\n\nShe glanced around. Even Felix was listening. But she had to be careful. She couldn't afford to lose their trust again. 'Now, if I may make some suggestions...'\n\n'I think I'm suffering from Stendhal Syndrome,' Irene murmured, looking around wide-eyed at the paintings. The syndrome wasn't recognized by orthodox medicine, but it perfectly described her current art-inspired ecstasy. 'This place is just...'\n\n'It is, isn't it?' Kai agreed approvingly. 'That veined black marble they've used for the pillars is perfect. And that central hall with the cupola and the marble stairs \u2013 beautiful use of light.'\n\n'I didn't know you knew so much about architecture.'\n\n'I've been reading the guidebook,' Kai admitted.\n\nThe two of them were making their way round the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in the role of a pair of besotted tourists. Irene had changed her appearance again and so far hadn't set off any obvious alarms.\n\nWhen taking a photo, one could include all sorts of interesting details. Doorways, for instance, for later comparative height references. Inconspicuous background alarms throughout the building. Even The Raft of the Medusa itself.\n\nIrene had to admit it was a striking painting. Its portrayal of the survivors \u2013 and corpses \u2013 on the raft was painfully convincing \u2013 with the remains of the frigate M\u00e9duse in the background. The musculature on the bodies, both living and dying, seemed real enough to touch. Waves swept over the edges of the raft and rose through gaps between the planks. While the raft's jury-rigged sail strained in the wind, the ocean surged in the background as storm clouds gathered overhead. A couple of desperate men waved ragged clothing towards a ship \u2013 barely visible as a dot on the horizon. Others \u2013 men and women alike \u2013 bowed their heads in despair, or knelt hopelessly beside the bodies of the dead.\n\nIt was also enormous. It was one thing to read the measurements written down, but quite another to see the painting stretching nearly from floor to ceiling. This was not going to be easy. The Language was too unpredictable to risk using it to remove the painting from its frame without damaging it, unless Irene had a very definite understanding of what she was doing. And even if she were to free it and they rolled it up, it wouldn't fit through any of the windows \u2013 ground floor or first floor \u2013 without entirely dismantling said window.\n\nThere weren't any significant collections of books in the museum, either. She wouldn't be able to drag it into her own Library and then drag it out again later in a different world. Even if the Fae on the team had trusted her to walk off with it.\n\n'...not that there's much of a French collection here anyhow,' Kai said, interrupting her thoughts. They wove their way through the rooms \u2013 all interconnecting chambers of various sizes, no corridors. 'It's an astonishing display.'\n\n'It's the result of the Habsburgs collecting such things for centuries,' Irene noted. 'I expect your uncles do the same. What was that line from the guidebook, about Rudolf II? \"What the Emperor knows about, he has to have\"?'\n\n'Sounds more like the Library to me,' Kai said, with a straight face.\n\nIrene couldn't help herself. She smiled. 'Let's go and talk strategy, before we visit the Prater.'\n\nVienna had wonderful coffee houses. Unfortunately they all had security cameras, but surely it was only natural that two tourists should stop off for coffee after a morning at the Kunsthistorisches Museum?\n\nIrene dabbed away her whipped-cream moustache and cut into a slice of sachertorte. 'We needed a chance to talk, away from the others,' she said, her voice lost in the hum of other conversations.\n\n'I won't claim I like anything about this job, but then I don't have to like it,' Kai replied. His expression was guarded.\n\n'But if I apologize for getting you into this, you'll just remind me you chose to come. Am I right?'\n\nKai's mouth quirked a little. 'You are. And I have my reasons for coming.'\n\n'Really?' Irene stole a fragment of his apple strudel. 'What are they?'\n\n'Oh, building bonds with the Fae, given that we have a truce with them now. Gaining future favours. That sort of thing. And if you eat my apple strudel, madam, I'll devour your sachertorte.'\n\n'You'd better not say that in front of our new colleagues,' Irene said primly. 'They might get entirely the wrong idea.' As he choked on his coffee, she went on, 'What do you make of them \u2013 our colleagues?'\n\nKai frowned. 'Tina's the one person on the team we can't afford to lose, as she's the only one who can find her way back to Mr Nemo's hideout. Either Mr Nemo really trusts her \u2013 or he has some sort of hold over her.'\n\n'What about Ernst?'\n\n'I don't think he's as simple as he pretends to be.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'Yes. At least part of that big ox routine is an act. What about Felix?'\n\n'He's probably the best-equipped of this whole team for the job we're undertaking,' Kai said slowly. 'He's a thief to his bones. At the same time I have the impression he's the least interested in working with the rest of us. And I don't think he likes you at all.'\n\n'Apparently a Librarian thwarted him in the past, and he holds a grudge,' Irene said. 'Who knows if it's justified? I also think Felix was expecting to be in charge.'\n\n'Tina asked about Felix's own team. I wonder what's going on there.'\n\n'Interesting question.' Irene doodled with her fork in the remains of her sachertorte. 'So why did Felix accept this job and why was he hired? This is a Fae master thief who's failed on at least one job in the past, who's no longer working with his usual crew, and who's taking a commission \u2013 not stealing for his own pleasure. It doesn't feel right... I wish I knew why.'\n\n'He'll be after something,' Kai said, accurately but unhelpfully.\n\n'And what about Indigo?'\n\n'She's bad news,' Kai said, his good mood gone. His tone discouraged further discussion.\n\n'Morally or politically?' Irene didn't want to pry, but the situation was too dangerous for her to remain ignorant. Plus, against her better nature \u2013 which mostly existed because of her school's lessons in morality \u2013 she was curious.\n\n'Both.'\n\n'What, does she eat baby seals or something?'\n\n'There's no point in being offended about eating baby seals, when there are worlds where there are so many seals that it's positive population control.'\n\n'I appreciate you don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to keep asking.' If the Library's reputation, or a world's safety depended on exactly what Indigo had done or might do, then sensitivity would have to wait.\n\nThere was a pause while conversations went on around them. Yet it was all hushed. Even the most innocent speeches were delivered in the knowledge that someone might be listening, that a camera could be watching, and that a potential accusation was only a moment away.\n\nFinally Kai said, 'If I tell you some of it, you mustn't share it with the others. You can tell the Library if you absolutely have to, but not Fae.'\n\n'I can promise that,' Irene agreed.\n\n'Indigo outright rebelled against both my father and her mother.' The disgust in Kai's words was palpable. 'She raised public dissent against my father's rule, Irene. She tried to persuade other dragons to join her. She claimed our monarchs had covered up matters which fundamentally undermined their right to govern. That they were dictators, and she had no intention of being their slave for the rest of her life. When she couldn't get support, she fled. And there was something worse... but it was so bad that even I don't know what it was, and I'm my father's son. Whatever she did, that knowledge was placed under seal at the highest levels. I can't tell you more than that, but you must believe me, Irene. Don't trust her. She may be my own sister, but I'd believe a Fae before her.'\n\nIrene felt a surprising ache of pity for Indigo. Imprisoned, co-opted into working for Mr Nemo... and completely disowned by her family. She knew dragon culture worked differently \u2013 to them, honour, lawfulness and fealty were familial love \u2013 but even so, it must be painful to be cut adrift from everything she'd known. Irene couldn't count the times she and her parents had disagreed, occasionally to the point of barely withheld rage, but she'd never once questioned her parents' love for her.\n\nYet she still nodded slowly. 'Thank you. I appreciate the warning. In fact, going with the not trusting anyone thought, I'd like to share this idea about what we should do if things go badly wrong...'\n\nOutside, the clouds had drawn in. Inside the cafe, the ubiquitous surveillance camera continued to watch over the citizens of Vienna.\n\nThe Casino Nonpareil was located in a large and gracious building about the same age as the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was the sort of place one had to be in the know to find \u2013 and have the money to be allowed in.\n\nInside, the rooms were segregated by game. There was a Roulette Room, a Poker Room, and others which Irene hadn't had the chance to investigate. They were currently in the Baccarat Room, which might once have been a ballroom. There were chandeliers still hanging from the ceiling, but now they overlooked a dozen or more card tables. Further signs of modernization were dotted around inconspicuously: a fire alarm, sprinklers, more security cameras... A sign near the door of the room stated: In the event of a CENSOR raid, all games will be considered null and all stakes returned to their original owners. It was repeated in several languages, presumably so no gambler present could claim ignorance.\n\n'The fact that they bother to have that sign there at all, suggests an unfortunate frequency of CENSOR raids,' Irene said softly. She'd changed her appearance again \u2013 chestnut hair dye, a different hairstyle, make-up suitable for a rich gambler's arm candy, and a little black dress. The operative word was little, and it only just covered the Library brand on her back. She was ready to give an 'all systems go' text to Kai, as soon as Hao Chen was here and suitably distracted.\n\nJerome followed her glance. 'Oh, they have that sign in all the serious casinos in town,' he said. 'Get me another whiskey sour, will you, sweetheart?'\n\n'Of course, honey,' Irene answered, dimpling, and headed towards the bar.\n\nJerome was accompanying her here. Kai, Ernst and Tina had been assigned to the river job, to insert the technology Indigo had given them. Meanwhile, Felix was on the move, watching for signs of CENSOR alerts. Indigo herself was back at their base, ready to activate the interrupts remotely.\n\nIrene's nerves twisted themselves into knots as she waited to collect Jerome's drink, sweeping a casual glance across the room. None of this would be worthwhile if Hao Chen didn't turn up. It was past midnight now. If he wasn't here by four in the morning, they'd have to go ahead with the plan anyway \u2013 trusting to luck that neither he nor any other nearby dragons noticed Kai meddling with the river. Jerome was enjoying himself, playing endless games of baccarat. But Irene...\n\nIrene was deeply worried. If Mr Nemo was wrong, and this world was claimed by a particular dragon as his territory \u2013 for example, this Hao Chen \u2013 then she was about to be put in an impossible position. She couldn't risk being caught stealing from a dragon \u2013 and if this world was his, anything on it would be considered his too. She would therefore be breaking one of the major stipulations of the treaty. The 'no thefts from signatories' clause might have been primarily intended to refer to books, but any dragon or Fae would apply it to any or all of their property. And if she couldn't steal the painting, she wouldn't get the book. The world she'd known and cared about would slide into chaos...\n\nIf only she could slip back to the Library to check. But she'd almost lost her life, as well as the team's trust, last time.\n\nShe made her way back to Jerome, and slipped the drink into his hand with an affected giggle. They'd discussed what sort of role she should assume. Jerome had ruled out professional gambler the moment he saw her handle a deck of cards. Irene had rejected bodyguard on the grounds that she preferred to be underestimated. So that left 'companion' \u2013 which also gave her an excuse for murmuring in his ear.\n\n'More people are arriving,' she whispered. 'Are these the serious players finally turning up?'\n\nJerome nodded. 'It's like a party. The big names won't arrive too early.'\n\nThe people drifting into the Baccarat Room didn't necessarily look fashionable or expensive, though they had all donned evening wear. The occasional piece of heavy gold jewellery or Rolex suggested money, but that didn't tell her whether the gambler was skilled or just well-off.\n\nShe scanned the room, looking for any sign of a dragon in human form \u2013 or even said dragon's minions. A question from earlier was teasing at her. 'By the way \u2013 what did Tina mean, when she said Felix had people he worked with?'\n\nJerome shrugged. 'It's no secret. He's always been the sort of thief who has... associates.'\n\nIrene could think of several fictional tropes that might apply to this archetype. 'Was he the master of countless devoted minion thieves? Or the acknowledged leader of a friendly group, with expertise in different areas?'\n\n'Ah, you know the sort of thing. It was the second option. Half the time they were feuding, and the rest of the time they were pulling off heists.'\n\nIrene swirled the soda in her own glass. She wasn't touching alcohol under these circumstances. 'If they were that good, why didn't Mr Nemo hire them?'\n\n'Things went wrong,' Jerome said. The room's chandeliers trembled under the impetus of some distant traffic, and for a moment the shifting lights made his expression seem actually sympathetic. 'He messed up. Then he messed up again. A man in his position can't afford to make mistakes. You know how things work, with me and my kind: once we start slipping from what we are, who we are, it all goes wrong. His crew sort of... drifted away.'\n\nIrene remembered Felix's very personal animosity towards her. If one of her fellow-Librarians had interfered with a theft and caused him to lose touch with his archetype in the process, she could understand why he was bitter. 'I see,' she murmured. 'And yet Mr Nemo still hired him.'\n\n'Felix will do anything to get his reputation back.' This time there was clear warning in Jerome's eyes. 'Don't foul up here, Carla \u2013' her pseudonym for the evening \u2013 'and don't get in his way.'\n\nA stir by the doorway broke the tension. Irene's eyes narrowed as she caught sight of a profile she recognized. It really was impossible to mistake a dragon for a normal human, once you'd met one, however much they tried to dress down. Hao Chen had scarcely bothered to hide what he was. His dinner suit was nicely cut, but his presence was unmistakeable. His black hair was swept back in loose waves that tumbled over his shoulders, and his eyes were the same deep blue as Kai's. A set of silver rings pierced his left earlobe, running from bottom to top \u2013 and the seal ring on his right forefinger was also heavy silver. He didn't have an entourage, unlike many of the other gamblers present, but he smiled and greeted people graciously as he passed.\n\n'The croupier said that he usually plays at table two,' Jerome said softly. 'Give it a moment and we'll drift over. This may go better than I'd thought.'\n\n'Why so?'\n\n'Because, Carla sweetheart, you Librarians don't know everything.' Jerome was positively grinning now. He finished his drink and passed her the empty glass. 'Get rid of this, get me another, and we'll stroll.'\n\nHao Chen gave Jerome a pleasant smile as the Fae approached. His eyes slid over Irene, but not quite in a dragon's usual judgement of human, therefore unimportant \u2013 there was something more nuanced to it. 'I don't think we've met?' he enquired, his German perfect.\n\n'Afraid not,' Jerome said, and offered his hand to shake. 'But I wouldn't be surprised if we met again. You look like a gentleman who likes to play baccarat at odds of forty to one.'\n\nHao Chen paused for half a second before taking Jerome's hand. His smile widened to match Jerome's own. 'What a delightful surprise. You know, it's been simply ages since I had the chance to match myself against a proper player.' He glanced back at Irene. 'I don't suppose your friend...'\n\nJerome patted Irene's rear possessively. She controlled her first reaction \u2013 to stab her high heel through his shoe \u2013 and lowered her eyelashes. 'Oh no, honey,' she said. 'I'm just here to hold Mr Town's drinks for him while he's playing. And his winnings, of course.' She even managed another breathy giggle.\n\nHao Chen nodded and turned back to Jerome. He had clearly written her off as irrelevant. 'So, any preferences?'\n\n'Chemin de fer or Macao,' Jerome replied. 'More interesting than Punto Banco.'\n\n'Macao,' Hao Chen said without hesitation. 'Just the two of us, I take it?'\n\n'For the moment, at least.' The two men were staring at each other like duellists about to draw blades. The rest of the casino might as well have not existed.\n\n'Good enough.' Hao Chen looked at the glass in his hand as though he'd forgotten its existence. 'Let me get some chips. Are you provided for?'\n\n'Of course,' Jerome said. He tapped the side of the bulging handbag hooked over Irene's elbow. 'But I let Carla here carry them. Wouldn't want to spoil the line of my suit.'\n\nHao Chen flashed his smile again and moved towards the inconspicuous desk near the door where a cashier sat.\n\nJerome eased himself into a chair at table two, leaving Irene to stand. 'Any thoughts?'\n\n'He's probably checking up on you while he gets his tokens,' Irene answered, leaning close. 'And your \"forty to one\" thing is clearly some kind of password, though I have no idea what.'\n\n'It's a particular betting system in baccarat,' Jerome said. He flipped open her handbag and began removing chips. 'It's known as Dragon 7. And among certain gamblers, from both sides, it's a recognition flag to let the other guy \u2013 or girl \u2013 know that we're here to play. Just because you've got a fancy formal truce going, doesn't mean that there weren't dragon\u2013Fae truces before that.'\n\nHis grin took some of the sting out of his words. But Irene was left wondering, with a hint of annoyance \u2013 just how many smaller 'private arrangements' were out there, beyond the scope of politicians and royalty?\n\n'Any last instructions?' Irene asked. She could see Hao Chen making his way back.\n\n'Let us play two hands before you buzz the others. That should be enough to keep his eyes on the table. Otherwise, just keep lighting my cigars and fetching my drinks. I'll be the interesting one tonight.'\n\n'Suits me,' Irene agreed.\n\n'Any preference over who starts as banker, or shall we draw for it?' Hao Chen asked, slipping into a facing chair. One of the quietly omnipresent croupiers hurried over, with two decks of cards.\n\n'You first,' Jerome said. 'We'll see how it goes.'\n\nThey began to play.\n\nAs Irene watched, she wished that her knowledge of the rules extended further than Ian Fleming novels.\n\nHao Chen laid down a bet. Jerome matched it. Hao Chen dealt Jerome a card, then himself, both face-down. They inspected their cards as tension built in the air.\n\nA pause.\n\nJerome tapped the table with one finger, and Hao Chen slid him a new card, face up: the Jack of diamonds. When Jerome shook his head, face impassive, Hao Chen dealt him another: the eight of clubs. Jerome sighed, flipped over his face-down card \u2013 the four of hearts \u2013 and slid his counters across the table to Hao Chen. They smiled at each other and it began again.\n\nAround her, other games were going on with the same degree of intensity. Outside in the streets of Vienna, the city moved to the rhythm of late-night business \u2013 the opera, restaurants, street stalls, the hum of traffic and the throb of the Metro. But in here there was silence except for the slap of cards on tables. Even the onlookers, like herself, kept quiet while the players focused on the truly important matters \u2013 the cards and each other. No doubt it was the same in the other rooms of the Casino Nonpareil. The legal and illegal games rooms...\n\nHao Chen dealt a third hand. Jerome raised a finger for a momentary pause, and reached inside his jacket for a cigar case. He snapped it open, offered it to Hao Chen \u2013 and when the dragon refused, he selected a cigar for himself. Irene was ready with her lighter.\n\nAnd when she slid her lighter back into her handbag, she tapped the button on her phone which would send the pre-typed message: Go ahead.\n\nThe phone buzzed in response. Then a moment later, buzzed again.\n\nAs casually as she could, Irene slipped it out of her handbag.\n\nIt was a message from Kai, and as she read it, she was seized by the familiar feeling of a plan coming apart.\n\nF not answering phone.\n\nFelix was supposed to be watching for CENSOR alerts, but what if he'd encountered some actual CENSOR agents? If so, was there a risk to the mission? Jerome knew Felix better than she did; he might be able to explain the Fae's current behaviour. Yet she couldn't interrupt the game now. Hao Chen would suspect something \u2013 and it was too late to abort Kai's side of the operation. With a silent curse she tapped in, Carry on \u2013 be careful.\n\nThe last bit was redundant, of course \u2013 but she was only human.\n\nThe third hand went by. A fourth. A fifth. The stakes were rising, but Irene couldn't see any clear signs of either man winning or losing. They were both professionally expressionless. Hao Chen crooked a finger at a passing waiter and was provided with a gin and tonic. Clearly they knew his tastes here. Jerome drew on his cigar as Hao Chen dealt them both face-down cards.\n\nAnd then the crowd split open in a sea of murmurs. A young woman came striding through, her fringed skirt hissing round her legs with every step as she headed straight for their table. Her hair and eyes were both slate grey, the colour of a rainy sky. Like him, she was a dragon.\n\nHao Chen jolted upright. 'Shu Fang! What are you doing here?' he asked. He clearly intended to demand an answer, but instead he sounded plaintive, almost querulous.\n\n'I'm here to get you out of trouble again, ninny,' she snapped. 'Not more baccarat...' Her gaze flicked to Jerome and judged him for what he was in a single moment. 'No offence, but we have trouble incoming and you don't want to be caught in it. Get the hell out of here, now.'\n\n'But the hand's dealt,' Hao Chen complained. 'He can't just...'\n\nThe woman glanced over her shoulder \u2013 nervous, almost panicked \u2013 then back to the table again. 'Then someone else can play it. You.' Her gaze drilled through Irene. 'Chair. Sit. You, Fae, take a few steps back and hide in the crowd. Trust me, it's for your own good.'\n\nHao Chen bit his lip. 'It might be best, just for this hand,' he agreed reluctantly. Irene realized he knew what \u2013 or who \u2013 was coming. Jerome rose, swapping places with Irene. He patted her on the shoulder as condescendingly as possible and faded back into the crowd.\n\nSomeone else was approaching their table, the crowd parting before her, and silence flowing out across the room in her wake. Irene stared, and she was hardly breaking her cover in doing so; even the other gamblers had abandoned their cards to goggle at the newcomer.\n\nThe woman was the first dragon Irene had ever seen who actually looked old. She was thin rather than slender, her face drawn into long wrinkles, white hair knotted back in a complicated bun. A heavy pair of wraparound dark glasses covered her eyes from brow to cheekbones. While her stick rapped against the ground with every step, she wasn't leaning on it \u2013 and Irene could recognize a swordcane when she saw one. She wore a champagne-gold evening dress and diamond brooch like an aristocrat, but her arms were corded with muscle under the cloth and her hands were seamed with scars.\n\nHao Chen swallowed and rose to his feet. 'Lady Ciu,' he said, with a graceful half-bow. 'You do me too much honour by visiting\u2014'\n\n'You will address me as aunt!' the elderly dragon snapped. 'What are you doing? Having failed to gamble away your entire allowance on slow horses, you're now wasting it on fast women? And dragging your sister into it as well?'\n\nHer head turned to fix Irene with a glare that was quite palpable despite her dark glasses. 'And could you find no better opponent than this?'\n\nIrene fought the urge to slide under the table and stay there. She'd been in the presence of powerful dragons before, who could manipulate the elements and even summon up storms. Lady Ciu was dangerous in an entirely different way. She didn't have the powers of a dragon monarch, but Irene had absolutely no doubt that she was lethal \u2013 and quite ready to dispose of irritating humans. 'Gn\u00e4dige Frau,' she said, raising her address to an extremely formal level \u2013 gracious lady \u2013 'if you will excuse me...'\n\n'Hm? She speaks!' Lady Ciu's cane flicked out and rapped Irene painfully on the shoulder, as she tried to rise from her chair. 'How curious! Well, if I've come all the way here, perhaps I should see how my nephew gambles. Hao Chen, you may finish your round.'\n\nHao Chen shrank back into his chair. 'Do you want a card?' he asked Irene.\n\nIrene realized she didn't even know what the card in front of her was. Carefully she lifted up the edge to peer at it, doing her best to imitate Jerome's style. It was the four of spades. What would James Bond have done? What were her odds of getting nine or less if she started with a four?\n\nLady Ciu hissed between her teeth. People who'd been drawing closer to watch retreated a pace and then tried to look as if it had been pure coincidence. 'What's this? A gambler who can't even remember her cards from one minute to another?'\n\nIrene's mouth was almost too dry to speak. 'Gn\u00e4dige Frau, your nephew had only just dealt the cards. I hadn't had a chance to look at them yet!'\n\n'Is that so?' Lady Ciu stalked round the table to stand directly behind Irene. From the way Hao Chen flinched, she was fixing him with her gaze. 'Very well. Are you going to ask for a card? Get on with it!'\n\nIrene's hands trembled, but not just from the natural fear of having an apex predator behind her. It was the knowledge that only a couple of layers of cloth lay between Lady Ciu and the Library brand across Irene's back. If she discovered that, it would ruin Irene's chance of remaining anonymous. And the odds of Lady Ciu believing a Librarian just happened to be playing cards with her nephew... She bit her lip. 'Card,' she said to Hao Chen. 'Please.'\n\nHe flipped a card across the table, face up. Six of spades. With the four she held, that made ten. She'd just lost the hand \u2013 she knew that much.\n\nA huge wave of relief filled Irene. 'Sorry,' she said, and flipped over her four. 'My loss.'\n\nHao Chen reached out quickly to scoop up the counters. 'Good game,' he said insincerely.\n\n'Yes.' Lady Ciu's cane tapped Irene's shoulder again, more gently, but on exactly the same spot \u2013 or same bruise, rather \u2013 where she'd rapped earlier. 'Good try, girl. But I can tell you're working for someone else. You're no gambler. So... where's your patron?'\n\nFor a moment the room was still. Then Jerome came walking out of the crowd, his cigar still in his hand. 'You'd be referring to me, I think.'\n\nHao Chen and his sister had both frozen, visibly counting down the seconds until violence erupted. But Lady Ciu simply sniffed. 'One of your type. I expected as much.'\n\n'I've got no argument with your nephew, ma'am,' Jerome said easily, 'and I don't think you've got any with my Carla there.'\n\nOne of the advantages \u2013 or disadvantages, Irene reflected \u2013 of the casino's illegal side, was that nobody even suggested calling the police or moved to intervene. Everyone was staying well out of it.\n\nAt least, she reflected drily, we have Hao Chen's full attention.\n\n'That may be so,' Lady Ciu said. 'However, I have nothing but arguments with you. Your presence here... offends me.'\n\nJerome took a long puff of his cigar. 'Well now, I hadn't heard that this place was your private holiday home, ma'am. Perhaps if I had done, I wouldn't have come.'\n\n'And now that you are here?'\n\nMake your excuses and go, Irene thought desperately in Jerome's direction.\n\n'I'm here to gamble.' Jerome lowered his cigar. 'If you don't care to have your nephew bet against me, ma'am, then perhaps you'd like to play a hand yourself.'\n\n'Ha!' The old dragon's eyes were invisible, but her mouth curled into a smile. 'Very well. I accept. Let's see how you play the game.'\n\nHao Chen and his sister stumbled forward simultaneously. 'Aunt, but\u2014' 'Aunt, you can't possibly\u2014'\n\nLady Ciu rapped her cane hard against the ground, ignoring the younger dragons. 'Girl \u2013 Carla \u2013 let your master take your seat. And don't try anything to help him.'\n\n'Now that's uncalled-for,' Jerome remarked, as he took the seat which Irene had hastily vacated. He emptied her bag of all their casino chips before passing it back. 'I'm not the sort to try to stack the odds in a fair game.'\n\n'We'll see.' Lady Ciu took the seat that had been Hao Chen's. 'You may be banker. Shuffle and deal.'\n\nAs Jerome shuffled, Irene noted one of the casino employees \u2013 a senior one, by her clothing \u2013 sidling across to Hao Chen. Irene caught a few desperate phrases. 'You promised she wouldn't come here... last time she...'\n\nThe phone in Irene's bag buzzed. It could be an emergency. But the whole room was looking at the baccarat table right now; she couldn't risk drawing attention.\n\nShe took a deep breath, and ignored her phone.\n\n'The stakes?' Lady Ciu asked.\n\nJerome toppled his entire stack of chips across the table. 'I wouldn't be satisfied with less, ma'am.'\n\n'Hao Chen!' she ordered. 'Match his stakes.'\n\nHao Chen swallowed. The word but hovered mutinously on the tip of his tongue and was bitten back. He stepped up and pushed his own chips forward.\n\nWith an inclination of his head, Jerome slid a card face-down across the table, and then dealt himself one. He lifted the corner of his own, but his face was of course unreadable.\n\nLady Ciu did the same, her face equally impassive. 'Another.'\n\nThe four of diamonds slid across the table towards her. She nodded, but didn't ask for a third.\n\nSilence draped the room, the scene stifling noise better than the room's velvet curtains. Jerome considered, smiled, and dealt himself a card.\n\nIt was the five of spades.\n\nStill with the same smile, he flipped over his face-down card. The six of spades. 'Your game, ma'am,' he said.\n\nWith a hiss of indrawn breath, Lady Ciu exposed her two of hearts. She'd only had a total of six.\n\n'You're reckless,' she said. 'If you hadn't drawn that second card, you'd have won. Banker's hand.'\n\nJerome shrugged. 'I thought it was worth the risk, ma'am. That's how it goes.' He pushed the counters towards her. 'Your winnings.'\n\nLady Ciu stared back. 'You've had your gamble. Now get out of here and count yourself lucky.'\n\nBehind her, Hao Chen made a tiny walk away now gesture with his fingers.\n\nJerome's mouth curled into a lazy smirk in response. 'I look forward to our next gamble, ma'am.' He rose and offered Irene his arm. 'Shall we?'\n\nAnd then an alarm went off. It wasn't the usual whooping of a fire alarm: it was the mixture of sirens and alarm bells that Irene had heard before \u2013 in the University Library. The tension broke and people began to shuffle rapidly towards the exit.\n\nBut they were blocked as men and women in uniform entered. 'Will everyone here remain calm!' their leader demanded, and her voice was anything but soothing. 'This is a CENSOR raid! Any attempt to resist will be grounds for immediate arrest.'\n\nThe room instantly dissolved into uneasy groups of people, eyeing one another dubiously. A couple of gamblers were surreptitiously ignoring the house rules and scooping their stakes off the tables.\n\nThe CENSOR group's leader pulled out an ID card and addressed the room. 'Lieutenant Richter here. We've been tracking vampires from yesterday's university raid and have information suggesting one of them is here.' Her tone softened a little. 'Ladies and gentlemen, please sit down. When we've finished our sweep of the building, you'll be free to go.'\n\nA fist of ice closed round Irene's guts. Next to her, she felt Jerome go tense. Was it pure coincidence that they'd shown up here, or did they have some way of tracing her or intelligence about the gang? Even with her new disguise, if they had photos from the University Library incident and took a good look at her...\n\n'I expect better treatment than this,' Lady Ciu muttered.\n\n'Let me handle it,' Hao Chen said, clearly keen to mollify the older dragon. Ignoring his recent opponent, he walked across to the lieutenant, his aunt and sister in tow. Hao Chen murmured something to the woman, then flashed some sort of ID. That bought him a nod. Then the CENSOR people parted without another word, and the dragons left.\n\n'Curiouser and curiouser,' Irene murmured. She wasn't the only person who'd been watching. Half the room had had their eyes on the interaction. A couple of men tried to repeat the effect, but flashing cash \u2013 or threats of I know your superior \u2013 didn't work, and they were turned back into the crowd.\n\n'Save the chat for later,' Jerome answered. 'I can probably leg it, but I don't know about you. Got any plans?'\n\n'Maybe I do. But you're pretty certain of yourself,' Irene couldn't help commenting.\n\nHe shrugged. 'I'm lucky, Carla. It goes with the territory.'\n\n'Well, you lost that draw with Lady Ciu...' Irene assessed her options as she spoke. She couldn't use the Language too publicly, but a few surreptitious words would be lost under the din of conversation. 'Give me a second, then drift towards the bar.'\n\nFirst things first. She slipped out her phone, checking the messages.\n\nJob done. On move, being followed. Need to lose them. Still no word from F.\n\nShe tilted the phone so that Jerome could see, biting back a sigh of relief. Apparently everything had gone all right, even with Felix absent \u2013 what had happened to him?\n\n'Felix dropped out of sight. Hm.'\n\n'Any thoughts about him?'\n\n'Let's get out of here first.'\n\nHe had a point. They moved casually towards the bar. As they walked under the fire alarm, it was simplicity itself for Irene to say, 'Fire alarm, sound at full volume.'\n\nIt was sheer perfection. It blasted out loud enough to deafen the room, and it was also connected to the lighting system. The bright chandeliers abruptly dimmed, and strips of neon light appeared over the door. Time for the finishing touch. Irene sparked up her cigarette lighter, telling it, 'Remain lit and fly into the nearest sprinkler system head.'\n\nIrene had never previously appreciated quite how thorough water sprinklers were. The effect was like being drenched by a dozen cold showers on full. Water filled the air.\n\nThe CENSOR agents could either hold back the crowd \u2013 now a yelling, wet, panicked mob \u2013 by force, or give way and let everyone into the corridor. They gave way.\n\nOutside, the corridor was a heaving mass of people, shouting to be heard over the alarm. Jerome locked a hand round Irene's wrist, and together they followed the soaked crowd into the street. The couple of guards at the door failed to maintain a cordon \u2013 and within a few minutes Irene and Jerome were streets away, innocently waiting to be served at a late-night sausage stand.\n\n'So, about those dragons,' Irene said quietly. 'If this place isn't claimed, as Mr Nemo said, then what are they doing here? And why has Felix vanished? There are too many unanswered questions.'\n\nThere were other couples chatting to each other in the queue, ranging from students in jeans and duffel coats to people in evening wear. Hot-dog stands made no class distinctions \u2013 and anyone could also be a CENSOR operative.\n\nA police car drove past, sirens blaring loudly and lights flashing. But it wasn't heading in the direction of the Casino Nonpareil. Irene could only hope that Kai and the others weren't its target.\n\nJerome shrugged. 'I guess Felix had his own business.'\n\n'Like what? That's not very helpful.'\n\n'I can see you're annoyed, but I don't know why you're annoyed at me.'\n\n'I'm annoyed because\u2014'\n\n'Sweet or spicy?' the stallholder asked, holding up mustard.\n\n'Sweet,' Irene said, annoyed at the distraction.\n\n'Spicy,' Jerome said with a grin. 'Because?' he prompted as they strolled away, local cuisine in hand.\n\n'I'm annoyed that you revealed yourself as Hao Chen's partner back there,' Irene admitted.\n\nGenuine surprise showed on Jerome's face. 'You know, I thought that you'd be thanking me for stepping in.'\n\n'All right,' she admitted. 'Perhaps that was ungrateful. Still... you put yourself in unnecessary danger.'\n\n'I wouldn't have missed a game like that for the world,' Jerome answered.\n\n'It was a huge risk!'\n\n'Honey, I like risks. I want risks. That's how I roll.' He considered her with a frown. 'By the way, I'd have thought you'd have been prepared to lose me back there, as long as you got the job done.'\n\nIrene took a bite, considering her answer. 'There are two ways of looking at that. The first is that we haven't got the job done yet. You're still useful.'\n\n'And the second?'\n\n'I don't play that way,' Irene said slowly. 'This isn't a game show or a zero-sum situation where only one person wins. I don't see why we shouldn't all get what we want.'\n\nYet he was right: why should she care about these total strangers? Being a Librarian and a spy meant being cold-blooded. She didn't have the luxury of choosing between her mission and the safety of casual acquaintances. It wasn't something that her parents had taught her. Still, the morality ground into her at school wouldn't be silenced. Plus she hated losing.\n\nShe felt a pang at the memory of her childhood refuge. Whatever she'd thought at the time, in retrospect it was a haven where ethics had been practical, trust had been possible and where she could still believe virtue would be rewarded. Even if it now seemed like fiction... And now Gamma-017 was in danger and she still didn't have the book she needed to save it.\n\n'You're asking me to accept a lot,' Jerome was saying.\n\n'But we need trust, if we're going to work together. Think of it as a gamble.' Irene paused. 'And what are all these police cars doing? That one's the third to pass us!'\n\n'Okay. Before we go any further,' Jerome said, 'I need you to promise not to lose your temper...'\n\n'The. Imperial. Regalia.' Irene spoke through gritted teeth as she inspected the items in front of her. 'Sword. Crown. Orb. And sceptre. That agate bowl was supposed to be the Holy Grail at one point, wasn't it? And that emerald salt cellar is bigger than my fist.' At this precise moment, it would have given her great pleasure to throw it through the apartment window. 'I'm... lost for words.'\n\n'I can probably think of a few,' Felix said, reclining smugly on the lounger with a glass of wine. 'Furious. Shocked. Jealous. I don't think any Librarian could have pulled this off, could they?'\n\nIrene forced herself to back away from the cliff edge of her anger. They still needed him. And she had promised Jerome \u2013 who clearly knew everything \u2013 that she wouldn't lose her temper. Even with some of the Hofburg Museum's most valuable items spread before her. 'Oh, all right. I admit it. I'm impressed.'\n\n'As you should be.'\n\n'Don't push your luck.' Irene looked around the bland apartment Jerome had brought her to. 'So what do you plan to do now?'\n\n'I haven't decided yet.' Felix took another cheerful sip of wine. It was the most relaxed \u2013 the most friendly \u2013 that Irene had seen him. The successful theft had filled a nagging hole in his self-esteem, and for now he was the affable gentleman thief through and through. 'Sometimes one just has the urge to steal a thing because it's there, if you know what I mean?'\n\nJerome clinked glasses with him. 'That I do.'\n\nIrene counted down from five to one silently, trying to control her exasperation. Felix was clearly unreliable. But... if the group agreed that he needed to be shut out of the operation, could they count on his non-interference? What if he decided to steal the painting himself, hiring a new gang, now he was on a high? On the other hand, if they kept him with them, how long before he started boasting and said too much about the other people involved, such as Irene and Kai? If they really were infringing the treaty, she didn't like to think of the consequences.\n\n'Let me call the others,' she said, needing a moment to think. 'I want to be sure they're all right.'\n\n'Be my guest,' Felix said with a lazy wave. His gaze returned fondly to the emerald salt cellar. It was sitting casually in a pile of crumpled newspapers on the coffee table and somehow seemed larger than life, almost too big to be real.\n\nIrene wandered over to the window. The phone rang, twice, and then Kai's voice said, 'Irene?' In the background she could hear the screech of wheels and the sounds of furious driving.\n\n'All secure here,' Irene said. 'Are you okay?'\n\n'Yes. We're somewhere\u2014' He broke off. 'No! No, the car won't fit through there!'\n\n'Easy peasy,' came Tina's distant voice. There was a grinding noise of metal against metal.\n\n'Give me the phone.' That was Ernst's voice. 'All is well. We are escaping. Dragon boy is a back-seat driver. Is bad habit.'\n\n'I usually let him do the driving,' Irene admitted. 'Jerome and I are with Felix. He's looted the Imperial Treasury... which is why all the cops are buzzing round the Hofburg Palace. Avoid that area.'\n\n'So that is where he is. Tell him we will be talking later, him and me.'\n\n'Have you had any word from Indigo?'\n\n'Only to confirm that the interrupts did their job.'\n\nThere was a painfully loud crash and a thud, then the squealing of wheels again. 'Are you all right?!' Irene demanded, wincing.\n\n'No,' Kai snapped, back on the call. 'I just nearly swallowed the damn phone, that's all.'\n\n'Good. See you back at base,' Irene finished. The phone went dead without another word.\n\nIrene turned to face the two Fae. 'They're all right \u2013 I hope.'\n\nShe'd come to a couple of conclusions. Someone needed to pull this so-called team together \u2013 not just to give orders, but to convince them to cooperate. Who knew, maybe it could even be good practice in getting dragons, Fae and Librarians to work together? Not that she'd ever be able to tell anyone about it... We need trust, she'd told Jerome. Now she had to trust them all, as she couldn't do this alone. They really needed Felix, too. The thief was good at what he did. But if he wasn't with them, and could even act against them... she was going to face a very unpleasant choice.\n\n'When I took the job, I thought everyone on the team was as, shall we say, invested in the job as I am,' she said. 'I was wrong, wasn't I?'\n\n'I wouldn't say you were exactly wrong,' Felix said. 'I just like to have my cake and eat it.'\n\nThe pile of gold and jewels on the table drew Irene's gaze. 'That's a pretty big cake,' she admitted. 'So are you sure you really need the Mr Nemo job now? The risks are stacking up. CENSOR is breathing down our necks. And there's not just one, but three dragons in town.'\n\nFelix frowned, emerging from his haze of pleasure a little. 'Three, you say?'\n\n'We ran into the others while we were at the Casino Nonpareil. Of course, they probably won't get in the way of our heist. But given the level of danger, I wouldn't blame you if you walked out...'\n\nShe was hoping Felix and his archetype couldn't resist a challenging theft. It wasn't just about the money for him. The greater the threat, the more tempting it would be.\n\n'Are you trying reverse psychology on me, Irene Winters?'\n\n'I am,' Irene admitted. 'Good catch.' She tried to channel her training. When an opponent spots your negotiating tactic, admit it, and openly admire them for their intelligence in noticing it. 'But... don't you want to be the thief who stole The Raft of the Medusa from under the nose of three dragons? The man with his name in Mr Nemo's private address book, on speed-dial for the most important thefts of all?'\n\n'It's a gamble,' Felix said. But she could hear the waver in his voice, the temptation tugging at him.\n\n'We're all gambling,' Irene answered. 'So \u2013 what is your plan for the painting? I'm sure you already have something in mind.'\n\nAs Felix leaned forward, eager to display his cleverness, she knew she had him.\n\n'We have a loiterer,' Indigo said.\n\nIrene looked up from the detonator which she was assembling under Ernst's guidance. 'Whereabouts?'\n\n'By the main entrance.' Indigo turned one of her screens so the rest of them could see the door to their building. She'd tapped into all the local cameras after the gang incident. 'He's been past twice and now he's standing there, checking the list of tenants. Of course, he might not be here looking for us, but...'\n\n'But worst scenario is probably true,' Ernst agreed philosophically. 'If we dump his body a good distance away, it may take them longer to find us.'\n\n'Or it might lead people directly here, if he's supposed to be investigating and goes missing,' Felix pointed out. 'If he's one of that gang, he may be calling early for payment.'\n\nIrene stared at the grainy black-and-white picture on the monitor. Indigo's new equipment might be top quality, but the camera in the building's lobby was cheap tat. Still, there was something familiar about him... 'Can you get me a better image?' she asked.\n\nThe camera zoomed in \u2013 and the man turned to reveal his face.\n\nIrene and Kai looked at each other in shock. 'It's Evariste,' Kai said.\n\n'If you both know him, then he's a Librarian or a dragon. Which?' Felix kept his tone casual, but Irene could sense the caution beneath it. Last night's confrontation and discussion seemed to have brokered a truce between them, but it wouldn't take much to break it again.\n\nIndigo sniffed. 'Not a dragon. Certainly not a dragon.'\n\n'He's a Librarian,' Irene said quickly, 'and he may have an urgent message.' She was remembering her email to Coppelia, and her need to know whether the treaty clashed with this job. Since she hadn't gone back to the Library... the Library had come to her.\n\nFelix put down the paperwork he'd been forging. 'Are you backing out?' he asked quietly.\n\n'I need to know what he has to tell me,' Irene said, instead of answering his question.\n\nFelix was silent.\n\n'I go down to get him,' Ernst suggested. 'Stay in room while they talk. I am neutral third party. I have no grudges. I crush anyone's head if necessary, whoever they are.'\n\nIrene reminded herself that Ernst was no more trustworthy than any other Fae in the room. Even if his 'friendly thug' attitude was easier to live with than Felix's caution \u2013 or outright hostility. Then another thought struck her. 'Indigo, can you get sound down there?'\n\n'Easily,' Indigo replied.\n\n'There you go,' Irene said. 'You can listen to what we have to say. And I won't need to bring him up here and expose you all.'\n\nFelix looked as if he would like to object, but nodded. 'That sounds fair enough.'\n\n'I'd better go down too,' Kai suggested. 'Just in case he tries anything.'\n\n'Well, of course. Anyone can see that you and Librarian girl are partners in crime.' Ernst patted him on the shoulder. 'Is rather cute, no?'\n\nIn the corridor outside, Irene took a deep breath. Even if she and Felix had negotiated a temporary peace, the room had been tense all morning. Kai and Ernst had both been very unhappy \u2013 and that was putting it mildly \u2013 about Felix dropping out for his own private schemes and Jerome abetting him. It would have been even worse if Indigo had not commented that it was 'typical of all Fae', thus uniting most of the room against her instead.\n\nKai looked sideways at her. 'Any thoughts?'\n\n'Only that I'm counting the hours till this is over,' Irene confessed.\n\n'I still don't see why Lady Ciu would have retired here,' he said, not for the first time.\n\n'Perhaps she likes the local sachertorte,' Irene offered.\n\n'No, she doesn't look the type to have a sweet tooth,' Kai said seriously. 'And it can't be the art. I was told that the eye injury left her nearly blind.'\n\n'She could see well enough to play cards last night,' Irene pointed out. 'Kai, she seemed... comparatively reasonable. Why are you so disturbed?'\n\nKai hunched his shoulders in a familiar gesture of discomfort. 'She wouldn't have been interested in the game. She couldn't care less what cards she drew. She was simply playing with her opponent, like a cat.'\n\nThat wasn't comforting. 'You said that she was a senior courtier before her injury, even if she wasn't as powerful as some.' Of a lesser family, Kai had said, meaning that Lady Ciu didn't have the elemental affinities of the more powerful dragons. So \u2013 thank goodness \u2013 she couldn't raise earthquakes or storms, or bring down blizzards that would wipe whole cities off the map. But she was still a dragon, which made her very dangerous. Kai had said she was part of the Winter Forest family, as well \u2013 a group of dragons who had good reason to have a grudge against Librarians in general, and Irene in particular. 'Where did she get that eye injury? You said she'd been a famous duellist.'\n\n'I don't know,' Kai said. 'I was told in a war, but I don't think that was the whole story.'\n\nAnd then they were in the lobby. Evariste was in local garb, but Irene would have known him anywhere. A dark-skinned man, his hair was growing out and clubbed back in a short tail. His overcoat was heavy and his shoes scuffed, an unobtrusive match for the local area. He carried himself with a learned wariness, light on his feet and ready to bolt.\n\nHe suppressed a twitch as he saw them. 'Hi,' he said nervously. 'Look, we aren't in immediate danger, are we? Should I be hitting the sewers and hiding till we can get out of town?'\n\n'It's not that bad,' Irene said. 'Thanks for coming.' She remembered Evariste had little experience with fieldwork on other worlds. In fact, after their mission together had gone bad, she'd assumed he'd hole up in the Library for a few years \u2013 or at least until he'd learned better skills.\n\nEvariste leaned against the deserted lobby desk. 'Oh no, no trouble at all. Do you realize that the Library entrance to this world is in Japan?'\n\nIrene winced. When Evariste had emerged from the Library into this world, he would have had to travel all the way to Vienna. 'I really am sorry,' she said guiltily. 'I came here via Fae transport. I don't even know the Library's classification for this world.'\n\n'A-327,' Evariste said promptly. 'There's no Librarian-in-Residence either. And to get right to the point, no, nobody's claimed this world according to our records. If you're stepping on someone's personal fief, you'll have a problem with them. But it won't have wider implications. And you're looking different. What happened to your hair?'\n\nIrene sighed in dizzying relief. Safe. She wasn't risking the peace treaty by stealing from anyone here. She relaxed, touching her purple-streaked, gel-spiked hair. 'A disguise. I've already been on too many cameras on this world.' Then she frowned. 'Wait a moment. If our classification is A-327, it would mean this world is technology-oriented, with no magic.'\n\n'I've seen the technology \u2013 cameras everywhere. This is not what I'd call a safe place.'\n\nKai was frowning too. 'I see what you're getting at,' he said. 'This world's supposed to be apparently crawling with supernatural entities. Werewolves, vampires, mages, whatever. Yet the Library designates it as non-magical \u2013 or at least, not magical enough to be significant.'\n\nIrene nodded. A or Alpha worlds were aspected towards technology, with little to no magic. Beta worlds had magic as the norm \u2013 with any technology being pretty unimportant. Gamma worlds had both. Perhaps the Library's information was out of date, and supernatural creatures were a recent development? But this didn't match with what she'd read about the world. 'Curiouser and curiouser,' she said. 'But the most important thing is\u2014'\n\n'Is to ask how Evariste's daughter is,' Kai said firmly. 'I'd been told that you got her back safely. Is everything going well?'\n\nEvariste's face lightened. 'Miranda Sofia's fine, but confused. Anyone would be \u2013 after being kidnapped by dragons.' He glowered briefly and quite unfairly at Kai. 'We're settled on a new world now, very high-technology, helping a Librarian-in-Residence who's nearing retirement. I only popped back to the Library to do an errand for her.'\n\n'Is that where you saw Coppelia?' Irene asked, feeling sorry for him.\n\n'Yes. She grabbed me and said that you'd requested some information. She gave me a token to find you. She also said \u2013 go ahead, walk off with the whole museum and everything else in it, just don't miss your deadline.'\n\n'Sounds like her,' Irene said with a sigh.\n\n'Good. Then I'm out of here. I'm hunting down a set of archaeological detective stories for Accidie about Prester John.'\n\nIrene wished her own mission was so easy to explain. 'Please let Coppelia know I'm being as proactive as possible.'\n\n'I will,' Evariste promised. 'Good luck with your mission, then...' He was clearly on the point of leaving, but curiosity prompted him to ask, 'How are you handling all the surveillance?'\n\n'We've got a techie. She's hacked into the local systems.'\n\nEvariste blinked. 'That sounds like something out of a bad movie.'\n\nIrene shrugged. 'Apparently programming languages are somewhat transferrable between worlds.'\n\nEvariste's expression was dubious. 'Irene, do you hang out much in high-tech locations?'\n\n'Not as much as some,' Irene admitted.\n\n'Don't take this the wrong way, but...' Evariste was clearly nerving himself up to disagree. 'You want to be careful. Programs and exploits don't transfer that easily. There are too many variables. If someone's telling you that it will work, then watch out. Maybe they're just telling you what you want to hear.'\n\nIrene glanced to Kai, but his expression was guarded. It wasn't shock or disagreement, but a studied neutrality. Her heart went cold. What has Kai not been telling me? She knew that he kept secrets from her; that was fair enough \u2013 she kept secrets from him. But if he was hiding mission-critical information, it had to be private dragon business. She didn't like to think about the implications. 'I see,' she said. 'We'll be careful.'\n\n'Was there anything else?' Evariste asked. He was clearly keen to leave as soon as possible.\n\n'No... I mean yes.' A thought sparked in Irene's mind. 'I apologize for reminding you of Qing Song,' she said, 'but he was of the Winter Forest family, wasn't he? Did he ever mention someone called Lady Ciu, when you were his prisoner?'\n\nEvariste frowned, but at least he didn't flinch at the memory. 'In what context?'\n\n'Probably approving,' Kai said. 'She used to be a respected warrior.'\n\n'There was a Ciu,' Evariste said slowly. 'He didn't talk about her as lady or anything, though. She'd worked for his family \u2013 I think it was teaching the kids swordplay. The way he talked about it, it was a century or so ago. He said she retired. Something about getting hurt in a fight. But her retirement wasn't because of the injury, it was because she'd lost. He said she'd been taken care of, I seem to remember. Putting her out to pasture, that was it. But I got the impression that he'd liked her.'\n\nSo was this world Lady Ciu's private retirement home? And were the two younger dragons her servants \u2013 or her nurses and keepers?\n\nThe phone in her pocket buzzed and she answered.\n\n'Tina here. We have a problem.'\n\n'What sort of problem?' Irene demanded.\n\n'Felix says he's going to shoot Indigo. Jerome's backing him up. You interested?'\n\n'Tell everyone to stay calm, we're coming now,' Irene said, ending the call. 'Evariste, Kai, there's trouble upstairs \u2013 got to go. Take care, safe journey, thanks for the help\u2014'\n\n'Whatever,' Evariste agreed. 'See you around.'\n\nHe was already heading out of the door as Irene hit the stairs running, and Kai followed. 'What is it?' he said.\n\n'Felix pulled a gun on Indigo,' Irene panted. 'Don't know why.'\n\nKai speeded up, racing ahead. Visions of what might happen if the team indulged in an open confrontation \u2013 bloodstained visions \u2013 flipped through Irene's mind like ratcheting film frames. They could say goodbye to the job if that happened. She kicked into a final burst of speed, dashing up the last stairs in Kai's wake.\n\nIndigo's hands were curved open in a gesture that would have revealed claws if she'd had them, and though her eyes might not be dragon-red, they glittered with anger. Across from her, Felix held his gun in a marksman's grip. Jerome had his gun out too, and though his grip seemed almost careless, the Fae had it aimed squarely at Kai, holding him motionless. Ernst still sat at a table, half-assembled bombs and detonators scattered across it in a dangerous detritus.\n\n'You were quick,' Tina remarked.\n\n'Will someone kindly tell me what the hell is going on?' Irene said, her tone ice cold.\n\n'Your Librarian gave it away,' Felix said. 'I was looking in the wrong direction when it came to betrayal. I should have gone for the obvious candidate.'\n\n'What do you mean?' Irene asked. It had to be Evariste's comment about programming. Inwardly she cursed having let the others listen in.\n\n'What she's doing with those computers is flat-out impossible. Your friend said so.' His paranoia was visible in the tense lines of his body. 'So how come she can manipulate this tech so easily, if she's never even been here before? How come she's doing the impossible?'\n\n'Because I am that good,' Indigo snapped, with a harmonic to her voice that should have made the monitors tremble where they stood. 'So what if the Librarian couldn't manage it? I can.'\n\n'But why's it so easy for you?' Felix demanded, nearly hysterical as his paranoia blossomed. 'Is someone helping you? Are you planning to sell us out? And Mr Nemo too?'\n\nIndigo tilted her arm so that the light caught the wide silver bracelet which still encircled her wrist. 'I'm bound, fool. I need Mr Nemo to take this off. I'm one hundred per cent committed to the job. More than you are... Do you think I'd really be cooperating with creatures like you, if I had any other choice?'\n\nIrene saw Felix's finger tighten on the trigger. 'I don't think she is getting help,' she interrupted, suspicion dawning slowly. 'At least it's not what you think. Want me to make some guesses?' Pieces fitted together now.\n\n'Like what?' Felix demanded.\n\nIrene walked further into the room, Kai just a step behind. She could sense his anger, his readiness to move against any target which presented itself. Which might be her in a minute. 'Contrary to what some of you may think,' she said, 'Kai doesn't tell me everything. So I need to do some hypothesizing.'\n\nJerome shifted position. Now his gun might have been pointed at anyone \u2013 or everyone \u2013 in the room. This was no better. 'Go on, then.'\n\n'I've noticed that the dragons are far more organized than the Fae \u2013 it's one of your known strengths. It was evident during the treaty negotiations, when both sides were flexing their muscles. The dragon delegation argued that their superior organizational powers brought more to the table, and so justified the grant of wider concessions. But organization's considerably easier when you've laid the groundwork in advance...'\n\nIndigo didn't move, but her eyes burned. Irene knew that she'd struck gold. She felt a bit sick; this betrayal cut deep. When she glanced at Kai, he looked like thunder, confirming her suspicions.\n\n'So tell me, Indigo \u2013 how does this work exactly? Laying down top-secret infrastructure for the dragon empires in secret, subverting human power structures? Do tech-savvy dragons like you grease the wheels of dragon commerce across a spectrum of worlds? It might sound mundane, but by making sure human and dragon software is compatible, you could control any world that uses technology \u2013 Alpha and Gamma worlds. Maybe even high-tech worlds where chaos rules and the Fae are stronger... is that right, Indigo? Can any dragon access the local computer networks, whatever world you're in, whenever and wherever you want?'\n\nEvery Fae in the room looked ready to kill someone. Ernst's hands froze. He carefully put down the tweezers and wire he'd been holding. 'Surely that is not possible. The sheer numbers of worlds...'\n\n'I'm not saying they've done this in every world,' Irene answered quickly, looking at the Fae, poised for action yet still hanging on her every word. 'Maybe just the ones where dragons live full-time? Like this one, where Lady Ciu's been a permanent resident for decades. Nor am I saying that every world's going to have exactly the same operating systems. But perhaps with enough dragons \"influencing\" their target worlds, they can make sure the right sorts of technology get developed? All added up, it could be enough to allow an expert to carry a briefcase full of memory sticks and expect to hit the ground running, if she went to a high-order world.'\n\nThe pieces were all fitting together. She couldn't believe the scale of it. Dragons made everything look so effortless \u2013 power, control, wealth. They always managed to place themselves in positions of high authority and stay there. This sort of sustained, covert, multi-generational campaign to infiltrate the software infrastructure across multiple worlds... She'd never even considered such a thing would be possible. It was like the old proverb about swans \u2013 floating gracefully on the surface of the water, but paddling away underneath like a millwheel. 'Am I right, Indigo? And has there been draconic influence in this world's software development?'\n\nIndigo's face was neutral, but her eyes flickered. Perhaps she was running through decision trees as logically as any computer, Irene wondered. Finally she sat down. 'If anyone were to take this seriously, you realize that you've endangered yourself and everyone in this room?'\n\n'Well, of course,' Irene said. And that was as good an admission as any she'd heard. The thought of bursting into manic laughter was very tempting. As if this job wasn't messy enough. 'This must be a huge dragon secret. Maybe their biggest. Naturally we're all in danger of death \u2013 permanent death, inescapable death, death raining down on us in storms of fire \u2013 if word gets out that we know about this.' She looked around the room. 'Note that I said if word gets out.'\n\n'And if dragon boy talks?' Ernst asked, his voice a quiet rumble of threat.\n\nKai picked up a discarded mouse from one of the tables. It splintered in his hand as he tightened his fingers around it. 'You said it yourself, didn't you? Irene and I are partners in crime.' His voice was bitter.\n\nFelix looked at Indigo. 'I'd love to shoot you now \u2013 but we need more answers. And you're hardly in league with your kin any more.' He lowered his gun, sliding it back into his jacket. 'So why were you on the run from your family?' he asked.\n\n'Emptying my father's bank accounts, on multiple worlds, to help finance revolution,' Indigo answered. 'Now are you going to help me with this theft, or not?'\n\n'I like your style. Any chance of future collaboration?' Felix suggested.\n\nIrene suppressed a sigh of relief as the tension coming from the Fae started to ebb away. Maybe no one would die today.\n\n'I think not,' Indigo snapped. 'My feelings towards my father don't make me like you any better.'\n\n'Needs must when the devil drives,' Felix said philosophically.\n\nKai stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Irene wondered if she'd hoped for peace \u2013 at least local, better-than-nothing peace \u2013 too soon.\n\n'You'd better go after him,' Indigo said, a malicious edge to her voice. 'You wouldn't want him to slip his leash...'\n\nKai was pacing up and down the landing outside. He grabbed Irene's arm the moment she emerged, dragging her into one of the empty offices. 'Thank you, Irene. Thank you very much.'\n\nHe was genuinely angry. 'There is a big difference between having a truce and actively giving away sensitive information to those creatures! How could you? How could you do such a thing?'\n\n'I didn't ask you about this, so your loyalties weren't compromised,' Irene retorted. 'I took great care not to ask you. I asked Indigo \u2013 and she confirmed it.'\n\nKai's temper wasn't abating. 'It doesn't matter where it came from \u2013 you know I can't let that sort of information get out. You've made it impossible for me to tell my father that the others know without admitting that you do too. Was that deliberate? Were you putting your own life at risk, out of some foolish camaraderie with Fae who have been threatening to kill you? Irene, whose side are you on?'\n\n'I'm trying to keep everyone pointed in the same direction till we've stolen that damn painting!' Irene snapped. 'I hadn't decided to say anything \u2013 but Evariste forced my hand and the others were out for Indigo's blood. I needed to say something. And what about Mr Nemo \u2013 don't you think he must know too? Why else would he have hired Indigo as his hacker, in a team of Fae? The Fae have mad scientists, or urban coders, or other archetypes. There must have been a reason why he chose a dragon.'\n\nKai muttered a sharp curse. 'This grows more and more complicated. My father would have accepted the necessity of this mission at the beginning, to secure the book for the Library, but now...'\n\nIrene was aware that then don't tell him about it wasn't much of an answer \u2013 or at least, not one that would satisfy Kai. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but that's the problem with you taking the initiative and coming with me on a mission. I have my own priorities. You're not under my authority any longer. I don't want to do this without you \u2013 but if you honestly feel that you can't stay any longer, I will understand.'\n\n'That's emotional blackmail,' Kai accused. 'You're trying to make me feel guilty.'\n\n'No.' Anger was receding now, leaving Irene exhausted. 'No, Kai, it's honesty. I can't make any promises about how this mess is going to work out, but I have to go through with it. If I don't, a world I care about falls into chaos \u2013 and we'll never get it back. That world made me who I am, perhaps just as much as my parents.'\n\n'Aside from the mission... Did you hear what she said, though?' Kai interjected. He was clearly still very angry. 'How Indigo admitted to stealing from our lord father?'\n\nWell, Irene thought, it does explain why nobody was willing to talk about the details of her crimes. It might have given other dragons ideas.\n\nNot for the first time, she wondered if there was such a thing as a universal standard of morality. Her old school had claimed that some lines should never be crossed. This seemed simplistic, but maybe they had a point. How would it feel if her own parents could never forgive her for committing a particular crime? Or if she couldn't forgive them?\n\nActual laws only applied to human beings. Everything in dragon society came down to custom \u2013 including family obligations, personal standards and ties of loyalty. Indigo had irrevocably broken those ties. Fae society was driven by personal ambition and the perfection of an individual's desired archetype. If a Fae took on the role of a fictional mass murderer, they could be an ally or an enemy, but not a criminal \u2013 unless their actions inconvenienced someone more powerful. And Librarians routinely stole books as part of their job. However, the only real crimes among them included betrayal of the Library and other Librarians, or failure... So was it actually possible for all these factions to share a morality? For this job, for the treaty and beyond?\n\nKai was looking at her, expecting an answer. 'You know my mission must be my priority,' she said. 'I'm not trying to manipulate you.'\n\nHe snorted. 'Maybe not, but you're succeeding.'\n\nIrene gave up and ran her hands through her hair. 'Look,' she said, 'I'm going back in. Will you be all right?'\n\nKai raised an eyebrow. 'Do you think I'm just going to stay out here? Don't worry, I'll behave myself. And I know you can look after yourself. But I promised to keep you safe, Irene... even against my family, no matter how angry I am.'\n\nIt was early evening in the Vienna Naschmarkt, and all the food stalls and mini-restaurants along the long street were up and running. Delicious odours tempted the prospective diner \u2013 fish and garlic, steak and sausage, curry and mustard and falafel. They all combined into a melange that would have been unthinkable in an actual meal, but which lured the nose and set the salivary glands flowing.\n\n'How much further does this market go on?' Kai asked, half glancing at Irene. Things were still a little tense between them. 'We don't want to be late.'\n\nHe had a point. They were off to deliver the gang's 'protection money' and their instructions had been clear. Show up at seven o'clock on the dot, under the stall with a blue awning at the far end of the Naschmarkt \u2013 Vienna's old night market. While technically Kai and Jerome were the contacts for the gang, Irene had invited herself along. Ernst and Felix were holding the fort with Indigo \u2013 ready to evacuate if CENSOR showed up. Tina was circling the Naschmarkt area in a small van, in case emergency pickup was needed.\n\n'It shouldn't be much further,' Irene said. The stalls along the street became more rundown and displayed shorter menus as they continued. The ones where they'd started, near the Ringstrasse \u2013 the circular boulevard at the heart of old Vienna \u2013 were good quality, tourist traps, or both. But further down, they grew seedier and cheaper. Not so much as to be dangerous \u2013 well, Irene reflected, perhaps not a place to be walking alone late at night \u2013 but perfect for illicit dealings.\n\n'There.' Jerome nodded at a blue awning flapping in the rising wind. 'That one, I think.'\n\nThe three of them perched on rickety stools at the stall's single bench. It advertised Middle Eastern food, but it neither looked nor smelled appetizing. Irene checked her watch, just as a young woman laid an acquisitive hand on Kai's arm.\n\nShe was strapped into tight Lycra and far too much fake leather. Her hair was a mix of blue and purple which gleamed under the streetlights, and her eyes were generously smudged with eyeshadow. 'Hey, handsome. You here for the dog racing?'\n\n'We are,' Jerome said, before Kai could wrench his arm away. He slid a small-denomination bill across the counter to the owner. 'For your trouble.'\n\n'Not a problem,' the man said, clearly used to that sort of exchange. Tucking the note away, he began serving another customer.\n\nIrene watched the young woman carefully. It didn't seem as if she could be concealing a weapon; everything fitted too snugly. 'Straight handover?' Irene asked.\n\n'The boss would like a word first,' the young woman said. Under her bravado and the heavy eyeshadow, she looked more than uneasy; she seemed spooked.\n\n'And if we don't want a word?' Kai asked. He removed her hand from his arm gently but firmly.\n\n'He said it'd be a good idea \u2013 for all of you,' she said hastily, almost stuttering, 'that he could do a deal with you.'\n\n'We've already agreed a deal,' Jerome replied.\n\n'He said...'\n\nIrene had been on the alert while they talked. There was no way anyone would trust this young woman to negotiate on her own. But there was nobody else close enough to jump them if they walked away, the people further down the counter were all busy with their food, and...\n\n...There was a red dot of light on the counter between her and Kai. It was the laser sight of a rifle.\n\nShe glanced behind them, at the row of old houses which edged the street. There was no way of working out the origin of the rifle sight. And there was no way of knowing if this was the only gun trained on them, which ruled out her counting on shielding herself or the others with the Language. They were sitting ducks out here \u2013 which was, of course, the idea.\n\n'I think we should go with the nice lady,' she said calmly. When Kai turned to frown at her, she indicated the red light on the counter. 'It seems that her boss wants to talk to us urgently \u2013 how can we say no?'\n\nIf the building they were led to had been a person, it would have been a criminal leading a double-life. Neighbours would say, 'But he was such a nice man!' after the police had finished their investigation and removed the bodies. On the outside it was a cheerful reseller, offering tickets for the latest shows and visits to surrounding attractions. But inside...\n\nPast the main door and the front office were dull grey walls and uncarpeted flooring. There were dark stains in the corners, and Irene imagined wash-downs that hadn't managed to get rid of all the blood. She could almost see people coming in one end... who didn't necessarily come out the other. There were absolutely no cameras. What happened inside the ticket reseller would stay inside the ticket reseller.\n\nSeveral large men had taken custody of them as they walked through the front door. They'd been searched, and Jerome's gun removed. The girl had been sent away with a packet of something pharmaceutical. If this had been a high-chaos world, it couldn't have conformed to archetypes more perfectly. And it had all been done with the bare minimum of speech.\n\nIrene hadn't tried resisting, and the others had followed her example. She was very curious about what was going on. If the gang had simply wanted them dead, they could easily have shot them from a distance, or put explosives under their office, or... really, it was rather depressing how simple it was to kill someone. So what did they want?\n\nThey were bustled into an office, where the man behind the desk was best described as grey: grey hair, grey suit, grey eyes, grey teeth. He even had a grey slimline laptop, and his grey coffee mug was resting on its discreetly closed surface. He looked over them, an insultingly slow assessment. 'So you're the new boys in town,' he finally said.\n\nIrene decided this was not the moment to stand up for female representation. 'You wanted a word?'\n\n'I'm looking for some new hackers and coders. I thought I'd offer you the job.'\n\nIrene, Kai and Jerome exchanged glances. 'Oh, we wouldn't want to step on the toes of your current people,' Kai said.\n\n'That won't be an issue.'\n\nWhich suggested that said toes had been turned up, and said people would never be heard from again. 'Why us?' Irene asked. 'We're new here.'\n\n'Right. Which is why I know you haven't got any local connections.'\n\n'We're just blockchain entrepreneurs\u2014' Irene tried.\n\n'Shut it.' He pointed a split-nailed finger at her. 'I had people at the Nonpareil last night. You and that guy were there when it all went down.' His finger shifted to Jerome. 'Then afterwards, you weren't on the police or casino records. No names, no photos \u2013 nothing. Someone cleaned up after you real good. Well, I want that someone on my payroll.'\n\nWonderful. We've shot ourselves in the foot by being too good at our jobs.\n\n'So who's in charge?' he demanded.\n\n'Her,' Kai said, before Irene could suggest anyone else.\n\n'Is that so?' The grey man sat back in his chair.\n\n'I can talk a machine into anything,' Irene bluffed. She could guess why Kai had chosen her. As long as the grey man wanted a computer expert, he'd keep her alive.\n\n'Helpful attitude. I like it. All right. I'm going to want you to get into police records. I'm also going to want a \u2013 what do they call it? \u2013 bitcoin thing. And we handle a lot of file distribution. You'll be doing that too. Don't worry, you'll get paid. But your team's working for me now.'\n\n'We've got commitments elsewhere,' Jerome put in. 'You can't expect us to drop out on jobs that we've already agreed to.'\n\n'So you work overtime. I'll buy you coffee. They do good coffee here in Vienna.'\n\n'And for that you pay us a lot of money...' Kai said, 'and you don't report us to CENSOR.'\n\n'Yeah, that'd be nasty. For you. Glad you're getting the idea.'\n\nIrene's back itched with the knowledge that four men with guns were standing behind her and the other two. This was the sort of situation where the wrong word could result in gunfire and casualties. None of them were immune to being killed by a stupid gunshot from a stupid thug, in a situation which had absolutely nothing to do with their real job. 'Just give us our priorities,' she said.\n\n'The police records come first,' the boss said. 'As for CENSOR \u2013 you could say we have a certain understanding with them. We do them favours, they make it worth our while. If you cross me, my sources would be very interested in suspicious individuals like you.'\n\nA very risky idea suddenly struck her. If she tried it and this gang turned out to be loyal foot-soldiers, she and her group would be finished. On the other hand, if she was right and they survived the gamble, they could gain invaluable intelligence from what was almost an inside source. The possible information justified the risk. 'CENSOR really seems to rule in these parts. You wouldn't want us to hack them, would you, to gain an edge? Just say the word.' Irene mentally crossed her fingers.\n\nThe grey man narrowed his eyes, his expression indicating Irene had managed to suggest something that was both completely unthinkable and extremely tempting. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was the sort of reaction that she'd have, if someone simply offered up a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio.\n\n'You think you really could?' he finally said.\n\n'Yes,' Irene said confidently, wishing she had Jerome's poker face.\n\nJerome chose this moment to say, 'You can't turn us into CENSOR now, can you? They'd ask us questions, and now we can give them certain answers \u2013 about you.'\n\n'We would have just paid up and left,' Kai chipped in in support. 'You can't blame us now, for protecting our interests.'\n\n'Are the two of you collaborating to say the worst possible thing?' Irene demanded in disbelief. She'd get nothing on CENSOR at this rate.\n\n'I feel attacked,' Jerome said.\n\n'I definitely feel attacked,' Kai answered.\n\nThey were bonding, which was good \u2013 how often did a Fae and a dragon manage cheerful banter? \u2013 but Irene really wished that they'd chosen some other time and place to do it. She sighed and turned to the grey man. 'We're going to cooperate.'\n\n'You two are lucky you've got one sensible woman on the team. You, kid.' He was talking to Irene again. 'You find out one thing for me from CENSOR, and I'll let you off your first fortnight's fees.'\n\n'What do you want to know?' Irene asked. If it seemed useful, maybe Indigo could pluck it from CENSOR's databanks \u2013 not that they'd bother to hand the information over.\n\n'Something happened yesterday. CENSOR raided the University Library, then the Spanish Riding School right after. They are all stirred up and my sources tell me something bad's going down. Find out what it is.'\n\nIrene felt her heart skip a beat. What if CENSOR really had been following their trail at the library and at the riding school? It could risk the job \u2013 in which case, Indigo really needed to do more digging. If the grey man had sources inside CENSOR, then he could tell her more about it. But this back and forth was simply too slow. She had to know. Time for a better lever.\n\n'I'll see what I can do,' she said, holding his gaze. 'In the meantime, you perceive I'm trustworthy, and you need to tell me everything you know about CENSOR.'\n\nThere was a sudden babble from the room as all the thugs tried to speak at the same time. Pain spiked inside Irene's head \u2013 the penalty of using the Language on so many.\n\n'Shut up, the lot of you!' the grey man ordered, and his flunkies went quiet. 'I guess you need to know, if you're going to do the job right,' he continued. Self-rationalization based on a Language-induced shift of perception was a wonderful thing. 'It's like this. CENSOR pays us for information. We pass on anything weird that we pick up, and they tell us what to listen out for too. If we slip them a few extra names to \"deal with\", that's just how we do business. But since the university and riding school raids, we haven't heard from them \u2013 and that's really unusual. Maybe someone's been badmouthing us. If so, I need to know who. But if it's because something huge is going down \u2013 I want in.'\n\n'Thank you, that's very helpful.' So CENSOR had connections on both sides of the law \u2013 within the police and organized crime. Their task was looking harder by the minute. Irene gave the grey man her most appreciative smile. 'Did CENSOR mention any keywords or other data? Something I could use in my search of their records?'\n\nThe grey man shrugged. 'They said to listen out for anything about libraries or librarians. Maybe someone at the University Library's implicated.'\n\nPure dread clutched at Irene's throat. That was one explanation, but the other possibility had dire implications for their mission. On first contact, the thugs had threatened to turn Kai and Jerome over to CENSOR if they didn't pay up. Their list of fake accusations had included 'hiding books of magic'. Was the Library really on CENSOR's watch list \u2013 or was this just an uncomfortable coincidence? Who was actually behind them?\n\n'Thanks,' she said. 'I'll do my best.'\n\nPerhaps he'd sensed that she was giving in too easily, for his eyes narrowed. 'I'll send someone to check on you.'\n\nWell, that would be unfortunate for whoever the someone was.\n\n'Piet, show them out,' he said. 'And get me more coffee.'\n\nMercifully, Jerome and Kai hadn't made any further attempts to interfere. Irene quietly thanked any nearby deities as she headed for the door. They'd need all the time they could get to evacuate their base.\n\nThen one of the quieter thugs frowned. 'Boss?' he said. 'Why did you just tell her all that?'\n\n'What?' the grey man said.\n\nIrene bit back a curse. The you perceive Language trick only lasted for a short amount of time, but it didn't usually wear off this fast. She felt Kai go tense next to her and nudged him towards the door. 'You perceive that there's nothing to worry about,' she tried again.\n\nThe sudden headache made her stumble, and Kai caught her elbow. Jerome ushered them out of the room, before closing the door. 'Lock it,' he barked.\n\nShe bit her lip, focusing. 'Door, lock. Lock, jam.'\n\nThe woman standing guard in the front office looked at them suspiciously. 'Something wrong?'\n\n'Not a problem,' Jerome said cheerfully, but her hand was now resting on her gun. 'We've got our orders\u2014'\n\nThe guard collapsed as Kai delivered a swift blow to the back of her neck.\n\n'I hope that was worth it,' Kai said, dragging the unconscious woman behind the counter. 'The moment the Language wears off again, they'll be after us.'\n\n'They're looking for a Librarian,' Irene said, and dry-swallowed a couple of aspirin.\n\n'So?'\n\n'Who else knows about Librarians, besides dragons and Fae?'\n\nJerome had flipped his phone open, but he paused mid-text. 'So that's why CENSOR gave Hao Chen a pass at the casino. Of course the dragons are in with them.' His gaze shifted to Kai. 'Your sister's got a point.'\n\n'About?' Kai queried, bristling.\n\n'About what happens when dragons are in charge.'\n\nThe door crashed open, and thugs spilled out. Behind them, the grey man yelled in a tone of genuine panic, 'Shoot the witch!'\n\nAll that liaison with CENSOR, and you never expected to run into a real witch? Irene ducked behind the counter. 'Guns, jam!' she shouted.\n\nJerome and Kai were dealing with the thugs. She slipped past them into the room they'd just left. As she expected, the boss was shaking his phone and cursing.\n\n'No phone signal in here, right?' she asked.\n\nHe flinched, looking at her as if she was an abomination out of an X-rated horror film poster. It took him a moment to remember his gun, and he pointed it at her with a shaking hand. 'Stay away from me, witch!'\n\n'You've put me in an unfortunate position,' Irene said. 'I don't suppose I can persuade you to keep your mouth shut about all this?'\n\n'Stay back or I'll shoot!'\n\n'Your gun's jammed,' she reminded him. He'd been within earshot when she'd used the Language. 'Work with me here. I don't want to have to kill you.'\n\nHe pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. His nerve broke, and he made a bolt for the other door.\n\nShe grabbed his flimsy chair and threw it. It hit him in the back; he stumbled, giving her time to close in. He dropped the gun and pulled a knife from an inner pocket. She dodged sideways, avoiding his slicing blow, and kicked him in the knee. He sank to the ground, the knife skittering away.\n\n'Finished playing with your prey yet, madam witch?' Kai enquired from the doorway.\n\nThe grey man made a wavering reach for his knife, so Irene stepped on his hand. She turned to Kai. 'You've got all the others?'\n\n'Down and unconscious.'\n\n'All right. We've got work to do.'\n\nTen minutes later, the thugs, guard and boss alike were tied up in the interview chamber. Irene sealed the doors with the Language, bonding them to their frames. They wouldn't hold against significant exterior assault, and the rooms weren't airtight \u2013 the prisoners wouldn't suffocate \u2013 but it would keep them all usefully out of the way for the next few hours.\n\n'So we're blown,' Jerome said, his tone cheerful rather than depressed. 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?'\n\n'Maybe,' Irene said. 'I'm thinking that we've been very lucky.'\n\nKai frowned. 'I don't follow. As far as I can see, we've been massively unlucky to have those idiots try to blackmail us, unlucky that they spotted us in the first place\u2014'\n\n'And unlucky that dragons are involved with CENSOR?' Jerome asked, with mock-innocence.\n\nKai levelled an icy glance at him, a glint of dragon-red in his eyes. 'CENSOR could have captured a Librarian in the past. That could well be why they know \"Library\" and \"Librarian\" mean something.'\n\n'You don't believe that, and neither do I,' Jerome said.\n\nIrene took a deep breath, focusing herself. She didn't believe it either, though she could understand why Kai wouldn't admit the obvious. 'We're lucky,' she said, interrupting their exchange, 'because the grey man thought he could extort money from us, so he hadn't reported us to CENSOR yet. We still have the advantage.'\n\n'But the moment they get out of there, they'll tell CENSOR \u2013 and everyone else.'\n\n'Then we move up the timetable.' Irene flexed her fingers. 'We don't have time to wait. We'll make the run tonight.'\n\nFelix slapped his ID card down in front of the museum security guard. 'CENSOR,' he snapped. 'We have a report of possible demonic manifestations on the second floor, near the French Romantic painters. What do your security systems say?'\n\nThe security guard's gaze flicked nervously from the ID card to Felix, then to Irene and the others behind him, all of them stern in their stolen CENSOR uniforms. 'We haven't had any disruptions yet,' he stammered. 'All systems are normal.'\n\n'We have our locational readings,' Felix answered. He tapped one of the devices hanging at his belt. 'We may still be in time to prevent a full-scale manifestation and threat to life.'\n\nThe security guard perked up, clearly visualizing a future which didn't have him dismissed for missing an outbreak. 'Can I do anything to help, sir?'\n\nAs they'd planned, Jerome took over. 'Sir, it might be possible to resolve this with minimal disruption. This late at night, there shouldn't be many possible targets to remove. If we stake out the gallery now and run the new ewarding programs, we can leave the rest of the museum undisturbed.'\n\n'I don't know,' Felix said dubiously. 'We can't risk any danger to the public. Even if we're talking just a few staff, with the museum closed for the night...'\n\n'Let me call my supervisor over, sir,' the security guard said, eagerly taking the bait. 'He'll tell you if it's possible.'\n\nFelix nodded. 'Very well. Lang, report in to headquarters. Give them a sitrep.'\n\n'Yes, sir,' Irene responded. She took a step away, raising one hand to shield her mouth as she murmured into her headset.\n\nThe security guard's supervisor arrived in less than half a minute. He and Felix broke into a rapid discussion about how best to handle things. And most importantly, how the museum took absolutely no responsibility for anything that might go wrong. Kai, Jerome and Ernst adopted poses of casually menacing professionalism. Ernst's uniform was visibly straining, designed for someone a couple of sizes smaller. Irene hoped that it would survive the night \u2013 or at least, long enough for them to get out of there.\n\n'All okay so far,' Irene muttered. 'How about you?'\n\n'Acceptable,' Indigo answered, live from their getaway van. Irene could hear the hum of traffic through the phone, and the distant ebb and flow of CENSOR transmissions being monitored. 'So far nobody's noticed my taps into the network \u2013 or picked up on the squad you intercepted for their uniforms. Tina should have us in position to collect you in ten minutes. Let us know if you need more or less time.'\n\n'Understood.'\n\nFelix broke off his conversation and signalled them over. 'Herr Vogel has approved the investigation. You all know the procedure. Lang, anything to report?'\n\n'Central says all under control and to go ahead, sir,' Irene responded. 'They say call back in ten minutes if there are any issues.'\n\n'Very good,' he said, acknowledging their code for pickup time. He glanced at Kai. 'Bauer, you stay here a moment \u2013 see if you can link their security cameras to our system. The rest of you, follow me.'\n\nHerr Vogel insisted on accompanying them up the twin flights of marble stairs, prattling nervously all the way. The regular lighting was off at this time of night, but the security officer had passed round torches. Marble lions crouched at the bottom of the staircases, their muscles smooth curves that gleamed in the torchlight. Painted figures peered down from the ceiling, eternal and unmoving. The entire museum seemed to be on guard, waiting for a moment's slip. Irene felt a trickle of sweat run down her back under her stolen uniform. So many things could go wrong, so many people might make a mistake. This was why she preferred operating on her own...\n\n'I hear there are problems all over town,' Herr Vogel said tentatively. 'People are saying on social media that CENSOR patrols are making widespread arrests.'\n\n'I can neither confirm nor deny this,' Felix answered, in tones which confirmed it very clearly indeed. 'With any luck this won't take long. Naturally we don't want to cause unnecessary panic here as well.'\n\n'Oh, absolutely,' Herr Vogel said quickly. 'We'll try to keep things under control. If something happens... should we assist?'\n\n'I appreciate your devotion to duty, but the answer is no. Our policy is containment. If this is a demonic manifestation, anyone unprotected may be subject to possession. We can't risk your staff infecting the general population.'\n\nThe little colour in Herr Vogel's cheeks drained away. 'I had no idea the risk was so great.'\n\n'To all Vienna.' Felix gave him a grave nod, one serious man to another. 'Fortunately there's no sign of anyone hanging around outside the museum.'\n\n'Fortunately?'\n\n'Cultists.' Felix looked into the middle distance for a moment, haunted remembrance shadowing his face. The torchlight caught his expression at just the right moment to emphasize his battle-weary air. He was every inch the professional CENSOR officer, someone who'd devoted his life to fighting horrors beyond imagination.\n\nIrene had to admit that Felix was doing an excellent job. And, as far as she could judge, thoroughly enjoying it. She suppressed a jealous thought that she could have played the squad leader just as well. The important thing was getting the job done.\n\n'Ah, I see. No, the area seems quiet tonight. Nothing on our cameras.'\n\nWith luck, it would stay that way. So far things had gone according to plan. They'd triggered CENSOR raids across Vienna, based on false information, via Indigo's links to CENSOR's network. They'd then ambushed a CENSOR team with a conveniently sized van and mostly conveniently sized uniforms. And they'd now infiltrated the Kunsthistorisches Museum, while Indigo and Tina remained in the stolen van, circling Vienna, ready to return for the pickup \u2013 it had been judged far too dangerous to keep the van sitting outside the museum.\n\n'Here we are,' Herr Vogel said, gesturing round the gallery. The walls were dark grey, the floor tiled wood, and a long skylight in the ceiling gazed up at a cloud-filled night sky. Though it was empty, the paintings were full of human faces which seemed to stare at the group from the shadows.\n\nKai came jogging into the room. 'I've linked up the museum cameras to CENSOR central command, sir. They'll be able to analyse the feed and pick up anything that we can't.'\n\n'Excellent,' Felix said. 'Benz, get out the scan tech. Herr Vogel, I must request that you leave this room now. There may be high-energy discharges, and while the paintings will be safe, I can't answer for your physical integrity.'\n\nHerr Vogel hesitated, then nodded. With an inclination of his head he strode away, leaving them together in the darkened room. Just the cameras left to take care of now...\n\nFelix turned to Irene. 'Check with central command, Lang. Are you getting the camera link feedback?'\n\n'Can you access the cameras?' Irene murmured into her headset.\n\n'Got it and setting a feedback loop,' Indigo answered. 'Walk around a bit and gesture with your equipment. I'll record it and play it back, to distract security.'\n\n'Central says to run full scans, sir,' Irene answered Felix. 'They have full access.'\n\nIrene wandered around, pointing pieces of appropriately mysterious equipment at the walls and paintings. Then Indigo said, 'That's enough. Synching \u2013 three, two, one, mark. You're good to go.'\n\n'We're clear,' Irene said, putting the equipment away.\n\n'Are we?' Felix asked.\n\n'We'll know if they come in here, I suppose,' Kai answered.\n\n'Damn. I've got to get Indigo to sign up with me one of these days. I never knew dragons could be so useful.' Felix moved briskly over to where The Raft of the Medusa hung. 'Irene, Ernst, give me a hand. Jerome, Kai, you're on watch duty.'\n\nIrene bumped fists with Kai in congratulation, before joining Felix. Felix scrambled onto Ernst's shoulders, peering at the upper edges of the frame. He drew in a hiss of breath. 'This is going to be as much of a nuisance as we'd thought. There's tech behind this.'\n\n'What kind?' Ernst asked.\n\n'Security alarms, what else? But far more than any of the other paintings seem to have. More than the Imperial Treasury had, even.'\n\n'So there is something unusual about this one,' Ernst commented. 'Then again, this is the one Mr Nemo wanted. Ours not to argue.' He shrugged, making Felix protest and clutch at the wall for balance. 'Will this stop you getting it down?'\n\n'Of course not! But I can't be sure exactly what I'll set off.'\n\n'Let's hope it's part of the main alarm system,' Irene said. She touched her earpiece. 'Indigo, are you picking up all this? Can you deactivate it?'\n\nThere was an uncomfortable pause. 'That might not be quite so simple,' Indigo said slowly. 'There's security in this system which I hadn't expected. Fiddling the cameras is one thing, but turning off the alarms is something else. In fact...'\n\n'In fact what?' Irene asked. That didn't sound encouraging.\n\n'Oh, don't worry, it's nothing. It'll actually be easier if you handle the alarms at your end.'\n\nIrene reported that back to the team. She decided to keep the It's nothing to herself. Maybe it was just nothing, and if it wasn't... they'd find out soon enough.\n\nFelix laughed, glancing at the busy team \u2013 and it was infectious. Irene herself had to chuckle at a Fae, dragon and Librarian team working so effectively. 'Let's do it,' he said. 'Irene, as we planned: first alarms, then detach the painting.' He leapt off Ernst's shoulder, landing like a cat. 'Ernst, be ready to hold the painting.'\n\nIrene swallowed. This was where the theft made the final jump from plan to actuality. No time for nerves now. She stepped forward to lay a finger against the frame. 'All alarms attached to the painting I'm touching, deactivate.'\n\nHer voice echoed in the gallery, amplified by the harmonics of the Language. She frowned at a brief twinge of head pain, but it didn't last. Next step. Felix had explained the mechanics of how the painting would be connected to the frame and the wall, from his prior 'acquisitions' experience, and she'd worked out the most efficient vocabulary. 'Fastenings holding up the painting I'm touching, detach and release: painting, slide gently to the ground without damage.'\n\nThe painting shuddered as screws unwound themselves from brackets and bolts detached themselves, then came free. The whole thing slid down the wall like water down a pane. Ernst caught it with barely a grunt as it started to topple, gently lowering it to the floor.\n\nFelix looked at the wall where it had been, and whistled. There was a wide array of circuitry there \u2013 far more than one would have expected. 'This is serious paranoia,' he said.\n\n'Irene!' Indigo's voice was sharp.\n\nIrene winced and put a hand to her earpiece. 'What is it? And please don't shout.'\n\n'Whatever you've just done has triggered alarms which I can't shut down \u2013 and they're not just linked to CENSOR, but somewhere else as well. You need to speed up.'\n\n'We're out of time,' Irene reported to the others. 'Alarms have been triggered that Indigo can't intercept. We need to get out \u2013 now.'\n\nFelix let out his breath in a thoughtful whistle, playing his torch along the lines of the frame. 'And the other shoe just dropped...'\n\n'Speak plainly,' Ernst demanded.\n\n'There's two canvases here. One's fastened over the other. What was it Mr Nemo told us again?'\n\nIrene resisted the urge to correct him to 'there are two canvases'. This was not the time to be a grammar purist. Instead, she cast her mind back. 'Mr Nemo said he wanted the canvas, whole and entire, and we could leave the frame behind. I suppose \"canvas\" could apply to both paintings, at a stretch, as an uncountable noun.' But why was this hidden painting guarded better than the Imperial Treasury? Just how much more didn't they know? 'Shall I detach the frame now?' she asked briskly, substituting efficiency for panic.\n\n'Go ahead.' The shadows hid Felix's face, but his shoulders were tense. 'And call in Indigo for immediate pickup. Ernst, get the packaging ready.'\n\nErnst slipped off his backpack and pulled out a large piece of fine, clean canvas. He unfolded it as though shaking out bedsheets, and it fluttered to the gallery floor in a ghostly drift.\n\nIrene was grateful for the time they'd spent beforehand going through the plan. She didn't have to waste precious seconds looking for the right words. Bending down and touching it, she said, 'Frame and struts of the paintings which I am touching, come apart, detach and roll away.'\n\nThe wood, gilding and ornamentation fell apart immediately in a dry rattling of antique pieces. Irene's imagination supplied images of ancient bones scuttling across the floor. 'Paintings which I am touching, float over to the plain canvas lying on the floor and rest on it, face-down.'\n\nShe leaned back as they drifted into the air and wished that there was some way to make them move faster. Tension knotted her shoulders, mingling with an incipient headache. All her instincts told her that this was about to go badly wrong \u2013 if it hadn't already. The unexpected extra security was also a fairly good signifier of probable disaster.\n\n'I feel as if you're using me like a blunt instrument,' she remarked, trying to silence her nerves.\n\n'Yes, but you're so good at this,' Felix answered. 'Normally I'd take more time and enjoy the process, but we need to move. Roll it up.'\n\n'Paintings and canvas on the floor, roll yourselves gently into a tube.' As they obeyed, curling into an ungainly Swiss roll, Irene switched to her headset. 'Indigo, get ready, we're about to exfiltrate.'\n\nThere was a muttered exchange of words at the other end, then Indigo said, 'We'll be at the museum entrance in a couple of minutes. We think.'\n\n'Think?'\n\n'Roadblocks. Don't worry about it.' Tyres squealed.\n\nIrene tried not to do just that. Indigo and Tina would be there. Because if they weren't, after all she'd been through, she was going to drag the paintings through the streets of Vienna herself and use them to bludgeon anything that got in her way.\n\nFelix fastened the roll with packing tape. 'Almost ready to go,' he said.\n\nA few seconds later, Irene and Jerome were leading the way to the great staircase, torches turned off. The others followed, carrying the hefty canvas roll between them. While Ernst could have managed the entire weight on his own, the carefully packaged roll was unwieldy and cumbersome. The museum was silent and dim light filtered in through the skylights \u2013 not enough for them to appreciate the decor, but enough to find their way out. Irene's stomach began to unknot slightly as they approached the staircase. From here it was a straight run to the exit. Almost there, almost there, she reassured herself. The wide stairwell beckoned, a white marble statue of a man with a raised dagger shining corpse-pale at the bend in the stairs.\n\n'Stop sneaking around,' Lady Ciu's voice said. 'You're not fooling anyone.'\n\nShe glided out of the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, tall and whipcord lean, as poised as any of the museum's fine statues. Her dark glasses were a band of pure blackness across her face. She carried her swordcane in her left hand, but she wasn't leaning on it now; her right hand rested on the handle, ready to draw the blade.\n\nJerome put a restraining hand on Irene's arm and stepped into the light. He reached for his gun. 'How convenient,' he said. 'I'd been hoping to see you again.'\n\nIrene quickly ran through half a dozen things she could do with the Language. Order the floor to swallow up Lady Ciu... drop the cupola on her head in a shower of glass, gilding and fresco... break the swordcane in her hand.\n\nYet every single one would tell the dragon that a Librarian was involved. This world wasn't protected by the treaty, but her and Kai's reputations as ambassadors were at risk. She didn't want to think about what would happen if Lady Ciu discovered the dragons' top-secret computer conspiracy had become public knowledge. All the more reason to have Felix take charge of the actual theft... and the blame.\n\nPerhaps the elderly dragon would be willing to negotiate. But too many things didn't add up. The extensive security behind this particular painting. The alarm Indigo hadn't been able to shut off. The fact that dragons happened to be in Vienna, right where the painting was \u2013 and now Lady Ciu chanced to be here. There was clearly something shady afoot.\n\nBut she still had to have that painting.\n\nNot for the first time, Irene cursed the size of their target. Shoving it through a window simply wasn't an option. Even if they could risk damaging the canvas that way, they couldn't expect Lady Ciu to just stand there while they did it. And if Irene used the Language to help somehow, then that was again undeniable proof that a Librarian was involved...\n\nJerome was still smiling at Lady Ciu. 'Is it time for another gamble?'\n\n'I knew you were that sort,' Lady Ciu answered. Her voice dripped contempt. 'No self-control \u2013 and you can't resist the thrill of a mortal risk.'\n\n'I may not be able to resist a bet,' Jerome replied, 'but you can't resist a challenge. We're well matched.'\n\nOut of Lady Ciu's line of sight, the canvas-carrying team had come to a halt. In the lead, Felix hesitated.\n\nIrene raised a hand in silent instruction for them to stay where they were.\n\n'I can hear your confederates scuttling,' Lady Ciu said. 'So what now?'\n\n'You let me come down to the foot of the stairs,' Jerome said, 'and then we draw. This is between the two of us.'\n\nIrene wished she could see the dragon's eyes and read her expression \u2013 but Lady Ciu's dark glasses were as opaque as the black stone of the pillars, as dead as a shark's eyes. A bullet could kill a dragon who'd taken human form. So if Lady Ciu was willing to go up against someone with a gun, armed only with a sword, then either she was suicidal or she was very good with that sword. Impossibly good. Legendarily good.\n\n'I agree,' Lady Ciu said slowly, to Irene's shock. 'But your friends? Will they interfere?'\n\n'No.' Jerome glanced towards Irene. 'What happens between us is between us, all right? This is on me. I signed up for the risk of it. Nothing more.' He was already walking down the stairs, each sharp footfall on the marble steps like the ticking of a clock. 'Whoever survives this can discuss next steps.'\n\n'Gambler,' Lady Ciu accused.\n\n'It's what I'm doing here. I'm not ashamed of that. But what about you? Sitting like a spider, waiting for challengers?'\n\n'I'm doing my duty.' Lady Ciu paced backwards as he approached, keeping the same distance between them. 'When my lady queen commands me to guard a world, a place or an item, then I do so. My sword has always been enough.'\n\n'So far.' Jerome was nearly at the bottom of the stairs. 'Should I turn up the lights? I wouldn't want you to miss your cue.'\n\nLady Ciu snorted. 'My eyes are my least important sense. Don't waste your last thoughts on such a thing.' She pulled a long blade from the neck of her cane. It gleamed like a strip of moonlight in the near-darkness. 'But what do you mean, you \"signed up\"? Who hired you?'\n\n'Does it matter?'\n\n'It might make the difference between whether I keep you alive or not.'\n\nJerome chuckled, deep in his throat. 'The stakes are all or nothing, lady.'\n\n'I'll be a little more precise.' She shifted her wrist. Light flickered on the steel. 'It makes a difference to me whether you were hired by a dragon or a Fae.'\n\n'To do what?'\n\n'Don't be ridiculous. We both know why you're here.'\n\nJerome shrugged. 'I don't roll over on my employers.'\n\n'I can appreciate loyalty.' Lady Ciu lowered the tip of her sword. The two of them were ten yards apart. 'On three, then?'\n\n'Very well.' Jerome let his hands fall to his sides. 'On three.'\n\nSilence filled the museum. It seemed to clutch at Irene's throat. She couldn't see a way out of this without revealing a Librarian was involved \u2013 or without someone being killed. And while she had never claimed her hands were clean, she certainly didn't believe in casual murder. But this was what Jerome wanted. She glanced over her shoulder at Kai and the others, and for a moment she saw the same tension in Kai that she had seen in Lady Ciu: the same eagerness for a challenge, the same readiness for a life-or-death duel. He wasn't going to offer any convenient way out of this. None of them were.\n\nNeither Jerome nor Lady Ciu spoke. If they were counting to three, they were doing it to themselves, listening to their own heartbeats.\n\nThen they moved. There was no signal, no word spoken, nothing \u2013 but they both slid into action at the same second. Lady Ciu dashed towards Jerome even as his hand fell to his holster. Her sword rose as he aimed. The movements were almost too quick for Irene to see.\n\nLady Ciu's sword blocked the bullet.\n\nThe crack of the gunfire mingled with the sound of bullet against steel, and the shot ploughed into the marble floor. Lady Ciu's blade cut from high to low, as Jerome fired a second time.\n\nThey stood for a moment like statues. And then Lady Ciu sagged, her hand clasped to her shoulder; but Jerome fell. Blood pooled around him, black against the white marble floor.\n\nHe shuddered as he lay there. 'Not quite...' he whispered.\n\nLady Ciu took her hand away from her shoulder. It was dark with blood. 'You are the first man in sixty years to have wounded me,' she said. 'I salute you.'\n\nJerome smiled weakly, then went still. His fingers lost their grip on his gun.\n\nLady Ciu turned to Irene and the others. 'Well? Will you surrender, or must I come after you?'\n\nIrene turned away from Jerome's body, as if in shock \u2013 which was genuine enough \u2013 to whisper unobserved into her headset. 'Indigo, when I give the word, turn on every single alarm in the building at top volume. Can you do that?'\n\n'If I do, people will come,' Indigo said.\n\n'Do it anyway. We need the truck here. Right away.' Then she locked eyes with Kai, mouthing: 'Get everyone to cover their ears. Now.'\n\nBelow, Lady Ciu sighed. 'Very well,' she said. She strode towards them, bloodied blade naked in her hand.\n\n'Now,' Irene said into the headset, and ran forward, urgently beckoning the others.\n\nShe'd underestimated the sheer volume that the entire building's alarms could produce. Urns trembled in their niches. The statue of Theseus stabbing a centaur shook. Dust came loose from the ceiling, showering down in a choking mist. The noise was deafening: it shivered her bones and drilled into her skull. These alarms weren't designed to go off all at the same time and at this volume \u2013 especially not with humans present.\n\nOr Fae.\n\nBut especially not dragons.\n\nIf it was painful for Irene, it was that much worse for Lady Ciu. She sank to one knee, her hands pressed against her head \u2013 though even in her pain, she didn't let go of her sword. Her dark glasses came loose and fell, and for a moment Irene saw the wide band of scarring across her face, like an old-fashioned domino mask. My eyes are my least important sense...\n\nThere was no time to gawp. Staggering in the turbulence of sound, Irene and the others charged down the stairs, clipping the statue of Theseus with the canvas \u2013 Irene winced \u2013 then they were down the final flight, and out into the central hall. Kai was worst hit by the noise, his keen draconic senses doubly punished by the volume, but he was somehow still upright, still moving.\n\nThere was no time to stop for Jerome's body. Irene could only hope that he'd been telling the truth when he'd said this was what he'd wanted \u2013 and that he hadn't been disappointed by his final gamble.\n\nEven through the noise, Lady Ciu stayed alert. Her voice was inaudible as her lips moved in curses, but her fury was obvious.\n\nLight pulsed around her.\n\nShe's going to take dragon form, Irene realized in horror. In an entrance hall this big, she has the space to do it...\n\nThe canvas-carrying team faltered. Felix and Ernst had possibly never seen a dragon assume their natural form before. Kai of course had, which gave him all the more reason to hesitate before advancing. Irene grabbed Felix by the shoulder, dragging him on. The sound of screeching wheels was just audible over the shriek of the alarms. 'Keep moving!' Irene gestured and shouted, loud enough to make her throat hurt. 'Don't stop!'\n\nLady Ciu's shape resolved as they stumbled past \u2013 a dragon, huge and serpentine, great tail lashing as her wings strained outwards. Her natural colour might have been the dull yellow-brown of sandstone, but in the thin moonlight she was a mass of shifting shadows, a flow of muscle under rippling skin. Scars marked her face in this form as well, an intaglio of silvery lines like watermarked silk. She lowered her head, her long neck sweeping round as she tried to locate the smaller figures scrambling past her.\n\nThey had bare seconds until Lady Ciu gave up trying to find them and blocked the exit instead. Irene threw herself against the barred entrance and called, 'Doors, unlock and open!' The doors heard her, even if no one else did, and undid themselves and swung wide open. She could only hope Lady Ciu hadn't noticed over the alarms.\n\nBut the boom of heavy wood as the doors slammed open couldn't be missed. With a thundering snarl of pure fury, the dragon twisted her body to strike.\n\nIrene threw herself through the doors and down the steps outside, into the cold night air, almost falling as she slipped on the smooth marble. Their truck was there, engine running. Felix was a step behind her. Ernst, carrying pretty much the full weight of the canvas, staggered out like a javelin-thrower with the world's biggest spear. It sagged at either end as he charged down the steps and dragged it towards the back of the lorry.\n\nGood, one of us has the sense to keep to the plan, Irene thought. But she couldn't look away. Not till Kai was out safely.\n\nA great coil of dragon body slid past on the other side of the doorway, and Irene thought of boa constrictors tightening around their prey. She still couldn't see Kai.\n\n'Come on!' Felix yelled.\n\nShe'd pulled Kai into this. He'd only come on this mission because of her. She was not going to leave him in there. The words in the Language for brick, mortar, marble and come apart tumbled through her mind as she prepared to demolish the museum's entrance to get him out of there. Whatever it took.\n\nAnd then Kai launched himself over Lady Ciu in an acrobat's smooth jump, rolling head-first down the stairs in a graceful somersault.\n\nIrene bit back the commands that she was forming, just waiting to be spoken. Her relief was too huge for words, which for a Librarian was huge indeed. She ran to where Felix was scrambling into the back of their vehicle and leapt up beside him, holding her hand out for Kai. They crowded into the confined interior, already full of Indigo's computers, with the great roll of canvas propped crossways like a huge inconvenient cigar.\n\nLady Ciu's draconic cry of thwarted rage drowned out the alarms and rattled the glass in the windows. The bronze statue of the Empress Maria Theresa in the square outside shivered on its plinth. Then the dragon slid through the wide-open museum doors, her wings tight against her body.\n\nTina hit the accelerator and the truck lurched into desperate speed, jolting along the park's paths and out onto the road.\n\nThere was chaos on the streets of Vienna. Traffic surged through the main arteries of the city, spurting at top speed when it could \u2013 slowing to an aggrieved crawl when it hit police or CENSOR barricades. Their stolen CENSOR vehicle gave Irene's group some leeway \u2013 police waved it through without hesitation. But it also made them terribly conspicuous.\n\nIrene squeezed Kai's hand, beyond grateful that he was out safely, then turned to Indigo. 'Are we being followed?'\n\n'By CENSOR? Not yet. By Lady Ciu? Look out of the window and tell me yourself.'\n\nTina was hunkered over the wheel, jiggling in her seat as she steered the truck between two cars and into an impossibly tight gap in the traffic. In a momentary glare of streetlights, Irene could see she was chewing gum as if her life depended on it, with a manic grin on her face.\n\nFelix scrambled into the front passenger seat. He lowered the window, letting in a blast of street fumes and noise and cautiously poked his head out \u2013 then yanked it back in. 'We've got trouble,' he said. 'There are two of them up there.'\n\n'Is the other dragon blue or grey?' Indigo asked.\n\n'Greyish? I wasn't exactly holding up paint samples to match its colour.'\n\n'It's Shu Fang, then. We could have a problem.'\n\n'The wind's picking up,' Felix replied hopefully. 'That should inconvenience them, right?'\n\n'The wind's picking up because Shu Fang's out there,' Kai said, cutting in. 'It's her element. And even if Lady Ciu can't spot us among the traffic, Shu Fang definitely will. There can't be that many CENSOR trucks near the museum.'\n\n'Well, damn.' Tina jerked the lorry into a right turn, and all of them grabbed something to hold onto. Indigo cursed under her breath as she steadied her keyboard. Horns outside screeched in protest, and voices emboldened by the night and the anonymity of traffic yelled insults at the CENSOR vehicle. 'We'll never make it to the Kaiserm\u00fchlen tunnel if they're right on top of us. It's another ten minutes across town... at least.'\n\nThe first draft of the plan had involved Tina simply driving the truck between worlds, in the same way as they'd arrived. But if they were being actively followed by dragons, either the dragons would pursue them from one world to the next, or the dragons' metaphysical 'weight' might tether them to this world. So they'd decided to use a large tunnel, where Tina could shift worlds unobserved. The problem with this was now becoming clear; it relied on having a head start.\n\nIrene glanced at Felix. He was looking uncertain, indecisive, as if he wanted a place to hide. If the lorry hadn't been rocketing along the road at eighty miles an hour, he'd probably have jumped out and made a run for it. All right. I can do this... time to take charge. 'Indigo, can you report the dragons to CENSOR as a major supernatural threat? They could actually do their job for once.'\n\n'You think I haven't already tried?' Indigo spat. Her rapidly typing fingers gleamed in the light from her monitors, and her eyes flickered red. 'Someone's in the system and actively working against me. I'm having enough trouble stopping anyone putting our truck's number plate out as stolen.'\n\n'But who... Hao Chen? Or his minions?' Irene said, remembering Hao Chen's links to CENSOR. They'd simply let him go during the casino incident. 'It could explain why he's not up there with Lady Ciu and Shu Fang.' She realized another unwelcome fact. 'And if you try to clear the traffic between us and the tunnel electronically, CENSOR will spot that. If the dragons are in league with them, they'll know where we're going...'\n\n'So do something about it!' Indigo demanded. 'I'm doing my part of the job. You do yours and buy us some time. Otherwise we'll be trapped here \u2013 they'll have stopped us and spotted us before we can get out of here.'\n\n'\"Spotted us and stopped us\", is the order I would expect,' Ernst pointed out.\n\n'Do not contradict me!' A glare of streetlights showed the snarl on Indigo's face. 'I will not be taken alive.'\n\nA gust of wind hit the lorry side on, strong enough to make it sway on its wheels. Then in a great fanfare of car horns and screaming, something came down on the roof. The lorry shook under its weight, and Tina muttered curses as she struggled with the wheel. Long rasping shrieks of claws against metal came from the roof as the dragon began to slice its way through.\n\nIrene grabbed for the taser at her belt, and Ernst pulled out his gun. 'Hold steady!' Irene called to Tina. At least nobody would get in the way of a truck with a dragon perched on its roof, but it was small consolation.\n\nSomething in the lorry's roof gave with a crack, and a limb tipped with steel-bright claws ripped through.\n\nTasers were only made for incapacitating humans, as Irene knew. However, the Language could get round that. 'Electroshock weapon in my hand, deliver your full charge into that dragon's flesh!'\n\nThe flaring discharge lit the crowded lorry interior with a flash of blindingly harsh light. It outlined everything and threw black shadows against the floor. With a scream the dragon clinging to the roof dragged herself loose, shaking the battered vehicle so hard that it nearly came off its wheels. They rocketed forward as Tina slammed her foot on the accelerator.\n\n'It's only due to pure luck that your idiocy hasn't fried all my computers,' Indigo said between her teeth, with the careful control of a woman inches away from severing heads. 'Why didn't you warn me?'\n\n'No time. Sorry.' Irene looked around at the motley crew. 'Any thoughts about what to do next? We're still not out of this world.'\n\nThen one of Indigo's computers chimed, and Hao Chen's voice came through loud and clear. 'Good evening to those of you hacking CENSOR. We wish to talk.' He paused. 'Unless you'd prefer to die instead.'\n\n'How's he talking to us?' Felix demanded.\n\n'Broadcasting on a CENSOR channel,' Indigo said. 'Are we going to answer?'\n\n'Can't you counter-hack his computer and make it blow up or something?'\n\nIndigo's expression of utter scorn was more acidic than vitriol. 'Hacking doesn't work like that.'\n\n'Well, sod hacking, then,' Felix muttered. 'Anyone got any other bright ideas?'\n\nKai's eyes were on Irene. 'If I go out the back and take my proper form, I could distract them,' he suggested. 'My colour wouldn't be enough for them to identify me...'\n\nIrene couldn't take that chance, for the sake of the treaty \u2013 and for Kai's sake. Why had Lady Ciu been so eager to learn whether Jerome was employed by a dragon or a Fae? Why would dragons want to steal such a thing? If Kai appeared and confirmed to her that a dragon had been involved, he wouldn't get away easily \u2013 if at all.\n\n'No,' she said firmly, assembling her thoughts. 'Tina \u2013 you need a long run-up to get away, because of the load you're carrying, right? Two dragons and a Librarian, as well as three Fae and the truck itself?'\n\n'Yeah, pretty much,' Tina replied, swerving round a pair of cars which had collided in the centre of the street. 'No offence, but you've got weight.'\n\n'I know, I know, it's all the sachertorte.' Irene swivelled back to Indigo. 'Can you give me a temporary channel to Hao Chen, and cut it off whenever I signal, so that he can't hear us?'\n\n'Easily,' Indigo said.\n\n'Here's a new idea,' Felix suggested. 'If we can get up to a high place and have Tina drive off, would she be able to make a transfer to the next world \u2013 before we hit the ground?'\n\n'Not in a lorry,' Tina said, without turning a hair. 'Could do it in a plane. Have done it in a hang-glider. But not in this. Besides, it wouldn't sort out the problem of dragons following us.'\n\n'Okay,' Irene said. 'Felix, we need to buy time. Can we play good cop/bad cop over the audio connection? I'm the hardliner, you're the reasonable one who wants to negotiate.'\n\nFelix nodded. 'I can do that. But what are we buying time for?'\n\n'We need to get to the nearest underground garage. I know there's one nearby \u2013'\n\n'There is, but once in, we wouldn't have enough run-up to escape through it,' Tina said. 'Even if it gets us out of sight of the dragons.'\n\n'It would,' Irene countered, 'as long as some of us get out, first.'\n\n'Connection made,' Indigo said, hitting a key. 'You're through.'\n\nThe wind outside shook the truck again. Irene raised her voice. 'Hello CENSOR! We are the independent association of mages and supernatural beings, and we demand that you immediately cease all operations against our kindred!'\n\nThere was a pause. 'You're what?' Hao Chen said.\n\n'Independent association of mages and supernatural beings,' Irene repeated. 'We don't have a cool acronym yet. We demand immediate release of all our colleagues from your prison camps \u2013 and law reform!'\n\nHao Chen snorted. 'Don't be stupid. We know what you really are. I'm here to negotiate your surrender. Or death.'\n\n'Wait!' Felix managed to interject real panic into his voice. 'We can be reasonable about this. I know the painting's important to you. How about we make a deal?'\n\n'Fool!' Irene snapped at Felix, doing her best imitation of an irritated aristocrat \u2013 Lord Silver would have been proud. 'These people won't listen to anything except strength. We should burn the painting. Now.'\n\n'Someone hold her down!' Felix told the empty air. 'Look, whoever you are, you said you're willing to discuss terms. What can you offer us?'\n\n'Well, your lives, for a start,' Hao Chen began. 'And if you've been paid for this attempted theft, then\u2014'\n\nIrene gestured to Indigo to mute the connection.\n\n'Right,' Indigo said, as Hao Chen continued to offer freedom, money and possible employment opportunities. 'He can't hear you. What do you mean, some of us get off first?'\n\n'You, Kai and I leave the truck as soon as we're in the garage. Would that lighten the load enough, Tina?'\n\n'Piece of cake.' Tina turned a harsh left, directly against the oncoming traffic, and shifted her gum. 'But what about you?'\n\nOutside, in the windswept night sky, one of the dragons roared. The noise rang across the city, echoing in the bones of the humans below. A panicked howl of vehicle brakes and alarm bells answered, and all the Fae in the truck winced.\n\nIrene looked around at the unlikely team. Tina, only interested in the road ahead; Kai, unreasonably trusting, utterly reliable; Ernst, inscrutable as ever behind his thuggish archetype; Indigo, focused on her work, as bright and brittle as lightning; and Felix, jittering in his seat. 'Kai and Indigo can fly me out. They won't be looking for three people on foot \u2013 and we can leave once we've lost the dragons. But you'll need to wait for us \u2013and your word on that would be really reassuring.'\n\n'We've already identified your vehicle,' Hao Chen declared over the open channel, unaware that his audience had stopped responding. 'We're moving in CENSOR forces with roadblocks right this minute. You can't keep driving round Vienna forever. You should really consider making a deal, while we're still prepared to talk to you \u2013'\n\n'Your plan's fine by me,' Tina said. When Felix turned to stare at her, she shrugged, eyes still on the road. 'I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but there's a limit to how well even I can drive this thing, if a dragon hitches a ride on top again. How long do you want us to wait \u2013 and how will you find us?'\n\n'Kai will do the finding,' Irene answered, glad that at least one person could stand the idea of trust. 'Six hours should be more than enough time.'\n\n'I can stomach this idea,' Ernst muttered, 'which is to say, I don't like it. But it makes sense. How will you find us, dragon boy? Do you have our scent in your nose?'\n\n'It's more metaphysical than that,' Kai said with dignity.\n\nIndigo lowered her gaze to her monitors again. 'I approve your plan too,' she said.\n\nFelix's expression was shadowed, and for a moment Irene thought he would refuse. Then, astonishingly, he laughed. 'The thing I most regret is that we won't see the expression on their faces when we've vanished. It's a deal, Irene. Give me your word in your Language, and I'll give you mine.'\n\n'I swear that this isn't a betrayal, and that I intend to join you later, after you're safely out of here \u2013 so that we can all escape,' Irene said. A twinge of caution made her add, 'And claim the reward Mr Nemo has promised us all.' The words echoed, carrying more weight than they should have done.\n\n'And I swear by my name and nature that once we're in a safe location, before we take the canvas to Mr Nemo, we'll wait six hours for you to join us,' Felix said. 'You have my word. Ernst?'\n\n'It'll do. I pledge as well.' He offered his hand to Kai. 'Here, dragon boy. Get a good grip on my hand and be sure you can find me again. We don't want you getting lost.'\n\nKai had a slightly mixed expression on his face as he took Ernst's hand. 'By now I think I could find any of you,' he said, 'wherever you were. But I appreciate the gesture.' There was something in his eyes that seemed to give the moment an extra significance. An offered hand, a gesture of trust between Fae and dragon...\n\n'Hello? Hello... Will you do a deal? I'm waiting for your answer,' Hao Chen said over the connection.\n\n'Let's do it,' Irene said. 'How long to the car park, Tina?'\n\n'Three minutes,' Tina said. 'Might be two.'\n\nIrene made a turn-the-audio-back-on-again gesture at Indigo, who nodded. 'How do we know we can trust you?' she asked Hao Chen. 'This could be just one more trick.'\n\n'You're the ones who broke into the museum,' Hao Chen responded. 'How do we know we can trust you?'\n\n'Aaaand roadblock ahead,' Tina said, her tone deadpan. 'Hang on, this is going to be bumpy.'\n\nFelix yelped and covered his face with his arms. Irene glimpsed the road beyond \u2013 the marshalled police cars, the men with guns \u2013 and dropped to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the others doing the same. They were all clinging onto something. Even Indigo.\n\nThe lorry hit the barricade of cars and careened through with a bone-shaking crash. The windscreen smashed to pieces: Tina ducked her head sideways as a bullet smashed through the glass, pinging off the back wall. They slowed, the lorry listing to one side, and then accelerated again, glass and metal crunching in their wake. The sound of bullets receded behind them.\n\nIrene reflected that just as they'd kept Hao Chen talking while they escaped, he'd been setting up a roadblock while he 'negotiated'. She glanced around. No casualties. Good. 'You think that's going to make us surrender?' Irene said into the link.\n\n'Think of it as a warning shot,' Hao Chen said. 'You've been marked from the air. You won't get past the next roadblock. Surrendering now is your only chance of getting out of this alive.'\n\n'You really think CENSOR's going to shoot us, rather than shoot actual dragons?' Felix demanded. 'What happened to their priorities?'\n\n'As far as CENSOR knows, you're a group of terrorist mages who summoned the dragons yourselves,' Hao Chen answered. 'Once you're stopped, the dragons will magically disappear.'\n\n'Yes, but they're attacking us!' Felix pointed out. 'How does that fit with your stupid narrative?'\n\nIrene could almost hear the shrug on the far end. 'Everyone knows mages are insane and evil. So who cares if their own weapons turn upon them? I should really thank you for the pro-CENSOR publicity, by the way. It's the best we've had in years. The main problem with keeping it funded is the lack of genuine supernatural activity here. But you know that, don't you? You're not from this world either.'\n\n'So just how long have you been running CENSOR?' Irene asked. The revelation was less shocking than it might have been, now that she put the pieces together, but she still found herself disgusted by it. All that fear, all that paranoia, and all of it based on a lie simply to keep convenient control of this world. Maybe there were no universal standards of morality \u2013 but this was still just plain wrong.\n\nHao Chen laughed. 'Getting me to betray myself over an open channel? I'm not that stupid. This channel's secure. Even if you distributed a recording, who'd believe you?'\n\nTina made a cut audio gesture to Indigo. 'Five seconds,' she said. 'The next turning.'\n\n'Look where you're driving, woman!' Ernst growled.\n\n'Yeah, yeah. Everyone who's getting out, be ready to do so.' She spun the wheel abruptly and hit the brake. The truck turned with a ferocious squeal, rocking to the right. One of Indigo's monitors finally came loose from its brackets and went flying. She cursed in fine archaic style.\n\nIrene snatched up one of Ernst's explosive packages. It might be useful: there were still enemy dragons and CENSOR to deal with, after all.\n\nKai scrambled to the back of the vehicle, keeping his balance in spite of the vehicle's contortions, and held out a hand to Irene. 'Let me go first,' he suggested, 'and I'll catch you.'\n\n'No offers to catch me?' Indigo demanded. She picked up her ever-present attach\u00e9 case, swaying in the dim interior as she rose to her feet.\n\n'You are tough dragon,' Ernst pointed out before Kai could say something regrettable. 'You will break less easily than puny Librarian. Dragon boy has his priorities right.'\n\n'There'll be a barrier gate up before the garage,' Felix said. He was still curled to one side, his arms protectively in front of his face. 'It'll be closed this time of night.'\n\n'Twenty-four-hour parking for us!' Tina answered, and the lorry charged down the slope into the car park. The barrier pole bowed under the vehicle's momentum, then gave way and went bouncing loose, shuddering across the concrete. From behind them came the furious roar of a dragon seeing its prey escaping.\n\nThe car park was well lit inside \u2013 Irene could see flashes of it through the shattered windscreen, over the shoulders of Felix and Tina, momentary glimpses of the sort of concrete and painted pillars that seemed universal to all worlds which had developed cars and needed somewhere to park them. Then there was a crunch from above, and the lorry jerked mid-movement as something low-hanging hit the roof.\n\n'I'll turn left and drop you,' Tina said, totally focused on her job, 'then we're free to go.'\n\nAs she spoke, she spun the lorry into another jerking turn, and the tyres screamed again, an accompaniment to the roaring dragons outside the building. Briefly, the vehicle slowed. Kai pushed the rear doors open and leapt out, landing with barely a stagger.\n\nIrene's jump was much less graceful than Kai's \u2013 or Indigo's. But she landed without breaking anything or spraining an ankle, underrated hazards when leaping from moving vehicles. The back door was still swinging open as Tina gunned the lorry into motion again. Ernst flipped a casual wave in their direction. It charged between rows of parked cars, leaving a trail of glass and a shattered wing mirror behind it.\n\nThe noise of its passage was drowned out by the sounds coming from the entrance. Irene and the two dragons turned to look, then broke into a run, with the operative direction being away.\n\nShu Fang was writhing through the entrance in a long coil of rain-grey scales and muscles, her wings pressed tight against her sides. Wind came with her, gusting blasts that whined against car windows and sent random pieces of rubbish rattling along the floor. Dozens of car alarms started jangling at the disturbance, adding new tones to the cacophony. Shu Fang moved with surprising speed, not at all slowed by the confined quarters.\n\nIndigo was in the lead as they fled, her precious case swinging as she sprinted. Kai had Irene by the wrist in the sort of grip that would leave bruises later, dragging her along behind. They were going in the opposite direction to their truck, dodging behind one row of cars and then another. Irene desperately wanted to know what Shu Fang was chasing \u2013 the lorry, or them \u2013 but she wasn't waiting around to find out.\n\nAnd then, between one moment and another, the constant squeal of wheels on tarmac was gone \u2013 as was the truck. Indigo paused mid-step, eyes wide with sudden fear, and gestured for Kai and Irene to stop and take cover.\n\nThe three of them crouched to hide behind the nearest car \u2013 a sleek Renault, Irene noticed with the distraction of terror, and owned by someone with a family, judging by the scatter of toys in the back seat. They waited. They could hear the heavy grinding of Shu Fang's movements, her belly rasping against the concrete. Her claws and wings scraped on the pillars and random cars, and the wailing of innumerable car alarms made for an insufferable accompanying dirge.\n\nOn the positive side, Irene reflected hopefully, there's only one dragon in here, so maybe both won't fit? Or maybe Lady Ciu just dislikes the noise...\n\nThere was no way she was going to stand around and wait for an elevator, with a rampaging dragon in the vicinity, but this sort of place usually had fire exits. The stairwell it was, then.\n\nKai tugged wordlessly at her arm, then pointed at one of the further columns. There was indeed a fire exit sign on it, and the outline of a door. She nodded, then prodded Indigo.\n\nThey all froze as Shu Fang's voice echoed through the underground car park. It carried above the car alarms, echoing with a cadence that rattled human bones and made Irene's breath catch in fear. 'Little ones... why do you waste your time running? I already have your scent.'\n\nIrene hadn't thought of that. No chance that she'd lose their trail, then.\n\n'Surrender,' Shu Fang said, her voice a cascade of deep-toned wind chimes, 'or I'm coming to get you.'\n\nIrene drew the pistol from its holster on her purloined uniform. 'Slide across the floor when I throw you, and keep going until you hit a wall,' she whispered to it. Then she pitched it under the nearest row of cars. It skidded across the floor, moving with an impetus beyond anything her throw could have supplied, and kept on moving out of her line of sight.\n\nWind plucked at their clothing and made car aerials quiver and hum. Behind their sheltering car, they watched Shu Fang slide past, following the noise of the gun on concrete. Her eyes were like onyx, her body a length of storm cloud that gleamed under the neon lights like a winter river in flood. She should have seemed ridiculous in the concrete surroundings, but instead she was utterly terrifying, a creature out of mythology that could rip the modern world apart.\n\nNow, before she realizes it's a diversion and destroys us all... Irene twisted Ernst's explosive's detonator to five seconds and slipped it under the fuel tank of the adjacent car. Then they bolted for the exit.\n\nShu Fang was right behind, lunging towards them like an express train. Wind blasted ahead of her, slamming into Irene's back and making her stumble. Panicked, Irene wondered if she should have set the explosion to go off sooner, or later, or if it would have any effect at all...\n\nAnd then it went off. The noise in the confined space was devastating; it drowned out the alarms, and even Shu Fang's roar of fury. Flames crackled behind them as they all piled through the exit \u2013 thank heavens for fire doors and regulations. They could hear cars exploding as they ran up the stairs.\n\n'What if CENSOR's out there?' Indigo demanded.\n\n'Then you're \"under arrest\" and we're taking you in for questioning,' Kai answered, his gesture taking in Indigo's civilian silk top and jeans. 'Just be yourself and it'll look convincing.'\n\nIndigo snorted. 'Did he learn that sort of deceit from you?' she asked Irene.\n\n'Yes,' Irene panted, wishing she was as fit as the dragons. 'I believe he did. Good job, Kai. Let's go.'\n\nFollowing the rest of the team's trail had taken them reassuringly far from the world of Alpha-327 \u2013 and its hostile dragons. Winter in the desert was colder than winter in Vienna: the wind licked across empty hills and valleys, cutting through Irene's coat as if it wasn't there. The landscape beneath them was divided by a single road running through it \u2013 like the stroke of a pen, where the ink had dried from glossy black to dusty grey. On either side of the road the land rose in successive ridges, in shades of pink, grey and orange. The only landmark was the solitary building in the distance, with a very familiar truck parked outside it.\n\nRiding on Kai \u2013 something that Irene had done less than half a dozen times \u2013 was still a thing of wonder. In his true form, as a dragon, he was a shimmering marvel of dark blue. His scales shone like sapphires, his voice thundered but was still recognizable as his own. She sat in the hollow of his back, behind his shoulders, as he cut through the sky, his flight more supernatural than physical. He didn't beat his wings but glided through the air, as fluid as a shark in water. Despite the rushing of the air, they could hear each other well enough to talk.\n\n'You're supporting an unjust regime,' Indigo said with passion, not for the first time. She was parked behind Irene on Kai's back, seated with a graceful nonchalance that indicated just how little she worried about falling off. 'Your treaty does nothing more than rubber-stamp the draconic status quo. If political allegiances do shift, then why should a new regime honour its predecessor's commitments? To the Fae, or the Library?'\n\n'Would you argue the dragons' political regime was unfair, if you were one of the ones in power?' Irene asked, wryly.\n\nIndigo didn't lose her temper. 'If I'd wanted to be in power, under my father and mother, then I could have been. It would have been easy. But have you ever been in a situation where you felt you had to do something about the status quo? That your ethics demanded it? Or don't Librarians care about that sort of thing?'\n\n'You've yet to tell me what you're actually standing for,' Irene countered. 'It's all been about what you're standing against. But if you're disputing the authority of the monarchs, what do you plan to put in their place? Or are you an anarchist?'\n\n'An elitist,' Indigo said. 'And I'm not alone. Far from it.'\n\n'So you and your allies are planning a situation where dragons still hold power over humans \u2013 just with different dragons in charge?'\n\nIndigo looked unapologetic. 'The definition of elitist, as I understand it, is that those who are superior should hold power. I'm a reasonable person. Show me humans who are as competent or intelligent as dragons, and I'll bring them into government as well.'\n\nIrene somehow didn't expect Indigo would find any humans whom she considered 'superior'. Even Kai, who was prepared to admit that Librarians, humans and even Fae could be competent or useful, wouldn't have argued for democracy \u2013 for the will of the people to choose their own government. As for herself... well, she'd willingly sworn to the Library. She'd bound herself to serve a hierarchical organization in the process. If she disobeyed her orders, she'd be punished.\n\nBut Indigo seemed determined to challenge her own kind.\n\n'What if you can't change the status quo?' Irene demanded.\n\nSparks flickered in Indigo's eyes like a foreshadowing of lightning. 'Anything can be changed if you really put your mind to it, Irene. If you're strong enough. You and I are both strong. If we don't achieve our desires, then we have nobody and nothing to blame except ourselves.'\n\nAbruptly Kai banked, dropping from the sky in a smooth plummet. 'We're here,' he said, his voice a deep rumble that Irene could feel in her bones. 'You were so busy arguing, I didn't like to interrupt.'\n\n'We should be careful when we draw near,' Irene said. 'We never described your true form to the group. All they'll see is a dragon.'\n\n'Land at a distance and approach on foot,' Indigo suggested.\n\nKai descended, and Irene tried not to think about how fast the road and earth were rising to meet them. She really didn't like heights. It was impossible not to think about falls, and impacts, and messy splashes.\n\nBut Kai settled gently on the ground beside the road, about fifty yards from the building. At this distance Irene could see it better. It looked like a disused diner, in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the area had once been inhabited. An old sign above the main entrance was so smeared with dust that it was impossible to make it out, and the broad window was shielded by tattered drawn blinds. If the Fae were in there, then they were hardly rushing out to greet them.\n\nBehind her and Indigo, light flared for a moment, briefly casting a pair of harsh shadows across the dusty earth. Then Kai clasped her shoulder, human once more. 'Which of us goes in first?' he asked.\n\nThe question was answered by Ernst cautiously appearing in the doorway of the diner. He waved to them.\n\n'About time,' Indigo muttered, and strode ahead. Irene and Kai followed at a more leisurely pace.\n\nKai didn't seem disposed to hurry. He waited till Indigo was out of earshot. 'I'm glad that you weren't falling for her ridiculous anti-monarch propaganda,' he said softly.\n\n'I have no intention of signing up to her crusade,' Irene said. 'To anyone's crusade.'\n\nKai looked reassured. 'I knew you had more sense than that. We shouldn't have to associate with her for much longer.'\n\nWhich means I'll soon be away from her dangerous influence? Irene thought wryly. But out loud, she said, 'I know what you're really annoyed about: we didn't have to pretend to arrest her. So you missed out on ordering her around in handcuffs.'\n\nKai snorted back a laugh as they joined the others. 'Well, when you put it like that...'\n\nErnst had discarded his CENSOR uniform jacket and was now wearing a battered but equally stretched check flannel shirt instead. 'Good job! Though next time, describe your dragon form, so that I am not hunting for missile launchers.'\n\n'They've been tried,' Kai said briefly. 'It didn't go well.'\n\nIt probably came down to the size of the target, Irene thought to herself. She'd seen missiles employed quite successfully against smaller dragons, as it happened. But was it her job to give either side a better understanding of each other's respective military capabilities? No, it was not. 'Are Tina and Felix all right?' she asked.\n\n'Well enough, but Felix will have a hangover when he wakes. The owner of this place stored whiskey in the cellar. So Felix and I tossed a coin as to who should keep watch \u2013 but I prefer vodka, so I did not mind when he cheated.'\n\nIrene's curiosity finally boiled over \u2013 now that they seemed almost out of danger, with the end of their journey within sight. 'Ernst... may I ask you a question?'\n\n'Certainly,' Ernst said gloomily. 'Everyone asks it, eventually. Let us walk aside so that I will not be overheard.'\n\nKai gave them a speculative glance. 'I'll go and see if there are any other supplies in this place. I wouldn't mind a cup of coffee.'\n\n'Tea for me,' Indigo said, and followed him inside.\n\nIrene mentally crossed her fingers that the kitchen would survive their joint presence, and turned to Ernst. 'Please understand that I don't intend to insult you... But your whole \"Russian\" ambience \u2013 the vocabulary, the attitude, even the reference to vodka \u2013 it feels a little overdone, even given the principle of Fae archetypes. I was wondering why.'\n\n'The fact that you see it means that I must work on it further,' Ernst rumbled. 'You see, Librarian girl, there are certain patterns which must be respected. I was originally from... well, you would not know the name. It was a small town in a country that no longer exists, in a world which has little except wars to make it interesting. Can you guess my way out of this?'\n\n'The Russian mobs?' Irene theorized. 'The, um, Bratva? The vory v zakone?'\n\n'Precisely. And in such a place, it was better to act the insider than be an outsider. Better to be Russian than... well, where I was once from.'\n\n'I understand,' Irene said. 'But did you always know that you were Fae?'\n\n'No. But after ten years I was working for a Fae boss, and he saw my potential. He showed me the different spheres and how to walk between them. He told me that I must have the proper blood somewhere in my family, because I found it easy to become...' He looked for words. 'What I was. What I am.'\n\n'Thank you for the explanation,' Irene said.\n\nErnst shrugged. 'A small thing. You didn't ask what I was expecting.'\n\n'Well, I don't want to get too intrusive, but what was that?'\n\n'To ask why I was doing this. Everyone else already has. Even dragon boy, though I did not tell him. It entertains me to tweak his nose a little.'\n\n'I wouldn't want to be left out, then...' Irene raised an eyebrow. 'I'll tell you my reason, if you'll tell me yours.'\n\nThey began to stroll towards the building. 'I am under orders,' Ernst said. 'My boss, he has an arrangement with Mr Nemo, and so I do as I am told. It is not for my sake alone. My husband is not well, and my boss pays for his medical care. We all do what we must, no?'\n\n'I'm sorry to hear that.' Irene was surprised that the burly Fae had any emotional entanglements at all, but she had better manners than to say so. 'I'm doing this for a book Mr Nemo has, and that the Library wants... and since we're being honest, or I hope that we are, the book's important to the stability of a world I care about. A place I went to school. Somewhere from my past.'\n\n'It is never simple,' Ernst agreed. 'Always there are complications.' He paused. 'Thinking of complications, I am reminded \u2013 before he began to drink, Felix unrolled the canvas. He was wanting to see the second painting, the one behind the first. It is in the side room there \u2013 the garage.' He nodded towards it.\n\n'Didn't you want to see it?'\n\nErnst rubbed his nose thoughtfully. 'I wanted to, yes. Then I thought, what if my boss says to me, did you see this mysterious painting, and I tell him yes, and I find myself being shot in the back many times? You know how these things can go.'\n\n'I... see your point,' Irene said. And she did, far too well.\n\nBut the choice to not look was also problematic. Why was the painting so important to the dragons? Important enough for them to take over CENSOR \u2013 or perhaps they'd even created CENSOR? \u2013 and station three representatives on that world to watch over it, and be willing to kill to keep it. They hadn't even listed it on the treaty as a world under their protection, perhaps in case anyone wondered why...\n\nFor the Library's sake, she told herself, she had to know.\n\n'Did Felix say anything to you about the canvas, after he'd looked at it?'\n\nErnst shrugged. 'He said it meant nothing to him. Tina was not interested. She could not drive it, after all. Perhaps it will mean something to you or the dragons. Shall I tell dragon boy to bring you some coffee in there?'\n\n'That'd be very kind.' Irene smiled at him. 'And the job's almost over now.'\n\n'It has been a smoother caper than most so far,' Ernst agreed. 'Even with Jerome lost to us. Still, without his diversion we might not have made it out so cleanly. I will turn down a glass for him later.'\n\nShe'd been trying not to think about Jerome. 'So will I.'\n\nThe garage door opened with a squeal. Of course there was no need for silence \u2013 they were in the middle of the desert, with nobody around for miles. But some impulse made her want to tiptoe and hush, as though it would let her erase her presence later.\n\nPerhaps my subconscious knows something it isn't telling me...\n\nIrene flipped the light switch and blinked in the sudden glare. The canvas was spread out on the floor before her. And then she blinked again, in shock this time, as she saw what was on the second canvas.\n\nAt first glance the canvas seemed to be a rough draft for The Raft of the Medusa, with only the people fully completed. She could see a group clinging together, on an incomplete raft that was barely a sketch of timbers, with a churning ocean and a thunderous sky. But these people weren't the ones in the original painting. (Could it really be called original, though, Irene wondered? Which of the two was older?) There were only nine figures, not the dozen or more on the 'public' painting \u2013 which would do for a term. Their faces were instantly recognizable too, as dragons in human form. More than that; Irene knew some of those faces. The Kings of the Eastern, Southern, and Northern Oceans. The Queen of the Southern Lands. The unfamiliar faces showed enough of a family resemblance to the ones she did know, that she guessed they might be siblings \u2013 the fourth king, the other queens...\n\nAnd who was the ninth figure, a man with the same family look as the four kings, but older? He was staring into the distance, with a look somewhere between resolution and despair.\n\nStormy waves curled over the edge of the vaguely sketched raft, and the sky beyond was full of clouds which seemed to reach out for the forlorn vessel, attempting to pull it back to whatever it was that they'd escaped from. That was it, Irene decided \u2013 this wasn't just a painting of a desperate group of survivors, it was a picture of them fleeing from something. But what? And why?\n\nShe leaned in to examine the swarming clouds in the background and the figures hidden within them, only visible when one looked closely. More dragons, pursuing... but somehow wrong. She'd seen dragons several times now \u2013 she might, in fact, be one of the Library's experts on the subject \u2013 and the ones in this painting seemed somehow more primitive than the dragons she knew. Their eyes held no expression, no intelligence, nothing but blank ferocity. Their outlines seemed to merge with the swirling wind and water from which they came. Maybe she was being fanciful now, but they seemed to represent the uncaring forces of destruction that threatened the few pitiful escapees on the raft. It seemed as if they were trying to reach these few to drag them down, tear them apart...\n\nIrene shivered at her emotional reaction to the picture. But wasn't that what true art was supposed to elicit? She tried to analyse her perceptions of what was depicted here as objectively as possible. The people on the raft weren't just trying to escape the ocean; they were clearly fleeing from other dragons. A different breed, perhaps? Or... an older variant? While Irene would have liked to think that it was just fiction \u2013 why had the dragons gone to such lengths to keep it hidden?\n\nThe whole point about draconic power was that it was absolute, unchanging and utterly unquestionable. The dragon monarchs themselves were immortal; nobody even raised the possibility that they might someday die. By definition (their own, at least), dragons were too powerful to have weaknesses as such, and their rulers were perfection personified. So this painting was either a gross insult to the entire set of dragon monarchs, or it represented a truth that they would never willingly have revealed. If it was the latter, was it a metaphor for some past state of distress and disaster, or a genuine depiction of a real escape? There were no immortal kings and queens here, but a group of desperate travellers, struggling together and in mortal peril. They were running for their lives from something that reached out to destroy them.\n\nSometimes historical truths slipped into fiction over time, and a story might contain a reference to long-forgotten facts. As a Librarian, Irene knew this better than anyone. She even remembered a fairytale by the Grimm brothers which had directly referred to the Library's history. That had contained a secret which people would have killed for, too.\n\nOf course, this painting might be no more than a carefully crafted slander \u2013 a suggestion that the dragon monarchs had once struggled for their thrones or had faced a danger serious enough to threaten even them. But in that case, why preserve the evidence? Why not burn it, rather than keeping it hidden away, guarded and watched?\n\nIrene knew almost nothing about dragon history. Kai had occasionally dropped the odd mention of wars with chaos \u2013 past and present \u2013 and the rise and fall of certain great families. But that wasn't the same thing as a definite chronology. He'd made it clear that deeper questions were actively discouraged among dragons, too. They were expected to accept what was and not ask for further details. In human history, the rulers all died eventually and were replaced by new and theoretically more progressive generations. But how did it work with near-immortal dragons? What had there been, before the dragon kings and queens came to power?\n\nAnd how dangerous might it be to know?\n\nThe door creaked behind her. Irene turned, catching Indigo's silhouette against the morning light. Another half-dozen pieces of the puzzle came together in her mind. She waited for the dragon to speak.\n\n'Aren't you going to say anything?' Indigo asked. 'You're usually so quick to give your opinion.'\n\n'I hadn't realized that it annoyed you so much,' Irene answered. 'Then again, I'm only human.' She considered her options as if they were a deck of Jerome's cards. Pretend ignorance of the situation? Or admit her suspicions, and accept the consequences? 'Kai's taking his time with the coffee.'\n\n'Don't expect him any time soon.' There was a savage smile in Indigo's voice. 'It's just the two of us.'\n\n'Should I worry about him?'\n\n'Does he matter to you? Besides politically, that is?'\n\n'Let's just say, whether or not he's in danger will affect my response to the situation.' Irene kept her tone as calm as her face, not wanting to give Indigo the advantage of knowing just how much Kai being in danger meant \u2013 and how it might affect what Irene would do to her.\n\n'Oh, relax. I've seen you're fond of him, and he of you. It gives me hope for him.' Indigo moved closer. 'Not immediate hope, but I think in the long term. So tell me, when did you start noticing things weren't adding up about the job?'\n\nAs if I would tell Indigo everything, just because she asked... 'The problem with having a reputation for intelligence is that people assume I know everything. You're demanding full details. But all I know is that you've confirmed something dubious is going on. Thank you for that, by the way.'\n\n'Come on. Use that mind of yours. Point out something you spotted, something I failed to hide, that roused your suspicions.'\n\n'Well...' Irene hesitated artistically. Why did Indigo seem to be in a hurry, pacing impatiently around the garage \u2013 did it mean Irene should play for time? 'I should have noticed something odd right back at the start, when Mr Nemo had those passports made for us. Only someone hooked into this world's computer systems could have prepared them \u2013 and we know how difficult that would be for an outsider. You were the only person on the team who could have done it, but you claimed you'd never visited this world before.'\n\n'It could have been a Fae,' Indigo countered. 'Someone with expertise. I'm sure that such creatures exist.'\n\n'In that case, why not hire them for this job, rather than you?' Irene walked around the edge of the canvas, putting space between her and Indigo. 'And why did we have a gambler on the team? We all assumed it was because Jerome was lucky, and used to handling high-stake capers. But someone knew all about Hao Chen and wanted a gambler on hand as one of the things most likely to distract him. The most likely person to know his weaknesses would be a dragon. And then there's the fact that you know what this is,' she said, gesturing to the painting. 'You weren't surprised when you saw it just now.'\n\nIndigo shrugged. 'Perhaps I'm better at hiding my emotions than you are.'\n\n'At seeing your own parents in this picture?'\n\n'Ah.' Indigo paused. 'You've met them, then?'\n\n'Your father, and not exactly by choice.' Irene would far rather have avoided Ao Guang's attention for the rest of her natural life. Being an object of interest to dragon monarchs wasn't safe. Especially if they thought you might be useful.\n\n'So you have some idea of the stakes that we're playing for here. You've been a pawn.' Indigo walked up to the edge of the canvas, facing Irene across it. 'Wouldn't you rather be a player?'\n\nIrene restrained the urge to roll her eyes. Why did everyone assume she wanted to be a devious mastermind and puppet-mistress \u2013 and put it in terms of chess? It was so... clich\u00e9d. 'Is this where you offer me a position on your side, for when your aunts and uncles are cast down from power?'\n\n'That'll do for a start.' Indigo wandered around the canvas, and Irene matched her, keeping it between them. 'Running from me, are you?'\n\n'Maintaining my independence,' Irene said.\n\n'That's what you'd be doing if you accepted, on a larger scale. Maintaining the Library's independence and status. Keeping my faction as an ally. Imagine your position if I did rise to power, and you weren't among my allies. We can manage a truce with the Fae on our own. Wouldn't it be better for us and the Library to be... friendly?'\n\nIrene looked at the circling dragon and had a very strong flashback to her memories of Mr Nemo's sharks. 'That's true,' she agreed carefully. She didn't think a fervent declaration of NO, I will never work for you! would go down too well. 'Being on good terms with you and your friends certainly won't break our oaths. I can work with that \u2013 and so can my superiors, if I put it to them in the right way.'\n\n'The benefits of a meritocracy.' Indigo gestured down at the canvas between them. 'As opposed to the stagnation caused by mere accidents of birth. Immortal slavery which will never change.'\n\n'Is this painting \"real\"?' Irene searched for the right phrasing. 'In the sense of representing something that genuinely happened? Or is it symbolic of some sort of past disaster?'\n\n'That... is something I don't know. Though I know more than most, having two royal parents, and being an inquisitive person. I have no shame about how far I've gone and what I've done to trace the past to its roots. At times at my family's expense. You should sympathize with curiosity, I think \u2013 surely you must understand how it feels to want to know.'\n\nIndigo gazed at the picture as if she was a burning glass and it was her tinder. 'Very few dragons go that far back. The official story is that the kings and queens are eternal, immortal, whatever \u2013 that they were the children of some incredibly ancient First Dragon, or something similarly cosmic and inexplicable. Apparently all the legends of immortal dragon rulers in mythology are retellings or misinterpretations of their reality. Of course, my beloved parents and their siblings write our history books, so they can say what they want. Wasn't there a story about that? He who controls the present, controls the past.'\n\n'And he who controls the past, controls the future,' Irene completed the quotation. It was true. Those in power were able to dictate what 'truth' was passed down \u2013 and their children then grew up believing it. 'And you intend to prove that the accepted versions of the past are incorrect?'\n\n'Money wasn't the only thing I stole from my father. I took information, too, and that is much more valuable. Information on what this was and where it was hidden. If he'd known how much I knew... well, fortunate for me that he didn't. I had to bargain with Mr Nemo to get the resources and the backing for this job, but you and I both know that sometimes one must deal with the enemy when playing for high stakes.' Indigo pointed at the canvas. 'This is a can of worms. I intend to open it.'\n\n'That's a rather mixed metaphor,' Irene pointed out.\n\n'I didn't spend my life studying metaphor. I occupied myself far more usefully.' Indigo shrugged. 'By the way...'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'You may be thinking that we dragons are curiously ignorant about our own roots. But how much do you know about the history of your own Library?'\n\n'Point taken,' Irene admitted. 'But do you think that a \u2013 well, an artistic impression like this \u2013 carries the same weight as a genuine historical record? You were the one who argued that a painting was no more than patterns of colour and shading on a piece of canvas.'\n\n'Unfortunately not everyone sees things my way. Fortunately, though, it's those who don't see things that way who will believe the story represented in this painting. As for artistic impression versus historical record... maybe I'll never find out exactly what happened thousands of years ago. But this painting will show that it wasn't the eternal peace of a glorious reign that they claim.' She practically spat the pronoun, and her eyes glinted dragon-red. 'That's the only way we can trigger change. It is time for us to ask questions. It is time to demand answers.'\n\n'I'm not your audience,' Irene said, before Indigo could go into a speech she'd obviously practised. 'What I would like is to stay well out of this.' Others might not care or believe that the painting represented dragon history in some way. But Indigo clearly thought dragons would, and that it would have a seismic effect on their society \u2013 and she should know. This painting was a bomb, and Irene wanted to be far away before it exploded.\n\n'I'm not stopping you from disappearing,' Indigo said calmly. 'Take your payment from Mr Nemo. Then go home.'\n\nIt was a tempting offer. This wasn't Library business. But there was one tiny problem... 'And what happens when people start asking who stole this, once the painting's exposed and it has the effect you're anticipating?'\n\n'Ah.' Indigo examined her fingernails. 'Yes, I suppose it might be inconvenient for you, if I said a Librarian was involved. Some people might even trace the crime back to the Library itself. Collusion with the Fae, to get hold of an object which damaged the dragon monarchs' reputations... I don't really need to go into the possible consequences, do I?'\n\nIrene might have thought that Indigo was bluffing, but she knew the dragon wasn't \u2013 and Indigo knew that Irene knew it. Even if the Library saved itself by claiming Irene had acted on her own and without permission (and it would), the smear would still cling. Fear and fury knotted together in Irene's stomach, as she realized just how bad this could be. 'You are gambling with the Library's reputation, and even its survival,' she said, her voice calm as ice. 'You are making yourself a dangerous enemy.'\n\nIrene had to find a way to stop Indigo. This situation had blossomed out of nowhere and was getting worse by the minute. The recently forged peace was fragile and there were people on both sides who'd be glad to believe the worst of the Library. But Irene also had to bring the canvas back to Mr Nemo, or she'd lose the book that she so desperately needed. The world of her childhood was at stake. So threats to destroy the painting were off the table. Would the Library expect her to somehow silence the dragon, permanently? She winced at the thought. Finally there was Mr Nemo... how much did he know, and what was his real involvement \u2013 in charge, or Indigo's partner in crime? Could he trigger the same rupturing of dragon society as Indigo's crusade even if she wasn't there to inspire it? Was it his goal too?\n\n'Good,' Indigo said, unmoved by Irene's implied threat. Maybe to a dragon, it was no more than the yapping of an angry puppy and she only needed to move her ankles out of the way. 'You're taking this seriously.'\n\n'I assure you that I'm taking it very seriously.' Irene shifted her focus to practicalities. If she couldn't dispose of the painting, she could perhaps immobilize Indigo, and then seek help from the Library \u2013 or even from her immediate 'colleagues'. The Fae members of the gang would be on Irene's side. While they might even welcome dragon revolution and/or regicide, she suspected they really wouldn't like having been used as pawns. And they definitely wouldn't like having targets painted on their backs, for their involvement in the theft. 'I think the next stage in this dance is for you to state your demands.'\n\n'I don't have any... yet.' Indigo began moving towards her again, and Irene again retreated. If Indigo got her hands on her, Irene could forget saying anything in the Language besides argh. 'I'm prepared to keep your involvement under wraps \u2013 if you do me a future favour. Or two.'\n\n'Or many,' Irene noted. 'That sort of agreement tends not to have a formal end date.'\n\n'You'd be a valuable asset... I wouldn't waste you. That would be stupid.'\n\nPerhaps she was telling the truth, but being used at all didn't sound exactly good for the asset. 'How kind of you,' Irene murmured.\n\n'You're very well trained,' Indigo said. It wasn't a compliment. Coming from her, it was a simple statement of fact. 'That school of yours, I suppose. Did they teach you to spy and pick locks there too?'\n\nIrene blinked in shock at this sudden reference to her old school. How could Indigo know about it? The only time she'd spoken freely about her past had been to Ernst just now, or... to Kai, on Mr Nemo's island. When they would have been under surveillance. That was it. Indigo had been the picture of sullen resentment at that dinner, but she must have been getting a full briefing from Mr Nemo behind the scenes. This reference to it was just a demonstration of how much Indigo knew about Irene \u2013 to show how much power she held in the current situation.\n\nShe couldn't let Indigo see her feelings, so she simply shrugged. 'Something along those lines.' But her most important lessons had involved learning to trust other people, to cooperate with them, to accept that people who weren't Librarians could deserve respect and fair treatment \u2013 whether they were humans, Fae, or dragons...\n\nIndigo looked a little disappointed that her jab hadn't had any effect. 'It's a better offer than many other dragons would give you. Would you rather be my ally \u2013 or their slave?'\n\n'I hate to think how much surveillance video you have of us all planning the heist,' Irene said instead of answering Indigo's question, her heart clenching at the thought. This wasn't just blackmail material against Irene and the Fae \u2013 it was blackmail material against Kai. 'No wonder you wouldn't let go of your attach\u00e9 case.'\n\nFor a moment Irene thought she saw irritation flicker in Indigo's eyes. Perhaps she hadn't expected Irene to think of that. 'At least I didn't leave anything on that world. Don't fret about Lady Ciu and her servants. They can't prove anything. They don't even suspect Library involvement. Yet.'\n\nJust how strong am I? Irene wondered. Strong enough to kill her to shut her mouth? I'd rather not...\n\nBut if she had to, the colder part of her knew she would.\n\n'I need an answer now,' Indigo said. 'A general expression of your willingness to cooperate with me will do.'\n\n'If I want to keep the Library's involvement secret, I'll have to fall in with your plans...' Irene said, preparing for something she'd never attempted before. 'And I'm forced to admit it. I can only say that you perceive that I am standing here and agreeing to your terms for the next five minutes.'\n\nThe effort of using the Language manifested in a streak of pain across her temples and pulsed in her chest. She'd never tried the Language's you perceive trick on a dragon before. They were creatures of order given form, so affecting them with the Language was like making water run uphill. Very, very difficult.\n\nBut not impossible.\n\nShe managed to step backwards, though her head ached as if it was going to split. Indigo kept looking at where she'd been standing \u2013 and, more to the point, didn't indicate she'd noticed Irene sidling towards the door. The smile on her face suggested her imagination was supplying all the details she could possibly want of Irene's capitulation. But when it wore off...\n\nIrene stepped outside into the bitingly cold wind. Priorities. Destroy Indigo's attach\u00e9 case and her computers. They hadn't visited anywhere where Indigo could upload her information, yet. Find Kai. Somehow rally the Fae to her side \u2013 and make sure that Indigo didn't have any leverage left. And all within five minutes.\n\nErnst was inside the diner's main room, nursing a mug of black coffee. He blinked in surprise. 'Is all well?'\n\n'A few minor hitches,' Irene said. 'There's something we all need to discuss. But first, have you seen where Indigo left her attach\u00e9 case?'\n\nErnst nodded glumly, and put down his coffee, gesturing behind him. 'Always things must get complicated. I was afraid of this. The case is behind the counter.'\n\nIrene nodded in thanks. The sooner she fried everything in the case, the happier she'd feel.\n\n'Irene?' Ernst said.\n\n'Yes?'\n\nHis fist took her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her before she could say anything. Another blow on the back of the neck sent her spinning down into unconsciousness.\n\nBut she thought, as darkness closed round her, that she heard the word sorry.\n\nIrene woke up to a surge of self-condemnation.\n\nWorse still, she was wearing a bikini. And high heels.\n\nShe tried to assess her surroundings with her eyes closed, something which seemed annoyingly familiar, pushing aside the urge to scream and throw things. The most worrying aspect \u2013 of many \u2013 was the weight she could feel against her throat. There was some sort of collar around her neck. It was difficult to think of any possible circumstances under which this could be a good thing.\n\nOther than that... wherever she was, it was quiet, though in the background she thought she could hear the faint buzz of air conditioning. The air smelled of disinfectant and she was lying on something padded, but it didn't feel soft enough to be a bed or mattress. The quality of the light, through her closed eyelids, suggested a fluorescent light overhead.\n\nDeciding she had more to gain if she looked around, she opened her eyes and slowly sat up. She was in a padded cell. No bed. No furniture. A fluorescent strip stretched across the ceiling, out of her reach. The door too was padded, on the inside, and there was a spy-hole in it \u2013 which, given her luck, probably allowed a full view of the whole room. No convenient standing out of view and then jumping the guard when they entered. Damn.\n\nA panel in the wall \u2013 also padded, of course \u2013 slid back to reveal a television screen. Well, that answered the question of where she was. As if she hadn't suspected.\n\nMr Nemo appeared. He was sitting behind a heavy ebony desk with a pile of brochures stacked on it. Behind him, a window looked out onto the depths of the ocean. An octopus flexed its tentacles as it glided through the water with the slowness of a ballerina. It was far too symbolic for Irene's tastes.\n\n'Miss Winters!' Mr Nemo said cheerfully. 'How pleasant to see you up and around. Please don't try to say anything: that collar around your neck will give you an electric shock if you do. And that includes speech in your Language.'\n\nIrene raised her fingers to explore the collar. Unfortunately the television screen didn't allow her to see her reflection. She could feel the smooth links of metal round her neck, like an oversized watchstrap; a more complicated disc was lying at the hollow of her throat.\n\nIt could all be an intricate and hilarious bluff. Or then again... his claims might be true.\n\nMr Nemo seemed to take her silence as acceptance, although her options for responding were limited. 'Now, I suppose you're wondering what you're doing there. Well, I assure you that it won't be for long. I'm in the middle of organizing a highly exclusive auction. Fae nobility, dragon monarchs \u2013 I did think of sending a catalogue to the Library, but they might have felt obligated to interfere. And since I'm not signed up to your peace treaty, I can do precisely what I like. The next few days are going to be very interesting. Naturally I can't have anyone coming here or meeting me personally, despite this auction being particularly important, but there are ways round that.'\n\nIrene pulled herself to her feet. She sketched out a large rectangle, and mouthed, The painting?\n\n'Precisely! And a few other bits and pieces too. It seems a shame not to take advantage of the occasion.' He tilted his head to one side, beads of sweat glistening in the wrinkles of his face. 'Now, I suppose you're wondering why you're in a high-security prison...'\n\nIrene made an exaggerated go on gesture with one hand.\n\n'My little auction may have some consequences.' He shrugged, the picture of a man saddened by all the dreadful things which could happen. 'I'm not a signatory to this treaty of yours, so I have no constraints on my behaviour. But you might feel that you should do something anyway, even without input from your superiors. So I'm temporarily removing you from the situation. Think of it as a summer holiday, Miss Winters! A little vacation from responsibility.'\n\nIrene began to say something, but as the first word escaped her lips the collar round her neck tightened, and an electric shock jangled painfully through her body. She found herself on her knees, fingers trying to prise the collar off, gasping for breath. All right. Not a bluff. One part of her mind was taking cold mental notes, even as tears rolled down her cheeks. It'd stop me managing more than a word... but could that be enough?\n\n'I really hoped that wouldn't be necessary,' Mr Nemo said. 'Please try to relax, Miss Winters. You shouldn't have to stay here for more than a day or two. I'm sure you're worried about Prince Kai too, but he's in perfectly good health \u2013 although under similar conditions. You'll both be under constant surveillance, of course. My camera network stretches island-wide. Even if you could leave your room, there is absolutely nowhere you could go where I couldn't find you.'\n\nIrene noted that Mr Nemo had slipped into full-on gloating. But every Fae archetype, including master criminals, had its weaknesses as well as strengths. Keeping enemies captive in the middle of a secret base wasn't a good move, for a start. Resorting to American Sign Language, for want of any better ideas, she signed, What about your promise to us?\n\nHe cupped his chin in his hands thoughtfully. 'You're probably asking me about payment for the picture. Very unfortunately, I can't understand a word you're signing. But don't worry, Miss Winters, I always keep my bargains. As soon as you present yourself to me and ask for it \u2013 in some manner that I can understand \u2013 I'll be glad to hand it over and let you go. But \u2013' he waved his fingers in her direction \u2013 'ta-ta for now, my dear.'\n\nThe television screen went dead, and the panel began to slide across it again. But Irene was already moving. Her first priority was getting something sharp. She lashed out at the television screen with one foot, heel braced. There had to be some point (no pun intended) to the ridiculous high heels she was wearing.\n\nThe heel punched squarely into the glass screen, sending a spider web of fractures racing across its surface. The panel was still trying to close, blocked by Irene's foot, and fortunately safety systems stopped it from attempting amputation. Balancing on one leg, Irene tugged off her right shoe, then dragged it out of the ruined screen, detaching some fragments of glass in the process. A couple of small shards fell to the floor as the panel finally closed.\n\nIrene set her teeth, so as not to make any noise that might trigger the collar, and used one razor-sharp shard to slice into her forearm. Using her finger as a stylus and her blood as ink, she managed to scrawl a single word in the Language on her collar: Deactivate. Of course there would be cameras watching, but she should still have a few seconds. Kicking off the remaining heel, she tensed and addressed the door: 'Unlock and open.'\n\nTo her relief, she remained unshocked as the door swung open.\n\nNow she had one last trick to play. The camera watching her would be linked to all the rest of them. Symbolic links, physical links, the Language was good with links. If even one camera was watching and listening to her right now...\n\nShe took a deep breath, braced herself, and spoke clearly. 'Surveillance devices in my presence, and all surveillance devices linked to them, malfunction!'\n\nThe Language worked easily in high-chaos worlds \u2013 in a way, it worked too well, fulfilling its user's wishes to an almost over-enthusiastic degree. Unfortunately, it then demanded a price. The shard of glass fell from Irene's hand as she swayed, and she had to prop herself up against the wall to stay upright. Blood trickled from her nose, and she blotted it with the back of her hand. She'd managed exotic things in high-chaos environments before \u2013 exploding a boat, warping a staircase, freezing a canal \u2013 but she hadn't tried to mess with anything as widespread as a whole hidden island's surveillance network. She shut her eyes for a moment as afterglow-images tracked across her vision. But if her command had taken so much energy, then it must have done something. In the absence of any signs of success \u2013 the cameras were hidden, after all \u2013 she could only trust that her splitting headache meant she'd succeeded.\n\nMore blood trickled down her arm as she staggered down the corridor, her pace speeding up as her sense of urgency grew. Must find bandage, she thought. She wasn't desperate enough to use her bikini yet. And watch out for pools of sharks or piranhas. This was a spartan, behind-the-scenes sort of place, unlike the more visited parts of Mr Nemo's lair. Each new hallway looked just as interchangeably grey as the next. If it had been a film set, one corridor could have represented the entire complex. She could imagine James Bond protagonists being chased through here by the villain of the moment, heading for disaster. She just hoped she was on the winning side of that particular Fae archetype.\n\nShe ran.\n\nTen minutes later, she was hiding behind a corner, as the third pair of guards so far marched past her. Their flowery sarongs might be pretty and colourful, but their guns looked all too genuine. Fortunately they weren't very good at conducting searches. The problem with successfully hiding your island from everyone else: your guards never accumulated any experience with genuine enemies.\n\nIrene needed information. She stepped out once they'd passed, and coughed in an official way. As they spun round, trying to work out where to aim their guns, she said quickly, 'You perceive I am your superior officer.'\n\nThey snapped to attention. 'Report!' she added. 'What is the current situation?'\n\nThe man on the right looked embarrassed. 'Subject L is still on the loose, sir. All other guests are still in their holding locations.'\n\n'I see.' Irene needed more \u2013 but it would be hard to explain certain questions. Such as Where precisely are these holding locations? 'Good. New orders, men. You're to accompany me to visit the guest Tina. Mr Nemo has a new job for her, and with Subject L on the loose, we need to make sure she's safe.'\n\n'Sir!' Both men saluted again and set off at a trot. Irene followed, feeling extremely conspicuous in her bikini. She hoped that the Language's influence would hold for however long it took to reach Tina. Of course, she wanted to get to Kai, but Mr Nemo would expect Irene to head straight for him. Their friendship... attachment... was an open secret. It was probably on their files in a dozen secret locations, from Fae to dragon spy headquarters.\n\nThey eventually reached what Irene considered the 'public' face of the island \u2013 including the corridors she and Kai had wandered through previously, with their huge aquarium-type windows. The door into this section was obvious from this side, but formed an unobtrusive wall panel on the public side. And really they'd come much further than Irene had thought possible, by the time one of the guards paused, shook his head, and said, 'Wait a moment...'\n\nIrene kidney-punched him, hit him on the back of the neck as he folded up, and pulled his gun out of his holster. She was quite pleased with their progress so far; the Language perception trick could wear off inconveniently fast. 'All right,' she said, as the other guard boggled at her. 'Where are the Fae guests being held?'\n\n'Sir? But...' He blinked, trying to come to terms with reality, and went pale. 'Oh my God, you're her. You're Subject L.'\n\nIrene wondered exactly what they'd told the guards about her. His reaction seemed unnecessarily dramatic. 'I asked you a question,' she said, capitalizing on his fear in tones of quiet menace.\n\n'I won't tell you anything,' the guard muttered. 'I am a loyal and faithful soldier.'\n\n'Look,' Irene said patiently, 'the camera system's still down. Nobody can see or hear you, and there's nobody here except you and me. And your friend. Who's unconscious. Wouldn't you prefer it if I went away and left you in peace? Rather than shooting holes in you? Or twisting your mind into knots?'\n\n'You're sure the cameras are out?' he asked tentatively.\n\n'If they weren't, then we'd have a dozen more guards with us and I'd be back in my cell,' Irene reassured him. 'I give you my word. Tell me what I want to know, and I won't kill you \u2013 or even torture you...'\n\n'Down that corridor, turn right, then take the third left, and the three Fae guests are in rooms next to each other,' the guard said, so fast that he was practically babbling. 'Madam Tina, then Mr Felix, then Mr Ernst.'\n\n'Good job,' Irene said. 'Now tell me what you see down the corridor there.'\n\n'I don't see\u2014'\n\nIrene hit him on the back of the head mid-phrase with the butt of the gun. That wasn't prohibited by any promises she'd given, after all. As he collapsed, she started running.\n\nThere were no guards outside the indicated doors. Mr Nemo must be assuming that she wouldn't go to the Fae team members for help. Well, she certainly wasn't going to ask Ernst, and Felix wasn't of any immediate use, but...\n\nIrene mentally crossed her fingers and knocked on the door that she hoped was Tina's.\n\n'Go away!' The snarl from inside was definitely Tina's. 'Unless you're here with permission for me to get the hell off this island, in which case come the hell in.'\n\nIrene tried the handle. It was locked \u2013 so much for them being 'guests'. The Language took care of that.\n\nTina was crouched in an armchair facing the door. Cigarette butts, wads of chewing gum and paper planes littered the floor. There was a curious sense of poised expectancy in the way that she sat there, almost like a car with its engine idling, ready to crash into movement. Her eyes widened as she took in Irene.\n\n'Has Mr Nemo given you your reward yet?' Irene asked.\n\nTina twirled a set of shiny new car keys round one finger. 'All ready to be picked up. You wouldn't appreciate it.'\n\n'And yet you're still here.'\n\n'I am kind of grinding my gears here, waiting to hit the road,' she admitted grudgingly.\n\nIrene nodded. 'In that case, I might be able to help... I'm here about something Kai discussed with you earlier. A paid job?' This was something Kai and Irene had discussed as one of their backup plans, days ago, when they were sitting in Vienna eating sachertorte. She prayed to any gods of the open road that they'd be on her side, in this negotiation with their acolyte.\n\nTina slowly smiled. It was like watching a landscape light up as the sun rose. 'You know, I was kind of hoping you would say that.' She was practically vibrating now, clinging to the edge of her chair, fingers white-knuckled with the effort of holding herself in position. 'So what am I taking and who am I taking it to?'\n\nIrene breathed an inner sigh of relief. 'I'll give you a name and an address...'\n\nIrene had congratulated herself on getting one thing done as she and Tina left the suite. It was a mistake. No sooner had the thought begun to coalesce than the two other doors in the hallway opened.\n\nErnst was the first to step out, his eyebrows rising as he took in Irene's outfit. 'Perhaps I missed something?' he asked.\n\nFelix stood in his doorway, a gun dangling loosely in his hand. But despite its support, he looked worn and anxious \u2013 as if he still hadn't quite reclaimed his archetype.\n\n'I'm leaving,' Tina said. She stepped out from behind Irene and waved at the two men. 'Night-night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite. I've had enough of this place. You going to stop me?'\n\n'Thinking about it,' Ernst rumbled.\n\n'I don't think so,' Irene said. She tried to appear imposing, despite her bikini, but she couldn't help recalling how fast and hard Ernst could hit. 'What was it Mr Nemo said to us? He'd allow us to leave, free and without constraints, at our own chosen time? Surely you're not going to stop one of your own doing that.'\n\nErnst shrugged philosophically. 'Mr Nemo isn't always right. Sometimes best solution is to knock everyone down and sort it out later. Great thinkers put it more elegantly, but I prefer my way. Also, my way is less lethal.'\n\nErnst was obviously a lost cause. But Felix... Irene could think of bait which he wouldn't be able to resist. 'I'm glad you're all right,' she said to him. 'I really wasn't sure about your master plan at first, but everything seems to be working out just as you said...'\n\nFelix's glare shifted into a slightly confused frown, though he did his best not to show it. No master schemer could ever admit to not knowing what was going on. 'It wasn't much,' he said after a moment, all false modesty.\n\nErnst hesitated, caught between possible targets. 'Explain,' he suggested.\n\nIrene shrugged, affecting to ignore Felix's gun and Ernst's balling fists. Behind her back, one hand made frantic escape now gestures at Tina. 'You've probably noticed that the surveillance cameras are all out of action,' she said to Ernst. 'That was my part of the job.' She nodded to Felix. 'And you did your bit of it by making sure I could infiltrate the heart of Mr Nemo's stronghold, as a harmless prisoner. Or should I say, apparently harmless?' She forced herself to smile. 'Now we're at the stage of the plan where there's no surveillance, everyone's running around like panicked gerbils, and Mr Nemo's own extensive collection is up for grabs.' She looked Felix square in the face. 'Like I said. Good plan.'\n\nIt was like a reverse of that moment when she'd been in the Vienna University Library and had been confronted by Ernst and Felix. Except that this time Felix was prepared to listen, and Ernst was the suspicious one. And Felix was listening. She could see the kindling excitement in his eyes at the thought of a caper on this scale.\n\nErnst coughed, reminding everyone of his looming presence. 'Felix. This is not a good idea. What is the plan? Where is a map? Where is an escape route? Where is anything \u2013 other than Librarian in front of you with silver tongue?'\n\nFelix whirled to face him. In the background, Irene could hear Tina retreating at a run. Good. 'Ernst. Remember you owe me a favour \u2013 from Galway? I'm calling it in.'\n\nErnst's face settled into lines of severe disapproval. 'You're going to regret this,' he said, dropping his usual speech pattern for a moment.\n\n'Maybe so. But sometimes you've got to do the regrettable thing. Give us fifteen minutes, Ernst. Not more than that. That's my favour. Then we're even.'\n\nErnst looked between Felix and Irene. He sighed. 'Fifteen minutes. Then I take no responsibility for what happens next.' He stepped back into his room and shut the door behind him.\n\nIrene could hardly believe it had been that simple. 'You must have done something very impressive for him,' she commented.\n\n'I picked a lock,' Felix said briefly. 'It was an important lock. Now are you with me on this raid, or do you have your own target?'\n\n'My own target,' Irene answered. Tina had told her where to find Kai. 'Tell me, did you see what was on the second canvas?'\n\n'I did,' Felix admitted. 'I was the one who unrolled it. But it didn't mean anything to me. I'm guessing it's blackmail material, or similar?'\n\n'Similar,' Irene agreed. She was tempted to walk away and get on with rescuing Kai, but an inner prod of morality made her pause. 'A word of advice, between temporary colleagues. I know you'll want everyone to know how you stole it from under the noses of three dragons. But that wouldn't end well. At all.'\n\n'Fair warning,' Felix said gaily, and Irene knew that he hadn't listened to a word that she'd said. 'See you around.'\n\nHe took off at a sprint, and Irene did the same.\n\nSeveral corridors away and a couple of levels higher up, she found the area Tina had described. It was a combination of prison cell system and sickbay. The first locked door opened on an empty room. So did the second. But the third...\n\nKai lay on a hospital trolley at the centre of the room, unconscious. There was a medical mask and gas tube strapped to his face, and he was connected up to a couple of monitors which beeped regularly. There weren't any guards, or tripwires that she could see, or infra-red alarm beams, or pressure pads in the floor... though of course, the point of such things was that intruders wouldn't be able to see them.\n\nThere weren't any obvious guards either. Surely any competent guard captain, on Irene's escape, would have assigned additional security to her possible targets. However, if she wanted to get Kai out, she was going to have to risk it.\n\nIrene picked her way silently across the floor, her bare feet noiseless on the concentric tiling, and reached Kai's side. His breathing was calm and undisturbed. She suppressed a sigh of relief. Carefully she removed the breathing mask from his face, stripping off the surgical tape that held it in place with a sympathetic wince. She checked his pulse. Steady. Good. She had no idea what they'd been giving him, and she wasn't going to sniff the gas to find out.\n\nWhen a hidden door slid open in the opposite wall to the entrance, it did so in dead silence. It was the change in the air that alerted Irene, as a cold draught brushed her bare skin. She looked up to see Indigo standing there, smiling, a remote control in her hand.\n\nThe dragon touched a button.\n\nThe floor under Irene fell away. She grabbed desperately at empty air: then her fingertips caught the edge of the panel she'd been standing on \u2013 which had retracted. As she swung over a gaping darkness below, her arms were already trembling with exertion. She didn't know how long she could hold on.\n\nThe room had been a trap, and she'd walked right into it.\n\nIrene struggled to pull herself up, but she didn't have a good enough grip on the edge of the floor; she needed time and leverage, and she didn't have either.\n\nThen Indigo loomed over her, silhouetted against the light. 'Well?' she said.\n\n'Well what?' Irene retorted. Now she could see various cunningly intersecting panels and trapdoors covering the entire floor \u2013 their edges outlined by the light from Kai's room. She hadn't stood a chance. She could also hear the sound of water, deep beneath her. Memory unhelpfully supplied a full-colour replay of the last person who'd dropped into one of Mr Nemo's shark pools. 'Am I supposed to beg you to get me out?' Sweat slicked her hands.\n\n'Are you deliberately trying to provoke me?' The words were mild enough, but Indigo's eyes burned with fury.\n\n'You're not Fae,' Irene said through gritted teeth. 'So I'm guessing that you're not here to gloat. If you're going to offer me a hand up... what... are your... conditions?'\n\n'Ah.' Indigo rested the panel's remote on the sleeping Kai's bed. 'Normally I would play along. Gloating over a helpless victim is the sort of petty, time-wasting, inefficient thing that Fae get up to at their worst moments.'\n\n'Normally?' Irene echoed. That didn't sound good.\n\n'You made mistakes.' There was a glint of red in Indigo's eyes. 'Firstly \u2013 and don't try it again \u2013 you used your Librarian abilities to delude me.' The air in the room prickled with static electricity, and Indigo's hair shivered and crackled with it. 'You dared to interfere with the functioning of my mind. You dared.'\n\nIrene's heart sank. Apparently she'd escaped in precisely the way most calculated to infuriate the dragon. 'You're the one associating with Fae,' she said, her fingers aching with the strain of holding onto the edge. 'You know what they can do to emotions and perceptions. Why are you so upset with me?'\n\n'Because I thought better of you,' Indigo said coldly. The toe of her shoe came down on the fingers of Irene's left hand, and she began to press.\n\nIrene bit back a gasp of pain. She was forced to let go, leaving her suspended by just one hand over the drop. The waters below her sounded louder now. Hungrier. Could the Language help? But Indigo would never let her complete a full sentence. 'Mistakes... plural?' she forced out, her right arm burning.\n\n'You came to find him.' Indigo pointed at Kai behind her. 'You could have gone looking for the canvas. You could have escaped. Both actions would have been logical uses of your time and energy. Instead, you chose to come crawling to his side, a pathetically emotional display. He's not that powerful \u2013 you couldn't expect him to save you. You would have known that Mr Nemo would keep him safe too, as a bargaining counter. He's not in mortal danger. And yet \u2013 you're here. It was a waste trying to cultivate you with logic and reason. You aren't worth my time.'\n\n'Yet you're still here, gloating. Like a Fae.'\n\n'I think it's therapeutic to explain to someone else how badly they got things wrong.' Indigo smiled. Her toe moved towards Irene's other hand.\n\n'Aren't you going to offer me a chance to join you, in exchange for my life?'\n\n'No. You'd just lie.'\n\nIrene had to admit that Indigo was absolutely right on that point. She definitely had the upper hand. The upper hand, the higher ground, and the lethal foot.\n\nWhen the opponent completely controls the chessboard and things can't get worse for you, sometimes the answer is to make it worse for everyone...\n\n'I'll find a more cooperative Librarian to support our faction, somewhere else, if I need one,' Indigo went on. 'You won't be missed. In fact, with you gone, you'll be that much easier to blame.'\n\n'Tell me,' Irene gasped, 'what's the thing you know?'\n\nIndigo paused. 'What do you mean?'\n\n'You knew about. Painting... You have some idea \u2013 what it means. What came before... dragon monarchs?'\n\nIndigo's mouth curled into a cruel smile. 'You're thinking that because you're about to die, I'm going to tell you all my secrets. Mistake. I'm not a Fae. I'm a dragon. And very soon I'm going to be a ruler.'\n\nHer foot came down.\n\nIrene couldn't hold on. The pain was too great. But as her grip slipped, she shouted, 'Panels, trapdoors, open!'\n\nIndigo's eyes widened in shock. She was already moving as Irene finished her second word, throwing herself towards the door. But she'd come too far into the room, and all the floor panels and trapdoors opened at once And with the floor effectively gone, everything in the room dropped into darkness \u2013 Irene, Indigo, Kai, trolley, and all.\n\nAs she dropped, Irene hit some kind of chute and she could hear Indigo screaming in fury above. There were scrapes and a thud, perhaps from Kai's trolley \u2013 and the light above vanished as the floor panels closed again. Irene could guess what would come next. She held her breath.\n\nThere was light \u2013 a blaze of it, electric, violent, eye-searing \u2013 and open air. And then water.\n\nThe impact was disorienting. Irene felt herself sinking, but she was too dizzy to be sure of anything else. She forced her eyes open and spread her limbs to slow her drop downwards. She was drifting in seawater \u2013 the open ocean? No, a confined pool, though a large one \u2013 and above her she could see two other blurred figures in the water. One had long hair that drifted around her, the other was tumbling like a rag doll in slow motion. In the distance, sleek shadows moved through the water, sliding ever closer.\n\nThe cut Irene had made in her arm gaped open, scraped in the fall, and a slow trail of crimson oozed from it. And the Language wasn't much use underwater: speech wouldn't work if she couldn't breathe.\n\nShe kicked desperately towards Kai, managing a pace that would have impressed the most enthusiastic life-savers at her old school. Indigo was swimming towards him as well, but clearly water wasn't her element. For once Irene's unwelcome outfit worked in her favour. It was far easier to swim in a bikini.\n\nShe could see the sharks gathering out of the corner of her eye. They moved closer now, huge and lethal in gunmetal grey and stark white, their eyes dead coals that watched her and assessed her value in flesh and blood. Perhaps they were used to having prey dropping by for dinner, and knew they could take their time about it.\n\nTheir circuits narrowed. One passed behind her, close enough that she felt its passage in the water, a physical force shoving her to one side. She moved, terror giving her strength and speed. It wouldn't give her armour, though, and any second now...\n\nHer hand closed on Kai's arm.\n\nHis eyes opened.\n\nUnder the influence of his will, the water embraced the pair of them, while another wave swept outwards in a pulse that threw the sharks back. A tentacle of water rapidly coiled around them to raise them to the surface, then carried them just as swiftly to the shore. Kai slid an arm round Irene's waist, supporting her as she coughed for air. A thin pattern of scales marked his skin, as elegant as mathematics and as perfect as frost.\n\nThey found themselves at the edge of a wide pool of seawater, at least fifty yards across, inside a low-roofed cavern. A hatch above showed where they'd entered, and electric lights, strung across the roof, blazed with actinic power. The air had a coldness to it which made her shiver, and suggested that a heavy thickness of rock stood between them and the warmer tropical air outside.\n\n'Are you all right?' Kai asked. He swung himself up onto the side of the pool, then helped her climb out. His brows drew together as he noted her clothing and condition.\n\nIrene opened her mouth to speak, but as she began to answer, the collar suddenly activated. She choked, attempting to pull it away from her neck, and an electric shock raced through her body as she crumpled to the ground. Oh no, she thought through the pain, the water must have washed off the Language... For a moment she thought she'd pass out from the combination of water and electricity.\n\nThen Kai was on his knees beside her, his face a picture of worry as she shuddered in pain. But as the spasms wore off, Irene noticed Indigo was also pulling herself out of the water. Fury blazed in every line of her body and her hair clung to her in a sodden mass. For once she was less than elegant. 'Son of Ao Guang,' she spat, 'you have chosen a very bad time to wake up.'\n\nKai rose to his feet. 'If I'd been able to convince everyone else that you were as faithless as you are dishonourable, we wouldn't be having this conversation. What have you done to Irene?'\n\n'I?' Indigo spread her hands. 'It was Ernst who hit her. It was Mr Nemo who had her dressed in that ridiculous bikini. I've done little more than offer her advice, which she didn't have the sense to take.'\n\nKai snorted. 'I woke up to find all three of us swimming in a shark pool together, so I'm going to assume you had something to do with it. And you were right behind me when I was tasered earlier. I suppose you had nothing to do with that, either?'\n\nIrene touched Kai's arm, then motioned towards a passageway set into the rock. With luck, Mr Nemo's surveillance system was still malfunctioning.\n\n'Leaving so soon?' Indigo said softly. 'I don't think so.'\n\nKai gestured loosely, his hand opening in a martial artist's invitation to spar, and the water rippled in response as if some unseen wind had touched it. 'You still have Mr Nemo's binding on you. Even if you didn't, I don't fear your storms down here. Water is my element. The advantage is mine, not yours. But please \u2013 go ahead. Try me.'\n\nSo that was Indigo's power \u2013 storms, or possibly rain. But Indigo would have to actually break through the roof to affect them. Plus she was still wearing that metal bracelet... which she'd said blocked her powers, Irene realized with slow dread. She'd lied about so many other things. Why assume she was telling the truth about that?\n\nIrene glanced up at the cave's roof to reassure herself it was still there. It was. And so were all those high-powered electrical lights, strung across it to provide a perfectly lit view of victims being eaten by sharks. A worrying suspicion began to stir. How did an elemental affinity with storms actually work?\n\nIndigo smiled, but it wasn't pretty. She spread her hands as if to demonstrate how empty they were, and Irene felt a sense of dread.\n\nThe lights all blew together in a fusillade of explosions like gunshots. Glass rained down, spattering on floor and water alike. Then lightning leapt from the electrical wiring above to sheathe Indigo in a blaze of blue-white fire. Two balls of lightning hovered above her open hands. 'Well, brother?' she taunted. 'Who has the advantage now?'\n\nIrene was painfully conscious that she was soaked and standing on a wet floor, and that water was an excellent conductor of electricity. Kai hesitated, perhaps coming to the same conclusions. Then he gestured. A wave spun upward out of the water, swirling to hover above them like a cobra's hood, a shield between them and the other dragon.\n\nIndigo's face was illuminated by her flaring power, like a classical mask carved from alabaster. She pointed her hand towards them.\n\nBut before the lightning could leap out at her command, the water folded round Irene and Kai, dragging them into the passageway in one great gush. It carried them perhaps twenty yards down the tunnel before it ran out of force, washing to a gentle standstill. Kai caught Irene's arm and they ran, following the tunnel downwards.\n\nThe fluorescent lighting was clear enough for them to see where they were going \u2013 and this was a practical tunnel for island staff, rather than one of the more opulent guest corridors. They turned several corners and finally stumbled through an open door into a guardroom. Here two of the sarong-clad guards had seized a moment to have a quiet cigarette.\n\nWithout breaking step, Kai caught one guard's wrist and spun him into a table, then knocked him out with a crisp blow to the chin. Irene grabbed a chair and thwacked the second guard before he could draw his gun. Kai caught him on the rebound and sent him to join the first in temporary slumber.\n\n'All right,' he said, closing the guardroom door. 'I see it's one of those days.'\n\nIrene shrugged. Again... she signed, relieved that they had trained in the same sign language. So very useful on covert missions. Do you think she'll follow? she asked.\n\n'Not on her own. She wouldn't have the advantage here. Besides, the further in we go, the stronger the chaos becomes, and the weaker we both are...' He looked at her properly, now they could catch their breath. 'Is that collar the thing that's stopping you talking?'\n\nIrene nodded and Kai reached into a pocket for his lock-picks, then blinked, realizing for the first time that he was in evening dress. Wet evening dress. 'This is ridiculous,' he said. With a gesture he forced the water from their sodden clothing \u2013 one of the less grandiose but still useful aspects of dragon elemental powers.\n\nThere wasn't actually a formal sign in ASL for Fae. So Irene nodded again and made a sympathetic face. As lock-picks were likely thin on the ground, she looked around for other implements \u2013 and purloined a paperclip from a stack of reports.\n\n'I can think of a simpler method. Turn round, please?' He fiddled with the collar. 'Ah. Thought so. There's a lock here at the back where you can't see it. It's an incredibly complex and expensive volume-sensitive gadget\u2014'\n\nThere was a snap. The collar came loose.\n\n'And then they put it on a cheap catch,' Kai finished smugly. 'So tell me what's going on.'\n\nIrene updated him with relief, finishing with the painting and Mr Nemo's upcoming auction. 'And Indigo's working with him because she wants to go public with it to bring down the monarchs.'\n\n'I told you she couldn't be trusted,' Kai muttered.\n\n'I admit you were right,' Irene said. 'Entirely right. But you didn't predict she was actively working with Mr Nemo, rather than being his prisoner.'\n\nKai took off his jacket and draped it round Irene's shoulders. She realized that she'd begun to shiver from the cold with her impractical clothing, and gave him a smile of thanks. 'We need to get that painting back. You know dragon politics better than I do, but I get the impression that the painting could be grounds for a civil war. And I'm sure there are some dragons who'd want one. Indigo hinted that she wasn't working alone. Treaty or no treaty, the Fae will take advantage of any perceived weakness. Even if the Library avoided taking sides, open conflicts between chaos and order would put Librarians in danger as they'd try to stabilize multiple worlds. It could last for years. For generations, even. All our work on the treaty would come to nothing, too.'\n\nKai frowned. 'Have you actually seen this painting?'\n\n'Yes,' Irene said. 'And... look, please accept my word that if it went public, it would be devastating. You don't need to see it to trust me on this point. I mean, wouldn't it be easier in some ways if we could deliver it back to the monarchs and honestly say you'd never even looked at it?'\n\nHis frown deepened. 'Irene, is it really that bad?'\n\nTo Irene's mind there was no shame in being desperate, but many dragons would never agree. 'It suggests there was a time when the monarchs were weak. That the history they've passed down might even be a lie \u2013 and who knows what truth it actually conceals? And Indigo thinks she and her allies can use it.' There was a silence. 'I'm not asking you to look away from the painting, if you really want to see it. But given how much trouble we may already be in \u2013' She didn't want to think about that. 'Can't at least one of us truthfully say I only ever saw the back of that canvas...' She'd drawn him into this; now she had to protect him.\n\n'Anyhow,' she said, as if he'd agreed, 'can you reattach this thing, so that it looks as if I'm helpless? Then we need to find Mr Nemo.' She rapped the electronic collar on the table, hoping to hear something essential snap. But Kai plucked it from her fingers with a superior look, squeezed it until a crack formed, then dripped in a few drops from the puddles on the floor. It might have survived a drop into a shark pool, but the interior circuitry wouldn't survive that.\n\n'Where should we search?' Kai asked, as he bent the catch back into shape. His inhumanly strong fingers locked the collar around her throat again. 'Mr Nemo could be anywhere on this island.'\n\n'Let's start with down,' Irene answered. 'Every time we've seen him on video, he's had a view of the seabed behind him.'\n\nKai nodded. 'Why not? And he must be on this island, there's too much localized chaos here for him to be elsewhere.'\n\n'If we can at least reach him, we can try to make a deal... and get our payment.'\n\nKai bent against her for a moment and murmured into her ear, 'What about Tina?' They were both keenly aware the surveillance could be back on at any time.\n\nWith her cheek against his, she whispered, 'I sent her away as we planned. But we can't depend on that.'\n\n'I know.' He was still for a moment, then said, 'There was something I didn't tell you earlier. Mr Nemo made me an offer, after we first came to the island\u2014'\n\nAnd it was at precisely that instant that the guards came swarming in, drawn guns a harsh contrast to their flowery sarongs. Someone was yelling, 'They're in here, captain! We've found them!'\n\nIrene gritted her teeth at how inconvenient life was sometimes. What was the deal that Mr Nemo had offered Kai? And how come he'd never mentioned it before?'\n\nAt least it was clear the guards hadn't expected to find them here. Which meant that the surveillance system wasn't up and running yet, and their previous conversation hadn't been caught on camera. So she kept her mouth shut, feigning dumbness, and glared at the guards.\n\nKai smiled lazily at the guards, ignoring their guns. 'Just the people I wanted to see. I would like to speak with Mr Nemo. At once.'\n\nThe techs finished tinkering with the large videoscreen, which covered half the wall, as the guards marched Irene and Kai into a conference room \u2013 guns still drawn. Indigo sat in a wide cupped armchair beneath the screen, hair now miraculously dry, clothing unmussed, no longer bothering to wear the bracelet which she'd claimed bound her powers. But the glint in her eyes suggested she would like to drop the island and all its inhabitants \u2013 especially them \u2013 into a shark tank. Ernst loomed behind her with his large arms folded, his expression somewhat weary.\n\nThe screen fizzed and came to life. Mr Nemo was still sitting behind his desk, but he looked significantly less at ease with the world. 'Prince Kai,' he said shortly. 'You wanted to speak with me.'\n\n'There have been a few irregularities,' Kai said, ignoring Indigo utterly. 'I thought it might be easier to sort them out person-to-person \u2013 as it were.'\n\n'Irregularities, you call them... My communication network is barely operational. A thief is loose in my personal store. And some of my favourite aquatic pets have been traumatized. Traumatized, sir! By you!'\n\n'Ah,' Kai said cheerfully, but with steel beneath. 'And I might have something to say about being attacked by your servant here\u2014'\n\n'I am not his servant,' Indigo broke in. 'I am an ally of convenience.'\n\n'There you have it,' Mr Nemo said. 'I can't be held responsible for anything my ally might have done of her own volition.'\n\nAnd what about you? Irene signed, glaring at Ernst.\n\nErnst shrugged. Either he could understand sign language, or he could guess what she meant. 'Not officially affiliated,' he said. 'Acted on my own behalf, based on personal opinions. Besides, it was not so bad as it might have been. If I had wanted to hurt you, you would have been hurt.'\n\nIrene had to admit that was true \u2013 whereas Mr Nemo and Indigo didn't care whether they hurt people or not, when ruthlessly pursuing their goals. Indigo was precisely the sort of person who would declare that a just revolution was worth a million deaths. As long as she wasn't one of them, of course.\n\n'So what do you want to say to me?' Mr Nemo demanded, folding his hands in an echo of his earlier calm.\n\n'My reward,' Kai said. 'You promised that after we returned with the item you'd sent us to steal, we would be allowed to leave with \u2013 what was it? Our respective prices, there and then, without hesitation or delay or cheating.'\n\nThe tension in Mr Nemo's shoulders eased. 'Now that's reasonable. So what's your price?'\n\n'Irene will want her prize too, before we leave. But I want her,' Kai said, and pointed at Indigo.\n\nIndigo stiffened in her chair. 'Are you mad?' she demanded.\n\nKai's smile was as cruel as Irene had ever seen it. He was a dragon prince, free from the fetters of human morality. 'Mr Nemo said that he could give me the means to keep you prisoner. I'm calling in his marker.'\n\nIrene forced herself to stifle her expression of shock. Could this be what he'd wanted to say, when the guards interrupted? And was his plan even viable? If Indigo was off the metaphorical chessboard, she couldn't use the painting in her attempts to trigger revolution... It would give them time to hide it again and avoid the whole political deck of cards coming tumbling down \u2013 with all that it meant for a spectrum of worlds. Then they could deal with Mr Nemo.\n\n'You drive a hard bargain, Prince Kai,' Mr Nemo said softly. 'But I accept your deal.'\n\nIndigo rose to her feet, eyes glittering. 'Are you handing me over to this child like a slave? As if you even have the power... What other bargains have you been making behind my back?'\n\n'My dear Indigo!' Mr Nemo replied, after an inaudible command to a guard off screen. 'Or should I say, Princess Qing Qing? As you've said yourself, you're not my employee \u2013 we're allies of convenience. We're both at perfect liberty to make deals with anyone we choose. I admit that I may have had some discussions with Prince Kai here about the future, in a broad and undefined sense. He seems to have made an extremely specific choice based on them. And my word, madam, is my bond.'\n\n'You're babbling,' Indigo said calmly. She began to pace, moving \u2013 Irene noted \u2013 several steps away from Ernst. Was she more worried than she wanted to show? 'I'm not your property. You can't just hand me over. If you try, then not only is our deal broken, but I will destroy your computer records. You think that she damaged your systems?' She pointed at Irene. 'All she did was mess with a few of your peripherals. When I've finished, you'll have nothing but a pile of virus-ridden slag. And where will all your blackmail information be then? Not to mention records of your precious one-of-a-kind valuables?'\n\nThe threat was delivered with a deadly calm which made it somehow more impressive. Mr Nemo, however, merely smiled. 'I'm fully aware of your capabilities, madam. That was why you went on the job, after all, rather than spending your time here. And we both know that I could make a similar barrage of threats regarding all your technological secrets and data keys. We both know that we're not going to betray each other at this point.'\n\nKai had gone still at the mention of Indigo's secrets. He was probably envisaging sensitive information on his kind \u2013 in the hands of a Fae who'd sell them off to the highest bidder. Irene wasn't that thrilled with the idea herself. 'And your promise to me?' he asked.\n\n'I always keep my word,' Mr Nemo answered, 'but you're going to have to allow me a minute or two, while one of my staff retrieves something from storage.'\n\nAn uneasy silence settled over the room. On the screen, Mr Nemo sipped his whiskey. Indigo watched Kai and Irene, as motionless as a painting herself, but with a glint in her eyes that promised violence. She seemed poised on a hair-trigger, ready to snap if Mr Nemo's reassurances proved worthless. Ernst \u2013 and all the guards scattered around the room \u2013 stood and waited, with the stance of soldiers who were well used to waiting.\n\nIrene considered. If Kai's plan did work, and Mr Nemo was retrieving her promised book too, it might snatch success from the jaws of failure. However, Indigo didn't seem too concerned about this reversal of fortunes \u2013 or was that just a refusal to show fear? Should Irene be more worried about the fact that Indigo wasn't worried?\n\nTheir mission had changed. Now she had to not only save a world for the Library, but also rescue hundreds or even thousands of worlds from a dragon civilization at war with itself. If this gambit failed, she couldn't rely on Tina fulfilling her mission in time. There was one other card that Irene could play, but if she did...\n\nJust as she was beginning to seriously consider flooding the entire base, the doors opened behind them. One guard was carrying a heavy briefcase, while two more dragged a beaten-looking Felix between them, and a fourth carried a large sack.\n\nIt was an utterly stereotypical burglar's sack. Irene couldn't even imagine where Felix had procured it. But it was bulging full, and she had to admire how far he'd managed to get in the time he'd had.\n\n'Allow me to kill two birds with one stone,' Mr Nemo said, looking more cheerful than he had for a while. 'Prince Kai, I have your payment here. And I have Miss Winters' prize as well. I'm not sure exactly how Felix here knew to take it, but he found it. As well as a few other highly valuable items.'\n\nFelix shrugged, dangling between the two guards. 'I have my ways. Perhaps you mentioned it, or perhaps you weren't as discreet as you'd thought.' Battered, bloodied and captured as he was, there was still a smirk to his voice. Even if he was temporarily inconvenienced, it was all part of his master thief role. Perhaps, Irene reflected, being caught and dragged in front of the authorities was an essential part of it.\n\nBut she was too distracted by the thought of her own prize to spend time analysing Fae narrative tropes. If the book was in that bag, then salvation for the world she cared about was five yards away from her. The world was a haven in her mind, the only place \u2013 other than the Library \u2013 where she'd ever felt truly safe. She was so close she could almost taste success.\n\n'Did you intend to sell the book to Irene, before we caught you?' Mr Nemo asked. 'Or simply keep it so she couldn't have it?'\n\nIt was as though masks flickered across Felix's face \u2013 Ambitious Thief, Practical Thief, Callous Thief \u2013 and were discarded again without any of them solidifying into reality. 'I'm still thinking about it,' he answered.\n\n'Well, your thinking time has run out.' Mr Nemo turned back to Kai. 'Here's your payment, prince. I hope we can now consider the matter settled.' His words had an air of formality to them.\n\nThe guard with the heavy briefcase flipped it open, offering the contents to Kai. Inside, on a thick lining of black velvet, lay a heavy silver collar linked by chains to a pair of cuffs. Unlike Indigo's fake cuff, this reeked of power. The metal glistened as fluidly as frozen mercury, but as Irene looked closer she thought that carved traceries of words swam beneath the surface.\n\nKai flinched before he could catch himself. 'Those things are your payment?'\n\n'I promised you the means to keep Princess Qing Qing prisoner. I didn't promise you any more than that.' Mr Nemo put his glass down, a smile of pure satisfaction curling across his face. It was as sincere as Felix's earlier self-fulfilment. Both Fae were utterly satisfied with how well they embodied their archetypes. The non-Fae present were merely convenient secondary actors to them, only valuable because they provided feed lines or situations allowing the Fae to take centre stage.\n\n'But...' Kai looked between the restraints and Indigo.\n\n'Catching her is your problem,' Mr Nemo said. 'Not mine. I believe the phrase is, Who will bell the cat?'\n\nIndigo seemed unimpressed. 'Very nice. I admit it. Now can we throw these hangers-on out of here? We have other matters to arrange.'\n\n'Of course,' said Mr Nemo. 'And here's Irene's reward \u2013 The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. Enjoy it, my dear. I think that concludes our business?'\n\nIrene took a deep breath. She felt Kai tense at her side, uncertain of what she had in mind but ready to back her.\n\n'No,' she said, her voice echoing in the room. 'It doesn't. I've changed my mind about my choice of prize.' Her stomach churned with despair at the thought of what she was giving up, and the risks she was taking with others' lives. But if she didn't do this, more than one world was at stake... Though that world was so precious to her, the collapse of the draconic status quo would cause shockwaves across the cosmos, and a war that could last a thousand years. This was her last chance to resolve that mess. 'For my payment, Mr Nemo... I want the painting.'\n\nIrene had rarely managed to reduce a room to quite such stunned silence. (Well, there had been the occasion with the robot impersonator and the levitating corgis, but that silence hadn't lasted long. There had been corgis involved, after all.)\n\nIndigo was the first to recover. 'Out of the question,' she said.\n\nBut in Mr Nemo's hastily concealed shock and the momentary trembling of his hand, Irene saw hope and possibility like big neon signs. This had seemed almost too ridiculous to work. But technically this was a permissible request. There was nothing in the deal about not changing one's mind, and she hadn't actually been handed her prize yet. And when dealing with Fae promises, technicalities were the very soul of the deal.\n\n'Possibly we've misheard Miss Winters.' Irene didn't miss his attempt to curry favour with the polite form of her name. And the smile working its way across his face tried and failed to convey geniality. It was the sort of generous grin that went with classic pictures of Father Christmas, and it was grossly out of place in this context. 'You wanted a very specific edition of The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor? I made some enquiries, and the world in question has been shifting towards chaos, has it not? I know how you Librarians are about that kind of thing. Naturally I would be pleased to assist you...'\n\nIrene took a step forward. 'Let me be precise,' she said firmly. 'I request and require that you give me a specific item from your collection \u2013 the canvas which I helped steal from Vienna yesterday. The hidden canvas which shows the dragon monarchs. That is the item I choose. I want it now, and I want to leave with it now \u2013 as agreed by you, \"without delay or endangerment\".'\n\nMr Nemo looked as if he had swallowed one of his catfish. 'Are you quite certain?'\n\n'Absolutely,' Irene replied.\n\n'You do realize that if you make this request, I'll have absolutely no incentive to give you the book that you're interested in? The book which I've discovered is one of a kind.' Steel entered his voice. 'In fact, I can promise you that it will not be sold or traded to the Library under any circumstances.'\n\nIrene didn't need to close her eyes to see memories of the world where she'd spent six years at school \u2013 a world that she'd loved. To be perfectly honest, she had hated it occasionally too, but it had made her who she was in her most formative years, nurturing her just as much as her parents had. She'd never needed to go back there: it had been enough to know that it was safe, a private refuge in her mind, whenever she'd needed one. Now, because of an even greater battle for power, it might be lost in the flow of chaos. Its inhabitants would become nothing more than background characters for visiting Fae to use in their narratives, or perhaps they would be twisted into Fae themselves. Archetypes rather than human beings, stories rather than real people \u2013 as unable to change as Mr Nemo was now unable to break his word.\n\nI'm sorry, she thought. I'll try to find another way. There has to be another way.\n\nShe wouldn't let herself think about what would happen if there wasn't.\n\n'I'm quite certain,' she said. But the steadiness in her voice required all her training. And she wouldn't let herself look at the sack of stolen goods in front of Felix.\n\n'You can't be seriously considering letting her have it,' Indigo said.\n\nMr Nemo looked pale and in pain, his face twisting under the pressure of his vows. 'I don't have a choice.'\n\n'You can do better than this,' Indigo urged him. 'Behaving this way is illogical. It's no better than being an animal. Or a human. You're not like my parents \u2013 you're capable of thinking round the situation, finding some other way of handling it. Don't let one single human spoil everything \u2013 just because she's playing with the letter of your promise to her.'\n\nBeside her, Irene felt Kai stiffen at the comparison of his father to a Fae. Any Fae. But he had the sense to keep his mouth shut.\n\n'I'm not surrendering,' Mr Nemo muttered, his face ashen. He took a harsh gulping breath, like a drowning man seizing a chance at oxygen. 'I can't refuse her request, now that she's made it. I would be breaking my word if I take action against her myself, or order any of my servants or allies to take action...'\n\nIndigo blinked, her eyelids flickering like a serpent's. Then she moved, sliding through the air like a knife. She grabbed a gun from the nearest guard's holster, levelled it at Irene, and fired.\n\nIt was Kai's superhuman speed that saved her, rather than her own reflexes. He slammed sideways into her, and the two of them rolled across the floor. In the pinwheel of violent motion, Irene caught sight of the guards raising their guns, uncertain whom they should be shooting.\n\nThere was very little cover in the room \u2013 just the big conference table, the flimsy chairs surrounding it \u2013 and nowhere to hide. A bullet clipped Kai's arm, drawing blood, and he gasped in pain.\n\nBut Irene was ready this time. 'Guns, jam!' she shouted.\n\nIndigo's gun clicked. She cursed and threw it to one side.\n\nKai rose to his feet. 'If you want Irene, sister, you're going to have to go through me.'\n\n'As you wish.' Indigo stalked towards them like a thundercloud. Even if she and Kai couldn't take their dragon forms due to the local chaos, there was something inhuman about the way they faced off. Looking at their faces, Irene could see their resemblance: their father's likeness was unmistakeably stamped on both of them.\n\nPhysically, at least. Mentally? That was another question.\n\nIndigo leapt onto the conference table, seemingly without effort, lunging towards them. Kai sprang onto the table to meet her, ripping through the air. She swung into a kick, foot heading for his chin, but he caught it on his crossed arms, throwing her backwards. She flipped, landing on her feet, and struck at him again, but he blocked \u2013 their motions speeding into a blur, becoming as fluid as a well-practised demonstration, rather than a lethal fight.\n\nIrene backed away, safely out of reach. She was no expert on martial arts. However, Indigo's pattern of movement was clearly aggressive, while Kai was focusing on holding her back. How could she use the Language to help him, without it backfiring on him?\n\n'Miss Winters.' Mr Nemo sounded as if he was strangling on his own unfulfilled promise, but he was still breathing. Unfortunately. 'I will regard...' He coughed, hands clenching. 'Regard any attempt to attack my men or damage my property as opening hostilities between us. And I will take any necessary... countermeasures.'\n\nIn other words, he'll feel free to have me killed out of hand.\n\n'And you, Ernst...'\n\n'I am not your servant,' Ernst grunted. His body language screamed a heartfelt desire to be somewhere else. 'If you give me orders, then that would make me your servant, and you break your bond.'\n\nMr Nemo gave a choking snort. 'Your boss is my friend... Ask yourself what he'd want you to do.' He sagged over the table, hands going to his temples, like a man trying to ward off a stroke by force of will.\n\nIndigo dropped to sweep a wide kick at Kai's ankles, hair floating out in a fan behind her. He leapt, leg coming down towards her throat in an axe kick. But she blocked it, catching his foot mid-air and twisting, sending him rolling across the table. He pivoted and sprang at her as she came to her feet. The two of them closed briefly to deliver a sequence of short harsh blows before circling each other like predators.\n\nThere was a spatter of blood on the table, from Kai's wounded arm.\n\nErnst reached into his pocket, then pressed something small into each ear. Irene realized with a sudden sinking feeling that he was using earplugs. That greatly reduced what she could achieve with the Language. And he made his choice clear, however reluctant it might have been, when he slung a chair at her \u2013 knowing she was bound not to destroy Mr Nemo's property.\n\nIrene dived sideways, past a couple of the guards. They stood still, awaiting orders, the guns in their hands almost an open invitation to be grabbed and used. Felix watched the room with narrowed eyes, waiting for a convenient moment to act. I suppose in his personal narrative as master thief, this is where most of the secondary characters get into a conveniently distracting brawl, allowing him to make his escape...\n\nBut as far as Irene was concerned, she was the protagonist here. She wriggled out of Kai's jacket, balled it in her hands, and tossed it at Ernst as she backed away, shouting, 'Suit jacket, wrap around Ernst's head and smother him!'\n\nThe garment obeyed, giving Ernst a headdress worthy of any haute couture model. His great hands rose to get a grip on the fabric, and he simply tore it away, ripping the seams apart as he pulled it from his face.\n\nIndigo flowed through a set of movements that ended with her slamming her bare hand into Kai's chest. He jolted back, whole body shuddering for breath, and barely managed to parry her follow-up stroke to his throat.\n\n'Wasting time,' Ernst commented as he tossed away the jacket's remains.\n\nIrene didn't bother answering. He wouldn't have heard it. She'd got what she wanted: she was close enough to the briefcase containing Kai's prize. Before the guard holding it could react, she grabbed the case and plucked out the shackles.\n\n'You can't do that!' Mr Nemo shouted.\n\nThey were heavy in her hands, as solid and weighty as if made from pure silver. But the metal seemed to squirm as she touched it, as though there was something in her flesh which it found antithetical to its purpose. She controlled her instinctive repulsion, took a deep breath, and flung them through the air at Indigo, grateful that she knew the dragon's true name. 'Shackles, bind Qing Qing!'\n\nIndigo heard the words. Her eyes gleamed red as she flung herself towards Kai and knocked him into the path of the chains. But Kai converted his motion into a backwards tumble and ducked underneath them as they rippled through the air. The collar and twin cuffs clamped round Indigo's neck and wrists.\n\nShe shrieked. The sound rose up through the normal octaves, and beyond an opera soprano's highest C. Many of the guards winced, raising their hands to their ears; a crack split Mr Nemo's television screen. And even on screen, his bottle and glass both splintered. Indigo's back arched and she fell to her knees, writhing in pain, her chained hands clawing at the collar around her throat. Gradually her motions slowed, her eyes glazing over.\n\nIrene and Kai had both covered their ears at Indigo's scream, Kai falling back a cautious few steps to the edge of the table. Irene thought she could see shock in his expression; was it the memory of the time that he himself had been a Fae captive, bound and shackled? Or was it simply the sight of any dragon so reduced?\n\nAnd then Ernst rushed forward with a quickness that belied his weight. His hand locked around Kai's ankle and he yanked, slamming Kai down onto the table in an ungainly bellyflop. While Kai struggled to catch his breath, Ernst grabbed his wrist, twisting it behind the dragon's back. He locked his free arm around Kai's throat, restraining him with an impossible strength.\n\nSilence filled the room. Even Felix was still, too transfixed by the drama taking place in front of him to seize the moment to escape. 'Now,' Ernst said. 'You surrender, Irene? Please? I do not want to have to snap dragon boy's neck.'\n\n'If you kill Kai, his family will destroy you!' Irene said desperately. Then she remembered that Ernst had his ears blocked.\n\nThe twitch of his shoulders showed that he had at least noticed her mouth moving. 'You know I cannot hear you. Raise your hands to show you give up. And no big sentences in the Language. I do not trust them.'\n\nKai struggled for breath. His eyes were furious; he wouldn't beg for mercy. But he knew how real his peril was. Here in a high-chaos location, away from water, he couldn't call on his element, couldn't take his true form... he was trapped like a human \u2013 and could die like one. But if she surrendered, could Mr Nemo interpret this as her giving up the painting too?\n\nA couple of thoughts formed, like a bridge across an ocean of desperation. The Language was powerful in high-chaos areas. What Kai couldn't do for himself, Irene might make him accomplish. If, that is, the presence of two dragons had forced just enough order into the area. She'd done it once before elsewhere, in another world and with other dragons...\n\n'Decision,' Ernst said. His arm tightened round Kai's neck. 'Now.'\n\nIrene slowly began to raise her hands as if she was complying with his order. But the Language wasn't about accepting reality. It was about changing reality. 'Kai,' she ordered, 'take your true form!'\n\nLight burned through the room as Kai shifted and changed in Ernst's grasp. The Fae tried to maintain his grip, but the archetype for that sort of fairy story \u2013 where a protagonist held on as their prey switched between lion, swan, serpent, whatever \u2013 wasn't strong enough here. With a shudder and a flex of his sapphire-scaled wings, Kai tossed Ernst to the ground. He uncoiled and the table collapsed under his weight as he threw his body across it, eyes burning. His great horned and bearded head turned to inspect the room. And for a moment there was nothing sentient in his eyes.\n\nIrene was on her knees. She didn't have the strength to stand. A fragment of Kai's dinner jacket lay within reach and she groped for it, pressing it against her nose to staunch the flow of blood.\n\n'Kai,' she whispered. 'I'm sorry.' What she'd done to him might have been necessary, but that didn't make it right. It was still a violation of his body and his power.\n\nKai focused on her, and she saw self-awareness grow in his eyes. He recognized her. She saw him note the unconscious Indigo, surrounded by a loop of his serpentine body. He swept a gaze across the room, wings folding against his body, and turned to glare at the television screen. 'Are there any more objections?' he demanded in a voice like thunder.\n\nMr Nemo held up one trembling hand, speaking as if each word was an effort. 'I accept Irene Winters' claim. I will give her what she wants.'\n\nAnd then the whole room seemed to shake. The guards abandoned any last attempts to be efficient and broke and ran. On Mr Nemo's screen, another guard shot into view. 'Dragons, sir! Dragons above! Circling!'\n\nMr Nemo pointed a finger at Irene and Kai. 'Do you know anything about this?'\n\nIrene would have liked to rise elegantly to her feet. Instead she crawled across to the table, and dragged herself upright. 'Really, Mr Nemo \u2013 are you suggesting that we expected some sort of betrayal on your part? So we deliberately sent someone with the location to Kai's family, to come and find us here?' She looked the Fae in the eyes. 'And as a result, the dragons now know exactly where you are?'\n\nNow that Mr Nemo had accepted her claim, its power had loosened its grip and the palsy was leaving him. He no longer looked like a patient on the verge of collapse. Now he simply looked like a very worried man trying \u2013 and failing \u2013 to hide his fear. This made him suddenly less archetypal and more human, for some reason. 'Are you calling your allies in to attack me? Is that what you're doing?'\n\nIrene wished her head didn't feel as if it was about to fragment. Shakes wracked her body. She needed the table to keep herself upright. It might have made these negotiations simpler, but the Language always extracted its price. 'I'm making no threats. What the dragons do is up to them.' She left that part open \u2013 hurricanes, storms, tidal waves, earthquakes... 'However, if you want to take this opportunity, here and now, to sign up to the dragon\u2013Fae truce, then Prince Kai and myself would be pleased to witness it. We can testify to the new arrivals that, as a truce signatory, they can't attack you or take any action against you or your possessions.' She left a meaningful pause before continuing. 'Before we leave. With that canvas.'\n\nMr Nemo took a deep breath and for a moment he closed his eyes. The crack in his screen fractured his face, making him look like a surrealist painting. Then he nodded. 'Done and done. I will order the painting brought to you at once. Please, Prince Kai, take human form \u2013 it'll make it easier for you to leave. Will a simple signed declaration of my intention to join the truce be sufficient? My word will bind me.'\n\n'Yes. And we'll inform the dragons on our way out,' Irene promised.\n\nFelix came sidling up from behind. 'Any chance of a lift out of here?' he asked hopefully.\n\nMr Nemo glared at him. 'I'll let you leave in one piece, as long as my guards can search you first.'\n\nFelix smirked. 'Deal.'\n\nKai's body flared with light again, and then he was human once more, his shoulders sagging with weariness. 'What about Indigo?' he asked quietly.\n\nIrene didn't have any good answers to that. If Indigo remained unconscious, and they handed her over to the dragons above, they were quite possibly handing her over for execution. And while Irene would have been prepared to kill her in an outright life-or-death fight, some morality \u2013 something that dated back to those distant schooldays \u2013 flinched at the idea. Even if Indigo had been quite prepared to kill Irene.\n\n'Princess Qing Qing is my guest,' Mr Nemo announced, cutting through Irene's thoughts. 'If my territory is protected, because I've signed up to the truce, you have no right to force her to leave. Am I right? I only promised the Prince the means to keep her captive \u2013 nothing more.'\n\nIrene and Kai exchanged glances. Leaving Indigo here, powerless and an effective prisoner, might not be any kinder than handing her over to the dragons. She'd be a pawn in Mr Nemo's schemes \u2013 or the schemes of any Fae he traded her to \u2013 unless she came to some new arrangement. But Kai didn't look any keener to hand Indigo over for execution than Irene. Perhaps working with her for the last few days had changed his perception of her. Or perhaps he was simply tired. 'Acceptable,' he said. 'The painting?'\n\n'Is being brought to the beach entrance,' Mr Nemo said. 'My guards will escort you there. As quickly as possible.'\n\n'One thing,' Ernst broke in. He'd removed his earplugs and had been listening to the conversation. 'My reward? I too have changed my mind.'\n\nMr Nemo sighed. 'Yes. What do you want?'\n\nErnst walked over to Felix's sack, and emptied it out. Various items bounced across the floor \u2013 an alabaster statuette, a clay cup, two jewellery boxes which spilled their diamond contents out in a flashing stream, a folded cotton sheet, a small wooden puzzle-box, and a wrapped scroll in a transparent plastic case. 'This,' he said, bending to pick up the scroll. 'This is the book you were all talking about, yes? The Egyptian one, the tale of the shipwrecked sailor?'\n\nMr Nemo's eyes widened. 'It is. What do you want it for?'\n\nIrene felt her heart jump in her chest. Having it waved under her nose like this was torture, and this turn of events was not something she had remotely anticipated. If Ernst wanted to give it to his boss, then perhaps she could bargain with him. There might still be a chance to get hold of it, and to save the world it came from...\n\n'For myself,' Ernst said, 'for my own reasons. Do you accept it as my payment?'\n\n'Done,' Mr Nemo said. A nasty smirk touched his lips. 'I suggest you take good care of it. There are thieves everywhere these days.'\n\n'Very true,' Ernst agreed. 'But my boss trusts my judgement. And when I say to him I have used it to buy goodwill with the Library \u2013 and that in return I have promised him a visit from a Library representative to discuss this truce \u2013 I think he will agree I acted sensibly.' He offered Irene the scroll. 'Deal?'\n\nIrene knew her hands were shaking as she reached out to take it, but she couldn't help herself. Her mouth was dry. 'A visit from me?' she said to Ernst. 'Or someone else?'\n\nErnst shrugged. 'Either. Though if it is you, Library girl, I will tell him to be careful. You could talk him into giving you the shirt off his back. Deal?'\n\n'Deal,' Irene agreed, and her hands finally closed on the scroll.\n\n'Now will you all get out of here?' Mr Nemo demanded. He paused, and added, ever the entrepreneur, 'And if you have any future requests, my door is always open...'\n\nOutside on the beach, a pair of white flags \u2013 attempts at signalling peaceful intentions? \u2013 streamed in the wind, the fabric snapping like gunshots. Two dragons circled in the sky above, distant flashes of crimson and light green against the growing mass of dark clouds. Kai's uncle Ao Shun walked the beach, his impeccably crafted shoes leaving prints a little too heavy for a human. Their friend Mu Dan, the dragon equivalent of a judge and private investigator, kept a careful pace to his rear. Ao Shun wore a suit, one that might have come from the Vienna they'd just left \u2013 assuming the wearer was a millionaire and only had a taste for black. Mu Dan was still in an outfit appropriate for Vale's world, a deep crimson gown \u2013 with enough room in the sleeves and skirt for hidden knives and guns. A hovering group of the sarong-clad guards had sensibly left their weapons inside, and were offering deckchairs and cocktails.\n\nKai stepped hastily forward and went to one knee, touching right fist to left shoulder. 'My lord uncle! I apologize for the inconvenience that has brought you here.'\n\n'Rise,' Ao Shun said. His tone was not quite annoyed, but there was a barely hidden note of impatience behind it. Irene knew that this dragon monarch, at least, was prepared to accept some freedom of thought from his servants. She hoped that he was in an open-minded mood today. 'And you, Irene Winters \u2013 I came here because I understood you had chanced across a... certain item.'\n\nIrene rose from her own bow. Curtseying while wearing a bikini would have looked stupid.\n\n'Your majesty,' she said respectfully. 'Your nephew and I believe this item might belong to you. The Fae who rules this island was shocked to learn he might have been a receiver of stolen property. He asked us to return the item to its proper owners as quickly as possible.'\n\n'I'm told he signed the treaty. How recently did this happen?' Ao Shun enquired. The sky above was darkening further. In the absence of direct sunlight, he could have been an ebony statue come to life. The glitter of ruby in his eyes indicated the state of his temper, even if it was controlled. In his shadow, Mu Dan faded into the background, despite her elegant gown and vivid presence. But Irene knew that she'd be listening like the dragon judge-investigator she was.\n\n'About ten minutes ago,' Irene admitted. 'Possibly five.'\n\nFortunately, before any further explanations could be demanded, a group of guards came onto the beach, bearing the rolled canvas between them with great care. Ao Shun's gaze moved to it. 'Is that it?'\n\n'Yes, your majesty,' Irene answered.\n\n'I will inspect it. You may remain here.' It was an order, not a suggestion.\n\nAs Ao Shun ordered the guards to unroll the canvas, Mu Dan moved closer to Kai and Irene. 'I have the most extraordinary feeling that I should be investigating... something here,' she confessed. She glanced around the beach, her sharp eyes narrowing as she considered each detail. 'No doubt it's that accursed Fae influence.'\n\n'I'm just grateful you both made it here in time,' Irene answered softly. 'Things were getting a little awkward.'\n\nMu Dan shrugged. 'It wasn't the most unusual summons I've ever had, though it was close. And I certainly wouldn't have expected to receive your note via a Fae. It's a good thing I knew you knew Lord Silver, as I'm not sure I'd have believed it came from you otherwise.'\n\nKai was processing a train of thought. 'Why did you send Tina to Silver with our message?' he asked Irene. 'Couldn't you think of someone more reliable?'\n\nIrene shrugged. 'The problem was choosing someone she knew, who'd do her a favour \u2013 who could then contact a dragon we knew, who could get us the help we needed. Tina couldn't have gone to your uncle directly. The forces of order in his court would have been far too high for a Fae. Anyhow, she'd never have been allowed in to see him.' It was the sort of last-ditch gamble that Fae story-forms loved. Whether their plan had been helped along by Fae influences or not, it had worked.\n\n'I'm glad we arrived when we did too,' Mu Dan continued. 'But you seemed to have almost resolved the problem...'\n\n'I was only here in the first place to collect a book,' Irene said self-deprecatingly. She lovingly patted the bundle under her arm. Again, she felt a thrill \u2013 and she still had time to get it to Coppelia. 'Did you get to meet Tina yourself?'\n\n'Yes. A very interesting person. I may use her in the future \u2013 despite her Fae nature.' Mu Dan smiled at the expression on Kai's face. The diamond pins in her mahogany hair glinted in a sudden burst of sunlight; overhead the storm clouds generated by the dragons' arrival \u2013 or Ao Shun's temper \u2013 were beginning to dissolve and separate. 'As Irene keeps reminding me, our situation is fluid, but I hope it is changing for the better, and I'm prepared to recognize useful talent when I see it.' She looked thoughtfully at the rise of the cliffs behind them. 'By the way, who is the Fae who lives here?'\n\n'Mr Nemo. An... interesting character.'\n\nMu Dan's lips tightened and her eyes glinted dragon-red. 'Are we talking about Mr Nemo the information trader, the thief, the blackmailer, the criminal, the trader in stolen goods, the...' She shut her mouth before more pejoratives could boil out, but her hands twitched, perhaps with an urge to tear the place down to the ground.\n\n'Peace treaty, remember?' Irene said.\n\n'You didn't tell me who he was!' Mu Dan seethed. 'Have you any idea of the criminal secrets his hideout conceals? The ways in which he might be connected to past cases?'\n\nIrene looked to Kai for help, but he was busy staying well out of the discussion. Mu Dan's reaction wasn't down to any Fae versus dragon sentiment: it was that of an investigator hearing that a notorious criminal was within arm's reach. 'I really am sorry I can't hand him over,' Irene said, 'but he's under the treaty \u2013 and for now, he's behaving himself.'\n\n'For now,' Mu Dan muttered darkly \u2013 making Irene rather curious about their past interactions.\n\nKai stretched. 'The sooner we can get away from all of this, the better.'\n\n'I hope that we holds for all of us,' Felix commented. He had appeared from nowhere, and the fact that they hadn't noticed was really rather embarrassing. 'You did promise me a lift out of here.'\n\n'You asked for one, which isn't quite the same thing.' Irene glanced at Kai, and he nodded. 'But I don't see why not, under the circumstances. A word of advice, though. Don't inconvenience his majesty Ao Shun.'\n\n'I don't need to be told that. And thanks. I owe you one. Both of you.'\n\nAo Shun brusquely gestured to the guards to roll up the canvas. Briefly he was still, as though considering some private cost\u2013effort analysis, before striding over to join them. 'Nephew. Miss Winters. Your service is noted and appreciated. I will have my servants take charge of that painting.' He raised one hand in signal, and the two dragons above came spiralling down. 'Mu Dan, you have been of assistance. Li Ming, my private secretary, will speak with you later. You are all free to go.'\n\nFrom a dragon monarch, the phrase your service is noted and appreciated was as good as Irene could possibly hope for. It also suggested that she and Kai \u2013 and the Library \u2013 had come out of this without a stain on their characters, which was better than she'd dared to hope. She bowed again, as did the others, but Ao Shun was already turning away to supervise the painting's transport.\n\n'I'll bear you and Irene away, until we can put you down elsewhere,' Kai told Felix. 'The sooner I shake the sands of this island off my feet, the better.'\n\n'And I need to reach the Library as soon as possible,' Irene said, patting the book under her arm. 'This won't wait.'\n\nA knock at the door disturbed Irene's concentration, and she looked up from her computer. 'Come in!' she called.\n\nHer mother entered. Her eyes fell on the pot of coffee on the table. 'Interesting,' she said.\n\n'What is?'\n\n'That instead of running directly back to your assigned world and your work \u2013 and your prince \u2013 you're staying in the Library for long enough to have coffee. And not just a cup, but a whole pot. Has it been a bad few days?'\n\n'It's been... hectic.' Irene propped her chin on her hand. 'Is this going to be a slightly longer discussion than last time, or will one of us have to run off on a job again?'\n\n'It's certainly a very convenient excuse for getting out of inconvenient conversations,' her mother admitted. She found a book-occupied chair close to Irene and moved its contents onto the floor, taking a seat, but not actually meeting Irene's eyes. 'Neither of us really make conversations easy, do we?'\n\n'It's been that way for a while,' Irene said \u2013 neutrally. She wanted her mother to stay and talk, this time. 'How's Father?'\n\n'Already on a new job. Hunting down an expanded copy of the Lokasenna in G-39. I'll be joining him there.'\n\n'That sounds interesting.' It was quite true. After the last few days, a simple book retrieval sounded heavenly.\n\nHer mother took a deep breath, then let it out. 'There's something I wanted to discuss with you.'\n\nAll sorts of nasty potential surprises came to mind, but she tried to swallow her fear. 'Please tell me it's only about Father's birthday \u2013 I know I need to get him something other than a dictionary this year.'\n\n'Well, that would be a good idea, but that's not for another three months.' Her mother leaned forward. Her hair, Irene noticed, had streaks of full white among the grey. 'This is difficult, Ray... Irene.' The use of Irene's childhood nickname, something her mother was usually careful to avoid, was either a sign of genuine feelings or intended to put Irene off-balance. 'I'm trying to be honest, and God knows that we find that hard. We spend too much time being good liars, and that's part of the problem.'\n\n'Go on,' Irene said. She wasn't sure where this was going, but it already felt uncomfortable enough.\n\n'Your father and I love you.' Her mother's hands twisted together in her lap. 'But we weren't necessarily good parents to you. As the years have gone by, the more we tried to get close to you, the more we made things worse.'\n\n'I understand,' Irene said, not knowing what else to say. She'd wanted them to talk, but she didn't want her mother to bare her soul in this way. It was raw and undignified and it made Irene want to cry. 'It wasn't your fault. It's how we both are. We need to know what's going on around us, we need to control it, and that's part of being a Librarian and a spy, but...'\n\n'But we never gave you a choice,' her mother interrupted. 'Not a real one. We always assumed that you would want to be a Librarian, as we had.'\n\n'But I did,' Irene insisted. 'Did want to, that is.'\n\nHer mother sighed, stooping forward in her seat. 'The way you grew up, could you have really wanted anything else?'\n\nIrene looked for words that would convince her. 'You could say that to any child who admired their parents' work. The answer would be the same. It's not a bad thing to know that your parents do important work. It's perfectly valid to use that, when you're deciding what to do with your life.'\n\n'Because you've been brainwashed from childhood into believing it's the most important thing you could possibly do?'\n\n'Now you're the one who's deliberately choosing emotive words.' Irene leaned forward. 'Mother, please, hear me out. If there's something I've learned over the last few years, it's that everything people do is important. I happen to have chosen this particular thing to do with my life, and I was lucky enough to have the choice. Because of you. Do you understand? Never say that you forced me into this. You didn't. I chose it, and because of what you and Father taught me, I chose it with full knowledge and consent.' She tried to remember where that phrasing came from, and then it hit her: the Catholic definition of mortal sin. Oh well. 'You're welcome to beat yourself up about things like searching my rooms \u2013 but please, please don't feel guilty about me choosing to be a Librarian.'\n\n'In a single year, you have put yourself in more danger than your father and I managed in a dozen. I didn't want a child just so she could get herself killed!' For a moment her mother's careful composure slipped, and Irene saw the naked fear in her face.\n\nIrene took her mother's hands in hers. They felt... fragile. 'Mother,' she said softly. 'I think all parents have this problem. Whether they're Librarians or not. And all children. I want you to be safe, too. But we can't lock each other away in a tower somewhere. That would be a new take on an old fairytale, wouldn't it? The princess locks her parents in a tower...'\n\nHer mother bit her lip. 'You're trying to distract me.'\n\n'I think it's reflexive. I'm used to avoiding this sort of thing.'\n\n'I know. You never tell me anything.'\n\n'Well, you always want to know everything,' Irene started, then stopped herself before the complaint could assume its habitual shape.\n\n'We taught you not to depend on technology or magic, but to rely on yourself and what you know. We have this belief that knowledge can keep us safe. That knowledge leads to control.' Her mother's hands tightened on Irene's. 'And we believe it for the people we love, too... But don't make the same mistakes that we have, Irene.' Her mouth quirked in a smile. 'Make some new ones.'\n\nThe momentary door that had opened between them was closing again. Yet Irene was content with that. They'd both said enough. It was something they were both going to have to come to terms with in the long run \u2013 that neither of them could keep each other safe \u2013 and it wasn't going to be resolved by one conversation. Still, it was really important to her that her mother had actually said it.\n\nHer mother let go of Irene's hands and looked at her computer. 'What are you working on? That looks like Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs. Your father would be pleased to know you're studying them.'\n\n'Unfortunately I've forgotten the little I ever knew,' Irene admitted. Her father had always been disappointed that Irene had never been interested in that area. 'This is a section from the text I brought back, The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. It's from a bit where the mystical serpent ruling the island talks about his past. I had to hand in the text, of course. But I checked first to find out which bit diverged from other versions and scanned it to study later.' She shrugged. 'I was curious, but I overestimated my powers of translation.'\n\n'Would you like me to ask your father to have a look?' her mother offered. 'He'd probably be interested himself, and he can send you a translation when it's done.'\n\n'That would be marvellous,' Irene said warmly. 'Thank you. I'll email you the scan.'\n\n'Why are you curious about it?'\n\n'It's from the world where you sent me to boarding school. I'm not sure what grabbed me about this. Maybe it's because I've never come across any unique books from there before.' Perhaps it was because of all the trouble she'd gone through to get the text. It would be nice to have some sort of personal reward \u2013 even if it was only a new story.\n\nAlthough to a Librarian, no new story was ever only a new story. It was always worthwhile.\n\n'Well, I'll pester him till he gets it done.' Her mother rose, shaking out her skirts. 'Take care of yourself, Irene. Remember that I worry.'\n\nIrene had a lump in her throat, and she swallowed. 'You can still call me Ray,' she said. 'I won't mind.'\n\nHer mother smiled. 'You will mind, but I appreciate the thought. Give our regards to Prince Kai. Get back to him before he starts worrying.'\n\n'Life was much easier before I had to worry about everyone else worrying,' Irene muttered.\n\n'It's called growing up, dear. It comes with staying alive.'\n\nKai was brooding over his own pot of coffee when she returned, sprawled in his favourite armchair by the fire. He greeted her with an absent-minded nod.\n\nShe settled into the chair opposite. 'Which of our many problems are you thinking about?' she asked.\n\n'I could just be thinking,' he said archly. 'Planning for the future. Considering diplomatic issues.'\n\n'If you were, then you'd be drinking tea. You only drink coffee when we're eating out \u2013 or when you're upset.' She waited. 'Am I wrong?'\n\n'Not wrong. Just not completely right. I'm not upset, I'm...' He looked for the right words. 'Conducting some self-examination.'\n\n'Do you want to tell me about it?'\n\nKai sagged gratefully. 'It would make my mind easier. I know I'm not your apprentice these days, Irene, but you've got more experience than I have. And better judgement.'\n\n'I dropped us into that mess because I didn't take your word about how dangerous Indigo was,' Irene pointed out. 'My judgement's hardly that reliable. Perhaps your uncle could help.'\n\n'I've been speaking to him too. He dropped by earlier.'\n\n'Oh.' Irene had thought that might happen. Ao Shun would have wanted a more detailed account of events; she didn't think he'd have been pleased. 'Ah... how did it go?' It couldn't have been that bad \u2013 Kai was still here, after all, and so was London...\n\nKai stared at the fire rather than at Irene. 'He agreed we had no way of knowing that the painting was an item of personal value to him \u2013 and the other monarchs. He didn't blame us. He thought that we'd done well to force Mr Nemo to sign the truce. But \u2013 he was amused.' Now the note of bitterness in Kai's voice truly became clear. It was the tone of a child \u2013 no, a teenager \u2013 who'd been through self-perceived hell and back, only to be patted on the head by an adult and told that the whole thing hadn't been that important. 'He thought we'd been playing around. He said how charming you looked in a bikini. He\u2014'\n\n'He was lying,' Irene said flatly.\n\nKai stiffened. 'Do not say that about my lord uncle,' he commanded.\n\nIrene tried to think how to explain herself, in a way Kai wouldn't automatically reject. 'I meant he'd have been lying for political reasons,' she said. 'Not personal ones.'\n\nThat drained a little of Kai's anger. 'Explain?'\n\n'Kai, consider his actions \u2013 rather than what he said after the fact. Based on a message from me about the painting, brought via a Fae, your uncle dropped everything and came immediately to investigate. He was ready to level the place if we hadn't managed to resolve things... just five minutes earlier. Does that sound to you as if he thought it was unimportant and amusing?'\n\n'No,' Kai admitted slowly. He frowned, thinking it through. 'Then it was that important. And that dangerous.'\n\nIrene thought of her own parents, and knowledge, and control. 'Perhaps your uncle believed that the best way to protect you was to keep you ignorant of how important it was.'\n\n'What was on the painting?' Kai asked. 'You know I never got to see it.'\n\nIrene could have said Are you sure you want to know? But that would have been putting off the inevitable. They both knew that he really did. 'It was a bit like The Raft of the Medusa,' she said, 'but not quite. It was a raft, on the ocean, but the figures on it were all the dragon monarchs \u2013 your father, your uncles and another man I didn't recognize, but who looked like family \u2013 also Ya Yu and three other women. They were all in human form, but quite recognizable. They were escaping from, well, other dragons.'\n\nKai was very still. 'My lord father and the other monarchs have always ruled. It is said that they are the true source of stories of heavenly dragon kings, in some countries. Why would anyone claim differently? Or paint a picture that suggested otherwise?'\n\nThe truly significant question lay between them like an unexploded grenade, with neither of them willing to touch it. Why should a picture like that be so important \u2013 to Ao Shun, to everyone \u2013 if there wasn't an element of truth to it?\n\nIrene took a deep breath. 'The job's over. If your uncle would rather you forget about it, then that might be the safest thing for you to do.' She saw the mutinous glint in Kai's eyes at the word safest, and hastily revised her suggestion. 'It might be what he would like you to do.'\n\n'Both of those things might indeed be true,' Kai agreed. 'But that doesn't mean I'll agree to just leave it.'\n\n'That's between you and him,' Irene temporized. It wasn't her problem, and she couldn't give him ethical advice. She wasn't even sure that she had any for herself.\n\n'Though one point comes to mind...'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'You do look charming in a bikini.'\n\nIrene snorted. 'I don't consider that relevant here.'\n\nKai relaxed, and his mouth twitched into a smile. 'Maybe I need a rest from work-related thoughts. There's something I've been wondering.'\n\n'What's that?'\n\n'A minor question that's been nagging at me. If your parents left you at boarding school, what sort of cover identity did they have on that world? Travelling book collectors? Diplomats? Scientists?'\n\nIrene felt her cheeks flush. 'You have to promise not to tell anyone.'\n\n'Oh, interesting.' Kai leaned forward. 'Spies? Adventurers? Mysterious masked men and women of mystery?'\n\nIrene took a deep breath. 'Actually... missionaries.'\n\nKai was silent for a moment. Then he began to laugh.\n\n'It was a perfectly valid cover by local standards!' Irene protested. 'It got me into the school with no questions asked... Memorizing a lot of Bible verses was good mental training!'\n\nKai just looked at her. 'Missionaries.'\n\nThe doorbell rang.\n\n'Your sins shall not be forgiven,' Irene muttered. She rose. 'Try to get yourself under control before I bring anyone in here.'\n\nThere was a minor delegation on her doorstep. Lord Silver. Sterrington. Vale, too \u2013 and their detective friend was looking surprisingly cheerful. If the Fae had dragged him along for their own purposes, she'd expect him to be irritated. The only thing she could think of which would put him in a good mood would be an interesting murder investigation. Oh no, not another one...\n\n'You might as well let us in, Miss Winters,' Silver said cheerfully. He was fully awake \u2013 as it was four in the afternoon \u2013 and dressed to kill, or at least to party. 'We have good news!'\n\nWith some reluctance Irene allowed them all to enter. 'Is anyone dead?' she asked nervously.\n\n'No,' Sterrington said, shrugging off her cape and passing it to Irene. 'Should they be?'\n\n'Generally speaking, I find people much more entertaining alive,' Silver noted. He added his cloak and hat to the growing pile in Irene's arms. 'Do we have somewhere to talk? I was being quite serious. I think you'll like what we have to say. Your princeling should be there as well.'\n\n'Right this way,' Irene said, redistributing her bundle onto the hat stand.\n\nThe looming presence of Fae had brought Kai back to his usual mannered self. 'How may we be of assistance?' he asked, falling into a diplomatic role as everyone took seats.\n\nSilver waved a hand at Sterrington. 'Would you like to start?'\n\n'No, no \u2013 be my guest,' Sterrington said. She looked... pleased, Irene decided. As if she'd come out the better in a bargain. Paranoia raised flags in Irene's mind and threw up fortifications.\n\nSilver opened proceedings. 'You may be aware that there's been some minor argument among my kind, about which of us should take the third role in our little treaty triumvirate.'\n\n'We could hardly have missed it,' Irene said drily. 'In fact, I raised the point vigorously with you just a few days ago.' This sounded like a prepared speech on Silver's part \u2013 and one for an audience. Was that why Vale had been brought here?\n\n'I don't think you appreciate quite how difficult my position has been, my little mouse. Of course, both of the main groups involved had perfectly reasonable points of view.' Silver glanced sideways at Sterrington, then continued. 'Having \u2013 reluctantly \u2013 found myself leading one group, I personally didn't want the role that you two have so virtuously accepted. But at the same time, a seat on the treaty committee carries weight. The person who holds it will have... influence.'\n\n'And nobody wants to give up influence,' Sterrington agreed. 'Fortunately, we have been able to find a solution which satisfies all parties.'\n\n'All Fae parties?' Kai asked.\n\n'Well, naturally,' Silver drawled. 'Though I don't think you'll be too upset with the result. Madame Sterrington, would you like to explain?'\n\n'I wouldn't want to interrupt your flow,' Sterrington said.\n\nVale snorted. 'I, on the other hand, am absolutely delighted to interrupt Lord Silver. They have an offer for you, Winters, Strongrock \u2013 though I admit it depends particularly on Winters accepting it.'\n\n'How did you get dragged into this?' Irene asked curiously.\n\n'I believe I'm here as a witness.' Vale shrugged. 'And you know I like to know what's going on. Since I have no cases at the moment, I thought I'd make myself useful.'\n\nSilver's expression had been souring at the interjection, but he leapt into the conversational gap before Vale could get any further. 'Kindly ignore the detective. My \u2013 no, our \u2013 offer is this. Sterrington here will take the Fae chair on our treaty liaison group. Her patron the Cardinal's agreed to it. But at the same time...' He smiled. It was, as usual, a mortal sin. 'Miss Winters here will take my niece as her apprentice.'\n\nThere was a pause as Irene turned the idea over in her head. Unfortunately, her mental process kept on coming up with the same conclusion. 'Your niece is, I assume, Fae like yourself?' she queried.\n\n'Well, of course,' Silver said smugly.\n\n'And you want her to be my apprentice?'\n\n'Exactly. I'm glad to see you're so quick to grasp the essentials.' Silver tilted his head, and Irene felt his regard like an intimate touch against her skin. 'I can imagine one point that's troubling you. I assure you that she's nothing like me, my dear little mouse. She's far less interested in the flesh. And far more interested in books. And much younger.'\n\nIt made sense, politically speaking. Both Silver's and Sterrington's factions gained something from the deal, though Silver's investment might be more long term. Yet Irene could see one major problem. 'I don't want to shoot down this compromise out of hand,' she said, 'but Fae can't enter the Library.'\n\nSilver waved a lazy gloved hand. 'Oh, I'm not expecting miracles. At least, not immediate miracles. I'm prepared to give you time to work on it. Months. Years. But I do expect you to try. Just because it hasn't been done previously, doesn't mean it can't be done.'\n\n'He has a point,' Kai put in unhelpfully.\n\nIrene turned to him. 'What do you think of this?' After all, he didn't like Sterrington \u2013 could he manage to work with her?\n\n'I think it might work,' Kai said slowly. 'I believe Madame Sterrington here is willing and able to cooperate with us.' Sterrington inclined her head gracefully. 'And let's be honest \u2013 not having a Fae on the liaison team is a serious problem. If Lord Silver's niece is genuinely willing to commit to the Library, rather than being a pawn in his service...'\n\n'Once you get to know her, you'll see she's far more loyal to anything she can read, than to her family,' Silver said. 'And having her as an apprentice and living with you would be helpful \u2013 blocking insinuations that any Librarians had inappropriately close attachments to dragons.' His gaze strayed from Irene to Kai. 'Of course, if I had chosen to take a position as a liaison, I suppose we could have managed something suitably bipartisan. Or rather tripartisan \u2013 and thoroughly inclusive...' He was now looking suggestively at them both.\n\nIrene could almost feel Kai stiffen in his chair with rage. 'Lord Silver,' she said mildly, 'you're not helping your case.' She needed a moment to think. 'Madame Sterrington, you'd be happy with this arrangement?'\n\n'Entirely so,' Sterrington said crisply. 'I wouldn't share accommodations with you two, but I would take lodgings nearby. I'd support weekly meetings to discuss current issues, unless there are matters of more urgency. General sharing of information. I believe we can make this work. I would like to make this work.'\n\nNow the onus was on Irene. She'd demanded an answer from Silver and Sterrington \u2013 and she'd got one. 'All right,' she said. 'I am prepared to accept this deal. With one caveat.'\n\n'Which is?' Silver asked.\n\n'My superiors have to agree.'\n\nSilver nodded. 'I expect you to do your best to get that approval. I'll accept those terms, and hope we won't need to renegotiate.'\n\n'Witnessed,' Vale put in. 'Don't look so harassed, Winters. You'll enjoy training his niece, once you get down to the job. I've often thought you have the soul of a born teacher.'\n\nIrene couldn't work out where that deduction had come from, but decided to take it as a compliment. She sighed. 'Thank you all for coming. I'll let you know as soon as I have an answer.'\n\nOnce they were all out of the door, she turned to Kai. 'I didn't expect you to support that quite as much as you did.'\n\n'Oh, her I can work with,' Kai said with surprising cheerfulness. 'After all, she's the cunning agent of a devious spymaster. At least we know what we're dealing with there.'\n\n'And this apprentice?'\n\n'Why are you asking me? You're the one who'll be training her. If you can help her be something other than like Lord Silver, even my lord father would agree that's a virtuous and meritorious action.'\n\nClearly she could expect no help from that quarter. 'Oh, very well,' Irene agreed, and found herself smiling. 'It should certainly be interesting \u2013 if it can be done... Fae living in the same house as dragons? Fae becoming Librarians?'\n\nKai squeezed her shoulder. 'Just because something is impossible has never stopped you before. You taught me that, too.'\n\n\u2003Dear Irene,\n\n\u2003I'd like to say all the usual things about hoping that you're well and asking about your friends. But instead I strongly recommend that you delete this email after reading it.\n\n\u2003You were right: there is something unusual about The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor \u2013 the version that you retrieved. The section about the sailor and the serpent... well, to cut to the chase, it's described as a winged giant serpent, rather than a normal giant serpent (and yes, there are 'normal' giant serpents, ask your mother about that trouble in Iceland sometime). And what does winged giant serpent suggest to you? Right. Exactly.\n\n\u2003In the usual version, the serpent tells the sailor about a personal tragedy \u2013 a star fell on the island and all his family are burned up, though sometimes his daughter survives. She isn't mentioned any further in the usual story. Rather unfair on the daughter. I'd have been interested in a variant that gives her an appearance and her own perspective...\n\n\u2003Your mother is leaning on my shoulder and telling me to get to the point.\n\n\u2003In this version, the 'winged serpent' (I'm avoiding certain words here) says that he and his four sons (note the number) and others of his kind fled to the island to escape a catastrophe. The language is rather opaque here \u2013 it's difficult to separate accurate description from semi-supernatural hyperbole. But this is my best guess at translating that catastrophe:\n\n\u2003The air became crystal and the earth closed its hands around us where we stood. Our bodies changed till we are as you now see me. Had we not fled, our spirits would have become as the wind and water and earth. (The word for spirit here is ba, meaning the part of the soul that gives a personality its unique aspects.) We left the land behind and crossed the limitless sea and sky, on newly fledged wings, to find a dwelling elsewhere. We were pursued by others who were also afflicted, but could no longer take human form (this is extraordinary!) and would have torn us to pieces. They no longer recognized us as their friends and kinsmen; their hearts were as stone.\n\n\u2003If there is truth in here rather than fiction, I'm not sure how much it has been mangled by my translation. Issues with the narrative could be due to problems any human might have, when trying to understand what someone non-human \u2013 or non-human now \u2013 is telling them. Or my problems with decoding the text could simply be due to the effect of multiple retellings of a story. The transmutation of an originally oral history? Or perhaps my translation is entirely accurate.\n\n\u2003We then pretty much revert to the standard version, with the winged serpent advising the sailor to have courage \u2013 and promising at least he'll get back to his family again. At this point (in another change from the usual version) the sailor asks about the winged serpent's own family. The serpent says that his four sons have gone forth to become kings, and that they and their mates (or co-rulers? Queens? Four sisters?) will rule over others who have fled identical disasters. The term here is the same as the one used for the earlier catastrophe.\n\n\u2003But the serpent says that he himself has a different task. He must establish an alliance with their utmost enemies, for the restoration of balance. (The phrasing is the restoration of Maat. The part that follows is complex, because normally in Egyptian mythology, this would be referring directly to the goddess Maat, thus indicating her restoration. But she personified concepts such as honour, balance and justice. So this might not have been about the restoration of an actual goddess, but about the qualities she represented. Could this be an attempt to translate whatever the winged serpent has said into the local terminology?) The serpent says that he will not return to this island but will be reborn in a different form. He finishes with: 'My fate shall be preserved by the scribes', so perhaps there is still a further record out there. There was clearly more to this story once than just this document alone.\n\n\u2003I agree that this text raises huge questions. However, they're questions that shouldn't be asked unless we have no other choice. Everyone deserves a bit of privacy, even 'winged serpents'. (I'm highly disturbed by these revelations myself \u2013 but you had to know as soon as possible, and a Library-routed letter seemed the safest method of contact.)\n\n\u2002Your mother is pointing out (over my shoulder, again) that firstly, this appears to be a case of genuine history reported as fiction. Secondly, this is something we might want to bury six feet under and never mention again. It might be extremely dangerous to have any 'winged serpents' find out that we're researching this part of their history. We're not telling you to forget what I've just said \u2013 after all knowledge is control, knowledge is safety \u2013 but at the same time, I suggest you delete this email. And don't mention the contents to Kai \u2013 for his own safety, too.\n\n\u2002Much love,\n\n\u2002Your father (and mother)"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Inkdeath",
        "author": "Cornelia Funke",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "books about books",
            "Inkworld"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Inkheart",
                "text": "Mortimer Folchart (Mo), a bookbinder, has such a beautiful voice that it can bring characters out of books when he reads aloud. He discovered his dangerous gift by accident when he was reading a story called Inkheart to his wife Resa and daughter Meggie. Several characters, including the evil Capricorn and some of his followers, came out of it into our world \u2013 and Resa vanished into the world of the book. Meggie, only three at the time, can't even remember her mother.\n\nNine years later the fire-eater Dustfinger, one of the Inkheart characters and desperately homesick for his own world, visits Mo and Meggie (now twelve years old) to warn them that Capricorn is looking for all copies of the book to destroy them, so that no one can ever move between the two worlds again by reading from it. He is after the copy that Mo still has, and he also wants to force Mo to read treasure out of books for him.\n\nCapricorn and his criminal gang have made an Italian village their headquarters, and when Dustfinger treacherously tells them where to find Mo, he is kidnapped and taken there. Meggie, her great-aunt Elinor (a book collector with a fine library) and the repentant Dustfinger join forces to rescue him. But they no longer have the book that might help Dustfinger to get home and Mo to find his wife at last. With a new friend \u2013 Farid, a boy read accidentally out of the Arabian Nights by Mo \u2013 they track down the author of Inkheart, old Fenoglio, but his own copies have also been stolen. Although a single copy is left, it is in the hands of Capricorn and his witch-like mother Mortola. After many more perilous adventures, Fenoglio and Meggie end up as captives back in Capricorn's village. Meggie, who has inherited her father's unusual talent, is to be made to read Capricorn's ally, a terrible creature known as the Shadow, out of the remaining copy of Inkheart. But with the help of Fenoglio, who writes new words to add to the story, she and Mo turn the tables and Capricorn falls dead. Fenoglio himself disappears into the Inkworld in exchange for the Shadow. With Dustfinger's help Resa, who spent years in the Inkworld serving Capricorn and Mortola and lost her voice in passing between the two worlds, is found again. Reunited, the Folcharts all go home to Elinor's house.\n\n[ Inkspell ]\n\nAt the end of Inkheart, Dustfinger went away with the only existing copy of Fenoglio's story \u2013 and with Farid, who wants to learn to be a fire-eater. Now, in Inkspell, Dustfinger has finally found someone to read him back to his own world: a petty criminal calling himself Orpheus who has a wonder-working voice like Mo's. Orpheus wants the book for himself, and reads Dustfinger into the Inkworld, but not his devoted apprentice Farid, who is left holding the book. Farid takes refuge with the Folcharts in Elinor's house. Meggie, longing to see the Inkworld too, discovers that she can read herself and Farid there. It is a place of marvels \u2013 fairies, water-nymphs, brownies \u2013 and when they meet a band of strolling players whose leader is known as the Black Prince, they are taken to the city of Ombra, capital of Lombrica, and find Fenoglio there. Ombra is in mourning for its ruling prince's son, Cosimo the Fair, killed by a gang of fire-raisers led by Firefox, one of Capricorn's men. And it is threatened by the ruler of the country of Argenta, known as the Adderhead, whose daughter Violante is Cosimo's widow. Near Ombra Dustfinger has been reunited with his wife Roxane, once a minstrel woman and now wise in herbal healing lore. But his daughter Brianna, Violante's maid, is hostile to him.\n\nBack in our own world Orpheus has allies: Capricorn's mother Mortola and his henchman Basta, who turn up at Elinor's house. Orpheus is to read them \u2013 and Mo \u2013 into the Inkworld, where Mortola believes her son will still be alive. In her fury at finding that he is dead there too, she shoots and wounds Mo, to the horror of Resa, who grabbed his hand at the last moment and came into the Inkworld too. Resa nurses her husband devotedly, keeping away the White Women who visit those close to death. They meet the strolling players, who take Mo for a famous robber known as the Bluejay. Left behind in our world, Elinor and her friend Darius, formerly reader to Capricorn, are still imprisoned in Elinor's house, while Orpheus lords it in her library.\n\nOnce again, Fenoglio and Meggie combine their talents for writing and reading aloud, this time in order to bring Cosimo the Fair back to life. But Cosimo's campaign against the Adderhead's forces ends in a disastrous defeat and many deaths. Fenoglio has lost control of his story, which now seems to be telling itself. Full of remorse, he vows never to write again. Mo and Resa have been captured and taken to the Castle of Night in Argenta, where Mo, with Meggie's help, is forced to bind a magic book to keep the Adderhead alive for ever. In return the Adderhead releases them, as agreed, but he sends soldiers after them and their friends: Dustfinger, the Black Prince and his men. Basta kills Farid in the fighting, and is killed himself by Mo. Dustfinger bargains with the White Women, daughters of Death, to take Farid's place and dies instead. Farid, alive again but distraught, persuades Fenoglio to write words for Meggie to read aloud that will bring Orpheus to the Inkworld, hoping that if he read Dustfinger home he can also read him back to life. And Orpheus arrives, clutching the single remaining copy of Inkheart. But was it safe to bring him here? And will Orpheus do what Farid wants...?\n\nInkspell ends on this note of suspense. Now you can find out what happens to all the characters next in Inkdeath.\n\nAn A\u2013Z of characters is at the back of the book."
            },
            {
                "title": "Nothing But a Dog and a Sheet of Paper",
                "text": "\u2003Hark, the footsteps of the night\n\n\u2003Fade in silence long.\n\n\u2003Quiet chirps my reading light\n\n\u2003Like a cricket's song.\n\n\u2003Books inviting us to read\n\n\u2003On the bookshelves stand.\n\n\u2003Piers for bridges that will lead\n\n\u2003Into fairyland.\n\n\u2014Rilke, Sacrifice to the Lares, from Vigils III\n\nMoonlight fell on Elinor's dressing gown, her nightdress, her bare feet, and the dog lying in front of them. Orpheus's dog. Oh, the way he looked at her with his eternally sad eyes! As if asking himself why, in the name of all the exciting smells in the world, she was sitting in her library in the middle of the night, surrounded by silent books, just staring into space.\n\n'Why?' said Elinor in the silence. 'Because I can't sleep, you stupid animal.' But she patted his head all the same. This is what you've come to, Elinor, she thought as she hauled herself out of her armchair. Spending your nights talking to a dog. You don't even like dogs, least of all this one, with his heavy breathing that always reminds you of his appalling master!\n\nStill, she had kept the dog in spite of the painful memories he brought back. She'd kept the chair too, even though the Magpie had sat in it. Mortola... how often Elinor thought she heard the old woman's voice when she went into the quiet library, how often she seemed to see Mortimer and Resa standing among the bookshelves, or Meggie sitting by the window with a book on her lap, face hidden behind her smooth, bright hair...\n\nMemories. They were all she had left. No more tangible than the pictures conjured up by books. But what would be left if she lost those memories too? Then she'd be alone again for ever \u2013 with the silence and the emptiness in her heart. And an ugly dog.\n\nHer feet looked so old in the pale moonlight. Moonlight! she thought, wiggling her toes in it. In many stories moonlight had magical powers. All lies. Her whole head was full of printed lies. She couldn't even look at the moon with eyes unclouded by veils of letters. Couldn't she wipe all those words out of her head and heart, and see the world through her own eyes again, at least once?\n\nHeavens, Elinor, what a fabulous mood you're in, she thought as she made her way over to the glass case where she kept everything that Orpheus had left behind, apart from his dog. Wallowing in self-pity, like that stupid dog rolling over in every puddle.\n\nThe sheet of paper that lay behind the glass looked nothing special, just an ordinary piece of lined paper densely written in pale-blue ink. Not to be compared with the magnificently illuminated books in the other display cases \u2013 even though the tracing of every letter showed how very impressed Orpheus was with himself. I hope the fire-elves have burnt that self-satisfied smile off his lips, thought Elinor as she opened the glass case. I hope the men-at-arms have skewered him \u2013 or, even better, I hope he's starved to death in the Wayless Wood, miserably and very, very slowly. It wasn't the first time she had pictured Orpheus's wretched end in the Inkworld to herself. These images gave her lonely heart more pleasure than almost anything.\n\nThe sheet of paper was already yellowing. To add insult to injury, it was cheap stuff. And the words on it really didn't look as though they could have spirited their writer away to another world right before Elinor's eyes. Three photographs lay beside the sheet of paper \u2013 one of Meggie and two of Resa \u2013 a photo of her as a child and another taken only a few months ago, with Mortimer beside her, both of them smiling so happily! Hardly a night went by when Elinor didn't look at those photographs. By now, at least, the tears had stopped running down her cheeks when she did so, but they were still there in her heart. Bitter tears. Her heart was full to the brim with them, a horrible feeling.\n\nLost.\n\nMeggie.\n\nResa.\n\nMortimer.\n\nAlmost three months had passed since their disappearance. In fact, Meggie had even been gone a few days longer than her parents...\n\nThe dog stretched and came trotting drowsily over to her. He pushed his nose into her dressing-gown pocket, knowing there were always a few dog biscuits in it for him.\n\n'Yes, all right, all right,' she murmured, shoving one of the smelly little things into his broad muzzle. 'Where's your master, then?' She held the sheet of paper in front of his nose, and the stupid creature sniffed it as if he really could catch Orpheus's scent behind the words on the page.\n\nElinor stared at the words, shaping them with her lips. In the streets of Ombra... She'd stood here so often over the last few weeks, surrounded by books that meant nothing to her; now she was once again alone with them. They didn't speak to her, just as if they knew that she'd have exchanged them all on the spot for the three people she had lost. Lost in a book.\n\n'I will learn how, damn it!' Her voice sounded defiant, like a child's. 'I'll learn how to read them so that they'll swallow me up too, I will, I will!'\n\nThe dog was looking at her as if he believed every word of it, but Elinor didn't, not a single one. No, she was no Silvertongue. Even if she tried for a dozen years or more, the words wouldn't make music when she spoke them. She'd loved words so much all her life. Although they didn't sing for her the way they sang for Meggie or Mortimer \u2013 or Orpheus, damn him three times over.\n\nThe piece of paper shook in her fingers as she started to cry. Here came the tears again. She'd held them back for so long, all the tears in her heart, until it was simply overflowing with them. Elinor's sobs were so loud that the dog cowered in alarm. How ridiculous that water ran out of your eyes when your heart hurt. Tragic heroines in books tended to be amazingly beautiful. Not a word about swollen eyes or a red nose. Crying always gives me a red nose, thought Elinor. I expect that's why I'll never be in any book.\n\n'Elinor?'\n\nShe spun round, hastily wiping her tears away.\n\nDarius stood in the open doorway, wearing the dressing gown that she had given him for his last birthday. It was much too large for him.\n\n'What is it?' she snapped. Where had that handkerchief gone this time? Sniffing, she pulled it from her sleeve and blew her nose. 'Three months, they've been gone three months now, Darius! Isn't that a good reason to cry? Yes, it is. Don't look at me so pityingly with your owlish eyes. Never mind how many books we buy,' she said, with a wide sweep of her arm towards her well-filled shelves, 'never mind how many we get at auctions, swap or steal \u2013 not one of them tells me what I want to know! Thousands of pages, and not a word on any of them with news of the only people I want to know about. Why would I be interested in anything else? Theirs is the only story I want to hear! How is Meggie now, do you think? How are Resa and Mortimer? Are they happy, Darius? Are they still alive? Will I ever see them again?'\n\nDarius looked along the books, as if the answer might after all be found in one of them. But then, like all those printed pages, he gave her no answer.\n\n'I'll make you some hot milk and honey,' he said at last, disappearing into the kitchen.\n\nAnd Elinor was alone again with the books, the moonlight and Orpheus's ugly dog."
            },
            {
                "title": "Only a Village",
                "text": "\u2003The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,\n\n\u2003The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,\n\n\u2003The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,\n\n\u2003And the highwayman came riding \u2013\n\n\u2003Riding \u2013 riding \u2013\n\n\u2003The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.\n\n\u2014Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman\n\nThe fairies were already beginning to dance among the trees, swarms of tiny blue bodies. Their wings caught the starlight, and Mo saw the Black Prince glancing anxiously at the sky. It was still as dark as the hills all around, but the fairies were never wrong. On a cold night like this, only the coming of dawn could lure them from their nests, and the village whose harvest the robbers were trying to save this time lay dangerously close to Ombra. As soon as daybreak came they must be gone.\n\nA village like many others: only a dozen poor huts, a few barren, stony fields, and a wall that would hardly keep out a child, let alone a soldier. Thirty women without their menfolk, three dozen fatherless children. Two days ago the new governor's men had carried off almost the entire harvest of the neighbouring village. The robbers had reached the place too late, but something could still be salvaged here. They'd spent hours digging, showing the women how to hide livestock and provisions underground...\n\nThe Strong Man was carrying the last hastily-dug sackful of potatoes, his rough-hewn face red with effort. It went the same colour when he was fighting or drunk. Between them all, they lowered the sack into the hiding place they had made just beyond the fields, and Mo covered the entrance with a network of twigs to hide the storage pit from soldiers and tax gatherers. By now, toads were croaking in the surrounding hills, as if to entice the day out, and the men on watch among the huts were getting restless. They'd seen the fairies too. High time to get away, back into the forest where a hiding place could always be found, even though the new governor was sending more and more patrols out to the hills. The Milksop, the widows of Ombra called him. A good nickname for the Adderhead's puny brother-in-law. But the Milksop's greed for what few possessions his new subjects had was insatiable.\n\nMo rubbed his eyes. Heavens, he was tired. He'd hardly slept for days. There were just too many villages that they might yet be able to reach ahead of the soldiers.\n\n'You look worn out,' Resa had said only yesterday when she woke up beside him, unaware that he hadn't come to bed beside her until the first light of dawn. He had said something about bad dreams, told her he'd been passing the sleepless hours by working on the book he was binding, a collection of her drawings of fairies and glass men. He hoped Resa and Meggie would be asleep again now when he came back to the lonely farmhouse that the Black Prince had found for them. It was east of Ombra, an hour's journey from the city on foot, and far from the land where the Adderhead still ruled, made immortal by a book that Mo had bound with his own hands.\n\nSoon, thought Mo. Soon the book won't protect him any more. But how often had he told himself that before? And the Adderhead was still immortal.\n\nA girl hesitantly approached Mo. How old would she be? Six? Seven? Her hair was as blonde as Meggie's, but it was a long time since Meggie had been so small. Shyly, she stopped a pace away from him.\n\nSnapper emerged from the darkness and went over to the child. 'Yes, go on, take a good look!' he whispered to the little girl. 'That's really him \u2013 the Bluejay! He eats children like you for supper.'\n\nSnapper loved such jokes. Mo bit back the words on the tip of his tongue. 'Don't believe a word he says!' he said, in a low voice. 'Why aren't you asleep like everyone else?'\n\nThe child looked at him. Then she pushed up his sleeve with her small hands until the scar showed. The scar of which the songs told tales...\n\nShe looked at him, wide-eyed, with the same mixture of awe and fear he had now seen in so many faces. The Bluejay. The girl ran back to her mother, and Mo straightened up. Whenever his chest hurt where Mortola had wounded him, it felt as if he had slipped in there to join him \u2013 the robber to whom Fenoglio had given Mo's face and voice. Or had the Bluejay always been a part of him, merely sleeping until Fenoglio's world brought him to life?\n\nSometimes when they were taking meat to one of the starving villages, or a few sacks of grain stolen from the Milksop's bailiffs, women would come up to him and kiss his hand. 'Go and thank the Black Prince, not me,' he always told them, but the Prince just laughed. 'Get yourself a bear,' he said. 'Then they'll leave you alone.'\n\nA child began crying in one of the huts. A tinge of red was showing in the night sky, and Mo thought he heard hoof beats. Horsemen, at least a dozen of them, maybe more. How fast the ears learnt to tell what sounds meant, much faster than it took the eyes to decipher written words.\n\nThe fairies scattered. Women cried out, and ran to the huts where their children slept. Mo's hand drew his sword as if of its own accord. As if it had never done anything else. It was the sword he had taken from the Castle of Night, the sword that once belonged to Firefox.\n\nThe first light of dawn.\n\nWasn't it said that they always came at first light because they loved the red of the sky? With any luck they'd be drunk after one of their master's endless banquets.\n\nThe Prince signalled to the robbers to take up their positions surrounding the village. It was only a couple of courses of flat stones, and the huts wouldn't offer much protection either. The bear was snorting and grunting, and here they came now out of the darkness: horsemen, more than a dozen of them with the new crest of Ombra on their breasts, a basilisk on a red background. They had not, of course, been expecting to find men here. Weeping women, crying children, yes, but not men, and armed men at that. Taken aback, they reined in their horses. They were drunk. Good \u2013 that would slow them down.\n\nThey didn't hesitate for long, seeing at once that they were far better armed than the ragged robbers. And they had horses.\n\nFools. They'd die before they realized that weapons and horses weren't all that counted.\n\n'Every last one of them!' Snapper whispered hoarsely to Mo. 'We have to kill them all, Bluejay. I hope your soft heart understands that. If a single man gets back to Ombra, this village will burn tomorrow.'\n\nMo merely nodded. As if he didn't know.\n\nThe horses neighed shrilly as their riders urged them towards the robbers, and Mo felt it again, just as he had on Mount Adder when he had killed Basta \u2013 that coldness of the blood. Cold as the hoarfrost at his feet. The only fear he felt was fear of himself.\n\nBut then came the screams. The groans. The blood. His own heartbeat, loud and much too fast. Striking and thrusting, pulling his sword out of the bodies of strangers, the blood of strangers wet on his clothes, faces distorted by hatred \u2013 or was it fear? Fortunately you couldn't see much under their helmets. They were so young! Smashed limbs, smashed human beings. Careful, watch out behind you. Kill. Fast. Not one of them must get away.\n\n'Bluejay.'\n\nOne of the soldiers whispered the name before Mo struck him down. Perhaps he had been thinking, with his last breath, of all the silver he'd get for bringing the Bluejay's body back to Ombra Castle \u2013 more silver than he could ever take as loot in a whole lifetime as a soldier. Mo pulled his sword out of the man's chest. They had come without their body armour. Who needed armour against women and children? How cold killing made you, very cold, although your own skin was burning and your blood was flowing fever-hot.\n\nThey did indeed kill them all. It was quiet in the huts as they threw the bodies over the precipice. Two were their own men, whose bones would now mingle with those of their enemies. There was no time to bury them.\n\nThe Black Prince had a nasty cut on his shoulder. Mo bandaged it as best he could. The bear sat beside them, looking anxious. The child came out of one of the huts, the little girl who had pushed his sleeve up. From a distance she really did look like Meggie. Meggie, Resa... he hoped they'd still be asleep when he got back. How was he going to explain all the blood if they weren't? So much blood...\n\nSometime, Mortimer, he thought, the nights will overshadow the days. Nights of blood. Peaceful days \u2013 days when Meggie showed him everything she had only been able to tell him about in the tower of the Castle of Night. Nymphs with scaly skins dwelling in blossom-covered pools, footprints of giants long gone, flowers that whispered when you touched them, trees growing right up to the sky, moss-women who appeared between their roots as if they had peeled away from the bark... Peaceful days. Nights of blood.\n\nThey did what they could to cover up the traces of the fight and left, taking the horses with them. There was a note of fear in the stammered thanks of the village women as they left. They'd seen with their own eyes that their allies knew as much about killing as their enemies did.\n\nSnapper rode back to the robbers' camp with the horses and most of the men. The camp was moved almost daily. At present it was in a dark ravine that became hardly any lighter even by day. They would send for Roxane to tend the wounded, while Mo went back to where Resa and Meggie were sleeping at the deserted farm. The Prince had found it for them, because Resa didn't want to stay in the robbers' camp and Meggie too longed for a house to live in after all those homeless weeks.\n\nThe Black Prince accompanied Mo, as he so often did. 'Of course. The Bluejay never travels without a retinue,' mocked Snapper before they parted company. Mo, whose heart was still racing from all the killing, could have dragged him off his horse for that, but the Prince restrained him.\n\nThey travelled on foot. It meant a painfully long walk for their tired limbs, but their footprints were harder to follow than a trail left by horses' hooves. And the farm must be kept safe, for everything Mo loved was waiting there.\n\nThe house, and the dilapidated farm buildings, always appeared among the trees as unexpectedly as if someone had dropped and lost them there. There was no trace now of the fields where food for the farm had once been grown, and the path that used to lead to the nearest village had disappeared long ago. The forest had swallowed everything up. Here it was no longer called the Wayless Wood, the name it bore south of Ombra. Here the forest had as many names as there were local villages: the Fairy Forest, the Dark Wood, the Moss-Women's Wood. If the Strong Man was to be believed, the place where the Bluejay's hide-out lay was called Larkwood. 'Larkwood? Nonsense,' was Meggie's response to that. 'The Strong Man calls everything after birds! He even gives birds' names to the fairies, although they can't stand the birds. Battista says it's called the Wood of Lights, which suits it much better. Did you ever see so many glow-worms and fire-elves in a wood? And all those fireflies that sit in the treetops at night...'\n\nWhatever the name of the wood, Mo was always captivated afresh by the peace and quiet under its trees. It reminded him that this, too, was a part of the Inkworld, as much a part of it as the Milksop's soldiers. The first of the morning sun was filtering through the branches, dappling the trees with pale gold, and the fairies were dancing as if intoxicated in the cold autumn sunlight. They fluttered into the bear's furry face until he hit out at them, and the Black Prince held one of the little creatures to his ear, smiling as if he could understand what its cross, shrill little voice was saying.\n\nHad the other world been like this? Why could he hardly remember? Had life there been the same beguiling mixture of darkness and light, cruelty and beauty... so much beauty that it sometimes almost made you drunk?\n\nThe Black Prince had the farm guarded by his men day and night.\n\nGecko was one of the guards today. As Mo and the Prince came through the trees he emerged from the ruined pigsty, a morose expression on his face. Gecko was always on the move. He was a small man whose slightly protuberant eyes had earned him his name. One of his tame crows was perched on his shoulder. The Prince used the crows as messengers, but most of the time they stole for Gecko from the markets; the amount they could carry away in their beaks always amazed Mo.\n\nWhen he saw the blood on their clothes Gecko turned pale. But the shadows of the Inkworld had obviously left the isolated farm untouched again last night.\n\nMo almost fell over his own feet with weariness as he walked towards the well. The Prince reached for his arm, although he too was swaying with exhaustion.\n\n'It was a close shave this time,' he said quietly, as if the peace were an illusion that could be shattered by his voice. 'If we're not more careful the soldiers will be waiting for us in the next village. The price the Adderhead has set on your head is high enough to buy all of Ombra. I can hardly trust my own men any more, and by this time even the children recognize you in the villages. Perhaps you ought to lie low here for a while.'\n\nMo shooed away the fairies whirring in the air above the well, then let the wooden bucket down. 'Nonsense. They recognize you too.'\n\nThe water in the depths below shone as if the moon were hiding from morning there. Like the well outside Merlin's cottage, thought Mo, as he cooled his face with the clear water and cleaned the cut that a soldier had given him on his forearm. All we need now is for Archimedes to fly up on my shoulder, while Wart comes stumbling out of the wood...\n\n'What are you smiling at?' The Black Prince leant on the edge of the well beside Mo, while his bear lumbered around, snuffling, on ground that was wet with dew.\n\n'A story I once read.' Mo put the bucket of water down for the bear. 'I'll tell it to you sometime. It's a good story, even though it has a sad ending.'\n\nBut the Prince shook his head, and passed his hand over his tired face. 'If it ends sadly I don't want to hear it.'\n\nGecko wasn't the only man who had been guarding the sleeping farm. Mo smiled when Battista stepped out of the tumbledown barn. Battista had no great opinion of fighting, but Mo liked him and the Strong Man best of all the robbers, and he found it easier to go out at night if one of them was watching over Resa and Meggie. Battista still did his clown act at fairs, even when his audience had hardly a penny to spare. 'We don't want them forgetting how to laugh altogether!' he said when Snapper mocked him for it. He liked to hide his pockmarked face behind the masks he made for himself: laughing masks, weeping masks, whatever he felt like at the time. But when he joined Mo at the well he handed him not a mask, but a bundle of black clothes.\n\n'A very good morning to you, Bluejay,' he said, with the same deep bow that he made to his audience. 'Sorry I took rather a long time with your order, but I ran out of thread. Like everything else, it's hard to get in Ombra. But luckily Gecko here,' he added, bowing in the man's direction, 'sent one of his black-feathered friends off to steal me a few reels from one of the market traders. Thanks to our new governor, they're still rich.'\n\n'Black clothes?' The Prince looked enquiringly at Mo. 'What for?'\n\n'A bookbinder's garments. Binding books is still my trade, or have you forgotten? What's more, black is good camouflage by night. As for this,' said Mo, stripping off his bloodstained shirt, 'I'd better dye it black too, or I can't very well wear it again.'\n\nThe Prince looked at him thoughtfully. 'I'll say it again, even though you don't want to listen. Lie low here for a few days. Forget the outside world, just as the world has forgotten this farm.'\n\nThe anxiety in his dark face touched Mo, and for a moment he was almost tempted to give the bundle back to Battista. But only almost.\n\nWhen the Prince had gone, Mo hid the shirt and his bloodstained trousers in the former bakehouse, now converted into his workshop, and put on the black clothes. They fitted perfectly, and he was wearing them as he slipped back into the house just as the morning made its way in through the unglazed windows.\n\nMeggie and Resa were still asleep. A fairy had lost her way in the gloom of Meggie's room. Mo lured her to his hand with a few quiet words. 'Will you look at that?' Snapper always used to say. 'Even the damn fairies love his voice. Looks like I'm the only person not to fall under its spell.'\n\nMo carried the fairy over to the window and let her flutter out. He pulled Meggie's blanket up over her shoulders, the way he used to on all those nights when he and she had only each other, and he glanced at her face. How young she still looked when she was asleep. Awake, she seemed so much more grown-up. She whispered a name in her sleep. Farid. Was it when you fell in love for the first time that you grew up?\n\n'Where have you been?'\n\nMo spun round. Resa was standing in the open doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes.\n\n'Watching the fairies' morning dance. The nights are getting colder now. Soon they'll hardly leave their nests at all.'\n\nIt wasn't exactly a lie. And the sleeves of the black tunic were long enough to hide the cut on his forearm. 'Come with me, or we'll wake this big daughter of ours.'\n\nHe drew her with him into the bedroom where they slept.\n\n'What kind of clothes are those?'\n\n'A bookbinder's outfit. Battista made them for me. Black as ink. Suitable, don't you think? I've asked him to make you and Meggie something too. You'll be needing another dress soon.'\n\nHe put his hand on her belly. You couldn't see it yet. A new child brought with them from the old world, although they had found out only in this one. It was barely a week since Resa had told him. 'Which would you like,' she'd asked, 'a daughter or a son?'\n\n'Can I choose?' he had replied, trying to imagine what it would be like to hold tiny fingers in his hand again, so tiny that they could scarcely grasp his thumb. It was just the right time \u2013 before Meggie was so grown-up that he could hardly call her a child at all.\n\n'The sickness is getting worse. I'll ride over to see Roxane tomorrow. She's sure to know what to do for it.'\n\n'Yes, she's sure to know.' Mo took her in his arms.\n\nPeaceful days. Nights of blood."
            },
            {
                "title": "Written Silver",
                "text": "\u2003To what was sombre he was most disposed\n\n\u2003When, in his bare room with its shutters closed,\n\n\u2003High-ceilinged, blue, he read his story, thinking,\n\n\u2003And in his mind's eye picturing forests sinking\n\n\u2003Under the water, seeing ochre skies,\n\n\u2003Fleshy flowers in woods of stars before his eyes...\n\n\u2014Arthur Rimbaud, The Poet at Seven Years Old\n\nOf course Orpheus did none of the digging himself. He stood there in his fine clothes watching Farid sweat. He had made him dig in two places already, and the hole Farid was excavating now was already deep enough to come up to his chest. The earth was moist and heavy. It had rained a great deal these last few days, and the spade was useless. In addition, there was a hanged man dangling right above Farid's head. The cold wind swung the body back and forth on its rotting rope. Suppose it fell, and buried him under its decaying bones?\n\nThree more sombre figures swung from the gallows on Farid's right. Milksop, the new governor, liked hanging people. Folk said that he had his wigs made from the hair of executed men and women \u2013 and the widows in Ombra whispered that this was the reason why so many women had been condemned to hang.\n\n'How much longer are you going to take? It's getting light! Go on, dig faster!' Orpheus snapped, kicking a skull down into the pit. Skulls lay beneath the gallows like terrible fruits.\n\nIt was true that day was beginning to dawn. Damn that Cheeseface! He'd had Farid digging almost all night long. If only he could wring the man's pale neck!\n\n'Faster? Get your fine bodyguard to do some digging for a change!' Farid shouted up to him. 'Then his muscles would at least be some use!'\n\nThe Chunk folded his bulky arms and smiled down with derision. Orpheus had found the giant working for a physician in the marketplace, holding down the man's customers while he pulled out their rotten teeth. 'What on earth are you going on about now?' was all Orpheus had said, condescendingly, when Farid asked why he needed another servant. 'Even the rag-and-bone men in Ombra have bodyguards to protect them from the riffraff roaming the streets. And I'm a good deal richer than they are!' In this he was certainly right \u2013 and as Orpheus offered better pay than the physician, and the Chunk's ears hurt from listening to all those screams of agony, he went with them without a word. He called himself Oss, a very short name for such a large fellow, but it suited a man who spoke so seldom that at first Farid could have sworn he had no tongue in his ugly mouth. However, that mouth worked overtime at eating, and more and more frequently the Chunk would devour what Orpheus's maids put in front of Farid too. At first Farid had complained, but after Oss lay in wait for him on the cellar steps one night he preferred to sleep on an empty stomach, or steal something from the marketplace. The Chunk had made life in Orpheus's service even worse. A handful of pieces of broken glass inside Farid's straw mattress, a leg stuck out to trip him up at the bottom of a staircase, a sudden rough hand grasping his hair... he had to be on his guard against Oss all the time. There was no peace from him except at night, when the man slept outside Orpheus's bedroom, docile as a dog.\n\n'Bodyguards don't dig!' Orpheus explained in a weary tone, pacing impatiently up and down between the holes Farid had dug. 'And if you go on dawdling like that we really will need a bodyguard. They're bringing two poachers here to hang before noon!'\n\n'Well, there you are, then! I keep telling you: let's just look for buried treasure behind your house!' The hills where gallows stood, graveyards, burnt-out farms... Orpheus loved places that sent a shiver down Farid's spine. Cheeseface certainly wasn't afraid of ghosts, you had to give him that. Farid wiped the sweat out of his eyes. 'You might at least write a more detailed description of which damn gallows the treasure's under. And why does it have to be buried so deep, for heaven's sake?'\n\n'Why buried so deep? Why not behind my house?' Orpheus pursed his girlishly soft lips scornfully. 'What an original idea! Does that sound as if it belongs in this story? Even Fenoglio wouldn't fall for such nonsense. But why do I bother to keep explaining? You wouldn't understand anyway.'\n\n'Oh no?' Farid drove his spade so deep into the damp soil that it stuck. 'Well, there's one thing I understand very well. While you're writing yourself treasure after treasure, acting the rich merchant and chasing every maid in Ombra, Dustfinger still lies among the dead!'\n\nFarid felt tears come to his eyes yet again. The pain was as fresh now as it had been on the night when Dustfinger died for him. If he could only forget that still face! If he could only remember Dustfinger as he was in life! But he kept seeing him lying in the disused mine, cold and silent, his heart frozen.\n\n'I'm sick and tired of being your servant!' he shouted up at Orpheus. In his fury he even forgot the hanged men, whose ghosts certainly wouldn't like so much shouting in the place where they had died. 'You haven't kept your side of the bargain! Instead of bringing him back, you've made yourself as comfortable in this world as a maggot in a side of bacon. You've buried him, like all the others! Fenoglio's right, you're about as much use as a perfumed pig's bladder! I'm going to tell Meggie to send you back again. And she'll do it, just you wait and see!'\n\nOss looked enquiringly at Orpheus, his eyes asking permission to seize Farid and beat him black and blue, but Orpheus ignored him. 'Ah, so we're back to that subject!' he said, barely able to control his voice. 'The amazing, wonderful Meggie, daughter of an equally fabulous father who answers to the name of a bird these days, hiding out in the forest with a band of verminous robbers while ragged minstrels make up song after song about him.'\n\nOrpheus adjusted his glasses and looked up at the sky, as if complaining to the powers above of Mo's unearned fame. He liked the nickname those glasses had earned him: Four-Eyes. It was whispered with fear and horror in Ombra, which pleased Orpheus even more. And the glasses were regarded as evidence that all the lies he told about his origins were the plain truth: he came from beyond the sea, he said, from a distant land ruled by princes who all had two sets of eyes, which allowed them to read their subjects' thoughts. He claimed to be a son of the king of that country, born out of wedlock, and said he'd had to flee after his own brother's wife had fallen madly in love with him. 'By the god of books, what a wretched story!' Fenoglio had cried, when Farid told Minerva's children about it. 'The slushy notions churning around in that fellow's mind! He hasn't a single fresh idea in his slimy brain \u2013 all he can do is mess about with other people's stories!'\n\nBut while Fenoglio was spending his days and nights feeling sorry for himself, Orpheus had leisure to put his own stamp on this story \u2013 and he seemed to know more about it than the man who had originally made it up.\n\n'When you love a book so much that you read it again and again, do you know what it makes you wish?' Orpheus had asked Farid, as they had stood outside the city gate of Ombra for the first time. 'No, of course you don't. How could you? I'm sure a book only makes you think how well it would burn on a cold night. But I'll tell you the answer all the same: you want to be in the book yourself. Although certainly not as a poor court poet. I'm happy to leave that role to Fenoglio \u2013 though even there he cuts a sorry figure!'\n\nOrpheus had set to work the third night after he arrived, in a dirty inn near the city walls. He had told Farid to steal him some wine and a candle, and had produced a grubby piece of paper and a pencil from under his cloak \u2013 and the book, the thrice-accursed book, Inkheart. His fingers had wandered over the pages collecting words, more and more words, like magpies in search of glittering baubles. And Farid had been fool enough to believe that the words Orpheus was so busily writing on his sheet of paper would heal the pain in his heart and bring Dustfinger back.\n\nBut Orpheus had very different ideas in mind. He sent Farid away before reading aloud what he had written, and before dawn the next morning ordered him to dig up his first treasure from the soil of Ombra, in the graveyard just beyond the infirmary. The sight of the coins had made Orpheus as happy as a child. But Farid had stared at the graves, tasting his own tears in his mouth.\n\nOrpheus had spent the silver on new clothes for himself, hired two maids and a cook, and bought a silk merchant's magnificent house. Its previous owner had gone away in search of his son, who had ridden with Cosimo to Argenta and never came back.\n\nOrpheus made out that he himself was a merchant, one who sold the granting of unusual wishes \u2013 and soon it had reached the Milksop's ears that this stranger with the thin fair hair and skin as pale as a prince's could supply bizarre things: spotted brownies, fairies as brightly coloured as butterflies, jewellery made of fire-elves' wings, belts set with the scales of river-nymphs, gold and white piebald horses to draw princely coaches, and other creatures previously known in Ombra only from fairy tales. The right words for all sorts of things could be found in Fenoglio's original book of Inkheart \u2013 Orpheus just had to fit them together in a slightly different way. Now and then one of his creations would die after taking only a few breaths, or would turn out vicious (the Chunk often had bandaged hands), but that didn't bother Orpheus. Why would he mind if a few dozen fire-elves died of starvation in the forest because they had no wings, or a handful of river-nymphs drifted dead in the water without their scales? He pulled thread after thread out of the fine fabric that Fenoglio had spun and wove patterns of his own, adding them to the old man's tapestry like brightly coloured patches, and growing rich on what his voice could entice out of another man's words.\n\nCurses on him. A thousand and one curses. This was too much.\n\n'I won't do anything for you any more! I won't do anything at all!' Farid wiped the moist earth from his hands and tried to climb out of the hole, but at a gesture from Orpheus Oss pushed him roughly back again.\n\n'Dig!' he grunted.\n\n'Dig yourself!' Farid was trembling in his sweaty tunic, though whether with cold or rage he couldn't have said. 'Your fine master is just a fraud! He's already been in jail for his lies, and that's where he'll end up again!'\n\nOrpheus narrowed his eyes. He didn't like to have that chapter in his life mentioned at all.\n\n'I bet you were the sort who cons money out of old ladies' pockets. And here you are all puffed up like a bullfrog, just because your lies are suddenly coming true. You suck up to the Milksop, because he's Adderhead's brother-in-law, and think yourself cleverer than anyone else! But what can you really do? Write fairies here who look like they've fallen into a vat of dye, chests full of treasure, and jewellery made of elves' wings for him. But you can't do what we brought you here for, you can't do that. Dustfinger is dead. He's dead. He \u2013 is \u2013 still \u2013 dead!'\n\nAnd now here came those wretched tears again. Farid wiped them away with his dirty fingers, while the Chunk stared down at him as blankly as only someone can who doesn't understand a word of what's being said. And how could he? What did Oss know about the words Orpheus was collecting on the sly, what did he know about the book and Orpheus's voice?\n\n'No one brought me here for anything!' Orpheus leant over the edge of the pit as if to spit the words into Farid's face. 'And I certainly don't have to listen to any lectures about Dustfinger from the boy who caused his death! Have you forgotten how he sacrificed himself for you? Why, I knew his name before you were even born, and I and no one else will bring him back, after you so drastically removed him from this story... but how and when I do it will be my own decision. Now dig. Or do you think, you brilliant example of the wisdom of Arabia \u2013' Farid thought he felt the words slicing through him \u2013 'do you think I'll be more likely to write if I can't pay my maids and I have to wash my own clothes?'\n\nDamn him. Damn him to hell. Farid bowed his head so that Orpheus wouldn't see his tears. The boy who caused his death...\n\n'Tell me why I keep paying minstrels good silver for their pitiful songs. Because I've forgotten Dustfinger? No. It's because you still haven't managed to find out how and where in this world I can speak to the White Women who have him now! So I go on listening to bad songs, I stand beside dying beggars, I bribe the healers in the infirmaries to call me when a patient is at death's door. Of course, it would be much easier if you could summon the White Women with fire, like your master, but we've tried that often enough and got nowhere, right? If at least they'd visit you, as it seems they like to visit those they've touched once with death already \u2013 but no! The fresh chicken blood I put outside the door was no use either, and nor were the children's bones I bought from a gravedigger for a bag of silver after the guards at the gate told you that was sure to raise a dozen White Women at once!'\n\nYes, yes! Farid wanted to put his hands over his ears. Orpheus was right. They'd tried everything, but the White Women simply didn't appear to them, and who else was to tell Orpheus how to bring Dustfinger back from the dead?\n\nWithout a word, Farid pulled his spade out of the ground and began digging again.\n\nHe had blisters on his hands by the time he finally struck wood. The chest he pulled out of the ground wasn't very large, but like the last one it was filled to the brim with silver coins. Farid had been listening when Orpheus read it there: Under the gallows on the Dark Hill, long before the Prince of Sighs had the oaks there felled for his son's coffin, a band of highwaymen had buried a casket of silver in the ground. Then they killed each other in a quarrel, but the silver still lay there in the earth with their bones bleaching above it.\n\nThe wood of the chest was rotten and, as with the other treasures he had dug up, Farid wondered whether the silver might not have been lying under the gallows even before Orpheus wrote his words. If asked such questions Cheeseface would only smile knowingly, but Farid doubted whether he really knew the answer.\n\n'There you are! Now who's talking? That ought to last another month.' Orpheus's smile was so self-satisfied that Farid would have liked to wipe it off his face with a spadeful of earth. Another month! The silver he and the Chunk were putting into leather bags would have filled the hungry bellies of everyone in Ombra for months to come.\n\n'How much longer is this going to take? The hangman's probably already on his way with fresh gallows fodder.' When Orpheus was nervous his voice sounded less impressive.\n\nWithout a word Farid tied up another bag full to bursting, kicked the empty chest back into the pit, and gave the hanged men one last glance. There had been a gallows on the Dark Hill before, but it was the Milksop who had declared it the main place of execution again. The stink of corpses drifted up to the castle too often from the gallows outside the city gate, and the stench didn't go well with the fine dishes that the Adderhead's brother-in-law ate while Ombra went hungry.\n\n'Have you found me some minstrels for this afternoon?'\n\nFarid just nodded as he followed Orpheus, carrying the heavy bags.\n\n'The one you got me yesterday was ugly as sin!' Orpheus got Oss to help him up on to his horse. 'Like a scarecrow come to life! And most of what came out of his toothless mouth was the usual old stuff: beautiful princess loves poor strolling player, tralalala, handsome prince's son falls in love with peasant's daughter, tralalalee... not a word about the White Women for me to use.'\n\nFarid was only half listening. He didn't think much of the strolling players any more. Most of them sang and danced for the Milksop these days, and they had voted the Black Prince out of his position as their king because he was openly hostile to the occupying army.\n\n'All the same,' Orpheus went on, 'the scarecrow did know a couple of new songs about the Bluejay. It cost me a pretty penny to worm them out of him, and he sang them as quietly as if the Milksop in person were standing under my window, but one of them I'd really never heard before. Are you still sure Fenoglio isn't writing again?'\n\n'Perfectly sure.' Farid slung his rucksack on his back and whistled softly through his teeth, as Dustfinger always used to. Jink shot out from under the gallows with a dead mouse in his jaws. Only the younger marten had stayed with Farid. Gwin was with Roxane, Dustfinger's wife \u2013 as if he wanted to be where his master was most likely to go if Death's pale fingers really did give him up.\n\n'Just why are you so sure?' Orpheus twisted his mouth in distaste as Jink jumped up on Farid's shoulder and disappeared inside the rucksack. Cheeseface disliked the marten, but tolerated him, presumably because he had once belonged to Dustfinger.\n\n'Rosenquartz says he isn't writing any more, and as Fenoglio's glass man he should know, right?'\n\nIn fact, Rosenquartz was always complaining of his hard life now that Fenoglio was back in Minerva's attic room, and Farid himself cursed the steep wooden staircase every time Orpheus sent him to question Fenoglio about things that Orpheus couldn't find in his original book. What lands lay south of the sea bordering Argenta? Is the prince who rules northern Lombrica related to the Adderhead's wife? Where exactly do the giants live, or have they died out now? Do the predatory fish in the rivers eat river-nymphs?\n\nSometimes Fenoglio wouldn't even let Farid in after he'd toiled up all those stairs, but now and then he would have drunk so much that he was in a talkative mood. On those days the old man overwhelmed him with such a torrent of information that Farid's head was spinning by the time he came back to Orpheus \u2013 who then questioned him all over again. It was enough to drive you crazy. But every time Orpheus and Fenoglio tried communicating with each other directly they started to quarrel within a few minutes.\n\n'Good. Excellent! It would complicate matters if the old man took to liking words better than wine again! His last notions led to nothing but hopeless confusion...' Orpheus picked up the reins and looked at the sky. It was going to be another rainy day, grey and dismal as the faces of the people of Ombra. 'Masked robbers, books of immortality, a prince returning from the dead!' Shaking his head, he rode his horse towards the path to Ombra. 'Who knows what he'd have thought up next! Better for Fenoglio to drink away what few wits he has left. I'll see to his story myself. After all, I understand it a great deal better than he does.'\n\nFarid had stopped listening as he dragged his donkey out of the bushes. Let Cheeseface talk away. Farid didn't care who wrote the words to bring Dustfinger back, just so long as he did come back in the end! Even if the whole wretched story went to hell in the process.\n\nAs usual, the donkey tried to bite Farid when he swung himself up on to its bony back. Cheeseface was riding one of the finest horses in Ombra. Despite his podgy figure, he was a good horseman \u2013 but of course, mean as he was, he'd bought only a donkey for Farid, a vicious animal so old that its head was bald. Even two donkeys couldn't have carried the Chunk, so Oss trotted along beside Orpheus like an overgrown dog, his face sweating with the effort of running up and down the narrow paths through the hills around Ombra.\n\n'Good. So Fenoglio isn't writing any more.' Orpheus liked to think out loud. It sometimes seemed as if he couldn't put his ideas in order unless he heard his own voice at the same time. 'But where do all the stories about the Bluejay come from, then? The widows he protects, silver left on poor folk's doorsteps, poached meat on the plates of fatherless children... is all that really Mo's own doing, or did Fenoglio write a few words by way of giving him a helping hand?'\n\nA cart came towards them. Cursing, Orpheus turned his horse towards the thorny bushes, and the Chunk stared up with a silly grin at the two boys kneeling in the cart, hands tied behind their backs, faces pinched with fear. One of them had eyes even brighter than Meggie's, and neither of them was older than Farid. Of course not. If they'd been older they would have gone with Cosimo on the disastrous expedition against the Adderhead that got all the men killed, and they'd be dead by now too. But presumably that was no comfort to them this morning. Their bodies would be visible from Ombra, a dreadful example to all who were tempted by hunger to go poaching.\n\nDid people die on the gallows too quickly for the White Women to come? Farid instinctively put his hand to his back, where Basta's knife had gone in. They hadn't come to him, had they? He didn't remember. He didn't even remember the pain, only Meggie's face when he regained consciousness, and how he had turned to see Dustfinger lying there... 'Why don't you just write that they come and take me away instead of him?' he had asked Orpheus, who merely laughed out loud. 'You? Do you seriously think the White Women would exchange the Fire-Dancer for a rascally thief like you? No, we'll have to offer them tastier bait than that.'\n\nThe bags of silver jogged up and down beside Orpheus's saddle as he spurred his horse on, and Oss's face was so red with effort that it looked as if it would explode on his fleshy neck any moment now.\n\nCurses on Cheeseface! Yes, Meggie had better send him back to his own world, thought Farid as he dug his heels into the donkey's sides. And the sooner the better! But who was going to write the words for her? And who but Orpheus could bring Dustfinger back from the dead?\n\nHe'll never come back, a voice whispered inside him. Dustfinger is dead, Farid. Dead.\n\nSo? he snapped back at the quiet voice. What does that mean in this world? I came back, didn't I?\n\nIf only he could remember the way."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ink-Clothes",
                "text": "\u2003It seems only yesterday I used to believe\n\n\u2003there was nothing under my skin but light.\n\n\u2003If you cut me I would shine.\n\n\u2003But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,\n\n\u2003I skin my knees. I bleed.\n\n\u2014Billy Collins, On Turning Ten\n\nA new morning woke Meggie, with pale light that fell on her face, and air as fresh as if no one had ever breathed it before. The fairies were twittering outside her window like birds that had learned to talk, and a bluejay screeched somewhere \u2013 if it really was a bluejay. The Strong Man could imitate any bird's call so well that it sounded as if the real thing were nesting in his broad chest. And they all answered him: larks, mockingbirds, woodpeckers, nightingales, and Gecko's tame crows.\n\nMo was awake too. She heard his voice outside \u2013 and her mother's. Could Farid have come at last? She quickly rose from the straw mattress she slept on (what had sleeping in a bed felt like? She could hardly remember) and went to the window. She'd been waiting for Farid for days. He had promised to come. However, she saw no one out in the yard but her parents and the Strong Man, who smiled at her when he saw her standing at the window.\n\nMo was helping Resa to saddle one of the horses that had been waiting in the stables when they first came here. The horses were so beautiful that they must once have belonged to one of the Milksop's high-born friends, but as with many of the things the Black Prince brought, Meggie tried not to think too much about how they fell into the robbers' hands. She loved the Black Prince, Battista and the Strong Man, but some of the others sent a shudder down her spine. Men like Snapper and Gecko, for instance, although the same men had rescued her and her parents on Mount Adder. 'Robbers are robbers, Meggie,' Farid often said. 'The Prince does what he does for other people, but several of his men just want to fill their pockets without having to toil in the fields or in a workshop.' Farid... she missed him so much that she felt ashamed of it.\n\nHer mother was looking pale. Resa had often been sick over the last few days. That must be why she wanted to ride over and see Roxane. No one knew what to do in such cases better than Dustfinger's widow, except perhaps for the Barn Owl, but he himself hadn't been particularly well since the death of Dustfinger, and especially since the Adderhead had burnt down the infirmary he'd run for so many years on the other side of the forest. No one knew what had become of Bella and all the other healers there.\n\nA mouse, horned like Dustfinger's marten, scurried past as Meggie went outside, and a fairy whirred towards her and snatched at her hair, but by now Meggie knew just how to shoo them away. The colder the weather, the fewer fairies ventured out of their nests, but they were still on the hunt for human hair. 'Nothing keeps them warmer,' Battista always said. 'Except for bears' hair, and it's dangerous to pull that out.'\n\nThe morning was so cool that Meggie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. The clothes the robbers had found for them weren't as warm as the sweaters she'd have worn on a day like this in the other world, and she thought almost wistfully of the warm socks waiting for her in Elinor's cupboards.\n\nMo turned and smiled as she came towards him. He looked tired but happy to see her. He wasn't sleeping much. Often he would work late into the night in his makeshift workshop, using the few tools that Fenoglio had found him. And he was always going out into the forest, either alone or with the Prince. He thought Meggie didn't know, but several times when she had been standing by the window unable to sleep, waiting for Farid, she had seen the robbers come for him. They called to Mo with the bluejay's cry. Meggie heard it almost every night.\n\n'Are you feeling any better?' She looked at her mother anxiously. 'Perhaps it was those mushrooms we found the other day.'\n\n'No, it definitely wasn't the mushrooms.' Resa looked at Mo and smiled. 'Roxane is sure to know a herb that will help. Would you like to come with me? Brianna might be there, she doesn't work for Orpheus every day.'\n\nBrianna. Why would Meggie want to see her? Because they were almost the same age? After Cosimo's death and the massacre of Ombra's menfolk, Her Ugliness had thrown Brianna out as a belated punishment for having favoured Cosimo's company over hers. So Brianna had come home to help Roxane in the fields at first, but now she was working for Orpheus. Just like Farid. By this time Orpheus had half a dozen maids. Farid said sarcastically that Cheeseface didn't even have to comb his own thin hair any more. Orpheus hired only beautiful girls, and Brianna was very beautiful, so beautiful that beside her Meggie felt like a duck next to a swan. To make it even worse, Brianna was Dustfinger's daughter. 'So? I don't even speak to her,' Farid had said when Meggie asked about her. 'She hates me, just like her mother.' Still, he saw Brianna almost every day... and all the others. And it was almost two weeks since he had been to see Meggie.\n\n'Well, are you coming with me?' Resa was still looking enquiringly at her, and Meggie felt herself blushing as if her mother had overheard all her thoughts.\n\n'No,' she said, 'no, I think I'd rather stay here. The Strong Man will be riding with you, won't he?'\n\n'Of course.' The Strong Man had made it his business to protect Meggie and Resa. Meggie wasn't sure whether Mo had asked him to, or whether he simply did it to show his devotion to the Bluejay.\n\nResa let him help her up on to the horse. She often complained of the difficulty of riding in a dress, and how much rather she'd have worn men's clothes in this world. 'I'll be back before dark,' she told Mo. 'And maybe Roxane will have something to help you sleep better at night, too.'\n\nThen she disappeared among the trees with the Strong Man, and Meggie was alone with Mo, just as she had been in the old days when there were only the two of them.\n\n'She really isn't well!'\n\n'Don't worry, Roxane will know what to do.' Mo glanced at the old bakehouse that he had made into his workshop. What were those black clothes he was wearing? Meggie wondered. 'I have to go out myself, but I'll be back this evening. Gecko and Battista are in the stables, and the Prince is going to send Woodenfoot to be here too while the Strong Man's gone. Those three will look after you better than I can.'\n\nWhat was it she heard in his voice? A lie? He'd changed since Mortola all but killed him. He was more reserved, and often as abstracted as if part of him had been left behind in the cave where he almost died, or in the tower prison in the Castle of Night.\n\n'Where are you going? I'll come with you.' Meggie felt him start nervously as she put her arm through his. 'What's the matter?'\n\n'Nothing, nothing at all.' He picked at his black sleeve and avoided her eyes.\n\n'You've been out with the Prince again. I saw him in the farmyard last night. What happened?'\n\n'It's nothing, Meggie. Really it isn't.' He stroked her hair, an absent expression on his face, then turned and made for the bakehouse.\n\n'Nothing at all?' Meggie followed him. The doorway was so low that Mo had to bend his head. 'Where did you get those black clothes?'\n\n'It's a bookbinder's outfit. Battista made it for me.'\n\nHe went over to the table where he worked. Some leather lay on it, a few sheets of parchment, some thread, a knife, and the slim volume into which he had bound Resa's drawings over the last few weeks: pictures of fairies, fire-elves and glass men, of the Black Prince and the Strong Man, Battista and Roxane. There was one of Farid too. The book was tied up as if Mo were taking it with him. The book, the black clothes...\n\nOh, she knew him so well.\n\n'No, Mo!' Meggie snatched the book away and hid it behind her back. He might be able to deceive Resa but he couldn't deceive her.\n\n'What is it?' He was trying really hard to look as if he had no idea what she meant. He was better at pretending than he used to be.\n\n'You're planning to go to Ombra to see Balbulus. Are you out of your mind? It's far too dangerous!'\n\nFor a moment Mo actually considered telling her more lies, but then he sighed. 'All right, I still can't fool you! I thought it might be easier now you're almost grown up. Stupid of me.'\n\nHe put his arms round her and gently removed the book from her hands. 'Yes, I want to see Balbulus. Before the books you've told me so much about are sold. Fenoglio will smuggle me into the castle as a bookbinder. How many casks of wine do you think the Milksop can buy for a book? They say half the library's gone already to pay for his banquets!'\n\n'Mo, it's too dangerous! Suppose someone recognizes you?'\n\n'Who? No one in Ombra has ever seen me.'\n\n'One of the soldiers could remember you from the dungeon in the Castle of Night. And they say Sootbird's in Ombra too! A few black clothes aren't likely to deceive him.'\n\n'Oh, come on! When Sootbird last saw me I was half dead. And another encounter with me will be the worse for him.' His face, more familiar to her than any other, suddenly became the face of a stranger \u2013 and not for the first time. Cold, chilly.\n\n'Don't look at me like that!' he said, smiling the chill away. But the smile didn't linger. 'Do you know, my own hands seem strange to me, Meggie.' He held them out to her as if she could see the change in them. 'They do things I didn't even know they could do \u2013 and they do those things well.'\n\nMeggie looked at his hands as if they were another man's. She had so often seen them cutting paper, stitching pages together, stretching leather \u2013 or putting a plaster on her knee when she had cut it. But she knew only too well what Mo meant. She'd watched him often enough practising behind the farm outbuildings with Battista or the Strong Man \u2013 with the sword he had carried ever since they were in the Castle of Night. Firefox's sword. Now he could make it dance as if his hands knew it as well as a paperknife or a bone folder for the pages in a book.\n\nThe Bluejay.\n\n'I think I ought to remind my hands of their real trade, Meggie. I'd like to remind myself of it too. Fenoglio has told Balbulus that he's found someone to repair and present his books as they deserve. But Balbulus wants to see this bookbinder before entrusting his works to him. That's why I'm going to ride to the castle and prove that I know my craft as well as he knows his. It's your own fault I can't wait to see his workshop with my own eyes at last! Do you remember all you told me about Balbulus and his brushes and pens, up in the tower of the Castle of Night?' He imitated her voice. He's an illuminator, Mo! In Ombra Castle! The best of them all. You should see his brushes, and his paints.\n\n'Yes,' she whispered. 'Yes, I remember.' She even remembered what he had replied: I'd really like to see those brushes. But she also remembered how afraid she had been for him back then.\n\n'Does Resa know where you're going?' She put her hand on his chest, where there was only a scar now as a reminder that he had almost died.\n\nHe didn't need to answer. His guilty look said clearly enough that he hadn't told her mother anything about his plans. Meggie looked at the tools lying on the table. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to remind his hands of their trade. Maybe he could also play that part in this world, the part that he'd loved so much in the other one, even if it was said that the Milksop considered books even more unnecessary than boils on the face. But Ombra belonged to the Adderhead. His soldiers were everywhere. Suppose one of them recognized the man who had been their dark lord's prisoner a few months ago?\n\n'Mo...' The words were on the tip of Meggie's tongue. She had often thought them over these last few days but never ventured to speak them aloud, because she wasn't sure whether she really meant them. 'Don't you sometimes think we ought to go back? I do. Back to Elinor and Darius. I know I persuaded you to stay, but... but the Adderhead is still looking for you, and you go out at night with the robbers. Maybe Resa doesn't notice, but I do! We've seen it all, the fairies and nymphs, the Wayless Wood and the glass men...' It was so difficult to find the right words, words which could also explain to her what she herself was feeling. 'Perhaps... perhaps it's time. I know Fenoglio isn't writing any more, but we could ask Orpheus. He's jealous of you anyway. I'm sure he'd be glad if we went away and left him the only reader in this story!'\n\nMo just looked at her, and Meggie knew his answer. They had changed places. Now he was the one who didn't want to go back. On the table, with the coarsely-made paper and the knives provided by Fenoglio, lay a bluejay's tail feather.\n\n'Come here!' Mo perched on the edge of the table and drew her to his side, the way he had done countless times when she was a little girl. That was long ago, so long ago! As if it were in another story, and the Meggie in it was a different Meggie. But when Mo put his arm around her shoulders she was back in that story for a moment, feeling safe, protected, without the longing that now felt as if it had always lived in her heart... the longing for a boy with black hair and soot on his fingers.\n\n'I know why you want to go back,' said Mo quietly. He might have changed, but he could still read her thoughts as easily as his own. 'How long since Farid was last here? Five days? Six?'\n\n'Twelve,' said Meggie in a miserable voice, and buried her face against his shoulder.\n\n'Twelve? What a faithless fellow. Shall we ask the Strong Man to tie a few knots in his skinny arms?'\n\nMeggie had to laugh. What would she do if someday Mo wasn't there any more to make her laugh?\n\n'I haven't seen it all yet, Meggie,' he said. 'I still haven't seen Balbulus's books, and they matter the most. Handwritten books, Meggie, illuminated books, not stained by the dust of endless years, not yellowing and trimmed again and again... no, the paint has only just dried on their pages, the bindings are supple. Who knows, maybe Balbulus will even let me watch him at work for a while. Imagine it! I've so often wished that I could see one of those tiny faces being painted on the parchment, just once, and the tendrils beginning to twine around an initial, and...'\n\nMeggie couldn't help it, she had to smile. 'All right, all right,' she said, and put her hand over his mouth. 'All right,' she repeated. 'We'll ride to see Balbulus, but together.'\n\nAs we used to, she added in her thoughts. Just you and me. And when Mo was about to protest she closed his mouth again. 'You said it yourself! Back in the disused mine.' The mine where Dustfinger had died... Meggie repeated Mo's words in a soft voice. She seemed to remember every word that had been spoken in those days, as if someone had written them on her heart. 'Show me the fairies, Meggie. And the water-nymphs. And the book illuminator in Ombra Castle. Let's find out how fine his brushes really are.'\n\nMo straightened up and began sorting out the tools lying on the table, as he always used to in his workshop in Elinor's garden.\n\n'Yes. Yes, I expect those were my words,' he said, without looking at her. 'But the Adderhead's brother-in-law rules Ombra now. What do you think your mother would say if I put you in such danger?'\n\nHer mother. Yes...\n\n'Resa doesn't have to know. Please, Mo! You must take me with you! Or... or I'll tell Gecko to tell the Black Prince what you're planning. Then you'll never get to Ombra!'\n\nHe turned his face away, but Meggie heard him laughing softly. 'That's blackmail. Did I teach you how to be a blackmailer?'\n\nWith a sigh, he turned back and looked at her for a long time. 'Oh, very well,' he said at last. 'Let's go to see the pens and brushes together. After all, we were together in the Adderhead's Castle of Night. Ombra Castle can't be so very dark by comparison, can it \u2013 although his brother-in-law rules it now?'\n\nHe stroked his black sleeve. 'I'm glad bookbinders here don't wear a costume as yellow as glue,' he said, as he put the book of Resa's drawings into a saddlebag. 'As for your mother \u2013 I'll fetch her from Roxane's after we've been to the castle, but don't tell her anything about our expedition. I expect you've guessed why she feels sick in the mornings, haven't you?'\n\nMeggie looked at him blankly \u2013 and then suddenly seemed to herself very, very stupid.\n\n'A brother or a sister? Which would you rather have?' Mo looked so happy. 'Poor Elinor. Did you know she's been waiting for that news ever since we moved in with her? And now we've taken the baby away to another world with us.'\n\nA brother or a sister. For a while, when Meggie was little, she had pretended she had an invisible sister. She used to make her daisy tea and bake sand cakes.\n\n'But... how long have you two known?'\n\n'The baby comes from the same story as you do, if that's what you mean. From Elinor's house, to be precise. A flesh and blood child, not made of words, not made of ink and paper. Although... who knows? Perhaps we've only slipped out of one story and into another. What do you think?'\n\nMeggie looked around, saw the table, the tools, the feather \u2013 and Mo's black clothes. Wasn't all this made of words? Fenoglio's words. The house, the farmyard, the sky above them, the trees, the rocks, the rain, the sun and the moon. Yes, what about us? Meggie thought. What are we made of? Resa, me, Mo and the baby on its way. She didn't know the answer any more. Had she ever known it?\n\nIt seemed as if the things around her were whispering of all that would be and all that had been, and when Meggie looked at her hands she felt as if she could read letters there, letters saying: and then a new child was born."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fenoglio Feels Sorry for Himself",
                "text": "\u2003'What is it?' Harry asked shakily.\n\n\u2003'This? This is called a Pensieve,' said Dumbledore. 'I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.'\n\n\u2014J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\n\nFenoglio was lying in bed, as he had so often in these last few weeks. Or was it months? It didn't matter. Morosely, he looked up at the fairies' nests above his head. They had all been abandoned except one, which poured out a constant stream of chattering and giggling. It shimmered in iridescent colours like a patch of oil on water. Orpheus's doing! The fairies in this world were blue, for heaven's sake! It said so in black and white in his book. What did that idiot think he was doing, creating fairies in all the colours of the rainbow? And to make it even worse, the rainbow-coloured fairies drove away the blue ones wherever they went. Rainbow-coloured fairies, spotted brownies, and apparently there were some four-armed glass men around the place too. Fenoglio's head ached at the mere thought of it. And not an hour passed when he didn't think of it, and wonder what Orpheus was writing now in his fine big house, where he held court as if he were the most important man in Ombra!\n\nFenoglio sent Rosenquartz to spy on the place almost every day, but it couldn't be said that the glass man showed much talent for the job. Far from it. Fenoglio also suspected that Rosenquartz sometimes stole off to Seamstresses' Alley to chase glass women instead of going to Orpheus's house. Your fault, Fenoglio, he told himself grumpily, you should have written a little more sense of duty into their glass heads. Which is not, I am afraid, the only thing you omitted to do...\n\nHe was reaching for the jug of red wine standing by his bed to comfort himself for this depressing fact when a small, rather breathless figure appeared at the skylight above. At last. Rosenquartz's limbs, usually pale pink, had turned carmine. Glass men couldn't sweat. They just changed colour if they'd been making a strenuous effort, another rule that Fenoglio himself had made, although with the best will in the world he couldn't now say why. But what did the foolish fellow think he was doing, clambering over the roof tops like that, with limbs that would smash if the stupid creature so much as fell off a table? A glass man certainly wasn't the ideal spy, but then again their small size made them very inconspicuous \u2013 and, fragile as their limbs were, their transparency undoubtedly came in useful on secret reconnaissance missions.\n\n'Well, what's he writing? Come on, out with it!' Fenoglio picked up the jug and made his way over to the glass man barefoot. Rosenquartz demanded a thimbleful of red wine in return for his spying activities, which \u2013 as he never tired of emphasizing\u2013 were not among the standard duties of a glass man, and thus called for extra payment. The thimble of wine wasn't too high a price, Fenoglio had to admit, but then so far Rosenquartz hadn't found out very much, and in addition the wine disagreed with him. It made him even more contrary than usual \u2013 and had him belching for hours on end.\n\n'Can't I even get my breath back before making my report?' he snapped.\n\nThat was Rosenquartz for you: contrary. And always so quick to take offence!\n\n'You're breathing now, aren't you? And you can obviously talk as well!' Fenoglio plucked the glass man off the thread that he had fastened to the skylight so that Rosenquartz could let himself down from it, and carried him over to the table. He'd exchanged his writing desk for it in the marketplace.\n\n'I repeat,' he said, giving Rosenquartz his thimbleful from the wine jug, 'what is he writing?'\n\nRosenquartz sniffed the wine and wrinkled his nose, which was now dark red. 'Your wine is getting worse and worse!' he observed in injured tones. 'I ought to ask for some other kind of fee!'\n\nAnnoyed, Fenoglio removed the thimble from his glass hands. 'You haven't even earned this one yet!' he thundered. 'Admit it, once again you haven't found anything out. Not the least little thing.'\n\nThe glass man folded his arms. 'Oh, haven't I?'\n\nIt was enough to drive a man crazy. And you couldn't even shake him for fear of breaking off an arm, or even his head.\n\nLooking grim, Fenoglio put the thimble back on the table.\n\nRosenquartz dipped his finger in and licked the wine off it. 'He's written himself another treasure.'\n\n'What, yet again? For heaven's sake, he gets through more silver than the Milksop!' It always annoyed Fenoglio that he hadn't thought of that idea himself. On the other hand, he'd have needed someone to read his words aloud and turn them into jingling coins, and he wasn't sure whether Meggie or her father would have lent their tongues to something so prosaic. 'Right. A treasure. What else?'\n\n'Oh, he's certainly writing something, but he doesn't seem very pleased with it. Did I tell you before that he has two glass men working for him now? You remember the four-armed one he was boasting of all over town?' Rosenquartz lowered his voice as if his next words were too terrible to be spoken. 'They say he threw him at the wall in a rage! Everyone in Ombra's heard about it, but Orpheus pays well \u2013' Fenoglio ignored the glass man's reproachful gaze as he made this remark \u2013 'so now he has these two brothers working for him, Jasper and Ironstone. The elder brother's a monster! He\u2014'\n\n'Two? What does that fool want two glass men for? Is he so busy mucking about with my story that one isn't enough to sharpen his quills for him?' Fenoglio felt anger turning his stomach, although it was good news that the four-armed glass man had come to grief. Perhaps it was beginning to dawn on Orpheus that his creations weren't worth the paper he wrote them on.\n\n'Good. Tell me more.'\n\nRosenquartz said nothing. He had folded his arms with an injured expression. He didn't like being interrupted.\n\n'Good God, don't be so coy about it!' Fenoglio pushed the wine a little closer to him. 'What else is he writing? Exotic new prey for the Milksop to hunt? Horned lapdogs for the ladies at court? Or maybe he's decided my world could do with some spotted dwarves?'\n\nRosenquartz dipped his finger in the wine again. 'You'll have to buy me new trousers,' he remarked. 'I tore these with all that horrible climbing about. They're worn out anyway. It's all right for you to go around however you please, but I didn't come to live with humans just to be worse dressed than my cousins in the forest.'\n\nThere were days when Fenoglio would gladly have snapped the glass man in half. 'Trousers? Why would I be interested in your trousers?' he asked tartly.\n\nRosenquartz took a deep draught from the thimble \u2013 and spat the wine out on to his glass feet. 'Pure vinegar!' he said crossly. 'Did I get bones thrown at me for this? Did I make my way through pigeon droppings and over broken tiles for this? Don't look so sceptical. That Ironstone threw chicken bones at me when he caught me looking at Orpheus's papers! He tried to push me out of the window!'\n\nSighing, he wiped the wine off his feet. 'Very well. There was something about horned wild boar, but I could hardly decipher it, and then something else about singing fish \u2013 pretty silly stuff, if you ask me \u2013 and quite a lot about the White Women. Four-Eyes is obviously collecting everything the strolling players sing about them...'\n\n'Yes, yes, all Ombra knows! Did it take you so long just to find that out?' Fenoglio buried his face in his hands. The wine really wasn't much good. His head seemed heavier every day. Damn it!\n\nRosenquartz took another mouthful, even though he made a face as he swallowed it. That glass idiot! He'd have another bellyache by tomorrow, if not sooner. 'Well, never mind that. This is my last report!' he announced between belches. 'I'm never going spying again! Not as long as that Ironstone works there. He's as strong as a brownie, and they say he's already broken the arms off at least two glass men!'\n\n'Yes, yes, all right. You're a terrible spy anyway,' muttered Fenoglio as he staggered back to his bed. 'Admit it, you're far keener to chase the glass women in Seamstresses' Alley. Just don't think I don't know about it!'\n\nWith a groan, he lay down on his straw mattress and stared up at the empty fairies' nests. Was there any more wretched existence than the life of a writer who had run out of words? Was there a worse fate than having to watch someone else twist your own words, adding colourful touches \u2013 in very bad taste \u2013 to the world you'd made? No room in the castle for him now as court poet, no chest full of fine clothes, no horse of his own \u2013 no, he was back in the little room in Minerva's attic. And it was a marvel that she'd taken him in again, considering that his words and songs had made sure she had no husband now, and no father for her children. All Ombra knew what part Fenoglio had played in Cosimo's war. It was amazing they hadn't hauled him out of bed yet and killed him, but no doubt the women of Ombra had their hands too full keeping starvation at bay. 'Where else would you go?' was all Minerva had said when she opened her door to find him standing there. 'They don't need a poet up at the castle now. I suppose they'll be singing the Piper's songs in future.' And there, of course, she was right. The Milksop loved the silver-nosed man's bloodthirsty verses \u2013 when he wasn't composing a few poorly rhymed lines himself, all about his hunting prowess.\n\nLuckily, at least Violante sent for Fenoglio now and then, never guessing, of course, that he brought her words stolen from poets in another world. But Her Ugliness didn't pay particularly well. The Adderhead's own daughter was poorer than the new governor's court ladies, so Fenoglio also worked as a scribe in the marketplace, which naturally had Rosenquartz telling anyone who would listen how low his master had sunk. But who paid any attention to a glass man's chirping little voice? Let the silly transparent fellow talk! Fenoglio had forsworn words for ever, no matter how invitingly Rosenquartz laid a blank piece of parchment on the table every evening. He was never going to write a single word again \u2013 except those he stole from others, and the dry, bloodless twaddle he had to put down on paper or parchment for wills, sales agreements and similar stuff. The time for living words was over. They were deceitful, murderous, bloodsucking monsters black as ink and bringing nothing but misfortune. He wasn't going to help them do it any more, not he. A walk through the streets of Ombra, empty of men these days, and he needed a whole jug of wine to keep off the gloom that had deprived him of any zest for life since Cosimo's defeat.\n\nBeardless boys, decrepit old men, cripples and beggars, travelling merchants who hadn't yet heard that there wasn't a copper coin to be made in Ombra now, or who did business with those leeches up in the castle \u2013 that was what you saw these days in the once lively streets. Women with eyes reddened from weeping, fatherless children, men from beyond the forest hoping to find a young widow or an abandoned workshop here... and soldiers. Yes, there were plenty of soldiers in Ombra. They took what they wanted, day after day, night after night. No house was safe from them. They called it compensation for war crimes, and they had a point. After all, Cosimo had been the attacker \u2013 Cosimo, his most beautiful and innocent creation (or so, at least, Fenoglio had thought). Now he lay dead in a sarcophagus in the crypt beneath the castle. Minerva claimed that Violante went down there every day, officially to mourn her dead husband but really \u2013 so people whispered \u2013 to meet her informers. They said Her Ugliness didn't even have to pay her spies. Hatred of the Milksop brought them to her by the dozen. Of course. You had only to look at the fellow \u2013 that perfumed, pigeon-breasted hangman, governor only by the grace of his brother-in-law, the Adderhead. If you painted a face on an egg it would bear a striking resemblance to him. And no, Fenoglio hadn't made him up. Once again, the story had produced the Milksop entirely by itself.\n\nAs his first official act, he had ordered a document to be hung up by the castle gates, listing the punishments that would be meted out in Ombra for various crimes from now on \u2013 with pictures, so that those who couldn't read would know what threatened them too. The loss of an eye for this offence, the loss of a hand for that one, whippings, the pillory, branding, blinding. Fenoglio looked away whenever he passed that notice, and when he was out with Minerva's children he put his hand over their eyes if they had to cross the marketplace, where most of the punishments were inflicted (although Ivo always wanted to peek). Of course they could still hear the screams.\n\nLuckily there weren't too many offenders left to be punished in this city without men. Many of the women had left with their children, travelling far away from the Wayless Wood that no longer protected them from the prince who ruled on the other side of it, the immortal Adderhead.\n\nAnd yes, Fenoglio thought, that had undoubtedly been his idea. But more and more rumours were being heard all the time, whispering that the Adderhead took little pleasure in his immortality.\n\nThere was a knock at the door. Who could that be? Oh, the devil, was he forgetting everything these days? Of course! Where was the damn note that crow had brought yesterday evening? Rosenquartz had been scared to death when he'd suddenly seen the bird perching on the skylight. Mortimer was coming to Ombra. Today! And wasn't he, Fenoglio, supposed to meet him outside the castle gates? This visit was a reckless notion. There were 'Wanted' posters up for the Bluejay on every street corner. Luckily the picture on them wasn't in the least like Mortimer, but all the same... Another knock.\n\nRosenquartz stayed where he was, beside his thimble. A glass man wasn't even any good at opening doors! Fenoglio felt sure Orpheus didn't have to open his door for himself. Apparently his new bodyguard was so large he could hardly get through the city gate. Bodyguard! If I ever do write again, thought Fenoglio, I'll get Meggie to read me a giant here, and we'll see what the calf's-head has to say about that.\n\nThe knocking was getting rather impatient.\n\n'Coming, coming!' Fenoglio stumbled over an empty wine jug as he looked for his trousers. Laboriously he climbed into them. How his bones ached! The hell with old age. Why hadn't he written a story in which people were young for ever? Because it would be boring, he thought as he hopped over to the door, one leg in the scratchy trousers. Deadly boring.\n\n'Sorry, Mortimer!' he called. 'The glass man forgot to wake me up at the right time!'\n\nBehind him, Rosenquartz began protesting, but the voice that replied to him outside wasn't Mortimer's \u2013 even if it was almost as beautiful as his. Orpheus. Talk of the devil! What did he want here? Come to complain that Rosenquartz had been in his house spying? If anyone has a reason to complain, I do, thought Fenoglio. After all, it's my story he's plundering and distorting! Miserable calf's-head, milkface, bullfrog, whippersnapper... Fenoglio had many names for Orpheus, none of them flattering.\n\nWasn't it bad enough that he kept sending Farid to bother him? Did he have to come himself? He was sure to ask thousands of stupid questions again. Your own fault, Fenoglio! How often he'd cursed himself for the words he'd written in the mine at Meggie's urging: So he called on another, younger man, Orpheus by name \u2013 skilled in letters, even if he could not yet handle them with the mastery of Fenoglio himself \u2013 and decided to instruct him in his art, as every master does at some time. For a while Orpheus should play with words in his place, seduce and lie with them, create and destroy, banish and restore \u2013 while Fenoglio waited for his weariness to pass, for his pleasure in words to reawaken, and then he would send Orpheus back to the world from which he had summoned him, to keep his story alive with new words never used before.\n\n'I ought to write him back where he came from!' Fenoglio growled as he kicked the empty jug out of his way. 'Right now!'\n\n'Write? Did I hear you say write?' Rosenquartz asked ironically behind him. He was back to his normal colour. Fenoglio threw a dry crust of bread at him, but it missed Rosenquartz's pale pink head by more than a hand's breadth, and the glass man gave a sympathetic sigh.\n\n'Fenoglio? Fenoglio, I know you're in there! Open the door.' God, how he hated that voice. Planting words in his story like weeds. His own words!\n\n'No, I'm not here!' growled Fenoglio. 'Not for you, calf's-head!'\n\nFenoglio, is Death a man or a woman? Were the White Women once living human beings? Fenoglio, how am I to bring Dustfinger back if you can't even tell me the simplest rules of this world? Enough of his questions. For God's sake, who had asked him to bring Dustfinger back? If everything had gone the way Fenoglio had originally written it, the man would have been dead long ago in any case. And as for 'the simplest rules', since when, might he ask, were life and death simple? Hang it all (and there was more than enough hanging in Ombra these days anyway), how was he supposed to know how everything worked, in this or any other world? He'd never thought much about death, or what came after it. Why bother? While you were alive, why would death interest you? And once you were dead \u2013 well, presumably you weren't interested in anything any more.\n\n'Of course he's there! Fenoglio?' That was Minerva's voice. Damn it, the calf's-head had roped her in to help him. Cunning. At least Orpheus was far from stupid.\n\nFenoglio hid the empty wine jugs under the bed, forced his other leg into his trousers, and unbolted the door.\n\n'So there you are!' Minerva inspected him disapprovingly from his uncombed head to his bare feet. 'I told your visitor you were at home.' How sad she looked. Weary too. These days she was working in the castle kitchen, where Fenoglio had asked Violante to find her a job. But the Milksop had a preference for feasting by night, so Minerva often didn't get home until the early hours of the morning. Very likely she'd drop dead of exhaustion some day and leave her poor children orphans. It was a wretched situation. What had become of his wonderful Ombra?\n\n'Fenoglio!' Orpheus pushed past Minerva with that ghastly, innocent smile he always had ready as camouflage. Of course he'd brought notes with him again, notes full of questions. How did he pay for the fine clothes he wore? Fenoglio himself had never worn such clothes, not even in his days of glory as court poet. Ah, he thought, but you forgot the treasures he's writing for himself, didn't you, Fenoglio?\n\nWithout a word Minerva went down the steep staircase again, and a man made his way through Fenoglio's door behind Orpheus. Even ducking his head, he almost got stuck in the doorway. Aha, the legendary bodyguard. There was even less space in Fenoglio's modest little room with this huge meatball inside it.\n\nFarid, on the other hand, didn't take up much space, although so far he had played a big part in the story. Farid, Dustfinger's angel of death... he followed his new master through the door hesitantly, as if ashamed to be keeping such company.\n\n'Well now, Fenoglio, I'm truly sorry,' said Orpheus, his supercilious smile giving the lie to his words, 'but I'm afraid I've found a few more inconsistencies.'\n\nInconsistencies!\n\n'I've sent Farid here before with my questions, but you gave him some very strange answers.' Looking portentous, he straightened his glasses and brought the book out from under his heavy velvet coat. Yes, that calf's-head had brought Fenoglio's book with him into the world of the story it told: the very last copy of Inkheart. But had he given it back to him, the author? Oh no. 'I'm sorry, Fenoglio,' was all he had said, with the arrogant expression that he had mastered so perfectly. (Orpheus had been quick to abandon the mask of a diligent student.) 'I'm sorry, but this book is mine. Or do you seriously claim that an author is the rightful owner of every copy of his books?' Puffed-up, milk-faced young upstart! What a way to speak to him, Fenoglio, the creator of everything around Orpheus himself, even the air he breathed!\n\n'Are you after me again for information on death?' Fenoglio squeezed his feet into his worn old boots. 'Why? So that you can go telling this poor boy you'll bring Dustfinger back from the White Women, just to keep him in your service?'\n\nFarid tightened his lips. Dustfinger's marten blinked sleepily on his shoulder \u2013 or was this a different animal?\n\n'What nonsense you talk!' Orpheus sounded distinctly peeved \u2013 he took offence very easily. 'Do I look as if I have any trouble finding servants? I have six maids, a bodyguard, a cook and the boy. You know very well it's not just for the boy I want to bring Dustfinger back. He belongs in this story. It's not half as good without him, it's a flower without petals, a night without stars\u2014'\n\n'A forest without trees?' Fenoglio muttered.\n\nOrpheus turned as red as beetroot. It was so amusing to make fun of the arrogant fop \u2013 one of the few pleasures Fenoglio still had left.\n\n'You're drunk, old man!' Orpheus spat. His voice could sound very unpleasant.\n\n'Drunk or not, I still know a hundred times more about words than you do. You trade at second-hand. You unravel whatever you can find and knit it up again as if a story were a pair of old socks! So don't you tell me what part Dustfinger ought to play in this one. Perhaps you remember I had him dead once already, before he decided to go with the White Women! What do you think you're doing, coming here to lecture me about my own story? Take a look at that, why don't you?' Furiously, he pointed to the shimmering fairies' nest above his bed. 'Rainbow-coloured fairies! Ever since they built their horrible nest up there I've had the most appalling dreams! And they steal the blue fairies' stocks of winter provisions!'\n\n'So?' Orpheus shrugged his plump shoulders. 'They look pretty, all the same, don't they? I thought it was so tedious for all fairies to be blue.'\n\n'Did you, indeed?' Fenoglio's voice rose to such volume that one of the colourful fairies interrupted her constant chatter and peered out of her gaudy nest. 'Then write your own world! This one's mine, understand? Mine! I'm sick and tired of your meddling with it. I admit I've made some mistakes in my life, but writing you here was far and away the worst of them!'\n\nBored, Orpheus inspected his fingernails. They were bitten to the quick. 'I'm not listening to any more of this!' he said in a menacingly soft voice. 'All that stuff about \"you wrote me here\", \"she read me here\" \u2013 nonsense! I'm the one who does the reading and writing around here now. The only one. The words don't obey you any more, old man, it's a long time since they did, and you know it!'\n\n'They'll obey me again! And the first thing I'll write will be a return ticket for you!'\n\n'Oh yes? And who's going to read these fabulous words? As far as I'm aware, you need someone to read them aloud for you. Unlike me.'\n\n'Well?' Fenoglio came so close that Orpheus's long-sighted eyes blinked at him in annoyance. 'I'll ask Mortimer! They don't call him Silvertongue for nothing, even if he goes by another name these days. Ask the boy! If it weren't for Mortimer, he'd still be in the desert shovelling camel dung.'\n\n'Mortimer!' Orpheus produced a derisive smile, although with some difficulty. 'Is your head buried so deep in your wine jug that you don't know what's going on in this world of yours? He's not doing any reading now. The bookbinder prefers to play the outlaw these days \u2013 the role you created especially for him.'\n\nThe bodyguard uttered a grunt, probably meant to be something like laughter. What a ghastly fellow! Had Fenoglio himself written him into the story, or had Orpheus? Fenoglio scrutinized the muscleman for a moment, irritated, and then turned back to his master.\n\n'I did not make it especially for him!' he said. 'It's the other way round: I used Mortimer as my pattern for the character... and from all I hear, he plays his part well. But that doesn't mean the Bluejay no longer has a silver tongue. Not to mention his gifted daughter.'\n\n'Oh yes? And do you know where he is?' Orpheus asked almost casually. He was staring at his fingernails again, while his bodyguard had set to work on what was left of Fenoglio's breakfast.\n\n'Indeed I do. He's coming\u2014' Fenoglio fell abruptly silent as the boy suddenly came up and clapped his hand over the old man's mouth. Why did he keep forgetting the lad's name? Because you're going senile, Fenoglio, he said to himself, that's why.\n\n'No one knows where the Bluejay is!' How reproachfully Farid's black eyes were looking at Fenoglio! 'No one!'\n\nOf course. Damn drunken old fool that he was! How could he have forgotten that Orpheus turned green with jealousy whenever he heard Mortimer's name, or that he went in and out of the Milksop's castle all the time? Fenoglio could have bitten his tongue off.\n\nBut Orpheus smiled. 'Don't look so alarmed, old man! So the bookbinder's coming here. Bold of him. Does he want to make the songs that sing of his daring come true before they hang him? Because that's how he'll meet his end, like all heroes. We both know that, don't we? Don't worry, I don't intend to hand him over ripe for the gallows. Others will do that. No, I just want to talk to him about the White Women. There aren't many who have survived a meeting with them, that's why I really would like a word with him. There are some very interesting rumours about such survivors.'\n\n'I'll tell him if I see him,' replied Fenoglio brusquely. 'But I can't think that he will want to talk to you. After all, I don't suppose he'd ever have met the White Women at all if you hadn't been so willing to read him here for Mortola. Rosenquartz!' He strode to the door with as much dignity as was possible in his shabby boots. 'I have some errands to run. See our guests out, and mind you keep away from that marten!'\n\nFenoglio stumbled down the staircase to the yard almost as fast as he had on the day when Basta had paid him a visit. Mortimer would be waiting outside the castle gates already! Suppose Orpheus found him there when he went to the castle to tell the Milksop what he had heard? The Bluejay was the Governor's mortal enemy.\n\nThe boy caught up with him halfway downstairs. Farid. Yes, that was the name. Of course. Going senile, for sure.\n\n'Is Silvertongue really coming here?' he whispered breathlessly. 'Don't worry, Orpheus won't give him away. Not yet! But Ombra is far too dangerous for him! Is he bringing Meggie with him?'\n\n'Farid!' Orpheus was looking down at them from the top of the stairs as if he were the king of the Inkworld. 'If the old fool doesn't tell Mortimer I want to speak to him, then you do it. Understand?'\n\nOld fool, thought Fenoglio. Oh, ye gods of words, give them back to me so that I can get this damned calf's-head out of my story!\n\nHe wanted to give Orpheus a suitably cutting answer, but not even his tongue could find the right words now, and the boy impatiently hauled him away."
            },
            {
                "title": "Sad Ombra",
                "text": "\u2003My courtiers called me the happy prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery in the city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot choose but weep.\n\n\u2014Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince\n\nFarid had told Meggie how difficult it was to get into Ombra now, and she had passed on everything he said to Mo. 'The guards aren't the harmless fools who used to stand there. If they ask you what you are doing in Ombra, think hard before you answer. Whatever they demand, you must stay humble and submissive. They don't search many people. Sometimes you may even be lucky and they'll just wave you through!'\n\nThey weren't lucky. The guards stopped them, and Meggie felt like clinging to Mo when one of the soldiers gestured to him to dismount and brusquely asked to see a sample of his craft. While the guard looked at the book of her mother's drawings, Meggie wondered in alarm whether she already knew the face under the open helmet from her imprisonment in the Castle of Night, and whether he would find the knife hidden in Mo's belt. They might kill him just for that knife. No one was allowed to carry weapons except the occupiers from Argenta, but Battista had made the belt so well that even the suspicious hands of the guard at the gate could find nothing wrong with it.\n\nMeggie was glad Mo had the knife with him as they rode through the ironbound gates, past the lances of the guards, and into the city that now belonged to the Adderhead.\n\nShe hadn't been in Ombra since she and Dustfinger first set out for the secret camp of the Motley Folk. It seemed an eternity ago that she had run through the streets with Resa's letter telling her that Mortola had shot her father. For a moment she pressed her face against Mo's back, so happy that he was back with her, alive and well. At last she would be able to show him what she'd told him so much about: Balbulus's workshop and the Laughing Prince's books. For one precious moment she forgot all her fears, and it seemed as if the Inkworld belonged only to him and her.\n\nMo liked Ombra. Meggie could see it in his face, from the way he looked around, reining in his horse again and again to look down the streets. Although it was impossible to ignore the mark left on the city by the occupying forces, Ombra was still what the stonemasons had made of it when they first carved its gates, columns and arches. Their works of art couldn't be carried away and broken up \u2013 for then they'd be worth no more than the paving stones in the street. So stone flowers still grew under the windows and balconies of Ombra, tendrils twined around columns and cornices, and faces stuck tongues out of grotesquely distorted mouths from the sand-coloured walls, weeping stony tears. But the Laughing Prince's coat of arms was defaced everywhere, and you could recognize the lion on it only from what was left of its mane.\n\n'The street on the right leads to the marketplace!' Meggie whispered to Mo, and he nodded like a sleepwalker. Very likely he was hearing, in his mind, the words that had once told him about the scene now surrounding him as he rode on. Meggie had heard about the Inkworld only from her mother, but Mo had read Fenoglio's book countless times as he tried again and again to find Resa among the words.\n\n'Is it the way you imagined it?' she asked him quietly.\n\n'Yes,' Mo whispered back. 'Yes \u2013 and no.'\n\nThere was a crowd of people in the marketplace, just as if the peace-loving Laughing Prince still ruled Ombra \u2013 except that there were hardly any men to be seen, and you could stop and watch entertainers again. For the Milksop allowed strolling players into the city, although only \u2013 it was whispered \u2013 if they were prepared to spy for him. Mo rode his horse past a crowd of children. There were many children in Ombra, even though their fathers were dead. Meggie saw a torch whirling through the air above the small heads \u2013 two, three, four torches \u2013 and sparks fading and going out in the cold air. Farid? she wondered, although she knew he'd done no more fire-eating since Dustfinger's death. But Mo suddenly pulled his hood down over his forehead, and then she too saw the familiar well-oiled face with its constant smile.\n\nSootbird.\n\nMeggie's fingers closed on Mo's cloak, but her father rode on, as if the man who had betrayed him once already wasn't there at all. More than a dozen strolling players had lost their lives because Sootbird had revealed the whereabouts of the secret camp, and Mo himself had almost been among the dead. Everyone in Lombrica knew that Sootbird went in and out of the Castle of Night, that he'd been paid for his treachery in silver by the Piper himself and was now also on excellent terms with the Milksop, yet there he stood in Ombra marketplace, smiling, unrivalled now that Dustfinger was dead and Farid had lost his enthusiasm for fire-eating.\n\nOh yes, Ombra certainly had new masters. Nothing could have made that clearer to Meggie than Sootbird's smug, masklike face. It was said that the Adderhead's alchemists had taught him certain things, and that what he played with now was dark fire, wily and deadly like the powders he used to tame it. The Strong Man had told Meggie that its smoke beguiled the senses, making Sootbird's spectators think they were watching the greatest fire-eater on earth.\n\nWhatever the truth of that was, the children of Ombra clapped. The torches didn't fly half as high in the air as they had for Dustfinger or Farid, but for a while the show made them forget their sad mothers, and the work waiting at home.\n\n'Mo, please!' Meggie quickly turned her face away as Sootbird looked in her direction. 'Let's turn back! Suppose he recognizes you?'\n\nThey were going to close the gates, then the two of them would be hunted through the streets like rats in a trap!\n\nBut Mo just shook his head very slightly as he reined in his horse behind one of the market stalls. 'Don't worry, Sootbird is far too busy keeping the fire away from his pretty face!' he whispered to Meggie. 'But let's dismount. We won't be so conspicuous on foot.'\n\nThe horse shied when Mo led it into the crowd, but he soothed it in a quiet voice. Meggie saw a juggler who had once followed the Black Prince among the stalls. Many of the strolling players had changed sides now that the Milksop was filling their pockets. These were not bad times for them, and the market traders did good business too. The women of Ombra couldn't afford any of the wares for sale, but with the money they had extorted the Milksop and his friends bought costly fabrics, jewellery, weapons, and delicacies with names that Fenoglio himself might not know. You could even buy horses here.\n\nMo looked around at the bustling, colourful throng as if he didn't want to miss a single face or any of the wares offered for sale, but finally his gaze turned to the towers rising high above the tiled roof tops, and lingered there. Meggie's heart constricted. He was still determined to go to the castle, and she cursed herself for ever telling him about Balbulus and his art.\n\nShe almost stopped breathing when they passed a 'Wanted' poster for the Bluejay, but Mo just cast a glance of amusement at the picture and ran his hand through his dark hair, which he now wore short like a peasant. Perhaps he thought his carefree attitude would soothe Meggie, but it didn't. It frightened her. When he acted like that he was the Bluejay, a stranger with her father's face.\n\nSuppose one of the soldiers who had guarded him in the Castle of Night was here? Wasn't that one staring at them? And the minstrel woman over there \u2013 didn't she look like one of the women who had gone out through the gates of the Castle of Night with them? Move away, Mo! she thought, willing him to walk on with her through one of the arches, into a street \u2013 any street \u2013 just to be out of sight of all those eyes. Two children clutched her skirt and held out their dirty hands, begging. Meggie smiled at them helplessly. She didn't have any money, not a coin. How hungry they looked! A soldier made his way through the crush and roughly pushed the beggar children aside. If only we were in there with Balbulus, thought Meggie \u2013 and stumbled into Mo as he abruptly stopped.\n\nBeside the stall of a physician who was praising his miracle medicine at the top of his voice, a few boys were standing around a pillory. There was a woman in it, her hands and head wedged in the wood, helpless as a doll. Rotting vegetables stuck to her face and hands, fresh dung, anything the children could find among the stalls.\n\nMeggie had seen such things before, in Fenoglio's company, but Mo stood there as if he had forgotten what he'd come to Ombra for. He was almost as pale as the woman, whose tears mingled with the dirt on her face, and for a moment Meggie was afraid he was going to reach for the knife hidden in his belt.\n\n'Mo!' She took his arm and quickly led him on, away from the gawping children who were already turning to look at him, and into the street going up to the castle.\n\n'Have you seen anything like that before?' The way he was looking at her! As if he couldn't believe she had been able to control herself so well at such a sight.\n\nHis glance made Meggie feel ashamed. 'Yes,' she said awkwardly. 'Yes, a few times. They put people in the pillory during the Laughing Prince's rule too.'\n\nMo was still looking at her. 'Don't tell me you can get used to such sights.'\n\nMeggie bent her head. The answer was yes. Yes, you could.\n\nMo took a deep breath, as if he had forgotten about breathing when he saw the weeping woman. Then he walked on in silence. He didn't say a word until they reached the castle forecourt.\n\nThere was another pillory right beside the castle gates, with a boy in it. Fire-elves had settled on his bare skin. Mo handed Meggie the horse's reins before she could stop him, and went over to the boy. Ignoring the guards at the gateway, who were staring at him, and the women passing by who turned their heads away in alarm, he shooed the fire-elves off the boy's skinny arms. The boy just looked at him incredulously. There was nothing to be seen on his face but fear, fear and shame. And Meggie remembered a story that Farid had told her, of how Dustfinger and the Black Prince had once been in the pillory together, side by side, when they were not much older than the lad now looking at his protector in such alarm.\n\n'Mortimer!'\n\nMeggie recognized the old man dragging Mo away from the pillory only after a second glance. Fenoglio's grey hair came almost down to his shoulders; his eyes were bloodshot, his face unshaven. He looked old \u2013 Meggie had never considered Fenoglio old before, but now it was all she could think of.\n\n'Are you out of your mind?' he snapped at her father in a low voice. 'Hello, Meggie,' he added abstractedly, and Meggie felt the blood shoot into her face as Farid appeared behind him.\n\nFarid.\n\nKeep very cool, she thought, but a smile had already stolen to her lips. Make it go away! But how, when it was so good to see his face? Jink was sitting on his shoulder, and sleepily flicked his tail when he saw her.\n\n'Hello, Meggie. How are you?' Farid stroked the marten's bushy coat.\n\nTwelve days. Not a sign of life from him for twelve whole days. Hadn't she firmly resolved not to say a word when she saw him again? But she just couldn't be angry with him. He still looked so sad. Not a sign of the laughter that once used to be as much a part of his face as his black eyes. The smile he gave her now was only a sad shadow of it.\n\n'I've been wanting to come and see you so often, but Orpheus just wouldn't let me go out!' He was hardly listening to his own words. He had eyes only for Meggie's father. The Bluejay.\n\nFarid had led Mo away with him \u2013 away from the pillory, away from the soldiers. Meggie followed them. The horse was restless, but Farid calmed it. Dustfinger had taught him how to talk to animals. He was close beside Meggie, so near and yet so far away.\n\n'What was the idea of that?' Fenoglio was still holding Mo firmly, as if afraid he might go back to the pillory. 'Do you want to put your own head in that thing too? Or \u2013 no, very likely they'd impale it on a pike right away!'\n\n'Those are fire-elves, Fenoglio! They'll burn his skin.' Mo's voice was husky with rage.\n\n'You think I don't know that? I invented the little brutes. The boy will survive. I imagine he's a thief. I don't want to know any more.'\n\nMo moved away, turning his back on Fenoglio as abruptly as if to keep himself from striking the old man. He scrutinized the guards and their weapons, the castle walls and the pillory, as if trying to think of a way to make them all disappear. Don't look at the guards, Mo! Meggie thought. That was the first thing Fenoglio had taught her in this world: not to look any soldier in the eye \u2013 any soldier, any nobleman \u2013 anyone who was allowed to carry a weapon.\n\n'Shall I spoil their appetite for his skin, Silvertongue?' Farid came up between Mo and Fenoglio.\n\nJink spat at the old man, as if detecting him as the cause of all that was wrong in his world. Without waiting for Mo's answer Farid went up to the pillory, where the elves had settled on the boy's skin again. With a snap of his fingers he sent sparks flying to singe their shimmering wings and send them swirling through the air and away, with an angry buzz. One of the guards picked up his lance, but before he could move Farid painted a fiery basilisk on the castle wall with his finger, bowed to the guards \u2013 who were staring incredulously at their master's burning emblem \u2013 and strolled back casually to Mo's side.\n\n'Very audacious, dear boy!' growled Fenoglio disapprovingly, but Farid took no notice of him.\n\n'Why did you come here, Silvertongue?' he asked, lowering his voice. 'This is dangerous!' But his eyes were shining. Farid loved dangerous ventures, and he loved Mo for being the Bluejay.\n\n'I want to look at some books.'\n\n'Books?' Farid was so bewildered that Mo couldn't help smiling.\n\n'Yes, books. Very special books.' He looked up at the tallest of the castle towers. Meggie had told him exactly where Balbulus had his workshop.\n\n'What's Orpheus up to?' Mo glanced at the guards. At this moment they were searching a butcher's deliveries \u2013 though what for they didn't seem to know. 'I've heard he's growing richer and richer.'\n\n'Yes, he is.' Farid's hand stroked Meggie's back. When Mo was with them he always confined himself to caresses that weren't too obvious. Farid felt great respect for fathers. But Meggie's rosy blush certainly didn't escape Mo's attention. 'He's growing richer, but he hasn't written anything to rescue Dustfinger yet! He thinks of nothing but his treasures, and what he can sell to the Milksop: wild boar with horns, golden lapdogs, spider moths, leaf men, anything else he can dream up.'\n\n'Spider moths? Leaf men?' Fenoglio looked at Farid in alarm, but Farid didn't seem to notice.\n\n'Orpheus wants to talk to you!' he whispered to Mo. 'About the White Women. Please do meet him! Maybe you know something that could help him to bring Dustfinger back!'\n\nMeggie saw the pity in Mo's face. He didn't believe Dustfinger would ever come back, any more than she did. 'Nonsense,' he said as his hand instinctively went to the place where Mortola had wounded him. 'I don't know anything. Anything more than everyone knows.'\n\nThe guards had let the butcher pass, and one of them was staring at Mo again. The basilisk painted by Farid on the stones was still burning on the castle walls.\n\nMo turned his back on the soldier. 'Listen!' he whispered to Meggie. 'I ought not to have brought you here. Suppose you stay with Farid while I go to see Balbulus? He can take you to Roxane's, and I'll meet you and Resa there.'\n\nFarid put his arm round Meggie's shoulders. 'Yes, you go. I'll look after her.'\n\nBut Meggie pushed his arm roughly away. She didn't like the idea of Mo going on his own \u2013 although she had to admit she'd have been only too happy to stay with Farid. She'd missed his face so much.\n\n'Look after me? You don't have to look after me!' she snapped at him, more sharply than she had intended. Being in love made you so stupid!\n\n'She's right about that. No one has to look after Meggie.' Mo gently took the horse's reins from her hand. 'Now that I come to think of it, she's looked after me more often than the other way round. I'll soon be back,' he told her. 'I promise. And not a word to your mother, all right?'\n\nMeggie just nodded.\n\n'Stop looking at me so anxiously!' Mo whispered in a conspiratorial tone. 'Don't the songs say the Bluejay hardly ever does anything without his beautiful daughter? So I'm much less of a suspicious character without you!'\n\n'Yes, but the songs are lying,' Meggie whispered back. 'The Bluejay doesn't have a daughter at all. He's not my father, he's a robber.'\n\nMo looked at her for a long moment. Then he kissed her on the forehead as if obliterating what she had said, and went slowly towards the castle with Fenoglio.\n\nMeggie never took her eyes off him as he reached the guards and stopped. In his black clothes he really did look like a stranger \u2013 the bookbinder from a foreign land who had come all this way to see the famous Balbulus's pictures and give them proper clothes to wear at last. Who cared that he'd also become a robber on his long journey?\n\nFarid took Meggie's hand as soon as Mo had turned his back to them. 'Your father's as brave as a lion,' he whispered to her, 'but a little crazy too, if you ask me. If I were the Bluejay I'd never go through that gate, certainly not to see a few books!'\n\n'You don't understand,' replied Meggie quietly. 'He wouldn't do it for anything except the books.'\n\nShe was wrong about that, but she wouldn't know it until later.\n\nThe soldiers let the writer and the bookbinder pass. Mo looked back at Meggie once more before he disappeared through the great gateway with its pointed iron portcullis. Ever since the Milksop had come to the castle it was lowered as soon as darkness fell, or whenever an alarm bell rang inside the building. Meggie had heard the sound once, and she instinctively expected to hear it again as Mo disappeared inside those mighty walls: the ringing of bells, the rattle of chains as the portcullis dropped, the sound of the iron spikes meeting the ground...\n\n'Meggie?' Farid put one hand under her chin and turned her face to his. 'You must believe me \u2013 I'd have come to see you ages ago, but Orpheus makes me work hard all day, and at night I steal out to Roxane's farm. I know she goes to the place where she's hidden Dustfinger almost every night! But she always catches me before I can follow her. Her stupid goose lets me bribe it with raisin bread, but if the linchetto in her stable doesn't bite me then Gwin gives me away. Roxane even lets him into the house now, though she always used to throw stones at him before!'\n\nWhat was he going on about? She didn't want to talk about Dustfinger or Gwin. If you really missed me, she kept thinking, then why didn't you come to see me at least once instead of going to Roxane's? Just once. There was only one answer: because he hadn't been missing her half as much as she'd missed him. He loved Dustfinger more than her. He would always love Dustfinger, even now he was dead. All the same, she let him kiss her, only a few paces from where the boy was still in the pillory with fire-elves on his skin. Don't tell me you can get used to such sights...\n\nMeggie didn't see Sootbird until he had reached the guards.\n\n'What is it?' Farid asked, as she stared over his shoulder. 'Ah, Sootbird. Yes. He's always going in and out of the castle. Whenever I see him I feel I could slit his throat!'\n\n'We must warn Mo!'\n\nThe guards let the fire-eater pass through like an old acquaintance. Meggie took a step towards them, but Farid kept her back.\n\n'Where do you think you're going? Don't worry, he won't see your father! The castle is large, and Silvertongue is going to see Balbulus. Sootbird won't lose his way and end up there too, you can bet! He has three lovers among the court ladies, he's off to see them \u2013 if Jacopo doesn't nab him first. He has to perform for the boy twice a day, and he's still a terrible fire-eater in spite of all they say about him. Miserable informer! I really wonder why the Black Prince hasn't killed him yet \u2013 or your father. Why are you looking at me like that?' he added, seeing Meggie's horrified expression. 'Silvertongue killed Basta, didn't he? Not that I saw it.' Farid glanced quickly down, as he always did in speaking of the hours when he had been dead.\n\nMeggie stared at the castle gates. She thought she could hear Mo's voice talking about Sootbird. And if he does... last time he saw me I was half dead. And another encounter will be the worse for him.\n\nThe Bluejay. Stop thinking of him by that name, Meggie thought. Stop it!\n\n'Come on!' Farid took her hand. 'Silvertongue said I was to take you to Roxane. Won't she just be glad to see me! But I expect she'll put on a friendly act if you're there too.'\n\n'No.' Meggie freed her hand from his, good as it felt to be holding hands with him again at last. 'I'm staying here. I'm staying right here until Mo comes out again.'\n\nFarid sighed and rolled his eyes, but he knew her well enough not to argue with her.\n\n'Oh, wonderful!' he said, lowering his voice. 'If I know Silvertongue he's sure to spend forever looking at those wretched books. So at least let me kiss you, or the guards will soon be wondering why we're still standing around.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Dangerous Visit",
                "text": "\u2003The question, given God's omniscient view,\n\n\u2003must what he foresees perforce come true?\n\n\u2003Or is free choice of action granted me\n\n\u2003To do a thing or else to let it be?\n\n\u2014Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (modernized)\n\nHumble. Humility and servility. He wasn't good at it. Did you ever notice that in the other world, Mortimer? he asked himself. Bow your head, don't stand too straight, let them look down on you even if you're taller than they are. Act as if you think it's perfectly natural for them to rule and everyone else to work.\n\nIt was so hard.\n\n'Ah, you're the bookbinder Balbulus is expecting,' one of the guards had said, glancing at his black clothes. 'What was all that with the boy just now? Don't you like our pillory?'\n\nHead lower, Mortimer! Go on. Pretend to be afraid. Forget your anger, forget the boy and his whimpering. 'It won't happen again.'\n\n'Exactly! He... he comes from far away,' Fenoglio was quick to add. 'He has yet to get used to our new governor's rule. But if you'll allow us... Balbulus can be very impatient.' Then he had bowed and hastily drew Mo on with him.\n\nOmbra Castle... it was difficult not to forget everything else when he stepped into the great courtyard. He remembered so many of the scenes from Fenoglio's book set here.\n\n'Heavens above, that was a close thing!' whispered Fenoglio as they led the horse to the stables. 'I don't want to have to remind you again: you're here as a bookbinder! Play the Bluejay just once more and you're a dead man! Damn it, Mortimer, I ought never to have agreed to bring you here. Look at all those soldiers. It's like being in the Castle of Night!'\n\n'Oh no, I assure you there's a difference,' Mo replied quietly, trying not to look up at the heads impaled on pikes that adorned the walls. Two belonged to a couple of the Black Prince's men, although he wouldn't have recognized them if the Strong Man hadn't told him about their fate. 'Although I didn't imagine the castle quite like this from your original description in Inkheart,' he whispered to Fenoglio.\n\n'You're telling me?' Fenoglio murmured. 'First Cosimo had it all rebuilt, now the Milksop's leaving his mark on the place. He's had the gold-mockers' nests torn down, and look at all the shacks they've put up to hoard their loot! I wonder if the Adderhead's noticed yet how little of it ever reaches the Castle of Night. If he has, his brother-in-law will soon be in trouble.'\n\n'Yes, the Milksop is pretty brazen about it.' Mo lowered his head as a couple of grooms came towards them. Even they were armed. His knife wouldn't be much use if anyone actually did recognize him. 'We stopped a few convoys intended for the Castle of Night,' he continued quietly when they had passed, 'and the contents of the chests always proved rather disappointing.'\n\nFenoglio stared at him. 'You're really doing it?'\n\n'Doing what?'\n\nThe old man looked nervously around, but no one seemed to be taking any notice of them. 'Well, all the things they sing about!' he whispered. 'I mean... most of the songs are poor stuff, badly written, but the Bluejay is still my character, so... what does it feel like? What does it feel like, playing him?'\n\nA maid carried two slaughtered geese past them. The birds' blood dripped on to the courtyard paving stones. Mo turned his head away. 'Playing? Is that what it still feels like to you \u2013 some kind of game?' His reply sounded touchier than he had intended.\n\nSometimes he'd really have given anything to read the thoughts in Fenoglio's head. And, who knew, maybe he would indeed read them some day in black and white, and find himself there on the page with words spun around him, like a fly caught in an old spider's web.\n\n'I admit it's turned into a dangerous game, but I'm really glad you took the part! Because wasn't I right? This world needs the Blue\u2014'\n\nMo interrupted Fenoglio \u2013 and put his fingers to his lips. A troop of soldiers passed them, and Fenoglio bit back the name he had first written down on a piece of parchment not so long ago. But the smile with which he watched the soldiers pass was the smile of a man who had planted an explosive device in his enemies' house, and was enjoying mingling with them knowing they had no idea he had laid that bomb.\n\nWicked old man.\n\nMo realized that the Inner Castle didn't look as Fenoglio had described it any more, either. He quietly repeated the words he had once read: The Laughing Prince's wife had laid out the garden because she was tired of the grey stones all around her. She planted flowers from foreign lands, and when they came into bloom they made her dream of distant seas, strange cities and mountains where dragons lived. She allowed gold-breasted birds to breed, birds that perched in the trees like feathered fruits, and planted a seedling from the Wayless Wood, a tree with leaves that could talk to the moon.\n\nFenoglio looked at him in surprise.\n\n'Oh, I know your book by heart,' said Mo. 'Have you forgotten how often I read aloud from it after your words had swallowed up my wife?'\n\nThe gold-breasted birds had left the Inner Courtyard too. The Milksop's statue was reflected in a stone basin, and if the tree that talked to the moon ever existed then it had been felled. Dog-pens stood where there had once been a garden, and the new lord of Ombra's hounds pressed their noses to the silvered wire fencing. It's a long time since this was your story, old man, thought Mo as he and Fenoglio walked towards the Inner Castle. But, then, who was telling it now? Orpheus, maybe? Or had the Adderhead taken over as narrator, using blood and iron instead of pen and ink?\n\nTullio took them to Balbulus, Tullio the furry-faced servant said in Fenoglio's book to be the offspring of a brownie father and a moss-woman mother.\n\n'How are you?' Fenoglio asked him as Tullio led them down the corridors. As if it had ever interested him how his creations were doing.\n\nTullio answered with a shrug of his shoulders. 'They hunt me,' he said, his voice barely audible. 'Our new master's friends \u2013 and he has a lot of them. They chase me along the passages and shut me in with the hounds, but Violante protects me. She protects me even though her son is one of the worst of them.'\n\n'Her son?' Mo asked.\n\n'Yes, didn't Meggie tell you about him?' Fenoglio whispered back. 'Jacopo, a real little devil. His grandfather in miniature, although he's getting to look more like his father every day. Not that he ever shed a tear for Cosimo. Far from it. They say he daubed Cosimo's bust in the crypt with Balbulus's paints, and in the evenings he sits beside the Milksop or on Sootbird's lap instead of keeping his mother company. It's said he even spies on her for his grandfather the Adderhead.'\n\nMo had read nothing in Fenoglio's book about the door outside which Tullio finally stopped, rather breathless after climbing so many steep flights of stairs. He instinctively put out his hand to stroke the letters that covered it. 'They're so beautiful, Mo,' Meggie had murmured as the two of them sat high in their prison in the Castle of Night. 'Intertwined as if someone had written them on the wood in liquid silver.'\n\nTullio raised his small, furry fist and knocked. The voice calling them in could belong to no one but Balbulus. Cold, self-satisfied, arrogant... the words Meggie had used to describe the best illuminator in this world were not nice ones. Tullio stood on tiptoe, took hold of the door handle \u2013 and then let go of it again in alarm.\n\n'Tullio!' The voice echoing up the staircase sounded very young, but it seemed used to giving orders. 'Where are you, Tullio? You must come and hold the torches for Sootbird.'\n\n'Jacopo!' Tullio breathed the word as if it were the name of an infectious illness. He ducked and instinctively tried to shelter behind Mo's back.\n\nA boy of perhaps six or seven came running upstairs. Mo had never seen Cosimo the Fair. The Milksop had had all his statues smashed, but Battista still had a few coins with his picture on them. A face almost too beautiful to be real, that was how everyone described him. His son had obviously inherited that beauty, although as yet it was only developing on his still round, childish face. But it was not an endearing face. The boy's eyes were watchful, and his mouth was as sullen as an old man's. His black tunic had an embroidered pattern showing his grandfather's emblematic adder with its flickering tongue, and even his belt was set with silver snakes, but around his neck dangled a silver nose \u2013 the Piper's trademark.\n\nFenoglio cast Mo a glance of alarm and stood in front of him, as if that would hide him from the boy.\n\nYou must come and hold the torches for Sootbird. Now what, Mo? He instinctively glanced down the stairs, but Jacopo had come alone, and this castle was large. His hand went to his belt all the same.\n\n'Who's that?' Only the defiance in the clear voice sounded like a little boy's. Jacopo was breathing heavily from all that stair-climbing.\n\n'He's... er... he's the new bookbinder, my Prince!' replied Fenoglio, bowing. 'I'm sure you remember how often Balbulus has complained of the clumsiness of our local bookbinders!'\n\n'And this one's better?' Jacopo folded his little arms. 'He doesn't look like a bookbinder. Bookbinders are old, and all pale because they sit indoors the whole time.'\n\n'Oh, we go out now and then too,' replied Mo. 'We go out to buy the best leather, new stamps, good knives, or to dry parchment in the sun if it's damp...'\n\nHe found it difficult to feel afraid of the boy, although he had heard so much that was bad about him. Cosimo's son reminded him of a boy he had known at school who was unlucky enough to be the headmaster's son. He used to stalk around the school yard like a copy of his father \u2013 and he was afraid of everything and everyone in the world. That's all very well, Mortimer, Mo told himself, but he was only a headmaster's son. This is the grandson of the Adderhead, so take care.\n\nJacopo frowned and looked disapprovingly at him. Obviously he didn't like the fact that Mo was so much taller than he was. 'You didn't bow! You have to bow to me.'\n\nMo felt Fenoglio's warning glance and bowed his head. 'My Prince.'\n\nIt was difficult. He would rather have chased Jacopo along the castle corridors in fun, the way he used to chase Meggie in Elinor's house, just to see if the child in him would emerge, carefully hidden as it was behind his grandfather's mannerisms.\n\nJacopo acknowledged his bow with a magnanimous nod, and Mo bowed his head again so that the boy wouldn't see his smile.\n\n'My grandfather is having trouble with a book,' remarked Jacopo in his arrogant voice. 'A lot of trouble. Perhaps you can help him.'\n\nTrouble with a book. Mo felt his heart miss a beat. In his mind's eye he saw the book before him again, felt the paper between his fingers. All those blank pages.\n\n'My grandfather has had lots of bookbinders hanged already because of that book.' Jacopo looked at Mo as if working out the size of the noose to fit his neck. 'He even had one flayed because the man had promised he could make the book better. Will you try all the same? But you'd have to ride to the Castle of Night with me so that my grandfather can see I was the one who found you, not the Milksop.'\n\nMo managed to get out of answering that as the door covered with letters opened and a man came out, an expression of annoyance on his face.\n\n'What's all this?' he snapped at Tullio. 'First there's a knock but no one comes in, then so much talk that my brush slips. So, as you all clearly have not come to see me, I would be greatly obliged if you'd continue your conversation somewhere else. There are more than enough rooms in this castle where no real work is done.'\n\nBalbulus... Meggie had described him very well. The slight lisp, the short nose and plump cheeks, the dark brown hair already receding from his forehead, although he was still quite a young man. An illuminator \u2013 and from what Mo had seen of his work, one of the best there had ever been, in either this world or his own. Mo forgot Jacopo and Fenoglio, he forgot the pillory and the boy in it, the soldiers down in the courtyard and even Sootbird. All he wanted was to go through that door. Even the glimpse of the workshop that he caught over Balbulus's shoulder made his heart beat as fast as a schoolboy's. He felt the same excitement as when he first held a book illustrated by Balbulus in his hand, when he was a prisoner threatened with death in the Castle of Night. This man's work had made him forget all that. Letters flowing as easily as if there were no more natural occupation for the human hand than writing, and then the pictures. Living, breathing parchment!\n\n'I'll talk to people where and when I like! I'm the Adderhead's grandson!' Jacopo's voice was shrill. 'I'm going to tell my uncle how impertinent you've been again. I'm going to tell him this minute! I'll say he ought to take all your brushes away from you!' With one last glance at Balbulus he turned. 'Come on, Tullio. Or I'll shut you in with the hounds!'\n\nThe little servant went to Jacopo's side, head hunched between his shoulders, and the Adderhead's grandson inspected Mo again from head to foot before turning and hurrying down the stairs again \u2013 suddenly just a child after all, in a hurry to see a show.\n\n'We ought to get out, Mortimer!' Fenoglio whispered to him. 'You should never have come to this place! Sootbird is here. It's not good, not good at all.'\n\nBut Balbulus was already impatiently beckoning the new bookbinder into his workshop. What did Mo care about Sootbird? He could think of nothing but what awaited him behind the door with the silver letters all over it.\n\nHe had spent so many hours of his life poring over the art of illumination, bending close to stained pages until his back ached, following every brush stroke with a magnifying glass, and wondering how such marvels could be captured on parchment. All the tiny faces, all the fantastic creatures, landscapes, flowers, miniature dragons, insects, so real that they seemed to be crawling off the pages. Letters as artfully entwined as if their lines had begun to grow only on that parchment.\n\nWas all that waiting for him on the desks in there?\n\nMaybe. But Balbulus stood in front of his work as if he were its guardian, and his eyes were so expressionless that Mo wondered how a man who bent so cold a gaze on the world could paint such pictures. Pictures so full of strength and fire...\n\n'Inkweaver.' Balbulus nodded to Fenoglio with a look that seemed to sum him up: the unshaven chin, the bloodshot eyes, the weariness in the old man's heart. And what, Mo wondered, will he see in me?\n\n'So you're the bookbinder?' Balbulus inspected him as thoroughly as if he planned to capture him on parchment. 'Fenoglio tells me truly wonderful things about your skill.'\n\n'Oh, does he?' Mo couldn't help sounding distracted. He wanted to see those pictures at long last, but once again the illuminator barred his way as if by chance. What did this mean? Let me see your work, thought Mo. You ought to feel flattered that I've risked my neck to come here for its sake. Good heavens, those brushes really were incredibly fine. And then there were the paints...\n\nFenoglio dug a warning elbow into his ribs, and Mo reluctantly tore himself away from the sight of all these wonders and looked into Balbulus's expressionless eyes.\n\n'I'm sorry. Yes, I'm a bookbinder, and I am sure you will want to see a sample of my work. I didn't have particularly good materials available, but...' He put his hand under the cloak that Battista had made (stealing so much black fabric couldn't have been easy), but Balbulus shook his head.\n\n'You don't have to show me any evidence of what you can do,' he said, never taking his eyes off Mo. 'Taddeo, the librarian in the Castle of Night, has told me at length how impressively you proved your abilities there.'\n\nLost.\n\nHe was lost.\n\nMo sensed Fenoglio's appalled glance on him. Yes, look at me, he thought. Are the words 'reckless idiot' written as black as ink on my forehead?\n\nHowever, Balbulus smiled. His smile was as hard to fathom as his eyes.\n\n'Yes, Taddeo has told me about you at length.' Meggie had given a good imitation of the way his tongue touched his teeth as he spoke. 'Usually he is rather a reserved man, but he positively sung your praises to me in writing. After all, there aren't many of your trade who can bind death itself in a book, are there?'\n\nFenoglio gripped his arm so hard that Mo could feel the old man's fear. Did he think they could simply turn and walk out of the door? A guard would surely have been posted outside some time ago, and even if not, there were soldiers waiting at the bottom of the stairs. How quickly you got used to the way they could appear at any moment, armed with the power to take a man away, imprison him or kill him with impunity... how Balbulus's colours glowed! Vermilion, sienna, burnt umber... how beautiful they were. Beauty that had lured him into a trap. Most birds were trapped with bread and a few tasty seeds, but the Bluejay could be caught by words and pictures.\n\n'I really don't know what you're talking about, highly esteemed Balbulus!' stammered Fenoglio. His fingers were still clutching Mo's arm. 'The... er... librarian at the Castle of Night? No. No, Mortimer's never worked on the other side of the forest. He comes from... from the north, yes, that's it.'\n\nWhat a terrible liar the old man was. You'd have thought someone who made up stories could tell better lies.\n\nHowever that might be, Mo himself was no good at lying either, so he kept quiet, silently cursing his curiosity, his impatience, his recklessness, while Balbulus went on staring at him. What had made him think he could simply discard the part he was expected to play in this world by putting on a few black clothes? What had made him think he could go back to being Mortimer the bookbinder for a few hours here in Ombra Castle?\n\n'Oh, be quiet, Inkweaver!' Balbulus snapped at Fenoglio. 'Just how much of a fool do you think I am? Of course I knew who he was the moment you mentioned him. \"A true master of his art.\" Isn't that how you put it? Words can be very treacherous, as you really should know by now.'\n\nFenoglio did not reply. Mo felt for the knife that the Black Prince had given him when they set out from Mount Adder. 'From now on you must always have it with you,' the Prince had told him, 'even when you lie down to sleep.' Mo had followed his advice, but what use would a knife be to him here? He'd be dead before he reached the foot of the stairs. For all he knew, maybe Jacopo himself had immediately realized who was standing in front of him and had raised the alarm too. Come quick, the Bluejay's flown into the cage of his own free will!\n\nI'm sorry, Meggie, thought Mo. Your father is an idiot. You rescued him from the Castle of Night only for him to get himself captured in another castle. Why hadn't he listened to her when she saw Sootbird in the marketplace?\n\nHad Fenoglio ever written a song about the Bluejay's fear? The fear didn't come when he had to fight, not then. It came when he thought of fetters, chains and dungeons, and desperation behind barred doors. Like now. He tasted fear on his tongue, felt it in his guts and his knees. At least an illuminator's workshop is the right place for a bookbinder to die, he thought. But the Bluejay was back now, cursing the bookbinder for being so reckless.\n\n'Do you know what particularly impressed Taddeo?' Balbulus flicked a little powdered paint off his sleeve. Yellow as pollen, it clung to the dark blue velvet. 'Your hands. He thought it astonishing that hands which knew so much about killing could treat the pages of a book with such care. And you do have beautiful hands. Look at mine, now!' Balbulus spread his fingers and examined them with distaste. 'A peasant's hands. Large and coarse. Would you like to see what they can do all the same?'\n\nAnd at last he stood aside and waved them over, like a conjuror raising the curtain on his show. Fenoglio tried to hold Mo back, but if he'd fallen into the trap, then he meant at least to taste the bait that would cost him his life.\n\nThere they were. Illuminated pages even better than those he had seen in the Castle of Night. Balbulus had adorned one of them with nothing but his own initial. The B spread right across the parchment, clad in gold and dark green and sheltering a nest full of fire-elves. On the page beside it, flowers and leaves twined around a picture hardly the size of a playing card. Mo followed the tendrils with his eyes, discovered seed-heads, fire-elves, strange fruits, tiny creatures that he couldn't name. The picture so skilfully framed showed two men surrounded by fairies. They were standing outside a village, with a crowd of ragged men behind them. One of the two was black and had a bear by his side. The other wore a bird mask, and the knife in his hand was a bookbinder's knife.\n\n'The Black Hand and the White Hand of Justice. The Prince and the Bluejay.' Balbulus looked at his work with barely concealed pride. 'I'll probably have to make some changes. You're even taller than I thought, and your bearing... but what am I talking about? I'm sure you're not anxious for this picture to resemble you too much \u2013 although of course it's meant only for Violante's eyes. Our new governor will never see it, because luckily there's no reason for him to toil up all the stairs to my workshop. To the Milksop's way of thinking, the value of a book is defined by the amount of wine it will buy. And if Violante doesn't hide it well, he'll soon have exchanged it \u2013 like all the other books my hands have made \u2013 for wine, or for a new silver-powdered wig. He can think himself truly lucky that I'm Balbulus the illuminator and not the Bluejay, or I'd be making parchment of his perfumed skin.'\n\nThe hatred in Balbulus's voice was black as the night painted in his pictures, and for a moment Mo saw in those expressionless eyes a flash of the fire that made the illuminator such a master of his art.\n\nFootsteps resounded on the stairs, heavy and regular, footsteps of a kind that Mo had heard only too often in the Castle of Night. Soldiers' footsteps.\n\n'What a pity. I really would have liked a longer chat!' Balbulus heaved a regretful sigh as the door was pushed open. 'But I'm afraid there are persons of much higher rank in this castle who want to talk to you.'\n\nThree soldiers took Mo between them. Fenoglio watched in dismay as they tied his hands.\n\n'You can go, Inkweaver!' said Balbulus.\n\n'But this \u2013 this is all a terrible misunderstanding!' Fenoglio was trying really hard not to let his voice betray his fear, but even Mo wasn't deceived.\n\n'Perhaps you shouldn't have described him in such detail in your songs,' Balbulus observed wearily. 'To the best of my knowledge that's been his undoing once before. By way of contrast, look at my pictures. I always show him with his mask on!'\n\nMo heard Fenoglio still protesting as the soldiers pushed him down the stairs. Resa! No, this time he didn't have to fear for her. She was safe with Roxane at the moment, and the Strong Man was with her. But what about Meggie? Had Farid taken her to Roxane's farm yet? The Black Prince would look after both of them. He'd promised that often enough. And, who knew, perhaps they'd find their way back \u2013 back to Elinor in the old house crammed with books right up to the roof, back to the world where flesh and blood wasn't made of letters.\n\nMo tried not to think of where he would be by then. He knew just one thing: the Bluejay and the bookbinder would die the same death."
            },
            {
                "title": "Roxane's Pain",
                "text": "\u2003'Hope,' said Sleet bitterly. 'I've learned to live without it.'\n\n\u2014Paul Stewart, Midnight Over Sanctaphrax\n\nResa often rode over to see Roxane, although it was a long way and the roads around Ombra grew more perilous with every passing day. But the Strong Man was a good bodyguard, and Mo let her go because he knew how many years she had lived in this world already, surviving even without him and the Strong Man.\n\nResa and Roxane had made friends tending the wounded together in the mine below Mount Adder, and their long journey through the Wayless Wood with a dead man had only deepened their friendship. Roxane never asked why Resa had wept almost as much as she did on the night when Dustfinger struck his bargain with the White Women. They had become friends not through talking, but by sharing experiences for which there were no words.\n\nIt was Resa who had gone to Roxane by night when she heard her sobbing under the trees far from the rest of the company, Resa who had embraced and comforted her, although she knew there was no comfort for the other woman's sorrow. She did not tell Roxane about the day when Mortola shot Mo, leaving her alone with the fear that she had lost him for ever. Through all those many days and nights when she sat in a dark cave cooling his hot, feverish brow, she had only imagined how it would feel never to see him again, never to touch him again, never to hear his voice again. But the fear of pain was quite different from pain itself. Mo was alive. He talked to her, slept at her side, put his arms around her. Whereas Dustfinger would never put his arms around Roxane again. Not in this life. Roxane had nothing but memories left, and perhaps memories were sometimes worse than nothing.\n\nAnd she knew that Roxane was feeling that pain for the second time. The first time, so the Black Prince had told Resa, the fire didn't even leave Roxane her dead husband's body. Perhaps that was why she guarded Dustfinger's body so jealously. No one knew the place where she had taken him, to visit him when longing wouldn't let her sleep.\n\nIt was when Mo's fever kept returning at night, and he was sleeping badly, that Resa first rode to Roxane's farm. She herself had often had to gather plants when she was in Mortola's service, but only plants that killed. Roxane had taught her to find their healing sisters. She told her which leaves were good for sleeplessness, which roots relieved the pain of an old wound, and that in this world it was wise to leave a dish of milk or an egg if you picked something from a tree, to please the wood-elves living in it. Many of the plants were strange to Resa, with unfamiliar odours that made her dizzy. Others she had often seen in Elinor's garden without guessing what power lay hidden in their inconspicuous stems and leaves. The Inkworld had taught her to see her own world more clearly and reminded her of something Mo had said long ago: 'I think we should sometimes read stories where everything's different from our world, don't you agree? There's nothing like it for teaching us to wonder why trees are green and not red, and why we have five fingers rather than six.'\n\nOf course Roxane knew a remedy for Resa's sickness. She was just telling her what herbs would help the flow of her milk later on when Fenoglio, with Meggie and Farid, rode into the yard. Resa asked herself why the old man and her daughter wore such a guilty look on their faces. Of course she didn't guess the reason.\n\nRoxane put her arms around Resa as Fenoglio, his voice faltering, told them what had happened. But Resa didn't know what to feel. Fear? Despair? Anger? Yes, anger. That was what she felt first of all. She was angry with Mo for being so reckless.\n\n'How could you have let him go?' she snapped at Meggie, so sharply that the Strong Man jumped. The words were out before she could regret them. But her anger stayed with her: because Mo had gone to the castle even though he knew it was dangerous. And because he had done it behind her back. His daughter had been allowed to come with him, but to his wife he hadn't said a word.\n\nRoxane stroked Resa's hair as she began to sob. Tears of rage, tears of fear. She was tired of feeling afraid.\n\nAfraid of knowing Roxane's pain."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Giveaway",
                "text": "\u2003'You're going to stop cruelty?' she asked. 'And greediness, and all those things? I don't think you could. You're very clever, but, oh no, you couldn't do anything like that.'\n\n\u2014Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan\n\nA dungeon awaited him, what else? And then? Mo remembered the death that the Adderhead had promised him only too clearly. It could take days, many days and nights. The fearlessness that had been his constant companion over the last few weeks, the cold calm that hatred and the White Women had implanted in him \u2013 they were gone as if he had never felt them. Since meeting the White Women he no longer feared death itself. It seemed to him familiar and at times even desirable. But dying was another matter, and so was imprisonment, which he feared almost more. He remembered, only too well, the despair waiting behind barred doors and the silence where even your own breath was painfully loud, every thought a torment, and where every hour tempted you simply to beat your head against the wall until you no longer heard and felt anything.\n\nMo had been unable to bear closed doors and windows since the days he had spent in the tower of the Castle of Night. Meggie seemed to have shed the fear of confinement like a dragonfly shedding its skin, but Resa felt as he did, and whenever fear woke one of them, they could find sleep again only in each other's arms.\n\nPlease, not a dungeon again.\n\nThat was what made fighting so easy \u2013 you could always choose death rather than captivity.\n\nPerhaps he could seize a sword from one of the soldiers in one of the dark corridors, far from the other guards on duty. For guards stood everywhere with the Milksop's emblem on their chests. He had to clench his fists to keep his fingers from putting that idea into practice. Not yet, Mortimer, he told himself. Another flight of steps, burning torches on both sides. Of course, they were leading him down into the depths of the castle. Dungeons always lay high above or far below. Resa had told him about the cells in the Castle of Night, so deep in the mountainside that she had often thought she wouldn't be able to breathe in them. They weren't pushing and hitting him yet as the soldiers there had done. Would they be more civil when it came to torturing and quartering him too? Down and down they went, step by step. One in front of him, two behind him, breathing on the back of his neck. Now, Mortimer! Try it now! There are only three of them! Their faces were so young \u2013 children's faces, beardless, frightened under their assumed ferocity. Since when had children been allowed to play soldiers? Always, he answered himself. They make the best soldiers because they still think they're immortal.\n\nOnly three of them. But even if he killed them quickly they would shout, bringing more men down on him.\n\nThe stairs ended at a door. The soldier in front of him opened it. Now! What are you waiting for? Mo flexed his fingers, getting ready. His heart was beating a little faster, as if to set the pace for him.\n\n'Bluejay.' The soldier turned to him, bowed, and left. There was a look of embarrassment on his face. In surprise, Mo scrutinized the other two. Admiration, fear, respect. The same mixture that he had met with so often, the result not of anything he had done himself, but of Fenoglio's songs. Hesitantly, he went through the open doorway \u2013 and only then did he realize where they had brought him.\n\nThe vault of the Princes of Ombra. Mo had read about that too. Fenoglio had found fine words for this place of the dead, words that sounded as if the old man dreamt of lying in such a vault himself some day. But in Fenoglio's book the most magnificent sarcophagus of all hadn't yet been there. Candles burnt at Cosimo's feet, tall, honey-coloured candles. Their perfume sweetened the air, and his stone image, lying on a bed of alabaster roses, was smiling as if in a happy dream.\n\nBeside the sarcophagus, very erect as if to compensate for the lack of light, stood a young woman in black, her hair drawn severely back.\n\nThe soldiers bowed their heads to her and murmured her name.\n\nViolante. The Adderhead's daughter. She was still known as Her Ugliness, although the birthmark that had earned her the name was only a faint shadow on her cheek now \u2013 it had begun to fade, people said, on the day when Cosimo came back from the dead. Only to return there soon.\n\nHer Ugliness.\n\nWhat a nickname. How did she live with it? But Violante's subjects used it with affection. Rumour had it that she secretly had leftovers from the princely kitchen taken to the starving villages by night, and fed those in need in Ombra by selling silverware and horses from the princely stables, even when the Milksop punished her for it by shutting her up in her rooms for days on end. She spoke up for those condemned to death and taken off to the gallows, and for those who vanished into dungeons \u2013 even though no one listened to her. Violante was powerless in her own castle, as the Black Prince had told Mo often enough. Even her son didn't do as she told him, but the Milksop was afraid of her all the same, for she was still his immortal brother-in-law's daughter.\n\nWhy had they brought him to her, here in the place where her dead husband lay at rest? Did she want to earn the price put on the Bluejay's head before the Milksop could claim it?\n\n'Does he have the scar?' She didn't take her eyes off his face.\n\nOne of the soldiers took an awkward step towards Mo, but he pushed up his sleeve, just as the little girl had the night before. The scar left by the teeth of Basta's dogs long ago, in another life \u2013 Fenoglio had made a story out of it, and sometimes Mo felt as if the old man had drawn the scar on his skin with his own hands, in pale ink.\n\nViolante came up to him. The heavy fabric of her dress trailed on the stone floor. She was really small, a good deal smaller than Meggie. When she put her hand to the embroidered pouch at her belt Mo expected to see the beryl that Meggie had told him about, but Violante took out a pair of glasses. Ground glass lenses, a silver frame \u2013 Orpheus's glasses must have been the model for this pair. It couldn't have been easy to find a master capable of grinding such lenses.\n\n'Yes, indeed. The famous scar. A giveaway.' The glasses enlarged Violante's eyes. They were not like her father's. 'So Balbulus was right. Do you know that my father has raised the price on your head yet again?'\n\nMo hid the scar under his sleeve once more. 'Yes, I heard about that.'\n\n'But you came here to see Balbulus's pictures all the same. I like that. Obviously what the songs say about you is true: you don't know what fear is, maybe you even love danger.'\n\nShe looked him up and down as thoroughly as if she were comparing him with the man in the pictures. But when he returned her glance she blushed \u2013 whether out of embarrassment or anger because he ventured to look her in the face, Mo couldn't have said. She turned abruptly, went over to her husband's tomb and ran her fingers over the stone roses as delicately as if she were trying to bring them to life.\n\n'I would have done exactly the same in your place. I've always thought we were like each other. Ever since I heard the first song about you from the strolling players. This world breeds misfortune like a pond breeding midges, but it's possible to fight back. We both know that. I was already stealing gold from the taxes in the treasury before anyone sang those songs about you. For a new infirmary, a beggars' refuge, or somewhere for orphans to go... I just made sure that one of the administrators was suspected of stealing the gold. They all deserve to hang anyway.'\n\nHow defiantly she tilted her chin as she turned back to him. Almost the way Meggie sometimes did. She seemed very old and very young at the same time. What was she planning? Would she hand him over to her father, to feed the poor with the price on his head, or so that she could buy enough parchment and paints for Balbulus at last? Everyone knew that she had even pawned her wedding ring to buy him brushes. Well, what could be more suitable? thought Mo. A bookbinder's skin, sold for new books.\n\nOne of the soldiers was still standing right behind him. The other two were guarding the door, obviously the only way out of the vault. Three. There were only three of them.\n\n'I know all the songs about you. I had them written down.' The eyes behind the lenses in her glasses were grey and curiously light. As if you could see that they weren't very strong. They certainly didn't resemble the Adderhead's lizard-like eyes. She must have inherited them from her mother. The book in which death was held captive had been bound in the room where she and her ugly little daughter used to live after they fell into disfavour. Did Violante still remember that room? Surely she did.\n\n'The new songs aren't very good,' she went on, 'but Balbulus makes up for that with his pictures. Now that my father's made the Milksop lord of this castle he usually works on them at night, and I keep the books with me so that they don't get sold like all the others. I read them when the Milksop is making merry in the great hall. I read them out loud so that the words will drown out all that noise: the drunken bawling, the silly laughter, Tullio crying when they've been chasing him again... and every word fills my heart with hope, the hope that you will stand there in the hall some day, with the Black Prince at your side, and kill them all. One by one. While I stand beside you with my feet in their blood.'\n\nViolante's soldiers didn't move a muscle. They seemed to be used to hearing such words in their mistress's mouth.\n\nShe took a step towards him. 'I've had people searching for you ever since I heard from my father's men that you were in hiding on this side of the forest. I wanted to find you before they did, but you're good at staying out of sight. No doubt the fairies and brownies hide you, as the songs say, and the moss-women heal your wounds...'\n\nMo couldn't help it. He had to smile. For a moment Violante's face had reminded him so much of Meggie's when she was telling one of her favourite stories.\n\n'Why do you smile?' Violante frowned, and for a moment he glimpsed the Adderhead in her light eyes. Careful, Mortimer.\n\n'Oh, I know. You're thinking: she's only a woman, hardly more than a girl, she has no power, no husband, no soldiers. You're right, most of my soldiers lie dead in the forest because my husband was in too much of a hurry to go to war against my father. But I'm not so stupid! \"Balbulus,\" I said, \"spread word that you're looking for a new bookbinder. Perhaps we'll find the Bluejay that way. If what Taddeo said is true, he'll come just to see your pictures. And then, when he's in my castle, my prisoner, just as he was once a prisoner in the Castle of Night, I'll ask him to help me kill my immortal father.\"'\n\nViolante's lips smiled in amusement as Mo looked sideways at her soldiers. 'Don't look so anxious! My soldiers are devoted to me. My father's men killed their brothers and fathers in the Wayless Wood!'\n\n'Your father won't be immortal for very much longer.' The words came from Mo's lips unthinkingly; he hadn't meant to speak them aloud. Idiot, he told himself. Have you forgotten who this is facing you, just because something about her reminds you of your daughter?\n\nBut Violante smiled. 'Then what my father's librarian told me is indeed true,' she said, as softly as if the dead could overhear her. 'When my father began feeling unwell he thought at first that one of his maids had poisoned him.'\n\n'Mortola.' Whenever Mo said her name he pictured her raising her gun.\n\n'You know her?' Violante seemed as reluctant as he was to utter that name. 'My father had her tortured to make her say what poison she'd given him, and when she didn't confess she was thrown into a dungeon under the Castle of Night, but she disappeared one day. I hope she's dead. They say she poisoned my mother.' Violante stroked the black fabric of her dress as if she had been speaking of the quality of the silk and not her mother's death. 'Whether or not that's true, my father knows by now who's to blame for the way his flesh is rotting on his bones. Soon after your flight Taddeo noticed that the book was beginning to smell strange. And the pages were swelling. The clasps concealed it for a while, which presumably was your intention, but now they can hardly hold the wooden covers together. Poor Taddeo almost died of fear when he saw the state the book was in. Apart from my father himself, he was the only one who was permitted to touch it, and who knew where it was hidden... he even knows the three words that would have to be written in it! My father would have killed anyone else for possessing that knowledge. But he trusts the old man more than anyone else in the world, perhaps because Taddeo was his tutor for many years, and often protected him from my grandfather when he was a child. Who knows? Of course, Taddeo didn't tell my father what state the book was in. He'd have hung even his old tutor on the spot for bringing him such bad news. No, Taddeo secretly summoned every bookbinder between the Wayless Wood and the sea to the Castle of Night, and when none of them could help him, he took Balbulus's advice to bind a second book looking just like the first, which he showed my father when he asked for it. But meanwhile my father was feeling worse every day. Everyone knows about it by now. His breath stinks like stagnant pond water, and he's freezing, as if the White Women's breath is already wrapping him in their deadly cold. What a revenge, Bluejay! Endless life with endless suffering. That doesn't sound like the doing of an angel, more like the work of a very clever devil. Which of the two are you?'\n\nMo didn't answer. Don't trust her, a voice inside him said. But his heart, strangely enough, told him something else.\n\n'As I said, it was a long time before my father suspected anyone but Mortola,' Violante went on. 'His suspicions even made him forget his search for you. But a day came when one of the bookbinders Taddeo had summoned to his aid told him what was wrong with the book, presumably hoping to be rewarded with silver for the news. My father had him killed \u2013 after all, no one must know about the threat to his immortality \u2013 but word soon spread. Now there's hardly a bookbinder left alive in Argenta. Every one of them who couldn't cure the book went to the gallows. And Taddeo has been thrown into the dungeons under the Castle of Night. \"So that your flesh will rot away slowly like mine,\" my father's supposed to have said. I don't know if Taddeo is still alive. He's old, and the dungeons of the Castle of Night are enough to kill much younger men.'\n\nMo felt sick, just as he had in the Castle of Night when he was binding the White Book to save Resa, Meggie and himself. Even then he had guessed that he was buying their lives at the cost of many others. Poor, timid Taddeo. Mo saw him in his mind's eye, crouching in one of those windowless dungeons. And he saw the bookbinders, he saw them very clearly, desolate figures swaying back and forth high in the air... He closed his eyes.\n\n'Well, imagine that. Just as it says in the songs,' he heard Violante say. 'A heart more full of pity than any other beats in the Bluejay's breast. You're really sorry that other people had to die for what you did. Don't be foolish. My father loves killing. If it hadn't been the bookbinders he'd have hung someone else! And in the end it wasn't a bookbinder, but an alchemist, who found a way to preserve the book. It's rumoured to be a very unappetizing way, and it couldn't reverse the harm you'd already done, but at least the book isn't rotting any more \u2013 and my father is looking for you harder than ever, because he still thinks only you can lift the curse you hid so skilfully between the empty pages. Don't wait for him to find you! Steal a march on him! Ally yourself with me. You and I, Bluejay \u2013 his daughter and the robber who has already tricked him once. We can be his downfall! Help me to kill him. Together we can do it easily!'\n\nHow she was looking at him \u2013 expectant as a child who has just told her dearest wish. Come with me, Bluejay, let's kill my father! What does a man have to do to his daughter, wondered Mo, to make her want something like that?\n\n'Not all daughters love their fathers, Bluejay,' said Violante, as if she had read his thoughts, just as Meggie so often did. 'They say your daughter loves you dearly \u2013 and you love her. But my father will kill them, your daughter, your wife, everyone you love, and last of all he'll kill you too. He won't let you go on making him a laughing stock to his subjects. He'll find you even if you go on hiding as cleverly as a fox in its earth, because with every breath he draws, his own body reminds him of what you've done to him. Sunlight hurts his skin, his limbs are so bloated that he can't ride any more. He finds even walking difficult. Day and night he pictures what he wants to do to you and yours. He's made the Piper write songs about your death, such terrible songs that anyone who hears them can't sleep, or so they say, and soon he'll send the silver-nosed man to sing them here as well \u2013 and to hunt you down. The Piper has been waiting a long time for that order, and he'll find you. His bait will be your pity for the poor. He'll kill so many of them that their blood will lure you out of the forest at last. But if I help you\u2014'\n\nA voice interrupted Violante, a childish voice that was clearly used to getting a hearing from adults. It echoed down the endless stairway leading to the vault.\n\n'He's bound to be with her, you just wait and see!' How excited Jacopo sounded! 'Balbulus is a very good liar, especially when he's lying for my mother. But when he does it he plucks at his sleeves and looks even more pleased with himself than usual. My grandfather's taught me to notice that kind of thing.'\n\nThe soldiers at the door looked enquiringly at their mistress, but Violante took no notice of them. She was listening to Jacopo outside the door, when another voice was heard and Mo saw, for the first time, a trace of fear in her fearless eyes. He knew the voice himself, and his hand went to the knife at his belt. Sootbird sounded as if the fire that he played with so clumsily had singed his vocal cords. 'His voice is like a warning,' Resa had once said of him, 'a warning to be on guard against his pretty face and the eternal smile on it.'\n\n'What a clever lad you are, Jacopo!' Did the boy hear the sarcasm in his voice? 'But why don't we go to your mother's rooms?'\n\n'Because she wouldn't be stupid enough to have him taken there. My mother is clever too, much cleverer than any of you!'\n\nViolante went up to Mo and took his arm. 'Put the knife away!' she whispered. 'The Bluejay won't die in this castle. I refuse to hear that song. Come with me.'\n\nShe beckoned to the soldier standing behind Mo \u2013 a tall, broad-shouldered young man who held his sword as if he hadn't used it very often \u2013 and made her purposeful way past the stone coffins, as if this wasn't the first time she had had to hide someone from her son. More than a dozen tombs stood in the vault. Sleeping stone figures lay on top of most of them, with swords on their breasts, dogs at their feet, pillows of marble or granite under their heads. Violante hurried past them without a glance until she stopped by a coffin with a plain stone lid cracked right down the middle, as if the dead man inside had once pushed it open.\n\n'If the Bluejay isn't here we'll go and scare Balbulus a bit, shall we?' There was jealousy in Jacopo's voice when he uttered Balbulus's name, as if he were talking about an older brother whom his mother preferred to him. 'We'll go back, and you can make fire lick around those books of his!'\n\nThe soldier's young face flushed red with effort as he heaved the lower part of the coffin lid aside. Mo kept his knife in his hand as he climbed into the sarcophagus. There was no dead body in it, but all the same Mo felt he could hardly breathe as he stretched out in the cold, cramped space. The coffin had clearly been made for a smaller man. Had Violante thrown his bones away so that she could hide her spies inside it? The darkness was almost total when the soldier pushed the cracked lid back into place. A little light and air came in through a few holes forming a flower pattern. Breathe steadily, Mo, breathe calmly, he told himself. He still had the knife in his hand; it was a pity none of the stone swords the dead were holding would be any use. 'Do you really think it's worth risking your own skin for a few painted goatskins?' Battista had enquired when he asked him to make the clothes and the belt. What a fool you are, Mortimer. Hasn't this world done enough to show you how dangerous it is? But Balbulus's painted goatskins had been very beautiful.\n\nA knock. A bolt was pushed back. The voices came to his ears more distinctly now. Footsteps. Mo tried to peer through the holes, but he could see only another coffin, and the black hem of Violante's dress disappearing as she walked quickly away. His eyes weren't going to help him. He let his head sink back on to the cold stone and listened. How loud his breathing was. Could there be any sound more suspicious here among the dead?\n\nSuppose it isn't just by chance that Sootbird has turned up now, something inside him whispered. Suppose Violante was only setting a trap for you? Not all daughters love their fathers. Suppose Her Ugliness was planning to give her father a very special present all the same? 'Look who I've caught for you. The Bluejay. He was disguised as a crow. I wonder who he thought he'd fool that way?'\n\n'Your Highness!' Sootbird's voice echoed through the vault as if he were standing right beside the coffin where Mo lay. 'Forgive us for disturbing you in your grief, but your son wants me to meet a visitor you received today. He insists on it. He thinks the man is an old and very dangerous acquaintance of mine.'\n\n'A visitor?' Violante's voice sounded as cool as the stone beneath Mo's head. 'The only visitor down here is death, and it's not much use warning anyone against death, is it?'\n\nSootbird laughed uneasily. 'No, certainly not, but Jacopo was talking about a flesh-and-blood visitor, a bookbinder, tall, dark hair...'\n\n'Balbulus was interviewing a bookbinder today,' Violante replied. 'He's been looking for one for a long time now. Someone who knows his trade better than the bookbinders of Ombra.'\n\nWhat was that noise? Of course. Jacopo hopping about on the flagstones. Obviously he sometimes acted like any other child after all. The hopping came closer. The temptation simply to stand up instead of lying there was very strong. It was difficult to keep your body as still as a corpse while you were still breathing. Mo closed his eyes so as not to see the stone around him. Keep your breath as shallow as you can, he told himself, breathe as quietly as the fairies.\n\nThe hopping stopped right beside him.\n\n'You've hidden him!' Jacopo's voice reached Mo inside the sarcophagus as if he were speaking the words for Mo's ears alone. 'Shall we look in the coffins, Sootbird?'\n\nThe boy seemed to find the notion very enticing, but Sootbird laughed nervously. 'Oh, I'm sure that won't be necessary, if we tell your mother who she's dealing with. This bookbinder could be the very man your father is looking for so desperately, Highness.'\n\n'The Bluejay? The Bluejay, here in the castle?' Violante's voice sounded so incredulous that even Mo believed she was taken by surprise. 'Of course! I've told my father time and again: one day that robber's own daring will be his downfall. You're not to say a word of this to the Milksop. I want to catch the Bluejay myself, and then at last my father will realize who ought to be on the throne of Ombra! Have you reinforced the guards at the gates? Have you sent soldiers to Balbulus's workshop?'\n\n'Er... no.' Sootbird was obviously confused. 'I mean... he isn't with Balbulus any more, he...'\n\n'What? You fool!' Violante's voice was as sharp as her father's. 'Lower the portcullis over the gateway. At once! If my father hears that the Bluejay was in this castle, in my library, and simply rode away again...' How menacing she made those words sound in the chilly air! She was indeed clever; her son was right.\n\n'Sandro!' That must be one of her soldiers. 'Tell the guards at the main gates to let the portcullis down. No one is to leave the castle. No one, do you hear? I only hope it's not too late already! Jacopo!'\n\n'Yes?' There was fear and defiance in the high voice \u2013 and a trace of distrust.\n\n'If he finds the gates closed, where could the Bluejay hide? You know every hiding place in this castle, don't you?'\n\n'Of course!' Now Jacopo sounded flattered. 'I can show you all of them.'\n\n'Good. Take three of the guards from outside the throne-room upstairs and post them at the most likely hiding places you know. I'll go and talk to Balbulus. The Bluejay! In my castle!'\n\nSootbird stammered something. Violante brusquely interrupted him, ordering him to go with her. Their footsteps and voices moved away, but Mo thought he could still hear them for some time on the endless stairs leading up and away from the dead, back to the world of the living, to the daylight where you could breathe easily...\n\nEven when all was perfectly still again he lay there for a few more agonizing moments, listening until he felt as if he could hear the dead themselves breathing. Then he braced his hands against the stone lid \u2013 and hastily reached for his knife when he heard footsteps again.\n\n'Bluejay!'\n\nIt was no more than a whisper. The cracked lid was pushed aside, and the soldier who had helped him into his hiding place reached out a hand to him.\n\n'We must hurry!' he whispered. 'The Milksop has raised the alarm. There are guards everywhere, but Violante knows ways out of this castle that even Jacopo hasn't found yet. I hope,' he added.\n\nAs Mo clambered out of the sarcophagus, legs stiff from lying in its cramped space, he still had the knife in his hand.\n\nThe boy stared at it. 'How many have you killed?' His voice sounded almost awestruck. As if killing were a high art, like the painting of Balbulus. How old would the lad be? Fourteen? Fifteen? He looked younger than Farid.\n\nHow many? What was he to say to that? Only a few months ago the answer would have been so simple. Perhaps he'd even have laughed out loud at such a ridiculous question. Now he just said, 'Not as many as those who lie here,' although he wasn't sure that he was telling the truth.\n\nThe boy looked along the rows of the dead as if counting them. 'Is it easy?'\n\nJudging by the curiosity in his eyes, he really didn't seem to know the answer, despite the sword at his side and his shirt of chain mail.\n\nYes, thought Mo. Yes, it's easy... if you have a second heart beating in your breast, cold and sharp-edged as the sword you carry. A certain amount of hatred and anger, a few weeks of fear and helpless rage, and you'll have a heart like that. It beats time for you when you come to kill, a wild, fast rhythm. And only later do you feel your other heart again, soft and warm. It shudders in time with the other one at the thought of what you did. It trembles and feels pain... but that's only afterwards.\n\nThe boy was still looking at him.\n\n'Killing is too easy,' said Mo. 'Dying is harder.'\n\nAlthough Cosimo's stony smile claimed otherwise.\n\n'Didn't you say we must hurry?'\n\nThe boy turned red under his shiny polished helmet. 'Yes... yes, of course.'\n\nA stone lion kept watch in front of a niche behind the coffins, the emblem of Ombra on its breast \u2013 presumably the only example of the old coat of arms that the Milksop hadn't had smashed. The soldier put his sword between the lion's bared teeth, and the wall of the vault opened just far enough for a grown man to squeeze through it. Hadn't Fenoglio described this entrance? Words that Mo had read long ago came back to his mind, about one of Cosimo's ancestors who had escaped his enemies several times along the passage beyond. And words will save the Bluejay again, he thought. Well, why not? He's made of them. All the same, his fingers passed over the stone as if they needed to reassure themselves that the walls of the vault weren't just made of paper.\n\n'The passage comes out above the castle,' the boy whispered to him. 'Violante couldn't get your horse from the stables. It would have attracted too much attention, but there'll be another waiting there. The forest will be swarming with soldiers, so be careful! And I'm to give you these.'\n\nMo put his hand into the saddlebags that the boy handed him.\n\nBooks.\n\n'Violante says I'm to tell you they're a present for you, made in the hope that you will accept the alliance she offers you.'\n\nThe passage was endless, almost as oppressively narrow as the sarcophagus, and Mo was glad when at last he saw the light of day again. The way out was little more than a crack between a couple of rocks. The horse was waiting under the trees, and he saw Ombra Castle, the guards on the walls, the soldiers pouring out of the gates like a swarm of locusts. Yes, he would have to be very careful. All the same, he undid the saddlebags, hid among the rocks \u2013 and opened one of the books."
            },
            {
                "title": "As If Nothing Had Happened",
                "text": "\u2003How cruel the earth, the willows shimmering,\n\n\u2003the birches bending and sighing.\n\n\u2003How cruel, how profoundly tender.\n\n\u2014Louise Gl\u00fcck, Lament\n\nFarid was holding Meggie's hand. He let her bury her face in his shirt while he kept whispering that everything would be all right. But the Black Prince still wasn't back, and the crow sent out by Gecko brought the same news as Doria, the Strong Man's younger brother, who had been spying for the robbers ever since Snapper had saved him and his friend from hanging. The alarm had been raised at the castle. The portcullis was lowered, and the guards at the gate were boasting that the Bluejay's head would soon be looking down on Ombra from the castle battlements.\n\nThe Strong Man had taken Meggie and Resa to the robbers' camp, although they would both have preferred to go back to Ombra. 'That's what the Bluejay would want,' was all he had said, and the Black Prince set off with Battista to the farm they'd called home for the last few weeks \u2013 such happy weeks, so deceptively peaceful in the turmoil of Fenoglio's world. 'We'll bring you your things,' was all the Prince had said, when Resa asked him what he was going there for. 'You can't go back.' Neither Resa nor Meggie asked why. They both knew the answer \u2013 because the Milksop would have the Bluejay questioned, and no one could be sure that a time wouldn't come when Mo might reveal where he had been hiding during those recent weeks.\n\nThe robbers themselves moved camp only a few hours after hearing of Mo's arrest. 'The Milksop has some very talented torturers,' Snapper remarked, and Resa sank down under the trees away from the others and buried her face in her arms.\n\nFenoglio had stayed in Ombra. 'Perhaps they'll let me see Violante. And Minerva's working in the castle kitchen tonight, maybe she'll find out something there. I'll do everything I can, Meggie!' he had promised as he said goodbye.\n\n'Like getting into bed and drinking two jugs of wine!' was all Farid said to that, but he kept remorsefully silent when Meggie began to cry.\n\nWhy had she let Mo ride to Ombra? If only she'd at least gone to the castle with him, but she'd wanted to be with Farid so much. She saw the same accusation in her mother's eyes: you could have stopped him, Meggie, no one else but you could have done it.\n\nWhen darkness began to fall Woodenfoot brought them something to eat. His stiff leg had earned him his name. Although not the fastest of the robbers, he was a good cook, but neither Meggie nor Resa could swallow a morsel. It was bitterly cold, and Farid tried to persuade Meggie to sit by the fire with him, but she just shook her head. She wanted to be alone with herself in the dark. The Strong Man brought her a blanket. His brother was with him, Doria. 'Not much good at poaching, but he's a first-class spy,' the Strong Man had whispered to her when he introduced them. The two brothers were not very much alike, although they had the same thick brown hair and Doria was already strong for his age (something that filled Farid with envy). He wasn't very tall. Doria only just came up to his elder brother's shoulder, and his eyes were as blue as the skin of Fenoglio's fairies, while the Strong Man's eyes were acorn-brown. 'We have different fathers,' the Strong Man had explained when Meggie expressed her surprise at the difference between them. 'Not that either of them's worth a lot.'\n\n'You mustn't worry.' Doria's voice sounded very grown-up.\n\nMeggie raised her head.\n\nHe put the blanket around her shoulders, and stepped shyly back when she looked up at him, but he did not avoid her eyes. Doria looked everyone in the face, even Snapper \u2013 and most people looked away from Snapper.\n\n'Your father will be all right, believe me. He'll outwit them all: the Milksop, the Adderhead, the Piper...'\n\n'After they've hanged him?' asked Meggie. She sounded as bitter as she felt, but Doria just shrugged his shoulders.\n\n'Nonsense. They were going to hang me too,' he said. 'He's the Bluejay! He and the Black Prince will save us all, you wait and see.' He made it sound as if it couldn't turn out any other way. As if he, Doria, were the only one who had read to the end of Fenoglio's story.\n\nBut Snapper, sitting under the trees with Gecko only a little way off, laughed hoarsely. 'Your brother's as big a fool as you!' he called over to the Strong Man. 'It's his bad luck he doesn't have your muscles, so I guess he won't live to be very old. The Bluejay is finished! And what does he leave behind as his legacy? The immortal Adderhead!'\n\nThe Strong Man clenched his fists and was about to go for Snapper, but Doria pulled him back when Gecko drew his knife and rose to his feet. The two of them often quarrelled, but suddenly they both raised their heads and listened. A jay was calling in the oak above them.\n\n'He's back! Meggie, he's back!' Farid climbed down from his lookout post so fast that he almost lost his balance.\n\nThe fire had burnt low; only the stars shone down into the dark ravine where the robbers had pitched their new camp, and Meggie didn't see Mo until Woodenfoot limped over to him with a torch. Battista and the Black Prince were with him. They all seemed unharmed. Doria turned to her. Well, Bluejay's daughter, his smile seemed to be saying, what did I tell you?\n\nResa jumped up in such haste that she stumbled over her blanket. She made her way through the crowd of robbers standing around Mo and the Prince. As if in a dream, Meggie followed her. It was too good not to be a dream.\n\nMo was still wearing the black clothes that Battista had made him. He looked tired, but he did indeed seem to be uninjured.\n\n'It's all right. Everything's all right,' Meggie heard him say as he kissed the tears from her mother's face, and when Meggie was there in front of him he smiled at her as if this were their old life, and he had only been on a short journey to cure a few sick books, not from a castle where people wanted to kill him.\n\n'I've brought you something,' he whispered to her, and only the way he hugged her so tight and for so long told her that he had been as frightened as she was.\n\n'Leave him alone, will you?' the Black Prince told his men as they crowded around Mo, wanting to know how the Bluejay had escaped from Ombra Castle as well as the Castle of Night. 'You'll hear the story soon enough. And now, double the guard.'\n\nThey reluctantly obeyed, sat around the dying fire grumbling, or disappeared into the tents that had been patched together out of pieces of fabric and old clothes, offering only scant shelter from nights that were growing colder all the time. But Mo beckoned Meggie and Resa over to his horse and delved into the saddlebags. He brought out two books, handling them as carefully as if they were living creatures. He gave one to Resa and one to Meggie \u2013 and laughed when Meggie snatched hers so quickly that she almost dropped it.\n\n'It's a long time since the two of us had a book in our hands, right?' he whispered to her with an almost conspiratorial smile. 'Open it. I promise you, you never saw a more beautiful book.'\n\nResa had taken her book too, but she didn't even look at it. 'Fenoglio said that illuminator was the bait for you,' she said in an expressionless voice. 'He told us they arrested you in his workshop.'\n\n'It wasn't exactly what it seemed. As you can see, no harm came of it. Or I wouldn't be here, would I?'\n\nMo said no more, and Resa asked no further questions. She didn't say a word when Mo sat down on the short grass in front of the horses and drew Meggie down beside him.\n\n'Farid?' he said, and Farid left Battista, whom he was obviously trying to question about events in Ombra, and went over to Mo with the same awe on his face that Meggie had seen on Doria's.\n\n'Can you make some light for us?' Mo asked, and Farid knelt down between them and made fire dance on his hands, although Meggie could clearly see that he didn't understand how the Bluejay could sit there right after his narrow escape from the Milksop's soldiers, showing his daughter a book before he did anything else.\n\n'Did you ever see anything so beautiful, Meggie?' Mo whispered as she caressed one of the gilded pictures with her finger. 'Apart from the fairies, of course,' he added with a smile as one of them, pale blue like the sky Balbulus painted, settled drowsily on the pages.\n\nMo shooed the fairy away as Dustfinger had always done, by blowing gently between her shimmering wings, and Meggie, beside him, bent her head over the pages and forgot her fears for him. She forgot Snapper, she even forgot Farid, who didn't so much as glance at what she couldn't tear her own eyes away from: lettering in sepia brown, as airy as if Balbulus had breathed it on to the parchment, dragons, birds stretching their long necks at the heads of the pages, initials heavy with gold leaf like shining buttons among the lines. The words danced with the pictures and the pictures sang for the words, singing their colourful song.\n\n'Is that Her Ugliness?' Meggie laid a finger on the finely drawn figure of a woman. There she stood, slender beside the written lines, her face barely half the size of Meggie's little fingernail, yet you could see the pale birthmark on her cheek.\n\n'Yes. And Balbulus made sure she'll still be recognized many hundreds of years from now.' Mo pointed to the name that the illuminator had written in dark-blue ink, clearly visible above the tiny head: Violante. The V had gold edging as fine as a hair. 'I met her today. I don't think she deserves her nickname,' Mo went on. 'She's rather too pale, and I think she could bear a grudge for a long time, but she fears nothing.'\n\nA leaf landed on the open book. Mo flicked it away, but it clung to his finger with thin, spidery arms. 'Well, how about this!' he said, holding it up to his eyes. 'Is it one of Orpheus's leaf-men? His creations obviously spread fast.'\n\n'And they're seldom very nice,' said Farid. 'Watch out. Those creatures spit.'\n\n'Really?' Mo laughed softly and let the leaf-man fly away just as it was pursing its lips.\n\nResa watched the strange creature go, and abruptly straightened up. 'It's all lies,' she said. Her voice shook on every word. 'This beauty is only a lie. It's just meant to take our minds off the darkness, all the misfortune \u2013 and all the death.'\n\nMo put the book on Meggie's lap and got to his feet, but Resa stepped back.\n\n'This isn't our story!' she said, in a voice loud enough for some of the robbers to turn and look at her. 'It's draining our hearts with all its magic. I want to go home. I want to forget all these horrors and not remember them until I'm back on Elinor's sofa!'\n\nGecko had turned too. He stared curiously at them while one of his crows tried to snatch a piece of meat from his hand. Snapper was listening as well.\n\n'We can't go back, Resa,' said Mo, lowering his voice. 'Fenoglio isn't writing any more, remember? And we can't trust Orpheus.'\n\n'Fenoglio will try to write us back if you ask. He owes it to you. Please, Mo! There can't be any happy ending here!'\n\nMo looked at Meggie, who was still kneeling beside Farid with Balbulus's book on her lap. What was he hoping for? Did he want her to contradict her mother?\n\nFarid glared at Resa and let the fire between his fingers go out. 'Silvertongue?'\n\nMo looked at him. Yes, he had many names now. What had it been like when he was only Mo? Probably Meggie couldn't remember either.\n\n'I must go back to Ombra. What am I to say to Orpheus?' Farid looked at him almost pleadingly. 'Will you tell him about the White Women?' There it was again, like fire burning on his face \u2013 his foolish hope.\n\n'There's nothing to tell. I've said so before,' replied Mo, and Farid bowed his head and looked at his sooty hands as if Mo had snatched hope itself from his fingers.\n\nHe stood up. He still went barefoot, even though there was sometimes frost at night now. 'Good luck, Meggie,' he murmured, giving her a quick kiss. Then he turned without another word. Meggie was already missing him as he swung himself up on to his donkey.\n\nYes. Perhaps they really ought to go back...\n\nShe jumped when Mo put his hand on her shoulder.\n\n'Keep the book wrapped in a cloth when you're not looking at it,' he said. 'The nights are damp.' Then he made his way past her mother and went over to the robbers, who were sitting around the embers of their dying fire as silently as if they were waiting for him.\n\nBut Resa stood there, staring at the book in her hands as if it were another book, the one that had swallowed her up entirely over ten years ago. Then she looked at Meggie.\n\n'What about you?' she asked. 'Do you want to stay here, like your father? Don't you miss your friends, and Elinor and Darius? And your warm bed without any lice in it, the caf\u00e9 down by the lake, the peaceful roads?'\n\nMeggie wished so much she could give the answer that Resa wanted to hear, but she couldn't.\n\n'I don't know,' she said quietly.\n\nAnd that was the truth."
            },
            {
                "title": "Sick with Longing",
                "text": "\u2003I lost a world the other day.\n\n\u2003Has anybody found?\n\n\u2003You'll know it by the row of stars\n\n\u2003Around its forehead bound.\n\n\u2003A rich man might not notice it;\n\n\u2003Yet to my frugal eye\n\n\u2003Of more esteem than ducats.\n\n\u2003Oh, find it, sir, for me!\n\n\u2014Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems\n\nElinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she'd dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love, or longing for something they'd lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferings \u2013 as a reader will. After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions you'd never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself.\n\nElinor had wallowed in misery on the printed page, but she'd never thought that in real life, grey and uneventful as hers had been for many years, such pain could enter her own heart. You're paying the price now, Elinor, she often told herself these days. Paying the price for the happiness of those last months. Didn't books say that too: that there's always a price to pay for happiness? How could she ever have thought she would simply find it and be allowed to keep it? Stupid. Stupid Elinor.\n\nWhen she didn't feel like getting up in the morning, when her heart faltered more and more frequently for no apparent reason, as if it were too tired to beat steadily, when she had no appetite even at breakfast time (although she had always preached that breakfast was the most important meal of the day), when Darius kept asking how she was with that anxious, owlish expression on his face, she began wondering whether becoming ill with longing was more than just a literary invention after all. Didn't she feel, deep down inside, that her longing was sapping her strength and her appetite, even her pleasure in her books? Longing.\n\nDarius suggested going away to auctions of rare books, or famous book shops that she hadn't visited for a long time. He drew up lists of volumes not yet in her library, lists that would have filled Elinor with delighted excitement only a year ago. But now her eyes passed over the titles with as little interest as if she were reading a shopping list for cleaning products. What had become of her love for printed pages and precious bindings, words on parchment and paper? She missed the tug at her heart that she used to feel at the sight of her books, the need to stroke their spines tenderly, open them, lose herself in them. But it seemed as if all of a sudden her heart couldn't enjoy or feel anything, as if the pain had numbed it to everything but her longing for Meggie and her parents. Because by now Elinor had understood this too: a longing for books was nothing compared to what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were no substitute for love itself. They couldn't kiss her like Meggie, they couldn't hug her like Resa, they couldn't laugh like Mortimer. Poor books, poor Elinor.\n\nShe began spending days on end in bed. She ate too little and then too much. Her stomach hurt, her head ached, her heart fluttered inside her. She was cross and absent-minded, and began crying like a crocodile over the most sentimental stories \u2013 because of course she went on reading. What else was there for her to do? She read and read and read, but she was stuffing herself with the letters on the page like an unhappy child stuffing itself with chocolates. They didn't taste bad, but she was still unhappy. And Orpheus's ugly dog lay beside her bed, slobbering on her carpet and staring at her with his sad eyes as if he were the only creature in the world who understood her sorrows.\n\nWell, perhaps that wasn't quite fair. Presumably Darius, too, knew just how wretched she was feeling. 'Elinor, won't you go for a little walk?' he would ask when he had brought her breakfast in bed yet again, and she still hadn't appeared in the kitchen by twelve noon. 'Elinor, I found this wonderful edition of Ivanhoe in one of your catalogues. Why don't we go and take a look at it? The place isn't far away.' Or, as he had said only a few days ago, 'Please, Elinor, go and see the doctor! This can't go on!'\n\n'The doctor?' she snapped at the poor man. 'And what do you expect me to say to him? \"Well, doctor, it seems to be my heart. It feels this ridiculous yearning for three people who disappeared into a book. Do you have any pills for that kind of thing?\"'\n\nOf course Darius had had no answer. Without a word, he had just put down her tea \u2013 tea with honey and lemon, her favourite \u2013 beside the bed among the mountains of books piled on her bedside table, and gone downstairs again looking so sad that Elinor had a shockingly guilty conscience. All the same, she didn't get up.\n\nShe stayed in bed for three more days, and when she dragged herself into her library on the fourth day, still in her nightdress and dressing gown, to get something else to read, she found Darius holding the sheet of paper. The one that had taken Orpheus to the place where Elinor supposed Resa, Meggie and Mortimer still were.\n\n'What on earth are you doing?' she asked, horrified. 'No one touches that piece of paper, understand? No one!'\n\nDarius put the sheet back in its place and wiped a speck off the glass case with his sleeve. 'I was only looking at it,' he said in his gentle voice. 'Orpheus really doesn't write badly, does he? Although it sounds very much like Fenoglio.'\n\n'Which is why it can hardly be described as Orpheus's writing,' said Elinor scornfully. 'He's a parasite. A louse preying on other writers \u2013 except that he feeds on their words, not their blood. Even his name is stolen from another poet! Orpheus!'\n\n'Yes, I expect you're right,' said Darius as he carefully closed the glass case again. 'But perhaps you should call him a forger instead. He copies Fenoglio's style so perfectly that at first glance you can't tell the difference. It would be interesting to see how he writes when he has to work without a model. Can he paint pictures of his own? Pictures that don't look like someone else's?' Darius looked at the words under the glass lid as if they could answer his question.\n\n'Why would I be interested in that? I hope he's dead and gone. Trodden underfoot.' Grim-faced, Elinor went up to the shelves and took out half a dozen books, supplies for another cheerless day in bed. 'Yes, trodden underfoot! By a giant. Or \u2013 no, wait! Even better \u2013 I hope his clever tongue is blue and sticking out of his mouth because they've hanged him!'\n\nThat brought a smile to Darius's owlish face.\n\n'Elinor, Elinor!' he said. 'I think you could teach the Adderhead himself the meaning of fear.'\n\n'Of course I could!' replied Elinor. 'Compared to me, the White Women are a bunch of sisters of mercy! But I'm stuck for the rest of my life in a story where there's no part for me but the role of a batty old woman!'\n\nDarius didn't reply to that. However, when Elinor came downstairs again that evening to find another book, he was standing in front of the glass case once more, looking at the words Orpheus had written on the sheet of paper."
            },
            {
                "title": "Back in the Service of Orpheus",
                "text": "\u2003Come close and consider the words.\n\n\u2003With a plain face hiding thousands of other faces\n\n\u2003and with no interest in your response,\n\n\u2003whether weak or strong,\n\n\u2003each word asks:\n\n\u2003Did you bring the key?\n\n\u2014Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Looking for Poetry\n\nOf course, the city gates of Ombra were closed when Farid finally rode his stubborn donkey around the last bend in the road. A thin crescent moon shone down on the castle towers, and the guards were passing the time by throwing stones at the bones dangling from the gallows outside the city walls. The Milksop had left some skeletons hanging there, though, to spare his sensitive nose, the gallows were no longer in use. Presumably he thought that gallows left empty were too reassuring a sight for his subjects.\n\n'Well, well, who comes here?' grunted one of the guards, a tall thin fellow propping himself on his spear as if his legs alone wouldn't carry him. 'Take a look at this laddie!' he added, roughly seizing Farid's reins. 'Riding around all on his own in the middle of the night! Aren't you afraid the Bluejay will steal that donkey from under your skinny behind? After all, he had to leave his horse up at the castle today, so he could do with your donkey. And you he'll feed to the Black Prince's bear!'\n\n'I've heard the bear eats nothing but men-at-arms because they crunch so nicely in his jaws.' As a precaution, Farid's hand went to his knife. He felt too tired to be humble \u2013 and perhaps it made him lightly reckless to know that the Bluejay had managed to get out of the Milksop's castle safe and sound. Yes, he too found himself calling Silvertongue by that name more and more often, although Meggie was always cross if she heard him.\n\n'Ho, ho, hark at the lad, will you, Rizzo?' called the guard to the other man on duty. 'Maybe he stole the donkey himself to sell to the sausage-maker in Butchers' Alley before the poor beast drops dead under him!'\n\nRizzo came closer, smiling unpleasantly, and raised his lance until the ugly spearhead was pointing straight at Farid's chest. 'I know this fellow,' he said. He had two missing front teeth, which made him hiss like a snake. 'Saw him breathing fire once or twice in the marketplace. Aren't you the one they say learnt his trade from the Fire-Dancer?'\n\n'Yes. What about it?' Farid's stomach muscles contracted. They always did when Dustfinger was mentioned.\n\n'What about it?' Rizzo prodded him with the spearhead. 'Get off your decrepit donkey and give us a bit of a show. Maybe we'll let you into the city afterwards.'\n\nThey did finally open the gates \u2013 after he had turned night into day for almost an hour for their pleasure, making the fire grow flowers as he had learnt to do from Dustfinger. Farid still loved the flames, even though the crackling of their voices reminded him only too painfully of the man who had taught him all about them. But he no longer made them dance in public; he did it only for himself. The flames were all that was left to him of Dustfinger, and sometimes, when he missed him so much that his heart was numb with longing, he wrote his name in fire on a wall somewhere in Ombra and stared at the letters until they went out, leaving him alone, just as Dustfinger had left him alone.\n\nNow that Ombra had lost its menfolk, it was usually as quiet as a city of the dead by night. Tonight, however, Farid ran into several troops of soldiers. The Bluejay had stirred them up like a wasps' nest and they were still buzzing around, as if that would bring the bold intruder back. Lowering his head, Farid dragged the donkey past them, and was glad when he finally reached Orpheus's house.\n\nIt was a magnificent building, one of the finest in Ombra, and the only one on this unrestful night with candlelight still shining through the windows. Torches burnt at the entrance \u2013 Orpheus lived in constant terror of thieves \u2013 and their flickering light brought the stone gargoyles above the gate to life. Farid always shuddered to see them stare down with their bulging eyes, their mouths wide open, their nostrils distended, looking as if they were about to snort in his face. He tried to put the torches to sleep with a whisper, as Dustfinger often did, but the fire wasn't listening to him. That happened more and more often now \u2013 as if to remind him that a pupil whose master was dead was a pupil for ever.\n\nHe was so tired. The dogs barked at him as he led the donkey across the yard to its stable. Back again. Back in the service of Orpheus. He would so much rather have rested his head in Meggie's lap, or sat by the fire with Silvertongue and the Black Prince. But for Dustfinger's sake he always came back here. Again and again.\n\nFarid let Jink climb out of the rucksack on to his shoulder, and looked up at the stars as if he could find Dustfinger's scarred face there. Why didn't he appear to him in a dream and tell him how to bring him back? Didn't the dead sometimes do that for those they loved? Or did Dustfinger come only to Roxane, as he had promised, and to his daughter? No, if Brianna was visited by any dead man it was Cosimo. The other maids said she whispered his name in her sleep and sometimes put out her hand to him, as if he were lying beside her.\n\nPerhaps he doesn't appear to me in my dreams because he knows I'm afraid of ghosts, thought Farid as he climbed the steps to the back door. The main entrance of the house, which led straight out into the square, was of course reserved for Orpheus himself and his fine customers. Servants, strolling players and delivery men had to plough through the muck in the yard and ring the bell at the modest little door hidden at the back of the house.\n\nFarid rang three times, but nothing stirred. By all the demons of the desert, where was that Chunk? He had nothing to do but open a door now and then. Or was he snoring away like a dog outside Orpheus's bedroom door again?\n\nHowever, when the bolt was finally pushed aside it wasn't Oss who let him in but Brianna. Dustfinger's daughter had been working for Orpheus for two weeks now, but presumably Cheeseface had no idea whose daughter was doing his laundry and scrubbing his pots. Orpheus was so blind.\n\nWithout a word, Brianna held the door open, and Farid was equally silent as he passed her. There were no words between them except those that went unspoken: My father died for you. He left us alone for you, only for you. Brianna blamed him for every tear her mother shed. She had told him so in a low voice after their first day together in the service of Orpheus. 'For every single tear!' Yet again, he thought he felt her glance on the back of his neck like a curse when he turned his back to her.\n\n'Where've you been all this time?' Oss seized him as he was stealing away to the place in the cellar where he slept. Jink hissed and ran off. Last time Oss kicked the marten he had almost broken Jink's ribs. 'He's been asking for you a hundred times over! Made me search every damn alleyway. I haven't had a wink of sleep all night because of you!'\n\n'So? You sleep enough as it is!'\n\nThe Chunk hit him in the face. 'Less of your cheek! Go on, your master's waiting for you.'\n\nOne of the maids came towards them on the stairs. She blushed as she made her way past Farid. What was her name? Dana? A nice girl, she'd often slipped him a delicious piece of meat when Oss had stolen his food, and Farid had kissed her in the kitchen a few times for that. But she wasn't half as beautiful as Meggie. Or Brianna.\n\n'I just hope he'll let me give you a good hiding!' Oss whispered before knocking on the door of Orpheus's study.\n\nThat was what Orpheus called the room, although he spent far less time studying in it than groping under one of the maids' skirts, or stuffing himself with the lavish dishes his cook had to prepare for him at any time of day or night. Tonight, however, he really was sitting at his desk, head bent over a sheet of paper, while his two glass men were arguing under their breath over whether it was better to stir ink to the left or the right. They were brothers called Jasper and Ironstone, and as different as day and night. Ironstone, the elder, loved lecturing his younger brother and ordering him about. Farid often wanted to wring his glass neck. He himself had two older brothers; they'd been one of the reasons why he had run away from home and joined a band of robbers.\n\n'Shut up!' Orpheus snapped at the quarrelling glass men. 'What ridiculous creatures you are! Stir to the left, stir to the right \u2013 just make sure you don't spatter my whole desk with ink again while you're stirring.'\n\nIronstone looked accusingly at Jasper \u2013 of course! If anyone had spattered Orpheus's desk with ink, it had to be his little brother. But he preserved a grim silence as Orpheus put pen to paper again.\n\n'Farid, you really must learn to read!' How often Meggie had told him that. And, with some difficulty, she had taught him a few letters of the alphabet. B for bear, R for robber ('look, Farid, there's a letter R in your name too'), M for Meggie, F for fire (wasn't it wonderful that his name began with the same letter?), and D... D for Dustfinger. He always got the rest mixed up. How were you supposed to remember those funny little things with their scrawled lines stretching all whichways? AOUIMTNP... it gave him a headache just to look at them. But yes, he must learn to read, he must. How else was he ever to find out whether Orpheus was really trying to write Dustfinger back?\n\n'Snippets, nothing but snippets!' Orpheus pushed Jasper aside with a curse as the glass man came up to sprinkle sand over the fresh ink. Grimly, he tore the sheet of paper he had been writing on into tiny scraps. Farid was used to that sight. Orpheus was seldom satisfied with what he put down on paper. He crumpled up what he had written, tore it in pieces, threw it on the fire with a curse, bullied the glass men and drank too much. But when he succeeded he was even more unbearable. He puffed himself up like a bullfrog, stalked proudly through Ombra like a newly-crowned king, kissed the maids with his moist, complacent lips, and let everyone know he had no equal. 'Let them call the old man Inkweaver!' he shouted, loudly enough to be heard all over the house. 'It suits him. He's nothing but a craftsman, while I... I am an enchanter! Ink-Enchanter, that's what they ought to call me. That's what they will call me someday!'\n\nBut tonight, yet again, the enchantment didn't seem to be working. 'Toad-twaddle! Goose-cackle! Leaden words!' he said angrily without raising his head. 'Just a mush of words, that's what you're smearing the paper with today, Orpheus: a watery, unseasoned, tasteless, slimy mush of words!'\n\nThe two glass men hastily scrambled down the legs of the desk and began picking up the shreds of paper.\n\n'My lord, the boy is back.' No one could sound more servile than Oss. His voice bowed to Orpheus as readily as his massive body, but his fingers held the nape of Farid's neck in a steely grip.\n\nOrpheus turned, his face like thunder, and stared at Farid as if he had finally pin-pointed the reason for his failure. 'Where the devil have you been? With Fenoglio all this time? Or helping your girlfriend's father to steal into the castle and out again? Oh yes, I've heard about his latest exploit. Presumably they'll be singing the first bad songs about it tomorrow. That fool of a bookbinder really does play the ridiculous part the old man wrote him with touching enthusiasm.' Envy and contempt mingled in Orpheus's voice, as they so often did when he spoke of Silvertongue.\n\n'He's not playing a part. He is the Bluejay.' Farid trod on Oss's foot hard enough to make him let go of his neck, and when the man tried to grab it again he pushed him away. With a grunt, the Chunk raised his big fist, but a glance from Orpheus halted him.\n\n'Oh, really? Have you joined the ranks of his admirers too?' He put a clean sheet of paper on his desk and stared at it, as though that could fill it with the right words. 'Jasper, what are you doing down there?' he snapped at the glass man. 'How often do I have to tell you two that the maids can sweep up scraps of paper? Sharpen me another pen!'\n\nFarid picked Jasper up, put him on the desk and earned a grateful smile. The younger glass man had to do all the unpleasant jobs \u2013 that was how his brother had fixed it \u2013 and sharpening pens was the most unpleasant of all, because the tiny blade they used slipped very easily. Only a few days ago it had cut deeply into Jasper's matchstick-thin arm, and Farid had discovered that glass men bleed like humans. Jasper's blood was transparent, of course. It had dripped on to Orpheus's paper like liquid glass, and Ironstone had slapped his little brother's face and called him a clumsy fool. For that, Farid had mixed some beer with the sand Ironstone ate. Since then Ironstone's limbs, usually clear as water (and he had been very proud of that), had been as yellow as horse's piss.\n\nOrpheus went to the window. 'If you stay out and about so long again,' he said to Farid over his shoulder, 'I'll tell Oss to beat you like a dog.'\n\nThe Chunk smiled, and Farid cursed silently as he contemplated them both. But Orpheus was still looking up at the black night sky with a morose expression. 'Would you believe it?' he said. 'That old fool Fenoglio didn't even go to the trouble of naming the stars in this world. No wonder I keep running out of words! What's the moon called here? You'd think his senile old brain might at least have bothered about that, but no! He just called it \"the moon\", as if it were the same moon we saw from our windows in the other world.'\n\n'Perhaps it really is the same moon. It was in my story too,' said Farid.\n\n'Rubbish, of course it was different!' Orpheus turned to the window again, as if he had to explain to the entire world out there how badly made it was. '\"Fenoglio,\" I ask him,' he went on in the self-satisfied voice that Ironstone always listened to devoutly, as if it were announcing truths never heard before, '\"is Death a woman or a man in this world? Or is it perhaps just a door through which you pass into quite a different story, one that you yourself unfortunately omitted to write?\" \"How do I know?\" he says. How does he know? Who else knows if he doesn't? He doesn't tell us in his book, anyway.'\n\nIn his book... Ironstone, who had climbed up to join Orpheus on the windowsill, cast a reverent glance at the desk where the last copy of Inkheart lay beside the sheet of paper on which Orpheus was writing. Farid wasn't sure whether the glass man really understood that his entire world, himself included, had presumably slipped out of that same book. It usually lay there open, for when Orpheus was writing he kept leafing through it with restless fingers in search of the right words. He never used a single word that couldn't be found in Inkheart, for he was firmly convinced that only words from Fenoglio's story could learn to breathe in this world. Others were just ink on paper.\n\n'\"Fenoglio,\" I ask, \"are the White Women only servants?\"' Orpheus went on, as Ironstone hung on every word from his soft \u2013 over-soft \u2013 lips. '\"Do the dead stay with them, or do the White Women take them somewhere else?\" \"I expect so,\" the old fool replies. \"I once told Minerva's children about a castle made of bones to comfort them for Cloud-Dancer's death, but I was only talking off the cuff.\" Off the cuff! Huh!'\n\n'The old fool!' repeated Ironstone like an echo, but in his reedy, glass man's voice it was not a very impressive sound.\n\nOrpheus turned and went back to his desk. 'With all your roaming around, I hope at least you didn't forget to tell Mortimer I want to talk to him? Or was he too busy playing the hero?'\n\n'He says there's nothing to talk about. He says he doesn't know anything about the White Women except what everyone knows.'\n\n'Oh, wonderful!' Orpheus reached for one of the pens that Jasper had sharpened so laboriously and snapped it in two. 'Did you at least ask whether he still sees them sometimes?'\n\n'I'm sure he does.' Jasper's voice was as delicate as his limbs. 'Once the White Women have touched someone they never let him go. Or so the moss-women say.'\n\n'I know that!' said Orpheus impatiently. 'I tried questioning a moss-woman about that rumour, but the nasty creature wouldn't talk about it. She just stared at me with her mousy eyes and said I eat too much rich food and drink too much wine!'\n\n'They talk to the fairies,' Jasper said. 'And fairies talk to glass men. Although not all of them,' he added with a sidelong glance at his brother. 'I've heard that the moss-women tell another tale of the White Women too. They say they can be summoned by anyone whose heart they've already touched with their cold fingers.'\n\n'Oh, indeed?' Orpheus looked thoughtfully at the glass man. 'I hadn't heard that one before.'\n\n'And it's not true! I've tried summoning them!' said Farid. 'Again and again!'\n\n'You! How often do I have to explain that you died much too quickly?' Orpheus snapped contemptuously at him. 'You were in a great hurry to die, and just as great a hurry to come back. What's more, you're such a poor catch that I'd assume they don't even remember you! No, you're not the person to do it.' He went to the window again. 'Go and make me some tea!' he told Farid without turning. 'I have to think.'\n\n'What kind of tea?'\n\nFarid put Jasper on his shoulder. He took the little man with him whenever he could, to keep him safe from his big brother. Sometimes, when Orpheus didn't need either of them because he was taking his pleasure with one of the maids, or seeing his tailor for yet another fitting of some new clothes \u2013 which could last hours \u2013 Farid took Jasper with him to Seamstresses' Alley, where the glass women helped to thread the dressmakers' needles, tread seams smooth with their tiny feet, and tack lace to costly silk. For Farid had now also learnt that glass men don't just bleed, they fall in love too, and Jasper was head over heels in love with a girl who had pale yellow limbs. He was only too fond of watching her in secret through her mistress's workshop window.\n\n'What kind of tea? How should I know? Something good for stomach-ache,' replied Orpheus crossly. 'I've had a pain in my belly all day as if there were stag beetles in it. How am I supposed to get anything sensible down on paper in that state?'\n\nOf course. Orpheus always complained of stomach-ache or a headache when his writing wasn't going well. I hope his belly torments him all night, thought Farid as he closed the study door behind him. I hope it plagues him until he writes something for Dustfinger at last."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Knife through the Heart",
                "text": "\u2003So far as he was concerned, as yet, there might never have been such a thing as a single particle of sorrow on the gay, sweet surface of the dew-glittering world.\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Once and Future King\n\n'At least he didn't tell you to go for the physician!' Jasper was doing his best to cheer Farid up as he carried him down the steep stairs to the kitchen. Yes indeed, the physician who lived beyond the city gate. Orpheus had sent Farid there only a few days ago. If you went to fetch him at night he threw logs of wood at you, or came to the door brandishing one of the pairs of pincers he used to draw teeth.\n\n'Stomach-ache! Headache!' said Farid crossly. 'Cheeseface has been over-eating again, that's all!'\n\n'Three roast gold-mockers filled with chocolate, fairy-nuts roasted in honey, and half a sucking pig stuffed with chestnuts,' said Jasper, counting it up. Then he ducked in alarm as he saw Jink by the kitchen door. The marten made Jasper nervous, even though Farid kept assuring him that while martens did like to chase glass men, they never, ever ate them.\n\nThere was only one maid still in the kitchen. Farid stopped in the doorway when he saw it was Brianna. That was all he needed. She was scrubbing the pots and pans from supper, her beautiful face grey with exhaustion. The working day began for Orpheus's maids before sunrise and often didn't end until the moon was high in the sky. Orpheus himself made a tour of inspection of the whole house every morning, looking for cobwebs and dust, a speck on one of the mirrors that hung everywhere, a tarnished silver spoon, or a shirt that still showed a dirty mark after laundering. If he found anything he would deduct a sum from all the maids' paltry wages on the spot. And he almost always did find something.\n\n'What do you want?' Brianna turned, wiping her wet hands on her apron.\n\n'Orpheus has stomach-ache,' muttered Farid, without looking at her. 'I'm to make him some tea.'\n\nBrianna went to one of the kitchen dressers and took an earthenware jar off the top shelf. Farid didn't know which way to look as she poured hot water on the herbs. Her hair was the same colour as her father's, but wavy, and it shone in the candlelight like the red gold rings that the governor liked to wear on his thin fingers. The strolling players sang songs about Dustfinger's daughter and her broken heart.\n\n'Why are you staring like that?' She took a sudden step towards him. Her voice was so cutting that Farid instinctively flinched back. 'Yes, I look like him, don't I?'\n\nIt was as if, all through the silence of the last few weeks, she had been sharpening her words until they were knives that she could thrust through his heart.\n\n'You don't look in the least like him. I keep telling my mother so. You're only some good-for-nothing layabout who made out that he was my father's son, keeping the pretence up so long that in the end my father thought he had to die for you!'\n\nEvery word a knife, and Farid felt them piercing his heart.\n\nBrianna's eyes were not like her father's. She had her mother's eyes, and they looked at Farid with the same hostility as Roxane's. He wanted to hit her to silence her beautiful mouth. But she resembled Dustfinger too much.\n\n'You're a demon, an evil spirit bringing nothing but bad luck.' She handed him the ready-brewed tea. 'There, take Orpheus that. And tell him his stomach would feel better if he didn't eat so much.'\n\nFarid's hands trembled as he took the mug.\n\n'You don't know anything about it!' he said hoarsely. 'Nothing at all. I didn't want him to bring me back. Being dead felt much better.'\n\nBut Brianna only looked at him with her mother's eyes. And her father's face.\n\nAnd Farid stumbled back up to Orpheus's room with the hot tea, while Jasper stroked his hair with his tiny glass hand, full of pity."
            },
            {
                "title": "News from Ombra",
                "text": "\u2003And leafing through old books we sometimes find\n\n\u2003A dark, oracular phrase is underlined.\n\n\u2003You once were here, but in time out of mind.\n\n\u2014Rainer Maria Rilke, Improvisations from Capri in Winter III\n\nMeggie liked it in the robbers' camp. Sometimes it almost seemed to Resa as if her daughter had always dreamt of living in shabby tents. She watched Battista making himself a new mask, asked the Strong Man to teach her how to speak to the larks, and accepted the wild flowers that his younger brother brought her with a smile. It was good to see Meggie smiling again more often, although Farid was still with Orpheus. But Resa missed the farm they had left behind. She missed the silence and seclusion, and the sense of being alone with Mo and Meggie after all the weeks when they had been apart. Weeks, months, years...\n\nSometimes, when she saw the two of them sitting by the fire with the robbers, she felt almost as if she were watching them at a game they had played all through the years when she hadn't been with them. Come on, Mo, let's play robbers.\n\nThe Black Prince had advised Mo not to go outside the camp for the time being, and for a few days he took that advice. But on the third night he disappeared into the forest once more, all alone, as if to go in search of himself. And on the fourth night he went out with the robbers again.\n\nBattista had sung Resa the songs that were going around Ombra after Mo's venture into the city. The Bluejay had flown away, said the songs, escaping on the back of the Milksop's best horse. It was said that he had killed ten guards, imprisoned Sootbird in the vault and stolen Balbulus's finest books. 'How much of it is true?' she had asked Mo. He laughed. 'I'm afraid I can't be said to have flown!' he had whispered, caressing her belly in which their child was slowly growing. And then he had gone out with the Black Prince again. And she lay there night after night, listening to the songs Battista sang outside the tent, terrified for her husband.\n\nThe Black Prince had had two tents pitched for them right beside his own. They were patched together from old clothes that the robbers had dyed with oak bark so that they wouldn't show up too much among the surrounding trees: one tent for Meggie, one for the Bluejay and his wife. The mats of dried moss on which they slept were damp, and when Mo went out at night Resa shared the tent with her daughter for warmth. One day the grass was so white with hoarfrost in the morning that you could see the glass men's tracks in it. 'This will be a hard winter,' said the Strong Man, not for the first time.\n\nOne could still find giants' footsteps in the ravine where the camp lay. The rain of the last few weeks had turned them into ponds where gold-spotted frogs swam. The trees on the slopes of the ravine rose to the sky, almost as tall as the trees in the Wayless Wood. Their withering leaves covered the ground, which was cool now in autumn, with gold and flaming red, and fairies' nests hung among the branches like overripe fruit. If you looked south you could see a village in the distance, its walls showing pale as mushrooms between the trees, but it was such a poor village that even the Milksop's greedy tax-gatherers didn't bother to come this way. Wolves howled by night in the surrounding woods, pale grey owls like little ghosts flew over the shabby tents, and horned squirrels stole what food there was to steal among the camp fires.\n\nThere were a good fifty men living in the camp, sometimes more. The youngest were the two boys saved from hanging by Snapper, and now they both went spying for the Prince: Doria, the Strong Man's brother, who brought Meggie wild flowers, and his orphaned friend Luc. Luc helped Gecko to tame his crows. Six women cooked and mended for the robbers, but none of them went out at night with the men. Resa drew portraits of almost all of them, boys, men and women. Battista had found paper and chalk for her; where, he didn't say. She wondered, as she portrayed every face, if the lines on them had indeed been drawn by Fenoglio's words alone, or whether they weren't perhaps, after all, living their own lives in this world independently of the old man.\n\nThe women did not even join the men when they sat together talking. Resa always sensed the disapproving looks when she and Meggie sat down quite naturally with Mo and the Black Prince. Sometimes she returned those glances, staring Snapper in the face, and Gecko, and all the others who tolerated women in the camp only to cook food and mend clothes. She cursed the nausea that kept coming back and prevented her from at least going with Mo when he and the Prince walked in the surrounding hills, looking for a place offering better shelter for the winter.\n\nThey had been in the camp that Meggie called the Camp of Lost Giants for five days and five nights when Doria and Luc returned from Ombra about midday with news. It was obviously such bad news that Doria didn't even tell it to his brother, but went straight to the Black Prince's tent. A little later the Prince sent for Mo, and Battista assembled the men.\n\nDoria glanced at his strong brother before stepping into the circle of robbers, as if drawing courage from him to tell his news. But his voice was clear and firm when he began to speak. He sounded so much older than he was.\n\n'The Piper came out of the Wayless Wood yesterday,' he began. 'He took the road that approaches Ombra from the west, burning and looting as he went, letting it be known everywhere that the Milksop hasn't sent enough taxes to the Castle of Night, and he's here to collect more.'\n\n'How many men-at-arms are there with him?' As usual, Snapper sounded brusque. Resa didn't like his voice. She didn't like anything about him.\n\nDoria seemed to like the man who had saved his life no better than she did, judging by the look he gave him. 'A great many. More than us. Far more,' he added. 'I don't know the exact figure. The peasants whose houses they burnt didn't have time to count them.'\n\n'Even if they had had time it wouldn't have been much use, would it?' replied Snapper. 'Everyone knows peasants can't count.'\n\nGecko laughed, and with him some of the robbers who were always to be found near Snapper: Swindler, Grabber, the Charcoal-Burner, Elfbane, and several more.\n\nDoria's lips tightened. He and the Strong Man were peasant-born, and Snapper knew it. His own father, apparently, had been a mercenary soldier.\n\n'Tell them what else you heard, Doria.' The Black Prince's voice sounded weary as Resa had seldom heard it before.\n\nThe boy glanced at his brother once more. 'They're taking a head-count of the children,' he said. 'The Piper is drawing up lists of all of them over six years old and no more than five feet tall.'\n\nA murmur rose among the robbers, and Resa saw Mo leaning over to the Prince to whisper something to him. How close to each other they seemed, and how naturally Mo sat there with the ragged robbers. As if he belonged to them as much as to her and Meggie.\n\nThe Black Prince straightened up. His hair wasn't long now, as it had been when Resa had first met him. Three days after Dustfinger's death he had shaved his head, the custom in this world after the death of a friend. For on the third day, it was said, the souls of the dead entered the realm from which there was no return.\n\n'We knew the Piper would be coming sometime,' said the Black Prince. 'The Adder could hardly have failed to notice that his brother-in-law was keeping most of the taxes he collects for himself. But as you've heard, the taxes aren't the only reason why he's coming. We all know only too well what they use children for in Argenta.'\n\n'What do they use them for?' Meggie's voice sounded so clear among the voices of all the men. You couldn't tell from the sound of it that it had already changed this world several times by reading a few sentences.\n\n'What for? The tunnels in the silver mines are narrow, Bluejay's daughter,' replied Snapper. 'Be glad you're too large to be any use down there yourself.'\n\nThe mines. Resa's hand went instinctively to the place where her unborn child was growing, and Mo glanced at her as if the same thought had struck him too.\n\n'Of course. The Adderhead has sent far too many children to the mines already. His peasants are beginning to resist. It seems the Piper has only just put down a revolt.' Battista's voice sounded as weary as the Prince's. There were too few of them to right all these wrongs. 'The children die quickly down there,' Battista went on. 'It's a marvel the Adder hasn't thought of taking ours before. Children with no fathers, only defenceless unarmed mothers.'\n\n'Then we'll have to hide them!' Doria sounded as fearless as only a boy of fifteen can. 'The way you hid the harvest!'\n\nResa saw a smile appear on Meggie's lips.\n\n'Hide them, oh yes, of course!' Snapper laughed with derision. 'A fabulous idea. Gecko, tell this greenhorn how many children there are in Ombra alone. He's a peasant's son, you know, can't count.'\n\nThe Strong Man was rising to his feet, but Doria cast him a warning glance, and his brother sat down again. 'I can pick my little brother up with one hand,' the Strong Man often said, 'but he's a hundred times cleverer than me.'\n\nGecko obviously had not the faintest notion how many children there were in Ombra, quite apart from the fact that he wasn't too good at counting himself. 'Well, there are a lot,' he faltered, while the crow on his shoulder pecked at his hair, presumably hoping to find a few lice. 'Flies and children \u2014 that's the only two things still in plentiful supply in Ombra.'\n\nNo one laughed.\n\nThe Black Prince remained silent, and so did everyone else. If the Piper wanted those children, then he would take them.\n\nA fire-elf settled on Resa's arm. She shook it off, and found herself longing for Elinor's house so much that her heart hurt as if the elf had burnt it. She longed for the kitchen, always full of the humming of the outsize fridge, for Mo's workshop in the garden, and the armchair in the library where you could sit and visit strange worlds without getting lost in them.\n\n'Perhaps it's just bait!' said Battista, breaking the silence. 'You know how the Piper likes to leave bait lying around \u2013 and he knows very well that we can't simply let him take the children. Perhaps,' he added, glancing at Mo, 'perhaps he's hoping to catch the Bluejay that way at last!'\n\nResa saw Meggie instinctively moving closer to Mo. But his face remained unmoved, as if the Bluejay were someone else entirely.\n\n'Violante's already told me the Piper would soon be coming here,' said Mo. 'But she said nothing about children.'\n\nThe Bluejay's voice... the voice that had fooled the Adderhead and beguiled the fairies. It did nothing of the kind to Snapper. It merely reminded him that he had once sat where the Bluejay was sitting now \u2013 at the Black Prince's side.\n\n'You've been talking to Her Ugliness? Fancy that! So that's what took you to Ombra Castle. The Bluejay in conversation with the Adder's daughter.' Snapper twisted his coarse face into a grimace. 'Of course she didn't tell you anything about the children! Why would she? Quite apart from the fact that we can assume she doesn't even know about it! Her Ugliness has no more say than a kitchen maid about what goes on at the castle. That's how it always was, and that's how it always will be.'\n\n'I've told you often enough, Snapper.' The Black Prince spoke more sharply than usual. 'Violante has more power than you think. And more men, too \u2013 even if they're all very young.' He nodded to Mo. 'Tell them what happened at the castle. It's time they knew.'\n\nResa looked at Mo. What did the Black Prince know that she didn't?\n\n'Yes, come on, Bluejay, tell us how you got away unscathed this time!' Snapper's voice was so openly hostile now that some of the robbers exchanged uneasy glances. 'It really does sound like enchantment! First they let you out of the Castle of Night scot-free, now you're out of Ombra Castle as well. Don't say you made the Milksop immortal too in order to get away!'\n\nSome of the robbers laughed, but their laughter sounded uncomfortable. Resa was sure that many of them really did take Mo for some kind of enchanter, one of those men whose names were best spoken only in whispers, because they were said to know dark arts and could bewitch ordinary mortals with no more than a glance. How else was it possible for a man who had arrived as if from nowhere to be able to handle a sword better than most of them? And he could read and write as well.\n\n'Folk say the Adderhead's immortality doesn't bring him much joy!' objected the Strong Man.\n\nDoria sat down beside him, his eyes fixed darkly on Snapper. No, the boy certainly didn't like his rescuer much. His friend Luc, on the other hand, followed Snapper and Gecko like a dog.\n\n'So how does that help us? The Piper is looting and murdering worse than ever.' Snapper spat. 'The Adder is immortal. The Milksop, his brother-in-law, hangs at least one of us almost every day. And the Bluejay rides to Ombra and comes back unharmed.'\n\nAll was very, very quiet once more. Many of the robbers felt that the deal the Bluejay had done with the Adderhead in the Castle of Night was more than uncanny, even if ultimately Mo had tricked the Silver Prince. But the Adderhead was immortal all the same. Again and again he enjoyed giving a sword to some man the Piper had captured and making him thrust it through his body \u2013 only to follow that up by wounding the attacker with the same sword and giving him enough time to die to attract the White Women. That was the Adderhead's way of proclaiming that he no longer feared the daughters of Death, although it was also said that he still avoided getting too close to them. 'Death Serves the Adder' was the inscription he had had placed in silver lettering above the gates of the Castle of Night.\n\n'No. I was not required to make the Milksop immortal.' Mo's voice sounded cold as he replied to Snapper, very cold. 'It was Violante who got me safely out of the castle. After asking me to help her kill her father.'\n\nResa placed her hand on her belly as if to keep the words away from her unborn child. But in her mind there was room for only one thought: he's told the Black Prince what happened in the castle, but he didn't tell me. He didn't tell me...\n\nShe remembered how hurt Meggie had sounded when Mo finally told them what he had done to the White Book before giving it to the Adderhead. 'You moistened every tenth page? But you can't have done! I was with you the whole time! Why didn't you say anything?' Although Mo had kept her mother's whereabouts a secret from her all those years, Meggie still believed that in the last resort he couldn't really have any secrets from her. Resa had never felt that. All the same, it hurt that he had told the Black Prince more than he told her. It hurt badly.\n\n'Her Ugliness wants to kill her father?' Battista sounded incredulous.\n\n'What's so surprising about that?' Snapper raised his voice as if to speak for them all. 'She's the Adder's spawn. What reply did you give her, Bluejay? Did you say you must wait until your damn book doesn't protect him from death any more?'\n\nHe hates Mo, thought Resa. He really hates him! But the look that Mo turned on Snapper was just as hostile, and Resa wondered, not for the first time, whether she simply used to overlook the anger in him, or whether it was as new as the scar on his chest.\n\n'The Book will protect Violante's father for a long time yet.' Mo sounded bitter. 'The Adderhead has found a way to save it.'\n\nYet again there was murmuring among the robbers. Only the Black Prince didn't seem surprised. So Mo had told him that too. Had told him, and not her. He's turning into a different man, thought Resa. The words are changing him. This life is changing him. Even if it's only a game. If it's a game at all...\n\n'But that's impossible. If you left the pages damp it will go mouldy, and you've always said yourself that mould kills books as certainly as fire.'\n\nMeggie sounded so reproachful. Secrets... nothing eats away at love faster.\n\nMo looked at his daughter. That was in another world, Meggie, said his eyes. But his mouth said something else. 'Well, the Adderhead has taught me better. The Book will go on protecting him from death \u2013 only if its pages stay blank.'\n\nNo, thought Resa. She knew what was coming next, and she felt like putting her hands over her ears, although she loved nothing in the world more than Mo's voice. She had almost forgotten his face in all those years in Mortola's service, but she had always remembered his voice. Now, however, it no longer sounded like her husband's. It was the voice of the Bluejay.\n\n'It doesn't take long to write three words.' Mo did not speak loudly, but the whole Inkworld seemed full of his voice. It seemed to have belonged here for ever \u2013 among the tall, towering trees, the ragged men, the drowsy fairies in their nests. 'The Adderhead still believes that only I can save the Book. He'll give it to me if I go to him promising to cure it, and then... some ink, a pen, it doesn't take more than a few seconds to write three words. Suppose Violante can gain those few seconds for me?'\n\nHis voice painted the scene in the air, and the robbers listened as if they could see the whole thing before their eyes. Until Snapper broke the spell.\n\n'You're out of your mind! Totally out of your mind!' he said hoarsely. 'I suppose by now you believe everything the songs say about you \u2013 how you're invulnerable! The invincible Bluejay! Her Ugliness will sell you, and her father will skin you alive if he gets his hands on you again. That won't take him much more than a few seconds! But your liking for playing the hero will cost all the rest of us our lives too!'\n\nResa saw Mo's fingers close around the hilt of his sword, but the Black Prince laid a hand on his arm. 'Maybe he'd have to play the hero less frequently if you and your friends did it more often, Snapper,' he said.\n\nSnapper rose to his feet menacingly slowly, but before he could say anything the Strong Man spoke up, quick as a child trying to settle his parents' quarrel. 'Suppose the Bluejay is right? Perhaps Her Ugliness really does want to help. She's always been good to us strolling players! She even used to come and visit our camp. And she feeds the poor and sends for the Barn Owl to come to the castle when the Milksop's had some unfortunate fellow's hand or foot chopped off!'\n\n'Yes, very generous of her, isn't it?' Gecko made a mocking face, as he so often did when the Strong Man said anything, and the crow on his shoulder uttered a croak of derision. 'What's so generous about giving away kitchen scraps and clothes no one wants any more? Does Her Ugliness go around in rags like my mother and my sisters? No! I expect Balbulus has run out of parchment, and she wants to buy more with the price on the Bluejay's head!'\n\nOnce again some of the robbers laughed. As for the Strong Man, he looked uncertainly at the Black Prince. His brother whispered something to him, and scowled at Gecko. Please, Prince! thought Resa. Tell Mo to forget what Violante said. He'll listen to you. And help him to forget the Book he bound for her father! Please!\n\nThe Black Prince glanced at her as if he had heard her silent pleading. But his dark face remained inscrutable. She often found Mo's face impossible to read these days.\n\n'Doria!' the Prince said. 'Do you think you can get past the castle guards and ask around among Violante's soldiers? One of them may have heard more about what the Piper is here for.'\n\nThe Strong Man opened his mouth as if to protest. He loved his brother and did all he could to protect him, but Doria was at an age when a boy doesn't want protection any more.\n\n'Of course. Easy,' he said with a smile that showed how happy he was to do as the Prince asked. 'I've known some of them ever since I could walk. Mostly they aren't much older than me.'\n\n'Good.' The Black Prince stood up. His next words were for Mo, although he didn't look at him. 'As for Violante's offer, I agree with Gecko and Snapper. Violante may have a soft spot for strolling players and feel sorry for her subjects, but she's still her father's daughter, and we ought not to trust her.'\n\nAll eyes went to the Bluejay.\n\nBut Mo said nothing.\n\nTo Resa, that silence spoke louder than words. She knew it, just as Meggie did. Resa saw the fear on her daughter's face as she began talking earnestly to Mo. Yes, by now Meggie too probably felt what a hold this story had taken on her father. The letters were drawing him deeper and deeper down, like a whirlpool made of ink, and once again the terrible thought that had haunted Resa with increasing frequency these last few weeks came to her: that on the day when Mo had lain wounded in Capricorn's burnt-out fortress, close to death, perhaps the White Women really did take a part of him away with them to the place where Dustfinger had gone, and she would see that part of him again only there. In the place where all stories end."
            },
            {
                "title": "Loud Words, Soft Words",
                "text": "\u2003When you go, space closes over like water behind you,\n\n\u2003Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,\n\n\u2003Space is only time visible in a different way,\n\n\u2003Places we love we can never leave.\n\n\u2014Ivan V. Lalic, Places We Love\n\n'Please, Mo! Ask him!'\n\nAt first Meggie thought she had heard her mother's voice only in a dream, one of the dark dreams that sometimes came to her out of the past. Resa sounded so desperate. But when Meggie opened her eyes she could still hear her voice. And when she looked out of the tent she saw her parents standing among the trees only a short way off, little more than two shadows in the night. The oak against which Mo was leaning was huge, an oak such as Meggie had never seen outside the Inkworld, and Resa was clutching his arm as if to force him to listen to her.\n\n'Isn't that what we've always done? When one of us didn't like a story any more, we closed the book! Mo, have you forgotten how many books there are? Let's find another to tell us its story, a book with words that will stay words and not make us a part of them!'\n\nMeggie glanced at the robbers lying under the trees only a little way off. Many of them were sleeping in the open, although the nights were already very cold, but her mother's despairing voice didn't seem to have woken any of them.\n\n'If I remember correctly, I was the one who wanted to close this book long ago.' Mo's voice sounded as cool as the air making its way in through the tent's ragged fabric. 'But you and Meggie wouldn't hear of another one.'\n\n'How was I to know what this story would turn you into?' Resa's voice sounded as if she hardly knew how to hold back her tears.\n\nGo back to sleep, Meggie told herself. Leave the two of them alone. But she stayed where she was, freezing in the cold night air.\n\n'What are you talking about? What's it supposed to have made me into?'\n\nMo spoke softly, as if he didn't want to disturb the silence of the night, but Resa seemed to have forgotten where she was.\n\n'What's it made you into?' Her voice was rising with every word. 'You wear a sword at your belt! You hardly sleep, you're out all night. Do you think I can't tell the cry of a real bluejay from a human imitation? I know how often Battista or the Strong Man came to fetch you when we were at the farm... and the worst of it is, I know how happy you are to go with them. You've found you have a taste for danger! You went to Ombra although the Prince warned you not to. And now you come back, after they almost caught you, and act as if it were all a game!'\n\n'What else is it?' Mo was still speaking so softly that Meggie could hardly hear him. 'Have you forgotten what this world is made of?'\n\n'I couldn't care less what it's made of. You can die in it, Mo. You know that better than I do. Or have you forgotten the White Women? No, you even talk about them in your sleep. Sometimes I almost think you miss them.'\n\nMo did not reply, but Meggie knew Resa was right. Mo had talked to her about the White Women only once. 'They're made of nothing but longing, Meggie,' he had said. 'They fill your heart to the brim with longing, until you just want to go with them, wherever they take you.'\n\n'Please, Mo!' Resa's voice was shaking. 'Ask Fenoglio to write us back again! He'll try to do it for you. He owes you that!'\n\nOne of the robbers coughed in his sleep, another moved closer to the fire... and Mo said nothing. When at last he did reply he sounded as if he were talking to a child. Even to Meggie he didn't speak like that. 'Fenoglio isn't writing at all these days, Resa. I'm not even sure whether he still can.'\n\n'Then go to Orpheus! You've heard what Farid says. Orpheus has written rainbow-coloured fairies into this world, and unicorns and\u2014'\n\n'So? Maybe Orpheus can add something to Fenoglio's story here and there. But he'd have to write something of his own to take us back to Elinor. I doubt if he can do that. And even if he can \u2013 from all Farid says, he's not interested in anything but making himself the richest man in Ombra. Do you have the money to pay him for his words?'\n\nThis time it was Resa who remained silent \u2013 for so long that she might have been mute again, as she was when she left her voice behind in the Inkworld.\n\nIt was Mo who finally broke the silence.\n\n'Resa!' he said. 'If we go back now I'll be sitting in Elinor's house doing nothing but wondering how this story goes on, day in, day out. And no book in the world will be able to tell me that!'\n\n'You don't just want to know how it goes on.' Now it was Resa's voice that sounded cool. 'You want to decide what happens. You want to be part of it! But who knows whether you'll ever find your way out of the letters on the page again, if you tangle yourself up in them even more?'\n\n'Even more? What do you mean? I've seen Death here, Resa \u2013 and I have a new life.'\n\n'If you won't do it for me,' \u2013 Meggie could hear how hard it was for her mother to go on \u2013 'then go back for Meggie... and for our second child. I want my baby to have a father, I want the baby's father to be alive when it's born \u2013 and I want him to be the same man who brought its sister up.'\n\nOnce more Meggie had to wait a long time for Mo's answer. A tawny owl hooted. Gecko's crows cawed sleepily in the tree where they roosted at night. Fenoglio's world seemed so peaceful. And Mo stroked the bark of the tree against which he was leaning, as tenderly as he usually caressed the spine of a book.\n\n'How do you know Meggie doesn't want to stay? She's almost grown up. And in love. Do you think she wants to go back while Farid stays here? Because stay he will.'\n\nIn love. Meggie's face was burning. She didn't want Mo to say what she herself had never put into words. In love \u2013 it sounded like a sickness without any cure, and wasn't that just how it sometimes felt? Yes, Farid would stay. She had so often told herself that, when she felt a wish to go back: Farid will stay even if Dustfinger doesn't return from the dead. He'll go on looking for him and longing for him, much more than he longs for you, Meggie. But how would it feel never to see him again? Would she leave her heart here and go around with an empty hole in her breast ever after? Would she stay alone \u2013 like Elinor \u2013 and only read about being in love in books?\n\n'She'll get over it!' she heard Resa say. 'She'll fall in love with someone else.'\n\nWhat was her mother talking about? She doesn't know me! thought Meggie. She never knew me. How could she? She was never there with us.\n\n'What about your second child?' Resa went on. 'Do you want the baby born in this world?'\n\nMo looked round him, and once more Meggie felt something she had long known: by now her father loved this world as much as she and Resa had once done. Perhaps he even loved it more.\n\n'Why not?' he retorted. 'Do you want it born in a world where what it longs for can be found only in books?'\n\nResa's voice shook when she replied, but now it was with anger. 'How can you say such a thing? Everything you find here was born in our world. Where else did Fenoglio get it all from?'\n\n'How should I know? Do you really still think there's only one real world, and the others are just pale offshoots?'\n\nSomewhere a wolf howled and two others responded. One of the guards came through the trees and put wood on the dying fire. His name was Wayfarer. None of the robbers went by the names they had been born with. He moved away again, after casting a curious glance at Mo and Resa.\n\n'I don't want to go back, Resa. Not now!' Mo's voice sounded determined, but at the same time Meggie could tell he was trying to win her mother over, as if he still hoped to convince her that they were in the right place. 'It will be months yet before the baby's born, and maybe we'll all be back in Elinor's house by then. But right now, this is where I want to be.'\n\nHe kissed Resa on the forehead. Then he went away, over to the men standing on guard among the trees at the far end of the camp. And Resa dropped into the grass where she stood and buried her face in her hands. Meggie wanted to go to her and comfort her, but what could she say? I want to stay with Farid, Resa. I don't want to find someone else. No, that would hardly be much comfort to her mother. And Mo didn't come back either."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Piper's Offer",
                "text": "\u2003The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.\n\n\u2014Graham Greene, Advice to Writers\n\nAt last. Here they came. Trumpets rang out in a fanfare from the city gates, an arrogant metallic sound. Just like the man it announced, Fenoglio thought. The Milksop \u2013 the common people always found the most suitable names. He couldn't have thought of a better one himself, but then he hadn't invented this pallid upstart either! Not even the Adderhead had his arrival announced by long-stemmed trumpets, but his pigeon-chested brother-in-law had only to ride around the castle and they struck up.\n\nFenoglio drew Minerva's children closer to his side. Despina didn't mind at all, but her brother wriggled out of Fenoglio's grasp and climbed up, nimble as a squirrel, to a ledge on the wall where he would have a view down the street along which they'd soon be coming. The Milksop and his retinue, also known to the townsfolk as his pack of hounds. Had the Adder's brother-in-law already been told that almost all the women of Ombra were waiting for him at the castle gate? Yes, surely.\n\nWhy is the Piper counting our children? That was the question that had brought them here. They had already called it out to the guards, whose faces were unmoved and who had merely lowered their spears in the direction of the angry women. But the women hadn't gone home, all the same.\n\nIt was Friday, the day when the hunt rode out, and the crowd had been waiting hours for the return of their new master, who had set about killing all the game in the Wayless Wood from the moment of his arrival. Once again his servants would be carrying dozens of bloodstained partridges, wild boar, deer and hares through the streets of starving Ombra, past women who hardly knew where to find food for the next day. That was why Fenoglio hardly ever went out of doors, and even less on Fridays than on any other day of the week, but curiosity had brought him here today. Curiosity \u2013 a tiresome feeling!\n\n'Fenoglio,' Minerva had said, 'can you look after Despina and Ivo? I have to go to the castle. We're all going. We want to make them tell us why the Piper is counting our children.'\n\nYou know why, Fenoglio wanted to say. But the desperation on Minerva's face silenced him. Let them hope their children weren't wanted for the silver mines, he told himself. Leave it to the Milksop and the Piper to take their hope away.\n\nOh, how tired he was of all this! He'd tried his hand at writing again yesterday, roused to anger by the arrogant smile with which the Piper rode into Ombra. He had picked up one of the sharpened pens that the glass man still placed encouragingly in front of him, sat down in front of a blank sheet of paper, and after an hour of waiting in vain told Rosenquartz off for buying paper that anyone could see was made of old trousers.\n\nAh, Fenoglio, he wondered, how many more stupid excuses will you think up for the way you've turned into an old man with no power over words any more?\n\nYes, he admitted it. He wanted to be master of this story, strongly as he had denied it after Cosimo's death. More and more often these days he set to work with pen and ink in search of the old magic \u2013 usually while the glass man was snoring in his fairy nest, because it was too embarrassing to have Rosenquartz as a witness of his failure. He tried it when Minerva had to give the children soup tasting little better than dishwater, when the horrible rainbow-coloured fairies jabbered away in their nest at the tops of their voices, keeping him awake, or when one of his creations \u2013 like the Piper yesterday \u2013 reminded him of the days when he had woven this world out of letters, intoxicated by his own skill with words.\n\nBut the paper stayed blank \u2013 as if all the words had stolen away to Orpheus, just because he took them and savoured them on his tongue. Had life ever tasted so bitter before?\n\nIn Fenoglio's gloomy mood he had even played with the idea of going back to that village in the other world, such a peaceful, well-fed place, so wonderfully free of fairies and stirring events, back to his grandchildren, who must be missing his stories. (And what fabulous stories he'd be able to tell them now!) But where could the words be found that would take him back? Certainly not in his empty old head, and he could hardly ask Orpheus to write them for him. He hadn't sunk as low as that yet.\n\nDespina tugged at his sleeve. Cosimo had given him the tunic he was wearing, but it too was moth-eaten now, and as dusty as his brain that wouldn't think. What was he doing here outside this damn castle? The sight of it depressed him. Why wasn't he lying in bed?\n\n'Fenoglio? Is it true that when people dig silver out of the ground they spit blood on it?' Despina's voice still reminded him of a little bird's. 'Ivo says I'm just the right size for the tunnels where they find most of the silver.'\n\nDamn the boy! Why did he tell his little sister such stories?\n\n'How often have I told you not to believe a word your brother says?' Fenoglio tucked Despina's thick black hair back behind her ears, and looked accusingly at Ivo. Poor fatherless little thing.\n\n'Why shouldn't I tell her? She asked me!' Ivo was at the age when you despise even comforting lies. 'I don't expect they'll take you,' he said, leaning down to his sister. 'Girls die too quickly. But they'll take me and Beppo and Lino, and even Mungus, although he limps. The Piper will take us all. And then they'll bring us back dead just like our\u2014'\n\nDespina put her hand over his mouth quickly, as if her father might come back to life if only her brother didn't speak the bad word. Fenoglio could happily have seized and shaken the boy, but Despina would only have burst into tears on the spot. Did all little sisters adore their brothers?\n\n'That's enough! Stop upsetting your sister!' he snapped at Ivo. 'The Piper's here to catch the Bluejay. Not for anything else. And to ask the Milksop why he isn't sending more silver to the Castle of Night.'\n\n'Oh yes? Then why are they counting us?' The boy had grown up in the last few weeks. As if grief had wiped away the childishness on his face. At the tender age of ten, Ivo was now the man of the family \u2013 even if Fenoglio sometimes tried to lift the burden of that responsibility off his thin shoulders. The boy worked with the dyers, helped to pull wet fabric through the stinking vats day in, day out, and brought the smell home with him in the evening. But he earned more with that work than Fenoglio did as a scribe in the marketplace.\n\n'They're going to kill us all!' he went on unmoved, his eyes fixed on the guards, who were still pointing their spears at the waiting women. 'And they'll tear the Bluejay to pieces, like they did last week with the strolling player who threw rotten vegetables at the governor. They fed the pieces to the hounds.'\n\n'Ivo!' This was too much. Fenoglio tried to grab him by the ears, but the boy was too quick for him and ran away before he could get a hold. However, his sister stood there squeezing Fenoglio's hand as tightly as if there were nothing else for her to cling to in this shattered world.\n\n'They won't catch him, will they?' Despina's little voice was so timid that Fenoglio had to bend down to hear what she was saying. 'The bear protects the Bluejay now as well as the Black Prince, doesn't he?'\n\n'Of course!' Fenoglio stroked her jet-black hair again. The sound of hoof beats was coming up the street, echoing among the houses, with voices chatting as casually as if they scorned the silence of the women waiting there, while the sun sank behind the surrounding hills and turned the roofs of Ombra red. The noble lords were late coming back from the pleasures of the hunt today, their silver-embroidered garments spattered with blood, their bored hearts comfortably aroused by killing. Death could indeed be a great entertainer \u2013 when it was someone else's death.\n\nThe women crowded closer together. The guards drove them back from the gates, but they stayed outside the castle walls: old women, young women, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. Minerva was one of those in front. She had grown thin in the last few weeks. Fenoglio's story, that man-eating monster, was eating her alive. But Minerva had smiled when she heard that the Bluejay had gone to see some books in the castle and ridden away unscathed.\n\n'He will save us!' she had whispered. In the evenings she sang, low-voiced, the songs going around Ombra, and very bad songs they were. About the White Hand and the Black Hand of Justice, the Jay and the Prince... a bookbinder and a knife-thrower against the Piper and his army of fire-raising men-at-arms. But why not? After all, didn't that sound like a good story?\n\nFenoglio picked Despina up as the soldiers escorting the hunting party rode by. Strolling players followed them down the street: pipers, drummers, jugglers, brownie-tamers, and of course Sootbird, who wasn't going to miss any fun, even if \u2013 so they said \u2013 he felt ill at the sight of people being blinded and quartered. Then came the hounds, dappled like the light in the Wayless Wood, with the kennel-boys who made sure the dogs were hungry on the day of the hunt, and finally the hunters, led by the Milksop, a skinny figure on a horse much too large for him. He was as ugly as his sister was said to be beautiful, with a pointed nose that seemed too short for his face and a wide, pinched mouth. No one knew why the Adderhead had made him, of all men, lord of Ombra. Perhaps it had been at the request of his sister who, after all, had given the Silver Prince his first son. But Fenoglio suspected it was more likely that the Adderhead had chosen his puny brother-in-law because he could be sure the Milksop would never rise against him.\n\nWhat a feeble character, thought Fenoglio scornfully as the Milksop rode by with a supercilious expression on his face. Obviously this story was now filling even leading roles with cheap supporting actors.\n\nAs expected, the fine ladies and gentlemen had brought back plenty of game: partridges dangling from the poles to which the grooms had tied them like fruit that had just fallen, half a dozen of the deer he had thought up especially for this world, with reddish-brown coats that were still as dappled as a fawn's even in old age (not that these animals had been particularly old), hares, stags, wild boar...\n\nThe women of Ombra stared at the slaughtered game expressionlessly. Many put a telltale hand to their empty stomachs, or glanced at their ever-hungry children waiting in doorways for their mothers.\n\nAnd then \u2013 then they carried the unicorn past.\n\nDamn that Cheeseface!\n\nThere were no unicorns in Fenoglio's world, but Orpheus had written one here just so that the Milksop could kill it. Fenoglio quickly put his hand over Despina's eyes when they carried it by, its white coat pierced and bloodstained. Rosenquartz had told him not quite a week ago about the Milksop's commission. The fee for it had been high, and all Ombra had wondered what distant country Four-Eyes had brought that fairy-tale creature from.\n\nA unicorn! What stories could have been told about it! But the Milksop wasn't paying for stories, quite apart from the fact that Orpheus couldn't have written them. He did it with my words, thought Fenoglio. With my words! He felt fury clenched like a stone in his belly. If he only had the money to hire a couple of thieves to steal the book which supplied that parasite with words! His own book! Or if, at least, he could have written a few treasures for himself! But he couldn't manage even that \u2013 he, Fenoglio, formerly court poet to Cosimo the Fair and creator of this once-magnificent world! Tears of self-pity came to his eyes, and he imagined them carrying Orpheus past, stabbed and bloodstained like the unicorn. Oh, yes!\n\n'Why are you counting our children? We want you to stop it!'\n\nMinerva's voice brought Fenoglio out of his vengeful daydreams. When she saw her mother step in front of the horses Despina wound her thin little arms so tightly around his neck that he could hardly breathe. Had Minerva lost her wits? Did she want her children to be not just fatherless but motherless too?\n\nA woman riding just behind the Milksop pointed her gloved finger at Minerva with her bare feet and shabby dress. The guards moved towards her with their spears.\n\nFor heaven's sake, Minerva! Fenoglio's heart was in his mouth. Despina began crying, but it wasn't her sobs that made Minerva stumble back. Unnoticed, the Piper had appeared on the battlements above the gateway.\n\n'You ask why we're counting your children?' he called down to the women.\n\nAs always, he was magnificently dressed. Even the Milksop looked like a mere valet by comparison. He stood on the battlements shimmering like a peacock with four crossbow-men beside him. Perhaps he had been up there for some time, watching to see how his master's brother-in-law would deal with the women waiting for him. His hoarse voice carried a long way in the silence that suddenly fell on Ombra.\n\n'We count everything that's ours!' he cried. 'Sheep, cows, chickens, women, children, men \u2013 not that you have many of those left \u2013 fields, barns, stables, houses. We count every tree in your forest. After all, the Adderhead likes to know what he's ruling over.'\n\nHis silver nose still looked like a beak in the middle of his face. There were tales saying that the Adderhead had ordered a silver heart to be made for his herald too, but Fenoglio felt sure there was still a human heart beating in the Piper's breast. Nothing was more cruel than a heart made of flesh and blood, because it knew what gives pain.\n\n'You don't want them for the mines?' The woman who spoke up this time did not step forward like Minerva, but hid among the others. The Piper did not answer at once. He examined his fingernails. The Piper was proud of his pink nails. They were as well manicured as a woman's, just as Fenoglio had described them. In spite of everything, it was still exciting to see his characters acting exactly as he had imagined.\n\nYou soak them in rosewater every evening, you villain, thought Fenoglio, as Despina stared at the Piper like a bird staring at the cat that wants to eat it. And you wear them as long as the nails of the ladies who keep the Milksop company.\n\n'For the mines? What a delightful idea!'\n\nIt was so quiet now that the silver-nosed man didn't even have to raise his voice. In the setting sun his shadow fell over the women, long and black. Very effective, Fenoglio thought. And how stupid the Milksop looked. The Piper was keeping him waiting outside his own gates like a servant. What a scene. But this one wasn't his own invention...\n\n'Ah, I understand! You think that's why the Adderhead sent me here!' The Piper leant his hands on the wall and looked down from the battlements, like a beast of prey wondering whether the Milksop or one of the women would taste better. 'No, no. I'm here to catch a bird, and you all know the colour of its feathers. Although, as I hear, he was black as a raven during his last impudent exploit. As soon as that bird is caught, I'll be riding back to the other side of the forest. Isn't that so, Governor?'\n\nThe Milksop looked up at him and adjusted his sword, still bloodstained from the hunt. 'If you say so!' he called in a voice that he could control only with difficulty. He glanced angrily at the women outside the gates, as if he'd never seen anything like them before.\n\n'I do say so.' The Piper smiled condescendingly down on the Milksop. 'But on the other hand,' he said, and the pause before he continued seemed endless, 'if this bird should escape capture once more...' He paused again, for a long time, as if he wanted to inspect each of the waiting women thoroughly. 'If any of those present here should go so far as to give him shelter and a roof over his head, warn him of our patrols, sing songs of how he pulls the wool over our eyes...' The sigh he heaved came from the depths of his breast. 'Well, in that case, no doubt I'd have to take your children with me in his place, for after all, I can't go back to the Castle of Night empty-handed, can I?'\n\nOh, the confounded silver-nosed bastard.\n\nWhy didn't you make him more stupid, Fenoglio? Because stupid villains are so boring, he answered himself, and was ashamed of it when he saw the despair on the women's faces.\n\n'So you see, it's entirely up to you!' The strained voice still had something of the slushy sweetness for which Capricorn had loved it so much. 'Help me to catch the bird that the Adderhead longs to hear singing in his castle, and you can keep your children. Otherwise...' He wearily signed to the guards, and the Milksop, his face rigid with fury, rode towards the gates as they opened. 'Otherwise, I am afraid I'll have to remember that there is indeed always a need for small hands in our silver mines.'\n\nThe women were still staring at him with faces as empty of emotion as if there simply were no room in them for yet more despair.\n\n'What are you still standing there for?' called the Piper as the servants carried the Milksop's dead game through the gateway below. 'Go away! Or I'll have boiling water poured over you. Not a bad idea at all, since I'm sure you could all do with a bath.'\n\nAs if numbed, the women moved back, looking up at the battlements as though the cauldrons were already heating up.\n\nThe last time Fenoglio's heart had raced like this was when the soldiers had appeared in Balbulus's workshop to take Mortimer away with them. He examined the faces of the women, the beggars crouching beside the pillory outside the castle walls, the frightened children, and fear spread through him. All the rewards set on Mortimer's head had not yet been able to buy the Silver Prince an informer in Ombra, but what now? What mother would not betray the Bluejay for her own child's sake?\n\nA beggar pushed his way through the crowd of women, and as he limped past Fenoglio recognized him as one of the Black Prince's spies. Good, he thought. Mortimer will soon know about the deal the Piper has offered the women of Ombra. But then what?\n\nThe Milksop's hunting party was moving on through the open castle gates, and the women set off for home, heads lowered, as if already ashamed of the act of betrayal the Piper had demanded of them.\n\n'Fenoglio?' A woman stopped in front of him. He didn't know who she was until she pushed back the scarf that she had tied over her pinned-up hair like a peasant woman.\n\n'Resa? What are you doing here?' Fenoglio instinctively looked round in alarm, but Mortimer's wife had obviously come without her husband.\n\n'I've been looking for you everywhere!'\n\nDespina clung around Fenoglio's neck and stared curiously at the strange woman. 'That lady looks like Meggie,' she whispered to him.\n\n'Yes, because she's Meggie's mother.' Fenoglio put Despina down as Minerva came towards him. She was walking slowly, as if she felt dizzy, and Ivo ran to her and put his arm protectively around her.\n\n'Fenoglio!' Resa took his arm. 'I have to speak to you!'\n\nWhat about? It couldn't be anything good.\n\n'Minerva, you go ahead,' he said. 'It will be all right, wait and see,' he added, but Minerva just looked at him as if he were one of her children. Then she took Despina's hand and followed her son, who was running on ahead. She walked as unsteadily as if the Piper's words were splinters of glass under her feet.\n\n'Tell me your husband is hidden deep, deep in the forest and not planning any more idiocy like that visit to Balbulus!' Fenoglio whispered to Resa as he led her away with him into Bakers' Alley. It still smelt of fresh bread and cake there, a tormenting aroma for most of the people of Ombra, who hadn't been able to afford such delicacies for a long time.\n\nResa covered her hair with the scarf again, and looked round as if she were afraid the Piper had come down from the battlements and was following her, but only a thin cat slunk past. Once there had been a great many pigs in the streets too, but they had been eaten long ago, most of them up at the castle.\n\n'I need your help!' Good God, how desperate she sounded! 'You must write us home again. You owe us that! It's your songs that have put Mo in danger, and it's getting worse every day! You heard what the Piper said!'\n\n'Stop, stop, stop!' He blamed himself often enough these days, but Fenoglio still didn't like to be blamed by others. And this accusation really was surely unjust. 'I never brought Mortimer here, Orpheus did. I really couldn't foresee that my inspiration for the Bluejay would suddenly be walking around here in flesh and blood!'\n\n'But it happened!' One of the night watchmen who lit the lanterns was coming down the street. Darkness fell fast in Ombra. Another banquet would soon be beginning in the castle, and Sootbird's fire would stink to high heaven.\n\n'If you won't do it for me,' said Resa, doing her best to sound composed, but Fenoglio could see the tears in her eyes, 'then do it for Meggie... and the brother or sister she's soon going to have.'\n\nAnother child? Fenoglio instinctively glanced at Resa's belly as if he could already see a new character in the story there. Was there no end to its complications?\n\n'Fenoglio, please!'\n\nWhat was he to say in reply? Should he tell her about the sheet of paper still lying blank on his table \u2013 or even admit that he liked the way her husband played the part he had written for him, that the Bluejay was his sole comfort in these dark days, the only one of his ideas that worked really well? No, better not.\n\n'Did Mortimer send you?'\n\nShe avoided his eyes.\n\n'Resa, does he want to leave too?' Leave this world of mine? he added in his thoughts. My world, still fabulous even if it's in a certain amount of turmoil at the moment? For, yes, Fenoglio knew only too well that he himself still loved it, despite its darkness. Perhaps because of its darkness. No. No, that wasn't why... or was it?\n\n'He must leave! Can't you see that?' The last of the daylight was fading from the streets. The buildings stood very close together, and it was cold, and as still as if all Ombra were thinking of the Piper's threat. Shivering, Resa drew her cloak around her. 'Your words... they're changing him!'\n\n'Oh, come on. Words don't change anyone!' Fenoglio's voice sounded louder than he had intended. 'Maybe my words have taught your husband things about himself he never knew before, but they were there all the time, and if he likes them now you can hardly call it my fault! Ride back, tell him what the Piper offered, say he'd better avoid anything like that visit to Balbulus in the near future, and for God's sake don't worry. He's playing his part very well! He plays it better than any of the other characters I made up, except maybe the Black Prince. Your husband is a hero in this world! What man wouldn't wish for that?'\n\nThe way she was looking at him, as if he were an old fool who didn't know what he was talking about! 'You know very well how heroes end up,' she said, carefully controlling her voice. 'They don't have wives or children, and they don't grow old. Find yourself another man to play the hero in your story, but leave my husband out of it! You must write us all back! Tonight!'\n\nHe hardly knew where to look. Her gaze was so clear \u2013 just like her daughter's. Meggie had always looked at him like that. A candle flared into life in the window above them. His world was sinking into darkness. Night was falling \u2013 close the curtains, tomorrow the story will go on...\n\n'I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I'll never be able to write again. It brings nothing but misfortune, and there's enough of that here already.'\n\nWhat a coward he was. Too cowardly for the truth. Why didn't he tell her that the words had abandoned him, that she was asking the wrong man? But Resa seemed to know it anyway. He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger, disappointment, fear \u2013 and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly. That was what it was doing to Minerva...\n\n'Very well.' Resa was in control of her voice, although it shook. 'Then I'll go to Orpheus. He can write unicorns into this world, he brought us all here. Why shouldn't he be able to send us home again too?'\n\nIf you can pay him, thought Fenoglio, but he didn't say it aloud. Orpheus would send her packing. He saved his words for the ladies and gentlemen in the castle who paid for his expensive clothes and his maids. No, she'd have to stay, and so would Mortimer and Meggie \u2013 and a good thing too, because who else was going to read his words, supposing they did obey him again some day. And who was to kill the Adderhead if not the Bluejay?\n\nYes, they had to stay. It was better that way.\n\n'Off you go to Orpheus, then,' he said. 'And I wish you luck with him.' He turned his back to her, so that he wouldn't have to see the despair in her eyes any longer. Did he detect a trace of contempt there too? 'But you'd better not ride back in the dark,' he added. 'The roads are more dangerous every day.'\n\nThen he left her. Minerva would be waiting with supper. He didn't turn back. He knew only too well how Resa would be gazing after him. Exactly like her daughter..."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Fear",
                "text": "\u2003You wish for something you don't really want, the dream says.\n\n\u2003Bad dream. Punish him. Chase him from the house.\n\n\u2003Tie him to the horses, let him run with them.\n\n\u2003Hang him. He deserves it.\n\n\u2003Feed him mushrooms. Poisonous ones.\n\n\u2014Paavo Haavikko, The Trees Breathe Gently\n\nMo had spent two whole days and nights with Battista and the Black Prince looking for a place where a hundred or more children could be hidden. With the bear's help, they had finally found a cave. But it was a long way off. The mountainside where the cave lay concealed was steep and almost impassable, especially for children's feet, and a pack of wolves roamed the ravine next to it, but there was some hope that neither the Milksop's hounds nor the Piper would find them there. Not a great deal of hope, but for the first time in many days Mo's heart felt a little lighter.\n\nHope. Nothing is more intoxicating. And hardly any hope was sweeter than the prospect of giving the Piper an unpleasant surprise and humiliating him in front of his immortal master.\n\nThey wouldn't have to hide all the children, of course, but many, very many of them must be hidden. If all went according to plan, Ombra would soon be not just without men but almost entirely without children, and the Piper would have to go from one remote farm to another if he wanted to steal any, hoping the Black Prince's men hadn't been there ahead of him helping the women to hide their little ones.\n\nYes, much would be gained if they succeeded in getting the children of Ombra to safety, and Mo was almost in high spirits as they returned to the camp. But when Meggie came to meet him with anxiety on her face, that mood was gone at once. Obviously there was more bad news.\n\nMeggie's voice shook as she told him about the deal the Piper had offered the women of Ombra. The Bluejay in exchange for your children. The Black Prince didn't have to tell Mo what that meant. Instead of helping to hide the children, he himself would have to hide from every woman who had a child of the right age.\n\n'You'd better take to living in the trees!' hiccupped Gecko. He was drunk, presumably on the wine they had stolen only last week from a couple of the Milksop's friends out hunting. 'After all, you can fly up there. Don't folk say that's how you escaped from Balbulus's workshop?'\n\nMo would happily have punched his drunken mouth, but Meggie reached for his hand, and the anger that sprang up in him so quickly these days ebbed away when he saw the fear on his daughter's face.\n\n'What will you do now, Mo?' she whispered.\n\nWhat indeed? He didn't know the answer. All he knew was that he would rather ride to the Castle of Night and surrender than hide. He quickly turned away so that Meggie wouldn't read his thoughts on his face, but she knew him so well. Too well.\n\n'Perhaps Resa's right after all!' she whispered to him, while Gecko stared at them with bloodshot eyes, and even the Black Prince couldn't conceal his anxiety. 'Perhaps,' she added, almost inaudibly, 'we really ought to go back home to Elinor, Mo!'\n\nShe'd heard him and Resa quarrelling.\n\nInvoluntarily, he looked round for Resa, but he couldn't see her anywhere.\n\nWhat will you do now, Mo?\n\nYes, what indeed? How was the last song about the Bluejay to go? But they never caught the Jay, however hard they looked for him. He disappeared without trace, as if he had never been. However, he left the Book behind, the White Book that he had bound for the Adderhead, and with it the Adder's immortal tyranny. No, that must not be the last song. No? What, then? But one day a mother, fearing for her children, gave the Bluejay away. And he died the worst of all deaths ever suffered by any man in the Castle of Night. Was that a better end to the story? Was there any better end at all?\n\n'Come along!' Battista put an arm around his shoulders. 'I suggest we get drunk to drown this news. If the others have left any of the Milksop's wine, that is. Forget the Piper, forget the Adderhead, drown them all in good red wine.'\n\nBut Mo didn't feel like drinking, even if the wine silenced the voice he kept hearing inside himself since his quarrel with Resa. I don't want to go back, it said. No, not yet...\n\nGecko staggered back to the fire and pushed in between Snapper and Elfbane. They'd soon start fighting again; they always did when they were drunk.\n\n'I'm going to get some sleep. That clears the head better than wine,' said the Black Prince. 'We'll talk tomorrow.'\n\nThe bear lay down outside his master's tent and looked at Mo.\n\nTomorrow.\n\nWhat now, Mortimer?\n\nIt was getting colder every day. His breath was white vapour hanging in the air as he looked around for Resa again. Where was she? He'd picked her a flower with a shallow cup, pale blue, a species she hadn't yet drawn. Fairyglass, people called it, because it collected so much morning dew in its soft petals that the fairies used it as a mirror.\n\n'Meggie, have you seen your mother?' he asked.\n\nBut Meggie didn't reply. Doria had brought her some of the wild boar that was roasting over the fire. It looked like a particularly good piece of meat. The boy whispered something to her. Was it his imagination, or had a rosy flush just risen to his daughter's face? In any case, she hadn't heard his question.\n\n'Meggie, do you know where Resa is?' Mo repeated, taking great care not to smile when Doria cast him a quick and rather anxious glance. He was a good-looking lad, a little smaller than Farid, but stronger. Presumably he was wondering whether the songs about the Bluejay told the truth when they said he guarded his daughter like the apple of his eye. No, more like the finest of all books, thought Mo, and I sincerely hope you're not going to give her as much grief as Farid, because if you do the Bluejay will feed you to the Prince's bear without the slightest hesitation!\n\nLuckily Meggie hadn't read his thoughts this time. 'Resa?' She tasted the roast meat and thanked Doria with a smile. 'She rode over to see Roxane.'\n\n'Roxane? But Roxane is here.' Mo glanced at the tent used as an infirmary for the sick. One of the robbers was in there, curled up in pain \u2013 probably from eating poisonous fungi \u2013 and Roxane stood outside the tent talking to two women who were nursing him.\n\nMeggie looked at her, bewildered. 'But Resa said she'd arranged to meet Roxane.'\n\nMo pinned the flower that had been meant for her mother to Meggie's dress. 'How long has she been gone?' He did his best to sound casual, but Meggie was not to be deceived. Not by him.\n\n'She set out around midday! If she's not with Roxane, then where is she?'\n\nShe was looking at him in bewilderment. No, she really had no idea. He kept forgetting that she didn't know Resa nearly as well as she knew him. A year was not a particularly long time to get acquainted with your own mother.\n\nHave you forgotten our quarrel? he wanted to reply. She's gone to see Fenoglio. But he bit back the words. Fear made his chest feel tight, and he'd only too gladly have believed it was fear for Resa. But he was as bad at lying to himself as to anyone else. He was not afraid for his wife, although he had reason to be. He feared that, somewhere in Ombra, the words were already being read aloud that would take him back to his old world, like a fish caught in a river and flung back into the pond it came from... Don't be stupid, Mortimer, he thought angrily. Who is going to read the words, even if Fenoglio really did write them for Resa? Well, a voice inside him whispered, who do you think?\n\nOrpheus.\n\nMeggie was still looking at him in concern, while Doria stood beside her hesitantly, unable to take his eyes off her face.\n\nMo turned. 'I'll be back soon,' he said.\n\n'Where are you going? Mo!'\n\nMeggie hurried after him when she saw him go over to the horses, but he did not turn again.\n\nWhy in such a hurry, Mortimer? the voice inside him mocked. Do you think you can ride faster than Orpheus can speak the words with his oily tongue? Darkness was falling from the sky like a scarf, a dark scarf smothering everything, the colours, the birdsong... Resa. Where was she? Still in Ombra, or on her way back already? And suddenly he felt the other fear \u2013 as bad as the fear of those words. The fear of footpads and nocturnal spirits, the memory of women they had found dead in the bushes. Had she at least taken the Strong Man with her? Mo uttered a quiet curse. No, of course not. He was sitting there with Battista and Wayfarer by the fire, and he had already drunk so much that he was beginning to sing.\n\nHe ought to have known. Resa had been very quiet since their quarrel. Had he forgotten what that meant? He knew that silence of hers. But he had gone off with the Black Prince instead of talking to her again about what made her so silent \u2013 almost as silent as in the days when she had lost her voice.\n\n'Mo, what are you doing?' Meggie's voice sounded faint with fear. Doria had followed them. Meggie whispered something to him, and he set off towards the Prince's tent.\n\n'Damn it, Meggie, what's the idea of that?' Mo tightened the horse's girth. He wished his fingers weren't shaking so much.\n\n'Where are you going to look for her? You can't leave this camp! Have you forgotten the Piper?'\n\nShe clung to him. Then Doria came back with the Prince. Mo cursed and put the horse's reins over its head.\n\n'What are you doing?' The Black Prince stopped behind him, the bear at his side.\n\n'I have to go to Ombra.'\n\n'Ombra?' The Prince gently moved Meggie aside and reached for the reins.\n\nWhat was he to say to him? Prince, my wife wants Fenoglio to write words that will make me disappear before your eyes, words that will turn the Bluejay back to what he once was \u2013 nothing but an old man's invention, vanishing as suddenly as he appeared?\n\n'This is suicide. You're not immortal, whatever the songs say. This is real life. Don't forget that.'\n\nReal life. What's that, Prince?\n\n'Resa has ridden to Ombra. She set out hours ago. She's alone, and it's night. I must go after her.'\n\n...and find out if the words have already been written. Written and read aloud.\n\n'But the Piper's there. Are you going to make him a present of yourself? Let me send some men after her.'\n\n'Which men? They're all drunk.'\n\nMo listened to the night air. He thought he could already hear the words that would send him back \u2013 words as powerful as those that had once protected him from the White Women. Above him the withering foliage rustled in the wind, and the drunken voices of the robbers by the fire came to him. The air smelt of resin, autumn leaves and the fragrant moss that grew in Fenoglio's forest. Even in winter it was still covered with tiny white flowers that tasted like honey if you crushed them in your fingers. I don't want to go back, Resa.\n\nA wolf howled in the mountains. Meggie turned her head in alarm. She was afraid of wolves, like her mother. I hope she stayed in Ombra, thought Mo. Even if that means I have to pass the guards. Let's go back, Mo. Please!\n\nHe swung himself up on the horse. Before he could stop her, Meggie was up there too, sitting behind him. As determined as her mother... she put her arms around him so firmly that he didn't even try to persuade her to stay behind.\n\n'Do you see that, bear?' asked the Prince. 'Do you know what it means? It means there'll soon be a new song \u2013 about the Bluejay's sheer pig-headedness, and how the Black Prince sometimes has to protect him from himself.'\n\nThere were still two men sober enough to ride. Doria came too, getting up behind the Prince on his horse without a word. He wore a sword that was too large for him, but he could handle it well, and he was as fearless as Farid. They would be in Ombra before it was light, although the moon now stood high in the sky.\n\nBut words were so much faster than any horse."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Dangerous Ally",
                "text": "\u2003All day long he was docile, intelligent, good\n\n\u2003Though sometimes changing to a darker mood\n\n\u2003He seemed hypocritical, could tell bitter lies,\n\n\u2003In the dark he saw dots of colour behind closed eyes,\n\n\u2003Clenched his fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother...\n\n\u2014Arthur Rimbaud, The Poet at Seven Years Old\n\nWhen Resa arrived Farid had just taken Orpheus his second bottle of wine. Cheeseface was celebrating. He was drinking to himself and his genius, as he called it. 'A unicorn! A perfect unicorn, snorting, pawing the ground with its hooves, ready to put its silly head in a virgin's lap any time! Why do you think there weren't any unicorns in this world, Oss? Because Fenoglio couldn't write them! Fluttering fairies, hairy brownies, glass men, yes, but no unicorns.'\n\nFarid would happily have tipped the wine over Orpheus's white shirt to make it as red as the coat of the unicorn. The unicorn brought into this world by Orpheus only for the Milksop to kill it. Farid had seen it. He had been on the way to Orpheus's tailor to get yet another pair of trousers that had become too tight for Cheeseface altered. When they carried the unicorn by, he had felt so sick at the sight of those dull eyes that he had to sit down in a doorway. Murderer. Farid had been listening when Orpheus read the words that had brought it to life, such beautiful words that he had stood as if rooted to the spot outside the study door. It came through the trees, white as wild jasmine flowers. And the fairies danced around it in dense swarms, as if they had been waiting, full of longing, for its arrival.\n\nOrpheus's voice had shown Farid the horn, the waving mane, had made him hear the unicorn snorting and scraping at the frozen grass with its hooves. For three whole days he had actually thought it might have been a good idea after all to bring Orpheus here. Three days, if he had counted them correctly \u2013 that was as long as the unicorn lived before the Milksop's hounds chased it onto the huntsmen's spears. Or was the tale Brianna told down in the kitchen the true version: that one of Sootbird's lovers had lured it to them with her smile?\n\nOss opened the door to Resa. When Farid looked past him, wondering who was knocking at such a late hour, he thought at first that the pale face emerging from the darkness was Meggie's. She looked so like her mother now.\n\n'Is Orpheus at home?'\n\nResa spoke in a low voice, as if ashamed of every word she said, and when she saw Farid behind the Chunk she lowered her head like a child caught in the act of doing something forbidden.\n\nWhat did she want with Cheeseface?\n\n'Please tell him that Silvertongue's wife has to speak to him.'\n\nWhen Oss showed her into the entrance hall Resa gave Farid a fleeting smile, but she avoided looking directly at him. Without a word, the Chunk indicated that she was to wait there, and stomped up the stairs. Resa's averted face told Farid that she wasn't going to tell him the reason for her visit, so he followed Oss, hoping to hear more in Orpheus's room.\n\nCheeseface was not alone when his bodyguard told him about his late-night visitor. There were three girls with Orpheus, none of them much older than Meggie, and they had been cooing at him for hours, telling him how clever, important and irresistible he was. The oldest was sitting on his plump knees, and Orpheus was kissing and fondling her so grossly that Farid would have liked to strike his fingers away. He was always being sent out to bring Orpheus the prettiest girls in Ombra. 'What are you making such a fuss about?' he had snapped, when Farid had at first refused to serve him in such a way. 'They inspire me. Haven't you ever heard of Muses? Off you go, or I'll never find the words you want so much!' So Farid obeyed him and took the girls who looked at him in the streets and the marketplace to Orpheus's house. And many of them did look at Farid; after all, nearly all the older boys in Ombra were either dead or served Violante. Most of them would go anywhere Farid took them for a few coins. They all had hungry brothers and sisters and mothers who needed the money. Some just wanted to be able to buy a new dress again.\n\n'Silvertongue's wife?' You could tell from Orpheus's voice that he had already put away a whole bottle of heavy red wine, but his eyes still looked surprisingly clear through his thick glasses. One of the girls touched the glasses with her finger, as cautiously as if she were afraid that doing so might turn her into glass herself on the spot.\n\n'Interesting. Bring her in. And you three, be off with you.'\n\nOrpheus pushed the girl off his knees and smoothed his clothes down. Conceited bullfrog! Farid thought, pretending to have difficulty with the cork in the new wine bottle so that Orpheus wouldn't send him out of the room.\n\nWhen Oss showed Resa in, the three girls hurried past her as if their mothers had caught them on Orpheus's lap.\n\n'Well, what a surprise! Do sit down!' Orpheus waved to one of the chairs that had been specially made with his initials on them, and raised his eyebrows to express his surprise even further. He had rehearsed this little move, and that wasn't the only one. Farid had often found Orpheus practising facial expressions in front of his mirror.\n\nOss closed the door, and Resa sat down hesitantly, as if not sure whether she really wanted to stay.\n\n'I hope you didn't come alone!' Orpheus sat down at his desk and observed his guest like a spider studying a fly. 'Ombra isn't the safest place by night, particularly not for a woman.'\n\n'I have to speak to you.' Resa still kept her voice very low. 'Alone,' she added, with a sideways glance at Farid.\n\n'Farid!' said Orpheus, without looking at him. 'Get out. And take Jasper with you. He's spattered himself with ink again. Wash him.'\n\nFarid bit back the curse that was on the tip of his tongue, put the glass man on his shoulder and went to the door. Resa lowered her head as he passed her, and he saw that her fingers were shaking as she smoothed out her plain skirt. What was she doing here?\n\nAs usual, Oss tried to trip him up outside the door, but Farid was used to such practical jokes now. He had even found a way to get his revenge for them. A smile from him, and the maids in the kitchen would see to it that the Chunk's next meal disagreed with him. Farid's smile was so much more attractive than Oss's.\n\nAll the same, he had to abandon any hope of listening at the door. Oss planted himself in front of it with a nasty smile. But Farid knew another place where the goings-on in Orpheus's study could be overheard. The maids said the wife of the previous owner of the house had liked to spy on her husband from this vantage point.\n\nJasper glanced at Farid in alarm when, instead of taking him down to the kitchen, he made for the stairs to the next floor. However, Oss suspected nothing, since Farid often had to fetch Orpheus a clean shirt or polish his boots. Orpheus's clothes had a room of their own, right beside his bedroom, and the spyhole was under the rails where his shirts hung. They smelt so strongly of roses and violets that Farid felt quite sick when he knelt down under them. One of the maids had shown him the hole in the floor when she had enticed him into the dressing room for a kiss. It was no bigger than a coin, but put your ear to it and you could hear every word spoken in the study downstairs, while if you looked through it with one eye you could see Orpheus's desk.\n\n'Can I do it?' Orpheus was laughing as if he had never heard a more absurd question. 'There's no doubt about that! But my words have their price, and they don't come cheap.'\n\n'I know.' Resa's voice still faltered as if she hated every word she spoke. 'I don't have silver like the Milksop, but I can work for you.'\n\n'Work? Oh no, thank you very much, I'm not short of maidservants.'\n\n'Do you want my wedding ring? It must be worth something. Gold is rare in Ombra.'\n\n'No, keep it. I'm not short of gold and silver either. But there's something else...' Orpheus gave a little laugh. Farid knew that laugh. It boded no good.\n\n'It really is quite amazing how things sometimes turn out!' Orpheus went on. 'It certainly is. I might say you're the very person I need.'\n\n'I don't understand.'\n\n'Of course not. Forgive me. I'll put it more clearly. Your husband \u2013 I don't know just what name to give him, he has such a vast number of them, but however that may be,' laughed Orpheus again as if he had made a joke that only he could appreciate, 'your husband met the White Women not so long ago, and I confess I had something to do with that. It's said he has felt their fingers on his heart already, but unfortunately he won't talk to me about this remarkable experience.'\n\n'What does that have to do with my request?'\n\nIt struck Farid for the first time how like Meggie's voice her mother's was. The same pride, the same vulnerability carefully hidden behind it.\n\n'Well, I'm sure you remember that scarcely two months ago, on Mount Adder, I swore to bring a mutual friend of ours back from the dead.'\n\nFarid's heart began to beat so violently that he was afraid Orpheus might hear it.\n\n'I'm still determined to keep my promise, but unfortunately I've discovered that it's as difficult to find out what game Death is playing in this world as in ours. No one knows anything, no one's saying anything, and the White Women themselves \u2013 no doubt rightly called the daughters of Death \u2013 won't appear to me, wherever I look for them. Obviously they don't talk to any reasonably healthy mortal, even one with such extraordinary abilities as mine! I'm sure you've heard about the unicorn, haven't you?'\n\n'Oh yes. In fact, I saw it.' Did Orpheus hear the abhorrence in Resa's voice? If so, even that probably made him feel flattered.\n\nFarid felt Jasper nervously digging his glass fingers into his shoulder. He'd almost forgotten the glass man. Jasper was scared to death of Orpheus, even more scared than he was of his big brother. Farid put him down on the dusty floor and laid a warning finger on his lips.\n\n'It was immaculate,' Orpheus went on in self-satisfied tones, 'absolutely immaculate... well, anyway, to return to the daughters of Death. It's said that they don't take it kindly when someone slips through their fingers. They follow such mortals into their dreams, wake them from sleep by whispering to them, even appear to them when they're awake. Has Mortimer been sleeping badly since he escaped the White Women?'\n\n'What's the point of all these questions?' Resa sounded annoyed \u2013 and afraid.\n\n'Is he sleeping badly?' Orpheus repeated. 'Yes.' Her reply was barely audible.\n\n'Good! Very good! What am I saying? Excellent!' Orpheus's voice was so loud that Farid involuntarily took his ear away from the hole in the floor. He hastily pressed it in place again. 'In that case, then perhaps what I heard only recently about those pale ladies is true \u2013 and we come to the matter of my fee!'\n\nOrpheus sounded very excited, but this time it didn't seem to have anything to do with the prospect of silver.\n\n'There's a rumour \u2013 and rumours, as I am sure you know, often contain a kernel of truth in both this and any other world,' said Orpheus, speaking in a velvety voice, as if to make it easy for Resa to swallow every word, 'there's a rumour that those whose hearts the White Women have touched,' \u2013 here he inserted a little pause for effect \u2013 'can summon them at any time. No fire is needed, such as Dustfinger used, no fear of death, only a voice that's familiar to them, a heartbeat known to their fingers... and they'll appear! I expect by now you can guess what payment I want? In return for the words I write you, I want your husband to call the White Women for me. So that I can ask them about Dustfinger.'\n\nFarid held his breath. It was as if he had heard the Devil in person bargaining. He didn't know what to think or feel. Indignation, hope, fear, joy... he felt them all at once. But in the end one idea blotted out all the others: Orpheus wants to bring him back! He really is trying to bring Dustfinger back!\n\nDown in the study there was such deathly silence that finally Farid put his eye, rather than his ear, to the spyhole. But all he could see was the careful parting in Orpheus's pale fair hair. Jasper knelt beside him, looking anxious.\n\n'The best place for him to try it is probably a graveyard.' Orpheus sounded as confident as if Resa had already agreed to the deal. 'If the White Women really do show themselves, they'll attract less attention there \u2013 and the strolling players could make up a very moving song about this latest Bluejay adventure.'\n\n'You're abominable, just as abominable as Mo says!' Resa's voice was trembling.\n\n'Ah, does he indeed? Well, I take that as a compliment. And do you know what? I think he'll be glad to summon them! As I was saying, a fine heroic song could be written about it all. A song praising his courage to the skies, celebrating the magic of his voice.'\n\n'Call them yourself if you want to talk to them.'\n\n'Sad to say, that's what I can't do. I thought I'd made that clear enough, so...'\n\nFarid heard the door slam. Resa was going! He picked up Jasper, made his way out through Orpheus's clothes, and ran downstairs. Oss was so surprised when he shot past that he even forgot to put out a leg to trip him. Resa was already in the hall. Brianna was just giving her her cloak.\n\n'Please!' Farid barred Resa's way to the door, ignoring both Brianna's hostile glance and Jasper's cry of alarm as he almost slipped off the boy's shoulder. 'Please! Perhaps Silvertongue really can summon them. Just get him to call them up, and then Orpheus can ask them how to get Dustfinger back! You want him to come back too, don't you? He protected you from Capricorn. He stole into the dungeons of the Castle of Night for you. His fire saved you all when Basta was lying in wait for you on Mount Adder!'\n\nBasta... on Mount Adder... for a moment the recollection silenced Farid as if Death had laid hands on him again. But then he went on, faltering, although Resa's face remained as cold as ice. 'Please! I mean, it's not like when Silvertongue was wounded... and even then they couldn't do him any harm! He is the Bluejay!'\n\nBrianna was staring at Farid as if he had lost his mind. Like everyone else, she thought Dustfinger was gone for ever. Farid could have hit them all for thinking so!\n\n'It was wrong of me to come here.' Resa tried to push him aside, but Farid thrust her hands away.\n\n'He only has to call them up!' he shouted at her. 'Ask him!'\n\nBut Resa pushed him out of her way again, so roughly this time that he stumbled against the wall and the glass man clung to his shirt. 'If you tell Mo I was here,' she said, 'I'll swear you were lying!'\n\nShe was already in the doorway when Orpheus's voice halted her. No doubt he had been standing at the top of the stairs for some time, waiting to see what would come of the quarrel. Oss stood behind him with the stolid expression that he always wore when he didn't understand what was going on.\n\n'Let her go. She very obviously doesn't want to let anyone help her.' Every word Orpheus spoke dripped contempt. 'Your husband will die in this story. You know that, or you wouldn't have come here. Maybe Fenoglio even wrote the right song about it himself before he ran out of words. \"The Bluejay's Death\", touching and very dramatic, heroic as befits such a character, but it certainly won't end with and they lived happily ever after. Be that as it may \u2013 the Piper struck up the first verse of the real song today. And, clever as he is, he wove a noose out of maternal love to put around your high-minded robber's neck. Is there any deadlier rope? Your husband will certainly walk straight into the trap in the most heroic way imaginable; he's playing the part Fenoglio created for him so enthusiastically, and his death will be the subject of another very impressive song. But I hope that when his head's on a spike above the castle gates you'll remember I could have kept him alive.'\n\nThe voice in which Orpheus said this conjured up the picture he described so clearly that Farid thought he could see Silvertongue's blood trickling down the castle walls while Resa stood in the doorway with her head bent, as if Orpheus's words had broken her own neck.\n\nFor a moment Fenoglio's whole story seemed to hold its breath again.\n\nThen Resa raised her head and looked at Orpheus.\n\n'Curse you!' she said. 'I wish I could call up the White Women myself and get them to take you away, here and now.'\n\nShe went down the steps outside the door unsteadily, as if her knees were trembling, but she did not turn back again.\n\n'Close the door, it's cold!' ordered Orpheus, and Brianna obeyed. But Orpheus himself remained standing there at the top of the stairs, staring at the closed door.\n\nFarid looked uncertainly up at him. 'Do you really believe Silvertongue can summon the White Women?'\n\n'Ah, so you were eavesdropping. Good.'\n\nGood? What did that mean?\n\nOrpheus stroked back his pale hair. 'I'm sure you know where Mortimer is hiding at the moment, don't you?'\n\n'Of course not! No one\u2014'\n\n'Spare me the lies!' snapped Orpheus. 'Go to him. Tell him why his wife came to see me, and ask if he's prepared to pay the price I demand for my words. And if you want to see Dustfinger again, the answer you bring me back had better be yes. Understand?'\n\n'The Fire-Dancer's dead!' Nothing in Brianna's voice showed that she was speaking of her father.\n\nOrpheus gave a little laugh. 'Well, so was Farid, my beauty, but the White Women were ready to do a deal. Why wouldn't they do the same thing again? It just has to be made attractive to them, and I think I now know how. It's like fishing. You only need the right bait.'\n\nWhat kind of bait did he mean? What was more desirable to the White Women than the Fire-Dancer? Farid didn't want to know the answer. All he wanted was to think that all might yet end well. That bringing Orpheus here had been right after all...\n\n'What are you standing around for?' Orpheus shouted down at him. 'Get moving! And you,' he added to Brianna, 'bring me something to eat. I think it's time for a new Bluejay song. And this time I, Orpheus, will write it!'\n\nFarid heard him humming to himself as he returned to his study."
            },
            {
                "title": "Soldiers' Hands",
                "text": "\u2003Does the walker choose the path or the path the walker?\n\n\u2014Garth Nix, Sabriel\n\nOmbra seemed more than ever like a city of the dead as Resa went back to the stable where she had left her horse. In the silence among the buildings she kept hearing Orpheus saying the same words over and over again, as clearly as if he were walking behind her: But I hope that when his head's on a spike above the castle gates you'll remember I could have kept him alive. Her tears almost blinded her as she stumbled through the night. What was she to do? Oh, what was she to do? Go back? No. Never.\n\nShe stopped.\n\nWhere was she? Ombra was a labyrinth of stone, and the years when she had known her way around its narrow streets were long gone.\n\nHer own footsteps echoed in her ears as she walked on. She was still wearing the boots she had on when Orpheus read Mo and her here. He had almost killed Mo once already. Had she forgotten that?\n\nA hiss overhead made her jump. It was followed by a dull crackling, and above the castle the night turned as scarlet as if the sky had caught fire. Sootbird was entertaining the Milksop and his guests by feeding the flames with alchemical poisons and menace until they writhed, instead of dancing as they used to dance for Dustfinger.\n\nDustfinger. Yes, she wanted him to come back too, and her heart froze when she imagined him lying among the dead. But it froze even more when she thought of the White Women reaching their hands out to Mo for a second time. Yet wouldn't they come for him anyway, if he stayed in this world? Your husband will die in this story...\n\nWhat was she to do?\n\nThe sky above her turned sulphurous green; Sootbird's fire had many colours. The street down which she was walking, faster all the time, ended in a square she had never seen before. Dilapidated houses stood here. A dead cat lay in one doorway. At a loss, she went over to the well in the middle of the square \u2013 and spun around when she heard footsteps behind her. Three men moved out of the shadows among the buildings. Soldiers wearing the Adderhead's colours.\n\nNow what, she wondered? She had a knife with her, but what use was that against three swords? One of the men had a crossbow too. She had seen only too often what bolts from such a weapon could do. You should have worn men's clothes, she told herself. Hasn't Roxane told you often enough that no woman in Ombra goes out after dark, for fear of the Milksop's men?\n\n'Well? I suppose your man's as dead as all the rest, right?'\n\nThe soldier facing her was not much taller than she was, but the other two towered more than a head above her.\n\nResa looked up at the houses, but who was going to come to her aid? Fenoglio lived on the other side of Ombra, and Orpheus \u2013 well, even if he could hear her from here, would he and his gigantic servant help her after she'd refused to do a deal with him? Try it, Resa. Scream! Perhaps Farid at least will come and help you. But her voice failed her, as it had when she'd lost it in this world for the first time...\n\nOnly one window showed a light in the surrounding houses. An old woman put her head out, and hastily retreated when she saw the soldiers. Resa seemed to hear Mo saying, 'Have you forgotten what this world is made of?' So if it really consisted only of words, what would those words say about her? But there was a woman there who was lost twice in the Inkworld, and the second time she never found her way back again.\n\nTwo of the soldiers were now right behind her. One of them put his hands on her hips. Resa felt as if she had read about what was now happening already somewhere, sometime... stop trembling, she told herself. Hit him, claw at his eyes! Hadn't Meggie told her how to defend herself if something like this ever happened?\n\nThe smallest of the three men came close to her, a dirty, expectant smile on his narrow lips. What did it feel like to get pleasure out of other people's fear?\n\n'Leave me alone!' At least her voice was obeying her again. But no doubt such voices were often heard in Ombra by night.\n\n'Why would we want to do that?' The soldier behind her smelt of Sootbird's fire. His hands reached out for her. The others laughed. Their laughter was almost the worst thing of all. Through the sound of it, however, Resa thought she heard something else. Footsteps \u2013 light, quick footsteps. Farid?\n\n'Take your hands off me!' This time she shouted it as loud as she could, but it wasn't her voice that made the men spin round.\n\n'Let her go. At once.'\n\nMeggie's voice sounded so grown-up that at first Resa didn't realize it was her daughter's. She walked out from among the houses holding herself very upright, just as she had walked into the arena that was the scene of Capricorn's festivities.\n\nThe soldier holding Resa dropped his hands like a boy caught doing something wrong, but when he saw no one but a girl step out of the darkness he made a grab for his victim again.\n\n'Another one?' The smaller man turned and sized Meggie up. 'All the better. See that, you two? What did I tell you about Ombra? It's a place full of women, so it is!'\n\nStupid words, and they were his last. The knife thrown by the Black Prince hit him in the back. Like shadows coming to life, the Prince and Mo emerged from the night. The soldier holding Resa pushed her away and drew his sword. He shouted a warning to the other man, but Mo killed them both so quickly that Resa felt she hadn't even had time to draw breath. Her knees gave way, and she had to lean against the nearest wall. Meggie ran to her, asking anxiously if she was injured. But Mo just looked at her.\n\n'Well? Is Fenoglio writing again?' That was all he said.\n\nHe knew why she had ridden here. Of course.\n\n'No!' she whispered. 'No, and he won't write anything either. Nor will Orpheus.'\n\nThe way he was looking at her! As if he didn't know whether he could believe what she said. He'd never looked at her like that before. Then he turned without a word, and helped the Prince to haul the dead men away into a side street.\n\n'We're going back through the dyers' stream!' Meggie whispered to her. 'Mo and the Prince have killed the guards there.'\n\nSo many men dead, Resa. Just because you want to go home. There was blood all over the paving stones, and when Mo dragged away the soldier who had been holding her, the man's eyes still seemed to stare at her. Was she sorry for him? No. But it sent a shiver down her spine to hear her daughter, too, speak so casually of killing. And what did Mo feel about it? Did he feel anything any more? She saw him wiping the blood off his sword with one of the dead men's cloaks, and looking her way. Why couldn't she read his thoughts in his eyes now, as she used to?\n\nBecause it was the Bluejay she saw there. And this time she had summoned him herself.\n\nThe walk to the dye works seemed endless. Sootbird's fire was still lighting up the sky, and they twice had to hide from a troop of drunken soldiers, but finally the acrid smell of the dyers' vats rose to their nostrils. Resa covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve when they came to the stream that carried the effluent away to the river through a grating in the city wall, and as she followed Mo into the stinking liquid she felt so sick that she could hardly take a deep enough breath to plunge down under the grating herself.\n\nAs the Black Prince helped her to the bank she saw one of the dead guards lying among the bushes. The blood on his chest looked like ink in the starless night, and Resa began crying. She couldn't stop, not even when they finally reached the river and washed the stinking water out of their hair and clothes as best they could.\n\nTwo robbers were waiting with horses further along the bank, at the place where the river-nymphs swam and the women of Ombra dried their washing on the flat rocks by the waterside. Doria was there too, without his brother the Strong Man. He put his shabby cloak around Meggie's shoulders when he saw how wet she was. Mo helped Resa into the saddle, but still said not a word. His silence made her shiver more than her wet clothes, and it was the Black Prince and not Mo who brought her a blanket. Had Mo told the Prince what she had gone to do in Ombra? No, surely not. How could he have explained without telling him what power words had in this world?\n\nMeggie knew why she had ridden to Ombra too. Resa saw it in her eyes. They were watchful \u2013 as if her daughter were wondering uneasily what she would do next. Suppose Meggie learnt that she'd even asked Orpheus for help? Would she understand that the only reason had been Resa's fears for her father?\n\nIt was beginning to rain as they set off. The wind drove the icy raindrops into their faces, and above the castle the sky glowed dark red, as if Sootbird were sending a warning after them. Doria fell behind on the Prince's orders, to obliterate their tracks, and Mo rode ahead in silence. When he looked round once his glance was for Meggie, not her, and Resa was thankful for the rain on her face that kept anyone from seeing her tears."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Sleepless Night",
                "text": "\u2003When despair for the world grows in me\n\n\u2003and I wake in the night at the least sound\n\n\u2003in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,\n\n\u2003I go and lie down where the wood drake\n\n\u2003rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.\n\n\u2003I come into the peace of wild things\n\n\u2003who do not tax their lives with forethought\n\n\u2003of grief. I come into the presence of still water.\n\n\u2003And I feel above me the day-blind stars\n\n\u2003waiting with their light. For a time\n\n\u2003I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.\n\n\u2014Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things\n\n'I'm sorry.' Resa meant it.\n\nI'm sorry. Two words. She whispered them again and again, but Mo sensed what she was really thinking behind her words: she was a captive again. Capricorn's fortress, his village in the mountains, the dungeons, the Castle of Night... so many prisons. Now a book was keeping her prisoner, the same book that had imprisoned her once before. And when she'd tried to escape, he had brought her back.\n\n'I'm sorry too,' he said. He said it as often as she did \u2013 and knew that she was waiting to hear very different words. Very well, let's go back, Resa. We'll find a way somehow! But he didn't say it, and the unspoken words gave rise to a silence they had never known, even when Resa was mute.\n\nAt last they lay down to sleep, although the sky was growing lighter outside, exhausted by the fear they had both felt and by what they didn't say to each other. Resa fell asleep quickly, and as he looked at her sleeping face he remembered all the years when he had longed to see her asleep beside him. But even that idea brought him no peace \u2013 and at last he left Resa alone with her dreams.\n\nHe stepped out into the waning night, passed the guards, who ribbed him about the stench of the dye works that still clung to his clothes, and walked through the narrow ravine where they had set up camp, as though, if he only strained his ears hard enough, the Inkworld would whisper to him and tell him what to do.\n\nHe knew, only too well, what he wanted to do...\n\nFinally he sat down by one of the ponds that had once been a giant's footprint, and watched the dragonflies whirring above the cloudy water. In this world they really did look like tiny winged dragons, and Mo loved sitting there, following their strange shapes with his eyes and imagining how huge the giant who had left such a footprint must have been. Only a few days ago he and Meggie had waded into one of the ponds to find out how deep the footprints were. The memory made him smile, although he was not in any smiling mood. He could still feel the shuddering sensation that killing left behind it. Did the Black Prince feel it too, even after all these years?\n\nMorning came hesitantly, like ink mingling with milk, and Mo couldn't say how long he had been sitting there, waiting for Fenoglio's world to tell him what ought to be done next, when a familiar voice quietly spoke his name.\n\n'You shouldn't be here on your own,' said Meggie, sitting down beside him on the grass. It was white with frost. 'It's dangerous to be so far away from the guards.'\n\n'What about you? I ought to be a stricter father, and forbid you to take a step outside the camp without me.'\n\nShe gave him an understanding smile and wrapped her arms around her knees. 'Nonsense. I always have a knife with me. Farid taught me how to use it.' She looked so grown-up. He was a fool, still wanting to protect her.\n\n'Have you made it up with Resa?'\n\nHer anxious expression made him feel awkward. Sometimes it had been so much easier to be alone with her.\n\n'Yes, of course.' He put out a finger, and one of the dragonflies settled on it. It looked as if it were made of blue-green glass.\n\n'And?' Meggie looked inquiringly at him. 'She asked them both, didn't she? Fenoglio and Orpheus.'\n\n'Yes. But she says she didn't come to an agreement with either of them.' The dragonfly arched its slender body. It was covered with tiny scales.\n\n'Of course not. What did she expect? Fenoglio isn't writing any more, and Orpheus is expensive.' Meggie frowned.\n\nHe stroked it with a smile. 'Watch out, or those lines will stay, and it's rather too early for that, don't you think?' How he loved her face. He loved it so much. And he wanted it to look happy. There was nothing in the world he wanted more.\n\n'Tell me one thing, Meggie. Be honest with me \u2013 perfectly honest.' She was a far better liar than he was. 'Do you want to go back too?'\n\nShe bent her head and tucked her smooth hair back behind her ears.\n\n'Meggie?'\n\nShe still didn't look at him.\n\n'I don't know,' she said at last, quietly. 'Maybe. It's a strain, feeling afraid so often. Afraid for you and Resa, afraid for Farid, for the Black Prince and Battista, for the Strong Man...' She raised her head and looked at him. 'You know Fenoglio likes sad stories. Maybe that's where all the unhappiness comes from. It's just that sort of story...'\n\nThat sort of story, yes. But who was telling it? Not Fenoglio. Mo looked at the frost on his fingers. Cold and white. Like the White Women... sometimes he woke from sleep with a start because he thought he heard them whispering. Sometimes he still felt their cold fingers on his heart, and sometimes \u2013 yes \u2013 sometimes he almost wanted to see them again.\n\nHe looked up at the trees, away from all the whiteness below. The sun was breaking through the morning mist, and the last few leaves shone pale gold on branches that were now almost bare. 'What about Farid? Isn't he a reason to stay?'\n\nMeggie lowered her head again. She was taking great care to sound casual. 'Farid doesn't mind whether I'm here or not. He thinks only of Dustfinger. It's been even worse since he died.'\n\nPoor Meggie. She'd fallen in love with the wrong boy. But when did love ever bother about that?\n\nShe tried very hard to hide her sadness when she looked at him again. 'What do you think, Mo? Is Elinor missing us?'\n\n'You and your mother certainly. I'm not so sure about me.' He imitated Elinor's voice. 'Mortimer! You've put that Dickens back in the wrong place. And why do I have to tell a bookbinder not to eat jam sandwiches in a library?'\n\nMeggie laughed. Well, that was something. It was getting harder every day to make her laugh. But next moment her face was grave again. 'I do miss Elinor very much. I miss her house, and the library, and the caf\u00e9 by the lake where she always took me for an ice cream. I miss your workshop, and you driving me to school in the morning and imitating Elinor and Darius quarrelling, and my friends always wanting to come and visit us because you make them laugh. I'd love to tell them everything that's happened to us, not that they'd believe a word of it. Although \u2013 perhaps I could take a glass man back with me as proof.'\n\nFor a moment she seemed to be far, far away, taken back to her old world, not by the words of Fenoglio or Orpheus, but by her own. But they were still sitting beside a pond in the hills around Ombra, and a fairy fluttered into Meggie's hair and pulled so hard that she shrieked, and Mo was quick to shoo the little creature away. It was one of the rainbow-coloured fairies, Orpheus's creations, and Mo thought he detected something of her maker's malice in the tiny face. Giggling happily, she carried her pale blonde plunder up to her nest, which shimmered in as many colours as the fairy herself. Unlike the blue fairies, those made by Orpheus didn't seem to grow drowsy as winter came on. The Strong Man even claimed that they stole from the blue fairies too as they slept in their nests.\n\nA tear hung on Meggie's lashes. Perhaps the fairy had caused it, or perhaps not. Mo gently wiped it away.\n\n'I see. So you do want to go back.'\n\n'No! I tell you, I don't know!' She was looking at him so unhappily. 'What will become of Fenoglio if we simply disappear? And what would the Black Prince think, and the Strong Man, and Battista? What will become of them? And Minerva and her children, and Roxane... and Farid?'\n\n'Yes, what?' said Mo. 'How would the story go on without the Bluejay? The Piper will take the children, because even the desperate mothers won't be able to find the Bluejay for him. Of course the Black Prince will try to save them \u2013 he'll be the true hero of this story, and he'll play the part well. But he's already played the hero too long, he's tired \u2013 and he doesn't have enough men. So the men-at-arms will kill him and all his followers one by one: the Prince, Battista, the Strong Man and Doria, Gecko and Snapper \u2013 well, perhaps those two will be no great loss. Then the Piper will probably chase the Milksop out and rule Ombra himself for a while. Orpheus will read unicorns here for him, or a few war machines... yes, I'm sure the Piper would rather like those. Fenoglio will drown his sorrows in wine and drink himself to death. And the Adderhead will be immortal. Some day he'll reign over a nation of the dead. I think the end of the story would go something like that, don't you?'\n\nMeggie looked at him. In the light of the new morning her hair looked like spun gold. Resa's hair had been just the same colour when he had first seen her, in Elinor's house.\n\n'Yes. Perhaps,' said Meggie quietly. 'But would the story really end so very differently if the Bluejay stayed? How could he give it a happy ending all by himself?'\n\n'Bluejay?' A couple of toads jumped into the water in alarm as the Strong Man ploughed his way through the undergrowth.\n\nMo straightened up. 'Maybe you'd better not call that name quite so loud in the forest,' he said, lowering his own voice.\n\nThe Strong Man looked as horrified as if men-at-arms were already standing among the trees. 'Sorry,' he muttered. 'My head doesn't work well so early in the morning, and all that wine last night... it's the boy. You know, the one who works for Orpheus, the one that Meggie\u2014' He stopped short at the sight of Meggie's expression. 'Oh, whatever I say sounds stupid!' he groaned, pressing his hand to his round face. 'Plain stupid! But that's how the words come out of my mouth. I can't help it!'\n\n'Farid. His name is Farid. Where is he?' Meggie's face lit up, although she was making a great effort to look indifferent.\n\n'Farid, of course. Funny sort of name. Like something out of a song, eh? He's in the camp. But he wants to speak to your father.'\n\nMeggie's smile was extinguished as quickly as it had come to her lips. Mo put his arm around her shoulder, but a father's hug was no use to a lovesick girl. Damn the boy.\n\n'He's all worked up. He must have ridden here so fast his donkey can hardly stand. He woke the whole camp, asking: \"Where's the Bluejay? I have to speak to him!\" No one could get anything else out of him!'\n\n'The Bluejay!' Mo had never heard Meggie sound so bitter before. 'I've told him a thousand times already not to call you that. How can he be so stupid?'\n\nThe wrong boy. But what did the heart care about that?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Sharp Words",
                "text": "\u2003Oh, please! he felt his heart say to him. Oh, please, let me leave!\n\n\u2014John Irving, The Cider House Rules\n\n'Darius!' Elinor couldn't bear the sound of her own voice any more. It was horrible \u2013 grouchy, irritable, impatient. She hadn't sounded like that in the old days, had she?\n\nDarius almost dropped the books he was bringing in, and the dog raised his head from the rug she had bought to keep him from ruining her wonderful wooden floor with his slimy slobber. Quite apart from the fact that you were always slipping on it.\n\n'Where's the Dickens we bought last week? For goodness' sake, how long does it take you to put a book back in its proper place? Am I paying you to sit in my armchair reading? That's what you do when I'm not here, admit it!'\n\nOh, Elinor. How she hated the words coming out of her mouth, and yet there was no keeping them back: bitter and venomous, spat out by her unhappy heart.\n\nDarius bowed his head, as he always did when he was trying not to show her how hurt he was. 'It's where it belongs, Elinor,' he said in his gentle voice, which only infuriated her more than ever. She'd been able to have magnificent quarrels with Mortimer, and Meggie had been a real little fighter. But Darius! Even Resa, mute as she was, used to stand up to Elinor better.\n\nOwl-faced coward. Why didn't he call her names? Why didn't he throw the books at her feet instead of clutching them so lovingly to his scrawny chest, as if he had to protect them from her?\n\n'Where it belongs?' she repeated. 'Do you think I can't even read these days?'\n\nHow anxiously the stupid dog was looking at her. Then he let his massive head sink to the rug again with a grunt.\n\nDarius put the stack of books he was carrying down on the nearest glass case, went up to the shelf where Dickens made himself at home, taking up a lot of space in between Defoe and Dumas (the man had written just too many books, that was his trouble), went straight to the volume she wanted and took it out. Without a word, he gave it to Elinor. Then he set about sorting the books he had brought into the library.\n\nShe felt so stupid, and Elinor hated to feel stupid. It was almost worse than feeling sad.\n\n'It's dirty!'\n\nStop it, Elinor, she told herself. But she couldn't. The words simply came out of her mouth. 'When did you last dust the books? Do I have to do that for myself too?'\n\nDarius kept his thin back turned to her. He took the words without flinching, like an undeserved beating.\n\n'What's the matter? Has your stuttering tongue finally given up? Sometimes I wonder whether you have a tongue at all! Mortola ought to have taken you with her instead of Resa \u2013 even when she was mute, Resa was more talkative than you.'\n\nDarius put the last book on the shelf, straightened another, and marched towards the door, holding himself very straight.\n\n'Darius! Come back!'\n\nHe didn't even turn.\n\nDamn. Elinor hurried after him, holding the Dickens which, she had to admit, really wasn't so very dusty. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't dusty in the least. Of course it's not, Elinor! she told herself. As if you didn't know how devotedly Darius removes the tiniest speck of dust from the books every Tuesday and Friday. Her cleaning lady always laughed at the fine brush he used for the purpose.\n\n'Darius! For heaven's sake, don't make such a big deal of it!'\n\nNo reply.\n\nThe dog overtook her on the stairs, and looked down at her from the top step with his tongue hanging out.\n\n'Darius!'\n\nBy that stupid dog's slobber \u2013 where was he?\n\nHis room was right next to the one Mortimer had used as an office. The door was open, and so was his suitcase, lying on the bed. It was the case she had bought him for their first trip together. Buying books with Darius had always been a pleasure (and she had to admit that he'd kept her from making many silly mistakes).\n\n'What...?' How heavy her sharp tongue suddenly felt. 'What the devil are you doing?'\n\nWell, what did she think? Very obviously, he was packing the few clothes he possessed.\n\n'Darius!'\n\nHe put the drawing of Meggie that Resa had given him on to the bed, with the notebook Mortimer had bound for him, and the bookmark that Meggie had made him from a bluejay's feathers.\n\n'The dressing gown,' he said hesitantly, as he put the photograph of his parents in the case, the one that always stood by his bed. 'Do you mind if I take it with me?'\n\n'Don't ask such silly questions! Of course not! It was a present, for heaven's sake. But where are you going?'\n\nCerberus trotted into the room and went to the bedside cupboard. Darius always kept a few biscuits in the drawer.\n\n'I don't know yet...'\n\nHe folded the dressing gown just as carefully as his other clothes (it was much too large for him, but how would she have known his size?), put the drawing, the notebook and the bookmark in the case and closed it. Of course, he couldn't manage to close the catches. He was so clumsy sometimes!\n\n'Unpack that again! At once! This is silly.'\n\nBut Darius shook his head.\n\n'Heavens above, you can't go as well and leave me all alone!' Elinor herself was frightened by the despair in her voice.\n\n'You're alone even when I'm here, Elinor,' said Darius, in a strained voice. 'You're so unhappy! I can't stand it any more!'\n\nThe stupid dog gave up snuffling around the bedside table and stood in front of her, looking sad. He's right, said his watering doggy eyes.\n\nAs if she didn't know! She couldn't stand herself any more either. Had she been like this long ago? Before Meggie, Mortimer and Resa came to live with her? Maybe. But then there'd only been the books around, and they weren't complaining. Although, to be honest, she'd never been as hard on the books as she was on Darius.\n\n'All right, you go, then!' Her voice began shaking in the most ridiculous way. 'Leave me alone. You're right. Why would you want to watch me getting more insufferable every day, always waiting for some miracle to bring them back? Perhaps I ought to shoot myself or drown myself in the lake, instead of perishing slowly in this miserable way. Writers sometimes do that, and it sounds good in stories.'\n\nOh, the way he was looking at her with his long-sighted eyes! (She really ought to have bought him new glasses long ago. His present pair looked just too silly.) Then he opened the case again and stared at his possessions. He took out Meggie's bookmark and stroked the boldly-patterned blue feathers. Bluejay feathers. Meggie had glued them to a strip of pale yellow card. It looked very pretty.\n\nDarius cleared his throat. He cleared it three times.\n\n'Oh, very well!' he said at last, in a voice that he carefully kept level. 'You win, Elinor. I'll try it. Fetch me that sheet of paper. Or you probably will go and shoot yourself someday.'\n\nWhat? What was he saying? Elinor's heart began to race, as if hurrying on ahead of her into the Inkworld to see the fairies, the glass men, and the people she loved so much more than she loved any book.\n\n'You mean...?'\n\nDarius nodded, resigned, like a warrior who has fought too many battles. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, Elinor.'\n\n'I'll get it!' Elinor turned on her heel. Everything that had made her heart so heavy these last few weeks, turning her limbs to an old woman's \u2013 it was all gone! Vanished without trace.\n\nBut Darius called her back. 'Elinor! We ought to take some of Meggie's notebooks too \u2013 and some practical things, like... like a lighter, for instance.'\n\n'And a knife!' Elinor added. After all, Basta was where they were going, and she had sworn that when next she met him she'd have a knife in her own hand.\n\nShe almost fell down the stairs, she was in such a hurry to get back to the library. Cerberus bounded after her, panting with excitement. Did he guess, in some corner of his doggy heart, that they were following his old master to the place where he'd gone when he had disappeared?\n\nHe's going to try it! He's going to try it! Elinor couldn't think of anything else. She didn't think of Resa's lost voice, Cockerell's stiff leg or Flatnose's mutilated face. Everything's going to be all right, that was all she thought as, with trembling fingers, she took the words that Orpheus had written out of the glass case. This time there won't be any Capricorn to frighten Darius. This time he'll read beautifully. Oh, dear God, Elinor, you're going to see them again!"
            },
            {
                "title": "Taking the Bait",
                "text": "\u2003If Jim had been able to read he might now have noticed a remarkable circumstance... but the fact was that Jim couldn't read.\n\n\u2014Michael Ende, Jim Knopf and the Wild 13\n\nA dwarf about twice the size of a glass man. Definitely not furry like Tullio \u2013 no, the dwarf was to have skin as white as alabaster, a head too big for it, and bandy legs. At least the Milksop always knew just what he wanted, even if his orders had come noticeably less often since the Piper arrived in the city. Orpheus was just wondering whether to give the dwarf red hair or the white hair of an albino when Oss knocked, and at his master's grunt of 'Enter' put his head around the door. Oss had revolting table manners, and was not much given to washing himself, but he never forgot to knock.\n\n'There's another letter for you, my lord!'\n\nAh, how good it made him feel being called that! My lord...\n\nOss came in, bowed his bald head (he sometimes overdid the servility) and handed Orpheus a sealed piece of paper. Paper? That was strange. The fine gentlemen usually sent their orders written on parchment, and the seal didn't look familiar either. Well, never mind that. This would be the third order today; business was good. The Piper's arrival had made no difference to that. This world could have been made for him! Hadn't he always known it, ever since he first opened Fenoglio's book with his sweaty schoolboy fingers? His accomplished lies didn't get him jailed as a forger or con man here; they valued his talents at their true worth in this world \u2013 and all Ombra bowed to him when he crossed the marketplace in his fine clothes. Fabulous.\n\n'Who's the letter from?'\n\nOss shrugged his ridiculously broad shoulders. 'Dunno, my lord. Farid gave it to me.'\n\n'Farid?' Orpheus sat up straight. 'Why didn't you say so at once?' He quickly snatched the letter from Oss's clumsy fingers.\n\nOrpheus \u2013 of course he didn't begin 'Dear Orpheus'. Even in the salutation of a letter the Bluejay told no lies! \u2013 Farid has told me what you want in return for the words my wife has asked you for. I agree.\n\nOrpheus read the words three times, four, five times, and yes, there it was in black and white.\n\nI agree.\n\nThe bookbinder had taken the bait! Could it really be that easy?\n\nYes, why not? Heroes are fools. Hadn't he always said so? The Bluejay had fallen into the trap, and all he had to do was snap it shut. With a pen, some ink... and his tongue.\n\n'Go away! I want to be alone!' he snarled at Oss, who was standing there looking bored and throwing nuts at the two glass men. 'And take Jasper with you!' Orpheus liked talking to himself out loud when he was writing his ideas down, so the glass man had better be out of the room. Jasper sat on Farid's shoulder far too often, and on no account must the boy learn what Orpheus was planning to write now. It was true that the stupid boy wanted Dustfinger back even more fervently than he did, but Orpheus wasn't so sure that he would sacrifice his girlfriend's father in return. No, by now Farid worshipped the Bluejay as much as everyone else here did.\n\nIronstone gave his brother a gleefully malicious glance as Oss picked Jasper up from the desk with fleshy fingers.\n\n'Parchment!' Orpheus ordered, as soon as the door had closed behind the two of them, and Ironstone busily spread the best sheet they had on the desk.\n\nOrpheus, however, went to the window and looked out at the hills from which, presumably, the Bluejay's letter had come. Silvertongue, Bluejay... fine names they'd given him, and yes, Mortimer was certainly very much braver and more noble than Orpheus himself was, but such a paragon couldn't compete with him in cunning. The good are stupid.\n\nYou have his wife to thank for this, Orpheus, he told himself as he began pacing up and down (nothing helped him to think better). If his wife wasn't so afraid of losing him, you might never have found the bait you need!\n\nOh, it would be fantastic! His greatest triumph! Unicorns, dwarves, rainbow-coloured fairies... not bad at all, but as nothing compared to what he'd do now! He would bring the Fire-Dancer back from the dead. Orpheus. Had the name he had taken ever suited him better? But he would be wilier than the singer whose name he had stolen. He would indeed. He would send another man into the realm of Death in the Fire-Dancer's place \u2013 and he'd make sure that he didn't come back.\n\n'Do you hear me, Dustfinger, in the cold land where you are now?' whispered Orpheus, while Ironstone busily stirred the ink. 'I've caught the bait to buy your freedom, the most wonderful bait of all, decked out with the finest pale-blue feathers!'\n\nHe began humming, as he always did when he was pleased with himself, and picked up Mortimer's letter again. What else had the Bluejay written?\n\nIt will be as you require. By the Devil's cloven hoof, he was writing in the style of public proclamations, like the robbers of the old days. I will try to call up the White Women, and in return you will write words to take my wife and daughter back to Elinor's house. But all you are to say about me is that I will follow them later.\n\nWell, well. What was this?\n\nSurprised, Orpheus lowered the sheet of paper. Mortimer wanted to stay? Why? Because his noble and heroic heart wouldn't let him steal away now that the Piper had made his threat? Or did he just like playing the part of a robber too much?\n\n'Well, never mind which, noble Bluejay,' said Orpheus softly (oh, how he liked the sound of his own voice!). 'It won't turn out the way you think it will. Because I have plans of my own for you!'\n\nHigh-minded idiot! Hadn't Mortimer ever read any tale of robbers right through? No happy ending for Robin Hood, for Angelo Duca, for Dick Turpin and all the rest of them. Why would there be a happy ending for the Bluejay? No, he was going to play just one part: the bait on the hook, a tasty bait \u2013 and one condemned to certain death.\n\nAnd I will write the last song about him! thought Orpheus as he strode up and down with a spring in his step, as if he already felt the right words inside him all the way down to his toes. Good people, hear the amazing tale of the Bluejay who brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead but then, sad to say, lost his own life. Heart-rending. Like Robin Hood's death at the hands of the treacherous nun, or Angelo Duca's end on the gallows beside his dead friend, with the hangman riding him to death on his shoulders. Yes, every hero needs a death like that. Even Fenoglio wouldn't write it in any other way.\n\nAh, but he hadn't finished reading the letter yet! What else did that most noble of robbers have to say? Hang a piece of blue cloth in the window when you have written the words. (How romantic! A real robber's idea. He really did seem to be turning more and more into the character made by Fenoglio in his image!) I will meet you at the graveyard of the strolling players on the following night. Farid knows where it is. Come alone, bringing one servant at the most. I know you are on friendly terms with the new governor, and I will not show myself until I am certain that none of his men is with you. Mortimer. (Well, well, so he actually still signed his old name. Who did he think he was fooling?)\n\nCome alone? Oh yes, I'll come alone, thought Orpheus. And you won't be able to see the words I've sent on ahead of you!\n\nHe rolled up the letter and slid it under his desk.\n\n'Everything ready, Ironstone? A dozen sharpened pens, ink stirred slowly while you take sixty-five breaths, a sheet of the best parchment?'\n\n'A dozen pens. Sixty-five breaths. The very best parchment.'\n\n'What about this list of words?' Orpheus looked at his bitten fingernails. He had recently taken to bathing them in rosewater every morning, but unfortunately that just made them tastier. 'Your useless brother left his footprints all over the words beginning with B.'\n\nThe list. The list of all the words used by Fenoglio in Inkheart, arranged in alphabetical order. He had only recently told Jasper to prepare it \u2013 his brother had terrible handwriting. But unfortunately the glass man had only just reached the letter D, so Orpheus still had to look everything up in Fenoglio's book if he wanted to be sure that any words he used were in Inkheart too. It was a nuisance, but it had to be done, and so far his method had proved its merits.\n\n'All ready!' Ironstone nodded eagerly.\n\nGood! The words were already coming. Orpheus sensed them like a tingling of his scalp. As soon as he picked up the pen he could hardly dip it in the ink fast enough. Dustfinger... the tears still came to his eyes when he remembered seeing him lying dead in the mine. Certainly one of the worst moments of his life.\n\nAnd how the promise he'd given Roxane had come to haunt him, even if she had never believed a word of it! He had given it with the dead man at his feet, 'I'll find words as precious and intoxicating as the scent of a lily, words to beguile Death and open the cold fingers he has closed around Dustfinger's warm heart!' He had been looking for those words ever since he arrived in this world \u2013 even if Farid and Fenoglio thought he did nothing but write unicorns and rainbow-coloured fairies into it. But after his first failed attempts he had accepted the bitter fact that beauty of sound alone was not enough in this case. Words like lilies would never bring Dustfinger back. Death demanded a more substantial price \u2013 a price paid in flesh and blood.\n\nIncredible that he hadn't hit upon the idea of Mortimer before \u2013 the man who had made Death a laughing stock to the living when he had bound an empty book to make the Adderhead immortal!\n\nSo away with him! This world needed only one silver tongue, and it was his. Once he had fed Mortimer to Death, and Fenoglio's brain was wrecked by the drink, only he would go on telling this story, on and on \u2013 with a suitable part in it for Dustfinger and a not inconsiderable part for himself.\n\n'Yes, call up the White Women for me, Mortimer!' whispered Orpheus as he filled the parchment with word after word in his elegant script. 'You'll never know what I've whispered into their pale ears first! \"Look what I've brought you! The Bluejay. Take him to your cold lord with greetings from Orpheus, and give me the fire-eater in exchange.\" Ah, Orpheus, Orpheus, they can say many things about you, but they can never call you stupid.'\n\nHe dipped his pen in the ink with a soft laugh \u2013 and spun round when the door opened behind him. Farid came in. Damn it, where was Oss? 'What do you want?' he snapped at the boy. 'How often do I have to tell you to knock before coming in? Next time I'll throw the inkwell at your stupid head. Bring me wine! The best we have.'\n\nHow the lad looked at him as he closed the door. He hates me, thought Orpheus.\n\nHe liked that idea. In his experience only the powerful were hated, and that was what he meant to be in this world.\n\nPowerful."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Graveyard of the Strolling Players",
                "text": "\u2003He sits down on a hill and sings. They are songs of magic, strong enough to wake the dead to life. Softly, cautiously, his song rises, then it grows louder and more insistent, until the turf opens up and the cold earth cracks.\n\n\u2014Tor Age Bringsv\u00e6rd, The Wild Gods\n\nThe strolling players' graveyard lay above a deserted village. Carandrella. It had kept its name, although the inhabitants had left long ago. Why and where they went no one knew now \u2013 an epidemic, some said, while others spoke of famine, and others again of two warring clans who had slaughtered one another and driven any survivors out. Whichever story was true, it wasn't in Fenoglio's book, and nor was this graveyard where the peasants had buried their dead among the Motley Folk, so that now they slept side by side for ever.\n\nA narrow, stony path wound its way from the abandoned cottages up the furze-grown slope, and ended on a rocky headland. Standing there you could look far south over the tree-tops of the Wayless Wood towards Argenta, where the sea lay somewhere beyond the hills. The dead of Carandrella, they said in Lombrica, have the best view in the country.\n\nA crumbling wall surrounded the graves. The gravestones were of the pale stone that was also used to build houses here. Stones for the living, stones for the dead. Names were incised on some of them, scratched clumsily as if whoever wrote them had learned the letters only to preserve the sound of a beloved name, rescuing it from the silence of death.\n\nMeggie felt as if the stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past the graves \u2013 Farina, Rosa, Lucio, Renzo. Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that had forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn't mind what their names had once been?\n\nMo was still talking to Orpheus. The Strong Man was sizing up his bodyguard Oss as if wondering which of them had the broader chest.\n\nMo. Don't do it! Please.\n\nMeggie looked at her mother, and abruptly turned her face away when Resa returned her glance. She was so angry with her. It was all because of Resa's tears, and because she had ridden off to see Orpheus, that Mo was here now.\n\nThe Black Prince had come with them as well as the Strong Man \u2013 and Doria, although his brother had told him to stay behind. Like Meggie, he was standing among the graves, looking around him at the things lying in front of the gravestones: faded flowers, a wooden toy, a shoe, a whistle. A fresh flower lay on one grave. Doria picked it up. The flower was white, like the beings they were waiting for. When he saw Meggie looking at him he came over to her. He really wasn't at all like his brother. The Strong Man wore his brown hair short, but Doria's was wavy and shoulder-length. Sometimes Meggie felt as if he had come out of one of the old fairy-tale books that Mo gave her when she had just learnt to read. The pictures in the books had been yellow with age, but Meggie used to look at them for hours, firmly convinced that the fairies who featured in some of the tales had painted them with their tiny hands.\n\n'Can you read the letters on the stones?' Doria was still holding the white flower as he stopped in front of her. Two fingers of his left hand were stiff. His father had broken them long ago in a drunken rage when Doria tried to protect his sister from him. At least, that was how the Strong Man told the story.\n\n'Yes, of course.' Meggie looked her father's way again. Fenoglio had sent him a message, delivered by Battista. You can't trust Orpheus, Mortimer! All useless.\n\nDon't do it, Mo. Please!\n\n'I'm looking for a name.' Doria sounded shyer than usual. 'But I can't... I can't read. It's my sister's name.'\n\n'What was she called?'\n\nIf the Strong Man was right, Doria had been fifteen on the very day when the Milksop was going to hang him. Meggie thought he looked older. 'Ah, well,' the Strong Man had said. 'Could be he's older. My mother's not that good at counting. She can't even remember my birthday.'\n\n'Her name was Susa.' Doria looked at the graves as if the name alone could conjure up his sister. 'My brother says she's supposed to be buried here, only he can't remember just where.'\n\nThey found the gravestone. It was overgrown with ivy, but the name was still clearly legible. Doria bent down and moved the ivy leaves aside. 'She had hair as bright as yours,' he said. 'Lazaro says my mother turned her out because she wanted to go and live with the strolling players. He never forgave her for that.'\n\n'Lazaro?'\n\n'My brother. You call him the Strong Man.' Doria traced the letters with his finger. They looked as if someone had scratched them into the stone with a knife. The first S was overgrown with moss.\n\nMo was still talking to Orpheus. Orpheus handed him a sheet of paper: the words he had written at Resa's request. Was Mo going to read them this very night, if the White Women really did appear? Would they all be back in Elinor's house before it was day? Meggie didn't know whether the idea made her feel sad or relieved. She didn't want to think about it, either. All she wanted was for Mo to get on his horse and ride away again, and for her mother's tears never to have brought him here.\n\nFarid was standing a little way off with Jink on his shoulder. At the sight of him, Meggie's heart felt the same chill as when she looked at Resa. Farid had taken Orpheus's demand to Mo knowing what danger it could mean for her father, knowing too that if the deal went through they might never see each other again. But all that meant nothing to Farid. He cared for only one person, and that was Dustfinger.\n\n'They say you come from far away, you and the Bluejay.' Doria had drawn the knife from his belt and was scratching the moss away from his sister's name. 'Is it different there?'\n\nWhat could she say to that? 'Yes,' she murmured at last. 'Very different.'\n\n'Really? Farid says there are coaches that can drive without horses, and music that comes out of a tiny black box.'\n\nMeggie couldn't help smiling. 'Yes, that's right,' she said quietly.\n\nDoria placed the white flower on his sister's grave and stood up. 'Is it true that there are flying machines in that country too?' How curious he was! 'I once tried making myself wings. I even flew a little way with them, but not very far.'\n\n'Yes, there are flying machines there as well,' replied Meggie distractedly. 'Resa can draw them for you.'\n\nMo folded the sheet of paper that Orpheus had given him. Her mother went over to him and began talking to him urgently. Why bother? He wouldn't listen to her. 'There's no other way, Meggie,' was all he had said, when she herself had begged him not to agree to the offer made by Orpheus. 'Your mother is right. It's time to go back. This is getting more dangerous every day.' And what could she say to that? The robbers had moved camp three times over the last few days because of the Piper's patrols, and they had heard that women were going to Ombra Castle all the time, claiming to have seen the Bluejay, in the hope of saving their children.\n\nOh, Mo.\n\n'He'll come to no harm,' said Doria behind her. 'You wait and see, even the White Women love his voice.'\n\nNonsense. Nothing but poetic nonsense!\n\nWhen Meggie went over to Mo her boots left traces in the hoarfrost as if a ghost had been walking over the graveyard. Mo's face was so serious. Was he afraid? Well, what do you think, Meggie? she asked herself. He wants to call the White Women. They're made of nothing but longing, Meggie.\n\nFarid looked awkwardly away as she passed him.\n\n'Please! You don't have to do it!' Resa's voice sounded far too loud among all the dead, and Mo gently laid his hand on her lips.\n\n'I want to,' he said. 'And you mustn't be afraid. I know the White Women better than you think.' He tucked the folded sheet of paper into her belt. 'There. Take good care of it. If for any reason I'm unable to read it, then Meggie will do it.'\n\nIf for any reason I'm unable to read it... if they kill me with their cold white hands, the way they killed Dustfinger. Meggie opened her mouth \u2013 and shut it again when Mo looked at her. She knew that look. No arguing. Forget it, Meggie.\n\n'Good. Very well, then. I've done my part of the bargain. I... er, I don't think we should wait any longer!' Orpheus was visibly impatient. He was stepping from foot to foot, with an unctuous smile on his lips. 'They're said to like it when the moon is shining, before it disappears behind the clouds...'\n\nMo just nodded and signalled to the Strong Man, who gently led Resa and Meggie away from the graves to an oak growing at the side of the graveyard. At a gesture from his brother, Doria joined them under the tree.\n\nOrpheus too took a couple of steps back, as if it were too dangerous to stand beside Mo now.\n\nMo exchanged a glance with the Black Prince. What had he told him? That he was going to try calling the White Women only for Dustfinger's sake? Or did the Prince know about the words that act would buy the Bluejay? No, surely not.\n\nSide by side, the two of them walked among the graves. The bear trotted after them. As for Orpheus, he and his bodyguard hurried over to the oak where Meggie and Resa were standing. Only Farid stayed put as if rooted to the spot, on his face both fear of the beings whom Mo was about to summon, and longing for the man they had taken away with them.\n\nA light wind blew over the graveyard, cool as the breath of those they were waiting for, and Resa instinctively took a step forward, but the Strong Man drew her back.\n\n'No,' he said quietly, and Resa stood still in the shade of the branches and stared, like Meggie, at the two men who had now stopped in the middle of the graveyard.\n\n'Show yourselves, daughters of Death!'\n\nMo's voice sounded as calm as if he had called on them many times before. 'You remember me, don't you? You remember Capricorn's fortress, you remember following me into the cave, and how faintly my heart beat against your white fingers. The Bluejay wants to ask you about a friend. Where are you?'\n\nResa put a hand to her heart. It must be beating as fast as Meggie's.\n\nThe first White Woman appeared right beside the gravestone where Mo was standing. She had only to reach out her arm to touch him, and she did touch him, as gently as if she were greeting a friend.\n\nThe bear moaned and lowered his head. Then he retreated step by step, and did something he had never done before. He left his master's side. But the Black Prince stood his ground next to Mo, although his dark face showed fear such as Meggie had never seen on it before.\n\nMo's face, however, gave nothing away when the pale fingers caressed his arm. The second White Woman appeared to his right. She put her hand to his breast, to the place where his heart was beating. Resa cried out and took another step forward, but the Strong Man held her back again.\n\n'They won't harm him. Watch!' he whispered to her.\n\nAnother White Woman appeared, then a fourth, and a fifth. They surrounded Mo and the Black Prince until Meggie saw the two men only as shadows among those misty figures. They were so beautiful \u2013 and so terrible \u2013 and for a moment Meggie wished Fenoglio could see them too. She knew how proud he would have been of the sight, proud of the flightless angels he had created.\n\nMore and more kept coming. They seemed to form from the white vapour that Mo and the Prince exhaled into the air. Why were there so many? Meggie saw the same enchantment that she felt on Resa's face too, even on Farid's, although he was so frightened of ghosts.\n\nBut then the whispering began, in voices that seemed as ethereal as the pale women themselves. It grew louder and louder, and enchantment turned to fear. Mo's outline blurred, as if he were dissolving in all the whiteness. Doria looked at his brother in alarm. Resa called Mo's name. The Strong Man tried to hold her back once more, but she tore herself away and began to run. Meggie ran after her, plunging into the mist of translucent bodies. Faces turned to her, as pale as the stones over which she stumbled. Where was her father?\n\nShe tried to push the white figures aside, but she only reached into a void again and again, until suddenly she touched the Black Prince. There he stood, his face ashen, his sword in his trembling hand, looking around him as if he had forgotten where he was. But the White Women were no longer whispering. They dissolved like smoke blowing in the wind. The night seemed darker when they were gone. So dark. And so terribly cold.\n\nResa called Mo's name again and again, and the Prince looked round desperately, his useless sword in his hand.\n\nBut Mo was not there."
            },
            {
                "title": "To Blame",
                "text": "\u2003Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very own presence can come together.\n\n\u2014Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveller's Wife\n\nResa waited among the graves until day began to dawn, but Mo did not come back.\n\nShe felt Roxane's pain now, except that she didn't even have a dead man to mourn. Mo was gone as if he had never existed. The story had swallowed him up, and she was to blame.\n\nMeggie was crying. The Strong Man held her in his arms while tears ran down his own broad face.\n\n'It's your fault!' Meggie had kept shouting, pushing Resa and Farid away, not even letting the Prince comfort her. 'You two persuaded him! Why did I save him after Mortola shot him, if they were going to take him now?'\n\n'I'm so sorry. I really am so very sorry.'\n\nOrpheus's voice still clung to Resa's skin like something venomously sweet. When the White Women disappeared, he had stood there as if waiting for something, making an effort to hide the smile that kept returning to his lips. But Resa had seen it. Indeed she had... and so had Farid.\n\n'What have you done?' He had seized Orpheus by his fine clothes and hammered at the man's chest with his fists. Orpheus's bodyguard tried to grab Farid, but the Strong Man held him off.\n\n'You filthy liar!' Farid had cried, sobbing. 'You double-tongued snake! Why didn't you ask them anything? You were never going to ask them anything, were you? You just wanted them to take Silvertongue! Ask him! Ask him what else he wrote! He didn't just write the words he promised Silvertongue \u2013 there was a second sheet too! He thinks I don't know what he gets up to because I can't read \u2013 but I can count. There were two sheets \u2013 and his glass man says he was reading out loud last night.'\n\nHe's right, a voice whispered inside Resa. Oh God, Farid is right!\n\nOrpheus, however, had taken great pains to look genuinely indignant. 'What's all this stupid talk?' he had cried. 'Do you think I'm not disappointed myself? How can I help it if they took him away with them? I've fulfilled my part of the bargain! I wrote exactly what Mortimer asked for! But did I get a chance to ask them about Dustfinger? No! All the same, I won't ask for my words back. I hope it's clear to all of you here,' and he looked at the Black Prince, who still had his sword in his hand, 'that I'm the one who gets nothing out of this deal!'\n\nThe words he had written were still tucked into Resa's belt. She had been going to throw them after him when he rode away, but then she had kept them after all. The words that were to take them back... she hadn't even looked to see what they said. They had been bought at too high a price. Mo was gone, and Meggie would never forgive her. She had lost them both, again, for the sake of those words.\n\nResa leant her forehead against the gravestone beside her. It was a child's grave; a tiny shirt lay on it. I'm so sorry. Once again she remembered Orpheus's deep, soft voice mingled with her daughter's sobbing. Farid was right. Orpheus was a liar. He had written what was to happen, and his voice made it come true. He had got rid of Mo because he was jealous of him, as Meggie had always said \u2013 and she had helped him to do it.\n\nWith trembling fingers she unfolded the paper that Mo had tucked into her belt. It was damp with dew, and Orpheus's coat of arms stood above the words, lavish as a prince's. Farid had told them how he had commissioned it from a designer of crests in Ombra \u2013 a crown for the lie that he came from a royal family, a pair of palm trees for the foreign land he claimed to come from, and a unicorn, its winding horn black with ink.\n\nMo's own bookbinder's mark was a unicorn too. Resa felt tears coming again. The words blurred before her eyes as she began to read them. The description of Elinor's house was a little stilted. But Orpheus had found the right words for her homesickness and her fear that this story could make her husband into someone else... how did he know so well what went on in her heart? From you yourself, Resa, she thought bitterly. You took all your despair to him. She read on \u2013 and stopped short.\n\nAnd mother and daughter went away, back to the house full of books, but the Bluejay stayed \u2013 promising to follow them when the time came and he had played his part...\n\nI wrote exactly what Mortimer asked for! she heard Orpheus saying, his voice full of injured innocence.\n\nNo. It couldn't be true! Mo had wanted to go with her and Meggie... hadn't he?\n\nYou'll never know the answer, she told herself, bent double over the little grave from the pain in her heart. She thought she heard the child inside her weeping too.\n\n'Let's go, Resa!' The Black Prince was there beside her, offering her his hand. His face showed no reproach, although it was sad, very sad. Nor did he ask about the words that Orpheus had written. Perhaps he believed the Bluejay had really been an enchanter after all. The Black Prince and the Bluejay, the two hands of justice \u2013 one black, the other white. Now there was only the Prince again.\n\nResa took his hand and rose to her feet with difficulty. Go? Go where? she felt like asking. Back to the camp, where an empty tent is waiting and your men will look at me with more hostility than ever?\n\nDoria brought her horse. The Strong Man was still standing with Meggie, his big face as tearstained as her daughter's. He avoided her eyes. So he too blamed her for what had happened.\n\nGo where? Back?\n\nResa was still holding the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it. Elinor's house. How would it feel to go back there without Mo? If Meggie would agree to read the words at all. Elinor, I've lost Mo. I wanted to protect him, but... no, she didn't want to have to tell that story. There was no going back. There was nothing any more.\n\n'Come along, Meggie.' The Black Prince beckoned Meggie over. He was about to put her up with Resa on her horse, but Meggie recoiled.\n\n'No. I'll ride with Doria,' she said.\n\nDoria brought his horse to her side. Farid gave the other boy a scowl when he lifted Meggie up behind him.\n\n'And why are you still here?' Meggie snapped at him. 'Still hoping to see Dustfinger suddenly materialize in front of you? He won't come back, any more than my father will \u2013 but I'm sure Orpheus will take you in again, after all you've done for him!'\n\nFarid flinched like a beaten dog at every word. Then he turned in silence and went to his donkey. He called for the marten, but Jink didn't come, and Farid rode away without him.\n\nMeggie didn't watch him go.\n\nShe turned to Resa. 'You needn't think I'm going back with you!' she said sharply. 'If you need a reader for your precious words, go to Orpheus, like you did before!'\n\nAgain, the Black Prince didn't ask what Meggie was talking about, although Resa saw the question on his weary face. He stayed at Resa's side as they rode the long way back. The sun claimed hill after hill for its own, but Resa knew that night would not end for her. It would live in her heart from now on. The same night, for ever and ever. Black and white at the same time, like the women who had taken Mo away with them."
            },
            {
                "title": "The End and the Beginning",
                "text": "\u2003Here is a small fact. You are going to die.\n\n\u2014Markus Zusak, The Book Thief\n\nThey brought it all back: the memory of pain and fear, of the burning fever and their cold hands on his heart. But this time everything was different. The White Women touched Mo and he did not fear them. They whispered the name that they thought was his, and it sounded like a welcome. Yes, they were welcoming him in their soft voices, heavy with longing, the voices he heard so often in his dreams \u2013 as if he were a friend who had been away for a long time, but had come back to them at last.\n\nThere were many of them, so many. Their pale faces surrounded him like mist, and everything else disappeared beyond it: Orpheus, Resa, Meggie, the Black Prince, who had been standing beside him only a moment ago. Even the stars vanished, and so did the ground beneath his feet. Suddenly he was standing on rotting leaves. Their fragrance hung sweet and heavy in the cold air. Bones lay among the leaves, pale and polished. Skulls. Arm bones and leg bones. Where was he?\n\nThey've taken you away with them, Mortimer, he thought. Just as they took Dustfinger.\n\nWhy didn't the idea make him afraid?\n\nHe heard birds above him, many birds, and when the White Women withdrew he saw air-roots overhead, hanging from a dark height like cobwebs. He was inside a tree as hollow as an organ pipe and as tall as the castle towers of Ombra. Fungi grew from its wooden sides, casting a pale green light on the nests of birds and fairies. Mo put out his hand to the roots to see if his fingers still had any feeling in them. Yes, they did. He ran them over his face, felt his own skin, the same as ever, warm. What did that mean? Wasn't this death, after all?\n\nIf not, what was it? A dream?\n\nHe turned, still as if he were asleep, and saw beds of moss. Moss-women slept on them, their wrinkled faces as ageless in death as in life. But on the last mossy bed lay a familiar figure, his face as still as when Mo had last seen it. Dustfinger.\n\nRoxane had kept the promise she made in the old mine. And he will look as if he were only sleeping long after my hair is white, for I know from Nettle how you go about preserving the body even when the soul is long gone.\n\nHesitantly, Mo approached the motionless figure. Without a word, the White Women made way for him.\n\nWhere are you, Mortimer, he wondered? Is this still the world of the living, even though the dead sleep here?\n\nDustfinger did indeed look as if he were sleeping. A peaceful, dreamless sleep. Was this where Roxane visited him? Presumably it was. But how did he himself come to be here?\n\n'Because this is the friend you wanted to ask about, isn't he?' The voice came from above, and when Mo looked up into the darkness he saw a bird sitting among the web of roots, a bird with gold plumage and a red mark on its breast. It was staring down at him from a bird's round eyes, but the voice that came from its beak was the voice of a woman.\n\n'Your friend is a welcome guest here. He has brought us fire, the only element that does not obey me. And my daughters would gladly bring you here too, because they love your voice, but they know that voice needs the breath of living flesh. And when I ordered them to bring you here all the same, as your penalty for binding the White Book, they persuaded me to spare you, telling me you have a plan which will appease me.'\n\n'And what might that be?' It was strange to hear his own voice in this place.\n\n'Don't you know? Even though you're ready to part with everything you love for it? You are going to bring me the man you took from me. Bring me the Adderhead, Bluejay.'\n\n'Who are you?' Mo looked at the White Women. Then he looked at Dustfinger's still face.\n\n'Guess.' The bird ruffled up its golden feathers, and Mo saw that the mark on its breast was blood.\n\n'You are Death.' Mo felt the word heavy on his tongue. Could any word be heavier?\n\n'Yes, so they call me, although I might be called by so many other names!' The bird shook itself, and golden feathers covered the leaves at Mo's feet. They fell on his hair and shoulders, and when he looked up again there was only the skeleton of a bird sitting among the roots. 'I am the end and the beginning.' Fur sprouted from the bones. Pointed ears grew on the bare skull. A squirrel was looking down at Mo, clutching the roots with tiny paws, and the voice with which the bird had spoken now came from its little mouth.\n\n'The Great Shape-Changer, that's the name I like!' The squirrel shook itself in its own turn, lost its fur, tail and ears and became a butterfly, a caterpillar at his feet, a big cat with a coat as dappled as the light in the Wayless Wood \u2013 and finally a marten that jumped on to the bed of moss where Dustfinger lay, and curled up at the dead man's feet.\n\n'I am the beginning of all stories, and their end,' it said in the voice of the bird, in the voice of the squirrel. 'I am transience and renewal. Without me nothing is born, because without me nothing dies. But you have interfered with my work, Bluejay, by binding the Book that ties my hands. I was very angry with you for that, terribly angry.'\n\nThe marten bared its teeth, and Mo felt the White Women coming close to him again. Was he about to die now? His chest felt tight, he was breathing with difficulty, as he had when he felt them near him before.\n\n'Yes, I was angry,' whispered the marten, and its voice was the voice of a woman, but it suddenly sounded old. 'However, my daughters calmed my rage. They love your heart as much as your voice. They say it is a great heart, very great, and it would be a pity to break it now.'\n\nThe marten fell silent, and suddenly the whispering that Mo had never forgotten came again. It surrounded him; it was everywhere. 'Be on your guard! Be on your guard, Bluejay!'\n\nBe on his guard against what? The pale faces were looking at him. They were beautiful, but they blurred as soon as he tried to see them more distinctly.\n\n'Orpheus!' whispered the pale lips.\n\nAnd suddenly Mo heard Orpheus's voice. Its melodious sound filled the hollow tree like a cloyingly sweet fragrance. 'Hear me, Master of the Cold,' said the poet. 'Hear me, Master of Silence. I offer you a bargain. I send you the Bluejay, who has made mock of you. He will believe that he has only to call on your pale daughters, but I am offering him to you as the price for the Fire-Dancer. Take him, and in return send Dustfinger back to the land of the living, for his tale is not yet told to its end. But the Bluejay's story lacks only one chapter, and your White Women shall write it.' So the poet wrote and so he read, and as always his words came true. The Bluejay, presumptuous as he was, summoned the White Women, and Death did not let him go again. But the Fire-Dancer came back, and his story had a new beginning.\n\nBe on your guard...\n\nIt was a few moments before Mo really understood. Then he cursed his stupidity in trusting the man who had nearly killed him once already. He desperately tried to remember the words Orpheus had written for Resa. Suppose he was trying to make an end of Meggie and Resa as well? Remember, Mo! What else did he write?\n\n'Yes, you were indeed stupid,' Death's voice mocked him. 'But he was even more stupid than you. He thinks I can be bound with words, I who rule the land where there are no words, although all words come from it. Nothing can bind me, only the White Book, because you have filled its pages with white silence. Almost daily, the man it protects sends me a poor wretch he has killed as a messenger of his mockery. I would happily melt the flesh from your bones for that! But my daughters read your heart like a book, and they assure me that you will not rest until the man whom the Book protects is mine again. Is that true, Bluejay?'\n\nThe marten lay down on Dustfinger's unmoving breast.\n\n'Yes!' whispered Mo.\n\n'Good. Then go back and rid the world of that Book. Fill it with words before spring comes, or winter will never end for you. And I will take not only your life for the Adderhead's, but your daughter's too, because she helped you to bind the Book. Do you understand, Bluejay?'\n\n'Why two?' asked Mo hoarsely. 'How can you ask for two lives in return for one? Take mine, that's enough.'\n\nBut the marten only stared at him. 'I fix the price,' it said. 'All you have to do is pay it.'\n\nMeggie. No. No. Go back, Resa, Mo thought. Get Meggie to read what Orpheus wrote and go back! Anything is better than this. Go back! Quickly!\n\nBut the marten laughed. And once again it sounded like an old woman's laughter.\n\n'All stories end with me, Bluejay,' Death said. 'You will find me everywhere.' And as if to prove it, the marten turned into the one-eared cat that liked to steal into Elinor's garden to hunt her birds. The cat jumped nimbly off Dustfinger's breast and rubbed around Mo's legs. 'Well, what do you say, Bluejay? Do you accept my conditions?'\n\nAnd I will take not only your life for the Adderhead's but your daughter's too.\n\nMo glanced at Dustfinger. His face looked so much more peaceful in death than it had in life. Had he met his younger daughter on the other side, and Cosimo, and Roxane's first husband? Were all the dead in the same place?\n\nThe cat sat down in front of him and stared at him.\n\n'I accept,' said Mo, so hoarsely that he could hardly make out his own words. 'But I make a condition too: give me the Fire-Dancer to go with me. My voice stole ten years of his life. Let me give them back to him. And there's another thing... don't the songs say that the Adderhead's death will come out of the fire?'\n\nThe cat crouched down. Fur fell red on the rotting leaves. Bones covered themselves with flesh and feathers again, and the gold-mocker with its bloodstained breast fluttered up to settle on Mo's shoulder.\n\n'You like to make what the songs say come true, do you?' the bird whispered to him. 'Very well, I will give him to you. Let the Fire-Dancer live again. But if spring comes and the Adderhead is still immortal, his heart will stop beating at the same time as yours \u2013 and your daughter's.'\n\nMo felt dizzy. He wanted to seize the bird and wring its golden neck to silence that voice, so old and pitiless, with irony in every word. Meggie. He almost stumbled as he went to Dustfinger's side once more.\n\nThis time the White Women were reluctant to make way for him.\n\n'As you see, my daughters don't like to let him go,' said the old woman's voice. 'Even though they know he will come back.'\n\nMo looked at the motionless body. The face was indeed so much more tranquil than it had been in life, and all of a sudden he wasn't sure whether he was really doing Dustfinger a favour by calling him back.\n\nThe bird was still on his shoulder, so light in weight, so sharp of claw.\n\n'What are you waiting for?' asked Death. 'Call him!'\n\nAnd Mo obeyed."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Familiar Voice",
                "text": "\u2003What remains to him? Tall Time wonders. What thoughts and smells, what names? Or are there only sensations and a clutter of incompatible words?\n\n\u2014Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone\n\nThey had gone. Had left him alone with all the blue that clashed with the red of the fire. Blue as the evening sky, blue as cranesbill flowers, blue as the lips of drowned men and the heart of a blaze burning with too hot a flame. Yes, sometimes it was hot in this world too. Hot and cold, light and dark, terrible and beautiful, it was everything all at once. It wasn't true that you felt nothing in the land of Death. You felt and heard and smelt and saw, but your heart remained strangely calm, as if it were resting before the dance began again.\n\nPeace. Was that the word?\n\nDid the guardians of this world feel it too, or did they long for something else? The pain they didn't know, the flesh they didn't dwell in. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. He couldn't tell from their faces. He saw both there: peace and longing, joy and pain. As if they knew about everything in this world and the other, just as they themselves were made of every colour at once, all the colours of the rainbow merging into white light. They told him that the land of Death had other places too, darker than the one where they had brought him and where no one stayed for long \u2013 except for him. Because he called up fire for them.\n\nThe White Women both feared and loved fire. They warmed their pale hands at it, laughing like children when he made it dance for them. They were children, young and old at the same time, so old. They made him form trees and flowers of fire, a fiery sun and moon, but for himself he made the fire paint faces, the faces he saw when the White Women took him with them to the river where they washed the hearts of the dead. Look into it, they whispered to him. Look into it, then those who love you will see you in their dreams. And he leant over the clear blue water and looked at the boy and the woman and the girl whose names he had forgotten, and saw them smiling in their sleep.\n\nWhy don't I know their names any more? he asked.\n\nBecause we've washed your heart, they said. Because we've washed it in the blue water that parts this world from the other one. It makes you forget.\n\nYes. He supposed it did. For whenever he tried to remember he saw nothing but the blue, cool and caressing. It was only when he called up fire and its red glow spread that the pictures came again, the same pictures that he saw in the water. But his longing for them fell asleep before it had woken fully.\n\nWhat was my name? he sometimes asked, and then they laughed. Fire-Dancer, they whispered, that was your name and always will be, because you'll stay with us for all eternity and never go away like all the others, away to another life...\n\nSometimes they brought him a girl, a little girl. She stroked his face and smiled like the woman he saw in the water and the flames. Who's that? he asked. She's been here and went away again, they said she was your daughter.\n\nDaughter... the word sounded like pain, but his heart merely remembered and did not feel it. It felt only love, nothing but love. There was nothing else any more.\n\nWhere were they? They had never before left him alone, not once since he had come here... wherever here was.\n\nHe had grown so used to the pale faces, to their beauty and their soft voices.\n\nBut suddenly he heard another voice, very different from theirs. He knew it. And he knew the name it was calling.\n\nDustfinger.\n\nHe hated that voice... or did he love it? He didn't know. He knew only one thing: it brought back everything he had forgotten \u2013 like a violent pain suddenly jolting his still heart into beating again. Hadn't that voice caused him pain once before, so much pain that it almost broke his heart? Yes, he remembered! He pressed his hands to his ears, but in the world of the dead you don't hear with your ears alone, and the voice made its way right inside him like fresh blood flowing into veins that had frozen long ago.\n\n'Wake up, Dustfinger!' it said. 'Come back. The story isn't over yet.'\n\nThe story... he felt the blue pushing him away, he felt firm flesh surrounding him again, and a heart beating in a chest far too small for it.\n\nSilvertongue, he thought. It's Silvertongue's voice. And suddenly all the names came back to him: Roxane, Brianna, Farid... and the pain was back again, and time, and longing too."
            },
            {
                "title": "Lost and Back Again",
                "text": "\u2003For it so happens that I have never been able to convince myself that the dead are utterly dead.\n\n\u2014Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King\n\nIt was dark when Gwin woke Roxane. She still didn't like the marten, but she couldn't bring herself to chase him away. She had seen him sitting on Dustfinger's shoulder too often. Sometimes she thought she still felt the warmth of his hands on Gwin's brown coat. Since his master's death the marten had allowed Roxane to stroke him. He never used to let her do that before. But he also used to kill her chickens before, and now he spared them, as if that were part of their unspoken agreement \u2013 his thanks for her letting him, and no other living creature, follow her when she went to his master. Only Gwin shared her secret and kept her company when she sat beside the dead man for an hour, sometimes two, losing herself in the sight of his still face.\n\nHe's back! said Gwin's bristling coat as he jumped up on her breast, but Roxane didn't understand. She pushed the marten away when she saw how dark it still was outside, but he persisted, hissing at her and scratching at the door. Of course she thought at once of the patrols that the Milksop was only too likely to send to isolated farms at night. Heart thudding, she reached for the knife that lay under her pillow and threw on her dress, while the marten pawed more and more impatiently at the door. Luckily he hadn't yet woken Jehan. Her son was fast asleep. Her goose wasn't giving the alarm either... which was strange.\n\nBarefoot, she went to the door, knife in hand, and listened, but there was nothing to be heard outside, and when she cautiously went out into the open air she felt as if she heard the night itself breathing deeply and regularly, like someone asleep. The stars shone down on her like flowers made of light, and their beauty hurt her weary heart.\n\n'Roxane...'\n\nThe marten shot past her.\n\nIt couldn't be true. The dead did not come back, even when they had promised they would. But the figure emerging from the shadows near the stable was so very familiar.\n\nGwin hissed when he saw the other marten sitting on his master's shoulder.\n\n'Roxane.' He spoke her name as if he wanted to savour it on his tongue, like something he hadn't tasted for a long time.\n\nIt was a dream, one of the dreams she had almost every night. Dreams in which she saw his face so clearly that she touched it in her sleep, and next day her fingers still remembered his skin. Even when he put his arms around her, carefully, as if he wasn't sure whether he had forgotten how to hold her, she didn't move \u2013 because her hands did not believe they would really feel him, her arms did not believe they could hold him again. But her eyes could see him. Her ears heard him breathing. Her skin felt his, as warm as if the fire were inside him, after he had been so terribly cold.\n\nHe had kept his promise. And even if he was coming to her only in a dream it was better than nothing... so much better.\n\n'Roxane! Look at me. Look at me.' He took her face between his hands, caressed her cheek, wiped away the tears she so often felt on her skin when she woke. And only then did she draw him close to her, let her hands tell her that she wasn't just embracing a ghost. It couldn't be true. She wept as she pressed her face to his. She wanted to hit him for having left her for the boy's sake, for all the pain she had already felt on his account, so much pain, but her heart gave her away, as it had the first time he came back. It always gave her away.\n\n'What is it?' He kissed her once more.\n\nThe scars. They were gone, as if the White Women had washed them away before sending him back to life.\n\nShe took his hands and laid them against his cheeks.\n\n'Well, who'd have thought it!' he said, stroking his own skin with his fingers as if it were a stranger's. 'They've really gone! Basta wouldn't like that at all.'\n\nWhy had they let him go? Who had paid the price for him, as he had paid it for the boy?\n\nWhy did she ask? He was back. That was all that mattered, back from the place from which there was no return. Where all the others were. Her daughter, the father of her son, Cosimo... so many dead. But he had come back. Even if she saw in his eyes that, this time, he had been so far away that something of him was still left there.\n\n'How long will you stay this time?' she whispered.\n\nHe did not answer at once. Gwin rubbed his head against his neck and looked at him, as if he too wanted to know the answer.\n\n'As long as Death allows,' he replied at last, and placed her hand on his beating heart.\n\n'What does that mean?' she whispered. But he closed her mouth with a kiss."
            },
            {
                "title": "A New Song",
                "text": "\u2003Bright hope arises from the dark\n\n\u2003And makes the mighty tremble.\n\n\u2003Princes can't fail to see his mark,\n\n\u2003Nor can they now dissemble.\n\n\u2003With hair like moleskin smooth and black,\n\n\u2003And mask of bluejay feathers,\n\n\u2003He vows wrongdoers to attack,\n\n\u2003Strikes princes in all weathers.\n\n\u2014Fenoglio, The Bluejay Songs\n\n'The Bluejay's come back from the dead!' It was Doria who brought the Black Prince the news. The boy stumbled into his tent just before dawn, so breathless that he could hardly get the words out. 'A moss-woman saw him. By the Hollow Trees where the healers bury their dead. She says he's brought the Fire-Dancer back too. Please! May I tell Meggie?'\n\nIncredible words. Far too wonderful to be true. All the same, the Black Prince set off at once for the place where the Hollow Trees grew \u2013 after making Doria promise not to tell anyone else what he had told him: neither Meggie nor her mother, neither Snapper nor any of the other robbers, not even his own brother, who was lying outside by the fire, fast asleep.\n\n'But they say the Piper's heard about it too!' the boy faltered.\n\n'That's unfortunate,' replied the Prince. 'Let's hope I find him before the Piper does.'\n\nHe rode fast, so fast that the bear was soon snorting with disapproval as he trotted along beside him. Why such haste? For a foolish hope? Why did his heart always insist on believing that there was a light in all the darkness? Where did he keep getting new hope from, after he had been disappointed countless times? You have the heart of a child, Prince. Hadn't Dustfinger always told him so? And he's brought the Fire-Dancer back too. It couldn't be true. Such things happened only in songs, and in the stories that mothers told their children in the evening to drive away night-time fears.\n\nHope can make you careless, he should have known that too. The Black Prince didn't see the soldiers until they emerged ahead of him through the trees. A good number of them. He counted ten. They had a moss-woman with them, her thin neck already rubbed sore by the rope on which they were pulling her along. Presumably they had caught her to make her lead them to the Hollow Trees, for hardly anyone knew the place where the healers buried their dead. They themselves, so rumour said, made sure that all the paths to it were hidden by undergrowth. But after helping Roxane to take Dustfinger there, the Black Prince knew the way.\n\nIt was a sacred place, but in her fear the moss-woman had indeed led the men-at-arms the right way. The crowns of the dead trees could already be seen in the distance. They rose, as grey as if morning had stripped them bare, among the oaks, which were still autumnal gold, and the Prince prayed the Bluejay wasn't there. Better to be with the White Women than in the Piper's hands.\n\nThree men-at-arms came up on him from behind, swords in their hands. The moss-woman sank to her knees as her captors drew their own swords and turned to their new quarry. The bear reared up on his hind legs and bared his teeth. The horses shied, and two of the soldiers retreated, but there were still a great many of them \u2013 too many for a knife and a pair of claws.\n\n'Well, guess what! Obviously the Piper's not the only one stupid enough to believe moss-women's gossip!' Their leader was almost as pale as the White Women, and his face was sprinkled with freckles. 'The Black Prince, none other! There was I cursing my luck, sent riding into this damn forest to catch a ghost, and who should stumble into my path but his black brother! The price on your head isn't as high as the price for the Bluejay, but it'll make us all rich men!'\n\n'You're wrong there. Touch him and you'll be dead men instead.'\n\nAnd his voice wakens the dead from sleep and makes the wolf lie down with the lamb... The Bluejay stepped out from behind a beech tree as naturally as if he had been waiting for the soldiers there. Don't call me Bluejay \u2013 it's only a name from the songs! He had said that to the Prince so often, but what else was he to call him?\n\nBluejay. They were whispering his name, their voices hoarse with terror. Who was he? The Prince had often wondered. Did he really come from the land where Dustfinger had spent so many years? And what kind of country was it? A land where songs came true?\n\nBluejay.\n\nThe bear roared him a welcome that made the horses rear, and the Jay drew his sword very slowly, as he always did, the sword that had once belonged to Firefox and had killed so many of the Black Prince's men. The face beneath the dark hair seemed paler than usual, but the Prince could see no fear in it. Presumably you forgot what fear was once you visited Death.\n\n'Yes, as you see, I'm really back from the dead. Even if I still feel Death's claws in me.' He spoke dreamily, as if a part of him were still with the White Women. 'I'm willing to show you the way if you want. It's entirely up to you. But if you do prefer to live a little longer,' he added, flourishing his sword in the air as if he were writing their names, 'then let him go. Him and the bear.'\n\nThey just stared at him, and their hands, resting on their swords, trembled as if they were reaching out for their own deaths. Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness, and the Black Prince went to the Bluejay's side and felt that the words were like a shield for them, the words sung quietly up and down the country... all about the White Hand and the Black Hand of Justice.\n\nThere'll be a new song now, thought the Prince as he drew his sword, and his heart felt so foolishly young that he could have fought a thousand men. As for the Piper's soldiers, they wrenched their horses' heads round and fled \u2013 from just two men. And the words.\n\nWhen they had gone the Bluejay went over to the moss-woman, who was still kneeling in the grass with her hands pressed to her bark-brown face, and undid the rope from her neck.\n\n'A few months ago one of you tended a bad wound I had,' he said. 'It wasn't you, was it?'\n\nThe moss-woman let him help her up, but she looked at him suspiciously. 'What do you mean by that? That we all look the same to human eyes?' she snapped. 'Well, we feel the same about you. So how am I supposed to know if I ever set eyes on you before?'\n\nAnd she limped away without another look at her rescuer, who stood there watching her go as if he had forgotten where he was.\n\n'How long have I been away?' he asked when the Black Prince joined him.\n\n'Over three days.'\n\n'As long as that?' Yes, he had been far away, very far away. 'Of course. Time runs differently when you meet Death, isn't that what they say?'\n\n'You know more about it than I do now,' replied the Prince.\n\nThe Bluejay made no comment on that.\n\n'Have you heard who I brought with me?' he asked at last.\n\n'It's difficult for me to believe such good news,' said the Black Prince huskily, but the Bluejay smiled and ran a hand over the Prince's short hair.\n\n'You can let it grow again,' he said. 'The man you shaved it for is breathing again. He's left his scars with the dead, that's all.'\n\nIt couldn't be true.\n\n'Where is he?' His heart still ached from the night when he had kept watch with Roxane at Dustfinger's side.\n\n'No doubt with Roxane. I didn't ask him where he was going. We were neither of us particularly talkative. The White Women leave silence behind them, Prince, not words.'\n\n'Silence?' the Black Prince laughed, and embraced him. 'What are you talking about? They've left joy behind, pure joy! And hope, hope again at last! I feel younger than I've felt for years! As if I could tear up trees by the roots \u2013 well, maybe not that beech, but many others. By this evening, everyone will be singing that the Bluejay fears Death so little that he seeks it out, and the Piper will tear the silver nose off his face in a rage...'\n\nThe Bluejay smiled again, but his look was still grave \u2013 very grave for a man who has just come back from the dead unscathed. And the Black Prince realized that there was bad news behind the good news, a shadow behind all the light. But they didn't speak of that. Not yet.\n\n'What about my wife and my daughter?' asked the Bluejay. 'Have they... have they already gone?'\n\n'Gone?' The Black Prince looked at him in surprise. 'No. Where would they go?'\n\nRelief and worry were mingled equally in the other man's face.\n\n'Sometime I'll explain all that to you too,' he said. 'Sometime. But it's a long story.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Visitor to Orpheus's Cellar",
                "text": "\u2003So many lives,\n\n\u2003So many things to remember!\n\n\u2003I was a stone in Tibet\n\n\u2003A tongue of bark\n\n\u2003At the heart of Africa\n\n\u2003Growing darker and darker...\n\n\u2014Derek Mahon, Lives\n\nWhen Oss, gripping Farid firmly by the back of his neck, told him that Orpheus wanted to see him in his study at once, he took two bottles of wine with him. Cheeseface had been drinking like a fish ever since their return from the graveyard of the strolling players, but the wine didn't make Orpheus talkative like Fenoglio, just extremely malicious and unpredictable.\n\nAs so often, he was by the window when Farid entered the study. He was swaying slightly, and staring at the sheet of paper that he'd studied over and over again these last few days, cursing, crumpling it up and then smoothing it out again.\n\n'There it is in black and white, every letter perfect as a picture, and it sounds good too, it sounds damn good!' he said thickly as his finger kept tapping the words. 'So why, by all the infernal spirits, did the bookbinder come back again too?'\n\nWhat was Cheeseface talking about? Farid put the wine bottles on the table and stood there waiting. 'Oss says you want to speak to me?' he asked.\n\nJasper was sitting beside the jug of pens, making frantic signals, but Farid couldn't work out what they meant.\n\n'Ah yes, Dustfinger's angel of death.' Orpheus put the paper down on his desk and turned to him with a nasty smile.\n\nWhy on earth did you come back to him? Farid asked himself, but he had only to think of the hatred on Meggie's face in the graveyard to answer his own question. Because you didn't know where else to go.\n\n'Yes, I sent for you.' Orpheus looked at the door. Oss had followed Farid into the room, more silently than you would have thought possible for a man of his size, and before Farid had time to realize why Jasper was waving to him so frantically, Oss's meaty hands had seized him.\n\n'So you haven't heard the news yet!' said Orpheus. 'Of course not. If you had I'm sure you'd have gone chasing straight off to him.'\n\nOff to who? Farid tried to wriggle free, but Oss pulled his hair so hard that tears of pain came to his eyes.\n\n'He really doesn't know. How touching.' Orpheus came so close to him that the smell of the wine on his breath made Farid feel sick.\n\n'Dustfinger,' said Orpheus in his velvety voice. 'Dustfinger is back.'\n\nFarid immediately forgot all about Oss's rough fingers and Orpheus's unpleasant smile. There was nothing in him but joy, like a violent pain, too much for his heart to bear.\n\n'Yes, he's back,' Orpheus went on. 'Thanks to my words \u2013 but the rabble out there are saying the Bluejay brought him back!' he added, with a dismissive gesture to the window. 'Curse them. May the Piper make maggot-flesh of them all!'\n\nFarid wasn't listening. His own blood was roaring in his ears. Dustfinger was back! Back!\n\n'Let go of me, Chunk!' Farid drove his elbows into Oss's stomach and tugged at his hands. 'Dustfinger will turn his fire on you!' he shouted. 'That's what he'll do, the moment he hears you two didn't let me go to him at once!'\n\n'Really?' Orpheus blew wine-laden breath into his face again. 'I'm more inclined to think he'll be grateful to me \u2013 or do you suppose he'd like you to bring him to his death again, you ill-omened brat? I warned him about you once before. He wouldn't listen to me then, but he'll have learnt better now, believe you me. If I had the book you came from here, I'd have read you back into your own story long ago, but sad to say it's out of print in this world.'\n\nOrpheus laughed. He liked to laugh at his own jokes. 'Lock him in the cellar,' he told the Chunk, 'and as soon as it's dark you can take him out to the hill where the gallows stand, and wring his neck. No one will notice a few bones more or less up there.'\n\nJasper put his hands over his eyes when Oss picked Farid up and threw him over his shoulder. Farid shouted and kicked, but the Chunk hit him in the face so hard that he almost lost consciousness.\n\n'The Bluejay! The Bluejay! I sent him to the White Women! I did it!' he heard Orpheus's voice ringing down the stairs after them. 'So why, by the devil's tail, didn't Death keep him? Didn't I make that high-minded idiot sound tempting enough with the finest words I could write?'\n\nAt the bottom of the stairs Farid made another attempt to free himself, but Oss hit him in the face again so hard that blood ran from his nose, and then shifted him to his other shoulder. A maid, alarmed, stuck her face out of the kitchen doorway as he carried Farid past \u2013 it was the little brown-haired girl who was always making up to him, but she didn't help him. How could she?\n\n'Get out!' was all Oss growled at her before dragging Farid down to the cellar. He tied him to one of the pillars supporting Orpheus's house, stuffed a dirty rag into his mouth, and left him alone, but not without giving him another vigorous kick first.\n\n'See you later, when it's dark!' he grunted before trudging back upstairs, and Farid was left behind with the cold stone at his back and the taste of his own tears in his mouth.\n\nIt hurt so much to know that Dustfinger was back, and all the same he would never see him again. But that's how it will be, Farid, he told himself. And, who knows, maybe Cheeseface is right. Perhaps you'd only bring him to his death again!\n\nHis tears burnt his face, so sore from Oss's blows. If only he could have called up fire to consume Orpheus, complete with his house and the Chunk, even if it meant that he too would burn! But he couldn't move his hands, and his tongue could not conjure up a word of fire, so he just crouched there sobbing, as he had sobbed on the night of Dustfinger's death, waiting for evening to come and Oss to fetch him and wring his neck, under the same gallows where he had dug up silver for Orpheus.\n\nLuckily the marten had gone. Oss would certainly have killed him too. But presumably Jink had found his way to Dustfinger long ago. The marten would have sensed that he was back. Why didn't you sense it yourself, Farid? he wondered. Never mind, at least Jink was safe. But what would become of Jasper if he couldn't protect him any more? Orpheus had often shut the glass man up in a drawer without any light or sand, just for cutting paper clumsily or splashing ink on his master's sleeve!\n\n'Dustfinger!' It did him good to at least try to whisper the name and know he was alive. How often Farid had imagined what it would be like to see him again. Longing made him tremble as if he were shaken by a fever. Which of the martens had jumped on Dustfinger's shoulder first to lick his scarred face, he wondered, Gwin or Jink?\n\nThe hours went by, and after a while Farid managed to spit out the gag. He tried gnawing through the rope that Oss had used to tie him up, but even a mouse could have done better. Would they look for him when he was lying dead and buried on the gallows hill? Dustfinger, Silvertongue, Meggie... oh, Meggie. He would never kiss her again. Not that he'd done that so very often recently. All the same... that bastard Cheeseface! Farid called down every curse he could remember on him \u2013 curses from this world, his own world, and the one where he had met Dustfinger. He shouted them all out loud, because that was the only way they worked \u2013 and fell silent in alarm when he heard the cellar door above him opening.\n\nWas it evening already? Probably. How could anyone tell in this damp, mouldy hole? Would Oss break his neck like a rabbit's or simply press his fat hands down over his mouth until he couldn't breathe any more? Don't think about it, Farid, you'll find out soon enough. He pressed his back against the pillar. Perhaps he could at least kick Oss's nose in. A well-aimed kick at that stupid face when he was taking off Farid's bonds, and it would break like a dry twig. He desperately braced himself against the rough rope, but unfortunately Oss was good at tying people up. Meggie! Can't you send a few words to save me as you did for your father? Fear was making his arms and legs weak. He listened to the footsteps coming down the stairs. They were surprisingly quiet for the Chunk. And suddenly two martens scurried towards him.\n\n'By all the fairies, that moon-faced fellow really has been making money,' a voice whispered in the darkness. 'What a grand house!' A flame began dancing, then a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth... five flames, just bright enough to light up Dustfinger's face \u2013 and Jasper sitting on his shoulder with a shy smile.\n\nDustfinger.\n\nFarid's heart felt so light that he wouldn't have been surprised if it had simply floated out of him. But what had happened to Dustfinger's face? It looked different. As if all the years had been washed away, all the sad, lonely years, and\u2014\n\n'Your scars \u2013 they're gone!'\n\nFarid could only whisper. Happiness muted his words like cotton wool. Jink jumped up to him and licked his bound hands.\n\n'Yes, and would you believe it \u2013 I think Roxane misses them.' Dustfinger reached the bottom step of the stairs and knelt down beside him. From above, agitated voices came down to them.\n\nDrawing a knife from his belt, Dustfinger cut through Farid's bonds. 'Hear that? I'm afraid Orpheus is about to find out he has a visitor.'\n\nFarid rubbed his numb wrists. He couldn't take his eyes off Dustfinger. Suppose he was only a ghost after all \u2013 or even worse, nothing but a dream? But then would Farid have felt his warmth, and the beating of his heart when he leant over him? No more of the dreadful silence that had surrounded Dustfinger in the mine. And he smelt of fire.\n\nThe Bluejay had brought him back. Yes, it must have been him. Whatever Orpheus said. Oh, he'd write his name in fire on the city walls of Ombra \u2013 Silvertongue, Bluejay, whichever name he liked! Farid put out his hand and timidly touched Dustfinger's face, so familiar and yet so strange.\n\nDustfinger laughed quietly and raised him to his feet. 'What is it? Do you want to make sure I'm not a ghost? I expect you're still afraid of them, aren't you? Suppose I was a ghost?'\n\nBy way of answer Farid flung his arms around him so impetuously that Jasper, with a sharp little scream, slid off Dustfinger's shoulder. Luckily he caught the glass man before Gwin did.\n\n'Careful, careful!' whispered Dustfinger, putting Jasper on to Farid's shoulder. 'You're still as clumsy as a young calf. You have your glass friend to thank for my being here. He told Brianna what Orpheus was planning to do to you, and she rode to Roxane.'\n\n'Brianna?' The glass man blushed when Farid put him on his arm. 'Thank you, Jasper!'\n\nThen he spun round. Orpheus's voice came ringing down the cellar stairs. 'A stranger? What are you talking about? How did he get past you?'\n\n'It's the maid's fault!' Farid heard Oss protesting. 'The red-haired maid let him in through the back door!'\n\nDustfinger listened to the sounds above, smiling the old mocking smile that Farid had missed so much. Sparks were dancing on his shoulders and his hair. They seemed to be shining even under his skin, and Farid's own skin was hot, as if the fire had been licking it since he touched Dustfinger.\n\n'The fire...' he whispered. 'Is it in you?'\n\n'Maybe,' Dustfinger whispered back. 'I'm probably not entirely what I was, but I can do a few interesting new things.'\n\n'New things?'\n\nFarid looked at him, eyes wide, but the voice of Orpheus came down again from above. 'Smells of fire, does he? Let me past, you human rhinoceros! Is his face scarred?'\n\n'No. Why?' Oss sounded offended.\n\nAnd footsteps came down the stairs again, heavy and uncertain footsteps this time. Orpheus hated climbing either up or down stairs, and Farid heard him cursing.\n\n'Meggie read Orpheus here!' he whispered as he pressed close to Dustfinger's side. 'I asked her to do it because I thought he could bring you back!'\n\n'Orpheus?' Dustfinger laughed again. 'No, it was only Silvertongue's voice I heard.'\n\n'His voice perhaps, but it was my words that brought you back!' Orpheus stumbled down the last few steps, his face red from the wine. 'Dustfinger. It really is you!' There was genuine delight in his voice.\n\nOss appeared behind Orpheus, fear and rage on his coarse face. 'Look at him, my lord!' he managed to get out. 'He's not human. He's a demon, or a spirit of the night. See those sparks on his hair? When I tried to hold on to him I almost burnt my fingers \u2013 as if the executioner had put red-hot coals in my hands!'\n\n'Yes, yes,' was all Orpheus said. 'He comes from far away, very far away. Such a journey can change a man.' He was staring at Dustfinger as if afraid he might dissolve into thin air at any moment \u2013 or, more likely, into a few lifeless words on a sheet of paper.\n\n'I'm so glad you're back!' he stammered, his voice awkward with longing. 'And your scars have gone! How amazing. I didn't write that. Well, anyway... you're back! This world is worth only half as much without you, but now it will all be as wonderful as it was when I first read about you in Inkheart. It was always the best of all stories, but now you'll be its hero \u2013 you alone, thanks to my art that took you home and now has even brought you back from the realm of Death!'\n\n'Your art? More likely Silvertongue's courage.' Dustfinger made a flame dance on his hand. It took on the shape of a White Woman so distinctly that Oss cowered against the cellar wall in terror.\n\n'Nonsense!' For a moment Orpheus sounded like a boy with hurt feelings, but he soon had himself in hand again. 'Nonsense!' he repeated, with more self-control this time, although his tongue was still rather thick from the wine. 'Whatever he told you, it isn't true. I did it all.'\n\n'He didn't tell me anything. He didn't have to. He was there, he and his voice.'\n\n'But I had the idea \u2013 and I wrote the words! He was only my tool.' Orpheus spluttered the last word as furiously as if he were spitting it into Silvertongue's face.\n\n'Ah yes... your words! Very cunning words, according to all I've heard from him.' The image of the White Woman was still burning on Dustfinger's hand. 'Maybe I ought to take those words to Silvertongue so that he can read them once more and find out what kind of part you intended him to play in all this.'\n\nOrpheus stood up very straight. 'I wrote them like that for you, only for you!' he cried in an injured voice. 'That was all I cared about \u2013 for you to come back. Why would that bookbinder interest me? After all, I had to offer Death something!'\n\nDustfinger blew gently into the flame burning on his hand. 'Oh, I understand you very well!' he said quietly, while the fire formed the shape of a bird, a golden bird with a red breast. 'I understand a good deal now that I've been on the other side, and I know two things for sure: Death obeys no words, and Silvertongue \u2013 not you \u2013 went to the White Women.'\n\n'He was the only one who could call them. What was I supposed to do?' cried Orpheus. 'And he did it for his wife! Not for you!'\n\n'Well now, I'd call that a good reason.' The fiery bird fell apart in Dustfinger's hand. 'And as for the words... to be honest, I like his voice so much better than yours, even if the sound of it didn't always make me happy. Silvertongue's voice is full of love. Yours speaks only of yourself. Quite apart from the fact that you're much too fond of reading words no one knows about, or forgetting a few you promised to read. Isn't that so, Farid?'\n\nFarid just stared at Orpheus, his face rigid with hate.\n\n'Be that as it may,' Dustfinger went on as the flame in his hand licked out of the ashes again, forming the shape of a tiny skull, 'I'll take the words with me. And the book.'\n\n'The book?' Orpheus stepped back as if the fire on Dustfinger's hand had turned into a snake.\n\n'Yes, Inkheart, you stole it from Farid, remember? That hardly makes it yours... even if you seem to be busily making use of it, from all I hear. Rainbow-coloured fairies, spotted brownies, unicorns... they say there are even dwarves in the castle now. What's the idea of all that? Weren't the blue fairies beautiful enough for you? The Milksop kicks the dwarves, and you bring unicorns here only to die.'\n\n'No, no!' Orpheus raised his hands defensively. 'You don't understand! I have great plans for this story. I'm still working on them, but believe me, it will be wonderful! Fenoglio left so much unsaid, there was so much he didn't describe \u2013 I'm going to change it all, I'm going to improve it...'\n\nDustfinger turned his hand over and dropped the ashes on the floor of Orpheus's cellar. 'You sound like Fenoglio himself \u2013 but I'd guess you're much worse than he is. This world is spinning its own threads. The two of you only confuse them \u2013 take them apart and put them together again in ways that don't really fit, instead of leaving it to the people who live in the place to improve it.'\n\n'Like who, for instance?' Orpheus's voice turned vicious. 'The Bluejay? Since when has he belonged here?'\n\nDustfinger shrugged his shoulders. 'Who knows? Perhaps all of us belong in more than one story. Now, bring me the book. Or shall I ask Farid to go and get it?'\n\nOrpheus was staring at him as bitterly as a rejected lover.\n\n'No!' he got out at last. 'I need it. The book stays here. You can't take it away from me. I'm warning you. Fenoglio's not the only one who can write words to harm you! I can\u2014'\n\n'I'm not afraid of words any more,' Dustfinger interrupted impatiently. 'Neither yours nor Fenoglio's. And neither of you was able to dictate how I'd die. Have you forgotten that?' He reached into the air, and a burning torch grew from his hand. 'Bring me the book,' he said, giving it to Farid. 'Bring everything he's written. Every word.'\n\nFarid nodded. He was back. Dustfinger was back!\n\n'You must take the list too!' Jasper's voice was as slight as his limbs. 'The list he made me draw up. Of all the words Fenoglio used! I'm as far as the letter F.'\n\n'Ah, not a bad idea! A list. Thank you, glass man.' Dustfinger smiled. No, his smile hadn't changed. Farid was so glad he hadn't left that behind with the White Women.\n\nHe put Jasper on his shoulder and went to the stairs. Jink ran after him. Orpheus tried to bar his way, but he flinched back when the torch left his glasses clouded and its flame singed his silk shirt. Oss was braver than his master, but in response to a whisper from Dustfinger the torch reached out to him with fiery hands, and before Oss had recovered from his fright Farid was past him. Agile as a gazelle, he leapt up the stairs, his heart full of happiness, and the taste of sweet revenge on his tongue.\n\n'Jasper!' Orpheus called after him. 'I'm going to smash you into such tiny splinters that no one will even be able to see what colour you were!'\n\nThe glass man dug his fingers into Farid's shoulder, but he didn't turn round.\n\n'As for you, you lying little camel-driver \u2013' Orpheus's voice broke \u2013 'I'll make you disappear into a story full of horrible things specially written for you!'\n\nThe threat halted Farid for a moment, but then he heard Dustfinger's voice.\n\n'Take care with your threats, Orpheus. If anything ever happens to the boy, or if he suddenly disappears \u2013 the fate you clearly intended for him this time \u2013 then I'll come to visit you again. And as you know, I never go anywhere without fire.'\n\n'It was for you!' Farid heard Orpheus shouting. 'I did it all for you! Is this the thanks I get?'\n\nIronstone hurled furious abuse at Farid and his younger brother as soon as he realized what they were looking for in his master's study. But Jasper, unmoved, helped Farid to find first the book and then every scrap of paper that Orpheus had ever written on. Ironstone threw sand and sharp pens at them, he wished every imaginable disease that can afflict a glass man on Jasper, and finally flung himself heroically on the last sheet of paper that Jasper was rolling up on Orpheus's desk, but Farid merely pushed him roughly aside.\n\n'Traitor!' shrieked Ironstone at his brother as Farid closed the door of the study behind him. 'I hope you're smashed into a thousand pieces!' But Jasper did not turn back, any more than he had at the threats made by Orpheus.\n\nDustfinger was already waiting at the front door of the house.\n\n'Where are they?' asked Farid anxiously as he hurried towards him. There was no sign of Orpheus or Oss, but he could hear their angry voices.\n\n'In the cellar,' said Dustfinger. 'I lost a little fire on the stairs. We'll be well into the forest before it goes out.'\n\nFarid nodded, and turned as one of the maids appeared at the top of the stairs, but it wasn't Brianna.\n\n'My daughter left,' said Dustfinger, as if he had read his thoughts. 'And I doubt if she'll be coming back to this house.'\n\n'She hates me!' Farid stammered. 'Why did she help me?'\n\nDustfinger opened the door, and the martens scurried out. 'Perhaps she likes Orpheus even less than you,' he said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Sootbird's Fire",
                "text": "\u2003Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player\n\n\u2003That struts and frets his hour upon the stage\n\n\u2003And then is heard no more. It is a tale\n\n\u2003Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury\n\n\u2003Signifying nothing.\n\n\u2014William Shakespeare, Macbeth\n\nFenoglio was happy. He was happy even though Ivo and Despina had taken it into their heads to drag him off to the marketplace, where Sootbird was giving yet another show. The criers had been announcing it for days, and naturally Minerva wasn't letting the children go alone. The Milksop had had a platform specially made so that everyone could watch his court fire-eater's incompetent performance. Did they hope such things would make the people forget that the Fire-Dancer was back? Never mind, not even Sootbird could cast a shadow over Fenoglio's cheerful mood. His heart hadn't been so light since he had set off with Cosimo for the Castle of Night. And he wasn't going to think of what had happened after that; no, that chapter was closed. His story had struck up a new song, and whose doing was that? His own! Who else had brought the Bluejay into the story, the man who had run rings around the Piper and the Milksop and brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead? What a character! Orpheus's creations were grotesque by comparison: garishly coloured fairies, dead unicorns, dwarves with a blue tinge to their hair. Yes, that calf's-head could bring such creatures into being, but only he, Fenoglio, could think up men like the Black Prince and the Bluejay. Well \u2013 he had to admit that only Mortimer had made the Bluejay flesh and blood. But the words had come first, all the same, and it was he who had written them, every single one!\n\n'Ivo! Despina!' Where were they, dammit? It was easier to catch Orpheus's rainbow-coloured fairies than those children! Hadn't he told them not to run too far ahead? Children were swarming all over the street, coming out of all the houses to forget, at least for an hour or so, the burdens the world had laid on their frail shoulders. It was no fun being a child in these dark times. The boys had become men too young, and the girls found their mothers' sadness hard to bear.\n\nAt first Minerva hadn't wanted to let Ivo and Despina go. There were too many soldiers in town, and too much work waiting at home, but Fenoglio had won her over, although he didn't like the thought of the stink that Sootbird would be spreading again. On a day when he was so happy, however, he wanted the children to be happy too, and while Sootbird put on his pathetic show he would simply dream of Dustfinger breathing fire in Ombra's marketplace in the near future. Or he would imagine the Bluejay riding into Ombra and chasing the Milksop out of the gates like a mangy dog, knocking the silver nose off the Piper's face, and then, together with the Black Prince, founding a realm of justice, ruled by the people! Or, perhaps not entirely. This world hadn't reached that point yet, but never mind. It would be wonderful, it would move all hearts, and he, Fenoglio, had set the story on the course that would save it when he had written the first song about the Bluejay. In the end he'd done everything right! Well, perhaps Cosimo had been a mistake, but where would the excitement be in a story if it wasn't dark from time to time?\n\n'Inkweaver! Where are you?' Ivo was waving to him impatiently. Did the boy think an old man could wriggle through this tide of children's bodies like an eel? Despina turned and smiled in relief when Fenoglio waved to her. But then her little head disappeared among all the others again.\n\n'Ivo!' called Fenoglio. 'Ivo, keep an eye on your sister, can't you?'\n\nGood heavens, he'd never known how many children there were in Ombra! Many of them were dragging their smaller brothers and sisters along after them as they flocked to the marketplace. Fenoglio was the only grown man to be seen, and few of the mothers had come. No doubt most of the children had stolen away on the sly \u2013 from workshops and stores, from housework or the stables. They had even come from the surrounding farms in their poor shabby clothes. Their clear voices were like the twittering of a flock of birds among the buildings. It was unlikely that Sootbird had ever had such an excited audience before.\n\nHe was already standing on the platform in the black and red costume worn by fire-eaters, but his clothes weren't patched together from rags like those of his brothers in the trade. They were made of the finest velvet, as befitted a prince's favourite. His ever-smiling face gleamed with the grease he used to protect it from the flames, but by now the fire had licked it so often that it looked like the masks Battista made from leather.\n\nSootbird was smiling again now as he looked down on the sea of little faces, crowding around the platform as eagerly as if he could release them from all their troubles, from hunger, from their mothers' sadness and from missing their dead fathers. Fenoglio saw Ivo at the very front, but where was Despina? Ah, over there, right beside her big brother. She waved excitedly to him, and he waved back as he joined the mothers waiting outside the houses. He heard them whispering about the Bluejay, and how he'd protect their children now that he had brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead. Yes, the sun was shining on Ombra again. Hope was back, and he, Fenoglio, had given it a name. The Bluejay...\n\nSootbird took off his cloak, which was so heavy and expensive that the price of it could surely have fed all the children crowded there in the marketplace for months. A brownie climbed up to him on the platform, hung about with bags full of the alchemists' powders that the inept fire-eater fed to the flames to make them obey him. Sootbird still feared the fire. You could see that clearly. Perhaps he feared it now more than ever, and Fenoglio felt uncomfortable, watching him begin his show. Flames sprayed and hissed, breathing out poison-green smoke that made the children cough. The fire formed shapes: menacing fists, claws, snapping mouths. Sootbird had been learning. He no longer waved a couple of torches about and breathed flames so poorly that everyone whispered Dustfinger's name. The fire he was playing with, though, seemed to be quite different. It was fire's dark brother, a nightmare made of flames, but the children watched the bright, evil spectacle, both fascinated and frightened. They jumped when the fire reached red claws out to them, and groaned in relief when it turned to nothing but smoke \u2013 although the smoke still hung in the air, acrid and making their eyes water. Was what people whispered true? Was it a fact that this smoke befuddled your senses so that you saw more than was really there? Well, if so, it doesn't work for me, thought Fenoglio as he rubbed his smarting eyes. A set of wretched conjuring tricks, that's all I see!\n\nTears were running down his nose, and when he turned to wipe the soot and smoke out of his eyes he saw a boy come stumbling down the road from the castle. The lad was older than the children in the square, old enough to be one of Violante's beardless soldiers, but he wore no uniform. His face seemed strangely familiar to Fenoglio. Where had he seen him before?\n\n'Luc!' the boy shouted. 'Luc! Run! All of you run!' He stumbled, fell, and crawled into a doorway just in time before the man pursuing him on horseback could ride him down. It was the Piper. He reined in his horse, while behind him a dozen men-at-arms surged along the road down from the castle. More of them came from every direction, Smiths' Street, Butchers' Street. They were coming out of every street and alley that led to the marketplace, riding in almost leisurely fashion on their great horses, armoured like their masters.\n\nBut the children kept staring up at Sootbird, suspecting nothing. They hadn't heard the boy's cries of warning. They didn't see the soldiers. They just stared at the fire while their mothers called their names. By the time the first of them turned it was too late. The men-at-arms drove back the weeping women, while more and more soldiers surged out of every street, enclosing the children in a ring of iron.\n\nHorrified, the little ones spun around. Amazement suddenly turned to pure fear. And the way they cried! How was Fenoglio ever to forget that crying? He stood there helplessly, his back to a wall, while five men-at-arms kept their lances pointed at him and the women. No more were needed. Five lances to keep the little group in check. One of the women ran for it all the same, but a soldier rode her down. Then they formed a circle of swords as Sootbird, at a nod from the Piper, extinguished his flames and bowed to the weeping children with a smile.\n\nThey drove them up to the castle like a flock of lambs. Some of the little ones were so frightened that they ran here and there among the horses, and were left lying on the paving of the road like broken toys. Fenoglio called the names of Ivo and Despina, but his voice merged with all the others, with all the screaming and sobbing. When the men-at-arms let the mothers go, he too stumbled over to the children who had been left behind, bleeding. He stared at the pale faces, terrified of recognizing Despina or Ivo. They weren't there, but Fenoglio felt as though he knew the faces all the same. Such small faces. Too young to die, too young for pain and terror. Two White Women appeared, his angels of death. And the mothers bent over the children and closed their ears to that white whispering. Three were dead, two boys and a girl. They no longer needed the White Women to make the crossing to the other side.\n\nThe lad who had stumbled along the street shouting his warning in vain was kneeling beside one of the dead boys. He stared up at the platform, his young face old with hatred. But Sootbird was gone, as if he had dissolved into the venomous smoke that hung in dense swathes over the marketplace. Only the brownie still stood there looking down, dazed, at the women bending over the children. Then, as slowly as if he had fallen out of ordinary time, he began collecting the empty bags left behind by Sootbird. A few of the women had run after the soldiers and the children they were taking away. The rest knelt there, wiped blood from the foreheads of the injured and felt their small limbs.\n\nFenoglio couldn't bear it any more. He turned and walked back, unsteadily, to the street where Minerva's house stood. Women came the other way, brought out of their houses by the screaming. They ran past him. It was too much! Too much! Minerva herself came running towards him. He stammered a few broken words, pointed to the castle. She ran after the other women.\n\nIt was such a fine day. The sun was as warm as if winter were still a long way off.\n\nHow was he ever going to forget that weeping? Fenoglio was amazed that his legs could still carry his tear-drenched heart up the stairs.\n\n'Rosenquartz!' He supported himself on his table, looked for parchment, paper, anything he could write on. 'Rosenquartz! Damn it all, where are you?'\n\nThe glass man peered out of the nest where Orpheus's rainbow-coloured fairies lived. What the devil was he doing up there? Wringing their silly necks?\n\n'If you were thinking of sending me off to spy on Orpheus again, forget it!' Rosenquartz called down to him. 'That Ironstone has gone and pushed the glass man Orpheus got to replace his brother out of the window! He's so badly smashed he looks like the remains of a wine bottle!'\n\n'I don't need you to go spying!' snapped Fenoglio, in a voice muffled by tears. 'Sharpen me some pens! Get stirring that ink, and jump to it!'\n\nAh, this weeping.\n\nHe sank down on his chair and buried his face in his hands. Tears ran through his fingers and dripped on to the table. Fenoglio couldn't remember ever having cried so much. Even Cosimo's death had left him dry-eyed. Ivo! Despina!\n\nHe heard the glass man landing on his bed. Hadn't he told him not to jump out of the fairy nests? Never mind. Let him break his glass neck if he liked. So much misfortune! There must be an end to it, or his old heart really would break!\n\nHe heard Rosenquartz hastily clambering up the table leg. 'Here you are,' said the glass man in a muted voice, offering him a freshly sharpened quill.\n\nFenoglio wiped the tears away from his face with his sleeve. His fingers were shaking as he took the pen. The glass man pushed a piece of paper over to him and quickly set about stirring the ink.\n\n'Where are the children?' he asked. 'Weren't you going to the marketplace with them?'\n\nAnother tear. It fell on the blank sheet, and the paper greedily soaked it up. Just like this wretched story, thought Fenoglio. Feeding on tears! Suppose Orpheus had written what happened in the marketplace? Folk said he had hardly left his house since the day of Dustfinger's visit to him, and he kept throwing bottles out of the window. In his rage, could he have written words to kill a few children?\n\nStop it, Fenoglio, don't go thinking about Orpheus! Write something yourself! He wished the paper wasn't so blank. 'Come on!' he whispered. 'Come here, words, will you? They're children! Children! Save them!'\n\n'Fenoglio?' Rosenquartz was looking at him with concern. 'Where are Ivo and Despina? What's happened?'\n\nBut all Fenoglio could do was bury his face in his hands again. Where were the words to open those accursed castle gates, break the lances, roast Sootbird in his own fire?\n\nIt was Minerva who told Rosenquartz what had happened \u2013 when she came back from the castle without her children. The Piper had made another speech.\n\n'He says he's tired of waiting,' Minerva told him in a toneless voice. 'He's giving us a week to bring him the Bluejay. Or he'll take our children away to the mines!'\n\nThen she went down to her empty kitchen, where no doubt the bowls from which Ivo and Despina had eaten that morning still stood. And Fenoglio sat there in front of the blank sheet of paper which showed nothing but the traces of his tears. Hour after hour, until late into the night."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Bluejay's Answer",
                "text": "\u2003'I want to be of use,' Homer began, but Dr. Larch wouldn't listen.\n\n\u2003'Then you are not permitted to hide,' said Larch. 'You are not permitted to look away.'\n\n\u2014John Irving, The Cider House Rules\n\nResa, her face pale, was writing in her best script. Just as she had long ago when she used to sit in men's clothes in Ombra marketplace, earning her living as a scribe. Orpheus's former glass man was stirring the ink for her. Dustfinger had brought Jasper back to the robbers' cave with him. And Farid too.\n\nThis is the Bluejay's answer, wrote Resa, with Mo standing beside her. In three days' time he will give himself up to Violante, widow of Cosimo and mother of the rightful heir of Ombra. In exchange the Piper will set free the children of Ombra whom he tricked into his power. This agreement shall be sealed with his master's seal, so that they may be safe for all time.\n\nOnly when this condition is met will the Bluejay be prepared to cure the White Book that he bound for the Adderhead in the Castle of Night.\n\nMeggie saw her mother's hand falter again and again as she wrote. The robbers stood around, watching her. A woman who could write... apart from Battista, none of them had that skill, not even the Black Prince. They had all tried to keep Mo from giving himself up \u2013 even Doria, who had done his best to warn the children of Ombra, and then had to watch as the Piper caught them, and his best friend Luc was killed.\n\nIn vain. Only one person hadn't even attempted to make Mo change his mind: Dustfinger.\n\nIt seemed almost as if he'd never been away, even though his face now had no scars. The same smile, enigmatic as ever, the same swift movements. He was here one moment, gone the next. Like a ghost. Meggie found herself thinking so again and again \u2013 yet at the same time she sensed that Dustfinger was more alive than ever before, more alive than anyone.\n\nMo looked her way, but Meggie wasn't sure that he really saw her. Ever since he had come back from the White Women, he seemed to be more the Bluejay than ever.\n\nHow could he give himself up as a prisoner? The Piper would kill him!\n\nResa had finished writing the letter. She looked at Mo as if hoping, just for a moment, that he would throw the parchment on the fire. But he only took the pen from her hand and added his sign under the deadly words \u2013 a pen and a sword forming a cross, in the way peasants made their mark instead of signing their names, because they didn't understand letters.\n\nNo.\n\nNo!\n\nResa bowed her head. Why didn't she say anything? Why couldn't she shed some tears to make him change his mind this time? Had she used them all up on that endless night among the graves when they stood waiting in vain for him to come back? Did Resa know what Mo had promised the White Women in return for letting him and Dustfinger go again? 'I may soon have to go away,' was all he had told Meggie. And when she had asked, full of fear, 'Go away? Where to?' all he had said was, 'Don't look at me so anxiously! Wherever I go, I've visited Death and come back safe and sound. It can hardly be more dangerous than that, can it?'\n\nShe ought to have asked more questions, but Meggie had felt too glad, indescribably glad, that she hadn't lost him for ever...\n\n'You're out of your mind! I've said so before and I'll say it again!'\n\nSnapper was drunk. He stood there red in the face, his brusque voice breaking the oppressive silence so suddenly that the glass man dropped the pen Mo had handed him.\n\n'Giving yourself up to the Adder's spawn in the hope that she can protect you from the Piper! He'll soon teach you better. And even if Silvernose leaves you alive \u2013 do you still think his master's daughter will help you to write in that damn book? You must have left your reason behind with Death! Her Ugliness will sell you for the throne of Ombra. And the Piper will send the children to the mines all the same!'\n\nMany of the robbers murmured agreement, but they fell silent when the Black Prince went to Mo's side.\n\n'How are you going to get the children out of the castle, then, Snapper?' he asked evenly. 'I don't like to think of the Bluejay riding through the castle gates of Ombra either, but if he doesn't give himself up, then what? I couldn't answer him when he asked that question, and believe me, I've been thinking of nothing else since Sootbird's performance! Are we to attack the castle with the few men we have? Will you lie in ambush when they take the children through the Wayless Wood? How many men-at-arms will be guarding them? Fifty? A hundred? How many dead children do you expect to see if you try freeing them that way?'\n\nThe Black Prince scrutinized the ragged men standing around him. Many of them lowered their heads, but Snapper defiantly thrust out his chin. The scar on his neck was as red as a fresh cut.\n\n'I'll ask you once again, Snapper,' said the Black Prince quietly. 'How many children would die if we tried rescuing them like that? Would we manage to save even one?'\n\nSnapper didn't reply. He just stared at Mo. Then he spat, turned, and marched away, followed by Gecko and a dozen others. But Resa took the written sheet of parchment without a word and folded it so that Jasper could seal it. Her face was as expressionless as if it were made of stone, like the face of Cosimo the Fair in the vault in Ombra Castle, but her hands were trembling so much that finally Battista went over and folded the parchment for her.\n\nThree days once again. Mo had been gone with the White Women for that long as well \u2013 three endless days that had made Meggie believe her father was dead beyond recall this time, and it was her mother's fault. And Farid's too. She hadn't exchanged a single word with either of them during those three days, and when Resa approached her she had pushed her away.\n\n'Meggie, why are you looking at your mother like that?' Mo had asked her on the first day after his return. Why? The White Women took you away because of her, she wanted to say, and then didn't. She knew she was being unfair, but the coolness between her and Resa was still there. She couldn't forgive Farid either.\n\nHe was standing beside Dustfinger, and was the only one who didn't look depressed. Of course. Why would Farid care that her father was about to hand himself over to the Piper? Dustfinger was back. Nothing else counted. He had tried to make up their quarrel. 'Come on, Meggie. No harm came to your father \u2013 and he brought Dustfinger back!' Yes, that was all that interested him. And all that ever would.\n\nJasper had let sealing wax drop on to the parchment, and Mo pressed his stamp on it, the one he'd carved for the book of Resa's drawings. A unicorn's head. The bookbinder's seal for the robber's promise. Mo gave Dustfinger the letter, exchanged a few words with Resa and the Black Prince, and came over to Meggie.\n\nWhen she was still so small that she stood no higher than his elbow, she would often push her head under his arm when something scared her. But that was long ago. 'What does Death look like, Mo?' she had asked. 'Did you really see Death himself?' The memory didn't seem to frighten him, but his eyes had immediately wandered far, far away. 'Death has many shapes, but the voice of a woman.' 'A woman?' Meggie had asked in surprise. 'But Fenoglio would never give a woman such a big part in his story!'\n\nAnd Mo had laughed and replied, 'I don't think it was Fenoglio who wrote Death's part, Meggie.'\n\nShe wouldn't look up at him when he stopped in front of her. 'Meggie?' He put his hand under her chin so that she had to meet his eyes. 'Don't look so sad. Please!'\n\nBehind him, the Black Prince took Battista and Doria aside. She could imagine what instructions he had for them. He was sending them to Ombra, to spread the news among the desperate mothers there that the Bluejay would not let their stolen children down. But what about his own daughter? Meggie thought, and was sure that Mo saw the accusation in her eyes.\n\nWithout a word, he took her hand and drew her away from the tents, away from the robbers, and away from Resa, who was still standing by the fire. She was wiping the ink from her fingers, wiping and wiping, while Jasper watched sympathetically. It was as if she were trying to wipe away the words she had written.\n\nMo stopped under one of the oak trees. Their branches stretched above the camp like a sky made of wood and yellowing leaves. He held Meggie's hand and ran his forefinger over it as if he were surprised to find how large it was now \u2013 yet her hands were still so much slimmer than his. A girl's hands...\n\n'The Piper will kill you.'\n\n'No, he won't. But if he tries I'll be happy to show him how sharp a bookbinder's knife is. Battista is going to sew me a place to hide a knife again, and believe me, I'll be very happy if that child-murderer gives me an opportunity to try it out on him.' Hatred fell over his face like a shadow. The Bluejay.\n\n'The knife won't be any help. He'll kill you just the same.' She sounded stupid. Like a defiant child. But she was so afraid for him.\n\n'Three children are dead, Meggie. Go to Doria and ask him to tell you again how they herded them together. They'll kill them all if the Bluejay doesn't give himself up!'\n\nThe Bluejay. He sounded as if he meant someone else. How dim did he think she was?\n\n'It's not your story, Mo! Let the Black Prince save the children.'\n\n'How? The Piper will kill them all if he tries.' There was so much fury in his eyes. And for the first time Meggie realized that Mo wasn't riding to the castle only to save the living children, but also to avenge the dead. That idea frightened her even more.\n\n'Yes, I see. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps there really isn't any other way,' she said. 'But at least let me come with you! So that I can help you. Like in the Castle of Night!' It seemed only yesterday that Firefox had pushed her into Mo's cell. Had he forgotten how glad he'd been to have her with him? Had he forgotten that it was she, with some help from Fenoglio, who had saved him?\n\nNo, she was sure he hadn't. But Meggie had only to look at him to know that in spite of everything he would go alone this time. All alone.\n\n'Do you remember the robber stories I used to tell you?' he asked.\n\n'Of course. They all end badly.'\n\n'And why? It's always the same. Because the robber wants to protect someone he loves, and they kill him for that. Right?'\n\nOh, he was so clever. Had he said the same thing to her mother? But I know him better than Resa, thought Meggie, and I know far more stories than she does. 'What about the highwayman poem?' she asked. Elinor had read it to her countless times. She could still hear her sighing, 'Oh, Meggie, why don't you read it aloud for a change? We don't have to mention it to your father, but I'd just love to see that highwayman galloping through my house!'\n\nMo smoothed the hair back from her forehead. 'What about it?'\n\n'The girl he loves warns him about the soldiers, and he escapes! Daughters can do that kind of thing too.'\n\n'Yes, indeed! Daughters are very good at rescuing their fathers. No one knows that better than me.' He had to smile. She loved his smile. Suppose she never saw it again? 'But don't you remember how the poem ends for the girl too?' he added.\n\nOf course Meggie remembered. Her musket shattered the moonlight, shattered her breast in the moonlight. And in the end the soldiers killed the highwayman after all. And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.\n\n'Meggie...'\n\nShe turned her back to him. She didn't want to look at him any more. She didn't want to feel afraid for him any more. She simply wanted to be angry with him, that was all. Just as she was angry with Farid, angry with Resa. Loving someone merely meant pain. Nothing but pain.\n\n'Meggie!' Mo took her shoulders and turned her round. 'Suppose I don't ride to Ombra \u2013 how would you like the song they'd sing then? And one morning the Bluejay disappeared and was never seen again. But the children of Ombra died on the other side of the forest, like their fathers, and the Adderhead reigned for all eternity because of the White Book that the Bluejay had bound for him.'\n\nYes, he was right. That was a terrible song, yet Meggie knew one that would be even worse: But the Bluejay rode to the castle to save the children of Ombra, and died there. And although the Fire-Dancer wrote his name in the sky with fiery letters so that the stars whisper it every night, his daughter never saw him again.\n\nThat was how it would turn out, yes. But Mo was listening to a different song.\n\n'Fenoglio's not going to write us a happy ending this time, Meggie!' he said. 'I'll have to write it myself, but with actions instead of words. Only the Bluejay can save the children. Only he can write the three words in the White Book.'\n\nShe still didn't look at him. She didn't want to hear what he was saying. But Mo went on in the voice she loved so much, the voice that had sung her to sleep, comforted her when she was sick, and told her stories about the mother who had disappeared.\n\n'I just want you to promise me something,' he said. 'You and your mother must look after each other while I'm gone. The two of you can't go back. There's no trusting Orpheus's words! But the Prince will protect you, and so will the Strong Man. He's promised me on his brother's life, and he's certainly a much better protector than I am. Do you hear, Meggie? Whatever happens, stay with the robbers. Don't go to Ombra, and don't follow me to the Castle of Night if they take me there! I wouldn't be able to think straight if I found out that you two were in danger. Promise me!'\n\nMeggie bowed her head so that he wouldn't read her answer in her eyes. No. No, she wasn't going to make him any promises. And she was sure Resa hadn't either. Or had she? Meggie glanced over at her mother. She looked terribly sad. The Strong Man was beside her. Unlike Meggie, he had forgiven Resa once Mo had come back safe and sound.\n\n'Meggie, please listen to me!' Usually Mo began making jokes when he thought the mood was getting too serious, but obviously that had changed too. His voice sounded as serious and down-to-earth as if he were discussing a school trip with her. 'If I don't come back,' he said, 'you must get Fenoglio to write words to take you and your mother home to Elinor in our old world. He can't have forgotten how to do it entirely, after all. Then you can read his words and take the three of you back, you and Resa \u2013 and your brother.'\n\n'Brother? I want a sister.'\n\n'Ah, do you?' Now he was smiling after all. 'Good. I want another daughter too. My first has grown too big to be picked up in my arms.'\n\nThey looked at each other, and there were so many words that Meggie wanted to say, but not one that really expressed what she was feeling.\n\n'Who's going to take the letter to the castle?' she asked quietly.\n\n'We don't know yet,' replied Mo. 'It won't be easy to find someone who'll be allowed access to Violante.'\n\nThree days to go from the time Her Ugliness would get the letter and the Piper would accept the terms. Meggie hugged him as hard as she used to when she was a small child. 'Please, Mo!' she said softly. 'Don't go! Please! Let's all go back. Resa was right!'\n\n'Go back? Meggie! Go back now, just when it's getting exciting?' he whispered to her. So he hadn't changed so very much after all. He still cracked jokes when he thought things were getting too serious. She loved him so much.\n\nMo took her face between his hands. He looked at her as if he were going to say something to her, and for a moment Meggie thought she read in his eyes that he was as frightened for her sake as she was for his.\n\n'Believe me, Meggie!' he said. 'I'm also riding to that castle to protect you. Someday you'll understand that. Didn't the two of us already know in the Castle of Night that I was binding the White Book for the Adderhead only to write those three words in it some time in the future?'\n\nMeggie shook her head so hard that Mo hugged her again.\n\n'Yes, Meggie!' he said quietly. 'Yes, we did.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "At Last",
                "text": "\u2003There, in the night, where none can spy\n\n\u2003all in my hunter's camp I lie,\n\n\u2003and play at books that I have read\n\n\u2003till it is time to go to bed.\n\n\u2003These are the hills, these are the woods,\n\n\u2003these are my starry solitudes,\n\n\u2003and there the river by whose brink\n\n\u2003the roaring lions come to drink.\n\n\u2014R.L. Stevenson, The Land of Story Books\n\nDarius read wonderfully, although in his mouth the words sounded very different from the way Mortimer would have read them (and of course very different again from the voice of Orpheus, that defiler of books). Perhaps Darius's art was most like Meggie's. He read with the innocence of a child, and it seemed to Elinor as if, for the first time, she saw the boy he had once been \u2013 a thin, bespectacled boy who loved books as passionately as she did, but with the difference that for him the pages came to life.\n\nDarius's voice was not as full and beautiful as Mortimer's, nor did it have the enthusiasm that lent Orpheus's voice its power. No, Darius took the words on his tongue as carefully as if they might break apart there, might lose their meaning if they were spoken in too loud and firm a tone. All the sadness of the world lay in Darius's voice: the magic of the weak, the quiet and cautious, and their knowledge of the pitiless minds of the strong...\n\nThe music of Orpheus's words amazed Elinor as much as on the day she first heard him read them. Those words didn't sound at all like the work of the vain fool who had thrown her books at the library walls. Well, that's because he stole them from someone else, thought Elinor, and then she thought of nothing more at all.\n\nDarius's tongue didn't stumble once \u2013 perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read. He opened the door between the letters on the page so gently that Elinor felt as if they were stealing into Fenoglio's world like two children slipping into a forbidden room.\n\nWhen she suddenly found a wall behind her she dared not believe what her fingers were feeling. At first you think it's a dream. Wasn't that how Resa had described it? Well, if this is a dream, thought Elinor, then I never intend to wake up! Her eyes greedily drank in the images suddenly flooding in on her: a square, a well, houses leaning against each other as if they were too old to stand up straight, women in long dresses (most of them very shabby), a flock of sparrows, pigeons, two thin cats, a cart and an old man shovelling garbage into it... heavens above, the stench was almost unbearable, but all the same Elinor breathed it in deeply.\n\nOmbra! She was in Ombra! What else could her surroundings be? A woman drawing water at the well turned and looked suspiciously at the heavy dark-red velvet dress Elinor was wearing. Oh, drat it! She had hired the dress from a theatrical costume agency, along with the tunic Darius was wearing. She'd asked for 'something medieval', and now here she stood looking as conspicuous as a peacock among a flock of crows!\n\nNever mind. You're here, Elinor! When something pulled her hair rather roughly, tears of joy came to her eyes. With a practised move, she caught the fairy who was about to make off with a grey strand of it. How she'd missed those tiny, fluttering creatures! But hadn't they been blue? This one shimmered in all the iridescent colours of a soap bubble. Captivated, Elinor closed her hands around her catch and examined the fairy through her fingers. The little creature looked rather sleepy. This was wonderful! When the tiny teeth dug into her thumb and the fairy escaped Elinor laughed out loud, making two women put their heads out of the nearby windows.\n\nElinor!\n\nShe clapped her hand to her mouth, but she could still feel laughter like sherbet powder fizzing on her tongue. Oh, she was so happy, so idiotically happy. She hadn't felt like this since she was six years old and stole into her father's library to get at the books he wouldn't let her read. Perhaps you ought to drop dead here and now, Elinor, she told herself. At this very moment. How can things get any better?\n\nTwo men in colourful garments were crossing the square. Strolling players! They didn't look quite as romantic as Elinor had imagined the Motley Folk, but never mind... they were minstrels, and a brownie was carrying their instruments. His hairy face looked so bemused when he saw her that Elinor instinctively felt her nose. Had something happened to her face? No, surely her nose had always been that size, hadn't it?\n\n'Elinor?'\n\nShe turned. Darius! For heaven's sake, she'd completely forgotten him. What was he doing under the rubbish cart?\n\nLooking bewildered, he crawled out from between the wooden wheels and plucked a few not-very-clean blades of straw off his tunic. Oh, Darius! Of all places in the Inkworld, he had to land under a load of garbage! Just like him! He was a walking disaster area. And the way he was looking around him \u2013 as if he'd fallen among thieves. Poor Darius. Wonderful Darius. He was still holding the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it, but where was the bag with all the things they'd meant to bring?\n\nJust a moment, Elinor, you were going to bring it. She looked around \u2013 and instead of the bag saw Cerberus beside her, snuffling at the strange paving stones with great interest.\n\n'H-h-he'd have starved to death if we'd left him behind,' stuttered Darius, still brushing straw off his tunic. 'A-a-anyway I suppose he can lead us to his master, and maybe he'll know where we can find the others.'\n\nNot a bad idea, Elinor told herself. I'd never have thought of that. But what was making him stammer again?\n\n'Darius! You did it!' she whispered, hugging him so hard that his glasses slipped. 'Thank you! Thank you so, so much!'\n\n'Hey, you there, where'd that dog come from?'\n\nCerberus pressed close to Elinor's legs, growling. Two soldiers were facing them. The soldiers are worse than the highwaymen. Hadn't Resa told her that too? Most of them will kill for fun some time or other.\n\nInvoluntarily, Elinor took a step back, but she just came up against the wall of the house behind her.\n\n'Well, cat got your tongues?' One of the men punched Darius in the belly with his gloved fist, so hard that he doubled up.\n\n'What do you think you're doing? Leave him alone!' Elinor's voice didn't sound half as fearless as she had hoped. 'That's my dog.'\n\n'Yours?' The soldier approaching her had only one eye. Fascinated, Elinor stared at the place where the other eye had once been. 'Only princesses may keep dogs. Trying to tell me you're a princess?'\n\nHe drew his sword and ran the blade over Elinor's dress. 'And what sort of clothes are those? You think they make you look a fine lady? What seamstress made that dress? She ought to be put in the pillory, so she ought!'\n\nThe other soldier laughed. 'The strolling players wear such garments!' he said. 'She's a minstrel woman rather past her prime.'\n\n'A minstrel woman? Nah, too ugly for that.' The one-eyed man scrutinized Elinor as if he were about to strip her dress off.\n\nShe longed to tell him what she thought of his own appearance, but Darius cast her a pleading glance, and the point of the sword pressed menacingly against her stomach as if the one-eyed soldier was thinking of boring a second navel in it. Look down, Elinor! Remember what Resa said. Women keep their eyes lowered in this world.\n\n'Please!' With difficulty, Darius scrambled to his feet. 'We... we're strangers here. W-w-we come from far away...'\n\n'And you come to Ombra?' The soldiers laughed. 'By the Adderhead's silver, who'd come here of his own free will?'\n\nThe one-eyed man was staring at Darius. 'Take a look at this!' he said, lifting off his glasses. 'He's got the same kind of frame thing as Four-Eyes, the fellow that got the unicorn and the dwarf for the Milksop.'\n\nMaking a big performance of it, he perched the glasses on his own nose.\n\n'Hey, take that off!' The other man uneasily retreated.\n\nThe one-eyed soldier blinked at him through one thick lens and grinned. 'I can see all your lies. All your black lies!'\n\nLaughing, he threw the glasses at Darius's feet.\n\n'Wherever you come from,' he said, reaching out for Cerberus's collar, 'you're going back without any dog. Dogs belong to princes. This one's an ugly brute, but the Milksop will like it all the same.'\n\nCerberus bit the gloved hand so hard that the soldier screamed and fell to his knees. The other man drew his sword, but Orpheus's dog wasn't half as stupid as he was ugly. With the soldier's glove still in his jaws, he turned and ran for his life.\n\n'Quick, Elinor!' Darius swiftly snatched up his twisted glasses and dragged her away with him, while the soldiers, cursing, stumbled off in pursuit of the hell-hound. Elinor couldn't remember when she had last run so fast \u2013 and even if her heart still felt like a young girl's, her legs were the legs of a rather too stout old woman.\n\nElinor, this was not the way you imagined your first hours in Ombra, she told herself as she followed Darius down an alley so narrow that she was afraid of getting stuck between the houses. But even if her feet hurt, and she could still feel the tip of that one-eyed oaf's sword in her stomach \u2013 never mind! She was in Ombra! At last she was behind the letters on the page! That was all that mattered. And it was hardly to be expected that life would be as tranquil here as in her house at home \u2013 leaving aside the fact that it hadn't been so tranquil there either recently. Well, never mind that... she was here! She was here at last! In the only story with an ending that she really wanted to know, because all the people she loved were in it.\n\nBut it's a pity the dog has gone, she thought, as Darius stopped at the end of the alley, unsure which way to go. Cerberus's ugly nose would have come in very useful in this maze of alleyways, and she was probably going to miss him too. Resa, Meggie, Mortimer \u2013 she felt like shouting their names through the streets. Where are you? I'm here, I'm here at last!\n\nBut perhaps they're not here any more, Elinor, a voice inside her whispered, while the strange sky above them grew dark. Perhaps the three of them died long ago. Hush, she thought. Hush, Elinor. That thought wasn't allowed. It simply was not allowed."
            },
            {
                "title": "Herbs for Her Ugliness",
                "text": "\u2003The soul is silent.\n\n\u2003If it speaks at all\n\n\u2003it speaks in dreams.\n\n\u2014Louise Gl\u00fcck, Child Crying Out\n\nViolante went down to the dungeons where the Milksop had imprisoned the children several times a day, with two maids who were still loyal to her, and one of the boys who served her as soldiers. Child soldiers, the Piper called them, but her father had made sure that these boys weren't children any more when he had their fathers and brothers slaughtered in the Wayless Wood. And the children in the dungeons soon wouldn't be children either. Fear was making them grow up fast.\n\nThe mothers stood outside the castle, begging the guards at least to let them go in to see their youngest children. They brought clothes, dolls, food, in the hope that at least some of it might end up in the hands of their sons and daughters. But the guards threw most of these things away, although Violante kept sending her maids to them to collect what the mothers had brought.\n\nFortunately the Piper did at least allow her to do that. Fooling the Milksop was easy. He was even more stupid than his doll-like sister, and had never realized how Violante was spinning her web behind his back. But the Piper was clever, and only two things made it possible to manipulate him: his fear of the Adderhead and his vanity. Violante had flattered the Piper from the day he first rode into Ombra. She made out that she was glad he had come, saying she was tired of the Milksop's feeble stupidity. She told the Piper how he squandered money, and commissioned Balbulus to write out the Piper's dark songs on his best parchment and illuminate them (even though the commission made Balbulus so furious that he broke three of his most valuable brushes before her eyes).\n\nAfter Sootbird had lured the children into the trap on the Piper's orders, Violante had praised the silver-nosed man for his wiliness \u2013 and was sick in her bedchamber later. Nor did she let him see that these days she couldn't sleep because she thought she heard the children crying in the dungeons by night. She wasn't letting him know that.\n\nShe had been just four herself when her father had her and her mother shut up in the Old Chamber in the Castle of Night, but her mother had taught her to hold her head high all the same. 'You've a man's heart, Violante,' her father-in-law had once told her. Sad, stupid old man. To this day she didn't know if he had been paying her a compliment or expressing disapproval. She knew only that all the things she most wanted belonged to men: freedom, knowledge, strength, cleverness. Power...\n\nWas the thirst for revenge masculine too, or a wish to rule, or impatience with others? She'd inherited all those from her father.\n\nHer Ugliness...\n\nHer disfiguring birthmark had faded, but the name stuck. It was part of her, like her very pale face and ridiculously slight body. 'Her Craftiness, that's what they ought to call you,' Balbulus sometimes said. No one knew her better than Balbulus. No one saw through her more clearly, and Violante knew that whenever Balbulus hid a fox in one of his pictures he meant her. Her Craftiness. She was certainly crafty. The sight of the Piper made her physically ill, but she smiled at him as she had learnt to do from watching her father: with condescension mingled with a touch of cruelty. She wore shoes that made her look taller (Violante had always hated being so short) but she did nothing to make her face prettier, since it was her opinion that beautiful women might be desired but were never respected, certainly not feared. Anyway, she would have felt ridiculous with her lips painted red or her brows plucked to a narrow arch.\n\nSome of the child prisoners were injured. The Piper had allowed Violante to send the Barn Owl to tend them, but there was no persuading him to let them go. 'Not until we've caught our bird,' he had replied to her request. 'They're here as bait for him!'\n\nAnd Violante had seen it in her mind's eye \u2013 she saw them dragging the Bluejay to the castle once the mothers weeping down there outside the gates had given him away. He was bleeding like the unicorn that the Milksop had killed in the forest. That image remained with her, even clearer than the pictures that Balbulus painted, but in her dreams she saw another. In that one the Bluejay killed her father and set a crown on her head, on her mouse-brown hair...\n\n'The Bluejay will soon be a dead man,' Balbulus had said to her only yesterday. 'I hope he'll at least ensure that his death makes a good picture.'\n\nViolante could have struck him in the face, but her anger had never yet impressed him. 'Take care, Your Ugliness,' he had murmured to her. 'You're always giving your love to the wrong men. But at least the last one had blue blood.'\n\nShe should have had his tongue cut out for such impertinence \u2013 her father would have done it on the spot \u2013 but then who would tell her the truth, much as it might hurt? Brianna used to. But Brianna had gone.\n\nOutside, the second night was falling on the children in the dungeons, and Violante had just asked one of her maids to bring her hot wine, hoping that for a few hours it would at least make her forget those little faces, the small hands clutching her skirt, when Vito entered her room.\n\n'Your Highness!' The boy was just fifteen, and the oldest of her soldiers, the son of a smith. A dead smith, of course. 'Your former maidservant is at the gate. Brianna, that woman healer's daughter.'\n\nTullio cast Violante a doubtful glance. He had wept when she had turned Brianna out. For that she wouldn't allow him to come to her room for more than two days.\n\nBrianna. Had Violante's own thoughts summoned her? The name still sounded so comforting. She'd probably spoken it more often than her son's. Why was her silly heart beating faster? Had it already forgotten how much pain the girl had caused it? Her father was right: the heart was a weak, changeable thing, bent on nothing but love, and there could be no more fatal mistake than to make it your master. Reason must be in charge. It comforted you for the heart's foolishness, it sang mocking songs about love, derided it as a whim of nature, transient as flowers. So why did she still keep following her heart?\n\nIt was her heart that leapt up at the sound of Brianna's name, while her reason asked: what does she want here? Does she miss her comfortable life? Is she tired of being a maid scrubbing floors for Four-Eyes, who bows so low to the Milksop that his chin almost collides with his plump knees? Or is she going to beg me to let her go down into the vault to kiss my dead husband's mouth?\n\n'Brianna says she's bringing herbs from her mother for the children in the dungeon. But she'll give them only to you in person.'\n\nTullio looked pleadingly at her. He had no pride, but a loyal heart. Too loyal. Yesterday a few of the Milksop's friends had shut him in the dog-pens with the hounds again. Her own son had been with them.\n\n'Good. Go and bring her in, Tullio!' Your voice can give you away, but Violante knew how to make hers sound indifferent. Only once had she shown what she really felt, when Cosimo had come back \u2013 and then she felt all the more ashamed to find that he preferred her maidservant to her.\n\nBrianna.\n\nTullio shot eagerly off, and Violante patted her hair, which was severely pinned back, and looked dubiously at her dress and the jewels she was wearing. Brianna had that effect on people. She was so beautiful that everyone felt clumsy and colourless in her presence. Violante had once liked that. She had hidden behind Brianna's beauty, relishing the fact that her maid made others feel as she herself always did \u2013 ugly. It had pleased her that so much beauty served her, admired her, perhaps even loved her.\n\nTullio was smiling foolishly all over his furry face as he came back with Brianna. She hesitated as she entered the room where she had spent so many hours. It was said that she wore a coin with Cosimo's picture around her neck, and kissed it so often that by now the face could hardly be made out. But grief had only made her more beautiful. How could that be? How could there be any justice in the world if even beauty wasn't fairly shared out?\n\nBrianna sank down in a low curtsey \u2013 no one could do it more charmingly \u2013 and handed Violante a basket full of herbs. 'My mother has heard from the Barn Owl that some of the children are hurt, and many won't eat. These herbs may help. She has written to tell you how they work and how they must be given.' Brianna took a sealed letter out from under the leaves, handing it to Violante with another curtsey.\n\nA seal, for a healer's instructions?\n\nViolante sent away the maid who was busy turning back her bed \u2013 she didn't trust the girl \u2013 and picked up her new reading glasses. The same glazier who had made a new frame for the glasses worn by Four-Eyes \u2013 a gold frame, of course \u2013 had made hers. She had paid him with her last ring. The glasses did not reveal lies to her, as it was said those that Four-Eyes wore did. Balbulus's lettering was not much clearer than when seen through the beryl she normally used, but at least the world wasn't red any more, and she could see better with both eyes at once, even though she couldn't wear the glasses for too long without straining her eyes. 'You read too much!' Balbulus was always saying, but what was she to do? Without words she would die, she'd simply die, even faster than her mother had done.\n\nThe seal of the letter was a unicorn's head. Whose seal was that?\n\nViolante broke it \u2013 and instinctively glanced at the door when she realized who had written to her. Brianna followed her glance. She had lived in this castle long enough to know that the walls and doors had ears, but fortunately written words made no sound. Nonetheless, Violante felt as if she could hear the Bluejay's voice as she read \u2013 and she understood exactly what he was telling her, even if he had hidden his real words behind the written ones with great skill.\n\nThe written words spoke of the children and how the Bluejay was giving himself up in exchange for their freedom. They promised her father that the White Book would be cured if the Piper let the children go. But the hidden words said something else, something that only she could read between the lines. They said that at last the Bluejay was ready to strike the bargain she had offered him beside Cosimo's coffin.\n\nHe would help her to kill her father.\n\nWe can do it easily together.\n\nCould they really? She lowered the letter. What had she been thinking when she made that promise?\n\nShe sensed Brianna's eyes on her, and abruptly turned her back to the girl. Think, Violante! She pictured what would happen, step by step, image by image, as if leafing through one of Balbulus's books.\n\nHer father would come to Ombra as soon as the Bluejay had given himself up. That much was certain. After all, he still hoped that the man who had bound the White Book for him could cure its ills. And as he trusted no one else with the Book, he would have to bring it to the Bluejay himself. Of course, her father would come with the intention of killing the Jay. He was desperate, half crazed with what the rotting pages were doing to him, and even on the journey he would be thinking how to put his enemy to death in the most painful possible way. But first he must hand the book over to that enemy. And as soon as the Bluejay had the White Book in his hands it would all depend on her. How much time does it take to write three words? She must gain him that time. Just three words, a few seconds when he was unobserved, a pen and some ink, and then not the Bluejay but her father would die \u2013 and Ombra would be hers.\n\nViolante felt her breath coming fast, her own blood roaring in her ears. Yes, it could work. But it was a dangerous plan, and far more dangerous for the Bluejay than for her. Nonsense, it will work, said her reason, her cool reason, but her heart was beating so fast that she felt dizzy. Once he's in the castle, her reason kept asking, how are you going to protect him? What about the Piper and the Milksop?\n\n'Your Highness?'\n\nBrianna's voice sounded different. As if something in her had broken. Good! I hope she sleeps badly, thought Violante. I hope her beauty fades while she's on her knees scrubbing floors. But when she turned and looked at Brianna, all she wanted was to hold her close and laugh with her again, the way they used to laugh.\n\n'There's something else I'm to tell you.' Brianna didn't lower her eyes when she looked at Violante. She was still as proud as ever. 'These herbs will taste very bitter. They will help only if you use them properly. In the worst case, they can even be deadly. It's all up to you.'\n\nAs if she had to have that explained to her! But Brianna was still looking at her. Protect him, said her eyes. If you don't, then all is lost!\n\nViolante stood up straight as a ramrod.\n\n'I understand you very well!' she said brusquely. 'I am sure that the children will be very much better in three days' time. Their troubles will be over, and I'll use the herbs with all the necessary care. Take that message back. And now go. Tullio will escort you back to the gates.'\n\nBrianna sank into another curtsey. 'Thank you. I know they'll be in the best of hands with you.' She rose, hesitantly. 'I know you have plenty of maids,' she added quietly, 'but if you ever want my company again, please send for me! I miss you.' She uttered the last words so softly that Violante could hardly hear them.\n\nI miss you too. The words were on the tip of Violante's tongue, but she didn't let them pass her lips. Be quiet, heart, you stupid forgetful thing.\n\n'Thank you,' she said. 'But I don't feel like hearing songs at present.'\n\n'No. Of course not.' Brianna turned as pale as when Violante had hit her, after she had been with Cosimo and then lied to Violante about it. 'But who's reading to you? Who's playing with Jacopo?'\n\n'I'm reading to myself.' Violante was proud of the cold rejection in her voice, although her heart felt so differently. 'As for Jacopo, I don't see much of him. He goes around wearing a tin nose that he had the smith make him, he sits on the Piper's knee and tells everyone he'd never have been stupid enough to let Sootbird entice him into the marketplace.'\n\nBrianna put her hand to her throat. She really did wear a coin there. 'Do you sometimes see him too?'\n\n'See who?'\n\n'Cosimo. I see him every night in my dreams. And in the day I sometimes feel as if he were standing behind me.'\n\nStupid creature. In love with a dead man. What did she still love about him? His beauty was food for worms now, and what else was there in Cosimo for anyone to love? No, Violante had buried her love with him. It had gone away like the silly happiness you feel after a jug of wine.\n\n'Would you like to go down to the vault?' Violante couldn't believe that her mouth had uttered those words.\n\nBrianna was looking at her incredulously.\n\n'Tullio will take you down. But don't expect too much \u2013 you'll find no one but the dead there. Tell me, Brianna,' she added (ugly Violante, cruel Violante), 'were you disappointed when the Bluejay brought your father and not Cosimo back from the dead?'\n\nBrianna bent her head. Violante had never been able to find out whether she loved her father or not. 'I would very much like to go down to the vault,' she said quietly. 'If you'll allow me.'\n\nViolante nodded to Tullio, and he took Brianna's hand.\n\n'Three more days and everything will be all right,' said Violante, when Brianna was at the door. 'Injustice is not immortal. It can't be!'\n\nBrianna nodded, as abstractedly as if she hadn't been listening. 'Send for me,' she said again.\n\nThen she was gone, and Violante was already missing her as the door closed. So? she thought. Is there any feeling you understand better? Losing people and missing them \u2013 that's what your life consists of.\n\nShe folded up the Bluejay's letter and went over to the tapestry that had hung in her bedchamber since she first slept there at the age of seven. It showed a unicorn hunt, woven in a time when unicorns had been creatures of fantasy and were not carried dead through Ombra after a hunt. But even the unicorns of fantasy had had to die. Innocence doesn't live long in any world. Ever since Violante had met the Bluejay the unicorn had reminded her of him. She had seen the same innocence in his face.\n\nHow are you going to protect him, Violante? How?\n\nWasn't it the same in all stories? Women didn't protect the unicorns. They brought them to their death.\n\nThe guards at her door looked tired, but they hastily straightened their backs when she came out. Child soldiers. They both had small siblings down in the dungeon.\n\n'Wake the Piper!' she told them. 'Tell him I have important news for my father.'\n\nHer father. The word never failed to take effect, but none tasted more unpleasant to her. Just six letters, and she felt small and weak and so ugly that people avoided looking at her. She remembered her seventh birthday only too well. It was the only day when her father had obviously been happy to have such an unattractive child. 'A good revenge!' he had told her mother. 'Giving my ugliest daughter to my enemy's handsome son for his wife.'\n\nFather.\n\nWhen would there be no one she had to call father any more?\n\nShe pressed the Bluejay's letter to her heart.\n\nSoon."
            },
            {
                "title": "Burnt Words",
                "text": "\u2003Time seemed to have just gone, in big clumps, or all the day was happening at once, or something, I was wondering so hard about what was to come, I was watching so hard the differences from our normal days. I wished I had more time to think, before she went right down, all the way down; my mind was going breathless, trying to get all its thinking done.\n\n\u2014Margo Lanagan, Black Juice\n\nThey were setting off at sunrise. The Piper had accepted Mo's conditions: the children of Ombra would be set free as soon as the Bluejay kept his promise and handed himself over to the Adderhead's daughter. Some of the robbers were going to disguise themselves as women and wait outside the castle with the mothers, and Dustfinger would accompany Mo to Ombra as a fiery warning to the Piper. But the Bluejay would ride into the castle alone.\n\nDon't call him that, Meggie, she told herself.\n\nThere were only a few hours now until dawn. The Black Prince was sitting by the fire, wide awake, with Battista and Dustfinger, who didn't appear to need any sleep at all now that he was back from the dead. Farid was sitting beside him, of course, and Roxane. But Dustfinger's daughter had moved into Ombra Castle. Violante had taken Brianna back on the morning when the Piper had announced his agreement with the Bluejay.\n\nMo wasn't sitting by the fire with them. He had gone to lie down and get some sleep, and Resa was with him. How could he sleep tonight? The Strong Man was sitting outside the tent as if he must at least keep watch over the Bluejay.\n\n'You should sleep too, Meggie,' Mo had told her when he saw her sitting a little way from the others under the trees, but Meggie had only shaken her head. It was rainy, and her clothes were as damp and chilly as her hair, but it wasn't much better inside the tents, and she didn't want to lie there with the rain telling her how the Piper would greet her father.\n\n'Meggie?' Doria sat down in the wet grass beside her. His hair was wavy from the rain. 'Are you riding to Ombra too?'\n\nShe nodded. Farid glanced at them.\n\n'I'll steal into the castle as soon as your father has ridden through the door, I promise you,' said Doria. 'And Dustfinger will stay near the castle too. We'll protect him.'\n\n'What are you saying?' Meggie's voice sounded sharper than she had intended. 'You can't protect him, not just the two of you! The Piper will kill him. Are you thinking, she's only a girl, tell her lies to comfort her? I was with my father in the Castle of Night. I've faced the Adderhead. They'll kill him!'\n\nDoria did not reply. He stayed silent for a long time, and she felt sorry she'd snapped at him like that. She wanted to say so, but she too remained silent, her head bent so that he wouldn't see the tears she'd been holding back for hours. What he'd said had started them flowing. And now he'd be thinking, she's a girl, she cries.\n\nShe felt Doria's hand on her hair. He was stroking it as gently as if to wipe away the rain. 'He won't kill him,' he whispered to her. 'The Piper is far too frightened of the Adderhead for that!'\n\n'But he hates my father! Hate is sometimes stronger than fear! And if the Piper doesn't kill him, then the Milksop will do it, or the Adderhead himself. He'll never get out of that castle alive, never!'\n\nHow her hands were shaking \u2013 as if all her fear was in her fingers. But Doria clasped them so firmly in his own hands that they couldn't shake any more. He had strong hands, although his fingers weren't much longer than her own. Farid's hands were slender by comparison.\n\n'Farid says you saved your father once with words when he was wounded. He says you did it just with words.'\n\nYes, but she had no words this time.\n\nWords...\n\n'What is it?' Doria let go of her hands and looked at her with a question in his eyes. Farid was still watching them, but Meggie ignored him. She planted a kiss on Doria's cheek. 'Thank you!' she said, quickly getting to her feet.\n\nOf course he didn't understand what she was thanking him for. Words. The words that Orpheus had written! How could she have forgotten them?\n\nShe ran through the wet grass to the tent where her parents were sleeping. Mo will be terribly angry, she thought, but he'll live! Hadn't she read what would happen next into this story more than once already? It was time to do it again, even if that meant it wouldn't end as Mo wanted. The Black Prince would just have to tell the rest of it. He'd find a way to make it turn out well, even without the Bluejay's aid. For the Bluejay must leave \u2013 before her father died with him.\n\nThe Strong Man had nodded off. His head had sunk on to his chest, and he was snoring slightly as Meggie crept past him.\n\nHer mother was awake. She had been crying.\n\n'I need to talk to you!' Meggie whispered to her. 'Please!'\n\nMo was fast asleep. Resa cast a glance at his sleeping face and then followed Meggie outside. They still weren't speaking to each other very much. Meggie found it impossible to forget that night among the graves. Yet now she was about to do exactly what her mother had intended when she rode to Ombra in secret.\n\n'If it's about tomorrow,' said Resa, taking her hand, 'don't tell anyone, but I'm going to Ombra with them, even though your father doesn't want me to. I want at least to be near him when he rides into the castle...'\n\n'He's not going to ride into the castle.'\n\nRain was still falling through the fading leaves as if the trees were shedding tears, and Meggie longed for Elinor's garden. The rain sounded so peaceful there. Here it whispered of nothing but death and danger. 'I'm going to read the words.'\n\nDustfinger turned, and for a moment Meggie was afraid he could see what she planned to do in her face and tell Mo, but he turned away again and kissed Roxane's black hair.\n\n'What words?' Resa looked at her blankly.\n\n'The words Orpheus wrote for you!' The words for which Mo almost died, she wanted to add. Now they would save his life.\n\nResa looked back at the tent where Mo was sleeping. 'I don't have them any more,' she said. 'I burnt them when your father didn't come back.'\n\nNo.\n\n'They couldn't have protected him anyway!'\n\nA glass man appeared among dripping wet nettles, pale green, like many of the glass men who still lived in the forest. He sneezed and scurried away in alarm at the sight of Meggie and Resa.\n\nHer mother placed her hands on Meggie's shoulders. 'He didn't want to come with us, Meggie! He told Orpheus to write something just for us. Your father wants to stay, even now, and neither you nor I can force him to go back. He'd never forgive us.'\n\nResa tried to stroke her daughter's wet hair back from her forehead, but Meggie pushed her hand away. It couldn't be true. She was lying. Mo would never stay here without his wife and daughter... would he?\n\n'And perhaps he's right. Perhaps everything will turn out well,' said her mother quietly. 'And one day we'll be telling Elinor how your father saved the children of Ombra.' Resa's voice didn't sound half as hopeful as her words. 'Bluejay,' she whispered as she glanced at the men sitting by the fire. 'The first present your father ever gave me was a bookmark made of bluejay feathers. Isn't that strange?'\n\nMeggie didn't answer. And Resa caressed her wet face once more and went back to the tent.\n\nBurnt.\n\nIt was still dark, but a few freezing fairies were already beginning to dance. Mo would soon be setting out, and there was nothing that could stop him. Nothing.\n\nBattista was sitting alone between the roots of the great oak which the guards climbed at night. You could see almost as far as Ombra from its highest branches. He was making a new mask. Meggie saw the blue feathers in his lap and knew who would soon be wearing it.\n\n'Battista?' Meggie knelt down beside him. The ground was cold and damp, but the moss among the roots was as soft as the cushions in Elinor's house.\n\nHe looked at her, his eyes full of sympathy. His glance was even more comforting than Doria's hands. 'Ah, the Bluejay's daughter,' he said in the voice that the Strong Man called Battista's marketplace voice. 'What a beautiful sight at such a dark hour. I've sewn your father a good place to hide a sharp knife. Can a poor strolling player ease your heart in some other way?'\n\nMeggie tried to smile. She was so tired of tears. 'Can you sing me a song? One of the songs the Inkweaver wrote about the Bluejay? It has to be one of those! The best you know. A song full of power and...'\n\n'Hope?' Battista smiled. 'Of course. I could fancy such a song too. Even if,' he added, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone, 'even if your father doesn't like having them sung when he's around. But I'll sing it so quietly that my voice won't wake him. Let's see, which is the right song for this dark night?' He thoughtfully stroked the mask on his lap. It was nearly finished. 'Yes,' he whispered at last. 'I know!' And he began singing in a soft voice:\n\n\u2003Piper, beware, your end is near,\n\n\u2003The Adder's power dwindles.\n\n\u2003He writhes, he goes in mortal fear,\n\n\u2003Nothing his strength rekindles.\n\n\u2003Though you seek the Jay in country and town,\n\n\u2003No sword can wound him, no hound run him down,\n\n\u2003And when you think you'll succeed in your quest,\n\n\u2003You find that the bird has flown the nest.\n\nYes, those were the right words. Meggie got Battista to sing them to her until she could remember every line. Then she sat down a little way from everyone else, under the trees, where the firelight still kept the darkness of night away, and wrote the song down in the notebook that Mo had bound for her long ago, in that other life, after a quarrel that now seemed so strange. Meggie, you'll lose yourself in the Inkworld. Didn't he say something like that to her at the time? And now he himself didn't want to leave this world; he wanted to stay here alone, without her.\n\nWords written down in black and white. It was a long, long time since she'd read anything aloud. When did she last do it? When she brought Orpheus here? Don't think about that, Meggie. Think of the other times, the Castle of Night, the words that helped when Mo was wounded...\n\n\u2003Piper, beware, your end is near.\n\nYes, she could still do it. Meggie felt the words gathering weight on her tongue as she wove them into her surroundings...\n\n\u2003The Adder's power dwindles.\n\n\u2003He writhes, he goes in mortal fear,\n\n\u2003Nothing his strength rekindles...\n\nShe sent the words to find Mo in his sleep, made him armour out of them, armour that even the Piper and his dark master couldn't pierce...\n\n\u2003Though you seek the Jay in country and town,\n\n\u2003No sword can wound him, no hound run him down,\n\n\u2003And when you think you'll succeed in your quest,\n\n\u2003You find that the bird has flown the nest.\n\nMeggie read Fenoglio's song over and over again. Until the sun rose."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Next Verse",
                "text": "\u2003Through this toilsome world, alas!\n\n\u2003Once and only once I pass;\n\n\u2003If a kindness I may show;\n\n\u2003If a good deed I may do\n\n\u2003To a suffering fellow man,\n\n\u2003Let me do it while I can.\n\n\u2003No delay, for it is plain\n\n\u2003I shall not pass this way again.\n\n\u2014Anonymous, I Shall Not Pass This Way Again\n\nIt was a cold day, misty and colourless, and Ombra looked as if it were wearing a grey dress. The women had gone to the castle at daybreak, silent as the day itself, and now they were standing there and waiting without a word.\n\nThere was not a cheerful sound to be heard, no laughter, no weeping. It was simply quiet. Resa stood with the mothers as if she too were waiting for a child to come back, instead of expecting to lose her husband. Did the baby she was carrying under her aching heart sense its mother's despair this morning? Suppose it never saw its father? Had that thought ever made Mo hesitate? She hadn't asked him.\n\nMeggie stood beside her, her face under such rigid control that it frightened Resa more than if she had been crying. Doria was with her, dressed as a maidservant with a headscarf over his brown hair, because boys of his age were conspicuous in Ombra now. His brother hadn't come with them. All Battista's skill with disguises couldn't have made the Strong Man look like a woman, but more than a dozen robbers had been able to steal past the guards at the gate with their faces shaved, wearing stolen dresses and with scarves over their heads. Even Resa didn't notice them among all the women. The Black Prince had told his men to go to the mothers as soon as their children were free and persuade them to bring their sons and daughters to the forest the next day, so that the robbers could hide them in case the Piper broke his word and came to take them away to the mines after all. For who was going to ransom them a second time, once the Bluejay was caught?\n\nThe Black Prince himself hadn't come to Ombra with them. His dark face would have attracted far too much attention. Snapper, who had opposed Mo's plan to the last, had also stayed in the camp, like Roxane and Farid. Of course Farid had wanted to go with the others, but Dustfinger had forbidden it, and after what had happened on Mount Adder Farid did not go against such orders.\n\nResa glanced at Meggie again. She knew that if she could find any comfort today it would be only in her daughter. Meggie was grown-up now, Resa realized that this morning. I don't need anyone, said her face. It said so to Doria, who was still standing beside her, to her mother, and perhaps above all to her father.\n\nA whisper ran through the waiting crowd. Reinforcements joined the guards on the castle walls, and Violante appeared behind the battlements above the gates, so pale that it looked as if the rumours about her were true: the Adderhead's daughter, they said, almost never left her dead husband's castle. Resa had never seen Her Ugliness before. But of course she had heard of the mark that had disfigured her face like a brand since birth, and then faded on Cosimo's return. It was hardly visible now, but Resa noticed that Violante's hand instinctively went to her cheek when she saw all the women staring up at her. Her Ugliness. Had they shouted that name up to her in the past, whenever she appeared on the battlements? Some of the women were whispering it even now, but Violante was neither ugly nor beautiful. She held herself very erect, as if to make up for her lack of height, but between the two men who stationed themselves beside her she looked so young and vulnerable that Resa felt fear close like a claw around her heart. The Piper and the Milksop. Violante looked like a child between the two of them. How was this girl to protect Mo?\n\nA boy pushed his way in beside the silver-nosed minstrel. He wore a metal nose too, but there was a real flesh-and-blood nose under it. This must be Jacopo, Violante's son. Mo had mentioned him. He obviously thought more of the Piper's company than his mother's, judging by the admiring looks he gave his grandfather's herald.\n\nResa felt dizzy when she saw the man with the silver nose standing up there so proudly. No, Violante couldn't protect Mo from him. He commanded Ombra now, not she, and not the Milksop who stood looking down at his subjects as haughtily as if the mere sight of them turned his stomach. The Piper, in contrast, seemed as pleased with himself as if the day belonged to him alone. Didn't I tell you so? his glance mocked them. I'll catch the Bluejay, and then I'll take your children all the same.\n\nWhy had she come? Why was she doing this to herself? Because she wanted to convince herself that it was all really happening, that she wasn't just reading about it?\n\nThe woman next to her reached for her arm. 'He's coming!' she whispered to Resa. There were whispers everywhere. 'He's coming! He's really coming!' Resa saw the sentries on the watchtowers by the gate giving the Piper a signal. Of course he was coming. What had they expected? Did they think he wouldn't keep his word?\n\nThe Milksop adjusted his wig and smiled at the Piper as triumphantly as if he personally, single-handed, had driven into his path the quarry he'd been hunting so long, but the Piper ignored him. He was staring at the street leading up from the city gate, his eyes as grey as the sky above him and just as cold. Resa remembered those eyes only too well. She also remembered the smile that now stole over his thin lips. He had smiled in just the same way in Capricorn's fortress whenever there was going to be an execution.\n\nAnd then she saw Mo.\n\nThere he was all of a sudden, where the street ended, mounted on the black horse that the Prince had given him after he had to leave his own behind at Ombra Castle. The mask that Battista had made him was dangling around his neck. He didn't need the mask any more to be the Bluejay. The bookbinder and the robber had the same face now.\n\nDustfinger was behind him. He was riding the horse that had carried Roxane to the Castle of Night, bringing Fenoglio's words to save them. But there were no words for what was going to happen now. Or were there? Was the terrible silence weighing down on them all made of words?\n\nNo, Resa, she thought. This story has no author any more. What happens now is written by the Bluejay in his own flesh and blood \u2013 and for a moment, as he rode out of the alley, even she could call Mo by no other name. The Bluejay. How hesitantly the women made way for him, as if they themselves suddenly thought the price he was going to pay for their children too high. But at last they formed a lane just wide enough for the two riders, and every hoof beat made Resa clutch the folds of her dress more tightly.\n\nWhat's the matter? Didn't you always love to read such stories? she thought bitterly, her heart in her mouth. Wouldn't you have liked this story too? The robber setting the children free by giving himself up to his enemies... admit it, you'd have loved every word! Except that the heroes of such stories don't usually have wives. Or daughters.\n\nMeggie was still standing there as if none of this was anything to do with her, but her eyes were fixed on her father as if her gaze could protect him. Mo rode past, so close that Resa could have touched his horse. Her knees felt weak. She reached for the arm of the nearest woman, feeling so faint and ill that she could hardly keep on her feet. Look at him, Resa, she told herself. That's what you're here for, to see him once again, aren't you?\n\nDid he feel fear? The fear that had made him wake abruptly from sleep on so many nights, his fear of bars and fetters? Resa, leave the door open.\n\nDustfinger is with him, she thought, trying to comfort herself. Dustfinger is right behind him, and he left all his own fears behind with Death. But Dustfinger will stay with him only as far as the castle gates, whispered her heart, and the Piper is waiting beyond them. She felt her knees giving way again until suddenly Meggie's arm was under hers, holding it as firmly as if her daughter were the older of the two of them. Resa turned her face into Meggie's shoulder, while the women around her looked longingly at the castle gates, which were still firmly closed.\n\nMo reined in his horse. Dustfinger was still just behind him, his face as expressionless as only he could make it. She wasn't yet used to the sight of him without his scars. He looked so much younger. Many eyes rested on him, the Fire-Dancer whom the Bluejay had brought back from the dead.\n\n'The Piper won't be able to touch him!' whispered the woman beside her, murmuring it like a magic spell. 'No, how can he hold the Bluejay captive if even Death couldn't do it?'\n\nPerhaps the Piper is more murderous than Death, Resa felt like replying, but she said nothing. She held her peace and looked up at the man with the silver nose.\n\n'So here you really are! The Bluejay, in person!' His hoarse voice carried a long way in the silence that had settled over Ombra again. 'Or do you still claim to be someone else, as you did back at the Castle of Night? How shabby you look. A dirty vagabond. I really thought you'd send someone in your place, hoping we wouldn't find him out behind the mask too soon.'\n\n'Oh, I don't think you as stupid as that, Piper!' Mo's face was full of contempt as he looked up at the silver-nosed man. 'Although shouldn't we change your name and call you after your new trade in future? Butcher of Children, how do you like that?'\n\nResa had never heard such hatred in Mo's voice before. The voice that could call the dead back to life. How intently everyone was listening. And in spite of all the hate and anger in it, it still sounded so soft and warm by comparison with the Piper's.\n\n'Call me what you like, bookbinder!' The Piper put his gloved hands on the battlements. 'I hear you know something about butchery yourself. But why did you bring the fire-eater with you? I don't remember inviting him! Where are his scars? Did he leave them with the dead?'\n\nThe battlements caught fire just where the Piper was leaning, and the flames whispered words that only Dustfinger understood. The silver-nosed tyrant flinched back, cursing, and struck at the sparks that were settling on his fine clothes, while Jacopo ducked into safety behind his back and stared, fascinated, at the whispering fire.\n\n'I left certain things with the dead, Piper. And I brought certain others back.' Dustfinger didn't raise his voice, but the flames went out as if they were creeping away into the stone, to wait there for more words of fire. 'I'm here to warn you not to treat your guest badly. Fire is as much his friend as mine now, and I don't have to tell you what a powerful friend it can be.'\n\nHis face pale with anger, the Piper rubbed the soot from his gloves, but before he could reply the Milksop leant over the battlements.\n\n'Guest?' he cried. 'Do you call that the right word for a robber who already has an appointment to meet the hangman in the Castle of Night?' His voice reminded Resa of the cackling of Roxane's goose.\n\nViolante pushed him aside as if he were one of her servants. How small she was.\n\n'The Bluejay is giving himself up as my prisoner, Governor! That was the agreement. And he is under my protection until my father comes.' Her voice was sharp and clear, astonishingly strong for such a slight body, and for a moment Resa took heart. Perhaps she really can protect him after all, she thought, and saw the same hope on Meggie's face.\n\nMo and the Piper were still staring at each other. Their hatred seemed to spin threads between the two of them, and Resa couldn't help thinking of the knife that Battista had sewn so carefully into Mo's clothes. She didn't know whether it frightened or reassured her to know that he had it with him.\n\n'Very well! Let's call him our guest!' the Piper called down. 'Which means that we ought to show him our own special brand of hospitality! After all, we've been waiting for him long enough.'\n\nHe raised his hand, still sooty from Dustfinger's fire, and the guards at the gate levelled their spears at Mo. Some of the women screamed. Resa thought she heard Meggie's voice too, but she herself was mute with fear. The sentries on the towers bent their crossbows.\n\nViolante put her son aside and took a step towards the Piper. But Dustfinger simply made the fire lick around his fingers as if he were playing with an animal, and Mo drew his sword. The Piper knew very well whose weapon it had once been.\n\n'What's the idea? Send the children out, Piper!' Mo cried, and this time his voice was so cold that Resa hardly recognized it as his. 'Send them out, or you can tell your master that the flesh will go on rotting on his bones because you couldn't bring him the Bluejay alive, only dead!'\n\nOne of the women began sobbing. Another pressed her hand to her mouth. Just behind the two of them Resa saw Minerva, Fenoglio's landlady. Of course, her children were among the captives. But Resa didn't want to think of Minerva's children, or the children of the other women. She saw nothing but the spears pointing at Mo's unarmed breast and the crossbows aimed at him from the walls.\n\n'I'm warning you, Piper!' Once more Violante's voice allowed Resa to breathe again. 'Let the children go.'\n\nThe Milksop cast a longing glance at the crossbows. For a moment Resa was afraid he would give the order to shoot, so that he himself could lay the Bluejay at the Adderhead's feet, his own personal hunting trophy. But instead the Piper leant forward and gave the guards a signal.\n\n'Open the gates!' he said, in a deliberately weary tone. 'Let the children out and the Bluejay in!'\n\nResa buried her head in her daughter's shoulder again. Meggie was still as self-controlled as her father, but she went on looking as if she feared to lose him the moment she took her eyes off him.\n\nThe gates slowly opened. They groaned and stuck until the guards pushed at them.\n\nAnd then they came out. Children. So many children. They surged out as if they had been waiting behind the heavy gates for days. The little ones were in such a hurry to get outside the walls that they stumbled, but the bigger children helped them to their feet again. Fear was written on all their faces, a fear much greater than themselves. The youngest began running as soon as they saw their mothers, threw themselves into their waiting arms and burrowed their way in among the women as if into a safe hiding place. But the older children walked back to freedom slowly, almost hesitantly. They looked distrustfully at the guards they had to pass, and stopped when they saw the two men waiting on their horses outside the gate.\n\n'Bluejay!' It was only a whisper, but it came from many mouths, louder and louder until the name seemed to be written on the air. 'Bluejay, Bluejay.' The children nudged each other, pointed to Mo \u2013 and stared in awe at the sparks surrounding Dustfinger like a swarm of tiny fairies. 'Fire-Dancer.'\n\nMore and more children stopped in front of the two horses, surrounded their riders, touched them as if to see if the men they knew only from the songs sung secretly by their mothers at their bedsides were really flesh and blood. Mo leant down from his horse. He waved the children aside, quietly saying something to them. Then he gave Dustfinger one last glance, and turned his horse towards the open gateway.\n\nThey would not let him go.\n\nThree children barred his way, two boys and a girl. They reached for his reins and wouldn't let him pass into the place they had just left, to be lost behind its walls like them. More and more of them crowded around him, held him, shielding him from the spears of the guards while their mothers called for them.\n\n'Bluejay!'\n\nThe Piper's voice made the children turn. 'Through those gates with you now, or we'll take them all back, and hang a dozen in cages over the gateway where the ravens can eat them!'\n\nThe children didn't move. They just stared at the silver-nosed man, and the boy beside him who was younger than they were. But Mo picked up his reins again and made his way through them as carefully as if each child were his own, and the children stood there while their mothers called them, watching him ride through the huge gateway. All alone.\n\nMo looked over his shoulder once more before he rode past the guards, as if he knew that Resa and Meggie had followed him after all, and Resa saw the fear on his face. She was sure that Meggie had seen it too. As he rode on again the gates were already beginning to close.\n\n'Disarm him!' Resa heard the Milksop shout, and the last thing she saw was soldiers, dozens of soldiers, dragging Mo off his horse."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Surprising Visitor",
                "text": "\u2002God took a deep breath. Another complaint! When would Man come to him without a complaint? But he shot up his eyebrows, smiled with delight, and cried: 'Man! How are the carrots coming on?'\n\n\u2014Ted Hughes, The Secret of Man's Wife, from The Dreamfighter\n\nOh, how good it was to see Despina's little face again! Even if she looked tired and sad, scared as a bird that had fallen out of its nest. And Ivo \u2013 had he been so tall before that wretched Sootbird took to stealing children? How thin he was... and was that blood on his tunic? 'The rats bit us,' he said, acting grown-up and fearless as he had so often since his father's death, but Fenoglio saw the fear in his childish eyes. Rats!\n\nHe just couldn't stop hugging and kissing them, he was so relieved. And so he should be. He forgave himself much, he forgave himself easily, but if his story had killed Minerva's children \u2013 he wasn't sure how he would have come to terms with that. But they were alive, and he himself had called the man who saved them into being.\n\n'What will they do to him now?' Despina freed herself from his arms, her big eyes dark with worry. Damn it, that was the trouble with children \u2013 they were always asking the very questions you so carefully avoided yourself. And then they gave the very answers you didn't want to hear!\n\n'They'll kill him,' said Ivo, and his little sister's eyes filled with tears.\n\nHow could she be crying for a stranger? She'd seen Mortimer for the first time today. It's because your songs have taught her to love him, Fenoglio, that's how. They all love him, and today will write that love in their hearts for ever. Whatever the Piper did to him, from now on the Bluejay was as immortal as the Adderhead. Indeed, he was far more reliably immortal, since the Adderhead could always be killed by three words. But words would keep Mortimer alive even if he died behind the castle walls \u2013 all the words now being whispered and sung down there in the streets would keep him alive.\n\nDespina wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at Fenoglio in the hope that he would contradict her brother, and of course he did, for her sake and his own. 'Ivo!' he said sternly. 'What nonsense are you talking? Do you think the Bluejay didn't have a plan when he gave himself up? Do you think he's just going to the Piper like a rabbit falling into a trap?'\n\nA smile of relief came to Despina's lips, and the shadow of a doubt appeared on Ivo's face.\n\n'No, of course he isn't!' said Minerva, who still hadn't spoken a word since she had brought the children up to his room. 'He's a cunning fox, not a rabbit! He'll outwit them all!' And Fenoglio heard the seed that his songs had sown begin to grow in her voice too. Hope \u2013 the Bluejay still stood for hope in the midst of all the darkness.\n\nMinerva took the children away with her. Of course. She would be going to feed them up with everything she could still find in the house, and Fenoglio was left alone with Rosenquartz, who had been stirring the ink without a word while Fenoglio lavished kisses on Despina and Ivo.\n\n'Outwit them all, will he?' he said in his reedy little voice as soon as Minerva closed the door behind her. 'How? Do you know what I think? I think it's all up with your fabulous robber! And he'll have a particularly nasty execution, that's what! I can only hope it will be in the Castle of Night. No one ever stops to think what all those screams of agony do to a glass man's poor head.'\n\nHeartless glassy little fellow! Fenoglio threw a cork at him, but Rosenquartz was used to such missiles and dodged it. Why had he taken on such a pessimistic glass man? Rosenquartz had his left arm in a sling. After Sootbird's performance Fenoglio had persuaded him to go and spy on Orpheus one more time, and Orpheus's horrible glass man really had pushed the poor creature out of the window. Luckily Rosenquartz had landed in the gutter, but Fenoglio still didn't know if the child-catching scene had been Orpheus's idea. No! He couldn't possibly have written it! Orpheus could write nothing without the book, and it seemed \u2013 for Rosenquartz had discovered this much \u2013 that Dustfinger had actually stolen it from him. Anyway, the scene was much too good for that calf's-head to have written, wasn't it?\n\nHe'll outwit them all...\n\nFenoglio went to the window, while the glass man adjusted his sling with a reproachful sigh. Did Mortimer really have a plan? Damn it, how was he to know? Mortimer wasn't really one of his characters, even if he was playing the part of one. Which is extremely annoying, Fenoglio thought. Because if he had been one of them, presumably I'd know what's really going on behind those thrice-damned walls.\n\nHe stared darkly over the roof tops to the castle. Poor Meggie. And no doubt she'd blame him for everything again. Her mother certainly did. Fenoglio remembered Resa's pleading look only too well. You must write us back again. You owe us that! Yes, perhaps he really should have tried. Suppose they killed Mortimer? Wouldn't it be better for them all to go back to their world then? What would he want to do here once the Bluejay was dead? Watch the immortal Adder and the Piper tell his story?\n\n'Of course he's here! Didn't you hear what she said? Up the stairs. Do you see any other stairs around here? For heaven's sake, Darius!'\n\nRosenquartz forgot his broken arm and looked at the door.\n\nWhat woman's voice was that?\n\nThere was a knock, but before Fenoglio could call, 'Come in,' the door opened and a rather powerful female form entered his room so impetuously that he instinctively took a step back, knocking his head against the sloping roof. The dress she wore looked as if it had come straight from some cheap theatrical production.\n\n'There we are! This is him, the author!' she announced, looking him up and down with such contempt that Fenoglio was aware of every hole in his tunic. I've seen this woman before, he thought.\n\n'And what's going on here, may I ask?' She jabbed her finger into his chest as hard as if to stab him straight to his old heart. And he'd seen the thin fellow behind her as well. Of course... wait...\n\n'Why is the Adderhead's flag hoisted in Ombra? Who is that frightful fellow with the silver nose? Why were they threatening Mortimer with spears, and since when, for goodness' sake, has he gone about wearing a sword?'\n\nThe bookworm. Of course! That's who she was. Elinor Loredan. Meggie had told him about her often enough. Fenoglio had last seen her through bars, stuck in one of the dog-pens in the arena where Capricorn's festivities were held. And the timid man with the owlish look was Capricorn's stammering reader! Though, with the best will in the world, Fenoglio couldn't remember his name. What were these two doing here? Were tourist visas for his story being handed out these days?\n\n'I admit I was relieved to see Mortimer alive,' his uninvited guest went on. (Did she ever stop to get her breath back?) 'And thank goodness he seems to be sound and healthy, although I didn't like to see him riding into that castle alone at all. But where are Resa and Meggie? And what about Mortola, Basta, and that puffed-up mooncalf Orpheus?'\n\nGood lord, the woman was just as awful as he'd imagined her! Her companion \u2013 Darius, yes, that was his name \u2013 was staring at Rosenquartz with such a captivated expression that the glass man, flattered, passed a hand over his pale pink hair.\n\n'Quiet!' thundered Fenoglio. 'Shut up, for heaven's sake!'\n\nIt had no effect. Not the slightest. 'Something's happened to them! Admit it! Why was Mortimer alone?' Once again she jabbed him in the chest. 'I just know something's happened to Meggie and Resa, something terrible... a giant has trodden on them, they've been impaled on spikes, they\u2014'\n\n'Nothing of the kind!' Fenoglio interrupted. 'They're with the Black Prince!'\n\n'The Black Prince?' Her eyes became almost as large as her bespectacled companion's. 'Oh!'\n\n'Yes, and if something terrible happens to anyone here it's going to be Mortimer. Which is why...' said Fenoglio, grabbing her arm, not very gently, and dragging her to the door, '... I want to be left in peace, for heaven's sake, so that I can think!'\n\nThat really did shut her up. But not for long.\n\n'Something terrible?' she asked.\n\nRosenquartz took his hands away from his ears.\n\n'What do you mean? Who writes what happens here? You do, isn't that so?'\n\nOh, wonderful! Now her fat fingers were prodding at his sorest point!\n\n'No, definitely not!' he told her sharply. 'This story is now telling itself, and today Mortimer prevented it from taking a very unpleasant turn! But unfortunately that looks as if it will cost him his neck, in which case I can only advise you to take his wife and daughter and go back with them to where you came from, as fast as possible! Because you've obviously found a way, haven't you?'\n\nWith these words he opened the door, but Signora Loredan simply closed it again.\n\n'Cost him his neck? What do you mean?' With a jerk, she freed her arm from his grasp. (Heavens above, the woman was as strong as a hippopotamus.)\n\n'I mean that, very regrettably, he's likely to be hung or beheaded or quartered, or whatever else strikes the Adderhead as the right kind of execution for the man who's his worst enemy!'\n\n'His worst enemy? Mortimer?' She was frowning incredulously \u2013 as if Fenoglio were an old fool who didn't know what he was talking about!\n\n'It was him. He made him into a robber.'\n\nThat was Rosenquartz. The miserable traitor! He was pointing a glass finger at his master so mercilessly that Fenoglio felt like picking him up from his desk and breaking him in two at the waist.\n\n'It's the songs,' murmured Rosenquartz to their two visitors, as if he'd known them for a lifetime. 'Obsessed by them, that's what he is, and Meggie's poor father has been caught up in his fine words like a fly in a spider's web!'\n\nThis was too much. Fenoglio marched towards Rosenquartz, but the bookworm woman barred his way.\n\n'Don't you dare do anything to that poor defenceless glass man!' She was glowering at him like a bulldog. Good God, what a fearsome female! 'Mortimer, a robber? He's the most peace-loving person I know.'\n\n'Oh, really?' Fenoglio's voice rose to such a pitch that Rosenquartz put his hands over his ridiculously tiny ears again. 'Well, perhaps even the most peace-loving person gets to feel less so when he's been shot and nearly killed, parted from his wife, and locked in a dungeon for weeks on end. And none of that was my work, whatever this lying glass man may say! Far from it. But for the words I wrote, I imagine Mortimer would be dead by now.'\n\n'Shot and nearly killed? Dungeon?' Signora Loredan cast a helpless glance at her bespectacled companion.\n\n'This sounds like a long story, Elinor,' he said in his quiet voice. 'Maybe you should listen to it.'\n\nBut before Fenoglio could say anything in response to that, Minerva put her head round the door. 'Fenoglio,' she said, glancing briefly at his visitors. 'Despina won't give me a moment's peace. She's worried about the Bluejay, she wants you to tell her how he's going to save himself.'\n\nThis was too much. Fenoglio sighed deeply and tried to ignore Rosenquartz's snort of derision. He ought to take the glass man into the Wayless Wood and leave him there, that's what he ought to do.\n\n'Send her to me,' he said, although he hadn't the faintest idea what to tell the little girl. What had become of the days when his head was brimming over with ideas? They were suffocated by all this misfortune, that was what had become of them!\n\n'The Bluejay? Didn't the man with the silver nose call Mortimer that?'\n\nOh, good heavens, he'd forgotten his visitors entirely for a moment.\n\n'Get out of here!' he snarled. 'Out of my room, out of my story! There are far too many visitors here already. Go away.'\n\nBut the brazen woman sat down on the chair at his desk, folded her arms, and planted her feet on his floor as if planning to let them take root there. 'No, I won't. I want to hear the story,' she said. 'The whole story.'\n\nThis was going from bad to worse. What an unlucky day \u2013 and it wasn't over yet.\n\n'Inkweaver?' Despina was standing in the doorway, her face tear-stained. When she saw the two strangers she instinctively stepped back, but Fenoglio went over and took her little hand.\n\n'Minerva says you want me to tell you about the Bluejay?'\n\nDespina nodded shyly, without taking her eyes off his visitors.\n\n'Well, that comes in handy.' Fenoglio sat down on his bed and took her on his lap. 'My two visitors here want to hear something about the Bluejay too. Suppose you and I tell them the whole story?'\n\nDespina nodded. 'How he outwitted the Adderhead and brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead?' she whispered.\n\n'Exactly,' said Fenoglio, 'and then the two of us will discover how it goes on. We'll just weave the rest of the song. After all, I'm the Inkweaver, right?'\n\nDespina nodded, looking at him so hopefully that his old heart felt heavy in his breast. A weaver who's run out of threads, he thought. Or, no \u2013 the threads were there, they were all there \u2013 he just couldn't weave them together any more.\n\nSignora Loredan was suddenly sitting perfectly still, looking at him as expectantly as Despina. The owl-faced man was staring at him too, as if he couldn't wait to hear the words come from his lips. Only Rosenquartz turned his back on Fenoglio and went on stirring the ink again, as if to remind him how long it was since he had last used it.\n\n'Fenoglio!' Despina's hand caressed his wrinkled face. 'Go on, tell me!'\n\n'Yes, go on!' said the bookworm woman. Elinor Loredan. He still hadn't asked how she came to be here. As if there weren't enough questions in this story already. And the stammerer wasn't going to be a particularly valuable addition to it either!\n\nDespina tugged at his sleeve. Where did all the hope in her reddened eyes come from? How had that hope survived Sootbird's guile, and all the fear in the dark dungeon? Children, thought Fenoglio as he took Despina's small hand firmly in his. If anyone could ever bring back the words, he supposed it would be the children."
            },
            {
                "title": "Only a Magpie",
                "text": "\u2003What was she, then, in the lean time,\n\n\u2003In the year's meagre quarter?\n\n\u2003She was bird and enchanter, was mistress\n\n\u2014Of fire and water. Franz Werfel, Invocations 1918\u20131921\n\nThe house where Fenoglio was lodging reminded Orpheus of places where he himself had lived not so long ago: a shabby building, crooked, leaning sideways, with mouldy walls and windows offering a view only of other dilapidated houses. The rain fell inside it too, because in this world windowpanes were only for the rich! Pitiful. How he hated hiding in the darkest corner of the back yard, where spiders crawled into his velvet sleeves and chicken droppings ruined his expensive boots. But what else could he do? Ever since Basta had killed a strolling player before her very eyes, Fenoglio's landlady went for anyone loitering in her yard with a pitchfork. And Orpheus had to know. He had to know if Fenoglio was writing again. He just hoped that useless glass man would come back before he was up to his knees in mud!\n\nA thin chicken strutted by, and beside him Cerberus growled. Orpheus hastily held his muzzle shut. He'd been glad when Cerberus suddenly came scratching at his door, of course, but one question had immediately spoiled his pleasure \u2013 how did the dog come to be here? Was Fenoglio writing again after all? Had Dustfinger taken the book to the old man? None of it made any sense, but he had to know. Who but Fenoglio could have dreamt up the touching scene performed by the Bluejay outside the castle? How much everyone loved the bookbinder for it! Even though by now the Piper must have beaten him half to death, he had become godlike when he rode through the gates of that damn castle. The Bluejay as a noble sacrificial lamb. If that didn't sound like Fenoglio he'd eat his hat!\n\nNaturally Orpheus had sent Oss with the glass man at first, but his bodyguard had let Fenoglio's landlady catch him. There was no dark corner where that great hulk could lurk unseen, and Ironstone hadn't even reached the stairs leading to Fenoglio's room. A chicken had chased him through the mud and a cat had almost bitten his head off \u2013 you certainly couldn't say that glass men made ideal spies, but their small size came in so handy! The same was true of fairies, of course, but they forgot the least little errand before they'd even flown out of the window \u2013 and after all, Fenoglio himself used his glass man as a spy, although he was lamentably unfit for the job.\n\nNo, Ironstone was much better at it. However, unlike Fenoglio's glass man he suffered from vertigo, which made it impossible for him to cross roof tops, and even on the ground he was so bad at finding his way that Orpheus found it better to put him down at the foot of Fenoglio's stairs, if he wanted to be sure he wouldn't get hopelessly lost.\n\nBut where the devil was he now? Admittedly climbing those stairs was like scaling a mountain for a glass man, but all the same... There was a goat bleating noisily in the shed behind which Orpheus was standing \u2013 it had probably caught the dog's scent \u2013 and some kind of liquid was seeping through the leather of his boots. Its smell was suspiciously appealing to Cerberus, who was snuffling around in the mud so greedily that Orpheus had to keep tugging him away from it.\n\nAh, here came Ironstone at last! He jumped from step to step, nimble as a mouse. Fabulous. For a glass man, he was a tough little fellow. It was to be hoped that what he'd found out was worth the ruin of those expensive boots.\n\nOrpheus bent down to Cerberus's collar and took off the chain, which for want of a dog leash he had ordered in Smiths' Alley. Cerberus trotted over to the stairs and plucked the protesting glass man off the bottom step. Ironstone claimed that the dog's slobber brought his glass skin out in a rash, but how else was he going to get through the mud with those thin legs of his? An old woman looked out of her window as the dog trotted back to Orpheus, but luckily it wasn't Fenoglio's landlady.\n\n'Well?' Cerberus dropped the glass man into his outstretched hands. Ugh! Dog slobber really was disgusting.\n\n'He's not writing. Not a line!' Ironstone passed his sleeve over his moist face. 'I told you so, master! He's drunk himself silly. His fingers shake if he so much as sees a pen!'\n\nOrpheus looked up at Fenoglio's room. Light showed underneath the door. Ironstone, who was slippery as an eel, always crawled through the broad crack underneath it.\n\n'Are you sure?' He fastened the chain to Cerberus's collar again.\n\n'Absolutely sure! And he doesn't have the book either. He has visitors, though.'\n\nThe old woman tipped a bucket of water out of her window. Always supposing it was water. Once again Cerberus was snuffling around with far too much interest.\n\n'Visitors? I don't want to know about them. But whatever it looks like, I'm sure he's writing again!'\n\nOrpheus looked up at the dilapidated houses. A candle burnt in every window. They were burning all over Ombra. For the Bluejay. Curse him! Curse them all: Fenoglio and Mortimer, his stupid daughter \u2013 and Dustfinger. He cursed the Fire-Dancer most of all. Dustfinger had betrayed him \u2013 stolen from him, Orpheus, whose heart had been given to him for so many years, who had read him home to his own story and snatched him away from Death! What was it they called him now? The Bluejay's fiery shadow. A shadow! It served him right. He, Orpheus, would have made him more than a shadow in this story, but that was over and done with. He had declared war on them all. He was going to write them a story that was to his own liking \u2013 just as soon as he had the book back!\n\nA child came out of the house and ran barefoot over the muddy yard to disappear into one of the outbuildings. Time to get out of here. Orpheus mopped the dog slobber off Ironstone with a cloth, put him on his shoulder, and stole away before the child came out again. Away from this filth \u2013 not that it was much better in the streets.\n\n'Blank sheets, nothing but blank sheets, master!' Ironstone whispered to him as they hurried back through the night to Orpheus's house. 'No more than a few sentences, and those were crossed out... that's all, I swear! His glass man almost spotted me today, but I managed to hide in one of his master's boots just in time. You can't imagine how it stank in there!'\n\nOh yes, he could. 'I'll have one of the maids soap you all over.'\n\n'No, no, better not. Last time the soapsuds left me belching for more than an hour, and my feet went white as milk!'\n\n'So? You think I'm letting a glass man who stinks of sweaty feet march all over my parchment?'\n\nA night watchman came towards them, swaying as he walked. Why were those fellows always drunk? Orpheus pressed a few copper coins into the man's wrinkled hand, in case he was thinking of calling a patrol. Now that the Bluejay was a prisoner in the castle, troops of soldiers were out and about in Ombra night and day.\n\n'How about the book? Did you really search for it thoroughly?'\n\nTwo boards in Butchers' Alley sang the praises of fresh unicorn meat. Ridiculous. Where was anyone supposed to get that? Orpheus turned into Glaziers' Alley, although Ironstone hated going that way.\n\n'Well, it wasn't easy.' Ironstone looked nervously at the notices advertising artificial limbs for broken glass men. 'Like I told you, he has visitors, and with all those eyes to notice things, getting around his room was tricky! I even searched his clothes, all the same, and he nearly shut me up in his chest! But no luck. He doesn't have the book, master, I swear he doesn't!'\n\n'Death and the devil!' Orpheus felt an almost irresistible urge to throw or break something. Ironstone knew these moods of his by now, and clung to his sleeve to be on the safe side.\n\nWho but the old man could have the book? Even if Dustfinger had given it to Mortimer, he certainly hadn't taken it to his dungeon with him! No, Dustfinger himself must have kept it. Orpheus felt a burning sensation in his stomach, as bad as if one of Dustfinger's martens were sitting there gnawing his guts. He was familiar with this pain, which always attacked him when something wasn't going as he wanted. A stomach ulcer, that was it. For sure. So? he asked himself. Mind you don't make it even worse, or do you want to have to go to one of the local quacks and have your blood let?\n\nIronstone was crouching on his shoulder, silent and depressed, probably thinking about the soapy water ahead of him. However, Cerberus was sniffing every wall he padded past. No wonder dogs liked this world \u2013 it stank to high heaven. I'd change that too, thought Orpheus. And I'd write myself a better spy, one as tiny as a spider and definitely not made of glass. But you won't be writing anything here any more, Orpheus, a voice whispered inside him, because you've lost the book!\n\nCursing, he quickened his pace, hauling Cerberus impatiently along with him \u2013 only to tread in cat dirt. Mud, chicken droppings, cat dirt... his boots were ruined, and where was he going to get the silver for a new pair? His last attempt to write himself a chest of treasure on the gallows hill had been a dismal failure, producing coins as thin as silver foil.\n\nAt last. There it was in all its glory. His house. The finest house in Ombra. His heartbeat always quickened when he saw the front steps shining in the darkness, white as alabaster, and the coat of arms over the entrance that made even Orpheus himself believe he was of royal descent. No, up to now things really hadn't gone badly for him here. He had to keep reminding himself of that when he felt like smashing glass men, or wishing a plague of boils on the neck of a certain skinny Arab boy. Not to mention ungrateful fire-eaters!\n\nOrpheus stopped suddenly. A bird was perching on the steps. It sat as if it intended to build a nest right there on the spot. It didn't fly away even when Orpheus came closer, but just stared at him with its black button-eyes. Birds \u2013 he hated them. They left their droppings everywhere. And all that fluttering, those sharp beaks, those feathers full of mites and worm eggs...\n\nOrpheus undid the chain from Cerberus's collar. 'Go on, catch it!'\n\nCerberus loved to chase birds, and now and then he even caught one. But this time he put his tail between his back legs and retreated as if a snake were wriggling there on the steps of Orpheus's house. What the devil...?\n\nThe bird jerked its head and hopped one step lower.\n\nCerberus ducked, and the glass man clung uneasily to Orpheus's collar. 'It's a magpie, master!' he whispered in his ear. 'They...' His voice almost failed him. 'They smash glass men and collect the coloured splinters for their nests! Please, master, chase it away!'\n\nThe magpie jerked its head again and stared at him. This was a strange bird, decidedly strange.\n\nOrpheus bent and threw a stone at it. The magpie spread its wings and uttered a hoarse cry.\n\n'Oh, master, master, it's going to smash me to pieces!' wailed Ironstone, clinging to his ear. 'Grey glass men are very rare!'\n\nThis time the magpie's cry sounded like laughter.\n\n'You still look as stupid as ever, Orpheus.'\n\nHe knew the voice at once.\n\nThe magpie stretched its neck. It coughed as if it were choking on grain pecked up too greedily. Then it spat out some seeds on the alabaster-white steps \u2013 one, two, three seeds \u2013 and began to grow.\n\nCerberus cowered behind his legs, and Ironstone was trembling so pitifully that his limbs clattered like china in a picnic basket.\n\nBut the magpie went on growing. Feathers became black clothes, grey hair pinned severely back, fingers hastily counting the seeds that the bird's beak had spat out on to the steps. Mortola looked older than Orpheus remembered her, much older. Her shoulders were hunched, even when she stood up. Her fingers curled over like the claws of a bird, her face was gaunt under the high cheekbones, and her skin was the colour of yellowed parchment. But her eyes were still piercing, and made Orpheus bow his head like a boy being scolded.\n\n'How \u2013 how do you do that?' he stammered. 'Fenoglio's book says nothing about shape-shifters! Only about Night-Mares and\u2014'\n\n'Fenoglio! What does he know?' Mortola plucked a feather off her black dress. 'Everything changes shape in this world, only most have to die first. But there are ways and means \u2013' and as she spoke she carefully dropped the seeds she had picked up into a leather bag \u2013 'for people to free themselves from their own shapes without any need for the White Women.'\n\n'Really?' Orpheus immediately began wondering what kind of possibilities that opened up for this story, but Mortola didn't give him any time to think it over.\n\n'You've settled into this world in fine style, haven't you?' she murmured, looking up at his house. 'Four-Eyes, the milky-bearded merchant from across the sea, who trades in unicorns and dwarves and can read every wish of the new lord of Ombra in his eyes \u2013 well, I thought to myself, bless me if that isn't my dear friend Orpheus! He's obviously managed to read himself here. And you've even brought that nasty dog along with you.'\n\nCerberus bared his teeth, but Ironstone was still trembling. Glass men really were absurd creatures. And to think Fenoglio was proud of them!\n\n'What do you want?' Orpheus did his best to sound cool and superior, not like the frightened little boy he became only too easily in Mortola's presence. She still terrified him, he had to admit it.\n\nFootsteps echoed through the night, presumably from one of the patrols sent out by the Piper to comb Ombra in case the Black Prince found some way of freeing his noble fellow-fighter after all.\n\n'Do you always welcome your guests outside the door?' hissed Mortola. 'Come on, time we went in!'\n\nOrpheus had to bring the bronze knocker down on the wood three times before Oss opened the door. He blinked sleepily down at Mortola.\n\n'Is this that wardrobe-man from the other world or a new one?' asked Mortola, pushing her way past Oss with her skirts rustling.\n\n'A new one,' muttered Orpheus, whose mind was still trying to work out whether it was a good thing she was back or not. Wasn't she supposed to be dead? But it was becoming clearer all the time that you couldn't rely on Death in this world. Which was both reassuring and alarming.\n\nHe took Mortola, not to his study, but into the reception room. The old woman looked around as if everything in it was hers. No, very likely it wasn't a good thing she was back. And what did she want of him? He could imagine: Mortimer. For sure she still wanted to kill him. Mortola didn't abandon such plans easily \u2013 particularly not where her son's murderer was concerned. In this case, however, other people looked like they were ahead of her in line.\n\n'So now the bookbinder really is the Bluejay!' she remarked, as if Orpheus had spoken his thoughts out loud. 'How many more ridiculous songs are they going to sing about him? Hailing him as their saviour... as if we hadn't brought him to this world in the first place! And the Adderhead, instead of hunting him down after he killed his best men on Mount Adder, blames Mortola for his escape, and for the way the flesh is rotting on his own bones. I knew at once it must be the White Book. Silvertongue is wily, but his innocent look deceives them all, and the Adder handed me, not him, over to the torturers, to get the name of the poison. I still feel the pain of it today, but I outwitted them \u2013 I made them bring me seeds and herbs, saying I'd brew them an antidote for their master. Instead I made myself wings to fly away. I listened to the wind and to the gossip in marketplaces to find the bookbinder, and I discovered he really was playing the robber, and the Black Prince had found him a hiding place. It was a good hiding place, too, but I found it all the same.' Mortola pursed her lips while she spoke, as if she felt she still had a beak. 'How I had to control myself not to peck his eyes out when I saw him again! There's no hurry, Mortola, I thought. Being in a hurry has spoilt your fine revenge once already. Sprinkle a few poisonous berries in his food, leaving him to writhe like a worm and die slowly enough for you to enjoy your revenge. But some stupid crow pecked the berries out of his dish, and the next time I tried it the bear snapped at me with his stinking muzzle and pulled out two of my tail feathers. I tried again in the camp where the Black Prince took them \u2013 him and his daughter and that deceitful maid \u2013 but the wrong man ate from that dish. Poisonous fungi, they said, he's eaten poisonous fungi!'\n\nMortola laughed, and Orpheus shuddered when he saw her fingers curving as if they were still clinging to a branch. 'It's like a jinx! Nothing can kill him, neither poison nor a bullet. It's as if everything in this world were bent on protecting him \u2013 every stone, every animal, even the shadows among the trees! The Bluejay! Death itself let him go, and did a deal with him for the Fire-Dancer. Oh, very impressive! But at what price? He hasn't told even his wife the price, only Mortola knows it! No one pays any attention to the magpie in the tree, but she hears everything \u2013 what the trees whisper at night, what spiders write in damp branches with their silver threads: they say that Death will take the Bluejay and his daughter if he doesn't deliver the Adderhead's life before winter ends. And they say the Adder's own daughter plans to help the Jay to write the three words in the White Book.'\n\n'What?' Orpheus had been only half listening. He knew Mortola's hate-filled tirades, endless and self-glorifying, but he pricked up his ears at that last remark. Violante in league with the Bluejay? Yes, it made sense. Of course! That was why Mortimer had handed himself over expressly to her! He might have known it. That paragon of virtue hadn't let himself be made prisoner only out of nobility of mind. The noble robber was intent on murder.\n\nOrpheus began pacing up and down, while Mortola went on uttering curses in so hoarse a voice that the words sounded hardly human.\n\nViolante \u2013 Orpheus had offered her his services as soon as he had settled in Ombra, but she had rejected them, saying that she already had a poet... not very nice of her.\n\n'Oh yes, he plans to kill the Adder! Stole into the castle like a marten into a poultry yard! Even the fairies sing about it as they do their silly dances, but only the magpie listens!' Mortola bent double. Even her coughing sounded like a croak. She was crazy! How she looked at him, with her pupils so black and fixed that they looked more like the eyes of a bird than of a human being. Orpheus shuddered.\n\n'Yes, yes, I know his plans!' she whispered. 'And I tell myself: Mortola, let him live, hard as that is for you. Kill his wife, or even better the daughter he dotes on, and flutter up on to his shoulder when he hears the news, so that you can hear his heart breaking. But let him live until the Adderhead gives him the White Book, because the Adder too must die for all the pain he gave me. And should the Silver Prince really be stupid enough to let his worst enemy lay hands on the Book that can kill him, all the better! The magpie will be there, and not the Bluejay but Mortola will write those three words. Yes, I know what they are. And Death will take both the Bluejay and the Adderhead, and in return for such rich pickings will finally give back what that accursed bookbinder took from me with his silver tongue \u2013 my son!'\n\nWhat the devil? Orpheus nearly choked on the wine he had just raised to his lips. The old witch was still dreaming of Capricorn's return! Well, why not, since first Cosimo and then Dustfinger had come back from the dead? But he could think of more interesting turns for this story to take than the return of Mortola's fire-raising son.\n\n'You really believe the Adderhead will bring the White Book here?' Ah, he felt there were great things in the offing, developments full of promise. Maybe all was not lost, even if Dustfinger had stolen Fenoglio's book from him. There were other ways to play a significant part in this story. The Adderhead in Ombra! What possibilities that opened up...\n\n'Of course he'll come! The Adder is more of a fool than most people think.' Mortola sat down on one of the chairs that stood ready for Orpheus's distinguished clients. The wind blew through the unglazed windows and made the candles flicker. Shadows danced like black birds on the whitewashed walls.\n\n'So will the Silver Prince let the bookbinder outwit him for the second time?' Orpheus himself was surprised by the hatred in his voice. To his astonishment, he realized that he now wished for Mortimer's death almost as passionately as Mortola. 'Even Dustfinger runs after him these days!' he uttered. 'Obviously Death has made him forget what that hero once did to him!' He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, as if he could wipe away the memory of Dustfinger's cold face. Yes, that was the only reason why Dustfinger had turned against him! Because Mortimer had bewitched him with his accursed voice. He bewitched them all. It was to be hoped that the Piper would cut his tongue out before they quartered him. He wanted to watch as the Milksop's hounds tore him to pieces, as the Piper sliced up his skin and his noble heart. Oh, if only he could have written that song about the Bluejay!\n\nMortola's coughing brought Orpheus back from his bloodthirsty dreams.\n\n'It's only too easy to swallow these seeds!' she gasped, bent double in the chair, her hands clutching the arms like claws. 'You have to put them under your tongue, but they're slippery little things, and if too many of them go astray and down to your stomach, the bird sometimes comes back when you haven't summoned it.' She jerked her head like the magpie, opened her mouth as if it were a beak and pressed her fingers to her pale lips.\n\n'Listen!' she managed to say as the fit shook her again. 'I want you to go to the castle as soon as the Adderhead reaches Ombra, and warn him against his daughter! Tell him to ask Balbulus the illuminator how many books about the Bluejay Violante has ordered from him. Convince him that his daughter is obsessed with his worst enemy and will do all in her power to save him. Tell him in the finest words you can think up. Use your voice, the way Silvertongue will try to use his. You're very keen on boasting that your voice is more impressive than Mortimer's! Prove it!'\n\nMortola retched \u2013 and spat another seed out into the palm of her hand.\n\nShe was clever, even if she was totally crazy, and it was surely best to let her believe she could go on acting as if she were his mistress, although all that retching made him feel so unwell he could almost have spat out his own wine. Orpheus brushed a little dust off his elaborately embroidered sleeves. His clothes, his house, all the maids... how could the old woman be blind enough to think he'd ever serve her again? As if he'd come into this world to carry out other people's plans! No, here he served only himself. So he had sworn.\n\n'It doesn't sound a bad idea.' Orpheus was taking great pains to keep his tone of voice as deferential as usual. 'But what about all the Bluejay's noble friends? He won't be hoping for support from Violante alone. What about the Black Prince?' And Dustfinger, he added silently, but he did not speak the name. He was going to take his own revenge on Dustfinger.\n\n'The Black Prince, yes. Another high-minded idiot. My son had trouble with him from time to time himself.' Mortola put the seed she had spat out away with the others. 'I'll take care of him. Him and Silvertongue's daughter. That girl's almost as dangerous as her father.'\n\n'Nonsense!' Orpheus poured himself more wine. Wine made him braver.\n\nMortola inspected him scornfully. Yes, she obviously still thought him a subservient fool. All the better. She rubbed her thin arms, shuddering as if the feathers were trying to pierce through her skin again.\n\n'What about the old man? The one who, they say, wrote Silvertongue's daughter the words I took from her in the Castle of Night? Is he still writing foolhardy recklessness into the Bluejay's heart?'\n\n'No, Fenoglio isn't writing any more. All the same, I'd have no objection if you killed him. Far from it \u2013 he's a terrible know-all.'\n\nMortola nodded, but she didn't really seem to be listening any more. 'I must go,' she said, rising unsteadily from her chair. 'Your house is as musty as a dungeon.'\n\nOss was lying outside the door when Mortola opened it. 'So this is your bodyguard?' she asked. 'You don't seem to have many enemies.'\n\nOrpheus slept poorly that night. He dreamt of birds, hundreds of birds, but when dawn came and Ombra emerged from the shadows of night like a pale fruit, he went to the window of his bedroom full of new confidence.\n\n'Good morning to you, Bluejay!' he said under his breath, eyes turned to the towers of the castle. 'I hope you passed a sleepless night! I dare say you still think the roles in this story have been cast by now, but you've played its hero long enough. Curtain up, Act Two: enter Orpheus. In what part? The part of the villain, of course. Isn't that always the best role in a play?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Greeting to the Piper",
                "text": "\u2002There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. [...] What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box-lids, and rain.\n\n\u2014Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles\n\nFarid wasn't with the party when the Bluejay rode to Ombra Castle. 'You're staying in the camp.' Dustfinger didn't have to say any more to make Farid worry about causing his death again, and the fear was like a hand clutching his throat. The Strong Man waited among the empty tents with him, because the Black Prince refused to believe that he could pass for a woman. They sat there for many hours, but when Meggie and the others at last came back Dustfinger wasn't with them, any more than the Bluejay was.\n\n'Where is he?' The Black Prince was the only person Farid dared to ask, although his face was so grave that even the bear didn't venture near him.\n\n'Where the Bluejay is,' replied the Prince, and when he saw Farid's look of dismay he added, 'No, not in the dungeon. I mean near him, that's all. Death has bound those two together, and nothing but death is going to part them again.'\n\nNear him.\n\nFarid looked at the tent where Meggie slept. He thought he could hear her crying, but he dared not go to her. She hadn't yet forgiven him for persuading her father to do that deal with Orpheus, and Doria was sitting outside her tent. He was to be found near Meggie a good deal too often for Farid's liking, but luckily he appeared to understand as little about girls as his strong brother.\n\nThe men back from Ombra were sitting around the fire, heads bent. Some of them didn't even take off the women's clothes they had been wearing, but the Black Prince gave them no time to drown their fears for the future in wine. He sent them out hunting. They would need good stocks of provisions if they were to hide the children of Ombra from the Piper: dried meat, warm furs.\n\nBut that didn't interest Farid. He no more belonged to the robbers than he had to Orpheus. He didn't even belong to Meggie. He belonged with only one person, and he had to keep away from him, for fear of bringing him to his death.\n\nDarkness was just falling, and the robbers were still smoking meat and stretching skins between the trees, when Gwin came scurrying out of the forest. Farid thought the marten was Jink until he saw the greying muzzle. Yes, it was Gwin all right. Since Dustfinger's death he had looked at Farid like an enemy, but tonight he nibbled his calves the way he used to when he wanted to play, and chattered until Farid followed him.\n\nThe marten was quick, too quick even for Farid, who could outrun most people, but Gwin kept stopping to wait for him with his tail twitching impatiently, leaving Farid to follow as fast as the darkness allowed, because he knew who had sent the marten.\n\nThey found Dustfinger where the castle walls became the city boundary of Ombra, and the mountainside on which the city stood rose so steeply that no more houses could stand there. Nothing but thorny bushes covered the slope, and the castle wall towered up without any windows, forbidding as a clenched fist, broken by only a few barred slits that let just enough air into the dungeons for the prisoners not to stifle to death before they were executed. No one stayed long in the castle dungeons of Ombra. Sentence was quickly passed and executions quickly carried out. Why feed someone for long if you were going to hang him anyway? It was only the Bluejay's judge who was coming from the far side of the forest specially for him. Five days, so the whisper went, it would take the Adderhead five days to reach Ombra in his black-draped coach \u2013 and no one knew whether the Bluejay would live as long as a single day after his arrival.\n\nDustfinger stood with his shoulders back against the wall and his head bent, as if he were listening. The deep shadows cast by the castle made him invisible to the guards pacing back and forth on the battlements.\n\nDustfinger turned only when Gwin bounded towards him. Farid looked anxiously up at the guards before running to him, but they weren't looking for a boy, or a man on his own. One man wouldn't be able to set the Bluejay free. No, the Milksop's soldiers were watching for the arrival of many men, men coming out of the nearby forest or using ropes to help them down the steep slope above the castle \u2013 although the Piper must know that even the Black Prince wouldn't venture to storm Ombra Castle.\n\nThe sky above the towers shone with the dark green of Sootbird's fire. The Milksop was celebrating. The Piper had ordered all the minstrels among the strolling players to compose songs about his own cunning and the defeat of the Bluejay, but very few had obeyed. Most of them kept silent, and their silence sang another song \u2013 a song of the sadness in Ombra and the tears of the women who had their children back, but had lost their hope.\n\n'Well, what do you think of Sootbird's fire?' Dustfinger whispered as Farid came to lean against the castle wall beside him. 'Our friend has learnt a few things, wouldn't you say?'\n\n'He's still useless!' Farid whispered back, and Dustfinger smiled, but his face grew grave again as he looked up at the windowless walls.\n\n'It's nearly midnight,' he said quietly. 'At this time the Piper likes to show prisoners his hospitality with fists, clubs and boots.' He laid his hands on the wall and passed them over it, as if the stones could tell him what was going on in the cells behind them. 'He's not with him yet,' he whispered. 'But it won't be long now.'\n\n'How do you know?' Sometimes it seemed to Farid as if someone else had come back from the dead, not the man he had known.\n\n'Well, Silvertongue, Bluejay, whatever you like to call him...' Dustfinger whispered, 'since his voice brought me back I've known what he feels as if Death had transplanted his heart into my breast. Now, catch me a fairy, or the Piper will half kill him before sunrise. Bring me one of the rainbow-coloured kind. Orpheus has given them his own vanity, which comes in handy. You can get them to do anything for a few compliments.'\n\nThe fairy was soon found. Orpheus's fairies were all over the place, and although winter didn't make them as drowsy as Fenoglio's blue fairies, it was child's play to pluck one from her nest at this hour of the night. She bit Farid, but he blew in her face as Dustfinger had taught him, until she was gasping for air and forgot all about biting. Dustfinger whispered something to her, and next moment the tiny thing was fluttering up to the barred slits in the wall and disappeared through one of them.\n\n'What did you tell her?' Above them, Sootbird's venomous fire went on devouring the night. It swallowed up the sky, the stars and the moon, and the smoke hanging in the air was so acrid that Farid's eyes were streaming.\n\n'Oh, just that I promised the Bluejay I'd send the most beautiful fairy of all to visit him in his dark dungeon. And by way of thanks she'll whisper him the news that the Adderhead will reach Ombra in five days' time, even if the moss-women pave his way here with curses, and that meanwhile we'll try to keep the Piper's mind occupied, so that he can't spend too much time beating up his prisoners.' Dustfinger clenched his left hand into a fist. 'You haven't yet asked me why I sent for you,' he said, blowing gently into the fist he had made. 'I thought you might like to see this.'\n\nHe laid his fist against the castle wall, and fiery spiders scuttled out from between his fingers. They hurried up the stones, more and more of them, as many as if they had been born there in Dustfinger's hand.\n\n'The Piper's afraid of spiders,' he whispered. 'He fears them more than swords and knives, and if these creep into his fine clothes he may forget, just for a while, how much he enjoys beating his prisoners at night.'\n\nFarid clenched his own fist. 'How do you make them?'\n\n'I don't know \u2013 which, I'm afraid, means I can't teach you. Any more than I can teach you this.' Dustfinger placed his hands together. Farid heard him whispering, but he couldn't make out the words. When a fiery bluejay flew out of Dustfinger's hands and soared into the night sky on wings of blue and white fire, he felt a pang of envy like a wasp-sting.\n\n'Oh, show me!' he whispered. 'Please! Let me try, at least!'\n\nDustfinger looked at him thoughtfully. One of the guards above them was raising the alarm. The fiery spiders had reached the castle battlements. 'Death taught me the trick of it, Farid,' he said softly.\n\n'Well? So I was dead too, like you, although not for so long!'\n\nDustfinger laughed. He laughed so loudly that a sentry looked down, and he quickly drew Farid back with him into the blackest shadows.\n\n'You're right. I'd quite forgotten!' he whispered, as the guards on the wall shouted in confusion and shot arrows at the fiery jay. The arrows smouldered and went out among its feathers. 'Very well, copy me! Try this.'\n\nFarid quickly curved his fingers, feeling the excitement he always felt when he was going to learn something new about fire. It wasn't easy to repeat the strange words that Dustfinger whispered, and Farid's heart leapt when he really did feel a fiery tingling between his fingers. Next moment spiders were swarming all over the wall from his hand too, their burning bodies hurrying up the stones like an army of sparks. He smiled proudly at Dustfinger. But when he tried the bluejay, only a few pale moths fluttered out from between his fingers.\n\n'Don't look so disappointed!' whispered Dustfinger as he sent two more bluejays flying into the night. 'There's plenty more to learn. But we'd better hide from our silver-nosed friend now.'\n\nOmbra Castle wore a burning coat as they made their way through the trees, and Sootbird's fire had gone out. The sky belonged to the fire conjured up by Dustfinger. The Piper sent patrols out, but Dustfinger made the flames give birth to wolves and big cats, snakes slithering out of the branches, fiery moths that flew in the faces of the men-at-arms. The forest at the foot of the castle seemed to be all aflame, but the fire did not take hold, and Farid and his master were shadows among all the red, untouched by the fear they were spreading.\n\nFinally the Piper had water poured from the battlements. It froze to ice in the branches of the trees, but Dustfinger's fire burnt on, shaping new creatures all the time, and died down only in the morning, like a spectre of the night. The fiery bluejays, however, went on circling in the air above Ombra, and when the Milksop sent his hounds into the forest where the flames were now extinguished, fiery hares threw them off any track they found. But Farid sat with Dustfinger in a thicket of thorn apple and brownie-thorn, feeling happiness warm his heart. It was so good to be near Dustfinger again, as he had been in the old days, during all the nights when he had watched over him or kept him from bad dreams. Now, however, there didn't seem to be anything he had to protect him from. Except yourself, Farid, he thought, and his happiness was gone like the fiery creatures that Dustfinger had conjured up to protect the Bluejay.\n\n'What's the matter?' Dustfinger looked at him as if it wasn't only Silvertongue's thoughts he could read.\n\nThen he took Farid's hand and blew gently into it, until a woman made of white fire rose from his fingers. 'They're not as bad as you think,' Dustfinger whispered to him, 'and if they come for me again it won't be because of you. Understand?'\n\n'What do you mean?' Farid's heart missed a beat. 'Are they going to come for you again? Why? Soon?' The White Woman on his hand changed into a moth, fluttered away, and dissolved in the grey light of dawn.\n\n'That depends on the Bluejay.'\n\n'What does?'\n\nDustfinger placed a warning hand over his mouth and pushed the thorny tendrils aside. Soldiers had taken up positions under the window slits of the dungeons. They were staring at the forest, eyes wide with fear. Sootbird was with them. He was examining the castle wall as if he could read in the stones how Dustfinger had set the night on fire. 'Look at him!' Dustfinger whispered. 'He hates the fire, and the fire hates him.'\n\nBut Farid didn't want to talk about Sootbird. He reached for Dustfinger's arm. 'They mustn't come to take you away again! Please!'\n\nDustfinger looked at him. His eyes were so different since he had come back. There was no fear in them now, only the old watchfulness. 'I'll say it again. It all depends on the Bluejay. So help me to protect him, because he's going to need protection. Five days and nights in the Piper's power \u2013 that's a long time. I think we'll all be glad when the Adderhead finally arrives.'\n\nFarid wanted to ask more questions, but he saw in Dustfinger's face that he would get no further answers. 'How about Her Ugliness? Don't you believe she can protect him?'\n\n'Do you?' Dustfinger asked back.\n\nA fairy was struggling through the thorny undergrowth. She almost tore her wings on the branches, but finally, exhausted, she perched on Dustfinger's knee. It was the fairy he had sent out to look for the Bluejay. She had found him, and was bringing back his thanks. Nor did she forget to mention that he had assured her that she was indeed the most beautiful fairy he had ever set eyes on."
            },
            {
                "title": "Stolen Children",
                "text": "\u2003when I was a child\n\n\u2003i was a squirrel a bluejay a fox\n\n\u2003and spoke with them in their tongues\n\n\u2003climbed their trees dug their dens\n\n\u2003and knew the taste\n\n\u2003of every grass and stone\n\n\u2003the meaning of the sun\n\n\u2003the message of the night-\n\n\u2014Norman H. Russell, The Message of the Rain\n\nIt was snowing, tiny icy flakes, and Meggie wondered whether her father could see the snowflakes falling from wherever he was held captive. No, she told herself, the dungeons of Ombra lie too deep under the castle, and the idea that Mo was missing his first sight of snow in the Inkworld made her almost as sad as knowing that he was a prisoner.\n\nDustfinger was protecting him, as the Black Prince had so often assured her. Battista and Roxane kept saying so as well. But Meggie could think of nothing but the Piper, and how frail and young Violante had looked beside him.\n\nThe Adderhead was only two days' journey away now, so Nettle had said yesterday. Two days, and everything would be decided.\n\nTwo days.\n\nThe Strong Man drew Meggie to his side and pointed through the trees. Two women were looking for a way through the snow-covered thickets. They had a couple of boys and a girl with them. The children of Ombra had been disappearing one by one ever since the Bluejay gave himself up. Their mothers took them out into the fields, down to the river to do their laundry, into the forest to look for firewood \u2013 and came back alone. There were four places where the Prince's men waited for the children. News of their whereabouts was passed on from mouth to mouth, and there was a woman as well as a robber waiting at each of those places, so that it wouldn't be too hard for the children to let go of their mothers' hands.\n\nResa, Battista and Gecko were receiving them at the infirmary run by the Barn Owl. Roxane and Elfbane waited at the place where the healers gathered the bark of oak trees. Two more women met children by the river, and Meggie, with Doria and the Strong Man, waited for them in a charcoal-burner's abandoned hut not far from the road to Ombra.\n\nThe three children hesitated when they saw the Strong Man, but their mothers led them on, and when Doria caught a couple of snowflakes on his outstretched tongue the youngest, a girl of about five, began giggling.\n\n'Suppose we just make the Piper angry again by hiding them with you?' asked the child's mother. 'Suppose he's given up any idea of taking the children away now the Bluejay is his prisoner? It was all about the Bluejay, wasn't it?'\n\nMeggie could have hit her for the coldness in her voice.\n\n'Yes, and this is his daughter!' said the Strong Man, putting a protective arm around Meggie's shoulders. 'So don't talk as if you didn't care what became of him! You'd never have got your child back but for her father, have you forgotten that already? But the Adderhead will still need children for his mines, and yours would be easy prey.'\n\n'That's his daughter? The witch?' The other woman drew her children close to her, but the girl looked curiously at Meggie.\n\n'You sound like the Adder's men!' The Strong Man held Meggie more firmly, as if to ward off the words. 'What's the matter with you? Do you want to know your children are safe or don't you? You can always take them back to Ombra and hope the Piper doesn't come knocking at your door!'\n\n'But where are you taking them?' The younger woman had tears in her eyes.\n\n'If I told you, you'd be able to give it away.' The Strong Man put the smaller boy up on his shoulders as if he weighed no more than a fairy.\n\n'Can we come too?'\n\n'No, we can't feed so many. It will be difficult enough to fill the children's bellies.'\n\n'And how long do you mean to hide them for?' How desperate every word sounded.\n\n'Until the Bluejay has killed the Adderhead.'\n\nThe women looked at Meggie.\n\n'How can he possibly do that?'\n\n'He'll kill him, you wait and see,' replied the Strong Man, and his voice sounded so confident that for a precious moment even Meggie forgot all her fears for Mo. But the moment passed, and once again she felt the snow on her skin, as cold as the end of all things.\n\nDoria put the little girl on his back and smiled at Meggie. He was tireless in his efforts to cheer her up. He brought her berries hard with frost, flowers covered with rime \u2013 the last flowers of the year \u2013 and made her forget her troubles by asking her about the world she came from. She was beginning to miss him when he wasn't near her.\n\nThe little girl cried when the women left, but Meggie stroked her hair and told her what Battista had said about the snow: many of the snowflakes, he had told her, were tiny elves who kissed your face with icy lips before melting on your warm skin. The child stared up at the whirling snow, and Meggie went on talking, letting the words comfort her too while the world around turned white, letting herself go back to the days when Mo used to tell her stories \u2013 before he was part of a story himself. It was a long time since Meggie had been able to say whether it was her story as well.\n\nThe snow did not fall for long, and left only a fine, light dusting on the cold ground. Twelve more women brought their children to the abandoned charcoal-burner's hut, their faces full of anxiety and concern, and full of doubt too. Were they doing the right thing? Some of the children didn't even look back at their mothers as the women left, others ran after them, and two cried so hard that their mothers took them away again, back to Ombra where the Piper was waiting for them like a silver spider in its web. By the time darkness fell, nineteen children stood under the trees with their powdering of snow, huddled together like a flock of goslings. The Strong Man looked like a giant beside them as he signalled to them to go with him. Doria conjured acorns out of their little noses and plucked coins from their hair when one of them started crying. The Strong Man showed them how he listened to the birds, and let three children ride on his shoulders all at once.\n\nAs for Meggie, she told them stories as darkness fell over them, stories Mo had told her so often that she thought she heard his voice with every word she spoke. They were all exhausted by the time they reached the robbers' camp. The place was teeming with children. Meggie tried to count them, but soon gave up. How were the robbers to fill so many mouths, when the Black Prince could hardly feed his own men?\n\nWhat Snapper and Gecko thought of all this showed only too clearly in their faces. Nursemaids, that was the whisper going around the camp. Is this what we went into the forest for? Snapper, Gecko, Elfbane, Woodenfoot, Wayfarer, Blackbeard... many of them were saying so. But who was the slightly-built man with the gentle face standing beside Snapper, looking around as if he had never seen his surroundings before? He looked like... no. No, it couldn't be true. Meggie rubbed her eyes. She was obviously so tired that she was seeing ghosts. But suddenly two strong arms went around her, hugging her so hard that she gasped for air.\n\n'Why, just look at you! You're almost as tall as me now, you shameless girl!'\n\nMeggie turned.\n\nElinor.\n\nWhat was happening? Had she lost her mind? Had it all been nothing but a dream, and now she was waking up? Would the trees dissolve next, would everything disappear \u2013 the robbers, the children \u2013 and she'd see Mo standing beside her bed asking if she intended to sleep right through breakfast?\n\nMeggie pressed her face into Elinor's dress. It was velvet, and looked like a theatrical costume. Yes, she was dreaming. Definitely. But then what was still real? Wake up, Meggie! she told herself. Come on, wake up!\n\nThe slightly-built stranger standing next to Snapper smiled shyly at her as he held his twisted spectacle frame up to his eyes, and yes, it really was Darius!\n\nElinor hugged her again, and Meggie began to cry. She wept into Elinor's peculiar dress, shedding all the tears she had been holding back since Mo rode to Ombra Castle.\n\n'Yes, yes, I know! It's just terrible,' said Elinor as she awkwardly stroked Meggie's hair. 'You poor thing. I've already given that scribbler fellow a piece of my mind. Conceited old fool! But you wait, your father will show that silver-nosed Fiddler a thing or two!'\n\n'He's the Piper.' Meggie had to laugh although the tears went on running down her face. 'The Piper, Elinor!'\n\n'Well, whatever! How's anyone supposed to remember all these strange names?' Elinor looked around her. 'That Fenoglio deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered for all this, but of course he doesn't see it that way. I'm glad we'll be able to keep an eye on him now. He refused to let Minerva come here on her own, I suppose just because he couldn't stand the thought of not having her to cook and mend for him!'\n\n'You mean Fenoglio's here too?' Meggie wiped her tears away.\n\n'Yes. But where's your mother? I can't find her anywhere.'\n\nMeggie's face seemed to show that she still wasn't on good terms with Resa, but Battista came between them before Elinor could ask her about that.\n\n'Bluejay's daughter, will you introduce me to your splendidly-dressed friend?' He bowed to Elinor. 'To what guild of the strolling players do you belong, gracious lady? Let me guess. You're an actress. Your voice would surely fill any marketplace!'\n\nElinor stared at him in such horror that Meggie quickly came to her aid. 'This is Elinor, Battista \u2013 my mother's aunt...'\n\n'Ah, one of the Bluejay's family!' Battista bowed even lower. 'Presumably that information will keep Snapper there from wringing your neck. He's trying to convince the Black Prince that you and this stranger \u2013' he indicated Darius, who joined them with a shy smile \u2013 'are spies of the Piper's.'\n\nElinor spun round so abruptly that she drove her elbow into Darius's stomach. 'The Black Prince?' She blushed like a girl as she saw him and his bear standing with Snapper. 'Oh, he's magnificent!' she breathed. 'And so is his bear \u2013 the bear looks just the way I imagined him! Ah, this is all so wonderful, so incredibly wonderful!'\n\nMeggie felt her tears drying up. She was so glad Elinor was here, so very glad indeed."
            },
            {
                "title": "A New Cage",
                "text": "\u2003Westley closed his eyes. There was pain coming and he had to be ready for it. He had to prepare his brain, he had to get his mind controlled and safe from their efforts, so that they could not break him.\n\n\u2014William Goldman, The Princess Bride\n\nThis time they came earlier than on the nights before. Night was only just falling outside. Not that it was ever light in Mo's cell, but night brought a different kind of darkness, and with it came the Piper. Mo sat up as straight as he could in chains, and prepared to be kicked and struck. If only he hadn't felt so stupid, so infinitely stupid. The fool who of his own free will had stumbled into his enemies' net. Not a robber any more, not a bookbinder, only a fool.\n\nThe cells in the dungeons of Ombra were no more comfortable than the cells in the tower of the Castle of Night. In these dark holes, hardly high enough for a man to stand up, the same fear lurked as in all dungeons. Yes, the fear was back. It had been waiting for him at the gates, it had almost choked him when the Milksop's men had bound his hands.\n\nCaptured. Helpless...\n\nThink about the children, Mortimer! Only the memory of their faces soothed him when he cursed himself for what he had done and endured the blows and kicks that the night brought with it. Dustfinger's fire at least made the Piper leave him in peace from time to time, but it also infuriated Silvernose more and more. In his mind Mo still heard the voice of the fairy who had fluttered up on to his shoulder that first night. He still saw the fiery spiders scuttering into the Piper's velvet garments. Mo had laughed at him for the panic in his face \u2013 but he had paid for that, several times.\n\nTwo more days, Mortimer, two days and two nights. Then the Adderhead will arrive. And then what? Yes, he was a fool to hope he might yet be able to give Death and her pale daughters what they demanded.\n\nWould Resa realize that he had also ridden to the castle for Meggie's sake when the White Women came for their daughter? Would she understand that he hadn't told her anything about it so that fear for Meggie wouldn't eat away at her own heart?\n\nThe two soldiers who entered his cell had soot on their hands and faces. They always came in pairs, but where was their silver-snouted master? Without a word, they hauled Mo to his feet. The chains were heavy and cut into his skin.\n\n'The Piper's going to be visiting you in another cell today!' they muttered to him. 'One that your friend's fire can't find.'\n\nThey went further down, down and down, past holes from which the smell of rotting flesh rose. Once Mo thought he saw a fiery snake creeping through the darkness, but one of his guards hit him when he turned to look at it.\n\nThe cell into which they pushed him was much larger than the one he had been kept in before. There was dried blood on the walls, and the air was both cold and musty.\n\nThe Piper kept him waiting, and when he finally arrived, followed by two more soldiers, he too had soot on his face. The men who had dragged Mo here made way respectfully for their master, but Mo saw how anxiously they looked around \u2013 as if they were waiting for Dustfinger's fiery spiders to crawl out of the walls any minute now. Mo could sense Dustfinger searching for him. It was as if his thoughts were putting out feelers for Mo, but the dungeons in Ombra lay almost as deep as those in the Castle of Night.\n\nPerhaps tonight he would use the knife that Battista had sewn into the hem of his shirt \u2013 although his hands hurt so much that he probably wouldn't even be able to hold it, let alone stab with it. But it felt good to have it with him when the fear became unbearable. The fear and the hatred.\n\n'Your fire-eating friend is getting bolder all the time, but that won't help you tonight, Bluejay. I'm tired of it!' The Piper's face was white under the soot that blackened even his silver nose. One of the soldiers hit Mo in the face. Two more days...\n\nThe Piper looked at his soot-smeared gloves with distaste. 'All Ombra is laughing at me. \"Look at the Piper,\" they whisper. \"The Fire-Dancer is running rings around his men, and the Black Prince is hiding the children from him! The Bluejay will save us after all.\" Well, enough of that! When I've finished with you tonight they won't think so any more.'\n\nHe came so close to Mo that his nose was almost prodding his enemy's face. 'What about it? Don't you want to use your wonderful voice to call for help? Call all your ragged friends, the Prince and his bear, the Fire-Dancer \u2013 or how about Violante? Her hairy servant is always on my heels, snooping, and hardly an hour goes by without her telling me that you're no use to her father unless you're alive. But her father is nothing like as terrifying these days as he used to be. You've made sure of that yourself.'\n\nViolante. Mo had seen her only once, when they were dragging him off his horse in the castle courtyard. How could he have been stupid enough to believe she'd be able to protect him? He was lost. And Meggie with him. Despair rose in him, such black despair that he felt sick, and the Piper smiled.\n\n'Ah, you're afraid. I like that. I ought to write a song about it. But from now on the only songs sung will be about me \u2013 dark songs, the kind I enjoy. Very dark.'\n\nWith a foolish grin, one of the soldiers went up to Mo holding a stick studded with iron.\n\n'\"The Bluejay will run away from them again!\" That's what they say!' The Piper took a step back. 'But you're never going to run away from anything any more. From now on you're going to crawl, Bluejay. Crawl to me.'\n\nThe two men who had brought him here seized Mo. They forced him up against the bloodstained wall, while the third man raised the iron-studded stick. The Piper stroked his silver nose.\n\n'You'll need your hands for the Book, Bluejay. But why would the Adder mind if I break your legs? And even if he did... as I was saying, the Adderhead's not what he used to be.'\n\nLost.\n\nOh God. Meggie, he thought. Had he ever told her such a terrible story as this? 'No, Mo, no fairy tales!' she always used to say when she was little. 'They're much too sad.' Not as sad as this one.\n\n'What a pity my father was unable to hear your little speech for himself, Piper.' Violante did not raise her voice much, but the Piper whipped round as if she had shouted at him. The soldier with the silly grin lowered the stick, and the others retreated, making way for the Adderhead's daughter. Violante was almost invisible in the black dress she wore. How could they call her ugly? At this moment Mo felt he had never seen a more beautiful face. He hoped the Piper didn't notice how his legs were trembling. He begrudged the silver-nosed man that satisfaction.\n\nA small, furry face appeared beside Violante. Tullio. Had he fetched her? Her Ugliness had half a dozen of her beardless soldiers with her too. They looked so young and vulnerable compared to the Piper's men, but their young hands held crossbows, weapons to be respected even by seasoned men-at-arms.\n\nBut the Piper quickly recovered.\n\n'What do you want here?' he snarled at Violante. 'I'm only making sure your precious prisoner doesn't fly the coop again. It's bad enough for his fiery friend to make us all a laughing stock. Your father's not going to like that one bit.'\n\n'And you are not going to like what I'm about to do.' There was no emotion at all in Violante's voice. 'Tie them up!' she ordered her soldiers. 'Take the chains off the Bluejay and tie him up too, but so that he can still ride.'\n\nThe Piper reached for his sword, but three of Violante's young men overpowered him and dragged him down. Mo could physically feel their hatred for the man. They'd happily have killed the Piper, he saw it on their young faces, and obviously the Piper's men saw it too, for they let themselves be tied up without resisting.\n\n'You ugly little snake!' The Piper's noseless voice sounded even stranger when he raised it. 'So the Milksop was right! You're hand in glove with that pack of robbers. What do you want? The throne of Ombra, and perhaps your father's too?'\n\nViolante's face was as still as if Balbulus had painted it. 'I want just one thing,' she replied. 'I want to deliver the Bluejay to my father intact, so that he can still be useful to him. And in return for that service I will indeed demand the throne of Ombra. Why not? I have ten times more right to it than the Milksop.'\n\nThe soldier who removed Mo's chains was the boy who had opened the sarcophagus for him in Cosimo's vault. 'I'm sorry!' he murmured as he tied him up. He didn't pull the rope very tight around Mo's arms, which were chafed and sore, but it still hurt, and all the time Mo never took his eyes off Violante. He could hear Snapper's hoarse voice in his ears only too clearly. She'll sell you for the throne of Ombra.\n\n'Where are you taking him?' The Piper spat in the face of the soldier tying him up. 'Even if you hide him with the giants, I'll find you!'\n\n'Oh, I've no intention of hiding him,' replied Violante with composure. 'I shall take him to my mother's castle. My father knows the way. And if he is to agree to my conditions, he must go there. I'm sure you'll tell him that.'\n\nShe'll sell you.\n\nViolante's glance moved over Mo as indifferently as if they had never met before. The Piper kicked Mo with his bound legs as Violante's soldiers led him out of the cell, but what was a kick compared to the iron-studded stick he had been about to use?\n\n'You're a dead man, Bluejay!' he shouted after him before one of Violante's soldiers gagged him. 'Dead!'\n\nNot yet, Mo wanted to reply. Not yet.\n\nA maid was waiting outside the barred door. Only when Mo passed her did he see that it was Brianna. So Violante really had taken her back. She nodded to him before following her mistress. Three guards lay unconscious in the passage. Violante stepped over them and followed the corridor down which Mo had been brought, to a narrow tunnel branching off to the left. Tullio hurried ahead, and her soldiers followed in silence, with Mo between them.\n\nHer mother's castle...\n\nWhatever Violante's intentions, he was very thankful to her that he still had the use of his legs.\n\nThe tunnel seemed endless. How did the Adderhead's daughter know so much about the secret ways around this castle?\n\n'I read about this tunnel.' Violante turned to him as if she had heard his thoughts. Or perhaps he was thinking out loud, after all those hours alone in the dark?\n\n'Fortunately for us, I am the only person who uses the castle library,' Violante went on. How she was looking at him \u2013 as if to determine whether he still trusted her! Oh yes, she was like her father. She loved the game of fear and power, just as the Adderhead did, the constant measuring of her strength against others, even to the point of death. So why did he still trust her all the same, in spite of his helplessness?\n\nTwo more tunnels branched off into the darkness, just as narrow as the first. When Tullio looked enquiringly at her, Violante pointed without hesitation to the one on the left. She was a strange woman, so much older than her years. Such coldness, such self-control. Never forget whose daughter she is. The Black Prince had so often urged Mo to remember that, and he was beginning to understand the warning better now. Violante was surrounded by the same aura of cruelty that he had felt in the company of her father, the same impatience with others, the same belief that she was cleverer than most people, better... more important.\n\n'Your Highness?' It was the soldier behind Mo. They all treated their mistress with great respect. 'What about your son?'\n\nViolante did not turn as she replied. 'Jacopo stays here. He'd only give us away.' Her voice was cold. Did you have to learn from your own parents how to love your child? If so, he supposed it was no wonder the Adderhead's daughter didn't know much about it.\n\nMo felt wind on his face. Air that smelt of more than just earth. The tunnel was getting wider. He heard rushing water, and as they came out into the open he saw Ombra high above him. Snow was falling from the black sky, and the river glinted beyond almost leafless bushes. Horses were waiting by the bank, guarded by a soldier, but a boy was holding a knife to the soldier's neck. Farid. Dustfinger stood beside him, sparks in his snow-dusted hair, the two martens at his feet.\n\nWhen Violante's soldiers aimed their crossbows at him, he only smiled. 'Where are you taking your prisoner, Adder's daughter?' he asked. 'I'm the shadow he brought back from the dead with him, and his shadow follows him wherever he goes.'\n\nTullio hid behind Violante's black skirts as if he were afraid Dustfinger would send him up in flames at any moment. But Violante signalled to her soldiers to lower their crossbows. Brianna just looked at her father.\n\n'He's not my prisoner,' said Violante. 'But I don't want my father hearing that from one of his countless spies. Hence the bonds. Shall I remove them all the same, Bluejay?'\n\nShe brought out a knife from under her cloak. Mo exchanged a glance with Dustfinger. He was glad to see him, although his heart still had to accustom itself to that feeling. The sight of Dustfinger had filled him with very different emotions for too many years. But since Death had touched them both they seemed to be made of the same flesh. And the same story. Perhaps there was only a single story anyway?\n\nDon't trust her! said Dustfinger's glance. And Mo knew that he would read his own unspoken answer in his face. I must.\n\n'I'll keep the bonds on,' he said, and Violante hid the knife among the folds of her dress again. Snowflakes clung to its black fabric like tiny feathers.\n\n'I am taking the Bluejay to the castle where my mother grew up,' she said. 'I can protect him there. Here I can't.'\n\n'The Castle in the Lake?' Dustfinger took a bag from his belt and gave it to Farid. 'That's a long way. A good four days' ride on horseback.'\n\n'You've heard of the castle?'\n\n'Who hasn't? But it was abandoned many years ago. Have you ever been there?'\n\nViolante's chin jutted so defiantly that she reminded Mo of Meggie again. 'No, I never have, but I remember all my mother told me about it, and I've read everything that's ever been written about the castle. I know it better than if I had been there.'\n\nDustfinger merely looked at her. Then he shrugged his shoulders. 'If you say so. The Piper isn't there \u2013 that's one good thing, and it's said to be easy to defend.' He scrutinized Violante's young soldiers as if counting their years of life. 'Yes, very likely the Bluejay will be safer there.'\n\nThe snowflakes settling on Mo's bound hands cooled his sore skin. He would hardly be able to use them unless he could move them more freely, at least at night. 'And you're sure your father will follow us to the castle?' His voice sounded as if the despair of the dungeon still clung to it.\n\nViolante smiled. 'Oh yes, indeed he will. He'll follow you anywhere. And he will bring the White Book with him.'\n\nThe White Book. The snow fell as if to paint the whole world as white as its empty pages. Winter had come. Your heartbeats are numbered, Mortimer, he told himself. And Meggie's. Meggie's... how could he still love this world in spite of everything? How was it that his eyes couldn't see enough of the distant trees, so much taller than the trees he had climbed as a boy, and his gaze sought fairies and glass men as if they'd always been a part of his world? Remember, Mortimer, there was once a very different world, a voice whispered inside him. But whatever it whispered, it was wasting its time. Even his own name sounded strange and unreal, and he knew that if there had been a hand trying to close Fenoglio's book for ever, he would have stopped it.\n\n'We have no horse for you, Fire-Dancer.' Violante's voice was hostile. She didn't like Dustfinger. Well, he had felt just the same himself for a long time, hadn't he?\n\nDustfinger gave such a mocking laugh that Violante just stared at him even more coldly. 'Ride on. I'll find you,' he said.\n\nHe was gone even before Violante's men brought Mo a horse, and so was Farid. There were only a few sparks still left glowing in the snow where they had been standing. Mo saw the awe on the faces of Violante's soldiers \u2013 as if they had seen a ghost. And perhaps that wasn't too far off, as a name for a man who had come back from the dead.\n\nStill nothing was moving in the castle. No sentry raised the alarm as the first of the young soldiers rode his horse into the river. No one shouted from the battlements that the Bluejay was escaping again. Ombra was asleep, and the snow covered it with a white blanket, while Dustfinger's fiery bluejays still circled above the roof tops."
            },
            {
                "title": "Pictures from the Ashes",
                "text": "\u2002Dumbledore shook his head. 'Curiosity is not a sin,' he said. 'But we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed...'\n\n\u2014J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\n\nThe cave that Mo and the Black Prince had found, long before Sootbird staged his show, was two hours' journey north of Ombra on foot. That was a long way for children to walk, and winter had come to the Inkworld, with rain that turned to snow more and more often. White moths were suddenly hanging from the bare branches like leaves made of ice, and grey-feathered owls had begun hunting the fairies.\n\n'My own fairies sleep at this time of year,' Fenoglio had said in self-defence, when Despina began crying because an owl had torn two of the tiny creatures to pieces before her eyes. 'But the silly creatures Orpheus has made flutter around as if they'd never heard of winter!'\n\nThe Black Prince led them uphill and downhill, through thickets and stony debris, along such overgrown paths that they usually had to carry the smaller children. Meggie's back was soon aching, but Elinor strode on as if she couldn't wait to see as much as possible of this strange world \u2013 although she went to a great deal of trouble to conceal her delight from the creator of the whole thing. Fenoglio was walking right behind them most of the time, with Resa and Darius. The little girl Resa was carrying looked so like Meggie that, whenever Meggie herself turned round to her mother, it was like looking back to a time that had never been. Mo used to carry her when she was little, always Mo. But when she saw Resa pressing her face into the little girl's hair Meggie wished it had been different. Perhaps then Mo's absence wouldn't have hurt her quite so much.\n\nWhen Resa felt sick halfway to the cave, Roxane told her not to carry any of the children any more. 'Be careful!' Meggie heard her say. 'You don't want to be telling your husband you've lost his child when he comes back, do you?'\n\nIt was obvious now that Resa was pregnant, and sometimes Meggie wanted to put her hand on the place where the child was growing, but she didn't. Tears had sprung to Darius's eyes when he heard about the pregnancy, and Elinor had cried, 'Well, everything has to turn out all right now,' hugging Resa so hard that she must almost have squashed the unborn child. But Meggie kept catching herself thinking: I don't need any sister. Or any brother either. I just want my father back! However, when one of the little boys she had been carrying on her back thanked her with a smacking kiss on her cheek, she felt \u2013 for the first time, and quite unexpectedly \u2013 that she was looking forward to the new baby, and she began imagining what it would be like to have a brother or sister putting small fingers into her own hand.\n\nThey were all glad that Roxane had come with them. Her son had not been among the children taken captive by the Piper and Sootbird, but she had brought Jehan along all the same. Roxane was wearing her long black hair loose again, as the minstrel women did. She smiled more often these days too, and when some of the children started crying because it was such a long way, Meggie heard her sing for the first time. She sang very quietly, but it was enough for Meggie to understand what Battista had once said: When Roxane sings she takes all the sadness from your heart and makes music out of it. How could she be so happy when Dustfinger wasn't with her? 'Because now she knows that he will always come back to her,' Battista said. Did Resa know the same of Mo?\n\nMeggie didn't see the entrance to the cave until she was very close to it. Tall fir trees hid it, thorn-apple, and bushes with white down hanging from their branches, long and soft as human hair. Meggie's skin was still itching hours after she had followed Doria through the dense thickets.\n\nThe crack in the rock leading to the cavern inside was so narrow that the Strong Man had to duck his head and squeeze through it sideways, but the cave itself was tall as a church inside, and the children's voices echoing back from the rock walls were so loud that it seemed to Meggie as if they could be heard all the way to Ombra.\n\nThe Black Prince posted six guards outside. They climbed high into the tops of the surrounding trees. He sent four more men back to obliterate their tracks. Doria went as well, and sitting on his shoulder was Jasper who had attached himself to Doria now that Farid had gone. It was an almost hopeless task to hide the prints of so many small feet, and Meggie could see from the Prince's face how much he would have liked to take the children even further away, far from the Piper and the Milksop's hounds.\n\nThe Black Prince had let half a dozen women come with their children, for he knew his men well enough to realize that they weren't much use as foster mothers. Roxane, Resa and Minerva helped the women to make the cave more comfortable, laying blankets and lengths of cloth between the rocky walls, bringing in more dry leaves so that everyone could sleep more easily, spreading furs over the leaves and piling up stones to make separate niches where the smallest children could bed down. They made a hearth to cook on, took stock of the provisions the robbers had brought \u2013 and kept straining their ears for noises outside, terrified of suddenly hearing the barking of dogs, or soldiers' voices.\n\n'See how greedily they're stuffing their little mouths!' grunted Snapper, when the Black Prince first had food served out to the children. 'Our provisions are hardly going to last a week at this rate. And then what?'\n\n'By then the Adderhead will be long dead,' replied the Strong Man, his tone defiant, but Snapper just laughed scornfully.\n\n'Oh yes? And the Bluejay will kill the Piper at the same time, will he? He'll need more than three words for that. And what about the Milksop and his men-at-arms?'\n\nYes, what about them? No one knew the answer to that. 'Violante will throw them all out once her father's dead!' said Minerva. But Meggie still found it hard to trust Her Ugliness.\n\n'He'll be all right, Meggie!' Elinor kept saying. 'Don't look so sad. If I get the hang of this whole story \u2013 which isn't so easy, since our good friend the author there likes making things complicated,' she added with a reproachful glance at Fenoglio, '\u2013 then they won't touch a hair of your father's head, because he has to cure that Book for the Adderhead. Which presumably he can't do, but that's another problem. Anyway, you wait and see. Everything will end well!'\n\nIf only Meggie could have believed her, as she used to believe Mo. 'It will be all right, Meggie!' That was all he had to say, and she would lay her head against his shoulder in the certain knowledge that he would fix everything. How long ago that was. So very long ago.\n\nThe Black Prince had sent Gecko's tame crows to Ombra \u2013 to the Barn Owl and his informers in the castle \u2013 and Resa stood outside the cave for hours on end, searching the sky for black feathers. But the only bird Gecko brought into the cave on the second day was a bedraggled magpie, and in the end it was Farid, not one of the crows, who brought them news of the Bluejay.\n\nHe was shaking with cold when one of the guards took him to the Black Prince, and his face had the forlorn expression it wore every time Dustfinger had sent him away. Meggie took Elinor's hand as he stammered out his news: Violante was taking Mo to her mother's castle as her prisoner. Dustfinger would follow them. The Piper had hit and threatened Mo... Violante had been afraid he would kill him. Resa buried her face in her hands, and Roxane put an arm around her.\n\n'Her mother's castle? But Violante's mother is dead!' By now Elinor knew her way around Fenoglio's story better than its author himself. She moved among the robbers as if she had always been one of them, got Battista to sing her minstrel songs, asked the Strong Man to show her how to talk to the birds, and made Jasper explain how many different kinds of glass men there were. She kept tripping on the hem of her peculiar dress, she had smudges on her forehead and spiders in her hair, but Elinor looked happier than she had ever been before.\n\n'It's the castle where her mother grew up. Dustfinger knows it.' Farid took a bag from his belt and wiped some soot off the leather. Then he looked at Meggie. 'We made spiders and wolves out of fire to protect your father!' There was no mistaking the pride in his voice.\n\n'But all the same Violante thought he wasn't safe in the castle.' Resa's voice sounded accusing: you can't protect him, in fact, none of you can protect him. He's on his own.\n\n'The Castle in the Lake.' The Black Prince spoke its name as if he did not particularly like Violante's idea either. 'There are many songs about that castle.'\n\n'Dark songs,' added Gecko. The magpie had flown to him and was perching on his shoulder. It was a skinny bird, and it stared at Meggie as if it would like to peck her eyes out.\n\n'What kind of songs?' Resa's voice was husky with fear.\n\n'Oh, ghost stories, that's all. Fanciful nonsense!' Fenoglio pushed past Resa. Despina was clinging to his hand. 'The Castle in the Lake was abandoned long ago, so people fill it with stories, but that's all they are.'\n\n'How reassuring!' The glance that Elinor cast Fenoglio made his face turn red.\n\nHe was in a gloomy mood. Since their arrival at the cave he had been complaining non-stop about the cold, the crying children, or the stench of the bear. Most of the time he sat behind a wall of stones he had built in the darkest corner of the cave, quarrelling with Rosenquartz. Only Ivo and Despina could get a smile out of him \u2013 and Darius, who had joined the old man as soon as they had arrived at the cave and, as he helped Fenoglio to build his wall, started timidly asking him about the world he had created. 'Where do the giants live?' 'Do water-nymphs live longer than human beings?' 'What kind of country lies beyond the mountains?' Darius obviously asked the right questions, for Fenoglio didn't lose patience with him as he had with Orpheus.\n\nThe Castle in the Lake.\n\nFenoglio shook his head when Meggie went to him to find out more about the place to which Her Ugliness was taking her father. 'It wasn't among the main scenes of the story,' was all he would say, grumpily. 'One of many settings. Just scenery! Read my book if you want to know more about it \u2013 if Dustfinger ever lets it out of his hands again, that is! If you ask me, he ought really have given it to me, although we still don't seem to be on speaking terms. After all, I wrote it, but there we are. At least Orpheus doesn't have it any more.'\n\nThe book.\n\nIn fact Dustfinger had passed Inkheart on long ago, but Meggie kept that knowledge to herself, for Farid had asked her to.\n\nHe had handed it over to her mother as swiftly as if Basta might emerge behind him to steal it, just as he had back in the other world. 'Dustfinger says it will be safest with you, because you know how powerful the words in it are,' he had murmured. 'The Black Prince doesn't understand that. But keep it hidden and let nobody know you have it! Orpheus mustn't get it back. Dustfinger is fairly sure, though, that he won't look for it in your hands.'\n\nResa had taken the book only with some reluctance, and finally she hid it in the place where she slept. Meggie's heart beat faster as she took it out from under the blanket. She hadn't held Fenoglio's book in her hands since Mortola had given it to her in Capricorn's arena to read the Shadow into being. It was a strange feeling to open it now that she was in the world it described, and for a moment Meggie feared the pages might suck in everything around her. The rocky ground where she was sitting, the blanket under which her mother slept, the white ice-moth that had lost its way in the cave, the children laughing as they ran after it... had all that really come into existence between these covers? The book seemed so meaningless compared to the marvels it described, just a few hundred printed pages and a dozen pictures not half as good as those that Balbulus painted, all in a silvery-green linen binding. Yet it wouldn't have surprised Meggie to find her own name on the pages, or the names of her mother, Farid, or Mo \u2013 although, no, her father bore another name in this world.\n\nMeggie had never had the chance to read Fenoglio's whole story. Where was she to begin now? Was there a picture of the Castle in the Lake? She was quickly leafing through the pages when she suddenly heard Farid's voice behind her.\n\n'Meggie?'\n\nShe closed the book guiltily, as if every word in it was a secret. How stupid of her. This book didn't know anything about all her fears, it knew nothing of the Bluejay, nor even of Farid...\n\nShe didn't think of him now as often as she used to. It was almost as if, with Dustfinger's return, the chapter about Farid and herself had ended, and the story was beginning again, extinguishing part of the tale it had told before with every new word.\n\n'Dustfinger gave me something else to bring back here.' Farid glanced at the book on her lap as if it were a snake. But then he knelt down beside her and took from his belt the soot-blackened bag that his fingers had been caressing while he delivered his news to the Prince.\n\n'He gave it to me for Roxane,' said Farid quietly, as he sprinkled a fine circle of ashes on the rocky ground. 'But you looked really upset, so...'\n\nHe didn't finish his sentence. Instead he whispered words that only he and Dustfinger understood \u2013 and the fire suddenly licked up from the ashes as if it had been sleeping there. Farid lured it out, praised and enticed it, until it burnt with such heat that the heart of the flames became white as paper, and a picture appeared, difficult to make out at first, then more and more distinct.\n\nHills, densely wooded... soldiers on a narrow path, many soldiers... two women riding among them. Meggie recognized Brianna at once by her hair. The woman in front of her must be Her Ugliness, and there \u2013 with Dustfinger beside him \u2013 rode Mo. Meggie instinctively put her hand out to him, but Farid held her fingers fast.\n\n'He has blood on his face,' she whispered.\n\n'The Piper.' Farid spoke to the flames again, and the picture spread out, showing the path turning towards mountains that Meggie had never seen before, much higher than the hills around Ombra. Snow lay on the way ahead, as it did on the slopes in the distance, and Meggie saw Mo breathing into his cold hands. He looked so strange in the fur-trimmed cloak he wore \u2013 like a character in a fairy tale. He is a character in a fairy tale, Meggie, a voice inside her whispered. The Bluejay... was he still her father too? Had Mo ever looked so serious? Her Ugliness turned to him; of course it was Her Ugliness, who else? They were talking, but the fire showed only silent images.\n\n'You see? He's all right. Thanks to Dustfinger.' Farid stared into the fire with longing, as if that could take him back to Dustfinger's side. Then he heaved a sigh and blew gently on the flames until they turned dark red as if blushing at the pet names he soothed them with.\n\n'Will you follow him?'\n\nFarid shook his head. 'Dustfinger wants me to look after Roxane.' Meggie could sense his bitterness for herself. 'What will you do?' He looked at her with the question in his eyes.\n\n'What am I supposed to do?'\n\nWhisper words, that's all I can do, she added in her mind. All the words the minstrels sing about the Bluejay: how he calms the waves with his voice, how he is invulnerable and fast as the wind, how the fairies protect him, and the White Women watch over his sleep. Words. They were the only means she had of protecting Mo, and she whispered them day and night, in every private moment, sending them after him like the crows that the Black Prince had sent to Ombra.\n\nThe flames had gone out, and Farid was heaping up the warm ashes with his hands when a shadow fell on him. Doria stood behind them, holding hands with two children. 'Meggie, the woman with the loud voice is looking for you.'\n\nThe robbers had many names for Elinor. Meggie couldn't help smiling, but Farid cast a none-too-friendly glance at Doria. He carefully put the ashes back in his bag, and rose to his feet. 'I'll be with Roxane,' he said, kissing Meggie on the mouth. He hadn't done that for weeks. Then he pushed past Doria and strode away without looking back once.\n\n'He kissed her!' one of the children whispered to Doria, just loud enough for Meggie to hear. The child was a girl, and she blushed when Meggie returned her gaze, and hastily hid her face in Doria's side.\n\n'So he did,' Doria whispered back. 'But did she kiss him back?'\n\n'No!' said the boy on his right, sizing up Meggie as if wondering whether kissing her would be fun.\n\n'That's a good thing, then,' said Doria. 'A very good thing.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "An Audience with the Adderhead",
                "text": "\u2002You cannot fully read a book without being alone. But through this very solitude you become intimately involved with people whom you might never have met otherwise, either because they have been dead for centuries or because they spoke languages you cannot understand. And nonetheless, they have become your closest friends, your wisest advisors, the wizards that hypnotize you, the lovers you have always dreamed of.\n\n\u2014Antonio Munoz Molina, The Power of the Pen\n\nJust after midnight the Adderhead's retinue reached Ombra. Orpheus had made Oss wait under the gallows by the city gate for three nights on end, so that he would be sure to hear of the Silver Prince's arrival as soon as the Milksop did.\n\nAll was ready. The Piper had had every door and window in the castle draped with black cloth so that it would be night there for his master even during the day, and the felled trees that the Milksop intended to burn on the castle hearths lay ready in the courtyard, although everyone knew that no fire could drive away the cold that had made its way into the Adderhead's flesh and bones. The one man who could perhaps have done it had escaped from the castle dungeons, and all Ombra wondered how the Silver Prince would take that news.\n\nOrpheus sent Oss to the castle that very night. After all, it was common knowledge that the Adderhead hardly slept at all.\n\n'Say I have information of the utmost importance for him. Say it's about the bookbinder and his daughter.' Having little confidence in his bodyguard's intellectual capacities, he repeated the words half a dozen times, but Oss did his errand well. After just over three hours, hours spent by Orpheus pacing restlessly up and down his study, he came back with the message that the audience was granted, but only on condition Orpheus went to the castle at once, since the Adderhead must rest before he set out again.\n\nSet out again? Aha. So he's playing his daughter's game! Orpheus thought as he hurried up the path to the castle. Very well. Then it's up to you to show him he can't win the game without your help! Involuntarily he licked his lips to keep them smooth for this great task. Never before had he spun his web around such magnificent prey. Curtain up, he whispered to himself again and again. Curtain up!\n\nThe servant who led him through the black-draped corridors to the throne-room said not a single word. It was hot and dark in the castle. Like hell, thought Orpheus. And wasn't that suitable? Didn't people often compare the Adderhead with the devil himself? You had to hand it to Fenoglio, this was a villain of real stature. Beside the Adderhead, Capricorn had been just a cheap play-actor, an amateur \u2013 although no doubt Mortola saw it differently. But who cared what Mortola thought now?\n\nA shudder of delight ran down Orpheus's plump shoulders. The Adderhead! Sprung from a clan that had cultivated the art of evil for generations. There was no cruel act that at least one of his ancestors hadn't committed. Cunning, the lust for power, total lack of any conscience: those were the family's outstanding characteristics. What a combination! Orpheus was excited. His hands were damp and sweating like a boy's on his first date. Again and again he ran his tongue over his teeth as if to sharpen them that way, prepare them for the right words. 'Believe me,' he heard himself saying, 'I can lay this world at your feet, I can make it into anything you like, but for that you must find me a certain book. It is even more powerful than the Book that made you immortal, far more powerful!'\n\nInkheart... no, he wasn't going to think of the night he had lost it, not now, and he certainly wasn't going to think of Dustfinger!\n\nIt was no lighter in the throne-room than in the corridors. A few lost-looking candles burnt among the columns and around the throne. On Orpheus's last visit (as far as he could remember, that was when he had delivered the dwarf to the Milksop), the way to the throne had been lined by stuffed animals, bears, wolves, spotted great cats, and of course the unicorn he had written here, but they were all gone now. Even the Milksop was bright enough to realize that in view of the sparse taxes he had sent to his brother-in-law, these hunting trophies were unlikely to impress the Adderhead. Nothing but darkness filled the great hall now, making the black-clad guards between the columns almost invisible. Only their weapons glinted in the flickering light of the fire that burnt behind the throne. Orpheus went to great pains to stride past them looking unimpressed, but unfortunately he stumbled over the hem of his coat twice, and when he finally stood in front of the throne itself, the Milksop was sitting there, and not his brother-in-law.\n\nOrpheus felt a stab of disappointment, sharp as a knife. He quickly bowed his head to hide it, and tried to find the right things to say, flattering but not too servile. Talking to the powerful called for special skills, but he'd had practice. There had always been people more powerful than he was in his life. His father had been the first, never satisfied with his awkward son who liked books better than working in his parents' shop: those endless hours among the dusty shelves, an ever-friendly smile when he had to serve the tourists who flocked in instead of leafing through a book with hasty fingers, avidly looking for the place where he had last had to leave the world of print. Orpheus couldn't count the slaps he'd earned over his forbidden passion for reading. One every tenth page was probably about it, but the price had never seemed too high. What was a slap for ten pages of escapism, ten pages far from everything that made him unhappy, ten pages of real life instead of the monotony that other people called the real world?\n\n'Your Grace!' Orpheus bent his head even lower. What a ridiculous sight the Milksop was under his silver-powdered wig, his scrawny neck emerging so pathetically from his heavy velvet collar. His pale face was as expressionless as ever \u2013 as if his creator had forgotten to give it eyebrows, just sketching in the eyes and lips lightly.\n\n'You want to speak to the Adderhead?' Even the Milksop's voice was not impressive. Malicious tongues mocked it, saying he wouldn't have to change it very much to use it as a decoy call to the ducks he liked shooting out of the sky.\n\nHow that feeble fool is sweating, thought Orpheus as he smiled deferentially. Well, I expect I'd be sweating in his place. The Adderhead had come to Ombra to kill his worst enemy, only to discover instead that his herald and his brother-in-law had let their valuable prisoner get away. Really, it was amazing that they were both still alive.\n\n'Yes, Your Honour. Whenever it is convenient to the Silver Prince!' Orpheus was delighted to realize that in this empty hall his voice sounded even more effective than usual. 'I have information for him that could be of the greatest significance.'\n\n'About his daughter and the Bluejay?' The Milksop plucked at his sleeves with a deliberately bored expression. Perfumed bonehead.\n\n'Indeed.' Orpheus cleared his throat. 'As you know, I have important clients, influential friends. News comes to my ears that doesn't even reach castles. This time it is alarming news, and I want to make sure that your brother-in-law hears of it.'\n\n'And what might this news be?'\n\nCareful, Orpheus!\n\n'As to that, Your Grace...' he really was taking great pains to sound regretful, 'I would rather tell it only to the Adderhead himself. After all, it concerns his daughter.'\n\n'Whom he will hardly feel like discussing at present!' The Milksop adjusted his wig. 'Sly, ugly creature!' he uttered. 'Abducts my prisoner to steal the throne of Ombra from me! Threatens to kill him if her own father doesn't follow her into the mountains like a dog! As if it hadn't been difficult enough to catch that puffed-up Bluejay! But why do I bother to tell you all this? I suppose because you brought me the unicorn. The best hunt of my life.' In melancholy mood, he stared at Orpheus with eyes almost as pale as his face. 'The more beautiful the game the greater the pleasure of killing it, don't you agree?'\n\n'Words of wisdom, Your Highness, words of wisdom!' Orpheus bowed again. The Milksop loved people to bow to him.\n\nGlancing nervously at the guards, he now leant down to Orpheus. 'I would so much like another unicorn!' he whispered. 'It was a huge success with all my friends. Do you think you can get me another? Maybe a little larger than the last one?'\n\nOrpheus gave the Milksop a confident smile. What a talkative, empty-headed fool he was, but then \u2013 every story needed such characters. They usually died quite early on. It was to be hoped that this general rule held good for the Adderhead's brother-in-law.\n\n'Naturally, Your Highness! That ought not to be any problem,' murmured Orpheus, choosing every word with care, even though this princely fool wasn't worth the trouble. 'But first I must speak to the Silver Prince. Rest assured that my information really is of the utmost importance. And you,' he added, giving the Milksop a crafty smile, 'will receive the throne of Ombra. Get me an audience with your immortal brother-in-law and the Bluejay will meet his well-deserved end at last. Violante will be punished for her deceitfulness, and for your triumphal celebrations I'll get you a Pegasus, which will surely impress your friends even more than the unicorn. You could hunt it with both crossbows and hawks!'\n\nThe Milksop's pale eyes widened with delight. 'A Pegasus!' he breathed as he impatiently waved one of the guards over. 'Fabulous indeed! I'll get you your audience, but let me advise you,' and here he lowered his voice to a whisper, 'not to go too close to my brother-in-law. The stink coming off him has already killed two of my dogs!'\n\nThe Adderhead kept Orpheus waiting another hour. It passed as painfully slowly as few hours had before in his whole life. The Milksop asked him about other creatures that might be hunted, and Orpheus promised basilisks and six-legged lions while his mind put the right words together for the Silver Prince. Every one of them must ring true. After all, the Lord of the Castle of Night was as famous for his clever mind as for his cruelty. Orpheus had done a great deal of thinking since Mortola visited him, and he always came to the same conclusion: he could make his dreams of wealth and influence come true only at the Adderhead's side. Even in a state of physical decay, the Silver Prince still played the leading part here. With his help, Orpheus might perhaps get back the book that had made this world such a wonderful toy before Dustfinger stole it. Not to mention the other book, the one enabling its owner to play with that toy for all eternity...\n\nHow modest you are, Orpheus, he had whispered to himself when the idea first took shape in his mind. Two books, that's all you ask! Just two books \u2013 and one of them full of blank pages and in rather poor condition!\n\nAh, what a life he could lead. Orpheus the all-powerful, Orpheus the immortal, hero of the world he had loved even as a child!\n\n'He's coming! Bow low!' The Milksop jumped up so hastily that his wig slipped down over his receding forehead, and Orpheus came out of his delightful daydreams with a start.\n\nA reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them. Orpheus had discovered that for the first time when, aged nearly eleven, he had tried describing or drawing characters from his favourite books. As the Adderhead came towards him out of the darkness, it was exactly like the day when he first encountered him in Fenoglio's book: he felt fear and admiration, he sensed the evil that surrounded the Silver Prince like black light, and an abundance of power that made it difficult to breathe. But Orpheus had imagined the Silver Prince very much taller. And of course Fenoglio's description had said nothing about that devastated face, the pale and puffy flesh, the swollen hands. Every step the Adderhead took seemed to hurt him. His eyes were bloodshot under their heavy lids. They watered even in the sparse candlelight, and the stench given off by his bloated body made Orpheus want desperately to cover his own mouth and nose.\n\nThe Adderhead didn't deign to look at him as he walked past, breathing heavily. Only when he was sitting on the throne did those reddened eyes turn to his visitor. A lizard's eyes, so Fenoglio had described them. Now they were inflamed slits under swollen lids, and the red jewels that the Adderhead wore in both nostrils were sunk deep, like nails driven into the white flesh.\n\n'You want to tell me something about my daughter and the Bluejay?' He struggled for breath after every other word, but that made his voice no less menacing. 'What is it? That Violante loves power as much as I do, so she's stolen it from me? Is that what you want to tell me? If so, then say goodbye to your tongue, because I'll have it torn out. I greatly dislike having my time wasted \u2013 however much of it I now have at my disposal.'\n\nHis tongue torn out... Orpheus gulped. Not a nice idea at all \u2013 but he still had it at the moment. Even if the stench wafting down from the throne made speaking almost impossible.\n\n'My tongue could come in very useful to you, Your Grace,' he replied, with difficulty suppressing an urge to retch. 'But of course you're free to tear it out at any time.'\n\nThe Adderhead's mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile. Pain carved fine lines around his lips. 'What a delightful offer. I see you take me seriously. Very well, what do you have to say?'\n\nCurtain up, Orpheus, he thought again. On you go, this is your big scene!\n\n'Your daughter Violante,' Orpheus let the name die away for effect before he went on, 'wants more than just the throne of Ombra. She wants yours too. Which is why she is planning to kill you.'\n\nThe Milksop clutched his chest, as if giving the lie to those who claimed that he had a dead partridge there instead of a heart. However, the Adderhead merely stared at Orpheus with his inflamed eyes.\n\n'Your tongue is in great danger,' he said. 'Violante can't kill me, have you forgotten that? No one can.'\n\nOrpheus felt the sweat running down his nose. The fire behind the Adderhead crackled as if it were calling Dustfinger. Oh, devil take it, he was so frightened. But then wasn't he always frightened? Look him straight in the eye, Orpheus, and trust your voice!\n\nThose eyes were terrible. They stripped the skin from his face. And the swollen fingers lay on the arms of the throne like dead flesh.\n\n'Oh yes, she can. If the Bluejay has told her the three words.' His voice really did sound astonishingly composed. Good, Orpheus, very good.\n\n'Ah, those three words... so you've heard about them too. Well, you are right. She could get them out of him under torture. Although I would expect him to say nothing for a very long time... and he could always give her the wrong words.'\n\n'Your daughter doesn't have to torture the Bluejay. She's in league with him.'\n\nYes!\n\nOrpheus saw, from the disfigured face, that such an idea really hadn't occurred to the Silver Prince yet. Ah, this game was fun. This was just the part he wanted to play. They'd soon all be sticking to his cunning tongue like flies on flypaper.\n\nThe Adderhead remained silent for an agonizingly long time.\n\n'Interesting,' he said at last. 'Violante's mother had a weakness for strolling players. I'm sure a robber would have taken her fancy just as much. But Violante is not like her mother. She's like me, although she doesn't care to hear people say so.'\n\n'Oh, I have no doubt of that, Your Highness!' Orpheus injected just enough deference into his voice. 'But why has the illuminator who works in this castle had to do nothing but illustrate songs about the Bluejay for over a year? Your daughter has sold her jewels to pay for paints. She's obsessed by that robber, he dominates her mind. Ask Balbulus! Ask him how often she sits in the library staring at the pictures he's painted of the man! And ask yourself, how is it possible for the Bluejay to have escaped from this castle twice in the last few weeks?'\n\n'I can't ask Balbulus anything.' The Adderhead's voice seemed made for this black-draped hall. 'The Piper is having him hunted out of town at this very moment. He cut his right hand off first.'\n\nThat really did silence Orpheus for a moment. His right hand. Instinctively, he touched his own writing hand. 'Why... er... if I may ask, Your Highness, why did he do that?' he managed in a thread of a voice.\n\n'Why? Because my daughter thought highly of his art, and I hope the stump of his wrist will make it clear to her how very angry I am. For Balbulus will of course take refuge with her. Where else would he go?'\n\n'Indeed. How clever of you.' Orpheus involuntarily moved his fingers as if to reassure himself that they were still there. He had run out of words; his brain was a blank sheet of paper and his tongue a dried-up pen.\n\n'Shall I let you into a secret?' The Adderhead licked his cracked lips. 'I like what my daughter has done! I can't allow it, but it pleases me. She doesn't care for being ordered around. Neither the Piper nor my pheasant-murdering brother-in-law \u2013' here he cast a look of disgust at the Milksop \u2013 'has realized that. As for the Bluejay, it may well be that Violante is only pretending to him that she will protect him. She's wily. She knows as well as I do that it's easy to trick heroes. You just have to make a hero believe you're on the side of what's right and just, and he'll go trotting after you like a lamb to the slaughter. But in the end Violante will sell me her noble robber. For the crown of Ombra. And who knows... perhaps I really will let her have it.'\n\nThe Milksop was looking straight ahead as fixedly as if he hadn't heard those last words spoken by his overlord and brother-in-law. However, the Adderhead leant back and patted his bloated thighs. 'I think your tongue is mine, Four-Eyes,' he said. 'Any last words before you're left as mute as a fish?'\n\nThe Milksop smiled unpleasantly, and Orpheus's lips began to tremble as if they already felt the pincers. No. No, this couldn't be happening. He hadn't found his way into this story just to end up a mute beggar in the streets of Ombra.\n\nHe gave the Adderhead what he hoped was an enigmatic smile and clasped his hands behind his back. Orpheus knew that this posture made him look rather imposing; he had rehearsed it often enough in front of the mirror. But now he needed words. Words that would cast ripples in this story, circling outwards like stones thrown into still water.\n\nHe lowered his voice as he began to speak again. A word weighs more heavily if it is softly uttered.\n\n'Very well, then these are my last words, Your Highness, but rest assured that they will also be the last words you remember when the White Women come for you. I swear to you by my tongue that your daughter plans to kill you. She hates you, and you underestimate her romantic weakness for the Bluejay. She wants the throne for him, and for herself. That's the only reason why she freed him. Robbers and princes' daughters have always been a dangerous mixture.'\n\nThe words grew in the dark hall as if they had a shadow. And the Adderhead's hooded gaze rested on Orpheus as if to poison him with its own evil.\n\n'But that's ridiculous!' The Milksop's voice made him sound like an injured child. 'Violante is little more than a girl, and an ugly one at that. She'd never dare turn against you!'\n\n'Of course she would!' For the first time the Adderhead's voice rose, and the Milksop compressed his narrow lips in alarm. 'Violante is fearless, unlike my other daughters. Ugly, but fearless. And very cunning... like this man.' Once again his eyes, clouded with pain, turned to Orpheus.\n\n'You're a viper like me, am I right? Poison runs in our veins, not blood. It consumes us too, but it is deadly only to others. It also runs in Violante's veins, so she will betray the Bluejay, whatever else she may intend at the moment.' The Adderhead laughed, but it turned into a cough. He struggled for breath, gasping as if water were filling his lungs, but when the Milksop bent over him in concern he pushed him roughly away. 'What do you want?' he spat at his brother-in-law. 'I'm immortal, remember?' And he laughed again, a wheezing, gasping laugh. Then the lizard eyes moved back to Orpheus.\n\n'I like you, milk-faced viper. You seem much more like a member of my family than that fellow.' With an impatient gesture, he thrust the Milksop aside. 'But he has a beautiful sister, so one has to take the brother on with her. Do you have a sister as well? Or can you be of use to me in some other way?'\n\nThis is going well, thought Orpheus. Very well indeed! Now I'll soon be weaving my own thread through the fabric of this story \u2013 and what colour will I choose? Gold? Black? Maybe blood red?\n\n'Oh,' he said, casting a weary glance at his fingernails \u2013 another effective trick, as the mirror had shown him. 'I can be useful to you in many ways. Ask your brother-in-law. I make dreams come true. I tailor things to your own wishes.'\n\nCareful, Orpheus, you don't have the book back yet. What are you promising?\n\n'Oh, a magician, are you?' The contempt in the Adderhead's voice was a warning.\n\n'No, I wouldn't call it that,' Orpheus was quick to reply. 'Let's just say my art is black. As black as ink.'\n\nInk! Of course, Orpheus! he told himself.\n\nWhy hadn't he thought of that before? Dustfinger had stolen his favourite book from him, it was true, but Fenoglio had written others. Why wouldn't the old man's words still work even if they didn't come from Inkheart? Where were the Bluejay songs that Violante was said to have collected so carefully? Didn't people say she'd ordered Balbulus to fill several books with them?\n\n'Black? A colour I like.' The Adderhead, groaning, heaved himself out of his throne. 'Brother-in-law, give the little viper a horse. I'll take him with me. It's a long way to the Castle in the Lake, and perhaps he'll help me to pass the time.'\n\nOrpheus bowed so deeply that he almost toppled over. 'What an honour!' he stammered \u2013 you always had to give powerful people the feeling that you could hardly speak in their presence. 'But in that case, might I most humbly ask Your Highness a favour?'\n\nThe Milksop cast him a distrustful glance. What if that fool had bartered Balbulus's books of Fenoglio's songs for a few casks of wine? He'd read him an attack of the plague!\n\n'I am a great lover of the art of book illumination,' Orpheus went on, without taking his eyes off the Milksop, 'and I've heard wonderful things about the library in this castle. I'd very much like to see the books, and perhaps take one or two on the journey. Who knows, I may even be able to entertain you with their contents on the way!'\n\nIndifferently, the Adderhead shrugged his shoulders. 'Why not? If you'll work out, while you're at it, how much silver those that my brother-in-law hasn't yet exchanged for wine are worth.'\n\nThe Milksop bent his head, but Orpheus had seen the vicious dislike in his eyes.\n\n'Of course.' Orpheus bowed as low as he could.\n\nThe Adderhead came down the steps of the throne and stopped in front of him, breathing heavily. 'When making your estimate, you should take into account the fact that books illuminated by Balbulus have risen in value!' he remarked. 'After all, he won't be producing any new works without his hand, and that certainly makes those already in existence more valuable, don't you agree?'\n\nOnce again Orpheus found it hard not to retch as the Adderhead's foul breath met his face, but all the same he managed to produce an admiring smile.\n\n'How extremely clever of you, Your Highness!' he replied. 'The perfect penalty! May I ask what punishment you intend for the Bluejay? Perhaps it would be appropriate to separate him from his tongue first, since everyone goes into such raptures about his voice?'\n\nBut the Adderhead shook his head. 'No, no. I have better plans for the Bluejay. I'm going to flay him alive and make his skin into parchment, and we want him to be able to scream as it's done to him, don't we?'\n\n'Of course!' breathed Orpheus. 'What a truly fitting punishment for a bookbinder! May I suggest that you write a warning to your enemies on this very special parchment and have it hung up in marketplaces? I will happily provide you with suitable words. In my trade one must be able to use words with skill.'\n\n'Well, well, you're obviously a man of many talents.' The Adderhead was examining him with something like amusement.\n\nNow, Orpheus! he told himself. Even if you do find Fenoglio's songs in the library, there's no substitute for that one book. Tell him about Inkheart!\n\n'I assure you, all my talents are at your disposal, Highness,' he faltered. 'But to practise my arts to perfection I need something that was stolen from me.'\n\n'Indeed? And what might that be?'\n\n'A book, Your Grace! The Fire-Dancer has stolen it, but I believe he did it at the request of the Bluejay, who is certain to know where it is now. So if you were to ask him about it as soon as he is in your power...'\n\n'A book? Did the Bluejay bind you a book too, I wonder?'\n\n'Oh no. No!' Orpheus waved the mere notion away. 'He has nothing to do with this book. No bookbinder captured its power inside the covers. It's the words in it that make it powerful. With those words, Your Grace, this world can be re-created, and every living thing in it made subject to your own purposes.'\n\n'Indeed? For instance, trees would bear silver fruit? It could be night for ever if I wanted?'\n\nHow he was staring at him \u2013 like a snake staring at a mouse! Not a word out of place now, Orpheus!\n\n'Oh, yes.' Orpheus nodded eagerly. 'I brought your brother-in-law a unicorn with the aid of that book. And a dwarf.'\n\nThe Adderhead cast the Milksop a derisive glance. 'Yes, that sounds like the kind of thing my good brother-in-law would want. My wishes would be rather different.'\n\nHe scrutinized Orpheus with satisfaction. Obviously the Adderhead had realized that the same kind of heart beat in both their breasts \u2013 black with vanity and the desire for vengeance, in love with its own cunning, full of contempt for those whose hearts were ruled by other feelings. Orpheus knew what state his own heart was in, and he feared only that those inflamed eyes might also uncover what he hid even from himself: his envy of the innocence of others, his longing for an unblemished heart.\n\n'What about my rotting flesh?' The Adderhead passed his swollen fingers over his face. 'Can you cure that too with this book, or do I still need the Bluejay to do it?'\n\nOrpheus hesitated.\n\n'Ah. I see... you're not sure.' The Adderhead's mouth twisted, his dark lizard eyes almost lost in his flesh. 'And you're clever enough not to promise what you can't perform. Well, I'll return to your other promises and give you a chance to ask the Bluejay about the book that was stolen from you.'\n\nOrpheus bowed his head. 'Thank you, Your Grace!' Oh, this was going well. Very well indeed.\n\n'Highness!' The Milksop was hurrying down the steps of the throne. His voice really was like a duck quacking, and Orpheus imagined not a wild boar or his fabulous unicorn being carried through the streets of Ombra as a trophy of the hunt, but the Milksop himself, his silver-powdered wig full of blood and dust. However, he'd be a poor sight in comparison with the unicorn.\n\nOrpheus exchanged a quick glance with the Adderhead, and for a moment it seemed to him as if they were seeing the same picture.\n\n'You ought to rest now, my prince,' said the Milksop, with obviously exaggerated concern. 'It was a long journey, and another lies ahead of you.'\n\n'Rest? How am I supposed to rest when you and the Piper have let the man who turned me into a piece of rotting meat escape? My skin is burning. My bones are icy. My eyes feel as if every ray of light pierced them with a pin. I can't rest until that accursed Book has stopped poisoning me and the man who bound it is dead. I picture it to myself every night, brother-in-law \u2013 just ask your sister \u2013 every night I pace up and down, unable to sleep, imagining him wailing and screaming and begging me for a quick death, but I'll have as many torments ready for him as that murderous Book has pages. He'll curse it even more often than I do \u2013 and he'll very soon find out that my daughter's skirts are no protection from the Adderhead!'\n\nOnce again a racking cough shook him, and for a moment his swollen hands clutched Orpheus by the arm. Their flesh was pale as a dead fish. It smells like a dead fish too, thought Orpheus. Yet he's still the lord of this story.\n\n'Grandfather!' The boy emerged from the darkness as suddenly as if he had been standing in the shadows all this time. He had a pile of books in his small arms.\n\n'Jacopo!' The Adderhead swung round so abruptly that his grandson stood rooted to the ground. 'How often do I have to tell you that even a prince doesn't walk into the throne-room unannounced?'\n\n'I was here before the rest of you!' Jacopo raised his chin and pressed the books to his chest, as if they could shield him from his grandfather's anger. 'I often come in here to read \u2013 over there, behind my great-great-great-grandfather's statue.' He pointed to the statue of a very fat man standing among the columns.\n\n'In the dark?'\n\n'You can see the pictures the words paint in your head better in the dark. Anyway, Sootbird gave me these.' He put out his hand, showing his grandfather a couple of candles.\n\nThe Adderhead frowned, and bent down to his grandson. 'You will not read in the throne-room as long as I'm here. You won't even put your head around the door. You will stay in your own room, or I'll have you shut in with the hounds like Tullio, understand? By the emblem of my house, you look more and more like your father. Can't you at least cut your hair?'\n\nJacopo held the gaze of those reddened eyes for an astonishingly long time, but finally he bowed his head, turned without a word and stalked away, the books still held in front of him like a shield.\n\n'He really is coming to look more like Cosimo all the time!' remarked the Milksop. 'But he gets his arrogance from his mother.'\n\n'No, he gets it from me,' the Adderhead told him. 'A very useful quality for him when he sits on the throne.'\n\nThe Milksop cast an anxious glance after Jacopo. But the Adderhead struck his brother-in-law's chest with his swollen fist. 'Summon your men!' he ordered him. 'I have work for you to do.'\n\n'Work?' Looking ill at ease, the Milksop raised his brows. He had dusted them with silver, like his wig.\n\n'Yes, for a change you won't be hunting unicorns, you'll be hunting children. Or do you want to let the Black Prince get away with hiding those brats in the forest, while you and the Piper are busy letting my daughter lead you by the nose like dancing bears?'\n\nThe Milksop twisted his pale mouth, looking injured. 'We had to prepare for your arrival, dear brother-in-law, and try to catch the Bluejay again\u2014'\n\n'In which attempt you weren't particularly successful!' the Adderhead brusquely interrupted him. 'Luckily my daughter has told us where we can find him, and while I recapture the bird you two so generously allowed to go free, you can bring the children here for me \u2013 along with that knife-thrower who calls himself a prince, so that he can watch me skin the Jay. I fear his own skin is too black to make parchment, so I'll have to think of something else for him. Fortunately I am very inventive in such matters. But, to be sure, they say the same of you, don't they?'\n\nThe Milksop flushed, obviously flattered, although it was clear that the prospect of hunting children through the forest didn't excite him half as much as a unicorn hunt, perhaps because they were prey that couldn't be eaten.\n\n'Good.' The Adderhead turned and walked on unsteady legs towards the door of the hall. 'Send me Sootbird and the Piper!' he called over his shoulder. 'He should be through with chopping off hands by now. And tell the maids that Jacopo will go with me to the Castle in the Lake. No one spies on his mother better than that child, even though she doesn't especially like him.'\n\nThe Milksop stared at him expressionlessly. 'As you please,' he murmured in a thin voice.\n\nBut the Adderhead turned once more as the servants scurried to open the heavy door for him.\n\n'As for you, milkface.' Orpheus couldn't help instinctively giving a start. 'I set off at sunset. My brother-in-law will tell you where you must be then. You'll have to bring your own servant, and a tent. And make sure you don't bore me. Parchment could always be made of your skin too.'\n\n'Your Highness!' Orpheus bowed again, although he was feeling weak at the knees. Had he ever played a more dangerous game? But everything will be all right, he told himself. You wait and see, Orpheus. This story is yours. It was written for you alone. No one loves it better, no one understands it better, certainly not the old fool who wrote it in the first place!\n\nThe Adderhead had been gone for some time, but Orpheus still stood there as if beguiled by the promise of the future.\n\n'So you're a magician. Fancy that.' The Milksop was inspecting him as if he were a caterpillar that had turned into a black moth before his eyes. 'Is that why the unicorn was so easy to hunt? Because it wasn't real?'\n\n'Oh, it was real enough,' replied Orpheus with a patronizing smile. It was made of the same stuff as you, he added in his mind. This Milksop creature really was a pathetic character. As soon as he could make the words come to life again he'd write a totally ridiculous kind of death for him. Suppose he had him torn to pieces by his own hounds? No. He'd make him choke to death on a chicken bone at one of his banquets, and then have him falling on his silver-dusted face into a large dish of black pudding. That was it. Orpheus couldn't help smiling.\n\n'That smile will soon be wiped off your face!' the Milksop hissed at him. 'The Adderhead doesn't like having his expectations disappointed.'\n\n'Oh, I'm sure you know that better than anyone,' replied Orpheus. 'Now kindly show me the library.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Four Berries",
                "text": "\u2003On my wall hangs a Japanese mask\n\n\u2003of gilded wood, the mask of an evil demon.\n\n\u2003With sympathy, I see\n\n\u2003the veins at his temples swelling,\n\n\u2003showing what a strain it is to be bad.\n\n\u2014Bertolt Brecht, The Mask of Evil\n\nThe marten was worse than the bear. He was watching her, he was chattering her name into the boy's ear (fortunately the boy didn't understand him) and chasing her away. But a time came when the marten followed the boy outside, and the bear just raised his heavy head when she hopped up to the bowl of soup that one of the women had put in front of his master.\n\nNothing was easier to poison than soup. The Black Prince was arguing with Snapper once again, and his back was turned as she dropped the dark red berries into the dish. Five tiny berries, that was all it would take to send the prince of the robbers to another kingdom, one where his bear wouldn't be able to follow him. But just as she was about to let the fifth berry fall from her beak the wretched marten shot towards her, as if even outside he had scented what she was planning. The berry rolled away, and Mortola prayed to all the devils in hell that four would be enough to kill.\n\nThe Black Prince. Another high-minded fool. Presumably his heart felt a pang every time he saw a cripple. He'd never help her to get hold of the book that would let her bargain with Death, not he. But fortunately men like that were less common than white ravens, and most of them died young. Such men didn't want what made other hearts beat faster: riches, power, fame. No, the Black Prince wasn't interested in any of that. Justice made his heart beat faster. Pity. Love. As if life hadn't treated him just as badly as the others. Kicks and blows, pain and hunger. He'd known more than enough of all that. So where did the pity that motivated him come from? And the warmth of his silly heart, the laughter in his face? He simply didn't see the world as it really was, that was the explanation \u2013 neither the world nor the people he felt so sorry for. Because if you did see them for what they were, what on earth would make you want to fight and even die for them?\n\nNo, if anyone could help her to get her hands on the White Book before the Bluejay wrote in it and ransomed himself from Death, it was Snapper. He was a man after Mortola's own heart. Snapper saw people as they really were: greedy and cowardly, full of self-interest, cunning. Only one kind of injustice had made him a robber, injustice to himself. Mortola knew all about him. One of the Laughing Prince's stewards had seized his farm, the way the powerful classes so often simply took what they wanted. That, and nothing else, had driven him into the forest. Yes, she could deal with Snapper.\n\nMortola knew exactly how to harness him for her own purposes once the Black Prince was out of the way. 'What are you all still doing here, Snapper?' she would whisper to him. 'There are more important things in life than looking after a few snotty-nosed children! The Bluejay knows why he's really landed you with them. He's planning to sell you all! You must kill him before he throws in his lot with the Adderhead's daughter. How did he try fooling you \u2013 by saying he only wanted to write in the White Book to kill the Adderhead? Nonsense! He wants to make himself immortal! And there's something else I'm sure he hasn't told you. The White Book doesn't just keep Death at bay \u2013 it makes its owner rich beyond the dreams of avarice!'\n\nOh yes, Mortola knew how Snapper's eyes would light up at those words. He didn't understand what made the Bluejay tick. Nor would he understand that she herself wanted the Book only to buy her son back from Death. But he would certainly set off at once with the prospect of gold and silver before his eyes. As soon as the Black Prince couldn't stop him any more... and luckily the berries worked fast.\n\nGecko called to her. He had filled his hand with breadcrumbs and was holding it up as if there were nothing tastier in the world. What a fool. Thought he knew something about birds. Well, perhaps he really did. After all, she was no ordinary bird. Mortola uttered a hoarse laugh. It sounded strange, coming from that pointed beak, and the Strong Man raised his head and looked up at the rocky ledge where she was perching. Yes, he knew about birds and what they said. She'd have to watch him carefully. 'Oh, never mind, kek-kek-kek, kraaa!' said the magpie in her, the magpie that thought only of worms and shiny things and the gleam of its black feathers. 'They're all fools, fools, such fools. But I am clever. Come along, old woman, let's fly after the Bluejay and peck his eyes out. What fun!'\n\nEvery day it was getting more difficult to keep her wings still when the magpie wanted to spread them, and Mortola had to shake her bird's head harder and harder to make it think human thoughts. Sometimes she couldn't even remember for sure what human thoughts were like.\n\nNow the feathers would shoot out through her skin even without the seeds. She had already swallowed too many, and the poison was wandering through her body and sowing the bird in her blood. Never mind. You'll find a way to drive it out, Mortola, she thought. But first the bookbinder must be dead and her son alive again! His face... what did it look like? She could hardly remember.\n\nThe Black Prince was still arguing with Snapper, as he did so often these days. Eat it! Start eating, you fool! Two other robbers came along \u2013 the pock-marked actor who was always at the Prince's side, and Gecko, who saw the world as Snapper did. One of the women came over to them, brought the actor a bowl of soup too and pointed to the one she had put in front of the Prince.\n\nThat's right, listen to her! Sit down! Eat! Mortola thrust her head forward. She felt how her human body wanted to shake off the feathers, how it longed to spread and stretch. Yesterday a couple of children had almost caught her shape-shifting. Silly, noisy nuisances. She'd never liked children \u2013 except her own son, and she had never let even him see that she loved him. Love ruined you. It made you soft, gullible...\n\nThere. He was eating. At last. Yes, enjoy it, Prince! The bear trotted up to his master and snuffled at the bowl. Get out, you clumsy great brute. Let him eat it. Four berries. Five would have been better, but with a little luck four would do the trick. It was useful that the trees they grew on were far from rare. Two of them stood only a little way below the cave. Resa was always warning the children not to try their berries.\n\nThe Black Prince put the bowl to his mouth and drank the dregs. Good. He'd soon feel Death twisting his guts. Mortola uttered a triumphant croak and spread her wings. Gecko raised his hand with the breadcrumbs again as she flew away over his head. Idiot. They were all stupid, very, very stupid. But that was just as well.\n\nThe women began ladling soup out for the children, and Silvertongue's daughter stood far away at the back of the long line. There'd be enough time to pick a few berries for her too. More than enough time."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Hand of Death",
                "text": "\u2003Death is great.\n\n\u2003Laugh as we may,\n\n\u2003we are its own.\n\n\u2003In life's bright day\n\n\u2003It weeps its way\n\n\u2003Into our hearts.\n\n\u2014Rainer Maria Rilke, Closing Piece\n\nMinerva made good soup. Meggie had often eaten it when she was staying with Fenoglio, and the aroma rising from the steaming bowls was so delicious that for a moment the huge, chilly cave really seemed like home. 'Please, Meggie, do eat something!' Resa had said. 'I don't have an appetite any more than you do, but it's not going to help your father if we starve to death because we're so worried about him.'\n\nNo, she supposed not. When she'd asked Farid to call up the fiery pictures for her again, the flames had shown nothing. 'You can't force them!' Farid had muttered in annoyance as he put the ashes back into his bag. 'The flames like to play, so you have to pretend you don't really want anything from them. But how am I supposed to do that when you're staring at them as if it were a matter of life and death?'\n\nWell, what else was it? Even the Black Prince was anxious about Mo. He had decided to follow Violante to the Castle in the Lake with a few men. He was going to set off tomorrow, but he wouldn't take Resa and Meggie with him. 'Of course not,' Meggie's mother had whispered bitterly. 'This world belongs to men.'\n\nMeggie picked up the wooden spoon that Doria had carved for her (it was a very good spoon) and listlessly stirred the soup. Jasper peered at it longingly. Of course. Glass men loved human food, although it wasn't good for them. Jasper was spending more and more time with Doria, even though Farid was back. Meggie wasn't surprised. Farid had been far from talkative since Dustfinger sent him away again. Most of the time he walked restlessly in the surrounding hills or tried to call up pictures in the fire. So far Roxane had looked into the flames only once. 'Thank you,' she had said to Farid afterwards, her voice cool. 'But I'd rather go on listening to my heart. It usually tells me whether he's all right.'\n\n'There, isn't that just what I told Dustfinger?' Farid had said, annoyed. 'So why did he send me to her? She doesn't need me. She'd bewitch me away if she could.'\n\nDoria offered Jasper his spoon.\n\n'Don't give him any!' said Meggie. 'He can't digest it! Ask him.' She was very fond of Jasper. He was so much friendlier than Rosenquartz, who liked nothing better than losing his temper and quarrelling with Fenoglio.\n\n'She's right,' muttered Jasper gloomily, but his sharp little nose sniffed, as if at least to fill his glass body with the forbidden aroma. The children sitting around Meggie giggled. They all liked the glass man, and Doria often had to rescue him from their small hands. They liked the marten too, but Jink snapped and spat when the fuss the children made of him got to be too much. The glass man, however, had little defence against human fingers.\n\nThe soup really did smell good. Meggie dipped her spoon into her bowl \u2013 and jumped when the magpie that had flown to Gecko fluttered over to her own shoulder. By now the bird seemed to belong in the cave, like Jink and the bear, but Resa disliked it.\n\n'Get away!' she said, shooing the magpie off Meggie's shoulder. The bird croaked angrily and jabbed at Resa with its beak. Meggie was so startled that she spilt the hot soup over her hands.\n\n'Sorry.' Resa mopped the liquid off Meggie's fingers with the hem of her dress. 'I can't stand that bird. I expect it's because it reminds me of Mortola.'\n\nThe Magpie \u2013 of course. It was a long time since Meggie had thought about Capricorn's mother, but then she hadn't been there when Mortola had shot Mo. Resa had.\n\n'It's only a bird,' said Meggie, her thoughts already far away again, following her father. She had found very little about the Castle in the Lake in Fenoglio's book. Deep in the mountains, in the middle of a lake... an endless bridge over black water. Was Mo riding over that bridge now? Suppose she and Resa simply followed the Black Prince? Do you hear, Meggie? Whatever happens, stay with the robbers! Promise me!\n\nResa pointed to the bowl in her lap. 'Do please eat it, Meggie!'\n\nBut Meggie turned to Roxane, who was quickly making her way past the children as they sat there eating. Her beautiful face was paler than Meggie had seen it since Dustfinger's return. Resa stood up, looking anxious.\n\n'What's happened?' She took Roxane's arm. 'Is there any news? Has anything been heard of Mo? You must tell me!'\n\nBut Roxane shook her head. 'The Prince...' The anxiety in her voice was plainly audible. 'He's not well, and I don't know what it is. He has terrible stomach cramps. I have a few roots here that may help him.'\n\nShe moved on, but Resa held her back again. 'Stomach cramps? Where is he?'\n\nMeggie heard the bear's howl from far away. The Strong Man was looking like a desperate child as they made their way towards him. Battista was there too, with Woodenfoot and Elfbane. The Black Prince lay on the ground. Minerva was kneeling beside him, trying to get some liquid into his mouth, but he writhed in pain, pressed his hands to his body and struggled for breath. Sweat stood out on his forehead.\n\n'Quiet, bear!' he gasped. He could hardly get the words past his lips; he had bitten them in his pain until they bled. But the bear went on howling and snorting as if his own life was at stake.\n\n'Let me by.' Resa pushed them all aside, even Minerva, and took the Prince's face between her hands.\n\n'Look at me!' she said. 'Please, look at me!'\n\nShe wiped the sweat from his brow and looked into his eyes.\n\nRoxane came back with a few roots in her hand, and the magpie flapped its way over to Gecko's shoulder.\n\nResa stared at it.\n\n'Strong Man!' she said, so quietly that no one but Meggie heard her. 'Catch that bird.'\n\nThe magpie jerked its head as the Black Prince writhed in Minerva's arms.\n\nThe Strong Man looked at Resa, his face streaming with tears, and nodded. But when he took a step towards Gecko, the magpie flew away and perched on a ledge high up below the roof of the cave.\n\nRoxane knelt beside Resa.\n\n'He's lost consciousness,' said Minerva. 'And see how shallow his breathing is!'\n\n'I've seen cramps like these before.' Resa's voice was trembling. 'The berries that cause them are dark red, not much bigger than a pinhead. Mortola liked to use them because they're easily mixed with food, and they bring a very painful death. There are two of the trees they grow on just below this cave! I've warned the children not to eat the berries.' She looked up at the magpie again.\n\n'Is there an antidote?' Roxane straightened her back. The Black Prince lay there as if dead, and the bear pushed his muzzle into his master's side and moaned like a human being.\n\n'Yes. A flower with tiny white blooms that smell of carrion.' Resa was still looking up at the bird. 'The root alleviates the effect of the berries.'\n\n'What's wrong with him?' Fenoglio made his way past the women, a look of concern on his face. Elinor was with him. The pair of them had spent all morning in Fenoglio's corner of the cave, arguing about what was good in his story and what wasn't. Whenever someone came near them they lowered their voices like conspirators, as if any of the children or the robbers could have understood what they were talking about.\n\nElinor put her hand to her mouth with alarm when she saw the Black Prince lying there motionless. She looked incredulous, as if she had found a wrongly printed page in a book.\n\n'Poisoned.' The Strong Man stood up, clenching his fists. His face was the dark red colour that it usually turned only when he was drunk. He took Gecko by his scrawny neck and shook him like a rag doll. 'Did you do this?' he cried. 'Or was it Snapper? Come on, tell us or I'll beat it out of you! I'll break all your bones until you're writhing in agony too!'\n\n'Let him go!' Roxane snapped. 'That's not going to help the Prince now!'\n\nThe Strong Man let go of Gecko and started sobbing. Minerva put her arms round him. But Resa looked up at the magpie again.\n\n'The plant you describe sounds like deathbud,' Roxane told her, while Gecko, coughing, rubbed his neck and cursed the Strong Man roundly. 'It's very rare. And even if it grew here it would have died down in the cold long ago. Isn't there anything else?'\n\nThe Black Prince came to his senses and tried to sit up, but he fell back with a groan. Battista knelt down beside him and looked at Roxane in search of help. The Strong Man too turned his tearful eyes on her like a pleading dog.\n\n'Don't stare at me like that!' she cried, and Meggie heard the desperation in her voice. 'I can't help him. Try giving him retchwort,' she told Minerva. 'And I'll go and look for deathbud roots, though I'm afraid there's not much point.'\n\n'Retchwort will only make it worse,' said Resa in a toneless voice. 'Believe me, I've seen this often enough.'\n\nThe Black Prince gasped in agony and buried his face against Battista's side. Then his body suddenly went limp, as if it had lost its battle against the pain. Roxane quickly knelt down beside him, putting her ear to his chest and her fingers on his mouth. Meggie tasted her own tears on her lips, and the Strong Man began sobbing like a child.\n\n'Still alive,' said Roxane. 'But only just.'\n\nGecko slipped away, probably to tell Snapper what was going on. But Elinor whispered something to Fenoglio. He turned away angrily, but Elinor held him back and went on talking insistently to him. 'Don't make such a fuss!' Meggie heard her whisper. 'Of course you can do it! Are you going to leave him to die?'\n\nMeggie was not the only one to have heard those last words. The Strong Man, bewildered, mopped the tears off his face. The bear groaned again and nuzzled his master's side. But Fenoglio still stood there, staring at the unconscious Prince. Then he took a hesitant step in Roxane's direction.\n\n'This... er... this flower, Roxane...'\n\nElinor stayed right behind him, as if she had to make sure he said the right thing. Fenoglio looked at her in annoyance.\n\n'What?' Roxane looked at him.\n\n'Tell me more about it. Where does it grow? How tall is it?'\n\n'It likes moist, shady places, but why ask? I told you, it'll have died down in the frost long ago.'\n\n'White flowers, tiny. Shady, moist surroundings.' Fenoglio passed his hand over his tired face. Then he turned abruptly and took Meggie's arm.\n\n'Come with me,' he told her in a low voice. 'We must hurry.'\n\n'Moist and shady,' he murmured as he led Meggie off with him. 'Right, so if they grew at the entrance of a brownie's burrow, protected by the warm air coming out of the burrow where a few brownies are hibernating... yes, that makes sense. Yes!'\n\nThe cave was almost empty. The women had taken the children out so that they wouldn't hear the Prince's cries of pain. A few small groups of robbers still sat there in silence, staring at one another as if wondering which of them had tried to kill their leader. Snapper was near the entrance with Gecko, and he returned Meggie's glance with such a black expression that she quickly looked the other way.\n\nFenoglio, however, did not avoid his eyes. 'I wonder if it was Snapper,' he whispered to Meggie.' Yes, I really do wonder.'\n\n'If anyone ought to know it's you!' muttered Elinor, who had followed them. 'Who else made up that horrible fellow?'\n\nFenoglio spun round as if something had stung him. 'Now you listen to me, Loredan! I've been patient with you so far because you're Meggie's aunt\u2014'\n\n'Great-aunt,' Elinor corrected him, unmoved.\n\n'Whatever. I never invited you into this story, so you will kindly spare me any remarks about my characters in future!'\n\n'Oh, will I?' Elinor's voice rose. It was loud enough to echo right through the huge cave. 'And suppose I'd spared you my comment just now? Your befuddled brain would never have thought of getting the flower here by\u2014'\n\nFenoglio pressed his hand roughly over her mouth. 'How many more times do I have to tell you?' he hissed. 'Not a word about writing, understand? I haven't the faintest desire to be drawn and quartered as a wizard because of a stupid woman.'\n\n'Fenoglio!' Meggie pulled him forcibly away from Elinor. 'The Black Prince! He's dying!'\n\nFenoglio stared at her for a fraction of a second, as if he thought her interruption was in the worst possible taste, but then, without a word, he retreated to the corner where he slept. Stony-faced, he cleared a wineskin aside and found a bundle of papers under a few clothes. To Meggie's surprise, most of the sheets already had writing on them.\n\n'Curse it all, where's Rosenquartz?' he muttered as he took a blank sheet. 'Out and about with Jasper again, no doubt. The moment two of them get together they forget their work and go looking for wild glass women. As if the glass women would give one of those pink good-for-nothings so much as a glance!'\n\nPaying no attention to the written pages, he put them aside. So many words. How long ago had he begun writing again? Meggie tried reading the first of the sheets. 'Only a few ideas,' muttered Fenoglio when their eyes met. 'Trying to see how all this could yet end well. What part your father will play in the story...'\n\nMeggie's heart turned over, but Elinor got in ahead of her.\n\n'Aha! So it was you who wrote all that about Mortimer after all: letting himself be taken prisoner, then riding to that castle, while my niece cries her eyes out at night!'\n\n'No, it wasn't me!' Fenoglio snapped at her angrily, as he quickly hid the written sheets under his clothes again. 'I didn't have him talking to Death either \u2013 though I must say I really like that part of the story. I tell you, these are just some ideas! Useless scribbling that leads nowhere! And it'll probably be the same with what I'm trying to do now. But I'll have a shot at it all the same. So kindly be quiet! Or do you want to talk the Black Prince into his grave?'\n\nAs Fenoglio dipped his pen in the ink, Meggie heard a slight sound behind her. With a clearly embarrassed expression, Rosenquartz emerged from behind the rock on which Fenoglio's writing things stood. The pale green face of a wild glass woman appeared behind him. Without a word, she scurried away past Fenoglio and Meggie.\n\n'I don't believe it!' thundered the old man, in such a loud voice that Rosenquartz put his hands over his ears. 'The Black Prince is at death's door, and you're gadding about with a wild glass woman!'\n\n'The Prince?' Rosenquartz looked at Fenoglio in such dismay that he calmed down at once. 'But, but\u2014'\n\n'Stop all that gabbling and stir the ink!' Fenoglio snapped. 'And if you were going to say something clever like, \"But the Prince is such a good man!\" that never kept anyone alive yet in any world, did it?' He dipped his pen in the ink so vigorously that it splashed Rosenquartz's pink face, but Meggie saw that the old man's fingers were shaking. 'Come on, then, Fenoglio!' he whispered to himself. 'It's only a flower. You can do it!'\n\nRosenquartz was watching him with concern, but Fenoglio just stared at the blank sheet before him. He stared at it like a torero facing a bull.\n\n'The entrance to the brownie burrow where the plant grows lies where Elfbane sets his snares!' he murmured. 'And the flowers smell so horrible that the fairies give them a wide berth. But moths love them, grey moths with wings patterned as if a glass man had painted tiny death's-heads on them. Can you see them, Fenoglio? Yes...'\n\nHe put pen to paper, hesitated \u2013 and began to write.\n\nNew words. Fresh words. Meggie thought she could hear the story taking a deep breath. Nourishment at last, after all the time when Orpheus had merely fed it with Fenoglio's old words.\n\n'There we are! He only has to be brought up to the mark, you see. He's a lazy old man,' Elinor whispered to her. 'Of course he can still do it, even if he won't believe it himself. You don't forget that kind of thing. I mean, could you forget how to read?'\n\nI don't know, Meggie was going to reply, but she said nothing. Her tongue was waiting for Fenoglio's words. Healing words. Like the words she had once read for Mo.\n\n'Why is the bear howling like that?' Meggie felt Farid's hands on her shoulders. She supposed he had been off in some place where the children couldn't find him, to try conjuring up fire again, but judging by his glum face the flames had refused to show anything.\n\n'Oh no! Him too!' cried the exasperated Fenoglio. 'Why did Darius and I pile up all these rocks? So that anyone and everyone can march into my bedroom? I need peace! This is a matter of life and death!'\n\n'Life and death?' Farid looked at Meggie in alarm.\n\n'The Black Prince... he... he...' Elinor was trying to sound composed, but her voice was shaking.\n\n'Not another word!' said Fenoglio, without looking up. 'Rosenquartz! Sand!'\n\n'Sand? Where am I supposed to find sand?' Rosenquartz's voice rose shrilly.\n\n'Oh, you really are useless! Why do you think I dragged you off to this wilderness with me? For a nice holiday so that you can chase green glass women?' Fenoglio blew on the wet ink and handed Meggie the sheet he had just written. He looked unsure of himself.\n\n'Make them grow, Meggie!' he said. 'A few last healing leaves, warmed by the breath of sleeping brownies, picked before the winter freezes them.'\n\nMeggie stared at the paper. There it was again, the story she had last heard when she had brought Orpheus here.\n\nYes. The words obeyed Fenoglio once again. And she would teach them how to live."
            },
            {
                "title": "Written and Unwritten",
                "text": "\u2002The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.\n\n\u2014Isaac Bashevis Singer, Advice to Writers\n\nRoxane found the plants exactly where Fenoglio had described: in the entrance of a brownie burrow where Elfbane set his snares. And Meggie, holding Despina's hand, watched again as the words that she had only just read became reality.\n\nThe leaves and flowers defied the cold wind, as if the fairies had planted them so that they could dream of summer when they saw them. But the smell rising from the flowers was the odour of decomposition and decay, and it had given the plant its name: deathbud. The flowers were put on graves to placate the White Women.\n\nRoxane brushed the moths off the leaves, dug up two plants and left two others, for fear of angering the wood-elves. Then she hurried back to the cave, where the White Women were already standing at the Black Prince's side, grated the roots, brewed them using the method Resa had described to her, and spooned the hot liquid into the Prince's mouth. He was already very weak, yet what they had hardly dared to hope for happened: the brew lessened the effect of the poison, lulled it to sleep, and brought back the strength of life.\n\nAnd the White Women disappeared, as if Death had called them to another place.\n\nThose last sentences had been easy to read, but many anxious hours passed before they too became reality. The poison was not giving in without a struggle, and the White Women came and went. Roxane strewed herbs to keep them away, as she had learnt to do from Nettle, but the pale faces kept appearing again, barely visible against the grey walls of the cave, and a time came when Meggie felt they were looking not just at the Prince, but at her too.\n\nDon't we know you? their eyes seemed to ask. Didn't your voice protect the man who has been ours twice? Meggie returned their glance for little longer than it takes to draw a breath, yet she immediately felt the longing that Mo had spoken of: longing for a place that lay far beyond all words. She took a step towards the White Women to feel their cool hands on her beating heart, to let them wipe away all her fear and pain, but other hands held her back, warm, firm hands.\n\n'Meggie, for heaven's sake don't look at them!' Elinor murmured. 'Come on, let's get you out into the fresh air. Why, you're as pale as those creatures themselves!'\n\nAnd she wouldn't take no for an answer, but led Meggie outside to where the robbers were consulting together and the children played under the trees, as if they had forgotten what was going on in the cave. The grass was white with hoarfrost, white as the figures waiting for the Black Prince, but the spell of the White Women was broken as soon as Meggie heard the children's laughter. They were throwing fir cones for the marten and shouting as he chased them. Life seemed so much stronger than death, death so much stronger than life. Like the ebb and flow of the tide.\n\nResa was standing outside the cave too, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, although the Strong Man had put a rabbit-skin cloak over her shoulders. 'Have you seen Snapper?' she asked Elinor. 'Or Gecko and his magpie?'\n\nBattista joined them. He looked exhausted. This was the first time he had left the Prince's side. 'They've gone,' he said. 'Snapper, Gecko and ten others. They went after the Bluejay as soon as it was clear that the Prince wasn't likely to be able to follow him.'\n\n'But Snapper hates Mo!' Resa's voice was so loud that several robbers turned to look at her, and even the children paused their game. 'Why would he want to help him?'\n\n'I'm afraid he has no intention of helping him,' Battista replied quietly. 'He's been telling the others he's going because the Bluejay plans to betray us and make his own bargain with Violante. And he said your husband hasn't told us the whole truth about the White Book.'\n\n'What kind of truth?' Resa's voice was failing her.\n\n'Snapper says,' Battista replied quietly, 'that the Book doesn't just make its owner immortal, it makes him immensely rich. That sounds a lot more tempting to most of our men than immortality. They'd betray their own mothers for a book like that. So why, they ask themselves, wouldn't the Bluejay plan on doing the same to us?'\n\n'But that's all lies! The Book makes its owner immortal, nothing more.' Meggie didn't care that her voice was rising. Let them all hear her, all of them putting their heads together, whispering about her father!\n\nElfbane turned to her, an unpleasant smile on his thin face. 'Oh yes? And how would you know that, little witch? Didn't your father keep it a secret from you that the Book was making the Adderhead's flesh rot on his bones?'\n\n'What if he did?' Elinor asked Elfbane angrily, putting a protective arm around Meggie. 'She still knows one thing: she can certainly trust her father more than a poisoner. Because who else poisoned the Prince if not your beloved Snapper?'\n\nThere was a rather unfriendly murmuring among the robbers, and Battista drew Elinor over to his side.\n\n'Mind what you say!' he whispered to her. 'Not all Snapper's friends went with him. And if you ask me, poison doesn't sound much like Snapper. A knife, yes, but poison...'\n\n'Oh no? Then who else would it be?' Elinor retorted.\n\nResa looked up at the sky as if the answer might be found there. 'Did Gecko take his magpie with him?' she asked.\n\nBattista nodded. 'Yes, luckily. The children are scared of it.'\n\n'With good reason.' Resa looked up at the sky again, and then at Battista. 'What exactly does Snapper mean to do?' she asked. 'Tell me.'\n\nBattista just shrugged wearily. 'I don't know. Maybe he's going to try to steal the Book from the Adderhead before he reaches the Castle in the Lake. Or maybe he's going straight there to get it for himself after the Bluejay has written the three words in it. Whatever his plan is, there's nothing we can do. The children need us, and until the Prince gets better he needs us too. Remember, Dustfinger is with the Bluejay. Snapper won't have an easy time of it with the pair of them! Now forgive me, but I must go back to the Prince.'\n\nSnapper won't have an easy time of it with the pair of them! Yes, but what if he really did steal the White Book from the Adderhead on the way, and the Adderhead arrived at the Castle in the Lake knowing that even the Bluejay couldn't help him now? Wouldn't he kill Mo then and there? And even if Mo did get a chance to write those three words on the blank pages... what if Snapper poisoned him afterwards, as ruthlessly as he'd presumably poisoned the Prince, just to get his hands on the Book?\n\nWhat if, what if... those questions kept Meggie awake even when all had long been sleeping around her, and finally she got up to go and see how the Black Prince was.\n\nHe was sleeping. The White Women had gone, but his dark face was still as grey as if their hands had bleached his skin. Minerva and Roxane were taking turns to sit at his side, and Fenoglio was with them, as if he must watch over his own words if they were to remain effective.\n\nFenoglio... Fenoglio could write again.\n\nWhat did the sheets of paper he had hidden under his clothes say?\n\n'Why did you make up the Bluejay for your robber songs, why didn't you just write about the Black Prince?' Meggie had asked him long ago.\n\n'Because the Prince was tired,' Fenoglio had replied. 'The Black Prince needed the Bluejay as much as the poor people who whispered his name at night. The Prince had been part of this world for too long to believe it could really be changed. And his men never doubted that he was flesh and blood like them. They're not nearly so sure about your father. Do you understand now?'\n\nMeggie understood only too well. But Mo was flesh and blood, and she was sure that Snapper didn't doubt it. When she returned to the sleepers, Darius had taken two of the children on to his lap and was quietly telling them a story. The little ones often woke him in the middle of the night because he knew how to drive away their bad dreams with stories, and Darius patiently resigned himself to his task. He liked Fenoglio's world, although it probably frightened him more than Elinor \u2013 but would he change it with his voice if Fenoglio asked him to? Would he read aloud what Meggie herself might not want to?\n\nWhat was on the sheets of paper that Fenoglio had hidden so hastily from her and Elinor?\n\nWhat did they say?\n\nGo and look, Meggie, she told herself. You won't be able to sleep anyway.\n\nAs she went round behind the wall marking off the place where Fenoglio slept, she heard Rosenquartz's quiet snoring. His master was sitting with the Black Prince, but the glass man lay on the clothes under which Fenoglio had hidden the written pages. Meggie carefully picked him up, surprised as usual to feel how cold his transparent limbs were, and laid him on the cushion that Fenoglio had brought with him from Ombra. Yes, the pages were still exactly where he had hidden them from Elinor and her. There were more than a dozen, covered with words written in haste \u2013 scraps of sentences, questions, snippets of ideas that presumably made no sense to anyone but their author: the pen or the sword? Who does Violante love? Careful, the Piper... Who writes the three words? Meggie couldn't decipher all of it, but on the very first page, in capital letters, were the words that made her heart beat faster: The Song of the Bluejay.\n\n'Just ideas, Meggie, as I told you. Only questions and ideas.'\n\nFenoglio's voice made her spin round in such alarm that she almost dropped the pages on the sleeping Rosenquartz.\n\n'The Prince is rather better,' said Fenoglio, as if she had come to him to hear that. 'It really does look as if my words have kept someone alive for once, instead of killing them. But then again, perhaps he's only alive because this story thinks he can still be useful to it. How would I know?' He sat down beside Meggie with a sigh and gently took what he had written from her hand.\n\n'Your words saved Mo too, before all this,' she said.\n\n'Yes, maybe.' Fenoglio brushed his hand over the dry ink as if that would dust the words free of anything harmful. 'All the same, you don't trust them now any more than I do, do you?'\n\nHe was right. She had learnt both to love and to fear the words.\n\n'Why The Song of the Bluejay?' she asked softly. 'You can't write any more about him! He's my father now! Make up a new hero. I'm sure you can invent one. But let Mo be Mo again, just Mo and no one else.'\n\nFenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. 'Are you sure that's what your father himself wants? Or don't you mind about that?'\n\n'Of course I do!' Meggie's voice was so sharp that Rosenquartz woke with a start. He looked around him with a bewildered expression \u2013 and fell asleep again. 'But Mo certainly wouldn't want you catching him in your words like a fly in a spider's web. You're changing him!'\n\n'Nonsense! Your father himself decided to be the Bluejay! I just wrote a few songs, and you've never read a single one of them aloud! So how would they change anything?'\n\nMeggie bowed her head.\n\n'Oh no!' Fenoglio looked at her, horrified. 'You did read them?'\n\n'After Mo rode to the castle. To protect him, to make him strong and invulnerable. I read them aloud every day.'\n\n'Well, who'd have thought it! Then let's hope the words in the songs work as well as those I've written for the Black Prince.' Fenoglio put an arm around her shoulders, as he had often done when they were both Capricorn's prisoners \u2013 in another world, in another story. Or was it the same story after all?\n\n'Meggie,' he said quietly. 'Even if you go on reading my songs aloud, even if you read them a dozen times a day \u2013 we both know they haven't made your father the Bluejay. If I'd chosen him as the model for the Piper, do you think he'd have become a murderer? Of course not! Your father is like the Black Prince! He feels for the weak. I didn't write that into his heart \u2013 it was always there! Your father didn't ride to Ombra Castle because of my words but for the children asleep out there. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps this story is changing him, but he's changing the story too! He's telling the next part of it through what he does, Meggie, not because of what I write. Even if the right words might be able to help him...'\n\n'Protect him, Fenoglio!' Meggie whispered. 'Snapper's after him, and he hates Mo.'\n\nFenoglio looked at her in surprise. 'What do you mean? You actually want me to write something about him? Heavens, it was confusing enough when I had only my own characters to worry about!'\n\nAnd you let them die without giving it a thought, Meggie told herself, but she didn't say so aloud. After all, Fenoglio had saved the Black Prince today \u2013 and he had really feared for him. What would Dustfinger have said about this sudden fit of sympathy?\n\nRosenquartz started snoring again.\n\n'Hear that?' asked Fenoglio. 'Can you tell me how such a ridiculously small creature can snore at such volume? Sometimes I feel like stuffing him in the inkwell overnight just to get some peace and quiet!'\n\n'You're a terrible old man!' Meggie reached for the written pages again and ran her finger along the words jotted down there. 'What does all this mean? The pen or the sword? Who writes the three words? Who does Violante love?'\n\n'Well, those are only some of the questions to be answered as this story goes on. All good stories hide behind a tangle of questions, and it isn't easy to find out their dodges. And this story certainly has a mind of its own, but,' and here Fenoglio lowered his voice as if the story itself could be eavesdropping, 'if you ask the right questions it will whisper all its secrets to you. A story like this is a very talkative thing.'\n\nFenoglio read aloud what he had written. 'The pen or the sword? A very important question. But I don't know the answer yet. Perhaps it will be both. Well, however that may be... Who will write the three words? Your father let himself be taken prisoner to do that, but who knows... will the Adderhead really allow his daughter to trick him? Is Violante as clever as she thinks, and who does Her Ugliness love? I am afraid she's fallen in love with your father. I think she fell in love with him a long time ago, before she ever met him.'\n\n'What?' Meggie looked at him in astonishment. 'What are you talking about? Violante isn't much older than me and Brianna!'\n\n'Nonsense! Not in years, perhaps, but with all the experience she's had, she's at least three times your age. And like so many princes' daughters she has a very romantic notion of robbers. Why do you think she made Balbulus illuminate all my Bluejay songs? And now he's riding along beside her in flesh and blood. Not unromantic, is it?'\n\n'You're dreadful!' Meggie's indignant voice woke Rosenquartz again.\n\n'Why? I'm only explaining what would have to be taken into account if I were really to try bringing this story to a good end, although it may have had different ideas itself for some time. Suppose I'm right? Suppose Violante loves the Bluejay and your father rejects her? Will she protect him from the Adderhead all the same? What role will Dustfinger take? Will the Piper see what game Violante is playing? Questions, nothing but questions! Believe you me, this story is a labyrinth! It looks as if there were several ways to go, but only one is right, and there's a nasty surprise ready to punish you for every false step. This time, though, I'll be prepared. This time I'll see the traps it's setting me, Meggie \u2013 and I'll find the right way out. But for that I have to ask questions. For instance: where's Mortola? I can't get that question out of my mind. And what, by all inky devils, is Orpheus up to? Questions, more and more questions... but Fenoglio is back in the game again! And he's saved the Black Prince!'\n\nEvery wrinkle in his old face expressed self-satisfaction.\n\nOh, he really was a terrible old man!"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Castle in the Lake",
                "text": "\u2002There is something about it that opens no door to words.\n\n\u2014John Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie\n\nThey rode north, further and further north. On the morning of the second day, Violante had Mo's hands, bound until now for fear of her father's spies, loosened after one of her soldiers told her that otherwise the Bluejay would soon lose the use of them. More than fifty soldiers had been waiting for them barely a mile out of Ombra. Hardly any of them were older than Farid, and they all looked as determined as if they would follow Violante to the end of the world.\n\nWith every mile they put behind them the woods were darker and the valleys deeper. The hills became mountains. Snow already lay on some of the passes, so that they had to dismount and lead their horses, and on the second night rain fell, covering the white snow with treacherous ice. The mountain range through which they were riding seemed almost uninhabited. Only very occasionally did Mo see a village in the distance, an isolated farmhouse or a charcoal-burner's hut. It was almost as if Fenoglio had forgotten to populate this part of his world.\n\nDustfinger joined them when they first stopped to rest. He did it as naturally as if nothing were simpler than to pick up the trail that Violante's soldiers were so carefully obliterating. The soldiers looked at him in the same respectful but wary way as they looked at Mo. Bluejay... Fire-Dancer... of course they knew the songs, and their eyes asked: are these men made of the same flesh as us?\n\nFor himself, Mo knew the answer \u2013 although he sometimes wondered whether by now ink, rather than blood, flowed through his veins. He wasn't so sure about Dustfinger. The horses shied when they saw him, although he could calm them with a whisper. He hardly slept or ate, and he plunged his hands into fire as if it were water. But when he talked about Roxane or Farid, there was human love in his words, and when he looked round for his daughter surreptitiously, as if he were ashamed of it, it was with the eyes of a mortal father.\n\nIt was good to ride, just to ride on while the Inkworld unfurled before them like elaborately folded paper. And with every mile Mo doubted more and more that all this had really been made by Fenoglio's words. Wasn't it more likely that the old man had simply been a reporter describing a tiny part of this world, a fraction of it that they had long ago left behind? Strange mountains rimmed the horizon, and Ombra was far away. The Wayless Wood seemed as distant as Elinor's garden, the Castle of Night nothing but a dark dream.\n\n'Have you ever been in these mountains before?' he once asked Dustfinger, who rode beside him in silence most of the time. Sometimes Mo thought he could hear the other man's thoughts. Roxane, they whispered. And Dustfinger's eyes kept wandering to his daughter, who was riding at Violante's side and didn't deign to give her father a glance.\n\n'No, I don't think so,' replied Dustfinger, and it was the same as every time Mo spoke to him: it seemed as if he were calling him back from that place for which there were no words. Dustfinger didn't talk about it, and Mo asked no questions. He knew what the other man was thinking. The White Women had touched them both, sowing in their hearts a longing for that place, a constant, wordless, bittersweet longing.\n\nDustfinger looked over his shoulder as if in search of a familiar view. 'I never rode north in the old days. The mountains frightened me,' he said, and smiled as if he were smiling at his old self, who had known so little of the world that a few mountains could scare him. 'I was always drawn to the sea. The sea and the south.'\n\nThen he fell silent again. Dustfinger had never been very talkative, and his journey to the land of Death hadn't changed that. So Mo left him to his silence and wondered, once more, whether the Black Prince had heard yet from Farid that the Bluejay was no longer in Ombra, and how Meggie and Resa had taken the news. It was so hard to leave them further behind with every step his horse took, even if he did it knowing that the further away he was, the safer they were. Don't think about them, he told himself. Don't wonder when or whether you'll see them again. Tell yourself the Bluejay never had a wife or a daughter. Just for a while.\n\nViolante turned in the saddle as if to make sure she hadn't lost him. Brianna whispered something to her, and Violante smiled. Her Ugliness had a beautiful smile, although you seldom saw it. It showed how young she still was.\n\nThey were riding up a densely wooded hill. Sunlight fell through the branches of the almost leafless trees, and in spite of the snow covering the moss and roots further up the slopes there was still a smell of autumn here, of rotting leaves and the last fading flowers. Fairies, drowsy with the onset of winter, flitted through the grass, which was yellow now and stiff with frost. Brownie tracks crossed their path, and Mo thought he heard wild glass men scurrying about under the bushes that grew on the slope above them. One of Violante's soldiers began to sing quietly, and the sound of his young voice made Mo feel as if everything he had left behind were fading: his concern for Resa and Meggie, the Black Prince, the children of Ombra and the threat of the Piper, even his bargain with Death. There was only the path, the endless path winding up into the strange mountains, and the desire in his heart that he couldn't tame, a wish to ride further and further on into this bewildering world. What did the castle to which Violante was leading them look like? Were there really giants in the mountains? Where did the path end? Did it ever end at all? Not for the Bluejay, a voice inside him whispered, and for a moment his heart beat like the heart of a ten-year-old boy, as fearless and as fresh.\n\nHe sensed Dustfinger's eyes resting on him. 'You like this world of mine.'\n\n'Yes. Yes, I do.' Mo himself could hear the guilt in his voice.\n\nDustfinger laughed louder than Mo had ever heard him laugh before. He looked so different without the scars \u2013 as if the White Women had healed his heart as well as his face. 'And you're ashamed of it!' he said. 'Why? Because you still think everything here is just made of words? It is indeed a strange thing: look at you! Anyone might think you belonged here as much as me. Are you sure someone didn't just read you over into that other world of yours?'\n\nMo didn't know whether or not he liked that idea. 'Fairly sure,' he answered.\n\nThe wind blew a leaf against his chest. Tiny limbs hung from it, a frightened face, pale brown like the leaf itself. Orpheus's leaf-men had obviously spread quickly. The strange creature bit Mo's finger when he reached for it, and the next gust of wind blew it away.\n\n'Did you see them last night too?' Dustfinger turned in the saddle. The soldier riding behind them avoided his eyes. There is no land more foreign than the realm of Death.\n\n'See who?'\n\nDustfinger responded with a mocking smile.\n\nThere had been two of them. Two White Women. They had been standing among the trees just before daybreak.\n\n'Why do you think they're following us? To remind us that we still belong to them?'\n\nDustfinger merely shrugged his shoulders, as if the answer wasn't important and the question was the wrong one. 'I see them every time I close my eyes. Dustfinger! they whisper. We miss you. Does your heart hurt again? Do you feel the burden of time? Shall we lift it from you? Shall we make you forget once more? I tell them no. Let me feel all of it a little longer. Who knows, perhaps you'll be taking me back soon anyway. Me,' he added, looking at Mo, 'and the Bluejay.'\n\nDark clouds were gathering above them, as if they had been waiting beyond the mountains, and the horses grew restless, but Dustfinger calmed them with a few quiet words.\n\n'What do they whisper to you?' he asked Mo, looking at him as if he knew the answer already.\n\n'Ah.' It was difficult to talk about the White Women. As difficult as if they held his tongue down as soon as he tried. 'Usually they simply stand there as if they were waiting for me. And if they do speak to me they always say the same thing: only Death will make you immortal, Bluejay.'\n\nHe hadn't told anyone that before, not the Black Prince or Resa or Meggie. What would be the point? The words would only have frightened them.\n\nBut Dustfinger knew the White Women \u2013 and the one they served. 'Immortal,' he repeated. 'Yes, they like to say such things, and no doubt they're right. But what about you? Are you in a hurry for immortality?'\n\nMo could find no answer for that.\n\nAhead, Violante turned her horse around. The path had brought them to the crest of a mountain, and far below lay a lake with a castle reflected in its waters, drifting on the ripples like a stone fruit floating a long way from the bank. Its walls were as dark as the spruce trees that grew on the slopes of the surrounding mountains, and an almost endless bridge, narrow as a ribbon of stone and supported on countless piers, led over the water to land, where two ruined watchtowers stood among a few abandoned huts.\n\n'The Impregnable Bridge!' whispered one of the soldiers, and all the stories he had heard about this place were echoed in that whisper.\n\nIt began to snow again, tiny, wet flakes that disappeared in the dark lake as if it were devouring them. Violante's young soldiers stared at their destination in dismal silence. It was not a very inviting sight. But their mistress's face lit up like a young girl's.\n\n'What do you say, Bluejay?' she asked Mo, putting her gold-framed glasses on her nose. 'Look at it. My mother described this castle to me so often that I feel as if I'd grown up here myself. I only wish these glasses were stronger,' she added impatiently, 'but even from here I can see that it's beautiful!'\n\nBeautiful? Mo would have called the castle sinister. But perhaps, to the Adderhead's daughter, that was one and the same thing.\n\n'Now do you see why I've brought you here?' Violante asked. 'No one can take this castle. Even the giants couldn't harm it when they still came to this valley. The lake is too deep, and the bridge is just wide enough for a single horseman.'\n\nThe path leading down to the banks of the lake was so steep that they had to lead their horses. It was as dark under the dense spruce trees as if their needles ate up the daylight, and Mo felt his heart grow heavy again. But Violante walked on impatiently, and the rest of them could hardly keep up with her as they passed through the trees that grew so close together.\n\n'Night-Mares!' whispered Dustfinger, when the silence among the trees grew as dark as the needles that covered the ground. 'Black Bogles, Red-Caps... everything that would terrify Farid lives here. Let's hope this castle really is uninhabited.'\n\nWhen they were standing on the banks of the lake at last, mist hung above the water, and the bridge and the castle rose from the white vapour as if they had just been born out of it. Stony growths from the depths of the water. The huts on the bank looked much more real now, although it was obvious that they had been standing empty for a very long time. Mo led his horse to one of the watchtowers. The door was charred, the interior black with soot.\n\nViolante came to his side. 'A nephew of my grandfather's was the last who tried to capture this castle. He never got across the lake. My grandfather bred predatory fish in it. They're said to be larger than horses, and they crave human flesh. The lake guards this castle better than any army could. There were never many soldiers here, but my grandfather always made sure there were enough provisions to withstand a siege. Cattle were kept in the castle, and he had vegetables grown and fruit trees planted in several of the inner courtyards. All the same, so my mother told me, she had to eat fish more often than she liked.'\n\nViolante laughed, but Mo looked out over the dark water uneasily. It was as if, through the drifting swathes of mist, he saw all the dead soldiers who had tried to cross the Impregnable Bridge. The lake was like a copy of the Inkworld itself, both beautiful and terrible. Its surface was smooth as glass, but the edge of the bank was marshy, and swarms of buzzing insects, obviously unaffected by the wintry weather, hovered among reeds now white with rime.\n\n'Why did your grandfather live in such a remote place?'\n\n'Because he was tired of human beings. Is that surprising?' Violante was still looking as captivated as if she couldn't believe that at last her short-sighted eyes were seeing what she had only known through words before. So often it is words or pictures that first tell us what we long for.\n\n'My mother's chambers were in the tower on the left. My grandfather had the tower built when giants still came here.' Violante's voice sounded as if she were talking in her sleep. 'At that time this lake was the only place outside the cities where you could be safe from them, because they couldn't cross it. But they loved to look at their reflection in its waters, and that's why it was also called the Giants' Mirror. My mother was afraid of them. She used to hide under the bed when she heard their footsteps, but all the same she wondered how big they would be if they were standing right in front of her, not on the distant bank. Once, when she was about five years old and a giant and his child appeared on the bank, she wanted to run over to them. But one of her nursemaids caught up with her where the bridge begins, and my grandfather had her shut up in the tower there for three days and nights, as a punishment.' Violante pointed to a tower that rose like a needle among the others. 'That tower was the only place in the castle that my mother didn't like to talk about. It had pictures of Night-Mares and lake monsters on its walls, of wolves and snakes and robbers attacking travellers. My grandfather had the pictures painted to show his daughters how dangerous the world beyond the lake was. The giants often used to take human beings \u2013 especially children \u2013 away as toys. Have you heard that?'\n\n'I've read about it,' replied Mo.\n\nThe happiness in her voice moved him, and he wondered, not for the first time, how it was that the book which had told him so much about fire-elves and giants said so little about the Adderhead's daughter. To Fenoglio, Violante had been only a minor character, an ugly, unhappy little girl, no more. Perhaps you could learn from her how small parts can be made into major roles if you play them in your own way.\n\nViolante seemed to have forgotten that he was standing beside her. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten everything, even that she had come here to kill her father. She was looking at the castle as if she hoped to see her mother appear on the battlements at any moment. But at last she turned abruptly.\n\n'Four of you stay by the watchtowers!' she ordered her soldiers. 'The rest come with me. But ride slowly if you don't want the sound of your horses' hooves to entice the fishes. My mother used to tell me how they'd pulled dozens of men down from the bridge.'\n\nAn uneasy murmur rose among her soldiers. They really were little more than children.\n\nBut Violante took no notice. She picked up her skirts, black like everything Mo had ever seen her wear, and let Brianna help her up on to her horse. 'You'll see,' she said. 'I know this castle better than if I'd lived here. I've studied all the books there are about it. I know its ground plan and all its secrets.'\n\n'Has your father ever been here?' Dustfinger asked the question just as it had formed in Mo's mind too.\n\nViolante picked up her reins. 'Only once,' she said, without looking at Dustfinger. 'When he was courting my mother. But that's a long time ago. All the same, he's sure to remember that no one can take this castle.'\n\nShe turned her horse. 'Come, Brianna,' she said, and rode towards the bridge. But her horse shied back when it saw the stone path across the water. Without a word, Dustfinger brought his mount to Violante's side, took the reins from her hand and led her horse on to the bridge behind his. The sound of their hooves echoed over the water as Violante's men followed him.\n\nMo was the last to ride on to the bridge. Suddenly the whole world seemed to be made of water. Mist drifted into his face, and the castle swam on the lake before him like a dark dream: towers, battlements, bridges, oriels, windowless walls with the wind and the water eating at them. The bridge seemed to go on for ever, and the gate to which it led looked out of reach, but at last it began to grow larger with every step that his horse took. The towers and walls filled the sky like a menacing song, and Mo saw dark shadows glide through the water, like watchdogs picking up the scent of their coming.\n\nWhat did the castle look like, Mo? he heard Meggie asking. Describe it!\n\nWhat would he say? He looked up at the towers, as many of them as if a new one grew every year, at the maze of oriels and bridges and the stone griffin above the gateway. 'It didn't look like a happy ending, Meggie,' he heard himself reply. 'It looked like a place from which no one ever comes back.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Role of Women",
                "text": "\u2003Why would I need a book?\n\n\u2003The wind leafs through the trees\n\n\u2003Speaking softly at its ease\n\n\u2003Words that I sometimes repeat.\n\n\u2003And Death, breaking eyes like a flower\n\n\u2003Does not have mine in its power...\n\n\u2014Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Pictures\n\nMen's clothes. Resa had stolen them from the sleeping Elfbane: a pair of trousers and a long, warm shirt. Very likely they were his pride and joy. Few of the robbers owned more than what they wore on their backs, but over the next few days she was going to need those clothes more than Elfbane.\n\nIt was long ago that the Inkworld had forced Resa to wear men's clothing, yet as soon as she put on the rough trousers the memory came back as if it were only yesterday. She remembered how often the knife had scratched her scalp as she cut her hair short, and how her throat had hurt from the constant attempt to make her voice sound deeper. This time she'd just pin up her hair, and presumably she wouldn't have to pretend to be a man, but trousers were so much more practical than a dress on overgrown paths, and she would have to take such paths if she wanted to follow Mo.\n\n'Promise me!' He had never asked her more fervently for anything. 'Promise me you'll both stay in hiding, never mind what happens, never mind what you hear. And if it all goes wrong \u2013' (what a clever way of getting around saying if I die) \u2013 'then Meggie must try to read the two of you back.'\n\nBack where? To Elinor's house, where every nook and cranny reminded her of him, and his workshop stood in the garden? Quite apart from the fact that Elinor herself was on this side of the letters now. But Mo didn't know that, any more than he knew she had burnt the words that Orpheus had written.\n\nNo. There was no going back home without him. If Mo died in the Inkworld, then so would she... hoping that the White Women would take her to wherever he was.\n\nDark thoughts, Resa, she told herself, placing her hand on her belly. It was so long since Meggie had been growing in there, but her fingers still remembered \u2013 all the days when she had felt her body in vain, and then the moment when she suddenly sensed the baby moving under her skin. There was no moment like it, and she could hardly wait to feel the tiny feet kicking below her ribs, the child inside her turning and stretching. It couldn't be long now. If only she didn't have to feel so anxious about the child's father.\n\n'Come along, let's go looking for him, to warn him about the Magpie and Snapper!' she whispered to her unborn child. 'We've been standing back and watching for too long. From now on we'll play our part, even if Fenoglio hasn't written us one.'\n\nOnly Roxane knew what she was planning, no one else. Not Elinor, not Meggie. They'd both have wanted to come too. But she must go alone, although that would make Meggie angry with her once again. She still hadn't entirely forgiven Resa for riding to Orpheus, or for that night in the graveyard. Meggie didn't forgive easily when her father's wellbeing was at stake. He was the only one she always forgave.\n\nResa took Fenoglio's book out from under the blanket beneath which she slept. She had asked Battista to make a leather bag for it, of course without telling him that he himself, more than likely, had been born between its pages. 'That's a strange book,' he had remarked. 'What scribe writes such ugly letters? And what kind of binding is that? Had the bookbinder run out of leather?'\n\nShe wasn't sure what Dustfinger would have said about her plan. It still touched her that he had entrusted the book to her. But now she must do as she thought right.\n\nShe looked across the cave at her daughter. Meggie was sleeping beside Farid, but Doria slept only a little further off, his face turned towards her. Orpheus's former glass man lay beside him, the boy's hand over him like a blanket. How young Meggie still looked in her sleep! Resa almost bent down to push the hair back from her daughter's forehead. It still hurt to think of all the years she had spent away from her; it hurt so much. Hurry up, Resa, she told herself. Day is already beginning to dawn outside. Soon they'd all be awake, and then they wouldn't let her leave.\n\nElinor murmured something in her sleep as Resa slipped past her, and the guard at the cave entrance glanced her way when she went round behind the wall that Fenoglio had built, as if to ward off the world he himself had made. He and his glass man were snoring in competition, like a bear and a grasshopper. Rosenquartz's tiny fingers were black with ink, and the sheet of paper beside him was covered with freshly-written words, but nearly all of them had been crossed out.\n\nResa put the bag containing the book down beside the wineskin for which Fenoglio was still inclined to reach, even though Elinor lost no opportunity to lecture him on his drinking. She put the letter she had written him between the pages, so that it stuck out of the bag like a white hand. He couldn't miss it.\n\nFenoglio, she had written \u2013 it had taken her a long time to look for the right words, and she still wasn't sure she had found them \u2013 I am giving Inkheart back to the man who wrote it. Perhaps your own book can tell you how this story is going to end, and will whisper you words to protect Meggie's father. Meanwhile I will try to make sure, in my own way, that the song of the Bluejay doesn't end sadly. Resa.\n\nThe sky was turning red as she stepped out of the cave, and it was bitterly cold. Woodenfoot was standing guard under the trees. He watched suspiciously as she turned north. Perhaps he didn't even recognize her in men's clothing. Some bread and a waterskin, a knife, the compass that Elinor had brought from their old world \u2013 that was all she was taking. It wouldn't be the first time she'd had to manage on her own in this world. But she hadn't gone far before she heard heavy footsteps behind her.\n\n'Resa!' The Strong Man sounded injured, like a child catching his sister in the act of running away. 'Where are you going?'\n\nAs if he didn't know.\n\n'You can't follow him! I promised him I'd look after you \u2013 you and your daughter.' He held her firmly, and anyone held firmly by the Strong Man wasn't going to get away.\n\n'Let me go!' she snapped at him. 'He doesn't know about Snapper. I have to follow him! You can look after Meggie.'\n\n'Doria will do that. I've never seen him look at a girl the way he looks at her. And Battista's there too.' He was still holding her. 'It's a long way to the Castle in the Lake. Very long and very dangerous.'\n\n'Roxane has told me how to get there.'\n\n'Oh yes? And did she tell you about the Night-Mares? And the Red-Caps, and the Black Elves?'\n\n'They haunted Capricorn's fortress too, and every one of his men was worse. So go back. I can look after myself.'\n\n'I'm sure. And you can take on Snapper and the Piper too.' Without another word he took the waterskin from her. 'The Bluejay will kill me when he sees you!'\n\nThe Bluejay. Suppose she met only him, and not her husband, at the castle? Mo might understand why she had followed him, but not the Bluejay.\n\n'Let's go.' The Strong Man marched off. He was as obstinate as he was strong. Not even the Black Prince could make him change his mind once he'd made it up, and Resa didn't even try. It would be good to have his company, very good. She hadn't often been alone in the forests of the Inkworld, and she didn't like to remember the times when she was.\n\n'Strong Man?' she asked when they had left the cave where her daughter was sleeping far behind. 'What did you think of the magpie that flew to Gecko?'\n\n'That was no magpie,' he said. 'It had a woman's voice. But I didn't say anything. The others would only have said I was crazy again.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Waiting",
                "text": "\u2003We shall not cease from exploration\n\n\u2003And the end of all our exploring\n\n\u2003Will be to arrive where we started\n\n\u2003And know the place for the first time.\n\n\u2014T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding\n\nThe Castle in the Lake was an oyster that had closed itself off from the world. Not a single window had a view of the mountains around. Not a single window looked out on the lake lapping at its dark walls. Once you had left the gate behind you there was only the castle: its dark and narrow courtyards, covered bridges linking its towers, walls painted with worlds like nothing that existed in the world outside these windowless fortifications. They showed gardens and gently rolling hills populated by unicorns, dragons and peacocks, and above them an eternally blue sky with white clouds drifting over it. The pictures were everywhere, in the rooms, along the corridors, on the courtyard walls. You saw them through every window (and there were many windows inside the castle). Painted views of a world that didn't exist. But the moist breath of the lake made paint flake off the stones, so that it seemed in many places as if someone had tried to wipe the painted lies off the walls.\n\nOnly from the towers, where the view was not interrupted by walls, oriels and roofs, could you see the world that really surrounded the castle, the great lake and the mountains that lay around it. Mo was immediately drawn to the battlements, where he could feel the sky above him and look at the world which fascinated him so much that he kept making his way deeper and deeper into it, even though it might not be any more real than the pictures on the walls. But Violante just wanted to see the rooms with windows looking out on painted worlds, rooms where her mother had played in the past.\n\nShe moved through the Castle as if she had come home, tenderly caressing the furniture, which was grey with dust, scrutinizing every piece of earthenware that she found under the cobwebs, and examining the pictures on the walls as closely as if they told her tales of her mother. 'This was the room where she and her sisters did their lessons. Look, those were their desks! They had a horrible tutor!' 'This was where my grandmother slept!' 'This was where they kept the hounds, this was the dovecote for the pigeons who carried their messages.'\n\nThe longer Mo followed her, the more it seemed to him that this painted world was exactly what Violante's shortsighted eyes wanted to see. Perhaps she felt safer in a world resembling the scenes in Balbulus's books \u2013 invented, easily controlled, timeless and unchanging, every corner of it familiar.\n\nWould Meggie have liked to see painted unicorns from her window, he wondered, eternally green hills, clouds that were always the same? No, he answered himself, Meggie would have climbed up to the towers like him.\n\n'Did your mother ever tell you if she was really happy here?' Mo couldn't keep the doubt out of his voice, and Violante heard it. The girlish softness that changed her face so much disappeared at once, and the Adderhead's daughter was back.\n\n'Of course! Very happy. Until my father made my grandfather give him her hand in marriage and took her away to the Castle of Night!' She looked at him defiantly, as if her mere gaze could force him to believe her \u2013 and to love this castle.\n\nThere was one room that didn't let you forget the outside world. Mo first found it when he was exploring on his own, searching for some place where he wouldn't feel that he was a prisoner again, if in a beautifully painted dungeon this time. Daylight dazzled him as he suddenly stepped into a hall in the west wing of the castle. It had so many windows that they turned the walls into lace. Light, reflected from the water of the lake, danced on the ceiling, and the mountains seemed to line up outside as if they wanted nothing more than to be seen through all those windows. The beauty of the view took Mo's breath away, although it was a dark beauty, and his eyes instinctively went to the sombre mountain slopes in search of any trace of human beings. He filled his lungs with the cold air carried in on the wind, and did not see that he was not alone until he turned and looked south, to where Ombra lay somewhere beyond the mountains. Dustfinger was sitting in one of the windows, the wind in his hair, his face turned towards the cold sun.\n\n'The strolling players call it the Hall of a Thousand Windows,' he said, without turning, and Mo wondered how long he had been sitting there. 'They say that Violante's mother and sisters had poor eyesight because their father would never let them look into the distance, for fear of what awaited them there. Daylight began to hurt their eyes. They couldn't even make out the pictures on the walls of their rooms clearly any more, and a physician who came here with a couple of the Motley Folk told Violante's grandfather that his daughters would go blind unless he let them see the real world now and then. So the Prince of Salt \u2013 that was what people called him, because he'd made a fortune in the salt trade \u2013 had these windows made in the walls and ordered his daughters to look out of them for an hour every day. But while they did so a minstrel had to tell them about the terrors of the outside world \u2013 the heartlessness and cruelty of human beings, disease running rife and hungry wolves \u2013 so that they'd never want to go out into it and leave their father.'\n\n'What a strange story,' said Mo. As he went over to Dustfinger's side he could feel his longing for Roxane as strongly as if it were his own.\n\n'It's only a story now,' said Dustfinger. 'But it all really happened, here in this place.' He blew a gentle breath into the cool air, and close beside them three girls were formed out of fire. They stood close together, staring into the distance, where the mountains were as blue as yearning.\n\n'It's said they tried to run away with the strolling players several times. Their father tolerated the Motley Folk only because they brought him news from other princely courts. But neither the girls nor the strolling players ever got any further than the first trees. Their father had them caught and brought his daughters back to the castle. As for the strolling players, he had them tied up there \u2013' Dustfinger pointed to a rock on the banks of the lake \u2013 'and the girls had to stand at the window \u2013' (the figures did exactly what Dustfinger described) \u2013 'freezing cold and trembling with fear, until giants came and dragged the strolling players away.'\n\nMo couldn't take his eyes off the fiery girls. The flames depicted their fear and loneliness as expressively as Balbulus could have done with his brush. No, Violante's mother had not been happy in this castle, whatever her daughter said.\n\n'What's he doing?'\n\nSuddenly Violante was standing behind them. Brianna and Tullio were with her.\n\nDustfinger snapped his fingers, and the flames lost their human form and twined around the window like a fiery plant. 'Don't worry. There'll just be a little soot left on the stones, and for the moment,' he added, glancing at Brianna, who was staring into the flames as if enchanted, 'it looks beautiful, don't you think?'\n\nIt did. The fire surrounded the window with red leaves and flowers of gold. Tullio instinctively took a step towards it, but Violante roughly pulled him back to her side. 'Put it out, Fire-Dancer!' she ordered Dustfinger. 'This minute.'\n\nShrugging his shoulders, Dustfinger obeyed. A whisper, and the fire went out. Violante's anger did not impress him, and that alarmed the Adderhead's daughter. Mo could see it in her eyes.\n\n'It did look beautiful, don't you agree?' he asked, passing his finger over the sooty sill. It was as if he could still see the three girls standing at the window.\n\n'Fire is never beautiful,' said Violante with scorn. 'Have you ever seen anyone die by fire? They burn for a long time.'\n\nShe obviously knew what she was talking about. How old had she been when she first saw someone die at the stake, how old when she first saw a hanging? How much darkness could children bear before darkness became a part of them for ever?\n\n'Come with me, Bluejay!' Violante turned abruptly. 'There's something I want to show you. Only you! Brianna, get some water and wash that soot off.'\n\nBrianna hurried away without a word, but not without casting a quick glance at her father, who held Mo back as he was about to follow Her Ugliness.\n\n'Beware of her!' he whispered. 'Princes' daughters have a weakness for mountebanks and robbers.'\n\n'Bluejay!' Violante's voice was sharp with impatience. 'Where are you?'\n\nDustfinger painted a fiery heart on the floor.\n\nViolante was waiting on the staircase in the tower as if afraid of the windows. Perhaps she liked shadows because she still felt the mark on her cheek from which her cruel nickname came. Meggie had been called very different pet names when she was little: 'my pretty', 'sweetheart', 'honey'... Meggie had grown up in the certainty that the mere sight of her filled him with love. Presumably Violante's mother had shown her daughter that kind of love, but everyone else had looked at her and shuddered, or felt pity at the most. Where had Violante hidden, as a child, from all those glances of dislike and all that pain? Had she taught her heart to despise everyone who could show the world a pretty face? Poor Adder's daughter, thought Mo as he saw her standing on the dark staircase, so lonely in her dark heart... no, Dustfinger was wrong. Violante loved nothing and no one, not even herself.\n\nShe hurried down the steps as if running away from her own shadow. She always walked fast and impatiently, picking up her long skirts as if cursing the clothes women had to wear in this world at every step she took.\n\n'Come with me. I want to show you something. My mother always told me the library of this castle was in the north wing, with the unicorn pictures. I don't know when it was moved, or why, but see for yourself... the tower guardroom, the scribe's room, the women's room,' she whispered as she walked. 'The bridge to the north tower, the bridge to the south tower, the aviary courtyard, the hounds' courtyard...' She really did move around the castle as if she had lived in it for years.\n\nHow often had she studied the books describing this place? Mo could hear the lake as she led him through a courtyard containing empty cages, gigantic cages made of metalwork as elaborate as if the bars were meant to be substitute trees for the birds inside. He heard water breaking on the stones, but the walls surrounding this courtyard were painted with beech and oak trees, and flocks of birds sitting in their branches: sparrows, larks, wild doves, nightingales and falcons, crossbills and robin redbreasts, woodpeckers and hummingbirds dipping their beaks into red flowers. A bluejay sat beside a swallow.\n\n'My mother and her sisters loved birds. So my grandfather didn't just have them painted on the walls, he had live birds brought here from the most distant lands, and filled these cages with them. He had the cages covered in winter, but my mother crept in under the covers. Sometimes she would sit for hours in one of the cages, until the nursemaids found her and plucked the birds' feathers from her hair.'\n\nShe hurried on. A covered passage under a gateway, another courtyard. Kennels, hunting scenes on the walls, and above it all the sound of the water of the lake, so far away and yet so close. Of course Violante's mother loved birds, thought Mo. She wished she had wings too. No doubt she and her sisters dreamt of flying away when they climbed into the cages and waited for their fine dresses to be covered with feathers.\n\nIt saddened him to think of the three lonely girls, but all the same he would have loved to show Meggie the cages and the painted birds, the unicorns and dragons, the Hall of a Thousand Windows, even the Impregnable Bridge that seemed to be hovering over the lake when you looked down on it from above. You'll tell Meggie about all this one day, he said to himself, as if just imagining it could make the words true.\n\nAnother staircase, another covered bridge like a tunnel suspended between the towers. The door at which Violante stopped was stained black, like all the doors in the castle. The wood had swelled, and she had to brace her shoulder against it to open it.\n\n'It's terrible!' she said, and she was right. Mo couldn't make out much in the long room. Two narrow windows let in only a little light and air, but even if he hadn't been able to see anything he would have smelt it. The books were stacked like firewood by the damp walls, and the cold air smelt so strongly of mould that he put his hand over his mouth and nose.\n\n'Look at them!' Violante picked up the nearest book and held it out to him, tears in her eyes. 'They're all like that!'\n\nMo took the book from her hand and tried to open it, but the pages had stuck together in a single blackened, musty-smelling lump. Mould covered the cut edges of the pages like foam. The covers were eaten away. What he was holding wasn't a book any more \u2013 it was the corpse of a book, and for a moment Mo felt nausea as he thought that he had condemned the Book he had bound for the Adderhead to the same fate. Did it look as bad as this one by now? Hardly, or it would have killed the Adderhead long ago, and the White Women wouldn't be reaching out their hands to Meggie.\n\n'I've looked at so many of them. Hardly any of them are in a better state! How can it have happened?'\n\nMo put the ruined book back with the others.\n\n'Well, wherever the library originally was, I'm afraid there's no safe place for books in this castle. Even if your grandfather tried to forget the lake outside, it's still there. The air is so damp that the books started rotting, and since no one knew how to save them I suppose they were put in this room, in the hope that they'd dry out more quickly here than in the library. A bad mistake. They must have been worth a fortune.'\n\nViolante pressed her lips together and passed her hand over the crumbling covers, as if stroking a dead pet's coat for the last time. 'My mother described them to me even more vividly than the rest of this castle! Luckily she took some to the Castle of Night with her, and then I took most of those to Ombra. As soon as I arrived I asked my father-in-law to send for the other books too. After all, this castle had been empty for years. But who listens to an eight-year-old girl? \"Forget the books, and the castle where they stand,\" that's what he said whenever I asked him. \"I'm not sending my men to a place like the Castle in the Lake, not for the finest books in the world. Haven't you heard of the fish your grandfather bred in the lake, and the eternal mists? Not to mention the giants.\" As if giants hadn't disappeared from these mountains years ago! He was such a fool! A greedy, gluttonous fool!' Anger took the sadness from her voice.\n\nMo looked around. The idea of the treasures that had once been hidden between all these wrecked covers nauseated him more than the stench of mould.\n\n'You can't do anything for the books now, can you?'\n\nHe shook his head. 'No. There's no remedy for mould. Although you say that the Adderhead has found one. I don't suppose you know what it is?'\n\n'Oh yes. But you won't like it.' Violante picked up one of the spoilt books. This one would still open, but the pages fell apart in her fingers. 'He's had the White Book dipped in fairy blood. They say that if that hadn't worked he'd have tried human blood.'\n\nMo felt as if he could see the blank pages he had cut in the Castle of Night soaking up the blood. 'That's appalling!' he said.\n\nIt obviously amused Violante that such a ridiculous piece of cruelty could shake him. 'Apparently my father mixed the fairy blood with the blood of fire-elves so that it would dry more quickly,' she went on, unmoved. 'Their blood is very hot, did you know that? Hot as liquid fire.'\n\n'Indeed?' Mo's voice was hoarse with disgust. 'I hope you aren't planning to try the same remedy with these books. Believe me, it wouldn't help them now.'\n\n'If you say so.'\n\nWas he just imagining the disappointment in her voice?\n\nHe turned round. He didn't want to see the dead books any more. Nor did he want to think of those pages drenched in blood.\n\nAs he came through the doorway, Dustfinger moved away from the painted wall of the corridor. It was almost as if he were stepping out of a book again. 'We have a visitor, Silvertongue,' he said. 'Although not the one we were expecting.'\n\n'Silvertongue?' Violante appeared in the open doorway. 'Why do you call him that?'\n\n'Oh, it's a long story.' Dustfinger gave her a smile which she did not return. 'I assure you the name fits him at least as well as the one you give him. And he's had it very much longer.'\n\n'Has he?' Violante looked at Dustfinger with barely concealed dislike. 'Is that what they call him among the dead too?'\n\nDustfinger turned and ran his finger over the gold-mocker sitting among the painted branches of a rose bush. 'No. No one goes by any name among the dead. We're all alike there. Mountebanks and princes. You'll find that out yourself some day.'\n\nViolante's face froze, and once again it looked like her father's. 'My husband once came back from the dead too. But he didn't tell me mountebanks were so highly honoured there.'\n\n'Did he tell you anything about it at all?' Dustfinger replied, looking so directly at Violante that she turned pale. 'I could tell you a long tale about your husband. I could tell you I've seen him twice among the dead. But I think you should greet your visitor now. He's not in a very good way.'\n\n'Who is this visitor?'\n\nDustfinger plucked a fiery brush out of the air.\n\n'Balbulus?' Violante looked at him in disbelief.\n\n'Yes,' said Dustfinger. 'And the Piper has left the mark of your father's anger on him.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Masters New and Old",
                "text": "\u2003'No problem!' cried Butt the Hoopoe. 'Any story worth its salt can handle a little shaking up.'\n\n\u2014Salman Rushdie, Hassan and the Sea of Stories\n\nHow his behind hurt! As if he'd never be able to sit on it again. Damn all this riding about the place. It was one thing to go through the streets of Ombra on horseback, his head held high, attracting envious glances. But it was no fun following the Adderhead's coach for hours in the dark, along rough paths where you were liable to break your neck the whole time.\n\nFor Orpheus's new master travelled only by night. As soon as dawn came he had his black tent pitched to hide there from the light of day, and only when the sun set did he heave his rotting body back into the coach standing ready for him. It was drawn by two horses as black as the velvet that lined the coach. Orpheus had cast a surreptitious glance inside it the first time they stopped to rest. The Adder's crest was embroidered on the cushions in silver thread, and they looked much softer than the saddle he'd been sitting in for days. He wouldn't have minded a coach like that himself, but he had to ride behind it with Jacopo, Violante's horrible brat, who kept demanding something to eat or drink, and showed such doglike devotion to the Piper that he wore a tin nose over his own. It still surprised Orpheus that the Piper wasn't travelling with them. Well, of course \u2013 he'd let the Bluejay escape. Presumably the Adderhead had sent him back to the Castle of Night to punish him. But why, for heaven's sake, didn't his master have more than four dozen men-at-arms to escort them? Orpheus had counted them twice, but that was all. Did the Adderhead think this handful of men was enough against Violante's child soldiers, or did he still trust his daughter? If so, then the Silver Prince was either considerably more stupid than he was reputed to be, or the rot had attacked his brain, which might well mean that Mortimer would be playing the hero again and he, Orpheus, had backed the wrong side. A terrible idea, so he was very careful not to think of it too often.\n\nThey made such painfully slow progress in the heavy coach that Oss could keep up with the horses on foot. Cerberus had been left behind in Ombra. The Adderhead, too, thought keeping dogs was a privilege of the nobility... it really was high time the rules of this world were rewritten.\n\n'Slow as snails!' grumbled one of the men-at-arms behind him. Those fellows stank to high heaven, as if competing with their master's odour. 'You wait and see, by the time we reach that damn castle the Bluejay will have flown again.' Idiots in armour. They still hadn't realized that the Bluejay had ridden to Ombra Castle with a plan in mind, and that plan had not yet been put into practice.\n\nAh, they were stopping at last. What a relief to his poor bones! The sky was still black as pitch, but presumably Thumbling had spotted a fairy dancing at the approach of dawn in spite of the cold.\n\nThumbling...\n\nThe Adderhead's new bodyguard could teach anyone the meaning of fear. He was as thin as if Death had taken him once already, and the scaly snake from his master's crest was tattooed across his larynx, so that when he spoke it writhed on his skin as if it were alive. A very unsettling sight, but luckily Thumbling didn't talk much. He did not owe his name to his stature. Indeed, Thumbling was rather taller than Orpheus, not that it was likely anyone in this world knew the fairy tale of the same name and its tiny central character. No, this Thumbling apparently got his name from the cruel things he could do with his thumbs.\n\nOrpheus hadn't found anything about him in Fenoglio's book, so presumably he was one of those characters who \u2013 if Fenoglio himself was to be believed \u2013 had been hatched out by the story itself, like midge larvae in a marshy pond. Thumbling dressed like a peasant, but his sword was better than the Piper's, and it was said that, like Silvernose, he had no sense of smell, which was why the two of them could be near the Adderhead without being overcome by nausea, unlike everyone else.\n\nLucky for them, thought Orpheus as he slid off his horse, groaning with relief.\n\n'Rub it down!' he ordered Oss testily. 'And then pitch my tent, and jump to it.' Orpheus thought his bodyguard extremely foolish since he had set eyes on Thumbling.\n\nOrpheus's tent was not particularly large. He could hardly stand up in it, and it was so cramped that he almost knocked it down when he turned around, but he hadn't been able to read himself a better one in a hurry, even though he had searched all his books for a rather grander version. His books... well, they were his now, anyway. Formerly the property of the library of Ombra Castle, but no one had stopped Orpheus when he'd helped himself to them.\n\nBooks.\n\nHow excited he had been, standing in the Laughing Prince's library. He had been so sure that he'd find at least one book there containing words by Fenoglio. And he had, indeed, come upon a book of Bluejay songs on the very first lectern. His fingers had been shaking as he freed the book from its chain (the locks were easily picked; he knew how to do these things). Got you now, Mortimer, he had thought. I'll knead you into shape like dough. You won't know who and where you are once I get my tongue around your robber's name! He had been all the more painfully disappointed when he read the first words. Oh, those leaden sounds, those badly-rhymed lines! Fenoglio couldn't have written any of the songs in that book. Where were the old man's songs? Violante took them with her, you fool, he told himself. Why didn't you think of that before?\n\nThe disappointment still hurt. But who said only Fenoglio's words could come alive in this world? Weren't all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!\n\nHowever that might be, what Orpheus had read so far during those endless hours in the saddle was not, unfortunately, very promising. It seemed that there wasn't a single storyteller in this world who understood his art, or at least not in the Laughing Prince's library. What a pitiful collection of beautifully handwritten tedium, what wooden babbling! And the characters! Not even his voice would bring them to life.\n\nOriginally Orpheus had intended to impress the Adderhead with a sample of his skill the next time they stopped to rest, but he still hadn't found anything that tasted better on his tongue than dry paper. Damn it all!\n\nOf course the Adderhead's tent was already pitched. Thumbling always sent a few servants on ahead so that his master could stumble out of the coach and straight into it. It was a fabric palace, the dark lengths of cloth embroidered with silver snakes shimmering in the moonlight as if thousands of slugs had been crawling over the material.\n\nSuppose he summons you now, Orpheus said to himself. Didn't you promise him entertainment? He still heard the Milksop's malicious words only too clearly: My brother-in-law doesn't like to have his expectations disappointed.\n\nOrpheus shivered. He sat down under a tree, feeling wretched, lit a candle and fished another book out of the saddlebags, while Oss went on struggling with the tent.\n\nChildren's stories! Oh, for heaven's sake! Damn it, damn it, damn it... or not? Wait a minute! This sounded familiar! Orpheus's heartbeat quickened. Yes, these were Fenoglio's words, no doubt about it.\n\n'That's my book!' Small fingers snatched the book from Orpheus's hands. There stood Jacopo, lips pouting, brows drawn together above his eyes \u2013 probably in imitation of his grandfather. He wasn't wearing the tin nose. Maybe it had become rather a nuisance after a while.\n\nWith difficulty, Orpheus resisted the temptation to tug the book out of those slender hands. Not a clever move. Be nice to the little devil, Orpheus!\n\n'Jacopo!' He gave him a broad and slightly deferential smile, the kind a prince's son would like, even if the prince in question was dead. 'This is your book? Then I'm sure you know who wrote it, don't you?'\n\nJacopo stared darkly at him. 'Tortoise-Face.'\n\nTortoise-Face. What a fabulous name for Fenoglio.\n\n'Do you like his stories?'\n\nJacopo shrugged. 'I like the songs about the Bluejay better, but my mother won't let me have them.'\n\n'That's not very nice of her, is it?' Orpheus stared at the book that Jacopo was clutching so possessively to his chest. He felt his hands sweating with desire for it. Fenoglio's words... suppose the words in that book worked as well as the words in Inkheart itself?\n\n'How would it be, Jacopo...' (oh, how happily he could have wrung his stupid princely neck!), 'how would it be if I told you a few robber stories, and you lent me that book in return?'\n\n'Can you tell stories? I thought you sold unicorns and dwarves.'\n\n'I can do that too!' And I'll have you impaled on a unicorn's horn if you don't give me the book this minute, thought Orpheus, hiding his savage reflections behind an even broader smile.\n\n'What do you want the book for? It's for children. Only for children.'\n\nHorrible little know-all. 'I want to look at the pictures.'\n\nJacopo opened the book and leafed through the parchment pages. 'They're boring. Just animals and fairies and brownies. I can't stand brownies. They stink, and they look like Tullio.' He looked at Orpheus. 'What will you give me if I lend it to you? Do you have any silver?'\n\nSilver. It ran in the family \u2013 although Jacopo resembled his dead father far more than his grandfather.\n\n'Of course.' Orpheus put his hand into the bag at his belt. Just you wait, princeling, he thought. If this book can do what I suspect it can, I'll think up a few nasty surprises for you.\n\nJacopo put out his hand, and Orpheus dropped a coin bearing his grandfather's head into it.\n\nThe little hand stayed open, demanding more. 'I want three.'\n\nOrpheus snarled with annoyance, and Jacopo clutched the book a little more firmly.\n\nGreedy little bastard. Orpheus dropped two more coins into the child's hand, and Jacopo was quick to close his fingers over them. 'That's for one day.'\n\n'One day?'\n\nOss trudged towards them. His toes were sticking out of his boots; he was always needing new boots for his elephantine feet. Too bad. Let him go barefoot for a while.\n\n'Your tent is ready, my lord.'\n\nJacopo stuffed the coins into the bag at his own belt, and held the book out to Orpheus with a gracious expression.\n\n'Three silver coins, three days!' said Orpheus, taking the book. 'And now get out before I change my mind.'\n\nJacopo ducked, but the next moment he remembered whose grandson he was.\n\n'That's no way to talk to me, Four-Eyes!' he cried shrilly, treading on Orpheus's foot so hard that he screamed. The soldiers who were sitting under the trees, freezing in the cold, laughed, and Jacopo stalked away like a shrunken copy of the Adderhead.\n\nOrpheus felt the blood shoot to his face. 'What kind of bodyguard are you?' he snapped at Oss. 'Can't you even protect me from a six-year-old?'\n\nWith that, he limped towards his tent.\n\nOss had lit an oil lamp and spread a bearskin on the cold forest floor, but Orpheus missed his own house the moment he stepped inside. 'All because of Mortimer and his stupid robber games!' he grumbled as he sat down on the bearskin in a bad temper. 'I'll send him to hell, and Dustfinger with him. From all I hear, those two seem to be inseparable these days. And if there isn't any hell in this world, well, I'll write one especially for them. Even Dustfinger won't like that kind of fire!'\n\nWrite... he avidly opened the book he had bargained for with that avaricious little devil. Bears, brownies, fairies... the child was right, these were children's stories. It wouldn't be easy to read something out of them to tempt the Adderhead, who was sure to summon him soon, for who else was going to help him pass the sleepless night?\n\nMore brownies. The old man seemed to have a soft spot for them. A very sentimental story about a glass woman in love... another featuring a nymph madly in love with a prince... for heaven's sake, even Jacopo could hardly be expected to take much interest in that. Was a robber at least mentioned somewhere? Or, if not that, a bluejay calling? Yes, that would do it: he could step into the Adderhead's tent and, with just a few words, read the enemy he'd been hunting so long into his presence. But instead he found woodpeckers, nightingales, even a talking sparrow \u2013 no bluejay. Curse it, curse it, curse it! He hoped his three silver coins had been a good investment. Nose-Nipper... hmm, that at least sounded like a creature he could use to get his own back on the boy. But wait a moment! There, where the forest was at its darkest... Orpheus's lips formed the words soundlessly... and where not even the brownies ventured out to search for mushrooms...\n\n'This camp is a very uncomfortable place to stay, master!' Ironstone was suddenly there beside him, looking gloomy. 'How long do you think we'll be travelling?'\n\nThe glass man was getting greyer every day. Perhaps he missed quarrelling with that treacherous brother of his. Or maybe it was because he kept catching woodlice and maggots and eating them with obvious relish.\n\n'Don't disturb me!' Orpheus snapped at him. 'Can't you see I'm reading? And what's that leg clinging to your jacket? Haven't I told you not to eat insects? Do you want me to chase you away into the forest to join the wild glass men?'\n\n'No. No, I really don't! I won't let another word pass my lips, Your Grace \u2013 and no insects either!' Ironstone bowed three times. (How Orpheus loved his servility!) 'Just one more question. Is that the book that was stolen from you?'\n\n'No, unfortunately \u2013 only its little brother,' replied Orpheus without looking up. 'And now for heaven's sake shut up!'\n\n...and where not even the brownies ventured out to search for mushrooms, he read on, lived the blackest of all shadows, the worst of all nameless terrors. Night-Mare it was now called, but once it had borne a human name, for Night-Mares are human souls so evil that the White Women cannot wash the wickedness from their hearts, and send them back again...\n\nOrpheus raised his head. 'Well, well, what a dark story!' he murmured. 'What was the old man thinking of? Had that ghastly imp annoyed him so much that he set out to sing him a very special lullaby? This sounds rather as if Jacopo's grandfather might like it too. Yes.' Once again he bent over the pages on which Balbulus had painted a shadow with black fingers reaching through the letters on the page. 'Oh yes, fabulous!' he whispered. 'Ironstone, bring me pen and paper \u2013 and quick, or I'll feed you to one of the horses.'\n\nThe glass man obeyed eagerly, and Orpheus set to work. Half a sentence stolen here, a few words there, a snippet plucked from the next page to link them. Fenoglio's words. Written with a rather lighter touch than in Inkheart \u2013 you almost thought you could hear the old man chuckling \u2013 but the music was the same. So why shouldn't the words from this story act like those from the other book \u2013 the one so shamefully stolen from him?\n\n'Yes. Yes, that sounds just like the old man's work!' whispered Orpheus as the paper soaked up the ink. 'But it needs a little more colour...' He was leafing through the illuminated pages, looking for the right words, when the glass man suddenly gave a shrill scream and scurried into hiding behind his hand.\n\nThere was a magpie in the opening of the tent.\n\nAlarmed, Ironstone clutched Orpheus's sleeve (he was brave only when dealing with smaller specimens of his own kind), and Orpheus's hope that this might be just an ordinary magpie was dashed as soon as the bird opened her beak.\n\n'Get out!' she spat at the glass man, and Ironstone scurried outside on his thin, spidery legs, although the Adderhead's men threw acorns and fairy-nuts at him.\n\nMortola. Of course Orpheus had known she'd turn up again sooner or later, but why couldn't it have been later? A magpie, he thought as she hopped towards him. If I could turn myself into an animal or a bird I'd make sure to choose something more impressive. How bedraggled she looked. Presumably a marten had been after her, or a fox. A pity it hadn't eaten her.\n\n'What are you doing here?' she snapped. 'Did I say anything about offering your services to the Adderhead?'\n\nShe sounded completely crazy, apart from the fact that her harsh voice lost all its terrors when it came out of a yellow beak. Your story's finished, Mortola, thought Orpheus. Over. Whereas mine is only just beginning...\n\n'Why are you sitting staring at me like that? Did he believe what you told him about his daughter and the Bluejay? Well, come on, out with it!' She pecked angrily at a beetle that had wandered into the tent, crunching it up so noisily that Orpheus felt sick.\n\n'Oh, yes, yes,' he said, irritated. 'Of course he believed me. I was very convincing.'\n\n'Good.' The magpie fluttered up on to the books that Orpheus had stolen from the library and peered down on what he had been writing. 'What's all this? Has the Adderhead ordered a unicorn from you too?'\n\n'No, no. That's nothing. Just a... er... a story I'm supposed to be writing for his pest of a grandson.' Orpheus placed his hand over the words, as if by chance.\n\n'What about the White Book?' Mortola preened her ruffled feathers. 'Have you found out where the Adderhead is hiding it? He must have it with him!'\n\n'Death and the devil, of course not! Do you think the Adderhead carries it about with him publicly?' This time Orpheus didn't even try to keep the contempt out of his voice, and Mortola pecked his hand so hard that he screeched.\n\n'I don't like your tone, Moonface! He must have it somewhere, so look for it, seeing that you're here. I can't take care of everything.'\n\n'When did you ever take care of anything?' Oh, why don't I wring her skinny neck, he said to himself, wiping the blood from the back of his hand. The way my father used to kill chickens and pigeons.\n\n'Is that any way to speak to me?' The magpie pecked at his hand again, but this time Orpheus snatched it away in time. 'Do you think I've just been perching on a branch doing nothing? I've rid the world of the Black Prince and made sure that his men will help me in future, not the Bluejay.'\n\n'Really? The Prince is dead?' Orpheus took a great deal of trouble to sound unimpressed. That would hurt Fenoglio. The old man was ridiculously proud of his character. 'What about the children he stole? Where are they?'\n\n'In a cave northeast of Ombra. The moss-women call it the Giants' Chamber. There are still a few robbers with them, and some women. It's a stupid hiding place, but since the Adderhead thought it was a good idea to send his brother-in-law to look for them, the children are probably safe there for a good while yet. Folk say even a rabbit can outwit that man.'\n\nInteresting! And wasn't that a piece of news that could convince the Adderhead of his own usefulness?\n\n'What about the Bluejay's wife and daughter? Are they there too?'\n\n'Certainly.' Mortola hissed as if something were stuck in her throat. 'I was going to poison the little witch as well and send her after the Prince, but her mother chased me away. She knows too much about me, far too much!'\n\nThis was getting better and better.\n\nBut Mortola could read his thoughts on his face. 'Don't look so stupidly pleased with yourself! You're not to tell the Adderhead a word about any of this. They're both mine. I'm not leaving them to the Silver Prince this time, just for him to let them go again, understand?'\n\n'Of course! My lips are sealed!' Orpheus immediately assumed his most innocent expression. 'What about the others \u2013 the robbers who are going to help you?'\n\n'They're following you. They'll lie in ambush for the Adder tomorrow night. They think it's their own idea, but I planted it in their silly heads! Where can the Book fall into their hands more easily than in the middle of the forest? Snapper's staged hundreds of such attacks in the past, and he won't have to deal with the Piper. The stupid Adder has left his best watchdog behind \u2013 I suppose to punish him for letting the Bluejay escape. But he's only cutting into his own rotting flesh, and perhaps the Magpie will redeem her own son from Death with his corpse as early as tomorrow. It's a pity that if I do I won't see the White Women take the bookbinder away, but that can't be helped. Take him away they will, and this time they won't let him go again. Who knows? Perhaps Death will be so pleased to have both the Adderhead and the Bluejay that the White Book will be forgotten. Then I can write my son's name in it and never fear for him again!'\n\nShe was talking feverishly, faster and faster with every sentence, cackling as if she would choke on the words if she didn't get them out fast enough.\n\n'Hide in the bushes when they attack!' she added. 'I don't want Snapper killing you too by mistake. I may need you yet if the fool happens to fail!'\n\nShe really does still trust you, Orpheus, he thought. He could almost have laughed out loud. What had happened to Mortola's mind? Did she think of nothing but worms and beetles now? A poor prospect for her, thought Orpheus, and a very good one for me.\n\n'Good. Excellent,' he said, while his brain thought swiftly of the best way to use all this information. Only one thing was perfectly clear: if the White Book fell into Mortola's hands, he himself would have lost the game. Death would take the Adderhead, Mortola would write her son's name in the White Book, and he himself wouldn't even get back the book that Dustfinger had stolen from him, to say nothing of immortal life! He would be left with nothing but the stories Fenoglio had written for a spoilt child. No, there was no alternative, he must go on backing the Adderhead.\n\n'Why are you standing there gaping like a mooncalf?' Mortola's voice sounded more like a bird's hoarse cry with every word.\n\n'My lord!' Oss put his head into the tent, looking alarmed. 'The Adderhead wants to see you. They say he's in a terrible temper.'\n\n'I'm coming.' Orpheus almost trod on the magpie's tail feathers as he stumbled out of the tent. She hopped aside with an angry cackle.\n\n'Horrible creature!' grunted Oss, kicking out at her. 'You want to shoo it away, my lord. My mother says magpies are thieves reborn.'\n\n'I don't like it either,' whispered Orpheus. 'I tell you what, why not wring its neck while I'm gone?'\n\nOss's mouth twisted in an unpleasant smile. He liked such tasks. Perhaps he wasn't such a bad bodyguard after all. No, he wasn't.\n\nOrpheus passed his hand once more over his hair (old man's hair, they called it here; no one else in Ombra was such a pale blond) and made for the Adderhead's tent. He wouldn't be able to read the Bluejay here for him, and whatever was hidden in Jacopo's book must wait until his audience with the Silver Prince was over, but thanks to Mortola he had something else to offer now.\n\nThe Adderhead's tent was as black beneath the trees as if night had left a piece of itself behind there. And suppose it had? Night was always kinder to you than day, Orpheus, he told himself as Thumbling pushed back the dark cloth of the tent flap, his face expressionless. Didn't darkness and silence make it so much easier to dream the world to your own taste? Yes, perhaps he ought to make it always night in this world, once he had Inkheart back again...\n\n'Your Highness!' Orpheus bowed low as the Adderhead's face emerged from the darkness like a distorted moon. 'I bring news I've just learnt from listening to the wind. I think you'll like it...'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Lazy Old Man",
                "text": "\u2003One day God felt he ought to give his workshop a springclean... It was amazing what ragged bits and pieces came out from under his workbench, as he swept. Beginnings of creatures, bits that looked useful but had seemed wrong, ideas that he'd mislaid and forgotten... There was even a tiny lump of sun. He scratched his head. What could be done with all this rubbish?\n\n\u2014Ted Hughes, Leftovers, from The Dreamfighter\n\nHere she came again! Elinor Loredan! The name sounded almost as if he'd thought her up himself. Cursing, Fenoglio pulled the blanket over his face. Wasn't it bad enough that she was a know-all, a bluestocking, and stubborn as a mule? Did she have to be an early riser too? He supposed day was just beginning to dawn outside.\n\n'Hm, that doesn't look particularly inspired!' Her eyes had gone straight to the blank sheet of paper lying beside him. How horribly bright and cheerful she sounded. 'Don't they say the Muses' kisses are sweetest early in the morning? I think I read that somewhere.'\n\nHuh. As if she knew anything about kissing \u2013 and hadn't he earned his sleep, when there wasn't a decent drop of wine to be had in this wretched cave? Hadn't he just saved the Black Prince's life? Very well, the Prince's legs were still rather weak, and he wasn't eating much, as Minerva kept saying with concern. But then, all those children had to be fed, not an easy task at this time of year, and the little ones were hungry the whole time \u2013 when they weren't asking him or Darius for a story, Farid for some tricks with fire, or Meggie for a few songs about the Bluejay. She sang them better than Battista by now.\n\nPerhaps that's something I ought to do, thought Fenoglio, ostentatiously turning his back on Signora Loredan. Write some more game here for us to hunt \u2013 something easily brought down, with plenty of meat on it and a good flavour.\n\n'Fenoglio!' She'd actually pulled the blanket off him! This was incredible!\n\nRosenquartz put his head out of the pocket where he had taken to sleeping, and rubbed his eyes.\n\n'Good morning, Rosenquartz. Get some paper out and sharpen the pens.'\n\nThat tone of voice! Just like a hospital nurse! Fenoglio sat up with a groan. He really was too old to be sleeping on the floor of a damp cave! 'That's my glass man, and he does what I tell him to do!' he grunted, but before he knew it Rosenquartz was scurrying past him with a syrupy-sweet smile on his pale pink lips.\n\nWhat by all the ink-devils was he playing at? The glass-headed traitor! How eagerly he did as she told him, whereas if he, Fenoglio, asked Rosenquartz for something it didn't arrive half so quickly.\n\n'Wonderful!' whispered Signora Loredan. 'Thank you, Rosenquartz.'\n\nElinor. It's not the name I'd have given her, thought Fenoglio as he forced his feet into his boots, shivering. Something more warlike would fit her much better... Penthesilea or Boadicea or some such Amazon... heavens, it was cold in this cave too! Can't you change the weather somehow, Fenoglio? Could he?\n\nAs he blew on his cold hands his uninvited visitor held out a steaming mug to him. 'Here you are. Doesn't taste particularly good, but it's hot. Coffee made from tree bark \u2013 you know, Rosenquartz really is a delightful glass man!' she whispered to him in a confidential tone. 'Jasper is very nice too, but so shy. And then there's that pink hair!'\n\nFlattered, Rosenquartz ran his fingers over it. Glass men's ears were certainly as keen as any owl's, which was why \u2013 even with their fragile limbs \u2013 they made such good spies. Fenoglio could cheerfully have stuffed the vain little creature into his empty wineskin.\n\nHe took a sip of the hot brew \u2013 it really did taste nasty \u2013 got to his feet, and dipped his face in the basin of water that Minerva always left ready for him in the evening. Did he just imagine it, or was there a thin layer of ice on the surface?\n\n'You really don't understand the first thing about writing, Loredan!' he growled. That was it, Loredan! That's what he'd call her in future. It suited her much better than the flowery 'Elinor'. 'For one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. The brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.'\n\n'Well, you certainly are very good at staring into space!' Oh, what a sharp tongue she had. 'Next you'll be telling me that tipping brandy and mead down your throat encourages the flow of ideas too.'\n\nHad Rosenquartz just nodded in agreement? He'd chase him out into the forest, where his wild cousins would teach him to eat snails and beetles.\n\n'Well then, Loredan, I'm sure you've known all along how this story ought to turn out! Let me guess: I suppose a frozen sparrow told you the ending yesterday when you were sitting outside the cave, gazing at my forest and my fairies, totally beguiled by them!' Damn it, another tear in his trousers. And Battista had hardly any thread left for mending clothes.\n\n'Inkweaver?' Despina came round the wall that allowed him, for a few precious moments, to forget where he was. 'Do you want any breakfast?'\n\nDear, kind Minerva. She still looked after him as if they were back in her house in Ombra. Fenoglio sighed. The good old days...\n\n'No thank you, Despina,' he replied, looking sideways at his other visitor. 'Tell your mother that unfortunately someone ruined my appetite first thing today.'\n\nDespina and Elinor exchanged a glance that could only be called conspiratorial. Good heavens, were even Minerva's children on Loredan's side now?\n\n'Resa has been gone for two days, not to mention Snapper, but what was the good of leaving you the book if you're just going to sleep the day away or drink bad wine with Battista?'\n\nDear God, how delightful this world had been when he hadn't had that voice ringing in his ears the whole time!\n\n'You owe it to Mortimer to give him a few words to help him. Who else is going to do it? The Black Prince is too weak, and Mortimer's poor daughter is just waiting for you to give her something to read aloud at long last. But oh, no, no. It's too cold, the wine is bad, the children make too much noise, how's anyone supposed to write? You don't run out of words when it comes to complaining!'\n\nThere! Rosenquartz was nodding again! I'll mix soup in his sand, thought Fenoglio, so much soup that he writhes with stomach cramps like the Black Prince \u2013 and I won't write a single word to cure him!\n\n'Fenoglio, are you listening to me?' She was looking at him as reproachfully as a teacher asking where his homework was!\n\nThe book, yes. Resa had left it here for him. So what use was that supposed to be? It just reminded him how easy he had once found storytelling, before he put every word down on paper knowing that it could become reality.\n\n'It can't be all that difficult! Mortimer has done almost all the work for you in advance! He's going to pretend to the Adderhead that he can heal the Book, then Violante will distract her father's attention, and Mortimer will write the three words in it. Maybe afterwards there'll be a duel with the Piper \u2013 that kind of thing always reads well \u2013 I suppose the Fire-Dancer will put on a show too, although personally I still don't like him \u2013 and yes, you could have Resa playing a part as well. She could keep that horrible Snapper occupied, I don't know just how, but I'm sure you'll think of something...'\n\n'Be quiet!' thundered Fenoglio in such a loud voice that Rosenquartz, terrified, took refuge behind the inkwell. 'What outrageous nonsense! That's just typical. Readers and their ideas! Yes, Mortimer's plan sounds really good. Plain and simple, but good. He overcomes the Adderhead with Violante's help, writes the three words, Adderhead dead, Bluejay saved, Violante ruler of Ombra \u2013 oh yes, it sounds wonderful. I tried writing it like that last night. It doesn't work! Dead words! This story doesn't like taking an easy path. It has other ideas, I can smell that in the air. But what are they? I brought the Piper into it, I gave Dustfinger his fair share of the action, but then \u2013 something or other was missing. Someone or other was missing! Someone who's going to thwart Mortimer's fine plan with a vengeance. Snapper? No, he's too stupid. But who? Sootbird?'\n\nShe was looking at him so anxiously. Well, well. At last she understood. But the next moment she was as defiant as ever. It was a wonder she didn't stamp her foot like a child. She was a child, disguised as a rather stout middle-aged woman.\n\n'But that's all nonsense! You're the author. You, and no one else.'\n\n'Oh yes? So why is Cosimo dead, then? Did I write about Mortimer binding the book in a way that would leave the Adderhead rotting alive? No. Was it my idea to make Snapper jealous of him, and Her Ugliness suddenly want to kill her father? Definitely not. I just planted this story, but it's growing the way it wants to, and everyone expects me to know in advance what kind of flowers it will have!'\n\nGood God, that incredulous look. As if he'd been talking about Santa Claus. But finally she thrust her chin out (it was quite an imposing chin), and that never boded well.\n\n'Excuses! Nothing but excuses! You can't think of anything, and Resa's on the way to that castle. Suppose the Adderhead gets there long before she does? Suppose he doesn't trust his daughter, and Mortimer is dead before\u2014'\n\n'And suppose Mortola is back, as Resa says?' Fenoglio brusquely interrupted her. 'Suppose Snapper kills Mortimer because he's jealous of the Bluejay? Suppose Violante hands Mortimer over to her father after all, because she can't bear to be rejected by yet another man? What about the Piper, what about Violante's spoilt son, what about all that?' His voice grew so loud that Rosenquartz hid under his blanket.\n\n'Stop shouting!' Suddenly Signora Loredan sounded unusually subdued. 'Poor Rosenquartz's head will be splitting.'\n\n'No, it won't, because his head is as empty as a sucked-out snail's shell. Mine, on the other hand, has to think about difficult problems, matters of life and death \u2013 but it's my glass man that gets your sympathy, and you drag me out of bed after I've been lying awake half the night straining my ears trying to get this story to tell me where it wants to go!'\n\nShe fell silent. She actually fell silent. She bit her surprisingly feminine lower lip and plucked a few burrs off the dress that Minerva had given her, lost in thought. That dress was always picking up dead leaves, burrs and rabbit droppings \u2013 and no wonder, the way she kept wandering around the forest. Elinor Loredan certainly loved his world, though of course she would never admit it \u2013 and she understood it almost as well as he did.\n\n'How... how would it be if you could at least gain us a little time?' She still sounded far less sure of herself than usual. 'Time to think, time to write! Time that might really give Resa a chance to warn Mortimer of Snapper and that magpie. Perhaps a wheel could come off the Adderhead's coach. He travels by coach, doesn't he?'\n\nWell, yes. Not such a stupid idea. Why hadn't he thought of it himself?\n\n'I can try,' he growled.\n\n'Oh, wonderful.' She smiled with relief \u2013 and was immediately more self-confident again. 'I'll ask Minerva to make you some nicer tea,' she added, looking back over her shoulder. 'Tea is better for thinking than wine, I'm sure. And don't be cross with Rosenquartz.'\n\nThe glass man smiled at her in a nauseating way, and Fenoglio gave him a slight nudge with his foot that sent him over on his back.\n\n'Stir the ink, you slimy-tongued traitor!' he said, as Rosenquartz scrambled to his feet, looking offended.\n\nMinerva really did bring him some tea. It even had a little lemon in it, and outside the cave the children were laughing as if everything in the world was all right. Well, make it all right, Fenoglio, he told himself. Loredan has a point. You're still the author of this story. The Adderhead is on his way to the Castle in the Lake, where Mortimer is waiting. The Bluejay is preparing for his finest song. Write it for him! Write Mortimer's part to its end. He's playing it with as much conviction as if he'd been born with the name you gave him. The words are obeying you again. You have the book. Orpheus is forgotten. This is still your story, so give it a good ending!\n\nYes. He'd do it. And Signora Loredan would finally be left speechless and show him the respect she owed him. But first he had to delay the Adderhead (and forget that had been Elinor's idea in the first place).\n\nOutside the children were shouting noisily. Rosenquartz was whispering to Jasper, who was sitting among the freshly-sharpened pens and watching him, wide-eyed. Minerva brought some soup, and Elinor peeped over the wall as if he couldn't see her there. But soon Fenoglio was beyond noticing any of that. The words were carrying him away as they had in the past, letting him ride on their inky backs, leaving him blind and deaf to his surroundings, until he heard only the crunch of coach wheels on frozen ground and the sound of black-painted wood splitting. Soon both glass men were dipping pens in the ink for him, the words came so fast. Splendid words. Words worthy of Fenoglio. He'd quite forgotten how the letters on the page could intoxicate you. No wine could compete with them...\n\n'Inkweaver!'\n\nFenoglio raised his head, irritated. He was already deep in the mountains, on his way to the Castle in the Lake, aware of the Adderhead's bloated flesh as if it were his own.\n\nBattista stood there, concern in his face, and the mountains vanished. Fenoglio was back in the cave, surrounded by robbers and hungry children. What was the matter? The Black Prince hadn't taken a turn for the worse again, had he?\n\n'Doria is back from one of his scouting expeditions. The boy's dead on his feet; he must have been running half the night. He says the Milksop is on his way here, and he knows about the cave. No one has any idea who told him.' Battista rubbed his pockmarked cheeks. 'They have hounds with them. Doria says they'll be here this evening. That means we must leave.'\n\n'Leave? And go where?'\n\nWhere could they take all the children, many of them half crazed with homesickness by now? Fenoglio saw from Battista's face that the robber had no answer to that question either.\n\nWell, so now what would clever Signora Loredan say? How was anyone supposed to write in these circumstances? 'Tell the Prince I'll be with him right away.'\n\nBattista nodded. As he turned, Despina pushed past him. Her little face was anxious. Children know at once when something's wrong. They are used to having to guess what grown-ups don't tell them.\n\n'Come here!' Fenoglio beckoned her over, while Rosenquartz fanned the words he had just written with a maple leaf. Fenoglio sat Despina on his lap and stroked her fair hair. Children... he forgave his villains so much, but since the Piper had started hunting children down, there was only one ending he wanted to write to the man's story, and it was a bloody one. If only he'd already written it! But it would have to wait now, like the song of the Bluejay. Where could they take the children? Think, Fenoglio, think!\n\nHe desperately rubbed his lined brow. Heavens, no wonder thinking dug such deep furrows in your face.\n\n'Rosenquartz!' he told the glass man sharply. 'Find Meggie. Tell her she must read what I've written, even though it isn't quite finished. It'll have to do.'\n\nThe glass man scurried off so fast that he knocked over the wine Battista had brought, and the covers of Fenoglio's bed were stained as if soaked in blood. The book! He snatched it out from under the damp fabric in concern. Inkheart. He still liked that title. What would happen if these pages were moistened? Would his whole world begin to rot? But the paper was dry, only one corner of the binding was slightly damp. Fenoglio rubbed it with his sleeve.\n\n'What's that?' Despina took the book from him. Of course \u2013 where would she ever have seen a book before? She hadn't grown up in a castle or a rich merchant's house.\n\n'This is a thing that has stories in it,' said Fenoglio.\n\nHe heard Elfbane calling the children together, the alarmed voices of the women, the first sounds of weeping. Despina listened anxiously too, but then she stared at the book again.\n\n'Stories?' She leafed through the pages as if expecting the words to fall out. 'What stories? Have you told them to us already?'\n\n'Not this one.' Fenoglio gently took the book from her hand and stared at the page where she had opened it. His own words looked back at him, written so long ago that they sounded like someone else's work...\n\n'What kind of a story is it? Will you tell it to me?'\n\nHe stared at his old words, written by a different Fenoglio, a Fenoglio whose heart had been so much younger, so much lighter \u2013 and not so vain, no doubt Signora Loredan would add.\n\nGreat marvels lay north of Ombra. Hardly any of its inhabitants had ever set eyes on those wonders, but the songs of the strolling players told tales about them and when the peasants wanted to escape their toil in the fields for a few precious moments they would imagine themselves standing on the banks of the lake which, so it was said, the giants used as their mirror. They would picture the nymphs thought to live in it rising from the water and taking them away to castles made of pearls and mother-of-pearl. As the sweat ran down their faces they would sing softly, songs that told of snow-white mountains and of the nests human beings had built in a mighty tree when the giants had begun stealing their children.\n\nNests... a mighty tree... stealing their children. Good heavens, that was it!\n\nFenoglio picked Jasper up and put him on Despina's shoulder. 'Jasper will take you back to your mother,' he said, and strode away past her. 'I must go to the Prince.'\n\nSignora Loredan is right, he thought as he made his way swiftly through the crowd of excited children, weeping mothers and robbers standing around helplessly. You're a foolish old man. Your befuddled brain doesn't even remember your own stories any more! Orpheus may well know more about your own world than you do by now.\n\nBut his vain self, lurking somewhere between his forehead and his breastbone, answered back at once. How are you supposed to remember them all, Fenoglio? There are just too many of them. Your imagination is inexhaustible.\n\nYes. Yes, he was indeed a vain old man. He admitted it. But he had very good reasons for his vanity."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Helpers",
                "text": "\u2003We never know we go \u2013 when we are going\n\n\u2003We jest and shut the door;\n\n\u2003Fate following behind us blots it,\n\n\u2003And we accost no more.\n\n\u2014Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems\n\nMortola was perching in a poison yew, surrounded by needles nearly as black as her plumage. Her left wing hurt. Orpheus's servant had almost broken it with his meaty fingers, and only her beak had saved her. She'd pecked his ugly nose until it bled, but she hardly knew how she had managed to flutter out of the tent. She had been able to fly only short distances since then, but even worse, she couldn't change back from her bird shape, although it was a long time since she had swallowed any of the seeds. How long since she had taken human form? Two days, three days? The magpie didn't count days, the magpie thought of nothing but beetles and worms (ah, plump, pale worms!), winter and wind and the fleas in her feathers.\n\nThe last person she had seen when she was in human shape was Snapper. And yes, he would follow the good advice she had given him in a whisper, and attack the Adderhead in the forest, but all the thanks he'd given her was to call her a damn witch, and try to seize her so that his men could kill her. She had bitten his hand, hissed at the others until they retreated, and there in the bushes she had swallowed the seeds again so that she could fly to Orpheus \u2013 only to have his servant almost break her wings! Peck his eyes out! Peck all their eyes out! Dig your claws into their stupid faces!\n\nMortola uttered a pitiful cry, and the robbers looked up at her as if she were announcing their death. They didn't realize that the magpie was the old woman they'd wanted to kill. They didn't realize anything. What were they going to do with the Book without her help, if they ever really did get their grubby hands on it? They were as stupid as the pale worms she pecked out of the earth. Did they think they just had to shake the Book, or tap its rotting pages, for the gold she'd promised them to come raining down? No, most likely they thought nothing at all as they sat down there among the trees, waiting for darkness to fall. Only a few hours before they planned to ambush the Adderhead's black coach, what were they doing? Drinking home-distilled spirits stolen from some charcoal-burner, dreaming of the wealth to come, bragging that they'd kill first the Adder and then the Bluejay. What about the three words? That's what the magpie wanted to call down to them. Which of you fools can write them in the White Book? However, Snapper at least had obviously thought of that point.\n\n'And once we have the Book,' he was babbling, 'we'll catch the Bluejay and force him to write the three words in it, and then as soon as the Adder is dead and we're wallowing in gold we'll kill him too, because I'm sick and tired of hearing all those stupid songs about him.'\n\n'Yes, let folk sing about us in future!' mumbled Gecko, putting a piece of bread soaked in brandy into the beak of the crow on his shoulder. The crow, alone among them, kept staring up at Mortola. 'We'll be more famous than anyone! More famous than the Bluejay, more famous than the Black Prince, more famous than Firefox and his fire-raisers. More famous than... what was his old master's name?'\n\n'Capricorn.'\n\nThe name pierced Mortola's heart like a red-hot needle, and she cowered on the branch where she was perching, shaken by yearning for her son. Ah, to see his face once more, bring him food once more, cut his pale hair...\n\nShe uttered another shrill cry, and her pain and hatred echoed through the dark valley where the robbers were planning to attack the lord of the Castle of Night.\n\nHer son. Her son. Her wonderful, cruel son. Mortola plucked feathers from her own breast as if that could drive the pain out of her heart.\n\nDead. Lost. And his murderer was playing the noble robber, his praises sung by the stupid rabble who used to tremble before her son! The murderer's shirt had been dyed red, the life had almost flowed out of him, but that little witch of a daughter had saved him. Was she whispering somewhere even now? I'll peck both their faces to pieces, I'll do such a good job of it that the treacherous maid won't recognize them... Resa... she saw you back at the cave, Mortola, she saw you, but what's she going to do about it? The bookbinder went alone, and she's playing the game that all women play in this world, the waiting game... ah, caterpillar!\n\nShe pecked furiously at the hairy body. Caterpillar, caterpillar, cried the voice inside her. Damn this bird-brain. What had she been thinking of just now? Killing. Yes. Revenge. The bird knew that feeling too. She felt her feathers ruffling up, her beak striking at the wood of the branch where she sat, as if it were the Bluejay's body.\n\nA cold wind blew through the tree, shaking its evergreen branches. Rain fell on Mortola's plumage. Time to fly down under the dark yews that would hide her from the robbers, and try, yet again, to shake off the bird-shape, be human flesh once more.\n\nBut the bird thought: no! Time to tuck her beak into her feathers, time to let the rustling branches sing her to sleep. Nonsense! She ruffled herself up, shook her silly little head, called her own name back to mind. Mortola. Mortola. Capricorn's mother...\n\nWhat was that? The crow on Gecko's shoulder jerked its head and spread its wings. Snapper unsteadily got to his feet, drew his sword, and shouted to the others to do the same. But there stood the Adder's men already, among the trees. Their leader was a lean, hawk-faced man, his eyes as expressionless as the eyes of a corpse. Almost casually, he thrust his sword into the first robber's chest. Three soldiers attacked Snapper. He slit them open, although his hand must still be hurting from Mortola's teeth, but his men were dying like flies around him. Folk would sing songs about them, yes, but they'd be songs mocking the fools who had thought they could ambush the Adderhead as easily as any rich merchant.\n\nMortola gave another pitiful cry, while swords were plunged into the bodies below her. These helpers had been no use at all. Now she had no one left but Orpheus, with his ink-magic and his velvety voice.\n\nThe hawk-faced man wiped his sword on a dead robber's cloak and looked around. Mortola instinctively ducked, but her magpie form stared greedily down at the glittering weapons, at the rings and belt buckles. How pretty they'd look in her nest, shining bright enough to bring down the stars from the sky by night!\n\nNone of the robbers was left standing. Even Snapper was on his knees by now. The hawk-faced man made a sign to his soldiers, and they dragged Snapper over to him. Die now, fool, thought Mortola bitterly. And the old woman you planned to strike down will watch you die!\n\nThe hawk-faced man asked Snapper something, hit him in the face, asked again. Mortola put her head on one side so as to hear them better and fluttered a few branches farther down, staying under cover of the needles.\n\n'He was dying when we set out.' Snapper's voice still sounded defiant, but it was also hoarse with fear. The Black Prince. They were talking about him. I did it, Mortola wanted to cackle. I, Mortola, poisoned him! Ask the Adderhead if he remembers me!\n\nShe flew lower still. Was the lean killer talking about children? He knew about the cave, did he? How? If only her stupid head could think straight!\n\nOne of the soldiers drew his sword, but the hawk-faced leader told him brusquely to sheathe it again. He stepped back, signalling to his men to do so too. Snapper, still on his knees among his dead companions, raised his head in surprise. But the magpie, who had been about to fly down to pull rings off dead fingers and peck at silver buttons, froze on her branch and shook with fear, because something in her stupid bird-brain was crying out: death, death, death! And there it came, mildewed black among the trees, panting like a huge dog, shapeless yet somehow human \u2013 a Night-Mare. Snapper fell to pleading instead of cursing, and the hawk-faced man watched him with his dead eyes as his followers retreated far into the trees. But the Night-Mare made for Snapper as if night itself were opening a mouth full of a thousand teeth, bringing him the worst of all deaths.\n\nWell, so what? Away with him, thought Mortola as her feathered body shook like an aspen tree. Away with the fool! He was no use to me. Orpheus must help me now. Orpheus...\n\nOrpheus. It was as if the name took shape the moment it came into her mind.\n\nNo, it couldn't be so. It couldn't be Orpheus suddenly standing there under the trees, with the Night-Mare cowering like a dog at his foolish smile.\n\nWho told the Adderhead about the robbers, Mortola? Who told him?\n\nOrpheus examined the trees with his glassy eyes. Then he raised his pale, plump hand and pointed to the magpie, who ducked when his finger swung her way.\n\nFly, Mortola, she thought. Fly!\n\nThe arrow hit her in mid-air, and pain drove the bird away. She no longer had wings as she fell, falling and falling through the cold air. Human bones broke when she hit the ground. And the last thing she saw was Orpheus's smile."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Dead Men in the Forest",
                "text": "\u2003It was evening all afternoon.\n\n\u2003It was snowing\n\n\u2003And it was going to snow.\n\n\u2003The blackbird sat\n\n\u2003In the cedar-limbs.\n\n\u2014Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird\n\nOn, further and further on. Resa was feeling sick again, but she didn't say so. Whenever the Strong Man turned to look anxiously at her she smiled, so that he wouldn't slow down because of her. Snapper had more than half a day's start on them, and she was trying not to think about the magpie at all.\n\nGo on, she told herself, go on. It's only a little sickness. Chew the leaves Roxane gave you and keep going. The forest through which they had been walking for days was darker than the Wayless Wood. She had never been in this part of the Inkworld before. It was like opening a new chapter, one she'd never yet read. 'The strolling players call it the forest where night sleeps,' the Strong Man had told her as they were passing through a ravine so dark, even by day, that she could hardly see her hand before her eyes. 'But the moss-women have given it the name of the Bearded Forest, because of all the healing lichens growing on the trees.' Resa liked that name better. With the frost lying on them, many trees did indeed look like ancient, bearded giants.\n\nThe Strong Man was good at reading tracks, but even Resa could have followed the trail left by Snapper and his men. Their footprints had frozen in many places, as if time had stopped. In other places they were obliterated by the rain, as if it had washed away the men themselves at the same time. The robbers hadn't taken any trouble to conceal their tracks. Why should they? They were the pursuers.\n\nIt rained a lot. At night the rain often turned to hail, but luckily there were enough evergreen trees under whose branches they could keep reasonably dry. At sunset it turned bitterly cold, and Resa was very glad of the fur-lined coat that the Strong Man had given her. Thanks to that coat and the coverings of moss that he cut from the trees for them both, she could sleep at night in spite of the cold.\n\nGo on, Resa, she thought, keep going. The magpie flies fast, and Snapper is quick with his knife. A bird uttered a hoarse cry in the trees above her, and she looked up in alarm, but it was only a crow and not a magpie gazing down at her.\n\n'Caw!' The Strong Man replied to the black bird with a croak of his own (even the owls talked to him), and then suddenly stopped. 'What the devil's that?' he murmured, scratching his shorn head.\n\nResa too stopped, alarmed. 'What's the matter? Have you lost the way?'\n\n'Me? Not in a thousand years, not in any forest in the world! Certainly not this one.' The Strong Man bent down and investigated the tracks on the fallen leaves, now frozen stiff. 'My cousin taught me to poach here. He showed me how to talk to the birds and make blankets from the bearded lichen on the trees. And he showed me the Castle in the Lake. No, Snapper's lost his way, not me. He's bearing much too far west!'\n\n'Your cousin?' Resa looked at him curiously. 'Is he among the robbers too?'\n\nThe Strong Man shook his head. 'He joined the fire-raisers,' he said, without looking at Resa. 'Disappeared when Capricorn did and never came back. He was a tall, ugly fellow, but I was always stronger, even when we were both little boys. I often wonder what's become of him. He may have been one of those damn fire-raisers, but he was still my cousin, see what I mean?'\n\nTall and ugly... Resa thought back to Capricorn's men. Flatnose? Oh, Strong Man, Mo's voice brought him to his death, she thought. Would you still go on protecting Mo if you knew? Yes, he probably would.\n\n'Let's follow Snapper's tracks,' she said. 'I want to know why he strayed from his path!'\n\nThey found him and his men very soon, in a clearing brown with withered leaves. The dead men lay there as if the trees had shed them along with their foliage. Ravens were already pecking at their flesh. Resa shooed the birds away \u2013 and stepped back in horror when she saw Snapper's body.\n\n'What did that?'\n\n'A Night-Mare!' The Strong Man's reply was barely audible.\n\n'A Night-Mare? But they kill through fear, nothing else. I've seen it!'\n\n'Yes, but only if they're prevented from eating their victims. They eat them too if they're allowed.'\n\nMo had once given her a dragonfly's cast-off case. Every limb could still be traced under the empty skin it had shed. There wasn't much more than that left of Snapper. Resa threw up there and then beside the dead men.\n\n'I don't like this.' The Strong Man examined the blood-soaked leaves. 'Looks almost as if the men who killed them watched the Night-Mare eat him... as if they'd brought it with them, like the Prince brings his bear!' He looked around, but nothing stirred. Only the ravens perched in the trees, waiting.\n\nThe Strong Man drew Gecko's cloak over his dead face. 'I'm going to follow the trails and find out where the killers came from.'\n\n'You don't need to.' Resa bent over one of the dead robbers and raised his left hand. The thumb was missing. 'Your little brother told me the Adderhead has a new bodyguard, a man known as Thumbling. They say he used to be one of the torturers in the Castle of Night until his master promoted him. Doria says he's notorious for cutting a thumb off every man he kills. He makes little pipes out of the thumb-bones to mock the Piper with them... and it seems he has a very large collection.' Resa began trembling, even though she no longer had to fear Snapper. 'She'll never be able to protect him,' she whispered. 'Violante can't protect Mo. They'll kill him!'\n\nThe Strong Man helped her to her feet and awkwardly put his arms around her.\n\n'What do we do now?' he asked. 'Go back?'\n\nBut Resa shook her head. The killers had a Night-Mare with them. A Night-Mare. She looked round.\n\n'The magpie,' she said. 'Where's the magpie? Call her!'\n\n'I told you, she doesn't sound like a real bird,' said the Strong Man, but all the same he imitated a magpie's cry. There was no reply, but just as the Strong Man was about to try again Resa saw the dead woman.\n\nMortola was lying a little way from the others, with an arrow in her breast. Resa had often imagined what it would feel like to see the woman she had served for so long lying dead at last. She had so often wanted to kill Mortola herself, but now she felt nothing at all. A few black feathers lay beside the corpse in the snow, and the fingernails of Mortola's left hand were still like a bird's claws. Resa bent down and took the bag from Mortola's belt. There were some tiny black seeds in it, the same as the seeds still sticking to Mortola's pale lips.\n\n'Who's that?' The Strong Man stared at the old woman in disbelief.\n\n'The woman who used to mix poisons for Capricorn. You must have heard of her. She was his mother.'\n\nThe Strong Man nodded, and involuntarily took a step back.\n\nResa tied Mortola's bag to her own belt. 'When I was one of her maids...' (she couldn't help smiling at the surprise in the Strong Man's eyes) '... when I was still one of her maids, it was said that Mortola had discovered a plant with seeds that could change your shape. Little Death, the other maids called it, and they whispered that it sent you crazy if you used it too often. They showed me the plant \u2013 it can be used as a deadly poison too, but I always thought its other quality was just a fairy tale. Obviously I was wrong.' Resa picked up one of the magpie feathers and laid it on Mortola's pierced breast. 'And they also said that Mortola had given up using Little Death after a fox nearly killed her in her bird-shape. But as soon as I saw the magpie in the cave I felt sure it was her.'\n\nShe rose to her feet.\n\nThe Strong Man pointed to the bag at her belt. 'Sounds to me like you'd better leave those seeds here.'\n\n'Should I?' replied Resa. 'Yes, maybe you're right. Come on, let's go. It will soon be dark.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Human Nests",
                "text": "\u2003Take note:\n\n\u2003words hide in the night\n\n\u2003in caves of music and image.\n\n\u2003Still humid and pregnant with sleep\n\n\u2003they turn in a winding river and by neglect are transformed.\n\n\u2014Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Looking for Poetry\n\nMeggie's feet were so cold that she could hardly feel her toes, in spite of her boots. They were still the pair she had brought from the other world. Only on their endless march over the last few days had they all realized what good shelter the cave had offered from the coming winter \u2013 and how flimsy their clothes were. The rain was even worse than the cold. It dripped off the trees and turned the ground to mud that froze when evening came. One little girl had already sprained her ankle, and Elinor was carrying her. Everyone who could was carrying one of the smaller children, though there weren't enough of them to go round. Snapper had taken his men with him, and Resa and the Strong Man had gone too.\n\nThe Black Prince carried three children at once, two in his arms and one on his back, although he was still hardly eating anything, and Roxane kept making him stop to rest. Meggie pressed her face into the hair of the little boy who was clinging round her neck. Beppe. He reminded her of Fenoglio's grandson. Beppe didn't weigh much \u2013 the children hadn't had enough to eat for days \u2013 but after all the hours that Meggie had spent trudging through the mud with the little boy in her arms he seemed as heavy as an adult. 'Meggie, sing me one of those songs!' he kept saying, and she sang in a soft voice that was reedy with weariness. Songs about the Bluejay, of course. By now she sometimes forgot that she was also singing about her father. When she closed her eyes now and then in sheer exhaustion she saw the castle Farid had shown her in the fire, a growth of dark stone reflected on a misty lake. She'd tried desperately to catch a sight of Mo somewhere among the walls, but she couldn't see him.\n\nShe was alone. She was even more alone now that Resa had gone. In spite of Elinor, in spite of Fenoglio, in spite of all the children, and definitely in spite of Farid. But out of this feeling of being abandoned, which only Doria could sometimes dispel, something else had grown: a sense that she must protect those who, like herself, were on their own, without father or mother, seeking shelter in a world that was as strange to them as to Meggie, although these children had never known any other.\n\nFenoglio himself, who was leading them, had only written about this world without knowing it, yet now they had nothing but his words to guide them.\n\nHe was walking at the front with the Black Prince. Despina clung to his back, though she was older than some of the children who had to walk. Her brother was up ahead with the older boys. They were running about among the trees as though they didn't feel tired at all. The Black Prince kept calling them back, telling them to do as the older girls did and carry the little ones. Farid and Doria were so far in advance of the rest of the party that Meggie hadn't seen them for nearly an hour. They were looking for the tree that Fenoglio had described to the Black Prince, so persuasively that the Prince had decided they should set off at once. And indeed, what other hope did they have?\n\n'How much further?' Meggie heard Despina ask, not for the first time.\n\n'Not very far now, not very far,' replied Fenoglio, but did he really know?\n\nMeggie had heard him telling the Black Prince about the human nests. They look like huge fairies' nests, but people lived in them, Prince! Many people. They built the nests when giants started coming for their children, and they chose such a tall tree that even the largest giants couldn't reach up to it.\n\n'Which goes to show,' he had whispered to Meggie, 'that it's sensible not to make your giants too big when you're writing a story about them!'\n\n'Human nests?' she had whispered back. 'Have you only just thought that up?'\n\n'Don't be ridiculous! What makes you think that?' Fenoglio sounded offended. 'Have I asked you to read them into existence? No. This world is so well equipped that you can manage very well without stopping to make up something new every five minutes \u2013 although that fool Orpheus thinks otherwise. I hope by now he's begging in the streets of Ombra \u2013 that'd serve him right for making my fairies rainbow-coloured!'\n\n'Beppe, walk for a little, will you?' Meggie put the boy down, although he resisted, and instead picked up a little girl who was so tired that she could hardly keep on her feet.\n\n'How much further?' A question that she had asked Mo so often herself, on those endless drives when they were going to cure another few sick books. 'Not far now, Meggie!' She could almost hear her father's voice, and for a moment her weariness made her imagine he was putting his jacket around her cold shoulders, but it was only a branch brushing against her back, and when she slipped on the wet leaves that covered the ground like a carpet, only Roxane's hand kept her from falling.\n\n'Careful, Meggie,' she said, and for a moment her face seemed as familiar as Resa's.\n\n'We've found the tree!' Doria appeared in front of them so suddenly that some of the smaller children hid, alarmed, behind the grown-ups. He was drenched with rain and trembling with cold, but he looked happy \u2013 happier than he had been for many days.\n\n'Farid stayed there. He's going to climb the tree and see if the nests are still fit to live in!' Doria spread his arms wide. 'They're huge! We'll have to construct something to help us haul the little ones up, but I have an idea.'\n\nMeggie had never heard him talk so fast or so much before. One of the little girls ran towards him, and Doria picked her up and whirled her round in a circle with him, laughing. 'The Milksop will never find us up there!' he cried. 'Now we only have to learn to fly and we can live as free as the birds!'\n\nThe children all began talking excitedly, until the Black Prince raised his hand. 'Where is the tree?' he asked Doria. His voice was heavy with fatigue. Sometimes Meggie feared that the poison had broken something in him, casting a shadow over the light that had always been a part of him before.\n\n'Right ahead, there!' Doria pointed through the trees that dripped with rain.\n\nSuddenly even the weariest feet could walk again. 'Quiet!' the Prince warned the children as they shouted louder and louder, but they were too excited to obey, and the forest echoed to the sound of their clear voices.\n\n'There, told you so, didn't I?' Suddenly Fenoglio was walking beside Meggie, his eyes full of his old pride in the world he had written. It was easily aroused.\n\n'Yes, you did.' Elinor got in before Meggie with the answer. She was obviously feeling cross in her damp clothes. 'But I haven't seen these fabulous nests of yours yet, and I must say the prospect of perching up at the top of a tree in this weather doesn't exactly sound enticing.'\n\nFenoglio glared at Elinor with contempt. 'Meggie,' he asked in a low voice, 'what's that lad there called? You know, the Strong Man's brother.'\n\n'You mean Doria?'\n\nDoria glanced around as she spoke his name, and Meggie smiled at him. She liked the way he looked at her. His glance warmed her heart in a way quite unlike Farid's. In a very different way.\n\n'Doria,' murmured Fenoglio. 'Doria. Sounds somehow familiar to me.'\n\n'Hardly surprising,' said Elinor sarcastically. 'The Dorias were a very famous aristocratic Italian family.'\n\nFenoglio gave her a look that was far from friendly, but he never got a chance to reply.\n\n'There they are!'\n\nIvo's voice was so loud in the gathering dusk that Minerva instinctively put her hand over his mouth.\n\nAnd there they really were.\n\nHuman nests.\n\nThey looked just as Fenoglio had described them in his book. He had read the passage aloud to Meggie. Gigantic nests in the crown of a mighty tree, with evergreen branches reaching so high into the sky that its top seemed lost in the clouds. The nests were round, like fairies' nests, but Meggie thought she saw bridges between them, ladders and nets made of twining tendrils. The children gathered around the Black Prince and stared up, enchanted, as if he had led them to a castle in the clouds. But Fenoglio looked happiest of all.\n\n'Aren't they fabulous?' he cried.\n\n'They're a very long way up, that's for sure!' Elinor sounded far from enthusiastic.\n\n'Well, that's the whole point!' replied Fenoglio brusquely, but Minerva and the other women were also looking at the nests in dismay.\n\n'What happened to the people who used to live up there?' asked Despina. 'Did they fall out of the nests?'\n\n'Of course not!' said Fenoglio impatiently, but Meggie could see he hadn't the faintest idea what had happened to the original nest-dwellers.\n\n'Oh no, I suppose they just wanted to get back to the ground!' said Jasper in his clear little voice.\n\nThe two glass men were sitting in the deep pockets of Darius's coat. He was the only one who had anything like proper winter clothing, but he was always ready to share his coat generously with a few of the children. He let them slip in under the warm fabric like chicks under a mother hen's wings.\n\nThe Black Prince looked up at the strange dwellings, scrutinized the tree that they would have to climb \u2013 and said nothing.\n\n'We can pull the children up in nets,' said Doria. 'The creepers will make ropes. Farid and I have tried them. They'll hold.'\n\n'This is the best possible hiding place!'\n\nIt was Farid's voice calling to them. Nimble as a squirrel, he came climbing down the trunk as if he had lived in trees in his old life, not the desert. 'Even if the Milksop's hounds find us we can defend ourselves from up here!'\n\n'With luck they won't find us at all,' said the Black Prince. 'I hope we'll be able to hold out up there until...'\n\nThey all looked at him expectantly. Until \u2013 yes, until when?\n\n'Until the Bluejay's killed the Adderhead!' said one of the children so confidently that the Prince had to smile.\n\n'Yes, exactly. Until the Bluejay's killed the Adderhead.'\n\n'And the Piper!' added one of the boys.\n\n'Of course, the Piper too.' Hope and anxiety were equally balanced in the glance that Battista exchanged with the Black Prince.\n\n'That's right, he'll kill them both, and then he'll marry Her Ugliness and they'll reign over Ombra and live happily ever after!' Despina's smile was as delighted as if she could already see the wedding before her eyes.\n\n'No, no!' Fenoglio looked at her, as horrified as if her words might come true the next moment. 'The Bluejay already has a wife, Despina, doesn't he? Have you forgotten Meggie's mother?'\n\nDespina glanced at Meggie in alarm and put her hand over her mouth, but Meggie just stroked her smooth hair. 'Sounds like a good story all the same,' she whispered to the child.\n\n'Start getting ropes up into the tree,' the Black Prince told Battista, 'and ask Doria just how he plans to haul the nets up. The rest of you, climb to the top of the tree and see which nests are still sound.'\n\nMeggie looked up at the dense thicket of branches. She had never set eyes on a tree like it before. The bark was reddish brown, but as rough as the bark of an oak, and the trunk did not branch until high up in the tree, although it had so many bulges that you could find footholds and handholds everywhere. In some places huge tree fungi formed platforms. Hollows gaped in the towering trunk, and crevices full of feathers showed that human beings were not the only creatures to have nested in this tree. Perhaps I should ask Doria if he can really build me wings, Meggie said to herself, and suddenly she thought of the magpie that had frightened her mother so much.\n\nWhy hadn't Resa taken her along? Because she thinks I'm still a small child, she told herself.\n\n'Meggie?' One of the children slipped her cold fingers into Meggie's hand. Elinor had nicknamed the little girl Fire-Elf because of her hair, which was as red as if Dustfinger had sprinkled it with sparks. How old was she? Four? Five? Many of the children didn't know their own ages.\n\n'Beppe says there are birds that eat children up there.'\n\n'Nonsense. Anyway, how would he know? You think Beppe's been up there already?'\n\nFire-Elf smiled in relief and looked sternly at Beppe. But her face grew grave again as, her fingers still clutching Meggie's hand firmly, she listened with the others to Farid reporting to the Black Prince.\n\n'The nests are so large that I should think five or even six of us can sleep in each of them!' He sounded so excited. 'Many of the bridges are crumbling, but there are enough creepers and timber up there to repair them.'\n\n'We have hardly any tools,' Doria pointed out. 'We must make do with our knives and swords.'\n\nThe robbers looked in some alarm at their swordbelts.\n\n'The crown of the tree is dense enough to give us good shelter from the wind, but there are gaps in it in some places,' Farid went on. 'I guess they were lookout points for the guards. We'll have to pad and line the nests, as the fairies do.'\n\n'Maybe some of us had better stay down here,' Elfbane put in. 'We have to go hunting and\u2014'\n\n'Oh, you can hunt up there!' Farid interrupted. 'There are flocks of birds, and I've seen large squirrels, and creatures like rabbits with fingers that cling to the branches. Though there are wild cats up there as well...'\n\nThe women looked at each other, frightened.\n\n'... and bats, and long-tailed brownies,' Farid went on. 'There's a whole world up there! It has caves in it, and a lot of the branches are so wide you can easily walk along them. Flowers and mushrooms grow there! It's fabulous. Wonderful!'\n\nFenoglio was smiling all over his wrinkled face, like a king hearing praise of his domain, and even Elinor looked wistfully up the rough trunk for the first time. Some of the children wanted to climb the tree at once, but the women stopped them. 'Go and collect leaves,' they told them, 'and moss and birds' feathers \u2013 anything you can find to make soft linings.'\n\nThe sun was already low as the robbers began stretching ropes, weaving nets, and building wooden platforms to be hauled up the tall trunk. Battista went back with some of the men to wipe out their tracks, and Meggie saw the Black Prince looking at his bear, at a loss. How was he going to get the bear up the tree? What would happen to the packhorses? So many questions, and he still wasn't at all sure that they had outrun the Milksop.\n\nMeggie was just helping Minerva to tie creepers together to make a net for provisions when Fenoglio drew her aside, a conspiratorial expression on his face.\n\n'You won't believe this!' he murmured to her when they were standing among the mighty roots of the tree. 'And don't you dare tell Loredan about it. She'd only accuse me of having delusions of grandeur again!'\n\n'What don't you want me to tell her?' Meggie looked at him blankly.\n\n'Well, that boy, you know who I mean \u2013 the one who keeps looking at you and brings you flowers and turns Farid green with jealousy. Doria...'\n\nAbove them the crown of the tree was bathed with red in the light of the setting sun, and the nests hung among its branches like black fruits.\n\nFeeling embarrassed, Meggie turned her face away. 'What about him?'\n\nFenoglio looked round as if afraid that Elinor might appear behind him next moment. 'Meggie,' he said, lowering his voice, 'I think I made him up too, just like Dustfinger and the Black Prince!'\n\n'Oh, nonsense, what are you talking about?' Meggie whispered back. 'Doria probably wasn't even born when you were writing your book!'\n\n'Yes, yes, I know! That's the confusing part of it! All these children,' said Fenoglio, with a sweeping gesture towards the children searching busily for moss and feathers under the trees, 'my story lays them like eggs, entirely without my aid. It's a very fertile story! But that boy...' Fenoglio lowered his voice as if Doria could hear him, although he was far away with Battista, kneeling on the forest floor and turning knives into machetes and saws. 'Meggie, this is where it gets so crazy: I wrote a story about him, but the character with his name was grown-up! And even stranger \u2013 the story was never published! Presumably it's still lying in a drawer in my old desk, or my grandchildren have made it into balls of paper to throw for the cats!'\n\n'But that's impossible. He can't be the same person.' Meggie unobtrusively glanced at Doria. She liked the sight of him; she liked it very much. 'What's this story about?' she asked. 'What does this grown-up Doria do?'\n\n'He builds castles and city walls. He even invents a flying machine, a clock to measure time, and \u2013' here Fenoglio looked at Meggie \u2013 'and a printing machine for a famous bookbinder.'\n\n'Really?' Meggie suddenly felt warm, the way she used to when Mo had told her a particularly good story. For a famous bookbinder. Just for a moment she forgot all about Doria and thought only of her father. Perhaps Fenoglio had already written the words that would keep Mo alive, perhaps he'd written them long ago. Oh, please, she begged Fenoglio's story, let the bookbinder be Mo!\n\n'Doria the Enchanter, I called him,' Fenoglio whispered. 'But it's with his hands that he works enchantment, like your father. And now, listen to this: it gets even better! This Doria has a wife who is said to come from a distant land, and she often gives him his ideas in the first place. Isn't that strange?'\n\n'What's so strange about it?' Meggie felt herself blushing, and just at that moment Farid looked at her. 'Did you give her a name?' she asked Fenoglio.\n\nAwkwardly, the old man cleared his throat. 'Well, you know I sometimes neglect my women characters a bit, and I couldn't find the right name, so I just called her his wife.'\n\nMeggie had to smile. Yes, that was very like Fenoglio. 'Doria has two stiff fingers on his left hand,' she pointed out. 'So how could he do all the things you say?'\n\n'But I wrote him those stiff fingers!' cried Fenoglio out loud, forgetting to be quiet. Doria raised his head and glanced at them, but luckily the Black Prince went up to him just at that moment.\n\n'His father broke them,' Fenoglio went on more quietly. 'When he was drunk. He was going to hit Doria's sister, and Doria tried to protect her.'\n\nMeggie leant back again the tree trunk. She felt as if she could hear its heart beating behind her, a gigantic heart in the wood. It was all a dream, just a dream. 'What was this sister's name?' she asked. 'Susa?'\n\n'How should I know?' retorted Fenoglio. 'I can't remember everything. Maybe she didn't have a name any more than his wife did. Anyway, it will just make him all the more famous later when people find out he can build such marvels in spite of his stiff fingers!'\n\n'I see,' murmured Meggie \u2013 and caught herself wondering what Doria would look like when he grew up. 'That's a lovely story,' she said.\n\n'I know,' agreed Fenoglio, leaning back with a self-satisfied sigh against the tree he had described in his book so many years ago. 'But not a word to the boy about all this, of course.'\n\n'Of course not. Did you leave any more stories like that in your desk drawers? Do you know what will happen to Minerva's children, and to Beppe and Fire-Elf?'\n\nFenoglio never got around to answering that question.\n\n'Well, isn't that wonderful!' Elinor was standing in front of them with her arms full of moss. 'Tell me, Meggie, isn't the fellow beside you the laziest man in this world \u2013 and any other? Everyone else is working while he stands here staring into space!'\n\n'Oh yes, and what about Meggie?' Fenoglio retorted indignantly. 'Anyway, you'd none of you have anything to do if the laziest man in all the worlds hadn't thought up this tree, and the nests in its branches!'\n\nElinor was not in the least impressed. 'We're probably all going to break our necks in those wretched nests,' was all she said. 'And I'm not sure if this is any better than the mines.'\n\n'Calm down, Loredan. In any case, the Piper wouldn't want you for the mines,' replied Fenoglio. 'You'd get stuck in the first tunnel.'\n\nMeggie left them to their quarrel. Lights were beginning to dance among the trees. At first Meggie thought they were glow-worms, but when some of them settled on her arms she saw that they were tiny moths, shining as if moonlight clung to them.\n\nA new chapter, she thought, looking up at the nests. A new place. And Fenoglio can tell me about Doria's future, but he doesn't know what his story is going to say about my father. Why didn't Resa take me with her?\n\nBecause your mother is a clever woman, Fenoglio would have told her. Who but you is going to read my words if I find the right ones? Darius? No, Meggie, you're the best teller of this tale. If you really want to help your father, your place is here beside me. And Mortimer would certainly see it just the same way!\n\nYes, she supposed he would.\n\nOne of the moths settled on her hand, shining on her finger like a ring. This Doria has a wife who is said to come from a distant land, and she often gives him his ideas in the first place. Yes. That really was strange."
            },
            {
                "title": "The White Whispering",
                "text": "\u2003Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,\n\n\u2003Enwrought with golden and silver light,\n\n\u2003The blue and the dim and the dark cloths\n\n\u2003Of night and light and the half light,\n\n\u2003I would spread the cloths under your feet:\n\n\u2003But I, being poor, have only my dreams;\n\n\u2003I have spread my dreams under your feet;\n\n\u2003Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.\n\n\u2014William Butler Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven\n\nFrom the tower battlements, Dustfinger looked down on a lake as black as night, where the reflection of the castle swam in a sea of stars. The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the surrounding mountains, and Dustfinger relished life as if he were tasting it for the first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness, all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again.\n\nEven the blackness of the trees intoxicated him with joy. The night blackened them as if to prove once and for all that this world was nothing but ink. And didn't the snow on the mountain peaks look like paper?\n\nEven so...\n\nAbove his head the moon burnt a silver hole in the night, and the stars surrounded it like fire-elves. Dustfinger tried to remember whether he had seen the moon in the realm of the dead too. Perhaps. Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose? Why? Why...\n\nThe White Women knew some of the answers, but they hadn't told him all of them. Later, they had whispered when they let him go. Another time. You will often come to us. And often go again.\n\nGwin sat on the battlements with him, listening uneasily to the lapping of the water. The marten didn't like the castle. Behind him, Silvertongue stirred in his sleep. Without a word, the two of them had decided to sleep up here on the tower behind the battlements, even though it was cold. Dustfinger didn't like sleeping in closed rooms, and Silvertongue seemed to feel the same. Although perhaps he slept up here only because Violante roamed the painted rooms even at night \u2013 as restlessly as if she were looking for her dead mother, or as if her sleeplessness would hasten the Adder's arrival. Did any daughter ever wait so impatiently to kill her father?\n\nViolante was not the only one who couldn't sleep. Her illuminator was sitting in the room full of dead books, trying to teach his left hand the art that his right had once mastered so superbly. He sat there hour after hour, at a desk that Brianna had dusted for him, forcing his unpractised fingers to trace leaves and tendrils, birds and tiny faces, while the useless stump of his right wrist held down the parchment he had, with forethought, brought with him.\n\n'Shall I find you a glass man in the forest?' Dustfinger had asked him, but Balbulus had only shaken his head.\n\n'I don't work with glass men,' he replied morosely. 'They're too liable to leave their footprints all over my pictures!'\n\nSilvertongue slept uneasily. Sleep brought him no peace, and it seemed worse tonight than the nights before. Presumably they were with him again. When the White Women slipped into your dreams you didn't see them. They came to Silvertongue more often than to Dustfinger himself, as if to make sure that the Bluejay didn't forget the bargain he had struck with their mistress, the Great Shape-Changer who made all things wither and blossom, grow and decay.\n\nThey were with him now, their cool fingers stroking his heart. Dustfinger could feel it as if it were his own. Let him sleep, he thought. Let him rest from the fear that day brings him: fear for himself, fear for his daughter, fear that he's done the wrong thing. Leave him alone.\n\nHe went over to him and placed his hand on his breast. Silvertongue woke with a start, pale-faced. Yes, they had been with him, and Dustfinger made fire dance on his fingers. He knew the chill that those visitors left behind. It was fresh and clear, pure as snow, but it both froze and burnt the heart.\n\n'What were they whispering this time? Bluejay, immortality is very close?'\n\nSilvertongue pushed aside the fur under which he was sleeping. His hands shook as if he had been holding them too long in cold water.\n\nDustfinger let the fire grow, and then gently pressed his hand to the other man's heart again. 'Better?'\n\nSilvertongue nodded. He did not push the hand away, even though it was still hotter than human skin. 'Did they pour fire into your veins to bring you back to life?' Farid had asked Dustfinger. 'Perhaps,' he had replied. The idea pleased him.\n\n'Heavens, they must really love you,' he said when Silvertongue got to his feet, still drowsy. 'Unfortunately they sometimes forget that their love always leads to death.'\n\n'Yes. Yes, they forget that. Thank you for waking me.' Silvertongue went over to the battlements and looked out into the night. 'He's coming, Bluejay. That's what they were whispering this time. He's coming. But,' he turned and looked at Dustfinger, 'they said the Piper was preparing the way for him. What do you think they mean by that?'\n\n'Whatever it means,' said Dustfinger, stepping to his side, 'the Piper will have to cross the bridge, like his master, so we'll see him coming in good time.' It still struck Dustfinger as strange that he could speak the Piper's name without feeling fear. But it seemed as if he had left his fears behind with the dead for ever.\n\nThe wind ruffled the surface of the lake. Violante's soldiers marched up and down on the bridge, and Dustfinger thought he could hear their mistress's restless footsteps up here on the battlements. Violante's footsteps \u2013 and the scratching of Balbulus's pen.\n\nSilvertongue looked at him. 'Show me Resa. The way you conjured up Violante's mother and her sisters out of the fire.'\n\nDustfinger hesitated.\n\n'Come on,' said Silvertongue. 'I know you're almost as familiar with her face as I am.'\n\nI've told Mo everything. That was what Resa had whispered to him in the dungeons of the Castle of Night. Obviously she had not been lying. Of course not, Dustfinger told himself. She can't tell a lie any more than the man she loves can.\n\nHe traced a figure in the night and made the flames paint it.\n\nSilvertongue instinctively put out his hand, but snatched his fingers away when the fire stung them.\n\n'What about Meggie?' Love was written all over his face. No, he hadn't changed, whatever anyone said. He was like an open book, with his burning heart and a voice that could conjure up whatever he wanted \u2013 just as Dustfinger could conjure up images with fire.\n\nThe flames painted Meggie in the night, filling her with warm life. It looked so real that her father turned away abruptly, because his hands wanted to reach into the fire again.\n\n'Your turn now.' Dustfinger left the fiery figures standing behind the battlements.\n\n'Mine?'\n\n'Yes, tell me about Roxane. Live up to your name, Silvertongue.'\n\nThe Bluejay smiled and leant back against the stones. 'Roxane? That's easy,' he said softly. 'Fenoglio has written wonderful things about her.'\n\nWhen he began to speak, his voice took hold of Dustfinger like a hand touching his heart. He felt the words on his skin as if they were Roxane's hands. Dustfinger had never seen a more beautiful woman before. Her hair was as black as the night that he loved. Her eyes were the darkness under the trees, ravens' feathers and the sooty breath of the fire. Her skin reminded him of moonlight on the wings of the fairies...\n\nDustfinger closed his eyes and could hear Roxane breathing beside him. He wanted Silvertongue to go on and on until the words became flesh and blood, but Fenoglio's words soon came to an end, and Roxane was gone.\n\n'And Brianna?' Silvertongue spoke her name, and Dustfinger could already see his daughter standing there in the night, turning her face away as she usually did when he came close to her. 'Your daughter is here, but you hardly dare look at her. Shall I show you Brianna too?'\n\n'Yes,' said Dustfinger softly, 'show me Brianna.'\n\nSilvertongue cleared his throat, as if to make sure that his voice was at its full strength. 'There's nothing written about your daughter in Fenoglio's book, except for her name and a few words about the small child that she isn't any more. So I can only say what everyone can see about her.'\n\nDustfinger's heart contracted, as if afraid of the words that were coming. His daughter, his daughter who was a stranger to him.\n\n'Brianna has inherited her mother's beauty, but everyone who sets eyes on her thinks of you too.' Silvertongue spoke the words carefully, as if plucking every one of them out of the night, assembling Brianna's face out of the stars. 'There's fire in her hair and in her heart, and when she looks in the mirror she thinks of her father...'\n\nAnd bears him a grudge for coming back from the dead without bringing Cosimo too, thought Dustfinger. Hush, he wanted to tell Silvertongue, forget my daughter. Tell me more about Roxane instead. But he kept silent, and Silvertongue went on.\n\n'Brianna is so much more grown-up than Meggie, but sometimes she looks like a lost child whose own beauty seems uncanny to her. She has her mother's grace and her beautiful voice \u2013 even the Prince's bear listens when Brianna sings \u2013 but all her songs are sad, saying that those we love will be lost someday.'\n\nDustfinger felt tears on his face. He had forgotten how they felt, so cool on his skin. He wiped them away with his hot fingers.\n\nBut Silvertongue went on, his voice as gentle as if he were speaking of his own daughter. 'She looks at you when she thinks you won't notice. She follows you with her eyes as if looking for herself in your face. And no doubt she wishes both of us would tell her what it's like among the dead, and whether we saw Cosimo there.'\n\n'I saw two of him,' said Dustfinger softly. 'I expect she'd gladly exchange me for either of them.'\n\nHe turned and looked down at the lake.\n\n'What is it?' asked Silvertongue.\n\nWithout a word, Dustfinger pointed down. A fiery serpent was crawling through the night. Torches. The waiting was over. The guards on the bridge began to move. One of them ran back to the castle to take the news to Violante.\n\nThe Adderhead was coming."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Time",
                "text": "\u2002'Is he your latest?' asked Man.\n\n\u2002'Hard to say,' God replied, peering into the Newt's eyes. 'He might have been here a while. Some things take an awful lot of work. But others \u2013 they just seem to turn up, somehow. All ready-made. Very odd!'\n\n\u2014Ted Hughes, The Playmate, from The Dreamcatcher and Other Stories\n\nDustfinger saw the torches down in the forest. Of course. The Adderhead feared daylight. Damn it all, the ink was too thick again.\n\n'Rosenquartz!' Fenoglio wiped the pen on his sleeve and looked around in search of the glass man. Walls made of branches elaborately woven together, the writing-board Doria had made him, his bed of leaves and moss, the candle that Farid kept relighting for him when the wind blew it out \u2013 but no Rosenquartz.\n\nVery likely he and Jasper hadn't yet given up hope of finding glass women, even up here. After all, Farid had been fool enough to tell them he'd seen at least two \u2013 'as pretty as fairies,' the idiot had added! Ever since then the two glass men had been clambering around in the branches so eagerly that it was only a question of time when they would break their silly necks. Stupid creatures.\n\nWell, never mind. Fenoglio dipped his pen back into the thick ink. He must just make do with things as they were. He loved his new perch for writing, so high that his world was truly at his feet, even if the glass man kept playing truant and it was terribly cold at night. Nowhere before had he felt so strongly that the words were coming to him as if of their own accord.\n\nYes, he'd write the Bluejay his very best song up here in the crown of a tree. What place could be more suitable? The last picture the flames showed Farid had been reassuring: Dustfinger behind the castle battlements, Mortimer asleep... it could only mean that the Adderhead hadn't reached the castle yet. Well, how could he, Fenoglio? he thought with satisfaction. You broke his coach wheel in the middle of the darkest part of the forest. That should hold the Silver Prince up for at least two days, if not more. Plenty of time for writing, now that the words loved him again.\n\n'Rosenquartz!' If I have to call him once more, thought Fenoglio, I personally am going to throw him out of this tree.\n\n'I'm not hard of hearing, thank you very much. Far from it. I hear better than you.' The glass man emerged from the darkness so suddenly that Fenoglio left a large blot of ink on the paper right beside the Adderhead's name. Well, he hoped that was a good omen. Rosenquartz dipped a thin twig in the ink and started stirring without a word of apology, without a word to explain where he had been. Concentrate, Fenoglio. Forget the glass man. Write.\n\nAnd the words came. They came easily. The Adderhead was on his way back to the castle where he had once paid court to Violante's mother, and his immortality was a burden to him. In his swollen hands he held the White Book that tormented him worse than his own torturers could have done. But soon there would be an end to it, because his daughter was going to hand over the man who had done all this to him. How sweet revenge would taste when the Bluejay had cured the book and his own rotting flesh! Dream of your revenge, Silver Prince, thought Fenoglio as he wrote down the Adderhead's dark thoughts. Think of nothing but your revenge \u2013 and forget that you've never trusted your daughter!\n\n'Well, fancy that, he's writing!' The words were only a whisper, but the Adderhead's face, so clear a moment ago that Fenoglio could have touched it, blurred and changed into the face of Signora Loredan. Meggie was with her. Why wasn't the child asleep? It didn't surprise Fenoglio in the least that her deranged aunt clambered around the branches by night, very likely in pursuit of every shining moth, but Meggie \u2013 she was tired to death after insisting on climbing the trunk with Doria, instead of being pulled up like the children.\n\n'Yes, he's writing,' he growled. 'And he'd probably have finished long ago if people didn't keep interrupting him the whole time.'\n\n'What do you mean, the whole time?' replied Loredan. She sounded aggressive again, and she looked so silly in the three dresses she was wearing, one on top of the other. It was amazing she could find so many in her considerable size. Luckily Battista had been able to make jackets for the children out of the monstrous garment she'd been wearing when she had stumbled into Fenoglio's world.\n\n'Elinor\u2014' Meggie tried to interrupt her, but no one could ever stop that busy tongue, as Fenoglio had discovered by now.\n\n'The whole time, he says!' Now she was letting wax from her candle drop on to the paper too! 'Is he hard at work day and night making sure the children don't fall out of these damn nests, is he climbing up and down this wretched tree to bring up something to eat? Is he repairing the walls so that the wind doesn't kill us all, is he keeping watch? No, but people are interrupting him the whole time.'\n\nSplash. Another drop of candle wax. And what a nerve she had, leaning over to look at the words he'd just written. 'This really doesn't sound bad,' she informed Meggie, as if Fenoglio had dissolved into the cold forest air before their eyes. 'No, not at all bad.'\n\nIt was beyond belief.\n\nNow Rosenquartz too was bending over his lines, wrinkling up his glassy forehead so much that it looked as if water were tracing folds there.\n\n'Oh, and do you, by any chance, want to deliver your opinion as well before I go on writing?' Fenoglio asked him sharply. 'Anything in particular you fancy? You want me to put a heroic glass man into the story, or a fat woman who always knows best and will drive the Adderhead to such distraction that he'll hand himself over to the White Women of his own free will? That would be one solution, I suppose.'\n\nMeggie came up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. 'You don't know how much longer you'll need, do you?' Her voice sounded so desolate. Not at all like a voice that had already changed this world several times.\n\n'It won't be long now.' Fenoglio took great care to sound confident. 'The words are coming. They\u2014' He fell silent.\n\nFrom outside came the hoarse, long-drawn-out cry of a falcon. Again and again. The guards' alarm signal. Oh no.\n\nThe nest into which Fenoglio had settled hung over a branch broader than any street in Ombra, but once again he felt dizzy when he climbed down the ladder Doria had made him so that he wouldn't have to let himself down on a rope. On the Black Prince's orders, ropes woven by the robbers from bark and climbing plants had been stretched everywhere. In addition, the tree itself had so many air-roots and branches hanging down that there was always something to hold on to. Yet none of that could make you forget the deep void yawning under the slippery boughs. The fact is, Fenoglio, you're no squirrel, he told himself as he clung to a few woody shoots and peered down. But for an old man you're not doing too badly up here.\n\n'They're hauling in the ropes!' Signora Loredan, unlike him, was surprisingly agile as she moved through the air along the wooden paths.\n\n'I can see that for myself!' growled Fenoglio. They were hauling up all the ropes that went down to the foot of the tree. That boded no good.\n\nFarid came climbing down to them. He often joined the guards posted by the Black Prince in the top branches of the tree. Heavens, how could any human being climb like that? The boy was almost as good at it as his marten.\n\n'Torches! They're coming closer!' he said breathlessly. 'And do you hear the dog barking?' He looked accusingly at Fenoglio. 'Didn't you say no one knew about this tree? Didn't you claim it had been forgotten, and the nests with it?'\n\nBlaming him. Of course. Something goes wrong, and it's all Fenoglio's fault!\n\n'Well? Dogs find forgotten places too!' he snapped at the boy. 'Why not ask who wiped our tracks out? Where's the Black Prince?'\n\n'Down on the ground with his bear. Trying to hide him. The stupid creature just refuses to be hauled up!'\n\nFenoglio listened. Sure enough, he heard dogs. Damn it, damn it, damn it!\n\n'So what about it?' Of course Signora Loredan was acting as if none of it bothered her at all. 'They can't get us down, can they? A tree like this must be easy to defend!'\n\n'They can starve us out, though.'\n\nFarid understood more about situations like this, and Elinor Loredan suddenly looked rather anxious after all. And who was she staring at?\n\n'Ah, so now I'm your last hope again, is that right?' Fenoglio imitated her voice. 'Write something, Fenoglio, go on! It can't be all that difficult!'\n\nThe children clambered out of the nests where they slept. They ran along the branches as if they were meadow footpaths, peering down in alarm. They looked like pretty beetles in the gigantic tree. Poor little things.\n\nDespina ran to Fenoglio. 'They can't get up the tree, can they?'\n\nHer brother just looked at him.\n\n'Of course not,' said Fenoglio, although Ivo's eyes accused him of lying. Ivo was spending more and more time with Roxane's son Jehan these days. The two boys got on well. They both knew too much about the world for lads of their age.\n\nFarid took Meggie's arm. 'Battista says we ought to get the children into the top nests. Will you help me?'\n\nOf course she nodded \u2013 she still liked him far too much \u2013 but Fenoglio held her back. 'Meggie stays here. I might need her.'\n\nNaturally, Farid immediately knew what he was talking about. In his black eyes Fenoglio saw the reborn Cosimo riding through the streets of Ombra, and the dead men lying among the trees in the Wayless Wood.\n\n'We don't need your words!' said the boy. 'I'll send fire raining down on them if they try to climb up!'\n\nFire? An alarming word in a forest.\n\n'Well, perhaps I can think of something better,' said Fenoglio, and sensed Meggie's desperate eyes on him. What about my father? they asked. Yes, what about him? Which set of words was more urgent now? Damn it, damn it, damn it!\n\nA few of the children began crying, and below him Fenoglio saw the torches that Farid had mentioned. They shone in the night like fire-elves, but with far more menace.\n\nFarid led Despina and Ivo away with him. The other children followed. Darius went to them, his thin hair untidy from sleep, and took the small hands that reached out in search of his. He glanced in concern at Elinor, but she just stood there staring darkly at the depths below, her hands clenched into fists.\n\n'Let them come!' she said fiercely, her voice shaking. 'I hope the bear will eat them all! I hope those men who hunt children will all be hacked to pieces!'\n\nA lunatic of a woman, but she took the words right out of Fenoglio's mouth. Meggie's eyes were still fixed on him.\n\n'Why are you looking at me like that? What am I supposed to do, Meggie?' he asked. 'This story is telling itself in two places again. Which of them needs the words more urgently? Am I supposed to grow a second head, or\u2014?'\n\nHe stopped abruptly.\n\nSignora Loredan was still firing off a salvo of curses at the ground below. 'Child-murderers! Vermin! Cockroaches in armour! You ought to be crushed underfoot!'\n\n'What was that you just said?' Fenoglio sounded more brusque than he had intended.\n\nElinor looked at him blankly.\n\nCrushed underfoot...! Fenoglio stared at the torches down below. 'Yes!' he whispered. 'Yes. It could be rather dangerous. But how am I to...?'\n\nHe turned and swiftly climbed the ladder to his nest again. The nest where the words were hatched out. That was the place for him now.\n\nBut of course Loredan followed him.\n\n'You have an idea?'\n\nHe did, and he certainly wasn't going to let her know that, once again, she had given it to him. 'I have an idea, that's right. Meggie, be ready, please.'\n\nRosenquartz handed him a pen. He was afraid, Fenoglio saw it in his glass face. It was a deeper pink than usual. Or had he been sneaking wine again? For the two glass men were now eating grated bark like their wild cousins, and the result was a little green mingling with Rosenquartz's pale pink. Not a very good colour combination.\n\nFenoglio put a blank sheet of paper on the board that Doria had so cleverly cut to size for him. For heaven's sake, he'd never yet managed to write two stories at once!\n\n'What about my father, Fenoglio?' Meggie knelt down beside him. She looked so desperate!\n\n'He still has time.' Fenoglio dipped his pen in the ink. 'Get Farid to look into the fire if you're worried, but I can assure you it's not easy to repair a coach wheel in a hurry. The Adderhead won't be at the castle for a day or so at the most. And I promise, as soon as I've dealt with what's going on here I'll get back to writing the words for the Bluejay. Don't look so sad! How are you going to help him if the Milksop shoots us all out of this tree? Now, give me the book. You know the one I mean.'\n\nHe knew where to look. He had described them at the very beginning, in the third or fourth chapter.\n\n'Come on, tell us!' Loredan's voice was quivering with impatience. 'What are you going to do?' She came closer to get a look at the book, but Fenoglio slammed it shut in front of her nose.\n\n'Be quiet!' he thundered, not that that made any difference to the noise coming in from outside. Was the Milksop here already?\n\nWrite, Fenoglio.\n\nHe closed his eyes. He could see him already. Very clearly. How exciting \u2013 given a task like this, writing was twice as much fun!\n\n'What I mean is\u2014'\n\n'Elinor, do keep quiet!' he heard Meggie say. And then the words came. Yes, this nest was a good place to write in."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fire and Darkness",
                "text": "\u2002What was Right, what was Wrong? What distinguished Doing from Not Doing? If I were to have my time again, the old King thought, I would bury myself in a monastery, for fear of a Doing which might lead to woe.\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Once and Future King\n\n'How many did you count?'\n\n'Nearly fifty.' They were trying hard to sound casual, but Violante's child-soldiers were frightened, and Mo wondered \u2013 not for the first time \u2013 whether they had ever really fought before, or if they knew about war only from the deaths of their brothers and fathers.\n\n'Only fifty? Then he really does trust me!' There was no mistaking the triumph in Violante's voice. The Adderhead's daughter thought nothing of fear. It was an emotion that she was very good at suppressing \u2013 one among many \u2013 and Mo read contempt in her eyes when she saw the fear on her young soldiers' faces. But it could be seen on Brianna's face too, and even on Tullio's furry features.\n\n'Is the Milksop with him?'\n\nThe boys, as Mo still couldn't help calling them, shook their heads.\n\n'What about the Piper? Surely he's brought the Piper too, hasn't he?'\n\nMore head-shaking. Mo exchanged a glance of surprise with Dustfinger.\n\n'To your posts!' Violante ordered. 'We've discussed it often enough. You don't even let my father on to the bridge. He can send a single envoy, no more. We'll keep him waiting for two or maybe three days. That's what he himself does with his enemies.'\n\n'He won't like that.'\n\n'He's not meant to like it. Now, off you all go. I want to speak to the Bluejay alone.' Violante cast Dustfinger an imperious glance. 'Entirely alone.'\n\nDustfinger did not move. Only when Mo nodded to him did he turn and leave, as silently as if he were the other man's shadow.\n\nViolante went over to the window. They were in the room that had once been her mother's. On the walls, unicorns grazed peacefully among the spotted cats that Mo had often seen in the forest, and the window had a view of the aviary courtyard, with the empty cages and painted nightingales, now faded by daylight. The Adderhead seemed far, far away, in another world.\n\n'So he hasn't brought the Piper,' said Violante. 'All the better. I suppose he sent him back to the Castle of Night, to punish him for letting you escape.'\n\n'Do you really think so?' Mo examined the peacefully grazing unicorns on the walls. They reminded him of other pictures, hunting scenes in which their white coats were pierced by lances. 'Last night the White Women told me a different tale.'\n\nHe could still hear them whispering: The Piper is preparing the way for him.\n\n'Really? Well, be that as it may... if he's coming after all, then we must kill him too. We can let the others go, but not the Piper.'\n\nWas she really so sure of herself?\n\nViolante still had her back turned to him. 'I'll have to have you bound again. Otherwise my father isn't likely to believe you're really my prisoner.'\n\n'I know. Get Dustfinger to do it. He knows how to tie people up so that they can easily free themselves.' He learnt it from a boy my daughter's in love with, added Mo in his mind. Where was Meggie now? With her mother, he hoped. And with the Black Prince. In safety.\n\n'When my father is dead \u2013' Violante spoke the word cautiously, so perhaps she wasn't so sure of succeeding as she made out \u2013 'the Milksop isn't going to give up the throne of Ombra to me without a fight. He'll probably get support from his sister in the Castle of Night. I hope you and I will still be allies?' For the first time she looked at him.\n\nWhat was he to say? No, once your father is dead I'm going away. Was he?\n\nViolante turned her back to him again before asking her next question. 'Do you really have a wife?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\nPrinces' daughters have a soft spot for robbers and mountebanks.\n\n'Send her away. I'll make you Prince of Ombra.'\n\nMo thought he heard Dustfinger laughing. 'I'm no prince, Your Highness,' he replied. 'I'm a robber \u2013 and a bookbinder. Two parts are more than enough for one man to play.'\n\nShe turned again, and scrutinized him as if she couldn't believe he meant it seriously. If only he could read her face better. But the mask Violante wore was even more inscrutable than those Battista made for performing his farces.\n\n'You don't even want to think my offer over?'\n\n'As I said: two parts are enough,' repeated Mo, and for a moment Violante's face was so like her father's that his heart missed a beat.\n\n'Very well. As you say,' she said. 'But I will ask you again when all this is over.'\n\nShe looked out of the window once more. 'I've told my soldiers to shut you up in the tower called the Needle. I won't consign you to one of the holes my grandfather used as dungeons. They're built so that the lake can fill them with just enough water to keep prisoners from actually drowning.' She looked at him, as if to see whether the idea frightened him. Yes, it does, thought Mo. So?\n\n'I will receive my father in the Hall of a Thousand Windows,' Violante went on. 'That's where he came to court my mother. I'll have you brought once I'm sure he has the White Book with him.'\n\nThe way she put her hands together \u2013 it was like a schoolgirl reciting in class. He still felt affection for her; she moved him. He wanted to protect her from all the pain of the past and the darkness in her own heart, although he knew no one could do that. Violante's heart was a locked room, with dark pictures on the walls.\n\n'You will pretend that you can heal the White Book, just as we planned. I'll have everything made ready \u2013 Balbulus has told me what you'd need \u2013 and when you seem to be starting work I'll distract my father's attention so that you can write the three words. I'll make him angry. That's usually the best way to distract him. He has a savage temper. If we're lucky he won't even notice you're putting pen to paper. They say he has a new bodyguard, so that could be a problem. But I'm sure my men can deal with him.'\n\nMy men. They're children, thought Mo, but fortunately Dustfinger was here too. No sooner had the name come into his mind than Dustfinger himself stepped through the doorway.\n\n'What do you want?' Violante snapped.\n\nDustfinger ignored her. 'It's very quiet out there,' he told Mo in a low voice. 'The Adderhead is taking the news that he's to be kept waiting surprisingly well. I don't like it.' He went back to the door and looked down the passage. 'Where are the guards?' he asked Violante.\n\n'Where would they be? I sent them down to the bridge. But two of my men are stationed in the courtyard. Now it's time for you to play the part of my prisoner, Bluejay. Yet another part. You see? Sometimes there are more than two.' She went to the window and called to the guards, but only silence answered her.\n\nMo felt it at the same moment. He felt the story taking a new turn. Time suddenly seemed to weigh more heavily, and a strange uneasiness took hold of him. As if he were on stage and had missed his cue.\n\n'Where are they?' Violante turned, and for a moment she looked almost as young and frightened as her soldiers. She went to the door and called for them again, but no one replied. Only the silence.\n\n'Keep close to me!' Dustfinger whispered to Mo. 'Whatever happens. Fire is sometimes a better defence than the sword.'\n\nViolante was still listening intently. The sound of footsteps was coming closer \u2013 stumbling, unsteady footsteps. Violante stepped back from the door as if afraid of what was coming. The soldier who collapsed at her feet was covered with blood \u2013 his own blood. It was the boy who had let Mo out of the sarcophagus. Did he know more about killing now?\n\nHe stammered something that Mo didn't understand until he bent over him. 'The Piper... they're everywhere.' The boy whispered more, but Mo couldn't make it out. He died with the faltering words still on his lips, mingling with his blood.\n\n'Is there another entrance? One you haven't told us about?' Dustfinger seized Violante's arm roughly.\n\n'No!' she stammered. 'No!' And she tore herself away from him as if it were he who had killed the boy at her feet.\n\nMo reached for her hand and led her out into the corridor, away from the voices suddenly echoing through the silent castle on all sides. But their flight ended at the next set of steps. Dustfinger sent his marten scurrying off as soldiers barred their way, bloodstained men who hadn't been boys for a long time. Aiming crossbows at them, they drove them to the hall where Violante's mother and her sisters had learnt to dance in front of a dozen silver mirrors. Now the Piper was reflected in them.\n\n'Well, well, isn't the prisoner in chains? How careless, Your Ugliness.' As always, the silver-nosed man held himself erect, proud as a peacock. But Mo was less surprised by the sight of him than by seeing the man at his side. Orpheus. He had never expected Orpheus to come here. He had forgotten him as soon as Dustfinger told him how he had taken the book, and all the words in it, away from him. You're a fool, Mortimer. As so often, his face showed what he was thinking, and Orpheus gloated over his surprise.\n\n'How did you get into the castle?' Violante pushed away the men holding her, and went up to the Piper, who might have been no more than an uninvited guest. His soldiers retreated before her as if they had forgotten who their master was. The Adderhead's daughter \u2013 it was a mighty title, even if she was the ugly daughter.\n\nHowever, it did not impress the Piper. 'Your father knew a more comfortable way in than that draughty bridge,' he replied in a world-weary tone. 'He thought you didn't know it, so it wouldn't be guarded. Obviously it was your grandfather's best-kept secret, but in fact it was your mother who showed it to your father when she stole away from this castle with him. A romantic story, don't you think?'\n\n'You're lying!' Violante looked around like a hunted animal, but all she saw was her own reflection next to the Piper's.\n\n'Really? Your men know better. I haven't had them all killed. Boys like them make excellent soldiers, because they still think themselves immortal.' He took a step towards Mo.\n\n'I could hardly wait to see you again, Bluejay. \"Send me on ahead,\" I asked the Adderhead. \"So that I can catch you the bird who flew away from me. I'll stalk him like a cat, along secret ways, and seize him while he's still looking out just for you.\"'\n\nMo wasn't listening. He read Dustfinger's thoughts as if they were his own. Now, Bluejay! they whispered, and as a fiery snake crawled up the legs of the soldier on his right he drove his elbow into the chest of the man behind him. Fire licked up from the floor, baring teeth of flame and setting light to the clothes of the men guarding them. Screaming, they staggered back, while the fire formed a protective ring around their two prisoners. Two soldiers raised their crossbows, but the Piper struck down their arms. He knew his master would not forgive him once more if he brought him the Bluejay dead. His face was pale with rage. But Orpheus smiled.\n\n'Very impressive! It really is!' He went up to the fire and inspected the flames intently as if to find out how Dustfinger summoned them up. But then his gaze went to Dustfinger himself.\n\n'No doubt you really could rescue the bookbinder all by yourself,' he said gently. 'But unluckily for him, you've made an enemy of me. What a mistake. I didn't come with the Piper. I serve his master now. He's waiting for night to fall before paying a call on the Bluejay, and he sent me ahead to prepare everything for his arrival. Including, among other things, the sad task of dispatching the Fire-Dancer to the realm of Death for the last time.'\n\nThe regret in his voice sounded almost genuine, and Mo remembered the day in Elinor's library when Orpheus had bargained with Mortola for Dustfinger's life.\n\n'That's enough talking. Get rid of him, Four-Eyes!' cried the Piper impatiently, as his men tore off their burning clothes. 'I want to get my hands on the Bluejay at last!'\n\n'Yes, yes, you'll have him in a minute!' replied Orpheus. He sounded irritated. 'But first I want my share!'\n\nHe came so close to the fire that its light reddened his pale face.\n\n'Who did you give Fenoglio's book to?' he asked Dustfinger through the flames. 'Him?' He nodded in Mo's direction.\n\n'Maybe,' replied Dustfinger, and smiled.\n\nOrpheus bit his lip like a child who has to hold back tears. 'Very well, smile away!' he said huskily. 'Mock me! But you'll soon be sorry for what you did to me.'\n\n'Will I?' replied Dustfinger, unmoved, as if the soldiers still aiming crossbows at them were not there at all. 'How are you going to frighten a man who's died once already?'\n\nThis time it was Orpheus who smiled, and Mo wished he had a sword, even though he knew that it wouldn't help him.\n\n'Piper, what is this man doing here? Since when has he served my fa...' Violante's voice died away as Orpheus's shadow moved, like an animal waking from sleep.\n\nA shape grew out of it, panting like a large dog. No face could be made out in that blurred, pulsating blackness, only eyes, cloudy and angry. Mo felt Dustfinger's fear, and the fire died down as if the dark figure had taken its breath away.\n\n'I don't suppose I have to explain what a Night-Mare is, do I?' said Orpheus in a velvety voice. 'The strolling players say they are the dead sent back by the White Women because even they couldn't wash the dark stains from their souls. So they condemn them to wander without human bodies, driven by their own darkness, in a world that is no longer theirs... until they are finally extinguished, eaten away by the air they can't breathe, burnt by the sun from which no body protects them. But until that happens they are like hungry dogs \u2013 very hungry.'\n\nHe took a step back. 'Take him!' he told the shadowy form. 'Get him, good dog! Take the Fire-Eater for your own, because he broke my heart.'\n\nMo moved closer to Dustfinger's side, but Dustfinger pushed him back. 'Get away, Bluejay!' he said sharply. 'This thing is worse than death!' The flames around them went out, and the Night-Mare, breathing heavily, stepped into the soot-ringed circle. Dustfinger did not shrink from it. He simply stood there as the shapeless hands reached for him, and then the life just went out of him, extinguished like a flame.\n\nMo felt as if his own heart stopped when the other man fell. But the Night-Mare bent over Dustfinger's motionless body, snuffling like a disappointed dog, and Mo remembered something that Battista had once told him: Night-Mares were interested only in living flesh and avoided the dead, fearing to be taken back by them to the realm they had escaped for a short time.\n\n'Oh, what happened?' cried Orpheus. He sounded like a disappointed child. 'Why was it so quick? I wanted to watch him dying for longer!'\n\n'Seize the Bluejay!' Mo heard the Piper calling. 'Go on, do it!' But his soldiers just stared at the Night-Mare. It had turned, and its dull gaze was now bent on Mo.\n\n'Orpheus! Call it off!' The Piper's voice almost cracked. 'We still need the Bluejay!'\n\nThe Night-Mare moaned as if its mouth were trying to find words \u2013 if it had a mouth at all. For a second Mo thought he could make out a face in the blackness. Evil seeped through his skin, covering his heart like mildew. His legs gave way, and he struggled desperately for breath. Dustfinger had been right; the creature was worse than death.\n\n'Back, dog!' Orpheus's voice made the Night-Mare freeze. 'You don't get him until later.'\n\nMo fell to his knees beside Dustfinger's motionless body. He wanted to lie down beside him, to stop breathing too, stop feeling, but the soldiers hauled him up and bound his hands. He hardly felt it. He could still barely breathe.\n\nWhen the Piper came up to him, Mo saw him as if through a veil. 'Somewhere in this castle they say there's a courtyard, an aviary with bird cages in it. Put him in one of those.' He drove his elbow into Mo's stomach, but all Mo felt was that he could breathe again as the Night-Mare withdrew, merging with Orpheus's shadow.\n\n'Stop! The Bluejay is still my prisoner!' Violante barred the soldiers' way as they were dragging Mo along with them.\n\nBut the Piper pushed her roughly aside. 'He was never your prisoner,' he said. 'Just how stupid do you think your father is? Take her to her room!' he ordered one of the soldiers. 'And throw the Fire-Dancer into the courtyard, outside the cage where you lock up the Bluejay. After all, we shouldn't part a shadow from its master, should we?'\n\nAnother of Violante's soldiers was lying outside the door, his young face showing his terror as he saw death coming. They lay everywhere. The Castle in the Lake \u2013 and the Bluejay with it \u2013 belonged to the Adderhead. So that was how the song ended.\n\n'What a terrible ending!' Mo could almost hear Meggie saying. 'I don't want to listen to this book, Mo. Don't you have another story?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Too Late",
                "text": "\u2002'Rat,' said the Mole, 'I simply can't go and turn in, and go to sleep, and do nothing, even though there doesn't seem to be anything to be done.'\n\n\u2014Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows\n\nThe lake. Resa wanted to run when she saw the water shining through the trees at the foot of the slope, but the Strong Man held her back, pointing without a word to the tents lining the bank. The black tent could belong to only one man, and Resa leant against one of the trees growing on the steep hillside and felt all her strength failing her. They were too late. The Adderhead had reached this place before them. Now what?\n\nShe looked at the castle lying there in the middle of the lake, like a black fruit that the Silver Prince was about to pluck. Its dark walls looked menacing \u2013 and inaccessible. Was Mo really there? Even if he was, so was the Adderhead. And the bridge leading across the lake to it was guarded by a dozen soldiers. Now what, Resa?\n\n'We can't go over the bridge, that's for sure,' the Strong Man whispered to her. 'I'll have a look around. You wait here. Maybe there's a boat somewhere.'\n\nBut Resa hadn't come all this way to wait. It was difficult finding a way over the steep slopes by the banks, and there were soldiers stationed everywhere among the trees, but their eyes were on the castle. The Strong Man led her away from the tents to the eastern bank of the lake, where trees grew all the way down to the water. Perhaps they could try to swim across the lake under cover of darkness? But it would be cold, very cold, and there were grim stories about the water of this lake and the creatures living in it. Resa's hand went to the child in her belly as she followed the Strong Man. She felt as if it had gone into hiding deep inside her.\n\nSuddenly the Strong Man took her arm and pointed to some rocks projecting into the lake. Two soldiers emerged among them, as suddenly as if they had come up out of the water. As they climbed to the bank, Resa saw horses waiting under the spruce trees only a few paces from the rocks.\n\n'What does that mean?' whispered the Strong Man as even more soldiers appeared on the rocks. 'Can there be another way into the castle? I'll go and look. But you're not coming with me this time. Please! I promised the Bluejay. He'd punch my nose in anyway if he knew you were here.'\n\n'No, he wouldn't,' Resa whispered back, but she stayed where she was, and the Strong Man slipped away as she stood under the trees, freezing, and watching him go. The water of the lake was lapping on the bank almost to the toes of her boots, and she thought she could see faces under the mirrorlike surface, faces pressed flat like patterns on the back of a ray. Shuddering, she retreated \u2013 and heard footsteps behind her.\n\n'Hey, you there.'\n\nShe spun round. A soldier was standing among the trees, sword in hand. Run, Resa!\n\nShe was faster than he was, with his weapons and heavy shirt of mail, but he called another man up, and this one had a crossbow. Faster, Resa! From tree to tree, hiding and then running, as children do. As she would have played with Meggie if she'd been there when her daughter was still small. All those years missed...\n\nAn arrow drove into the tree beside her. Another buried itself in the ground just in front of her feet. Don't follow me, Resa. I have to know you'll be there when I come back. Oh, Mo. It's so much harder to wait, just to keep on waiting.\n\nShe ducked behind a tree and drew her knife. They were coming closer, weren't they? Run on, Resa. But her legs were weak with fear. Breathing heavily, she staggered to the shelter of the next tree \u2013 and felt a large hand over her mouth.\n\n'Call and tell them you're surrendering!' the Strong Man whispered. 'But don't go towards them. Make them come to you.'\n\nResa nodded and put the knife away. The two soldiers called something to each other. She felt sick with fear as she put out her arm from behind the tree and asked them not to shoot, her voice trembling. She waited until the Strong Man had crawled away \u2013 with astonishing agility for a man of his size \u2013 before she emerged from the shelter of the tree with her hands in the air. The eyes under the soldiers' helmets widened in surprise as they saw she was a woman. Their smiles boded no good, even though they lowered their weapons, but before one of them could grab her, the Strong Man was behind them, and winding an arm around the neck of each. Resa turned away as he killed them. She threw up in the damp grass, hand pressed to her belly, afraid the child had sensed her terror.\n\n'They're all over the place!' The Strong Man pulled her to her feet. His shoulder was bleeding so freely that it dyed his shirt red. 'One of them had a knife. \"Watch out for knives, Lazaro,\" that's what Doria always says. That little fellow's far cleverer than me.' He was swaying so much that Resa had to support him. They staggered on together, further into the trees.\n\n'The Piper is here too,' the Strong Man whispered. 'Those were his men we saw on the rocks. Seems there's a tunnel under the lake there, all the way to the castle. And I'm afraid there's more bad news.'\n\nHe looked round. Voices came over from the banks of the lake. Suppose the men's bodies were found? The Strong Man led her to a burrow in the ground that smelt of brownies.\n\nResa heard the sobbing as soon as she made her way into it. The Strong Man was groaning as he crawled in after her. Something furry crouched there in the darkness. At first Resa thought it really was a brownie. Then she remembered the description Meggie had given her of Violante's servant. What was his name? Yes, Tullio.\n\nShe reached for the furry hand. Violante's servant stared at her, eyes wide with fear.\n\n'What's happened? I'm the Bluejay's wife! Please, is he still alive?'\n\nHe went on staring at her with his dark eyes, which were round like an animal's. 'They're all dead,' he whispered. Resa's heart began to falter as if it had forgotten how to beat. 'There's blood everywhere. They've locked Violante in her room, and as for the Bluejay...'\n\nWhat had they done to him? No, she didn't want to hear. Resa closed her eyes as if that would take her back to Elinor's house, the peaceful garden, where she could go over to Mo's workshop...\n\n'The Piper has shut him up in a cage.'\n\n'Does that mean he's still alive?'\n\nThe quick nod allowed her heart to beat more regularly again.\n\n'They still need him!'\n\nOf course. How could she have forgotten?\n\n'But the Night-Mare has eaten the Fire-Dancer.'\n\nOh no. It couldn't be true. Resa buried her face in her hands.\n\n'Is the Adderhead already in the castle?' the Strong Man asked.\n\nTullio shook his head and began sobbing again.\n\nThe Strong Man looked at Resa. 'Then he'll be riding over tonight. And the Bluejay will kill him.' It sounded as if he were reciting a magic spell.\n\n'How?' Resa cut a strip of fabric from his tunic with her knife and bandaged his wound, which was still bleeding hard. 'How is he going to write the words if Violante can't help him any more and Dustfinger is...' She did not utter the word 'dead', as if she could make it untrue by leaving it unspoken.\n\nFootsteps could be heard outside, but they moved away again. Resa undid Mortola's bag from her belt.\n\n'No, Lazaro,' she said softly \u2013 it was the first time she had used the Strong Man's name. 'The Bluejay will not kill the Adderhead. They will kill him, once the Adderhead finds out that Mo can't cure the White Book. And that will be very soon.'\n\nShe sprinkled a few of the tiny seeds into her hand. Seeds that taught the soul what only Death could usually teach: how to take on another form.\n\n'What are you doing?' The Strong Man tried to take the bag away from her, but Resa clutched it in both hands.\n\n'You have to place them under your tongue,' she whispered, 'and take care not to swallow them. For if you do that too often the animal will grow too strong, and you forget what you were before. Capricorn had a dog that was said to have been one of his men once, until Mortola tried out these seeds on him. A day came when the dog attacked her, and they killed it. At the time I thought it was just a story to scare the maids.'\n\nShe shook all but four of the seeds back into the bag. Four tiny seeds, almost round like poppy seeds, but lighter in colour. 'Take Tullio and go back to the cave!' she told the Strong Man. 'Tell the Black Prince what we saw. Tell him about Snapper too. And take care of Meggie!'\n\nHe was looking at her unhappily.\n\n'You can't help me here, Lazaro!' she whispered. 'You can't help either me or the Bluejay. Go back and protect our daughter. And comfort Roxane. Or \u2013 no, perhaps you'd better not tell her anything yet. I'll do it myself.'\n\nShe licked the seeds up from her hand. 'You never know what kind of creature you'll turn into,' she whispered. 'But I hope it will have wings.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Help from Mountains Far Away",
                "text": "\u2002He thinks of the old days, when everything was created. It was so long ago! He and his brothers killed the monstrous giant Ymer then and made the whole world from his corpse. His blood became the sea, his flesh the land, mountains and cliffs arose from his bones, trees and grass grew out of his hair.\n\n\u2014Tor Age Bringsv\u00e6rd, The Wild Gods\n\nMeggie waited... while her ears were filled with screams. While Farid put out Sootbird's black fire with white flames. While Darius soothed the children by telling them stories, his soft voice louder than usual to drown out the noise of fighting, and Elinor helped the other women to cut the ropes that the Milksop's men had shot up into the tree on arrows.\n\nMeggie waited, quietly singing the songs Battista had taught her \u2013 all the songs full of hope and light, defiance and courage \u2013 while down at the foot of the tree the robbers were fighting for the children's lives and their own. Every scream reminded Meggie of the battle in the forest in which Farid had died. But this time she feared for two boys, not one.\n\nHer eyes didn't know who to look for first, Farid or Doria, black hair or brown. Sometimes she couldn't see either of them, they moved so fast in the branches, both of them following the fire that Sootbird sent up into the huge tree like burning tar. Doria beat it out with cloths and mats, while Farid mocked Sootbird from above and sent his own flames to nest on the murderous fire like doves until their fiery plumage smothered it. He had learnt a great deal from Dustfinger. Farid was no novice now, and Meggie saw jealousy distort Sootbird's leathery face, while the Milksop sat on his horse among the trees, observing the fighting men with as little expression on his face as if he were watching his hounds bring down a stag.\n\nThe robbers were still defending the tree, even though they were hopelessly outnumbered. But how much longer could they fight?\n\nWhere was he? Where was the creature she and Fenoglio had called to their aid? It had all been so quick with Cosimo!\n\nNo one knew what Meggie had read aloud a few hours ago except Fenoglio and the two glass men, who had listened to her open-mouthed. They hadn't even had a chance to tell Elinor about it, since the Milksop's attack had been so sudden.\n\n'You have to give him time!' Fenoglio had told Meggie when she put down the sheet of paper bearing his words. 'He has to come from far away, or it couldn't be done.'\n\nJust so long as he didn't arrive only after they were all dead...\n\nThe Black Prince was bleeding from his shoulder. Almost all the robbers were wounded by now. It would be too late. Too late.\n\nMeggie saw Doria just avoiding an arrow, Roxane comforting the crying children, and Elinor and Minerva desperately trying to cut another rope before the Milksop's men could climb it. Oh, when would he come? When?\n\nAnd, suddenly, she felt the sensation, exactly as Fenoglio had described it: a trembling that shook the tree to its topmost branches. Everyone felt it. The men fighting stopped and looked at each other in alarm. The ground quivered beneath his footsteps. That was what Fenoglio had written.\n\n'Are you really sure he'll be peaceful?' Meggie had asked anxiously.\n\n'Of course I am!' Fenoglio had replied in some annoyance. But Meggie couldn't help thinking of Cosimo, who hadn't turned out as Fenoglio imagined him. Or had he? Who could say what exactly went on in the old man's head? Perhaps Elinor was more likely to guess than the rest of them.\n\nThe quivering grew stronger. Branches broke, shoots, saplings. Flocks of birds flew up from the undergrowth, and the battle cries under the tree turned to screams of terror as the giant pushed his way out of the thickets.\n\nNo, he wasn't as tall as the tree.\n\n'Of course not!' Fenoglio had said. 'Of course they're not as tall as that! It would be silly! Anyway, didn't I tell you these nests were built on purpose to keep the people who lived in them safe from the giants? Well, there you are! He won't be able to reach up to any of them, but the Milksop will run for it as soon as he sees the giant, that's for sure. He'll run as fast as his spindly legs can carry him!'\n\nAnd that was what the Milksop did, although he left it to his horse to do the running. He was the first to turn and flee. Sootbird was so terrified that he burnt himself on his own flames, and the robbers themselves stood firm only because the Black Prince made them. It was Elinor who let the first rope down to the men and snapped at the other women as they stood there, petrified, staring at the giant. 'Throw down ropes!' Meggie heard her shouting. 'And get on with it, or do you want him to crush them underfoot?'\n\nBrave Elinor.\n\nThe robbers began climbing, while the screams of the soldiers rang through the forest, retreating further into the distance all the time. However, now it was the giant's turn to stop and stare up at the children, who in turn were staring down at him with both delight and terror on their little faces.\n\n'They like human children. That's the problem,' Fenoglio had murmured to Meggie before she began to read. 'After a time they begin catching them, like butterflies or hamsters. But I've tried to write one here who's too lethargic to do that. Although it presumably means he won't be a very clever specimen.'\n\nDid the giant look clever? Meggie couldn't say. She had imagined him as quite different. His mighty limbs were not grossly massive, and he moved only a little more ponderously than the Strong Man. For a moment, as he stood there among the trees, it seemed to Meggie that he, not the robbers, was the right size for this forest. His eyes were strange. They were rounder than human eyes, and rather like a chameleon's. The same could be said of his skin. The giant was naked, like the fairies and elves, and his skin changed colour with every movement he made. When he first appeared it had been pale brown, like the bark of a tree, but now it was patterned with red like the last of the berries hanging in an almost leafless hawthorn bush that came up to his knees. Even his hair changed colour \u2013 sometimes green, then suddenly pale like the sky. All this made him almost invisible among the trees. As if the air were moving. As if the wind, or the spirit of this forest, had taken visible shape in him.\n\n'Aha! Here he is at last! Fabulous!' Fenoglio appeared behind Meggie so suddenly that she almost stumbled off the branch where she was standing. 'Yes, we know our craft, you and I! I wouldn't say a word against your father, but in my view you're the true mistress of this art. You're still child enough to see the pictures behind the words as clearly as only children can. Which is probably why this giant doesn't look at all the way I imagined him.'\n\n'But I didn't imagine him like this either,' Meggie said in a whisper, as if any loud word might attract the giant's attention.\n\n'Really? Hm.' Fenoglio took a cautious step forward. 'Well, never mind that. I can't wait to hear what Signora Loredan thinks of him, I really can't.'\n\nMeggie could see what Doria, for one, thought of the giant. He was perched in the crown of the tree and couldn't take his eyes off the apparition. And Farid was looking as captivated as he usually did only when Dustfinger was showing him a new trick, while Jink, sitting on his lap, bared his teeth in alarm.\n\nMeggie felt pleased. She had done it again! She had used Fenoglio's words and her voice to go on telling the story. And, as on those other occasions, she felt exhausted and proud at the same time \u2013 and a little afraid of what she had summoned up.\n\n'So now do you have the words for my father ready?'\n\n'The words for your father? No, but I'm working on them.' Fenoglio rubbed his lined forehead as if he had to wake up a few thoughts slumbering there. 'I'm afraid a giant wouldn't be much help to your father, but trust me. I'll get that done tonight too. When the Adderhead reaches the castle Violante will receive him with my words, and the two of us will bring this story to a good ending once and for all. Oh, he really is magnificent!' Fenoglio leant forward to get a better look at his creation. 'Although I wonder where he gets those chameleon eyes. I never wrote a word about them! Never mind, it makes him look... well, interesting. Perhaps I ought to write a few more giants like him here. It's a shame they hide away in the mountains now.'\n\nThe robbers did not appear to agree with him. They were still climbing the ropes as hastily as if the Milksop's men were after them. By now only the Black Prince and his bear stood at the foot of the tree.\n\n'What's the Prince doing still down there?' Fenoglio leant so far forward that Meggie instinctively grabbed his tunic. 'For heaven's sake, why doesn't he leave the damn bear alone? These giants don't have particularly good eyesight. He'll be trodden underfoot if the giant stumbles just once!'\n\nMeggie tried to haul the old man back. 'The Black Prince would never leave the bear alone, you know he wouldn't!'\n\n'But he must!' She had seldom seen Fenoglio so concerned. Obviously he really was fonder of the Prince than most of his characters.\n\n'Come on up!' he called down to him. 'Come on, Prince!'\n\nBut the Black Prince went on talking to his bear as if the animal were a sulky child, while the giant stood there staring up at the children. Several women shrieked when he reached out his hand. They pulled the children away, but however far the giant stretched, his mighty fingers couldn't reach the nests, just as Fenoglio had said.\n\n'Made to measure!' the old man whispered. 'See that, Meggie?' Yes, this time he obviously had thought of everything.\n\nThe giant looked disappointed. He reached up once more, and then took a step to one side. His heel missed the Black Prince by no more than a twig's breadth. The bear roared and stood up on his hind legs \u2013 and the giant, in surprise, looked down at what was there between his feet.\n\n'Oh, no!' faltered Fenoglio. 'No, no, no!' he shouted down to his creation. 'Not him! Leave the Prince alone. That's not what you're here for! Go after the Milksop. Take some of his men, if you want anyone! Go on, go away!'\n\nThe giant raised his head, looking to see who was shouting like that, but then he bent and picked up the Prince and the bear with as little ceremony as Elinor picking caterpillars off her roses.\n\n'No!' stammered Fenoglio. 'What's going on now? What went wrong this time? He'll break every bone in the Prince's body!'\n\nThe robbers hung from their ropes, frozen rigid. One of them threw his knife down at the giant's hand. The giant pulled it out with his lips like a thorn and dropped the Black Prince as he might have dropped a toy. Meggie flinched as he struck the ground and lay there without moving. She heard Elinor scream, while the giant hit out at the men on the ropes as if they were wasps trying to sting him.\n\nEveryone was shouting in confusion. Battista ran to one of the ropes to go to the Prince's aid. Farid and Doria followed him, and even Elinor ran after him, while Roxane stood there, horrified, with her arms around two crying children. As for Fenoglio, he was shaking at the ropes hanging from the tree in helpless fury.\n\n'No!' he shouted down once more. 'No, you just can't do that!'\n\nAnd suddenly one of the ropes tore away and he fell into the void below. Meggie tried to grab him, but she arrived too late. Fenoglio was falling, with an expression of surprise on his wrinkled face, and the giant caught him in mid-air like a ripe fruit dropping from the tree.\n\nThe children had stopped screaming. The women and the robbers were silent too as the giant sat down at the foot of the tree and examined his catch. He put the bear carelessly on the ground, but as he did so his glance fell on the unconscious Prince, and he picked him up again. Roaring, the bear went to his master's aid, but the giant just flicked him away with his hand. Then he rose to his feet, looked up at the children one last time, and strode away with Fenoglio in his right hand and the Black Prince in his left."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Bluejay's Angels",
                "text": "\u2002I ask you:\n\n\u2002What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me!\n\n\u2002But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now.\n\n\u2014Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger\n\nOrpheus had seen Violante for the first time at one of the Milksop's banquets, and even then he had wondered what it would be like to rule Ombra at her side. All his maids were more beautiful than the Adderhead's daughter, but Violante had something that they did not possess: arrogance, ambition, the lust for power. All of that appealed to Orpheus, and when the Piper led her into the Hall of a Thousand Windows his heart beat faster as he saw how high she still held her head, even though she had staked everything on a single card and lost.\n\nHer gaze passed over them all as if they were the losers \u2013 her father, Thumbling, the Piper. She had only a fleeting glance for Orpheus, but never mind. How was she to know what a prominent part he would play in the future? The Adderhead would still be stuck in the mud with a broken wheel if he hadn't read him four new coach wheels on the spot. How everyone had stared! Even Thumbling had learnt to respect him.\n\nThe Hall of a Thousand Windows had no windows any more. Thumbling had had them draped with black cloth, and only half a dozen torches gave light in the darkness, just enough of it to show the Adderhead the face of his worst enemy.\n\nWhen they pushed Mortimer in, Violante's haughty mask cracked, but she quickly pulled herself together. Orpheus saw, with satisfaction, that they had not treated the Bluejay particularly gently, but he could still stand, and the Piper had certainly made sure his hands were unharmed. They could have cut out his tongue, though, thought Orpheus, thus putting an end to all the fulsome praise of his voice once and for all. But then it occurred to him that Mortimer still had to tell him where Fenoglio's book was, since Dustfinger hadn't given its whereabouts away.\n\nThe torchlight fell only on Mortimer. The Adderhead sat in darkness. He clearly didn't want to give his prisoner the satisfaction of seeing his bloated body. Anyone could smell it, though.\n\n'Well, Bluejay? Did my daughter describe this meeting of ours rather differently to you? Very likely.' The Adderhead's breath rattled in his throat like an old man's. 'I was very glad when Violante suggested this castle as our meeting place, although the journey here wasn't easy. The castle gave me happiness once before, if not for very long. And I was sure that her mother hadn't told her about the secret passage. She told her daughter a great deal about this castle, but little of it had anything to do with reality.'\n\nViolante's face remained expressionless. 'I don't know what you're talking about, Father,' she said. What an effort she was making not to look at Mortimer. Touching.\n\n'No, you don't know anything, that's the point.' The Adderhead laughed. 'I often had people posted to overhear what your mother told you in the Old Chamber. All the stories about her happy childhood days, the sweet lies told to make her ugly little daughter dream of a place so different from the castle where she really grew up. Reality isn't usually much like what we say about it, but you always confused the words with the truth. Just the same as your mother \u2013 you could never distinguish between what you want and the way things really are, could you?'\n\nViolante did not reply. She simply stood there, as upright as ever, staring into the darkness where her father was concealed.\n\n'When I met your mother for the first time in this hall,' the Adderhead went on in his hoarse voice, 'she wanted nothing but to get away from here. She'd have tried to run away if her father had given her any chance. Did she tell you that one of her sisters fell to her death climbing out of one of these windows? Or that she herself was almost drowned by the water-nymphs when she tried swimming across the lake? Presumably not. Instead, she made out that I forced her father to give me her hand in marriage, and took her away from here against her will. Who knows, perhaps she even believed that story herself in the end?'\n\n'You're lying.' Violante was trying very hard to sound composed. 'I don't want to hear any more.'\n\n'But hear it you will,' said the Adderhead, unmoved. 'It's time you stopped hiding behind pretty stories and heard the facts. Your grandfather was only too inclined to make sure that any suitors of his daughters disappeared. So your mother showed me the tunnel \u2013 the one that enabled the Piper to get into the castle entirely unnoticed. She was madly in love with me at the time, whatever she may have said to you.'\n\n'Why are you telling me these lies?' Violante still held her head high, but her voice was trembling. 'It wasn't my mother who showed you the tunnel. It must have been one of your spies. And she never loved you, either.'\n\n'Believe what you like. I assume you don't know very much about love.' The Adderhead coughed, and rose from the chair where he was sitting with a groan. Violante retreated as he stepped into the torchlight.\n\n'Yes, see what your noble robber has done to me,' said the Adderhead as he slowly approached Mortimer. It was getting more and more painful for him to walk, Orpheus had seen that often enough on the endless journey to this bleak castle, but the Silver Prince still stood as straight as his daughter.\n\n'But let's not discuss the past any more,' he said, when he was so close to Mortimer that his prisoner had the full benefit of the odour he gave off, 'or about the way my daughter may have envisaged this bargain. Convince me that it really doesn't make sense for me to flay you alive at once \u2013 and do the same to your wife and daughter. Yes, you left them with the Black Prince, but I know about the cave where they're hiding. I assume that my useless brother-in-law has captured them by now and will be taking them to Ombra.'\n\nAh, that really got through to Mortimer. Guess who told the Adderhead about the cave, noble robber, thought Orpheus, smiling broadly when Mortimer looked at him.\n\n'So now...' The Adderhead drove his gloved fist into his prisoner's chest just where Mortola had wounded him. 'What are the prospects? Can you reverse your own trick? Can you cure the Book you so craftily used to deceive me?'\n\nMortimer hesitated for only a moment. 'Of course,' he replied. 'If you give it to me.'\n\nVery well. Orpheus had to admit that Mortimer's voice still sounded impressive, even in these dire straits (although his own sounded far, far better). But the Adderhead wasn't to be beguiled this time. He struck Mortimer in the face so hard that he fell to his knees.\n\n'Do you seriously expect to fool me again?' he snarled. 'How stupid do you think I am? No one can cure this book! Dozens of your fellow craftsmen have died to give me that information. No, it's past saving, which means that my flesh will rot for all eternity, and every day I'll be tempted to write the three words in it myself and put an end to all this. But I have thought of a better solution, and I'll require your services for it once more after all, which is why I am truly grateful to my daughter for taking such good care of you. After all,' he added, glancing at the Piper, 'I know what a hot temper my silver-nosed herald has.'\n\nThe Piper was going to say something, but the Adderhead merely raised his hand impatiently and turned back to Mortimer.\n\n'What kind of solution?' The famous voice sounded hoarse. Was the Bluejay afraid now after all? Orpheus felt like a boy enjoying a particularly exciting passage in a book. I hope he's afraid, he thought. And I hope this is one of the last chapters he appears in.\n\nMortimer's face twisted when the Piper pressed his knife against his ribs. Oh yes, he's obviously made the wrong enemies in this story, thought Orpheus. And the wrong friends. But that was high-minded heroes for you. Stupid.\n\n'What kind of solution?' The Adderhead scratched his itching flesh. 'You'll bind me another book, what else? But this time you won't go unobserved for a single second. And once this new book with its spotlessly white pages protects me from Death again, we'll write your name in the other one \u2013 so that you can know for a while how it feels to be rotting alive. After that I'll tear it to pieces, page by page, and watch as you feel your flesh tearing and you beg the White Women to come for you. Doesn't that sound like a solution satisfactory to all parties?'\n\nAh. A new White Book. Not a bad idea, thought Orpheus. But my name would suit its brand-new pages so much better! Stop dreaming, Orpheus, he told himself.\n\nThe Piper had his knife to Mortimer's throat. 'Well, what's your answer, Bluejay? Want me to carve it into you with my knife?'\n\nMortimer said nothing.\n\n'Answer!' the Piper snarled at him. 'Or shall I do it for you? There's only one answer, anyway.'\n\nMortimer still said nothing, but Violante appointed herself to speak for him. 'Why should he help you if you're going to kill him in any case?' she asked her father.\n\nThe Adderhead shrugged his heavy shoulders. 'I could let him die in a rather less painful way, or just send his wife and daughter to the mines instead of killing them. After all, we've bargained for those two once before.'\n\n'But this time they're not in your hands.' Mortimer's voice sounded as if he were very far away. He's going to say no, thought Orpheus in astonishment. What a fool.\n\n'Not yet, but they soon will be.' The Piper let his knife slide down Mortimer's chest, and its point traced a heart over the place where the real one beat. 'Orpheus has given us a very detailed description of the place where they're hiding. You heard. The Milksop is presumably taking them to Ombra at this very moment.'\n\nFor the second time Mortimer looked at Orpheus, and the hatred in his eyes was sweeter than the little cakes that Oss was sent to buy for him in Ombra market every Friday. Well, there'd be no more Oss now. Unfortunately the Night-Mare had eaten him when it slipped out of Fenoglio's words \u2013 it had taken Orpheus some time to get it under control. But he could always find a new bodyguard.\n\n'You can get down to work at once. Your noble patroness, very usefully, has made sure everything you'll need is here!' spat the Piper, and this time blood flowed when he pressed his knife against Mortimer's throat. 'Obviously she wanted to provide every last detail to make us think you were really still alive only to cure the Book. What a farce. Ah, well, she always had a weakness for strolling players.'\n\nMortimer ignored the Piper as if he were invisible. He looked only at the Adderhead. 'No,' he said. The word hung heavily in the dark hall. 'I will not bind you another book. Death would not forgive me a second time for that.'\n\nViolante instinctively took a step towards Mortimer, but he took no notice of her.\n\n'Don't listen to him!' she told her father. 'He'll do it! Just give him a little time.' Oh, so she really was fond of the Bluejay. Orpheus frowned. One more reason to wish him to the devil.\n\nThe Adderhead looked thoughtfully at his daughter. 'Why would you want him to do it?'\n\n'Well, you...' For the first time Violante's voice betrayed uncertainty. 'He'll make you well again.'\n\n'So?' The Silver Prince was breathing heavily. 'You want to see me dead. Don't deny it. I like that! It shows that my blood flows in your veins. Sometimes I think I really should put you on the throne of Ombra. You'd certainly fill the position better than my silver-powdered brother-in-law.'\n\n'Of course I would! I'd send six times as much silver to the Castle of Night, because I wouldn't be squandering it on banquets and hunting parties. But for that you must leave me the Bluejay \u2013 once he's done what you want.'\n\nImpressive. She was actually still making conditions. Oh yes, I like her, thought Orpheus. I like her very much. She just has to have her weakness for lawless bookbinders driven out of her. But then... what possibilities!\n\nObviously the Adderhead was appreciating his daughter more and more as well. He laughed louder than Orpheus had ever heard him laugh before. 'Look at her!' he cried. 'Bargaining with me even though she stands there empty-handed! Take her to her room,' he ordered one of his soldiers. 'But watch her carefully. And send Jacopo to her. A son should be with his mother. You, however,' he said, turning to Mortimer, 'will finally agree to my demand, or I'll have my bodyguard torture a 'yes' out of you.'\n\nThe Piper, aggrieved, lowered his knife when Thumbling stepped out of the darkness. Violante cast him an uneasy glance, and resisted when the soldier dragged her away with him \u2013 but Mortimer still remained silent.\n\n'Your Grace!' Orpheus took a respectful step forward (at least, he hoped it looked respectful). 'Let me get him to consent!'\n\nA whispered name (for you just have to call the creatures by their right names, like dogs), and the Night-Mare emerged from Orpheus's shadow.\n\n'Not the Night-Mare!' the Piper said forcefully. 'You want to see the Bluejay dead on the spot, like the Fire-Dancer? No.' He had Mortimer hauled to his feet again.\n\n'Didn't you hear? I'm dealing with this, Piper.' Thumbling took off his black gloves.\n\nOrpheus tasted disappointment like bitter almonds on his tongue. What a chance to show the Adderhead how useful he was! If he'd only had Fenoglio's book so that he could use it to write the Piper right out of this world. And that Thumbling fellow too.\n\n'My lord! Please, listen to me!' He stepped in front of the Adderhead. 'May I ask for the answer to an additional question to be extracted from the prisoner in the course of what, I'm sure, he will find a rather uncomfortable process? You'll remember the book I told you about, the book that can change this world in any way you like! Please get him to say where it is!'\n\nBut the Adderhead just turned his back. 'Later,' he said, and dropped back, with another groan, into the chair where the shadows hid him. 'We're talking about only one book now, a book with white pages. You can start, Thumbling,' said his gasping voice in the darkness. 'But take care of his hands.'\n\nWhen Orpheus felt the sudden chill on his face, he thought at first that the night wind was blowing through the black-draped windows. But there they were, standing beside the Bluejay, as white and terrible as they had been in the graveyard of the strolling players. They surrounded Mortimer like flightless angels, their limbs made of mist, their faces white as bleached bone. The Piper stumbled back so hastily that he fell and cut himself on his own knife. Even Thumbling's face lost its look of indifference. And the soldiers who had been guarding Mortimer flinched back like frightened children.\n\nIt couldn't be true! Why were they protecting him? As thanks to him for tricking them more than once? For stealing Dustfinger away from them? Orpheus felt the Night-Mare cower like a beaten dog. So even the Night-Mare feared them? No. No, for heaven's sake! This world really must be rewritten. And he was the man to do it. Yes, indeed. He'd find a way.\n\nWhat were they whispering?\n\nThe pale light spread by the daughters of Death drove away the shadows where the Adderhead was concealed, and Orpheus saw the Silver Prince fighting for breath in his dark corner, putting his shaking hands over his eyes. So he was still afraid of the White Women, even though he had killed so many men in the Castle of Night to prove that he wasn't. All lies. The Adderhead, in his immortal body, was breathless with fear.\n\nBut Mortimer stood among Fenoglio's angels of death as if they were a part of him \u2013 and smiled."
            },
            {
                "title": "Mother and Son",
                "text": "\u2002The scent of moist dirt and fresh growth washes in over me, watery, slippery, with an acid taste to it like the bark of a tree. It smells like youth; it smells like heartbreak.\n\n\u2014Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin\n\nOf course the Adderhead had Violante locked in her mother's former chamber. He knew very well that she would just hear the many lies his late wife had told her all the more clearly there. It couldn't be true. Her mother had never lied to her. Mother and father had always meant good and bad, truth and lies, love and hate. It had been so simple! But now her father had taken that from her too. Violante searched inside herself for her pride and the strength she had always preserved, but all she found was an ugly little girl sitting in the dust of her hopes, at the heart of her mother's shattered image.\n\nShe leant her forehead against the barred door and listened for the Bluejay's screams, but she heard only the guards talking outside her door. Oh, why hadn't he said yes? Because he thought she'd still be able to shield him? Thumbling would soon teach him better. She couldn't help thinking of the minstrel whom her father had had quartered because he had sung for her mother, and the servant who had brought her books and was starved to death in a cage outside her window. She had given him parchment to eat. How could she have promised the Bluejay protection when those who were on her side had always gone to their deaths?\n\n'Thumbling will slice strips off his skin!' Jacopo's voice hardly reached her. 'They say he does it so skilfully that his victims don't die. He's said to have practised on dead bodies!'\n\n'Be quiet!' She felt like slapping his pale face. He was growing more and more like Cosimo every day, although he would so much rather have been like his grandfather.\n\n'You can't hear anything from here. They'll take him down to the cellar near the dungeons. I've been there. All the instruments are still in place \u2013 rusty, but they're still fit for use: chains, knives, screws, iron spikes...'\n\nViolante looked at him, and he fell silent. She went to the window, but the cage where they had first imprisoned the Bluejay was empty. Only the Fire-Dancer lay dead outside it. Strange that the ravens hadn't touched him. As if they were afraid to.\n\nJacopo took the plate of food that one of the maids had brought him and sulkily picked at it. How old was he now? She couldn't remember. At least he'd stopped wearing that tin nose since the Piper had made fun of him for it.\n\n'You like him.'\n\n'Who?'\n\n'The Bluejay.'\n\n'He's better than any of them.' Once again she listened at the door. Why hadn't he said yes? Then perhaps she might yet have been able to save him.\n\n'If the Bluejay makes another book, will Grandfather still go on smelling so bad? I think he will. I think he'll just fall down dead some day. He looks dead already, really.' How indifferent he sounded. A few months ago Jacopo had still adored her father. Were all children like that? How would she know? She had just one child. Children... Violante still saw them running out of the castle gate in Ombra and into their mothers' arms. If the Bluejay died for them, were they really worth it?\n\n'I don't like looking at Grandfather any more!' Jacopo shuddered and put his hands over his eyes. 'If he dies I'll be king, won't I?' The chill in his clear voice both impressed and alarmed Violante.\n\n'No, you won't. Not after your father attacked him. His own son will be king. King in the Castle of Night and in Ombra.'\n\n'But he's only a baby.'\n\n'So his mother will reign for him. And the Milksop.' What's more, Violante added in her thoughts, your grandfather is still immortal, and no one seems able to do anything about it. Not for all eternity.\n\nJacopo pushed his plate aside and strolled over to Brianna. She was embroidering a picture of a horseman who looked suspiciously like Cosimo, although Brianna said he was the hero of an old fairy tale. It did Violante good to have Brianna with her again, although the girl had been even more silent than usual since the Night-Mare had killed her father. Perhaps she had loved him after all. Most daughters loved their fathers.\n\n'Brianna!' Jacopo thrust a hand into her beautiful hair. 'Read to me. Go on. I'm bored.'\n\n'You can read for yourself. In fact you can read very well.' Brianna removed his fingers from her hair and went on with her embroidery.\n\n'I'll fetch the Night-Mare!' Jacopo's voice rose shrilly, as it always did when he didn't get his own way. 'I'll fetch it to eat you like your father. Oh no, I forgot, it didn't eat him. He's lying dead out in the courtyard, with ravens pecking around him.'\n\nBrianna didn't even raise her head, but Violante saw her hands trembling so violently that she pricked her finger.\n\n'Jacopo!'\n\nHer son turned to her, and for a moment Violante thought his eyes were begging her to say more. Shake me! Hit me! Punish me! said those eyes. Or take me in your arms. I'm scared. I hate this castle. I want to go away.\n\nShe hadn't wanted children. She didn't know how to deal with them. But Cosimo's father had begged for a grandson. How was she supposed to deal with a child? She could hardly manage to keep her own painful heart together. If only it had at least been a girl. The Bluejay had a daughter. Everyone said he loved her very much. Perhaps he'd give in after all for the daughter's sake, and bind her father a second book. If the Milksop really did catch the girl. And then? She didn't want to think about his wife. Perhaps she was dying anyway. The Milksop liked treating those he hunted cruelly.\n\n'Read! Read to me!' Jacopo was still standing in front of Brianna. He snatched the embroidery from her lap, so roughly that she pricked her hand again.\n\n'That looks like my father.'\n\n'No, it doesn't!' Brianna cast a quick glance at Violante.\n\n'Yes, it does. Why don't you ask the Bluejay to bring him back from the dead? The way he brought your father back?'\n\nOnce Brianna would have slapped him, but Cosimo's death had broken something in her. She was soft now, like the inside of a shellfish, soft and full of pain. All the same, her company was better than none, and Violante slept much more easily when Brianna sang for her in the evenings.\n\nOutside, someone pushed back the bolt.\n\nWhat did that mean? Were they coming to tell her that the Piper had killed the Bluejay after all? That Thumbling had broken him like so many men before? And if so, she asked herself, what difference does it make? Your heart is broken into pieces anyway.\n\nBut it was Four-Eyes who came in. Orpheus, or Moonface, as the Piper derisively called him. Violante still couldn't understand how he had insinuated himself into her father's good graces so swiftly. Perhaps it was his voice. It was almost as beautiful as the Bluejay's, but something in it made Violante shudder.\n\n'Your Highness!' Her visitor bowed so low that the bow verged on mockery.\n\n'Has the Bluejay given my father the right answer after all?'\n\n'No, I'm afraid not. But he is still alive, if that's what you wanted to know.' His eyes looked so innocent through those round glasses \u2013 glasses that she had copied from him, except that unlike Four-Eyes Violante didn't always wear hers. Sometimes she preferred to see the world through a blur.\n\n'Where is he?'\n\n'Ah, so you've seen the empty cage. Well, I suggested to the Adderhead different accommodation for the Bluejay. You presumably know about the dungeons where your grandfather used to throw his prisoners. Once in there, I'm sure our noble robber will very soon give up the idea of resisting your father's wishes. But let's come to the reason for my visit.'\n\nHis smile was sweet as syrup. What did he want from her?\n\n'Your Highness.' His voice stroked Violante's skin like the hare's foot that Balbulus used to smooth parchment. 'Like you, I am a great lover of books. Sad to say, I hear that the library of this castle is in a terrible condition, but it has also come to my ears that you still have a few books with you. Would it be possible for me to borrow one, or maybe even two? Of course I would show my appreciation of the loan in every possible way.'\n\n'What about my book?' Jacopo pushed in front of Violante, his arms folded in the pose his grandfather used to adopt before his swollen arms had made even that gesture painful. 'You haven't given it back to me yet. You owe me \u2013' he counted on his short fingers \u2013 'you owe me twelve silver coins.'\n\nThe look Orpheus gave Jacopo was neither warm nor sweet, but his voice was still both. 'Why, of course! What a good thing you've reminded me of it, Prince. Come to my room and I'll give you the coins and your book back. But now let me speak to your mother, will you?' With an apologetic smile, he turned back to Violante.\n\n'Well, what do you say?' he asked, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. 'Would you lend me one, Your Highness? I've heard wonderful things about your books, and believe me, I will treat them with the utmost care.'\n\n'She only has two with her.' Jacopo pointed to the chest beside the bed. 'And they're both about the Blue\u2014'\n\nViolante clapped her hand over his mouth, but Orpheus was already making for the chest.\n\n'I'm sorry,' she said, barring his way. 'I am too much attached to these books to let them out of my hands. And as I'm sure you have heard, my father has seen to it that Balbulus can't illuminate any more books for me.'\n\nOrpheus hardly seemed to be listening. He was staring spellbound at the chest. 'May I at least take a look at them?'\n\n'Don't let him have them!'\n\nClearly Orpheus hadn't even noticed Brianna. His face froze when he heard her voice behind him, and his plump fingers clenched into fists.\n\nBrianna stood up and returned his hostile glance with composure. 'He does strange things with books,' she said. 'Books and the words in them. And he hates the Bluejay. My father said he tried selling him to Death.'\n\n'Poor confused creature!' stammered Orpheus, but he was visibly nervous as he adjusted his glasses. 'She was my maid, as presumably you know, and I caught her stealing. No doubt that's why she says such things about me.'\n\nBrianna went as red as if he had thrown hot water in her face, but Violante moved to her side to defend her. 'Brianna would never steal,' she said. 'Now go away, please. I can't give you the books.'\n\n'Oh, so she'd never steal?' Orpheus was clearly having some difficulty in giving his voice its old velvety sound. 'As far as I know she stole your husband from you, didn't she?'\n\n'Here you are!'\n\nBefore Violante could react Jacopo was standing in front of Orpheus, holding her books. 'Which one do you want? She likes reading the thicker book most. But this time you must pay me more than you paid for my own book!'\n\nViolante tried to snatch the books from his hands, but Jacopo was surprisingly strong, and Orpheus hastily opened the door.\n\n'Quick. Take these books to safe keeping!' he ordered the soldier on guard outside.\n\nThe man had no difficulty in getting the books away from Jacopo. Orpheus opened them, read a few lines first from one, then from the other \u2013 and gave Violante a triumphant smile.\n\n'Yes, exactly the reading matter I need,' he said. 'You'll get them back as soon as they've served their purpose. But these books,' he added to Jacopo, pinching his cheek roughly, 'I'm borrowing for free, you greedy son of a dead prince! And we can forget about any payment for your other book too, or do you want to meet my Night-Mare? I'm sure you've heard of it.'\n\nJacopo just stared at him with a mixture of fear and hatred on his thin face.\n\nOrpheus, however, bowed and went out through the doorway. 'I really can't thank you enough, Your Highness,' he said by way of farewell. 'You have no idea how happy these books make me. Now the Bluejay is certain to give your father the right answer soon.'\n\nJacopo was chewing his lip hard as the guard outside shot the bolt again. He always did that when something hadn't gone the way he wanted. Violante slapped his face so hard that he stumbled against her bed and fell. He began crying without a sound, his eyes fixed on her like a dog that has been punished.\n\nBrianna helped him up and wiped his tears away with her dress.\n\n'What is Four-Eyes going to do with the books?' Violante was shivering. She was shivering all over. She had a new enemy.\n\n'I don't know,' Brianna replied. 'All I do know is that my father took one away from him because he had done great harm with it.'\n\nGreat harm.\n\nNow the Bluejay is certain to give your father the right answer soon."
            },
            {
                "title": "Clothed and Unclothed",
                "text": "\u2002Archimedes finished his sparrow, wiped his beak politely on the bough, and turned his eyes full on the Wart. These great, round eyes had, as a famous writer has expressed it, a bloom of light upon them like the purple bloom of powder on a grape.\n\n\u2002'Now that you have learned to fly,' he said, 'Merlyn wants you to try the Wild Geese.'\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Once and Future King\n\nIt was easy to fly, so easy. The skill of it came with the body, with every feather and every delicate bone. For the seeds had turned Resa into a bird. The transformation caused painful spasms which had terrified Lazaro the Strong Man, but she hadn't turned into a magpie like Mortola. 'A swift!' the Strong Man had whispered when she flew to his hand, dizzy to find everything suddenly so much larger.\n\n'Swifts are nice birds, very nice. It suits you.' He had very gently stroked her wings with his forefinger, and it seemed so strange that she couldn't smile at him with her beak. But she could speak in her human voice, which alarmed poor Tullio even more.\n\nHer feathers warmed her, and the guards on the banks of the lake didn't even look up as she flew over their heads. Obviously they hadn't yet found the soldiers the Strong Man had killed. The crests on their grey cloaks reminded Resa of the dungeons of the Castle of Night. Forget them, she thought, as she spread her wings on the wind. That's in the past. But perhaps you can still change what's yet to come. Or was life after all only a tangle of threads spun by fate, and there was no escaping it? Don't think, Resa, she told herself, fly!\n\nWhere was he? Where was Mo?\n\nThe Piper has locked him up in a cage. Tullio hadn't been able to say just where that cage stood. In a courtyard, he had stammered, a courtyard full of painted birds. Resa had heard about the painted walls of the castle. From the outside, however, its walls were almost black, built of the dark stone also found on the banks of the lake. She was glad she didn't have to cross the bridge, which was swarming with soldiers. It was raining, and the raindrops made endless circles on the water below her. But her body weighed very little, and flying was a wonderful sensation. She saw her reflection underneath her. It shot across the waves like an arrow, and at last the towers rose to meet her, the fortified walls, the slate-grey roofs, and among them courtyards \u2013 gaping dark holes in the pattern of the stone. She spotted trees with bare branches, dog-runs, a frozen garden, and soldiers everywhere. But cages...?\n\nWhen she finally found them at first she saw only Dustfinger, lying where he had been thrown on the grey paving stones like a bundle of old clothes. Oh, God. She would never have wanted to see him like that again. There was a child standing beside him, staring at the still body as if waiting for it to move \u2013 just as it had done once before, if the songs of the strolling players told the truth. And they do tell the truth, Resa wanted to call down. I've felt his warm hands. I've seen him smile again and kiss his wife. But when she saw him lying there it was as if he had never moved since he died in the mine.\n\nShe didn't see the cages until she dived below the slate roof tops. They were all empty. No trace of Mo. Empty cages and an empty body. She wanted to let herself drop like a stone, hit the paving and lie there as motionless as Dustfinger.\n\nThe child turned. He was the boy she had last seen standing on the battlements in Ombra. Violante's son. Even Meggie, who would usually take any child on her lap with such tenderness, spoke of him only with dislike. Jacopo. For a moment he stared up at Resa as if he could see the woman under the feathers, but then he bent over the dead man again, touched the rigid face \u2013 and straightened up when someone called his name. There was no mistaking that strained nasal voice.\n\nThe Piper.\n\nResa flew up to the ridge of a roof.\n\n'Come along, your grandfather wants to see you!' The Piper took the boy by the scruff of his neck and pushed him roughly towards the nearest flight of steps.\n\n'What for?' Jacopo's voice sounded like a ridiculous echo of his grandfather's, but it was also the voice of a little boy lost among all the grown-ups, fatherless \u2013 and motherless, judging by all Roxane had said about Violante's lack of love for him.\n\n'What do you think he wants you for? He's certainly not pining away for your peevish company.' The Piper thumped Jacopo on the back with his fist. 'He wants to know what your mother says when you're alone in her room with her.'\n\n'She doesn't talk to me.'\n\n'Oh, I don't like to hear that. What are we to do with you if you're no use as a spy? Maybe we ought to feed you to the Night-Mare! It's a long time since the creature had anything to eat, and if your grandfather gets his way it won't get to taste the Bluejay in a hurry either.'\n\nNight-Mare.\n\nSo Tullio had told the truth. As soon as the voices died away Resa fluttered down to Dustfinger. But the swift couldn't weep any more than she could smile. Fly after the Piper, Resa, she told herself as she perched on the stones, wet with rain. Look for Mo. There's no more you can do for the Fire-Dancer now, any more than you could before. She was only thankful that the Night-Mare hadn't feasted on him as it had on Snapper. His cheek was so cold when she pressed her feathered head against it.\n\n'How did you come by that pretty dress of feathers, Resa?'\n\nThe whisper came from nowhere \u2013 out of the rain, the moist air, the painted stone \u2013 but surely not from the cold lips. Yet it was Dustfinger's voice, husky and soft at the same time, ever familiar. Resa swiftly turned her bird's head \u2013 and heard his quiet laughter.\n\n'Didn't you look round like that for me before, back in the dungeons of the Castle of Night? I was invisible then too, as far as I remember, but it's far more entertaining to be without a body. Although you can't enjoy the entertainment too long. I'm afraid if I let my body lie here much longer it won't fit me any more, and then I suppose not even your husband's voice could bring me back. Apart from the fact that without the help of the flesh you soon forget who you are. I admit I'd almost forgotten already \u2013 until I saw you.'\n\nIt was like seeing a sleeper wake when the dead man moved. Dustfinger pushed back the damp hair from his face and looked down at himself, as if to make sure that his body did still fit him. It was just as Resa had dreamt it the night after his first death, when he did not wake again. Not until Mo brought him back to life.\n\nMo. She fluttered up on to Dustfinger's arm, but he put a warning finger to his lips as she opened her beak. He called Gwin with a soft whistle, then looked up at the steps which the Piper had climbed with Jacopo, to the windows on their left and on again to the oriel tower casting its shadow down on them. 'The fairies tell tales of a plant that turns human beings into animals and animals into humans,' he whispered. 'But they also say it's dangerous to use it. How long have you been wearing your feathered clothing?'\n\n'About two hours.'\n\n'Then it's time to take it off again. Luckily this castle has many forgotten chambers, and I explored them all before the Piper arrived.' He put out his hand, and Resa perched on his skin, now warm again. He was alive! Wasn't he?\n\n'I brought back a few very useful abilities from the realm of Death!' whispered Dustfinger as he carried her down a passage painted with fish and water-nymphs so true to life that Resa felt as if the lake had swallowed them up. 'I can take off this body like a garment, I can give fire a soul, and I can read your husband's heart better than the letters you took such trouble to teach me.'\n\nHe pushed a door open. No window let any light into the room beyond, but Dustfinger whispered, and the walls were covered with sparks as if they were growing a fiery coat.\n\nWhen Resa spat out the seeds she had been holding under her tongue, two were missing, and for a terrible moment she was afraid she would be a bird for ever, but her body still remembered itself. When she had human limbs again she instinctively stroked her belly and wondered whether the child inside it was changed by the seeds too. The idea frightened her so much that she was almost sick.\n\nDustfinger picked up a swift's feather lying at her feet and looked at it thoughtfully.\n\n'Roxane is well,' said Resa.\n\nHe smiled. 'I know.'\n\nHe seemed to know everything. So she told him nothing about either Snapper or Mortola, or how the Black Prince had nearly died. And Dustfinger did not ask why she had followed Mo.\n\n'What about the Night-Mare?' Even speaking the word frightened her.\n\n'I slipped through its black paws just in time.' He rubbed a hand over his face as if to wipe a shadow away. 'Luckily creatures of its kind aren't interested in dead men.'\n\n'Where did it come from?'\n\n'Orpheus brought it here with him. It follows him like a dog.'\n\n'Orpheus?' But that was impossible! Orpheus was in Ombra, drowning his sorrows in drink and wallowing in self-pity, as he had been doing ever since Dustfinger stole the book from him.\n\n'That's right, Orpheus. I don't know how he fixed it, but he serves the Adder now. And he's just had your husband thrown into one of the dungeons under the castle.'\n\nFootsteps could be heard above them, but they soon died away.\n\n'Take me to him!'\n\n'You can't go there. The cells are deep down and well guarded. I may be able to do it alone, but two of us would attract far too much attention. This castle will be teeming with soldiers once they discover that the Fire-Dancer is back from the dead again.'\n\nYou can't go there... wait here, Resa... it's too dangerous. She was tired of hearing this kind of thing. 'How is he?' she asked. 'You said you can read his heart.'\n\nShe saw the answer in Dustfinger's eyes.\n\n'A bird will attract less attention than you would,' she said, and put the seeds in her mouth before he could stop her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Black",
                "text": "\u2003You are the bird whose soft wings came\n\n\u2003When I cried out at night, waking from sleep.\n\n\u2003Cried only with my arms, because your name\n\n\u2003Is like a chasm, a thousand long nights deep.\n\n\u2014Rainer Maria Rilke, The Guardian Angel\n\nThe cell they threw Mo into was worse than the tower in the Castle of Night or the dungeon in Ombra. They had let him down on a chain, his hands bound, deeper and deeper down until the dark settled on his eyes like blindness. And the Piper had stood there above him, describing in his nasal whine how he was going to bring Meggie and Resa here and kill them before his eyes. As if the Piper's words made any difference. Meggie was lost already. Death would take her as well as him. But perhaps the Great Shape-Changer would at least spare Resa and their unborn child if Mo refused to bind the Adderhead another book. Ink, Mortimer, black ink surrounds you, he thought. It was difficult to breathe in this damp void. But it made him feel strangely calm to think it was no longer up to him to go on with this story, on and on all the time. He was so tired of it...\n\nHe dropped to his knees. The damp stone felt like the bottom of a well. As a child he had always been afraid of falling into a well and starving to death, helpless and alone. He shuddered, longing for Dustfinger's fire, for its light and warmth. But Dustfinger was dead. Extinguished by Orpheus's Night-Mare. Mo thought he could hear it breathing beside him, so distinctly that he looked for its red eyes in all that blackness. But there was nothing. Or was there?\n\nHe heard footsteps, and looked up.\n\n'Well, how do you like it down there?'\n\nOrpheus was standing on the edge of the shaft. The light of his torch didn't reach the bottom of it; the cell lay too deep for that, and Mo instinctively stepped back so that the darkness would hide him. Like a caged animal, he thought.\n\n'Oh, so you're not talking to me any more? Very understandable.' Orpheus smiled with self-satisfaction, and Mo's hand went to where his knife had been hidden, the knife so carefully concealed by Battista. Thumbling had found it all the same. Mo imagined thrusting it into Orpheus's flabby body. Again and again. The pictures that his helpless hatred conjured up were so full of blood that they sickened him.\n\n'I'm here to tell you how this story goes on. Just in case you still think you play a leading part in it.'\n\nMo closed his eyes and leant back against the damp wall. Let him talk, he told himself. Think of Resa, think of Meggie. Or perhaps he'd better not. How had Orpheus heard about the cave?\n\nAll is lost, a voice inside him whispered. Everything. The composure that he had felt since the appearance of the White Women was gone. Come back, he wanted to whisper. Please! Protect me! But they didn't come. Instead, words ate into his heart like pale maggots. Where did they come from? All is lost. Stop it, he told himself. But the words ate their way on, and he writhed as if in physical pain.\n\n'You're so quiet! Ah, do you feel it already?' Orpheus laughed, happy as a child. 'I knew it would work. I knew it when I read the first song. Oh yes, I have a book again, Mortimer. In fact I have three of them, full to the brim with Fenoglio's words, and two of them are all about the Bluejay. Violante brought them to this castle. Wasn't that kind of her? I had to make some changes, of course \u2013 move a few words here, a few more there. Fenoglio is very kind to the Bluejay, but I was able to put that right.'\n\nFenoglio's Bluejay songs. All neatly written down by Balbulus. Mo closed his eyes.\n\n'And, by the way, the water isn't my doing!' Orpheus called down to him. 'The Adderhead has had the sluices to the lake opened. You won't drown, it doesn't rise high enough for that, but it won't be pleasant.'\n\nAt the same moment Mo felt the water rising up his legs as if the darkness had turned liquid, so cold and black that he fought for breath.\n\n'No, the water isn't my idea,' Orpheus went on, sounding bored. 'I know you too well by now to think that fear of that kind would change your mind. Presumably you're hoping your obstinacy may yet mollify Death, now that you haven't kept your part of the bargain. Oh yes, I know about the deal you did with Death, I know everything... but however that may be, I'll drive the obstinacy out of you. I'll make you forget your high-minded virtues. I'll make you forget everything except the fear, because the White Women can't protect you from my words.'\n\nMo wanted to strike the man dead. With his bare hands. But they were bound, he reminded himself: 'At first I was going to write something about your wife and daughter, but then I said to myself: no, Orpheus, that way he won't feel the words himself!' How the moon-faced creature was enjoying every syllable he spoke. As if he had dreamt of this moment. There he is up above, thought Mo, and here I am down in a black cell, helpless as a rat that he could kill at any moment.\n\n'No,' Orpheus went on. 'No, I said to myself. Let him feel the power of your words for himself. Show him that from now on you can play with the Bluejay like a cat playing with a mouse. Except that your claws are made of letters!'\n\nAnd Mo felt the claws. It was as if the water were seeping through his skin and straight into his heart. So black. Then came the pain. As violent as if Mortola had shot him a second time, and so real that he pressed his hands to his chest, thinking he would feel his own blood between his fingers. Although the darkness blinded him, he saw it stain his shirt and his hands, and felt his strength fading away as it had before. He could hardly stand upright; he had to brace his back against the wall to keep from slipping into the water that was already up to his waist. Resa. Oh God. Resa, help me.\n\nDespair shook him like a child. Despair and helpless rage.\n\n'I wasn't sure at first what would work best.' Orpheus's voice cut through the pain like a blunt knife. 'Should I send a few unpleasant water-monsters to visit you? I have the book here that Fenoglio wrote for Jacopo. It has some rather nasty creatures in it. But I decided on another, far more interesting way! I decided to drive you mad with beings out of your own head, come to haunt you with old fears, old anger and old pain all dammed up in your heroic heart, locked away but not forgotten. Bring it all back to him, Orpheus! I told myself. With some added images that he's always been afraid of: a dead wife. A dead child. Send them all down to him in the darkness, let him drown in his own anger. Who feels like a hero when he's trembling with fright and knows it comes from nowhere but himself? How does the Bluejay feel when he dreams of bloody slaughter? How does it feel to doubt your own sanity? Yes, I told myself, if you want to break him, that's the way. Let him lose himself, let the Bluejay howl like a mad dog, let him trap himself in his own fear. Let loose the Furies who can kill him so cleverly from the inside.'\n\nMo felt what Orpheus was describing even as the other man spoke, and he realized that Orpheus had already read the words aloud some time ago, with a tongue as powerful as his own. Yes, it was a new Bluejay song. Telling how he lost his mind in a damp, black cell, how he nearly drowned himself in his despair, and how at last he begged for mercy and bound the Adderhead another White Book, his hands still shaking from hours in the dark.\n\nThe water had stopped rising, but Mo felt something brush past his legs. Breathe slowly, Mortimer, breathe very steadily. Shut out the words, don't let them in. You can do it. But how, when a gunshot had just entered his breast again, when his blood was mingling with the water and everything in him cried out for revenge? He felt feverish again, feverish and yet so cold. He bit his lip to keep Orpheus from hearing him groan, pressed his hand to his heart. Feel it; there isn't really any blood there. Meggie isn't dead, even if you see that image as clearly as Orpheus could write the scene. No, no, no! But the words whispered: yes! And he felt as if he were breaking into a thousand tiny shards.\n\n'Throw your torch down, guard! I want to see him.'\n\nThe torch fell. It dazzled Mo, and drifted on the dark water for a moment before going out.\n\n'Well, well, so you do feel them! You feel every single word, don't you?' Orpheus looked down at him like a child looks at a worm he has put on a hook, fascinated to see it writhe. Mo wanted to put his head under the water until he couldn't breathe any more. Stop it, Mortimer, he told himself, what is he doing to you? Defend yourself. But how? He felt like sinking into the water just to escape the words, but he knew that even there they would be waiting for him.\n\n'I'll be back in an hour's time!' Orpheus called down. 'Of course, I couldn't resist reading at least a few nasty creatures into the water for you, but don't worry, they won't kill you. Who knows, perhaps you'll even find them a welcome diversion from what your mind shows you? Bluejay... yes, you really ought to be careful when you choose what part to play. Get them to call me as soon as you realize that your high-minded approach is out of place here. Then I'll write you a few words to save you. Along the lines of: but morning came, and the Bluejay's madness left him...'\n\nOrpheus laughed, and went away. Leaving him alone with the water and the darkness and the words.\n\nBind the Book for the Adderhead. The sentence formed in Mo's mind as if written in perfect calligraphy. Bind him another White Book and all will be well.\n\nAgain pain shot through him so violently that he cried out. He saw Thumbling taking his fingers in a pair of pincers, saw the Milksop dragging Meggie out of a cave by her hair, saw the dogs snapping at Resa. He was shivering with fever, or was it from the cold? It's only in your mind, Mortimer! He struck his forehead against the stone. If only he could have seen something, anything but Orpheus's images. If only he could have felt something other than the words. Press your hands on the stone, go on, dip your face in the water, strike yourself with your fists, that's all that's real, nothing else. Oh yes?\n\nMo sobbed, and pressed his bound hands to his forehead. He heard a fluttering above him. Sparks sprang up in the blackness. The dark retreated as if someone were removing a blindfold from his eyes. Dustfinger? No, Dustfinger was dead. Even if his heart refused to believe it.\n\nThe Bluejay is dying, the voice inside him whispered, the Bluejay is losing his mind. And he heard fluttering again. Of course. Death was coming to visit him, and she wasn't sending the White Women to protect him again. This time she was coming herself to take him away, because he had failed. Death would take first him, then Meggie... but perhaps even that was better than the words Orpheus had written.\n\nIt was all black, so black, in spite of the sparks. He could still see them. Where did they come from? He heard the fluttering again, and suddenly he felt someone beside him. A hand was laid on his forehead, caressed his face. Such a familiar hand.\n\n'What is it? Mo!'\n\nResa. This was impossible. Was Orpheus conjuring up her face, only to drown her the next moment before his eyes? He had never known that Orpheus could write so well. And how warm her hands were!\n\n'What's the matter with him?'\n\nDustfinger's voice. Mo looked up and saw him, exactly where Orpheus had been standing. Madness. He was caught in a dream until Orpheus released him.\n\n'Mo!' Resa took his face between her hands. Only a dream. But what did that matter? It was so good to see her. He sobbed with relief, and she held him tight. 'You must get away from here!'\n\nShe couldn't be real.\n\n'Listen to me, Mo! You must get away.'\n\n'You can't be here.' How heavy his tongue was.\n\n'Yes, I can.'\n\n'Dustfinger is dead.' Resa... she looked so different with her hair pinned up.\n\nSomething swam between them. Spikes stuck up from the water, and Resa flinched in alarm. Mo drew her close and hit out at the swimming thing. Still as if in a dream. Dustfinger threw a rope down. It didn't come low enough, but at a whisper from above it began growing longer, lengthened by fibres made of flames.\n\nMo reached for it, and let it go again.\n\n'I can't leave this place.' The sparks made the water filling the cell seem as red as blood. 'I can't.'\n\n'What are you talking about?' Resa pressed the fiery rope into his damp hands.\n\n'Death. Meggie.' He had lost the words, too, in all the darkness. 'I have to find the Book, Resa.'\n\nShe put the rope back into his hands once more. They would have to climb fast to keep it from burning their skin. Mo began climbing, but it seemed as though the darkness clung to him like a black scarf. Dustfinger helped him up over the rim of the shaft. Two guards lay there, dead or unconscious.\n\nDustfinger looked at him, looked into his heart, saw everything in it.\n\n'Those are terrible pictures,' he said.\n\n'Black as ink.' Mo's voice was hoarse. 'A greeting from Orpheus.'\n\nThe words were still there. Pain. Despair. Hatred. Rage. His heart seemed to fill with them at every breath he took. As if the dark dungeon were inside him now.\n\nHe took a sword from one of the guards and drew Resa close. He felt her trembling under the men's clothes she wore. Perhaps she really was here. But how? And why wasn't the Fire-Dancer lying dead outside the cages any more? Suppose these are only pictures conjured up by Orpheus, he thought as he followed Dustfinger. Suppose he's showing them to me only to fling me even deeper into the darkness? Orpheus. Strike him dead, Mortimer, him and his words. His own hatred frightened him almost more than the darkness; it was so full of blood, so intemperate.\n\nDustfinger went ahead as fast as if he were leading them along paths he knew. Flights of steps, gateways, endless passages, with never any hesitation, as if the stones themselves told him the way. Wherever he went, sparks sprang from the walls, spreading out and painting the black with gold. They met soldiers three times. Mo killed them with as much relish as if he were killing Orpheus. Dustfinger had to make him go on, and Mo saw the fear on Resa's face. He reached for her hand, like a drowning man \u2013 and felt the darkness still inside him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ah, Fenoglio",
                "text": "\u2003And so the poet's testament ends here,\n\n\u2003And as he leaves this world upon his bier,\n\n\u2003Take you your leave of him, saying thank God\n\n\u2003We're rid of him, let's have the next man now,\n\n\u2003To make a fair round dozen beneath the sod\n\n\u2003Just as the good old custom used to vow.\n\n\u2003In life and death alike, let's not pretend\n\n\u2003Anyone mourns for such a vagrant's end.\n\n\u2014Adapted from Fran\u00e7ois Villon, A Ballade with which Villon Concludes his Testament\n\nIn the hand of a giant. His own giant! Not bad, eh? No reason to be sad about it. If only the Black Prince had looked rather livelier! If, if, if, Fenoglio, he told himself. If only you'd finished writing the words for Mortimer! If only you had some idea how this story is to go on now...\n\nThe huge fingers held him both firmly and carefully, as if they were used to carrying small humans around. Not necessarily a reassuring idea. Fenoglio really didn't want to become some giant child's toy. He had little doubt that it would be one of the nastiest ways of meeting one's end. But would anyone ask his opinion? No.\n\nWhich brings us back to the one crucial question, thought Fenoglio as his stomach, bumped about as it was, slowly but surely began to feel as if he'd eaten too many of Minerva's stuffed pigs' trotters. The one great crucial question.\n\nWas there another man writing this story?\n\nWas there a scribbler sitting somewhere in the hills that he himself had described so vividly, another writer who had sent him falling into this giant's hand? Or was the wretch sitting in the other world, the real world that hadn't been written, the way he used to sit there himself, putting Inkheart down on paper?\n\nOh, come on! What would that make you, Fenoglio? he asked himself, both annoyed and badly shaken, as he always was when that question occurred to him. No, he wasn't dangling from strings like the stupid puppet that Battista sometimes showed in marketplaces (although it did look a little like him). No, no, no. No strings for Fenoglio, no strings controlling either his words or his fate. He liked to keep his life in his own hands and didn't want any interference \u2013 although he admitted that he himself was very fond of pulling strings. But there it was: his story had simply swerved off course. No one was writing it. It was writing itself! And now it had come up with this stupid idea of the giant carrying him off!\n\nAlthough his stomach rebelled, Fenoglio cast another glance at the depths below him. It was definitely a long way down, but why should that bother him after he'd fallen from the tree like a ripe fruit? The sight of the Black Prince gave considerably more cause for concern. He really did look alarmingly lifeless lying in the giant's other hand. What a shame. All the trouble he'd gone to to keep the man alive \u2013 all the words, the herbs in the snow, Roxane's nursing, all for nothing! Damn it! Fenoglio swore so loudly that the giant raised him to his eyes to look at him. This was too much!\n\nWould it help to smile? Was it any use talking to him? Well, if you don't know the answer, Fenoglio, you old fool, he told himself, then who does?\n\nThe giant stopped. He was still staring at him. He had opened his fingers out slightly, and Fenoglio took the opportunity of stretching his old limbs.\n\nWords, words were wanted again \u2013 and of course, as always, they had to be exactly right. Perhaps it was a blessing to be mute and unable to rely on words at all!\n\n'Er...' What a wretched start, Fenoglio! 'Er. What's your name?' Oh, for heaven's sake!\n\nThe giant puffed air into his face and said something. The sounds that passed his lips were certainly words, but Fenoglio didn't understand them. How could that be possible?\n\nGood heavens, how the giant was looking at him! Fenoglio's eldest grandson had looked like that when he found a big black beetle in his kitchen. The boy was both fascinated and troubled by it. And then the beetle began wriggling, and Pippo had dropped it in alarm and trodden on it. So keep still, Fenoglio! No wriggling, not the least little wriggle, however much your old bones ache. Good God, those fingers. Each of them as long as one of his own arms!\n\nBut clearly the giant had lost interest in him for the moment. He was examining his other catch with obvious concern. Finally he shook the Black Prince as if he were a watch that had run down, and sighed when he still didn't move. With another deep sigh he sank to his knees \u2013 astonishingly gently, given his size \u2013 looked sadly at the black face, and then carefully laid the Prince on the thick moss under the trees. It was just what Fenoglio's grandchildren had done with the dead birds they took away from their cat. They'd had exactly the same look on their faces as they laid the small bodies to rest among his roses. Pippo used to make a cross out of twigs for every dead animal, but the giant didn't do that for the Black Prince. He didn't bury him either. He just covered him with dry leaves, very carefully, as if he didn't want to disturb his sleep. Then he rose to his feet again, looked at Fenoglio \u2013 perhaps to make sure that he, at least, was still breathing \u2013 and went on, every stride as long as a dozen human footsteps, perhaps more. Going where? Away from everything, Fenoglio, far away!\n\nHe felt those mighty fingers closing more tightly around him again, and then \u2013 he couldn't believe his ears! \u2013 the giant began humming the same tune that Roxane sang to the children in the evening. Did giants sing human songs? Whether they did or not, this one was obviously happy with himself and the world, even if the toy with the black face was broken. Perhaps he was thinking about giving the other strange creature that had fallen into his hand so suddenly to his son. Oh no! Fenoglio shuddered. Suppose the giant child pulled him apart the way children sometimes dismember insects?\n\nYou fool, he thought, you arrogant old fool! Loredan was right. Delusions of grandeur, that's your trouble! How could you think there are words to control a giant?\n\nAnother stride, and then another... goodbye for ever, Ombra. Presumably he'd never find out now what became of the children. And Mortimer.\n\nFenoglio closed his eyes. And suddenly he thought he heard his grandchildren's high, insistent voices: Grandfather, play dead for us. Of course! Nothing easier. How often he'd lain there on his sofa without moving, even when they prodded his stomach and his wrinkled cheeks with their little fingers. Play dead.\n\nFenoglio uttered a loud groan, made his limbs go limp and fixed his eyes.\n\nThere. The giant stopped and looked at him in dismay. Keep your breathing shallow, Fenoglio told himself. It would be better not to breathe at all, but then your stupid old head would probably burst.\n\nWhen the giant puffed into his face once again he almost sneezed. But Fenoglio's grandchildren had puffed in his face too, although with considerably smaller mouths, and breath that didn't smell quite so strong. Keep still, Fenoglio.\n\nStill.\n\nThe mighty face became a mask of disappointment. Another sigh rose from that broad chest. A cautious prod with his forefinger, a few incomprehensible words, and the giant knelt down. The downward plunge made Fenoglio feel dizzy, but he went on playing dead. The giant looked around for help, as if someone might come fluttering down from the trees to revive his toy. A few snowflakes fell from the grey sky \u2013 it was getting colder again \u2013 and settled on the giant's huge arms. They were as green as the moss all around, as grey as the bark of the trees, and then finally white, as the snow began to fall more thickly.\n\nThe giant sighed and murmured to himself. Obviously he really was severely disappointed. Then he put Fenoglio down on the ground as carefully as he had set down the Black Prince, gave him one last experimental prod with his finger \u2013 don't move, Fenoglio told himself! \u2013 and sprinkled a handful of dry oak leaves on his face. They had woodlice in them, and other creatures of the forest floor, most of which had a great many legs, and all of them immediately looked for new hiding places in Fenoglio's clothes. Keep playing dead, he thought; didn't Pippo once put a caterpillar on your face? And much to his disappointment, you still didn't move!\n\nAnd he did not move, not even when something very hairy crawled over his nose. He waited for the footsteps to go away and the ground beneath him to stop vibrating like a drum. Away went the helper he had called. Away he went, leaving Fenoglio alone again with all his other creations. Now what?\n\nAll was still. There was only the faintest vibration left in the distance, and Fenoglio pushed the dead leaves off his face and chest and sat up, groaning. His legs felt as if someone had been sitting on them, but they would still carry him. But which way should he go? Follow the giant's footsteps backwards, of course, he thought. After all, they ought to take you straight back to the tree with the nests. You'll be able to read the tracks easily enough for yourself.\n\nThere. There was the last footprint. How his ribs hurt! He wondered if one of them was broken. If so, he too would have a claim on Roxane's attentions at last. Not an unpleasant prospect. Although something else awaited him on his return: Signora Loredan's sharp tongue. She'd certainly have something to say about his experiment with the giant. And then there was the Milksop...\n\nInvoluntarily, Fenoglio quickened his pace in spite of his aching ribs. Suppose the Milksop had come back and brought them all down from the tree by now, Loredan and the children, Meggie and Minerva. Roxane and all the others? Oh, why hadn't he simply written that the Milksop and his men were struck down by the plague? That was the trouble with writing: there were such an infinite number of turns the story could take. How were you to know which one was right? Go on, admit it, Fenoglio, he thought, a giant just sounded more magnificent. Quite apart from the fact that the plague would hardly have stayed down at the foot of the tree.\n\nFor a moment he stood listening, afraid the monster might come back. Monster, Fenoglio? What did that giant do that was so monstrous? Did he bite off your head or tear a leg off? There you are, then.\n\nEven what happened to the Black Prince had been an accident. Where was the place where the Prince had been left? Everything looked the same under the trees, and the giant's strides were so long that you could lose your way between his footprints.\n\nFenoglio looked up at the sky. Snowflakes settled on his forehead. Darkness was falling too. That was all he needed! He immediately remembered every creature with which he had populated the night in this world. He wouldn't want to meet a single one of them. There! What was that? Footsteps! He stumbled back against the nearest tree.\n\n'Inkweaver!'\n\nA man was coming towards him. Battista? Fenoglio was so glad to see his pockmarked face! He felt there wasn't a more beautiful face in the whole world.\n\n'You're alive!' cried Battista as he came up. 'We thought the giant had eaten you!'\n\n'The Black Prince...' Fenoglio was truly surprised to feel such pain in his heart for the Prince.\n\nBattista led him away. 'I know. The bear found him.'\n\n'Is he...?'\n\nBattista smiled. 'No, he's as alive as you. Although I'm not sure whether all his bones are still unbroken. Seems like Death just doesn't fancy the taste of him! First poison, now a giant \u2013 or maybe the White Women simply don't like his face! But we'd better make sure we get back to the nests as soon as we can. I'm afraid the Milksop will come back. He's certainly as terrified of his brother-in-law as he was of the giant!'\n\nThe Black Prince was sitting among the roots of the tree where the giant had laid him to rest, his back against the trunk, while the bear tenderly licked his face. The leaves that the giant had so considerately placed over him still clung to his clothes and his hair. He was alive! To his own annoyance, Fenoglio felt a tear running down his nose. He could have thrown his arms around the Prince's neck.\n\n'Inkweaver! How did you get away?' His voice showed that he was in pain, and Battista gently pushed him back when he tried to sit up straighter.\n\n'Oh, you showed me how, Prince!' said Fenoglio hoarsely. 'The giant was obviously only interested in live toys.'\n\n'Just as well for us,' replied the Prince, closing his eyes. He deserves better, thought Fenoglio. Better than so much pain and all that fighting.\n\nSomething rustled in the undergrowth. Fenoglio spun round in alarm, but it was only two more robbers and Farid, with a stretcher made of branches. The boy nodded to him, but he clearly wasn't half as glad as the others to see him safe. How those black eyes were looking at him! The fact was, Farid knew too much about Fenoglio and the part he played in this world. Don't look at me so accusingly, he wanted to protest.\n\nWhat else were we to do? Meggie thought it was a good idea too \u2013 well, to be honest, she had expressed a few doubts.\n\n'I don't understand where that giant came from so suddenly!' said Battista. 'Even when I was a child the giants were little more than a fairy tale. I don't know any of the strolling players who ever set eyes on one, except for Dustfinger, and he would always venture further into the mountains than the rest of us.'\n\nWithout a word, Farid turned his back on Fenoglio and cut a few more twigs for the stretcher. Presumably the bear would happily have carried his master on his furry back, and Battista had some difficulty in persuading him to get out of the way when they lifted the Black Prince and put him on the stretcher. Only when his master spoke gently to him did the bear calm down, and he lumbered along beside the Prince looking dejected.\n\nWell, come on, Fenoglio, the old man told himself, what are you waiting for? Go after them, he muttered as he followed Battista, his legs aching. No one's going to carry you. And you'd better pray to whatever you believe in that the Milksop isn't back!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Light",
                "text": "\u2002All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness.\n\n\u2014Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow\n\nThe fire was everywhere. It ate its way along the walls and licked down from the ceiling, crept out of the stone, and gave as much light as if the sun itself had risen in the darkened castle to scorch his bloated flesh.\n\nThe Adderhead shouted at the Piper until he was hoarse. He struck him in his bony chest with his fists, longing to ram the man's silver nose into his face, deep into the sound flesh that he envied him so much.\n\nThe Fire-Dancer was back from the dead for the second time, and the Bluejay had escaped from one of the cells which, so his father-in-law had always claimed, no prisoner ever left alive. 'Flown away!' whispered his soldiers. 'The bird has flown, and now he's roaming the castle like a hungry wolf. He'll kill us all!'\n\nThe Adderhead had handed over the two guards of the cell to Thumbling for punishment, but the Bluejay had already killed six more, and the rumours grew louder with every dead man they found. His soldiers were running away, over the bridge or along the tunnel under the lake, anywhere to get away from the bewitched castle that now belonged to the Bluejay and the Fire-Dancer. Some of them had even jumped into the lake, never to climb out again. The rest were shaking in their shoes like a crowd of terrified children, while the painted walls burnt and the light scorched the Adder's brain and his skin.\n\n'Bring me Four-Eyes!' he shouted, and Thumbling dragged Orpheus into his room. Jacopo crept in at the door too, like a worm that had dug its way out of damp earth.\n\n'Put out the fire!' How his throat hurt! As if the sparks were in there too. 'Put it out at once and bring me back the Bluejay, or I'll cut your slimy tongue out! Is this why you persuaded me to throw him into that cell? So that he could fly away?'\n\nThe pale-blue eyes blurred behind the man's glasses \u2013 and the flattering tongue sounded as if it had been bathed in precious oil. But it was impossible to mistake the fear in it.\n\n'I told the Piper he ought to post more than two guards outside the cell,' said the sly little snake. So much cleverer than Silvernose, so much mock innocence, even the Adderhead couldn't quite see through it. 'Only a few more hours and the Jay would have been pleading with you to let him bind the book. Ask the guards. They heard him down there writhing like a worm on the hook, groaning and sighing\u2014'\n\n'The guards are dead. I handed them over to Thumbling and told him to make sure their screams could be heard all over the castle.'\n\nThumbling adjusted his black gloves. 'Four-Eyes is telling the truth. The guards kept bleating over and over that the Bluejay was in a very bad state down in that cell. They heard him screaming and groaning, and they checked a couple of times to make sure he was still alive. I'd like to know how you did it,' he said, his hawk-like gaze resting on Orpheus for a moment. 'But anyway, they said the Jay kept whispering one name again and again...'\n\nThe Adderhead put his hands over his burning eyes. 'What name? My daughter's name, by any chance?'\n\n'No, the name of some other woman,' replied Thumbling.\n\n'Resa. His wife, Your Highness.' Orpheus smiled. The Adderhead was not sure whether his smile expressed deference or self-satisfaction.\n\nThe Piper cast a vicious glance at Orpheus. 'My men will soon have caught his wife. And his daughter too!'\n\n'And what use is that to me now?' The Adderhead pressed his fists into his eyes, but he could still see the fire all the same. Pain was cutting him into slices, stinking slices, and now the man to whom he owed it all had fooled him for the second time. He needed the Book! A new Book to heal his flesh. It was hanging off his bones like mud \u2013 heavy, damp, stinking mud.\n\nBluejay.\n\n'Take two of those who tried to run away up on to the bridge where everyone can see them,' he said grimly. 'And you, fetch that dog of yours!' he snapped at Orpheus. 'It must be hungry.'\n\nThe men screamed like animals as the black shadow devoured them, and the Adderhead imagined that the cries echoing all the way to his room were the Bluejay's. The man owed him many screams.\n\nOrpheus listened with a smile, and the Night-Mare returned to him like a faithful dog after its meal. Panting, it merged with Orpheus's shadow, and its darkness made even the Adderhead shudder. Orpheus, however, adjusted his glasses with a satisfied expression. Their round lenses reflected the sparks burning on the walls. Four-Eyes.\n\n'I'll bring you back the Bluejay,' he said, and even against his will the Adderhead felt the confidence in that velvety voice soothing him once again. 'He hasn't escaped you, however it may seem. I have bound him in invisible chains. I forged them myself with my black art, and wherever he's hiding those chains will pull at him and bring back old pain. He knows I am the one sending him the pain, and he knows it will never end as long as I live. So he'll try to kill me. Set Thumbling to guard my room, and the Bluejay will stumble into his arms. He's not our problem any more. But the Fire-Dancer is.'\n\nThe hatred in his pale face surprised the Adderhead. Usually such hatred comes only after love.\n\n'So, he's back from the dead again!' Loathing clung to every word that Orpheus spoke, slowing his smooth tongue. 'He's acting as if he were lord of this castle, but take my advice and his fire will soon be extinguished!'\n\n'And what advice might that be?'\n\nOrpheus smiled.\n\n'Send Thumbling to your daughter. Have her thrown into one of the cells, and spread word that she helped the Bluejay to escape. That'll stop all the nonsense talked that makes your soldiers tremble with fear. As for her beautiful maidservant, lock her up in the cage where the Bluejay himself was held. And tell Thumbling he needn't treat the girl too gently.'\n\nThe fire was still reflected in Orpheus's glasses. They made his eyes almost invisible, and for a moment the Adderhead felt something he had never felt before \u2013 fear of another man. It was an interesting sensation. Like a tingling on the back of the neck, a slight pressure in the stomach...\n\n'Exactly what I planned to do,' he said \u2013 and read in Orpheus's face that he knew he was lying. I'll have to kill him, thought the Adderhead. As soon as the new Book is bound.\n\nNo man should be cleverer than his master. Particularly not when he controlled so dangerous a dog."
            },
            {
                "title": "Made Visible",
                "text": "\u2002But writing broke away from the gods and in that rupture much of its power was lost.\n\n\u2014Salman Rushdie, The Power of the Pen\n\n'You must go! You're not safe anywhere in this castle!' Dustfinger kept saying it, again and again, and Mo kept shaking his head.\n\n'I have to find the White Book.'\n\n'Let me look for it. I'll write the three words. Even I can write well enough for that!'\n\n'No, that wasn't the bargain. Suppose Death comes for Meggie all the same? I bound the Book, I must rid the world of it. And the Adder wants to see you dead as much as me.'\n\n'I'll simply slip out of my skin again.'\n\n'You only just found your way back into it last time.'\n\nHow familiar the two of them sounded with each other. Like two sides of a coin, like two faces of the same man.\n\n'What bargain are you talking about?'\n\nThey looked at Resa as if they both wished her far, far away. Mo was pale, but his eyes were dark with anger, and his hand kept going to his old wound. What had they done to him down in that terrible cell?\n\nDust lay like snow in the room where they were hiding. The plaster on the ceiling was so damp that it had crumbled away in places. The Castle in the Lake was sick. Perhaps it was already dying, but on its walls lambs still slept beside wolves, dreaming of a world that never was. The room had two narrow windows. A dead tree stood in the courtyard below.\n\nWalls, parapets, oriel towers, bridges... a stony trap, and Resa wanted her wings back. How her skin was itching. As if the feathered quills were just waiting to pierce through again.\n\n'Mo, what kind of bargain?' She came between the two men.\n\nWhen he told her she began crying. Now at last she understood. He was promised to Death whether he stayed or fled. Caught in a trap made of stone and ink. And so was their daughter.\n\nHe took her in his arms, but he wasn't really with her. He was still down in the cell, drowning in hate and fear. His heart was beating so violently that she was afraid it might break in his breast.\n\n'I'll kill him,' she heard him say as she wept into his shoulder. 'I ought to have done it long ago. And after that I'll look for the Book.'\n\nShe knew only too well who he meant. Orpheus. He pushed her gently away from him and picked up his sword. It was covered with blood, but he wiped the blade clean on his sleeve. He still wore the black clothes of a bookbinder, although it was a long time since that had been his trade. He made for the door with determination, but Dustfinger barred his way.\n\n'What's your idea?!' he said. 'Very well, so Orpheus read the words, but you are making them come true!' He raised his hands, and fire wrote the words in the air, terrible words, all speaking of only one thing. The Bluejay's Last Song.\n\nMo stretched out his hand as if to extinguish them, but they scorched his fingers and burnt his heart.\n\n'Orpheus is just waiting for you to come to him!' said Dustfinger. 'He's going to serve you up to the Adderhead on a platter made of ink. Resist it! It's not a pleasant feeling to read the words that guide your actions. No one knows that better than I do, but they didn't come true for me either. They have only as much power as you give them. You won't go to Orpheus, I will. I don't know much about killing. Even dying didn't teach me that, but I can steal the books from which he takes the words. And once you can think straight again, we'll look for the White Book together.'\n\n'Suppose the Adder's soldiers find Mo here first?' Resa was still staring at the burning words. She read them again and again.\n\nDustfinger passed his hand over the picture fading on the walls of the room, and the painted wolf began to move. 'I'll leave you a watchdog, though not quite such a fierce one as Orpheus's, but it will howl when the soldiers come, and I hope it can hold them off long enough to give you time to find another hiding place. Fire will teach the Adder's men to fear every shadow.'\n\nThe wolf with its burning coat leapt off the wall and followed Dustfinger out. However, the words that had been written in the air were still there, and Resa read them again: But when the Bluejay would not bow to the Adderhead only one man knew what to do, a stranger who had come from far away to be the Adder's adviser. He understood that the Bluejay could be broken by only one man, and that was himself. So he summoned up all that the Bluejay didn't dare to acknowledge: the fear that made him fearless, the anger that made him invincible. He had him thrown into darkness to fight himself there \u2013 to fight the pain still inside him, never forgotten, never healed, all the fear that fetters and chains had given him, the anger that had sown the seeds of fear. He painted dreadful pictures in his heart, pictures of...\n\nResa read no more. The words were too terrible. But the fire had burnt the last sentences into her memory.\n\n...and the Bluejay, broken by his own darkness, pleaded with the Adderhead to be allowed to bind him a second Book, even more beautiful than the first. But as soon as the Silver Prince had the Book in his hands he condemned him to die the slowest of all deaths, and the minstrels sang the Last Song of the Bluejay.\n\nMo had turned his back on the words. He stood there with the dust of countless years around him like grey snow, looking at his hands as if he wasn't sure whether they still did as he told them or obeyed the words burning behind him.\n\n'Mo?' Resa kissed him. She knew that he wouldn't like what she was about to do.\n\nHe looked at her absently, his eyes full of darkness.\n\n'I will look for the White Book. I'll find it and write the three words in it for you.' So that the Adderhead dies before Orpheus's words come true, she added in her mind, and before the name Fenoglio gave you kills you.\n\nBy the time Mo understood what she had said, she was already lifting the seeds to her mouth. He tried to knock them out of her hand, but she already had them under her tongue.\n\n'No, Resa!'\n\nShe flew through the fiery letters. Their heat singed her breast.\n\n'Resa!'\n\nNo, this time he was the one who must wait. Stay where you are, she thought. Please, Mo."
            },
            {
                "title": "Love Disguised as Hate",
                "text": "\u2002Where did this love come from? I don't know; it came to me like a thief in the night [...]. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard-seed in the shadow of them, and I wished I'd committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still... But the mustard-seed had taken root and was growing, and the little green shoot was splitting my heart wide open [...].\n\n\u2014Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass\n\nThe Adderhead wanted fairy blood, a whole tub full, to bathe his itching skin. Orpheus was writing fairies' nests into the bare branches of the cherry trees growing under his window when he heard soft footsteps behind him. He dropped his pen so abruptly that it spattered Ironstone's grey feet with ink. The Bluejay!\n\nOrpheus thought he could already feel the sword between his shoulder blades: after all, he himself had stoked the Bluejay's blood-lust, drowning him in anger and helpless rage. How had he managed to get past the guards? There were three outside his door, and Thumbling was waiting in the next room.\n\nHowever, when Orpheus turned he found not Mortimer but Dustfinger standing behind him.\n\nWhat was he doing here? Why wasn't he outside the cage where his sobbing daughter sat, letting the Night-Mare eat him?\n\nDustfinger.\n\nLess than a year ago the mere thought of seeing him would have made Orpheus drunk with happiness \u2013 in the bleak room where he was living at the time, surrounded by books that spoke of the longing in his heart but never satisfied it. Longing for a world that bowed to his will, longing to escape his grey failure of a life at last, to become the Orpheus that slumbered inside him, the man whom those who mocked him never saw. Perhaps longing was the wrong word. It sounded too tame, too gentle and resigned. It was a raging desire that drove him, desire for everything he didn't have.\n\nOh yes, the sight of Dustfinger would have made him very happy back then. But now his heart beat faster for other reasons. The hate he felt still tasted like love, but that didn't tame it. And suddenly Orpheus saw the opportunity for such perfect revenge that he spontaneously smiled.\n\n'Well, if it isn't my old childhood friend. My faithless friend.' Orpheus pushed Violante's Bluejay book under the parchment on which he was writing.\n\nIronstone ducked behind the inkwell in fear. Fear. Not necessarily a bad feeling. Sometimes it could be very stimulating.\n\n'I suppose you're here to steal a few more books from me?' he went on. 'That won't do the Bluejay any good. The words have been read, and they'll pursue him. That's the price you pay for making a story your own. But how about you? Have you seen your daughter recently?'\n\nDustfinger's expression gave nothing away. He really didn't know yet! Ah, love. What a perfect tool of revenge. Even the fearless heart that Dustfinger had brought back from the dead was powerless against it.\n\n'You really should go to her. She's sobbing in the most heart-rending way, tearing her beautiful hair.'\n\nThe look in his eyes! Got you, thought Orpheus. Got you both on the hook now, you and the Bluejay.\n\n'My black dog is guarding your daughter,' he went on, and every word tasted as good as spiced wine. 'I expect she's terribly afraid. But I've ordered my dog not to feast on her sweet flesh and soul... just yet.'\n\nThere \u2013 so fear could sting Dustfinger after all. His unscarred face turned pale. He stared at Orpheus's shadow, but the Night-Mare did not emerge from it. The Night-Mare was outside the cage where Brianna sat weeping and calling for her father.\n\n'I'll kill you if it so much as touches her. I don't know much about killing, but for you I'd learn!' Dustfinger's face seemed so much more vulnerable without the scars. His clothes and hair were covered with fiery sparks.\n\nOrpheus had to admit it \u2013 the Fire-Dancer was still his favourite character. Whatever Dustfinger did to him, however often he betrayed him, it didn't change that. His heart loved him like a dog. All the more reason to remove him from this story once and for all \u2013 although it was still a shame. Orpheus could hardly believe he had come here only to protect the Bluejay. Such high-minded nobility didn't suit him at all. No, it was time the Fire-Dancer returned to playing a part that was more like himself.\n\n'You can ransom your daughter!' Orpheus let every word melt on his tongue.\n\nOh, sweet revenge. The marten on Dustfinger's shoulder bared its teeth. Nasty brute.\n\nDustfinger stroked its brown coat. 'How?'\n\nOrpheus rose to his feet. 'Well... first by putting out the lights you've so skilfully brought to this castle. At once.'\n\nThe sparks on the walls flared up as if reaching out to burn him, but then they died down. Only those on Dustfinger's hair and clothes still shone. Yes. What a terrible weapon love could be. Was any knife sharper? Time to thrust it even deeper into his faithless heart.\n\n'Your daughter is crying her eyes out in the same cage that held the Bluejay,' Orpheus went on. 'Of course she looks much more beautiful in there, with that fiery hair. Like a precious bird...'\n\nThe sparks swirled around Dustfinger like a red mist.\n\n'Bring us the bird who really belongs in that cage. Bring us the Bluejay and your lovely daughter is free. But if you don't bring him, I'll feed my black dog on her flesh and her soul. Don't look at me like that! As far as I'm aware you've played the part of traitor once already. I wanted to write you a better part, but you wouldn't hear of it!'\n\nDustfinger said nothing, just looked at him.\n\n'You stole the book from me!' Orpheus's voice almost failed him, the words still tasted so bitter. 'You ranged yourself on the bookbinder's side, although he snatched you out of your own story, instead of backing me, the man who brought you home! That was cruel, very cruel.' Tears rose to his eyes. 'What did you think \u2013 that I'd just accept such treachery? No, my plan was to send you back to the dead without a soul, hollow as an insect sucked dry, but I like this revenge even better. I'll make you a traitor again. How that will pierce the bookbinder's noble heart!'\n\nThe flames were leaping from the walls again. They licked up from the floor scorching Orpheus's boots. Ironstone moaned with fear and buried his head in his glass arms. Dustfinger's anger showed in the flames, burning on his face, raining down from the ceiling in sparks.\n\n'Keep your fire away from me!' Orpheus cried. 'I'm the only one who can command the Night-Mare, and your daughter will be the first it eats when it next feels hungry. Which will be soon. I want a trail of fire laid to wherever the Bluejay is hiding, and I'll be the man who shows it to the Adderhead, understand?'\n\nThe flames on the walls went out for the second time. Even the candles on the desk burnt out, and all was dark in Orpheus's room. Only Dustfinger himself was still enveloped in sparks, as if the fire were in him.\n\nWhy did the look in his eyes make Orpheus feel such shame? Why did his heart still feel love? He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again Dustfinger was gone.\n\nAs Orpheus stepped out of the door the guards who were supposed to be keeping watch outside his room came stumbling along the corridor, their faces twisted with fear. 'The Bluejay was here!' they stammered. 'He was all made of fire, and then he suddenly dissolved into smoke. Thumbling has gone to tell the Adderhead.'\n\nIdiots. He'd feed them all to the Night-Mare.\n\nDon't lose your temper, he told himself. You'll soon bring the Adderhead the real Bluejay. And your Night-Mare will eat the Fire-Dancer too.\n\n'Tell the Silver Prince to send some men to the courtyard under my window,' he snarled at the guards. 'They'll find enough fairies' nests there to fill a tub with their blood for him.'\n\nThen he went back to his room and read the nests into the trees. But he saw Dustfinger's face through the letters, as if he were living behind them. As if all the words spoke only of him."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Other Name",
                "text": "\u2002I write your name. Two syllables. Two vowels. Your name inflates you, is bigger than you. You repose in a corner, sleeping; your name awakes you. I write it. You could not be named otherwise. Your name is your juice, your taste, your savor. Called by another name, you vanish. I write it. Your name.\n\n\u2014Susan Sontag, The Letter Scene\n\nThe Castle in the Lake had been built to protect a few unhappy children from the world, but the longer Mo walked in its corridors the more he felt as if it had been waiting for another task to fulfil one day: to drown the Bluejay in his own darkness between its painted walls. Dustfinger's fiery wolf ran ahead as if it knew the way, and while Mo followed he killed four more soldiers. The castle belonged to the Fire-Dancer and the Bluejay, he read it in their faces, and the anger that Orpheus aroused in him made him strike so often that their blood drenched his black clothes. Black. Orpheus's words had turned his heart black too.\n\nYou ought to have asked them which way to go instead of killing them, he thought bitterly as he bent to pass through an arched gateway. A flock of doves fluttered up. No swifts. Not one. Where was Resa? Well, where did he suppose? In the Adderhead's bedchamber, searching for the Book he had once bound to save her. A swift could fly fast, very fast, and his own steps were heavy as lead from the words Orpheus had written.\n\nThere. Was that the tower into which the Adderhead had retreated? It was as Dustfinger had described it. Two more soldiers... they staggered back in horror when they saw him. Kill them quickly, Mo, before they scream. Blood. Blood as red as fire. Hadn't red once been his favourite colour? Now the sight of it made him feel ill. He clambered over the dead men, took the silver-grey cloak from one of them, put on the other man's helmet. Maybe the disguise would spare him the killing if he met any more of them.\n\nThe next corridor looked familiar, but there were no guards in sight. The wolf loped on, but Mo stopped outside a door and pushed it open.\n\nThe dead books. The Lost Library.\n\nHe lowered his sword and went in. Dustfinger's sparks glowed in here too, burning the smell of mould and decay out of the air.\n\nBooks. He leant the bloodstained sword against the wall, stroked their stained spines, and felt the burden of the words lifting from his shoulders. He was not the Bluejay, not Silvertongue, just Mortimer. Orpheus had written nothing about the bookbinder.\n\nMo picked up a book. Poor thing, it was a wreck. He took up another and then another \u2013 and heard a rustling sound. His hand immediately went to his sword, and Orpheus's words reached for his heart again.\n\nA few piles of books fell over. An arm pushed its way past all the printed corpses, followed by a second arm, without a hand. Balbulus.\n\n'Ah, it's you they're looking for!' He straightened up, ink on the fingers of his left hand. 'Since I hid in here from the Piper, not a soldier's come through this door until today. I expect the mouldy smell keeps them away. But today there've been two here already. They've certainly kept a better watch on you than on me! So, how did you escape them?'\n\n'With the help of fire and feathers,' said Mo, leaning his sword against the wall again. He didn't want to remember. He wanted to forget the Bluejay, just for a few moments, and find happiness instead of misery among parchment and leather-bound covers.\n\nBalbulus followed his glance. No doubt he saw the longing in it. 'I've found a few books that are still good for something. Do you want to see them?'\n\nMo listened for sounds outside. The wolf was silent, but he thought he heard voices. No. They died away again.\n\nJust for a few moments, then.\n\nBalbulus gave him a book not much bigger than his hand. It had a few holes nibbled in it, but it had obviously escaped mildew. The binding was very well made. His fingers had missed leafing through written pages so much. His eyes were so hungry for words that carried him away, instead of capturing and controlling him. How very much his hand wanted to hold a knife that cut not flesh but paper.\n\n'What's that?' whispered Balbulus.\n\nIt had turned dark. The fire on the walls had gone out, and Mo couldn't see the book in his hands any more.\n\n'Silvertongue?'\n\nHe turned.\n\nDustfinger stood in the doorway, a shadow rimmed with fire.\n\n'I've been talking to Orpheus.' His voice sounded different. The composure that Death had left in him was gone. His old desperation, almost forgotten by both of them, was back.\n\n'What's happened?'\n\nDustfinger lured fire back out of the darkness and made it build a cage among the books, a cage with a girl in tears inside it.\n\nBrianna. Mo saw on Dustfinger's face the same fear he had so often felt himself. Flesh of his flesh. Child. Such a powerful word. The most powerful of all.\n\nDustfinger had only to look at him, and Mo read it all in his eyes: the Night-Mare watching his daughter, the price he would have to pay to ransom her.\n\n'So?' Mo listened for sounds outside. 'Are the soldiers already out there?'\n\n'I haven't laid the trail yet.'\n\nMo sensed Dustfinger's fear sharply, as if Meggie were the girl in the cage, as if it were her weeping that came out of the fire.\n\n'What are you waiting for? Lead them here!' he said. 'It's time my hands bound a book again \u2013 even if the job must never be finished. Let them capture the bookbinder, not the Bluejay. They won't notice the difference. And I'll banish the Bluejay forever, bury him deep in the dungeon cell below, with the words that Orpheus wrote.'\n\nDustfinger breathed into the darkness, and instead of the cage the fire formed the sign that Mo had imprinted on the spines of so many books: a unicorn's head. 'If that's what you want,' he said quietly. 'But if you're playing the bookbinder again, then what part is mine?'\n\n'Your daughter's rescuer,' said Mo. 'My wife's protector. Resa has gone to look for the White Book. Help her to find it, and bring it to me.'\n\nSo that I can write the end in it, he thought. Three words, that's all it takes. And suddenly a thought occurred to him and made him smile in all the darkness. Orpheus had not written anything at all about Resa, not a single binding word. Who else had he forgotten?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Back",
                "text": "\u2003Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments\n\n\u2003Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,\n\n\u2003That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,\n\n\u2003Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,\n\n\u2003The clouds methought would open and show riches\n\n\u2003Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd\n\n\u2003I cried to dream again.\n\n\u2014William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 3 Scene 2\n\nRoxane was singing again. For the children who couldn't sleep for fear of the Milksop. And everything Meggie had ever heard about her voice was true. Even the tree seemed to be listening to her, the birds in its topmost branches, the animals living among its roots, the stars in the dark sky. There was so much comfort in Roxane's voice, although what she sang was often sad, and Meggie heard her longing for Dustfinger in every word. It was a comfort to hear about longing, even if it filled her heart to the brim. Longing for sleep free of fear, and carefree days, for firm ground underfoot, a full stomach, the streets of Ombra, mothers... and fathers.\n\nMeggie was sitting high up in the tree, outside the nest where Fenoglio had sat writing. She didn't know who to worry about first: Fenoglio and the Black Prince; Farid, who had followed the giant with Battista; or Doria, who had climbed down again to find out if the Milksop had really left. She tried not even to think of her parents, but suddenly Roxane began the song about the Bluejay that Meggie loved most, because it described his captivity in the Castle of Night with his daughter. Some of the songs were more heroic, but only this one also spoke of her father, and it was her father she missed. 'Mo?' she would so much have liked to ask, putting her head on his shoulder. 'Do you think the giant is taking Fenoglio to his children as a toy? Do you think he'll tread on Farid and Battista and crush them if they try to rescue the Prince? Do you think anyone can love two boys with just one heart? Have you seen Resa? And how are you, Mo, how are you?'\n\n'Has the Bluejay killed the Adderhead yet?' one of the children had asked Elinor only yesterday. 'Will he come back soon to save us from the Milksop?'\n\n'Of course he will!' Elinor had replied, glancing at Meggie. Of course...\n\n'The boy's not back yet,' she heard Elfbane say to Woodenfoot down below her. 'Shall I go and look for him?'\n\n'Why do that?' replied Woodenfoot, lowering his voice. 'He'll come back if he can. And if he doesn't, then they've caught him. I'm sure the soldiers are down there somewhere. I just hope Battista will be careful when he comes back himself.'\n\n'How can he be careful?' asked Elfbane, with a grim laugh. 'The giant behind him, the Milksop in front of him, and the Prince probably dead. We'll soon be striking up our own last song, and it won't sound half as good as the songs Roxane sings.'\n\nMeggie buried her face in her arms. Don't think about it, Meggie, she told herself, just don't think about it. Listen to Roxane. Dream that everything will be all right. That they'll all come back safe and sound: Mo, Resa, Fenoglio, the Black Prince, Farid \u2013 and Doria. What does the Milksop do to prisoners? No, don't think about it, don't ask such questions.\n\nVoices drifted up from down below. Leaning forward, she tried to make something out in the darkness. Was that Battista's voice? She saw fire, just a small flame, but it gave a bright light. There was Fenoglio! And the Black Prince on a stretcher beside him.\n\n'Farid?' she called down.\n\n'Hush!' hissed Elfbane, and Meggie pressed her hand to her mouth. The robbers were letting down ropes, and a net to take the Prince.\n\n'Quick, Battista!' Roxane's voice sounded so different when she wasn't singing. 'They're coming!'\n\nShe didn't need to say any more. Horses snorted among the trees, twigs broke under the tread of many boots. The robbers threw down more ropes, and some let themselves down the trunk. Arrows came out of the darkness. Men swarmed out from the surrounding trees like silver beetles. 'Wait and see \u2013 they'll bide their time until Battista comes back. With the Prince!' Hadn't Doria said so? That was why he had gone down himself. And he hadn't come back.\n\nFarid made the fire flare up. He and Battista placed themselves in front of the Black Prince to protect him. The bear was with them too.\n\n'What is it? What's going on?' Elinor was kneeling beside Meggie, her hair in wild confusion as if bristling with fear. 'I'd actually dropped off to sleep, would you believe it?'\n\nMeggie did not reply. What could she do? Oh, what could she do? She made her way over to the forked branch where Roxane and the other women were kneeling. Only two of the robbers were with them. All the others were letting themselves down the trunk to help the Prince, but it was a long way to the ground, a terribly long way, and a rain of arrows came from below. Two men fell, screaming, and the women covered the children's eyes and ears.\n\n'Where is he?' Elinor leant so far forward that Roxane pulled her back by force. 'Where is he?' she cried again. 'Someone tell me, is that old fool still alive?'\n\nFenoglio looked up at them as if he had heard her voice, his lined face full of fear, the fighting all around him. One man fell dead at his feet, and Fenoglio picked up his sword.\n\n'Look at that, will you?' cried Elinor. 'What's he doing? Does he think he can play the hero in his own damn story?'\n\nI must go down, thought Meggie. I must help Farid and look for Doria! Where was he? Lying dead somewhere among the trees? No, he can't be. Fenoglio wrote about him! Wonderful things. He can't be dead. All the same...\n\nShe ran to the ropes, but Elfbane stopped her. 'Climb up the tree!' he said urgently. 'All the women and children must get as far up the tree as they can!'\n\n'Oh yes, and what are we going to do when we reach the top?' snapped Elinor. 'Wait for them to pick us off?'\n\nThere was no answer to that question.\n\n'They have the Prince!' Minerva's voice sounded so desperate that everyone looked round. Some of the women began sobbing. Sure enough, they had the Black Prince. They were dragging him off the stretcher where he lay. The bear lay motionless beside him with an arrow in his coat. Battista had been captured too. Where was Farid?\n\nWhere the fire was.\n\nFarid made it bite and burn, but Sootbird was there too, his leathery face pale above his red and black costume. Fire ate fire, the flames licked up the trunk. Meggie thought she could hear the tree groaning. Several smaller trees had already caught fire. The children were crying hard enough to melt anyone's heart.\n\nOh, Fenoglio, thought Meggie, we don't have much luck with the people we call to our aid. First Cosimo, now the giant.\n\nThe giant.\n\nHis face appeared among the trees as suddenly as if the mere word had summoned him. His skin had turned dark as the night, and he wore the reflection of the stars on his brow. One foot trod out the fire that was eating at the roots of their tree. The other foot missed Farid and Sootbird so narrowly that Meggie's own scream echoed in her ears.\n\n'Yes! Yes, he's back!' she heard Fenoglio shout. He staggered towards the mighty feet and climbed on to one of its toes as if it were a lifeboat.\n\nBut the giant looked up at the crying children enquiringly, as if he had come for something that he couldn't find.\n\nThe Milksop's men abandoned their prisoners and ran for their lives again, with their lord in front on his snow-white horse. Only Sootbird stood his ground with a small troop, sending his fire to lick at the giant. The giant stared at the flames, bewildered, and stumbled back when they caught his toes.\n\n'No, please!' Meggie called down. 'Please don't go away again. Help us!'\n\nAnd suddenly Farid was standing on the giant's shoulder, making flakes of fire rain down from the night. They settled on the clothes of Sootbird and his men like burning burrs, until they flung themselves down on the forest floor and rolled over and over on the dry leaves. As for the giant, he looked at Farid in astonishment, plucked him off his shoulder as easily as a moth, and placed him on his raised palm. How large his fingers were. Terribly large. And how small Farid looked standing there beside them.\n\nSootbird and his men were still beating at their burning clothes. The giant stared down at them, irritated. He rubbed his ear as if their screams hurt him, closed his hand around Farid as if he were a precious find, and with the other hand flicked the screaming men away into the forest like a child brushing a spider off its clothes. Then he put his hand to his ear again and looked up at the tree, still searching for something \u2013 as if he had suddenly remembered what he had come for.\n\n'Roxane!'\n\nIt was Darius's voice that Meggie heard echoing through the tree, hesitant and firm at the same time. 'Roxane! I think he came back because of you. Sing!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "In the Adderhead's Bedchamber",
                "text": "\u2002And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumors, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane!\n\n\u2014Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children\n\nResa flew after one of the servants who were carrying buckets of blood and water to the Adderhead's bedchamber. He sat there in a silver tub, red up to his neck, gasping and cursing, such a terrible sight that Resa feared for Mo more than ever. What revenge would make up for such suffering?\n\nThumbling looked around when she flew to the wardrobe by the door, but she ducked in good time. It could be useful to be small. Dustfinger's sparks were burning on the walls. Three soldiers were flicking at them with damp cloths, while the Adderhead put his bloodstained hand over his smarting eyes. His grandson stood beside the tub, arms folded, as if that would protect him from his grandfather's bad temper. What a small, thin child he was, as handsome as his father and delicately built like his mother. But unlike Violante, Jacopo didn't resemble his grandfather at all, although he imitated the Adderhead's every gesture.\n\n'She didn't.' He thrust out his chin. He had copied that from his mother, although presumably he didn't know it.\n\n'Oh no? Then who else helped the Bluejay if not your mother?'\n\nA servant poured the contents of his bucket over the Adderhead's back. Resa felt sick when she saw the blood running over the pale nape of his neck. Jacopo too looked at his grandfather with both fear and disgust \u2013 and quickly glanced away when the Adderhead caught him at it.\n\n'Yes, you just look at me!' he snarled at his grandson. 'Your mother helped the man who did this to me.'\n\n'She didn't. The Bluejay has flown away! Everyone says he can fly, and they say he's invulnerable too.'\n\nThe Adderhead laughed. His breath whistled. 'Invulnerable? I'll show you just how invulnerable he is once I've caught him again. I'll give you a knife and you can find out for yourself.'\n\n'But you won't catch him.'\n\nThe Adderhead smacked his hand down in the bath of blood, splashing Jacopo's pale tunic with red. 'Watch out. You're getting more and more like your mother.'\n\nJacopo seemed to be wondering whether this was a good thing or not.\n\nWhere was the White Book? Resa looked around her. Chests, clothes thrown over a chair, the bed untidy. The Adderhead slept poorly. Where did he hide it? His life depended on the Book, his immortal life. Resa looked for a casket, perhaps a precious cloth in which it was wrapped, even though it stank and was rotting... but suddenly the room went completely dark, so dark that only sounds remained: the splashing of the bloody water, the soldiers breathing hard, Jacopo's cry of alarm.\n\n'What's that?'\n\nDustfinger's sparks had suddenly died down. Resa felt the bird's heart in her breast beating even faster than usual. What had happened? Something must have happened, and it couldn't be anything good.\n\nOne of the soldiers lit a torch, putting his hand around the flame to keep it from dazzling his master.\n\n'At last!' The Adderhead's voice sounded both relieved and surprised. He waved to the servants, and they went on pouring the contents of their buckets over his itching skin. Where had they caught all the fairies? Fairies slept at this time of year.\n\nThe door opened as if the story itself were answering her, and Orpheus came in. 'Well?' he asked with a deep bow. 'Were there enough fairies, Your Highness? Or shall I get you some more?'\n\n'This will do for the time being.' The Adderhead filled his hands with the red water and dipped his face into it. 'Do you have anything to do with the fire going out?'\n\n'Do I have anything to do with it?' Orpheus smiled with such self-satisfaction that Resa longed to fly down and peck his pale face to pieces with her beak. 'I do indeed,' he went on. 'I've persuaded the Fire-Dancer to change sides.'\n\nNo. It couldn't be true. He was lying.\n\nThe bird in her pecked at a fly, and Jacopo looked up. Keep your head down, Resa, she told herself, even though it's dark. She wished the feathers on her breast and throat weren't so white.\n\n'Good. But I hope you didn't promise him any reward for it!' The Adderhead plunged deep into the bloody water. 'He's made me a laughing-stock to my men. I want to see him dead, and dead beyond recall this time. But that can wait. What about the Bluejay?'\n\n'The Fire-Dancer will lead us to him. For no reward at all.' The words were terrible enough, but the beauty of Orpheus's voice made them even worse. 'He'll lay a trail of flames, and your soldiers will only have to follow it.'\n\nNo. No. Resa began trembling. Dustfinger surely hadn't betrayed Mo again. No.\n\nA suppressed cry came from her bird-breast, and Jacopo looked up at her again. But even if he did see her, there was nothing there but a trembling swift lost in the dark human world.\n\n'Is everything ready for the Bluejay to set to work at once?' asked Orpheus. 'The sooner he's finished, the sooner you can kill him.'\n\nOh, Meggie, what kind of being did you read here? Resa thought desperately. With his shining glasses and flatteringly beautiful voice, Orpheus seemed to her like a demon.\n\nThe Adderhead heaved himself out of his bath, groaning. He stood there as bloodstained as a newborn child. Jacopo instinctively flinched back, but his grandfather beckoned him closer.\n\n'My lord, you need to stay in the bath longer for the blood to take effect!' said one of the servants.\n\n'Later!' replied the Adderhead impatiently. 'You think I want to be sitting in the tub when they bring me my worst enemy? Give me those towels!' he told Jacopo sharply. 'And quick, or do you want me to put you in the dark cell with your mother? Did I say you were getting more like her? No, it's your father you look like \u2013 more and more like him all the time.'\n\nWith a black look, Jacopo handed him the towels lying ready beside the tub. 'Clothes!'\n\nThe servants hurried over to the chests, and Resa hid in the dark again, but the voice of Orpheus followed her like a deadly scent.\n\n'Your Grace, I... er...' He cleared his throat. 'I've kept my promise. The Bluejay will soon be your prisoner again, and he'll bind you a new book. I think I've earned a reward.'\n\n'Oh, do you?' The servants were putting black garments on the Adderhead's blood-red skin. 'And what were you thinking of?'\n\n'Well. Do you remember the book I mentioned to you? I would still very much like to have it back, and I'm sure you can find it for me. But if that can't be done at once \u2013' oh, the vanity of the gesture as he smoothed his pale fair hair! '\u2013 I would also accept your daughter's hand in marriage as my reward for the delivery of the Bluejay.'\n\nOrpheus.\n\nResa thought of the day when she had first set eyes on him, in Elinor's house, accompanied by Mortola and Basta. At the time she had only noticed that he didn't resemble the men with whom Mortola usually liked to surround herself. He looked strangely harmless, almost innocent, with that childlike face. How stupid she had been. He was worse than any of them, much, much worse.\n\n'Your Highness.' That was the Piper's voice. Resa hadn't heard him come in. 'We've caught the Bluejay. Him and the book illuminator. Shall we bring the Jay straight to you?'\n\n'Aren't you going to tell us how you caught him?' purred Orpheus. 'Did you pick up his scent with that silver nose of yours?'\n\nThe Piper replied in as reluctant a voice as if every word bit his tongue. 'The Fire-Dancer gave him away. With a trail of flames.'\n\nResa wanted to spit out the seeds so that she could shed human tears.\n\nBut Orpheus laughed out loud, happy as a child. 'And who told you about that trail? Come on, out with it!'\n\nIt took the Piper a long time to answer. 'You, who else?' he said hoarsely at last. 'And some day I'll find out what devilry you used to do it.'\n\n'Well, he's done it, anyway!' said the Adderhead. 'After you let the Jay escape twice. Take the prisoner to the Hall of a Thousand Windows. Chain him to the table where he's to bind the book, and have every move he makes watched. If this new Book makes me sick too, I'll cut your heart out with my own hands, Piper, and believe me, a heart's not as easily replaced as a nose.'\n\nBird-thoughts were obscuring Resa's mind. It frightened her, but how was she to reach Mo without wings? And even if you do fly to him, she asked herself, what then? Are you going to peck out the Piper's eyes so that he can't see the Bluejay escape? Fly away, Resa, it's all over, she thought. Save your unborn child even if you can't save its father. Go back to Meggie. Birdlike fears filled her, birdlike fears and human pain \u2013 or was it the other way around? Was she going crazy? Crazy like Mortola?\n\nShe perched there, trembling, waiting for the bedchamber to empty and for the Adderhead to go and see his prisoner. Why did Dustfinger give him away, she wondered. Why? What did Orpheus promise him? What can be worth more than the life Mo gave him back?\n\nThe Adderhead, Orpheus, the Piper, the soldiers, two servants with the cushions to support their master's aching flesh \u2013 Resa saw them all go, but just as she thought she was alone and was putting her head over the edge of the wardrobe, there stood Jacopo staring straight up at her.\n\nOne of the servants came back to fetch the Adderhead his coat.\n\n'See that bird up there?' Jacopo asked. 'Catch it for me!'\n\nBut the servant dragged him unceremoniously to the door. 'You don't give the orders around here! Go and see your mother. I'm sure she'll be glad of company where she is now!'\n\nJacopo resisted, but the servant pushed him roughly through the doorway. Then he closed the door \u2013 and came over to the wardrobe. Resa retreated. She heard him pushing something in front of the wardrobe. Fly into his face, she told herself. But then where? The door was closed, the windows draped. The servant threw a black coat at her. She fluttered against the door, against the walls, heard the man cursing. Where could she go? She flew up to the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but something hit her wing. It hurt, it hurt badly, and she fell.\n\n'You just wait, I'll wring your neck! Who knows, maybe you won't taste bad. Sure to be better than what our fine master gives us to eat.' Hands reached for her. She tried to fly away, but her wing hurt, and the man's fingers held on tightly. In desperation, she pecked them with her beak.\n\n'Let it go!'\n\nBewildered, the servant turned, and Dustfinger struck him to the ground. There was fire behind him. A traitor's fire. Gwin was staring hungrily at her, but Dustfinger shooed him away. Resa tried to peck his hands when he reached for her, but she had no strength left, and he carefully lifted her from the floor and stroked her feathers.\n\n'What's the matter with your wing? Can you move it?'\n\nThe bird in her trusted him, as all wild creatures did, but her human heart remembered what the Piper had said. 'Why did you give Mo away?'\n\n'Because that's what he wanted. Spit the seeds out, Resa! Have you forgotten that you're human?'\n\nPerhaps I want to forget it, she thought, but she obediently spat the little seeds out into his hand. This time none were missing, but she still felt the bird growing stronger and stronger inside her. Small and large, large and small, skin with feathers, skin without feathers... she stroked her arms, felt fingers again, not claws, felt tears in her eyes, a woman's tears.\n\n'Did you see where the White Book is hidden?'\n\nShe shook her head. Her heart was so glad that it could love him again.\n\n'We have to find it, Resa,' Dustfinger whispered. 'Your husband is going to bind the Adder another book, remembering his old trade and forgetting the Bluejay, and in that way he will be safe from Orpheus's words. But that book must never be finished, do you understand?'\n\nYes, she understood. They looked everywhere by the light of the fire, groping among damp towels, clothes and boots, swords, pitchers, silver salvers and embroidered cushions. They even reached into the bloody water. When they heard footsteps outside Dustfinger dragged the unconscious servant with him, and they hid behind the wardrobe on which Resa had been perching. For a bird, the room had seemed as large as a whole world, but now it seemed too cramped to breathe in. Dustfinger placed himself in front of Resa to protect her, but the servants who came in were too busy emptying their master's bath of blood to notice anything. They cursed as they cleared the damp towels away, covering up for their disgust at the Adderhead's rotting flesh with mockery. Then they carried the tub out and left Dustfinger and Resa alone again.\n\nSearch... in every corner, in every chest, in and under the tumbled bed. Search for the Book."
            },
            {
                "title": "Burning Words",
                "text": "\u2003It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.\n\n\u2003You bastards, she thought.\n\n\u2003You lovely bastards.\n\n\u2003Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.\n\n\u2014Markus Zusak, The Book Thief\n\nFarid found Doria. When they carried him to the tree Meggie thought at first that the giant had crushed him, just as he had crushed the Milksop's men, who lay in the frosty grass like broken dolls.\n\n'No, it wasn't the giant,' said Roxane, as they put Doria down with the other injured men: the Black Prince and Woodenfoot, Silkworm and Hedgehog. 'This is the work of humans.'\n\nRoxane had made one of the lowest nests into a sickroom. Luckily there were only two dead among the robbers, while the Milksop had lost many men. Even fear of his brother-in-law wasn't going to bring him back another time.\n\nSootbird too was dead. He lay on the grass with his neck broken, staring up at the sky with empty eyes. Wolves prowled among the trees, lured by the smell of blood. But they dared not come any closer, because the giant was curled up like a child under the tree with its nests, sleeping as deeply as if Roxane's singing had sent him into the realm of dreams for ever.\n\nDoria did not come round when Minerva bandaged his bleeding head, and Meggie sat beside him as Roxane cared for the other wounded. Hedgehog was in a very bad way, but the other men's injuries would heal. Fortunately the Black Prince had only a couple of broken ribs. He wanted to go down to his bear, but Roxane had forbidden it, and Battista had to keep assuring him that the bear was already chasing snow hares again, now that Roxane had pulled out the arrow from his furry shoulder. But Doria didn't move. He just lay there, his brown hair full of blood.\n\n'What do you think? Will he ever wake up again?' Meggie asked as Roxane bent over him.\n\n'I don't know,' Roxane replied. 'Talk to him. Sometimes that calls them back.'\n\nTalk to him. What should she tell Doria? He had asked her about the other world again and again, so in a soft voice Meggie began talking to him about horseless carriages and flying machines, ships without sails and devices that carried voices from one part of the world to another. Elinor came to see how she was. Fenoglio sat beside her for a while. Even Farid came and held her hand while she held Doria's, and for the first time Meggie felt as close to him as she had when the two of them followed her captured parents with Dustfinger. Can one heart love two boys at once?\n\n'Farid,' said Fenoglio quietly after a while, 'let's see what your fire can tell us about the Bluejay, and then this story will be brought to an end. A good end.'\n\n'Maybe we ought to send the giant to the Bluejay!' said Silkworm. Roxane had cut an arrow out of his arm, and his tongue was heavy with the wine she had given him to dull the pain. The Milksop had left all sorts of things behind: wine and blankets, weapons, riderless horses.\n\n'Have you forgotten where the Bluejay is?' asked the Black Prince. Meggie was so glad he was alive. 'No giant can wade through the Black Lake. Even if they did once like to look at their reflections in its water.'\n\nNo, it wouldn't be as simple as that.\n\n'Come on, Meggie, let's ask the fire,' said Farid, but Meggie was reluctant to let go of Doria's hand.\n\n'You go. I'll stay with him,' said Minerva, and Fenoglio whispered, 'Don't look so anxious! Of course the boy will wake up again! Have you forgotten what I told you? His story is only just beginning.'\n\nBut Doria's pale face made that hard to believe.\n\nThe branch that Farid knelt on to summon the fire was as broad as the road outside Elinor's garden gate. As Meggie crouched beside him, Fenoglio looked suspiciously up at the children sitting in the branches above them watching the sleeping giant.\n\n'Don't you dare!' he called, pointing to the fir cones in their small hands. 'The first of you to throw one of those at the giant will go down after it. I promise you!'\n\n'But they will throw one sometime, and then what?' asked Farid as he carefully sprinkled a little ash on the tree's wooden skin. There wasn't much left, even though he gathered it up again meticulously every time he'd used it. 'What will the giant do when he wakes up?'\n\n'How would I know?' grumbled Fenoglio, casting a slightly worried look downwards. 'I just hope poor Roxane doesn't have to spend the rest of her life singing him to sleep.'\n\nThe Black Prince came over to them too. Battista had to support him. He sat down beside Meggie without a word. The fire was sleepy today. However hard Farid enticed and flattered it, it seemed forever before flames rose from the ashes. The giant began humming to himself in his sleep. Jink jumped up on to Farid's knees, a dead bird in his mouth, and suddenly the pictures came: Dustfinger in a courtyard, surrounded by large cages. There was a girl in one of them, weeping. Brianna. A black figure stood between her and her father.\n\n'Night-Mare!' whispered Battista. Meggie looked at him in alarm. The picture dissolved into greyish smoke, and another appeared in the heart of the flames. Farid took Meggie's hand, and Battista uttered a soft curse. Mo. He was chained to a table. The Piper was with him. And the Adderhead, his swollen face looking even more terrible than Meggie had seen it in her worst dreams. Leather and blank sheets of paper lay on the table.\n\n'He's binding him another White Book!' whispered Meggie. 'What does that mean?' In alarm, she looked at Fenoglio.\n\n'Meggie!' Farid drew her attention to the fire again.\n\nLetters were rising from the flames, burning letters that formed into words.\n\n'What the devil is that!' Fenoglio uttered. 'Who wrote that?'\n\nThe words blew away and went out among the branches before anyone could read them. But the fire gave Fenoglio the answer to his question. A round, pale face appeared in the flames, its circular glasses looking like a second pair of eyes.\n\n'Orpheus!' Farid whispered.\n\nThe flames burnt low, slipping back into the ashes as if returning to their nest, but a few fiery words still drifted through the air. Bluejay... fear... broke... die...\n\n'What does that mean?' asked the Black Prince.\n\n'It's a long story, Prince,' Fenoglio replied wearily. 'And I'm afraid the wrong man has written the end of it.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Bookbinder",
                "text": "\u2002The real author was neither one of us: a fist is more than the sum of its fingers.\n\n\u2014Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin\n\nFold. Cut. The paper was good, better than last time. Mo's fingertips felt the fibres on its pale white surface, ran along the edges in search of memories. And they came, filling his heart and mind with a thousand images, a thousand and more forgotten days. The smell of the glue took him back to all the places where he had been alone with a sick book, and the familiar gestures made him feel his old satisfaction in giving new life and beauty to a book, saving it from time's sharp teeth, at least for a while. He'd forgotten the peace that came when his hands were doing their work. Fold, cut, pull a thread through the paper. Mortimer was back again: Mortimer the bookbinder, for whom a knife didn't have to be sharp because a sharp blade killed better, and who wasn't threatened by the words, because he was only making them new clothes.\n\n'You're taking your time, Bluejay.'\n\nThe Piper's voice brought him back to the Hall of a Thousand Windows.\n\nDon't let it happen, Mortimer, he told himself. Simply imagine that the silver-nosed man is still in his own book, is nothing but a voice coming out of the letters on the page. The Bluejay isn't here. Orpheus's words must look for him somewhere else.\n\n'You know you're going to die when you've finished it. That's what makes you so slow, am I correct?' The Piper struck him so hard in the back with his gloved fist that Mo almost cut his own hands, and the Bluejay surfaced for a moment, thinking what it would be like to plunge the blade that cut the paper into the Piper's breast.\n\nMo forced himself to put the knife aside and picked up another sheet of paper, seeking peace in gluing all that whiteness together.\n\nThe Piper was right. He was taking his time, not because he was afraid of dying but because this book must never be finished, and the only reason for every move he made was to bring back Mortimer Folchart, the bookbinder who could not be bound by Orpheus's words. Mo hardly felt them any more. All the despair that had seeped into his heart in that dark cell, all the rage and hopelessness, had faded as if his hands had washed them out of his heart.\n\nBut what would happen if Dustfinger and Resa didn't find the other White Book? Suppose the Night-Mare devoured Brianna and her father? Would he stand in this hall for ever then, binding blank pages? Not for ever, Mo. You're not immortal. Luckily.\n\nThe Piper would kill him. He'd been waiting to do it ever since they first met in the Castle of Night. And, of course, the strolling players would sing about the death of the Bluejay, not Mortimer Folchart. But what would become of Resa and the unborn child? And what about Meggie? Don't think, Mortimer, he told himself. Cut, fold, stitch, win yourself some time, even if you don't yet know what for. When you're dead Resa can fly away and find Meggie. Meggie...\n\nPlease, his heart pleaded with the White Women, let my daughter live! I will go with you, but leave Meggie here. Her life is only just beginning, though she may not know yet which world she wants to live it in.\n\nCutting, folding, stitching \u2013 he thought he saw Meggie's face on the blank paper. He almost felt her beside him as he had in the Old Chamber in the Castle of Night, the room where Violante's mother had lived. Violante... they'd thrown her into one of the cells. Mo knew exactly what would frighten her most down there: she would be afraid of the darkness taking what little vision she had from her. The Adder's daughter still moved him, and he would gladly have helped her, but the Bluejay must sleep.\n\nFour candles had been lit for him. They didn't give much light, but they were better than nothing. The chains didn't make working any easier either. Every time he moved, their clinking reminded him that he wasn't in his workshop in Elinor's garden.\n\nThe door opened.\n\n'There you are!' Orpheus's voice echoed through the empty hall. 'This role suits you much better! What made that old fool Fenoglio think of turning a bookbinder into a robber?'\n\nHe stopped in front of Mo with a triumphant smile, just too far away for the knife to reach him. Yes, Orpheus would think of that kind of thing. As usual, his breath smelt sweetish.\n\n'You ought to have known Dustfinger would betray you some time. He betrays everyone \u2013 and believe me, I know what I'm talking about. It's the part he plays best. But presumably you couldn't pick and choose who'd help you.'\n\nMo picked up the leather intended for the cover. It was red, like the cover of the first book.\n\n'Ah, so you're not talking to me any more! Well, I can understand that.' Orpheus had never looked happier.\n\n'Leave him to work, Four-Eyes! Or do you want me telling the Adderhead that he has to live in his itching skin a little longer, just because you felt like a nice chat?' The Piper's voice sounded even more strained than usual. Orpheus wasn't making himself many friends.\n\n'Don't forget, your master will soon be rid of that skin, Piper, and he owes it all to me!' he replied in a supercilious tone. 'Your powers of persuasion haven't impressed our bookbinding friend much, if I remember rightly.'\n\nSo the two of them were competing to see who could be closest to the Adder. At the moment Orpheus seemed to hold the better cards, but perhaps that could be changed.\n\n'What are you talking about, Orpheus?' said Mo, without looking up from his work. He tasted sweet revenge on his tongue. 'The Adderhead need feel grateful to no one but the Piper. I was careless. I ran straight into their arms. You had nothing at all to do with it.'\n\n'What?' Piqued, Orpheus fiddled with his glasses.\n\n'That's exactly how I'll tell the tale to the Adderhead. As soon as he's had a good sleep.' Mo cut through the leather and imagined that he was cutting the web Orpheus had spun around him.\n\nThe Piper narrowed his eyes, as if that would help him to see more clearly what game the Bluejay was playing. The Bluejay isn't here, Piper, thought Mo. But how could you understand that?\n\n'Careful, bookbinder!' Orpheus took a clumsy step towards him. His voice was almost cracking. 'Use your silver tongue to spread lies about me and I'll have it cut out on the spot!'\n\n'Oh yes? Who by?'\n\nMo looked directly at the Piper.\n\n'I don't want to see my daughter in this castle,' he said softly. 'I don't want anyone looking for her after the Bluejay is dead.'\n\nThe Piper returned his glance \u2013 and smiled. 'That's a promise. The Bluejay has no daughter,' he said. 'And he'll keep his tongue too. So long as it speaks the right words.'\n\nOrpheus bit his lips so hard that they turned as pale as his skin. Then he moved close to Mo's side.\n\n'I'll write new words!' he hissed in his ear. 'Words that will make you writhe like a worm on the hook!'\n\n'Write what you like,' replied Mo, cutting through the leather again.\n\nThe bookbinder wouldn't feel the words."
            },
            {
                "title": "So Many Tears",
                "text": "\u2003...from the beginning of time,\n\n\u2003in childhood, I thought\n\n\u2003that pain meant\n\n\u2003I was not loved.\n\n\u2003It meant I loved.\n\n\u2014Louise Gl\u00fcck, Ararat\n\nShe was crying! Jacopo had never heard his mother cry before. Not even when they brought his father back from the forest, dead. He hadn't cried then either, but that was different.\n\nShould he call down to her? He knelt on the edge of the shaft and stared into the darkness. He couldn't see her, only hear her. The weeping sounded terrible. It scared him. His mother didn't cry. His mother was always strong, always proud. She didn't take him in her arms, like Brianna. Brianna hugged him even when he'd been cruel to her. 'It's because you look like your father!' the maids in the kitchen said. 'Brianna was in love with your father!' She was still in love with him. She had a coin with his picture on it in the bag at her belt; she sometimes kissed it in secret, and she wrote his name on the walls. She wrote it in the air and in the dust. She was so stupid.\n\nThe sobbing down below grew even more violent, and Jacopo put his hands over his ears. It sounded as if his mother were breaking into small pieces, such tiny pieces that no one would ever be able to put her together again. But he wanted to keep her!\n\n'Your grandfather will take you with him,' said the servants. 'Back to the Castle of Night, so that you can play with his son.' But Jacopo didn't want to go to the Castle of Night. He wanted to go back to Ombra. That was his castle. And he was frightened of his grandfather, who stank and gasped for air, and had skin so spongy you were scared you might dig holes in it with your fingers.\n\nIt must be all wet with her tears down there. She sounded as if she'd soon be drowning in them! No wonder she was so sad. She couldn't read any books in the darkness, and his mother wasn't happy without books. She loved nothing so much. She loved them far more than him, but never mind that. He didn't want her marrying Four-Eyes all the same. Jacopo hated Four-Eyes. His voice was like melted sugar on your skin.\n\nHe liked the Bluejay. And the Fire-Dancer. But soon they'd both be dead. Orpheus was going to feed the Fire-Dancer to the Night-Mare, and as soon as the Bluejay had finished the new Book they'd flay him. His grandfather had once made him watch a man being flayed alive. Jacopo had hidden away from the victim's screams in the furthest corner of his heart, but he had still heard them there.\n\nIt was quiet. His mother had stopped crying. Had she cried herself to death?\n\nThe guards took no notice of him as he bent far over the edge of the black shaft. 'Mother?'\n\nThe word didn't pass his lips easily. He never called her Mother. It was as Her Ugliness that he thought of her. But now she had been crying.\n\n'Jacopo?'\n\nShe was still alive.\n\n'Is the Bluejay dead?'\n\n'Not yet. He's binding the book.'\n\n'Where is Brianna?'\n\n'In one of the cages.' He was jealous of Brianna. Violante liked Brianna better than him. She was allowed to sleep with his mother, who talked to her much more often than she talked to him, her son. But Brianna comforted him too when he'd hurt himself, or when the Milksop's men taunted him about his dead father. And she was very beautiful.\n\n'Orpheus\u2014' he began, but one of the guards grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet.\n\n'That's enough chatter!' he said. 'Get out.'\n\nJacopo tried to wriggle free, but it was no good.\n\n'Let her out!' he shouted, beating his fists against the man's armed chest. 'Let her out this minute!'\n\nBut the soldier only laughed.\n\n'Hark at him, will you!' he said to the other guard. 'Mind you don't end up in that cell yourself, midget. Your grandfather has a son now. So his grandson doesn't count for much, specially when he's Cosimo's brat and his mother is thick as thieves with the Bluejay.'\n\nHe pushed Jacopo away so roughly that he fell over and Jacopo wished he could make flames come out of his hands, like the Fire-Dancer, or kill them all with a sword, the way the Bluejay had killed so many men.\n\n'Jacopo?' he heard his mother call from down below, but when he turned back to the edge of the shaft the soldiers barred his way.\n\n'Get out, I tell you!' one of them snapped. 'Or I'll tell Four-Eyes to feed you to the Night-Mare. I bet you're not half as tough as the illuminator they're keeping in reserve for it.'\n\nJacopo kicked the man's knee as hard as he could, and escaped before the other guard could grab hold of him.\n\nThe passages down which he stumbled were so dark that he saw a thousand monsters in the shadows. It had been better when there was fire burning on all the walls, much better. Where was he to go? Back to the room where they'd locked him in with his mother? No, there were beetles there that crawled into your nose and ears. Orpheus had sent them. He'd told the boy so himself, laughing. Jacopo had changed his clothes three times already to get rid of the beetles, but he could still feel them everywhere.\n\nPerhaps he ought to go to the cage where Brianna was? No, the Night-Mare was outside it. Jacopo crouched on the stone floor and buried his face in his hands. He wished them all to hell, Orpheus and the Piper and his grandfather. He wanted to be like the Bluejay and the Black Prince \u2013 and then he'd kill them all. Every last one of them. That'd soon stop them laughing. And then he'd sit on the throne of Ombra and attack the Castle of Night, just like his father. But he would conquer it and take all its silver to Ombra, and the strolling players would sing songs about him, and he'd make them put on a show at the castle every day, just for him, and the Fire-Dancer would write his name in the sky, and his mother would curtsey to him, and he'd marry a girl as beautiful as Brianna...\n\nHe saw it all so clearly in his mind's eye as he sat there, in the darkness that protected his grandfather's eyes. He saw it as clearly as the pictures that Balbulus had painted for him.\n\nThere would be a book about him. Jacopo. A book as magnificent as the one about the Bluejay. Not empty and mouldy like...\n\n[ Jacopo raised his head ]\n\n...the White Book.\n\nYes. Why not? That'd certainly make them laugh on the other side of their faces!\n\nJacopo stood up. It would be easy. He must just make sure his grandfather didn't notice that it was gone at once. He'd better leave another book in its place. But which?\n\nHe rested his hands on his trembling knees.\n\nOrpheus had had his books taken away, and his mother's were all gone too. But there were other books in this castle, sick books, as sick as his grandfather's. They were in the room where the Bluejay had been caught.\n\nIt was a long way there, and Jacopo got lost a couple of times, but finally the smell of decay guided him \u2013 the same smell that surrounded his grandfather \u2013 and so did the sooty trail, barely visible in the light of his torch, laid by the Fire-Dancer to give the Bluejay away. Why had he done it? For silver, like Sootbird? What would he buy with the silver? A castle? A woman? A horse?\n\n'Trust your friends even less than your enemies, Jacopo.' That was what his grandfather had taught him. 'There are no such things as friends. Not for a prince.' At one time his grandfather often used to talk to him, but that was long ago. He has a son now, Jacopo.\n\nHe chose a book that wasn't too big \u2013 the White Book was not very big either \u2013 and put it under his tunic.\n\nThere were two guards outside his grandfather's bedchamber. So he was back from seeing the Bluejay? Perhaps he'd killed him already? No, the new Book couldn't be finished yet. Such things took a long time, Balbulus had told him so. But when it was finished his grandfather was going to make the Bluejay scream, and either marry off his mother to Four-Eyes or leave her in that cell until she broke into tiny little pieces. And they would take Jacopo to the Castle of Night with them.\n\nJacopo straightened his clothes and wiped the tears from his eyes. He hadn't even noticed them. They blurred everything, the guards and the light of their torches. Stupid. Crying was stupid.\n\n'I want to see my grandfather!'\n\nHow they grinned at each other! The Bluejay would kill them all. Every man of them.\n\n'He's asleep. Get out.'\n\n'He can't sleep, you idiot!' Jacopo's shrill voice rose. Only a few months ago he would have stamped his foot, but he'd learnt that that didn't work particularly well. 'Thumbling sent me. I'm to take him his sleeping medicine.'\n\nThe guards exchanged uncertain glances. Luckily he was cleverer than any of them. Much cleverer.\n\n'Very well, in you go!' growled one of them. 'But mind you don't start carrying on about your mother to him, because if you do I'll chuck you into that cell with my own hands, understand?'\n\nYou're a dead man, thought Jacopo as he walked past the guard. Dead. Dead. Dead. Don't you know that yet? Oh, how good this felt!\n\n'What do you want?' His grandfather was sitting on the bed with two servants beside him, wiping the fairy blood off his legs. His eyelids were heavy from the poppy-juice he took when he wanted to sleep. And why shouldn't he sleep now? The Bluejay was caught, and was binding Death in another book for him.\n\n'What are you going to do to the Bluejay when he's finished?' Jacopo knew exactly what kinds of stories his grandfather liked to tell.\n\nThe Adderhead laughed and impatiently waved the servants away. Bowing and scraping, they made their way to the door.\n\n'Maybe you do take after me, even if you look like your father.' The Adderhead let himself drop on his side, groaning. 'What would you do to him first?' His tongue was already as heavy as his eyelids.\n\n'I don't know. Pull out his fingernails?'\n\nJacopo went over to the bed. There it was, the cushion that the Adderhead always had with him. To prop up his sick flesh, they said. But Jacopo knew better. He'd often seen his grandfather put his hand under the heavy fabric to feel the leather binding with his fingers. Once he had even caught a glimpse of the blood-soaked covers. No one paid any attention to what a child saw. Not even the Adderhead, who trusted no one but himself.\n\n'His fingernails? Hm. Painful, yes. I hope my son will get ideas like that once he's your age. Although why does a man need a son when he's immortal? I ask myself that question more and more frequently. Why does a man need a wife? Or daughters...'\n\nThe last words were barely audible. The Adderhead opened his mouth, and a snore came out. The lizard-like eyelids closed, and his left hand clutched the cushion in which his death was hidden. But Jacopo had small, slender hands, not at all like his grandfather's. Very carefully, he undid the ribbons tying the fabric, put his fingers inside the cushion and took out the Book, the White Book \u2013 although it really should be called the Red Book now. His grandfather turned his head, and his breath rattled in his sleep. Jacopo reached under his tunic for the volume he had taken from the Lost Library, and exchanged it for its red twin.\n\n'My grandfather's asleep,' he told the guards when he came out of the room. 'And you'd better not wake him or he'll pull your fingernails out.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Night-Mare",
                "text": "\u2002What should he fear who fears not death itself?\n\n\u2014Friedrich Schiller, The Robbers\n\nResa had flown away to Silvertongue in the Hall of a Thousand Windows. 'The bird will never leave you again, Resa!' Dustfinger had warned her, but she had put the seeds into her mouth all the same.\n\nHe had had great difficulty in dragging her out of the bedchamber before the Silver Prince came back. The despair in her face went to his heart. They had not found the White Book, and both of them knew what that meant: it wasn't the Adderhead who would die, but the Bluejay \u2013 by the hand of the Piper, Thumbling, or the White Women coming for him because he hadn't been able to pay the price Death demanded for his life.\n\nResa had flown to him so that Silvertongue would not be alone when he died. Or did she still hope for some miracle to save him? Perhaps. Dustfinger had not told her that Death was going to take him again too \u2013 and then her daughter.\n\n'If you don't find the Book,' Silvertongue had whispered to him before sending him away to lay the fiery trail for the Piper, 'then at least let us try to save our daughters.'\n\nOur daughters... Dustfinger knew where to find Brianna, but how was he to protect Meggie from the Piper, or the White Women themselves?\n\nOf course the Piper's men had tried to hold him fast once he'd led them to the Bluejay, but it was easy to escape them. They were still looking for him, but the darkness in the castle hid the Adderhead's enemies as well as easing the pain in his eyes.\n\nOrpheus seemed very sure that his black dog was enough to guard Brianna. Two torches burnt beside the cage where she sat, crouching like a captive bird. But there was no soldier on guard. The real guard lurked somewhere in the shadows, in a place that the torchlight didn't reach.\n\nHow in the world had Orpheus managed to tame it?\n\n'Don't forget, he read it out of a book,' Silvertongue had said. 'A book for children too, although I'm not sure that Fenoglio made the Night-Mare any less dangerous because of that. But it's made of words, and I'm sure that Orpheus himself used words to make it obey him. Just a few rearranged words, a couple of slightly twisted sentences, and the terror in the night becomes an obedient dog.'\n\nBut Silvertongue, Dustfinger had thought, have you forgotten that everything in this world is made of words? He knew only that this Night-Mare was not less dangerous, but even more sinister, than those found in the Wayless Wood. It would not, like its fellows, be driven away by fairy dust and fire \u2013 it was woven of darker stuff. What a pity you didn't ask the White Women its name, he said to himself as he slowly made his way towards the cages. Don't the songs say that's the only way to kill a Night-Mare? For that was what he had to do: destroy the creature so that Orpheus could not call it back. Forget the songs, Dustfinger, he told himself as he looked around. Write your own, just as the Bluejay must write his now.\n\nAt the sound of his whispering the torches flared up as if to welcome him, weary of the darkness surrounding them. And Brianna raised her head.\n\nHow beautiful she was, as lovely as her mother.\n\nDustfinger looked around again, waiting for the darkness to start moving. Where was it?\n\nHe heard a snuffling sound, felt cold breath, panting like a large dog's. To his left the shadows grew and became blacker than black. His heart began to beat painfully fast. Ah. So the fear was still there, even though he so seldom felt it now.\n\nBrianna got to her feet and stumbled away until her back was up against the bars. Behind her, a painted peacock spread its tail on the grey wall. 'Go away!' she whispered. 'Please! It will eat you!'\n\nGo away. A tempting idea. But he had once had two daughters, now he had only one... and he would keep her, not for ever but perhaps for a few years yet. Precious time. Time \u2013 whatever that was.\n\nAll was cold behind him, dreadfully cold. Dustfinger called up the flames and wrapped himself in their warmth, but the cold made the fire burn low and go out, leaving him alone with the shadow.\n\n'Please! Please go away!' Brianna's voice urged, and the love in it, that she usually hid so well, warmed him more than the fire ever could. He called on the flames again, more sternly this time, reminding them that he and they were brothers, inseparable. Hesitantly, they licked up from the ground, trembling as if a cold wind were blowing through them, but they burnt, and the Night-Mare retreated and stared at him.\n\nYes, what the songs said about him and his like was true. It must be true. The songs said Night-Mares were made entirely of the blackness of the soul, of evil that could not be forgotten or forgiven until they were snuffed out, consuming themselves and taking with them everything they had ever been.\n\nThe eyes transfixed him, red eyes in all that blackness, eyes both fierce and dull, lost in themselves, with no yesterday and no tomorrow, without light and warmth, caught in their own cold, the freezing entity of evil.\n\nDustfinger felt the fire around him like a warm fur. It almost burnt his skin, but it was his only protection against those dull eyes and the hungry mouth that opened, screaming so horribly that Brianna sank to her knees and put her hands over her ears.\n\nThe Night-Mare reached a black hand out to the fire. It hissed when he dipped it into the flames \u2013 and Dustfinger thought he recognized a face in all the blackness. A face he had never forgotten.\n\nWas it possible? Had Orpheus seen it too, and so tamed his black dog by calling it by its forgotten name? Or had he given it that name himself, and brought back the man whom Silvertongue had sent to his death?'\n\nBrianna was crying behind him. Dustfinger sensed her trembling through the bars, but he felt no fear now. He was just grateful. Grateful for this moment. Glad of this new encounter \u2013 which he hoped would be their last.\n\n'Well, look! Who have we here?' he said softly, as Brianna's weeping died down on the other side of the bars. 'Do you remember yourself in all your darkness? Do you remember the knife, and the boy's thin, unprotected back? Do you remember the sound my heart made when it broke?'\n\nThe Night-Mare stared at him, and Dustfinger stepped towards it, still surrounded by flames \u2013 flames burning hotter and hotter, nourished by all the pain and despair he was bringing back to mind.\n\n'Away with you, Basta!' he said, speaking the name loud enough to pierce the heart of all the darkness. 'Be gone for all eternity.'\n\nThe face showed more clearly \u2013 the narrow, foxy face that he had once feared so much \u2013 and Dustfinger made the flames bite into the cold, made them penetrate the blackness like swords, all of them writing Basta's name, and the Night-Mare screamed again, its eyes suddenly full of memories. It screamed and screamed, while its shape ran like ink, melting into the shadows, dispersing like smoke. Only the cold was left, but the fire ate that too, and Dustfinger fell on his knees and felt the pain leaving him \u2013 pain that had outlasted death itself. He wished Farid were here with him. He wished it so much that, for a few moments, he forgot where he was.\n\n'Father?' Brianna's whisper reached him through the smoke.\n\nHad she ever called him that before? Yes, long ago. But had he been the same man then?\n\nThe bars of the cage bent under the heat of his hands. He dared not touch Brianna because he felt the fire so strongly in them. Footsteps approached \u2013 heavy, rapid footsteps. The Night-Mare's screams had brought them. But the darkness swallowed Dustfinger and Brianna up before the soldiers reached the cages, and they looked in vain for their black watchman."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Other Side",
                "text": "\u2002She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter.\n\n\u2002Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her... What good were the words?\n\n\u2002She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. 'What good are the words?'\n\n\u2014Markus Zusak, The Book Thief\n\nThe Black Prince was still with Roxane. She was going to splint his injured leg so that he could walk on it. Walk to the Castle in the Lake. 'We have time,' Meggie had told him, although her heart was in a hurry. Mo would certainly need as long to bind this White Book as he had needed in the Castle of Night.\n\nThe Black Prince intended to set out with almost all his men to stand by the Bluejay. But without Elinor and without Meggie. 'Your father made me promise that you and your mother would stay in a safe place,' he had told her. 'With your mother I wasn't able to keep my promise, but at least I'll keep it where you're concerned. Didn't you promise him the same thing?'\n\nNo, she had not. So she would go, even if it almost broke her heart to leave Doria behind. He still hadn't woken up, but Darius would talk to him. And Elinor. And she would come back \u2013 wouldn't she?\n\nFarid was going with her. He would be able to call fire if the weather grew cold on their way, and she had stolen some dried meat and filled one of Battista's leather bottles with water. How could the Black Prince think she would stay after she had seen those fiery words? How could he think she'd leave her father to die as if this were some other, quite different story?\n\n'Meggie, the Black Prince doesn't know about the words,' Fenoglio had pointed out. 'And he has no idea what Orpheus is up to either!' But Fenoglio did know, and all the same \u2013 just like the Prince \u2013 he didn't want her to go. 'Do you want what happened to your mother to happen to you too? No one knows where she is. No, you must stay. We'll help your father in our own way. I'll write day and night, I promise you. But what use is that if you don't stay here to read what I've written?'\n\nStay here. Wait. No, she was sorry, but she was going to steal away in secret like Resa, and she wouldn't get lost... she'd waited far too long already. If Fenoglio did indeed think of something \u2013 and he had certainly been able to write the giant here \u2013 then Darius could read it, and the children had Battista and Elinor, Roxane and Fenoglio to look after them. But Mo was alone, all alone. He needed her. He'd always needed her.\n\nElinor was snoring gently. Darius slept next to her, in between Minerva's children. Meggie moved as quietly as the woven structure of the nest allowed, picking up her jacket, her shoes, and the rucksack that still reminded her of the other world.\n\n'Ready?' Farid was standing in the round doorway of the nest. 'It will soon be light.'\n\nMeggie nodded \u2013 and turned as Farid stared past her, his eyes as wide as a child's.\n\nA White Woman was standing beside the sleepers. She looked at Meggie.\n\nShe had a pencil in her hand, a short, worn-out chalk pencil, and with a look of invitation she was offering Farid one of the candles that Elinor had brought from Ombra. Farid went towards her like a sleepwalker, and with a whisper lit the wick. The White Woman dipped her pencil into the flame and began to write on a sheet of paper. Meggie had been trying to write a good end to her father's story on it after the giant took Fenoglio away. The White Woman wrote and wrote, while Minerva whispered her husband's name in her sleep, while Elinor turned over on to her other side, while Despina put her arm around her brother and the wind blew through the wickerwork of the nest, almost putting out the candle. Then the White Woman straightened up, looked at Meggie once more, and disappeared as if the wind had blown her away.\n\nFarid breathed a sigh of relief when she had gone, and pressed his face into Meggie's hair. But Meggie gently moved him aside and bent over the paper on which the White Woman had written.\n\n'Can you read it?' Farid whispered.\n\nMeggie nodded.\n\n'Go to the Black Prince and tell him he can spare his leg,' she said softly. 'We'll all stay here. The song of the Bluejay has been written.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Box",
                "text": "\u2002'Okay,' said the Lady, turning to Abby. 'Tomorrow bring the book.'\n\n\u2002'Which one?'\n\n\u2002'There's more than one book?'\n\n\u2014Alan Armstrong, Whittington\n\nIt wasn't easy to make your hands work slowly when they loved what they were doing so much. Mo's eyes stung in the bad light, his ankles were sore from the heavy chains, and yet in the strangest way he felt happy. It was as if he were binding not the Adderhead's death, but time itself into a book \u2013 and with it all fears for the future, all the pain of the past... until there was nothing left but now, this moment when his hands caressed paper and leather.\n\n'I'll bring fire to help you as soon as I've freed Brianna,' Dustfinger had promised, before leaving him alone to go and act the part of a traitor once more. 'And I'll bring the White Book with me,' he had added.\n\nHowever, it was not Dustfinger but Resa who came. Mo's heart had almost stopped when the swift flew through the doorway. One of the guards had aimed his crossbow at her, but she darted away from the arrow, and Mo had plucked a brown feather from his shoulder. They haven't found the Book. That was his first thought as the swift settled on a beam above him. But whatever happened, he was glad she was there.\n\nThe Piper was leaning against a column, his eyes following every movement Mo made. Was he going to try doing without sleep for two whole weeks? Or did he think this book could be bound in a day?\n\nMo put down his knife and rubbed his tired eyes. The swift spread her wings as if she were waving to him, and Mo quickly bent his head so that the Piper's attention wouldn't be drawn to her. But he looked up again when the silver-nosed man uttered a curse.\n\nFire was licking from the walls.\n\nIt could mean only one thing: Brianna was free.\n\n'Why are you smiling like that, Bluejay?' The Piper came up to him and drove his fist into Mo's stomach, doubling him up. The swift above their heads cried out.\n\n'Do you think your fiery friend will come to make amends for betraying you?' the silver-nosed man whispered. 'Don't rejoice too soon! This time I'm going to chop his head off. We'll see if he can come back from the dead without that!'\n\nThe Bluejay would have liked to thrust the bookbinder's knife into that heartless breast, but once again Mo, the bookbinder, sent him away. What are you waiting for? asked the Jay. The White Book? No one's going to find it! Well then, Mo retorted, why should I fight any more? Without the Book I'm dead anyway, and so is my daughter.\n\nMeggie. The bookbinder and the Bluejay were the same man only in sharing their fears for her.\n\nThe door opened, and a small, thin figure made its way into the fire-lit hall. Jacopo.\n\nHe came towards Mo, taking small steps. Did he want to tell the Bluejay about his mother? Or had his grandfather sent him to find out how Mo was getting on with binding the new Book?\n\nViolante's son stopped close to Mo, but he was looking at the Piper.\n\n'Will it soon be ready?' he asked.\n\n'If you don't keep him from his work,' replied the silver-nosed man.\n\nJacopo put a hand under his tunic and brought out a book. He had wrapped it in a brightly-coloured cloth. 'I want the Bluejay to cure this book for me. It's my favourite.'\n\nHe opened it, and Mo forgot to breathe. Pages soaked in blood.\n\nJacopo was looking at him.\n\n'Your favourite book? There's only one book the Bluejay's supposed to bother with. So get out!' The Piper poured himself a goblet of wine. 'Go to the kitchen and tell them to send up more meat and wine.'\n\n'I only want him to take a look at it!' Jacopo's voice sounded as defiant as ever. 'Grandfather said I could get him to do that. You can ask him if you like.' He was passing Mo a short, worn pencil that could easily be hidden in the hand. That was better than the knife \u2013 much, much better.\n\nThe Piper put a piece of meat in his mouth and washed it down with wine. 'You're lying,' he said. 'Has your grandfather told you what I do to liars?'\n\n'No, what?' Jacopo thrust his chin out just as his mother did and took a step towards the silver-nosed man.\n\nThe Piper wiped his greasy fingers on a snow-white napkin and smiled.\n\nMo clutched the pencil in his fingers and opened the White Book.\n\n'First I cut their tongues out,' said the Piper.\n\nJacopo took another step towards him.\n\n'Oh yes?'\n\nHeart.\n\nMo's fingers shook as he traced each letter.\n\n'Yes. After all, it's not easy to tell lies without a tongue. Although \u2013 wait, I did once know a mute beggar who told me shameless lies. He talked with his fingers.'\n\n'So?'\n\nThe Piper laughed. 'So I cut them off, one by one.'\n\nKeep looking up, Mo, or he'll realize that you're writing.\n\nSpell.\n\nOnly one more word now. A single word.\n\nThe Piper glanced at him. He looked at the open book. Mo hid the pencil in his closed fist.\n\nThe swift spread her wings again. She wanted to help him. No, Resa! But the bird was already in the air, flying above the Piper's head.\n\n'I saw that bird before!' said Jacopo. 'In my grandfather's bedchamber.'\n\n'Did you indeed?' The Piper looked at the ledge where the swift had now settled. He snatched a crossbow from one of the soldiers.\n\nNo! Resa, fly away!\n\nJust one more word, but all Mo saw was the little bird.\n\nThe Piper shot, and the swift fluttered upwards. The arrow missed, and she flew straight into the Piper's face.\n\nWrite, Mo! He pressed the pencil down on to the blood-soaked paper.\n\nThe Piper's silver nose slipped when he struck out at the swift.\n\nDeath."
            },
            {
                "title": "White Night",
                "text": "\u2002The poor Emperor could hardly breathe. It was as if something were sitting on his breast. He opened his eyes and then he saw that it was Death... and strange heads were looking out from the folds of the great velvet hangings of his bed, some of them horrible, some divinely beautiful: they were all the Emperor's good and bad deeds looking down on him now that Death sat there on his breast.\n\n\u2014Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale\n\nThe Adderhead was freezing. He was freezing even in his sleep, although he clutched the cushion to his sore chest, the cushion containing the Book that protected him from eternal cold. Even his dreams, heavy with poppy-juice, couldn't warm him any more. Dreams of the tortures he would inflict on the Bluejay. Once he had dreamt only of love in this castle. But wasn't that only right and proper? Hadn't the love he found here tormented him as much as his rotting flesh?\n\nOh, how cold he was. Even his dreams seemed to be covered with hoarfrost. Dreams of torture, dreams of love. He opened his eyes, and the painted walls stared at him with the eyes of Violante's mother. That damn poppy-juice. This damn castle. And why was the fire back? The Adderhead groaned and pressed his hands to his eyes, but the sparks seemed to burn even beneath his lids.\n\nRed. Red and gold. Light as sharp as a knife-blade, and out of the fire came the whispering, the whispering he had feared ever since he first heard it at a dying man's side. Trembling, he peered through his swollen fingers. No. No, it couldn't be true. It was the poppy-juice making him imagine them. Nothing else. He saw four of them all standing round his bed, white as snow \u2013 no, whiter \u2013 and they were whispering the name he had been born with. Over and over again, as if to remind him that he hadn't always had the skin of a serpent.\n\nIt was the poppy-juice, only the poppy-juice.\n\nThe Adderhead thrust a trembling hand into the cushion to take out the Book, to hold it up and so ward them off, but their white fingers were already reaching into his breast.\n\nHow they were looking at him! With the eyes of all the dead he had sent to them.\n\nAnd then they whispered his name again.\n\nAnd his heart stood still."
            },
            {
                "title": "Over",
                "text": "\u2002'I did it!' cried God. And he looked down at Sparrow and pointed at the vanishing marvel. 'I did it! I made a Swift!'\n\n\u2014Ted Hughes, How Sparrow Saved the Birds, from The Dreamfighter\n\nThe White Woman appeared as soon as Mo closed the blood-soaked Book again. At the sight of her the Piper forgot the swift, and Violante's son hid under the table to which Mo was chained. But this daughter of Death hadn't come to take the Bluejay away. She was here to give him his freedom, and Resa saw the relief on Mo's face.\n\nAt that moment he forgot everything. Resa saw that too. Perhaps he hoped, for a split second, that the story had been told to the end at last. But the Piper hadn't died with his master. For a few precious moments fear held him transfixed, but when the White Woman disappeared she took his fear with her, and Resa spread her wings once more. She spat out the seeds as she flew at the Piper, so that she would get back hands she could use to help, feet that could run. But the bird was reluctant to leave her, and she still had claws as she landed on the flagstones right beside the two men.\n\nMo looked down at her in alarm, and before Resa could realize what danger she was putting him in, the Piper had taken the chains binding him to the table, to wind them around his own hand. Mo fell to his knees as the Piper tugged the chains. He was holding the knife he had been using to cut paper, but what good was a bookbinder's knife against a sword or a crossbow?\n\nDesperately, Resa fluttered up on the table, retching in the frantic hope that there might be a seed still under her tongue, but her feathery prison would not let her go, and the Piper pulled at Mo's chains again.\n\n'Your pale angel was in a hurry to leave this time!' he said scornfully. 'Why didn't she undo your chains for you? But don't worry, we'll leave you plenty of time to die, time enough for your white friends to come back again. Now, go on working.'\n\nWith difficulty, Mo straightened up. 'Why should I?' he asked, pushing the White Book over to the Piper. 'Your master won't be needing any second book now. That's why the White Woman came here. I've written the three words in this one. See for yourself. The Adderhead is dead.'\n\nThe Piper stared at the bloodstained binding. Then he looked under the table, where Jacopo was cowering like a small, frightened animal.\n\n'Is he indeed?' he said, drawing his sword. 'Well, if that's so... I've no objection to immortality myself. So, as I said, go on working.'\n\nHis soldiers began to whisper.\n\n'Quiet!' the Piper snapped, pointing to one of them with his gloved hand. 'You. Go to the Adderhead and tell him the Bluejay claims he's dead.'\n\nThe soldier hurried away. The others watched him go with fear in their eyes. But the Piper put the point of his sword to Mo's chest. 'You're not working yet!'\n\nMo stepped as far back as the chains would allow, the knife in his hand. 'There won't be any other book. No book with white pages. Off you go, Jacopo! Run to your mother and tell her everything will be all right.'\n\nJacopo crawled out from under the table and ran for it. The Piper didn't even look at him as he disappeared. 'When the Adderhead's son was born I advised him to dispose of Cosimo's little bastard,' he said, looking at the White Book. 'But he wouldn't hear of it. Stupid of him.'\n\nThe soldier he had sent to the Adderhead came stumbling back into the dark hall, out of breath.\n\n'The Jay's telling the truth!' he gasped. 'The Adderhead is dead, and the White Women are everywhere.'\n\nThe other soldiers lowered their crossbows.\n\n'L-l-let's go back to Ombra, sir!' stammered one of them. 'This castle is bewitched. We can take the Bluejay with us!'\n\n'A good idea,' said the Piper. And he smiled.\n\nNo.\n\nResa fluttered into his face once more, pecking the smile from his lips. It was the bird who did it \u2013 or was it the woman, the wife? She heard Mo cry out as the Piper struck at her with his sword. The blade cut deep into her wing. She fell, and suddenly she had human limbs again, as if the Piper had cut the bird out of her. The Piper stared at her in disbelief, but as he raised his sword Mo thrust the knife deep into his chest, right through his expensive clothes. And the Piper looked at him in astonishment as he died.\n\nHis soldiers, however, were still there. Mo snatched the Piper's sword and drove them back, away from his wife. But there were too many of them, and he was still chained to the table. Soon there was blood everywhere, on his chest, on his hands and arms. Was it his own?\n\nThey were going to kill him, and once again Resa could only watch, stand by and watch as she had done so often in the course of this story. But suddenly fire was consuming the chains and Dustfinger stood over her to protect her, with the marten on his shoulder. Beside him stood Jacopo.\n\n'Is she dead too?' Resa heard him ask as the soldiers ran from the fire, screaming.\n\n'No,' Dustfinger answered. 'It's only her arm that's wounded.'\n\n'But she was a bird!' said Jacopo.\n\n'Yes.' That was Mo's voice. 'Don't you think that sounds like a good story?'\n\nIt was suddenly so quiet in the great hall. No more fighting, no screams, only the crackling of the fire as it talked to Dustfinger.\n\nMo knelt down beside her. There was blood everywhere, but he was alive, and once again Resa had a human hand to take his. And all was well."
            },
            {
                "title": "Staked on the Wrong Card",
                "text": "\u2002Like Orpheus I play death on the strings of life.\n\n\u2014Ingeborg Bachmann, To Speak of the Dark\n\nOrpheus was reading frantically, he realized that himself. He was reading in too loud a voice, and much too fast. As if his tongue were trying to thrust the words through the bookbinder's body like knives. He had written him the torments of hell in revenge for the Piper's mocking smile. That smile still haunted him. How small it had made him, just when he was feeling so full of grandeur! But at least there'd soon be no more smiling for the Bluejay.\n\nIronstone stirred the ink and looked at him anxiously. His fury obviously showed on his face, written there in small beads of sweat.\n\nConcentrate, Orpheus, he told himself \u2013 and tried again. There were a few words that he could hardly decipher because the letters ran together so unsteadily, drunk with his own rage.\n\nWhy did he feel as if he were reading the words into a void? Why did they seem like pebbles being dropped down a well, where their echo was lost in the darkness? Something was wrong. He'd never felt like this before when he was reading aloud.\n\n'Ironstone!' he ordered the glass man. 'Run to the Hall of a Thousand Windows and see how the Bluejay is doing. He ought to be doubled up in agony like a poisoned dog by now.'\n\nThe glass man lowered the twig he was using to stir the ink and looked at him in alarm. 'But... but master, I don't know the way.'\n\n'Don't make such a stupid fuss, or do you want me to ask the Night-Mare if it fancies a glass man for a change? Turn right outside this room and then go straight ahead. Ask the guards the way!'\n\nUnhappily, Ironstone set off. Silly creature! Fenoglio really might have thought up a less ridiculous kind of assistant to help scribes. But that was the trouble with this world \u2013 at heart, it was childish. Why had he loved the book so much when he was a child? Well, for that very reason! But now he was grown up, and it was time this world grew up too.\n\nAnother sentence \u2013 and once again the strange feeling that the words were dying away even before he spoke them. Damn it!\n\nDizzy with rage, he was reaching for the inkwell to throw it at the painted wall when he suddenly heard loud shouts outside. Orpheus put the inkwell back on the table and listened. What was all this? He opened his door and looked down the corridor. There were no guards outside the Adderhead's bedchamber any more, and two servants ran past him in a state of great agitation. By all the devils in hell, what did this mean? And why was Dustfinger's fire burning on the walls again?\n\nOrpheus hurried out into the passage and stopped outside the Adderhead's door. It was open, and the Silver Prince lay dead on his bed, his eyes open so wide that it wasn't difficult to guess what his last sight had been.\n\nInstinctively, Orpheus looked round before he went up to the bed, but of course the White Women had left long ago. They had what they'd been waiting so long for. But how? How had it happened?\n\n'Yes, you'll have to look for a new master, Four-Eyes!' Thumbling came out from behind the hangings of the bed and gave him a hawkish smile. Orpheus saw the ring that the Adderhead had used to seal death sentences on his lean hand. Thumbling was also wearing the Silver Prince's sword.\n\n'Let's hope the stink washes out!' he murmured to Orpheus in a confidential tone as he flung his master's heavy velvet coat over his shoulders. Then he strode away, down the corridor where Dustfinger's fire whispered along the walls.\n\nBut Orpheus stood there feeling the tears run down his nose. All was lost! He'd staked everything on the wrong card; he'd put up with the stench of the rotting prince, bowed low to him and wasted his time in this dark castle all for nothing! It wasn't he who had written the last song but Fenoglio, who else could it have been? And presumably the Bluejay featured as the hero again, while Orpheus was the villain. No, worse! He played the ridiculous part of the loser!\n\nHe spat in the Adderhead's rigid face and stumbled back to his room, where the useless words still lay on the table. Trembling with rage, he picked up the inkwell and poured its contents over what he had written.\n\n'Master, master! Have you heard?' The glass man, out of breath, was standing in the doorway. He was quick on his spidery legs, you had to give him that.\n\n'Yes, I know, the Adderhead's dead! What about the Bluejay?'\n\n'They're fighting! He and the Piper are fighting.'\n\n'Aha. Well, perhaps Silver-Nose may run him through yet. That would at least be something.' Orpheus snatched up his things and stuffed them into the fine leather bag he had brought from Ombra: pens, parchment, even the empty inkwell, the silver candelabrum that the Adderhead had given him, and of course the three books \u2013 Jacopo's, and the two about the Bluejay. He wasn't giving up yet, not he.\n\nHe picked up the glass man and put him in the pouch at his belt.\n\n'What are you going to do, master?' asked Ironstone anxiously.\n\n'We'll summon the Night-Mare and get out of this castle!'\n\n'The Night-Mare's gone, master! They say the Fire-Dancer sent it up in smoke!'\n\nDamn, damn, damn. Of course. That was why fire was burning on the walls again! Dustfinger had recognized the Night-Mare. He had seen who was breathing there in the heart of darkness! Well, Orpheus, you'll just have to read yourself another Night-Mare out of Jacopo's book, he thought. It wasn't all that difficult. Only this time he must give it a name that Dustfinger didn't know!\n\nHe listened for sounds in the corridor. Nothing. The rats had deserted the sinking ship. The Adderhead was alone in death. Orpheus went back into the bedchamber where his bloated corpse lay and stole what silver he could find, but Thumbling hadn't missed much. Then he hurried with the wailing glass man to the tunnel that had brought the Piper to the castle. Water was running down the stone walls as if the passage were sticking in the lake's moist flesh like a thorn.\n\nThe guards posted on the bank to keep watch on the way out were gone, but a few dead soldiers lay among the rocks. In the end they had clearly killed each other in their panic. Orpheus took a sword from one of the dead men, but threw it away again when he discovered how heavy it was. Instead he took a knife from another dead man's belt and put the soldier's coarse cloak over his shoulders. It might look ugly, but it was warm.\n\n'Where are we going, master?' faltered Ironstone. 'Back to Ombra?'\n\n'Why would we want to go back there?' was all that Orpheus replied, as he looked up at the dark slopes barring the way to the north.\n\nTo the north... he had no idea what to expect there. As with so much else in his book, Fenoglio had written nothing about it, and that was just why he would go north. The mountains looked far from inviting, with their snowy peaks and bleak slopes. But it was the best way to go now that Ombra, he supposed, would soon belong to Violante and the Bluejay. To hell with that wretched bookbinder, to the hottest hell the human mind can imagine, he thought. And may Dustfinger freeze in eternal ice until his treacherous fingers break off!\n\nOrpheus looked back at the bridge one last time before making for the trees. There went the Silver Prince's soldiers, running away. And what were they running away from? Two men and their white guardian angels. And their lord's bloated body.\n\n'Master, master, couldn't you put me on your shoulder?\n\nSuppose I fall out of this pouch?' the glass man wailed.\n\n'Then I'll need a new glass man!' Orpheus replied.\n\nNorthward into unwritten country. Yes, he thought as his feet, with difficulty, sought a way up the steep slope. Maybe that part of this world will obey my words."
            },
            {
                "title": "Leaving",
                "text": "\u2002'Tell me a story,' says Alba, leaning against me like cold cooked pasta.\n\n\u2002I put my arm around her. 'What kind of story?'\n\n\u2002'A good story. A story about you and Mama...'\n\n\u2002'Hmm. Okay. Once upon a time\u2014'\n\n\u2002'When was that?'\n\n\u2002'All times at once. A long time ago, and right now.'\n\n\u2014Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveller's Wife\n\nThe Piper's sword had cut deep into Resa's arm, but Brianna had learnt a good deal from her mother, even though she liked singing to Violante better than growing herbs in stony fields.\n\n'The arm will heal,' she said as she bound up the wound. But the bird would never leave Resa now. Silvertongue knew that as well as Dustfinger.\n\nThe Piper had done his best to send the Bluejay after his master to his death. He had wounded him in the shoulder and on the left arm, but in the end he alone had followed the Adderhead, and Dustfinger made the fire consume both his body and his master's.\n\nPale-faced, Violante stood at Silvertongue's side as the Adderhead and the Piper turned to ashes. She looked younger, as if she had shed a few years in the cell where her father had flung her \u2013 almost as forlorn as a child \u2013 yet when she turned away at last from the fire devouring her father, she put her arm around her son. Dustfinger had never seen her do a thing like that before. Everyone still disliked Jacopo, though he had saved them all. Even Silvertongue with his soft heart felt the same, though he was ashamed of it. Dustfinger saw it in his face.\n\nThere were still a dozen of Violante's child soldiers alive. They found them in the dungeon cells, but the Adderhead's soldiers had all gone, like the White Women. Only their abandoned tents still stood on the banks of the lake, with the black coach and a few riderless horses. Jacopo claimed that his great-grandfather's man-eating fish had come up from the lake and eaten some of the men as they ran for their lives over the bridge. Neither Silvertongue nor Violante believed him, but Dustfinger went out on to the bridge and found a few shimmering scales on the wet stones, as large as linden leaves. So they didn't take the bridge, but left the Castle in the Lake along the tunnel down which the Piper had come.\n\nIt was snowing when they stepped out into the open, and the castle disappeared behind them among the swirling snowflakes as if it were dissolving into the whiteness. The world around them was as still as if it had used up all words, as if all the tales there were to tell in this world had now been told. Dustfinger found Orpheus's tracks in the frozen mud of the bank, and Silvertongue looked at the trees into which they disappeared as if he could still hear Orpheus's voice inside him.\n\n'I wish he were dead,' he said quietly.\n\n'A clever wish,' replied Dustfinger. 'But I'm afraid it's too late to make it come true.' He had looked for Orpheus after the Piper was dead, but his room had been empty, like Thumbling's. The world looked so bright this cold morning. They were all so light at heart. But the darkness remained, and would go on telling its part of the story.\n\nThey caught some of the horses left behind by the Adderhead's men. Although weakened by his wounds, Silvertongue was in a hurry. At least let's save our daughters.\n\n'The Black Prince will have been looking after Meggie,' Dustfinger told him, but the anxiety was still on his face as they rode further and further south.\n\nThey were a silent company, all caught up in their own thoughts and memories. Only Jacopo sometimes raised his clear voice, as demanding as ever. 'I'm hungry.' 'I'm thirsty.' 'When will we be there?' 'Do you think the Milksop has killed the children and the robbers?' His mother always answered him, although often abstractedly. The Castle in the Lake had spun a bond between them out of shared fear and dark memories, and perhaps the strongest strand of it was the fact that Jacopo had done what his mother intended to do when she rode to the castle. The Adderhead was dead. But Dustfinger felt sure that, all the same, Violante would feel her father behind her like a shadow all her life \u2013 and very likely Her Ugliness knew it herself by now.\n\nSilvertongue took the Bluejay away with him too. It seemed as if the two of them were riding side by side, and not for the first time Dustfinger wondered whether they were only two sides of the same man. Whatever the answer was, the bookbinder loved this world as much as the robber did.\n\nOn the first night, when they stopped to rest under a tree with furry yellow catkins falling from its bare branches, the swift came back, although Resa had thrown the last of the seeds into the lake. She changed shape in her sleep and flew up into the flowering branches, where moonlight painted her plumage silver. When Dustfinger saw her sitting there he woke Silvertongue, and they waited under the tree together until the swift flew down again at dawn and turned back into a woman there between them.\n\n'What will become of the child?' she asked, full of dread.\n\n'It will dream of flying,' Silvertongue replied. Just as the bookbinder dreamt of the robber, and the robber of the bookbinder, and the Fire-Dancer dreamt of the flames and the minstrel woman who could dance like them. Perhaps, after all, this world was made of dreams, and an old man had merely found the words for them.\n\nResa wept when they came to the cave and found it empty, but Dustfinger discovered the Strong Man's sign outside the entrance, drawn on the rocks in soot, and buried underneath it was a message obviously left by Doria for his big brother. Dustfinger had heard of the tree with the nests in it that Doria described, but he had never seen it with his own eyes.\n\nIt took them two days to find the tree, and Dustfinger was the first to see the giant. He took Silvertongue's reins, and Resa put her hand to her mouth in alarm. But Violante stared at the giant like an enchanted child.\n\nHe was holding Roxane in his hand as if she too were a bird. Brianna went pale at the sight of her mother between those mighty fingers, but Dustfinger dismounted and went up to the giant.\n\nThe Black Prince was standing between the giant's vast legs, with the bear beside him. He was limping as he went to meet Dustfinger, but he looked happier than he had for a long time.\n\n'Where's Meggie?' asked Silvertongue as the Prince hugged him, and Battista pointed up into the tree. Dustfinger had never seen such a tree before, not even in the wild heart of the Wayless Wood, and he wanted to climb up to the nests at once and see the branches covered with frost-flowers where the women and children perched like birds.\n\nMeggie's voice called her father's name, and Silvertongue went to meet her as she let herself down the trunk on a rope, as naturally as if she had always lived in the trees. But Dustfinger turned and looked up at Roxane. She whispered something to the giant, who put her down on the ground as carefully as if he believed she was made of glass. Roxane. He vowed never to forget her name again. He would ask the fire to write its letters in his heart so that not even the White Women could wash it away. Roxane. Dustfinger held her in his arms, and the giant looked down at them with eyes that seemed to reflect all the colours in the world.\n\n'Look around,' Roxane whispered to him, and Dustfinger saw Silvertongue embracing his daughter and wiping the tears off her face. He saw the bookworm woman running to Resa \u2013 how in the name of all the fairies did she come to be here? \u2013 Tullio burying his furry face in Violante's skirt, the Strong Man almost smothering Silvertongue in his bear hug... and...\n\nFarid.\n\nHe stood there digging his toes into the newly fallen snow. He still went barefoot, and surely he'd grown taller?\n\nDustfinger went up to him. 'I see you've taken good care of Roxane,' he said. 'Did the fire obey you while I was gone?'\n\n'It always obeys me!' Yes, he had grown older. 'I fought Sootbird.'\n\n'Imagine that!'\n\n'My fire ate his fire.'\n\n'Did it indeed?'\n\n'Yes! I climbed up on the giant and made fire rain down on Sootbird. And then the giant broke his neck.'\n\nDustfinger couldn't help smiling, and Farid returned his smile. 'Do you... do you have to go away again?' He looked as anxious as if he feared the White Women were already waiting.\n\n'No,' said Dustfinger, smiling again. 'No, not for a while, I think.'\n\nFarid. He'd ask the fire to write that name in his heart as well. Roxane. Brianna. Farid. And Gwin, of course."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ombra",
                "text": "\u2003What if this road, that has held no surprises\n\n\u2003These many years, decided not to go\n\n\u2003Home after all; what if it could turn\n\n\u2003Left or right with no more ado\n\n\u2003Than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin\n\n\u2003Were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,\n\n\u2003that is shaken and rolled out, and takes\n\n\u2003a new shape from the contours beneath?\n\n\u2003And if it chose to lay itself down\n\n\u2003In a new way; around a blind corner,\n\n\u2003across hills you must climb without knowing\n\n\u2003what's on the other side; who would not hanker\n\n\u2003to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know\n\n\u2003a story's end, or where a road will go.\n\n\u2014Sheenagh Pugh, What If This Road\n\nWhen the Black Prince took the children back to Ombra snow lay on the battlements above the city wall, but the women threw flowers they had made out of scraps of fabric cut from old clothes. The lion emblem waved from the city towers again, but now his paw was laid on a book with blank pages, and his mane was made of fire. The Milksop had gone. He had fled from the giant, not to Ombra, but straight to the Castle of Night and his sister's arms, and Violante had returned to take possession of the city and prepare it for the return of its children.\n\nMeggie was standing with Elinor, Darius and Fenoglio in the square outside the castle gates as the mothers hugged their sons and daughters, and Violante, speaking from the battlements, thanked the Black Prince and the Bluejay for saving them.\n\n'You know what, Meggie?' Fenoglio whispered to her, as Violante had provisions from the castle kitchens distributed to the women. 'Maybe Her Ugliness will fall in love with the Black Prince some day. After all, he was the Bluejay before your father took the part, and Violante was more in love with the role than the man anyway!'\n\nOh, Fenoglio! He was just the same as ever. Although the giant had gone back to his mountains long ago, he had completely restored the old man's self-confidence.\n\nThe Bluejay had not come to Ombra. Mo and Resa had stayed behind at the farm where they had once lived. 'Let the Bluejay go back to where he came from,' he had told the Prince. 'Into the strolling players' songs.' They were singing them everywhere already: how the Jay and the Fire-Dancer, all by themselves, had defeated the Adderhead and the Piper with all their men...\n\n'Please, Battista,' Mo had said, 'why don't you, at least, write a song telling the true story? About the people who helped the Jay and the Fire-Dancer. About the swift \u2013 and the boy!'\n\nBattista had promised Mo to write a song like that, but Fenoglio only shook his head. 'No one will sing it, Meggie. People don't like their heroes to need help, particularly not from women and children.'\n\nNo doubt he was right. Perhaps that meant Violante would have a hard time on the throne of Ombra, although all its people were cheering her today. Jacopo stood beside his mother. He looked more like a small copy of his father every day, but all the same he still reminded Meggie even more of his sinister grandfather. She shuddered to think how ready Jacopo had been to deliver the Adderhead up to Death \u2013 even though that had been the saving of Mo.\n\nAnother widow now ruled the country on the far side of the forest, and she too had a son and was taking care of the throne for him. Meggie knew that Violante expected war, but no one wanted to think of that today. This day belonged to the children who had come home. Not one of them was missing, and the strolling players sang about Farid's fire, the tree full of nests, and the giant who had so mysteriously come out of the mountains at just the right moment.\n\n'I'll miss him,' Elinor had whispered as he disappeared among the trees, and Meggie felt the same. She would never forget how the Inkworld was reflected on his skin, or how light-footed he was when he strode away, so gentle in such a big body.\n\n'Meggie!' Farid made his way through the women and children. 'Where's Silvertongue?'\n\n'With my mother,' she replied \u2013 and was surprised to find that her heart beat no faster than usual at the sight of him. When had that changed?\n\nFarid frowned. 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'and Dustfinger's with his minstrel woman again. He kisses her so often you might think her lips tasted of honey.'\n\nOh dear. Farid was still jealous of Roxane.\n\n'I think I'll go away for a while,' he said.\n\n'Go away? Where to?'\n\nBehind Meggie, Elinor and Fenoglio began arguing over something Elinor didn't like about the look of the castle. Those two loved arguing with each other, and they had plenty of opportunity for arguments because they were neighbours now. The bag in which Elinor had packed all kinds of things that might come in useful in the Inkworld, including her silver cutlery, was still standing in her house in the other world ('Well, I was very excited, it's easy to forget such things then!'), but fortunately she had been wearing the Loredan family jewels when Darius read them both over, and Rosenquartz had sold them for her so cleverly ('Meggie, you've no idea what a shrewd businessman that glass man is!') that now she was the proud possessor of a house in the street where Minerva lived.\n\n'Where to?' Farid made a fiery flower grow between his fingers and placed it on Meggie's dress. 'Oh, I think I'll just stroll from village to village the way Dustfinger used to.'\n\nMeggie looked at the burning flower. The flames faded like real petals, and only a tiny spot of ash was left on her dress. Farid. His mere name used to quicken her pulse, but now she hardly listened as he told her about his plans, all the marketplaces where he would put on a show, the mountain villages, the far side of the Wayless Wood. Her heart leapt only when she suddenly saw the Strong Man standing there with the women. A few of the children had climbed on to his shoulders, just as they often used to in the cave, but she couldn't see the face she was looking for beside him. Disappointed, she let her eyes wander on, and blushed when Doria was suddenly standing there in front of her. Farid abruptly fell silent, and looked at the other boy in the same way as he so often looked at Roxane.\n\nThe scar on Doria's forehead was as long as Meggie's middle finger. 'A blow with a spiked mace, not particularly well aimed,' Roxane had said. 'Head wounds bleed a lot, so they probably thought he was dead.' Roxane had nursed him for many nights on end, but Fenoglio's opinion was still that Doria was alive thanks only to the story he had written long ago about the boy's future. 'And anyway, even if you want to believe it was Roxane who made him better, then who made up Roxane, may I ask?' He was certainly his old self again.\n\n'Doria! How are you?' Meggie involuntarily put out her hand and caressed the scar on his forehead. Farid gave her a strange look.\n\n'Fine. My head's as good as new.' Doria brought something out from behind his back. 'Is this what they're like?'\n\nMeggie stared at the tiny wooden aeroplane he had made.\n\n'That's how you described them, isn't it? The flying machines.'\n\n'But you were unconscious!'\n\nHe smiled and put his hand to his head. 'The words are in here, all the same. But I don't know how the music thing is supposed to work. You know, the little box that plays music.'\n\nMeggie had to smile. 'Oh yes, a radio. That wouldn't be any good here. I don't know just how to explain it to you...'\n\nFarid was still looking at her. Then he abruptly took her hand. 'Excuse us,' he told Doria, and led Meggie into the nearest house entrance with him. 'Does Silvertongue know how you look at him?'\n\n'Look at who?'\n\n'Who!' He passed his finger over his forehead as if tracing Doria's scar. 'Listen,' he said, stroking her hair back. 'Why don't you come with me? We could go from village to village together. The way we did when we and Dustfinger were following your mother and father. Do you remember?'\n\nHow could he ask that?\n\nMeggie looked over her shoulder. Doria was standing beside Fenoglio and Elinor. Fenoglio was looking at the aeroplane.\n\n'I'm sorry, Farid,' she said, gently removing his hand from her shoulder. 'But I don't want to leave.'\n\n'Why not?' He tried to kiss her, but Meggie turned her face away. Even though she felt tears coming to her eyes. Do you remember?\n\n'I wish you luck,' she said, kissing him on the cheek. He still had the most beautiful eyes of any boy she'd ever seen. But now her heart beat so much faster for someone else."
            },
            {
                "title": "Later",
                "text": "Almost five months later a baby will be born at the lonely farm where the Black Prince once hid the Bluejay. It will be a boy, dark-haired like his father, but with his mother's and sister's eyes. He will think that every wood is full of fairies, that a glass man sleeps on every table \u2013 so long as there's some parchment on it \u2013 that books are written by hand, and the most famous of illuminators paints with his left hand because his right hand is made of leather. He will think that strolling players breathe fire and perform comic plays in every marketplace, that women always wear long dresses, and soldiers stand at every city gate.\n\nAnd he will have an aunt called Elinor who tells him there's a world which is not like this one. A world with neither fairies nor glass men, but with animals who carry their young in a pouch in front of their bellies, and birds with wings that beat so fast it sounds like the humming of a bumblebee, with carriages that drive along without any horses, and pictures that move of their own accord. Elinor will tell him how, long ago, a horrible man called Orpheus brought his parents out of that world and into this one by magic, and how this Orpheus finally had to flee from his father and the Fire-Dancer to the northern mountains, where it's to be hoped he froze to death. She will tell him that even the most powerful men don't carry swords in the other world, but there are much, much more terrible weapons there. (His father owns a very fine sword, kept wrapped in a cloth in his workshop. He hides it from the child, but sometimes the boy will secretly unwrap it and runs his fingers over the shiny blade.) Elinor will tell him amazing things about that other world. She will even claim that the people there have built coaches that can fly, but he doesn't really believe that, although Doria has made wings for his sister, and Meggie really did fly from the city wall to the river wearing them. The boy laughed at her, all the same, for he knows more about flying than Meggie. That's because he sometimes grows wings at night, and he and his mother fly up into the trees. But perhaps he's just dreaming it. He dreams it almost every night, but he'd like to see the flying coaches all the same, and the animals with pouches, the moving pictures, and the house that Elinor is always talking about. A house full of books not written by any hand, and the books are sad, because they're waiting for Elinor.\n\n'Some day we'll go and visit them together,' Elinor often says, and Darius nods. Darius can tell wonderful stories too, about flying carpets and genies in bottles. 'Some day the three of us will go back, and then I'll show you all these things.'\n\nAnd the boy runs to the workshop where his father is making leather clothes for books that are often illustrated with pictures painted by the famous Balbulus himself, and says, 'Mo!' He always calls his father Mo, he doesn't know why, perhaps because that's what his sister calls him. 'When are we going to the other world, the one you came from?'\n\nAnd his father puts him on his lap and runs his fingers through his dark hair, and says, like Elinor, 'I'm sure we will some day. But we'd need words for that, exactly the right words, because only the right words unlock the doors between worlds, and the only person who could write them for us is a lazy old man. What's more, I'm afraid he's getting more forgetful every day.'\n\nThen he tells him about the Black Prince and his bear, the giants that they'll go and see someday, and the new tricks the Fire-Dancer has taught the flames. And the boy will see, in his father's eyes, that he is very happy and not at all homesick for the other world. Any more than his sister is. Or his mother.\n\nSo the boy will think that perhaps he'll have to go alone one day, if he wants to see that world. And he'll have to find out which old man his father means, because there are several in Ombra. Maybe he means the one who has two glass men and writes songs for the strolling players and for Violante whom everyone calls Her Kindliness, and who is much better liked than her son. Battista calls this old man Inkweaver, and Meggie sometimes goes to see him. Maybe he'll go with her next time, so that he can ask him for the words that open doors. Because it must be exciting in that other world, much more exciting than in his own..."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Libriomancer",
        "author": "Jim C. Hines",
        "genres": [
            "urban fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "magic",
            "Magic Ex Libris"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Some people would say it's a bad idea to bring a fire-spider into a public library. Those people would probably be right, but it was better than leaving him alone in the house for nine hours straight. The one time I tried, Smudge had expressed his displeasure by burning through the screen that covered his tank, burrowing into my laundry basket, and setting two weeks' worth of clothes ablaze.\n\nThe fire department had arrived in time to keep the whole place from burning. I remembered digging through the drenched, dripping mess my bedroom had become until I found Smudge huddled in a corner. With steam rising from his body, he had raced onto my shoulder and clung there as if terrified I was going to abandon him again. And then he bit my ear.\n\nThe four-inch spider was a memento of what I had left behind, one last piece of that other life. If magic were alcohol, Smudge would be both sobriety medallion and the one whiskey bottle I kept around as a reminder.\n\nWhile at work, he stayed in a steel birdcage behind my desk, safely out of reach of small children. More importantly, it kept the small children safely out of Smudge's reach.\n\nAccording to a series of tests I had run with an infrared thermometer, Smudge's flames could reach temperatures in excess of thirteen hundred degrees, roughly the same as your average Bunsen burner. I suspected he could get hotter, but since he only burst into flame when scared or threatened, it seemed cruel to pursue that particular research project.\n\nNot to mention the fact that I was officially forbidden from doing magical research. My duties these days were much more straightforward.\n\nI sighed and picked up the old bar code scanner. Age had yellowed the plastic grip, and the cord protruding from the handle was heavily reinforced with electrical tape. For the third time that afternoon, I played the red beam over the back of the latest Charlaine Harris novel.\n\nThe scanner's LED flashed green, and the computer emitted a cheerful beep as the screen populated with what should have been the details of Harris' fantasy mystery, a book our system insisted was actually The Joy of Pickling II, by Charlotte F. Pennyworth.\n\nI tossed the useless scanner aside, cleared the record, and began manually entering the book's information into the Copper River Library database. Without the scanner, it took me a half hour to input the rest of the new books into the system.\n\nWhen I finished the stack, I glanced around the library. Mrs. Trembath was two-finger typing at one of the public computer terminals, probably forwarding more inspirational cat photos to her grandchildren. Karen Beauchamp was huddled in a beanbag chair in the children's section, reading The Color Purple.\n\nKaren's parents would be ticked to know she was reading books they hadn't personally approved. I made a mental note to save a nice, innocuous dust jacket Karen could wrap around the cover.\n\nAside from them, the library was empty. Traffic had been slow all afternoon, as people took advantage of the June sunshine.\n\nI removed a fire opal pendant and set the orange stone on the center of the keyboard. The screen flickered, and a new window popped up on the screen. A simple circular logo showed an open book etched onto a medieval shield above the letters DZP.\n\nThis database had nothing to do with the Copper River Library. Having cataloged the new books for one library, it was time to do it all over again. I began with a book called Heart of Stone, a paranormal romance about a half-gorgon detective who got involved with a sexy mafia hit man. The story was nothing unusual, but the hit man wore enchanted sunglasses that allowed him to see magic and protected him from the detective's gaze. Those could be useful in the field. I entered the description and page numbers. The author also hinted that the half-gorgon's tears had aphrodisiac properties, and were potentially addictive. Something to watch for when the sequels came out.\n\nOne by one, I worked my way through the rest of the books. Copper River was a small town, but we had the best science fiction and fantasy collection in the entire U.P. Not that Michigan's Upper Peninsula was the most populous place, but I'd match our catalog against any library in the state. I had read every one of the three thousand titles that strained the aging wooden shelves of our SF/F section.\n\nMost of those books had been purchased through a grant from the Johannes Porter Institute for Literacy, one of the cover corporations for Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re. That grant paid most of my salary and kept the town well-stocked in speculative fiction. All I had to do to keep it was keep cataloging new books for the Porters.\n\nRather, that was all I was permitted to do.\n\n\"Hey, Mister V.\" Karen had lowered her book. \"Is something wrong with Smudge?\"\n\nI turned around just as a piece of the pea-sized obsidian gravel that lined the bottom of Smudge's cage dropped to the tile floor. Smudge was pacing quick circles, and tendrils of smoke had begun to rise from his back.\n\nI jumped to my feet and grabbed my worn canvas backpack from beneath the desk. Doing my best to hide the cage with my body, I pulled out a bag of Jelly Bellies and dropped one in beside the ceramic water dish nested in the gravel. \"What's the matter, partner?\"\n\nSmudge ignored me and the candy both. Not good.\n\nMrs. Trembath sniffed the air. \"Is something burning?\"\n\nI searched the library, trying to figure out who or what was making Smudge nervous. Neither Karen nor Mrs. Trembath struck me as dangerous, but I trusted Smudge's judgment over my own. His warnings had saved my life three times. Four if you counted that mess with the rabid jackalope. \"Furnace trouble. I'm sorry, but I'll need to close the library until I can get someone in here to check it out.\"\n\nKaren was leaning halfway over the desk, searching for the source of the smoke. I grabbed a paperback and gently swatted her back. \"That means you, too.\"\n\n\"I wish my parents would let me have a tarantula,\" she grumbled as I escorted her toward the door. \"If you ever need someone to watch him for you\u2014\"\n\n\"You'll be the first person I call.\" I thought back to the last time Karen's family had been here and quickly added, \"if you promise not to use him to terrorize your little brother.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't,\" she said, eyes full of twelve-year-old mischief. \"But if Smudge happened to escape into the bathroom while Bryan was brushing his teeth...\"\n\n\"Out.\" I gave her one final, playful thwap with the book. Unfortunately, while I was shooing Karen out the door, Mrs. Trembath had limped over to the desk.\n\nShe pointed her aluminum cane at Smudge's cage. \"Isaac, your poor spider's on fire!\"\n\n\"He's not\u2014\" Aw, crap. Red flames had begun to ripple over Smudge's back. I hurried over and took Mrs. Trembath's arm, but it's hard to rush an eighty-three-year-old grandmother. I managed to get her moving toward the door, then returned to check on Smudge.\n\nThat was a mistake. Mrs. Trembath came back moments later. She had left her cane by the door, and her wrinkled face was taut with determination as she raised trembling arms and pointed a red fire extinguisher at Smudge's cage.\n\n\"No!\" I stepped in front of her as frigid air whooshed from the extinguisher's nozzle like an icy jet engine. It shouldn't hurt our books, but I had no idea what it would do to a fire-spider. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut. I heard books and paperwork flying behind me. The instant the stream died, I reached out blindly to yank the extinguisher away.\n\nMy eyes watered. I had to stop myself from rubbing them, which would only make the irritation worse. White powder covered my shirt and hands.\n\n\"He's still burning!\"\n\nI glanced at Smudge. As the chemicals from the fire extinguisher dispersed, Smudge's flames flared even higher, taking on an orange tinge. All eight eyes glared up at Mrs. Trembath with what I could only describe as pure arachnid loathing.\n\nMrs. Trembath returned to the doorway to fetch her cane, which she raised in both hands like a samurai sword. \"At least put the poor thing out of his misery.\"\n\n\"He's not burning. He's... bioluminescent.\" I doubted Mrs. Trembath weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she had raised five kids, and could probably take on an entire wolf pack through sheer cussedness. Unfortunately, the last time I had seen Smudge this spooked, the threat had been far worse than wolves.\n\n\"Isaac Vainio, you get out of my way and let me help that poor creature.\"\n\nMagic would have ended our standoff, but I was already pushing things by keeping Smudge. Even the smallest spell could get me hauled down to Illinois to explain myself to Nicola Pallas, the Regional Master of the Porters.\n\nInstead, I folded my arms and said, \"Smudge is fine, but I really need to take care of the furnace situation.\"\n\n\"He's not fine, he's\u2014\"\n\n\"Are you questioning my authority?\" I widened my eyes, hamming it up as much as possible. In a faux-military voice, I asked, \"Are you aware that section six point two of the Copper River Library user agreement gives me the authority to revoke your library card, including Internet privileges?\"\n\nShe lowered her cane. \"You wouldn't dare.\"\n\nI leaned closer and whispered, \"A librarian's gotta do what a librarian's gotta do.\"\n\nWe stared at one another for about five seconds before she cracked. With an amused chuckle, she jabbed a finger into my chest. \"So why haven't I ever seen him glow before?\"\n\n\"Diet,\" I said quickly. \"He escaped last night and got outside. He must have gobbled down at least a dozen fireflies before I caught him.\" I braced myself, praying she didn't know enough about biochemistry to see through my rather weak excuse.\n\nShe backed down. \"Maybe if you gave him real food instead of candy, he wouldn't have to sneak out on his own.\"\n\n\"He gets crickets at home.\" I glanced around nervously as I walked her to the door. I still didn't know what had set Smudge off, and the sooner I got Mrs. Trembath out of here, the safer she'd be.\n\n\"See you tomorrow afternoon?\"\n\n\"I hope so.\" Through the windows, I watched her make her way to the old blue SUV she affectionately referred to as the Rusty Hippo. As she pulled away, I spotted three people approaching the library. They were dressed far too warmly for June, even in the U.P. They kept their heads down and their hands in their pockets.\n\nI locked the door, though if Smudge was right, that probably wouldn't help. The trio stopped to study the address of the post office across the street. One reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Her hand glittered like a disco ball in the afternoon sun as she scanned the buildings. She tugged her sleeve over her hand a second later, but that one glimpse was enough to identify them as Sanguinarius Meyerii, informally known as sparklers.\n\nI returned to the desk. \"You know, you'd be a lot more helpful if you could talk.\"\n\nSmudge continued running laps, flames flickering like tiny orange banners on his back. He was never wrong about danger, but he couldn't tell you if that danger was a meteorite streaking toward the roof or an amorous moose running amok in the parking lot.\n\nOr a trio of vampires.\n\nI opened the cage door. Smudge scrambled out and immediately disappeared beneath the desk. \"Careful,\" I said. \"If you burn this place down, I'm out of a job.\"\n\nFamiliar adrenaline pounded through my limbs as I searched through the newly cataloged books from the cart. I might be forbidden from using magic in ordinary circumstances, but this definitely qualified as extraordinary. I grabbed Ann Crispin's latest book, Vulcan's Mirror, an old-school space adventure set in a mirror universe, complete with evil goatees for everyone.\n\nI didn't have an eidetic memory, but training and natural aptitude had put me pretty darn close. I flipped to chapter eight and skimmed to the scene where a lizardlike assassin was creeping down the corridor of his alien vessel, disruptor pistol in hand.\n\nThe author had described the scene in vivid detail: the hard, sharp-cornered metal of the weapon's grip, the low heat on the assassin's palm from the power source, the metallic blue sheen of the barrel as he sighted at a red-shirted security guard... detail after detail, each one painting the scene in the reader's mind. Making it real.\n\nLibriomancy was in many ways a lazy man's magic. There were no wands, no fancy spells, no ancient incantations. No hand-waving or runes. Nothing but the words on the page, the collective belief of the readers, and the libriomancer's love of the story.\n\nLove was the key to accessing that belief and power. And this series had been one of my favorites growing up.\n\nMy fingers traced the words, feeling the roughness of the paper, the curve of the page near the spine. My mouth was dry, and my heart pounded like I was a kid about to kiss a girl for the first time.\n\nI thought back to the days when I had gone hunting with my brother and father. The slow, steady breathing as I lined up the sights of my rifle. Take a deep breath, exhale, and slowly squeeze the trigger.\n\nMy fingers slipped through the pages into another universe. I felt the hot, humid air of the ship on my skin. I flexed my hand, watching the movement of fingers that appeared to end at the knuckles.\n\nI reached deeper until I touched the dry, scaly skin of the killer's arm. There was no true life in that alien flesh. This was merely the manifestation of belief. Real or not, the assassin had a strong grip, and I had to tug and twist to free the weapon from his hand.\n\nThe disruptor was uncomfortably hot to the touch. It was large enough that I had to turn it sideways so it wouldn't catch on the edges of the book. As I withdrew my hand, magic and story became real. I now clutched a heavy blue-steel pistol with a thick grip and a barrel as long as my forearm. I slipped my finger through a trigger guard designed for digits the size of kielbasa and hid the weapon behind my back.\n\nThe library door slammed open, the oak frame splintering like balsa. Cold fear splashed over the excitement and wonder of magic, urging fight or flight.\n\nNeither option was likely to work against sparklers.\n\nI leaned against the desk, doing my best to appear unworried. \"I'm sorry, the library's closed. Furnace trouble. If you could come back in the morning\u2014\"\n\n\"Isaac Vainio?\"\n\nSo much for the faint hope that they weren't after me. The speaker was a teenaged girl, maybe fifteen years old. That was the age she had been turned, at any rate. She wore a bright orange hoodie and too much makeup. Short black hair poked from beneath her hood, and a red flannel scarf looped around her neck. An old backpack hung from her left shoulder. Her dull, red-black eyes never left mine.\n\nHer companions were a burly brown-skinned man in flannel and a pale, middle-aged woman in an ankle-length raincoat. The raincoat was a bright floral pattern utterly at odds with the rage and hunger in her eyes. The man wore a Green Bay Packers cap, and looked like he had been custom carved to be a professional ass-kicker.\n\n\"That's me,\" I said, tapping the plastic badge clipped to my shirt pocket. White powder from the fire extinguisher mostly hid my slack-jawed photo. \"What can I help you with?\"\n\n\"Information and payback.\" She pushed back her hood and craned her head, as if searching to make sure I was alone. Her lips curled, revealing crooked teeth, and I wondered briefly if braces would have any effect on vampires. \"You should be more careful in your choice of friends, Isaac.\"\n\nI studied the trio more closely. I was certain I had never seen them before. Not locals, then. Relatively young, since Meyerii had only begun popping up back in 2005.\n\nI had read pretty much every vampire book ever written in English, German, Spanish, and French. In recent years, authors had whittled away many of the more monstrous vampiric traits. More to the point, they had eliminated many weaknesses as well. Going after Meyerii with sunlight, garlic, or stakes to the heart was about as useful as trying to tickle them to death.\n\nIt took every bit of focus to shut out the voice in my head whispering that I was about to die. I reached instead for anger. \"Two years, three months, and sixteen days.\"\n\nRed eyes narrowed. \"Take him!\"\n\nThe middle-aged woman snarled. Her coat flapped sharply as she moved, too quickly for me to see. Her hands clamped around my biceps and hauled me off the ground.\n\n\"That's how long it's been since I last used magic.\" My words were hoarse, squeezed out through fear and adrenaline. I jabbed the barrel of the gun into her side and pulled the trigger.\n\nGreen energy burned through her midsection. She dropped me, eyes wide with panic, and grabbed the hole with both hands as if trying to hold herself together. It took less than a second for the energy to devour her body, leaving nothing but a faint ozone smell in the air.\n\nI pointed at the girl, hoping they would be so stunned by the loss of their companion that I could get off another shot. No such luck. The disruptor was ripped from my hand, and something the approximate size and power of a pickup truck flung me across the room. I slammed into the shelves and crumpled to the ground, paperbacks showering down around me.\n\nGreen Bay had tossed me into the romance section. Not much I could use here, even if the room hadn't been spinning like a bad carnival ride, preventing me from focusing. If I squinted, I might have been able to pull a claymore from one of the Scottish Highland romances, but that would do precisely nothing against these two. Where was a good invisibility cloak when you really needed it?\n\nGreen Bay twisted his hand into my shirt and lifted me one-handed, pinning me against the shelves hard enough to compress my rib cage.\n\n\"If he so much as looks at another book, rip off his arms.\" The girl walked over and plucked the disruptor from her companion's hand. She stabbed the barrel into my side. The metal was hot enough to burn.\n\n\"If you want a library card, you'll have to fill out one of the yellow forms,\" I said. Good old banter, the last refuge against terror and imminent death.\n\nHer face was dry and filthy. She was several inches shorter than me, but the feral hunger in those red eyes made her seem bigger. \"You should have left us alone, Isaac.\"\n\nI tasted blood. I must have bitten my cheek when I hit the shelves. I swallowed, hoping to minimize the scent. \"You realize you broke down my door, right?\"\n\nHer voice tickled the inside of my skull, like millipedes crawling through my cerebral cortex. \"Tell me who among the Porters has been hunting us.\"\n\n\"I'm retired from the field.\" Even after more than two years, the words stung. \"And I never hunted vampires. We leave it to you to police your own kind. The automatons take care of any rogues your masters can't handle.\"\n\nHer voice grew soft, and the millipedes dug deeper. Most Meyerii didn't have psychic powers. This could be another damn hybrid. One of these days, vampiric experiments in transfusion were going to create something they couldn't handle.\n\n\"Don't lie to me, Isaac. You will give me their names.\"\n\n\"I'm a libriomancer. Mind tricks don't work on me. Only money.\" When all else fails, fall back on movie quotes.\n\n\"Dammit!\" She spun away.\n\n\"You're new to the vampire thing, right?\" I asked, doing my best to control my breathing. \"You probably weren't around the last time your kind went toe-to-toe with the Porters. It wasn't pretty. Twenty-three rogue vampires marching down the streets of New Orleans versus one old mechanical warrior. All it took was a single automaton to reduce those vampires to twenty-three piles of dust and ash.\" I might have been a mere cataloger, but I was still a member of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re. Killing a Porter was a death sentence. They had to know that.\n\nShe didn't look at me, but I could feel the other one shifting nervously. \"I have no idea what's going on, but if I was involved, do you really think I'd let you march through my front door? That I'd allow myself to be captured so easily? That I'd be wearing a name tag?\"\n\nHer attention dropped to the plastic badge. She wiped a thumb through the powder and stared at the washed-out photo that made me look a little vampiric myself.\n\nIf I hadn't been two years out of practice, I would have had something better than a ray gun waiting for them. Back in the days of Dracula, humans had a fighting chance against the undead. But the more they evolved from monsters into angsty, sexy superheroes, the more the odds of a human being surviving an encounter with an angry vampire shrank to nothing.\n\n\"He's got a point, Mel.\" Green Bay's grip loosened ever so slightly. \"He doesn't look like much. He's nothing but a librarian.\"\n\n\"What do you mean: nothing but a\u2014\"\n\nHe thumped me against the shelf without even blinking.\n\n\"He's lying,\" Mel insisted.\n\n\"I'm an awful liar,\" I said quickly. \"Ask anyone.\"\n\nMel stepped back, setting the disruptor on the desk. \"We'll have a reader sift through his thoughts.\"\n\nReader, slang for the different species of vampire who could absorb the thoughts and experiences of their victims. Maybe I had a few hours of life left after all. They'd have to transport me back to whatever nest they had come from\u2014probably Detroit or Green Bay. If I could get my hands on another book, or even just make a quick phone call\u2014\n\nMel opened her backpack and pulled out a large Tupperware container and a butterfly knife. \"Drain him. His blood will give the reader the memories she needs.\"\n\n\"Hold on, you're supposed to give the prisoner time to bargain! It's traditional. I'm a libriomancer, remember? You want money? Take me to the history section and I'll give you the Hope Diamond.\" I turned my attention to Green Bay. \"Or how about a Packers Super Bowl ring? Give me two minutes in the sports section, and it's all yours.\"\n\nHe followed my gaze, but Mel punched him in the shoulder.\n\n\"What's he going to do?\" he asked. \"Attack us with a football?\"\n\n\"We are not giving the libriomancer more books.\" Mel jabbed her black-polished nail into Green Bay's shoulder, punctuating every word.\n\nA lazy knock on the broken doorframe made both vampires whirl.\n\n\"Get out of here!\" I shouted, trying to warn whoever it was. I grabbed Green Bay's fingers, trying to break his grip, but it was like trying to bend steel. Kicking him in the stomach was equally futile.\n\n\"The library's closed,\" snapped Mel.\n\nFootsteps crunched on broken wood and glass. When I saw who had entered, my body went limp with relief.\n\nLena Greenwood was the least imposing heroine you'd ever see. She was several inches shorter than me, heavyset but graceful as a dancer. I didn't know her actual age, but she appeared to be in her early twenties, and was about as intimidating as a stuffed bear. A damned sexy bear, but not someone you'd expect to go toe-to-toe with your average monster.\n\nWisps of loose black hair framed dark eyes, a round face, and a cheerful smile, as if she had walked in on a surprise party. She wore a motorcycle jacket of black leather, the kind with slip-in plastic shields to protect the shoulders, elbows, and back. The T-shirt she wore beneath was filthy, as were her jeans and the red high-top sneakers on her feet. She carried a pair of bokken: curved wooden practice swords that matched the brown shade of her skin.\n\n\"Vampires?\" she asked.\n\nI managed a nod. \"They didn't want to pay their late fees.\"\n\n\"I thought you might be joining us,\" Mel snarled. To her companion, she snapped, \"Make sure she's alone.\"\n\nGreen Bay released my shoulders and blurred across the library like the Flash. I didn't see what happened next, being busy falling down and gasping in pain, but when I looked over, the vampire was pinned to the wall like an insect with one of Lena's bokken protruding from his chest.\n\nHe snarled and grabbed the hilt, trying to pull himself free. The stake-through-the-heart bit didn't work on Meyerii, but he appeared unable to break or remove Lena's weapon.\n\n\"What did you do to him?\" Mel demanded.\n\nHis struggles grew more frantic as Lena turned her back on him and strode toward us. \"The wood is alive,\" she said softly. \"It put out roots.\"\n\nI looked at Mel. \"You still have time to run away.\"\n\nMel rushed for the disruptor. Lena lunged, swinging her remaining bokken two-handed in an overhead smash that struck the weapon before Mel could pull the trigger. Green sparks spat from the barrel, but nothing more. Mel flung the disruptor away and seized my throat, her nails piercing my skin. \"I'll kill him!\"\n\nLena rested the tip of her bokken on the floor, folding both hands over the hilt. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her lower lip was swollen. \"I'm tempted to let you. What's the matter with you, Isaac? Letting a pair of vampires get the drop on you like this?\"\n\n\"There were three,\" I corrected, my voice strained from the pressure on my windpipe. \"I got one.\"\n\n\"With your toy gun? The gun they promptly took away from you?\" She shook her head. \"An entire library, and that was the best you could do? How did you ever survive in the field?\"\n\n\"They kicked me out of the field, remember? Besides, I'm out of practice.\" But she was right. There were shields that would have protected me from the vampires' attacks, mind-control rays, and so much more.\n\n\"Shut up, both of you.\" Mel's gaze flicked to her partner, who continued to writhe and struggle. I imagined tiny roots punching through his body, anchoring him to the wall, and shuddered.\n\nMovement overhead caught my eye. I forced myself to look straight at Mel, so as not to call her attention to the fire-spider slipping slowly downward from the ceiling on a silken line. Smudge dropped the last foot or so to land ever so lightly atop Mel's head like a fuzzy red-and-brown crown.\n\nAn angry, burning crown.\n\nFlame whooshed through Mel's hair. She shrieked and spun, launching Smudge through the air into the computers. I grabbed the top shelf, lifted both feet, and shoved hard.\n\nVampires might be strong, but Mel's mass was merely human, and I had physics on my side. She stumbled back, and then Lena's bokken smashed her forearm, shattering bone.\n\nMel's good hand twisted into the leather of Lena's jacket. The two of them seemed to fly through the library. Mel slammed Lena to the ground by one of the spiral book racks, which toppled over with a loud crash. Mel reached for Lena's throat.\n\nLena grabbed the vampire's arm at the wrist and elbow, then twisted.\n\nUndead or not, Mel could still feel pain. I winced at the loud pop that signaled a dislocated elbow. Behind them, Green Bay let out an animalistic snarl and strained to free himself. The wall behind him cracked.\n\nI retrieved Vulcan's Mirror, skimming the pages until I reopened the magic I had used before. I picked up the disruptor with my other hand and thrust it into the book, letting the text re-form the damaged weapon to its original shape and function before pulling it free once more. Not the safest move, but homicidal vampires qualified as \"extenuating circumstances.\"\n\nGreen Bay finally broke free with an animalistic scream, taking a good chunk of the wall with him. As he staggered toward Mel and Lena, I sighted and pulled the trigger. He vanished in a flare of green energy.\n\nLena hauled Mel upright. \"Your turn. Who ordered the attack in Dearborn?\"\n\n\"What attack?\" I asked. Lena lived in Dearborn, making me wonder what exactly had brought her to my library.\n\n\"Shut up, Isaac.\"\n\nMel clenched her fist and swung, connecting with Lena's jaw. From the way Mel cried out, the blow hurt her as much as it did Lena, but it was enough to let her break free. She spun toward me.\n\nI fired one last time, and Mel vanished.\n\nLena picked up her remaining bokken. I had vaporized the other along with Green Bay. Keeping her back to me, she ran her fingers over the wood. \"What did you do that for?\"\n\nHer flat tone took me aback. \"Why did I shoot the woman who tried to cut my throat?\"\n\n\"She was beaten. You didn't have to kill her.\"\n\n\"You ran her buddy through with one of your swords!\"\n\n\"I stopped him. I would have stopped her.\" With a sigh, she turned to face me. \"They used to be human, until magic changed them into something else. Do you think that girl truly understood what she would become?\"\n\nI picked up the butterfly knife Mel had dropped. With the immediate threat passed, I was feeling rather shaky. \"I'd have more sympathy if not for the part where she tried to cut my throat.\"\n\n\"What did they say to you?\"\n\n\"They thought someone from the Porters had been hunting vampires, and wanted me to tell them who was involved.\" I dropped to my knees and crawled beneath the computer desks, searching through tangled cords for any sign of Smudge. I found him hiding in a nest of blue network cables. From the smell of burnt plastic, we'd have to call the computer guy in the morning, but Smudge appeared unharmed. He scurried up onto my shoulder, searing tiny black dots on my sleeve.\n\n\"So what did you tell them?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Nothing. I'm retired, remember? Nobody tells me anything.\" I picked up Vulcan's Mirror again and flipped to chapter eight. I searched the inner edges for char, but this was a new release, and the pages were clean of magical decay. I dissolved the disruptor back into the text and set the book on its cart. \"Thank you.\"\n\nShe picked up one of the overturned tables. \"Any time.\"\n\nI hadn't seen Lena since I moved back up north two years ago. The last I knew, she was the only dryad living in North America, and was currently serving as live-in bodyguard for Doctor Nidhi Shah, a downstate shrink who worked with a number of \"unusual\" clients. Myself included, back in the day.\n\n\"You mentioned another attack. What's going on, Lena?\"\n\nShe returned to the doorway to check outside. \"From what I can tell, the vampires have declared war on the Porters.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "The idea of vampires declaring war on the Porters was about as ridiculous as the Upper Peninsula marching to war against Canada.\n\nOriginally known as Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re or The Twelve Doorkeepers, the Porters had been around for roughly half a millennium. The original twelve had consisted of nine libriomancers, a sorcerer, a bard, and an alchemist. All save two were long dead, but the organization had grown over the centuries, and now numbered between four and five hundred members worldwide.\n\nIts mission was unchanged. Every Porter took an oath to preserve the secrecy of magic, protect the world from magical threats, and work to expand our knowledge of magic's power and potential.\n\n\"Vampires get stronger every year,\" Lena commented as she examined the wall where the Green Bay vamp had ripped himself free, exposing the studs. Chunks of plaster littered the carpet.\n\n\"I blame Anne Rice. She helped start this whole vampire resurgence back in the late seventies. Then Huff and Hamilton and a few others helped it build...\" And of course, in more recent times, you had Stephenie Meyer.\n\nSupernatural creatures came about in one of two ways. A handful were natural-born, having evolved alongside Homo sapiens with whatever magical gifts or abilities helped them survive. These days, survival meant concealing their existence, like the deepwater Pacific merfolk or the handful of naga living in Laos.\n\nBut the majority of such species were created, thanks in part to the magic of libriomancy.\n\nThere were only twenty-four known libriomancers in this country, and we knew better than to go sticking our hands into a vampire scene where we might brush against an exposed fang. But there were always others with potential, readers with natural talents who didn't understand what they were doing.\n\nHad Mel reached into her book and felt the vampire's teeth sink into her arm, the magic searing through her veins? Or had she been turned the old-fashioned way by another Meyerii? Lena was right that she couldn't have truly known what she was getting into, even if she had been given a choice.\n\n\"What happened in Dearborn?\" I asked. \"Is Doctor Shah all right?\"\n\nLena's eyes tightened as she turned away. \"You've got company.\"\n\nI stepped to one of the wire spinner racks and grabbed an old pulp adventure. I flipped to a familiar page, and my fingers sank into the yellowed paper until I brushed the chrome-and-steel handle of a good old-fashioned laser gun. The weapon was cool to the touch, a quirk of the built-in coolant system that prevented the tiny nuclear battery from going critical.\n\nI tried not to think about that too hard.\n\n\"Another gun?\" Lena's eyebrows rose. \"Kind of a one-trick libriomancer, aren't you?\"\n\nOutside, a heavyset man with a sweat-slick brow hurried toward the library steps clutching a bolt-action deer rifle in both hands. Damp clumps of hair clung to his worn denim sleeves like tiny brown slivers. \"Everyone okay in there?\"\n\n\"We're fine, John.\" I flipped the metal switch on the laser to power it down before sliding it into my pocket. John and Lizzie Pascoe ran the barbershop across the street. They were great neighbors, always willing to pitch in and help a friend... exactly what I didn't need right now.\n\nJohn carefully kept his distance as he peered between us. He had never said anything to me, but I knew Smudge made him nervous. \"Damn, Vainio. That is one busted library. What the hell were you doing, hosting an open bar for itinerant hockey players?\"\n\nI turned around, and it finally began to sink in just how thoroughly we had wrecked the place. Broken shelves spilled piles of books onto the carpet. Cracked and broken monitors lay beside upended tables. The door looked like it had lost a fight with a pissed-off grizzly, and then there was the smashed wall.\n\n\"Lizzie called the cops when we heard the commotion,\" said John.\n\n\"Thanks.\" Explaining this to the police was going to be almost as hard as explaining to my boss. \"We had a wolf.\"\n\n\"A wolf?\" John repeated, his skepticism as thick as the smell of pipe tobacco on his breath.\n\n\"Someone must have left the back door open last night,\" I said. \"I figure it came inside to get out of the rain and hid in the basement. Squeezed up onto the furnace to keep warm. When I went down to investigate, it freaked.\"\n\nJohn's face screwed up in a scowl. \"And the hippies down in Lansing want to protect the damn things.\"\n\nI doubted John would be happy to know which side I had been on during the last battle over keeping wolves on the endangered species list. The DNR was right that the wolf population had returned to healthier levels, but the Porters continued to fight to regulate the hunting and killing of wolves... and more importantly, to help protect the werewolf packs living in the wilds of the U. P. \"It didn't hurt anyone. Just made a little mess, that's all.\"\n\n\"A little mess?\"\n\nI forced a grin. \"It knocked over some shelves and tables, and toppled Smudge's cage. Scared the poor thing half to death. But all the wolf wanted was to get away.\"\n\n\"You're a lucky man, Isaac.\"\n\n\"Believe me, I know.\" I glanced at Lena, who had thrust her bokken through her belt and was standing with folded arms. \"Lena here chased it off.\"\n\nShe took that as her cue, holding out her hand. \"Lena Greenwood. I heard the commotion from outside. I found Isaac trying to fend the wolf off with some old science fiction book.\"\n\n\"That sounds like Isaac,\" John said with a laugh. He looked her up and down before returning the handshake. \"So you went after the wolf with a stick?\"\n\n\"Bokken,\" Lena corrected. \"I'm a second dan in kendo, and I've also studied gatka\u2014Indian stick fighting. I figured I had a better chance than he did.\"\n\nJohn grunted. \"You're a friend of his?\"\n\n\"I worked with him once or twice, downstate.\"\n\n\"Isaac doesn't talk much about his life as a troll,\" he said.\n\nLena shot me a quizzical glance.\n\n\"Folks who live in lower Michigan,\" I clarified. \"Below the bridge.\"\n\nSirens screamed in the distance. I stepped past John and checked the street. We had acquired a few gawkers, but there was no sign of more vampires. Smudge had cooled off, so I trusted we were safe for the moment.\n\n\"Are you sure you're all right?\" John clapped my arm, making sure to grab the side away from Smudge. \"You look like you're about two seconds from passing out.\"\n\n\"Adrenaline.\" That and the normal aftereffects of magic. It would be several hours before my heart slowed to its normal rate. It would take even longer for the emotional thrill to fade. \"I'm just a little shaken.\"\n\nThe police were getting closer. If they started questioning Lena or looking into her background, I'd be in even more of a mess than I was. \"Lena, why don't you wait for me at my place? I'll be over as soon as I'm finished here. I'm on Red Maple Drive, on the east edge of\u2014\"\n\n\"I know.\" She pulled me into a quick hug that probably looked spontaneous to John. Her fingers laced behind my neck, and her breath tickled my ear. \"Be careful this time. Keep Smudge and your books with you, and watch your back.\"\n\nShe nodded to John and hopped down the steps, where she strode toward the motorcycle parked a short way up the street. She tucked the bokken into a case strapped to the side of her bike, pulled a green helmet over her head, and pulled away.\n\nJohn's lips quirked. \"You've been holding out, boy. How long have you and she\u2014\"\n\n\"Lena's just a friend.\" A friend I barely knew, and hadn't seen in several years. A friend whose woodsy smell lingered pleasantly in my nose. I could still feel the heat of her body pressing against mine.\n\n\"Right, 'cause all of my 'friends' hug me like that.\"\n\n\"Jealous?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" John grinned and glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure his wife hadn't overheard.\n\n\"You know, you might not want to be standing here with a rifle when the cops start asking questions,\" I said gently.\n\nHe chuckled and pulled back the bolt of his gun, ejecting a bullet, which he slid into his shirt pocket. \"You let us know if you need anything,\" he said over his shoulder as he left. \"I can talk to my brother about fixing that door if you want. He's a damn good carpenter, though I'll deny it if you tell him I said so.\"\n\n\"Thanks, John.\" I headed back inside as the police car stopped in front of the library, lights flashing. I reached up to pet Smudge, gently brushing the bristles along his back, then returned him to his cage. I had just enough time to dissolve the laser pistol back into its book before the police officer knocked on the doorframe.\n\nI barely heard. Other books called to me from the shelves, their long-lost whispers as sweet and seductive as Lena's fingers trailing over my neck. There were items in those pages that would hypnotize the police and my boss both, letting me speed through the inevitable questions and get back home to find out what the hell was going on.\n\n\"Sir, are you all right?\"\n\nI gripped the edge of the desk and nodded. Using magic to protect my life was one thing, but the emergency had passed, at least for the moment. As I turned my back on the shelves, I felt the same aching despair in my gut that I had experienced two years ago after walking away from all things magical.\n\nPrometheus had stolen fire from the gods and suffered the consequences. I had returned the gift of the gods, and the price had been my dreams.\n\n\"I'm fine.\" I forced those memories down and walked over to talk to him and his partner.\n\nFor the rest of the day, I recited essentially the same story I had given John, while passersby stared and gossiped from the sidewalk. A fire truck showed up at one point, sirens screaming. I overheard enough to know I had Mrs. Trembath to thank for that one.\n\n\"We'll have someone from DNR stop by to check the basement,\" another officer said as she walked out of the library. \"You might want to talk to an exterminator, too. We found small holes bored through some of those studs by the door.\"\n\nI swallowed, remembering Lena's comment about her living bokken putting out roots. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Isaac!\" The shout came from a forty-something woman making her way up the sidewalk.\n\n\"That's my boss,\" I said. \"Do you mind if I go fill her in?\"\n\nThe cop gave me a sympathetic smile. \"Good luck.\"\n\nJennifer Latona had moved to Copper River shortly before me, taking over for the previous library director after he retired. She wasn't completely comfortable with small town life yet, and it often felt like she was trying to prove herself.\n\nShe climbed the stairs to look inside, then spun back around. The steps gave her almost a foot of height over me. \"The police said there was a wolf in my library.\"\n\n\"Nobody was hurt, and the insurance company should cover the damage.\" Just as long as nobody found out what had really done this. Few policies covered acts of vampires.\n\n\"There was a wolf. In my library.\" She ran her fingers through her frazzled hair.\n\n\"The spider doesn't seem so bad now, does he?\"\n\nThat earned a glare. I was saved by a passing fireman who commented, \"Could have been worse, eh? Eight years back, we had a bear get into the corner store down the street. Gorged himself on chocolate and smashed the Slushee machine to pieces.\"\n\n\"I want new doors on this place,\" Jenn said firmly. \"Steel doors, with deadbolts.\"\n\n\"John said his brother could do the work. I'll give him a call. I can also get that insurance paperwork started, if you want.\"\n\nShe nodded, glaring at the library as if trying to will the damage to repair itself. There was a witch down in El Salvador who could have done exactly that, but she charged way too much for this kind of job.\n\nI gestured at the crowd and the flashing lights. \"I'll have an easier time of it if I work from home...\"\n\n\"There was a wolf in my library.\"\n\nI took that as permission. A minute later, Smudge and I were in my truck speeding toward home, Lena, and\u2014hopefully\u2014some answers.\n\nEvery libriomancer I had ever met had one thing in common: we were daydreamers.\n\nSure, lots of kids imagined what it would be like to be Superman or Wolverine, or secretly tried to use the force to levitate a toy car, but we obsessed over this stuff. Night after night, I had lain awake pondering whether heat vision could be pinpointed with enough accuracy to kill a mosquito, or whether a lightsaber could be modified to recharge via a regular AC outlet. I fantasized about what I would do if I were ever to develop superpowers. Where would I fly, what global problems would I solve first, where would I go when I needed to get away from it all? (I had eventually decided to build my own private moonbase.)\n\nSome children outgrew such things as they grew up. My daydreams had simply grown more complex. In high school, I couldn't read a history lesson without wondering how Batman would have foiled the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, or whether a single time traveler with a laser and high-tech armor could have changed the course of the Battle of Chickamauga.\n\nImagine spending your whole life yearning for that kind of magic, only to discover it was real.\n\nImagine discovering that magic, like so much else, came with a price. With rules and limits and old men looking over your shoulder. You might as well bring a kid down on Christmas morning, show him a mountain of shiny presents, and then tell him he can only open three or else Santa will beat him up and stuff him into his own stocking.\n\nI learned that I had never truly wanted to be the superhero. Oh, I imagined it, sure. As a kid, I thought about taunting the bullies, then laughing as they injured their fists and feet against my rock-hard muscles. In ninth grade, I constructed one fantasy after another in which my powers allowed me to save Jenny Johnson from various dangers, and how she might express her appreciation once I had flown her to safety...\n\nBut what I truly wanted, what I dreamed about as an adult, was magic itself. Understanding its rules, its potential... I had studied under several researchers with the Porters, but you couldn't become a full researcher without first serving your time in the field. And you couldn't work in the field if you lost control of your own magic.\n\nA loud honk jolted me back into awareness. The streetlight was green, and I hadn't noticed. My face warmed as I sped through the intersection, waving an apology to the driver behind me.\n\nAfter two years, I could still hear Nicola Pallas' words as clearly as if she was sitting beside me in the truck. Nicola was Regional Master of the Porters, essentially a magical middle manager, though your average manager didn't spend her free time trying to crossbreed French poodles with chupacabras.\n\n\"Resign from the field, Isaac.\" She had driven up from her ranch in Illinois to meet with me. Her voice was flat, like she was discussing what color to paint her living room instead of my future with the Porters. \"We've decided to set you up with a desk job as a cataloger if you're interested. We think you'd do well there. But you're done with fieldwork.\"\n\nIn other words, I was done with magic. She was asking me to turn my back on the joy and the awe and the wonder, to leave those things to people with better self-control. I remembered grimacing, my face raw and stiff from partially healed burns. \"What's my other choice?\"\n\nHer black eyebrows came together slightly as she stared at me. \"You misunderstand. This isn't a choice.\"\n\nThe most infuriating part was that she was right. I was a damn good cataloger. I saw the magical potential of every book I read.\n\nI simply wasn't permitted to touch that magic.\n\nWhen I reached my house, a one-story structure with a metal roof and aluminum siding in desperate need of power washing, I spotted Lena's motorcycle parked on the edge of the dirt driveway. The black-and-pine-green Honda sport bike was polished to a liquid sheen. A silver oak leaf was airbrushed onto the side, and her helmet hung from the back.\n\nI killed the engine and grabbed Smudge's cage. He was relaxed enough to finish off the last of the Jelly Belly, which was good enough for me.\n\nA pair of squirrels abandoned the bird feeder and raced into the branches as I approached the front step. They chittered angrily at me while I unlocked the door and stepped inside.\n\nAn empty Mountain Dew can sat beside the sink, and a note was taped to the table. I had forgotten to give Lena a key, but that obviously hadn't stopped her. I grabbed the note."
            },
            {
                "title": "Back soon. Watch yourself, and don't get killed. \u2013L",
                "text": "I had bought the house from my parents shortly after my reassignment. They had moved out to Nevada when my father got a job offer from one of the silver mines, but the lousy housing market meant they hadn't been able to sell this place. It was a full six months before I stopped thinking of this as my parents' house.\n\nI set Smudge's cage on the kitchen counter and entered the living room, which I had converted into my own personal library. Floor-to-ceiling cherrywood bookshelves lined three walls. A worn recliner was tucked into the far corner beside the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. The lock for that door had broken years ago, but a broomstick in the track kept anyone outside from opening it.\n\nI closed my eyes, feeling the tug of the books. This was my refuge, my fortress of solitude. Standing in this quiet cave, surrounded by walls of books, was normally enough to ease my mind no matter how stressful things got... but not today. Today the books called to me. Every one was a gateway to magic, waiting to be unlocked.\n\nI forced myself to turn away, returning to the kitchen to grab this morning's newspaper. I slid one sheet after another into Smudge's cage, pressing them down over the gravel. Smudge tried to sneak out, but I nudged him back. \"Sorry, buddy. I need you working security.\"\n\nI moved his cage into the hallway, directly beneath the smoke detector. Once he was in place, I grabbed a baggie of chocolate-covered ants from the fridge and dropped a few in with him. He deserved them for helping take out a vampire, and he would need the calories after all that flaming.\n\nWith my makeshift security alarm prepped and content, I retreated to my office. More books waited here, stacked on the desk and below the window. Hardcovers and paperbacks, all jammed together like some sort of literary Tetris, waiting to be shelved.\n\nI tried calling Pallas first, but she didn't answer. I left a vague message about \"problems on the job site,\" then tried Ray Walker, the archivist down in East Lansing and my former mentor. His cell phone went straight to voice mail, and I gave up on calling his store after the twelfth ring. I glared at the phone, trying to decide who to call next, when the door creaked open behind me.\n\nI spun, heart pounding. Lena leaned in the doorway, her twin bokken tucked beneath one arm. She was doing a lousy job of hiding her amusement.\n\n\"This is what you call watching your back?\" she asked.\n\nI ignored the gibe. \"Didn't you lose one of those swords at the library?\"\n\n\"I made a new one.\" She stepped inside and studied the office. Her gaze lingered on a framed print of the Space Shuttle Columbia from its original 1981 launch, signed by both John Young and Robert Crippen, the commander and pilot of that first mission. \"The trees told me you were back.\"\n\n\"The trees?\"\n\n\"I was resting in the big oak in your backyard.\" She gave me a half-shrug. \"They talk to each other. I can watch the entire house through the root system, if I sink deeply enough into the heart of the tree.\"\n\nThat simple statement set off a cascade of questions in my head. I knew Lena had to return to her tree, and that many of her superhuman abilities came from that connection. The tree's strength was her own. She wasn't invulnerable, but a tree's roots could crush concrete and stone. Lena could do much the same.\n\nBut I knew nothing about what happened when she entered a tree. How could she perceive what happened outside? Did those senses weaken with distance? If that connection passed through the roots to other trees, did those trees have to be the same species? Were some trees more conducive to magic than others?\n\nI dragged myself back to more immediate concerns, starting with, \"How did you get inside?\"\n\n\"You barred the back door with a wooden stick.\" She twirled one of her bokken, narrowly missing the desk. \"That doesn't work so well against me.\"\n\n\"So is this the point where you explain what's going on?\"\n\n\"Food first. Questions second. I didn't want to raid your fridge without permission, but now that you're here...\"\n\nLena and I had different definitions of \"food.\" She tossed her jacket over a chair, then seized a two-liter bottle of Cherry Coke and an old carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I grabbed a bowl and spoon and offered them to her without a word.\n\nShe took the spoon, plopped down at the table, and pulled a bag of M&Ms from her jacket pocket.\n\n\"You're worse than Smudge,\" I said, watching her sprinkle the candy over her ice cream.\n\nShe dug in with an almost feral grin. \"High metabolism.\"\n\nI remained standing. \"Well?\"\n\n\"This isn't the first attack against the Porters.\" She lowered her head, and black hair curtained her face. \"A few days ago, I learned Victor Harrison had been murdered.\"\n\n\"Oh, damn.\" Victor was a modest, awkward man. He was brilliant, but I had no idea how someone so kindhearted had made it through fieldwork. He was one of the few people who could make magic and machines play nicely together. He had built the Porters' server network from the ground up, adding layers of security both mundane and magical.\n\nThree years back, one unlucky woman had come close to hacking our systems. Rumor had it she was enjoying her new life as a garter snake.\n\nOne of Victor's favorite tricks was programming his DVR to record and play back shows that wouldn't air for another six months. He was supposed to send me next season's Doctor Who. \"How did it happen?\"\n\n\"They tortured him to death in his own home.\" Lena stabbed her spoon into the ice cream. Her shoulders were tight. \"Nidhi was called down to Columbus to help examine the scene. The house was a wreck. Walls smashed in, windows broken, and blood everywhere. He put up a good fight, but it wasn't enough.\"\n\n\"Wait... how good of a fight?\" Any serious magical conflict should have attracted attention.\n\nLena gave me a grim smile. \"Exactly. From what we could tell, his television incinerated at least one vampire. He had rigged an extra channel to put out a burst of ultraviolet light through the screen. Nobody could understand exactly what he had done to his garbage disposal, but they found blood and a fang in there.\" She crunched another bite of ice cream and M&Ms. \"It should have been more than enough magic to alert the Porters and summon one of their automatons to investigate, but that didn't happen. Nicola Pallas first learned of the attack on the news.\"\n\nMeaning the Porters hadn't been the first ones to arrive. Most of the police officers I'd met were decent people, but they weren't equipped for this kind of investigation and didn't know how to avoid tainting any magical evidence.\n\n\"The next attack was similar,\" Lena said. \"An alchemist in northern Indiana. The Porters think vampires might also be behind the death of a telepath in Madison about six months back. That time, they tortured her whole family before killing her.\"\n\nMadison... that would have been Abigail Dooley. I remembered hearing about her death, but I hadn't known the details. She had retired years ago, and had been making a comfortable living via the occasional visit to the casino.\n\n\"Why punish her family? She was out of the game. She didn't know anything worth\u2014\" The realization made me ill. \"They were torturing her. So she'd hear her family's thoughts as they died.\"\n\n\"That was Nidhi's guess, too,\" said Lena, her voice dead.\n\nThree murders. \"Why haven't I heard about this before now?\"\n\n\"I'm not a Porter. You'd have to ask them.\" Lena stared at the table, but it was obvious she wasn't really seeing it. \"There were two more attacks yesterday,\" she said slowly. \"The first was against Nidhi Shah.\"\n\nAnd Lena was Doctor Shah's bodyguard. \"Is she all right?\"\n\nEven as I asked, I saw the answer in her face. \"There were four vampires. I was forced to kill the first. I stopped another, but they found my tree. They cut it down. I've never felt pain like that before. I tried to fight, but as my tree died...\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" The words felt utterly inadequate, but she gave a tiny nod of thanks. \"Are you... with your tree gone\u2014\"\n\n\"I've survived the loss of a tree once before.\" She stared past me, her eyes wet. \"It takes time for life to leave a fallen tree. The leaves wither and fall away. The wood dries and cracks. Insects bore through the bark.\" She shuddered. \"I'll need to find a new home for that part of myself, but your oak will do for today. It's not the same, but it's enough.\"\n\nFor once, I managed to suppress any tactless questions about her nature.\n\n\"They ruined my garden, too,\" she said distantly. \"Uprooted my rosebushes and my grapevines. I guess they were afraid I could use the plants as weapons.\" She twirled her spoon, digging a pit into her ice cream. \"Nidhi shouted for me to get away. I crawled into the closest tree that was big enough to hold me, a thirty-year-old maple. I stayed only long enough to keep myself from following my oak into death, but when I emerged, they were long gone.\"\n\nI had met with Doctor Shah several times, though rarely by choice. I understood the logic of making people who warped reality on a regular basis check in with a professional psychiatrist, but given how that had turned out for me, my feelings toward Shah were mixed at best. None of which mattered now. I could only imagine what Lena must be feeling. As far as I knew, Doctor Shah was the closest thing she had to a family. \"You did everything you could.\"\n\n\"There was no body.\" Lena's fingers sank into the wood of the table as she spoke. \"The only blood I could find came from me and one of the vampires. I don't know where they went or why they took her. She might already be dead, or they might have turned her. So I sought out the nearest help I could find.\"\n\n\"I'm just a cataloger these days.\" If the vampires wanted to turn Shah, she might have a chance. For some species, the process could take days. But why torture and murder the others and not her? \"What are the Porters doing about this?\"\n\n\"They won't say. They're strictly a humans-only club, remember?\"\n\nGuilt made me turn away, though I had no control over our policies. \"Who was the second victim?\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"I'm sorry, Isaac. They found Ray Walker's body yesterday night.\"\n\nPop psychology described five stages of grief. I went through all five in less than a minute as I struggled to accept the death of my friend.\n\nWalker was no danger to anyone. There was no reason for any vampire to go after him... but there was no lie in Lena's gaze. My body tightened, fists clenched, stomach taut. My mind flipped through its mental catalog, searching for magic that would allow me to bring back my friend. But books with such power were locked, and trying to reverse death would accomplish nothing except to earn my exile from the Porters.\n\nI sagged into a chair and wiped a fist across my eyes. \"How?\"\n\n\"Like the others.\"\n\nRay Walker had brought me into the world of magic. The Porters found me when I was in high school, and arranged for me to attend Michigan State University where I could work with Ray. For four years, I had spent every free night in his bookstore or apartment, reading handwritten texts on magic, examining artifacts, and discussing the possibilities of magic.\n\nRay had personally recommended me for a research position in Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re. He had given me purpose and a goal. When I screwed that up, he helped to arrange my job here. While he had never said anything, I had no doubt he had argued on my behalf, to keep Pallas from booting me out altogether.\n\nMy cell phone buzzed. I dug it out of my pocket. The caller ID read UNKNOWN. My fingers moved mechanically, accepting the call and bringing the phone to my ear.\n\n\"Isaac? Thank God. Are you all right?\"\n\nI recognized the faint New York accent at once. \"Three sparklers tried to kill me this afternoon, and now I find out Ray's dead? What the hell is going on, Deb? Why aren't the Porters doing something?\"\n\nDeb DeGeorge was a fellow libriomancer and librarian, but whereas I worked for a small public library, she held a position with the Library of Congress in Washington DC. She had a pair of Master's degrees, spoke and read five languages and could spout obscenities in six more, and worked as a self-described \"cataloger of weird shit.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry about Ray, hon. I only learned about him a few hours ago. You said you were attacked? The vampires\u2014\"\n\n\"Are ash.\"\n\nShe gave a disbelieving snort. \"Three sparklers? Damn, Isaac.\"\n\n\"I had help. Lena Greenwood showed up and did her ass-kicking thing. Deb, I couldn't get through to Pallas either.\"\n\n\"She's alive,\" Deb said quickly. \"You've heard about Harrison? Whoever killed him found a way to hack the spells he cast protecting our communications. We're still working to secure everything, and until we do...\"\n\nUntil then, our murderer could be listening to every word we said. \"I understand.\"\n\n\"Stay put, Isaac. I'll be there soon.\"\n\n\"But what\u2014\"\n\n\"Stay!\" The phone went dead before I could respond.\n\n\"What did she say?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Not much, but she sounded nervous.\" This was a woman who had faced down a homicidal Chilean mummy and walked away without a scratch.\n\nBetween Smudge, Lena, and my personal library, we should be safe for the moment. I looked out the kitchen window. Trees secluded the houses from one another, and this part of town was quiet enough the neighbors' kids down the street sometimes played an entire set of tennis in the road without having to move for cars.\n\nLena reached over to touch my arm. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"I'm not a field agent.\" Deb and the others would investigate Ray's death. They would figure out who took Doctor Shah. They would stop whoever had done this, while I... filed paperwork and stayed out of the way. \"Ray was my friend.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for a time. My thoughts were manic and uncontrolled, jumping from the attack at the library to Ray to the other deaths. \"It doesn't make sense,\" I said. \"Individual vampires are tough, but in an all-out war, they wouldn't stand a chance. More than half of them are helpless during the day, and at last count, humans outnumbered them a million to one.\"\n\n\"Some sort of civil war among the vampires?\" Lena scooped up the last of the ice cream.\n\n\"The Porters would have heard.\" Though whether or not they would have bothered to tell me was another question entirely. \"Have there been similar attacks in other countries?\"\n\n\"Not that I know of.\"\n\nMost vampires were perfectly content to live in peace, but plenty of them were still monsters at heart. If they were attacking Porters with impunity here, it wouldn't be long before others followed suit.\n\nMeaning if this wasn't stopped soon, we could be looking at a worldwide war with the undead."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "Magic had always messed with my dreams. According to years of Porter research, brainwave excitation during REM sleep immediately following the use of magic tended to mimic the patterns seen in active magic use. And according to Porter gossip, Nicola Pallas had once awoken following a day of intensive spellcasting to find that she had transformed herself into a two-hundred-pound green rabbit in her sleep.\n\nI wasn't powerful enough to suffer such problems. Instead, I simply endured surreal, too-vivid dreams in which my magic failed me when I needed it most. Sometimes I reached into my books, only to find myself unable to pull my hand free. Or I would fling the book away and watch in horror as what remained of my arm slowly dissolved, consumed by the book. The worst nightmares were when I fell through the magical portal I had opened in the pages, or worse yet, something on the other side of that portal pulled me in.\n\nTonight was one of the bad ones. I jolted awake so hard I fell out of bed. Remnants of my dreams screamed that I was tumbling deeper into darkness. Soft fingers touched my shoulder and I shouted, slapping them away.\n\n\"Take it easy,\" said Lena. \"It's me.\"\n\nI tried to shove her back, but it was like trying to uproot a tree. Slowly, reality pushed the dream aside, and the pounding of my heart eased.\n\nShe helped me to my feet. I sat down on the bed, rubbing my eyes. The sheets were damp with sweat.\n\nDoctor Shah had once prescribed pills that were supposed to help me sleep. Unfortunately, I had thrown my remaining supply away two years ago. Even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have risked them tonight. I needed my mind clear if anything happened. \"What are you doing in my bedroom?\"\n\n\"Someone just pulled into your driveway,\" said Lena.\n\nThe sky outside was dark. The red glow of the alarm clock provided just enough light to make out Lena's shape as she sat down beside me, one hand still gripping my arm. I heard Smudge stirring in his tank beside me. At night, he slept in a thirty-gallon aquarium lined with obsidian gravel and soil.\n\nA single cricket chirped somewhere inside the tank, probably roused out of hiding by all the noise. That was a mistake. A scurry of feet and a faint spark followed, and that was the end of the cricket.\n\nI flipped on a light, which helped to banish the dream. Smudge froze, cricket clutched in his forelegs. He watched me as if making sure I wasn't about to reach in and steal his snack, then retreated into a thick web that reminded me of unspun cotton.\n\nI snatched up the Heinlein paperback I had left on the bedside table, fighting a shiver. I had fallen asleep in my blue jeans, and the cold air raised bumps along my naked chest and arms.\n\nLena stared unabashedly as I grabbed a flannel bathrobe from the floor and pulled it on. I ignored her, opening the book to the page I had dog-eared earlier.\n\nThe doorbell rang just as we reached the entryway. Lena gripped one of her bokken with both hands while I skimmed my book, then peeked out the front window.\n\nI doubted vampires would be so obvious, but after yesterday, I wasn't taking chances. I relaxed at the sight of Deb DeGeorge standing impatiently on the front porch. \"Go ahead.\"\n\nLena unlocked the door, and Deb stepped inside. \"Oh, good,\" she said. \"You're still alive.\"\n\nI snorted. \"Nice to see you, too.\"\n\nDeb was in her early forties, with gray hair cut playfully short and a trio of silver rings in each ear. I had never seen her wear any color but black, and today was no exception. A thigh-length black jacket covered a matching shirt and long skirt.\n\nShe gave me a quick hug before moving toward the living room. Her breath smelled of gum and mint mouthwash. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of the books spilling over the end table and spread over the floor.\n\n\"Don't even start,\" I said, tossing the Heinlein onto the closest pile.\n\n\"I didn't say anything.\"\n\n\"You don't have to.\" I jabbed a finger at the books. \"I'll have you know that I've developed a highly refined, if unorthodox, cataloging system.\"\n\nDeb ran a hand over the shelves, clucking her tongue. \"So many books, and no nonfiction? No biographies or histories?\"\n\n\"Office library, Miss Snooty. Just because you have no imagination doesn't mean the rest of us should limit ourselves to dusty old textbooks.\"\n\nDeb's first love had always been history. Whereas I could reach into a sci-fi thriller and yank out a blaster, she could produce invaluable artifacts from three-hundred-year-old texts. Rumor had it the Porters had recruited her at the age of sixteen, after she successfully sold a copy of the Star of Bombay, a 182-carat star sapphire currently housed in the Smithsonian.\n\nI preferred my lasers and magic swords.\n\nDeb's eyes were puffy, and she moved with a barely-contained manic energy that suggested either recent magic use or a major caffeine overdose. Possibly both, knowing her.\n\nShe studied me in turn. \"Those are some nasty bruises.\"\n\nI touched my throat. I had managed to hide those with my collar yesterday after work, but the bathrobe exposed more of the bruises and scratches left by Mel and her minions. \"You should see the other guys.\"\n\nMy stomach chose that moment to let out a loud growl, earning a sympathetic look from Deb. Magic burned a lot of energy, but it ruined your appetite. Even hours later, the thought of food made me feel mildly nauseated. Magic was a great weight-loss plan, but as any doctor could tell you, losing too much weight too quickly was a bad idea. Magic users had died of malnutrition before. By the end of my time in the field, I had been down to a hundred and twenty pounds. My nails had been yellow and brittle, my blood pressure dangerously low, and I had been cold all the time.\n\n\"What's going on, Deb?\" I asked.\n\nShe sagged into the armchair. \"I would have been here sooner, but there was another attack.\"\n\nI braced myself. \"Who?\"\n\n\"Not who.\" Emotion roughened her words. \"Around eleven o'clock last night, the Michigan State University library burned to the ground.\" Her eyes met mine, sharing a pain few others would have understood.\n\nHer words choked away any remaining fatigue. \"How bad?\"\n\n\"All of it.\"\n\n\"Why would vampires go after a library?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Because,\" I said numbly, \"the MSU library housed the regional archive for the Porters.\" So many books... so much knowledge. \"Have any other archives been hit?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" Deb pulled out her cell phone and checked the screen, then tucked it away again. \"Whoever's behind this, they're keeping it local so far.\"\n\nLena edged closer. \"We know who's behind this.\"\n\n\"I don't think vampires did this.\" Deb stared at the floor. \"What would you say if I told you Johannes Gutenberg disappeared three months ago?\"\n\n\"Oh, shit.\" I spoke four languages, but sometimes good old-fashioned swearing worked best.\n\nJohannes Gutenberg had invented the practice of libriomancy around the end of the fifteenth century. Growing up, he had studied under a minor sorcerer and friar at St. Christopher's church in Mainz, but Gutenberg had lacked the raw power of the great mages. He ended his apprenticeship and set out on his own, determined to master the art he had seen.\n\nHe devoted his life to the study of magic, a pursuit that eventually led him to the development of the printing press and the mass production of books. Gutenberg theorized that this would allow him to tap into the mutual belief of readers, bolstering his power.\n\nHis long gamble paid off. Hundreds, even thousands of people could now read the exact same book in the exact same form. The first recorded act of libriomancy was when Gutenberg used his mass-produced Bible to create the Holy Grail, the cup of life which had kept him alive all these years.\n\n\"Not a single automaton has responded to the attacks against the Porters,\" Deb said. \"We can't find them, and we can't find Gutenberg.\"\n\nGutenberg had built the first automaton to be his personal bodyguard and protector around the end of the fifteenth century. Over the next forty years, as libriomancy spread and Gutenberg's power grew, he created a total of twelve mechanical guardians. They were all but indestructible, tasked with preventing practitioners from abusing their power and helping to hide magic from public view.\n\nI would have given anything to be able to study them, to learn how a libriomancer had produced such things. Nobody had ever managed to duplicate his creations.\n\n\"You think the vampires took him?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"If they've turned him...\" I swallowed hard at the thought of so much knowledge in the hands of the undead.\n\n\"Pallas doesn't think so,\" said Deb. \"She says there are spells in place, contingencies from ages ago. None of those have been activated.\"\n\n\"The vampires at the library couldn't even stop the two of us,\" Lena added. \"How could they overpower Gutenberg?\"\n\n\"They couldn't,\" said Deb. \"Not without help.\"\n\n\"You mean someone inside the Porters.\" I waited, but she simply watched me, her head tilted to one side like a teacher waiting impatiently for a student to figure out the lesson. \"Wait, is that why I wasn't told? Was I a suspect?\"\n\n\"We all were.\" Deb reached into her jacket, then made a face. \"Weeks like this, what I want more than anything else is a damned cigarette.\"\n\n\"No way,\" I said automatically. \"I heard what you were like the last time you quit.\" Magic and nicotine withdrawal made for a very nasty libriomancer. If the rumors were true, Deb had used a copy of The Odyssey to transform one particularly unpleasant patron into a pig for most of a day.\n\n\"The vampire population has doubled in the past ten years,\" said Deb. \"Not to mention werewolves and ghosts and the rest. They stay out of sight, but Gutenberg is losing control.\" She stood and started toward the bookshelves, but caught her foot. I moved to catch her as she fell. She spun, and something hissed against the side of my neck.\n\n\"Sorry, Isaac.\" Deb backed away, holding a high-tech hypospray in her hand.\n\nLena stepped between us, slapping the hypospray away. With her other hand, she seized Deb by the jacket and slammed her into the shelves, hard enough that books toppled to the ground.\n\n\"Easy on the library,\" I protested. Warmth spread from my neck down into my chest, but for some reason, I wasn't upset. \"What was that stuff?\"\n\n\"Truth serum.\" Deb didn't move. I wouldn't have either, given how pissed off Lena looked. \"I read about it in your reports. Bujold, I think.\"\n\nThat would explain my laid-back reaction. Bujold wrote good truth drugs. \"You should read the whole series. I'll get you into spaceships and aliens yet.\"\n\n\"Is the drug dangerous?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Nah.\" I shook my head. \"As long as I'm not allergic. It just makes the recipient feel content and helpful and uninhibited. And also warm.\" Truth be told, this was the most relaxed I had been since the attack. I wagged a finger at Deb. \"Three vampires tried to kill me, and you're worried I'm the bad guy?\"\n\n\"You're an ex-libriomancer, yanked out of the field and banished to the middle of nowhere,\" Deb said. \"You kept a magical pet in defiance of Porter rules, and now you've acquired a dryad bodyguard. What would you think, hon?\"\n\n\"I had to keep Smudge. How do you put a spider back into a book when the spider can set the book on fire?\" More importantly, returning Smudge to his book would dissolve him back into magical energy, essentially killing him.\n\nShe tilted her head, acknowledging the point. \"Do you know where Johannes Gutenberg is?\"\n\n\"Nope.\" I smirked. \"I hear rumors he's gone missing, though.\"\n\n\"Are you satisfied?\" demanded Lena.\n\n\"I'll be satisfied once I get my hands on whoever's killing my friends,\" Deb shot back. \"Isaac, I went to the MSU library with another Porter. The place was smashed, like someone had physically torn down the walls. The kind of damage an automaton could have done.\"\n\nAnd nobody but Gutenberg could command an automaton to do such a thing. \"That's crazy. Why would he attack his own archive?\"\n\n\"Hell if I know. Pallas agrees with you. She believes it could also have been caused by a Porter who couldn't control his or her magic.\" She gave me a pointed look. \"When you fought those vampires yesterday afternoon, did you have any problems?\"\n\n\"You mean did I lose control and blow up half the building?\" I shook my head. \"Not this time.\"\n\nA moth tapped against the sliding glass door, drawn to the light. Deb stared for several moments, searching the darkness before turning her attention back to me. The fingers of her right hand fidgeted against her leg. \"If someone were recruiting, you'd be the perfect choice. Resentful, eager to get back in the game...\"\n\n\"Oh, sure,\" I said easily. \"I've got access to the Porter database, too. But resentment isn't going to launch me into a sociopathic killing spree.\" I sighed. \"You and I both know they made the right call.\"\n\nI couldn't have admitted it without the drug, but Doctor Shah had been right to recommend I be pulled from the field, and Pallas had been right to act on that recommendation. I had anger and resentment aplenty, but most of that was directed toward myself.\n\n\"What happened?\" Lena asked quietly.\n\n\"I broke the rules.\" My chest felt like someone had hollowed it out with an ice cream scoop. \"I was putting in my time in the field, hoping to earn a research position. I'd been tracking a drug called Iced Z. Powdered zombie brains. Nasty stuff. You do not want to be anywhere near a Z addict when he gets the munchies.\n\n\"Two victims had shown up in the medical center out on Mackinac Island. The doctors didn't know what to do with them. They thought it was some kind of antibiotic-resistant Necrotizing fasciitis. Flesh-eating bacteria. The first victim died of an overdose. We snuck in so Smudge could cremate her before the body rose again. I managed to save the second one, though she lost about twenty percent of her brain function. She was coherent enough to tell me where she got the stuff.\"\n\nI had never talked about what happened that day to anyone except Doctor Shah, but the magical drug coursing through my blood had loosened the floodgates. \"They were using the horses. Automobiles aren't allowed on Mackinac Island, so it's all bikes and horse-drawn carriages. The dealer had set up an entire stable of undead horses behind this beautiful Victorian mansion down by the port. He'd been selling this shit to tourists for about two months.\n\n\"As I snuck inside, I couldn't stop thinking about the girl we'd cremated. Her brainwave activity had never truly stopped; if the hospital had hooked her up to the right equipment, they would have picked it up, but there was no reason. When I found her, she was deep in some kind of undead hibernation while her tissues died and reanimated. I kept wondering if she had felt the flames consuming her flesh. If her brain had been capable of registering the pain.\"\n\nI sighed. \"In my head, I was that girl's avenging angel, punishing those who had wronged her. I played the hero, and I did everything wrong. I had pushed myself thirty-six hours straight without sleep or food, running on righteous anger and stimulant tablets from a science fiction novel. I didn't bother to properly learn the layout and routine of the house. I went in alone, too impatient to wait for backup. And I used magic with abandon.\n\n\"I remember the sound of bullets ricocheting from my personal shield. I fired stunners with both hands, shooting anything that moved. But those weapons only worked on the living, and this bastard had a cadre of undead bodyguards as well. Someone wrenched the pistol out of my right hand. I broke free and backed off, setting the remaining weapon to overload and throwing it like a grenade. I grabbed another book, but there was no time to read. The horses had broken free.\n\n\"Or maybe the dealer had deliberately set them loose in order to cover his escape, I don't know. I heard their low, wheezing gasps, like tattered bellows blowing foul, rotten air. Decaying hooves clopped against the road as others smashed their way out of the stables. Four of them closed in on me. They shied back from Smudge, who was flaming like a tiny sun, but he couldn't stop them all.\"\n\n\"What did you do?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"What do you think I did? I panicked! I tried to shove free, but the horses were too massive. I remember teeth clamping down on my jacket, yanking me off-balance. My shield would stop projectile weapons, but it was useless against zombies.\"\n\nI had tumbled to the floor, landing amidst soiled straw and blood and maggots. The sight of those unstoppable horses closing in on their long, bony legs had made me think of H. G. Wells. \"Do you remember the Martian tripods from War of the Worlds?\"\n\nDeb nodded.\n\n\"As I lay there, I could see the pages of the book. I remembered the hopelessness and despair I felt the first time I read the story. I could feel the story, as if I was reliving that night at home, huddled by the light to read just one more chapter.\n\n\"Another horse bent down to bite my face. I pressed my hand to its neck and fired a beam of heat that burned through the horse and seared a hole in the wall behind. The same heat ray the Martians used.\"\n\n\"Holy shit.\" Deb stared. \"Libriomancy without the book?\"\n\n\"It almost killed me.\" I glanced at my hands. \"Humans char, too.\" I shuddered, remembering the numbness in my arms, the blackened skin that had taken months to heal. \"I destroyed everything. The horses, the zombies, the dealer... I would have died if the fire department hadn't dragged me out of there. The next thing I remember, I was waking up in a magically warded prison cell.\"\n\nLena reached over to give my hand a quick squeeze. \"You stopped that man.\"\n\n\"I got lucky,\" I said. \"I ignored the rules. I punched through the boundaries between myself and my magic until it almost consumed me. I could have destroyed half the island.\"\n\n\"What was the last contact you had with the Porters?\" Deb asked.\n\n\"An e-mail from Ray about a week ago, confirming that he had received my latest batch of books to be magically sealed and asking if I caught the Firefly marathon on Saturday.\" My head was starting to throb. I didn't remember Bujold describing headaches when she wrote about this drug, but it had been a while since I read her stuff.\n\nDeb turned to Lena. \"And how did you end up here, just in time to rescue Isaac from these vampires?\"\n\n\"He was the closest Porter I thought I could trust,\" Lena said, a little too quickly. \"I came to his house first, figuring it would be better to talk privately. A sparkler showed up looking for him.\"\n\nI yelped. \"They came here?\"\n\n\"Only one. He got a lot more cooperative after I cut off his right hand. He said the others were planning to jump Isaac at the library.\"\n\n\"What did you do to the sparkler?\" Deb asked.\n\n\"I sent him home.\"\n\n\"You let him go?\" I demanded. \"How do you know he won't come back?\"\n\nLena smiled innocently. \"Because I said if I saw him again, I'd use his hand for fertilizer, but if he went away like a good boy, I'd mail it to him later this week. Which reminds me, there's a vampire hand in your freezer's ice maker.\" Seeing my aghast expression, she added, \"Don't worry. I double-bagged it.\"\n\n\"This is not how I used to fantasize about you showing up on my doorstep,\" I protested.\n\nLena's brows rose.\n\n\"Relaxed inhibitions,\" Deb reminded her.\n\n\"Yep.\" Which I suspected I would regret later, but at the moment I couldn't bring myself to care. \"I always imagined you as the outdoors type, and the two of us rolling around in the grass together. Maybe in the rain. Definitely barefoot, though.\"\n\n\"Or taking a rowboat out after hours and making love on the river?\" Lena suggested. To Deb's exasperated look, she said, \"What? I work part time for Parks and Recreation. I've got the keys to the boat sheds.\"\n\n\"That would be good, too,\" I said, shifting position. \"See, it's that kind of talk that explains why men used to go wild over nymphs.\"\n\nHer lips quirked. \"Not just men.\"\n\n\"Ooh. Now that's just the kind of information that would have spiced up those fantasies.\"\n\nDeb gave me a gentle smack on the arm, pulling my attention back to the immediate crisis. \"I'm sorry, hon. I didn't believe you could be involved, but I had to be certain.\"\n\n\"I understand.\" I'd probably be pissed later, but for now I didn't care. \"I'm curious, what were you going to do if it turned out I was working for the bad guys?\" I peeked at her jacket, trying to see what books she might have hidden away.\n\nShe swatted me back. \"Be grateful you'll never know.\" She tensed suddenly, her attention focused past me to a yellow cricket the size of a small paper clip that had jumped into the room from the kitchen.\n\nI stooped to grab the cricket, but it hopped away. \"They're for Smudge. I keep them in a screen-covered bucket in the office, but occasionally one sneaks out.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Deb said, her muscles tight. She tracked the cricket's motion as it retreated beneath one of the bookshelves. \"I need help, Isaac. Someone I can trust. I'm officially reassigning you back to the field.\"\n\nThe words were a sucker punch to the gut, smashing through my drug-induced high to steal the breath from my lungs. Hope, fear, and excitement duked it out behind my rib cage. Under normal circumstances, only the Regional Masters could reassign someone, but with Gutenberg gone and the Porters in a state of crisis, this would fall under a field agent's emergency powers. Barely. \"What about Lena?\"\n\n\"Hm?\" Deb wrenched her attention back to the two of us. \"I can't do anything for her officially, but you took out four vampires between the pair of you. That's good enough for me. If you vouch for her, I want her along, too.\"\n\nUncomfortable as I was with fieldwork, this could put me back on the path toward magical research. With one simple sentence, Deb had rekindled a dream two years dead. Pallas would have to sign off on everything, but if we could stop these attacks on the Porters, how could she refuse?\n\nIf I could stay focused. If I kept from losing control of my magic this time.\n\nI pulled Deb into a hug. Her surprised squawk relaxed into laughter, and she pushed me away, grinning.\n\n\"I'll be right back,\" I said, rubbing my temples. \"I'm going to take something for this headache, and then we can get out of here.\"\n\nI hurried back to the office. Whatever her drug had done to me, it was definitely getting worse. The light sent needles into my brain, and every beat of my pulse was a tiny explosion in the front of my skull. I grabbed a copy of Homer's Odyssey and flipped to book ten, where Odysseus conversed with his great-grandfather Hermes.\n\n\"There you are,\" I muttered, skimming the text. The virtue of the herb that I shall give you will prevent her spells from working.\n\nThe herb was called Moly, described as \"a talisman against every sort of mischief.\" I had once written a paper about its nullifying effects on magic. Unfortunately, nobody had yet found a way to preserve its potency. Drying the herb merely resulted in a rather pungent and magically useless potpourri. But if I could earn a research position, I could look into alternate means of preservation, perhaps pressing and freeze-drying the plant, or saturating it in a glycerin solution....\n\nI checked the pages to make sure they were clean of char. Excitement and pain interfered with my concentration. It took close to a minute to finally reach into the book and grasp the herb, a small black-rooted plant with a round flower, the five petals so white they appeared bleached.\n\nAs I held it in my hand, the throbbing in my skull eased, and my head began to clear. The petals wilted as the Moly's magic fought off Deb's drug. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, then checked the book again. The pages were clean, so I dissolved the expended Moly back into the pages, clapped the book shut and returned it to the shelf.\n\nWith my mind working once more, my eagerness grew... and that made me nervous. It was exactly that excitement and determination, the thrill of magic and the need to charge out and avenge the fallen, that had gotten me into trouble before.\n\n\"Everything okay back there?\" Deb called.\n\n\"I'll be out in a sec.\" My face grew hot as I recalled the things I had said to Lena. I glanced back at the office shelves. I had a hundred-year-old copy of Dante's Divine Comedy, and a sip from the River Lethe would effectively erase her memory of my oversharing. Or maybe I'd be better off drinking it myself.\n\nI banished that thought and headed to the bedroom to retrieve Smudge, who was racing back and forth, kicking up gravel as he went. The air above his cage was noticeably warmer. \"What's wrong, partner?\"\n\nOne of these days, someone would write about a magical ring that allowed the wearer to read the mind of a fire-spider. Until then, I was stuck with vague warnings. I opened the blinds and checked outside: nothing. \"Deb, is there any chance you could have been followed?\"\n\n\"I doubt it, but anything's possible. Why?\"\n\nI stared at the cricket box. A cop friend downstate had once described what he called the \"pucker effect,\" the body's automatic response when something just wasn't right. He wasn't talking about the lips; the puckering happened farther south, and every cop learned to trust that instinct.\n\nI closed the blinds and turned around. Most of my books were in the office or the library, but I could work with what was stacked around the bedroom for late-night reading. A copy of Dune, an urban fantasy by Anton Strout... I skimmed the latter, and soon held the protagonist's favorite weapon: a heavy metal cylinder that extended to a full-sized bat at the press of a button.\n\nI read Dune next, hoping with each sentence that I was imagining things. Smudge could simply be running hot after the day's excitement. I certainly was. But he had been calm and cool earlier in the night, before Deb arrived.\n\nI kept the bat in its collapsed state and tucked it into a pocket of my robe, creating a rather embarrassing bulge. If pressed, I could always blame that on my exchange with Lena. I pulled the other side of the robe over the front and cinched the belt tight, hoping neither of my guests would notice.\n\nFinally, just before leaving the room, I opened the small screened-in box with Smudge's crickets and snatched a fat one from the end of a half-devoured cardboard tube.\n\nWhen I returned to the library, I found Deb whispering to Lena. Deb glanced up, asking, \"How's your head?\"\n\n\"Better.\" I stopped a short distance away, looking through the glass door behind her and hoping to spy something, anything lurking outside that would explain Smudge's reaction. The backyard was empty. \"Are you ready to hunt some vampires?\"\n\n\"At least there are no dinosaurs this time,\" she answered.\n\nI forced a chuckle. \"Damn Michael Crichton. Do you know how much it cost me to fix my car? State Farm doesn't cover acts of dinosaurs.\" I stepped closer. \"We should have kept a few eggs. If Smudge can survive in this world, so could they. We could send trained velociraptors out to fight vampires. The movie rights alone would make us rich.\"\n\nI relaxed my right hand, allowing the cricket to squirm free. It dropped to the floor and took a single hop before freezing.\n\nI had hoped I was wrong, that Deb would make some scathing comment about my insect-infested home, or simply step forward to crush the cricket under her heel. Instead, she tensed like a cat preparing to pounce. It lasted only a second, maybe two, but it was enough.\n\nI pulled the bat from my pocket and pressed a button. The weapon sprang to its full length with a satisfying metallic clunk.\n\n\"Freud would have a field day with that.\" Deb backed away. Her tongue flicked over her lips, and her eyes kept darting toward the cricket.\n\n\"How long since they turned you?\" I checked Lena, who wasn't moving. She watched Deb with glazed eyes, as if drugged.\n\n\"Three weeks.\" Deb reached into her jacket. \"I'm sorry, hon. I really wanted to bring you back in one piece.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "I slapped the power pack clipped to the back of my belt. A translucent wall of energy shimmered to life around my body, courtesy of Frank Herbert's Dune. Bullets ripped directly from the pages of Deb's book into my shield, but none penetrated. It was the same defense I had used against the Iced Z dealer's guns two years ago.\n\nDeb must have prepared the book earlier, opening its magic to a scene of gunfire and leaving it ready in case she needed a quick, silent weapon. It was difficult, dangerous, and illegal as hell. I would have loved to know exactly how she had pulled it off.\n\nThe sharp metal scent of gunpowder filled the room as bullets spat silently from the page and ripped into the shelves behind me. I jumped forward, trying to protect Lena and the books with my body. I swung the bat with both hands, striking the book hard enough to knock it up and away from me. The shield only stopped high-velocity impacts, which meant I could still use old-fashioned weapons like knives and bats.\n\nBullets gouged the wall and ceiling, raining chunks of plaster down on my head. My backswing smashed Deb's wrist. Had she been human, that blow would have shattered bone. I did jar her enough to make her drop the gun, which was little comfort as she stepped in, caught the bat, and twisted it away from me. She slammed her other hand into my chest, sending me staggering into the shelves.\n\nPain radiated from the center of my rib cage, but I did my best to keep it from showing as I brushed myself off. \"Wallacea, right?\"\n\nThe full species name was Muscavore Wallacea, informally known as the Children of Renfield. They weren't technically vampires, but they ran in the same circles. Deb wouldn't be as fast or strong as the sparklers I had faced in the library. She was more than a match for a human, though. For a dryad, too, from the look of things. Lena still hadn't snapped out of her trance.\n\n\"War is coming,\" said Deb. \"The Porters aren't going to win this one. I don't want to see you hurt.\"\n\n\"You fired a machine gun at me!\"\n\n\"I was aiming for your legs.\" She shrugged. \"If you'd have let me into your mind like your friend here, I wouldn't have needed the gun.\"\n\nThat was where the headache had come from. I grinned and tapped my head. \"Blame that on the fish in my brain.\"\n\nDeb stared. \"What the hell are you talking about?\"\n\n\"Telepathic fish.\" I shrugged, using the movement to scan the closest shelves. What kind of weapon would take out a Renfield? \"You need to read more Douglas Adams. The fish translates other languages by eating incoming thought waves. Turns out it provides a bit of a buffer against mental assaults, too. Gobbles up psychic attacks like candy. I wrote a paper on it three years ago.\"\n\n\"You put a fish in your brain.\" Her fingers inched toward her jacket. \"You're an odd man, Isaac Vainio.\"\n\n\"Why are the vampires really attacking us, Deb?\"\n\n\"I didn't lie to you. Someone, probably a Porter, has been working against the vampires. But we didn't attack the library, and we didn't take Gutenberg.\" She snatched a book from her jacket.\n\nI kicked the cricket across the floor, then lunged for the copy of Starship Troopers on the closest shelf. Deb had a head start, but as I had hoped, the cricket broke her concentration long enough for me to find the scene I wanted.\n\nA chittering sound filled the room, and Deb froze. Between the buzz of enormous wings and the click of chitinous bodies moving together, it was like I had ripped a hole in the side of a giant insect hive.\n\nDisturbing as the noises were to me, I was human. Deb, on the other hand, had become a creature who lived by consuming the strength of insects and small animals. Her book forgotten in her hands, she reached toward mine, toward the enormous insectoid aliens within the pages.\n\nI sidestepped to pick up the book she had used to fire at me. Her magic was still active. I set Starship Troopers on a shelf and gripped Deb's book with both hands. \"Let Lena go and drop your books. The jacket, too. Then we'll talk.\"\n\nShe wrenched her attention away from the sound long enough to glance at Lena, who started as if woken from a dream.\n\n\"Good. Now drop them.\"\n\nDeb stared at the pages of her book, and for a moment I thought she was going to try magic. Her knuckles whitened with pressure.\n\nI raised the book, and my fingers sank into the paper, touching Deb's magic. I could feel the staccato concussions of gunfire within the text, waiting to be released. \"Please don't make me do this.\"\n\nShe relaxed, tossing the book to the ground. She slipped off her jacket as well. \"Could you please shut that?\"\n\nI reached over to close Starship Troopers, muffling the alien bugs. \"Are you all right, Lena?\"\n\n\"I will be.\" Lena pressed a hand against the wall for balance. \"She was trying to persuade me you had been turned. She wanted me to make sure you came quietly, so we could 'help' you.\"\n\n\"Lena has a stronger mind than I expected, and I'm still figuring out these new powers,\" Deb said. \"If you'd given me another five minutes\u2014\"\n\n\"Tell me about Ray,\" I interrupted. \"The truth. Were you involved?\"\n\n\"I'd never hurt Ray. I wish I knew who murdered him.\" She slunk backward until she reached the glass door. \"I told you, hon. We didn't start this.\"\n\n\"You're saying we did?\"\n\n\"Be careful who you trust, Isaac,\" Deb said. \"Gutenberg is over six hundred years old. Is he even human anymore? Does anyone really know him?\"\n\n\"I know he wouldn't destroy his own archives.\" I tried to say more, but my throat constricted, and I began to cough.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Isaac.\"\n\nThe book she had dropped lay on the floor. Wisps of yellow-green gas seeped from the edges of the pages. Chlorine. My shield would stop bullets, but not air. A shield that suffocated the user wasn't terribly helpful.\n\nDeb swatted my book away hard enough to rip the binding, and then Lena's right hook slammed her back. The follow-up punch was hard enough to knock Deb through the door and onto the deck out back.\n\nI staggered toward the broken door. If I could get outside...\n\nThe cloud thickened around me, clinging to my body. I might have admired that trick, if the gas hadn't been burning my lungs from the inside out. Lena grabbed my arm, trying to help me outside, but that only brought her into the worst of the chlorine. I pointed to Deb's book.\n\nLena grabbed it and drew back to throw.\n\n\"No!\" The word grated the inside of my throat, but Lena lowered her arm. I snatched the book and squinted as gas continued to rise from the paper. I tried to hold my breath, but my lungs and throat hurt too much, and the muscles wouldn't obey.\n\nI wiped my eyes and glanced at the cover. This was an annotated history of World War I. I flipped the pages until I found Deb's spell, which resembled a jagged tear down the center of the book, rimed in green frost. Pressing my hand over the rip did nothing to stop the flow.\n\nMy nose dripped, and my vision blurred. I could barely hear over the pounding in my head. Pulling the hem of my bathrobe over my mouth and nose, I leaned closer, trying to make out the text. This chapter described the use of chlorine gas against the British in 1915. The Germans had deployed more than a hundred tons of the gas. Enough to wipe out a good chunk of Copper River.\n\n\"Get out of here!\" The words triggered another coughing fit, as if my body were trying to expel my lungs from my chest.\n\nLena caught my shoulders to keep me from falling. I closed my eyes, rereading the words in my mind. I could see Deb's spell, but I couldn't manipulate it. If I was going to stop this thing, I needed to use my own magic.\n\nLena braced me as I bore down, straining my fingers against the page until I ripped into that April battlefield. I expanded the rip until it devoured the hole Deb had created. The book was now mine, as was its magic. Magic that continued to pour out.\n\nAt the library, I had dissolved my weapons back into their texts. I did the same thing here, treating the chlorine as a single magically-created artifact. My vision flashed and sparked as I struggled to draw the gas back into the pages.\n\nSlowly, the chlorine thinned. I collapsed against Lena and did my best to keep from vomiting. I brought the book to my face like a gas mask. My coughing grew worse as it pulled out the chlorine that had pooled in my lungs.\n\nI couldn't talk, so I turned around and raised the book to Lena. She nodded, putting her hand over mine and pressing the book to her mouth and nose. As the pounding in my head eased slightly, a new sound made me wince: a high, piercing beep.\n\n\"Smoke alarm,\" I gasped. I staggered toward the bedroom. Most of the gas had stayed with me, but some had dispersed through the house. I found Smudge curled in a ball at the bottom of his tank. Bits of blackened, smoldering web clung to his body, and the air smelled like smoke, but he wasn't burning anymore. He wasn't moving at all.\n\nI yanked off the lid and carefully scooped him free, setting him on the bed. I lowered the book over his body like a tent.\n\nCome on, I prayed. You've faced worse than this. Arachnid lungs weren't the same as ours, but even if I had known everything there was to know about spider anatomy, Smudge was no ordinary spider. I had no idea how much gas would be toxic to a fire-spider.\n\nA wisp of smoke rose from beneath the book, and I sagged with relief. I pulled the book away, and Smudge crawled slowly toward me. I lifted him into my hand. Together, the three of us made our way back out to the kitchen, where I set Smudge down on the counter.\n\nThere was no sign of Deb. I put the book down and poured a cup of water for Lena, then got another for myself. The cold both stung and soothed my throat. I felt like I had swallowed a sandblaster.\n\nI made my way back to the living room and grabbed The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from the shelves. I turned to a dog-eared page and pulled out a small crystal vial full of red liquid. I opened the vial and allowed a single drop to fall onto my tongue.\n\nInstantly, the pain began to recede. I passed the bottle to Lena. \"You should only need one drop,\" I said in a voice that sounded almost human again. \"It's supposed to heal any injury.\"\n\nOnce Lena finished, I poured another drop onto my fingertip and extended it to Smudge. His mandibles tickled my fingertip, and soon he, too, was back to his old self.\n\nI picked up Deb's World War I book and squinted at the edges of the pages, where the paper was glued to the spine. Lines of ragged black seared the inner margins, invisible to anyone not trained to see it. The char wasn't bad enough to be a threat, but further use would cause problems.\n\nI sealed Starship Troopers next, then returned my bat and shield to their respective texts. I considered keeping the medicine, but I was pushing things too far already. I remembered Ray Walker lecturing me on the importance of terminating my spells.\n\n\"Every time you reach into a book, you're creating a portal, a hole into magic.\" He had punched a hole in the top of the half-empty pizza box to demonstrate. \"The more of that energy you return, the faster those holes heal. Now, the universe is pretty tough, and you can get away with keeping the occasional fire-spider, but don't push it. Not unless you want to rip open something you can't fix.\"\n\nI returned the vial to the book, then surveyed the damage to my library. Angry as I was at Deb's betrayal, seeing the bullet-ridden texts was worse. It was one thing to shoot at me, but to destroy my books... I picked up an Asimov paperback, examining the tattered hole through the spine and pages.\n\n\"So you have vampires among the Porters,\" Lena commented. \"That's new.\"\n\n\"Deb's not exactly a vampire.\" I set the damaged book on the arm of the chair\u2014she had shot my chair, too!\u2014and returned to the kitchen to finish the rest of my water. \"Muscavore Wallacea, from a ninety-year-old book called Renfield. It's a sequel to Dracula, written by Samantha Wallace. In her book, the Renfield character wasn't mad at all, and actually gained certain powers by consuming the smaller lives of insects and other creatures. Renfield was strong, fast, and able to influence the thoughts of others. Let a child of Renfield into your head for too long, and that 'madness' becomes infectious.\"\n\nLena whistled. \"In other words, I owe you a thank you.\"\n\n\"After the sparklers at the library, I think we're at one save apiece.\"\n\nHer answering smile took some of the sting out of the past twenty-four hours. She picked up her bokken and strode out the back door, glass crunching beneath her bare feet. \"Do you think she's right about someone from the Porters working against the vampires?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" I took a slow, shaky breath, trying in vain to calm myself. I was in way over my head, but I no longer cared. \"But I say we get out of here and find out.\"\n\nI stood in front of the open hall closet, staring at a brown suede duster on a wooden hanger.\n\nI'm officially reassigning you back to the field.\n\nOne little sentence, alluring and seductive, offering me a path to my dreams, then snatched away before I could seize it. Before it could seize me.\n\nMy breathing was rapid, and my heart continued to beat double-time. I hadn't just fallen off the magical wagon; the wagon had run me over and dragged me six blocks down a pothole-ridden street. The effects were worse after two years away. My body was no longer used to channeling this kind of energy.\n\nTwo years behind a desk, cataloging magic but never able to touch it. Two years of purgatory, redeemed in that one little sentence.\n\nI reached for the hanger. My hand trembled, to my great annoyance\u2014another aftereffect of magic and adrenaline. The duster was heavy, lined with a polyethylene fiber weave that could stop small caliber bullets or turn away a blade. It held up pretty well against zombie horses, too.\n\nI had sewn pockets into the lining, carefully sized and positioned to accommodate most American book formats. Twin constellations of black dots marked the leather shoulder pads where Smudge had ridden in the past. I slipped the familiar weight onto my body and brushed dust from the sleeves. The jacket still smelled ever so faintly of smoke.\n\n\"Looks good on you,\" Lena commented.\n\nIt felt good. Familiar. It conjured memories of hope.\n\nI returned to the library to stock up, a ritual my body remembered well even after so much time. My hands moved automatically to pull books from the shelves: Heinlein, Malory, L. Frank Baum, Le Guin, an old James Bond adventure. The spines were worn, and the pages fell open to the scenes I had used most often. I looped rubber bands into the books, top to bottom, to mark the pages I might need.\n\nAll total, I was packing sixteen titles when I finished, including a hardcover in the front that should provide a little extra protection for the heart.\n\n\"What about Deb?\" Lena asked softly. \"Shouldn't you let the Porters know?\"\n\n\"She's not completely turned,\" I protested weakly. Deb had tried to recruit me. Why would she bother unless something of our friendship remained? But when that failed, she had also tried to shoot holes in me.\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Someone can do magic or they can be magic, but not both. As Deb's transformation continues, she'll lose the ability to perform libriomancy.\" She had to know the cost of her transformation. No libriomancer would willingly sacrifice their magic.\n\n\"We could go after her. If there's any way to save her...\"\n\nI shook my head. Deb wasn't like a drug addict who could check into rehab and get her life back. This kind of magical transformation was irreversible. I didn't want to turn her in, but I had no choice. Given her access to the Porters, the damage she could do was too great.\n\nI turned away and picked up the phone. Pallas wasn't answering, so I left a brief voice mail letting her know our friend Deb had been \"poached by a competing firm.\"\n\n\"What will they do to her?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Knowing Pallas, she'll assign someone to hunt and destroy her. Destroy the thing she's become, I mean.\" My words sounded distant. Mechanical. Deb was already lost. Knowing that didn't ease the guilt for signing her death warrant.\n\n\"They'll kill her for what someone else did to her?\"\n\n\"Whatever bug-eater wormed their way into Deb's mind killed her.\"\n\n\"Isaac, she's a victim.\"\n\n\"I know that.\" Just like Nidhi Shah. If Shah was alive, would the Porters have to destroy her as well? I slammed the phone back into its cradle. \"I'm sorry, Lena.\"\n\nShe peered out the broken door without answering.\n\n\"Of course, until Pallas says otherwise, Deb's still an agent of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re. As such, I'm obliged to follow her orders.\"\n\nLena raised her eyebrows at my logic, but didn't argue. I retrieved Smudge, who climbed up my sleeve to take his familiar place on my right shoulder.\n\nDespite being out of the field for two years, I still kept a go bag packed with clothes, money, a small folded cage for Smudge, a handful of books, and a few other essentials. I stopped long enough to duct tape a bed sheet over the broken glass door to keep the mosquitoes out, then headed outside with Lena.\n\nThe Dalmatian a few houses down was barking madly from the fenced-in yard. I glanced up and down the street, but the houses out here were built with plenty of space and trees between them. Aside from the dog, nobody appeared to have noticed our little battle.\n\nDeb's car sat abandoned in the driveway. The doors were locked, but when I returned to the living room, I found the keys in her jacket pocket.\n\nThe instant I opened the car door, the stench of stale, rotting food poured out, making me gag. Fast food wrappers, pizza boxes, and crumpled cups filled the back seats, along with half-eaten crusts and spilled fries. Flies buzzed angrily at the intrusion.\n\n\"She was using the mess to attract insects,\" I said, feeling ill. \"The more she ate, the stronger she became.\"\n\nSmudge had perked up at the sound of the flies. He crept down to my wrist, crouched, and pounced. His forelegs snapped out to catch a black fly from midair. He landed on the side of the car, cooking the hapless fly in his legs and stuffing it into his mouth.\n\nI opened the door and searched the front. A printout from the Lansing State Journal Web site described the destruction of the MSU library. Deb had told the truth about that much. If anything, she had understated the damage. A color photo showed yellow police tape around a low hill of rubble. The nearby buildings appeared untouched.\n\nI found several books tossed carelessly onto the passenger seat. A pair of bloody brown feathers were stuck to the floor mat. Apparently Deb was starting to move up from insects to birds. I picked up a well-worn field guide to Michigan insects and fanned the pages.\n\nLena looked over my shoulder, her body brushing mine. \"She was using libriomancy to create her own snacks?\"\n\n\"Magically created insects wouldn't give her the same strength or power, but they might have helped her control the hunger.\" I studied the pages, noting the faint signs of char, like rot or mold eating the paper from the binding outward. \"She's been overusing this book, probably trying to stave off the change and hold on to her magic as long as she could.\"\n\n\"And that's bad?\"\n\n\"Ray once told me magic was like electricity. Pump too many amps through a cord that's not rated for it, and you risk melting it or starting a fire. Books can channel a lot of magic. So can people, for that matter. But there are limits.\"\n\nSmudge had crawled into the back seat, where he was digging into a writhing pile of maggots. He settled down and began to gobble them like popcorn.\n\n\"That is beyond gross,\" I said, using a Jelly Belly to lure him out. I slammed the door shut. Lena started toward her motorcycle, but I shook my head. \"We're safer together.\"\n\n\"We're also an easier target.\"\n\n\"Whoever targets my car deserves what they get.\" I keyed in the code to the garage door opener. The door lurched upward, squealing in protest, to reveal the gleaming curves of a black 1973 Triumph convertible. Despite having sat untouched for more than two years, not a speck of dust marred the paint.\n\n\"It's cute,\" Lena said, tracing her fingers over the red pinstriping.\n\n\"It's not cute.\" I climbed into the driver's seat. \"The body's mostly steel, so it's tougher than a lot of modern cars. And it's been modified for the field.\"\n\nLena grabbed a small pack from her motorcycle's saddlebag and squeezed it into the back, along with her two bokken. She waited while I backed out of the garage, then wheeled her bike in beside the old snow blower.\n\n\"I approve,\" she said when she joined me in the car. She reached out to touch the wood-paneled interior, then poked the tiny blue TARDIS that hung from the rearview mirror. \"That's the flying phone booth from Doctor Who, right?\"\n\n\"It's a police box. It was a gift from Ray, when I came back from my first solo mission in the field.\" Ray had taken me out to the local pizza place to celebrate. I was pretty sure he had been even more excited about my success than I was.\n\nSmudge raced down my sleeve, over the steering wheel, and onto the dash. Driving fascinated him. I had never figured out exactly why, but the old iron-and-ceramic trivet secured to the middle of the dash was his favorite spot in the world. As a bonus, in cold weather, he did a great job of keeping the windshield defrosted.\n\nLena pointed to the lower edge of the rearview mirror, where tiny symbols were etched into the glass. \"What does this say?\"\n\n\"It's Spanish. The spell gives the driver a form of night vision. You'll see the same characters on the windshield.\"\n\n\"Nice. And that gray rock tied to the steering wheel?\"\n\n\"A piece of hoof from a mountain goat. For traction control. We could take this thing snowmobiling on a frozen lake if we wanted, and we'd never lose control.\"\n\n\"I didn't think libriomancers could do that kind of magic.\"\n\n\"We can't.\" I sped toward Highway 41. \"I kind of stole it.\"\n\n\"From who?\"\n\n\"Ponce de Leon.\"\n\nI could see her staring at me from the edge of my vision. \"As in Ponce de Leon the conquistador?\"\n\n\"He wasn't using it anymore.\" I kept my attention on the road, especially the wooded areas to either side. Tough as the car was, a deer leaping out at the wrong moment could still inflict a fair amount of damage. I had deer whistles on the bumper, but I had seen too many wrecks and too many suicidal deer to trust them. \"Besides, is it really stealing if you're stealing from an asshole?\"\n\n\"I'd have to double-check, but I don't think the criminal code includes an asshole clause.\" She rolled down her window and reached out, fingers spread against the wind. Smudge flattened his body on the dash. \"So where are we going?\"\n\n\"To see a vampire named Ted Boyer in Marquette.\" Most vampires kept to the bigger cities where it was easier to go unnoticed, but Ted was a Yooper through and through, born and bred in the U.P. \"He should be able to fill us in on the latest bloodsucker gossip.\"\n\nLena played with the radio for a while, eventually settling on a country station. The air and the music all but swallowed her uncharacteristically quiet question. \"Isaac, how many strains of vampirism can be cured?\"\n\n\"Eleven,\" I said. \"There are a handful of others that can be managed like a chronic disease.\" I had once met a vampire who worked as an electrical engineer, and had rigged an insulin pump to deliver a steady dosage of holy water into his system, just enough to keep the symptoms at bay. But most, including Deb's strain, were incurable. \"You're worried about Doctor Shah.\"\n\n\"About her, and about what they could do with her. Nidhi knows every Porter in the region. She evaluated and worked with you all.\"\n\nI gritted my teeth and pressed down on the accelerator. If the vampires were starting a war, they couldn't have found a better person to fill them in on the strengths and weaknesses of their enemy."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "I took my time getting to marquette, wanting to wait until the sun was fully risen. Ted was an old school vampire, mostly Sanguinarius Stokerus, though the hybrid that turned him had given him a few extra quirks. He would be sluggish and weak during the day, which suited me just fine.\n\n\"How do we know your friend isn't involved in whatever's happening?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"First of all, Ted's a coward. I don't recall him ever going after a victim who was strong enough to put up a fight.\"\n\n\"What's the second reason?\"\n\n\"I stuck a bomb in his head.\" I searched for the arched wooden sign I remembered from my last visit. Ted lived on the southern edge of the city, about two miles in from the bay. \"He had been preying on humans, so Pallas ordered me to eliminate him. Normally, the vampires would have taken care of him, but there were 'jurisdictional complications' between the Detroit and Green Bay nests. When I found Ted, he begged me to give him another chance. I figured it couldn't hurt to have my own informant. The device also lets me track his location. He's not tamed by a long shot, but this is the next best thing.\"\n\n\"What happened after you left the field?\"\n\n\"The Porters send someone up every couple of months. Mostly they just let the computer map his movements. It sends up an alert if he goes anywhere he's not supposed to, like the Boy Scout camp west of town.\" When I found him, he had been living in the woods and sneaking into tents at night to feed.\n\nLena looked around as I drove up the winding road. \"And now he lives in a trailer park?\"\n\n\"He says he's comfortable here.\" I veered left, toward the more heavily wooded area in the back. I quickly spotted Ted's trailer, a yellow double-wide with green trim. An American flag jutted from a pole in the doorframe. Ted's blue Ford Bronco sat in the dirt driveway, the body slowly losing the war against rust. A faded bumper sticker on the back read, Say yah to da U. P., eh?\n\nWhile Lena grabbed her weapons, I opened the glove box and took out a small nylon bag and an old space opera. From chapter twelve of the book, I created a PDA-sized device with a glowing red dot dead-center on the screen.\n\nI tugged open the screen door and knocked. Ted should be sleeping, but you never knew. Frenzied barking erupted from inside, followed by the sound of claws scratching the door. I tried the knob. \"How are you with locks?\"\n\nLena handed her bokken to me. They were heavier than I had expected. She slid a toothpick from a small pocket in the seam of her jacket and winked. \"Watch this.\"\n\nShe held the toothpick between her finger and thumb. The wood grew as if alive, lengthening and sprouting a flat triangular bump on one side. She slid the toothpick into the lock and closed her eyes. Instead of trying to pick the lock, she simply waited. Moments later, she grinned and turned the toothpick. When she pulled it back out, it had grown into a reasonable imitation of a key.\n\n\"Nice,\" I said.\n\n\"You should see what I can do with rosebushes.\"\n\nI checked the nearby trailers to make sure nobody had noticed. The dog continued to protest our arrival to all who would listen, but either the neighbors had left for work, or else they had learned to tune out Ted's pet.\n\nWork. \"Oh, crap. Remind me to call the library when we finish here.\" I was supposed to open this morning. How many angry messages would be waiting on my machine when I returned home?\n\nLena opened the door and braced herself as a small, hyperactive beagle pounced at her legs, barking and sniffing. He didn't appear aggressive, just happy. His entire butt wagged as he examined Lena's sneakers.\n\nSmudge shifted on my shoulder, watching the dog closely. \"Watch yourself,\" I said to Lena. \"You know how dogs are with trees.\"\n\nShe punched my arm, but did issue a stern, \"Don't even think about it,\" to the beagle.\n\nTed's home was unchanged from my last visit, well-kept and smelling faintly of barbeque. The living room was to the left, with a handmade entertainment center dominating one wall, and a decent collection of video games filling the shelves. On our right was a small kitchen and dining area.\n\nI peeked in the fridge. No sign of blood, which was good. The freezer was bursting with venison packed into plastic bags, each one dated in black marker. \"Ted's a good hunter. He doesn't bother to bring a bow or rifle, but ever since our 'talk' a few years ago, he's made sure to pay for his hunting license every year. It's amazing how quickly you start following the rules when someone sticks a cranial explosive to the base of your skull. He hasn't had so much as a parking ticket since then.\"\n\nI walked down the hallway into the small utility room in the back, where peeling linoleum and the scent of antiseptic greeted us. The beagle grew even more excited, which I wouldn't have thought possible. His collar and tags rang against the empty steel dish on the floor.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said. \"No food until your owner wakes up.\" I opened the storage closet to find a pile of rags and towels stuffed haphazardly onto the shelves. I dropped to one knee and reached past the towels until I found the tiny steel handle sunk into the back. A tug rewarded me with a metallic click. Standing, I pulled the entire closet, which swiveled out to reveal an aluminum ladder secured to the wall studs with what appeared to be old metal coat hangers.\n\nLena squeezed past, the brushing of her body against mine momentarily distracting me as she peered into the dark hole in the floor.\n\n\"Ted sleeps hard,\" I assured her. I double-checked Smudge, who seemed far more anxious about the beagle than the vampire below.\n\nShe descended one-handed, holding both bokken in her other hand. I followed, and the beagle's yips changed to a drawn-out, pathetic whine as he watched us from the edge of the hole.\n\nThe air below was damp and cool. A single incandescent bulb hung overhead. I found the chain and pulled, illuminating cinder block walls and a low ceiling lined with cobwebs and daddy longlegs. Ted's makeshift cellar was the size of a small bedroom. A pair of metal support pillars were stuck into the middle of the cement floor, bracing the underside of the trailer.\n\nTed's coffin rested on two wide logs, positioned like fat tree stumps. The coffin was glossy black, trimmed in silver, and looked entirely out of place in these dingy surroundings. The thing was polished so well I could see us both reflected in its surface. I wondered idly, not for the first time, how he had gotten it down here. Had he simply dug out a cellar and then moved the trailer into position on top, using his vampiric tricks to erase the curiosity of anyone who might have questioned?\n\nHalf of a Ping-Pong table was shoved against a wall. Ted's old paddle and a single yellowed ball rested on the corner. He had painted a net on the wall, giving him a practice table where he could play against himself. A minifridge hummed beneath the table. An orange extension cord trailed up through a heavily caulked hole in the ceiling.\n\nI checked the fridge and pulled out one of eight identical blue thermoses, each one dated like the venison from upstairs. I unscrewed the lid and took a whiff.\n\n\"Blood?\" Lena guessed.\n\n\"Probably deer blood.\" I stepped toward the coffin and pulled the detonator from my pocket. \"Go ahead.\"\n\nLena tucked one bokken through her belt, readied the other, and yanked open the lid. The black barrel of a sawed-off shotgun poked out. From inside the coffin, Ted shouted, \"Who the hell are\u2014?\"\n\nLena slammed the lid back down on the barrel, pinning it long enough for her to grab the end. Ted swore as he struggled to control his gun. I crouched low, trying to stay out of the line of fire.\n\nLena's lips tightened in a smile. She adjusted her stance and thrust the gun backward, ramming the stock into Ted's body. Ted's cursing grew in pitch and intensity as Lena twisted the shotgun free and set it on the Ping-Pong table.\n\n\"Since when do you sleep armed, Ted?\" I asked.\n\n\"Isaac?\" The lid opened, and his words turned wary. \"What brings you out this way?\"\n\n\"Three vampires tried to kill me at work yesterday. A Wallacea showed up at my house early this morning to finish the job.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"Bug-eater.\"\n\n\"Yet here you are.\" He snorted and sat up, pushing the lid back. A rubber pad glued to the wall protected the coffin's edge. \"Maybe the next one will have better luck.\"\n\nTed was a small, slender man with wild eyes, wilder hair, and a complexion that would have made Snow White jealous. He was wearing nothing but ratty gray sweatpants, revealing a lean, bony torso. A vivid red mark on his right shoulder showed where Lena had rammed the gun into him.\n\nI tossed him a thermos. He unscrewed the lid and took a long drink. Bloodshot eyes flitted from me to Lena and back. I could see the tension in the corded muscles of his neck and shoulders. The longer we waited in silence, the more nervous he'd get.\n\nHe smelled like death and Old Spice, the latter being the best thing he had found to overpower the former. When he spoke, his lips peeled back to reveal pale, receded gums and gaps among his ivory teeth where his fangs had once been. \"Who's the fat chick?\"\n\n\"Oh, good, Ted. Insult the woman who just took your gun away.\" I raised the detonator, earning a low snarl. \"Her name's Lena Greenwood. She's the one who's going to humiliate you\u2014again\u2014if you give us any crap.\"\n\n\"Yah, I know that name. Tree lover, right?\" He pointed to the trapdoor. \"Would one of you bring Jimmer down here before the damn fool jumps and breaks his neck?\"\n\nThe beagle looked ready to do just that. I could hear his claws scraping the edge of the hole as he peered down at us, his entire body quivering. He whined piteously as I approached. The instant I held out my arms, he launched himself into the air. I nearly dropped the detonator, but managed to catch both it and the dog. I set him down, and he raced toward the coffin.\n\nTed dipped a finger into the thermos and offered the red-coated digit to the dog, who reared up and began lapping at the blood.\n\n\"If you've made yourself a vampire beagle\u2014\" I began.\n\n\"Nah, Jimmer just likes the taste.\" He set the thermos in the corner of the coffin and stretched. Without looking, he grabbed a plastic lighter and a half-empty pack of cigarettes from a pocket in the coffin's blue satin lining. \"So what will it take to get rid of you so I can go back to sleep?\"\n\n\"A clean blood test, for starters.\" While he lit up, I opened the small pouch I had taken from the glove box. Inside was a compact plastic glucose meter, modified by the same engineer who had rigged his insulin pump to fight his vampirism. I uncapped a canister of blood test strips, pulled out a green one, and stuck it into the meter. \"Which arm?\"\n\nHe blew a stream of smoke in my face, but extended his left arm. I jabbed a silver needle into the skin and pressed the drop of blood to the test strip. The meter beeped a few seconds later, the screen reading 23.\n\n\"Am I clean, boss?\" Ted asked with a scowl.\n\n\"You're within normal range.\" The green strips were calibrated for Stokerus vamps. Anything under 60 meant Ted was sticking to his nonhuman diet. \"The bug-eater who tried to kill me used to be a Porter.\"\n\nTed paused in mid-drag. \"They turned a Porter? That's ballsy.\"\n\n\"What's going on, Ted? Why come after us now?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me.\" He sucked his finger clean, then dipped it into the thermos again for the dog. \"If it was up to me, I'd have sent someone to off you years ago.\"\n\nI sighed. \"And if I'd followed orders, I'd have left your ashes in the bonfire pit at Camp Gichigamin.\"\n\nHe didn't answer.\n\n\"You're here because I convinced the Porters you could be useful to us.\" I leaned closer. \"If you're going to give me attitude instead of answers, then you're not useful anymore.\"\n\nHis attention shifted to the detonator.\n\n\"Go ahead, take it. I can make another. Any libriomancer can.\"\n\n\"All I know is you aren't the only one with problems,\" he said sullenly. \"Vampires have been disappearing for a few months now. We figured they'd been dusted, that maybe another idiot was trying to play slayer. It happens every once in a while. They don't usually last long. But then a few of the missing vampires showed up again and started causing trouble.\"\n\n\"What kind of trouble?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Hunting humans. Fighting and killing other vamps.\" Ted chugged the rest of the blood, then licked his lips, leaving a faint residue on his beard and mustache. \"That's nothing new. Every newborn vampire thinks he's hot shit until someone else pounds the shit right out of him and shows him what's what, but this is different. One of these upstarts even slew her own sire.\"\n\n\"It wouldn't be the first time,\" I said.\n\n\"Nah, the way I hear, this was a southerner. They don't mess with their makers. They can't.\" He lit another cigarette and flicked the first butt into the corner.\n\n\"Southerner?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Sanguinarius Henricus.\" Another relatively young bloodline, one which had arisen from Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series. \"Ted's right. Harris' vampires are intrinsically incapable of acting against their masters.\"\n\nTed wouldn't hesitate to lie to me, but he was a lousy actor. The shotgun, the chain smoking, the twitchiness in his hands... everything suggested he was genuinely spooked.\n\n\"They say you're the ones behind this,\" Ted commented. \"Maybe even old man Gutenberg himself.\"\n\n\"'The biggest liar in the world is They Say,'\" I muttered. \"Douglas Malloch.\"\n\nTed stared. \"Who?\"\n\n\"Never mind. Get dressed, Ted.\"\n\nHis lips pulled back, a threat display which would have been far more effective had his fangs not been sitting in a Porter lab downstate. \"Why?\"\n\n\"I need a bloodhound, someone who can sense and track other vampires.\" That power was one of the reasons Ted had returned to the relative seclusion of the U. P., where others of his kind wouldn't be constantly triggering his territorial instincts. \"You're going to help me check out Ray's place, and then you're going to lead us to the bastard that killed him.\"\n\n\"The hell I am!\"\n\n\"Hell is the other option, sure.\" I raised the detonator. \"Don't think I've forgotten what you really are. What you did to those boys.\"\n\nHis tongue flicked out, moistening his lower lip. \"I been clean for years now. You know that, eh? Whatever's going on down there, I want nothing to do with it.\"\n\n\"Fine.\" I backed toward the ladder, then jabbed a button on the control unit, and Ted shouted incoherently. He was out of his coffin and halfway to my throat when Lena drove a knee into his gut. She spun, tossing him onto the Ping-Pong table.\n\nI held the detonator so he could see the countdown. \"Twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes. That's how long you have left, unless I enter the cancellation code.\"\n\n\"You son of a bitch. I've lived this long by minding my own business, not butting in on\u2014\"\n\n\"They killed Ray,\" I said softly. \"They turned my friend. Now get dressed.\" I glanced at the dog. \"And you should probably call someone to watch Jimmer while you're gone.\"\n\nI stood impatiently while Ted finished spreading a green tarp in the trunk of my car. Next, he hauled a plastic bucket from the trailer, removed the lid, and dumped five gallons' worth of dirt and pebbles onto the tarp. He tossed the bucket away and climbed inside, stifling a yawn as he shaped himself a dirt pillow. \"Not a lot of room back here.\"\n\n\"It's daytime,\" I said. \"You'll be snoring in five minutes.\"\n\nHe tossed the tire iron out. I had to jump to one side to keep it from smashing my shin. A tow cable followed, and then a pair of emergency flares. He bent his knees and settled his head on the dirt. \"Hey, how about turning off that countdown? What if you wipe out and die in a wreck on the way downstate? I don't want to get blown up because of your crappy driving.\"\n\nI slammed the trunk and gathered up the things he had thrown out, squeezing them in behind the seats.\n\n\"Do we really need him?\" Lena asked as we pulled out of the trailer park. \"Can't you just pull out a time machine and go back to prevent the murders from happening?\"\n\n\"Most time machines won't fit through a book,\" I said. \"The book is the window for the magic, meaning we can't create anything larger. And no, we can't just create a twenty-foot-wide copy of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Otherwise I'd have taken my own personal spaceship to the moon years ago. How much do you know about libriomancy?\"\n\n\"Not that much,\" she admitted.\n\nI swerved around a suicidal woodchuck, earning a cranky shout from the trunk. \"Go to sleep, Ted!\" To Lena, I said, \"What we do is no different than any other magic. At its heart, magic is a two-part process: access and manifestation. Few people can tap into magical energy. Those who manage usually can't control the manifestation. The magic fizzles, or if they're really unlucky, it fries their minds.\n\n\"I can touch magic, but I can't shape and define it on my own the way a true sorcerer could. The key to libriomancy, the secret Gutenberg unlocked, was that when hundreds or thousands of people read a book in the exact same form, it creates a pool of belief anchored to that form. Gutenberg did it with roughly two hundred copies of his Bible. Most of us need thousands.\"\n\n\"So an oversized book wouldn't work unless you printed and distributed thousands of them,\" Lena said. \"So why not pay off some author to write about a handheld time machine?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg's a bit paranoid about anything that could, in theory, be used to erase him from existence. The Porters do have a few ghostwriters on payroll, but putting in a request requires a stack of paperwork like you wouldn't believe. Between the speed of bureaucracy and the speed of publishing, if I requisitioned a toy like that today, the book might come out three years from now. And then there's the magical cost of trying to change time. I'd have to work through the equations, but that much power could easily burn you out of existence.\"\n\nI gunned the engine, pulling into the passing lane and putting an SUV towing a pontoon boat behind us. It would be hours before we reached the bridge, and longer yet to arrive in East Lansing. Meaning there was time to ask Lena something that had been bothering me. \"You've known Doctor Shah a long time, right?\"\n\n\"She took me in when the Porters found me. I watch her back, especially when she gets called in to consult on the ugly cases. Remember that big oil spill down south? We spent two weeks down there, working with a displaced family. My job was to keep the family from eating Nidhi. You do not want to trigger a mermaid with full-blown PTSD.\"\n\n\"So you've met a lot of Porters,\" I said.\n\n\"Nidhi doesn't share the details of her cases, but I see most of her clients at least in passing.\"\n\n\"Then why come to me?\" I glanced at the speedometer and eased back on the gas. Stress always seemed to weigh down my foot. \"Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the rescue at the library. But I'm a cataloger, two years out of the field.\"\n\n\"You were the closest Porter I could trust to\u2014\"\n\n\"Nope,\" I said. \"I know what you told Deb, but the closest Porter to Dearborn, not counting Ray, would have been Nicola Pallas. Instead of a five-hour trip, you drove eight in order to\u2014\"\n\n\"Six.\"\n\nI ran the numbers in my head and winced to realize how fast she must have been going. \"Six hours away from the vampires who had taken Shah, to find me. So either you knew the vampires were coming after me next\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" she said. \"It's possible they followed me. I didn't see anyone, but that doesn't mean much.\"\n\nSparklers could have run alongside the highway, keeping pace until they figured out where she was going, then running ahead to Copper River to track me down. I didn't know what kind of records the vampires kept, but it wouldn't be too hard to find the lone libriomancer working in the U. P.\n\nLena had saved my life, and Smudge trusted her, but something still wasn't adding up. \"You said you could trust me. Why? We barely know each other.\"\n\n\"I... read your file.\"\n\n\"I see.\" I stared at the road. \"So you already knew about Mackinac Island.\" About everything I had told Doctor Shah. The nightmares, the grief, the breakdown when they reassigned me.\n\n\"Not everything.\"\n\n\"Does Shah know you had access to her files?\"\n\nLena shook her head. \"If she knew, she'd be even angrier than you are.\"\n\n\"I doubt that.\" We were doing ninety by the time we hit Highway 2. I forced myself to relax. \"Did it occur to you that breaking into someone's psych records wasn't the best way to build trust?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Isaac. I didn't have a choice.\"\n\n\"Bullshit.\"\n\n\"That's easy for a human to say,\" she shot back. \"I couldn't go after Nidhi. I wanted to. More than you'll ever understand. But I couldn't. Not alone. I needed you.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"To protect me.\"\n\n\"Me?\" I choked back a laugh. \"From what?\"\n\n\"From what I am. What I could become.\" She looked away. \"There are two kinds of magical creatures in this world. Those that arose 'naturally,' and those that were created. I'm one of the latter. I was born fifty years ago in the pages of a cheap paperback.\"\n\nThe stiffness in her body and the numbness in her voice reminded me of myself, sitting in Doctor Shah's office after Mackinac Island. \"You can't bring intelligent beings into our world from books.\"\n\nAside from the problem of size, no book could truly capture the complexity of a sentient being. The fictional mind couldn't handle the transition into the real world. They went mad.\n\nOne of my earliest jobs for the Porters had been at an elementary school, where I had been sent to repel an invasion of little blue men. An overly talented fourth grader had somehow managed to pull them out of an old book. Three apples high and batshit insane, every last one of them. I never had gotten the smell out of my steel-toed boots, and the deranged singing had earwormed me for weeks.\n\nEven Smudge was rather neurotic. He had run endless laps in his cage for weeks after I created him, until he collapsed from exhaustion. He probably would have died from the shock if he hadn't been written to be so loyal. I had needed his help, and that core loyalty gave him a lifeline, a mission that saved him from madness. \"How could you have come from a book?\"\n\n\"This was when the Gor novels first came out. Just like any other hot trend, authors scrambled to join the bandwagon.\" She spoke in a monotone, reciting the story instead of telling it.\n\nI knew the Gor books, a series by John Norman famed for its portrayal of sexual servitude. Tarnsman of Gor had been the first of dozens, back in the late sixties. The series had been popular enough to spawn an entire subculture.\n\n\"The book was called Nymphs of Neptune.\"\n\nI groaned. \"Really?\"\n\nThat got a quiet chuckle. \"A terrible title for a terrible book. There were twenty-four nymphs, all of whom looked roughly the same. The author had a fondness for plump women, describing us as 'the Grecian ideal of beauty and perfection.' Our surface appearance changed, depending on the desires of our lovers. One of us was given to 'a noble Nubian warrior,' and she became 'dark as the richest chocolate, to match her lord and master.'\"\n\nMy fingers clenched tighter around the wheel. \"And somebody published this crap?\"\n\n\"Oh, it was quite popular for a time.\" She sighed. \"Central to a nymph's nature is the inability to refuse her lover.\"\n\n\"You're not allowed to say no.\"\n\n\"I'll never know who reached into that book and pulled out an acorn from the tree of a dryad. They must have tossed it aside and forgotten all about it, but my tree grew with magical swiftness. Within a few years, I emerged naked and lost. I wandered for two days until I came to a farmhouse. The first person I met was a farmer named Frank Dearing. He took me in. I helped work the fields during the day, and by night\u2014\"\n\n\"I can guess.\" My jaw hurt from clenching it.\n\nI had always assumed Lena to be a natural-born dryad. The idea that she had been created, grown from a seed in a bad pulp novel... created to be someone's plaything, like some kind of magical sex toy... I felt physically ill just thinking about it.\n\nLena touched my forearm. \"It's all right.\"\n\n\"How the hell is it all right?\"\n\n\"I was happy. Content. I didn't know any better. Part of our nature is that we don't want to say no. When Frank died and the Porters found me, they brought me to Nidhi. They thought I was suffering from Stockholm syndrome. They knew I was magical, but we didn't discover my origins until later. By then... I had spent so much time with her.\"\n\nI looked at Lena, the black hair, the brown skin. \"You and Doctor Shah?\"\n\n\"We've been lovers for nine years.\"\n\nMy mental clutch jolted and stalled as I tried to incorporate this information into my image of Doctor Shah.\n\n\"You only knew her as a therapist,\" said Lena. \"If you met her outside of the office, you'd probably like her. She's a bit of a geek, too.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, too?\" I asked, but my heart wasn't in the banter.\n\n\"Nidhi grew up reading comics, especially She-Hulk and Tank Girl. Those fantasies helped to shape me. The Nymphs of Neptune were able warriors, and there were plenty of scenes where we fought our sisters for the pleasure of men. I learned to fight for a better purpose.\" She shrugged. \"It could be worse. I'm smart, strong, and nigh indestructible.\"\n\nBeing born from an acorn, she wouldn't have experienced the shock of transition the way a more fully-fleshed character might. I suspected her nature helped there as well, just as Smudge's had. Presumably both Frank Dearing and Doctor Shah wanted a sane lover, and Lena would have been shaped by those desires. \"Is it strength if you exist to fulfill someone else's fantasy?\"\n\nShe flexed an arm. \"Tell you what. Let's arm wrestle, and you can tell me if that strength is real.\" Her words were playful, but muted.\n\n\"This doesn't explain why you read my file. Why you sought me out.\" My anger at Lena had fled, replaced by confusion. Her athleticism, her energy, her sense of humor, everything I found so appealing about her, were these things simply a result of how her race had been written?\n\n\"Think about it, Isaac. My lover was taken by vampires. If she's not dead, if they turn her like they did your friend Deb... her desires define me, Isaac.\"\n\n\"And you can't refuse your lover. So you need\u2014\" I almost swerved off the road.\n\n\"You're not usually this slow on the uptake,\" Lena commented.\n\n\"You want me to become your next owner?\" Red sparks crackled from Smudge's back, either from the anger in my words or my driving.\n\n\"I knew you were attracted to me, when we met before. You appreciated my body, but you also liked me. Your file confirmed that you'd make a good partner.\"\n\n\"And you didn't think you should let me in on this plan?\"\n\n\"Sorry, I got a bit distracted saving your ass from those sparklers.\"\n\n\"Lena, I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Nidhi was conflicted, too, when she learned the truth about me. This is what I am. I can't change that. And there are a lot of people out there who... well, their fantasies aren't something I ever intend to become.\"\n\nI couldn't even figure out who I was angry at. Whatever hack had written Lena's book couldn't have known what he was creating. From the sound of things, whoever pulled her acorn from the pages had been an untrained amateur. Otherwise, why leave it in the woods? As for Lena herself, she was simply trying to survive, to take some kind of control over what she would become.\n\nOf everyone she had met in her time with Doctor Shah, she had chosen me. She was entrusting me with her life and with her self, with who she would become.\n\nI thought back to her unwillingness to kill, the way she had described vampires as victims of magic, shaped and defined by their magical nature. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nHer answering silence lasted long enough for me to realize how inadequate my words were, and then she shrugged. \"Everyone has problems.\"\n\n\"Couldn't you\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't try to fix me. I am what I am.\" Her sudden, mischievous smile eased the mood. \"It's a lot to process, I know. I'm thinking of putting together a pamphlet. 'What to do When a Dryad has the Hots for You.' What do you think?\"\n\nHow had Shah lived with herself? Yet if I said no, Lena Greenwood could become far more dangerous than any vampire. \"So what are you supposed to do?\"\n\nShe took a deep, slow breath. \"I'm not asking you to make a decision, or to commit to anything. Just please think about it.\"\n\nI was going to have a hard time thinking about anything else."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "I was no less conflicted when we reached the Mackinac Bridge three hours later. I pulled into line at the toll booths and asked Lena, \"Do you have an M&M?\"\n\nShe fished one from the bag in her pocket, her head cocked in confusion.\n\nI used the candy to lure Smudge off the dashboard and out of sight as we pulled up to the booth. I wasn't aware of any laws forbidding the transportation of large spiders, but I tried to avoid giving people heart attacks when possible. Smudge stayed on my lap, hidden by my jacket as I paid the toll and drove onto the bridge.\n\n\"You look pale,\" Lena commented.\n\n\"I'm fine.\" I shifted gears, staying in the right lane and keeping my eyes fixed on the road ahead.\n\n\"Do you want me to take a turn driving?\"\n\n\"The only thing worse than driving over this bridge is sitting in the passenger seat while someone else drives. No offense. It's a control thing.\"\n\nThe Triumph's built-in enchantments provided protection against everything from rocks to bullets to dragonfire (though I'd never tested that last one). None of which made me any more comfortable as the road sloped higher and we left the U. P. behind.\n\nFive miles of steel suspension bridge connected Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. At its center point, the Mackinac Bridge rose two hundred feet above the churning water. At that height, you'd fall for roughly three and a half seconds, slamming into the water at around 110 feet per second, or roughly 77 miles per hour.\n\nDiscomforting as the math was, it helped keep my mind occupied. I soon found myself stuck behind a slow-moving station wagon. Passing was out of the question. The center lanes were grated steel, which meant they generated enough vibration to make you feel like you were trapped inside a pissed-off bumblebee. Not to mention the fact that the wind rising through the grate could flip a small vehicle.\n\nSure, it had only happened once, back in eighty-nine. But I wasn't taking any chances.\n\nMy companions had no such fears. Smudge returned to the dashboard and squeezed into the lower right corner of the windshield in order to better watch the thick steel cables as we passed. I wondered if he saw this as a kind of enormous metal web. Lena was smiling as she peered out at the water.\n\n\"Is it true there's a colony of lake trolls living at the base of the bridge?\" she asked.\n\n\"Not since seventy-one.\" I peeked out at the blue water below, where Lake Huron met Lake Michigan. Whitecaps highlighted the waves.\n\n\"Tell me about Gutenberg.\" Her calmness reminded me of Doctor Shah, and I wondered if this was a deliberate attempt to distract me. \"If he drank from the Holy Grail, why can't you do the same thing and become immortal, too?\"\n\n\"He locked the book. Most holy books are locked, actually.\" Given how violent humans could get over matters of religion, this was one of the few things almost every Porter agreed on. \"Basically, he seals the text, preventing anyone from using its magic. Libriomancy works through the resonance among copies of a book. Locking one seals them all, and the original, locked copy goes to one of our archives.\"\n\n\"Is it something they do often?\"\n\n\"Often enough. It's getting harder to keep up with new titles these days. Catalogers flag potentially dangerous books. Take David Brin's Earth. He wrote about a microscopic black hole that fell into the planet's core, threatening to devour the entire world. That black hole would be small enough to fit through the pages, meaning any fool kid with magical talent who didn't know better...\"\n\n\"Would it really destroy the Earth?\"\n\n\"It's tough to say. The amount of energy it would take to create a black hole, even a pinpoint one, is immense. It might just swallow the kid and pop back out of existence, but in theory, it could also become self-sustaining as it devoured more mass.\" There were plans upon plans for such world-threatening eventualities, developed by Porter researchers. \"We get review copies of every new book from the major publishers and most of the small presses. We usually catch and lock the troublesome ones before they're released to the public, though Harry Potter gave us some trouble.\"\n\nJ. K. Rowling had received a visit from Gutenberg himself, asking her to eliminate that damned time-turner from future books. Before I could say more, Smudge scrambled off of the dashboard and onto the steering wheel. Heat rippled from his back as he spun around to glare at the windshield.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Lena.\n\nThe windshield began to fog over, gray wisps creeping inward from the edge. \"Not now, dammit.\"\n\nWe were more than halfway across, but that left another two miles to go. Keeping one white-knuckled hand on the wheel, I reached out to try to wipe the windshield clean. My efforts had no effect. This wasn't frost; it was smoke, trapped within the windshield itself.\n\n\"Vampires?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Phone call.\" I flipped on the emergency blinkers. The driver behind me honked the horn, making me jump. \"The windshield is crystal, not glass.\"\n\nSmoke condensed into a young, translucent face with an arrogant smirk. I already knew who it was. Only one person could seize control of the car like that: the same person who had enchanted it to begin with.\n\n\"I'm in the middle of the goddamned Mackinac Bridge!\" I shouted.\n\nThe image vanished, reappearing as a much smaller face in the rearview mirror. \"Isaac, my friend. So glad to find you alive and well. I hear you're having an interesting week.\"\n\nI kept my attention on the road. \"Lena, meet Juan Ponce de Leon. Explorer, sorcerer, retired bounty hunter, ex-Porter, and all-around dick. His hobbies are magic, conquering native populations, and butting into people's lives at the worst possible time.\"\n\nDe Leon laughed. \"Guilty on all counts, I'm afraid.\" His black hair was cut stylishly short, and his tan skin was so flawless it made me wonder if he was wearing makeup.\n\n\"What do you want?\" I asked.\n\n\"The same thing as you. To find out what happened to Master Gutenberg and his missing automatons.\"\n\nI feigned confusion. \"Something happened to Gutenberg?\"\n\nAnother laugh. \"Banishment hasn't blinded me to the world of magic, Isaac. And you're far too young and inexperienced to play games with me. Don't think I've forgotten what you stole from me.\"\n\n\"It had been impounded for nine years!\"\n\nHe frowned. The face in the mirror was a mere two inches high, but the annoyance of even a miniaturized Ponce de Leon was enough to send chills through my blood. \"Do you realize how easy it would be for me to accelerate that car and strip off the traction spells, even from here?\"\n\n\"Point taken.\"\n\nDe Leon pursed his lips. \"Do the Porters have any leads?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't know.\" I had called Pallas again when we stopped for gas an hour ago. She hadn't answered, but her voice mail message had said, \"Isaac, check in and let us know what you find in East Lansing.\" When Lena called the same number, she got a generic prompt to leave a message, so apparently Pallas was finding new ways to bypass whoever had hacked the Porters' communications. Not what I had expected, but if she was giving me tacit permission to continue snooping, I wasn't about to argue. \"The vampires think Gutenberg is behind everything, that he's working against them.\"\n\n\"To what end?\" De Leon steepled his fingers in front of his chin. \"Johannes wouldn't simply abandon the Porters. He's invested too much. He's very possessive of his creations.\"\n\n\"Who else has the power to eliminate him and take control of his automatons?\" I swallowed, then added, \"Aside from yourself?\"\n\nHe waved my accusation away. \"I've tried to unravel the secrets of Johannes' mechanical golems. I failed. Gutenberg hates them, you know. A passionate, burning hatred, but he needs them.\"\n\n\"Could they have turned against him?\" asked Lena.\n\nDe Leon blinked. \"Interesting... but no, I don't think so. Their loyalty to Gutenberg is enchanted into their very core.\"\n\n\"I assume you've tried to find him?\" I asked.\n\n\"Naturally. But my resources are limited. Ironic, isn't it? If Johannes hadn't banished me to Spain, cursing me to remain within her borders, I might be better prepared to help find him. I can confirm that he is alive, and that he is as human as ever. That's all I know.\"\n\nMeaning if vampires were involved, they hadn't turned Gutenberg yet. It was more than we'd known before. \"If this explodes into all-out war between vampires and humans, what will you do? Whose side will you take?\"\n\nHis lips quirked. \"I suggest you find Gutenberg, and quickly.\"\n\n\"The Porters are\u2014\"\n\n\"The Porters have their own problems to deal with.\" He leaned closer, with that smile that could charm a rabid hippogriff. \"You know how to reach me, Isaac. If this does mark the dissolution of Johannes' little club, you're going to need all the allies you can get.\"\n\nHis visage dissolved into smoke before I could figure out the safest way to respond. Smudge kept low as he crept carefully back to his trivet on the dash.\n\nLena opened the window, venting the burnt-dust smell of frightened fire-spider. \"Is he really who he claims to be?\"\n\n\"Yep. He was an explorer in the service of the Spanish Empire.\" I swerved past that damned station wagon and hit the gas, speeding down the highway. \"That much the history books got right. But he was also a sorcerer. In 1521, he was shot in the thigh with a poisoned arrow. He sailed to Cuba, where he spent the next month using his magic to fight the poison. He created a potion, blending the juice of the manzanilla de la muerte with the waters of a magical spring.\"\n\n\"The fountain of youth?\"\n\n\"From what I've been told, it was more like the mud puddle of youth, but yes. It saved his life, but the damage remained. There might have been a magical element to the poison. He walks with a limp to this day.\"\n\n\"Do you think he could be involved with the attacks or Gutenberg's disappearance?\"\n\n\"He's kept pretty quiet in the decades since Gutenberg banished him.\" He might have been pulling strings from Spain, but my gut told me he had been telling the truth. \"Even if he wasn't involved before, he won't hesitate to take advantage of the situation.\"\n\nMeaning in addition to rogue vampires, missing automatons, and Gutenberg, we could potentially have a sorcerer with power second only to Gutenberg himself to worry about. If I had been a fire-spider, I would have been blazing like a bonfire right about now.\n\nAfter losing an hour to construction on southbound 127, we reached East Lansing shortly before sunset. Ray Walker had lived in an apartment above his used bookstore on Grand River Avenue, across the road from the northern edge of Michigan State University.\n\nI found a parking spot a block away in an oversized orange-and-blue parking garage. I checked to make sure nobody was watching, then popped the trunk.\n\nTed yawned and held up a hand to shield his eyes. \"Come back and get me after the sun goes down, eh?\"\n\n\"No problem, but I need somewhere to store the leftovers from dinner.\" I tossed a pizza box into the trunk beside him.\n\nTed bolted out like I had electrocuted him. He snarled at me, fully awake and fully pissed off. \"Asshole.\"\n\n\"Hey, at least I didn't ask for anchovies with the extra garlic.\" I slammed the trunk shut. \"Come on.\"\n\nEast Lansing lost a significant chunk of its population over the summer, but plenty of students lived here year-round, filling the sidewalks and moving in and out of various shops. I had adjusted to East Lansing during my time at MSU, but after spending two years back in Copper River, the city felt uncomfortably crowded. I did my best to ignore the people and the traffic as we headed back behind the various stores.\n\nSweat dripped down my sides, but I hadn't been willing to leave my jacket and books in the car. The jacket also allowed me to hide Smudge, who was currently riding in a small, rectangular cage, clipped to my belt loop with a steel carabiner. It lay flat against my hip, creating an awkward bulge, but it kept him safe and out of sight.\n\nYellow crime tape marked the back entrance to Ray's shop. Flyers in every color covered the windows, advertising local bands, tutoring services, fundraisers, and more. I peered between the flyers, looking in at the darkened store. Row after row of cramped plywood bookshelves stood with bulging shelves, exactly as I remembered them.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" Lena asked softly.\n\nI walked past the store to a glass door that led to a split staircase between Ray's store and what had once been a barbershop, but appeared to have been converted into a tattoo parlor. I had climbed those steps a thousand times as a student, heading up to Ray's apartment for my true studies.\n\n\"There's a security camera,\" I said softly as I led my companions through the door and down the steps. Incense from a new age shop hung heavy in the air. I ducked into the cramped opening beneath the stairs.\n\nWhile Ted examined the graffiti scratched onto the wall, I pulled out a Robert Asprin paperback and skimmed the pages. \"Hold this, please.\"\n\nWhile Lena gripped the edges of the book, I reached inside with both hands and tugged out a sheet of invisible fabric. I had to stop several times to roll and crumple the material so it would fit through the book. Invisibility was a common enough trick, but most rings and cloaks were only good for one person. This sheet should be enough to cover us all.\n\nMinutes later, we were climbing back up the stairs to the apartments above, invisible to humans and cameras alike. Unfortunately, the sheet also trapped the stench of death, rot, and Old Spice rising from Ted's body as he pressed close to me.\n\nI swear he was deliberately treading on my feet as we walked, but it was Lena's body against mine that was truly distracting. She held the edge of the sheet in one hand and her twin bokken in the other, but her hip and thigh brushed mine with each step.\n\n\"No need to ask which apartment,\" Ted commented.\n\nToothpick-sized splinters littered the worn seventies carpeting of the hallway where the deadbolt and lock had been smashed in. A new latch was bolted to the door and frame, secured by a heavy padlock.\n\nUntil now, it had only been words. Stories. Here was proof of Ray's death, of the violence of the attack. His killer had stood in this very spot.\n\nLena set her weapons against the wall and picked up a six-inch sliver of wood. \"Are you ready?\"\n\nI checked Smudge, who was calm and cool, then nodded. Lena slid the sliver into the padlock. Moments later, the door swung inward.\n\n\"Don't touch anything,\" I warned.\n\n\"Oh, please.\" Ted snorted. \"Like this is my first time breaking and entering.\"\n\nA powerful antiseptic smell lingered in the air as I stepped carefully into the apartment. It couldn't hide the metallic scent of blood. Ray's blood. I reached to the side and flipped on the light switch with my elbow.\n\nEver since Deb told me about Ray, a part of me had hoped it was a mistake, that somehow he had survived and escaped into hiding. Seeing the ruins of his apartment crushed that hope, leaving only a hollow sensation in my rib cage.\n\nBlack fingerprint powder covered light switches and the wall of the arched doorway to the kitchen. Clean, rectangular stripes cut through the dust where the police had lifted prints.\n\nA half-finished mug of tea sat on the end table beside the fold-out sofa in the living room. I had crashed on that couch many times after late-night magic sessions, or in one case, a Mystery Science Theater marathon.\n\nI stepped closer, examining the book that lay open on the carpet: a collection of Shakespeare's comedies. I could see Ray's handwriting, tiny and machine-precise in the margins.\n\nHe always wrote in his books, a habit that had driven me crazy from day one. I could barely bring myself to highlight my textbooks, and he desecrated every one of his books with notes, analyzing historical context, referencing other books and stories, analyzing word choice... he would have made a great literature professor if he had been more comfortable speaking in front of groups.\n\nThe drywall behind the couch was cracked, a round indentation showing where the attacker must have slammed Ray's head against the wall. A few small shards from a broken lamp lay on the carpet, though the lamp itself was gone. The upright piano to the right of the couch had been smashed. Broken ivory keys and snapped wires made it looked like a gutted animal.\n\n\"They came in fast,\" Lena said as she studied the room. \"He didn't have time to stand. A vampire could be through the door and incapacitate a normal human in less than a second.\"\n\nI looked to Ted for confirmation.\n\n\"One of us did this.\" Ted's pupils were wide, and his pale lips had drawn back from his teeth. His breathing reminded me of an animal, quick and predatory as he sniffed the air. He nodded toward the kitchen. \"In there.\"\n\n\"Ray didn't invite them in,\" I said. That eliminated more than thirty potential species of vampire. How had they gotten past the security camera? A few species could move quickly enough to avoid being seen. Others could dissolve into mist. Or maybe the killer simply wore a baggy sweatshirt or jacket to hide their identity. I needed more information, but I wasn't yet ready to enter the room where my friend had died.\n\nI moved to the small antique desk in the far corner of the living room, next to the window. Ray's computer was gone, leaving a clean rectangular outline in the dust. The police must have taken it to check his e-mail or chat logs. They wouldn't find anything. A spell on the motherboard would have wiped the hard drive the moment it passed through the matching enchantment in the doorway. That spell was a standard Porter precaution, courtesy of the late Victor Harrison.\n\nA hand closed over my shoulder. Lena didn't say a word. She stood beside me, giving me time, but letting me know she was there.\n\n\"He didn't deserve this.\" I swallowed, trying to ease the tightness in my throat. I had always had a vivid imagination. It was part of what made me a good libriomancer, but now it tortured me, recreating the possible details of the attack: the jolt of adrenaline as the door crashed inward; the shock, pain, and confusion as inhumanly strong hands ripped him from the couch; the fear when he realized what was happening. Had he called out for help as the vampire hauled him into the kitchen?\n\nI steeled myself and stepped past Ted, who had stopped at the boundary of the kitchen where carpet met brown linoleum. Faded smears of blood marked the walls, and the floor was tacky. Someone had done an initial clean-up, possibly the landlord, but it would take industrial cleaners to make this place habitable again.\n\nThe pantry was smashed in. A few stray Cheerios crunched beneath my feet, and I spotted tiny ants moving across the floor. The knives from the wooden block beside the sink were missing. Probably taken to a police forensics lab.\n\nI opened Smudge's cage, allowing him to climb up to my shoulder. He immediately turned around and perched low to watch Ted. Heat wafted from his small body.\n\n\"It's the blood,\" Ted said. \"I can taste it.\" His face was even paler than usual, and his tongue flicked over his lower lip. His eyes had taken on a reddish tinge. \"I'll just wait back here.\"\n\n\"Good idea.\" I'd hate to have to kill Ted after going to all that work to drag him down here. Not to mention the questions a layer of vampire ash could raise in whoever came to clear out Ray's belongings. Probably his ex-wife or daughter. I wondered whether the Porters had talked to them. They deserved to know the truth, but that would never happen.\n\nLena had moved to the round wooden table tucked into the corner. Bloodstains darkened every scratch and gouge in the surface. Thin streaks through the stains showed where the police had swabbed samples of the blood. Of Ray's blood.\n\nI forced myself to move closer, examining the fresh scars in the wood and the faint spatter of blood on the wall. I stepped to the side, moving my hand down as if I were swinging a knife, then wrenching it free. \"Whoever killed him stood here.\"\n\nThe white ceiling showed the blood better than the walls. There was nothing careful or precise about what had been done to Ray Walker. Every violent wrench of the knife would have sprayed blood from the blade onto the wall and ceiling. From those lines, Ray had been stabbed at least six times.\n\n\"This feels personal,\" Lena said. \"It's overkill.\"\n\nPersonal, and completely different than the attacks on me back in Copper River. The sparklers had been pissed, but not like this. And Deb had tried to trick me into coming with her. \"How does it compare to the attack on Doctor Shah?\"\n\n\"The vampires who hit us were organized and smart.\" Lena's words were tight. \"If they'd come in with this kind of uncontrolled fury, I'd have taken them apart.\"\n\nI closed my eyes, listening to the cars rushing past on Grand River Avenue. \"Why didn't anyone hear?\"\n\n\"It's easy enough to stop someone from screaming,\" Ted offered from the other side of the doorway. \"Crush the throat with one hand. If you're into knives, jab the lungs. Or if you're lucky enough to have some of that vampire mojo, you can mind-control them.\" He took a step back, hands raised. \"Hey, you asked, man.\"\n\nI stared at Ted, then back at the bloodstains on the walls and ceiling. I dropped to my hands and knees by the table. Faint outlines showed where blood had puddled on the linoleum. Ted could barely enter the room without losing control. \"What kind of vampire enters without needing an invitation, kills with no restraint, but doesn't drink the blood of their victim?\"\n\n\"Does that narrow down the possibilities?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Too much.\" I slammed a fist into the wall. \"None of the species living in the Midwest fit.\"\n\n\"It's a vampire, all right,\" Ted took a single step back toward the kitchen. His eyes turned a vivid red. Lena readied her bokken, and I heard the telltale puff of Smudge's flame. Ted hissed and backed away, shaking his head.\n\n\"What is it?\" Lena asked.\n\nTed rubbed his jaw. \"You know how I've stayed alive all these years, Isaac?\"\n\n\"By hiding in a basement?\"\n\nHe ignored me. \"Instinct. Pure, animal instinct. When I step into that room and get a good whiff of the thing that killed your friend, those instincts tell me to get as far away as possible. You'd be wise to do the same.\"\n\n\"But you can smell it?\" I asked. \"Which means you can track it.\"\n\nHis animalistic snarl eased into an expression of disgust. \"Aw, shit. I shouldn't have said that. Yah, I can track it.\"\n\nI turned away from the blood, though I doubted I would ever be able to scrape the image from my mind. The vampire would have been drenched in blood. They couldn't have simply strolled away without attracting notice, but some vampires could move too fast to see, especially at night. \"Let's go.\"\n\n\"I'll follow this thing, but once we find it, you're on your own,\" said Ted.\n\nI straightened my jacket, taking comfort from the weight of my books. \"You find it. We'll take it from there.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "I wasn't surprised when Ted led us onto campus, directly toward the remains of the MSU main library. A dead Porter and a destroyed archive in the same city? How could they not be connected?\n\nNightfall had added strength to Ted's step, making him seem somehow larger. He puffed on a cigarette as he walked. Apparently smoking didn't interfere with his ability to track the other vampire. \"This is a bad idea,\" he muttered.\n\nI remembered the MSU library as an imposing four-story fortress of brick and glass, built on the northern bank of the Red Cedar River. As a freshman, I had gotten hopelessly lost on the third floor, trying to track down a journal article about Jacques Derrida's contribution to literary theory.\n\nThe attack had smashed the entire building to rubble.\n\nRoads were blocked off, and the smell of smoke and dust choked the air. A hastily erected chain-link fence circled the ruins. Yellow caution tape was woven through the fence, framing a hill of broken bricks and twisted metal. Intact sections of wall and floor jutted from the pile at random angles. Broken glass glittered in the street, illuminated by enormous halogen lamps set up around the edges. Generators and construction equipment growled like angry metal beasts.\n\nA crew in reflective orange vests and hard hats was working to clear the debris. Others worked with dogs, presumably searching for survivors trapped within the wreckage. A bulldozer was parked a short distance away. I spotted a police car and an ambulance as well.\n\nTed lit another cigarette and spat the butt of the first onto the street, earning an annoyed look from one of the students who surrounded the site at a safe distance. Many were snapping photos with their cell phones. Others were murmuring to one another, and I saw several people crying. Ruined books and magazines were everywhere, the breeze ripping through their pages.\n\nThe trees around the library were gray with dust, but appeared intact. Likewise, the neighboring buildings were dirty but unharmed: not a cracked window anywhere. This had been a deliberate, carefully-controlled attack on the library. On us.\n\n\"No vampire did this,\" Ted growled. \"Not even sparklers are this tough. Whatever busted this place, they'd swat you and me like mosquitoes.\"\n\n\"We'll see,\" said Lena. She had twisted her bokken into a single thick cane, like a hand-carved double helix. It was a nifty trick, one that allowed her to retain her weapons without drawing much attention. She leaned on the cane and asked, \"Can you tell if anyone's alive in there?\"\n\nTed's odor and appearance kept the gawkers from getting too close, and the screech of tools and equipment prevented anyone from overhearing our conversation. \"I'd have to get closer to be sure,\" said Ted, \"but I don't think so.\"\n\nI crossed the street and gripped the chain-link fence, staring at the mess. \"The attack came fast. There wouldn't have been time for everyone to get out.\" Deb had suggested one of Gutenberg's automatons might have done this, and I was hard-pressed to think of another option. A dragon, possibly... though there hadn't been a verified dragon sighting since 1825, and I didn't see any fire damage.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Ted stayed a few steps back from the fence, his eyes wide. \"Whoever you're looking for, they're still in there.\"\n\nI spun around. \"Are you sure?\" If the vampire had come here after Ray's death, but prior to destruction of the library, they could have been trapped inside. \"Maybe the attack on the library was an attempt to stop the killer. They could be injured or even dead.\"\n\n\"Definitely not dead.\" Ted was still staring at the library. \"No more than I am, at any rate.\"\n\nI rubbed my face. The dust was drying my eyes and throat, and it was about to get worse. I pulled a book from one of my back pockets and, hunching close to Lena to block people's view, retrieved a folded ID badge. \"Let's go.\"\n\nTed didn't move. \"I told you I'd help find this thing. That's all.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"And once I've laid eyes on the creature that killed Ray Walker, you're welcome to run all the way back to Marquette.\"\n\n\"You don't understand. Whatever's down there, it's a hell of a lot stronger than I am.\" His eyes were wide, and retained their red tinge. \"What are you going to do, genius? Blow me up in the middle of this crowd? I'm not going in. If you're smart, neither will you. Call your Porters and have them send in the big guns.\"\n\nThe Porters had already investigated. Why hadn't they found the vampire hiding out in the rubble? He had a point, though. I called Pallas again, but received the same message as before. I hung up the phone. \"With Gutenberg and his automatons gone and the Porters not answering my calls, we are the big guns.\"\n\nTed snorted. \"Just do me one favor. Switch off the countdown on the damn bomb in my head before you go down there.\"\n\n\"If you've lied to me\u2014\" I began.\n\nTed bared his teeth. \"Why bother? The truth is likely to get you killed a lot faster than any lie.\"\n\nI retrieved the control pad and switched off the countdown. Ted took off the instant the timer stopped. He cut through the bushes beside the sidewalk, which momentarily obscured him from view. A lean dark-furred wolf emerged from the far side. He was just as scraggly-looking in this shape. Like most Stokerus vampires, Ted had the ability to shift his form, though he could only do so at night. He loped away, eliciting shouts and screams from passing students.\n\nI strode toward the gate. A man in a heavy jacket and a fire helmet walked over to meet me. Dark bags under his eyes betrayed his fatigue. He folded his arms, blocking our way.\n\nI flashed my ID badge before he could speak. \"We're here to inspect the scene.\"\n\nHe hesitated, then jumped back. \"Sir... on your hip\u2014\"\n\nMy jacket had caught on Smudge's cage when I pocketed that book, exposing him to view. \"He's a bomb-sniffing spider.\" I did my best to sound officious and impatient, as if this poor fellow was the only one who hadn't gotten the memo about the spiders. \"It's a new initiative from the feds. Spiders are even more sensitive to chemicals than dogs. He can detect microscopic amounts of explosive residue by touch alone.\"\n\n\"I... yes, sir.\" He opened the gate and backed away, giving us a wide berth. \"You'll need to sign in.\"\n\nI kept my badge open and waited. He bit his lip, scanned my ID again, and backed down.\n\n\"I'll just make a note myself.\" He scribbled something onto a clipboard, then hurried to a small trailer parked just inside the fence to retrieve a pair of hard hats. \"We haven't found any evidence of an explosion. The whole thing just collapsed. We're thinking the water from the river could have seeped out, softening the ground beneath the library to create a sinkhole.\"\n\n\"How many casualties?\" asked Lena, donning her helmet.\n\n\"About thirty.\" Sweat had painted lines down his dust-covered jowls. \"Witnesses say one moment everyone was minding their own business, the next the whole thing was falling down.\" He pointed to a second boundary of tape, strung on metal poles in the debris. \"That's the safe line. You'll want to stay on this side. The whole structure's still settling.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said. I glanced at the name on his jacket, barely legible through the dirt. \"How long have you been here, Akers?\"\n\n\"Fourteen hours, sir.\" He straightened his back and raised his chin, as if consciously trying to throw off the effects of exhaustion.\n\nI wanted to order him home to get some rest. He'd probably obey, but as I had no real authority here, that was likely to create more problems. So I settled for clapping his arm and saying, \"You're doing good work.\"\n\nHe nodded his thanks, then turned away, leaving Lena and me alone. I started to tuck the ID badge away, but Lena caught my wrist.\n\n\"What is that?\" She tugged the badge free. \"It's blank.\"\n\n\"Psychic paper. Works great for getting through airport security, too.\" I surveyed the library. Somewhere beneath our feet was the thing that had killed Ray. All we needed to do was sneak inside past the workers and their dogs, not to mention the students with their cameras.\n\nI reached for a copy of Alice in Wonderland. \"Give me five minutes, then join me in that port-a-potty over there.\"\n\n\"We're sneaking in through the toilet?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\" In some ways, the toilet would have been preferable to what I had in mind.\n\nOur arrival had drawn a few curious looks from the workers, but most were too intent on finding survivors to care about us. As for the students, how many people were going to pay attention to a guy using the john? Even if they never saw him emerge.\n\nBy the time Lena squeezed in beside me, I had created two glass bottles marked \"DRINK ME\" from the book and set a bit of broken concrete in the bottom of the door to keep it from closing completely. I let Smudge out of his cage, then passed one of the bottles to Lena.\n\n\"You know, when most guys try to get a girl alone for drinks, this is not how they do it.\" She eyed the bottle warily. \"Dare I ask what's in this?\"\n\n\"Ask Lewis Carroll. All I know is that it will help us get inside, and that according to Deb, it works great in Jell-O shots.\" The potion was an odd blend of flavors, fruity and sweet and surreal. I set Smudge on the plastic seat as I began to shrink, clothes and all. I stabilized at a mere ten inches high.\n\nLena grinned. \"Librarians: now in convenient travel size.\" She downed her own potion, and soon stood level with me once more. \"So you don't think someone's going to notice a pair of animated Barbie dolls scampering over the debris?\"\n\n\"We're not done yet.\" I flipped to chapter four of the book. As I performed yet another act of magic, a distant whisper raised the hairs on the back of my neck.\n\n\"Tut, tut, child! Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.\"\n\n\"What's wrong?\" Lena raised her bokken, each one now roughly the size of a toothpick.\n\n\"Nothing. I'm fine.\" I pulled out a small cake, doing my best to block out the voices.\n\n\"But I don't want to go among mad people.\"\n\nI closed the book and jammed it back into my pocket.\n\n\"You're sweating,\" said Lena.\n\nThe first line had come from the Duchess. The second was Alice herself. Alice in Wonderland tended to sneak into your head faster than most books. I had a theory that the surreal, at times psychedelic nature of the story thinned the boundaries between reality and fantasy, lending itself to libriomancy. But the same ease with which I reached into Wonderland made it that much simpler for Wonderland to whisper back.\n\nI slowed my breathing and focused on my surroundings: the foul smell of human waste, the mechanical pounding of the equipment outside, the crease in Lena's brow as she watched me. The more I anchored myself in this world, the easier it became to shut out those voices... for now.\n\n\"I'm all right,\" I said quietly. \"Here, have some cake.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"Nothing serious, as long as I'm careful.\"\n\n\"You're doomed,\" she said. Her tone was playful, but worry wrinkled her brow and the corners of her eyes.\n\nI ripped the cake in half, stuffing part into my mouth. Every bite shrank me further. I kept eating until I was roughly two inches high.\n\n\"Not bad,\" said Lena as she ate. \"I'm more of a cheesecake girl, myself.\"\n\nSmudge crawled down to the floor and studied us, his eight dark eyes taking in our newly diminished size. We were all roughly the same height now, but Smudge significantly outmassed us.\n\nLena peeked out the door. \"Making our way through all that is going to take time.\"\n\nI grimaced. \"It would if we were walking.\"\n\nLena looked from me to Smudge and back again. \"You're joking.\"\n\n\"I've done it once before. He should remember.\" Much as I loved that spider, some primal part of me shuddered as I approached. The bristles on his back appeared to be the size of pencils, every one of them a powerful heating element. \"I had to sneak into the Henry Ford Museum. A pair of kids managed to summon up the ghost of Ford himself. Smudge and I crawled in through the vents.\" I took her arm, pulling her closer. \"You'll want to stand behind me.\"\n\nShe slipped her arms around my waist. \"Like this?\"\n\n\"That's good.\" The words came out a bit higher in pitch than I had intended. Her breath tickled my left ear. I could feel her hips and breasts pressing my back, her hands resting on my stomach, just above the button of my jeans.\n\n\"What next?\" she whispered.\n\nThat was when Smudge began spinning several loops of sticky silk around us both.\n\n\"This is just to help us stay on his back.\" The strands reminded me of strings of rubber cement, flexible and sticky, but strong. I felt Lena tense with each pass. \"Did you know spiders could produce different types of silk?\" I asked. \"They use lines of different strength and stickiness, and in Smudge's case, flammability.\"\n\n\"That's so comforting.\" She tightened her arms. \"How long did it take to train him to carry a rider?\"\n\n\"I didn't, really.\" I closed my eyes, thinking back to the report I had sent to Pallas shortly after creating Smudge. \"He just... understood. He was written to help the ones he cared about. I think the fact that he's a product of my magic gives him an added familiarity with my mind, making it easier for him to understand what I need.\" Unfortunately, that understanding didn't work both ways.\n\nOnce Smudge finished, he backed away and turned in a circle, tangling more silk onto his own body. When he finished, I stepped up to the narrow part where his thorax met his abdomen. \"On three?\"\n\nI counted down, and we swung our legs carefully over Smudge's back. Had Smudge been a real tarantula, this would have left us thoroughly perforated, but his bristles were thick and blunt. I tried not to think about what would happen if those bristles heated up.\n\n\"Lean forward,\" I said, pressing myself down until the silk around us stuck to the lines he had wrapped around himself, gluing us in place. I slid my arms through another line. With our makeshift seat belts ready, I squeezed gently with my legs, sending Smudge scrambling out the door.\n\n\"How do you steer?\"\n\nI grinned and pulled a small laser pointer from my pants pocket. I projected a green dot onto the floor, and Smudge scrambled forward. \"Red lasers don't work. I think the green reminds him of fireflies.\"\n\nLena rested her chin on my shoulder. Her bokken jabbed my ribs as we made our way through the shadows. \"And what happens if something spooks him?\"\n\n\"I never said it was a perfect plan.\" We crawled over broken concrete steps, sneaking through cracks and rubble until we reached the edge of the library's foundation. Smudge was getting warmer, but so far, it was a low, nervous heat. He didn't like the idea of going in there any more than I did, where who knew how many tons of broken library waited to crush us. Not to mention a psychotic vampire. \"He won't hurt us, though.\"\n\n\"I hope you're right.\" Lena's arms tightened as we crawled along a steel I-beam that had twisted like hot plastic. The sides of the beam created a tight but safe passageway deeper into the darkness. Blood rushed to my head, but the spider silk kept us from falling. I gripped my jacket with one hand to keep my books from tumbling loose. \"If he sets my ass on fire, I'm holding you personally responsible.\"\n\n\"He can't,\" I said, trying to wrench my imagination away from Lena's perfect posterior. \"He's completely loyal to his companions. It's how he was written. He might singe us a bit, but he's incapable of seriously hurting us. Like a computer program, he can't break those rules.\"\n\nAs soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to kick myself. Lena was a product of libriomancy, just like Smudge. And her \"programming\" was far crueler than his. When she finally answered, she sounded distant. \"Can you change the program?\"\n\n\"No more than you can uncarve a statue. I'm sorry.\" Stupid! \"I didn't mean\u2014\"\n\n\"I know.\" She gave me a quick squeeze. \"You keep Smudge around, even though he has no choice but to help you? Essentially a slave to his nature?\"\n\n\"He's my friend,\" I said sharply. \"I can't set him loose, and I couldn't just dissolve him back into his book.\"\n\n\"Hm.\" She didn't push the point.\n\nI aimed the laser to the left, and Smudge scurried toward what would have been the eastern stairwell. Only the faintest slivers of light penetrated here. I pulled a flashlight from my pocket and handed it to Lena. Smudge was perfectly comfortable in darkness, but I wasn't.\n\n\"Where are we going first?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"The archive.\" That was the only reason I could think of for a vampire to come here after killing Ray.\n\nIt was a long journey to the basement. Smudge rarely broke pace, keeping to unbroken sections of wall and floor when possible. I wasn't normally prone to motion sickness, but as he worked his way down, moving to and fro like a miniature eight-legged roller coaster, my stomach began to protest.\n\nI sucked air through my teeth to filter out the dust, and kept my eyes on the terrain ahead. Watching a fixed point helped slightly with the motion sickness, but if this got much worse, I was going to vomit all over my fire-spider.\n\nLena had no such trouble. She laughed as we climbed down the underside of a fallen wall. \"If you ever get tired of the library, you could make a fortune selling tickets for spider rides.\"\n\nThe pounding of the work crew had dulled, muffled by the wreckage. Occasionally, deep groans and creaks echoed through the building as it continued to settle. Water dripped from broken pipes. Rubble pattered in the distance like hailstones. Unpleasant reminders that the whole place could shift and crush us like bugs at any time. And of course, if Ted was right, there was also the fugitive vampire to deal with.\n\nSmudge grew warmer as we worked our way down. Dust soon covered us all. My throat and nostrils were caked with it. The wreckage here was worse, and we kept having to backtrack to find our way through.\n\nYet there were also places that had escaped most of the damage. We passed a small study area that appeared intact. Old journals were neatly shelved, and a black L.L. Bean backpack sat abandoned beside a small desk. Only a few feet beyond, girders had smashed through the ceiling.\n\nThe first body I spotted was a girl of about twenty who had taken shelter in a doorway. Good instincts for an earthquake, but the doorway had collapsed, crushing her. From the looks of it, her death had been quick.\n\nWe passed two other bodies before reaching the elevator. The doors had crumpled open. Normally, the Porter archive in the hidden subbasement could only be accessed by entering a nine-digit code with the elevator buttons. But the assault on the library had pinned the elevator car overhead and ripped open the bottom of the shaft, exposing the archive.\n\nThe Porters kept six archives in the US, hidden rooms protected by security both magic and mundane, where locked books could be stored along with hard copies of our files and records. At last count, this archive should have held more than a thousand books, including the forty-one titles I had flagged over the past two years.\n\nSmudge crawled upside down to the side of the shaft, then climbed down one of the thick steel cables on the wall. My legs were sweating, and I could feel Smudge shivering as we descended, as if he was fighting his own instincts. Something else was down here.\n\nI had hoped the archive might have survived intact, given the additional protections the Porters had set up, but our first steps through the crushed elevator doors squelched that hope. If anything, this area had been hit worse. Four stories of debris had smashed through the ceiling like it was made of tissue paper. It took several minutes just to find a path out of the elevator shaft.\n\n\"Aren't you worried about someone discovering this place when they clear out the wreckage?\" Lena whispered.\n\n\"The Porters will insert someone into the reconstruction efforts to bulldoze over the basement and adjust the memories of anyone who might raise questions.\" Once Smudge reached stable ground, we stopped so Lena and I could dismount, a process that involved a great deal of messy struggle. Each strand had to be peeled away like double-sided duct tape. After freeing ourselves from Smudge, we spent several more minutes ripping the rest of the spider stuff off of each other.\n\nSmudge had an easier time of it. The instant we stepped away, his bristles began to glow red. The webbing on his body soon vanished in a puff of smoke.\n\nLena handed me the flashlight and readied her bokken, one in each hand. We had gone only a few steps when waves of flame whooshed to life on Smudge's back. I searched the darkness, but the tiny flashlight beam found nothing more dangerous than a lone rat. Lena raised her weapons, and the rat scurried away.\n\n\"If any part of this place survived, it would be the vault where the books are kept. Toward the center.\" I pulled out another book, retrieving a nasty-looking microwave pistol. According to the author, it should vaporize flesh without harming anything else... like books or the still-shifting debris.\n\nWhispers from the book tickled the boundaries of my mind. Too much magic plus too little sleep was an equation for eventual madness, but I had time yet. I silenced the voices the best I could and concentrated on following Lena, who was climbing over a broken ceiling tile.\n\nDown here, insulated from the chaos aboveground, every noise was magnified. My nerves were humming, and each creak and groan made me jump.\n\nMy flashlight was supposed to illuminate darkness up to seventy meters away, but shrinking had diminished the beam, so I could barely discern shapes two meters out. Nor was there enough space for us to return to our normal size.\n\nThe vault had withstood the damage better than the rest of the library. A single line of three-foot-high bookshelves ran down the center of the room. These shelves were built of reinforced steel, the fronts covered with magically strengthened safety glass: inch-thick windows which were supposed to be unbreakable.\n\nThe glass was shattered, and the shelves bowed under the weight of the fallen beams and rafters. We moved into the triangular tunnel formed by the debris leaning up against the shelves. I shone my light through the ragged line of glass teeth. Many books remained, but the bottom row was conspicuously empty. \"That's not good.\"\n\nHad the vampire managed to steal some of our books before the library collapsed? To what end? Nobody, with the possible exception of Gutenberg himself, could unlock a book. That thought seeped down into my gut, churning like a stone.\n\n\"To your left,\" Lena whispered.\n\nI spun, playing my beam over the shelves until I spied our friend the rat, his glowing eyes watching us. A second pair of eyes joined the first, then another. Smudge's flames flared higher, illuminating our surroundings in red.\n\nI almost wished he hadn't. Four more rats watched us from atop the shelves. Others peeked through the rubble. Two crawled out of a shelf farther down, dragging a copy of Prey by Michael Crichton.\n\nSmudge scurried toward them, and they dropped the book, retreating from the flaming spider. But as he moved away, more rats closed in on Lena and me. Rows of shining eyes appeared up above as well. There could be close to two hundred... roughly enough to add up to one good-sized vampire.\n\n\"I hate shapeshifters,\" I said, raising my gun. \"What we need is the Pied Piper's flute. We could march these things out of here and hold them entranced for as long as we needed.\"\n\n\"So get it,\" Lena said tersely, pressing her back to mine.\n\n\"Two problems. I didn't bring the right book, and I don't know how to play the flute.\"\n\nThe rats crawled toward us. I squeezed the trigger, and a white beam speared the nearest one, sizzling it into nothingness. \"Really?\" I said, my fear momentarily forgotten. \"A visible beam for a microwave weapon? That doesn't even make sense.\"\n\nAnother rat scampered toward Lena. I heard the thud of wood on bone, and the rat squealed in pain. \"Maybe you could critique the bad science fiction toy later?\"\n\nThree more darted in from different sides. I blasted the front leg off of one rat, while Lena clobbered another with both of her wooden swords. The third nearly caught us, but Lena spun, catching it in the jaw with the butt of one bokken, then swinging them both together. She struck hard enough to knock the stunned rat toward Smudge. Smudge pounced, setting the rat alight.\n\n\"You're in a library, remember?\" The last thing we needed was a panicked animal running about on fire, igniting everything it touched. I waited for Smudge to back away, then vaporized the rat. The stench of burnt fur lingered in the air. \"I wish I knew what species this thing was.\"\n\n\"You want to ask it for its pedigree?\" Lena wasn't even breathing hard.\n\n\"Some species obey the law of conservation of mass, meaning the more rats we kill, the more we hurt it. Others simply regenerate when they shift between forms.\" The rats had backed away, but I could see their eyes glinting in the light. I raised my voice. \"I know what you're thinking, and you're right. If you rush us, we won't be able to stop you all. Fortunately, this little gun comes with a self-destruct. I flip the switch, and the battery goes critical, vaporizing us all.\"\n\nThe rats didn't move.\n\n\"You killed Ray to learn about the archive, but you couldn't bypass the protections on this place.\" A vampire couldn't, but an automaton could. It had smashed the entire library, shattering the spells shielding those books and allowing the vampire to sneak in as mist or rats or whatever. Only one person could have commanded an automaton to do that. \"What have you done with Gutenberg?\"\n\nTiny claws scraped wood, glass, and cement as the rats turned in unison and fled into the darkness. I swore and chased after them, following the clicking of their nails and firing at every rat I spotted. I took out four more before we reached the end of the vault.\n\nRats poured through the rubble, disappearing into a gap in the wall. I continued to shoot, trying to clog the hole with their bodies, but it wasn't enough.\n\nLena tossed dead rats aside, exposing a neatly drilled tunnel roughly six inches in diameter. \"Where would this lead?\"\n\nWe were at the edge of the library. I frowned, trying to orient myself and visualize the other buildings on campus. \"I'm not sure.\"\n\nLena moved cautiously into the hole. I followed her through the sloping tunnel, which emerged at the base of a rectangular corridor. Light from grates overhead revealed steel pipes running along the wall. I flipped off my flashlight and grabbed my copy of Alice. A quick drink from chapter four, and both Lena and I were expanding to our normal size. I pressed a hand to the wall, trying to stifle the mad banter of the Queen of Hearts. I definitely needed to stop using this book for a while.\n\nSmudge climbed up my jacket, resuming his customary place on my shoulder. \"Steam tunnels,\" I said softly. Even from here I could feel the heat wafting from the pipes. The floor was bare cement, the walls a dingy yellow. \"They run beneath most of the buildings on campus.\"\n\nThe ground was clean. No fur, no droppings, no tiny footprints. \"Split up?\" asked Lena.\n\nI nodded and set off to the left. I could hear voices from up above, and once what sounded like a skateboard going past, but there was no sign of our vampire. The grates were closed, and I was fairly certain we would have heard if anyone had opened them. Rats could have squeezed through, but that many fleeing rats would have elicited screams.\n\nThe thing that had slaughtered my friend wouldn't have fled. It enjoyed killing, and it hated Porters. It was here.\n\n\"What did the Porters do to you, anyway?\" I called. \"Trim your fangs? Send you home to your sire with your tail between your legs?\" A soft chuckle in the distance made me jump. I raised my gun, trying to identify the source of the sound. \"You know, you'll be the fourth vampire I've killed this week.\"\n\n\"Porters.\" From the way the vampire spat the word, I could tell two things: it was male, and it was pissed. \"So arrogant.\"\n\nHis words echoed in the tunnel, making him harder to track. \"Where's Gutenberg?\"\n\n\"You have no idea who he is. What he's done.\"\n\nI whirled. How the hell had he gotten behind me? \"So teach me. This is a university, after all.\"\n\nHe stepped into the light, all six-foot plus of him. His skin was milky white. He had belted on a worn pair of blue jeans, but was otherwise naked. He must not have had time to finish dressing after shifting back to this form. Shaggy brown hair hung past his neck, and dust clung to his chiseled body. He paced in a tight line, head and shoulders hunched forward. \"You think your weapon can stop me, Isaac?\"\n\nI tried to hide my reaction. I failed.\n\n\"Oh, yes. I know exactly who you are, little libriomancer.\" He smiled, his fangs digging into his lower lip. Smudge burst into flame as the vampire stepped closer. I twisted my head away from Smudge, being careful not to break eye contact with the vampire.\n\n\"Likewise,\" I said. \"You're the thing that murdered my friend.\" I pulled the trigger.\n\nHis face contorted in pain, and he began to dissolve. It took me a second to realize he wasn't disintegrating the way the rats had. Instead, he sank into a pool of pink-tinged mist that swept toward me.\n\nI fired into the mist, burning a hole through the cloud, but it didn't slow the vampire down. He spread out to surround me. Smudge raced down my body and jumped into the mist like a tiny butane torch, burning away the fog, but he was too small to do any serious damage. I backed into the wall. An arm solidified from the mist, and fingers seized my wrist.\n\n\"Lena, I might need some help back here!\"\n\nI snuck my other hand into an interior pocket of my jacket as he re-formed. My fingertips touched a thirty-year-old paperback. When the vampire saw what I was doing, he ripped the jacket off of me, nearly taking my arms with it. I managed to retain my grip on the book, even as he spun me around and pressed me against one of the steam pipes. A layer of foam insulation kept me from burning my face off, but the vampire pushed harder, as if he intended to shove my skull right through the pipe.\n\nI craned my arm and pulled the trigger. My shot grazed the vampire's face, causing the skin to blister and peel. He yanked my wrist, and my gun clattered away. He switched his grip to my collar, jerking me to and fro like a dog shaking a squirrel, then slammed my back into the opposite wall.\n\n\"Beg, libriomancer.\" His breath was cool and foul, like an animal had crawled into his chest to die. His left hand clutched my throat. Fingernails like razors poked the soft flesh behind my jawbone.\n\n\"What the hell are you?\" I whispered. His eyes were like none in any vampire book I had read. The pupil of each eye was cross-shaped, as if someone had taken the slitted pupils of a cat and superimposed them at right angles. Golden irises glittered in the firelight.\n\n\"Would you really like to know?\" His mouth opened wider.\n\nThe sad thing was, I did. A previously undiscovered species of vampire? I would have loved to know where he had come from.\n\nI tightened my grip on the book. The rubber band marked a page I had read so many times I could have recited it in my sleep. It was one of the few books whose magic I could use without reading the page, which was exactly why I carried it. My fingers sank through the paper into hot desert air.\n\nThe vampire pulled a black-hilted skinning knife from his belt. Dried blood darkened the blade's edge and the nasty-looking hook on the back. \"Beg for me,\" he whispered.\n\nThe fingers of my hand closed around the end of a metal tube. I shifted my grip, allowing the book to drop away. I flipped a switch, and a glowing blade thrummed magically to life.\n\nMy first swing severed the vampire's arm at the elbow. The knife clanged against the ground. I ducked low, taking his legs off with the backswing. He hissed and began to dissolve into mist.\n\nI stepped to the side, studied the pipes for a moment, and slashed through the lower one. Hot steam blasted down, directly onto the mist. He re-formed a few seconds later, dragging himself out of the steam with his remaining arm.\n\nI pointed the humming blade at his throat. \"Ray Walker was my friend.\"\n\nHis expression flickered. Confusion, fear, rage... emotions flashed past like a roulette wheel.\n\n\"You're going to tell me where to find Gutenberg and what the hell you are,\" I said. Ted had been terrified of this thing. Why?\n\nHis eyes glowed like coals, making the black cross of his pupils appear even darker. \"You'll find out soon enough, Porter.\"\n\nThe flames started inside of him. Fury changed to pain, then fear as smoke poured from his mouth and nose. He cried out as fire consumed his body. Moments later, Smudge and I were alone, staring down at a layer of black, oily ash.\n\nI deactivated my blade. The handle slipped from my fingers to clank against the floor. I heard Lena call my name, but I didn't answer. I didn't move at all.\n\nThe vampire's final taunt had been in Middle High German."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "I was still standing there, staring at the blackened mess on the floor, when Lena arrived.\n\n\"You killed him.\" Disapproval sharpened her words.\n\n\"I didn't, actually. I cut off a few limbs, but that shouldn't have been enough to destroy him.\" I knelt and touched the ash. It had a thick, crunchy texture, like something you'd clean from your oven. \"He burned up from the inside. Maybe to stop me from questioning him.\"\n\n\"A vampire with a self-destruct button?\"\n\n\"That's what it looked like to me. Either he killed himself, or someone else did.\" I wasn't aware of any vampires who could spontaneously combust at will. I wiped my hand on the wall. \"He knew my name.\"\n\n\"If he was able to read Ray's mind\u2014\"\n\n\"He didn't try to read mine.\" I hadn't felt any of the telltale pains like I had with Deb back at the house.\n\nLena gestured to the pipe, which continued to hiss and spray hot steam into the tunnel. \"We should get moving before someone comes to check on that.\"\n\nI pried myself away from the remains of our one lead and followed her back down the tunnel, filling her in on the details of the fight.\n\n\"Did you learn anything that could help us?\" she asked.\n\nI thought about his final words, spoken in Gutenberg's native tongue. \"Maybe.\"\n\nLena had found some of the missing books from the archive. I counted a total of thirty, carelessly stuffed into a pair of plastic milk crates. Given the empty shelf I had seen, there should have been at least fifty.\n\nEach of us picked up a crate. \"If I can get onto the Porter database, I should be able to pull a list of which titles were shelved where and figure out what else he took.\"\n\n\"What about the tunnel to the library?\" Lena asked.\n\nI hesitated. There were a number of spells which could have collapsed the small passageway. I flexed my hands, feeling the magic coursing through my veins, crackling for release. When I had returned my weapon to its book, voices from another galaxy had insinuated themselves into my thoughts, just as had happened with Alice in Wonderland.\n\n\"I've got this,\" Lena said, watching me with much the same focus as Doctor Shah used to. She returned to the wall where we had emerged and dropped to her hands and knees. I did my best not to stare at the way her jeans hugged her thighs and backside as she pushed her bokken into the tunnel.\n\nI could just make out thin roots and branches sprouting from the end of the weapon. Dust and bits of concrete began to fall as the tendrils bored into the tunnel.\n\nLena rose and brushed her hands together. We avoided the grates, walking instead until we came to a locked door that, once Lena worked her lock-picking magic, opened into a basement hallway. We strode past what appeared to be grad student offices. Only a few of the old wooden doors were open, and none of the students gave us a second glance as we found our way to a stairwell and left, emerging about a block east of the library.\n\n\"Wait.\" I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and closed my eyes.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Listening.\" Searching beneath the clanking of construction equipment, the grumble of distant cars, for any trace of magical energy. \"The more magic I use, the more... permeable I become to that magic. It can cause problems if I push too hard.\" The whispers in my head were only the first symptom. \"I'm hoping I can use it. If someone else was controlling this vampire, I might be able to sense them.\"\n\n\"Permeable?\"\n\n\"The more you reach into books, the easier it becomes for those books to reach back into you.\" The past few days had left me hypersensitive to magic. The locked books gave off a cool, heavy pull that made me think of dead stars floating in space.\n\nI opened my eyes and turned in a slow circle. I could feel the Triumph in the parking garage, which was an accomplishment all by itself. As long as I pushed myself to the brink of madness, I'd always be able to remember where I parked. But I heard no other magical whispers, no trace of another presence.\n\nIf someone else had destroyed that vampire, they had either done so from a distance, or else they were strong enough to hide from my amateur attempt to find them.\n\nGutenberg could have done so with ease.\n\n\"Ted told us other vampires had been taken,\" I said. \"That they had been turned against their sires. We need more information. Were there any commonalities in who was taken? Did they develop the cross-shaped pupils this one had? What's the pattern?\"\n\n\"What you need is to rest,\" Lena said firmly.\n\nShe was right, and tomorrow would be better for what I had in mind anyway. But my body was wound too tightly for rest. I wanted to act.\n\n\"We passed an Internet caf\u00e9 on the way in,\" I said. \"I should at least check our taxonomy of vampires to see if there's any mention of those eyes.\" Given how many vampire books I had read, the odds were slim I had missed such a thing, but it was better to be certain.\n\nShe shifted her crate to one arm and waved her remaining bokken under my nose. \"Tomorrow.\"\n\nI raised my hands in surrender, then bent to pick up my crate of books. \"All right,\" I agreed. \"But first thing in the morning, we head to Detroit and start questioning vampires.\"\n\nLena drove us to a small motel off the highway, giving me time to think. I kept imagining the fight in the steam tunnels. Had the hatred and fury been the vampire's own, or had it come from whoever was controlling him? Was he killer or puppet?\n\nThe young man at the front desk gave us a skeptical once-over, taking in the dirt and dust that made us look like vampires ourselves, freshly risen from the grave. \"Can I help you?\"\n\nI reached for my wallet, but Lena was faster, slapping a credit card onto the desk.\n\n\"How many beds?\" he asked mechanically.\n\nLena grinned. \"Just one.\"\n\nMy neck and cheeks grew warm, even though I knew it meant nothing. Lena would find a tree to sleep in, just as she had done last night.\n\nOur room was about what you'd expect for a roadside motel, decorated in industrial beige with generic, vaguely floral artwork hanging on the wall above the bed. The air conditioner didn't so much purr as gasp asthmatically, spitting out a faint musty odor.\n\nI flipped on the television for Smudge, channel-surfing until I found SpongeBob SquarePants. I couldn't stand the show, but Smudge liked the voices. I opened his cage, and he scurried up onto the screen, where he proceeded to dart to and fro in his endless quest to catch SpongeBob's red tie.\n\nLena closed the curtains and sat lazily in a chair by the desk, her bokken leaning against the wall. She kicked off her sneakers and socks, then flexed her feet, a slow, luxurious movement that reminded me of a cat stretching. \"Are you planning to spend the whole night pacing?\"\n\n\"Considering the fact that I'm planning to beard the vampires in their den tomorrow, I think a little nervous pacing is warranted.\" But I forced myself to stop, plopping down on the corner of the bed instead. \"They have to play by Porter rules in the real world, but once we enter the nest, the rules change. It's like a reservation, with its own sovereign law. If they believe the Porters are working against them...\"\n\n\"So we take precautions,\" she said.\n\n\"We'll need to stop at a bookstore. Even if they don't kill us, convincing them to listen could be a problem.\" Particularly since the one vampire who might have proved my point had immolated himself.\n\nLena rose easily to her feet and strode toward the bathroom. \"Do you mind if I grab a quick shower?\"\n\nI shook my head, mentally cataloging possible titles to buy tomorrow.\n\n\"You're pretty filthy yourself, you know.\"\n\nI blinked and looked up. \"What?\"\n\nShe leaned against the bathroom doorframe, arms folded, watching me with a mischievous smile \"You really need to work off some tension. And so do I.\" Her grin grew. \"With or without you.\"\n\nAnd just like that, I was no longer thinking about vampires. \"Um.\"\n\n\"It's your choice, Isaac.\" She slipped into the bathroom, but left the door open a crack. I heard the rustle of cloth, and my imagination filled in the details. The faint scratching of a zipper, the sound of jeans tossed carelessly to the floor. The elastic snap of a bra strap as she undid the hooks.\n\nI took a deep breath and lay back on the bed, trying to clear my head. The spray started up in the shower, followed by the metal scrape of the shower curtain rings.\n\nBack in the nineties, a Porter by the name of Ken Cassidy had used a bit of magic from a Piers Anthony novel to make women fall in love with him. To fall in lust, rather. Deb DeGeorge had been called in to deal with him, slipping some of his own potion into his drink so that he fell in love with the next creature he saw.\n\nThe last I heard, Ken had abandoned magic and devoted his life to caring for his Amazon parrot, Annabelle.\n\nIf I took advantage of Lena's nature, was I any different from Ken Cassidy? Regardless of whether or not I was the one casting the spell, Lena was forced by magic to seek out a partner and mate, no different than any of Ken's victims had been.\n\nSo what was the alternative? Do the \"noble\" thing and wait for her to find someone else?\n\nOh, hell. Now she was singing. A Madonna tune, from the sound of it. I could see her in my imagination, her thick black hair slicked down between her shoulder blades, the light gleaming on her wet skin.\n\nLena was a hamadryad. A nymph. Meaning I had no doubt she could very thoroughly and effectively help me \"relieve my tension.\" On top of everything else, I was curious. She appeared human, but she was something more. Something magical. What would it be like to step through that door, to strip off these filthy clothes and join her?\n\nMy last relationship, if you could call it that, had ended more than a year ago. It had lasted six weeks, which was about average for me since joining the Porters. But Lena knew about magic. I wouldn't have to hide that part of my life, to pretend to be someone I wasn't.\n\nI walked to the bathroom. Through the door, I could just make out the steamed glass of the mirror and the yellow shower curtain, beyond which stood... a fantasy. A dryad created from the pages of what sounded like a horny teenager's sexual daydreams.\n\n\"Dammit.\" I gritted my teeth and pulled the door shut. It didn't quite muffle Lena's chuckle.\n\nI stomped back to the bed. Sitting down was significantly more uncomfortable than before. Jaw tight, I tugged a battered copy of Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring from one of my jacket pockets and did my best to concentrate on something other than Lena Greenwood.\n\nThis was a first edition paperback from Ballantine, with Barbara Remington's psychedelic cover painting that showed green hills and pink mountains, along with random trees and snakes and lizards and what appeared to be emus. The spine was badly creased, with bits flaking away. The librarian in me cringed at the repairs I had made at age eleven, using what looked like half a roll of clear packing tape to try to fix the cover.\n\nGutenberg had locked the book to keep the ring of power from escaping. Our world had enough trouble with power-mad leaders already. I carried this book for other reasons than magic.\n\nEvery libriomancer had a first book. Etched more sharply into my memory than my first kiss, this book had been my magical awakening. I remembered sitting on my bedroom floor reading late into the night, my blue bedspread pulled over my head like a makeshift tent as I shone a Batman flashlight onto these very pages.\n\nI hadn't wanted the ring. Gandalf said that ring was trouble, and eleven-year-old me believed him. I had wanted Frodo's sword, Sting: an elf blade, one light enough for someone like me to use. Frodo's tormenters had been goblins and orcs; mine were the bullies down the street, waiting at the bus stop to play another round of Punch the Nerd.\n\nI opened the book to a familiar scene. I knew these words by heart, but I read them anyway. Frodo had been stabbed by the Witch-king of Angmar. He was taken to the elves in Rivendell, where he was reunited with his uncle Bilbo. It was Bilbo who gifted his nephew with mithril armor and the magical sword named Sting.\n\nI brushed my fingers over the yellowed pages, feeling the cold magical current beneath the words: Gutenberg's lock, though I hadn't recognized his magic at the time. I had been imagining the warmth of Rivendell, the sunlight and the gentle breezes, the sense of peace that filled the air, and then...\n\nLike any child raised on tales of magical worlds beyond paintings and mirrors and wardrobes, I had yearned to enter Middle Earth, to reach through.\n\nMy entire hand had gone numb. For an instant, it was as if my fingers had transformed into living text, words in brown ink spiraling through my skin and muscle and bone.\n\nI had screamed, flung the book across the room, and hadn't touched another novel for almost a year. My parents, convinced I was on drugs, had forced me to see a therapist.\n\nAt the time, I hadn't understood the words that tried to consume my hand. Nor had I seen them well enough to write them down. But by the time I entered college, I had taught myself enough to identify those partially-remembered fragments as Latin.\n\nI could feel Gutenberg's lock, like an invisible chapter squeezed into the book, deflecting and trapping any magic that leaked from the pages. In theory, it should do the same to anyone trying to reach in or manipulate the book, which meant a lock was impossible to reverse.\n\nOf course, once you had yanked Conan the Barbarian's sword out of a book to fight off a rabid weresquirrel, \"impossible\" lost a lot of its punch. If anyone could unlock a book, it was the man who had invented libriomancy. And the first step would be to acquire the original, locked texts.\n\nI fanned the pages. The velvet-textured paper against my fingertips brought back memories of those early, untrained attempts at magic, many years after my late-night Tolkien trauma. As I began to figure out how to deliberately tap into that belief and love of the story, I had gone a little bit overboard. I almost flunked my senior year of high school, being too busy collecting things like a sonic screwdriver (which I had never figured out how to use), a crystal ball from L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, an impressive array of swords, and the winged sandals of Hermes himself.\n\nThe sandals should have been the end of me. Being a teenager, I had immediately snuck out to try them, and probably would have broken my neck in the maple tree out back if Ray Walker hadn't shown up before I had risen more than ten feet or so.\n\nFreaked out at being discovered, I had tried to flee. So Ray shot me in the ass with a tranquilizer dart filled with distilled Moly, the same herbs I had used to counter Deb DeGeorge's magic. Ray's potion had countered the magic of my sandals and brought me slowly back to Earth, flailing and screaming the whole way down.\n\nIt was Ray who welcomed me into the world of magic, introducing me to libriomancy. Years later, he had introduced me to Johannes Gutenberg as well.\n\nI didn't want to believe Gutenberg could be involved, but I couldn't ignore the evidence. I set the book aside and picked up my phone and dialed Pallas' number.\n\n\"Isaac. Wait one moment.\"\n\nI grimaced at the electronic squeal that erupted from the speaker. \"Nicola?\"\n\n\"What did you find in East Lansing?\"\n\n\"Deb said someone had hacked our communications,\" I said warily. \"I've already had one Porter try to kill me this week.\"\n\n\"This connection is now secure. We've heard nothing further from Ms. DeGeorge. Her apartment was empty, and she appears to have gone underground. Perhaps literally. As for myself, either I've been turned by our enemy and therefore already know any information you might share, or else I remain human and Regional Master of the Porters, in which case I would appreciate your report.\"\n\nThat certainly sounded like Pallas. \"I dragged Ted Boyer down from Marquette. He sniffed out the vampire that killed Ray and tracked it to the archive.\"\n\n\"We investigated the archive. There was no sign of any vampire.\"\n\nI explained how the vampire had snuck back in through the steam tunnels. \"Something pounded that library to rubble. I don't know anything that can inflict that kind of damage without being spotted, except one of our automatons.\"\n\nThe phone went silent. I could imagine her playing with the earpieces of her reading glasses, which always hung from a gold chain around her neck.\n\n\"Why did you allow my not-so-official return to the field?\" I demanded. Pallas wasn't my favorite person in the world, but she wasn't stupid. Much as I wanted to find Ray's killer, honesty forced me to recognize I wasn't the best choice. \"Why aren't there a dozen field agents in East Lansing right now?\"\n\nLena emerged from the bathroom wearing cutoff shorts and a T-shirt, rubbing a towel through her hair. She cocked her head, and I mouthed Pallas' name.\n\n\"I know Gutenberg is missing,\" I said. \"I know the automatons have vanished. Why allow a cataloger who's already proven himself unfit for field duty to take the lead on this?\"\n\n\"Because I've lost DeGeorge, the automatons, and Gutenberg himself,\" Pallas said. Fatigue slurred her words. \"As a cataloger who's unfit for field duty, I imagine you're low on the list of potential vampire targets. At least you were, until Lena led them to you.\"\n\n\"Or maybe I'm the perfect target,\" I shot back. \"Someone low on the food chain, who you wouldn't bother to watch as closely.\"\n\n\"Which is why I asked someone from outside the Porters to look in on you and confirm your humanity.\"\n\nSomeone from outside... \"De Leon?\"\n\n\"He owed me a favor. Isaac, there are larger problems here. Moscow was struck by an 'earthquake' two weeks ago which appears to have been magical in nature, destroying several former KGB facilities. Similar strikes have been reported in London, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, and Nigeria over the past three months.\"\n\nI remembered hearing about the quakes in London and Hong Kong. \"Automatons?\"\n\n\"Possibly. Though we suspect at least one such attack was carried out by a Porter with an all-too-human grudge. There's no pattern, and with Gutenberg and the automatons gone, I'm doing everything I can to keep the Porters from fracturing beneath the weight of regional and national differences.\" She took a long, slow breath. \"None of which is your concern. What else have you learned?\"\n\nI described my fight with the vampire, including the way he had self-destructed at the end. \"I've never come across anything like it, either the eyes or the ability to burn a vampire from within.\" I hesitated, then added, \"I think it might have been Gutenberg's work.\"\n\n\"Unlikely,\" Pallas said flatly.\n\n\"Who else could control the automatons? Who else would speak a six-hundred-year-old German dialect?\"\n\n\"I know Johannes Gutenberg as well as you knew Ray Walker. Better, in fact. We would know if he had been turned. He would never turn against his own Porters, and there's not a man or woman living today with the power to force him to do anything he doesn't want.\" When she spoke again, she sounded pensive. \"You're certain about the dialect?\"\n\n\"As certain as I can be without having lived in fifteenth-century Mainz.\"\n\nAnother pause. \"So what do you intend to do next?\"\n\n\"Ted said there had been other problems among the vampires. We need more information, and I figure the best way to get it is to go to the source.\"\n\n\"I see. Be careful, Isaac. I'm short on people, and would prefer not to lose any more.\"\n\nThe phone went dead. I stared at it in disbelief. \"She didn't tell me to back off.\"\n\n\"That's good, right?\" The bed shifted as Lena sat down beside me. \"Would you have followed her orders if she had?\"\n\n\"Pallas doesn't generally give her underlings much choice in the matter.\" I replayed our conversation in my mind. \"She doesn't believe Gutenberg could do this.\"\n\n\"You disagree.\" It wasn't a question.\n\n\"There are Porters who treat Gutenberg like a god, but he's not. Nobody's invulnerable.\" Even if Pallas was right that no one alive had the power to control Gutenberg, that didn't mean he wasn't acting of his own free will. We just didn't know why. \"I've got to talk to the vampires, find out what they know.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow.\" Lena's tone was hard. These were the same vampires who had taken Nidhi Shah, who had pursued her into the U.P. and tried to kill us both.\n\n\"Will you be all right?\" I asked.\n\n\"Of course,\" she said, too quickly. She smiled and traced the veins on the back of my hand with her finger. \"Though I could be better.\"\n\nI tried not to stare at her bare legs, or the way her breasts pulled the thin material of her shirt taut, or the quirk of her full lips that suggested she knew exactly what was going through my mind, dammit.\n\n\"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before,\" Lena said softly. \"About me. Why I sought you out.\"\n\nI nodded, lost for words and distracted by the gentle tingle of her finger on my skin.\n\nShe glanced at the wall. \"The couple two rooms down is having sex right now.\"\n\nI managed a moderately coherent, \"Huh?\"\n\n\"I can feel it. Their desire. The pleasure.\" She tilted her head slightly, a bemused smile on her face. \"He's not terribly good at this. He's trying too hard.\" She turned her attention back to me and shrugged. \"This is what I am. I can't stop any more than you can stop seeing the world in color.\"\n\n\"Actually, the rods in the eye only see black and white, and they require less light than the cones, so if it's dark enough\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up.\" She gave me a playful smack on the arm. \"Did you know we passed one couple and two individual men having 'automotive relations' on the road today? Including one on the Mackinac Bridge?\"\n\n\"Thank you so much for telling me that. In addition to everything else, now I can worry about some lonely guy jerking his wheel at the wrong time and driving my car off the bridge.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"On the bright side, being able to sense desire and lust means very few men can sneak up on me. It's not something I want to know. It's voyeuristic and uncomfortable. But it's what I am, meaning I can't help knowing how much you're struggling with your desire, trying so hard to do the right thing.\"\n\n\"I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"If you apologize, I'll drag you out of the room and throw you into that sorry excuse for a pool. You're supposed to want me, Isaac. It's how I was written. And the more time I spend with you, the more I see you in action...\" She smiled again. \"Just know the feeling is mutual.\"\n\n\"What about Doctor Shah?\" Between my exhaustion and the labyrinthine tangle of urges and emotions, it came out more harshly than I had intended.\n\nLena jerked back. \"I should lie to you,\" she said softly. \"Say you're the only one I want now. But I love her, too.\"\n\n\"Too?\" I repeated.\n\nFor the first time, I saw Lena Greenwood blush, her cheeks and ears darkening. She raised her chin and looked me in the eyes, which glistened with unshed tears. \"Nidhi used to struggle with the same conflicts. She felt guilty. She questioned whether I truly loved her, or if that love was just an artifact of what I was, a magical rebound after losing my former lover. 'It takes time to truly fall in love,' she said.\"\n\n\"How did she move beyond that guilt?\" I asked.\n\n\"By accepting what I was.\" Lena stared at the TV, but it was obvious she wasn't seeing it. \"She worked with one of your catalogers to figure out where I had come from. We read my book together. I remember lying in bed, laughing with her over some of the more over-the-top scenes. I remember holding her as she wept angry tears after we read the chapter where the rules of my being were spelled out. She is... was a good person, Isaac. She made me a good person.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I said. \"And I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I want to show you something.\" She took my hand, tugging me toward the door. We walked together out of the hotel and around to a small park out back, beyond the fenced-in pool that smelled of mildew and chlorine.\n\nThe playground was old and ill-tended, built back before brightly-colored plastic equipment replaced aluminum and steel. The heavy chains of the swing set clinked in the breeze. A chipmunk darted through the muddy wood chips at the bottom of the slide and vanished into the pine trees beyond. I filled my lungs with the humid air and the smell of the clover that had overgrown much of the ground. It made me momentarily homesick for the U. P.\n\nHere I was, walking hand in hand with a gorgeous woman, slowly starting to relax for the first time in days. Naturally, I had to open my mouth and spoil it. \"How much of who you are is you?\"\n\n\"You mean, how much of who I am will change and shift to adapt to my new lover?\" She didn't appear offended. \"Physically, my coloration shifts, but my body doesn't change. Beyond that... I don't know. I don't think of it as changing so much as getting to experience more of life. With Nidhi, I learned to love rock climbing and skydiving, country music, fresh malapua, and old episodes of M*A*S*H. Before her, Frank Dearing taught me to love the earth, the feel of the soil, the pride of the harvest, the satisfaction of a long day's work. Those loves don't go away, exactly... but they fade to make room for the new.\"\n\n\"So if you and I...\"\n\nShe winked. \"Yes, there's a good chance you'd turn me into a devoted Doctor Who fangirl.\"\n\nHer fingers remained twined with mine as she led me past the monkey bars toward the trees. She gave me a sideways glance. \"I'll be here when you make up your mind. Or if you just need help getting to sleep tonight.\"\n\nWith a mischievous smile, she jabbed her bokken into the ground and tugged me close, her arm circling my waist. Before I could react, she slipped her other hand behind my neck and kissed me.\n\nShe leaned into my body, and we both staggered a step before catching our balance. Her legs and hips pressed into mine, and her fingers twisted into the back of my shirt. She tasted faintly of mint, and any remaining conflict I was struggling with slipped away as her tongue darted between my lips. I kissed her harder, wrapping my arms around her body.\n\n\"Mm.\" The soft moan of her mouth against mine made me pull her in even tighter. When she finally broke away, both of us were breathing hard. Her eyes were bright, and the way she looked at me was more sensual than any kiss.\n\nShe stepped away, pulling me after her through pine branches that jabbed my exposed skin but didn't appear to bother her in the slightest. Without taking her eyes off of mine, she reached out to touch the trunk of the largest tree. Her fingers slipped between folds in the bark, disappearing in much the same way that I reached into my books, and I gasped.\n\n\"Can you feel it?\" she whispered.\n\nI nodded dumbly. The air brushed over every pine needle, making the hairs on my body rise in response. The tree's roots dug deep into the ground. I curled my toes into my boots, feeling the immovable strength of the tree rising through my bones.\n\n\"Nidhi never could,\" she said quietly. \"I hoped, given what you said about sensing magic, that I might be able to share this with you.\"\n\nA squirrel jumped from the branches, and I laughed. \"It tickles.\"\n\n\"A little, yes.\"\n\n\"This isn't your tree.\" I wasn't sure how I knew. It simply felt off, like trying to sleep in an unfamiliar bed.\n\n\"I can rest in any tree, but you're right. This isn't the tree that houses what I am. After the vampires cut down my oak...\" She shook her head, tugged me close, and kissed me again. \"I took cuttings from my tree. When I went to your house, I grafted one to the oak tree behind your house. If you decide\u2014 If I return, that will become the tree that houses the rest of what I am.\"\n\nHer brown eyes watched me, reading my face. I still didn't know what was fair or right. All I knew was as I stood there feeling Lena's magic and her connection to the trees, thinking about her returning to Copper River with me, I felt happier than I had been in a long time.\n\n\"Isaac?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Sweet dreams.\" She grinned and slipped her hand free from mine, pressing herself against the tree. A part of me felt like I should turn away to give her privacy, but she had invited me to watch this. Her arm thrust deeper into the trunk. One leg followed. She turned sideways, squeezing into a tree barely wide enough to accommodate her.\n\nShe brought her fingers to her lips and blew me a kiss. I read both mischief and lust in her eyes, and then, seconds later, I was alone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "I spent most of the night thinking about Lena, even in my dreams. I spent half of breakfast trying to put those thoughts into words.\n\nLena was uncharacteristically quiet as she ate. I got the sense she was deliberately giving me time. She split her attention between me and a Belgian waffle drowned in strawberry syrup and topped with what might best be described as the Mount Everest of whipped cream.\n\nI usually approached food as a necessity, a refueling process to be completed as quickly as possible, but Lena turned each meal into a sensual experience. I watched the tip of her tongue capture a speck of whipped cream from her upper lip. She glanced up at me through her lashes and smiled.\n\nI set down my fork and pushed away a half-eaten omelet. One way or another, I had to start this conversation now, before we headed into the Detroit nest. \"I've been thinking of you as human.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Confusion creased the skin between her eyebrows.\n\n\"I created Smudge out of a book,\" I said. \"The magic is no different than what I used to create the potion and gun I used at the archive. He's bound by the rules of his character. But he's alive.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\" she asked, her tone neutral.\n\n\"Nothing in his book said anything about liking SpongeBob or chocolate-covered ladybugs dipped in cinnamon. He came from a stereotypical pseudomedieval setting. Nothing in that setting made him hate Journey songs.\"\n\nLena snorted. \"Journey? You're kidding.\"\n\n\"Why do you think I was so quick to change the station when we were driving down 127 yesterday? He melted one of the speakers in my truck the first time he heard 'Faithfully.'\"\n\n\"You created him. You could have shaped his likes and dislikes.\"\n\n\"Oh, no. I can't stand SpongeBob.\"\n\n\"What about Journey?\"\n\n\"We're getting off topic.\" I finished the last of my coffee and waved away the waiter who started to offer me a refill. \"It's easy to remember what Smudge is. No other spider cooks his own horseflies. But you look human. You're strong, you can manipulate wood, but I've seen other humans do equally impressive magic.\"\n\nI traced the grain of the false wood tabletop, remembering the sensation of Lena's magic flowing through my body, connecting us to one another through the pine tree. \"I've been trying to treat you like a human woman, and by that standard... no one should ever be forced or coerced into taking a lover.\"\n\nShe frowned. \"Are you suggesting a woman who isn't human is fair game?\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant.\" I groaned and leaned back in the booth. The hardest part was trying to separate logic from desire. Whatever I said or did, how could I ever know my attraction to Lena hadn't swayed my choice? \"Showing up on an acquaintance's doorstep and asking him to become your lover... your mate... isn't normal. Not for humans.\"\n\n\"Normal?\" she repeated. \"Yesterday you fed me cake from Wonderland so we could ride your spider into a magical basement and fight a vampire.\"\n\n\"True enough. Look, my parents dated for four and a half years before my mother proposed. Humans choose at the end of that courtship period. For a human, picking a mate you hardly know is madness. But you're not human. Last night at the pine tree, feeling your magic\u2014feeling you\u2014helped me to finally understand that. And this is how you choose.\"\n\n\"Pine trees have never been my favorite. The smell lingers in my hair for days.\" Lena munched a piece of bacon. \"So what are you saying, Isaac?\"\n\nI had rehearsed this bit time and again last night, but my mouth was dry. I lifted my coffee mug, remembered it was empty, and sighed. \"I need to stop treating you as human and start taking you for what you are.\"\n\n\"Oh, so you want to take me, do you?\" Her tone was playful, but her expression was as serious as I'd ever seen.\n\nI knew what I wanted. The hardest part was accepting that it was okay to want it. \"If you're sure.\"\n\nShe dug a twenty out of her wallet and slapped it onto the table. I barely managed to grab my jacket before she was hauling me away from our table and out the door. When we reached the car, she caught my shoulder, spun me around, and kissed me. Her hand slid around my waist, holding me so tightly I couldn't have broken free if I'd wanted to.\n\nNot that I wanted to. Last night when we kissed, I had been torn. I realized now that Lena had been holding back as well. This time, I could feel her joy, much as I had sensed the magic of her tree before. I lost myself in that kiss, in the pleasure she took and the pleasure she gave in return.\n\nI felt like a kid finding magic for the first time. It was the same excitement, the same joy in her touch. In her.\n\nI pulled away, momentarily dizzy. \"Wow.\"\n\nShe laughed, a sound of such untarnished happiness that I couldn't help but do the same. Her hands slid beneath my shirt and up the skin of my back, making me shiver. I ran my hand through her hair, then traced the curve of her ear, eliciting a soft moan of enjoyment.\n\nShe pressed her cheek to mine so her breath warmed my neck. \"Do we have to go vampire hunting right away?\"\n\nI didn't want to answer, so I kissed her again, a move Lena seemed to appreciate. Her leg curled around mine, her body resting against the trunk of the car for support as I leaned into her.\n\nA loud whistle yanked me back to reality. A woman watching from the entrance to the restaurant smiled and gave us a thumbs-up.\n\nLena nipped my ear, then whispered, \"Why couldn't you have figured this out last night?\"\n\n\"That's a good question, and once the blood flow returns to my brain, I might even be able to answer it.\"\n\nShe laughed, kissed my palm, and circled around to the passenger side.\n\nNeither of us spoke as we drove, but each time I peeked over at Lena, she was smiling. Her body appeared relaxed, her movements more fluid.\n\nAs for me, I felt like I was on a roller coaster that had just started climbing that first hill. I was anxious, exhilarated, and a little uncertain what I had gotten myself into. Lena Greenwood was a literal fantasy woman, written by a man as an imaginary plaything for other men. But the moment she stepped out of her tree all those years ago, she had become something more. Something magical and beautiful and strong.\n\nMuch as I wanted to head straight to the nearest hotel and spend the rest of the day exploring that magic, we had undead killers to stop, and that meant another shopping trip.\n\nA short distance from the Ambassador Bridge, I pulled into a small, fenced-in lot beside a four-story warehouse. The store was unimpressive from the outside. Small safety glass windows did little to break up the monotony of the red brick walls. A peeling billboard on the front of the building read, \"K's USED BOOKS.\"\n\n\"I hate big cities, but there are a few advantages,\" I said as we climbed out of the car.\n\nThe bookstore had no coffee shop. No Internet caf\u00e9, no window displays, no toys or greeting cards or cute little calendars with inspirational quotes and pictures of kittens. K's Books sold books. Four stories worth of books. Row after row of ten-foot-high wooden bookshelves, every shelf bowing under the weight of its inventory.\n\nI stepped inside and inhaled the old-paper smell. Dehumidifiers hummed away in the background. Fluorescent lights flickered in the aisles. A hand-inked map tacked onto the wall by the staircase detailed the subjects to be found on each floor.\n\nHad there been any justice in the world, the owners, Kevin and Fawn Shamel, would have been libriomancers. They loved books as much as any man or woman I had ever met. But strong as that love might be, they lacked any magical ability whatsoever.\n\nFawn was working the front today, behind an old-fashioned cash register and a pile of empty brown paper grocery bags. She was in her late sixties, slender as a twig, with braided gray hair and a perpetual grin that widened when she spotted me. \"Isaac Vainio! Long time no see, stranger!\"\n\n\"When are you going to open up a store in Copper River?\" I demanded as I reached over to pet Brillo, the store cat, who was curled up on the edge of the counter. Age had robbed Brillo of most of the kinked hair on his back that had given him his name, leaving him rather pathetically pink and balding, but the years had taken none of his attitude. He yowled and batted my hand when I stopped petting him.\n\nFawn shook her head. \"We're barely breaking even these days. The economy's in the toilet.\" She jabbed a finger at me. \"I expect you to put us into the black this month, Isaac Vainio!\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am. So where's Kevin?\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes. \"Book fair in Grand Rapids.\"\n\n\"Oh, really?\" I glanced at the old clock on the wall, calculating how long it would take to reach Grand Rapids. Lena jabbed me with an elbow, reminding me why we were here.\n\nFawn tilted her head. \"And who is this?\"\n\n\"A friend from work,\" Lena said.\n\n\"A friend. I see.\" Fawn's lips pressed into a knowing smile. \"Isaac's a pretty good man, but he gets lost in his head sometimes. Just give him a good thwack to bring him back.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" I said, grabbing one of the bags off the counter. \"Let's go stimulate the economy.\"\n\n\"Is that what they're calling it these days?\" Lena murmured, taking my hand in hers.\n\nScience fiction and fantasy were on the third floor. I climbed past stacks of unshelved books at every landing, pausing briefly to admire the old reading-and book-related posters that papered the walls.\n\nLena laughed. \"You're practically glowing.\"\n\n\"I'm having a good day.\" I could feel the books calling out to me as I walked through the third floor, moving unerringly toward the familiar shelves. So much magical potential waiting to be brought into this world. \"Even before I learned what I was, books were my escape from the world. This place... bookstores, libraries... they're the closest thing I have to a church.\" I ran my finger lightly over the spines as I walked, skimming authors and titles. The SF section alone probably held more books than the entire Copper River Library.\n\n\"So you stopped here for a blessing before wading into the lions' den?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\" I grabbed a book and dropped it into my bag. \"K's Books is more than just a church. It's also my armory.\"\n\nOne by one, I filled my bag, concentrating on vampire books. Urban fantasy, paranormal romance, gaming tie-ins, old-school horror... nothing could stop every subspecies of vampire, but by the time I filled that first bag, I had enough material to protect us from at least ninety percent of them, and armament enough to give the last ten percent pause.\n\nI dropped the bag at the front desk and grabbed another. I found a few more potential weapons, but also picked up some books for pleasure reading, titles I had been meaning to read or reread for a while. Next, I pulled a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket.\n\n\"What's that?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Plan B. I put the list together last night. I slipped the clerk a twenty to let me use his computer to access the Porter database.\"\n\nLena simply smiled as she watched me fill yet another bag and carry it down to the counter, cradling it in both arms to keep it from splitting under the weight of the books. \"You're giddy. Almost postcoitally so.\"\n\nFawn raised an eyebrow as she began adding up the total. \"Save it for later, kids. I've already tossed out one teenager this week for getting too familiar with the old Playboys on the second floor. Though what anyone wants with old airbrushed magazines when they have their Internet and their smart phones and everything else, I can't imagine.\"\n\nOnce she finished swiping my credit card, Fawn limped out from behind the desk, leaning heavily on an aluminum cane. Her arthritis was worse than I remembered. Each step obviously pained her, though she did her best to hide it. She gave me a quick hug with her free arm. \"You come back soon, Isaac. We can't afford to go another two years without your money.\"\n\n\"I will. Tell Kevin I said hi, and I'll catch him next time.\" I scratched Brillo behind the ears and headed out to the car, my mood darkening with each step.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Fawn's a good person.\" I laid my coat out on the trunk and emptied the pockets. \"She's had two knee surgeries and a hip replacement that I know of, and she's still hurting. I could fix that. One sip from Lucy's Narnian cordial, or the healing swords from Saberhagen or Lackey... we've cataloged more than a hundred books we use for magical healing.\"\n\n\"So why not help her?\"\n\n\"Part of the Porters' mission is to conceal magic's existence from the world,\" I said flatly. \"If I heal Fawn Shamel, where do I stop? Who decides who does and doesn't deserve relief? The books would char and rip open long before we could help everyone, and the magical chaos leaking through those books would create more damage than we'd fixed.\"\n\n\"That's bullshit,\" Lena said flatly. \"You can't heal everyone, so don't help anyone at all?\"\n\nI snapped a rubber band around a role-playing game tie-in, then picked up the next. \"I know, I know. I've been over it again and again with Ray, with Pallas, even with Doctor Shah.\"\n\n\"Would anyone know if you snuck back inside and slipped a drop of Lucy's potion into her drink?\"\n\n\"Probably not,\" I admitted. \"And every one of us can start making exceptions for the people we care about, until sooner or later our secret escapes, and the world goes crazy.\"\n\n\"Crazier, you mean?\"\n\nI sighed and turned back to the piles of new books. There was no way I was fitting even a fraction of those into my jacket. It was time for a wardrobe upgrade. I opened up an old paperback and pulled out a long, brown coat.\n\n\"What is it with you and brown jackets?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"There were two reasons I wanted that jacket,\" I said as I slipped the new one on. It was a little long, but not horribly so. \"Doctor Who\u2014the tenth doctor, specifically\u2014was one of those reasons.\"\n\n\"And the other?\"\n\n\"Don't tell me you've never seen Firefly?\" I shook my head. \"You and I have work to do when this is all over.\"\n\nLena watched as I shoved book after book into my pockets. \"Maybe the Porters are just worried about protecting their own. Helping others is a good thing, but not if you destroy yourself in the process. Look at how much you've pushed yourself over the past two days, magically. How much more can you take?\"\n\n\"I'm all right. Sleep helped.\" Once I had finally gotten to sleep, at least. I had checked my vitals this morning. My resting heart rate was running about a hundred beats per minute. My temp was ninety-nine point eight. Definitely elevated, but not in the danger zone yet. I was jumpy and having a hard time holding still, but some of that could also be the result of kissing Lena.\n\n\"So what's to stop these vampires from simply killing us on sight?\" she asked.\n\nI pulled out a battered copy of The Road to Oz and gave her a mischievous grin. \"I'm just too darn lovable.\"\n\nMorning traffic meant it took close to an hour to reach the one entrance to the Detroit nest I knew about. \"You know what I like about Copper River?\" I said through gritted teeth as we jolted to a halt yet again. \"Up north, rush hour means two cars stopped at the same intersection.\"\n\nI checked the mirrors and darted into the right turn lane, gunning the engine to make the light. Our destination was a few blocks back from the main roads, about a mile or so from the Detroit River. I pulled into a small corner parking lot. A colorful, hand-painted sign on the side of the converted house read, Dolingen Daycare. Cartoon animals frolicked around the bubble letters of the sign.\n\n\"Tell me this isn't a vampire daycare,\" Lena said.\n\n\"Vampires tend to be a little paranoid.\" I clipped Smudge's cage to my belt loop. He was nervous, but wasn't openly flaming yet. I also checked my jeans pocket, feeling the reassuring weight of a small bit of horseshoe-shaped metal, wrapped in crumpled paper knotted shut with string. \"They build their lairs for defense, and the daycare is part of that defense. It covers one of the only ways into their nest. If the Porters were to attack, or even if normal humans got wind of them and showed up with torches and pitchforks, this place gives them a guaranteed supply of young, innocent hostages during the daytime, when many vampire species are at their weakest.\"\n\nLena grabbed her bokken out of the back and shoved them through her belt. She had replaced the one she lost in the MSU library, and the new weapon smelled strongly of pine.\n\nThe daycare was built on a small lot with a cedar fence walling off the backyard. Several thick birch trees shaded the building. Construction paper animals decorated the open window on the side, and I could hear other children playing within.\n\nThe door opened before we could knock, and a friendly-looking fellow stepped out to greet us. He looked to be in his late thirties, with black hair and a face that could have belonged to the love child of Jon Hamm and Keanu Reeves.\n\n\"Nice place,\" I commented. \"Doesn't Michigan have disclosure laws requiring you to tell parents that this place is run by soulless monsters?\"\n\nHe tilted his head, studying the two of us in turn. \"You're calling us soulless? You've obviously never met an elf.\"\n\n\"Isaac Vainio,\" I said cheerfully, reaching out to shake his hand.\n\nLena tensed, but the vampire merely smiled and grasped my hand in his. \"Kyle Forrester. Soulless monster and manager at Dolingen Daycare. How can I help you?\"\n\n\"Your people asked to see me,\" I said. \"They've sent several invitations, so I'm assuming it must be urgent.\"\n\n\"Everything always is.\" He stepped back, beckoning us through the door. \"I thought immortality would teach people patience. Instead, you end up with vampires rushing about at superhuman speeds, even more stressed out than before they died.\" Somewhere in the house, a little boy started crying, the sound swiftly climbing to an ear-piercing scream. Kyle gave me an apologetic smile. \"I'll be right back.\"\n\nLena gave me a skeptical look as we followed him inside. I patted my pocket. \"Love magnet, courtesy of L. Frank Baum. Its magic will burn out eventually, but it should make things go a little faster.\"\n\nLena pulled me close. \"I get that you like to show off, but next time, a heads-up about your plan would be appreciated, okay?\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" At first glance, the daycare center appeared completely normal. The ceiling tiles had all been painted, resulting in a chaotic mix of colors and scribbling. Posters about safety and respect and manners hung from the walls. The linoleum floor smelled like lemon cleaner, and I picked up the salty aroma of stale Play-Doh as well.\n\nI also counted three security cameras, not including the one we had passed beneath the eaves on the porch.\n\nI peeked into one room with a battered upright piano in the corner and toy instruments stuffed onto bright red-and-blue shelves. Another room was full of folded blankets, with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the walls and ceiling.\n\nThe children were in what I assumed was the main playroom, judging from the number of toys scattered over the floor. A man and woman\u2014more vampires, presumably\u2014were herding nine kids who looked to range from about two to twelve years of age. A large sheepdog was \"helping,\" circling to and fro and eliciting giggles from a pair of young girls while Kyle talked quietly to a red-faced boy in the corner. The boy nodded, then smiled as Kyle reached out to tickle his neck.\n\n\"I'll be in the office,\" Kyle announced, shooing the boy back toward the others. \"Don't forget Jenny's inhaler at seven, and make sure Tamika keeps her shoes on if you go outside.\"\n\nSeveral things happened as he turned to join us. One of the children pointed to Smudge and yelled, \"Hey, he's got a spider!\" The sheepdog looked at me and snarled. And Smudge burst into red flame.\n\n\"Cool!\" whispered the kid who had spotted Smudge.\n\nKyle frowned. \"Mister Puddles, stay!\"\n\nThe dog ignored him. The woman reached for the dog's collar.\n\n\"Mister Puddles?\" I repeated.\n\n\"The kids named him,\" said Kyle. \"He's not usually like this with strangers.\"\n\nAnd he definitely shouldn't have been like this with me. The love magnet should have had them all eager to help in whatever way they could.\n\nMister Puddles growled and snapped at the woman. She yanked her hand away, moving far quicker than any human, but none of the children appeared to notice. Her eyes were wide, and she stared at the dog as if she didn't recognize it. Before anyone else could react, Mister Puddles was bounding straight at me.\n\nFor such a big animal, he moved fast, bowling Kyle aside and jumping onto my chest. The two of us slammed to the floor. I tried to shove his jaw away from my throat, but it was like trying to stop a bus with my bare hands. White teeth snapped at my throat, ripping my shirt away to expose the silver crucifix I had donned. The dog yelped and drew back, then gagged as Lena caught him by the collar.\n\nThe children shrieked in protest. \"Don't you hurt Mister Puddles!\" A wooden duck flew through the air, striking Lena in the shoulder.\n\n\"Get them outside now,\" Kyle shouted.\n\nMister Puddles kicked and flailed until the collar broke away. He twisted around and clamped his teeth into Lena's calf. She drew one of her bokken and smashed the butt on the top of the dog's head. The blow stunned him for a moment. His eyes glowed faintly red through the mop of hair flopped over his face. He staggered back, nails clicking on the linoleum. Lena pulled her second sword and moved to stand between me and the dog. I could see her weapons responding to her magic, the edges growing razor sharp.\n\n\"Mister Puddles, that's enough!\" Kyle was in full vamp mode now, his face turned monstrous, his fangs bared. He seized the dog by the scruff of the neck and hauled him into the air.\n\nMister Puddles shifted form, changing from an enormous shaggy dog into an enormous hairy man, naked and growling. His nails were long and blackened. Before I could react, his hand slashed out, and blood sprayed from Kyle's throat.\n\nMister Puddles spun back toward me, but Lena struck his elbow with one of her bokken. He grabbed the wooden blade, so she stepped closer and drove her knee into his crotch. She lowered her stance, gripped her weapon, and pulled. The wooden blade nearly cut off the vampire's fingers. She spun in a tight circle, bringing the second sword around to slice the side of his neck.\n\nThe vampire's lips pulled back. \"Hello again, Isaac.\"\n\nThe intonation was identical to the vampire I had faced at MSU, as was the anger and hatred in his voice, as if the same mind was taunting me through another body. I reached into my pocket, grabbing a small pistol I had prepared from a Simon Green book. \"Who are you?\"\n\nHe only laughed and lunged again. Lena ducked low, striking him in the knee. Her blades cut parallel gashes into his thigh, and he staggered into the wall.\n\n\"His name is Rupert Loyola.\" Kyle held a hand to his throat. The wound had already begun to heal, though blood soaked the front of his shirt. He sounded like someone had run a cheese grater over his larynx.\n\nI studied Loyola, trying to make out the shape of his eyes through the long black bangs that hung to his nose. The red glow was just enough to illuminate the same cross-shaped pupils I had seen on the vampire in the steam tunnels. I pointed the gun at his chest. I wasn't sure what species he was, but frozen darts of holy water should deter most vampires. \"How do you know who I am?\"\n\nLoyola's body arched backward, and he fell to his knees. His eyes began to burn.\n\n\"Don't let him ignite!\" I raced into the next room, grabbed an abandoned cup, and twisted off the top. As Loyola flopped onto his back, I splashed the contents into his face. Grape juice trickled down his beard, but the eyes merely burned brighter.\n\n\"Fire extinguisher,\" Lena shouted. Kyle vanished into the kitchen.\n\nLoyola's good leg snapped out, sweeping Lena's feet and knocking her to the floor. He jumped up and reached for me, bloody fingers spread like claws. I fired two darts into his stomach, but he didn't react at all. He grabbed my throat, slammed me against the wall, and bared his fangs.\n\nI rammed the barrel of my gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. At the same time, both of Lena's bokken punched through the center of his chest. The sharpened tips jabbed my breastbone hard enough to bruise, but neither one pierced my skin.\n\nLoyola wrenched free and crashed through the door, eyes ablaze. He made it halfway down the walk before falling face-first into the grass. He disintegrated on impact."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "Furious as I was at losing another lead, it was the dark blood soaking into Lena's torn jeans that turned my insides cold. I dropped to my knees, clamping a hand over the bite to try to slow the bleeding.\n\n\"A single bite won't harm her,\" Kyle reassured us. He had taken a handful of paper towels and was doing his best to clean the blood from his now-healed throat. \"Rupert can't turn anyone unless they drink his blood after he bites them.\"\n\nLena hissed through her teeth as she pushed my hand aside and pulled up her pants leg. I wasn't taking any chances. I popped the magazine out of my pistol and removed the individual darts. One by one, I pressed the frozen slivers of holy water onto the gashes in Lena's lower leg. Her skin was tough as oak, but the dog had left four nasty puncture wounds.\n\nI tried not to imagine what it would have done to me.\n\n\"I killed him.\" Her words were quiet, but hard. She stared out the door.\n\n\"He didn't give you a choice,\" I said.\n\nKyle nodded. \"This was an obvious act of self-defense. You've broken no law.\"\n\n\"I saw him grab you,\" she said. \"I didn't think.\"\n\nI took her hand. \"This wasn't your fault. It's the fault of whoever was controlling him.\"\n\nShe shook herself. \"Then he was a victim twice over. Trapped by whatever magic turned him into a vampire, then enslaved.\"\n\n\"Not just a slave.\" I thought back to the other murders. \"I think whoever's controlling them can see through their eyes, share their experiences. And he knows me.\"\n\n\"Are you all right, Isaac?\" Kyle sounded genuinely concerned, which meant the love magnet was working fine. But it hadn't stopped Mister Puddles. Whatever magic had controlled him was far stronger than mine. \"Your throat is red where he grabbed you.\"\n\n\"Bruised, but I'll live.\" In addition to the battering Loyola had given me, Smudge's panic had blackened my pants and jacket both. I was lucky he hadn't set me on fire. Red sparks continued to glow along his back. \"Where does Mister\u2014 Where does Rupert go when he's not playing sheepdog?\"\n\n\"Nowhere,\" said Kyle. \"He sleeps here. He rarely takes human shape. He's the best security we have.\" His fist shot out, punching through drywall and splintering a wall stud. His face never changed, betraying nothing of his anger or frustration. \"I had no idea anything was wrong. You've seen this before? Do you know who's doing this to our people?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" I dissolved the gun back into its book long enough to re-form and reload it, then tucked both book and weapon into my pocket.\n\nOne of the other vampires hurried through the playroom. \"What's going on in here?\"\n\n\"Keep the kids outside,\" Kyle snapped.\n\nThe vampire glared at us. At Lena, mostly. The love magnet deflected any anger and suspicion from me, but it didn't do anything to help her. \"What did they do to\u2014\"\n\n\"Marisha!\" Kyle hunched his shoulders and hissed, a sound that made me think of an angry jaguar preparing to pounce. The other vampire drew back as if struck. She bowed her head and retreated.\n\n\"We need you to take us underground,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"What about the children?\" asked Lena. \"Are we just going to leave them here?\"\n\n\"Their babysitters know the rules.\" I glanced at Kyle, who once again appeared fully human, albeit bloody. \"Kyle knows exactly what will happen if they hurt or turn even one of these children. They're smarter than that.\"\n\n\"No slayings, and no turnings without the human's consent.\" He raised a hand. \"To forestall your next question, according to our laws, no human can give consent to be turned before age seventeen. These children are safer here than they are at home.\"\n\n\"You expect us to believe that?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"The worst they get is the occasional mental nudge to keep them in line, but I've been trying to cut back on that. I don't like messing with their heads, especially at that age. I've been making the staff watch old episodes of Supernanny, trying to adapt her reward system to the daycare. It's... not taking off as well as I'd hoped.\"\n\nA shout from outside preceded quick footsteps as several of the kids raced into the playroom, apparently having evaded their vampire babysitters. \"Where's Mister Puddles?\"\n\n\"My staff are strong enough to fight a bear, but they can't keep kids out of a house.\" Kyle sounded more amused than annoyed as he grabbed a jacket out of the closet and threw it on, hastily zipping it up to hide the blood on his shirt. \"Mister Puddles was sick. These people are going to take him to the vet.\"\n\n\"Is it rabies?\"\n\n\"Did that spider bite Mister Puddles?\"\n\n\"Is the doctor going to casterbate him?\"\n\nMarisha raised her voice. \"Why don't we do music time next? Everyone into the music room, please!\"\n\nHer words jabbed the base of my skull. The children obeyed at once, turning away from us and marching silently to grab instruments from the shelves.\n\nI stepped closer to Kyle, pitching my words for him alone. \"If I hear of even one child gone sick or missing from this place, I will burn it\u2014and you\u2014to the ground.\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"Good.\" I brushed myself off. \"In that case, I think it's time you take us to your leader.\"\n\nA heavy padlock protected the door to the basement stairs. Kyle unlocked the door and led us down wooden steps into an unfinished basement, well-stocked with cans of food, powdered juice mix, diapers, baby food jars, and more, all neatly arranged on the steel shelves that lined every wall. A broken tricycle and other old toys were stacked up in the corner.\n\nKyle ducked into the furnace room and pressed one of the cinder blocks near the top of the wall, which swiveled in place to reveal a small keypad and a glass plate. He typed in a six-digit code, then pressed his hand to the plate.\n\n\"Fingerprint scanner?\" I guessed.\n\nKyle grinned. \"I could tell you all of our secrets, but the powers-that-be get twitchy when humans know too much. You're safer not knowing.\"\n\nThat was one of the limits of the love magnet. If Kyle thought certain information would endanger me, he would go out of his way to keep those secrets in order to protect me.\n\nHe pushed the cinder block back into place with a click. At the same time, the wall behind the furnace slid open to reveal a stone staircase which descended three steps to an open elevator car. If the elevator made a sound, the humming of the furnace fans kept human ears from detecting it.\n\n\"Are you sure about this?\" Lena asked softly.\n\n\"Nope.\" Smudge continued to emit a red glow as I followed Kyle into the elevator car. I was no more thrilled than they were. The sparklers in Copper River would have killed me if not for Lena. Vampires had turned Deb, and who knew what they had done to Nidhi Shah? A nest full of potentially hostile vampires made the traditional lion's den look like a box of kittens.\n\nFrom the furrows on Lena's forehead, she was thinking the same thing. I grabbed her hand, eliciting a tight smile of thanks.\n\nWith my other hand, I checked my pockets, examining the items I had prepared: a UV flashlight, a thick lotion of silver and garlic, a pair of silver-tipped ash stakes, and more.\n\n\"You'll have to turn those over before entering the nest,\" Kyle said as the doors slid shut.\n\n\"Naturally.\" I rubbed the lotion over my hands and neck, then offered it to Lena. I clutched the flashlight, my thumb over the button. For sun-fearing species, this would be just as good as a flamethrower.\n\nMister Puddles had been at the daycare center for a long time, presumably tracking who came in and out of the nest. If whoever was behind this\u2014my mind whispered Gutenberg's name\u2014had another vampire waiting for us when we emerged, I wanted to be ready.\n\nI was amused to note that even vampires obeyed the unwritten rules of elevator etiquette. Kyle kept to his own space and watched the doors as we sank deeper and deeper underground. I busied myself searching the featureless metal walls, trying to spot the cameras. I had found two hidden within the overhead light when the elevator slowed.\n\nThe air that rushed in through the doors was noticeably colder, and smelled of salt. I looked out at the inside of a steel vault that made me think of a bank safe. Three armed figures stood with machine guns pointed at us. They wore matching black Kevlar jackets, ammo magazines on their belts, and uniformly unamused expressions.\n\nOne drew back as we emerged, hissing at either my crucifix or the garlic lotion. \"Hi,\" I said cheerfully. Their eyes appeared normal, and none of them seemed to recognize me. \"I'm Isaac Vainio of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re.\"\n\nNervous as I was to be surrounded by creatures directly above me on the food chain, a part of me was excited to finally see the vampires in their self-made environment. They had built a fully functioning underground ecosystem, one which had survived for almost a hundred years. Reading reports was one thing, but few humans ever saw this place for themselves, and almost none of those humans emerged to share what they had seen.\n\nThe one with the garlic or crucifix allergy grabbed a radio from her belt and muttered something I couldn't make out. She raised her gun. \"Press your hands against the wall.\"\n\nKyle had already assumed the position. I kept smiling as I joined him. They relieved Lena of her bokken, and I handed over my holy water pistol and stakes without a complaint. They took the UV flashlight and my crucifix as well, as I had expected. One grabbed my jacket.\n\nI squeezed the pockets to prove there was nothing else. \"We're in a bit of a hurry here, if you don't mind?\"\n\nMister Puddles might have been able to resist the love magnet, but not these three. One of them punched a combination into the keypad beside the vault's metal door, then yanked it open. That door was a good six inches thick, and looked to be solid steel, but she moved it like it was light as a screen door.\n\n\"Welcome to the Detroit nest,\" said the largest of the trio, sounding like he was reading from a script. \"By entering our territory, you acknowledge that you are leaving human law behind. Any act of aggression\u2014\"\n\n\"Can we get the short version, please?\" I asked.\n\nThe woman rolled her eyes. \"Behave, or we eat you.\"\n\n\"Got it.\"\n\nShe led us into a rectangular tunnel, thirty feet wide and twenty high. The other two guards hauled the door shut, and I heard heavy bolts clunk into place, trapping us down here. The only way out now was by the good graces of our vampire hosts.\n\nI gawked openly as we walked. White salt crusted the rock walls, glittering in the dim, blue-tinged light from a series of LED bulbs. Bare electrical cables ran from the lights to thick metal conduits running along the ceiling. A battered pickup truck was parked against the wall to the right of the elevator. The bottom was rusted brown, and a layer of salt painted the rest white. A pair of well-maintained dirt bikes were tucked into the corner behind the truck.\n\n\"How big is this place?\" Lena asked, looking around.\n\n\"Miles,\" I said. \"There were two major salt mines beneath Detroit. One continues to operate today, but the vampires spent a great deal of time and money to get the second mine erased from the records, giving them a relatively safe place to live.\"\n\n\"Listen to Mister Tour Guide,\" chuckled Kyle.\n\nWe passed tunnels and staircases carved into the walls, along with several small maintenance trucks. \"What's over there?\" I asked, pointing to a green metal door.\n\n\"Freight elevator,\" said the guard. \"We've only got two elevators large enough for vehicles.\" Her ink-black brows drew together. \"I probably shouldn't have told you that.\"\n\nI pantomimed turning a key in my lips, even as I tried to orient myself and figure out where such an elevator might emerge. We hadn't walked very far yet, but there was no guarantee the shaft was vertical. \"What about that one?\"\n\n\"Mausoleum,\" said Kyle. \"Close to a hundred coffins, each lined with the dirt from a different vampire's native home. Beyond that is a storage unit. The humming you hear is a bank of industrial refrigeration units.\"\n\nI didn't have to ask what they were keeping refrigerated. \"You couldn't run this place on generators. I assume you've got someone at Detroit Edison siphoning electricity and hiding the evidence?\"\n\nNeither vampire answered, not that I expected them to. I studied other vampires as we walked. A wizened-looking creature with gray skin and long, clawed fingers lounged against the wall, smoking a clove cigarette. Two inhumanly gorgeous women sat hunched over a chessboard. A boy who looked no older than thirteen clung to the wall like Spider-Man, working on an electrical junction box of some sort.\n\nI stepped toward a tunnel which was curtained off with thick plastic sheeting. Neither of my undead escorts stopped me, so I shoved the curtain to one side, revealing artificial sunlight and a cave of green. \"You're farming?\"\n\n\"Hard to do with all the salt,\" said the guard, \"but yes.\"\n\nThey had improvised an enormous hydroponics garden. White water pipes fed row upon row of plants in clear plastic reservoirs, and people were busily moving from row to row, checking corn, tomatoes, and other crops, including an impressive collection of mushrooms.\n\n\"Nice setup,\" said Lena, squeezing past me to take a look. \"I didn't think vampires needed food.\"\n\n\"A few species do,\" I said. \"I'm guessing this is mostly for the human population, though.\"\n\nLena turned to me, her unspoken question clear.\n\n\"There are more than fifteen thousand people living homeless in Detroit,\" said Kyle. \"Some of them are brought here. We give them food and shelter, and in return...\"\n\n\"In return you feed on them?\" Lena demanded.\n\n\"Humans commonly sell blood or other fluids for money,\" the guard said mildly. \"Some, especially those who have been left to die alone and forgotten on the streets, even sell their own bodies. We offer them a much better deal.\"\n\n\"Nobody is brought here against their will,\" Kyle added. \"There are laws. Agreements. Every human is given a choice, with no mental coercion.\"\n\n\"What do your laws say about attacking unarmed humans in their homes?\" Lena asked.\n\nBoth vampires looked troubled. \"You'll want to talk to Miss Granach about that,\" said the guard.\n\n\"It's not a bad life down here.\" Clearly eager to change the subject, Kyle pointed to a low-ceilinged room which rang out with a familiar chorus of electronic sound effects. Colored lights flickered inside.\n\n\"You have an arcade,\" I said.\n\n\"It keeps the younger vampires happy. About half of the machines are overclocked for vampiric reflexes. You wouldn't last ten seconds.\"\n\nLena moved closer, brushing my arm with hers. Her body was tense, and she was constantly looking about, assessing every vampire and human we passed. Nidhi Shah might be dead, but what of the vampires who had taken her? If they were here, I hoped they'd have the good sense to stay hidden.\n\nSmudge was getting anxious, too, judging by the uncomfortable warmth at my hip. The tunnels were cleaner here, making me feel like I was strolling through a bizarre cross between a cave and a shopping mall. PA speakers were mounted along the ceiling, and I spied several more cameras. I had no doubt there were others, better concealed, but the visible cameras reminded everyone they were being watched, enforcing control.\n\n\"You should have been here in the seventies,\" Kyle commented. \"The first time I came down here, they were piping Bee Gees music through the sound system. No disco balls, though. Mirrors, you know?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I said, but I was having a harder time maintaining my false cheer. I glanced over my shoulder, trying to remember the various turns we had taken. I thought I could find my way back to the elevator, but I wasn't certain anymore.\n\nThey led us past a tunnel that smelled of guano and down a side passage, where two more vampires stood guard in front of twelve-foot-high steel doors. A weight pressed against my mind, followed by shooting pains as my translator fish gobbled whatever telepathic probe they were sending my way. Just to be safe, I recited Dr. Seuss' Fox in Socks to myself. It wouldn't stop most mind readers, but it might block or annoy a few.\n\nA camera above the doors swiveled toward us. I swallowed and stepped forward. So far, so good, but the love magnet couldn't affect the entire nest. If I couldn't convince them we were on the same side, working against a common enemy...\n\n\"I'm Isaac Vainio,\" I said. \"Your vampires tried to kill me earlier this week. I'd like to talk to someone about that. I also thought you'd want to know what I've learned about whoever's enslaving your kind.\"\n\nI held my breath. All it would take was a single command relayed over the radios carried by both guards, and we were dead.\n\n\"Rupert Loyola is ash,\" Kyle added. \"He had been taken over by this same enemy.\"\n\nLena's fists were clenched by her sides. \"Are you going to be okay?\" I whispered.\n\nShe gave me a sharp but unconvincing nod. Her breathing was quick, and she shifted her balance on the balls of her feet, like a tiger preparing to pounce. The guards noticed it, too. They raised their guns slightly in a not-so-subtle warning.\n\nI slipped my hand into her hair and kissed her, trying to focus her attention on me. I felt her relax slightly. She pulled away, but muttered a quick, \"Thanks.\"\n\nIt might have been better to leave Lena behind, but I doubted all the vampires and Porters in the world could have kept her back. And truth be told, I was far more comfortable with her along, both for protection and for her company. For the determination in her every step, even when she was afraid. She knew her limits, but she also knew her strength.\n\nI knew neither, and I envied her.\n\nBoth vampires stiffened, then turned to open the doors, presumably responding to a mental command from within.\n\n\"Good luck,\" said our escort before walking away, leaving Lena, Kyle, and myself at the entrance to what looked like an underground palace. Glowing crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The upper part of the walls was rough-hewn stone. Closer to the floor, the rock had been carefully carved into recessed archways, each of which housed a statue carved from salt. I counted fourteen, all lit from within, each representing a famous vampire from throughout history.\n\n\"Isn't that Bruce Lee?\" asked Lena, pointing to one of the statues.\n\nI nodded. \"He was turned in seventy-three, after collapsing in his home. When the doctors at the hospital couldn't revive him, a vampire intervened, hoping to preserve Lee's knowledge and experience. The last I heard, he was living in Taiwan. He's got an underground vampire dojo and everything. That is one vampire you do not want to try to stake.\"\n\nA throne of salt crystal inlaid with gold sat on a high dais at the far end of the hall. I checked the balconies to either side, but we appeared to be alone.\n\nAnd then we weren't. A shadow in the shape of a black jaguar melted from the wall. As it approached the throne, it stretched gracefully into the form of an elderly woman. She settled onto the throne and gave Kyle a barely perceptible nod.\n\nKyle dropped to one knee. \"Mistress Granach, this is Isaac Vainio, libriomancer of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re, and his companion Lena Greenwood.\"\n\n\"Dryad,\" added Lena. \"And mate of Nidhi Shah.\"\n\nI did my best to ignore the way those words burrowed into my chest, concentrating instead on remembering everything I had read about Alice Granach. She had been born in the middle of the nineteenth century. She had been turned during the Great Depression, and was supposed to be a wickedly clever accountant. For the past sixty years, she had served as one of the four ruling vampires of the Detroit nest.\n\nShe was beautiful for her age. Her white hair was cut short, and faint wrinkles lined her eyes and mouth, giving the impression of wisdom and character. She moved with a relaxed grace, settling back in the throne while studying us each in turn.\n\nGranach had been around long enough to trade the dark trappings of the undead lifestyle for something more comfortable. She wore a University of Michigan sweatshirt and black jeans. Her feet were bare. Rimless glasses perched low on her nose.\n\n\"Sanguinarius LeFanus,\" I whispered. According to our reports, Granach was one of the only surviving vampires from that line, started back in 1872 with the publication of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's story, Carmilla.\n\nMovement in the balconies caught my eye, and Smudge burst into low flame. I tucked my jacket back behind his cage automatically, then counted the guards who now watched us from above: five to the right, and another half dozen to the left.\n\nGranach leaned back, crossing her ankles. \"Doctor Shah suggested you might find your way here.\"\n\nIt was the absolute worst thing she could have said. I grabbed Lena's arm, but she jerked free with ease. I saw automatic rifles being readied from the balconies. Smudge flared higher, his flames licking the top of his cage. \"Lena...\"\n\n\"What did you do to her?\" Lena demanded.\n\n\"We took Shah in response to the attacks against us,\" Granach said. \"She was targeted because I believed her insight into the Porters would give us the means to protect ourselves against you. She proved quite cooperative... eventually.\"\n\nLena leaped forward. She was halfway to the throne when bullets cratered the ground in front of her. She jumped sideways, rolling low to try to avoid the gunfire.\n\n\"We didn't attack you!\" I rushed after Lena, hands held high. My ears rang, making my words sound hollow. \"Lena, they'll kill us both.\" The guards had stopped shooting, but they stood ready to rip us apart in their crossfire.\n\nLena didn't move. I turned to Granach. \"I know someone has been kidnapping your people. They're using vampires to murder Porters. I've fought two such vampires so far. Kyle was there for the second attack.\"\n\n\"He killed Mister Puddles,\" Kyle added.\n\n\"Yes, we know. He was controlled by strange magic.\" Granach smiled. \"Tell me, Isaac, how is such magic any different from what you've used? My guards generally don't escort humans into the throne room, particularly Porters. Yet as I watched your progress, I saw one vampire after another go out of their way to help you.\"\n\n\"Wait, what?\" Kyle sounded pissed. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I used magic to keep you all from killing me,\" I admitted. There was only so much the love magnet could handle, and I suspected I was reaching its limits. \"I didn't enslave anyone. You think Kyle would be getting ready to rip out my throat if I could truly control him?\"\n\n\"What I think, Isaac, is that you're caught up in something you don't understand.\" Granach descended the dais, graceful as a dancer. \"Doctor Shah's notes told us a great deal about you, as did your friend Deb. You know nothing more of your master's plans and purposes than a private in the mud of the trenches knows of his general's.\"\n\n\"I know you turned a libriomancer,\" I said carefully, doing my best to match Granach's calm. \"I know your pets attacked me at my library.\"\n\nShe inclined her head. \"We sought information about our enemies. There has been disagreement over how best to respond to this new threat. Some argue that now is the chance to strike, to reveal ourselves and take our place as the superior race.\"\n\n\"Good luck with that,\" I said. \"Have you taken a good look at the toys the military are playing with these days? Forget wooden stakes and garlic. You'll never even see the drone that takes you out. But we didn't come here to fight you.\"\n\n\"Speak for yourself,\" Lena said softly.\n\n\"Deb argued as you do. Rather convincingly, I might add. You should thank her for that.\" Granach folded her arms, staring down at me in a way that made me feel like a child in the principal's office. \"If you hope to leave this place alive, prove your sincerity. Tell me what has happened to Johannes Gutenberg.\"\n\nOh, crap. Deb would have told them about the disappearance of Gutenberg and the automatons. \"He's alive, and we believe he's still human. The Porters are searching for him.\"\n\n\"You have suspicions.\" Granach moved within arm's reach, and I felt Lena tense. Granach smiled, revealing too-perfect teeth as she circled us. \"You're uncertain. Conflicted. Tell me, Isaac, what is it you fear?\"\n\nThere was no pain in my head. She couldn't touch my thoughts. But this was someone with centuries of practice at reading people. My tone, my body language, probably even my scent.\n\n\"You're hiding something,\" she continued. \"Tell me the truth about your master, and I'll consider helping you.\"\n\nI didn't want to believe Gutenberg could be behind this, but the evidence suggested otherwise. The voice in the steam tunnels. The disappearance of the automatons. The theft of locked books.\n\nIf Gutenberg had turned against the Porters, then I needed all the help I could get. And if the Porters refused to accept Gutenberg's betrayal...\n\n\"I think the Porters are wrong,\" I said slowly. \"I believe Gutenberg may be involved with these attacks. I don't yet know how or why.\"\n\n\"Doctor Shah came to the same conclusion,\" Granach said lightly. \"Like you, she believes the Porters as a whole are not behind this, and that the attacks are the work of a single individual.\"\n\n\"You said 'believes.'\" Lena swallowed. \"Is Nidhi... did you kill her?\"\n\nGranach paused, her brow wrinkling. She tilted her head as if listening to a silent voice. \"Follow me.\"\n\nNeither of us moved. \"I answered your question,\" I said. \"It's your turn. Tell us about Doctor Shah and the disappearances among your people.\"\n\n\"I can do better than that,\" she said. \"We've captured three of these enslaved vampires, each with the cross-shaped pupils Kyle described.\"\n\n\"When did he tell you\u2014?\" Telepaths. Right. I wondered what else he had filled them in on while we were standing here.\n\n\"The first two burned to ash before we could question them,\" she continued. \"The third is being held below. She's answered none of our questions, but perhaps you and your magic will have better luck.\"\n\n\"How did you keep her alive?\"\n\n\"You'll see.\"\n\nTwo guards materialized to either side of us. Granach cleared her throat and gave me a pointed look. I reluctantly pulled out the love magnet and handed it over. One of the guards poked at Smudge in his cage.\n\n\"He stays with me,\" I said before they could ask. \"I'll keep him in his cage. If you're afraid of a little spider, then you've got bigger problems than us.\"\n\n\"What about Nidhi?\" Lena demanded.\n\n\"She's been working with our prisoner,\" said Granach. \"She's provided some insight, but not enough to crack the mind behind this.\"\n\n\"What did you do to her?\" Lena stepped toward Granach. I checked the guards and braced myself. I had no idea who would win in a fight between Lena and Granach, but we'd never make it back to the surface.\n\nGranach merely smiled. \"Why don't you come and see for yourself?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "The security on the next elevator was even tighter than the last. Airport checkpoints could have learned a lot from the undead. There was a full-body scanner, a metal detector, and a hunchbacked vampire with a chemical-sensing wand that kept going off when he brought it too close to Smudge. As for the doors, the lock required a drop of Alice Granach's blood before it opened to admit us.\n\nLena clutched my hand hard enough to bruise as we sank deeper into the earth. I had watched this woman take out sparklers and stand up to one of the ruling vampires of Detroit. Until this moment, I had never seen her look afraid. Her lips were tight, and her heart was beating so hard I could see her pulse in her throat. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and her brown eyes were wide.\n\n\"I'm right here,\" I whispered.\n\nShe glanced down and relaxed her grip. \"Sorry.\"\n\nAlice Granach watched us both, and I had no doubt she was analyzing every twitch we made. She probably knew Lena better than I did, thanks to Doctor Shah. The thought made me momentarily jealous.\n\nKyle had accompanied us as well, but he refused to look at me, standing sullenly in one corner with his arms folded.\n\n\"If I start to...\" Lena's voice trailed off.\n\n\"I'll do what I can.\" Whatever monstrous path Granach had led Doctor Shah down, I had to keep Lena from following.\n\nThe doors opened into a cramped corridor, barely wide enough for two to walk abreast. The ceiling was so low I could touch it without straightening my arm.\n\n\"This way.\" Granach led us past thick Plexiglass doors built into either side of the white-painted hallway. In one room, a young boy sat huddled in the far corner. \"The doors are thick enough to withstand even our strength. Should one ever break, it would trigger an array of ultraviolet lasers strong enough to vaporize flesh. Each cell is also airtight, a necessity when some of your prisoners can dissolve into mist.\"\n\nI peered more closely at the rubber-sealed edges. A smaller, similarly-sealed metal square was built into the wall to the right of each door, like miniature air locks. \"Who are these people?\"\n\n\"Anyone too dangerous to roam freely through our home who, for whatever reason, we've chosen not to eliminate. Yet.\" Granach pointed to a middle-aged woman in another cell. \"She tried to feed on her own kind, hoping to absorb their powers. We'd have destroyed her on the spot, except it seems to have worked. We're studying her blood to learn why. The boy we just passed was conspiring with a vampire hunter from the Catholic Church, hoping for redemption. He lives until we know exactly how many people he told of our existence. Naturally, this hasn't made him terribly cooperative.\"\n\n\"What about him?\" I asked, pointing to a skinny black-haired vampire sleeping on a stone-carved bench.\n\n\"He hacked our servers. I lost four years' worth of e-mail.\"\n\nWe turned right, and Lena froze. Up ahead, a single figure sat in a wooden chair in front of another cell, talking to someone within. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a gun stood guard behind her. The dim lighting made it hard to discern any details, but I heard Lena's slow, indrawn breath. She took a single step, then spun around and grabbed my shoulders.\n\n\"Whatever they did, there will be consequences,\" I promised, pulling her close. \"We'll find a way.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Her hand slid up my neck, into my hair. She kissed me once, inhaled deeply, then turned to face Nidhi Shah.\n\nShah rose from the chair and stepped toward us. Even from here I could see her confusion and disbelief. She halted in midstep when the guard behind her readied his gun.\n\n\"It's all right,\" said Granach. \"Isaac is a Porter. He and his friend Lena have come to lend us their expertise.\"\n\n\"Lena? How...?\" Shah looked exhausted. Behind the rectangular lenses of her glasses, her eyes were shadowed. Her lower lip was swollen and bruised. Her clothes were filthy. The embroidered collar of her blue shirt was low enough to see her neck. The exposed skin was undamaged, and her shirt was free of bloodstains. \"What are you doing here, love?\"\n\nLena whirled toward Granach, her eyes wide with disbelief.\n\n\"Yes, she's human,\" Granach said, sounding amused. \"Once she understood the threat we faced, she cooperated willingly. It's for the best, as this leaves her mind intact.\"\n\nShah gave us a tentative smile, revealing the slight gap between her front teeth that I remembered from our sessions. Her hair hung about her face in dirty wisps, and I could just make out the faint blue tattoo on her left temple, a series of Gujarati characters that meant balance.\n\nLena pulled away from me. I glanced at Smudge, who continued to glow like a coal, but he didn't noticeably react to Shah's presence. \"I think she's telling the truth.\"\n\nLena ran down the hall, wrapped her arms around Doctor Shah, and kissed her hard. For her part, Doctor Shah returned the embrace with enthusiasm.\n\n\"So nice to see young lovers reunited,\" Granach purred, her cold breath tickling my neck. I hadn't even heard her approach. She was smiling, not at Lena and Doctor Shah, but at me, as if she was the one who had jabbed a knife into my chest and twisted.\n\nI did my best to swallow the jealousy and forced a smile of my own. \"I've never met a vampire with dentures before. What kind of cream do you use to keep them in?\"\n\n\"You have a good eye,\" she said, but the amusement was gone from her voice. \"These are specially designed. Would you like to see?\" Her smile tightened, and tiny triangular blades slid from the canine teeth.\n\n\"Don't tease her, Isaac,\" said Shah. \"Alice doesn't take well to challenges.\"\n\n\"Isaac.\" Lena stared at me, her mouth round with confusion. She kept a possessive arm around Shah's waist. I had the feeling she had completely forgotten my presence until Shah mentioned my name.\n\nDoctor Shah looked from Lena to me and back. \"I see.\"\n\n\"I thought you were\u2014\" Lena began.\n\n\"I understand.\" Shah was breathing hard, and her face was darker than usual. She wiped her brow and studied me more closely. \"You've been overdoing your magic again, Isaac.\"\n\nThere was the calm, clinically detached tone I remembered from the last time I walked out of her office. \"I haven't had much of a choice.\"\n\nGranach let out a melodramatic sigh. \"Perhaps you could sort out your tangled little human emotions at a later time? I believe Isaac was going to try to help us find a rogue libriomancer.\"\n\n\"She thinks Gutenberg is behind this,\" said Shah.\n\n\"What do you think?\" I asked.\n\nShe shook her head. \"I've learned my way around Porter minds, but Gutenberg is a breed apart. The only thing I know for certain is that I don't know or understand what goes on in that man's head.\"\n\nGranach gestured toward the glass door. Lena didn't meet my eyes as I stepped past her to examine the prisoner inside.\n\nThe woman in the cell was short and slender. Her skin had a strange blue-gray pallor. She wore green hospital scrubs covered in bloodstains, especially at the waist. Heavy scars covered her wrists, as if they had been repeatedly clawed open. Her fingernails were glassy with a bluish tinge, and there were faint lesions on her skin.\n\n\"You've been helping them?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Not at first.\" I had rarely heard Doctor Shah angry before. She tapped the tattoo on her temple. \"The Porters' protections kept them from reading my mind, but they found other ways to batter my will. They took my files, forced me to decrypt and translate them so they could study every patient I'd ever worked with.\"\n\nThe fury in her words reminded me of my own when Deb had first told me about the destruction of our library. Forcing Doctor Shah to break confidentiality was a violation far worse than the attack on her home.\n\nGranach rapped a knuckle on the glass, earning a snarl from the creature within. \"Her name is Chesa. She staked one of the elders and secreted him away, torturing him for two days before we found them.\"\n\n\"How?\" I asked.\n\n\"A rosewood stake through the heart to immobilize him. After that, she used knives.\"\n\nJust like the vampire who had killed Ray Walker.\n\n\"She's a sociopath,\" said Doctor Shah. \"Though that particular diagnosis doesn't mean as much down here. She cut off the victim's head when she heard the others coming.\"\n\nI moved to the far edge, trying to make out Chesa's eyes.\n\n\"She's tried four times to kill herself with her bare hands,\" Shah continued. \"But her body heals too quickly. Those scars on her arms will be gone within an hour. The guards pass blood into the cell through here to feed her.\" She tapped the small square panel, which was connected to a flexible hose leading to a heavy green air tank. \"I suspect Chesa would starve herself if she could, but her nature works against her. She can't fight the bloodlust. She drinks her own after each suicide attempt, even licking the floor in her hunger.\"\n\n\"So what stops her from going up in flames like the others?\" I asked.\n\n\"Flame requires oxygen.\" Granach pointed to the tank. \"Pure nitrogen and carbon dioxide.\"\n\n\"Clever.\" That would explain the blue-tinged skin and nails. \"What does oxygen deprivation do to a creature so dependent on blood?\"\n\n\"It tortures her,\" Shah said flatly. \"Imagine every muscle in your body cramping with superhuman strength, your skin cold and stiff as leather. Every cell starving.\"\n\nI knelt to examine the mechanism. A one-way valve was screwed onto the plate, which would prevent a vampire from going gaseous and forcing her way out through the air tank. \"How did you capture her in the first place?\"\n\n\"Not even vampires are invulnerable,\" said Granach. \"Strike hard enough, and most can be knocked unconscious, at least for a time.\"\n\n\"Good to know. What else have you learned?\"\n\nShah sagged into her chair. She seemed calm, but her knuckles were white as she clung to Lena's hand. \"Chesa's mind isn't her own.\" She grabbed a notepad from the floor and flipped through the pages. \"I've seen glimpses of what I believe to be Chesa herself, but they're fleeting. Moments of fear and confusion, swiftly overpowered by the controlling mind. Minds, rather.\"\n\n\"There's more than one?\" I asked.\n\n\"If Chesa were human, I'd probably diagnose her with some form of dissociative identity disorder. Her body language, her intonation, everything shifts at random. One moment she's pacing like a tiger, looking out as if she can smell my blood even through the barrier. The next she's rocking and banging her head against the wall, a violent self-stimming behavior that reminds me of severe autism. I've documented at least four distinct patterns of behavior and body language.\"\n\nI stared at Chesa, trying to fit the pieces together in my head. \"What species is she?\"\n\n\"Manananggal,\" said Granach.\n\n\"Really?\" I pressed against the door, my other concerns momentarily forgotten. \"That would explain the blood at the waist, but what is she doing in Detroit?\"\n\n\"What's a manananggal?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"A creature that originated in the Philippines,\" I said. \"Natural, not book-born. She's not exactly a vampire, though she does feed on blood. And organs. And the occasional unborn child. At night they sprout wings, and the upper part of the torso separates from the lower, allowing her to fly and hunt.\"\n\n\"Not in there,\" said Granach. \"We keep the air pressure too low.\"\n\nChesa slammed her head against the door, making me jump. Smudge flared hot. I patted out the sparks on my jacket. \"What have you tried to get her to talk?\"\n\n\"Hypnotism had no effect,\" Granach said sourly. \"Nor did drugs or torture.\"\n\n\"None of them affect whoever is controlling her.\" I cupped my hands to the door, studying the gold irises that flexed around her cross-shaped pupils. \"What about her blood? Can't your readers sort through her thoughts?\"\n\n\"We've tried. They followed her memories through the streets. She was attacked during the daytime. From the speed and power, we assume it was another vampire. There was pain, a falling sensation, and then... nothing. She has no recollection beyond that moment.\"\n\n\"The one thing the murders have in common is rage,\" said Doctor Shah. \"Fury like that doesn't come out of nowhere.\"\n\n\"They hate us,\" I agreed, remembering Ray's apartment. \"This is personal.\" If Gutenberg was responsible, how long had this hatred been building beneath the surface, and how had he managed to hide it from those around him?\n\nI knocked on the cell door. \"Hi, there. Alice here says you have no memories, but I'm betting you remember me.\"\n\nChesa sank back slowly. Her arms and shoulders shivered, reminding me of a bird ruffling her wings.\n\n\"Looking at the murders suggests we're dealing with a serial killer,\" Shah said. \"A serial killer wants power. The thrill of playing God.\"\n\n\"That could be any Porter,\" I said dryly.\n\n\"Why do you think they keep me on staff?\" she countered, matching my tone.\n\n\"Touch\u00e9.\" I reached deep into my pockets to grab a copy of Heart of Stone.\n\n\"You were searched,\" Granach said darkly. The guard moved toward me, but she held up a hand. \"How\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you want me to examine your prisoner, or do you want to stand here in front of the woman you kidnapped and argue about rule breaking?\"\n\nShe scowled, but didn't stop me from tugging a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses from the pages. The nosepieces were warm, and sweat smeared the top of both lenses. I used my shirttail to wipe them clean, then slipped them on.\n\nThe tunnel dimmed further, but certain figures brightened. Lena appeared backlit, as if sunlight flickered just behind her body. The vampires glowed as well, a silvery light more reminiscent of the moon.\n\n\"You're pushing too hard,\" Doctor Shah warned. She was a faded shadow, utterly without magic save for the small burning light on her temple. \"Have the voices returned?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" I lied.\n\nI glanced down. I would have expected Smudge to glow like fire, but his magic was different. A simple white light surrounded him like a comet, the tail extending toward me. I unhooked his cage and held it at arm's length, using the cuff of the jacket to protect my fingers from the heat of the bars. No matter where I held him, the tail pointed to my chest.\n\nHow much of Smudge's magic flowed through me? That connection would explain why he understood my plans so easily.\n\nLena was a product of libriomancy, too, and as I looked more closely, I saw flickers of white light stretching away from her. One led to Doctor Shah, while another, weaker thread connected her to me. A third extended through the wall at a slight upward angle. Perhaps that was her connection to the trees above, some lingering thread to the pine she had slept in last night, or to the branch she had grafted to my oak in Copper River.\n\nI examined Chesa next. Unlike the rest of us, Chesa was surrounded by two competing magical auras. One was similar to Granach and Kyle. The other matched the white, comet-like light coming off of Smudge, complete with a faint tail pointing toward whoever was controlling her. \"Which way is north?\"\n\nGranach pointed off to the left. My guess had been off by a good ninety degrees or so. I clipped the cage back onto my belt loop, then stuck singed fingers in my mouth. \"What are you so worried about, Smudge? She's not getting out of that cage, and nobody else is trying to kill us right this minute.\" To the others, I said, \"Our killer is west of here. Is there any way to take Chesa aboveground? I could triangulate a rough location.\"\n\n\"It would be difficult,\" said Granach. \"What else can you see?\"\n\n\"I've never used these glasses before, but the magic matches my own. I think this was done by a libriomancer.\"\n\n\"We surmised as much.\" Granach pressed a hand to the glass. \"Can't you conjure up a crystal ball or a magic mirror to show us the face of our enemy? Or summon a genie and wish that enemy into nothingness?\"\n\n\"I could pull Aladdin's lamp into our world, sure.\" I continued to study the manananggal. What happened to Chesa's organs when she separated her body to hunt, and how did they repair themselves afterward? The average human being had twenty-two feet of small intestine alone. If her magic could be duplicated by Porter surgeons to heal\u2014\n\n\"The lamp,\" Granach prodded.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said. \"The lamp would fit through the book, but the transition from the fictional world would destroy the genie's mind. On the bright side, I doubt we'd survive long enough to worry about a murderous libriomancer. As for mirrors and such, they come preprogrammed for another world. Take Tolkien's palantir, for example.\" I stared at their blank faces and sighed. \"It's a crystal ball. Didn't you people at least see the movies?\"\n\nDoctor Shah cleared her throat.\n\n\"Right. The point is, I could use the palantir to try to find our enemy. Likely as not, it would show us the dark lord Sauron from Lord of the Rings. And if we're really unlucky, Sauron would reach through that connection to attack or possess whoever looked upon him.\"\n\n\"So you have no other way of finding this libriomancer?\"\n\nI hesitated. \"Taking Chesa up to the surface will be fastest.\"\n\n\"We could send others through the air lock to subdue her,\" Granach said slowly. \"If she were kept unconscious, sealed in an airtight coffin...\"\n\nA whoosh of heat and flame seared my hip. I swore and jumped, which only rattled Smudge further. He was burning like a blackened marshmallow, running vertical loops within his cage. Smoke poured from my jacket as I yanked it back.\n\nLena ripped the cage free, tearing my belt loop in the process. She set him gently on the floor, then flexed her reddened hand. \"Have you considered asbestos-lined jeans?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" I flapped my jacket, trying to find the source of the smoke. The material was blackened, but nothing appeared to be burned or melted.\n\n\"That's not smoke,\" Kyle said softly.\n\nIt was mist, thick and black, which poured from my jacket and rushed toward the guard, where it coalesced into a familiar figure. Rupert Loyola, also known as Mister Puddles, grabbed the guard's head and twisted, then hurled the body at Alice Granach.\n\nA slash of Loyola's blackened nails tore through the air hose into Chesa's cage. Kyle grabbed him in a bear hug. They staggered, but Loyola kept his balance long enough to smash a heel into the small air lock.\n\nLena shoved Doctor Shah back, picked up her chair, and shattered it against Loyola's ribs. The broken chair back shifted in Lena's hands, growing sharpened points.\n\nLoyola was already dissolving into mist once again. He swirled away, re-forming behind Granach. She spun, and her hand shot through his half-formed neck.\n\nI looked away. The sound of crunching bone and sinew was horrifying enough. I didn't need the visuals, too.\n\nNobody moved. Only the whisper of rushing air broke the silence. Kyle shut off the air tank, but the hiss continued.\n\n\"The air lock,\" I said. Inside the cell, Chesa laughed as she pressed up to the other side. Lena covered the metal plate with her hands, trying to slow the flow of oxygen, but it was too late. Chesa's cross-slitted eyes flared like coals.\n\nThe fire was slower to consume her. She burned for more than a minute, laughing for much of that time, until her body was finally reduced to ashes.\n\nGranach picked up the guard's gun and pointed it at me. \"I thought Loyola was dead,\" she said softly, using her other hand to brush away dust that had once been a vampire.\n\n\"He was stabbed and shot,\" I said. \"He fled out the door, fell, and...\"\n\n\"Dissolved into mist,\" Lena finished. \"We thought he had died and burned.\"\n\n\"You carried him into the heart of our nest, concealed within your jacket.\" Granach strode toward me. I never saw her hand move, but the impact of her fist knocked me into the wall.\n\n\"Kyle was there,\" I protested. Speaking made the right side of my jaw pop, and my cheek was bleeding. \"Ask him!\"\n\n\"Ask the one you influenced with your magic?\" She pointed the gun at my forehead. \"Mister Vainio, you're going to tell us the truth. Cooperate, and you and your friends die quickly.\" Her lips curled, and steel glinted from her teeth. \"I rather hope you refuse.\"\n\nAlarms buzzed in the distance, and I was fairly certain the lights were flashing, though that could have been the result of Granach bouncing me against the wall.\n\nAt least I knew why Smudge had been so nervous this whole time. He wasn't worried about being surrounded by vampires; he was upset about the vampire who had hitched a ride in my jacket. Stupid physics-defying magic. If Mister Puddles had just obeyed the law of conservation of mass and energy, I'd have felt his weight clinging to me.\n\n\"If you pull that trigger,\" Lena said softly, \"it will be the last thing you do.\" She held two sharp wooden stakes. She gripped one by the point, ready to throw, while keeping the other low for stabbing. \"You're old enough I'm betting you can't dodge at this distance.\"\n\nIn other circumstances, I would have heard boots tromping down the hall as reinforcements arrived, but these were vampires. There was a rush of air, and then we were surrounded.\n\nI hunched against the wall, trying to look harmless as I shoved a hand into my pocket, reaching deeper until I touched a metal sphere the size of a softball. \"I think you should tell them to lower their weapons.\"\n\n\"Give me one reason,\" Granach demanded.\n\nI licked my lips. \"Because I'm holding a thermal detonator.\"\n\nNobody moved. I carefully pulled out the softball-sized silver orb. It was heavier than I had expected, and I had no idea how sensitive it might be to rough handling. I wasn't even a hundred percent certain how to activate it.\n\nThat was one of the problems with libriomancy. Sure, I could create Harry Potter's wand, but that didn't mean I knew how to use it. I had nearly given myself carpal tunnel trying to levitate that damn feather.\n\n\"You were searched!\" Granach looked furious enough to rip me apart.\n\nLena appeared almost as annoyed as the vampire. \"You were carrying a bomb around inside your jacket?\"\n\n\"Did I forget to mention that?\" I gave her a sheepish shrug. \"The pockets are bigger on the inside. I should probably warn you all that I'm not sure what kind of blast radius this thing has. It might just destroy everyone in this hallway, or it might rip through the whole mine, and the next thing you know, your little kingdom is Michigan's biggest sinkhole.\"\n\nGranach smiled and lowered her gun. \"Go ahead, little human. Run away. Run as fast and far as you can. It won't be far enough.\"\n\n\"Ray Walker was my friend. I want to find this killer as much as you do.\"\n\n\"You could be telling the truth,\" Granach conceded. \"Or you could be one of Gutenberg's pawns, sent to eliminate our prisoner.\"\n\n\"Mister Puddles was one of you!\" I protested. \"He could have entered the nest any time he liked!\"\n\n\"But he couldn't have reached the prisoners,\" Doctor Shah said. \"For that, he needed you.\"\n\n\"You're not helping!\" I stepped toward Granach, hoping she could read me well enough to recognize the truth. \"Give me one week. I can find Gutenberg.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"By doing something really stupid.\"\n\nTo my surprise, that earned a genuine bark of laughter. \"Like confronting us in the heart of our nest?\"\n\nI tried to smile. My hand was sweating, and the detonator was feeling heavier with every passing moment.\n\n\"What are you planning, Isaac?\" Doctor Shah stepped closer. Of everyone here, she was the only one who might have some idea what I was considering. \"You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll need their help.\" I pointed to Lena and Shah.\n\nGranach chuckled. \"The doctor stays here, but you can have your dryad. In fact, I'll make her a deal. Bring me the body of the one behind this, and I'll give you back your lover. If you're unable to defeat Gutenberg...\" Her smile grew. \"Then in seven days, you bring me Isaac Vainio.\"\n\nLena stood taut as piano wire. Her knuckles were tight, and her fingers appeared to have sunk into the wooden stakes, as if she were one with her weapons. \"I can't.\"\n\nGranach gestured, and one of the guards pointed his gun at Doctor Shah.\n\n\"Deal,\" I said before Lena could answer. \"Let's go.\"\n\n\"Lena!\" Shah's voice was as sharp as I'd ever heard. She shook her head.\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" Lena relaxed her grip, allowing the stakes to clatter to the floor. I couldn't tell if she was speaking to Shah or to me.\n\nShah switched to Gujarati. I didn't understand the language, but my magic translated the meaning. \"Isaac, if Gutenberg is behind this... you know what dissociative identity disorder implies.\"\n\n\"No secrets.\" Granach backhanded Doctor Shah, knocking her to the floor. Lena rushed after her, but two of the vampires caught her by the arms, dragging her back.\n\nI nodded to Doctor Shah, and allowed the other guards to escort me away.\n\nTrading the darkness of the nest for the bright sun made me sympathize with the undead. I covered my eyes as daylight did its best to burn out my retinas.\n\nThe Triumph appeared untouched. I had no doubt someone had attached a tracking device, but I could find that later with a bit of magic from James Bond. Lena moved stiffly, avoiding eye contact.\n\n\"It's all right,\" I said quietly.\n\nShe glanced up.\n\n\"We'll find Gutenberg, and we'll get Shah back.\" I shivered, the aftereffects of too much magic and too many people trying to kill me. Trying to fight it only made the trembling worse. I leaned against the car and worked to slow my breathing. I felt like I had spent the past few days mainlining espressos. \"Then you and Doctor Shah can go back to your lives.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" The vampires had returned Lena's bokken. She hugged them both to her chest. \"I thought Nidhi was\u2014\"\n\n\"I know.\" My words came out more clipped than I had intended. I should have been preparing for what was to come next, and instead I found myself thinking back to the magic flowing from her tree through us both, the happiness in her eyes as we left the restaurant this morning, the feel of her lips on mine. \"You did... you're doing what you have to.\"\n\nI stared at the car, trying to assess whether or not I was up for driving. Reluctantly, I fished out my keys and handed them to Lena, trying to ignore the way her fingers brushed my palm.\n\n\"Can you really find Gutenberg?\" she asked.\n\n\"That depends on how well Plan B works.\" I climbed into the car and tried to settle my mind. \"We didn't recover all of the stolen books from the archive. In theory, I might be able to use those missing books to find whoever has them.\"\n\n\"In theory?\"\n\n\"I've never done it before.\" I knew of only one person who had. \"We'll need a quiet place to work, away from people.\"\n\n\"One quiet, isolated place in the middle of Detroit. Not a problem.\"\n\n\"Not the middle. We're off to one side.\" My head was throbbing, but I resisted the urge to use magic to heal the damage Granach had done. Doctor Shah was right. I was overdoing it, and if I was going to find our killer, I couldn't afford to weaken my barriers any further.\n\n\"Do you believe they'll return Nidhi?\" she asked quietly as we pulled out of the parking lot.\n\n\"I believe that if we can find Johannes Gutenberg, we'll be in a much better position to demand they hold up their end of the deal.\"\n\nI closed my eyes, thinking about everything we had learned. Chesa had tortured an elder vampire for two days, but hadn't enslaved him. An elder would have made a valuable slave, suggesting she couldn't do so. The libriomancer probably had to do that in person.\n\nI was more worried by the fact that Chesa wasn't a true vampire by most standards. A libriomancer who could control vampires was bad enough, but this one could control other magical creatures as well. I glanced at Lena, imagining her brown eyes tightening, pupils shifting into pointed crosses.\n\n\"What did Nidhi mean at the end?\" Lena asked. \"What's so special about a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder?\"\n\n\"Remember what I said to you about the dangers of libriomancy and the way books could reach back into you? It's possible Shah was seeing different people fighting to control Chesa's body. It's also possible those shifts in Chesa's behavior all came from the same mind. From Gutenberg's mind.\" I hugged my jacket tighter around my body. \"Magically speaking, dissociative identity disorder looks a lot like possession.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "Neither of us spoke much after that. Not that I could blame Lena for her silence. Thanks to me, her lover was still trapped underground.\n\nI had planned it all out. The love magnet, the extra weapons to hand over, convincing anyone watching that I had been disarmed...\n\nSmudge had known. He had tried to warn me, but I was convinced I knew what I was doing. That I was smarter than the bloodsuckers in their nest, smarter than the killer. And because of that arrogance, the killer had used me to infiltrate the nest and destroy our one potential lead.\n\nAt Mackinac Island two years ago, I had at least managed to stop my enemies before almost destroying myself. This time, all I had accomplished was to help a murderer. If Lena hadn't been there and given me time to retrieve that detonator, I'd probably be dead by now.\n\n\"I should have called Pallas,\" I said quietly. \"Asked her to send a real field agent to question the vampires.\"\n\n\"You could call her now,\" Lena suggested.\n\nI shook my head. Having helped to eliminate the one person who might have led us to Ray Walker's murderer, I could think of only one other option, and there was no way Pallas would sign off on it.\n\nI closed my eyes, remembering Shah's expression as we were dragged away. Shah had the best poker face of anyone I knew, but she had been trapped down there for days, surrounded by creatures who considered her little more than livestock. She hadn't been able to hide her despair.\n\n\"It doesn't make sense. Gutenberg knows the dangers of possession better than anyone.\" Gutenberg had written the laws of libriomancy. But Chesa had been enslaved by libriomancy, and who else could command Gutenberg's automatons? Ponce de Leon was powerful, but he was no libriomancer. Nicola Pallas used bardic magic. Deb DeGeorge's power was fading, and she had shown no symptoms of possession. I mentally reviewed the other libriomancers I knew, but not one of them was strong enough to challenge Gutenberg.\n\n\"Power makes people believe they're invulnerable,\" said Lena.\n\n\"But why now, after so many lifetimes of practicing magic? And why didn't anyone notice the signs?\" I sagged back in the seat.\n\n\"Maybe someone did. Maybe they pointed it out to him, and he brushed their concerns aside until it was too late.\" Her words were pointed, and she still didn't look at me.\n\n\"I'm all right,\" I said. For the moment, anyway. What I was planning could change that all too easily.\n\nWithin two more miles, we had traded the busy streets for an old neighborhood that felt like a ghost town. Abandoned houses watched over the road through empty, jagged-edged windows. Up ahead, a maple tree had fallen through the roof of a two-story house with faded siding. Weeds and shrubs were well on their way to reclaiming driveways and sidewalks.\n\n\"What is this place?\" I asked.\n\nShe pointed to a large brick complex up ahead. The closest building was twice as long as a football field. A broken sign over the entrance read:\u2014motive Plant of Detroit. \"This is one of the largest abandoned factory complexes in the country. It was shut down decades ago. The city wants to bulldoze the whole place, but attorneys from both sides are still duking it out in the courts.\"\n\nThe car lurched drunkenly as we passed beneath the old sign. The road looked like it had been bombed back to the Stone Age. Lena downshifted and did her best to avoid the worst of the gaping cracks and potholes.\n\nThe whole place had a post-apocalyptic feel. Graffiti covered the walls of the main plant and the various connected buildings. I spotted everything from simple gang tags to a full mural showing a stylized George Washington gunning down a field of robots, which was actually pretty awesome.\n\nWe passed what might have once been a warehouse, but was now little more than a blackened patch of cement surrounded by weeds. A few metal support beams jutted from the ground at the edges.\n\nWeeds brushed the underside of the car as Lena pulled into a crumbled blacktop parking lot. I retrieved Smudge and climbed out. The movement reawakened the throbbing pain in my neck and head.\n\nI adjusted the familiar weight of my armor-laden jacket, then grabbed the paper bag full of books out of the back of the car. The air here smelled like dandelions, clover, and urine. I strode past the nearest building. The outer wall was long gone, and the pillars within the three-story structure made it feel like a parking garage.\n\nAn old, wooden boat with a cracked hull and peeling paint had been dragged inside. It looked like someone had dumped it here, where it had been repurposed into a makeshift shelter.\n\n\"This place was the cutting edge of modern technology during World War II, rolling out bombers and other military hardware,\" said Lena.\n\nGlass, wood, and rubble crunched under my feet. We cut through the corner of the building and emerged into a courtyard of sorts. Brick walls rose up on two sides. Little grew here, the ground being smothered in a layer of debris and red bricks. Green vines climbed the far wall, nearly reaching the top of the three-story building.\n\nI brushed off a broken slab of cement and sat carefully on the edge, then turned Smudge loose to hunt. This place was pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet for a creature who lived on insects. He was relatively cool to the touch, which was reassuring.\n\nI pulled a book from my jacket and used it to create a gold-plated handgun.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\nI gripped the gun with both hands, sighted in on a patch of bare earth, and pulled the trigger twice. Dirt and pebbles sprayed the air, and Smudge flared into a tiny torch. He settled down quickly, though not before giving me a nasty eight-eyed glare.\n\n\"Signaling to anyone here that this is a good time to make themselves scarce.\" I set down the gun and grabbed the first book from the paper bag. This was an older fantasy novel by Fred Saberhagen, and included a magical sword with the power to kill anyone, anywhere in the world.\n\n\"You haven't told me what you're doing,\" Lena said.\n\nI read the first few pages, searching for the tingle of magic. I felt nothing but the unpleasant jolt of the lock. \"A locked book is magically useless to anyone except maybe Gutenberg himself, but not even he should be able to use its power. Not unless he first rips away that lock.\"\n\nI set the Saberhagen aside and picked up the next book, Mira Grant's Feed. \"Magic 101.\" I skimmed the opening scene. \"Libriomancy works because we can create identical copies of a text. That generates a kind of magical resonance between books. Libriomancers essentially reach into every copy of a book at once in order to access the cumulative belief of readers.\"\n\nFeed was locked as well, thankfully. I wasn't up for fighting a worldwide zombie epidemic this week. I set it aside and reached for a Soviet-era thriller called Rabid, by C. H. Shaffer, in which a Russian scientist develops a new, weaponized version of the rabies virus.\n\nI hadn't read this one, but as I ran my fingers down the opening pages, magic sparked through my bones, making me yelp. I tried again, pressing harder until my fingers pierced the paper.\n\nI could feel the tattered remains of the lock, but it didn't stop me from accessing the book's magic. Block-printed Latin text swirled beneath my skin. I had never been able to read the text of a magical lock before. Excitement pushed everything else aside as I concentrated on the words. \"Et magicae artis adpositi erant derisus et sapientiae gloriae correptio cum contumelia.\"\n\n\"Which means?\" Lena asked impatiently.\n\n\"'And the delusions of their magic art were put down, and their boasting of wisdom was reproachfully rebuked.' Gutenberg used the Bible to lock this book.\"\n\nI pressed deeper. It was like reaching through a broken window. I could touch the book's magic, but the lock jabbed and sliced my flesh as I did. I slowly withdrew my fingers. My skin was undamaged, but my joints felt cold and stiff.\n\nI turned the book over to read the summary. The heroine was a beautiful doctor working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was the first to diagnose the new form of rabies, making her a target for Russian spies. I skimmed the back, then flipped through the final chapter, searching for any mention of a vaccine or cure. \"Nothing,\" I whispered. \"They burn down the Russian lab and irradiate the last samples. CIA guy gets shot, but it's just a flesh wound. Meaning this book could be used to create a highly contagious and deadly virus, one with no known cure.\"\n\n\"Can you lock it again?\"\n\nNow that I had seen how Gutenberg did it... I shook my head. \"I'd need more time to study, and even if I did, what's to stop him from ripping open the rest?\" I wiped my hands on my jeans. \"But I can use this book to find him.\"\n\nLena sat down beside me, resting her twin bokken on her thighs. \"This is what Nidhi tried to warn you against, isn't it? What will it do to you?\"\n\n\"I have no idea. I've never done it before.\" I held up Rabid. \"Imagine magic as a frozen lake, one which coexists with the world around us. The book is the auger that helps us drill through the surface, and that hole gives definition to the energy beneath.\"\n\n\"Magic as ice fishing. That's different.\"\n\n\"Every copy of this book chips away at the same hole, including the one our killer has been working with.\"\n\n\"You can spy on him through that hole? Through your copy of the book?\"\n\n\"In theory.\" It violated half the rules of libriomancy, but there was precedent. \"Gutenberg did it once, back in World War II. He used a copy of Mein Kampf to gather intelligence about the Germans. Every copy of the book becomes a kind of magical bug.\" As I understood the story, that experience had come dangerously close to killing him. Drowning him, to extend the metaphor. Magical objects dissolved back into energy when returned to their books. What would happen to my mind if I lost my mental grip and slipped beneath the ice?\n\nThe only consolation was that I probably wouldn't last long enough to know I had failed.\n\n\"I know that look,\" Lena said. \"What aren't you telling me? How am I supposed to help if I don't know\u2014\"\n\n\"You can't help,\" I snapped, and instantly regretted it. I opened the book and started reading.\n\nLena plucked it out of my hands and read the back. \"So what's the risk? Are you going to infect yourself with this virus? If so, we can find another way. I'm not watching you die.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"The danger isn't physical. Even if I succeed... there's a possibility that something might come back through me.\"\n\n\"You're worried about being possessed, like Gutenberg?\"\n\nI didn't bother trying to snatch the book away from her. \"If I do this, we have a shot at finding him. If I lose myself, you can drag my body back to the vampires. All I know is that if I don't try, Doctor Shah dies.\"\n\nLena stiffened. She gripped the book with both hands. For a moment, I thought she might refuse to return it. A part of me hoped she would. But she reached out, offering the book back to me.\n\nNeither of us spoke. There was no need.\n\nI blinked, trying to concentrate on the story. The opening was fast-paced, full of danger and tension as emergency room doctors tried to save a patient from a nearby university who had been infected with an early form of the virus. As I read, the pages grew warmer. I imagined the characters' voices, the shouts as the patient turned violent, trapped in the terror of fever-induced hallucinations. Tears streamed down his face, and he sprayed spittle as he screamed. He struck a nurse and jumped off of the gurney, only to collapse as his legs gave way. From the shadows, a figure in a dark suit calmly documented it all.\n\nI gradually allowed my fingertips to melt into the page. The pain of Gutenberg's broken magic wasn't as sharp this time. So long as I moved slowly, I could keep from crying out. My hand sank to the wrist. At this point, I could have taken anything I wanted from the story: weapons, medicine, infected blood... \"So far, so good.\"\n\n\"What next?\" asked Lena.\n\nIt looked exactly like someone had severed my hand and grafted a book onto the stump. I flexed my hand. I could feel my fingers, but what did that really mean? Some Porters argued that your body retained its physical form when you reached into a book; others claimed your flesh and bones ceased to be, and that only the \"persistence of belief\" in your own body allowed you to maintain and re-create your flesh while performing libriomancy. \"Have you ever wondered where the 'self' is?\"\n\nThe question was rhetorical, but she responded without pause. \"Shared between this body and my tree.\"\n\n\"Really? Can you feel your tree even when you're separated from it? Does distance change\u2014 Never mind.\" I hauled my attention back to the book. \"Possession occurs when characters from a book reach into the Porter's mind. I need to do the opposite, to push my mind, my self into the book.\"\n\nVoices whispered in my ear. I recognized them all. Georgia McCain, the dedicated doctor who worked to track the virus from the university back to its source. Brad Ryder, the agent whose investigation brought him to Georgia's front door. I felt their fear, their anger, their unspoken attraction, and their desperation to save the world. But those emotions weren't their own. The characters were nothing but words on a page. Whatever pseudolife I felt had been created by readers and magic.\n\nMy boundaries were weak from the exertions of the past several days, and the longer I maintained my connection to the book, the more those voices would push through the cracks in my mind.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Lena touched my shoulder. Her words sounded slurred and distant.\n\n\"I'm all right.\" I shoved her hand away, concentrating on those voices, immersing myself in the spell laid out by Shaffer, a spell as magical as anything cast by the sorcerers of old. I could feel the book's potential power, a tingle that ran just beneath my skin, waiting to be shaped. Wanting to be shaped.\n\nThe voices were louder now: panicked screams and furious arguments. A politician's cool, calming speech. The grief of a parent mourning a child.\n\nI couldn't see Lena or the factory anymore. Images flickered, taunting me from the edge of my awareness. I waited impatiently as they gradually came into focus, if \"focus\" was the right word for the collage of shifting figures that surrounded me. I stared at one, trying to will it into clarity, but my efforts merely made my head hurt. It was as if someone had taken a thousand photographs of similar-looking women and layered them atop one another, until you lost all but the rough suggestion of a woman in a white lab coat.\n\nEvery one of those layers was a reader's mental image of Georgia McCain. I was seeing their belief. Excitement surged through me, followed by a single question. Now that I'm here, how do I get out again?\n\nMy body felt numb and heavy. I tried to flex my hands, but there was no way of telling whether I succeeded. I hesitated, but if I tried to escape now, I'd have accomplished nothing. I tried to relax, to calm my thoughts, even as more figures shuffled toward me.\n\nIn the real world, thousands of copies of Rabid were spread across the globe; magically speaking, every one of those copies coexisted here. But only one of those books had been used recently to manipulate magic. I searched for any lingering trace of magic, trying to let the current guide me.\n\nPain returned. I welcomed it. This was the first physical sensation I had felt since losing myself in the book. The shattered lock cut deeper this time, and I could see the text more clearly, both the Latin, laid out in neat blocks and rows, and a second spell made up of broken scrawls, all but illegible.\n\nBoth the lock and that second spell had been placed upon the physical copy of the book I was looking for. I clung to them, letting the pain flow through me as I reached out to touch that physical book.\n\nDarkness. Cold air that smelled like oil and gasoline. The heavy, dead magic of locked books. This wasn't from my copy of Rabid; I was sensing wherever that other book was being kept.\n\nMy mind leaped at the implications. Could two libriomancers communicate this way? Could messages be passed through matching books? If so, would there be a delay, or would the process be instantaneous? What about physical objects? Could I transport something from one book to another?\n\nA new voice caught my attention, not a character from the book but a man arguing with himself. He spoke in sharp, angry sentences that jumped and fell in volume like a broken radio. I tried to see, and was rewarded with the image of a vague, manlike shape. I had to concentrate to fill in each detail. He was white. Slender, wearing a filthy coverall and heavy boots. A jagged scar ripped the side of his head and face.\n\n\"You think I don't hear you?\" He grabbed a handful of books, snarled, and threw them aside with a careless disregard that made me cringe. No true libriomancer would treat books so harshly. \"Always watching. Always spying. Ripping out the pages of my brain.\"\n\nThis wasn't Johannes Gutenberg. The voice was unfamiliar. I couldn't yet focus well enough to identify the speaker.\n\nHis fingers closed around Rabid, and his tone shifted, becoming deeper. \"I see you, Isaac.\"\n\nMy mind ran at a manic pace. This is awesome I'm talking to someone through a book oh shit he's going to kill me how the hell do I get out of here?\n\nHe muttered in Latin, and I saw his words, like hastily scrawled ropes shooting outward. He was trying to lock the book again, with me inside.\n\n\"Who are you?\" I demanded, projecting the question with everything I had.\n\nHe hesitated, and I heard... I felt different voices trying to respond. James Moriarty. Jakob Hoffman. Doctor Hannibal Lecter. Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Norman Bates.\n\nThere were more, but the original voice shouted them down, struggling to make himself heard. More Latin snaked toward me. He grabbed a pen, scribbling the words onto the pages as he spoke.\n\nI fled, seeking the magic of the story. If I could follow the killer's magical current to him, I should be able to follow whatever trail I had left for myself when I reached into the book. But before I could find it, another presence crashed into me from below.\n\nI screamed, only to have my fear devoured and spilled back over me, increased a thousandfold. I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I clung to myself as that tide dragged away everything I was. Memories, dreams, everything crumbled like a sand castle on the beach.\n\n\"Isaac!\"\n\nThe syllables meant nothing, but I reached out instinctively, like an infant grabbing for his mother.\n\nMy eyes snapped open. My brain rebelled as it tried to reorient to a physical world of light and matter. My throat was hoarse. Lena sat beside me, shaking my shoulders and shouting, but I couldn't hear her over my own screaming. My vision faded, and I felt myself topple sideways.\n\nStrong hands caught me, easing me down. My body was rigid, muscles cramping in pain, but I couldn't relax. I could feel that other presence following me through the book. I didn't know what he had sent after me, or how. All I knew was that I had to get away; I had to stop it from following.\n\nMy hands were empty. Where was the book?\n\nThere, discarded on the ground. Smudge stood to one side, covered in orange fire. I pointed and screamed something I never would have imagined myself saying. \"Burn it!\"\n\nSmudge couldn't understand English, but he was perfectly fluent in terror. He raced to the book and jumped onto the cover, turning and dancing and igniting the pages.\n\n\"Isaac, look at me!\" Lena cradled my face, her eyes wide as she searched mine. \"What happened?\"\n\nI shuddered. Sobs ripped through me. I clung to her, trying to shut out the memory of being consumed, of the inhuman rage and hatred that would have drowned me.\n\nShe held me, one hand combing through my hair. \"You're safe,\" she whispered, over and over.\n\nI shook my head and closed my eyes. I don't know how long I might have stayed there if I hadn't sensed the magic leaking from the book, brushing my bones. I yelled and jumped to my feet.\n\nSmudge scurried toward us, leaving blackened weeds in his wake. Behind him, burnt pages fluttered in an unseen breeze: pages damaged both by fire and by magical char.\n\nLena grabbed her bokken, raising them both in a defensive stance. \"Tell me what happened, Isaac.\"\n\n\"I found him.\" The words hurt my throat. \"He tried to trap me in the book.\"\n\nOnly whatever that last attack had been, it hadn't felt like a magical lock. It was more like... hunger. Desperate, furious, raw hunger. The memory started me trembling again. I doubled over and grabbed my knees, squeezing hard so the pain would prove I was still real. That I still existed.\n\n\"Isaac...\" Lena shifted sideways. \"What is that?\"\n\nThe book's movement grew more violent. Pages tore loose, whirling about in tight circles. \"I think he sent someone... something... to follow me.\"\n\nLena snatched at one of the pages, then swore. Blood welled from her fingertips. She moved to stand between me and the book.\n\nNone of this should have been possible. Peering through books was one thing, but physically reaching through that book to strike another libriomancer? Gray smoke whirled within the pages, coalescing into solid form. This could change everything we knew about libriomancy, and all I wanted to do was flee.\n\nI forced myself to stand. Characters shouted in my head, their words as loud and real as Lena's, thanks to my immersion in the book.\n\nSmudge scrambled up the closest wall, burning like a beacon. This was the sort of threat Gutenberg's automatons had been created to fight. They could absorb magic, devour whatever this thing was and destroy the book in the process. I, on the other hand, was close to losing myself to my own magic.\n\nSmoke and blackness began to coalesce. I could feel the thing pushing, struggling to find form. Arms and legs separated from the smoke. A man-shaped shadow took a slow, shuddering step toward us. The whirling pages clung to its body, a blackened paper skin. \"I think... I think it's a character from the book.\"\n\n\"Which one?\"\n\nI listened to the voices as the thing took another step. \"All of them.\"\n\nThe figure didn't seem to care about the various laws of magic its existence violated as it trudged toward us, propelled by the one drive every character in the book shared: the need to destroy their enemies."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "I stood frozen as the thing approached.\n\nI had faced monsters before. I had my books, my magic... if I could shut out the voices long enough to use them. But I didn't know what we were fighting. It looked like nothing so much as a burnt corpse. There was no face, nothing but faint impressions that could have been eyes and a mouth. I couldn't even figure out what to call it.\n\nLena's swords flattened in her hands. I could feel the wood responding to her magic, like a low, warm buzz through my bones as the edges grew sharper.\n\nI shouldn't have been able to feel it. That was another warning sign. The boundaries between me and magic were dangerously thin.\n\n\"Is that thing contagious?\" Lena asked.\n\nI hadn't even considered whether it would carry the virus. \"Possibly.\"\n\n\"No offense, but I don't like Plan B anymore.\" Lena slid one foot forward and swung.\n\nHer bokken hit the thing's neck and snapped like a rotten branch. The impact knocked the creature back a step, but didn't appear to have injured it. Lena stared at her broken weapon.\n\nGeorgia McCain was the protagonist of the book. If this was a conglomeration of characters, she should be the strongest. \"Georgia, I know you're in there. Can you hear me?\"\n\nIt snatched up the other piece of her sword and began to gnaw on it, doglike.\n\n\"She's feeding on magic,\" I said. Meaning any weapons I might be able to conjure would be worse than useless. Blasting the thing with a disruptor beam would only make it stronger. I glanced at Smudge, who was staying safely out of the way. But if this got worse, he would try to help. He had to. It was how he was written. And he would be nothing but a bite-sized snack to this thing.\n\nLena tossed her swords aside, scooped up a brick, and threw. It tore an ugly wound through Georgia's shoulder. Paper skin flapped loosely, but the damage healed within seconds. Lena made a face and retreated toward a broken section of wall, where she ripped out a six-foot length of rusted rebar and gave it a quick spin with both hands. Bits of concrete clung to one end of the bar.\n\nI backed away as whatever it was lurched toward me. Lena strode up to it and swung her metal staff like a baseball bat. The impact flattened the thing's head and knocked it to the ground, but it merely groaned and pushed itself to its knees. Lena smashed it back down, spinning her staff to batter it about the head and limbs. \"Join in any time.\"\n\nI tried to remember the calming exercises Doctor Shah had insisted on teaching me. I needed to focus, to think, but every time I looked at this thing, I saw only darkness returning to devour me.\n\nNot just me. It would have to kill Lena to get to me. Smudge, too, unless I found a way to stop it.\n\nThe thing showed no sign of strategy or planning. As far as I could tell, it was simply going after the closest and strongest source of magic.\n\n\"It's like fighting a pi\u00f1ata from Hell,\" Lena said, breathing hard.\n\n\"He didn't send something through the book,\" I said slowly. \"He reshaped the book itself.\"\n\n\"Terrific. So how do we kill it?\"\n\nSmudge was a magical creature given physical form. You could hurt or kill him by destroying that form, but this was a book, a literal portal to magic. No matter what we did, it could re-form itself.\n\nA part of me wondered at the limits of such magic. If we flung the damn thing into the sun, how long could it endure? As I had no convenient way of launching it into space, that was a dead end. I needed more time to study the damn thing.\n\nLena cried out and jumped back. Her pants leg was torn, and blood dripped down her ankle. \"It's cold!\"\n\nI pulled a cyberpunk book from my jacket. My fingers shook as I flipped to the dog-eared page I wanted. I hesitated. I had performed libriomancy a thousand times, but now I was afraid. I felt like a child again, terrified of the book and what lay beyond.\n\nRationally, I knew this book should be safe. Yet it took all of my willpower to force myself to reach into those pages.\n\nEven as I tried, a girl's voice condemned my recklessness: another character from Rabid, decrying the dangers of biological warfare.\n\nI shouted to drown out the voices and plunged my hand deeper, grabbing a simple handle reminiscent of a sword hilt.\n\n\"I thought you said this thing fed on magic,\" Lena said. Sweat shone on her face as she continued to strike.\n\n\"Lead it in here.\" I ran through an open wall into the cool shade of what had once been an assembly line. Rust and graffiti covered the metal support pillars. A rat scurried through a gap in the far wall. Overhead, sparrows fluttered angrily from their nests in the steel rafters, protesting my intrusion.\n\nThey were going to be a lot more upset soon.\n\nLena smashed the thing to turn it around, then struck again, knocking it after me. She reminded me of a hockey player controlling the puck. Her jacket was torn, and her cheekbone was vivid red.\n\nI pointed the handle away from me and activated it. A monofilament wire shot out, held in place by a powerful magnetic field which had probably fried every one of the credit cards in my wallet. I extended the blade to its maximum length and flicked my wrist. The pillar to my left shivered. Dust and flakes of old green paint rained down. The cut was invisible at first, but then the pillar shifted ever so slightly out of alignment. \"Can you pin it to the floor?\"\n\n\"Not for very long.\" Lena landed an overhead blow that bent the creature double. Its hands grabbed Lena's knee, and she yelled in pain. She brought her other knee into its jaw, but it clung tight. She had to jab the bar through the thing's hand and pry the arm back to free herself.\n\nIt grabbed the other end of the bar, and Lena's mouth tightened into a smile. She stepped back, yanking it off-balance, and speared the end of the bar through its chest.\n\nLena lifted the opposite end of the bar, then thrust downward. Steel punched through the old concrete floor. Lena bent the end of the bar double like an oversized staple through the thing's chest, then jumped backward, collapsing to the floor as her leg gave out.\n\nI swung at another pillar, then grabbed Lena's arm. She did her best to keep up as I all but dragged her away.\n\nThe first pillar shifted and ripped free of the roof, showering metal and rust as it slammed to the ground with an impact that swayed the whole building, but the roof remained standing.\n\nI cut through several more pillars from the doorway, then flicked off my weapon. \"This would probably be a good time to get the hell out of here.\"\n\nWhat followed sounded like a drawn-out explosion. I stopped only long enough to grab Smudge as we hobbled away, taking shelter in an open doorway of the next building. The center of the ceiling collapsed first, steel and concrete and tarred roof crumbling inward. The ground shook, and dust shivered down from above.\n\nI glanced around, wondering if I had miscalculated. None of these structures were terribly stable, and if they came down, I doubted we would be able to escape. Lena apparently had the same thought. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down, sheltering me with her body the best she could. She was tough enough to endure falling glass and debris, but if the whole place collapsed, we were both squashed.\n\nSlowly, the cracking and rumbling quieted. Dust clouded the air like brown fog. It looked like about half of the building had fallen, and there was no sign of whatever the other libriomancer had sent after us.\n\nLena's arm and leg were both bleeding. I wasn't sure what would happen if she became infected. Her magic defined her; could a magical disease rewrite what she was? But the cold hum of the book's magic was absent. I hoped and prayed that meant she was safe.\n\nI started to dissolve my weapon back into the book. I stared at the pages, momentarily confused. I didn't have time to read old novels, not with a potential Category A bioterrorism event. I should be back in the lab, not... what was this place?\n\n\"Isaac?\" A heavyset woman touched my shoulder.\n\n\"What are you doing out here without a biosuit?\" I started to back away, and the woman reached out to grab my arm. An electric shock jolted my nervous system.\n\nNo, not an electric shock; a magical one. Lena. This was an old auto plant in Detroit, not a quarantined lab in Phoenix. I staggered back, gasping for breath.\n\nLena caught my elbow. I slipped the book and handle into my pocket. Dissolving a magically-created object was simple enough, but right now I couldn't risk it. \"Sorry. Spaced out for a moment, that's all.\"\n\n\"Bullshit. What just happened?\"\n\n\"Monofilament sword,\" I said, deliberately misinterpreting the question. \"Maximum length of twenty meters. Cuts through almost anything.\"\n\n\"Isaac\u2014\"\n\n\"Later, once we're safe.\"\n\nShe glared, but didn't press me. \"You think that thing is still alive under there?\"\n\n\"Yep.\" I could feel it underneath the ruins, an open book leaking magic into our world. \"That was the easy part.\"\n\nI started toward the source of that magic, but Lena grabbed my collar and hauled me backward. \"Give it a minute to make sure the rest of the building isn't about to come down. You can use the time to tell me who or what we're up against.\"\n\nI fought the urge to flee, uncertain whether the impulse was my own or an artifact of the characters fighting to take hold in my head. \"This isn't Gutenberg's work. I got his names. Some of them, at least.\"\n\n\"How many do most libriomancers have?\"\n\n\"Shah was right. He's possessed. James Moriarty, from Sherlock Holmes. Hannibal Lecter, a serial killer from Thomas Harris' books. Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a James Bond villain, and Norman Bates comes from Robert Bloch's Psycho.\"\n\n\"Lovely company.\" Another chunk of the roof crashed down, making her whirl. She stood unmoving, attention fixed on the mess, before lowering her bokken. \"Doesn't anyone ever get possessed by Mary Poppins?\"\n\n\"That wouldn't help. The transition from the book would destroy the mind, and you'd end up with one mad nanny. But you're right, possession tends to involve more aggressive minds.\" I wondered who would be first to take up residence in my head if I kept pushing. \"I heard one name I didn't recognize: Jakob Hoffman. It might be the libriomancer's true name, or it could have been another character. Either way, I've never heard of him.\"\n\n\"All of them live inside his head?\"\n\n\"Mad as hatters. And once possession takes hold, it becomes easier for other characters to sneak in. You become the doorway for the book's magic.\" Given what I had seen, it wouldn't be long before that magic burned him out completely. The problem was the damage he could do in the meantime. \"Whoever he is, he hated me.\"\n\n\"He knew you?\"\n\n\"Even through the book.\" The thing he had sent after me could have been the manifestation of his madness, the raw, out-of-control hunger and fear.\n\nI pushed the memory aside and clasped my trembling hands together, trying to think. Every libriomancer had a specialty. Deb DeGeorge did history. I was a sci-fi geek. The characters he had named were from mysteries and thrillers... but nobody local fit that pattern.\n\n\"Can possession be cured?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't know how. People like Doctor Shah are supposed to make sure it never gets to this point.\" There was nothing physical to dissolve back into the book. You'd have to use magic to try to unravel the original mind from the characters, but how? You couldn't reach into a man's mind like he was a book and pull out what you needed.\n\nI blinked and turned that thought over in my head. Slowly, I climbed to my feet. \"Time to take care of that thing.\"\n\n\"We should call the Porters,\" Lena said. \"Let someone else deal with the aftermath so you can rest.\"\n\n\"We don't have time. How long do you think this will hold it?\" I made my way inside, testing every step. Lena stayed with me, using her remaining bokken as a cane to support her injured knee. Roughly four feet of rubble covered the spot where she had pinned the thing like an insect. One of the walls creaked, making me jump. \"I need to examine the body.\"\n\nLena scowled. \"Of course you do.\"\n\nDigging a hole through the mess would have been hard enough without the characters shouting in my head, warning me to don protective gear, to call in a team to sterilize the entire place. I was constantly jumping at imagined noises and movement that vanished as soon as I turned to look.\n\nBricks shifted, and a blackened hand reached for Lena's wrist. She fell backward. \"There you go.\"\n\nI crawled over to where she had been working. I could just make out part of the face and left arm. The skin had changed. The charring was worse, and black dust fell away from the fingers every time it moved, reaching unerringly toward me.\n\nI picked up a metal bolt and poked the back of the hand. It felt like burnt leather.\n\nWas this my fault? Had I damaged the book so badly in my attempt to find the killer that I had allowed him to send this twisted, unfinished creature back after me?\n\n\"I could try to finish what he started,\" I mumbled. \"Separate it from the book and fix it in this form long enough to destroy it.\" But even if I knew how to do that, who was to say the character I created wouldn't carry the virus? \"You think the vampires would let me borrow their dungeon to study this thing?\"\n\nLena didn't answer.\n\nI couldn't heal a book, and ultimately, that was all this was: a burnt, pissed-off book oozing magic all over the place. \"I need to lock it.\"\n\n\"I thought you said you didn't know how to do that.\"\n\n\"I don't.\" I sat back and rubbed the dust from my eyes, remembering hastily scrawled Latin reaching out to constrict me. \"But Gutenberg figured this out centuries ago. All I have to do is duplicate his work.\"\n\n\"He probably wasn't sitting on top of a killer book at the time.\"\n\nI forced a chuckle at that. Gutenberg probably hadn't been so burned out that the simplest spell could have cost him his sanity, either.\n\nI pulled a paperback from my pocket and brought it toward that blackened hand. Instead of a lock, maybe I could simply dissolve it into another book?\n\nThe instant the fingers touched the book, black char spread like charcoal dust through the pages. I yanked it back. So much for that approach.\n\n\"Magic is a two-part process. Access and manifestation,\" I whispered. Both I and my counterpart had accessed the book's magic. He had controlled the manifestation of that magic.\n\nI closed my eyes, rereading the opening chapter of Rabid in my mind, rebuilding the scene until it was as real as I could make it. The story surged through me, threatening to drag me down. I did my best to walk the line between magic and madness. I needed that connection to the story, but if I lost myself, we were all screwed.\n\nWithout looking, I reached out and grabbed its wrist.\n\n\"Isaac!\"\n\nDry fingers clamped around mine. But even as it tried to crush my bones, my hand sank through its skin as easily as the pages of the book. \"Part one: access.\"\n\nI lay flat, reaching deeper. It couldn't hurt me now, though it certainly tried. The arm passed through my throat and face without effect.\n\n\"I don't care what Nidhi's files say,\" Lena whispered. \"You are completely insane.\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" I don't think she heard me, but the voices surged in response, screaming for me to get away. I touched what felt like burnt cardboard. My fingers closed around a book, the pages wrinkled and brittle like autumn leaves. \"Part two: manifestation.\"\n\nI carefully closed my hand around the book, leaned back, and pulled out the thing's heart.\n\nThe creature collapsed into black smoke and dust. As its mass dissolved, the rubble shifted beneath me. I squawked and tumbled onto my side, bruising my elbow and scraping my hip. I rolled down like a child on a hill, and likely would have brained myself on the cement if Lena hadn't caught me.\n\nShe held my elbow as we limped back into the clearing, where I examined my prize. The lower part of the book's cover was completely illegible, but I could make out a bit of the red-and-gray artwork in the upper right corner. When I opened the book, more of the cover flaked away. The interior pages were ash black.\n\n\"It's still leaking,\" I said quietly. The dust on my hands charged my skin with magical pseudolife, trying to re-form. \"Not as quickly as before, but given enough time, we'll have to fight that thing all over again.\"\n\n\"So have Smudge finish destroying it,\" Lena suggested.\n\n\"Every copy of this book is damaged. Eliminating this one could protect us, but it could also shunt the other libriomancer's magic elsewhere.\" I grabbed Feed from the sack, studying the lock. Gutenberg had locked these books using a quote from the Bible. He was a libriomancer, after all. It made sense his magic would come from books.\n\nAnd how was I supposed to concentrate on magic when I needed all of my focus just to cling to sanity, to hold on to who I was? Voices had broken down into screams, and they were getting stronger.\n\nThe lock I had seen was a fragment of Biblical magic. Which would have been useful information if I had a copy of that Bible on hand, and Gutenberg looking over my shoulder to tell me how to use it.\n\n\"Isaac?\"\n\nThe screams drowned Lena's words. Only the shape of her lips told me she was speaking my name. Shouting. The world beyond was a blur. I squinted at Lena, then at the blazing ball that was Smudge. I was out of time.\n\nI shoved my hand into Rabid, and the world around me vanished. I couldn't see my hands, but I felt them, the jagged magic of the unlocked book flaying one, and the cold heaviness of the locked text in the other. Praying this worked, I thrust the locked book into the heart of Rabid, willing that lock to expand and encompass them both.\n\nThe screaming stopped. The world snapped into focus, and Rabid fell away. Lena was shouting at me. I pushed myself up and started to speak, but my legs gave way. I watched the ground approach with all the inevitability of an oncoming plow, sweeping consciousness to the curb like the first slush of winter."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "I awoke in a bedroom that smelled like muddy dog.\n\nThe queen-sized bed was uncomfortably soft, with blue satin sheets and thick pillows. Cracks of sunlight snuck around heavy patterned curtains. I was wearing nothing save brown sweatpants.\n\nThe room was silent. More importantly, so were my thoughts. I touched my fingers to my neck, checking my pulse. A little quick, but better than it had been for days. My respiration seemed normal as well, though my breath was rather foul. Either I had somehow recovered from my near-possession at the old auto plant, or else I had gone completely mad.\n\nI sat up and wished I hadn't. Pain tore my stiff back, every vertebra protesting loudly. I bit back a gasp and, moving more cautiously, reached for the lamp on the bedside table to my left. The lamp responded to my touch, bulbs brightening beneath a stained-glass shade to illuminate a room with patterned wallpaper and a sloped ceiling.\n\nThe skittering of tiny feet on metal bars pulled my attention to Smudge. His cage sat on a potholder atop a heavy oak dresser by the wall. He was hyper, running laps as if to celebrate my awakening, but he wasn't on fire. I crossed the hardwood floor and pulled back the curtains to reveal a field dotted with pine trees and bordered by a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A brown barn stood near the back. I counted four dogs sleeping in the shade beside the barn.\n\nMy jacket was nowhere to be found, but the rest of my clothes were waiting for me in the closet. My shirt and jeans hung on wooden hangers, and my socks and underwear were neatly folded on a shelf. My boots were so clean I hardly recognized them.\n\nAs I dressed, I discovered a number of healing, yellowish bruises scattered over my body. I twisted in front of the mirror on the closet door, checking the damage. I looked like I had lost a fight with a pickup. I touched the mottled bruise on my right cheekbone. I must have gotten that one when I passed out.\n\nI also found several small puncture wounds inside my left elbow, along with a relatively fresh burn mark on my chest, none of which I remembered. The burn lined up nicely with a crisp-edged hole in the front of my shirt.\n\nI tossed the sweatpants across the rumpled bed, grabbed Smudge's cage, and opened the door. I stepped into a narrow hallway, then jumped back as a pair of black-furred creatures raced past. They resembled clumsy, oversized puppies, though they weren't dogs. Both animals skidded to a stop in front of me. One raised a row of black spines on its back. The other whimpered and proceeded to piss on the floor.\n\n\"And now I know where I am.\" I had never been in this house before, but I knew the location, I was roughly a half-hour south of Chicago, in the home of one of the most powerful bards in the world.\n\nThe more aggressive animal pounced on my boot. Oversized fangs were no match for the leather-covered steel toes. I let him play for a few seconds, then shoved him away. He tumbled into his companion, which set off a new round of mock-growls, and then they were off again.\n\nI followed them into a large, open room with wood paneling and a bay window looking out on the yard. Circular white speakers in the ceiling piped out a steady stream of jazz. The walls were lined with shelves, but where my shelves back home were overflowing with books, this collection included CDs, old audio tapes, vinyl, and even a selection of 8-track tapes, all meticulously organized by artist and release date. I clasped my hands behind my back, resisting the urge to reshelve them based on the ANSCR standard we used at the library.\n\nLena sat barefoot on a brown couch covered in animal fur. Nicola Pallas was pacing behind the couch, followed closely by a strange-looking beast with curly white fur that looked like a cross between a dog and a nightmare. The animal glanced over at me, its black tongue lolling to one side.\n\n\"How do you feel?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Like a mummy freshly risen from the dead.\" I stretched again, grimacing as various joints popped in protest. There were no other chairs, so I joined her on the couch. I didn't know the proper distance for people-who-were-almost-lovers-until-the-dryad's-girlfriend-turned-up-alive, so I settled awkwardly onto the opposite end and rested my feet on the coffee table, earning myself a pointed glare from Pallas.\n\n\"The attitude is familiar, at least.\" Nicola Pallas, Regional Master of the Porters, looked exhausted. Her tan, ruddy face drooped, and the bags beneath her eyes were darker than I remembered. She wore a rumpled denim jacket over a tight turtleneck. A silver ring glowed faintly blue on her right index finger. She pointed that finger at me. \"What is your name?\"\n\nI raised my hands, making the movement as slow and nonthreatening as I could. I didn't know what that ring could do, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to find out. \"Isaac Vainio. It's just me. No fictional hitchhikers in my head, if that's what you're worried about.\"\n\n\"That was one of our concerns.\" Pallas studied me a moment longer. The magical glow of her ring dimmed, but didn't entirely go out. \"Lena brought you to me four days ago.\"\n\n\"Four days?\" That would explain the dry mouth and the rumbling in my stomach. \"Did anyone remember to feed Smudge?\"\n\n\"I have,\" said Lena. \"Nicola said he had to stay in his cage, but I've been giving him bits of hamburger and some butterscotch candies I found in the other room.\"\n\n\"I wanted him caged for his own protection.\" Pallas reached down to scratch her pet behind the ears, carefully avoiding the black spines that lay flat along the middle of the animal's neck and back. \"Pac-Man eats pretty much anything.\"\n\n\"Pac-Man?\" The beast looked up at me, oversized fangs giving it an expression that straddled the line between deadly and dopey. A string of drool waved pendulum-like from the jaw, pushing it firmly into the latter category.\n\n\"When he was a puppy, he tried to eat a ghost,\" Pallas explained.\n\nI had never been able to tell when she was joking. Another puppy bounded through the room. \"How many animals do you have here?\"\n\n\"Four pureblood chupacabra, six poodles, and three crossbreeds, not counting the eleven puppies. I also keep goats in the barn. Louis is the pack leader, but he's locked in the kennel right now. He has a fungal infection, and I don't want him spreading it to the other animals. Bessie's upstairs. Chupacabra get vicious when pregnant. I can't even go near her without using magic, so it's hard to make sure she's getting enough goat blood. The little one who just went by is Pumbaa. My niece named him. He tends to be rather flatulent. I'm trying to adjust his diet to see if it helps, but so far\u2014\"\n\n\"What's happened since Lena brought me here?\" I interrupted. I had the feeling Pallas could go on all day about her pets.\n\n\"I kept you sedated for the first forty-eight hours. I couldn't risk any sort of magical healing, not in your state. I estimated we had at best a fifty-fifty chance of getting you back. We roused you every twelve hours to give you food and drink, and to allow you to use the bathroom.\"\n\n\"I... don't remember that.\" I glanced at Lena.\n\n\"This wasn't how I had planned to get you out of your pants,\" she said wryly.\n\nPallas continued as if she hadn't heard. \"You may experience nausea, dry mouth, and constipation as the rest of the drugs work through your system.\"\n\n\"Good to know.\"\n\nPallas whistled a countermelody to the trumpet and piano riff playing over the speakers, and I felt her magic pass through me. Pallas was one of four known bards with the ability to shape magic through music. I had no idea what she was doing with that magic now, though. Using magic on another Porter without permission violated both rules and politeness, and while Pallas had never worried about politeness, she tended to be rather hard-assed about the rules. \"Lena told me what you did.\"\n\nMy hackles rose at the implicit disapproval. \"What I did was find the libriomancer who killed Ray. I saw him. It's not Gutenberg. I need to look up the name Jakob Hoffman. If we can track him down\u2014\"\n\n\"You had a vision, and you heard voices. That's not the same thing as finding a killer. Our database has no record of any literary character named Jakob Hoffman. We've contacted thirteen Jakob and Jake Hoffmans so far, but none have any magical abilities, nor do they appear to have any connection to this murderer.\" Her rings clinked as she fidgeted. In all the time I'd known Pallas, I don't think I had ever seen her still. \"You've given us a lead, nothing more. A lead that may or may not pay off.\"\n\n\"When I spoke to you on the phone the other day, you said there was a magical attack in London. Did it hit Baker Street, by any chance? Anywhere near Sherlock Holmes' fictional residence? You mentioned Afghanistan as well. Watson, Holmes' partner, was a veteran from Afghanistan. Those attacks could be coming from the various personalities struggling for control of our killer.\"\n\n\"A rather elementary conclusion, Isaac.\" Though her expression never changed, I was pretty sure that was a joke. \"We're looking into the connection and trying to tie the other attacks to specific literary characters.\" She tilted her head toward one of the speakers and stared out the window. \"Lena also brought me the book you destroyed. Do you have any idea what that level of char can do? To the libriomancer, and to this world?\"\n\n\"I know what it almost did to me,\" I said.\n\n\"I doubt that.\" She moved closer, and the clinking grew faster. \"Lena says you barely escaped that book, that you were like a gibbering child when your awareness returned.\"\n\n\"Not true. I was like a gibbering grown-up.\" But the memory of those moments undermined my attempt at humor. \"He tried to lock me into the book. When that failed, he sent... something after me. I've never experienced anything like it before. It was like\u2014\"\n\n\"Like a single disharmonic note, growing in volume until it overpowered the melody that defines you.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" I suppose, to a bard, that was as horrific a description as any. \"You know what it was?\"\n\n\"It was proof that I erred in allowing you to investigate this matter. Isaac Vainio, you are forbidden from practicing magic until further notice.\"\n\nHer tone never changed, so it took me a second to understand what she was saying. I jumped up from the couch. \"I found the man who killed Ray Walker!\"\n\nShe hummed quietly, and her stereo switched to a faster-paced song. The magic in the air grew stronger as well, like a magnetic current through my bones. Her animals were less subtle. As one, they growled and raised their spines.\n\n\"What would have happened if you hadn't managed to cling to your sanity back there in Detroit?\" Pallas asked. \"If you had lost yourself to possession? Instead of one rogue libriomancer, you would have forced us to fight two. Imagine yourself terrified and insane, your body flowing with uncontrolled magic. What do you think you would you have done to Lena?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have hurt her.\" But even as I protested, I remembered staring at Lena with no memory of who she was. If that darkness had caught me... \"What was it? Ray described the consequences of magical screw-ups in great detail, and he never mentioned anything like that. None of the Porter texts or reports I've read\u2014\"\n\n\"Your antics with the vampires have had consequences as well,\" Pallas said, as if I'd never spoken. \"Attacks worldwide have increased over the past four days. I spent this morning on the phone with Luis Quenta in Bolivia. They had to firebomb the Santa Cruz nest to keep the vampires contained. They're testing us. And with Gutenberg and his automatons gone, we're failing that test.\"\n\n\"They gave me a week to find this killer,\" I protested. One week, more than half of which I had now wasted, lying unconscious in Nicola Pallas' apartment.\n\n\"Granach gave you a week. She said nothing about the rest of the world, nor are all vampires bound by a deal made by Alice Granach.\" Pallas picked up an enormous dog bone that appeared to be made of some sort of woven black material. \"My animals are beautiful, but they will always be part monster. I have their toys custom-made from Kevlar. Anything else they destroy within minutes. If I ever forget, if I expect them to be other than what they are, then whatever happens to me will be my own fault as much as theirs.\" She threw the toy across the room, starting a riot of growling and fighting. \"Magic is the same way. If you forget the rules, it will turn on you.\"\n\n\"We'd know even less if I hadn't broken the rules.\" I shivered, remembering my flight through the book. \"How could someone get so powerful without the Porters knowing?\"\n\nFor the first time, Pallas looked uncertain. She turned toward the window, staring out at the field. \"That is something we've been asking ever since these attacks started.\"\n\n\"And?\" I pressed.\n\n\"And the Porters will continue to investigate until we have answered that question.\"\n\n\"He's possessed, but it's more than that, isn't it?\" I pressed. \"Possession would drive him mad, force him to lash out. It wouldn't give him the power to rip open locked books, or to send that thing through a book after me. He's killing Porters, enslaving vampires... why?\"\n\nPallas reached down to scratch one of the puppies on the belly. \"This matter is no longer your concern.\"\n\n\"No longer my concern?\" I stood and turned to face her. \"He tried to kill me!\"\n\n\"He tried to do far worse than that.\" She raised a hand, her ring pulsing a warning. \"You have been touched by something you don't understand.\"\n\n\"So explain it to me!\"\n\n\"When the immediate crisis is resolved, we will speak more about what you saw.\"\n\n\"What about Nidhi?\" Lena asked quietly. \"What happens to her while you continue to investigate?\"\n\n\"We will not turn Isaac over to the undead. Nor will this rogue libriomancer be delivered to their laboratories, where who knows what power they might try to extract from him.\" Pallas rubbed her temples. \"I'm struggling on three fronts. Our first priority is finding this libriomancer. If what you saw is true, he will soon destroy himself, but who knows what damage he'll cause in the meantime. We're also speaking with the vampires, doing what we can to maintain peace and persuade them to return Nidhi Shah unharmed.\"\n\n\"What's the third front?\" I asked.\n\n\"Politics. At least vampires don't bother to mask their hostility in pointless pleasantries.\" Her laughter had always sounded forced to me, and this was no exception. She knelt to scratch Pac-Man's ears as he gnawed the Kevlar toy he had triumphantly stolen from the other animals. \"Gutenberg may yet live, but we can't wait for him to return. He built the Porters to function after his death, but there are... differences of opinion as to who should take his place. We've established a temporary ruling council, twelve regional masters from throughout the world. In magical affairs, I now speak for most of North America.\"\n\n\"Which means you're overwhelmed and understaffed. Let me help! I have copies of the books he stole from the archive. I can show you\u2014\"\n\n\"Those books have been shipped to Philadelphia, where they are being examined by two of the most skilled libriomancers we have.\"\n\nI stopped to survey the other magical trappings Pallas had prepared. Etchings in the windows reminded me of the spells worked into the windshield and mirrors of my car. An ornate brass padlock hung on the front door, like something out of a medieval fantasy novel. And then there was her music collection. \"Am I a prisoner?\"\n\n\"For the time being, the council prefers you both remain here,\" Pallas said. \"We will, of course, complete a full review of your actions before a final decision can be made as to your status.\"\n\n\"Nice,\" I said. \"Yank the guy who actually found your rogue libriomancer out of the field.\" My tone earned a growl from Pac-Man.\n\n\"Don't exaggerate. Had you found this man, we'd be having a very different conversation. You heard a name. Three field agents have wasted their time trying to follow up on that lead. They've found nothing.\"\n\n\"So how can it hurt to let me try?\" I asked, trying charm instead.\n\nCharm proved as futile as anger. \"In thirty years, I've only had to put down one of my animals before its time,\" Pallas said. \"A bitch named Peaches. She was aggressive, but I've dealt with worse. Her problem was single-mindedness. Once she sighted prey, she had to have it. She chewed through the barn to kill one of my goats. When a deer approached the fence, she scaled it and escaped. That fence is electrified, with enough power to stop a bull, but Peaches didn't know how to stop. She tore her leg to the bone on the barbed wire, but she caught her deer. She was a beautiful creature, with hazel eyes, soft fur, and gently curved spines that rattled like maracas when she ran.\"\n\nI tilted my head. \"Are you calling me a bitch?\"\n\n\"I'm telling you that your part in this investigation is over.\"\n\n\"You're hiding something,\" I said. \"Do you know what happened to Gutenberg? To the automatons? Do you know what Jakob Hoffman is trying to do?\"\n\n\"Stand down, Isaac.\" The speakers began to buzz as bass thrummed through the house. \"I prefer not to use force against another Porter, but you will remain here. This is for your own protection.\"\n\nI was no match for Pallas, especially here on her home turf, with her pets ready to eat me.\n\nLena hadn't spoken at all. How much of this same argument had she already had with Pallas? Lena wouldn't sit here and wait for the vampires to murder her lover. She couldn't. She would set out alone if she had to, single-handedly challenging the entire nest, and they would kill her. I doubted Pallas would stop her. Lena wasn't a Porter, after all.\n\nI sucked a long, slow breath through my teeth. If I stayed here, both Lena Greenwood and Nidhi Shah would die. I couldn't change Pallas' mind. She was far too rule-bound for that.\n\n\"Then I quit,\" I whispered numbly.\n\nLena straightened.\n\nPallas turned to stare at me, her forehead crinkled in confusion. \"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"I resign from the Porters. You want it in writing? Give me a pen.\" I would have said more, but I was having trouble finding words.\n\n\"What are you doing, Isaac?\" Lena whispered.\n\nI felt like I was struggling to swallow a rock. I kept my focus on Pallas. If I looked at Lena, I'd lose it. \"You're the Regional Master of the Porters. So be it. If I'm no longer a Porter, then you have no right to hold me here.\"\n\n\"There are laws governing the use of magic\u2014\" Pallas began.\n\n\"And if I break them after I leave, you're welcome to haul my ass back here,\" I snapped. \"Until then, I'd appreciate it if you and your dogs got the hell out of my way.\"\n\nMy car was parked on the edge of the dirt driveway. My jacket and books were in the back, save those Pallas had shipped to Philadelphia. It wasn't until I settled the familiar weight onto my shoulders that I realized how vulnerable and naked I had felt without it.\n\nSmudge started running laps on the dashboard the instant I let him out of the cage. \"Sorry, partner. I'm not too happy about being locked up for four days, either.\"\n\nLena retrieved her bokken from the trunk and climbed into the passenger's seat. \"Do you have an actual plan?\"\n\n\"Find the libriomancer. Save Nidhi. I'm working on the details.\" I was also trying very hard not to think about what would come next. About what I had just thrown away. I jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine. \"Tell me what happened after I passed out.\"\n\n\"I tried to wake you. So did Smudge.\" She reached out to touch the burnt hole on my shirt. \"When that didn't work, I called Nicola. She said to bring you here. You heard the rest.\"\n\n\"That's it?\" I shook my head, not buying it. \"You've just been waiting for four days while Nidhi\u2014\"\n\n\"I thought you were dying, Isaac. You were cold, sweaty, and shivering, muttering to yourself in a language I couldn't understand.\"\n\n\"What would you have done if I didn't wake up?\"\n\nShe looked away. \"I couldn't leave you, but if you didn't recover soon and the Porters didn't find the other libriomancer...\"\n\n\"You meant to take me back to Detroit. To trade me for Nidhi Shah.\"\n\nShe raised her chin. \"That's right.\"\n\nIt was the logical choice. Trade the comatose libriomancer who might never awaken for the lover who was very much alive. Logic did nothing to alleviate this new emotional sucker punch to my gut. \"How exactly did Pallas react when you told her how I had found the other libriomancer, and the thing that came through the book after us?\"\n\n\"I have a harder time reading autistics, but\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe blinked. \"You didn't know?\"\n\n\"I don't have access to her files.\"\n\n\"Neither do I,\" Lena said sharply. \"But I've learned a thing or two living with Nidhi. I've been here for four days, long enough to get a sense of Nicola Pallas. She doesn't express her emotions the same way you or I do. I think she's frightened, though. When I first described what happened, she walked away from me in mid-sentence and started making phone calls. When she finished, she was playing with her bracelets and moving about like she wanted to run but didn't know where.\"\n\n\"She knows something,\" I muttered. \"Why wouldn't she tell me?\"\n\n\"Maybe because she knows how close you came to dying,\" Lena said sharply.\n\nI had no answer to that.\n\nI stopped at the end of the driveway, which emerged onto a dirt road bordered by maple trees on either side. \"One more question. Which way do I go to get back to Michigan?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "If I had to choose the single most important moment of my life, the turning point that determined who and what I would become, it would be the day Ray Walker invited me to join the Porters. He had changed everything. Even as a cataloger, I had been a part of something magical. And now I had thrown that away.\n\nI relived my conversation with Pallas again and again as I drove. I knew she was doing what she felt was right. She was playing by the rules, pulling me off the investigation until they could be certain I hadn't been contaminated by whatever it was I had seen in Detroit. Or maybe, as Lena suggested, she was genuinely trying to protect me.\n\nI stopped at a gas station to ask for directions to the nearest library, which turned out to be a small white building squeezed between the post office and the police department. I pulled into the parking lot and spent the next five minutes trying to bribe Smudge back into his cage. He was not happy about going back there, but leaving him loose in the car wasn't a good idea, and I didn't want to try to explain his presence to the local librarian.\n\n\"The Porters have spent four days looking for Jakob Hoffman,\" Lena said as she followed me inside.\n\n\"I'm sure they're doing the best they can.\" I sat down in front of a public computer terminal and opened up the library's catalog in one screen and an Internet browser in another. \"But I know the other libriomancers in this area. One's a mechanic. Another works for a museum. None of them are librarians.\"\n\nI flexed my fingers, doing everything I could to ignore the hollowness in my chest. \"I need you to do me a favor.\"\n\nLena settled into the chair beside me. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Time me.\" I attacked the keyboard, clicking between windows. An Internet search pulled up more than a thousand results for \"Jakob Hoffman,\" including a character from a 2010 movie and a rather embarrassing YouTube video. I clicked through page after page of results, but found nothing.\n\nThe library database was no better. Not that I had expected it to be quite that easy. The Porters had already looked for Hoffman and come up short.\n\nI cleared the screen. I couldn't count the number of times I had helped patrons track down ancestors on genealogy sites or locate long-lost classmates, and I had found books with far less information than a character's name. I was a pretty good libriomancer, but I was a damn good librarian.\n\nI pulled up online book distributor sites next. No luck. If Hoffman was a character, he wasn't important enough to be included in the book's summary. The bookstore databases didn't give me any results either.\n\nI sat back, steepling my fingers and glaring at the computer as if I could will it into giving me the information I wanted.\n\n\"Ten minutes.\" Lena said, smiling oddly.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Did you know you bite your tongue when you're concentrating?\"\n\nI very deliberately closed my mouth and tried the fanfiction sites next. Fanfic writers often wrote about secondary characters, but once again I came up empty.\n\n\"All right, let's cheat.\" I removed my necklace and placed the stone in the middle of the keyboard. The screen flickered, and then a new window appeared, giving me access to the Porters' database. Not only could I search through our catalog, but the site gave me a back door into various other organizations' data. I could check law enforcement to see if \"Jakob Hoffman\" had ever been used as an alias, or\u2014 \"Shit!\"\n\nBlack smoke poured out of the front of the computer. The screen popped and fizzed, the image shrinking to a single line of white light. The hard drive made a sound like someone had jammed a screwdriver into the spokes of a bicycle wheel.\n\nThe man behind the front desk hurried toward us. \"What happened?\"\n\nThe Porters had locked me out of the database. I picked up my necklace and stared at the orange stone which had been created specifically for me, giving me access to centuries of knowledge and records.\n\n\"Sir?\" The man, whose ID card read \"Ro,\" leaned past me to try the keyboard.\n\n\"I don't know what happened,\" I said numbly. \"It just died.\"\n\n\"Did you spill anything?\" He dropped below the desk and yanked the power cord, but foul-smelling black smoke continued to rise from the box. He leaned back and raised his voice. \"Stacy, would you call J. J. and tell him to get up here?\"\n\nPallas would have known I'd head straight to the library. She had probably killed my access before I even left the driveway... just as the rules required.\n\nI blinked, ashamed to realize how close I was to tears. I stood and backed away, leaving the staff to worry about the now-useless computer. Useless unless you needed a boat anchor, maybe.\n\nLena touched my arm. \"Porters?\"\n\nI nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I jammed the necklace into my pants pocket and moved to another machine. With each breath, I pushed the grief back down until I could focus on the screen.\n\n\"Time?\" I asked, my voice tight.\n\nLena glanced at the clock on the wall. \"Fourteen minutes.\"\n\nThe U.S. copyright database was no help. Nor were various social media sites. I checked phone directories as well, but my gut told me Jakob Hoffman wasn't a real person. I had felt the different voices in that libriomancer's head, lost and incomplete, struggling to survive in a world utterly different from the ones they were used to.\n\nIf Hoffman was a character, he had to be important enough for readers to identify with him, to believe in him. But he didn't come up in any of the bookstore or publisher listings...\n\nWhat if the author hadn't used a regular publisher? I opened up a new window and began searching for blogs and review sites that specialized in self-published titles. \"Bingo.\"\n\n\"Twenty-four and a half minutes,\" said Lena, leaning over my shoulder.\n\nI was getting rusty. \"Jakob Hoffman is the hero of a self-published World War II fantasy called V-Day. He's an American soldier in Germany who discovers that Hitler is raising an army of vampires.\" I jabbed a finger at the screen. \"Hitler enslaves the vampires using a mystical silver cross.\"\n\n\"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\"The review doesn't say. There's no link, no ISBN or other information.\" I couldn't find a single copy available for sale online, new or used. The title wasn't registered with the copyright office, the Library of Congress, or anywhere else. \"This isn't right. It's like the author went out of their way to make it hard to track down a copy of the book.\"\n\n\"Like they're trying to hide it?\"\n\nFew self-published titles sold well enough to create the communal belief necessary for magic. This one obviously had, and had done so while bypassing traditional sales and distribution channels. That couldn't be a coincidence. I sent a copy of the review to the library printer. \"He wrote this book himself.\"\n\n\"The other libriomancer?\"\n\n\"To create a weapon.\" I pulled up the library catalog again. \"It breaks one of Gutenberg's cardinal rules.\"\n\nIn the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it had been common for libriomancers to double as writers, trying to create weapons and artifacts they could use. That experience had taught the Porters two important lessons. First, writing was harder than it looked. Second, and more importantly, the dangers of possession increased exponentially with books written by libriomancers. Something about our own magic infused the text, weakening the barriers between story and reality, and endangering any reader with the slightest bit of magical ability.\n\nI jumped to my feet and headed for the science fiction and fantasy section of the library, moving with newfound determination.\n\n\"You think they'll have a copy?\" Lena asked doubtfully.\n\n\"Nope.\" I skimmed the shelves until I got to the M's. I pulled out a worn paperback of Robin McKinley's Beauty.\n\n\"Are you going to explain, or are you going to grandstand?\"\n\n\"A little of both.\" I stepped deeper into the shelves, making sure nobody was watching. \"This is McKinley's retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In her version, the beast's library contains a copy of every book ever written, past and future.\"\n\nMcKinley wasn't the only author to have imagined such a library, but the Porters had rules restricting the use of these titles. Some had been charred too badly to risk using them again, while others were supposed to be preserved for emergencies. Normally, I would have needed to write a three-page requisition to use this one, but there were advantages to being a freelancer. The Porters would come after me if I proved a danger, but I should be able to get away with minor tricks.\n\nI skimmed to the library scene and reached into the beast's castle, concentrating on the title I wanted.\n\n\"How do you create a book you've never read?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Remind me later, and I'll give you a copy of Price's treatises on metamagical manifestation. In brief, we can't create 'future' titles. The book has to exist in our world.\" Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book. \"It's all about resonance. I know the book I want, and magical resonance allows me to create a clone of the work from existing copies. At least, that's Price's theory.\"\n\nI held my breath and grabbed what felt like a slim trade paperback. I turned it sideways, tugged it free, and showed it to Lena with a flourish. \"Be honest. Don't I deserve a little grandstanding?\"\n\n\"Read first. Grandstand later.\"\n\nI shoved V-Day into my jacket, reshelved Beauty in the proper spot, and followed her toward the door. There were now three people hunched over the corpse of the computer I had fried, like necromancers trying to resurrect a corpse.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said.\n\nRo waved my apology away. \"Not your fault. It looks like the power supply shorted out, fried the whole thing.\"\n\nHis cheerfulness only made me feel worse, and I grabbed a bookmark with the library's information on the way out. Once I got back home, I'd send them a check to try to cover the damage I had caused.\n\nI wondered if Pallas had canceled the grant that covered my salary, or if she'd leave that alone until it expired at the end of the next fiscal year. Either way, this library didn't deserve to take the hit for my mistake.\n\nBut first, I was going to find this bastard.\n\n\"Where do we go next?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"I don't know yet.\" I flipped to the copyright page. \"Listen to this. 'This work is copyright Charles de Guerre, and may not be reproduced, quoted, sold, or reviewed under penalty of law.' Someone doesn't get how copyright law works, but it might have helped him hide the book from Porter catalogers.\"\n\n\"Guerre is French for war, right?\"\n\n\"This isn't his real name. A nom de guerre is another term for a pseudonym.\" I checked the back of the book. \"There's nothing to indicate where the book was printed. Mister de Guerre didn't want anyone tracking him down.\" I gnawed on my lower lip as I studied the name. \"Keep an eye out for a bookstore.\"\n\nI watched her drive, her attention focused entirely on the road. Now that she knew Nidhi Shah was alive and human, she had no need of me. Did I change from a potential mate to simply another human, like moving a file from one drawer to another?\n\nOr was she simply pretending, hiding her feelings for me so that she could return to her lover when this was all over? I thought back to the way she had watched me in the library. I almost asked, then thought better of it. Shah was alive, and Lena loved her. As for me... I would do whatever it took to make her happy. She deserved that much.\n\nI adjusted my seat back and examined the book more closely. I had seen some gorgeous self-published books in my time. This was not one of them. The cover photo was dark and pixelated, and the interior font was several sizes too large. The whole thing was just under three hundred pages.\n\nThe first chapter introduced Jakob Hoffman as the typical white, American everyman, born in 1925 on an Iowa farm that had been in his family for three generations. The day he turned seventeen, he kissed his perfect girlfriend good-bye and walked six miles to enlist in the Army.\n\nI skimmed through the next few chapters until the first monsters appeared. There was no complexity or depth to de Guerre's vampires. They were evil, soulless creatures who delighted in blood and death: the perfect complement to Hitler's Nazi army. The writing was rather dialogue-heavy, but overall the book was better than I had expected. The battle scenes, in particular, were quite strong, written with gritty, vivid detail that suggested de Guerre had done his research.\n\nI continued to skip ahead, scanning the pages for words like \"vampire\" and \"magic.\" I stopped on chapter twelve and read more closely. \"We've got a problem.\"\n\n\"Only one?\"\n\n\"Hitler gets his hands on an artifact called the Silver Cross, an angelic tool created by God and used by the Church during the Crusades.\" I cleared my throat and read from Hitler's monologue. \"Handed down to King Richard the Lionhearted by the archangel Michael, the cross gives the wielder power over all unnatural creatures. The hellbred spawn of Satan shall be transformed into an army of righteousness, kneeling before he who carries God's almighty blessing! His servants shall look through the eye of the cross and see God's true glory.\"\n\n\"Unnatural creatures,\" Lena repeated. \"Like me.\"\n\nOr the manananggal we had seen in the Detroit nest. I closed the book, marking my spot with one finger. \"Hitler's forces were primarily made up of vampires, but they also included ghosts, werewolves, and more.\"\n\n\"Can you create your own version of the cross to fight back? Free his servants, or turn them against him?\"\n\n\"Normally, yes. The book provides a template, so a libriomancer could theoretically make as many copies of the cross as they wanted. At least until the book charred and they lost control of its magic. But not in this case.\" I flipped to an earlier chapter. \"Jakob's character has a vision the first time he touches the cross. There's a flashback to King Richard receiving the cross from the archangel, who warns him not to try to understand or duplicate its power. 'Remember the lesson of Babel. God's mysteries are His alone. This is the one true cross, the weapon of the almighty and His faithful. Should any attempt to re-create it, His wrath shall cause the fraudulent cross to sear him with the fires of Hell itself.' Charles de Guerre, or whoever he is, deliberately wrote this book so that only one cross could exist at a time. If I try to make another, it will come with its own self-destruct mechanism.\"\n\nI flipped to the front of the book. The copyright was dated last year. How many copies had he printed in that time? A few hundred? A thousand? There was no price, because he wouldn't have tried to sell them. This wasn't about profit; it was about getting the book into the hands of as many readers as possible so he could access the book's magic. He would have given them away to readers most likely to appreciate the story. \"Hitler uses the cross to command an army. Our libriomancer has only enslaved a handful of individual vampires, suggesting the book's magic is still limited.\"\n\n\"How long until he's up to full strength?\"\n\n\"The equations are messy. It depends on how strongly the readers believe, and whether those readers have any magical ability themselves. Time is also a factor. Belief fades over time, though there's no consistent half-life. A thousand people reading a book in a year will create a stronger cumulative belief than if the same number read it over a decade.\"\n\nLena swerved across two lanes and onto the exit ramp, earning a yelp from me and an angry puff of smoke from Smudge. I started to protest, but she cut me off. \"You said you needed a bookstore, right?\"\n\nThe store she had spied was tucked into a shopping center. Much of the store's space had been taken over by toys, videos, and electronics. I strode past the science fiction and fantasy section, heading for astrology and new age.\n\nLena gave me a skeptical look as I plucked a book from the top shelf. \"The Ancient Wisdom of Crystals? That stuff actually works?\"\n\n\"Libriomancy is all about belief. Most crystals don't have any inherent magical power, but the ones in here...\" I checked the front matter. \"This is the sixth printing. That should be more than enough for what I need.\"\n\nI paid cash for the book and hurried out the door, reading as I walked. A car honked, and Lena yanked me back to the curb so they could pass. \"Eyes up, genius.\"\n\nI did my best to split my attention between the book and the cars. By the time we reached the Triumph, I had found what I needed.\n\n\"Unakite,\" I said, skimming the description. \"A more recent mystical discovery, unakite crystals affect the heart chakra, lifting the blackness from your heart. Holding this stone will also allow you to see through deception.\" I grabbed V-Day from the front seat. \"A pseudonym is just another form of deception.\"\n\nI concentrated. This was harder than pulling swords from a fantasy novel. I didn't actually believe in the power of crystals, not the way I believed in stories. I had to overcome my own skepticism in order to access the book's magic, which took a while. But eventually, I managed to retrieve a long, hexagonal crystal, pointed on one end like a fat, stubby pencil.\n\nThe stone was polished liquid smooth. The facets were mottled orange and dark green. I set The Ancient Wisdom of Crystals on the floor and picked up V-Day, turning to the copyright page. Gripping the crystal in one hand, I read the name.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\nThe letters blurred as if I was looking through water. I squinted, clutching the stone and concentrating. \"Charles... Humphrey. No, Hubert.\" The letters continued to come into focus. \"Charles Hubert!\" I slammed the book shut and crowed, \"And that is why you don't kick the librarian off the investigation!\"\n\n\"You're doing it again.\"\n\n\"Doing what?\"\n\n\"Showing off.\" She started the engine.\n\n\"Damn right I am.\"\n\nWe stopped at an Internet caf\u00e9 and coffee shop outside of Gary, Indiana, and sat down for another round of research. Lena squeezed in beside me in a partitioned space with a flat-screen monitor, grungy keyboard and mouse, and a laminated menu tacked to the wall.\n\nOne hour and two lattes later, I pushed the keyboard away and rubbed my eyes. Lena appeared untouched by fatigue as she read, her body close enough to mine that I could feel her warmth. She was the first to voice what we were both thinking. \"Charles Hubert isn't a murderer.\"\n\nHubert had been easy enough to find, though there was nothing online about his current address or location. I had pulled up no fewer than a dozen newspaper articles, all between twenty and twenty-four months old. I clicked the one from a Jackson, Michigan paper which read Wounded Veteran Returns Home from Afghanistan. \"He was in Iraq twice, and this was his second rotation in Afghanistan. He volunteered to go back.\"\n\n\"Forty-nine years old,\" Lena read. \"They sent him home after a rocket-propelled grenade hit his convoy.\"\n\n\"He received multiple commendations.\" I clicked the photo, pulling up a larger image. I pointed to the bandages that covered much of his head. \"The man I saw had a scar. He's skinnier now, but this is him.\" Two years ago, he had been a decorated soldier and, from all accounts, a decent man. What had happened to transform him into a possessed murderer?\n\nLena reached over my hand, clicking on a different article. I did my best not to respond to the touch of her skin on mine, or the way our thighs and hips pressed together as we worked. \"He used to work at an independent bookstore in Jackson, Michigan.\"\n\nA perfect job for a libriomancer. Only I knew the name of every Porter in the Midwest, and I had never heard of Hubert. Even if he wasn't formally trained, anyone messing with magic earned a visit from the Porters. How had Hubert mastered libriomancy while completely avoiding our radar?\n\n\"Head injuries can lead to personality changes,\" Lena suggested. \"The man suffered a crushed skull. He's got an eight-centimeter metal plate in his head. There's no way he came out of that without damage to the brain. Add the psychological effects of the attack: post-traumatic stress, the horror of seeing two of your buddies torn apart in front of you\u2014\"\n\n\"That wouldn't explain the magic. I've read of rare cases where brain damage wiped out someone's ability to perform magic, but never the reverse.\" I glared at the screen. \"We need access to his medical records.\" Normally I would have used the Porter database as a gateway into the military and hospital systems, but I had already blown up one computer today.\n\nLena pointed to a paragraph buried midway down the article to a quote from Margaret Hubert, thanking God for bringing her son home alive. \"Let's ask Mom.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "Margaret Hubert lived in southern Jackson, in a small white house with an enormous silver maple growing alongside the driveway. An orange \"Beware of the Dog\" sign hung beside the front door.\n\nI checked Smudge in his cage. He was calm enough, meaning Charles probably wasn't here. I clipped him to my hip, pulled my jacket over the cage and knocked on the door.\n\n\"I'll take the lead on this one,\" Lena said as footsteps approached from the other side.\n\n\"Why?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because she's not a wizard or a vampire, and your people skills aren't quite as polished as your research skills.\"\n\nThe door opened before I could come up with a suitable response. An older woman wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt for a local 5K run studied us through the screen door, while an arthritic-looking bulldog tried to push past her knees. \"Yes?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Hubert?\" asked Lena.\n\nThe woman nodded.\n\n\"My name is Lena, and this is my partner Isaac. We were hoping we could take a few minutes of your time to talk to you about your son.\"\n\nShe stiffened, and her lips pressed into thin lines. The door moved forward slightly, as if she were fighting the urge to slam it in our faces. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Private detectives, contracted by the city to look into old missing persons reports and other cold cases.\" Her words blended compassion and professionalism, like a kindly schoolteacher. \"We have a lead on your son, and were hoping you could help us find him.\"\n\nI had never seen anyone turn so pale so quickly. Lena lunged forward, arms extended, but Mrs. Hubert caught herself on the doorframe.\n\n\"I'm all right. I just didn't expect... come inside, please.\"\n\nI followed Lena through the door. The bulldog tried to nose its way into my jacket, then jumped back as if burned. I made sure Mrs. Hubert wasn't looking, then glared down at Smudge. \"Stop that,\" I whispered sternly.\n\nThe house was the very definition of cluttered. Running trophies and medals filled the mantel over the fireplace. Quilts hung on the walls, and a pile of half-finished quilting squares covered the dining room table. Handmade candles hung from pegs on another wall like pastel-colored wax nunchucks. A scrapbook and supplies lay open on the kitchen counter. This was a woman who kept herself busy.\n\n\"Thank you, Margaret,\" said Lena. \"I'm sorry for intruding unannounced, and I promise we won't take up too much of your time.\"\n\n\"That's all right. And please, call me Margie.\" She led us into the living room, where a half-finished puzzle covered a wooden coffee table. \"Would you like something to eat? I've got applesauce bread.\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" said Lena, sitting down in an overstuffed love seat while I examined the room.\n\nA dusty television sat in an entertainment center which had seen better days. The wooden laminate was beginning to peel away, and several of the shelves sagged. I studied the framed photographs crowded together along the top. Most of the pictures showed either an older, heavyset man or a teenager with shaggy brown hair. I didn't see a single photo or newspaper clipping of Charles Hubert.\n\nNo, there was one. I picked up a silver-framed shot in the back. Charles Hubert and the brown-haired teen stood proudly in front of a nine-point buck. Both kids wore orange camo and held deer rifles in their hands. \"First buck?\" I asked.\n\nMargie nodded. \"Mike was so proud. We ate venison for a month because he wouldn't let us give any of it away. The antlers are still in his room.\" She sat down and began to fidget with the puzzle pieces. \"What is it you'd like to know?\"\n\n\"When was the last time you saw Charles?\" Lena asked.\n\nMargie looked taken aback. She blinked and played with a diamond ring on her right ring finger. \"I'm not sure. It's been a while... wait, do you think he could have been involved with what happened to Mike?\"\n\nI opened my mouth, but a quick glare from Lena shut me up before I could speak. \"We're not sure,\" she said cautiously. \"We're trying to explore every possibility.\"\n\n\"Charles and Mike used to go hunting every year with my husband, rest his soul. After Mike was\u2014\" Her shoulders shook. She looked up at Lena, her eyebrows bunched together. \"I'm sorry, what was I saying?\"\n\nIt was possible we were seeing the early signs of dementia, but I had heard no sign of confusion or uncertainty when she talked about Mike's buck. Only when Charles was mentioned had Margie begun to stumble.\n\n\"You were telling me about Charles,\" Lena said gently. \"Have you seen him at all since he returned from Afghanistan?\"\n\n\"Afghanistan?\" She looked at Lena, her eyes glassy with tears. \"I don't... what did he do? Did Charles take my son?\" Tears broke free, running down her cheeks, but her words were flat.\n\n\"We just need to ask him some questions,\" Lena reassured her.\n\n\"Do you mind if I use the bathroom?\" I asked. Margie looked up at me, her face blank, then nodded. I retreated down the hall into a bathroom decorated in orange and black, the colors of the local high school. I sat down and pulled out a paperback copy of The Odyssey.\n\nWhen I returned, Margie seemed calmer. She was describing the disappearance of her son Mike. \"We had gone to see a Tigers game. We went to the first home game every year. Mike always brought his glove. He wanted to catch a home run ball, but he never did.\"\n\nShe shuddered and dabbed her eyes. \"He had gone ahead to start the car. The police found no evidence of foul play.\"\n\n\"You let a twelve-year-old boy run off by himself?\" I asked.\n\nLena glared at me.\n\n\"We wouldn't\u2014we didn't...\" She trailed off, staring into the distance.\n\n\"What happened to Mike wasn't your fault,\" said Lena.\n\nI leaned over, holding a sprig of Moly in one hand. \"I found this on the floor. From one of your crafts?\"\n\nThe moment she touched the magical herb, her entire demeanor changed. \"He wasn't alone. Charles had just gotten his driver's permit. He and Mike\u2014\" Her eyes went round, and the white petals began to wilt as they battled whatever spell had rewritten her memories. She stared at me. \"Who... what did you do to me? Where is Charles?\"\n\n\"You remember him now?\" I asked.\n\n\"Of course I remember him! I\u2014\" She clutched her head. \"Who are you people? I want you to leave. Get out of my house!\"\n\nLena touched her arm. \"Margie, you're safe. We're trying to help you.\"\n\nMargie didn't shake her off, but she glared at me like I was the devil come to take her soul.\n\nI retreated toward the door. \"I'll be in the car.\"\n\nBack in the Triumph, I let Smudge out of his cage. He scurried up to the windshield, then turned around to look at me as if waiting impatiently for the drive to start.\n\n\"Charles Hubert comes back from Afghanistan with magic,\" I said slowly, trying to fit the pieces together. \"He overdoes it and ends up possessed. That much makes sense. An amateur libriomancer with nobody to guide him... but why was he alone? Why didn't the Porters find him?\"\n\nI took out my phone and called Ponce de Leon. If anyone would know about operating under the Porters' radar, it was him. He might also have an idea how someone could suddenly develop magical abilities. His phone went to voice mail. I left a brief message, then turned back to Smudge. When he wasn't setting things on fire or running laps, the fire-spider was a pretty good listener.\n\n\"Two years ago, Margie was there to meet her son when he came home from Afghanistan. Between then and now, someone wrote him out of her memories.\" Possibly Charles himself, building another roadblock to anyone who might try to find him. \"And then he started killing Porters.\"\n\nNo, first he had written V-Day. I picked up the book and began to read more closely, losing myself in the story.\n\nLena emerged from the house an hour later and handed me a withered, blackened flower. \"She's back to the way she was. As far as Margie remembers, she had only one son. She's pissed as hell at you, but doesn't know exactly why.\"\n\n\"I think I know what happened to her other son.\" I folded the corner of the page I was reading and flipped back to an earlier chapter. \"Listen to this. It's immediately after Jakob Hoffman's first encounter with a vampire. He's being debriefed and still doesn't understand what it was he saw.\"\n\nThe captain's words were like flies buzzing in the stables back home. Discipline and training compelled Jakob to respond. \"Yes, sir!\" \"No, I didn't see anything, sir.\" \"I don't know, sir.\"\n\nBut he had seen something. He simply didn't understand what it was he had seen. Not yet.\n\nThe first to die had been Private Sterling, a young-faced kid fresh from the States. Bright-eyed and bare-chinned, he made Jakob feel like an old man. Jakob remembered Sterling calling out a challenge, though he hadn't seen anyone.\n\n\"You're jumping at ghosts, Mikey,\" Jakob teased. But Mikey insisted someone was out there. He slid his rifle from his shoulder and stepped away to investigate.\n\nJakob closed his eyes. Mikey was just a kid. The older soldiers were supposed to keep an eye on the new ones, to keep them out of trouble. It was his duty, and he had failed.\n\nHe remembered seeing movement behind the fence that marked the edge of their temporary base. Barbed wire snapping like guitar strings. Mikey's shout, choked off as quickly as it began. Jakob raised his weapon, but by the time he had taken a single step, Mikey was gone, along with whoever... with whatever had taken him.\n\nAnd then all hell had broken loose.\n\n\"You think vampires killed Hubert's brother?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"There's more.\" I skipped ahead. \"Sixty pages later, Jakob goes back to confront his captain.\n\n\"You knew!\" Never had Jakob come so close to physically attacking a superior officer, but even now discipline compelled him to add a grudging, \"Sir.\"\n\nCaptain Nichols didn't say a word. He just stood there, his swarthy face a stone mask. The silence stretched on until Jakob couldn't take it anymore.\n\n\"Well?\" he shouted. \"You knew these things, these vampires were out there. You knew what we were fighting. Why didn't you warn us, sir? Why aren't we sending patrols out with M2s to burn these bastards into ash?\"\n\n\"Specialist Hoffman, are you suggesting you could run this war better than your superiors?\"\n\nHoffman stiffened. \"No, sir. I'm suggesting that if people were told the truth, that we could do a better job of implementing those orders. That if we had been warned, Mikey might still be alive. Sir.\"\n\nNichols didn't answer. He didn't have to. Nothing he could say would justify sending men out unprepared. Those men were Jakob's brothers, and they were dying at the hands of German monsters. Nothing Nichols said could make that all right. Nothing could bring Mikey back.\n\nLena was looking at the house. \"Charles saw something the day his brother disappeared, but he didn't know what. He didn't piece it together until years later, after he discovered the Porters and learned the truth.\"\n\n\"After he learned what we keep hidden from the world,\" I said. \"He blames the Porters for his brother's death, so now he's sending vampires after us as punishment.\"\n\nShe rubbed her arms together. \"Margie said Charles was never right after he came home from Afghanistan. The doctors tried various medications, but he continued to hallucinate. He woke up screaming, and began showing signs of paranoia. They thought it was post-traumatic stress disorder. His memories were fragmented, and there was so much he had to relearn. He couldn't even read when he first woke up from the attack.\" She looked at me. \"It was after he started reading that the hallucinations began.\"\n\n\"They weren't hallucinations. That was his magic.\" I closed the book. \"In the end, after they retrieve the Silver Cross, Jakob Hoffman discovers that Nichols and several other superior officers are under the influence of dark magic. He steals the cross and uses it to unleash the vampires against Nichols and the rest of the officers who betrayed them. It's brutal, effective, and impossible to cover up. A two-page epilogue describes the public outrage. Whole governments are overthrown, and the world unites to wipe out the undead.\"\n\n\"That's his end game,\" said Lena. \"Use his vampires to attack the Porters, show the world what's been kept from them, and start a war.\"\n\n\"Please tell me his mother knows where we can find him.\"\n\nShe passed me a piece of paper with directions. \"Margie remembered him wiping her memory. He told her he was doing it to protect her, that she was better off not knowing what was happening to him. The last thing he did before casting that spell was to make her sign over the deed to the family hunting camp.\"\n\nI had just merged onto 127 North when Ponce de Leon misted onto the rearview mirror. Lena had put the top down before we left, and the air rushing past made it difficult to hear de Leon's greeting.\n\n\"You know, I have a phone,\" I shouted.\n\nHe glanced past me, and when he spoke again, his voice was amplified by the car's speakers. \"And which is more likely to be tapped, your phone or my magic?\"\n\nHe had a point. I wondered which worried him more: that a murderer might listen in on our conversation, or that the Porters might do so. \"Have you ever heard of someone gaining magical abilities as a result of an injury to the brain?\"\n\n\"Not precisely, no.\"\n\n\"So be precise.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't the Porters be a better resource for this sort of question, Isaac?\" His question had only a shadow of his usual taunting, which worried me.\n\n\"What can I say? I seem to be running out of friends.\"\n\nWith an opening like that, I would have expected a killer jab at my personality, but de Leon merely sighed and turned away. \"Oh, Johannes. I warned him...\"\n\n\"Warned him about what?\"\n\n\"Do you know how to perform a locking spell, Mister Vainio?\"\n\nI wasn't sure my efforts in Detroit counted. \"I managed to seal off a book by\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't ask about books.\"\n\nI felt like he had punched me from inside my own rib cage. The car drifted onto the rumble strips to the right of the road as his words sank in. Lena grabbed the wheel, guiding us back into our lane.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said. \"Are you saying you can lock people?\"\n\nHe smiled and spread his hands. \"The terms of my exile prevent me from divulging certain secrets. This is nothing but conjecture on your part.\"\n\nA locking spell to prevent someone from accessing his magic. \"Why?\"\n\n\"What would you do with individuals who became dangerous or unmanageable?\" de Leon asked. \"Magical imprisonment isn't terribly cost-effective, and execution seems rather extreme.\"\n\n\"Banishment works,\" Lena suggested.\n\nDe Leon smirked. \"Does it really? We'll see.\"\n\n\"Locking someone's power wouldn't be enough,\" I said slowly. Maybe you could seal off a man's magic, but that wouldn't prevent him from returning the next day with a high-powered rifle and taking his revenge, or from simply going to the media to spill the truth about the Porters. \"You'd have to erase his memories of magic, too.\"\n\n\"Keep going,\" said de Leon. \"This is a fascinating mental exercise.\"\n\nIt would need to be a selective wipe. Total amnesia would raise too many questions. But how? Gutenberg was a libriomancer. We couldn't simply rewrite a human being, erasing whole chapters out of his life.\n\nNo, I assumed we couldn't do it. It was becoming more and more clear how much had been withheld from my training. Had Ray Walker known about this? Did Pallas? \"How often do they do it? Lock people?\"\n\nDe Leon shrugged. \"As you know, I've not been a member of your little club for many years.\"\n\n\"Hubert's injury broke that lock,\" Lena said.\n\n\"How?\" I asked.\n\n\"The brain can rewrite itself to some extent, bypassing damaged areas,\" she said. \"As he healed, his brain could have found a way around those spells. He would have started to remember what had been taken from him. That's why he was lashing out at Porters. They stole his magic and his memories.\"\n\nAnger narrowed my vision as I yanked the wheel and sped past a semi. It was disturbingly easy to imagine myself in Hubert's place. If things had gone differently two years ago, if Ray hadn't been there to speak on my behalf, would they have stolen my magic, too? I had given up magic for two years, but to lose even the awareness of magic, to have those memories ripped away...\n\nWhat had it been like for Hubert? First the explosion, then awakening in the hospital. The disorientation, the pain of his injuries, and the memories swelling free and floating to the surface. Had it been a gradual thing, or had his previous life returned to him in a single overwhelming flash?\n\n\"If Pallas and the other higher-ups know about this practice,\" Lena said slowly, \"why haven't they pieced it together and gone after Hubert?\"\n\n\"Excellent question.\" De Leon sounded like a professor praising a favorite student.\n\n\"You couldn't just erase Hubert's memories,\" I said, my heartbeat growing sharper as I worked through the implications. \"They don't want lowly field agents or catalogers knowing what they've done. They'd have to erase Hubert from our memories as well, to make sure we didn't question the disappearance of a colleague. If Hubert has access to Gutenberg's knowledge, he could have worked the same spell to hide himself from the memories of the Regional Masters.\"\n\n\"What about the records?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Victor Harrison.\" I glanced at the mirror, but de Leon neither confirmed nor denied my guess. \"We thought the attack on Harrison was a way to tap into our communications, but that was only part of it. Harrison also had access to our databases. Hubert could have used him to wipe his records.\"\n\n\"That could be why he stole those books from the archive,\" Lena said. \"Not to use their magic, but to figure out how to reverse a magical lock. If there are others like Hubert, he could be planning to help them.\"\n\n\"Or he could be trying to reverse engineer the process, to find a way to do to Gutenberg and the rest of the Porters what they did to him.\" I needed time to process everything, to sort through the various pieces, but one significant question remained unanswered. \"I reached through one of those books, trying to find Hubert. He sent something back after me. Something that felt alive, made of hatred and desperate hunger. I've never felt magic like that, powerful enough to wipe me out of existence as casually as you or I might slap a mosquito.\"\n\nThe last traces of humor vanished from de Leon's face. When he spoke, he was as cold and sober as I had ever seen. \"You are a very fortunate man, Isaac Vainio. Do the Porters know about this?\"\n\n\"We told Nicola Pallas what happened,\" said Lena.\n\nI saw comprehension in his eyes. \"She forbade you from leaving, didn't she? And you defied her.\"\n\n\"You know what that was. What Hubert conjured up to destroy me.\"\n\nThe muscles in de Leon's jaw twitched, like he was struggling to speak. He shouted in frustration, then threw back his head and laughed bitterly. \"Johannes, you fool!\" His hands seemed to grab the sides of the mirror, and he leaned in close. \"I would tell you what it is you face, and perhaps even help you to survive your next encounter long enough to save Gutenberg's life. Only Gutenberg's own geis prevents me.\" Another laugh, this one softer. \"He would have appreciated the irony, I think.\"\n\n\"So why aren't the Porters doing more?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"'Why do the other pieces stay behind?' ask the pawns.\" De Leon chuckled and brushed his mustache with thumb and forefinger. \"The Porters are doing what they have always done. They are preparing to eliminate the threat and contain the damage, once you or another of their pawns flush out their quarry. Only I'm afraid they underestimate the danger. With Gutenberg gone, there's not a single one who remembers...\"\n\n\"Remembers what?\" I demanded.\n\n\"Find Gutenberg,\" de Leon said urgently. \"If the thing you saw enters his mind, then what you experienced will be a mere hint of the suffering to come.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked. \"Where did it come from, and if the Porters know about this threat, why hasn't that information been shared?\"\n\n\"Those, Isaac Vainio, are some of the many questions that led to my eventual departure from the Porters.\" He moved closer, until his eyes filled the mirror. \"If you fail to rescue Gutenberg,\" de Leon said softly, \"then I promise whatever is left of you will answer to me.\"\n\nHe disappeared before I could respond.\n\n\"It isn't right,\" Lena said. \"Rewriting a man's mind. Stealing his memories.\"\n\n\"We don't know what Hubert did.\" It was little more than a token protest. Punish me, imprison me, even kill me if the crime warranted it. But don't strip away the very thing that defines me.\n\n\"I won't let the Porters do that to you,\" Lena said, as if reading my thoughts.\n\n\"Given what de Leon said, that might be a moot point.\" I pushed the gas pedal, and the needle jumped past eighty. \"How long until we reach the camp?\"\n\n\"About a hundred miles or so.\"\n\nMy knuckles were white on the wheel. \"Plenty of time to see what Ponce de Leon's custom-spelled car can do.\"\n\nIt took most of the afternoon to find our way to the dirt back roads leading to Charles Hubert's hunting cabin in the woods. The little convertible jolted and lurched through ruts and canyons left by spring rains. Birch trees leaned together on either side, their branches forming a canopy that blotted out the sky.\n\nHubert wasn't the only one with property in these woods. We passed four other hand-painted signs before reaching the turnoff another mile or so down the road. I shifted into first gear. Tree roots jabbed the tires, and exposed rock scraped the underside of the car, making me cringe.\n\nWe had to stop twice so that Lena could clear fallen branches from the road. They had been there for a while, judging from the dead leaves, which meant nobody had driven this road for weeks.\n\nThe air over Smudge rippled with heat, though whether that was due to whatever waited for us at Hubert's cabin or to my own driving, I couldn't say. I checked my directions, then killed the engine. \"The camp should be another quarter mile up ahead.\"\n\n\"I'll check it out.\" She retrieved her bokken from the back and thrust them through her belt. She walked to the nearest birch and climbed it like a ladder, her fingers sinking into the wood as she pulled herself higher. Once she was about twenty feet up, she strode from branch to branch, holding the trunks for support. The leaves soon hid her from sight.\n\nI checked my books, mentally reviewing which weapons would be best against a possessed libriomancer. The Odyssey was starting to show signs of char, but I should be able to get more Moly, and I needed to be able to counter whatever Hubert might throw at us. A stun grenade would be good if we could get the drop on him.\n\nI thought back to what de Leon had said. Whatever Hubert had inside of him, it was enough to frighten one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. If de Leon was nervous, my chances were pretty dismal. But if we could sneak in long enough to find and rescue Gutenberg...\n\nInvisibility. Speed. Silence. We needed to be magic-enhanced ninjas. I picked out a few more titles, then looked over my books for healing magic. Possession couldn't be cured, not once it had gone this far. There was nothing I could do to save whatever remained of Charles Hubert.\n\nLena rapped on the window. I yelled and dropped the books I had been studying. Okay, I needed some ninja magic. Lena seemed to be doing fine on her own.\n\n\"It's abandoned,\" Lena said as I climbed out of the car. \"Looks like he left a while ago.\"\n\n\"Dammit.\" I lifted Smudge to my shoulder. He was hot to the touch. \"Are you sure? This is not a happy spider.\"\n\n\"The place is a wreck, Isaac. Nothing lives there now except maybe the raccoons.\"\n\nI gathered my books and followed her down the road. A short distance on, it branched to the left into an overgrown clearing beside a plain-looking wooden cabin. What was left of it, at any rate.\n\n\"Automatons?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Maybe.\" Something had smashed its way into the cabin. Only two of the four walls remained. Half of the roof had splintered and fallen in, and the rest sagged dangerously. A wooden staircase on the far side led downhill toward a small stream.\n\nThe interior walls that remained were unfinished, and the floorboards were bare plywood. A flannel jacket hung from a peg on the wall. A set of shelves had collapsed, spilling canned food beside a rust-dotted refrigerator that looked to be at least forty years old. Torn, moldy books were strewn through the wreckage, along with something metallic.\n\nI stepped closer, testing the floor. An ominous cracking made me back away. \"Could I borrow a sword?\"\n\nLena handed me one of her bokken. I used it to poke at the books, searching for the glint I had spied. After a few attempts, I uncovered a gold coin slightly larger than a quarter. I slid it close enough to pick up and brushed it off on my sleeve. Though worn, I could make out the image of a stern-looking woman and the words \"Dei Gratina.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"A two-guinea coin.\" I flipped it to Lena. \"A piece of treasure from Treasure Island. It's a training exercise. Ray had me create and dissolve that same coin time and again in our first year working together.\" I stared at the ruined books. \"Hubert was practicing.\"\n\n\"You think the Porters noticed?\"\n\n\"And sent an automaton to deal with him? Maybe.\" I turned in a slow circle. A clear, grassy area the width of a two-lane road led down to the stream. On the other side of the clearing, a pair of pine trees had toppled over, the trunks splintered like matchsticks. Most of the needles had fallen off, forming a brown carpet on the ground.\n\n\"Hubert walked away from this,\" said Lena. \"So what happened to whoever or whatever attacked him?\"\n\nI took Heart of Stone from my jacket and pulled out the enchanted sunglasses I had used before. Beneath one of the fallen trees, the air rippled slightly, like a cloaking device from an old SF flick.\n\nSmudge grew hotter as I approached. I heard the telltale puff as his body ignited, and leaned my head to the left to avoid singeing my ear. I pointed to the distortion. Lena readied her bokken and moved downhill, approaching from the other side.\n\nSomething clinked underfoot. I held up a hand for Lena to wait. I couldn't see anything in the dirt or grass. I crouched, moving my hands slowly through the knee-high weeds until I found what I had stepped on: a pair of invisible metal blocks, each one the size of a small LEGO brick. Both were smooth on all but one side, where small ridges formed the letters I and W.\n\nI clutched them in my fist and continued toward the magical distortion. Lena extended one of her bokken, giving whatever it was a gentle poke. \"It's heavy,\" she said. \"Feels like metal.\"\n\nPonce de Leon would have yanked the concealment spell aside like a stage magician pulling a tablecloth from beneath a vase. I had to do it the hard way.\n\nI went through six sprigs of Moly, setting them around whatever it was and watching each flower wilt and die as it leached away the magic hiding this thing from our sight.\n\nI removed the sunglasses and hung them from a belt loop. Even without them, I could now make out a dark shape, larger and broader than a man. Smudge ran down my body, igniting dead pine needles as he scurried away. I stomped out the small flames he left behind. Smudge scrambled up an old beech tree, where he turned around and refused to come back down.\n\n\"That's not a good sign.\" I pulled out a blaster and aimed it at the shape, just to be safe.\n\nI had always thought the dissolution of magic should have more pizzazz: swirling lights, colored smoke... even just a loud popping sound. Unfortunately, the universe didn't share my taste in special effects. I saw the shine of metal, and then\u2014\n\n\"Shit!\" I scrambled back, tripping over fallen branches.\n\nSprawled before us, pinned face-up by a four-inch-wide branch that speared it to the earth, was one of Gutenberg's automatons."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "Few people ever saw one of Gutenberg's mechanical enforcers. Far fewer walked away from the experience. I swallowed and stepped closer. A layer of dirt and pine needles blanketed the automaton, meaning it hadn't moved in a while. The trunk of the fallen tree had rolled to one side, crushing the automaton's left arm and leg into the dirt and leaving that single branch protruding from its chest.\n\nThe automaton looked like an eight-foot-tall tailor's dummy, clad in silver armor made up of metal blocks fitted together so perfectly they appeared to be a single fluid layer. I unclenched my fist and looked at the blocks I had picked up. They matched the armor, and I could see where some of the blocks had been ripped away to expose dark, aged wood.\n\nThe head had been split like an apple to reveal the mechanism inside. Bronze gears and broken cables littered the ground between the halves. One eye had fallen loose, a perfect black marble the size of a plum.\n\nI touched the right arm, half-expecting the automaton to come to life and grab me for daring to disturb its rest. When nothing happened, I swept off the worst of the dirt. A crack in the arm exposed the hammered metal joint of the elbow, and the wooden hand had been smashed, revealing smaller skeletal rods and hinges.\n\nMore metal blocks lay scattered in the dirt. I picked up another and scraped the dirt away to reveal a backward letter F.\n\n\"Movable type,\" I whispered. These were what made up the automaton's armor. Metal blocks, each one hand-cast and filed to perfection. Awe at what I was holding warred with intestine-knotting fear of the thing lying so close. Awe won. I was holding magical history. For all I knew, it had been Gutenberg himself who poured molten metal into the hand-molds to create these letters, though these were significantly larger than the pieces of type he had used for his printing press.\n\nThe blocks on the automaton faced inward, the letters stamping the wooden body. I crouched over the thing's stomach, fear all but forgotten as I examined the exposed wood where the pine branch had staked the thing to the ground.\n\n\"Isaac, are you sure that's smart?\"\n\nI barely heard. The wooden torso had been hand-carved; I could see the tool marks. The surface of the wood was a deep, oiled brown. I spat on my fingers and rubbed away the worst of the dirt. I could see the letters imprinted into the surface of the wood. \"This thing is like a living printing press.\" No, not just a press, but a living book. I sat back, trying to absorb what we had discovered.\n\nLena touched two fingers to the exposed wood.\n\n\"Be careful. It's a construct, fueled by magic, and it retained enough power to conceal itself until my Moly drained that spell.\"\n\n\"What could do this?\" Lena gestured to the split head and the impaled chest.\n\n\"Charles Hubert. Meaning we are seriously outmatched.\" A flicker of light pulled my attention toward Smudge, who had managed to set the side of his tree on fire. I grabbed a broken branch and extended it toward him until he climbed onto the end. Lena climbed up and beat out the flames with one hand.\n\nI transferred Smudge to a bit of exposed rock and searched the woods to either side. \"Keep an eye out. He might just be freaking out about the automaton, but if not...\"\n\nLena flexed her shoulders and gave her swords a quick spin.\n\nI slipped the sunglasses back on. The sprigs of Moly appeared as shadows, empty holes in the faint magic that flowed even now from the automaton.\n\nThis automaton was hundreds of years old, one of only twelve in existence, constructed with some of Gutenberg's earliest spells. Never, to the best of my knowledge, had anyone managed to destroy an automaton. Though given what I had learned, maybe Gutenberg had raised an entire army of mechanical warriors, and that knowledge had simply been wiped from our histories.\n\nDissecting its magic could reveal how Gutenberg had animated these things; it could help me to understand the very foundation of libriomancy. But I trusted Smudge's instincts. It was time to get out of here. Reluctantly, I turned away from the automaton and headed back toward the cabin.\n\n\"We should gather up those books to see what else Hubert was studying. If he found something with the power to stop an automaton, that might...\"\n\nMy voice trailed off. One of the ruined books in what remained of the cabin was magically active. I pushed the sunglasses higher on the bridge of my nose, squinting at what appeared to be a rip in reality, edged in char. \"Uh-oh.\"\n\n\"Uh-oh as in this is going to be hard, or uh-oh as in we should be running away as fast as we can?\" Lena joined me, swords ready.\n\n\"Do you remember how I tried to find Hubert, back in the auto factory in Detroit? I think Hubert has done something similar here.\" I stepped onto the cabin floor, slowly shifting my weight forward until the boards bowed and cracked. Lena jabbed one bokken into the ground and crouched, touching the floorboards. The wood creaked as she used her magic. Through the glasses, I could see the plywood strengthening, the fibers knitting together.\n\nI crawled forward to snatch the book. The cover was torn away, and exposure to the wind and rain had taken its toll, but the interior pages were still legible. The page header revealed this to be The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"One of the characters in Hubert's head comes from Holmes.\" That couldn't be a coincidence. Was possession the result of overusing this book, which was badly charred? Or did Moriarty's connection to the text make it easier for Hubert to access its magic? There had been frustratingly few studies on the effects of possession on magic.\n\n\"Can you seal it?\" Lena asked.\n\nI grimaced. The safest way would be to access the book's magic myself, then use that connection to close off whatever Hubert had done. It was the same strategy I had used to end Deb DeGeorge's chlorine gas attack. Only Deb hadn't been using a text so damaged it could fail catastrophically, unleashing God only knew what.\n\nI peered over the top of my glasses. Even without them I could see the magical damage, like someone had held the book spine-first over an open flame. I wondered briefly if the connection worked both ways, if I could use this book to peek in on Hubert again.\n\nWith that thought came the memory of the last time, and the madness that had found me there. I shuddered.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\nI tried to will my hands to stop shaking. \"I can do this now, or I can do it safely. I can't do both.\" And I wasn't all that sure about the \"safely\" part, even if I had a month to study.\n\nA flash of light momentarily blinded me. I ripped off the glasses and rubbed tears from my eyes, trying to focus on the thing that had materialized in the woods on the far side of the cabin.\n\n\"They're a lot more intimidating when they're moving,\" Lena said, raising both bokken and stepping in front of me.\n\nAn automaton stepped out of the woods like an oversized armored knight. Metal enclosed its body, all save the head and hands. Those glassy black eyes found us, and a jaw that made me think of a ventriloquist's dummy opened slightly as it strode forward.\n\nEven as we backed away, I found myself wondering if automatons were capable of speech, or if the mouth was just an aesthetic touch. Without a word, Lena and I split up. She retreated downhill, while I backed toward the car. I spotted Smudge in the edge of my vision, burning like a miniature sun on the stone where I had left him.\n\nThe automaton followed me. I snatched a book and read faster than I ever had in my life, snatching a laser pistol and firing before the barrel had fully cleared the text. I vaporized the corner of the book, and the red beam splattered against the automaton's metal armor without doing the slightest damage.\n\n\"Just like the thing in Detroit?\" Lena shouted.\n\n\"Looks that way.\" Magic was useless against an automaton. I fled into the woods, hoping the trees would slow it down. No such luck. I glanced back to see wooden fists smashing trees aside like twigs.\n\nA chunk of concrete the size of my head smashed into the automaton, exploding into a cloud of gray dust. The impact would have killed a human instantly, and even a vampire might have thought twice. The automaton merely staggered, then turned to face Lena.\n\nShe had stabbed her bokken into the cabin's foundation and used them to pry off large, jagged blocks of concrete. She hurled another, and the automaton knocked it aside with one wooden fist.\n\nI tossed the useless laser pistol away and switched to a David Weber book. Sweat dripped into my eyes, blurring my vision, and my entire body shook with fear and adrenaline. The pulse rifle I wanted barely fit through the pages. I dropped the book and hefted the rifle to my shoulder.\n\nThe automaton whirled again. The things were supposed to be able to sense magic. Every time I reached into a book, I was essentially shouting, \"Come and get me!\"\n\nI sighted at the ground in front of the automaton and pulled the trigger. Tiny explosive darts spat from the barrel at supersonic speeds. The automaton's foot sank into a smoking hole. I fired again, blasting the ground where it stood. Shooting this thing directly might not work, but maybe I could bury it long enough for us to escape. Clay and rock sizzled, and sparks shot through the smoke.\n\nWith another flash of light, the thing vanished from my makeshift pit and reappeared down by the stream.\n\n\"That's cheating,\" Lena complained.\n\nI hurried toward her. \"Get out of here. Take the Triumph, and contact Pallas. Tell the Porters what we've learned.\" I blasted the ground again, trying to slow the automaton down.\n\n\"Right.\" She grunted as she hurled another chunk of concrete. \"Because the unstoppable clockwork golem will never catch up with a forty-year-old car lurching up a dirt road in first gear.\"\n\nI fired at a tree, hoping to topple it onto the automaton. Maybe that was what Hubert had done to destroy the other one. Explosive darts shredded the trunk, but the tree fell too slowly and at the wrong angle, missing by a good twenty feet.\n\nLena hit me in the shoulder with the butt of her weapon, hard enough to make me stagger. \"Don't do that again.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Right, no more shooting trees.\n\nLena raised her swords. \"The hands and feet are exposed wood. If it would stay still long enough for me to grab hold, I might be able to destroy this thing from the inside.\"\n\n\"Even if it wasn't protected from magic, it would crush you the instant you tried.\" Before I could say anything more, the automaton leaped forward.\n\nLena grabbed the back of my jacket and hurled me aside. She spun back to face it, raising one arm to block its swing.\n\nI heard bone crack, followed by Lena's shout of pain. This was a woman who had outmuscled vampires, and the automaton batted her aside like a rag doll. Her left arm was shattered, her sleeve torn and bloody.\n\n\"Lena, go!\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\" She held her arm tight against her side as she pushed herself upright. She jumped back, dodging the next swing, but pain made her cry out again. She stumbled and grabbed a young birch tree for balance. \"Besides, you've got the keys.\"\n\n\"Dammit!\" I switched books, this time pulling out a copy of Peter and Wendy. Just as before, my use of magic yanked the automaton's attention back to me. I held the book over my head and shook it like a salt shaker. Fine dust sprinkled from the pages. I thought back to the kiss Lena and I had shared that morning, and fueled by fairy magic and happy thoughts, shot into the air like Superman. I tossed the car keys toward Lena, then spun in midair to face the automaton. \"That's right, catch me if you can!\"\n\nIt could. There was another blink of light, and then it was high overhead, dropping toward me like a missile. I swore and swerved wildly, barely dodging the thick-fingered hand that clapped shut mere inches from my leg. Trees shook as the automaton crashed into the ground.\n\nI was well above the treetops, which made both Lena and the automaton look like toys. If I fell from this height, it was an even bet whether I'd die when I impacted the ground, or if the tree branches would just batter me to a broken but breathing pulp. I curved to the side, my guts lurching like I was on the world's worst roller coaster.\n\nThe automaton merely watched, its eyes glowing like tiny stars. The dust clinging to my hair and clothes began to sizzle, and I felt myself losing altitude.\n\n\"Not fair.\" It was one thing to absorb magical attacks, but nobody had ever told me they could reach out and drain the magic from others. I dove toward the trees, trying to reach something solid. I stretched out my hands, reaching for a branch\u2014\n\nThe last of the fairy dust dissolved. Lena shouted my name, though the air rushing past my ears made it hard to hear. The branch I had hoped to catch struck my palms like a baseball bat and tore out of my grasp. The impact spun my legs over my head, and another branch hit me in the back. Something sliced the side of my face. Wood cracked and split, and then the earth slammed into me.\n\nI tried to sit up, but a wave of pain and nausea crushed that idea. I could see the automaton striding toward me. Two of them, actually, though I assumed my doubled vision was a side effect of the impact. Blood pooled inside my cheek, along with a shard of something sharp that might have been part of a tooth.\n\n\"Isaac!\"\n\nI tried to wave Lena off, but my arm wouldn't work. I looked down, and the sight of my dislocated shoulder made me queasy. I spat and looked up at the automaton. \"I don't suppose I could interest you in a bribe?\"\n\nWooden fingers reached for me, and then Lena hit the automaton with a tree. The force of her one-handed swing knocked the thing off its feet, a good six feet into the clearing.\n\n\"Stay down,\" she said as she limped past me. Her face was swollen and bloody. Her weapon was a five-inch-thick maple tree. She had sheared away the roots and branches, creating what was essentially an enormous wooden club.\n\nThe automaton was already coming toward her. She shifted her grip, braced herself, and smashed the legs out from beneath it. The tree whooshed through the air overhead as she twirled and slammed the end down on the automaton's face.\n\n\"Lena, you can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up, Isaac.\" She swung again. The automaton blocked, and the tree cracked against its arm. The broken end fell away, and she stepped back, adjusting her grip. \"I couldn't save Nidhi. I'm not losing you.\"\n\nI tried to stand, but the effort made me throw up. I had probably given myself a concussion with that landing.\n\nLena thrust the broken tree like a sword. The automaton caught it in both hands and crushed it to splinters, then backhanded Lena into the woods, a blow that would have killed a human being instantly. I saw her push herself to her knees and prayed she would stay down.\n\nBut she wouldn't, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to help her. The automaton turned back to me.\n\nWe should have fled the moment I found that book... though once an automaton had your magical scent, they were supposed to be able to find you anywhere. I wondered briefly why Hubert hadn't used them more often. Why bother with vampires when you had unstoppable mechanical soldiers?\n\nI saw Lena hobbling toward us again. I shook my head. \"Get out of here!\"\n\n\"No.\" She crouched at the base of a large maple tree and shoved her fingers into the dirt. A short distance away, roots punched out of the earth and coiled around the automaton's feet.\n\nIt ripped free without apparent effort and strode toward her. She swore and stood, back against the tree.\n\n\"Over here,\" I shouted, but it ignored me. Wooden hands reached for Lena's throat.\n\nHer lips pressed into a tight smile. Her eyes met mine, and she blew me a quick kiss. With her good hand, she grabbed the automaton's wrist.\n\nAnd then both Lena and the automaton fell backward into the tree.\n\nI could hardly move, let alone reach the tree where Lena had vanished. If my body hurt this much with adrenaline still pumping through me, I didn't want to know what I would feel like later.\n\nI had left the Narnia book behind, not wanting to overuse its magic. I had swapped it for a gaming tie-in novel, one which came with potions of healing. Unfortunately, that novel was in one of my back pockets, meaning I had to sit up or roll over to reach it.\n\nI braced myself with my good arm and pushed onto my elbow. My eyes watered, and I cursed in three different languages until the pain receded enough for me to sit up the rest of the way. Sweat was dripping from my forehead by the time I managed to tug the bottom of the jacket out from beneath me.\n\n\"Right,\" I gasped. \"From now on, the healing book goes in the front pocket.\"\n\nI wiped my eyes and did my best to ignore the buzz of fictional minds reaching for mine as I thrust my hand into the book and plucked a healing potion from a halfling thief. I downed the entire thing, then gasped as my shoulder wrenched back into place.\n\nIt wasn't quite as effective as Lucy's Narnian potion, but it fixed the worst of the damage. Cuts faded to red lines, and bruises dulled somewhat. Between crashing through branches on the way down, then landing on my books, my skin remained a mottled mess of black and blue. My tooth was still chipped, too.\n\nI was more worried about internal injuries. I pressed my abdomen, feeling for firmness and pain, but found nothing worse than bruises.\n\nBlackened weeds showed where Smudge had fled into the woods. I found him cowering in the dirt in a circle of charred pine needles. I waited for him to scramble back up to his customary spot on my shoulder, then turned to the tree where Lena had vanished.\n\nI pressed a sweaty palm to the tree. The bark was undamaged and cool to the touch. Their feet had dug deep into the dirt, gouging the earth. I could see where she had braced herself for that one final pull.\n\nSo why hadn't she emerged? I didn't fully understand Lena's magic, or the automaton's for that matter. They could have both been killed, or they could still be battling within the tree. And if Lena lost that fight, could the automaton claw its way back into our world?\n\nI picked up the rifle and walked toward the cabin. I kept seeing Lena's face right before she vanished: pain tightening the lines of her neck and jaw, eyes narrowed with determination. Again and again, I watched in my mind as the automaton beat the hell out of her. Her broken arm, her cries of pain ripping free even though she was obviously trying to hold them back.\n\nBy the time I spied the discarded copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I was too pissed off to think. I raised the rifle to my shoulder. \"Let's see if your little peephole works both ways, you son of a bitch.\"\n\nI switched the rifle to full auto and pulled the trigger, emptying the magazine into the book in a mere four seconds.\n\nThat might not have been the best move. Magical backlash surged through the gun like an electrical shock, flinging me backward. The rifle dissolved in my hands, leaving nothing but a coating of greasy black dust on my palms. I landed on my back hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs.\n\nSmudge skittered off my shoulder to the ground, flame rippling on his back as he turned around to glare at me accusingly.\n\n\"Sorry about that.\" I wiped my hands on my jeans and sat up. I had dug a smoking hole at least twenty feet deep and five feet wide. The book was gone. I retrieved my sunglasses. One lens was shattered, but the other worked well enough. I searched the hole, making sure no trace of magic remained.\n\n\"Come on, Smudge.\" The smart thing would be to get the hell out of here. If Lena hadn't destroyed the automaton, if it managed to escape the tree, then at any moment I could find myself face-to-face with a mechanical nightmare, with no dryad bodyguard to save my ass this time around. Or Hubert could send another one after me.\n\nBut Lena was in that tree, too. She hadn't left me, and I'd be damned if I was going to abandon her.\n\nI gathered up every book I could find from the cabin and brought them to the tree. Back at my house, Lena had said she knew I was home because she sensed my arrival through the trees, meaning she retained some awareness of the outside world. I leaned against the trunk, wondering if she could feel my hands and forehead against the bark. \"Thank you.\"\n\nI sagged to the ground, surrendering to the aftermath of so much magic, but there was one precaution left to take. If the automaton won whatever battle it was waging within the tree, it would try to escape. I recreated the monofilament sword I had used in Detroit. The blade should cut through the tree as quickly as I could swing.\n\nI might not be able to use magical weapons against the automaton, but if it killed Lena, I'd slice the whole damn tree to pieces before I let it back into the world.\n\nI tried to concentrate on the books, sorting those that showed the worst signs of magical char. Those were the books Hubert had used the most. \"What were you doing here?\"\n\nPracticing, yes. But what else? He had come here, to a place that was quiet and familiar and safe. I thought back to the Copper River Library and the sparklers who had attacked me. Had magic come as naturally to Hubert as it had to me? Had he felt the same excitement, the same joy? Even as I had been certain I was about to die at the hands of those vampires, I had been grateful for the chance to use magic one last time.\n\nHow much had he remembered? His anger toward the Porters suggested he knew what had been done to him. Gutenberg had taken away that part of his life once before. He would have wanted to find a way to protect himself. V-Day gave him a weapon, but books took time to write and publish.\n\nThe Silver Cross wouldn't be enough to overpower Gutenberg. Nor should it have worked on automatons, not if they were constructed to absorb magic. I flipped through the first book, an old copy of Dracula. Vampire research, perhaps.\n\nThe next book was Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris. This was probably how Hannibal Lecter had crept into Hubert's mind. I set it aside and reached for the next. The cover was gone, and the first few pages fell away when I opened them. I flipped to the middle of the book and froze. This was Albert Kapr's biography of Johannes Gutenberg.\n\nWe had assumed Hubert's possession was an accident, a side effect of reckless magic use. We had assumed wrong. \"You did it on purpose, didn't you?\"\n\nThe automatons were built to protect their creator. To protect Gutenberg. So the best way to defend against them was to become Gutenberg.\n\nIt wouldn't have been perfect. The Gutenberg of this book was a creation of the author, a character built by historians. Transporting that character's mind from the pages into our world would have resulted in a flawed, deranged copy of Gutenberg: a madman, but one who retained enough of Gutenberg's identity to confuse the automatons.\n\nAnd then, once Hubert had opened himself to one book, removing the barriers between himself and the magic, other characters began to seep into his thoughts. Had any of those been deliberate? Had he welcomed Moriarty as a genius who could help him to stay one step ahead of the Porters?\n\nIt was a desperate, brilliant move, one that would ultimately destroy him.\n\nI was so lost in the possibilities that I almost missed the movement from the tree. Alertness jolted through my nerves, and I grabbed the sword as slender brown fingers poked through the trunk.\n\nI waited, barely breathing, but the arm reaching toward me was unmistakably Lena's. Wood and bark seemed to flow around her, flexible and fluid as the tree birthed her back into this world. I dropped the sword and stepped forward to catch her as she fell.\n\nFor one horrible moment, I thought she was dead, her body expelled by the tree. And then her arms tightened around my shoulders.\n\nI lowered her to the ground, leaning her against the tree. She started to smile, then hissed and touched her swollen, bloody lip. \"Remind me not to do that again.\"\n\n\"The automaton?\"\n\nShe wiped her chin. \"He's not coming back.\"\n\nI snatched the gaming book and created another healing potion. The instant she swallowed, some of the tension began to ease from her body. The swelling on her face diminished, and the bones of her arm knit together with an audible crackling sound. \"Thanks.\"\n\nSmudge scrambled down my arm and jumped to the ground. I tensed, but he wasn't setting anything on fire. He was simply creeping after a large, bright green luna moth that had fluttered onto another tree.\n\n\"You destroyed one of Gutenberg's automatons,\" I said softly.\n\nLena shrugged.\n\n\"You're not supposed to be able to do that.\"\n\n\"So noted.\" She leaned into me, her head resting on my shoulder. \"Tell you what. You take care of the next one, okay?\"\n\n\"Fair enough.\" I put my arms around her, trying not to jostle her injuries.\n\n\"You're not going to break me, you know.\" Amusement and more warmed her voice, and her breath brushed the skin beneath my jaw.\n\n\"It was after me,\" I said. \"You didn't have to\u2014\"\n\n\"Actually, I did.\"\n\nOf course. She couldn't free Nidhi Shah without trading either Hubert or myself, and since we still hadn't found Hubert... \"We'll get her back.\"\n\nShe pulled back, leaving her hands on my knees. \"That's not what I meant.\" She lifted her head and looked me in the eyes. \"I've never taken a beating like that before. I thought I was dying. But when I saw you fall... it wasn't about saving Nidhi. I couldn't let you die.\"\n\n\"Why?\" The word escaped despite my best efforts. I had always had a problem with asking too many questions, even when I knew better. Especially when I knew better.\n\nLena reached up to cup my face in her hand, her fingers brushing the hair back from my ear, and pulled me close. Her lips found mine, and for a moment I forgot about automatons and possessed libriomancers.\n\nShe broke away. \"It's what I am.\" Her attention slipped past me to Smudge, and her lips quirked. \"To use a metaphor your spider might appreciate, nymphs can be quick to heat up, but once they do, they smolder for a long time.\"\n\nI had no response to that, and Lena didn't give me time to ponder. She stood and pulled me to my feet. \"I'm thinking we might not want to hang around here.\"\n\n\"We can't go quite yet.\" I pointed to the broken automaton, trying to focus. \"If it's my turn to face the next one, I want to know exactly what makes these things tick.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "I stood over the automaton, an untrained coroner about to perform the world's oddest autopsy. The trouble was, even \"dead,\" the automaton was all but invulnerable. Hubert might have been able to impale this thing, but so far I had failed to pry even a single metal block from its wooden body. Smudge watched warily from my shoulder. He had calmed enough to join me, but shifted to and fro, ready to flee at the slightest provocation.\n\nAs eager as I was to uncover the automaton's secrets, I couldn't stop thinking about Lena.\n\nIt had been one kiss, and a relatively brief one at that. We had fought an automaton and survived. Who wouldn't get swept up in the relief and excitement after living through that? Whatever she might feel for me, it didn't change the fact that she was in love with Nidhi Shah.\n\nBut what happened to that love the longer she was separated from Shah? The more time she spent with me...?\n\nI turned away from that train of thought. Lena wasn't a thing to be stolen. She had made her choice. She didn't need me, not with Shah alive and human.\n\nDespite the past week, I knew so little about her power. The way she entered her tree reminded me of my own magic, of reaching into the pages of a story. The tree was her portal to magic. But how could Lena pass into and out of that magic at will? Did the tree absorb and hold her physical body? There was no way that tree had been large enough to contain both Lena and the automaton, suggesting their bodies somehow transformed, becoming a part of the tree.\n\n\"What happened when you pulled the automaton in with you?\" I asked. \"How did you fight it? How do you know it won't escape?\"\n\n\"It's hard to describe,\" she said. \"It fought against me, and against the tree itself. As its strength waned, it tried to steal mine.\" She touched the ground, as if reaching for the roots below to touch those memories. \"That's why it lost. It didn't understand the tree's magic.\"\n\n\"I don't understand either.\"\n\n\"I didn't fight it, Isaac.\" She gestured toward the trees. \"Do they fight the wind? Do they fight the snow and ice in winter? They endure. They live. They grow. Fire a bullet into the trunk, and it will heal, growing to encompass that bullet within itself. Chop off a branch, and the bark will seal the wound.\"\n\n\"Unless you chop the whole thing down,\" I said.\n\nShe glanced away. I wondered if she was remembering her own tree, killed by vampires. \"The automaton tried to take my strength. I let it. The more I flowed through it, the more it became a part of us. A part of the tree.\"\n\n\"The bulk of the automaton's body is wood,\" I mused. That might have made it easier for Lena to absorb it into the tree. I tried again to pry the letters free from the broken body in front of us. \"Can you soften this one enough for me to pull these loose?\"\n\nLena put her hand over mine. She grimaced when she touched the body, but the rigid splinters gradually bowed beneath our grasp. I wiggled one of the letters like a loose tooth, back and forth until it finally twisted free. More letters followed. I set each one down in order and studied the indentations in the wooden body.\n\n\"Lux.\" I checked the blocks to be sure. \"Latin for light.\"\n\nLena pried more letters free from both sides of the word. Even with her magic, they clung hard. It took ten minutes to remove and reconstruct the rest of the sentence.\n\n\"Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux,\" I read. \"And God said, 'Be light made,' and light was made.\"\n\n\"From the Bible?\"\n\n\"Genesis.\" Latin text. I stared at the blocks, excitement prickling the back of my neck. \"Pry off the next row. Hurry!\"\n\nI stopped myself from reaching past her to try to rip the letters free, knowing it would be futile. I placed the letters together one by one while I waited, trying not to fidget. \"Et magicae,\" I whispered as more words formed.\n\n\"Magic?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Yes!\" I flushed and lowered my voice. \"Yes, that's right.\"\n\nShe laughed, but pulled more letters free until I had laid out the entire sentence. \"Et magicae artis adpositi erant derisus et sapientiae gloriae correptio cum contumelia.\" I jumped up, laughing like a madman. \"That's the same spell Gutenberg used for his lock. I knew it sounded familiar.\"\n\n\"Which means what?\" Lena caught my arms. \"Spill it.\"\n\n\"And the delusions of their magic art were put down, and their boasting of wisdom was reproachfully rebuked.\" I picked up one of the letters, cupping it in my hands. \"This is from the Latin Vulgate Bible. The Mazarin Bible.\"\n\n\"Some of us aren't libriomancers, and don't spend our lives memorizing everything we read.\"\n\n\"Also known as the Gutenberg Bible,\" I said. \"This thing is a walking Bible.\" But not a line-by-line reconstruction of the Bible. Gutenberg's Bible had been well over a thousand pages. This was more like clippings, rearranged and hammered into place to create something new. The first line was from Genesis, while the next was from a completely different part of the Bible. The Book of Wisdom, if I was remembering right.\n\n\"Wasn't Gutenberg a devout Christian?\" Lena asked. \"Maybe this was a reflection of his belief. Let your faith be your armor, and all that?\"\n\n\"Not just armor.\" I reread the first row, thinking of how the automaton had first arrived. \"Be light made. It's a spell. That's how they travel. Their bodies transform into light.\"\n\nLena looked at the second sentence. \"The delusions of their magic were put down... another spell. To protect it against magical attacks?\"\n\nI sat down hard. Multiple spells bound together. Individual, self-contained spells combined to power the whole. \"Belief is bound and anchored to books. Gutenberg took that book and pulled it apart, remaking it into this.\" I realized I was shaking my head. \"But you can't do that! If you cut up a book, you start to lose the magical resonance with other copies of that book. You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"You can't.\" Lena pulled off another block. \"He could.\"\n\nI snatched up one of the letters, trying to understand. If they had been smaller, taken from the press itself, then maybe some of the book's magic would have flowed backward through the keys that had created it. Maybe. But these blocks were too large to have come from that press. \"It doesn't make sense!\"\n\n\"How many years did it take Gutenberg to develop printing and libriomancy?\" Lena asked gently.\n\n\"Decades.\" I continued to examine the letters. Gutenberg's studies had included both alchemy and sympathetic magic. Maybe if he melted down the keys from the original press and blended them into\u2014\n\n\"And you expect to figure it all out in one afternoon?\"\n\n\"Not all of it, but\u2014 You don't understand. This creates a whole new model of libriomancy. It's like Copernicus reshaping our understanding of the solar system. It's revolutionary. Everything I thought I knew... there's so much more, just sitting here. Waiting to be deciphered.\"\n\n\"What do you think Charles Hubert is doing while you pore over these blocks?\"\n\nI could have spent weeks, even months examining the automaton, but she was right, dammit. \"You were able to soften the wood to remove the letters. Do you think you could heal it?\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" She studied the split skull and the wood impaling the body. \"Why would I do that, exactly?\"\n\n\"The automatons were created to protect Gutenberg. Hubert destroyed this one, which suggests it wasn't under his control. So if we can repair it, it might lead us to them both.\" One by one, I pressed the letters back into the matching indentations in the wood. They snapped into place, as if the wooden body was the world's strongest magnet. When I was done, Lena gripped the branch in its chest and twisted. Her fingers sank into the wood, all the way to the knuckles. The muscles in her arms, shoulders and neck tightened like ropes as she slowly pulled it free. The other end of the branch had penetrated a good four feet into the earth, hammered by the weight of the falling tree.\n\n\"Aside from the hole in the chest, the most significant damage was to the head.\" I scooted over to examine the two halves, which had fallen away like the shell of an enormous coconut. The jaw hung from a bent brass pin on one side. I gathered other gears and rods from the ground. There were no springs that I could find. Magic took the place of mechanical propulsion.\n\nA metal rod an inch wide jutted from the neck. Broken silver chains threaded through smaller, brass-rimmed holes. I picked up a small wooden wheel which appeared to fit into the back of the empty eye socket. A second wheel followed at an angle from the first. I pressed the glass eye into place. A metal ring was supposed to screw into the front of the socket to hold it there, but that ring was dented beyond repair.\n\n\"Move your hand.\" Lena touched the eye socket, and the wood swelled slightly, just enough to keep the glass sphere from rolling free. She rotated the eye one way, then another. I could hear gears grinding behind the glass.\n\n\"The head rotates side to side on a primary axis here.\" I tapped the rod in the neck. \"This rod threads through a hole in the larger one to allow it to look up and down, giving it a full range of motion.\" I fitted a small gear over the first rod, pressing it down into the neck. The chains would have looped up over the secondary rod, fitting with two spiked gears to provide movement on the vertical axis.\n\nI could visualize most of the mechanism. A secondary chain and gear system ran to the jaw. A copper cone fitted up against the ear, providing hearing. But there were a handful of larger gears and disks that lacked any obvious function. They appeared to fit in the center of the head, but they didn't connect to anything, nor did they provide any additional articulation.\n\nI rubbed the disks clean on my shirt. There were letters along the edges. J-O on one, S-T on another, beautifully etched in careful, flowing calligraphy. The J was even decorated, like an illuminated manuscript in brass. \"This is another spell.\"\n\n\"Maybe that's the automaton's brain.\"\n\n\"That depends on when it was made. In the early sixteenth century, people still didn't understand the brain. Many scientists, da Vinci among them, thought the brain was the seat of the soul.\" If Gutenberg had subscribed to such beliefs, this wouldn't necessarily be the source of the automaton's artificial thoughts, but the metaphorical heart of its magic.\n\nI slid the gears onto either side of the horizontal rod. A smaller gear added a pair of Ns. A sharp-toothed crown-wheel escapement slid over the top of the vertical rod, bringing an H-A. I rotated them together until the letters lined up: JOHANN.\n\n\"Gutenberg wouldn't be the first artist to autograph his work,\" Lena suggested.\n\nI pointed to the S-T on the second disk. \"We're missing a piece.\"\n\nIt was Lena who found the thick cylinder, an inch-high pipe with a jagged upper edge and a magnificently carved F, followed by a smaller U.\n\nI disassembled the disks, sliding the cylinder over the central rod, then pushing the rest into place. Rotating one disk moved the other, and as I lined up the first name, the second came together below. \"Oh, God.\"\n\n\"Who was Johann Fust?\"\n\n\"A businessman,\" I whispered. \"An investor who helped to fund Gutenberg's press. Gutenberg failed to repay the loan, so Fust ended up suing him. The details are scarce, but Fust nearly destroyed him. According to some historians, Fust took Gutenberg's equipment as payment for that debt. One way or another, Fust then went on to set up his own press.\" The gears in my hand twitched, rotating a single click on their own.\n\n\"Do you think Fust made the automatons?\"\n\n\"No. I think this automaton is Fust.\" I sat back, staring at the broken figure. \"Libriomancers cheat,\" I said numbly. We weren't strong enough to work magic any other way. As a traditional sorcerer, Gutenberg had been a failure, so he had spent his life finding another path to power. \"He used the magic of the Bible to define his automatons, to give them their powers, but he's not God. He couldn't give them life, or the independence they needed in order to fight his enemies.\"\n\n\"So he used people?\" Lena stared at the automaton in horror. \"Which means when I dragged that thing into the tree with me, I killed it.\"\n\n\"Or you freed it.\" The gears clicked again. \"Fust supposedly died of the plague. Gutenberg must have gone to him just before he died.\"\n\nHad he revealed his power? Offered Fust the chance to live free of the pain? Death from plague was a nasty way to go. Or had Gutenberg simply ripped Fust's spirit from his body, trapping it in a mechanical head.\n\n\"He enslaved them,\" said Lena. \"Isaac, what happens to Fust if we repair this thing? If he's finally at peace, are we dragging him back into servitude?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Ghosts and spirits... it's hard to separate facts from superstition. Does a medium truly contact ghosts, or does the medium's own magic create the ghost in the first place? I don't think there's a single Porter in North America who can talk to the dead.\" Though there were a handful of vampire species who could theoretically do so. \"Gutenberg has kept so much from the rest of us.\"\n\n\"Can you find him without repairing the automaton?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"Maybe eventually. But we don't have time.\" I jogged back to the Triumph, where I dug out an old space opera. When I returned to Lena and the automaton, I had created a small handheld monitoring pad and a shiny silver pellet the size of my thumb.\n\n\"That looks like the same toy you used on Ted Boyer.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Which could be a problem, now that I think about it. Let me change the frequency.\" I grabbed the pellet, gripped both ends, and twisted forty-five degrees. The light blinked three times. I adjusted a dial on the tracking pad until the red dot appeared again. \"Are you able to carve out a place for this?\"\n\nShe dragged her index finger through the inside of the automaton's head, whittling a groove with her nail. I pressed the explosive into place while a lip of wood grew around it, securing it in place.\n\n\"I'm not sure what's going to happen when we fix this thing,\" I said. \"But if it decides to destroy us, that should take it out.\" They might be invulnerable from the outside, but an explosive nested against the heart of its magic was another matter entirely.\n\n\"Promise me that when this is over, you'll press that button.\"\n\nWhatever Fust might have done to Gutenberg back in the fifteenth century, he had paid for it many times over. I nodded and reached over to the other side of the head, carefully pulling it into place so that the horizontal rod slid into the matching hole below the ear.\n\nLena straightened the rod for the jaw. Her fingers slid between mine as we pushed the head together. Just as before, I felt her magic sinking into the wood, infusing it with life.\n\n\"This was an oak,\" I whispered.\n\n\"That's right.\" She smiled at me as splinters on either side twitched and reached out, knitting the cracks.\n\n\"Hubert couldn't repair it,\" I said. \"That's why he left it behind.\" I couldn't have done it either, not without carving an entirely new head and body. I marveled at the magic flowing through her hands. It was like she was reaching into the tree's past, reminding it of the days when it had stood tall and proud, drinking in the sun and the rain.\n\nThe automaton's fingers twitched, and Smudge seared my ear in alarm. As one, Lena and I rose and backed away. I armed the explosive and held my thumb over the button, just in case. The head turned, then started to twitch. I could hear a metal clicking from within the neck as it tried and failed to straighten its head.\n\n\"I think we missed a piece,\" I said.\n\n\"Do you know who you are?\" Lena asked it.\n\nThe automaton rolled onto its side and slowly pushed itself upright. The hole in its chest was gone, replaced with young, bright wood, naked and unprotected. How many spells lay scattered on the ground, broken and useless?\n\nEven as I asked the question, something crawled over my foot, making me jump. The metal keys were moving through the grass, climbing up the automaton's body like silver insects. The automaton didn't move.\n\nOn impulse, I stepped forward and touched the metal skin. I could feel the individual spells crackling with magic, but the metal nearest the chest was cold and dead.\n\n\"Isaac, what are you doing?\"\n\nMore letters clicked into place, and I felt another line of magic surge to life. The sensation reminded me of steam rushing through a pipe, all of that energy waiting to be tapped and directed. \"He transferred the essence of a living person into another body. Can you imagine what else we could do? You could build prosthetic limbs that respond like living flesh, or entire bodies for people dying of injury or disease.\"\n\n\"Or living weapons,\" Lena said, watching the automaton.\n\nThe automaton stared at us in return. Its jaw hung open, giving it a vaguely shocked and dimwitted expression. We hadn't fixed all of the chains and cables inside. Would those repair themselves with time as well?\n\n\"Johann Fust.\" I waited, but there was no sign of recognition or awareness. After so many centuries, it might not remember who it was. Gutenberg was the only one who knew the automatons' identities, and I couldn't imagine him ever addressing them by name.\n\n\"Isaac... are you sure we should be doing this?\"\n\n\"Fixing a wood-and-metal golem that could crush us both? Not at all.\"\n\n\"No. Trying to save Gutenberg. He enslaved his enemies in these things. He manipulated the minds and memories of people like Charles Hubert. He runs the Porters like his own little dictatorship. Does anyone know what other secrets he might be hiding?\"\n\n\"De Leon might,\" I said.\n\n\"What do you think Ponce de Leon was really banished for?\"\n\nI had asked myself the same question. All I knew was that de Leon had been a Porter for centuries. He had been one of the original twelve, and he had left the organization at some point during the twentieth century.\n\nMaybe he had been right to do so.\n\nThe last of the metal blocks slid into place. The automaton limped forward. The jaw wasn't the only damaged component, but overall, it appeared functional. Protecting Gutenberg would have been one of its core spells, and now those spells had been rebuilt.\n\nWhatever crimes Gutenberg might have committed, we had to find him. We had to stop Charles Hubert, or whatever he had become. \"Where is Johannes Gutenberg?\"\n\nThe clicking in the neck grew louder as the automaton turned to look at me.\n\n\"Gutenberg is in danger.\" It didn't move. Maybe it couldn't hear or understand me, or maybe it wasn't programmed to obey anyone but its creator. I tried again. \"Wo ist Johannes Gutenberg? Er ist in Gefahr.\"\n\nIt was modern-day German, but hopefully whatever was left of Fust might recognize it. The automaton went perfectly still, and I sensed its magic building like a capacitor preparing to discharge. I backed away, gesturing for Lena to do the same.\n\nIt brightened like a miniature sun, and then it was gone. I checked my tracking device. The screen was blank. Panic tightened my throat. If we had blown up our only link to Gutenberg\u2014\n\nThe red dot reappeared, and the map zoomed outward, recalibrating as it picked up the signal. I saved the location. \"We've got him.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "I gripped the wheel with both hands as the Triumph lumbered up the gulley-strewn road. Gravel sprayed from the back tires as we accelerated.\n\n\"Are you going to share the plan with me this time?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"The plan... is to call the Porters for help.\"\n\n\"Suddenly you and the Porters are friends again? How long was I in that tree?\"\n\nI could feel her staring at me. \"I thought that automaton was going to kill you,\" I said softly.\n\n\"It was going to kill both of us,\" she said. \"It didn't.\"\n\n\"But Hubert has others. Not to mention the vampire slaves he's collected.\" The Triumph's traction spells kicked in like a powerful static charge as we rounded a curve. \"They'd crush us both.\"\n\n\"They'd crush you,\" Lena said quietly. \"Not me. You said the Silver Cross lets Hubert control more than just vampires, remember?\"\n\n\"Right. I get crushed, you join Hubert's army of ass-kicking slaves.\" Smudge, too, if Hubert decided a fire-spider was worth the effort. \"Two years ago, Pallas pulled me out of the field for a reason. I rush in alone, and I almost get myself killed. I'm not risking it this time. I'm not risking you.\"\n\n\"You're not alone.\"\n\nMy cell phone buzzed like an angry wasp before I could answer. I slowed long enough to grab it and check the screen, which showed a missed text message and a voice mail.\n\n\"Watch the road.\" Lena tugged the phone away from me. \"The voice mail is from Nicola.\" She switched the phone to speaker so we could both hear.\n\n\"Isaac, this is Nicola Pallas. What the hell did you do?\"\n\n\"I don't think I've ever heard her swear,\" I commented.\n\n\"That's because you've never started a war before,\" said Pallas' voice.\n\nI glanced at Lena, who shrugged. \"It says she left this message almost forty minutes ago.\"\n\n\"Can you hear us?\" I asked.\n\n\"Don't be absurd. I just split a part of my consciousness and transferred it into your voice mail so it could talk to you and report back to me once you tell it what you've done.\"\n\n\"Sweet,\" I whispered. \"You have got to teach me that trick.\"\n\nLena cleared her throat and gave the phone a meaningful look.\n\n\"Sorry. Charles Hubert is possessed by Gutenberg. He sent an automaton to kill us, but Lena destroyed it. We've got Gutenberg's location. It looks like he's near the town of Mecosta. I'll send you the coordinates, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Send them, but don't expect help any time soon,\" Pallas interrupted. \"We've pulled every field agent in the Midwest into Detroit. I'll try to send someone to assist you, but I can't make any promises.\"\n\nLena tensed and jerked the phone closer. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"At six twenty-one tonight, four automatons smashed their way into the Detroit nest. Twelve city blocks have lost power, and Dolingen Daycare is nothing but a crater.\"\n\nMy gut turned to ice. \"What happened to the kids?\"\n\n\"Most had gone home. One of the vampires hauled the rest away. The automatons weren't interested in humans. They're killing every vampire they can find. Most of the vampires are trapped underground. The rest have fled.\"\n\n\"Meaning we have angry, frightened vampires running through the city,\" Lena said.\n\n\"We did this,\" I said. The timing couldn't be an accident. \"When we found Hubert's cabin and destroyed his automaton. He panicked. We pushed him into launching this attack.\"\n\n\"How long will it take you to reach Gutenberg?\" asked Pallas.\n\nI bit my lip, visualizing the highways and calculating speed. \"Twenty minutes if I go all out.\"\n\n\"Do it.\"\n\n\"Hubert isn't stupid,\" I said. \"He'll have kept at least one automaton back to protect him. Maybe more.\" Four were currently attacking Detroit. We had destroyed a fifth, and Johann Fust was a wild card, meaning there could be a half-dozen automatons waiting for us.\n\n\"You said you defeated one,\" said Pallas. \"Do it again. We're doing our best to contain the scene, but we're outnumbered and outpowered.\"\n\n\"I thought you didn't trust me.\"\n\n\"I don't,\" Pallas said flatly. \"However, at this point in time, I need every Porter I can find. Besides, you'd be hard-pressed to make things worse.\"\n\n\"Was that... was that a joke?\"\n\nThe phone went dead. I shifted into fourth gear and gunned the engine, engaging the overdrive. The car surged ahead, magic holding us to the road as we sped down 66 toward Mecosta.\n\n\"Isaac, the text message is from Alice Granach.\" Fear chilled her words. \"It was sent at six-thirty.\"\n\nRight after the automatons attacked the nest. \"What does it say?\"\n\n\"It's just her name and a phone number.\" Lena was already dialing. I heard it ring once, and then a young-sounding male voice answered, \"You've reached Dolingen Properties. How may I direct your call?\"\n\n\"Tell Granach that Isaac Vainio needs to talk to her.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I believe she was expecting you. One moment please.\"\n\nThe speaker began to play what sounded like an old Beach Boys tune, and a minute or so later, Granach picked up. \"Is Lena with you?\"\n\n\"I'm right here,\" said Lena.\n\n\"Good.\" Gunfire crackled in the background. \"I thought you'd want to hear when I drain the blood from your lover.\"\n\n\"The man behind the attack is Charles Hubert,\" Lena shouted. \"We know where he is. We're on our way to end this!\"\n\nGranach didn't answer right away, but the screams and explosions continued from the speaker, interrupted by crackling static. \"Tell me where to find this man. In exchange, the doctor dies quickly.\"\n\nDoctor Shah would die, and then the vampires would find Gutenberg. Everything Charles Hubert had done in the madness of possession paled beside the damage the true Gutenberg could do if Granach turned him. Vampires were nothing but mosquitoes to someone with Gutenberg's power, but depending on what Hubert had done to incapacitate him, he might be vulnerable...\n\n\"We're trying to help you,\" I protested. A minivan honked, and the driver flipped me off as I cut in front of her and hit the gas.\n\n\"Your Porters are more worried about stopping those of us who escaped, and hiding our presence from the mortals.\"\n\n\"Enough,\" Lena snapped, bringing the phone to her face. \"Here's a counteroffer, Granach. Isaac and I will end this attack. Once we do, we're going to have access to everything Charles Hubert has done. The automatons, the magic he's used to control your people, even Gutenberg himself. So you're going to hand Nidhi back to us alive and unharmed, or I will use those weapons to end you. Do we have an understanding?\"\n\nI heard shouting and more gunshots, but Granach didn't answer right away. She was furious, but she was also smart. I imagined her calculating odds, reviewing everything she knew about Lena Greenwood. I realized I was holding my breath, and forced myself to exhale.\n\n\"Agreed,\" Granach said grudgingly. \"But if the automatons reach the heart of our nest, I will see your lover dead before they destroy me.\"\n\nLena hung up and handed me the phone.\n\n\"You weren't bluffing, were you?\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\n\"Awesome.\" I reached forward and flicked the wiper lever twice, activating another spell. True invisibility would have been suicidal, so de Leon had opted instead for a spell that encouraged others to forget what they had seen. I'd piss off plenty of drivers tonight, but they would get over it as soon as I passed out of sight.\n\nMore importantly, if we passed any police cars, they should soon forget who they were chasing and why.\n\nI pushed the car past a hundred miles per hour. As I did my best to dodge through traffic, the rest of my mind struggled to figure out how we were going to take on Charles Hubert and survive.\n\nThe needle was on empty when we reached Mecosta. I stopped at a gas station on the edge of town and filled the tank while Lena hurried inside. It was difficult to plan without knowing exactly what we were heading into. Maybe Hubert had already succumbed to madness, and we'd find him unconscious or dead in some shack in the woods, but I doubted it. More likely, that shack would be guarded by automatons and vampires both.\n\nWe could hold our own against a vampire or two, but Hubert wouldn't make it so easy. The characters in his head might be mad, but they were also brilliant, and Hubert himself had years of military experience.\n\nI peered through the window at the books tucked behind the driver's seat. I had kept a copy of Gutenberg's biography. If it worked for Hubert, it should work for me. Possessed by Gutenberg, I could slow or confuse the automatons long enough for Lena to reach Hubert.\n\nAt which point he could still use the Silver Cross against her. Crap. Okay, so what if I used Moly or some other magic-inhibiting substance to try to protect her from the cross' effect? Only Mister Puddles had ignored the effects of my love magnet, back in Detroit. Hubert's magic was too damn strong.\n\nLena emerged carrying a warmed-over hot dog, a one-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and a handful of frosted fudge cakes. She handed the hot dog to me and kept the rest. \"I fight better on a full stomach.\"\n\n\"How do you even function on a diet like that?\"\n\n\"Trees use glucose for energy, too. Anything I don't burn off, the tree pulls for itself.\"\n\nI stared warily at the shriveled hot dog in its stale bun. Anxiety and overuse of magic churned in my gut, but I forced the hot dog down.\n\n\"What if we go in small?\" Lena asked over the crinkle of cellophane. She broke off a few crumbs of chocolate and set them out for Smudge. \"Sneak in like we did back at the MSU archive?\"\n\n\"Automatons can sense magic. No matter what we do, they'll see us coming.\" Lena and Smudge were magic, and I was carrying around a magical fish in my head. \"We could try to overwhelm them. Some of the weapons in those books could take out an entire building.\"\n\n\"What about Gutenberg? We don't even know for certain that Hubert will be with him.\"\n\n\"Gutenberg is too great a threat,\" I said. \"Hubert won't risk anyone finding him. He'll be there.\"\n\nWe continued to brainstorm as we drove, discarding one plan after another. A quick, hard strike seemed to be the best option. Hubert should be distracted with his assault on the Detroit nest. If we hit fast enough, we might be able to overpower him before he could respond.\n\nLena watched the tracking screen, calling out directions as we drove. The tracking device didn't include street maps, which created a bit of a challenge, but Mecosta was a small town. Our automaton was a little way west, toward Big Rapids.\n\n\"There,\" she said.\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"It's your magic box, and it says we're right on top of that thing.\"\n\nWhich meant Johannes Gutenberg was being held captive at Mecosta Auto Sales and Repair. The office building was a small, blocky structure of brown brick and glass. The windows were dark. One had been broken and covered with plywood. A sun-faded banner announced an old going out of business sale.\n\nBehind the office was a larger building with four separate garage doors, presumably the repair bays. A handful of cars were parked in a large, mostly abandoned lot. Prices were still painted onto the windshields.\n\nI kept driving, just to be certain, but the signal on the tracking device didn't change. Smudge confirmed it, turning in place to keep a wary eye on the dealership.\n\nI pulled off the road a mile past the dealership and grabbed my books. The sunglasses I had used back at Hubert's cabin were damaged. I dissolved them into Heart of Stone and waited for the magic to re-form them. A thin line of char marked the center of the pages, but I went ahead and retrieved a second, identical pair, which I handed to Lena.\n\nNext, I proceeded to arm myself much the same as I had at the Detroit nest, with garlic, crucifix, and a pair of pistols. I also created a sheathed broadsword with a gold, jewel-encrusted hilt. \"Excalibur number seventy-three.\" We had more than a hundred versions of Excalibur cataloged in our database. \"Cuts through just about anything.\"\n\n\"Nice,\" said Lena. \"Shades, sword, and guns. Very badass.\"\n\n\"Very heavy,\" I complained. The books in my jacket were bad enough. \"Did you want anything else?\"\n\nShe studied me over the top of her sunglasses. \"I think maybe you'd better hold off on any more magic. You're shivering.\"\n\nI didn't bother to deny it.\n\nShe pushed up the glasses and examined me, then Smudge. \"Do we really have to kill Hubert?\"\n\n\"He knows he's dying. He chose death the moment he opened himself to possession.\" I returned my books to their pockets and slipped the sword over my shoulder. \"I'm thinking our best chance is to speak to someone else.\"\n\nI reclined the seat as far as it would go, trying to ignore Lena's amused smile as I struggled to sit back down with my various weapons. The tremors in my hands didn't help matters. I finally had to lower the top so Excalibur's hilt would stop catching on it.\n\nWith Smudge in his cage, I pulled onto the road and did a U-turn. Through the enchanted sunglasses, Mecosta Auto Sales and Repair was a very different place. Hubert had painted an illusion of normalcy over what was essentially a small fortress. The office building was magically dead, but the garages in back were surrounded by a makeshift barrier that could have come straight out of World War I, with wooden posts and barbed wire woven into an impassible web.\n\nChrome spikes protruded from the garage walls, and a pair of armed vampires patrolled the roof. The garage doors appeared to be magically reinforced. The cars in the lot were likewise infected with magic of some sort. Every car had a bright patch of power. The location varied from one to the next.\n\n\"How did Hubert do all of this?\" Lena asked, squinting through her lens. \"I thought libriomancers couldn't create anything that didn't fit through your books.\"\n\n\"We can't.\" I pulled into the lot as casually as I could.\n\nLena handed me the charred copy of Sherlock Holmes. \"You said those voices were all mad. Do you have a backup plan?\"\n\n\"Not this time,\" I lied. I climbed out of the car, trying to ignore the vampires on the roof who had readied rifles. I skimmed down the page until I found the story I wanted. I reread the dialogue, memorizing Holmes' lines. Cupping my hands to my mouth, I shouted, \"Your occupation is gone, sir. You are lost if you return to London!\"\n\nOne of the parked cars lurched toward us. Throughout the lot, other vehicles came to life. Some screeched toward Lena, but most targeted me. Lena leaped easily over a rusted Corvette, then dropped low as one of the vampires fired at her. Bullets cratered the parking lot as she sprinted toward the side of the service garage.\n\nI shoved the book back into my pocket and pulled out both pistols. I shot blindly at the vampires until they ducked down, then sighted carefully at a red Chevy Cavalier. The laser punched through the engine, and my next shots shredded the front tires for good measure.\n\nHigh beams from my right momentarily blinded me. I squinted through the sunglasses to see a fifty-eight Plymouth Fury racing toward me. And Charles Hubert was a libriomancer.\n\n\"Nice,\" I said, firing again. The Fury had been cannibalized straight out of Stephen King's Christine. I could see now where Hubert had welded parts of King's homicidal car to the other vehicles, bringing them all to life. Had he grown them all from a single, book-sized piece of that Fury? King's book had hinted that the car could repair itself.\n\nI pocketed the gun in my right hand and drew Excalibur, while continuing to try to pin down the vampires with the other pistol. \"Until this moment, I failed to understand or appreciate the might of your organization,\" I shouted. The dialogue was straight out of \"The Final Problem,\" the story in which Holmes sacrificed his own life to destroy his archenemy, Professor Moriarty.\n\nI hoped that wasn't prophetic.\n\nI fired left-handed, then jumped back. Excalibur twisted in my grip, jerking my arm out and downward. The impact of sword on car reminded me of hitting a baseball, if the baseball was made of solid lead.\n\nI couldn't have released the sword if I wanted to. It sliced through tires and steel, emerging from the Fury with enough speed to whirl me in a complete circle. The Fury spun out, wrecking a station wagon.\n\nI checked Smudge's cage to make sure he was all right, then ran to hide behind the mangled car. \"Best. Sword. Ever!\"\n\nLena was using her bokken to cut through the barbed wire. I crouched behind the Fury as both vampires concentrated their fire on me. I blasted the side mirror off the car and used it to peek over the hood. I fired blindly, using the mirror to try to guide my shots toward the figures on the roof. Then a cloud of mist flowed out from the garage and solidified into the figure of a woman.\n\nLena thrust her bokken through the new arrival, who promptly dissolved into ash. One of the vampires on the roof dropped his weapon and sprang into the air. He snatched one of Lena's bokken in now-clawed feet, ripping it from her grasp.\n\n\"This is inevitable destruction!\" I shouted, quoting the story once more. \"Surely you can spare me five minutes to hear what I have to say.\"\n\nThe cars slowed. Over the idling of their engines, I heard an answering cry, \"All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.\"\n\nThat was one of Moriarty's lines to Holmes. I had hooked him. I peeked out from behind the car. \"Have you any suggestion to make?\"\n\n\"You must drop it.\"\n\nFor the first time, I revised the script, trying to preserve Holmes' voice the best I could. \"I've done what I could, but I cannot beat you. You know every move of this game, and I am not clever enough to bring destruction upon you. I know it would grieve you to have to take extreme measures against me. Let us meet, that I might present an alternative solution.\"\n\nSilence. Had my changes snapped Moriarty's hold on Hubert's mind? I looked to Lena and readied my weapons.\n\nAnd then the rightmost garage door began to rise."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "Fluorescent lights flickered inside. Directly in front of me, an automaton was stretched out on a car lift like Frankenstein's monster. Three other automatons lay as if dead in the repair bays to either side, while two more stood in the shadows in the back.\n\nStacks of tires lined the back wall. The air smelled of grease and oil. I knew this place. I had seen it through a book when I touched Hubert's mind.\n\nLena joined me, a single bokken resting on her shoulder. I sheathed Excalibur and kept one hand in my pocket, finger on the trigger of my laser. \"Over there,\" I whispered, pointing to what appeared to be a small office in the back corner.\n\nThe door swung open. The office was dark, but through the glasses I could make out the glow of magic. And then what was left of Charles Hubert stepped out.\n\nThe soldier from the newspaper photos was gone, replaced by a pale scarecrow of a man who looked like he weighed maybe a hundred pounds, tops. Filthy green sweatpants hung from his bony hips. His chest was bare, white skin outlining every rib. He had lost most of his hair, and his head was like a painted skull. His scar was a vivid pink line down the side of his head and face.\n\nLines of faded text covered his skin. From the irregular handwriting, it looked like he had done it himself with a black marker. I saw English, German, and what looked like Pashto. In one hand, he held a heavy silver cross, encrusted with rubies.\n\nLena grabbed my forearm and tugged. The laser burned through my jacket pocket and blasted the back wall, filling the air with the stench of melted rubber. She twisted my arm and plucked the gun from my hand, then retrieved the other pistol. She stripped Excalibur from my back as well.\n\n\"Lena...\"\n\nShe removed her sunglasses and tossed them to the floor. In the dim light, I could just make out the pointed crosses of Lena's pupils. The sight made me ill. He must have taken control of her before he ever emerged from his office.\n\n\"You have less frontal development that I should have expected,\" Hubert said, still quoting the story. Moriarty had such a civilized way of insulting one's intelligence. \"It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's jacket.\"\n\n\"How did you persuade my companion to betray me?\" I asked, and was rewarded by a glimmer of confusion in Hubert's eyes. A mind such as Moriarty's would never believe in magic.\n\n\"She was clever enough to see the truth,\" he said after a pause. \"To join me rather than be trodden underfoot. Now tell me of the footprints.\"\n\nI blinked. \"The footprints?\"\n\n\"I see them in my memory. Two lines of footmarks clearly marked in the moist blackness of the soil, both leading away. None return.\" His precise diction couldn't conceal his confusion or his fear.\n\n\"Of course,\" I said, pulling out the Holmes book. The footprints were from the very end of the story.\n\n\"You murdered me,\" he said, his voice rising in pitch. \"You flung me into the swirling water and seething foam!\"\n\n\"Not at all.\" I kept my words calm, trying to draw him back from the madness. I turned to an earlier page of the story, when Holmes places his revolver upon the table. Whispers called to me, warning how easily I could follow Hubert into madness, but I had to try. I could still end this. A single shot from that revolver\u2014\n\nThe moment I touched the book's magic, Hubert stiffened. I saw recognition in his eyes. Lena kicked the book from my hands. The automatons climbed down from their lifts and moved to surround me.\n\nHubert stepped closer and studied me through black-rimmed glasses that were far too large for his gaunt face. His lower lip was cracked, and had left a streak of blood on his teeth.\n\n\"Do you know who you are?\" I asked.\n\nHe smiled. The tip of his tongue dabbed at the fresh blood welling up from his lip. \"Do you, Isaac Vainio? Do you know who you are? Are you certain the Porters have never tampered with your mind?\"\n\n\"I know what Gutenberg did to you. How he stole your magic, erased your memories of the Porters.\" I pointed to the writing on his body. \"You tried to rewrite yourself?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg did it first,\" he spat. \"Etched his damned spell right through my skin. He carved my skull with his magic!\" He made a sound that was half laughter, half hacking cough. \"He killed me, Isaac. I'm unraveling one thread at a time, every fiber stretched until they snap.\"\n\n\"Why did you steal the books from the archive?\" I asked.\n\n\"The archive...\" He stared at the floor, as if trying to remember. \"Magical locks, binding the books, everything comes down to locking the doors. Trapping magic. Creating prisons. We had to find the key. Books, automatons, people, it doesn't matter. We had to find a way to free them.\"\n\n\"Free who? Other Porters? Or do you mean the automatons? I know about the people Gutenberg trapped in those bodies. Johann Fust and the others.\"\n\n\"Fust!\" His face reddened, the lines of his mouth and eyes tightening with rage. He began to rant in German. \"Johann Fust swindled from me my life's work. He sought to steal my legacy. He stole Peter...\" His anger broke. \"Peter was a skilled scriptor and craftsman, and Fust gave his own daughter as a bribe to turn Peter against me!\"\n\nHe wiped drool from his chin, his words becoming more manic. \"We invented libriomancy! We know the dangers, the threats both true and phantom. We know the lies.\"\n\n\"You murdered Ray Walker. You tortured him, and others.\"\n\n\"I didn't. We didn't!\" He cradled the silver cross in both hands. \"I couldn't stop them. If I held them in, they turned their rage against me. I needed to hide. I needed to know what the Porters knew. I needed the books.\"\n\nThe other characters in his head, murderers and madmen, too strong for him to control. \"I know about your brother,\" I said softly. \"I've read V-Day.\"\n\nHe blinked and switched back to English, his entire mannerism changing in an instant. \"Really? What did you think? I wasn't happy with the middle, and the whole thing needed at least one more good rewrite, but I had deadlines, you know?\"\n\nWatching one mind after another wrest control of Charles Hubert gave me chills that felt as if they came from the very marrow of my bones. \"It was good.\"\n\nHe preened, and then his expression shifted yet again. \"My brothers...\" His voice was gruffer now, with a faint hint of a drawl. \"It was the same with my unit. They hid the truth. They kept magic from us, denied us the weapons that could have saved my buddies, could have stopped the Nazi monsters who wanted to slaughter everyone and everything I loved.\"\n\n\"Jakob?\" At his hesitant nod, I pressed harder. \"You were a good man, Jakob Hoffman. You saved lives. You protected innocent people.\"\n\n\"I failed,\" he said. \"We lost. They're still here. Infecting everyone, turning this world into a nightmare. I couldn't save Mikey. Couldn't save myself. I know what I'm becoming, and I'll burn this world to the ground before I let them win!\"\n\n\"You didn't fail,\" I said, but it was no use. This wasn't his world, and it never would be. \"Where's Gutenberg, Jakob?\"\n\nHe giggled, a sound that transformed into a sob. \"In here.\" He tapped the scar on his head. \"Whispering. Screaming. Begging.\"\n\nLena plucked the cage from my hip and walked over to join him. For the first time since her birth, she was free of any lover, enslaved instead by the magic of Hubert's cross. I wondered briefly how much of a difference it truly made.\n\nHubert opened the cage and extended a hand. Smudge crawled up his arm and onto his shoulder. Just like that, I was alone. I raised my chin, trying not to show how much it hurt to see him standing there with Lena and Smudge. I swallowed, then reached into my pocket. Lena readied Excalibur, but I wasn't trying to use magic. Not this time.\n\n\"It's over, Jakob.\" I gripped the tracking module I had used to find this place.\n\n\"Oh, Isaac.\" He was speaking German again. \"Your magic isn't strong enough to overpower my automatons.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I smiled and jabbed the detonation button. To my right, an automaton's head exploded into splinters. I tried not to let my relief show. \"I'll destroy them all if I have to,\" I bluffed.\n\n\"Not bad,\" Hubert said, in English. The mechanical man who had once been Johann Fust toppled forward.\n\n\"You've lost. Let us help you.\"\n\nThe other automatons advanced. \"You will help me, Isaac. You will show me how you repaired the broken automaton I left at my cabin. You and Lena will help me to prepare more.\"\n\n\"You're dying,\" I said bluntly. \"Even if I helped you, you won't live long enough to raise your mechanical army.\"\n\nHe straightened, his voice taking on a stern British accent. \"My end was inevitable from the moment I set foot upon this path. Yours could have been avoided.\"\n\nThe intonation was familiar. We had come full circle, and I was speaking once again with Professor Moriarty.\n\n\"If you will not assist me in this endeavor, then you are of no further use.\" He raised the silver cross. \"Lena, my dear, it's time for you to kill Isaac Vainio.\"\n\nLena strode toward me. She wouldn't meet my eyes, which I took to be a good sign. He might have control of her actions, but she wasn't happy about it.\n\nHubert, on the other hand, was practically drooling. He had brought his fists to his chin, and his eyes were wide. He appeared to be talking to himself.\n\n\"Even now the dead spread terror through the streets,\" he mumbled. \"We will burn them from their homes, and the world will unite to eradicate them all.\"\n\nI ran, dodging between the automatons and making my way toward the open garage door. I heard the heavy clomp of feet behind me. Wooden fingers clamped around my arm. It was the same arm I had dislocated at the cabin, and the shoulder throbbed with pain. The automaton spun me around to face Lena, who had raised both Excalibur and her bokken, preparing to strike.\n\nI grabbed the automaton's wrist. \"I lied. I did have a backup plan. I didn't tell you about it, because it's somewhere between insane and suicidal. Sorry.\"\n\nThe automaton hauled me into the air like a pi\u00f1ata. I could feel the warmth of its metal armor, the spells flowing through those blocks, turning it into an animated spellbook.\n\nI twisted and slapped my hand against the automaton's chest. I had read these spells at the cabin. I knew the text imprinted into the wood. I could see the letters in my mind. It was all magic. My books, the automatons, Lena's connection to her tree... everything came back to energy, belief, and willpower.\n\nMy fingers sank into the automaton's metal skin, exactly like the pages of a book. Until that moment, I hadn't been certain this would work. I still wasn't. Reaching into the automaton's magic was one thing. Doing something with that magic was the real trick.\n\nLena didn't give me the chance. I saw her lunge, and tried to twist out of the way.\n\nI wasn't fast enough.\n\nMy heartbeat grew louder, overpowering everything else. I stared down at the wooden blade protruding from my side. It felt like someone had punched me just beneath the ribs. There was less pain than I would have expected, but\u2014\n\nOh, wait, there was the pain. It felt like the blade was burning inside me, growing hotter with every passing second. I tasted blood, and it was hard to breathe, as if someone were squeezing my lungs like a damp sponge. The burning grew more intense, spreading through my entire side.\n\nI reached deeper into the automaton. It was a book, nothing more. Just another book. Praying to whatever deity might be listening, I pulled myself fully into the automaton's body.\n\nPain gave way to numbness. My physical form dissolved, joining the magical energy contained in this wood and metal form, like an enormous mechanical battery. I had always wondered what happened to my physical hand when I reached into a book. Now I knew. It became nothing.\n\nWhen I was six years old, I had gone wading at Lake Superior. I followed a school of minnows deeper and deeper until the sand dropped out from beneath me and I sank below the water.\n\nMy brother had come after me and hauled me back within seconds, but I never forgot that sense of panic, gasping for breath as I bobbed up and down, my body flailing instinctively as I tried to stay afloat. I couldn't control my own limbs. I couldn't scream.\n\nThis was worse. Magical energy dragged me in all directions. I couldn't see, couldn't move, and nobody was going to reach in to seize me by the hair and pull me to safety.\n\nWho are you?\n\nThe words were in German. I clung to that other presence, tried to call out for help. In return, it tried to smother me.\n\nThat attack saved both my life and my sanity. Burning lines of text flared to life: Gutenberg's spells, embossed into our wooden skin. My skin. I focused on the magic, orienting myself within this form. And having called his twelve disciples together, he gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out.\n\nThe automaton saw me as a spirit to be excised. Our body staggered, and my awareness began to fade. The mind trapped here had five hundred years of experience in this form, and I hadn't even figured out how to walk.\n\nAnother verse flared to life. And a fire was kindled in their congregation: the flame burned the wicked. I had spent enough time with Smudge to recognize magical fire as it spread through me.\n\n\"I'm not here to hurt you!\" I might have spoken the words out loud. There was no way of knowing.\n\nGet out!\n\nPain worked its way inward, surrounding me. I pushed back, but it was like trying to stop the tide with my bare hands. The magic surged past my efforts. I felt the metal keys growing hotter, searing the wooden skin. The automaton would destroy itself before it let another mind take control.\n\nCould I turn the automaton's magic against itself? Use one of its protective spells to block this attack?\n\nNo... forget the text encasing our body. I turned my awareness toward the gears and rods in our head, and the letters that bound that other spirit here.\n\nKatherine Pfeifferin. Not a name I recognized from the history books. I could feel the magic spreading out from those carefully engraved letters, a web that both trapped Katherine here and infused her spirit throughout the automaton's body.\n\n\"Katherine!\" Nothing. Like Johann Fust, she appeared to have no memory of who she had been.\n\nI tried once again to manipulate the flames, but instead of fighting them, I channeled them toward that metal disk, adding my own strength and will to their heat in an attempt to burn away those letters. I felt Katherine's fear and confusion, a momentary sense of disorientation. Flames spread over my body, and the metal keys began to soften.\n\nAnd then, just like that, I was alone. The flames died. I toppled onto my back. My head felt like someone had stabbed a red-hot poker directly into my brain stem. Which was essentially what I had done.\n\n\"How did you do that?\" Charles Hubert's voice. I could sense the specific line of Biblical text that allowed me to hear. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The world slowly flickered into place around me.\n\nI saw Hubert and the other automatons. Lena stood in front of me, Excalibur held ready. Her bokken was gone. I touched my side, remembering the agony spreading through me from her sword. What did it mean that I could no longer feel the pain? Had I healed myself when I fled into the automaton, or\u2014more likely\u2014had I destroyed my own body in the process?\n\nAnother automaton stepped toward me. I could sense the magic connecting it to Hubert. The entire building buzzed with magic. The silver cross in Hubert's hand was a magnet, tugging at everyone it had touched, including Lena and Smudge.\n\n\"Go to repair bay three,\" Hubert commanded me. \"Lie down and be still until I can study you.\"\n\nI started to move before I realized what I was doing. Something in that voice, in that presence, demanded obedience. This was my Lord and creator.\n\nNo... the true Gutenberg lay beyond, in the office. I could sense him there, unconscious but alive. I stopped walking.\n\nThe automaton at the cabin had absorbed the magic from my fairy dust, dragging me back to Earth. I turned around and reached one hand toward the silver cross, just as that other automaton had done. I could end this now. I could free Lena and Smudge, and break Hubert's control over the vampires. All I had to do was find the right spell.\n\nWooden fists clubbed me from behind, slamming me to the ground. There was no pain, which was a nice change from the beatings I'd taken lately. I rolled over as another automaton kicked my side, knocking me through a garage door and into the parking lot.\n\nHubert had four other automatons in here, all of whom were far less clumsy than me. We were pretty much indestructible, but with four of them against me, I had no doubt they would eventually inflict enough damage to destroy me.\n\nI tried to push myself up, but another automaton seized my head. Two others grabbed my arms. They hauled me into the air, straining to rip me apart.\n\n\"Wait.\" Hubert hurried toward me. \"Tell me what you did!\" For a moment, the madness was gone. He was simply another libriomancer, eager to understand a new facet of magic. And then his face shifted, the muscles going taut. \"Tell me!\"\n\nI turned my vision upward, even as another blow sent a hairline crack through the side of my face. He might not know how to repair an automaton, but he knew how to destroy one.\n\nI found the text that gave the automaton the power to speak. And they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. My words reverberated through the building, powerful enough to make the doors buzz. \"I'll tell you when I get back.\"\n\nMy wooden bones creaked, the brute strength of the other automatons threatening to unravel the spells that held me together. I needed to take them to a place where they'd be just as disoriented and clumsy as I was.\n\n\"Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux.\" The spell I needed warmed to life. I chose my destination, activated the automaton's magic, and flew."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "For roughly one and a quarter seconds, the automaton ceased to exist. I was nothing but magic and light. There was no sense of movement as more than two hundred thousand miles rushed past, and then I was tumbling out of control toward a pockmarked gray desert.\n\nI fell for close to a minute before slamming face-first into the moon. Fine dust exploded outward from the impact. Despite the lessened gravity, my mass was unchanged, and I bounced a good thirty feet into the air.\n\nMy arms whirled like windmills. I landed at an angle, my feet skidding through the dust. I fell again, and when I finally slid to a halt, I was on my back staring up at the Earth. Darkness shrouded half the planet; the other half was blue and white and perfect.\n\nI sat up and scooped a handful of regolith. It trickled through my wooden fingers like sand, only grittier. The hills and craters stretching out around me banished all thought of Charles Hubert, of the battle far overhead in Detroit, of the automatons who would no doubt be coming after me. I was on the moon!\n\nI had aimed for Mare Insularum, safely within the sunlit side of the moon, but I had no idea how close I had come.\n\nI jumped into the air, marveling at the slight but visible curve of the horizon. My feet sank into the grit, and I jumped again, turning to look at the sun. If I had hit my target, Kepler Crater should be somewhere west of here.\n\nI shook with what could have been laughter, had there been air to carry the sound. I had dreamed of this since I was a child watching clips of Armstrong's historic first steps during the Apollo 11 mission.\n\nCould automatons travel to other planets as well? Depending on where Mars was in its orbit, it would take anywhere from five to twenty minutes to reach the surface traveling at the speed of light. It might require multiple jumps, though. I had come in high when I arrived at the moon, and any errors would be magnified on a longer journey. But it should be possible.\n\nMaybe there was a way to cheat. Automatons traveled as light. What if I used a telescope to find my target, to pinpoint exactly where I wanted to go?\n\nI was like a child who had discovered the way to Neverland. I wanted to clap and laugh and run and explore. This was true magic. This was wonder and awe and exploration. Had any Porter traveled like this before? We could go anywhere.\n\nThe possibilities were endless. I was in a position to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. We could explore the entire solar system and beyond. I turned toward the sun. How would magic fare against the power of the sun's corona?\n\nGutenberg must have known what his automatons could do. Was this another aspect of magic he had hidden from us? He could have sent his automatons anywhere. NASA spent billions to send their rovers to Mars. An automaton could travel there and back within an hour.\n\nThis was a sin greater even than what he had done to Charles Hubert. To have access to such knowledge, and to choose not to use or share that access...\n\nLight flickered to my left, like lightning robbed of its thunder. Four automatons popped into existence a short distance overhead and began to fall.\n\nRight. Euphoria faded slightly as I remembered why I had fled to this place. I dug through the dirt until I found a rock the size of a human skull. I hurled it at the nearest automaton, hitting it in midair and sending it into a backspin.\n\nWelcome to the moon! I crowed silently. Let's see how your five-hundred-year-old minds cope with one-sixth gravity.\n\nI skipped toward them, taking great bounding steps. Before, I had been the clumsy one. Now the others stumbled as they tried to adjust to this new environment. I would have smiled, if my hinged jaw had allowed it. I landed hard, bending my knees to absorb my momentum and sliding into the closest automaton. It reached for my head, but I crouched lower, gripping it by the waist and hurling it skyward.\n\nI wasn't strong enough to toss it into orbit, but judging by the arc of ascent, it wouldn't come back down for a good half mile or so.\n\nAnother automaton charged me. I dug my feet into the ground and braced myself as it slammed a wooden fist into my side. I skidded backward, but it was the other automaton that lost its footing, spinning in a circle from the power of its own attack. I seized it by the head and twirled, swinging it like a club against the next of its fellows.\n\nUnfortunately, my makeshift weapon was already adapting. Hinged fingers tightened around my wrists, twisting hard enough to strain my joints. I raised it overhead and slammed it to the ground, but it refused to let go. Another automaton closed in, hands outstretched. I was still outnumbered, and once they got their hands on me, the moon's weaker gravity wouldn't stop them from ripping me apart piece by piece.\n\nThe automaton's fingers dug through the metal blocks on my wrist, tearing several of them free. A strip of my wrist went numb as that spell died. I allowed myself to fall backward, raising both feet to my chest. The other automaton followed me down, and I kicked it in the neck with all of my strength. The automaton snapped away, spinning like a bicycle tire.\n\nI fled, stalling as long as I could, trying to absorb every detail of the experience: the gentle pull of gravity; the way the dust dropped in a vacuum, every speck falling like a lead weight; the Earth hanging overhead, so large it gave the impression it could come crashing down on us at any moment. I scooped up another rock and held it as if it were more precious than gold.\n\nThey spread out to surround me. Two bounced through the air, while the third kept to the ground, looking like a slow-motion jogger. Interesting... different automatons adapted differently, suggesting they retained at least a little individuality and independence within their wood-and-metal shells. The fourth flickered into view to my left.\n\nReady for another ride?\n\nHow much time had passed since I arrived? Five minutes, maybe? It would never be enough. I stared at the Earth, mentally reorienting myself so that I was no longer looking up, but down. That was an awfully long way to fall.\n\nThe nice thing about this body was that I appeared to be incapable of experiencing vertigo. Fear, on the other hand, I could feel just fine.\n\nI studied the Pacific Ocean, still shining in the sunlight. Another automaton flew at me. I jumped away, doing my best to estimate distances and calculate acceleration. I had to guess at both. The radius of the Earth was roughly 6400 kilometers. Using that as my guide, I picked a spot roughly 7000 kilometers up, activated the automaton's magic, and disappeared.\n\nEarth's gravity began to pull me home from the moment I materialized. There was no air here, which meant I had no way to control my fall, and nothing to slow my acceleration.\n\nFor the first time, I noticed a significant design flaw in Gutenberg's automatons: there was no way to close my eyes. I tried to lose myself in math instead. This high up, the pull of gravity would be fractionally less than 9.8 meters per second squared. Maybe eighty percent of normal?\n\nThe other automatons flickered into view around me, but I fell right past them. They vanished and reappeared, trying to get ahead of me, but each time they lost momentum.\n\nI used my own magic to travel to a point just above them, shedding velocity in a brilliant flare of light. We weren't quite close enough to touch each other. Light-speed travel didn't allow for precision. One appeared directly below me, but I plowed through it like a locomotive, leaving it pinwheeling overhead.\n\nAfter that, we simply fell together. For the moment, they seemed content to follow. Nothing could flee forever.\n\nThis body lacked the inner sense of balance and acceleration that would have allowed me to gauge our speed or how long we fell. Earth grew noticeably larger, and continued to expand below us. Given time and a calculator, I might have been able to estimate our height based on the apparent size of the planet, but that was beyond my ability to do in my head.\n\nMy thoughts began to drift. What would the Porters tell my parents? They couldn't exactly head out west, knock on the door, and say, \"We regret to inform you that your son was stabbed by a dryad, then lost his body when he entered a clockwork golem.\"\n\nThey should make pamphlets. How to cope with the loss of a loved one: A guide to selective magical amnesia. I could have used some instructions back in college, for that matter. How to make your girlfriend believe you're really not cheating on her, and you're just a member of a secret magical organization called Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re, founded by a guy who supposedly died in 1468.\n\nDie Zwelf Porten\u00e6re. The Twelve Doorkeepers. Books were a doorway to magic, and the automatons were living books. I had passed through that doorway. Surely there was a way to pass back, to re-create my physical body...\n\nDoorkeepers. Guardians.\n\nI thought back to my first encounter with Hubert, in Detroit. Whatever had come after me in that book had felt like a living mind. Not a character, not a spell, but another presence, desperate and starving.\n\nWhat if Hubert hadn't sent that thing through the book? What if it had already been there, living in magic itself? Locked away. What had Hubert said? Everything comes down to locking the doors. Creating prisons.\n\nIt made sense. That was why Pallas had wanted to keep me under guard. I had reached too deep into magic, and she was afraid of what I might have brought back.\n\nTurbulence jolted me back to the present. At this speed, even the thinnest air at the very edge of Earth's atmosphere battered me harder than any automaton. I spread my arms and legs, tilting my hands like rudders to spin myself toward the closest automaton. The air below grew hotter as I flew closer.\n\nIt reached out to grab me, but this time I welcomed the attack. I wrapped the other automaton in a bear hug, wrenching us both around so it was beneath me. \"Ever wonder why meteorites burn up in the atmosphere? Welcome to your first and last lesson in twenty-first-century physics.\"\n\nBy now, we should have been traveling at many times the speed of sound. Our bodies compressed the air, superheating the gases below us until they reached temperatures hot enough to vaporize rock... or melt metal. Most meteorites burned up within seconds. My timing would have to be perfect.\n\nI did my best to stay atop the other automaton, using it as my own personal heat shield. The metal skin on my exposed arms began to melt. The air around us turned to flame. I concentrated on the other automaton's magic, watching spells snap and melt away. The wooden body began to crumble as its protections vanished. I could feel my own magic struggling to hold me together.\n\n\"Yeah, it's a short lesson.\" Praying this worked, I concentrated on the ground below and shouted, \"Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux!\"\n\nI imagine I looked a bit like the Human Torch as I materialized above the parking lot, my arms blackened, my body covered in flame. I dropped a good forty feet, smashing through a Hummer that was too slow to drive out of the way.\n\nMy hands were useless lumps of coal, held together only by magic. The air rippled from the heat rising off my body. But I was alive, more or less. I rolled off the crumpled remains of the truck and climbed to my feet. The winged vampire who had been guarding the roof swooped toward me, then apparently thought better of it.\n\nI strode through the open garage door. Hubert stared at my glowing form. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"Research.\" I could still bend my left arm at the elbow. My right arm was dead from the shoulder. Blobs of molten metal streaked the charred wood.\n\nHubert backed away, hands shaking as he clutched his silver cross like a shield.\n\nTime in this body had acclimated me to its senses. I could see Hubert's possession, the other minds tumbling and fighting for control like some sort of magical spin cycle. What remained of Charles Hubert was tattered, shredded almost to nothingness.\n\nI could see something else, too: a darker thread of consciousness woven through those invading minds, seeping into Hubert from elsewhere. \"End this, Charles. Let me\u2014\"\n\n\"Let you help me?\" He sounded weary. \"You and I both know we're past that.\" He raised his cross to his forehead. Behind him, Lena lifted a black revolver.\n\nI rapped my left hand against my metal-clad chest. Chunks of charred wood fell away from my fingers. \"You can't kill me with that.\"\n\nLena pressed the barrel of the gun beneath her chin.\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nA true sorcerer could have manipulated the gunpowder in the bullets, transforming it into something inert. I needed my books, and a way to pause time or freeze Lena in place before she pulled the trigger.\n\n\"Show me how you claimed that body for your own, and I will give Lena back to you.\"\n\nGive him and the darkness that infested him the ability to take a new form, one which would be all but unstoppable? \"This isn't your fault,\" I said softly. \"You didn't know what was out there.\"\n\nHubert jabbed the cross at Lena. \"I will kill her.\"\n\nI looked down at myself. I could try to drain the magic from the cross, but that would take too long. I couldn't risk Lena pulling that trigger.\n\n\"And the delusions of their magic art were put down,\" I whispered, finding the corresponding text on my body that shielded me from hostile magic. Two years ago I had performed libriomancy without a book, channeling the magic of War of the Worlds through myself to destroy the zombies that would have slaughtered me. Now I was the book. I concentrated on that single line of text, the spell which shielded me from outside magic, and flung it around Lena and Smudge.\n\nMetal blocks fell away from my body and clinked on the floor. I hadn't counted on that. Having extended that spell to others, I had lost its protection for myself... but it did what I had hoped. Slowly, Lena lowered her weapon.\n\nDeranged and dying, Hubert was still a genius. He was several geniuses, in fact, if you included the various characters in his head. He looked from Lena to me, and his face twisted into a snarl as he put the pieces together. He pointed the cross toward me, and I felt its magic take hold of my mind and body. \"Kill her.\"\n\nTo my horror, I moved to obey. Lena jumped to the side and fired the gun. Hubert fell, blood dripping from his arm. The silver cross clattered away, but didn't release me from his final command. I swung at Lena with my remaining arm.\n\nShe rolled out of the way, then jumped over one of the open repair bays. She picked up Excalibur from the floor and lunged at me. The blade chipped deep into my right arm. The blackened wood cracked, and the lower part of my arm fell away.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Isaac.\"\n\nI swung again, then jumped forward, using the weight of my body to knock her off-balance. She stumbled, and I kicked at her knee. She twisted to avoid the worst of the blow, but my foot caught her thigh, and she fell.\n\nI felt Hubert's will guiding mine, manipulating my thoughts... and then the strings snapped. I froze, my leg raised to stomp Lena's chest. Slowly, I lowered my foot and turned around.\n\nHubert screamed. Standing atop the silver cross was Smudge, doing what could best be described as an eight-legged jig. White-hot flames danced over his body.\n\nI straightened. \"You should not have pissed off the fire-spider.\"\n\nA ruby fell free and rolled across the floor as the cross softened beneath Smudge's onslaught. Hubert crawled toward it on hands and knees, his shoulder leaking blood. He snatched up the ruby, then reached for the cross.\n\nLena and I both shouted at him to stop, but he ignored us. His hand closed around softened metal, and I heard the sizzle of burning flesh. Smudge skittered back, his work done. When Hubert lifted the cross, it sagged and melted around his hand.\n\nThe winged vampire had entered through the garage door. Fangs bared, he clutched his rifle with both hands, looking from Lena to me to Hubert.\n\nTears poured down Hubert's face. His hand shook violently. One bar of the cross broke free and fell to the ground. \"Why?\" he demanded. \"Why do you protect them?\"\n\nI glanced at the vampire, who tossed the gun to the floor and bolted away. \"They're what we made them. Our magic. Our belief. Our books.\"\n\nHubert's sobs changed to laughter. He looked up, and his eyes literally shone. \"You can't stop us,\" he mumbled.\n\nI studied the pattern of magic, trying to discern who or what was speaking. Charles Hubert was all but gone, drowned in the whirling energies trapped in his body. They were consuming him, burning his life from the inside.\n\nBurning... I started toward him as I realized what was happening. \"Charles, don't!\"\n\nI was too late. The light in his eyes spread, destroying him just as he had destroyed his vampire slaves. One by one I watched the other minds die, until only one remained. Eyes of flame stared into mine. I had touched that presence once before, and it terrified me. The hatred was just as powerful as the last time, but now it was personal. I felt it studying me. Remembering me.\n\nAnd then it, too, was devoured, and nothing remained of Charles Hubert."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "\"Isaac?\" Lena flung the gun away and stepped cautiously toward me. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"I've been better.\" One of my arms ended at the elbow; the other was a charred, brittle mess. On the other hand, considering that I had recently been stabbed, plummeted through Earth's atmosphere, and destroyed four of Gutenberg's automatons, I was doing pretty well.\n\n\"You look like flame-broiled crap.\" Lena touched my arm. I could see the magic flowing through her, trying to strengthen the wood. Trying to strengthen me. She hissed and pulled her fingers back as if she had been burnt.\n\n\"What's wrong?\"\n\n\"The limbs are too far gone. It's... disturbing. Like touching death. Isaac, what did you do to yourself?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you later.\" I dropped to one knee and reached for Smudge with my blackened limb. He approached even more warily than Lena had. He brushed his legs over the misshapen lump of my hand, smelling me. Whatever he found must have satisfied him, because he raced up my arm and onto my shoulder as if nothing had changed.\n\nHad this body been capable of it, I think I would have wept then. Whatever I had become, however badly I had damaged myself, Smudge knew me.\n\n\"What happens now that Hubert's dead?\" Lena asked.\n\nAny vampires he had enslaved were once again free. Most would return to the nest, though I suspected some would take advantage of the chaos and freedom to indulge their darker natures. \"I don't know. The automatons are able to act independently, to some extent. They might simply revert to their original instructions.\"\n\n\"Or they might continue to follow Hubert's last orders.\"\n\nWe both turned toward the office where Gutenberg lay unconscious. Hubert had locked the door. Lena started to reach for the frame, but I simply forced my arm through the upper corner and pried the whole door free.\n\nInside, Johannes Gutenberg lay unconscious in a metal cot wedged into place beside the door. He was bound by magic and medicine both. An IV tube snaked into his left arm, the needle and tubing clumsily taped to his flesh with duct tape.\n\nHe was shorter than me. Shorter than my human body, I mean. A bushy black beard and mustache hid much of his pale face. His shaggy hair came past his ears, and he had the worst case of bedhead I had seen in a long time. He reminded me a little of a young, skinny Santa Claus.\n\nI turned in a slow circle, checking the room for any unpleasant surprises. Empty metal filing cabinets lined the wall. A few key rings hung from a large pegboard to the left. Books were scattered over the large desk in the corner. I recognized some of the locked books from our archive in that careless pile. Others had fallen onto the floor. One book in particular caught my attention: a thick leather-bound tome that crackled with old magic.\n\nLena bent over Gutenberg and pinched the skin on the back of his hand. \"He's dehydrated.\"\n\nI turned away from the books to study Gutenberg's form more closely. \"I think I can remove the magic Hubert used to keep him down.\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"Isaac... are you sure this is the right thing to do?\"\n\nI didn't have to ask what she meant. When I concentrated, I could see the Grail's power in every cell of Gutenberg's body, trying to regenerate the damage Hubert's drugs and magic had done, keeping him young and healthy and alive. Such power was forbidden to the rest of us, but Gutenberg had made himself the exception.\n\nAs an automaton, I could dissolve that spell.\n\nWas Gutenberg so different from Charles Hubert? Like Hubert, Gutenberg had enslaved his enemies, trapping their spirits within the bodies of his automatons and forcing them to serve him throughout the centuries. Who had Katherine Pfeifferin been? A criminal who deserved imprisonment, or a would-be lover who had spurned Gutenberg and paid the price?\n\nSaving Gutenberg's life meant restoring him to his position of power over the Porters. It meant allowing him to continue to manipulate the minds and magic of those who broke his rules.\n\nNobody truly knew Johannes Gutenberg. He had watched over the Porters for so long, and his presence had maintained a degree of peace and stability. But how far would he go to protect the organization? What had he done to maintain his seat as de facto lord of all things magical?\n\nI looked down at the frail, pale figure of the world's most powerful libriomancer and whispered, \"I don't know.\"\n\nA new voice from the doorway said, \"Whatever you choose, I suggest you choose quickly.\"\n\nLena reacted before me, snatching up Excalibur and pointing it at the ghostly man standing behind us. The office was dimly lit, and the man's form was unfocused, but both the voice and the magic emanating from his form identified him as well as a fingerprint.\n\n\"Aren't you forbidden from leaving Spain?\"\n\n\"Which is why I've not left. Physically.\" Ponce de Leon chuckled and limped past us, passing through Lena's sword like a ghost. He leafed idly through the books on the desk. His fingers never touched them, but the pages fluttered open in response to his power. \"Charles Hubert is dead?\"\n\n\"He killed himself,\" said Lena.\n\n\"Did he, now? I wonder...\" He clucked his tongue as he studied a copy of Rabid. \"Clumsy work on these locks. Like he was trying to reshape the Venus de Milo with a chainsaw.\"\n\nHe stepped toward Gutenberg. I raised my arm, but he merely chuckled. \"I couldn't hurt him if I wanted to. Not in this form, at any rate.\" He reached out to brush spectral fingers through the hair on Gutenberg's forehead. \"Oh, Johannes. You knew this couldn't last forever.\"\n\n\"What couldn't last?\" asked Lena.\n\nDe Leon ignored the question. \"You're unhappy about the choices Gutenberg has made? You think someone else could do better?\"\n\n\"You mean someone like you?\" Lena asked.\n\nDe Leon raised his hands as if warding off an assault. \"Chain myself with politics and bureaucracy again? Oh, God, no.\" He looked up at me. \"Isaac, on the other hand, shows potential. Magic is both art and science, and judging from what he's done to himself here, he's got a handle on both. I imagine, with a little work, he could figure out how to control the remaining automatons, and from there it's a pretty straight road to the top spot.\"\n\n\"I don't even know how to free myself from this body,\" I protested. \"Could you\u2014?\"\n\n\"Even if I knew all of Gutenberg's secrets, which I don't, his geis on me prevents me from interfering in such matters.\" He laughed, a tired, bitter sound. \"I can't help you, but neither can I protect him should you choose to end his life.\"\n\n\"What would you do?\"\n\nHe shook his head, his eyes going distant. \"I've held power over people's lives before. In time, I learned that I should not be trusted with such power. Whatever mistakes Gutenberg has made, I suspect I would have done far worse.\"\n\n\"I don't want to run the Porters.\"\n\n\"Which makes you better qualified than many to do so,\" de Leon countered.\n\nHe couldn't be serious. I was a failed field agent, utterly unprepared to run a global network of magic-users. To make sure nonhuman races remained hidden from the public, and to enforce the peace between various races. To supervise my own people. To oversee the locking of potentially dangerous books.\n\n\"You're unlikely to have another chance,\" he continued.\n\n\"Why are you telling us this?\" Lena asked. \"Did you come here to persuade us to kill your rival for you?\"\n\nDe Leon merely chuckled. \"What I want is for you to consider the consequences of your choice, whatever choice you make.\"\n\n\"How can we know that?\" Gutenberg had chosen to allow the vampires to establish a nest in Detroit. As a result, a rogue vampire had murdered Charles Hubert's brother. Gutenberg had locked Hubert's mind and magic instead of imprisoning him. Years later, an explosion had shattered that lock, creating a murderer. Who could have foreseen any of that?\n\nDe Leon merely shrugged and examined another book.\n\nAll I had wanted was to be a researcher, to see how far magic could take us. To truly understand magic. \"When Charles Hubert died, I saw the characters that had crept into his mind. I saw something else, too.\"\n\n\"Something that frightened you,\" said de Leon, nodding. \"Something old and terrible and unstoppable.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What you saw is the reason Gutenberg allows creatures such as vampires and werewolves to exist and multiply.\"\n\n\"Why is that?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Because if that thing ever finds its way to our world, we will need their strength to defeat it.\"\n\nI thought of Hubert's attack on the Detroit nest, and my meeting with Alice Granach. \"Why would they help us?\"\n\n\"Survival.\" He stepped past me and looked down at Gutenberg. \"Choose quickly, libriomancer. But whatever choice you make, be certain you're prepared for what comes next.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nHe sighed. \"Johannes is a brilliant, stubborn, prideful man. The Porters did their best to cover up his disappearance, but this night has destroyed their efforts. The world of magic will know what has happened. After all this time, we know that Gutenberg is vulnerable. There are those who would exploit such vulnerabilities.\"\n\n\"Tell me what I saw in Hubert's mind.\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"Only Gutenberg knows the truth.\"\n\nAnd if Gutenberg died, that truth went with him. If I wanted answers, I had to restore him.\n\nPonce de Leon's mouth quirked, suggesting he knew exactly what I was thinking. Had that been his intent all along, to make sure I saved Gutenberg by reminding me how much knowledge would be lost if he died?\n\nDe Leon bent over the body and planted a soft kiss on Gutenberg's lips. \"Te amo, you old fool.\"\n\nI stared. Over the years, I had often wondered what would happen if Ponce de Leon and Johannes Gutenberg were to confront one another face-to-face. This had never come up as a possibility.\n\nDe Leon cupped Gutenberg's cheek, then backed away. \"Suerte, Isaac Vainio and Lena Greenwood.\"\n\n\"Good luck to you, too,\" I said automatically.\n\nHe walked through the desk and the wall beyond, disappearing like a ghost.\n\nI turned my attention to Gutenberg. Whatever sins he had committed, he knew more of magic than anyone alive. If destroying a book was an act of evil, how much more evil was it to destroy a mind? I nodded to Lena.\n\nShe set her sword aside and peeled back the tape of Gutenberg's IV. The flesh beneath was red and raw. Blood seeped from damaged skin. Lena tugged the needle free, and a single drop of dark blood trickled down his arm.\n\nI reached out with my remaining arm, touching the magical web Hubert had woven to suppress Gutenberg's power. With what remained of the automaton's magic, I tore Hubert's spell away like cobwebs.\n\nJohannes Gutenberg bolted upright in the cot, blinked at Lena and myself, and vomited onto my legs. Lena grabbed his shoulder to steady him.\n\nWhen he finished, his face was pale, and beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead. He wiped his lips on his sleeve. \"I'm sorry about that. Thank you, Lena.\" He nodded a greeting to her, then turned his full attention to me. \"Isaac Vainio? What are you doing in my automaton?\"\n\n\"How did you know?\"\n\n\"You've inscribed yourself into the text, for those with the ability to read it. Also, the fire-spider gives you away.\" He rose on shaky legs, leaning on Lena for support. \"What of Charles Hubert?\"\n\n\"Dead,\" said Lena. \"Consumed by magic.\"\n\n\"A shame.\" He combed his fingers through his hair, his movements becoming visibly stronger from one second to the next. I could see his magic at work, like antibodies devouring the remaining drugs in his system.\n\nHe brushed his hands over his wrinkled purple silk shirt and black trousers. His silver belt buckle gleamed like polished chrome. \"Hubert was brilliant, but undisciplined. He used magic to protect the men in his unit ten years ago. He killed six enemy combatants. That... was not his first violation.\"\n\n\"You punished him for protecting his own people?\"\n\n\"For his methods in doing so,\" Gutenberg said. \"What would happen when those deaths became public, Isaac? The Porters are not an American organization, but a global one. We cannot afford to interfere in political conflicts. How long before national interests would splinter us? Before we turned on one another in an ever-escalating war of magic?\"\n\n\"Hubert sent the automatons to attack the Detroit nest of vampires,\" said Lena. \"Alice Granach is holding Nidhi Shah as a hostage.\"\n\nGutenberg stepped toward the desk, examining the books. \"There was an old text, bound in leather. I remember Hubert taking it from my library. Have you seen it?\"\n\nI knew exactly which book he meant, and I knew what must have happened to it. Only one other person had entered this office since Hubert's death.\n\n\"I... don't remember seeing a book like that.\"\n\nHe studied me closely, then shrugged. \"I'll find it eventually.\"\n\nSomehow I doubted that.\n\nGutenberg grabbed another book from the desk. It opened in his hand. He glanced at the pages, then reached into the book to retrieve a small, black cell phone. \"I assume Pallas is overseeing the conflict in Detroit?\"\n\nI nodded dumbly, trying to understand what I had just seen. Gutenberg hadn't even looked at the cover or title before picking up that book. It was like he had known instinctively which one held the potential magic he wanted, and had opened the book to that exact page.\n\n\"Nothing.\" He tossed the phone at the book. It vanished the instant it touched the cover. \"They're following standard containment practice. A single libriomancer uses a book to create an electromagnetic pulse to scramble radios and cameras. Unfortunately, such magic also plays havoc with communications.\"\n\nHe gathered a handful of books from the desk, then marched out of the office and through the garage, stopping only briefly to survey the damaged automobiles in the parking lot. A Volkswagen Beetle growled to life and crept toward us. One headlight flipped upward, trying to blind us. The other pulsed with magic.\n\nThat second headlight was the piece that had come from Stephen King's killer car. I braced myself. Hubert was dead, meaning the remaining cars were free of his control. My arms were useless, but I should be able to stomp these things into\u2014\n\nGutenberg snapped his fingers, and flame exploded within the Beetle's haunted headlight. The magical pseudolife within the car flickered out, and the engine died. Momentum carried the Beetle onward, but it was easy enough to intercept. The car crunched harmlessly into my leg.\n\nGutenberg spun in a slow circle, and magical fire blasted the cannibalized parts Hubert had welded to his other cars. I stared at him, trying to understand how a libriomancer could fling magic with such ease. For an instant, his body seemed to flicker. I saw not living flesh but text, skin made up of layer upon layer of pages, a palimpsest of books, magic, and humanity. At the same time, I felt Smudge fade. For that brief span as Gutenberg eliminated the last of Hubert's guardians, Smudge was simply a spider, oversized and mundane.\n\nSmudge was a manifestation of a book's magic. Gutenberg had bypassed the book, stealing Smudge's magic directly and using it to disable the cars. I felt simultaneously protective of Smudge and eager to figure out the trick myself. \"What are you?\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Gutenberg winked. \"Trade secret.\"\n\nSmudge's body exploded in fire as his magic returned, and he scrambled around to the back of my head, hiding from Gutenberg.\n\n\"I do appear to owe you both a favor, however.\" He looked to Lena first, and nodded. \"I know what you want, and I'll do what I can to reunite you with your lover.\" To me, he said, \"What would you ask of me, Isaac Vainio?\"\n\nI stared down at myself. \"This body\u2014\"\n\n\"Given enough time, I might be able to repair it. But returning you to what you were?\" He sighed and rubbed his eyes. \"Though I rarely admit it these days, there are limits to my power. Your body has been destroyed, and libriomancy cannot create life. With the proper texts, I could perhaps construct a caricature of Isaac Vainio, but it would be a shallow thing, a mockery of the man you were. I am not God.\"\n\nThis body lacked the physical reactions of my own, but despair hit me hard nonetheless. I felt emptiness, hope sinking away through my gut... phantom grief, perhaps, like the shadow pain of a patient with a lost limb. My prosthesis was a five-hundred-year-old creation of wood and brass and magic.\n\nLena folded her arms and studied me. \"If you can't get him out of there, then I guess I'll just have to go in after him.\"\n\n\"An automaton is no simple tree,\" Gutenberg warned.\n\n\"Simple?\" Lena laughed. \"Have you ever studied the network of a tree's roots as it seeks out water? As the tree pipes that water through a body an order of magnitude larger than your own, and does so without the crude central pump that leaves you humans so vulnerable? As it survives winters that would leave you a frozen meatsicle in the snow?\"\n\nI braced myself, but Gutenberg merely laughed. \"I concede the point,\" he said. \"But the automatons weren't created to house living flesh. You might be able to enter and leave your trees at will without losing your sense of self, but have you ever brought another human being with you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Lena said softly.\n\n\"Yet you intend to attempt it anyway.\" He clucked his tongue and led us back into the office, where he grabbed a Saberhagen novel off the desk. He swiped his fingers through the book, sweeping away the magical lock like smoke. With one hand, he pulled a long, gleaming sword from the pages. \"I can't predict what might happen to you both. You might lose yourself as well as Isaac. If you do manage to succeed, I suspect you'll have need of this blade. It should heal any physical damage... assuming he survives at all. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I'm needed in Detroit.\"\n\n\"You offered me a favor.\"\n\nHe looked pointedly toward the sword. I ignored the hint.\n\n\"Tell me what I saw in Charles Hubert.\"\n\n\"You saw that, did you?\" He gestured for me to step closer. \"Are you sure you want to know?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"So be it.\" He touched my chest, and I felt a tugging sensation, as if a hook had lodged behind my breastbone. \"If you survive, I'll tell you what I know.\"\n\nGutenberg snapped his fingers, and for a moment, I felt part of the automaton's magic tear free, enveloping him like a blanket. An instant later, Gutenberg vanished in a flash of sunlight."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "I looked up at the ceiling, imagining the sky beyond. The automaton was battered and possibly dying, but surely I had enough strength to make it back to the moon. Could I reach Mars in the time I had left?\n\nLena reached for the exposed wood of my face. I pushed her aside. \"You'd be risking your life.\"\n\n\"I heard the old man, too,\" she snapped. \"And I'm not interested in any noble bullshit. I'm not letting you die in that thing. Now shut up and hold on.\"\n\nShe grabbed my forearm in one hand and cupped my face in the other. Chunks of black wood crumbled away as she tightened her grip on my arm, but she simply squeezed harder. It was a gruesome sight, and I thanked Gutenberg again for not giving his creations a sense of pain.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\"\n\nI heard her voice inside me, even as the automaton's senses picked up her words. Her warmth infused the cold, dead wood of my body. Her emotions twined with mine, hot and passionate. Metal blocks fell away, ringing against the floor as she pressed deeper into my body.\n\nWhatever magic had created Lena Greenwood, her emotions were as genuine and powerful as any I had ever felt. Perhaps more so. It shamed me that I had ever believed otherwise.\n\nI saw her love for Doctor Shah. Through Lena's eyes, I saw not the calm, detached psychiatrist who had oh-so-coldly signed the papers that once ended my dreams of magic, but a passionate, devoted woman who walked the border between magic and mundane, giving everything she could to try to help those who fought the demons and the darkness.\n\nI saw Shah's grief when a Porter named Jared killed himself four years ago: the deep, shaking sobs she had refused to let anyone but Lena see. I shared Lena's helplessness as she tried to comfort her lover. In the end, Shah's grief transformed to determination. Shah worked even harder to help those she could, like a libriomancer whose husband was killed by a spell gone wrong.\n\nI also saw Lena's memories of the attack a week before. I heard the crash of furniture from inside the house, where Shah struggled against impossible foes to try to give Lena a few more seconds, and I felt Lena's anguish as her own strength failed her. I shared her fear, her despair at the death of her tree, and the seductiveness of its death. A part of her had wanted to give up then, to enter her tree and never emerge.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I whispered. To Lena. To Nidhi Shah as well.\n\n\"I told you to shut up.\"\n\nAs Lena focused her attention on me, I touched new memories. I saw myself as she saw me, practically glowing with excitement as I worked over the fallen automaton at Hubert's cabin. I watched my passion and joy turn to outrage as I realized what Gutenberg had done.\n\nI saw my grief over Ray's death as we examined his apartment, and my pathetically transparent attempts to keep that grief and pain to myself, to project an aura of strength.\n\nI saw everything. Lena's earliest memory, stumbling forth from a tree with no awareness of who or where she was. Her first kiss with Nidhi Shah. A trip they had taken to Wyoming so Lena could try to climb Devil's Tower, and the nights they had spent in their tent together.\n\nI had always known Lena was strong enough to break me like a twig, but I had never comprehended her strength as a person. She understood exactly what she was. She knew that someday she would lose Nidhi Shah, and when that happened she would lose herself as well. She knew, and she wasn't afraid.\n\nEven the murder of her tree and the loss of her lover hadn't broken her. She had grieved as deeply as anyone, but like Shah, she turned that grief into another source of strength. She had sought me out, determined to live, to choose what she would become.\n\nAs I explored Lena Greenwood, she did the same, seeing me from within.\n\n\"Wait, you went to the moon?\" I felt Lena's amazement and laughter, her pride as she relived those memories with me, sharing my delight at fulfilling a childhood dream, my sense of wonder as I stared up at our world overhead. My awe at what I had done, and my excitement as I realized how much more magic could accomplish.\n\nIt was in that moment, as I saw myself through her eyes, that Lena reached deeper and pulled.\n\nI clamped my fingers around her hand without thinking. My true fingers: flesh and blood, and cold like winter snow as they left the emptiness of the automaton's body and emerged into the night air.\n\nFor several seconds I existed in two bodies at once. The automaton stumbled, and my awareness jolted backward, trying instinctively to recover my balance.\n\n\"Oh, no, you don't.\" Lena's grip tightened hard enough that my knuckles popped. She pulled harder.\n\nMetal letters dropped like rain. Pain exploded in my side. I gasped and fell into Lena's arms. Blood flowed down my side. I had been dying when I crawled into the automaton, and the wound remained. I felt her scoop me up and carry me to the cot. I curled my body into a ball and clutched my side, barely able to think beyond the pain.\n\nIt radiated out from where Lena had stabbed me. I couldn't breathe. Lena's bokken must have punctured a lung.\n\n\"Don't move.\" Lena stood over me, examining the metal sword Gutenberg had left. I pointed to my wound, pantomiming what needed to be done. She gripped the hilt in one hand and the blade in the other, aiming the tip at the center of the blood pooling on my side.\n\nI closed my eyes. I knew the sword was made to heal, but that didn't mean I wanted to watch her stab me with it.\n\nWarmth spread through my ribs, and I gasped, filling my lungs for the first time in what felt like weeks.\n\nI looked up to see Lena dragging the sword through my body like an oar, sweeping away injuries both old and new. Not only had I retained the injuries I had suffered before I joined with the automaton, I had somehow managed to gain new ones while trapped within that body. My mind immediately began picking through competing theories as to how that could have happened, but the result was burnt, blistered skin, bruised flesh, and several broken bones.\n\nOne by one, Lena sliced my wounds away. I had to close my eyes when she brought the blade to my face. After this, I'd never worry about visiting a dentist again. Nothing they did could compare to Lena fixing my battered jaw with a broadsword.\n\n\"That should do it.\" The cot shifted as Lena sat down beside me.\n\nI tested my limbs. I felt the same. I looked the same. She had even fixed the scar on the back of my right hand where I had cut myself on Captain Hook's sword seven years ago. \"Um... I don't suppose I could trouble you for clothes?\"\n\nLena's eyes sparkled. \"Where's the fun in that?\"\n\nTiny, hot feet tickled my leg as Smudge climbed my body. I held perfectly still, torn between relief and nervousness. He made his way to my shoulder and settled down, watching the door.\n\n\"I believe they're ready,\" came Gutenberg's voice from outside.\n\nI yelped and pulled my knees to my chest as the door swung open and Gutenberg entered, followed by Nicola Pallas and Deb DeGeorge. Pac-Man and another of Pallas' animals snarled at me, straining at the chains Pallas gripped in her fist. Four automatons stood behind them. I also saw what was left of the automaton I had commandeered.\n\nIt stood motionless, the metal blocks scattered in a circle on the floor. Roots had sprouted from the feet, punching into the cement floor. Green buds clung to the fingertips. Tiny branches like shiny brown spikes protruded from the neck and head.\n\n\"Not bad,\" said Gutenberg. He held one of the buds in his fingertips.\n\n\"Not bad at all.\" Lena was still looking at me. My neck grew warm.\n\nGutenberg's brows rose, but he said nothing as he picked up both Excalibur and the sword Lena had used to heal me. Pallas stepped past him, studying me from one angle after another, all the while humming the Linus and Lucy theme from Charlie Brown. Pac-Man sniffed my feet. The other animal growled, but Pac-Man nipped it on the ear, and the growl changed to a yip of pain.\n\n\"Sit,\" Pallas snapped. Both animals dropped to their haunches. Blood matted Pac-Man's side. The other one trembled, as if it could barely restrain itself from ripping out my throat.\n\nDeb stood in the doorway, looking like she wanted nothing more than to flee. She was covered in dust and dirt, and her skin was paler than before. She kept one hand to her hip, and her face was taut with pain. \"Good to see you in one piece, hon.\"\n\n\"What's going on?\" asked Lena. Her attention was on Pallas' animals. She kept her fingers spread, ready to seize them both.\n\nGutenberg held up a hand, waiting for Pallas to finish whatever she was doing. She took her sweet time, getting far too up close and personal for my taste, before straightening. Only then did the humming stop. She had gone for at least five minutes without pausing for breath.\n\n\"It's him,\" she said, hauling her beasts back. \"Only him.\"\n\n\"In the flesh,\" I said weakly.\n\nIt was Deb who finally took pity on me. She unzipped her jacket and handed it to me.\n\nI hesitated. \"No offense, but the last time I saw you, you shot up my living room and then tried to poison me.\"\n\n\"That will not happen again,\" Gutenberg said firmly. \"I took a page from your book, Isaac. Nothing so crude as the bomb you implanted in Ted Boyer, but I promise you Ms. DeGeorge will not act against us in the future.\"\n\nDeb scowled, but didn't say anything.\n\nI wrapped the jacket around my waist like a makeshift kilt, tying the sleeves together at the hip. \"How did you get back so quickly? Wait, how long were we in there?\"\n\n\"Long enough for us to begin cleaning up the damage Hubert did.\" Gutenberg returned the sword to its book. \"I left you three hours ago.\"\n\nThree hours. It had felt like minutes.\n\n\"It's a disaster,\" Deb said quietly. \"Like a bomb went off at the daycare center.\"\n\n\"We have people working the perimeter,\" Gutenberg went on. \"They'll keep the mundanes out and the vampires in until we can cover up the most obvious signs of magic.\"\n\n\"Signs like a big freaking elevator shaft into the center of the Earth?\" Deb asked. \"Yeah, people might have a few questions about that.\"\n\n\"How many...?\" Lena asked quietly.\n\n\"Our preliminary count is between thirty and forty humans dead,\" said Pallas. \"Most were killed by vampires in the chaos. We won't have a verified casualty list for at least a week. We'll be monitoring the morgues to make sure everyone stays dead. At least a hundred more saw the fighting. Information on vampire casualties is rougher, since few of them leave corpses behind. We estimate that the automatons slaughtered at least fifty. It will be days before anyone can figure out how many more might have fled.\"\n\nClose to a hundred lives, maybe more, snuffed out in a single night by one deranged libriomancer.\n\n\"The vampires have telepaths among their kind,\" Gutenberg said. \"They'll gather up any of their number who might have strayed.\"\n\n\"And do what with them?\" asked Pallas. \"They murdered innocent people\u2014\"\n\n\"They were running for their lives,\" Deb shot back. \"Running from your killer mannequins.\"\n\n\"Enough,\" Gutenberg interrupted. \"I'm not prepared to escalate the war Charles Hubert worked so hard to try to create.\"\n\n\"So it's contained?\" I stared at them, trying to believe it. Trying to focus not on the death, but on how much worse things could have been. \"We stopped Hubert in time?\"\n\n\"You did,\" said Gutenberg. \"Though it will take months to fully contain the damage. I'll be diverting one automaton to Taipei, where the vampires are currently engaged in a full-fledged civil war. Another will go to Kaliningrad to deal with a libriomancer who, in my absence, has been offering his services to the Russian mob.\"\n\n\"What about Nidhi?\" Lena hadn't left my side. I felt her tremble slightly as she spoke.\n\n\"Alive, and human,\" said Gutenberg. \"Alice Granach has accepted personal responsibility for making sure Doctor Shah is returned to us unharmed.\" His voice hardened, making me suspect Granach had been given little choice about that responsibility. \"Ms. DeGeorge will escort you to Detroit to meet her.\"\n\n\"Great, now I'm running an escort service,\" Deb muttered.\n\nGutenberg's words twisted in my chest. I did my best to keep my reaction from showing. Lena had made her choice the moment she learned Shah was alive and human. I turned to her. \"Thank you.\" I gestured down at myself. \"For this, and for everything else.\"\n\nShe gave me a halfhearted smile. \"I figure it was the least I could do. After stabbing you, and all.\"\n\nI chuckled and stared at the ground, wanting to stall, to keep her here a few minutes more.\n\nShe looked away, tracking something I couldn't see. Her fingers shot out to trap a mosquito hovering in the air. She offered the buzzing bloodsucker to Smudge, who cooked and gobbled it down in one quick movement. \"You keep him safe, okay?\"\n\nI wasn't sure which one of us she was talking to, but I nodded. I forced myself to release her other hand. \"I'm sure Gutenberg will want me to check in with Doctor Shah to make sure my brain's working properly. I'll see you then?\"\n\nIt sounded weak. What were you supposed to say in a situation like this, when it was time for the most amazing woman you'd ever met to return to her lover?\n\nShe leaned in and kissed me one last time, her arms tightening around my bare skin. Her forehead pressed against mine. I breathed in, holding the scent of her as long as I could.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she whispered as she pulled away. She followed the others out of the office without looking back, as if she were afraid of what she would do if she hesitated. I watched through the doorway as they vanished with one of the automatons.\n\nGutenberg stooped to pick a handful of metal letters from the floor. \"Now then,\" he said. \"I believe you had a question for me...\"\n\nI swallowed. \"I want to know what I saw in Hubert's mind.\"\n\nHe picked up another book from the floor and pulled out a pair of pressed black pants, like a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. Within seconds, he had created an entire tuxedo, which he handed to me without looking, one piece at a time. It was too tight, and didn't include socks or underwear, but it was a step up from wearing Deb's jacket.\n\n\"James Bond you aren't,\" Gutenberg commented.\n\nI left the top shirt buttons undone and pulled on the jacket while he gathered up the rest of the books from the desk. \"You founded the Porters to keep that thing out of our world, didn't you?\"\n\n\"In part, yes.\" He began stacking books on the desk. \"The truth, Isaac, is that I don't know precisely what they are.\"\n\n\"They?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"I believe so, but I know only four things for certain. Whatever they are, they have existed at least as long I have, though they could be far older. As old as the universe itself, perhaps, though I doubt it. In these past centuries, they have grown stronger. They hate with a fury unlike any other. And sooner or later, they will find a way to fully enter our world.\" He scowled at me. \"Sooner, if idiots like you and Hubert keep flinging magic about with abandon and weakening the boundaries of our world!\"\n\n\"How many people know about this?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Twenty-three, now. The risk has always been that shortsighted madmen would work to summon and command these things. It's happened before.\" He opened the office door and walked out into the parking lot, where he stared into the sky. \"The first time they struck at me, I thought they were the host of Hell itself. I've broadened my theories considerably since then, though I've found nothing to either confirm or disprove that original belief.\"\n\n\"How do you fight them?\"\n\n\"The same way you fight any enemy. With knowledge.\" He smiled. \"As I recall, you once expressed interest in a research position...\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "I finally made it home around sunrise the next morning, jittery from caffeine and magic both. Lena's motorcycle was in the garage where she had left it. I could probably pay Dave Trembath to drive it down to Dearborn on his trailer... or I could use it as an excuse to call Lena.\n\nAnd then what, Vainio? Ask how she and Nidhi are getting along? Tell her you're always here if her current lover gets kidnapped by vampires again? I shook my head and turned away from the bike. I could deal with it later.\n\nInside, the house was every bit the disaster it had been when I left. Despite my precautions, flies and mosquitoes had found their way in through the back door. I halfheartedly pressed the duct tape back into place, trying to fix my makeshift curtain, then gave up.\n\nI checked the library next, mentally cataloging which books I might be able to use to repair the bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. The back door was a lost cause.\n\nMy voice mail held six increasingly pissed-off messages from Jennifer Latona, demanding to know why I hadn't returned to work and asking for an update on the insurance claim.\n\nCrap. I knew I had forgotten something...\n\nAll things considered, I should have been happy. I had stopped the man who murdered Ray Walker, and earned a promotion in the process. For years I had imagined this moment: I would have full access to the Porter archives, centuries of magical research to explore.\n\nOnly I wouldn't get to choose which project to join, which research to duplicate and expand, adding my own ideas and insights. I had a single assignment, one which could only be shared with a handful of others Porters cleared by Gutenberg himself: find the origin of the thing I had seen in Hubert's mind, and figure out how to stop it.\n\nGutenberg would be sending me material from his own personal library. Scanned copies of documents five hundred years old, including firsthand descriptions of his encounters with our unknown enemies, and an uncensored account of the founding of Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re... including the identities of the twelve men and women who had been transformed into automatons.\n\nOnly six remained. Six trapped souls, forced to serve and protect their master. Gutenberg had offered to free them... if I could come up with a better way to protect and enforce magical law.\n\nWith a sigh, I headed for my office. While I waited for the computer to power up, I stared out the window, my thoughts drifting back to my clumsy, glorious landing on the surface of the moon. Going back would be difficult in this body, but not impossible. Science fiction had spent decades on such matters, designing energy suits that could protect me from the cold and the vacuum.\n\n\"I'm going back,\" I whispered. And not just to the moon. Wherever magic could take us.\n\nI sat down at the desk and pulled up the Detroit Free Press Web site. They described last night's events as an explosion caused by a natural gas line rupture, though one eyewitness in the comments section insisted it had been a terrorist attack and the government was trying to hide the truth. The photo showed a simple fence where people had posted photos of missing loved ones. Flowers and other tokens were piled at the base of the fence.\n\nNothing was said about vampires or metal giants, or the magic used to bring the chaos under control.\n\nI closed the site, choosing to focus instead on the lives we had saved. How much longer would it have been before the damage grew too widespread to contain? Another hour, maybe two, and the events Hubert had started would have led to war the likes of which the world had never seen.\n\nI glanced at the phone, tempted to call and check on Lena. The Porters would have made sure she and Nidhi were safe. By now, they should be back home... and knowing Lena, they probably didn't want to be disturbed right now.\n\nI swallowed to ease the knot in my throat and opened up our insurance company's Web site to start an online claim for the damage to the library. I'd be talking to Jennifer tomorrow about cutting back to a half-time position in order to focus more time and energy on my research. Nicola Pallas had already arranged a cover story to explain my absence over the past week: a severe bout of rotavirus that had put me in the hospital. A forged doctor's note was on its way to Jennifer's mailbox.\n\nOnce the insurance claim was sent, I logged into the Porter database. Research began with reading, and I had a lot to catch up on.\n\nFor two straight days, I threw myself into my work, reading every treatise on magic, every report on possession, every scrap of information I could find.\n\nIncluding the personnel reports on every Porter whose magic had been locked and their memories rewritten. There were fewer than I had feared. On average, it looked like Gutenberg only had to do it once every decade or so. The records included notes on the magic used to wipe both the memories of the subject and to adjust the memories of their family and friends\u2014including other Porters\u2014in order to eliminate any questions.\n\n\"Asshole,\" I muttered. But having seen what Charles Hubert had become, on some level, I understood Gutenberg's fear.\n\nI also looked for information on Ponce de Leon, but found little of use. Records of his time with the Porters were minimal, with nothing to indicate why he had finally been banished or what spells had been used to confine him to Spain. But there were other sources of information. Thanks to interlibrary loans, I would be receiving a copy of pretty much every biography of Ponce de Leon currently available. One way or another, I intended to piece together exactly what had happened, and how worried I should be about de Leon making off with Gutenberg's book.\n\nAnd then there was the book FedEx had dropped on my doorstep this morning: an annotated copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, a fifteenth-century guide to witchcraft which Gutenberg believed might hold some insight.\n\nI had been reading for three straight hours when I heard a vehicle pull into the driveway. I sat back and rubbed my eyes. The book was in Latin, Gutenberg's notes were in Middle High German, and trying to jump back and forth between the two was shorting out my brain. My knees and back cracked as I stood and headed for the door. A peek through the window showed Nidhi Shah and Lena Greenwood walking up the driveway.\n\nI surveyed my home and grimaced. Aside from nailing sheets of plywood over the broken back door, I had done nothing at all to clean up. Nor was I much better off: my clothes were rumpled, stubble covered my chin and cheeks, and my hair was a bed-flattened disaster.\n\nDoctor Shah didn't look so great either. Her eyes were shadowed, and she acted jumpy, glancing about as she approached like she was waiting for something to leap out at her. Given her time in captivity, I couldn't blame her. How did a therapist cope with that kind of trauma?\n\nI took a moment to compose myself, trying to keep my own conflicting feelings from showing, then opened the door.\n\n\"Isaac!\" Lena bounded up the steps to hug me. \"Congratulations on your promotion!\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nShe pulled back, and her brow furrowed. \"Have you eaten anything today?\"\n\n\"Raisin Bran. I think.\" Had I actually finished that bowl, or was it still sitting in my office? \"I've been busy with the new job.\" I stepped to the side. \"I haven't had time to straighten up around here. Sorry.\"\n\nLena pulled a box of Hot Tamale candies from her pocket. \"I brought something for Smudge. Do you mind?\"\n\nI gestured for her to go ahead, and she hurried back to my office. I shook Doctor Shah's hand and shut the door behind her. \"I'm glad you're all right.\" I hesitated. \"Are you? All right, I mean?\"\n\n\"I've had better months, but I'm getting there. I met with Margaret Hubert yesterday. Her son's magic was crude, like an ax through her memories, but I think the Porters should be able to help her.\"\n\nLena returned and opened the fridge. \"You haven't even been shopping yet?\"\n\nDoctor Shah rolled her eyes. I couldn't tell if her expression was one of fondness or exasperation. Probably both.\n\n\"If I'd known you were coming, I would have stocked up on ice cream,\" I said.\n\n\"Well, make sure you remember next time.\"\n\nNext time? \"I'm sorry I forgot to call you about the motorcycle.\"\n\n\"I'm not here about the bike.\" Lena gave up on my fridge and sat down at the table, where she tossed back a few candies.\n\nWhen she didn't say anything more, I turned back to Shah. \"Do you want a beer?\"\n\nHer face eased into a genuine smile. \"Oh, God, yes.\"\n\nI grabbed two from the fridge, one for each of us. I took a long drink, then asked, \"Did Gutenberg send you to check up on me?\"\n\n\"Gutenberg has nothing to do with this visit,\" Lena assured me.\n\n\"In part, I wanted the chance to say thank you,\" said Doctor Shah. \"For helping Lena, and for freeing me.\"\n\n\"I couldn't have done it myself.\" I gave Lena a quick salute with the bottle. \"She's a better field agent than I ever was.\"\n\n\"Says the man who took out four automatons,\" Lena shot back.\n\n\"There's more.\" Doctor Shah stared at her bottle. \"You know why Lena first sought you out.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" I kept my voice as neutral as I could. \"She was afraid you had been killed or turned, and she needed...\"\n\n\"I needed you,\" Lena said bluntly. \"Especially after the death of my tree.\"\n\nI tried not to think about the branch she had grafted onto the oak out back. \"Until we could reunite you and Doctor Shah.\"\n\n\"Please call me Nidhi.\" She forced another smile. \"I think we're well beyond titles at this point, don't you?\"\n\n\"Nidhi and I were talking about Gutenberg,\" Lena said. \"We had what you might call a professional disagreement.\"\n\n\"Lena believes Gutenberg has narcissistic personality disorder, and may in fact be a sociopath,\" Nidhi said calmly. \"Whereas I believe the DSM-IV wasn't written to diagnose six-hundred-year-old sorcerers.\"\n\nI stared. \"You're asking me to settle a debate about mental disorders?\"\n\n\"We fought.\" Lena was arranging her remaining candies in a single meandering line.\n\n\"It happens. You've had a rough few days.\" Nidhi was the therapist, not me. \"People fight.\"\n\n\"Not like this,\" Lena said softly. \"Not me.\"\n\n\"Lena adapts to the personality of her lover.\" Nidhi wiped condensation from the neck of her bottle. \"After losing both me and her tree, Lena spent an entire week with you.\"\n\nMy stomach did a somersault. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"She loves you.\" There were so many conflicting emotions in those three words I couldn't begin to untangle them all.\n\n\"I... I know.\" I winced as soon as I said it. Han Solo could say that and be awesome. I just felt like a dork. \"But it was one week. She loves you more.\"\n\n\"I'm right here,\" Lena said, flicking a candy at me. \"It's not a competition. And I love you both.\"\n\nI could translate ancient texts in a half-dozen languages, but the more I tried to follow this conversation, the more lost I became.\n\n\"I've never been my own person. I never will be.\" Lena spoke flatly, without resentment. \"But fighting with my lover like that... it was something new. Something that happened because of you.\"\n\n\"You're blaming me for\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up, Isaac.\" Lena stood up. \"I'm thanking you, dumbass.\"\n\nI looked at Nidhi, hoping she would throw me a lifeline, but she merely took another drink from her beer.\n\n\"You're welcome?\" I said weakly.\n\nLena ignored me, which was probably for the best. \"With Frank Dearing, then with Nidhi... I didn't know what I was or why my feelings changed until much later. I've never had a choice before.\"\n\nI thought she had made her choice the moment we found Nidhi alive in the Detroit nest. If not... the only reason to drive to Copper River to see me was... but then why would she bring Nidhi along? \"Are you saying you need time to choose?\"\n\nLena shook her head. \"I've already made my choice.\"\n\nI waited. She folded her arms, grinning mischievously.\n\n\"Well?\" I said.\n\n\"I choose you both.\"\n\n\"I\u2014 What?\"\n\nNidhi chuckled. \"That's pretty much what I said, too.\"\n\n\"If you're worried about the sex, don't.\" I could see the anxiety behind Lena's smile. \"I've got more than enough stamina to keep up with you both.\"\n\n\"But not at once!\" Nidhi said quickly.\n\nLena stuck out her tongue.\n\n\"You're proposing that the three of us...\" I trailed off, trying to find words.\n\n\"I know what I am,\" Lena said firmly. \"I love who I've been with Nidhi. If I leave her, if I stay with you, I'll adapt to your needs and desires. But right at this moment I'm becoming something different. Something more, pulled in two directions at once. I'm conflicted. I want to keep that conflict, Isaac. I want to feel torn. When I'm with a single lover, then every choice I make comes back to what they want. Let me love you both, and some of those wants cancel out. It's the closest I've ever come to truly choosing for myself. I want the conflict. And I want you.\"\n\nShe glanced at Nidhi. \"Just like I want you, too, so don't you dare pout at me.\"\n\nMy mind derailed at the idea of Doctor Shah pouting, but that was easier to process than what Lena was proposing. The logistics alone... they lived downstate. Were they expecting me to move to Dearborn? Or would Lena commute from the lower peninsula to the upper?\n\n\"And you're okay with this?\" I asked, stalling for time.\n\n\"It wouldn't have been my first choice.\" Nidhi sighed. \"I don't own her. She's forced me to confront a lot of my own attitudes and assumptions these past two days. I don't imagine it will be easy, but I'm willing to try, for her.\"\n\n\"I'm not asking for promises,\" Lena pressed. \"I'm only asking for you\u2014for us\u2014to try.\"\n\n\"The Porters have offered to reassign me to the U.P.,\" said Nidhi. \"They need someone working with the werewolf packs up here. I could keep up my mundane practice as well. Seasonal affective disorder alone will keep me busy most of the year. I'd get my own place, of course. I don't imagine you and I would do well living in the same house.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" I said. This wasn't just about Lena; it was about the three of us. Nidhi Shah was a part of Lena's life. A week ago, the idea of bringing Doctor Shah into my life would have been uncomfortable at best, but after seeing her the way Lena did... Okay, it was still uncomfortable. \"I've never even managed a successful relationship with one person, let alone two. I don't know how to\u2014\"\n\n\"Neither do I,\" said Lena. \"So we learn. What's the matter? I thought you liked learning.\"\n\nUncomfortable, but perhaps not unworkable.\n\n\"Stop overthinking this, Isaac,\" said Lena.\n\n\"Overthinking is what I do.\"\n\nShe took my hand. Her palm was damp and warm. \"What do you want?\"\n\nHad she asked me a month ago, I would have answered without hesitating. I wanted to rejoin the Porters. I wanted a research position. I wanted magic.\n\nI had those things now, and none of them had come in the way I expected. Why should this be any different? \"I think\u2014\" My throat went dry. I took a quick drink. \"I think I'd like to try.\"\n\nShe laughed and hauled me out of my chair. Her arms clamped around my body, and her mouth found mine. I staggered back a step before catching my balance, then returned the kiss. Her lips parted, and for a short time I forgot about Nidhi Shah, about magical dangers bent on killing us all, about everything except Lena Greenwood's body pressed against mine, holding me tight while our tongues danced together.\n\nShe broke away, beaming. While I caught my breath, she spun around and yanked Nidhi to her feet. Lena proceeded to kiss her with every bit as much enthusiasm as she had me.\n\nJealousy flared, an instinctive ape-level response crying, Mine! I did my best to squash that response, but this arrangement was definitely going to take some getting used to. And if it was hard for me, what must it be like for Doctor Shah\u2014for Nidhi\u2014to suddenly find herself sharing her lover with a former client?\n\nI waited for them to finish. \"This presents a serious question.\"\n\nThey both looked at me. \"What's that?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Whether to start you off with a Doctor Who marathon or dive straight into Firefly.\"\n\nLena grinned and took us both by the hands. \"We can discuss it over ice cream,\" she proclaimed. \"Or pie. Maybe both. Either way, we're going to celebrate, my treat. And don't worry about the calories. We'll work that off later.\"\n\nI swapped a bemused look with Nidhi as Lena tugged us both toward the door. What else awaited us, I didn't know... but there was magic out there, and I intended to explore it all.\n\nFor more books by this author, click here."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Inkspell",
        "author": "Cornelia Funke",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "books about books",
            "Inkworld"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\u2003Words Made to Measure\n\n\u2003He has been trying to sing\n\n\u2003Love into existence again\n\n\u2003And he has failed.\n\n\u2014Margaret Atwood, 'Orpheus 2', Eating Fire.\n\nTwilight was gathering, and Orpheus still wasn't here. Farid's heart beat faster, as it always did when day left him alone with the darkness. Curse that Cheeseface! Where could he be? The birds were falling silent in the trees, as if the approach of night had stifled their voices, and the nearby mountains were turning black. You might have thought the setting sun had singed them. Soon the whole world would be black as pitch, even the grass beneath Farid's bare feet, and the ghosts would begin to whisper. Farid knew only one place where he felt safe from them: right behind Dustfinger, so close that he could feel his warmth. Dustfinger wasn't afraid of the night. He liked it.\n\n'Hearing them again, are you?' he asked, as Farid pressed close to him. 'How many times do I have to tell you? There aren't any ghosts in this world. One of its few advantages.'\n\nDustfinger stood there leaning against an oak tree, looking down the lonely road. In the distance, a street lamp cast its light on the cracked asphalt where a few houses huddled by the roadside. There were scarcely a dozen of them, standing close together as if they feared the night as much as Farid.\n\nThe house where Cheeseface lived was the first in the road. There was a light on behind one of its windows. Dustfinger had been staring at it for more than an hour. Farid had often tried standing motionless like that, but his limbs simply would not keep still.\n\n'I'm going to find out where he is!'\n\n'No, you're not!' Dustfinger's face was as expressionless as ever, but his voice gave him away. Farid heard the impatience in it... and the hope that refused to die, although it had been disappointed so often before. 'Are you sure he said Friday?'\n\n'Yes, and this is Friday, right?'\n\nDustfinger just nodded, and pushed his shoulder-length hair back from his face. Farid had tried growing his own hair long, but it was so curly, tangled and unruly that in the end he cut it short again with his knife.\n\n'Friday outside the village at four o'clock, that's what he said. While that dog of his growled at me as if it really fancied a nice crunchy boy to eat!' The wind blew through Farid's thin sweater, and he rubbed his arms, shivering. A good warm fire, that's what he'd have liked now, but Dustfinger wouldn't let him light so much as a match in this wind. Four o'clock... cursing quietly, Farid looked up at the darkening sky. He knew it was well past four, even without a watch.\n\n'I tell you, he's making us wait on purpose, the stuck-up idiot!'\n\nDustfinger's thin lips twisted into a smile. Farid was finding it easier and easier to make him smile. Perhaps that was why he'd promised to take Farid too... supposing Orpheus really did send Dustfinger back. Back to his own world, created from paper, printer's ink and an old man's words.\n\nOh, come on! thought Farid. How would Orpheus, of all people, succeed where all the others had failed? So many had tried it... the Stammerer, Golden Eyes, Raventongue. Swindlers who had taken their money.\n\nThe light went out behind Orpheus's window, and Dustfinger abruptly straightened up. A door closed. The sound of footsteps echoed through the darkness: rapid, irregular footsteps. Then Orpheus appeared in the light of the single street lamp. Farid had privately nicknamed him Cheeseface because of his pale skin and the way he sweated like a piece of cheese in the sun. Breathing heavily, he walked down the steep slope of the road, with his hell-hound beside him. It was ugly as a hyena. When Orpheus saw Dustfinger standing by the roadside he stopped, smiled broadly, and waved to him.\n\nFarid grasped Dustfinger's arm. 'Look at that silly grin. False as fool's gold!' he whispered. 'How can you trust him?'\n\n'Who says I trust him? And what's the matter with you? You're all jittery. Would you rather stay here? Cars, moving pictures, canned music, light that keeps the night away\u2014' Dustfinger clambered over the knee-high wall beside the road. 'You like all that. You'll be bored to death where I want to go.'\n\nWhat was he talking about? As if he didn't know perfectly well that there was only one thing Farid wanted: to stay with him. He was about to reply angrily, but a sharp crack, like boots treading on a twig, made him spin round. Dustfinger had heard it too. He had stopped, and was listening. But there was nothing to be seen among the trees, only the branches moving in the wind, and a moth, pale as a ghost, that fluttered in Farid's face.\n\n'I'm sorry, it took longer than I expected!' cried Orpheus as he approached them.\n\nFarid still couldn't grasp the fact that such a voice could emerge from that mouth. They had heard about Orpheus's voice in several villages, and Dustfinger had set out at once in search of it, but not until a week ago had they found the man himself in a library, reading fairy tales to a few children. None of the children seemed to notice the dwarf who suddenly slipped out from behind one of the shelves crammed with well-thumbed books. But Dustfinger had seen him. He had lain in wait for Orpheus, approaching him just as he was about to get into his car again, and finally he'd shown him the book \u2013 the book that Farid had cursed more often than anything else on earth.\n\n'Oh, I know that book!' Orpheus had breathed. 'And as for you,' he had added almost devoutly, looking at Dustfinger as if to stare the scars from his cheeks, 'I know you too! You're the best thing in it. Dustfinger! The fire-eater! Who read you here into this saddest of all stories? No, don't say anything! You want to go back, don't you? But you can't find the door, the door hidden among the letters on the page! Never mind! I can build you a new one, with words made to measure! For a special price, between friends \u2013 if you're really the man I take you for.'\n\nA special price between friends? What a laugh! They'd had to promise him almost all their money, and then wait for him for hours in this godforsaken spot, on this windy night that smelled of ghosts.\n\n'Is the marten in there?' Orpheus shone his torch on Dustfinger's rucksack. 'You know my dog doesn't like him.'\n\n'No, he's finding something to eat.' Dustfinger's eyes wandered to the book under Orpheus's arm. 'Well? Have you... done it?'\n\n'Of course!' As Orpheus spoke, the hell-hound bared its teeth and glared at Farid. 'To start with, the words were rather hard to find. Perhaps because I was so excited. As I told you at our first meeting, this book, Inkheart \u2013' Orpheus stroked the volume \u2013 'was my favourite when I was a child. I was eleven when I last saw it. I kept borrowing it from our run-down library until it was stolen. Unfortunately I hadn't been brave enough to steal it myself, and then someone else did, but I never forgot it. This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends! Friends like you, fire-eaters, giants, fairies...! Have you any idea how bitterly I wept when I read about your death? But you're alive, and everything will be all right! You will retell the story\u2014'\n\n'I?' Dustfinger interrupted him, with an amused look. 'No, believe me, that's a task for others.'\n\n'Well, perhaps.' Orpheus cleared his throat as if he felt embarrassed to have revealed so much of his feelings. 'However that may be, it's a shame I can't go with you,' he said, making for the wall beside the road with his curiously awkward gait. 'But the reader has to stay behind, that's the iron rule. I've tried every way I could to read myself into a book, but it just won't work.' Sighing, he stopped by the wall, put his hand under his ill-fitting jacket and brought out a sheet of paper. 'Well \u2013 this is what you asked for,' he told Dustfinger. 'Wonderful words, just for you, a road of words to take you straight back again. Here, read it!'\n\nHesitantly, Dustfinger took the sheet of paper. It was covered with fine, slanting handwriting, the letters tangled like thread. Dustfinger slowly ran his finger along the words, as if he had to show each of them separately to his eyes. Orpheus watched him, like a schoolboy waiting to be told the mark his work has earned.\n\nWhen Dustfinger finally looked up again, he sounded surprised. 'You write very well! Those are beautiful words...'\n\nOrpheus went as red as if someone had tipped mulberry juice over his face. 'I'm glad you like it!'\n\n'I like it very much! It's all just as I described it to you. It even sounds a little better.'\n\nOrpheus took the sheet of paper back with an awkward smile. 'I can't promise that it'll be the same time of day there,' he said in a muted voice. 'The laws of my art are difficult to understand, but believe me, no one knows more about them than I do. For instance, I've discovered that if you want to change or continue a story, you should use only words that are in the book already. Too many new words and nothing at all may happen, or alternatively something could happen that you didn't intend. Perhaps it's different if you wrote the original story\u2014'\n\n'In the name of all the fairies, you're fuller of words than a whole library!' Dustfinger interrupted impatiently. 'How about just reading it now?'\n\nOrpheus fell silent as abruptly as if he had swallowed his tongue. 'By all means,' he said in slightly injured tones. 'Well, now you'll see! With my help, the book will welcome you back like a prodigal son. It will suck you up the way paper absorbs ink.'\n\nDustfinger just nodded and looked down the empty road. Farid sensed how much he wanted to believe Cheeseface \u2013 and how afraid he was of another disappointment.\n\n'What about me?' Farid went up to him. 'He did write something about me too, didn't he? Did you check it?'\n\nOrpheus gave him a rather nasty look. 'My God,' he said sarcastically to Dustfinger, 'that boy really does seem fond of you! Where did you pick him up? Somewhere along the road?'\n\n'Not exactly,' said Dustfinger. 'He was plucked out of his story by the man who did me the same favour.'\n\n'Ah, yes! That... Silvertongue!' Orpheus spoke the name in a disparaging tone, as if he couldn't believe that anyone really deserved it.\n\n'Yes, that's what he's called. How do you know?' There was no mistaking Dustfinger's surprise.\n\nThe hell-hound snuffled at Farid's bare toes. Orpheus shrugged. 'Sooner or later you get to hear of everyone who can breathe life into the letters on a page.'\n\n'Indeed?' Dustfinger sounded sceptical, but he asked no more questions. He just stared at the sheet of paper covered with Orpheus's fine handwriting. But Cheeseface was still looking at Farid.\n\n'What book do you come from?' he asked. 'And why don't you want to go back into your own story, instead of his, which is nothing to do with you?'\n\n'That's none of your business!' replied Farid angrily. He liked Cheeseface less and less. He was too inquisitive \u2013 and far too shrewd.\n\nBut Dustfinger just laughed quietly. 'His own story? No, Farid isn't in the least homesick for that one. The boy switches from story to story like a snake changing its skin.' Farid heard something like admiration in his voice.\n\n'Does he indeed?' Orpheus looked at Farid again, so patronizingly that the boy would have liked to kick his fat shins, but the hell-hound was still glaring hungrily at him. 'Very well,' said Orpheus, sitting down on the wall. 'I'm warning you, all the same! Reading you back is easy, but the boy has no business in your story! I can't put his name into it, I can only say \"a boy\", and as you know, I can't guarantee that it will work. Even if it does, he'll probably just cause confusion. He may even bring you bad luck!'\n\nWhatever did the wretched man mean? Farid looked at Dustfinger. Please, he thought, oh, please! Don't listen to him. Take me with you.\n\nDustfinger returned his gaze. And smiled.\n\n'Bad luck?' he said, and his voice conveyed the certainty that no one could tell him anything he didn't already know about bad luck. 'Nonsense. So far the boy has brought me nothing but good luck instead. And he's not a bad fire-eater. He's coming with me. And so is this.' Before Orpheus realized what he meant, Dustfinger picked up the book that Cheeseface had put down on the wall beside him. 'You won't be needing it any more. And I shall sleep considerably more easily if it's in my possession.'\n\nDismayed, Orpheus stared at him. 'But... but I told you, it's my favourite book! I really would like to keep it.'\n\n'And so would I,' was all Dustfinger said as he handed Farid the book. 'Here, take good care of it.'\n\nFarid clutched it to his chest and nodded. 'Now for Gwin,' he said. 'We must call him.' But just as he took a little dry bread from his trouser pocket and was about to call Gwin's name, Dustfinger put his hand over Farid's mouth.\n\n'Gwin stays here,' he said. If he had announced that he was planning to leave his right arm behind, Farid couldn't have looked at him more incredulously. 'Why are you staring at me like that? We'll catch ourselves another marten once we're there, one that's not so ready to bite.'\n\n'Well, at least you've seen sense there,' said Orpheus, his voice sounding injured.\n\nWhatever was he talking about? But Dustfinger avoided the boy's questioning gaze. 'Come on, start reading!' he told Orpheus. 'Or we'll still be standing here at sunrise.'\n\nOrpheus looked at him for a moment as if he were about to say something else. But then he cleared his throat. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, you're right. Ten years in the wrong story \u2013 that's a long time. Let's start reading.'\n\nWords.\n\nWords filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers. Words made to measure, written by Orpheus with his dough-pale hands, words taken from the book that Farid was clutching tightly, and then fitted together into a new meaning. They spoke of another world, a world full of marvels and terrors. And Farid, listening, forgot time. He didn't even feel that there was such a thing. Nothing existed but the voice of Orpheus, so ill-suited to the mouth it came from. It obliterated everything: the pot-holed road and the run-down houses at the far end of it, the street lamp, the wall where Orpheus was sitting, even the moon above the black trees. And suddenly the air smelled strange and sweet...\n\nHe can do it, thought Farid, he really can do it, and meanwhile the voice of Orpheus made him blind and deaf to everything that wasn't made of the written letters on the sheet of paper...\n\nWhen Cheeseface suddenly fell silent, he looked around him in confusion, dizzy from the beautiful sound of the words. But why were the houses still there, and the street lamp, all rusty from wind and rain? Orpheus was still there too, and his hell-hound.\n\nOnly one thing was missing. Dustfinger.\n\nBut Farid was still standing on the same lonely road. In the wrong world."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fool's Gold",
                "text": "\u2002For plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan, and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.\n\n\u2014Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer\n\n'No!' Farid heard the horror in his own voice. 'No! What have you done? Where has he gone?'\n\nOrpheus rose ponderously from the wall, still holding that wretched piece of paper, and he smiled. 'Home. Where else?'\n\n'But what about me? Go on reading. Go on!' Everything was blurred by the tears in his eyes. He was alone again, alone as he had always been before he found Dustfinger. Farid began trembling so hard that he didn't even notice Orpheus taking the book from his hands.\n\n'And here's the proof of it once again,' he heard the man murmur. 'I bear my name by right. I am the master of all words, both written and spoken. No one can compete with me.'\n\n'Master of words? What are you talking about?' Farid shouted in such a loud voice that even the hell-hound flinched. 'If you know so much about your trade, then why am I still here? Go on, start reading again! And give me that book back!' He reached for it, but Orpheus avoided him with surprising agility.\n\n'The book? Why should I give it to you? You probably can't even read. Let me tell you something! If I'd wanted you to go with him, then you'd be there now, but you have no business in his story, so I just left out what I'd written about you. Understand? And now, be off before I set my dog on you. Boys like you threw stones at him when he was a puppy, and he's enjoyed chasing your sort ever since!'\n\n'You brute! You liar! You traitor!' Farid's voice broke. Hadn't he known it? Hadn't he told Dustfinger? Cheeseface was as false as fool's gold.\n\nSomething made its way between his bare feet, something furry and round-nosed with tiny horns between its ears. The marten. He's gone, Gwin, thought Farid. Dustfinger's gone. We'll never see him again!\n\nThe hell-hound lowered its bulky head and took a hesitant step towards the marten, but Gwin bared his needle-sharp teeth, and the huge dog withdrew its nose in astonishment. Its fear gave Farid fresh courage.\n\n'Come on, give it to me!' He rammed his thin fist into Orpheus's chest. 'That piece of paper, and the book too! Or I'll slit you open like a carp. I swear I will!' But he couldn't help sobbing, which made the words sound nothing like as impressive as he had intended.\n\nOrpheus patted his dog's head as he stowed the book away in the waistband of his trousers. 'Dear me, that really scares us, Cerberus, doesn't it?'\n\nGwin pressed close to Farid's ankles, his tail twitching uneasily back and forth. Even when the marten ran across the road and disappeared into the trees on the other side, Farid thought it was because of the dog. Deaf and blind, he kept thinking later, you were deaf and blind, Farid. But Orpheus smiled, like someone who knows more than his opponent.\n\n'Let me tell you, my young friend,' he said, 'it gave me a terrible fright when Dustfinger wanted the book back. Luckily he handed it to you, or I couldn't have done anything for him. It was hard enough persuading my clients not to just kill him, but I made them promise. Only on that condition would I act as bait... bait for the book, because in case you haven't caught on yet, this is all about the book. The book and nothing else. They promised not to hurt a hair of Dustfinger's head, but I'm afraid no one said a word about you.'\n\nAnd before Farid realized what Cheeseface was talking about, he felt the knife at his throat \u2013 sharp as the edge of a reed, colder than mist among the trees.\n\n'Well, well, who have we here?' a well-remembered voice murmured in his ear. 'Didn't I last see you with Silvertongue? It seems you helped Dustfinger to steal the book for him, isn't that so? What a fine little fellow you are!' The knife scratched Farid's skin, and the man breathed peppermint into his face. If he hadn't known Basta by his voice, then that stinking breath would have identified the man. His knife and a few mint leaves \u2013 Basta was never without them. He chewed the leaves and then spat out what remained. He was dangerous as a rabid dog, and not too bright, but how did he come to be here? How had he found them?\n\n'Well, how do you like my new knife?' Basta purred into Farid's ear. 'I'd have liked to introduce the fire-eater to it too, but Orpheus here has a weakness for him. Never mind, I'll find Dustfinger again. Him and Silvertongue, and Silvertongue's witch of a daughter. They'll all pay...'\n\n'Pay for what?' said Farid. 'Saving you from the Shadow?'\n\nBut Basta only pressed the blade more firmly against his neck. 'Saving me? They brought me bad luck, nothing but bad luck!'\n\n'For heaven's sake put that knife away!' Orpheus interrupted, sounding sickened. 'He's only a boy. Let him go. I have the book as we agreed, so\u2014'\n\n'Let him go?' Basta laughed aloud, but the laughter died in his throat. A snarling sound came from the woods behind them, and the hell-hound laid its ears back. Basta spun round. 'What the devil...? You damned idiot! What have you let out of the book?'\n\nFarid didn't want to know the answer. He felt Basta loosen his grip for a moment. That was enough: he bit the man's hand so hard that he tasted blood. Basta screamed and dropped the knife. Farid jerked back his elbows, rammed them into the man's narrow chest and ran. But he had entirely forgotten the little wall by the roadside; he stumbled on it and fell to his knees, so hard that he was left gasping for breath. As he picked himself up he saw the paper lying on the asphalt, the sheet of paper that had carried Dustfinger away. The wind must have blown it into the road. With quick fingers, he reached for it. I just left out what I'd written about you. Understand? Orpheus's words still rang in his head, mocking him. Farid clutched the sheet of paper to his chest and ran on, over the road and towards the dark trees waiting on the other side. The hell-hound was growling and barking behind him. Then it howled. Something snarled again, so fiercely that Farid ran even faster. Orpheus screamed, fear making his voice shrill and ugly. Basta swore, and then the snarl came again, wild as the snarling of the great cats that had lived in Farid's old world.\n\nDon't look round, he thought. Run, run! he told his legs. Let the cat eat the hell-hound, let it eat them all, Basta and Cheeseface included, just keep running. The dead leaves lying under the trees were damp and muffled the sound of his footsteps, but they were slippery too, and made him lose his balance on the steep slope. Desperately he caught hold of a tree trunk, pressed himself against it, knees trembling, and listened to the sounds of the night. Could Basta hear him gasping?\n\nA sob escaped his throat. He pressed his hands to his mouth. The book, Basta had the book! He'd been supposed to look after it \u2013 and how was he ever going to find Dustfinger again now? Farid felt the sheet of paper that held Orpheus's words. He was still holding it tight. It was damp and dirty \u2013 and now it was his only hope.\n\n'Hey, you little bastard! Bite me, would you?' Basta's voice reached him through the quiet night air. 'You can run but I'll get you yet, do you hear? You, the fire-eater, Silvertongue and his hoity-toity daughter \u2013 and the old man who wrote those accursed words! I'll kill you all! One by one! The way I've just slit open the beast that came out of the book.'\n\nFarid hardly dared to breathe. Go on, he told himself. Go on! He can't see you! Trembling, he felt for the next tree trunk, sought a handhold, and was grateful to the wind for blowing through the leaves and drowning out his footsteps with their rustling. How many times do I have to tell you? There aren't any ghosts in this world. One of its few advantages. He heard Dustfinger's voice as clearly as if he were still following the fire-eater. Farid kept repeating the words as the tears ran down his face and thorns gashed his feet: There are no ghosts, there are no ghosts!\n\nA branch whipped against his face so hard that he almost cried out. Were they following him? He couldn't hear anything except the wind. He slipped again, and stumbled down the slope. Nettles stung his legs, burrs caught in his hair. And something jumped up at him, furry and warm, pushing its nose into his face.\n\n'Gwin?' Farid felt the little head. Yes, there were the tiny horns. He pressed his face into the marten's soft fur. 'Basta's back, Gwin!' he whispered. 'And he has the book! Suppose Orpheus reads him into it again? He's sure to go back into the book some time, don't you think? How are we going to warn Dustfinger about him now?'\n\nFarid twice found himself back at the road that wound down the mountain, but he dared not walk along it, and instead made his way on through the prickly undergrowth. Soon every breath he drew hurt, but he did not stop. Only when the first rays of the sun made their way through the trees, and Basta still hadn't appeared behind him, did he know that he had got away.\n\nNow what? he thought as he lay in the damp grass, gasping for breath. Now what? And suddenly he remembered another voice, the voice that had brought him into this world. Silvertongue. Of course. Only Silvertongue could help Farid now, he or his daughter. Meggie. They were living with the bookworm woman these days. Farid had once been there with Dustfinger. It was a long way to go, particularly with the cuts on his feet. But he had to get there before Basta did..."
            },
            {
                "title": "Dustfinger Comes Home",
                "text": "\u2002'What is this?' said the Leopard, 'that is so 'sclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?'\n\n\u2014Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories\n\nFor a moment Dustfinger felt as if he had never been away \u2013 as if he had simply had a bad dream, and the memory of it had left a stale taste on his tongue, a shadow on his heart, nothing more. All of a sudden everything was back again: the sounds, so familiar and never forgotten; the scents; the tree-trunks dappled in the morning light; the shadow of the leaves on his face. Some were turning colour, like the leaves in that other world, so autumn must be coming here too, but the air was still mild. It smelled of over-ripe berries, fading blossoms, a thousand or more flowers dazing his senses \u2013 flowers pale as wax glimmering under the shade of the trees, blue stars on stems so thin and delicate that he walked carefully so as not to tread on them. Oaks, planes, tulip trees towering to the sky all around him! He had almost forgotten how huge a tree could be, how broad and tall its trunk, with a leaf canopy spreading so wide that a whole troop of horsemen could shelter beneath it. The forests of the other world were so young, their trees still children. They had always made him feel old, so old that the years covered him like cobwebs. Here he was young again, just a child among the trees, not much older than the mushrooms growing among their roots, not much taller than the thistles and nettles.\n\nBut where was the boy?\n\nDustfinger looked around, searching for him, calling his name again and again. 'Farid!' It was a name that had become almost as familiar to him as his own over these last few months. But there was no reply. Only his own voice echoing back from the trees.\n\nSo that was it. The boy had been left behind. What would he do now, all alone? Well, thought Dustfinger as he looked round in vain one last time, what do you think? He'll manage better in that world than you ever did. The noise, the speed, the crowds of people, he likes all that. And you've taught him enough of your craft, he can play with fire almost as well as you. Yes, the boy will manage very well. But for a moment the joy of his home-coming wilted in Dustfinger's heart like one of the flowers at his feet, and the morning light that had welcomed him only a moment ago now seemed wan and lifeless. The other world had cheated him again: yes, it had let him go after all those years, but it had kept the only beings to whom he had given his heart there...\n\nWell, and what does that teach you? he thought, kneeling in the dewy grass. Better keep your heart to yourself, Dustfinger. He picked up a leaf that glowed red as fire on the dark moss. There hadn't been any leaves like that in the other world, had there? So what was the matter with him? Angry with himself, he straightened up again. Listen, Dustfinger, you're back! he told himself firmly. Back! Forget the boy \u2013 yes, you've lost him, but you have your own world back instead, a whole world. You're back, can you finally believe it?\n\nIf only it wasn't so difficult. It was far easier to believe in unhappiness than in happiness. He would have to touch every flower, feel every tree, crumble the earth in his fingers and feel the first gnat-bite on his skin before he really believed it.\n\nBut yes, he was back. He really was back. At last. And suddenly happiness went to his head like a glass of strong wine. Even the thought of Farid couldn't cloud it any more. His ten-year nightmare was over. How light he felt, light as one of the leaves raining down from the trees like gold!\n\nHe was happy.\n\nRemember, Dustfinger? This is what it feels like. Happiness.\n\nSure enough, Orpheus had read him to the very place he had described. There was the pool, shimmering among grey and white stones, surrounded by flowering oleander, and only a little way from the bank stood the plane tree where the fire-elves nested. Their nests seemed to cluster more densely around the trunk than he remembered. A less practised eye might have taken them for bees' nests, but they were smaller and rather paler, almost as pale as the bark peeling from the tall trunk to which they clung.\n\nDustfinger looked round, once again breathing the air he had missed so much these last ten years. Scents he had almost forgotten mingled with those that could be found in the other world too. And you could find trees like the ones around the pool there too, although smaller and much younger. Branches of eucalyptus and alder reached out over the water as if to cool their leaves. Dustfinger cautiously made his way through the trees until he reached the bank. A tortoise made off at a leisurely pace when his shadow fell on its shell. The tongue of a toad, sitting on a stone, shot out and swallowed a fire-elf. Swarms of them were whirring about over the water, with their high-pitched buzzing that always sounded so angry.\n\nIt was time to raid their nests.\n\nDustfinger knelt down on one of the damp stones. Something rustled behind him, and for a moment he caught himself looking for Farid's dark hair and Gwin's head with its little horns, but it was only a lizard pushing its way out of the leaves and crawling up on to one of the stones to bask in the autumn sunlight. 'Idiot!' he muttered, leaning forward. 'Forget the boy \u2013 and as for the marten, he won't miss you. Anyway, you had good reasons for leaving him behind. The best of reasons.'\n\nHis reflection trembled on the dark water. His face was the same as ever. The scars were still there, of course, but at least he had suffered no further injuries: his nose hadn't been smashed in, he didn't have a stiff leg like Cockerell in the other story, everything was in the right place. He even still had his voice \u2013 so the man Orpheus obviously knew his trade.\n\nDustfinger bent lower over the water. Where were they? Had they forgotten him? The blue fairies forget every face, often just minutes after seeing it, but what about these others? Ten years is a long time, but did they count years?\n\nThe water moved, and his reflection mingled with other features. Toad-like eyes were looking up at him from an almost human face, with long hair drifting in the water like grass, and equally green and fine. Dustfinger took his hand out of the cool water, and another hand stretched up \u2013 a slender, delicate hand almost like a child's, covered with scales so tiny that you could scarcely see them. A damp finger, cool as the water from which it had risen, touched his face and traced the scars on it.\n\n'Yes, it's not easy to forget my face, is it?' Dustfinger spoke so quietly that his voice was scarcely more than a whisper. Loud voices frighten water-nymphs. 'So you remember the scars. And do you remember what I asked you and your sisters to do for me, when I was here before?'\n\nThe toad-like eyes looked at him, black and gold, and then the water-nymph sank and vanished as if she had been a mere illusion. But a few moments later, three of them appeared together in the dark water. Shoulders white as lily petals shimmered beneath the surface, fish-tails with rainbow scales like the belly of a perch flicked, barely visible, in the water below. The tiny gnats dancing above the water stung Dustfinger's face and arms, as if they had been waiting just for him, but he hardly felt it. The nymphs hadn't forgotten him \u2013 neither his face nor what he needed from them to help him summon fire.\n\nThey reached their hands up out of the water. Tiny air bubbles rose to the surface, the sign of their laughter, as silent as everything else about them. They took his hands between their own, stroked his arms, his face, his bare throat, until his skin was almost as cool as theirs, and covered with the same fine, slimy deposit that protected their scales. Then, as suddenly as they had come, they disappeared again. Their faces sank down into the dark pool, and Dustfinger might have thought, as always, that he had only dreamed them, but for the cool sensation on his skin, the shimmering of his hands and arms.\n\n'Thank you!' he whispered, although only his own reflection now quivered on the water. Then he straightened up, made his way through the oleander bushes on the bank, and moved towards the fire-tree as silently as possible. If Farid had been here, he'd have been prancing through the wet grass like a foal in his excitement.\n\nCobwebs wet with dew clung to Dustfinger's clothes as he stood under the plane tree. The lowest nests hung so far down that he could easily reach into one of the entrance holes. The first elves came swarming angrily out when he put in the fingers that the water-nymphs had covered with moist slime, but he calmed them by humming quietly. If he could hit the right note, their agitated swirling soon turned to a tumbling flight, their own humming and buzzing becoming drowsy, until their tiny, hot bodies settled on his arms, burning his skin and leaving a tiny deposit of soot. However much it hurt he must not flinch, mustn't scare them away, must reach even further into the nest until he found what he was looking for: their fiery honey. Bees stung, but fire-elves burned holes in your skin if the water-nymphs hadn't touched it first. And even with their protection, it was prudent not to be too greedy when you stole the elves' honey. If a robber took too much they would fly in his face, burn his skin and hair, and wouldn't let him go until he was writhing in pain at the foot of their tree.\n\nBut Dustfinger was never greedy enough to annoy them. He took only a tiny piece of honeycomb from the nest, scarcely larger than his thumbnail. That was all he needed for now. He went on humming quietly as he wrapped the honey in some leaves.\n\nThe fire-elves woke as soon as he stopped humming. They whirred around him faster and faster, while their voices rose to a sound like bumble-bees buzzing angrily. However, they did not attack him. You had to ignore them, act as if you hadn't even seen them as you turned and walked away at your leisure, slowly, very slowly. They went on whirling in the air around Dustfinger for some time, but in the end they fell behind him, and he followed the small stream that flowed out of the water-nymphs' pool and wound slowly away through willows, reeds and alders.\n\nHe knew where the stream would take him: out of the Wayless Wood, where you hardly ever met another soul of your own kind, and then on northwards, to places where the forest belonged to human beings, and its timber fell to their axes so fast that most trees died before their canopies could offer shelter to so much as a single horseman. The stream would lead him through the valley as it slowly opened out, past hills where no man had ever set foot because they were full of giants and bears and creatures that had never been given a name. At some point the first charcoal-burners' huts would appear on the slopes, Dustfinger would see the first patch of bare earth among the dense green, and then he would be reunited not just with fairies and water-nymphs but, he hoped, with some of those human beings he had missed for so long.\n\nHe moved into cover when a sleepy wolf appeared between two trees in the distance, and waited, motionless, until its grey muzzle had disappeared. Yes, bears and wolves \u2013 he must learn to listen for their steps again, to sense their presence nearby before they saw him \u2013 not forgetting the big wildcats, dappled like tree-trunks in the sunlight, and the snakes as green as the foliage where they liked to hide. They let themselves down from the branches with less sound than his hand would make brushing a leaf off his shoulder. Luckily the giants generally stayed in their hills, where not even he dared go. Only in winter did they sometimes come down. But there were other creatures too, beings less gentle than the water-nymphs, and they couldn't be lulled by humming, like the fire-elves. They were usually invisible, well hidden among timber and green leaves, but they were no less dangerous for that: Tree-Men, Trows, Black Bogles, Night-Mares... some of them even ventured as far as the charcoal-burners' huts.\n\n'Take a little more care!' Dustfinger whispered to himself. 'You don't want your first day home to be your last.'\n\nThe sheer intoxication of being back gradually died down, allowing him to think more clearly again. But the happiness remained in his heart, soft and warm like a young bird's downy plumage.\n\nHe took his clothes off beside a stream and washed the water-nymphs' slimy deposit off his body, together with the fire-elves' soot and the grime of the other world. Then he put on the clothes he hadn't worn for ten years. He had looked after them carefully, but there were a few moth-holes in the black fabric all the same, and the sleeves had already been threadbare when he first took them off in that other world. These garments were all red and black, the colours worn by fire-eaters, just as tightrope-walkers clothed themselves in the blue of the sky. He stroked the rough material, put on the full-sleeved doublet, and threw the dark cloak over his shoulders. Luckily everything still fitted; getting new clothes made was an expensive business, even if you just took your old clothes to the tailor to be patched up again, as the strolling players usually did.\n\nWhen twilight fell he looked around for a safe place to sleep. Finally he climbed up on to a fallen oak with its root-ball towering so high into the air that it offered good shelter for the night. The root-ball was like a great rampart of earth, yet some of the roots still clung to the ground as if unwilling to let go of life. The crown of the fallen tree had put out new shoots, although they now pointed to the ground and not the sky. Dustfinger nimbly clambered along the mighty trunk, digging his fingers into its rough bark.\n\nWhen he reached the roots, which were now thrusting up into the air as if they could find nourishment there, a few fairies flew up, chattering crossly. They had obviously been looking for building materials for their nests. Of course: it would soon be autumn, time for a rather more weatherproof sleeping-place. The blue fairies took no particular trouble over the nests they built in spring, but as soon as the first leaf turned colour they began improving them, padding them with animal fur and birds' feathers, weaving more grass and twigs into the walls, sealing cracks with moss and fairy spit.\n\nTwo of the tiny blue creatures didn't fly away when they saw him. They stared avidly at his sandy hair as the evening light, falling through the tree-tops, tinged their wings with red.\n\n'Ah, of course!' Dustfinger laughed softly. 'You want some of my hair for your nests.' He cut off a lock with his knife. One of the delighted fairies seized the hair in her delicate, insect-like hands and fluttered quickly away with it. The other fairy, so tiny that she could only just have hatched from her mother-of-pearl egg, followed her. He had missed those bold little blue creatures, he'd missed them so much.\n\nDown below among the trees, night was falling, but in the light of the setting sun the treetops overhead were turning red as sorrel in a summer meadow. Soon the fairies would be asleep in their nests, the mice and rabbits in their holes and burrows. The cool of the night would make the lizards' legs stiff, the birds would fall silent, predators would prepare to go hunting, their eyes like yellow lights in the darkness. Let's hope they don't fancy a fire-eater for dinner, thought Dustfinger, stretching his legs out on the fallen trunk. He thrust his knife into the cracked bark beside him, wrapped himself in the cloak he hadn't worn for ten years, and stared up at the leaves. They were growing darker and darker now. An owl rose from an oak and swooped away, little more than a shadow among the branches. A tree whispered in its sleep, words that no human ear could understand.\n\nDustfinger closed his eyes and listened.\n\nHe was home again."
            },
            {
                "title": "Silvertongue's Daughter",
                "text": "\u2002Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?\n\n\u2014Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife\n\nMeggie hated quarrelling with Mo. It left her shaking inside, and nothing could comfort her \u2013 not a hug from her mother, not the liquorice sweets Resa's aunt Elinor gave her if their loud voices had carried to the library, not Darius, who firmly believed in the miraculous healing powers of hot milk and honey in such cases.\n\nNothing helped.\n\nThis time it had been particularly bad, because Mo had really only come to see her to say goodbye. He had a new job waiting, some sick books too old and valuable to be sent to him. In the past Meggie would have gone with him, but this time she had decided to stay with Elinor and her mother.\n\nWhy did he have to come to her room just when she was reading the notebooks again? They'd often quarrelled over those notebooks recently, although Mo hated a quarrel as much as she did. Afterwards, he usually disappeared into the workshop that Elinor had had built behind the house for him, and a time would come, once Meggie couldn't bear to be angry with him any more, when she would follow him there. He never raised his head when she slipped through the doorway, and without a word Meggie would sit down beside him on the chair that was always ready for her and watch him at work, just as she had done even before she could read. She loved watching his hands free a book from its shabby dress, separate stained pages from each other, part the threads holding a damaged quire together, or soak rag paper to mend a sheet of paper worn thin. It was never long before Mo turned and asked her a question of some kind: did she like the colour he'd chosen for a linen binding, did she agree that the paper pulp he'd mixed for repairs had turned out slightly too dark? It was Mo's way of apologizing, of saying: don't let's quarrel, Meggie, let's forget what we said just now.\n\nBut that was no good today. Because he hadn't disappeared into his workshop, he'd gone away to see some book collector or other and give the collector's printed treasures a new lease of life. This time he wouldn't come to her with a present to make up the quarrel \u2013 a book he'd found in a second-hand bookshop somewhere, or a bookmark decorated with bluejay feathers found in Elinor's garden...\n\nSo why couldn't she have been reading some other book when he came into her room?\n\n'Good heavens, Meggie, you seem to have nothing in your head but those notebooks!' he had said angrily. It had been the same every time, these last few months, whenever he had found her like that in her room \u2013 lying on the rug, deaf and blind to all that went on around her, eyes glued to the words with which she had written down what Resa told her \u2013 tales of what she had seen 'there', as Mo bitterly called it.\n\nThere.\n\nInkworld was the name Meggie gave to the place of which Mo spoke so slightingly, and her mother sometimes with such longing. Inkworld, after the book about it, Inkheart. The book was gone, but her mother's memories were as vivid as if not a day had passed since she was there \u2013 in that world of paper and printer's ink where there were fairies and princes, water-nymphs, fire-elves, and trees that seemed to grow to the sky.\n\nMeggie had sat with her mother for countless days and nights, writing down what Resa's fingers told her. Resa had left her voice behind in the Inkworld, so she talked to her daughter either with pencil and paper or with her hands, telling the story of those years \u2013 those terrible magical years, she called them. Sometimes she also drew what her eyes had seen but her tongue could no longer describe: fairies, birds, strange flowers, conjured up on paper with just a few strokes, yet looking so real that Meggie almost believed she had seen them too.\n\nAt first Mo himself had bound the notebooks in which Meggie wrote down Resa's memories \u2013 and each binding was more beautiful than the last \u2013 but a time came when Meggie noticed the anxiety in his eyes as he watched her reading them, completely absorbed in the words and pictures. Of course she understood his uneasiness; after all, for years he had lost his wife to this world made of words and paper. How could he like it if his daughter thought of little else? Oh yes, Meggie understood Mo very well, yet she couldn't do as he asked \u2013 close the books and forget the Inkworld for a while.\n\nPerhaps her longing for it wouldn't have been quite as strong if the fairies and brownies had still been around, all those strange creatures they had brought back from Capricorn's accursed village. But none of them lived in Elinor's garden now. The fairies' empty nests still clung to the trees, and the burrows that the brownies had dug were still there, but their inhabitants were gone. At first Elinor thought they had run away or been stolen, but then the ashes had been found. They covered the grass in the garden, fine as dust, grey ashes, as grey as the shadows from which Elinor's strange guests had once appeared. And Meggie had realized that there was no return from death, even for creatures made of nothing but words.\n\nElinor, however, could not reconcile herself to this idea. Defiantly, desperately, she had driven back to Capricorn's village \u2013 only to find the streets empty, the houses burned down, and not a living soul in sight. 'You know, Elinor,' Mo had said when she came back with her face tear-stained, 'I was afraid of something like this. I couldn't really believe there were words to bring back the dead. And besides \u2013 if you're honest with yourself \u2013 you must admit they didn't fit into this world.'\n\n'Nor do I!' was all Elinor had replied.\n\nOver the next few weeks, Meggie often heard sobbing from Elinor's room when she slipped into the library one last time in the evening to find a book. Many months had passed since then \u2013 they had all been living together in Elinor's big house for nearly a year, and Meggie had a feeling that Elinor was glad not to be alone with her books any more. She had given them the best rooms; Elinor's old schoolbooks and a few writers she no longer much liked had been banished to the attic to make more space. Meggie's room had a view of snow-topped mountains, and from her parents' bedroom you could see the distant lake with its gleaming water, which had so often tempted the fairies to fly in that direction.\n\nMo had never simply gone off like that before. Without a word of goodbye. Without making up the quarrel...\n\nPerhaps I should go down and help Darius in the library, thought Meggie as she sat there wiping the tears from her face. She never cried while she was quarrelling with Mo; the tears didn't come until later... and he always looked terribly guilty when he saw her red eyes. She was sure that yet again everyone had heard them quarrelling! Darius was probably making the hot milk and honey already, and as soon as she put her head round the kitchen door Elinor would begin calling Mo, and men in general, names. No, she'd better stay in her own room.\n\nOh, Mo. He had snatched the notebook she was reading out of her hand and taken it with him! And that one was the book where she had collected ideas for stories of her own: beginnings which had never got any further, opening words, crossed-out sentences, all her failed attempts... how could he just take it away from her? She didn't want Mo to read it, she didn't want him seeing how she tried in vain to fit the words together on paper, words that came to her tongue so easily and with such power when she read aloud. Meggie could write down what Resa described to her; she could fill pages and pages with the stories her mother told her. But as soon as she tried to make something new of them, a story with a life of its own, her mind went blank. The words seemed to fly out of her head \u2013 like snowflakes leaving only a damp patch on your skin when you put out your hand to catch them.\n\nSomeone knocked on Meggie's door.\n\n'Come in!' she snuffled, looking in her trouser pockets for one of the old-fashioned handkerchiefs that Elinor had given her. ('They belonged to my sister. Her name began with an M, like yours. Embroidered in the corner there, see? I thought it would be better for you to have them than let the moths eat holes in them.')\n\nHer mother put her head round the door.\n\nMeggie tried a smile, but it was a miserable failure.\n\n'Can I come in?' Resa's fingers traced the words in the air faster than Darius could have said them aloud. Meggie nodded. By now she understood her mother's sign language almost as easily as the letters of the alphabet \u2013 she knew it better than Mo and much better than Elinor, who often called for Meggie in desperation when Resa's fingers went too fast for her.\n\nResa closed the door behind her and sat down on the window-sill with her daughter. Meggie always called her mother by her first name, perhaps because she hadn't had a mother for ten years, or perhaps because, for the same inexplicable reason, she had always called her father just Mo.\n\nMeggie recognized the notebook as soon as Resa put it on her lap. It was the one that Mo had taken. 'I found it lying outside your door,' said her mother's hands.\n\nMeggie stroked the patterned binding. So Mo had brought it back. Why hadn't he come in? Because he was still too angry, or because he was sorry?\n\n'He wants me to put them away in the attic. At least for a while.' Meggie suddenly felt so small. And at the same time so old. 'He said, \"Perhaps I ought to turn into a glass man or dye my skin blue, since my wife and daughter obviously think more of fairies and glass men than of me.\"'\n\nResa smiled, and stroked Meggie's nose with her forefinger.\n\n'Yes, I know, of course he doesn't really think that! But he always gets so angry when he sees me with the notebooks...'\n\nResa looked out through the open window. Elinor's garden was so large that you couldn't see where it began or ended, you just saw tall trees and rhododendron shrubs so old that they surrounded Elinor's house like an evergreen wood. Right under Meggie's window was a lawn with a narrow gravel path round it. A garden seat stood to one side of the lawn. Meggie still remembered the night when she had sat there watching Dustfinger breathe fire. Elinor's ever-grumpy gardener had swept the dead leaves off the lawn only that afternoon. You could still see the bare patch in the middle where Capricorn's men had burned Elinor's best books. The gardener kept trying to persuade Elinor to plant something in that space, or sow more grass seed there, but Elinor just shook her head energetically. 'Who grows grass on a grave?' she had snapped the last time he suggested it, and she told him to leave the yarrow alone too. It had grown luxuriantly around the sides of the blackened patch ever since the fire, as if to make its flat flower-heads a reminder of the night when Elinor's printed children were swallowed up by the flames.\n\nThe sun was setting behind the nearby mountains, so red that it was as if it, too, wanted to remind them of that long-extinguished fire, and a cool wind blew from the hills too, making Resa shiver.\n\nMeggie closed the window. The wind blew a few faded rose petals against the pane; they stuck to the glass, pale yellow and translucent. 'I don't want to quarrel with him,' she whispered. 'I never used to quarrel with Mo. Well, almost never...'\n\n'Perhaps he's right.' Her mother pushed back her hair. It was just as long as Meggie's, but darker, as if a shadow had fallen on it. Resa usually held it back with a comb. Meggie often wore her hair like that too, and sometimes when she looked at her reflection in the mirror of her wardrobe she seemed to be seeing, not herself, but a younger version of her mother. 'Another year and she'll be towering over you,' Mo sometimes said when he wanted to tease Resa, and the short-sighted Darius had confused Meggie with her mother several times already.\n\nResa ran her forefinger over the window-pane as if tracing the rose-petals that clung to it. Then her hands began speaking again, hesitantly, just as lips can sometimes hesitate. 'I do understand your father, Meggie,' she said. 'Sometimes I myself think the two of us talk about that other world too often. Even I don't understand why I keep coming back to the subject. And I'm always telling you about what was beautiful there, not the other things: being shut up, Mortola's punishments, how my hands and knees hurt so much from all the work that I couldn't sleep... all the cruelty I saw there. Did I tell you about the maid who died of fright because a Night-Mare stole into our bedroom?'\n\n'Yes, you did.' Meggie moved very close to her mother, but Resa's hands fell silent. They were still roughened from all her years of toil as a maid, working first for Mortola and then for Capricorn. 'You've told me about everything,' said Meggie. 'The bad things too, even if Mo won't believe it!'\n\n'Because all the same he feels that we dream only of the wonderful part. As if I ever had many of those!' Resa shook her head. Again her fingers fell silent for a long time before she let them go on. 'I had to steal it for myself, in seconds, minutes... sometimes a precious hour when we were allowed out in the forest to gather the plants Mortola needed for her black potions.'\n\n'But there were the years when you were free too! When you disguised yourself and worked in the markets as a scribe.' Disguised as a man... Meggie had pictured it over and over again: her mother with her hair cut short, wearing a scribe's tunic, ink on her fingers from the finest handwriting to be found in the Inkworld. So Resa had told her. It was the way she had earned a living in a world which didn't make it easy for women to work. Meggie would have liked to hear the story again now, even if it had a sad ending, for after that Resa's years of unhappiness had begun. But wonderful things had happened during that time too, like the great banquet at the Laughing Prince's castle to which Mortola had taken her maids, the banquet where Resa saw the Laughing Prince himself, and the Black Prince and his bear, the tightrope-walker called Cloud-Dancer...\n\nBut Resa hadn't come into her room to tell all those stories again. She said nothing in reply. And when her fingers did begin to speak once more, they moved more slowly than usual. 'Forget the Inkworld, Meggie,' they said. 'Let's both of us forget it, at least for a little while. For your father's sake \u2013 and for yours. Or one day you may be blind to the beauty around you here.' She looked out of the window again at the gathering dusk. 'I've told you all about it already,' said her hands. 'Everything you wanted to know.'\n\nSo she had. And Meggie had asked her many questions, thousands and thousands of them. Did you ever see one of the giants? What sort of clothes did you wear? What did the fortress look like, in the forest where Mortola took you, and that prince you talk about, the Laughing Prince \u2013 was his castle as huge and magnificent as the Castle of Night? Tell me about his son Cosimo the Fair, and the Adderhead and his men-at-arms. Was everything in his castle really made of silver? How big is the bear that the Black Prince always keeps beside him, and what about the trees, can they really talk? And that old woman, the one they all call Nettle, is it true that she can fly?\n\nResa had answered all these questions as well as she could, but even a thousand answers did not add up to a whole ten years, and there were some questions that Meggie had never put to her. She had never asked about Dustfinger, for instance. But Resa had talked about him all the same, telling her that everyone in the Inkworld knew his name, even many years after he had disappeared. Of course, he was known as the fire-dancer too, so Resa had recognized him at once when she met him for the first time in this world...\n\nThere was another question that Meggie didn't ask \u2013 although it often came into her mind \u2013 for Resa couldn't have answered it: what about Fenoglio, the writer of the book that had drawn first her mother and finally even its own author into its pages? How was Fenoglio now?\n\nMore than a year had passed since Meggie's voice had cast the spell of Fenoglio's own words over him \u2013 and he had disappeared as if they had swallowed him up. Sometimes Meggie saw his wrinkled face in her dreams, but she never knew if it looked sad or happy. Not that it had ever been easy to read the expression on Fenoglio's tortoise-like face anyway. One night, when she woke suddenly from one of these dreams and couldn't get to sleep again, she had begun a story in which Fenoglio was trying to write himself home again, back to his grandchildren and the village where Meggie had first met him. But as with all the other stories she'd started to write, she never got past the first three sentences.\n\nMeggie leafed through the notebook that Mo had taken away from her, then closed it again. Resa put a hand under her chin and looked into her face.\n\n'Don't be cross with him!'\n\n'I never am, not for long! He knows that. How much longer will he be away?'\n\n'Ten days, maybe more.'\n\nTen days! Meggie looked at the shelf beside her bed. There they were, neatly ranged side by side: the Bad Books, as she secretly called them, full of Resa's stories: tales of glass men and water-nymphs, fire-elves, Night-Mares, White Women and all the other strange creatures that her mother had described.\n\n'All right. I'll phone him and say he can make them a box. But I'll keep the key to it.'\n\nResa dropped a kiss on her forehead. Then she carefully passed her hand over the notebook in Meggie's lap. 'Does anyone in the world bind books more beautifully than your father?' her fingers asked.\n\nMeggie shook her head with a smile. 'No,' she whispered. 'No one, in this world or any other.'\n\nWhen Resa went downstairs again to help Darius and Elinor with supper, Meggie stayed by the window to watch Elinor's garden filling with shadows. When a squirrel scurried over the lawn, its bushy tail stretched out behind it, she was reminded of Dustfinger's tame marten Gwin. How strange that she now understood the yearning she had so often seen on his master's scarred face.\n\nYes, Mo was probably right. She thought about Dustfinger's world too much, far too much. She had even read some of Resa's stories aloud a few times, although didn't she know how dangerous her voice could be when it spoke the words on the page? Hadn't she \u2013 to be perfectly honest, more honest than people usually are \u2013 hadn't she cherished a secret hope that the words would take her to that world? What would Mo have done if he'd known about these experiments? Would he have buried the notebooks in the garden or thrown them in the lake, as he sometimes threatened to do with the stray cats that stole into his workshop?\n\nYes, I'll lock them away, thought Meggie, as the first stars appeared outside. As soon as Mo has made them a new box. The box with her favourite books in it was crammed full now. It was red, red as poppies; Mo had only recently repainted it. The box for the notebooks must be a different colour, perhaps green like the Wayless Wood that Resa had described so often. Yes, green. And didn't the guards outside the Laughing Prince's castle wear green cloaks too?\n\nA moth fluttered against the window, reminding Meggie of the blue-skinned fairies and the best of all the stories that Resa had told her about them: how they healed Dustfinger's face after Basta had slashed it, in gratitude to him for the many times he had freed their sisters from the wire cages where pedlars imprisoned them to be sold at market as good-luck charms. And deep in the Wayless Wood he... no, that's enough!\n\nMeggie leaned her forehead against the cool pane.\n\nQuite enough.\n\nI'll take them all to Mo's workshop, she thought. At once. And when he's back I'll ask him to bind me a new notebook for stories about this world of ours. She had already begun writing some: about Elinor's garden and her library, about the castle down by the lake. Robbers had once lived there; Elinor had told her about them in her own typical story-telling style, with so many grisly details that Darius, listening, forgot to go on sorting books, and his eyes widened in horror behind his thick glasses.\n\n'Meggie, supper-time!'\n\nElinor's call echoed right to the top of the stairs. She had a very powerful voice. Louder than the Titanic's foghorn, Mo always said.\n\nMeggie slipped off the window-sill.\n\n'Just coming!' she called down the corridor. Then she went back into her room, took the notebooks off the shelf one by one until her arms could hardly hold the stack, and carried the precarious pile down the corridor and into the room that Mo used as an office. It had once been Meggie's bedroom; she had slept there when she first came to Elinor's house with Mo and Dustfinger, but all you could see from its window was the gravel forecourt, some spruce trees, a large chestnut, and Elinor's grey station wagon, which stood out of doors in all weathers, because it was Elinor's opinion that cars living in luxury in a garage rusted more quickly. But when they had decided to come and live there, Meggie had wanted a window with a view of the garden. So Mo, surrounded by Elinor's collection of old travel guides, did his paperwork in the room where Meggie had slept before she ever went to Capricorn's village, when she still had no mother and almost never quarrelled with Mo...\n\n'Meggie, where are you?' Elinor's voice sounded impatient. Her joints often ached these days, but she refused to go to the doctor. ('What's the point?' was her only comment. 'They haven't invented a pill to cure old age, have they?')\n\n'I'll be down in a minute!' called Meggie, carefully lowering the notebooks on to Mo's desk. Two of them slipped off the pile and almost knocked over the vase of autumn flowers that her mother had put by the window. Meggie caught it just before the water spilled over Mo's invoices and receipts for petrol. She was standing there with the vase still in her hand, her fingers sticky with drifting pollen, when she saw the figure between the trees where the path came up from the road. Her heart began to thud so hard that the vase almost slipped out of her fingers again.\n\nWell, that just went to prove it. Mo was right. 'Meggie, take your head out of those books, or soon you won't know the difference between reality and your imagination!' He'd told her that so often, and now it was happening. She'd been thinking about Dustfinger only a moment ago, hadn't she? And now she saw someone standing out there in the night, just like the time, more than a year ago, when she'd seen Dustfinger waiting outside their house, motionless as the figure she saw there at this moment...\n\n'Meggie, for heaven's sake, how many more times do I have to call you?' Elinor was wheezing from climbing all the stairs. 'What are you doing, standing there rooted to the spot? Didn't you say \u2013 good heavens, who's that?'\n\n'You can see him too?' Meggie was so relieved she could have hugged Elinor.\n\n'Of course I can.'\n\nThe figure moved. Barefoot, it ran over the pale gravel.\n\n'It's that boy!' Elinor sounded incredulous. 'The one who helped the matchstick-eater steal the book from your father. Well, he's got a nerve, turning up here. He looks rather the worse for wear. Does he think I'm going to let him in? I dare say the matchstick-eater's out there too.'\n\nElinor came closer to the window, looking anxious, but Meggie was already out of the door. She ran downstairs and raced through the entrance hall. Her mother came along the corridor leading to the kitchen.\n\n'Resa!' Meggie called. 'Farid's here. It's Farid!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Farid",
                "text": "\u2002He was stubborn as a mule, clever as a monkey, and nimble as a hare.\n\n\u2014Louis Pergaud, The War of the Buttons\n\nResa took Farid into the kitchen and tended his feet first. They looked terrible, cut and bleeding. While Resa cleaned them and put plasters over the cuts, Farid began telling his story, his tongue heavy with weariness. Meggie did her best not to stare at him too often. He was still rather taller than she was, even though she'd grown a great deal since they last met... on the night when he had gone off with Dustfinger. Dustfinger and the book. She hadn't forgotten his face, any more than she could forget the day when Mo first read him out of his own story in Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. She'd never met another boy with such beautiful eyes, almost like a girl's. They were as black as his hair, which was cut a little shorter than it had been in the old days and made him look more grown-up. Farid. Meggie felt her tongue relishing his name \u2013 and quickly turned her eyes away when he raised his head and looked at her.\n\nElinor stared at him all the time without any embarrassment, and with as much hostility as she had shown in scrutinizing Dustfinger when he had sat at her kitchen table, feeding his marten bread and ham. She hadn't let Farid bring the marten into the house with him. 'And if he eats a single songbird in my garden he'd better watch out!' she said as the marten scurried away over the pale gravel. She had bolted the door after him, as if Gwin could open locked doors as easily as his master.\n\nFarid played with a book of matches as he told his tale.\n\n'Look at that!' Elinor whispered to Meggie. 'Just like the matchstick-eater. Don't you think he looks very like him?'\n\nBut Meggie did not reply. She didn't want to miss a word of the story Farid had to tell. She wanted to hear everything about Dustfinger's return, about the man with the hell-hound who read aloud so well, about the snarling creature that could have been one of the big cats from the Wayless Wood \u2013 and about the words that Basta had shouted after Farid: 'You can run, but I'll get you yet, do you hear? You, the fire-eater, Silvertongue and his hoity-toity daughter \u2013 and the old man who wrote those accursed words! I'll kill you all! One by one!'\n\nWhile Farid told his story, Resa's eyes kept straying to the grubby piece of paper he had put down on the kitchen table. She looked at it as if she were afraid of it, as if the words on that paper could draw her back again. Back to the Inkworld. When Farid repeated the threat Basta had shouted, she put her arms around Meggie and held her close. But Darius, who had been sitting next to Elinor in silence all this time, buried his face in his hands.\n\nFarid didn't waste much time describing how he had got to Elinor's house on his bare, bloody feet. In answer to Meggie's questions, he just muttered something about getting a lift from a truck driver. He ended his account abruptly, as if he had suddenly run out of words, and when he fell silent it was very quiet in the big kitchen.\n\nFarid had brought an invisible guest with him. Fear.\n\n'Put more coffee on, Darius!' said Elinor, as she looked gloomily at the table laid for supper. No one was taking any notice of it. 'This could be iced tea, it's so cold.'\n\nDarius set to work at once, busy and eager, like a bespectacled squirrel, while Elinor gave Farid a glance as cold as if he were personally responsible for the bad news he'd brought. Meggie still remembered just how alarming she had once found that look. 'The woman with pebble eyes,' she had secretly called Elinor. Sometimes the name still fitted.\n\n'What a terrific story!' exclaimed Elinor as Resa went to give Darius a hand; Farid's news had obviously made him so nervous that he couldn't measure out the right amount of ground coffee. He had just begun counting the spoonfuls he was tipping into the filter for the third time when Resa gently took the measuring spoon from his hand.\n\n'So Basta's back with a brand-new knife and a mouth full of peppermint leaves, I suspect. Bloody hell!' Elinor was apt to swear when she was anxious or annoyed. 'As if it wasn't bad enough waking up every third night drenched in sweat because I've seen his foxy face in my dreams... not to mention his knife. But let's try to keep calm! Look at it like this: Basta knows where I live, but obviously it's Mo and Meggie he's after, not me, so this house ought really to be safe as \u2013 well, safe as houses for you. After all, he's not likely to know you've moved in here, is he?' She looked at Resa and Meggie triumphantly, as if this were a conclusive argument.\n\nBut Meggie's response made Elinor's face darken again at once. 'Farid knew,' she pointed out.\n\n'So he did,' growled Elinor, her glance turning to Farid again. 'You knew too. How?'\n\nHer voice was so sharp that Farid instinctively flinched. 'An old woman told us,' he said in a wavering voice. 'We went back to Capricorn's village after the fairies Dustfinger took with him turned to ashes. He wanted to see if the same thing had happened to the others. The whole village was deserted, not a soul in sight, not even a stray dog. Only ashes, ashes everywhere. So we went to the next village and tried to find out just what had happened, and... well, that was when we heard how a fat woman had been there, saying something about dead fairies, but at least, she said, luckily the human beings hadn't died on her too, and they were living with her now...'\n\nElinor lowered her gaze guiltily, and collected a few crumbs from her plate with one finger. 'Damn it,' she muttered. 'Yes. Perhaps I did say rather too much in that shop when I phoned you from there. I was in such a state after seeing the empty village! How could I guess those gossips would tell Dustfinger about me? Dustfinger, of all people! Since when do old women talk to someone like him?'\n\nOr to someone like Basta, thought Meggie.\n\nBut Farid just shrugged his shoulders, rose to his feet, which were now covered with plasters, and began limping up and down Elinor's kitchen. 'Dustfinger thought you'd all be here in any case,' he said. 'We even passed this way once because he wanted to see if she was all right.'\n\nHe jerked his head Resa's way. Elinor snorted scornfully. 'Oh, did he, indeed? How good of him.' She had never liked Dustfinger, and the fact that he had stolen the book from Mo before disappearing had done little to lessen her dislike. Resa, however, smiled at Farid's words, though she tried to hide her smile from Elinor. Meggie still clearly remembered the morning when Darius had brought her mother the strange little bundle he'd found outside the front door \u2013 a candle, a few pencils, and a box of matches, all tied up with stems of blue speedwell. Meggie had known at once who the bundle came from. And so did Resa.\n\n'Well,' said Elinor, drumming on her plate with the handle of her knife, 'I'm delighted to hear that the matchstick-eater's back where he belongs. The very idea of him slinking around my house by night! It's just a pity he didn't take Basta too.'\n\nBasta! When Elinor said his name Resa suddenly rose from her chair, went out into the corridor and came back with the telephone. She held it out to Meggie with a look of entreaty in her eyes, and began gesticulating so excitedly with her other hand that even Meggie had difficulty in reading the signs she traced in the air. But finally she understood.\n\nResa wanted her to call Mo. Of course.\n\nIt seemed forever before he came to the phone. He'd probably been working. When Mo was away he always worked late into the night, so that he could get home sooner.\n\n'Meggie?' He sounded surprised. Perhaps he thought she was calling because of their quarrel, but who'd be interested in that stupid argument now?\n\nIt was some time before he could make anything of the words she was hastily stammering out. 'Slowly, Meggie!' he kept saying. 'Take it slowly.' But that was easier said than done when your heart was in your mouth, and Basta might be waiting at Elinor's garden gate this very minute... Meggie didn't even dare to think this idea through to its logical conclusion.\n\nMo, on the other hand, remained strangely calm \u2013 almost as if he had expected the past to catch up with them again. 'Stories never really end, Meggie,' he had once told her, 'even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.'\n\n'Has Elinor switched the burglar alarm on?' he asked now.\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Has she told the police?'\n\n'No. She says they wouldn't believe her anyway.'\n\n'She ought to call them, all the same. And give them a description of Basta. You can describe him between you, right?'\n\nWhat a question! Meggie had tried to forget Basta's face, but it would live on in her memory for the rest of her life, as clear as a photograph.\n\n'Listen, Meggie.' Perhaps Mo wasn't quite as calm as he made out. His voice didn't sound the same as usual. 'I'll drive back tonight. Tell Elinor and your mother. I'll be with you by tomorrow morning at the latest. Bolt everything and keep the windows closed, understand?'\n\nMeggie nodded, forgetting that Mo couldn't see her over the phone.\n\n'Meggie?'\n\n'Yes, I understand.' She tried to sound calm and brave, even if she didn't feel that way. She was scared, badly scared.\n\n'See you tomorrow, Meggie!'\n\nShe could tell from his voice that he was going to set out right away. And suddenly, seeing the moonlit road in her mind's eye, the long road back, a new and terrible thought came into her mind...\n\n'What about you?' she exclaimed. 'Mo! Suppose Basta's lying in wait for you somewhere?' But her father had already rung off.\n\nElinor decided to put Farid where Dustfinger had once slept: in the attic room, where crates of books were stacked high around the narrow bedstead. Anyone who slept there would surely dream of being struck dead by printed paper. Meggie was told to show Farid the way, and when she wished him goodnight he just nodded abstractedly. He looked very lost sitting on the narrow bed \u2013 almost as lost as on the day when Mo had read him into Capricorn's church, a thin, nameless boy with a turban over his black hair.\n\nThat night, before she went to sleep, Elinor checked the burglar alarm several times to make sure it really was switched on. As for Darius, he went to find the rifle that Elinor sometimes fired into the air if she saw a cat prowling under one of the birds' nests in her garden. Wearing the orange dressing-gown that Elinor had given him last Christmas \u2013 it was much too big for him \u2013 he settled down in the armchair in the entrance hall, the gun on his lap, staring at the front door with a determined expression. But when Elinor came to check the alarm for the second time he was already fast asleep.\n\nIt was a long time before Meggie could sleep. She looked at the shelves where her notebooks used to stand, stroked the empty wood, and finally knelt down by the red-painted box that Mo had made long ago for her favourite books. She hadn't opened it for months. There wasn't room in it for a single extra book, and by now it was too heavy for her to take it when she went away. So Elinor had given her the bookcase to hold more of the books she loved. It stood beside Meggie's bed, and it had glass doors, and carvings that twined over the dark wood, making it look as if it hadn't forgotten that it was once alive. And the shelves behind the glass doors were well filled, for by now Resa and Elinor, as well as Mo, gave Meggie books, and even Darius brought her a new one now and then. But her old friends, the books Meggie had already owned before they had moved in with Elinor, still lived in the box, and when she opened the heavy lid it was almost as if half-forgotten voices met her ears and familiar faces were looking at her. How well-worn they all were... 'Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?' Mo had said when, on Meggie's last birthday, they were looking at all her dear old books again. 'As if something was left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells... and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower... both strange and familiar.'\n\nSlightly younger, yes. Meggie picked up one of the books lying on top and leafed through it. She had read it at least a dozen times. Ah, here was the scene she had liked best when she was eight, and there was the one she had marked with a red pencil when she was ten because she thought it was so beautiful. She ran her finger down the wobbly line. There'd been no Resa in her life then, no Elinor, no Darius, only Mo... no longing to see blue fairies, no memories of a scarred face, a marten with little horns and a boy who always went barefoot, no memory of Basta and his knife. A different Meggie had read that book, very different... and there she would stay between its pages, preserved as a memento.\n\nWith a sigh, Meggie closed the book again and put it back with the others. She could hear her mother pacing up and down next door. Did she, like Meggie, keep thinking of the threat that Basta had shouted after Farid? I ought to go to her, thought Meggie. Perhaps our fear won't be so bad if we're together. But just as she was getting up Resa's footsteps died away, and it was quiet in the room next door, quiet as sleep. Maybe sleep wasn't a bad idea. Mo certainly wouldn't arrive any sooner just because she was awake and waiting for him... oh, if only she could at least have called him, but he was always forgetting to switch his mobile on.\n\nMeggie closed the lid of her book-box softly, as if the sound might wake Resa again, and blew out the candles that she lit every evening although Elinor was always telling her not to. As she was taking her T-shirt off over her head, she heard a knock at her door, a very quiet knock. She opened the door, expecting to see her mother outside because she couldn't sleep after all, but it was Farid. He went scarlet in the face when he saw that she was wearing only her underclothes. He stammered an apology, and before Meggie could say anything limped away again on his lavishly plastered feet. She almost forgot to put the T-shirt back on before going after him.\n\n'What's the matter?' she whispered anxiously as she beckoned him back into her room. 'Did you hear anything downstairs?'\n\nBut Farid shook his head. He was holding the piece of paper in his hand: Dustfinger's return ticket, as Elinor had tartly described it. Hesitantly he followed Meggie into her room, and looked around it like someone who doesn't feel comfortable in enclosed spaces. Ever since he had disappeared with Dustfinger, leaving no trace behind, he had probably spent most of his days and nights in the open air.\n\n'I'm sorry,' he stammered, staring at his toes. Two of Resa's plasters were already peeling off. 'I know it's late, but\u2014' and for the first time he looked Meggie in the eye, turning red again as he did so. 'But Orpheus says he didn't read it all,' he went on, his voice hesitating. 'He just left out the words that would have taken me into the book too. He did it on purpose, but I have to warn Dustfinger, so...'\n\n'So what?' Meggie pushed the chair from her desk over to him and sat down on the window-sill herself. Farid sat down as hesitantly as he had entered her room.\n\n'You must get me there too. Please!' He held the dirty piece of paper out to her again, with such a pleading expression in his black eyes that Meggie didn't know where to look. How long and thick his eyelashes were! Hers were nothing like as beautiful.\n\n'Please! I know you can do it!' he stammered. 'I remember that night in Capricorn's village... I remember all about it, and you had only a single sheet of paper then!'\n\nThat night in Capricorn's village. Meggie's heart always began to thud when she thought of it: the night when she had read the Shadow into appearing, and then hadn't been able to make him kill Capricorn until Mo did it for her.\n\n'Orpheus wrote the words, he said so himself! He just didn't read them aloud \u2013 but they're here on this paper! Of course my actual name isn't there or it wouldn't work.' Farid was speaking faster and faster. 'Orpheus says that's the secret of it: if you want to change the story you must use only words that are already in the book, if possible.'\n\n'He said that?' Meggie's heart missed a beat, as if it had stumbled over Farid's information. You must use only words that are already in the book if possible... was that why she'd never been able to read anything out of Resa's stories \u2013 because she'd used words that weren't in Inkheart? Or was it just because she didn't know enough about writing?\n\n'Yes. Orpheus thinks he's so clever because of the way he can read aloud.' Farid spat the man's name out like a plum-stone. 'But if you ask me, he's not half as good at it as you or your father.'\n\nMaybe not, thought Meggie, but he read Dustfinger back. And he wrote the words for it himself. Neither Mo nor I could have done that. She took from Farid the piece of paper with the passage that Orpheus had written. The handwriting was difficult to decipher, but it was beautiful \u2013 very individual and curiously ornate.\n\n'When exactly did Dustfinger disappear?'\n\nFarid shrugged. 'I don't know,' he muttered, abashed. Of course \u2013 she had forgotten that he couldn't read.\n\nMeggie traced the first sentence with her finger. Dustfinger returned on a day fragrant with the scent of berries and mushrooms.\n\nThoughtfully, she lowered the piece of paper. 'It's no good,' she said. 'We don't even have the book. How can it work without the book?'\n\n'But Orpheus didn't use the book either! Dustfinger took it away from him before he read the words on that paper!' Farid pushed his chair back and came to stand beside her. Feeling him so close made Meggie uneasy; she didn't try to work out why.\n\n'But that can't be so!' she murmured.\n\nDustfinger had gone, though.\n\nA few hand-written sentences had opened the door between the words on the page for him \u2013 the door that Mo had tried to batter down so unsuccessfully. And it was not Fenoglio, the author of the book, who had written those sentences, but a stranger \u2013 a stranger with a curious name. Orpheus.\n\nMeggie knew more than most people about what waited beyond the words. She herself had already opened doors, had lured living, breathing creatures out of faded, yellowing pages \u2013 and she had been there when her father read this boy out of an Arabian fairy-tale, the boy of flesh and blood now standing beside her. However, this Orpheus seemed to know far, far more than she did, even more than Mo \u2013 Farid still called him Silvertongue \u2013 and suddenly Meggie was afraid of the words on that grubby piece of paper. She put it down on her desk as if it had burned her fingers.\n\n'Please! Do please at least try!' Farid's voice sounded almost pleading. 'Suppose Orpheus has already read Basta back after all? Dustfinger has to learn that they're in league with each other. He thinks he's safe from Basta in his own world!'\n\nMeggie was still staring at the words written by Orpheus. They sounded beautiful, enchantingly beautiful. Meggie felt her tongue longing to taste them. She very nearly began reading them aloud. Horrified, she clapped her hand to her mouth.\n\nOrpheus.\n\nOf course she knew the name, and the story that surrounded it like a tangle of flowers and thorns. Elinor had given her a book with a beautiful poem about him in it.\n\n\u2003Orpheus with his lute made trees\n\n\u2003And the mountain-tops that freeze,\n\n\u2003Bow themselves when he did sing:\n\n\u2003To his music plants and flowers\n\n\u2003Ever sprung; as sun and showers\n\n\u2003There had made a lasting spring.\n\n\u2003Everything that heard him play,\n\n\u2003Even the billows of the sea,\n\n\u2003Hung their heads, and then lay by.\n\n\u2003In sweet music is such art,\n\n\u2003Killing care and grief of heart\n\n\u2003Fall asleep, or hearing die.\n\nShe looked at Farid with a question in her eyes. 'How old is he?'\n\n'Orpheus?' Farid shrugged. 'Twenty, twenty-five, how should I know? Difficult to say. His face is like a child's.'\n\nSo young. But the words on the paper didn't sound like a young man's words. They sounded as if they knew a great many things.\n\n'Please!' Farid was still looking at her. 'You will try, won't you?'\n\nMeggie looked out of the window. She couldn't help thinking of the empty fairies' nests, the glass men who had vanished, and something Dustfinger had said to her long ago: Sometimes, when you went to the well to wash early in the morning, those tiny fairies would be whirring above the water, hardly bigger than the dragonflies you have here, and blue as violets... they weren't very friendly, but by night they shone like glow-worms.\n\n'All right,' she said, and it was almost as if someone else were answering Farid. 'All right, I'll try. But your feet must get better first. The world my mother talks about isn't a place where you'd want to be lame.'\n\n'Nonsense, my feet are fine!' Farid walked up and down on the soft carpet as if to prove it. 'You can try right away as far as I'm concerned!'\n\nBut Meggie shook her head. 'No,' she said firmly. 'I must learn to read it fluently first. That's not going to be easy, given his handwriting \u2013 and it's smeared in several places, so I'll probably copy it out. This man Orpheus wasn't lying. He did write something about you, but I'm not quite sure that it will do. And if I try it,' she went on, trying to sound very casual, 'if I try it, then I want to come with you.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'Yes, why not?' Meggie couldn't keep her voice from showing how hurt she felt by his horrified look.\n\nFarid did not reply.\n\nDidn't he understand that she wanted to see it for herself? She wanted to see everything that Dustfinger and her mother had told her about, Dustfinger in a voice soft with longing: the fairies swarming above the grass, trees so high that you thought they would catch the clouds in their branches, the Wayless Wood, the strolling players, the Laughing Prince's castle, the silver towers of the Castle of Night, Ombra market, the fire that danced for him, the whispering pool where the water-nymphs' faces looked up at you...\n\nNo, Farid didn't understand. He had probably never felt that yearning for a completely different world, any more than he felt the homesickness that had broken Dustfinger's heart. Farid wanted just one thing: he wanted to find Dustfinger, warn him of Basta's knife and be back with him again. He was Dustfinger's shadow. That was the part he wanted to play, never mind what story they were in.\n\n'Forget it! You can't come too.' Without looking at Meggie he limped back to the chair she had given him, sat down and pulled off the plasters that Resa had so carefully put on his toes. 'People can't read themselves into a book. Even Orpheus can't! He told Dustfinger so himself: he's tried it several times, he said, and it just won't work.'\n\n'Oh no?' Meggie tried to sound more sure of herself than she felt. 'You said yourself that I read better than he does. So perhaps I can make it work!' Even if I can't write as well as he does, she added to herself.\n\nFarid cast her an uneasy glance as he put the plasters in his trouser pocket. 'But it's dangerous there,' he said. 'Particularly for a g\u2014' He didn't finish the word. Instead he began inspecting his blood-stained toes intently.\n\nIdiot. Meggie's anger tasted bitter on her tongue. Who did he think she was? She probably knew more about the world she'd be reading him into than he did. 'I know it's dangerous,' she said, piqued. 'Either I go with you or I don't read aloud from this sheet of paper. You must make up your mind. And now you'd better leave me alone. I have to think.'\n\nFarid cast a final glance at the piece of paper with Orpheus's words on it before he went to the door. 'When will you try?' he asked before he went back out into the corridor. 'Tomorrow?'\n\n'Perhaps,' was all Meggie would say.\n\nThen she closed the door behind him, and was alone with the words that Orpheus had written."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Inn of the Strolling Players",
                "text": "\u2002'Thank you,' said Lucy, opening the box and taking out a match. 'WATCH, EVERYONE!' she cried, her voice echoing round the White Flats. 'WATCH! THIS IS GOODBYE TO BAD MEMORIES!'\n\n\u2014Philip Ridley, Dakota of the White Flats\n\nIt took Dustfinger two whole days to get through the Wayless Wood. He met very few people on the way: a few charcoal-burners blackened with soot, a ragged poacher with two rabbits slung over his shoulder and hunger written large on his face, and a group of the Prince's game wardens, armed to the teeth, probably on the trail of some poor devil who had shot a deer to feed his children. None of them saw Dustfinger. He knew how to pass unseen, and only on the second night, when he heard a pack of wolves howling in the nearby hills, did he dare to summon fire.\n\nFire. So different in this world and the other one. How good it would be to hear its crackling voice again at last, and to be able to answer. Dustfinger collected some of the dry wood lying around among the trees, with wax-flowers and thyme rambling over it. He carefully unwrapped the fire-elves' stolen honey from the leaves that kept it moist and supple, and put a tiny morsel in his mouth. How scared he had been the first time he tasted the honey! Scared that his precious booty would burn his tongue for ever and he would lose his voice. But that fear had proved groundless. The honey did burn your mouth like red-hot coals, but the pain passed off \u2013 and if you bore it long enough, then afterwards you could speak to fire, even with a mere human tongue. The effect of a tiny piece lasted for five or six months, sometimes almost a year. Just a soft whisper in the language of the flames, a snap of your fingers, and sparks would leap crackling from dry wood, damp wood, even stone.\n\nAt first the fire licked up from the twigs more reluctantly than it had in the old days \u2013 as if it couldn't really believe he was back. But then it began to whisper and welcomed him more and more exuberantly, until he had to rein in those wildly leaping flames, imitating the sound of their crackling until the fire sank lower, like a wildcat that will crouch down and purr if you stroke its fur carefully enough.\n\nWhile the fire devoured the wood and its light kept the wolves away, Dustfinger found himself thinking of the boy again. He couldn't count the many nights when he'd had to tell Farid how fire spoke, for the boy knew only mute and sullen flames. 'Heavens above,' he muttered to himself as he warmed his fingers over the glowing embers, 'you're still missing him!' He was glad that the marten at least was still with the boy, to keep him company as he faced the ghosts he saw everywhere.\n\nYes, Dustfinger did miss Farid. But there were others whom he had been missing for ten long years, missing them so much that his heart was still sore with longing. It was with those people crowding his mind that he strode out, more impatiently with every passing hour, as he approached the outskirts of the forest and what lay beyond it \u2013 the world of humans. It was not just his longing for fairies, little glass men and water-nymphs that had tormented him in the other world, nor his desire to be back in the silence under the trees. There weren't many human beings he had missed, but he had missed those few all the more fiercely.\n\nHe had tried so hard to forget them since the day he came, half-starved, to Silvertongue's door, and Silvertongue had explained that there could be no way back for him. It was then he had realized that he must choose. Forget them, Dustfinger \u2013 how often he had told himself that! \u2013 forget them, or the loss of them all will drive you mad. But his heart simply did not obey. Memories, so sweet and so bitter... they had both nourished and devoured him for so many years. Until a time came when they began to fade, turning faint and blurred, only an ache to be quickly pushed away because it went to your heart. For what was the use of remembering all you had lost?\n\nBetter not remember now either, Dustfinger told himself as the trees around him became younger and the canopy of leaves above grew lighter. Ten years \u2013 it's a long time, and many may be lost and gone by now.\n\nCharcoal-burners' huts appeared among the trees more and more often now, but Dustfinger did not let the soot-blackened men see him. Outside the forest, people spoke of them slightingly, for the charcoal-burners lived deeper in the forest than most dared to go. Craftsmen, peasants, traders, princes: they all needed charcoal, but they didn't like to see the men who burned it for them in their own towns and villages. Dustfinger liked the charcoal-burners, who knew almost as much about the forest as he did, although they made enemies of the trees daily. He had sat by their fires often enough, listening to their stories, but after all these years there were other stories he wanted to hear, tales of what had been going on outside the forest, and there was only one place to hear those: in one of the inns that stood along the road.\n\nDustfinger had one particular inn in mind. It lay on the northern outskirts of the forest, where the road appeared among the trees and began to wind uphill, past a few isolated farms, until it reached the city gate of Ombra, the capital city of Lombrica, the Laughing Prince's realm.\n\nThe inns on the road outside Ombra had always been places where the strolling players called the Motley Folk met. They offered their skills there to rich merchants, tradesmen and craftsmen, for weddings and funerals, for festivities to celebrate a traveller's safe return or the birth of a child. They would provide music, earthy jokes and conjuring tricks for just a few coins, taking the audience's minds off their troubles large and small. And if Dustfinger wanted to find out what had been happening in all the years he was away, then the Motley Folk were the people to ask. The players were the newspapers of this world. No one knew what went on in it better than these travellers who were never at home anywhere.\n\nWho knows, thought Dustfinger as he walked down the road, with the autumn sun, by now low in the sky, on his face. If I'm lucky I may even meet old acquaintances.\n\nThe road was muddy and full of puddles. Cartwheels had made deep ruts in it, and the hoofprints left by oxen and horses were full of rainwater. At this time of year it sometimes rained for days on end, as it had yesterday, when he had been glad to be under the trees where the leaves caught the rain before it drenched him to the skin. The night had been cold, all the same, and his clothes were clammy even though he had slept beside his fire. He was glad that the sky was clear today, apart from a few shreds of cloud drifting over the hills.\n\nLuckily he had found a few coins in his old clothes. He hoped they would be enough for a bowl of soup. Dustfinger had brought nothing with him from the other world. What would he do here with the printed paper they used for money in that world? Only gold, silver and ringing copper counted in this one, with the local prince's head on the coins if possible. As soon as his money was gone he'd have to look for a market place where he could perform, in Ombra or elsewhere.\n\nThe inn that was his destination hadn't changed much in the last few years, either for better or for worse. It was as shabby as ever, with a few windows that were hardly more than holes in the grey stone walls. In the world where he had been living until three days ago, it was unlikely that any guests at all would have crossed such a grubby threshold. But here the inn was the last shelter available before you entered the forest, the last chance of a hot meal and a place to sleep that wasn't damp with dew or rain... and you got a few lice and bugs thrown in for free, thought Dustfinger as he pushed the door open.\n\nIt was so dark in the room inside that his eyes took a little while to adjust to the dim light. The other world had spoilt him with all its lights, with the brightness that made even night into day there. It had accustomed him to seeing everything clearly, to thinking of light as something you could switch on and off, available whenever you wanted. But now his eyes must cope again with a world of twilight and shadows, of long nights as black as charred wood, and houses from which the sunlight was often shut out, because its heat was unwelcome...\n\nAll the light inside the inn came from the few sunbeams falling through the holes that were the windows. Dust-motes danced in them like a swarm of tiny fairies. A fire was burning in the hearth under a battered black cauldron. The smell rising from it was not particularly appetizing, even to Dustfinger's empty stomach, but that didn't surprise him. This inn had never had a landlord who knew the first thing about cooking. A little girl hardly more than ten years old was standing beside the cauldron, stirring whatever was simmering in it with a stick. Some thirty guests were sitting on rough-hewn benches in the dark, smoking, talking quietly and drinking.\n\nDustfinger strolled over to an empty place and sat down. He surreptitiously looked round for a face that might seem familiar, for a pair of the motley trousers that only the players wore. He immediately saw a lute-player by the window, negotiating with a much better dressed man than the musician himself, probably a rich merchant. No poor peasant could afford to hire an entertainer, of course. If a farmer wanted music at his wedding he must play the fiddle himself. He couldn't have afforded even the two pipers who were also sitting by the window. At the table next to them, a group of actors were arguing in loud voices, probably about who got the best part in a new play. One still wore the mask behind which he hid when they acted in the towns' market places. He looked strange sitting there among the others, but then all the Motley Folk were strange \u2013 with or without masks, whether they sang or danced, performed broad farces on a wooden stage or breathed fire. The same was true of their companions \u2013 travelling physicians, bonesetters, stonecutters, miracle healers. The players brought them customers.\n\nOld faces, young faces, happy and unhappy faces: there were all of those in the smoke-filled room, but none of them seemed familiar to Dustfinger. He too sensed he was being scrutinized, but he was used to it. His scarred face attracted glances everywhere, and the clothes he wore did the rest \u2013 a fire-eater's costume, black as soot, red as the flames that he played with, but that others feared. For a moment he felt curiously strange amidst all this once-familiar activity, as if the other world still clung to him and could be clearly seen: all the years, the endless years since Silvertongue plucked him out of his own story and stole his life without intending to, as you might crush a snail-shell in passing.\n\n'Hey, who have we here?'\n\nA hand fell heavily on his shoulder, and a man leaned over him and stared at his face. His hair was grey, his face round and beardless, and he was so unsteady on his feet that for a moment Dustfinger thought he was drunk. 'Why, if I don't know that face!' cried the man incredulously, grasping Dustfinger's shoulder hard, as if to make sure it was really flesh and blood. 'So where've you sprung from, my old fire-eating friend? Straight from the realm of the dead? What happened? Did the fairies bring you back to life? They always were besotted with you, those little blue imps.'\n\nA few men turned to look at them, but there was so much noise in the dark, stuffy room that not many people noticed what was going on.\n\n'Cloud-Dancer!' Dustfinger straightened up and embraced the other man. 'How are you?'\n\n'Ah, and there was I thinking you'd forgotten me!' Cloud-Dancer gave a broad grin, baring large, yellow teeth.\n\nOh no, Dustfinger had not forgotten him \u2013 although he had tried to, as he had tried to forget the others he had missed. Cloud-Dancer, the best tightrope-walker who ever strolled around the rooftops. Dustfinger had recognized him at once, in spite of his now grey hair and the left leg that was skewed at such a curiously stiff angle.\n\n'Come along, we must drink to this. You don't meet a dead friend again every day.' He impatiently drew Dustfinger over to a bench under one of the windows. A little sunlight fell through it from outside. Then he signalled to the girl who was still stirring the cauldron, and ordered two goblets of wine. The little creature stared at Dustfinger's scars for a moment, fascinated, and then scurried over to the counter. A fat man stood behind it, watching his guests with dull eyes.\n\n'You're looking good!' remarked Cloud-Dancer. 'Well-fed, not a grey hair on your head, hardly a hole in your clothes. You even still have all your teeth, by the look of it. Where've you been? Maybe I should set out for the same place myself \u2013 seems like a man can live pretty well there.'\n\n'Forget it. It's better here.' Dustfinger pushed back the hair from his forehead and looked round. 'That's enough about me. How have you been yourself? You can afford wine, but your hair is grey, and your left leg...'\n\n'Ah, yes, my leg.' The girl brought their wine. As Cloud-Dancer searched his purse for the right money, she stared at Dustfinger again with such curiosity that he rubbed his fingertips together and whispered a few fire-words. Reaching out his forefinger, he smiled at her and blew gently on the fingertip. A tiny flame, too weak to light a fire but just bright enough to be reflected in the little girl's eyes, flickered on his nail and spat out sparks of gold on the dirty table. The child stood there enchanted, until Dustfinger blew the flame out and dipped his finger in the goblet of wine that Cloud-Dancer pushed over to him.\n\n'So you still like playing with fire,' said Cloud-Dancer, as the girl cast an anxious glance at the fat landlord and hurried back to the cauldron. 'My own games are over now, sad to say.'\n\n'What happened?'\n\n'I fell off the rope, I don't dance in the clouds any more. A market trader threw a cabbage at me \u2013 I expect I was distracting his customers' attention. At least I was lucky enough to land on a cloth-merchant's stall. That way I broke my leg and a couple of ribs, but not my neck.'\n\nDustfinger looked at him thoughtfully. 'Then how do you make a living now you can't walk the tightrope?'\n\nCloud-Dancer shrugged. 'Believe it or not, I can still go about on foot. I can even ride with this leg of mine \u2013 if there's a horse available. I earn my living as a messenger, although I still like to be with the strolling players, listening to their stories and sitting by the fire with them. But it's words that nourish me now, even though I can't read. Threatening letters, begging letters, love letters, sales contracts, wills \u2013 I deliver anything that can be written on a piece of parchment or paper. And I can be relied upon to carry a spoken message too, when it's been whispered into my ear in confidence. I make quite a good living, although I'm not the fastest messenger money can hire. But everyone who gives me a letter to deliver knows that it really will reach the person it's meant for. And a guarantee of that is hard to find.'\n\nDustfinger believed him. For a few gold pieces you can read the Prince's own letters, that was what they used to say even in his own time. You just had to know someone who was good at forging broken seals. 'How about our other friends?' Dustfinger looked at the pipers by the window. 'What are they doing?'\n\nCloud-Dancer took a sip of wine and pulled a face. 'Ugh! I should have asked for honey in this. The others, well,' he rubbed his stiff leg, 'some are dead, some have just disappeared like you. Look over there, behind the farmer staring so gloomily into his tankard,' he said, jerking his head at the counter. 'There's our old friend Sootbird, with a laugh fixed on his face like a tattoo, the worst fire-eater for miles around, although he still tries to copy you and wonders why fire would rather dance for you than him.'\n\n'He'll never find out.' Dustfinger glanced surreptitiously at the other fire-eater. As far as he remembered, Sootbird could juggle burning torches well enough, but fire didn't dance for him. He was like a hopeless lover rejected again and again by the girl of his choice. Long ago, feeling sorry for the man's futile efforts, Dustfinger had given him some fire-elves' honey, but even with its aid Sootbird hadn't understood what the flames were telling him.\n\n'I've heard that he works with powders bought from alchemists now,' Cloud-Dancer whispered across the table, 'and that's an expensive pastime, if you ask me. The fire bites him so often that his hands and arms are quite red from it. But he doesn't let it get at his face. Before he performs he smears it with grease until it shines like bacon fat.'\n\n'Does he still drink after every show?'\n\n'After the show, before the show, but he's still a good-looking fellow, don't you think?'\n\nYes, so he was, with his friendly, ever-smiling face. Sootbird was one of those entertainers who lived on the glances of others, on laughter and applause, on knowing that people will stop to look at them. Even now he was entertaining the others who were leaning against the counter with him. Dustfinger turned his back; he didn't want to see the old mixture of admiration and envy in the other man's eyes. Sootbird was not one of those he had missed.\n\n'You mustn't think times are any easier now for the Motley Folk,' said Cloud-Dancer across the table, low-voiced. 'Since Cosimo's death the Laughing Prince doesn't let the likes of us into the markets except on feast days, and as for going up to the castle itself, that's only when his grandson demands entertainers loudly enough. Not a very nice little boy \u2013 he's already ordering his servants about and threatening them with whipping and the pillory. Still, he loves the Motley Folk.'\n\n'Cosimo the Fair is dead?' Dustfinger nearly choked on the sour wine.\n\n'Yes.' Cloud-Dancer leaned over the table, as if it wasn't right to speak of death and misfortune in too loud a voice. 'He rode away scarcely a year ago, beautiful as an angel, to prove his princely courage and finish off the fire-raisers who were haunting the forest then. You may remember their leader, Capricorn?'\n\nDustfinger had to smile. 'Oh yes. I remember him,' he said quietly.\n\n'He disappeared about the same time you did, but his gang carried on the same as ever. Firefox became their new leader. There wasn't a village nor a farm this side of the forest that was safe from them. So Cosimo rode away to put an end to their evil deeds. He smoked out the whole band, but he didn't come home himself. Since then, his father, who used to like eating so much that his breakfast alone could have fed three whole villages, has become known as the Prince of Sighs too. For the Laughing Prince does nothing but sigh these days.'\n\nDustfinger held his fingers in the dust-motes dancing above him in the sun. 'The Prince of Sighs!' he murmured. 'Well, well. And what about His Noble Highness on the other side of the forest?'\n\n'The Adderhead?' Cloud-Dancer looked round uneasily. 'Hm, well, I'm afraid he's not dead yet. Still thinks himself lord of the whole world. When his game wardens find a peasant in the forest with a rabbit he has the man blinded, he enslaves folk who don't pay their taxes and makes them dig the ground for silver until they're coughing up blood. The gallows outside his castle are always in use, and he likes to see a pair of motley trousers dangling there best of all. Still, few speak ill of him, because he has more spies than this inn has bedbugs, and he pays them well. But you can't bribe Death,' added Cloud-Dancer softly, 'and the Adderhead is growing old. It's said that he's afraid of the White Women these days, and terrified of dying, so terrified that he falls to his knees by night and howls like a beaten dog. And they say his cooks have to make him calves' blood pudding every morning, because that's supposed to keep a man young, and he keeps a hanged man's finger-bone under his pillow to protect him from the White Women. He's married four times in the last seven years. His wives get younger and younger, but still none of them has given him what he wants most dearly.'\n\n'So the Adderhead has no son yet?'\n\nCloud-Dancer shook his head. 'No, but all the same his grandson will rule us some day, because the old fox married one of his daughters off to Cosimo the Fair \u2013 Violante, known to everyone as Her Ugliness \u2013 and she had a son by Cosimo before he went away to die. They say her father made her acceptable to the Laughing Prince by giving her a valuable manuscript to take for her dowry \u2013 and the best illuminator at his court into the bargain. Yes, the Laughing Prince was once as keen on written papers as on good food, but now his precious books are mouldering away! Nothing interests him any more, least of all his subjects. There are rumours that it's all gone exactly as the Adderhead planned, and that he himself made sure his son-in-law would never return from Capricorn's fortress, so that his grandson could succeed to the throne.'\n\n'The rumours are probably true.' Dustfinger looked at the crowd in the stuffy room. Strolling pedlars, physicians, journeymen craftsmen, players with darned sleeves. One man had an unhappy-looking brownie sitting on the floor beside him. Many looked as if they didn't know how they were going to pay for the wine they were drinking. There were few happy faces to be seen here, few faces free of care, sickness and resentment. Well, what had he expected? Had he hoped that misfortune would have stolen away while he was gone? No. He had wanted to come back \u2013 that was all he'd hoped for in ten long years \u2013 not back to paradise, he'd just wanted to come home. Doesn't a fish want to be back in the water, even if there's a perch lying in wait for it?\n\nA drunk staggered against the table and almost spilled the wine. Dustfinger reached for the jug. 'And what about Capricorn's men? Firefox and the rest? Are they all dead?'\n\n'In your dreams!' Cloud-Dancer laughed bitterly. 'All the fire-raisers who escaped Cosimo's attack were welcomed to the Castle of Night with open arms. The Adderhead made Firefox his herald, and these days the Piper, Capricorn's old minstrel, sings his dark songs in the Castle of Silver Towers. He wears silk and velvet, and his pockets are full of gold.'\n\n'The Piper's still around?' Dustfinger passed his hand over his face. 'Heavens, have you no good news at all to tell me? Something to make me glad to be home again?'\n\nCloud-Dancer laughed, so loudly that Sootbird turned and glanced at him. 'The best news is that you're back!' he said. 'We've missed you, Master of the Fire! They say the fairies sigh as they dance by night, since you left us so faithlessly, and the Black Prince tells his bear stories about you before falling asleep.'\n\n'So the Prince is still around too? Good.' Relieved, Dustfinger took a sip of the wine, although it really did taste vile. He hadn't dared to ask about the Prince, for fear he might hear something like Cosimo's sad story.\n\n'Oh, he's doing fine!' Cloud-Dancer raised his voice as two pedlars at the next table began to quarrel. 'Still the same \u2013 black as pitch, quick with his tongue and even quicker with his knife, never seen without his bear.'\n\nDustfinger smiled. Yes, this was good news indeed. The Black Prince: bear-tamer, knife-thrower, probably still fretting angrily at the way of the world. Dustfinger had known him since they were both homeless, orphaned children. At the age of eleven they'd stood side by side in the pillory over on the far side of the forest, where they were born, and they'd still smelled of rotten vegetables two days later. They had both been born in Argenta, the Silver Land, the realm of the Adderhead.\n\nCloud-Dancer looked at his face. 'Well?' he asked. 'When are you finally going to ask the question you've been wanting to ask since I clapped you on the shoulder? Go on! Before I'm too drunk to answer you.'\n\nDustfinger had to smile; he couldn't help it. Cloud-Dancer had always known how to see into other people's hearts, though you might not have thought so from his face. 'Very well. What shall I... how is she?'\n\n'At last!' Cloud-Dancer smiled with such self-satisfaction that two gaps in his teeth showed. 'Well, first, she's still very beautiful. Lives in a house now, doesn't sing and dance any more, doesn't wear brightly coloured skirts, pins up her hair like a farmer's wife. She tends a plot of land up on the hill behind the castle, growing herbs for the physicians. Even Nettle buys from her. She lives on that, sometimes well, sometimes not so well, bringing up her children.'\n\nDustfinger tried to look indifferent, but Cloud-Dancer's smile told him that he wasn't succeeding. 'What about that spice merchant who was always after her?'\n\n'What about him? He left years ago, he's probably living in some big house by the sea, growing richer with every sack of pepper his ships bring in.'\n\n'Then she didn't marry him?'\n\n'No. She chose another man.'\n\n'Another man?' Once again Dustfinger tried to sound indifferent, and once again he failed.\n\nCloud-Dancer enjoyed keeping him in suspense for a while, and then went on. 'Yes, another man. He soon died, poor fellow, but she has a child by him, a boy.'\n\nDustfinger said nothing, listening to his own thudding heart. His stupid heart. 'What about the girls?'\n\n'Oh, the girls. Yes, them \u2013 I wonder who their father can have been?' Cloud-Dancer was smiling again, like a little boy who has pulled off a mischievous trick. 'Brianna's as lovely as her mother already. Although she's inherited your red hair.'\n\n'And Rosanna, the younger?' Her hair was dark, like her mother's.\n\nThe smile on Cloud-Dancer's face disappeared as if Dustfinger had wiped it away. 'The child has been dead a long time,' he said softly. 'There was a fever, two winters after you went away. Many died of it. Even Nettle couldn't help them.'\n\nDustfinger drew bright, damp lines on the table with his forefinger, which was sticky from the wine. Dead. Much might be lost in the space of ten years. For a moment he tried desperately to remember her face, such a little face, but it blurred, as if he had spent too long over the attempt to forget it.\n\nAmidst all the noise, Cloud-Dancer sat with him in silence for a long time. Then at last he rose, ponderously; it wasn't easy to get up from the low bench with his stiff leg. 'I must be off, my friend,' he said. 'I still have three letters to deliver, two of them up there in Ombra. I want to be at the city gate before dark, or the guards will have their little joke again and refuse to let me in.'\n\nDustfinger was still drawing lines on the dark wood of the table. Two winters after you went away \u2013 the words stung like nettles in his head. 'Where are the others camping at the moment?'\n\n'Just outside the city wall of Ombra. Our prince's beloved grandson celebrates his birthday soon. Every entertainer and minstrel is welcome at the castle on that day.'\n\nDustfinger nodded without raising his head. 'I'll see. Maybe I'll go along too.' He abruptly rose from the hard bench. The girl by the hearth looked at them. His younger daughter would have been about her age now if the fever hadn't carried her off.\n\nTogether with Cloud-Dancer, he made his way past the crowded benches and chairs to the door. It was still fine outside, a sunny autumn day, clad in bright foliage like a strolling player.\n\n'Come to Ombra with me!' Cloud-Dancer laid a hand on his shoulder. 'My horse will carry two, and we can always find a place to sleep there.'\n\nBut Dustfinger shook his head.\n\n'Later,' he said, looking down the muddy road. 'It's time I paid a visit.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Meggie's Decision",
                "text": "\u2002The idea hovered and shivered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.\n\n\u2014Philip Pullman, Northern Lights\n\nMo came home just as they were all sitting down to breakfast, and Resa kissed him as if he'd been away for weeks. Meggie hugged him harder than usual too, relieved that he had come back safe and sound, but she avoided looking him straight in the eye. Mo knew her too well. He would have spotted her guilty conscience at once. And Meggie's conscience was very guilty.\n\nThe reason was the sheet of paper hidden among her school books up in her room, closely written in her own hand, although the words were by someone else. Meggie had spent hours copying out what Orpheus had written. Every time she got something wrong she had begun again from the beginning, for fear that a single mistake could spoil everything. She had added just three words \u2013 where the passage mentioned a boy, in the sentences left unread by Orpheus, Meggie had added 'and the girl'. Three nondescript, perfectly ordinary words, so ordinary that it was overwhelmingly likely that they occurred somewhere in the pages of Inkheart. She couldn't check, however, because the only copy of the book she would have needed to do that was now in Basta's hands. Basta... the mere sound of his name reminded Meggie of black days and black nights. Black with fear.\n\nMo had brought her a present to make peace between them, as he always did when they had quarrelled: a small notebook bound by himself, just the right size for her jacket pocket, with a marbled paper cover. Mo knew how much Meggie liked marbled patterns; she had been only nine when he had taught her how to colour them for herself. Guilt went to her heart when he put the notebook down by her plate, and for a moment she wanted to tell him everything, just as she had always done. But a glance from Farid prevented her. That glance said, 'No, Meggie, he won't let you go there \u2013 ever.' So she kept quiet, kissed Mo, whispered, 'Thank you,' and said no more, quickly bending her head, her tongue heavy with the words she hadn't spoken.\n\nLuckily no one noticed her sad expression. The others were still anxious about Farid's news of Basta. Elinor had gone to the police, on Mo's advice, but her visit to them had done nothing to improve her mood.\n\n'Just as I told you,' she said crossly, working away at the cheese with her knife as if it were the cause of all this trouble. 'Those fools didn't believe a word I said. A couple of sheep in uniform would have listened better. You know I don't like dogs, but maybe I ought to get some after all... a couple of huge black brutes to tear Basta apart the moment he comes through my garden gate. A Dobsterman dog, yes. A Dobsterman or two. Isn't a Dobsterman the dog that eats people?'\n\n'You mean a Dobermann.' Mo winked across the table at Meggie.\n\nIt broke her heart. There he was winking at her, his deceitful daughter who was planning to go right away, to a place where he probably couldn't follow her. Perhaps her mother would understand, but Mo? No, not Mo. Never.\n\nMeggie bit her lip so hard that it hurt, while Elinor, still in a state of agitation, went on. 'And I could hire a bodyguard. You can do that, can't you? One with a pistol \u2013 no, not just a pistol, armed to the teeth: knives, guns, everything, and so big that Basta's black heart would stop at the mere sight of him! How does that sound?'\n\nMeggie saw Mo suppress a smile with difficulty. 'How does it sound? As if you'd been reading too many thrillers, Elinor.'\n\n'Well, I have read a lot of thrillers,' she said, injured. 'They're very informative if you don't usually mix much with criminals. What's more, I can't forget seeing Basta's knife at your throat.'\n\n'Nor can I, believe me.' Meggie saw his hand go to his throat as if, just for a moment, he felt the sharp blade against his skin again. 'All the same, I think you're worrying unnecessarily. I had plenty of time to think it all over on the drive back, and I don't believe Basta will come all the way here just to get revenge. Revenge for what? For being saved from Capricorn's Shadow \u2013 and by us? No. He'll have had this Orpheus read him back by now. Back into the book. Basta never liked our world half as much as Capricorn did. Some things about it made him very nervous.'\n\nHe spread jam on top of his bread and cheese. Elinor watched this, as usual, with horror, and Mo, also as usual, ignored her disapproving glance.\n\n'So what about those threats he shouted after the boy?'\n\n'Well, he was angry that he'd got away, wasn't he? I don't have to tell you the kind of thing Basta says when he's angry. I'm only surprised he was actually clever enough to find out that Dustfinger had the book. And I'd like to know where he found this man Orpheus too. He seems to be better than me at reading aloud.'\n\n'Nonsense!' Elinor's voice sounded cross, but relieved too. 'The only one who may be as good at it as you are is your daughter.'\n\nMo smiled at Meggie and put another slice of cheese on top of the jam. 'Thanks, very flattering. But, however that may be, our knife-happy friend Basta has gone! And I hope he's taken the wretched book with him, and put an end to that story for ever. There'll be no more need for Elinor to jump when she hears something rustling in the garden at night, and Darius won't have to dream of Basta's knife \u2013 which means that the news Farid has brought is in fact very good news! I hope you've all thanked him warmly!'\n\nFarid smiled shyly as Mo raised his coffee cup to him, but Meggie saw the anxiety in his black eyes. If Mo was right, then by now Basta was in the same place as Dustfinger. And they all thought Mo was right. You could see the relief in Darius's and Elinor's faces, and Resa put her arms around Mo's neck and smiled as if everything was fine again.\n\nElinor began asking Mo questions about the books he had so shockingly abandoned to answer Meggie's phone call. And Darius was trying to tell Resa about the new system of classification he had thought up for Elinor's library. But Farid looked at his empty plate. Against the background of its white china, he was probably seeing Basta's knife at Dustfinger's neck.\n\nBasta. The name stuck in Meggie's throat like a pebble. She kept thinking the same thing: if Mo was right, Basta was now where she soon hoped to be herself. In the Inkworld.\n\nShe was going to try it that very night, she would try to use her own voice and Orpheus's words to make her way through the thicket of written letters, into the Wayless Wood. Farid had pleaded with her to wait no longer. He was beside himself with anxiety for Dustfinger, and Mo's remarks had certainly done nothing to change that. 'Please, Meggie!' He had begged her again and again. 'Please read it!'\n\nMeggie looked across the table at Mo. He was whispering something to Resa, and she laughed. You heard her voice only when she laughed. Mo put his arm round her, and his eyes sought Meggie. When her bed was empty tomorrow morning he wouldn't look as carefree as he did now. Would he be angry, or merely sad? Resa laughed when, for her and Elinor's benefit, he mimicked the horror of the collector whose books he had abandoned so disgracefully when Meggie had phoned, and Meggie had to laugh too when he imitated the poor man's voice. The collector had obviously been very fat and breathless.\n\nElinor was the only one who didn't laugh. 'I don't think that's funny, Mortimer,' she said sharply. 'Personally, I'd probably have shot you if you'd simply gone off leaving my poor books behind, all sick and dirty.'\n\n'Yes, I expect you would.' Mo gave Meggie a conspiratorial look, as he always did when Elinor lectured him or his daughter on the way to treat books or the rules of her library.\n\nOh Mo, if only you knew, thought Meggie, if only you knew... She felt as if he would read her secret in her face any minute now. Abruptly, she pushed her chair back, muttered, 'I'm not hungry,' and went off to Elinor's library. Where else? Whenever she wanted to escape her own thoughts, she went to books for help. She was sure to find something to keep her mind occupied until evening finally came and they all went to bed, suspecting nothing.\n\nLooking at Elinor's library, you couldn't tell that scarcely more than a year ago it had contained nothing but a red rooster hanging dead in front of empty shelves, while Elinor's finest books burned on the lawn outside. The jar that Elinor had filled with some of their pale ashes still stood beside her bed.\n\nMeggie ran her forefinger over the backs of the books. They were ranged side by side on the shelves again now, like piano keys. Some shelves were still empty, but Elinor and Darius were always out and about, visiting second-hand bookshops and auctions, to replace those lost treasures with new and equally wonderful books.\n\nOrpheus... where was the story of Orpheus?\n\nMeggie was on her way over to the shelf where the Greeks and Romans whispered their ancient stories when the library door opened behind her, and Mo came in.\n\n'Resa says you have the sheet of paper that Farid brought with him in your room. Can I see it?' He was trying to sound as casual as if he were just asking about the weather, but he'd never been any good at pretending. Mo couldn't pretend, any more than he could tell lies.\n\n'Why?' Meggie leaned against Elinor's books as if they would strengthen her backbone.\n\n'Why? Because I'm curious, remember? And what's more,' he added, looking at the backs of the books, as if he could find the right words there, 'and what's more, I think it would be better to burn that sheet of paper.'\n\n'Burn it?' Meggie looked at him incredulously. 'But why?'\n\n'I know it sounds as if I'm seeing ghosts,' he said, taking a book off the shelf, opening it and leafing absent-mindedly through it, 'but that piece of paper, Meggie... I feel it's like an open door, a door that we'd be well advised to close once and for all. Before Farid tries disappearing into that damn story too.'\n\n'What if he does?' Meggie couldn't help the cool note that crept into her voice. As if she were talking to a stranger. 'Why can't you understand? He only wants to find Dustfinger! To warn him against Basta.'\n\nMo closed the book he had taken off the shelf and put it back in its place. 'So he says. But suppose Dustfinger didn't actually want to take him along, suppose he left him behind on purpose? Would that surprise you?'\n\nNo. No, it wouldn't. Meggie said nothing. It was so quiet among the books, so terribly quiet among all those words.\n\n'I know, Meggie,' said Mo at last, in a low voice. 'I know you think the world that book describes is much more exciting than this one. I understand the feeling. I've often imagined being right inside one of my favourite books. But we both know that once imagination turns to reality things feel quite different. You think the Inkworld is a magical place, a world of wonders \u2013 but believe me, your mother has told me a lot about it that you wouldn't like at all. It's a cruel, dangerous place, full of darkness and violence, ruled by brute force, Meggie, not by justice.'\n\nHe looked at her, searching her face for the understanding he had always found there before, but did not find now.\n\n'Farid comes from a world like that,' said Meggie. 'And he didn't choose to get into this story of ours. You brought him here.'\n\nShe regretted her words the moment they were out. Mo turned away as if she had struck him. 'Yes. You're right, of course,' he said, going back to the door. 'And I don't want to quarrel with you again. But I don't want that paper lying about your room either. Give it back to Farid. Or else, who knows, there could be a giant sitting on your bed tomorrow morning.' He was trying to make her laugh, of course. He couldn't bear the two of them to be on bad terms again. He looked so depressed. And so tired.\n\n'You know perfectly well nothing like that can happen,' said Meggie. 'Why do you always worry so much? Things don't just come out of the words on the page unless you call them. You should know that better than anyone!'\n\nHis hand was still on the door-handle.\n\n'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, no doubt you're right. But do you know what? Sometimes I'd like to put a padlock on all the books in this world. And as for that very special book... I'd be glad, now, if Capricorn really had burned the last copy back there in his village. That book brings bad luck, Meggie, nothing but bad luck, even if you won't believe me.'\n\nThen he closed the library door after him.\n\nMeggie stood there motionless until his footsteps had died away. She went over to one of the windows looking out on to the garden, but when Mo finally came down the path leading to his workshop he didn't look back at the house. Resa was with him. She had put her arm round his shoulders, and her other hand was tracing words, but Meggie couldn't make them out. Were they talking about her?\n\nIt was sometimes an odd feeling suddenly to have not just a father, but two parents who talked to each other when she wasn't with them. Mo went into his workshop alone, and Resa strolled back to the house. She waved to Meggie when she saw her standing at the window, and Meggie waved back.\n\nAn odd feeling...\n\nMeggie sat among Elinor's books for some time longer, looking first at one, then at another, searching for passages to drown out her own thoughts. But the letters on the pages remained just letters, forming neither pictures nor words, and finally Meggie went out into the garden, lay down on the grass and looked at the workshop. She could see Mo at work through its windows.\n\nI can't do it, she thought, as the wind blew leaves off the trees and whirled them away like brightly painted toys. No. I can't! They'll all be so worried, and Mo will never, ever say a word to me again.\n\nMeggie thought all those things; she thought them over and over again. And at the same time she knew, deep down inside her, that she had made up her mind long ago."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Minstrel Woman",
                "text": "\u2003The minstrel must go on his way,\n\n\u2003As he has done so long,\n\n\u2003And so a note of sad farewell\n\n\u2003Lingers around his song.\n\n\u2003Ah, will I e'er come back again?\n\n\u2003My dear, alas, who knows?\n\n\u2003The heavy hand of death is laid\n\n\u2003On many a budding rose.\n\n\u2014E. von Monsterberg, quoted from Musikanten, Gaukler und Vaganten\n\nIt was just getting light when Dustfinger reached the farm that Cloud-Dancer had described to him. It lay on a south-facing slope, surrounded by olive trees. The soil, said Cloud-Dancer, was poor and stony there, but it suited the herbs that Roxane grew. The house stood alone, with no village nearby to protect it. There was only a wall, hardly chest-high, and a wooden gate. You could see the rooftops of Ombra in the distance, the castle towers rising high above the houses, and the road winding towards the city gate \u2013 so near, and yet too far to be a refuge if highwaymen or soldiers coming home from war thought it a good idea to loot this lonely farm, where only a woman and two children lived.\n\nPerhaps at least she has a farm-hand, thought Dustfinger as he stood behind some bushes of broom. Their branches hid him, but he had a good view of the house.\n\nIt was small, like most farmhouses \u2013 not as poor as many of them, but not much better either. The whole house would have fitted a dozen times over and more into one of the great halls where Roxane had once danced. Even the Adderhead used to invite her to his castle, poorly as he thought of the Motley Folk, for in those days everyone had wanted to hear her sing. Rich traders, the miller down by the river, the spice merchant who had sent her presents for more than a year... so many men had wanted to marry her, had given her jewellery and costly dresses, offered her fine apartments in their houses, and every one of those apartments was certainly larger than the little house where she lived now. But Roxane had stayed with the Motley Folk. She had never been one of those women among the strolling players who would sell their voices and their bodies to a lord and master for a little security, a settled home...\n\nHowever, the day had come when she, too, had tired of travelling and had wanted a home for herself and her children. For no law protected those who lived on the road, and that meant the Motley Folk as well as robbers and highwaymen. If you stole from a player you need not fear any punishment, if you did violence to one of their women you could safely go back to your comfortable home, and even if you killed a traveller you need not fear the hangman. All his widow could do in revenge was strike the killer's shadow as the sun cast it on the city wall, only his shadow, and she had to pay for her husband's funeral too. The Motley Folk were fair game. People called them the Devil's decoys, they liked to be entertained by them, listened to their songs and stories, watched their clever tricks \u2013 and barred their doors and gates to them when evening came. The players had to camp outside towns and villages, outside the protection of the walls, always on the move, envied for their freedom, yet despised because they served many masters for money and bread.\n\nNot many strolling players ever left the road \u2013 the road and the lonely paths. But that was obviously what Roxane had done.\n\nThere was a stable beside the house, a barn and a bakehouse, and between them a yard with a well in the middle of it. There was a garden, fenced off to keep chickens and goats from uprooting the young plants, and a dozen narrow fields on the slope beyond. Some had been harvested, while in others the herbs stood high, bushy and heavy with their own seed. The fragrance borne across to Dustfinger on the wind made the morning air both sweet and bitter.\n\nRoxane was kneeling in the farthest field, among plants of flax, comfrey and wild mallow. She seemed to have been at work for a long time already, although the morning mist still hung in the nearby trees. A boy of perhaps seven or eight knelt beside her. Roxane was talking to him and laughing. How often Dustfinger had summoned up her face in his memory, every part of it: her mouth, her eyes, her high forehead. It had been more difficult with every passing year, and with every year the picture had dimmed, desperately as he had tried to remember more clearly. Time had blurred her face and covered it with dust.\n\nDustfinger took a step forward \u2013 and two steps back. He had thought of turning back three times already, of stealing away again as silently as he had come, but he had stayed. A wind blew through the broom bushes, catching him in the back as if to give him fresh heart, and Dustfinger plucked up his courage, pushed the branches aside and walked towards the house and the fields.\n\nThe boy saw him first, and a goose rose from the tall grass by the stable and came towards him, cackling and beating her wings. Peasants were not allowed to keep dogs, that was a privilege reserved for princes, but a goose was a reliable guard too \u2013 and just as alarming. But Dustfinger knew how to avoid the gaping beak, and stroked the excited bird's white neck until she folded her wings like a freshly ironed dress and waddled peacefully away, back to her place in the grass.\n\nRoxane had risen to her feet. She wiped the earth off her hands on to her dress and looked at him, just looked. She had indeed pinned her hair up like a farmer's wife, but it was obviously as long as ever and still as black, apart from a few grey strands. Her dress was as brown as the earth where she had been kneeling, no longer brightly coloured like the skirts she used to wear. But her face was still as familiar to Dustfinger as the sight of the sky, more familiar than his own reflection.\n\nThe boy picked up the rake lying on the ground beside him. He clutched it with a grimly determined air, as if he were used to protecting his mother from strangers. Clever lad, thought Dustfinger, never trust anyone, certainly not a scar-faced man like me suddenly emerging from the bushes.\n\nWhat was he going to say when she asked him where he'd been?\n\nRoxane whispered something to the boy, who reluctantly lowered the rake. Suspicion still lingered in his eyes.\n\nTen years.\n\nHe'd often been gone a long time \u2013 in the forest, in the towns on the coast, among the isolated villages lying in the hills around \u2013 like a fox that visited farmyards only when its stomach rumbled. 'Your heart's a vagabond,' Roxane always said. Sometimes he'd had to search for her when she had moved on with the others. They lived together in the forest for a while, in an abandoned charcoal-burner's hut, and then in a tent with other strolling players. They even managed to hold out within the solid walls of Ombra all one winter. He was always the one who wanted to move on, and when their first daughter was born and Roxane wanted to stay put more often \u2013 in some reasonably familiar place, with the other women among the strolling players, close to the shelter of walls \u2013 he would go off alone. But he always came back to her and the children, much to the annoyance of all the rich men who flocked around her wanting to make an honest woman of her.\n\nWhat had she thought when he stayed away for a whole ten years? Had she, like Cloud-Dancer, thought him dead? Or did she believe he had simply left without a word, without saying goodbye?\n\nHe could not find the answer in Roxane's face. He saw bewilderment there, anger, perhaps love too. Perhaps. She whispered something to the boy, took his hand and made him walk beside her. She went slowly, as if she must prevent her feet from going faster. He longed to run to her, leaving one of those years behind him at every step, but he had used up all his courage. He stood there as if rooted to the spot, looking at her as she came towards him after all those years, all the years for which he had no explanation... except one that she wouldn't believe.\n\nOnly a few paces still separated them when Roxane stopped. She put her arm around the boy's shoulder, but he pushed it away. Of course. He didn't want his mother's arm reminding him how young he still was. How proudly she thrust out her chin. That was the first thing he had noticed about Roxane \u2013 her pride. He couldn't help smiling, but he bowed his head so that she couldn't see the smile.\n\n'Obviously no living creature can withstand you to this day. My goose has always driven everyone else off.' When Roxane spoke there was nothing special about her voice, none of the strength and beauty it had when she sang.\n\n'Well, nothing's changed there,' he said. 'In all these years.' And suddenly, as he looked at her, he finally, truly knew that he had come home. It was so strong a sensation that he felt weak at the knees. How happy he was to see her again, how dreadfully, terribly happy! Ask me, he thought. Ask me where I've been. Although he didn't know how he would explain.\n\nBut she said only, 'You seem to have been well off, wherever you've been.'\n\n'It only looks like that,' he replied. 'I didn't stay there of my own free will.'\n\nRoxane examined his face as if she had forgotten what it looked like, and stroked the boy's hair. It was as black as hers, but his eyes were the eyes of another. They looked at him coldly. Dustfinger rubbed his hands together and whispered fire-words to his fingers until sparks fell from them like rain. Where they landed on the stony ground flowers sprang up, red flowers, each petal a tongue of flame. The boy stared at them with mingled delight and fear. In the end he crouched down beside them and put his hand out to the fiery flowers.\n\n'Careful!' warned Dustfinger, but it was already too late. The boy, taken by surprise, put his burned fingertips in his mouth.\n\n'So the fire still obeys you,' said Roxane, and for the first time he detected something like a smile in her eyes. 'You look hungry. Come with me.' And without another word she walked towards the house. The boy was still staring at the fiery flowers.\n\n'I've heard you grow herbs for the healers.' Dustfinger stood indecisively in the doorway.\n\n'Yes, even Nettle buys from me.'\n\nNettle, small as a moss-woman, always surly, sparing of her words as a beggar with his tongue cut out. But there wasn't a better healer in this world.\n\n'Does she still live in the old bear's cave on the outskirts of the forest?' Hesitantly, Dustfinger walked through the doorway. It was so low that he had to duck his head. The smell of freshly baked bread rose to his nostrils. Roxane placed a loaf on the table, brought cheese, oil, olives.\n\n'Yes, but she isn't often there. She's getting more eccentric all the time, she roams the forest talking to the trees and to herself, looking for plants still unknown to her. Sometimes you don't see her for weeks, so people come to me more and more often these days. Nettle has taught me things these last few years.' She didn't look at him as she said that. 'She's shown me how to grow herbs in my fields that usually thrive only in the forest. Butterfly clover, jinglebell leaf, and the red anemones where the fire-elves get their honey.'\n\n'I didn't know those anemones could be used for healing too.'\n\n'They can't. I planted them because they reminded me of someone.' This time she did look at him.\n\nDustfinger put out his hand to one of the bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and rubbed the dry flowers between his fingers: lavender, where vipers hide, and helpful if they bite you. 'I expect they grow here only because you sing for them,' he said. 'Didn't folk always say: when Roxane sings the stones burst into flower?'\n\nRoxane cut some bread, poured oil into a bowl. 'I sing only for the stones these days,' she said. 'And for my son.' She handed him the bread. 'Here, eat this. I baked it only yesterday.' Then, turning her back to him, she went over to the fire. Dustfinger watched her surreptitiously as he dipped a piece of bread into the oil. Two sacks of straw and a couple of blankets on the bed, a bench, a chair, a table, pitchers, baskets, bottles and bowls, bundles of dried herbs under the ceiling, crammed close together the way they used to hang in Nettle's cave, and a chest that looked strangely fine in this otherwise sparsely furnished room. Dustfinger still remembered the cloth merchant who had given it to Roxane. It was a heavy load for his servants to carry, and it had been full to the brim with silken dresses embroidered with pearls, the sleeves edged with lace. Were they still there in the chest? Unworn, useless for working in the fields?\n\n'I went to Nettle when Rosanna first fell ill.' Roxane did not turn to him as she spoke. 'I didn't know anything, not even how to draw the fever out of her. Nettle showed me all she knew, but nothing helped our daughter. So I rode to see the Barn Owl with her, while her fever rose higher and higher. I took her into the forest, to the fairies, but they didn't help me either. They might have done it for you \u2013 but you weren't there.'\n\nDustfinger saw her pass the back of her hand over her eyes. 'Cloud-Dancer told me.' He knew these were not the right words, but he could find no better.\n\nRoxane just nodded, and passed her hand over her eyes again. 'Some say that you can see the people you love even after death,' she said quietly. 'They say the dead visit you by night, or at least in your dreams; your longing for them calls them back, if only for a little while... Rosanna didn't come. I went to women who said they could speak to the dead. I burned herbs whose fragrance was supposed to summon her, and I lay awake long nights hoping that she would come back, at least once. But it was all lies. There's no way back. Or have you been there? Did you find one?'\n\n'In the realm of the dead? No.' Dustfinger shook his head with a sad smile. 'No, I didn't go quite so far. But believe me, if I had, then even from there I'd have sought some way to get back to you...'\n\nHow long she looked at him! No one else had ever looked at him like that. And once again he tried to find words, the words that could explain where he had been, but there were none.\n\n'When Rosanna died,' Roxane's tongue seemed to shrink from the word, as if it could kill her daughter a second time, 'when she died and I held her in my arms, I swore something to myself: I swore that never, never again would I be so helpless when death tried to take away someone I love. I've learned a great deal since then. Perhaps today I could cure her. Or perhaps not.'\n\nShe looked at him again, and when he returned her glance he did not try to hide his pain, as he usually would.\n\n'Where did you bury her?'\n\n'Behind the house, where she always used to play.'\n\nHe turned to the open door, wanting at least to see the earth under which she lay, but Roxane held him back. 'Where have you been?' she whispered, laying her forehead against his chest.\n\nHe stroked her hair, stroked the fine grey strands like silken cobwebs running through the sooty black, and buried his face in it. She still mixed a little bitter orange into the water when she washed her hair. Its perfume brought back so many memories that he felt dizzy. 'Far away,' he said. 'I've been very, very far away.' Then he just stood there holding her tightly, unable to believe that she was really there again, not just a figment of his dreams, not just a memory, blurred and vague, but a woman of flesh and blood with fragrant hair... and she was not sending him away.\n\nHow long they simply stood there like that, he didn't know.\n\n'What about our older girl? How is Brianna?' he asked at last.\n\n'She's been living up at the castle for four years now. She serves Violante, the Prince's daughter-in-law, known to everyone as Her Ugliness.' She came out of his arms, smoothed her pinned-up hair, and reached for his hands. 'Brianna sings for Violante, looks after her spoilt little son and reads to her,' she said. 'Violante adores books, but her eyesight is bad, so she can't easily read them for herself \u2013 let alone that she must do it in secret because the Prince thinks poorly of women who read.'\n\n'But Brianna can read?'\n\n'Yes, and I've taught my son to read too.'\n\n'What's his name?'\n\n'Jehan. After his father.' Roxane went over to the table and touched the flowers standing on it.\n\n'Did I know him?'\n\n'No. He left me this farm \u2013 and a son. The fire-raisers set light to our barn, he ran in to save the livestock, and the fire consumed him. Isn't it strange \u2013 that you can love two men and fire protects one of them, but kills the other?' She was silent for some time before she spoke again. 'Firefox was leader of the arsonists then. They were almost worse than under Capricorn. Basta and Capricorn disappeared at the same time as you, did you know?'\n\n'Yes, so I've heard,' he murmured, unable to take his eyes off her. How lovely she was. How beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her. When she came towards him again every movement reminded him of the day he had first seen her dance.\n\n'The fairies did very well,' she said quietly, stroking his face. 'If I didn't know better, I'd think someone had simply painted those scars on your face with a silver pencil.'\n\n'A lie, but a kind one,' he said just as softly. No one knew better than Roxane where the scars came from. They would neither of them forget the day when the Adderhead had commanded her to dance and sing before him. Capricorn had been there too, with Basta and all the other fire-raisers, and Basta had stared at Roxane like a tom-cat eyeing a tasty bird. He had pursued her day after day, promising her gold and jewels, threatening and flattering her, and when she rejected him again and again, alone and in company, Basta made enquiries to discover the identity of the man she preferred to him. He lay in wait for Dustfinger on his way to Roxane, with two other men, who held him down while Basta cut his face.\n\n'You didn't marry again after your husband died?' You fool, he thought, are you jealous of a dead man?\n\n'No, the only man on this farm is Jehan.'\n\nThe boy appeared in the doorway as suddenly as if he had been listening behind it, just waiting for his name to be spoken. Without a word he made his way past Dustfinger and sat down on the bench.\n\n'The flowers are even bigger now,' he said.\n\n'Did you burn your fingers on them?'\n\n'Only a little.'\n\nRoxane pushed a jug of cold water over to him. 'Here, dip them in that. And if it doesn't help I'll break an egg for you. There's nothing better for burns than a little egg white.'\n\nJehan obediently put his fingers in the jug, still looking at Dustfinger. 'Doesn't he ever burn himself?' he asked his mother.\n\nRoxane had to smile. 'No, never. Fire loves him. It licks his fingers, it kisses him.'\n\nJehan looked at Dustfinger as if his mother had said that fairy and not human blood ran in his veins.\n\n'Careful, she's teasing you!' said Dustfinger. 'Of course it bites me too.'\n\n'Those scars on your face \u2013 they weren't made by fire?'\n\n'No.' Dustfinger helped himself to more bread. 'This woman, Violante,' he said. 'Cloud-Dancer told me the Adderhead is her father. Does she hate the strolling players as much as he does?'\n\n'No.' Roxane ran her fingers through Jehan's black hair. 'If Violante hates anyone, it's her father himself. She was seven when he sent her here. She was married to Cosimo when she was twelve, and six years later she was a widow. Now there she sits in her father-in-law's castle, trying to care for his subjects, as he has long neglected to do in his mourning for his son. Violante feels for the weak. Beggars, cripples, widows with hungry children, peasants who can't pay their taxes \u2013 they all go to her, but Violante is a woman. Any power she has is only because everyone's afraid of her father, even on this side of the forest.'\n\n'Brianna likes it at the castle.' Jehan wiped his wet fingers on his trousers and looked at their reddened tips with concern.\n\nRoxane dipped his fingers back in the cold water. 'Yes, I'm afraid so,' she said. 'Our daughter likes to wear Violante's cast-off clothes, sleep in a soft four-poster bed, and have the fine folk at court pay her compliments. But I don't care for it, and she knows I don't.'\n\n'The Ugly Lady sends for me too sometimes!' There was no mistaking the pride in Jehan's voice. 'To play with her son. Jacopo pesters her and Brianna when they're reading, and no one else will play with him because he always starts screaming when you have a fight with him... and when he loses he shouts that he's going to have your head chopped off!'\n\n'You let him play with a prince's brat?' Dustfinger cast Roxane an anxious glance. 'Whatever their age, princes are never friends to anyone. Have you forgotten that? And the same is true of their daughters, especially if the Adderhead is their father.'\n\nRoxane made her way past him in silence. 'You don't have to remind me what princes are like,' she said. 'Your daughter is fifteen years old now, it's a long time since she took any advice from me. But who knows, maybe she'll listen to her father, even if she hasn't seen him for ten years. Next Sunday the Laughing Prince is holding festivities to celebrate his grandson's birthday. A good fire-eater is sure to be welcome at the castle, since Sootbird is the only one they've had to entertain them all these years.' She stopped in the open doorway. 'Come along, Jehan,' she said, 'your fingers don't look too bad, and there's plenty of work still to do.'\n\nThe boy obeyed without protest. At the door he cast a last, curious look at Dustfinger, then ran off \u2013 and Dustfinger was left alone in the little house. He looked at the pots and pans near the fire, the wooden bowls, the spinning-wheel in the corner and the chest that spoke of Roxane's past. Yes, it was a simple house, not much bigger than a charcoal-burner's hut, but it was a home \u2013 something that Roxane had always wanted. She had never liked to have only the sky above her by night... even if he made the fire grow flowers for her, flowers to watch over her sleep."
            },
            {
                "title": "Meggie Reads",
                "text": "\u2002'Don't ask where the rest of this book is!' It is a shrill cry that comes from an undefined spot among the shelves. 'All books continue in the beyond...'\n\n\u2014Italo Calvino, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller\n\nWhen all was quiet in Elinor's house, and the garden was bright in the moonlight, Meggie put on the dress that Resa had made for her. Several months ago, she had asked her mother what kind of clothes women wore in the Inkworld.\n\n'Which women?' Resa had enquired. 'Farmers' wives? Strolling players? Princes' daughters? Maidservants?'\n\n'What did you wear?' Meggie asked, and Resa had gone into the nearest town with Darius and bought some dress material there: plain, coarsely woven red fabric. Then she had asked Elinor to bring the old sewing machine up from the cellar. 'That's the sort of dress I wore when I was living in Capricorn's fortress as a maid,' her hands had said, putting the finished dress over Meggie's head. 'It would have been too fine for a peasant woman, but it was just about good enough for a rich man's servant, and Mortola was very keen that we shouldn't be much worse dressed than the Prince's maids \u2013 even if we only served a gang of fire-raisers.'\n\nMeggie stood in front of her wardrobe mirror and examined herself in the dull glass. She looked strange to herself. And she'd be a stranger in the Inkworld too; a dress alone couldn't alter that. A stranger, just as Dustfinger was here, she thought \u2013 and she remembered the unhappiness in his eyes. Nonsense, she told herself crossly, pushing back her smooth hair. I'm not planning to spend ten years there.\n\nThe sleeves of the dress were already a little too short, and it was stretched tight over her breasts too. 'Good heavens, Meggie!' Elinor had exclaimed when she realized, for the first time, that they weren't as flat as the cover of a book any more. 'Well, I imagine your Pippi Longstocking days are over now!'\n\nThey hadn't found anything suitable for Farid to wear, not in the attic or in the trunks of clothes down in the cellar that smelled of mothballs and cigar smoke, but he didn't seem to mind. 'Who cares? If it works we'll start out in the forest,' he said. 'No one will be interested in my jeans there, and as soon as we come to a village or town I'll steal myself something to wear!'\n\nEverything always seemed so simple to him. He couldn't understand that Meggie felt guilty because of Mo and Resa, any more than he understood her anxiety to find the right clothes. When she confessed that she could hardly look Mo and her mother in the eye after deciding to go with him, he had just asked 'Why?', looking at her blankly. 'You're thirteen! Surely they'd be marrying you off to someone quite soon anyway?'\n\n'Marrying me off?' Meggie had felt the blood rise to her face. But how could she talk about such things to a boy out of a story in the Thousand and One Nights, where all women were servants or slave-girls \u2013 or lived in a harem?\n\n'Anyway,' added Farid, kindly ignoring the fact that she was still blushing, 'you're not intending to stay very long, are you?'\n\nNo, she wasn't. She wanted to taste and smell and feel the Inkworld, see fairies and princes \u2013 and then come home again to Mo and Resa, Elinor and Darius. There was just one problem: the words Orpheus had written might take her into Dustfinger's story, but they couldn't bring her back. Only one person could write her back again \u2013 Fenoglio, the inventor of the world she wanted to visit, the creator of glass men and blue-skinned fairies, of Dustfinger and Basta too. Yes, only Fenoglio could help her to return. Every time Meggie thought of that, her courage drained away and she felt like cancelling the whole plan, striking out those three little words she had added to what Orpheus had written: '... and the girl'.\n\nSuppose she couldn't find Fenoglio, suppose he wasn't even in his own story any more? Oh, come on! He must still be there, she told herself whenever that thought made her heart beat faster. He can't simply write himself back, not without someone to read what he's written aloud! But suppose Fenoglio had found another reader there, someone like Orpheus or Darius? The gift didn't seem to be unique, as she and Mo had once thought.\n\nNo, he's still there! I'm sure he is! thought Meggie for the hundredth time, reading her goodbye letter to Mo and Resa once more. She herself didn't know why she had chosen to write it on the letterhead that she and Mo had designed together. That was hardly going to mollify him.\n\nDearest Mo, dear Resa. Meggie knew the words by heart.\n\nPlease don't worry. Farid has to find Dustfinger to warn him about Basta, and I'm going too. I won't stay long \u2013 I just want to see the Wayless Wood, the Laughing Prince and Cosimo the Fair, and perhaps the Black Prince and Cloud-Dancer. I want to see the fairies again, and the glass men \u2013 and Fenoglio. He'll write me back here. You know he can do it, so don't worry. Capricorn isn't in the Inkworld any more, after all.\n\nSee you soon, lots of love and kisses, Meggie.\n\nP.S. I'll bring you a book back, Mo. Apparently there are wonderful books there, hand-written books full of pictures, like the ones in Elinor's glass cases. Only even better. Please don't be angry.\n\nShe had torn up this letter and rewritten it three times, but that had made matters no better. Because she knew that there were no words that could stop Mo being angry with her and Resa weeping with anxiety \u2013 the way she did the day Meggie came home from school two hours later than usual. She put the letter on her pillow \u2013 they couldn't miss seeing it there \u2013 and went over to the mirror again. Meggie, she thought, what are you doing? What do you think you're doing? But her reflection did not reply.\n\nWhen she let Farid into her room just after midnight he was surprised to see her dress. 'I don't have shoes to go with it,' she said. 'But luckily it's quite long, and I don't think my boots show much, do they?'\n\nFarid just nodded. 'It looks lovely,' he murmured awkwardly.\n\nMeggie locked the door after letting him in, and took the key out of the lock so that it could be unlocked again from outside. Elinor had a second key, and though she probably wouldn't be able to find it at first, Darius would know where it was. Meggie glanced at the letter on her pillow once more...\n\nOver his shoulder, Farid had the rucksack she had found in Elinor's attic. 'Oh, he's welcome to it,' Elinor had said when Meggie asked her. 'It once belonged to an uncle of mine. I hated him! The boy can put that smelly marten in it. I like the idea!'\n\nThe marten! Meggie's heart missed a beat.\n\nFarid didn't know why Dustfinger had left Gwin behind, and Meggie hadn't told him, although she knew the reason only too well. She herself, after all, had told Dustfinger what part the marten was to play in his story. He was to die a dreadful, violent death because of Gwin \u2013 if what Fenoglio had written came true.\n\nBut Farid just shook his head sadly when she asked him about the marten. 'He's gone,' said the boy. 'I tied him up in the garden, because the bookworm woman kept on at me about her birds, but he gnawed through the rope. I've looked for him everywhere, but I just can't find him!'\n\nClever Gwin.\n\n'He'll have to stay here,' said Meggie. 'Orpheus didn't write anything about him, and Resa will look after him. She likes him.'\n\nFarid nodded, and glanced unhappily at the window, but he didn't contradict her.\n\nThe Wayless Wood \u2013 that was where Orpheus's words would take them. Farid knew where Dustfinger had meant to go after arriving in the forest: to Ombra, where the Laughing Prince's castle stood. And that was where Meggie hoped to find Fenoglio too. He had often told her about Ombra when they were both Capricorn's prisoners. One night, when neither of them could sleep because Capricorn's men were shooting at stray cats outside again, he had whispered to Meggie, 'If I could choose to see one place in the Inkworld, then it would be Ombra... After all, the Laughing Prince is a great lover of books, which can hardly be said of his adversary the Adderhead. Yes, life must surely be good for a writer in Ombra. A room in an attic somewhere, perhaps in the alley where the cobblers and saddlers work \u2013 their trades don't smell too bad \u2013 and a glass man to sharpen my quills, a few fairies over my bed, and I could look down into the alley through my window and see all life pass by...'\n\n'What are you taking with you?' Farid's voice startled Meggie out of her thoughts. 'You know we're not supposed to bring too much.'\n\n'Of course I know.' Did he think that just because she was a girl she needed a dozen dresses? All she was going to carry was the old leather bag that had always gone with her and Mo on their travels when she was little. It would remind her of Mo, and she hoped that in the Inkworld it would be as inconspicuous as her dress. But the things she'd stuffed into it would certainly attract attention if anyone saw them: a hairbrush made of plastic, modern like the buttons on the cardigan she had packed; also a couple of pencils, a penknife, a photograph of her parents and one of Elinor. She had thought hard about what book to take. Going without one would have seemed to her like setting off naked, but it mustn't be a heavy book, so it had to be a paperback. 'Books in beach clothes,' Mo called them, 'badly dressed for most occasions, but useful when you're on holiday.' Elinor didn't have a single paperback on her shelves, but Meggie herself owned a few. In the end she had decided on one that Resa had given her, a collection of stories set near the lake that lay close to Elinor's house. That way she would be taking a little bit of home with her \u2013 for Elinor's house was her home now, more than anywhere else had ever been. And who knew, maybe Fenoglio would be able to use the words in it to write her back again, back into her own story...\n\nFarid had gone to the window. It was open, and a cool wind was blowing into the room, moving the curtains that Resa had made. Meggie shivered in her new dress. The nights were still very mild, but what would the season be in the Inkworld? Perhaps it was winter there...\n\n'I ought to say goodbye to him, at least,' murmured Farid. 'Gwin!' he called softly into the night air, clicking his tongue.\n\nMeggie quickly pulled him away from the window. 'Don't do that!' she snapped. 'Do you want to wake everyone up? I've already told you, Gwin will be fine here. He's probably found a female marten by now. There are a few around the place. Elinor's always afraid they'll eat the nightingale that sings outside her window in the evening.'\n\nFarid looked very unhappy, but he stepped back from the window. 'Why are you leaving it open?' he asked. 'Suppose Basta...' He didn't finish his sentence.\n\n'Elinor's alarm system works even if there's an open window,' was all Meggie said, while she put the notebook Mo had given her in her bag. There was a reason why she didn't want to close the window. One night in a hotel by the sea, not far from Capricorn's village, she had persuaded Mo to read her a poem. A poem about a moon-bird asleep in a peppermint wind. Next morning the bird was fluttering against the window of their hotel bedroom, and Meggie couldn't forget how its little head kept colliding with the glass again and again. Her window must stay open.\n\n'We'd better sit close to each other on the sofa,' she said. 'And sling your rucksack over your back.'\n\nFarid obeyed. He sat down on the sofa as hesitantly as he had on her chair. It was an old, velvet, button-backed sofa with tassels, its pale green upholstery very worn. 'You need somewhere comfortable to sit and read,' Elinor had said when she asked Darius to put it in Meggie's room. What would Elinor say when she found that Meggie had gone? Would she understand? She'll probably swear a lot, thought Meggie, kneeling beside her school bag. And then she'll say, 'Damn it, why didn't the silly girl take me too?' That would be Elinor all over. Meggie suddenly wanted to see her again, but she tried not to think of any of them any more \u2013 not Elinor or Resa or Mo. Particularly not Mo, for she might have only too clear an idea of what he'd look like when he found her letter... no, stop it, she told herself.\n\nShe quickly reached into her school bag and took out her geography book. The sheet of paper that Farid had brought with him was in there, beside her own copy of it, but Meggie took out only the copy in her own handwriting. Farid moved aside as she sat down next to him, and for a moment Meggie thought she saw something like fear in his eyes.\n\n'What's the matter?' she asked. 'Have you changed your mind?'\n\nBut he shook his head. 'No. It's just... it hasn't ever happened to you, has it?'\n\n'What?' For the first time Meggie noticed that he had a beard coming. It looked odd on his young face.\n\n'Well, what \u2013 what happened to Darius.'\n\nAh, that was it. He was afraid of arriving in Dustfinger's world with a twisted face, or a stiff leg, or mute like Resa.\n\n'No, of course not!' Meggie couldn't help the note of injury that crept into her voice. Although \u2013 could she really be sure that Fenoglio had arrived unharmed on the other side? Fenoglio, the Steadfast Tin Soldier... she had never seen people again after sending them away into the letters on the page. She'd seen only those who came out of the pages. Never mind. Don't think so much, Meggie. Read, or you may lose courage before you even feel the first word on your tongue...\n\nFarid cleared his throat, as if he, and not Meggie, must start reading.\n\nSo what was she waiting for? Did she expect Mo to knock on her door and wonder why she had locked it? All had been quiet next door for some time. Her parents were asleep. Don't think of them, Meggie! Don't think of Mo or Resa or Elinor, just think of the words \u2013 and the place where you want them to take you. A place of marvels and adventures.\n\nMeggie looked at the letters on the page, black and carefully shaped. She tried the taste of the first few syllables on her tongue, tried to picture the world of which the words whispered, the trees, the birds, the strange sky... Then she began to read. Her heart was thudding almost as violently as it had on the night she had been meant to use her voice to kill. Yet this time she had to do so much less. She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words, just large enough for her and Farid to pass through...\n\nA fresh fragrance rose to her nostrils, the scent of thousands and thousands of leaves. Then everything disappeared: her desk, the lamp beside her, the open window. The last thing that Meggie saw was Gwin, sitting on the window-sill, snuffling and looking at them."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Inkworld",
                "text": "\u2002Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.\n\n\u2014J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan\n\nIt was bright. Sunlight filtered through countless leaves. Shadows danced on a nearby pool, and a swarm of tiny red elves was whirring above the dark water.\n\nI can do it! That was Meggie's first thought when she sensed that the letters on the page really had let her through and she wasn't in Elinor's house any more, but somewhere very, very different. I can do it. I can read myself into a story. She really had slipped through the words, as she'd so often done in her mind. But this time she wouldn't have to slip into the skin of a character in the story \u2013 no, this time she would be in the story herself, part of it. Her very own self. Meggie. Not even that man Orpheus had done it. He had read Dustfinger home, but he couldn't read himself into the book, right into it. No one but Meggie had ever done it before, not Orpheus, not Darius, not Mo.\n\nMo.\n\nMeggie looked round almost as if she hoped he might be standing behind her, as usual when they were in a strange place. But only Farid was there, looking around as incredulously as she was. Elinor's house was far, far away. Her parents were gone. And there was no way back.\n\nQuite suddenly, Meggie felt fear rise in her like black, brackish water. She felt lost, terribly lost, felt it in every part of her. She didn't belong here! What had she done?\n\nShe stared at the paper in her hand, so useless now, the bait she had swallowed. Fenoglio's story had caught her. The sense of triumph that had carried her away just now was gone as if it had never been. Fear had extinguished it, fear that she had made a terrible mistake and it could never be put right. Meggie tried desperately to find some other feeling in her heart, but there was nothing, not even curiosity about the world now surrounding her. I want to go back! That was all she could think.\n\nBut Farid turned to her and smiled.\n\n'Look at those trees, Meggie!' he said. 'They really do grow right up to the sky. Look at them!'\n\nHe ran his fingers over his face, felt his nose and mouth, looked down at himself, and on realizing that he was obviously entirely unharmed began leaping about like a grasshopper. He made his way over the tree roots that wound through the moss which grew thick and soft between them, jumped from root to root \u2013 and then turned round and round, laughing, arms outstretched, until he was dizzy and staggered back against the nearest tree. Still laughing, he leaned against its trunk, which was so vast that five grown men with their arms stretched out could hardly have encompassed it, and looked up into the tangle of twigs and branches.\n\n'You did it, Meggie!' he cried. 'You did it! Hear that, Cheeseface?' he shouted at the trees. 'She can do it, using your words. She can do what you've tried thousands of times! She can do it and you can't!' He laughed again, as gleefully as a small child. Until he noticed that Meggie was perfectly silent.\n\n'What's the matter?' he asked, indicating her mouth in alarm. 'You haven't...?'\n\nLost her voice, like her mother? Had she? Her tongue felt heavy, but the words came out. 'No. No, I'm all right.'\n\nFarid smiled with relief. His carefree mood soothed Meggie's fears, and for the first time she really looked around her. They were in a valley, a broad, densely wooded valley among hills with trees standing so close together on their slopes that the crowns grew into each other. Chestnut and oak on the hillsides, ash and poplar further down, mingling their leaves with the silvery foliage of willows. The Wayless Wood deserved its name. It seemed to have no end and no beginning, like a green sea where you could drown as easily as in the wet and salty waves of its sister the Ocean.\n\n'Isn't this incredible? Isn't it amazingly wonderful?' Farid laughed so exuberantly that an animal of some kind, invisible among the leaves, snarled angrily down at them. 'Dustfinger told me about it, but it's even better than he said. How can there be so many different kinds of leaves? And just look at all the flowers and berries! We won't starve here!' Farid picked a berry, round and blue-black, sniffed it and put it in his mouth. 'I once knew an old man,' he said, wiping the juice from his lips, 'who used to tell stories at night by the fire. Stories about paradise. This is just how he described it: carpets of moss, pools of cool water, flowers and sweet berries everywhere, trees growing up to the sky, and the voices of their leaves speaking to the wind above you. Can you hear them?'\n\nYes, Meggie could. And she could see elves, swarms of them, tiny creatures with red skins. Resa had told her about them. They were swirling like midges above a pool of water, only a few steps away, which reflected the leaves of the trees. It was surrounded by bushes that bore red flowers, and the water was covered with their faded petals.\n\nMeggie couldn't see any blue fairies, but she did see butterflies, bees, birds, spiders' webs still silvery with dew although the sun was high in the sky, lizards, rabbits... there was a rustling and a rushing all around them, a crackling and a scratching and a pulsing, there was a hissing and a cooing and a chirping. This world seemed to be bursting with life, and yet it seemed quiet as well, wonderfully quiet, as if time didn't exist, as if there were no beginning or end to the present moment.\n\n'Do you think he came here too?' Farid looked round wistfully, as if hoping that Dustfinger would appear among the trees at any moment. 'Yes, of course. Orpheus must have read him to this very place, don't you think? He told me about that pool, and the red elves, and the tree over there with the pale bark where you can find their nests. \"And then you must follow a stream,\" he said, \"a stream going north. For in the south lies Argenta where the Adderhead rules, and you'll be hanged from a gallows there quicker than you can say your name.\" But I'd better take a look from up there!' Quick as a squirrel, he climbed a sapling, and before Meggie knew it he had caught hold of a woody vine and was hauling himself up to the top of a gigantic tree.\n\n'What are you doing?' she called after him.\n\n'You can always see more from further up!'\n\nFarid was hardly visible among the branches now. Meggie folded up the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it and put it in her bag. She didn't want to see the letters any more; they seemed to her like poisonous beetles, like Alice in Wonderland's bottle saying 'Drink me!' Her fingers touched the notebook with its marbled paper cover, and suddenly she had tears in her eyes.\n\n'When you come to a charcoal-burner's hut, Dustfinger said, then you know you're out of the Wayless Wood.' Farid's voice came down to her like the sound of a strange bird. 'I remember every word he said. If I want them to, words stick in my memory like flies sticking to resin. I don't need paper to put them on, not me! You just have to find the charcoal-burners and the black patches they leave on the forest floor, he said, and then you know the world of humans isn't far off. Follow the stream that springs from the water-nymphs' pool. It will lead you straight to Lombrica and the Laughing Prince's realm. Soon you'll see his castle on the eastern slope of a hill, high above a river. It's grey as a wasps' nest, and the city is all around it, with a market place where you can breathe fire right up to the sky...'\n\nMeggie was kneeling among the flowers \u2013 violets and purple bellflowers \u2013 most of them fading now, but they were still fragrant, and smelled so sweet that she felt dizzy. A wasp was zooming around among them \u2013 or did it just look like a wasp? How much had Fenoglio copied from his own world and how much had he made up? It all seemed so familiar and yet so strange.\n\n'Isn't it lucky he told me about everything in such detail?' Meggie saw Farid's bare feet. He was swinging through the leaves at a dizzy height. 'Dustfinger often couldn't sleep at night. He was afraid of his dreams. I used to wake him up when they were bad, and then we sat by the fire and I asked him questions. I do that very well. I'm brilliant at asking questions. You bet I am!'\n\nMeggie couldn't help smiling at the pride in his voice. She looked up at the canopy of foliage, and saw that the leaves were turning colour, as they had been in Elinor's garden too. Did the two worlds keep time with each other? And had they always kept time, or did their stories become inextricably linked only on the day when Mo brought Capricorn, Basta and Dustfinger from one into the other? She would never find out the answer, for who could know?\n\nThere was a rustling under one of the bushes, a thorny shrub, heavy with dark berries. Wolves and bears, cats with dappled fur \u2013 Resa had told her about them too. Involuntarily, Meggie stepped back, but her dress caught on some tall thistles white with their own downy seed-heads.\n\n'Farid?' she called, cross with herself when she heard the fear in her voice. 'Farid!'\n\nBut he didn't seem to hear her. He was still chattering away to himself high among the branches, carefree as a bird in the sunshine, while she, Meggie, was down here among the shadows. Shadows that moved, had eyes, growled... was that a snake? She freed her dress with such a violent tug that it tore, and stumbled further back until she came up against the rough trunk of an oak tree. The snake slid past quickly, as if the sight of Meggie had made it mortally afraid too, but there was still something moving under the bush, and finally a head pushed out from the prickly twigs. It was furry and round-nosed, and it had tiny horns between its ears.\n\n'No!' whispered Meggie. 'Oh no!'\n\nGwin stared at her almost reproachfully, as if he thought it was her fault that his fur was full of fine prickles.\n\nFarid's voice above her was more distinct now. Obviously he was finally coming down from his lookout post. 'No hut, no castle, nothing in sight!' he called. 'It'll be a few days before we get out of this forest, but that's how Dustfinger wanted it. He wanted to take his time coming back to the world of humans. I think he was almost more homesick for the trees and fairies than for other people. Well, I don't know about you \u2013 and the trees are beautiful, very beautiful \u2013 but personally I'd like to see the castle too, and the other strolling players, and the men-at-arms.'\n\nHe jumped down on the grass, hopped on one leg through the carpet of blue flowers \u2013 and let out a cry of delight when he saw the marten. 'Gwin! Oh, I knew you'd heard me! Come here, you son of a devil and a snake! Won't Dustfinger be surprised to see we've brought him his old friend after all!'\n\nOh, won't he just! thought Meggie. Fear will take his breath away \u2013 he'll go weak at the knees.\n\nThe marten jumped on to Farid's knee as the boy crouched down in the grass, and affectionately licked his chin. He would have bitten anyone else, even Dustfinger, but with Farid he acted like a young kitten.\n\n'Shoo him away, Farid!' Meggie's voice sounded sharper than she had intended.\n\n'Shoo him away?' Farid laughed. 'What are you talking about? Hear that, Gwin? What have you done to offend her? Left a dead mouse on one of her precious books?'\n\n'Shoo him away, I said! He'll be all right on his own, you know he will. Please!' she added, seeing his horrified expression as he looked at her.\n\nFarid straightened up, the marten in his arms. His face was more hostile than she had ever seen it before. Gwin jumped up on his shoulder and stared at Meggie as if he had understood every word she said. Very well, then, she'd just have to tell Farid \u2013 but how?\n\n'Didn't Dustfinger tell you?'\n\n'Tell me what?' He looked at her as if he'd like to hit her.\n\nAbove them, the wind blew through the leaf canopy like a menacing whisper.\n\n'If you don't shoo Gwin away,' said Meggie, although each word was difficult to utter, 'then Dustfinger will. And he'll chase you away too.'\n\nThe marten was still staring at her.\n\n'Why would he do a thing like that? You don't like him, that's what it is. You never liked Dustfinger, and you don't like Gwin either.'\n\n'That's not true! You don't understand!' Meggie's voice was loud and shrill. 'He's going to die because of Gwin! Dustfinger dies, that's how Fenoglio wrote the story! Perhaps it's been changed, perhaps this is a new story we're in and everything in the book is just a pile of dead words, but all the same...'\n\nMeggie hadn't the heart to go on. Farid stood there shaking his head again and again, as if her words were like needles digging into it, hurting him.\n\n'He's going to die?' His voice was barely audible. 'He dies in the book?'\n\nHow lost he looked standing there with the marten still perched on his shoulder! He looked at the trees around them with horror, as if they were all intent on killing Dustfinger. 'But \u2013 but if I'd known that,' he stammered, 'I'd have torn up Cheeseface's wretched piece of paper! I'd never have let him read Dustfinger back!'\n\nMeggie just looked at him. What could she say?\n\n'Who kills him? Basta?'\n\nTwo squirrels were chasing about overhead. They had white spots as if someone had shaken a paintbrush over them. The marten wanted to go after them, but Farid seized his tail and held it tight.\n\n'One of Capricorn's men. That's all Fenoglio wrote!'\n\n'But they're all dead!'\n\n'We don't know that.' Meggie would have been only too glad to comfort him, but she didn't know how. 'Suppose they're still alive in this world? And even if they aren't \u2013 Mo and Darius didn't read all of them out. Some are still sure to be here. Dustfinger tries to save Gwin from them, and they kill him. That's what it says in the book, and Dustfinger knows it. That's why he left the marten behind.'\n\n'Yes, so he did.' Farid looked round as if seeking some solution, a way he could send the marten back again. Gwin nuzzled his cheek with his nose, and Meggie saw the tears in Farid's eyes.\n\n'Wait here!' he said, and he turned abruptly and went off with the marten. He had gone only a few paces before the forest swallowed him up like a frog swallowing a fly, and Meggie stood there on her own among the flowers. Some of them grew in Elinor's garden too, but this wasn't Elinor's garden. This wasn't even the same world. And this time she couldn't just close the book and be back again: back in her own room, on the sofa that smelled of Elinor. The world beyond the words on the page was wide \u2013 hadn't she always known it? \u2013 wide enough for her to be lost there forever. Only one person could write her out of it again \u2013 an old man \u2013 and Meggie didn't even know where he lived in this world he had created. She didn't even know if he was still alive. Could this world live if its creator was dead? Why not? Books don't stop existing just because their authors have died, do they?\n\nWhat have I done? thought Meggie as she stood there waiting for Farid to come back. Oh Mo, what have I done? Can't you fetch me back again?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Gone",
                "text": "\u2002I woke up and knew he was gone. Straight away I knew he was gone. When you love somebody you know these things.\n\n\u2014David Almond, Skellig\n\nMo knew at once that Meggie was gone. He knew it the moment he knocked on her door and only silence replied. Resa was down in the kitchen with Elinor, laying the table for breakfast. The clink of the plates made its way upstairs to him, but he hardly heard it; he just stood there outside the closed door, listening to his own heart. It was beating far too loudly, far too fast. 'Meggie?' He pressed the handle down, but the door was locked. Meggie never locked her door, never.\n\nHis heart beat even faster, as if to choke him. The silence behind the door sounded terribly familiar. Just such a silence had met his ears once before, when he had called Resa's name again and again. He had waited ten years for an answer.\n\nNot again, please God, not again. Not Meggie.\n\nIt seemed as if he heard the book whispering on the other side of the door: Fenoglio's accursed story. He thought he heard the pages rustling, greedy as pale teeth.\n\n'Mortimer?' Elinor was standing behind him. 'The eggs are getting cold. Where are you and Meggie? Oh heavens!' She looked at his face with concern and reached for his hand. 'What's the matter with you? You're pale as death.'\n\n'Do you have a spare key for Meggie's door, Elinor?'\n\nShe understood at once. Just like Mo, she guessed what had happened behind that locked door, presumably last night when they were all asleep. She pressed his hand. Then she turned without a word and hurried downstairs. But Mo just stood there leaning against the locked door, heard Elinor call Darius and begin to search for the key, cursing, and he stared at the books standing side by side on her shelves all down the long corridor. Resa came running upstairs, pale-faced. Her hands fluttered like frightened birds as she asked him what had happened. What was he to say?\n\n'Can't you imagine? Haven't you told her about the place often enough?' He tried the handle again, as if that could change anything. Meggie had covered the whole door with quotations. They looked to him now like magic spells written on the white paint in a childish hand. Take me to another world! Go on! I know you can do it. My father has shown me how. Odd that your heart didn't simply stop when it hurt so much. But his heart hadn't stopped ten years ago either, when the words on the page swallowed Resa up.\n\nElinor pushed him aside. She was holding the key in her trembling fingers, and she impatiently put it in the lock. Crossly, she called Meggie's name, as if she too hadn't guessed long ago that nothing but silence waited behind that door: the same silence as on the night that had taught Mo to fear his own voice.\n\nHe was the last to enter the empty room, and he did so hesitantly. There was a letter on Meggie's pillow. Dearest Mo... he didn't read on, he didn't want to see the words that would only pierce him to the heart. As Resa picked up the letter he looked round the room \u2013 his eyes searching for another sheet of paper, the one the boy had brought with him \u2013 but it was nowhere to be found. Well, of course not, you fool, he told himself. She's taken it with her; after all, she must have been holding it while she read.\n\nOnly years later would he discover from Meggie that the original sheet of paper with Orpheus's writing on it had been there in her room all the time, hidden between the pages of a book \u2013 where else? Her geography book. Suppose he had found it? Would he have been able to follow Meggie? No, probably not. The story had another path in store for him, a darker and more difficult path.\n\n'Perhaps she's only gone off with the boy! Girls of her age do that kind of thing. Not that I know much about it, but...' Elinor's voice reached him as if from very far away. In answer, Resa handed her the letter that had been waiting on the pillow.\n\nGone. Meggie was gone.\n\nHe had no daughter any more.\n\nWould she come back, like her mother? Fished out of the sea of words again by some other voice? If so, when? In ten years' time, like Resa? She'd be grown up by then. Would he even recognize her? Everything was blurred before his eyes: Meggie's school things on the desk in front of the window, her clothes, carefully hanging over the back of the chair as if she really meant to come back, her soft toys beside the bed, their furry faces kissed threadbare, although it was a long time since Meggie had needed them to help her get to sleep. Resa began crying without a sound, one hand pressed to her mute mouth. Mo wanted to comfort her, but how could he with such despair in his own heart?\n\nHe turned, pushed aside Darius, who was standing there in the open doorway with a sad, owl-like gaze, and went to his study, where those damned notebooks were still stacked among his own papers. He swept them off the desk one by one, as if he could silence the words that way \u2013 all the accursed words that had bewitched his child, luring her away like the Pied Piper in the story, to a place where he had already been unable to follow Resa. Mo felt as if he were dreaming the same nightmare all over again, but this time he didn't even have a book whose pages he could have searched for Meggie.\n\nLater, he couldn't say how he had got through the rest of that day without going mad. All he remembered was wandering for hours through Elinor's garden, as if he might find Meggie somewhere there among the old trees where she liked to sit and read. When darkness fell and he set out to look for Resa, he found her in Meggie's room. She was sitting on the empty bed, staring at three tiny creatures circling just below the ceiling, as if they were looking for the door they had come through. Meggie had left the window open, but they didn't fly out, perhaps because the strange, black night frightened them.\n\n'Fire-elves,' said Resa's hands when he sat down beside her. 'If they settle on your skin you must shake them off, or they'll burn you.'\n\nFire-elves. Mo remembered reading about them in the book. Something always came back in return. There seemed to be just that one book in the whole world.\n\n'Why three of them?' he asked. 'One for Meggie, one for the boy...'\n\n'I think the marten went too,' said Resa's hands.\n\nMo almost laughed out loud. Poor Dustfinger, he obviously couldn't shake off his bad luck \u2013 but Mo could feel no sympathy for him. Not this time. Without Dustfinger the words on the sheet of paper would never have been written, and he would still have a daughter.\n\n'Do you think at least she'll like it there?' he asked, laying his head in Resa's lap. 'After all, you liked it, didn't you? Or, at any rate, you told her so.'\n\n'I'm sorry,' said her hands. 'So very sorry.'\n\nBut he held her fingers tight. 'What are you talking about?' he said softly. 'I was the one who brought the damned book into the house, remember?' And then they were both silent. In silence, they watched the poor, lost elves. At some point they did fly through the window, and into the strange night. As their tiny red bodies disappeared into the blackness like sparks going out, Mo wondered whether Meggie was wandering through an equally black night at this moment. The thought pursued him into his dark dreams."
            },
            {
                "title": "Uninvited Guests",
                "text": "\u2002'You people with hearts,' he said once, 'have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.'\n\n\u2014L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz\n\nOn the day when Meggie disappeared silence moved back into Elinor's house, but not the silence of the old days when only her books lived there with her. The silence that now filled the rooms and corridors tasted of sorrow. Resa wept a great deal, and Mortimer said nothing, as if paper and ink had swallowed up not just his daughter, but all the words in the world with her. He spent a lot of time in his workshop, ate little, hardly slept \u2013 and on the third day Darius, looking very anxious, went to Elinor and told her that Silvertongue was packing up all his tools.\n\nWhen Elinor entered his workshop, out of breath because Darius had been tugging her along behind him so fast, Mortimer was throwing the stamps he used for gold leaf into a crate, pell-mell \u2013 tools that he normally handled as carefully as if they were made of glass.\n\n'What the devil are you doing?' enquired Elinor.\n\n'What does it look like?' he replied, and began clearing away his sewing frame. 'I'm going to find another profession. I never want to touch a book again, curse them all. Other people can listen to the stories they tell and mend the clothes they wear. I want nothing more to do with them.'\n\nWhen Elinor went to fetch Resa to help her, Resa just shook her head.\n\n'Well, I can understand why those two are useless just now,' commented Elinor, as she and Darius sat at breakfast by themselves yet again. 'How could Meggie do a thing like that to them? What was her idea \u2013 did she want to break her poor parents' hearts? Or prove once and for all that books are dangerous?'\n\nDarius had no answer but silence. He had been the same all these last few sad days.\n\n'For heaven's sake, all of you silent as the grave!' Elinor snapped at him. 'We must do something to get the silly creature back. Anything. Good God, it can't be as difficult as all that! After all, there are no fewer than two Silvertongues under this roof!'\n\nDarius looked at her in alarm and choked on his tea. He had left his gift unused for so long that no doubt it seemed like a dream to him \u2013 and he didn't want to be reminded of it.\n\n'All right, all right, you don't have to read aloud,' Elinor assured him impatiently. Good God, that owlish gaze of horror! She could have shaken him. 'Mortimer can do it! But what should he read? Think, Darius! If we want to fetch her back, should it be something about the Inkworld or about our own world? Oh, I'm all confused. Perhaps we can write something like: Once upon a time there was a grumpy middle-aged woman called Elinor who loved nothing but her books, until one day her niece moved in with her, along with the niece's husband and daughter. Elinor liked that, but one day the daughter set off on a very, very stupid journey, and Elinor swore that she would give all her books away if only the child would come home. She packed them up in big crates, and as she was putting the last book in, Meggie walked through the doorway... Heavens above, don't stare at me in that sympathetic way!' she snapped at Darius. 'I'm trying to do something, at least! And you yourself keep saying: Mortimer is a master, it takes him only a couple of sentences!'\n\nDarius adjusted his glasses. 'Yes, only a couple of sentences,' he said, in his gentle, uncertain voice. 'But they must be sentences describing a whole world, Elinor. The words must make music. They must be so closely interwoven that the voice doesn't fall through.'\n\n'Oh, for goodness' sake!' Elinor said brusquely \u2013 although she knew he was right. Mortimer had once tried to explain it to her in almost the same way: the mystery of why not every story would come to life. But she didn't want to hear about that, not now. Damn you, Elinor, she thought bitterly, damn you three times over for all those evenings you spent with the silly child imagining what it would be like to live in that other world, among fairies, brownies and glass men. There had been many such evenings, very many, and Mortimer had often put his head round the door and asked, sarcastically, if they couldn't discuss something other than Wayless Woods and blue-skinned fairies just for once.\n\nWell, at least Meggie knows all she needs to know about that world, thought Elinor, wiping the tears from her eyes. She realizes she must be careful of the Adderhead and his men-at-arms, and she mustn't go too far into the forest or she'll probably be eaten, torn to pieces or trodden underfoot. And she'd be well advised not to look up when she passes a gallows. She knows she must bow when a prince rides by, and that she can still wear her hair loose because she's only a girl... damn it, here came the tears again! Elinor was mopping the corners of her eyes with the hem of her blouse when someone rang the front door bell.\n\nMany years later, she was still angry with herself for the stupidity that didn't warn her to look through the spy-hole in the door before opening it. Of course she had thought it was Resa or Mortimer outside. Of course. Stupid Elinor. Stupid, stupid Elinor. She had realized her mistake only when she opened the door, and there stood the stranger in front of her.\n\nHe was not very tall and rather too well-fed, with pale skin and equally pale fair hair. The eyes behind his rimless glasses looked slightly surprised, almost innocent like a child's. He opened his mouth to speak as Elinor put her head round the door, but she cut him short.\n\n'What are you doing here?' she barked. 'This is private property. Didn't you see the notice down by the road?'\n\nHe had come in a car; the impudent fool had simply brought it up her drive! Elinor saw it, a dusty, dark blue vehicle, standing beside her own station wagon. She thought she saw a huge dog on the passenger seat. That was the last straw!\n\n'Yes, of course I did!' The stranger's smile was so innocent that it suited his childish face. 'Why, no one could miss seeing the notice, and I really do apologize, Signora Loredan, for my sudden and unannounced arrival.'\n\nHeavens above \u2013 it took Elinor's breath away. The moon-faced man's voice was almost as beautiful as Mortimer's, deep and velvety like a cushion. Coming from that round face with its childlike eyes, it was so incongruous that you felt almost as if the stranger had swallowed its real owner and taken over his voice.\n\n'Never mind the apologies!' said Elinor abruptly, once she had got over her surprise. 'Just get out.' And so saying, she was about to close the door again, but the stranger only smiled (a smile that no longer looked quite so innocent) and jammed his shoe between the door and the frame. A dusty brown shoe.\n\n'Do forgive me, Signora Loredan,' he said softly, 'but I've come about a book. A truly unique book. I have heard, of course, that you have a remarkable library, but I can assure you that you don't yet have this book in your collection.'\n\nWith an almost reverent expression on his face, he put a hand under his pale, creased linen jacket. Elinor recognized the book at once. Of course. It was the only book that made her heart beat faster not because it was a particularly fine edition, or because she longed to read it. No. At the sight of that book Elinor's heart beat faster for only one reason: because she feared it like a ferocious animal.\n\n'Where did you get that from?' She answered her question herself, but unfortunately a little too late. Suddenly, very suddenly, the memory of the boy's story came back to her. 'Orpheus!' she whispered \u2013 and she wanted to shout, loud enough for Mortimer to hear her in his workshop, but before a sound could come out of her mouth someone slipped out of the cover of the rhododendron bushes by the front door, quick as a lizard, and put his hand over her mouth.\n\n'Well, my lady bookworm,' a man's voice purred in her ear. Elinor had so often heard that voice in her dreams, and every time she found herself fighting for breath at the sound of it! Even in broad daylight the effect was just as bad. Basta pushed her roughly back into the house. Of course, he had a knife in his hand; Elinor could as easily imagine Basta without a nose as without a knife. Orpheus turned and waved to the strange car. A man built like a wardrobe got out, strolled around the car at a leisurely pace, and opened the back door. An old woman stuck her legs out and reached for his arm.\n\nMortola. The Magpie.\n\nAnother regular visitor to Elinor's nightmares.\n\nThe old woman's legs were thickly bandaged under her dark stockings, and she leaned on a stick as she walked towards Elinor's house on the wardrobe-man's arm. She hobbled into the hall with a grimly determined expression, as if she were taking possession of the whole house, and the look she gave Elinor was so openly hostile that its recipient felt weak at the knees, hard as she tried to hide her fear. A thousand dreadful memories came back to her \u2013 memories of a cage stinking of raw meat, a square lit by the beams of glaring car headlights, and fear, dreadful fear...\n\nBasta closed the door of the house behind Mortola. He hadn't changed: the same thin face, the same way of narrowing his eyes, and there was an amulet dangling around his neck to ward off the bad luck that Basta thought lurked under every ladder, behind every bush.\n\n'Where are the others?' Mortola demanded, while the wardrobe-man looked around him with a foolish expression. The sight of all those books seemed to fill him with boundless astonishment. He was probably wondering what on earth anyone would do with so many.\n\n'The others? I don't know who you're talking about.' Elinor thought her voice sounded remarkably steady for a woman half dead with terror.\n\nMortola's small, round chin jutted aggressively. 'You know perfectly well. I'm talking about Silvertongue and his witch of a daughter, and that maidservant, the one he calls his wife. Shall I get Basta to set fire to a few of your books, or will you call the three of them for us of your own accord?'\n\nBasta? Basta's afraid of fire, Elinor wanted to reply, but she refrained. It wasn't difficult to hold a lighted match to a book. Even Basta, who feared fire so much, would probably be capable of that small action, and the wardrobe-man didn't look bright enough to be afraid of anything. I just have to keep stalling, thought Elinor. After all, they don't know about the workshop in the garden, or about Darius either.\n\n'Elinor?' she heard Darius call at that very moment. Before she could reply, Basta's hand was over her mouth again. She heard Darius come down the corridor with his usual rapid tread. 'Elinor?' he called again. Then the footsteps stopped as abruptly as his voice.\n\n'Surprise, surprise!' purred Basta. 'Aren't you glad to see us, Stumbletongue? A couple of old friends come to pay you a visit!' Basta's left hand was bandaged, Elinor noticed when he took his fingers away from her mouth, and she remembered the hissing creature that Farid said had slipped through the words in Dustfinger's place. What a pity it didn't eat rather more of our knife-happy friend, she thought.\n\n'Basta!' Darius's voice was little more than a whisper.\n\n'That's right, Basta! I'd have been here much sooner, believe you me, but they put me in jail for a while on account of something that happened years ago. No sooner was Capricorn gone than all the people who'd been too scared to open their mouths suddenly felt very brave. Well, never mind. You could say they did me a favour, because who do you think they put in my cell one fine day? I never could get him to tell me his real name, so let's call him by the name he's given himself: Orpheus!' He slapped the man so hard on the back that he stumbled forward. 'Yes, our good friend Orpheus!' Basta put an arm around his shoulders. 'The Devil did me a real favour when he made Orpheus, of all people, my cellmate \u2013 or perhaps our story is so keen to have us back that it sent him? Well, one way or another, we had a good time, didn't we?'\n\nOrpheus did not look at him. He straightened his jacket in embarrassment, and inspected Elinor's bookshelves.\n\n'Hey, just look at him!' Basta dug his elbow roughly into Orpheus's ribs. 'You wouldn't believe how often I've told him there's nothing to be ashamed of in going to jail, particularly when your prisons here are so much more comfortable than our dungeons at home. Come on, tell them how I found out about your invaluable gifts. How I caught you one night reading yourself that stupid dog out of the book! Reading himself a dog! Lord knows, I could think of better ideas.'\n\nBasta laughed nastily, and Orpheus straightened his tie with nervous fingers. 'Cerberus is still in the car,' he told Mortola. 'He doesn't like it there at all. We ought to bring him in!'\n\nThe wardrobe-man turned to the door. He obviously had a soft spot for animals, but Mortola stopped him with an impatient gesture.\n\n'The dog stays where it is. I can't stand that creature!' Frowning, she looked around Elinor's hall. 'Well, I expected your house to be bigger than this,' she said, with assumed disappointment. 'I thought you were rich.'\n\n'So she is!' Basta flung his arm so roughly round Orpheus's neck that his glasses slipped down his nose. 'But she spends all her money on books. What would she pay us for the book we took from Dustfinger, do you think?' He pinched Orpheus's round cheeks. 'Yes, our friend here made good juicy bait for the fire-eater. He may look like a bullfrog, but even Silvertongue can't make the words obey him so well, let alone Darius. Ask Dustfinger \u2013 Orpheus sent him home as if nothing could be easier! Not that the fire-eater will\u2014'\n\n'Hold your tongue, Basta!' Mortola interrupted him abruptly. 'You've always liked the sound of your own voice. Well?' She impatiently tapped her stick on the marble tiles that were Elinor's pride and joy. 'Where are they? Where are the others? I shan't ask again!'\n\nCome along, Elinor told herself, lie to them. Lie yourself blue in the face! Quick! But she hadn't even opened her mouth when she heard the key in the lock. Oh no! No, Mortimer! she prayed silently. Stay where you are! Go back to the workshop with Resa, shut yourselves up there, but please, please don't come in just now!\n\nOf course her prayers made not the slightest difference.\n\nMortimer opened the door, came in with his arm round Resa's shoulders \u2013 and stopped abruptly at the sight of Orpheus. Before he had entirely grasped what was going on, the man built like a wardrobe had closed the door behind him in obedience to a signal from Mortola.\n\n'Hello there, Silvertongue!' said Basta, in a menacingly soft voice, as he snapped his knife open in front of Mortimer's face. 'And isn't this our lovely mute Resa? Excellent! Two birds with one stone. All we need now is the little witch.'\n\nElinor saw Mortimer close his eyes for a moment, as if hoping that Basta and Mortola would have disappeared when he opened them again. But, naturally, no such thing happened.\n\n'Call her!' ordered Mortola, as she stared at Mortimer with such hatred in her eyes that Elinor felt afraid.\n\n'Who?' he asked, without taking his eyes off Basta.\n\n'Don't pretend to be more stupid than you are!' Mortola said crossly. 'Or do you want me to let Basta cut the same pattern on your wife's face as he did on the fire-eater's?'\n\nBasta ran his thumb lovingly over the gleaming blade.\n\n'If by \"little witch\" you mean my daughter,' replied Mortimer huskily, 'she isn't here.'\n\n'Oh no?' Mortola hobbled towards him. 'Be careful what you say. My legs are aching after that endless drive to get here, so I'm not feeling particularly patient.'\n\n'She isn't here,' Mortimer repeated. 'Meggie has gone away, with the boy you took the book from. He asked her to take him to Dustfinger, she did it \u2013 and she went with him.'\n\nMortola narrowed her eyes incredulously. 'Nonsense!' she exclaimed. 'How could she have done it without the book?' But Elinor saw the doubt in her face.\n\nMortimer shrugged. 'The boy had a hand-written sheet of paper with him \u2013 the one that sent Dustfinger back, apparently.'\n\n'That's impossible!' Orpheus looked at him in astonishment. 'Are you seriously saying your daughter read herself into the story, using my words?'\n\n'Oh, so you're this Orpheus, are you?' Mortimer returned his glance, not in a very friendly way. 'Then you're responsible for the loss of my daughter.'\n\nOrpheus straightened his glasses and gave Mortimer an equally hostile look. Then, abruptly, he turned to Mortola. 'Is this man Silvertongue?' he demanded. 'He's lying! I'm sure of it! He's lying! No one can read themselves into a story. He can't, his daughter can't, no one can. I've tried it myself, hundreds of times. It doesn't work!'\n\n'Yes,' said Mortimer wearily. 'That's just what I thought too. Until four days ago.'\n\nMortola stared at him. Then she signalled to Basta. 'Shut them up in the cellar!' she ordered. 'And then look for the girl. Search the whole house.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Fenoglio",
                "text": "\u2002'I do practise remembering, Nain,' I said. 'Writing and reading and remembering.'\n\n\u2002'That you should!' said Nain sharply. 'Do you know what happens each time you write a thing down? Each time you name it? You sap its strength.'\n\n\u2014Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Seeing Stone\n\nIt wasn't easy to get past the guards at the gate of Ombra after dark, but Fenoglio knew them all. He had written many love poems for the heavily-built oaf who barred his way with his spear tonight \u2013 and very successful they were, he had been told. Judging by the fool's appearance, he'd be needing to call on Fenoglio's services again.\n\n'But mind you're back before midnight, scribbler!' the ugly fellow grunted before letting him pass. 'That's when the Ferret takes over from me, and he's not interested in your poems, even though his girl can read.'\n\n'Thanks for the warning!' said Fenoglio, giving the stupid fellow a false smile as he pushed past him. As if he didn't know that the Ferret was not to be trifled with! His stomach still hurt when he remembered how that sharp-nosed fellow had dug the shaft of his spear into it, when he'd tried pushing past him with a couple of well-chosen words. No, there'd be no bribing the Ferret, not with poems or any other written gifts. The Ferret wanted gold, and Fenoglio didn't have too much of that, or at least not enough to waste it on a guard at the city gates.\n\n'Midnight!' he cursed quietly as he stumbled down the steep path. 'As if that wasn't just when the strolling players wake up!'\n\nHis landlady's son carried the torch ahead of him. Ivo was nine years old and full of insatiable curiosity about all the wonders of his world. He was always fighting his sister for the honour of carrying the torch when Fenoglio went to visit the strolling players. Fenoglio paid Ivo's mother a few coins a week for a room in the attic. The price included the washing, cooking and mending that Minerva did for him too. In return, Fenoglio told her children bedtime stories, and listened patiently as she told him what a stubborn oaf her husband could be at times. The fact was, Fenoglio had struck lucky.\n\nThe boy scurried along ahead of him with increasing impatience. He could hardly wait to reach the brightly coloured tents, where music played and firelight shone among the trees. He kept looking round reproachfully, as if Fenoglio were taking his time on purpose. Did he think an old man could go as fast as a grasshopper?\n\nThe Motley Folk had pitched camp where the ground was so stony that nothing would grow on it, behind the cottages where the peasants who farmed the Laughing Prince's land lived. Now that the Prince of Ombra no longer wanted to hear their jests and songs, they came less often than before, but luckily the prince's grandson wanted players to entertain him on his birthday, so this Sunday they would at last come streaming through the city gates: fire-eaters and tightrope-walkers, animal tamers and knife-throwers, actors, buffoons, and many a minstrel whose songs came from Fenoglio's pen.\n\nFor Fenoglio liked writing for the Motley Folk: merry songs, sad songs, songs to make you laugh or weep, as the spirit moved him. He couldn't earn more than a few copper coins for those songs; the strolling players' pockets were always empty. If his words were to earn gold then he must write for princes or for a rich merchant. But when he made the words dance and pull faces, when he wanted to write tales of peasants and robbers, of ordinary folk who didn't live in castles or eat from golden plates, then he wrote for the strolling players.\n\nIt had taken some time for them to accept him into their tents. Only when more and more wandering minstrels were singing Fenoglio's songs, and their children were asking for his stories, did they stop turning him away. And now even their king invited Fenoglio to sit beside his fire, as he had tonight. Although not a drop of royal blood ran in his veins, this man was known as the Black Prince. The Prince took good care of his motley subjects, and they had chosen him to lead them twice already. It was better not to ask where all the gold he gave so generously to the sick and crippled came from, but Fenoglio knew one thing: he himself had invented the Prince.\n\nOh yes, I made them all! he thought, as the music came more clearly through the night air. He had made up the Prince and the tame bear that followed him like a dog, and Cloud-Dancer who, sad to say, fell off his rope, and many more, even the two rulers who believed that they laid down the law in this world. Fenoglio had not yet seen all his creations, but every time he suddenly met one in flesh and blood it made his heart beat faster \u2013 although he couldn't always remember whether any particular one of them had really sprung from his own pen, or came from somewhere else...\n\nThere were the tents at last, bright as windblown flowers in the black night. Ivo began running so fast that he almost fell over his own feet. A dirty boy with hair as unkempt as an alley cat's fur came out to meet them, hopping on one leg. He grinned challengingly at Ivo \u2013 and ran away on his hands. Lord, these players' children performed such contortions, you might think they had no bones in their bodies!\n\n'Off you go, then!' growled Fenoglio when Ivo looked pleadingly at him. After all, he didn't need the torch any more. Several fires were burning among the tents, which often consisted of little more than a few grubby lengths of cloth stretched over ropes between the trees. Fenoglio looked around with a sigh of satisfaction as the boy raced away. Yes, this was just as he'd imagined the Inkworld as he wrote his story: bright and noisy, full of life. The air smelled of smoke, of roast meat, of rosemary and thyme, horses, dogs and dirty clothes, pine needles and burning wood. Oh, he loved it! He loved the hurry and bustle, he even loved the dirt, he loved the way life here was lived before his very eyes, not behind locked doors. You could learn anything in this world: how the smith shaped the metal of a sickle in the fire, how the dyer mixed his dyes, how the tanner removed hair from leather and how the cobbler cut it to shape to make shoes. Nothing happened behind closed doors. It was all going on, in the alleyways, on the road, in the market place, here among shabby tents, and he, Fenoglio \u2013 still as curious as a boy \u2013 could watch, although the stench of the leather mordant and the dye tubs sometimes took his breath away. Yes, he liked this world of his. He liked it very much \u2013 although he couldn't help seeing that not everything was working out the way he had intended.\n\nIt was his own fault. I should have written a sequel, thought Fenoglio, making his way through the crowd. I could still write one, here and now, and change everything, if only I had someone to read it aloud! Of course he had looked for another Silvertongue, but in vain. No Meggie, no Mortimer, not even someone like that man Darius who was more than likely to botch the job... and Fenoglio could play only the part of a writer whose fine words didn't exactly keep him in luxury, while the two princes he had invented ruled his world after their own fashion. Annoying, extremely annoying.\n\nOne of those princes above all gave him cause for concern \u2013 the Adderhead.\n\nHe reigned to the south of the forest, high above the sea, sitting on the silver throne of the Castle of Night. As an invented character, not by any means a bad one. A bloodhound, a ruthless slave-driver \u2013 but after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story. If you can keep them under control. It was for this purpose that Fenoglio had thought up the Laughing Prince, a ruler who would rather laugh at the broad jokes of the strolling players than wage war, and his magnificent son Cosimo. Who could have guessed that Cosimo would simply die, and then his father would collapse with grief like a cake taken out of the oven too soon?\n\nNot my fault! How often Fenoglio had told himself that. Not my idea, not my fault! But it had happened all the same. As if some diabolical scribbler had intervened, going on with the story in his place and leaving him, Fenoglio, the creator of this whole world, with nothing but the role of a poor writer!\n\nOh, stop that. You're not so poor, Fenoglio, he thought as he stopped beside a minstrel sitting among the tents, singing one of Fenoglio's own songs. No, he wasn't poor. The Laughing Prince, who was now the Prince of Sighs, would hear only Fenoglio's laments for his dead son, and Balbulus, the most famous illuminator far and wide, had to record the stories Fenoglio wrote for the Prince's grandson Jacopo in his own hand, on the most costly of parchment. No, he really wasn't so poor!\n\nAnd moreover, didn't his words now seem to him better in a minstrel's mouth than pressed between the pages of a book, to lie there gathering dust? He liked to think of them as free, owing no one allegiance. They were too powerful to be given in printed form to any fool who might do God knew what with them. Looked at that way, it was reassuring to think that there were no printed books in this world. Books here were hand-written, which made them so valuable that only princes could afford them. Other folk had to store the words in their heads, or listen to minstrels singing them.\n\nA little boy tugged at Fenoglio's sleeve. His tunic had holes in it, and his nose was running. 'Inkweaver!' He brought out a mask from behind his back, the kind of mask worn by the actors, and quickly put it over his eyes. There were feathers, light brown and blue, stuck to the cracked leather. 'Who am I, Inkweaver?'\n\n'Hm!' Fenoglio wrinkled his lined brow as if he had to think hard about it.\n\nThe mouth below the mask drooped in disappointment. 'The Bluejay! I'm the Bluejay, of course!'\n\n'Of course!' Fenoglio pinched the child's red little nose.\n\n'Will you tell us another story about him today? Please!'\n\n'Maybe! I must admit, I imagine his mask as rather more impressive than yours. What do you think? Shouldn't you look for a few more feathers?'\n\nThe boy took off his mask and looked at it crossly. 'They're not very easy to find.'\n\n'Take a look down by the river. Even bluejays aren't safe from the cats that go hunting there.' He was about to move away, but the boy held on tight. Thin as the children of the strolling players might be, they had strong little hands.\n\n'Just one story. Please, Inkweaver!'\n\nTwo other children joined him, a girl and a boy. They looked expectantly at Fenoglio. Ah, yes, the Bluejay stories. He'd always told good robber tales \u2013 his own grandchildren had liked them too, back in the other world. But the stories he thought up here were much better. You heard them everywhere these days: The Incredible Deeds of the Bravest of Robbers, the Noble and Fearless Bluejay. Fenoglio still remembered the night he had made the Bluejay up. His hand had been trembling with rage as he wrote. 'The Adderhead's caught another of the strolling players,' the Black Prince had told him that night. 'It was Crookback this time. They hanged him at noon yesterday.'\n\nCrookback \u2013 one of his own characters! A harmless fellow who could stand on his head longer than anyone else. 'Who does this prince think he is?' Fenoglio had cried out into the night, as if the Adderhead could hear him. 'I am lord of life and death in this world, I, Fenoglio, no one else!' And the words had gone down on paper, wild and angry as the robber he created that night. The Bluejay was all that Fenoglio would have liked to be in the world he had made: free as a bird, subject to no lord, fearless, noble (sometimes witty too), a man who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, and protected the weak from the tyranny of the strong in a world where there was no law to do it...\n\nFenoglio felt another tug at his sleeve. 'Please, Inkweaver! Just one story!' The boy was really persistent. He loved listening to stories, and would very likely make a famous minstrel some day. 'They say the Bluejay stole the Adderhead's lucky charm!' whispered the little boy. 'The hanged man's finger-bone to protect him from the White Women. They say the Bluejay wears it around his own neck now.'\n\n'Do they indeed?' Fenoglio raised his eyebrows, always a very effective move, thick and bushy as they were. 'Well, I've heard of an even more daring deed, but I must have a word with the Black Prince first.'\n\n'Oh, please, Inkweaver!' They were clinging to his sleeves, almost tearing off the expensive braid he'd had sewn on the coarse fabric for a few coins, so as not to look as poverty-stricken as the scribes who wrote wills and letters in the market place.\n\n'No!' he said sternly, freeing his sleeve. 'Later, maybe. Now go away!'\n\nThe boy with the runny nose looked at him so sadly that, for a moment, Fenoglio was reminded of his grandson. Pippo always used to look like that when he brought Fenoglio a book and put it on his lap with a hopeful expression...\n\nAh, children! thought Fenoglio, as he walked towards the fire where he had seen the Black Prince. Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures, but the best listeners in the world \u2013 any world. The very best of all."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Black Prince",
                "text": "\u2002'So bears can make their own souls...' she said. There was a great deal in the world to know.\n\n\u2014Philip Pullman, Northern Lights\n\nThe Black Prince was not alone. Of course not; his bear was with him, as usual. He was crouching by the fire behind his master, like a shaggy shadow. Fenoglio still remembered the words he had used when he first created the Prince at the very beginning of Inkheart. He recited them quietly to himself as he approached him: 'An orphan boy with skin almost as black as his curly hair, as quick with his knife as his tongue, always ready to protect those he loved \u2013 his two younger sisters, a maltreated bear, or his best friend, his very best friend Dustfinger...'\n\n'...who would have died an extremely dramatic death if it had been left to me, all the same!' added Fenoglio quietly as he waved to the Prince. 'But luckily my black friend doesn't know that, or I don't suppose I'd be very welcome at his fireside!'\n\nThe Prince returned his greeting. He probably thought he was called the Black Prince because of the colour of his skin, but Fenoglio knew better. He had stolen the name from a history book in his old world. A famous knight once bore it, a king's son who was a great robber too. Would he have been pleased to think that his name had been given to a knife-thrower, king of the strolling players? If not, there's nothing he can do about it, thought Fenoglio, for his own story came to its end long ago.\n\nOn the Prince's left sat the hopelessly incompetent physician who had almost broken Fenoglio's jaw pulling out a tooth, and to the right of him crouched Sootbird, a lousy fire-eater who knew as little of his trade as the physician knew of drawing teeth. Fenoglio was not quite sure about the physician, but there was no way he had invented Sootbird. Heaven knew where he had come from! All who saw him inefficiently breathing fire, in terror of the blaze, instantly found another name springing to mind: the name of Dustfinger the fire-dancer, tamer of the flames...\n\nThe bear grunted as Fenoglio sat down by the fire with his master, and scrutinized him with little yellow eyes, as if to work out how much meat there was left to gnaw on such old bones. Your own fault, Fenoglio told himself: why did you have to make the Prince's companion a tame bear? A dog would have done just as well. The market traders told anyone who would listen that the bear was a man under a spell, bewitched by fairies or brownies (they couldn't decide which), but Fenoglio knew better. The bear was just a bear, a real bear who loved the Black Prince for freeing him, years ago, from the ring through his nose and from his former master, who beat him with a thorny stick to make him dance in market places.\n\nSix more men were sitting beside the fire with the Black Prince. Fenoglio knew only two of them. One was an actor whose name Fenoglio kept forgetting. The other was a professional Strong Man who earned his living performing in market places: tearing chains apart, lifting grown men into the air, bending iron bars. They all fell silent as Fenoglio joined them. They tolerated his company, but he was not by any means one of them. Only the Prince smiled at him.\n\n'Ah, the Inkweaver!' he said. 'Do you have a new song about the Bluejay for us?'\n\nFenoglio accepted the goblet of hot wine and honey that one of the men gave him at a sign from the Prince, and sat down on the stony ground. His old bones didn't really like hunkering down there, even on a night as mild as this, but the strolling players did not care for chairs or other forms of seating.\n\n'I really came to give you this,' he said, putting his hand into the breast of his doublet. He looked around before handing the Prince the sealed letter, but in this milling throng it was difficult to see if anyone who didn't belong to the Motley Folk was watching them.\n\nThe Prince took the letter with a nod and tucked it into his belt. 'Thank you,' he said.\n\n'You're welcome!' replied Fenoglio, trying to ignore the bear's bad breath. The Prince couldn't write, any more than most of his motley subjects could, but Fenoglio was happy to do it for him, particularly when it was something like this he wanted. The letter was for one of the Laughing Prince's head foresters. His men had attacked the strolling players' women and children on the road three times. No one else seemed to mind, neither the Laughing Prince in his grief nor the men who were supposed to do justice in his place, for the victims were only strolling players. So the king of the players himself was going to do something about it: the man would find Fenoglio's letter on his doorstep that very night. Its contents would prevent him from sleeping in peace, and with luck would keep him away from women wearing the brightly coloured skirts of the Motley Folk in future. Fenoglio was rather proud of his threatening letters, almost as proud as he was of his robber songs.\n\n'Have you heard the latest, Inkweaver?' The Prince stroked his bear's black muzzle. 'The Adderhead has put a price on the Bluejay's head.'\n\n'The Bluejay?' Fenoglio swallowed his wine the wrong way, and the physician thumped him on the back so hard that he spilled the hot drink over his fingers. 'That's a good one!' he gasped, once he had his breath back. 'Well, don't let anyone say words are just noise and hot air! The Adder will have to search a long time for that particular robber!'\n\nHow oddly they were looking at him! As if they knew more than he did. But more about what?\n\n'Haven't you heard yet, Inkweaver?' said Sootbird quietly. 'Your songs seem to be coming true! The Adderhead's tax gatherers have already been robbed twice by a man in a bird mask, and one of his game wardens, a man famous for enjoying every kind of cruelty, is said to have been found dead in the forest with a feather in his mouth. Guess what bird the feather came from?'\n\nFenoglio glanced incredulously at the Prince, but he was looking at the fire, stirring the embers with a stick.\n\n'But... but that's astonishing!' cried Fenoglio \u2013 and then hastily lowered his voice as he saw the others looking anxiously around. 'Astonishing news, I mean!' he went on in an undertone. 'Whatever's going on \u2013 well, I'll write another song this minute! Suggest something! Go on! What would you like the Bluejay to do next?'\n\nThe Prince smiled, but the physician looked at Fenoglio with scorn. 'You talk as if it were all a game, Inkweaver!' he said. 'You sit in your own room, scribbling a few words on paper, but whoever's playing the part of your robber risks his neck, for he's certainly made of flesh and blood, not just words!'\n\n'Yes, but no one knows his face, because the Bluejay wears a mask. Very clever of you, Inkweaver. How is the Adderhead to know what face to look for? A mask like that is very useful. Anyone can wear it.' It was the actor speaking. Baptista. Yes, of course, that was his name. Did I make him up? Fenoglio wondered. Well, never mind; no one knew more about masks than Baptista, perhaps because his face was disfigured by pock marks. Many of the actors got him to make them leather masks showing laughter or tears.\n\n'The songs give a detailed description of him, though.' Sootbird gave Fenoglio a searching look.\n\n'So they do!' Baptista leaped to his feet, put his hand to his shabby belt as if he wore a sword there, and peered around as if looking for an enemy. 'He's said to be tall. That's no surprise. Heroes usually are.' Baptista began prowling up and down on tiptoe. 'His hair,' he said, stroking his own head, 'is dark, dark as moleskin, if we're to believe the songs. Now, that's unusual. Most heroes have golden hair, whatever you take golden hair to look like. We know nothing about his origins, but one thing's for sure \u2013' and here Baptista assumed a haughty expression \u2013 'none but the purest princely blood flows in his veins. How else would he be so brave and noble?'\n\n'No, you're wrong there!' Fenoglio interrupted him. 'The Bluejay is a man of the people. What kind of a robber gets born in a castle?'\n\n'You heard the poet!' Baptista looked as if he were wiping the haughtiness right away from his brow with his hand. The other men laughed. 'So let's get to the face behind the feathered mask.' Baptista ran his fingers over his own ruined face. 'Of course he's handsome and distinguished \u2013 and pale as ivory! The songs don't say so, but we know that a hero's skin is pale. With due respect, Your Highness!' he added, bowing mockingly to the Black Prince.\n\n'Oh, don't mind me! I've no objection!' was all the Prince said, his expression unchanged.\n\n'Don't forget the scar!' said Sootbird. 'The scar on his left arm where the dogs bit him. It's mentioned in every song. Come along, roll up your sleeves. Let's see if the Bluejay is by any chance here among us!' He looked challengingly around him, but only the Strong Man, laughing, pushed up his sleeve. The others sat in silence.\n\nThe Prince smoothed back his long hair. He had three knives at his belt. The strolling players, even the man they called their king, were forbidden to carry arms, but why should they keep laws that failed to protect them? Folk said the Prince was so skilful with a knife that he could aim at the eye of a dragonfly and hit it. Just as Fenoglio had once written.\n\n'Whatever he looks like, this man who's making my songs come true, I drink to him. Let the Adderhead search for the man I described. He'll never find him!' Fenoglio raised his goblet to the company. He was feeling in the best of moods, almost intoxicated, and certainly not with the terrible wine. Well, he thought, and who says so, Fenoglio? You do! You write something and it comes true! Even without anyone to read it aloud...\n\nBut the Strong Man spoiled his mood. 'To be honest, Inkweaver, I don't feel like celebrating,' he growled. 'They say the Adderhead is paying good silver these days for the tongue of every minstrel who sings songs mocking him. And they also say he has quite a collection of tongues already.'\n\n'Tongues?' Instinctively, Fenoglio felt his own. 'Does he mean my songs too?'\n\nNo one answered him. The men said nothing. The sound of a woman singing came from a tent behind them \u2013 a lullaby as sweet and peaceful as if it came from another world. A world of which one could only dream.\n\n'I'm always telling my motley subjects: don't go near the Castle of Night!' The Prince put a piece of meat dripping with fat in the bear's mouth, wiped his knife on his trousers and returned it to his belt. 'To think that we're just food for crows to the Adderhead \u2013 mere carrion! But since the Laughing Prince took to weeping instead of laughing, they've all had empty pockets and empty bellies. That's what sends them over there. There are many rich merchants in Argenta, far more than on this side of the forest. It's not for nothing they call it the Silver Land.'\n\nDevil take it. Fenoglio rubbed his aching knees. What had become of his good mood? Vanished \u2013 like the fragrance of a flower trodden underfoot. Gloomily, he took another sip of honeyed wine. The children came flocking around him again, begging for a story, but Fenoglio sent them away. He couldn't make up stories when he was in a bad temper.\n\n'And there's another thing,' said the Prince. 'The Strong Man picked up a boy and a girl in the forest today. They told a strange story: they said Basta, Capricorn's knife-man, was back, and they're here to warn an old friend of mine about him \u2013 Dustfinger. I expect you've heard of him?'\n\n'Mmph?' Fenoglio nearly choked on his wine with surprise. 'Dustfinger? Yes, of course, the fire-eater.'\n\n'The best there's ever been.' The Prince cast a quick glance at Sootbird, but he was just showing the physician a sore tooth. 'He was thought to be dead,' the Prince went on, lowering his voice. 'No one's heard anything of him for over ten years. There were countless tales of how and where he died, but luckily none of them seem to be true. However, Dustfinger's not the only man the boy and girl are looking for. The girl was also asking about an old man, a writer with a face like a tortoise. You, by any chance?'\n\nFenoglio couldn't find a word in his head that would do for an answer. Saying no more, the Prince took his arm and pulled him to his feet. 'Come along!' he added, as the bear lumbered along behind them, grunting. 'The two of them were half-starved, said something about being deep in the Wayless Wood. The women are just feeding them now.'\n\nA boy and a girl... Dustfinger... Fenoglio's thoughts were racing, although unfortunately his head was not at its clearest after two goblets of wine.\n\nMore than a dozen children were squatting in the grass under a lime tree on the outskirts of the camp. Two women were ladling out soup for them. The children greedily spooned the thin brew up from the wooden bowls that had been put into their dirty hands.\n\n'See how many they've rounded up again!' the Prince whispered to Fenoglio. 'We shall all go hungry because of their soft hearts.'\n\nFenoglio just nodded as he looked at the thin faces. He knew how often the Black Prince himself picked up hungry children. If they turned out to have any talent for juggling, standing on their heads, or other tricks that would bring a smile to people's faces and lure a few coins out of their pockets, then the Motley Folk took them in and let them join the company of the strolling players, going from market to market, from town to town.\n\n'There they are.' The Prince pointed to two heads bending particularly low over their bowls. When Fenoglio moved towards them, the girl raised her head as if he had called her name. Incredulously, she stared at him \u2013 and put her spoon down.\n\nMeggie.\n\nFenoglio returned her gaze with such astonishment that she had to smile. Yes, it really was Meggie. He remembered that smile very well, even if she hadn't often had reason to show it when they were imprisoned in Capricorn's house together.\n\nShe leaped up, pushed past the other children and flung her arms around his neck. 'Oh, I knew you were still here!' she cried, between laughter and tears. 'Did you really have to write those wolves into your story? And then the Night-Mares and the Redcaps \u2013 they threw stones at Farid and went for his face with fingers like claws. It was a good thing Farid could make a fire, but still...'\n\nFenoglio opened his mouth \u2013 and closed it again, helplessly. His head was full of a thousand questions. How did she get here? What about Dustfinger? Where was her father? And what about Capricorn? Was he dead? Had her plan worked? If so, why was Basta still alive? The questions drowned each other out like humming insects, and Fenoglio dared not ask any of them while the Black Prince stood there, never taking his eyes off him.\n\n'I see you know these two,' he remarked.\n\nFenoglio just nodded. Yes, where had he seen the boy sitting beside Meggie before? Wasn't he with Dustfinger on that strange day when, for the first time, he met one of his own creations face to face?\n\n'Er... they're relations of mine,' he stammered. What a pitiful lie for a storyteller!\n\nThe Prince's mocking eyes sparkled. 'Relations... well, fancy that! I must say they don't look very like you.'\n\nMeggie unwound her arms from Fenoglio's neck and stared at the Prince.\n\n'Meggie,' said Fenoglio, 'may I introduce the Black Prince?'\n\nWith a smile, the Prince made her a bow.\n\n'The Black Prince! Oh yes.' Meggie repeated his name almost reverently. 'And that's his bear! Farid, come here. Look!'\n\nFarid, of course. Fenoglio remembered him now. Meggie had often talked about him. The boy stood up, but not before hastily swallowing the very last of the soup in his bowl. He kept well behind Meggie, at a safe distance from the bear.\n\n'She absolutely insisted on coming!' he said, wiping his greasy mouth on his arm. 'Really! I didn't want to bring her, but she's as obstinate as a camel.'\n\nMeggie was obviously about to make some sharp retort, but Fenoglio put his arm round her shoulders. 'My dear boy,' he told Farid, 'you have no idea how glad I am to see Meggie here! I could almost say she's all I needed in this world to make me happy!'\n\nHe hastily took his leave of the Prince and drew Meggie and Farid away with him. 'Come with me!' he whispered as they made their way past the tents. 'We have a great deal to talk about, a very great deal, but we can do it better in my room without strange ears to overhear us. It's getting late anyway, and the guard at the gate won't let us back into the city after midnight.'\n\nMeggie just nodded abstractedly and looked at the hurry and bustle all around her, wide-eyed, but Farid pulled his arm away from Fenoglio's grasp. 'I can't come with you. I have to look for Dustfinger!'\n\nFenoglio looked disbelievingly at him. So it was really true? Dustfinger was\u2014\n\n'Yes, he's back,' said Meggie. 'The women said Farid might find him at the house of the minstrel woman he once lived with. She has a farm up there on the hill.'\n\n'Minstrel woman?' Fenoglio looked the way Meggie's finger was pointing. The hill she meant was only a black outline in the moonlit night. Of course! Roxane. He remembered her. Was she really as wonderful as he had described her?\n\nThe boy was shifting impatiently from foot to foot. 'I have to go,' he told Meggie. 'Where can I find you?'\n\n'In Cobblers' and Saddlers' Alley,' replied Fenoglio, answering for Meggie. 'Just ask for Minerva's house.'\n\nFarid nodded. He went on looking at Meggie.\n\n'It's not a good idea to start a journey by night,' said Fenoglio, although he had a feeling that this boy wasn't interested in his advice. 'The roads here aren't what you'd call safe. Particularly not at night. There are robbers, vagabonds...'\n\n'I can look after myself.' Farid took a knife from his belt.\n\n'Take care, Meggie.' He reached for her hand, then turned abruptly and disappeared among the strolling players. It did not escape Fenoglio that Meggie turned to look back at him several times.\n\n'Heavens, poor lad!' he growled, shooing a couple of children out of the way as they came flocking up to beg him for a story again. 'He's in love with you, am I right?'\n\n'Oh, don't!' Meggie let go of his hand, but he had made her smile.\n\n'All right, I'll hold my tongue! Does your father know you're here?'\n\nThat was the wrong question. Her guilty conscience was plain to see in her face.\n\n'Dear me! Very well, you must tell me all about it. How you came here, what all this talk of Basta and Dustfinger means, everything! You've grown! Or have I shrunk? My God, Meggie, I'm so glad you're here! Now we can get this story back under control! With my words and your voice\u2014'\n\n'Under control? What do you mean?' She suspiciously examined his face. She had often seen him look just like that in the past, when they were Capricorn's prisoners \u2013 his brow wrinkled, his eyes as clear as if they could look straight into your heart. But this wasn't the place for explanations.\n\n'Later!' whispered Fenoglio, and drew her on. 'Later, Meggie. There are too many ears here. Damn it, where's my torchbearer now?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Strange Sounds on a Strange Night",
                "text": "\u2003How silent lies the world\n\n\u2003Within fair twilight furled,\n\n\u2003Bringing such sweet relief!\n\n\u2003A quiet room resembling,\n\n\u2003Where, without fear or trembling,\n\n\u2003You sleep away day's grief.\n\n\u2014Matthias Claudius, Evening Song\n\nLater, when Meggie tried to remember the way they went to Fenoglio's room, she could see only a few blurred pictures in her mind's eye \u2013 a guard who tried to bar their way with his spear, but sullenly let them pass when he recognized Fenoglio, dark alleys down which they followed a boy with a torch, then a steep flight of steps, creaking underfoot as it led them up the side of a grey wall. She felt so dizzy with weariness as she followed Fenoglio up these steps that he felt quite anxious, and took her arm a couple of times.\n\n'I think we'd better wait until morning to tell each other what's happened since we last met,' he said, propelling her into his room. 'I'll ask Minerva to bring you up a straw mattress later, but you'll sleep in my bed tonight. Three days and nights in the Wayless Wood. Inky infernos, I'd probably have died of sheer fright!'\n\n'Farid had his knife,' murmured Meggie. The knife had indeed been a comfort when they were sleeping in the treetops by night, and those growling, grating noises came up to them from below. Farid had always kept it ready to hand. 'And when he saw ghosts,' she said sleepily, as Fenoglio lit a lamp, 'he made a fire.'\n\n'Ghosts? There aren't any ghosts in this world, or at least none that I wrote into it. What did you eat all that time?'\n\nMeggie groped her way over to the bed. It looked very inviting, even if it was only a straw mattress and a couple of coarse blankets. 'Berries,' she murmured. 'Lots of berries, and the bread we took with us from Elinor's kitchen \u2013 and rabbits, but Farid caught those.'\n\n'Good heavens above!' Fenoglio shook his head, incredulous. It was really good to see his wrinkled face again, but right now all Meggie really wanted to do was sleep. She took her boots off, crept under the scratchy blankets and stretched out her aching legs.\n\n'What gave you the crazy idea of reading yourself and Farid into the Wayless Wood? Why not arrive here? Dustfinger must have told the boy a few things about this world.'\n\n'Orpheus's words.' Meggie couldn't help yawning. 'We only had Orpheus's words, and Dustfinger had got Orpheus to read him into the forest.'\n\n'Of course. Sounds just like him.' She felt Fenoglio pulling the blankets up to her chin. 'I'd better not ask you who this Orpheus is. We'll talk again tomorrow. Sleep well. And welcome to my world!'\n\nMeggie just managed to open her eyes once more. 'Where are you going to sleep?'\n\n'Don't worry about me. A few of Minerva's relations come in every night to share the family's beds downstairs, and one more won't make much difference. You soon get used to a little less comfort, I assure you. I only hope her husband doesn't snore as loud as she says.'\n\nThen he closed the door behind him, and Meggie heard him laboriously making his way down the steep wooden staircase, cursing quietly to himself. Mice scurried through the rafters over her head (at least, she hoped they were mice) and the voices of the sentries guarding the nearby city wall drifted in through the only window. Meggie closed her eyes. Her feet hurt, and the music from the strolling players' camp was still ringing in her ears. The Black Prince, she thought, I've seen the Black Prince... and the city gate of Ombra... and I've heard the trees whispering to each other in the Wayless Wood. If she could only have told Resa all about it. Or Elinor. Or Mo. But more than likely Mo never wanted to hear another word about the Inkworld.\n\nMeggie rubbed her tired eyes. Fairies' nests clung to the beams in the roof above the bed, just as Fenoglio had always wanted, but nothing moved behind the dark entrance holes where the fairies flew into them. Fenoglio's attic room was rather larger than the one where he and Meggie had been kept prisoner by Capricorn. As well as the bed he had so generously let her have, there was a wooden chest, a bench, and a writing-desk made of dark wood, gleaming and adorned with carvings. It did not go with the rest of the furniture: the roughly made bench, the simple chest. You might have thought it had strayed here out of another story, just like Meggie herself. An earthenware jug stood on it, containing a whole set of quill pens; there were two inkwells...\n\nFenoglio was looking happy. He really was.\n\nMeggie passed her arm over her tired face. The dress Resa had made her still smelled of her mother, but now it smelled of the Wayless Wood too. She put her hand inside the leather bag that she had almost lost twice in the forest, and took out the notebook Mo had given her. The marbled binding was a mixture of deep blue and peacock green \u2013 Mo's favourite colours. It was good to have your books with you in strange places. Mo had told her that so often, but did he mean places like this? On their second day in the forest Meggie had tried to read the book she had brought with her, while Farid went hunting for a rabbit. She couldn't get past the first page, and finally she had forgotten the book and left it lying as she sat beside a stream with swarms of blue fairies hovering over it. Did your hunger for stories die down when you were in one yourself? Or had she just been too exhausted? I should at least write down what's happened so far, she thought, stroking the cover of her notebook again, but weariness was like cotton wool in her head and her limbs. Tomorrow, she thought. And tomorrow I'll tell Fenoglio that he must write me back home, too. I've seen the fairies, I've even seen the fire-elves, and the Wayless Wood and Ombra. Yes. Because, after all, it will take him a few days to find the right words...\n\nSomething rustled in one of the fairies' nests above her. But no blue face looked out.\n\nIt was chilly in this room, and everything was strange \u2013 so strange. Meggie was used to strange places; after all, Mo had always taken her with him when he had to go away to cure sick books. But she could rely on one thing in all those places: she knew he was with her. Always. Meggie pressed her cheek against the rough straw mattress. She missed her mother and Elinor and Darius, but most of all she missed Mo. It was like an ache tugging at her heart. Love and a guilty conscience didn't mix. If only he had come too! He'd shown her so much of her own world, how she would have loved to show him this one! She knew he'd have liked it all: the fire-elves, the whispering trees, the camp of the strolling players...\n\nOh, she did miss Mo.\n\nHow about Fenoglio? Wasn't there anyone he missed? Didn't he feel at all homesick for the village where he used to live, for his children, his friends and neighbours? What about his grandchildren? Meggie had often raced around his house with them! 'I'll show you everything tomorrow!' Fenoglio had whispered to her as they hurried after the boy ahead of them, carrying the torch which had almost burned down, and his voice had sounded as if he were a prince informing his guest that he would show him round the palace next day. 'The guards don't like people roaming the streets by night,' he had added, and it was indeed very quiet among the close-crammed houses. They reminded Meggie of Capricorn's village so much that she half expected to see one of the Black Jackets around some corner, leaning against the wall with a rifle in his hand. But all they met were a few pigs grunting as they wandered in the steep alleys, and a ragged man sweeping up the rubbish that lay among the houses and shovelling it into a handcart. 'You'll get used to the smell in time!' Fenoglio had whispered, as Meggie put her hand over her nose. 'Think yourself lucky I'm not lodging with a dyer, or over there with the tanners. Even I haven't got used to the stink of their trades.'\n\nNo, Meggie felt sure that Fenoglio didn't miss anything. Why would he? This was his world, born from his brain, as familiar to him as his own thoughts.\n\nMeggie listened to the night. There was another sound as well as the rustle of the scurrying mice \u2013 a faint snoring. It seemed to come from the desk. Pushing back her blanket, she made her way cautiously over to it. A glass man was sleeping beside the jug of quill pens, his head on a tiny cushion. His transparent limbs were spattered with ink. Presumably he sharpened the pens, dipped them in the bulbous inkwells, sprinkled sand over the wet ink... just as Fenoglio had always wanted. And did the fairies' nests above his bed really bring good luck and sweet dreams? Meggie thought she saw a trace of fairy dust on the desk. Thoughtfully, she ran her finger over it, looked at the glittering dust left clinging to her fingertip, and rubbed it on her forehead. Did fairy dust cure homesickness?\n\nFor she was still homesick. All this beauty around her, yet she kept thinking of Elinor's house and Mo's workshop... her heart was so stupid! Hadn't it always beat faster when Resa told her about the Inkworld? And now she was here, really here, it didn't seem to know just what it ought to feel. It's because the others aren't here too, something inside her whispered, as if her heart were trying to defend itself. Because they're none of them here.\n\nIf only Farid at least had stayed with her... how she envied him the way he had slipped from one world to another as if he were just changing his shirt! The only longing he seemed to know was for the sight of Dustfinger's scarred face.\n\nMeggie went to the window. There was only a piece of fabric tacked over it. Meggie pushed it aside and looked down into the narrow alley. The ragged refuse collector was just pushing his cart past with its heavy, stinking load. It nearly got stuck between the buildings. The windows above it were almost all dark; a candle burned behind only one of them, and a child's crying drifted out into the night. Roof stood next to roof like the scales of a fir-cone, and the walls and towers of the castle rose dark above them to the starry sky.\n\nThe Laughing Prince's castle. Resa had described it well. The moon stood pale above the grey battlements, outlining them in silver, them and the guards pacing up and down on the walls. It seemed to be the same as the moon that rose and set over the mountains behind Elinor's house. 'The Prince is holding festivities for his spoilt grandson,' Fenoglio had told Meggie, 'and I'm to go up to the castle with a new song. I'll take you with me. We'll have to find you a clean dress, but Minerva has three daughters. They're sure to have a dress among them to fit you.'\n\nMeggie took one last look at the sleeping glass man and went back to the bed under the fairies' nests. After the celebrations, she thought as she pulled her dirty dress off over her head and slipped under the coarse blanket again, first thing after the celebrations I'll ask Fenoglio to write me home. As she closed her eyes, she once again saw the swarms of fairies who had swirled around her in the green twilight of the Wayless Wood, pulling her hair until Farid threw fir-cones at them. She heard the trees whispering in voices that seemed to be half earth, half air, she remembered the scaly faces she had seen in the water of dark pools, and the Black Prince too, and his bear...\n\nThere was a rustling under the bed, and something crawled over her arm. Meggie sleepily brushed it off. I hope Mo isn't too angry, was the last thing she thought before she fell asleep and dreamed of Elinor's garden. Or was it the Wayless Wood?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Only a Lie",
                "text": "\u2002The blanket was there, but it was the boy's embrace that covered and warmed him.\n\n\u2014Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee\n\nFarid soon realized that Fenoglio was right. It had been stupid just to go off like that in the middle of the night. It was true that no robber leaped out at him from the darkness, and not even a fox crossed his path as he climbed the moonlit hill that the strolling players had pointed out to him, but which of the run-down farms lying among the black nocturnal trees was the right one? They all looked the same: a grey stone house, not much bigger than a hut, surrounded by olive trees, a well, sometimes a cowshed, a few narrow fields. Nothing stirred in the farmhouses. Their inhabitants were asleep, exhausted by hard work, and with every wall and every gate that he crept past Farid's hopes dwindled. Suddenly, and for the first time, he felt lost in this strange world, and he was about to curl up and go to sleep under a tree when he saw the fire.\n\nIt was burning brightly high up on the slope of the hill, red as a hibiscus flower opening and then fading even as it unfurls. Farid quickened his pace and hurried up the slope, his gaze fixed on the place where he had seen the blossoming flames. Dustfinger! It shone among the trees again, sulphur yellow this time, bright as sunlight. It must be Dustfinger! Who else would make fire dance by night?\n\nFarid went faster, so fast that he was soon struggling for breath. He came upon a path winding uphill, past the stumps of trees that had been felled only recently. The path was stony and wet with dew, but his bare feet were glad to be spared the prickly thyme for a while. There, another red flower blossoming in the darkness! Above him, a house emerged from the night. Beyond it the hill climbed on, terraced fields rose up the slope like steps, with stones piled up along their edges. The house itself looked as poor and plain as all the others. The path ended at a simple gateway and a wall of flat stones just high enough to reach Farid's chest. As he stood at the gate a goose went for him, flapping her wings and hissing like a snake, but Farid took no notice of her. He had found the man he was looking for.\n\nDustfinger was standing in the yard, making flowers of flame blossom in the air. They opened at a snap of his fingers, spread their fiery petals, faded, put out stems of burning gold, and burst into flower yet again. The fire seemed to come out of nowhere; Dustfinger had only to call it with his hands or his voice, he fanned the flames with nothing but his breath \u2013 no torches now, no bottle from which he filled his mouth \u2013 Farid could see none of the aids he had needed in the other world. He just stood there setting the night ablaze. More and more flowers swirled around him in their wild dance, spitting sparks at his feet like golden seed-corn, until he stood there bathed in liquid fire.\n\nFarid had noticed often enough how peaceful Dustfinger's face became when he was playing with fire, but he had never seen him look so happy before. Just plain happy. The goose was still cackling, but Dustfinger seemed not to hear her. Only when Farid opened the gate did she scold so shrilly that he turned \u2013 and the fiery flowers went out as if night had crushed them in black fingers. The happiness in Dustfinger's face was extinguished too.\n\nAt the door of the house, a woman stood up; she had probably been sitting on the doorstep. There was a boy there too; Farid hadn't noticed him before. The boy's gaze followed Farid as he crossed the yard, but Dustfinger still hadn't moved from the spot where he was standing. He just looked at Farid as the sparks went out at his feet, leaving nothing but a faint red glow behind.\n\nFarid sought that familiar face for any welcome, any hint of a smile, but it showed only bewilderment. At last Farid's courage failed him, and he just stood there, with his heart trembling in his breast as if it were freezing cold.\n\n'Farid?'\n\nDustfinger was coming towards him. The woman followed. She was very beautiful, but Farid ignored her. Dustfinger was wearing the clothes he always carried with him in the other world but had never worn. Black and red... Farid dared not look at him when he stopped a pace away. He just stood there with his head bent, staring at his toes. Perhaps Dustfinger had never meant to take him along at all, perhaps he'd fixed it from the start that Cheeseface wouldn't read those final sentences, and now he was angry because Farid had followed him from one world to another all the same... Would he beat him? He'd never beaten him yet, although he'd come close to it once when Farid accidentally set fire to Gwin's tail.\n\n'How could I ever have believed that anything would stop you chasing after me?' Farid felt Dustfinger's hand raise his chin, and when he looked up, he saw at last what he had been hoping for in Dustfinger's eyes: joy. 'Where have you been hiding? I called you at least a dozen times, I looked for you... the fire-elves must have thought me crazy!' He was scrutinizing Farid's face anxiously, as if he wasn't sure whether there was some change in it. It was so good to feel his concern. Farid could have danced for joy, the way the fire had danced for Dustfinger just now.\n\n'Well, you seem to be the same as ever!' said Dustfinger at last. 'A skinny dark-eyed little devil. But wait \u2013 you're so quiet! It didn't cost you your voice, did it?'\n\nFarid smiled. 'No, I'm all right!' he said, glancing quickly at the woman, who was still standing behind Dustfinger. 'But it wasn't Cheeseface who brought me here. He simply stopped reading the moment you were gone! Meggie read me here, using Cheeseface's words.'\n\n'Meggie? Silvertongue's daughter?'\n\n'Yes, but what about you? You're all right, aren't you?'\n\nDustfinger's mouth twisted into the wry smile that Farid knew so well. 'As you can see, the scars are still there. But there's no more damage done, if that's what you mean.' He turned round and looked at the woman in a way that Farid didn't like at all.\n\nHer hair was black, and her eyes were almost as dark as his own. She really was very beautiful, even if she was old \u2013 well, much older than Farid \u2013 but he didn't like her. He didn't like either her or the boy. After all, he hadn't followed Dustfinger to his own world just to share him.\n\nThe woman came up beside Dustfinger and placed her hand on his shoulder. 'Who's this?' she asked, sizing Farid up in much the same way as he had looked at her. 'One of your many secrets? A son I don't know about?'\n\nFarid felt the blood rise to his face. Dustfinger's son. He liked the idea. Unobtrusively, he stole a look at the strange boy. Who was his father?\n\n'My son?' Dustfinger affectionately caressed her face. 'What an idea! No, Farid's a fire-eater. He was my apprentice for a while, and now he thinks I can't manage without him. Indeed, he's so sure of it that he follows me everywhere, however far he has to go.'\n\n'Oh, stop it!' Farid's voice sounded angrier than he had intended. 'I'm here to warn you! But I can go away again if you like.'\n\n'Take it easy!' Dustfinger held him firmly by the arm as he turned to go. 'Heavens above, I forgot how quickly you take offence. Warn me? Warn me of what?'\n\n'Basta.'\n\nThe woman's hand flew to her mouth when he said that name \u2013 and Farid began to tell his story, describing everything that had happened since Dustfinger disappeared from that remote road in the mountains as if he had never existed. When he had finished, Dustfinger asked just one question. 'So Basta has the book?'\n\nFarid dug his toes into the hard earth and nodded. 'Yes,' he muttered ruefully. 'He put his knife to my throat. What was I to do?'\n\n'Basta?' The woman reached for Dustfinger's hand. 'He's still alive, then?'\n\nDustfinger just nodded. Then he looked at Farid again. 'Do you believe he's here now? Do you think Orpheus has read him here?'\n\nFarid shrugged helplessly. 'I don't know! When I got away from him he shouted after me that he'd be revenged on Silvertongue too. But Silvertongue doesn't believe it, he says Basta was just in a rage...'\n\nDustfinger looked at the gate, which was still standing open. 'Yes, Basta says a lot of things when he's in a rage,' he murmured. Then he sighed, and trod out a few sparks that were still glowing on the ground in front of him.\n\n'Bad news,' he said softly. 'Nothing but bad news. All we need now is for you to have brought Gwin with you.'\n\nThank heaven it was dark. Lies weren't nearly as easily spotted in the dark as by day. Farid did his best to sound as surprised as possible. 'Gwin? Oh no! No, I didn't bring him with me. You said he was to stay there. And Meggie said so too \u2013 she said I mustn't bring him.'\n\n'Clever girl!' Dustfinger's sigh of relief went to Farid's heart.\n\n'You left the marten behind?' The woman shook her head, as if she couldn't believe it. 'I always thought you loved that little monster more than any other living creature.'\n\n'Oh, you know my faithless heart!' replied Dustfinger, but his light-hearted tone of voice couldn't deceive even Farid. 'Are you hungry?' he asked the boy. 'How long have you been here?'\n\nFarid cleared his throat; his lie about Gwin was like a splinter lodged in it. 'For four days,' he managed to say. 'The strolling players gave us something to eat, but I'm still hungry, all the same...'\n\n'Us?' Dustfinger's voice suddenly sounded distrustful.\n\n'Silvertongue's daughter. Meggie. She came with me.'\n\n'She's here?' Dustfinger looked at him in astonishment. Then he groaned, and pushed the hair back from his forehead. 'Oh, how pleased her father will be! Not to mention her mother. Did you by any chance bring anyone else too?'\n\nFarid shook his head.\n\n'Where is she now?'\n\n'With the old man.' Farid jerked his head back the way he had come. 'He's living near the castle. We met him in the strolling players' camp. Meggie was very glad to see him. She was going to look for him anyway, to get him to take her back. I think she's homesick...'\n\n'What old man? Who the devil are you talking about now?'\n\n'Well, that writer! The one with the face like a tortoise \u2013 you remember, you ran away from him back then in\u2014'\n\n'Yes, yes, all right!' Dustfinger put his hand over Farid's mouth as if he didn't want to hear another word, and stared towards the place where, somewhere in the darkness, the walls of Ombra lay hidden. 'Heavens above, what next?' he murmured.\n\n'Is that... is it more bad news?' Farid hardly dared to ask.\n\nDustfinger looked away, but all the same Farid had seen his smile. 'Oh, yes,' he said. 'I suppose there never was a boy who brought so much bad news all at once. And in the middle of the night too. What do we do with bearers of bad tidings, Roxane?'\n\nRoxane. So that was her name. For a moment Farid thought she would suggest sending him away. But then she shrugged. 'We feed them, what else?' she said. 'Even if this one doesn't look too starved.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Present for Capricorn",
                "text": "\u2002'If he has been my father's enemy, I like him still less!' exclaimed the now really anxious girl. 'Will you not speak to him, Major Heyward, that I may hear his tones? Foolish though it may be, you have often heard me avow my faith in the tones of the human voice!'\n\n\u2014J. Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans\n\nEvening drew on, night fell, and no one came to unlock Elinor's cellar. They sat there in silence among tubes of tomato pur\u00e9e, cans of ravioli and all the other provisions stacked on the shelves around them \u2013 trying not to see the fear on each other's faces.\n\n'My house isn't all that large!' said Elinor once, breaking the silence. 'By now even that fool Basta should have realized that Meggie really isn't here.'\n\nNo one replied. Resa was clinging to Mortimer as if that would protect him from Basta's knife, and Darius was cleaning his already spotless glasses for the hundredth time. By the time footsteps finally approached the cellar door, Elinor's watch had stopped. Memories flooded into her weary mind as she rose, with difficulty, from the container of olive oil on which she had been sitting \u2013 memories of blank, windowless walls and musty straw. Her cellar was a more comfortable prison than Capricorn's sheds, let alone the crypt under his church, but the same man opened the door \u2013 and Elinor was just as much afraid of Basta in her own house.\n\nWhen she had last seen him, he had been a prisoner himself, shut up in a cage by the master he adored. Had he forgotten that? How had Mortola persuaded him to serve her again in spite of it? The stupid idea of asking Basta didn't even cross Elinor's mind. She gave herself the answer: because a dog needs a master.\n\nBasta had the man built like a wardrobe with him when he came to fetch them. There were four of them, after all, and Basta remembered only too well the day when Dustfinger had escaped him. 'Well, Silvertongue, I'm sorry it's taken some time,' he said in his soft, cat-like voice, as he pushed Mortimer down the corridor to Elinor's library. 'But Mortola just couldn't decide what kind of revenge to take, now that your witchy daughter really has run for it.'\n\n'And what has she thought up?' asked Elinor, although she was afraid of the answer. Basta was only too willing to tell her.\n\n'Well, first she was going to shoot you all and sink you in the lake, although we told her just burying you somewhere under the bushes out there would do. But then she decided it would be too merciful to let you die knowing the little witch has got away from her. No, Mortola really didn't fancy that idea.'\n\n'Oh, didn't she?' Fear made Elinor's legs so heavy that she stopped walking until the wardrobe-man impatiently pushed her on. But before she could ask what Mortola was planning to do instead of shooting them, Basta was already opening the door of her library and ushering them in with an ironic bow.\n\nMortola was sitting enthroned in Elinor's favourite armchair. Scarcely a pace away from her lay a dog with running eyes and a head broad enough for you to rest a plate on it. Its forelegs were bandaged, like Mortola's own legs, and there was a bandage around its belly too. A dog! In her library! Elinor tightened her lips. This is probably the least of your worries just now, Elinor, she told herself. You'd better just ignore it.\n\nMortola's stick was leaning against one of the glass cases in which Elinor kept her most valuable books. The moon-faced man stood beside the old woman. Orpheus \u2013 what did the fool think he was doing, claiming such a name for himself? Or had his parents in all seriousness given it to him? At any rate, he looked as if he too had passed a sleepless night, which gave Elinor a certain grim satisfaction.\n\n'My son always said revenge was a dish best eaten cold,' observed Mortola, as she looked at her prisoners' exhausted faces. There was a pleased expression on her own. 'I admit I wasn't in any mood to take that advice yesterday. I'd have liked to see you all dead there and then, but the little witch's disappearing act has given me time to think, and I've decided to postpone my revenge for a while, so that I can enjoy it all the more, and in cold blood.'\n\n'Hear, hear!' muttered Elinor, earning a thrust from the butt of Basta's rifle. But Mortola turned her birdlike gaze on Mortimer. She seemed to be seeing no one else: not Resa, not Darius, not Elinor, just him.\n\n'Silvertongue!' She spoke the name with scorn. 'How many have you killed with your velvet voice? A dozen? Cockerell, Flatnose, and finally, your crowning achievement, my son.' The bitterness in Mortola's voice was as raw as if Capricorn had died only last night, instead of over a year ago. 'And you will die for killing him. You will die as sure as I'm sitting here, and I shall watch, as I had to watch the death of my son. But since I know from personal experience that nothing hurts more, in this or any other world, than the death of one's own child, I want you to see your daughter die before you die yourself.'\n\nMortimer stood there and didn't turn a hair. Usually you could see all his feelings in his face, but at this moment even Elinor couldn't have said what was going on inside him.\n\n'She's gone, Mortola,' was all he said, hoarsely. 'Meggie's gone, and I don't think you can bring her back, or you'd have done it long ago, wouldn't you?'\n\n'Who said anything about bringing her back?' Mortola's narrow lips twisted into a joyless smile. 'Do you think I intend to stay in this stupid world of yours any longer now I have the book? Why should I? No, I'm going to look for your daughter in my own world, where Basta will catch her like a little bird. And then I'll give the two of you to my son as a present. There'll be more festivities, Silvertongue, but this time Capricorn will not die. Oh no. He'll sit beside me and hold my hand while Death takes first your daughter, and then you. Yes, that's how it will be!'\n\nElinor glanced at Darius, and saw in his face the incredulous astonishment that she herself felt. But Mortola was smiling superciliously.\n\n'Why are you staring at me like that? You think Capricorn is dead?' Mortola's voice almost cracked. 'Nonsense. Yes, he died here, but what does that mean? This world is a joke, a masquerade such as the strolling players perform in market places. In our world, the real world, Capricorn is still alive. That's why I got the book back from that fire-eater. The little witch said it herself, the night you killed him: he'll always be there as long as the book exists. Yes, I know she meant the fire-eater, but what's true of him is most certainly true of my son! They're still there, all of them: Capricorn and Flatnose, Cockerell and the Shadow!'\n\nShe looked triumphantly from one to another of them, but they all remained silent. Except for Mortimer. 'That's nonsense, Mortola!' he said. 'And you know it better than anyone. You were in the Inkworld yourself when Capricorn disappeared from it, together with Basta and Dustfinger.'\n\n'So? He went away, that's all.' Mortola's voice was shrill. 'And then he didn't come back, but that means nothing. My son was always travelling on business. The Adderhead sometimes sent him a messenger in the middle of the night when he needed his services, and then he'd be gone the next morning. But he's back now. Back and waiting for me to bring his murderer to his fortress in the Wayless Wood.'\n\nElinor felt a crazy urge to laugh, but fear closed her throat. There's no doubt about it, she thought, the old Magpie's lost her wits! Unfortunately that doesn't make her any less dangerous.\n\n'Orpheus!' Mortola impatiently beckoned the moon-face to her side. Very slowly, as if to show that he obeyed her by no means as willingly as Basta did, he strolled over to her, taking a sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket as he did so. With a self-important expression, he unfolded it and laid it on the glass case with Mortola's stick leaning on it. The dog, panting, watched every movement he made.\n\n'It won't be easy!' observed Orpheus as he leaned over the dog, affectionately patting its ugly head. 'I've never tried reading so many people over all at once before. Perhaps it would be a better idea to do it one by one\u2014'\n\n'No!' Mortola brusquely interrupted him. 'No, you'll read us all over at once, as we agreed.'\n\nOrpheus shrugged. 'Very well, just as you like. As I said, it's risky because\u2014'\n\n'Be quiet! I don't want to hear this.' Mortola dug her bony fingers into the arms of the chair. (I'll never be able to sit in it again without thinking of her, thought Elinor.) 'May I remind you of that cell? I was the one who paid for its door to open. A word from me and you'll end up back there, without books or so much as a single sheet of paper. And, believe me, I'll make sure you do just that if you fail. After all, you read the fire-eater over without much trouble, according to Basta.'\n\n'Yes, but that was easy, very easy! Like putting something back in its proper place.' Orpheus looked out of Elinor's window as dreamily as if he were seeing Dustfinger vanish again, this time from the lawn outside. Frowning, he turned to Mortola. 'It's different with him,' he said, pointing to Mortimer. 'It's not his story. He doesn't belong in it.'\n\n'Nor did his daughter. Are you saying she reads better than you?'\n\n'Of course not!' Orpheus stood up very straight. 'No one reads better than me. Haven't I proved that? Didn't you yourself say Dustfinger spent ten years looking for someone to read him back?'\n\n'Yes, very well. No more talk, then.' Mortola picked up her stick and rose to her feet, with difficulty. 'Wouldn't it be amusing if a ferocious cat slipped out of the pages, like the one that came through when the fire-eater left? Basta's hand hasn't healed yet, and he had a knife and the dog to help him.' She gave Elinor and Darius a nasty look.\n\nElinor took a step forward, ignoring the butt of Basta's rifle. 'What do you mean? I'm coming too, of course!'\n\nMortola raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. 'Oh, and who do you think decides that? Why would I want you with us? Or that stupid bungler Darius? I'm sure my son would have no objection to feeding you two to the Shadow as well, but I don't want to make things too difficult for Orpheus.' She pointed her stick at Mortimer. 'We're taking him with us. No one else.'\n\nResa was clinging to Mortimer's arm. Mortola went over to her, smiling. 'Yes, little pigeon, I'm leaving you here too!' she said, pinching her cheek hard. 'It will hurt if I take him away from you again, won't it? When you've only just got him back. After all those years...'\n\nMortola signed to Basta, who reached roughly for Resa's arm. She struggled, still clinging to Mortimer, with a desperate expression on her face that went to Elinor's heart. But as she went to try and help Resa, the wardrobe-man barred her way. And Mortimer himself gently removed Resa's hand from his arm.\n\n'It's all right,' he said. 'After all, I'm the only one in this family who hasn't been to the Inkworld yet. And I promise you I won't come back without Meggie.'\n\n'Very true, because you won't come back at all!' Basta mocked, as he pushed Resa hard towards Elinor. And Mortola was still smiling. Elinor would have loved to hit her. Do something, Elinor! she thought. But what could she do? Hold on to Mortimer? Tear up the sheet of paper that the moon-face was so carefully smoothing out on her glass case?\n\n'Well, can we begin now?' asked Orpheus, licking his lips as if he could hardly wait to demonstrate his skill again.\n\n'Of course.' Mortola leaned heavily on her stick and beckoned Basta to her side.\n\nOrpheus looked at him suspiciously. 'You'll make sure he leaves Dustfinger alone, right?' he said to Mortola. 'You promised!'\n\nBasta passed a finger over his throat and winked at him.\n\n'Did you see that?' Orpheus's beautiful voice broke. 'You promised! That was my one condition. You leave Dustfinger in peace or I don't read a single word!'\n\n'Yes, yes, all right, don't shout like that or you'll ruin your voice,' replied Mortola impatiently. 'We have Silvertongue. Why would I be interested in that wretched fire-eater? Go on, start reading!'\n\n'Hey, wait a minute!' This was the first time Elinor had heard the wardrobe-man's voice. It was curiously high for a man of his size \u2013 as if an elephant were speaking in a cricket's chirping voice. 'What happens to the others when you're gone?'\n\n'How should I know?' Mortola shrugged. 'Let whatever comes here to replace us eat them. Make the fat woman your maid and Darius your bootboy. Anything you like, it's all the same to me. Just start reading!'\n\nOrpheus obeyed. He went over to the glass case where the sheet of paper with his words on it was waiting, cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses.\n\n'Capricorn's fortress lay in the forest where the first tracks of giants could be found.' The words flowed over his lips like music. 'It was a long time since anyone had seen the giants, but other and more alarming beings haunted the walls by night \u2013 Night-Mares and Redcaps, creatures as cruel as the men who had built the fortress. It was all of grey stone, as grey as the rocky slope behind it...'\n\nDo something! thought Elinor. Do something, it's now or never, snatch that piece of paper from the moon-faced man's hand, kick the Magpie's stick away... but she couldn't move a muscle.\n\nWhat a voice! And the magic of the words \u2013 they slowed her brain, making her drowsy with delight. When Orpheus read of prickly woodbine and tamarisk flowers, Elinor thought she could smell them. He really does read as well as Mortimer! That was the only thought of her own that would form in her head. And the others were no better off, they were all staring at Orpheus's lips as if they could hardly wait for the next word: Darius, Basta, the wardrobe-man, even Mortimer \u2013 why, even the Magpie. They listened motionless, caught up in the sound of the words. Only one of them moved. Resa. Elinor saw her struggling against the magic as you might struggle in deep water, finally coming up behind Mortimer and flinging her arms around him.\n\nAnd then they had all disappeared: Basta, Mortola the Magpie \u2013 and Mortimer and Resa."
            },
            {
                "title": "Mortola's Revenge",
                "text": "\u2003I do not dare,\n\n\u2003I do not dare to write it,\n\n\u2003if you die.\n\n\u2014Pablo Neruda, The Dead Woman', The Captain's Verses\n\nIt was as if a transparent picture, like stained glass, came down over what Resa had just been seeing \u2013 Elinor's library, the backs of the books so carefully classified by Darius and ranged side by side \u2013 blurring it all, while the other picture itself became clearer. Stones eroded the books; soot-blackened walls replaced the bookshelves. Grass sprouted from Elinor's wooden floorboards, and the white plaster of the ceiling gave way to a sky covered by dark clouds.\n\nResa's arms were still wound around Mo. He was the only thing that didn't disappear, and she wouldn't let go of him for fear of losing him again after all, as she had lost him once before. So long ago.\n\n'Resa?' She saw the alarm in his eyes as he turned and realized that she had come too. Quickly, she put her hand over his mouth. Honeysuckle climbed up the black walls on their left. Mo put out his hand to the leaves, as if his fingers must feel what his eyes had already seen. Resa remembered that she had once done the same, touching everything, bewildered to find the world beyond the letters on the page so real.\n\nIf she hadn't heard the words Orpheus had spoken for herself, Resa wouldn't have known where Mortola had made him read them all. Capricorn's fortress had looked so different when she had last stood in its courtyard. There had been men everywhere, armed men on the flights of steps, at the gate, on the wall. Where the bakehouse had stood there was nothing now but charred beams, and it was by the stairway over there that she and the other maids used to beat the dust from the tapestry hangings, tapestries which Mortola placed on the walls of the bare rooms only on special occasions.\n\nThose rooms were gone. The walls of the fortress were crumbling and black from fire. Soot covered the stones as if someone had painted them with a black brush, and yarrow grew all over the once bare courtyard. Yarrow loved burned earth; it grew everywhere. Where a narrow stairway had once led up to the watch-tower, the forest was now making its way into Capricorn's den. Young trees had taken root among the ruins, as if they had been just waiting to reclaim the place occupied by this human abode. Thistles grew in the gaping cavities of the windows, moss covered the ruined stairs, and ivy climbed to the charred wooden stumps that had once been Capricorn's gallows. Resa had seen many men hanging on them.\n\n'What's this?' Mortola's voice echoed from the dead walls. 'What are these miserable ruins? This isn't my son's fortress!'\n\nResa drew closer to Mo's side. He still seemed numbed, almost as if he were waiting for the moment when he would wake up and see Elinor's books again instead of the stones. Resa knew only too well how he was feeling. It was not so bad for her this second time; after all, she wasn't alone now, and she knew what had happened. But Mo seemed to have forgotten everything: Mortola, Basta \u2013 and why they had brought him here. Resa, however, had not forgotten, and she watched with a thudding heart as Mortola stumbled through the yarrow to the charred walls and felt the stones, as if she were running her fingers over her dead son's face.\n\n'I'll cut that man Orpheus's tongue out with my own hands and serve it for supper!' she exclaimed. 'With chopped foxglove! Is this supposed to be my son's fortress? Never!'\n\nHer head moved frantically back and forth like a bird's as she looked around her. But Basta just stood there in silence, pointing his gun at Resa and Mo.\n\n'Well, say something!' shouted the Magpie. 'Say something, you fool!'\n\nBasta bent down and picked up a rusty helmet lying at his feet. 'What do you expect me to say?' he growled, throwing the helmet back into the grass with a gloomy expression, and giving it a kick that sent it clattering against the wall. 'Of course it's our castle. Didn't you see the figure of the goat on the wall there? Even the carved devils are still standing, though they wear ivy crowns now \u2013 and look, there's one of the eyes that Slasher liked to paint on the stones.'\n\nMortola stared at the red eye to which Basta was pointing. Then she hobbled over to the remains of the wooden gate, now splintered, torn off its hinges, and barely visible under the brambles and tall stinging nettles. She stood there in silence, looking round her. As for Mo, he had finally come back to his senses.\n\n'What are they talking about?' he whispered to Resa. 'Where are we? Was this where Capricorn used to hide out?'\n\nResa just nodded. However, the Magpie turned at the sound of Mo's voice and stared at him. Then she came over to him, stumbling as if she felt dizzy.\n\n'Yes, this is his castle, but Capricorn isn't here!' she said in a dangerously low voice. 'My son is not here. So Basta was right after all. He's dead, here and in the other world too, dead, and what killed him? Your voice, your accursed voice!' There was such hatred in her face that Resa instinctively tried to draw Mo away, somewhere, anywhere he would be safe from that glance. But there was nothing behind them except the sooty wall with the figure of Capricorn's goat still displayed on it, a red-eyed goat with burning horns.\n\n'Silvertongue!' Mortola spat the word out as if it were poison. 'Killertongue suits you better. Your daughter couldn't bring herself to utter the words that killed my son, but you \u2013 oh, you didn't hesitate for a moment!' Her voice was little more than a whisper as she went on: 'I can still see you before me, as if it had happened only last night \u2013 taking the piece of paper from her hand and putting her aside. And then the words came out of your mouth, fine-sounding as everything you say, and when you'd finished my son lay dead in the dust.' For a moment she put her fingers to her mouth as if to suppress a sob. When she let her hand drop again, her lips were still quivering.\n\n'How \u2013 how can this be?' she went on, in a trembling voice. 'Tell me, how is it possible? He didn't belong in your false world at all. So how could he die there? Was that the only reason you lured him over with your wicked tongue?' And again she turned and stared at the burned walls, her bony hands clenched into fists.\n\nBasta bent down again. This time he picked up an arrow point. 'I'd really like to know what happened!' he muttered. 'I always said Capricorn wasn't here, but what about the others? Firefox, Pitch-Eater, Humpback, the Piper, Slasher... are they all dead? Or are they in the Laughing Prince's dungeon?' He looked uneasily at Mortola. 'What are we going to do if they're all gone?' Basta sounded like a boy afraid of the dark. 'Do you want us to live in a cave like brownies until the wolves find us? Have you forgotten the wolves? And the Night-Mares, the fire-elves, all the other creatures crawling around the place... I for one haven't forgotten them, but you would come back to this accursed spot where there are three ghosts lurking behind every tree!' He reached for the amulet dangling around his neck, but Mortola did not deign to look at him.\n\n'Oh, be quiet!' she said, so sharply that Basta flinched. 'How often must I tell you that ghosts are nothing to be afraid of? As for wolves, that's why you carry a knife, isn't it? We'll manage. We managed in their world, and we know our way around in this one a good deal better. And, don't forget, we have a powerful friend here. We're going to pay him a visit, yes, that's what. But first I have something else to do, something I should have done long ago.' And again her eyes were on Mo. On him and no one else. Then she turned, walked steadily up to Basta and took the rifle from his hand.\n\nResa reached for Mo's arm and tried to pull him aside, but Mortola was too quick on the draw. The Magpie had some skill with a gun. She had often shot at the birds who pecked the seed from her garden beds, back in Capricorn's yard. Blood spread over Mo's shirt like a flower blossoming, red, crimson. Resa heard herself scream as he fell and suddenly lay there motionless, while the grass around him turned as red as his shirt. She flung herself down on her knees, turned him over, and pressed her hands to the wound as if she could hold back the blood, all the blood carrying his life away...\n\n'Come along, Basta!' she heard Mortola say. 'We have a long way to go, and it's time we found safe shelter before it gets dark. This forest is not a pleasant place by night.'\n\n'You're going to leave them here?' That was Basta's voice.\n\n'Why not? I know you always fancied her, but the wolves will take care of them. The fresh blood will bring them this way.'\n\nThe blood. It was still flowing so fast, and Mo's face was white as a sheet. 'No. Oh, please, no!' whispered Resa. Aloud, in her own voice. She pressed her fingers to her shaking lips.\n\n'Well, what do you know? Our little pigeon can speak again!' Basta's mocking voice hardly penetrated the rushing in her ears. 'What a pity he can't hear you any more, eh? So long, Resa!'\n\nShe did not look round. Not even when their footsteps died away. 'No!' she heard herself whispering again and again. 'No!' like a prayer. She tore a strip of fabric from her dress \u2013 if only her fingers weren't shaking so badly \u2013 and pressed it to the wound. Her hands were wet with his blood and her own tears. Resa, she told herself sternly, crying won't do him any good. Try to remember! What did Capricorn's men do when they were wounded? They cauterized the wound, but she didn't want to think of that. There had been a plant too, a plant with hairy leaves and pale mauve flowers, tiny bells into which bumble bees flew, buzzing. She looked around, through the veil of tears over her eyes, as if hoping for a miracle...\n\nTwo blue-skinned fairies were hovering among the twining honeysuckle. If Dustfinger had been here now, he'd surely have known how to entice them. He'd have called to them softly, persuaded them to give him some of their fairy spit, or the silvery dust that they shook out of their hair.\n\nShe heard her own sobbing again. She lifted the dark hair back from Mo's brow with her blood-stained fingers, called him by name. He couldn't be gone, not now, not after all those years...\n\nOver and over she called his name, put her fingers on his lips, felt his breath, shallow and irregular, coming with difficulty as if someone were sitting on his chest. Death, she thought, it's Death...\n\nA sound made her jump. Footsteps on soft leaves. Had Mortola changed her mind? Had she sent Basta back to fetch them? Or were the wolves coming? If only she at least had a knife. Mo always carried one. Feverishly, she put her hands in his trouser pockets, feeling for the smooth handle...\n\nThe footsteps grew louder. Yes, they were human footsteps, no doubt about it. And then suddenly all was still. Menacingly still. Resa felt the handle in her fingers. She quickly removed the knife from Mo's pocket and snapped it open. She hardly dared to turn, but at last she did.\n\nAn old woman was standing in what had once been Capricorn's gateway. She looked as small as a child among the pillars that still stood erect. She had a sack slung over her shoulder and was wearing a dress that looked as if she had woven it from nettles. Her skin was burned brown, her face furrowed like the bark of a tree. Her grey hair was as short as a marten's fur, and had leaves and burrs clinging to it. Without a word, she came towards Resa. Her feet were bare, but she didn't seem to mind the nettles and thistles growing in the courtyard of the ruined fortress. Her face expressionless, she pushed Resa aside and bent over Mo. Unmoved, she lifted the bloody scraps of fabric that Resa was still pressing to the wound.\n\n'I never saw a wound like that before,' she remarked, in a voice that sounded hoarse, as if it wasn't often used. 'What did it?'\n\n'A gun,' replied Resa. It felt strange to be speaking with her tongue again instead of her hands.\n\n'A gun?' The old woman looked at her, shook her head, and bent over Mo again. 'A gun. What may that be?' she murmured as her brown fingers felt the wound. 'Dear me, these days they go inventing new weapons faster than a chick hatches from its egg, and I have to find out how to mend what they stab and cut.' She put her ear to Mo's chest, listened, and straightened up again with a sigh. 'Are you wearing something under that dress?' she asked abruptly, without looking at Resa. 'Take it off and tear it up. I need long strips.' Then she put her hand into a leather bag at her belt, took out a little bottle, and used its contents to soak one of the strips of fabric that Resa was offering her. 'Press that down on it!' she said, handing the fabric back to Resa. 'This is a bad wound. I may have to cut or cauterize it, but not here. The two of us can't carry him on our own, but the strolling players have a camp not far off, for their old and sick people. I may find help there.' She dressed the wound with fingers as nimble as if she had never done anything else. 'Keep him warm!' she said as she rose to her feet again and slung the sack over her shoulder. Then she pointed to the knife that Resa had dropped in the grass. 'Keep that with you. I'll try to be back before the wolves get here. And if one of the White Women turns up, make sure she doesn't look at him or whisper his name.'\n\nThen she was gone, as suddenly as she had come. And Resa knelt there in the courtyard of Capricorn's fortress, her hand pressed down on the blood-soaked dressing, and listened to Mo's breathing.\n\n'Can you hear me? My voice is back,' she whispered to him. 'Just as if it had been waiting for you here.' But Mo did not move. His face was as pale as if the stones and grass had drunk all his blood.\n\nResa didn't know how much time had passed when she heard the whispering behind her, incomprehensible and soft as rain. When she looked around, there stood the figure on the ruined stairway. A White Woman, blurred as a reflection on water. Resa knew only too well what such an apparition meant. She had told Meggie about the White Women often enough. Only one thing lured them, and faster than blood lured the wolves: failing breath, a heart beating ever more feebly...\n\n'Be quiet!' Resa shouted at the pale figure, bending protectively over Mo's face. 'Go away, and don't you dare look at him. He isn't going with you, not today!' They whisper your name if they want to take you with them, so Dustfinger had told her. But they don't know Mo's name, thought Resa. They can't know it, because he doesn't belong here. All the same, she held her hands over his ears.\n\nThe sun was beginning to set. It sank inexorably behind the trees. Darkness fell between the charred walls, and the pale figure on the stairs stood out more clearly all the time. It stood there motionless, waiting."
            },
            {
                "title": "Birthday Morning",
                "text": "\u2002'Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city... Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills...'\n\n\u2014Khalil Gibran, The Prophet\n\nMeggie woke with a start. She had been dreaming, and her dreams had been bad, but she didn't remember what they were about, only the fear they left behind like a knife wound in the heart. Noise came to her ears, shouting and loud laughter, children's voices, the barking of dogs, the grunting of pigs, hammering, sawing. She felt sunlight on her face, and the air she was breathing smelled of dung and freshly baked bread. Where was she? Only when she saw Fenoglio sitting at his writing-desk did she remember. Ombra \u2013 she was in Ombra.\n\n'Good morning!' Fenoglio had obviously slept extremely well. He looked very pleased with himself and the world in general. Well, who should be pleased with it if not the man who made it up? The glass man Meggie had seen last night, asleep beside the jug of quill pens, was standing beside him.\n\n'Say hello to our guest, Rosenquartz!' Fenoglio told him.\n\nThe glass man bowed stiffly in Meggie's direction, took Fenoglio's dripping pen, wiped it on a rag and put it back in the jug with the others. Then he bent to look at what Fenoglio had written. 'Ah. Not a song about this Bluejay for a change!' he snapped. 'Are you taking this one up to the castle today?'\n\n'I am indeed,' said Fenoglio loftily. 'Now, do please make sure the ink doesn't run.'\n\nThe glass man wrinkled his nose, as if he had never allowed such a thing to happen, put both hands into the bowl of sand standing next to the pens, and scattered the fine grains over the freshly written parchment with practised energy.\n\n'Rosenquartz, how often do I have to tell you?' snapped Fenoglio. 'Too much sand, too much energy. That way you'll smudge everything.'\n\nThe glass man brushed a couple of grains of sand off his hands and folded his arms, looking injured. 'Then you do better!' His voice reminded Meggie of the noise you make tapping a glass with your fingernails. 'I'd certainly like to see that!' he added sharply, examining Fenoglio's clumsy fingers with such scorn that Meggie had to laugh.\n\n'Me too!' she said, pulling her dress on over her head. A few withered flowers from the Wayless Wood still clung to it, and Meggie couldn't help thinking of Farid. Had he found Dustfinger?\n\n'Hear that?' Rosenquartz cast her a friendly glance. 'She sounds like a clever girl.'\n\n'Oh yes, Meggie's very clever,' replied Fenoglio. 'The two of us have been through a lot together. It's thanks to her that I'm sitting here now, trying to tell a glass man the right way to scatter sand over ink.'\n\nRosenquartz looked curiously at Meggie, but he didn't ask what Fenoglio's mysterious comment meant. Meggie went up to the desk and looked over the old man's shoulder. 'Your handwriting's easier to read these days,' she said.\n\n'Thank you very much,' murmured Fenoglio. 'You should know. But look \u2013 do you see that smudged P?'\n\n'If you are seriously suggesting that I'm to blame for it,' said Rosenquartz in his ringing little voice, 'then this is the last time I hold your pens for you, and I'm going straight off to look for a scribe who won't expect me to work before breakfast.'\n\n'All right, all right, I'm not blaming you. I smudged the P myself!' Fenoglio winked at Meggie. 'He's easily offended,' he whispered confidentially to her. 'His pride is as fragile as his limbs.'\n\nThe glass man turned his back on Fenoglio without a word, picked up the rag he had used to clean the pen, and tried to wipe a still-damp inkspot off his arm. His limbs were not entirely colourless, like those of the glass people who had lived in Elinor's garden. Everything about him was pale pink, like the flowers of a wild rose. Only his hair was slightly darker.\n\n'You didn't say anything about my new song,' Fenoglio pointed out. 'Wonderful, don't you agree?'\n\n'Not bad,' replied Rosenquartz without turning round, and he began polishing up his feet.\n\n'Not bad? It's a masterpiece, you maggot-coloured, ink-smudging pen-holder!' Fenoglio struck the desk so hard that the glass man fell over on his back like a beetle. 'I'm going to market today to get a new glass man, one who knows about these things and will appreciate my robber songs too!' He opened a longish box and took out a stick of sealing wax. 'At least you haven't forgotten to get a flame for the wax this time!' he growled.\n\nRosenquartz snatched the sealing wax from his hand and held it in the flame of the candle that stood beside the jug. His face expressionless, he placed the melting end of the wax on the parchment roll, waved his glass hand over the red seal a couple of times, and then cast Fenoglio an imperious glance, whereupon Fenoglio solemnly pressed the ring he wore on his middle finger down on to the soft wax.\n\n'F for Fenoglio, F for fantasy, F for fabulous,' he announced. 'There we are.'\n\n'B for breakfast would sound better just now,' said Rosenquartz, but Fenoglio ignored this remark.\n\n'What did you think of the song for the Prince?' he asked Meggie.\n\n'I... er... I couldn't read it all because you two were quarrelling,' she said evasively. She didn't want to make Fenoglio even gloomier by saying that the lines struck her as familiar. 'Why does the Laughing Prince want such a sad poem?' she asked instead.\n\n'Because his son is dead,' replied Fenoglio. 'One sad song after another, that's all he wants to hear since Cosimo's death. I'm tired of it!' Sighing, he put the parchment back on his desk and went over to the chest standing under the window.\n\n'Cosimo? Cosimo the Fair is dead?' Meggie couldn't conceal her disappointment. Resa had told her so much about the Laughing Prince's son: everyone who saw him loved him, even the Adderhead feared him, his peasants brought their sick children to him because they believed anyone as beautiful as an angel could cure all sicknesses too...\n\nFenoglio sighed. 'Yes, it's terrible. And a bitter lesson. This story isn't my story any more! It's developed a will of its own.'\n\n'Oh no, here we go again!' Rosenquartz groaned. 'His story! I'll never understand all this talk. Maybe you really ought to go and see one of those physicians who cure sick minds.'\n\n'My dear Rosenquartz,' Fenoglio replied, 'all this talk, as you call it, is above your transparent little head. But believe me, Meggie knows just what I'm talking about!' He opened the chest, looking cross, and took out a long, dark blue robe. 'I ought to get a new one made,' he muttered. 'Yes, I definitely ought to. This is no robe for a man whose words are sung up and down the land, a man commissioned by a prince to put his grief for his son into words! Just look at the sleeves! Holes everywhere. In spite of Minerva's sprigs of lavender, the moths have been at it.'\n\n'It's good enough for a poor poet,' remarked the glass man in matter-of-fact tones.\n\nFenoglio put the robe back in the chest and let the lid fall into place with a dull thud. 'One of these days,' he said, 'I am going to throw something really hard at you!'\n\nThis threat did not seem to bother Rosenquartz unduly. The two went on wrangling about this and that; it seemed to be a kind of game they played, and they had obviously forgotten Meggie's presence entirely. She went to the window, pushed aside the fabric over it and looked out. It was going to be a sunny day, although mist still lingered above the hills surrounding the city. Which was the hill where the house of the minstrel woman stood, the place where Farid hoped to find Dustfinger? She had forgotten. Would he come back if he actually found the fire-eater, or would he just go off with him, like last time, forgetting that she was here too? Meggie didn't even try to work out just how that idea made her feel. There was enough turmoil in her heart already, so much turmoil that she'd have liked to ask Fenoglio for a mirror, just to see herself for a moment \u2013 her own familiar face amidst all the strangeness surrounding her, all the strange feelings in her heart. But instead she let her gaze wander over the misty hills.\n\nHow far did Fenoglio's world go? Just as far as he had described it? 'Interesting!' he had whispered, back when Basta had dragged the two of them off to Capricorn's village. 'Do you know, this place is very like one of the settings I thought up for Inkheart?' It must have been Ombra he meant. The hills around Ombra really did look like those over which Meggie had escaped with Mo and Elinor when Dustfinger set them free from Capricorn's dungeons, except that these seemed even greener, if that was possible, and more enchanted. As if every leaf suggested that fairies and fire-elves lived under the trees. And the houses and streets you could see from Fenoglio's room might have been in Capricorn's village, if they hadn't been so much noisier and more colourful.\n\n'Just look at the crowds \u2013 they all want to go up to the castle today,' said Fenoglio behind her. 'Travelling pedlars, peasants, craftsmen, rich merchants, beggars, they'll all be going there to celebrate the birthday, to earn or spend a few coins, to enjoy themselves, and most of all to stare at the grand folk.'\n\nMeggie looked at the castle walls. They rose above the russet rooftops almost menacingly. Black banners on the towers flapped in the wind.\n\n'How long has Cosimo been dead?'\n\n'Hardly a year yet. I'd just moved into this room. As you can imagine, your voice took me straight to where it plucked the Shadow out of the story: the middle of Capricorn's fortress. Fortunately, all was hopeless confusion there because the monstrous Shadow had disappeared, and none of the fire-raisers noticed an old man suddenly standing among them looking foolish. I spent a couple of dreadful days in the forest, and unfortunately I didn't, like you, have a clever companion who could use a knife, catch rabbits, and kindle fire with a couple of dry twigs. But the Black Prince himself finally picked me up \u2013 imagine how I stared when he was suddenly there in front of me. I didn't think I knew any of the men who were with him, but I'll admit that I could never remember the minor characters in my stories very clearly \u2013 only vaguely, if at all.\n\n'Well, be that as it may, one of them took me to Ombra, ragged and destitute as I was. But luckily I had a ring that I could sell. A goldsmith gave me enough for it to allow me to rent this room from Minerva, and all seemed to be going well. Very well indeed, in fact. I thought up stories, and stories about stories, better than any I'd made up for a long time. The words came pouring out of me, but when I'd only just made my name with the first songs I wrote for the Laughing Prince, when the strolling players had just begun to find that they liked my verses, Firefox goes and burns down a few farms by the river \u2013 and Cosimo the Fair sets out to put an end to Firefox and his gang once and for all. Good, I thought, why not? How was I to guess that he'd get himself killed? I had such plans for him! He was to be a truly great prince, a blessing to his subjects, and my story was going to give them a happy ending when he freed this world from the Adderhead. But instead he gets himself killed by a band of fire-raisers in the Wayless Wood!'\n\nFenoglio sighed.\n\n'At first his father wouldn't believe he was dead. For Cosimo's face was badly burned, like those of all the other dead who were brought back. The fire had done its work, but when months passed, and still he didn't return...' Fenoglio sighed again, and once more looked in the chest where the moth-eaten robe lay. He handed Meggie two long, pale blue woollen stockings, a couple of leather straps, and a much-washed, dark blue dress. 'I'm afraid this will be too big for you \u2013 it belongs to Minerva's second daughter, and she's the same size as her mother,' he said, 'but what you're wearing now urgently needs a wash. You can keep the stockings up with those garters \u2013 not very comfortable, but you'll get used to it. Good Lord, you really have grown, Meggie,' he said, turning his back to her as she changed her clothes. 'Rosenquartz! You turn round too!'\n\nIt was true that the dress didn't fit particularly well, and Meggie suddenly felt almost glad that Fenoglio had no mirror. At home she had been studying her reflection quite often recently. It was odd to watch your own body changing as if you were a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis.\n\n'Ready?' asked Fenoglio, turning round. 'Ah well, that'll do, although such a pretty girl really deserves a prettier dress.' He looked down at himself, and sighed. 'I think I'd better stay as I am; at least this robe doesn't have any holes in it. And what does it matter? The castle will be swarming with entertainers and fine folk today, so no one will take any notice of the two of us.'\n\n'Two? What do you mean?' Rosenquartz put down the blade he had been using to sharpen a pen. 'Aren't you going to take me with you?'\n\n'Are you crazy? Just for me to carry you back in pieces? No. Anyway, you'd have to listen to that bad poem I'm taking to the Prince.'\n\nRosenquartz was still grumbling as Fenoglio closed the door behind them. The wooden staircase that Meggie had hardly been able to climb last night, exhausted as she was, led down to a yard surrounded by houses, with pigsties, woodsheds and vegetable plots competing for what little space was left. A narrow little stream wound its way through the yard, two children were shooing a pig away from the vegetable beds, and a woman with a baby in her arms was feeding a flock of skinny hens.\n\n'A wonderful morning, isn't it, Minerva?' Fenoglio called to her, as Meggie hesitantly followed him down the last steep steps.\n\nMinerva came to the foot of the stairs. A girl of perhaps six was clinging to her skirt, and stared suspiciously at Meggie. She stopped, feeling unsure of herself. Perhaps they can see it, she thought, perhaps they can see I don't belong here...\n\n'Watch out!' the little girl called, but before Meggie realized what she meant, something was pulling her hair. The little girl threw a clod of earth, and a fairy fluttered away empty-handed, scolding crossly.\n\n'Good heavens, where are you from?' asked Minerva, helping Meggie down from the steps. 'Aren't there any fairies there? They're crazy for human hair, particularly when it's as pretty as yours. If you don't pin it up you'll soon be bald. And anyway, you're too old to wear it loose, not unless you want to be taken for one of the strolling players.'\n\nMinerva was small and stocky, not much taller than Meggie. 'My word, how thin you are!' she said. 'That dress is almost slipping off your shoulders. I'll take it in for you this evening. Has she had any breakfast?' she asked, and shook her head at the sight of Fenoglio's baffled expression. 'Dear Lord, surely you didn't forget to give the girl something to eat?'\n\nFenoglio helplessly raised his hands. 'I'm an old man, Minerva!' he cried. 'I do forget things! What's the matter with everyone this morning? I was in such a good mood, but you all keep going on like this. Rosenquartz has already been infuriating me.'\n\nBy way of answer Minerva dumped the baby in his arms and led Meggie off with her.\n\n'And whose baby is this?' enquired Fenoglio, following her. 'Aren't there enough children running about the place already?'\n\n'It's my eldest daughter's,' was all Minerva replied, 'and you've seen it a couple of times before. Are you getting so forgetful that I'll have to introduce my own children to you?'\n\nMinerva's younger children were called Despina and Ivo; Ivo was the boy who had been carrying Fenoglio's torch last night. He smiled at Meggie as she and his mother came into the kitchen. Minerva made Meggie eat a plate of polenta and two slices of bread spread with a paste that smelled of olives. The milk she gave her was so rich that Meggie's tongue felt coated with cream after the first sip. As she ate, Minerva pinned her hair up for her. Meggie scarcely recognized herself when Minerva pushed a bowl of water over to her so that she could see her reflection.\n\n'Where did you get those boots?' asked Ivo. His sister was still inspecting Meggie like some strange animal that had lost its way and wandered into their kitchen. Where indeed? Meggie hastily tried to pull the dress down to hide her boots, but it was too short.\n\n'Meggie comes from far away,' explained Fenoglio, who had noticed her confusion. 'Very far away. A place where there are people with three legs, and others whose noses grow on their chins.'\n\nThe children stared first at him and then at Meggie.\n\n'Oh, stop it! What nonsense you do talk!' Minerva lightly cuffed the back of his head. 'They believe every word you say. One of these days they'll be setting off to look for all the crazy places you tell them about, and I'll be left childless.'\n\nMeggie almost choked on the rich milk. She had quite forgotten her homesickness, but Minerva's words brought it back \u2013 and her guilty conscience too. She had been away from home five days now, if she'd been keeping count correctly.\n\n'You and your stories!' Minerva handed Fenoglio a mug of milk. 'As if it wasn't enough for you to keep telling them those robber tales. Do you know what Ivo said to me yesterday? When I'm grown up I'm going to join the robbers too! He wants to be like the Bluejay! What do you think you're doing, pray? Tell them about Cosimo for all I care, tell them about the giants, or the Black Prince and his bear, but not another word about that Bluejay, understand?'\n\n'Yes, yes, not another word,' muttered Fenoglio. 'But don't blame me if the boy picks up one of the songs about him from somewhere. Everyone's singing them.'\n\nMeggie had no idea what they were talking about, but in her mind she was already up at the castle anyway. Resa had told her that the birds' nests clustered together on its walls so thickly that sometimes the twittering drowned out the minstrels' songs. And fairies nested there too, she said, fairies who were pale grey like the stone of the castle walls because they often nibbled human food, instead of living on flowers and fruits like their sisters in the wild. And there were said to be trees in the Inner Courtyard of the castle that grew nowhere else except in the very heart of the Wayless Wood, trees with leaves that murmured in the wind like a chorus of human voices, and foretold the future on moonless nights \u2013 but in a language that no one could understand.\n\n'Would you like anything else to eat?'\n\nMeggie started, and came down to earth again.\n\n'Inky infernos!' Fenoglio rose and handed the baby back to Minerva. 'Do you want to fatten her up until she fits into that dress? We must be off, or we'll miss half of it. The Prince has asked me to bring him the new song before midday, and you know he doesn't like people to be late.'\n\n'No, I don't know any such thing,' replied Minerva grumpily, as Fenoglio propelled Meggie towards the door. 'Because I don't go in and out of the castle the way you do. What does our fine prince want from you this time \u2013 another lament?'\n\n'Yes, I've had enough of them too, but he pays well. Would you rather I was penniless and you had to look for a new lodger?'\n\n'Very well, very well,' grumbled Minerva, clearing the children's empty bowls off the table. 'I tell you what, though: this prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death, and then the Adderhead will send his men-at-arms. They'll settle here like flies on fresh horse dung, on the excuse of just wanting to protect their master's poor fatherless grandson.'\n\nFenoglio turned so abruptly that he almost sent Meggie flying. 'No, Minerva. No!' he said firmly. 'That won't happen. Not as long as I live \u2013 which I hope will be a very long time yet!'\n\n'Oh yes?' Minerva removed her son's fingers from the tub of butter. 'And how are you going to prevent it? With your robber songs? Do you think some fool with a feathered mask, playing the hero because he's listened to your songs too often, can keep the men-at-arms away from our city? Heroes end up on the gallows, Fenoglio,' she continued, lowering her voice, and Meggie could hear the fear behind her mockery. 'It may be different in your songs, but in real life princes hang them, and the finest of words don't change that.'\n\nThe two children looked uneasily at their mother, and Minerva stroked their hair as if that would wipe away her own words. But Fenoglio merely shrugged. 'Oh, come on, you see everything in such dismal hues!' he said. 'You underestimate the power of words, believe me! They are strong, stronger than you think. Ask Meggie!'\n\nBut before Minerva could do just that, he was pushing Meggie out of the house. 'Ivo, Despina, do you want to come?' he called to the children. 'I'll bring them home safe and sound. I always do!' he added, as Minerva's anxious face appeared in the doorway. 'The best entertainers far and wide will be at the castle today. They'll have come from very far away. Your two can't miss this chance!'\n\nAs soon as they stepped out of the alley, they were caught up in the crowd streaming along. People came thronging up from all sides: shabbily dressed peasants, beggars, women with children, and men whose wealth showed not only in the magnificence of their embroidered sleeves, but most of all in the servants who roughly forced a path through the crowd for them. Riders drove their horses through the throng without a thought for those they pushed against the walls; litters were jammed in the crush of bodies, however angrily the litter-bearers cursed and shouted.\n\n'Devil take it, this is worse than a market day!' Fenoglio shouted to Meggie above the heads around them. Ivo darted through the crowd, quick as a herring in the sea, but Despina looked so alarmed that Fenoglio finally put her up on his shoulders before she was squashed between baskets and people's bellies. Meggie felt her own heart beat faster, what with all the confusion, the pushing and shoving, the thousands of smells and the voices filling the air.\n\n'Look around you, Meggie! Isn't it wonderful?' cried Fenoglio proudly.\n\nIt was indeed. It was just as Meggie had imagined it on all those evenings when Resa had told her about the Inkworld. Her senses were quite dazed. Eyes, ears... they could scarcely take in a tenth of all that was going on around her. Music came from somewhere: trumpets, jingles, drums... and then the street widened, spewing her and all the others out in front of the castle walls. They towered among the other buildings, tall and massive, as if they had been built by men larger than those now flocking to the gateway. Armed guards stood in front of the gate, with their helmets reflecting the pale morning light. Their cloaks were dark green, like the tunics they wore over their coats of mail. Both bore the emblem of the Laughing Prince. Resa had described it to Meggie: a lion on a green background, surrounded by white roses \u2013 but it had changed. The lion wept silver tears now, and the roses twined around a broken heart.\n\nThe guards let most of the crowd pass, only occasionally barring someone's way with the shaft of a spear or a mailed fist. No one seemed troubled by that \u2013 they went on pressing in \u2013 and Meggie too finally found herself in the shadow of those metre-thick walls. Of course she had been in castles before, with Mo, but it felt quite different to be going in past guards armed with spears instead of a kiosk selling picture postcards. The walls seemed so much more threatening and forbidding. Look, they seemed to say, see how small you all are, how powerless and fragile.\n\nFenoglio appeared to feel none of this; he was beaming like a child at Christmas. He ignored both the portcullis above their heads and the slits through which hot pitch could be tipped out on the heads of uninvited guests. Meggie, on the contrary, instinctively looked up as they passed, and wondered why the traces of pitch on the weathered stone looked so fresh. But finally the open sky was above her again, clear and blue, as if it had been swept clean for the princely birthday \u2013 and Meggie was in the Outer Courtyard of Ombra Castle."
            },
            {
                "title": "Visitors from the Wrong Side of the Forest",
                "text": "\u2002Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It's only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes \u2013 if necessary \u2013 brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.\n\n\u2014Clive Barker, Abarat\n\nFirst of all Meggie looked for the birds' nests that Resa had described, and sure enough, there they were, clinging just below the battlements like blisters on the walls. Birds with yellow breasts shot out of the entrance holes. Like flakes of gold dancing in the sun, Resa had said, and she was right. The sky above Meggie seemed to be covered with swirling gold, all in honour of the princely birthday. More and more people surged through the gateway, although there was already a milling crowd in the courtyard. Stalls had been set up within the walls, in front of the stables and the huts where the blacksmiths, grooms and everyone else employed in the castle lived and worked. Today, as the Prince was inviting his subjects to celebrate with him the birthday of his grandson and royal heir, food and drink was free. 'Very generous, I'm sure,' Mo would probably have whispered. 'Food and drink from their own fields, won by the labour of their own hands.' Mo did not particularly like castles. But that was the way of Fenoglio's world: the land on which the peasants toiled belonged to the Laughing Prince who was now the Prince of Sighs, so a large part of the harvest was his too, and he dressed in silk and velvet, while his peasants wore much-mended smocks that scratched the skin.\n\nDespina had wound her thin arms around Fenoglio's neck when they passed the guards at the gate, but at the sight of the first entertainers she quickly slipped off his back. One of them had stretched his rope between the battlements, and was walking high up there in the air, moving more lightly than a spider on its silver thread. His clothes were blue as the sky above him, for blue was the colour of the tightrope-walkers; Meggie's mother had told her that too. If only Resa had been here! The Motley Folk were everywhere among the stalls: pipers and jugglers, knife-throwers, Strong Men, animal tamers, contortionists, actors, clowns. Right in front of the wall Meggie saw a fire-eater, yes, black and red was their costume, and for a moment she thought it was Dustfinger, but when the man turned he was a stranger with an unscarred face, and the smile with which he bowed to the people around him was not at all like Dustfinger's.\n\nBut he must be here, if he's really back, thought Meggie, as she looked around for him. Why did she feel so disappointed? As if she didn't know. It was Farid she really missed. And if Dustfinger wasn't here, she supposed it would be no use looking for Farid either.\n\n'Come along, Meggie!' Despina pronounced her name as if it was going to take her tongue some time to get used to it. She pulled Meggie over to a stall selling sweet cakes dripping with honey. Even today those cakes had to be paid for. The trader selling them was keeping a close eye on his wares, but luckily Fenoglio had a few coins on him. Despina's thin fingers were sticky when she put them into Meggie's hand again. She looked round, wide-eyed, and kept stopping, but Fenoglio impatiently waved them on, past a wooden platform decked with flowers and evergreen branches, rising above the stalls. The black banners flying from the castle battlements and towers overhead hung here as well, to the right and left of three thrones on the platform. The backs of the seats were embroidered with the emblem of the weeping lion.\n\n'Why three thrones, I ask myself?' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he urged her and the children on. 'The Prince of Sighs himself won't be showing his face anyway. Come along, we're late already.' With a firm step, he turned his back on the busy scene in the Outer Courtyard and made his way to the Inner Ring of the castle walls. The gate towards which he was moving was not quite as tall as the one in the Outer Ring, but it too looked forbidding, and so did the guards who crossed their spears as Fenoglio approached them. 'As if they didn't know me!' he whispered crossly to Meggie. 'But we have to play the same game every time. Tell the Prince that Fenoglio the poet is here!' he said, raising his voice, as the two children pressed close to him and stared at the spears as if looking for dried blood on their points.\n\n'Is the Prince expecting you?' The guard who spoke seemed to be still very young, judging by what could be seen of his face under his helmet.\n\n'Of course he is!' snapped Fenoglio. 'And if he has to wait any longer I'll blame it on you, Anselmo. What's more, if you want me to write you a few fine-sounding words, as you did last month \u2013' here the guard cast a nervous glance at his fellow sentry, but the latter pretended not to have heard and looked up at the tightrope-walker \u2013 'then,' Fenoglio concluded, lowering his voice, 'I shall keep you waiting in your own turn. I'm an old man, and God knows I have better things to do than kick my heels here in front of your spear.'\n\nAll that could be seen of Anselmo's face turned as red as the sour wine that Fenoglio had drunk beside the strolling players' fire. However, he did not move his spear aside. 'The fact is, Inkweaver, we have visitors,' he said in an undertone.\n\n'Visitors? What are you talking about?'\n\nBut Anselmo wasn't looking at Fenoglio any more.\n\nThe gate behind him opened, creaking, as if its own weight were too heavy for it. Meggie drew Despina aside; Fenoglio took Ivo's hand. Soldiers rode into the Outer Courtyard, armed horsemen, their cloaks silvery grey, like the greaves they wore on their legs, and the emblem on their breasts was not the Laughing Prince's. It showed a viper's slender body rearing up in search of prey, and Meggie recognized it at once. This was the Adderhead's coat of arms.\n\nNothing moved in the Outer Courtyard now. All was silent as the grave. The entertainers, even the blue-clad tightrope-walker high above on his rope, were all forgotten. Resa had told Meggie exactly what the Adderhead's emblem looked like; she had seen it often enough at close quarters. Envoys from the Castle of Night had been welcome guests in Capricorn's fortress. Many of the farms set on fire by Capricorn's men, so rumour said at the time, had been burned down on the Adderhead's orders.\n\nMeggie held Despina close as the men-at-arms rode by them. Their breastplates glinted in the sun. It looked as if not even a bolt from a crossbow could pierce that armour, let alone a poor man's arrow. Two men rode at their head: one was a redhead, in armour like the soldiers following him but resplendent in a cloak of foxtails, while the other was wearing a green robe shot with silver that was fine enough for any prince. However, what everyone noticed about him first was not that robe but his nose; unlike ordinary noses of flesh and blood, it was made of silver.\n\n'Look at that couple! What a team!' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie, as the two men rode side by side through the silent crowd. 'Both of them my creations, and both once Capricorn's men. Your mother may have told you about them. Firefox was Capricorn's deputy, the Piper was his minstrel. But the silver nose wasn't my idea. Nor the fact that they escaped Cosimo's soldiers when he attacked Capricorn's fortress, and now serve the Adderhead.'\n\nIt was still eerily silent in the courtyard. There was no sound but the clatter of hooves, the snorting horses, the clank of armour, weapons and spears \u2013 curiously loud, as if the sounds were caught between the high walls like birds.\n\nThe Adderhead himself was one of the last to ride in. There was no mistaking him. 'He looks like a butcher,' Resa had said. 'A butcher in princely clothes, with his love of killing written all over his coarse face.' The horse he rode was white, heavily built like its master, and was almost entirely hidden by a caparison patterned with the snake emblem. The Adderhead himself wore a black robe embroidered with silver flowers. His skin was tanned by the sun, his sparse hair was grey, his mouth curiously small \u2013 a lipless slit in his coarse, clean-shaven face. Everything about him seemed heavy and fleshy: his arms and legs, his thick neck, his broad nose. Unlike those richer subjects of the Laughing Prince who were now standing in the courtyard, he wore no jewellery, no heavy chains around his neck, no rings set with precious stones on his fat fingers. But gems sparkled in the corners of his nostrils, red as drops of blood, and on the middle finger of his left hand, over his glove, he wore the silver ring he used for sealing death warrants. His eyes, narrow under lids folded like a salamander's, darted restlessly around the courtyard. They seemed to linger for a split second, like a lizard's sticky tongue, on everything they saw: the strolling players, the tightrope-walker overhead, the rich merchants waiting beside the empty, flower-decked platform, submissively bowing their heads when his glance rested on them. Nothing seemed to escape those salamander eyes, nothing at all: no child pressing his face into his mother's apron in alarm, no beautiful woman, no man glaring up at him with hostility. Yet he reined in his horse in front of only one person in the crowd.\n\n'Well, well, so here's the king of the strolling players! Last time I saw you, your head was in the pillory in my castle courtyard. And when are you going to honour us with another visit?' The Adderhead's voice rang out through the silent courtyard. It sounded very deep, as if it came from the black interior of his stout body. Meggie instinctively moved closer to Fenoglio's side. But the Black Prince bowed, so deeply that the bow turned to mockery. 'I'm sorry,' he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, 'but I'm afraid my bear didn't care for your hospitality. He says the pillory was rather tight for his neck.'\n\nMeggie saw the Adderhead's mouth twist into an unpleasant smile. 'Well, I could keep a rope ready for your next visit \u2013 a rope that will fit perfectly, and a gallows of oak strong enough even for such a fat old bear as yours,' he said.\n\nThe Black Prince turned to his bear and pretended to discuss it with him. 'Sorry again,' he said, as the bear threw its paws around his neck, grunting, 'the bear says he likes the south, but your shadow lies too dark over it. He won't come until the Bluejay pays you the honour of a visit too.'\n\nA soft whisper ran through the crowd \u2013 and was silenced when the Adderhead turned in his saddle and let his lizard-like gaze move over those standing around him.\n\n'And furthermore,' the Prince continued in a loud voice, 'the bear would like to know why you don't make the Piper trot along behind your horse on a silver chain, as such a good, tame minstrel should?'\n\nThe Piper wrenched his horse round, but before he could urge it towards the Black Prince the Adderhead raised a hand. 'I will let you know just as soon as the Bluejay is my guest!' he said, while the silver-nosed man reluctantly rode back to his place. 'And believe me, that will be before long. I've already ordered the gallows to be built.' Then he spurred his horse, and the men-at-arms rode on again. It seemed an eternity before the last of them had disappeared through the gateway.\n\n'Yes, off you ride!' whispered Fenoglio, as the castle courtyard gradually filled with carefree noise again. 'Viewing this place as if it would all soon be his, thinking he can spread his power through my world like a running sore, and play a part I never wrote for him...'\n\nThe guard's spear abruptly silenced him. 'Very well, poet!' said Anselmo. 'You can go in now. Off with you!'\n\n'Off with you?' thundered Fenoglio. 'Is that any way to speak to the Prince's poet? Listen,' he told the two children, 'you'd better stay here. Don't eat too much cake. And don't go too close to the fire-eater, because he's useless at his job, and leave the Black Prince's bear alone. Understand?'\n\nThe two of them nodded, and ran straight to the nearest cake stall. But Fenoglio took Meggie's hand and strode past the guards with her, his head held high.\n\n'Fenoglio,' she asked in a low voice as the gate closed behind them, and the noise of the Outer Courtyard died away, 'who is the Bluejay?'\n\nIt was cool behind the great gate, as if winter had built itself a nest here. Trees shaded a wide courtyard, the air was fragrant with the scent of roses and other flowers whose names Meggie didn't know, and a stone basin of water, round as the moon, reflected the part of the castle in which the Laughing Prince lived.\n\n'Oh, he doesn't exist!' was all Fenoglio would say, as he impatiently beckoned her on. 'But I'll explain all that later. Come along now. We must take the Laughing Prince my verses at last, or I won't be his court poet any more.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Prince of Sighs",
                "text": "\u2002The man couldn't very well tell the king, 'No, I won't go,' for he had to earn his bread.\n\n\u2014Italo Calvino, tr. George Marten, Italian Folk Tales, 'The King in the Basket'\n\nThe windows of the hall where the Prince of Sighs, once the Laughing Prince, received Fenoglio were hung with black draperies. The place smelled like a crypt, of dried flowers and soot from the candles. The candles were burning in front of statues which all had the same face, sometimes a good likeness, sometimes less good. Cosimo the Fair, thought Meggie. He stared down at her from countless pairs of marble eyes as she walked towards his father with Fenoglio.\n\nThe throne in which the Prince of Sighs sat enthroned stood between two other high-backed chairs. The dark green upholstery of the chair on his left was occupied only by a helmet with a plume of peacock feathers, its metal brightly polished as if it were waiting for its owner. A boy of about five or six sat in the chair on his right. He wore a black brocade doublet embroidered all over with pearls as if it were covered in tears. This must be the birthday boy: Jacopo, grandson of the Prince of Sighs, but the Adderhead's grandson too.\n\nThe child looked bored. He was swinging his short legs restlessly as if he could hardly prevent himself running outside to the entertainers, and the sweet cakes, and the armchair waiting for him on the platform adorned with prickly bindweed and roses. His grandfather, on the other hand, looked as if he never intended to rise from his chair again. He sat there as powerless as a puppet, in black robes that were too large for him now, as if hypnotized by the eyes of his dead son. Not particularly tall but fat enough for two men, that was how Resa had described him; seldom seen without something to eat in his greasy fingers, always rather breathless because of the weight his legs, which were not especially strong, had to carry, and yet always in the best of tempers.\n\nThe Prince whom Meggie saw now, sitting in his dimly lit castle, was nothing like that. His face was pale and his skin hung in wrinkled folds, as if it had once belonged to a larger man. Grief had melted the fat from his limbs, and his expression was fixed, as if it had frozen on the day when they brought him the news of his son's death. Only his eyes still showed his horror and bewilderment at what life had done to him.\n\nApart from his grandson and the guards standing silent in the background, there were only two women with him. One kept her head humbly bent like a maidservant, although she wore a dress fit for a princess. Her mistress stood between the Prince of Sighs and the empty chair on which the plumed helmet lay. Violante, thought Meggie. The Adderhead's daughter and Cosimo's widow. Her Ugliness, as people called her. Fenoglio had told Meggie about her, emphasizing the fact that she was indeed one of his creations, but that he had never intended her to be more than a minor character: the unhappy child of an unhappy mother and a very bad father. 'It's absurd to marry her to Cosimo the Fair!' Fenoglio had said. 'But as I told you, this story is getting out of hand!'\n\nViolante wore black, like her son and her father-in-law. Her dress too was embroidered with pearly tears, but their precious lustre didn't suit her particularly well. Her face looked as if someone had drawn it on a stained piece of paper with a pencil too pale for the purpose, and the dark silk of her dress made her look even plainer. The only thing you noticed about her face was the purple birthmark, as big as a poppy, disfiguring her left cheek.\n\nWhen Meggie and Fenoglio came across the dark hall, Violante was just bending down to her father-in-law, speaking to him quietly. The Prince's expression did not change, but finally he nodded, and the boy slipped down from his chair in relief.\n\nFenoglio signalled to Meggie to stay where she was. His head respectfully bent, then he stepped aside, and unobtrusively signalled to Meggie to do the same. Violante nodded to Fenoglio as she passed him, her head held high, but she didn't even look at Meggie. She ignored the stone statues of her dead husband too. Her Ugliness seemed to be in a hurry to escape this dark hall \u2013 in almost as much of a hurry as her son. The maid who followed her passed so close to Meggie that the servant girl's dress almost touched her. She didn't seem much older than Meggie herself. Her hair had a reddish tinge, as if firelight were falling on it, and she wore it loose, as only the women among the strolling players usually did in this world. Meggie had never seen lovelier hair.\n\n'You're late, Fenoglio!' said the Prince of Sighs as soon as the doors had closed behind the women and his grandson. His voice still came out of his mouth with an effort, like a very fat man's. 'Did you run short of words?'\n\n'I won't run short of words until my last breath, my Prince,' replied Fenoglio, with a bow. Meggie wasn't sure whether to copy him. In the end she decided on a clumsy curtsey.\n\nAt close quarters the Prince of Sighs looked even more fragile. His skin resembled withered leaves; the whites of his eyes like yellowed paper. 'Who's the girl?' he asked, bending his weary gaze on her. 'Your maid? Too young to be your lover, isn't she?'\n\nMeggie felt the blood rise to her face.\n\n'Your Grace, what an idea!' said Fenoglio, dismissing it and putting an arm around her shoulders. 'This is my granddaughter who's come to visit me. My son hopes I shall find her a husband, and what better place for her to look for one than at the wonderful festivities you're holding today?'\n\nMeggie blushed more than ever, but she forced herself to smile.\n\n'You have a son, do you?' The voice of the Prince of Sighs sounded envious, as if he begrudged any of his subjects the luck of having a living son. 'It's not wise to let your children go too far away,' he murmured, without taking his eyes off Meggie. 'Only too likely that they may never come back!'\n\nMeggie didn't know where to look. 'I'll be going home soon,' she said. 'My father knows that.' I hope, she added in her mind.\n\n'Yes. Yes, of course. She'll be going back. When the time comes.' Fenoglio's voice sounded impatient. 'But now we come to the reason for my visit.' He took the roll of parchment so carefully sealed by Rosenquartz from his belt, and climbed the steps to the princely chair with his head respectfully bent. The Prince of Sighs seemed to be in pain. He tightened his lips as he leaned forward to take the parchment, and cool though it was in the hall, sweat stood out on his forehead. Meggie remembered what Minerva had said: This Prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death. Fenoglio seemed to think so too.\n\n'Aren't you feeling well, my Prince?' he asked with concern.\n\n'No, I am not!' snapped the Prince, annoyed. 'Unfortunately the Adderhead noticed it today too.' He leaned back, sighing, and struck the side of his chair with his hand. 'Tullio!'\n\nA servant clad in black, like the Prince, shot out from behind the chair. He would have looked like a rather short human being but for the fine fur on his face and hands. Tullio reminded Meggie of the brownies in Elinor's garden who had turned to ashes, although he clearly had more of the human being about him.\n\n'Go and get me a minstrel \u2013 one who can read!' ordered the Prince. 'He can sing me Fenoglio's song.' And Tullio scurried off, as willing as a puppy.\n\n'Did you send for Nettle, as I advised?' Fenoglio's voice sounded urgent, but the Prince just waved the idea angrily away.\n\n'Nettle? What for? She wouldn't come, or if she did it would probably just be to poison me, because I had a couple of oaks felled for my son's coffin. How can I help it if she'd rather talk to trees than human beings? None of them can help me, not Nettle nor any of the physicians, stonecutters and boneknitters whose evil-smelling potions I've swallowed. No herb grows that can cure grief.' His fingers trembled as he broke Fenoglio's seal, and all was so still in the darkened hall as he read that Meggie heard the candle flames hiss as the wicks burned down.\n\nAlmost soundlessly, the Prince moved his lips as his clouded eyes followed Fenoglio's words. 'He will awake no more, oh never more,' Meggie heard him whisper. She looked sideways at Fenoglio, who flushed guiltily when he noticed her glance. Yes, he had stolen the lines, and certainly not from any poet of this world.\n\nThe Laughing Prince raised his head and wiped a tear from his clouded eyes. 'Fair words, Fenoglio,' he said bitterly, 'yes, you know all about those. But when will any of you poets find the words to open the door through which Death takes us?'\n\nFenoglio looked round at the statues. He stared at them, lost in thought as if he were seeing them for the first time. 'I am sorry, but there are no such words, my Prince,' he said. 'Death is all silence. Even poets have no words once they have passed the door Death closes behind us. If I may, then, I would humbly beg your leave to go. My landlady's children are waiting outside, and if I don't catch them again soon they may well run off with the strolling players, for like all children they dream of taming bears and dancing between heaven and hell on a tightrope.'\n\n'Yes, yes, go away!' said the Prince of Sighs, wearily waving his beringed hand. 'I'll send to let you know when I want words again. They are sweet-tasting poison, but still, they're the only way to make even pain taste bittersweet for a few moments.'\n\nHe will awake no more, oh never more... Elinor would certainly have known who wrote those lines, thought Meggie, as she walked back down the dark hall with Fenoglio. The herbs scattered on the floor rustled under her boots. Their fragrance hung in the cool air as if to remind the sad Prince of the world waiting for him out there. But perhaps it reminded him only of the flowers in the crypt where Cosimo lay.\n\nAt the door, Tullio came to meet them with the minstrel, hopping and leaping in front of the man like a trained, shaggy animal. The minstrel wore bells at his waist and had a lute on his back. He was a tall, thin fellow with a sullen set to his mouth, and so garishly clothed that he would have put a peacock's tail to shame.\n\n'That fellow can actually read, can he?' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he pushed her through the door. 'I don't believe it! What's more, his singing sounds as sweet as the cawing of a crow. Let's be off before he gets his great horsy teeth into my poor lines of verse!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Ten Years",
                "text": "\u2003Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse\n\n\u2003Without a rider on a road at night.\n\n\u2003The mind sits listening and hears it pass.\n\n\u2014Wallace Stephens, 'The Pure Good of Theory', Collected Poems\n\nDustfinger was leaning against the castle wall, behind the stalls where people were crowding. The aroma of honey and hot chestnuts rose to his nostrils, and high above him went the tightrope-walker whose blue figure, from a distance, reminded him so much of Cloud-Dancer. He was holding a long pole with tiny birds sitting on it, birds as red as drops of blood, and when the dancer changed direction \u2013 stepping lightly, as if standing on a swaying rope was the most natural thing in the world \u2013 the birds flew up and fluttered around him, twittering shrilly. The marten on Dustfinger's shoulder looked up at them and licked his lips. He was still very young, smaller and more delicate than Gwin, not half as likely to bite, and most important of all he didn't fear fire. Absently, Dustfinger tickled his horned head. He had caught him behind the stable soon after his arrival at Roxane's house, when the marten was trying to stalk her chickens, and had called him Jink, because of the way he jinked as he moved, dodging and darting before jumping up at Dustfinger so suddenly that he almost knocked him over. Are you crazy? he had asked himself when he lured the animal to him with a fresh egg. He's a marten. How do you know that it makes any difference to Death what name he bears? But he'd kept Jink all the same. Perhaps he had left all his fears behind in the other world: his fears, his loneliness, his ill fortune...\n\nJink learned fast; he was soon leaping through the flames as if he'd been doing it all his life. It would be easy to earn a few coins with him at the markets \u2013 with him and the boy.\n\nThe marten nuzzled Dustfinger's cheek. Some acrobats were building a human tower in front of the empty platform that still awaited the birthday boy. Farid had tried persuading Dustfinger to perform too, but he didn't want people staring at him today. He wanted to stare himself, see his fill of all he'd missed so long. So he was not in fire-eater's costume either, but wore Roxane's dead husband's clothes, which she had given him. They had obviously been almost the same size. Poor fellow: neither Orpheus nor Silvertongue could bring him back from where he was now.\n\n'Why don't you earn the money today for a change?' he had asked Farid. The boy had turned first red and then white as chalk with pride \u2013 and shot away into the turmoil. He was a quick learner. Only a tiny morsel of the fiery honey, and Farid was talking to the flames as if he'd been born with their language on his tongue. Of course, they didn't yet spring from the ground when the boy snapped his fingers as readily as for Dustfinger himself, but when Farid called to the fire in a low voice it would speak to him \u2013 condescendingly, sometimes with mockery, but still it answered him.\n\n'Oh, but he is your son!' Roxane had said when Farid had drawn a bucket of water from the well early in the morning, cursing, to cool his burned fingers. 'He's not,' Dustfinger had replied \u2013 and had seen in her eyes that she didn't believe him.\n\nBefore they set off for the castle, he had practised a couple of tricks with Farid, and Jehan had watched. But when Dustfinger beckoned him closer, he ran away. Farid had laughed out loud at him for it, but Dustfinger put his hand over his mouth. 'The fire devoured his father, have you forgotten?' he had whispered, and Farid bowed his head, ashamed.\n\nHow proudly he stood there among the other entertainers! Dustfinger pushed his own way past the stalls to get a better view. Farid had taken off his shirt as Dustfinger himself sometimes did \u2013 burning cloth was more dangerous than a small burn on the skin, and you could easily protect your naked body against the licking tongues of fire with grease. The boy put on a good act, such a good one that even the traders stared at him spellbound, and Dustfinger took his chance to free a few fairies from the cages where they had been imprisoned, to be sold to some fool as lucky charms. No wonder Roxane suspects you of being his father, he told himself. Your chest swells with pride when you look at him. Next to Farid, a couple of clowns were exchanging broad jokes, to his right the Black Prince was wrestling with his bear, but all the same more and more people stopped to look at the boy standing there playing with fire, oblivious of all around him. Dustfinger watched as Sootbird lowered his torches and looked enviously their way. He'd never learn. He was still as poor a fire-eater as he'd been ten years ago.\n\nFarid bowed, and a shower of coins fell into the wooden bowl that Roxane had given him. He glanced proudly at Dustfinger, as hungry for praise as a dog for a bone, and when Dustfinger clapped his hands he flushed red with delight. What a child he still was, even though he had proudly shown Dustfinger the first stubble on his chin a few months ago!\n\nDustfinger was making his way past two farmers haggling over a couple of piglets when the gate to the Inner Castle opened again \u2013 this time not, as before, for the Adderhead, when Dustfinger himself had only just managed to hide from the Piper's searching glance behind a cake stall. No. Obviously the birthday boy himself was finally appearing at his own festivities \u2013 and his mother would accompany the child, with her maidservant. How fast his foolish heart was suddenly beating! 'She has your hair,' Roxane had said, 'and my eyes.'\n\nThe Prince's pipers made the most of their big scene. Proud as turkey-cocks they stood there, long-stemmed trumpets held aloft in the air. The strolling players, being their own masters, disapproved without exception of musicians who sold their art to a single lord. In exchange, the pipers were better dressed, not in motley array like the players on the road, but in their Prince's colours. For the pipers of the Prince of Sighs, that meant green and gold. His daughter-in-law wore black. Cosimo the Fair had been dead for barely a year, but his young widow would certainly have been courted by several suitors already, in spite of the mark, dark as a burn, that disfigured her face. The crowd came thronging around the platform as soon as Violante and her son had taken their seats. Dustfinger had to climb on an empty barrel to catch a glimpse of her maidservant beyond all those heads and bodies.\n\nBrianna was standing behind the boy. Despite her bright hair, she was like her mother. The dress she wore made her look very grown up, yet Dustfinger still saw in her face traces of the little girl who had tried to snatch burning torches from his hand, or stamped her foot angrily when he wouldn't let her catch the sparks he brought raining down from the sky.\n\nTen years. Ten years he'd spent in the wrong story. Ten years in which Death had taken one of his daughters, leaving behind nothing but memories as pale and indistinct as if she had never lived at all, while his other daughter had grown up, laughing and weeping through all those years, and he had not been there. Hypocrite! he told himself, unable to take his eyes from Brianna's face. Are you trying to tell yourself you were a devoted father before Silvertongue lured you into his story?\n\nCosimo's son laughed out loud. His stubby finger pointed first at one, then at another of the entertainers, and he caught the flowers that the women players threw him. How old was he? Five? Six?\n\nBrianna had been the same age when Silvertongue's voice had enticed him away. She had only come up to his elbow, and she'd weighed so little that he scarcely noticed when she climbed up on his back. When he forgot time yet again and stayed away for weeks on end, in places with names she had never heard, she used to hit him with her little fists and throw the presents he brought her at his feet. Then she would slip out of bed the same night to retrieve them after all: coloured ribbons as soft as rabbit fur, fabric flowers to put in her hair, little pipes that could imitate the song of a lark or the hoot of an owl. She had never told him so, of course, she was proud \u2013 even prouder than her mother \u2013 but he always knew where she put the presents \u2013 in a bag among her clothes. Did she still have it?\n\nShe had kept his presents, yes, but they could never bring a smile to her face when he had stayed away for a long time. Only fire could do that, and for a moment \u2013 a seductive moment \u2013 Dustfinger was tempted to step out of the gaping crowd, take his place among the other entertainers performing tricks for the Prince's grandson, and summon fire just for his daughter's sake. But he stood where he was, invisible behind the throng, watching her smooth back her hair with the palm of her hand in the same way as her mother did so often, unobtrusively rubbing her nose and shifting from foot to foot, as if she'd much rather be dancing down there than standing stiffly here.\n\n'Eat him, bear! Eat him up this minute! So he really is back, but do you think he's planning to go and see an old friend?'\n\nDustfinger spun round so suddenly that he almost fell off the barrel where he was still standing. The Black Prince was looking up at him, with his bear behind him. Dustfinger had hoped to meet him here, surrounded by strangers, rather than in the strolling players' camp, where there were too many who would ask where he had been... The two of them had known each other since they were the same age as the Prince's grandson enthroned in his chair on the platform \u2013 the orphaned sons of strolling players, adult before their time, and Dustfinger had missed that black face almost as much as Roxane's.\n\n'So will he really eat me if I get off this barrel?' The Prince laughed. His laughter sounded almost as carefree as in the old days. 'Maybe. After all, he's noticed that I really do have a grudge against you for not coming to see me. And didn't you scorch his fur last time you two met?'\n\nJink crouched on Dustfinger's shoulder as he jumped off the barrel, chattering excitedly in his ear. 'Don't worry, the bear doesn't eat your sort!' Dustfinger whispered to him \u2013 and hugged the Prince as hard as if a single embrace could make up for ten years.\n\n'You still smell more of bear than man.'\n\n'And you smell of fire. Now tell me, where've you been?' The Black Prince held Dustfinger at arm's length and looked at him as if he could read in his face everything that had happened during his friend's absence. 'So the fire-raisers didn't string you up, then, as many folk say. You look too healthy for that. What about the other story \u2013 that the Adderhead locked you up in his dankest dungeon? Or did you turn yourself into a tree for a while, as some songs say, a tree with burning leaves deep in the Wayless Wood?'\n\nDustfinger smiled. 'I'd have liked that. But I assure you, even you wouldn't believe the real story.'\n\nA whisper ran through the crowd. Looking over all the heads, Dustfinger saw Farid, red in the face, acknowledging their applause. Her Ugliness's son was clapping so hard that he almost fell off his chair. But Farid was searching the throng for Dustfinger's face. He smiled at the boy \u2013 and sensed that the Black Prince was looking at him thoughtfully.\n\n'So the boy really is yours?' he said. 'No, don't worry, I'll ask no more questions. I know you like to have your secrets, and I don't suppose that has changed much. All the same, I want to hear the story you spoke of, some time. And you owe us a performance too. We can all do with something to cheer us up. Times are bad, even on this side of the forest, though it may not seem so today...'\n\n'Yes, so I've heard already. And the Adderhead obviously doesn't love you any better than before. What have you done, to make him threaten you with the gallows? Did the bear take one of his stags?' Dustfinger stroked Jink's bristling fur. The marten never took his eyes off the bear.\n\n'Oh, believe me, the Adderhead scarcely guesses half of what I do, or I'd have been dangling from the battlements of the Castle of Night long ago!'\n\n'Oh yes?' The tightrope-walker was sitting on his rope above them, surrounded by his birds and swinging his legs, as if the milling crowd down below was nothing to do with him. 'Prince, I don't like that look in your eye,' said Dustfinger, looking up at the man walking the rope. 'You'd do better not to provoke the Adderhead any more, or he'll have you hunted down just as he's hunted others. And then you won't be safe on this side of the forest either!'\n\nSomeone was pulling at his sleeve. Dustfinger turned, so abruptly that Farid flinched back in alarm. 'I'm sorry!' he stammered, nodding rather uncertainly to the Prince. 'But Meggie's here. With Fenoglio!' He sounded as excited as if he had met the Laughing Prince in person.\n\n'Where?' Dustfinger looked round, but Farid had eyes only for the bear, who had affectionately placed his muzzle on the Black Prince's head. The Prince smiled and pushed the bear's muzzle away.\n\n'Where?' Dustfinger repeated impatiently. For Fenoglio was the very last person he wanted to meet.\n\n'Over there, just behind the platform!'\n\nDustfinger looked the way Farid's finger was pointing. Sure enough, there was the old man, with two children, just as he had first seen him. Silvertongue's daughter stood beside him. She had grown tall \u2013 and even more like her mother. Dustfinger uttered a quiet curse. What were those two after, here in his story? They had as little to do with it as he had to do with theirs. Oh yes? mocked a voice inside him. The old man won't see it that way. Did you forget he claims to have created everything here?\n\n'I don't want to see him,' he told Farid. 'Bad luck clings to that old man, and worse than bad luck too, mark my words.'\n\n'Is the boy talking about the Inkweaver?' The Prince came so close to Dustfinger's side that the marten hissed at him. 'What do you have against him? He writes good songs.'\n\n'He writes other things as well.' And who knows what he's already written about you, Dustfinger added in his mind. A few well-chosen words, Prince, and you're a dead man!\n\nFarid was still looking at the girl. 'What about Meggie? Don't you want to see her either?' His voice sounded husky with disappointment. 'She asked how you were.'\n\n'Give her my regards. She'll understand. Off you go, then! I can see you're still in love with her. How was it you once described her eyes? Little pieces of the sky!'\n\nFarid blushed scarlet. 'Stop it!' he said angrily.\n\nBut Dustfinger took him by the shoulders and turned him round. 'Go on!' he said. 'Give her my regards, but tell her to keep my name out of her magic mouth, understand?'\n\nFarid cast a last glance at the bear, nodded \u2013 and strolled back to the girl very slowly, as if to show that he wasn't in any hurry to reach her. She was going to great pains herself not to look his way too often, as she fidgeted awkwardly with the sleeves of her dress. She looked as if she belonged here, a maidservant from a not particularly prosperous home, perhaps the daughter of a farmer or a craftsman. Well, her father was indeed a craftsman, wasn't he? If one with special talents. Perhaps she was looking around rather too freely. Girls here usually kept their heads bent \u2013 and sometimes they were already married by her age. Did his daughter Brianna have anything like that in mind? Roxane hadn't said so.\n\n'That boy's good. Better than Sootbird already.' The Prince put out his hand to the marten \u2013 and withdrew it when Jink bared his tiny teeth.\n\n'That's not difficult.' Dustfinger let his eyes wander to Fenoglio. So they called him Inkweaver here. How contented he looked, the man who had written Dustfinger's death. A knife in the back, plunged so deep that it found his heart, that was what Fenoglio had planned for him. Dustfinger instinctively reached to touch the spot between his shoulder-blades. Yes; he had read them already, after all, Fenoglio's deadly words, one night in the other world when he had been lying awake, trying in vain to conjure up Roxane's face in his memory. You can't go back! He had kept hearing Meggie's voice saying those words. One of Capricorn's men is waiting for you in the book. They want to kill Gwin, and you try to help him, so they kill you instead. He had taken the book out of his rucksack with trembling fingers, had opened it and searched the pages for his death. And then he'd read what it said there in black and white, over and over again. After that he had decided to leave Gwin behind if he should ever come back here... Dustfinger stroked Jink's bushy tail. No, perhaps it had not been a good idea to catch another marten.\n\n'What's the matter? You look as if the hangman had given you the nod all of a sudden.' The Black Prince put an arm around his shoulders, while his bear sniffed curiously at Dustfinger's rucksack. 'The boy must have told you how we picked him up in the forest? He was in a state of great agitation, said he was here to warn you. And when he said of whom, many of my men's hands went to their knives.'\n\nBasta. Dustfinger ran a finger over his scarred cheek. 'Yes, he's probably back too.'\n\n'With his master?'\n\n'No, Capricorn's dead. I saw him die myself.'\n\nThe Black Prince put his hand in his bear's mouth and tickled its tongue. 'Well, that's good news. And there wouldn't be much for him to come back to, just a few charred walls. Only old Nettle sometimes goes there. She swears you can't find better yarrow anywhere than in the fire-raisers' old fortress.'\n\nDustfinger saw Fenoglio glancing his way. Meggie was looking in the same direction too. He quickly turned his back on them.\n\n'We have a camp near there now \u2013 you'll remember the old brownies' caves,' the Prince went on, lowering his voice. 'Since Cosimo smoked out the fire-raisers those caves have made a good shelter again. Only the strolling players know about them. The old and frail, cripples, women tired of living on the road with their children \u2013 they can all stay and rest there for a while. I tell you what, the Secret Camp would be a good place for you to tell me your story! The one you say is so hard to believe. I've often been there for the bear's sake. He gets grouchy when he spends too long between city walls. Roxane can tell you how to find the place; she knows her way about the forest almost as well as you by now.'\n\n'I know the old brownie caves,' said Dustfinger. He had hidden from Capricorn's men there many times, but he wasn't sure that he really wanted to tell the Prince about the last ten years.\n\n'Six torches!' Farid was beside him again, wiping soot off his fingers on his trousers. 'I juggled with six torches and I didn't drop one. I think she liked it.'\n\nDustfinger suppressed a smile. 'Very likely.' Two of the strolling players had drawn the Prince aside. Dustfinger wasn't sure whether he knew them, but he turned his back, to be on the safe side.\n\n'Did you know everyone's talking about you?' Farid's eyes were round as coins with excitement. 'They're all saying you're back. And I think some of them have recognized you.'\n\n'Oh, have they?' Dustfinger looked uneasily around. His daughter was still standing behind the little prince's chair. He hadn't told Farid about her. It was bad enough having the boy jealous of Roxane.\n\n'They say there was never a fire-eater to match you! The other one there, Sootbird they call him \u2013' Farid put a piece of bread in Jink's mouth \u2013 'he asked about you, but I didn't know if you wanted to meet him. He's really bad at it, he doesn't know how to do anything \u2013 but he says he knows you. Is that right?'\n\n'Yes, but all the same I'd rather not meet him.' Dustfinger turned. The tightrope-walker had come down from his rope at last. Cloud-Dancer was talking to him and pointing Dustfinger's way. Time to disappear. He would be happy to see them all again, but not here, and not today...\n\n'I've had enough of this,' he told Farid. 'You stay and earn us a few more coins. I'll be at Roxane's if you want me.'\n\nUp on the platform, Her Ugliness was handing her son a gold-embroidered purse. The child put his plump hand into it and threw the entertainers some coins. They hastily bent to pick them out of the dust. But Dustfinger cast a last look at the Black Prince and went away.\n\nWhat would Roxane say when she heard that he hadn't exchanged a single word with his daughter? He knew the answer. She would laugh. She knew only too well what a coward he could be."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cold and White",
                "text": "\u2003I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night\n\n\u2003Just so I can extend pain\n\n\u2003Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada's wing\n\n\u2014Xi Murong, 'Poetry's Value', Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry\n\nThere they were again. Mo felt them coming closer, he saw them even though his eyes were closed \u2013 white women, their faces so pale, their eyes colourless and cold. That was all there was in the world, white shadows in the dark and the pain in his breast, red pain. Every breath brought it back. Breathing. Hadn't it once been perfectly easy? Now it was difficult, as difficult as if they had buried him already, heaping earth on his breast, on the pain burning and throbbing there. He couldn't move. His body was useless, a burning prison. He wanted to open his eyes, but his lids weighed down as heavily as if they were made of stone. Everything was lost. Only words remained: pain, fear, death. White words. No colour in them, no life. Only the pain was red.\n\nIs this death? Mo wondered. This void, full of faint shadows? Sometimes he thought he felt the fingers of the pale women reaching into his agonized breast as if to crush his heart. Their breath wafted over his hot face, and they were whispering a name, but it was not the name he remembered as his own. Bluejay, they whispered.\n\nTheir voices seemed to be made of cold yearning, nothing but cold yearning. It's easy, they whispered, you don't even have to open your eyes. No more pain, no darkness. Stand up, they whispered, it's time to go, and they entwined their white fingers with his. Their fingers were wonderfully cool on his burning skin.\n\nBut the other voice wouldn't let him go. Indistinct, barely audible, as if it came from far, far away, it penetrated the whispering. It sounded strange, almost discordant among the whispering shadows. Be quiet, he wanted to tell it with his tongue of stone. Be quiet, please, let me go! For nothing but that voice kept him imprisoned in the burning house that was his body. But the voice went on.\n\nHe knew it, but where from? He couldn't remember. It was long ago that he had last heard it, too long ago..."
            },
            {
                "title": "In Elinor's Cellar",
                "text": "\u2003The lofty bookshelves sag\n\n\u2003Under thousands of sleeping souls\n\n\u2003Silence, hopeful \u2013\n\n\u2003Every time I open a book, a soul is awakened.\n\n\u2014Xi Chuan, 'Books', New Generation\n\nI ought to have furnished my cellar more comfortably, thought Elinor, watching Darius pump up the air mattress he had found behind one of the storage shelves for her. But how could she have guessed that some dreadful day she'd have to sleep down here, while a bespectacled, moon-faced man sat up in her wonderful library with his slobbering dog, playing master of the house? The wretched animal had almost eaten the fairy who had slipped out of Orpheus's words. A blue fairy and a lark fluttering in panic against the window-panes, that was all that had come out of the book \u2013 to replace four people! 'Look at that!' Orpheus had triumphantly announced. 'Two for four! There are fewer and fewer coming out, and one day I'll manage not to let anything out of a book at all.' Conceited pig! As if anyone was interested in who or what came out of the book, when Resa and Mortimer had gone! And Mortola and Basta...\n\nQuick, Elinor, think of something else!\n\nIf only she could have hoped that someone useful would soon come knocking on her front door! But unfortunately such a visitor was highly improbable. She had never had much to do with her neighbours, certainly not since Darius had taken over the care of her books and Mo, Resa and Meggie had moved in. What more did she need in the way of company?\n\nHer nose began to prickle ominously. That's the wrong way to think, Elinor, she warned herself \u2013 as if she'd been able to think of anything else these last few hours. They're all right! she kept telling herself. You'd have sensed it if anything had happened to them. Wasn't that what all the stories said? You felt it, like a pang in your heart, when something happened to someone you loved?\n\nDarius smiled hesitantly at her as his foot went tirelessly up and down on the pump. The air mattress already looked like a caterpillar, a huge, squashed caterpillar. How was she supposed to sleep on that thing? She'd roll off and land on the cold cement floor.\n\n'Darius!' she said. 'We must do something! We can't simply let them shut us up here while Mortola...'\n\nOh God, how that old witch had looked at Mortimer. Don't think about it, Elinor! Just don't think about it! Or about Basta and his gun. Or Meggie wandering through the Wayless Wood all alone. I'm sure she's alone! A giant will have stepped on that boy and crushed him by now... It was a good thing Darius didn't know the silly way her thoughts were getting all mixed up, making the tears start to come all the time...\n\n'Darius!' Elinor whispered, for the man built like a wardrobe would certainly be on guard outside the door. 'Darius, it's all up to you! You must read them back!'\n\nDarius shook his head so vigorously that his glasses almost slipped off his nose. 'No!' His voice was trembling like a leaf in the wind, and his foot began pumping again as if that stupid mattress were the most important thing in the world. Then, very suddenly, he stopped and hid his face in his hands. 'You know what will happen!' Elinor heard him say in a stifled voice. 'You know what will happen to them if I read while I'm afraid.'\n\nElinor sighed.\n\nYes, she knew. Distorted faces, stiff legs, a lost voice... and of course he was afraid. Probably even more afraid than she was, for Darius had known Mortola and Basta considerably longer...\n\n'Yes. Yes, I know. All right,' she murmured, and began abstractedly straightening a few cans on the shelves \u2013 tomato sauce, ravioli (not a particularly nice brand), red kidney beans \u2013 Mortimer loved red kidney beans. There it came again, that prickling in her nose.\n\n'Very well!' she said, turning round resolutely. 'Then that Orpheus will have to do it.' How composed and sure of herself she sounded! She was obviously a gifted actress, thought Elinor, she'd realized that before, back in Capricorn's church when all had seemed lost... indeed, now that she came to think of it, everything had seemed rather gloomier then, if anything.\n\nDarius stared at her, bewildered.\n\n'Don't look at me like that, for God's sake!' she hissed. 'I don't know how we can make him do it either. Not yet.'\n\nShe began pacing up and down, up and down, between the shelves full of cans and preserving jars.\n\n'He's vain, Darius!' she whispered. 'Very vain. Did you see how he changed colour when he realized that Meggie had done something he's tried and failed to do for years? I'm sure he'd like to ask her\u2014' She stopped suddenly and looked at Darius.\n\n'\u2014how she managed it.' Darius stopped pumping.\n\n'Yes! But Meggie would have to be here herself to tell him that.' They looked at each other.\n\n'That's how we'll do it, Darius!' Elinor whispered. 'We'll get Orpheus to bring Meggie back, and then she can read Mortimer and Resa back too, with the same words he used for her! That ought to work!' She began pacing up and down again like the caged panther in the poem she liked so much... except that the look in her eyes was no longer hopeless. She must lay her plans well. That man Orpheus was clever. And so are you, Elinor, she told herself. Just try it!\n\nShe couldn't help it; she started thinking of the way Mortola had looked at Mortimer again. Suppose it was much too late by the time she...?\n\nOh, stop it!\n\nElinor thrust out her chin, pulled her shoulders back \u2013 and marched firmly towards the cellar door. She hammered on the white-painted metal with the flat of her hand. 'Hey!' she called. 'Hey, you, wardrobe-man! Open this door! I have to speak to that man Orpheus! At once.'\n\nBut nothing stirred on the other side of the door \u2013 and Elinor let her hand drop again. For a moment she entertained the dreadful thought that the two men had gone and left them alone down here, locked in... and without so much as a can opener, thought Elinor. What a ridiculous way to die. Starving among piles of canned food. She was just raising both hands to hammer on the door again when she heard footsteps outside. Footsteps going away, up the stairs leading from the cellar to the entrance hall.\n\n'Hey!' she shouted, so loudly that Darius, standing behind her, jumped. 'Hey, come back, you hulking great wardrobe! Open this door! I want to talk to Orpheus!'\n\nBut all was quiet on the other side of the door. Elinor fell to her knees in front of it. She felt Darius come up beside her and put a hand hesitantly on her shoulder. 'He'll be back,' he said quietly. 'At least they're still here, aren't they?' Then he returned to the air mattress.\n\nBut Elinor sat there, her back against the cold cellar door, listening to the silence. You couldn't even hear the birds down here, not the smallest chirp of a cricket. Meggie will fetch them back, she thought. Meggie will fetch them back! But suppose by now her mother and father are both...\n\nNot the way to think, Elinor. Not the way to think.\n\nShe closed her eyes and heard Darius begin pumping again.\n\nI'd have sensed it, she thought. Yes, I would. I'd have sensed it if anything had happened to them. It says so in all the stories, and surely they can't all be lying!"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Camp in the Forest",
                "text": "\u2003I thought it said in every tick:\n\n\u2003I am so sick, so sick, so sick;\n\n\u2003O death, come quick, come quick, come quick.\n\n\u2014Frances Cornford, 'The Watch', Collected Poems\n\nResa didn't know how long she had been sitting there, just sitting in the dimly lit, dark cave where the strolling players slept, holding Mo's hand. One of the women players brought her something to eat, and now and then one of the children crept in, leaned against the cave wall and listened to what she was telling Mo in a quiet voice \u2013 about Meggie and Elinor, Darius, the library and its books, the workshop where he cured books of sickness and wounds as bad as his own... How strange the strolling players must find her stories of another world that they had never seen. And how very strange they must think her, to talk to someone who lay so still, his eyes closed as if he would never open them again.\n\nJust as the fifth White Woman appeared on the steps, the old woman had returned to Capricorn's fortress with three men. It had not been so very far for her to go. Resa had seen guards standing among the trees as they entered the camp. The people these men were guarding were the cripples and the old folk, women with small children, and obviously there were also some in the camp who were simply resting from the stress and strain of life on the open road.\n\nWhen Resa asked where food and clothing for all these people came from, one of the strolling players who had come to fetch Mo replied: 'From the Prince.' And when she asked what prince he meant, he had put a black stone into her hand by way of answer.\n\nShe was known as Nettle, the old woman who had so suddenly appeared at the gate of Capricorn's fortress. Everyone treated her with respect, but a little fear was mingled with it too. Resa had to help her when she cauterized Mo's wound. She still felt sick when she thought of it. Then she had helped the old woman to bind up the wound again, and memorized all her directions. 'If he's still breathing in three days' time he may live,' she had said before leaving them alone again, in the cave that offered protection from wild beasts, the sun and the rain, but not from fear or from black, despairing thoughts.\n\nThree days. It grew dark and then light again outside, light and then dark again, and every time Nettle came back and bent over Mo, Resa sought her face desperately for some sign of hope. But the old woman's features remained expressionless. The days went by, and Mo was still breathing, but he still wouldn't open his eyes.\n\nThe cave smelled of mushrooms, the brownies' favourite food. Very likely a whole pack of them had once lived here. Now the mushroom aroma mingled with the scent of dead leaves. The strolling players had strewn the cold floor of the cave with them: dead leaves and fragrant herbs \u2013 thyme, meadowsweet, woodruff. Resa rubbed the dry leaves between her fingers as she sat there cooling Mo's forehead, which was not cold any more but hot, terribly hot... the scent of thyme reminded her of a fairy tale he had read to her long, long ago, before he found out that his voice could bring someone like Capricorn out of the words on the page. Wild thyme should not be brought indoors, the story had said, bad luck comes with it. Resa threw the hard stems away and brushed the scent off her fingers on to her dress.\n\nOne of the women brought her something to eat again, and sat beside her for a while in silence, as if hoping that her presence would bring a little comfort. Soon after that three of the men came in too, but they stayed standing at the entrance of the cave, looking at her and Mo from a distance. They whispered to each other as they glanced at the pair of them.\n\n'Are we welcome here?' Resa asked Nettle on one of her silent visits. 'I think they're talking about us.'\n\n'Let them!' was all the old woman said. 'I told them you were attacked by footpads, but of course that doesn't satisfy them. A beautiful woman, a man with a strange wound, where do they come from? What happened? They're curious. And if you're wise, you won't let too many of them see that scar on his arm.'\n\n'Why not?' Resa looked at her, baffled.\n\nThe old woman scrutinized her as if she wanted to see into her heart. 'Well, if you really don't know, then that's just as well,' she said at last. 'And let them talk. What else are they to do? Some come here to wait for death, others for life to begin at last, others again live only on the stories they are told. Tightrope-walkers, fire-eaters, peasants, princes \u2013 they're all the same, flesh and blood and a heart that knows it will stop beating one day.'\n\nFire-eaters. Resa's heart leaped when Nettle mentioned them. Of course. Why hadn't she thought of it before?\n\n'Please!' she said, when the old woman reached the entrance of the cave again. 'You must know many strolling players. Is there one who calls himself Dustfinger?'\n\nNettle turned as slowly as if she were still deciding whether to answer this. 'Dustfinger?' she finally replied, in unforthcoming tones. 'You'll scarcely find one of the strolling players who doesn't know of him, but no one's seen him for years. Although there are rumours that he's back...'\n\nOh yes, he's back, thought Resa, and he will help me just as I helped him in the other world.\n\n'I must send him a message!' She heard the desperation in her own voice. 'Please!'\n\nNettle looked at her without any expression on her brown face. 'Cloud-Dancer is here,' she said at last. 'His leg is aching again, but as soon as it's better he'll be on his way. See if he'll ask around for you and deliver your message.'\n\nThen she had gone.\n\nCloud-Dancer.\n\nDarkness was falling again outside, and with the fading light men, women and children came into the cave and lay down on the dead leaves to sleep \u2013 away from her, as if Mo's stillness might be catching. One of the women brought her a torch. It cast quivering shadows on the rocky walls, shadows that made faces and passed black fingers over Mo's pallid face. The fire did not keep the White Women away, although it was said that they both desired and feared it. They appeared in the cave again and again, like pale reflections with faces made of mist. They came closer and disappeared again, presumably driven away by the sharp and bitter smell of the leaves that Nettle had scattered around the place where Mo was lying. 'It will keep them off,' the old woman had said, 'but you must watch carefully all the same.'\n\nOne of the children was crying in his sleep. His mother stroked his hair to comfort him, and Resa couldn't help thinking of Meggie. Was she alone, or was the boy still with her? Was she happy, sad, sick, in good health...? How often she had asked herself these questions, as if she hoped for an answer some time, from somewhere...\n\nA woman brought her fresh water. She smiled gratefully, and asked the woman about Cloud-Dancer. 'He prefers to sleep in the open,' she said, pointing. It was some time since Resa had seen any more White Women, but all the same she woke one of the women who had offered to relieve her during the night. Then she climbed over the sleeping figures and went out.\n\nThe moon was shining through the dense canopy of leaves, brighter than any torch. A few men were sitting around a fire. Unsure of herself, Resa went towards them, in the dress that wasn't right for this place at all. It ended too far above her ankles even for one of the strolling players, and it was torn too.\n\nThe men stared at her, both suspicious and curious.\n\n'Is one of you Cloud-Dancer?'\n\nA thin little man, toothless and probably not nearly as old as he looked, nudged the man sitting next to him in the ribs.\n\n'Why do you ask?' This man's face was friendly, but his eyes were wary.\n\n'Nettle says he might carry a message for me.'\n\n'A message? Who to?' He stretched his left leg, rubbing the knee as if it hurt him.\n\n'To a fire-eater. Dustfinger is his name. His face...'\n\nCloud-Dancer drew one finger over his cheek. 'Three scars. I know. What do you want with him?'\n\n'I want you to take him this.' Resa knelt down by the fire and put her hand into the pocket of her dress. She always had paper and a pencil with her; they had done duty as her tongue for years. Now her voice was back, but a wooden tongue was more useful for sending Dustfinger a message. Fingers trembling, she began to write, taking no notice of the suspicious eyes following her hand as if she were doing something forbidden.\n\n'She can write,' remarked the toothless man. There was no mistaking the disapproval in his tone. It was a long, long time ago that Resa had sat in the market places of towns on the far side of the forest, dressed in men's clothes and with her hair cut short, because writing was the only way she knew to earn her living \u2013 and writing was a craft forbidden to women in this world. Slavery was the punishment for it, and it had made her Mortola's slave. For it was Mortola who had discovered Resa's disguise, and as a reward she was allowed to take her away to Capricorn's fortress.\n\n'Dustfinger won't be able to read that,' pointed out Cloud-Dancer equably.\n\n'Yes, he will. I taught him how.'\n\nThey looked at her incredulously. Letters. Mysterious things, rich men's tools, not meant for strolling players and certainly not for women...\n\nOnly Cloud-Dancer smiled. 'Well, fancy that. Dustfinger can read,' he said softly. 'Fine, but I can't. You'd better tell me what you've written, so that I can tell him the words even if your note gets lost. Which can easily happen with written words, much more easily than with words in your head.'\n\nResa looked Cloud-Dancer straight in the face. You trust people far too easily... how often Dustfinger had told her that, but what choice did she have now? In a low voice, she repeated what she had written. 'Dear Dustfinger, I am in the strolling players' camp with Mo, deep in the Wayless Wood. Mortola and Basta brought us here, and Mortola\u2014' her voice failed as she said it \u2013 'Mortola shot Mo. Meggie is here too, I don't know exactly where, but please look for her and bring her to me! Protect her as you tried to protect me. But beware of Basta. Resa.'\n\n'Mortola? Wasn't that what they called the old woman who lived with the fire-raisers?' The man who asked this question had no right hand. A thief \u2013 you lost your left hand for stealing a loaf, your right hand for a piece of meat.\n\n'Yes, they say she's poisoned more men than the Adderhead has hairs on his head!' Cloud-Dancer pushed a log of wood back into the fire. 'And it was Basta who slashed Dustfinger's face all that time ago. He won't like to hear those two names.'\n\n'But Basta's dead!' remarked the toothless minstrel. 'And they've been saying the same about the old woman too!'\n\n'That's what they tell the children,' said a man with his back to Resa, 'so they'll sleep better. The likes of Mortola don't die. They only bring death to others.'\n\nThey're not going to help me, thought Resa. Not now they've heard those two names. The only one looking at her in anything like a friendly way was a man wearing the black and red of a fire-eater. But Cloud-Dancer was still inspecting her as if he wasn't sure what to make of her \u2013 her and her mysterious message.\n\nFinally, however, and without a word, he took the note from her fingers and put it in the bag he wore at his belt. 'Very well, I'll take Dustfinger your message,' he said. 'I know where he is.'\n\nHe was going to help her after all. Resa could hardly believe it.\n\n'Oh, thank you.' Swaying with exhaustion, she straightened up again. 'When do you think he'll get the message?'\n\nCloud-Dancer patted his knee. 'My leg must get better first.'\n\n'Of course.' Resa bit back the words she wanted to shout, begging him to hurry. She mustn't press him too hard, or he might change his mind, and then who would find Dustfinger for her? A piece of wood broke apart in the flames, spitting out glowing sparks at her feet. 'I have no money to pay you,' she said, 'but perhaps you'll accept this.' And she took her wedding ring off her finger and offered it to Cloud-Dancer. The toothless man looked at the gold ring as avidly as if he would like to put his own hand out for it, but Cloud-Dancer shook his head.\n\n'No, forget it,' he said. 'Your husband is sick. It's bad luck to give away your wedding ring, I've heard.'\n\nBad luck. Resa was quick to put the ring back on her finger. 'Yes,' she murmured. 'Yes, you're right. Thank you. Thank you with all my heart!'\n\nShe turned to go.\n\n'Hey, you!' The minstrel whose back had been turned to her was looking at her. He had only two fingers on his right hand. 'Your husband \u2013 he has dark hair. Dark as the fur of a mole. And he's tall. Very tall.'\n\nBewildered, Resa looked at him. 'So?'\n\n'And then there's the scar. Just where the songs say. I've seen it. Everyone knows how he got it: the Adderhead's dogs bit him there when he was poaching near the Castle of Night, and he took a stag, one of the White Stags that only the Adderhead himself may kill.'\n\nWhat on earth was he talking about? Resa remembered what Nettle had said: And if you're wise, you won't let too many of them see that scar on his arm.\n\nThe toothless man laughed. 'Listen to Twofingers, will you! He thinks it's the Bluejay lying there in the cave. Since when did you believe in old wives' tales? Was he wearing his feathered mask?'\n\n'How should I know?' snapped Twofingers. 'Did I bring him here? But I tell you, that's him!'\n\nResa sensed that the fire-eater was examining her thoughtfully. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said. 'I don't know any Bluejay.'\n\n'You don't?' Twofingers picked up the lute lying on the grass beside him. Resa had never before heard the song that he now sang in a soft voice:\n\n\u2003Bright hope arises from the dark\n\n\u2003And makes the mighty tremble.\n\n\u2003Princes can't fail to see his mark,\n\n\u2003Nor can they now dissemble.\n\n\u2003With hair like moleskin smooth and black,\n\n\u2003And mask of bluejay feathers,\n\n\u2003He vows wrongdoers to attack,\n\n\u2003Strikes princes in all weathers.\n\n\u2003He hunts their game\n\n\u2003He robs their gold \u2013\n\n\u2003And him they would have slain.\n\n\u2003But he's away, he will not stay,\n\n\u2003They seek the Jay in vain.\n\nHow they were all looking at her! Resa took a step backwards.\n\n'I must go to my husband,' she said. 'That song... it has nothing to do with him. Believe me, it doesn't.'\n\nShe felt their eyes on her back as she returned to the cave. Forget them, she told herself. Dustfinger will get your message, that's all that matters, and he'll find Meggie and bring her here.\n\nThe woman who had taken her place rose without a word and lay down with the others again. Resa was so exhausted that she swayed as she knelt on the dead leaves covering the floor. And the tears came once more. She wiped them away with her sleeve, hid her face in the fabric of her dress that smelled so familiar... of Elinor's house, of the old sofa where she used to sit with Meggie \u2013 telling her about this world. She began to sob, so loudly that she was afraid she might have woken one of the sleeping company. Alarmed, she pressed her hand to her mouth.\n\n'Resa?' It was hardly more than a whisper.\n\nShe raised her head. Mo was looking at her. Looking at her.\n\n'I heard your voice,' he whispered.\n\nShe didn't know whether to laugh or weep first. She leaned over him and covered his face with kisses. And then she both laughed and wept."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fenoglio's Plan",
                "text": "\u2003All I need is a sheet of paper\n\n\u2003and something to write with, and then\n\n\u2003I can turn the world upside down.\n\n\u2014Friedrich Nietzsche, Die weisse und die schwarze Kunst\n\nTwo days had passed since the festivities at the castle: two days which Fenoglio had spent showing Meggie every nook and cranny of Ombra. 'But today,' he said, before they set off again after eating breakfast with Minerva, 'today I'll show you the river. It's a steep climb down, not very easy for my old bones, but there's nowhere better to talk in peace. And what's more, if we're in luck you may see some river-nymphs down there.' Meggie would have loved to see a river-nymph. She had only come upon a water-nymph so far, in a rather muddy pond in the Wayless Wood, and as soon as Meggie's reflection had fallen on the water the nymph had darted away. But what exactly did Fenoglio want to talk about in peace? It wasn't hard to guess.\n\nWhat was he going to ask her to read here this time? Or, rather, who was he going to ask her to read here \u2013 and where from? From another story written by Fenoglio himself?\n\nThe path down which he led her wound its way along steeply sloping fields where farmers were working, bent double in the morning sun. How hard it must be growing enough to eat to allow you to survive the winter. And then there were all the creatures who secretly attacked your few provisions: mice, mealworms, maggots, woodlice. Life was much more difficult in Fenoglio's world, yet it seemed to Meggie that with every new day his story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as spiders' webs, and enchantingly beautiful too...\n\nEverything around her seemed so real by now. Her homesickness had almost disappeared.\n\n'Come on!' Fenoglio's voice startled her out of her thoughts. The river lay before them, shining in the sun, with faded flowers drifting on the water by its banks. Fenoglio took her hand and led her down the bank, to a place where large rocks stood. Meggie hopefully leaned over the slowly flowing water, but there were no river-nymphs in sight.\n\n'Well, they're timid. Too many people about!' Fenoglio looked disapprovingly at the women doing their washing nearby. He waved to Meggie to walk on until the voices died away, and only the rippling of the water could be heard. Behind them the roofs and towers of Ombra rose against the pale blue sky. The houses were crowded close inside the walls, like birds in a nest too small for them, and the black banners of the castle fluttered above them as if to inscribe the Laughing Prince's grief on the sky itself.\n\nMeggie clambered up on to a flat rock over the water's edge. The river was not broad, but seemed to be deep, and its water was darker than the shadows on the opposite bank.\n\n'Can you see one?' Fenoglio almost slipped off the wet rock as he joined her. Meggie shook her head. 'What's the matter?' Fenoglio knew her well after the days and nights they had spent together in Capricorn's house. 'Not homesick again, are you?'\n\n'No, no.' Meggie knelt down and ran her fingers through the cold water. 'I just had that dream again.'\n\nThe previous day, Fenoglio had shown her Bakers' Alley, the houses where the rich spice and cloth dealers lived, and every gargoyle, every carved flower, every richly adorned frieze with which the skilful stonemasons of Ombra had ornamented the buildings of the city. Judging by the pride Fenoglio displayed as he led Meggie past every corner of Ombra, however remote, he seemed to consider it all his own work. 'Well, perhaps not every corner,' he admitted, as she once tried getting him to go down an alley she hadn't seen yet. 'Of course Ombra has its ugly sides too, but there's no need for you to bother your pretty head about them.'\n\nIt had been dark by the time they were back in his room under Minerva's roof, and Fenoglio quarrelled with Rosenquartz because the glass man had spattered the fairies with ink. Even though their voices rose louder and louder, Meggie nodded off on the straw mattress that Minerva had sent up the steep staircase for her and that now lay under the window \u2013 and suddenly there was all that red, a dull red, shining, wet red, and her heart had started beating faster and faster, ever faster, until its violent thudding woke her with a start...\n\n'There, look!' Fenoglio took her arm.\n\nRainbow scales shimmered under the watery surface of the river. At first Meggie almost took them for leaves, but then she saw the eyes looking at her, like human eyes yet very different, for they had no whites. The nymph's arms looked delicate and fragile, almost transparent. Another glance, and then the scaly tail flicked in the water, and there was nothing left to be seen but a shoal of fish gliding by, silvery as a snail track, and a swarm of fire-elves like the elves she and Farid had seen in the forest. Farid. He had made a fiery flower blossom at her feet, a flower just for her. Dustfinger had certainly taught him many wonderful things.\n\n'I think it's always the same dream, but I can't remember. I just remember the fear \u2013 as if something terrible had happened!' She turned to Fenoglio. 'Do you think it really has?'\n\n'Nonsense!' Fenoglio brushed the thought aside like a troublesome insect. 'We must blame Rosenquartz for your bad dream. I expect the fairies sat on your forehead in the night because he annoyed them! They're vengeful little things, and I'm afraid it makes no difference to them who they avenge themselves on.'\n\n'I see.' Meggie dipped her fingers in the water again. It was so cold that she shivered. She heard the washerwomen laugh, and a fire-elf settled on her wrist. Insect eyes stared at her out of a human face. Meggie quickly shooed the tiny creature away.\n\n'Very sensible,' Fenoglio said. 'You want to be careful of fire-elves. They'll burn your skin.'\n\n'I know. Resa told me about them.' Meggie watched the elf go. There was a sore, red mark on her arm where it had settled.\n\n'My own invention,' explained Fenoglio proudly. 'They produce honey that lets you talk to fire. Very much sought after by fire-eaters, but the elves attack anyone who comes too close to their nests, and few know how to set about stealing the honey without getting badly burned. In fact, now that I come to think of it, probably no one but Dustfinger knows.'\n\nMeggie just nodded. She had hardly been listening. 'What did you want to talk to me about? You want me to read something, don't you?'\n\nA few faded red flowers drifted past on the water, red as dried blood, and Meggie's heart began beating so hard again that she put her hand to her breast. What was the matter with her?\n\nFenoglio undid the bag at his belt and tipped a domed red stone out into his hand. 'Isn't it magnificent?' he asked. 'I went to get it this morning while you were still asleep. It's a beryl, a reading stone. You can use it like spectacles.'\n\n'I know. What about it?' Meggie stroked the smooth stone with her fingertips. Mo had several like it, lying on the window-sill of his workshop.\n\n'What about it? Don't be so impatient! Violante is almost as blind as a bat, and her delightful son has hidden her old reading stone. So I bought her another, even though it was a ruinous price. I hope she'll be so grateful that in return she'll tell us a few things about her late husband! Yes, yes, I know I made up Cosimo myself, but it was long ago that I wrote about him. To be honest, I don't remember that part particularly well, and what's more... who knows how he may have changed, once this story took it into its head to go on telling itself?'\n\nA horrible foreboding came into Meggie's mind. No, he couldn't be planning to do that. Not even Fenoglio would think up such an idea. Or would he?\n\n'Listen, Meggie!' He lowered his voice, as if the women doing their washing upstream could hear him. 'The two of us are going to bring Cosimo back!'\n\nMeggie sat up straight, so abruptly that she almost slipped and fell into the river. 'You're crazy. Totally crazy! Cosimo's dead!'\n\n'Can anyone prove it?' She didn't like Fenoglio's smile one little bit. 'I told you \u2013 his body was burned beyond recognition. Even his father wasn't sure it was really Cosimo! He waited six months before he would have the dead man buried in the coffin intended for his son.'\n\n'But it was Cosimo, wasn't it?'\n\n'Who's going to say so? It was a terrible massacre. They say the fire-raisers had been storing some kind of alchemical powder in their fortress, and Firefox set it alight to help him get away. The flames enveloped Cosimo and most of his men, and later no one could identify the dead bodies found among the ruins.'\n\nMeggie shuddered. Fenoglio, on the other hand, seemed greatly pleased by this idea. She couldn't believe how satisfied he looked.\n\n'But it was him, you know it was!' Meggie's voice sank to a whisper. 'Fenoglio, we can't bring back the dead!'\n\n'I know, I know, probably not.' There was deep regret in his voice. 'Although didn't some of the dead come back when you summoned the Shadow?'\n\n'No! They all fell to dust and ashes again only a few days later. Elinor cried her eyes out \u2013 she went to Capricorn's village, even though Mo tried to persuade her not to, and there wasn't anyone there either. They'd all gone. For ever.'\n\n'Hm.' Fenoglio stared at his hands. They looked like the hands of a farmer or a craftsman, not hands that wielded only a pen. 'So we can't. Very well!' he murmured. 'Perhaps it's all for the best. How would a story ever work if anyone could just come back from the dead at any time? It would lead to hopeless confusion; it would wreck the suspense! No, you're right: the dead stay dead. So we won't bring Cosimo back, just \u2013 well, someone who looks like him!'\n\n'Looks like him? You are crazy!' whispered Meggie. 'You're a total lunatic!'\n\nBut her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. 'So what? All writers are lunatics! I promise you, I'll choose my words very carefully, so carefully that our brand-new Cosimo will be firmly convinced he is the old one. Do you see, Meggie? Even if he's only a double, he mustn't know it. On no account is he to know it! What do you think?'\n\nMeggie just shook her head. She hadn't come here to change this world. She'd only wanted to see it!\n\n'Meggie!' Fenoglio placed his hand on her shoulder. 'You saw the Laughing Prince! He could die any day, and then what? It's not just strolling players that the Adderhead strings up! He has his peasants' eyes put out if they catch a rabbit in the forest. He forces children to work in his silver mines until they're blind and crippled, and he's made Firefox, who is a murderer and arsonist, his own herald!'\n\n'Oh yes? And who made him that way? You did!' Meggie angrily pushed his hand away. 'You always did like your villains best.'\n\n'Well, yes, maybe.' Fenoglio shrugged, as if he were powerless to do anything about it. 'But what was I to do? Who wants to read a story about two benevolent princes ruling a merry band of happy, contented subjects? What kind of a story would that be?'\n\nMeggie leaned over the water and fished out one of the red flowers. 'You like making them up!' she said quietly. 'All these monsters.'\n\nEven Fenoglio had no reply to that. So they sat in silence while the women upstream spread their washing on the rocks to dry. It was still warm in the sun, in spite of the faded flowers that the river kept bringing in to the bank.\n\nFenoglio broke the silence at last. 'Please, Meggie!' he said. 'Just this once. If you help me to get back in control of this story I'll write you the most wonderful words to take you home again \u2013 whenever you like! Or if you change your mind because you like my world better, then I'll bring your father here for you, and your mother... and even that bookworm woman, though from all you tell me she sounds a frightful person!'\n\nThat made Meggie laugh. Yes, Elinor would like it here, she thought, and she was sure Resa would like to see the place again. But not Mo. No, never.\n\nShe suddenly stood up and smoothed down her dress. Looking up at the castle, she imagined what it would be like if the Adderhead with his salamander gaze ruled up there. She hadn't even liked the Laughing Prince much.\n\n'Meggie, believe me,' said Fenoglio, 'you'd be doing something truly good. You'd be giving a son back to his father, a husband back to his wife, a father back to his child \u2013 yes, I know he's not a particularly nice child, but all the same! And you'd be helping to thwart the Adderhead's plans. Surely that's an honourable thing to do? Please, Meggie!' He looked at her almost imploringly. 'Help me. It's my story, after all! Believe me, I know what's best for it! Lend me your voice just once more!'\n\nLend me your voice... Meggie was still looking up at the castle, but she no longer saw the towers and the black banners. She was seeing the Shadow, and Capricorn lying dead in the dust.\n\n'All right, I'll think about it,' she said. 'But now Farid is waiting for me.'\n\nFenoglio looked at her with as much surprise as if she had suddenly sprouted wings. 'Oh, is he indeed?' There was no mistaking the disapproval in his voice. 'But I was going to go up to the castle with you to take Her Ugliness the beryl. I wanted you to hear what she has to say about Cosimo...'\n\n'I promised him!' They had agreed to meet outside the city gates so that Farid wouldn't have to pass the guards.\n\n'You promised? Well, never mind. You wouldn't be the first girl to keep a suitor waiting.'\n\n'He is not my suitor!'\n\n'Glad to hear it! Since your father isn't here, it's up to me to keep an eye on you, after all.' Fenoglio looked at her gloomily. 'You really have grown! The girls here marry at your age. Oh, don't look at me like that! Minerva's second daughter has been married for five months, and she was just fourteen. How old is that boy? Fifteen? Sixteen?'\n\nMeggie did not reply, but simply turned her back on him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Violante",
                "text": "\u2003There is no frigate like a book\n\n\u2003To take us lands away,\n\n\u2003Nor any courser like a page\n\n\u2003Of prancing poetry.\n\n\u2003This traverse may the poorest take\n\n\u2003Without oppress of toll;\n\n\u2003How frugal is the chariot\n\n\u2003That bears a human soul!\n\n\u2014Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson\n\nFenoglio simply persuaded Farid to go up to the castle with them. 'This will work out very well,' he whispered to Meggie. 'He can entertain the Prince's spoilt brat of a grandson and give us a chance to get Violante to talk in peace.'\n\nThe Outer Courtyard lay as if deserted that morning. Only a few dry twigs and squashed cakes showed that there had been festivities here. Grooms, blacksmiths, stable lads were all going about their work again, but an oppressive silence seemed to weigh down on everyone within the walls. On recognizing Fenoglio, the guards of the Inner Castle let them pass without a word, and a group of men in grey robes, grave-faced, came towards them beneath the trees of the Inner Courtyard. 'Physicians!' muttered Fenoglio, uneasily watching them go. 'More than enough of them to cure a dozen men to death. This bodes no good.'\n\nThe servant whom Fenoglio buttonholed outside the throne-room looked pale and tired. The Prince of Sighs, he told Fenoglio in a whisper, had taken to his bed during his grandson's celebrations and hadn't left it since. He would not eat or drink, and he had sent a messenger to the stonemason carving his sarcophagus telling him to hurry up about it.\n\nBut they were allowed in to visit Violante. The Prince would see neither his daughter-in-law nor his grandson. He had sent even the physicians away. He would have no one near him but his furry-faced page Tullio.\n\n'She's where she ought not to be, again!' The servant was whispering as if he could be heard by the sick Prince in his apartments as he led them through the castle. A carved likeness of Cosimo looked down on them in every corridor. Now that Meggie knew about Fenoglio's plans, the stony eyes made her even more uncomfortable. 'They all have the same face!' Farid whispered to her, but before Meggie could explain why the servant was beckoning them silently up a spiral staircase.\n\n'Does Balbulus still ask such a high price for letting Violante into the library?' asked Fenoglio quietly as their guide stopped at a door, which was adorned with brass letters.\n\n'Poor thing, she's given him almost all her jewellery,' the servant whispered back. 'But there you are, he used to live in the Castle of Night, didn't he? Everyone knows that those who live on the other side of the forest are greedy folk. With the exception of my mistress.'\n\n'Come in!' called a bad-tempered voice when the servant knocked. The room they entered was so bright that it made Meggie blink after walking through all those dark passages and up the dark stairs. Daylight fell through high windows on to several intricately carved desks. The man standing at the largest of them was neither young nor old, and he had black hair and brown eyes which looked at them without any cordiality as he turned to them.\n\n'Ah, the Inkweaver!' he said, reluctantly putting down the hare's foot he held in his hand. Meggie knew what it was for; Mo had told her often enough. Rubbing parchment with a hare's foot made it smooth. And there were the colours whose names Mo had repeated over and over to her. Tell me again! How often she had plagued Mo with that demand! She never tired of the sound of them: lapis lazuli, orpiment, violet, malachite green. What makes them still shine like that, Mo? she had asked. After all, they're so old! What are they made of? And Mo had told her \u2013 told her how you made them, all those wonderful colours that shone even after hundreds of years as if they had been stolen from the rainbow, now protected from air and light between the pages of books. To make malachite green you pounded wild iris flowers and mixed them with yellow lead oxide; the red was made from murex shells and cochineal insects... they had so often stood together looking at the pictures in one of the valuable manuscripts that Mo was to free from the grime of many years. Look at those delicate tendrils, he had said, can you imagine how fine the pens and brushes must be to paint something like that, Meggie? He was always complaining that no one could make such implements any more. And now she saw them with her own eyes, pens as fine as hairs and tiny brushes, whole sets of them standing in a glazed jug: brushes that could conjure up flowers and faces no bigger than a pinhead on parchment or paper. You moistened them with a little gum arabic to make the paint cling better. Her fingers itched to pick a brush out of the set and take it away with her for Mo... he ought to have come just for this, she thought, to stand here in this room.\n\nAn illuminator's workshop... Fenoglio's world seemed twice, three times as wonderful. Elinor would have given one of her little fingers to be standing here now, thought Meggie. She was about to move towards one of the desks to take a closer look at it all, the brushes, the pigments, the parchment, but Fenoglio held her back.\n\n'Balbulus!' He sketched a bow. 'And how is the master today?' There was no mistaking the mockery in his voice.\n\n'The Inkweaver wants to see the Lady Violante,' said the servant in a low voice.\n\nBalbulus pointed to a door behind him. 'Well, you know where the library is. Or perhaps we had better rename it the Chamber of Forgotten Treasures.' He lisped slightly, his tongue touching his teeth as if it didn't have enough room in his mouth. 'Violante is just looking at my latest work, or what she can see of it. I finished copying out the stories for her son last night. I'd rather have used the parchment for other texts, I must admit, but Violante insisted.'\n\n'Well, I'm sorry you had to waste your art on such frivolities,' replied Fenoglio, without so much as glancing at the work Balbulus had before him at the moment. Farid did not seem interested in the picture either. He looked at the window, where the sky outside shone a brighter blue than any of the paints sticking to the fine brushes. But Meggie wanted to see how good Balbulus was at his art, and whether his haughty attitude was justified. Unobtrusively, she took a step forward. She saw a picture framed in gold leaf, showing a castle among green hills, a forest, magnificently dressed riders among the trees, fairies fluttering around them, and a white stag turning to flee. Never before had she seen such a picture. It glowed like stained glass \u2013 like a window placed on the parchment. She would have loved to look at it more closely, see the faces, the horses' harnesses, the flowers and clouds, but Balbulus cast her such an icy glance that she retreated, blushing.\n\n'That poem you brought yesterday,' said Balbulus in a bored voice, as he bent over his work again, 'it was good. You ought to write such things more often, but I know you prefer writing stories for children or songs for the Motley Folk. And why? Just for the wind to sing your words? The spoken word is nothing, it hardly lives longer than an insect! Only the written word is eternal.'\n\n'Eternal?' Fenoglio made the word sound as if there could be nothing more ridiculous in the world. 'Nothing's eternal \u2013 and what happier fate could words have than to be sung by minstrels? Yes, of course they change the words, they sing them slightly differently every time, but isn't that in itself wonderful? A story wearing another dress every time you hear it \u2013 what could be better? A story that grows and puts out flowers like a living thing! But look at the stories people press in books! They may last longer, yes, but they breathe only when someone opens the book. They are sound pressed between the pages, and only a voice can bring them back to life! Then they throw off sparks, Balbulus! Then they go free as birds flying out into the world. Perhaps you're right, and the paper makes them immortal. But why should I care? Will I live on, neatly pressed between the pages with my words? Nonsense! We're none of us immortal; even the finest words don't change that, do they?'\n\nBalbulus had listened to him without any expression on his face. 'What an unusual opinion, Inkweaver!' he said. 'For my part, I think highly of the immortality of my work, and very poorly of minstrels. But why don't you go in to Violante? She'll probably have to leave soon, to hear some peasant's woes or listen to a merchant complaining of the highwaymen who make the roads unsafe. It's almost impossible to get hold of acceptable parchment these days. Robbers steal it and offer it for sale in the markets at outrageous prices! Have you any idea how many goats must be slaughtered for me to write down one of your stories?'\n\n'About one for each double spread,' said Meggie, earning another icy look from Balbulus.\n\n'Clever girl,' he said, in a tone that made his words sound more like blame than praise. 'And why? Because those fools the goatherds drive them through thorns and prickly bushes, without stopping to think that their skins will be needed for parchment!'\n\n'Oh, come, I keep telling you!' said Fenoglio, steering Meggie and Farid towards the library door. 'Paper, Balbulus. Paper is the material of the future.'\n\n'Paper!' she heard Balbulus mutter scornfully. 'Good heavens, Inkweaver, you're even crazier than I thought.'\n\nMeggie had visited more libraries with Mo than she could count. Many had been larger than the Laughing Prince's, but few were more beautiful. You could still see that it had once been its owner's favourite place. The only trace of Cosimo here was a white stone bust; someone had laid roses in front of it. The tapestries on the high walls were finer than those in the throne-room, the sconces heavier, the colours warmer, and Meggie had seen enough in Balbulus's workshop to guess what treasures surrounded her here. They stood chained to the shelves, not spine beside spine like the books in Elinor's library, but with the cut edge facing forward, because that was where the title was. In front of the shelves were rows of desks, presumably reserved for the latest precious acquisitions. Books lay on them, chained like their sisters in the shelves, and closed so that no harmful ray of light could fall on Balbulus's pictures. In addition all the library windows were hung with heavy fabric; obviously the Prince of Sighs knew what damage sunlight did to books. Only two windows let in the light that might harm them. Her Ugliness stood in front of one window, bending so low over a book that her nose almost touched the pages.\n\n'Balbulus is getting better and better, Brianna,' she said.\n\n'He's greedy! A pearl, just for letting you into your father-in-law's library!' Her maidservant was standing at the other window looking out, while Violante's son tugged at her hand.\n\n'Brianna!' he whined. 'Come on! This is boring. Come on out into the courtyard. You promised.'\n\n'He uses the money from the pearls to buy new pigments! How else would he get them, when no one in this castle will pay gold for anything but statues of a dead man?' Violante jumped when Fenoglio closed the door behind him, guiltily hiding the book behind her back. Only when she saw who it was did her face relax. 'Fenoglio!' she said, pushing her mousy brown hair back from her forehead. 'Must you scare me like that?' The mark on her face was like a paw-print.\n\nFenoglio smiled, and put his hand to the bag at his belt. 'I've brought you something.'\n\nViolante's fingers closed greedily on the red stone. Her hands were small and rounded like a child's. She quickly reopened the book she had hidden behind her back and held the beryl up to one of her eyes.\n\n'Come on, Brianna, or I'll tell them to cut your hair off!' Jacopo took a handful of the maid's hair and pulled it so hard that she screamed. 'That's what my grandfather does. He shaves them bald, the minstrel girls and the women who live in the forest. He says they turn into owls by night and screech outside your windows till you're dead in your bed.'\n\n'Don't look at me like that!' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie. 'I didn't invent this little horror. Here, Jacopo!' He dug his elbow imperatively into Farid's ribs as Brianna went on trying to free her hair from the child's small fingers. 'Look, I've brought someone to see you.'\n\nJacopo let go of Brianna's hair and examined Farid with little enthusiasm. 'He doesn't have a sword,' he pointed out.\n\n'A sword! Who needs a sword?' Fenoglio wrinkled his nose. 'Farid is a fire-eater.'\n\nBrianna raised her head and looked at Farid. But Jacopo was still inspecting him as unenthusiastically as ever.\n\n'Oh, this stone is wonderful!' his mother murmured. 'My old one wasn't half so good. I can make them all out, Brianna, every character. Did I ever tell you how my mother taught me to read by making up a little song for each letter?' She began to chant quietly: 'A brown bear bites off a big bit of B... I didn't see particularly well even then, but she traced them on the floor very large for me, laying them out with flower petals or little stones. A, B, C, the minstrel plays for me.'\n\n'No,' said Brianna. 'No, you never told me.'\n\nJacopo was still staring at Farid. 'He was at my festivities!' he said. 'He threw torches.'\n\n'That was nothing, just a children's game.' Farid was looking patronizingly at the boy, as if he himself and not Jacopo were the Prince's son. 'I can do other tricks too, but I don't think you're old enough for them.'\n\nMeggie saw Brianna hide a smile as she took the comb out of her pale red hair and pinned it up again. She did it very prettily. Farid was watching her, and for the first time in her life Meggie wished that she had such lovely hair, although she wasn't sure that she could manage to put a comb in it so gracefully. Luckily Jacopo attracted Farid's attention again by clearing his throat and folding his arms. He had probably copied the mannerism from his grandfather.\n\n'Show me or I'll have you whipped.' The threat sounded ridiculous, uttered in such a shrill voice \u2013 yet at the same time it was more terrible than if it had come from an adult mouth.\n\n'Oh, will you?' Farid's face gave nothing away. He had obviously learned a thing or two from Dustfinger. 'And what do you think I'd do to you then?'\n\nThis left Jacopo speechless, but just as he was about to appeal to his mother for support Farid reached out his hand to the boy. 'Very well, come along, then.'\n\nJacopo hesitated, and for a moment Meggie was tempted to take Farid's hand herself and follow him into the courtyard, instead of listening to Fenoglio trying to follow a dead man's trail, but Jacopo moved faster. His pale, stubby fingers gripped Farid's brown hand tightly, and when he turned in the doorway his face was that of a happy, perfectly ordinary little boy. 'He's going to show me tricks, did you hear?' he said proudly, but his mother didn't even look up.\n\n'Oh, what a wonderful stone,' was all she whispered. 'If only it wasn't red, if only I had one for each eye\u2014'\n\n'Well, I'm working on a way around that, but I'm afraid I haven't found the right glassmaker yet.' With a sigh, Fenoglio dropped into one of the chairs invitingly arranged among the reading desks. They all bore the old coat of arms on their leather upholstery, the one where the lion was not shedding tears, and the leather of some was so worn that you could clearly tell how many hours the Laughing Prince had once spent here \u2013 until grief sapped his pleasure in books.\n\n'A glassmaker? Why a glassmaker?' Violante gazed at Fenoglio through the beryl. It looked almost as if her eye was made of fire.\n\n'Glass can be ground to make your eyes see better, much better than through a stone, but there isn't a glazier in Ombra who knows what I'm talking about!'\n\n'Oh, I know, only the stonemasons are good for anything in this place! Balbulus says there's not a single decent book-binder in all Lombrica.'\n\nI could tell you the name of a good one, thought Meggie instinctively, and for a moment she wished Mo were here, so much that it hurt. But Her Ugliness was looking at her book again. 'There are good glaziers in my father's realm,' she said, without glancing up. 'He's had several windows in his castle filled in with glass. He had to sell off a hundred of his peasants to go for soldiers to pay for it.' Violante seemed to consider the price well worth paying.\n\nI don't think I like her, thought Meggie, as she went slowly from desk to desk. The bindings of the books lying on them were beautiful, and she would have loved to hide at least one of them under her dress, so that she could look at it in Fenoglio's room at her leisure, but the clips holding the chains in place were firmly riveted to the wooden covers of the books.\n\n'You're welcome to look at them.' Her Ugliness spoke to Meggie so suddenly that she jumped. Violante was still holding the red stone up to her eye, and Meggie was reminded of the blood-red jewels at the corners of the Adderhead's nostrils. His daughter resembled her father more than she probably knew.\n\n'Thank you,' murmured Meggie, and opened one. She remembered the day when Mo had shown her how to open an old book without using her fingers. He had handed her a book with two brass clasps holding its wooden covers together, she had looked at him, baffled, and then, smiling at her, he had struck the front of the book so hard with his fist that the clasps snapped open like little mouths, and the book was opened as if by a ghostly hand.\n\nBut the book that Meggie opened in the Laughing Prince's library showed no sign of age, as that other book had done. No speck of mould disfigured the parchment, no beetles or bookworms had nibbled it, like some of the manuscripts she had seen when Mo restored them. The years were not kind to parchment and paper; a book had many enemies, and in time it withered like a human body. 'Which tells us, Meggie,' Mo always said, 'that a book is a living thing!' If only she could have shown him this one!\n\nVery, very carefully she turned the pages \u2013 yet her mind was not entirely on what she was doing, for the wind blew Farid's voice into the room like the memory of another world. Meggie listened to what was going on outside as she snapped the clasps of the book shut again. Fenoglio and Violante were still talking about useless bookbinders. Neither of them was taking any notice of her, and Meggie stole over to one of the darkened windows and peered through the gap in the curtains. Her glance fell on a walled garden, beds full of brightly coloured flowers, and Farid standing among them letting flames lick their way up his bare arms, just as Dustfinger had done the first time Meggie saw him breathing fire back in Elinor's garden, before he betrayed her...\n\nJacopo was laughing exuberantly. He clapped \u2013 and then stumbled back in alarm as Farid sent the torches whirling through the air like Catherine wheels. Meggie couldn't help smiling; Dustfinger had certainly taught him a lot, even if Farid couldn't yet breathe fire quite so high in the air as his teacher.\n\n'Books? No, I told you, Cosimo never came in here!' Violante's voice suddenly sounded considerably sharper, and Meggie turned round. 'He thought nothing of books, he loved dogs, good boots, a fast horse... there were days when he even loved his son. But I don't want to talk about him.'\n\nLaughter drifted up from outside again. Brianna joined Meggie at the window. 'The boy's a very good fire-eater,' she said.\n\n'Really?' Her short-sighted mistress looked at her. 'I thought you didn't like fire-eaters. You're always saying they're feckless folk.'\n\n'This one's good. Much better than Sootbird.' Brianna's voice sounded husky. 'I noticed him at the celebrations.'\n\n'Violante!' Fenoglio sounded impatient. 'Could we forget about that fire-breathing boy for a moment? Very well, so Cosimo didn't like books. These things happen. But surely you can tell me a little more about him!'\n\n'Why?' Her Ugliness raised the beryl to her eye again. 'Let Cosimo rest in peace, he's dead! The dead don't want to linger here. Why won't anyone understand that? And if you want to know some secret about him \u2013 well, he had none! He could talk about weapons for hours on end. He liked fire-eaters and knife-throwers and wild rides through the night. He had the smiths show him how to forge a sword, and he fenced for hours with the guards down in the courtyard until he'd mastered every trick they knew, but when the minstrels struck up their songs he began yawning after the first verse. He wouldn't have cared for any of the songs you've written about him. He might have liked the robber songs, but as for the idea that words can be like music, making the heart beat faster... he had no ear for that! Even executions interested him more than words, although he never enjoyed them the way my father does.'\n\n'Really?' Fenoglio sounded surprised but by no means disappointed. 'Wild rides through the night,' he murmured. 'Fast horses. Yes, why not?'\n\nHer Ugliness wasn't listening to him. 'Brianna!' she said. 'Take this book. If I praise Balbulus enough for his new pictures, perhaps he'll leave it with us for a while.' Her maid took the book from her, an abstracted expression on her face, and went to the window again.\n\n'But the people loved him, didn't they?' Fenoglio had risen from his chair. 'Cosimo was good to them... to the peasants, the poor... the strolling players.'\n\nViolante stroked the mark on her cheek. 'Yes, they all loved him. He was so handsome that you just had to love him. You couldn't help it. But as for the peasants\u2014' and she wearily rubbed her short-sighted eyes \u2013 'do you know what he always said about them? Why are they so ugly, he asked? Ugly clothes, ugly faces... when they brought their disputes to him he really did try to do justice fairly, but it bored him to tears. He could hardly wait to get away again, back to his father's soldiers, his horse and his hounds...'\n\nFenoglio said nothing. He looked so baffled that Meggie almost felt sorry for him. Isn't he going to make me read aloud after all, she wondered? And for a strange moment she felt something like disappointment.\n\n'Come along, Brianna!' ordered Her Ugliness, but her maid did not stir. She was gazing down at the courtyard as if she had never seen a fire-eater in her life before.\n\nFrowning, Violante went over to her. 'What are you staring at?' she asked, squinting through the window with her short-sighted eyes.\n\n'He... he's making flowers from fire,' stammered Brianna. 'They start like golden buds and then they unfold like real flowers. I once saw something like that... when I was very little...'\n\n'Yes, very nice, but come along now.' Her Ugliness turned and made for the door. She had an odd way of walking, with her head slightly bent, yet carrying herself very upright. Brianna took a last look out of the window before hurrying after her.\n\nBalbulus was grinding colours when they entered his workshop: blue for the sky, russet and umber for the earth. Violante whispered something to him. Presumably she was softening him up. She pointed to the book that Brianna was carrying for her.\n\n'I'll be off now, Your Highness,' said Fenoglio.\n\n'Yes, you can go!' she told him. 'But next time you visit me don't ask questions about my late husband, bring me one of the songs you write for the minstrels instead. I like them very much, particularly those songs about the robber, the man who makes my father so angry. What's his name? Oh yes \u2013 the Bluejay!'\n\nFenoglio paled slightly under his sunburn. 'How do you know I wrote those songs?'\n\nHer Ugliness just laughed. 'I'm the Adderhead's daughter, have you forgotten? Of course I have my spies! They're good, too! Are you afraid I'll tell my father who wrote the songs? Don't worry, we say only the bare minimum to each other. And he's more interested in what the songs are about than in the man who wrote them. Although if I were you I'd stay this side of the forest for now!'\n\nFenoglio bowed, forcing a smile. 'I shall take your advice to heart, Highness,' he said.\n\nThe door with brass letters on it latched heavily into place as Fenoglio pulled it shut. 'Curse it!' he muttered. 'Curse it, curse it.'\n\n'What's the matter?' Meggie looked at him with concern. 'Is it what she said about Cosimo?'\n\n'No, nonsense! But if Violante knows who writes the songs about the Bluejay, then so does the Adderhead! He has many more spies than she does, and suppose he doesn't keep to his own side of the forest much longer? Well, there's still time to do something about it... Meggie,' he whispered, as they went down the steep spiral staircase. 'I told you I had a model for the Bluejay. Do you want to guess who it was?' He looked expectantly at her. 'I like to base my characters on real people,' he whispered in conspiratorial tones. 'Not every writer does that, but in my experience it makes them more lifelike. Facial expressions, gestures, the way someone walks, a voice, perhaps a birthmark or a scar \u2013 I steal something here, something there, and then they begin to breathe, until anyone hearing or reading about them thinks they can touch them! I didn't have a wide choice for the Bluejay. My model couldn't be too old, nor too young either, and not fat or short, of course, heroes are never short, fat or ugly \u2013 in real life, maybe, but never in stories... no, the Bluejay had to be tall and good-looking, attractive to other people\u2014'\n\nFenoglio fell silent. Footsteps were coming down the stairs, quick footsteps, and Brianna appeared on the massive steps above them.\n\n'Excuse me,' she said, and looked around guiltily, as if she had stolen away without her mistress's knowledge. 'That boy \u2013 do you know who taught him to play with fire like that?' She looked at Fenoglio as if she wanted to hear the answer more than anything, and yet as if at the same time there was nothing she feared hearing more. 'Do you know?' she asked again. 'Do you know his name?'\n\n'Dustfinger,' replied Meggie, speaking for Fenoglio. 'Dustfinger taught him.' And only when she spoke the name for the second time did she realize who Brianna reminded her of, her face and the shimmer of her red hair."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Words",
                "text": "\u2003If all you have of me is your red hair\n\n\u2003and my whole-hearted laughter\n\n\u2003what else in me was good or ill may fare\n\n\u2003like faded flowers drifting in the water.\n\n\u2014Paul Zech, after Fran\u00e7ois Villon, 'The Ballade of Little Florestan'\n\nDustfinger was just chasing Jink out of Roxane's henhouse when Brianna came riding into the yard. The sight of her almost stopped his heart. The dress she wore made her look like a rich merchant's daughter; since when did maidservants wear such clothes? And the horse she was riding didn't suit this place either, with its expensive harness, its gold-studded saddle, and the deep black coat that shone as if three grooms had spent all day brushing it. A soldier in the Laughing Prince's livery rode with her. He scrutinized the simple house and the fields, his face expressionless. But Brianna looked at Dustfinger. She thrust out her chin just as her mother so often did, straightened the comb in her hair \u2013 and looked at him.\n\nHe wished he could have made himself invisible. How hostile her glance was, her expression both adult and that of an injured child! She was so like her mother. The soldier helped her to dismount and then took his horse to drink at the well, acting as if he had neither eyes nor ears.\n\nRoxane came out of the house. Brianna's arrival obviously surprised her as much as him. 'Why didn't you tell me he was back?' Brianna snapped. Roxane opened her mouth \u2013 and shut it again.\n\nGo on, say something, Dustfinger, he told himself. The marten leaped off his shoulder and disappeared behind the stable.\n\n'I asked her not to.' How hoarse his voice sounded. 'I thought I'd rather tell you myself.' But your father is a coward, he added to himself, afraid of his own daughter.\n\nShe was looking at him so angrily, in exactly her old way. Except that now she was too grown-up to hit him.\n\n'I saw that boy,' she said. 'He was at the festival, and today he was breathing fire for Jacopo. He did it just like you.'\n\nDustfinger saw Farid appear. He stayed behind Roxane, but Jehan pushed past him, glanced anxiously at the soldier and then ran to his sister. 'Where did you get that horse?' he asked.\n\n'Violante gave it to me. As thanks for taking her with me by night to see the strolling players.'\n\n'You take her with you?' Roxane sounded concerned.\n\n'Why not? She loves their shows! And the Black Prince says it's all right.' Brianna didn't look at her mother.\n\nFarid went over to Dustfinger. 'What does she want here?' he whispered. 'She's Her Ugliness's maid.'\n\n'And my daughter too,' replied Dustfinger.\n\nFarid stared incredulously at Brianna, but she took no notice of him. It was on her father's account that she had come.\n\n'Ten years!' she said accusingly. 'You stayed away for ten years, and now you come back just like that? Everyone said you were dead! They said you'd mouldered away in the Adderhead's dungeons! They said the fire-raisers had handed you over to him because you wouldn't tell them all your secrets!'\n\n'I did tell them,' said Dustfinger tonelessly. 'Almost all my secrets.' And they used them to set another world on fire, he added in his thoughts. A world without a door to let me out again, so that I could come back.\n\n'I dreamed of you!' Brianna's voice rose so high that her horse shied away. 'I dreamed the men-at-arms tied you to a stake and burned you! I could smell the smoke and hear you trying to talk to the fire, but it wouldn't obey you and the flames devoured you. I had that dream almost every night! I still do! I was afraid of going to sleep for ten whole years, and now here you are, hale and hearty, as if nothing had happened! Where \u2013 have \u2013 you \u2013 been?'\n\nDustfinger glanced at Roxane \u2013 and saw the same question in her eyes. 'I couldn't come back,' he said. 'I couldn't. I tried, believe me, I tried.'\n\nThe wrong words. They were true a hundred times over, yet they sounded like a lie. Hadn't he always known it? Words were useless. At times they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for them? The heart is as silent as a fish, however much the tongue tries to give it a voice.\n\nBrianna turned her back on him and buried her face in her horse's mane, while the soldier went on standing by the well, acting as if he were nothing but thin air.\n\nAnd that's what I wish I was too, thought Dustfinger. Just thin air.\n\n'But it's the truth! He couldn't come back!' Farid stationed himself protectively in front of Dustfinger. 'There wasn't any way! It's exactly like he says \u2013 he was in an entirely different world, but it's as real as this one. There are many, many worlds, they're all different, and they're written down in books!'\n\nBrianna turned to him. 'Do I look like a little girl who still believes in fairy-tales?' she asked scornfully. 'Once, when he stayed away so long that my mother's eyes were red with crying every morning, the other strolling players told me stories about him. They said he was talking to the fairies, or he'd gone to see the giants, or he was down at the bottom of the sea looking for a fire that even water can't put out. I didn't believe the stories even then, but I liked them. Now I don't. I'm not a little girl any more. Not by any means. Help me mount my horse!' she ordered the soldier.\n\nHe obeyed without a word. Jehan stared at the sword hanging from his belt.\n\n'Stay and eat with us!' said Roxane.\n\nBut Brianna just shook her head and turned her horse in silence. The soldier winked at Jehan, who was still gazing at his sword. They rode away on their horses, which seemed much too large for the narrow, stony path leading to Roxane's farm.\n\nRoxane took Jehan indoors with her, but Dustfinger stayed out by the stable until the two riders had disappeared into the hills. Farid's voice quivered with indignation when he finally broke the silence. 'But you really couldn't come back!'\n\n'No... but you must admit your story didn't sound very likely.'\n\n'It's exactly what happened, all the same!'\n\nDustfinger shrugged, and looked at the place in the distance where his daughter had disappeared. 'Sometimes even I think I only dreamed it all,' he murmured.\n\nA chicken squawked angrily behind them.\n\n'Where the devil is Jink?' With a curse, Dustfinger opened the stable door. A white hen fluttered past him into the open; another fowl lay in the straw, her feathers bloody. A marten was sitting beside her.\n\n'Jink!' Dustfinger scolded. 'Damn it, didn't I tell you to leave the chickens alone?'\n\nThe marten looked at him.\n\nFeathers were sticking to the animal's muzzle. He stretched, raised his bushy tail, came to Dustfinger, and rubbed against his legs like a cat.\n\n'Well, what do you know?' whispered Dustfinger. 'Hello, Gwin.'\n\nHis death was back."
            },
            {
                "title": "New Masters",
                "text": "\u2003Tyrants smile with their last breath\n\n\u2003For they know that at their death,\n\n\u2003Tyranny just changes hands,\n\n\u2003Serfdom lives on in their lands.\n\n\u2014Heinrich Heine, 'King David'\n\nThe Prince of Sighs, once the Laughing Prince, died scarcely a day after Meggie had been to the castle with Fenoglio. He died at dawn, and the men-at-arms rode into Ombra three days later. Meggie was in the market place with Minerva when they came. After her father-in-law's death Violante had ordered the guard at the city gate to be doubled, but there were so many men-at-arms that the guards let them in without offering any resistance. The Piper rode at their head, his silver nose like a beak in the middle of his face, as shiny as if he had polished it up specially for the occasion. The narrow streets echoed with the snorting of horses, and it was quiet as the mounted men appeared among the buildings. The street cries of traders, the voices of women crowding around the stalls, all fell silent when the Piper reined in his horse and disapprovingly scrutinized the crowd.\n\n'Make way!' he called. His voice sounded oddly strained, but what else would you expect of a man who had no nose? 'Make way for the envoy of the Adderhead. We are here to pay his last respects to your dead Prince and ensure that his grandson takes his rightful place as his heir.'\n\nThe silence continued, but then a single voice was raised. 'Thursday's market day in Ombra, always was, so if you gentlemen would like to dismount, we can get on with it!'\n\nThe Piper looked for the speaker among the faces staring up at him, but the man was hidden by the crowd. A murmur of agreement rose in the market place.\n\n'Oh, so that's it!' cried the Piper through the confused voices. 'You think we rode right through that accursed forest just to dismount here and make our way through a rabble of stinking peasants. As soon as the cat's dead the mice dance on the table. But I have news for you. There's a cat in your miserable town again, a cat with sharper claws than the old one!'\n\nWithout another word, he turned in the saddle, raised his black-gloved hand \u2013 and gave his men a signal.\n\nThen he rode his horse straight into the crowd.\n\nThe silence that had been weighing down so heavily on the market place was torn like rending cloth. Screams rose in its enclosed space. More and more horsemen rode in from among the houses around it, so heavily armed they looked like iron reptiles, their helmets drawn so far down that you could see only their mouths and their eyes between nose-guard and rim. There was a clinking of spurs, a clashing of greaves and breastplates so brightly polished that they reflected the crowd's horrified faces. Minerva pushed her children out of the way. Despina stumbled, and Meggie was going to her aid when she herself tripped over a couple of cabbages and fell flat. A stranger pulled her to her feet just before the Piper rode her down. Meggie heard his horse snorting above her, felt his gleaming spurs brush her shoulder. She took shelter behind a potter's overturned stall, although she cut her hands on his broken pots. Trembling, she crouched among the shards, surrounded by smashed barrels and sacks that had burst open, watching helplessly as others, less lucky, fell under the horses' hooves. The mounted men struck out at many in the crowd with their feet or the shafts of their spears. Horses shied, reared, and kicked at pots and people's heads.\n\nThen, just as suddenly as they had come, the men-at-arms were gone. Only the sound of their horses' hooves could still be heard as they rode fast up the street to the castle. The market place was left looking as if a strong wind had blown through it, an ill wind breaking jugs and pots as well as human bones. There was a smell of fear in the air as Meggie crawled out from behind the barrels. Peasants were gathering up their trampled vegetables, mothers wiped tears from their children's faces and blood from their knees, women stood looking at the broken earthenware dishes they had hoped to sell \u2013 and all was quiet in the market place again. Very quiet. The voices cursing the horsemen did so in undertones, and even the weeping and groaning were muted. Minerva came over to Meggie, concern in her face, with the sobbing Despina and Ivo beside her.\n\n'Yes, I think we have a new master now,' she said bitterly, helping Meggie to her feet. 'Can you take the children home? I'll stay here and see what I can do to help. There must be many broken bones, but luckily a few physicians can always be found here on market day.'\n\nMeggie just nodded. She didn't know how she felt. Afraid? Angry? Desperate? There didn't seem to be any word to describe the state of her heart. Silently, she took Despina and Ivo by the hand and set off home with them. Her knees hurt, and she was limping, but nonetheless she hurried along the alleys so fast that the children could hardly keep up.\n\n'Now!' She uttered just that one word as she hobbled into Fenoglio's room. 'Let me read it now. At once.' Her voice shook, and she had to lean against the bare wall because her grazed knees were trembling. Indeed, everything in her and about her was trembling.\n\n'What's happened?' Fenoglio was sitting at his desk. The parchment lying before him was covered with words. Rosenquartz stood beside him with a dripping pen in his hand, looking at Meggie in astonishment.\n\n'We must do it now!' she cried. 'This minute! They just rode into the middle of the crowd \u2013 into all those people!'\n\n'Ah, so the soldiers are here already. Well, I told you we must hurry. Who was leading them? Firefox?'\n\n'No, it was the Piper.' Meggie went over to the bed and sat down on it. Suddenly she felt only fear, as if she were back kneeling among the toppled stalls again, and her fury had run out of steam. 'There are so many of them!' she whispered. 'It's too late! What could Cosimo do against them?'\n\n'You just leave that to me!' Fenoglio took the pen from the glass man's hand and began writing again. 'The Laughing Prince has many soldiers too, and they'll follow Cosimo once he's back. Of course, it would have been better if you'd read him here while his father was still alive. The Laughing Prince was in rather too much of a hurry to die, but that can't be helped now! Other things can be, though.' With his brow furrowed, he read through what he had written, crossed out a word here, added one there, and then waved his hand to the glass man. 'Sand, Rosenquartz, hurry up!'\n\nMeggie pulled her skirt up and looked at her injured knees. One of them was beginning to swell. 'But are you sure it will really be any better with Cosimo?' she asked in a low voice. 'From what Her Ugliness said about him, it didn't sound like it.'\n\n'Of course it will be better! What kind of question is that? Cosimo is one of the good characters and always was, never mind what Violante says. Anyway, when you read this aloud you'll be bringing a new version of him here. An improved version, we might say.'\n\n'But... but why does there have to be a new prince here at all?' Meggie passed her sleeve over her tear-stained face. The clank of armour was still echoing in her ears, the snorting and whinnying, the screaming \u2013 the screams of people who wore no armour.\n\n'What can be better than a prince who does what we want?' Fenoglio took another sheet of parchment. 'Just a few more lines,' he murmured. 'I've almost finished. Oh, curse it, how I hate writing on parchment. I hope you ordered more paper, Rosenquartz.'\n\n'Of course I did, long ago,' replied the glass man, huffily. 'But there haven't been any deliveries for ages. The paper mill's on the other side of the forest, remember?'\n\n'Yes, a pity.' Fenoglio wrinkled his nose. 'Very inconvenient, to be sure.'\n\n'Fenoglio, listen to me, will you? Why don't we read that robber here instead of Cosimo?' Meggie pulled her skirt down over her knees again. 'You know \u2013 the robber in your songs! The Bluejay!'\n\nFenoglio laughed out loud. 'The Bluejay? Good heavens! I'd like to see your face if\u2014 but joking aside, no \u2013 absolutely not! A robber's not fit to rule, Meggie. Robin Hood didn't become king! Robbers are good for stirring up trouble, that's all. I couldn't even put the Black Prince on the throne here. This world is ruled by royalty, not robbers, entertainers or peasants. That's the way I made it, and I assure you it's a royal prince we need.'\n\nRosenquartz sharpened another quill and dipped it in the ink, and Fenoglio began writing again. 'Yes,' Meggie heard him whispering. 'Yes, this will sound wonderful when you read it aloud. What a surprise for the Adderhead! He thinks he can do what he likes in my world, do exactly as he pleases, but he's wrong. He'll play the part I give him and no other!'\n\nMeggie rose from the bed and limped over to the window. It had begun to rain again; the sky was weeping as silently as the people in the market place. And the Adderhead's banner was already being hoisted above the castle."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cosimo",
                "text": "\u2002'Yes,' said Abhorsen. 'I am a necromancer, but not of the common kind. Where others of the art raise the dead, I lay them back to rest...'\n\n\u2014Garth Nix, Sabriel\n\nIt was dark when Fenoglio finally put his pen aside. All was still in the alley below. It had been quiet there all day, as if the people had fled indoors like mice hiding from the cat.\n\n'Have you finished?' asked Meggie, as Fenoglio leaned back and rubbed his weary eyes. Her voice sounded faint and afraid, not like a voice that could awaken a prince and bring him to life, but after all, she had already made a monster rise from Fenoglio's words, even if that was long ago \u2013 and Mo, not she, had read the very last words.\n\nMo. After what had happened in the market place, she missed him more than ever.\n\n'Yes, I've finished!' Fenoglio sounded as pleased with himself as he had in Capricorn's village, when he and Meggie between them first planned a way to alter his story. All had ended well that time, but now... now she was in the story herself. Did that make Fenoglio's words stronger or weaker? Meggie had told him about Orpheus's rule \u2013 that it was better to use only words that were in the story already \u2013 but Fenoglio had just dismissed the idea. 'Nonsense. Remember how we wrote a happy ending before for the Steadfast Tin Soldier? Did I stop to make sure I was using only words out of his own story? No, I didn't. Perhaps that rule applies to people like this man Orpheus, people who venture to mess about with other writers' stories, but surely not for an author setting out to change his own!'\n\nMeggie hoped he was right.\n\nFenoglio had crossed out a good deal, but his handwriting had indeed become more legible. Meggie looked along the lines. Yes, this time they were Fenoglio's own words, not stolen from any other writer...\n\n'Good, isn't it?' He dipped a piece of bread in the soup that Minerva had brought up for them hours ago, and looked expectantly at Meggie. Of course the soup was cold. Neither of them could even have thought of eating until now, and Rosenquartz was the only one who had drunk some of the soup. It had made his whole body change colour, until Fenoglio firmly took his tiny spoon away from him and asked if he wanted to kill himself.\n\n'Leave that alone, Rosenquartz!' he now added sternly, as the glass man reached a transparent finger out to his dish again. 'You've had quite enough! You know you can't digest human food. Do you want me to have to take you back to that physician who almost broke your nose off last time?'\n\n'Eating sand all the time is so boring!' complained the glass man, withdrawing his finger with an injured air. 'And the sand you bring me isn't particularly tasty either.'\n\n'You ungrateful creature!' thundered Fenoglio. 'When I go down to the river for it specially! And last time the river-nymphs thought it would be fun to pull me in. I nearly drowned, all because of you.'\n\nThe glass man seemed unimpressed. Still looking injured, he sat down beside the jug full of quills, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep.\n\n'Two of them have already died on me that way!' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie. 'They just can't resist our food. Stupid creatures.'\n\nBut Meggie was only half listening. She sat down on the bed with the parchment and read through it all again, word by word. Rain came in through the window, as if to remind her of another night \u2013 the night when she first heard of Fenoglio's book, and saw Dustfinger standing outside in the rain. Dustfinger had looked happy in the castle courtyard. Fenoglio was happy too, and Farid, and Minerva and her children. And it must stay that way. I'll read this for all of them, thought Meggie. For the strolling players, so that the Adderhead won't hang them just for singing a song, for the peasants in the market place whose vegetables were trampled by those horses. What about Her Ugliness? Would it make Violante happy to have a husband again? Would she notice that this was a different Cosimo? But the words would come too late for the Prince of Sighs. He would never hear of his son's return.\n\n'Well, say something!' Fenoglio's voice sounded unsure of itself. 'Don't you like it?'\n\n'Oh, yes. Yes, I do. It's lovely.'\n\nRelief spread over his face. 'Then what are you waiting for?'\n\n'About the mark on her face \u2013 oh, I don't know \u2013 it sounds like magic, like an inkspell.'\n\n'Oh, come on. I think it's romantic, and that never hurts.'\n\n'If you say so. It's your story.' Meggie shrugged her shoulders. 'But there's one more thing. Who's going to disappear when he arrives?'\n\nFenoglio went pale. 'Heavens, I'd entirely forgotten about that. Rosenquartz, go and hide in your nest!' he told the glass man. 'Luckily the fairies are out.'\n\n'That's no use,' said Meggie quietly, as the glass man made his way up to the empty fairies' nest, where he used to sulk and sometimes sleep. 'Hiding is no use at all.'\n\nThe sound of a horse's hooves rose to them from the street outside. One of the men-at-arms was riding by. Obviously the Piper wasn't going to let the people of Ombra forget who their new master truly was, even in their sleep.\n\n'Well, there's a sign for us!' Fenoglio whispered to Meggie. 'If that man disappears, he's no loss. Anyway, how do you know anyone will disappear at all? I think it happens only if you read someone here who leaves a gap to be filled in his own story. But our new Cosimo has no story of his own! He was born here, today, from these words!'\n\nWell, he might be right.\n\nThe clatter of the hooves mingled with the sound of Meggie's voice. 'It was a quiet night in Ombra, very quiet,' she read. 'The wounds inflicted by the men-at-arms had not yet healed, and many never would.' And suddenly she forgot about the fear she had felt in the morning, and again thought only of her anger. She had felt so angry with men who encased themselves in armour and kicked women and children in the back with their iron shoes. The anger made her voice strong and full, ready to awaken new life. 'Doors and shutters were bolted, and behind them the children cried, as quietly as if fear itself kept their mouths shut, while their parents peered out into the night, fearfully wondering how dark the future would be under their new master. But suddenly hoofbeats echoed down the alley where the cobblers and saddlers lived' \u2013 how easily the words came now! They flowed over Meggie's tongue as if they had been just waiting to be read aloud, to be brought to life this very night. 'People hurried to their windows. They looked out in fear, expecting to see one of the men-at-arms or even the Piper himself with his silver nose, but someone else came riding up to the castle, and the sight of him, familiar as it was, yet turned their faces pale. For the new arrival who came riding through sleepless Ombra bore the face of their dead prince, Cosimo the Fair, who had been resting in his crypt so long.\n\nHis likeness rode down the street on a white horse, and he was as handsome as all the songs about the fair Cosimo said. He rode through the castle gateway with the Adderhead's banner flying above it, reined in his horse in the quiet nocturnal courtyard, and for all who saw him there in the moonlight, sitting erect on his white horse, it was as if Cosimo had never been away. Then all the weeping was over, the weeping and the fear. The people of Ombra rejoiced, and others came from the most remote villages to see the man who bore a dead prince's face, and they whispered, \"Cosimo is back. Cosimo the Fair has come back to take his father's place and protect Ombra from the Adderhead.\"\n\nAnd so it was. The saviour of the city ascended the throne, and the birthmark on Her Ugliness's face faded. Cosimo the Fair had his father's court poet summoned, and asked his advice, for he had been told how wise a man he was, and now a great new age began.'\n\nMeggie lowered the parchment. A great new age...\n\nFenoglio hurried to the window. Meggie had heard the sound too \u2013 hoofbeats \u2013 but she did not rise to her feet.\n\n'That must be him!' whispered Fenoglio. 'He's coming, oh, Meggie, he's coming! Listen!'\n\nBut Meggie still sat there looking at the written words on her lap. It seemed to her that they were breathing. Paper made flesh, ink made blood... suddenly she was tired, so tired that it seemed much too far to walk to the window. She felt like a child who had climbed down into the cellar all alone, and now felt scared. If only Mo were here...\n\n'Any moment now! He'll be riding by any moment now!' Fenoglio leaned so far out of the window that he was in danger of falling head first into the alley. At least he was still here \u2013 he hadn't disappeared the way he did when she summoned the Shadow. But where else would he have gone, Meggie wondered? There seemed to be only one story left, this story, Fenoglio's story. And it seemed to have no beginning and no end.\n\n'Come on, Meggie!' In great excitement, he beckoned her over. 'You read it wonderfully, oh yes, wonderfully well! But I suppose you know that. Some of the phrases weren't among the best I've ever written, it was a little clumsy here and there, a little more dramatic colour wouldn't have hurt, but never mind, it worked! It definitely worked!'\n\nThere was a knock.\n\nA knock on the door. Rosenquartz peered out of his nest, his face anxious, and Fenoglio turned, both alarmed and annoyed.\n\n'Meggie?' whispered a voice. 'Are you there, Meggie?'\n\nIt was Farid.\n\n'What does he want here?' Fenoglio uttered a less than delicate curse. 'Send him away. We really can't do with having him around just now. Oh \u2013 oh, look! Here he comes! Meggie, you're an enchantress!'\n\nThe hoofbeats were louder now. But Meggie did not go to the window; she walked to the door instead. Farid was standing outside, his face downcast. He looked almost as if he'd been crying. 'It's Gwin, Meggie... Gwin's back,' he stammered. 'I don't know how he found me! I even threw stones to make him go away.'\n\n'Meggie!' Fenoglio's voice sounded worse than merely irritated. 'Where are you?'\n\nWithout a word, she took Farid's hand and drew him over to the window with her.\n\nA white horse was coming up the narrow alley. Its rider had black hair, and his face was as young and handsome as the face of the statues in the castle, but his eyes were not stony white; instead, they were bright and as dark as his hair. He was looking around as if he had just woken from a dream, and one that didn't entirely fit in with what he now saw.\n\n'Cosimo!' whispered Farid, bewildered. 'The dead Cosimo.'\n\n'Not exactly,' Fenoglio whispered back. 'First, he isn't dead, as you can see for yourself, and second, he's not that Cosimo. He's a new one, a brand-new one, and Meggie and I have made him between us. Of course no one else will notice.'\n\n'Not even his wife?'\n\n'Well, maybe she will! But who cares about that? She hardly ever leaves the castle.'\n\nCosimo reined in his horse barely a metre from Minerva's house. Instinctively, Meggie stepped back from the window. 'What about him?' she whispered. 'Who does he himself think he is?'\n\n'What a question! He thinks he's Cosimo, of course!' replied Fenoglio impatiently. 'Don't get me confused, for heaven's sake! All we've done is make sure the story goes on the way I originally planned it, no more and no less!'\n\nCosimo turned in his saddle and stared back down the street the way he had come \u2013 as if he had lost something, but had forgotten what it was. Then he clicked his tongue softly and urged his horse on, past Minerva's husband's workshop and the narrow house where the physician lived. Fenoglio often complained of the man's lack of skill in pulling teeth.\n\n'That's not a good idea.' Farid retreated from the window as if the Devil himself had gone riding by. 'It's bad luck to summon the dead.'\n\n'He never was dead, damn it all!' snapped Fenoglio. 'How often do I have to explain? He was born this very day, from my words and Meggie's voice, so don't talk such nonsense. What are you doing here anyway? Since when do people come visiting decent girls in the middle of the night?'\n\nFarid's face flushed dark red. Then he turned without a word and went to the door.\n\n'Leave him alone! He can visit me whenever he likes!' Meggie told Fenoglio sharply. The stairs were slippery with rain, and she didn't catch up with Farid until he had reached the last step. He looked so sad.\n\n'What did you tell Dustfinger? Did you tell him how Gwin followed us?'\n\n'No, I didn't dare.' Farid leaned against the wall of the house and closed his eyes. 'You should have seen his face when he saw the marten. Do you think he'll have to die now, Meggie?'\n\nShe put out her hand and touched his face. He really had been crying. She could feel the dried tears on his skin.\n\n'That's what Cheeseface said!' She could hardly make out the words he was whispering. 'He said I'd bring him bad luck.'\n\n'What are you talking about? Dustfinger should be glad to have you!'\n\nFarid looked up at the sky. Rain was still falling. 'I must go back,' he said. 'That's why I came. To tell you I must stay with him now. I have to look after him \u2013 do you understand? If I keep close by him, then nothing bad will happen. You can visit me, though, at Roxane's farm! We're there most of the time. Dustfinger is crazy about her, he hardly ever leaves her side. Roxane this, Roxane that...' There was no mistaking the jealousy in his voice.\n\nMeggie knew how he felt. She still clearly remembered those first few weeks back at Elinor's house, and her troubled heart when Mo spent hours going for walks with Resa, and didn't even ask if she would like to come too. She remembered what it felt like to stand outside a closed door and hear her father's laughter on the other side, laughter meant not for her but for her mother. 'Why do you look like that?' Elinor had asked once, when she found Meggie watching the two of them in the garden. 'Half his heart still belongs to you. Isn't that enough?' She had felt so ashamed. At least Farid was only jealous of a stranger. She'd been jealous of her own mother.\n\n'Please, Meggie! I must stay with him. Who else is going to look after him? Roxane? She doesn't know anything about the marten, and anyway...'\n\nMeggie turned her head away so that he wouldn't see her disappointment. Bother Gwin! She traced small circles on the damp ground with her toe.\n\n'You will come, won't you?' Farid took her hands. 'There are wonderful plants growing in Roxane's fields, and she has a goose who thinks she's a watchdog, and an old horse. Jehan, that's her son, says there's a linchetto living in the stable, don't ask me what a linchetto is, but Jehan says if you fart at it, it runs away. Well, Jehan's still just a baby, but I think you'd like him...'\n\n'Is he Dustfinger's son?' Meggie tucked her hair back behind her ear and tried to smile.\n\n'No, but guess what? Roxane thinks I am. Imagine that! Please, Meggie! Come to Roxane's, do!' He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her full on her mouth. His skin was wet with rain. When she didn't pull away, he took her face between his hands and kissed her again, on her forehead, on her nose, on her mouth once more. 'You will come, won't you? Promise!' he whispered.\n\nThen he ran away, fleet-footed as always, ever since the day Meggie had first set eyes on him. 'You must come!' he called back to her once more, before disappearing into the dark passage leading out to the street. 'Maybe you'd better stay with us for a while \u2013 Dustfinger and me, I mean! That old man is crazy. You don't go playing games with the dead!'\n\nThen he had gone, and Meggie was leaning against the wall of Minerva's house, where Farid had been standing a moment ago. She passed her fingers over her mouth, as if she must make sure that Farid's kiss had not changed it in some way.\n\n'Meggie?' Fenoglio was standing at the top of the stairs, a lantern in his hand. 'What are you doing down there? Has the boy gone? What did he want? Standing around in the dark there with you!'\n\nMeggie did not reply. She didn't want to talk to anyone. She just wanted to listen to what her bewildered heart was telling her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Elinor",
                "text": "\u2002Out in the world not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did.\n\n\u2014Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes\n\nElinor spent a couple of miserable days and nights in her cellar. The man built like a wardrobe brought them something to eat morning and evening \u2013 at least, they assumed it was morning and evening, always supposing that Darius's watch was still keeping time. When the bulky figure first appeared with bread and a plastic bottle of water, she had thrown the bottle at his head. Or rather, she'd tried to, but the colossus ducked just in time and the bottle burst against the wall.\n\n'Never again, Darius!' Elinor whispered when the wardrobe-man, grunting contemptuously, had locked them in once more. 'I was never going to let myself be locked up again, that's what I swore back in that stinking cage, when those arsonists walked past the bars with their rifles and flicked burning cigarette ends in my face. And now here I am locked up in my own cellar!'\n\nOn the first night she got up from the air mattress, which made all her bones ache, and threw cans of food against the wall. Darius just crouched there on the blanket he had spread out over the cushion for the garden bench, looking at her wide-eyed. By the afternoon of the second day \u2013 or was it the third? \u2013 Elinor was breaking jars, sobbing when she cut her fingers on the glass. Darius was just sweeping up the broken pieces when the wardrobe-man came to fetch her. Darius tried to follow, but the wardrobe-man pushed his thin chest so roughly that he stumbled and fell among the olives, preserved tomatoes, and all the other things that had spilled out of the jars when Elinor smashed them.\n\n'Bastard!' she snapped at the colossus, but he just grinned, pleased as a child who has knocked down a tower of building bricks, and hummed to himself as he led Elinor to her library. Who says bad people can't be happy too? she thought as he opened the door and jerked his head, indicating that she should go in.\n\nHer library was a shocking sight. There were dirty mugs and plates strewn around everywhere \u2013 on the window-sill, on the carpet, even on the glass cases containing her greatest treasures \u2013 and that wasn't the worst of it. Her books were the worst. Hardly any of them were still in their right places. They were stacked on the floor among the unwashed coffee mugs, they were scattered in front of the windows. Many even lay flat on the floor open, their spines upward. Elinor couldn't bear to look! Didn't the monster know that was the way to break a book's neck?\n\nIf he did, it didn't bother him. Orpheus was sitting in her favourite armchair, his dreadful dog beside him holding something between its paws that looked suspiciously like one of her gardening shoes. Its master had draped his plump legs over one arm of the chair, and was holding a beautifully illustrated book about fairies that Elinor had bought in an auction only two months ago, paying such a high price that it had made Darius bury his head in his hands.\n\n'That,' she said, her voice trembling slightly, 'that is a very, very valuable book.'\n\nOrpheus turned his head to her and smiled. It was the smile of a naughty boy. 'I know!' he said in his velvety voice. 'You have very, very many valuable books, Signora Loredan.'\n\n'Yes, indeed,' replied Elinor icily. 'That's why I don't stack them any old how, like egg-boxes or slices of cheese. Each has its own place.'\n\nThis observation only made Orpheus smile even more broadly. He closed the book, after dog-earing one of the pages. Elinor drew in her breath sharply.\n\n'Books aren't glass vases, dear lady,' said Orpheus as he sat up in the chair. 'They're not as fragile or as decorative. They're just books! It's their contents that matter, and their contents won't fall out if you stack them in a pile.' He ran his hand over his smooth hair, as if afraid his parting might have slipped. 'Sugar says you wanted to speak to me?'\n\nElinor cast an incredulous glance at the wardrobe-man. 'Sugar?'\n\nThe giant smiled, revealing such an extraordinary collection of bad teeth that Elinor didn't have to wonder how he got his nickname.\n\n'I certainly do. I've been wanting to speak to you for days. I insist on being let out of the cellar \u2013 and my librarian, too! I'm sick of having to pee in a bucket in my own house, and not knowing whether it's day or night. I order you to bring my niece and her husband back. They're in the greatest danger, and it's all your fault, and I order you to keep your fat fingers off my books, damn it!'\n\nElinor shut her mouth \u2013 and cursed herself with every curse she could call to mind. Oh no! What was Darius always telling her? What had she told herself hundreds of times, lying down there on that horrible air mattress? Control yourself, Elinor, be cunning, Elinor, watch your tongue \u2013 all useless. She had burst like a balloon blown up too far.\n\nBut Orpheus still sat there, with his legs crossed and that impudent smile on his face. 'I could probably bring them back. Yes, probably!' he said, patting his dog's ugly head. 'But why should I?' His fat fingers stroked the cover of the book he had just so cruelly dog-eared. 'A handsome cover, isn't it? Rather sentimental, perhaps, and I don't think of fairies quite like that, but all the same...'\n\n'Yes, yes, I know it's handsome, but I'm not interested in the cover just now!' Elinor was trying not to raise her voice, but she simply couldn't keep it down. 'If you can really bring them back, then for heaven's sake get a move on and do it! Before it's too late. The old woman is going to kill him, didn't you hear her? She's going to kill Mortimer!'\n\nHis expression indifferent, Orpheus straightened his crumpled tie. 'Well, he killed Mortola's son, as far as I can make out. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as another \u2013 not entirely unknown \u2013 book so forcibly puts it.'\n\n'Her son was a murderer!' Elinor clenched her fists. She wanted to rush at the moon-face and snatch her book from his hands, hands that looked as soft and white as if they had never in their life done anything but turn the pages of a book. However, Sugar barred her way.\n\n'Yes, yes, I know.' Orpheus heaved a heavy sigh. 'I know all about Capricorn. I've read the book telling his story more times than I can count, and I have to say he was a very good villain, one of the best I ever met in the realm of the written word. Just killing someone like that \u2013 well, if you ask me, it's almost a crime. Although I'm glad of it for Dustfinger.'\n\nOh, if only she could have hit him just once, on his broad nose, on his smiling mouth!\n\n'Capricorn had Mortimer abducted! He captured his daughter and kept his wife a prisoner for years on end!' Tears of rage and helplessness came into Elinor's eyes. 'Please, Mr Orpheus or whatever your real name is!' She put all her strength and self-control into sounding reasonably friendly. 'Please! Bring them back, and while you're at it please bring Meggie back too, before she gets trodden on by a giant or impaled on a spear in that story.'\n\nOrpheus leaned back and looked at her as if she were a picture on an easel. How naturally he had taken over her armchair \u2013 as if Elinor herself had never sat there with Meggie beside her, or with Resa on her lap when she was still tiny, so many years ago. Elinor bit back her fury. Control yourself, Elinor, she thought, as she kept her eyes fixed on Orpheus's pale, bespectacled face. Control yourself! For the sake of Mortimer, and Resa, and Meggie!\n\nOrpheus cleared his throat. 'I don't know what's bothering you,' he said, examining his fingernails, which were bitten like a schoolboy's. 'I envy all three of them!'\n\nIt was a moment before Elinor realized what he was talking about. Only when he went on did it become clear.\n\n'What makes you think they want to come back?' he asked softly. 'If I were there I never would! There's nowhere in this world I've ever wanted to be half as much as on the hill where the Laughing Prince's castle lies. I've walked through Ombra market countless times, I've looked up at the towers and the banners with the lion emblem. I've imagined what it would be like to wander through the Wayless Wood and watch Dustfinger stealing honey from the fire-elves. I've pictured the minstrel woman he loves, Roxane. I've stood in Capricorn's fortress smelling the potions that Mortola brewed from monks-hood and hemlock. The Adderhead's castle often figures in my dreams, even today. Sometimes I'm in one of its dungeons, sometimes I'm stealing in through the gate with Dustfinger and looking up at the heads of minstrels set there on pikes by the Adderhead for singing the wrong song... By all the words and letters in the world, when Mortola told me her name I thought she was crazy! Yes, she and Basta did look like the characters they claimed to be, but could it really be true that someone had brought them here out of my favourite book? Were there other people who could read aloud the way I can? I didn't believe it until Dustfinger came up to me in that musty, ramshackle library. Oh, God, how my heart beat when I saw his face with the three pale scars left by Basta's knife! It beat faster than on the day I first kissed a girl. It really was him, the melancholy hero of my very favourite book. And I helped him to disappear into it again, but what about me? Hopeless.' He laughed, a sad and bitter laugh. 'I just hope he doesn't have to die the death that idiot of an author intended for him. No, he can't! He'll be all right, I'm sure he will. After all, Capricorn is dead and Basta's a coward. Do you know, I wrote to that Fenoglio, the author, when I was twelve, telling him he must change his story, or at least write a sequel in which Dustfinger comes back? He never answered my letter, any more than Inkheart ever had a sequel. Oh well,' Orpheus sighed deeply.\n\nDustfinger, Dustfinger... Elinor compressed her lips. Who cared what happened to the matchstick-eater? Keep calm, Elinor, don't go off the deep end again, you must be clever now, clever, go carefully... Easier said than done.\n\n'Listen, if you'd like to be in that book so much \u2013' and this time she really did manage to make her voice sound as if what she was saying didn't matter all that much to her \u2013 'then why not just bring Meggie back? She knows how you can read yourself into a story. She's done it! I'm sure she can tell you how to do it, or read you over there too.'\n\nOrpheus's round face darkened so suddenly that Elinor immediately knew she had made a bad mistake. How could she have forgotten what a vain, conceited creature he was?\n\n'No one,' said Orpheus softly, rising slowly and menacingly from her chair, 'no one can tell me anything about the art of reading. Certainly not a little girl!'\n\nNow he'll put you straight back in the cellar, thought Elinor. What am I going to do? Think, Elinor, try to find the right answer in your silly head! Do something! Surely you can think something up! 'Oh, of course not!' she stammered. 'No one but you could have read Dustfinger back. No one. But\u2014'\n\n'No buts. You watch out.' Orpheus posed as if he were about to sing an aria on stage, and picked up the book lying on the chair where he had so carelessly put it down. He opened it right where the dog-ear disfigured the creamy white page, ran the tip of his tongue over his lips as if he had to smooth them so that the words would flow freely \u2013 and then his voice filled Elinor's library again, the captivating voice that did not suit his outward appearance in the least. Orpheus read as if he were letting his favourite food melt in his mouth, relishing it, greedy for the sound of the letters, pearls melting on his tongue, words like seeds from which he was making life emerge.\n\nPerhaps he really was the greatest master ever of his art. He certainly practised it with the utmost passion.\n\n'There is a tale of a certain shepherd, Tudur of Llangollen, who came across a troop of faeries, dancing to the tune of a tiny fiddler.' A faint chirping sound arose behind Elinor, but when she turned round there was no one to be seen but Sugar, listening to Orpheus's voice with a bewildered expression on his face. 'Tudur tried to resist the enchanting strains, but finally, throwing his cap in the air and shouting: \"Now for it, then, play away, old devil!\" he joined in.'\n\nThe fiddling grew shriller and shriller, and when Elinor turned round this time she saw a man standing in her library, surrounded by small creatures dressed in leaves and prancing about on his bare feet like a dancing bear, while a step or so away a tiny little thing with a bellflower on its head was playing a fiddle hardly larger than an acorn.\n\n'Immediately, a pair of horns appeared on the fiddler's head and a tail sprouted from beneath his coat!' Orpheus let his voice swell until he was almost singing. 'The dancing sprites turned into goats, dogs, cats and foxes, and they and Tudur spun around in a dizzying frenzy.'\n\nElinor pressed her hands to her mouth. There they were, emerging from behind the armchair, leaping over the stacks of books, dancing on the open pages with their muddy hooves. The dog jumped up and barked at them.\n\n'Stop it!' Elinor cried to Orpheus. 'Stop it at once!'\n\nHe closed the book with a triumphant smile.\n\n'Chase them out into the garden!' he told Sugar, who was standing there transfixed. Confused, the man groped his way over to the door, opened it \u2013 and let the whole troop dance past him, fiddling, screeching, barking, bleating, on down Elinor's corridor and past her bedroom, until the noise gradually died away.\n\n'No one,' repeated Orpheus, and now there was not the smallest trace of a smile to be seen on his round face, 'no one can teach Orpheus anything about the art of reading. And did you notice? Nothing disappeared! Maybe a few bookworms if there are any in your library, maybe a couple of flies...'\n\n'Maybe a couple of motorists down on the road,' added Elinor in a hoarse voice, but unfortunately there was no hiding the fact that she was impressed.\n\n'Maybe!' said Orpheus, carelessly shrugging his round shoulders. 'But that wouldn't make any difference to my mastery, would it? And now I hope you understand something about the art of cooking, because I'm sick and tired of what Sugar serves up. And I'm hungry. I'm always hungry when I've been reading aloud.'\n\n'Cooking?' Elinor practically choked on her rage. 'You expect me to act as your cook in my own house?'\n\n'Well, of course. Make yourself useful. Or do you want to give Sugar the idea that you and your stammering friend are superfluous to requirements? He's in a bad mood anyway, because he hasn't yet found anything worth stealing in your house. No, we really don't want to put any stupid notions into his head, do we?'\n\nElinor took a deep breath and tried to control her trembling knees. 'No. No, we don't,' she said, turned \u2013 and went into the kitchen."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Man",
                "text": "\u2003So she placed the healing herb\n\n\u2003In his mouth \u2013 he slept straightway.\n\n\u2003She covered him most carefully.\n\n\u2003He still slept on the livelong day.\n\n\u2014Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parsifal\n\nResa and Mo were alone in the cave when they came in: two women and four men. Two of the men had been sitting by the fire with Cloud-Dancer: Sootbird the fire-eater and Twofingers. His face was no friendlier by daylight, and the others too were looking so hostile that Resa instinctively moved closer to Mo. Only Sootbird seemed to feel awkward.\n\nMo was asleep. He had slept this uneasy, fevered sleep for more than a day now, and it made Nettle shake her head anxiously. The six strolling players stopped only a few paces away from him. They loomed between Resa and the daylight coming in from outside. One of the women stepped out in front of the rest of them. She wasn't particularly old, but her fingers were crooked like a bird's claws.\n\n'He must go!' she said. 'Today. He's not one of us, and nor are you.'\n\n'What do you mean?' Hard as Resa was trying to sound calm, her voice shook. 'He can't go anywhere. He's still too weak.'\n\nIf only Nettle had been there! But she had gone away muttering something about sick children \u2013 and the root of a herb that might perhaps cure Mo's fever. The six would have felt afraid of Nettle, they'd have been respectful and timid, but to the strolling players Resa was only a stranger, a desperate stranger with a mortally sick husband \u2013 even if none of them guessed just how much of a stranger she was in this world.\n\n'It's the children... you must see how we feel!' The other woman was still very young, and she was pregnant. She placed one protective hand on her belly. 'A man like him puts our children in danger, and Martha's right, you don't even belong to us. This is the only place where they let us stay. No one drives us away, but once they hear the Bluejay is here, that will be over. They'll say we were hiding him.'\n\n'But he isn't this Bluejay! I told you so before. And who do you mean by \"they\"?'\n\nMo whispered something in his fever, his hand clutching Resa's arm. She soothingly stroked his forehead and forced a little of the decoction that Nettle had made between his lips. Her visitors watched in silence.\n\n'As if you didn't know!' said one of them, a tall, thin man shaken by a dry cough. 'The Adderhead's looking for him. He'll send his men-at-arms here. He'll have us all hung for hiding him.'\n\n'I'm telling you again!' Resa took Mo's hand and held it very tight. 'He's not a robber, or anyone else out of your stories! We've only been here a few days! My husband is a bookbinder, that's his trade, he isn't anything else!'\n\nThe way they were looking at her!\n\n'I've seldom heard a worse lie!' The two-fingered man's mouth twisted. He had an unpleasant voice. Judging by his brightly patterned clothing, he was one of the players who put on comic shows in market places, loud, coarse farces to make the spectators laugh all their troubles away. 'What would a bookbinder be doing in Capricorn's old fortress in the middle of the Wayless Wood? People never go there of their own free will, what with the White Women and the other horrors haunting the ruins. And why would Mortola bother with a bookbinder? Why would she shoot him with some witchy weapon no one's ever heard of before?'\n\nThe others nodded agreement \u2013 and took another step towards Mo. What was she to do? What could she say? What use was it having a voice if no one would listen to her? 'Don't let it worry you, not being able to speak,' Dustfinger had often told her. 'People tend not to listen anyway, right?'\n\nPerhaps she could call for help, but who was going to come? Cloud-Dancer had set off early in the morning with Nettle, when the leaves had still been tinged red by the light of the rising sun, and the women who brought Resa food and sometimes kept watch beside Mo for her, to let her get a few hours' sleep, had gone down to the nearby river with the children. There were only a few old men outside the cave, and they had come here because they were tired of other people and were waiting to die. They weren't likely to help her.\n\n'We won't hand him over to the Adderhead, we'll just take him back to where Nettle found you. To that accursed fortress.' It was the man with the cough again. He had a raven sitting on his shoulder. Resa knew such ravens from the days when she had sat in market places writing documents and petitions \u2013 their owners trained them to steal a few extra coins while they were performing their own tricks.\n\n'The songs say that the Bluejay protects the Motley Folk,' the raven's owner went on. 'And those he's supposed to have killed threatened our women and children. We appreciate that, we've all sung the songs about him, but we're not ready to be strung up for his sake.'\n\nThey'd made up their minds long ago. They were going to take Mo away. Resa wanted to shout at them, but she simply had no strength left for shouting. 'It will kill him if you take him back there!' Her voice was hardly louder than a whisper.\n\nThey didn't care about that; Resa saw it in their eyes. Why should they, she thought. What would she do if the children out there were hers? She remembered a visit that the Adderhead had paid to Capricorn's fortress, to see an enemy of theirs executed. Since that day she had known what someone who enjoyed inflicting pain on others looked like.\n\nBefore Resa could stop her, the woman with the claw-like fingers knelt down beside Mo and pushed his sleeve up. 'There, see that?' she said triumphantly. 'He has the scar, just as the songs describe it \u2013 where the Adder's dogs bit him.'\n\nResa hauled her away so violently that the woman fell at her companions' feet. 'Those dogs weren't the Adderhead's. They belonged to Basta!'\n\nThe name made them start nervously, but all the same they didn't leave. Sootbird helped the woman to her feet, and Twofingers went closer to Mo. 'Come on!' he told the others. 'Let's pick him up.'\n\nThey all joined him; only the fire-eater hesitated.\n\n'Oh please, believe me!' Resa pushed their hands away. 'How can you think I'd lie to you? What thanks would that be for all your help?'\n\nNo one took any notice of her. Twofingers pulled away the blanket that Nettle had given them to cover Mo. It was cold in the cave at night.\n\n'Well, fancy that! Visiting our guests. How kind of you.'\n\nHow they spun round! Like naughty children caught in the act. A man was standing in the entrance to the cave. For a moment Resa thought it was Dustfinger and wondered, in bewilderment, how Cloud-Dancer could possibly have brought him so quickly. But then she saw that the man the six of them were staring at so guiltily was black. Everything about him was black: his long hair, his skin, his eyes, even his clothes. And beside him, almost a head taller, stood a bear as black as his master.\n\n'These must be the visitors Nettle told me about, I expect?' The bear ducked his head, grunting, as he followed the man into the cave. 'She says they know an old friend of mine, a very good friend. Dustfinger. Of course, you've all heard of him, haven't you? And I'm sure you know that his friends have always been my friends too. The same applies to his enemies, of course.'\n\nThe six moved aside with some haste, as if to give the stranger a better view of Resa. The fire-eater laughed nervously. 'Why, what are you doing here, Prince?'\n\n'Oh, this and that. Why are there no guards outside? Do you think the brownies have lost their taste for our provisions?' He walked slowly towards them. His bear dropped to all fours and lumbered after him, puffing and snorting, as if he didn't like the cramped cave.\n\nPrince! They called him 'Prince'. Of course. The Black Prince! Fenoglio's book had told Resa his story, and she had heard his name in Ombra market too, from the maids in Capricorn's fortress, even from Capricorn's men. Yet she had never seen him face to face. When Fenoglio's story had first swallowed her up he had been a knife-thrower, a bear-tamer... and Dustfinger's friend since the two of them had been barely half as old as Meggie was now.\n\nThe others drew aside as he stepped up to them with his bear, but the Prince ignored them. He looked down at Resa. There were three knives in his brightly embroidered belt: slender, shiny knives, although no strolling player was allowed to carry weapons. 'That's to make it easier to skewer them,' Dustfinger had often said mockingly.\n\n'Welcome to the Secret Camp,' said the Black Prince, his glance going to Mo's blood-stained bandages. 'Dustfinger's friends are always welcome here \u2013 even if it may not look like it just now.' He looked ironically at the others standing around there. Only the two-fingered man defiantly returned his gaze, but then he too bent his head.\n\nThe Prince went on looking down at Resa. 'Where did you meet Dustfinger?'\n\nWhat was she to say? In another world? The bear was sniffing the bread lying beside her. His hot breath, the breath of a beast of prey, made her shudder. Tell the truth, Resa, she thought. You don't have to say what world it happened in.\n\n'I worked as a maid for the fire-raisers for several years,' she said. 'I ran away, but a snake bit me. Dustfinger found me and helped me. I'd have died but for him.' Yes, he hid me, she continued the story in her mind, but Basta and the others soon found me, and they half killed Dustfinger.\n\n'What about your husband? I hear he's not one of us.' The black eyes explored her face. They seemed to be well versed in detecting lies.\n\n'She says he's a bookbinder, but we know better!' The two-fingered man spat out his words contemptuously.\n\n'So what do you know?' The Prince looked at them, and they fell silent.\n\n'He is a bookbinder! Give him paper, glue and leather, and once he's better he'll show you.' Don't cry, Resa, she told herself. You've cried quite enough these last few days.\n\nThe thin man coughed again.\n\n'Very well, you heard her.' The Prince crouched down beside her on the ground. 'These two stay here until Dustfinger arrives to confirm their story. He'll soon tell us if this is only a harmless bookbinder or that robber you're always going on about. Dustfinger knows your husband too, doesn't he?'\n\n'Oh yes,' replied Resa softly. 'He's known him longer than he's known me.'\n\nMo turned his head, and whispered Meggie's name.\n\n'Meggie? Is that your name?' The Prince pushed the bear's muzzle away as the animal sniffed the bread again.\n\n'It's our daughter's name.'\n\n'You have a daughter? How old is she?' The bear rolled on his back for his belly to be scratched, as if he were a dog.\n\n'Thirteen.'\n\n'Thirteen? Almost the same age as Dustfinger's daughter.'\n\nDustfinger's daughter? He'd never said anything to her about any daughter.\n\n'So why are you all still standing around?' the Prince snapped at the others. 'Bring fresh water! Can't you see he's feverish?'\n\nThe two women hurried away, relieved, or so it seemed to Resa, to have a good reason to leave the cave. But the men stood around indecisively.\n\n'Suppose it really is him, though, Prince?' asked the thin man. 'And suppose the Adderhead hears about him before Dustfinger gets here?' He coughed so hard that he had to press his hand to his chest.\n\n'Suppose he's who? The Bluejay? Nonsense! There's probably no such man, and even if there is, since when have we given up people who are on our own side? And suppose the songs are true, and he's protected your women and your children...'\n\n'Songs are never true.' The two-fingered man's eyebrows were as dark as if he had blackened them with soot. 'He's probably no better than any other highwayman, a murderer greedy for gold, nothing more...'\n\n'Perhaps, or perhaps not,' retorted the Prince. 'I see only an injured man and a woman asking for our help.'\n\nThe men did not reply, but the glances they cast Mo were still hostile.\n\n'Now get out, and hurry up about it!' the Prince said angrily. 'How's he to get better with you staring at him like that? Or do you think his wife likes your ugly mugs? Go and make yourselves useful, there's plenty of work outside.'\n\nAnd they did go, sullenly slouching away like men who had not done what they came to do.\n\n'He isn't the Bluejay!' Resa whispered, when they had left.\n\n'Very likely not!' The Prince stroked his bear's round ears. 'But I'm afraid our friends out there are convinced he is. And the Adder has put a high price on the Bluejay's head.'\n\n'A high price?' Resa looked at the entrance to the cave. Two of the men were still standing there. 'They'll come back,' she whispered, 'and try to take him away after all.'\n\nBut the Black Prince shook his head.\n\n'Not while I'm here. And I'll stay until Dustfinger arrives. Nettle said you'd sent him a message, so I expect he'll soon be here to tell them you're not lying, won't he?'\n\nThe women came back with a basin of water. Resa dipped a scrap of fabric in it to cool Mo's brow. The pregnant woman leaned over her and put a few dried flowers in her lap. 'Here,' she whispered. 'Put this on his heart. It brings luck.'\n\nResa stroked the dried flower-heads. 'They obey you,' she said to the Prince, when the women had gone again. 'Why?'\n\n'Oh, because they've chosen me as their leader,' replied the Prince. 'And because I'm a very good knife-thrower.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Fairydeath",
                "text": "\u2003The wind this evening, so eagerly playing\n\n\u2003Sounds like blades that someone is swinging \u2013\n\n\u2003On the instrument of the trees densely growing...\n\n\u2014Montale, Poems\n\nAt first Dustfinger didn't believe Farid when he told him what he had seen and heard in Fenoglio's room. Even the old man couldn't be crazy enough to meddle with Death's handiwork. But then, that same day, a couple of women buying herbs from Roxane had the same story to tell as the boy: Cosimo the Fair had come back, they said, back from the dead.\n\n'Women say the White Women fell so deeply in love with him that at last they let him go,' said Roxane. 'And men say he'd just been hiding from his ugly wife for a while.'\n\nCrazy stories, thought Dustfinger, but not half as crazy as the truth.\n\nThe women had nothing to say about Brianna. He didn't like to think of her up at the castle. No one knew what might happen there next. It seemed that the Piper was still in Ombra with half a dozen men-at-arms. Cosimo had sent the rest of them out of the city, and they were waiting outside the walls for their own lord's arrival. For there was a widespread rumour that the Adderhead would come in person to see this prince who had risen from the dead. He wasn't going to accept the idea of Cosimo's taking the throne from his grandson again so easily.\n\n'I'll ride to Ombra myself and see how she is,' said Roxane. 'They probably wouldn't even let you through the Outer Gate. But there's something else you can do for me.'\n\nThe women had not come just for the herbs and to pass on the gossip about Cosimo. They had brought Roxane an order from Nettle, who was in Ombra treating two sick children in the dyers' quarter. She needed a root of fairydeath, dangerous medicine which killed as often as it cured. The old woman hadn't said for what poor devil she needed the root. 'Just that it's a man at the Secret Camp who's injured, and Nettle is going back there this evening,' said Roxane. 'And another thing... Cloud-Dancer was with her. It seems he's carrying a message for you.'\n\n'A message? For me?'\n\n'Yes, from a woman.' Roxane looked at him for a moment, and then went into the house to get the root.\n\n'You're going to Ombra?' Farid was there behind Dustfinger so suddenly that he jumped.\n\n'I am, and Roxane is riding to the castle,' he said. 'So you stay here to keep an eye on Jehan.'\n\n'And who's going to keep an eye on you?'\n\n'Me?'\n\n'Yes.' What a look Farid was giving him! And the marten too. 'To stop it happening.' Farid spoke so softly that Dustfinger could hardly hear him. 'Stop what it says in the book.'\n\n'Oh, that.' The boy was watching him as anxiously as if he might fall down dead any minute. Dustfinger had to suppress a smile, although it was his own death they were discussing. 'Did Meggie tell you about it?'\n\nFarid nodded.\n\n'Very well. Forget it, do you hear me? The words are written. Maybe they'll come true, maybe not.'\n\nBut Farid shook his head so vigorously that his black hair fell over his forehead. 'No!' he said. 'No, they won't come true! I swear it. I swear it by the djinns that howl in the desert and the ghosts that eat the dead, I swear it by everything I fear!'\n\nDustfinger looked thoughtfully at him. 'You crazy boy!' he said. 'But I like your oath. We'd better leave Gwin here, then, and you can keep him!'\n\nGwin did not approve. He bit Dustfinger's hand when he was put on his chain, snapped at his fingers, and chattered even more angrily when Jink got into his master's rucksack.\n\n'You're taking the new marten with you and the old one must be put on the chain?' asked Roxane, when she came back to them with the root for Nettle.\n\n'Yes. Because someone said he'd bring me bad luck.'\n\n'Since when have you believed that kind of thing?'\n\nIndeed, since when? Since I met an old man who claims to have made you and me up, thought Dustfinger. Gwin was still hissing; he had seldom seen the marten so angry. Without a word he took the chain off Gwin's collar again. And ignored Farid's look of alarm.\n\nAll the way to Ombra Gwin sat on Farid's shoulders, as if to show Dustfinger that he hadn't forgiven him yet. And the moment Jink put his nose out of the rucksack, Gwin bared his teeth and snarled so menacingly that Farid had to hold his muzzle shut a couple of times.\n\nThe gallows outside the city gates were empty; only a few ravens were perched on the wooden beams. Even though Cosimo was back, Her Ugliness was still administering justice in Ombra, just as she had done in his father's lifetime, and she did not think well of hangings \u2013 perhaps because, as a child, she had seen too many men dangling from a rope with their tongues blue and their faces bloated.\n\n'Listen,' Dustfinger said to Farid as they stopped beneath the gallows, 'while I take Nettle the root and ask Cloud-Dancer for the message I'm told he has for me, you go and find Meggie. I must talk to her.'\n\nFarid went red, but he nodded. Dustfinger looked at his face with amusement. 'What's all this? Did something besides Cosimo's return from the dead happen on the evening when you went to see her?'\n\n'None of your business!' muttered Farid, blushing more deeply than ever.\n\nA farmer, swearing profusely, was driving a cart laden with barrels towards the city gates. The oxen blocked the gateway, and the guards impatiently grabbed the reins. Dustfinger took this chance to get himself and Farid past them. 'Bring Meggie here, all the same,' he said as they parted on the other side of the gates. 'And don't get so lovesick you lose your way.'\n\nHe watched the boy until he had disappeared among the houses. No wonder Roxane thought Farid was his son. Sometimes he suspected his own heart of thinking the same."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cloud-Dancer's Message",
                "text": "\u2003Yes, my love,\n\n\u2003This world of ours bleeds\n\n\u2003With more pain than just the pain of love.\n\n\u2014Faiz Ahmed Faiz, 'The love I gave you once', An Elusive Dawn\n\nThere could hardly be a worse smell in the world than the odour rising from the dyers' vats. The acrid stench rose to Dustfinger's nostrils even as he was making his way along the alley where the smiths plied their trade \u2013 tinkers mending pots and pans, blacksmiths shoeing horses, and on the other side of the road the armourers, who were considered superior to the other smiths and were arrogant as befitted their status. The sound of all the hammers beating on red-hot iron was almost as bad as the smell in the alley. The dyers had their hovels in the most remote part of Ombra; their stinking vats were never tolerated in the better parts of any town. But just as Dustfinger was approaching the gate separating their quarter from the rest of Ombra, a man coming out of an armourer's workshop collided with him.\n\nThe Piper. He was easily recognizable by his silver nose, although Dustfinger could remember the days when he had a nose of flesh and blood. Just your luck again, Dustfinger, he told himself, turning his head aside and trying to slip past Capricorn's minstrel quickly. Of all the men in this world, that bloodhound has to cross your path. He was beginning to hope that the Piper hadn't noticed who he had bumped into, but just as he thought he was safely past him the silver-nosed man seized his arm and swung him round.\n\n'Dustfinger!' he said in the strained voice that had once sounded so different. It had always reminded Dustfinger of over-sweet cakes. Capricorn had loved to listen to it more than any other voice, and the same was true of the songs it sang. The Piper wrote wonderful songs about fire-raising and murder, so wonderful that they almost made you believe there was no nobler occupation than cutting throats. Did he sing the same songs for the Adderhead \u2013 or were they too coarsegrained for the silver halls of the Castle of Night?\n\n'Well, fancy that! I'm inclined to think just about everyone's coming back from the dead these days,' said the Piper, while the two men-at-arms with him looked covetously at the weapons displayed outside the armourers' workshops. 'I really thought Basta had sliced you up and then buried you years ago. Did you know he's back too? He and the old woman, Mortola. I'm sure you remember her. The Adderhead was delighted to welcome her to his castle. You know how highly he always thought of her deadly concoctions.'\n\nDustfinger hid the fear pervading his heart behind a smile. 'Why, if it isn't the Piper!' he said. 'Your new nose suits you much better than the old one. It tells everyone who your new master is, and shows that it belongs to a minstrel who can be bought for silver.'\n\nThe Piper's eyes had not changed. They were pale grey like the sky on a rainy day, and they stared at him with as fixed a gaze as the eyes of a bird. Dustfinger knew from Roxane how he had lost his nose, cut off by a man whose daughter he had seduced with his dark songs.\n\n'You always did have a dangerously sharp tongue, Dustfinger,' he said. 'It's about time someone finally cut it out. Indeed, wasn't that tried once, and you got away only because the Black Prince and his bear protected you? Are they still looking after you? I don't see them anywhere.' He looked around, his eye searching the scene.\n\nDustfinger cast a quick glance at the two men-at-arms. They were both at least a head taller than him. What would Farid say if he could see me now? he wondered. That I ought to have had him with me so that he could keep his vow? The Piper had a sword, of course, and his hand was already on the hilt. He obviously thought as little as the Black Prince did of the law forbidding strolling players to carry weapons. A good thing the smiths are hammering so loudly, thought Dustfinger, or no doubt everyone would hear my heart beating with fear.\n\n'I must be on my way,' he said, as casually as possible. 'Give Basta my regards when you see him, and as for burying me, he hasn't done it yet.' He turned \u2013 it was worth a try \u2013 but the Piper held his arm tightly.\n\n'Of course, and there's your marten too!' he hissed.\n\nDustfinger felt Jink's damp muzzle against his ear. It's the wrong marten, he thought, trying to calm his racing heart. The wrong marten. But had Fenoglio ever mentioned Gwin's name when he staged Dustfinger's death? With the best will in the world he couldn't remember. I'll have to ask Basta to give me the book back so that I can look it up, he thought bitterly. He signalled to Jink to get back into the rucksack. Better not think about that.\n\nThe Piper was still holding his arm. He wore pale leather gloves, finely stitched like a lady's. 'The Adderhead will soon be here,' he told Dustfinger in an undertone. 'He didn't care at all for the news of his son-in-law's strange return to life. He thinks the whole business is a wicked masquerade designed to cheat his defenceless grandson of the throne.'\n\nFour guards came down the street wearing the Laughing Prince's colours: Cosimo's colours now. Dustfinger had never in his life been so glad to see armed men. The Piper let go of his arm.\n\n'We'll meet again soon,' he hissed in his noseless voice.\n\n'I dare say,' was all that Dustfinger replied. Then he quickly pushed between a couple of ragged boys standing there and staring wide-eyed at a sword, made his way past a woman showing her battered cooking pot to one of the smiths, and disappeared through the dyers' gate.\n\nNo one followed him. No one seized him and hauled him back. You have too many enemies, Dustfinger, he thought. He didn't slow down until he came to the tubs from which the vapours of the liquid muck used by the dyers rose. The same miasma hung over the stream that carried the stinking brew under the city wall and down to the river. No wonder the river-nymphs were found only above the place where it flowed into the main waterway.\n\nIn the second house Dustfinger tried, they told him where to find Nettle. The woman he had been sent to had eyes red with weeping, and was carrying a baby. Without a word, she beckoned him into her house, if a house it could be called. Nettle was bending over a little girl with red cheeks and glazed eyes. At the sight of Dustfinger she straightened up, looking grumpy.\n\n'Roxane asked me to bring you this!'\n\nShe glanced briefly at the root, compressed her narrow lips, and nodded.\n\n'What's wrong with the girl?' he asked. The child's mother had sat down by the bed again.\n\nNettle shrugged. She seemed to be wearing the same moss-green garment as she had did years ago \u2013 and obviously she still liked him as little as ever.\n\n'A high fever, but she'll survive,' she replied. 'It's not half as bad as the one that killed your daughter... while her father was off jaunting around the world!' She looked him in the face as she said that, as if to make sure that her words went home, but Dustfinger knew how to hide pain. He was almost as good at hiding pain as he was at playing with fire.\n\n'The root is dangerous,' he said.\n\n'Do you think you have to tell me that?' The old woman looked at him as if he had insulted her. 'The wound it's to heal is dangerous too. He's a strong man or he'd be dead by now.'\n\n'Do I know him?'\n\n'You know his wife.'\n\nWhat was the old woman talking about? Dustfinger glanced at the sick child. Her small face was flushed with fever.\n\n'I heard that Roxane's let you back into her bed again,' said Nettle. 'You can tell her she's more of a fool than I thought.\n\nAnd now go round behind the house. Cloud-Dancer's there. He can tell you more about the other woman. She gave him a message for you.'\n\nCloud-Dancer was standing beside a stunted oleander bush that grew near the dyers' huts.\n\n'That poor child, did you see her?' he asked as Dustfinger came over to him. 'I can't bear to see them so sick. And the mothers... you'd think they'd weep their eyes away. I remember how Roxane\u2014' But here he broke off abruptly. 'Sorry,' he murmured, putting his hand into the breast of his dirty tunic, 'I was forgetting she was your child too. Here, this is for you.' He brought out a note on fine, pure white paper such as Dustfinger had never seen in this world before. 'A woman gave me this for you. Nettle found her and her husband in the forest, in Capricorn's old fortress, and took them to the Secret Camp. The man's wounded, quite badly.'\n\nHesitantly, Dustfinger unfolded the paper. He recognized the writing at once.\n\n'She says she knows you. I told her you can't read, but\u2014'\n\n'I can read now,' Dustfinger interrupted him. 'She taught me.'\n\nHow did she come to be here? That was all he could think of as Resa's words danced before his eyes. The paper was so crumpled that it was difficult to decipher them. Not that reading had ever come easily to him...\n\n'Yes, she said so too: \"I taught him\", she told me.' Cloud-Dancer looked at him curiously. 'Where did you get to know the woman?'\n\n'It's a long story.' He put the note in his rucksack. 'I must be off,' he said.\n\n'We're going back this evening, Nettle and I!' Cloud-Dancer called after him. 'Shall I tell the woman anything?'\n\n'Yes. Tell her I'll bring her daughter to her.'\n\nCosimo's soldiers were still standing in the smiths' alley, assessing the merits of a sword, something an ordinary man-at-arms could never afford. There was no sign of the Piper. Brightly coloured strips of fabric hung from the windows: Ombra was celebrating the return of its dead prince, but Dustfinger was in no mood to celebrate. The words in his rucksack weighed heavily on him, even if he had to admit that it gave him bitter satisfaction to see that Silvertongue obviously had even less luck in this world than he, Dustfinger, had known in Silvertongue's. Did he know what it felt like to be in the wrong story now? Or hadn't he had time to feel anything before Mortola shot him?\n\nPeople were thronging the street leading up to the castle as if it were market day. Dustfinger looked up at the towers, from which black banners still flew. What did his daughter think of the return of her mistress's husband? Even if you were to ask Brianna, she wouldn't tell you, he thought, turning back to the gate. It was time to get out of here before he encountered the Piper again. Or even his master...\n\nMeggie was already waiting with Farid under the empty gallows. The boy whispered something to her, and she laughed. By fire and ashes, thought Dustfinger, see how happy those two look, and you have to be the bearer of bad news yet again! Why is it always you? Simple, he answered himself. Bad news suits your face better than good news."
            },
            {
                "title": "Ink-Medicine",
                "text": "\u2003The memory of my father is wrapped up in\n\n\u2003White paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work.\n\n\u2003Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits\n\n\u2003Out of his hat, he drew love from his small body.\n\n\u2014Yehuda Amichai, 'My Father', Isi Bongo 2\n\nMeggie stopped laughing as soon as she saw Dustfinger approaching her. Why was his face so grave? Farid had said he was happy. Was it the sight of her that made him look so grim? Was he angry with her because she had followed him into his story, and her face reminded him of years that he surely wanted to forget? 'What does he want to talk to me about?' she had asked Farid.\n\n'Probably Fenoglio,' Farid had said. 'And probably Cosimo too. He wants to know what the old man is planning!' As if she could have told Dustfinger that...\n\nWhen he stopped in front of her, there was not a sign on his face of the smile that she had always found so hard to interpret.\n\n'Hello, Meggie,' he said. A marten blinked sleepily out of his rucksack, but it wasn't Gwin. Gwin was sitting on Farid's shoulders, and hissed as the other marten's nose showed above Dustfinger's shoulder.\n\n'Hello,' she said awkwardly. 'How are you?' It was strange to see him again. She felt both pleased and distrustful.\n\nBehind them, people were flowing ceaselessly towards the city gate: peasants, tradesmen, entertainers, beggars, everyone who had heard of Cosimo's return. Although there were no telephones or newspapers in this world, and only the rich wrote letters, news travelled fast here.\n\n'Fine! Yes, I'm really fine!' Now he was smiling after all, and not in his usual enigmatic way. Farid had told the truth. Dustfinger was happy. It almost seemed to embarrass him. His face looked so much younger, in spite of the scars; but suddenly it turned grave again.\n\nThe other marten jumped down on the ground when his master took the rucksack off his shoulders and brought out a piece of paper. 'I'd meant to talk to you about Cosimo, our Prince who has so surprisingly come back from the dead,' he said, unfolding the crumpled piece of paper. 'But I think I'd better show you this first.'\n\nBaffled, Meggie took the note. When she saw the handwriting, she looked at Dustfinger with incredulity. How had he come by a letter from her mother? Here, in this world?\n\nBut all he said was: 'Read it.' And Meggie read it. The words were like a noose going around her neck, drawing tighter with every word, until she could scarcely breathe.\n\n'What is it?' asked Farid uneasily. 'What does it say?' He looked at Dustfinger, but Dustfinger did not answer.\n\nAs for Meggie, she was staring at Resa's words. 'Mortola \u2013 Mortola shot Mo?'\n\nBehind them, people were pushing forward to see Cosimo, the brand-new Cosimo, but why should she be interested? Nothing else mattered to her now. There was just one thing she wanted to know.\n\n'How...' she said, and looked at Dustfinger in desperation, 'how come they're here? And how is Mo? It's not too bad, is it?'\n\nDustfinger avoided her eyes. 'All I know is what it says there,' he said. 'Mortola shot your father, Resa is with him in the Secret Camp, and she asked me to look for you. A friend brought me her note. He's going back to the camp this morning, with Nettle. She\u2014'\n\n'Nettle? Resa told me about her!' Meggie interrupted him. 'She's a healer, a very good one... she'll make Mo better, won't she?'\n\n'Of course,' said Dustfinger, but he still didn't look at her.\n\nFarid's gaze moved from him to Meggie in confusion. 'Mortola shot Silvertongue?' he stammered. 'Then the root's for him! But you said it was dangerous!'\n\nDustfinger cast him a warning glance, and Farid fell silent.\n\n'Dangerous?' whispered Meggie. 'What's dangerous?'\n\n'Nothing, nothing at all. I'll take you to them right away.' Dustfinger slung the rucksack over his shoulder. 'Go to Fenoglio and tell him you'll be away for a few days. Tell him Farid and I will be with you. I don't suppose the news will relieve his mind very much, but that's too bad. Don't say where we're going, and don't say why! News travels fast in these hills, and it would be better,' he added, lowering his voice, 'if Mortola doesn't find out that your father is still alive. The camp where he is now is known only to the strolling players, and they've all had to swear an oath never to let anyone who isn't one of us know about the place. But all the same...'\n\n'... oaths are made to be broken!' Meggie finished his sentence for him.\n\n'You said it.' Dustfinger looked at the city gate. 'Go now. It won't be easy to get through that crowd, but hurry all the same. Tell the old man there's a minstrel woman who lives on that hill, he\u2014'\n\n'He knows who Roxane is,' Meggie interrupted.\n\n'Of course!' This time Dustfinger's smile was bitter. 'I keep forgetting he knows all about me. Right, tell him to let Roxane know I must be away for a few days. And ask him to keep an eye on my daughter. I suppose he knows who she is too?'\n\nMeggie just nodded.\n\n'Good,' Dustfinger went on. 'Then tell the old man something else: if a single one of his accursed words harms Brianna, he'll rue the day he ever thought up a man who can summon fire.'\n\n'I'll tell him!' Meggie whispered. Then she ran off, pushing and shoving her way through the crowds of people trying to get into the city. Mo, she thought. Mortola shot Mo. And her dream came back to her, her red, red dream.\n\nFenoglio was standing at the window when Meggie stumbled into his room.\n\n'Good heavens, what do you think you look like?' he exclaimed. 'Didn't I tell you not to go out while all these people are thronging the streets? But that boy only has to whistle and you go running to him like a well-trained puppy!'\n\n'Stop that!' snapped Meggie, so abruptly that Fenoglio actually did fall silent. 'You have to write something for me. And fast!'\n\nShe hauled him over to his desk, where Rosenquartz was quietly snoring away.\n\n'Write what?' Confused, Fenoglio dropped into his chair.\n\n'It's my father,' faltered Meggie, taking one of the freshly sharpened quill pens out of the jug with shaking fingers. 'He's here, but Mortola's shot him. He's very sick! Dustfinger didn't want to say so, but I could tell from the way he looked, so please write something, anything that will make him well again. He's in the forest in the strolling players' secret camp. Please, hurry!'\n\nFenoglio looked at her in bewilderment. 'Shot your father? And he's here? But why? I don't understand!'\n\n'You don't have to understand!' cried Meggie desperately. 'You just have to help him. Dustfinger's going to take me to him. And I'll read him better, understand? I mean, he's in your story now, you can even bring back the dead, so why can't you heal a wound too? Please!' She dipped the pen in the inkwell and put it into his hand.\n\n'Heavens, Meggie!' murmured Fenoglio. 'This is bad, but... but with the best will in the world I don't know what to write. I don't even know where he is. If at least I knew what the place looks like...'\n\nMeggie stared at him. Suddenly the tears she had been holding back all this time were flowing. 'Please!' she whispered. 'Just try! Dustfinger's waiting. Outside by the gate.'\n\nFenoglio looked at her, and gently took the pen from her hand.\n\n'I'll try, then,' he said hoarsely. 'You're right, this is my story. I couldn't have helped him in the other world, but perhaps I can here. Go to the window,' he told her, when she had brought him two sheets of parchment. 'And look out of it, look at the people in the streets or the birds in the sky, occupy your mind somehow. Just don't look at me or I won't be able to write.'\n\nMeggie obeyed. She saw Minerva and her children down in the crowd, and the woman who lived opposite, she watched pigs grunting as they pushed past the people, soldiers with the Laughing Prince's emblem on their chests \u2013 yet she wasn't really seeing any of it. She just heard Fenoglio dip his pen in the inkwell, heard it scratching over the parchment, pausing, and writing on again. Please, she thought, please let him find the right words. Please. The pen fell silent for a painfully long time, while down in the street a beggar pushed a child aside with his crutch. Time passed slowly, like a shadow spreading. People thronged the streets, one dog barked at another, trumpets sounded from the castle, ringing out above the rooftops.\n\nMeggie couldn't have said how much time had passed when, with a sigh, Fenoglio put down his pen. Rosenquartz was still snoring, stretched out straight as a ruler behind the sand-box. Fenoglio reached into the box and sprinkled sand over the wet ink.\n\n'Did you \u2013 did you think of something?' Meggie hesitantly asked.\n\n'Yes, yes, but don't ask me if I got it right.'\n\nHe handed her the parchment, and her eyes skimmed the words. There weren't many of them, but if they were indeed the right words, they would be enough.\n\n'I didn't make him up, Meggie!' said Fenoglio in a soft voice. 'Your father isn't one of my characters, like Cosimo and Dustfinger and Capricorn. He doesn't belong here. So don't hope for too much, will you?'\n\nMeggie nodded as she rolled up the parchment. 'Dustfinger wants you to keep an eye on his daughter while he's gone.'\n\n'His daughter? Dustfinger has a daughter? Did I write that? Oh yes \u2013 indeed, weren't there two of them?'\n\n'You know one of them anyway. She's Brianna, Her Ugliness's maid.'\n\n'Brianna?' Fenoglio looked at her in astonishment.\n\n'Yes.' Meggie picked up the leather bag that she had brought with her from the other world and went to the door. 'Look after her. I'm to say that if you don't, you'll rue the day you ever thought up someone who can call on fire.'\n\n'He said that?' Fenoglio pushed back his chair and laughed. 'You know something? I like him better and better. I believe I'll write another story about him, a story where he's the hero, and he doesn't\u2014'\n\n'Die?' Meggie opened the door. 'I'll tell him, but I think he's had more than enough of being in one of your stories.'\n\n'But he is in one. He came back into my story of his own free will!' Fenoglio called after her as she hurried down the steps. 'We're all in it, Meggie, up to our necks in it! When are you coming back? I want you to meet Cosimo!'\n\nMeggie did not reply. How was she to know when she'd be coming back?\n\n'You call that hurrying?' asked Dustfinger, when she was standing before him again, out of breath and putting Fenoglio's parchment in her bag. 'What's that parchment for? Did the old man give you one of his songs for nourishment along the way?'\n\n'Something like that,' replied Meggie.\n\n'Just so long as my name's not in it,' said Dustfinger, turning towards the road.\n\n'Is it far?' called Meggie, as she hurried after him and Farid.\n\n'We'll be there by evening,' said Dustfinger, over his shoulder."
            },
            {
                "title": "Screams",
                "text": "\u2003I want to see thirst\n\n\u2003In the syllables,\n\n\u2003Touch fire\n\n\u2003In the sound;\n\n\u2003Feel through the dark\n\n\u2003For the scream.\n\n\u2014Pablo Neruda, 'Word', Five Decades\n\nThe White Women were still there. Resa didn't seem to see them any more, but Mo felt their presence like shadows in sunlight. He didn't tell her about them. She looked so tired. The one thing that still kept her going was her hope that Dustfinger would soon arrive \u2013 with Meggie.\n\n'You wait and see, he'll find her,' Resa kept whispering to him when he shook with fever. How could she be so sure? As if Dustfinger had never let them down, never stolen the book, never betrayed them... Meggie. The need to see her once again was even stronger than the enticing whispers of the White Women, stronger than the pain in his breast... and who could say, perhaps this accursed story might yet take a turn for the better? Although Mo remembered Fenoglio's preference for unhappy endings only too well.\n\n'Tell me what it looks like outside,' he sometimes whispered to Resa. 'It's ridiculous to be in a whole different world and see nothing of it but a cave.' And Resa described what he couldn't see \u2013 the trees, so much taller and older than any trees he had ever set eyes on, the fairies like swarms of gnats among the branches, the glass men in the tall bracken, and the nameless terrors of the night. Once she caught a fairy \u2013 Dustfinger had told her how to do it \u2013 and took it to him. She held the little creature in the hollow of her hands and put it close to his ear, so that he could hear the fairy's chirping, indignant voice.\n\nIt all seemed so real, however often he told himself it was made of nothing but paper and ink. The hard ground where he lay, the dry leaves that rustled when he tossed and turned in his fever, the bear's hot breath \u2013 and the Black Prince, whom he had last seen in the pages of a book. Now the man himself sometimes sat beside him, cooling his brow and talking quietly to Resa. Or was it all just a fevered dream?\n\nDeath felt real in this Inkworld too. Very real. It was strange to encounter death here in a world out of a book. But even if the dying was made only of words \u2013 even if, perhaps, it was nothing but a game played by the letters on the page \u2013 his body thought it was real. His heart felt fear, his flesh felt pain. And the White Women had not gone away, even if Resa couldn't see them. Mo felt them near him, every minute, every hour, every day and every night. Fenoglio's angels of death. Did they make dying easier than it was in the world he came from? No. Nothing could make it easier. You lost what you loved. That was death, here as well as there.\n\nIt was light outside when Mo heard the first scream. At first he thought the fever was taking hold of him again. But then he saw from Resa's face that she could hear it too: the clash of weapons, and screaming. Cries of fear \u2013 death cries. Mo tried to sit up, but the pain pounced on him like an animal digging its teeth into his chest. He saw the Black Prince standing outside the cave, his sword drawn; he saw Resa jump up. Fever made her face blur before his eyes, but then Mo suddenly saw another picture: he saw Meggie sitting in Fenoglio's kitchen staring at the old man in horror as, full of pride, he told her of the fine death scene he had written for Dustfinger. Oh yes, Fenoglio liked sad stories. And perhaps he had just written another.\n\n'Resa!' Mo cursed the way his tongue felt, heavy with fever. 'Resa, go and hide \u2013 hide somewhere in the forest.'\n\nBut she stayed with him as she always had \u2013 except for that one day, the day when his own voice had banished her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Blood-stained Straw",
                "text": "\u2002Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.\n\n\u2014Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built\n\nMeggie had often felt frightened in the Wayless Wood with Farid, but it was different with Dustfinger. The trees seemed to rustle more loudly when he passed them, the bushes seemed to reach their branches out to him. Fairies settled on his rucksack like butterflies on a flower, pulling his hair until he brushed them away, talking to them. Other creatures, too, appeared and disappeared, beings whose names Meggie didn't know either from Resa's stories or from any other source, some of them no more than a pair of eyes among the trees.\n\nDustfinger led them as purposefully as if he could see their road laid out like a red guideline before him. He never even stopped to rest, but took them on and on, uphill and downhill, going deeper into the forest every hour. Away from human beings. When at last he stopped, Meggie's legs were shaking with exhaustion. It must be late in the afternoon. Dustfinger passed his hand over the snapped twigs of a bush, bent down, examined the damp ground, and picked up a handful of berries that had been trodden underfoot.\n\n'What's the matter?' asked Farid anxiously.\n\n'Too many feet. And above all, too many boots.'\n\nDustfinger swore quietly, and began to go faster. Too many boots... Meggie realized what he meant when the camp appeared among the trees. She saw tents that had been torn down, a trampled campfire...\n\n'You two stay here!' Dustfinger ordered, and this time they obeyed. They watched anxiously as he stepped out of the shelter of the trees, looked around, raised tent panels, reached his hand into cold ashes \u2013 and turned over two bodies lying motionless near the fireplace. Meggie was going to follow him when she saw the corpses, but Farid held her back. When Dustfinger disappeared into a cave and came out again, pale-faced, Meggie tore herself away and ran to him.\n\n'Where are my parents? Are they in there?' She recoiled as her foot struck another dead body.\n\n'No, there's no one left in there. But I found this.' Dustfinger held out a strip of fabric. Resa had a dress with that pattern. The fabric was blood-stained. 'Do you know it?'\n\nMeggie nodded.\n\n'Then your parents really were here. The blood is probably your father's.' Dustfinger passed a hand over his face. 'Perhaps someone got away. Someone who can tell us what happened here. I'll take a look around. Farid!'\n\nFarid hurried to his side. Meggie was going to thrust her way past the two of them, but Dustfinger held her back. 'Listen, Meggie!' he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. 'The fact that your parents aren't here is a good sign. It probably means they're still alive. There's a bed in the cave; I expect your mother was nursing your father there. And I've found a bear's paw-prints, which means the Black Prince was here. Perhaps all this was a plan to capture him, although I don't know why they would have taken the others... no, that I don't understand.'\n\nBefore setting off with Farid in search of survivors, Dustfinger told Meggie to wait in the cave. The entrance was tall and broad enough for a man to stand in it upright. The cave beyond it led deep into the mountain. The ground was strewn with leaves, and blankets and beds of straw were arranged side by side there, some of them just the right size for a child.\n\nIt was not difficult to see where Mo had been lying. The straw in that place was blood-stained, like the blanket lying beside it. A bowl of water, an overturned wooden mug, a bunch of dried flowers... Meggie picked them up and ran her fingers over the petals. She knelt down and stared at the blood-stained straw. Fenoglio's parchment was close to her breast, but Mo was gone. How could Fenoglio's words help him now?\n\nTry, something inside her whispered. You can't tell how powerful his words are in this world. It's made of them, after all.\n\nShe heard footsteps behind her. Farid and Dustfinger were back, and Dustfinger was holding a child in his arms, a little girl. She stared at Meggie wide-eyed, as if she were in a bad dream and couldn't wake up.\n\n'She wouldn't talk to me, but luckily Farid inspires rather more confidence,' said Dustfinger, carefully putting the child down on her feet. 'She says her name is Lianna and she's five years old. And there were a lot of men: silver men with swords, and snakes on their breasts. Not so very surprising, if you ask me. They obviously killed the guards and some of those who defended themselves, and then took the rest away, even the women and children. As for the wounded,' he glanced briefly at Meggie \u2013 'they were clearly loaded on to some kind of cart. The men had no horses with them. The girl is here only because her mother told her to hide among the trees.'\n\nGwin scurried into the cave, followed by Jink. The little girl jumped when the martens leaped up at Dustfinger. Then she watched, fascinated, as Farid took Gwin off Dustfinger's shoulder and put him on his own lap.\n\n'Ask her if there were other children here,' said Dustfinger softly.\n\nFarid held up five fingers and showed them to the girl. 'How many children, Lianna?'\n\nThe child looked at him and tapped first Farid's forefinger, then his second and third fingers. 'Merle. Fabio. Tinka,' she whispered.\n\n'Three,' said Dustfinger. 'Probably no older than she is.'\n\nTimidly, Lianna put her hand out to stroke Gwin's bushy tail, but Dustfinger held her fingers in a firm grip. 'Better not,' he said gently. 'He bites. Try the other one.'\n\n'Meggie?' Farid came over to her. But Meggie did not answer him. She wound her arms tightly around her knees and buried her face in her skirt. She didn't want to see the cave any more. She didn't want to see any of Fenoglio's world any more, not even Farid and Dustfinger, or the girl who didn't know where her own parents were either. She wanted to be in Elinor's library, sitting in the big armchair where Elinor liked to read, and she wanted to see Mo put his head round the door and ask what the book on her lap was. But Mo wasn't here, perhaps he was gone for ever, and Fenoglio's story held her fast in its black, inky arms, whispering terrible things to her \u2013 about armed men who dragged away children, old people, the sick... mothers and fathers.\n\n'Nettle will soon be here with Cloud-Dancer,' she heard Dustfinger say. 'She'll look after the child.'\n\n'What about us?' asked Farid.\n\n'I'll follow them,' said Dustfinger. 'To find out how many are still alive, and where they're being taken. Although I think I know.'\n\nMeggie raised her head. 'To the Castle of Night.'\n\n'Good guess.'\n\nThe child put her hand out to Jink; she was still small enough to find comfort for her grief in stroking an animal's fur. Meggie envied her.\n\n'What do you mean, you'll follow them?' Farid shooed Gwin off his lap and stood up.\n\n'Exactly what I said.' Dustfinger's face was as uncommunicative as a closed door. 'I will follow them while you two wait here for Cloud-Dancer and Nettle. Tell them I'm trying to follow the trail, and Cloud-Dancer is to take you back to Ombra. He's not fast enough to follow me with his stiff leg. Then tell Roxane what's happened, so she doesn't think I've vanished again, and Meggie will stay with Fenoglio.' His face was as well-controlled as ever when he looked at her, but in his eyes Meggie saw all that she herself was feeling: fear, anxiety, anger... helpless anger.\n\n'But we have to help them!' Farid's voice shook.\n\n'How? The Black Prince might have been able to save them, but they've obviously caught him, and I don't know anyone else ready to risk his life for a few strolling players.'\n\n'What about that robber everyone's talking about, the Bluejay?'\n\n'There's no such person.' Meggie's voice was little more than a whisper. 'Fenoglio made him up.'\n\n'Really?' Dustfinger looked at her thoughtfully. 'I've heard otherwise, but still... well, as soon as you're in Ombra, get Cloud-Dancer to go to the strolling players and tell them what's happened. I know the Prince has men at his command, men who are devoted to him and probably well armed as well, but I've no idea where they are. Perhaps one of the strolling players may know. Or Cloud-Dancer himself. He must try to get word to them somehow. There's a mill in Argenta called the Spelt-Mill. It's always been one of the few places south of the forest where people can meet or exchange news without the risk that it will come to the Adderhead's ears at once. The miller is so rich he doesn't even have to fear the men-at-arms. So if anyone wants to see me, or has any idea of how we can help the prisoners, let him send news there. I'll drop in now and then to ask if any messages have come. Understand?'\n\nMeggie nodded. 'The Spelt-Mill,' she repeated quietly, unable to look anywhere but at the blood-stained straw.\n\n'Right, Meggie can do all that, but I'm going with you.' Farid's voice sounded so defiant that the little girl, still kneeling silently beside Meggie, was upset and reached for her hand.\n\n'I'm warning you, don't start on about looking after me again!' Dustfinger's voice was so sharp that Farid lowered his eyes. 'I'm going alone, and that's that. You take care of Meggie and the child until Nettle comes, and then get Cloud-Dancer to take you to Ombra.'\n\n'No!' Meggie saw the tears in Farid's eyes, but Dustfinger just walked towards the cave entrance without another word. Gwin scuttled in front of him.\n\n'If it gets dark before they arrive,' he added, looking over his shoulder at Farid, 'then light a fire. Not because of the soldiers. They have what they came for, but wolves and Night-Mares are always hungry: the wolves for your flesh, the Night-Mares for your fear.'\n\nThen he was gone, and Farid stood there, his eyes blurred with tears. 'That bloody bastard!' he whispered. 'That thrice-accursed son of a bitch! But he'll soon see. I'm going to follow him. I will look after him! I swore I would.' Abruptly, he knelt down in front of Meggie and took her hand. 'You will go to Ombra, won't you? Please. I have to go after him. I know you understand!'\n\nMeggie said nothing. What was there to say? That she wasn't going back any more than he was? He'd only have tried to persuade her not to go on. Jink rubbed against Farid's legs, and then scurried outside. The little girl ran after the marten, but stopped at the entrance to the cave \u2013 a small, forlorn figure, all alone. Like me, thought Meggie.\n\nWithout looking at Farid, she took Fenoglio's parchment out of her belt. The letters could scarcely be made out in the twilight that filled the cave.\n\n'What's that?' Farid straightened up.\n\n'Words. Only words, but better than nothing.'\n\n'Wait, I'll give you a light.' Farid rubbed his fingertips together and whispered. A tiny flame appeared on his thumbnail. He blew gently on the little flame, until it grew like the flame of a candle, and then held his thumb above the parchment. The flickering light made the letters shine as if Rosenquartz had retraced them with fresh ink.\n\nUseless, something whispered in Meggie. The words will be useless! Mo isn't here, he's far away, he may not even be alive any more. Shut up! she snapped at this internal voice. I'm not listening. This is all I can do, there's nothing else, nothing at all! She picked up the blood-stained blanket, placed the parchment on it, and ran her fingers over her lips. The little girl was still standing outside the cave, waiting for her mother to come back.\n\n'Read it, Meggie!' Farid nodded at her encouragingly. And she read it, her fingers clutching the blanket stained with Mo's dried blood. 'Mortimer felt the pain...' She thought she felt it herself, in the sound of every letter on her tongue, in every word that passed her lips. 'The wound was burning. It burned like the hatred in Mortola's eyes when she had shot him. Perhaps it was her hatred that was sucking the life out of him, making him weaker and weaker. He felt his own blood wet and warm on his skin. He felt Death reaching out to him. But all of a sudden there was something else too: words. Words that relieved the pain, cooled his brow and spoke of love, nothing but love. They made his breathing easier again, and healed the place where death had been flowing in. He felt the sound of them on his skin and deep in his heart. They echoed ever louder, ever more clearly through the darkness that threatened to swallow him up, and suddenly he knew the voice speaking the words: it was his daughter's voice, and the White Women withdrew their pale hands as if they had burned themselves on her love.'\n\nMeggie buried her face in her hands. The parchment rolled up on her lap of its own accord, as if it had served its purpose. Straw pricked her through her dress, as it had in the shed where Capricorn had once imprisoned her and Mo. She felt someone stroking her hair, and for a moment, a crazy moment, she thought Fenoglio's words had brought Mo back, back to the cave safe and sound, and everything was all right again. But when she raised her head it was only Farid standing beside her.\n\n'That was beautiful,' he said. 'I'm sure it helped. You wait and see.'\n\nBut Meggie shook her head. 'No!' she whispered. 'No. Those were only beautiful words, but my father isn't made of Fenoglio's words. He's made of flesh and blood.'\n\n'So? What difference does that make?' Farid removed her hands from her tear-stained face. 'Perhaps everything's just made of words. Look at me, for instance. Pinch me. Am I made of paper?'\n\nNo, he wasn't. And Meggie had to smile when he kissed her, although she was still shedding tears.\n\nDustfinger had not been gone long when they heard footsteps among the trees. Farid had taken Dustfinger's advice and made a fire, and Meggie was sitting close to him with the little girl's head on her lap. Nettle said not a word as she emerged from the darkness and saw the wrecked camp. Silently, she went from one dead body to another, looking for life where none was left, while Cloud-Dancer, his face unmoving, listened to the message Dustfinger had left for him. It was only when Meggie asked Cloud-Dancer to take a message, not just to Roxane and the strolling players, but to Fenoglio too, that Farid fully realized she didn't intend to go back to Ombra any more than he did. His expressionless face didn't show whether he was angry or glad.\n\n'I've written my message for Fenoglio.' With a heavy heart, Meggie had torn a page for it out of the notebook that Mo had given her. On the other hand, what better use could she put it to than saving him? If it was still possible to save him. 'You'll find Fenoglio in Minerva's house, in Cobblers' Alley. And it's very important that no one else reads the message.'\n\n'I know the Inkweaver!' Cloud-Dancer watched Nettle draw a ragged cloak over the face of another dead man. Then he frowned at the sheet of paper with Meggie's writing on it. 'There've been messengers who were hanged for the words they carried. I hope these aren't that kind? No, don't tell me!' he said defensively, as Meggie was about to answer. 'Usually I ask the sender to tell me the words of any message I carry, but with this one I have a feeling I'd better not know.'\n\n'What do you suppose she's written?' asked Nettle bitterly. 'No doubt she was thanking the old man for writing the songs that will bring her father to the gallows! Or is he to write a dirge for him, the Bluejay's last song? I scented misfortune the moment I saw that scar on his arm. I always thought the Bluejay was just a fancy, like all the noble princes and princesses in other songs. Well, you were wrong there, Nettle, said I to myself, and you're certainly not the first to notice the scar. So the Inkweaver had to go and describe it in detail! Curse the old fool and his silly songs! Men have been hanged before because they were taken for the Bluejay, but now it seems the Adderhead has the right man in his hands, and the game of playing heroes is over. Protecting the weak, robbing the strong... yes, it all sounds very fine, but heroes aren't immortal except in songs, and your father will find only too soon that a mask doesn't protect you from death.'\n\nMeggie just sat there and stared at the old woman. What was she talking about?\n\n'Why are you looking at me like that, so surprised?' asked Nettle. 'Do you think the Adderhead sent his men here for a few old strolling players and pregnant women, or for the Black Prince? Nonsense. The Black Prince never hid from the Adder yet. No. Someone slipped off to the Castle of Night and whispered in the Adderhead's ear that the Bluejay was lying wounded in the strolling players' secret camp and could easily be picked up, along with the poor players who were hiding him. It will have been someone who knows the camp and has surely been paid good silver for his treachery. The Adderhead will make a great spectacle of the execution, the Inkweaver will write a touching song about it, and perhaps someone else will soon wear the feathered mask, for they'll go on singing those songs long after your father's dead and buried behind the Castle of Night.'\n\nMeggie heard her own blood surging through her veins.\n\n'What scar are you talking about?' Her voice was little more than a whisper.\n\n'Why, the scar on his left arm! Surely you must know it? The songs say that the Adderhead's hounds bit the Bluejay there when he was hunting their master's white stags...'\n\nFenoglio. What had he done?\n\nMeggie covered her mouth with her hand. She once again heard Fenoglio's voice on the spiral staircase as they were going down from Balbulus's workshop. I like to base my characters on real people. Not every writer does that, but in my experience it makes them more lifelike! Facial expressions, gestures, the way someone walks, a voice, perhaps a birthmark or a scar \u2013 I steal something here, something there, and then they begin to breathe, until anyone hearing or reading about them thinks they can touch them! I didn't have a wide choice for the Bluejay...\n\nMo. Fenoglio had taken her father as his model.\n\nMeggie stared at the sleeping child. She too had often slept like that, with her head in Mo's lap.\n\n'Meggie's father is the Bluejay?' Farid, beside her, uttered an incredulous laugh. 'What nonsense! Silvertongue can't even bring himself to kill a rabbit. You mark my words, Meggie, the Adderhead will soon realize that, and then he'll let him go. Come on!' He rose to his feet and offered her his hand. 'We must start out or we'll never catch up with Dustfinger!'\n\n'You're going after him now?' Nettle shook her head at such folly, while Meggie laid the little girl's head down on the grass.\n\n'Keep going south if you miss his trail in the dark,' said Cloud-Dancer. 'Due south, and then you'll reach the road some time. But beware of wolves. There are many wolves in these parts.'\n\nFarid just nodded. 'I have fire with me,' he said, making a spark dance on the palm of his hand.\n\nCloud-Dancer grinned. 'Well done! Perhaps you really are Dustfinger's son, as Roxane suspects!'\n\n'Who knows?' was all Farid would reply, and he led Meggie away with him.\n\nShe followed him into the dark trees, feeling numb. A robber! She could think of nothing else. He had made Mo into a robber, a part of his story! At that moment she hated Fenoglio just as much as Dustfinger did."
            },
            {
                "title": "An Audience for Fenoglio",
                "text": "\u2002'Lady Cora,' he said, 'sometimes one has to do things which are unpalatable. When great issues are involved one can't toy with the situation in silk gloves. No. We are making history.'\n\n\u2014Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan\n\nFenoglio was pacing up and down his room. Seven steps to the window, seven back to the door. Meggie had gone, and there was no one who could tell him if she'd found her father still alive. What an appalling muddle! Whenever he began to hope he was getting things under control again, something happened that did not remotely suit his plans. Perhaps another man really did exist somewhere \u2013 a diabolical storyteller who was continuing his tale, giving it new twists and turns, unpredictable and unpleasant developments, moving his characters as if they were chessmen, or simply placing new ones who had nothing to do with his own story on the chessboard!\n\nAnd still Cosimo had sent no messenger. Well, I must exercise a little more patience, Fenoglio told himself. He's only just ascended his throne, and I'm sure he has a great deal to do. All his subjects wanting to see him, petitioners, widows, orphans, his administrators, gamekeepers, his son, his wife... 'Oh, nonsense! I'm the one he should have sent for first of all!' Fenoglio uttered the words so angrily that he was startled by the sound of his own voice. 'I, the man who brought him back to life, who made him in the first place!'\n\nHe went to the window and looked up at the castle. The Adderhead's banner flew from the left-hand tower. Yes, the Adderhead was in Ombra, and must have ridden like the devil to see his son-in-law newly back from the dead, in person. He hadn't brought Firefox with him this time; no doubt the man was busy looting or murdering elsewhere on his master's behalf, but the Piper was still abroad in the streets of Ombra, always with a few men-at-arms in his wake. What did they want here? Did the Adderhead still seriously hope to place his grandson on the throne?\n\nNo, Cosimo would never allow it.\n\nFor a moment Fenoglio forgot his dark mood, and a smile stole over his face. Ah, if he could only have told the Adderhead who had wrecked his fine plans! A writer! How that would have angered him! They had given him an unpleasant surprise \u2013 he with his words, Meggie with her voice...\n\nPoor Meggie... poor Mortimer...\n\nHow pleadingly she had looked at him. And what a farcical performance he had put on for her! Yet how could the poor thing have thought for a moment that he could help her father, when he himself hadn't even brought Mortimer here? Quite apart from the fact that Mortimer wasn't one of his creations in the first place. But that look of hers! He simply had not the heart to let her leave without any hope at all!\n\nRosenquartz was sitting on the desk with his transparent legs crossed, throwing breadcrumbs at the fairies.\n\n'Stop that!' Fenoglio snapped. 'Do you want them to grab you by the legs and try throwing you out of the window again? I won't save you this time, believe you me. I won't even sweep you up when you're a little pile of broken glass down there in the pigs' muck. The refuse collector can shovel you into his barrow instead.'\n\n'That's right, take your bad temper out on me!' The glass man turned his back on Fenoglio. 'It won't make Cosimo summon you any sooner, though!'\n\nHere, unfortunately, he was right. Fenoglio went to the window. In the streets below, the excitement over Cosimo's return had died down, and perhaps the Adderhead's presence had cast a damper on it too. People were going about their business again, the pigs were rooting about among the refuse, children were chasing each other around the close-packed houses, and now and then an armed soldier made his way through the crowd. There were clearly more soldiers about than usual in Ombra now. Cosimo was obviously having them patrol the city, perhaps to prevent the men-at-arms riding his subjects down again just because they were in the way. Yes, Cosimo will see to everything, thought Fenoglio. He'll be a good prince, in so far as any princes are good. Who knows, perhaps he'll even allow the strolling players back into Ombra on ordinary market days soon.\n\n'That's it. That will be my first piece of advice. To let the players back again,' murmured Fenoglio. 'And if he doesn't send for me by this evening I'll go to him unasked. What's the ungrateful fellow thinking of? Does he suppose men get brought back from the dead every day?'\n\n'I thought he'd never been dead at all?' Rosenquartz clambered up to his nest. He was out of reach there, as he very well knew. 'What about Meggie's father, then? Do you think he's still alive?'\n\n'How should I know?' replied Fenoglio irritably. He didn't want to be reminded of Mortimer. 'Well, at least no one can blame me for that mess!' he growled. 'I can't help it if they're all knocking my story about, like a tree that just has to be thoroughly pruned to make it bear fruit.'\n\n'Pruned?' Rosenquartz piped up. 'No, they're adding things. Your story is growing \u2013 growing like a weed! And not a particularly pretty one either, if you ask me.'\n\nFenoglio was just wondering whether to throw the inkwell at him when Minerva put her head round the door.\n\n'A messenger, Fenoglio!' Her face was flushed, as if she had run too fast. 'A messenger from the castle! He wants to see you! Cosimo wants to see you!'\n\nFenoglio hurried to the door, smoothing down the tunic that Minerva had made him. He had been wearing it for days, it was badly crumpled, but there was no helping that now. When he had tried to pay Minerva for it she had just shaken her head, saying he'd paid already \u2013 with the stories he told her children day after day, evening after evening. It was a fine tunic, though, even if fairy-tales for children had paid for it.\n\nThe messenger was waiting down in the street outside the house, looking important and frowning impatiently. He wore the black mourning cloak, as if the Prince of Sighs were still on the throne.\n\nOh well, it will all be different now, thought Fenoglio. It will most definitely be different. From now on I, and not my characters, will be telling this story again.\n\nHis guide didn't even look round at him as he hurried along the streets after the man. Surly oaf! Fenoglio thought. But this character probably really was a product of his, Fenoglio's, pen \u2013 one of the many anonymous people with whom he had populated this world so that his main characters wouldn't be rattling about it on their own.\n\nA number of men-at-arms were loafing around outside the stables in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. Fenoglio wondered, with annoyance, what they were doing there. Cosimo's men were pacing back and forth up on the battlements, like hounds set to keep watch on a pack of wolves. The men-at-arms stared up at them with hostility. Yes, you look at that, thought Fenoglio. There'll be no leading part in my story for your dark lord, only a death fit for a thoroughgoing villain. Perhaps he'd invent another one some time, for stories soon get boring without a proper villain, but it was unlikely that Meggie would lend him her voice to call such a character to life.\n\nThe guards at the Inner Gate raised their spears.\n\n'What's all this?' Fenoglio heard the Adderhead's voice the moment he set foot in the Inner Courtyard. 'Are you telling me he's still keeping me waiting, you lousy fur-faced creature?'\n\nA softer voice answered, apprehensive and scared. Fenoglio saw the Laughing Prince's dwarfish servant Tullio facing the Adderhead. He came only up to the prince's silver-studded belt. Two of the Laughing Prince's guards stood behind him, but the Adderhead was at the head of at least twenty heavily armed men: an intimidating sight, even if Firefox wasn't with them, and nor was there any sign of the Piper.\n\n'Your daughter will receive you, sir.' Tullio's voice shook like a leaf in the wind.\n\n'My daughter? If I want Violante's company I'll summon her to my own castle. No, I want to see this dead man who's come to life! So you will now take me to Cosimo at once, you stinking brownie bastard!'\n\nThe unfortunate Tullio began trembling. 'The Prince of Ombra,' he began again, in a thread of a voice, 'will not receive you!'\n\nThese words made Fenoglio stumble back as if he had been struck in the chest \u2013 right into the nearest rosebush, where the thorns caught in his new tunic. What was going on? Cosimo wouldn't receive the Adderhead? Was that part of his own plan?\n\nThe Adderhead thrust out his lips as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. The veins at his temples stood out, dark on his blotched and ruddy skin. His lizard-like eyes stared down at Tullio. Then he took the crossbow from the nearest soldier's hand and, as Tullio ducked like a frightened rabbit, aimed at one of the birds in the sky above. It was a good shot. The bird fell right at the Adderhead's feet, its yellow feathers red with blood. A gold-mocker: Fenoglio had invented them especially for the castle of the Prince of Sighs. The Adderhead bent and pulled the arrow out of its tiny breast.\n\n'Here, take that!' he said, pressing the dead bird into Tullio's hand. 'And tell your master that he has obviously left his common sense behind in the realm of the dead. I'll allow that to be some excuse this once, but should he send you to me with such an outrageous message when next I visit him, he'll get not a bird back, but you with an arrow in your breast. Will you tell him that?'\n\nTullio stared at the blood-stained bird he was holding, and nodded.\n\nAs for the Adderhead, he turned on his heel and waved to his men to follow him. Fenoglio's guide bent his head timorously as they marched past. 'Look him straight in the eye!' Fenoglio told himself, as the Adderhead passed so close to him that he thought he could smell his sweat. 'You invented him!' But instead he hunched his head between his shoulders, like a tortoise sensing danger, and did not move until the Inner Gate had closed behind the last of the men-at-arms.\n\nTullio was still waiting at the door which had shut behind the Adderhead, staring at the dead bird in his hand. 'Should I show it to Cosimo?' he asked, looking distressed, as they came up to him.\n\n'Oh, have it roasted in the kitchen and eat it if you like!' Fenoglio's guide snarled at him. 'But get out of my way.'\n\nThe throne-room hadn't changed since Fenoglio's last visit. The windows were still hung with black. The only light came from candles, and the blank eyes of the statues stared at everyone who approached the throne itself. But now their living, breathing model sat on the throne, resembling his stone copies so much that the dark hall seemed to Fenoglio like a cabinet of mirrors.\n\nCosimo was alone. Neither Her Ugliness nor her son was to be seen. There were only six guards standing in the background, almost invisible in the dim light.\n\nFenoglio stopped at a suitable distance from the steps up to the throne, and bowed. Although it was his opinion that no one in this or any other world deserved to have him \u2013 Fenoglio \u2013 bow his head to them, certainly not those whom his own words had called to life, nevertheless he too had to observe the rules of the game in this world of his own creation. Here it was as natural to bow to nobles dressed in silk and velvet as it had been to shake hands in his old world.\n\nGo on, then, old man, bow, even if it hurts your back, he thought, bending his head a little more humbly. You fixed it this way yourself.\n\nCosimo examined him as if he were not sure whether he remembered his face. He was dressed entirely in white, which emphasized his likeness to the statues even more.\n\n'You are the poet Fenoglio, also known as the Inkweaver, is that so?' Fenoglio had imagined that the voice would be rather fuller. Cosimo looked at the statues, letting his eyes wander from one to another. 'Someone recommended me to summon you. I believe it was my wife. She says you have the cleverest mind to be found between this castle and the Adderhead's, and she thinks I shall need clever minds. But that's not why I called for you.'\n\nViolante? Violante had recommended him? Fenoglio tried to hide his surprise. 'No? Why then, Your Grace?' he asked.\n\nCosimo's eyes rested on him as abstractedly as if he were looking straight through him. Then he glanced down at himself, plucked at the magnificent tunic he wore, and adjusted his belt. 'My clothes don't fit any more,' he observed. 'They're all a little too long or too wide, as if they'd been made for those statues and not for me.'\n\nHe smiled at Fenoglio rather helplessly. It was the smile of an angel.\n\n'You... er... you've been through a difficult time, Your Grace,' said Fenoglio.\n\n'Yes. Yes, so I'm told. You see, I don't remember. There's very little I can remember at all. My head feels strangely empty.' He passed a hand over his brow and looked at the statues again. 'That's why I summoned you,' he said. 'They say you're a master of words, and I want you to help me to remember. I'm giving you the task of writing down everything there is to say about Cosimo. Get my soldiers to tell you, my servants, my old nurse, my... wife.' He hesitated for a moment before saying that last word. 'Balbulus will write your stories out and illuminate them, and then I'll have them read to me, to fill the empty space in my head and heart with words and images again. Do you think you can do it?'\n\nFenoglio hastily nodded. 'Oh yes, of course, Your Grace. I'll write it all down. Stories of your childhood, when your worthy father was still alive, tales of your first rides through the Wayless Wood, everything about the day your wife came to this castle, and the day your son was born.'\n\nCosimo nodded. 'Yes, yes!' he said, and there was relief in his voice. 'I see you understand. And don't forget my victory over the fire-raisers, and the time I spent with the White Women.'\n\n'I certainly will not.' Fenoglio examined the handsome face as unobtrusively as possible. How could this have happened? He had been meant not just to believe that he was the real Cosimo, but to share all the dead man's memories too...\n\nCosimo rose from the throne occupied by his father not so long ago, and began pacing up and down. 'I've already been told several stories myself. By my wife.'\n\nHer Ugliness again. Fenoglio looked around for her. 'Where is your wife?'\n\n'Looking for my son. He ran away because I wouldn't receive his grandfather.'\n\n'If I may make so bold, Your Grace \u2013 why wouldn't you receive him?'\n\nThe heavy door opened behind Fenoglio's back, and Tullio scurried in. He was no longer holding the dead bird as he crouched on the steps at Cosimo's feet, but fear still lingered on his face.\n\n'I do not intend ever to receive him again.' Cosimo stopped in front of the throne and patted the emblem of his house. 'I have told the guards at the gate not to let my father-in-law into this castle another time, or any who serve him.'\n\nTullio looked up at him in alarm and incredulity, as if he already felt the Adderhead's arrow in his own furry breast.\n\nBut Cosimo, unmoved, was continuing. 'I have had myself informed of what went on in my realm while I\u2014' and he hesitated for a moment again before going on \u2013 'while I was away. Yes, let's call it that: away. I have listened to my administrators, head foresters, merchants and peasants, my soldiers and my wife. In the process I have learned some very interesting things. Alarming things. And just imagine, poet: my father-in-law had something to do with almost every bad tale that I hear. Tell me, since I believe you go in and out of the strolling players' tents: what do the Motley Folk say about the Adderhead?'\n\n'The Motley Folk?' Fenoglio cleared his throat. 'Well, what everyone says. They say he's very powerful, perhaps rather too powerful.'\n\nCosimo uttered a mirthless laugh. 'Oh yes. He is indeed. And?'\n\nWhat was he getting at? You should know, Fenoglio, he told himself uneasily. If you don't know what's going on in his head, then who does? 'Well, they say the Adderhead rules with an iron fist,' he went on hesitantly. 'There's no law in Argenta but his own word and his seal. He is vengeful and vain, he extorts so much from his peasants that they go hungry, he sends rebellious subjects to his silver mines, even children, until they're spitting blood down in the depths. Poachers caught in his part of the forest are blinded, thieves have their right hands cut off \u2013 I am glad to say your father abolished that custom some time ago \u2013 and the only minstrel who can safely approach the Castle of Night is the Piper \u2013 when he's not plundering villages with Firefox.' Good heavens, did I write all this? thought Fenoglio. I suppose I did.\n\n'Yes, I've heard all that too. What else?' Cosimo folded his arms over his chest and began pacing up and down, up and down. He really was as beautiful as an angel. Perhaps I ought to have made him a little less beautiful, thought Fenoglio. He looks almost unreal.\n\n'What else?' He frowned. 'The Adderhead was always afraid of death, but as he gets older they say it's become almost an obsession. He is said to spend the night on his knees, sobbing and cursing, shaking with fear that the White Women will come for him. They also say that he washes several times a day, for fear of sickness and infection, and he sends envoys to distant lands, with chests full of silver to buy him miracle cures for old age. And the women he marries are younger and younger. He hopes that a son will be born to him at long last.'\n\nCosimo had stopped pacing. 'Yes!' he said softly. 'Yes, I have heard all that too. But there are even worse stories. When are you coming to those \u2013 or must I tell them myself?' And before Fenoglio could answer he went on: 'They say the Adderhead sends Firefox over the border by night to extort goods from my peasants. They say he claims the whole Wayless Wood for himself, he has my merchants plundered when they come ashore in his harbours, demands high tolls from them for the use of his streets and bridges, and pays footpads to make my roads unsafe. They say he has the timber for his ships chopped down in my part of the forest, and keeps his informers in this castle and in every street in Ombra. They say he even paid my own son to tell him everything my father discussed with his councillors in this hall. And finally \u2013' Cosimo paused for effect before he went on \u2013 'I am assured that the messenger who warned the fire-raisers of my forthcoming attack on them was sent by my father-in-law. I'm told he ate quails covered in silver leaf to celebrate my death, and sent my father a letter of sympathy on parchment so cleverly painted with poison that every character on it was deadly as snake's venom. So do you still wonder why I wouldn't receive him?'\n\nPoisoned parchment? Good heavens, who'd think up something like that? thought Fenoglio. Not I, for one!\n\n'Are you at a loss for words, poet?' asked Cosimo. 'Well, I can tell you I felt the same when I was told all these terrible things. What can one say of such a neighbour? What do you think of the rumour that the Adderhead had my wife's mother poisoned because she liked listening to a minstrel too much? What do you think of his sending Firefox his own men-at-arms as reinforcements, to make quite sure that I never returned from the fire-raisers' fortress? My father-in-law tried to do away with me, poet! I have forgotten a year of my life, and everything before it is as vague in my mind as if someone else had lived it. They say I was dead. They say the White Women took me away. They ask: where have you been, Cosimo? And I don't know the answer! But now I know who wanted my death, and I know who to blame for the way I feel now: empty like a gutted fish, younger than my own son. Tell me, what's the appropriate punishment for crimes of such a monstrous kind against both me and others?'\n\nBut Fenoglio could only look at him. Who is he? he asked himself. For heaven's sake, Fenoglio, you know what he looks like, but who is he? 'You tell me!' he replied at last, hoarsely.\n\nAnd Cosimo gave him that angelic smile again. 'Why, there's only one appropriate punishment, poet!' he said. 'I will go to war. I'll wage war against my father-in-law until the Castle of Night is razed to the ground and his name is forgotten.'\n\nFenoglio stood there in the darkened hall, hearing his own blood roaring in his ears. War? I must have misheard, he thought. I never wrote anything about war. But a voice began whispering inside him: a great new age, Fenoglio! Didn't you write something about a great new age?\n\n'He has the impudence to ride to my castle with men in his retinue who have already pillaged and burned for Capricorn; he's made Firefox, whom I rode out to defeat, his herald; he's sent the Piper here as protector of my son! The audacity of it! Perhaps he could deride my father in that way, but not me. I'll show him he's not dealing with a prince who's either shedding tears or over-eating now.' A faint flush had risen to Cosimo's face. Anger made him even more handsome.\n\nWar. Think, Fenoglio. Think. War! Is that what you wanted? He felt his old knees beginning to tremble.\n\nAs for Cosimo, he laid his hand almost lovingly on his sword. He slowly drew it from the scabbard. 'It was for this alone that death spared me, poet,' he said, cutting the air with the long, slender blade. 'So that I could bring justice to this world and turn the Devil himself off his throne. That's worth fighting for, don't you think? Even worth dying for.' He was a fine sight standing there with the drawn sword in his hand. And yes, wasn't he right? Perhaps war really was the only way to put the Adderhead in his place.\n\n'You must help me, Inkweaver! That's what they call you, don't they? I like the name!' Cosimo gracefully sheathed the sword again. Tullio, who was still sitting on the steps at his feet, shuddered as the sharp blade scraped the leather scabbard. 'You will write a speech for me, calling my people to arms. You will explain our cause to them, you'll plant enthusiasm for that cause and hatred for our enemy in every heart. And we'll use the strolling players too \u2013 you're a friend of theirs. Write them fiery songs, poet! Songs that will make men want to fight. You forge the words, I'll have the swords forged. Many, many swords.'\n\nHe stood there like an avenging angel, lacking nothing but the wings, and for the first, the very first time in his life Fenoglio felt something like affection for one of his inky creations. I'll give him wings, he thought. I will indeed. With my words.\n\n'Your Highness!' When he bowed his head this time it wasn't difficult, and for a wonderful moment he felt almost as if he had written himself the son he never had. Don't go turning sentimental in your old age, he told himself, but this warning made no difference to the unaccustomed softening of his heart.\n\nI ought to ride with him, he thought. Yes, indeed. I'll go to war against the Adderhead with him, old as I may be. Fenoglio, a hero in the world of his own creation, a poet and a warrior too. It was a role he'd like. As if he had written himself the perfect part to play.\n\nCosimo smiled again. Fenoglio would have bet everything he had that there was no more delightful smile in this or any other world. Tullio seemed to have succumbed to Cosimo's charm too, despite the fear the Adderhead had put into his heart. Enchanted, he stared up at the master who had come back to him, his little hands in his lap as if they were still holding the bird with the bloody breast.\n\n'I hear your words already!' said Cosimo, returning to the throne. 'My wife loves written words, you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, and it seems my father felt the same \u2013 but I want to hear words, not read them! Remember that, when you're looking for the right words: you must ask yourself what they sound like! Glowing with passion, dark with sorrow, sweet with love, that's what I want. Write words quivering with all our righteous anger at the Adderhead's evil deeds, and soon that anger will be in every heart. You will write my accusation, my fiery accusation, and we'll have it read out in every market place and spread abroad by the strolling players: Beware, Adderhead! Let it be heard all the way to his own side of the forest. Your wicked days are numbered! And soon every peasant will want to fight under my banner, every man young or old, your words will bring them flocking here to the castle! I've heard that when the Adderhead doesn't like what books say he'll sometimes have them burned in the fireplaces of his castle, but how will he burn words that everyone is singing and speaking?'\n\nHe could always burn the man who speaks them, thought Fenoglio. Or the man who wrote them. It was an uncomfortable thought that cooled the ardour of his heart slightly, but Cosimo seemed to have picked it up.\n\n'I shall, of course, take you under my personal protection immediately,' he said. 'In future you will live here at the castle, in apartments suitable for a court poet.'\n\n'At the castle?' Fenoglio cleared his throat, so awkward did this offer make him feel. 'That... that's very generous of you. Yes, indeed.' New times were coming, new and wonderful times. A great new age...\n\n'You will be a good Prince, Your Grace!' he said, his voice much moved. 'A good and great Prince. And my songs about you will still be sung in centuries to come, when the Adderhead is long forgotten. I promise you that.'\n\nFootsteps sounded behind him. Fenoglio turned, annoyed by the interruption at such an emotional moment. Violante came hurrying through the hall, holding her son's hand, with her maid behind her.\n\n'Cosimo!' she cried. 'Listen to him. Your son wants to say he's sorry.'\n\nFenoglio didn't think that Jacopo looked at all sorry. Violante was having to drag him along behind her, and his face was dark as thunder. He didn't seem particularly pleased by his father's return. His mother, on the other hand, was radiant as Fenoglio had never seen her before, and the mark on her face was not much darker than a shadow cast by the sun.\n\nThe birthmark on Her Ugliness's face faded. Oh, thank you, Meggie, he thought. What a pity you're not here...\n\n'I won't say sorry!' announced Jacopo, as his mother propelled him none too gently up the steps to the throne. 'He's the one who ought to say sorry to my grandfather!'\n\nUnobtrusively, Fenoglio took a step back. Time for him to go.\n\n'Do you remember me?' he heard Cosimo ask. 'Was I a stern father?'\n\nJacopo merely shrugged.\n\n'Oh yes, you were very stern!' Her Ugliness replied on the child's behalf. 'You took away his hounds when he acted like this. And his horse.'\n\nShe was clever, cleverer than Fenoglio had expected. He went quietly towards the door. It was a good thing he'd soon be living at the castle. He must keep an eye on Violante, or she'd soon be filling the blank of Cosimo's memory to her own liking \u2013 as if stuffing a newly prepared turkey. When the servants opened the great door he saw Cosimo abstractedly smiling at his wife. He's grateful to her, thought Fenoglio, grateful to her for filling his emptiness with her words, but he doesn't love her.\n\nAnd of course that's another thing you never thought of, Fenoglio, he told himself reproachfully as he walked through the Inner Courtyard. Why didn't you write a word about Cosimo loving his wife? Didn't you tell Meggie the story, long ago, about the flower maiden who gave her heart to the wrong man? What are stories for if we don't learn from them? Well, at least Violante loved Cosimo. You only had to look at her to see it. That was something, after all...\n\nOn the other hand... Violante's maid, the girl with the beautiful hair, Brianna, who Meggie said was Dustfinger's daughter \u2013 hadn't she seemed equally enraptured when she looked at Cosimo? And Cosimo himself \u2013 hadn't he looked at the maid more often than at his wife? Oh, never mind, thought Fenoglio. There'll soon be more important matters at stake than love. Far more important matters..."
            },
            {
                "title": "Another Messenger",
                "text": "\u2002The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.\n\n\u2014Chinese proverb, Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst\n\nThe Adderhead and his men-at-arms had disappeared when Fenoglio came out of the gate of the Inner Castle. Good, thought Fenoglio. He'll be fuming with rage on his long ride home! The thought of it made him smile. A number of men were waiting in the Outer Courtyard. It was easy to guess their trade from their blackened hands, even though no doubt they had scrubbed them thoroughly for their Prince. The entire population of Smiths' Alley in Ombra seemed to have come up to the castle. You forge the words, I'll have the swords forged, many, many swords. Had Cosimo's preparations for his war begun already? If so, it's time I set to work on my words, Fenoglio told himself.\n\nAs he turned into Cobblers' Alley he thought for a moment that he heard steps behind him, but when he turned there was only a one-legged beggar hobbling laboriously past him. At every other step the beggar's crutch slipped in the filth lying among the houses \u2013 pig dung, vegetable refuse, stinking puddles of whatever fluids people tipped out of their windows. Well, there'll soon be cripples enough, thought Fenoglio as he walked on towards Minerva's house. You could call war a cripple factory... What kind of idea was that? Were doubts of Cosimo's plans stirring in his elated mind? Oh, let it alone...\n\nBy all the letters of the alphabet, I'm certainly not going to miss this climb once I'm living in the castle, he thought as he toiled up the stairway to his room. I must just remember to ask Cosimo not, on any account, to give me quarters in one of the towers. The climb up to Balbulus's workshop was bad enough! Oh, so these few steps are too steep for you, but you trust yourself to go to war in your old age, do you? said a quiet, mocking voice inside him. It always spoke up at the most inappropriate moments, but Fenoglio had plenty of practice in ignoring it.\n\nRosenquartz wasn't there. Presumably he had climbed out of the window again to visit the glass man working for the scribe who lived over the road in Bakers' Alley. The fairies all seemed to have flown away too. It was quiet in Fenoglio's room, unusually quiet. He sat down on his bed, sighing. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help thinking of his grandchildren, and the way they used to fill his house with noise and laughter. So what? he thought, feeling angry with himself. Minerva's children make just the same kind of noise, and think how often you've sent them packing down to the yard because it was too much for you!\n\nFootsteps came up the stairs. Well, speak of the devil...! He didn't feel like telling stories, not at the moment. He had to pack his things, and then break the news gently to Minerva that she must look around for a new lodger.\n\n'Go away!' he called to whoever was at the door. 'Go and tease the pigs or chickens in the yard! The Inkweaver doesn't have time just now. He's moving to the castle.'\n\nThe door swung open all the same, but not to reveal two children's faces. A man stood there \u2013 a man with a blotched face and slightly protuberant eyes. Fenoglio had never seen him before, yet he seemed strangely familiar. His leather trousers were patched and dirty, but the colour of his cloak made Fenoglio's heart beat faster. It was the Adderhead's silvery grey.\n\n'What's the idea?' he asked brusquely, getting to his feet, but the stranger was already through the doorway. He stood there with his legs spread, his grin as ugly as his face itself, but it was the sight of his companion that made Fenoglio's old knees feel weak. Basta was smiling at him like a long-lost friend. He too wore the silver of the Adderhead.\n\n'Bad luck again! Talk about terrible luck!' said Basta, looking round the room. 'The girl's not here. And there we go stalking you all the way from the castle, quiet as cats, thinking we'll catch two birds with one stone, and now it's just one ugly old raven in our trap. Never mind, at least one is something. Can't expect too much of Lady Fortune, can we? After all, she sent you to the castle at just the right time. I recognized your ugly tortoise face at once, but you didn't even see me, did you?'\n\nNo, Fenoglio hadn't seen him. Should he have looked closely at every man standing behind the Adderhead? Yes \u2013 if you'd had your wits about you, Fenoglio, he told himself, that's exactly what you'd have done! How could you forget that Basta's back? Wasn't what happened to Mortimer warning enough?\n\n'Well, what a surprise! Basta! How did you escape the Shadow?' he said out loud, moving unobtrusively backwards until he could feel the bed behind him. Ever since a man in the house next door had his throat cut in his sleep, he had slept with a knife under his pillow, although he wasn't sure if it was still there.\n\n'Sorry, but he must have overlooked me, shut up in that cage as I was,' purred Basta in his catlike voice. 'Capricorn wasn't so lucky, but Mortola is still around, and she's told our old friend the Adderhead about the three birds we're after. Dangerous sorcerers who kill with words.' Basta slowly came towards Fenoglio. 'Who do you think those birds are?'\n\nThe other man kicked the door shut with his boot.\n\n'Mortola?' Fenoglio tried to make his voice mocking and supercilious, but it sounded more like the croak of a dying raven. 'Wasn't it Mortola who had you put in the cage to be fed to the Shadow?'\n\nBasta just shrugged his shoulders and flung back his silver-grey cloak. Of course, he had his knife. A brand new one, it seemed, finer than any he'd ever had in the other world, and undoubtedly just as sharp.\n\n'Yes, not very nice of her,' he said as his fingers caressed the handle of the knife. 'But she's really sorry. Come on, then, do you know what birds we're after? Let me help you a little. We've already wrung the neck of one of them \u2013 the one that sang loudest.'\n\nFenoglio let himself drop on to the bed, without \u2013 or so he hoped \u2013 any expression on his face. 'I assume you mean Mortimer,' he said, slowly pushing his hand under the pillow.\n\n'Quite right!' Basta smiled. 'You should have been there when Mortola shot him \u2013 just the way she used to shoot the crows who stole the seed from her fields.' The memory made his smile even nastier. How well Fenoglio knew what was going on in his black heart! After all, he had made Basta up, just as he had made up Cosimo and his angelic smile. Basta had always liked describing his own and other people's abominable deeds in detail. His companion didn't seem to be so talkative. He was looking round Fenoglio's room with a bored expression. A good thing the glass man wasn't there; it was so easy to smash him.\n\n'But we're not going to shoot you.' Basta came a little closer to Fenoglio, his face as intent as that of a stalking cat. 'We'll probably hang you until your tongue is sticking out of your poor old mouth.'\n\n'How very imaginative!' said Fenoglio, moving his fingers further and further under the pillow. 'But you know what will happen then. You'll die too.'\n\nBasta's smile disappeared as suddenly as a mouse scurrying into its hole. 'Oh yes!' he hissed unpleasantly, as his hand instinctively went to the amulet at his throat. 'I almost forgot. You believe you made me up, right? And what about him?' He pointed to the other man. 'That's Slasher. Did you make him up too? He sometimes worked for Capricorn, after all. Many of the old fire-raisers wear the Adder's silver now, although some of us think it was more fun under Capricorn. All those fine folk in the Castle of Night...!' He spat scornfully at Fenoglio's feet. 'It's no coincidence that the Adderhead has a snake on his coat of arms. He wants you to crawl on your belly to him, that's what our noble lord and master likes. But never mind, he pays well! Hey, Slasher!' he addressed his still-silent companion. 'What do you think, does the old fellow look as if he made you up?'\n\nSlasher's ugly face twisted. 'If so, he made a bad job of it, eh?'\n\n'You're right there.' Basta laughed. 'I'd say he deserves a taste of our knives just for the face he gave you, right?'\n\nSlasher. Yes, indeed, he'd invented Slasher too. Fenoglio felt sick to his stomach when he remembered why he'd given the man that name.\n\n'Out with it, old man!' Basta leaned so close that Fenoglio smelled his peppermint-scented breath. 'Where's the girl? Tell us and we may let you live a little longer. We'll send the child after her father first. I'm sure she's longing to see him. They were so fond of each other, those two. Come on, where is she? Spit it out!' He slowly drew the knife from his belt. Its blade was long and slightly curved. Fenoglio swallowed as if to force down his fear. He pushed his hand yet further under the pillow, but all his fingertips met was a piece of bread, probably hidden there by Rosenquartz. Just as well, he thought. What good would a knife have done? Basta would have run me through before I even got a proper hold on it, not to mention Slasher. He felt the sweat running into his eyes.\n\n'Hey, Basta, I know you like the sound of your own voice, but let's get going and take him with us.' Slasher spoke in croaking tones, like the toads in the hills by night. Of course, that was how Fenoglio had described him. Slasher, the man with the voice of a toad. 'We can question him later. We have to follow the others now,' he urged Basta. 'Who knows what this dead prince will do next? Suppose he doesn't let us out of his accursed gate? Suppose he sends his soldiers after us? The others must be miles ahead by now!'\n\nWith a regretful sigh, Basta put the knife back in his belt. 'Yes, very well, you're right,' he said in surly tones. 'I need to take my time with this sort of thing. Questioning people is an art, a real art.' He roughly seized Fenoglio's arm, pulled him to his feet and pushed him towards the door. 'Just like old times, eh?' he snarled in his ear. 'I took you out of your own house once before, remember? Put on as good an act as you did then and you'll go on breathing a little longer. And if we pass that woman feeding pigs in the yard, tell her we're taking you to see an old girlfriend of yours, understand?'\n\nFenoglio just nodded. Minerva wouldn't believe a word of it, but perhaps she might fetch help.\n\nBasta's hand was already on the door handle when footsteps came upstairs again. The old wood creaked and groaned. The children. For heaven's sake! But it was not a child's voice that spoke outside the door.\n\n'Inkweaver?'\n\nBasta cast an anxious glance at Slasher, but Fenoglio had recognized the voice: it was Cloud-Dancer, the former tightrope-walker, who had brought him messages from the Black Prince many times before. He'd be no help, not with his stiff leg! But what news brought him here? Had the Black Prince heard anything of Meggie?\n\nBasta waved Slasher over to the left of the door, and stationed himself to the right. Then he gave Fenoglio a sign, and drew the knife from his belt again.\n\nFenoglio opened the door. It was so low that he always had to duck his head coming in. There stood Cloud-Dancer, rubbing his knee. 'Bloody stairs!' he swore. 'Steep and falling apart. I'm just glad you're in and I don't have to climb them again. Here.' He looked around as if the old house had ears, and reached into the leather bag that had carried so many letters from place to place. 'The girl who's staying with you sends you this.' He held out a piece of paper folded several times. It looked like a page from Meggie's notebook. Meggie hated to tear pages out of a book, and she'd have been reluctant to take one out of this notebook in particular; her father had bound it for her. So the message must be very important \u2013 and Basta would take it from him at once.\n\n'Well, here you are, then!' Cloud-Dancer impatiently held the folded paper in front of his nose. 'Any idea how fast I hurried to bring you this?'\n\nReluctantly, Fenoglio put his hand out. He knew just one thing: Basta must not see Meggie's message. Never. His fingers closed around the paper so tightly that none of it was visible.\n\n'And listen!' Cloud-Dancer went on quietly. 'The Adderhead has attacked the Secret Camp. Dustfinger\u2014'\n\nFenoglio shook his head, almost imperceptibly. 'Fine. Thank you very much, but the fact is I have visitors just now,' he said, desperately trying to convey what he couldn't say in words with his eyes. He rolled them to right and left, as if they could act as fingers pointing to where Basta and Slasher were waiting behind the door.\n\nCloud-Dancer took a step back.\n\n'Run!' cried Fenoglio, and leaped out of the doorway. Cloud-Dancer almost fell downstairs as Fenoglio made his way past him, but then he stumbled on. Fenoglio was sliding, rather than running, down the stairs. He didn't turn until he had reached the bottom. He heard Basta cursing behind him, and Slasher's croaking voice. He heard the children in the yard screaming with fright, and from somewhere came Minerva's voice, but by then he was running past the sheds, and the lines where her freshly washed laundry hung. A pig ran between his legs, making him stumble and fall in the mud, and when he got up he saw that Cloud-Dancer hadn't been as fast as he was. How could he be, with his stiff leg? Basta had taken him by the collar, while Slasher pushed Minerva aside as she tried to bar his way with a rake. Fenoglio ducked down, first behind an empty barrel, then behind the pigs' trough, and crawled over to one of the sheds on all fours.\n\nDespina.\n\nShe was staring at him in astonishment. He laid his finger on his lips, crawled on, forced his way past a couple of planks and squeezed into the place where Minerva's children had their hideout. He only just fitted in \u2013 the place wasn't meant for old men who were beginning to put on weight around the hips. The two children came here when they didn't want to go to bed, or weren't keen to work. They hadn't shown their hiding place to anyone but Fenoglio, as proof of friendship \u2013 and in return for a good ghost story.\n\nHe heard Cloud-Dancer scream, he heard Basta roaring something and Minerva weeping. He almost crawled back to them, but fear paralyzed him. And what could he do against Basta's knife and the sword that hung from Slasher's belt? He leaned against the wooden wall of the shed, heard the pigs grunting and rooting about in the ground. Meggie's message swam before his eyes; the sheet of paper was dirty with the mud he'd crawled through, but he could still decipher what she had written.\n\n'I don't know!' he heard Cloud-Dancer scream. 'I don't know what she wrote on it. I can't read!' Brave Cloud-Dancer. He probably did know, all the same. He usually had people tell him what their messages said.\n\n'But you can tell me where she is, can't you?' That was Basta's voice. 'Out with it. Is she with Dustfinger? You whispered his name to the old man!'\n\n'I don't know!' He screamed again, and Minerva wept louder than ever and shouted for help, her voice echoing back from the narrow houses.\n\n'The Adderhead's men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players,' Fenoglio read. 'Dustfinger is following... the Spelt-Mill...' The letters blurred as he looked at them. Yet again he heard screaming out there. He bit his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed. 'Write something, Fenoglio. Save them. Write...' It was as if he could hear Meggie's voice. Another scream. No. No, he couldn't just sit here. He crawled out, on and on until he could rise to his feet.\n\nBasta was still holding Cloud-Dancer in a firm grip, pressing him back against the wall of the house. The old tightrope-walker's shirt was slit and bloody, and Slasher was standing in front of him with a knife in his hand. Where was Minerva? She was nowhere to be seen, but Despina and Ivo were there, in hiding near the sheds, watching what one man can do to another. With a smile on his lips.\n\n'Basta!' Fenoglio took a step forward. He put all his rage and all his fear into his voice, and held Meggie's close-written sheet of paper up in the air.\n\nBasta turned with assumed surprise. 'Oh, there you are!' he called. 'With the pigs. I might have known it. You'd better bring us that letter before Slasher finishes slicing up your friend here.'\n\n'You'll have to fetch it yourselves.'\n\n'Why?' Slasher laughed. 'You can read it to us, can't you?'\n\nYes. He could. Fenoglio stood there at his wits' end. Where were all the lies, the clever lies that usually sprang to his lips so easily? Cloud-Dancer was staring at him, his face twisted with pain and fear \u2013 and suddenly, as if he couldn't stand the fear a moment longer, he tore himself away from Basta and ran towards Fenoglio. He ran fast in spite of his stiff knee, but Basta's knife was faster \u2013 so much faster. It went straight into Cloud-Dancer's back, just as the Adderhead's arrow had pierced the gold-mocker's breast. The tightrope-walker fell in the mud, and Fenoglio, standing there, began to tremble. He was trembling so much that Meggie's letter slipped out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. But Cloud-Dancer lay there unmoving, his face in the dirt. Despina came out of hiding, hard as Ivo tried to haul her back, and stared wide-eyed at the motionless figure lying before Fenoglio's feet. It was quiet in the yard, very quiet.\n\n'Read it out, scribbler!'\n\nFenoglio raised his head. Basta stood there in front of him, holding the knife that had been sticking into Cloud-Dancer's back just now. Fenoglio stared at the blood on the bright blade and at Meggie's message. In Basta's hand. Without thinking, he clenched his fists. He struck Basta in the chest as if neither the knife nor Slasher existed. Basta staggered back, anger and astonishment on his face. He fell over a bucket full of weeds that Minerva had been pulling out of her vegetable plots. Cursing, he got to his feet. 'Don't do that again, old man!' he spat. 'I'm telling you for the last time, read that out!'\n\nBut Fenoglio had snatched Minerva's pitchfork from the dirty straw piled up outside the pigsty. 'Murderer!' he whispered, pointing the crudely forged prongs at Basta. What had happened to his voice? 'Murderer, murderer!' he repeated, louder and louder, and he thrust the pitchfork at the place in Basta's breast where his black heart beat.\n\nBasta retreated, his face distorted with rage.\n\n'Slasher!' he roared. 'Slasher, come here and get that damn fork away from him!'\n\nBut Slasher had gone beyond the houses, sword in hand, and was listening. Horses' hooves were clattering along the alley outside. 'We must go, Basta!' he called. 'Cosimo's guards are on their way!'\n\nBasta stared at Fenoglio, his narrowed eyes full of hate. 'We'll meet again, old man!' he whispered. 'And next time you'll be lying in the dirt in front of me, like him.' He stepped heedlessly over the motionless Cloud-Dancer. 'As for this,' he said, tucking Meggie's letter under his belt, 'Mortola will read it to me. Who'd have thought that the third little bird would write telling us where to find her in her own fair hand? And we'll pick up the fire-eater for free into the bargain!'\n\n'Come on, quickly, Basta!' Slasher beckoned impatiently.\n\n'What are you bothered about? You think they'll string us up because there's one less strolling player in the world?' replied Basta calmly, but he turned away from Fenoglio. He waved to him one last time before disappearing among the houses.\n\nFenoglio thought he heard voices, the clink of weapons, but perhaps it was something else. He knelt down beside Cloud-Dancer, turned him gently on his back and put his ear to his chest \u2013 as if he hadn't seen death in his face some moments ago. He sensed the two children coming up beside him. Despina put her hand on his shoulder. It was slim and light as a leaf.\n\n'Is he dead?' she whispered.\n\n'You can see he is,' said her brother.\n\n'Will the White Women come to fetch him now?'\n\nFenoglio shook his head. 'No, he's going to them of his own accord,' he answered quietly. 'You can see that. He's gone already. But they'll welcome him to their White Castle. It's built of bones, but very beautiful. There's a courtyard in that castle, full of fragrant flowers, with a tightrope made of moonlight stretched across it just for Cloud-Dancer...' The words came easily: beautiful, comforting words, but were they really true? Fenoglio didn't know. He had never taken any interest in what came after death, either in this world or the other one. Probably just silence, silence without a single word of comfort.\n\nMinerva came stumbling back from the alley, a cut on her forehead. The physician who lived on the corner was with her, and two other women, their faces pale with fear. Despina ran to her mother, but Ivo stayed beside Fenoglio.\n\n'No one would come.' Minerva sobbed as she fell to her knees beside the dead man. 'They were all afraid. Every one of them!'\n\n'Cloud-Dancer,' murmured the physician. Boneknitter, he was often called, Stonecutter, Piss-Prophet, and sometimes, when he had lost a patient, Angel of Death. 'Only a week ago he was asking if I knew anything that would do the pain in his knee good.'\n\nFenoglio remembered seeing the physician with the Black Prince. Should he tell him what Cloud-Dancer had said about the Secret Camp? Could he trust him? No, it was better to trust no one. Nothing and no one. The Adderhead had many spies. Fenoglio straightened up. Never before had he felt so old, so very old that it seemed as if he couldn't survive another single day. The mill that Meggie had mentioned in her letter, where the devil was it? The name had sounded familiar... well, of course it did; he himself had described it in one of the last chapters of Inkheart. The miller was no friend to the Adderhead, even though his mill stood near the Castle of Night, in a dark valley south of the Wayless Wood.\n\n'Minerva,' he asked, 'how long does it take a mounted man to get from here to the Castle of Night?'\n\n'Two days for sure, if he's not going to ruin his horse,' replied Minerva quietly.\n\nTwo days, if not less, before Basta found out what was in Meggie's letter. If he rode to the Castle of Night with it, that was. But he's sure to do that, thought Fenoglio. Basta can't read, so he will take the letter to Mortola, and the Magpie is sure to be at the Castle of Night. Yes, there were probably two days to go before Mortola would read what Meggie had said and send Basta to the mill. Where Meggie might already be waiting... Fenoglio sighed. Two days. Perhaps that would be enough to get a warning to her, but not to write the words she hoped he would send \u2013 words to save her parents.\n\nWrite something, Fenoglio. Write...\n\nAs if it were so simple! Meggie, Cosimo, they all wanted words from him. It was easy for them to talk. You needed time to find the right words, and enough time was exactly what he didn't have!\n\n'Minerva, tell Rosenquartz I have to go to the castle,' said Fenoglio. Suddenly he felt dreadfully tired. 'Tell him I'll fetch him later.'\n\nMinerva stroked Despina's hair \u2013 the girl was sobbing into her skirt \u2013 and nodded. 'Yes, you go to the castle!' she said huskily. 'Go and tell Cosimo to send soldiers after those murderers. By God, I'll be in the front row to watch them hang!'\n\n'Hang? What are you talking about?' The physician ran a hand through his sparse hair and looked sadly down at the dead man. 'Cloud-Dancer was one of the strolling players. No one gets hanged for stabbing a strolling player. There's a harsher penalty for killing a hare in the forest.'\n\nIvo looked incredulously at Fenoglio. 'Will they really not punish them?'\n\nWhat was he to tell the boy? No, it was a fact. No one would punish them. Perhaps the Black Prince might some day, or the man who had taken to wearing the Bluejay's mask, but Cosimo wouldn't send a single soldier after Basta. The Motley Folk were all outlaws, in Lombrica and Argenta alike. Subject to none, protected by none. But Cosimo will give me a horseman if I ask him, thought Fenoglio, a fast horseman who can warn Meggie of Basta. 'Write something, Fenoglio. Save them! Write something that will set them all free and kill the Adderhead...' Yes, by God, he would. He'd write rousing songs for Cosimo and powerful words for Meggie. And then her voice could help this story to find a good ending at last."
            },
            {
                "title": "No Hope",
                "text": "\u2002The mustard-pot got up and walked over to his plate on thin silver legs that waddled like the owl's... 'Oh, I love the mustard-pot!' cried the Wart. 'Wherever did you get it?'\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone\n\nLuckily Darius was a good cook, or Orpheus would probably have locked Elinor up in the cellar again after the very first meal and read himself food to eat out of her books. Thanks to Darius's cooking, however, they were able to spend time upstairs more often \u2013 although under the watchful eye of Sugar \u2013 for Orpheus liked his food, and plenty of it, and he enjoyed what Darius cooked.\n\nFearing that otherwise Orpheus might let only Darius upstairs, they pretended that Elinor had concocted all those delicacies with their appetizing aromas and Darius was just her assistant, tirelessly chopping, stirring and tasting; but as soon as Sugar, getting bored, left the kitchen to stare at the bookshelves, Darius took over the wooden spoon and Elinor the chopping \u2013 not that she was much better at chopping than cooking.\n\nNow and then some bewildered figure, looking round as if lost, stumbled into the kitchen. Sometimes the visitor was human, sometimes furry or feathered; once it was even a talking mustard-pot. Elinor could usually work out, from the appearance of each one, which of her poor books Orpheus had in his pale hands at that moment. Tiny men with old-fashioned hairstyles were presumably from Gulliver's Travels. The mustard-pot was very probably from Merlin's cottage, and the enchanting and extremely confused faun who tripped in one lunchtime on delicate goat's hooves must come from Narnia.\n\nNaturally Elinor wondered anxiously if all these creatures were in her library when they didn't happen to be standing glassy-eyed in the kitchen, and finally she asked Darius to go and find out, on the pretext of asking what Orpheus wanted to eat. He came back with the reassuring news that her Holy of Holies was still in dreadful disorder, but apart from Orpheus, his horrible dog, and a rather pale gentleman who looked to Darius suspiciously like the Canterville Ghost, no one was pawing, soiling, sniffing or otherwise damaging Elinor's books.\n\n'Thank God!' she sighed, relieved. 'He obviously makes them all disappear again. I must say that appalling man really does know his trade. And it looks as if he can read them out of a book by now without making someone else disappear into it!'\n\n'No doubt about that,' remarked Darius \u2013 and Elinor thought she heard a trace of envy in his gentle voice.\n\n'He's a monster all the same,' she said, in a clumsy attempt to console him. 'It's just a pity this house is so well stocked with provisions, or he'd have had to send the wardrobe-man shopping, and then he'd be alone facing the two of us.'\n\nAs it was, however, days passed by, and there was nothing they could do about either their own imprisonment or the fact that Mortimer and Resa were probably in deadly danger. Elinor tried not even to think of Meggie. And Orpheus, the one person who could obviously have put everything right with such ease, sat in her library like a pale, fat spider, playing with her books and the characters who populated them, as if they were toys to be taken out and put away again.\n\n'How much longer is he planning to go on like this, I ask myself?' she said for about the hundredth time as Darius was putting rice in a serving dish \u2013 rice cooked just long enough, of course, so that it was soft but the grains were all separate. 'Is he planning to keep us cooking and cleaning for him as unpaid servants for the rest of his life, while he amuses himself with my poor books? In my house?'\n\nDarius did not reply. Instead, and without a word, he piled food on to four plates \u2013 this was a meal that certainly wasn't going to send Orpheus out of the house.\n\n'Darius!' whispered Elinor, putting a hand on his thin shoulder. 'Won't you just have a try? I know he always keeps the book close to him, but perhaps we can get our hands on it somehow. You could put something in his food...'\n\n'He gets Sugar to taste everything he's going to eat.'\n\n'Yes, I know. Right, so we must try something else, anything, and then you can read us into the book! If this repulsive creature won't bring them out for us, then we'll simply go after them!'\n\nBut Darius shook his head, as he had done every time Elinor had suggested the same thing, although in slightly different words. 'I can't do it, Elinor!' he whispered, and his glasses clouded over, whether with the steam of cooking or tears rising to his eyes, she thought it better not to enquire. 'I've never read anyone into a book, only out of it, and you know what happened then.'\n\n'Oh, all right, then read someone here, someone strong and heroic who'll chase those two out of my house! Who cares if his nose has been flattened or he's lost his voice like Resa, just so long as he has plenty of muscle!'\n\nAs if on cue, Sugar put his head round the door. Elinor was constantly amazed to see that it was not much wider than his neck. 'Orpheus wants to know where dinner is.'\n\n'Just ready,' replied Darius, handing him one of the steaming plates.\n\n'Rice again?' growled Sugar.\n\n'Yes, sorry about that,' said Darius, as he pushed past him with Orpheus's plate.\n\n'And you see about the dessert!' Sugar ordered Elinor as she was about to put the first forkful in her own mouth.\n\nNo, this just couldn't go on. Acting the kitchen-maid in her own house, with a horrible man in her library throwing her books on the floor, treating them like boxes of chocolates, nibbling something from one book here, another there.\n\nThere must be a way to do it, she thought, spooning walnut ice cream into two dishes with a gloomy expression on her face. There must. There must. Why couldn't her stupid brain work it out?"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Captives",
                "text": "\u2002'Then you don't think he's dead, then?'\n\n\u2002He put on his hat. 'Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he's very alive. Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look at him, and when I come back we'll get together and decide.'\n\n\u2014Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird\n\nNight had fallen long ago when Meggie and Farid set out to follow Dustfinger. Go south, keep going south, Cloud-Dancer had told them, but how did you know you were going south when there was no sun to show you the way, no stars shining through the black leaves? The darkness seemed to have devoured everything: the trees, even the ground before their feet. Moths fluttered into their faces, attracted by the fire that Farid was nursing in his fingers like a little animal. The trees seemed to have eyes and hands, and the wind carried voices to their ears, soft voices whispering words to Meggie that she didn't understand. On any other night a point would probably have come when she just stopped, or ran back to where Cloud-Dancer and Nettle might still be sitting by the fire; but tonight she knew only that she must find Dustfinger and her parents, for neither night nor the forest could hold any terrors for her greater than the fear that had taken root in her heart when she saw Mo's blood on the straw.\n\nAt first, and with the fire to help him, Farid kept finding traces: a print left by one of Dustfinger's boots, a broken twig, a marten's trail... but the time came when he stood there at a loss, not sure which way to go. Tree grew beside tree in the pale moonlight whichever way you looked, so close together that you couldn't make out any path between their trunks, and Meggie saw eyes: eyes above her, behind her, beside her... hungry eyes, angry eyes, so many of them that she wished the moon wouldn't shine so brightly through the leaves.\n\n'Farid!' she whispered. 'Let's climb a tree and wait for sunrise. We'll never find Dustfinger's trail again if we just go on like this.'\n\n'My own opinion exactly!' Dustfinger appeared among the trees without a sound, as if he had been standing there for some time already. 'I've been able to hear you ploughing through the forest behind me like a herd of wild boar for the last hour,' he said, as Jink pushed past his legs. 'This is the Wayless Wood, and not the safest part of it either. You can think yourselves lucky I managed to convince the elves in the ash trees that you weren't breaking their branches just for fun. And how about the Night-Mares? Do you think they don't pick up your scent? If I hadn't sent them packing you'd probably be lying stiff as dead wood among the trees by now, caught in bad dreams like two flies in a spider's web.'\n\n'Night-Mares?' whispered Farid, as the sparks at his fingertips went out. Night-Mares. Meggie came closer to him. She was remembering a story that Resa had told her. What a good thing it hadn't come into her mind earlier...\n\n'Yes, did I never tell you about them?' Jink ran to Dustfinger as he walked towards them, and greeted Gwin with a delighted chatter. 'They may not eat you alive like those desert ghosts you kept telling me about, but they're not exactly friendly either.'\n\n'I'm not going back,' said Meggie, looking at him resolutely. 'Whatever you say I'm not going back.'\n\nDustfinger looked at her. 'No, I know,' he said. 'Your mother all over.' That was all.\n\nAll night they followed the broad track left by the men-at-arms as they had marched through the forest \u2013 all night and the following day. Dustfinger let them stop for a brief rest only when he saw that Meggie was staggering with exhaustion. When the sun was once again so low in the sky that it touched the tree-tops they reached the crest of a hill, and Meggie saw the dark ribbon of a road running through the green of the forest down below. A collection of buildings stood beside it: a long, low house, with stables round a yard.\n\n'The only inn close to the border,' Dustfinger whispered to them. 'They probably left their horses there. You can move considerably faster on foot in the forest. Everyone who wants to go south and down to the sea stops to rest at this inn: couriers, traders, even a few of the strolling players, though everyone knows that the landlord is one of the Adderhead's spies. If we're lucky we'll be there before the party we're following, because they won't be able to get down the slopes with the handcart and the prisoners. They'll have to go the long way round, but we can take the direct route and wait for them at the inn.'\n\n'And then what?' For a moment Meggie thought she saw the same anxiety in his eyes that had driven her into the woods by night. But who was he anxious about? The Black Prince, the other strolling players... her mother? She still clearly remembered that day in Capricorn's crypt when he had begged Resa to escape with him and leave her daughter behind...\n\nPerhaps Dustfinger had remembered it too. 'Why are you looking at me like that?' he asked.\n\n'Oh, it's nothing,' she murmured, bending her head. 'I'm just worried.'\n\n'And for good reason,' he said, abruptly turning his back on her.\n\n'But what are we going to do when we've caught up with them?' Farid was hurrying unsteadily after him.\n\n'I don't know,' Dustfinger said as he began looking for a way down the slope, keeping in the cover of the trees. 'I thought one of you might have some idea, since you were so keen to come along.'\n\nThe route he took led downhill so steeply that Meggie could hardly keep her footing, but then she suddenly saw the road \u2013 stony, and rutted with channels where water had once flowed down from the hills. On the other side were the stables and the house she had seen from the top of the hill. Dustfinger waved her over to a place by the roadside where the undergrowth would shield her from curious eyes.\n\n'No, they don't seem to be here yet, but they must arrive soon!' he said quietly. 'They may even stay the night, fill their bellies and get drunk to forget the terrors of the forest. I can't show my face over there while it's still light. Given my luck, one of Capricorn's fire-raisers who's working for the Adderhead now will cross my path. But you,' he said, placing a hand on Farid's shoulder, 'you can go over there safely. If anyone asks where you're from, just say your master's sitting in the inn drinking. Count the soldiers, count the prisoners, and see how many children are among them. Understand? Meanwhile I'll take a look further along the road. I have a kind of idea.'\n\nFarid nodded, and lured Gwin over to him.\n\n'I'll go with him!' Meggie expected Dustfinger to forbid her to go with Farid, but he just shrugged his shoulders.\n\n'As you like. I can't keep you here. I just hope your mother doesn't give herself away when she recognizes you. And another thing!' He took hold of Meggie's arm as she was about to follow Farid. 'Don't take it into your head that we can do anything for your parents. Perhaps we can free the children, even a few of the adults if they run fast enough. But your father won't be able to run, and your mother will stay with him. She won't leave him on his own, any more than she would leave you behind that other time. We both remember it, don't we?'\n\nMeggie nodded and turned her face away, so that he wouldn't see her tears. But Dustfinger gently turned her round and wiped them from her cheeks. 'You really are very like your mother,' he said softly. 'She never wanted anyone to see her cry either \u2013 however good her reasons for tears.' His face looked strained as he scrutinized the two of them again 'Well, you're dirty enough,' he commented. 'Anyone would take you for a stable boy and a kitchen-maid. We'll meet behind the stables as soon as it's dark. Now, off you go.'\n\nThey didn't have long to wait.\n\nMeggie and Farid had been hanging around the stables for barely an hour when they saw the procession of prisoners come down the road \u2013 women, children, old men, hands tied behind their backs and soldiers on both sides of them. These men were not armed, no helmets hid their sullen features, but they all wore their master's snake emblem on their breasts, silver-grey cloaks, and swords at their belts. Meggie recognized their leader at once: it was Firefox. And judging by his face, he didn't seem to like travelling on foot very much.\n\n'Don't stare at them like that!' whispered Farid, as Meggie stood there rooted to the spot. He dragged her behind one of the carts standing around the yard. 'Your mother's not hurt. Did you see her?' Meggie nodded. Yes, Resa was walking between two other women, one of them pregnant. But where was Mo?\n\n'Hey!' bellowed Firefox, as his men drove the prisoners into the yard. 'Whose are those carts? We need more room.'\n\nThe soldiers pushed the carts aside, handling one of them so roughly that its load of sacks slipped off. A man hurried out of the inn \u2013 probably the cart's owner \u2013 a protest already on his lips, but when he saw the soldiers he bit it back and shouted at the grooms, who quickly righted the cart again. Traders, farmers, servants \u2013 more and more people came crowding out of the stables and the main building to see the cause of all the noise in the yard. A fat, perspiring man made his way through the turmoil to Firefox, faced him with a hostile expression, and let fly a torrent of angry words.\n\n'All right, all right!' Meggie heard Firefox growl. 'But we need space. Can't you see we have prisoners with us? Would you rather we drove them into your stables?'\n\n'Yes, yes, use one of the stables!' cried the fat man in relief, beckoning to a couple of his servants who were standing there staring at the prisoners, some of whom had fallen to their knees just where they were, their faces pale with exhaustion and fear.\n\n'Come on!' Farid whispered to Meggie, and side by side they pushed their way past the muttering farmers and traders, past the servants still clearing the burst sacks out of the yard, past the soldiers casting hopeful glances at the inn. No one seemed to be taking very much notice of the prisoners, but it was hardly necessary: none of them looked as if they still had the strength to escape. Even the children, whose legs might have been fast enough for them to run, were clinging to their mothers' skirts, empty-eyed, or staring in fear at the armed men who had brought them here. Resa was supporting the pregnant woman. Yes, her mother was uninjured; Meggie could see that much, although she avoided coming too close to her, in case Dustfinger was right to fear that Resa would give herself away if she recognized her. How desperately she was looking around! She took the arm of a soldier, whose beardless face made him look only a boy, and then\u2014\n\n'Farid!' Meggie couldn't believe it. Resa was talking. Not with her hands, but with her mouth. Her voice could hardly be heard in all this noise, but it was her voice. How could it be possible? The soldier didn't listen to her, but pushed her roughly away, and Resa turned. The Black Prince and his bear were pulling a cart into the yard. They had been harnessed to it like oxen. A chain was wound around the bear's black muzzle, another round his throat and chest. But Resa had eyes for neither the bear nor the Prince \u2013 she kept looking at the cart, and Meggie immediately realized what that meant.\n\nWithout a word, she took off. 'Meggie!' Farid called after her, but she wasn't listening. No one could stop her. The cart was a ramshackle thing. First she saw only the man with the injured leg, one of the strolling players holding a child on his lap. Then she saw Mo.\n\nShe thought her heart would never beat again. He was lying there with his eyes closed, under a dirty blanket, but all the same Meggie saw the blood. His shirt was soaked in it, the shirt he liked best to wear, although the sleeves had worn thin. Meggie forgot everything: Farid, the soldiers, Dustfinger's warning, where she was, why she was here. She just stared at her father and his still face. The world was suddenly an empty place, very empty, and her heart was a cold, dead thing.\n\n'Meggie!' Farid reached for her arm. He hauled her away with him, ignoring her resistance, and held her close when she began to sob.\n\n'He's dead, Farid! Did you see him? Mo... he's dead!' She kept stammering that terrible word. Dead. Gone. For ever.\n\nShe pushed Farid's arm away. 'I must go to him.' Bad luck clings to this book, Meggie, nothing but bad luck, even if you don't believe me. Hadn't he told her that in Elinor's library? How much every one of those words hurt now. Death had been waiting in the book. His death.\n\n'Meggie!' Farid was still holding her firmly. He shook her as if he had to wake her up. 'Meggie, listen. He's not dead! Do you think they'd be dragging him along with them if he was?'\n\nWould they? She wasn't sure of anything any more.\n\n'Come with me. Come on!' Farid pulled her away with him. He pushed his way casually through the crowd, as if none of the hurry and bustle interested him. Finally, with an indifferent expression on his face, he stopped by the stable into which the soldiers were herding the prisoners. Meggie wiped away her tears and tried to look equally indifferent, but how could she when her heart, coming back to life, felt as if someone had cut it in two?\n\n'Do you have enough for us to eat there?' she heard Firefox ask. 'We're ravenous after our journey through that accursed forest.'\n\nMeggie saw them push Resa into the dark stable with the other women, while two soldiers released the Black Prince and his bear.\n\n'Of course I have enough!' said the fat landlord indignantly. 'And you won't recognize your horses, their coats are so glossy!'\n\n'So I should hope,' replied Firefox. 'Otherwise the Adderhead will make sure you're not landlord of this hovel much longer. We ride at daybreak tomorrow. My men and the prisoners can stay in the stable, but I want a bed \u2013 and a bed to myself, too, not one I have to share with a crowd of snoring, farting strangers.'\n\n'Of course, of course!' The landlord nodded eagerly. 'But what about that monster?' He pointed anxiously at the bear. 'He'll scare the horses. Why didn't you kill him and leave him in the forest?'\n\n'Because the Adderhead wants to hang him along with his master,' replied Firefox, 'and because my men believe all the nonsense they hear about him \u2013 folk say he's a Night-Mare who likes to take the shape of a bear, so it's a bad idea to fire an arrow into his coat.'\n\n'A Night-Mare?' The landlord chuckled nervously. He obviously seemed to think the story not impossible. 'Never mind what he is, he's not going into my stable. Tie him up behind the bakehouse if you like. Then perhaps the horses won't smell him.' The bear growled in a low tone as one of the soldiers pulled him along on his chain, but as they were forced away behind the main building the Black Prince spoke to him soothingly, in a quiet voice, as if comforting a child.\n\nThe cart with Mo and the injured old man on it was still in the yard. A few servants were standing around, gossiping to each other, presumably trying to work out exactly who had been captured on the Adderhead's orders. Was the rumour already spreading that the man lying as if dead on the cart was the Bluejay? The soldier with the beardless face shooed the servants away, took the child off the cart and pushed him towards the stable too. 'What about the wounded prisoners?' he called to Firefox. 'Do we just leave those two on the cart where they are?'\n\n'And find that they're dead in the morning, or gone? What are you thinking of, you fool? One of them's the reason why we went into that damned forest, right?' Firefox turned to the landlord again. 'Is there a physician among your guests?' he asked. 'I have a prisoner who must be kept alive because the Adderhead plans a magnificent execution for him. It's no real fun with a dead man, if you see what I mean.'\n\nMust be kept alive... Farid pressed Meggie's hand and smiled triumphantly at her.\n\n'Oh yes, of course, of course!' The landlord looked curiously at the cart. 'It's a nuisance, for sure, if condemned men die before their execution. I hear that's happened twice this year already. However, I can't offer you a physician. I do have a moss-woman helping out in the kitchen, though. She's set many of my guests to rights in her time.'\n\n'Good! Send for her!'\n\nThe landlord impatiently beckoned to a boy leaning by the stable door. Firefox called two of his soldiers to him. 'Go on, get the wounded men into the stable too!' Meggie heard him say. 'Double guards outside the door, and four of you keep watch on the Bluejay tonight, understand? No wine, no mead, and anyone who falls asleep will be sorry for it!'\n\n'The Bluejay?' The landlord stared in amazement. 'You have the Bluejay on that cart?' When Firefox cast him a warning glance, he quickly put his fat fingers to his mouth. 'Not a word!' he uttered. 'No one will hear a word of it from me.'\n\n'I should hope not,' growled Firefox, and looked around as if to make sure that no one else had heard what he said.\n\nWhen the soldiers lifted Mo off the cart, Meggie instinctively took a step forward, but Farid dragged her back. 'Meggie, what's the matter with you?' he hissed. 'If you carry on like this they'll shut you up too. Do you think that will help anyone?'\n\nMeggie shook her head. 'He really is still alive, Farid, isn't he?' she whispered. She was almost afraid to believe it.\n\n'Yes, of course. I told you so. Don't look so sad. Everything will turn out all right, you wait and see!' Farid caressed her forehead and kissed the tears from her eyelashes.\n\n'Hey, you two lovebirds, get away from the horses!'\n\nThe Piper was standing before them. Meggie bent her head, although she was sure he wouldn't recognize her. She had been just a girl in a dirty dress when he almost rode her down in Ombra market place. Today he was once again more splendidly clothed than any of the strolling players Meggie had yet seen. His silken garments shimmered like a peacock's tail, and the rings on his fingers were genuine silver, like the nose on his face. Obviously the Adderhead paid well for songs that pleased him.\n\nThe Piper looked hard at them again, and then strolled over to Firefox. 'Well, so you're back from the forest!' he called from some way off. 'And with rich booty, so I've heard. Looks as if one of your spies wasn't lying for a change. Good news for the Adderhead at last.'\n\nFirefox replied, but Meggie wasn't listening. The snotty-nosed boy came back with the moss-woman, a short little creature who hardly came up to his shoulder. Her skin was grey as beech-bark, her face as wrinkled as a shrivelled apple. Moss-women, healers... before Farid realized what she meant to do, Meggie had slipped away from him. The moss-woman would know how Mo really was. She made her way as close as she could to the little woman, until only the boy stood between them. The moss-woman's smock was stained with meat-juices from the spit, and her feet were bare, but she inspected the men standing around her with fearless eyes.\n\n'Sure as I live, a genuine moss-woman,' growled Firefox, while his men retreated from the tiny woman as if she were as dangerous as the Black Prince's bear. 'I thought they never came out of the forest. But yes, apparently they know something about healing. Don't folk say that old witch Nettle's mother was a moss-woman?'\n\n'Yes, but her father was useless.' The little woman scrutinized Firefox as intently as if she were trying to find out what kind of blood flowed in his veins. 'You drink too much,' she observed. 'Just look at your face. Carry on like this and your liver will soon burst like an over-ripe pumpkin.'\n\nA ripple of laughter ran through the onlookers, but a glance from Firefox silenced them. 'Listen, you're not here to give me advice, she-gnome!' he snapped at the moss-woman. 'I want you to look at one of my prisoners. He has to reach the Adderhead's castle alive.'\n\n'Yes, I know all that,' replied the moss-woman, still examining his face with disapproval. 'So that your master can kill him by all the rules of the executioner's trade. Fetch me water. Hot water and clean towels. And I want someone to help me.'\n\nFirefox nodded to the boy. 'If you want a helper, pick one for yourself,' he growled, and surreptitiously felt his stomach, where he presumably supposed his liver was located.\n\n'One of your men? No, thank you.' The moss-woman wrinkled up her little nose scornfully, and looked around until her eye fell on Meggie. 'That one will do,' said the little creature. 'She doesn't look too stupid.'\n\nAnd before Meggie knew it, one of the soldiers took her roughly by the shoulder. The last thing she saw before she stumbled into the stable after the moss-woman was the expression of alarm on Farid's face."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Familiar Face",
                "text": "\u2002Believe me. Sometimes when life looks to be at its grimmest, there's a light hidden at the heart of things.\n\n\u2014Clive Barker, Abarat\n\nMo was conscious as the moss-woman knelt down beside him. He sat leaning back against the damp wall, his eyes searching all the prisoners crouching in the dimly lit stable, looking for Resa's face. He didn't see Meggie until the little woman impatiently beckoned her over. Of course he realized at once that even a smile would have given her away, but it was so hard for him not to take her in his arms, so hard to hide the joy and fear that struggled for his heart at the sight of her.\n\n'What are you standing around for?' the old woman snapped at Meggie. 'Come here, you stupid thing!' Mo could have shaken her, but Meggie just knelt down quickly beside her and took the blood-stained bandages that the old woman was none too gently cutting away from his chest. Don't stare at her, thought Mo, forcing his eyes to look anywhere else: at the old woman's hands, at the other prisoners, not at his daughter. Had Resa seen her too? She's all right, he thought. Yes, definitely. She wasn't any thinner than usual, and she didn't seem to be sick or injured either. If only he could at least have exchanged a word with her!\n\n'By fairy-spit, what's the matter with you?' asked the little woman roughly as Meggie almost spilled the water she was handing her. 'I might just as well have taken one of the soldiers.' She began feeling Mo's injuries with her bark-like fingers. It hurt, but he clenched his teeth so that Meggie wouldn't notice.\n\n'Are you always so hard on her?' he asked the old woman.\n\nThe little moss-woman muttered something incomprehensible without looking at him, but Meggie ventured a quick glance, and he smiled at her, hoping she wouldn't notice the concern in his eyes, his alarm at seeing her again in this of all places, among all the soldiers. Be careful, Meggie, he tried to tell her with his eyes. How her lips were quivering, probably with all the words that she couldn't say aloud, any more than he could! But it was so good to see her. Even in this place. In all those days and nights of fever, he had so often felt sure that he would never see her face again!\n\n'Hurry up, can't you?' Suddenly Firefox was standing right behind Meggie, and at the sound of his voice she quickly bowed her head and held the bowl of water out to the little old woman again.\n\n'This is a nasty wound!' remarked the moss-woman. 'I'm surprised you're still alive.'\n\n'Yes, strange, isn't it?' Mo was as much aware of Meggie's glance as if it were the pressure of her hand. 'Perhaps the fairies whispered a few words of healing in my ear.'\n\n'Words of healing?' The moss-woman wrinkled up her nose. 'What kind of words would those be? Fairies' gossip is as stupid and useless as fairies themselves.'\n\n'Well, then someone else must have whispered them to me.'\n\nMo saw how pale Meggie turned as she helped the moss-woman to re-bandage his wound, the wound that hadn't killed him. It's nothing, Meggie, he wanted to say, I'm fine \u2013 but all he could do was look at her again, only in passing, as if her face meant no more to him than any other.\n\n'Believe it or not,' he told the old woman, 'I did hear the words. Beautiful words. At first I thought it was my wife's voice, but then I realized it was my daughter's. I heard her voice as clearly as if she were sitting here beside me.'\n\n'Yes, yes, folk hear all kinds of things in a fever!' replied the moss-woman brusquely. 'I've heard of those who swore the dead spoke to them. The dead, angels, demons... a fever will summon up whole troops of them.' She turned to Firefox. 'I have an ointment that will help him,' she said, 'and I'll brew up something for him to drink. I can't do any more.' When she turned her back on them, Meggie quickly put her hand on Mo's fingers. No one noticed, nor did they notice the gentle pressure he gave her hand in return. He smiled at her again, and only when the moss-woman turned again did he quickly look aside. 'You ought to look at his leg too!' he said, nodded towards the strolling player lying asleep beside him on the straw, exhausted.\n\n'No, she oughtn't!' Firefox interrupted. 'It's all one to me whether he lives or dies. You're different.'\n\n'Oh, I see! You still think I'm that robber.' Mo leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. 'I suppose it's no good if I tell you yet again that I'm not?'\n\nBy way of answer, Firefox just cast him a contemptuous glance. 'Tell the Adderhead. Perhaps he'll believe you,' he said. Then he pulled Meggie roughly to her feet. 'Go on, off with you both! That'll do!' he shouted at her and the moss-woman. His men pushed them both towards the stable door. Meggie tried to look round again, her eyes searching for her mother, sitting somewhere among the other prisoners, and looking towards Mo yet again, but Firefox grabbed her arm and forced her out of the door \u2013 leaving Mo wishing he had words at his command, words like those that had killed Capricorn. His tongue longed to taste them, longed to send them after Firefox and see him fall in the dust like his former master. But there was no one here to write the words for him. Only Fenoglio's story was everywhere, surrounding them with horror and darkness \u2013 and presumably his own death was already planned for one of the next chapters."
            },
            {
                "title": "Paper and Fire",
                "text": "\u2002'Good, well, if that's decided,' came a weary voice from the opposite end of the dank hold. It was the gnokgoblin, still manacled and quite forgotten. 'Then will someone please release me.'\n\n\u2014Paul Stewart, Midnight Over Sanctaphrax\n\nDustfinger saw the windows of the inn glowing like dirty yellow eyes as he stole across the road. Jink scurried ahead of him, little more than a shadow in the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and it was so dark in the yard and around the stables that even his own scarred face would just look like a pale patch.\n\nThere were guards outside the stable where the prisoners had been shut up, four guards, but they didn't notice him. They were staring into the night, their faces bored, hands on their sword hilts, looking longingly again and again at the lighted windows opposite. Loud, drunken voices came from the inn \u2013 and then the sound of a lute, its strings well plucked, followed by singing in a curiously strained voice. Ah, so the Piper was back from Ombra too, and singing one of his songs, drunk with blood and the intoxication of killing. The presence of the man with the silver nose was yet another reason why he had to stay out of sight. Meggie and Farid were waiting behind the stables, as agreed, but they were arguing in such loud voices that Dustfinger came up behind the boy and put his hand over his mouth.\n\n'What do you think you're doing?' he said angrily, his voice low. 'Do you want them to put you two in with the others?'\n\nMeggie bowed her head. She had tears in her eyes again.\n\n'She wants to go into the stable!' Farid whispered. 'She thinks they'll all be asleep! As if\u2014'\n\nDustfinger closed the boy's mouth with his hand again. Voices rang out over the yard. Obviously someone had brought the guards outside the stable something to eat. 'Where's the Black Prince?' he whispered, when all was still again.\n\n'Between the bakehouse and the main building. Tell her she can't go back into that stable! There are at least fifteen soldiers in there.'\n\n'How many guarding the Prince?'\n\n'Three.'\n\nThree. Dustfinger glanced up at the sky. No moon. It was hidden behind the clouds, and the darkness was black as a cloak.\n\n'Are you going to free him? Three aren't many!' Farid sounded excited. Not a trace of fear in his voice. That fearlessness would be the death of him yet. 'We can cut their throats before they make a sound. It'll be easy.' He often said such things. Dustfinger kept wondering if it was just talk, or if he'd actually done something of the kind in the past.\n\n'I can tell you're ready for anything!' he said softly. 'But you know very well I'm no good at cutting throats. How many prisoners are there?'\n\n'Eleven women, three children, nine men not counting Silvertongue.'\n\n'How is he?' Dustfinger looked at Meggie. 'Have you seen him? Can he walk?'\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n'What about your mother?' She cast him a quick glance. She didn't like it when he mentioned Resa. 'Come on, is she all right?'\n\n'I think so.' She put one hand to the stable wall, as if she could feel her parents behind it. 'But I didn't get a chance to talk to her. Please!' How pleadingly she was looking at him! 'I'm sure they're all asleep. I'll be very careful!'\n\nFarid cast a despairing glance up at the stars, as if such stupidity would make them break their eternal silence.\n\n'The guards won't sleep,' said Dustfinger. 'So think up a good lie for them. Do you have anything to write with?'\n\nMeggie looked at him incredulously, and for a moment Dustfinger saw her mother's eyes. Then she quickly put her hand into the bag that she carried with her. 'I have some paper with me,' she whispered, hastily tearing a page out of her little marbled notebook.\n\nLike mother, like daughter. Never without the means of writing.\n\n'You're letting her do it?' Farid looked at him in astonishment.\n\n'Yes.'\n\nMeggie looked at him expectantly.\n\n'Write that there'll be a fallen tree lying across the road they take tomorrow. When it catches fire, everyone strong and young enough must run into the forest to the left. To the left: that's important! Write that we'll be waiting there to hide them. Did you get that down?'\n\nMeggie nodded. Her pencil hurried over the paper. He could only hope that Resa would be able to decipher the tiny handwriting in the darkness of the stable, because he wouldn't be there to make fire for her.\n\n'Have you thought what you're going to tell the guards?' he asked.\n\nMeggie nodded. For a moment she looked almost like the little girl she had still been not much more than a year ago, and Dustfinger wondered whether it was a mistake, after all, to let her go \u2013 but before he could change his mind she was off. She raced over the yard and disappeared into the inn. When she came back, she was carrying a jug.\n\n'Please, the moss-woman sent me!' they heard her clear voice telling the guards. 'I'm to take the children milk.'\n\n'Look at that. Clever as a jackal!' whispered Farid as the guards moved aside. 'And brave as a lioness.' There was so much admiration in his voice that Dustfinger couldn't help smiling. The boy was definitely in love.\n\n'Yes, she's probably cleverer than both of us put together,' he whispered back. 'And certainly braver, at least as far as I'm concerned.'\n\nFarid just nodded. He was staring at the open stable door \u2013 and smiled with relief when Meggie came out again.\n\n'See that?' she whispered to him when she was back beside Farid. 'It was perfectly easy.'\n\n'Good!' said Dustfinger, beckoning Farid over to his side.\n\n'Then let's cross our fingers and hope that what we have to do now is as easy. What about it, Farid? Do you feel like playing with fire?'\n\nThe boy carried out his task with as cool a head as Meggie. Apparently lost to the world, but in a spot where the men guarding the Prince had a clear view of him, he began making fire dance as naturally as if he were standing in some peaceful market place, not in front of an inn which sheltered Firefox and the Piper. The guards nudged each other, laughed, glad of something to pass the time this sleepless night. Seems that I'm the only one here whose heart is beating faster, thought Dustfinger as he stole past heaps of stinking offal and rotting vegetables. It looked as if the fat landlord's cooks simply threw everything they couldn't serve to the guests out here behind the house. A few rats scurried off when they heard Dustfinger's footsteps, and the hungry eyes of a brownie glowed among the bushes. They had tied the Prince up next to a mountain of carcasses, and his bear just far enough away to keep him from reaching the bones. He squatted there, snorting unhappily through his muzzle, which was bound, now and then uttering a miserably muted howl.\n\nThe guards had stuck a torch in the ground not far away, but the flame went out at once when the wind carried Dustfinger's quiet voice to it. Nothing was left but a faint glow \u2013 and the Black Prince raised his head. He knew at once who must be slinking around in the dark when the fire so suddenly died down. A few more quick and silent steps, and Dustfinger took cover behind the bear's furry back.\n\n'That boy's really good!' whispered the Prince, without turning round. A sharp knife would soon deal with the ropes binding him.\n\n'Yes, very good. And afraid of nothing, unlike me.' Dustfinger examined the padlocks on the bear's chains. They were rusty, but not particularly difficult to open. 'What do you say to a little walk in the forest? But the bear must be quiet, quiet as an owl. Can he do it?' He ducked when one of the guards turned, but the man had obviously just heard the maid who was coming out of the kitchen to tip a bucket of refuse on to the garbage heaps behind the building. She disappeared again, with a curious look at the bound Prince \u2013 and took with her the noise that had come spilling out of the doorway.\n\n'What about the others?'\n\n'Four guards outside the stable, another four off told by Firefox to guard Silvertongue, and there must be ten more guarding the other prisoners. It's unlikely that we can distract the attention of all of them, certainly not for long enough to get the injured and crippled to safety.'\n\n'Silvertongue?'\n\n'Yes, the man they were looking for in your camp. What do you call him?' A padlock sprang open. The bear growled; perhaps Jink was making him uneasy. The second chain had better stay where it was for now, or he'd probably eat the marten. Dustfinger set about cutting the ropes tying up the Black Prince. He had to hurry, for they must be gone before Farid's arms tired. The second padlock clicked. Another quick glance at the boy... by the fire of the elves! thought Dustfinger. He throws the torches almost as high as I do now! But just as the Prince was throwing off his ropes, a fat man marched up to Farid with a maid and a soldier behind him. He shouted at the boy and pointed indignantly to the flames. Farid just smiled, skipped back while Gwin leaped around his legs, and went on juggling the burning torches. Oh yes, he was as clever as Meggie! Dustfinger signed to the Prince to go with him. The bear groped his way along after them, following his master's low voice. A pity he really was only a bear and not a Night-Mare. There'd have been no need to tell one of those to keep quiet. But at least he was black, as black as his master, and the night swallowed them up as if they were a part of it.\n\n'We'll meet down on the road by the fallen tree.' The Prince nodded, and disappeared into the darkness. As for Dustfinger, he set off in search of the boy and Resa's daughter.\n\nThe soldiers were all shouting in confusion in the yard now it was clear that the Black Prince had escaped; even the Piper had come out of the inn. But neither Farid nor the girl could be seen. The soldiers began searching the outskirts of the forest and the slope behind the house, carrying torches. Dustfinger whispered words into the night until the fire felt sleepy, and torch after torch was extinguished as if the slight breeze had blown them out. The men stopped in the middle of the road, feeling uneasy, and looked around with eyes full of fear \u2013 fear of the dark, fear of the bear, fear of everything else that roamed the woods by night.\n\nNone of them dared go as far as the place where the fallen tree was blocking the road. The forest and the hills were as quiet as if no human foot had ever trodden there. Gwin was perched on the tree-trunk, and Farid and Meggie were waiting on the other side under the trees. The boy had a bleeding lip, and the girl had laid her head wearily against his shoulder. Embarrassed, she straightened up as Dustfinger emerged in front of them.\n\n'Is he free?' asked Farid.\n\nDustfinger put a hand under his chin and looked at the split lip. 'Yes. Whatever happens tomorrow, the Prince and his bear will lend us a hand. How did you do that?' The two martens scurried past him and disappeared into the forest side by side.\n\n'Oh, it's nothing. One of the soldiers tried to grab me, but I got away. Well, tell me, was I good?' As if he didn't know the answer.\n\n'So good that I'm beginning to worry. If you carry on like this I'll soon be out of a job.'\n\nFarid smiled. How sad Meggie looked, though. She seemed as lost as the child they had found in the looted camp. It wasn't difficult to imagine how she was feeling, even if, like Dustfinger himself, you had never known your parents. Acrobats, some of the women among the strolling players, a travelling physician... he had had many substitutes for them. Any of the Motley Folk who looked after abandoned children were like their parents. Well, say something to her, Dustfinger, anything, he thought. You often used to cheer her mother up. Though usually it was just for a short time... stolen time.\n\n'Listen.' He knelt down in front of Meggie and looked at her. 'If we really manage to free some of them tomorrow, the Black Prince will take them to safety \u2013 but the three of us will follow the others.'\n\nShe looked at him as distrustfully as if he were a worn tightrope that she must walk high in the air.\n\n'Why?' she asked quietly. When she spoke in a low tone you didn't guess at the power that her voice could exert. 'Why do you want to help them?' She didn't have to spell it out: last time you didn't. Back in Capricorn's village. What could he say? That it was easier to stand by and watch in a strange world than in your own?\n\n'Let's say I may have something to make up for,' he said at last. He knew he didn't have to explain what he meant. They both remembered that night, in another tale, when he had betrayed her to Capricorn. And there's something else too, he almost added, I think your mother has been a captive long enough. But he didn't say that. He knew that Meggie wouldn't have liked it.\n\nA good hour later the Black Prince joined them, uninjured and with his bear."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Burning Tree",
                "text": "\u2003Do you see the tongues of fire\n\n\u2003Darting, flickering higher and higher?\n\n\u2003Do you see the flames all dancing,\n\n\u2003Flaring, off the dry wood glancing?\n\n\u2014James Kr\u00fcss, Fire\n\nResa's feet were bleeding. The road was stony, and wet with the morning dew. They all had their hands bound again, except the children. She had been terrified that the soldiers wouldn't let them walk with the other prisoners, but would load them on to the cart instead. 'Cry if they try to make you get up there!' she had whispered to the little ones. 'Cry and scream until they let you walk with us.' But luckily that hadn't been necessary. How scared the three children looked \u2013 two girls and a boy, not counting the baby still inside Mina's belly.\n\nThe elder girl, who was just six, was walking between Resa and Mina. Whenever Resa glanced at her she wondered what Meggie had looked like at that age. Mo had shown her photographs, wonderful photographs taken in all the years she herself had missed, but those weren't her own memories but his. And Meggie's.\n\nBrave Meggie. Resa's heart still contracted when she remembered how her daughter had passed her the sheet of paper in the stable. Where was she now? Was she watching them from somewhere in the forest?\n\nOnly when the hue and cry over the Black Prince had broken out had she been able to read the note, by the light of the torch left burning overnight in the stable. None of the others could read, so she had been able to pass on Dustfinger's news to the women sitting near her only in whispers. After that, there had been no chance to tell the men too, but the ones who could walk would run anyway. Resa was to look after the children, and they knew what they were to do.\n\nThe other girl and the boy were walking between their mother and the woman with claw-like fingers who had wanted to take Mo back to Capricorn's fortress. Resa had said nothing to her about Dustfinger's news, and every glance the woman cast her said: I was right, too! But Mina smiled when she looked at Resa, Mina with her round belly, who could have thought she had good reason to hate her for what had happened. Perhaps the flowers she gave Resa in the cave really had brought luck. Mo was better, much better \u2013 after she had thought for so many endless hours that every breath he drew would be his last. Now that the Prince had escaped, a horse was pulling the cart with Mo on it. The bear had set the Prince free, they whispered, which finally proved that he was indeed a Night-Mare. His ghostly glance had made the chains disappear, and he had turned himself into a human being and cut his master's bonds. Resa wondered whether that human being had a scarred face.\n\nWhen all the noise had begun in the night she had been so scared for Dustfinger, Meggie and the boy, but next morning the fury on the soldiers' faces told her that they had got away.\n\nBut where was the fallen tree Meggie had mentioned in her note?\n\nThe little girl beside her was clinging to her dress. Resa smiled at the child \u2013 and sensed the Piper looking down at her from his horse. She quickly turned her head away. Luckily neither he nor Firefox had recognized her. She had often enough listened to the Piper's bloodthirsty songs in Capricorn's fortress \u2013 the minstrel still had a human nose on his face in those days \u2013 and she had polished Firefox's boots, but fortunately he had not been one of those who chased her and the other maids.\n\nUp above the prisoners' heads the soldiers were describing, at the tops of their voices, what their master would do to the Black Prince once he'd caught him and his enchanted bear again. Now that they were on horseback once more their tempers had clearly improved. From time to time the Piper turned in his saddle and contributed some particularly cruel idea. Resa would have liked to put her hands over the ears of the little girl beside her. The child's mother was not among the prisoners, but was wandering the country with some of the other strolling players, happy in the belief that her daughter was safe in the Secret Camp.\n\nThe girl would run. So would the other children with their mother. The claw-fingered woman would probably try to escape too, and Sootbird and most of the other men. The minstrel with the injured leg who was on the cart with Mo would stay, like Twofingers, because he was afraid of the soldiers' crossbows, and so would the old stilt-walker, who no longer trusted his legs. Benedicta, who could hardly see where she was going, would stay behind too, and Mina, whose child would soon be coming into the world... and Mo.\n\nThe road went ever more steeply downhill. Overhead, the branches of the trees were intertwined. It was a still, windless morning, cloudy and damp, but Dustfinger's fires burned even in rain. Resa peered past the horses. How close together the trees stood, nothing but darkness showing between them even in broad daylight. The plan was for them to run to the left. Did Meggie expect her to try and escape too? How often she had asked herself that \u2013 and she always came to the same conclusion: no, Meggie knows that I won't leave her father alone. She loves him just as much.\n\nResa's pace slowed. There it was, the fallen tree, its trunk green with moss. The little girl looked up at her, wide-eyed. They had feared that one of the children would talk, but they had been silent as the grave all morning.\n\nFirefox swore when he saw the tree. He reined in his horse, and told the first four horsemen to dismount and clear the obstacle out of the way. They obeyed, looking sullen, handed their horses' reins to other men and strode towards the tree-trunk. Resa dared not look at the roadside, for fear that any glance of hers might give Dustfinger or Meggie away. She thought she heard fingers snapping, and then a whisper, barely audible. Not human words, but fire-words. Dustfinger had once spoken them for her in the other world, where they didn't work, where fire was deaf and dumb. 'They sound much better when I say them there,' he had said, and he told her about the fire-honey he took from the elves. She remembered the sound very well, all the same \u2013 as if flames were biting their way through black coal, as if they were hungrily devouring white paper. No one else heard the whisper through the rustle of the leaves, the steady rain, the twittering of birds and the chirping of crickets.\n\nThe fire licked up from beneath the bark of the tree like a nest full of snakes. The men didn't notice. Only when the first flame shot up, hot and greedy, rising so high that it almost brought down the leaves of the trees, did they stumble back in alarm and disbelief. The riderless horses reared and tried to break free as the fire hissed and danced.\n\n'Run!' whispered Resa, and the little girl ran for it, fleet-footed as a fawn. Children, women, men, they all ran towards the trees \u2013 Sootbird, the claw-fingered woman \u2013 past the shying horses they ran, and into the shelter of the dark forest. Two soldiers shot arrows after them, but their own horses were rearing in fear of the fire, and the arrows buried themselves in the bark of trees instead of in human flesh. Resa saw fugitive after fugitive disappear among the trees while the soldiers shouted at each other, and it hurt her to stay standing there; it hurt badly.\n\nThe tree went on burning, its bark turned black... run, thought Resa, run, all of you! But she herself still stood there although her feet longed to run too, run away, run to her daughter waiting somewhere in the trees. Yet she stayed there. She stood still. There was just one thing she must not think of: that they would shut her up again. For if she did, she would run in spite of Mo. She'd run and run and never stop again. She had been a prisoner too long, she had lived on nothing but memories too long, memories of Mo, memories of Meggie... she had fed on them all those years when she served first Mortola, then Capricorn.\n\n'Don't get any silly ideas, Bluejay!' she heard one of the soldiers call back. 'Or I'll put an arrow through you!'\n\n'What kind of ideas did you have in mind?' replied Mo. 'Do I look stupid enough to run away from your crossbow?' She could almost have laughed. He'd always been able to make her laugh so easily.\n\n'What are you waiting for? Fetch them back!' roared the Piper. His silver nose had slipped out of place, and his horse was still shying hard as he pulled on the reins. Some of the men obeyed, stumbling half-heartedly into the forest, but retreating again as a shadow stirred in the undergrowth, growling.\n\n'The Night-Mare!' one of them shouted, and next moment they were all back in the middle of the road, pale-faced and with trembling hands, as if the swords they held could do nothing to defend them from the horror lurking in the trees.\n\n'Night-Mare? This is broad daylight, you fools!' Firefox yelled at them. 'That's a bear, nothing but a bear!'\n\nHesitantly, they moved towards the forest again, keeping close together like a brood of chicks hiding behind their mother. Resa heard them swearing as they used their swords to cut a path through the twining wild vines and brambles, while their horses stood in the road snorting and trembling. Firefox and the Piper put their heads together, while the soldiers still standing in the road to guard the remaining prisoners stared at the forest wide-eyed, as if the Night-Mare that looked so deceptively like a bear would leap out at any moment and swallow them up, skin and hair and all, in the usual manner of ghosts.\n\nResa saw Mo glance at her, saw the relief in his face when he saw her \u2013 and his disappointment that she was still there too. He was still pale, but no longer as pale as if the hand of Death had touched his face. She took a step towards the cart, wanting to go to him, take his hand, see if it was still hot with the fever, but one of the soldiers roughly pushed her back.\n\nThe tree was still burning. The flames crackled as if they were singing a mocking song about the Adderhead, and when the men who had gone into the forest came back, they brought not a single one of the escaped prisoners with them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Poor Meggie",
                "text": "\u2002'Hello,' said a soft, musical voice, and Leonardo looked up. In front of him stood the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen, a girl who might have frightened him but for the sad expression in her blue eyes. He knew about sadness.\n\n\u2014Eva Ibbotson, The Mystery of the Seventh Witch\n\nMeggie did not say a word. However hard Farid tried to cheer her up she just sat there among the trees, her arms wrapped around her legs, perfectly silent. Yes, they had set many of the captives free, but her parents were not among them.\n\nNot one of those who managed to escape had been injured. One of the children had twisted his ankle, that was all, and he was small enough for the grown-ups to carry him. The forest had swallowed them up so quickly that after only a few steps the Adderhead's men had found themselves chasing shadows. Dustfinger hid the children inside a hollow tree, the women crawled underneath a thicket of wild vine and nettles, while the Prince's bear kept the soldiers at a distance. The men had climbed trees and perched high up among the leaves; Dustfinger and the Prince were the last to hide, after leading the soldiers astray in different directions.\n\nThe Black Prince advised the freed captives to go back to Ombra and, for the time being, to join the strolling players still encamped there. He himself had other plans. Before he left he spoke to Meggie, and she did not look quite so hopeless after that.\n\n'He said he won't let anyone hang my father,' she told Farid. 'He says he knows that Mo is not the Bluejay, and he and his men will make the Adderhead realize that he's caught the wrong man.' And she looked so hopeful as she said this that Farid just nodded and murmured, 'That's great!' \u2013 although he could think only that the Adderhead would execute Silvertongue all the same.\n\n'What about the informer the Piper mentioned? Will the Prince look for him?' he asked Dustfinger, as they set out again.\n\n'He won't have to look for long,' Dustfinger said. 'He just has to wait until one of the strolling players suddenly has his pockets full of silver.'\n\nSilver. Farid had to admit that he was curious to see the silver towers of the Castle of Night. Even the battlements were said to be lined with silver. But they would not choose the same route as Firefox. 'We know where they're going,' said Dustfinger, 'and there are shorter and safer ways to the Castle of Night than the road.'\n\n'What about the Spelt-Mill?' asked Meggie. 'The mill in the forest that you mentioned? Aren't we going there first?'\n\n'Not necessarily. Why?'\n\nMeggie didn't answer at once. Obviously she guessed that the reply would not please Dustfinger. 'I gave Cloud-Dancer a letter for Fenoglio,' she said at last, reluctantly. 'I asked him to write something to save my parents, and to send it to the mill.'\n\n'A letter?' Dustfinger's voice was so cutting that Farid instinctively put his arm round Meggie's shoulders. 'Oh, wonderful! And suppose the wrong eyes read it?'\n\nFarid ducked his head, but Meggie did not. Instead, she returned Dustfinger's glance. 'Nobody but Fenoglio can help them now,' she said. 'You know that. You know it perfectly well.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Knock on the Door",
                "text": "\u2002Lancelot considered his cup.\n\n\u2002'He is inhuman,' he said at last. 'But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?'\n\n\u2014T.H. White, The Ill-Made Knight\n\nThe horseman Fenoglio had sent after Meggie had been gone for days now. 'You must ride like the wind,' he had told the man, saying that the life or death of a young and, of course, beautiful girl was at stake. (After all, he wanted to be sure that the man would really do his best.) 'But I'm afraid you won't be able to persuade her to come back with you. She's very obstinate,' he had added, 'so decide on a new meeting-place with her \u2013 a safe one this time \u2013 and tell her you'll be back as soon as possible with a letter from me. Can you remember that?'\n\nThe soldier, a fresh-faced youth, had repeated his instructions without any trouble and galloped away, saying he would be back in three days' time at the latest. Three days. If the lad kept his word, he'd soon be back \u2013 but Fenoglio would have no letter for him to take to Meggie. For the words that were to put the whole story right again \u2013 save the good, punish the bad \u2013 simply would not come.\n\nFenoglio sat day and night in the room that Cosimo had given him, staring at the sheets of parchment that Minerva had brought him, in the company of the terrified Rosenquartz. But there seemed to be a jinx on it: whatever he began to write seeped out of his head like ink running on damp paper. Where were the words he wanted? Why did they stay as dead as dry leaves? He argued with Rosenquartz, told him to send for wine, roast meat, sweetmeats, different ink, a new pen \u2013 while the smiths were hammering and forging metal out in the castle courtyards, the castle gates were reinforced, the pans for pitch were cleaned and spears sharpened. Preparing for war was a noisy business. Particularly when you were in a hurry.\n\nAnd Cosimo was in a great hurry. The words for him had almost written themselves: words full of righteous anger. Cosimo's criers had already gone out proclaiming them in every market place and every village. Ever since then volunteers had been flocking to Ombra, soldiers recruited for the fight against the Adderhead. But where were the words with which Cosimo's war would be won and Meggie's father saved from the gallows at the same time?\n\nHow he racked his old brains! But nothing occurred to him. The days went by, and despair entered Fenoglio's heart. Suppose the Adderhead had hanged Mortimer long ago? Would Meggie still read what he had written then? If her father was dead, wouldn't what happened to Cosimo and this world itself be a matter of indifference to her? 'Nonsense, Fenoglio,' he muttered, as he crossed out sentence after sentence after hours of work. 'And I'll tell you what: if you can't think of any words they'll have to do without them for once. Cosimo will just have to rescue Mortimer!'\n\nOh yes? Suppose they storm the Adderhead's castle, and everyone in the dungeons dies as the building burns? a voice inside him whispered. Or suppose Cosimo's troops are dashed to pieces on the steep and towering walls of the Castle of Night?\n\nFenoglio put his pen down and buried his face in his hands. It was dark again outside, and his head was as empty as the parchment in front of him. Cosimo had sent Fenoglio an invitation, brought by Tullio, to dine at his table \u2013 but he had no appetite, although he liked to watch Cosimo listening with shining eyes to the songs he had written about him. Her Ugliness claimed that their words bored her husband, but this version of Cosimo loved what Fenoglio wrote for him: wonderful fairy-tales about his heroic deeds in the past, the time he had spent with the White Women, and the battle at Capricorn's fortress.\n\nYes, he was in high favour with the handsome Prince, just as he himself had written \u2013 while Her Ugliness was more and more often refused admittance to her husband's presence. So Violante spent even more time in the library than she had before Cosimo's return. Since her father-in-law's death, she no longer had to steal into it secretly or bribe Balbulus with her jewels, for Cosimo didn't mind whether or not she read books. All that interested him was whether she was writing letters to her father, or trying to make contact with the Adderhead in some other way. As if she ever had!\n\nFenoglio felt sorry for Violante, lonely as she was, but he consoled himself by remembering that she had always been solitary by nature. Even her son hadn't changed that. And yet \u2013 she had probably never before wanted any human being's company as much as she wanted Cosimo's. The mark on her face had faded, but something else burned there now \u2013 love, just as pointless as the birthmark, for Cosimo did not return her love. On the contrary, he was having his wife watched. For some time Violante had been followed by a sturdy, bald-headed man who used to train the Laughing Prince's hounds. Now he shadowed Her Ugliness as if he had turned himself into a dog, a sniffer dog trying to pick up the scent of all her thoughts. Apparently Violante asked Balbulus to write letters to Cosimo, pleading letters assuring him of her loyalty and devotion, but people said he didn't read them. One of his courtiers even claimed that Cosimo had forgotten how to read.\n\nFenoglio took his hands away from his face and looked enviously at the sleeping Rosenquartz, lying beside the inkwell and snoring peacefully. He was just picking up his pen again when there was a knock at the door.\n\nWho could it be so late at night? Cosimo usually went out riding at this hour.\n\nIt was his wife standing at the door. Violante was wearing one of the black dresses she had put away when Cosimo returned. Her eyes were reddened, as if sore with weeping, but perhaps she was just using the beryl too often.\n\n'Cosimo has taken Brianna with him again!' she said in a broken voice. 'She's allowed to ride with him, eat with him, she even spends the nights with him. She tells him stories now instead of me, she reads to him, sings for him, dances for him the way she once did for me. And I'm left alone.'\n\nFenoglio rose from his chair. 'Come in!' he said. 'Where's your shadow?'\n\n'I bought a litter of puppies and told him to train them, as a surprise for Cosimo. Since then he disappears on occasion.'\n\nShe was clever, oh yes, in fact very clever. Had he known that? No, he hardly even remembered making her up.\n\n'Sit down!' He gave her his own chair \u2013 there was no other \u2013 and sat on the chest under the window where he kept his clothes. Not his old, moth-eaten garments, but the new ones that Cosimo had given him, magnificent clothes made for a court poet.\n\n'Can't you talk to her?' Violante passed nervous hands over her black dress. 'Brianna loves your songs, she might listen to you! I need her. I have no one else in this castle except for Balbulus, and all he wants is for me to give him gold to buy more pigments.'\n\n'What about your son?'\n\n'He doesn't like me.'\n\nFenoglio did not reply, for she was right. Jacopo didn't like anyone except his sinister grandfather, and no one liked Jacopo either. He wasn't easy to like.\n\nNight came in from outside, and the hammering of the smiths. 'Cosimo is planning to reinforce the city walls,' Violante went on. 'He's going to fell every tree from here to the river. They say Nettle cursed him for it. They say she said she'd go to the White Women and tell them to fetch him back again.'\n\n'Don't worry. The White Women don't do as Nettle says.'\n\n'Are you sure?' She rubbed her sore eyes. 'Brianna is supposed to read to me! He has no right to take her away. I want you to write to her mother. Cosimo has all my letters read, but you can ask her to come. He trusts you. Write and tell Brianna's mother that Jacopo wants to play with her son, and say she's to bring him to the castle about midday. I know she used to be a minstrel woman, but I'm told she grows herbs now; all the physicians in the city go to her. I have some very rare plants in my garden. Write and tell her she can take anything from the garden that she likes: seeds, root runners, cuttings, anything at all if only she will come.'\n\nRoxane. She wanted Roxane to come here.\n\n'Why do you want to talk to her mother and not Brianna herself? She's not a little girl any more.'\n\n'I tried! She won't listen. She just looks at me in silence, murmurs excuses \u2013 and goes back to him. No, I have to speak to her mother.'\n\nFenoglio said nothing. From all he knew of Roxane, he wasn't sure that she would come. After all, he himself had given her a proud nature and a dislike of royal blood. On the other hand \u2013 hadn't he promised Meggie to keep an eye on Dustfinger's daughter? If he couldn't keep any other promise, because his words had failed him so pitifully, perhaps he should at least try with this one... Heavens, he thought. I wouldn't like to be anywhere near Dustfinger when he hears that his daughter is spending her nights with Cosimo!\n\n'Very well, I'll send Roxane a messenger,' he said. 'But don't expect too much. I've heard that she isn't particularly happy to have her daughter living at court.'\n\n'I know!' Violante rose, and glanced at the paper waiting on his desk. 'Are you writing a new story? Is it about the Bluejay? You must show it to me first!' For a moment she was very much the Adderhead's daughter.\n\n'Of course, of course,' Fenoglio hastily assured her. 'You'll get it before even the strolling players. And I'll write it the way you like a story best: dark, hopeless, sinister...' Cruel too, he added silently. For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn't want to be told tales of good fortune and beauty; she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.\n\nShe was still gazing at him, with the same arrogant look that her father turned on the world. Fenoglio remembered the words he had once written about her kindred: Noble blood \u2013 for centuries the Adderhead's kin firmly believed that the blood flowing in their veins made them bolder, cleverer, stronger than all who were their subjects. The same look in their eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years, even in those of Her Ugliness, whom her noble family would happily have drowned at birth in the castle moat, like a puppy born deformed.\n\n'The servants say Brianna's mother can sing even better than she does. They say her mother knew how to make stones weep and roses blossom with her voice.' Violante patted her face, just where the birthmark had been such a fiery red only a short time ago.\n\n'Yes, I've heard much the same.' Fenoglio followed her to the door.\n\n'They even say she sang in my father's castle, but I don't believe that. My father never let any strolling players through his gate. The nearest they came was to be hanged outside it.' Yes, because there was once a rumour that your mother betrayed him with a minstrel, thought Fenoglio as he opened the door for her.\n\n'Brianna says her mother doesn't sing any more because she believes her voice brings great misfortune to everyone she loves. It seems that happened to Brianna's father.'\n\n'I've heard that story too.'\n\nViolante went out into the corridor. Even at close quarters her birthmark was barely visible now. 'You'll send the messenger to her tomorrow morning?'\n\n'If that's what you want.'\n\nShe looked down the dark corridor. 'Brianna will never talk about her father. One of the cooks says he was a fire-eater. The way that cook tells the story, Brianna's mother was deeply in love with him, but then one of the fire-raisers fell in love with her himself and slashed the fire-eater's face.'\n\n'Yes, I've heard that one as well!' Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. Dustfinger's bittersweet story was certainly very much to Violante's taste.\n\n'She took him to a physician, the cook says, and stayed with him until his face was healed.' How far away her voice sounded, as if she had lost herself among the words. Fenoglio's words. 'But he left her all the same.' Violante turned her face away. 'Write that letter!' she said abruptly. 'Write it tonight.' Then she hurried away in her black dress, in such haste that it looked as if she were suddenly ashamed of coming to see him.\n\n'Rosenquartz,' said Fenoglio, closing the door behind her. 'Do you think I'm only any good at making up characters who are sad or bad?'\n\nBut the glass man was still asleep beside the quill, from which ink dripped on to the empty sheet of parchment."
            },
            {
                "title": "Roxane",
                "text": "\u2003My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;\n\n\u2003Coral is far more red than her lips' red.\n\n\u2003If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;\n\n\u2003If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.\n\n\u2014William Shakespeare, Sonnets, No. 130\n\nFenoglio waited for Roxane in a room in the castle where petitioners were usually received, ordinary folk who came here to tell Cosimo's administrators their troubles while a scribe recorded their words on paper (parchment being far too valuable for such purposes). Then they were sent away hoping that their prince would put his mind to their concerns sometime. But under the Laughing Prince that had not been very often, except at Violante's persuasion, so his subjects had usually settled their quarrels among themselves, with or without violence, depending on their temperament and their influence in the community. It was to be hoped that Cosimo would change all that soon...\n\n'What am I doing here?' murmured Fenoglio, looking around the high-ceilinged, narrow room. He had still been in bed (in much more comfort than at Minerva's house) when Her Ugliness's messenger had appeared. Violante sent her apologies, said the man, and since he was better with words than anyone else she knew, she asked him to talk to Roxane on her behalf. That was how the powerful acted \u2013 offloading the less pleasant tasks in life on to other people. But on the other hand... he had always hoped to meet Dustfinger's wife some day. Was she really as beautiful as his description of her?\n\nWith a sigh, he dropped into the armchair generally used by one of Cosimo's administrators. Since Cosimo's return, so many petitioners had flocked to the castle that in future they were going to be allowed to come and put their cases on only two days of the week. Their prince had weightier matters on his mind just now than the troubles of a farmer whose neighbour had stolen his pig, a cobbler who had bought poor quality leather from a dealer, or a seamstress whose husband beat her every night when he came home drunk. Of course, there was a judge in every town of any size to settle such quarrels, but most of them had a poor reputation. Folk said, on both sides of the Wayless Wood, that you'd get your rights only if you filled the judges' pockets with gold. So those who had no gold went up to the castle to appeal to their angel-faced prince, without realizing that he had more than enough to do preparing for his war.\n\nWhen Roxane entered the room she had two children with her: a girl of about five and an older boy, probably Brianna's brother Jehan \u2013 the lad who had the dubious honour of playing with Jacopo now and then. She frowned as she scrutinized the tapestries on the walls celebrating the Laughing Prince's exploits in his youth. Unicorns, dragons, white stags... clearly nothing had been safe from his royal spear.\n\n'Why don't we just go into the garden?' suggested Fenoglio, noticing her expression of disapproval and quickly rising from the princely chair. If anything, she was even more beautiful than his description of her. But after all, he had sought the most wonderful of words for her when he wrote the scene in Inkheart where Dustfinger saw her for the first time. Yet all at once, now that she so suddenly stood before him in the flesh, he felt as lovelorn as a silly boy. Oh, for goodness' sake, Fenoglio! he reproached himself. You made her up, and now you're staring at her as if this was the first time in your life you'd ever seen a woman! Worst of all, Roxane seemed to notice it.\n\n'Yes, let's go into the garden! I've heard a great deal about it, but I've never seen it,' she said with a smile that cast Fenoglio into total confusion. 'But first, please tell me why you want to speak to me. Your letter said only that it was about Brianna.'\n\nWhy he wanted to speak to her? Huh! He cursed Violante's jealousy, Cosimo's faithless heart, and himself too. 'Let's go into the garden first,' he said. Perhaps it would be easier to tell her what Her Ugliness had instructed him to say in the open air.\n\nBut of course it was not.\n\nThe boy set off in search of Jacopo as soon as they were outside, but the girl stayed with Roxane, clinging to her hand as she went from plant to plant \u2013 and Fenoglio found he couldn't utter a word.\n\n'I know why I was summoned,' said Roxane, just as he was trying for the tenth time to find the right words. 'Brianna didn't tell me herself, she'd never do that. But the maid who takes Cosimo his breakfast every morning often comes to me for advice about her sick mother, and she's told me that Brianna seldom leaves his room. Not even at night.'\n\n'Yes. Yes, that's it... Violante is concerned. And she hopes that you...' Oh, damn it, how his voice was faltering! He didn't know how to go on. This wretched confusion. His story clearly had too many characters in it. How was he to foresee everything they'd think of? It was downright impossible, particularly when a young girl's heart was involved. No one could expect him to understand anything about that.\n\nRoxane scrutinized his face as if she were still waiting for the end of his sentence. You stupid old fool, surely you're not going to blush, Fenoglio thought \u2013 and felt the blood shoot into his wrinkled face as if to drive age out of it.\n\n'The boy has told me about you,' said Roxane. 'Farid. He's in love with the girl who's staying with you \u2013 Meggie, isn't that right? When he speaks her name he looks as if he had a pearl in his mouth.'\n\n'Yes, I'm beginning to think that Meggie likes him too.'\n\nWhat exactly, wondered Fenoglio uneasily, has the boy been saying about me? Telling her I made her up, and the man she loves too \u2013 only to kill him off again?\n\nThe little girl was still clutching Roxane's hand. With a smile, she put a flower in the child's long, dark hair. You know something, Fenoglio? he thought. All this is nonsense! What makes you think you invented her? She must always have been here, long before you wrote your story. A woman like her can't possibly be made of nothing but words! You've been wrong all this time! They were here already, all of them: Dustfinger and Capricorn, Basta and Roxane, Minerva, Violante, the Adderhead... you merely wrote their story, but they didn't like it, and now they're writing it for themselves.\n\nThe little girl felt the flower with her fingers and smiled.\n\n'Is she Dustfinger's daughter?' asked Fenoglio.\n\nRoxane looked at him in surprise. 'No,' she said. 'Our second daughter died long ago. But how do you come to know Dustfinger? He's never mentioned you to me.'\n\nYou fool, Fenoglio, you stupid fool.\n\n'Oh, I certainly know Dustfinger!' he stammered. 'In fact I know him very well. I often visit the strolling players, you see, when they pitch their tents here outside the city wall. That's where \u2013 er \u2013 where I met him.'\n\n'Really?' Roxane ran her fingers over a plant with feathery leaves. 'I didn't know he'd been back there already.' Her face thoughtful, she moved on to another flower-bed. 'Wild mallow. I grow it in my own fields. Isn't it beautiful? So useful, too...' She did not look at Fenoglio as she went on. 'Dustfinger has gone. Yet again. All I had was a message to say he's following men of the Adderhead's troops who have kidnapped some of the strolling players. Her mother,' she added, putting her arm round the girl, 'is one of them. And the Black Prince, a good friend of his.'\n\nThey'd captured the Prince too? Fenoglio tried to hide his alarm. Obviously matters were even worse than he'd thought \u2013 and what he was writing down on parchment was still no use.\n\nRoxane felt the seed-heads of a lavender bush. Their sweet scent immediately filled the air. 'I'm told that you were there when Cloud-Dancer was killed. Did you know his murderer? I heard that it was Basta, one of the fire-raisers from the forest.'\n\n'I'm afraid what you heard was right.' Not a night passed when Fenoglio did not see Basta's knife flying through the air. It pursued him into all his dreams.\n\n'The boy told Dustfinger that Basta was back. But I hoped he wasn't telling the truth. I'm anxious.' She spoke so softly that Fenoglio could hardly make out her words. 'So anxious that I keep finding myself just standing and staring at the forest, as if he might appear among the trees again at any moment, the way he did on the morning he came back.' She picked a dried lavender head and shook some of the tiny seeds into her hand. 'May I take these with me?'\n\n'You can take anything you want,' replied Fenoglio. 'Seeds, runners, cuttings, so Violante told me to tell you \u2013 anything, if you'll persuade your daughter to keep Violante herself company in future and not her husband.'\n\nRoxane looked at the seeds in her hand, and then let a few of them fall lightly to the flower-bed. 'It won't work. My daughter hasn't listened to me for years. She loves the life up here, although she knows that I don't, and she's loved Cosimo ever since she first saw him ride out of the castle gate on his wedding day. She was barely seven then, and after that her heart was set on coming here to the castle, even if it meant working as a maid. If Violante hadn't once heard her singing down in the kitchen she'd probably still be emptying chamber-pots, feeding kitchen scraps to the pigs, and sometimes stealing upstairs in secret to feast her eyes on the statues of Cosimo. Instead, she became like Violante's little sister... wore her clothes, looked after her son, sang and danced for her like one of the strolling players, like her own mother. Not with motley skirts and dirty feet, not sleeping by the roadside and carrying a knife to defend herself against vagrants trying to creep in under her blanket by night, but in silken clothes and with a soft bed to sleep in. She wears her hair loose, all the same, just as I did, and she loves too much, exactly as I did. No,' she said, placing the seeds in Fenoglio's hand. 'Tell Violante that much as I would like to help her, I can't.'\n\nThe little girl looked at Fenoglio. Where was her mother now?\n\n'Listen,' he told Roxane. Her beauty took his breath away. 'Take as many seeds as you like. They'll grow and thrive in your fields much better than within these grey walls. Dustfinger has gone off with Meggie. I sent her a messenger. As soon as the man is back you'll hear everything he has to tell: where they are now, how long they'll stay away, everything!'\n\nRoxane took the lavender from him again, picked a handful more, and carefully put them in the bag hanging from her belt. 'Thank you,' she said. 'But if I don't hear from Dustfinger soon I shall set off in search of him myself. I've stayed here too often just waiting for him to come back safe and sound, and I can't get it out of my mind that Basta is back!'\n\n'But how will you find him? The last news I heard from Meggie was that they were making for a mill known as the Spelt-Mill. It's on the far side of the forest in Argenta. That's dangerous country!'\n\nRoxane smiled at him, like a woman explaining the way of the world to her child. 'It will soon be dangerous here too,' she said. 'Do you think the Adderhead won't have heard by now that Cosimo is having swords forged day and night? Perhaps you should look around for some other place to do your writing, before the fiery arrows come raining down on your desk.'\n\nRoxane's mount was waiting in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. It was an old black horse, thin and going grey around the muzzle. 'I know the Spelt-Mill,' she said, lifting the little girl up on the horse's back. 'I'll ride past it, and if I don't find them there I'll try the Barn Owl's place. He's the best physician I know on either side of the forest, and he looked after Dustfinger as a boy. Perhaps he may have heard news of him.'\n\nOf course, the Barn Owl! How could Fenoglio have forgotten him? If Dustfinger ever had anything like a father, it was this man. He had been one of the physicians who went around with the strolling players from place to place, from market to market. Unfortunately, Fenoglio didn't know much more about him. Damn it all, he thought, how can you forget your own stories? And don't try making your age an excuse.\n\n'If you see Jehan, send him home,' said Roxane, as she swung herself up behind the girl on the horse. 'He knows the way.'\n\n'Are you planning to ride through the Wayless Wood on that old nag?'\n\n'This old nag will still carry me as far as I want,' she said. The girl leaned back against her breast as she gathered up the reins. 'Goodbye,' she said, but Fenoglio held the horse back by the bridle. An idea had come to him, an idea born of desperation, but what else could he do? Wait for the mounted messenger he had sent, until it was too late?\n\n'Roxane,' he said, low-voiced, as he looked up at her, 'I have to get a letter to Meggie. I've sent a horseman after her to tell me where she is and whether she's well, but he isn't back yet, and by the time I've sent him off again with the letter... (don't tell her anything about Basta and Slasher, Fenoglio, it would only upset her unnecessarily!)... well, what I'm getting at is...(for heaven's sake, Fenoglio, don't stare at her like that, stammering like an old dotard!)... what I mean is, if you really do ride after Dustfinger, would you take my letter to Meggie with you? You'd probably find her sooner than any messenger I could send now.' What kind of a letter, an inner voice mocked him, a letter telling her that nothing has occurred to you? But as usual, he ignored the voice. 'It's a very important letter!' If he could have spoken even more softly he would have done so.\n\nRoxane wrinkled her brow. Even that was a beautiful sight. 'The last time you had anything to do with a letter, it cost Cloud-Dancer his life. Still, very well, bring it to me if you like. As I said, I'm not going to wait much longer.'\n\nThe castle courtyard seemed strangely empty to Fenoglio when she had gone. Rosenquartz was waiting in his room beside the parchment, which was still blank, looking reproachful. 'You know something, Rosenquartz?' Fenoglio said to the glass man, sitting down on his chair again with a sigh. 'I think Dustfinger would wring my old neck if he knew how I gaze at his wife. But what does that matter \u2013 he'd like to wring my neck anyway, one reason more or less makes no difference. He doesn't deserve Roxane anyway, leaving her alone so often!'\n\n'Someone's in a truly princely temper again!' remarked Rosenquartz.\n\n'Be quiet!' growled Fenoglio. 'This parchment is about to be covered with words. And I just hope you've stirred the ink properly!'\n\n'The ink's not to blame if the parchment is still blank!' retorted the glass man.\n\nFenoglio didn't throw the pen at him, although his fingers itched to do so. The words that had passed Rosenquartz's pale lips were only the truth. How could the glass man help it if the truth was unpleasant?"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Castle by the Sea",
                "text": "\u2003It was a page he had\n\n\u2003Found in the handbook\n\n\u2003Of heartbreak.\n\n\u2014Wallace Stephens, 'Madame la Fleurie', Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens\n\nIt was exactly as Mo had imagined the Castle of Night: mighty towers, round and heavily built, crenellations like black teeth below the silver rooftops. Mo thought he was seeing Fenoglio's words before his eyes when the exhausted captives staggered through the castle gateway ahead of him. Black words on paper white as milk: The Castle of Night, a dark growth by the sea, every stone of it polished with screams, its walls slippery with tears and blood. Yes, Fenoglio was a good storyteller. Silver rimmed the battlements and gateways, and wound over the walls like snail-trails. The Adderhead loved that metal; his subjects called it moonspit, perhaps because an alchemist had once spun him a tale that it could keep away the White Women, who hated it because it reflected their pale faces. Or so Fenoglio had written, anyway.\n\nOf all places in the Inkworld, this was the last where Mo would have chosen to be. But he wasn't choosing his own way through this story, that much was certain. It had even given him a new name \u2013 the Bluejay. Sometimes he felt as if the name were really his. As if he had been carrying it around in him like a seed that only now had begun to grow in this world of words.\n\nHe was feeling better. The fever was still there, like opaque glass in front of his eyes, but the pain was a tame kitten by comparison with the beast of prey that had still been tearing at him in the cave. He could sit up if he gritted his teeth, he could look round to find Resa. He seldom took his eyes off her, as if, in that way, he could protect her from the glances of the soldiers, their kicks and blows. The sight of her hurt more than his wound. By the time the gates of the Castle of Night closed behind her and the other prisoners, she could barely keep on her feet for exhaustion. She stood still and looked up at the walls surrounding her, like a mouse examining the trap it has fallen into. One of the soldiers pushed her on with the shaft of his spear, and Mo longed to put his hands round the man's neck and press hard. He tasted the hatred on his tongue and in his heart like a shivering sensation, and cursed his own weakness.\n\nResa looked at him and tried to smile, but she was too exhausted, and he saw her fear. The soldiers reined in their horses and surrounded the prisoners, as if they could possibly have escaped from those steeply towering walls. The vipers' heads supporting the roofs and ledges left no one in any doubt who the lord of this castle was. They looked down on the forlorn little troop from everywhere, with forked tongues in their narrow mouths, eyes of red gemstone, silver scales shimmering like fish-skin in the moonlight.\n\n'Put the Bluejay in the tower!' Firefox's voice was almost lost in the huge expanse of the castle courtyard. 'And take the others to the dungeons.' So they were going to be separated. Mo saw Resa, moving painfully on her sore feet, turn to Firefox. One of the mounted men kicked her back so roughly with his boot that she fell to the ground. And Mo felt a dragging sensation in his breast, as if his hatred had given birth to something, something that wanted to kill. A new heart, cold and hard.\n\nA weapon. If only he had a weapon, one of the ugly swords they all wore at their belts, or one of those sharp, shiny knives. There seemed to be nothing more desirable in the world than such a sharp piece of metal \u2013 more desirable than all the words Fenoglio could write. They hauled him off the cart. He could hardly keep his footing, but somehow or other he stood upright. Four soldiers surrounded him and seized him, and he imagined himself killing them one by one. While that new, cold heart in his breast beat time.\n\n'Hey, go a bit more carefully with him, will you?' Firefox snapped at them. 'You think I brought him this whole damn way just for you fools to kill him now?'\n\nResa was crying. Mo heard her call his name again and again. He turned, but he couldn't see her anywhere, he only heard her voice. He called her name, tried to break free, kicked out at the soldiers who were dragging him away towards one of the towers.\n\n'You just try that again!' snarled one of them. 'What's biting you, then? You two will soon be reunited. The Adderhead likes wives to watch an execution.'\n\n'That's right, he can't get enough of their weeping and wailing,' mocked another man. 'You'll see, he'll keep her alive a little longer just for that. And you'll get a magnificent execution, Bluejay, you mark my words.'\n\nBluejay. A new name. A new heart. Like ice in his breast, with edges as sharp as a blade."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Mill",
                "text": "\u2002We rode and rode and nothing happened. Wherever we went, it was calm, peaceful and beautiful. You could call it a quiet evening in the mountains, I thought, if that hadn't been so wrong.\n\n\u2014Astrid Lindgren, The Brothers Lionheart\n\nIt took Dustfinger over three days to reach the Spelt-Mill with Meggie and Farid. Three long, grey days during which Meggie hardly spoke a word, although Farid did his best to cheer her up. Most of the time it was raining, a fine drizzle, and soon none of them could remember what it felt like to sleep in dry clothes. Only when, at last, the dark valley where the mill stood opened out before them, did the sun break through the clouds. Low in the sky above the hills, it shed golden light on the river and the shingle roofs. There wasn't another dwelling to be seen far and wide \u2013 only the miller's house, a few outhouses, and the mill itself, with its great wooden wheel dipping deep into the water. Willows, poplars and eucalyptus bushes lined the bank of the river on which it stood, together with alders and wild pear trees. There was a cart standing at the foot of the steps leading into the mill. A broad-shouldered man, dusty with flour, was just loading it up with sacks. There was no one else in sight except a boy who, on seeing them approach, ran over to the house. All looked peaceful \u2013 peaceful and quiet, apart from the rushing of the water, which drowned out even the chirping of the cicadas.\n\n'You'll see!' Farid whispered to Meggie. 'Fenoglio's written something. I'm sure he has. Or if not, we'll just wait until\u2014'\n\n'We'll do no such thing,' Dustfinger brusquely interrupted him, looking distrustfully around. 'We'll ask about the letter and then go on. Many people come to this mill, and after what happened on the road the first of the soldiers will soon be putting in an appearance. If it was up to me, we wouldn't show our faces here until everything had calmed down a bit, but if you must...'\n\n'Suppose the letter hasn't come yet?' Meggie looked at him with anxiety in her face. 'When I wrote to Fenoglio I told him I'd wait for it here!'\n\n'Yes, and I don't remember saying you could write to him at all, did I?'\n\nMeggie made no answer, and Dustfinger glanced at the mill again. 'I just hope Cloud-Dancer delivered the letter safely, and the old man hasn't been showing it around. I don't have to tell you what damage the words on a page can do.'\n\nHe looked around for the last time before moving out of the cover of the trees. Then he signalled to Farid and Meggie to follow him, and strode towards the buildings. The boy who had run to the house was sitting on the steps outside the door of the mill again, and a few chickens ran away, squawking, as Gwin shot towards them.\n\n'Farid, catch that damn marten!' ordered Dustfinger, as he whistled Jink to his side, but Gwin hissed at Farid. He didn't bite him (he never bit Farid), but he wasn't letting himself be caught either. He slipped through Farid's legs, and bounded after one of the chickens. Cackling, it fluttered up the steps of the mill, but the marten wasn't to be shaken off that way. He shot past the boy, who was still sitting on the steps apparently taking no interest in anything, and disappeared through the open door in pursuit of the chicken. A moment later the cackling stopped abruptly \u2013 and Meggie glanced anxiously at Dustfinger.\n\n'Oh, wonderful!' he murmured, making Jink jump back into his rucksack. 'A marten in the flour and a dead chicken, that's going to make us very popular here! Talk of the devil...'\n\nThe man loading up the cart wiped his floury hands on his trousers and came towards them.\n\n'Excuse me, please!' Dustfinger called to him. 'Where's the miller? I'll pay for the chicken, of course. But we're really here to collect something. A letter.'\n\nThe man stopped in front of them. He was a full head taller than Dustfinger. 'I'm the miller now,' he said. 'My father's dead. A letter, you say?' He inspected them one by one. His eyes lingered longest on Dustfinger's face.\n\n'Yes, a letter from Ombra,' replied Dustfinger, glancing up at the mill. 'Why isn't it grinding? Don't the farmers bring you their grain any more, or have you run out of miller's men?'\n\nThe miller shrugged. 'Someone brought us damp spelt to grind yesterday. The bran gummed up the millstones. My man spent hours cleaning them. What kind of letter is it? And who's it to? Don't you have a name?'\n\nDustfinger looked at him thoughtfully. 'So is there a letter here?'\n\n'It's for me,' said Meggie, stepping forward beside him. 'Meggie Folchart. That's my name.'\n\nThe miller inspected her at length \u2013 her dirty dress, her matted hair \u2013 and then he nodded. 'Yes, I have it inside,' he said. 'I'm only asking because a letter can be dangerous in the wrong hands, can't it? Go on in, I'll just load this last sack up.'\n\n'Fill the water bottles,' Dustfinger whispered to Farid, slinging his rucksack over the boy's shoulders. 'I'll catch that damn marten, pay for the chicken, and as soon as Meggie has the letter we'll be off out of here.'\n\nBefore Farid could protest, he had disappeared into the mill. With Meggie. The boy passed his arm over his dirty face and watched them go.\n\n'Fill the water bottles!' muttered Farid as he climbed down the bank to the river. 'Catch the marten! Does he think I'm his servant?' The mill boy was still sitting on the steps as Farid stood in the cold river, holding their gourds under water. There was something about that boy that he didn't like. Something in his face. Fear. Yes, that was it. He was afraid. What of? It's hardly likely to be me, thought Farid, looking round. Something was wrong; he could smell it. He'd always been able to smell it, even back in his other life when he had to stand guard, spy out the land, follow people unseen, go scouting ahead \u2013 oh yes, he knew what danger smelled like. He put the water bottles in the rucksack with Jink and scratched the sleepy marten's head.\n\nHe didn't see the body until he was about to wade back to the bank. The dead man was still young, and Farid had a feeling that he'd seen his face before. Hadn't the man thrown a copper coin into his bowl in Ombra, during the celebrations at the castle? The body was caught in the branches bending low above the water, but the wound in its chest was clearly visible. A knife. Farid's heart began to race so suddenly that he could hardly breathe. He looked at the mill. The boy sitting outside it was clutching his own shoulders as if he feared he might fall apart with terror. But the miller had disappeared.\n\nNo sound could be heard from the mill, but that meant nothing. The rushing water would have drowned out everything \u2013 screams, the clash of swords...\n\nCome on, Farid, he told himself sharply. Slink up there and find out what's going on. You've done it a hundred times \u2013 no, even more often. Ducking low, he waded through the river and climbed up on to the bank behind the millwheel. His heart was in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the mill, but that was nothing new either. A thousand times or more he had slunk up to a building, a window, a closed door, with his heart beating hard. He leaned Dustfinger's rucksack with the sleeping marten in it against the wall.\n\nGwin. Gwin had run inside the mill. And Dustfinger had gone after him. That wasn't good. Not good at all. Meggie was with him too. Farid looked up at the mill. The nearest window was a good way above his head, but luckily the wall was rough-textured. 'Keep silent as a snake,' he whispered to himself as he hauled himself up. The window-sill was white with flour dust. Holding his breath, Farid peered in. The first thing he saw was a podgy fellow with a foolish face, probably the miller's man. Farid had never seen the other man beside him before, but unfortunately he couldn't say the same of his companion.\n\nBasta. The same thin face, the same vicious smile. Only the clothes were different. Basta was no longer wearing his white shirt and black suit with the flower in his buttonhole. No, Basta now wore the Adderhead's silvery grey, and he had a sword at his side. With a knife in his belt too, of course. But he was holding a dead chicken in his left hand.\n\nOnly the millstone stood between him and Dustfinger \u2013 the millstone and Gwin, who was crouching in the middle of the round stone, staring longingly at the chicken as the tip of his tail twitched restlessly up and down. Meggie was standing close to Dustfinger. Was she thinking the same as Farid? Did she remember Fenoglio's deadly words? Perhaps, for she was trying to entice Gwin over to her, but the marten took no notice.\n\nWhat am I to do, Farid wondered, what on earth am I to do? Climb in? Nonsense, what use would that be? His silly little knife couldn't prevail against two swords, and then there'd be the miller and his man to deal with too. The miller was standing right beside the door. 'Well, are these the folk you were waiting for?' he asked Basta. How pleased with himself and his lies he looked. Farid would have loved to use his knife to peel that sly smile off his lips.\n\n'Yes, they are!' purred Basta. 'The little witch, and the fire-eater into the bargain. It was well worth the wait. Even though I'll probably never get that damned flour out of my lungs again.'\n\nThink, Farid. Go on. He looked around, let his eyes wander, as if they could find him a way of escape through the solid masonry. There was another window, but the miller's man was standing in front of it, and a wooden staircase led up to the loft, where they probably stored the grain. They would tip it through the wooden hopper sticking up through the floor of the loft, and then it would fall on the millstone. The hopper! Yes, it rose through the ceiling of the mill like a wooden mouth right above the stone. Suppose he...\n\nFarid looked up at the mill. Was there another window higher up? Yes, there was, hardly more than a hole in the wall, but he had crawled through narrower openings before. His heart was still in his mouth as he hauled himself further up the wall. The river flowed fast to his left, and a crow stared at him from a willow as suspiciously as if it were about to give him away to the miller at any moment. Farid was breathing heavily as he forced his shoulders through the narrow aperture in the wall. As he set foot on the wooden floorboards of the loft, they creaked treacherously, but the river drowned out that tell-tale sound. On his stomach, Farid inched over to the hopper and peered down through it. Right below him stood Basta. And Dustfinger must be standing opposite him on the other side of the stone, with Meggie. Farid couldn't see him, but he could imagine only too well what Dustfinger was thinking of: Fenoglio's words telling the tale of his death.\n\n'Grab that marten, Slasher!' Basta told the man beside him. 'Go on, do it.'\n\n'Do it yourself. You think I want to catch rabies?'\n\n'Come here, Gwin!' That was Dustfinger's voice. What was he doing? Trying to laugh his own fear in the face, the way he sometimes did when the fire bit his skin? Gwin leaped off the stone. He would be sitting on Dustfinger's shoulder, staring at Basta. Stupid Gwin. He didn't know about the words...\n\n'Fine new clothes, Basta!' said Dustfinger. 'When the servant finds a new master he must wear new clothes, mustn't he?'\n\n'Servant? Who's a servant here? Just listen to him. As bold as if he'd never felt my knife! Have you forgotten how you screamed when it cut your face?' Basta set one boot on the millstone. 'Don't you dare move so much as a finger. Hands up! Go on, up in the air! I know what you can do with fire in this world. One little whisper from you, one snap of your fingers, and my knife goes into the little witch's breast.'\n\nA snap of the fingers. Yes, get on with it, Farid! He looked around, searching for what he needed, quickly twisted some straw together to make a torch, and began whispering. 'Come along!' he lured the fire, clicking his tongue and hissing the way Dustfinger had shown him after he put a little fire-honey in his mouth for the first time. They had practised every evening behind Roxane's house, practised the language of fire, its crackling words... Farid whispered them all until a tiny flame came licking up out of the straw.\n\n'Ooh dear! See how the little witch is staring at me, Slasher?' asked Basta below him, with pretended terror. 'What a pity she needs written words for her witchcraft! But there's no book anywhere here. Wasn't it nice of her to write to us in person and tell us where to find you?' Basta disguised his voice to make it sound shrill and girlish. 'The Adderhead's men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players! Write something for me, Fenoglio! Or something like that. You know, I was really disappointed to hear that your father's still alive. Oh, don't look so disbelieving, little witch, I still can't read and I don't intend to learn, but there are enough fools around the place who can, even in this world. A scribe ran into our arms right outside the city gates of Ombra. It took a little while for him to decipher your scribble, but we still had a good enough start to get here ahead of you. We were even on the spot in time to kill the old man's messenger, who was supposed to warn you.'\n\n'You're even more talkative than you used to be, Basta.' Dustfinger's voice sounded as if he found this tedious. How well he could hide his fear! Farid always admired him for that, almost more than for his skill with fire.\n\nSlowly, very slowly, Basta drew his knife from his belt. Dustfinger didn't like knives. He generally kept his in his rucksack, and his rucksack was leaning against the wall outside. Farid had so often begged him to keep the knife in his belt, but no, he wouldn't hear of it.\n\n'Talkative? Well, well.' Basta looked at his reflection in the bright blade of the knife. 'No one could say the same of you. But I tell you what! Since we've known each other so long, I'll carry the news of your death to your wife in person! What do you say to that, fire-eater? Do you think Roxane will be glad to see me again?' Caressingly, he ran two fingers along the blade. 'And as for you, little witch... I thought it was really nice of you to entrust your letter to an old tightrope-walker. With his stiff leg, he wasn't half as fast as my knife.'\n\n'Cloud-Dancer? You killed Cloud-Dancer?'\n\nThere was no boredom in Dustfinger's voice now. Stand still, please, whispered Farid. Please, please stand still. He was hastily feeding more straw to the flames.\n\n'Ah, so you didn't know that yet!' Basta's voice became soft with contentment. 'Yes, there'll be no more dancing for your old friend. Ask Slasher, he was there.'\n\n'You're lying!' Meggie's voice shook. Farid bent cautiously forward. He saw Dustfinger push her roughly behind him, his eyes searching for a way out, but there was none. Sacks full of flour were stacked behind him and Meggie, Slasher was barring their way to their right, on their left was the man with the silly grin, and in front of the window through which Farid had peered stood the miller. But there was straw lying on the floor at their feet, a great deal of straw, and it would burn almost as well as paper.\n\nBasta laughed. With one bound, he leaped up on the millstone and looked down at Dustfinger. He was standing very close to the outlet of the hopper now. Hurry up, come on, whispered Farid, kindling a second bundle of straw from the first and holding them both above the funnel. He hoped its wood wouldn't catch fire. He hoped the straw would slide through. He hoped so. His fingers were scorched as he stuffed the burning bundles in, but he took no notice. Dustfinger was in a trap, and Meggie was in it with him. What did a couple of burned fingers matter?\n\n'Yes, poor Cloud-Dancer was far too slow,' purred Basta, as he tossed his knife from one hand to the other. 'You're faster than him, I know, fire-eater, but you won't get away all the same. And this time I'm not just going to cut your face, this time I'll slice your skin off in strips from head to foot.'\n\nNow! Farid let the burning straw drop. The hopper swallowed it like a sack of corn, and spat it out on Basta's boots.\n\n'Fire! Where's that fire coming from?' It was the miller's voice. His man was bellowing like an ox when it sees the butcher's hatchet.\n\nFarid's fingers hurt, his skin was beginning to blister, but the fire was dancing, dancing up Basta's boots, licking close to his arms. Terrified, he stumbled, fell backwards off the millstone and cracked his head open against the edge of it. Blood flowed. Basta feared fire, feared it more than the bad luck against which his amulets were supposed to protect him.\n\nAs for Farid, he raced down the steps to the floor of the mill, pushed aside the miller's man, who was staring at him as if he were a ghost, ran to Meggie and pulled her away with him towards the window through which he had first looked.\n\n'Jump!' he called to her. 'Quick, jump out!' Meggie was trembling. Her hair was full of flour, and she closed her eyes before she jumped, but jump she did. Farid looked round at Dustfinger. He was talking to the flames, making them sing and grow, while the miller and his man beat desperately at the burning straw with empty sacks, but the fire danced on. It was dancing for Dustfinger.\n\nFarid crouched in the open window. 'Come on!' he called to Dustfinger. 'Hurry up!'\n\nWhere was Basta?\n\nDustfinger pushed the miller aside and ran to him through the smoke and flames. Farid swung himself out of the window and clung to the sill outside as he watched the dazed Basta hauling himself up by the millstone. His hand was bloody when he put it to the back of his head. 'Get him!' he shouted to Slasher. 'Hold the fire-eater fast!'\n\n'Quick!' cried Farid, as his toes tried to find a foothold on the outside of the wall, but Dustfinger stumbled over an empty sack as he ran. Gwin jumped off his shoulder and scurried towards Farid, and when Dustfinger got to his feet again Slasher was standing between him and the window, coughing, his sword in his hand.\n\n'Come on!' Farid heard Meggie shouting. She was standing right under the window, her eyes wide with fear, staring up at him. But Farid wriggled his way back into the burning mill.\n\n'What are you doing? Get out!' Dustfinger shouted at him as he struck out with a burning sack at Slasher, whose trousers had caught fire. Slasher swayed as he lashed out with his sword, first at the flames, then at Dustfinger. His sharp blade slit Dustfinger's leg open just as Farid jumped down into the burning straw again. Dustfinger stumbled back against the wall, pressing his hand to his thigh, while Slasher raised his sword again, half mad with rage and pain.\n\n'No!' Farid's own voice rang in his ears as he jumped at the man. He bit his shoulder and kicked him until he dropped the sword that he had been pointing at Dustfinger's chest. Then Farid pushed Slasher into the flames. The man was more than a head taller than Farid himself, but desperation lent him strength. Farid was about to attack Basta too as he emerged from the smoke, coughing, but Dustfinger pulled him back and hissed at the flames until they made for Basta like angry vipers. Farid heard Basta scream, but did not turn to look. He just stumbled towards the window, with Dustfinger beside him, cursing as he pressed his fingers to his bleeding leg. But he was alive. He was really alive. While the fire was devouring Basta."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Best of all Nights",
                "text": "\u2002'Eat,' said Merlot.\n\n\u2002'I couldn't possibly,' said Despereaux, backing away from the book.\n\n\u2002'Why?'\n\n\u2002'Um,' said Despereaux, 'it would ruin the story.'\n\n\u2014Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux\n\nLater, none of them knew how they had got away from the mill. All Farid could remember were images: of Meggie's face as she stumbled down to the river, of the blood in the water when Dustfinger jumped in, of the smoke they could see still rising into the sky after they had been wading through the cold water for more than an hour. But no one came after them: not Slasher or the miller or his man, and not Basta either. Only Gwin appeared on the bank at some point. Stupid Gwin.\n\nIt was the middle of the night when Dustfinger clambered out of the water, his face pale with exhaustion. As he let himself drop on to the grass, Farid anxiously listened into the darkness, but all he heard was a loud and steady roar like the breathing of a gigantic animal.\n\n'What's that?' he whispered.\n\n'The sea. Don't you know what the sea sounds like?'\n\nThe sea. Gwin jumped on Farid's back as he was looking at Dustfinger's leg, but he shooed the marten away. 'Get out!' he snapped. 'Go hunting! You've done enough harm for one day.' Then he let Jink out of the rucksack too, and looked for something to bind up the wound. Meggie wrung out her wet dress and crouched beside them.\n\n'Is it bad?'\n\n'No, I'm fine,' said Dustfinger, but he winced as Farid cleaned the deep gash. 'Poor Cloud-Dancer!' he murmured. 'He escaped death once, and now the Grim Reaper's come for him after all. Who knows, perhaps the White Women don't like people to slip through their fingers like that?'\n\n'I'm sorry.' Meggie spoke so quietly that Farid could hardly hear her. 'I'm so very sorry. It's all my fault, and he died for nothing. Because where is Fenoglio going to find us now, even if he's written something for me?'\n\n'Fenoglio.' Dustfinger spoke as if it were the name of some disease.\n\n'Did you feel them too?' Meggie looked at him. 'I thought I could feel his words on my skin. I thought: they're going to kill Dustfinger and there's nothing we can do about it!'\n\n'But there was,' said Farid defiantly.\n\nDustfinger, however, leaned back and looked up at the stars. 'Really? We'll see. Perhaps the old man's thought up some different fate for me by now. Perhaps death is waiting just around another corner.'\n\n'Let it wait!' was all Farid would say, fishing a bag out of Dustfinger's rucksack. 'A little fairy dust can never hurt,' he murmured as he trickled the glittering powder into the wound. Then he pulled his shirt over his head, cut a strip off with his knife, and tied it carefully round Dustfinger's leg. It wasn't easy with his burned fingers, but he did his best, although the pain twisted his face.\n\nDustfinger reached for his hand and looked at it, frowning. 'Heavens, your fingers are covered with as many blisters as if fire-elves had been dancing on them,' he commented. 'I guess we both need a physician. What a pity Roxane isn't here.' Sighing, he lay down on his back again and looked up at the dark sky. 'You know what, Farid?' he said, as if talking to the stars. 'There's one really strange thing about all this. If Meggie's father hadn't plucked me out of my own story, I don't suppose I'd ever have found such a fabulous watchdog as you.' He winked at Meggie. 'Did you see him biting? I'll bet Slasher thought it was the Black Prince's bear gnawing his shoulder.'\n\n'Oh, stop it!' Farid didn't know where to look. Embarrassed, he picked a blade of grass with his bare toes.\n\n'Yes, but Farid is cleverer than the bear,' said Meggie. 'Much cleverer.'\n\n'Indeed. Cleverer than me too,' Dustfinger pointed out. 'And as for what he can do with fire, I'm beginning to get seriously worried.'\n\nFarid couldn't help it; he had to grin. He felt so proud that the blood shot all the way to his ears, but in the dark no one, luckily, would see him blushing.\n\nDustfinger felt his leg, and cautiously rose to his feet. The first step he took made his face contort with pain, but then he limped up and down the river bank a few times. 'There we are,' he said. 'A little slower than usual, but it will do. It must.' Then he stopped in front of Farid. 'I believe I owe you a debt,' he said. 'How am I to repay you? Perhaps I could show you something new? A game with fire that only I can play? How about that?'\n\nFarid held his breath. 'What kind of a game is it?' he asked.\n\n'I can't show you except by the sea,' replied Dustfinger, 'but we must go there anyway, because we both need a physician. And the best physician I know lives by the sea. In the shadow of the Castle of Night.'\n\nThey decided to take turns keeping watch. Farid said he would take the first watch, and while Meggie and Dustfinger slept behind him, under the branches of a durmast oak that dipped low to the ground, he sat in the grass and looked up at the sky, where more stars shone than there were fireflies hovering above the river. Farid tried to remember a night, any night, when he had felt as he did now, so entirely at ease with himself, but he couldn't. This was the best of all nights for him \u2013 in spite of all the terrors that lay behind him, in spite of his burned fingers, which still hurt although Dustfinger had put fairy dust on them, and the cooling ointment that Roxane had made for him.\n\nHe felt so much alive. As alive as the fire.\n\nHe had saved Dustfinger. He had been stronger than the words. Everything was all right.\n\nThe two martens were squabbling behind him, no doubt over prey of some kind. 'Wake me when the moon is above that hill,' Dustfinger had said, but when Farid went to him he was sleeping deeply, with such peace in his face that Farid decided to let him sleep on, and returned to his place under the stars.\n\nSoon afterwards, when he heard steps behind him, it was not Dustfinger but Meggie he saw there. 'I keep waking up,' she said. 'I just can't stop thinking.'\n\n'Wondering how Fenoglio is going to find you now?'\n\nShe nodded.\n\nShe still believed in words so much. Farid believed in other things: in his knife, in courage and cunning. And in friendship. Meggie leaned her head against his shoulder, and they both remained as silent as the stars above them. After a while a wind rose, cold and gusty, salt as seawater, and Meggie sat up and clasped her arms around her knees, shivering.\n\n'This world,' she said. 'Do you really like it?'\n\nWhat a question! Farid never asked himself such things. He was glad to be with Dustfinger again, and didn't mind where that was.\n\n'It's a cruel world, don't you think?' Meggie went on. 'Mo often told me I forget how cruel it is too easily.'\n\nWith his burned fingers, Farid stroked her fair hair. It shone even in the dark. 'They're all cruel,' he said. 'The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one too. Maybe people don't see the cruelty in your world straight away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.'\n\nHe put his arm round her, sensed her fear, her anxiety, her anger... it was as if he could hear her heart whispering as clearly as the voice of fire.\n\n'You know a funny thing?' she asked. 'Even if I could go back at this moment, I wouldn't. Now that's crazy, isn't it? It's almost as if I'd always wanted to come here, to somewhere like this. But why? It's a terrible place!'\n\n'Terrible and beautiful,' said Farid, and kissed her. Kissing her tasted good. Much better than Dustfinger's fire-honey. Much better than anything he had ever tasted before. 'You can't go back, anyway,' he whispered to her. 'As soon as we have your father free, we'll explain that to him.'\n\n'Explain what?'\n\n'Why, that we're afraid he'll have to leave you here. Because you belong with me now, and I'm staying with Dustfinger.'\n\nShe laughed, and pressed her face to his shoulder in embarrassment. 'I'm sure Mo won't agree to that.'\n\n'Well? So tell him the girls here marry when they're your age.'\n\nShe laughed again, but then her face grew grave. 'Perhaps Mo will stay too,' she said softly. 'Perhaps we'll all stay... Resa and Fenoglio too. And we'll go and fetch Elinor and Darius as well, and then we'll all live happily ever after.' The sad note had crept back into her voice. 'They can't hang Mo, Farid!' she whispered. 'We'll save him, won't we? And my mother and the others. It's always like that in stories: bad things happen but then it all ends happily. And this is a story.'\n\n'Of course!' said Farid, although with the best will in the world he couldn't imagine that happy ending. He felt good, though, all the same.\n\nAfter a while, Meggie dropped off to sleep beside him. And he sat there and kept watch over her \u2013 her and Dustfinger \u2013 all night long. It was the best of all nights."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Right Words",
                "text": "\u2003There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple. If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with't.\n\n\u2014William Shakespeare, The Tempest\n\nThe groom was a fool, and took forever to saddle up the wretched horse. I never invented a character like that, thought Fenoglio. Lucky that I'm in a good mood. For he was indeed in the best of moods. He had been whistling quietly to himself for hours, because he had done it. He had found the solution! Yes, at last the words had flowed on to the parchment as if they'd just been waiting for him to fish them out of the sea of letters. The right words. The only right words. Now the story could go on and all would end well. He was an enchanter after all, a conjuror with words, one of the very first quality. No one could hold a candle to him \u2013 well, one or two, maybe, but in his own world, not this one. If only this dolt of a groom would hurry up! It was high time he went to Roxane's house or she would ride away without the letter \u2013 and then how was he going to get it to Meggie? For there was still no sign of life from the young hothead he had sent after her. That callow youth had probably got lost in the Wayless Wood.\n\nHe felt for the letter under his cloak. A good thing that words weighed light, light as a feather, even the most important of them. Roxane wouldn't have a heavy load to carry when she took Meggie the Adderhead's death warrant. And she would take something else to the principality by the sea with her \u2013 the certainty of Cosimo's victory.\n\nJust so long as Cosimo didn't set out before Meggie even had a chance to read his words! Cosimo was burning with impatience, longing for the day when he would lead his soldiers to the other side of the forest. 'Because he wants to find out who he is!' whispered the quiet voice in Fenoglio's head (or was it in his heart?). 'Because your fine avenging angel is empty, like a box with nothing inside it. A few borrowed memories, a few stone statues \u2013 that's all the poor lad has, and your stories of his heroic deeds. He searches his empty heart in desperation for some echo of them. You ought to have tried to bring the real Cosimo back, after all, straight back from the realm of the dead, but you didn't dare!' Hush! Fenoglio shook his head in annoyance. Why did these troublesome thoughts keep returning? Everything would be all right once Cosimo sat on the Adderhead's throne. Then he'd have memories of his own, and he'd gather more of them every day. And soon the emptiness would be forgotten.\n\nHis horse was saddled at last. The groom helped him to mount, his mouth twisted in a mocking smile. The fool! Fenoglio knew he didn't cut a very good figure on a horse, he'd never get used to riding \u2013 but so what? These horses were alarming beasts, much too strong for his liking, but a poet living at his prince's court didn't travel on foot like a peasant. And he would go much faster on horseback \u2013 assuming the animal wanted to go the same way as he did. What a business it was to get the creature moving!\n\nThe hooves clattered over the paved courtyard, past the barrels of pitch and iron spikes that Cosimo was having set on the walls. The castle still resounded at night to the hammering of the smiths, and Cosimo's soldiers slept in the wooden huts along the wall, crammed close together like larvae in an ants' nest. He had certainly brought a warrior angel into being, but hadn't angels always been warlike? The fact is, I'm just no good at making up peaceful characters, thought Fenoglio as he trotted across the yard. The good ones either have bad luck like Dustfinger, or they fall among thieves like the Black Prince. Could he ever have made up a character like Mortimer? Probably not.\n\nAs Fenoglio was riding towards the Outer Gate it swung open, so that for a moment he actually assumed the guards were finally showing a little respect for their prince's poet. But when he saw how low they bent their heads he realized that it couldn't possibly be for him.\n\nCosimo came riding towards him through the wide gateway, on a horse so white that it looked a little unreal. In the dark he looked almost more beautiful than by day, but wasn't that the case with all angels? Only seven soldiers followed him; he never took more as guards on his nocturnal rides. But someone else rode at his side too: Brianna, Dustfinger's daughter, no longer wearing a dress that had belonged to her mistress, poor Violante, as so often in the past, but in one of the gowns that Cosimo had given her. He heaped presents upon her, while he no longer allowed his wife even to leave the castle, or their son either. But in spite of all these proofs of love, Brianna didn't look particularly happy. And why should she? What girl would be cheerful if her lover was planning to go to war? The prospect didn't seem to cloud Cosimo's mood. Far from it; he looked as light at heart as if the future could bring nothing but good. He went riding every night. He seemed to need very little sleep, and Fenoglio had heard he rode at such a breakneck pace that hardly any of his bodyguards could keep up \u2013 like a man who had been told that Death had no power over him. What difference did it make anyway, when he could remember neither his death nor his life?\n\nDay and night, Balbulus was painting the most wonderful pictures to illustrate stories about that lost life. More than a dozen scribes supplied him with the hand-written pages. 'My husband still won't enter the library,' Violante had commented bitterly, last time Fenoglio saw her. 'But he fills all the reading desks with books about himself.'\n\nUnfortunately, it was only too clear that the words from which Fenoglio and Meggie had made him did not satisfy Cosimo. There were simply not enough of them. Everything he heard about himself seemed to be to do with another man. Perhaps that was why he loved Dustfinger's daughter so much: because she had nothing to do with the man he seemed to have been before his death. Fenoglio had to keep writing new and ardent love songs to Brianna for him. He generally stole them from other poets; he had always had a good memory for verse, and Meggie wasn't here now to catch him in the act of theft. Tears always came to Brianna's eyes when one of the minstrels, who were now welcomed to the castle again, sang her one of those songs.\n\n'Fenoglio!' Cosimo reined in his horse, and Fenoglio bent his head in the most natural way in the world, as he did only for the young prince. 'Where are you going, poet? Everything's ready for us to march out!' He sounded as impatient as his horse, which was prancing back and forth, and threatened to infect Fenoglio's horse with its restlessness. 'Or would you rather stay here and sharpen your pens for all the songs you'll have to write about my victory?'\n\nMarch out? Ready?\n\nFenoglio looked round in confusion, but Cosimo laughed. 'Do you think I'd assemble the troops here in the castle? There are far too many for that. No, they're encamped down by the river. I'm only waiting for one more company of mercenaries recruited for me in the north. They may arrive tomorrow!'\n\nAs soon as that? Fenoglio cast Brianna a quick glance. So that was why she looked so sad. 'Please, Your Grace!' Fenoglio could not conceal the anxiety in his voice. 'It's much too soon! Wait a little longer!'\n\nBut Cosimo only smiled. 'The moon is red, poet! The soothsayers think that's a good sign. A sign that we mustn't miss the moment, or all may come to grief.'\n\nWhat nonsense! Fenoglio bowed his head to keep Cosimo from seeing the annoyance in his face. Cosimo knew anyway that his love of soothsayers and fortune-tellers irritated Fenoglio, who thought them all a set of avaricious frauds. 'Let me say it once again, Your Grace!' He had repeated this warning so often that it was beginning to sound flat. 'The only thing that will bring you bad luck is setting out too soon!'\n\nBut Cosimo merely shook his head indulgently.\n\n'You're an old man, Fenoglio,' he said. 'Your blood flows slowly, but I'm young! What should I wait for? For the Adderhead to recruit mercenaries too and barricade himself in the Castle of Night?'\n\nHe probably did that long ago, thought Fenoglio. And that's why you must wait for the words, my words, and for Meggie to read them, the way she read you here. Wait for her voice! 'Just one or two weeks more, Your Grace!' he said urgently. 'Your peasants must bring their harvest in. What else will they have to live on in winter?'\n\nBut Cosimo didn't want to hear about such things. 'That truly is old man's talk!' he said angrily. 'Where are your fiery words now? They'll live on the Adderhead's stores of provisions, on the good fortune of our victory, on the silver from the Castle of Night. I'll have it distributed in the villages!'\n\nThey can't eat silver, Your Grace, thought Fenoglio, but he did not say so aloud. Instead, he looked up at the sky. Dear God, how high the moon had risen already! But Cosimo still had something on his mind.\n\n'There's a question I've been meaning to ask you for some time,' he said, just as Fenoglio was about to take his leave with some stammered excuse. 'You're so friendly with the strolling players. Everyone's talking about that fire-eater, the one they say can talk to the flames...'\n\nOut of the corner of his eye, Fenoglio saw Brianna bend her head.\n\n'You mean Dustfinger?'\n\n'Yes, that's his name. I know he's Brianna's father,' said Cosimo, casting her a loving glance, 'but she won't talk about him. And she says she doesn't know where he is now. But perhaps you do?' Cosimo patted his horse's neck. His face seemed to burn with beauty.\n\n'Why? What do you want of him?'\n\n'Isn't that obvious? He can talk to fire! They say he can make the flames grow to a great height without burning him.'\n\nFenoglio understood even before Cosimo explained. 'You want Dustfinger for your war.' He couldn't help it, he laughed aloud.\n\n'What's so funny about that?' Cosimo frowned.\n\nDustfinger the fire-dancer as a weapon. Fenoglio shook his head. 'Oh no,' he said. 'I know Dustfinger very well \u2013' he saw Brianna give him a look of surprise as he said so \u2013 'and he is many things, but certainly not a warrior. He'd laugh in your face.'\n\n'He had better not.' There was no mistaking the anger in Cosimo's voice. But Brianna was looking at Fenoglio as if she had a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue. Well, this was no time for them! 'Your Highness,' he said hastily, 'please excuse me now! One of Minerva's children is ill, and I promised to get a few herbs from Brianna's mother for her.'\n\n'Oh, I see. Of course. Yes, of course, ride on, and we'll talk later.' Cosimo gathered up his reins again. 'If the child doesn't improve let me know, and I'll send a physician.'\n\n'Thank you,' said Fenoglio, but before he finally went on his way there was one question he himself had to ask. 'I've heard your wife isn't well either?' Balbulus, who at present was the only visitor allowed to see Violante, had told him so.\n\n'Oh, she's just in a temper.' Cosimo took Brianna's hand as if to comfort her for the fact that they were talking about his wife. 'Violante loses her temper easily. She gets it from her father. She simply will not understand why I won't let her leave the castle, yet it's obvious that her father's informers are everywhere, and who would they try to pump for information first? Violante and Jacopo.' It was hard not to believe every word that those beautiful lips uttered, particularly when they spoke with so much genuine conviction.\n\n'Well, I expect you're right! But please don't forget that your wife hates her father.'\n\n'You can hate someone and obey him all the same. Isn't that so?' Cosimo looked at Fenoglio with that naked expression in his eyes, like the eyes of a very young baby.\n\n'Yes, yes, probably,' he replied uncomfortably. Every time Cosimo looked at him like that, Fenoglio felt as if he had found an empty page in a book, a moth-hole in the finely woven carpet of words.\n\n'Your Highness!' he said, bowing his head again, and he finally, if not very elegantly, got his horse to trot out of the gateway.\n\nBrianna had given him a good description of the way to her mother's farmhouse. He had asked her about it after Roxane's visit, apparently in all innocence, saying that he was plagued by aching bones. Dustfinger's daughter was a strange child. She wanted nothing to do with her father, and obviously not much with her mother either. Luckily she had warned him about the goose, so he was holding the horse's reins firmly when the cackling bird came towards him. Roxane was sitting outside her house when he rode into the yard. It was a poor place. Her beauty seemed to fit into it as little as a jewel in a beggar's hut. Her son was sleeping in the doorway beside her, curled up like a puppy, his head on her lap.\n\n'He wants to come with me,' she said as Fenoglio slid clumsily off the horse. 'The little girl cried too, when I told her I had to go away. But I can't take them, not to Argenta. The Adderhead's had children hanged before now. A friend is going to look after the girl for me, and Jehan, and the plants and animals too.'\n\nShe stroked her son's dark hair, and for a moment Fenoglio didn't want her to ride away. But what would become of his words then? Who else would find Meggie? Should he ask Cosimo for another horseman who might not come back either? Well, who knows, maybe Roxane won't come back, an insidious voice inside him whispered. And then your precious words will be lost. 'Nonsense!' he said angrily, out loud. 'I made a copy, of course.'\n\n'What did you say?' Roxane looked at him in surprise.\n\n'Oh, nothing, nothing!' Heavens above, now he was talking to himself. 'There's something else I have to tell you \u2013 don't ride to the mill! A minstrel who sings for Cosimo has brought me news from the Black Prince.'\n\nRoxane pressed her hand to her mouth.\n\n'No, no. It's not so bad!' Fenoglio quickly reassured her. 'The fact is, Meggie's father has obviously been taken prisoner by the Adderhead, but to be honest I feared as much. As for Dustfinger and Meggie \u2013 well, to be brief, the mill where Meggie was going to wait for my letter seems to have burned down. Apparently the miller is telling everyone that a marten made fire rain down from the roof, while a wizard with a scarred face spoke to the flames. It seems this wizard had a demon with him in the shape of a dark-skinned boy who saved him when he was wounded and helped him and a girl to escape.'\n\nRoxane looked at him with a thoughtful expression, as if she had to search for the meaning of what he said. 'Wounded?'\n\n'Yes, but they escaped! That's the main thing. Roxane, do you think you really can find them?'\n\nShe passed a hand over her forehead. 'I'll try.'\n\n'Don't worry,' said Fenoglio. 'You heard what they're saying. Dustfinger has a demon protecting him now. In any case, hasn't he always managed very well on his own?'\n\n'Oh yes, indeed he has!'\n\nFenoglio cursed every wrinkle on his old face, she was so beautiful. Why didn't he have Cosimo's good looks? Although would she like that? She liked Dustfinger, who ought to have been dead by now if the story had gone the way he had once written it. Fenoglio, he told himself, this is going too far. You're behaving like a jealous lover!\n\nBut Roxane was taking no notice of him anyway. She looked down at the boy sleeping in her lap. 'Brianna was furious when she heard I was going to ride after her father,' she said. 'I only hope Cosimo will look after her, and won't begin his war before I get back.'\n\nFenoglio made no reply to that. Why tell her about Cosimo's plans? To make her even more anxious? No. He took out the letter for Meggie from under his cloak. Written words that could become sound, a mighty sound... he had never before made Rosenquartz seal a letter so carefully.\n\n'This letter can save Meggie's parents,' he said urgently. 'It can save her father. It can save us all, so take good care of it!'\n\nRoxane turned the sealed parchment this way and that, as if it seemed to her too small for such great claims. 'I never heard of a letter that could open the dungeons of the Castle of Night,' she said. 'Do you think it's right to give the girl false hopes?'\n\n'They aren't false,' said Fenoglio, rather hurt to find that she had so little faith in his words.\n\n'Very well. If I find Dustfinger, and the girl is still with him, she'll get your letter.' Roxane stroked her son's hair again, very gently, as if to brush a leaf away. 'Does she love her father?'\n\n'Yes. Yes, she loves him very much.'\n\n'My daughter loves hers too. Brianna loves him so much that she won't speak a word to him now. When he went away in the old days, when he just used to go into the forest or down to the sea, anywhere that fire or the wind happened to lure him, she would try to run after him on her little feet. I don't think he even noticed, he always disappeared so fast, quick as a fox that has stolen a chicken. But she loved him all the same. Why? That boy loves him too. He even thinks Dustfinger needs him, but he needs no one, only fire.'\n\nFenoglio looked thoughtfully at her. 'You're wrong,' he said. 'He was wretchedly unhappy when he was away. You should have seen him.'\n\nShe eyed him incredulously. 'You know where he was?'\n\nNow what? Old fool that he was, what had he said this time? 'Well, yes,' he stammered. 'Yes. Yes, I was there myself.' He needed some lies, and where were they? The truth wasn't going to be much use this time. A few good lies were needed to explain everything. Why shouldn't he find a few good words for Dustfinger for a change \u2013 even if he envied him his wife?\n\n'He says he couldn't come back.' She didn't believe it, but you could tell from Roxane's voice how much she wished she did.\n\n'That's exactly how it was! He had a bad time! Capricorn set Basta on him, they took him far, far away and tried to make him tell them how to talk with fire.' Here came the lies now, and they might even be close to the truth, who could say? 'Believe me, Basta took his revenge for your preference for Dustfinger! They shut him away for years, and he finally escaped, but they soon found him and beat him half to death.' Meggie had told him that part. A little of the truth couldn't hurt, and Roxane didn't have to know that it was because of Resa. 'It was dreadful, dreadful!' Fenoglio felt the pleasure of storytelling run away with him, the pleasure of watching Roxane's eyes widen as she hung on his lips, waiting eagerly for his next words. Should he make Dustfinger a little villainous after all? No, he'd killed him once already, he'd do him a favour today. He would make his wife forgive him, once and for all, for staying away those ten years. Sometimes I can be a truly benevolent person, thought Fenoglio.\n\n'He thought he'd die. He thought he'd never see you again, and that was the worst of it for him.' Fenoglio had to clear his throat. He was moved by his own words \u2013 and so was Roxane. Oh yes, he saw the distrust disappear from her eyes, he saw them soften with love. 'After that he wandered in strange lands, like a dog turned out of doors, looking for a way that would take him not to Basta or Capricorn but to you.' The words were coming as if of their own accord now. As if he really knew what Dustfinger had felt all those years. 'He was forlorn, truly forlorn, his heart was cold as a stone from loneliness. There was no room in it for anything but longing \u2013 longing for you. And for his daughter.'\n\n'He had two daughters.' Roxane's voice was almost inaudible.\n\nDamn it, he'd forgotten that. Two daughters, of course! But Roxane was so rapt with his words that his mistake didn't break the spell.\n\n'How do you know all this?' she asked. 'He never told me you knew each other so well.'\n\nOh, no one knows him better, thought Fenoglio. I can assure you, my beauty, no one knows him better.\n\nRoxane pushed her black hair back from her face. Fenoglio saw a trace of grey in it, as if she had combed it with a dusty comb. 'I shall ride early in the morning,' she said.\n\n'Excellent.' Fenoglio drew his horse to his side. Why was it so difficult to get on to these creatures with anything like elegance? 'Look after yourself,' he said, when he was finally on the horse's back. 'And the letter too. And give Meggie my love. Tell her everything will be all right. I promise.'\n\nAs he rode away she stood beside her sleeping son, looking thoughtful, and watched him go. He really did hope she would find Dustfinger, and it wasn't just that he wanted Meggie to get his words. No. A little happiness in this story couldn't hurt, and Roxane was not happy without Dustfinger. That was the way he'd fixed it.\n\nHe doesn't deserve her, all the same, thought Fenoglio again as he rode towards the lights of Ombra, which were neither as bright nor as many as the lights of his old world, but were at least equally inviting. Soon the houses behind the protecting walls would be without their menfolk. They would all be going with Cosimo, including Minerva's husband \u2013 although she had begged him to stay \u2013 and the cobbler whose workshop was next to his. Even the rag-collector who went round every Tuesday was going to fight the Adderhead. Would they follow Cosimo as willingly if I'd made him ugly, Fenoglio wondered? Ugly as the Adderhead with his butcher's face? No, people find it easier to believe that a man with a handsome face has good intentions, so he had done well to put an angel on the throne. Yes, that was clever, extremely clever. Fenoglio caught himself humming quietly as the horse carried him past the guards. They let him in without a word, their prince's poet, the man who put their world into words, and had made it out of words. Bow your heads to Fenoglio!\n\nThe guards would go with Cosimo too, and the soldiers up in the castle, and the grooms who were hardly as old as the boy who went around with Dustfinger. Even Minerva's son Ivo would have gone if she had let him. They'll all come back, thought Fenoglio as he rode towards the stables. Or most of them, at least. It will end well, I know it will. Not just well, but very well indeed!"
            },
            {
                "title": "Angry Orpheus",
                "text": "\u2003All words are written in the same ink,\n\n\u2003'flower' and 'power', say, are much the same,\n\n\u2003and though I might write 'blood, blood, blood'\n\n\u2003all over the page the paper would not be stained\n\n\u2003nor would I bleed.\n\n\u2014Philippe Jacottet, 'Chant d'en bas'\n\nElinor lay on her air mattress staring at the ceiling. She had quarrelled with Orpheus again, even though she knew she'd be punished with the cellar. Sent to bed early, Elinor! she thought bitterly. That was how her father used to punish her as a child when he caught her yet again with a book that he didn't think she should be reading at her age. Sent to bed early, sometimes at five in the afternoon. It had been particularly bad in summer, when the birds were singing and her sister was playing outside under the window \u2013 her sister who didn't care for books at all, but liked nothing so much as telling tales on Elinor when, instead of playing with her, she buried her head in a book that her father had said she mustn't read.\n\n'Elinor, please don't quarrel with Orpheus!' Darius had tried drumming that into her so often, but no, she just couldn't control her temper! How could she be expected to, when his wretched dog slobbered all over some of her most valuable books because his master never thought of putting them back on their shelves when he'd had his fun with them?\n\nRecently, however, he hadn't been taking any more books off the shelves, not one. That at least was a small comfort. 'He just reads Inkheart,' Darius had whispered to her as they were washing the dishes together in the kitchen. Her dishwasher had gone wrong. As if it wasn't bad enough to be working as a kitchen-maid in her own house, now her hands were all swollen with washing-up water! 'He seems to be looking for words,' Darius whispered. 'Then he puts them together differently, writes them down, writes and writes, the wastepaper basket is brimming over. He keeps on trying, and then he reads what he's written out loud, and when nothing happens...'\n\n'Yes? Then what?'\n\n'Oh, nothing,' Darius had said evasively, scrubbing away industriously at a pan encrusted with fat, but Elinor knew that if it was 'nothing' he wouldn't have turned so embarrassed and silent.\n\n'Then what?' she repeated \u2013 and Darius, blushing to his ears, had finally told her. Then Orpheus threw her books, her wonderful books, at the walls. He flung them on the floor in his rage \u2013 now and then one even sailed out of the window \u2013 and all because he couldn't do what Meggie had done. Inkheart was closed to him, however lovingly he cooed and implored in his velvety voice, reading and rereading the sentences he so longed to slip between.\n\nOf course, she had run straight off when she next heard him shouting. She'd gone to save her printed children. 'No!' Orpheus had yelled, so loudly that you could hear him in the kitchen. 'No, no, no! Let me in, you thrice-accursed thing! I sent Dustfinger back into you! Can't you understand that? What would you be without him? I gave you back Mortola and Basta! I've earned my reward, haven't I?'\n\nThe man built like a wardrobe wasn't standing outside the library door to stop Elinor. He was probably roaming the house yet again, to see if he could find something worth stealing after all. Not in a hundred years would it have occurred to him that the books were by far the most valuable things in the place. Later, Elinor couldn't remember the names she had called Orpheus. She remembered only the book he was holding in his raised hand, a beautiful edition of the poems of William Blake. And for all her furious insults, he threw it out of the window, while the wardrobe-man grabbed her from behind and dragged her to the cellar stairs.\n\nOh, Meggie! thought Elinor as she lay on the air mattress, staring up at the crumbling plaster on her cellar ceiling. Why didn't you take me with you? Why didn't you at least ask if I'd like to come too?"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Barn Owl",
                "text": "And every doctor must know that God has set a great mystery in the plants, if only because of the spirits and wild fancies that cast men into despair, and this aid comes not from the Devil but from Nature.\n\n[ Paracelsus, Works ]\n\nThe sea. Meggie hadn't seen it since the day they drove back from Capricorn's village to Elinor's house with the fairies and brownies who were nothing but ashes now. 'This is where the physician I told you about lives,' said Dustfinger, when the bay appeared beyond the trees. It was beautiful. The sun made the water shimmer like green glass, foaming glass constantly shaped by the wind into new folds. It was a strong wind, driving veils of cloud over the blue sky, and it carried a scent of salt and distant islands. It would have gladdened the heart but for the bare hill in the distance rising above the wooded slopes, and the castle on top of the hill, broad and heavy as its master's face, in spite of its silvered rooftops and battlements.\n\n'Yes, there it is,' said Dustfinger, when he saw Meggie's look of alarm. 'The Castle of Night. And the hill where it stands is called Mount Adder, what else? Bare as an old man's bald head, so no one can come close under the cover of trees. But don't worry, it's not quite as close as it looks.'\n\n'The towers,' said Farid. 'Are they really all pure silver?'\n\n'Oh yes,' said Dustfinger. 'Dug from the mountains, this one and others. Roast fowls, young women, fertile land... and silver... the Adderhead has a hearty appetite for many things.'\n\nA broad, sandy beach edged the bay. Where it joined the trees a long wall and a tower rose, sand-coloured and inconspicuous. There was not a soul to be seen on the beach, no boat was drawn up on the pale sand, only that building \u2013 the low tower and the long, tiled rooftops hardly visible behind the wall. A path wound towards it like a viper's trail, but Dustfinger led them round to the back of the building under cover of the trees. He beckoned impatiently to them before disappearing into the shadow of the wall. The wood of the door outside which he was waiting for them was weathered, and the bell hanging above it was rusty with the salty wind. Wild flowers grew near the door, faded blossoms and brown seed-heads with a fairy nibbling at them. She had paler skin than her woodland sisters.\n\nIt all seemed so peaceful. The buzz of a wasp reached Meggie's ear, mingling with the roaring of the sea, but she remembered only too well how peaceful the mill had looked. Dustfinger had not forgotten it either. He stood there listening intently before he finally put out his hand and pulled the chain of the rusty bell. His leg was bleeding again \u2013 Meggie saw him press his hand to it \u2013 but nonetheless he had kept urging them to make haste on the way to this place. 'There's no better physician,' was all he would say when Farid asked where he was taking them, 'and none we can trust more. In addition, it's not far from there to the Castle of Night, and that's where Meggie still wants to go, doesn't she?' He had given them some leaves to eat, downy and bitter. 'Get them down inside you,' he said when they made faces of disgust. 'You can stay where we're going only if you have at least five of them in your belly.'\n\nThe wooden door opened just a crack, and a woman peered through. 'By all good spirits!' Meggie heard her whisper, and then the door opened and a thin, wrinkled hand beckoned them in. The woman who quickly closed it behind them again was just as wrinkled and thin as her hand, and she stared at Dustfinger as if he had fallen straight from heaven.\n\n'Yesterday! He said so yesterday!' she exclaimed. 'You wait and see, Bella, he's back, that's what he said. Who else would have set the mill ablaze? Who else talks to fire? He didn't get a wink of sleep all night. He was worried, but you're all right, aren't you? What's the matter with your leg?'\n\nDustfinger put a finger to his mouth, but Meggie saw that he was smiling. 'It could be better,' he said quietly. 'And you talk as fast as ever, Bella, but could you take us to the Barn Owl now?'\n\n'Yes, yes, of course!' Bella sounded slightly injured. 'I suppose you have that horrible marten in there?' she enquired, with a distrustful look at Dustfinger's rucksack. 'Don't you go letting him out.'\n\n'Of course not,' Dustfinger assured her, casting a glance at Farid which obviously warned him to say nothing about the second marten asleep in his own rucksack.\n\nWithout another word, the old woman beckoned to them to follow her down a dark, unadorned colonnade. She took small, hasty footsteps, as if she were a squirrel wearing a long dress of coarsely woven fabric. 'A good thing you came round the back way,' she said in a lowered voice as she led them past a series of closed doors. 'I'm afraid the Adderhead has ears even here now, but luckily he doesn't pay his informers well enough for them to work in the wing where we treat infectious cases. I hope you gave those two enough of the leaves?'\n\n'Yes, indeed.' Dustfinger nodded, but Meggie saw that he looked around uneasily, and inconspicuously put another of the leaves that he had given them in his own mouth. Not until they passed the fragile figures sunning themselves in the courtyard around which the colonnade ran did Meggie realize just where Dustfinger had brought them. It was an infirmary. Farid put his hand to his mouth in horror when they met an old man who looked as pale as if Death had come for him long ago, and he replied to the man's toothless smile with only a frightened nod.\n\n'Don't look as if you were about to fall down dead!' Dustfinger whispered to him, although he didn't look particularly comfortable here either. 'Your fingers will be well tended here, and moreover we'll be relatively safe, which is more than can be said for many places on this side of the forest.'\n\n'Yes, if there's one thing the Adderhead fears,' added Bella in knowing tones, 'it's death and the diseases that lead to it. All the same, you shouldn't let either the patients or the nurses here see more of you than they must. If there's one thing I've learned in life it's never to trust anyone. Except the Barn Owl, of course.'\n\n'And what about me, Bella?' asked Dustfinger.\n\n'You least of all!' was her only reply. She stopped at a plain wooden door. 'It's a pity your face is so unmistakable,' she told Dustfinger, low-voiced, 'or you could have put on a show for our patients. Nothing does the sick more good than a little pleasure.' Then she knocked on the door and, with a nod, stepped aside.\n\nThe room on the other side of the door was dark, for the only window was half hidden behind stacks of books. It was the kind of room Mo would have loved. He liked books to look as if someone had only just put them down. Quite unlike Elinor, he saw nothing wrong in leaving them lying there open, waiting for the next reader. The Barn Owl seemed to feel the same. He could hardly be spotted among all those piled books \u2013 a small man with short-sighted eyes and broad hands. He looked to Meggie like a mole, except that his hair was grey.\n\n'Didn't I say so?' He knocked two books off their stacks as he hurried towards Dustfinger. '\"He's back,\" I said, but they wouldn't believe it. Obviously the White Women are letting more and more of the dead come back to life these days!'\n\nThe two men embraced. Then the Barn Owl took a step back and looked Dustfinger thoroughly up and down. The physician was an old man, older than Fenoglio, but his eyes were as young as Farid's. 'You look all right,' he commented, pleased. 'Except for your leg. What's the matter with it? Did you get that injury at the mill? One of my women healers was taken up to the castle yesterday to tend two men bitten by fire. She brought back a strange story about an ambush, and a horned marten that spits fire...'\n\nUp to the castle? Instinctively, Meggie moved towards the physician. 'Did she see the prisoners too?' she interrupted him. 'They would just have been taken there \u2013 strolling players, men and women. My mother and father are with them.'\n\nThe Barn Owl looked at her sympathetically. 'Are you the girl that the Black Prince's men told me about? Your father\u2014'\n\n'\u2013 is the man they take for the Bluejay,' Dustfinger finished the sentence. 'Do you know how he and the other prisoners are?'\n\nBefore the Barn Owl could answer, a girl put her head round the door. She stared at the strangers in alarm. Her eyes lingered on Meggie so long that finally the Barn Owl cleared his throat.\n\n'What is it, Carla?' he asked.\n\nThe girl bit her pale lips nervously. 'I'm to ask if we have any eyebright left,' she said timidly.\n\n'Of course. Go to Bella and she'll give you some, but now leave us alone.'\n\nThe girl disappeared with a hasty nod, but she left the door open. Sighing, the Barn Owl closed it and then bolted it too. 'Where were we? Oh yes, the prisoners. The physician responsible for the dungeons is looking after them. He's useless at his job, but who else could stand it up there? Instead of healing the sick he has to preside over whippings and lashings. Luckily they're not letting him near your father, and the Adderhead's own physician isn't going to soil his fingers on a prisoner, so my best woman healer goes up to the castle every day to tend him.'\n\n'How is my father?' Meggie tried not to sound like a little girl holding back her tears with difficulty, but she didn't entirely succeed.\n\n'He's badly wounded, but I think you know that?'\n\nMeggie nodded. And the tears came again, flowing and flowing as if to wash it all out of her heart: her grief, her longing, her fear. Farid put his arm round her shoulders, but that just reminded her of Mo even more \u2013 of all the years he had protected her and held her close. And now that he was in trouble, she wasn't with him.\n\n'He's lost a great deal of blood, and he's still weak, but he's doing well \u2013 much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know.' You could tell from the Barn Owl's voice that he often had to talk to people who were anxious about those they loved. 'My healer has advised him not to let anyone notice, to give us more time. But at the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about.'\n\nMeggie's heart soared. It will be all right, something inside her said \u2013 for the first time since Dustfinger had given her Resa's note. Everything will be all right! Feeling embarrassed, she wiped the tears off her face.\n\n'The weapon that wounded your father \u2013 my healer says it must be a terrible thing,' the Barn Owl continued. 'I hope the Adderhead's armourers are not working on some diabolical invention in secret!'\n\n'No, that weapon was from a very different place.' And nothing good comes from that place, said Dustfinger's face, but Meggie didn't want to think of what a gun could do to this world just now. Her thoughts were with Mo.\n\n'My father,' she told the Barn Owl, 'would like this room very much. He loves books, and yours are really beautiful. Although he'd probably tell you that some of them needed rebinding, and that one won't live much longer if you don't soon do something about the beetles eating it.'\n\nThe Barn Owl picked up the book she had pointed out and caressed the pages just as Mo always did. 'The Bluejay loves books?' he asked. 'Unusual for a robber.'\n\n'He's not a robber,' said Meggie. 'He's a doctor like you, only he heals books instead of people.'\n\n'Really? Then is it true that the Adderhead had captured the wrong man? In that case, I suppose when they say your father killed Capricorn, that isn't true either?'\n\n'Oh yes, that's true.' Dustfinger looked out of the window as if he saw the scene of Capricorn's festivities outside. 'And all he needed to do it was his voice. You ought to get him or his daughter to read to you some time. Afterwards, I assure you, you'll see your books in a very different light. You might well close and padlock them.'\n\n'Really?' The Barn Owl looked at Meggie with great interest, as if he would like to hear more about Capricorn's death, but there was another knock. This time a man's voice came through the bolted door. 'Will you come, master? We've prepared everything, but it will be better if you make the incision.'\n\nMeggie saw Farid turn pale. 'Just coming!' said the Barn Owl. 'You go ahead. I hope I can welcome your father to this room some day,' he said to Meggie as he went to the door. 'For you're right: my books could certainly do with a doctor. Does the Black Prince have any plans for the prisoners?' He looked enquiringly at Dustfinger.\n\n'No. No, I don't think so. Have you heard anything about the other captives? Meggie's mother is among them.' It gave Meggie a pang that Dustfinger, and not she, had been the one to ask about Resa.\n\n'No, I don't know anything about the others,' replied the Barn Owl. 'But now you must excuse me. I am sure Bella's already told you that you had better keep to this part of the building. The Adderhead is spending more and more of his silver on informers. No place in Argenta is safe from them, not even this one.'\n\n'I know.' Dustfinger picked up one of the books lying on the Barn Owl's table. It was a herbal. Meggie could imagine how Elinor would have looked at it \u2013 full of longing to own it \u2013 and Mo would have run a finger over the painted pages as if he could feel the brush that had conjured up the fine lines of the pictures on paper. But what was Dustfinger thinking of? The herbs in Roxane's fields? 'Believe me, I wouldn't have come here but for what happened at the mill,' he said. 'No one would want to bring danger to this place, but we'll be gone again this very day.'\n\nHowever, the Barn Owl wouldn't hear of it. 'Nonsense, you must stay until your leg and the boy's fingers are better,' he said. 'You know how glad I am you came. And I'm glad you have the boy with you too. Did you know,' he asked, turning to Farid, 'he's never had a pupil before? I was always telling him that a master must pass on his art, but he wouldn't listen to me. I pass mine on to many, and that's why I must leave you now. I have to show a pupil how to cut a foot off without killing the man it's attached to.'\n\nFarid stared at him, horrified. 'Cut it off?' he whispered. 'How do you mean, cut it off?' But the Barn Owl had already closed the door behind him.\n\n'Didn't I tell you?' said Dustfinger, feeling his injured thigh. 'The Barn Owl is a first-class sawbones. But I think we'll be allowed to keep our own fingers and feet.'\n\nAfter Bella had treated Farid's blisters and Dustfinger's leg, she took them to a remote room, close to the door through which they had entered the building. Meggie liked the prospect of sleeping under a roof again, but Farid was not at all comfortable with the idea. Looking unhappy, he squatted on the lavender-strewn floor, chewing one of the bitter leaves with determination. 'Can't we sleep on the beach tonight? I should think the sand would be nice and soft,' he asked Dustfinger, who was stretching out on one of the straw mattresses. 'Or in the forest?'\n\n'If you like,' replied Dustfinger. 'But let me sleep now. And stop looking as if I'd brought you among cannibals, or I won't show you what I promised tomorrow night.'\n\n'Tomorrow?' Farid spat the leaf out into his hand. 'Why not tonight?'\n\n'Because it's too windy now,' said Dustfinger, turning his back on him, 'and because my damned leg hurts... do you need any more reasons?'\n\nRemorsefully, Farid shook his head, put the leaf back in his mouth and stared at the door as if Death in person might walk in any moment. But Meggie just sat there in the bare room, repeating to herself, over and over, what the Barn Owl had said about Mo: he's doing well \u2013 much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know... at the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about.\n\nWhen twilight fell, Dustfinger limped outside. He leaned against a column and looked up at the hill where the Castle of Night stood. Never moving, he gazed at the silver towers \u2013 and Meggie asked herself, for what was surely the hundredth time, if he was helping her only for her mother's sake. Perhaps Dustfinger himself didn't know."
            },
            {
                "title": "In the Dungeon of the Castle of Night",
                "text": "\u2003They say:\n\n\u2003Speak for us (to whom?)\n\n\u2003Some say: Avenge us (on whom?)\n\n\u2003Some say: take our place.\n\n\u2003Some say: Witness\n\n\u2003Others say (and these are women)\n\n\u2003Be happy for us.\n\n\u2014Margaret Atwood, 'Down', Eating Fire\n\nMina was crying again. Resa took the other woman in her arms as if she were still a child, hummed a tune and rocked her as she sometimes rocked Meggie, although by now her daughter was almost as tall as Resa herself.\n\nA girl came twice a day, a thin, nervous little thing, younger than Meggie, to bring them bread and water. Sometimes there was porridge too, cold and sticky, but it filled the stomach \u2013 and reminded Resa of the days when Mortola had locked her up for something she had or hadn't done. The porridge had tasted just like this. When she asked the girl about the Bluejay, the child just ducked her head in fright and left Resa in fear \u2013 the fear that Mo was dead by now, that they had hanged him, up there in the huge courtyard, and the last thing he had seen in this world was not her face, but the silver vipers' heads with their tongues licking down from the walls. Sometimes she saw it all so clearly in her mind's eye that she put her hands over her eyes, but the pictures were still there. And the darkness around her made her think it could all have been a dream: that moment at Capricorn's festivities when she had suddenly seen Mo standing beside Meggie, the year in Elinor's house, all that happiness \u2013 just a dream.\n\nAt least she was not alone. Even if the glances of the others were often hostile, their voices brought her out of her dark thoughts for a brief while. Now and then someone told a story, to keep them from hearing the weeping from the other cells, the scurrying of rats, the screams, the stammering voices that had long since ceased to make sense. Usually it was the women who told stories. Stories of love and death, betrayal and friendship, but they all ended happily, lights in the darkness, like the candles in Resa's pocket with wicks that had now become damp. Resa told fairy-tales that Mo had read aloud to her long, long ago, when Meggie's fingers were still soft and tiny, and the written word held no terrors for any of them yet. As for the strolling players, they told tales of the world around them: of Cosimo the Fair and his battle with the fire-raisers, of the Black Prince and how he found his bear, and his friend the fire-dancer, the man who made sparks rain down and fiery flowers blossom in the darkest night. Benedicta sang a song about him in a soft voice, a beautiful song, and in the end even Twofingers joined in, until the warder banged his stick against the bars and told them to keep quiet.\n\n'I saw him once,' whispered Benedicta when the warder had gone away again. 'Many years ago, when I was a little girl. It was wonderful. The fire was so bright that even my eyes could see it. They say he's dead.'\n\n'No, he isn't,' said Resa quietly. 'Who do you think made the tree across the road burn?' They looked at her so incredulously! But she was too tired to tell them any more. She was too tired to explain anything. Let me go to my husband, that was all she wanted to say. Let me go to my child. Don't tell me any more stories, tell me how they are. Please.\n\nSomeone did at last give her news of Meggie and Mo, but Resa would rather have heard it from any other mouth.\n\nThe others were asleep when Mortola came. She had two soldiers with her. Resa was awake, because she was seeing those pictures again, pictures of Mo being brought into the courtyard, having the rope put around his neck... he's dead, and she has come to tell me! That was her first thought when the Magpie stood before her with a triumphant smile.\n\n'Well, well, here's our faithless maid!' said Mortola as Resa got to her feet, with difficulty. 'You seem to be as much of a witch as your daughter. How have you kept him alive? Perhaps I took aim a little too hastily. Never mind. A few more weeks and he'll be strong enough for his execution!'\n\nAlive.\n\nResa turned her head away so that Mortola wouldn't see the smile that stole over her lips, but the Magpie was not looking at her face. She was enjoying the sight of her torn dress and bleeding, bare feet.\n\n'The Bluejay!' Mortola lowered her voice. 'Of course, I haven't told the Adderhead that he's going to execute the wrong man \u2013 why should I? It's all working out just as I wanted. And I shall get my hands on your daughter too.'\n\nMeggie. The sense of happiness that had briefly warmed Resa's heart disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Beside her, Mina sat up, woken by Mortola's hoarse voice.\n\n'Oh yes, I have powerful friends in this world,' continued the Magpie, with a self-satisfied smile. 'The Adderhead has caught me your husband, why wouldn't he catch me your witch of a daughter too? Do you know how I've convinced him that she's a witch? By showing him a photograph of her. Yes, Resa, I let Basta take the photos of your little darling with him, all those pretty silver-framed photographs standing around the bookworm woman's house. Of course the Adderhead thinks they're magic pictures, mirror images captured on paper. His soldiers are afraid to touch them, but they're showing them around all over the place. A pity we can't duplicate them as we could in your world! But fortunately your daughter has joined forces with Dustfinger, and there's no need for any magic picture of him. Every peasant has heard of him \u2013 him and his scars.'\n\n'He'll protect her!' said Resa. She had to say something.\n\n'Oh yes? The way he protected you?'\n\nResa dug her fingers into the fabric of her dirty dress. There was no one, in either this or the other world, that she hated as much as the Magpie. Not even Basta. It was Mortola who had taught her how to hate. 'Everything is different here,' she managed to say. 'Fire obeys him here, and he's not alone as he was in the other world. He has friends.'\n\n'Friends! Ah, I suppose you mean the other mountebanks: the Black Prince, as he calls himself, and the rest of that rabble!' Contemptuously, the Magpie scanned the other prisoners.\n\nThey had almost all woken up. 'Look at them, Resa!' said Mortola spitefully. 'How are they going to help you out of here? With a few brightly coloured balls, or a couple of sentimental songs? One of them gave you away, did you know that? And as for Dustfinger, what could he do? Unleash fire to save you? It would burn you too, and he certainly won't risk that, besotted with you as he always was.' She leaned forward with a smile. 'Did you ever tell your husband what good friends you two were?'\n\nResa did not reply. She knew Mortola's games. She knew them very well.\n\n'What do you think? Shall I tell him?' Mortola whispered, ready to pounce, like a cat waiting by a mousehole.\n\n'Do that,' Resa whispered back. 'Tell him. You can't tell him anything he doesn't know already. I've given him back the years you stole from us, word for word, day after day. And Mo knows, too, that your own son made you live in his cellar, and let everyone think you were only his housekeeper.'\n\nMortola tried to hit her in the face, as she had so often done before, as she had done to all her maids \u2013 right in the middle of the face \u2013 but Resa caught her hand before it landed.\n\n'He's alive, Mortola!' she whispered to the Magpie. 'This story isn't over yet, and his death isn't written anywhere in it \u2013 but my daughter will whisper yours in your ear when she hears what you did to her father. You'll see one day. And then I shall watch you die.'\n\nThis time she didn't manage to catch Mortola's hand, and her cheek was still burning long after the Magpie had gone away. She felt the eyes of the other prisoners like fingers feeling her face when she was sitting on the cold ground again. Mina was the first to say something. 'Where did you meet the old woman? She mixed poisons for Capricorn.'\n\n'I know,' said Resa tonelessly. 'I belonged to her. For many long years.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Letter from Fenoglio",
                "text": "\u2003Is there then a world\n\n\u2003Where I rule absolutely on fate?\n\n\u2003A time I bind with chains of signs?\n\n\u2003An existence become endless at my bidding?\n\n\u2014Wislawa Szymborska, 'The joy of writing', View with a Grain of Sand\n\nDustfinger was asleep when Roxane arrived. It was already growing dark outside. Farid and Meggie had gone out to the beach, but he was lying down because his leg was hurting. When he saw Roxane standing in the doorway he thought at first his imagination was playing tricks on him, as it so often did by night. After all, he had once been here with her, very long ago. The room they had then had looked almost the same, and he had been lying on a straw mattress just like this, his face slashed and sticky with his own blood.\n\nRoxane was wearing her hair loose. Perhaps that was why she woke the memory of that other night. His heart always seemed to miss a beat at the mere thought of it. He had been mad with pain and fear, had crawled away like a wounded animal, until Roxane found him and brought him here. At first the Barn Owl had hardly recognized him. He had given him something to drink that made him sleep, and when he woke again Roxane had been standing in the doorway, just as she was standing now. When the cuts would not heal, for all the physician's skill, she had gone into the forest with him, deeper and deeper into the forest to find the fairies \u2013 and she had stayed with him until his face was healed well enough for him to venture among other people again. There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.\n\nBut what was his greeting when she suddenly appeared? 'What are you doing here?' he asked. Then he could have bitten his tongue off. Why didn't he say how much he had missed her, so much that he had almost turned back a dozen times?\n\n'Yes, indeed, what am I doing here?' Roxane asked back. Once she would have turned her back on him for such a question, but now she just smiled, so mockingly that he felt as awkward as a boy.\n\n'Where have you left Jehan?'\n\n'With a friend.' She kissed him. 'What's the matter with your leg? Fenoglio told me you were wounded.'\n\n'It's getting better. What do you have to do with Fenoglio?'\n\n'You don't like him. Why not?' Roxane stroked his face. How beautiful she looked. So very beautiful.\n\n'Let's just say he had plans for me that I didn't care for in the least. Has the old man by any chance given you something for Meggie? A letter, for instance?'\n\nWithout a word, she brought it out from under her cloak.\n\nThere the words were \u2013 words that wanted to come true. Roxane offered him the sealed parchment, but Dustfinger shook his head. 'You'd better give that to Meggie,' he said. 'She's down on the beach.'\n\nRoxane glanced at him in surprise. 'You look almost as if you were afraid of a piece of parchment.'\n\n'Yes,' said Dustfinger, reaching for her hand. 'Yes, I am. Particularly when Fenoglio's been writing on it. Come on, let's go and look for Meggie.'\n\nMeggie smiled awkwardly at Roxane when she gave her the parchment, and for a moment looked curiously from her to Dustfinger, but then she had eyes only for Fenoglio's letter. She broke the seal so hastily that she almost tore the parchment. There were three closely-written sheets. The first was a letter to her. When she had read it Meggie put it away under her belt, paying it no further attention. The words she had been so eagerly waiting for filled the other two sheets. Meggie's eyes travelled over the lines so fast that Dustfinger could hardly believe she was really reading them. Finally she raised her head, looked up at the Castle of Night \u2013 and smiled.\n\n'Well, what does the old devil say?' asked Dustfinger.\n\nMeggie offered him the two sheets. 'It's different from what I expected. Quite different, but it's good. Here, read it for yourself.'\n\nGingerly, he took the parchment in his fingertips, as if he might burn himself on it more easily than on a flame. 'When did you learn to read?' Roxane's voice sounded so surprised that he had to smile.\n\n'Meggie's mother taught me.' Fool; why was he telling her that? Roxane gave Meggie a long look as he laboured to decipher Fenoglio's handwriting. Resa had usually written in capital letters, to make it easier for him.\n\n'It could work, couldn't it?' Meggie was looking over his shoulder.\n\nThe sea roared as if to agree with her. Yes, perhaps it really would work... Dustfinger followed the written words like a dangerous path. But it was a path, and it led right into the middle of the Adderhead's heart. However, Dustfinger didn't like the part the old man intended Meggie to play. After all, her mother had asked him to take care of her.\n\nFarid looked unhappily at the letters. He still couldn't read. Sometimes Dustfinger felt that he suspected those tiny black signs of witchcraft. What else would he think of them, indeed, after all his experiences? 'Come on!' Farid shifted impatiently from foot to foot. 'What's he written?'\n\n'Meggie will have to go to the castle. Straight into the Adder's nest.'\n\n'What?' Horrified, the boy looked first at him and then at the girl. 'But that's impossible!' He took Meggie by the shoulders and turned her roughly round to face him. 'You can't go there. It's much too dangerous!'\n\nPoor boy. Of course she would go. 'That's the way Fenoglio has written it,' she said, removing Farid's hands from her shoulders.\n\n'Leave her alone,' said Dustfinger, giving Meggie the sheets of parchment back. 'When are you going to read it aloud?'\n\n'Now.'\n\nOf course. She didn't want to lose any time, and why should she? The sooner the story took a new turn, the better. It could hardly get worse.\n\nOr could it?\n\n'What's all this about?' Roxane looked from one to another of them, baffled. She scrutinized Farid without much friendliness; she still didn't like him. Dustfinger thought that wouldn't change until something convinced her that Farid was not his son. 'Explain!' she said. 'Fenoglio said this letter could save her parents. But what can a letter do for someone in a dungeon in the Castle of Night?'\n\nDustfinger stroked her hair back. He liked to see her wearing it loose again. 'Listen,' he said. 'I know it's difficult to believe, but if anything can open the dungeon doors in the Castle of Night, it's this letter \u2013 and Meggie's voice. She can make ink live and breathe, Roxane, just as you can bring a song to life. Her father has the same gift. If the Adderhead knew that, then I imagine he'd have hanged him long ago. The words that Meggie's father used to kill Capricorn looked just as harmless as these.'\n\nThe way she was looking at him! As incredulously as she used to when he had yet again tried to explain where he had been for weeks on end. 'You mean magic, an inkspell?' she whispered.\n\n'No. I mean reading aloud.'\n\nShe didn't understand a word of this, of course, which was not surprising. Perhaps she would if she heard Meggie read, if she saw the words suddenly trembling in the air, if she could smell them, feel them on her skin...\n\n'I'd like to be alone when I read it,' said Meggie, looking at Farid. Then she turned and went back to the infirmary with Fenoglio's letter in her hand. Farid wanted to follow her, but Dustfinger detained him.\n\n'Let her!' he said. 'Do you think she'll disappear into the words? That's nonsense. We're all up to our necks in the story she's going to read anyway. She only wants to make sure the wind changes, and it will \u2013 if the old man has written the right words!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Wrong Ears",
                "text": "\u2003Song lies asleep in everything\n\n\u2003That dreams the day and night away,\n\n\u2003And the whole world itself will sing\n\n\u2003If once the magic word you say.\n\n\u2014Joseph von Eichendorff, The Divining Rod\n\nRoxane brought Meggie an oil lamp before leaving her alone in the room where they would be sleeping. 'Written words need light, that's the awkward thing about them,' she said. 'But if these words are really as important as you all say, I can understand that you want to read them alone. I've always thought my singing voice sounds best when I'm on my own too.' She was already in the doorway when she added: 'Your mother \u2013 do she and Dustfinger know each other well?'\n\nMeggie almost replied: I don't know. I never asked my mother. But at last she said: 'They were friends.' She did not mention the resentment she still felt when she thought how Dustfinger had known where Resa was, all those years, and hadn't told Mo. But Roxane asked no more questions anyway. 'If you need any help,' was all she said before she left the room, 'you'll find me with the Barn Owl.'\n\nMeggie waited until her footsteps along the dark corridor had died away. Then she sat down on one of the straw mattresses and put the sheets of parchment on her lap. What would it be like, she couldn't help thinking as the words lay spread out before her, simply to do it for fun, just once? What would it be like to feel the magic of the words on her tongue when it wasn't a matter of life or death, good or bad luck? Once, in Elinor's house, she had been almost unable to resist that temptation, when she had seen a book that she'd loved as a small child \u2013 a book with mice in frilly dresses and tiny suits making jam and going for picnics. She had stopped the first word forming on her lips by closing the book, though, because she'd suddenly seen some dreadful pictures in her mind. One of the dressed-up mice in Elinor's garden surrounded by its wild relations, who would never in a million years dream of making jam. And an image of a little frilly dress, complete with a grey tail, in the jaws of one of the cats that regularly roamed among Elinor's rhododendron bushes. Meggie had never brought anything out of the words on the page just for fun, and she wasn't going to do it this evening either.\n\n'The whole secret, Meggie,' Mo had once told her, 'is in the breathing. It gives your voice strength and fills it with your life. And not just yours. Sometimes it feels as if when you take a breath you are breathing in everything around you, everything that makes up the world and moves it, and then it all flows into the words.' She tried it. She tried to breathe as calmly and deeply as the sea \u2013 the sound of the surf came into the room from outside \u2013 in and out, in and out, as if she could capture its power in her voice. The oil lamp that Roxane had brought in filled the bare room with warm light, and outside one of the women healers walked softly by.\n\n'I'm just going on with the story!' whispered Meggie. 'I'm going on with the story. That's what it's waiting for. Come on!' She pictured the massive figure of the Adderhead pacing sleeplessly up and down in the Castle of Night, never guessing that there was a girl who planned to whisper his name in Death's ear this very night.\n\nShe took the letter that Fenoglio had written her from her belt. It was as well that Dustfinger hadn't read it.\n\n\u2002Dear Meggie, it said, I hope that what I'm sending won't disappoint you. It's odd, but I have found that obviously I can write only what doesn't contradict anything I wrote about the Inkworld earlier. I have to keep the rules I made myself, even though I often made them unconsciously.\n\n\u2002I hope your father is all right. From what I hear he is now a prisoner in the Castle of Night \u2013 and I must admit that I am not entirely blameless there. Yes, I admit it. After all, as you will have found out by now, I used him as a living model for the Bluejay. I am sorry, but I really did think it was a good idea at the time. He made an excellent and noble robber in my imagination, and how could I guess that he would ever really come into my story? Well, be that as it may, he's here, and the Adderhead won't set him free just because I write a new passage saying so. I didn't make him that way, Meggie. The story must be true to itself, that's the only way to do it, so I can only send you these words. At first they may do no more than delay your father's execution, but I hope they will ultimately lead to his freedom after all. Trust me. I believe the words I enclose are the only possible way of bringing this story to a truly happy ending, and you like stories with happy endings, don't you?\n\n\u2002Go on with my story, Meggie, before it goes on with itself!\n\n\u2002I would have liked to bring you the words myself, but I have to keep an eye on Cosimo. I am rather afraid that in his case we made it a little too easy for ourselves. Take care of yourself, give my good wishes to your father when you see him again (which I hope will be soon), and to the boy who worships the ground under your feet too \u2013 oh yes, and tell Dustfinger, though I don't suppose he'll like it, that his wife is much too beautiful for him.\n\n\u2002Love and kisses,\n\n\u2002Fenoglio\n\n\u2002P.S. Since your father is still alive, I have wondered whether perhaps the words I gave you for him in the forest worked after all? If so, Meggie, then that could be only because I made him one of my characters, in a way \u2013 which would mean that some good came of the whole Bluejay story, don't you think?\n\nOh, Fenoglio. What a master he was in the art of turning everything to his own advantage!\n\nA breath of wind came through the window as Meggie reread the letter, making the sheets of parchment move as if the story itself were impatient and wanted to hear the new words. 'Yes, all right. Here I go,' whispered Meggie.\n\nShe had not often heard her father read aloud, but she remembered exactly how Mo gave every word the right sound, every single word...\n\nIt was quiet in the room, very quiet. The whole Inkworld \u2013 every fairy, every tree, even the sea \u2013 seemed to be waiting for her voice. 'Night after night,' Meggie began, 'the Adderhead could get no rest. His wife slept soundly and deeply. She was his fifth wife, and younger than his three eldest daughters. Her body, pregnant with his child, was a mound under the bedclothes. It must be a boy this time; she had already borne him two daughters. If this child were another girl he would disown her, just as he had repudiated his other wives. He would send her back to her father, or to some lonely castle in the mountains.\n\nWhy could she sleep, although she feared him, while he paced up and down the magnificent bedchamber like an old dancing bear in its cage?\n\nBecause he alone felt the truly great fear. The fear of Death.\n\nDeath waited outside the windows, outside the glass panes paid for by selling his strongest peasants. Death pressed its ugly face against them as soon as darkness swallowed up his castle like a snake swallowing a mouse. He had more torches lit every night, more candles, yet still the fear came \u2013 to make him shake and fall on his knees because they trembled so much, to show him his future: the flesh falling from his bones, the worms eating him, the White Women leading him away. The Adderhead pressed his hands to his mouth so that the guards outside the door would not hear him sobbing. Fear. Fear of the end of all his days, fear of the void, fear, fear, fear. Fear that Death was already in his body somewhere, invisible, growing and flourishing and eating him away \u2013 the one enemy he could never defeat, never burn or stab or hang, the one enemy from whom there was no escaping.\n\nOne night, blacker and more endless than any that had gone before, the fear was particularly terrible, and he had them all woken, as he quite often did, all who were sleeping peacefully in their beds instead of trembling and sweating like him: his wife, the useless physicians, the petitioners, scribes, administrators, his herald, the silver-nosed minstrel. He had the cooks driven into the kitchen to prepare him a banquet, but as he was sitting at his table, his fingers dripping with fat from the freshly roasted meat, a girl came to the Castle of Night. She walked fearlessly past the guards and offered him a deal: a bargain with Death.\n\nThat was how it would be. Because she was reading it. How the words made their way out through Meggie's lips. As if they were weaving the future. Every sound, every character a thread... Meggie forgot everything around her: the infirmary, the straw mattress she was sitting on, even Farid and his unhappy face as he watched her go. She went on spinning Fenoglio's story; that was why she was here, spinning it out of threads of sound with her breath and her voice \u2013 to save her father and her mother. And this whole strange world that had enchanted her.\n\nWhen Meggie heard the agitated voices she thought at first that they were coming out of the words, but they grew louder and louder. Reluctantly, she raised her head. She hadn't read it all yet. There were still a few sentences waiting, waiting for her to teach them to breathe. Look at the words on the page, Meggie, she told herself. Concentrate!\n\nShe gave a start when a dull knocking resounded through the infirmary. The voices grew louder, she heard hasty footsteps, and Roxane appeared in the doorway. 'They've come from the Castle of Night!' she whispered. 'They have a picture of you, a strange picture. Quick, come with me!'\n\nMeggie tried to put the parchment in her sleeve until she could read those last few sentences, but then thought better of it and pushed it down the neck of her dress. She hoped it would not show under the firm fabric. She could still taste the words on her tongue, she still saw herself standing before the Adderhead just as she had read it, but Roxane reached for her hand and pulled her along. A woman's voice came down the colonnade, Bella's voice, and then the voice of a man, loud and commanding. Roxane did not let Meggie's hand go but led her on, past the doors behind which the patients slept, or else lay awake listening to their own heavy breathing.\n\nThe Barn Owl's room was empty. Roxane took Meggie in with her, bolted the door and looked around. The window was barred, and the steps were coming closer. Meggie thought she heard the Barn Owl's voice, and another voice, rough and threatening. Then, suddenly, there was silence. They had stopped outside the door. Roxane put her arm round Meggie's shoulders.\n\n'They're going to take you with them!' she whispered as the Barn Owl talked to the intruders on the other side of the door. 'We'll send word to the Black Prince. He has spies in the castle. We'll try to help you, understand?'\n\nMeggie just nodded.\n\nSomeone was hammering on the door. 'Open up, little witch, or do we have to come and get you?'\n\nBooks, books everywhere. Meggie retreated among the stacks of volumes. There wasn't a single book here she could have gone to for help, even if she'd wanted to. The knowledge in them could give her no aid. She'd have needed a story for that, but she remembered looking for a suitable story in vain in Capricorn's house. She glanced at Roxane in search of help \u2013 and saw the same helplessness on Roxane's face too.\n\nWhat would happen if they took her away with them? So many sentences were still unread. Meggie tried desperately to remember just where she had been interrupted...\n\nMore hammering on the door. The wood groaned; it would soon splinter and break. Meggie went to the door, pushed the bolt back and opened it. She couldn't count the soldiers standing out in the narrow corridor, but there were a great many of them. They were led by Firefox; Meggie recognized him in spite of the scarf he had tied over his mouth and nose. They all had such scarves wound round their faces, and their eyes above them were terrified. I hope you've all caught the plague here, thought Meggie. I hope you die like flies. The soldier beside Firefox stumbled back as if he had heard her thoughts, but it was Meggie's face that frightened him. 'Witch!' he exclaimed, staring at what Firefox held in his hand. Meggie recognized the narrow silver frame at once. It was her photo, from Elinor's library.\n\nA murmur arose among the men-at-arms. But Firefox put his hand roughly under her chin, making her turn her face to him. 'I thought so. You're the girl from the stable,' he said. 'I'll admit you didn't look to me like a witch there!' Meggie tried to turn her head away, but Firefox's hand did not let go. 'Well done!' he said to a girl who was standing among the men-at-arms looking lost. Her feet were bare, and she wore the same plain tunic as all the women who worked in the infirmary. Carla, wasn't that her name?\n\nShe bent her head and looked at the piece of silver that the soldier pressed into her hand as if she'd never seen such a beautiful, shiny coin before. 'He said I'd get work,' she whispered almost inaudibly. 'In the castle kitchen. The minstrel with the silver nose said so.'\n\nFirefox shrugged scornfully. 'You've come to the wrong man here,' he said, turning his back to her heedlessly. 'And this time I'm to take you too, sawbones,' he said to the Barn Owl. 'You've let the wrong sort of visitors through your gate once too often. I told the Adderhead it was high time to light a fire here, a great fire. I can still do that kind of thing extremely well, but he wouldn't hear of it. Someone's told him his death will come out of a fire. Since then he won't let us light anything but candles.' There was no missing his contempt for his master's weakness.\n\nThe Barn Owl looked at Meggie. I'm sorry, said his eyes. And she read a question in them too: where's Dustfinger? Yes, where?\n\n'Let me go with her.' Roxane went up to Meggie and tried to put an arm round her shoulders again, but Firefox pushed her roughly back.\n\n'Only the girl in the witch picture,' he said, 'and the physician.'\n\nRoxane, Bella and a few of the other women followed them to the gate leading out to the sea. The surf shone in the moonlight, and the beach lay there deserted, except for a few footprints which no one, luckily, examined closely. The soldiers had brought horses for their prisoners. Meggie's laid its ears back when one of the soldiers put her on its back. Only when it was trotting towards the mountains with her did she dare to look surreptitiously around. But there was no sign of Dustfinger and Farid. Except for the footprints in the sand."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fire and Water",
                "text": "\u2002And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?\n\n\u2014Khalil Gibran, The Prophet\n\nAll was quiet behind the walls of the infirmary when Dustfinger gestured to Farid to come out from among the trees. No weeping, no cursing the men who had come from the Castle of Night. Most of the women had gone back to the sick and dying. Only Roxane still stood on the beach, looking at the path the soldiers had taken.\n\nShe went to Dustfinger, her footsteps weary.\n\n'I'll go after them!' stammered Farid beside him, his fists clenched. 'At least there's no missing that accursed castle!'\n\n'What do you think you're talking about, damn it?' Dustfinger snapped at him. 'Do you believe you can just walk through the gates? That is the Castle of Night, where they stick chopped-off heads on the battlements.'\n\nFarid ducked his head and stared up at the silver towers. They rose to the sky as if to impale the stars.\n\n'But... but Meggie,' he stammered.\n\n'Yes, all right, we'll follow her,' said Dustfinger, irritation in his voice. 'My leg's already looking forward to the climb. But we're not stumbling off just like that. You have something to learn yet.'\n\nThe relief in the boy's face when he looked at him \u2013 as if he were delighted at the prospect of creeping into the Adder's nest! Dustfinger could only shake his head at such idiocy.\n\n'Something to learn? What?'\n\n'What I was going to show you anyway.' Dustfinger went towards the water. He wished his leg would hurry up and heal.\n\nRoxane followed him. 'You two are going after them? What are you talking about?' Fear and rage were mingled on her face as she came between him and the boy. 'You can't go to the castle! There's no more you can do! Either for the girl, or for the Barn Owl, or for any of the others. Your wonderful letter came to nothing, nothing at all!'\n\n'We'll see,' was all Dustfinger would reply. 'It depends whether Meggie read it out, and if so, how far she got.'\n\nHe tried to move her aside, but Roxane pushed his hands away. 'Let's send a message to the Black Prince!' There was desperation in her voice. 'Have you forgotten all the fire-raisers up there at the castle? You'll be dead before the sun rises! What about Basta? What about Firefox and the Piper? Someone is bound to recognize your face!'\n\n'Who says I'm going to show my face?' he replied.\n\nRoxane flinched back. She cast Farid such a hostile glance that the boy turned away. 'But that's our secret. You've never shown anyone but me before. And you yourself said you're the only one who can do it!'\n\n'The boy will be able to do it too!'\n\nThe sand crunched under his feet as he walked towards the waves. He did not stop until the surf was washing around his boots.\n\n'What's she talking about?' asked Farid. 'What are you going to show me? Is it very difficult?'\n\nDustfinger looked round. Roxane was walking slowly back to the infirmary. She disappeared behind the plain wooden gate without once turning.\n\n'What is it?' Impatiently, Farid tugged at his sleeve. 'Tell me.'\n\nDustfinger turned his back to him. 'Fire and water,' he said, 'don't really mix. You could say they're incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.'\n\nIt was a long time since he had last spoken the words he now whispered. But the fire understood. A flame licked up between the wet pebbles that the sea had washed up on the sand. Dustfinger bent and enticed it into the hollow of his hand as if it were a young bird, whispered, told it what he wanted, promised it a nocturnal game such as it had never played before... and when it answered, crackling, flaring up, so hot that it burned his skin, he threw it into the foaming sea, fingers outstretched as if he still held the fire on invisible strings. The water snapped at the flame like a fish snapping at a fly, but the fire only burned brighter, while Dustfinger, standing on the shore, spread his arms wide.\n\nHissing and flaring, the fire imitated him, moving to left and right along the sea-wave, further and further, until the surf, now rimmed with flames, rolled towards the shore, and a band of fire was washed up at Dustfinger's feet like a love token. He plunged both hands into the blazing foam, and when he straightened up again he held a fairy fluttering in his fingers, as blue as her forest sisters but surrounded by a fiery lustre, and her eyes were as red as the flames from which she was born. Dustfinger held her in his hands like a rare moth, waited for the prickling of his skin, the heat running up his arms as if he suddenly had liquid fire instead of blood in his veins. Not until it had burned its way right up to his armpits did he let the tiny creature fly away, chattering and swearing crossly, as they always did when you lured them to you by making the sea play with fire.\n\n'What's that?' asked Farid in alarm, looking at Dustfinger's blackened hands and arms.\n\nDustfinger took a cloth from his belt and carefully rubbed the soot into his skin. 'That,' he said, 'is something that will get us into the castle. But the soot works only if you get it from the fairies for yourself. So it's your turn now.'\n\nFarid looked at him incredulously. 'But I can't do that!' he stammered. 'I don't know how you did it.'\n\n'Nonsense!' Dustfinger stepped back from the water and sat down on the damp sand. 'Of course you can do it! Just think of Meggie!'\n\nUndecided, Farid looked up at the castle, while the waves licked his bare toes as if inviting him to play.\n\n'Won't they see the fire up there?'\n\n'The castle is further away than it looks. Believe me, your feet will show you that when we start climbing. And if the guards up there do see anything they'll think it's lightning, or fire-elves dancing over the water. When did you start thinking so hard before you began to play? All I can say is, if you wait much longer I shall certainly start remembering what a crazy notion going up there is.'\n\nThat convinced Farid.\n\nThe flame went out three times when he threw it into the breakers. But at the fourth attempt the waves were rimmed with fire for him as he had demanded \u2013 perhaps not quite such bright fire as they had made for Dustfinger, but the sea burned for Farid too. And for the second time that night, fire and water played together.\n\n'Well done,' said Dustfinger, as the boy looked proudly at the soot on his arms. 'Spread it well over your chest and legs and face.'\n\n'Why?' Farid looked at him, wide-eyed.\n\n'Because it will make us invisible,' replied Dustfinger, rubbing soot into his own face. 'Until sunrise.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Invisible as the Wind",
                "text": "\u2002'So sorry, your bloodiness, Mr Baron, sir,' he said greasily. 'My mistake, my mistake \u2013 I didn't see you \u2013 of course I didn't, you're invisible \u2013 forgive old Peevsie his little joke, sir.'\n\n\u2014J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\n\nIt was an odd feeling, being invisible. Farid felt all-powerful and lost at the same time. As if he were nowhere and everywhere. The worst of it was that he couldn't see Dustfinger. He had to rely on his hearing. 'Dustfinger?' he kept whispering as he followed him through the night, and every time a quiet reply came back: 'I'm here, right in front of you.'\n\nThe soldiers who had taken Meggie and the Barn Owl with them would have to follow a road \u2013 a bad one, almost entirely overgrown in many places \u2013 that wound up into the hills, bending and curving. Dustfinger, on the other hand, was making his way across country and up slopes too steep for horses, especially when they had to carry armed riders. Farid tried not to think how much it must be hurting Dustfinger's leg. Now and then he heard him swearing quietly, and he kept stopping, invisible, nothing but a breathing in the night.\n\nThe castle was indeed further away than it had looked from the beach, but finally its walls towered to the sky right in front of them. By comparison with this fortress, the castle of Ombra seemed to Farid like a toy, built by a prince who liked to eat and drink but had no intention of going to war. In the Castle of Night, every stone seemed to have been set in place with war in mind, and as Farid followed the sound of Dustfinger's gasping breaths, he pictured to himself, with horror, what it must be like to storm up the steep slope with hot pitch raining down on you from the battlements above, and bolts from crossbows flying your way.\n\nMorning was still far off when they reached the castle gate. They still had a few precious hours of invisibility left, but the gate was shut, and Farid felt tears of disappointment fill his eyes. 'It's closed!' he whispered. 'They've taken them into the castle already! Now what?' Every breath hurt him, they had travelled so fast. But what good did it do them now to be as transparent as glass, as invisible as the wind?\n\nHe sensed Dustfinger's body beside him, warm in the windy night. 'Of course it's closed!' his voice whispered. 'What did you expect? Did you think the two of us would overtake them? We wouldn't have done that even if I wasn't hobbling like an old woman! But you wait: they're sure to open the gate for someone else tonight. Even if it's only one of their informers.'\n\n'Or maybe we could climb in?' Farid looked hopefully up at the pale grey walls. He saw the guards on the battlements, armed with spears.\n\n'Climb in? You really do seem to be head over heels in love. Can't you see how smooth and high these walls are? Forget it \u2013 we'll wait.'\n\nSix gallows towered in front of them. Dead men hung from four of them. Farid was thankful that in the darkness they just looked like bundles of old clothes. 'Damn it!' he heard Dustfinger murmur. 'Why doesn't the fairy venom make your fear go away as well as your body?' The same thing had occurred to Farid too, but he was not afraid of the guards, Basta or Firefox. His fear, his terrible fear was for Meggie. Being invisible only made it worse. There seemed to be nothing left of him but the pain in his heart.\n\nA chilly wind was blowing tonight, and Farid was just breathing on his invisible fingers to warm them when hoofbeats echoed through the dark.\n\n'There, now!' whispered Dustfinger. 'Looks like we're in luck for a change! Remember, whatever happens, we must be out of here before daybreak. The sun will make us visible again almost as fast as you can summon fire.'\n\nThe hoofbeats grew louder, and a horseman emerged from the darkness \u2013 not in the Adderhead's pale silver, but clothed in red and black. 'Well, would you believe it?' whispered Dustfinger. 'Sootbird, no less!'\n\nOne of the guards called something down from the battlements, and Sootbird replied.\n\n'Come on!' Dustfinger hissed to Farid as the gate swung open, creaking. They followed so close to Sootbird that Farid could have touched his horse's tail. Traitor, he thought, filthy traitor! He would have liked to drag him down from the saddle, put a knife to his throat, and ask what news he was bringing to the Castle of Night \u2013 but Dustfinger thrust him on, through the gigantic gate and into the courtyard. He led Farid onwards as Sootbird rode to the castle stables. They were swarming with men-at-arms. Obviously the Castle of Night was as wakeful as its master was said to be.\n\n'Listen!' whispered Dustfinger, drawing Farid under an arch. 'This castle is the size of a city and as full of nooks and crannies as a labyrinth. Mark the way you go with soot. I don't want to have to search for you later because you're lost like a child in the forest, understand?'\n\n'But what about Sootbird? He gave the Secret Camp away, didn't he?'\n\n'Very likely. But forget him for now. Think of Meggie.'\n\n'But he was among the prisoners!' A troop of soldiers marched past them. Farid flinched back in alarm. He still couldn't believe that they really did not see him.\n\n'So?' Dustfinger's voice sounded like the wind itself speaking. 'It's the oldest disguise in the world for traitors. Where do you hide your informer? Among your victims. I expect the Piper told him once or twice what a magnificent fire-eater he was, and then they were best friends. Sootbird's always had peculiar taste in friends. Well, come on, or we'll still be standing here when the sun melts our invisibility off us.'\n\nThat made Farid look instinctively up at the sky. It was a dark night. Even the moon seemed lost in all the blackness, and he could not take his eyes off the silver towers.\n\n'The Adder's nest!' he whispered \u2013 and felt Dustfinger's invisible hand drawing him on again, none too gently."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Adderhead",
                "text": "\u2003Thoughts of death\n\n\u2003Crowd over my happiness\n\n\u2003Like dark clouds\n\n\u2003Over the silver sickle of the moon.\n\n\u2014St. Brown, Poems to Read\n\nThe Adderhead was at table when Firefox brought Meggie to him. Exactly as she had read it in the story. The hall where he was feasting was so magnificent that the Laughing Prince's throne-room seemed plain as a farmhouse by comparison. The tiles over which Firefox dragged Meggie to his master were strewn with white rose-petals. A sea of candles burned in claw-footed candelabra, standing between columns covered with silver scales. The light of the candles made them shimmer like snakeskin. Countless servants hurried around between the scaly pillars, soundlessly, heads bent. Maidservants waited in respectful rows for a sign from their master. They all looked tired, torn from sleep, just as Fenoglio had described it. Some were leaning their backs surreptitiously against the tapestries on the walls.\n\nBeside the Adderhead, at a table that seemed to be laid for a hundred guests, sat a woman as pale as a porcelain doll, with such a childlike face that Meggie would have thought her the Adderhead's daughter if she didn't know better. The Silver Prince himself ate greedily, as if by swallowing the food that stood in countless dishes on the table covered with black cloth, he could swallow his own fear too. But his wife touched nothing. It seemed to Meggie that the sight of her husband eating so greedily nauseated her; she kept passing her ringed hands over her swollen belly. Oddly enough, her pregnancy made her look even more like a child: a child with a thin, bitter mouth and cool eyes.\n\nThe silver-nosed Piper stood behind the Adderhead, one foot on a stool, his lute supported on his thigh, singing softly as his fingers slowly plucked the strings. But Meggie's eyes did not linger on him long. At the end of the table she had seen someone she knew only too well. Her heart faltered like an old woman's feet when Mortola returned her glance, with a smile so full of triumph that Meggie's knees began to tremble. The man who had wounded Dustfinger in the mill sat beside Mortola. His hands were bandaged, and above his forehead the fire had burned a pathway into his hair. Basta was in an even worse state. He was sitting close to Mortola, his face so red and swollen that Meggie almost failed to recognize him. But he had escaped death once again. Perhaps the good-luck charms he always wore worked after all.\n\nFirefox clutched Meggie's arm tightly as he walked towards the Adderhead in his heavy fox-fur cloak \u2013 as if to prove that he personally had caught this little bird. He roughly pushed her in front of the table and threw the framed photograph down among the dishes.\n\nThe Adderhead raised his head and looked at her, with bloodshot eyes in which Meggie could still see the traces of the bad night Fenoglio's words had given him. When he raised his greasy hand, the Piper fell silent behind him and propped his lute against the wall.\n\n'There she is!' announced Firefox, as his master wiped the grease from his fingers and lips with an embroidered napkin. 'I wish we had a witch-picture like this of everyone we're after. Then the informers wouldn't keep bringing us the wrong people.'\n\nThe Adderhead had picked up the photograph. Appraisingly, he compared it with Meggie. She tried to bend her head, but Firefox forced her face up.\n\n'Remarkable!' commented the Adderhead. 'My best painters couldn't have produced anywhere near as good a likeness of the girl.' With a bored expression, he reached for a little silver toothpick and prodded his teeth with it. 'Mortola says you're a witch. Is it true?'\n\n'Yes!' replied Meggie, looking him straight in the eye. Now they'd find out whether Fenoglio's words would come true again. If only she had been able to read to the end! She had read a great deal of it, but she could feel the rest of the words still waiting under her dress. Forget them, Meggie, she told herself. You must make the words you have already read come true \u2013 and hope that the Adderhead plays his part just as you do.\n\n'Yes?' repeated the Adderhead. 'So you admit it? Don't you know what I usually do to witches and magicians? I burn them.' The same words. He was speaking Fenoglio's words. Exactly as Fenoglio had put them into his mouth. Exactly as she had read them out loud in the infirmary a few hours ago.\n\nShe knew what she must answer. The words came into her mind of their own accord, as if they were hers and not Fenoglio's. Meggie looked at Basta and the other man from the mill. Fenoglio hadn't written about them personally, but the answer was still right. 'The last to burn,' she said calmly, 'were your own men. Only one man commands fire in this world, and he's not you.'\n\nThe Adderhead stared at her \u2013 watchful as a fat tom-cat not yet certain how to play his game most satisfactorily with the mouse he has caught. 'Ah,' he said in his heavy, thick voice. 'I suppose you mean that fire-dancer. He likes to go around with poachers and footpads. You think he'll come and try to rescue you, eh? Then, at last, I could feed him to the fire that you claim obeys him so well.'\n\n'I don't need anyone to rescue me,' replied Meggie. 'I would have come to you myself in any case, even if you hadn't had me brought here.'\n\nThere was laughter among the silver columns. The Adderhead leaned across the table and examined her with unconcealed curiosity.\n\n'Well, well!' he said. 'Really? Why? To plead with me to let your father go? Because that robber is your father, isn't he? At least, Mortola says so. She even says we've caught your mother too.'\n\nMortola! Fenoglio had never thought of her. He hadn't written a word about her, but there she sat with her magpie gaze. Don't think about it, Meggie. Be cold. Cold to your very heart, as you were on the night when you summoned the Shadow. But where was she to get the right words from now? Improvise, Meggie, she told herself, like an actress who's forgotten her lines. Go on! Make up your own words and then just mix them into the words Fenoglio wrote for you, like an extra spice.\n\n'The Magpie is right,' she replied to the Adderhead. And sure enough, her voice sounded calm and steady, as if her heart wasn't thudding in her breast like a small, hunted animal. 'You took my father captive when she'd almost killed him, and you're holding my mother prisoner in your dungeons. However, I'm not here to ask for leniency. I have a deal to offer you.'\n\n'Listen to the little witch!' Basta's voice shook with hatred. 'Why don't I just slice her up nice and thin, and you can feed her to your dogs?'\n\nHowever, the Adderhead ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed on Meggie's face, as if seeking it for what she wasn't saying. Be like Dustfinger, she told herself. You can never tell what Dustfinger is thinking or feeling from the way he looks. Try! It can't be all that difficult.\n\n'A deal?' The Adderhead took his wife's hand, as casually as if he had just found it lying beside his plate by chance. 'What do you plan to sell me that I can't simply take for myself?'\n\nHis men laughed. Meggie tried not to notice that her fingers were numb with terror. Once again it was Fenoglio's words that passed her lips. Words that she had read aloud.\n\n'My father,' she continued, in a carefully controlled voice, 'is no robber. He's a bookbinder and an enchanter. He is the only man alive who doesn't fear death. Haven't you seen his wound? Didn't the physicians tell you that injury ought to have killed him? Nothing can kill him. Mortola tried, and did he die? No. He has brought Cosimo the Fair back to life, although the White Women had already delivered him up to Death, and if you let him and my mother go then you need not fear Death either, for my father,' said Meggie, taking her time over the last few words, 'my father can make you immortal.'\n\nAll was very quiet in the great hall.\n\nUntil Mortola's voice broke the silence. 'She's lying!' she cried. 'The little witch is lying! Don't believe a word of it. It's her tongue, her bewitched tongue. That's her only weapon. Her father can die all right, indeed he can! Bring him here and I'll prove it. I'll kill him myself before your eyes, and this time I'll do it properly!'\n\nNo! Meggie's heart began to race as if it would leap out of her breast. What had she done? The Adderhead was staring at her, but when at last he spoke it seemed as if he hadn't even heard what Mortola had said.\n\n'How?' was all he asked. 'How could your father do what you promise?' He was thinking of the night to come now. Meggie saw it in his eyes. He was thinking of the fear waiting for him: it would be even worse than in the night just gone, even more merciless...\n\nMeggie leaned forward over the laden table. She spoke the words as if she were reading them aloud again. 'My father will bind you a book!' she said, so quietly that apart from the Adderhead no one, except perhaps his doll-like wife, could hear her. 'He will bind it for you with my help, a book with five hundred blank pages. He will cover it with wood and leather, he will give it brass clasps, and you will write your name on the first page in your own hand. In token of thanks, however, you will let him go, and with him all whose lives he asks for, and you will hide the book in a place known only to you, for hear this: as long as that book exists you will be immortal. Nothing will be able to kill you, no disease, no weapon \u2013 as long as the book remains intact.'\n\n'Indeed!' The Adderhead's bloodshot eyes were staring at her. His breath smelled sweetish, as if he had been drinking wine that was too heavy. 'And suppose someone burns it or tears it up? Parchment doesn't last like silver.'\n\n'You will have to take good care of it,' replied Meggie quietly \u2013 and it will kill you all the same, she added in her thoughts. She felt as if she were hearing her own voice reading Fenoglio's words again (and how good they had tasted!): But there was that one thing the girl did not tell the Adderhead: the book not only made him immortal but could kill him too, if someone only wrote three words on its white pages, and those words were: heart, spell, death.\n\n'What's she whispering?' Mortola had risen to her feet. She leaned her bony hands on the table. 'Don't listen to her!' she told the Adderhead. 'She's a witch and a liar! How often do I have to tell you? Kill her \u2013 her and her father \u2013 before they kill you! The old man probably wrote all her words for her, the old man I told you about!'\n\nFor the first time the Adderhead turned to look at Mortola, and Meggie briefly feared that he might believe her after all. But then she saw the anger in his face. 'Be quiet!' he snapped at the Magpie. 'Capricorn may have listened to you, but he's gone, like the Shadow who made him powerful, and you are tolerated at this court only because you have rendered me certain services! But I don't want to hear any more of your drivel about silver tongues and old men who can bring written words to life. Not another word out of you, or I send you back to where you once came from \u2013 in the kitchen with the maids.'\n\nMortola turned as white as if she had no blood left in her veins.\n\n'I warned you!' she said hoarsely. 'Don't forget it!' Then, stony-faced, she sat down again. Basta cast her an anxious glance, but Mortola took no notice of him. She just stared at Meggie with such venom that she felt those eyes were burning a hole in her face.\n\nThe Adderhead, however, speared one of the tiny roasted birds lying on a silver platter in front of him with his knife, and put it between his lips with relish. Obviously his angry exchange with Mortola had given him an appetite. 'Did I understand you correctly? You yourself would help your father with the work?' he asked, as he spat out the little bones into the hand of a servant who hastily stepped forward. 'Does that mean he has taught a daughter his craft, as a master craftsman usually teaches his sons? Surely you know that such a thing is forbidden in my realm?'\n\nMeggie looked at him fearlessly. Even these words had been written by Fenoglio, every one of them, and she knew what the Adderhead was going to say next, because she had read that too.\n\n'If a craftsman of Argenta breaks that law, my pretty child,' he went on, 'I usually have his right hand chopped off. But, very well, I'll make an exception in your case, since it's to my own advantage.'\n\nHe's going to do it, thought Meggie. He's going to let me see Mo just as Fenoglio planned. Happiness emboldened her. 'My mother,' she said, although Fenoglio had not written anything about that, 'she could help too. Then it would be done even faster.'\n\n'No, no!' The Adderhead smiled with delight, as if the disappointment in Meggie's eyes tasted better than all the delicacies on silver dishes before him. 'Your mother stays in her dungeon, as a little incentive to the two of you to work quickly.' He signalled impatiently to Firefox. 'What are you waiting for? Take her to her father! And tell the librarian to set to work this very night, to provide everything a bookbinder needs for his work.'\n\n'Take her to her father?' Firefox gripped Meggie's arm, but he did not take a step. 'You surely don't believe her witchy nonsense?'\n\nMeggie almost forgot to breathe. She had not read these words aloud; not one of them was written by Fenoglio. What would happen now? Not a foot moved in the hall \u2013 even the servants stood still exactly where they were \u2013 you could feel the silence. But Firefox went on. 'A book to hold Death captive in its pages? Only a child would believe such a story, and this child has thought it up to save her father. Mortola's right. Hang him now, before we become the laughing stock of the peasants! Capricorn would have done it long ago.'\n\n'Capricorn?' The Adderhead spat out the name like one of the delicate bones he had spat into the servant's hand. He did not look at Firefox as he spoke, but his thick fingers clenched into a fist on the table. 'Since Mortola came back I've heard that name very often. But as far as I know Capricorn is dead \u2013 even his personal witch and poisoner couldn't prevent that \u2013 and you, Firefox, have obviously forgotten who your new master is. I am the Adderhead! My family has ruled this land for more than seven generations, while your old master was only the bastard son of a soot-blackened smith! You were a fire-raiser, a murderer, no more, and I've made you my herald. A little more gratitude is called for, I think, or do you want to look for a new master?'\n\nFirefox's face turned almost as red as his hair. 'No, Your Grace,' he said almost inaudibly. 'No, I don't.'\n\n'Good!' The Adderhead impaled another bird on his knife. They were waiting in their silver dish, piled up like chestnuts. 'Then do as I said. Take the girl to her father, and make sure he soon sets to work. Have you brought that physician, as I ordered? The Barn Owl?'\n\nFirefox nodded, without looking at his master.\n\n'Good. Let him visit her father to tend him twice a day. We want our prisoner to be fit and well, understand?'\n\n'I understand,' said Firefox hoarsely.\n\nHe looked neither to right nor left as he led Meggie out of the hall. All eyes followed her \u2013 and avoided her own eyes when they met theirs. Witch. That was what they had called her before, back in Capricorn's village. Perhaps it was true. At that moment she felt powerful, as powerful as if the whole Inkworld obeyed her voice. They are taking me to Mo, she thought. They are taking me to him, and that will be the beginning of the end for the Adderhead.\n\nBut when the servants had closed the doors of the hall behind them, a soldier barred Firefox's way.\n\n'Mortola has a message for you,' he said. 'You're to search the girl for a sheet of paper or anything else with writing on it. She says you should look in her sleeves first. She hid something there once before.'\n\nBefore Meggie fully realized what was happening, Firefox took hold of her and roughly pushed her sleeves up. Finding nothing there, he was about to put his hands inside her dress, but Meggie pushed them away and took out the parchment herself. Firefox tore it from her fingers, stared at the written letters for a moment with the baffled look of a man who couldn't read, and then, without a word, handed the parchment to the soldier.\n\nMeggie felt dizzy with fear as he led her on. Suppose Mortola showed the letter to the Adderhead? Suppose, suppose...?\n\n'Get moving!' growled Firefox, pushing her up a flight of stairs. As if numbed, Meggie stumbled up the steep steps. Fenoglio, she thought, Fenoglio, help me. Mortola knows about our plan.\n\n'Stop!' Firefox brutally grabbed her by the hair. Four men-at-arms were on guard outside a door with three bolts over it. A nod of the head from Firefox told them to open it.\n\nMo, thought Meggie. They really are taking me to him. And that thought extinguished any others. Even thoughts of Mortola."
            },
            {
                "title": "Fire on the Wall",
                "text": "\u2003Lo, on the whiteness of the wall,\n\n\u2003Behold, appeared a human hand,\n\n\u2003Which wrote and wrote, in letters tall,\n\n\u2003A fiery message for the land.\n\n\u2014Heinrich Heine, Belshazzar\n\nAll was quiet in the wide, dark corridors as Dustfinger and Farid stole into the Castle of Night. Only wax dripped from a thousand candles on the stone flags that all bore the Adderhead's coat of arms. Servants hurried past them in soft-soled shoes, and maids scuttled by with bent heads. Guards stood in endless passages and outside doorways so high that they seemed to have been made for giants, not ordinary humans. Every one of them bore the emblematic creature of the Adderhead \u2013 the snake striking at its prey \u2013 in scales of silver, and huge mirrors hung beside the doors. Farid kept stopping in front of them to look into the polished metal and reassure himself that he really was invisible.\n\nDustfinger made an acorn-sized flame dance on his hand so that the boy could follow him. Servants were carrying delicious things to eat out of one of the halls they passed. Their aroma reminded Dustfinger painfully of his invisible stomach, and when he pushed his way past the servants as soundlessly as the Adderhead's snake, he heard them talking in muted tones about a young witch, and a deal that was to save the Bluejay from the gallows. Dustfinger, as invisible as their voices, listened to them and did not know which of his emotions was the stronger: relief that Fenoglio's words were obviously coming true again, or fear of those words and the invisible threads spun by the old man, threads to catch even the Adderhead and make him dream of immortality, although Fenoglio had recorded his death in writing long ago. But had Meggie really read those deadly words before they took her away?\n\n'Now what?' Farid whispered. 'Did you hear that? They've shut Meggie up with Silvertongue in one of the towers! How do I get there?' His voice was shaking \u2013 heavens, what a plague love was! Anyone who claimed otherwise had never yet felt that wretched trembling of the heart.\n\n'Forget it!' Dustfinger whispered to the boy. 'The dungeons in the tower have strong doors. Even invisible you wouldn't get through them. And the place will be swarming with guards. After all, they still think they've caught the Bluejay. You'd do better to steal into the kitchen and listen to the maids and the menservants \u2013 you always learn something interesting that way. But be careful! I repeat: invisible doesn't mean immortal.'\n\n'How about you?'\n\n'I'm going to venture down to the dungeons under the castle, where the less valuable prisoners are held, to find the Barn Owl and Meggie's mother. See that fat marble statue there? Must be some ancestor of the Adderhead. We'll meet there. And don't even think of following me! Farid?'\n\nBut the boy had already gone. Dustfinger suppressed a soft curse. He just hoped no one heard the boy's lovesick heart thudding!\n\nIt was a long, dark way to the dungeons. One of the women healers who worked for the Barn Owl had told him where the entrance lay. None of the guards he passed even turned their heads as Dustfinger slipped by them. Two were lounging around at the mouth of the damp corridor, lit only by a single torch, with the door to the dungeons at the end of it. Beyond that door the way went on down, down into the deadly entrails of the Castle of Night which digested human beings like a stony stomach, now and then excreting a few dead bodies. There was another snake on the door that no one ever wished to enter, but here the silver adder was coiled around a skull.\n\nThe guards were quarrelling \u2013 it was something to do with Firefox \u2013 but Dustfinger had no time to eavesdrop. He was only glad that all their attention was on each other as he slipped past. The door creaked slightly when he opened it, just wide enough to get through \u2013 his heart almost stopped as he did it \u2013 but the guards didn't turn round. What wouldn't he give for a fearless heart like Farid's, even if it made you reckless! It was so dark beyond the door that, for a moment, he had to summon fire before his invisible feet made their way down the steps, and just in time. They were steep and well-trodden, worn away by the people whom the dungeons had swallowed up. Fear and desperation rose to greet him like vapours from the depths. The steps were said to lead as far down under the hill as the castle towers rose to the sky above it, but Dustfinger had never met anyone who could confirm this tale. Of those he had known who were taken down here, he had never seen a single one alive again.\n\nDustfinger, Dustfinger, he thought before starting on the downward climb, this is a dangerous path to take just to pass the time of day with two old friends, and your visit won't even do them much good. However, he had run after the Barn Owl for years just as Farid was now running after him, and as for Resa \u2013 perhaps he recalled her name last to convince himself that he was certainly not climbing down this damned stairway on her account.\n\nUnfortunately even invisible feet make sounds, but luckily he only met guards once. Three warders passed him at such close quarters that he could smell the garlic on their breath, and he only just managed to press close to the wall in time to stop the fattest of them bumping into him. During the rest of the dark downward climb, he met no one. There was a torch burning every few metres along the rough-hewn walls, so different from the finely chiselled masonry in the castle above. Dustfinger twice passed a room where more guards were sitting, but they never even raised their heads as he stole by, more quietly than a breath of air and equally invisible.\n\nWhen the stairs finally came to an end, he almost collided with a warder pacing up and down a candlelit corridor with a bored expression on his face. Soundlessly, he slipped past the man. He peered into dungeons scarcely larger than holes, too low for anyone to stand up in. Others were large enough to take fifty men. It would certainly be easy simply to forget a prisoner down here, and Dustfinger's heart contracted as he imagined how Resa must be feeling in this darkness. She had been a prisoner before, for so many years, and after that her freedom had lasted barely a year.\n\nHe heard voices, and followed them along another corridor until they grew louder. A small, bald-headed man came towards him. He passed so close that Dustfinger held his breath \u2013 but the man didn't notice him, just muttered something about stupid women and disappeared round the corner. Dustfinger pressed his back against the damp wall and listened. Someone was weeping \u2013 a woman, and someone else was speaking soothingly to her. There was only one cell at the end of the corridor: a dark, barred cavern with a torch burning beside it. How was he to get past those damned bars? He went close to them. There sat Resa, stroking another woman's hair to comfort her, while Twofingers sat beside them playing a sad tune on a little flute. No one could have done it half as well with all ten fingers as he did with seven. Dustfinger didn't know the others: neither the women with Resa nor the other men. There was no sign of the Barn Owl. Where had they taken him? Had he perhaps been imprisoned with Silvertongue?\n\nHe looked around, listened. Somewhere a man laughed, probably one of the warders. Dustfinger held a finger in the burning torch, whispered fire-words until a flame leaped from his fingertip like a sparrow picking up crumbs. When he had first shown Farid how to write his name on a wall in fire, the boy's black eyes had almost popped out of his head. Yet it was perfectly easy. Dustfinger put his hand between the bars and passed his finger over the rough stone. Resa, he wrote, and saw Twofingers lower his flute and stare at the burning letters. Resa turned. Heavens, how sad she looked! He should have come sooner. A good thing her daughter couldn't see her like this.\n\nShe rose, took a step towards her name, and hesitated. Still with his finger, Dustfinger drew a fiery line like an arrow pointing his way. She came close to the bars and stared at the empty air, incredulous and baffled.\n\n'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'You won't see my face today, but it's still as scarred as ever.'\n\n'Dustfinger?' She reached into the air, and his invisible fingers took her hand. She was actually speaking! The Black Prince had told him she could speak again, but he hadn't believed him.\n\n'What a beautiful voice!' he whispered. 'I always imagined it would be something like that. When did you get it back?'\n\n'When Mortola shot Mo.'\n\nTwofingers was still staring at her. The woman Resa had been comforting turned to them too. Just so long as they didn't say anything...\n\n'How are you?' she whispered. 'How is Meggie?'\n\n'Well. Better off than you, for sure. She and the writer got together to change this story for the better.'\n\nResa was clinging to the bars with one hand, and to his own hand with the other. 'Where is she now?'\n\n'Probably with her father.' He saw the horror in her face. 'Yes, I know, he's up in the tower, but that's what she wanted. It's all part of the plan Fenoglio has thought up.'\n\n'How is he? How's Mo?'\n\nJealousy still gave him a pang. The heart was a stupid thing. 'Said to be better, and thanks to Meggie he's not going to be hanged for the time being, so don't look so sad. Your daughter and Fenoglio have thought of a very clever way to save him. Him, and you, and all the others...' Steps approached. Dustfinger let go of Resa's hand and moved back, but the footsteps went past and away again.\n\n'Are you still there?' Her eyes searched the darkness.\n\n'Yes.' He took hold of her fingers once more. 'We only ever seem to meet in dungeons now! How long does it take your husband to bind a book?'\n\n'Bind a book?'\n\nHe heard footsteps again, but this time the sound died away more quickly.\n\n'Yes. It's a crazy story, but since Fenoglio has written it and your daughter has read it, no doubt it will come true.'\n\nShe put her other hand through the bars until her fingers met his face. 'You really are invisible! How do you do it?' She sounded as curious as a little girl. She was curious about everything she didn't know. He had always liked that in her.\n\n'Only an old fairy trick!' Her fingers stroked his scarred cheek. Why can't you help her, Dustfinger? he thought. She'll go mad down here! Suppose he struck one of the warders down? But there was still that endless staircase to climb, and after it the castle, the wide courtyard, the bare hilltop \u2013 nowhere to hide her, no tree to conceal her. Only stones and soldiers.\n\n'What about your wife?' Her voice was beautiful. 'Did you find her?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'What did you tell her?'\n\n'About what?'\n\n'The time you were away.'\n\n'Nothing.'\n\n'I've told Mo everything.'\n\nYes, no doubt she had. 'Well, Silvertongue knows what you're talking about, but I don't think Roxane would have believed me, do you?'\n\n'No, probably not.' For a moment she bent her head as if she were remembering \u2013 remembering the time he couldn't tell Roxane about. 'The Black Prince told me you have a daughter too,' she whispered. 'Why didn't you ever tell me about her?'\n\nTwofingers and the woman with the tear-stained face were still staring at them. With luck they believed by now that they had imagined the fiery letters. There was only a faint trace of soot left on the wall, and it was not unusual, after all, for people to begin talking to the empty air in dungeons.\n\n'I had two daughters.' Dustfinger jumped as someone screamed somewhere. 'The elder is around Meggie's age, but she's angry with me. She wants to know where I was for those ten years. Perhaps you know a pretty story I can tell her?'\n\n'What about the other one?'\n\n'She's dead.'\n\nResa just pressed his hand. 'I'm sorry.'\n\n'Yes. So am I.' He turned. One of the warders was standing at the end of the corridor. He called something to another warder, and then walked on, looking sullen.\n\n'Three weeks, maybe four!' Resa whispered. 'That's how long Mo would need, depending on the thickness of the book.'\n\n'Good, then that's not so bad.' He put his hand through the bars and stroked her hair. 'A couple of weeks are nothing to all those years in Capricorn's house, Resa! Remember that every time you feel like beating your head against these bars. Promise me.'\n\nShe nodded. 'Tell Meggie I'm well!' she whispered. 'And tell Mo too, please. You'll be talking to him as well, won't you?'\n\n'Yes, of course!' lied Dustfinger. What harm did it do to promise her that? For what else could he do to help her? The other woman began sobbing again. Her weeping echoed back from the mouldering walls, louder and louder.\n\n'Damn it all, shut your gob there!'\n\nDustfinger pressed close to the wall as the warder approached. He was a fat fellow, a hulk of a man, and Dustfinger held his breath as he stopped right beside him. For a terrible moment Twofingers was staring straight at him as if he could see him, but then his eyes moved on, searching the darkness, perhaps for more fiery letters on the wall.\n\n'Don't cry!' Resa tried to calm the woman as the warder struck the bars with his stick. Dustfinger could hardly find a corner to retreat into. The weeping woman buried her face in Resa's skirt, and the warder turned with a grunt and trudged away again. Dustfinger waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away before returning to the bars. Resa was kneeling beside the woman, whose face was still buried in her dress, and talking to her softly.\n\n'Resa!' he whispered. 'I must go. Did they bring an old man down here tonight? A physician, he calls himself the Barn Owl.'\n\nShe came back to the bars. 'No,' she whispered, 'but the warders were talking about a physician they've arrested. He has to treat all the sick people in the castle before they shut him up with us.'\n\n'That'll be him. Give him my greetings.' It was hard for him to leave her alone in the dark like this. He would have liked to free her from her cage, just as he set fairies free in market places, but Resa wouldn't be able to fly away.\n\nAt the foot of the stairs, two warders were joking about the hangman whose work Firefox was only too keen to take over. Dustfinger slipped past them, quick as a lizard, but all the same one of them turned his way with a confused expression. Perhaps the smell of fire that Dustfinger wore like a second coat had risen to his nostrils."
            },
            {
                "title": "In the Tower of the Castle of Night",
                "text": "\u2002You never came out the way you came in.\n\n\u2014Francis Spufford, The Child that Books Built\n\nMo was asleep when they brought Meggie to him. It was only the fever that made him sleep, numbing the thoughts that kept him awake hour after hour, day after day, while he listened to his own heartbeat in the draughty cell where they had put him, high in one of the silver towers. The moon was still shining through the barred windows when the approaching footsteps roused him.\n\n'Wake up, Bluejay!' The light of a torch fell into the cell, and Firefox pushed a slender figure through the door.\n\nResa? What kind of dream was this? A good one, for a change?\n\nBut it was not his wife they had brought. It was his daughter.\n\nWith difficulty, Mo sat up. He tasted Meggie's tears on his face as she hugged him so hard that he drew in his breath sharply with pain.\n\nMeggie. They had caught her too.\n\n'Mo? Say something!' She took his hand and looked at his face with concern. 'How are you?' she whispered.\n\n'Well, fancy that!' mocked Firefox. 'The Bluejay really does have a daughter. I expect she's about to tell you she's here of her own free will, as she tried to make the Adderhead believe. She's done a deal with him, and it's supposed to save your neck. You should have heard the fairy-tales she told. You could always sell her and her angel's tongue to the strolling players.'\n\nMo didn't even ask what he was talking about. He drew Meggie close as soon as the guard had bolted the door behind Firefox, kissed her hair, her forehead, took her face between his hands. He had been so sure that he'd seen that face for the last time in the stable in the forest. 'Meggie, for God's sake,' he said, leaning his back against the cold wall, since he could still hardly stand. He was so glad to see her there. So glad and so dismayed too. 'How did they catch you?'\n\n'Never mind that. Everything will be all right, believe me!' She put her hand on his shirt where there was still dried blood on it. 'You looked so sick in the stable... I thought I'd never see you again.'\n\n'I thought the same when I found that letter on your pillow.' He stroked the tears off her lashes as he had so often done before over the years. How tall she was, hardly a child any more, although he could still clearly see the child in her. 'Oh, heavens, it's so good to see you, Meggie. I know I shouldn't say so. A good father would say: dear daughter, do you have to get yourself locked up every time I do?'\n\nShe had to laugh, but he saw the concern in her eyes. She passed her fingers over his face as if she were finding shadows that hadn't been there before. Perhaps the White Women had left their fingerprints behind, even though they hadn't taken him away with them.\n\n'Don't look at me like that! I'm better, much better, and you know why.' He brushed the hair back from her forehead; it was so like her mother's. The thought of Resa hurt like a sharp thorn. 'Those were powerful words. Did Fenoglio write them for you?'\n\nMeggie nodded. 'And he wrote more for me too,' she whispered in his ear. 'Words that will save you. You and Resa and all the others.'\n\nWords. His whole life seemed to be woven from words. His life, and his death too.\n\n'They took your mother and the others to the dungeons under the castle.' He remembered Fenoglio's description only too well: the dungeons under the Castle of Night where fear clung to the walls like mould, and no ray of sun ever warmed the black stones. What words were going to get Resa out of there? And him out of this silver tower?\n\n'Mo?' Meggie put her hand on his shoulder. 'Do you think you can work?'\n\n'Work? Why?' He couldn't help smiling, for the first time in a long, long while. 'Do you think the Adderhead will forget he wants to hang me if I restore his books for him?'\n\nBut he didn't once interrupt as she told him, in a low voice, Fenoglio's idea for rescuing him. He sat on the straw mattress where he had lain these last few days and nights, counting the notches carved in the walls by other unfortunates, and listened to Meggie. And the more of the story she told, the crazier Fenoglio's plan seemed, but when she had finished Mo shook his head, and smiled.\n\n'Not a bad idea!' he said quietly. 'No, the old fox is no fool, he knows his story.' It's just a pity that Mortola presumably knows the altered version now too, he added to himself. And that you were interrupted before you had read it to the end. As so often, Meggie seemed to see what he was thinking from his face. He saw it in her eyes. He stroked the bridge of her nose with his forefinger, as he always used to when she was little, so little that her hand could hardly close round his finger. Little Meggie, big Meggie, brave Meggie...\n\n'You're so much braver than I am,' he said. 'Bargaining with the Adderhead. I'd really have liked to see that.'\n\nShe put her arms round his neck and stroked his tired face. 'You will see it, Mo!' she whispered. 'Fenoglio's words always come true, much more so in this world than in our own. They made you well again, didn't they?'\n\nHe just nodded. If he had said anything, she would have known from his voice that he found it difficult to believe, as she did, in a happy ending. Even when Meggie was younger she had always known at once if he was troubled in some way, but then it had been easy to take her mind off it with a joke, a pun, a story. It wasn't so simple now. No one could see into Mo's heart as easily as Meggie, except her mother. Resa had the same way of looking at him.\n\n'I expect you've heard why they dragged me here, haven't you?' he asked. 'I'm supposed to be a famous robber. Remember when we used to play Robin Hood?'\n\nMeggie nodded. 'You always wanted to be Robin.'\n\n'And you wanted to be the Sheriff of Nottingham. The baddies are stronger, Mo, you kept telling me. Clever child. Do you know what they call me? You'll like it.'\n\n'The Bluejay.' Meggie almost whispered the name.\n\n'Yes, exactly. What do you think? I don't suppose there's much hope the real Bluejay will come wanting his name back before my execution, do you?'\n\nHow gravely she was looking at him. As if she knew something he didn't.\n\n'There isn't any other Bluejay, Mo,' she said quietly. 'You are him.' Without another word she took his arm, turned his sleeve up and let her finger trace the scar that Basta's dogs had left. 'That wound was just healing when we were in Fenoglio's house. He gave you an ointment to help the scar tissue form better, remember?'\n\nHe didn't understand. Not a word. 'So?'\n\n'You are the Bluejay!' She repeated it. 'No one else. Fenoglio wrote the songs about him. He made him up because he thought his world needed a robber \u2013 and he used you as his model! He was a noble robber in my imagination, that's what he wrote to me.'\n\nIt was some time before Mo's mind could take in the meaning of her words. Suddenly he had to laugh. So loudly that the guard opened the barred flap in the door and stared suspiciously in. Mo wiped the laugh off his face and stared back until the guard disappeared again, cursing. Then he leaned his head against the wall behind him and closed his eyes.\n\n'I'm sorry, Mo,' whispered Meggie. 'So sorry. Sometimes Fenoglio is a terrible old man!'\n\n'Well, yes.'\n\nPerhaps that was why Orpheus had found it so easy to read him here. Because he was already in this story anyway. 'What do you think?' he asked. 'Do I feel honoured, or do I wring Fenoglio's old neck?'\n\nMeggie put her hand on his forehead. 'You're all hot! Lie down. You must rest.'\n\nHow often had he said the same to her, how many nights had he spent sitting beside her bed? Measles, chickenpox, scarlet fever... 'Lord, Meggie,' he had groaned when she caught whooping cough too, 'can't you leave out at least one childhood illness?'\n\nThe fever was pouring hot lead into his veins, and when Meggie bent over him, he thought for a moment that Resa was sitting beside him. But Meggie's hair was fairer.\n\n'Where are Dustfinger and Farid? They were with you, weren't they? Have they been captured too?' The fever made his tongue heavy.\n\n'No, I don't think so. Did you know Dustfinger has a wife?'\n\n'Yes, it was because of her that Basta cut his face. Have you met her?'\n\nMeggie nodded. 'She's very beautiful. Farid is jealous of her.'\n\n'Really? I thought he was in love with you.'\n\nShe went red, bright red.\n\n'Meggie?' Mo sat up. When on earth was this fever finally going to go away? It made him as weak as an old man. 'Oh no!' he said quietly. 'I see I've missed something. My daughter falls in love and I fail to notice! One more reason to curse that damned book. You should have stayed with Farid. I'd have been all right.'\n\n'You wouldn't! They'd have hanged you!'\n\n'They may yet. The boy must be worried out of his mind about you now. Poor fellow. Has he kissed you?'\n\n'Mo!' She turned her face away, embarrassed, but she was smiling.\n\n'I have to know. I think I even have to give my permission, don't I?'\n\n'Mo, stop it!' She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow, as usual when he was teasing her, and was horrified to see his face twist with pain. 'Oh, I'm sorry,' she whispered.\n\n'Well, so long as it hurts, I'm still alive.'\n\nThe wind carried the sound of horses' hooves up to them. Weapons clashed, voices rang through the night.\n\n'I tell you what,' said Mo quietly. 'Let's play our old game. We'll imagine we're in another story. In Hobbiton, maybe, that's quite a peaceful place, or with Wart and the wild geese. What do you think?'\n\nShe did not reply for some time. Then she took his hand and whispered, 'I'd like to imagine us in the Wayless Wood together. You and me and Resa. Then I could show you the fairies, and the fire-elves and the whispering trees, and \u2013 no, wait! Balbulus's workshop! That's it. I'd like to be there with you. He's an illuminator, Mo. In the Castle of Sighs in Ombra! The best of all illuminators. You could see his brushes and pigments...'\n\nSuddenly she sounded so excited! She could still forget everything, like a child \u2013 she could forget the bolted door and the gallows in the courtyard. The mere thought of a couple of fine paintbrushes would do it. 'Very well,' said Mo, stroking her fair hair again. 'Anything you say. Let's imagine we're in the castle of Ombra. I really would like to see those brushes.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 62",
                "text": "\u2003Where to?\n\n\u2003I dreamed a limitless book,\n\n\u2003A book unbound,\n\n\u2003Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance\n\n\u2003On every line there was a new horizon drawn,\n\n\u2003New heavens supposed;\n\n\u2003New states, new souls.\n\n\u2014Clive Barker, Abarat, Preface\n\nFarid was waiting by the statue, as they had agreed. He had hidden behind it \u2013 obviously he still found it hard to believe that he was invisible \u2013 and he hadn't managed to get a sight of Meggie. Dustfinger could tell from his voice; it was husky with disappointment. 'I got into the tower, I even saw the cell, but it's just too well guarded. And in the kitchen they were saying she's a witch and she'll be killed along with her father!'\n\n'Well, what did you expect they'd be talking about? Did you hear anything else?'\n\n'Yes, something about Firefox. They said he'll send Cosimo back to the dead.'\n\n'Ah. Nothing about the Black Prince?'\n\n'Only that there are people looking for him, but they haven't found him. They say he and his bear can exchange shapes, so that sometimes the bear is the Prince and the Prince is the bear. And they say he can fly and make himself invisible, and that he's going to rescue the Bluejay!'\n\n'Really?' Dustfinger laughed quietly. 'The Prince will like that. Right, come on. It's time for us to be off.'\n\n'Be off?' Dustfinger felt Farid's fingers clutching his arm. 'Why? We could hide. The castle's so big, no one would find us.'\n\n'You think so? What would you do here anyway? Meggie wouldn't go with you even if you could magic her through locked doors. Have you forgotten the deal she was offering the Adderhead? Resa says it will take Silvertongue a few weeks to bind a book, and the Adderhead won't hurt a hair of his head or Meggie's until he has that book, will he? So come on! It's time we looked for the Prince. We must tell him about Sootbird.'\n\nOutside, it was still as dark as if morning would never come. This time they slipped through the castle gate together with a troop of men-at-arms. Dustfinger would have liked to know where they were going so late at night. Let's hope they're not hunting the Prince, he thought, cursing Sootbird for his treacherous heart.\n\nThe men-at-arms galloped off down the road leading away from Mount Adder into the mountains. Dustfinger was standing there watching them go when something furry suddenly jumped up at him. Taken by surprise, he stumbled into the structure of one of the gallows. Two feet were swinging back and forth above him. But Gwin clung to his arm as naturally as if his master had always been invisible.\n\n'Damn it all!' His heart was in his mouth as he seized the marten. 'You'll be the death of me yet, you little beast, won't you?' he hissed at him. 'Where did you spring from?'\n\nAs if in answer, Roxane stepped out of the shadow of the castle walls. 'Dustfinger?' she whispered as her eyes searched for his invisible face. Jink appeared behind her and raised his nose, sniffing.\n\n'Yes, who did you think?' He guided her on with him, pressing her close to the wall so that the sentries on the battlements couldn't see her. This time he didn't ask why she had followed them. He was too glad that she was there. Even if the expression on her face reminded him for a moment of Resa and her sadness. 'There's nothing we can do here for the moment,' he whispered. 'But did you know that Sootbird is a welcome guest in the Castle of Night?'\n\n'Sootbird?'\n\n'Yes. It's bad news. You ride back to Ombra and see to Jehan and Brianna. I'll go and look for the Black Prince and warn him of this cuckoo in the nest.'\n\n'And how are you going to find him?' Roxane smiled, as if she could see his baffled face. 'Shall I take you to him?'\n\n'You?'\n\n'Yes.' Up above, the guards called something to each other. Dustfinger drew Roxane even closer to the wall. 'The Prince cares for his Motley Folk very well,' she whispered. 'And as I'm sure you can imagine, he doesn't always earn the money he needs for cripples and old folk, widows and orphans, by doing tricks in market places. His men are skilful poachers and the terror of tax gatherers, they have hiding places all over the forest, in Argenta and Lombrica alike, and there are often sick or wounded men there... Nettle will have nothing to do with robbers, nor will the moss-women, and they don't trust most physicians. So some time ago they began coming to me. I'm not afraid of the forest, I've been in its darkest corners with you. Arrow wounds, broken bones, a bad cough \u2013 I know how to cure all those, and the Prince trusts me. I was always Dustfinger's wife to him, even when I was married to another man. Perhaps he was right.'\n\n'Was he?' Dustfinger spun round. Someone was clearing his throat in the darkness.\n\n'Didn't you say we must be gone before the sun rises?' Farid's voice sounded reproachful.\n\nBy fire and fairies, he'd forgotten the boy! And Farid was right. Morning couldn't be far away, and the shadow of the Castle of Night was not the best place to discuss dead husbands.\n\n'Very well. Catch the martens!' Dustfinger whispered into the night. 'But don't, for heaven's sake, scare me to death like that again, understand? Or I'll never let you make yourself invisible again.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Badger's Earth",
                "text": "\u2002'Oh, Sara. It is like a story.'\n\n\u2002'It is a story... everything is a story. You are a story \u2013 I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.'\n\n\u2014Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Little Princess\n\nFarid followed Dustfinger and Roxane through the night with an expression that must surely be as dark as the sky above them. It hurt to leave Meggie behind in the castle, however sensible it was. And now here was Roxane coming with them too. Although he had to admit that she seemed to know exactly where she was going. They soon came upon the first hiding-place, well concealed behind thorny undergrowth, but it was deserted. In the next they found two men who distrustfully drew their knives, and did not put them back in their belts until Roxane had spoken to them at length. Perhaps they sensed the presence of Dustfinger and Farid, in spite of their invisibility. Fortunately Roxane had once cured a nasty ulcer for one of them, and he finally told her where she would find the Prince.\n\nThe Badger's Earth. Farid thought he heard those words twice. 'Their main hide-out,' was all that Roxane said. 'We must be there by daybreak. But they warned me that there are said to be soldiers on the move, a great many of them.'\n\nFrom then on Farid sometimes thought he heard the clink of swords in the distance, the snorting of horses, voices, marching footsteps \u2013 but perhaps he was only imagining it. Soon the first rays of sunlight penetrated the leaf canopy above them, gradually turning their bodies visible again, like reflections on dark water. It was good not to have to keep looking for his own hands and feet, and to see Dustfinger again. Even if he was walking beside Roxane.\n\nNow and then Farid sensed her looking at him, as if she were still searching his dark face for some similarity to Dustfinger. At her farm she had once or twice asked him questions about his mother. Farid would have liked to tell her that his mother had been a princess, much, much more beautiful than Roxane, and that Dustfinger had loved her so dearly that he stayed with her for ten years until death took her from him, leaving him only with their son, their dark-skinned, black-eyed son who now followed him like a shadow. But his age wasn't quite right for this tale, and moreover Dustfinger would probably have been furious if Roxane had asked him for the truth behind it, so in the end Farid told her only that his mother was dead \u2013 which was probably correct. If Roxane was stupid enough to think Dustfinger had come back to her only because he had lost another woman, all the better. Every glance that Dustfinger cast her filled Farid's heart to the brim with jealousy. Suppose he decided to stay with her for ever, at the farm with the fragrant fields of herbs? Suppose he stopped wanting to go from one market place to the next, but preferred to live with her, kissing her and laughing with her as he already did only too often, forgetting fire and Farid?\n\nThe forest became denser and denser, and the Castle of Night might have been only a bad dream, when they suddenly saw over a dozen men standing among the trees around them. Armed men in ragged clothes. They appeared so silently that even Dustfinger hadn't heard them. They surrounded them with hostile expressions on their faces, knives and swords in their hands, and stared at the two figures who were still almost transparent around the chests and arms.\n\n'Hey, Snapper, don't you know me?' asked Roxane, going up to one of them. 'How are your fingers doing?'\n\nThe man's face cleared. He was a heavily built fellow with a scar on his neck. 'Ah, the herb-witch,' he said. 'Of course. Why are you roaming the forest here so early? And what are those ghosts with you?'\n\n'We're not ghosts. We're looking for the Black Prince.' As Dustfinger moved to Roxane's side all the men's weapons turned his way.\n\n'What are you doing?' Roxane asked the men angrily. 'Look at his face. Did you never hear of the fire-dancer? The Prince will set his bear on you if he hears that you threatened him.'\n\nThe men put their heads together and scrutinized Dustfinger's scarred face uneasily.\n\n'Three scars as pale as cobwebs,' whispered Snapper. 'Oh yes, we've all heard about him, but only in songs...'\n\n'Who says songs can't be believed?' Dustfinger breathed into the cool morning air and whispered fire-words until a flame consumed his steaming breath. The robbers flinched back and stared at him, as if this only reinforced their certainty that he was a ghost. However, Dustfinger raised both hands in the air and put the flame out between them as if nothing could be easier. Then he bent down and cooled the palms of his hands on the dewy grass.\n\n'Did you see that?' Snapper looked at the others. 'That's just what the Prince has always told us about him \u2013 he catches fire as you might catch a rabbit, he speaks to it like a lover.'\n\nThe robbers took the three into their midst. Farid looked uneasily at the men's faces as he walked along beside them. They reminded him of other faces, faces from an earlier life, from a world that he did not like to remember, and he stayed as close as he could to Dustfinger's side.\n\n'Are you sure these are the Prince's men?' Dustfinger asked Roxane in an undertone.\n\n'Oh yes,' she whispered back. 'He can't choose who will follow him.'\n\nFarid did not think this answer very reassuring.\n\nThe robbers in Farid's old life had claimed caves full of treasure as their own, caverns more magnificent than the halls of the Castle of Night. The hide-out where Snapper took them could not be compared with those caves. Its entrance, hidden in a crevice in the ground among tall beech trees, was so narrow that you had to squeeze your way in, and even Farid had to duck his head in the passage beyond it. The cave it led to was not much better. Other passages branched off, obviously leading even deeper underground. 'Welcome to the Badger's Earth!' said Snapper, while the men sitting on the floor of the cave looked at them suspiciously. 'Who says that only the Adderhead can dig deep into the ground? There are several men among us who toiled in his mines for years. They found out how you can nest far down in the earth and not have it fall on your head.'\n\nThe Prince was alone in a cave to one side of the others; only the bear was with him, and he looked tired. But at the sight of Dustfinger his face brightened, and the news they brought was not so much of a surprise to him as they had expected.\n\n'Ah yes, Sootbird!' he said, and Snapper drew a finger across his throat at the mention of that name. 'I ought to have asked myself much sooner how he could afford the alchemists' powders he uses in his fire-eating shows. The few coins he earns in market places wouldn't run to it. But unfortunately I didn't have him watched until after the attack on the Secret Camp. He soon parted from the other prisoners we freed and met the Adderhead's informers on the border. While those he betrayed are in the dungeons of the Castle of Night, and there's nothing I can do for them! Here I am stuck in a forest swarming with soldiers. The Adderhead is assembling them up on the road that leads to Ombra.'\n\n'Cosimo?' It was Roxane who spoke the name, and the Prince nodded.\n\n'Yes. I sent him three messengers with three warnings. One came back, but only to say that Cosimo laughed in his face. I'll admit I don't remember him as being quite so stupid. The year he spent away seems to have robbed him of his reason. He's planning to make war on the Adderhead with an army of peasants. It's as if we were to march against the Adderhead ourselves.'\n\n'We'd have a better chance,' said Snapper.\n\n'Yes, I expect we would.' The Black Prince sounded so discouraged that Farid's heart failed him. Secretly, he had always put far more trust in the Prince than in Fenoglio's words, but what could this troop of ragged men digging themselves holes in the forest like rabbits do against the Castle of Night?\n\nThe men brought them something to eat, and Roxane looked at Dustfinger's leg. She treated the wound with an ointment that made it smell like spring in the cave for a moment. And Farid couldn't help thinking of Meggie. He remembered a story that he had heard by a fire on a cold night in the desert. It was the tale of a thief who fell in love with a princess; he still remembered it very well. The two were so deeply in love that they could speak to each other over a distance of many miles. Each could hear the other's thoughts even if walls separated them, each knew whether the other was sad or happy... but intently as Farid listened to his own feelings, he could sense nothing. He couldn't even have said whether Meggie was still alive. She seemed to have gone away, gone away from his heart, from the world. When he brushed the tears from his eyes, he felt Dustfinger looking at him.\n\n'I'll have to rest this wretched leg or it will never heal,' he said quietly. 'But we'll go back. When the time comes...'\n\nRoxane frowned, but she said nothing. The Prince and Dustfinger began talking so quietly that Farid had to move close to them to make anything out. Roxane put her head on Dustfinger's lap and was soon asleep. But Farid curled up like a puppy beside him, closed his eyes, and listened to the two men.\n\nThe Black Prince wanted to know all about Silvertongue \u2013 whether the day of the execution was fixed, where he was held prisoner, how his wound was doing. Dustfinger told him what he knew. And he told him about the book that Meggie had offered the Adderhead as a ransom for her father.\n\n'A book to hold Death prisoner?' The Prince laughed incredulously. 'Has the Adderhead taken to believing in fairy-tales?'\n\nDustfinger did not reply to that. He said nothing about Fenoglio; he did not say that they were all part of a story that an old man had written. In his place Farid wouldn't have said so either. The Black Prince probably wouldn't believe that there were words which could decide even his own fate, words like invisible paths from which you could not turn aside. The bear grunted in his sleep, and Roxane turned her head restlessly. She was holding Dustfinger's hand as if she wanted to take him into her dreams.\n\n'You told the boy you'd go back,' said the Prince. 'You can come with us.'\n\n'Are you going to the Castle of Night? Why? Do you plan to storm it with these few men? Or tell the Adderhead that he's caught the wrong man? With this on your nose?' Dustfinger put his hand among the blankets lying on the floor, and brought out a bird mask. Bluejay feathers sewn to cracked leather. He put the mask on his scarred face.\n\n'Many of us have worn that mask before,' said the Prince. 'And now they're going to hang another innocent man for the deeds we've done. I can't allow that! This time it's a bookbinder. Last time, after we attacked one of the silver transports, they hanged a charcoal-burner just because he had a scar on his arm. His wife is probably still mourning him.'\n\n'It's not just the deeds you did. Fenoglio invented most of them!' Dustfinger sounded irritated. 'Damn it, Prince, you can't save Silvertongue. You'll only die too. Or do you seriously think the Adderhead will let him go just because you've turned yourself in?'\n\n'No, I'm not such a fool as that. But I must do something.' The Prince put his hand in his bear's mouth, as he so often did, and as always that hand, as if miraculously, came back intact from between the bear's teeth.\n\n'Yes, yes, very well.' Dustfinger sighed. 'You and your unwritten rules. You don't even know Silvertongue! How can you want to die for someone you don't know?'\n\n'Who would you die for?' the Prince asked in return.\n\nFarid saw Dustfinger look at Roxane's sleeping face \u2013 and then turn to him. He quickly closed his eyes.\n\n'You'd die for Roxane,' he heard the Prince say.\n\n'Perhaps,' said Dustfinger, and through his lashes Farid saw him trace Roxane's dark brows with his finger. 'Or perhaps not. Do you have many informers in the Castle of Night?'\n\n'Yes, indeed. Kitchen-maids, stable boys, even a few of the guards \u2013 although they come very expensive \u2013 and most useful of all, a falconer who sends me a message now and then by one of his clever birds. I shall hear at once when they've fixed the day of the execution. You know the Adderhead doesn't have such things done in a market place or in front of the common people in the castle courtyard any more, not since you spoiled my punishment so thoroughly for him. He was never a friend of such spectacles anyway. An execution is a serious matter to the Adderhead. The gallows outside the castle will do for a poor minstrel, there'll be no trouble about that, but the Bluejay will die inside the gate.'\n\n'Yes. If his daughter's voice doesn't open that gate for him,' replied Dustfinger. 'Her voice and a book \u2013 a book full of immortality.'\n\nFarid heard the Black Prince laugh. 'That sounds almost like some new song by the Inkweaver!'\n\n'Yes,' replied Dustfinger in a husky voice. 'It sounds just like him, doesn't it?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "All is Lost",
                "text": "\u2003'Tis war! 'Tis war! God's angel stand by ye\n\n\u2003And guide your hand.\n\n\u2003'Tis war, alas, and guiltless I would be\n\n\u2003Of what betides this land.\n\n\u2014Matthias Claudius, War Song\n\nAfter a few days' rest, Dustfinger's leg was much better, and Farid was just telling the two martens how they'd soon all be stealing into the Castle of Night to rescue Meggie and her parents when bad news came to the Badger's Earth. One of the men who had been watching the road to Ombra brought it. His face was covered with blood and he could hardly keep on his feet.\n\n'They're killing them!' he kept stammering over and over again. 'They're killing them all.'\n\n'Where?' asked the Prince. 'Where exactly?'\n\n'Not two hours from here,' the messenger managed to say. 'Keep going north.'\n\nThe Prince left ten men at the Badger's Earth. Roxane tried to persuade Dustfinger to stay too. 'You must spare your leg, or it will never heal,' she said. But he would not listen to her, so she too came on the fast, silent march through the forest.\n\nThey heard the sound of battle long before they could see anything. Screams reached Farid's ears, cries of pain, and the whinnying of horses, shrill with fear. A moment came when the Prince signalled to them to go more slowly. A few more paces, bending low, and the ground in front of them dropped steeply to the road that ended, many miles further on, at the gates of Ombra. Dustfinger made Farid and Roxane get down on the ground, although no one was looking their way. Hundreds of men were fighting among the trees down below, but there were no robbers among them. Robbers do not wear shirts of chain mail, breastplates and helmets decked with peacock feathers; they seldom have horses, and never coats of arms embroidered on silken surcoats.\n\nDustfinger held Roxane close when she began to sob. The sun was sinking behind the hills as the Adderhead's soldiers cut down Cosimo's men one by one. It looked as if the battle had been raging for a long time; the road was covered with dead bodies lying side by side. Only a small troop was still on horseback amidst all this death. Cosimo himself was among them, his beautiful face distorted by rage and fear. For a moment it looked almost as if those few mounted men would be able to carve themselves a breach in the enemy ranks, but then Firefox came among them with a company of men gleaming like deadly beetles in their armour. They mowed down Cosimo and his retinue like dry grass as the sun sank right behind the hills, as red as if all the blood that had been shed was reflected in the sky. Firefox himself struck Cosimo from his horse, and Dustfinger buried his face in Roxane's hair, as if he were tired of seeing Death at work. But Farid did not turn his head away. His face unmoving, he looked at the slaughter and thought of Meggie \u2013 Meggie, who perhaps still believed that a little ink could cure anything in this world. Would she believe it if her eyes saw what his were seeing now?\n\nFew of Cosimo's men survived their Prince. Barely a dozen fled into the trees. No one went to the trouble of pursuing them. The Adderhead's soldiers broke into cries of triumph, and began plundering the corpses like a flock of vultures in human form. They did not get Cosimo's body, however. Firefox himself drove his soldiers off, and had that beautiful corpse loaded on to a horse and taken away.\n\n'Why are they doing that?' asked Farid.\n\n'Why? Because his corpse is the proof that he really is dead this time,' said Dustfinger bitterly.\n\n'Yes, he is indeed,' whispered the Black Prince. 'I suppose you think yourself immortal if you've come back from the dead once. But he wasn't, any more than his men, and now almost all the people of Lombrica will be widows and orphans.'\n\nIt was many hours before the Adderhead's soldiers finally moved away, laden with what they could rob from the dead. Darkness was coming on again when silence fell at last among the trees, the silence that is felt only in the presence of Death.\n\nRoxane was the first to find a way down the slope. She was no longer weeping. Her face was fixed and rigid, but whether with anger or pain Farid could not have said. The robbers hesitated before following her, for the first White Women were already standing there among the dead."
            },
            {
                "title": "Lord of the Story",
                "text": "\u2003Iron helmets will not save\n\n\u2003Even heroes from the grave.\n\n\u2003Good men's blood will drain away\n\n\u2003While the wicked win the day.\n\n\u2014Heinrich Heine, Valkyries\n\nFenoglio was wandering among the dead when the robbers found him. Night fell, but he did not know what night it was. Nor could he remember how many days had passed since he rode out of the gates of Ombra with Cosimo. He knew only one thing: they were all dead. Minerva's husband, his neighbour, the father of the boy who had so often begged him for a story. All dead. And he himself would very likely have been dead too if his horse hadn't shied and thrown him. He had crawled away into the trees, to hide there like an animal and watch the slaughter.\n\nSince the departure of the Adderhead's soldiers he had been stumbling from one corpse to the next, cursing himself, cursing his story, cursing the world he had created. When he felt the hand on his shoulder he actually thought for a moment that Cosimo had risen from the dead yet again, but it was the Black Prince standing behind him.\n\n'What are you doing here?' he snarled at him and the men with him. 'Do you want to die too? Go away and hide, and leave me in peace.' He struck his brow. His damned head that had invented them all, and with them all the misfortune they were wading through like black, stinking water! He fell on his knees beside a dead man whose open eyes were staring at the sky, and blamed himself furiously \u2013 himself, the Adderhead, Cosimo and his haste \u2013 and then suddenly fell silent when he saw Dustfinger standing next to the Prince.\n\n'You!' he stammered, and got to his feet again, swaying. 'You're still alive! You're not dead yet, even though I wrote it that way.' He took Dustfinger's arm and clutched it tightly.\n\n'Yes, disappointing, isn't it?' replied Dustfinger, shaking Fenoglio's hand roughly off. 'Is it any comfort to you that no doubt, but for Farid, I'd have been lying as dead and cold as these men? After all, you didn't foresee him.'\n\nFarid? Oh yes, the boy plucked by Mortimer from his desert story. He was standing beside Dustfinger and staring at Fenoglio with murder in his eyes. No, the boy really did not belong here. Whoever had sent him to protect Dustfinger, it hadn't been him, Fenoglio! But that was the wretched part of the whole business! With everyone interfering in his story, how could it turn out well?\n\n'I can't find Cosimo!' he muttered. 'I've been looking for him for hours. Have any of you seen him?'\n\n'Firefox has had his body taken away,' the Prince replied. 'I expect they'll put it on public display so that this time no one can claim he's still alive.'\n\nFenoglio stared at him until the bear began to growl. Then he shook his head again and again. 'I don't understand it!' he stammered. 'How could it happen? Didn't Meggie read what I wrote for her? Didn't Roxane find her?' He looked despairingly at Dustfinger. How well he remembered the day he had described his death! A good scene, one of the best he'd ever written.\n\n'Oh yes, Roxane gave Meggie the letter. Ask her yourself if you don't believe me. Although I don't think she'll feel much like talking at the moment.' Dustfinger pointed to the woman walking among the corpses. Roxane. The beautiful Roxane. She bent over the dead, looked into their faces, and finally knelt down beside a man whom a White Woman was approaching. She quickly put her hands over his ears, bent over his face, and gestured to the two robbers who were following her with torches in their hands. No, she would certainly not feel much like talking just now.\n\nDustfinger looked at him. Why that reproachful expression? Fenoglio wanted to snap at him. After all, I invented your wife too! But he bit the words back. 'Very well. So Roxane gave Meggie the letter,' he said instead. 'But did Meggie read it?'\n\nDustfinger looked at him with great dislike. 'She tried to, but the Adderhead had her taken to the Castle of Night that very evening.'\n\n'Oh, God!' Fenoglio looked around. The dead faces of Cosimo's men stared at him. 'So that's it!' he cried. 'I thought all this had happened only because Cosimo wanted to set off too soon, but no! The words, my wonderful words... Meggie can't have read them, or everything would have been all right!'\n\n'Nothing would have been all right!' Dustfinger's voice was so cutting that Fenoglio involuntarily flinched. 'Not a man of all these lying here would be dead if you hadn't brought Cosimo back!'\n\nThe Prince and his men stared at Dustfinger, unable to make anything of this. Of course, they had no idea what he was talking about. But obviously Dustfinger knew only too well. Meggie had told him about Cosimo. Or had it been the boy?\n\n'Why are you staring at him like that?' Farid challenged the robbers, ranging himself at Dustfinger's side. 'It was exactly as he says! Fenoglio brought Cosimo back from the dead. I was there myself.'\n\nHow the fools flinched away! Only the Black Prince looked thoughtfully at Fenoglio.\n\n'What nonsense!' Fenoglio said. 'No one comes back to this world from the dead! Think what a crowd there'd be! I made a new Cosimo, a brand-new one, and everything would have turned out well if Meggie hadn't been interrupted while she read! My Cosimo would have been a wonderful ruler, a\u2014'\n\nBefore he could say any more, the Prince's black hand came down over his mouth. 'That's enough,' he said. 'Enough talking while the dead lie here around us. Your Cosimo is dead, wherever he came from, and the man they take for the Bluejay because of your songs may well be dead soon too. You seem to enjoy playing with Death, Inkweaver.'\n\nFenoglio tried to protest, but the Black Prince had already turned to his men. 'Go on looking for the wounded!' he told them. 'And hurry! It's time we got off this road.'\n\nThey found barely two dozen survivors. Two dozen among hundreds of dead. When the robbers set off again with the wounded men, Fenoglio staggered after them in silence without asking where they were going. 'The old man is following us!' he heard Dustfinger tell the Prince. 'Where else would he go?' was all the Prince replied \u2013 and Dustfinger said nothing. But he kept well away from Fenoglio, as if he were Death itself."
            },
            {
                "title": "Blank Paper",
                "text": "\u2003We make for your sake such things as stand fast,\n\n\u2003Through the ages these pages forever will last.\n\n\u2003On blank paper the printer sets down what is heard\n\n\u2003Giving life to what's rife with the power of the word.\n\n\u2003Michael Kongehl,\n\n\u2014'On the White Art', Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst\n\nWhen Mortola had Mo's cell unlocked, Meggie was just telling him about the Laughing Prince's festivities, the tightrope-walker and the Black Prince and Farid's juggling with the torches. Mo put his arm protectively round her as the bolts were shot back and Mortola came into the cell, flanked by Basta and the Piper. The sunlight falling into the room made Basta's face look like boiled lobster.\n\n'Look at that, what an idyll! Father and daughter reunited,' sneered Mortola. 'Truly touching!'\n\n'Hurry up!' the guard told her through the door, low-voiced. 'If the Adderhead hears that I let you in to see him, they'll put me in the pillory for three days!'\n\n'And if they do I've paid you well enough, haven't I?' was all Mortola replied, while Basta went up to Mo with a vicious smile.\n\n'Well, Silvertongue,' he purred, 'didn't I say you'd all fall into our trap yet?'\n\n'You look more as if it was you who fell into Dustfinger's trap,' replied Mo, quickly putting Meggie behind him when, by way of answer, Basta snapped his knife open.\n\n'Basta! Stop that!' Mortola snapped at him. 'We don't have time for your games.'\n\nMeggie came out from behind Mo's back as Mortola moved towards her. She wanted to show the old woman that she wasn't afraid of her (even if, of course, that was only a brave lie).\n\n'Those were interesting words that you had hidden in your clothing,' Mortola said to her, low-voiced. 'The Adderhead was particularly interested in the part about three very special words. Oh, see how pale she's gone around her pretty little nose! Yes, the Adderhead knows about your plans, little pigeon, and he knows now that Mortola isn't as stupid as he thought. But unfortunately he still wants the book you promised him. The fool really does believe that you two can keep his death imprisoned in a book.' The Magpie wrinkled her nose at such princely stupidity, and came yet closer to Meggie. 'Yes, he's a gullible fool, like all princes!' she whispered to Meggie. 'We both know that, don't we? For the words you carried with you also say that Cosimo the Fair will conquer this castle, and kill the Adderhead, with the aid of the book your father is to bind for him. But how can that be so? Cosimo is dead, and for good this time. Oh, how alarmed you look, you little witch!' Her bony fingers pinched Meggie's cheeks hard. Mo went to strike her hand away, but Basta faced him with the knife. 'Your tongue has lost its magic power, my little darling!' said the Magpie. 'The words are only words. The book your father is to bind for the Adderhead will be nothing but a blank book \u2013 and once the Silver Prince finally realizes that, nothing will save you two from the hangman. And Mortola will be avenged at last.'\n\n'Leave her alone, Mortola!' Mo reached for Meggie's hand in spite of Basta's knife, and Meggie clasped his fingers firmly in hers as thoughts raced through her mind in confusion. Cosimo was dead? For the second time? What did that mean? Nothing, she thought. Nothing at all, Meggie. Because you never read the words that were to protect him.\n\nMortola seemed to notice her relief, for the Magpie's eyes became as narrow as her lips. 'Ah, so that doesn't trouble you? Do you think I'd lie to you? Or do you believe in that book of immortality yourself? Let me tell you something.' The Magpie's thin fingers dug into Meggie's shoulder. 'It's a book, no more, and I am sure you and your father remember what my son used to do with books! Capricorn would never have been fool enough to entrust his life to one, even if you'd promised him immortality for it! And furthermore... those three words that it seems must not be written in the book... I know them now too.'\n\n'What do you mean by that, Mortola?' asked Mo quietly. 'Do you by any chance dream of putting Basta here on the Adderhead's throne? Or even yourself?'\n\nThe Magpie cast a quick glance at the guard outside the cell door, but he had his back to them, and she turned to Mo again, her face expressionless. 'Whatever I intend to do, Silvertongue,' she hissed at him, 'you won't live to see it. This story is over for you. Why isn't he in chains?' she snapped at the Piper. 'He's still a prisoner, isn't he? At least tie his hands while you move him.'\n\nMeggie was about to protest, but Mo cast her a warning glance.\n\n'Believe me, Silvertongue,' said Mortola in a low voice as the Piper roughly tied Mo's hands behind his back, 'even if the Adderhead sets you free after you've made him his book, you won't get far. And Mortola's word is worth more than the words of a poet. Take the pair of them to the Old Chamber!' she ordered as she went to the door again. 'But watch them closely, and make sure that not a single book falls into their hands.'\n\nThe Old Chamber lay in the most remote part of the Castle of Night, far from the halls where the Adderhead held court. The corridors down which Basta and the Piper led them were dusty and deserted. No silver adorned the columns and doors here; there was no glass in the draughty windows.\n\nThe chamber whose door the Piper finally opened, with a mocking bow to Mo, seemed to have been unoccupied for a long time. The pink fabric of the bed hangings was moth-eaten. The bunches of flowers standing in pitchers in the window niches were long dried up; dust was caught in the withered blossoms, and lay thick and dirty white on the chests that stood under the windows. In the middle of the chamber was a table: a long wooden surface laid on trestles. A man stood behind it, as pale as paper, with white hair and inkstains on his fingers. He gave Meggie only a quick glance, but he studied Mo as thoroughly as if someone had asked him to deliver an expert opinion on him.\n\n'Is this the man?' he asked the Piper. 'He looks as if he'd never held a book in his hand in his life, let alone had the faintest idea how to bind one.'\n\nMeggie saw a smile steal over Mo's face. Without a word he went over to the table and examined the tools lying on it.\n\n'My name is Taddeo, and I am the librarian here,' went on the stranger, sounding annoyed. 'I don't suppose that a single one of these objects means anything to you, but I can assure you that the paper you see there alone is worth more than your wretched robber's life. The finest product of the best paper mill for a thousand miles around, enough to bind more than two books of five hundred pages. Although a genuine bookbinder, of course, would prefer parchment to any paper, however good.'\n\nMo held his bound hands out to the Piper. 'There could be two opinions about that,' he said, as the silver-nosed minstrel, his expression sullen, undid his bonds. 'You should be glad I asked for paper. Parchment for this book would cost a fortune. Quite apart from the hundreds of goats who would have to give their lives for it. And as for the quality of these sheets, it's by no means as good as you claim. The texture is coarse, but if there's no better available it will have to do. I hope at least it's well sized. As for the rest of this \u2013' Mo's expert fingers passed over the tools lying ready \u2013 'it looks serviceable.'\n\nKnives and bone folders, hemp, strong thread and needles to stitch the pages, glue and a pot to heat it in, beechwood for the back and front covers, leather to go over them \u2013 Mo picked them all up, as he did in his own workshop, before he set to work. Then he looked around. 'What about the press and the sewing frame? And what am I going to heat the glue with?'\n\n'You... you'll have everything you need before evening,' replied Taddeo, in some confusion.\n\n'The clasps are all right, but I shall need another file, and leather and linen for the tapes.'\n\n'Of course, of course. Anything you say.' The librarian nodded, very ready to oblige now, while an incredulous smile spread over his pale face.\n\n'Good.' Mo leaned on the table, supporting himself with both hands. 'I'm sorry, but I'm not very strong on my legs yet. I hope the leather is more flexible than the parchment, and as for the glue,' he added, picking up the pot and sniffing, 'well, we'll see if it's good enough. And bring me some paste too. I'll use glue only for the covers. Bookworms like the flavour too much.'\n\nMeggie relished the sight of the surprised faces. Even the Piper was staring at Mo in disbelief. Only Basta remained unmoved. He knew that he had brought the librarian a bookbinder, not a robber.\n\n'My father needs a chair,' said Meggie, with an imperious glance at the librarian. 'Can't you see he's injured? Is he supposed to work standing up?'\n\n'Standing up? No... no, of course not! By no means. I'll have an armchair brought at once,' answered the librarian distractedly. He was still staring at Mo. 'You... er... you know a remarkable amount about books for a highwayman.'\n\nMo gave him a smile. 'Yes, don't I?' he said. 'Perhaps the highwayman was once a bookbinder? Don't they say that all kinds of professions are to be found among the outlaws? Farmers, cobblers, physicians, minstrels\u2014'\n\n'Never mind what he once was,' the Piper interrupted. 'He's a murderer anyway, so don't fall for his soft voice, bookworm. He kills without batting an eyelid. Ask Basta if you don't believe me.'\n\n'Yes, very true!' Basta rubbed his burned skin. 'He's more dangerous than a nest of vipers. And his daughter's no better. I hope those knives won't give you any silly ideas,' he said to Mo. 'The guards will be counting them regularly, and they'll cut off one of your daughter's fingers for every knife that goes missing. And the same applies to any other stupid tricks you try. Do you understand?'\n\nMo did not answer him, but he looked at the knives as if to count them for safety's sake. 'Oh, do get him a chair!' said Meggie to the librarian impatiently as Mo leaned on the table again.\n\n'Yes, of course! At once!' Taddeo hurried away, but the Piper gave an ugly laugh.\n\n'Listen to the little witch! Ordering people about like a prince's brat! Well, not surprising, is it, since she claims to be the daughter of a man who can keep Death a prisoner between two wooden covers! What about you, Basta? Do you believe her story?'\n\nBasta put his hand to the amulet hanging round his neck. It was not a rabbit's paw, as he had worn in Capricorn's service, but something that looked suspiciously like a human finger-bone. 'Who knows?' he muttered.\n\n'Yes, who knows?' agreed Mo, without turning to look at the two of them. 'But I can summon Death, anyway, can't I, Basta? So can Meggie.'\n\nThe Piper cast Basta a swift glance.\n\nBasta had pale blotches on his burned skin. 'All I know,' he growled, his hand still on his amulet, 'is that you should have been dead and buried long ago, Silvertongue. And the Adderhead would do better to listen to Mortola instead of your witchy daughter. He ate out of her hand, did the Silver Prince. He fell for her lies.'\n\nThe Piper straightened his back, as ready to attack as the viper on his master's coat of arms. 'Fell for her lies?' he said, in his curiously strained voice. He was a good head taller than Basta. 'The Adderhead falls for nothing anyone says. He is a great ruler, greater than any other. Firefox sometimes forgets that, and so does Mortola. Don't go making the same mistake. And now get out. The Adderhead's orders are that no one who ever worked for Capricorn is to be on guard in this room. Could that mean that he doesn't trust you?'\n\nBasta's voice turned to a hiss. 'You worked for Capricorn once yourself, Piper!' he said through compressed lips. 'You'd be nothing but for him.'\n\n'Oh yes? You see this nose?' The Piper stroked his silver nose. 'I once had a nose like yours, an ordinary nose of flesh and blood. It hurt losing it, but the Adderhead had a better one made for me, and since then I don't sing for drunken fire-raisers, I sing only for him \u2013 a real prince whose family is older than the towers of this castle. If you don't want to serve him, then go back to Capricorn's fortress. Maybe his ghost is haunting those burned-out walls \u2013 oh, but you're afraid of ghosts, aren't you, Basta?'\n\nThe two men were standing so close that the blade of Basta's knife wouldn't have fitted between them.\n\n'Yes, I am afraid of ghosts,' he hissed. 'But at least I don't spend every night on my knees, whimpering because I'm afraid the White Women might fetch me away, like your fine new master.'\n\nThe Piper struck Basta in the face so hard that his head hit the door frame. Blood ran down his burned cheek in a trail of red. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. 'Take care to avoid dark corridors, Piper!' he whispered. 'You don't have a nose any more, but one can always find something else to cut off.'\n\nWhen the librarian came back with the chair Basta had gone, and the Piper left too after posting two guards outside the door. 'No one comes in or goes out except the librarian!' Meggie heard him ordering brusquely before he left. 'And check up regularly to make sure the Bluejay is working.'\n\nTaddeo smiled awkwardly at Mo as the Piper's footsteps died away outside, as if he felt he should apologise for the soldiers guarding the door. 'Excuse me,' he said quietly, placing the chair at the table for him, 'but I have a few books which are showing strange signs of damage. Could you maybe take a look at them?'\n\nMeggie had to suppress a smile, but Mo acted as if the librarian had asked him the most natural question in the world. 'Of course,' he said.\n\nTaddeo nodded, and glanced at the door. One of the guards was pacing up and down outside, looking sullen. 'But Mortola mustn't know, so I'll come back when it's dark,' he whispered to Mo. 'Luckily she goes to bed early. There are wonderful books in this castle, but sad to say no one here can appreciate them. It was different in the past, but the past is over and forgotten. I've heard matters aren't much better at the Laughing Prince's castle these days, but at least they have Balbulus there. We were all very sorry when the Adderhead gave his daughter our best illuminator to take with her as her dowry! Since then I'm not allowed to employ more than two scribes and one illuminator of only average talent. The only copies I can commission are of manuscripts about the Adderhead's ancestors, the mining and working of silver, or the art of war. Last year, when wood ran short again, Firefox even heated the small banqueting hall with my finest books.' Tears came to Taddeo's clouded eyes.\n\n'Bring me the books whenever you like,' said Mo.\n\nThe old librarian passed the hem of his dark blue tunic over his eyes. 'Oh yes!' he murmured. 'Oh yes, I will. Thank you.'\n\nThen he was gone. Sighing, Mo sat down in the chair that Taddeo had brought him. 'Very well,' he said. 'Let's get down to work. A book to keep Death at bay \u2013 what an idea! It's just a pity it's for this butcher. You'll have to help me, Meggie, with the folding and stitching, the pressing...' She just nodded. Of course she would help him. There were few things she liked doing better.\n\nIt felt so familiar, watching Mo at work again \u2013 setting the parchment straight, folding it, cutting and stitching it. He worked more slowly than usual, and his hand kept going to his chest and the place where Mortola had wounded him. But Meggie could tell that carrying out the familiar movements did him good, even if some of the tools were not like those he was used to. The actions had been the same for hundreds of years, in both this world and the other one.\n\nAfter only a few hours the Old Chamber had something curiously familiar about it, like a refuge and not just another prison. When twilight began to fall outside, the librarian and a servant brought them a couple of oil lamps. The warm light almost made the dusty room look full of life, for the first time in ages.\n\n'It's a long while since any lamps were lit in this room,' said Taddeo, putting a second one on the table for Mo.\n\n'Who lived in this room last?' asked Mo.\n\n'Our first princess,' replied Taddeo. 'Her daughter Violante married the Laughing Prince's son. I wonder if Violante knows that Cosimo has died for the second time.' He looked sadly out of the window. A moist wind was blowing in, and Mo weighted the paper down with a piece of wood. 'Violante came into the world with a birthmark that disfigured her face,' the librarian went on, in an abstracted voice, as if he were telling this story not to them but to some distant hearer. 'Everyone said it was a punishment, a curse from the fairies because her mother had fallen in love with a minstrel. The Adderhead had her mother banished to this part of the castle as soon as the baby was born, and she lived here with her daughter until she died... died very suddenly.'\n\n'That's a sad story,' said Mo.\n\n'Believe me,' replied Taddeo bitterly, 'if all the sad stories these walls have seen were written down in books, we could fill every room in the castle with them.'\n\nMeggie looked round as if she could see all those books of sad stories. 'How old was Violante when she was betrothed to Cosimo and sent to Ombra?' she asked.\n\n'Seven. And the daughters of our present princess were only six when they were betrothed and sent away. We all hope she'll have a son this time!' Taddeo let his eyes linger on the parchment that Mo had cut to size, the tools... 'It's good to see life in this room again,' he said quietly. 'I'll come back with the books as soon as I'm sure that Mortola is asleep.'\n\n'Six, seven years old \u2013 my God, Meggie,' said Mo when Taddeo had gone, 'here you are, thirteen already, and I still haven't sent you away, let alone betrothed you to anyone!'\n\nIt felt good to laugh, even if the sound echoed strangely in this high-ceilinged room.\n\nTaddeo did not come back until hours later. Mo was still working, although he put his hand to his chest more and more often, and Meggie had already tried persuading him once or twice to lie down and sleep. 'Sleep?' was all he said. 'I haven't slept properly for a single night in this castle. And anyway, I want to see your mother again, and I won't be able to do that until this book is finished.'\n\nThe librarian brought him two volumes. 'Look at this!' he whispered, pushing the first over to Mo. 'See those places where the binding is eaten away? And inside it looks almost as if the ink were rusting. There are holes in the parchment. You can hardly read some of the words now! What can have caused it? Worms, beetles? I never used to concern myself with these things. I had an assistant who knew all about these sicknesses that books suffer, but one morning he disappeared. They say he joined the robbers in the forest.'\n\nMo picked up the book, opened it, and passed his hand over the pages. 'Good heavens!' he said. 'Who painted this? I've never seen such beautiful illuminations.'\n\n'Balbulus,' replied Taddeo. 'The illuminator who was sent away with Violante. He was very young when he painted this book. Look, his script was still a little awkward, but now his mastery is impeccable.'\n\n'How do you know?' asked Meggie.\n\nThe librarian lowered his voice. 'Violante has a book sent to me now and then. She knows how much I admire the craftsmanship of Balbulus, and she knows there's no one else left in the Castle of Night who loves books. Not since her mother died. Do you see the chests there?' He pointed to the heavy, dusty wooden chests by the door and under the windows. 'Violante's mother kept her books in them, hidden among her clothes. She would take them out only in the evening and show them to the little girl, although I suppose the child hardly understood a word of what her mother read her at the time. But then, soon after Capricorn had disappeared, Mortola came here. The Adderhead had asked her to train the maids in the kitchen \u2013 no one said what exactly they were to be trained to do. Then Violante's mother asked me to hide her books in the library, because Mortola had her room searched at least twice a day \u2013 she never found out what for. This,' he said, pointing to the book that Mo was still leafing through, 'was one of her favourites. The little girl would point to a picture and then her mother told her a story about it. I was going to give it to Violante when they sent her away, but she left it behind in this room. Perhaps because she didn't want to take any memories of this sad place to her new life with her. All the same, I'd like to save it as a memento of her mother. You know, I think that a book always keeps something of its owners, woodworms, the corrosive effect of the ink, who knows what else... between its pages.'\n\n'Yes, I think so too,' said Mo. 'I'm sure of it.'\n\n'And?' The old man looked at him hopefully. 'Do you know how it can be preserved from further harm?'\n\nMo carefully closed the book. 'Yes, but it won't be easy. Does the second book look the same?'\n\n'Oh, that one \u2013' the librarian cast another nervous look at the door \u2013 'well, it's not in such a bad way yet. But I thought you might like to see it. Balbulus completed it not long ago, for Violante. It contains,' he said, looking uncertainly at Mo, 'it contains all the songs that the strolling players sing about the Bluejay. As far as I know there are only two copies. Violante owns one, and the other is before you and is a copy that she had specially made for me. They say the man who wrote the songs didn't want them written down, but any minstrel will sing them to you for a few coins. That was how Violante collected them and had them written out by Balbulus. The strolling players, you see \u2013 well, they're like walking books here, where real books are so few and far between! You know,' he whispered to Mo as he opened the volume, 'I sometimes think this world would have lost its memory long ago but for the Motley Folk. Unfortunately the Adderhead is only too fond of hanging them! I've often suggested sending a scribe to see them before they're executed, to get all those beautiful songs written down before the words die with them, but no one in this castle listens to an old librarian.'\n\n'No, very likely not,' murmured Mo, but Meggie could tell from his voice that he hadn't been listening to anything Taddeo had said. Mo was immersed in the letters, the beautiful written characters flowing over the parchment in front of him like a delicate river of ink.\n\n'Forgive my curiosity.' Taddeo cleared his throat, embarrassed. 'I've heard that you deny being the Bluejay... but if you will allow me...' He took the book from Mo's hand and opened it at a page that Balbulus had illuminated lavishly. A man stood between two trees, so wonderfully painted that Meggie thought she could hear the rustle of the leaves. He wore a bird-mask over his face. 'That's how Balbulus painted the Bluejay,' whispered Taddeo, 'just as the songs describe him, dark-haired, tall... doesn't he look like you?'\n\n'I don't know,' said Mo. 'He's wearing a mask, isn't he?'\n\n'Yes, yes, indeed.' Taddeo was still looking intently at him. 'But did you know that they say something else about the Bluejay? They say he has a very beautiful voice, not at all like the bird that shares his name. It's said that he can tame bears and wolves with a few words. Forgive me for being so forward, but \u2013' he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone \u2013 'you have a very beautiful voice. Mortola tells strange tales of it. And then, when you have the scar too...' He stared at Mo's arm.\n\n'Oh, you mean this, don't you?' Mo placed his finger under a line beside which Balbulus had painted a pack of white dogs, and read: 'High on his left arm he will bear the scar to his dying day. Yes, I do have a scar like that, but I didn't get it from the dogs in this song.' He put his hand to his arm, as if remembering the day when Basta had found them in the tumbledown hut full of broken pots and tiles.\n\nHowever, the old librarian took a step back. 'So you are him!' he breathed. 'The hope of the poor, the terror of butchers, avenger and robber, as much at home in the forest as the bears and wolves?'\n\nMo shut the book and pressed the metal clasps into the leather-covered binding. 'No,' he said. 'No, I'm not, but thank you very much for the book, all the same. It's a long time since I had one in my hands, and it will be good to have something to read again, won't it, Meggie?'\n\n'Yes,' was all she said, taking the book from his hand. Songs about the Bluejay. What would Fenoglio have said if he'd known that Violante had had them written down in secret? And they might offer so much help! Her heart leaped as she thought of the possibilities, but Taddeo immediately dashed her hopes.\n\n'I'm very sorry,' he said, taking the book gently but firmly from her hands again. 'But I can't leave either of the books here with you. Mortola has been talking to me \u2013 to everyone who has anything to do with the library. She's threatened to have anyone who so much as brings a book into this room blinded. Blinded, imagine it! What a threat, when only our eyes reveal the world of words to us! I've already risked far too much coming here with them at all, but I love those books so much that I had to ask your advice. Please, tell me what I must do to save them!'\n\nMeggie was so disappointed that she would have turned down his request point blank, but of course Mo saw things differently. Mo thought only of the sick books. 'Of course,' he said to Taddeo. 'I'd better write it down for you. It will take time \u2013 weeks, months \u2013 and I don't know if you'll be able to get all the materials you need, but it's worth a try. I'm not happy about suggesting this, but I'm afraid you'll have to take at least the first book apart, because if you're to save it the pages must bleach in the sun. If you don't know how to go about it \u2013 and it must be done with the utmost care \u2013 I'll be happy to do it for you. Mortola can watch if she wants, to make sure I'm not doing anything dangerous.'\n\n'Oh, thank you!' The old man bowed deeply as he put the two books firmly under his thin arm. 'Many, many thanks. I really do most fervently hope the Adderhead will let you live, and if he doesn't that he grants you a quick death.'\n\nMeggie would very much have liked to give him the answer this remark deserved, but Taddeo scurried away too fast on his grasshopper legs.\n\n'Mo, don't you help him!' she said when the guard outside had bolted the door again. 'Why should you? He's a miserable coward!'\n\n'Oh, I can understand him,' said Mo. 'I wouldn't like to do without my eyes either, even though we have useful inventions like Braille in our own world.'\n\n'All the same, I wouldn't help him.' Meggie loved her father for his strangely soft heart, but her own could not summon up any sympathy for Taddeo. She imitated his voice. 'I hope he grants you a quick death! How can anyone say such a thing?'\n\nBut Mo wasn't listening. 'Have you ever seen such beautiful books, Meggie?' he asked, lying down on the bed.\n\n'You bet I have!' she said indignantly. 'Any book I'm allowed to read is more beautiful, right?'\n\nBut Mo did not reply. He had turned his back to her and was breathing deeply and peacefully. Obviously sleep had found its way to him at last."
            },
            {
                "title": "Kindness and Mercy",
                "text": "\u2003Here are we five or six strung up, you see,\n\n\u2003And here the flesh that all too well we fed,\n\n\u2003Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred,\n\n\u2003And we the bones grow dust and ash withal.\n\n\u2014Fran\u00e7ois Villon, tr. A.C. Swinburne, Ballade of the Hanged Men\n\n'When are we going back?' Farid asked Dustfinger this question several times a day, and every time he got the same answer: 'Not yet.'\n\n'But we've been here so long.' It was almost two weeks since the blood-bath in the forest, and he was sick and tired of hanging around in the Badger's Earth. 'What about Meggie? You promised we'd go back!'\n\nAll Dustfinger said to that was, 'If you go on pressing me so hard I shall forget that promise.' Then he went to Roxane. She was busy day and night, nursing the wounded they had found among the dead, in the hope that at least these few would return to Ombra, but some of them she tended in vain. He will stay with her, thought Farid every time he saw Dustfinger sitting beside her. And I'll have to go back to the Castle of Night alone. The thought hurt like fire biting him.\n\nOn the fifteenth day, when Farid felt he would never be able to wash the smell of mouse droppings and pale mushrooms off his skin, two of the Black Prince's informers brought identical news: the Adderhead's wife had borne him a son. To celebrate this event, so his criers were announcing in every market place, in exactly two weeks' time he would show his great kindness and mercy by setting free all the prisoners held in the dungeons of the Castle of Night. Including the Bluejay.\n\n'Nonsense!' said Dustfinger, when Farid told him about it. 'The Adderhead has a roast quail where other people have a heart. He would never set anyone free out of mercy, however many sons were born to him. No, if he really intends to let them go it's because Fenoglio wrote it that way, and for no other reason.'\n\nFenoglio seemed to share this opinion. Ever since the blood-bath he had spent most of his time sitting in some dark corner of the Badger's Earth, looking gloomy and scarcely saying a word, but now he started defiantly announcing to anyone who would listen that the good news was due solely to him. No one took any notice of him, no one knew what he was talking about \u2013 except for Dustfinger, who was still avoiding him like the plague in human form. 'Listen to the old man! How he boasts and brags!' he said to Farid. 'Cosimo and his men are hardly cold in the ground and he's forgotten them already. I hope he drops dead himself!'\n\nThe Black Prince, of course, believed in the Adderhead's mercy as little as Dustfinger did, in spite of Fenoglio's assurances that exactly what the informers had said would really happen. The robbers sat together until late into the night, discussing what to do. They would not let Farid join this council, but Dustfinger was with them.\n\n'What's their plan? Tell me!' Farid asked him, when he finally came back from the cave where the robbers had been putting their heads together for hours on end.\n\n'They're going to set out in a week's time.'\n\n'Where for? The Castle of Night?'\n\n'Yes.' Dustfinger didn't seem half as pleased as he was. 'Good heavens, you're fidgeting like fire when the wind blows into it,' he snapped at Farid irritably. 'We'll see if you're still so happy once we get there. We'll have to crawl underground like worms, and go much deeper there than here.'\n\n'Even deeper?'\n\nBut of course. Farid pictured Mount Adder before him: there wasn't anywhere to hide, not a bush, not a tree.\n\n'There's an abandoned mine at the foot of the north slope.' Dustfinger made a face, as if the mere thought of the place turned his stomach. 'Some ancestor of the Adderhead must have dug too deep there, and several galleries fell in, but that's so long ago that obviously not even the Adderhead himself remembers the mine. Not a pleasant place, but a good hide-out, and the only one on Mount Adder. The bear found the entrance.'\n\nA mine. Farid swallowed. The thought of it left him struggling for air. 'Then what?' he asked. 'What do we do when we get there?'\n\n'Wait. Wait to see if the Adderhead really keeps his promise.'\n\n'Wait? Is that all?'\n\n'You'll learn everything else soon enough.'\n\n'Then we're going too?'\n\n'Did you have anything else in mind?'\n\nFarid hugged him more tightly than he had for a long time. Even though he knew that Dustfinger did not particularly like to be hugged.\n\n'No,' said Roxane when the Black Prince offered to have her escorted back to Ombra by one of his men before they set out. 'I'm coming with you. If you can spare a man, then send him to my children to tell them I'll be home soon.'\n\nSoon! Farid wondered exactly when that was going to be, but he said nothing. Although the time when they would set out was now fixed, the days still passed terribly slowly, and almost every night he dreamed of Meggie. Those were bad dreams, full of darkness and fear. When the day of their departure finally came, half a dozen robbers stayed in the Badger's Earth to go on tending the wounded. The rest set out on the road to the Castle of Night: thirty men in ragged clothing, but well armed. And Roxane. And Fenoglio.\n\n'You're taking the old man too?' Dustfinger asked the Prince in astonishment when he saw Fenoglio among the men. 'Are you crazy? Send him back to Ombra. Take him anywhere else, straight to the White Women for preference, but send him away!'\n\nHowever, the Prince wouldn't hear of it. 'What do you have against him?' he asked. 'He's a harmless old man. And don't start telling me again how he can bring the dead to life! Even my bear likes him. He's written us some fine songs, and he can tell wonderful stories, even if he has no appetite for them just now. And he doesn't want to go back to Ombra anyway.'\n\n'I'm not surprised, considering all the widows and orphans he's made there,' said Dustfinger bitterly, and when Fenoglio looked his way he cast him so icy a glance that the old man quickly turned his head again.\n\nIt was a silent march. The trees whispered above their heads, as if warning them not to take a step further south, and once or twice Dustfinger had to summon fire to chase away beings that none of them could see, although they sensed them. Farid was tired, tired to death, his face and his arms all scratched with thorns, by the time the silver towers finally appeared above the treetops. 'Like a crown on a bald head!' whispered one of the robbers, and for a moment Farid felt he could physically grasp the fear that these ragged men felt at the sight of the mighty fortress. No doubt they were all glad when the Prince led them to the north slope of Mount Adder, and the tops of the towers disappeared again. The earth fell in folds like a crumpled garment on this side of the hill, and the few trees cowered low, as if they heard the sound of axes too often. Farid had never seen such trees before. Their leaves seemed as black as night itself, and their bark was prickly like a hedgehog. Red berries grew on the branches. 'Mortola's berries!' Dustfinger whispered to him as he picked a handful in passing. 'She's said to have scattered them everywhere at the foot of this hill, until they were sprinkled all over the ground. The trees grow very fast, they shoot up from the earth like mushrooms and keep all other trees away. Bitterberry trees, they're called. Everything about them is poisonous \u2013 their berries and their leaves. And their bark burns the skin worse than fire.' Farid dropped the berries, and wiped his hand on his trousers.\n\nA little later, when it was pitch dark, they almost ran into one of the patrols that the Adderhead regularly sent out, but the bear warned them in time. The mounted men appeared among the trees like silver beetles. Moonlight was reflected on their breastplates, and Farid hardly dared to breathe as he ducked down into a crevice in the ground with Dustfinger and Roxane, waiting for the hoofbeats to die away. They stole on, like mice under the eyes of a cat, until they had finally reached their goal.\n\nWild vines and rubble hid the entrance. The Prince was the first to force his way down into the bowels of the earth. Farid hesitated when he saw how steep the climb down into the darkness looked. 'Come on!' whispered Dustfinger impatiently. 'The sun will soon rise, and the Adder's soldiers aren't going to mistake you for a squirrel.'\n\n'But it smells like a burial vault,' said Farid, and he looked longingly up at the sky.\n\n'The boy has a good nose!' said Snapper, before pushing his way past him, grim-faced. 'Yes, there are many dead men down there. The mountain devoured them because they dug too deep. You don't see them, but you smell them. People say they stop up the galleries like a cargo of dead fish.'\n\nHorrified, Farid looked at him, but Dustfinger just pushed him in the back. 'Look, how often do I have to tell you it's not the dead but the living you should fear? Come on, make a few sparks dance on your fingertips to give us a light.'\n\nThe robbers had settled in those galleries that were not buried in rubble. They had given the roofs and walls additional props, but Farid didn't trust the beams now braced against the stone and the ground. How could they support the weight of a whole mountain? He thought he heard it sighing and groaning, and while he made himself as comfortable as he could on the dirty blankets that the robbers had spread on the hard ground, he suddenly remembered Sootbird again. But the Prince only laughed when he anxiously asked about him. 'No, Sootbird doesn't know about this place, or any of our hideouts. He's often tried to get us to take him along, but who's going to trust such a wretched fire-eater? The only reason he knew about the Secret Camp was because he's one of the strolling players.'\n\nAll the same, Farid did not feel safe. Almost a week yet to go before the Adderhead freed his prisoners! It would be a long wait. He was already wishing himself back among the mouse droppings in the Badger's Earth. During the night he kept staring at the rubble closing off the galleries where they were sleeping. He thought he heard pale fingers scraping at the stones. 'Put your hands over your ears, then!' was all Dustfinger said when Farid shook him awake to say so, and he put his arms round Roxane again. Dustfinger was having bad dreams, the kind he had often had in the other world, but now it was Roxane who calmed him and whispered him back to sleep. Her quiet voice, soft with love, reminded Farid of Meggie's, and he missed Meggie so much that he felt ashamed of his weakness. In this darkness, surrounded by the dead, it was difficult to believe that she was missing him too. Suppose she had forgotten him, the way Dustfinger often forgot him now that Roxane was here? Only Meggie had made him forget his jealousy, but Meggie wasn't with him now.\n\nOn the second night a boy came to the mine. He worked in the stables of the Castle of Night, and had been spying for the Black Prince ever since the Piper had his brother hanged. He said that the Adderhead would let the prisoners go along the road leading down to the harbour, on condition that they boarded a ship there and never returned.\n\n'The road to the harbour. Ah,' was all the Prince said when the informer had gone again \u2013 and he set out with Dustfinger that same night. Farid didn't ask if he could go too. He simply followed them.\n\nThe road was little more than a footpath leading through the trees. It ran straight down Mount Adder, as if in a hurry to slip under the canopy of leaves. 'The Adderhead pardoned a troop of prisoners once before and let them go along this road,' said the Prince, when they were under the trees at the roadside. 'And they did reach the sea without mishap, just as he had promised, but the ship waiting for them was a slave ship, and they say the Adderhead got a particularly fine silver bridle for those prisoners, a scant dozen of them.'\n\nSlaves? Farid remembered markets where people were sold, and buyers gaped at them and felt them as if they were cattle. Girls with blonde hair had been in great demand.\n\n'Don't look as if Meggie had been sold already!' said Dustfinger. 'The Prince will think of something \u2013 won't you?'\n\nThe Black Prince tried to smile, but he couldn't conceal the fact that he was eyeing the road with great concern. 'They must never reach that ship,' he said. 'And we can only hope that the Adderhead doesn't send too many soldiers to escort them. We must hide them quickly \u2013 in the mine at first, that will be best, until everything's quietened down again. And very likely,' he added almost as an afterthought, 'we shall need fire.'\n\nDustfinger blew on his fingers until flames as delicate as butterfly wings were dancing there. 'What do you think I'm still here for?' he asked. 'Fire there shall be. But I will not take a sword in my hand, in case that's what you're hoping. You know I'm no good with such things.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "A Visit",
                "text": "\u2002'If I cannot get me forth out of this house,' he thought, 'I am a dead man!'\n\n\u2014R.L. Stevenson, The Black Arrow\n\nWhen Meggie woke, she didn't know for a moment where she was. In Elinor's house? she wondered. With Fenoglio? But then she saw Mo bending low over the big table, binding a book. The book. Five hundred blank pages. They were in the Castle of Night, and Mo was to have the book finished tomorrow... A flash of lightning illuminated the soot-blackened ceiling, and the thunder that followed sounded menacingly loud, but it wasn't the storm that had woken Meggie. She had heard voices. The guards. There was someone at the door. Mo had heard it too.\n\n'Meggie, he mustn't work such long hours. It could bring the fever back,' the Barn Owl had told her that very morning, before they took him down to the dungeons again. But what could she do about it? Mo sent her to bed the moment she began yawning too often. ('That was the twenty-third yawn, Meggie. Go on, bed for you or you'll be dead on your feet before this damned book is finished.') Then it would be ages before he went to sleep himself. He stayed up cutting, folding and stitching until it was nearly dawn. He'd done that tonight as well.\n\nWhen one of the guards opened the door, Meggie thought for a dreadful moment that Mortola had come to kill Mo after all, before the Adderhead let him go. But it was not the Magpie. The Adderhead stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. Two servants stood behind him, their faces pale with exhaustion, carrying silver candelabras from which wax dripped to the floorboards. Their master, treading heavily, approached the table at which Mo worked, and stared at the book. It was almost finished.\n\n'What are you doing here?' Mo still had the paperknife in his hand. The Adderhead stared at him. His eyes were even more bloodshot than on the night when Meggie had made her bargain with him.\n\n'How much longer?' he demanded. 'My son is crying. He cries all night. He feels the White Women coming close, just as I do. Now they want to fetch him away too, him and me at the same time. Folk say they're particularly hungry on stormy nights.'\n\nMo put the knife down. 'The book will be finished tomorrow, as agreed. It would have been ready sooner, but the leather to cover it was full of tears and holes made by thorns, so that held us up, and the paper wasn't as good as it might have been either.'\n\n'Yes, yes, very well, the librarian has passed your complaints on!' The Adderhead's voice sounded as if he had been shouting himself hoarse. 'If Taddeo had his way, you'd spend the rest of your life in this room, rebinding all my books. But I will let you go \u2013 you, your daughter, your wife, and those good-for-nothing strolling players. They can all go \u2013 I just want the book! Mortola has told me about the three words that your daughter so cunningly failed to mention, but never mind that \u2013 I shall take good care that no one writes them in its pages! I want to be able to laugh in the Cold Man's face at last \u2013 laugh at him and his pale women! Another night like this and I shall be beating my head against the wall, I shall kill my wife, I shall kill my child, I shall kill all of you. Do you understand, Bluejay or whatever your name is? You must finish the book before dark falls again! You must!'\n\nMo stroked the wooden boards that he had covered with leather only the day before. 'I'll be finished by the time the sun rises. But you must swear to me on your son's life that then you will let us go at once.'\n\nThe Adderhead looked at him as if the White Women were there standing behind him. 'Yes, yes, I swear by whoever and whatever you like! By sunrise, that sounds good!' He walked ponderously over to Mo and stared at his chest. 'Show me!' he whispered. 'Show me where Mortola wounded you. With the magic weapon that my master-at-arms took apart so thoroughly that now no one can put it together again. I had the fool hanged for that.'\n\nMo hesitated, but finally he opened his shirt.\n\n'So close to the heart!' The Adderhead put his hand on Mo's chest as if to make sure that the heart in it was really still beating. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, you must indeed know a way to cheat death or you wouldn't be alive now.'\n\nHe turned abruptly and waved the two servants over to the door. 'Very well \u2013 I shall have you fetched soon after sunrise, you and the book,' he said over his shoulder.\n\n'Now get me something to eat in the hall!' Meggie heard him shouting outside the door as the guards bolted it again. 'Wake the cooks, wake the maids and the Piper. Wake them all! I want to eat, and listen to a few dark songs. And the Piper must sing them so loudly that I don't hear the child crying.'\n\nThen his footsteps retreated, and only the rolling of the thunder remained. A flash of lightning made the pages of the almost-finished book shine as if they had a life of their own. Mo had gone over to the window. He stood there motionless, looking out.\n\n'By sunrise! Can you do it?' asked Meggie anxiously.\n\n'Of course,' he said, without turning. Lightning was flickering over the sea like a distant light being switched on and off by someone \u2013 except that no such light existed in this world. Meggie went over to Mo, and he put his arm round her. He knew she was afraid of thunderstorms. When she was very small and had crept into bed with him, he always told her the same story: thunderstorms were because the sky longed to be united with the earth, and reached out fiery fingers to touch it on such nights.\n\nBut Mo didn't tell that story today.\n\n'Did you see the fear in his face?' Meggie whispered to him. 'Exactly as Fenoglio described it.'\n\n'Yes, even the Adderhead must play the part that Fenoglio has written for him,' replied Mo. 'But so must we, Meggie. How do you like that idea?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Night Before",
                "text": "\u2003True, I talk of dreams,\n\n\u2003Which are the children of an idle brain,\n\n\u2003Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,\n\n\u2003Which is as thin of substance as the air.\n\n\u2014William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet\n\nIt was the last night before the day when the Adderhead would show his clemency. In a few hours, just before dawn, they would all be in position by the road. None of the informers had been able to say exactly when the prisoners were to come down it \u2013 they knew only that this would be the day. The robbers were sitting together, telling each other tales of old adventures in loud voices. Presumably that was their means of keeping fear at bay, but Dustfinger did not feel like either talking or listening. He kept waking suddenly from sleep, but not because of the voices that came to his ears. Pictures in his mind woke him, terrible pictures that had been robbing him of sleep for days.\n\nThis time they had been particularly bad, and so real that he started up as if Gwin had jumped on his chest. His heart was still thudding hard as he sat there staring into the dark. Dreams \u2013 in the other world they had often kept him from sleeping too, but he couldn't remember any of them as bad as this one. 'It's the dead. They bring bad dreams,' Farid always said. 'They whisper terrible things to you, and then they lie on your breast to feel your racing heart. It makes them feel alive again!'\n\nDustfinger liked this explanation. He feared death, but not the dead. But suppose it was quite different; suppose the dreams were showing him a story already waiting for him somewhere? Reality was a fragile thing; Silvertongue's voice had shown him that once and for all.\n\nRoxane stirred in her sleep beside him. She turned her head and murmured the names of her children, the dead as well as the living. There was still no news from Ombra. Even the Black Prince had heard nothing for a long time, either from the castle or the city, no word of what had happened after the Adderhead sent Cosimo's body back to his daughter, with the news that hardly any of the men who had followed him would come back either.\n\nRoxane whispered Brianna's name again. Every day she stayed here with him cut her to the heart, Dustfinger knew that only too well. So why didn't he simply go back with her? Why not turn his back on this infernal hill, and return at last to a place where you didn't have to hide underground like an animal? Or like a dead man, he added in his thoughts.\n\nYou know why, he told himself. It's the dreams. The accursed dreams. He whispered fire-words to banish the darkness in which dreams put forth such dreadful blossoms. A flame licked up sleepily from the ground beside him. He held out his hand and let it dance up his arm, lick his fingers and his forehead, in the hope that it would simply burn the horrible pictures away. But even the pain did not rid him of them, and Dustfinger extinguished the flame with the flat of his hand. His skin was sooty and hot afterwards, as if the fire had left its black breath behind, but the dream was still there, a terror in his heart, too black and strong even for the fire.\n\nHow could he simply go away when he saw such images by night \u2013 pictures of the dead, again and again, nothing but blood and death? The faces changed. Sometimes it was Resa's face he saw, sometimes Meggie's, then at other times the face of the Barn Owl. He had seen the Black Prince too, with blood on his breast. And today \u2013 today it had been Farid's face. Just like the night before. Dustfinger closed his eyes when the pictures came back, so plain and clear... Of course he had tried to persuade the boy to stay with Roxane tomorrow, when he set off with the robbers \u2013 along the road they were to come down, Resa and Silvertongue, Meggie, the Barn Owl and all the others. (Just how many there would be, even the Prince's informers could not say.) But it was hopeless.\n\nDustfinger leaned back against the damp stone into which hands long gone had cut the narrow galleries, and looked at the boy. Farid had curled up like a small child, knees drawn up against his chest, with the two martens beside him. They slept at Farid's side more and more often when they came back from hunting, perhaps because they knew that Roxane did not like them.\n\nHow peacefully the boy lay there, not at all as Dustfinger had just seen him in his dreams. A smile even flickered across his dark face. Perhaps he was dreaming of Meggie, Resa's Meggie, as like her mother as one flame is like another, and yet so different. 'You do think she's all right, don't you?' Farid asked that question heaven knows how many times a day. Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.\n\nA cold wind blew through the galleries, and Dustfinger saw the boy shivering in his sleep. Gwin raised his head when he rose and took the cloak off his shoulders, covering Farid with it. 'Why are you looking at me like that?' he whispered to the marten. 'He's crept into your heart just as he crept into mine. How could it happen to us, Gwin?'\n\nThe marten licked his paw and looked at him from dark eyes. When he dreamed it was surely only of hunting, not of dead boys.\n\nSuppose the old man was sending the dreams? The idea made Dustfinger shudder as he lay down beside Roxane on the hard ground again. Yes, Fenoglio could be sitting in some corner, as he had often done these last few days, spinning bad dreams for him. That was exactly what he had done with the Adderhead's fears! Nonsense, thought Dustfinger angrily, putting his arm round Roxane. Meggie isn't here. Without her, the old man's words are nothing but ink. Now try to get some sleep, or you'll be nodding off as you wait among the trees with the others tomorrow.\n\nBut it was a long time before he could close his eyes.\n\nHe just lay there and listened to the boy's breathing."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Pen and the Sword",
                "text": "\u2002'Of course not,' said Hermione. 'Everything we need is here on this paper.'\n\n\u2014J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\n\nMo worked all night, while the storm raged outside as if Fenoglio's world could not accept that soon immortality would arrive in it. Meggie had tried to stay awake, but finally she had nodded off again, head on the table, and he had put her to bed as he had done so many times before. Marvelling yet again to see how big she was now. Almost grown up. Almost.\n\nMeggie woke as he snapped the clasps shut. 'Good morning,' he said as she raised her head from the pillow \u2013 and hoped it would really be a good morning. Outside, the sky was turning red like a face with the blood streaming back into it. The clasps held well. Mo had filed them so that no part of them pricked or dug into the fingers. They held the blank pages together as firmly as if Death were already between them. The leather he had been given for the binding had a reddish tinge, and it surrounded the wooden boards of the covers like their natural skin. The back was gently rounded, the stitching firm, the quires carefully planed. But the fact was that none of that mattered with this book. No one would read it. No one would keep it beside his bed to leaf through its pages again and again. The book was eerie for all its beauty, even Mo felt that, although it was the work of his own hands. It seemed to have a voice that whispered barely perceptible words, words that were not to be found on its blank pages. But they existed. Fenoglio had written them, in a place far away, where women and children now wept for their dead husbands and fathers. Yes, the clasps were important.\n\nHeavy footsteps echoed along the corridor outside the door. Soldiers' footsteps. They came closer and closer. Outside, the night was fading. The Adderhead was taking Mo at his word. By the time the sun rises...\n\nMeggie quickly got out of bed, passed her hand over her hair and smoothed down her creased dress.\n\n'Is it finished?' she whispered.\n\nHe nodded, and took the book from the table. 'Do you think the Adderhead will like it?'\n\nThe Piper opened the door, with four men following him. His silver nose sat on his face as if it had grown from the flesh.\n\n'Well, Bluejay? Have you finished?'\n\nMo inspected the book from all sides. 'Yes, I think so,' he said, but when the Piper put his hand out he hid it behind his back. 'Oh no,' he said. 'I'm keeping this until your master has kept his side of the bargain.'\n\n'You are?' The Piper smiled in derision. 'Don't you think I know ways of taking it from you? But hold on to it for a while. Fear will make you weak at the knees soon enough.'\n\nIt was a long way from the part of the Castle of Night where the ghosts of forgotten women lived to the halls where the Adderhead held court. The Piper walked behind Mo all the way with his curiously arrogant gait, stiff as a stork, so close behind that Mo felt his breath on the nape of his neck. Mo had never been in most of the corridors along which they marched, yet he felt as if he had walked down them all before \u2013 in the days when he read Fenoglio's book over and over again as he tried to bring Resa back. It was a strange feeling to be here himself, behind the words on the page \u2013 and looking for her again.\n\nHe had read about the hall whose mighty doors opened for them, too, and when he saw Meggie's look of alarm he knew only too well what other dreadful place it reminded them both of. Capricorn's red church had not been half as magnificent as the Adderhead's throne-room, but thanks to Fenoglio's description Mo had recognized the model at once. Red-washed walls, column ranged beside column on both sides, except that unlike those in Capricorn's church, these were faced with scales of silver. Capricorn had even taken the idea of a statue from the Adderhead, but the sculptor who immortalised the Silver Prince clearly knew his trade better.\n\nCapricorn had not tried to imitate the Adderhead's throne. It was in the shape of a nest of silver vipers, two of them rearing up with their mouths fixed and wide open, so that the Adderhead's hands could rest on their heads. The lord of the Castle of Night was magnificently clad, despite the early hour, as if to welcome his immortality with due honour. He wore a cape of silvery-white heron feathers over garments of black silk. Behind him, like a flock of birds with bright plumage, stood his court: administrators, ladies' maids, servants \u2013 and among them, dressed in the ashen grey of their guild, a number of physicians.\n\nMortola was there too, of course. She stood in the background, almost invisible in her black dress. If Mo had not been looking out for her he would have missed her. There was no sign of Basta, but Firefox was standing next to the throne, arms crossed under his fox-fur cloak. He was staring their way with hostility, but to Mo's surprise his dark looks were aimed not at him, but mainly at the Piper.\n\nIt's a game, thought Mo as he walked past the silver columns. Fenoglio's game. If only it hadn't felt so real. How quiet it was in the red hall, in spite of all the people. Meggie looked at him, her face so pale under her fair hair, and he gave her the most encouraging smile his lips could manage \u2013 feeling thankful that she couldn't hear how fast his heart was beating.\n\nThe Adderhead's wife sat beside him. Meggie had described her perfectly: an ivory porcelain doll. Behind them stood the nurse with the eagerly awaited son. Mo had never wanted a son, only a daughter. Resa had teased him about it when they didn't yet know what their baby would be. The child's crying sounded strangely lost in the great hall. Even the rain beating against glazed windows high above them drowned out the shrill little voice.\n\nIt's a game, thought Mo once more when he was standing before the steps of the throne, only a game. If only he'd known more about the rules. There was someone else present whom they knew. Taddeo the librarian, head humbly bent, stood right behind the Adderhead's throne, and gave him an anxious smile.\n\nThe Adderhead looked even more exhausted for lack of sleep than he had on their last meeting. His face was blotched and full of shadows, his lips colourless. Only the rubies in the corners of his nostrils shone red. Who could say how many sleepless nights he had spent? For a moment it seemed to Mo as if all his life had gone into the rubies at the corners of his nose.\n\n'Good, so you have really finished,' he said. 'Of course, you're in a hurry to see your wife again, I'm sure. I've been told she asks about you every day. That's love, I expect, isn't it?'\n\nA game, only a game... it didn't feel like that. Nothing had ever seemed more real than the hatred that Mo felt at this moment, as he looked at that coarse and arrogant face. And he felt something else beating in his breast again: his new, cold heart. Or was it just his old heart, burned out with hatred?\n\nThe Adderhead made a sign to the Piper, and the silver-nosed man stepped commandingly towards Mo. He found it hard to put the book into the man's gloved hands. After all, there was nothing else that could save them now. The Piper noticed his reluctance, smiled scornfully at him \u2013 and took the book up the steps to his master. Then, with a brief glance at Firefox, he stationed himself right beside the throne with an arrogant air, as if there were no more important man in the hall.\n\n'Beautiful. Beautiful indeed!' The Adderhead caressed the white pages of the book. 'Whether or not he's a robber, he knows something about bookbinding, don't you agree, Firefox?'\n\n'There are men of many trades among the robbers,' was all that Firefox replied. 'Why not an accursed bookbinder too?'\n\n'How true, how true. Did you all hear that?' The Adderhead looked at his colourfully clad retinue, inviting approval. 'It seems to me that my herald still thinks I'd have let a little girl trick me. Yes, he believes I'm a credulous fool by comparison with his old master Capricorn.'\n\nFirefox was about to protest, but the Adderhead silenced him with a gesture. 'Do not speak!' was all he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. 'In spite of my very obvious folly, I have thought of a way to prove which of the two of us is wrong.' With a nod of the head, he summoned Taddeo to his side. Eager to oblige, the librarian approached him, taking pen and ink from the folds of his flowing robe.\n\n'It's perfectly simple, Firefox!' You could tell that the Adderhead liked the sound of his own voice. 'You, and not I, will be the first to write your name in this book! Taddeo here has assured me that the letters can be removed again with a scraper that Balbulus once designed specially for that purpose, leaving no trace. No one will be able to see even a shadow of your writing on the pages. So you write your name \u2013 which I know you are able to do \u2013 we give the Bluejay a sword, and he runs it through your body. Isn't that a fabulous idea? Won't it prove beyond doubt whether or not this book can do what his daughter promised me?'\n\nA game. Mo saw fear spread over Firefox's face like a rash.\n\n'Well, come along!' the Adderhead derided him, opening the book and leafing through the blank pages, as if lost in thought. 'Why do you suddenly look so pale? Isn't such a game precisely to your taste? Come along, write your name in it. Not the name you've given yourself, but the one you were born with.'\n\nThink. Mo saw one of the guards surrounding him and Meggie draw his sword. What are you going to do? What? He felt Meggie's horrified gaze, felt her fear like a chill beside him.\n\nFirefox looked round as if searching for a face that might offer help, but no one stepped forward, not even Mortola. She stood there with her lips compressed so tightly that they were almost white, and if her glance could have killed as her poisons often did, the book would not have helped the Adderhead. As it was, however, he just smiled at her, and put the pen in his herald's hand. Firefox stared at the sharpened quill as if he were not sure what to do with it. Then he dipped it ceremoniously in the ink \u2013 and wrote.\n\n'Excellent!' The Piper took the book from his hand the moment he had finished. The Adderhead waved to one of the servants waiting with dishes full of fruit and cakes at the foot of the silver columns. 'Well, what are you waiting for, Firefox? Try your luck!' Honey dripped from his fingers as he pushed one of the cakes between his lips.\n\nFirefox, however, stood there, still staring at the Piper, whose long arms were wound round the book as if he were holding a baby. He responded to Firefox's glance with a nasty smile. Firefox abruptly turned his back to him and the Adderhead, and came down the steps.\n\nMo removed Meggie's hand from his arm and pushed her gently aside, although she resisted. The men-at-arms standing around retreated, with incredulity on their faces, as if clearing a stage. Except for the one who had drawn his sword and now held it out to Mo. Was this still Fenoglio's game? It would be like him. When Mo had entered the hall just now he'd have given one of his eyes for a sword, but he didn't want this one. He wanted it as little as the roles some other people wanted him to play, whether Fenoglio or the Adderhead. He had always hated games like this, games played by the strong with someone weaker, the cat with the helpless mouse... he hated them, even when the mouse was a murderer and fire-raiser.\n\nWhen Firefox stopped at the foot of the steps, hesitating as if he were wondering whether there might not be some way out for him after all, one of the men-at-arms went up to him and took his sword from its sheath.\n\n'Here, Bluejay, take it.' The soldier who was holding his sword out to Mo was getting impatient, and Mo remembered the night when he had picked up Basta's sword and chased him and Capricorn out of his house. He still remembered just how heavy the weapon had felt in his hand, how the bright blade caught the light...\n\n'No, thank you,' he said, stepping back. 'Swords are not among the tools of my trade. I thought I'd proved that with the book.'\n\nThe Adderhead wiped the honey off his fingers, removed a few cake crumbs from his lips, and looked him up and down. 'Oh, come on, Bluejay!' he said in a tone of mild surprise. 'You heard. We don't expect any great skill in swordplay. All you have to do is run it through his body. It really isn't difficult!'\n\nFirefox was staring at Mo. His eyes were clouded with hatred. Look at him, you fool, Mo told himself. He'd run you through with that sword on the spot, so why don't you do it to him? Meggie understood why not. He saw it in her eyes. Perhaps the Bluejay might take that sword, but not her father.\n\n'Forget it, Adder,' he said out loud. 'If you have an account to settle with your bloodhound, see to it yourself. Ours is a different agreement.'\n\nThe Adderhead looked at him with as much interest as if some exotic animal had wandered into his hall. Then he laughed. 'I like your answer!' he cried. 'Indeed I do. And do you know something? It finally shows me I've caught the right man. You are the Bluejay, without any doubt. He's said to be a sly fox. But all the same I'll keep my bargain.'\n\nAnd so saying, he nodded to the man-at-arms who was still offering Mo the sword. Without hesitation, the man turned and thrust the long blade through the body of his master's herald, so fast that Firefox did not even manage to flinch back.\n\nMeggie screamed. Mo drew her close and hid her face against his chest. But Firefox stood there, staring in bewilderment at the sword sticking out of his body as if it were a part of him.\n\nWith a self-satisfied smile, the Adderhead looked around, enjoying the silent horror in the hall around him. Firefox took the sword sticking out of his body and pulled the blade out very slowly, his face distorted, but without swaying on his feet. And the great hall became as still as if all present had stopped breathing.\n\nAs for the Adderhead, he applauded. 'Well, look at that!' he cried. 'Is there anyone here in this hall who thinks he could have survived that swordstroke? He's just a little pale, that's all \u2013 am I right, Firefox?'\n\nHis herald did not reply, but just stood there staring at the blood-stained sword in his hands.\n\nBut the Adderhead went on, in a voice of high good humour, 'Well, I think that proves it! The girl wasn't lying, and the Adderhead is not a gullible fool who fell for a child's fairy-tale, is he?'\n\nHe placed his words as carefully as a beast of prey places its paws. Nothing but silence answered him. Even Firefox, his face white with pain, said not a word as he wiped his own blood from the swordblade.\n\n'Excellent!' remarked the Adderhead. 'That's done, then \u2013 and now I have an immortal herald. It's time I was able to say the same of myself. Piper,' he said, turning to the man with the silver nose. 'Empty the hall for me. Get everyone out \u2013 servants, women, physicians, clerks, all of them. I want just ten men-at-arms to stay, the librarian, you and Firefox, and the two prisoners. You go away too!' he snapped at Mortola, who was about to protest. 'Stay with my wife and get that baby to stop crying at last.'\n\n'What's he going to do, Mo?' whispered Meggie as the hall emptied around them. But he could only shake his head. He didn't know either. He only felt that the game was far from over yet.\n\n'What about us?' he called to the Adderhead. 'My daughter and I have fulfilled our part of the bargain, so fetch the prisoners from your dungeons and let us go.'\n\nBut the Adderhead only raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. 'Yes, of course, of course, Bluejay,' he graciously replied. 'As you have kept your word, I keep mine. The Adder's word of honour. I've already sent men down to the dungeons, but it's a long way from there to the gate, so give us the pleasure of your company a little longer. Believe me, we shall provide you with entertainment.'\n\nA game. Mo looked round and saw the huge doors close behind the last servants. Once empty, the hall only seemed larger.\n\n'Well, how are you doing, Firefox?' The Adderhead ran a cool eye over his herald. 'What does it feel like to be immortal? Fabulous? Reassuring?'\n\nFirefox said nothing. He was still holding the sword which had run him through. 'I'd like my own sword back,' he said hoarsely, without taking his eyes off his master. 'This one is no good.'\n\n'Nonsense. I'll have a new sword forged for you, a better one, in gratitude for the service you've done me today!' replied the Adderhead. 'But first we have one small thing to do so that we can remove your name from my book without any damage.'\n\n'Remove it?' Firefox's eyes wandered to the Piper, who opened the book again and held it out to the librarian.\n\n'Remove it, yes. You remember that originally the book was to make me immortal, not you, and for that to happen the scribe must write three more words in it.'\n\n'What for?' Firefox wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.\n\nThree words. Poor devil. Did he hear the trap snapping shut? Meggie reached for Mo's hand.\n\n'To make room, one might say. To make room for me,' replied the Adderhead. 'And do you know what?' he went on, as Firefox looked at him uncomprehendingly. 'As a reward for your unselfish proof of how reliably this book really does protect one from death, as soon as the scribe has written those three words you may kill the Bluejay. If he can be killed, that is. Well, is it a fair offer?'\n\n'What? What are you talking about?' Meggie's voice was shrill with fear, but Mo quickly put his hand over her mouth. 'Meggie, please!' he said, low-voiced. 'Have you forgotten what you said about Fenoglio's words? Nothing will happen to me. Do you hear me?'\n\nBut she wouldn't listen. She sobbed and held him tightly until two men-at-arms roughly dragged her away.\n\n'Three words!' Firefox was advancing on him. And hadn't he just been feeling sorry for him? You're a fool, Mortimer, thought Mo.\n\n'Three words! Count them well, Bluejay!' said Firefox, raising his sword. 'On four I shall strike, and it will hurt, I promise you, even if it may not kill you. I know what I'm talking about.'\n\nThe sword blade shone like ice in the candlelight. It looked long enough to run three men through at once, and here and there Firefox's blood still clung to the bright metal like rust.\n\n'Come now, Taddeo,' said the Adderhead. 'You remember the words I told you? Write them one by one, but don't say them aloud. Just count them for us.'\n\nThe Piper opened the book and held it out to the old man. With trembling fingers, Taddeo dipped his pen in the jar of ink. 'One,' he whispered, and the pen scratched over the parchment.\n\n'Two.'\n\nFirefox, smiling, set the point of the sword against Mo's chest.\n\nTaddeo raised his head, dipped his pen in the ink again and looked uncertainly at the Adderhead.\n\n'Have you forgotten how to count, old man?' he asked.\n\nTaddeo just shook his head and lowered the pen to the paper again. 'Three!' he whispered.\n\nMo heard Meggie call his name, and stared at the point of the sword. Words, nothing but words protected him from that sharp, bright blade...\n\nIn Fenoglio's world, words were enough.\n\nFirefox's eyes widened in mingled astonishment and horror. Mo saw him try with his last breath to thrust the sword into him, to take him to wherever pen and ink were sending him, too, but the sword dropped from his hands. Firefox collapsed like a bundle of empty clothes, and fell at Mo's feet.\n\nThe Piper stood there staring down at the dead man in silence, while Taddeo lowered his pen and retreated from the book in which he had just been writing as if it might kill him as well, with a quiet voice, with a single word.\n\n'Take him away,' ordered the Adderhead. 'Before the White Women come to fetch him from my castle. Get on with it!'\n\nThree men-at-arms carried Firefox out. The foxtails on his cloak dragged on the tiles as they hauled him away, and Mo stood there staring at the sword lying at his feet. He felt Meggie put her arms around him. Her heart was beating like a frightened bird's.\n\n'Who wants an immortal herald?' remarked the Adderhead as the dead Firefox was removed. 'If you'd been a little cleverer you'd have seen that for yourself.' The jewels that adorned his nostrils looked more than ever like drops of blood.\n\n'Shall I remove his name, Your Grace?' Taddeo's voice was so hesitant that it was barely audible.\n\n'Of course. His name and the three words, you understand. And do a thorough job of it. I want the pages white as newly fallen snow again.'\n\nThe librarian obediently set to work. The scraping sound was curiously loud in the empty hall. When Taddeo had finished, he passed the flat of his hand over the parchment, which was blank again now. Then the Piper took the book from his hands and offered it to the Adderhead.\n\nMo saw the man's stout fingers shaking as they dipped the pen in the ink. And before he began to write, the Adderhead looked up once more. 'I am sure you weren't stupid enough to bind any kind of extra magic into this book, were you, Bluejay?' he asked warily. 'There are ways of killing a man \u2013 and not just a man, but his wife and daughter too \u2013 that make dying a very long and very painful business. It can take days \u2013 many days and many nights.'\n\n'Magic? No,' replied Mo, still staring at the sword at his feet. 'I don't know anything about magic. Let me say it again: bookbinding, and nothing else, is my trade. And all I know about it has gone into that book. No more and no less.'\n\n'Very well.' The Adderhead dipped the pen in the ink again \u2013 and stopped once more. 'White,' he murmured, staring at the blank pages. 'See how white they are. White as the women who bring death, white as the bones the Cold Man leaves behind when he's had his fill of flesh and blood.'\n\nThen he wrote. Wrote his name in the blank book, and closed it. 'That's done!' he cried triumphantly. 'That's done, Taddeo! Lock him in the book, the soul-swallower, the enemy who can't be killed. Now he can't kill me either. Now we're equals. Two Cold Men ruling the world together, for all eternity.'\n\nThe librarian obeyed, but as he was engaging the clasps he looked at Mo. Who are you? his eyes seemed to ask. What's your part in this game? But even if Mo had wanted to, he couldn't have given him the answer.\n\nThe Adderhead, however, seemed to think he knew it. 'You know, I like you, Bluejay,' he said, never taking his lizard-like gaze off Mo. 'Yes, you'd make a good herald, but that's not the way the parts are shared out, is it?'\n\n'No, indeed not,' said Mo. But you don't know who shares them out, and I do, he added in his thoughts.\n\nThe Adderhead nodded to the men-at-arms. 'Let him go,' he ordered. 'And the girl, and anyone else he wants to take.'\n\nThey stepped aside, if reluctantly.\n\n'Come on, Mo!' whispered Meggie, pressing his hand.\n\nHow pale she was. Pale with fear, and so defenceless. Mo looked past the men-at-arms, and thought of the walled courtyard waiting for them out there, the silver vipers staring down, the openings for boiling pitch above the gate. He thought of the crossbows of the guards on the battlements too, the spears of the guards at the gate \u2013 and the soldiers who had pushed Resa down in the dirt. Without a word, he bent down and picked up the sword that had fallen from Firefox's hand.\n\n'Mo!' Meggie let go of his hand and looked at him in horror. 'What are you doing?'\n\nBut he just pulled her close to him without a word, while the men-at-arms all drew their weapons. Firefox's sword weighed heavy, heavier than the one he had used to chase Capricorn out of his house.\n\n'Well, fancy that!' said the Adderhead. 'You don't seem to trust my word, Bluejay!'\n\n'Oh, I trust it,' said Mo, without lowering the sword. 'But everyone here except me has a weapon, so I think I'll keep this masterless sword. You keep the book, and if we're both lucky we'll never see each other again after this morning.'\n\nEven the Adderhead's laughter sounded as if it were made of silver \u2013 dark, tarnished silver. 'Well, now,' he said. 'It's a pleasure to play games with you, Bluejay. You're a good opponent. Which is why I'll keep my word. Let him go,' he told the men-at-arms again. 'Tell the guards at the gate the Adderhead is letting the Bluejay go because he need never fear him again. For the Adderhead is immortal!'\n\nThe words echoed in Mo's ears as he took Meggie's hand. Taddeo was still holding the book, holding it as if it might bite him. Mo thought he could still feel its paper between his fingers, the wood of the boards, the leather covering it, the thread stitching the pages. Then he saw Meggie's gaze. She was staring at the sword in his hand as if it made a stranger of him.\n\n'Come on,' he said. 'Let's join your mother!'\n\n'Yes, go, Bluejay, take your daughter and your wife and all the others,' the Adderhead called after them. 'Before Mortola reminds me how stupid it is to let you go free!'\n\nOnly two men-at-arms followed them on their long journey through the castle. The courtyard was almost empty at this early hour of the morning. The sky above the Castle of Night was grey, and fine rain was falling like a veil before the face of the dawning day. The few servants already at work retreated in alarm from the sight of the sword in Mo's hand, and the men-at-arms waved them aside without a word.\n\nThe other prisoners were already waiting at the gate, a forlorn little troop guarded by a dozen soldiers. At first Mo couldn't see Resa, but suddenly one figure moved away from the others and ran towards him and Meggie. No one stopped her. Perhaps the soldiers had heard of Firefox's fate. Mo felt their eyes on him, full of horror and fear \u2013 the man who bound Death between white pages, and was a robber into the bargain! Didn't the sword in his hand prove that for all time? He didn't care what they thought. Let them be afraid of him. He had felt more than enough fear for one lifetime in all those days and nights when he thought he had lost everything \u2013 his wife, his daughter \u2013 and there was nothing left for him but a lonely death in this world made of words.\n\nResa hugged him and Meggie in turn; she almost crushed them, and his face was wet with her tears when she let go of him again.\n\n'Come on, let's go through the gate, Resa!' he urged in a low voice. 'Before the lord of this castle changes his mind! We all have a great deal to tell each other, but for now let's go!'\n\nThe other prisoners joined them in silence. They watched incredulously as the gate opened for them, as its iron-bound wings swung open and let them go free. Some of them stumbled over their own feet in their haste as they crowded out. But still no one from the castle followed them. The guards just stood there, swords and spears in their hands, staring as the prisoners stumbled uncertainly away, their legs stiff from weeks in the dungeons. Only one man-at-arms came out of the gate with them, wordlessly indicating the path they should take. Suppose they shoot at us from the battlements? Mo thought, when he saw that there was not a single tree or bush to give them cover as they followed the road down the bare slope. He felt like a fly on the wall ready to be swatted. But nothing happened. They walked through the grey morning, through the rain now pouring down, with the castle crouched menacingly behind them like a monster \u2013 and nothing happened.\n\n'He's keeping his promise!' Mo heard the others whispering these words more and more often. 'The Adderhead is keeping his word.' Resa asked anxiously about his wound, and he replied quietly that he was all right, while he waited to hear footsteps behind them, soldiers' footsteps. But all was still. It seemed as if they had been going down the bare hillside for an eternity when trees suddenly appeared in front of them. The shade that their branches cast on the road was as dark as if night itself had taken refuge under them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Only a Dream",
                "text": "\u2002One day a young man said, 'This tale about everybody having to die doesn't sit too well with me. I will go in search of the land where one never dies.'\n\n\u2014Italo Calvino, tr. George Martin, The Land Where One Never Dies', Italian Folktales\n\nDustfinger was lying among the trees, drenched to the skin by the rain, with Farid beside him. The boy's black hair clung to his forehead, and he kept shivering. The others were certainly in no better shape. They had been waiting for hours; they'd taken up their positions before sunrise, and it had been raining ever since. It was dark under the trees, as dark as if day had never dawned. And quiet, as quiet as if the waiting men were not alone in holding their breath. Only the noise of the rain splashed and dripped on to the trees and branches, falling and falling. Farid wiped his wet nose on his sleeve, and someone sneezed somewhere. Stupid fool, hold your nose, thought Dustfinger \u2013 then started when he heard something rustling on the other side of the road. But it was only a rabbit scuttling out of the thickets. It stopped in the middle of the road, sniffing the air, ears twitching, eyes wide open. It's probably not half as scared as I am, thought Dustfinger, wishing himself back with Roxane in the dark underground galleries of the mine. They smelled like a crypt, but at least they were dry.\n\nHe was pushing his dripping hair back from his forehead for about the hundredth time when Farid, beside him, suddenly raised his head. The rabbit raced away among the trees, and footsteps sounded through the rushing of the rain. Here they came at last, a forlorn little troop, almost as wet as the robbers waiting for them. Farid was going to jump up, but Dustfinger seized him and pulled him roughly back to his side. 'Stay where you are, understand?' he hissed. 'I didn't leave the martens with Roxane only to have to catch you instead!'\n\nSilvertongue led the way, with Meggie and Resa behind him. He was holding a sword in his hand, as he had on the night when he turned Capricorn and Basta out of his house. The pregnant woman he had seen in the dungeon was stumbling down the road beside Resa. She kept looking back, up to the Castle of Night, which still towered menacing and huge behind them, even though it was so far away now. There were more prisoners than he had seen at the inn in the forest. Obviously the Adderhead really had emptied his dungeons. Some were swaying as if they could hardly keep on their feet, others blinking as if even the dim light of this dark day was too much for their eyes. Silvertongue seemed to be all right, in spite of his blood-stained shirt, and Resa did not look quite as pale as in the dungeon, but perhaps that was just his imagination.\n\nHe had just seen the Barn Owl among the others \u2013 how old and fragile he looked! \u2013 when Farid clutched his arm in sudden fright and pointed at the men who had appeared on the road. They emerged so soundlessly that they might have been growing out of the rain, more and more of them, and at first Dustfinger thought the Black Prince had managed to get reinforcements after all. But then he saw Basta.\n\nHe was holding a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, and blood lust was written all over his scorched face. None of the men with him wore the Adderhead's coat of arms, but that meant nothing. Perhaps Mortola had sent them, perhaps the Adderhead wanted to be able to protest innocence when his prisoners were found dead in the road. There were a great many men; that was all that mattered. Dozens and dozens of them. Far more than the robbers lying in wait in the trees with the Black Prince. Basta raised a hand, smiling, and they advanced down the road with drawn swords, going at a comfortable pace as if they wanted to enjoy the fear on the prisoners' faces for a while before they struck.\n\nThe Black Prince was the first to leap out of the trees, with the bear at his side. The two of them took up their position in the road as if they alone could stop the slaughter. But his men were quick to follow, silently forming a wall of bodies between the prisoners and the men who had come to kill them. Cursing quietly, Dustfinger rose to his feet too. This was going to be a morning of bloodshed. The rain wouldn't fall fast enough to wash all the blood away, and he would have to provoke the fire to great anger, for it didn't like rain. Damp made it sleepy \u2013 and it would have to bite hard, very hard.\n\n'Farid!' He breathed the boy's name, and was just in time to haul him back by the arm. He wanted to go to Meggie, of course, but he would have to take fire with him. They would need to make a circle of it \u2013 a ring of flames around those who had nothing but their hands against all those swords. He picked up a strong branch, enticed fire from its damp bark \u2013 hissing, steaming fire \u2013 and threw the burning wood to the boy. The barrier of human flesh wouldn't hold for long; it was fire that must save them.\n\nBasta's voice came through the gloom, derisive, bloodthirsty, while Farid made sparks rain down the ground. He scattered them over the wet earth like a farmer sowing his seed, while Dustfinger followed him and made them grow. The flames were flaring up as Basta's men attacked. Sword clashed against sword, screams filled the air, bodies collided as Dustfinger and Farid lured fire into being and nursed it until it almost surrounded the company of prisoners. Dustfinger left only a narrow path free, a way of escape into the forest in case the flames stopped obeying even him and their anger finally made them bite everyone, friend and foe alike.\n\nHe saw Resa's face and the fear in it; he saw Farid leap over the flames to join the freed prisoners, in line with their plan. A good thing Meggie was there, or very likely Farid would not have left his side. Dustfinger himself still stood outside the fire. He drew his knife \u2013 it was always better to have a knife in your hand when Basta was around \u2013 and whispered to the fire, insistently, almost lovingly, to keep it from doing what it wanted and becoming an enemy instead of a friend. As the robbers were forced further and further back, they came closer and closer to the troop of freed prisoners. Among them all, only Silvertongue had a weapon.\n\nThree of Basta's men were attacking the Prince, but the bear was protecting his master with teeth and claws. Dustfinger felt almost sick at the sight of the wounds those black paws inflicted. The fire crackled at him, wanted to play, wanted to dance, didn't understand anything about the fear all around, neither smelled nor tasted it. Dustfinger heard cries, one as clear as a boy's voice. He pushed his way through the fighting bodies \u2013 and picked up a sword lying in the mud. Where was Farid?\n\nThere, thrusting about him with his knife, swift as an adder striking. Dustfinger seized his arm, hissing at the flames to let them pass, and dragged him away. 'Damn it all! I ought to have left you with Roxane,' he shouted as he pushed Farid through the fire. 'Didn't I tell you to stay with Meggie?' He could have wrung the boy's thin neck, but he was so relieved to see him uninjured.\n\nMeggie ran to Farid and took his hand. They stood there side by side, staring at the blood and the turmoil, but Dustfinger tried to hear nothing, see nothing. The fire alone was his concern. The rest was up to the Prince.\n\nSilvertongue was striking out well with his sword, far better than Dustfinger himself could have managed, but his face looked exhausted and wet with rain. Dustfinger glanced at Resa. She was standing beside Meggie, and she was still unhurt. For now. The damned rain was running down his face and the back of his neck, drowning out his voice with its rushing. The water was singing a lullaby to the flames, an ancient lullaby, and Dustfinger raised his voice, called louder and louder to wake it again, to make it roar and bite. He went very near the ring of fire, saw the fighting men come closer and closer. Some were already almost stumbling into the flames.\n\nFarid too had seen what the rain was doing. He ran nimbly to where the flames were dying down, and Meggie ran after him. A man fell dead in the ring of fire where the boy was standing, extinguishing the flames there with his lifeless body, and a second man stumbled over him. Cursing, Dustfinger made for the deadly breach in the ring, called Silvertongue to help \u2013 and saw Basta appear among the flames. Basta, with his face singed and hatred in his eyes \u2013 hatred, and fear of the fire. Which would prove stronger? He was staring through the flames, blinking at the smoke, as if in search of one particular face; Dustfinger could well imagine whose. Instinctively, he took a step back. Another man fell dead in the flames; two more, swords drawn, leaped over his body and attacked the prisoners. Screams rang in Dustfinger's ears. He saw Silvertongue place himself in front of Resa, while Basta set a foot on the dead men as if they were a bridge. More flames were needed. Dustfinger was making for the fire, so that it could hear him better at close quarters, but someone seized his arm and swung him round. Twofingers.\n\n'They'll kill us!' he stammered, his eyes wide with fear. 'They were going to kill us all along! And if they don't get us, the flames will burn us alive!'\n\n'Let me go!' Dustfinger shouted at him. The smoke was stinging his eyes and making him cough.\n\nBasta. He was staring at him through the smoke as if an invisible bond united them. The flames licked up at him in vain, and he raised his knife. Who was he aiming at? And why was he smiling like that?\n\nThe boy.\n\nDustfinger pushed the two-fingered man aside. He shouted Farid's name, but the noise all around drowned out his voice. The boy was still holding Meggie's hand with one of his own, while his other held the knife, the knife that Dustfinger had given him in another life, in another story.\n\n'Farid!' The boy did not hear him \u2013 and Basta threw.\n\nDustfinger saw the knife go into that thin back. He caught the boy before he fell to the ground, but he was already dead. And there stood Basta with his foot on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger's heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms; it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years. He saw Meggie's face, heard her sobbing Farid's name, and put the boy's body into her arms. His legs were trembling so much that he had difficulty in straightening up. Everything about him was trembling, even the hand holding the knife that he had pulled out of the boy's back. He wanted to get at Basta, through the fire and the fighting men, but Silvertongue was faster. Silvertongue, who had plucked Farid from his own story and whose daughter sat there weeping as if her own heart had had a knife driven into it, like the boy...\n\nMo ignored the flames moving towards him. He thrust his sword through Basta's body as if he had never done anything else in his life, as if from now on his trade was killing. Basta died with an expression of surprise still on his face. He fell into the fire, and Dustfinger stumbled back to Farid, who was still held in Meggie's arms.\n\nWhat had he expected \u2013 that the boy would come back to life just because his killer was dead? No, the black eyes were still empty, empty as a deserted house. There was none of the joy in them now that had always been so difficult to banish. And Dustfinger knelt there on the trodden earth, while Resa comforted her weeping daughter, and men were fighting, killing and being killed around them, and he no longer had any idea what he was doing here, what was going on, why he had ever come beneath these trees, the same trees that he had seen in his dream.\n\nIn the worst of all dreams.\n\nAnd now it had come true."
            },
            {
                "title": "An Exchange",
                "text": "\u2003The blue of my eyes was extinguished tonight\n\n\u2003The red gold of my heart\n\n\u2014Georg Trakl, 'By Night', Poems\n\nThey almost all escaped. The fire saved them, the fury of the bear, the Black Prince's men \u2013 and Mo, who practised killing that grey morning as if he meant to become a master of the craft. Basta was left dead under the trees, along with Slasher and so many of their men that the ground was covered with their corpses as if with dead leaves. Two of the strolling players had been killed too \u2013 and Farid.\n\nFarid.\n\nDustfinger himself was pale as death when he carried him back to the mine. Meggie walked beside him all the long, dark way. She held Farid's hand, as if that could help, feeling as sore inside herself as if it would never get better.\n\nShe was the only one whom Dustfinger did not send away when he had laid Farid down on his cloak in the most remote of the galleries. No one dared approach him as he bent over the dead boy and wiped the soot from his brow. Roxane did try to talk to him, but when she saw the expression on his face she left him alone. He allowed only Meggie to sit beside Farid, as if he had seen his own pain in her eyes. So they both sat with him in the depths of Mount Adder, as if they had come to the end of all stories. Without a single word still left to say.\n\nPerhaps night had fallen outside by the time Meggie heard Dustfinger's voice. It came to her as if from far away, through the fog of pain that enveloped her as if she would never find her way out.\n\n'You'd like him back too, wouldn't you?'\n\nIt was difficult for her to turn her eyes away from Farid's face. 'He'll never come back,' she whispered, and looked at Dustfinger. She didn't have the strength to speak any louder. All her strength was gone, as if Farid had taken it away with him. He had taken everything away with him.\n\n'There's a story.' Dustfinger looked at his hands, as if what he was talking about was written there. 'A story about the White Women.'\n\n'What kind of story?' Meggie didn't want to hear any more stories ever again. This one had broken her heart for all time. Nonetheless, there was something in Dustfinger's voice...\n\nHe bent over Farid and wiped some soot from his cold forehead. 'Roxane knows it,' he said. 'She'll tell it to you. Just go to her and... and tell her I've had to go away. Tell her I'm going to find out if the story is true.' He spoke with a strange kind of hesitation, as if it were infinitely difficult to find the right words. 'And remind her of my promise \u2013 that I'll always find a way back to her, wherever I am. Will you tell her that?'\n\nWhat was he talking about? 'Find out?' Meggie's voice was husky with tears. 'Find out what exactly?'\n\n'Oh, people say this and that about the White Women. Much of it's just superstition, but there's sure to be some truth in it somewhere. Stories are always like that, aren't they? No doubt Fenoglio could tell me more, but to be honest I don't want to ask him. I'd rather ask them in person.'\n\nDustfinger straightened up. He stood there looking around him, as if he had forgotten where he really was.\n\nThe White Women. 'They'll be coming soon, won't they?' Meggie asked him anxiously. 'Coming for Farid.'\n\nBut Dustfinger shook his head, and for the first time since Farid's death he smiled, that strangely sad smile that Meggie had never seen on any face but his, and that she had never entirely understood. 'No, why should they? They're sure of him already. They come only if you're still clinging to life, if they have to lure you to them with a look or a whispered word. Everything else is superstition. They come while you're still breathing, but very close to death. They come when your heart is beating more and more faintly, when they can smell fear, or blood, as in your father's case. If you die as quickly as Farid you go to them entirely of your own accord.'\n\nMeggie caressed Farid's fingers. They were colder than the stone where she was sitting. 'Then I don't understand,' she whispered. 'If they aren't coming at all, how will you ask them anything?'\n\n'I shall summon them,' replied Dustfinger. 'But you had better not be here when I do it, so will you go to Roxane and tell her what I have said to you?'\n\nShe was going to ask more questions, but he put a finger on his lips. 'Please, Meggie!' he said. He didn't often call her by her name. 'Tell Roxane what I have told you \u2013 and say... say I'm sorry. Now, off you go.'\n\nMeggie sensed that he was afraid, but she did not ask him what of, because her heart was asking other questions. How could it be true that Farid was dead, and how would it feel to have him dead in her heart for ever? She caressed his still face one last time before she got to her feet. When she looked back once more at the entrance to the gallery, Dustfinger was looking down at Farid. And, for the first time since she had known him, his face showed all that he usually hid: affection, love \u2013 and pain.\n\nMeggie knew where to look for Roxane, but she lost her way twice in the dark galleries before she finally found her. Roxane was tending the injured women, while the Barn Owl was looking after the men. Many of them had been hurt, and although the fire had saved their lives it had burned many of them badly. Mo was nowhere to be seen, and nor was the Prince; they were probably on guard at the entrance to the mine, but Resa was with Roxane. She was just bandaging an arm that had suffered burns, and Roxane was treating a cut on an old woman's forehead with the same ointment she had once used on Dustfinger's wounds. Its spring-like fragrance did not suit this place.\n\nWhen Meggie came out of the dark passage Roxane raised her head. Perhaps she had been hoping it was Dustfinger's footsteps that she had heard. Meggie leaned back against the cold wall of the gallery. This is all a dream, she thought, a terrible, terrible dream. She felt dizzy with weeping.\n\n'What's that story?' she asked Roxane. 'A story about the White Women... Dustfinger says you're to tell me. And he says he has to go away because he wants to find out if it's true.'\n\n'Go away?' Roxane put the ointment down. 'What are you talking about?'\n\nMeggie wiped her eyes, but there were no tears left in them. She supposed she had used them all up. Where did so many tears come from? 'He says he's going to summon them,' she murmured. 'And he says you're to remember his promise. That he'll always come back, he'll find a way wherever he is...' The words still made no sense to her when she repeated them. But they obviously meant something to Roxane.\n\nShe straightened up, and so did Resa.\n\n'What are you talking about, Meggie?' asked her mother, with concern in her voice. 'Where's Dustfinger?'\n\n'With Farid. He's still with Farid.' It hurt so much to speak his name. Resa took her in her arms. But Roxane just stood there, staring at the dark gallery from which Meggie had come. Then she suddenly pushed Meggie aside, made her way past her and disappeared into the darkness. Resa hurried after her, without letting go of Meggie's hand. Roxane was only a little way ahead of them. She trod on the hem of her dress, fell over, picked herself up again and ran on. Faster and faster. But still she came too late.\n\nResa almost stumbled into Roxane, for she was standing rooted to the spot at the entrance of the gallery where Farid lay. Her name burned on the wall in fiery letters, and the White Women were still there. They withdrew their pale hands from Dustfinger's breast as if they had torn out his heart. Perhaps Roxane was the last thing he saw. Perhaps he just had time to see Farid move before he himself collapsed without a sound, as the White Women vanished.\n\nYes, Farid was moving \u2013 like someone who has slept too long and too deeply. He sat up, his gaze blurred, with no idea who was suddenly lying there motionless behind him. Even when Roxane made her way past him he did not turn. He stared into space, as if there were pictures in front of him that no one else could see.\n\nHesitantly, as if he were a stranger, Meggie went to him. She didn't know what to feel. She didn't know what to think.\n\nBut Roxane stood beside Dustfinger, her hand pressed firmly to her mouth, as if she had to hold back her pain. Her name was still burning on the wall of the gallery as if it had stood there for ever, but she took no notice of the letters of fire. Without a word she sank to her knees and took Dustfinger's head on her lap, as carefully as if she feared to break what was already broken, and she bent over him until her black hair surrounded his face like a veil.\n\nResa began to weep. But Farid still sat there as if numbed. Only when Meggie was right in front of him did he seem to notice her.\n\n'Meggie?' he murmured, his tongue heavy.\n\nIt couldn't be true. He was really back.\n\nFarid. Suddenly his name did not taste of pain. He put his hand out to her and she took it, quickly, as if she had to hold on tight to prevent him from going away again, so far away. Was Dustfinger in that place now? How warm Farid's face felt again. Her fingers couldn't believe it. She knelt beside him and put her arms around him, much too tight, felt his heart beating against her, beating strongly.\n\n'Meggie!' He looked as relieved as if he had woken from a bad dream. There was even a smile stealing over his lips. But then Roxane, behind them, began sobbing, very quietly, so quietly that you could hardly hear it through her curtain of hair \u2013 and Farid turned round.\n\nFor a moment he seemed unable to take in what he saw.\n\nThen he tore himself away from Meggie, stood up, stumbled over the cloak as if his legs were still too weak for him to walk. He crawled over to Dustfinger's side on his knees and touched the still face with incredulous horror.\n\n'What happened?' He was shouting at Roxane as if she were the cause of all misfortune. 'What have you done? What did you do to him?'\n\nMeggie knelt down beside him, trying to soothe him, but he wouldn't let her. He pushed her hands away and bent over Dustfinger again, putting his ear to his chest, listening \u2013 and sobbing as he pressed his face to the place where no heart beat any more.\n\nThe Black Prince entered the gallery. Mo was with him, and more and more faces appeared behind them.\n\n'Go away!' Farid shouted at them. 'Go away, all of you! What have you done to him? Why isn't he breathing? There's no blood anywhere, no blood at all.'\n\n'No one did anything to him, Farid!' whispered Meggie. You'd like him back too, wouldn't you? Meggie heard Dustfinger saying. She kept hearing the words in her head, over and over again. 'It was the White Women. We saw them. He summoned them himself.'\n\n'You're lying!' Farid was almost shouting at her. 'Why would he do a thing like that?'\n\nBut Roxane ran her finger over Dustfinger's scars, fine, pale lines, as fine as if a glass man's pen, and not a knife, had drawn them. 'There's a story that the strolling players tell their children,' she said, without looking at any of them. 'About a fire-eater whose son the White Women took. In his despair he remembered something that was said about them: they fear fire, yet long for its warmth. So he decided to summon them by his art and ask them to give him back his son. It worked. He summoned them with fire, he made it dance and sing for them, and they did not deliver his son to death but gave him his life back. However, they took the fire-eater with them, and he never came back. The story says he must live with them for ever, until the end of time, and make fire dance for them.' Roxane picked up Dustfinger's lifeless hand and kissed the soot-blackened fingertips. 'It's only a story,' she went on. 'But he loved to hear it. He always said it was so beautiful that there must be a grain of truth in it. Whether that's so or not \u2013 he's made it come true himself now, and he'll never return. In spite of his promise. Not this time.'\n\nFarid stared at her in horror. Watching his face, Meggie saw memory return: the memory of Basta's knife. He reached round to his back, and when he withdrew his hand his own blood was sticking to his fingers. His tunic was still damp with it.\n\n'You were dead, Farid!' Meggie whispered. 'And Dustfinger brought you back.' She closed her eyes so as not to see that motionless figure any more. She wanted to see other pictures: Dustfinger breathing fire for her in Elinor's garden, or guiding her and Mo through the hills away from Capricorn's dreadful village, and his happiness when she first saw him in his own world. He had both betrayed and rescued her \u2013 and now he had given her Farid back. Tears were running down her face, and she hardly noticed when her mother knelt down beside her.\n\nIt was a long night.\n\nRoxane and the Prince kept watch by Dustfinger's side, but Farid had climbed out of the mine to where the moon was showing through black clouds, and mist rose from the ground that was wet with rain. He had pushed aside the guards who tried to stop him and thrown himself down on the moss. He lay there now under Mortola's venomous trees, sobbing \u2013 while the two martens scuffled in the darkness as if they still had a master to quarrel over.\n\nOf course Meggie went to him, but Farid sent her away, so she set off to find Mo. Resa was asleep beside him, her face wet with tears, but Mo was awake. He sat there with his arm around her sleeping mother, and looked into the darkness as if a story was written there \u2013 a story that he didn't yet understand. For the first time, Meggie couldn't read in his face what he was thinking. There was something strange and closed in it, hard as the scab over a wound, but when he noticed her enquiring look he smiled at her, and all the strangeness was gone.\n\n'Come here,' he said softly, and she sat down beside him and pressed her face into his shoulder. 'I want to go home, Mo!' she whispered.\n\n'No, you don't,' he whispered back, and she sobbed into his shirt, as she had done so often when she was a little girl. She had been able to unload all her grief on to him, however heavily it weighed. Mo had brushed it away simply by stroking her hair, putting his hand on her brow and whispering her name, and that was what he did now in this sad place, on this sad night. He couldn't take all the pain away, there was too much of it, but he could help just by holding her close. No one could do it better. Not Resa. Not even Farid.\n\nYes, it was a long night, as long as a thousand nights, darker than any that Meggie had ever known. And she didn't know how long she had been sleeping beside Mo when Farid was suddenly shaking her awake. He led her off with him, away from her sleeping parents, into a dark corner that smelled of the Prince's bear.\n\n'Meggie,' he whispered, taking her hand between his and pressing it so hard that it hurt. 'I know how we can make everything right again. You go to Fenoglio! Tell him to write something that will bring Dustfinger back to life! He'll listen to you!'\n\nOf course. She might have known he would think up this idea. He was looking at her so pleadingly that it hurt, but she shook her head.\n\n'No, Farid. Dustfinger is dead. Fenoglio can't do anything for him. And even if he could \u2013 haven't you heard what he keeps muttering to himself? He says he'll never write another word, not after what happened to Cosimo.'\n\nFenoglio had indeed changed. Meggie had hardly recognized him when she saw him again. Once, his eyes had always reminded her of a little boy's. Now they were an old man's eyes. His gaze was suspicious, uncertain, as if he didn't trust the ground under his feet any more, and since Cosimo's death he cared nothing for shaving himself, combing his hair or washing. He had asked only about the book that Mo had bound. But not even Meggie's assurance that its blank pages did indeed ward off death had wiped the bitterness from his face. 'Oh, wonderful!' he had muttered. 'The Adderhead's immortal and Cosimo's dead as a doornail. Nothing goes right with this story any more.' And he had gone off again, far from all the others. No, Fenoglio wouldn't help anyone any more, not even himself. All the same, when Farid set off in search of him, Meggie went too.\n\nFenoglio was spending most of his time these days in one of the deepest galleries of the mine, a place almost entirely filled with rubble, to which no one else climbed down. He was asleep when they clambered down the steep ladder, the fur that the robbers had given him drawn up to his chin, his old forehead wrinkled as if he were thinking hard even in his dreams.\n\n'Fenoglio!' Farid roughly shook him awake.\n\nThe old man turned over on his back with a grunt that would have done the Prince's bear credit. Then he opened his eyes and stared at Farid as if seeing his dark face for the very first time. 'Oh, it's you!' he growled, dazed with sleep, and propped himself on his elbows. 'The boy who came back from the dead. Something else that I never wrote! What do you want? Do you know I was just having my first good dream for days?'\n\n'You must write us something!'\n\n'Write something? I'm never going to write again. Haven't we seen what comes of it? I have this fabulous idea about the book of immortality that will set the good characters free and bring the Adderhead to his death in the most subtle way. And what happens? The Adder is immortal now, and the forest is full of corpses again! Robbers, strolling players, the two-fingered man \u2013 dead! Why do I keep making them up if this story is only going to kill them? Oh, this thrice-accursed story! It's in love with Death!'\n\n'But you must bring him back!' Farid's lips were trembling. 'You made the Adderhead immortal, so why not him?'\n\n'You're talking about Dustfinger, aren't you?' Fenoglio sat up and rubbed his face, sighing heavily. 'Yes, he's dead now too, dead as a doornail, but I'd planned that a long way back, as you perhaps remember. Be that as it may, Dustfinger is dead, you were dead... Minerva's husband, Cosimo, the boys who rode with him, they're all dead! Can't this story think of anything else? I'll tell you something, my boy. I'm not its author any more. No, the author is Death, the Grim Reaper, the Cold Man, call him what you like. It's his dance, and never mind what I write he'll take my words and make them serve him!'\n\n'Nonsense!' Farid was no longer even wiping away the tears that streamed down his face. 'You must fetch him back. It wasn't his death at all, it was mine! Make him breathe again! It will only take a few words. After all, you did it for Cosimo and for Silvertongue.'\n\n'Just a moment \u2013 Meggie's father wasn't dead yet,' Fenoglio soberly pointed out. 'And as for Cosimo, he only looked like Cosimo \u2013 how many more times do I have to explain that? Meggie and I made a brand-new Cosimo, and unfortunately it went terribly wrong. No!' He reached into his belt, produced something resembling a handkerchief, and blew his nose nosily. 'This is not a story in which the dead come to life! All right, I admit I brought immortality into it, yes. But that's different from bringing back the dead. No, when someone is dead here, he stays dead! It's the same in this world as in the one I come from. Dustfinger got around that rule very cleverly on your behalf. Perhaps I wrote the sentimental story that gave him the idea myself... I really don't remember, but never mind, there are always gaps. And he paid for your life with his own. That's always been the only trade-off that Death will accept. Who'd have thought it? Dustfinger, of all people, gets so fond of a good-for-nothing boy that he ends up dying for him. I admit it's a much better idea than the one about the marten, but it isn't mine. Oh no! So if you're looking for someone to blame, then blame yourself. Because one thing is certain, my boy \u2013' and so saying he jabbed his finger roughly into Farid's thin chest \u2013 'and it's that you don't belong in this story! And if you hadn't taken it into your head to wangle your way into it, Dustfinger would still be alive\u2014'\n\nFarid punched Fenoglio in the face before Meggie could pull him back.\n\n'How can you say a thing like that?' she shouted at Fenoglio as Farid, sobbing, put his arms around her. 'Farid saved Dustfinger at the mill. He's protected him ever since he arrived here\u2014'\n\n'Yes, yes, all right!' growled Fenoglio, feeling his nose. It hurt. 'I'm a heartless old man, I know. But although you may not believe it, I felt dreadful when I saw Dustfinger lying there. And then Roxane's tears, appalling, really appalling. All the wounded men, Meggie, all the dead, so many dead... no, Meggie, the words don't obey me any more. Except when it suits them. They've turned against me like snakes.'\n\n'Exactly. You're a failure, a miserable failure!' Farid shook Meggie off. 'You don't know your own trade. But someone else does. The man who brought Dustfinger here. Orpheus. He'll get him back, you wait and see. Write him here! You can at least do that! Yes, write Orpheus here at once or... or... I'll tell the Adderhead you were going to kill him, I'll tell all the women in Ombra it's your fault their menfolk are dead... I'll... I'll...'\n\nHe stood there with his fists clenched, quivering with rage and despair. But the old man just looked at him. Then, with difficulty, he rose to his feet. 'Do you know something, my boy?' he said, putting his face very close to Farid's. 'If you'd asked me nicely I might have tried, but not this way. No, no! Fenoglio must be asked, not threatened. I still have that much pride left.'\n\nAt this Farid looked like going for him again, but Meggie held him back. 'Fenoglio, stop it!' she shouted at the old man. 'He's desperate, can't you see that?'\n\n'Desperate? So what? I'm desperate too!' Fenoglio snapped at her. 'My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here,' he said, holding them out to her, 'don't want to write any more! I'm afraid of words, Meggie! Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words any more? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm its creator!'\n\n'Fetch Orpheus!' said Farid hoarsely. Meggie could hear how much trouble he was taking to control his voice, to banish the rage from it. 'Bring him here, and let him write it for you! Teach him what you know, the way Dustfinger taught me everything! Let him find the right words for you. He loves your story, he told Dustfinger so himself! He even wrote you a letter when he was a boy.'\n\n'Did he?' For a moment Fenoglio sounded almost like his old inquisitive self.\n\n'Yes, he admires you! He thinks this is the best of all stories, he said so!'\n\n'Really?' Fenoglio sounded flattered. 'Well, it isn't bad. That is to say, it wasn't bad.' He looked thoughtfully at Farid. 'A pupil. A pupil for Fenoglio,' he murmured. 'A writer's apprentice. Hm. Orpheus...' He spoke the name as if he had to taste it. 'The only poet who ever challenged Death... appropriate.'\n\nFarid was looking at him so hopefully that it went to Meggie's heart again. But Fenoglio smiled, even though it was a sad smile.\n\n'Look at him, Meggie!' he said. 'He has the same pleading look as my grandchildren could turn on to wheedle anything out of me. Does he look at you the same way when he wants something from you?'\n\nMeggie felt herself blushing. However, Fenoglio turned back to Farid. 'You know we'll need Meggie's help, don't you?'\n\nFarid nodded, and looked at her.\n\n'I'll read it,' she said quietly. 'If Fenoglio writes it, I'll read it.' And get the man who helped Mortola to bring my father here and almost kill him into this story, Meggie added in her thoughts. She tried not to think of what Mo would say about the deal.\n\nHowever, Fenoglio already seemed to be searching for words in his mind. The right words \u2013 words that would not betray and deceive him. 'Very well,' he muttered abstractedly, 'let's get down to work one last time. But where am I going to find paper and ink? Not to mention a pen and a helpful glass man? Poor Rosenquartz is still in Ombra.'\n\n'I have paper,' said Meggie, 'and a pencil.'\n\n'That's very beautiful,' said Fenoglio when she put her notebook in his lap. 'Did your father bind it?'\n\nMeggie nodded.\n\n'There are some pages torn out.'\n\n'Yes, for a message to my mother and the letter I sent you. The one that Cloud-Dancer brought you.'\n\n'Oh. Oh yes. Him.' For a moment Fenoglio looked dreadfully tired. 'Books with blank pages,' he murmured. 'They seem to be playing more and more of a part in this story, don't you think?' Then he asked Meggie to leave him alone with Farid so that the boy could tell him about Orpheus. 'To be honest,' he whispered to Meggie, 'I think he vastly over-estimates the man's abilities! What has this fellow Orpheus done? Put my own words together in a different order, that's all. But I'll admit I'm curious to meet him. It takes a fair amount of megalomania to give yourself a name like that, and megalomania is an interesting character trait.'\n\nMeggie did not share his opinion, but it was too late to go back on her promise. She would read again. For Farid this time. She went quietly back to her parents, laid her head on Mo's chest and fell asleep hearing his heartbeat in her ear. Words had saved him; why shouldn't they do the same for Dustfinger? Even if he had gone far, far away... didn't the words of this world rule even the land of silence?"
            },
            {
                "title": "The Bluejay",
                "text": "\u2003The world existed to be read. And I read it.\n\n\u2014L.S. Schwartz, Ruined by Reading\n\nResa and Meggie were asleep when Mo woke, but he felt as if he couldn't breathe among all the stones and the dead a moment longer. The men guarding the entrance of the mine greeted him with a nod as he came climbing up to them. Pale morning light was seeping through the crevice that led to the outside world; the air smelled of rosemary, thyme, and the berries on Mortola's poisonous trees. Mo's senses were constantly confused by the way the familiar mingled with the strange in Fenoglio's world \u2013 and by the fact that the strange features often struck him as more real than the others.\n\nThe guards were not the only men Mo met at the entrance to the mine. Five more were leaning against the walls of the gallery, among them Snapper and the Black Prince himself.\n\n'Ah, here comes the most wanted robber between Ombra and the sea!' said Snapper, low-voiced, as Mo came towards them. They examined him like some new kind of animal, of which they had heard the strangest stories. And Mo felt more than ever like an actor who had stepped on stage with the unpleasant feeling that he knew neither the play nor his part in it.\n\n'I don't know how the rest of you feel,' said Snapper, glancing round at the others, 'but I always thought some writer had made up the Bluejay. And that the only man who might lay claim to that feathered mask was our own Black Prince, even if he doesn't entirely match the description in the songs. So when folk said the Bluejay was a prisoner in the Castle of Night, I thought they just wanted to hang some other poor fellow because he happened to have a scar on his arm. But then,' he said, looking Mo up and down as extensively as if assessing him by every line of every song he had ever heard about the Bluejay, 'then I saw you fight in the forest... and his sword-blade flashes through them like a needle through the pages, isn't that what one of the songs says? A good description, indeed!'\n\nOh yes, Snapper? thought Mo. Suppose I were to tell you that the Bluejay was really made up by a writer, just like you?\n\nHow furtively they were all looking at him.\n\n'We must get away from here,' said the Prince into the silence. 'They're combing the forest all the way down to the sea. They've already found two of our hiding-places and smoked them out \u2013 they haven't yet come upon the mine, but only because they don't expect us to be so close to their own back door.' The bear grunted, as if amused by the stupidity of the men-at-arms. The grey muzzle in the furry black face, the clever little amber eyes \u2013 Mo had liked the bear even in the book, although he had imagined him slightly larger. 'Tonight half of us will take the injured to the Badger's Earth,' the Black Prince continued, 'and the others will go to Ombra with me and Roxane.'\n\n'And where does he go?' Snapper was looking at Mo. Then they all looked at him. Mo felt as if their eyes were fingering his skin. Eyes full of hope, but what for? What had they heard about him? Were people already telling stories about what had happened at the Castle of Night, about the book full of blank pages, and Firefox's death?\n\n'He has to get away from here, what else do you think? A long way away!' The Prince picked a dead leaf out of the bear's coat. 'The Adderhead will be looking for him, even though he's spreading word everywhere that Mortola was responsible for the attack in the forest.' He nodded to a thin boy, at least a head shorter than Meggie, who was standing among the men. 'Tell us again what the crier announced in your village.'\n\n'This,' began the boy in a hesitant voice, 'this is the Adderhead's promise: If the Bluejay ever ventures to show his face in Argenta again, he will die the slowest death that the executioners of the Castle of Night have ever given anyone. And the man who brings him in will be rewarded with the Bluejay's weight in silver.'\n\n'Better start starving yourself, then, Bluejay,' mocked Snapper, but none of the others laughed.\n\n'Did you really make him immortal?' It was the boy who asked this question.\n\nSnapper laughed out loud. 'Listen to the lad! I expect you think the Prince can fly too, eh?'\n\nBut the boy took no notice of him. He was still looking at Mo. 'They say you yourself can't die,' he said in a low voice. 'They say you made yourself a book like that too, a book of white pages with your death held captive in it.'\n\nMo had to smile. Meggie had so often looked at him wide-eyed, just like that. Is it a true story, Mo? Come on, tell me! They were all waiting for his answer, even the Black Prince. He saw it in their faces.\n\n'Oh, I can die all right,' he said. 'Believe me, I have come very close. As for the Adderhead, however \u2013 yes, I have made him immortal. But not for long.'\n\n'What do you mean by that?' The smile had long since frozen on Snapper's coarse-featured face.\n\nMo was looking not at him but at the Black Prince when he answered. 'I mean that at present nothing can kill the Adderhead. No sword, no knife, no disease. The book I have bound for him protects him. But the same book will be his undoing, for he will have only a few weeks to enjoy it.'\n\n'Why's that?' It was the boy again.\n\nMo lowered his voice when he replied, just as he did when he was sharing a secret with Meggie. 'Oh, it's not particularly difficult to ensure that a book doesn't live long, you know. Particularly not for a bookbinder. And that's my trade, although so many people seem to think differently. Normally it's not my job to kill a book \u2013 on the contrary, I'm usually called in to save the lives of books \u2013 but in this case I'm afraid I had to do it. After all, I didn't want to be guilty of letting the Adderhead sit on his throne for all eternity, passing the time by hanging strolling players.'\n\n'Then you are a wizard!' Snapper's voice was hoarse.\n\n'No, really, I'm not,' replied Mo. 'Let me say it once again: I'm a bookbinder.'\n\nThey were staring at him again, and this time Mo wasn't sure whether there might not be some fear mingled with the respect in their eyes.\n\n'Off you all go now!' The Prince's voice broke the silence. 'Go and make litters for the injured.' They obeyed, although every one of them cast a last glance at Mo before they walked away. Only the boy gave him a bashful smile too.\n\nAs for the Black Prince, he signalled to Mo to go with him.\n\n'A few weeks,' he repeated when they were in the gallery where he and the bear slept, away from the others. 'How many exactly?'\n\nHow many? Even Mo couldn't tell for sure. If they didn't notice what he had done for the time being, it would all be quite quick. 'Not very many,' he replied.\n\n'And they won't be able to save the book?'\n\n'No.'\n\nThe Prince smiled. It was the first smile Mo had seen on his dark face. 'That's consoling news, Bluejay. It saps one's courage to fight an immortal enemy. But you do know, don't you, that he'll only hunt you down all the more pitilessly when he realizes that you've tricked him?'\n\nSo he would, indeed. That was why Mo hadn't told Meggie, had done what had to be done in secret, while she was asleep. He hadn't wanted the Adderhead to see the fear in her face.\n\n'I don't intend to come back to this side of the forest,' he told the Prince. 'Perhaps there'll be a good hiding-place for us somewhere near Ombra.'\n\nThe Prince smiled again. 'I'm sure there will be,' he said, and looked at Mo as intently as if he meant to see straight into his heart. Go on, try it, thought Mo. Look into my heart and tell me what you find there, because I don't know myself any more. He remembered reading about the Black Prince for the first time. What a fabulous character, he had thought, but the man now standing before him was considerably more impressive than the image of him that the words had conjured up. Perhaps a little smaller, though. And a little sadder.\n\n'Your wife says you're not the man we take you for,' said the Prince. 'Dustfinger said the same. He told me that you come from the country where he spent all those years when we thought he was dead. Is it very different from here?'\n\nMo couldn't help smiling. 'Oh yes. I think so.'\n\n'How? Are people happier there?'\n\n'Perhaps.'\n\n'Perhaps! Hm.' The Prince bent, and picked up something lying on the blanket under which he slept. 'I've forgotten what your wife calls you. Dustfinger had a strange name for you: Silvertongue. But Dustfinger is dead, and to everyone else you will be the Bluejay now. Even I find it difficult to call you anything else, after seeing you fight in the forest. So this belongs to you here in future. Unless you decide to go back after all... back to the country where you came from, and where I suppose you have another name.'\n\nMo had never before seen the mask that the Prince was holding out to him. The leather was dark and damaged here and there, but the feathers shone brightly: white, black, yellowish-brown, blue. The colours of a bluejay.\n\n'This mask has been celebrated in many songs,' said the Black Prince. 'I allowed myself to wear it for a while, and several of us have done so too, but now it is yours.'\n\nIn silence, Mo turned the mask this way and that in his hands. For a strange moment he felt an urge to put it on, as if he had done so many times before. Oh yes, Fenoglio's words were powerful, but words they were, nothing but words \u2013 even if they had been written for him. Any actor, surely, could choose the part he played?\n\n'No,' he said, handing the mask back to the Prince. 'Snapper is right; the Bluejay is a fantasy, an old man's invention. Fighting, I assure you, is not my trade.'\n\nThe Prince looked at him thoughtfully, but he did not take the mask. 'Keep it all the same,' he said. 'It's too dangerous for anyone to wear it now. And as for your trade \u2013 none of us here was born a robber.'\n\nMo said nothing to that. He just looked at his fingers. It had taken him a long time to wash off all the blood on them after the fight in the forest.\n\nHe was still standing there holding the mask, alone in the dark gallery that smelled of the long-forgotten dead, when he heard Meggie's voice behind him.\n\n'Mo?' She looked at his face with concern. 'Where have you been? Roxane is setting out soon, and Resa wants to know if we're going with her. What do you say?'\n\nYes, what did he say? Where did he want to go? Back to my workshop, he thought. Back to Elinor's house. Or did he?\n\nWhat did Meggie want? He had only to look at her to know the answer. Of course. She wanted to stay because of the boy, but he was not the only reason. Resa wanted to stay too, in spite of the dungeon where they had put her, in spite of all the pain and darkness. What was it about Fenoglio's world that filled the heart with longing? Didn't he feel it himself? Like sweet poison that worked on you only too quickly...\n\n'What do you say, Mo?' Meggie took his hand. How tall she had grown.\n\n'What do I say?' He listened as though, if he concentrated hard, he could hear the words whispering in the walls of the gallery, or in the weave of the blanket under which the Black Prince slept. But all he heard was his own voice. 'How would you like it if I said: show me the fairies, Meggie? And the water-nymphs. And that illuminator in Ombra castle. Let's find out how fine those brushes really are.'\n\nDangerous words. But Meggie hugged him harder than she had since she was a little girl."
            },
            {
                "title": "Farid's Hope",
                "text": "\u2002And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake.\n\n\u2014Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines\n\nWhen the men on guard raised the alarm for the second time, just before sunset, the Black Prince ordered everyone to climb deep down into the mine, where there was water in the narrow passages and you thought you could hear the earth breathing. But one man did not join them: Fenoglio. When the Prince gave the all-clear, and Meggie climbed up again with the others, her feet wet and her heart still full of fear, Fenoglio came towards her and drew her aside. Luckily Mo happened to be talking to Resa and didn't notice.\n\n'Here you are. But I'm not guaranteeing anything,' Fenoglio whispered to her as he gave her the notebook back. 'This is very likely another mistake in black and white just like the others, but I'm too tired to worry about it. Feed this damned story, feed it with new words, I'm not going to listen. I'm going to lie down and sleep. That was the last thing I will ever write in my life.'\n\nFeed it.\n\nFarid suggested that Meggie should read Fenoglio's words in the place where he and Dustfinger had slept. Dustfinger's rucksack was still lying beside his blanket, and the two martens had curled up to the right and left of it. Farid crouched down between them and hugged the rucksack to him as if Dustfinger's heart were beating inside. He looked expectantly at Meggie, but she remained silent. She looked at the words and said nothing. Fenoglio's writing swam before her eyes as if, for the first time, it did not want her to read it.\n\n'Meggie?' Farid was still looking at her. There was such sadness in his eyes, such despair. For him, she thought. Just for him. And she knelt down on the blanket where Dustfinger used to sleep.\n\nEven as she read the first few words, she sensed that Fenoglio had done his work well yet again. She felt it like breath on her face. The letters on the page were alive, the story was alive. It wanted to take those words and grow. That was what it wanted. Had Fenoglio felt the same when he wrote them?\n\n'One day, when Death had taken much prey again,' began Meggie, and it was almost as if she were reading a familiar book that she had only just laid aside, 'Fenoglio the great poet decided to write no more. He was tired of words and their seductive power. He had had enough of the way they cheated and scorned him, and kept silent when they should have spoken. So he called on another, younger man, Orpheus by name \u2013 skilled in letters, even if he could not yet handle them with the mastery of Fenoglio himself \u2013 and decided to instruct him in his art, as every master does at some time. For a while Orpheus should play with words in his place, seduce and lie with them, create and destroy, banish and restore \u2013 while Fenoglio waited for his weariness to pass, for his pleasure in words to reawaken, and then he would send Orpheus back to the world from which he had summoned him, to keep his story alive with new words never used before.'\n\nMeggie's voice died away. It echoed underground as if it had a shadow. And just as silence was spreading around them, they heard footsteps.\n\nFootsteps on the damp stone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Alone Again",
                "text": "\u2003Hope is the thing with feathers.\n\n\u2014Emily Dickinson, 'Hope', The Poems of Emily Dickinson\n\nOrpheus disappeared right in front of Elinor's eyes. She was standing only a few steps from him, holding the bottle of wine he had demanded, when he simply vanished into thin air \u2013 into less than thin air, into nothing \u2013 as if he had never been there at all, as if she had only dreamed him. The bottle slipped from her hand, fell on the wooden floorboards of the library, and broke among the books that Orpheus had left open there.\n\nThe dog began to howl so horribly that Darius came racing out of the kitchen. The wardrobe-man didn't bar his way. He was simply staring at the place where Orpheus had been standing a moment ago. His voice trembling, he had been reading from a sheet of paper lying on one of Elinor's glass display cases right in front of him, and clutching Inkheart to his breast, as if he could force the book to accept him at last in that way. Elinor had stopped as if turned to stone when she realized what he was trying to do for the hundredth, even the thousandth time. Perhaps they'll come back out of the book to replace him, she had thought, or at least one of them: Meggie, Resa, Mortimer. Each of the three names tasted so bitter on her tongue, as bitter as all that is lost. But now Orpheus had gone, and none of the three had come back. Only the damned dog refused to stop howling.\n\n'He's done it,' whispered Elinor. 'Darius, he's done it! He's over there... they're all over there. All except for us!'\n\nFor a moment she felt infinitely sorry for herself. Here she was, Elinor Loredan, among all her books, and they wouldn't let her in, not one of them would let her in. Closed doors enticing her, filling her heart with longing, and then letting her go no further than the doorway. Accursed, blasted, heartless things! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!\n\nBut you once saw it quite differently, Elinor! she reminded herself, wiping the tears from her eyes. So what? Wasn't she old enough to change her mind, to bury an old love that had betrayed her miserably? They had not let her in. All the others were between their pages now, but she wasn't. Poor Elinor, poor, lonely Elinor! She sobbed so loudly that she had to put her hand over her mouth.\n\nDarius cast her a sympathetic glance and hesitantly came to her side. Well, at least he was still with her, that was one good thing. And of course he could read her thoughts in her face, as always. But he couldn't help her either.\n\nI want to be with them, she thought despairingly. They're my family: Resa and Meggie and Mortimer. I want to see the Wayless Wood and feel a fairy settle on my hand again, I want to meet the Black Prince even if it means smelling his bear, I want to hear Dustfinger talking to fire even if I still can't stand the man! I want, I want, I want...\n\n'Oh, Darius!' sobbed Elinor. 'Why didn't the wretched fellow take me too?' But Darius just looked at her with his wise, owl-like eyes.\n\n'Hey, where did he go? That bastard still owed me money!' Sugar went to the place where Orpheus had disappeared and looked all round him, as if Orpheus might be stuck among the bookshelves somewhere. 'Damn it, what does he think he's doing, just vanishing like that?' He bent down and picked up a sheet of paper.\n\nThe sheet of paper that Orpheus had been reading from! Had he taken the book with him, but left behind the words that had opened the door for him? If so, then all was not lost after all... With determination, Elinor snatched the sheet of paper from Sugar's hand. 'Give me that!' she demanded, clutching it to her breast just as Orpheus had clutched the book. The wardrobe-man's face darkened.\n\nTwo very different feelings seemed to be struggling with each other on his face: anger at Elinor's boldness, and fear of the written words that she was pressing to her breast so passionately. For a moment Elinor wasn't sure which would get the upper hand. Darius came up behind her, as if he seriously intended to defend her if necessary, but luckily Sugar's face cleared again, and he began to laugh.\n\n'Well, fancy that!' he mocked her. 'What do you want that scrap of paper for? Do you want to disappear into thin air too, like Orpheus and the Magpie and your two friends? Feel free, but first I want the wages Orpheus and the old woman still owe me!' And he looked around Elinor's library as if he might see something in it that would do instead of payment.\n\n'Your wages, yes, of course, I understand!' said Elinor quickly, leading him to the door. 'I still have some money hidden in my room. Darius, you know where it is. Give it to him, all that's left, just so long as he goes away.'\n\nDarius did not look very enthusiastic, but Sugar gave such a broad smile that you could see every one of his bad teeth. 'Well, that sounds like sense at last!' he grunted, and stomped after Darius who, resigned to this development, led him to Elinor's room.\n\nBut Elinor stayed behind in the library.\n\nHow quiet it suddenly was there. Orpheus had indeed sent all the characters he had read out of their books back into them again. Only his dog was still there, tail drooping as it sniffed the spot where its master had been standing only a few minutes before.\n\n'So empty!' Elinor murmured. 'So empty.' She felt desolate. Almost more so than on the day when the Magpie had taken Mortimer and Resa away. The book into which they had all disappeared was gone. What happened to a book that disappeared into its own story?\n\nOh, forget the book, Elinor! she thought as a tear ran down her nose. How are you ever going to find them again now?\n\nOrpheus's words. They swam before her eyes as she looked at the paper. Yes, they must have taken him over there, what else? Carefully, she opened the glass case on which the paper had been lying before Orpheus disappeared and took out the book inside it \u2013 a wonderfully illustrated edition of Hans Andersen's fairy-tales signed by the author himself \u2013 and put the sheet of paper in its place."
            },
            {
                "title": "A New Poet",
                "text": "\u2003The joy of writing\n\n\u2003The power of preserving,\n\n\u2003Revenge of a mortal hand.\n\n\u2014Wislawa Szymborska, 'The joy of writing',[ View with a Grain of Sand\n\nAt first Orpheus could hardly be seen in the shadows filling the gallery like black breath. He stepped hesitantly into the light of the oil lamp by whose light Meggie had been reading. She thought she saw him put something under his jacket, but she couldn't make out what it was. Perhaps a book.\n\n'Orpheus!' Farid ran to him, still holding Dustfinger's rucksack in his arms.\n\nSo he was really here. Orpheus. Meggie had imagined him very differently... as much more impressive. This was just a man who was rather too stout, still very young, in an ill-fitting suit, and he looked as out of place in the Inkworld as a polar bear or a whale. In addition, he seemed to have lost his tongue. He stood there in a daze, looking at Meggie, at the dark gallery down which he had come, and finally at Farid, who had obviously entirely forgotten that the man he now greeted with such a radiant smile had stolen from him and betrayed him to Basta at their last meeting. Orpheus didn't even seem to recognize Farid, but when he finally did it brought his voice back.\n\n'Dustfinger's boy! How did you get here?' he faltered. And yes, Meggie had to admit that his voice was impressive, much more impressive than his face. 'Well, never mind that. This must be the Inkworld!' he went on, taking no more notice of Farid. 'I knew I could do it! I knew I could!' A self-satisfied smile spread over his face. Gwin leaped up, hissing, as he almost trod on his tail, but Orpheus didn't even notice the marten. 'Fantastic!' he murmured as he ran the palm of his hand over the gallery walls. 'I suppose this is one of the passages that lead to the princely tombs under the castle of Ombra.'\n\n'No, it's not,' said Meggie coldly. Orpheus \u2013 in league with Mortola \u2013 a magic-tongued deceiver. How empty his round face looked! No wonder, she thought with great dislike, as she rose from the place where Dustfinger had slept. He has no conscience, no sympathy, no heart. Why had she brought him here? As if there weren't enough of his sort in the Inkworld. I did it for Farid, replied her heart, for Farid...\n\n'How are Elinor and Darius? If you've done anything to them...' Meggie didn't finish her sentence. If he had, then what?\n\nOrpheus turned, with as much surprise as if he hadn't seen her at all before. 'Elinor and Darius? Oh, are you that girl who apparently read herself here?' His eyes became watchful. Obviously he remembered what he had done to her parents.\n\n'My father almost died because of you!' Meggie was angry with herself for the way her voice shook.\n\nOrpheus blushed childishly red, whether in annoyance or embarrassment Meggie couldn't have said, but whichever it was he quickly recovered. 'Well, how can I help it if Mortola had a score to settle with him?' he replied. 'And from what you say I take it that he's still alive, so there's nothing to get upset about, is there?' Shrugging, he turned his back to Meggie. 'Strange!' he murmured, glancing at the rubble at the end of the gallery, the narrow ladders and the props supporting the roof. 'Will someone explain exactly where I am? This looks almost like a mine, but I didn't read anything about a mine...'\n\n'Never mind what you read. I'm the one who brought you here.'\n\nMeggie's voice was so sharp that Farid cast her a glance of alarm.\n\n'You?' Orpheus turned and examined her so condescendingly that the blood rushed to Meggie's face. 'You obviously don't know who you're talking to. But why am I bothering with you anyway? I'm tired of looking at this unattractive mine. Where are the fairies? The men-at-arms? The strolling players?' He roughly pushed Meggie aside and went to the ladder, but Farid barred his way.\n\n'You stay where you are, Cheeseface!' he snapped. 'Do you want to know why you're here? Because of Dustfinger.'\n\n'Oh yes?' There was derision in Orpheus's laughter. 'Haven't you found him yet? Well, perhaps he doesn't want to be found, or not by a persistent fellow like you...'\n\n'He's dead,' Farid interrupted brusquely. 'Dustfinger is dead, and the only reason why Meggie read you here is for you to write him back!'\n\n'She \u2013 did \u2013 not \u2013 read \u2013 me \u2013 here! How many more times do I have to tell you?' Orpheus made for the ladder again, but Farid simply took his hand without a word and led him over to the place where Dustfinger was.\n\nRoxane had hung his cloak in front of the gallery where he was still lying, motionless as if the earth had crushed him. She and Resa had placed burning candles around him \u2013 dancing fire instead of the flowers usually laid beside corpses.\n\n'Good heavens!' exclaimed Orpheus when he saw him lying there. 'Dead! He really is dead! But this is terrible!'\n\nMeggie was amazed to see that there were tears in his eyes. His fingers shook as he took his misted-up glasses off his nose and polished them on his jacket. Then, hesitantly, he went up to Dustfinger, bent and touched his hand.\n\n'Cold!' he whispered, and retreated. His eyes blurred with tears; he looked at Farid. 'Was it Basta? Come on, tell me! No, wait, how did it go? Was Basta even there? Some of Capricorn's men, yes, that was it, they were going to kill the marten and Dustfinger tried to save him! I wept my eyes out when I read that chapter, I threw the book at the wall! And now I get here at last and\u2014' He was struggling for breath. 'I only sent him back because I thought he'd be safe here now! Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God! Dead!' Orpheus sobbed \u2013 and then fell silent. He bent over Dustfinger's body again. 'Wait a moment. Stabbed. Stabbed, that's what it says in the book. So where's the wound? Stabbed for the marten's sake, yes, that's what it said.' He turned abruptly and stared at Gwin, who was perched on Farid's shoulders, hissing at him. 'He left the marten behind. He left him and you both behind. So how is it possible that\u2014'\n\nFarid said nothing, as the marten affectionately licked his ear. Meggie felt so sorry for him, but when she put out her hand he drew back.\n\n'What's that marten doing here? Tell me! Have you lost your tongue?' There was a metallic edge to Orpheus's beautiful voice.\n\n'He didn't die for Gwin,' whispered Farid.\n\n'No? Who did he die for, then?'\n\n'For me.'\n\nThis time Farid did not withdraw his hand when Meggie took it. But before he could tell Orpheus any more, they heard another voice behind them. Abrupt and angry.\n\n'Who's this? What is a stranger doing here?'\n\nOrpheus spun round as if caught in some guilty act. There stood Roxane. with Resa beside her. Orpheus stared at her in amazement. 'Roxane!' he whispered. 'The beautiful minstrel woman! May I introduce myself? My name is Orpheus. I was a \u2013 a friend of Dustfinger's. Yes, I think one could say that.'\n\n'Meggie!' said Resa in a faltering voice. 'How did he get here?'\n\nMeggie instinctively hid the notebook containing Fenoglio's words behind her back.\n\n'So how is Elinor?' Resa asked Orpheus sharply. 'And Darius? What have you done to them?'\n\n'Nothing!' replied Orpheus. In his confusion he obviously didn't notice that the woman who had been able to speak only with her fingers had a voice again. 'Far from it. I went to a lot of trouble to help them feel more relaxed about books. They keep them like butterflies pinned in a case, each in its own place, imprisoned in their cells! But books want to breathe and sing, they want to feel air between their pages, and a reader's fingers tenderly stroking them\u2014'\n\nRoxane took Dustfinger's cloak from the prop over which she had draped it. 'You don't look like a friend of Dustfinger's to me,' she interrupted Orpheus. 'But if you want to say goodbye to him, do it now, because I'm going to take him with me.'\n\n'Take him with you? What do you mean?' Farid barred her way. 'Orpheus is here to bring him back!'\n\n'Get out of my sight!' Roxane snapped at him. 'The very first time I saw you coming to my farm, I knew you brought bad luck. You ought to be dead, not Dustfinger. That's how it is and that's how it stays.'\n\nFarid flinched as if Roxane had struck him. He did not resist as she pushed him aside, and stood there with his shoulders drooping as she bent over Dustfinger.\n\nMeggie couldn't think of any way to comfort him, but her mother knelt down beside Roxane. 'Listen!' she said quietly. 'Dustfinger brought Farid back from the dead by making the words of a story come true. Words, Roxane! In this world they make strange things happen, and Orpheus knows a lot about words.'\n\n'Oh yes, I do!' Orpheus quickly went to Roxane's side. 'I made him a door of words so that he could come back to you, did he never tell you?'\n\nRoxane looked at him disbelievingly, but the magic of his voice worked on her too. 'Yes, believe me, I did it!' Orpheus went on. 'And I'll write something to bring him back from the dead. I'll find words as precious and intoxicating as the scent of a lily, words to beguile Death and open the cold fingers he has closed around Dustfinger's warm heart!' A delighted smile lit up his face, as if he were already relishing his great achievements to come.\n\nBut Roxane just shook her head, as if to free herself from the magic of his voice, and blew out the candles standing around Dustfinger. 'Now I understand,' she said, covering Dustfinger with his cloak. 'You're an enchanter. I only went to an enchanter once. After our younger daughter died. People who go to enchanters are desperate, and they know it. They live on false hopes like ravens preying on carrion. His promises sounded just as wonderful as yours. He promised me what I most desperately wanted. They all do. They promise to bring back what's lost for ever: a child, a friend \u2013 or a husband.' She drew the cloak over Dustfinger's still face. 'I'll never believe such promises again. They only make the pain worse. I'll take him back to Ombra with me and find a place there where no one will disturb him, not the Adderhead, not the wolves, not even the fairies. And he will still look as if he were only sleeping long after my hair is white, for I know from Nettle how you go about preserving the body even when the soul is long gone.'\n\n'You'll tell me where that is, won't you?' Farid's voice trembled, as if he knew Roxane's answer already. 'You'll tell me where you're taking him?'\n\n'No,' said Roxane. 'You least of all.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 77",
                "text": "\u2002Where Now?\n\n\u2002The Giant rested back in his chair. 'You've some stories left,' he said. 'I can smell them on your skin.'\n\n\u2014Brian Patten, The Story Giant\n\nFarid watched as they laid the injured on litters under cover of night. The injured and the dead. Six robbers were standing among the trees listening for any sound that might mean danger. Only the tops of the silver towers were to be seen in the distance, bright in the starlight, yet it seemed to them all as if the Adderhead could see them. Could he sense it up in his castle when they stole soft-footed over Mount Adder? Who could tell what the Adderhead might be able to do now? Now that he was immortal, and as invincible as Death itself?\n\nBut the night was still, as still as Dustfinger, who was to be taken back to Ombra on a cart drawn by the Black Prince's bear. Meggie was going there too for the time being, to the other side of the forest, with Silvertongue and her mother. The Black Prince had told them of a village too poor and remote from any road to interest princes. He would hide them there, or on one of the nearby farms.\n\nShould he go with them?\n\nFarid saw Meggie looking at him. She was standing with her mother and the other women. Silvertongue was with the robbers, and hanging from his belt was the sword with which he had apparently killed Basta \u2013 and not just Basta. Almost a dozen men had died at his hands, so several of the robbers had told Farid, their voices lowered in respect. Amazing. Back in the hills around Capricorn's village, Silvertongue couldn't have killed a blackbird when they were in hiding together, let alone a human being. On the other hand, how had he himself learned to kill? The answer was not hard to find. Fear and rage. And there was enough of those in this story.\n\nRoxane was with the robbers too. She turned her back on Farid when she noticed him looking at her. She treated him like air \u2013 as if he had never returned to the land of the living, as if he were only a ghost, an ill-intentioned ghost who had devoured her husband's heart. 'What was it like being dead, Farid?' Meggie had asked him. But he couldn't remember. Or perhaps he didn't want to remember.\n\nOrpheus was standing barely two paces away from him, shivering in the thin shirt he wore. The Prince had told him he must change his light-coloured suit for a dark cloak and woollen trousers. But in spite of the clothes he still looked like a cuckoo among sparrows. Fenoglio was watching Orpheus like an old tom cat keeping a wary eye on a young one who has invaded his territory. 'He looks a fool!' Fenoglio had whispered this comment to Meggie just loud enough for everyone to hear it. 'Look at him. A callow youth, knows nothing about life, how is he going to be able to write? It might well be best to send him straight back, but never mind. There's no saving this wretched story now anyway.'\n\nHe was probably right. But why hadn't he at least tried to write Dustfinger back? Didn't he care anything for the characters he had created? Was he just moving them like pawns in a game of chess, enjoying their pain?\n\nFarid clenched his fists in helpless anger. I would have tried, he thought. A hundred times, a thousand times, for the rest of my life. But he couldn't even read those strange little signs! The few that Dustfinger had taught him would never be enough to bring him back from where he was now. Even if he wrote his name in letters of fire on the walls of the Castle of Night, Dustfinger's face would remain as terribly still as when he last saw it.\n\nNo, only Orpheus could try it. But he hadn't written a single word since Meggie read him here. He just stood there \u2013 or paced up and down, up and down, while the robbers watched him suspiciously. The glances Silvertongue cast him were not very friendly either. He had turned pale when he saw Orpheus again. For a moment Farid had thought he would seize Cheeseface and beat him to a jelly, but Meggie had taken his hand and drawn him away. Whatever the two of them had said to each other, she wasn't telling Farid. She had known that her father would not approve if she read Orpheus here, but she had done it all the same. For him. Was Orpheus interested in any of that? Oh no. He was still acting as if his own voice, not Meggie's, had brought him here. Stuck-up, thrice-accursed son of a bitch!\n\n'Farid? Have you made up your mind?' Farid came out of his gloomy thoughts. Meggie was standing in front of him. 'You will come with us, won't you? Resa says you can stay with us as long as you like, and Mo doesn't mind either.'\n\nSilvertongue was still standing with the robbers, talking to the Black Prince. Farid saw Orpheus watching the two of them... then he began pacing up and down once more, rubbed his forehead, smoothed back his hair, muttered as if talking to himself. Like a lunatic, thought Farid. I've pinned my hopes on a lunatic!\n\n'Wait here.' He turned away from Meggie and went over to Orpheus. 'I'm going with Meggie,' he said brusquely. 'You can go wherever you like.'\n\nCheeseface straightened his glasses. 'What are you talking about? Of course I'm coming with you! After all, I want to see everything \u2013 the Wayless Wood, the Laughing Prince's castle.' He looked up at the hill. 'And of course I'd have liked to see the Castle of Night too, but after what's happened here, I suppose it isn't a good time. Well, this is only my first day here... have you seen the Adderhead yourself? Is he very terrifying? I'd like to see those silver scales on the columns...'\n\n'You're not here to go sightseeing!' Farid's voice was choked with anger. What on earth was Cheeseface thinking of? How could he stand there looking around him as if he were on a pleasure trip, while Dustfinger would soon be lying in some dark crypt, or wherever Roxane planned to take him?\n\n'Oh no?' Orpheus's round face darkened. 'Is that any way to talk to me? I'll do as I like. Do you think I've finally arrived where I always wanted to be just to have a snotty boy, who has no business here anyway, order me about? You think words can simply be plucked from the empty air? This is all about Death, you stupid boy! It could take months for me to get the right idea. Who knows? You don't call up ideas just like that, not even with fire, and we need a brilliant, a divine idea. Which means\u2014' Orpheus inspected his fingernails, 'that I shall need a servant! Or do you want me to waste my time washing my own clothes and finding myself something to eat?'\n\nThe dog. The accursed dog. 'Very well. I'll be your servant too.' Farid brought the words out only with difficulty. 'If you will bring him back.'\n\n'Excellent!' Orpheus smiled. 'Then, for a start, get me some food. It looks as if we're going to be embarking on a long and uncomfortable march.'\n\nFarid gritted his teeth, but of course he obeyed. He would have scraped the silver from the towers of the Castle of Night to get Dustfinger breathing again.\n\n'Farid? What is it? Are you coming with us?' Meggie stepped into his path as he ran past her, with bread and dried meat for Cheeseface in his pockets.\n\n'Yes \u2013 yes, we're coming with you!' He flung his arms round her neck, but only once he saw that Silvertongue's back was turned to him. You never knew with fathers. 'I'll save him, Meggie!' he whispered in her ear. 'I'll bring Dustfinger back. This story will have a happy ending. I swear!'"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Great Library 04",
        "author": "Rachel Caine",
        "genres": [],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Red Ibrahim in Alexandria to Callum Brightwell in England, delivered via secure messenger:\n\n\u2002My most honored cousin in trade,\n\n\u2002I am advised by my daughter, Anit, that you have engaged in a dangerous game with the Archivist Magister of the Great Library.\n\n\u2002I do not think, given your history and your legendary cunning, that I need to remind you of the danger this brings, not just to you but to all of us. While we sometimes use the Library in the pursuit of our trade, we must never allow ourselves to be used in turn. An ant cannot direct a giant.\n\n\u2002You have placed your son in the gravest of danger.\n\n\u2002As one loving father to another, I beg you: call off this plan. Bring your son home. Withdraw from any further engagement with the Archivist. I will likewise have Anit deliver her captives back into your custody, and you may do as you like with them, but pray do not continue to involve my family in this foolhardy venture.\n\n\u2002The Archivist may talk most pleasantly with you. A viper may learn to talk, but it is still full of poison.\n\n\u2002Blessings of the gods to you, old friend.\n\n\u2002Reply from Callum Brightwell to Red Ibrahim, delivered via secure messenger\n\n\u2002My son Brendan can well care for himself, but I thank you for your concern. Should the worst occur, I still have his twin, Jess. He's not presently pleased with me for sending his brother in his place, but I expect that will pass.\n\n\u2002If you plan to lecture me, you might have taken greater care with your own sons\u2014both lost to you now, advancing the cause of your own business. Don't lecture me on how to protect my own. As to your daughter, she entered into this arrangement on your behalf, and with your full authority; you may take up any misgivings you have with her, not me.\n\n\u2002I expect you to uphold the agreement as she has made it. Anit and I are of like minds in this, and as she is the heir to your vast empire of commerce, you should listen to her. She's clever, and as ruthless as you, in many ways.\n\n\u2002And you wouldn't like to make enemies of our families.\n\n\u2002I think upon calm reflection you will see the wisdom of gathering the Library's favour as chaos gathers around us. The world is more unsafe now than it ever has been in living memory. Being allies with the Archivist means that their guard will be lower when we decide to turn these tables to our advantage, as we might at any time.\n\n\u2002Peace be upon you, my friend. Let's see how this plays out."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "It had all started as an exercise to fight the unending boredom of being locked in this Alexandrian prison cell.\n\nWhen Jess Brightwell woke up, he realized that he'd lost track of time. Days blurred here, and he knew it was important to remember how long he'd been trapped, waiting for the axe to fall\u2014or not. So he diligently scratched out a record on the wall using a button from his shirt.\n\nFive days. Five days since he'd arrived back in Alexandria, bringing with him Scholar Wolfe and Morgan Hault as his prisoners. They'd been taken off in different directions, and he'd been dumped here to\u2014as they'd said\u2014await the Archivist's pleasure.\n\nThe Archivist, it seemed, was a very busy man.\n\nOnce Jess had the days logged, he did the mental exercise of calculating the date, from pure boredom. It took him long, uneasy moments to realize why that date\u2014today\u2014seemed important.\n\nAnd then he remembered and was ashamed it had taken him so long.\n\nToday was the anniversary of his brother Liam's death. His elder brother.\n\nAnd today meant that Jess was now older than Liam had ever lived to be.\n\nHe couldn't remember exactly how Liam had died. Could hardly remember his brother at all these days, other than a vague impression of a sharp nose and shaggy blondish hair. He must have watched Liam walk up the stairs of the scaffold and stand as the rope was fixed around his neck.\n\nBut he couldn't remember that, or watching the drop. Just Liam, hanging. It seemed like a painting viewed at a distance, not a memory.\n\nWish I could remember, he thought. If Liam had held his head high on the way to his death, if he'd gone up the steps firmly and stood without fear, then maybe Jess would be able to do it, too. Because that was likely to be in his future.\n\nHe closed his eyes and tried to picture it: the cell door opening. Soldiers in High Garda uniforms, the army of the Great Library, waiting stone-faced in the hall. A Scholar to read the text of his choice to him on the way to execution. Perhaps a priest, if he asked for one.\n\nBut there, his mind went blank. He didn't know how the Archivist would end his life. Would it be a quiet death? Private? A shot in the back? Burial without a marker? Maybe nobody would ever know what had become of him.\n\nOr maybe he'd end up facing the noose after all, and the steps up to it. If he could picture himself walking without flinching to his execution, perhaps he could actually do it.\n\nHe knew he ought to be focusing on what he would be saying to the Archivist if he was called, but at this moment, death seemed so close he could touch it, and besides, it was easier to accept failure than to dare to predict success. He'd never been especially superstitious, but imagining triumph now seemed like drawing a target on his back. No reason to offend the Egyptian gods. Not so early.\n\nHe stood up and walked the cell. Cold, barren, with bars and a flat stone shelf that pretended at being a bed. A bare toilet that needed cleaning, and the sharp smell of it was starting to squirm against his skin.\n\nIf I had something to read... The thought crept in without warning, and he felt it like a personal loss. Not having a book at hand was a worse punishment than most. He was trying not to think about his death, and he was too afraid to think about the fate of Morgan or Scholar Wolfe or anything else... except that he could almost hear Scholar Wolfe's dry, acerbic voice telling him, If only you had a brain up to the task, Brightwell, you'd never lack for something to read.\n\nJess settled on the stone ledge, closed his eyes, and tried to clearly imagine the first page of one of his favorite books. Nothing came at his command. Just words, jumbled and frantic, that wouldn't sort themselves in order. Better if he imagined writing a letter.\n\nDear Morgan, he thought. I'm trapped in a holding cell inside the Serapeum, and all I can think of is that I should have done better by you, and all of us. I'm afraid all this is for nothing. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being stupid enough to think I could outwit the Archivist. I love you. Please don't hate me.\n\nThat was selfish. She should hate him. He'd sent her back into the Iron Tower, a life sentence of servitude and an unbreakable collar fastened tight around her neck. He'd deceived Scholar Wolfe into a prison far worse than this one, and an inevitable death sentence. He'd betrayed everyone who'd ever trusted him, and for what?\n\nFor cleverness and a probably foolish idea that he could somehow, somehow, pull off a miracle. What gave him the right to even think it?\n\nClank.\n\nThat was the sound of a key turning in a heavy lock.\n\nJess stood, the chill on his back left by the ledge still lingering like a ghost, and then he came to the bars as the door at the end of the hall opened. He could see the hinges move and the iron door swinging in. It wasn't locked again when it closed. Careless.\n\nHe listened to the decisive thud of footsteps against the floor, growing louder, and then three High Garda soldiers in black with golden emblems were in front of his cell. They stopped and faced him. The oldest\u2014his close-cut hair a stiff silver brush around his head\u2014barked in common Greek, \"Step back from the bars and turn around.\"\n\nJess's skin felt flushed, then cold; he swallowed back a rush of fear and felt his pulse race in a futile attempt to outrun the inevitable. He followed the instructions. They didn't lock the outer door. That's a chance, if I can get by them. He could. He could sweep the legs out from under the first, use that off-balance body to knock back the other two, pull a sidearm free from one of them, shoot at least one, maybe two of them. Luck would dictate whether he'd die in the attempt, but at least he'd die fighting.\n\nI don't want to die, something in him that sounded like a child whispered. Not like Liam. Not on the same day.\n\nAnd suddenly, he remembered.\n\nThe London sky, iron gray. Light rain had been falling on his child's face. He'd been too short to see his brother ascend anything but the top two steps of the scaffold. Liam had stumbled on the last one, and a guard had steadied him. His brother had been shivering and slow, and he hadn't been brave after all. He'd looked out into the crowd of those gathered, and Jess remembered the searing second of eye contact with his brother before Liam transferred that stare to their father.\n\nJess had looked, too. Callum Brightwell had stared back without a flicker of change in his expression, as if his eldest son were a stranger.\n\nThey'd tied Liam's hands. And put a hood over his head.\n\nA voice in the here and now snapped him out of the memory. \"Against the wall. Hands behind your back.\"\n\nJess slowly moved to comply, trying to assess where the other man was... and froze when the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his neck. \"I know what you're thinking, son. Don't try it. I'd rather not shoot you for stupidity.\"\n\nThe guard had a familiar accent\u2014raised near Manchester, most likely. His time in Alexandria had covered his English roots a bit, but it was odd, Jess thought, that he might be killed by one of his countrymen, so far from home. Killed by the English, just like Liam.\n\nOnce a set of Library restraints settled around his wrists and tightened, he felt strangely less shaken. Opportunity was gone now. All his choices had been narrowed to one course. All he had to do now was play it out.\n\nJess turned to look at the High Garda soldier. A man with roots from another garden, maybe one closer to Alexandria; the man had a darker complexion, dark eyes, a neat beard, and a compassionate but firm expression on his face. \"Am I coming back?\" he asked, and wished he hadn't.\n\n\"Likely not,\" the soldier said. \"Wherever you go next, you won't be back here.\"\n\nJess nodded. He closed his eyes for a second and then opened them. Liam had faltered on the stairs. Had trembled. But at the end his elder brother had stood firm in his bonds and hood and waited for death without showing any fear.\n\nHe could do the same.\n\n\"Then, let's go,\" he said, and forced a grin he hoped looked careless. \"I could do with a change of scenery.\"\n\nThey didn't take him to the gallows. Not immediately, anyway. And though he half feared he'd never see the shot that would kill him from behind, they reached the end of the hall and the unlocked door without incident. Lucky that Captain Santi isn't here to see that breach of security, he thought. Santi would have had someone's head for it. Metaphorically speaking.\n\nAnd now he wished he hadn't thought of that, because it added another possible execution method to his imagined deaths.\n\nIt was a long march through quite a number of checkpoints, each strongly manned with soldiers and automata; the sphinxes watched him with suspicious red eyes and flexed their lion claws. Of all the automata he'd faced before\u2014lions, Spartans, once a hawk-headed Egyptian god\u2014these were the ones that most unnerved him. Something about the human pharaoh's face made them especially inhuman. They'd have no trouble tearing him apart in these close quarters, coming as they would from either side.\n\nJess added it to his preferred ways not to die and was grateful when the route took them through an iron gate and into dazzling sunlight. Dying in the sun was always better than dying in the dark, wasn't it? He sucked down thick Alexandrian sea air in convulsive breaths and turned his face up to the warmth; as his eyes adjusted, he realized he was being marched through the small ornamental garden that led around to the side of the giant Alexandrian pyramid that held the Scholar Steps. Too brief a walk, one he didn't have much time to savor, before they passed into the darkness of another doorway near the base of the vast, looming structure.\n\nThen he knew exactly where he was. He'd been here before.\n\nThe guards marched him through a long lobby guarded by gods and monsters in their niches and down a hall inscribed with hieroglyphs to a final door. Another, larger sphinx sat in an alcove, and a warning growl sounded until the soldier in charge held up his wrist to show the gold bracelet there. The sphinx subsided, and the door opened.\n\nJess stepped into the outer office of the single most powerful person in the world.\n\nHis guards didn't follow him in. When he looked back, they'd already turned to walk away, and the door was swinging shut.\n\nThere were guards, of course; these wore the distinctive red-slashed uniforms of the High Garda Elite, sworn to the personal protection of the Archivist, and they took custody of him without a word. Jess almost missed his old escort. He'd trained as a High Garda himself, had worn the uniform, had eaten in the same dining hall as those men. The Elites were more akin to fanatics than to soldiers. They had separate quarters. Separate training. And they were dedicated to one man, not to the protection of the Great Library.\n\nThe Elites hardly gave him a glance as they formed a tight cordon around him and marched him through the outer office, where an assistant's desk sat empty, and then through a set of massive double doors decorated with the Library's seal.\n\nHe was escorted to a heavy, ornate chair and pushed into it, and the guards immediately withdrew to stand in the shadows. They went as immobile as automata.\n\nJess raised his gaze to find that the head of the Great Library wasn't even bothering to look at him.\n\nThe old man looked different, Jess thought. Grayer, but somehow stronger, too, as if he'd taken up a new exercise regimen. His hair had been cropped close now, and his skin had a darker hue than before, as if he'd spent time out in the sun. Sailing, perhaps. He must have a ship or two at his disposal.\n\nThe Archivist signed official documents with quick scratches of his pen.\n\nJess expected to at least have the old man's attention, but the Archivist said nothing. He simply worked. In a moment, a young woman walked in with a silver tray and put a small china cup of strong coffee on the table next to Jess.\n\n\"Can't drink it, love,\" he said with a shrug of his shoulders, and twisted to show her his bound hands.\n\nThe Archivist sighed without looking up. \"Remove his restraints, will you, please?\" The order was directed at no one in particular, but a guard immediately stepped forward to press his Library bracelet to the shackles, and they snapped apart. Jess handed them over, and the guard took up his invisibility game again. Jess picked up the coffee cup with a fleeting quirk of his lips at the lovely assistant\u2014she was beautiful\u2014and it was only after he saw the hurt in her eyes that he realized he should have remembered her.\n\nAnd Brendan Brightwell certainly should have remembered her. He couldn't forget, not for a second, that he was now intent on carrying on an impersonation of his twin brother, and his brother, God help him, had carried on a secret affair with this very same young woman. Whose name he couldn't remember, no matter how he tried.\n\nGet your head in the room, he told himself. He wasn't Jess anymore. Couldn't be. Jess Brightwell was a dead man in Alexandria; he'd come here to set plans in motion, and he'd done it the only way he could: as his brother Brendan. His life now depended on everyone believing that he was his twin, as unlike him as it was possible to be. Sarcastic, sharp, brash, always ready with a grin or a joke or a knife in the ribs.\n\nHe returned his focus to the Archivist Magister, the head of the Great Library of Alexandria, as the old man\u2014still without looking up\u2014said, \"Explain why I shouldn't have your head taken off here and now, prisoner.\" He frowned down at the document he was marking and put it aside to take up another.\n\nJess held on to the brash smile that was his brother's shield. \"In here? You'd be days cleaning the carpets.\"\n\n\"Don't be obtuse.\"\n\n\"Well, then. You'd just be robbing yourself. I'm here bearing gifts. Valuable ones, at that. And I have much more to offer.\"\n\n\"Heretics and criminals have nothing to offer me,\" the Archivist said. He still hadn't given him real attention.\n\n\"You must not have read my father's message.\"\n\n\"Your father is a heretic and a criminal. Did you miss my point, boy?\"\n\nJess drank the coffee. It was strong, and familiar as home. \"Not at all,\" he said. \"But we're both aware the Great Library has dealt with far worse than my da to get what it wants.\"\n\n\"And what do you and your book-dealing father imagine that to be?\"\n\n\"The thing that will destroy this place.\"\n\nThe Archivist finally put his pen down and looked at him directly\u2014a cold stare, empty of pity or mercy. This was a man who'd sentenced Scholar Wolfe to torture once, and Thomas, too. Who'd killed countless innocents who'd stood between him and the Library's goals, and showed no sign of ever caring.\n\n\"Go on,\" he said.\n\n\"The Library has rested for nearly four thousand years on the supremacy of alchemy, and the Obscurists who practice the highest levels of it. Everything you do rests on some aspect of their power: the automata who keep cities in fear. The portals you send your armies through. But most of all, the books. When only the Library is the source of learning and knowledge, you have a stranglehold on the world.\"\n\n\"I might argue with your sinister interpretations, but not your facts,\" the Archivist said. \"The Library is the source of learning and knowledge. The automata help keep order. The Translation Chambers are an efficient way to move our people from one point in the world to the next. And your point is...?\"\n\n\"That one simple invention brings it all down,\" Jess said. \"Something so blindingly simple that it ought to have been invented thousands of years ago, if it hadn't been deliberately and continuously suppressed by the Library. And you.\"\n\nThe Archivist sighed and made a point of going back to his papers. \"If you insist on talking in riddles, then this conversation is over, and I'll send your body back to your father for a proper burial. It's the least I can do.\"\n\nJess sat back and smiled. \"We have a working model. In fact, it's churning out copies of things that have been secret for a thousand years\u2014you remember the Black Archive books my brother and his friends stole from you? At this very moment, your power is being eroded one page at a time. If you'd like to ignore that, please yourself.\"\n\nThe old man was good at this, Jess thought; not so much as a flicker, a flinch, a twitch. But the card had been played, and he'd done it as well as he could do it, and all he could do now was sip coffee and pray that he hadn't just signed his own death warrant.\n\nThe Archivist put down his pen. \"I'll do you the honor of acknowledging that this is of some interest to me. It is of advantage to the Library, long may it survive, to take control of this machine so that it may be properly administered. It's to no one's benefit to unleash such a technology on a world unready to handle it responsibly. Surely even your father can see that?\"\n\n\"My da's not one for social responsibility,\" Jess said, and showed teeth. \"He's more interested in the financial benefits. What do you offer for him to destroy it? Has to be more than he stands to gain, mind you.\"\n\n\"Blackmail?\"\n\nJess shrugged. \"You're the learned man. I'm just conveying the offer. For a price\u2014and a very, very large one\u2014my father will destroy his press, shut down all operations, and hand over the plans and the man who drew them up.\"\n\n\"Thomas Schreiber.\"\n\nThomas's name from those bloodless lips made Jess want to abandon this plan and kill this old lizard now, before more harm could be done to his friend. He spent a pleasant few seconds thinking of how to accomplish it. It was thinly possible that he might be able to lure a guard, snatch a gun, and put a bullet in that evil head before anyone could stop him.\n\nAssassination was always possible if one didn't care about getting away with it. Or surviving.\n\nHe held himself still, smiling, though the hate that surged in him physically ached. The old man was tapping his fingers silently on his desk, and whatever he was thinking, none of it showed in his face until he said, \"What's your father's price?\"\n\nThat was it, then. Jess had been balanced on the edge of a cliff and now a bridge had appeared in front of him. Narrow, death still very much a possibility at any misstep, but a chance. A chance.\n\n\"Oh, it's very high,\" Jess said. For the first time in his life, having an identical twin was proving to be a good thing. A lifesaving thing, in fact. He copied Brendan's brash grin and loose, easy posture and crossed his legs. Took in a deep breath of familiar air. He'd missed Alexandria down to his bones, and it helped steady the shaking anger he kept tightly locked. \"It might ruin a medium-sized country. But you'll pay it, because it will bring an end to this business once and for all. I already brought you one Scholar you wanted so badly, and the Obscurist, too, for free. As a sign of good faith.\" Wolfe's betrayal was a burden he'd have to endure for a lifetime. The desperate look in the man's eyes... The Library's dungeons had broken him before, and only time and love had put him back together again. This time? This time there might be no repairing what Jess had done to him.\n\n\"Yet you didn't deliver your brother along with them.\"\n\n\"Well, family's family. My father might. But not yet. Early days.\"\n\nThe Archivist studied him, and those sharp eyes, faded with age but every bit as dangerous as they'd ever been, missed nothing. The old man's skin might be rough and lined, his hair dulled, but he was a killer. A survivor. A ruthless and morally bankrupt absolute ruler. \"You know, the resemblance between you two really is remarkable. Without the scar I couldn't tell you apart.\"\n\nBrendan's shrug was higher than Jess's, and more fluid. \"Really? Because we're nothing alike. My brother's a bookish idiot and always has been. I'm my father's son. I'm not sentimental.\" Brendan's smile stretched his lips. \"And you have my father's assurance he sent me. But that's your business, whether you believe me or not. Please yourself.\"\n\nThe Archivist smoothly changed tack. \"You realize that I do have bargaining leverage, boy. I have you.\"\n\n\"And my father has another son. Not much benefit to angering him, either.\" Jess took a sip of coffee to give himself time, and listened to the Archivist's silence. Silences, he'd learned, had layers to them. Some were tense, on the verge of violence; some were slow and calm and peaceful.\n\nThis one had edges.\n\nJess moved his gaze away from the Archivist and studied the office as if he'd never seen it before\u2014he had, once, but he'd been younger then, and desperately afraid. Brendan, having never seen it, would take it all in: the lush carpets in Egyptian motifs, the shimmering wall of glass that offered a view of the blue waters of the Alexandrian harbor and the boats sailing on it. The oversized automaton statue of the hawk-headed Egyptian god Horus, standing with one foot forward. It would be ready to protect the Archivist at the slightest threat, in addition to the waiting Elites.\n\nJess sipped coffee, but he tasted only bitterness. His pulse threatened to race, but he breathed deeply, the way that his friend Khalila had taught him, and felt the pressure slow. Wait it out, he thought. Brendan would.\n\nAt last the Archivist said, \"Tell me, Mr. Brightwell\u2014have you ever heard of the Feast of Greater Burning?\"\n\nJess's skin went cold, and he felt muscles tighten in his back. Tried to keep it from his face. \"Not familiar with it,\" he said, because he was fairly sure Brendan wouldn't have known. \"You're inviting me to dinner?\"\n\n\"Our ancestors here were not known for the savagery of many other cultures, but the occasional sacrifice was known to occur. We give many offerings during the Feast of Greater Burning, and these days, they are symbolic and ceremonial. A thousand years ago, the feast was a practical way to both continue tradition and dispose of... particularly troublesome individuals. If you understand my meaning.\"\n\n\"You're threatening to burn me alive? Don't dance around it, sir. I'm not likely to faint. Or beg. Kill me, and deal with my father. More to the point: don't.\"\n\nThe Archivist had been unnaturally still and composed, but he slapped his hand on the shining surface of his desk with a report like a gunshot. He didn't move like an old man, Jess thought. There was real strength behind the blow. \"Don't presume to threaten me, boy. I am the Archivist of the Great Library! I command the respect, wealth, and loyalty of the world!\"\n\n\"You did once,\" Jess agreed, and it sounded quite calm. \"But the world is changing. And this is your only chance to control it.\"\n\nThe Archivist went as still as the Horus statue looming in the corner. Those eyes caught the light from the windows and turned an eerily hollow shade. Got him, Jess thought. The one thing that every Archivist for nearly a thousand years feared was change, and it was upon this one whether he liked it or not. With a working press to print copies of books, people would no longer be beholden to the alchemically mirrored copies from the Great Library. They could own books, not merely borrow them. They could write books without the oversight of Scholars and the censorship of the Library. The Library had started as a preserver of knowledge, a beacon of light, but through the centuries and millennia, it had become a center of power.\n\nPower rotted from within.\n\nIf the Library was going to survive at all, the one thing the Archivist needed to stop was the printing press.\n\nJess sighed. \"Let's not pretend you don't want what my father has. You've killed a hundred Scholars to keep the secret over the centuries. We're willing to trade it to you, with all the plans. But if you're not interested, I expect we can sell the idea elsewhere.\" He stood up.\n\nThe Horus statue turned its gleaming golden head in a sharp, birdlike gesture, staring down at him.\n\n\"Careful,\" the Archivist said softly. \"If I made you disappear, no one would ever find your bones.\"\n\nJess put both palms flat on the man's desk and leaned forward. He had some satisfaction in knowing he was ruining the shine. \"If you make me disappear,\" he said, \"you'll be the last Archivist of a ruined Library. If you think that's an empty threat, unleash your metal god.\" He heard the rush of human footsteps as the guards came forward, but the Archivist lifted a hand and they stopped.\n\nSilence. Edges and humming tension. When a full ten heartbeats thudded past, Jess stepped back to his chair and settled in, as if he were at home. \"We can be powerful allies,\" he said. \"Burners are rising all over the world against you. Kingdoms are on the verge of rebellion. Your High Garda troops are stretched too thin to protect your vital outposts. We can help.\"\n\n\"I do not deal with smugglers and thieves.\"\n\n\"You've dealt with rulers and kings for years. My father's crown is shadows, but it's real enough. Think of it in those terms, and swallow your pride if you don't want to lose all... this.\" Jess gestured around at the office and the great central pyramid in which it stood: the home of the Great Library of Alexandria, in a city devoted to its glory, in a country made incredibly rich by it, protected by armies and tradition, automata and alchemy.\n\nIt was all more fragile than it seemed, and they both knew that.\n\nThe Archivist made a small gesture, and the Horus statue's head returned to its neutral position... but once you'd seen it move, Jess thought, you'd never forget it again. The point had been made.\n\nMutual destruction.\n\n\"What does he want in return for such... consideration?\"\n\n\"Books,\" Jess said. \"Rare and valuable. It's nothing to you; you've got vast storehouses of things no one's ever seen.\"\n\n\"How many?\"\n\nThere it is, Jess thought. They had an agreement. Now they were only arguing terms. He relaxed a little, but only a little. \"For the press and plans? One hundred thousand rare volumes, and I'll inspect each one.\" He smiled. Brendan's cynical smile. \"Believe me, I'd rather be doing something else. It's my brother who's the bookworm.\"\n\n\"That will take weeks,\" the Archivist said.\n\n\"Are you in a hurry?\"\n\nThat earned him a sharp glower. \"Your answer implied you have more to barter.\"\n\n\"Well, the press and plans are worth that much, to be sure, but the mind of the one who built that wonder... that's worth more, even if it's just to ensure he doesn't build more.\"\n\nIf the Archivist was aware of it, he kept his own counsel. \"Schreiber is valuable to us.\"\n\n\"Then that's another hundred thousand books. And the others?\"\n\n\"What others?\"\n\n\"Captain Santi. Khalila Seif. Glain Wathen. Dario Santiago,\" Jess said. He tried not to think of their faces. Tried to care nothing about them, as Brendan might have done.\n\nThe Archivist flipped a dismissive hand but then thought better of it. \"Santi deserves punishment,\" he said thoughtfully. \"An example should be made of him. Dario Santiago's family is royal. Pardoning him could earn us the renewed loyalty of Spain and Portugal.\"\n\n\"And Khalila?\" Jess tried to keep his voice calm and light. Difficult.\n\n\"The Seif girl made her choice. She can rot with her father and brothers in prison, until their execution.\"\n\nJess's chest began to burn as if he were holding his breath, but he was pulling in plenty of air. Khalila, Khalila, executed without a thought for her brilliance and compassion. \"That leaves Wathen.\"\n\n\"Drop the Welsh girl into a well somewhere and be done with it. She's not important.\"\n\nYou bastard. You cold, stupid bastard. She's your next High Commander.\n\nAnd suddenly, the burning in his chest turned to ice. He'd done it. It was agonizing, playing to this man's vanity, drawing him into a discussion that dismissed people he loved to death and torment... but now, with the casual admission that murder was acceptable, the Archivist had shown his flank, and he was vulnerable. A fish on the line, Jess thought. Don't let him wriggle off.\n\nHe nodded casually and tapped his fingers on his thigh. \"I'll convey all this to my father. He'll want terms for the ones you want.\"\n\n\"You may use my personal Codex, if you'd prefer. It is not monitored.\"\n\nBrendan's grin hurt his lips this time, but he deployed it anyway. \"I'm not a fool,\" Jess said. \"I'll manage my own affairs. If we deliver Santi, Khalila Seif, Thomas Schreiber, return Dario to his relatives, and dispose of Wathen, what do you offer in return for all that?\"\n\n\"Besides the two hundred thousand rare volumes you've already demanded? You go too far, young man.\"\n\n\"I am my father's son, after all. A fair offer buys you what you want. It's simple commerce.\"\n\n\"I am not in commerce.\" The Archivist managed to make it sound like a mouthful of filth, but after a hesitation, he donned a pair of thin spectacles and opened a book on his desk. He appeared to scan its contents, though Jess doubted he had to check; a man in his position would know precisely what he had to offer, and what its value would be.\n\nA moment later, the Archivist clapped the book shut and said, \"I've wasted enough time on these fools and rebels. Two hundred thousand rare original books from the Archives, plus a full High Garda company's shipment of weapons sent for the use of your father, including Greek fire. And the High Garda turns a blind eye to anything the Brightwell clan does from this point forward, so long as it doesn't involve outright threat to the Library. Does that suffice?\"\n\nDespite everything, Jess found himself unable to reply for a long few seconds. The Archivist Magister is selling weapons and Greek fire as if it's nothing. And guaranteeing protection to black market smugglers. The betrayal of the Library's principles ran so deep, offended Jess's soul so much, that for a difficult few breaths he couldn't master his distaste.\n\nHe rose again, slowly this time, and nodded tersely. \"I'll tell my father,\" he said. \"I expect an answer within the day. Where should I wait?\"\n\nThe Archivist had already moved on and was taking another book from the stack on the corner of his desk, and a pen. He made swift notes without looking up. \"My assistant will take you to more comfortable accommodations,\" he said. \"For now, you are my guest. A guest with no privileges, and no freedom, you understand. I hold you hostage for your father's good behavior. And make no mistake, if I see any signs of betrayal, I will kill you.\"\n\nJess bowed slightly. A touch mockingly, as his brother would have. \"Of course.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "He didn't allow himself to relax until the assistant\u2014what in God's name was she called?\u2014led him from the office and into the anteroom decorated with ancient friezes from Babylon, where her own desk sat. Less well polished, that wood, and stacked with work. She wore a gold band of service, and, yes, she was lovely; he could certainly see why Brendan had been so taken with her. Graceful as she motioned him to a seat and opened a book on her desk\u2014one that no doubt contained orders from the Archivist that he'd just written out.\n\nHe studied her while she wasn't looking. The rich skin tone told him she was of Egyptian heritage, mixed with something else he couldn't define; he remembered the thick braid she wore down her back, and the cheekbones and pointed chin. I need to remember her name. N something. Naomi? Nallana?\n\nIt came to him with sudden clarity, and he used it. \"Neksa, about the way I left\u2014\" This was a bridge he needed to test. Carefully.\n\n\"You left exactly the way you intended,\" she said in a brisk voice very different from the warm one that Jess remembered from their first encounter, the night he'd realized his brother had taken a lover from the Library's staff. \"Without any warning and without a word.\" She looked up, and those sharp eyes seemed to cut right through him. \"Though I thank you, at least, for a decent note to tell me you regretted it. I wish I could say it lessened the sting.\"\n\nBrendan had written a letter? An apology? Clearly, his brother felt more for this girl than had been obvious. \"Sorry,\" Jess muttered. He wanted to say something else, but it was risky, and the further he pushed Neksa away, the better for both of them. \"Had to be done.\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" she agreed. She opened a drawer in her desk and removed something that she extended to him. It was a wooden box, carved with the symbol of the Great Library on the top, and when he opened it, he found a copper bracelet sitting on a bed of soft red velvet.\n\nHe shoved it back at her. \"I'm not joining your cult.\"\n\n\"And we wouldn't have you,\" she said. \"If you don't agree to put it on, your accommodations will be the sort that are far less pleasant. Did you imagine you'd be granted the same freedom this time?\" That, Jess felt, was a double cut. Probably well deserved, that rejection.\n\nJess gave her a look he well remembered from Brendan's childhood\u2014petulant, with a bit of aggression\u2014and plucked the bracelet from the velvet. He slid it onto his wrist and winced when the alchemy embedded in the metal closed the bracelet and shrank it to fit close to his skin. He'd need an Obscurist, or the alchemical key that Neksa probably kept well hidden, to remove it.\n\n\"Tight,\" he said. \"Can't you loosen it\u2014\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" she said. \"I don't suppose you're brave enough to chop your hand off for comfort?\"\n\nJess was honest enough to admit that he wasn't. At least, not without far more dire circumstances. He bowed slightly. \"After you.\"\n\nHe followed as she led him through the corridors of the Serapeum. It was jarring to realize that the hallway they entered was not the same he'd passed through to get here, and it preoccupied him trying to make some sense of it. He had the strange, unmistakable sense that the office was no longer where it had been when he'd been brought into it. Was that possible? Or was there some strange, confusing Obscurist field that scrambled his memory of the directions?\n\nThe thick sea air closed over him as they passed out into an unfamiliar courtyard, and he felt that strong sense of home again. This place had quickly become something special to him. He'd made his first real friends here. He'd found purpose.\n\nAnd now this was a hostile environment, full of traps. He needed to remember that.\n\nNeksa took him through the gardens that surrounded the base of the huge pyramid, and Jess looked up at the sun-gilded marble facing of it, the fire of gold at its top. They were on the public side of the pyramid now, where a steady stream of people entered the vast reading and study rooms. On the other side, the side he'd entered before, were the Scholar Steps. Thomas Schreiber's name had been carved there, and Khalila Seif's, and Dario Santiago's... if they hadn't been chipped into oblivion yet. Likely. Jess imagined that would have been first on the Archivist's list, to erase them from Library history.\n\nScholar Christopher Wolfe's name was years gone already. The Library seemed permanent. But the steady, quiet editing of its own history showed its vulnerability.\n\nHe concentrated on following the sway of Neksa's braid out of the shadows, through the lush, blooming gardens, and out to the busy street. That took them past a lounging statue of an enormous sphinx, and the automaton turned its pharaoh's head to regard them with flickering reddish eyes. Jess's skin prickled with a flood of adrenaline, but he kept his pace measured and tried to control his heartbeat, too. This was the beast that would be set on his trail if he violated his parole. And while he might be able to disable the thing, it could easily disembowel him with a swipe of its claws, or take to the air with its wings to crush him down. Worse still, that human-shaped mouth hid a nightmare of razor-sharp teeth. Better to never see those, or hear the shrill, eerie scream.\n\nThe bracelet he wore was both protection and threat.\n\nNeksa stepped confidently into the wide, white-stoned street and gestured for an oncoming steam-powered carriage, which hissed to a stop next to them. Neksa gave an address and they scrambled in. They sat on opposite sides, staring at each other, as the vehicle lurched into motion, and the wonders of Alexandria began to scroll past.\n\nNeksa finally said, \"You'll leave when your business is done here.\"\n\nIt was not quite a question, but Jess treated it as one. \"I will,\" he said. \"I owe it to my father.\"\n\n\"And you owe me nothing.\"\n\nJess looked away and fixed his gaze on the broad shape of the Lighthouse tower, where his friends had once held offices. \"I owe a lot of people a lot of things,\" he said, and wasn't sure if he was speaking for himself or his brother. \"No idea how I'll be able to pay all those debts.\"\n\nShe shook her head but didn't answer otherwise, and they rode in silence, clanking past the Lighthouse and around a shallow curve that took them into different streets. Alexandria held a wide, wild variety of architecture: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, a few styles from farther afield. They passed a lush Chinese palace surrounded by carefully tended gardens, and then a manor house that could have easily passed for English.\n\nThey were, Jess realized, passing a diplomatic district. His pulse sped up as he spotted an ornate Spanish palace behind heavy iron gates, because he knew who lived behind that fa\u00e7ade. Dario had told him that he had a cousin serving as an ambassador in Alexandria.\n\nDario's family was stuffed with royals and lords and ladies. Hardly surprising they'd end up in positions of power here, too.\n\nJess noted the location, and the carriage took another turn into a much drabber section... perfectly respectable but very small homes decorated with a variety of bright colors. The carriage drew to a halt, and Neksa handed the driver a slip of paper\u2014a promissory note from the Archivist, most likely. After they stepped out, the driver clattered her carriage onward, and Neksa led him up the worn steps to a door that swung open when she pressed her hand to it. \"It's keyed to your bracelet,\" she told him. \"And, of course, the lock can be overridden at any time by someone of higher rank. You will be watched, monitored, and tracked. We will search your quarters regularly.\"\n\n\"I expect nothing else,\" he said. The single room they stepped into had blank white walls, plain furnishings that seemed comfortable enough. A bed in a doorless alcove that could be curtained off for privacy, a long reading couch, a desk and chair. The kitchen held the rudiments necessary to cooking. There was a bathroom in yet another curtained alcove.\n\nThe windows were small and barred from the outside, and there was no other door.\n\n\"Adequate,\" he said. \"And how far am I allowed to go?\"\n\n\"You don't. You wait until you're told differently. The Archivist has told me you'll be put under lock and key in the prisons if you set foot outside this door. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"What am I supposed to do for food?\"\n\n\"You'll get food brought to you. Beyond that, it's not my concern.\"\n\n\"So this is another holding cell\u2014is that it?\"\n\n\"A much better one. Count your blessings, Brendan.\"\n\nFor a long second, they stared at each other. She was looking for something in him, he realized. Some spark.\n\nHe didn't have it to give her.\n\nNeksa looked away, took in a quick breath, and said, \"If you need something else, write it to me in the Codex.\"\n\n\"Books,\" he said. \"I'll need books.\"\n\n\"There is a shelf of Blanks next to the bed,\" she told him. \"We're not cruel.\" There was an accusation buried in it, and then a bit of a frown followed it as she tilted her head to study him again. \"When did you become such a reader, Brendan?\"\n\nA second of inattention, and he'd slipped. Jess was a reader. Brendan was not. \"Just wanted to do a bit of research for Da.\"\n\nShe nodded, but that little notch of a frown remained between her eyebrows. Jess stared her down, and she finally looked away again and then left without a good-bye. The door shut behind her, and Jess sank down on the couch. Allowed himself a deep, shaking breath.\n\nIt was alarmingly easy to become his brother... but the little things mattered. Neksa was now on her guard, even more than she had been. If she began to doubt he was who he claimed, he'd end his days screaming in a dungeon, or worse.\n\nHe put his aching head in his hands, because that made him finally face the rest of it: Scholar Wolfe, locked in his own private hell again because bringing him here had made this charade possible. And Morgan, Morgan, back in the Iron Tower, where she'd be once more enslaved, not even her body her own.\n\nThis has to work, he told himself. He couldn't use the Codex that had been provided to him; it was obvious that Neksa would see every pen stroke he wrote in it, watch it appear in real time in her own mirrored volume. And with the bracelet locked on his wrist, he couldn't slip away to send messages.\n\nThey were all locked up, in their own ways. Dario, Khalila, Thomas, Glain, Captain Santi... all prisoners headed for Red Ibrahim's ship, which would carry them here to Alexandria for sale to the Library. That was the bargain Jess's father had made with his fellow master smuggler. Red Ibrahim would exact his own terms from the Archivist, in his own time.\n\nEvery one of his friends, every one, was inches from death, or prison.\n\nHow did I ever think this was going to work? Not that he'd had much richness in choices; he'd known that his father would betray them back in England, and this had been the last-ditch effort, once that happened, to keep some elements in play. Wolfe, for one; he hadn't brought Scholar Wolfe here by chance. He'd been afraid that, of all of them, the Archivist would have ordered Wolfe killed instantly. He and Dario had agreed that delivering Wolfe gift wrapped was the only decent option of a set of very bad choices. Jess was acutely aware that it meant, at best, sentencing Wolfe back to a prison that had destroyed him before.\n\nNo, no good choices.\n\nDelivering Morgan had been more strategic, because of all of them, Morgan had the most chance of turning the tide... but that meant sending her back to the last place she wanted to go: the Iron Tower.\n\nStanding here, an inch from death, Jess didn't feel especially sure that it was a plan at all.\n\nBut it was all they had.\n\nJess opened a Blank and summoned up a map of the city. He found where he was, near the diplomatic district, still within easy walking distance of the Serapeum, Alexandria University, and the closely guarded precincts of the Great Archives.\n\nHe was near where he'd last visited the Alexandrian Graymarket\u2014Red Ibrahim's criminal enterprise. But that shadow gathering never lingered anywhere; it was a constant game of cat and mouse with the High Garda, a dangerous one. He had no notion, and no way to find out, where the Graymarket might convene again, not without tapping into family lines of communication. And that he couldn't do, with the Library monitoring his every move.\n\nAnd Dario, damn him, hadn't come through as agreed. Jess had been watching everywhere for a sign\u2014especially as he'd passed the embassy\u2014but Santiago, as always, had proved to be reliable only when it suited him.\n\nThat was unfair, but it felt exactly true in that moment.\n\nJess fell asleep, despite the urgent flood of worry he couldn't seem to shut off. How long he slept, he had no idea, but suddenly he was sitting straight up, ready for a fight.\n\nHe'd have blamed it on a bad dream, but he knew it was more than that. Something was wrong. The sudden shock of adrenaline made him want to rush to his feet, but he knew better. Any move without information could be the wrong one.\n\nA small handheld glow flickered on, and he saw a man of about thirty-five standing not ten feet from him, leaning against the small kitchen table. How he'd managed to enter a locked door and barred windows, Jess had no idea, but the most important thing was that the man was not holding a weapon and was putting a finger to his lips, then circling the same finger in the air around them and touching his ears.\n\nThere were some sort of monitors here. Listening. That was a warning.\n\nJess stopped and looked around for something with which\u2014and on which\u2014to write, but the only thing he saw was the Library-provided Codex on the table. He went back to studying the man, and now that he was getting control of his first impulse to fight, he thought the man looked a bit familiar. Only a bit, and he didn't think he'd seen him before...\n\nThen it hit him. He was looking at a Spaniard with some passing family resemblance to Dario Santiago. Taller, thinner, lacking the devilish goatee that Dario had decided to sport.\n\nJess thought hard for a few seconds, then slowly signed out with his fingers, Are you from Santiago?\n\nThe man seemed startled, then pleased, and he replied, just as slowly, Yes. Dario taught you to sign?\n\nDario's sister had been born deaf. Most of his family, Dario had said, had learned to sign. And Jess had considered it a useful skill to pick up, in slow moments locked in a Philadelphia jail. It had kept him and Dario occupied, at least.\n\nHe did, Jess said. Why are you here?\n\nHelping. The man spread his hands wide and shrugged. Dario asked. What can I do?\n\nDario, of all of them, was the one whom Jess had trusted the least... until recently. He was gaining a brand-new appreciation for the Spaniard's ability to play this game of deceit.\n\nBut could he trust this man? In truth, he couldn't even be sure Dario had sent him. And Jess's own sign language was nowhere near fluent enough to conduct an in-depth interrogation... not that they had time for it. However this wraith had gotten into the house, he'd need to be out before the Library detected anything out of the ordinary.\n\nYou doubt me, the man signed, and gave him a grin that was so effortless it was hard not to return it. Jess felt the familiar mix of irritation and\u2014reluctantly\u2014liking. Smart of you. Dario said you would doubt. He said to tell you to trust me... Here, the man faltered, thinking through his signs, then spelling the word out carefully. Scrubber.\n\nAh. That old familiar insult that Dario had been leveling his way for more than a year. At least now it had a tinge of fondness to it. And only those who knew Dario would know that name.\n\nCan you help me? Jess asked.\n\nEscape?\n\nNo. Get messages out without detection.\n\nThe Spaniard nodded. Give me names.\n\nThe Spanish ambassador.\n\nThe man's face relaxed, and he almost laughed, and then he gave Jess an elaborately ornate bow. Your servant. I am Alvaro Santiago.\n\nYou're the ambassador?\n\nThat's me. Alvaro shrugged, as if to say, Why not? This time, Jess had to stifle a laugh. Safe for me to come. Even if caught, not likely to be punished.\n\nThat was a neat checkmate of a move, though Jess had never imagined an ambassador who could move with the quiet skill of a criminal. He'd always thought they came with escorts of rattling guards.\n\nWhat do you need? Alvaro asked when Jess hesitated. Who else to contact for you?\n\nThis was another conundrum, but Jess only spared it a second's hesitation before he signed back a response. Elsinore Quest. Mesmer.\n\nI will find her.\n\nHim.\n\nAh. Fine. To come here?\n\nNo. Tell him to intercept me the next time I'm taken to the Serapeum. Jess hesitated. He'll require payment. A large one.\n\nAlvaro gracefully waved that aside. I trust you to repay all debts. Why a Mesmer?\n\nOnly a feeling, really, but he had the definite feeling that the next interview with the Archivist would be far, far more difficult, and Elsinore Quest had a skill set that might come in quite handy. But Alvaro didn't need to know that. Not important, Jess signed back.\n\nAlvaro doubted that, clearly, but he shrugged and let it go. Anyone else?\n\nRed Ibrahim. Smuggler.\n\nThe ambassador cocked his head, clearly not recognizing the name. Why would he? Royals and the smuggling royalty almost certainly didn't share social circles. When Jess spread his hands, not sure how to indicate an impasse, Alvaro nodded and signed, Then I will find him.\n\nCriminal, Jess signed, with a little extra emphasis. Funny, this was one of the first words that Dario had taught him. Be careful. Dangerous.\n\nThe ambassador waved that away with airy disregard. Too noble and too arrogant to believe he could be at risk himself, Jess thought; he'd spent too much time being respected for his birth and station in life. Dario had been forced to learn his limits. Maybe this Santiago would as well.\n\nJust don't die, Jess thought. He'd hate to have that on his conscience and, perhaps just as important, lose his only real ally. He'd have to thank Dario later for setting this up. That would be unpleasant, but credit was due: his noble friend had thought of a sideways move where he'd only been looking straight ahead.\n\nDario kept reminding him that this was a game of chess, and he was annoyingly right.\n\nAlvaro was watching him expectantly. Anyone else? he signed, and Jess shook his head. He had few enough people to trust now, and the tighter the circle he drew, the better. Not even Alvaro could get into the Iron Tower.\n\nWhen you speak to Red Ibrahim, remember to say that I am Brendan, Jess replied, twisting his fingers around the spelling of his brother's name and nearly botching it, but the meaning must have come across because Alvaro nodded briskly, stepped forward, and offered his hand for a silent shake. The ambassador inclined his head at a precise, regal angle, gave Jess a smile that was a copy of Dario's confident/arrogant expression, and walked directly to the door. When he saw Jess's frown, he smiled even wider.\n\nThe Archivist relies too much on his Obscurists. There are alchemical scripts all over this house. Every word you say will be transcribed into the record. Remember that. I'll have people watching the door at all times. They'll convey a message if you sign to them. Trust no one else.\n\nWith that, he opened the door and strolled out, bold as brass. Jess walked as far as the entrance but remembered the bracelet on his wrist, the one he couldn't remove. They'd tethered him in place quite effectively. Alvaro had no such restriction.\n\nJess watched him calmly walk away, and within a few steps, men glided out from the shadows and corners to surround him. Alvaro had an expert personal guard, one that many kings would envy.\n\nThere was no sign of the promised watchers from the Library. Perhaps they'd been drawn away, or bought off.\n\nAnd what now?\n\nJess had no answers.\n\nHe waited for half an hour, then an hour. He lit the chemical glows throughout the small living space and examined every corner, drawer, and inch of it before he poured himself a glass of water from the kitchen tap and sat down at the table. There was a Codex provided, and a shelf of Blanks. At the very least they'd given him that. He could request any book from the Archives, and it would be mirrored into the Blank, and he'd have something to read.\n\nExcept, of course, that Brendan probably wouldn't do that. Brendan didn't read for pleasure, only for purpose. In many ways, it was going to be the most difficult part of carrying off this impersonation.\n\nJess compromised and called up anything on the subject of censorship. The first entry was an obscure treatise written by a Scholar named Liburn on the absolute necessity to restrict the reading material of the general public\u2014apparently, too much reading, and reading too widely, could cause people to aspire above their station. Women, especially, were considered vulnerable to an \"excess of learning.\" It was a rank piece of ignorance. He thought about Khalila Seif and the crisp opinion she'd have on that, and shook his head as he wiped the text and tried to think of something else, anything else, that his brother might read.\n\nWhile the page of the Blank was clear, a curious thing happened: a new section of handwriting appeared. He didn't notice at first; he was intent on searching through the list of approved texts on the Codex. But when he glanced over, he immediately recognized the hand that had written the words.\n\nShe didn't give her name, no doubt in case anyone else should see this, and he had no idea at all how she was able to make her message appear not in a Codex, where it properly should go, but in a Blank, where as far as he was aware, it ought to be impossible.\n\nBut then, the impossible was just another challenge to Morgan Hault.\n\nThe paragraph read:\n\nYou can't write back to me; this communication is one-way only. I pray you have the chance to see this. Don't worry, it will only appear once and fade in an hour. It's the best I can do with the time and tools I have. I am well, and, yes, wearing a collar, and I like it no better than you'd expect. I hope that in a few days I might be able to make contact with the man we discussed. He is our best hope. I am monitoring the Codex of the Archivist's assistant; her security is far lower than her master's, which is how I know how to find you. I will watch out for any danger and alert you in the same way as this. Keep a Blank with you at all times. I love you.\n\nThat was all business, until the last sentence, and the simple declaration of it stopped him cold for an instant. He'd sold her into slavery in the Iron Tower as part of this terrible bargain, and he'd never forget that. If anything went wrong...\n\nStop, Jess told himself, and closed the Blank. He kept his hand on it, as if he were holding her. Morgan is strong. She'll survive.\n\nNow he just had to keep his end of the bargain and stay alive, too."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Khalila Seif to her father, undelivered:\n\n\u2002Beloved Father, I pray this reaches you, and that Allah's infinite mercy has found you first, and freed you from your imprisonment.\n\n\u2002This is my fault, though I take comfort in knowing you would never have had me do anything but what I have done. The actions I've taken have been taken from love, loyalty, friendship, and pure respect for the mission of the Great Library, which I know you also cherish.\n\n\u2002It seems impossible that such pure things could have led us to such a dark place, but as you once told me, when you fight evil men, good intentions can't protect you. But the fight must be made, and I am making it.\n\n\u2002We have a plan to save you, and with faith and prayer and hard work, I believe it will succeed. I hope I will do you honor in this.\n\n\u2002Please tell my brothers that I pray for them as well, though not as much, because they would be the first to tell me you deserve prayers more. And send my love and grieving regrets to my uncle for the loss of Cousin Rafa. He was betrayed by the very people he trusted without question, and that, more than anything else, tells me that we must win this fight even if it costs my life.\n\n\u2002Inshallah, I will see you soon, Father."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "The clouds were the color of lead and pressed flat on the horizon, erasing the line between heaving sea and sky. Khalila stood at the railing and watched the oncoming storm. She was aware of the wind whipping wildly at the long lilac dress she wore and was especially glad of the extra hairpins she'd put in her headscarf, which she'd wrapped carefully and tucked beneath the neck of her dress. It held in warmth, which was a blessing from Allah, because the gusts had an edge of pure ice to them that worked its way through any small opening to bite at her skin. Far too cold out, so far from the safety of land.\n\nA weight settled around her shoulders, and she shot a grateful smile toward the young man who'd brought her a heavy coat. It smelled of thick sweat and wet sheep, but there was no denying its insulating power. \"Thank you, Thomas,\" she said, and the German nodded and leaned on the railing. That almost made them of a height. He seemed calm, but she didn't trust it. Thomas, of all of them, had been the most devastated by the betrayal of the Brightwell family that had landed them aboard this ship; he couldn't reconcile it. In Thomas's rather innocent world, family was always to be trusted, and he counted Jess\u2014and by extension Jess's twin, Brendan\u2014as a true brother.\n\n\"You're thinking about him,\" she said.\n\n\"How can you tell?\" Thomas managed a thread of a smile.\n\n\"Your face,\" she said. \"I know how you feel. When I see Brendan Brightwell again, I'll kill him. Betrayal is a serious thing, in my part of the world.\"\n\nShe watched Thomas's hands flex on the iron railing. His deep-seated innocence had been battered, if not broken. \"Mine, too,\" he said. \"God help them if we come face-to-face with any of the Brightwells again, then.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"Even Jess, if he had some part in it.\" She had a strong suspicion that Jess had everything to do with this, and for that, she wasn't sure if she could ever forgive him. If Jess had arranged all this, he'd hurt Thomas, of all people, and she felt a great, banked fury for that.\n\nThomas met her gaze for a second, then gave her a quirk of a smile, very different from the usual full-souled one she loved. \"The storm looks bad,\" he said. \"She'd be a fool to sail into it.\"\n\n\"Anit is not a fool,\" Khalila said. \"But she will want to deliver us quickly to Alexandria. We are not an easy cargo, and we've already been delayed. We're lucky to have this much freedom, to breathe the air and walk the decks.\"\n\nThomas shrugged and gestured at the heavy, heaving sea. \"Where else could we go?\"\n\nShe didn't miss the dark look in his eyes or the way he lingered on those waves, as if he was thinking about the peace that might be had under them. Khalila silently slipped her hand into his and held it. She knew her fingers were freezing, but Thomas's were warm, and he didn't seem to mind. Together they watched the lightning stitch through the clouds ahead. The thunder was inaudible over the boom of the sea against the metal hull of the ship. Even in these conditions, the huge cargo ship sailed smoothly, though Khalila kept her other hand on the railing; that might change soon, if that storm came at them. She supposed she ought to have been properly frightened of the weather, but there was a wild beauty in it as well. A power that showed, clearer than anything else, the magnificence of Allah's creations.\n\nBut the wind was still cold enough to steal her breath away.\n\n\"Do you think they're all right?\" Thomas asked her then. Like her, he was watching the lightning. She saw it dance in his pale eyes. \"Wolfe and Morgan?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"I believe they will be.\"\n\n\"I wish I could be sure. All I can think about is...\" He didn't finish, but she knew what he would have said; he would have been thinking of his time trapped in the dungeons of Rome, at the mercy of the Great Library. They'd nearly broken him there. Nearly.\n\nThomas shook his head, violently, as if trying to throw something out of it. Bits of sea spray glittered in his stiff, close-cropped blond hair like a cap of jewels. He was growing in a thick, short beard, too. \"Why did Jess let this happen?\"\n\nKhalila had her own suspicions, strong ones, but she kept them to herself. Worse to guess and be wrong. \"I doubt it was at all his choice,\" she said. \"I think he'd have moved heaven and earth to be with us, fight with us. Don't you?\"\n\nShe saw something else flicker in his eyes then, but it was too brief for her to recognize it clearly. \"The Jess I knew would do that.\"\n\n\"Then believe that he'll find us now.\"\n\nThomas said nothing else, and she let the silence stretch warm between them. Before she'd met Thomas and her other year-mates in training at the Great Library, she'd never have believed she could befriend someone so unlike herself; he was so huge and strong and... well, solidly and mysteriously German. But he was brilliant and sweet and funny; of all of them, his loyalty was as unbreakable as she imagined that thick skull to be. She cherished him. She cherished all of them, in ways that continued to unfold in new and surprising directions.\n\n\"Isn't this adorable?\" a new voice said from behind them, and Khalila glanced back to see that Glain Wathen had joined them. Another tall person, but Glain had a narrow Welsh cast to her features that gave her the beauty of a precisely honed knife. \"Is it a private love affair, or can anyone join?\"\n\nFor answer, Khalila held out her other hand. Glain snorted and linked arms with her instead. She rocked and balanced easily on the deck and stared into the storm without a trace of fear. A great deal of appreciation, though.\n\n\"Dario's down below puking his guts out,\" Glain said. She sounded uncommonly cheerful about it. \"Santi's sleeping. He said to wake him if we sink, and not before.\"\n\nThat sounded like the very practical High Garda captain. Rarely disturbed by any impending doom. If there was something to do, he'd do it, but otherwise, he saved his strength... though, Khalila thought, he'd been darkly quiet since they'd been taken aboard this ship. He wasn't speaking about his feelings or about the loss of Scholar Wolfe. She understood, in part\u2014she loved Scholar Wolfe like a dour brother or a quarrelsome uncle; not quite a father, but most definitely family.\n\nThey were all family now. And she was proud of that.\n\n\"Dario said that he needed to talk to you,\" Glain said. \"Go on. I'll keep the great lump here from falling overboard.\"\n\n\"I won't fall,\" Thomas said. Glain glanced at Khalila, quick as the lightning flickering on the horizon, and Khalila knew they'd both caught the inference.\n\nHe wouldn't fall, but he'd definitely thought of jumping. It was part of the reason Khalila had spent so much time up here on the freezing decks; she wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure his anger and despair didn't turn even darker. She didn't think he'd do something so unforgivable, but she could understand the wild impulse. He felt betrayed, alone, lost. Hopeless.\n\nShe fought that herself. But she had faith\u2014faith in her friends\u2014to sustain her, as well as her unshakeable faith in the plans of Allah. They had all survived this far. All was not lost.\n\nShe had to believe it and make them believe it, too. At least Glain seemed completely unbothered by their current circumstances as unarmed prisoners, surrounded by enemies and ocean water.\n\n\"Try not to pick any fights,\" she told Glain. \"Here.\" She stripped off the warm, stinking coat and draped it over Glain's shoulders; she instantly regretted it when the wind sliced through the fabric of her dress and began to claw at her skin. Still, she paused long enough to plant a gentle kiss on Thomas's cheek\u2014one he kindly bent down to allow. \"Watch Glain's back for me,\" she whispered. It would keep him solid.\n\n\"I know what you're doing,\" he whispered back. \"But I will.\"\n\n\"And shave your beard,\" she said, in a louder tone. \"It's like trying to kiss a bear.\"\n\nHe laughed, and she was glad to hear it; it wasn't quite the old, happy laugh she remembered, but it was a start.\n\nShe fought her way across the decks, past sure-footed sailors moving about unknowable tasks, and when she arrived at the door that led below, she glanced up at the lighted bridge. The brawny, scarred captain stood there, and several of his officers, and with them the slender form of a very young woman. Anit, daughter of Red Ibrahim, and at least for now, their captor.\n\nAnit did not spare her a glance. She was intent on charts and the words of her captain. Khalila stood for a few seconds watching them, trying to memorize the faces of those framed in that light.\n\nThe girl finally looked up, as if she felt Khalila's regard. Anit looked away first.\n\nInteresting. Some guilt? Or just disinterest?\n\nBelowdecks, the tossing felt worse, and the air was thick with the smells of rust, mold, and\u2014as she approached the tiny cabin that Dario shared with Thomas\u2014vomit. Khalila eased it open. \"Dario?\"\n\nShe winced at the sound of him spewing into a bucket. From the sound of it, the bucket badly needed emptying. She looked in to find him collapsing back on his bunk. Dario, even in the worst of times, always prided himself on his neat appearance, but just now he was pallid, with messy hair and a stained shirt that clung as if he'd gone swimming in it. She could smell the rank sweat even over the sick.\n\n\"Cristo,\" he groaned, and she didn't know if it was meant for a prayer or a curse. \"This is no place for you, flower, but since you're here, pray God bring me a dagger and let me get it over with.\"\n\n\"Hush,\" she said, and draped a towel over the slop bucket. She carried it to the small toilet in the corner and emptied it, and rinsed it in the basin before setting it back near his bunk.\n\n\"You may look like a delicate thing, but you have the cast-iron stomach of a born sailor,\" Dario said. He looked feverish, eyes reddened and cheeks flushed, but his skin had a translucent pallor she didn't like. \"Stay a moment. I need to talk to you. And I wouldn't have called for you to act as my nursemaid\u2014you know that.\"\n\n\"Well, I can't imagine Glain emptying your slop bucket,\" she said, and settled next to him on the bunk. She took his hand and felt the tremor in it. \"You're dehydrated. You need water. I'll fetch some.\"\n\n\"Not now.\" He studied her for a few seconds. \"You know, don't you?\"\n\nShe smiled a little. \"Know what?\"\n\n\"About Jess.\"\n\n\"I have a guess,\" she said, and the smile went away. She felt cold inside now. Hard as ice. \"Why didn't you tell me, Dario? Why did you\u2014\"\n\n\"I couldn't. We told Morgan, of necessity; we needed her help for him to carry this off at all. But you've too honest a face, madonna; if he'd told you that he planned to impersonate his brother and go to Alexandria in Brendan's place, you'd have given the game away when they came to take us. We needed you to fight like your life depended on it.\"\n\nShe'd come dangerously close to killing Brendan\u2014she remembered that; she'd been intent on cutting down as many of the Brightwell soldiers as she could, trying to keep from being taken prisoner. And Brendan\u2014that had been Jess \u2014had been one of those she'd have been happy to run a sword through. \"You still should have told me.\"\n\nDario shook his head. \"We're far down that river now. Jess is in Alexandria, and his credentials assure him access to the Archivist. He'll have delivered Morgan to the Iron Tower, where she has her own plans.\"\n\n\"And Scholar Wolfe?\" She was hoping to hear that Wolfe, too, had been privy to this, that he had some brilliant scheme to make this gamble worthwhile.\n\n\"Wolfe didn't know,\" Dario admitted. \"If he had, Santi would have sensed something was off. And we couldn't risk Santi refusing to cooperate. Wolfe would have approved of this. We were certain of that.\"\n\nWhatever doubts she had about it, they were not useful now. \"And Thomas?\"\n\n\"Are you serious? The worst liar in the world? Though I admit, I thought he was going to tear Jess in half before the fool escaped.\"\n\nThe Translation tag Jess had used would have deposited Jess\u2014and Wolfe and Morgan\u2014into the center of the Great Archives, inside the stronghold. It was, she had to admit, an audacious plan. It might even be a good one. But the risk was fearfully high\u2014not just for Jess, but for all of them. \"Is Jess's plan to kill the Archivist?\" If he did, Jess couldn't survive it, but it would undoubtedly be a victory of some kind. But someone near the throne would rise to fill the office, and likely it would be someone just as bad; she shuddered to think of that rat-faced Gregory, now Obscurist, assuming the job.\n\nNo, until the Library saw the error of its ways and chose a new course of its own will, until the Curia and the Archivist were replaced with leaders who understood the damage their repression had done... until then, assassination accomplished nothing, except to force the Library to crush down with more force.\n\nShe hoped Jess knew that.\n\nDario shrugged a little. \"He'll do whatever he thinks best, as he usually does. It's aggravating, especially since the little scrubber usually turns out to be right.\"\n\n\"Stop calling him that. You love him, too.\"\n\nDario sighed and closed his eyes. \"You mentioned water, didn't you? I could do with that, my love. I don't want you to see me in this state.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" she said, and smiled. \"I love seeing you in this state. It means that for once, you're human and have given up your delusions of grandeur.\"\n\n\"I do not have delusions of grandeur. I am, in fact, grand.\"\n\nShe laughed, but once that bright moment faded\u2014and she let it fade\u2014she said, \"Once you're better, we will have a talk about how much I despise dishonesty. You may consider that a warning. I will not be lied to, Dario. Not even for what you believe is my own good.\"\n\n\"If I survive the night, I will look forward to your lecture,\" he said. \"And I know. If the stakes of this hadn't been so high, the choices so few... but I should have known you would figure out our plan eventually. There is no one like you, Khalila. No one on God's earth.\"\n\nShe wanted to kiss him in that moment but settled for a quick, gentle stroke of fingers across his forehead. \"And no one quite like you,\" she said. \"Allah be praised for that.\"\n\nHe caught her hand as she tried to draw away. \"Wait. Back in England you said... Well, I was hoping that you'd changed your mind and...\"\n\n\"Decided to marry you?\" She asked it in a brisk way and managed to keep her voice steady. It was what he'd asked her in England, just before the soldiers had broken in on them and everything had fallen apart. Of course, she thought. He asked because he was afraid we would lose each other then. That one of us might be lost forever. \"What did I say, Dario?\"\n\n\"You said you might,\" he said. \"I was hoping for a more definite answer. Given that we might still be facing our deaths. Or at least I might be, if I keep vomiting my stomach inside out.\"\n\n\"Consider I'm giving you reason to survive.\"\n\n\"Is that a yes?\"\n\n\"That,\" she said, \"is a very definite might.\"\n\nHe let go. He didn't want to, she could see it, but she appreciated that he knew when to back off. And besides, she could see the nausea twisting in him again. She quickly rose and headed for the door as he groaned and wrapped his arms around the bucket.\n\nKhalila found washcloths and soap, and once he'd emptied whatever small amount he had left to surrender in his stomach, she stripped off his shirt and helped him scrub off the sweat. A fresh shirt came out of a supply laid in for the crew\u2014not Dario's usual quality, but he could hardly complain\u2014and she brought him water and made him drink until he finally collapsed to the pillow again. His color was better, and though his hair needed a thorough washing, he seemed more himself.\n\n\"I love you.\" He sighed. \"God help me.\"\n\n\"If you love me, tell me what you were planning to accomplish by getting us captured and loaded on this ship,\" she said. \"Because you're in no shape to carry it off now, and someone must.\"\n\n\"Why do you think I had anything planned?\"\n\n\"Because I'm not an idiot, and neither are you. Jess had his plan. Morgan had hers. What was yours?\"\n\nDario swallowed, closed his eyes, and said, \"Slight... problem with my plan. It was a bargain with Anit, and I've since determined that she's gone back on it. She wasn't supposed to deliver us to Alexandria, but it seems now she's intent on doing just that.\"\n\n\"Where were you planning for us to go, then?\"\n\n\"Cadiz. Where we'd be met by envoys of my cousins.\"\n\n\"Your... cousins?\"\n\n\"The king and queen of Spain,\" he said. \"Well, I did tell you I was grand, didn't I? The plan was that they would pay a wonderfully great ransom for all of us, Anit appeases her father, and we'd have royal support to continue on our journey. Spain and Portugal have broken with the Library, as have Wales and a few others. I think they will gladly give us everything we need.\"\n\nKhalila realized her eyebrows were raised\u2014probably at the casual mention of Dario's cousins\u2014and left them that way. \"And do you have an answer for how to put us back on that original plan?\"\n\n\"Not presently,\" he admitted. He put an arm over his eyes. \"If only I could think instead of spewing...\"\n\nShe patted him on the shoulder. \"Lucky for you, you're not the only one with a brain. Rest. Leave it to me.\"\n\nThat got her an uncovered pair of brown eyes and an unexpected hint of vulnerability from him. For all his confidence\u2014or arrogance, less charitably described\u2014Dario knew the risks of this game they were playing. And the penalties. \"Please be careful, madonna,\" he told her. \"For the love of Allah, be careful.\"\n\n\"For the love of God, rest,\" she said, and smiled to soothe his pride, then went to see the one person she least wanted to face."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "When she tapped lightly on Captain Niccolo Santi's door, she was told immediately to enter. Not asleep as had been assumed, then. He was fully dressed, and clearly not as bad a sailor as Dario... not that she could imagine Santi being bad at very much. He had a drawn look and a shadow in his eyes, but he nodded briskly and indicated that she should take a seat on the single bed in the room. She refused politely and put her back to the wall; it helped to steady her. Santi rode the waves without a sign that he even thought about it.\n\n\"I've been waiting,\" he said. \"I should have guessed it'd be you. Were you elected, or did you volunteer?\"\n\nThis wasn't the Santi she knew, the one easy in his skin, who treated them all with a kind of paternal exasperation, at worst. Santi was the kind one, the one who wore his responsibilities with ease, while Wolfe snapped and barked at the best of times.\n\nThis Santi was sharp, aggressive, and she didn't like it. Khalila ignored the question and said, \"I'm surprised they haven't locked you in.\"\n\n\"I'm clearly not that dangerous. After all, I let them take me back at the Brightwell castle,\" he said. \"I let them take Chris.\" She felt the self-directed anger behind that. Searing.\n\n\"Captain\u2014\"\n\nHe pushed that away with a slash of his hand. \"What do you want?\"\n\nShe ached for him, but there was no healing his toxic guilt. He knew what waited for Wolfe in Alexandria at the hands of the Archivist Magister. Santi would sooner have died than see that happen. \"Forgive me,\" she said. \"I have something to tell you.\" She took in a breath. \"It's about Jess.\"\n\nThat sharpened his focus. He was a fiercely smart man; she watched him assess all the possibilities before he said, \"My God. What did that fool do?\" But he was already far ahead of that. He answered his own question. \"He realized the Brightwells would sell us out before it happened. But instead of involving all of us, he made his own dice throw. Not alone, though. Dario, at a guess. Not Glain; she'd have come to me. Thomas would have had none of it. You\u2014well, I think you would have known better, too.\"\n\nHe knew them so well. Khalila let out a slow breath, took in another, and said, \"Dario and Jess, at a start. They involved Morgan, as I understand it. For practical reasons...\"\n\n\"Your next words had better assure me that Wolfe knew what they were doing. That they didn't drag him off as a prisoner without telling him.\"\n\nShe swallowed and tried to think of some neutral answer, but that took too long. She saw the bitter ignition of rage in his eyes... and then he was moving.\n\n\"Captain? Captain, wait! Where are you going?\" Because Santi was stalking toward the cabin door.\n\nHe didn't answer.\n\nShe managed to glide into his path and put her back to the door. For a heart-stopping second, she was afraid he might just thrust her out of the way, but he came to a halt, glared at her with brutal intensity. \"Please don't go after Dario. He's very ill. Please.\"\n\n\"I don't care.\"\n\n\"Captain,\" she said. \"Imagine for a moment that Scholar Wolfe knew the Brightwells would most certainly betray us, and there was no possible way out of that trap. Don't you think he would have advised us to use that as an opportunity? To turn a defeat to a chance? That is all that Dario and Jess did. They overturned the table, because there were no winning moves. As a military man, you know that sometimes it's the only option!\"\n\nHe didn't like it. She watched the blind fury struggle against his good sense, and finally he slammed the heel of his hand hard into the steel bulkhead beside her and wheeled away to put his back to her. When he finally faced her again, he was more composed. \"Jess is in Alexandria? Posing as his brother?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"I believe so.\"\n\n\"He'd better have a care when I see him again,\" he said. \"But that can wait. Why tell me this now?\"\n\n\"Because the plan that Jess and Dario concocted was for Anit to betray her father and convey us to Spain, where Dario has allies who will help us. But she's lost her courage, it seems. We're headed straight for Alexandria. I think you know that if we're handed over in chains...\"\n\nHe nodded sharply. \"If we reach Alexandria, we're dead,\" he finished. \"Most of us, in any case. They'll execute me and Glain out of hand. And you, along with your relatives they already have, to keep your country in line. Dario... he might escape. Thomas, they'll keep. He's valuable to them.\" It was a quick, concise analysis, and deadly accurate. It matched precisely her own.\n\n\"We need to take this ship,\" Khalila said. \"And we need all of us to do it. Including you, Captain.\"\n\n\"Just the five of us against the entire crew?\"\n\n\"Four,\" she said. \"Considering Dario's condition. We are outnumbered. Yet Anit has left us free, and I find myself wondering why on earth she would do that, knowing how dangerous we can be. I think she can't disobey her father\u2014no doubt the captain and his men would report her in an instant if she tried\u2014but, at the same time, I think she wouldn't be disappointed if we are able to force the issue.\"\n\nUnlike Wolfe, who would have snarled at her and called her a fool, Santi gave that serious thought. She knew he was doing what she'd already done: analyzing each of the points of vulnerability, and the fortifications and arms that protected them. \"Obviously, if we take the bridge, we can steer the ship,\" he said. \"But we can't take the bridge.\"\n\n\"We can take Anit.\"\n\n\"She's a child.\"\n\n\"Old enough to run her father's operations and command the hundred or so sailors who crew this vessel,\" Khalila replied. \"Which is, to me, old enough to be taken hostage. I'm not saying we hurt her, but since she conspired in the first place with Jess and Dario, and changed her mind...\"\n\n\"Fine. We take the girl hostage and force the ship to Cadiz. What does that get us, precisely, besides a safe haven? I'm High Garda. I'm telling you that Alexandria has never been taken.\"\n\n\"In the last thousand years, who's tried? The last serious threat was the Mongols, and they were defeated by the Ottomans before they ever came close. Tell me, Captain: have the real, physical defenses of the Library ever been tested? Truly tested?\"\n\n\"There are always four full companies inside the city, with the Elite unit stationed at the Serapeum. That's not even counting the automata. No one is taking that city without tremendous losses on both sides. Which I would have told you if you had consulted me before embarking on this plan!\"\n\n\"Morgan's job is to take care of the automata,\" Khalila said. \"Why do you think Jess included her? From inside the Iron Tower, she can take down a great many of the defenses the Obscurists have always maintained... And you, Captain, you know the other captains. Three out of four commanders around Philadelphia agreed with you. There's a very real possibility of a High Garda rebellion, isn't there? If the opportunity for reform seems real?\"\n\n\"The difference is that those three commanders stood aside for us in the field. They would never do that in what we consider home. They'll defend it. No matter whether they like me or agree with me, they will fight for the Library.\"\n\n\"The battle is coming to Alexandria. Whether we do it, or the massed armies of the kingdoms already denying treaties do, or it happens in twenty years when Thomas's press has eroded the power of the Library beyond repair... the Library will fall. We are talking about how to protect what is true and good about it before that happens. If you love the Library as I do, we must gain control of it and begin to make it what it truly should be: not a tyrant kingdom, but a spiritual and intellectual leader. That is its truest purpose.\"\n\nShe needed him to believe it. Captain Santi was their best hope to achieve military victory in Alexandria; with any luck, it could be done with a minimum loss of life. But to save Alexandria, they first had to take it. She had to make Santi believe it was at least possible, or his heart would break before they ever made landfall. Captain Santi was the strong, quiet center of their group. If he broke now, they would all shatter. This was a thing, she believed, that Jess and Dario did not understand.\n\nBut she did. And so it fell to her.\n\nShe watched him think through it, step by step. He knew the risks. The points of failure. The slim odds they could ever be successful.\n\nBut he also had to know that if they wanted the Great Library of Alexandria to survive and uphold its beautiful ideals... then those who truly loved it would have to take these risks.\n\nWe are not destroying the Library, she wanted to say to him. We are saving it.\n\nBut he would have to reach that conclusion himself. Without Santi, they would not find the strength. Without Jess, no inspiration. Without Thomas, there was no real future. Without Glain, no protection. Without Morgan, no audacity. Without Wolfe, no challenge to do better, be better.\n\nWithout Dario, no subtlety.\n\nWithout her... but she didn't see her role. It would have been prideful to imagine she could not be spared, but she knew she could not spare even one of these others.\n\nSanti said, \"You have the gift, you know.\"\n\n\"What gift?\"\n\n\"Silence,\" he said. \"You let people think. And yet, you also lead from silence. I've met a few like you.\"\n\nShe felt a slight heat in her cheeks and raised her chin against the urge to deny what he'd said. \"Were they worthy of your trust?\" she asked.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" Santi told her. \"Every one of them.\" He sighed. \"The path to Alexandria leads through allies, connections, and communications with those I can trust. I make no guarantees that we'll ever see the city, or survive it if we do. But you're right. We need to land in Cadiz and build allies.\"\n\n\"Then we take the ship?\"\n\n\"We take the ship,\" he said. \"God help us.\" He nodded at the small bunk. \"Sit down. It's too suspicious if we gather in numbers, so I'll need you to memorize plans, timing, all of it. You'll set everyone in the right place and time.\"\n\nShe sat, smoothing her skirt with restless fingers. She was aware that by coming here, and staying for long, she'd be inviting gossip. But let them talk, if they intended to. Better the crew assume she and Santi were lovers than that they suspect they were conspirators. \"One thing,\" she said. \"Give me a chance to talk to Anit first.\"\n\nHe stared at her for a long moment, then said, \"If you insist on doing that, you have to be prepared to fail. Are you? Prepared to fail?\"\n\n\"You mean, am I prepared to take action? Take her prisoner? Slip a knife in her ribs?\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"Anit made her choice,\" Khalila said. \"And, yes. I am prepared.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Anit was no kind of fool. She'd been hardened in the same fires that Jess Brightwell had been; she understood full well how brutal the world was, and what place she had in it. She was quiet and thoughtful and noticed everything.\n\nAnit was also wary of her own captain and crew. Khalila understood that very well. Women watched their allies as much as their enemies, if they wished to prevent trouble and keep their power. Especially if all of their subordinates and peers were men. Unfair, perhaps, but practical.\n\nIf this was to work at all, Khalila thought, she needed to play upon the fact that Anit had grown up guarded, alone, and under constant pressure from the men around her.\n\nThe fact that Anit would unwillingly, perhaps unconsciously, feel kinship with another young woman.\n\nIt didn't take long for Khalila to come up with the correct approach. She waited until midmorning, then changed to a black dress and moved with deliberate speed toward the metal stairs that led up to the bridge, where Anit stood. She was, of course, instantly intercepted by two stout men\u2014sun weathered, hair bleached nearly blond, covered in blurred tattoos. \"No access,\" one of them said. \"Go away.\"\n\n\"I need to speak with Anit,\" Khalila said. \"Please.\"\n\n\"No access.\"\n\n\"Tell her it's a private matter.\"\n\n\"Don't care,\" the first sailor said, and shoved her back. \"Move on. Now. Before I feed you to the fish.\"\n\n\"Not without my express permission you don't.\" Anit's voice came from the door to the bridge, and when Khalila looked up, she saw the girl watching them. Assessing. \"What kind of private matter?\"\n\n\"The kind I don't prefer to talk about with them listening,\" Khalila said. \"Please.\"\n\nAnit came down the steps, waved the sailors a few steps away, and waited with her arms folded. She was in no danger; there were at least ten men only feet away who, though intent on their own business on deck, would certainly come running at her call.\n\nAnd, of course, Anit could very likely defend herself.\n\n\"You have something to ask?\" Anit prompted.\n\n\"I assume you have a woman's monthly supplies,\" Khalila said. \"There are none in my cabin. I'm afraid I've already stained a dress.\" She pitched her voice loud enough that the sailors could hear and smiled as she saw them draw back. She could never fathom how men failed to come to grips with the workings of a woman's body.\n\n\"No one provided you with\u2014\" Anit let out a frustrated sigh. \"Of course they didn't. They didn't even consider it. Glain must need some as well. Please come with me. I'll give you what I can from my own stores.\" She glanced at the sailors and rolled her eyes. \"No need to accompany me,\" she told them. \"I'll be fine.\"\n\nAnit led her off to the large cabin she occupied on the ship, and as she opened cabinets and took down a box of menstrual pads, she said, \"So what is it you really want to talk about?\"\n\n\"Oh, I do need these\u2014believe me. I have no doubt I'll be bleeding in a day or so. But you're right: I also needed to talk about our situation.\"\n\n\"Situation.\" Anit found a small canvas bag and began to load it up. \"I've doubled the supplies. You can share with Glain.\" There was a small hesitation in her voice, something that set Khalila on alert. She put her hand lightly on Anit's arm and felt the girl tense. Careful, she told herself. She could easily turn this wrong.\n\n\"Why did you change your mind?\"\n\nAnit's hands suddenly stilled, and she looked up at Khalila. For a moment, Khalila was sure the girl would answer, but then her look flattened, darkened, and she thrust the bag into Khalila's hands. \"You should go.\"\n\n\"Anit...\" Khalila took a deep breath. \"I understand that your father ordered you to change our agreement. No one blames you. I don't blame you. But it's clear you're taking us to Alexandria. You know what will happen to us.\"\n\n\"You should go,\" Anit said. \"Now.\"\n\n\"Not until I know what he threatened to make you betray your agreement. I know your word means everything to you.\"\n\n\"I can have you removed.\"\n\n\"Yes. You can call your sailors. You can lock us in our rooms. Drop me overboard, should you wish\u2014\" The flinch and widened eyes from Anit made Khalila press on. \"Are those your father's orders? To put us over the side?\"\n\n\"Not all of you,\" Anit said. \"Only the one with no value to the Archivist.\"\n\n\"You mean Glain.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"When is it to happen?\"\n\n\"I have my orders, Khalila.\"\n\n\"I'm not asking you to go against them. I'm asking you to tell me when they plan to kill her so we can come to her defense. That leaves you entirely out of it.\"\n\nAnit looked away and said, \"I didn't want this. We had an agreement. But... my father has made promises, important promises. I can't go against him on this.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" Khalila said. \"When will they take Glain?\"\n\nAnit didn't meet her eyes. \"Tonight. They'll drug your food and drink so there's no interference.\"\n\n\"Will they drug all of us? Or only Glain and myself, since we share the cabin?\"\n\n\"Just the two of you,\" Anit admitted. \"But if you don't eat it, they'll know I warned you.\"\n\nKhalila nodded. \"I'll eat it. But all the same, the others might accidentally see it happen and come to her rescue.\"\n\n\"They'd best be prepared to fight,\" Anit said.\n\n\"Which among us is the most valuable?\"\n\n\"Thomas. And Captain Santi.\"\n\nKhalila cocked her head and frowned. \"Santi? I'd have thought he'd have gone over the side with Glain. He's no one to ransom him. What use does he have of value to the Archivist?\"\n\n\"It isn't about ransom,\" Anit said. This time, she did meet Khalila's eyes, but only for an instant, and then she turned away and wrapped both arms around herself, as if feeling the chill. \"The Archivist wants to punish Wolfe. He can use Santi to hurt him.\"\n\nThe depth of depravity in that made Khalila feel sick. That someone so powerful should use that power so cruelly... and so randomly. There was a deep, personal anger there, one that she was glad she couldn't understand. \"All right,\" she said. \"Thank you for these. I appreciate the kindness.\"\n\n\"We must all be kind,\" Anit said. \"While we're still able. Khalila? I never wanted any of this.\"\n\nKhalila knew she shouldn't ask, but she had to. \"Will you help us?\"\n\n\"No,\" Anit said, and smiled. \"But somehow, I know that won't stop you.\"\n\nKhalila left and was glad of the strong blast of wind on the deck, even as it bleached the heat out of her. She needed to feel something bracing. She'd been ready to take Anit hostage, if need be, but she thought Anit wanted to help. And under just the right circumstances, she might be free to do so.\n\nAll that remained was to work out how those circumstances needed to occur.\n\nBut first, they'd need to save Glain's life.\n\nShe remembered little of the evening. Eating the drugged meal had been hard, but the worst had been watching Glain consume it, too, all unknowing. Out of an abundance of caution, Santi and Thomas had elected not to eat or drink at all, though they made a good simulation of it.\n\nGlain hadn't noticed.\n\nBy the time the meal was done, Khalila already felt the drag of the medications and sent Thomas a half-panicked look as Glain yawned. Dario had eaten only a little of his own food, probably because of his still-unsteady stomach, but he also yawned. It was hard to say whether it was a sympathetic response or the drugs at work in him, too. Did Anit lie to me? Did she tell them to drug us all? At least Santi and Thomas will still be effective.\n\nBut that also might mean they'd be watched, and prevented from acting.\n\nGlain collapsed into bed almost immediately when they reached their cabin, but Khalila tried hard to keep herself awake, hour after hour... pacing, praying, resorting to pinching herself when her legs failed to support her anymore. At the last, she crawled into her bed, and the drag on her eyelids became irresistible.\n\nKhalila woke with a pounding headache, a dire thirst, and the ship tossing like a toy boat in the teeth of the storm... and when she crawled out of her bunk and checked, Glain was not there.\n\nGlain was not there.\n\n\"No,\" Khalila whispered, and swept the covers aside, as if somehow the young Welsh woman could have been hiding underneath them. She dragged herself to her feet and threw on a fleece-lined robe that Anit had loaned her, cinched it tight, and staggered outside into the teeth of the wind. Her hijab nearly tore loose, but she clamped a hand to it as she tried to see what was happening.\n\nThe deck was nearly deserted, only a few sailors struggling about their tasks. She didn't see Glain.\n\nShe didn't see any of her friends.\n\nKhalila ducked back into the shelter of the hall and hurried to the cabin that Thomas and Dario shared. Empty. She tried Captain Santi's room.\n\nAnd found all of them gathered there.\n\nDario rose immediately and came to her as she stood panting and shaking, unexpectedly weak. He tucked a stray lock of hair that had come loose back under the cover of her hijab; she hugged him fiercely and felt such an intense relief that it made her knees threaten to buckle. She tried to speak, but tears choked the words. She lingered on every face, especially Glain's; the Welsh woman sat nursing a drink, paler than normal. She had a bandage around her head and another winding her forearm.\n\nShe wasn't the only one with injuries. Every one of them had visible bruises or bandages, or both. Dario winced when she squeezed too tightly, and she instantly released him and held him at arm's length to study him.\n\n\"I'm fine, madonna,\" he told her, and fitted his hand to her cheek in such a natural, gentle motion that she closed her eyes for a moment to control the racing of her heart. \"We're all fine.\"\n\n\"Speak for yourself,\" Glain growled. \"I've got a nasty hangover and my ears are still ringing from hitting the damned railing.\"\n\nKhalila felt breathless. She knew the kind of fight each one of these people could put up, and the fact that they were all injured... it meant she had missed something truly violent.\n\nSanti said, \"Sit before you fall, Khalila.\" He moved a chair forward, and she gratefully took it. Dario's chair, she thought; he stayed on his feet. She wasn't certain that he'd conquered his seasickness, but at least he was able to stand upright and not look as though he might spew. Small victories.\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\nThey told her in bursts. First Santi related watching their cabin, with Thomas as backup. The arrival of four sailors to retrieve Glain in the dark of night had been foiled, but more had come, and then others had joined the fight.\n\nGlain had been dragged out by Anit's crew and towed toward the side. Dario had managed to grab Glain just as she'd been pushed over the railing, limp and unconscious. He'd suffered bruised ribs while unable to fight back, but he'd grimly held on to her arm and kept her dangling above the waves, until Thomas's strength had come to save her.\n\nThen they'd surrounded Glain, who'd begun to revive in the cold wind and rain, and kept her safe until Anit ordered the attack to stop, for fear of killing her father's valuable prisoners in order to dispose of a useless one.\n\n\"Useless.\" Santi shook his head. \"Even half-unconscious, she fought like a devil. She's worth her weight in gold.\"\n\n\"Captain,\" Glain said. \"I fought like a drunken rag doll. But thank you for the kindness.\"\n\n\"You've taken too much of Wolfe's judgment to heart. I've been a professional soldier all my life, and I can only think of half a dozen I'd pick to have by my side in a brawl. You're in that number.\"\n\nGlain, Khalila thought, looked as though she'd been sweet-talked by a lover. Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks blushed. She craved a good fight the way most yearned for love or money. \"I'm honored,\" Glain said. \"And thankful you all came to my defense. I'll return the favor, anytime.\"\n\n\"We know,\" Dario said. He looked at Santi. \"Will they try it again?\"\n\n\"We're not giving them a chance, because we're going to take this ship.\" Santi unrolled a rough map, hand drawn but to Khalila's eye highly accurate; it showed the ocean, the coast of Spain, and the opposing coastline, with Alexandria marked by the Horus eye symbol of the Great Library. Cadiz, he'd marked with a star. \"We're off the coast of Portugal now, making for the Strait of Gibraltar; the ship's sailing into the teeth of the storm because there's no alternative, and Anit's been given some deadline to meet. The storm helps us; it keeps the majority of her crew at their posts and makes communication more difficult. But she'll be on her guard for it, too. Anit's locked herself into the bridge with her captain and officers. They're armed, and we're not. In less than a day, we're sailing past Cadiz and headed for the entrance to the strait. We'll lose our opportunity.\"\n\n\"Weapons?\" Glain asked.\n\n\"All the pistols and rifles are locked in a cabinet on the bridge.\"\n\n\"And the locks?\" Dario asked.\n\n\"Jess might have been able to pick them, but I don't think any of us could. Morgan might have been able to do something with an Obscurist power, but we don't have that, either.\"\n\n\"Is there a workshop on this ship?\" Thomas asked.\n\n\"I suppose. Why?\"\n\n\"I can find us weapons,\" he said. \"Nothing with bullets\u2014they won't be so careless\u2014but they will have other things I can adapt. Explosives, possibly. Welding tools. All these can be useful.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Santi said. \"Dario, you go with\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm the only one uninjured,\" Khalila said. \"I'll go with him. Together, we can work faster.\"\n\n\"My flower, do you know even the slightest thing about workshops?\" Dario asked her, which was patronizing enough to make her send him a sharp, dangerous look.\n\n\"My uncle was a Library inventor for thirty years, and I apprenticed with him,\" she said. \"When you call me flower, you imply I can't fight. We both know that's untrue. With a sword, I am far better than you.\"\n\nDario winced. Good. Knocking him back occasionally would keep him at least a little humbled. \"I retract the insult, however I meant it,\" he said. \"Though I'd feel better if I came with you.\"\n\n\"No. Glain?\"\n\n\"Happy to assist,\" Glain said. \"I was starting to feel useless sitting here. Besides, if you're making weapons, Thomas, best you have someone to test them out for you.\"\n\n\"No,\" Khalila said. \"You're still at risk.\"\n\n\"And to take me, they'll need to overpower the two of you. Not bloody likely. Besides, I'm not drugged, and I'm not going down without taking them with me.\"\n\nThomas nodded. He didn't seem displeased. He usually didn't, when Glain was near. Khalila suspected he admired the young woman a great deal more than he was willing to show, especially considering that Glain herself showed no interest whatsoever in any romantic partners of any gender. In any case, they made a good team, the three of them.\n\nThat left only Dario and Santi together, which worried her; both could take care of themselves, of course, but Dario's ribs were bandaged, and the captain looked battered. She exchanged a look with him, but the captain only nodded. \"Go,\" he said. \"And, Scholar? We all need to agree on engagement rules.\"\n\n\"I think we know what they are,\" she said. \"We are in this to the end now. There is only one engagement level, though I prefer not to use fatal force when less will do, and to use threats when force is not necessary. Diplomacy when that will suffice most of all. Agreed?\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" he said, and smiled tightly.\n\nIt was only later that she wondered just when Santi\u2014and all the others\u2014had agreed that she was in charge. And when she had become so comfortable with the idea.\n\nThe workshop proved to be a toy box for Thomas, full of scrap metal he quickly sharpened for them into crude\u2014but deadly\u2014daggers and swords. \"The edges won't last long,\" he warned them as they tested the balance and weight of the blades. \"I could make properly done ones if we had a day or so. But they will do for short, dirty fighting.\"\n\n\"My favorite,\" Glain said, and slipped one of the daggers into her belt, then another into her boot. \"Any chance of a projectile weapon?\"\n\n\"No. Everything I could reconfigure would require smithing, and we don't have time. I considered the riveters, but they're too heavy for our purposes, and tethered with steam hoses.\"\n\n\"Still not impossible,\" Glain said, and tried the weight of the rivet driver. Khalila doubted she herself could have managed it, but in Glain's hands, it looked quite at home. \"There were two connectors on the bulkhead outside of the bridge. One must be for steam. I'll chance it.\"\n\n\"And the charges?\" Khalila asked. Thomas held up a small box in one hand and a quart-sized glass bottle full of green liquid in the other.\n\n\"The powder charge in this box will fuse the lock on one of the bridge doors so it can't open,\" he said. \"The Greek fire will cut open the other.\"\n\n\"Careful with those,\" Glain said, and Khalila understood her nervousness. There was enough Greek fire in that glass to ignite half the ship. \"You trip, and we all end this voyage on the bottom.\"\n\nThomas gave her a faint smile. \"I'm large. Not lumbering.\"\n\nNo one had happened on them in the workshop, which was a bit of a miracle, but someone would surely notice Thomas\u2014who was very noticeable\u2014toting a bottle of Greek fire. Swords and daggers could be concealed, and Khalila now carried a belt full of blades beneath the fleece-lined robe, out of view. She sighed and hunted up another wooden box that fit the bottle, and padded it with rags. Thomas latched it shut and hefted it, along with the other items. It didn't look innocent, but at least it didn't look as openly guilty.\n\nGlain didn't bother to conceal anything, and there wasn't much use arguing with her.\n\nThe first man to spot them in the corridor heading for the cabins was, happily, one of the sailors Khalila disliked the most; he'd threatened to disembowel Dario, for one thing. He seemed instantly suspicious and opened his mouth to say, \"What do you think you're doing around\u2014\"\n\nHe never reached the end of that question, because Glain stepped forward and slipped a dagger neatly between his ribs. Khalila caught her breath, because every instinct in her shouted that it was unnecessary... but she knew better. They were outnumbered and about to enter a very dangerous fight\u2014one that would determine more than just their own fates.\n\nHe could have given an alarm. Glain had stopped it.\n\nThe sailor was dead within seconds, and nearly silently. They dragged him into a storage locker, and they slipped quickly back to Santi's cabin, where the captain and Dario waited.\n\n\"About time,\" Dario said, and pulled them in. He checked the hall and closed the door. Khalila stumbled into him as the ship took a breathtaking lurch; the storm was worse again, though she couldn't imagine how much more violent it could possibly get. \"Did you find anything?\"\n\nFor answer, she unfastened her outer robe and began to remove swords and daggers. A pair for each of them, and a few spares. She'd been clinking as she walked and gained almost half again her weight from all the metal. It was a relief to lay it down, except for the sword and dagger she kept. These, she belted on outside the fleeced robe this time. Let them notice. She no longer cared. They all looked warlike and piratical now, especially Dario, who seemed most suited to the occupation by looks. And Glain, toting the industrial rivet gun on her shoulder.\n\n\"Plans, Captain?\" Khalila asked. He was looking thoughtfully at the weapons.\n\n\"Questions,\" he said. \"No one found you in the workshop?\"\n\n\"No one,\" Thomas said. \"Lucky.\"\n\nSanti didn't seem to believe it. \"Even on such a stormy day, that seems odd.\"\n\n\"We did kill a man on the way back,\" Glain offered. \"Quietly.\"\n\nHe nodded at the point but still looked troubled. \"I don't know if this is some kind of trap, but we don't have much choice. If we wait, we'll be into the strait, well past our port.\"\n\nKhalila said, \"If we don't take action, Anit will simply carry on as her father commands. She has nothing to lose from it. But... I do believe she's hoping we will find a way. She may have even kept her crew away from the workshop. She's not a fool. She'd guess how we'd proceed.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" Dario said. \"That girl's a fiendishly good chess player.\"\n\n\"Then we move,\" Santi said. \"Khalila, you have steady hands. Set the explosive charge to fuse the bridge door we don't intend to enter. When we hear the blast, we'll burn through the other side, quietly. Hopefully, the crew's attention will be drawn the wrong way.\"\n\n\"And what's she to do if it draws everyone straight to her?\" Dario asked. \"I'd better go with her.\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said. \"We'll need the four of us when that door does open, because even if Anit doesn't fight us, her captain and bridge crew will. There are seven of them. I can't spare you, Dario.\"\n\n\"I'll rejoin you as soon as I can,\" Khalila promised. \"I'll be all right.\"\n\nThomas put the small box in her hands. \"There's a small self-starting fuse,\" he said. \"The charge will stick to the door; it's magnetic. Put it over the lock, just here\u2014\" He demonstrated on their cabin door. \"Pull the tab to start the fuse. You can leave it to do its job then.\"\n\n\"How long is the fuse?\"\n\n\"About ten seconds,\" he said. \"Long enough to get to safety.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath and nodded. Steady. Steady and calm. But the ship was pitching wildly, and she put the box under one arm and held tight to a handhold as the ship groaned like a living thing, rolled sharply to the left. Kept rolling, as if it intended to overturn... and then, suddenly, righted itself.\n\n\"They should be steering into the storm, not putting their starboard side to it,\" Dario said. He looked wretched again, but grimly determined. Khalila watched as a chair skidded from one side of Santi's cabin to the next. She was grateful that the Greek fire was cushioned, but Allah preserve them all if Thomas dropped that box.\n\n\"How do you know?\" Glain asked. \"You're a terrible sailor.\"\n\n\"I do read,\" Dario shot back. \"Try it sometime.\"\n\n\"Stop bickering,\" Santi said. \"Focus. We can't wait. This ship is making the turn toward the strait. We're out of time. Khalila splits off once we reach the deck, makes her way to the port side of the bridge, where she places the charge and comes to us as soon as possible. As soon as we hear that explosion, we breach the starboard door, and we do what we must to steer this ship to Cadiz. Use the least violence we have to, but don't hesitate. Understood?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" they all said, in unison.\n\n\"Then, let's go.\"\n\nKhalila looked at Dario for an instant that seemed like an eternity, then quickly placed a kiss on his cheek.\n\nThat was the only good-bye she would allow herself."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "What seemed simple enough became vastly more complex the moment the door opened to the deck of the ship. When she'd last been up here, Khalila had been admiring the oncoming storm's distant beauty. In the heart of it, there was only brutality. The wind hit like hammer blows, and the rain drove needles into her exposed skin; the deck pitched and yawed, wallowing in the deep waves. Water surged over the metal decks and threatened to drag her over, until Thomas clamped a hand on her and held her tight against the pull. She gasped in gratitude, though she was worried that he'd not be able to anchor her and keep a good grip on his very dangerous box... and then she realized, as she blinked away stinging salt spray, that Glain had a hand on his other arm. They'd all linked, instinctively.\n\nThe crew had strung ropes around the deck. Anchors to cling to, when the sea broke across the deck. She broke Thomas's grip and lunged for one of those. The others could brace one another, but she was going to have to make her own way now.\n\nIf anyone called after her, she couldn't hear in the roar of the storm. Lightning broke the sky on the port side, a spear forking from heaven to drive into the sea, and the thunder slammed into her like a physical blow. She'd gone a few feet from the others, and already she'd lost sight of them. Good cover, she told herself. Her heart was racing and her mouth was dry, and she was terrified. Her dress, soaking and heavy now, threatened to trip her. She moved down the rope as quickly as she could, heading for the port side of the ship. When she touched that railing, she ducked under the rope and followed the railing toward the stern of the ship. The bridge was up a set of stairs.\n\nAnother, more distant shock of lightning illuminated the steps before she passed by them, and she lunged for a handhold and had begun to climb up when the door at the top swung open and a sailor muffled in a thick rainproof coat stepped out.\n\nThey stared at each other in surprise.\n\nKhalila moved first. She backed down to the pitching deck and shoved the box inside the sodden fleece of the robe she wore.\n\nThen she drew her sword, and as the sailor shut and secured the waterproof door at the top, she waited with the blade concealed behind her.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" he shouted at her over the roar, and came down toward her.\n\nForgive me, she thought, in the instant before she lunged.\n\nHer balance was off, and the ship plunged into a trough in that second, throwing the sailor forward and her blade lower than she intended. It slid into his stomach, not his heart, and she felt a blind second of panic as he screamed\u2014but no one could hear it. She tugged the sword free and lunged again, and this time, her aim was true. She felt the sword scrape lightly against a rib, then slip deep toward his heart.\n\nHe took one step toward her and collapsed.\n\nHer heart hammered so loudly it was almost as deafening as the storm, and she gasped for breath against the shock of what she'd done. It had been necessary, she knew that, but even so... Khalila shoved the bloody sword back into her belt with cold, trembling hands and hurried up the steps. She opened the box, set the magnetic charge, and even as she adjusted it to the right spot on the door, just as Thomas had shown her, she wondered how anyone could possibly hear even this explosion in all the howl of the storm.\n\nIt didn't matter. She had to proceed, regardless. She pulled the tab, igniting the fuse that Thomas had put inside the device, and turned to go down the steps.\n\nSomeone crouched there, blocking her way. Another sailor, looking at the man she'd killed. He hadn't noticed her yet. She slipped down toward him, and as he rose, she braced herself on the slick railings and kicked out with both feet, sending him crashing into the port-side railing. Ten seconds. She needed to be clear of the stairs, but he was still blocking her path.\n\nHe turned like a cat to grab her as she tried to dart past him onto the deck.\n\nTime to use the dagger, which she tried to do, but this man was warier and faster, and he caught her wrist in a crushing grip and twisted. She lost the blade. No space to draw the sword, but there was more to a weapon than just the edge; she grabbed a handful of the thick fleece gown and used it to cushion her hand against the blade as she shoved it upward, and the rough pommel of the sword collided sharply with his chin. His head snapped back, more in surprise than in real harm, and she stepped forward to put her right foot behind his left, and twisted into his grip instead of away.\n\nHe went down, mouth an open O of surprise, and hit the deck hard. He rolled for the knife, but she found it first and dropped on her knees to bury it in his throat.\n\nShe rolled away, praying she had time and Thomas had been precise in his mixtures. She was only a few feet away when she felt the shudder of the explosion through the metal, and a brilliant bright red jet of fire burst out from the door to cook the falling rain into a puff of steam.\n\nKhalila scrambled up, staggered as the ship lurched again, and almost fell into the guide rope. She slipped and clung for her life. The winds were so strong that they pummeled like lead fists, and she couldn't pull in breath against the full force of the blast. Bright sparks swam in her vision, and she prayed for another burst of lightning; there was nothing to see now but darkness and flying rain.\n\nAnd then she saw the glow from the bridge above. Couldn't make out anything within it, only the indistinct light. She was halfway to the starboard side. Halfway to the other set of stairs.\n\nShe fought her way against the wind until she fell across another obstacle in her way. A dead man. A sailor, by Allah's mercy, not one of her friends. She climbed over him and realized that she'd found the stairs. She pulled her sword free and scrambled up.\n\nThe opening at the top was a melted mess of metal and still-bubbling Greek fire, though someone\u2014likely Thomas\u2014had thrown down a counteragent to prevent the stuff from eating through the hull of the ship and sinking them all. She jumped over the flickering green flames and into the bridge... into the middle of a standoff.\n\nAnit looked like a delicate toy in Thomas's hands, and Thomas... well, he looked dangerous, and so did the blade he held to the girl's throat. There were two of the bridge crew down, wounded or dead; the remaining, save the helmsman, who'd stayed at his post, were backed up to the sealed port exit. Through luck or design, none of them had High Garda guns, which could have ended this very badly.\n\nKhalila stopped where she was, sword at the ready and breathing hard. Santi's focus didn't move from the captain, though Dario's did, in a flicker, to sweep her for injuries. He must have been satisfied she was all right, since he didn't move toward her.\n\nShe felt weak now, and the cold had set deep. Rain coursed down her face from her soaked hijab.\n\nBut she held firm as Captain Santi said, \"Surrender or we kill the girl, and probably all of you. You know we can do it.\"\n\nOne of them laughed.\n\nThere was a loud puff of air, and a red-hot rivet appeared in the steel beside the man's head. Anit glanced over. Glain, it seemed, had found the connection for the steam hose below, and she seemed very content to try her aim again on the next one to doubt their sincerity.\n\nNo one laughed again.\n\nThe ship's captain, a burly, scarred man who had survived far worse than this, finally said, \"All right. Maybe you could kill us. But you need us if you want to sail this ship and survive the next five minutes, and you know that.\"\n\n\"And just where do you plan to sail it after you let Red Ibrahim's daughter be killed under your command?\" Santi asked. He seemed cool and calm and utterly in charge. \"Alexandria? Her father doesn't sound the type to let you explain what happened. From what I've heard, he's the type happy to take your tongue out first.\"\n\n\"With all of you dead, he'll only hear one side: ours. She's all you've got, you fool, and the numbers are on our side. Your only choice is to give up.\"\n\n\"It's not,\" Santi said. Khalila knew that tone, light and careless. This was Santi at his most dangerous. He lifted a half-full bottle of green liquid\u2014the leftover Greek fire. He pulled the stopper. \"If I pour, it eats straight down, through every layer of the ship, until it bores through the bottom. Won't take long. And my friend Thomas has the only countermeasure. Do you think you can take it from him in time?\"\n\nThe sailors froze, and everyone looked to the captain, who struggled to seem unimpressed. \"You'd go down with us.\"\n\n\"It's better than what waits for us with the Archivist,\" Santi said. \"Agreed, my friends?\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" Thomas said, in a voice pitched so low it was like an earthquake.\n\n\"Agreed,\" Dario said.\n\n\"Of course.\" Glain.\n\n\"Yes,\" Khalila said, last of all. \"We're not afraid of death. If we were, we would never have begun this.\"\n\n\"Stop,\" Anit said sharply. Not to them. To her captain. \"They mean it. They'll send us all down together. Give up.\"\n\n\"Your father\u2014\"\n\n\"I will deal with my father. This is on my head. I command you to obey!\"\n\nWhether it was Anit's direct order or the threat of Santi and that jug, the captain hesitated only a moment before he nodded and ordered his men to their knees, hands on their heads. He joined them. The helmsman hadn't released the wheel; he couldn't, Khalila realized. He'd been tied to it, to avoid being tossed away in a sudden lurch.\n\n\"Change course,\" Thomas said to the helmsman. \"We head for Cadiz.\"\n\nThe man murmured under his breath as he spun the wheel. \"I'll need the exact heading,\" he said. \"From the charts.\"\n\nSanti stoppered the Greek fire, handed it to Glain, and pulled a chart from the rack at the rear of the room. He unrolled it on the table and read off coordinates. The helmsman's face was not made for deception, Khalila thought, and she glided up behind him and put a knife to his throat. \"Put us off course, and I'll kill you,\" she said very quietly, just for him. \"I know you're thinking of it. Don't. You can all live through this. Anit will take the blame, and none of you will be punished. Do you believe me?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"I'll get you to Cadiz.\"\n\n\"Then we have no quarrel,\" she said, and released him. The relief that spread over his face, as she stepped to the side to watch him, convinced her he meant what he'd said. \"Salaam alaikum, brother.\"\n\n\"Alaikum salaam,\" he replied with a wary nod.\n\n\"You find friends in the oddest places,\" Dario observed. He'd drawn close to her, and she noticed that in the press of the moment, his nausea had receded, maybe for good. He seemed to be riding the sharp slip of the waves much more easily now. \"How did you know he was Muslim?\"\n\n\"A sailor without tattoos?\"\n\n\"Oh. I forgot. Tattoos are haram.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she agreed. \"But that aside, he was reciting the shahada while Santi held that bottle. In case he might die.\"\n\n\"The shahada?\"\n\n\"The profession of faith.\"\n\n\"And with all that was happening, you thought to notice.\" He didn't make it a question. \"Honestly, flower, sometimes I find you quite frightening.\"\n\n\"Good,\" she said, and stretched up to kiss his cheek, just a modest and soft brush of lips on skin. \"You really must wash. You smell like death.\"\n\n\"Bathing will have to wait until I'm sure one of these fine new friends of ours won't knife me in the tub,\" he said. \"Thomas? I think you can let the poor girl go now.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Thomas said, as if he'd forgotten he held Anit. \"Sorry.\" He released her, and Khalila noted that despite the apparent ferocity with which he'd held the girl, she had not even a reddened mark on her neck.\n\nAnd, more significantly, the girl didn't look angry. \"Thank you for not crushing me,\" Anit said. \"I suppose I deserved it.\"\n\n\"Before we start that conversation, please tell your captain that I'm a man of my word,\" Santi said. \"And he'd best be a man of his, because I will keep this bottle ready until we're off this ship.\"\n\n\"He isn't in charge here, Captain. I am. And I tell you that we have a bargain. This ship sails to Cadiz. Whatever comes there, I will bear the responsibility for my father's anger.\" Anit, Khalila thought, was pleased. She'd hoped for an opportunity to change her mind.\n\nWhich they'd given her. We are pawns in her game, Khalila thought, but she didn't mind. Red Ibrahim's daughter had a dangerous road to walk, and she traveled it bravely. Let her have her victories where she could.\n\nTheir own victories would be longer in coming.\n\nAs they steered on, the storm's fury seemed to lessen a little. Allah's will, Khalila thought, though she knew he had far too many concerns to be directing the wind and fury in their favor. Their success, or failure, would depend on their own grit, luck, and intelligence.\n\nAnd Santi's very credible threat.\n\n\"Leave my bridge,\" the captain said. \"I follow the orders of my mistress. I'll see you safely where you're bound. But my bridge is my own.\"\n\n\"From now on, you'll have to consider me crew,\" Santi said, and folded down one of the built-in seats. \"I'll be here until we're safely in dock, because while I trust the word of Red Ibrahim's daughter, I don't trust you.\"\n\n\"He stays, we all stay,\" Khalila said, and settled wearily in the corner. She was shivering now, soaked, and the ebb of adrenaline that had carried her through this was making her feel sick. Now that the crisis was over, she was forced to remember that she had killed two men today.\n\nShe closed her eyes and began to pray for their souls as the ship carried them on to the shore of Spain, and whatever might come next."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a report by Thomas Qualls, Master of Cells, to the Artifex Magnus. Not submitted to the Codex, and marked as private correspondence:\n\n\u2002I have enclosed the last round of direct transcription of Scholar Christopher Wolfe's interrogations. There is little point in wasting your time reading it; there is no variety in his responses to questioning, whatever the particular tools we chose to employ. He rarely speaks at all now.\n\n\u2002As I told you six months ago, I believe we have long since gathered all useful data from this prisoner regarding his invention, his process, his research, and each and every associate who might have factored into the development of the device in question. He has been steadfast that his lover, Captain Niccolo Santi, has no knowledge of, or responsibility for, the invention, building, or operation of the device, and in fact has never seen this machine, or even been told of its existence. As I've told you, I don't think it's worth killing a High Garda captain.\n\n\u2002I don't know why you hate this Wolfe so much, but I assure you that if your plan was to break him, he is long past broken. You have destroyed his invention, destroyed his research. Erased all his writings from the Library's records. You have done everything short of killing him, and that is no favor. I am, as you're aware, not a merciful person, or a kind one; I would not last long in this job if I had even a shred of such fine qualities.\n\n\u2002So understand that when I tell you I have had enough. I will not subject this prisoner to more pain.\n\n\u2002There are limits, and he has reached them. So have I, surprisingly.\n\n\u2002Therefore, I have personally released Scholar Wolfe, and I have seen the Archivist in person and explained my decisions. The Obscurist Magnus has also been told. The Archivist was not happy with this, but he agreed\u2014based upon my extensive knowledge of other prisoners kept in our Roman cells\u2014to allow me to exercise this one, small, almost meaningless act of mercy. Or, at least, he didn't dare stop me, given the rage of his Obscurist.\n\n\u2002Leave Wolfe alone, Artifex.\n\n\u2002I have resigned my post, and there is nothing you can do to punish me. I will retire in comfort and wealth. But I will be watching, and I promise you, if Christopher Wolfe is ever imprisoned again, I will take steps to make sure you regret it for the rest of your life.\n\n\u2002We both know how deep the rot extends in our beloved Library. And if I need to expose it to the burning light of day... I will."
            },
            {
                "title": "WOLFE",
                "text": "It was the smell, in the end, that was the worst of it. Not that the Great Library kept a filthy prison, but the stench of terror and despair was harder to wash away than more organic stains. This facility used stones that had been quarried for similar purposes five thousand years ago, long enough that the walls had been well soaked in pain and horror, and exhaled it constantly.\n\nAnd he knew the miasma of it so intimately, horribly well.\n\nHe could ignore the darkness, the bars, the discomfort. But not the smell. And so, after the bars had closed around him, Christopher Wolfe had gone a little mad. A day of shuddering, flinching, imagining that every noise was a torturer coming for him again. A night when he wouldn't close his eyes, for fear the past would smother him.\n\nThe morning of the second day\u2014which he calculated not by sunrise, which was invisible down here, but by the changing of the guard watch\u2014he had grown more accustomed to the stench of the place, and the darkness and the confinement, or at least he'd mastered his dread of those things a bit. He reminded himself that if he was right, his job here was not to wallow in useless self-pity, but to do something more.\n\nIf he was right, of course. If this was some plan that Jess and his miserable twin had conjured up. If this was not simply betrayal, but betrayal to a purpose.\n\nThe question then was what he was expected to accomplish, locked up here. Morgan, he could understand. But if this was a plan, by rights one of them should have whispered at least a hint to him before it was too late.\n\nThen why would it profit any scheme\u2014and he sensed Dario Santiago's Machiavellian hand behind it\u2014to send him back to a hell he'd never have agreed to return to? Wolfe had worked hard to keep his trauma silent and secret from the younger members of their little band, but Jess, in particular, had been privy to details. The young man knew at least the edges of that particular knife, if not the terrible wounds it had left.\n\nNo way to solve this puzzle without information, he told himself, and concentrated on the one he could solve: the security of this prison.\n\nHere in this passage, he saw more of the dull metallic gleam of moving sphinxes than he did human High Garda. An overdependence upon automation, he thought. The sphinxes could be gotten around. Jess had worked out how. Even Dario had managed it.\n\nHuman guards were more difficult, if less lethal. They adapted. The sphinxes at least operated upon a set of rigid orders.\n\nBut surely his feckless students hadn't put him here just to escape; no point in that. No, there was a purpose behind it, just as there was behind putting Morgan back in the Iron Tower.\n\nThat was when he heard the murmurs from another cell. He recognized the words, and they were echoed from other locations\u2014one farther to his right, and one almost directly to his left. Prisoners at morning prayers.\n\nAnd suddenly, Wolfe knew precisely why he'd been placed here. It started with those prayers but would hardly end there.\n\nHe sat cross-legged on his narrow bunk and ran through where, precisely, these prisons were located. They'd not taken the precaution this time of moving him to another city. He was in Alexandria, in the cells buried far beneath the Serapeum. Holding pens for those sentenced to death. Ignore that, Wolfe thought, as he felt a small crack run through his resolve. Just another problem to be solved.\n\nHe listened. Sat for the better part of an hour and simply listened, pinpointing coughs, shuffles, rustles, the distant sounds of moans and sobs. This place is full of dissidents. Normally, it would not be; the Library's opponents ranged from Burners\u2014who normally killed themselves rather than end up here\u2014to smugglers, who were usually killed quickly.\n\nThis prison, he realized, had been packed with individuals the Archivist thought might go against him. We did this, he thought. Our small act of rebellion, rescuing Thomas from Rome, echoing across the entire Library system... it forced him to tighten his grip, eliminate those who could do him harm. He had no doubt that the individuals jailed near him were Library sworn... Scholars, librarians, High Garda soldiers.\n\nThe core of the Library, now seen as its enemies. Tyrants turned on their own, in the end; it was the only way to keep power.\n\nThe prayers ceased, and Wolfe stood up and went to the bars of his cell. They were heavy, cold iron, and he thought of a thousand ways to break them. All required things he didn't currently possess, but that had never stopped him for long. \"My friend next door,\" he said. \"Are you by any chance a relative of Khalila Seif?\"\n\nThere was a moment of silence, and then a guarded reply. \"Why do you ask?\"\n\n\"Because I know her well,\" Wolfe said. \"And a more brilliant, clever student I've never taught. She's that rare combination of a great mind and an even better heart.\"\n\nHe heard the release of a breath. It sounded shaken. \"That's my sister,\" the man said. \"My younger sister. I'm Saleh. She's well?\" The young man\u2014he was young, perhaps a few years older than Khalila\u2014sounded shaken. \"She's not here?\"\n\n\"Safe I can't guarantee, but last I saw her, she was well, and far away from here.\"\n\n\"I pray she stays far away, too.\" He hesitated a moment, then said, \"My apologies. I've given you my name and not asked yours.\"\n\n\"Christopher Wolfe.\"\n\n\"The rebel Scholar.\" Saleh's voice had turned brittle. \"The one who brought all this on us.\"\n\n\"Blame can wait. Survival first,\" Wolfe said. He had no patience for fools, now or ever; the only thing he'd ever done to deserve the blame was to invent a machine the Library didn't want. Everything, everything, followed from that. His imprisonment. His release, and erasure from Library records. His penance as lowly instructor. His determination to never allow the Archivist to destroy another bright mind. \"Tell me who's here with us.\"\n\n\"My father, uncle, and older brother are farther down the row,\" Saleh said. \"Arrested on suspicion of treason against the Great Library. Which is nonsense, of course. We were arrested to force Khalila to come back.\"\n\n\"Who else is here?\"\n\n\"A Scholar Artifex, Marcus Johnson. Le Dinh, Scholar Medica. Captain Ahmed Khan, High Garda. Two or three Scholars from the Literature ranks, one a beloved author whose recent works are considered heretical. A host of librarians, for various crimes including concealment of original works, and Burner sympathies.\" Saleh paused to think. \"There's one at the end of this corridor I don't know. He never speaks. My father tried sign, but there was no response. But that only accounts for this one hallway.\"\n\n\"How many other High Garda are confined in here?\"\n\n\"Six more. Ahmed's the only one of significant rank, though.\"\n\nWolfe had forgotten about the bars around him now, the chill in the stones, the evil smell of the place. He found a small chip of stone and used it to begin scratching out a list on the wall. \"Start methodically,\" he said. \"Are you at the end of the hallway?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then tell me who is next to you.\"\n\nWhen he was done with Saleh, he engaged the woman to his right, Ariane, who'd been listening. She was High Garda and delivered her account in a crisp, calm voice that he quite liked. It reminded him for a terrifying second of Nic, and he had to pause and push that need away. Niccolo is safe, he told himself. And on his way. Your job is to be ready when he arrives.\n\nThe word spread slowly down the hall, and passed back to him, as he drew a complete map of the prison hall, with names attached. By the time the meager ration of lunch arrived, he'd memorized the placements and rubbed away the map.\n\n\"Eat it, don't throw it,\" advised the High Garda soldier who handed him the tray of food. Meat, bread, cheese, figs, a small portion of sour beer and a larger one of water. \"Throw it, you get nothing else today or tomorrow. Doesn't take long for people to learn the lesson.\"\n\nWolfe glanced up at him and had a second of doubt. Did he know this man? Recognize him? It was possible, but he couldn't be sure, and the soldier gave no indication at all of knowing him.\n\n\"I'll throw it when I'm tired of the food,\" he said.\n\nThat got him a bare thread of a smile, and the young man\u2014he was young, nearly as young as Wolfe's students\u2014tapped fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. \"That's why you're a Scholar,\" he said. \"You get right to the bottom of things.\"\n\nI do know him, Wolfe thought. He couldn't place the boy in proper context; surely they wouldn't put one of Santi's people on duty here? Unless, of course, there was more going on in Alexandria than he'd previously suspected\u2014eminently possible, considering the shocking number of Scholars and librarians imprisoned. Perhaps the stronghold of the Great Library was no longer holding quite as strongly. An interesting theory to chase.\n\nWolfe ate his food slowly, not to savor its taste\u2014it had little\u2014but because he was involved in assessing the residents of this prison for their potential value in any escape attempt. The Artifex Scholar would certainly be useful. The writers could certainly come up with distractions. He was most concerned about Khalila's father, who suffered from a delicate heart, which these conditions certainly hadn't improved.\n\nHe was still deep in thought when he scraped the last of the watery meat from the bottom of the bowl.\n\nThere was a message written on it, barely visible now and disappearing fast. It said, Lieutenant Zara sent me.\n\nWolfe paused, closed his eyes a moment, and took in a deep, slow breath. Brightwell had not, after all, abandoned him here without a word, without a plan. Santi's lieutenant\u2014not a woman he cared for a great deal, but competent nonetheless\u2014had been alerted to his plight. And knowing Zara, she had plans.\n\nNow he had a messenger, and possibly even an extra ally.\n\nWolfe used his thumb to scrub the rest of the message from the bowl and put the tray through the slot outside the bars after downing the ale and most of the water, which he desperately needed.\n\nWhen the young man came back to collect the dishes, Wolfe finally placed him in his proper context. A lieutenant, one who'd been in charge of the Blue Dogs in Santi's squad. Troll. His nickname was Troll. A competent young man, and fearless, which would be an asset here. Wolfe nodded. Troll glanced down in the bowl, gave that thread-thin smile again, and left without a word.\n\nWolfe sat back on his bunk and began to methodically catalogue every item in this bare, depressing cell for its usefulness.\n\nBecause soon, he'd need every possible asset to find a way out of this."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "He woke in the dark, disoriented, and for a moment he reached out to touch Santi's sleeping form, only to hit cold stone. Memory struck a second later, along with the stench of the place, and he groaned and tried to put himself back to sleep. He'd be better off unconscious.\n\n\"Oh, wake up, you waste of skin,\" said a voice that did not sound like it came out of his nightmares... or did it? The lines had blurred considerably recently.\n\n\"You're not real,\" he mumbled, and turned over to face the cold stone wall.\n\n\"The woman in the cell next to you is named\u2014what is her name, boy?\"\n\n\"Ariane, sir. Ariane Daskalakis,\" said a second voice. \"Lately a lieutenant in the High Garda.\"\n\n\"Tragic, the talent that is being wasted in these dark days. Very well, Wolfe, sit up and talk to me, or I'll order Daskalakis here shot right now.\"\n\nHe sat up. No denying that this was real now. He could see only a faint outline of the man standing beyond the bars, but he knew it was no spirit haunting him. The hiss of a glow igniting in the man's hand threw a faintly greenish light over both of them, and Wolfe threw up a hand to block the glare as his eyes struggled to adjust. Getting old, he thought. I'd have blinked that away easily a few years ago. It was an idle observation. He was currently unlikely to get much older.\n\n\"Artifex Magnus,\" he said. \"I should have expected to see you, I suppose. You never could resist a chance to gloat.\"\n\n\"Do you really imagine that's why I'm here?\"\n\n\"Well, I doubt you're here to kill me quietly in the dark. You've never been that kindly disposed.\"\n\nThe Artifex gave him a cynical grin. \"I've never liked you; that's true. You're an arrogant, insufferable bully who believed he could do anything without penalties. As brilliant and driven as you are, you could have risen to sit in my chair, if only you'd kept your haughtiness under control. But still, this is a pity, the depths you've sunk to.\"\n\n\"Can we dispense with the pleasantries and get to the point? What brings you out of your warm, and no doubt very comfortable, bed?\" Wolfe looked beyond the old man, into the shadows. No guards, just a very nervous young Scholar who clearly looked frightened out of his wits and wouldn't look directly at Wolfe at all. Odd. \"And unescorted?\"\n\n\"There will be no records that I came here,\" the Artifex said. \"The automata will have no memory of it. I came to ask you a question. It's important.\"\n\n\"You really could wait until visiting hours.\"\n\n\"If you were ever allowed to see another friendly face, that might be clever. But since you're going to rot in this cell until you die screaming, I'd think you'd settle for an old enemy.\" There was something strange about the Artifex's tone now. Wolfe couldn't quite pin it down.\n\n\"I doubt I'll ever be that desperate,\" Wolfe said. But he was, of course. And the Artifex knew it.\n\n\"One question. Answer it honestly, and no one dies tonight.\"\n\nWolfe didn't answer directly, but he inclined his head just a touch. There was a very real danger that if he didn't comply, Ariane might be killed. Or Saleh. It would be one of his neighbors, close enough that he could hear the damage done.\n\n\"I knew you were smarter than you seem. Do the Brightwells really have a working press?\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" Wolfe said. \"And it's better and faster than anything I've seen before. Better by far than what I built. Better than the first attempts Thomas made, too. It certainly will do the job.\"\n\n\"The job,\" the Artifex repeated.\n\n\"The job of destroying the power of the Great Library to censor and withhold information. Which is what you've feared all along.\"\n\nThe Artifex stepped closer and wrapped his free hand around a bar of the cell door. \"Do you understand what you've done, Wolfe? What you're so arrogantly destroying?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Wolfe said. \"We've finally opened a door you've kept padlocked for a thousand years. And there's power in what we have. Power you can't take away.\"\n\n\"You're worse than the Burners. If this machine spreads, it will tear the Library apart, piece by piece. Destroy something that has united the world for so many thousands of years.\" There were tears\u2014real tears\u2014in the old man's eyes now. \"You think you're fighting for freedom. Freedom is dangerous. Give humankind freedom, and they will inevitably fall into chaos and war, religious zealotry and senseless violence. We have kept the peace. And we've done it by giving the people what they need, when they need it. Not what they want. Want is nothing but blind and selfish greed.\"\n\n\"Don't wrap yourself in virtue,\" Wolfe said. \"You've killed tens of thousands in the consolidation of your power\u2014and that's what it is: raw power. The power to decide for hundreds of millions of people what is good for them and what isn't. They don't need your godlike guidance. They need to grow.\"\n\n\"Cancer is a growth,\" the Artifex replied. \"Is cancer a good thing?\"\n\n\"If you've come to debate with me, for the love of the gods, leave me to die in peace,\" Wolfe said, and stretched on his bunk to put his face to the wall. \"You're a sick man in a sick, dying system. And something healthier must replace it.\"\n\n\"Christopher.\"\n\nUse of his first name made Wolfe turn over and stare. \"We aren't friends. You don't have the right.\"\n\n\"We were. Once. Long ago. You remember. I was a mentor to you.\"\n\nUnwillingly, he did. And wished he could block it out. \"What I remember is that you didn't hesitate to send me into a trap when it benefited you. I nearly died.\"\n\n\"It did benefit me,\" the Artifex acknowledged. \"And you, as it turned out. You came out of it covered in glory and awarded a Scholar's gold band. Do you think that happened by accident?\"\n\n\"I think I earned it,\" Wolfe snapped, but suddenly he was no longer as certain as he sounded. The Artifex, even before he took the title, had always been a game player. \"And it landed you the wealth you wanted, didn't it?\"\n\n\"It did, at that. Christopher, my point is that we have benefited each other before. We could do so now. All I need from you is information.\"\n\n\"What, you don't mean to torture it out of me this time?\" Wolfe kept his tone dismissive and acerbic. \"How generous of you. And unusual.\"\n\n\"Torture didn't avail us well last time. I see no reason to think it would be any better this time. So I offer you a bargain, and, Christopher, you'd best listen closely, because you will not get a better one.\"\n\n\"Get it over with. I'm tired.\"\n\nIf his contempt threw the Artifex off, it wasn't at all visible.\n\nFor answer, the Artifex took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and slid it across the floor. Wolfe frowned at it, then picked it up and unfolded it.\n\nWritten on it in the Artifex's hand was I will protect Santi if you take your own life.\n\nIt fair took his breath away, for a moment. But when he spoke again, his voice stayed steady. \"And why would you want me to do that? I thought the Archivist had an entire elaborate execution planned.\"\n\n\"Because I don't trust you,\" the Artifex said. \"I don't trust that you're some helpless prisoner. I don't trust that the Brightwells mean what they say. And I most specifically don't trust that there is no plan to turn all this to your advantage. I believe that with you dead and gone, your students will lose their way, regardless of what orders they've been given.\"\n\nWolfe shrugged. \"Flattering, that you think I have such vast control. But it's not much of a bargain, considering that you don't have Nic.\"\n\n\"Oh, but I do,\" the Artifex said. \"And I promise you, if you don't accept this bargain, I will see that he suffers every torment you can possibly imagine in your place. I'll even have you brought along, so you can see it firsthand. I know you, Christopher. And I know what will destroy you. Do the right thing. I will give you three days. If you aren't dead by that time, then we'll begin this terrible journey together.\"\n\nWolfe balled up the note and threw it back through the bars. \"Are we finished? Because I'm bored with your company.\" His tone remained just the same, but there was a crack inside him, an earthquake shift of horror. Did he have Nic? Had the entire plan\u2014whatever it could have been\u2014come completely apart? It was all too possible. He rolled toward the wall without waiting for an answer, and the Artifex didn't speak again. After a long few moments, Wolfe heard footsteps receding, and the burn of the glow went dark.\n\nHe lay there shaking in the dark, staring hard into it. He doesn't have Nic. And he won't. I know my little band of students better than that. Whatever plan is in motion, it can't depend on me kneeling to the Artifex. Or dying in this cell.\n\nHe wished he could believe it. He slammed the heel of his hand into the wall, again and again until he felt the skin break and smelled hot blood, and cursed the moment he'd ever laid eyes on any of the students of his Postulant class."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Obscurist Eskander to Obscurist Magnus Keria Morning. Not submitted to the Codex, and marked as private correspondence. Destroyed upon her death:\n\n\u2002I have loved you for years. Half my lifetime now, I have known that there is no one else for me, and never will be. And I know that you are at peace with our life in the Tower, and I will never be.\n\n\u2002But I swore to you long, long ago I would never break the seals of this place, never walk out of these doors and find my freedom... not if it meant more pain, more slavery, more destruction to the Obscurists I'd have to leave behind. My freedom would come at too high a price.\n\n\u2002It's strange that I now have to remind you of your own duty.\n\n\u2002Keria, I know you are angry. I know you are raging; I can feel it through the walls of this tower. But no matter how deep your pain, how right your anger, if you strike at the Archivist and lose, imagine what will happen to these Obscurists you now have sworn to protect. Imagine how a shallow, predatory man like that, who values his own life above all others, will react. If you kill him, you might cut out a cancer... or simply spread it everywhere. All that holds the Great Library together now is belief. Shatter it, and we are all at risk.\n\n\u2002The Library has been forced to live under bad leaders before. Let him age, and wither, and die. We will outlive him.\n\n\u2002All we can do now is to protect our son, who has been so terribly wounded.\n\n\u2002And to do that, you have to swallow your anger, and wait. Wait until it's time for revenge.\n\n\u2002I read over this, and I realize that though it's all true, I had meant to say this in kinder ways. But you know that I love you. And I love our son, lost as he is to us.\n\n\u2002It's odd to me, of all people, to be counseling you about caution.\n\n\u2002With love,\n\n\u2002Your hermit"
            },
            {
                "title": "MORGAN",
                "text": "Morgan's first mistake was almost her last.\n\nBeing parted from Jess and Wolfe was something she'd expected, but she still hated it; worry about what would happen to them distracted her too much, and when the Obscurist's carriage had come to collect her from the Great Archives, she'd had to resist the urge to fight. She could have easily gotten free, but that wouldn't have advanced their cause. She had to be inside the Iron Tower to do that.\n\nThe last place she ever wanted to be.\n\nThe carriage had been reinforced with scripts to keep her powers blunted, and the first thing the Obscurist who'd come for her had done was lock a golden collar around her neck. She'd felt the alchemical formulae written inside it connect with the power in her, and the collar had sealed itself shut.\n\nBut that still wasn't a mistake. It was an advantage. They believed they had her under control. And in the days since, she'd bided her time and pretended to be cowed. She'd sent a message to Jess, but the Obscurists were slow to trust her again; they kept her locked in a room, and when she broke the wards on the door, her collar shocked her into unconsciousness for several hours. When she woke, the wards were up, stronger than ever.\n\nThey'd also taken away her Codex. There wasn't a writing utensil or scrap of paper left in the room, and apart from a food tray slipped through a slot in the door, she'd been left completely alone for four days.\n\nOn the fifth day, they let her out, but only to meet with the Obscurist Magnus.\n\nHe had her summoned to the lush gardens near the top of the Tower\u2014an entire floor devoted to beauty and growth, and windows that were open to the outside to permit the warm sea breezes. No point in trying to throw herself out of them; they would snap shut well before she reached them. She'd experimented with that more than a few times during her last internment here.\n\nShe took a seat near a pool filled with blooming lotus flowers, and a servant\u2014another Obscurist, but a very lightly talented one\u2014brought a cup of hot tea and sweet pastries. Tea seemed like a miracle to her; they'd denied any to her from the moment she'd been locked away. Morgan poured a cup and took her first sips just as Gregory came into the garden, and the sight of him drove it all home to her in a way the collar and the familiar sight of the garden had not: she was a prisoner here, again.\n\nAnd he looked so damned smug about it.\n\nGregory had always struck her as a would-be tyrant, and now he wore the robes of the Obscurist Magnus, the second-most powerful (or, perhaps really third) person in the Great Library. Everything about the way he approached her, from the superior smile to the arrogant thrust of his walk and the toadies scurrying in his wake... it all showed how much he enjoyed his newfound power. Wolfe's mother had died in this garden. There had been a lot of damage, as Morgan recalled; she could see the repairs now that she looked for them, and the new plants.\n\nGregory had commissioned himself a new set of robes. These were far more elaborate than what Wolfe's mother had been content to wear, fine as those were. He was a petty, selfish man. The Archivist had set about raising men and women to the top of the Library who believed more in power than in learning, more in arrogance than in humility. Gregory was only the latest of a rotten breed.\n\nThe smell of blooming flowers seemed overpowering, and her stomach lurched as she realized that if she couldn't leave this place under her own terms, she'd never leave it at all. Worse: she'd be tasked with the job of accepting Gregory's match for her. Bedding a man she couldn't love. Birthing a child that, if sufficiently gifted, would be kept just as much a prisoner\u2014or seeing it taken from her and sent away to the orphanage if not gifted enough.\n\nTo a stranger's eyes, the Iron Tower might seem luxurious. Elegant rooms, fine foods... the Obscurists went begging for nothing, except their freedom.\n\nBut it all left a rotten, wretched taste in the back of her throat, and for a perilous moment she was afraid she might spit out her tea. She drank down the rest in a gulp and set the cup aside, came to her feet, and met Gregory as an equal.\n\n\"I knew we'd get you back, Morgan,\" Gregory said. \"All that drama and death, and for what? You end up where you belonged from the beginning. And don't worry. I've learned a thing or two about controlling unruly residents. Keria wasn't willing to face the fact that you represent both a huge gain for us and a huge risk. I am.\"\n\n\"So you're going to lock me away,\" Morgan said, and shrugged. The collar felt heavy and thick around her neck. Gregory seemed to waver in the heat\u2014when had it gotten so warm in the garden?\u2014but she was sure his smile grew wider. \"Or try, more likely. I've escaped from this tower more than once. I'll do it again.\" Her voice sounded strange. Hollow, as if she heard it through a long metal tube. Voice communication, she thought. Thomas would be fascinated; she wondered if she should mention it to him. She turned slightly, as if she expected to find him standing nearby, and then realized that, no, Thomas was not here, Jess was gone, their little company of friends and allies was shattered into bits, and suddenly the grief and loneliness overwhelmed her. She wanted to weep. Jess, she thought, and felt empty to her core. Jess. She needed him here. She needed him to tell her that it would all, finally, be all right.\n\nNothing seemed right. Not the light, which broke into rainbows around her. Not the heat, which seemed as thick as a blanket on her sweating skin. Not the sound of Gregory's quiet laughter, as much nightmare as reality.\n\nWhen he touched her, it might have been gentle, but his fingertips seemed made of hot coals and rough as granite, and she flinched back. What is it? What's wrong with me? She struggled to piece thoughts together; they wanted to fly apart, spin into broken colors and sickening shards. The tea. He put something in the tea. Something to make her vulnerable, make it harder for her to access her power. She felt the suffocating, deadening effects of the Iron Tower, and the collar weighing her down, and for just a moment she felt a gray wave of despair. I can't. I can't do this. I'm going to die in here.\n\nShe reached out. Not for Gregory. Nothing so obvious. She didn't need to destroy him, even if she could manage it. She just needed to be sure she could defeat what he'd dosed her with.\n\nIt hurt like ripping away a piece of herself, and she gritted her teeth on a scream as the pain built, and built, echoing from the walls of the Tower and the collar, and then a fresh red rose blooming just behind Gregory caught her attention.\n\nShe pulled and felt a hiss of energy flowing from the rose. The bloom faded, shriveled, and the life pulled out of the stem, the leaves. Tempting, to pull more, faster, destroying the entire bush, but she stopped with just the one stem.\n\nThe petals drifted down, wrinkled and dead. Blackened.\n\nThe power she'd taken in broke through the drugs. She was still trapped. Still at Gregory's whims and mercies.\n\nBut she was not helpless.\n\nBecause he seemed to expect it, Morgan allowed her eyes to roll back and let her body go limp. Gregory caught her on the way to the ground, and she felt herself being lifted, carried, and the hissing, buzzing complex web of life inside the garden faded away into iron and stone and the bright, burning shadows of other Obscurists and servants.\n\nLet go, she told herself. Let him think he's won. Unless he believes it, he'll just put you right back in that locked room. Let him win.\n\nShe rolled into the dark and found it a welcome shelter."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "Waking was a painful process that came in a rush of headache, nausea, and an ache that went so deep she wondered if she might truly be ill. The light filtering red through her closed eyelids seemed far too bright, and she groaned and rolled over, trying to hide from it. Failing miserably.\n\n\"Oh hush,\" said a strangely familiar voice. \"Open your eyes, Morgan. You're not the first to ever have a hangover.\"\n\nThe voice had the lingering traces of an accent\u2014Scots, Morgan thought\u2014that gave the woman's Greek a lilting, teasing sound. Morgan didn't respond for a second or two, and then carefully opened her eyes a slit. Quickly shut them again. \"Close the window?\"\n\n\"No.\" That voice was far too cheerful. \"I like the light. And since we'll be sharing this room, you'll just have to make do, won't you?\"\n\nAnnis. The voice finally fell into the proper place, and Morgan opened her eyes wide this time, blinking until the glare resolved into a bright aura around a woman with gray-threaded red hair, a rounded face, and a tilted smile. The lines near her eyes and mouth showed she laughed often and deeply.\n\nAnnis was one of the least-talented Obscurists confined to the Tower\u2014someone who had barely passed the threshold of entrance and was capable of only the most rudimentary of alchemical work. It had never put a dent in her happiness. Born happy, others said of her. She'll laugh when she dies.\n\nShe was certainly smiling, if not quite laughing, at Morgan's pain.\n\n\"I'm not hungover,\" Morgan said. It came out as a feeble, annoyed protest, which she hadn't meant. \"I was drugged.\"\n\nOne of Annis's eyebrows rose sharply. She was braiding her long hair in quick, efficient swipes, and now she neatly tied off the end and began coiling the waist-long braid into a crown atop her head. She slotted in pins to hold it without so much as glancing in a mirror. It was impressive. \"Drugged?\" she repeated. \"I suppose you drank Gregory's special tea, then.\"\n\n\"He does this often?\"\n\n\"Often enough,\" she said. Not smiling now, and in no way amused. \"When he thinks he might not get his way. Funny thing: give the man all the power he wants, and he still feels weak. Almost as if there's a hole in him that can't be filled.\" Annis's look had turned sharp now. Assessing. \"Feeling better?\"\n\n\"Some. Don't suppose you have any headache remedies?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Annis turned to a cabinet and came back with a glass of water and a single pill. \"This should settle you.\" When Morgan hesitated, Annis made a face. \"I'm not one of Gregory's lackeys. I was Keria Morning's friend. And I'll not be loyal to the man who all but jumped into her still-warm shoes.\"\n\nMorgan took the pill and chased it down with the water. \"Then we might be friends,\" she said. Through the pain of her headache, she sensed a very definite hiss that defined the presence of alchemical scripts near her. No, around her. She could see them, when she concentrated, though it nearly split her skull in two: bands of symbols that ran in spirals up the walls of this room. Expertly done, but not expertly enough to be hidden from her.\n\nShe concentrated on the one point of weakness: the symbol that relayed the information gathered by the scripts to the transcription automata. She reached out to stroke her fingers over the barely perceptible writing and thought about sending a surge of power through it to disable the connection... but no. If she did, that would alert him that she'd recovered her power. And they'd simply repair it.\n\nAnnis, she realized, was talking to her. \"I'm sorry. What did you say?\"\n\n\"I said that you're also not my friend, girl. You're my charge. I'm completely responsible for your behavior. That's a neat trick, don't you think? I'm his most vocal doubter. If either of us steps wrong, we're both in it.\"\n\n\"He can't kill us.\"\n\n\"He can't kill you,\" Annis corrected. \"Me, I'm of little enough use to him. Too old to bear another child, and the least of all in this rusty prison. Killing me would be easy. So by all means, factor that into your thinking.\"\n\nIt was the last thing Morgan wanted to do, honestly. Having another person depending on her choices made her feel claustrophobic. \"You were friends with Keria Morning? Really?\"\n\n\"Aye. When I came here, she was the first to make me welcome and the last to make me feel inferior. I knew she had a destiny, that one. I'm sorry it had to include dying for her son's folly, but that was as she wished it.\"\n\n\"You think it's folly to fight for the heart of the Library?\"\n\n\"I think the Library is too huge a beastie to turn with the poke of a few spears.\"\n\nMorgan almost laughed at that, dire as it was; the image of the Library as a lumbering beast the size of an ancient dinosaur, but composed entirely of books, was too strange. She liked Annis. That was going to make things much, much more difficult.\n\nThe headache pill was already starting to lift the throbbing fog from her brain, and without that to focus on, she began to notice other things: the cool, incense-scented air that tasted just a little bitter on the back of her tongue. The luxurious comfort of the bed on which she rested\u2014only the finest for the Obscurists, of course. It was a fancy cage, indeed. Most accepted it without much protest, though from her previous confinement here, she could name only a few who were truly content.\n\nAnnis, though truly happy, was by no means content. She had a sharp mind, a sharp tongue, and a spirit that would never come to terms with this prison, however sweet it seemed.\n\n\"Annis,\" she said. \"Do you know what's happened to... to my friends?\"\n\nThe older woman stopped in the act of wrapping a colorful knitted scarf around her neck and turned to stare at her. \"No. Why? Weren't you captured alone?\"\n\n\"I wasn't captured,\" she said. \"I was\u2014\" She remembered the scripts in the walls and held up a finger, then slowly turned it to the wall. \"Oh, my head is still making me sick. Do you have another of those pills?\" As she said it, she shook her head. Annis looked mystified, but then nodded.\n\n\"Why, yes. Yes, I do.\" Annis wasn't much for deception; that sounded as artificial as a first-year actor in a play. \"Let me get that for you.\"\n\nShe stood up and then looked around uncertainly and mouthed, What are you doing?\n\nChanging a script, Morgan mouthed back. Keep talking.\n\nAnnis looked completely thrown by the request, but she found something to chatter about\u2014food, it sounded like, and her favorite dishes\u2014while Morgan summoned up that tiny hoarded store of power from the dead rose and began to examine the complex formulae that surrounded the room. Clever, she thought. But not clever enough.\n\nIt took a single, focused burst of power to rewrite the variable to be switched on and off at will, with a simple voice command.\n\nMorgan blinked, let the alchemical formulae fade, and said, \"Silencio.\"\n\n\"Did you just tell me to shut up in Spanish?\" Annis asked. \"Because I'll have you know I'm excellent with Spanish\u2014don't you try to throw me off\u2014\"\n\n\"They can't hear us now,\" Morgan said. \"I don't dare leave it off for long, but whenever we want to talk without eavesdroppers, just say that.\"\n\n\"Handy,\" Annis said, and blinked. \"You could honestly see the scripts? In here? Weren't they hidden?\"\n\n\"Very hidden. But I have a gift for that sort of thing.\"\n\n\"Obviously.\" Annis took in a breath and blew it out. \"All right, then. What do you want to tell me?\"\n\n\"That I came here because I wanted to,\" Morgan said. \"And I warn you, if you go to Gregory, it won't stop me. I'll just find another way.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't give Gregory the sweat off my back. He was a horrid, power-hungry bully all his life, and he's turning into a monster as fast as he can. Your secrets are safe with me.\" Annis considered her for a long moment before saying, \"Why would you come back here of your own free will?\"\n\n\"Because the best place to start taking away the Archivist's power is here, where his power really rests. Without the Iron Tower, he's got very little.\"\n\n\"He has the High Garda,\" Annis said. \"Which is no inconsiderable threat in itself.\"\n\n\"If he truly has them.\"\n\n\"Hmmm. And he may have overstepped, you know. He's called for a Feast of Greater Burning,\" Annis said. \"The public execution of his political enemies. And I've heard that many otherwise loyal High Garda soldiers aren't well pleased to be doing his dirty work.\"\n\n\"How would you hear that?\"\n\n\"My girl, I've made it a point to, ah, intimately befriend the guards when they seem so inclined. And they seem happy to talk under those conditions. Especially since they know I can't tell anyone outside these walls. Oh, don't give me such a blushing look. I've always enjoyed the pleasures of a good bed partner, and heaven knows, we've got little else to do for entertainment.\" Morgan started to laugh in uncomfortable delight but managed to keep it to a muffled giggle. Annis's grin widened. \"So. You're right that if you somehow break the links of the Iron Tower to the Archivist, the High Garda might not be as firm an ally as he imagines. No one likes what he's doing.\"\n\n\"I like it even less. It's a terrible, cruel waste. And thinking that he might put Scholar Wolfe on that pyre...\"\n\nAnnis shut her eyes briefly and then opened them again. The shine had taken on a hard quality. \"He has Keria's son? You're sure?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"She died to protect Christopher, you know.\"\n\n\"I know. I was there.\" Morgan swallowed hard. \"I wanted to like her. But I only ever knew her as my jailor. Seeing her with Wolfe...\"\n\n\"She never wanted to give that boy up,\" Annis said. \"She hated that he was taken away. Once she became Obscurist, she bent the rules regularly to keep children with parents as long as she could, even when there was no hope that they would test as talented. She wasn't a monster, Morgan. She was a woman trying to do her best, under tremendous pressure.\"\n\n\"What about Wolfe's father?\"\n\nAnnis fell uncharacteristically silent. She rose and walked to the tall mirror in the far corner of the room, adjusting the fall of the warm robes she wore. \"He broke her heart.\"\n\n\"Is he still here? In the Tower?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, he's here, though he's not been seen in many years. Self-imposed exile, though I suppose Gregory will make it more official than that and lock him in for good one of these days.\"\n\n\"Is he as powerful as they say he is?\"\n\n\"Aye.\" Annis turned slowly to regard her. \"And that's what you really wanted to know, isn't it? About him?\"\n\n\"I'm just curious,\" Morgan lied. \"What's he like?\"\n\n\"Like? Like a wild, mad bastard who never accepted his fate. He loved Keria. Too much, I think. When he turned down the chance to become the Obscurist and she took it instead... that was the end of them. That, and how she let their son be sent away, or at least, that's what he came to believe. We all thought he'd come crawling out, sooner or later; few seal themselves away and mean it, you know. But he did. He shut the door and never left those rooms again.\"\n\n\"You're sure he's still alive?\"\n\n\"Dead men don't take deliveries of food and supplies, have their clothes cleaned, and all the other mundane necessities of life. But he's put wards on his doors that only Keria could break\u2014and I know others, including Gregory, tried.\"\n\nMorgan was desperate to ask exactly where Eskander's room was located. The Tower was large and complicated; she'd explored some of it before, but hardly all, and though the whispers about the Hermit of the Iron Tower had come to her attention, she hadn't been interested then in following them.\n\nShe'd pushed Annis enough, though. There was no doubt Gregory was forcing the older woman to spy on whatever Morgan did, and while Annis would likely cover for her out of sheer dislike for the Obscurist, if it became too obvious, she wouldn't have too much of a choice.\n\n\"I'm going to turn the ears back on,\" Morgan said. \"Pretend they're not there. But don't mention Eskander or anything we talked about. All right?\"\n\nAnnis nodded. \"You said there's a word to speak to turn it off. What turns it on again?\"\n\nMorgan said, \"Presta atenci\u00f3n.\" Pay attention. \"Thank you for the medication, and letting me rest. I think it's starting to help. I think I might be a little hungry.\"\n\nAnnis stumbled a little but finally said, \"Well, then, we'll be having something to eat. Come on. I'll refresh your memory on just how good the cooks are here.\"\n\nShe seemed relieved when they left the room, and whispered, \"So they're listening? God help me, I say the most indecent things.\"\n\n\"Pretend they're always listening,\" Morgan said. \"And if you want to have private conversation...\"\n\n\"Yes, I understand. I told you, I'm brilliant with Spanish.\" Annis winked at her and led the way to the winding stairs. \"And with Spaniards, too.\"\n\nMorgan was sure that was at least partially true."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "Annis escorted her to the Iron Tower's dining hall, where Morgan forced herself to smile at Obscurists who welcomed her back\u2014some even meaning it\u2014and ate her food in silence. She'd choked down most of it when a hush came over the large room\u2014and over the fifty or so Obscurists gathered in it\u2014as a High Garda soldier wearing the symbol of Iron Tower dedicated service strode in, scanned the room, and headed straight for the table Morgan and Annis shared. Others in the room averted their gazes; in such confined spaces, privacy was paramount, just as gossip was king. The soldier was a man of native Australian heritage, with solid features and deep-set eyes. He nodded to Annis, who silently took her cup of tea and left the table, leaving Morgan quite alone in the midst of a crowd.\n\n\"Captain wants you,\" the soldier said. \"Now.\" His Greek was excellent\u2014better than Morgan's\u2014and she nodded and got up without a word. Resisting would only bring more of the guards, and this wasn't the time for a meaningful fight. Besides, she was curious what possible interest a captain of the Iron Tower High Garda could have in her.\n\nHer answer was even less clear when she was presented to the captain, who proved to be a tall, severely dressed woman. Skin the color of the bark of an olive tree, and a prominent nose that looked to have been broken at least once. In her middle age, with threads of gray beginning to dust her dark, sleek hair. The High Garda captain's office was on the ground floor of the Tower, temptingly close to the exits, but it wasn't the time to consider running, either. So when the captain nodded to a chair in front of the plain desk, Morgan took it.\n\n\"Morgan Hault,\" the captain said. \"That's your name?\"\n\n\"It is.\"\n\n\"Mine is Captain Nofret Alamasi.\" The captain had a Codex open on her desk, and Morgan suspected that what was written there contained reports of her prior behavior and misconducts\u2014and escapes. \"I am known for two things, Morgan. I am not friendly, and I am loyal to the Great Library beyond question. Which is why this is my posting. The last High Garda captain had a tendency to befriend Obscurists. I do not have that failing. If you keep faith, I will treat you as an honored guest in this tower. If you break it, you will be a prisoner.\"\n\n\"I'm already a prisoner,\" Morgan said. \"We all are.\"\n\n\"It doesn't have to feel that way unless you make it so.\" The captain closed the book. \"I wanted to see your face, and for you to see mine, when I give you this message: if you seek to escape this tower again, I will confine you to a single room, feed you through a slot in the door, and you will never see the light of the sun again. Are we clear?\"\n\n\"Clear,\" Morgan said. \"Captain Alamasi, how long have you held this posting?\"\n\nAlamasi gave her a level stare before she said, \"Not long. Why?\"\n\n\"You might look into how long your predecessors lasted. Your new Obscurist Magnus is not a patient man, and he isn't a good man. You'd do well not to put your faith in him.\"\n\n\"I don't,\" the captain said. \"I put my faith in my orders. Which I will carry out without fail. You may count on me to do that. I don't need warnings, and I don't need conversation. I've warned you. And that's all the grace you'll get.\"\n\nInteresting. It sent Morgan's mind careening down a path she hadn't thought of before, and she was a little distracted when she said, \"Yes, Captain. I understand.\"\n\nThe captain nodded at her waiting soldier, who ushered Morgan out again, up into the lifting chamber that rose through the levels of the Iron Tower. He was returning her to her room, she realized, and not to the dining hall. She didn't object.\n\nAnnis was waiting for her, and when the door swung open, the older Obscurist jumped from the bed, where she'd been sitting, to stand in awkward silence, looking from Morgan to the soldier. Not sure of what her response should be.\n\n\"It's all right,\" Morgan told her. \"I've just met the High Garda captain. She seems nice.\"\n\nThe soldier gave her a look that told her he almost appreciated the joke, and then he turned and marched away, leaving her to Annis's care.\n\n\"Christ above, I thought they were marching you off to...\" Annis didn't finish the thought. \"Well, at least you're safe. Just a warning, then?\"\n\n\"A warning,\" Morgan said. \"I've gotten nothing but warnings since I stepped into this Tower. What exactly are they afraid I'm going to do?\"\n\n\"What aren't they afraid you'll do? Here. Orders came for you.\" Annis handed her a Codex. The first page held a message from Gregory in the man's cramped, inelegant hand. It read, Tell Morgan Hault to report to the Master Copyist. She will serve there until I decide she can be trusted with more vital duties.\n\nServing under the Master Copyist was one step above kitchen duty\u2014mind-numbing work, hand copying scripts developed by more gifted Obscurists. It was reserved for those who were too low powered to do anything more creative.\n\n\"Annis,\" Morgan said thoughtfully. \"You work under the Master Copyist, don't you?\"\n\n\"For my sins,\" Annis said. \"Why?\"\n\n\"We are going to the same place.\"\n\n\"No!\" Annis looked horrified. \"He wouldn't! You? What a waste of talent that is!\"\n\n\"I expect it's to teach me humility and make sure that I understand how to obey,\" Morgan said. \"I don't suppose it'll be very effective at either, but I'll copy for him. As much as he likes.\"\n\n\"Will you, now?\"\n\nAnnis's regard this time was steady and interested, but Morgan didn't satisfy her curiosity. She simply couldn't afford to do so. Annis might be an ally in what was to come. Or she might be a dire problem.\n\nEither way, Morgan didn't intend to involve her any further than necessary.\n\nSettling in as a copyist was ridiculously simple, and it gave her time to construct advanced formulae in her mind, which she wrote out on a mental Codex in letters of fire while her hand copied down simple mirror scripts, over and over, for inclusion in the bindings of Blanks. There were about fifty Obscurists set to the task, all copying the same mindless string of symbols and imbuing the scrap of paper with a brush of talent to link it to Aristotle's universal liquid. He'd been right about this, if wrong about many other things: there truly was an undercurrent of power in the world, one that those with specific skills and gifts could access to shift the nature of a thing from one state to another.\n\nI could write one symbol down, pour power into it, and kill everyone in this room, she thought. For just a moment, she could feel the trembling possibility of it in her fingertips, a dark power like shadows brushing her skin. I could take all this away from the Archivist. Every one of his Obscurists. It seemed so simple in that moment, so breathtakingly easy, that when she realized what she was thinking of doing, she flinched and ruined the script she was copying. The Master Copyist\u2014a nasty little beetle named Fratelli\u2014looked sharply in her direction, and she disposed of the ruined paper in a bin beneath her desk and pulled another slim scrap onto the copy surface.\n\nShe wasn't here to kill anyone. She was here to save them. Her power had been twisted and came from darker places now, but that didn't mean she had to give in to the impulses it fired in her mind.\n\nShe copied the script. Flawlessly. And the next, and the next, until the Master Copyist's attention wandered away.\n\nThen she began to alter the scripts.\n\nIt would have taken a sharper eye than his to realize what she was doing, and fooling the older man who sat beside her to double-check her work was even easier. All of the scripts appeared to work perfectly; when he brushed his thumb across the inked symbols, they rose from the paper in glittering images.\n\nBut there was one tiny difference in the scripts from the standard she was supposed to be duplicating... and each script stored a single letter into a message she was composing. It took a great deal of concentration, and more than two hours to do even the brief message she intended, but at last, she wrote the final symbol, and imbued it with the last piece of punctuation. Then she tapped pen to paper, a seemingly innocent gesture, and all the scripts flared into power at once in a single burst.\n\nSomewhere in Alexandria, there was a Codex that Brendan Brightwell had been assigned, and if she knew Jess, he had already picked it up and read through it, and some of his essence had marked it. Her message sought that essence and directed itself not to the Codex\u2014which was sure to be monitored\u2014but to the nearest Blank to it.\n\nShe indulged herself by wasting a total of seven letters at the end to say I love you.\n\nUnnecessary, but she couldn't resist. She felt a wild, sudden yearning for him, for his easy smile and the clarified light in his eyes when he looked at her. She needed to feel his arms around her, and to hear his voice tell her that however unlikely it seemed right now, it would succeed. Her breath seemed to swell in her chest, like tears, and she closed her eyes for a moment and imagined herself somewhere else, far from here, with him in a place of sunlight, silence, warmth.\n\nA hand rapped sharply on her desk, and she opened her eyes. \"Stop lagging,\" the Master Copyist snapped. \"Keep writing.\"\n\nMorgan bit back the impulse to suck the life out of him in one convulsive, wonderful pull, and put her pen back to paper to draw the same symbols, over and over and over.\n\nThe day was almost done when a hand fell on her shoulder, and she looked up into the face of the Obscurist Magnus. Gregory. Her skin tightened, and she resisted an urge to strike his grip away. Did he know? Is he better than I thought?\n\nBut there was no awareness in the Obscurist Magnus's face that she'd been slowly, carefully manipulating the simple task she'd been set. No, this was something else.\n\nAnd she felt needles of alarm sweep through her at the sight of the cold focus of his gaze.\n\n\"Come,\" he said. \"Walk with me.\"\n\nAcross the room, Annis was just rising from her copy desk; the older woman caught sight of Gregory, and there was no mistaking the alarm on her face, but she did nothing but avert her gaze and hurry off. No help from her.\n\nNo help from anyone, as the room quickly emptied, and Morgan debated whether it was time to mount a resistance. Not yet. Of course not yet.\n\nShe silently stood and joined Gregory as the Obscurist walked out of the copy room and down a winding set of stairs that wrapped around the vast walls of the Tower. It was dizzying, this method of descending, and she tried not to look down. She'd always had a hidden fear of heights, though she knew there were alchemical barriers in place beyond the railings; after the first few times Obscurists had hurled themselves from the highest floors, precautions had been put in place. If she were bent on suicide, she could have easily unraveled them, but she wasn't. Though pushing Gregory over was an interesting thought.\n\n\"Where are you taking me?\" she asked him.\n\n\"To meet someone,\" he said. \"Someone special.\"\n\nShe almost, almost bolted then; Gregory took an unhealthy interest in the darkest secret of the Iron Tower: the breeding of Obscurists. She'd accepted when returning here that they would assign her a partner in the hopes of producing a talented child to add to the thinning ranks of the Obscurists. She'd accepted that they'd try to force her into it.\n\nShe never, ever intended to cooperate... though the fact that Gregory had so easily drugged her on arrival was worrying. She'd need to develop defensive scripts to repel any other attempts. I should have done that already, she thought. She felt cold and alone, descending these steps.\n\nGregory stopped on the landing for the seventh level, which held the Obscurists' opulent library. An entire wall of Blanks waiting to be filled with requested content, and an array of Codexes to use to select it. But more than that, the Obscurist library also contained an entire wall of original volumes and scrolls, some so ancient and fragile that they were kept in cases with alchemical formulae designed to slow their destruction.\n\nFor a disorienting moment, Morgan imagined Jess here. She could vividly see him sprawled just there on that tufted couch, an original volume in his hands. He'd secured reading material even in their Philadelphia prison. He'd have found this a rare delight.\n\nBut the young man sitting on the couch\u2014not sprawling\u2014was reading a Blank, and he quickly put it aside and rose at the sight of the Obscurist Magnus.\n\nThen he looked at her, and she stared back without a single flicker of expression. She didn't dislike him, not at all; his name was Benjamin Argent, and he was a kind, smart, intelligent soul.\n\n\"Morgan,\" he said, and extended his hand. He was taller than she was, and slender, and she thought she could see both resignation and resentment in the brief eye contact they shared before both looked away. \"You're back.\"\n\n\"Evidently.\"\n\n\"I didn't expect to ever see you again.\" His tone was neutral, but she easily read what he meant: I hoped I'd never see you again.\n\n\"It came as something of a surprise to me, too.\"\n\nGregory was smiling at them both. A cold, knowing smile. He said nothing, but the silence said everything he needed to convey to her\u2014no, to both of them. Morgan knew that Ben already had a lover within the Iron Tower, but not the one that had been chosen for him. Ben had politely, calmly, pointedly refused to submit.\n\n\"I have a question for the two of you,\" the Obscurist said. \"Do you recall the last time an Obscurist was executed for disobedience in the Iron Tower?\"\n\nIt was such an unexpected question that Morgan glanced at Ben, mystified, and he seemed just as puzzled. \"No, sir,\" Ben said. \"Punishments, yes. Execution, no.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" Gregory said. \"Obscurists have been exempt from execution for a very long time. We have always been a rare breed, and over the past thousand years there have been fewer and fewer of us. A few hundred years ago, Obscurists were free to come and go from this place, you know. Free to marry whomever they wished. The folly of this became obvious over time. We are, and always will be, a valuable resource. So every possible effort is made to rehabilitate Obscurists who fail to comply with their expected duties. Correct?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Ben said. \"I'm not sure what you\u2014\"\n\n\"The rules have changed,\" Gregory said. \"And none of this is for your benefit.\"\n\nHe cut the young man's throat.\n\nIt was so sudden, deliberate, and shocking a move that for an instant, Morgan didn't even understand what she was seeing. A flash of a knife Gregory had held casually at his side. A sudden, violent burst of red across Gregory's robes ( plain robes, he planned this, he wore things he could afford to have stained ). The sharp, copper smell flooded over her, and she felt trapped in it, off-balance and slow with horror.\n\nShe looked down, still not comprehending what had happened. Benjamin had collapsed, his lifeblood pumping out and soaking the rug he lay on. He was gasping for air, and she thought wildly, stupidly, that she should do something, anything, and her shock broke with an almost audible snap inside.\n\nThe rush of anguish, horror, and fury mixed with the red taste of blood in the air, and she reached for power, any power, to use to strike back.\n\n\"No, no, no,\" Gregory said. \"None of that.\" He touched her collar.\n\nThe agony that hit her was like nothing she had felt before. She screamed and collapsed next to the dying young man, and felt his warm blood on her skin as she writhed uncontrollably. She could feel his life seeping away, and she couldn't touch it. Couldn't manage more than a tortured gasp for breath.\n\nShe was barely conscious when Gregory leaned over her. His blood-flecked face was framed by black sparkles as she fought to stay conscious. \"Consider this a lesson,\" the Obscurist Magnus said. \"I know you're thinking of ways to undermine me. The first time you defy an order from me, any order, someone else will die. I told you. The rules have changed. You and your friends did that.\"\n\nShe gasped for air that seemed thick and liquid in her lungs. Gregory's voice seemed smeared and far away, his face receding down a long, dark tunnel.\n\nYou and your friends did that.\n\nAnd then she tumbled away into the black."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Brendan Brightwell to Jess Brightwell, sent via ship from England to Alexandria. Lost, along with the ship Valiant Isis, in a storm off the coast of Spain:\n\n\u2002I'm as bored as bored could be, Brother. Being you is dead boring. I've been given stacks of books, and I'm forced to make some show of actually reading them, since I'm supposed to be you.\n\n\u2002You are impossible. How do you ever live with yourself?\n\n\u2002I'm sorry to have to tell you that no one misses you. Well, certainly not Da, who rubs his hands together in glee when he thinks about the vast amounts of geneih he's about to make from the Library, and the equally vast amounts of other currencies that are pouring into his banks from every corner of the earth. Your Thomas's press is something of a nine-day wonder. Every unpleasant character from Shanghai to the American colonies has sent emissaries to have a look, and he's gotten quite good at demonstrating the thing. God help us if it breaks, but Thomas left thorough instructions. I'm sure that\u2014as you\u2014I'd be forced into pretending to fix it.\n\n\u2002Do overthrow your tyrant and finish this soon. Since you don't have half as much of a fondness for wine, or food, or casual ladies, I'm forced to do without most of the things that make life worthwhile.\n\n\u2002Books, Jess. Really?\n\n\u2002Release me from the hell soon, or I might just release myself."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "For a long few days, Jess waited for word. Any word would have been better than the frozen silence from the Serapeum; he'd expected to be summoned for more interrogation, threatened, or\u2014most unlikely\u2014delivered to the Great Archives to begin choosing books for the trade with his father. He waited for any further messages from Morgan, but none arrived. No word from Dario's cousin, either, though he could see from his front door that there were always men and women posted to watch him. Whether they were Library or Spanish spies, he had no way of telling.\n\nMight as well get on with it, then, he thought that morning, as he watched the sunrise and drank sweet, black, thick coffee. He stood in his doorway and leaned there, marking the positions of each watcher. They were as bored as he was. He'd given them no reason at all to raise their alarms, after all. That was intentional.\n\nJess held one hand down at his side and, with deliberation, spelled out his message in sign: Send Quest now. Santiago had told him that he'd have someone watching for any such communications; Jess could only hope that the agents weren't asleep on the job at this early hour. At least the ambassador had seemed like a serious, competent man. Perhaps he inspired others to be just as alert.\n\nHe repeated the sequence of letters five times, just to be sure; it took the entire leisurely drunk cup of coffee, and the entire sunrise, to do it without making it seem obvious. He was praying that none of the High Garda spies could read sign, or at least, not the specific Spanish sign dialect that Dario had taught him.\n\nAfter he'd thrown the dregs of the cup into the street, he turned and went back inside, shut the door, and waited on Elsinore Quest.\n\nQuest never arrived.\n\nThe High Garda did.\n\nHis first warning was when the door smashed open and a flood of uniforms rushed through it; he was thrown against the wall with shouted warnings ringing in his ears, and while his face was pressed tight to the rough paint, he listened to them tear apart the house.\n\n\"What's this?\"\n\nA soldier yanked him back by the collar, slammed him into the chair at the kitchen table, and held up two tightly wrapped packets in thin metallic foil, each about the size of his hand. Jess shrugged. The soldier carefully slit one open and peered at the brown sludge inside, then sniffed it.\n\n\"Smoke bomb,\" he reported to his commander, who stood watching. She nodded sharply. \"Expertly made.\"\n\n\"Of course it is. We gave him access to a Codex. He likely has dozens of toys made by now. Tear it apart. Find everything.\" She turned her gaze to Jess. \"I don't blame you. I'd do the same. But others might not be so forgiving.\"\n\n\"I was bored,\" Jess said. \"What else was there to do? Couldn't go out for a stroll, could I?\" He finished it with Brendan's best, most charming smile, the one his brother deployed to great effect, and watched it have no impact at all.\n\n\"Pity you didn't show a little good faith and patience, Brightwell. You might have lived through this.\" She shook her head. \"Odds are, I won't be seeing you again.\"\n\nThe urge to just run felt dirty and overwhelming, and for a few seconds he allowed himself the fantasy. He could fight. He might even make it to the safety of the Spanish embassy; from there, he could be out of Alexandria on a friendly ship. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the cool salt spray on his face.\n\nAnd where could he go to escape the guilt?\n\nRunning meant leaving Scholar Wolfe to die screaming in the Feast of Greater Burning. It meant leaving Morgan locked in the Iron Tower, forced into a life she never wanted\u2014and that she'd gone back to voluntarily, out of sheer faith in his ability to pull this off.\n\nRun, and you're the worst kind of coward, he told himself. The part of him that was so very good at impersonating his twin, Brendan, argued back, Run, and I'm a pragmatist. It was always a risky plan. It isn't going to work if I'm locked up here, without access, without influence. I can make another plan.\n\nJess closed his eyes and, in a moment, opened them again. If running was the intelligent thing to do, then he would have to be a fool.\n\nIt took the High Garda less than five minutes to strip his little prison down to bare floor and bare walls; they were well trained indeed. They found almost all the things he'd hidden: the carefully sharpened knives, the concoctions he'd brewed from spices and oils to create stinging, blinding fogs; the small, crude still he'd made to brew pure alcohol. The captain set it on the table with raised eyebrows. \"That's for personal consumption,\" Jess said. \"I told you I was bored.\" It wasn't, of course. Alcohol was an excellent base for many things, including firebombs. Hardly as effective as Greek fire, but then, he couldn't make Greek fire out of fruit, sugar, and yeast, all of which they'd provided him as part of his kitchen supplies.\n\n\"Clever little criminal,\" she said. \"The worst kind. Get up. Let's go.\"\n\nHe shrugged. They didn't shackle him, which he found interesting, but they closed around him in a cordon and took him out of the house to the street.\n\nThey parted to reveal not a High Garda carrier, but a large, formal carriage with the seal of the Great Library on the side and glimmering gold on the brightwork.\n\n\"Archivist wants you,\" the captain said. \"Inside.\"\n\nQuest, you bastard, Jess thought. It was too late now. If the Spanish spies had gotten the message, if they'd passed it on, then Quest had been slow to respond, and there was no longer any use wishing. He knew that this meeting with the Archivist would be something far less cordial than the last.\n\nThis would be the real interrogation.\n\nAnd he would have to survive it without help.\n\n\"Coming?\" he asked the captain, as he climbed into the carriage. She shook her head. He held out his hand. \"You've been fair. Thank you.\"\n\nFor the first time, she let a tiny smile crack her hard surface. \"I'm not fool enough to shake the hand of a skilled pickpocket,\" she said. \"Good luck, Brightwell.\"\n\nShe slammed the door, and he heard the locks engage.\n\nTrapped. Doesn't matter, Jess told himself, though he felt the coil of wire in his guts pull tighter. Whatever comes next, you can outwit it.\n\nHe had to believe that. If he didn't, this would be over quickly.\n\nThe interior of the carriage reminded him, quite darkly, of a carriage he'd entered at ten years old, when he'd first watched a vile man rip apart and eat a book he'd have given his life to save. Ink-lickers. Jess shuddered when the memory crawled up his spine; he hadn't encountered that particular book vice in years, since the Library had been intent on stamping it out. It seemed a uniquely English obsession, so far, and by far the most disturbing one he could imagine. At least as it related to the written word.\n\nHe tried not to think about what was coming as the carriage rolled smoothly on. There was no point in trying the locks; they were clearly alchemical, and he was no Obscurist. With time, he might find a way to force them.\n\nHe didn't have time.\n\nThe carriage had gone for a few minutes when the trap slid back on top of the coach with a bang that made him jump and look up; silhouetted by the sunlight, the driver was just another uniformed Library servant. Jess hadn't looked at him twice before climbing in; he'd been utterly unremarkable.\n\nMore remarkable now that he said, \"Right, let's go on with it, boy. We don't have much time.\"\n\nJess blocked the light with his hand, and the features came into shadowy focus. \"Who are you?\"\n\nThe man sighed. \"Truly, I have the curse of a forgettable face. Or the benefit, in my line of work.\"\n\n\"Quest?\" Jess felt a jolt of astonishment, with a healthy dose of chagrin; he'd completely missed the obvious. Then again, so had the High Garda, even the commander. Quest had a gift for blending in... and a rare nerve, to do it so boldly.\n\n\"Well, you did quite generously hire me for a small fortune, young man. Or have me hired, at any rate. I trust I can do as fine a job for you as I did for your Scholar Wolfe in the past, but without quite as much trauma, perhaps. What is it you require?\" Elsinore Quest was a skilled Mesmer, capable of convincing almost anyone of almost anything; he'd helped Scholar Wolfe unearth the buried and agonizing memories of his time under Library captivity, in order to pinpoint where Thomas Schreiber had been taken. An ugly task at the time, but a very necessary one.\n\n\"Can you mesmerize me on the move? While driving?\"\n\n\"It's not ideal, but it will have to do. I only have this very special position for a few more blocks, mind you, and then I'll have to exit the box and the regular driver will be restored quite peacefully and won't remember a thing of leaving his post. Don't worry. You won't remember it, either.\"\n\nJess opened his mouth to ask details of that particular feat, but Quest continued. \"Your very fine Spanish friend relayed me quite a huge pile of Alexandrian geneih, or I promise you, I'd not be wearing this rotten livery and taking such a ridiculous risk, so you must trust me that I know my business. What is it you wish me to do for you?\"\n\nJess told him. Quest was quiet for a long moment, and Jess had the sharp premonition that payment or no, Quest was about to disappear from his post atop the box without another word. Not even no.\n\nThen the man sighed. \"I suppose it's possible. Very well. How long do you want it to last?\"\n\n\"At least the rest of the day. How long will it take to achieve the proper\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhh,\" Quest said, and there was something soothing about his voice now. Quiet and still. He was tapping a finger lightly against the roof of the carriage, and Jess's attention was drawn by the rhythm. \"Just a little further, Mr. Brightwell. Just listen to the sound of my voice. Listen and relax. Listen and relax, and we will have a chat about all of this, a wonderful and calming chat about your brother.\"\n\nJess found himself collapsing back against the seats.\n\nAnd then he didn't remember anything else."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "It couldn't have been more than a few moments before he opened his eyes, but he felt as if he'd slept a full night. All the dull aches drilled into his bones by the stress and worry were gone.\n\nHe looked up through the open trap of the door and saw a silent driver in livery. Something about the driver. He'd forgotten what he'd observed, and it no longer seemed important. He yawned and stretched and thought, Well, if I'm going to my gruesome death, at least I'm doing it in a damn cheerful mood.\n\nThe carriage rolled swiftly on through the streets; lesser conveyances moved out of the way, pedestrians stepped back, and even the larger, lumbering steam wagons that moved goods through the city made respectful space for their passage. Well, this is posh, he thought. And when did the Archivist become an emperor? Ages ago, most likely, a bit of grandeur and arrogance at a time. Power formed like pearls, in accretion layers over time. Pharaoh's reign had passed, though a ceremonial Ptolemy still acted as a figurehead and kept Egypt's rich history alive. Gradually, inevitably, all of the devotion that the old god-king demanded had landed on the Library.\n\nAnd now it formed a crown on the head of the most corrupt man ever to hold the office of Archivist.\n\nDa had always said that the corrupt were easier to do business with than the honest, at least; if that held true, today would end in huge profits. And if it went badly, he could always sacrifice himself to remove the old man from the board. Better a bloody, costly victory than a slow defeat for the family. He didn't have a weapon, but he'd make do. His father had taught him early on in life that anything, even a tightly rolled piece of paper, could be effective enough as a weapon. Speed and ruthlessness were the key components of any attack, and he'd need to have both of those if he intended to kill the Archivist; the High Garda and automata would be on him in a second, maybe two, and he had to make it count. If that was what the day required.\n\nNo sense in raising his pulse now. He couldn't control what was to come, so he closed his eyes until the steady hiss of the steam engine changed pitch. The carriage was slowing, and the drive was over.\n\nPity. It was a perfect day outside.\n\nThe carriage didn't pause at the checkpoints, which parted without question; the prowling sphinxes there glared in at him with reddened eyes, their eerie human faces reminding him of someone and no one at all. The sphinxes used at the checkpoints were larger than their more common counterparts, and the wings folded at their sides were not at all ornamental. They could fly for short distances, the wings were sharp as knives, and he'd heard rumors that their bites were poisonous. He believed it. The aura of menace coming off these things was especially intense.\n\nThere was, he noticed, also a large number of High Garda Elite manning the checkpoint\u2014twenty, by his guess. If there were as many stationed at every side of the Serapeum's pyramid, the Archivist was uneasy.\n\nGood. An uneasy negotiator was an easier mark.\n\nThe carriage deposited him in a secured courtyard\u2014more automata prowling\u2014and the driver ushered him out with icy politeness.\n\nNeksa was waiting for him. He felt a lurch in the pit of his stomach, seeing her again. Sweet, lovely Neksa.\n\n\"At least if I'm going to die today, I get a last look at true beauty.\" He didn't even think about the words before he said them, but they sounded right. Felt right. He paired them with an extravagant bow.\n\nAs he straightened, Neksa slapped him. Hard enough to rock his head back and inscribe a hand-shaped burn on his cheek, and he blinked back his surprise and somehow managed to hold on to the slipping grin. \"Suppose I deserved that.\"\n\n\"Suppose you deserve a great deal more,\" Neksa snapped. \"You are here for the Archivist, not for me. If it were up to me, I'd put you on a boat back home and drill holes in the hull as a going-away present.\"\n\nWell, you do care after all, love. He followed her stiff back and swaying hips through a small door at the back of a water garden thick with lotus and found himself in one of the many claustrophobic passages within the pyramid itself. He'd never been inside it, and he marked it for later, though he hadn't seen how she'd managed to open it. Likely it was keyed to the band around her wrist, which would clearly list her privileges and restrictions. Wouldn't work without her being alive and wearing it, of course; the Library wasn't stupid.\n\nIf he wanted to use this way again, he'd have to make Neksa an ally... or a prisoner. Though he didn't relish that last, but he didn't rule it out.\n\nThe looming, arching walls were inscribed with hieroglyphs nearly as fresh as the day they were chiseled, millennia ago, and he resisted the urge to trail his fingers over those sharp edges. History was everywhere in Alexandria. It was in the air he breathed, the stones he walked on. The Great Library had survived the march of time. It gave him some hope that he might survive his day inside it.\n\nNeksa reached the distant end of the corridor\u2014which, he noted, had no branches and he strongly suspected could be locked off at either end with either the airflows blocked or lethal gas introduced. Stepping through to the next room was disorienting, since the next chamber was a huge vaulted gallery filled with twenty-foot-high gilded statues of gods, all marking a path that led to the other side. Horus guarded the end of the row, facing toward them; the giant hawk-headed god stood staring straight ahead with a flail clasped in his right hand. All the gods had been decorated with gold and silver, but Horus's body had been crafted of pure black stone, and the craftsman had taken a Roman approach to showing the perfect musculature... an odd effect, and more than a little unsettling.\n\nHe was unsurprised when the god's eyes lit red as they approached and the golden hawk's head tilted down to regard them. The flail in its hand was razor edged. It would cut them both in half with a single swing, and Jess watched for any twitch of movement that would signal that was about to happen. Dive for the floor, roll, hope for the best. At least you won't suffer long if you're slow.\n\nNeksa, without pausing or slowing her stride, held up her hand to show her bracelet, and he did the same. Horus tracked their progress with unnerving intensity but didn't move, and once they were past the tree trunks of his legs, he allowed himself a little breath of relief. He'd been so occupied with Horus that he'd failed to check the other gods in the rows, but he had little doubt that they, too, were automata, which meant anyone invading this place would come to a bad, red end.\n\nNot the sort of place you took by force of arms, the Serapeum.\n\n\"Impressive,\" he said. Neksa ignored him. \"In London we never see the like of these particular automata. Are they new?\"\n\n\"Stop talking,\" Neksa said. \"Or you'll get to inspect them all too closely.\"\n\nShe sounded sincere, and he went quiet, absorbing the next hallway, and the next. It was a labyrinth in here. He wondered whether the hallways themselves were, in some form, automata; perhaps they moved and reconfigured on a schedule, to foil people like him memorizing the layout of the place. They all seemed the same, and confusingly indirect to the purpose.\n\nFor what it was worth, though, he kept a mental map until they'd arrived in an anteroom he recognized... one with four High Garda Elite on duty. They all looked strong and razor edged. One\u2014he presumed the one in command\u2014nodded to Neksa briskly and fixed a dark stare on him. \"Against the wall,\" the commander barked. She was a small woman, with the fair hair and skin of the Nordic regions, and greenish eyes that looked as cold as sea ice. Scars on her neck, her hands, and a particularly large one on the side of her face. She looked like she ate fear for breakfast.\n\nHe put his palms against the nearest wall and leaned. She searched him efficiently and thoroughly, finding nothing, and when she snapped her fingers to indicate she was finished, he turned and leaned back on the wall to give her an appraising look. She ignored him and returned to her post.\n\nNeksa was already seated behind her desk and was writing in the Codex there.\n\n\"Well?\" he asked. \"Was I summoned to admire the decor?\"\n\nHe might as well have been a bug for all the attention they gave him, and the minutes stretched by until Neksa suddenly rose and threw open the double doors to the Archivist's office.\n\nA man strode out, followed by a small army of retainers. He wore too-ornate Obscurist robes, as if he still hadn't quite worked the stiffness out of them... and then the newcomer's face went florid with rage and he pointed. \"Arrest him!\"\n\nThe Obscurist's retainers moved forward instantly, but the High Garda commander stepped into the path and shook her head mutely. That ended the matter.\n\n\"What are you doing? That's Jess Brightwell! He's a wanted criminal!\"\n\n\"Understandable mistake. I'm the other Brightwell son. Brendan. My brother does indeed resemble me. Makes for an uncomfortable visit here, I'll tell you that.\"\n\n\"Visit?\" The Obscurist barked it out in bitter amusement. \"I don't care who you are; your whole family should be burned to the ground. You're enemies of the Library, all of you.\"\n\n\"Allies of the Library, you mean,\" Brendan said, and bowed slightly. \"Though I'll grant you, it's a strange turn of events for us, too. I've got no love for my feckless brother. If I lay hands on him, I promise, you can have him, sir.\"\n\n\"It's my lord. You are speaking to the Obscurist Magnus.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He cocked the eyebrow with the scar in it. \"Thought the Obscurist Magnus was a woman. My error, my lord.\"\n\nHe couldn't resist mocking the man, even though he knew how dangerous it was.\n\nThe Obscurist gave him a thin, angry smile. \"She was,\" he said. \"Dead and forgotten now.\" He took a few steps past, then made a show of turning around, as if he'd only just thought of something. \"Please tell your beloved brother that his young lady, Morgan, is in good hands. I've matched her with our brightest Obscurist. I'm sure their children will be most gifted.\"\n\nIt was obvious enough that the idiot thought that might goad him into some fit of temper, but he'd chosen the wrong Brightwell for that.\n\nBrendan shrugged. \"Well, doubt I'll be talking to Jess anytime soon, seeing as how he's cut ties with me as well as you. But I'm sure he'd thank you for your consideration.\"\n\nWhatever the Obscurist had been looking for, the bland answer didn't please him. He stalked off without another word.\n\nNeksa said, without looking up from the paperwork she was shuffling on her desk, \"Don't keep him waiting.\"\n\nBrendan nodded and noted the slight tremble in her hands, the color in her face. She still cares, he thought. He hardly deserved it, of course, and he wondered what she was so worried about. His father's power protected him... and if it didn't, there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent coming to a bad end.\n\nHe reached out and touched her on the cheek. For an instant, she froze, and her eyes moved to lock on his. \"It's all right, love,\" he told her. \"I'll be all right.\"\n\nHer mouth opened, but she said nothing.\n\nHe walked into the Archivist's office.\n\nThere was no one inside. Just the desk, the silent automata, and a chill in the air that might have just been his imagination.\n\nHis breath went cold in his chest. His fingers went numb. And he realized that the cold wasn't his imagination at all.\n\n\"Sit,\" a voice said, and for a disorienting moment, he thought it was the statue of the goddess Bast speaking to him... and then he realized that something very wrong was happening. The air smelled sickly sweet, too thick, too heavy in his lungs. He felt himself moving, not to a chair, but to collapse to a sitting position on the carpeted floor like a dropped puppet. This is wrong, he thought, and the word rang in his head like a silver bell: wrong, wrong, wrooooooong... It smeared into a silver mist and was gone, and he sat, waiting, for the goddess to speak again.\n\n\"Tell me your name,\" the voice said.\n\n\"Brendan Brightwell,\" he said.\n\n\"Again.\"\n\n\"Brendan Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Again.\"\n\n\"Brendan Lyell Sinclair Brightwell,\" he said. He felt free now, floating outside his heavy, inert body. \"Son and heir of Callum Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Did you come here with a valid offer from Callum Brightwell?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Do you intend to deceive us?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Do you intend to cheat us?\"\n\nBrendan felt himself grinning. \"I'd be foolish if I didn't try,\" he said. \"Though if you make it profitable enough, I'll play straight. Father's orders.\"\n\nHe heard another voice, low and in the background. An angry old man. Cheat me, will they? I'll see them all hanged. Hanged, like Liam, on a dirty gibbet in London when Brendan was just a boy. He remembered watching. It had been an object lesson in the price of failure. His brother Jess had tried to turn away, had cried. But Brendan had watched, dry-eyed, and he'd won his father's approval that day. It wasn't that he hadn't loved Liam, though the boy was much older than him and Jess; it was that he understood, as Jess never had, that death was the cost of play. Great rewards required real risks.\n\nWhy was he thinking of Liam? Hadn't thought of him in ages. But now he remembered his elder brother ruffling his hair, sneaking him treats when no one was looking, especially when he'd been exiled to his room in punishment. Liam had died younger than Brendan was now.\n\nHe felt a trickle of wetness on his cheeks but couldn't raise his hands to wipe it away.\n\n\"What is your name?\" the voice asked again.\n\n\"Brendan Brightwell.\"\n\n\"And the name of your brother?\"\n\n\"The live one, or the dead one?\"\n\nWhispered conversation he couldn't follow. \"The live one.\"\n\n\"Jess,\" he said. \"Jess Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Do you love your brother?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Would you betray him?\"\n\nBrendan fell silent. Remembered Liam on the gallows, waiting for the drop. In that last moment, Liam had looked straight at him.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"If I had to.\" It broke something inside him with a sharp, cold snap. \"Don't make me.\"\n\n\"Where is your brother?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"At your home?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nThe voice took on a dark amusement. \"But you'll tell me where your home is, won't you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Brendan said. \"Before I left England, I took the precaution of having that particular memory blocked by a Mesmer. I can't lead you to my father, or the press. Or my brother, if that's who you want most.\"\n\n\"Why did you come here?\"\n\n\"To make a deal. Simple as that.\"\n\n\"Do you intend to betray the Archivist or the Great Library?\"\n\n\"No,\" Brendan said. \"Not unless my father decides there's a better deal elsewhere.\"\n\nHonest answers, every one. Silence ticked by like a leaking tap, drip, drip, drip of seconds, minutes, and he waited, frozen in place. His legs were going numb. He wasn't sure he could stand up even if the goddess allowed it.\n\nThen it all began again.\n\nAnd again.\n\nAnd again.\n\nHis voice had gone hoarse by the time silence fell at last, and his skin felt raw from the cold. He was so tired it was all he could do to hold himself upright, and he was pitifully grateful when the voice of the goddess finally said, \"We're finished here.\"\n\nA fresh blast of air hit him in the face, fluttering his hair and clothes, and he pulled in a breath of something that ached sharply in his lungs. He felt weak, and then exhausted beyond any reasonable measure, and pitched sideways onto the carpet as if his muscles had been cut. He gasped in the cool, clear air, and as the fog began to subside in his head he knew what had happened. Gas. He'd been drugged. But not only that. There had been a compulsion as well, something centering in the bracelet he wore. An Obscurist who'd trained as a Mesmer\u2014and a powerful one\u2014had been manipulating him. Trying to pry the lid off his brain and stir around in there.\n\nThe sense of nausea that swept over him made him glad he'd collapsed; if he'd been upright, no doubt he'd have ruined the carpet. It subsided before it grew too desperate, and he slowly rolled over on his back as a door at the rear of the room opened to admit the Archivist and an impressive retinue of armed guards.\n\n\"You bastard,\" Brendan gasped, and tried to get up. He failed but kept trying until he finally managed to climb to his feet and stagger to the nearest chair. He fell into it with sick gratitude and cradled his pounding head in both hands. \"What was the point of that?\"\n\nThe Archivist seated himself behind his desk and fussed with the placement of his Codex, blank paper, pens... and then sat back and tented his fingers together as he stared at Brendan. \"I had to be certain,\" he said. \"You and your brother are so startlingly alike. I needed reassurance that I was not dealing with the wrong Brightwell. That would have been a fatal error.\"\n\n\"Well, you aren't,\" Brendan snapped. \"And if you ever do anything like this to me again, the deal's off and I'm gone, and my family will not take it well. Understand?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" The Archivist's tone was smooth as melting butter. \"I wouldn't dream of subjecting you to it again. You are now a respected business partner\u2014one I shall have to treat with care. I commend you for your honesty, young Brightwell. I much prefer to have loyalty and limits stated up front, especially when embarking on such a partnership. Now. How quickly can your father deliver the plans for this printing machine?\"\n\n\"Thought you had plans for it,\" Brendan said. \"Wasn't that what you threw the German lad in prison for, drawing them?\"\n\n\"The Black Archives, where such things are stored, became a liability. We... closed them.\"\n\n\"Meaning?\"\n\n\"The contents of the Black Archives are gone,\" the Archivist said. \"Better that dangerous information be lost forever than inflicted on an unready world, don't you agree?\"\n\nBrendan shrugged. \"The more you burn, the rarer the volumes we sell. So that means our printing machine is the only version there is? Interesting. The price might have just gone up.\"\n\n\"I expected nothing less from you,\" the Archivist said. \"But the price will remain as we agreed. If I find your father has broken trust with me, if these machines appear anywhere else, I will have you executed in a way that will burn in the memory of anyone tempted to cross the Library again, and I will hunt down every single member of your family, however remote, and do the same to them. Your father. Brother. Mother. Every cousin. Babes in arms. Are we understood, Brendan Brightwell? But if you keep your agreement, I will keep mine. Believe me.\"\n\nIn Brendan's experience of men who thought themselves honest (and rarely were), the phrase believe me was a clear signal they intended to do the opposite of what they said. But he nodded. The black storm inside his head wasn't lessening, and he felt an unsettling tremble in his muscles, but for the purposes of this meeting, he'd have to manage through it. \"We'll require immediate payment in Alexandrian geneih, of course. English currency isn't worth much at the moment, given the Welsh rampaging all over our country.\"\n\n\"Already done. The funds have been sent to the bank your father specified. He has been in contact directly, of course.\"\n\nThat woke prickles of alarm down Brendan's spine. If the old man was negotiating directly now, what did that make him? Nothing but a hostage. And, most likely, an object lesson.\n\n\"Then are we done here? Because I'd like a stiff drink and something for my headache.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't drink,\" the Archivist said. \"It would probably kill you just now, and that would be an awkward situation. Best thing to do is to stay awake, stay active, and let it work out of your system. In fact, I'll help with that. Your assistance will be helpful today.\"\n\n\"With what exactly?\"\n\n\"Captain Wahl will tell you. You may go.\" The Archivist brushed the back of a hand at him, as if sweeping him away like an annoying bug. And just like that, he was forgotten.\n\nThat was one of the more annoying things about this evil old bastard, Brendan thought: he could sincerely threaten to peel your skin from your bones one moment and treat you as beneath his notice the next. And for a moment, Brendan seriously thought about using the dagger he'd lifted from the High Garda captain while she'd been searching him and burying it right in the old man's eye, just for the sheer justice of it.\n\nBut that didn't seem like a wise waste of his life.\n\nThe female captain, the one of the ice-cold eyes and Nordic heritage (and scars), stepped forward and fixed her unsettling stare on Brendan's face. \"You're with me,\" she said. \"Step a toe out of line, and I'll leave you dead for crows. Understand?\"\n\n\"Charming,\" he said, and gave her his best grin. \"I'm sure we're going to get along wonderfully.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "Captain Wahl ushered him out of the Archivist's suite through yet another different path, this one avoiding the Hall of Gods altogether; the Archivist had a frankly annoying number of ways to avoid his enemies, and every path seemed designed to end in disaster for someone bent on disturbing the old man's calm. Wahl's route marched him through a series of nondescript rooms, each looking the same; he supposed they were waiting rooms but could see no signs directing visitors to them. If you have to ask, he thought, you shouldn't even be here.\n\n\"Captain,\" he said as they passed through the seventh of such rooms, occupied by empty chairs and shelves of Blanks for the entertainment of nonexistent occupants, \"exactly what are you planning for me?\"\n\n\"If you're worried I'm marching you to execution, I'm not,\" she said. \"But I do have full authority to leave you dead in the road if you try to escape.\"\n\n\"Yes, you made that very clear; thank you for clarifying. I meant, what is it you want my expertise for, exactly?\"\n\nShe didn't bother to answer, only lengthened her stride, which made Brendan simmer; his brother Jess enjoyed vigorous exercise as well as bookish pursuits, but Brendan only liked to run when chased. And her pace seemed designed to punish him for his lack of enthusiasm.\n\nThey came through a doorway guarded by two automata into a stone courtyard; this one wasn't decorated with winsome gardens or floating lotus flowers. It was utilitarian, a rally point for soldiers, and Brendan took quick stock of it, noting the access points, the defenses, and where he stood in relation to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was plainly visible. He'd need to sketch a map later, but he had a facility for details. And plans.\n\nSince Wahl seemed unwilling to part with details, he watched her. She seemed comfortable and assured, but there was something about the ten guards traveling around them, spreading out once they achieved the street outside the Serapeum, that made him wonder. She had them on a ranger patrol, looking for threats. Not looking at him. That seemed odd, if he was counted as any kind of threat.\n\nThey encountered nothing, and they made quick time as they jogged through the streets. People and vehicles made way for them, and he felt the heavy weight of stares and knew gossip would be flowing in their wake. Stupid way to travel, he thought, though at least he wasn't out of breath yet. City's full of High Garda carriers. This is doing nothing but flaunting the Archivist's power.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" he asked her again, more loudly this time. They'd passed the University districts, headed down from the Lighthouse, and now they were in one of the poorer, more anonymous sections of town, crowded with merchants and cheap, temporary housing that looked ripe to fall at any moment. Cleaner and brighter than London, but he knew the type of neighborhood well. It was where deals were made, both legitimate and criminal.\n\n\"I wanted you because you're said to be connected in the smuggling trade. You might be able to convince your brothers in crime to give up peacefully.\"\n\n\"We call them cousins, and, wait, are you mad? We're going to raid a smuggler's den? You should have brought more bodies. These won't even provide a good shelter to hide behind once they fall.\" She sent him an impatient glance and increased the pace, which was annoying. \"I'm very serious, Captain. These aren't just idiots hiding secret book collections in their private homes! These are hard people who survive in the hardest city on earth for their trade. You do not go after them like this!\"\n\n\"This is just my personal escort, Brightwell,\" she said. \"My army is already waiting.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\nShe whistled, and the entire contingent of Elites shifted from a jog to a smooth, quiet walk as they approached a corner. Brendan's nerves prickled, but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.\n\n\"Up,\" she said. \"Look up.\"\n\nHe did, and felt his heart shrink in an instinctive spasm of dread, because there were sphinxes perched motionless on roofs. Large ones. And as he looked down, he realized that they were on the ground, too, crouched motionless in shadows.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" he asked her.\n\n\"Straight ahead. The building with blue trim.\"\n\nThat was a generous description; the trim might have been blue an age ago, but it was a weathered, flaking, indeterminate color now, on a building that sagged as if it might melt completely in the next rain. A ramshackle thing made for knocking down, at least to the casual eye.\n\nBut he recognized the precautions.\n\nThe windows were, of course, barred; that was no surprise in such a neighborhood. But they were also dark, and he thought they were almost certainly covered by steel plates. The door looked old, but it would be reinforced and highly armored. Inside, the place would be a fortress, with dozens of tunnels for escape.\n\nIt was large enough to be a major storage point for Red Ibrahim's business, though the old fox would be careful to keep visible traffic to a minimum.\n\n\"Well?\" Wahl raised a fist, and her escort came to a halt along with her. \"Go and make them surrender. That's why you're here.\"\n\n\"They'll kill me.\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I assume you're hard to kill. But if you want to stay here and refuse, we'll find out fast.\"\n\n\"Do I at least get a weapon?\"\n\n\"Besides the dagger you lifted from me earlier? No.\" She pulled her sidearm and aimed it straight at his chest. \"Go on. I'm almost sure the sphinxes won't tear into you.\"\n\nHe felt sweat break out at the back of his neck. This was a death sentence, and it was blindingly clear to him in that moment that they intended to have him killed, but with the excuse that he'd been killed by smugglers. A neat solution to the Archivist's puzzle of how to get rid of his annoying visitor, while also claiming innocence to his newly made ally.\n\nHe took two steps toward the building. A sphinx's wings unfurled somewhere above him with a faint, metallic ring, and he glanced up.\n\nHe was aware of a flash of light from the building he was facing, and then a hammer blow to his chest, and being lifted off his feet and thrown like a toy. Fragments of images crowded in, all chaotic: a massive red fireball rising to the sky. A sphinx falling out of the sky and crashing to the pavement. Two High Garda soldiers cut to pieces by flying metal in splashes of vivid crimson.\n\nHe landed on his side and rolled until a hard wall crushed him to a stop, and for a moment he just panted for breath and waited for his dazed eyes to come back into focus.\n\nWhen they did, he saw a slaughterhouse. Half of Wahl's soldiers were down, blood on the street and splattered on dirty walls. There was nothing left of the building they'd been approaching but crumbled walls and burning rubble.\n\nThose of them still standing were in a white-hot fight for their lives. Sphinxes were tearing apart surrounding buildings, trying to get at those firing from shelter, but as soon as an automaton succeeded in forcing its way in, it was faced with hails of hellish gunfire. He saw three sprawled, motionless machines. Red Ibrahim's people had a way to kill them effectively enough, though he heard tortured screams from a building on the left where a sphinx had ripped through the roof and descended on unprepared residents.\n\nInnocents, perhaps. But probably dead in seconds, if so.\n\n\"I found the traitor!\"\n\nHe hardly heard the shout; it sounded like a whisper in his blast-numbed ears. He looked around, dazed, and then happened to look up and saw a man with a red scarf over his face aiming a rifle down at him.\n\nHe rolled away at the last instant, bullets peppering the ground and building around him. None of them found their mark, but some came far too close, and then he saw something falling toward him. It was just a shape, indistinct, and he put his hands up to protect his head.\n\nHe caught a thrown bottle of Greek fire that, by all rights, should have reduced him to burned bones on a molten street, and once he realized what he held, he nearly dropped it, anyway, out of sheer surprise. The cap popped loose and rolled away, and the liquid sloshed and rippled with half-seen flames. He steadied his hands and pulled it down to rest on his chest, which was all he could do at that moment. No throwing it back without splashing it all over himself.\n\nMore bullets rattled down, and he curled carefully on his side and hugged the wall, with the deadly bottle as protected as he could manage. If a bullet hit him, he'd likely survive. If it hit the flask, he wouldn't.\n\nHe stayed where he was, acutely aware of the deadly weight held against his chest, and stared at the dirty wall in front of his face as an eerie silence finally fell. A beetle wandered up the scarred surface as if all the danger around it meant nothing. Lucky you, he thought. Though the beetle would burn just as surely as he if this glass container cracked.\n\n\"Brightwell?\" Wahl's voice was breathless. He turned his head at an awkward angle and looked up at her. One side of her face was bloody, and she had a half dozen bullet dents in the black armor over her chest. \"Surprised to find you alive.\"\n\n\"Surprised myself,\" he said. His voice sounded as shaky as his hands felt. \"Mind taking this?\"\n\nShe spotted the Greek fire and took in a sharp breath, but she retrieved the cap and made it safe before picking it up. He rolled over on his back and sucked in a couple of deep, cooling breaths before climbing to his feet again. As he leaned against the wall, he counted the soldiers standing and realized that most of those who'd been in her escort were down.\n\nA sphinx was systematically ripping apart something that had once been human at the far end of the street. It was damaged, with one wing gone and one leg dragging uselessly, but that didn't make it any less horrific.\n\n\"You were right,\" Wahl said. For the first time, she seemed to have a flicker of humanity in her eyes. Not for him, of course. For the men and women of her squad. \"We should have brought an entire company. Not even the sphinxes can stop murderers who don't mind destroying their own headquarters. We can only hope we can find one still alive to question.\"\n\nHe didn't tell her that Red Ibrahim certainly knew she was coming and that the building had likely already been emptied of everything of value. That the ones fighting were almost certainly hired mercenaries, with no connection back to his real organization.\n\nIf she had been better at this, Brendan would have buried the dagger in her and found a spare piece of shrapnel to shove into the wound. Blamed it on the explosion. But she wasn't. She had no real understanding of how smugglers worked, and that was a good thing. Better to keep her in charge than someone such as Jess's Captain Santi, who almost certainly wouldn't have made these mistakes.\n\nHe thought, I hope I don't have to kill you, Captain Wahl.\n\nBut he knew full well he would if it came to that.\n\nFamily first."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "Wahl walked him to the door of his sad little house, and Brendan walked inside, grimaced at the wreckage of the place, and wearily slammed the door. His head ached fiercely, he had bruises in places he'd never been bruised before, and he reeked of smoke and blood. He couldn't recall feeling this tired in a long time. All he wanted to do was sleep now, and the sight of the rumpled small bed drew him like a magnet. He toppled onto it facedown and felt darkness descend frighteningly quickly.\n\nIn two hours, Jess Brightwell opened his eyes.\n\nOn waking, you'll remember everything, he heard a voice say. It took him a moment to place it, but then he remembered the carriage ride to the Serapeum, and Elsinore Quest. You will remember that you are Jess Brightwell. You asked me to mesmer you into believing you were your twin, and so I did. It shouldn't last more than a day at most. You'll come back to yourself as soon as you sleep, and remember all the events of the day as if you did them yourself. You'll remember that you asked me to do this, most especially. I insist you remember that, because I don't wish to end up at the wrong end of your knife.\n\nJess felt sick, and for a moment he stayed where he was, flat on the bed, until he felt comfortable in his skin again. His heart was racing, skin flushed and prickling with alarm, and blessed Heron, he ached from the abuse his imaginary brother's body had taken. Quest's mesmer skills were incredibly well honed, to convince him that he was Brendan to such an extent; he'd thought differently, acted differently. Even moved differently. He'd even flirted with Neksa.\n\nBut it had all worked. He'd feared interrogation, though he'd expected it to be physical rather than at the hands of an Obscurist and mind-altering gas. Thank God he'd asked Quest to specifically shield the part of his memory that had to do with his father's location. He'd feared the Archivist would decide to torture that last bit out of him, and though torture hadn't been involved, the question had most certainly been asked, and an answer compelled.\n\nBut Brendan\u2014the Brendan that Quest had created in him\u2014had been able to swear to a great many blatant lies with perfect sincerity.\n\nWhatever Alvaro Santiago had paid the Mesmer on Jess's behalf, it wasn't half enough.\n\nJess stood up. He felt every wound that Brendan had collected and recalled in sharp detail the nearly deadly day he'd had. Including the gentle, intimate touch on Neksa's cheek... which she'd allowed, or at least been too shocked to protest. He wasn't certain yet whether that had been inspired or a terrible mistake. Time would tell.\n\nHe opened the tap at the sink and washed his dirty face in icy water, then stood for some moments staring into the mirror. The difference between himself and his twin was so small, and yet so large it was like walking a high wire above a furnace. Exhausting. Maybe I should have Quest convince me I really am my brother for the duration. Could be restful.\n\nBut no. He'd need both sides of his personality to get through this, because now that the Archivist believed him... somewhat... there was much to do.\n\nHe checked the Blank, but once again there was no message from Morgan. It isn't safe for her yet, he told himself, but the worry gnawed harder. Morgan had been confident she could find a way to get around the Iron Tower's restraints. What if she hadn't? What could have happened to her in there? What Gregory had said about a partner... He found himself staring at the page for far too long before he slammed the book shut, ate a meager meal he didn't taste, and fell into a troubled, dream-crowded sleep.\n\nHe woke up to a pounding on the door and squinted at the window. Wasn't yet light outside, and it took all his control not to bury his head under the pillow and seek sleep again. Not that it would matter, he knew; they'd just come in and drag him out of bed if he tried.\n\nA fresh High Garda Elite contingent stood outside, glittering with sharp edges in the dull predawn light. Jess wondered what had happened to Wahl.\n\n\"Come with us,\" the man in charge said, and turned to head down the path. The rest of his soldiers waited for Jess to step out, and he debated it for a long few seconds before closing the door and following. They closed in around him. No carriage today; they'd brought a sturdily armored carrier. Good. The more the High Garda was worried about Red Ibrahim's retaliations, the less they'd pay attention to their prisoner. He didn't doubt they still considered him one.\n\nThe carrier was standard\u2014bench seats along both sides, hanging straps for those who didn't earn a seat. Jess was given the seat closest to the metal barrier to the driver\u2014and the farthest from the exit. No one seemed inclined to make conversation, and he was still regretting getting out of bed and not insisting on coffee. He put his head back against the metal as the carrier's doors slammed, the engine hissed and gears engaged, and they glided rapidly toward their destination.\n\nHe expected to emerge at the Serapeum and be led through yet another confusing tangle of corridors, but instead he found himself at the Alexandria Colosseum. An old Roman import, still maintained and in use; the vast structure could hold as many as fifty thousand, and while the old blood sports had been long outlawed, the more civilized contests remained popular. \"We're taking in a football game?\" he asked. He'd played it with other children in London, a ragged, barely serviceable ball kicked back and forth and chased to grimy landmarks that served as goals. Hadn't played it since he was twelve, and had never attended a game, though they had been as popular in London as anywhere.\n\nBut there were no happy sports fans here. The place was deserted, and the perimeter iron fences had automaton guards. It felt eerie and as ghostly as the departed spirits of the Caesars.\n\nThe High Garda surrounded him in a tight cordon, and he was pushed forward... to a guarded entrance.\n\nAnd a downward-sloping ramp, lit by greenish glows on both sides.\n\nThe descent was harrowing. The place smelled like centuries of death and blood, and a stomach-turning electric feeling crawled along his nerves. Nothing good has ever happened here, he thought. These weren't the changing rooms for the teams, or the public galleries. This was ancient, and awful.\n\nIt was also in use.\n\nThe ramp leveled out into a long, broader hallway, still lit with the same glows that, though bright enough, cast a sickly pall over pale stone and iron doors, all tightly shut. The High Garda captain pushed one open and said, \"In.\"\n\nIf I go in there, I'm never coming out. The whole place screamed at him to fight as hard and as dirty as he could, and stay alive for another moment.\n\nBut that was a fight he couldn't possibly win, and he had little choice but to limp inside.\n\nThe door slammed behind him, but he hardly noticed. He was too surprised by what spread out before him.\n\nHe stood on an overlooking gallery, and beneath it spread out a neat, orderly, modern workshop, with hundreds of tables and Scholars and mechanical technicians moving among them. Automata, half-built or under repair, occupied most of the space: sphinxes, both large and small. Lions. Spartans. Something in the back, veiled behind cloth, that looked more massive than any of the rest, but he couldn't make out any details except a ridged back.\n\nThe Archivist waited at the railing.\n\n\"The mission yesterday was not what I'd hoped for,\" said the Archivist. \"Though I understand I can't legitimately blame it on you.\"\n\n\"Did you blame it on Captain Wahl?\"\n\n\"Captain Wahl understands that failure is not acceptable for High Garda Elites,\" the old man said. \"Don't worry, I won't ask you to be our stalking-horse for the next raid. Your father was informed of the... difficulties. He was very plain that you were to be treated as a guest.\"\n\n\"I'm sure he asked very nicely.\"\n\n\"In his way.\" The Archivist looked out over the workshop. \"This used to be the space where condemned criminals were held before they were brought into the amphitheater to fight for their lives. Savage times. We've put it to better use.\"\n\n\"Thought I was going to the lions,\" Jess said, in Brendan's slightly sarcastic tone. \"Is this supposed to frighten me?\" He leaned on the railing beside the old man. There were, of course, guards, guards everywhere, and off to his left and behind them sat a massive automaton lion, ready to spring if he made the slightest mistake. Tempting, to think about tossing the old man over the railing. He imagined how easy it would be.\n\nBut it wouldn't save anyone else, either.\n\n\"Caution you to mind your step,\" the Archivist said. \"The rigorous questioning you went through has established your identity. Whatever doubts I have now are simply to do with the general untrustworthiness of your... type.\"\n\n\"Criminals?\" Jess let loose a fierce grin. \"Reasonable. But we're in business. And I'll keep my word because it's in my da's best interests.\"\n\n\"Perhaps. As you know, it's unwise to cross me. I made the promise to empty France of its pernicious rebels, and I did it. Destroying your entire family would be a wave of my little finger.\"\n\n\"And I could shove you off this balcony,\" Jess said. \"But I won't.\" He leaned back from the rail and faced the Archivist fully. \"When do I see the books?\"\n\n\"Soon. But first I thought you'd be amenable to telling me more about this smuggler operating so effectively under my nose. Since he and his band almost took your life yesterday.\"\n\nRisks of doing business, Jess thought. That applied to his danger yesterday and what he was going to do now. \"That will cost you. It's no small thing for me to betray someone like him.\"\n\n\"If you are loyal to me and to the Library, you will be protected. You won't need to pander to your rivals anymore. All I want is for you to\u2014\"\n\nThe Archivist paused at a cry of alarm from below in the workshop, and Jess had a bare second to glance in that direction and take in the sphinx that had launched itself into the air, gliding on metallic eagle wings. Its back legs were not a lion's; they were knife-sharp talons.\n\nIt was coming straight for them.\n\nThe Archivist's guards reacted with admirable speed, as unexpected as it was; a hail of gunfire shattered the air.\n\nIt bounced off of the armor that coated the sphinx. This was no ordinary automaton, Jess realized. And when he took his riveted gaze from it and looked back at the workshop, he saw that the Scholar who'd been standing by that table was still watching, unafraid. Unmoved.\n\nThis is an assassination. The Scholar had been waiting for this opportunity. And now, all Jess had to do was stand back and allow it to happen. Most of the workshop below was in chaos, technicians and Scholars scrambling for safety. There were a dozen guards in the room, and they were all focused on firing on the sphinx circling above, to little effect. No one would fault him for saving himself.\n\nBut if there was one thing that would earn him his freedom to do as he pleased, it would be this. No more questions. No more doubts.\n\nMuch as he wanted to see this old man's guts strewn on the floor, he needed to save him.\n\nHe reached a lightning-fast decision, grabbed the Archivist, and shoved him away from the banister an instant before the sphinx's talons sheared through the metal and cracked the stone floor. He kept the old man moving, running, dodging, on the gallery as the soldiers poured more fire into the attacking automaton. Off switch, he thought. Must be an off switch!\n\nHe turned and threw himself back at it, hand grabbing for the neck of the thing as the smooth bronze face contorted, the needle-sharp teeth snapped at his arm. His searching fingers slid on smooth, featureless metal.\n\nNo off switch. Not there, where it should be. Unless the Scholar had deliberately removed any chance of shutting the evil thing off. I'm dead, he thought. Time seemed to stretch. He saw the sharp claws extruding out of the lion paws; they were an instant away from gutting him, and if those teeth got a good hold, it would rip his throat out in a bloody spray.\n\nIn that moment, he remembered something. It came in a sudden rush of light, color, sound, smell... as vivid as if he were there again, standing in Thomas's filthy cell beneath the streets of Rome. Drawings etched on the walls and on dirty scraps of paper.\n\nA beautifully detailed automaton.\n\nThomas designed this thing. His plans.\n\nAnd a circled notation with two words.\n\nIt might be nothing. It might be everything.\n\nJess gasped in a breath and whispered, \"Pax Romana.\"\n\nThe sphinx blinked its red eyes, stopped, then pivoted and soared up to a perch at the highest point in the workshop, on a stout wooden scaffold. It perched and settled with a hissing ruffle of metal wings.\n\nThe light went out in its eyes.\n\n\"No!\" the Scholar cried below, the one who'd set the thing in motion. He was only a few years older than Jess, but in that moment, terror made him sound like a child. \"No! He has to die! Why\u2014\"\n\nHe picked up a sharp knife from the bench beside him and ran, but it was a useless effort. Whether he was on the attack or running for his life, it didn't matter; he was shot dead in two steps and collapsed heavily to the floor. There was a hole the size of an apple in his head, and when Jess looked up, he saw one of the High Garda was lowering a rifle.\n\nThe Archivist was pale and sweating, and as Jess turned toward him, the old man stumbled and caught himself against a wall, then slid down it. That was the face of a man who'd seen his own death, and clearly, and didn't care for the warning.\n\nJess crouched beside him and tried to check his pulse, but the Archivist struck his hand away. \"Don't touch me,\" he said. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Jess said. He hoped that the Archivist, in the press of the chaos and fear, hadn't heard the whispered words. From the wonder in his eyes, he hadn't. \"I thought it was about to gut me like a fish. Thing must be broken.\"\n\n\"Broken,\" the Archivist repeated, and looked past him at the now-still automaton. Its eyes were dark and empty. It might have been an inert statue, and perhaps now it was, after those words. Jess's heart felt like it was exploding in his chest with every fast beat, and he smelled the rank, burning stench of his own sweat now.\n\n\"Yes, yes, of course, you're correct. It was malfunctioning.\" The old man gulped in several shallow breaths, and some color crept back into his face. \"It couldn't defeat the safeguards I had put in place. There was no real danger. It could never have actually harmed me.\"\n\nJess felt a bitter burn of a laugh deep in his throat, but he swallowed it. \"Didn't know that,\" he said. \"Thought I'd best look after my family's interests.\"\n\n\"So you did, lad. So you did. Whether there was any risk or not, you showed extraordinary courage. I won't forget it.\" The old man held out his hand, which was trembling, though his voice had taken on its veneer of calm again. Jess grasped it and pulled him to his feet.\n\nIf he expected more effusive thanks, he was disappointed; the Archivist turned and stalked to the High Garda soldier who'd put the bullet in the Scholar's head, snatched the rifle away, and flung it into the corner. \"You. What were you thinking?\"\n\nThe soldier was a young, muscular woman who had the look of South Asia to her features, and she clearly didn't expect to be attacked for what she'd done. She took a half step back, shot a wide glance at her commander, then raised her chin and snapped to attention. \"Sir, I acted to prevent the danger from reaching you.\"\n\n\"The danger? That idiot was half a room away. How do you think we'll learn anything from a man with half his brain on the floor?\"\n\n\"Sir\u2014,\" the High Garda captain began. It was a mistake. The old man hated having seen his mortality and his own fear. Would have been far wiser to keep out of his notice.\n\n\"Quiet!\" The Archivist's shout was full throated and vicious, and the captain froze. All the soldiers went to attention, instinctively. \"Is that how you train your best soldiers? Because these are the best, are they not? Or are you trying to have me killed as well?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\" The captain's face was rigid, his eyes glassy and narrowed. \"I would give my life to\u2014\"\n\n\"I only saw one life being thrown in the way of that thing, and that was a criminal's. You're demoted, Captain. Get out of my sight.\" The Archivist spun toward the woman who'd fired the shot. \"You have an hour to depart the city, or I set a sphinx to hunt you down. Get out. I won't have you in that uniform. Go back to whatever backwater province the Library found you in.\"\n\nWhatever resentment they felt, whatever shock, the soldiers took it without expression now. Both nodded and left through the door Jess had entered.\n\nAnother soldier took a solid step forward. He briskly opened his Codex and wrote inside it. \"We will escort you out of here, sir.\"\n\n\"You will not. Get another team in place to take me home. You're all sent back to the High Garda. If any of you had been fit to be Elites, you would have prevented this from happening at all.\"\n\nIt was a breathtaking, petulant show of power. The Archivist had just destroyed the careers of a dozen people who had risen through the ranks and were accounted the cream of the High Garda Elites... for what? The worst of it was a failure to wound, when all their training had been instructing them to instantly kill anyone who raised a hand to him. The whole thing was petty and brutal.\n\nThat, Jess thought, is how you destroy the loyalty of the High Garda. He knew how passionate these soldiers were about their duty, about their ideals... but here stood the man who personified those ideals, and he was as flawed and petty as any other. If he'd been a good leader\u2014and he must have been, once\u2014he'd long forgotten how to inspire.\n\nHe could only punish in the hope of keeping his uncertain grip on the reins of power.\n\n\"Sir,\" Jess said, and bowed when the old man's sharp gaze pierced him. \"Do you want me to write a report to you about the Alexandrian smugglers?\"\n\n\"Yes. Go. You may requisition the appropriate supplies. Neksa will see you are given approval.\"\n\n\"Then, I'll be on my way.\"\n\n\"Yes. Jess?\"\n\nIt was a good job that Jess was looking away at that moment; the situation had rattled him, and Jess nearly answered to it.\n\nBut the extra beat gave him a second to set himself before he looked up, innocent and grinning, to say, \"Got me confused with my brother again, Archivist. But I won't hold it against you.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" The Archivist's eyes were as cold as death. \"Yes, of course. Brendan.\"\n\nThen he turned and walked out, waiting for a bullet to find him, or a sphinx's claws. The sound of his boot heels seemed very loud. Very final.\n\nThen he was down the hallway and up the ramp and in the clean outside air, and he gasped and took a moment to lean against an ancient stone column and thank whatever gods were looking after him these days.\n\nNo. Not gods.\n\nIn the moment when he knew he was about to die, it hadn't been a god who'd come to him. It had been a memory of Thomas.\n\nWhat made him finally move was not the frowning faces of the guards protecting the carrier, or the angle of the sun; it was the knowledge that Thomas depended on him. So did Wolfe, and Khalila, Glain, Dario, Captain Santi.\n\nAnd Morgan.\n\nHe looked up and found the black spire of the Iron Tower. Birds circled it, though none landed; whether that was Obscurist power or the material the thing was made from, even they had the good sense to avoid it.\n\nHe walked toward the gates and past the carrier, and though the guards surely would have shot him dead yesterday, today they let him pass. He owed consideration to the dead Scholar below, with his useless attempt at rebellion. And he couldn't waste the gift that man's blood had given him: the trust of the Archivist and the freedom to move without constraints.\n\nIt was time to start a war."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from Dario Santiago to Khalila Seif. Destroyed by Santiago without delivery prior to their departure from England:\n\n\u2002As you well know, lovely flower, I am rarely at a loss for words, but you have a way of turning my own flaws against me, and my own virtues, too. Though which of those my eloquence might be, I leave to you to decide.\n\n\u2002I'm setting this down on paper because I know that in the moment, when I am looking at you and I know that the course of my life rests on the words you will say... I don't know if I will have the courage to speak my mind. No\u2014not my mind. My heart. You know I protect that particular organ with more care than any other; I hold everyone at a distance, partly because I genuinely find it hard to care for people, and partly because I was hurt often when I was young. Always by those closest to me.\n\n\u2002I say that not for sympathy\u2014why would you have any for that? Everyone has been hurt\u2014but because I need for you to see that I want the opposite with you. What began as flattery and, yes, a casual kind of lust, has become something entirely different. I treasure you. I honor you. I know that you are nothing I deserve, and everything I want in my life.\n\n\u2002And so, I intend to ask you to marry me. I will do it at the very worst moment, because I am hopeless and stupid in such things, and I fully expect you will tell me with all kindness that you would rather become a nun than marry me. (Does the religion of Islam have nuns? I apologize. I should know this by now.)\n\n\u2002But I will ask. And when I do, please know that I stand before you an honest man, with my heart for the first time wide-open. I know you can pierce it with a word.\n\n\u2002But better dead at your feet than never having tried.\n\n\u2002There, my eloquence is back.\n\n\u2002Perhaps this will go better than I expected."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "Khalila wrote letters to the families of dead men while sitting in a lush hotel waiting room in Cadiz, after begging sheets of paper and a good pen from the desk clerk. Outside of the hotel's windows, a storm still raged, but the force was slowly dying. The ship that had delivered them would be departing soon, seeking cover in the last of the gale.\n\nThe captain had been paid very well to report that all of the prisoners had been killed during a rebellion and thrown into the sea... and Anit would make certain that he kept his promises. Whether the Library would believe the captain's report or not, the truth was unprovable at the moment, and that would sow confusion and buy time. But the clock should be moving quickly, and instead, here they were: waiting.\n\n\"You shouldn't bother with that now,\" Dario said from where he watched her write. She was currently writing in Portuguese, to the family of a sailor from Lisbon. \"There'll be a lot more men lost before this is done. And the sailors on that ship would have killed us, you know.\"\n\n\"And I would hope they'd seek forgiveness for it,\" she replied. \"But I am not responsible for their souls, only for mine.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" He didn't understand that, she thought, but at least he respected it. And she respected him for it. \"At least it keeps you occupied. I should have known his envoy would be late. Typical royal punctuality.\"\n\n\"The weather is foul out there, and you're too impatient. Have some of... what is this again?\"\n\n\"Tortilla de patatas,\" he said, and cut himself a broad slice of the round egg dish. \"Eggs and potatoes. Delicious.\"\n\n\"And that?\" She pointed at something that resembled a bread tube. He cut off a piece and handed it to her. She forced herself to chew and swallow. It was better than she'd expected. She'd eaten a bite or two of the tortilla, enough to keep hunger at bay but not enough to feel she was sated. She didn't want to be comfortable, not while writing the news of a person's death. It seemed wrong.\n\n\"Bluefin tuna. You like it?\"\n\n\"It's good. But I'm not very hungry.\"\n\n\"I'll be happy to finish it.\" His tone was light, but he was restlessly shifting and staring grimly at the lobby doors. \"I hate wasting time. While you're scribbling and I'm nibbling, God only knows what's happening to the others.\"\n\n\"Thomas and Glain? Captain Santi?\"\n\n\"You're deliberately misunderstanding me.\"\n\n\"Apparently.\" She signed her name to the bottom of the letter, folded it, and put it into an envelope she'd already marked with the family's address in Lisbon. \"You're usually less concerned about the fate of Jess Brightwell.\"\n\n\"That's because my ultimate survival generally doesn't depend on him.\"\n\n\"Dario.\"\n\n\"Mi amor, it isn't that I don't care what happens. He's a good ally. A fine one to have at your side. I even count him as a friend. Is it wrong to say that in other circumstances, I doubt our paths would have crossed except when he steals me blind?\"\n\nShe shook her head. Dario was in a foul mood, scowling now at the doorway and toying with the pearl earring dangling from his left earlobe. He'd traded someone aboard the ship for it, or else won it at dice. She preferred not to know. It did suit him, though. So did the clean new clothes he was wearing\u2014black shirt, black trousers in a particularly attractive cut that she really shouldn't have noticed. A flash of red lining in his coat. He looked accustomed to the best, and the only thing spoiling it was his unmistakable anxiety.\n\nKhalila said, \"No, you aren't wrong. It only shows that Allah's given us a great gift in blessing us with such interesting people.\"\n\n\"Allah hates a thief, I've heard.\"\n\n\"So does God, I believe. And yet, here we are, in debt to one.\"\n\nDario's scowl deepened, and he sighed. \"Don't remind me, flower.\" He paused for a moment, then burst out, \"If the fool's gone and gotten himself killed\u2014\"\n\n\"Then we will have to make it our mission to rescue Morgan and Scholar Wolfe,\" she finished for him. \"And bury our dead friend with honor. Yes. I'm sure that is what you were about to say, since you are an honorable man at heart, Dario.\"\n\nHe sent her a quick, apologetic glance. \"Am I?\"\n\n\"For the most part, you aspire to it, and that is all anyone can ask. Now, would you do me a service and take these letters to be mailed?\"\n\n\"Anything to keep me occupied,\" he said, and took the handful of envelopes. \"You wrote for all of us? To all the families?\"\n\nShe felt a hard pull of guilt inside and blinked. \"As you said, those men would have killed us all or sold us into the hands of the Archivist without a second thought. But that doesn't make it right. And the families deserve to know.\"\n\n\"I'll never understand you,\" he said. \"I doubt Santi writes letters to the families of soldiers he kills in battle. Only those he loses from his own side.\"\n\n\"You're right\u2014I don't,\" Captain Santi said. Khalila had glimpsed him coming down the stairs from the third floor, where they'd taken rooms; no doubt Glain was still on duty there to guard their space. \"But she's not a soldier, and it's a good habit, remembering that every life we take breaks dozens more. It keeps us from killing when there are other options.\"\n\n\"Fine, then, I'm outvoted and half a monster...\" Dario's voice trailed off, and the silence made Khalila look up and follow the direction of his stare. \" Dios m\u00edo, he hasn't just sent someone; he's actually come himself. That's why we've been cooling our heels so long.\"\n\n\"Who's come?\" Santi asked, and she could see him changing his stance subtly, bracing for a fight if one was brewing.\n\n\"The king,\" Khalila said softly. She could see the cordon of sharply dressed soldiers who surrounded the golden carriage and who now peeled away to form an armed wall on either side of the hotel doorway leading between the carriage door and the entrance. She stood up and belatedly rubbed ink from her fingers against her dark dress, thanking Allah she hadn't chosen the sky blue fabric today. The deep purple hid all sins. \"Did you expect this?\"\n\n\"Well.\" Dario didn't seem to quite know how to feel. \"We were close when we were children, but I didn't expect him to stir out of Madrid. Still, the King's Train to Cadiz, coach to here... he's only put himself out a couple of hours at most. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on it.\"\n\nThe hotel front doors burst open, held back by two soldiers who, despite their shimmering, perfect livery, looked well capable of killing everyone in seconds, and then the king of Spain swept in.\n\nHe was nothing like Dario. For one thing, he was a plain young man, very nearly ugly, with narrow, close-set eyes and a nose that flattened too broadly... and yet, the smile he aimed at them was wide and warm and erased all such shallow thoughts. As he strode toward them, she realized he was a short man, shorter than she was in her flat boots, and he wore gold shoes with significant heels to raise him above his natural height.\n\nBut he strode like a giant and dazzled like a gem, and when his gaze flashed to her, she felt like the sun had burned through clouds.\n\n\"You must be Scholar Seif,\" he said, and came straight toward her, ignoring Dario. \"It is my delight and honor to meet you.\"\n\nShe bowed\u2014just a little, enough to show her thanks, not enough to show subservience\u2014and it must have been correct, because the king's smile grew even wider and warmer. \"Sire, I'm not certain I'm at all worthy of your time, but I do appreciate your words.\"\n\n\"Not worthy? Nonsense. You and your friends are moving the balance of the world. Did you not realize how significant that is?\"\n\nHe was, she realized, not simply flattering. There was real intent in those sharply intelligent eyes, and a message despite his warmth. She felt some of the dazzle lift, just as Dario said, \"Honestly, Cousin, could you please not sweep the love of my life away on your glittering golden wings?\"\n\nWithout breaking his smile, but somehow markedly shifting it, the king turned on one heel to face Dario. \"You have never shown any weakness in the area of the ladies. But I do congratulate you on finally choosing one who is so considerably better than you deserve. She's having a good effect, I hear.\"\n\n\"It's not my business to rehabilitate him,\" Khalila said. \"Nor the business of any woman. Should he improve himself, then it is his own doing, and not mine. Respectfully. Your Highness.\" She added that quickly, in case the king of the country in which she stood might take offense.\n\nHe laughed. \"I'm not the kind of man who lops off heads for speaking truth,\" he said. \"And you have improved him, like it or not. God knows we've all been struggling to accomplish that for years. When we were children together, I had to bloody his nose to get him to stop calling me names. I didn't think I could ever beat him hard enough to make the leopard actually change his spots.\"\n\n\"I should have fought back,\" Dario said. \"Would have, if you hadn't been\u2014\"\n\n\"The king?\"\n\n\"Smaller.\"\n\n\"Ha, Cousin, I know you better. Please, Scholar, don't stand on ceremony with me. I'm happy to be simply Ram\u00f3n Alfonse, as long as I'm with friends. I do consider you friends. Even you, Dario.\"\n\nDario managed not to quite roll his eyes. \"Family, at least.\" He sobered. \"But we have important things to discuss, Ram\u00f3n, do we not? Most notably, whether or not we are all about to be crushed under the heel of the Library.\"\n\n\"If you are asking if we are officially at war, well.\" The king of Spain snapped his fingers, and a retainer stepped up to proffer a rather official-looking scroll, which he took without looking and handed to Khalila, not to his cousin. \"In a sense, we are.\"\n\nKhalila unrolled the stiff paper, heavy with seals and redolent of the sweet beeswax that had formed them. She was holding something that would be an important piece of history, she realized: a withdrawal from the ancient Treaty of Pergamum, the foundational document that ensured the neutrality of the Great Library. And not just by Spain; Spain, it appeared, was a latecomer to the agreement, following Wales, England, Portugal, Turkey, Russia, Japan, the exiled queen of France, and the United Colonies of America. It was a stunning list, and she gasped without meaning to do it, as Dario leaned in to take a look.\n\n\"I see Spain was reluctant to join the party, Cousin,\" he said. Which was not what she was thinking at all.\n\nShe was imagining the chaos that would ensue from this, and she felt sick. The Library would, of course, be withdrawing its Scholars and librarians from these countries and locking down their Serapeums... but they couldn't strategically turn their backs on such a large part of the world. Russia alone was enough to rip the fragile fabric of the Library's grip on power. And Japan and Wales were known to hold learning in such high regard that any attempt to cast these rebel countries as barbarians would be worthless.\n\nSpain and Portugal were conservative lands. England was proud in defeat. And while France's queen in exile might be expected to support any such measure, for the American colonies to break with tradition meant something dire had changed.\n\nThe Library had burned Philadelphia, and America would not forget it.\n\nSanti, as usual, was practical in his analysis. \"Dramatic, but these are all lands that don't touch Egypt,\" he said. \"Easy to be rebellious at a distance. We still need a better way in.\"\n\n\"Or a navy,\" Ram\u00f3n Alfonse said, and bowed slightly. \"Captain Santi, Spain and Portugal have the honor of offering you ships and men to your cause. But first, we must agree on what the goals of this battle will be.\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi said. \"I don't want to lead a foreign army against my own people. I'm trying to save the Library, not destroy it.\"\n\n\"And where then are your troops? Besides these good people.\" Ram\u00f3n gave Santi an appraising look. \"I am compassionate toward you, Captain Santi. I understand your point. But remember, regardless of who fights by your side, should you be successful, a new treaty may well be forged with the Great Library.\" Ram\u00f3n gave Santi an appraising look. \"And for all your undoubtedly high principles, I believe you're interested in saving someone in particular from the Library, first and foremost.\"\n\nSanti could hardly argue that point, but he didn't let his expression show it. \"The Spanish and Portuguese navies are the envy of the world, no doubt, but don't you think they'll expect you to use them? We need a better plan than an attack they can anticipate without getting out of their chairs. Your ships will be a vital part of that, without any doubt, but we need a much different approach if we want to win control of the Library without unnecessary bloodshed.\"\n\n\"Well, I am no strategist; I leave that thorny problem in your capable hands, Captain. My job is to end the Library's oppressive grip upon knowledge to the benefit of my people. That last part is the most important, of course.\"\n\n\"Are you in communication with the Russian tsar and the emperor of Japan?\"\n\n\"As it happens, I am. But I hardly think the lobby of the Cadiz Grand Hotel is the proper venue for that discussion. Come.\"\n\nThe king turned and abruptly headed for the door. His soldiers didn't seem at all surprised; a core of them closed ranks around him, but another part split off to rush up the stairs, and a third portion moved to take posts around the three of them: Dario, Santi, and Khalila.\n\nOne of the soldiers stepped smartly up to Dario and bowed slightly. \"Don Santiago, His Highness Ram\u00f3n Alfonse is pleased to see you moved to more secure and comfortable accommodations in Madrid. Please follow me.\"\n\nSanti said, \"And if we don't wish to go with you?\"\n\nThe soldier was a thin-faced man, hardened, with eyes as lifeless as a doll's. \"Then, Captain Santi, you will be taken to more secure and less comfortable accommodations here in Cadiz. While I have no wish to kill you, I will obey the orders of my king.\"\n\nKhalila didn't want the full focus of that man's eyes, but she raised her chin and didn't blink when she received it. \"I am a Scholar. So is Scholar Santiago. Captain Santi is of command rank within the High Garda. You understand what you are doing, do you?\"\n\n\"Spain's recently declared its independence from the Library, Scholar,\" he told her. \"And that makes you a foreign refugee, at best. Don Santiago is welcome to travel with the king to Madrid, as are you, as his guests. But do not imagine wearing the symbol of the Library gives you any special consideration.\"\n\nIt was no more than she should have expected, she knew that, but the vicious precision with which the man said it indicated years of pent-up resentment, a fierce satisfaction at a minor revenge. She felt a shiver go through her and hoped it was not something he could see. We didn't think of the resentment. Or the glee with which people would view the Library's vulnerability. Once the chill passed, she felt heat. Anger, building to fury. You will not destroy the Library. You will not.\n\n\"We're happy to be my royal cousin's guests,\" Dario said. \"Of course. Are we not?\" His tone was butter smooth, but the quick glance he sent her and Santi was loaded with warning. They all knew Santi was on a hair trigger; the last thing he wanted was to become enmeshed in royal politics when every moment wasted was another his lover spent in a cell in Alexandria, moving fast toward execution.\n\nBut Santi nodded agreement, however hot the look was in his eyes. And in a moment, the guards returned from upstairs, leading Thomas and Glain. Thomas looked like he was in the mood to fight, but he calmed when he saw the rest of them standing unharmed. \"What is this? They're packing our bags. Such as we have, of course.\"\n\n\"We're going on to Madrid,\" Dario told him. \"It's all right.\"\n\nBut was it? This had the feeling of a trap closing around them, for all that they'd hoped for something like it. \"Should we do this? Are we sure?\"\n\n\"There are no right moves at this stage,\" Santi told her. \"Everything will go wrong. Egos will get in the way. Politics. Greed. We have to find a way through, whatever happens.\" He took in a slow breath. \"But you two would be far safer staying in Spain and organizing the unification of countries against the Archivist. You're both natural politicians. Make them call for the Archivist's removal, and the replacement of the Curia with new leadership, as a condition of signing a new treaty.\"\n\n\"And you?\" Khalila asked.\n\n\"Let me and Glain go on to Alexandria.\"\n\n\"The days when one or two people could save those we love are long gone, Captain.\" Surprisingly, it came from Glain herself. She looked calm, though she was watching the soldiers around them with sharp focus. \"To cripple the Archivist's power, you have to make people believe he's vulnerable. That's already started. Wales openly defied him, and they still conquered London and brought England to its knees; he threatened them for storming the Oxford Serapeum, but he couldn't stop them, either. That hurt him, and this hurts him more with every country that declares its independence. We need to take advantage of it.\"\n\n\"And, Dario? Is your cousin going to commit real troops to fight a real war?\" asked Santi.\n\nDario shrugged. \"Let's find out.\"\n\nNot that they had much choice."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "The royal coach was, as might have been expected, luxurious, and large enough for twice their number; Ram\u00f3n Alfonse dismissed all but two of his guards from the interior to make them comfortable, and offered water and juice. Dario looked over the selection with a frown. \"Nothing more relaxing than that?\"\n\n\"A king is offering you refreshment from his own hands, and you criticize? Really, Cousin. You haven't changed at all.\"\n\n\"I have. I no longer think that I'm the most important thing in the world. I've met people who've convinced me of that. I thought you'd be pleased.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am,\" the king said, and poured a crystal glass full of orange juice at Khalila's request. He passed it to her with a smile. The carriage they traveled in was so well insulated that she could only barely detect the hissing of the carriage engine and the sound of the wheels. No sense of motion at all. \"We all thought that you'd never grow out of your arrogance, but we'd hoped you'd learn to point it in a useful direction. I suspect these friends of yours have helped.\" A glass went to Thomas, who took it carefully in his massive hand. It looked like a child's teacup in comparison. \"You, sir, you are an inventor who understands the automata?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And, if I heard correctly, who also can reproduce the written word using some sort of machine? Tell me, does it copy script quickly? I've seen automata that can do such things. A French inventor built one, but it was meant as an aide to scholars, and was slow enough that the Library felt it was of no particular interest.\"\n\n\"They take this machine seriously. Once the letters are set on a tray, a page can be printed again and again, without limit.\"\n\n\"Quickly?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe king's eyebrows rose, and Khalila watched him take a long, meditative sip of his juice. \"Well. I'd heard rumors, but this is the first confirmation. And does such a machine actually exist?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Is it in use now?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Then the dogs have been unleashed, and we don't have time to waste. If I intend to stop the High Garda from using every Serapeum with a Translation Chamber as a potential invasion point, I need to act quickly to preserve the kingdom.\" He drummed his perfectly manicured nails on his knee and looked off into the distance. \"And, of course, we will require the plans for such a machine, in exchange for our assistance.\"\n\nHis tone had shifted. So, Khalila noted, had the emphasis of his pronouns; she could almost hear the weight of them. This was the king of Spain speaking, not Ram\u00f3n Alfonse.\n\nDario had missed it. \"Cousin, before we give up anything\u2014\"\n\n\"It's customary to call me Your Highness,\" the king interrupted. \"We permitted you landing and shelter. It aligns with our interests to support you in your quest to, shall we say, reform the great institution to which you owe your true loyalty. But this is not an exchange. Crowns negotiate only with crowns.\"\n\n\"Which means?\" Captain Santi asked.\n\n\"When great kings fall, the world trembles. Who is the Archivist's successor, when you achieve your goal?\"\n\n\"I'm no kingmaker, Your Highness.\"\n\n\"You have no choice. And you must take that seriously. I don't know your Scholar Christopher Wolfe. Would he be capable of holding the center in such a time of crisis? Of not only leading a Library caught in the throes of change, but dealing resolutely with the heads of every nation on earth? Because Spain will not come to the new Archivist as a supplicant. We will come as an equal. All the reverence and history the Great Library has behind it means nothing if it cannot defend its own existence.\"\n\nSanti was silent, and Khalila could see he'd never asked himself such a question. It took a long, charged moment before he said, \"Wolfe is fully capable. But he will never want it.\"\n\n\"Then who? Who leads the Library if you succeed? If you don't know, your quest is nothing but disaster. The Archivist is a fixed star in the heavens. Remove him, and you had best install a great light to keep the sky from falling.\"\n\n\"So says the king of Spain?\"\n\n\"So would say a friend,\" Ram\u00f3n Alfonse said. \"Sadly, a king has no friends once he takes the crown. It may be put aside from time to time, but a king is not a man. A king\u2014and an Archivist\u2014is a country.\"\n\n\"There are tens of thousands of truly great Scholars still loyal to the true ideals of the Library,\" Khalila said. \"We will find someone, Sire.\"\n\n\"No. You will not. There is nothing rarer than an honest politician, dear Scholar, and that is what you will need to prevent the greatest disaster of this\u2014perhaps of any\u2014age.\" The king was quiet for a moment, and then he said, \"I think you began this effort of yours for noble reasons, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the Scholars frequently quote. So be sure what you are doing. And be ready. Spain is an ally, to a point. But Spain will not fight for the same goals that you seek.\"\n\nThe silence in the carriage was profound after that quiet statement. Khalila felt a little sick. She thought herself an intelligent person, but he was right: none of them had fully considered the effects of what they'd set in motion. It had started as a means to save friends, and now... now it was larger than they'd ever imagined.\n\n\"King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse,\" she said. \"Does Spain believe in the burning and destruction of the Great Archives? Of the wholesale loss of millions of original works?\"\n\nShe'd struck him from an unexpected quarter, and she saw him blink. \"No. Naturally, that is abhorrent to any person of any land.\"\n\n\"But it will happen. It is inevitable. If we count politics above the preservation of knowledge, that is the outcome. We know, because it happened for a thousand years before the Great Library created the Archive system and the Blanks. Tens of thousands of precious, unique works, all gone because a king decreed that destroying them was useful. That denying knowledge to others was a tactic of war. Those are the days we fear, and they are coming. Unless we succeed, and you help us, then you will one day look on a world with no respect for knowledge and no tools to tell truth from a lie. Is that what you want?\"\n\n\"Of course not. But the Library can't survive on reputation alone. It needs strength, and it needs a leader who can mend all this damage. It's been a long time coming, but the worst will happen quickly. You must be ready, Scholar Seif.\" The king's gaze swept across the rest of them. \"You must not wait to find your new Archivist. When you present Spain with a name, you will receive our full support.\"\n\nIt wasn't Scholar Wolfe; she knew that. Wolfe didn't have the temperament or, she thought, the desire.\n\nThen who?\n\nShe didn't know. And she had the sick, falling feeling that none of them did.\n\nThe carriage suddenly picked up speed with a lurch, and they all swayed from the change. The king turned to the guard beside him and said, \"What's happening?\"\n\nThe guard slid open the compartment window that separated them from the driver, conversed, and slid it closed. \"Your Highness, we're informed that High Garda troops have arrived via Translation at the Cadiz Serapeum, and they are fortifying the building, along with the librarians. We believe the same is occurring in the Madrid library, and several others throughout the country.\"\n\n\"Then Spain must choose,\" King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse said soberly. \"We must take every single Serapeum. If they surrender, they will be given safe passage to Alexandria. If they resist, take the fight forward until resistance is done. Give the orders.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Khalila blurted out, and instantly wished she hadn't when all eyes turned to her. \" Wait! If you start this war, it erupts everywhere! And at what cost?\"\n\n\"To the Library? Everything. To us? We risk becoming the burning wasteland that was France, after their rebellion. Or, more recently, Philadelphia. But the Archivist cannot fight on so many fronts, and so we stand little risk of punishment. As king of Spain, I must do this.\" The king stared at her with such intensity she felt an instinct to look away... but she did not. \"This is the path you've paved for us.\"\n\n\"Then let us try something else first,\" she said. \"Let us talk to them.\"\n\n\"Talk?\" He sat back, a frown forming now, and looked at Dario. \"Talk?\"\n\n\"She's right,\" Dario said. \"There are doubts in the ranks. We had help getting away in America. And what loss to you if we can persuade at least one of the Serapeums to side with us?\"\n\n\"I don't like your chances, but it's your funeral mass to schedule.\" Ram\u00f3n Alfonse tapped the barrier, and it slid open. \"Counter that last order. Take me to the train. Then you may deliver our friends where they believe they need to go, and assign a full company of soldiers to guard them. I'll expect them in Madrid in one piece. If they fail, or God forbid are murdered, then my original orders stand: take the Library properties with all speed.\"\n\n\"Sire,\" the driver said, and closed the window again.\n\n\"There.\" The king arched an eyebrow at them. \"I wish you luck, my friends. And if not luck... then I will exact vengeance.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "Talking their way into the Serapeum had seemed like a reasonable idea in the heat of the moment.\n\nStanding on the blocked road that led to the building, surrounded by grim, determined Spanish soldiers, it seemed a great deal more like suicide.\n\nKhalila, to calm her nerves, walked away from the low, intense discussion between Santi and Dario and Thomas and found Glain, who was sitting on the back of a troop carrier. She had a rifle in her hands, efficiently loading it, then fine-tuning the optical scope. She'd put on Spanish armor, since it was all that was available, and she looked as at home in that as she did in High Garda gear.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Khalila asked.\n\nGlain, without looking up, said, \"I'm making sure that I'm ready for what happens when everything else fails.\" She looked calm, but then, she usually did; the High Garda had done that for her, smoothed away her old flares of temper and given her purpose and direction. Glain had been born for soldiering, far more than anyone else Khalila had ever known. They had nothing in common, and yet, strangely, they had so much, too. \"Did you finish your prayers?\"\n\n\"I did.\" Khalila sat on the back step of the truck and stared out at the street. They were looking at the sweep of the Cadiz Serapeum, which had been designed by the famous architect Gaud\u00ed; it was a fabulous structure in the shape of a coiled dragon, with shimmering blue-tiled scales and a snaking roofline that outlined the dragon's back. Beautiful, and somehow very suited to this odd, lovely country. The rain was still falling in a steady, relentless mist, but at least the winds had passed, and the temperature was a bit warmer. She was still grateful for the heavy coat that the palace guards had pressed on her.\n\nShe was also grateful for the weapon in the coat pocket. A Spanish pistol, heavy and full of brutal promise. She preferred swords, but she'd studied with pistols as well. She could do what was needed.\n\n\"I think we're going to need prayers,\" Glain said. \"The king was right. We've opened the gates of hell, you know. And what comes out now is our fault.\"\n\n\"Is a fire the fault of the man who drops a match, or the one who spilled the oil all over the floor, knew it, and left it there?\"\n\n\"Scholar arguments. I'm practical. We started this, and now it's a war. We need to prepare for that.\"\n\n\"You don't think we have a chance?\"\n\nKhalila looked directly at her friend. Glain's hair had grown out and was curling at the ends. Glain had little time for appearances or romance, though in her own way she did love those around her; it was only that the love she felt was expressed as loyalty, fidelity, and friendship.\n\n\"I think we haven't begun to understand the costs of what we're doing,\" Glain said. \"But you point me at what needs to be done, and I'll do it. I'm a soldier. You, Khalila: you're a politician.\"\n\nKhalila laughed. \"I am not!\" But she was, of course. She'd grown up moving through a political family, in a highly developed political society in Saudi Arabia. And the politics of the Great Library had simply seemed familiar.\n\nGlain sent her a look that was part wry amusement, part exasperation. \"When they talk about who will lead the Library, you realize that the Curia will have to go, don't you? Not just the Archivist. They've all been complicit in what he's done, all these years. At the very least, they're weak. At the most, they're as bad as he is. So we have to find not just his replacement, but the heads of all the specialties, unless they break ranks and join with us\u2014and even then, we'll have to be careful of spies and traitors. Some of them will want us dead, even in defeat.\"\n\nAs usual, Glain and Santi had the same view of the tactical situation, and Khalila had to admit that it was... not encouraging. \"We need to preserve. That's our first objective. Protect the books.\"\n\n\"It's what we swore to do,\" Glain agreed.\n\n\"But we also should protect our brothers and sisters who might not understand what they're fighting for. We didn't. Not until it was too late.\" Glain nodded, but it didn't look like wholehearted agreement, either. \"You don't want us to do this.\"\n\n\"I don't want any of us putting ourselves out as easy targets,\" Glain replied. \"There's brave, and then there's stupid.\"\n\n\"Which am I?\"\n\n\"That depends.\"\n\nKhalila turned to meet her eyes over the rifle. \"But you'll look after me.\"\n\nGlain pulled in a breath and slowly let it out. \"Stupid, then.\"\n\nShe stood up. \"Don't tell them until I'm gone.\"\n\n\"Khalila\u2014\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"We can win this with force, or we can try to win it with the power of an idea. I want to try that first. I need to do that first, for my soul.\"\n\nGlain muttered something in Welsh that Khalila only vaguely understood, but it sounded grim. \"I'll see you buried according to your faith, if it comes to that. And shoot the brains out of anyone who hurts you. That's all I can do, for my soul.\"\n\n\"I know that, Sister.\"\n\nGlain's grin came like a burst of sunlight, and was just as quickly gone. \"Chwaer,\" she said. \"If you want to be accurate. Though I don't suppose you'll ever learn to pronounce it properly.\"\n\n\"Chwaer,\" Khalila said back, with what she thought was a surprisingly good attempt. \"Don't let them stop me.\"\n\nShe stood up and walked around the truck, keeping it between her and Santi, who'd be the first to spot her movement and guess her purpose. She was aware of Glain moving behind her\u2014finding a good vantage spot, she thought. Something high.\n\nThere was an automaton pacing in front of the gates of the Serapeum. It was a sphinx, which meant they'd likely brought it from Alexandria; it froze when it saw her and turned its pharaonic head in her direction. She didn't pause. She walked steadily forward. The sphinx didn't attack, but it crouched lower, those baleful red eyes glowing brighter.\n\n\"I have come to talk,\" she said. \"I am Khalila Seif, Scholar of the Great Library, and I come to talk.\"\n\nShe heard a shout from behind her in the distance. It rang down the street, from wet cobbles and the looming stonework of the buildings rising on both sides. She was afraid and trembling, and she wanted very badly to turn and run back to the safety of her friends.\n\nDario was calling her name in a sharp, panicked voice.\n\n\"Let me in,\" she said. \"At the very least, you gain a hostage. One the Archivist wants very badly.\"\n\nFor a moment, and the sphinx only crouched lower, and she could see the hard cables that served as its muscles flexing beneath that bronze skin. I know what to do if it attacks, she told herself. She remembered Jess's instruction and felt a little steadier. A little stronger. She could freeze that automaton in place with a touch and walk in looking as powerful and mysterious as an Obscurist.\n\nIf it didn't take her hand off first, of course.\n\n\"Khalila!\" Dario's shout was closer. He was running toward her. She heard the crack of a rifle shot and a yelp and backward-pedaling footsteps. Didn't dare take her attention from the automaton, but she prayed Glain hadn't deliberately wounded him. No, she'd have placed a shot neatly at his feet and forced him back to cover. He'd think it was a Library sniper. Hopefully. That would keep all the rest back as well. \"Khalila, love, get out of there!\"\n\n\"I'm coming inside,\" Khalila said to the sphinx, and took another step.\n\nIt rose from its crouch, turned, and glided toward the gate.\n\nShe followed, and as she passed the barrier of that open courtyard wall, she pulled in a breath that smelled of rain and iron and rust, and a phantom hint of blood. There were gardens surrounding the Serapeum, thick with late-blooming flowers and trees whose turning leaves still clung to branches. It was a beautiful place. She imagined what it would be like after a battle to take this place. Churned, broken, and destroyed.\n\nNo. This cannot happen.\n\nAhead, the sphinx moved with a silky lion's stride to the closed, thickly barred gates... which silently opened. The automaton paused outside of them, watching her, and as she passed it, the thing bared needle teeth in an unmistakable threat.\n\nShe stepped inside, and the gates slammed together behind her with incredible speed and force, and she very nearly cried out at the ring of the iron... but she stopped where she was, just a foot or two inside the sacred Serapeum grounds, and caught her breath. Her heart was speeding faster now, and she allowed herself to take in where she stood in the small respite.\n\nThis close, the form of the building did look like a resting dragon, with the wide entry hall its long, narrow head, and a pair of slitted yellow windows above glowing to give the illusion of eyes. A terrifying symbol of power, this construction; on a day less grim, on an occasion less dire, it might have looked beautiful, but the clouds and rain had stripped all ornaments away to show the pure menace beneath.\n\nAnd I have walked in alone.\n\nThey let her wait for a long few moments before she felt\u2014rather than saw\u2014someone approaching her from the side. She turned her head without moving any other muscles that might get her unnecessarily killed and saw a uniformed High Garda soldier training a weapon on her. A turn to the other side confirmed what she already knew: there was another there as well, angled so that her merely ducking wouldn't kill them in a crossfire. She suspected there would be a third somewhere invisible up higher in the building's serpentine roofline.\n\nKhalila folded her hands and waited for the real negotiations to begin.\n\nIt took another few moments before the door opened in the dragon's mouth, and a small old woman in Library robes descended the steps with the help of a cane. She was of Japanese ancestry, and her robes reflected the cultural style of that land; her cane, Khalila noticed, was carved with the shape of a dragon's head.\n\nThere was no mistaking the gold band around the woman's wrist.\n\nKhalila bowed low, and the Scholar matched it to a careful degree less deep. She carried an umbrella in her other hand, though she didn't offer to shelter Khalila with it. The older woman's eyes were calm and unreadable.\n\n\"Scholar,\" Khalila greeted her.\n\n\"Scholar,\" the other woman said. \"You demonstrate disregard for your own safety. How did you know we wouldn't simply have you killed?\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" Khalila answered. Quite truthfully. \"I hoped.\"\n\nThe woman was motionless for a long stretch of seconds\u2014long enough that the chill began to eat at Khalila's nerves. But then she said, \"I am Scholar Murasaki Shirasu. I am aware of who you are, of course. Not your scholarly accomplishments, which are slight, but your actions, which loom much larger.\"\n\n\"I'm honored to have come to the attention of the great essayist Murasaki at all,\" Khalila answered. \"As to my accomplishments, I am too young to claim any.\"\n\nMurasaki gave her a slow smile. \"Humble and elegant,\" she said. \"And you do not rise to the bait. Come inside, Scholar Seif. Let us warm ourselves with tea, and you may present your case not just to me, but to the High Garda as well. I doubt you will ever leave us again, but that was, of course, your choice.\"\n\nKhalila didn't answer, because she couldn't think of anything that wouldn't betray her uncertainty.\n\nShe followed Scholar Murasaki into the dragon's mouth."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "The first thing the High Garda did the instant she crossed the Serapeum threshold was relieve her of her pistol, of course; she had expected as much. She had not quite expected to be facing so many drawn weapons\u2014ten, at her count, though those were only the ones she could see\u2014and she raised her arms and stood very quietly for the search, which was so thorough even Glain would have been impressed. Scholar Murasaki ignored all of it and walked across a wide, intricately inlaid wooden floor to seat herself in a carved wooden chair next to a stand that held a chained, oversized Codex.\n\nThe smell of the place overwhelmed Khalila for a moment with helpless longing. Books. The crisp, lightly spiced smell of pages, as constant in the air here as incense. The entry hall was immense and rose in a rounded, organic bubble. It was topped with a huge blue curved window with gray that spiraled in like smoke. Gorgeous and odd. This entire Serapeum was a delight.\n\nI can't let this be destroyed. We have few enough things to feed our souls.\n\n\"Clear,\" the soldier said, and stepped back. He was a blond young man who topped her by a head and twice over in breadth. Unlike the angry man in Philadelphia, he hadn't insisted on the removal of her hijab, but then, Spain was a deeply cosmopolitan country, with seeds of the culture of Islam in its arts, architecture, and food. She felt more at home here than she ever had in the Burner camp.\n\n\"Is she the one with Obscurist powers?\" asked a dark-skinned woman wearing librarian robes. She sounded anxious, and she was hiding in the back, behind the row of weapons. As if I might bite, Khalila thought.\n\n\"I am not,\" she replied. \"My friend Morgan Hault is the Obscurist, and she has been taken to the Iron Tower in Alexandria. Scholar Wolfe is, we assume, in prison and awaiting execution. You have nothing to fear from me, I assure you. I come only to talk.\"\n\n\"About what?\" That brought someone else out of the shadows: a tall, scarred man with shockingly red hair shaved close to his skull. One of the scars ran a white ridge through the left side of his head. No librarian, this one; he wore High Garda armor and uniform, and command like a mantle. \"Because if you're here to talk to us about giving up the Serapeum for the Spanish to loot, you know better.\"\n\nThere was something of an opening in what he said, she realized. He didn't simply condemn her and order her arrested. He was listening.\n\nSo was Scholar Murasaki. The gravity of the situation suddenly descended on her, freezing her in place, and she took a moment to compose her thoughts. Think. What will convince these two very different people?\n\n\"I have never been here before,\" Khalila said. \"To Spain, or to Cadiz or this Serapeum. Yet the moment I stepped inside, it was familiar to me. It was home. I look at you, and I don't see enemies. I see those who value what I do: the preservation and distribution of knowledge. The delights of discovery and the honor of guardianship. You are the Great Library; you are its heart and soul, spirit and blood. And I would rather die than see you, and this place, desecrated when I can prevent it.\"\n\nThey didn't say anything at all. There was no reaction. And Khalila closed her eyes. \"There is a rot at the heart of what we love. It is not the knowledge or the preservation of it. It is the notion that only we can decide what is worthy, what is not, what is progress, and whether or not it should proceed. For thousands of years, the Archivists have told us that all we have here is all there can be. But it isn't. I saw. I know.\" She turned to Murasaki, whose face was thrown into stark, aged lines by the light cascading in from above. \"Do you know the poet Murasaki Hiroko?\"\n\n\"I do not. There is no such poet.\"\n\n\"But there was,\" Khalila said softly. \"I saw the manuscript, Scholar. She wrote poems to her lover, but her lover was another married woman, and at the time the Curia deemed them unfit for distribution. When she protested, they told her to destroy the work. She refused, and wrote more poems calling for the end of censorship by the Great Library. I read them. They were rotting in the Black Archives. If you don't know of her, it is because she was simply... erased.\"\n\nShe felt the shift of tension\u2014the wrong way. \"Nonsense,\" the red-haired captain said. \"No such thing. The Black Archives are a fable told to frighten children and interest conspiracy-minded crackpots.\"\n\n\"It was vast,\" Khalila said. \"Story upon story of shelves, all filled with works the Library deemed seditious or dangerous. Confiscated from the Scholars who wrote them. Locked away, to rot in darkness and silence, all those books silenced. I saw it. I was there. I read Murasaki Hiroko's poems, and they were\u2014\" Her voice faltered and broke, and she took in a gulp of air. \"They were searing and angry and brilliant. They were beautiful. And now they're gone.\"\n\nThis time, the silence felt heavy, and it lasted a second too long before Scholar Murasaki said, \"Gone. But you claim they were in the Black Archives.\"\n\n\"They were,\" Khalila said. She had tears in her eyes now. \"Where they'd been kept for almost five hundred years. But once we had been there, seen them, the Black Archives were no longer secret. And the Archivist ordered them all destroyed rather than let them see the light of day.\"\n\n\"You're lying,\" the captain said. \"The Library does not destroy books. We're not Burners.\"\n\n\"But we are,\" she said, and let the tears come, the grief cascade out of the locked box she'd kept it in. \" We are. That is the ugly, filthy truth; the Library decides, in secret, what should be read and what shouldn't. What should be destroyed if it poses a danger. I watched those books burn. Hundreds of thousands of books, row upon row, all turning to ashes...\" She couldn't speak. She tasted tears and struggled not to cry. \"We saved what we could. It wasn't enough.\"\n\n\"What you're alleging is heresy,\" the Scholar said. For the first time, she sounded shaken. \"Heresy at the highest levels of the Great Library.\"\n\nKhalila wiped her tears with shaking hands. \"I told you what I saw. I will swear to it under any oath you say. You may question me as much as you like; I will tell you the truth: I saw the Black Archives burn on the Archivist's command. There is no greater sin than\u2014\"\n\n\"What you are saying is heresy!\" That was from the librarian who'd been hiding in the back but who pushed forward now. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, and she leveled a pointing finger at Khalila. \"You and your friends, you betrayed the Library. You abandoned your posts. And you've been declared outlaws and enemies! You took refuge in a Burner city, of all places! Why should we believe anything you have to say, especially when you claim the Black Archives actually exist?\"\n\n\"Have you never had a doubt?\" Khalila ignored the librarian, because now she focused on the High Garda captain. \"Have you never been given an order you thought was wrong? Never arrested people without understanding what they'd done to deserve it? Never seen Scholars vanish, their work mysteriously gone? I've seen the prison under Rome. I've seen how the Library treats those it fears.\"\n\nHe didn't reply, but she could see the flicker in his gaze. She'd hit a mark\u2014how deeply, was the question.\n\n\"Is Captain Santi still alive?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes. Do you know him?\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"Do you respect him?\"\n\n\"I did before.\"\n\n\"You still should. He has never compromised his beliefs.\"\n\n\"He's in open rebellion against the Great Library!\"\n\n\"No. He is seeking to spread the knowledge that has been denied to us by generations of Archivists. He seeks, as I do, to preserve the ideals of the Library, from which we've long ago strayed. We seek to bring the light of knowledge back to what is now a dark room. And I came here to ask for your help.\"\n\nMurasaki stirred. \"We cannot support rebels.\"\n\n\"I am not asking that at all,\" she said. \"I'm asking that you preserve this place. Use it as it was always meant to be used. Open it. Don't listen to the orders of the Great Library, which tell you that the people around you are your enemies, that we are your enemies, that the king of Spain stands outside to destroy everything you love; he doesn't want to do that. He wants to see this place remain exactly as it is.\" She turned back to the High Garda. \"Are your orders to advance on Madrid?\"\n\nHe didn't answer for a long moment, and then he said, \"Not yet. First, our orders are to find you, Santi, and the others and send you through the Translation Chamber to Alexandria, where you'll be held for trial.\"\n\n\"None of us will get a trial,\" she said. \"I've seen the orders. Glain is to be killed immediately. Santi and I, we would be sent to join the prisoners for the Feast of Greater Burning, where my father, brothers, and uncle are already imprisoned. And Thomas\u2014Thomas will be made to work for them until they decide he's of no use anymore. And none of us will be remembered. No journals of our lives. No mention of our works. We will vanish... like the books of the Black Archives.\"\n\nNone of them spoke. She took in a deep breath. \"I pledge this to you: I will die here in this place before I let anyone, anyone, plunder this beautiful library. And King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse knows that.\"\n\n\"Brave words, Scholar,\" said the High Garda captain. \"But all it takes is a single shot to kill you, and your promise means nothing. Spain stands at our gates with troops ready to take this building. Are you asking us to trust that the king will hold back out of the goodness of his heart?\" He shook his head. \"I'm not in the business of taking the word of a young woman barely out of training on the motives of a man she doesn't even know.\"\n\n\"If I can sign Spain to a new treaty, will you break with the Archivist?\"\n\nThere was a moment of silence, and then Murasaki said, \"You mean, break with the Library.\"\n\n\"No. I mean the Archivist. Because we mean to replace him. The Library will live on. Your vow is to the Library. Does it matter to you who sits in that office?\"\n\n\"It might,\" she said. \"It might a great deal. And you cannot guarantee that the one who takes his place won't be as bad, or worse. Can you?\"\n\n\"Scholar Murasaki, I can promise you that you will be part of that choice.\" It was a rash promise, but Murasaki was a widely respected Scholar, one who had refused a post on the Curia to take leadership of the Cadiz Serapeum. We could hardly find a better, more impartial person to take the Archivist's robes, if it comes to that. \"You are a woman of great standing and reputation. If you join with us, if you believe in our cause\u2014\"\n\n\"You can't trust the word of the Spanish king,\" said the librarian who'd pushed forward. Khalila didn't recognize her, and there was something about her that put her on edge; the glittery eagerness of the woman's eyes, the tense set of her shoulders. \"Kings lie. They'll promise peace, and as soon as they have the chance, they'll loot this sacred place and kill us all. We can never trust these power-hungry savages; surely you know that, Scholar...\"\n\n\"I come from what some call power-hungry savages,\" Murasaki said evenly. \"And I know King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse very well. He will not willingly destroy one of the jewels of his kingdom unless we force him to do so. Our lives and our books are safe; Scholar Seif is quite correct. The question is, will the High Garda obey commands to retrieve these fugitives and send them to Alexandria? Or will the High Garda choose to do as it is sworn, and guard this place against any harm?\"\n\n\"You're talking treason,\" the High Garda commander rumbled.\n\n\"I am asking a question,\" Murasaki said, with glacial composure that Khalila herself didn't possess\u2014not inwardly. This had become a thorny knot of a conversation, and she didn't dare inject herself. She'd set it in motion. Now she could only stand back and see how it ended. \"And the question is, to whom do all of us owe our loyalty? To an Archivist who seems willing to provoke wars to get his hands on his enemies... or to the Library?\"\n\nKhalila imagined, quite vividly, that this debate might end with her own blood on the floor, and felt a little faint... but also, oddly, a little thrilled. Finally, they were engaged in the world. Affecting it directly. And that felt... powerful. It felt important.\n\n\"You took an oath, same as I did, Shirasu,\" the commander said. \"Whatever we think of the man, he is the elected head of the Library.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I do not remember my oath all that well, my friend. What was the wording of it? Did it swear my allegiance to a man?\"\n\nThe commander stroked his beard. Khalila knew Murasaki was ruthlessly correct: the oath was to the Library, not to the Archivist who headed it. But he still had an answer. \"It's up to the Curia to remove him, then. Not to the head of one Serapeum far away from Alexandria.\"\n\n\"The head of my discipline rose to the level of Curia through corruption, as did most of them,\" she said. \"Favors for favors, payments, patronage, and favoritism. I'm not blind, Fergus. I know the corruption of which this young woman speaks. Do you think we punished France solely because of its rebellion against the Library? It was a convenient excuse to loot an entire country of its treasures, which became a river of gold to enrich the Library's flagging treasury. I know that because I saw it. And for many years, I have regretted that silence.\" She smiled slightly, and it softened the severe lines of her face. \"Fergus, you told me yourself of your discomfort when the previous High Commander was removed and replaced by someone you didn't think was half so worthy.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" he agreed. \"Captain Chu was a pompous ass and only as good as the lieutenants under him, that's true. But he's not bent.\"\n\n\"When a strong gale constantly blows, everything bends,\" Murasaki said. \"And even the most honest make accommodations, and soon they are not honest at all.\"\n\nKhalila's attention was drawn back to the librarian, who was edging closer to the front now. Her body seemed stiff, and her face shone with sweat in the reflected light from the window above, though the temperature inside was cool enough. She wasn't registering objections anymore. Her gaze was fixed on Murasaki, and she was heading straight for the Scholar where she sat in her chair.\n\nKhalila saw the librarian's hand come out from the pocket of her robe and knew she had seconds to act. She didn't know and couldn't see what it was the woman held\u2014knife, gun, something else\u2014but she lunged forward, grabbed the woman's hand and twisted it.\n\nIt was a bottle.\n\nLiquid splashed onto the woman's robe in a long, slick stain from chest to hips, and the smell of it hit Khalila an instant before she felt the drops that had hit her exposed hand begin to burn. She grabbed a thick fold of her skirt and wrapped the skin tight to stifle the fire; so long as it was starved for oxygen it couldn't spread and burrow, though the pain was a sharp, stabbing agony that made her gasp in breaths.\n\nShe was lucky.\n\nThere was no saving the librarian.\n\nThe woman screamed as her robe erupted in a rush of green fire that greedily wrapped around her. Everyone scrambled out of the way. Murasaki came to her feet and shouted orders Khalila couldn't hear.\n\nThe Greek fire caught with a vengeance as the commander\u2014Fergus\u2014shouted orders. The librarian continued to scream as her skin turned red, then black under the flames. She turned in wild circles, and where she stepped, fire took hold. It was chaos.\n\nAnd then Murasaki herself took a gun from a soldier and put a bullet in the woman's heart.\n\nThe body collapsed to the inlaid marble floor, hissing and burning, until a High Garda soldier dressed in thick padding ran to the rescue and sprayed a thick, suffocating foam over the body.\n\nKhalila tried to be still. The stench, the smoke, the horror of it, was all too much, and around her, others were screaming, crying, running away into the other parts of the vast complex. She composed herself, tried to breath shallowly, and waited for Murasaki to realize what had just happened.\n\nIt didn't take long.\n\nThe old woman handed the pistol back to the soldier, who seemed rightfully ashamed of his lack of action, and exchanged a long look with her guard commander. These two, it seemed, truly were friends of long standing. There was very real regard; it burned in the look. Fergus was breathing heavily, fury in those blue eyes; Murasaki, for her part, seemed as calm as ever. \"So,\" she said. \"We knew it could happen.\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\" Khalila said. She felt off-balance now. \"You knew someone would try to kill you?\"\n\n\"I have been living on borrowed time since word began to spread of Christopher Wolfe and his arrest and... erasure.\"\n\n\"You know Wolfe?\"\n\n\"I know him very well. He was a brilliant man, if somewhat unlikeable. It came as a blow to many of us when he was taken from the rolls of the Scholars. We never knew what heresy or crime he had committed to earn it, but most who knew him were certain it was wrong. Tell me, does he still live?\"\n\nKhalila wanted very badly to be able to say yes, but instead, she could only say, \"I hope he does. He's in the hands of the Archivist now, along with my friend\u2014\" She almost said Jess, but Jess's safety in Alexandria depended on discretion. \"Morgan, who would have been sent to the Iron Tower. I don't know what's happened to Wolfe, but we are going to find him. You have my word.\"\n\n\"I do not know you, or the value of your word, Scholar Seif, though nothing you have done causes me to doubt it.\" Murasaki turned her focus back to her High Garda commander. \"Well? What do you say?\"\n\nHe sighed. \"I say if the Archivist is desperate enough to assassinate you\u2014and she was his creature, no doubt about that; we've long established as much\u2014then we don't have much of a choice. He sees you as a threat.\"\n\n\"He should. I came here of my own accord to avoid being a rival to him. But I could easily change my mind.\"\n\n\"You should lock down your Translation Chamber,\" Khalila said. \"Before they send troops to take this place away from you. He might order it destroyed.\"\n\n\"You think he would? Destroy it?\" Murasaki asked.\n\n\"I think the Archivist will do anything to preserve his power, and Scholar Murasaki has a powerful reputation. If she sides with us, it will hurt him badly. He won't take the chance.\"\n\nFergus nodded and snapped his fingers. A lieutenant stepped forward. \"Kali, lock it down. And keep the Scholars and librarians in the interior. I don't want them put at any more risk than we must. Lock down the Codexes, too. All of them. The slower Alexandria gets word of this, the better.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" the woman said, and cut her eyes toward Khalila. \"And about them...? Our orders...\"\n\n\"We're not the Archivist's personal guard, and these people don't threaten our Serapeum. We're not leaving these grounds.\"\n\nShe saluted and turned to give orders to soldiers, who scattered on their missions. Which left the still-smoking corpse, Murasaki, Fergus, Khalila, and the lieutenant alone in the vast room. Smoke had risen to stain the windows overhead and swirled there like storm clouds.\n\n\"Lieutenant, please have a squad of troopers make the body safe and store it,\" Murasaki said. \"Find out her funeral preferences. I will personally pay for her burial, and transportation to her family if that was her wish.\"\n\nThe lieutenant silently saluted and left.\n\nFergus said, \"Are we really doing this, Shirasu?\"\n\n\"We've talked about it more than once. I don't think we have any choice if we intend to keep faith with our vows,\" she said, and turned to Khalila. \"You're injured, child. I'll summon a Medica.\"\n\nKhalila realized she was shaking from the pain, but at least it wasn't growing worse. If she uncovered it now, she was afraid the Greek fire would find new breath and spread. \"I'm fine,\" she lied. \"Scholar Murasaki, I need to know what you intend to do.\"\n\n\"I would have thought it was obvious,\" Murasaki said. \"I will continue to serve the people of Cadiz and the people of this country. If necessary, we will protect this place and these books with our lives. And I will reject, by force, any attempt by the Archivist to take control of this Serapeum. You may tell King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse that while we continue to serve the Great Library and its ideals, we do not support the Archivist. Nor will we fight on his behalf.\"\n\nKhalila bowed her head. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Thank Scholar Wolfe,\" Murasaki said. \"The Archivist's injustice to him is the only evidence I needed.\"\n\n\"One more thing,\" Khalila said. \"A favor.\"\n\n\"You saved my life. I think I might owe you this.\"\n\n\"Use of your Translation Chamber.\"\n\n\"To go where?\"\n\n\"Alexandria,\" Khalila said. \"Not to the Serapeum. The High Garda compound.\"\n\nMurasaki's brows climbed. \"Are you so eager to be killed?\"\n\n\"We have friends there,\" Khalila said. \"And a plan. If it happens as I hope, you may follow us home, honored Scholar, to help us restore the Library we both love.\"\n\nThere was a long silence\u2014too long for comfort\u2014and Murasaki finally inclined her head a regal degree. \"This I will do for you,\" she said. \"But, Scholar, be warned: this is not a game for children, or amateurs. You have taken on something so much larger than you know. I hope you are not crushed under its weight. I believe that if you live long enough, you might do great things.\"\n\nKhalila bowed and put her hand to her heart. \"You honor me, Scholar. May I leave to gather my friends?\"\n\n\"And how do you know you'll not be leading them into a neat trap?\" Fergus rumbled. He was still frowning; maybe it was simply the way his face fell even at the best of times. \"Easy for us to take you all and offer you up to the Archivist.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Khalila said. \"It would be. But I think there is some honor, and some wisdom, left inside the Library, Captain.\"\n\nShe turned, took a deep breath, and walked out of the jaws of the dragon into the wider compound, past waiting High Garda who did nothing to stop her. The gates opened, and she dared to hope that finally, something was going their way.\n\nThen she was almost knocked over by Dario as he threw his arms around her.\n\n\"That was stupid,\" Dario told her as he pressed his lips against her forehead. \"If you hadn't come back\u2014\"\n\n\"You'd have gone to your cousin,\" she said.\n\n\"No. No, flower. I'd have fought every one of them to get to you.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"Then we are both stupid. I'd do the same for you.\"\n\n\"Your hand!\" He frowned down at it, cradling it carefully. \"Let's find a healer.\"\n\n\"In a while. First, let's find Captain Santi.\" She pulled back and looked at him directly. \"I've found us a way home.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Excerpt from the personal journal of Niccolo Santi. Not yet available in the Codex:\n\n\u2002I sit with my journal and my pen, and I find nothing to say. I look back on other pages, and I understand why; every page is full of Christopher. The things he does that annoy me, or amuse me, or delight me. The joy of sitting together in the quiet between missions, when we still had those to look forward to together. He has always been a sharp ball of thorns, and difficult to hold on to, but that has never stopped me from loving him.\n\n\u2002In the silence where he should be, I hear nothing.\n\n\u2002I wait.\n\n\u2002I try to lock away the rage I feel for this stupid Brightwell boy and his stupid plan that has sent the man I love into another dark hole in the ground, endless nights of fear and pain and anguish. There is nothing in the world worth Christopher's suffering. Not to me. Let the Library rise or fall; it only matters to me if he is alive, and safe, and sane.\n\n\u2002If that is heresy, then I will be happy to die a heretic.\n\n\u2002If he comes broken out of that place\u2014and he must come out of it\u2014then I will take every bruise, every hurt, out on Jess Brightwell.\n\n\u2002God help me if this takes Christopher from me for good."
            },
            {
                "title": "WOLFE",
                "text": "\"All right,\" Wolfe said in a low whisper, leaning against the wall that separated him from Ariane, on his right. \"Ready?\"\n\n\"Ready,\" she whispered back.\n\n\"Twenty-two guards on this level,\" he said. \"Four hallways, with four guards always assigned to each one. Two walk, and two rest. Each guard is armed with a standard High Garda pistol, rifle, and two knives. There are six automata: one on each hallway, and two that roam at random. Guards change in six-hour shifts, but each hallway changes an hour after the one to its right. All right. Repeat it.\"\n\nAriane repeated it. Where she faltered\u2014she was not well, and he worried that she wouldn't be strong enough to keep this up, soon enough\u2014he patiently reminded her, until she'd recounted it perfectly three times. Then she moved on to teach the sequence to the person housed to her right.\n\nThis was the routine now, every day, noting details and adding to them, and sharing so that every person had the same information, should any opportunities come.\n\nBut it wasn't enough. Not yet.\n\nWolfe wanted to sleep, to be rested for what was coming... but once he'd stretched out, as always, relaxing brought the memories. He'd fought them every night, sometimes all night; lack of rest made them more vivid and compelling, but the vicious circle was hard to break. His hands trembled. His skin itched so fiercely that he rubbed scars until they bled. Hunger, thirst, the constant, gnawing chill... those, he could stand. But the memories were the worst.\n\nPlease, Nic. Help me. Help me one more night. He slowly closed his eyes and summoned up Nic. First his smile, the one that came so rarely in public and so easily in private. The rich, dark color of his eyes, the soft silk of his hair. The scrape of a beard Nic could never quite shave clean for more than an hour or two.\n\nHis neck. Powerful shoulders. Scars. The shape of his chin and his hands. Everything about him, built memory by memory, until Wolfe could feel his warmth, his strength, as a barrier between him and the pulling darkness. What are you so afraid of, Christopher? Santi's voice, quiet and gentle in the night. Your scars have healed. They can't break you now. You are made of scars, and so am I, and together, we can forget them all.\n\nI'm not afraid, Wolfe told him. Not now. He twined his fingers with the warmth of Niccolo Santi's hair and kissed him, and the warmth of that let him drift away, lost in the feeling, until the nightmares lost their way and sleep found him.\n\nIt didn't find him for long, because he woke in a convulsive rush and sat up with his heart pounding and nerves jumping. He'd heard something, something more than just the random noise of a prison.\n\nThere was someone inside his cell.\n\nDark as it was, he could hardly make out the shape, but he was certain it was a human shape, wrapped in black.\n\n\"Quiet,\" a voice whispered. Barely a thread of sound. \"Hush now, Scholar. Crying out will do you no good.\"\n\nThe voice was too soft to identify, but he knew it on some deep, visceral level. I'm imagining things, he thought. I've lost my mind. No one can get in here, past the guards, past the automata.\n\nFor a wild, random moment, he thought he knew who it was, and he whispered, \"Nic?\" But of course it wasn't Niccolo Santi, conjured up by his longing.\n\n\"No.\" The voice was just a whisper. \"You know who it is, Scholar. You always know when I arrive, don't you?\"\n\nHe stopped breathing. Like a child, hiding in the dark from the monsters, that was all he could do. There was nowhere to run. No one to call on for help.\n\n\"You know,\" the shadow said. \"We're old friends, you and I. I've been with you in your darkest moments. I've cleaned your wounds. I've listened to you weep. Remember?\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe whispered. \"No. You're not here. You're not\u2014\"\n\nA cold finger touched his lips. Cold and thin as bone.\n\nHe closed his eyes.\n\n\"I'm not here to hurt you,\" the voice said. \"I am here to ask you a question, Scholar. You remember how I asked you questions, don't you? Sometimes it was very gentle. Those were the good times.\"\n\nThat had only made it worse, the times when the questions had been kind and soft, and there had been a cup of tea and a sweet pastry and a bath. Fresh clothes. Wolfe remembered it so vividly every scar began to ache.\n\nKindness made the inevitable cruelty so much worse.\n\n\"Do you know who made me do that to you, Scholar? It was your old friend the Artifex. He's always been afraid of you. You, you see, would have become the Artifex, and he knew that. He's still afraid of you taking his place. Is this his doing now?\"\n\nWolfe shook his head. His throat had gone painfully dry. I'm talking to a phantom, he thought, but the finger touching his lips felt so real. So cold, but so real.\n\n\"The Archivist,\" he said. \"It's the Archivist who wants us all dead. He's old. His grip is slipping on the throne.\"\n\n\"More than you know,\" the whisper said. \"Be patient. This will be over soon. They've left you alone, but the questions are coming. And I will be coming back to ask them.\"\n\nHe knew that was true; the questions always came, and always, always, the gray, pale shadow was there to ask them. He was going mad, completely mad, and this was an impossible nightmare.\n\nThe cold finger left his lips. The chill lingered like a fog.\n\n\"You let me go,\" Wolfe whispered. \"You said you'd let me go.\"\n\n\"I always keep my promises. You remember, don't you?\"\n\nHe did. He remembered. And that was more frightening than the idea that this was a ghost, a phantom, a madness. \"Qualls.\" The name alone made him feel faint, and he had to brace himself against the wall. \"No. You're gone. Gone. You let me go.\"\n\n\"Did I?\" Qualls gave out a terrible, chilling chuckle, a scrap of iron on stone, of screams echoing from far away. Even in full light, the man had always been terrifying. Something about him was dead, and it showed in his eyes, his smile, the not-quite-human way he moved. \"Very well. Go. The cell door is open... if you have the courage to run.\"\n\nAnd then he was gone, as quickly as that. A shadow in shadow.\n\nNo, Wolfe thought. He was never here. Couldn't have been here. I'm broken.\n\nSanti's voice whispered, Broken bones heal twice as strong.\n\nWolfe held his head in his hands, shivering, sick, shaking from the onslaught of memory, and finally, he realized there was a way to know if it had ever happened at all.\n\nHe slipped out of bed, went to the cell door, and pulled.\n\nIt opened without a sound.\n\nWolfe froze, shocked into stillness. He'd never expected this, never thought it would move.\n\nHe was here. Qualls was here.\n\nHe went weak against the bars. Go. I can run. I can escape.\n\nBut something inside him twisted and screamed in terror at the thought. I won't make it.\n\nHe heard a soft growl.\n\nRed lights glowed in the darkness: the eyes of the sphinx, moving forward with slow, deliberate pads. Wolfe leaned against the bars and tightly wrapped a hand around the bars to hold the door shut. If the sphinx pushed...\n\nThe growl turned to a hiss, and the light grew brighter, until quite suddenly it flared into a red glare bright enough to dazzle his eyes. He blocked the worst of it with his left hand while keeping his right firmly around the bars, and slumped down. Hoped he looked as desperate and dejected as he felt.\n\n\"I can't sleep,\" he said to the thing. \"Please. Help me. Tell them I need something to help me sleep. A bit of wine, a drug, anything. For the love of the gods\u2014\"\n\nIn the harsh red light, he saw a lion's paw swipe at the bars at the level of his fingers. If I let go and it isn't locked...\n\nBut he had to let go or have his fingers severed. He snatched his hand back just in time and leaned all his weight against the door as he covered his face. Through the cover, he sensed the sphinx was pacing back and forth in a restless figure eight. A paw rang sharply against the bars again, and he flinched. Pretending to cry left him perilously near the real thing, but he held himself back from plummeting off that cliff. He'd spent months in a cell like this, huddled and broken. He wouldn't go back to that.\n\n\"Please,\" he said, in a voice he allowed to tremble and break. \"Please, for mercy's sake, let me sleep.\"\n\nIt sounded true because it was. A wail came from deep within him, and he let it out. A tormented, ugly sound.\n\nThe sphinx hissed, and then he heard it take up its slow, steady pace moving down the hallway. The other cells were deathly quiet now, no rustles or moans, snores or cries. Everyone was aware of what had happened.\n\nWolfe moved to the corner of his cell closest to Saleh's and whispered, \"Noise. I need noise. Pass the word to the other end of the hall.\"\n\n\"Done,\" Saleh whispered back. Word passed quickly. Coughs and sneezes began at the other end. Snoring. A voice counting out loud.\n\nFreedom was there, in his grasp. He knew the guards and the automaton routes, but even so, an escape would be impossible without tools and help. He couldn't do this. He couldn't.\n\nHe couldn't run and leave the others here.\n\nYou have to try. All of us agreed we would, if the chance came.\n\nHe reached out for the door and pulled.\n\nIt didn't open.\n\nIt was locked.\n\nHad it ever been unlocked at all?\n\nIt happened before. You imagined Santi was with you the last time. You imagined he was taken to be questioned. You imagined you could hear his screams. You kept crying for them to stop hurting him. It had all been very real, in those dark months. He had needed someone so badly that he'd created Santi out of whole imagination... but even that desperate delusion hadn't been able to block out the very real pain.\n\nYou're imagining things again.\n\nNo, that couldn't be true. The door had been unlocked, hadn't it? He'd felt it move under his hand. And you heard Santi's screams back then, but he was never there.\n\nBut why would he imagine Qualls? His torturer? What sense did that make?\n\nWolfe put a hand on the wall to steady himself. The rough stone felt damp and slick under his palm, and very real. He concentrated on that, on the texture of what he could feel, the smell of the place. This is reality.\n\nThe door had felt real as it moved, too.\n\nHe was coming apart, just as he had before, in a cell like this under the Forum in Rome. Qualls had been there. Imagining him was a sign that his healed, twice-strong bones were cracking. That he couldn't hold.\n\nWolfe collapsed to the floor and rolled over on his back, staring at the black ceiling. Opened his mouth and started to scream without making a sound. He felt tears streaming down from the corners of his eyes, and the ache inside felt black and empty and bottomless.\n\nI'm not strong. I'm broken. I can't save anyone. I can't even save myself.\n\nAs he lay there, he heard the whispering tread of the sphinx again, saw the muted red glow of the eyes turn to regard him, but he didn't move, and the monster didn't lurk. When he was sure it was past, he rolled up to his feet and crawled into the bed. He knew he wouldn't sleep, but it was more comfortable than the cold stone, at least by a small margin.\n\nHe felt Santi's phantom warmth settle beside him, felt his lover's arms around him, and heard Santi whisper, I'll be with you. When you think you can't endure, I will help. Believe in me, if you can't believe in yourself. No, that was a memory, not a phantom; when he'd come back from Rome a broken, shaking shell of a man, that's exactly what Nic had said to him.\n\nThere was no Qualls. Qualls was a specter, a ghost, a terrible memory screaming under the surface. A phantom, to drag him into the darkness.\n\nHe deliberately summoned up Nic in every line, every texture, every memory he could find, and held him close. Nic would keep him safe.\n\nIt was a trick, a fidget, a lie, but it let him slide away into a dark, dreamless, whispering sleep at last."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 28",
                "text": "Morning brought a certain sour satisfaction with it. Wolfe woke alone, curled on his bed, and though there was never any morning light to help mark the hours, the glows had been brightened again. He heard the normal shuffle of men and women in their cells, and before he rose, he quickly ran through the map in his mind, placing each of them in the three-dimensional model he'd built, then adding the guards one by one, in as much detail as he could. Last, the automata.\n\nThe imaginary visit in the night seemed like a vague dream to him now, and he was glad of it. It was a bitter taste in his mouth to think he could be so fragile. They hadn't even used torture yet, only deprivation and the boredom and routine of prison.\n\nBut the counterpoint to it was the sure and certain knowledge that come the Feast of Greater Burning, they were going to die, and horribly. So in a sense, the torture was ever present, and none of the guards had to sully their hands with prisoner blood. Not, he thought, that most would blink at the job.\n\n\"Wolfe!\"\n\nA tap on the bars from Saleh's corner, and Wolfe rose and walked there. \"What is it?\"\n\nSaleh let out a breathless laugh. \"What do you mean? What happened last night?\"\n\nHe'd forgotten that he'd spoken to Saleh in the depths of his delusion. Or at least had hoped that the conversation had been imagined as well. Wolfe took a moment to think how best to say it, but he didn't have a chance before they heard a sharp cry from somewhere down the hall. Hard to pinpoint where it was coming from, but it took only seconds for word to be passed down the row.\n\n\"That's my father,\" Saleh said. He was trying to sound calm, but Wolfe could hear the tightness underneath it. \"They've taken him out of the cell. Where are they taking him? For what?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Wolfe said. \"Focus, Saleh. He's valuable. They won't execute him out of hand, no matter what he does...\" His voice trailed off, and he blinked.\n\nBecause it was true. Only a few of them, of course; the patriarch of the Seif family was one, Scholar Maria Kent was another, located down a level on the east hall. One or two others who stood high enough to be counted as truly exceptional prisoners that the Archivist would want to make a public show of destroying.\n\n\"They've taken him away,\" Saleh said. He was trying to sound calm, but the worry gave his voice a tremble it didn't normally have. \"What are they going to do to him, Scholar? Is this because of my sister? Because of you?\"\n\nIt was, without any shadow of a doubt. Wolfe knew he bore a great deal of responsibility, if not guilt, for what was happening to the Seif family; he'd have to carry that, too, without flinching.\n\n\"Yes,\" Wolfe said honestly. \"It's why I'm here, to help you.\" Please, all the gods of Egypt, let that be the plan.\n\n\"Then, help! My father is an honest man, a Scholar, loyal always to the Library. You can't let them hurt him!\"\n\nWolfe closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. \"You're right,\" he said. \"I can't.\" He raised his voice. \"Guard! I need a guard!\"\n\nThe man who came at his call wasn't alone; he was paced by one of the sphinxes. Their stares were equally warning. \"What do you want?\" the soldier asked.\n\n\"I want to speak with the Artifex Magnus,\" he said. \"Immediately. It's important.\"\n\n\"We'll get to you,\" the soldier said. \"Wait your turn, Stormcrow.\"\n\n\"All right. I will. And I'll be sure to tell the Artifex what you said when he finally sees me, so that he knows who to blame.\"\n\n\"Blame for what?\"\n\n\"My old students are planning an attack,\" Wolfe said. \"A daring and potentially ruinous one for the Library that will happen in just a very few hours, now. I know when and where. But by all means, continue uselessly interrogating prisoners who have nothing to do with it. I'm sure that's highly effective.\" His contempt, he'd long ago learned, had a special sting to it, and he deployed it now to good effect. It wasn't an act. He really did find these High Garda Elites to be contemptible. They'd long ago compromised their true loyalty to pin it to the person of one man. When they'd lost, their path wasn't material anymore, and all the excuses in the world meant nothing. They were corrupt, and on some level, they knew.\n\n\"Why should I believe you?\"\n\nWolfe shrugged. \"Then, don't. As I said: I'll make sure the Artifex hears the full story. Including how you failed to report an imminent threat against the Library. Never mind. I'm happy to wait.\"\n\nHe turned away from the bars and stretched out on the bunk. He even added a tuneless hum.\n\nIt took only fifteen seconds, counted in fast pulse beats, for the soldier to turn the key in the lock. \"Out,\" he snapped. \"Now. If this is a trick, you'll suffer for it.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Wolfe said. \"Naturally.\"\n\nHe sat up, fought against a wave of very real nausea and dizziness, and forced himself to his feet. He would show none of it\u2014none of the exhaustion, the fear, the screaming panic. He'd had years of experience now at concealing it from everyone except those who mattered to him.\n\nA broken bone heals twice as strong, he told himself. Santi had taught him that mantra the night he'd stumbled in the door of their house. He could still hear the soft, insistent whisper of it if he chose. Santi had bathed him, dried him, clothed him, held him through the night to whisper it in a constant, bracing refrain, because Wolfe had been unable to speak or explain where he'd been.\n\nStay with me, Nic, he thought, as the shackles closed around his wrists. I need you more than ever.\n\nAs they passed Saleh's cell, Wolfe locked gazes with the young man and nodded. Saleh nodded back. He'd keep things moving forward here; there was no doubt. Khalila's brother could be counted on.\n\nEven if Jess Brightwell's could not.\n\n\"Scholar? Scholar Wolfe?\" One of the librarians\u2014Kima; he remembered her from his circuits; she'd been the senior at the Serapeum in Leeds\u2014leaned against the bars and held out her hand. He brushed her fingers with his, which resulted in a warning to Kima and a push between his shoulders to quicken his pace. He passed every cell and marked every face. They were all watching. Trusting him to do something to redeem them.\n\nOne thing about being a Research Scholar, as he'd been for almost all of his lifetime: he knew things that those who had no such background couldn't imagine.\n\nAnd he knew the Alexandria Serapeum better than even the guards who patrolled it. If he could get there, he knew exactly what to do.\n\nBut first, he was going to have to spin the most fabulous, compelling tale he could to take to the Artifex, and then to the Archivist. It would have to be the best lie of his life.\n\nHe knew what it would have to be.\n\nBrendan Brightwell is not who you think he is. You've been misled.\n\nThat would certainly set the Archivist's teeth on edge. As lies went, it was just bold enough to work."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "From a treatise by the Medica Phlogistes written in 1733. Interdicted from the Codex to the Black Archives upon review in 1881:\n\n\u2002Although there are a great many of my very learned colleagues who disagree with me on every point, I contend that while the number of Obscurists is, without a doubt, decreasing over time, there is no evidence that the trait that makes an Obscurist so valuable\u2014the ability to sense and manipulate the universal fluidic energy that lies beneath everything\u2014is not latently present in all of us. A gifted metalworker is not thought to possess the Obscurist talent, and yet, he is able to fashion metal in ways that no one else can duplicate. A Scholar able to tell a story in a unique and involving way... is that not also such an expression? And many Medica know full well that we have a touch of the talent, and we can use it to enhance our cures and treatments. In many religions, this is known and accepted as fact.\n\n\u2002Why, then, do we treat Obscurists as such a special and prized breed?\n\n\u2002The answer lies not in our desire for the innate value of their talents, though we value the skill of the Medica, the metalworker, or the writer.\n\n\u2002The answer is that we value them out of proportion because we simply need them to operate a system that has not been changed in thousands of years. That is, namely, the Codex and the Archives. If the Obscurists were no longer necessary to make those core functions of the Library work, how much more could be accomplished in our world? How much better and faster and stronger would the Library now be?\n\n\u2002We have fettered ourselves to a system that is bound to fail, and is failing now.\n\n\u2002I am only a Medica, and not even Medica Magnus, but I will say this: we must see beyond our present needs to our future state.\n\n\u2002If we do not, there may be no future for us at all."
            },
            {
                "title": "MORGAN",
                "text": "It took weeks for Morgan to work out what clever thing Gregory had done to cripple her abilities. Elegant work, masterful... and, she strongly suspected, not his doing. Someone else had written the script, which by itself was useless; the targeted Obscurist had to have a particular innocuous drug in her system for the script to take any effect.\n\nThere was nothing she could do about the script, which he'd built into the crafting of her collar.\n\nBut the innocent companion drug? That was a point of failure.\n\nShe and Annis both looked up at the quiet knock, and Annis whispered, \"Ready?\" Morgan nodded, and the older woman stood and went to open the unlocked door.\n\nThe kitchen server brought in the tray and set it down silently on the nearest table.\n\n\"Good, I'm famished, and the wee girl here needs that soup; she can't seem to keep anything else down,\" Annis said. Her winning smile and warm charm disarmed whatever wariness the server might have had, and he smiled back, and instead of bolting from the room, as he'd probably been directed to do, he took the time to uncover the dishes and show Annis the contents.\n\n\"Lovely,\" she said. \"Just lovely, the work you do. Food is home, as I'm sure you know, and I thank you for it.\" She put a gentle touch on the young man's wrist, staring straight into his eyes. \"You're so tired, dear lad. Why don't you sit for a moment?\"\n\nIf this was going to work without violence, it had to work in that moment... and it did. The server, without a question, slipped quietly into the chair next to the table. Morgan watched in fascination as Annis weaved a silken, unbreakable web of words, lulling the man into a relaxed, trancelike state. She'd known Annis's Obscurist powers were slight, but in this one area, she truly excelled.\n\nMorgan sat up slowly when Annis gestured, but didn't come closer.\n\n\"Now, my friend, is there any special seasoning in these dishes?\" Annis asked.\n\n\"Yes.\" The young man's voice was flat but calm. Annis sent Morgan a nod. All was well. \"Salt, pepper, curry powder, cardamom\u2014\"\n\n\"That's in my dish, yes. And in my friend's soup? Was there anything added to hers that is not added to someone else's?\"\n\nThe answer came slowly but firmly. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"And what is it?\"\n\n\"I don't know. It's from a bottle we were given. It isn't harmful.\"\n\nAnnis's glance at Morgan had taken on a hard look, but her voice remained quiet and gentle. \"Of course not; you'd never do such a thing. None of you would. And who assured you it was harmless?\"\n\n\"The Obscurist.\" The young man frowned a little this time, as if the mere mention of the title disturbed him.\n\n\"I see. Tell me, do you like him?\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter. I'm loyal to the Tower and the Library.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know that. And it is to your credit\u2014what is your name, young man?\"\n\n\"Friedrich,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, Friedrich, you have done nothing at all wrong in following the Obscurist's orders; of course you haven't. That liquid you add is as harmless as water. So it really doesn't matter which bowl you add it to, does it?\"\n\n\"No. But I was told\u2014\"\n\n\"If it's harmless, it doesn't matter, isn't that right?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's right.\" His frown cleared.\n\n\"And could you do me a favor, my friend Friedrich?\"\n\n\"Of course, Obscurist Annis.\"\n\n\"From now on, when you reach for that bottle, you will pour it instead into the food next to the one designated for Obscurist Morgan.\"\n\n\"But I have orders\u2014\"\n\n\"The liquid is harmless, remember? So it doesn't matter which food it goes into. You'd never do anything to harm any one of us, isn't that right?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Friedrich said, and then more strongly: \"Yes, that's right.\"\n\n\"Then from now on, you will just add that liquid to my bowl, or if I am not eating at the same time as Obscurist Morgan, then to anyone else's food. That sounds perfectly fine, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"So what are you going to do at the next meal?\"\n\n\"Add the liquid to someone else's bowl. Yours first. But anyone other than Obscurist Morgan's if you aren't there.\"\n\n\"Wonderful. Now, Friedrich, I know you work very hard, don't you?\"\n\n\"I like my work.\"\n\n\"Of course you do. But you must take time off sometime!\"\n\n\"I work five of the seven days,\" he said. \"Two of the days I leave the Tower and go to my parents' home.\"\n\n\"And when you are gone, who takes your place?\"\n\n\"Millicent Thorpe.\"\n\n\"When will she next be taking over your position?\"\n\n\"In two days.\"\n\n\"Well, that's lovely,\" Annis said, and her voice had taken on a lazy, slow reassurance again. \"You should look forward to your time off, Friedrich.\"\n\nHe nodded but didn't answer.\n\nMorgan snapped her fingers and scribbled out a message on a scrap of paper. Annis took it, read it, and said, \"Friedrich, one last thing: when I say the magic word, you are going to forget we ever had this conversation, but you are going to do as we agreed and never again put that liquid into Obscurist Morgan's food, all right?\"\n\n\"All right.\"\n\n\"And when I say the magic word, you will stand up and go about your duties. You will only remember that you delivered the food as you are supposed to. You understand that?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Good. Are you listening, Friedrich? The magic word is... forget.\"\n\nAnd with that, the young man straightened, stood up, and walked straight to the door. Morgan watched him leave with a little feeling of awe. When the door shut, she turned that stare on Annis. \"That was... unbelievable. When you told me you could do it, I honestly didn't believe you. I didn't know an Obscurist could affect a mind so directly without some kind of script, and drugs!\"\n\n\"No, no, it isn't about being an Obscurist at all. This is merely mesmerism, something anyone can learn if they've a mind and a bit of a talent, though it's sure that the Library tries to keep Mesmers pushed away from the legitimate trades. You'll find them more in criminal circles than anywhere else. As someone who has a little bit of talent and a lot of time on my hands knows well. I know a great many obscure and only partly legal things.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Annis. I don't know how to\u2014\"\n\nAnnis waved it away. \"Please. You think I'm doing it just for you? The more I can do to spite Gregory, the better I like my life here. It's what Keria would have wanted. She'd have torn his head off for what he's doing, and I'd have held him down. Here.\" She picked up the plate of fragrant, steaming rice scented delicately of saffron and topped with a rich red sauce. \"Hope you enjoy curry as much as I do. It's lamb and potato vindaloo.\"\n\n\"Sorry about the soup,\" Morgan said. She took a cautious mouthful of the curry and nearly choked as it set her tongue burning like Greek fire. \"God!\"\n\n\"Delicious, isn't it?\" Annis gave her a cheery grin. \"Food of champions, my girl, and no mistake. Eat up. You'll need your strength for what comes next.\"\n\nMorgan wiped her tearing eyes and kept at it, and after the first fiery shock, the taste of the vindaloo made her wolf it down in happy mouthfuls. Still searingly hot, but she could get used to it, she thought. \"How soon will the drug be out of my system, do you think?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. It was damn clever, how he drugged you obviously the first time and then secretly from then on. I'd say at least a day; they've been dosing you for a while, and I'd rather not try it before time, since you said it hurt badly enough to put you down when you last tried to work any aggressive uses. I can explain away headaches and nausea, but fainting spells mean they might send you to the Medica, and for all we know, the Medica's going to dope you with the same again.\"\n\nFrightening\u2014but realistic\u2014thought. \"All right. I'll give it a day.\" She chewed her lip. \"Did you speak to Natasha about the additions to the Codex monitoring scripts?\"\n\n\"Aye. And she handed me my ass for it. Not my business, above my skills, all that.\" Annis shrugged. \"But I did manage to gather that the monitoring has been redone, again, which means they're looking for you to try a contact. I wouldn't.\"\n\nDamn. Jess was alone out there, and she had no idea what kind of trouble he was in... or what was happening to Scholar Wolfe. Just as they couldn't know her situation, she supposed. What kind of a conspiracy couldn't coordinate efforts? One doomed to fail. And she had to be the one to solve that problem, not Jess. If he grew desperate enough, he'd do something brave and foolish, and she needed to keep him from it by holding up her end of the job... but neither of them had counted on the Iron Tower using drugs to control her.\n\nAnnis was right, though. Using her powers in any way that Gregory hadn't specifically authorized would result in paralyzing agony right now, and that alone would give away her intentions.\n\n\"What about doing something without powers?\" Morgan asked.\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\n\"Trying to see him.\"\n\nAnnis knew very well who him meant, and her faded red brows shot up in skeptical arches. \"Not wise,\" she said. \"Besides, he won't see you. He doesn't see anyone. Not even Gregory can break the wards on his door, you know. Not even Keria could do that.\"\n\n\"Did she try?\"\n\n\"I don't know, but I think it's more that he built them with a personal key that only she possessed. She was the one person Eskander trusted fully, and she was the one person who could have done it with or without his permission, given time. But she always asked before she went to him. And he usually allowed it.\"\n\n\"Were they in love?\"\n\nAnnis thought about that. She spooned up her soup quietly for a while, then put the utensil down and reached for a glass of water. Annis was careful about the water, and they knew it, at least, was safe to drink. \"Oh yes, desperately,\" she finally said. \"But love is never as simple as you'd think, is it? Or as easy. At least it isn't in here; no idea how it is out there. They understood that love was a trap, a weapon to be used against them. Eskander never wanted to be here, not a single day. And he fought it, over and over. Then, when their son was born, he stopped fighting... but when Wolfe was taken away from the Tower, put into the orphanage, that was the breaking point, I think. Love can't heal all. It can't repair broken hearts. And I think in the end they were both shattered by it.\"\n\nIt seemed a breathtakingly sad story, and it made Morgan shiver a little; she loved Jess, or at least, she thought she did. Or was it only that he seemed so taken with her that she'd accepted it as fate? She did care for him, and deeply. But the more time away, the more she saw herself clearly... the less sure she was that she was what Jess needed, or wanted. Or that he was right for her, either.\n\nMaybe they would end up like Eskander and Keria. Or maybe this would turn out differently. She closed her eyes and imagined Jess, and his image came vividly; ink stains on his fingers, that quiet, odd smile of his, the sharp intelligence of how he analyzed things. The sudden bursts of precisely calculated speed and violence when he needed them. She'd never met someone with so little fear, and she wondered if he knew how afraid she was, every day. There was something both reassuring and intimidating about being with him.\n\nAnd she did want him. Thinking of him made her remember the way his hands felt against her skin, his lips on hers.\n\nLove is never as simple as you think. Annis was right about that. And in this moment, she couldn't properly sort her feelings, except that she wanted Jess more than she'd ever wanted anyone else. Was that love? The kind of love that lasted? She didn't know. And for now, it didn't matter.\n\nNothing mattered except contacting Eskander, and in a way that didn't alert Gregory to her intentions.\n\n\"Did you get the plans?\" Morgan asked, and Annis nodded and reached beneath her robe into a hidden pocket\u2014one she'd sewn herself\u2014to retrieve a thin, folded sheet of paper.\n\n\"Had to do it small,\" she said. \"But it's accurate enough. He's warded every way in, though, as you can see; I've marked them down. The only one that\u2014as far as I know\u2014isn't warded is the window, and it doesn't open. Won't break, either.\"\n\n\"What about this?\" Morgan put the empty plate back on the tray and pointed to a tiny square high in the wall of Eskander's rooms. He had three rooms, as large as the chambers that Gregory now occupied and likely just as opulent: a bedroom, a bath, and a sitting room. The square was on the wall of the room Annis's tiny script had designated as the bedroom.\n\n\"Too small for any human to pass,\" Annis said. \"And screens on both ends welded in place. It's the air venting. There's another here...\" She pointed to one located in the sitting room on an opposite wall. \"But I don't see what possible good they could do.\"\n\n\"What's the nearest access point to this vent? One we can reach?\"\n\n\"There isn't one. They connect directly back to the central air-processing hub; for him, that would be on the twelfth level.\"\n\n\"So theoretically, if we get into the air-processing hub, we could talk to him,\" Morgan said. \"Directly. With no one overhearing.\"\n\nAnnis blinked and looked at the paper, then frowned in thought. \"That's two floors away,\" she said. \"And I can't be certain no one else would hear, if you're shouting loud enough to be heard that far away.\"\n\n\"Who said anything about shouting?\" Morgan smiled. \"I'm talking about sending down a resonant crystal, with the matched component on our end.\"\n\nAnnis looked blank. \"I took a fancy to mesmerism, not engineering,\" she said. \"Explain.\"\n\n\"Sympathetic vibration,\" Morgan said. \"There is an entire department of Obscurists on Level Four who are working on crystals that are sympathetically linked, and you may speak into one and listen from the other.\"\n\n\"Long-distance talking?\"\n\n\"You didn't know?\"\n\n\"I don't pay much attention,\" Annis admitted. \"The engineers from Artifex are always sending over blueprints for some nonsensical invention or other, and few of them prove to work. It's not my area. It all sounds crackbrained to me.\"\n\n\"Oh, it should work,\" Morgan said. \"All we have to do is obtain a raw pair; the script to link them together should be simple enough, once I know what the frequency is to vibrate them.\"\n\n\"And how do you propose we steal such a thing?\"\n\n\"We don't. We find an Obscurist working there who wants out of this iron trap we're in, and we work together.\"\n\n\"No, no, no, we can't do that. The chances of betrayal double with every person you tell!\"\n\nMorgan gave her a long, serious look, then took the older woman's hands. \"Annis,\" she said. \"It's why I came here. It's why I've risked my life and my freedom to enter this Tower. To make sure that no one is ever locked in it again against their will. There will be risks. And we have to start taking them now.\"\n\nAnnis's hands tightened on hers, and the woman's cool, translucent skin seemed to pale even further... but then she nodded. \"Well then. You'll be wanting to know who in that section might be helpful.\"\n\n\"I would.\"\n\n\"I'll make a list of those to avoid at all costs. Most everyone else in the Tower would listen to a plan, but mind you: there isn't one of them that would risk imprisonment or injury. We've all heard talk of rebellion, and most support it in their hearts. It's their cowardly bodies you have to convince.\" Annis took a deep breath. \"Perhaps I could mesmer one of them to bring us the crystals.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It would minimize\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Morgan said again. \"I'm doing this to free us, not enslave us further. I don't like what we had to do to Friedrich, but he was already being used; we just ensured it wouldn't be effective. I won't do the same to a fellow prisoner in this place.\"\n\nAnnis looked sad, and she also looked wary. \"Lass, I don't think you understand. You were born out there, wild in the world. We are like birds who've never known but a cage. We see the world through our windows, but I fear if you threw our doors wide-open, we might be afraid to leave.\"\n\n\"But you'd have the choice.\" Morgan touched the collar around her neck. \"Freedom doesn't mean you have to leave. It means you choose. It isn't done for you.\"\n\nAnnis slowly nodded. \"All right. I'll visit the workshop. I'm sure I have a friend or two there.\"\n\n\"Be careful,\" Morgan said. \"We're going against Gregory now. And he's already killed one Obscurist. He won't hesitate to kill more to hang on to his power.\"\n\nAnnis winked at her. \"I've run circles around that little shite since we were both your age,\" she said. \"I'll be back soon. Oh... almost forgot. Presta atenci\u00f3n.\"\n\nShe left, taking the food tray with her; Morgan felt the tiny snap of power as the listening scripts were activated again. She was tempted to follow, but she knew Annis was right; the Obscurist had eyes on her at all times, and the only safe place was here, in the rooms they searched daily for new intrusions. The crystals would be a fine way to spy on someone at a distance, she thought. Until that moment, she hadn't thought of it, but now that she had, she wondered if there might not be a second use for the crystals, after making contact with Eskander.\n\nKnowing what Gregory might be up to... that could be valuable.\n\nAnnis didn't return for a few hours, which made Morgan pace the floor in worry, but when she finally did, she had a man of about her own age in tow. In fact, he had his hand around Annis's waist and a smile on his face that quickly faltered when he saw Morgan in the room.\n\nAnnis shut the door. \" Silencio. Morgan, this is Pyotr. An old, old friend of mine.\"\n\nPyotr was a man who'd aged well; his hair had silvered, and his strong face\u2014never pretty, Morgan guessed\u2014still looked striking. He nodded to her cautiously. \"Hello.\"\n\n\"Hello, Pyotr,\" she replied, and sat down on her bed.\n\nHe stared at her in confusion, then at Annis. \"Forgive me, love, but... I must have misunderstood.\"\n\nMorgan realized that Annis had coaxed him here with a promise of something a great deal more intimate than a conversation, and had to stifle an uncomfortable laugh. Of all the things she didn't want to think about, Annis's love life was top of the list. Annis was the first to admit that it was quite colorful.\n\n\"You didn't at all,\" Annis told him cheerfully. \"I lied dreadfully, but if you're a patient man, I might just keep all my promises. Make yourself comfortable, Pyotr. We've got something to discuss with you.\"\n\nAnnis's instincts proved to be as good as ever; Pyotr, it turned out, had been dragged to the Iron Tower against his will when he was almost fifteen and had never stopped wanting to find his way out again. \"You're the one who escaped the Tower,\" he said. \"Twice.\"\n\n\"I did,\" Morgan said. \"More than twice, actually, but once I came back without anyone the wiser. And I came back this time under my own will again.\"\n\n\"Gregory says you were dragged back.\"\n\n\"He would,\" Annis said sourly. She sat on her bed and patted the spot next to her. \"We've got a long story.\"\n\n\"Short, really,\" Morgan said, as the other man sank down beside Annis. \"How badly do you want to get out of the Iron Tower? Not just as a fugitive. As a free man, no collar around your neck. Free to come and go as you please.\"\n\nHe blinked. He'd been here a long time, and for a moment she was afraid that it had been too long for him to remember the rebellious, angry boy who'd been brought here fighting. But then he said, \"If you can promise such a thing, I'd fight for it. And I'm far from the only one. But don't say it if you can't do it. Lives will be lost.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Morgan said. \"And I promise you that this will happen. I am here to make it happen.\"\n\n\"You're alone,\" he pointed out.\n\n\"She's not,\" Annis said quietly. \"And you aren't the first we've talked to.\"\n\nA lie, but a small one, and it seemed to reassure Pyotr that they were serious. \"Still. Rebellions have been tried before. What makes you any different?\"\n\n\"We're going to have the strongest Obscurist in the world on our side,\" Morgan said.\n\n\"Gregory?\" he laughed out loud. \"Don't be stupid.\"\n\n\"Gregory was never the strongest,\" Annis said. \"Keria was the second strongest. But you know who outshone them all.\"\n\nPyotr turned and looked at her with naked astonishment. \"The hermit? That's ridiculous. He hasn't even been heard from since Keria's death. He might be dead himself in there, except he still accepts meals!\"\n\n\"He isn't dead,\" Morgan said. \"I can... I suppose the best way to say it is that I can feel him. Like heat against my skin. I think he's biding his time.\"\n\n\"Until what?\"\n\n\"Until we get the stomach for a real fight,\" Annis said. \"You remember how he was. Of all of us, he never accepted this. Never accommodated to it. When his door opens, everything changes.\"\n\n\"First we have to convince him to try,\" Morgan said. \"And that's where you come in.\"\n\nIt took half an hour to convince Pyotr of their sincerity, but by the time he rose to leave, he seemed a different man; stronger, taller, full of purpose. \"Now, be careful,\" Annis cautioned him. \"I know you're putting yourself at risk, but be as careful as you can be. We can't afford to lose you, my sweet.\"\n\n\"I know how to do it,\" he said. \"The scripts we apply to the crystals often shatter them. I'll simply substitute broken crystals for a good pair. No one will notice. But the scripts rarely work, you know. I myself only have a success rate of forty percent, and I am the most successful.\"\n\n\"Then we'll do it together,\" Morgan said. \"Thank you, Pyotr. Thank you for trusting us.\"\n\n\"You, I don't know. Her?\" He laughed and, in a move so practiced that it seemed rehearsed, gathered Annis into his arms and kissed her soundly. They parted laughing, and the delight in her eyes flashed like fire. \"Her, I know. And trust. I will be back.\"\n\n\"One moment,\" Annis said, and ruffled his hair into a disordered mess and disarranged his clothes. \"No one would ever believe you'd been here if you came out so neat.\"\n\nHe laughed and kissed her again, and was gone, striding like a man with a purpose.\n\n\"You didn't have to, ah, promise him...,\" Morgan started awkwardly. Annis rolled her eyes.\n\n\"Child. I am the mistress of my own body. It's well-known in the Tower that I enjoy what pleasure I can find. You're not compromising my honor or any such nonsense. Pyotr and I have a long-standing, cheerful little arrangement.\"\n\n\"Do you love him?\"\n\n\"No. Not in the way you probably mean, at least. Keria and Eskander\u2014they had that kind of love. But me? I've never found it, nor do I feel the lack.\" Annis's gaze seemed far too sharp. \"In the Tower, we've never had the luxury of weddings and marriage and growing old together. You'll need to decide for yourself what your life is like outside of it, I suppose. For me, this suits well enough.\"\n\nThey were fundamentally different in that, Morgan decided, but she had to admit that Annis seemed completely at peace with her life here... but perfectly willing to risk it, at the same time.\n\nPyotr proved to be as good as his word; he appeared back at their door two hours later and produced two small quartz crystals. \"Not tuned yet,\" he said, and handed over the written script to Morgan. \"This is the formula. We keep tinkering with it, but the crystals are always slightly flawed, and that makes it impossible to know how the power will flow through both. Statistically, one of them cracks half the time.\"\n\nMorgan rewrote the script with a tiny change, and Pyotr set the crystals atop it, took in a deep breath, and held out his hands, touching both. Morgan set her own fingers over his, and together, they bled power slowly into the crystals. Pyotr was strong, but he'd never attained the kind of fine control that Morgan had been born with, and she guided and smoothed the power he imbued through every pen stroke of the script.\n\nIt flashed through the crystals in a simultaneous burst that left a burned smell in the air, and a strange hum; when Morgan opened her eyes and pulled her hands back, she saw that both crystals were intact.\n\nAnd both were glowing, very faintly, along the cloudy fault lines within.\n\n\"What did you do?\" Pyotr asked. \"I've never seen it so perfectly aligned before, not even with a successful match.\"\n\n\"You have to think of the cracks and faults inside the crystal not as flaws, but as features,\" she said. \"You're matching two unlike things together, and each has different weight, different features, different alignments. But at the smallest level, they are the same. Don't think at the top. Think at the bottom.\"\n\nPyotr gave her a long, considering look and then nodded. \"I see what you mean, I think. But I don't think I could have done that without you.\" His eyes widened. \"You don't look well, child.\"\n\nShe didn't feel well, either. This wasn't the drug still coursing through her system; that had very specific uses and triggers. No, she had just poured a great deal of power out, and in a manner that her body was no longer capable of replacing in the way that Pyotr could. The drug and the collar didn't shut her down, because what she was doing was in no way an aggressive use... but at the same time, her own body had a way of punishing her.\n\nShe felt the hollow darkness inside, and a growing desperation. I'm empty. I need... I need fuel. But not food, not rest, nothing that innocent.\n\nShe held out her hand to Annis and noted the faint dark lines forming beneath her flesh. \"Take me up,\" she said. \"To the garden.\" Because the alternatives were impossible. She hadn't extended herself so far before, not since coming here, and the Iron Tower's walls muted her ability to draw from outside. Out in the world, she could have taken a little from a lot of things around her, and none would have been the wiser. But here... there were few things she could reach to drain.\n\nAnd all of them would notice.\n\nAnnis led her quickly out of their rooms and to the lifting chamber, which swept them upward level after level, past the rooms she'd once had, past another floor where her friends had been imprisoned. As she passed it, she felt a dark surge of need overtake her, and it was all she could do not to reach for Annis's hand again.\n\nInstead, she shrank into the corner, shivering, and when the doors opened, she plunged out into the rich foliage of the greenhouse.\n\nThere were people here. No, no, no... She stumbled away to a secluded alcove veiled by ferns and flowering bushes and sank down on the ground. The earth here went deep, and when she blinked, she could see the life pulsing through the stalks of the flowers, the plants, the leaves, the roots.\n\n\"Get back,\" she said to Annis. \"Leave!\"\n\nAnnis flinched and pulled back, and Morgan couldn't control her need any longer. She plunged her fingers into the loose black soil...\n\n...and killed.\n\nThe flowers near her wilted first, all their color fading. But she couldn't stop there. She pulled life from the stalks, the leaves, down to the roots. Then one thick shrub. Then the next. Then a willow tree. Worms boiled to the surface, and she ripped life from their writhing bodies.\n\nShe heard Annis gasp in horror and told herself to stop, stop, before it was too late... and somehow, with all the strength in her, she pulled her hands out of the now-sterile soil and crawled backward. Dry branches rattled. Dead petals and leaves rained down, dry and desiccated.\n\nShe blinked back tears of relief and rage and horror and saw what she'd done. A portion of the garden ten feet all around her had turned brown and brittle.\n\nIt would never grow anything again.\n\nAnnis backed away from her, hands at her mouth, as Morgan wearily rose. Tears glittered in her pale blue eyes. \"What are you?\" Annis asked. It was barely a whisper.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Morgan said, and she meant it. \"I'm hoping Eskander can tell me.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 31",
                "text": "It must have been a crisis for Annis, but Morgan hardly noticed; she was too busy fighting the enormous need to keep drinking in the life buzzing and hissing and pulsing around her. The bright sparks of flying insects. The hum of a beehive. The warning call of birds, fleeing to the farthest branches.\n\nThe bright blurs of Obscurists. They were blinding to her, and desperately burning with just the energy she needed.\n\nShe shut her eyes and concentrated on deep, steady breaths until the emptiness inside began to recede. The howling vortex slowed and then stopped. I am not empty. I'm not.\n\nWhen she opened her eyes again, she felt better. More herself. And realized that she was stumbling along, half-dragged by Annis; just as she realized it, Annis got her out of the lifting chamber, and Morgan foggily realized she was now on their residence floor.\n\n\"I'm all right,\" she told Annis, and pulled free. She had to brace herself against the wall, but she would be all right. No matter what. Annis seemed glad to let go, because she moved a sharp three steps away and watched her carefully. \"I'm not a mad dog, Annis. Not yet.\"\n\n\"You destroyed things,\" Annis said. \"I've never in my life seen an Obscurist do that. We channel life. We don't destroy it.\"\n\n\"Not here,\" Morgan said, and forced herself into a normal walk, with only a slight pressure of fingertips on the wall to keep herself upright. Once they were back in the room, she saw that Pyotr was gone but the crystals remained, humming and gently glittering along their faults.\n\nAnnis still left a good distance between them. Morgan looked down at her hands and spread her fingers. The dark streaks were gone. And she felt almost herself again.\n\n\"Silencio. Now,\" Annis said. \"Explain.\"\n\n\"It... it's difficult. I used too much power, too quickly, when I was too weak; I didn't have a choice: I was trying to save lives by making things grow faster...\" Her voice faded out. It sounded like a threadbare defense, even to herself. \"It all went wrong. The plants died. Insects. Animals. Everything. I was told that if I rested, took good care, I might improve again. But it would never be the same for me. The connection I had to power... it's distorted. Twisted. And sometimes I need...\" She gestured helplessly upward. \"You saw.\"\n\n\"You need things to die to make you live?\" Annis said.\n\n\"You consume living things in every dish you eat.\"\n\n\"It isn't the same!\"\n\n\"It is,\" Morgan said. \"But if you want to leave and never deal with me again, I understand that. Just... don't betray me. Please.\"\n\nAnnis shook her head and sank down on her bed, head in her hands. She looked her age in that moment, every year of it; then she wiped the tears from her face and took a deep breath. \"I always said I'd deal with the Christian devil to win freedom for those who wanted out of here. Like Eskander. I suppose you're near enough, at that.\" She swallowed. \"Could you kill Gregory the same way? Just... draw the life out of him?\"\n\n\"Not before he'd kill me. That's why I haven't. That, and... I don't want to do that. Not that way.\"\n\n\"Why? It would solve everything.\"\n\nThat evil taste on her tongue. That howling emptiness. She couldn't describe why, except to say, \"Because if I kill that way, I think... I think it will destroy whatever's left in me that's still good. And you'll have something much worse than Gregory to stop.\" She looked up and met Annis's eyes. \"Will you help me? Get me to the air duct?\"\n\nIt was a long moment, and then Annis said, \"If you're up to it.\"\n\n\"I am.\" I have to be."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 32",
                "text": "Getting to the proper level meant bypassing four separate security measures, but those were minor issues, far too reliant on the wards and scripts and common knowledge that the area was off-limits. There was one guard present, on a roaming schedule, but Annis had noted down his routes, and they slipped by him without notice. He was bored and tired and had likely never had an alarm in all his time inside the Iron Tower.\n\nThe air-circulation hub was a vast open core, drawing in air from the outside of the building, filtering it, running it through a complex series of devices to heat or cool as needed, and then blowing it back out through a series of branching ducts.\n\n\"Constructed by Artifex engineers,\" Annis said, and pointed to the etched letters beneath the rows and rows of grilles. \"And helpfully labeled as well. But we won't be able to take these covers off, you know.\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter. Can you tell which one goes to Eskander's rooms?\"\n\n\"Which room do you prefer?\"\n\n\"Sitting room,\" she said. Talking to him in the privacy of his bedroom seemed... presumptuous. Annis nodded and led the way through a twisting, confusing maze of corridors that must be used only by maintenance engineers, and only very occasionally. \"Here,\" Annis said, and pointed to one particular grille. \"That's the one.\"\n\n\"You're sure?\"\n\n\"I'm sure. It's the same number that appeared in the plans for the vent. Engineers like things to be specific.\" Annis winked. \"I met one of them once who was assigned here to install the lift and the new electrical lights. Well, met isn't quite the right word. But I did like him.\"\n\n\"Very helpful,\" Morgan said, and pulled one of the crystals from the pocket of her robe. Even wrapped in the thick layer of padding she'd tied around it, it was a small thing, only about the size of her finger, and nearly as slim, and it fit easily through the grate. She set it down carefully.\n\n\"The question now is, how do we ensure it gets to the far end...,\" Annis began, then checked herself as she heard the steady roar of the air system begin. \"Of course. It's light enough. The air will take it to the other end of the duct, all the way to the grate.\"\n\n\"We hope. Move.\"\n\nThey wedged themselves into an alcove meant for this purpose, holding tight to handholds put there, as the huge fan set in the center of the open middle spun up with an increasing roar and fresh air blew through every grated opening around the circle. It was deafeningly loud, which was amazing, since Morgan had never thought about how the air moved through this sealed tower... or why she rarely heard the sound of it. There must be sound suppressors on the grates of some kind. Oh no. No, no, no... That might destroy this plan before it could start.\n\nBut no. She calmed her racing heartbeat. The most effective way wouldn't be to put that suppression on the grille inside a room, but here, where the noise was the loudest... and when the fan spun down again, and the hurricane-force wind died, she ventured out to the grate to peer inside. Good, the crystal was now gone... and as she ran her fingers over the grate, she could feel the script that had been woven through the metal to quiet the noise.\n\nShe broke it with a sharp snap, took out the other crystal from her pocket, and said, \"Obscurist Eskander? Can you hear me? Please answer if you can hear me. I will be able to hear you on this end.\"\n\nShe held the crystal to her ear and, to her surprise, heard music\u2014a harp, she thought, but she wasn't certain; the sound quality wasn't that sharp. Whatever it might be, it stopped abruptly, and there was nothing for a long moment. Long enough that she wondered if she'd imagined the sound after all.\n\nThen a man's voice, shockingly close, said, \"Who are you? How is this possible?\"\n\n\"My name is Morgan,\" she said. \"Morgan Hault. I knew the Obscurist\u2014I mean, the old one, Keria. And I know your son, Christopher Wolfe.\"\n\nHe didn't answer.\n\n\"I came back to the Iron Tower to find you, sir. And to get your help.\"\n\n\"Didn't they tell you? I don't care. And I don't help. Leave me alone. That's all I ask.\"\n\n\"Keria died to save your son, sir. I was there. I saw.\" Morgan heard her voice shake, but she didn't know if he could. \"At the end, she chose his life over her own. And she saved us all. I know how much that must have hurt\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't know anything about her, or about me,\" he said. \"I told you. Leave me alone.\"\n\nHe could have stopped this with a snap of his fingers, Morgan thought; he could have broken the crystal any time he pleased.\n\nBut he hadn't. And she had to believe that deep inside, he needed to talk. And to be useful in some way. Self-imposed exile was a harsh, inhuman sentence; how long since he'd had a visitor, after Keria? How many people even remembered he was here?\n\n\"He needs your help,\" she said. \"Your son. The Archivist has him in his prison. He plans to execute him.\"\n\nSilence, still. She wished that she'd worked out a way to see this man, to know if she was getting through to him at all.\n\nAnnis said, \"Morgan. The fan will start up again soon. We have to move!\"\n\nMorgan shook her head and twined her fingers into the metal grate. \"Eskander, please! Your son saved our lives. He is a brave, brilliant man, and he needs you. I'm begging you, please help!\"\n\n\"I can't,\" Eskander said. It sounded hollow.\n\n\"You can; you know you should be the Obscurist! Take what's rightly yours! Stop Gregory, and lead us out of this tower!\"\n\n\"Lives would be lost.\"\n\n\"They're being lost now. Gregory killed a boy in front of me, just to prove a point! Do you think he cares about any of us? He only cares about his own greed! You must have known him, before you shut yourself away. You must know I'm telling the truth!\"\n\n\"Morgan!\" Annis sounded desperate now, and when Morgan glanced back, she saw the woman's robes fluttering in the wind that was already starting to form. The gigantic fan was starting its next cycle. \"Morgan, we have to go! We can come back!\"\n\nMorgan knew instinctively that if she stopped here, short of convincing him, it would all be for nothing. He'd refuse to answer again. He'd break the crystal. \"Go! I'll hold on here!\" she shouted over the gust of wind that pushed her against the grate. \"Just go, Annis!\"\n\n\"Annis?\" She could hardly hear Eskander over the building roar, but she pushed the crystal harder against her ear and hardly felt the cut that opened. \"Is Annis with you?\"\n\n\"Yes! She's here! She's helping me, and she said if Keria was still alive, she'd be the first to go against Gregory! But he killed her, and now you have to be the one!\"\n\nShe didn't hear his reply. The fan spun up to a shattering roar and threatened to tear her loose, and she had to drop the crystal and watch as it shattered on the metal grate before it was blown away into the darkness. She grabbed at the mesh with her left hand and tried to cling with all her might; she felt muscles trembling and pulling and tearing, and her robes tore in the battering. Her hair came loose. It felt like threads of steel cutting her face to pieces, and she struggled to breathe against the intense pressure on her back. How long does it last? She wasn't going to make it. Her fingers were bleeding and cramping, and what breath she had was lost in a scream of pain as her right hand lost its grip, and she felt the wind shear her sideways, felt something pop in her arm, and then her left hand was loose and she felt herself lifting up, twisting wildly. She couldn't think how to use her power, or on what to focus; there was just panic, terrible and awful panic...\n\nAnd then a hand grabbed her and dragged her down. Annis. She'd stripped off her robe and tied it to the handhold, with the other end tied tight around her ankle. The wind flattened the thin shift she wore against her body and sent her wild hair flying like a flag, but she held on and pulled Morgan into her tight, unyielding embrace and held her against the storm as they both twisted and hovered in the blast, until its weakening dumped them back down to the metal floor, and both fell, still holding each other.\n\nAnnis was the first to get her breath, and she used it to laugh. A raw, half-terrified sound, but it was still laughter, and against her will, Morgan joined her until they rolled on their backs, exhausted.\n\n\"Did it work?\" Annis asked, and finger-combed her wild hair out of her face as she sat up. Morgan's was no better, and she tried to twist it back into a rough queue to keep it from her eyes. \"Is he with us?\"\n\n\"The crystal broke.\" Morgan's laughter turned to ashes in her mouth, and she swallowed hard against a sudden, weightless feeling of horror. \"I lost him.\"\n\nShe looked utterly ragged, she realized as Annis helped her up; at least Annis's robe had survived the storm with only minor distress, but Morgan's robe would hardly pass a glance without drawing attention. Do I dare? She'd already expended more power than she wished, and she couldn't tell how much more she had left before the emptiness set in. But she tapped a trickle of it, whispered a formula under her breath to guide the work, and the tears knitted back together. Imperfect, like a child's mending, but it would have to do.\n\n\"We should hurry,\" Annis said. She'd seen the work but said nothing, only slightly compressing her lips. \"I'd not put it past Gregory to have someone besides me checking on your whereabouts.\"\n\n\"What are we going to say about the garden?\"\n\n\"I've no idea at all. Do you?\"\n\n\"Tell the truth,\" Morgan said. \"That you don't know what happened. And I won't tell him, either. Let him puzzle it out, unless he already knows that an Obscurist can go... dark. If he does, he might see me as more valuable yet. I imagine he'd like an assassin to order all his own.\"\n\n\"Or he'd kill you,\" Annis said archly. \"A paranoid choob like that wouldn't see you as useful. Only dangerous to his rule.\"\n\n\"Can't help that. We were seen there. It's a good chance he'll hang on to me even harder.\"\n\nAnnis wasn't happy with that, but she fell silent, and they hurried back through the winding maze of metal corridors. A brief wait for the bored guard to pass, and they dashed for the stairs. Easier to go down than up, but then they called the lifting chamber to take them up.\n\nMorgan didn't even notice anything out of the ordinary, so sunk was she in the sense of failure, until Annis said, \"The devil?\" and pushed buttons again. \"Missed our stop.\"\n\nIt's Gregory. He's got us trapped. He's taking us where he wants us. Morgan readied herself for whatever was coming as the lift slowed and stopped. She exchanged a look with Annis, and they both stepped out onto the landing. No guards. No Gregory.\n\nThen Annis said, in a voice that Morgan had never heard before, \"Oh.\"\n\nShe turned to look where Annis was staring, down the hall, where a door was standing open.\n\nThey took two tentative steps in that direction before a deep male voice said, \"Still falling for that old trick, Annis? After all this time?\"\n\nAnnis squealed, half in shock, half in delight, and a man stepped forward who Morgan hadn't noticed at all; it was as if he'd wrapped himself in shadows and become part of the wall. Now he'd stepped into the light, and Morgan had only a second to take him in: an older man, silvered hair cascading over his shoulders, clean-shaven, with dark eyes and skin of dark amber.\n\n\"Barbarian!\" Annis cried, and threw herself on him. He seemed unprepared for that, but only for an instant, and then he embraced her like he might never let her go again. \"Oh, my dear. My dear. Is it really you?\"\n\n\"Really me,\" he said, and finally pushed her to arm's length. As he looked her over, Morgan began to see the resemblance to Scholar Wolfe, especially the frown that grooved between his brows. \"I swore I'd never open that door again, you know.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Annis said, and fit her hand to his cheek. \"But I also know that you'll not abandon those who so desperately need you. Not you, Eskander.\"\n\n\"Won't I?\" The bitter smile was wholly like Wolfe's. \"You have a short memory. I abandoned Keria. And you.\"\n\n\"No. You never did.\"\n\n\"I didn't save her when she needed me.\"\n\n\"She didn't call on you. Keria never was one to cry for help. She fought her battles alone, and she'd be happy to have died in one of them.\"\n\nHe was like Wolfe in another way, Morgan thought: his unbreaking devotion, because she could see the grief and loss. She'd known Keria Morning, the old Obscurist, only as a frightening, cold, powerful woman until the last moments, but he had known her as someone completely different.\n\nSomeone to be grieved.\n\nWhen Eskander's gaze fixed on her, Morgan felt exposed... every fault and flaw showing. Another thing that Wolfe had inherited from his father, this intense, judgmental stare. \"You're my son's student? Morgan?\" She nodded. Wasn't sure if she could speak. \"Keria spoke of you, the last time I saw her. She thought you were a rare talent. She'd never said that before.\"\n\nMorgan wasn't sure what to say to that, except, \"I'm honored.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't be. Talent makes you a target. Talent makes you their weapon.\"\n\n\"I'm not theirs.\"\n\nHe smiled faintly. \"Good. Then, take that off.\"\n\nHe wasn't wearing a collar. It hit her with a sudden shock that he didn't wear the standard robes of a Tower Obscurist; he had on a loose black shirt, plain trousers, comfortably distressed boots. A belt that held what looked like a High Garda\u2013issue pistol. Add a Scholar's robe, and his likeness to his son would be uncanny.\n\nIt hit her a second later what he was actually saying. \"Take what off?\" She thought he meant the robe.\n\nHe touched his fingers to his throat, and she mimicked him and put her hand to the collar. \"I can't!\"\n\n\"I can,\" he said. \"If you will permit me...?\"\n\n\"He'll know,\" Morgan said.\n\n\"Of course he will.\" This time, the smile was dark and full of menace. \"I'm looking forward to it.\"\n\nShe nodded. She didn't believe he could do it until Eskander stepped close to her, put both hands on her collar, and pulled.\n\nShe felt the harsh flash of broken scripts. Not broken: shattered. Destroyed. The power it took was immense, and it took her breath away.\n\nThe golden collar hung loose as he moved back, and he left it up to her to take hold of it, pull it free, and let it drop to the floor with a harsh metallic ring. She felt the vulnerable, raw circle where the collar had been and felt a rush of tears first, and then something else, cleaner, sharper: freedom.\n\n\"And me?\" Annis asked quietly.\n\n\"And you,\" he said, and easily broke hers, too. \"Don't be afraid, Annis.\"\n\nShe let out a shaky laugh and took the collar off. Instead of letting it drop, she looked at it. Turned it over and over in her hands, running her fingers over the incised symbols, and then crouched and put it carefully down. The skin it had covered all these years was ghostly, and at the edges, ridged with scars. \"I've not been without it since I was a wee lass,\" she said. \"A child. I never knew how heavy it was.\"\n\nSomewhere below them, an alarm began to sound in sharp, rhythmic pulses.\n\n\"They'll know. They're coming,\" Morgan said.\n\nEskander smiled. \"No. They won't. Not until I'm ready for them to know. Now... let's begin.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "RESTRICTED ACCESS TO THE ARCHIVIST MAGISTER ONLY, from the Artifex Magnus:\n\n\u2002The creature is finished. I understand why you desire new automata; I understand that new improvements are necessary to respond to ever-growing threats and keep the population respectful of our power. It's certain that this does convey that as nothing before ever has, not even the statues of the gods.\n\n\u2002The technical challenges have been considerable, and while I know that it's taken five years beyond our original estimates, your new automaton is finally ready to be tested.\n\n\u2002I hope you know what you are doing. I don't scare easily, but this... I am scared of this.\n\n\u2002And we all should be.\n\n\u2002It could end everything."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "There was a new uneasiness in the air in Alexandria. Even Jess could feel it. He woke early\u2014middle of the night, actually\u2014and had spent his time after washing and dressing in sending messages out in family code. He owed an explanation to Red Ibrahim. The name traitor had been thrown at him along with Greek fire, and he didn't much like either of them.\n\nMorgan still hadn't written, but that would have to remain a mystery; he knew time was running out, and fast. The Alexandrian newspaper was tightly censored by the Library, but there were other sources of news, and now that he was finally trusted by the Archivist\u2014though, honestly, he knew he couldn't count on it for long\u2014he'd left to seek the gossip out well before dawn. He didn't bother about the trailing High Garda eyes assigned to him, because he simply went to the local bakeshop and bought breakfast and thick, hot coffee and engaged in quiet conversation with the other patrons.\n\n\"I heard that Spain has completely broken free,\" one old man said, leaning close. \"There's some treaty between the rebel countries, too. Like they'll be marching on us. High Garda will put a stop to it.\" But he hadn't sounded confident. Others told him of rumors of some great invention, but they were uncertain what it could be. Most assumed it was a war machine of some sort.\n\nHe thought it likely to be the whisper of Thomas's press. Those whispers reaching Alexandria meant the speculation had to be a roar already on the borders, as tight as the Library locked down the flow of news here.\n\nHe found out when an anonymous woman wearing librarian robes took a seat at the counter next to him, ordered pastries, and left a printed piece of paper in her wake. It could have been dropped by anyone, but Jess had seen the expert dodge, and he retrieved it before anyone else could see it.\n\nThe printing was vastly inferior to the quality Thomas had achieved; the block type was clumsily lined up, and the spacing terrible. But it was a fresh-printed page with ink that still smudged when he rubbed on it, and it read, THE LIBRARY IS LYING TO YOU. A LIFE IS WORTH MORE THAN A BOOK. The symbol on the bottom was a new one, but he thought it had a passing resemblance to the flames the Burners used to sketch on their handwritten flyers.\n\nAnit, he thought, had wasted no time in arranging for the construction of a press right here in the city... and taking payments from the Burners to upgrade their propaganda leaflets. There was a little touch of satisfaction, but it was quickly chased away by the memory of the Archivist's warning.\n\nThe Archivist wanted to exclusively direct the use of Thomas's invention. He wouldn't take kindly to the news that upstarts were already taking advantage and the invention he was paying so heavily for was already spreading without him.\n\nJess folded the paper small and put it into his pocket for disposal somewhere safe... but then he didn't need to, as the next young man who slouched at the bar muttered, \"You have a message for His Excellency?\" Spanish. To confirm it, the man signed, under cover of the counter, Scrubber.\n\n\"We really need a new word,\" Jess said. He took the paper from his pocket and a pen, and wrote on the back, Find out where my other friends are. Tell them things are moving quickly. The Archivist is bound to move up the executions.\n\nHe passed the folded paper on, and the young man claimed his morning roll and coffee and sauntered off looking like he had not a care in the world.\n\nJess wished he could be as relaxed.\n\nAs the sun began to blush the eastern horizon, he headed back and had just stretched out on his bed when the knock rattled the door. The new High Garda Elite had a heavy hand.\n\n\"You're up,\" the woman said, and sounded a bit unhappy about it. \"All right. The faster we go, the faster we're finished.\"\n\n\"And what is it we're doing?\" Jess didn't expect an answer and, in fact, didn't get one. Their commander was already striding away, and Jess had to hurry to catch up. There was a full team of soldiers in the street, and more in two different troop carriers lined up. The commander whistled and made a quick hand signal, and the soldiers waiting for her began to pile into the remaining carrier. This early, traffic was light on the street, though Jess saw a few nervous residents peeking through windows and around doors to see what was causing a stir. Seeing three trucks full of High Garda likely didn't reassure them, but then again, they had good reason to be worried.\n\nThey all did, now.\n\nThe commander clung silently to a handhold as the carrier hissed and clanked down the Alexandrian streets with alarming speed. Still not talking. \"Are we going after smugglers again?\" Jess asked her. \"I hope this time you brought a proper army.\"\n\nThe captain didn't seem even mildly amused. \"Not smugglers.\"\n\nThat seemed... odd. And strangely ominous. \"Then what value are you expecting out of me, Captain?\"\n\n\"Out of you? Not much. But the Artifex said you could identify what we were looking for.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\nShe didn't bother to answer him, and he supposed she didn't need to; the Artifex had put this squarely on his head, no doubt at the orders of his fellow in corruption, the Archivist Magister.\n\nJess had no doubt whatsoever that today was going to be a very bad day, but he consoled himself that at least it would be far, far worse for whoever would be on the receiving end of this visit. Having fifty High Garda knocking on the door would ruin anyone's breakfast.\n\nHe couldn't see out, and so he didn't recognize the street until he exited the carrier\u2014last, since none of the soldiers seemed inclined to give way for him. But then he did, and it was only an instant before memory caught up to instinct, and he knew they were standing on the street where Red Ibrahim lived.\n\nRed Ibrahim was an old, dangerous man, but even the most dangerous men could be brought down. He'd survived sixty years or so in a business where ten years was considered astonishing; he'd done so right under the very noses of the High Garda and the Archivist. It took a particularly hard and brilliant person to accomplish that.\n\nSo how had they found him now?\n\nThere was only one answer.\n\nMy father sold out his oldest friend and business ally. Just as he'd sell his own sons for a tidy profit if the opportunity presented itself.\n\nJess had no idea what Brendan would have done in this situation; he only knew that he owed Red Ibrahim and Anit, and he couldn't be the cause of their murders.\n\nAnd how exactly are you going to prevent it? That was definitely his brother's caustic voice in his head. You can't. This has gone beyond you. You just have to keep up with the avalanche now. The priority is to save your friends and save the Library. Saving smugglers isn't part of it.\n\nThe commander turned to him and pointed at the house.\n\nNot Red Ibrahim's house. A modest stucco home sitting two doors down, guarded by an old fountain and a gate with weathered old boards that needed a fresh coat of paint. Jess had never noted the place before, never even glanced at it. It looked like the nondescript house of a well-off librarian or a low-level Scholar. I'm out of practice, Jess thought. He'd have spotted such a thoroughly unexceptional house in minutes, back in the day, before the Library had made him lax about such things.\n\nSomeone didn't want to be noticed.\n\nThe soldiers obviously had their orders; they silently moved away, each intent on getting to his or her position. There was a breach team who swarmed over the wall and quietly opened the gate; one even took the precaution of oiling the hinges first. Jess followed the captain to the front door. Unassuming or not, it was a stout barrier, but the captain gave a silent hand signal. Her Greek fire expert took a flask and funnel and poured carefully measured drops of the liquid into the crack of the door to dissolve the lock, then stepped back with a brisk nod.\n\nThe first soldier opened the door quietly, and to no significant drama, though Jess had expected some kind of violence to erupt. One by one, the team he was with filed inside, and he was nearly the last to enter, though the soldiers stood aside to let him move up to the captain.\n\nThey were in a small, shabby room, with a worn carpet on the floor and two chairs, a single lamp, and a bookcase. Nothing of note, though Jess strode to the bookcase and looked through the titles. They were all in Library binding, of course, and he pulled one at random to leaf through it. Nothing suspicious. It all seemed in order, but then, the best smugglers made sure it did.\n\nHe let his eyes unfocus and regard the shelf as a whole. Nothing at all suspicious... and then, because he wasn't overthinking it, his gaze sharpened on a single book. No different, no larger, no smaller, but there was something about it... ah. Discoloration on the top edge of the binding, as if this book was often retrieved... and yet, none evenly along the spine. It had been removed. Not read.\n\nIt would have taken someone with his practiced eye to see it, but once seen, it was unmistakable. If this had been smugglers, or even collectors, he might have kept all this to himself... but not this time. This time, they were looking for Burners, and whether they'd invested in a printing press or not, they were still enemies.\n\nAs Jess considered his next step, he heard a soldier report back. \"We've been through every room, Captain. Nothing suspicious. No one here.\"\n\n\"They're here,\" Jess said. \"You just can't see them.\"\n\nThe new captain turned slowly to stare at him. \"Meaning what? That they're invisible? Ghosts? Speak sense.\"\n\nFor answer, Jess reached out and tipped the book, then back in.\n\nThey all heard the click. Soldiers fanned out, but Jess didn't move. He knew where it was. No point in helping them, though. They'd surely work out that this house didn't have space for any hidden rooms of any size.\n\nNot unless they were below.\n\nHe bent and pulled back the rug. Even with the cover gone, it was cleverly done; the sides of the trapdoor were almost invisible, flush with the wooden floor. There was one piece of wood of an odd size, as if it had been added as a replacement or fit; he pushed on it, and one end flipped up to form a handle.\n\n\"Ready?\" he asked softly.\n\nThe captain formed up the troops and then gave him a brisk nod.\n\nHe pulled the trap up in one fast motion, and the soldiers plunged down the steps. They went quietly, and the quiet remained for two or three heartbeats... until the sound of shots exploded. Shots, cries, shouts, screams. Flashes of light. Jess stepped back as the battle intensified and the sharp smell of gunpowder and blood hit the air. He had no High Garda armor, and putting himself in the thick of it would do no one any good. Besides, it seemed from the slowing gunfire that he wasn't needed.\n\nIn the brief pause between one spate of shouting and the next, he heard the unmistakable soft click of another latch being released.\n\nJess stepped back, careful to be as silent as he could, and angled to see into the next room. A bedroom, with a small, flat bed that was swinging silently upward. Clever. He had no weapon, but he took a heavy soapstone statue of Horus from the bookcase and waited.\n\nThe Burner who emerged stopped and took a bottle from her pocket. Greek fire, sloshing in her shaking hand. She shouted, \"A life is worth more than a book, you Library ghouls!\" and tossed it down the steps. Jess heard it shatter and knew the captain would order her people back out through the other trap.\n\nThe Burner turned to run and saw him blocking her path.\n\nShe was older than he was, but not by much. A year, maybe two. African extraction, with a sharply triangular face and skin as dark as burnished ebony.\n\nAnd she didn't hesitate to attack.\n\nHe saw her lunge and draw the knife at her belt in the same motion, and he used the statue to deflect the stab that would have surely gutted him. \"Stop!\" He tried to keep it as low as he could. \"Stop, I'm not your enemy!\"\n\nShe didn't believe him, and why would she? He'd come here with the High Garda. And, truthfully, he was no friend of the Burners, either. She came at him again with the knife, and this time she scored a shallow cut along his ribs with it before he swung the statue and connected hard with her head.\n\nShe dropped. Not out, but not conscious enough to escape, either, and now it was too late even if she'd had a planned exit; High Garda troops were coming up through the other trapdoor at a run, and the captain spotted him. \"You! Brightwell! With me! You two, get that Burner and put her in with the rest we've got.\"\n\nJess set the statue down and went to the captain as the Burner was dragged to the front door and out toward the troop carriers. More of her companions were being led up or carried from the rooms below. Jess counted a dozen of them before the last was out, and the captain grabbed his shoulder and shoved him toward the steps.\n\n\"I'm not going down there,\" Jess said. \"She's thrown Greek fire.\"\n\n\"It's out,\" she said. \"We have suppressant. Go on. I need your expert opinion on what I'm looking at down there.\"\n\n\"Expert?\" he asked, brows arched. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Shut up and move.\"\n\nHe descended carefully. The room was smoky but lit by still-burning glows, and though the acrid, thick mist made him cough, it didn't seem to be actively dangerous. The ceiling was higher than he'd expected; it had taken a lot of work to dig out this large room. Multiple exits, too. He spotted at least three other trapdoors, all open. \"Did anyone get away?\" he asked.\n\n\"We don't think so, but it's possible,\" said one of the other soldiers. \"There's a tunnel in the back we're following. This place is a warren. It's dug under half the houses on the block.\"\n\nIncluding Red Ibrahim's? No, not bloody likely. He'd avoid that, at all costs. And what possible alliance could he have with Burners?\n\nBut he knew the answer to that the instant his eyes fixed on the structure that had been built in the center of the room. It was crude, and poorly aligned, but the plan of it was familiar. Stacks of raw paper sat against the walls, ready for pressing. Jess thought of the flyer he'd used as notepaper to send to the Spanish ambassador. It had almost certainly come from this press.\n\n\"You know what it is?\" the captain asked. \"It seems to be some kind of... ink machine.\"\n\nJess looked around and found a printed page in a corner; it was smeared and poorly aligned but legible. He handed it to the captain and watched the stages of realization hit in turn. Confusion first. Then dawning wonder. Then unease, as she realized the implications. He could tell that this captain wasn't someone who tended to think of the immense possibilities... only the dangers. But then, that was why she'd risen to her current post... and likely no further.\n\n\"It prints duplicates,\" Jess said. \"Ink on paper. No Obscurist required.\"\n\n\"It's a machine that makes Burner lies look true.\" The captain crumpled the paper up and threw it with force against the wall. It bounced and rolled, and she stomped it flat. \"And they can blanket the street with them. It's obscene.\"\n\n\"It's a tool,\" Jess said. \"And it can do a great deal of good, in the right use.\"\n\n\"Good? If anyone can decide what is right and wrong, then we are lost, Brightwell! No unity, no sanity. It's an abomination.\"\n\nJess imagined that was what the first Archivist to destroy one of these machines had said. It had been the excuse for cutting the throat of the Scholar who invented it, too. \"Perhaps,\" he said. \"But just think for a moment what the Library could do with it.\"\n\n\"If even one of these things exists, there is no Library, don't you understand that?\" The captain turned and walked back to the steps. \"Gold Squad! Get down here. I want this thing destroyed. Not one scrap of it should remain when you're done\u2014do you understand? Make a list of all the materials that go into it. We will want to track purchases.\"\n\nA swarm of High Garda came down into the basement and began dismantling the press with hands, hammers, iron bars\u2014anything they could find. They'd make short work of it, Jess thought.\n\nBut it didn't matter. It wouldn't be the only one in Alexandria. If the Burners had discovered how useful it was, and they obviously had, then Anit would have built several of them; this one, she'd sold to the Burners, but there would be bigger ones. Better ones. Red Ibrahim had access to money and talent that the Burners couldn't dream of, and he would see the astonishing possibilities where the High Garda captain would only see the threat.\n\nNot that he was wrong, of course. There was no more dire, direct threat to the Great Library's power than the machine the soldiers were so busily dismantling. But the jinn was long out of the bottle by now; print machines were being thrown together in all corners of the world. The revolution was disorganized, but it was inevitable. The Archivist was riding a blind horse toward a cliff, and someone had to stop the inevitable disaster.\n\nThat wouldn't be done by destroying this machine, or any of them, or all of them. It would be done by remembering what the Library was, at its heart: a defiant outpost of courage, built by those who made knowledge something to be cherished, not destroyed.\n\nPeople like this captain\u2014who saw only danger from progress, while paying lip service to a tradition they didn't understand\u2014were the largest obstacle to that goal. For generations, they'd placed all their worth and trust in the Library being the only source of knowledge. And they'd cling to that with everything they had.\n\nBut being the only source had never been the Library's founding purpose. Only preservation and protection.\n\nJess didn't argue; the captain wouldn't listen and saw him as hardly better than a Burner, anyway. Jess sat deep in thought on a barrel of ink, paging through the records of what the Burners had already printed and distributed\u2014a shockingly high number of leaflets\u2014when the captain snatched the notebook from his hand and stuffed it into her own pocket next to a personal journal. I miss my journal, Jess thought, and was strangely surprised to feel a little pang of grief. He'd not written down a thing that had happened in his life for such a long time; he'd broken the habit and custom without a glance backward the instant he knew the Library might be reading the contents. But he was surprised to realize that he missed it. Maybe, once this was over, he could write about what had happened. That might help this strange, gray mood that had taken him over.\n\nYou can take it apart, but you can't destroy the idea, he wanted to tell the captain, but he'd be wasting his time.\n\n\"Well?\" the captain snapped. \"Are you staying here to wait for the Burners to come back and tear you apart, or are you going with us? Either way is fine with me.\"\n\nHe couldn't help but ask, \"You mean, you'd let me stay?\"\n\nThe woman shrugged. \"Stay if you like. But it'll be the end of you if you do.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"I was told to withdraw. You should do the same, if you want to live.\"\n\n\"Captain?\"\n\nThe woman walked away, and Jess trailed her up, through the house, to the street.\n\n\"Last time,\" the captain said. \"Are you coming or staying?\"\n\n\"Staying,\" Jess said. Since he'd been given the choice, which was baffling. The captain stepped into the carrier and it sped away, leaving a cloud of white steam behind it. The next two carriers followed close behind.\n\nAnd then they were gone.\n\nThey'd left him behind. Free. That hardly seemed right, and he was trying to decide what the hell was happening when he heard the alarm sound from the Lighthouse.\n\nIt was legendary, that sound: an eerie, shrieking rise and fall that pierced the ear and woke a deep, anxious terror inside. Monsters screamed like that. The alarm at the Lighthouse had last sounded two hundred years ago, when a huge storm had threatened the city; it hadn't been activated on a clear day, like this one, in hundreds of years before that.\n\nJess stood rooted to the spot, listening, and saw people stepping outside of buildings and homes around him. Red Ibrahim's door opened, and a cluster of servants came out, nervously wiping their hands on aprons. No sign of the man himself.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked a large, square woman in a white head scarf. A chef, he thought, pulled away from the morning's food preparations. \"Do you know?\"\n\nJess shook his head. \"A test?\"\n\n\"I've never heard it tested before. Wouldn't they announce it in advance?\" She rocked back and forth, silent for a moment, then burst out, \"I wish they'd shut it off!\"\n\nShe'd had to speak loudly to be heard over the wailing, and as soon as she said it, as if she'd wished it done, the shriek of the alarm cut off. Echoes rolled through the streets, and a profound, uneasy silence settled. Nothing moved\u2014nothing except speeding troop carriers, moving out from the High Garda compound. Dozens of them, spreading out to different parts of the city.\n\nAnd with them, the loping, shining forms of automata.\n\nJess felt sickness curl deep inside. Something is happening. Something b ad.\n\nThen the amplified voice of the Archivist rang out. What Obscurist magic it was, he couldn't fathom, though Morgan likely would have known, but the voice of one man reached an entire city, and it was clear and eerily calm.\n\n\"Citizens of Alexandria, this is the Archivist of the Great Library. Be it known to you now that no Burner shall be left alive in our great and ancient city. No criminal smuggler shall be left alive to deal in forbidden books. No quarter will be given those who seek to destroy the safety and security of thousands of years. We have been merciful. I tell you now, we will not be merciful again.\n\n\"To that end the High Garda is now marching on hidden sites in our city to rout Burners and criminals from their holes and destroy utterly any trace of their existence. There will be damage. There will be innocent lives lost. But we believe in the greater worth of the Library. Knowledge is all!\"\n\nAs Jess heard those around him devoutly repeat it, he saw that one of the troop carriers, with a phalanx of running automaton lions, was heading in their direction.\n\nHe turned to the servants. \"Get out of here!\" he shouted, and grabbed the chef's arm as she started to obey. \"Wait. Where's Red Ibrahim?\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Don't waste my time, woman. Where is he?\"\n\nShe gave him a long look, and he felt something sharp prick his stomach. He looked down to find a wickedly well-used knife resting there. \"Take your hand off me. The master of the house is gone. There's only us inside.\"\n\n\"Then, leave,\" he said. \"And warn him. Tell him to go to ground, now \u2014\"\n\nThe words died in his throat, because he caught something from the corner of his eye and turned his head to look. There was still a knife threatening to gut him, but in that moment, it no longer mattered. Cold filled his veins, froze his spine, and he heard the chef whisper, \"What in good Heron's name is...\" She fell silent, then let out a scream, backed up, and ran.\n\nJess didn't move. Couldn't. His brain struggled to make sense of the size of it, the eerie beauty of it, as the sleek, serpentine shape rose on beating wings. That isn't possible.\n\nThey'd built a dragon.\n\nThe entire city was screaming. He heard the panic coming in waves as the dragon rose and circled in lazy spirals, banking and turning. It was a nightmare. It was deeply wrong. It was beautiful.\n\nAnd then it came down.\n\nThe part of his mind that was frozen, clinical, trying to understand... it noted that this monster descended like a hawk, a swift, brutal, eerily silent descent. It had claws and talons, and it landed on the street at the end of the block. And the scale of it... He had never imagined anything could be built so large, so vividly and horribly swift. A snakelike neck stretched up as high as a three-story building to support a head shaped like that of an ancient, brutal dinosaur, if such had been made of clouded steel. Spiked, razor-sharp teeth. And the body: a hissing, whispering marvel of interlocking-plate scales, iridescent in the bright sunlight.\n\nIts eyes glowed dark yellow, and there was no mercy in them. No thought.\n\nEveryone near him was gone now, running for their lives. Houses had emptied. And the dragon's talons clashed on stone as it lowered its head and breathed down a thick, green fog into the street.\n\nJess had time to taste that bitter, poisonous tang in the back of his throat before his lungs convulsed into coughs, and he found himself falling to his hands and knees trying to find clearer air. That's the stench of Greek fire. He'd seen that mist build up in Philadelphia, clouding the air until it all ignited at once... and then he realized that the Library had taken note of it, too. First the mist, then the fire, he thought, and lurched up to his feet again to run. He couldn't see where he was going; the rancid fog stung and blurred his vision, but he knew he was still on the road, feeling cobbles under his feet. He could hear the metallic hiss and clank of the automaton behind him, but how far, where...\n\nInstinct told him, Run, just run, it doesn't matter, run!\n\nJess ran, blinded, as fast as he could go, until he tasted clearer air, and then he dashed a hand over his eyes and tried to see where he was.\n\nHe'd come dangerously close to falling over a curb and impaling himself on an iron fence, but he was near the farther end of the street now, and he dared to slow down and try to look back.\n\nJust as he did, a spark ignited in the cloud, and for an instant he'd never forget, the fog of Greek fire glowed like a beautiful, fragile network of green lace, suspended in the air...\n\n...and then everything in it exploded.\n\nThe houses. The street. Fences. Fountains, weeping flames.\n\nA green bubble of hell.\n\nStones melted. Houses collapsed. If anything lived inside that fog, it was incinerated to the bones. The servants? The chef? What about the others on the street\u2014did they get out in time?\n\nJess let out a raw scream, because he was in Philadelphia again, seeing the bombs fall and lives lost, and it was happening here, in Alexandria, and for what? For what? To punish the Burners? Red Ibrahim?\n\nNo. To terrify. To show the city that the Archivist would not allow any opposition.\n\nThe wail of the alarm started again, and from inside the inferno came a chilling, answering roar, and the dragon launched itself up. It trailed streamers of fire behind it, nightmarish curls that writhed and twisted into black smoke. The automaton was streaked with soot and ash, but it was intact. Eerily alive.\n\nIt circled the sky over the city, and the threat was as clear as the sun in the sky: you are all one breath away from death now.\n\nJess found himself sitting now, clinging to the iron fence; it felt hot, and he realized that his clothes were giving off little curls of wispy smoke. His skin felt dry and hot, and he wearily got to his feet and walked on through falling ash and the eerie wail of the alarm until he saw the troop carrier that had been headed toward his street.\n\nIt was parked at the top of the hill, and four automaton lions waited, pacing.\n\nNowhere else to go, he thought, and kept walking. He coughed and tasted the bitter aftertaste of the fog. Spat out a thick mouthful of greenish phlegm and nearly collapsed with the force of another convulsive series of coughs.\n\nWhen he finally straightened, the lions had surrounded him, and as one, they growled and showed teeth when he tried to move forward.\n\n\"I wouldn't,\" said a light, calm voice. \"You're Jess Brightwell, are you not?\"\n\nFor a split second, he nearly answered yes, but he caught it just in time and said, \"For the thousandth time, no. I'm his twin, Brendan, and for God's sake, can't you get that into your thick skulls? What the hell was that thing?\"\n\n\"Take him,\" the voice said. \"He's the one we want.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 35",
                "text": "Jess didn't bother to ask where he was being taken. He assumed that he would be taken back to his cramped little prison, to wait there on the Archivist's pleasure, but he couldn't shake the horror of what he'd just seen. War was one thing; it was horrible and brutal, but there were rules, or at least there should be. He'd been trained as High Garda. Where was the duty and honor in what had just happened? Where was the benefit to knowledge? Had any of those people ever threatened the Great Library? This was the Library's own city. The Archivist was making war against his own people.\n\nHe didn't recognize any of the soldiers who sat silently around him. They wore the uniform of High Garda Elite, which he supposed wasn't surprising. He wondered how many more the Archivist had in reserve. And he wondered if it would do any good to tell them just how faithless the man was whom they were so faithfully obeying.\n\nThe soldier sitting next to him coughed and sent him a scowl. \"You stink,\" the man said. \"Smells like Greek fire and cat piss.\"\n\n\"Quiet,\" said a commanding voice from down the row. \"You've smelled worse than that on many a day, and I doubt you have his excuse. Leave him alone. He'll get what's coming to him soon enough.\"\n\nThe soldier subsided, but the look he was giving Jess was pure loathing. Jess hardly even noticed. In every blink of his eyes he saw that street aflame, and the bodies in it. His hands were shaking and suddenly the stench that the soldier had commented on was all too real and suffocating.\n\nHe didn't much notice the trip at all, but suddenly he realized that they'd stopped and soldiers were pouring out of the open door. The hostile soldier next to him grabbed him by his shackled wrists and heaved him up; Jess was forced to rise or have both shoulders dislocated. He didn't much mind the pain. At least it gave him something to focus on.\n\nThis wasn't his little house. He recognized this bare courtyard, with its view of the Lighthouse in the distance. It was a rally point for High Garda troops, and the huge sweep of the Serapeum rose into the sky above them. The whole courtyard was full of soldiers. Some wore the Elite uniform, but most wore the same as the one he'd worn with such pride just months back. Loyal men and women. Jess wondered whom they had been told they were fighting. Burners and rebels most likely. He wondered if any of them harbored any doubts.\n\nAs before, he was led through a maze of tunnels. He recognized part of it, but that part had belonged to another route before. It confirmed what he'd suspected\u2014that the building itself was an automaton in some sense. Its defenses started with the confusion of its ever-changing corridors, a defense Jess wasn't sure he understood or could outwit, at least not yet. Right now, there was nothing in this world he wanted more than to be out of here, even if there was nowhere else to go. He was too heartsick to play games and too angry to pretend any longer. If he had the chance, he intended to kill the Archivist any way he could. It might not stop that dragon from flying again, but at least it was something.\n\nHe was in the mood for murder.\n\nNeksa was at her desk in the outer office, and she looked nervous and disturbed. She fiddled with the Library band on her wrist in a way that he was sure he'd never seen before. She avoided looking at him directly, and that was when he was sure that something had gone very wrong.\n\nIn the Archivist's office, there were two people standing and one on his knees. Guards as well, of course, lurking in the shadows along with the waiting automaton gods. Jess's mind reeled, and for a long moment he was sure he had gone insane. This could not be right. Could not be happening.\n\nBut then his brother Brendan shook his head and said, \"Sorry, Brother.\" It was the brisk tone that made Jess take a step back and realize he wasn't imagining things. His brother really was here.\n\nAnd then the man kneeling on the carpet looked up. His hair was a matted, graying mess, and he looked paler and more wild than Jess had ever seen him, but it was Scholar Wolfe. Bruised, and from the look in his eyes half-mad, but alive.\n\n\"Scholar?\" Jess moved toward him, but before he could get more than a step, his brother grabbed his elbow and pulled him to a stop. \"Let me go. What's been done to him?\"\n\nThe third man in the tableau was the Archivist, of course. He was standing behind his desk, but with no sense of calm about him. His hands were clenched behind his back, and his color had an unhealthy reddish tone to it. \"Nothing has been done to him. Not yet. In fact, Christopher has done me a great favor. I don't suppose he meant to do so, but that doesn't change the fact that you have been lying to me all this time. And we're going to find out exactly how you managed that.\"\n\n\"I already told him that you drugged me and took my place,\" Brendan said. \"And that Father had no choice but to play along if he wanted to get his bargain. Once he realized the game was up, he sent me as a sign of good faith to finish the deal. And I will. I'm sorry, Brother. It was never going to work for long.\"\n\n\"You think he really intends to give Father any bargain?\" Jess almost laughed. Besides the awful taste of chemicals and death, he tasted something even worse: defeat. \"Don't be stupid. He has both Callum Brightwell's sons. He can get what he wants without paying a geneih. Unless you think that Father is even more heartless than I ever thought he was. Why did you come here? He'll kill us both.\"\n\n\"My fault,\" Wolfe said. His voice sounded rusty and hollow and haunted. \"Why didn't you tell me what you planned? Because you knew I'd never let you take this risk? Jess...\"\n\n\"Too clever by half,\" the Archivist agreed. \"It's the clever ones that get caught in their own traps. If you'd only told the Scholar what you intended, he wouldn't have come to me and told me a lie that turned out to be true. He told me you'd taken your brother's place. And of course it was what I suspected from the beginning, but you did an excellent job of putting my suspicions to rest. I intend to spend some time with you to find out exactly what you've been up to. You didn't do this alone. You had help, and I intend to pull every name out of you and send every one of your allies screaming into the afterlife. I admit you were bold. We'll see how bold you are at the Feast of Greater Burning.\" He suddenly opened the Codex on his desk and scribbled a note.\n\n\"No need for that,\" Jess's brother said in a deliberately calm and careless tone. He was the master of making it seem he didn't care. \"Just send the boy home. My father will still hold to the bargain, as long as Jess is safe.\"\n\n\"Your father will do exactly what I tell him. He's going to lose a son. Take care he doesn't lose two. Your brother's written his own fate, and his own very unhappy ending. If you're as smart as I believe you to be, you'll stand aside and save your family and your fortune. No point in losing everything, is there?\"\n\n\"Don't believe him,\" Jess said. \"He'll kill all of us. Some of us will just die later.\"\n\nBrendan shrugged. \"I don't see that I have much choice,\" he said. \"And I don't see that you do, either. You started this, Jess. And you know the consequences. The Library always wins in the end.\" He turned toward the Archivist and bowed slightly. \"You understand that I had to try to save him. He's my brother. But one thing about our family: we put business first. My da will understand what had to be done. I brought you the plans. And that makes us square for our end of the deal.\"\n\nThe double doors opened, and Neksa stepped inside. She shot an involuntary look at Jess, then Brendan, before she settled her gaze on the Archivist. \"Sir,\" she said, and bowed.\n\n\"Come in, my dear,\" he said, and smiled. Jess didn't like the look of it, even though the Archivist took a seat and tried to seem welcoming. \"Do you recognize these young men?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said, and she sounded baffled. \"The two Brightwell brothers. But I thought only one was here.\"\n\n\"Did you?\"\n\nJess caught the tone, and he knew his brother did as well, but neither of them moved. The guards, responding to some signal he hadn't seen, had drawn weapons and moved closer. Whatever was about to happen, there was no way to stop it.\n\n\"You rented a house to one of them, I believe,\" the Archivist said. \"Or have I been misinformed?\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Neksa seemed caught off guard. She bit her lip and tried again. \"I did, sir. Some time ago, now. But that was long before there was any hint that his brother would turn against the Library. I can only beg your understanding and assure you of my loyalty.\"\n\n\"Did you help?\" the Archivist asked.\n\n\"I don't understand. Please, sir, I have never betrayed you in any way, if that is what you are saying. I never would. You are the Archivist, and I would never betray my oath.\"\n\nThe Archivist looked at Brendan. There was a hint of a smile on his lips, and it chilled Jess to the bone. \"Is that true?\"\n\nBrendan returned the old man's gaze for a long moment before he said, \"She rented me a house for money. I was here to check up on my brother while he was in High Garda training. Then I left. I hardly exchanged half a dozen words with her.\"\n\n\"Hardly an impassioned plea for her life, young man,\" the Archivist said. \"Do you want her to live?\"\n\nJess heard a muffled gasp from Neksa, but he couldn't look away from his brother's face. Even now Brendan didn't betray any anxiety or any fear.\n\n\"I don't much care,\" Brendan said, and turned to look at the young woman with the same indifference. \"Please yourself, I suppose; she's your employee, not mine.\"\n\nIt was a ploy, Jess realized, and a good one; even knowing his brother, he would've believed that Brendan didn't care either way. And it was the only way that Neksa still had a chance of walking out alive. If she reached the outer office, he could only hope she had the sense to run, because the Archivist wouldn't forget, and he certainly wouldn't forgive.\n\nThe Archivist nodded. \"It's true,\" he said. \"She's never given me the slightest hint that she might be anything but loyal. She's bright, efficient, and a tireless servant of the Library. I could never find anyone half as competent to take her place. She knows my secrets. And that's why this is such a loss.\"\n\nBrendan knew, in that instant, and he began to move toward her, but it was already too late. The statue of Horus stepped from its alcove and, in one terrifying, fluid motion, drove the spear it carried through her back with so much force it emerged from her chest and buried itself in the floor. Jess shouted, but his voice blended with the sound of his twin's scream. Brendan reached her just as the automaton withdrew the spear in a spray of blood and stepped back into its alcove. He caught Neksa as she fell forward and wrapped his arms around her as he eased her to the floor. She was still alive. Jess tried to get to her and to his brother, but in the next instant he was shoved down on his knees next to Wolfe, and there were guns at the back of both of their heads. Don't, Jess thought wildly at his brother. Don't try it.\n\nAnd if it entered Brendan's mind at all, his brother dismissed the idea of killing the old man because he was trying to stop the rush of blood from Neksa's wounds. It was useless, and no one could've saved her, not even the most skilled of Medica, and Jess closed his eyes and tried not to listen to the words his brother was whispering to the woman who was dying in his arms. It was private. It was heartbreaking.\n\nHe knew she was gone when his brother went quiet. Brendan's back was to him, and his brother was still, but there was something forming under that stillness that was very, very dangerous.\n\nBrendan eased Neksa back to the carpet and closed her eyes with bloodied fingers.\n\nThen he went for the Archivist.\n\nJess timed his move precisely; he threw himself forward, hit his brother in mid-lunge, and knocked him sideways to the floor. They tangled together and rolled, and then Brendan's fingers were around Jess's throat and there was no way he could defend himself except to try to writhe free, and his brother's eyes were wide and dark and wholly mad with fury... and then they went blank, as the High Garda soldiers dragged him off and forced him to his knees in the spreading pool of blood from Neksa's fallen body.\n\n\"You two, settle down,\" the Archivist said. He hadn't moved from where he'd been sitting, and he still had a calm, remote look on his face. Jess had always hated him. He'd never hated him so much it felt like physical pain before. \"It had to be done, of course. The girl couldn't be trusted, and that's deeply unfortunate. And now I find I can't trust either of you. Much as I'd hoped that your father and I could reach a lasting agreement, it seems he's no more trustworthy than any other criminal. For the protection of the Great Library, I have to remove all contaminants from our society. Rebels. Burners. Criminals. And you... you are at least guilty of at least one of those things, if not more.\" He nodded to the High Garda captain. \"Take them back to the prison. Remove the body for funeral rites. She deserves that from us, at least.\"\n\n\"I'm going to kill you,\" Brendan said. His voice held all the rage that Jess had swallowed, and more. \"You evil old bastard, you're going to pay for this if I have to crawl out of hell to bring you the bill.\"\n\n\"Save your breath,\" Jess told his brother. \"He's not worth wasting it.\"\n\nThe Archivist smiled and shrugged. \"Wolfe? No threats from you, then?\"\n\nWolfe kept silent. His dark eyes were half-hidden under his wild hair, and he didn't look capable of much, weak as he was. But somehow, Jess thought that was more frightening than his brother's raw, wounded fury.\n\n\"Take them out of my sight.\" The Archivist sighed and took up his pen. \"I have to find a new assistant.\"\n\nThey took Brendan out first, and Jess was glad of that.\n\nIt meant his brother was spared the sight of the girl he loved being rolled into the spoiled carpet and taken away without ceremony, or even a last look from the man who'd killed her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 36",
                "text": "The corridors had shifted again, and Jess grimly memorized this configuration, too; he was starting to see a pattern to it, but he'd need more data to finish the puzzle. Not likely to get it in the time he had left. He had the feeling he'd been to this office for the last time.\n\nBrendan's hands were shackled now, and his ankles, too; as Jess was pushed down into the carrier seat, he got the same treatment. So did Wolfe. No chance of using their numbers to take down the six High Garda soldiers crowded in with them, though Jess had considered it as an option for a flash. Brendan sat silently now, as still as an automaton. He was half-soaked in Neksa's blood, and Jess could imagine how that felt cooling against his skin. If he'd ever needed more of a reason to see the Archivist dead, he had it now.\n\n\"Bren,\" he said quietly. And when he got no response: \"Scraps.\"\n\n\"Don't,\" Brendan said. \"Just don't.\"\n\n\"Leave him,\" Wolfe said from Jess's other side. \"Jess. Is Santi\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Jess said. \"But I'm glad to see you alive.\"\n\n\"Are you?\" Wolfe had recovered a ghost of his usual acerbic tone. \"That's mystifying, considering the horror I unleashed on you just now. Both of you.\"\n\n\"My fault,\" Jess said. \"Dario and I, we thought... we thought you'd tell Santi what we planned, and Santi would put a quick stop to it. I hated not telling you, but...\" He shook his head. \"It wasn't worth what you've been through, Scholar, and I am sorry for that.\"\n\n\"Don't take the world on your back. I don't need your guilt, Brightwell. I need your mind working. We're not finished.\"\n\nIt looked like they were, Jess thought, but he kept that silent. At least Wolfe wasn't broken to his core. Not yet. But Brendan... No, he couldn't be. His twin bounced; he didn't break. He never cared enough to be hurt the way that others could be. Or at least, he never showed it if he was.\n\n\"Not sure how we're getting out of this, sir,\" Jess admitted. \"My plans didn't include... this. Any of this.\"\n\n\"I suppose it would be asking a great deal if they did,\" Wolfe said. \"But there's all the time in the world to feel defeated.\"\n\n\"Shut up, the lot of you,\" growled one of the soldiers. \"You're going nowhere but into the cells and into the ground.\"\n\nHard to argue that he was wrong... except that the carrier, which had been hurtling along at a fast clip, suddenly decelerated and threw everyone's weight toward the front.\n\n\"Blessed Isis, learn to drive, you mongrel\u2014,\" shouted the same soldier who'd first spoken, and he pushed his way up to the front to bang on the driver's compartment. \"What's happening?\"\n\nNo answer. The carrier continued to slow down, and Jess looked over at Wolfe, then at Brendan. Brendan's eyes were shut, his face tense and still, but Wolfe seemed more than aware of things. \"Be ready,\" the Scholar whispered, and Jess nodded. Ready for what, he wasn't sure; with ankles and wrists pinned, it wasn't likely he could do more than flail at random. But anything out of the ordinary was something that might, might be useful.\n\nThe carrier ground to a hissing stop, and a brisk, businesslike boom sounded three times on the door. \"Come on, soldier, we don't have all day,\" barked a bored voice. \"Orders and papers. High Commander's orders.\"\n\n\"Talk to the driver!\" their guard commander shouted without opening up. \"He's got the clearances!\"\n\n\"He says you've got them.\"\n\n\"We're transporting prisoners on the orders of the Archivist, you idiot. Can't you see the Elite seal on the vehicle?\"\n\n\"Word is, some faction's stolen two of those very things. I'll need to inspect before I can open the barricades.\"\n\n\"What's your rank, soldier?\" the Elite guard barked.\n\n\"Lieutenant, sir. And yours?\"\n\n\"I outrank you. Open the barricades!\"\n\n\"Show me your orders and it's yours.\"\n\n\"Damn your soul to the crocodiles\u2014\" The commander backed up and drew his sidearm, and around them, his soldiers followed suit. \"Be ready. I don't like this.\"\n\n\"Lieutenant?\" More bangs on the door. \"If you force me to crack this can, I'll have your head, superior or not!\"\n\nHe sounded like an annoyed, tired High Garda officer, Jess thought, and that must have decided the Elite commander, too, because he unlatched the door and slid it open, just enough to thrust his Codex out. \"First page,\" he said. \"And then I'll want your name. You can expect to be cleaning toilets in my barracks by\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped because he was coughing... and in a second, they all were:; helpless, racking coughs, though Jess couldn't see any smoke. In the next seconds, his eyes filled with burning tears, and he felt, rather than saw, soldiers stumbling blindly toward the door, retching.\n\nThen the three of them were alone, struggling to breathe in the toxic atmosphere, until the door slid fully open and brought in a gust of bracing fresh air that Jess sucked in with real relief. He was lying on the floor, with Wolfe half on top of him, and as he blinked the burn from his eyes, he saw someone pulling Wolfe out by the feet into the glare of daylight.\n\nHe was grabbed and dragged next, and caught by a second pair of hands before his head could hit the ground.\n\n\"Move!\" the same voice barked. \"We have a minute, maybe two, and we'd best be gone!\"\n\nJess craned his head as he was being carried past and saw a pile of unconscious High Garda Elites next to the troop carrier, which was idling and billowing steam in the road. There was an official-looking barricade, but no one manning it now.\n\nHe was being carried by two men, and as he looked up at the one holding his shoulders, he put the upside-down face into the right orientation. \"Tom? Tom Rolleson?\"\n\nTroll grinned. \"Welcome back, Jess,\" he said. \"Hell of a mess you've got us in.\"\n\nJess found himself\u2014between coughing fits\u2014unceremoniously loaded into another carrier, and as his irritated eyes adjusted, he realized he was, finally, among friends. Santi's company, to be specific: the voice that had demanded credentials from the other vehicle had been Centurion Botha's, and as the man applied the Library key to the manacles on his wrists, then his ankles, Jess had to grab for a handhold as the vehicle lurched into motion. \"The gas,\" he said. \"Yours?\"\n\n\"A little invention we took off some Burners a while ago,\" Botha said, and unlocked Scholar Wolfe's cuffs. \"We thought it might come in handy sometime.\" He started to apply the key to Brendan's restraints and then checked himself and sat back, looking from Jess to his twin. \"Two of you is too many, Brightwell. Assuming I've let loose the right one?\"\n\n\"You did,\" Jess said, at the same moment his brother said, \"No, you didn't,\" and thrust his restraints back out at Botha.\n\n\"Ease off, Scraps,\" Jess said. \"We're among friends.\"\n\n\"You are. I don't know where I stand.\" Brendan sounded better. Not good, by any means, but at least calm, and no longer ragged with rage. \"What kind of friends? Because these look like your type, not mine.\"\n\n\"I see the resemblance is more than skin deep,\" Botha said. \"What's your name, other Brightwell?\"\n\n\"Brendan.\"\n\n\"Brendan, I am Centurion Botha. If I remove these, do I have your word you will not make me kill you over something stupid?\"\n\nBrendan shrugged. \"For all that signifies.\"\n\n\"Go ahead,\" Jess said. \"I'll take responsibility for him. Do anything stupid, and I'll throw you out for the Elites to find.\"\n\n\"You would,\" Brendan said. He said nothing else as Botha unlocked his restraints, and settled back without any troublemaking.\n\nWhich left Jess free to hear Scholar Wolfe say, \"Do you know if Nic is\u2014\"\n\n\"He's well, sir,\" Botha said immediately. \"You'll see him soon. I promise that.\"\n\nWolfe took in a deep breath and sat back to put his head in his hands. \"I hate for him to see me like this,\" he said. \"But he's seen me far worse. Where are we going?\"\n\nBotha cast a raised eyebrow toward Brendan. Jess shrugged. \"For better or worse, he's got nowhere else to go,\" he said. \"Safe enough to tell him.\"\n\n\"We're going to a safe place,\" Botha said. \"It belongs to a friend of yours.\"\n\n\"Of mine?\" Jess asked, and frowned. \"I'm not hip-deep in those these days.\"\n\n\"You'll see,\" Botha said. \"You have more than you think.\"\n\nThey emerged into a large, dark space, with light cascading in sharp squares from skylights above. This was clearly a military storage area, and kitted out for vehicles like High Garda troop carriers; there were four more parked nearby, but in the dim light, Jess couldn't make out the insignia, except that it wasn't the Horus eye of the Library. Militarily neat, and for a moment he had the strange sensation that they'd somehow found a safe space in the middle of the High Garda compound... until he realized that the signs posted to keep the space clear, and keep weapons locked, were in Spanish.\n\nHis suspicions proved right when Botha led them through an enclosed hallway without windows and into a large, gracious, tiled courtyard with ornate fountains and a garden that looked nothing like the ones usually found in Alexandria. This one was unmistakably European, and olive trees grew in ropy spirals around the edges, topped with pale, dusty leaves and dark fruit. Orange trees sprawled in massive pots.\n\nAnd waiting in the courtyard stood the Spanish ambassador, Alvaro Santiago, but Jess spent only an instant in recognition before he took in the people standing beside him.\n\nThomas, with a thick scruff of golden beard and hair curling down to his collar. Glain, next to him, lean and immaculate in a High Garda uniform. Khalila, framed by a wine red dress and matching hijab. Dario, as resplendent as his cousin's closet could provide. And, on the end, in plain black, stood Captain Santi.\n\nKhalila was the first to rush forward and, without hesitation, fold Jess in an embrace, then kiss him on both cheeks. He pressed his forehead to hers and smiled. \"I thought you'd slip a knife in my ribs.\"\n\n\"Oh, I would have, for a few days after your dramatic departure,\" she said. \"You beautiful fool. I forgave you at least an hour ago, as soon as I knew I might see you again.\"\n\nHe was almost shaken by that. He hadn't realized until she was here, real, how much he'd missed her explosive brilliance and calm energy. She released him and stepped away, and the next was Dario, who offered only a grave handshake. \"Still alive after all,\" he said.\n\n\"And I see you've already found yourself a decent tailor,\" Jess said, and pulled him into an embrace. Dario returned it briefly, but with real feeling. \"You had to tell your cousin your nickname for me.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Dario said. \"I tell everyone to call you Scrubber. And as for my tailor, one must keep up standards.\" Dario's tone was light, but he was taking in Brendan's bloody clothes, and Wolfe, who was staring motionless at Santi. Taking in all information, as he usually did, even if he came to the wrong conclusion half the time. Well, that was unfair. A quarter of the time.\n\nDario stepped aside, and Glain gave him a grin and a one-armed, briskly martial hug before stepping back.\n\nThat left Captain Santi, who was moving straight for Wolfe, slowly, as if he couldn't believe his lover wouldn't vanish... and Thomas.\n\nThomas stood where he was and made Jess come to him. He looks different, Jess thought. As glad as Jess was to see him, the careful expression in Thomas's eyes made him slow down.\n\nThen he understood why. The last time he saw me, I was lying to him. And it hurt. Khalila and Glain had forgiven him, for their own reasons; Dario had already known. But Thomas... it had cut Thomas deep.\n\nSo the first thing Jess said was, \"I'm sorry. Truly sorry, Thomas.\"\n\nThomas nodded, and they stood there staring at each other, with an awkward, uncomfortable space between them... and then Thomas jerked his chin toward Wolfe and Santi, and Jess turned to look.\n\nWolfe extended a hand to Santi. It trembled badly, until Santi grabbed it and pulled Wolfe into his arms, and the sound he made came deep from his soul, a raw sound of relief that seemed to echo through the air. When they parted, it was only to arm's length, and Santi looked at Wolfe, into him, and said, \"I should have been with you. I would have been with you.\"\n\n\"You were,\" Wolfe said. \"Every moment.\"\n\nThen they were kissing, and Jess looked away, back at Thomas, who was smiling a little now. \"Good to see that,\" Thomas said, and the smile faded when he focused back on Jess. \"You left us. You left us thinking\u2014God knows what we were thinking. But I nearly killed you, and I am not sorry for that. It was the right thing to do, at the time.\"\n\n\"What I did was the right thing to do,\" Jess said. \"At the time. But I'm still sorry.\"\n\nThomas sighed. \"I suppose it will have to do, as an apology.\" He pulled Jess into a hug, slapped his back so hard it stung, and then pushed him back. \"Talk later. We have things to do now.\" He frowned then and stopped Jess from moving with a hand on his shoulder. \"Something's wrong.\"\n\n\"Obviously,\" Jess said. \"But we're not going to solve it standing here.\"\n\nThomas nodded and slid a look to Brendan, who was still standing where Jess had left him. \"And him? Is he all right?\"\n\nJess shook his head but didn't try to explain; Brendan wouldn't want anyone knowing his grief, at least, not here. Not now. That was why he had a slight smile on his face and empty eyes. It was a mask, and sooner or later, it would have to come off... but if it helped now, so be it.\n\n\"Ambassador.\" Jess moved to Alvaro Santiago and bowed. He made sure it was profound, even though it hurt. \"Thank you. I assume we're safe here...?\"\n\n\"For now,\" Santiago said. He didn't seem quite as lighthearted as before. \"As safe as anyone is in this city at the moment. But the moment is changing, and I think you know that.\" He raised his voice. \"Everyone, welcome. Come inside. I've set aside rooms for you, baths, clothes, meals. When you're rested, we will meet to discuss our futures.\"\n\nSomehow, Jess didn't think the ambassador's future would run quite the same path as his own, but for now, at least, it was enough.\n\nTrouble came when Jess was in his room, stripping off his chemical-soaked shirt with real relief; he was naked to the waist when a knock came at his door, and he sighed and threw on the soft white shirt that had been provided for him before he opened the door.\n\nNiccolo Santi grabbed him by the throat and walked him four brisk steps backward to the nearest wall. The impact drove the breath from Jess's chest, and he tried to gasp out a question, but Santi's hand tightened. The captain's hand was brutally strong, and his eyes were cold. \"No,\" he said. \"You don't talk. I talk, Brightwell. Do you know why? Nod if you do.\"\n\nJess jerked his head awkwardly up and down. He'd seen Santi in a killing mood, but never aimed at him... and this was very definitely personal.\n\n\"You took him,\" Santi said. His voice was low and calm, the one they all knew was the most dangerous sign of his temper. \"You ripped him away and handed him to the Archivist. You had no way of knowing what they would do to him or what hole they'd throw him into. And you\u2014you, of all of them, knew what he'd endured. You sent him back to hell, boy. And I do not forget that, even if he walked out of it alive.\"\n\nJess felt his face growing thick and red, and what little air he could painfully pull in wasn't enough. All it would take would be one spasm of Santi's hand, and he'd be unconscious. On his way to an ugly death.\n\nFight back, his instincts told him. He had a chance. Santi was so focused on his rage that he could hurt him, break free, and escape... but he held himself still with a huge effort. He wouldn't fight back.\n\nHe was guilty of what Santi accused.\n\nSanti let him go a second later and pushed himself backward. Surprised, Jess thought, at his own violence. Santi was a trained soldier, but he was a man who was in command of himself at almost all times... but not now. They exchanged looks. Santi was staring at him as if he didn't know him, and Jess gasped for breath and put a hand to his painful neck.\n\n\"Sir,\" Jess managed to say. \"I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" Santi said. \"I don't care if you're overflowing with regret. I don't care if this was Dario's harebrained idea, as I suspect it was. I don't even care that you brought him back to me, because we both know Wolfe could have died there, alone, and that I will never forgive, Jess. I want to send him out of here, away from all of this, and never let him come back. The only reason I won't is I know he wouldn't go.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Jess tried again. \"It's my fault. I know that. I should have told him, and you, before we set it all in motion.\"\n\n\"If you'd told me, stronzo, I would have knocked your heads together until you came up with a better plan.\"\n\n\"I know. I didn't tell you because I knew you'd stop us. And I knew Wolfe would have agreed, but told you. Same outcome. It wasn't easy, Captain. But it's my responsibility, and I'll try to earn your trust again.\"\n\n\"You're lucky I'm not twenty years younger,\" Santi said. \"I'd have killed you.\" He sighed and rubbed his head in frustration. \"But you're just a boy, and you made a mistake, and I should know better myself. I'm sorry for putting my hands on you, Jess.\"\n\n\"You wanted me to fight back.\"\n\nSanti's glance at him told him it was true. \"And you didn't.\"\n\n\"Because I know you'd kill me in any kind of a fight, Captain. I can outrun you. I can't outfight you.\"\n\nHe watched the captain pull in a deep breath, hold it, and then let it out in a rush. \"Promise me you won't put Christopher in that kind of danger again. Not that. Not ever.\"\n\nJess nodded. \"I swear, I'll do everything I can.\"\n\n\"Am I such a child that I need a lover and a student to decide my own life for me?\"\n\nThat sharp voice stopped them both in their tracks. Santi turned, and Jess looked past him to find Scholar Wolfe in the doorway, arms folded. He looked tired but clean; his color was still too pale by half, but his eyes were bright, and the temper in them was all too familiar.\n\nSanti winced. \"Chris\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh no, by all means, choke the young man half to death for doing exactly what I would have done in his place. And, yes, of course, decide my life. Pad me in cotton like a fragile bottle of Greek fire. Nic. I am here. I am standing. I am sane. And much as I love you, much as I will always love you, don't ever assume I can't, or won't, think for myself.\" Wolfe's voice softened, took on a warmer timbre. \"My love, I know you're blaming him because you failed to see it coming. Don't. They fooled me as well. Fooled me so well I betrayed him earlier today, and almost got him and his brother murdered. For my troubles, I am responsible for the cruel death of a young woman who did absolutely nothing to deserve it, so if you're angry with him... be just as angry with me.\"\n\nSanti went to him and folded him in his arms, because he\u2014like Jess\u2014had heard the tremble in the man's voice. And Wolfe let out his breath and sank into that embrace with real gratitude. \"I'm sorry,\" Santi whispered. \"I shouldn't have taken it out on Jess. But seeing you like this\u2014it rips me to pieces. You know that.\"\n\n\"I do,\" Wolfe said. \"But I am mending. A broken bone heals twice as strong, remember?\"\n\nSanti laughed. It sounded unsteady and half-desperate. \"I remember. I remember everything. That's the curse of it, isn't it?\"\n\n\"That's the beauty of it,\" Wolfe replied. \"Come. Leave Jess to rest. He's as exhausted as I am, I think.\"\n\nSanti exchanged a look with Jess, and Jess nodded. Santi meant what he said: he wouldn't forget Jess's betrayal. And Jess would have to earn back any kind of trust. It was a lot to understand from a single look, and yet completely clear. He might be forgiven by the others, and easily, but for Santi, he'd have a long road back.\n\nAnd that was fair.\n\nJess locked the door again, took off his clothes, and stepped into the luxury of the Spanish embassy's shower. He stayed in it for far too long, until the water began to run cold and his skin pebbled into gooseflesh; the feeling of being safe was something he didn't want to give up, and as soon as he switched off the spray, dried himself, and dressed again in the High Garda uniform provided, he was back on guard. Alvaro Santiago, as he was sure they all knew, was an ally, but not a friend.\n\nThey had no friends in Alexandria. Not now.\n\nDownstairs, he found most of the others gathered in a small library; it was richly decorated, and the chair Jess sank into with a sigh was the most comfortable thing he could imagine. His aching body craved sleep, but comfort would have to do for now.\n\nWhen he took a seat, everyone stopped talking and stared at him. \"What?\" he asked.\n\nDario shook his head. \"I'm still amazed you're alive,\" he said. \"You are an unbelievably good liar, Jess. Better than I would have imagined, if you survived this long. I find that your best quality.\"\n\n\"Shut up, peacock,\" Jess said. \"If you have a best quality, I'm still struggling to find it.\"\n\n\"Boys,\" Glain said. \"Don't make me separate you. By which I mean, heads from bodies. We've gotten this far. Stop squabbling about the size of your\u2014\"\n\n\"Glain!\" Khalila said.\n\n\"Talents,\" Glain finished. Her voice softened. \"Have you talked to your brother?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jess said. \"He doesn't want to talk.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Twins,\" Jess said. \"I don't want to, either, and I didn't just watch the girl I loved...\" His voice trailed off, because suddenly he imagined Morgan in Neksa's place, and the spear driving through her body into the floor. Her blood warm on his hands.\n\n\"Mein Gott, Jess, is that what happened?\" Thomas leaned forward, and the large armchair he sat in creaked as if struggling under the strain. \"Were you there? What happened?\"\n\nIt was an innocent question, but Jess suddenly felt even more tired. \"The Archivist had her killed,\" he said. \"By an automaton. No reason except to make a point. I thought we were next.\" As soon as he said it, he knew that was true. He'd been pushing that awareness away all this time, had denied it while he'd been on his knees in front of the Archivist, but, yes. He and Brendan had been on the raw edge of death, close enough to feel it. And see it. A shudder worked through him, and he closed his eyes. \"I think my brother truly cared for her. So I don't know, Thomas. I don't know how he is now. I just know he doesn't want to talk about it.\" And neither do I, he thought, but didn't say. Thomas was a good enough friend to know it.\n\nHe opened his eyes when he felt Khalila take his hand. She didn't speak, and for that he was grateful. They all sat in silence for a while, before Glain, always to the point, said, \"How safe are we here?\"\n\n\"On a scale of absolutely to not at all?\" Dario shrugged. \"Somewhat, for now. My cousin's a good man, and he'll do what he can to help us, but he is at the mercy of my other cousin. The royal one. And if the Archivist decides to expel all ambassadors from the city, as he might...\" He raised a hand and let it drop. \"It's possible he could evacuate us along with his staff. But that hardly gets us closer to our goal.\"\n\n\"Maybe our goal can't be reached without an army,\" Glain said. \"Didn't you clever foxes think of that? Or did you expect to simply trick the Archivist into writing his own execution order?\"\n\n\"Now, there's a thought,\" Dario said. Glain sent him a dark look. \"But not a serious one. We have the start of an army, don't we? Santi's company is here, with us. And Santi's sent messages to other captains he trusts. Add them up, and...\"\n\n\"We have enough to lose, and badly,\" Thomas said. \"Alexandria can be taken. The Serapeum? From all I've seen and heard, that would be much, much harder. The Curia has only to seal themselves inside it and wait. The remaining High Garda forces, the automata... these can't be overcome for long.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" Jess said. \"I've been in and out of the Archivist's office several times since I've been here, and each time, I entered and left different ways. The hallways move. The entire pyramid is a vast clockwork that the Archivist can reorder anytime he wishes. It's a deathtrap for an invasion. They could hold it forever, and we'd be cut to pieces.\"\n\n\"What's the mood in the city?\" Khalila asked. She stood up and poured herself a cup of water from a pitcher sitting nearby, and Jess followed suit. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was until he saw her drinking it. It tasted clear, pure, and wonderfully cool. \"Scholar Murasaki in Cadiz has been contacting senior Scholars all over the world, and her word is certainly influential. More and more outposts of the Great Library are declaring themselves neutral and refusing to allow High Garda soldiers through their Translation Chambers. It makes things much more complicated for the Archivist if he has to move troops slowly, through foreign lands and waters. Especially now, with more countries abandoning the treaty every day.\"\n\n\"Unsettled,\" Jess said. \"But the news isn't reaching people here of much of that, and what is, is being dismissed as panic and rumor. The Burners are spreading word, though, and recruiting on it. And they have presses to print up their messages; Red Ibrahim must have installed a few across the city already. Have you spoken to him?\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" Khalila said, when no one else volunteered. \"We left that relationship at a bit of an awkward point, in that Red Ibrahim wanted to sell us to the Archivist, and we did not wish to be sold. I don't think Anit took it personally. Why, haven't you spoken to him?\"\n\nJess shook his head. \"If I'd tried, I'd have led the Elites right to his door. I let my father do any communicating, but since it's my da, I don't know what he's been saying, either. He tried to change the deal two or three times already. I'd not put it past him now to tell Red Ibrahim to sell us out. He likely considers both his sons lost.\"\n\n\"Just like that?\" It was Glain who said it, and unusually for her, it sounded quiet and almost compassionate. \"Not much of a family you have, Jess.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"Not much. I'd have thought you'd figured that out by now.\"\n\nHe hadn't meant for Brendan to hear it, but when he looked up he saw that his twin was standing like a shadow in the doorway. \"I didn't mean you,\" he said. It sounded false and awkward, and his brother said nothing. He poured water, gulped it, and poured again.\n\n\"So how do we kill him?\" Brendan asked.\n\nSilence for a moment, before Glain said, \"You mean the Archivist.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean the man who runs the falafel concession. How do we kill him?\"\n\nThey all looked at one another. Of course it would have come to this question eventually, but Brendan had gone right to the core of it. We're assassinating the most important man in the world, Jess thought. What other choice do we have, if we want to save anything now? Anyone?\n\n\"The Feast of Greater Burning is our chance,\" Dario said. \"The Archivist will be there\u2014\"\n\n\"And very well protected,\" Glain muttered.\n\n\"\u2014and so will his Curia. He's demanded for Scholars and librarians all over the city to attend. For all we know, he's summoned Scholars from all over the world. He intends this to be a brutal display of his power.\"\n\n\"Which is exactly why it's the wrong place to try to kill him,\" Glain argued. \"He'll expect it.\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter,\" Brendan said. \"Anyone can be killed. You just have to stop caring about surviving it.\"\n\nKhalila looked at him, then at Jess, worry clear on her face. Jess just shook his head. \"We want him to step down,\" she said at last. \"If we can make it impossible for him to continue...\"\n\n\"Dying makes it impossible for him to continue.\"\n\n\"Scraps\u2014,\" Jess said.\n\n\"He has to be killed,\" Brendan said, as calmly as if Jess hadn't spoken at all. \"He'll never give up power on his own. And, besides, all the harm he's done, the death he's ordered here and everywhere... he doesn't deserve the breaths he's drawing right now.\" He turned and met Jess's eyes. \"Am I wrong?\"\n\n\"You're angry,\" Jess said. \"You feel guilty. But, no. You're not wrong. I'm sorry, Khalila, but he isn't. I've been here. You haven't. I've seen\u2014seen the lengths he's willing to go to keep his power, and the Library's. Maybe my brother's right.\"\n\n\"Then it can be done,\" Glain said. \"I'm a good shot. Santi's even better. If we plan this properly\u2014\"\n\n\"Always plans with you,\" Brendan said. \"Never action.\"\n\nHe put his cup down and walked toward the door. Jess got up and followed, and stopped him just before he made it out. \"What are you going to do?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm not staying here,\" Brendan said. \"And I'm not relying on your too-noble friends, either. Let me go, Jess.\"\n\n\"No chance,\" Jess said, and he meant it. \"You go, I go. Together.\"\n\n\"You can't go,\" Khalila said. She'd gotten up, and though she hadn't approached, it was clear she wanted to. \"Jess! You're safe here. At least rest for the night! Tomorrow\u2014\"\n\nJess was listening, but he was looking into Brendan's eyes, and he knew what he was seeing there. He slowly shook his head. \"What are you thinking, Brother?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm thinking that all the honorable intentions in the world won't make the Archivist listen to a word your friends have to say,\" Brendan said. \"You and I, we know people who aren't so honorable.\"\n\nThat was all true. And Jess knew that whatever Ambassador Santiago might personally wish, he was a politician... and politicians couldn't be relied on for long, because their will was not their own. Criminals, on the other hand, tended to be more straightforward. \"If you're talking about our most prominent cousin, he might not be so well disposed toward us right now.\"\n\nBrendan shrugged. He clearly didn't care about such details. And Jess recognized the smile that smoothed across his lips. It was deeply dangerous. \"Then we'll be charming,\" he said. \"Come on, Brother. Just this once. Let's uphold our family honor and do the wrong thing.\"\n\n\"Jess!\" Khalila's voice was pleading.\n\n\"She's right, my friend,\" Thomas said. \"You should stay here.\"\n\n\"No. We need a backup in case Spain fails us,\" Jess said, and let a grin that matched his brother's slide into place. \"Brendan's right. It's time to do the wrong thing.\"\n\n\"We'll be back,\" Brendan said. \"And if not, don't look. You won't find us.\"\n\nWith that, he was gone, and Jess moved fast to follow."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 37",
                "text": "Getting out of the embassy without being noticed wasn't going to be easy. He and Brendan both agreed that going out the front would walk them right into High Garda custody in short order; their only chance of getting out clean was to make their own way. Besides, it felt good to exercise all his athletic skills again. Brendan, for all his usual lack of enthusiasm for action, was strong and lithe; he found handholds up to the roof and gave Jess a lift, and together they lay flat on the warm clay tiles and watched the guard patrols until they found a gap. Not much of one, a narrow window that required skill and speed to take advantage of it, but then they were over the wall and into a no-man's-land of empty space before another tall fence, one with outward-curving spikes, appeared twenty steps down the hill.\n\n\"Don't like this,\" Jess said. \"The ambassador isn't stupid. He'll have some kind of defenses\u2014\"\n\nThey both heard the barking at the same time, exchanged a look, and raced for the outer fence. This one was smooth iron bars set close together, with only crossbars at the bottom and top, well above their heads.\n\nA pack of sleek black dogs crested the hill, spotted them, and began baying furiously as they came on.\n\n\"On my shoulders!\" Jess shouted, and grabbed the bars for support. Brendan vaulted up and stood, and Jess grabbed his brother's ankles. \"Lifting!\" He put his hands under his brother's heels and pushed, panting against the tearing strain in muscles unused to this particular move. It worked. His brother scrambled up to the top, slung a leg over the crossbar, and reached down.\n\nJess backed up and took a running leap, and Brendan's hand slapped around his wrist. Jess braced himself against the fence and tried to take some of the strain as his brother pulled... and then his fingers curled around the cross brace and he was able to get up and over and make the leap down with Brendan to the other side, just as the dogs crashed to a furious, foaming halt against the barrier, leaping and barking and snarling.\n\nBrendan kissed his fingers to the pack, rolled the strain from his shoulders, and said, \"You know where to find our cousin?\"\n\n\"He won't be happy to see us\u2014I can almost guarantee that.\"\n\n\"Like I said: we can be charming. Come on, Jess. Sun's almost down.\"\n\nJess's High Garda uniform made it easier for him to blend in, especially in the late-afternoon crowds near the docks; he stole his brother a hooded jacket, the better to cover up their unmistakable resemblance, and took him through the shadier parts of the port, to an old, tumbledown tavern with a creaking sign painted with the face of a Gorgon. The Medusa was one of the first places Jess had learned to visit; it was a favorite of sailors, traders, smugglers, and criminals, and he wasn't surprised to find it open when most of the port's more respectable establishments were starting to shutter their windows and doors.\n\nThe mood in the city was hushed and grim, and no one\u2014except the proprietors of the Medusa\u2014wanted to take chances this evening.\n\nJess pushed his way in, and immediately their arrival brought stilled conversations and appraising looks. He scanned the room and saw the broken-toothed old man\u2014by all appearances, a drunk who'd nearly grown himself into the table at which he sat\u2014and eased in across from him. His brother squeezed in beside him and pulled back his hood.\n\n\"We need to talk to our cousin,\" Jess said, and the old man ignored them. His glass was empty. Jess looked at Brendan. \"You've got geneih?\"\n\nBrendan dumped a handful of golden Library coins on the table, which brought a greasy young man in an apron immediately at the sound of ringing currency. \"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"What have you?\"\n\n\"What he's having,\" Jess said. \"Four of them.\" He pointed to the drunk. \"He'll have two.\"\n\nLike a magic trick, the cash was gone; it seemed the server had never come close to the coins, but they vanished all the same. Jess leaned forward and tried to see if the man was even conscious. His eyes were open and he was breathing, but when Jess passed a hand in front of the wrinkled old face, he got no response.\n\n\"This is your plan?\" Brendan sounded impatient. \"I'm not here to drink myself senseless. Or even sensible.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Jess said.\n\nThe drinks arrived, and two of them were set down firmly in front of the old man, with one apiece for Jess and Brendan. Neither of them touched the stuff. Jess arranged the glasses in front of the old man into a rough triangle and said, \"A life might be worth more than a book, but a book is worth more than your life if they catch you with it. You've got three on you right now.\"\n\nThe old man wasn't drunk. His eyes suddenly, sharply focused on Jess's face, and there was nothing vague about their gray depths now. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"A friend,\" Jess said. \"I'm a Brightwell.\"\n\n\"Obviously. I'm not drunk enough to see double,\" the man said. \"You're the twins. You'd best get yourselves home to cold England if you know what's good for you. You've got no family here.\"\n\n\"Oh, come on, the best family wants to kill each other half the time,\" Brendan said. \"We want to see him. Now.\"\n\n\"No.\" The old man bared rotten teeth, and Jess leaned back to avoid the smell of his breath. \"He doesn't want to see you. Ever. You helped destroy one of his operations and burned his house down. You killed ten of his people. You're lucky I don't spill your guts right now.\"\n\n\"I didn't kill anyone. I was a prisoner. And the dragon almost burned me along with the house.\"\n\nBrendan leaned forward and locked gazes with the old man. \"You want to see your guts?\" And Jess was suddenly aware that his brother held a knife under the table, pressed against the old man's stomach\u2014probably the man's own knife, at that. Brendan always did have fast hands. \"No more conversation. Get us to him or your last drink ends up on the floor the hard way.\"\n\nThe man, who was assuredly not a drunk, stared at him a moment, then looked past them and whistled. A high, sharp sound that echoed through the room and cut conversation dead. All around them, dangerous-looking men and women pushed back their chairs and rose, and Jess sent his brother a glare. Just had to push it, didn't you? \"These young men want to go to the temple,\" the old man said. \"Let them make their supplications. It's a night to get right with our gods, I think.\"\n\nBefore either of them could draw breath, much less put up a fight, there were cloth bags jammed over their heads, and Jess felt a heavy blow and sharp, lancing pain at the back of his head... and then nothing.\n\nHe woke up with the bag being dragged off. The smell of dried lentils from the bag's former contents made him sneeze, and that woke a headache the size of the Serapeum behind his eyes. Stupid, he thought, and tried to move his hands. Tied, of course. But as he pulled, he felt the bonds being sliced apart, and he was pulled to his feet. He found his balance and blinked away bleary tears.\n\nHe hadn't expected to find himself actually in a temple, but that was where he was: the temple of the Roman goddess Laverna. Not a very well-frequented temple. Small, dusty, kept up more for appearances than for actual rites. He'd never visited it in Alexandria and was a little surprised to even see the goddess included here. He looked around and found Brendan standing next to him. The man who'd cut his bonds had moved off and was somewhere in the columned shadows behind them.\n\n\"Strange, isn't it?\" said the man standing a few feet ahead of them on the tiled floor. He was facing the graceful marble statue of the goddess, with a knife in her right hand and coins in her left. \"The Egyptians never had a god of thieves. The Romans, on the other hand, not only had one but honored her as goddess of thieves, cheats, and plagiarists, and they even had a gate for her in Rome. I've seen it. Perhaps I'll go to Rome after this. It's a city that welcomes our brothers.\"\n\nHe turned to look at them, and Jess knew him as his vision finally sharpened: Red Ibrahim. Anit's father. The head of criminal enterprises, including book smuggling, here in Alexandria. He was a native of the city, and he had the shaved head of someone who might even aspire to be a priest... but his religion was more along the worship of Laverna. He was a hard man. A man who'd survived and flourished in the hardest place on earth to practice his trade. He'd lost two sons to it.\n\nBefore, Jess had faced him as a business ally, if not real family. But here, now, the feeling was very different.\n\n\"You shouldn't have come to me,\" Red Ibrahim said. \"I have no mercy for traitors.\"\n\n\"Hear us out,\" Brendan said. \"Please, Cousin. Our father\u2014\"\n\n\"Your father wants you home, immediately. Both of you. No more deals with the Archivist. No more playacting. Your place is with your family, and not here. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"I'm going to kill the Archivist,\" Brendan said. \"And you are not stopping me.\"\n\nRed Ibrahim didn't answer. He shook his head and turned to Jess. \"Your brother is a fool, and he's angry. I hope you are clearer of mind. I will see you taken to a ship and sent home, and you can forget about this place forever. The Archivist will win tomorrow, or not; your friends will achieve their goal, or not. But you will not be here to see it. I'm closing my operations in this city. Already, most of my people have set sail, or will today.\"\n\n\"Rats,\" Brendan said. \"And the ship's not sinking. It's being set back on course.\"\n\n\"We're not going back to England,\" Jess said. \"Not until this is over. Run if you like. But first you're going to help us.\"\n\n\"Help you what? Overthrow the Archivist Magister of the Great Library? I'm not a fool, and you're not a hero, young man. You should remember that, especially now. It will keep you alive.\"\n\n\"Alive isn't enough.\"\n\nRed Ibrahim shook his head. \"Then this won't matter. I'll tell your father I tried. But he'd rather you never come home than you spill what you know to the Library. And I agree. You are princes of our underworld kingdom. And you can't be taken alive.\"\n\nHe reached under the flowing Egyptian robes he wore and came out with a High Garda pistol. Jess watched him thumb the selector switch from stun to kill, and time seemed to slow to a trickle as his senses expanded. There was another exit from this shrine, behind the goddess's statue; he could see the glimmer of it on the dusty tiles. It meant going through Red Ibrahim to get to it, but that would have to be done. The accomplice behind them cut them off from that escape, and Jess could feel him moving up. He didn't look, but he knew that man, too, would be armed. He was heading for Brendan's back.\n\nAnd Red Ibrahim was taking aim at Jess's head.\n\nJess dropped just before the shot came, and felt a hot burn along his scalp as it only just missed. His brother was moving, too, a blur in the air beside him, and he instinctively rolled to his right to put room between them. Red Ibrahim would think he'd hit his target, at least for an instant, and Jess used that instant to set his feet and launch himself straight at the man.\n\nHe hit Red Ibrahim squarely, and the gun tumbled free as they both fell backward to the floor at the feet of the statue. Jess reached for it, but it put him off-balance, and quick as a striking cobra, Red Ibrahim flipped him on his back and pinned him there with a sharp right knee on his upper arm and a left knee compressing his chest. The older man caught Jess's left hand as he launched it in an attack and twisted it down at a painful angle. The gun was out of reach now of both of them; Red Ibrahim would have to shift his weight to get it, and Jess was alert for any hint of that.\n\nBut Ibrahim simply drew a knife and reached to cut Jess's throat.\n\nThe scream and shot came simultaneously, and for a confused second Jess was sure that the statue of Laverna had moved and punched a red hole through Ibrahim's skull... but that wasn't right. Ibrahim's eyes went wide and surprised, and then blank. His weight slithered bonelessly to fall heavily away, and Jess finally put the pieces together: the spray of blood on the white marble of the goddess's statue, the shot, the scream.\n\nAnd he turned his head toward where the gun had been and saw Anit kneeling there, trembling, as the gun fell to the floor. It bounced close to him, and he grabbed for it and came up to his knees just in time to see that Brendan was against a column and the man holding him was about to stab him in the heart.\n\nJess fired, and the man staggered back and sprawled full length on the floor. He crawled for a few seconds, then went still.\n\nBrendan looked up, panting. His face was bloody, and his knuckles dripped crimson, but he nodded to Jess, and Jess nodded back.\n\nWhat did we just do?\n\nBrendan pulled Jess to his feet, wiped the thick track of blood from the side of his face, and went to Anit, who was still on her knees, hands resting limply on her thighs. The girl\u2014child, really, she was far from old enough for this\u2014stared at her fallen father, and then she looked up at the two of them with tears shimmering in her eyes. \"I couldn't\u2014I\u2014 He was going to\u2014\" She suddenly covered her mouth with both hands, and a wail burst out of her, only a little muffled by the cover. \"No, no, Father \u2014\"\n\n\"Anit?\" Jess got her attention, slowly. \"Anit, why...\"\n\nHer hands were trembling badly. When she lowered them from her mouth, he took them in his. Cold as ice. But when she answered, her voice was steadier than he expected. \"He betrayed you,\" she said. \"He betrayed your father, too; he took the money from the Archivist. He broke the oaths. I had no choice.\" She swallowed. \"He would have killed you both. I couldn't\u2014\" She shook her head and didn't finish, but Jess understood.\n\nHe understood what they owed her.\n\n\"We can't leave her,\" Jess said. \"She'll have to come with us.\"\n\n\"Come with us where, exactly? Whatever protection Red Ibrahim could have offered, it's gone now; his men will be fading into the night as quickly as they can, if they don't come looking for us to settle the score...\" Brendan's calculations finally added up to what Jess's already had, and he looked at Anit with new speculation. \"Or... we take her with us. She knows the operation. She has her father's codes and secrets. And however loyal his men are, they won't attack if we have her.\"\n\nMuch as Jess didn't like to think about it as keeping Anit hostage, his brother was right. Besides, leaving Anit for her father's guards to discover would be cruel. She'd confess in a heartbeat, and they'd kill her for what she'd done... at least, unless she found her center and power very quickly. Right now, that seemed unlikely. She needed time to recover and regroup.\n\nJess helped the girl up. \"Come on, Anit,\" he said. \"We'll take you somewhere safe.\"\n\n\"I killed my father. Do you think there's safety from that?\"\n\n\"We'll keep you safe until you're ready,\" he said, and she turned and looked at him. The glassy shock over her eyes cracked, and what bled through was fury.\n\n\"I wish I'd never met you,\" she said. \"Any of you!\"\n\n\"You're not the first to say that,\" Brendan said. \"But you're the one who killed your da, not us. You should be thinking of yourself. Do you have somewhere else to go?\"\n\nShe broke free of Jess. For a second he thought she meant to take the gun, and he quickly switched it to stun; he had no desire to kill her, no matter what she might do. But she just pulled away and ran back to her father.\n\nJess glanced at his brother, and Brendan returned it, but neither of them followed her. She knelt down and posed her father's body: arms crossed on his chest like the pharaohs of old, legs straight, robe perfectly neat. Last, she unwound the red silk scarf she wore around her throat and placed it over his closed eyes.\n\n\"We don't have time for this,\" Brendan muttered.\n\n\"Make time,\" Jess said. \"She saved my life, and I saved yours because of it.\"\n\nAnit prayed for a moment, then kissed her father's still lips and said, \"Anubis, guide him to his rest. Forgive me, Father. But you were wrong. You have been wrong since you betrayed what we believe for the Archivist's gold.\" She reached into the fold of his robe and came out with a red velvet case. Then she stood up, turned, and looked at both of them. \"Come on,\" she said. \"I saved your lives because it suits my purposes. No use if all of us die here.\"\n\nThere was already something different about her, Jess thought. Something stronger, and more dangerous, than he'd seen before.\n\n\"What's in the case?\" Brendan asked as she led the way to the back door of the temple.\n\n\"Keys,\" she said. \"To the kingdom.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "Captain Santi, when he heard of the Brightwells' escape, was grim but silent. It was Scholar Wolfe who lost his temper.\n\n\"And you didn't stop them?\" he shouted at the rest of them, and for a moment Khalila felt like a student again, caught short and feeling the burn of his contempt.\n\n\"How?\" Dario spread his hands wide. \"You know Jess. His brother's just as bad. What were we supposed to do, sit on them? Tie them up?\"\n\n\"If necessary!\" Wolfe spat the words like nails and stalked away. Without his Scholar's robe, he looked less majestic but more lethal, Khalila thought. A man who'd endured much and survived more. There was an edge to him that was honed almost to breaking. \"Do you know where they've gone? Tell me it isn't some wild plan to kill the Archivist.\"\n\nNone of them replied to that\u2014presumably, Khalila thought, because they all knew that was exactly what the two young men were about. Jess knew better, but he also was willing to forget that to protect his brother.\n\n\"There's nothing we can do about them now,\" Khalila said, and got the full, dark force of Wolfe's attention. She didn't flinch. \"But there is something we can do, and it's more important. We must get the Scholars, especially the Research Scholars, on our side. Most of them have to see how dangerous the Archivist has become; they only need some assurance that we are sensible to join us. Scholar, you know many of them, if not all of them. Which of them do you think we should approach?\"\n\n\"I can't approach anyone. I'm under an instant death sentence if they find me in the streets, or had you forgotten that?\"\n\n\"No, I hadn't,\" Khalila said. \"And you should stay here. I doubt the captain will allow you out of his sight again, in any case\u2014\"\n\n\"True,\" Santi said. \"And, no, Chris, it isn't up for debate.\"\n\nKhalila hurried on. \"But Dario and I... we are far less well-known. Scholar Murasaki has already arrived at the Lighthouse from Cadiz, and she is doing her part for us. Give us names. Let us go to the most influential of them tonight.\"\n\n\"Not alone,\" Glain said. \"I'm your escort, and don't bother to argue about it.\"\n\n\"Why would I?\" Khalila said, and smiled. \"You see? We're well protected. But we should do this, sir. Now.\"\n\n\"You'll be recognized.\"\n\n\"Not here. Young women in hijabs are common. I'll blend in. Dario\u2014might have to amend his wardrobe, however.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with it?\" Dario asked.\n\n\"You look like a Spanish noble.\"\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"And do you think there are dozens of them roaming the streets here tonight?\"\n\n\"I get your point,\" he said, and sighed. \"I'll change.\" He paused on the way out of the door to look at Wolfe. \"Scholar, she's right. She usually is, of course. Give her the names. We'll need every advantage if we intend to do anything meaningful tomorrow.\"\n\nWolfe glared, and it was a hot enough look to burn stones... but then he stalked to a small desk in the corner of the library and took up a pen. \"Give me a moment,\" he said. \"I'm writing individual letters. Hopefully, they will help open minds to what you have to say.\"\n\nIt took half an hour, more or less, and Khalila helped slip each of the letters into envelopes and write the Scholars' names on them. \"You signed these,\" she said. \"You realize that if all this fails, these are proof you were bent on undermining the Archivist's authority.\"\n\n\"Do you really think that matters, if this fails? Proof or no proof, we'll all be in the ground.\" He paused and signed the last letter. \"Khalila, if you let yourself be taken while you're out tonight, it's not likely we can save you. You might end up in the same jail I just escaped. You understand that.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said. \"Don't worry, sir. We'll be back.\"\n\n\"Do that,\" he said, and for an instant she was sure she saw something kind in his eyes. Something warm. Rare, to see such vulnerability in this man. \"Well, at least you. Santiago and Wathen, now...\" He handed her the last letter, and Khalila smiled and looked toward Glain\u2014who seemed to be sleeping, and wasn't, of course.\n\n\"Nice of you to think of me,\" Glain said without opening her eyes or adjusting her relaxed posture. \"I'll come back just to spite you, sir.\"\n\nDario was just a few moments later, and with him came the ambassador. \"My esteemed cousin Alvaro would prefer it if we do not vault the fence and draw unwanted attention, like our thieving friends,\" he said. \"He's arranged for a carriage. He's also insisted on a disguise for me.\" He spread his arms, and Khalila had to cover a laugh, because Dario was wearing, of all things, a Christian monk's robe. \"Should you be asked, I am Brother Ferdinand, a poor Franciscan monk.\"\n\n\"Is there a real Brother Ferdinand?\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" Alvaro said, without a flicker. \"But he's hardly ever the same person, and no one remembers monks, anyway. The driver of the carriage is a loyal retainer of mine, but I warn you: if you compromise yourselves or are otherwise identified, he'll have to drive away without you.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" Khalila said. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Don't thank me. I have other news, I'm afraid. I can only extend the safety of this embassy to you until tomorrow morning. I've received orders from Madrid. The king has ordered this embassy closed and all of our staff withdrawn; he's arranged for a ship to be waiting in the harbor to take us to a neutral port. I fear this means he's planning something more than waiting to see what happens.\"\n\n\"Meaning?\" Wolfe asked.\n\nThe ambassador shook his head. \"Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you. My hospitality is one thing. My loyalty is quite another. I tell you this because when you leave the safety of these gates tomorrow, you will have nowhere left to return. I'm sorry for that.\"\n\n\"You've done more than could be expected,\" Santi said, and offered his hand. The ambassador took it in a firm shake. \"We're grateful. And if this goes right tomorrow, perhaps the embassy might stay open.\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\" There was something in Alvaro Santiago's voice that indicated he doubted it, though nothing showed on his face. \"May my God and yours hold us close in the hours to come.\"\n\nThat hung a pall in the air, and Khalila turned to Dario and said, \"Well, Brother Ferdinand, we had best be about our business.\"\n\n\"It's the Lord's work,\" he said, deadpan, and bowed her through the door."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 39",
                "text": "\"Divide and conquer,\" Dario said as the carriage rolled through the eerily quiet streets of Alexandria toward the port and along the curving drive that went toward the Lighthouse. \"Am I to convince these Scholars to fight, or only to not support the Archivist?\"\n\n\"You're not to convince them of anything,\" Khalila said, \"because I know you, Dario. You will frighten or infuriate them into entirely the wrong thing. Just present the case as I laid it out for you and tell them that they must make their own decision.\"\n\n\"I don't like you splitting up,\" Glain said. \"I can only watch one of you.\"\n\n\"Half the time will be spent in the open. It's worth the risk. Naturally, you'll be watching Khalila,\" Dario said. \"Brother Ferdinand can take care of himself.\"\n\n\"And I can't?\" Khalila raised her eyebrows and watched his discomfort grow as he realized the trap he'd put himself inside. \"Very well. Glain will stay with me. And you, Brother, had best carry your God as your sword and shield.\"\n\n\"Or this,\" Dario said, and eased a High Garda pistol from his heavy sleeve. \"Courtesy of Lieutenant Zara. I think she likes me.\"\n\n\"At least someone does,\" Khalila said, and then relented and kissed him, very quickly, as the carriage began to slow. \"Dario. If you're taken...\"\n\n\"I won't be,\" he said. \"Until later, madonna.\"\n\n\"Until later,\" she said. He opened the carriage door as the vehicle halted, and as he started to get out, she was seized by a very real surge of dread. \"Dario!\" She grabbed his hand, and he froze, one foot on the step down. She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and said, \"The answer is yes. It was always yes, by the way. But I thought I should make you wait a while, since you seemed so confident.\"\n\nIt took him only an instant to realize what she was saying, and the look on his face, in his eyes\u2014it took her breath away, and it definitely did not belong on a monk. \"You do me the greatest honor I will ever receive,\" he said, and it didn't sound like a glib, facile line; it sounded like something raw, and very real. He pressed her fingers to his lips, and she caught her breath at the intense heat of his mouth against her skin. His eyes never left hers. \"I will live my life to be worthy of it.\"\n\nHe stepped down, and Khalila took in a deep breath. Glain said, \"What the hell was that?\"\n\n\"Dario asked me to marry him just before we were taken in England,\" she said. \"And I just agreed. Am I insane, Glain?\"\n\n\"Absolutely,\" Glain said, and gave her a full, wide smile. \"He'll make you happy. And if he doesn't, just tell me, and I'll end him.\"\n\nKhalila smiled back, and then Brother Ferdinand was helping her down from the carriage with all due respect, as fine an example of a monk as she could imagine, and she turned to face the Lighthouse.\n\nHer smile faded, and all the anxiety she'd pushed aside began to buzz in her veins.\n\nNow is our test.\n\nAnd this, most of all, they could not fail.\n\nThere were, strangely, no High Garda soldiers at the Lighthouse this evening; the sunset was spreading red across the sky, and down at the base of the tower, night had already spread a dark blue shadow.\n\nBut there were automata, and Khalila moved quickly to avoid a roaming sphinx. There were crowds of people in the vast courtyard, many of them Library assistants seeking transportation home; even here, their voices were muted and quiet, the mood dark. Khalila used the exiting workers as cover and hoped Glain would do the same; Dario had already slipped through.\n\nOnce inside the Lighthouse's tower, she caught her breath and tried to slow her pounding heartbeat. Glain joined her just a moment later, and they took the winding stairs up to the first of their Scholars, a Medica named Parker. She was a commanding older woman with sweeping walnut hair, eyes the color of the open sea, and an attitude that Khalila could best liken to that of an angry, wounded lion. She took Wolfe's letter, ripped it open with a sharply pointed fingernail lacquered crimson, and read the contents once rapidly, then twice slowly before she spoke. \"Close the door,\" she said without looking up. \"Is he serious?\"\n\n\"I assume you know Scholar Wolfe,\" Khalila said. \"Have you ever known him not to be?\"\n\n\"Fair point. The man has the sense of humor of a corpse.\" Scholar Parker drummed her fingernails on her polished black desk, then folded the letter again. \"I heard that Wolfe had been thrown back into prison.\"\n\n\"He's free,\" Khalila said. \"That's all I can tell you.\"\n\n\"Do you know what's in this?\" She tapped the folded paper, and Khalila shook her head. \"I've known Christopher Wolfe for ten years, and I've never known him to make wild claims, but he says he's seen the Black Archives. That's insane enough, but then he says\u2014\"\n\n\"That the Archivist ordered them burned,\" Khalila finished quietly. \"Tens of thousands of original, irreplaceable books. Yes. He's telling the truth. I was there, too. I saw it happen. And it's a horror I'll never forget.\"\n\n\"You're one of his students.\"\n\n\"Yes, Scholar.\"\n\n\"So strange. I never thought Wolfe had the patience to teach, and if he did, that he'd be a terrible influence. But you seem more or less sane.\"\n\n\"More or less,\" Khalila agreed. \"Scholar, I am not here to ask you for anything but an open mind. Scholar Wolfe has no doubt written what he believes; I know what I do. And if you believe that the Library is facing the worst moment of its existence... then please think on which side you'll stand tomorrow. Think what you believe in, and what you want the Great Library to be not today, but tomorrow, and the day after, and for the next hundred generations. Because Scholar Wolfe and I don't believe that it can continue down the path it is on. And if he's written to you, I think he knows you don't believe it, either.\"\n\nScholar Parker said nothing, and there was no reading her expression. All it would take, Khalila thought, would be for that well-manicured hand to press the gold button on her desk and summon Lighthouse security, and this would end quickly, and badly... but Parker finally opened a drawer and dropped the letter into it. She closed it with a firm click of a lock engaging. \"Do you know where I was born?\" she asked, which seemed an odd question. Khalila shook her head. \"I'm from the American colonies. We have a tendency to question authority. You may tell Scholar Wolfe that I'll think about what he's said... and tell him I wish him safety. Now you should go. I don't imagine it's very safe for you here.\"\n\n\"It isn't,\" Khalila agreed, and got up from where she'd taken a seat. Glain was still beside the closed door, looking every inch a crisp, cool High Garda soldier. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Who else are you seeing?\"\n\n\"I don't think I should tell you that.\"\n\nParker nodded. \"Quite right. But if Scholar Yang is on your list, take him off. He's been spouting the Archivist's rhetoric for some months now, and it wouldn't end well.\"\n\nKhalila felt a little hint of a chill. \"Thank you,\" she said again, and moved to the door.\n\nAs soon as they were in the curving hallway, Glain said,\" Is Scholar Yang on your list?\"\n\n\"Not mine,\" Khalila said. \"Dario's. Go tell him. Go now.\"\n\nKhalila forced herself to trust that Glain would find him, and delivered her other ten letters, spending only a few moments with each recipient; a few she received immediate and positive indications from, and a few an alarming and glacial silence. Most were somewhere in the middle, cautiously noncommittal. If these are our best and most influential friends, then Allah protect us, she thought. She felt sick that she'd missed prayers and hoped that he would remember and understand her need. But soldiers didn't pause in battle to pray, and neither could she.\n\nAs she left the last Scholar's office on the fortieth floor, she consulted the Codex directory and found Scholar Yang's office was only one floor below; she took the winding steps down, and as she opened the door to the hallway, she listened for any trouble.\n\nShe heard nothing. Nothing at all.\n\nScholar Yang's office was sixteen doors down. He was a historian by inclination, or so she'd understood; surely a historian would understand better than anyone the risk of the Library hurtling blindly forward down this course. He would understand, she told herself.\n\nShe raised her hand to knock on the door, and as she did, she smelled something odd, and oddly familiar. The smell of sea air and stone, those were completely right, but that sharp, metallic scent...\n\nShe looked down and saw blood on the floor in a circle the size of her head. Hand-shaped smears of it, too, on the wall just to the right. The hem of her dress had fallen in the still-liquid pool, and as she stared, a thick red stain began working its way up through the fabric.\n\nShe stepped back with a gasp.\n\nThe hallway was silent. Whatever had happened here happened long enough ago that the prisoner\u2014 or body \u2014was already gone, and only this silent evidence left.\n\nShe went back to the stairs and hurried down another flight, then another, with her heart beating so fast she thought she might fly apart... and then, with intense relief, she saw Glain rounding the lower floor and heading up toward her.\n\nThe relief didn't outlast the look Glain gave her. They met on the landing, and Glain didn't pause. She took Khalila's arm and said, \"Go, go, we have to go now.\"\n\n\"Dario\u2014\" No. Not Dario. It couldn't be.\n\n\"They have him,\" Glain said. \"Nothing I could do. I have to get you out before they lock the whole building and send sphinxes up to sniff us out. Move!\"\n\nKhalila wanted to protest. Wanted to argue. Wanted to stay.\n\nBut she knew Glain was right, and she knew that Dario would say the same. \"Is he dead?\" She didn't want to know that answer, but she asked. She had to ask.\n\n\"No,\" Glain said. \"But we will be, if we don't keep moving.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "WOLFE",
                "text": "\"They'll be all right,\" Santi said, and Wolfe thought he sounded certain of it. Half an act, surely, but Wolfe nodded in agreement without entering into it. Nic had a rare talent for reading him, especially when his nerves were so raw. All he could do was hope the others weren't as perceptive.\n\nNot that there were any others left. Jess had hared off after his wild brother; Thomas had gone with the ambassador to look at the workshop facilities he'd been promised earlier. Glain, Dario, and Khalila... all risking their lives out there in the night.\n\nAnd though he knew where Morgan was, he didn't know how she was. Or if she'd made any progress at all toward her goal of taking the Iron Tower out of the Archivist's arsenal. If she managed it\u2014an enormous variable\u2014then it would truly change the game completely. But so far, there'd been no word, no sign. The Codex and Blanks continued to carry on with their mundane tasks; out in the streets, word was that automata still roamed, stalked, and flew.\n\nThe one bright sign, according to Alvaro Santiago, was that the Translation Chambers seemed to be malfunctioning from Alexandria outbound. That, at least, was keeping the Archivist's plans to seed his troops in Serapeums at a standstill... and if that was all Morgan accomplished, it was still a great deal.\n\nSo it was him, Santi, and Santi's lieutenant Zara, who'd come to roost in the reading room in the chair that Khalila had left empty. She seemed confident, too. Perhaps it was a special class they taught at the High Garda officers' school.\n\n\"Tell me everything that's happened,\" Wolfe said. \"Seeing as the children aren't here, you don't have to feather the truth.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't, anyway,\" Zara said. \"And neither should you. They aren't children any more than we are... not with as much as they've done and seen. Protect them, certainly. But don't coddle them.\"\n\n\"And I'll thank you to not tell me how to behave around my own students.\"\n\n\"They were your students. Not anymore. Now they follow you because they hero-worship you, not from any desperate urge to learn from you. You do realize that, don't you?\"\n\n\"Zara,\" Santi said. The tone was a warning. Zara sighed and changed subjects.\n\n\"All right. Since you came back here, it seems that the hornets' nest\u2014which had already been kicked by the mess in Philadelphia\u2014only buzzed and stung more. The Burners had been circumspect here, but within days of the news, they were organizing, recruiting, setting up cancerous little cells around the city. They staged public burnings of their journals, and a few suicides. When the High Garda cracked down, they retaliated with new attacks on the compound. A week ago, inked flyers began to appear all over the town\u2014a few at first, then more and more. Combined with the rebellion in the provinces, the upstart kings and angry Scholars in the field... well, the Archivist has been struggling to put out more fires than he can safely handle.\"\n\n\"Is it true the High Garda Commander resigned?\" Santi asked.\n\n\"Resigned and turned in his gold band. He left for his family home, so I'm told. The new commander... he's the Archivist's ugly little puppet, and if he's told to put the Archives to the torch, I'm sure he wouldn't hesitate, though how many of his men would follow I don't know. Enough, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Any progress with the other captains?\"\n\n\"Your name has currency still, and at least three-quarters of the High Garda captains would support you and, at the very least, stand down their troops. But the Elites?\" She shook her head. \"No chance. They swear personal loyalty to the Archivist now. Not to the Library. They're five hundred strong, and they'll fight every step.\"\n\n\"That's better than I'd hoped,\" Santi said. \"If we can have most of the High Garda refuse to act...\"\n\n\"That leaves a good few thousand of them willing to cut our throats,\" Wolfe finished sourly. \"It's not enough. We can't rely on Scholars to fight our battles, though most of the Research Scholars I know have field experience. And we still have the automata to contend with.\"\n\n\"Including the dragon,\" Zara said. \"I saw it myself. It's a nightmare\u2014breathes toxic gas that catches fire, and it can rend with teeth and claws, too. Armored and fast. I can't think of anything that could take it down. The sphinxes are bad enough, but this...\"\n\nDragon. Wolfe hadn't seen it for himself, had only heard Jess's description... but it had sounded like a nightmare, indeed. His mother never would have agreed to such a thing... or perhaps she had. Perhaps it had been in the works for a very long time and required only Gregory's eagerness to ingratiate himself to make it a reality.\n\n\"We have something that can bring it down,\" Santi said. \"Thomas's weapon. The Ray of Apollo.\"\n\n\"You have it?\" Zara's eyes widened. \"I thought it was destroyed in the escape from Philadelphia.\"\n\n\"He built another one. A better one,\" Wolfe said. \"But we had to leave it in England. Unless somehow you worked a miracle, Nic?\"\n\n\"No chance to,\" Santi said, and settled in a chair beside Wolfe. \"We were chained and put on board the ship the same night. As far as I'm aware, Jess's father has the thing, and Thomas's pet lion, too.\"\n\n\"He might regret that last thing,\" Wolfe said. \"I don't think Thomas told it to obey any of them, did he?\"\n\n\"No,\" Santi agreed. \"He didn't. With any luck, maybe they've shut it up in the workshop and not got their hands on the weapon, either.\"\n\n\"We can hope.\"\n\nSanti looked at the clock, and Wolfe saw the flicker of doubt. Their children\u2014and he would always think of them as their children; he'd given up on anything else\u2014were late returning, and that was almost certainly not good news. \"I could take a team out and look for them,\" Nic said.\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said.\n\n\"He'd be safe enough inside the carrier,\" Zara said. \"I can get a picked team together, Captain.\"\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said again, and speared Zara with a glare. \"You won't. We wait.\"\n\nSanti launched himself out of the chair and paced to the back of the room. He was pouring a glass of wine, but that, Wolfe thought, was just a thing to do instead of arguing.\n\n\"You push him, Scholar,\" Zara said. She, too, was watching Santi. \"I don't think you understand how much he endures for you.\"\n\n\"You really think I don't?\"\n\nShe swung her gaze back at him. As flat and alien as a tiger's. \"I don't think you know how much he hurts for your sake. But... he loves you. And needs you.\"\n\n\"And you,\" Wolfe said, though it hurt to say it. \"You keep him moving forward when he wants to turn back. He told me that once. When he thinks too much of me, you make him think about the goal.\"\n\n\"He always thinks too much about you,\" she said. \"It'll be the end of him someday, Scholar. It's up to you to look after him.\"\n\nWolfe watched her stand up and leave; he wasn't sure how to respond to that, or if he should. Santi hadn't heard. He came back and settled in the chair he'd left, sipped some of the wine, and handed it over to Wolfe. \"What do we do if they don't come back?\" he asked.\n\n\"We go to the Feast of Greater Burning, and we do what we can,\" Wolfe said. \"And tomorrow, we'll probably die. You know that, don't you?\"\n\n\"I do,\" Nic said. Wolfe drank the rest of the wine; it was a thick marvel of a red, better than he'd tasted in years. The Spanish had a way with grapes.\n\n\"Did you tell your company to fight with us or to stand down?\"\n\n\"I told them to act according to their conscience. What else could I tell them? I'm not even their captain, not anymore. I have no rank. No career. Nothing.\"\n\n\"Do you blame me?\" Wolfe asked quietly. He put the cup down, and when he straightened again, he had Santi's full focus on him.\n\n\"No,\" Santi said. A harsh word, but it came gently, and with love. \"I don't. Ever. What I've done, I've done because it needed to be done, and I accept whatever comes of it. Amore mio, I'll find a place in the world, if we live through tomorrow. Don't concern yourself with that.\"\n\nWolfe grabbed for his hand and held it, closed his eyes, remembered the horror of the nights in the prison when he'd imagined Santi in such detail, such life, to keep it all at bay. But that fantasy had been nothing compared to the reality of having him here, seeing that smile.\n\nSomething tugged at him, and for a second he felt a bubble of panic surface. Some memory clawing to the surface, something from the prison.\n\nThen he remembered, and a flinch ran through him. I came so close to losing my mind. So close.\n\n\"What is it?\" Santi asked, and moved closer. \"Chris?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" he said. \"I\u2014 One night in the prison, I imagined something. Someone, actually. It seemed so real.\"\n\n\"Someone?\"\n\n\"Him,\" Wolfe said, and could hardly hear his own voice. \"From Rome. Qualls.\"\n\nSanti went still. \"The torturer.\"\n\nWolfe nodded. \"I think it was just... my brain, playing tricks. He isn't here. He left the Archivist's service, didn't he? Retired far from here.\"\n\n\"You saw Qualls?\"\n\n\"No. I imagined him.\" Wolfe wished there was more wine left in the glass, but he didn't have the strength to fetch himself more. \"I don't know why I'd imagine he'd want to rescue me, though. Do you?\"\n\nThey'd talked about Qualls once, and only once, months after Wolfe's release from the Roman prison. Santi had wanted very badly to hunt the man down and rip him to pieces. Maybe still did. \"Do you think he was real?\"\n\n\"He seemed real. I don't know,\" Wolfe said. His hands were shaking, and he clenched them into fists. \"But promise me that tomorrow, there's no prison. No Qualls. If it comes to that\u2014\"\n\n\"If it does,\" Santi said, \"then it comes for us both.\"\n\nTheir fingers intertwined, and Wolfe leaned his head against Santi's shoulder. Odd, that the promise of death would sound so inviting when put that way. \"I'd rather live with you,\" he said. \"Let's try for that.\"\n\n\"Yes. Let's.\" Santi's head came up, and he looked at the closed door. \"Did you hear that?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nSanti was already up. \"Carriage,\" he said, and was halfway down the stairs by the time Wolfe managed to make it to his feet. He followed as quickly as he could and was nearly to the floor of the grand entrance to the embassy when the doors opened and Glain and Khalila entered.\n\nGlain and Khalila, alone.\n\n\"What happened?\" Santi was asking. Khalila's face showed her distress, and Wolfe's eyes fixed on a heavy stain of blood at the bottom of her skirt. \"Where is he?\"\n\n\"Taken,\" Glain said. \"I'm sorry, Captain. I should have been there. Stopped it.\"\n\n\"Where were you?\"\n\nThe Welsh girl straightened to her full height and looked into the middle distance. An automatic, formal reporting stance. \"Sir, I elected to accompany Dario; Khalila asked me to. He sent me to make sure she was all right. When I got back, he'd been taken by the High Garda. We couldn't get to him. I thought the best I could do was make sure she was safe.\" Her chin set itself at a more aggressive angle. \"I'll go get him, sir.\"\n\n\"You won't,\" Santi said. \"Does the ambassador know?\"\n\n\"The ambassador does not know, and would prefer you tell him immediately,\" said Alvaro Santiago, coming at a brisk walk from what must have been his office. He looked grim, and lines formed at the corners of his mouth and eyes as he listened to the story. \"He was caught with your letters on him, then. A clear sign of treason. I'll file a formal protest, but if they have him, they'll keep him.\"\n\n\"Can you find out where he's being held?\"\n\n\"If I go and demand answers of the High Garda, the first question they will ask is how I knew,\" he said. \"No. I can't reasonably find out until at least the morning. If they suspect you're hiding here, diplomacy won't save you, and I'd rather not have my entire staff slaughtered to protect you. We wait. Dario may not be especially likeable, but I promise you this: he has honor to spare. He'll say nothing to put you at risk. And tomorrow, we will find him. All right?\"\n\n\"No!\" Khalila shook off Glain's restraining hand. \"No, it isn't all right. They hurt him. There was blood\u2014\"\n\n\"Not enough for a fatal wound,\" Glain put in.\n\n\"There was a great deal of blood, and I want to go find him! Let me go find him!\"\n\n\"Khalila.\" Santi put his hands on her shoulders, and Wolfe saw the tense fury drain out of her. \"He knew the risk. And if I know Dario, he'll be claiming every royal privilege from here to Spain, and the High Garda will have to take it seriously. They'll send word to the Artifex, and the Artifex will have him transferred to the prison as he considers his options. We can't get him. Not tonight. I'm sorry.\"\n\nThe breath went out of her in a wrenching sound that might have been a sob, but there were no tears in her eyes. \"Where's Thomas?\"\n\n\"In the workshop,\" Alvaro said. \"He asked me for special tools and locked me out. I don't know what he's doing. Is he always so...\"\n\n\"Strange? Yes,\" Wolfe said. \"And brilliant. Work will help him. Leave him there.\" He exchanged a look with Santi. \"All of you, go rest. There's nothing more we can do tonight. Morning will come soon enough.\"\n\n\"Has Jess come back?\" Glain asked.\n\n\"No,\" Wolfe said.\n\nAnd privately, he doubted they'd ever see the boy again."
            },
            {
                "title": "MORGAN",
                "text": "Somehow, Morgan had never anticipated that getting the most powerful Obscurist in the world on her side would be anything but a total victory. She'd thought of it as a lock to be picked, a door to be opened... but now that the lock had fallen and the door swung wide, there was a flesh-and-blood man.\n\nEven though she'd known all along that he had voluntarily exiled himself for almost forty years, an act of will that no one she knew could duplicate... she'd never imagined he'd be so damned stubborn.\n\n\"That's simply a failure of your imagination,\" Annis said. They sat together in the reading room, where Eskander had sent them.\n\n\"We got him out of his room!\"\n\n\"We did,\" she agreed. \"But you see, you never knew the young Eskander. I did. He was wild and impulsive and full of passion. But he's had forty years of strict silence and self-control, and I think you can see that he's no longer a man who makes quick decisions. He heard us out. Now he's thinking.\"\n\n\"We don't have time!\"\n\n\"We have nothing but time,\" Annis shot back. \"Here, in the Iron Tower, that's all we have. Here, read this. Is this what he was looking for? It's well above my ken.\"\n\nMorgan took the Blank she held and skimmed the cramped, ancient writing, then shook her head. \"That's a formula to undo familiarity links, but it's too specific. We need something broader.\"\n\nAnnis rubbed her forehead and wiped the Blank's contents. \"I doubt they'll give us access to something so advanced.\"\n\n\"The Obscurist special library contains all the research that's needed to write new, highly advanced formulae; they can't leave out things if they expect us to invent properly. It'll be here. And likely look completely benign.\"\n\n\"Why can't he do this? He knows what he's looking for!\"\n\n\"Because by accessing the contents here in the reading room, it doesn't track to a specific person,\" Morgan said. \"If any of these texts are flagged as dangerous, then it's best to have none of our names appearing on any High Garda list, don't you think?\"\n\nAnnis grumbled but went back to the Codex. \"He might have given us a proper year instead of a range. This could take forever.\"\n\nMorgan understood how she felt, but she knew Annis wouldn't understand the reverse. To the older woman, this was just annoyance and boredom. To Morgan, every minute off the clock was another minute the world turned closer to the Feast of Greater Burning, and she knew that she'd lose cherished lives there if they failed in this.\n\n\"We have to go faster,\" Morgan said, and Annis shot her a grateful look of agreement.\n\n\"It's a pity we can't have the automata search for us,\" she said. \"Though I suppose ripping apart heretics is more in line with their mission.\"\n\nMorgan paused in the act of turning a page, and her eyes widened. She jumped up and threw her arms around Annis, who seemed shocked, but laughed. \"You're a genius!\" Morgan said, and kissed her cheek.\n\n\"I have never in my life been told so,\" Annis said. \"Why, exactly?\"\n\n\"The Archives,\" Morgan said. \"As newly discovered books come in, there are specially built automata, Scribes, who do nothing but read and transcribe the contents into the record. Isn't that right?\"\n\n\"Of course. The words have to be meticulously copied into the Archives to become available.\"\n\n\"And how many Scribes are there?\"\n\n\"Tens of thousands, back in the earliest days,\" Annis said. \"I don't know how many today. Thousands, at least.\"\n\n\"Pen! I need a pen!\" Morgan began pulling open drawers in the copy desks on the sides of the room, unearthing bits of discarded paper, broken nibs, a half-dried bottle of ink... and then Annis pressed a working pen into her hand, and Morgan pulled a fresh sheet of paper from a stack.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Annis leaned forward. Morgan, without pausing as she swiftly, confidently sketched out the formula that she was building in her mind, used one shoulder to bump the woman back. She didn't answer. Didn't have time. The reading room had no windows, but she knew the world was turning fast toward morning, and when the sun reached its hottest, highest point for the day, people would die.\n\nHer pen sketched one last Greek symbol, and then she sat back and ran through it in her mind again. It should work. No one had thought of the Scribes as anything but conduits before, and the Archives as the only real repository of knowledge... but the Scribes were the vital link between originals and copies.\n\nShe put the pen down, took a deep breath, and opened herself to the flow of the energy that bound up the world. This was going to require almost everything she had so carefully hoarded, but it would be worth it.\n\nShe touched a finger to the inked symbols, and they exploded into a matrix of swirling, glittering shapes that circled around her in a storm. Moving far too fast. She quickly began to place them in order, until they moved in a tight cylinder around her, and then she closed her eyes and pushed. What she was doing was nothing like rewriting the lion automata, which were individual constructions; the Scribes were all connected, stationary, linked by real mechanical wires and tubes of fluids as well as alchemy. They had been constructed so for a reason: to allow smooth, seamless, mindless action.\n\nWhat affected one of them affected all of them. By design.\n\nShe felt, rather than saw, the formula disappearing into the flow, traveling from where she sat to the Archives, and into the first Scribe, who automatically relayed it to the next, and the next, and the next...\n\nShe collapsed forward onto the desk, gasping for breath, as the last of her energy trickled away and the insatiable hunger set in. No, no, not now... She felt as if she were smothering, drowning in air that was too thick to breathe. Rescue blazed in glowing, strong lights next to her, and all she had to do was reach...\n\nBut that was Annis, and if she reached out now, she'd destroy a human life. She wouldn't be able to stop.\n\n\"Morgan? Morgan!\" Annis was shaking her, and when Morgan opened her eyes, she saw the older woman's face was tense with worry. \"Lass, are you all right?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Morgan said. She wasn't, she trembled all over, and the emptiness inside her threatened to eat her alive. She pictured locking it away, behind door after door after door, until she could draw a breath. It sustained her body, at least, if nothing else. \"Yes. Give me the Codex.\"\n\nAnnis retrieved the book from the table where they'd been working and opened it in front of her. Morgan picked up the pen. Her hand was unsteady, but she wrote down three words in ancient Greek.\n\n\"That's all?\" Annis frowned. \"How is that going to get us anywhere? Is that a title?\"\n\n\"No,\" Morgan said. \"It's the words for the Scribes to find. Those three, together. That should tell us which book.\"\n\n\"You're having the Scribes search for it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nAnnis sank into a chair. Her mouth opened and closed as she worked it through, and then she said, \"That's brilliant.\"\n\n\"Only if it works,\" Morgan said. She was still trembling, but less so with every breath. I can keep it under control, she told herself. I won't give in to it. But the other side of that coin was that until she did give in and swallow the energy of other living creatures, she would be as powerless as any normal person walking the streets of Alexandria. Corrupted. That was what she'd been called, back in Philadelphia, and she had to believe that it wasn't true, that it was something she could overcome. Use carefully.\n\nI will not hurt Annis. I will not.\n\nAnnis had no idea of the danger she was in. She put her hand on Morgan's shoulder, and Morgan flinched at the contact. The power she needed was right there, hovering just beyond her skin...\n\n\"Look!\" Annis leaned closer to the Codex. \"It's writing!\"\n\nA single entry was written in precision-perfect penmanship. Morgan could picture the automaton on the other end making the loops and lines, an unthinking and perfect machine.\n\n\"On the Practical Effects of Advanced, Multiple-Source Familiarity Formulae and the Energy Exchange Principle,\" Annis read. \"My God, you've found it.\"\n\n\"I hope,\" Morgan said. \"Get it.\"\n\nAnnis pressed a finger to the title and held a Blank close. As they watched, the empty pages of the Blank filled with cramped, archaic script, a perfect copy of the original volume locked away in the Archives. The product of an obscure, long-forgotten Scholar whose name Morgan didn't even recognize.\n\nAs they turned pages, a glowing corner of a page caught her eye, and she quickly flipped to it.\n\nThere, on the page, was the answer they'd been looking for.\n\n\"The Iron Tower's security keys,\" Annis said. She sounded quiet, and almost shaken. \"Morgan. This is the answer. This is what we need to open the doors, remove the collars. To let us all... leave.\" Annis's eyes filled with tears, and she looked lost now. \"I thought\u2014until this moment, it was just an idea, you understand. A puzzle to solve. But this... this is real. This is...\"\n\nMorgan heard the footsteps approaching before Annis did, and quickly wiped the Blank and cleared the Scribe's writing in the Codex. The other books weren't incriminating, but this one... this was.\n\n\"Oh, hello,\" said Bjorn, a lean older man with a sharply pointed face. Morgan knew him slightly, but he wasn't someone she came into contact with on anything like a regular basis. Maybe it's nothing, she told herself. Bjorn's energy flooded the room, far brighter and more compelling than Annis's, and she felt the locks breaking on her resolve. If I just take a little...\n\nNo. As desperate as she was, as empty, she knew she wouldn't be able to siphon just enough. She had no idea how it would feel to another Obscurist, but she thought it would be painful. Agonizing, very possibly. And she couldn't do that, not to an innocent person.\n\n\"Hello,\" Annis said. She, at least, seemed instantly at ease. \"Well, if it isn't my favorite musician. I haven't heard you play in weeks. What on earth has kept you away? Please tell me it's not a new lover.\"\n\n\"You know you're the only one for me,\" Bjorn said, and winked at her. His smile seemed wrong to Morgan, but then, everything did now. She was fighting her own darkness, and it seemed to crowd in from everywhere. \"No, I've been on a special project, my crimson witch. The new master wanted something special done.\" He shrugged. \"Some sort of new flying automaton. Don't really see the point, honestly.\"\n\n\"Flying?\" Morgan forced herself back into some sort of focus. \"Is it a new model completely?\"\n\n\"Don't know and don't care. My part of it was just the gravitational formulae. Devilishly tricky, by the way. I must have destroyed a hundred scrolls before I got it right, and then it had to fit with all the others.\"\n\n\"Others?\"\n\n\"Navigational, and some kind of fire formula. Specialist work, all of it. Oh, Gregory supplied a rough master formula, but believe me, it took weeks to get the details\u2014\"\n\nA new automaton, just in time for the Feast of Greater Burning. Morgan felt sick and dizzy and most of all, out of time. She looked half-desperately at Annis, who couldn't have understood the half of what was going through her mind, but Annis was, if nothing else, emotionally perceptive. She walked to Bjorn, took his arm, and said, \"Why don't you tell me all about it, my love, over a tall glass of something that will make the evening better?\"\n\n\"Well, that's a better option than reading myself to sleep,\" he said. \"Which was what I was about. And after the drink?\"\n\n\"Depends on whether or not you're at all awake,\" Annis said. She walked him to the entrance. \"And whether or not you put me to sleep with the boring details of your project.\"\n\nAs she pulled the door shut, she sent Morgan a last look, with a roll of her eyes. The things I do for you.\n\nMorgan felt the dusty stirrings of a laugh, but it died quickly, and not even a ghost stayed on. She quickly restored the Blank's contents, found the page, and marked it with a scrap of paper before she slipped out of the reading room and down to Eskander's private suite.\n\nWhen she knocked, he answered. \"In,\" he said. \"Quickly. Were you seen?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No. I was careful. I found\u2014\"\n\nHe was already taking the book from her hands, and when he did, their fingers brushed, and the incandescent power of the man broke through every lock, every door, every semblance of control she had in her. She was trembling with emptiness, and he had so much life in him, so much to spare. The dark hollows inside her where her power had been echoed with the screaming need to be filled.\n\nShe'd take only a little.\n\nShe grabbed his wrist and began to draw his life away.\n\n\"No.\" Eskander wrenched free, and she felt the flood of power break with a crystalline shock. \"This only makes your problems worse. Don't you see that? The more you siphon from other living things, the more narrow and twisted your pathways become. You've already damaged yourself. Don't finish the job. You'll end up blackened, like Gilles de Rais. Mad and murderous and dangerous, or don't they teach the warnings anymore?\"\n\nMorgan didn't answer. She wasn't certain she could.\n\nEskander finally sighed. \"We're so tied to the Tower now that few have the chance of ever expending their power to the level of real damage. You're the first I've ever seen who's capable of it, other than Keria.\"\n\n\"And you,\" Morgan said. Her voice was barely a thread.\n\n\"Yes,\" he agreed. \"And me. I was so desperate to escape this place, to save Keria from it... and we almost achieved that. We came so close, before\u2014before the child was born. But I pushed too far. I broke the wards, but in doing so, I burned myself black inside, just as you have. It's why I walled myself away. I could feel the life burning in everything around me, whispering to me to claim it. It was driving me mad.\"\n\nHis image blurred, and she realized that her eyes were burning with tears; she knew exactly what he was saying, exactly how it felt to be so empty, so desperate, so broken. She'd felt it in Philadelphia, and though she'd tried, she had never fully healed. She didn't know how.\n\n\"I don't want to be this,\" she whispered. \"I don't want it.\"\n\n\"Did you want to be an Obscurist?\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\nEskander's wavering image smiled. She blinked and felt the heavy slide of tears down her cheeks. He reached out and wiped them away with his thumbs, then fitted his hands around her cheeks. \"Neither did I,\" he said. \"But where you are now, that is worse. That will lead you into madness.\"\n\n\"I don't know how to stop it!\" She heard the desperation in her voice, and the fear, too. \"How\u2014how did you?\"\n\n\"I had help,\" he said. \"I had Keria, who scoured the Archives for treatments and came here even though I told her to leave me alone. I was afraid for her, but I think she was more afraid to lose me. She showed me how to become myself again.\" Eskander paused. \"There are two ways. One is slow and gentle. The other\u2014the other is fast but painful.\"\n\n\"Fast,\" Morgan said. Wounded as she was, damaged, broken, she could do great harm to their enemies... but she could do it to those she loved, too. She knew the stories that Eskander had referred to; she'd looked them up in the Codex after coming here. Stories of madness and murder. At a certain point, an Obscurist severed from the natural flow of energy in the world was a parasite... and predator. She could feel those urges inside her, begging her to survive at any cost. \"I want to be healed, and there isn't much time. How can I do that?\"\n\n\"I can't show you,\" he said. He took both her hands and said, \"What I will do is remake you. This is not alchemy, Morgan; this is not potions and incantations and phases of the moon. This is pure, elemental power. And it is going to hurt.\" He smiled, but there was no warmth in it now. \"It certainly hurt me when Keria did it to me. I won't lie to you; it might not work, and if it doesn't, you will be... less than you are now.\"\n\n\"But if it works?\"\n\n\"Then you will be restored. More than restored; I sense the potential in you to surpass me, in terms of your power. You will be a force to be reckoned with, either way. But only one of those outcomes means anything good for you.\"\n\nMorgan drew in a breath. This, she sensed, was a huge risk, but she didn't see any other direction to go but forward. \"Yes,\" she said. \"Please. Do it.\"\n\nShe felt the incredible power seething in the man, and now she could also hear the whisper of the Tower itself, containing and muting all of their talents, their powers. What would Eskander be outside these walls? She couldn't imagine.\n\n\"I'm ready,\" she said.\n\n\"No, child. I don't think you are.\"\n\nShe didn't even have time to draw breath or brace herself before a wave of agony hit, so intense that it seemed to burn her from the inside out, combust everything inside her and char it black, reduce it to ash and reduce the ashes to nothing. He's killing me, she had time to think, in that endless, torturous limbo of pain.\n\nFor a moment she floated, anchored to her body by only the thinnest fraying cord of light... and in that moment, the power racing through Eskander exploded out and through her, tracing an intricate web of paths through her body. As each channel snapped to life, another lightning-hot spasm of pain raced through her, but it was a different frequency of pain that resonated more and more strongly inside her, until with a hissing snap, she was...\n\nIncandescent.\n\nWhen she opened her eyes, the glow remained, a brilliant golden whisper over her skin that only gradually faded, and with every blink, she saw the pulse of the world around her\u2014not only living things, but everything, lit in energy and structures like crystalline castles. And below her, around her, the whispering opalescent power that coursed through the air, the ground, stretching through the sky to brush the stars.\n\nEskander let her go and stepped back. She stared at him in wonder, at the brilliant flare of him, until the effect finally faded and he was just a man, and this just a room.\n\nShe felt... new. Completely new.\n\n\"What\u2014what did you do?\" She could barely get the words out. Eskander picked up the book that he'd set aside and flipped to the marker she'd put inside. He read the passage rapidly and nodded. Turned the page and nodded again, then walked to his desk, where he sat and took out pen and paper.\n\nHe wasn't going to answer her, she realized, and she tried again. \"Sir, how did you... how did you fix...\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" he said. \"I destroyed. I rebuilt the nerves and pathways that your own life force depends upon into their proper structure. You were like a tree struck by lightning; some part of the tree still lives, but the trickle of life isn't enough to sustain it. Neither completely dead nor completely alive. Now you are alive again, and an Obscurist completely. Don't mistake me: you're not indestructible. The power you have must be carefully measured and portioned, and you must learn when, and how, to use it without destroying those paths again.\"\n\n\"But\u2014I only did what I had to do to save others\u2014\"\n\n\"You are not a god,\" he interrupted her. \"Saving lives is something all men and women must do when called on, but never think you alone can do it. I'm accounted the most powerful Obscurist in a thousand years. Do you think I can save a hundred lives at a time? A thousand? A city? Of course I can't, because Obscurists are just humans with a better view of the world, and a larger lever with which to move it. Others can act, and must. We are not the saviors of the world.\"\n\nIt set her on her heels, and in the next moment, she felt angry. Angry that he wasn't willing to step into the full responsibility of his power. \"So that's it? You're not going to help save those people who are going to die? My friends?\"\n\n\"Morgan, if the power we wield was the answer to every question, the Obscurist Magnus would be the Archivist, wouldn't he? But Obscurists are forbidden by law to hold the post. I know this is a disappointment to you, but I'm not the savior you're looking for.\" He never stopped writing while he spoke\u2014quick, certain strokes of his pen, and now he sat back, took the page in his hand, and pulled the symbols off the page and into the representation she was familiar with\u2014glittering, spinning symbols surrounding him. But the ones he'd created were not chaotic. They already had a smooth, humming, complicated path, interweaving and interlocking like gears in a precision machine. \"However, I can help, and I will. The Iron Tower is the fragile point where the Library rests its weight; we always have been since the first Obscurist created the Codex and the Blanks. Could the Library have survived without us? Yes. But not in its current form. It depends on us for almost everything, and that must continue in some fashion. The Codex, the Great Archives... these things must remain intact, even as we plan some better future for them. The Translation Chambers I will block once the moment is right. Be careful until then. The Archivist will still have an easy avenue of escape.\"\n\n\"But\u2014you said\u2014\"\n\n\"I said I wasn't your savior. I never said I wouldn't do what I can.\" He banished the formula he'd written with a wave of his hand. \"I can open the doors of this tower. Remove our collars. I can stop Gregory, or at least make him run to the safety of his master. But I can't force any one of these Obscurists to follow you out into the world. Most of them have never set foot out there; like me, they've been caged so long they've forgotten the smell of free air. And none of them are combat ready. We're house cats, not tigers.\"\n\nIt was a shocking dose of cold water, and for a moment Morgan didn't know what to say to him. He'd said it with such dispassion, such lack of concern... as if all this, even the deaths clicking relentlessly toward them, were academic exercises.\n\n\"And what about your son?\" she asked.\n\nEskander turned toward her. There was the ghost of Christopher Wolfe in the shape of his face, the bitterly dark eyes. \"My son must save himself,\" he said. \"As must we all. There is no single person who can stop any of it. Gregory must be overthrown, and I'll have to step into his place to keep order. My place is here looking after these people, not out there fighting.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Gregory will leave the Tower in a procession with the Curia. Once he's out of the doors, I'll amend the wards, and he'll never cross this threshold again. Whatever happens to him from there isn't my concern.\"\n\n\"I thought you were going to set us free!\"\n\n\"And I will. As soon as I amend the wards, any Obscurists who wish can come and go as they please. Is that fair?\"\n\n\"No!\" she shouted. \"It isn't fair! You have the power to protect everyone, not just Obscurists!\"\n\n\"I couldn't protect Keria,\" he said, and it stopped her cold. Not the words, but the tone. The bleak, obsidian-hard reality of it. \"I've learned bitter lessons about limits. I wish I could be what you all want. But I don't think that's my fate.\"\n\n\"You make your fate! We all do! And if you turn your back on him...\"\n\n\"Wait until sunrise,\" he said. \"As for the Iron Tower soldiers, you'll need to deal with them yourself\u2014and you, unlike these other hothouse flowers, are fully capable of doing that. The doors will open for you. After that, you're on your own. May the gods keep you, Morgan.\"\n\n\"Eskander, you have to help\u2014\"\n\nShe was talking to his back. Eskander was walking away. He firmly, but calmly, opened the door and ushered her out, and shut the portal behind her. She felt the hot rush of the wards locking back in place. She could see them now, a marvel of power and intricate planning.\n\nShe knew she could break them. But that wouldn't solve anything. Eskander was so like his son.\n\nExcept that in one important sense, he wasn't like Wolfe at all. Wolfe was a hero. Wolfe stepped forward.\n\nAnd his father had just disappointed her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 42",
                "text": "Morgan stood on a padded bench to look out of the window of their room. It didn't face east, but she was watching the Lighthouse, which would show the sunrise first in a dazzle in the reflective mirrors at its top. The sky had turned a beautiful, delicate blue, something neither morning nor night, and as she watched, it continued to slip lighter. She toyed with the collar clasped around her neck, but it didn't feel like a trap anymore. Though it still resonated as active\u2014Eskander's doing\u2014she could unsnap and remove it at any time. Like most of what she was doing in this tower, it was a misdirection. A lie.\n\n\"You remind me of Keria,\" Annis said from below. She was up and dressed, and instead of comfortable Tower robes, she'd put on a pair of thick canvas trousers, a red silk shirt, boots, and a thick belt loaded with the travel case Obscurists carried when sent on missions for the Library... something with pens, paper, ink, and Translation tags to carry them back to safety in the event of emergency. The case was beautifully worked leather and embossed with the Library symbol.\n\n\"I don't look anything like her,\" Morgan said.\n\n\"No, of course not, but she liked it up there, watching the sunrises and sunsets. She liked to imagine being out there. And, of course, once she became the Obscurist Magnus, she was free to live out those dreams, in some part. But more than that, you remind me of Keria because you're so unhappy.\"\n\nMorgan watched the Lighthouse. She couldn't command the sun to rise any faster, but she couldn't look away, either. \"My friends are going to die today unless miracles happen. Why wouldn't I be unhappy?\"\n\n\"You're unhappy because you feel guilty.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\n\"That you're worried you're not in love with a young man who's in love with you.\"\n\nNow she did look away, because that was a truth that lanced straight through her. She instinctively started to deny it\u2014she did love him; she knew she did. The problem was that she wasn't sure she was in love with him. Or capable of that kind of feeling. He was as close as she'd ever been to the grand sweeps of emotion she'd seen others take. She wanted to be in love. Jess was everything she should crave: brave, kind, clever, and funny, and her heart fluttered and skin warmed when their eyes met.\n\nShe swallowed and said, \"How do you know if... if he's the one?\"\n\n\"Oh, that cherished old nonsense. For some people, there's only one, all their lives. For others, love comes twice, or three times, or more. For others, none at all. And, well, for me, I'm the latter category, but that doesn't make me unhappy or stop me from enjoying the men\u2014and women, for that matter\u2014around me. You see? Once you know yourself, you'll know how you feel.\" Annis's tone shifted. \"It's almost dawn.\"\n\nMorgan snapped her attention back to the window and, yes, there was a blaze of sun lighting the golden top spire of the Lighthouse and beginning to shimmer on the reflectors.\n\nMorning, on the day of the Feast of Greater Burning.\n\nShe jumped down and reached for her robe. Annis's eyebrows arched. \"You're wearing an Obscurist robe? Do you really think that's wise?\"\n\n\"Not wise,\" Morgan said, and pulled the cloth on over the shirt and trousers she wore. \"But I'm tired of hiding what I am.\"\n\nThere was a polite knock at the door just then, and after a quick look between them, Annis said, \"Yes?\"\n\nGregory opened the door. Behind him stood a full contingent of the High Garda. He wore the formal robes of the Obscurist Magnus, bright red silk covered with gold and jeweled alchemical symbols, and he carried a staff crowned with the eye of Horus.\n\n\"Well,\" Annis said. \"Don't you look fancy this morning, your worship. Is it your birthday again?\"\n\n\"You tampered with the formulae written into this room.\" Gregory wasn't speaking to Annis. He'd ignored her completely. He tilted his staff toward Morgan. \"I know your barely capable companion hardly has the wits to light a candle, so it must be you who's done it.\" The staff slowly moved to point at Annis, who sat up straighter but didn't speak. \"Do I need to make another sacrifice on the altar of your pride?\"\n\n\"No, Obscurist, I'll confess,\" Morgan said. \"I stopped eating the food prepared for me. I stole food where I could. After a day or so, I was able to adjust the formulae you used to spy on me. It's not her fault. She had nothing to do with it.\" She swallowed a real taste of dread. \"She's well loved in this tower, and you know that. If you kill her for no good reason, do you really think it helps the rest accept you as their lord and master?\"\n\nHe didn't like that, and for a second she felt terror he'd actually do it, order Annis murdered in front of her... but he must have realized she was being truthful, at least about the consequences. Annis knew everyone, and everyone liked Annis. Many loved her fiercely. If he hurt her, he'd never truly rule here.\n\n\"You're coming with me,\" he told her. \"I want you to see the end of your Scholar Wolfe, and all your friends.\"\n\n\"But you'll bring her back,\" Annis said. \"Won't you? Safe? Please, Gregory.\"\n\n\"If she behaves herself,\" Gregory said, and glanced back at the High Garda captain, who was standing just at his elbow. \"Hold her.\"\n\nBefore Morgan could realize which of them he meant, the captain had hold of her in a bear hug that trapped her arms at her sides and lifted her off the ground. Morgan kicked and shouted, but another soldier stepped forward, jammed a metal brace into her mouth, and wrenched it wide-open. She tasted iron and blood and let out a muffled scream. She reached for power, but Gregory's was already there, blocking her.\n\n\"Hurry it up,\" Gregory said. \"She's fighting me.\"\n\nThe guard poured a liquid down her throat, and she felt it cascade through her like a fall of silk, smoothing out the alarm, the tension, the resistance. Annis was on her feet now and shouting, and Gregory backhanded her contemptuously when the woman came at him. When she tried to get up from the bed where she'd fallen, a High Garda soldier stepped forward and pointed a sidearm at her. \"Stay down,\" the soldier barked, and Annis slowly held up her hands.\n\nMorgan couldn't fight back. She felt numb, barely anchored to her body now. As the soldier removed the mouth brace and the captain lowered her to her feet, she hardly noticed the changes. She struggled to keep her thoughts from sliding away like silvery fish in a stream.\n\nGregory grabbed her chin in his fingers and tilted her head up. He peered into her eyes, and she felt a snap of power around her but couldn't reach for it. She could walk and see and hear, but the path to any resistance was dark and impassable.\n\nShe looked desperately at Annis, and Annis stared back at her. The fear and anger in her friend's eyes told her that there was nothing to be done, for now, but submit.\n\nShe nodded slightly and hoped Annis understood... and then Gregory was leaving and she was being pulled along by soldiers in his wake, to the Feast of Greater Burning."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "When Anit led them into a deserted warehouse by the port, Jess was all but certain she intended to have them killed. He was considering whether it would be wise to draw a weapon when his twin brother took the choice away from him by drawing first and putting the muzzle of the High Garda pistol against the back of Anit's skull as she unlocked the door. \"Let's be clear,\" Brendan said. \"If you're planning anything, you die before we hit the ground. And I'm not my brother. I won't hesitate.\"\n\nJess was mildly offended by that, but in all practical senses his brother was right; he did take an instant to weigh the consequences, where Brendan dealt with whatever came, regardless. Odd, because back in their childhoods, Brendan had been the planner, the schemer, the watcher.\n\nPeople changed. He was only starting to realize how much and how quickly.\n\nAnit didn't so much as flinch. She finished unlocking the door as if he hadn't just threatened her life, and swung the entrance open as she pocketed the keys. \"I'll go first, shall I?\" From the weeping, guilt-ridden girl at the temple, she'd become something completely different now. Jess wasn't sure if it was a good change, but it was useful for now. She stepped over the threshold, and Brendan followed close behind, while Jess closed the door and engaged the heavy lock, which on this side didn't require keys.\n\nLights went on, row after row of chemical glows suspended from the tall ceiling, and it seemed to stretch on forever. Below each band of lights were huge multilevel storage racks loaded with crates and boxes.\n\nNot a soul in sight.\n\nIt was a stunning sight, and a testament to Red Ibrahim's wealth. \"Is all this books?\" Jess asked. If so, it dominated his father's own vast operation.\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"Legitimate trade goods. My father's real business has always been storage and shipping; it's profitable, and it makes an excellent shield for our smaller operations. This way.\" She cut a mazelike path between the shelving, and Jess wondered how, exactly, the workers retrieved those crates stacked thirty feet above their heads... until he saw the neatly stored gantries along the wall, wheeled platforms with hand cranks to push the height of the platforms up or down as needed. No Obscurist magic here; this was simple, efficient gear and human ingenuity.\n\n\"Can't we take a straighter course?\" Brendan asked after the twelfth turn and a zag in the opposite direction, again.\n\nAnit didn't answer, but Jess said, \"Pressure-sensitive floor, am I correct? The path has to be perfect.\" She didn't answer, but in two more turns, they reached a huge wall of shelves stretching along the side... and one small section let out a pressurized hiss and slid inward and off to the side on a track. Anit led the way inside.\n\nThe hidden entrance sealed itself behind them, and lights flickered on\u2014bright lights, bright as yellow suns, and aimed into their eyes. Jess threw up a hand to try to peer past, and Anit said, \"Stop where you are. Don't move. Brendan, put your gun away.\"\n\nBrendan looked prone to argue. Jess said, \"Do it,\" and his twin finally complied.\n\n\"Clear,\" Anit said in a completely normal tone of voice, and walked forward. More lights came on, and the spotlights that had pinned them in place faded; looking up, Jess saw they were odd glass globes with thin metal inside, not at all like the usual comfortable chemical glows. He'd seen something similar before, and it took him a second to place it.\n\nThe Iron Tower. Morgan had explained they ran on a forbidden technology: electricity. Somehow, he wasn't surprised that Red Ibrahim had taken advantage of it as well.\n\nThe lights coming on in the hall beyond revealed a tight group of men, all armed. They'd been aiming, Jess realized, while he and Brendan were blinded in the glare. Anit could have easily stepped aside and had them shot dead... but she hadn't.\n\n\"Anit? Is that blood? Are you injured?\" A tall man stepped forward. He had a reddish tint to his dark skin, and an accent that, to Jess's ears, placed his birthplace along the African coast. Somalia or Kenya. A shaved head and gold rings in his ears.\n\n\"No, Tadalesh. It isn't my blood,\" Anit said. \"It's my father's. He's dead.\"\n\nThese were Red Ibrahim's people, and all of them took the news as Jess could have expected: angrily. \"Who killed him?\" Tadalesh demanded, and took a step forward, aiming the gun at Brendan, who of course raised his, too. \"Was it you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Anit said, and pushed Brendan's arm down. \"It wasn't him.\" For a second, Jess was sure she was about to confess, and that might get them all killed... but Anit, guilt ridden or not, had better sense than that. \"If you want someone to blame, forget the hand that pulled the trigger. It's the Archivist who's our real enemy, and theirs as well. We have common cause now. This is Brendan Brightwell and Jess Brightwell, and they are cousins in the trade from England.\"\n\n\"Why's that one wearing a High Garda uniform, then?\" asked a hard-looking woman who held a High Garda rifle.\n\n\"As you well know, not every High Garda soldier is our born enemy. Some of them make our lives easier. Consider him a friend unless he proves me wrong.\" Anit took a deep breath, looked down at the blood on her dress, and said, \"My father is gone. His sons are gone. But I remain, and you answer to me. Serve me well, and I will see you all rich, safe, and happy. Cross me, and I promise that you won't live long enough to regret it. I may be young, but I am not naive, and I am not stupid.\" She looked up again, and her eyes were burning with determination. She looked very much like her father now. \"By the blood of my father, I will see him avenged, and I will carry on his business. If any of you disagree, say it now; for the next minute, and the next minute only, I will allow you to walk away without penalty. But if you go, you will never work for me, or with me, ever again.\"\n\nTime ticked by. Red Ibrahim's smugglers\u2014the top ranks of his lieutenants, Jess thought; surely these were his most trusted associates\u2014looked uneasily at one another, and though a few shifted their weight, none of them walked away.\n\nWhen the minute was up\u2014and Jess was certain Anit had counted it to the second\u2014she said, \"All right. We have an opportunity, and one that won't come again. Come with me.\"\n\n\"Did she mean that for us, too?\" Brendan asked as Anit strode away through the circle of her lieutenants\u2014hers now, not her father's\u2014and down the hall. Jess shrugged and followed. He didn't know what she planned, but he knew one thing, and only one: she was their only ally just now.\n\nAnd one way or another, they needed to get to the Feast of Greater Burning.\n\nThe secret area of the warehouse went down into the rock, tunnels that opened into a warren of rooms, passages, and (or so Jess assumed) entrances and exits. Red Ibrahim had built this place to preserve not just business, but lives; there were rooms where fugitives could live in comfort for extended periods, and even bathing facilities and a small kitchen.\n\nAnit led them past all of it to a large round room filled with books and scrolls. She went straight to a honeycomb of wood that held scroll cases and checked tags and pulled out a leather holder that seemed ready to fall to pieces.\n\n\"The cow that came from remembers the first Pharaohs,\" Brendan said. Anit nodded, cleared a space on a table, and unrolled the scroll carefully. Tadalesh turned up the lights in the room, and the lieutenants crowded around.\n\n\"What is it?\" one of them asked, craning his neck to make sense of it.\n\n\"The Colosseum,\" she said. \"Where the Feast of Greater Burning will be held. Every Scholar and librarian in Alexandria is required to be there. The full Curia will be there. And the Archivist.\"\n\n\"So... we're going to strike the Archives,\" Tadalesh said. \"Finally.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It's the best chance we've ever had to\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"We leave the Archives alone. I've made a deal with the Brightwells. There are cousins of our own going to their deaths in that arena today. And who cares about them? No one but us. We have one objective, and only one: rescue our people.\" She smiled, but it was a chillingly cold sort of thing, and it matched the drying blood on her dress. \"If the Archivist or any member of his circle of sycophants stands in the way of that, then I'll pay a fortune for the knife, arrow, or bullet that takes them down. I'll spend my father's fortune to avenge him and to save his people. Is that clear? Profit can wait. Revenge comes first.\"\n\nForgoing profit was almost certainly a completely new idea to the men and women Anit was speaking to; in Jess's family, profit\u2014or at least, avoiding a loss\u2014had been central to every action taken. Loyalty had always been second on the list. From the glances among Anit's people, he could see their experience was no different... but revenge was a powerful incentive. These same people had worked for Red Ibrahim for years, to be standing here. They had cast their fortunes with him. And even if loyalty came second to profit, it still finished ahead of anything else.\n\n\"If you take down the Archivist,\" Jess said, \"then I can assure you that the way will be clear to earning profits with those presses you've built in secret... and doing it legitimately. But only if the Archivist isn't standing in the way of it.\"\n\n\"And, of course, the Brightwells get a portion,\" Anit said. \"Since they developed the entire technology.\"\n\nIt was useful for them to grab on to that; it explained the Brightwells' presence here, and they understood business dealings just fine. They wouldn't understand that this was personal for Jess, and now for Brendan, but Anit had given him a perfect opportunity to conceal that.\n\nOne by one, the lieutenants nodded. Tadalesh seemed the most reluctant; clearly, he'd been dreaming about getting his hands on books from the Archives for quite some time. But he finally agreed, and bent to look at the plans.\n\n\"Trouble will be getting in,\" said one of them. \"The main entrance will be well secured, and none of us has Library bands. They'll have automata everywhere, not to mention High Garda.\"\n\n\"Fewer High Garda than you'd think,\" Jess said. \"Word is, they're staying in the compound.\" At least he hoped that would be the case, that Santi had been able to convince his friends and fellow captains to refuse the orders. \"And there's another way in. I've been there. I know it.\"\n\n\"Show us,\" Anit said, and stepped back.\n\nJess put his finger on the door that led down to the oldest parts of the amphitheater and the unexpected modernity of the workshop; praise the old gods of Egypt, these particular corridors were solid concrete and timber, and they wouldn't be moving like the ones in the Serapeum. \"Get us in there,\" he said, \"and I can get you directly to the floor of the arena. We can get your people to safety the same way.\"\n\n\"You're sure? It looks sealed.\"\n\n\"It isn't,\" Jess said. \"And if you want weapons, that's where they're being made. New weapons. Deadly ones.\"\n\n\"How do you know this?\" Tadalesh asked.\n\n\"The Archivist showed me,\" Jess said. \"And I'd like to make it his worst mistake yet.\"\n\nA sharp sound rang through the room\u2014a bell, ringing in the distance. They all looked up, as if to hear it better, but Anit was the first to react. \"Someone's forced the outer door. High Garda, most likely. Exits,\" she snapped. \"Scatter plan. Gather your people and head for the amphitheater. Bring weapons. I'll join you in the street behind the main entrance.\" She turned to Jess. \"Can you get us through the perimeter fence? Take care of the automata?\"\n\n\"We can,\" Brendan said, when Jess stopped to think for a few seconds. \"We'll gather our own forces and meet you there. All right?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"I'll take you to an exit. From there, you're on your own. Good luck to you.\"\n\n\"Good luck to us all,\" Jess said. \"Anit?\" Her gaze caught and held his. \"Thank you.\"\n\nHe meant it for much more than just the help in escaping, and she knew it.\n\n\"It's for my father,\" she said. \"And after this is done, we will talk about compensation.\" Her smile was brief, and every bit her father's. \"After all, even family gets paid. Eventually.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "THE FEAST OF GREATER BURNING",
                "text": "[ THOMAS ]\n\nWorking was what kept him steady, and so he spent the hours in the workshop of the Spanish embassy. It had been built by a competent engineer\u2014he could see that at a glance; walking into it had made him feel at home in a way few things could these days. The smell of tools, oils, freshly lathed wood and metal.\n\n\"I hope this is to your liking,\" said Ambassador Santiago. He stood in the doorway surveying the large room, and clearly not much familiar with the tools, presses, vise benches, and materials carefully placed for convenience. \"My artisans use it, as do my soldiers. Is there anything you might need that you don't see here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Thomas said. He walked over to a stack of ready-made rifle barrels and checked the alignment by rolling one on the table. Straight and true. That was good. Very good. \"I'll need a diamond. A large one, please.\"\n\n\"A\u2014\" He'd succeeded in putting Santiago at a loss for words. \"I see. How large, precisely?\"\n\nThomas showed him with a space between two fingers. Not a small space. \"About this,\" he said. \"And as flawless as you can find, please. If there are rubies and sapphires, those will also be welcome.\"\n\nThe ambassador's expression was priceless. Thomas was mildly sorry that Jess wasn't here to see it. \"Are you... making some kind of jewelry?\"\n\n\"This clearly isn't the time for that,\" Thomas said. \"No. I am making a weapon. One capable of bringing down a flying automaton. And I think you would agree, it is something we very badly need.\"\n\n\"Do you want an assistant? I can send someone\u2014\"\n\nHe missed Jess, but Jess had other concerns. \"No. Just the gems, please. And if there's food, have someone bring some? I forgot to eat.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" The ambassador clearly thought he was insane, but Thomas paid no attention to that, or to the man's departure. He had only a few hours to do what he needed to do, and much to avoid thinking about. With quick, precise movements, he pulled four barrels, checked each one, and then moved on to retrieve the thinnest wire on the shelves. It was expertly drawn and perfectly formed, and as he measured and cut what he needed, he remembered the makeshift, laughable device he and Jess had cobbled together out of hope and scraps in Philadelphia. Amazing it had worked even once, much less held together long enough to save their lives.\n\nHe'd made improvements on his design since then, and now, as he imagined the three-dimensional plans he'd so carefully constructed in his head, he knew what he was creating was, in its way, as dangerous as the press the Library feared so much. High Garda weapons were deadly, but they had limited ranges.\n\nThis weapon\u2014at least, theoretically\u2014could strike any target at any distance, so long as it traveled in a straight line. In theory, if powerful enough, it could cross the distance between stars, the way starlight reached the earth.\n\nLight was the most ephemeral of forces, and yet one of the most powerful. It had properties of gas and liquid and solid. Pure light, solid light... that was an astonishing and dangerous thing. And once he had created it and used it in public, where others could see... he could not control how it would be used in other hands.\n\nSo be it. Just now, he couldn't think of the future, or of anything else beyond what would come when the new day arrived.\n\nOne part at a time, he machined the pieces he needed for not one but four separate Rays of Apollo. He had no written plans, but he didn't need them; he had the image in his mind, and he could spin and enlarge and match pieces to it at will. He worked quietly and surely, building each piece with care, and when food arrived he ate without even looking at what the Spanish had provided him and drank whatever had come with it. His concentration stayed on the plans and the parts and the quiet, intense satisfaction when a piece fit perfectly with the next.\n\nAt some point, the ambassador must have returned, because he turned to see a black leather case on the table beside him and put the carefully assembled weapon\u2014the first of four\u2014aside to open it.\n\nInside sat the largest, most perfect diamond he'd ever seen. The size of a baby's hand, and when he put it to the light\u2014morning light, he realized, beginning to reflect from the distant golden cap of the Serapeum\u2014the light exploded into perfect rainbows around him. Flawless.\n\nIt would do.\n\nNext to it sat five other stones: two rubies, a truly enormous emerald, and two sapphires of unusual clarity. The note with them said, Spain will expect these returned, Scholar Schreiber.\n\nThomas examined and discarded one of the rubies and\u2014with regret\u2014the emerald, which simply wouldn't fit without alterations he knew the ambassador would frown on. Then he began to add the stones to the weapons, fixing them in place with the mounts he'd added for that purpose.\n\nNow he needed power.\n\nHe walked out of the workshop into the embassy, ignoring the polite inquiries of the few staff about at this hour (who were, he vaguely noticed, packing things as if to move). The questions became less polite when he ripped open the control panel he found in a maintenance closet and stripped out the power supply for the chemical glows. The room plunged into inky darkness, except for the rising laster of dawn through the windows, and the questions turned into demands.\n\nHe was ripping away the fourth power supply when the guards surrounded him, and a very harried, tired-looking man in a silk robe came into the room, took everything in at a glance before the power went out, and shouted for the guards to hold their fire.\n\nA shot went off, but it missed him, and Thomas shoved his way through and into the embassy entry hall, which had better light from the east-facing windows. Some of the guards and servants were activating portable glows, and the ambassador was speaking to him, but Thomas wasn't listening. He was closely examining the contacts and matching the power flow of these particular units against the requirements of the Ray; they were complicated mathematical calculations, and he truly didn't have time to spare for the man. He hadn't destroyed anything. Merely borrowed. Even now, a servant of the residence was plugging in new power supplies and the lights were coming back on.\n\nThough he supposed he could have asked. It was simply that he was so close to finishing his task that communicating with someone else was a waste of time he couldn't spare.\n\nThe ambassador, thoroughly exasperated (at least, that was what Thomas gathered from the way he threw up his hands), stalked away to berate Scholar Wolfe, who stood watching from the stairs.\n\nJa. This would serve. All the calculations fit. He'd need to install some fittings to secure the power supply and make it simple to replace, but it would do until he could spend the time to create something better.\n\nWhen he finished, it was full light outside. Morning. And as he looked at the four weapons he'd built, the terrible power of them he'd harnessed, the focus broke inside him, and all the things he hadn't allowed himself to feel rushed back in.\n\nHe sat down, hard, on a workbench and put his head in his hands. His breath came faster, and then faster still, an engine turning in his chest that he couldn't control.\n\nAnd he didn't know why.\n\nSomeone called his name, but he couldn't look up or answer. It wasn't until her weight settled in next to him and he smelled the soft jasmine scent of her perfume that he knew Khalila had joined him. Her hands rested gently on his shoulder and his back. She was saying his name.\n\nHe couldn't get his breath. The engine inside him was racing, faster and faster, and he saw black spots now, and his hands trembled like an old man's.\n\n\"Thomas, put your head down. There. Slow, deep breaths. In through your nose, then out through your mouth. You're all right now. You're safe. You're safe.\"\n\nWhether it was her even, quiet voice or the gentle pressure of her hands, he began to listen and follow her advice. It helped push back the dizziness, the spots, the panic that had threatened to send him to a very dark place. When his breathing slowed, he sent her a quick, guilty glance. \"I'm sorry,\" he said. \"I don't know\u2014\"\n\n\"I do,\" she said. \"You're afraid. We're all afraid. Do you feel a little better?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"I suppose\u2014I suppose I felt very alone for a moment. When I'm making something, there's nothing else, and then... it's gone. And it's only me.\" He managed a smile. \"And I am sometimes not quite enough.\"\n\n\"Because of Rome?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" He didn't want to talk about that yet, though he knew\u2014and Wolfe had quietly told him\u2014that only talking would ease the pressure building inside of him. \"I needed to make something to help us. This was all I could think of. Is Jess\u2014\" She shook her head, and he didn't finish the question. \"He'll be all right. He's a survivor, our Jess.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, and her arm slid into the crook of his, holding tight. \"I hope Dario is.\"\n\n\"Dario?\" Thomas blinked. He'd missed something in his preoccupations. He'd been working so intently that he'd ignored everything, and perhaps... perhaps he shouldn't have. \"What about him?\"\n\n\"He was taken,\" she said. Her voice remained steady, but he felt the tremor in her. \"He's\u2014 I don't know, Thomas. I hope he's alive. I pray he is. If he isn't...\"\n\n\"He is,\" Thomas said, and put his arm around her shoulders. She felt slight and fragile, but he knew her strength, too. \"We will all be all right.\" To his surprise, he almost believed it. \"We've come so far, and through so much. And if I'm wrong, and today is the end of it...\"\n\n\"I couldn't ask for better friends to have at my side,\" Khalila finished, which was exactly his thought. \"I know. I feel the same.\" She hesitated a moment and then said, \"Do you want to tell me about Rome?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"I want you to pick up one of those and come with me.\"\n\nShe slipped off of the bench and took up one of the sleek new weapons. She seemed surprised when she lifted it. \"It's lighter than I thought.\"\n\n\"Yes. I thought of some improvements. Be careful of the trigger.\" He picked up the one on the other end and led her out of the workshop through the back door. The dawn had that strangely magical glow to it, thick with morning dew, a soft and shimmering color that faded from blazing orange to gold to blue, and to the west still clinging stubbornly to night. The garden they'd entered had a stone wall built around it, and Thomas nodded at the far end of it. \"There. Shoot.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Khalila gave him an uncertain look but hefted the weapon competently enough. Wolfe's training, and hard lessons in survival. She sighted, took a breath, and pressed the guarded trigger.\n\nA beam of solid red light poured from the barrel and struck the wall, and the wall simply... vanished with a crack and a sudden puff of steam. No, it melted. Thomas blinked, and his brain made involuntary heat-transfer calculations, and he looked back at Khalila. \"Is it hot to the touch?\"\n\n\"Warm,\" she said. \"But not too hot, no. I only fired it for a second.\"\n\nThomas nodded, raised his gun, and sighted as well. He fired at the newly shortened wall, and once again, it cracked, hissed steam, and melted into a thick, reddish mass on the ground. As he watched, the melted stone cooled to dull crimson, then black, like lava.\n\nHe checked the power reserve gauge on each of the weapons and nodded. \"Good. They should each handle four or five of such bursts. Fewer, if the trigger is held longer.\"\n\nKhalila looked glad to hand hers back to him. \"I suppose we need them,\" she said. \"But they're\u2014\"\n\n\"Powerful,\" he said. \"Yes. And dangerous. But we need to be dangerous now, don't we? If we want to survive?\"\n\nShe nodded. And though he didn't want to, he knew they were both thinking of the same question.\n\nAt what cost?\n\nKhalila walked with him back into the workshop, where they found Scholar Wolfe standing there. He'd put on a black Scholar's robe, and in all aspects, Thomas thought, he looked mostly unchanged since the first day he'd met them at the train to Alexandria. For all the damage, Wolfe survived.\n\n\"These are astonishing,\" Wolfe said. \"You did these overnight?\"\n\n\"I needed to keep busy.\"\n\nWolfe laughed, but it sounded bleak. \"Yes. Obviously. But only Thomas Schreiber could keep busy by perfecting a beautiful death machine like this. Perhaps you should take up cards.\"\n\n\"We need them,\" Thomas said.\n\n\"Oh, I know we do,\" Wolfe agreed. \"But forgive me for clinging one more moment to the fiction that right will prevail without becoming worse than its opposite.\"\n\nThomas felt something zip through him, like a high-tension wire breaking, and he didn't know he was angry, truly angry, until that moment. \"You want to let them continue to do what they did to us? To thousands before us, and after? Do you really think it will stop, if we don't stop it?\"\n\n\"I'd like to believe that even now, there is some argument that avoids a bloodbath.\"\n\n\"Then make it,\" Thomas said. \"But I won't let them do what was done to me, and to you, to Dario or Khalila, or anyone they've taken.\" He took one of the rays and held it out to Wolfe. \"It's time to decide, Scholar. Are you talking, or fighting?\"\n\nWolfe glared at him and at the weapon; Thomas knew he was thinking about Santi, who would never have hesitated.\n\nHe took the ray and said, \"I can do both.\"\n\n\"Then let's be ready,\" Thomas said. \"Because it won't be long now.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "SANTI",
                "text": "From his perch on the roof of the Spanish embassy, Santi watched the procession wind past the Serapeum. He'd borrowed a pair of field glasses from the Spanish commander, who'd been more occupied with loading weapons, armor, and valuables into the convoy of trunks set to depart shortly; the embassy staff would be going with it, and the ambassador, too. To his credit, Alvaro Santiago truly didn't want to go, but he was sensible enough to know that should the Archivist come out of this day on top, Spain would be next on his list to crush, and the embassy would have all of the safety of a globe of Greek fire.\n\n\"Well?\" Zara asked. She was at his shoulder, as still as a lounging cat. \"Anything?\"\n\n\"High Garda Elite companies,\" he said, and lowered the glasses. \"Not a single High Garda banner. I think you're right. The High Commander closed the compound.\"\n\n\"Or, just as likely, he's no longer the High Commander,\" she said. \"Given how popular he wasn't with his peers. They'll sit this out. But that might not matter. The Elites are enough, especially with the automata out in force, and that beast up there.\" She nodded toward the Serapeum, where the metallic shimmer of the dragon sat coiled around the top of the pyramid, awaiting its orders. \"That has to go first, or we'll end up like pigs turning on spits.\"\n\n\"Nothing from the Iron Tower?\"\n\n\"Nothing except that the Obscurist has left it, along with a solid contingent of the guards assigned there. That's him, in the red. The automata are still working. Nothing's changed. Whatever your girl was doing in there, she's failed.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't count her out.\"\n\n\"Or in,\" Zara said. \"We have our company. We have whatever's left of your Scholar's students. We have... what else, exactly? Nic, this is a fool's errand. The odds aren't even high; they're zero. If we go out there, we will die. And they will win, forever. Is that what you call victory?\"\n\nHe didn't answer her. He took up the glasses again and tightened the focus. It was far to the road where the procession was taking place, but he thought that walking just behind the Obscurist was someone in a white robe. Someone who might have been Morgan.\n\nIf he's taken her from the Tower, what does that mean? That she's won? Or that she's lost? He couldn't know, and Zara's points were irritatingly right. There were a few failure points, and thus far, all of them seemed to have crashed in on themselves. Jess and his brother were missing, gone off on some revenge mission. There was no indication that any of the Scholars that Wolfe had approached\u2014or any from the distant Serapeums\u2014would offer their support. The automata remained a danger, and the Obscurists showed no sign of turning on their master.\n\nAnd Dario was missing. Taken, and perhaps dead, and of all of these things, Santi felt that the keenest. The loss of any of these young, brilliant minds was something he, like Wolfe, didn't want to face. And as unlikable as Dario might have been at times, he'd changed. He'd become something better.\n\nHe deserved a chance. So did those prisoners who were being marched now in that procession toward the amphitheater.\n\n\"There's no cheering,\" he said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"There are crowds along the street, but they're all silent. Do you hear anything else?\"\n\nZara listened, then shook her head. \"So? The common folk of Alexandria are going to rise up for us? You're dreaming, Captain.\"\n\n\"I might be,\" he said, and turned the glasses back to the glimmering scales of the dragon. \"First, we have to take that creature down. Ideas?\"\n\n\"It's a dragon. It breathes Greek fire.\"\n\n\"You're usually better than this.\"\n\n\"And you're usually better than to throw yourself into a useless fight,\" she replied. \"Unless something dramatic happens...\"\n\nSomething drew Santi's attention down to the open drive in front of the mansion. Four shapes, fanning out at equidistant points in the middle of the road. He recognized Wolfe's robe blowing in the morning breeze an instant before he heard Thomas's deep voice say, \"Now,\" and four beams of light\u2014one red, two blue, one a shattering white\u2014drew lines from the four humans straight to the dragon at the top of the Serapeum.\n\nThe shrieking, grating scream that came out of the dragon was loud enough to shatter windows, and down on the street below the Serapeum, the procession scattered as the dragon unfurled its wings and launched itself upward.\n\nIt wasn't flying evenly. When Santi lifted the glasses and focused, he saw that along one side\u2014the side that had been facing the embassy\u2014half of its heavy, plated scales were gone, revealing cables, gears, wires, tubes, that were slashed open to expose ropes of green liquid cascading out.\n\nHe removed the glasses and threw himself down on the edge of the roof to shout, \"Again! You hit it! Keep hitting it!\"\n\nWolfe looked up, and so did the other three faces. Khalila, Thomas, and Glain. \"Again!\" Wolfe shouted, and the beams sliced out again. One missed completely as the dragon banked, but three found marks. Thomas's\u2014the white beam\u2014sheared off one entire wing of the creature and sent it spinning heavily off to crash somewhere down into the city. A cloud of screams rose. \"Keep firing!\"\n\nThe dragon was making a clumsy attempt to keep aloft, but as the rays fired at it again, it marked its enemies and, in an awkward corkscrewing motion, turned its fall into a lunge.\n\nGod save us, it's coming straight for us.\n\n\"Up! Get up!\" Zara was dragging at his arm, but there wasn't any point; they'd never get off the roof, and the four down below weren't running. They were holding down their triggers, sending continuous blinding pulses of light at the automaton as its enormous, shredding jaws cranked open and it fell toward them.\n\nIt was Wolfe's shot that cut the head from the beast. It hit at just the right angle, cutting clean through a gap in the melted, blackened scales and into the body of the creature; the weight of the head ripped it free and sent it tumbling down in a rough spiral to crash into the iron fence that ringed the compound, where it was impaled down to the ground on the spikes.\n\nThe body fell limply out of the sky. It hit just past the fence and skidded to a stop, hissing steam and leaking Greek fire that caught the entire metal skeleton on fire and slowly, steadily began to melt it down. The barbed tail of the thing continued to twitch, but that, Santi thought, was just the heat burning through the metal cables.\n\nWolfe turned to look up, and Santi found himself smiling. No, grinning. He saw the matching, vulpine expression on his lover's face.\n\n\"Now,\" he said, \"we have a chance. Come on, Zara, let's get\u2014\"\n\nHe rolled over and started to rise, and checked himself when he realized that she was holding a pistol on him. Her dark eyes were wide and very steady.\n\n\"No, Captain,\" she said. \"Not this time. I'm not letting you kill yourself. Not for him. I've watched you drag yourself through hell for him, and you can't do this, Nic, you can't. You swore oaths. This is wrong.\"\n\nHe got up slowly, eyes on hers and not on the gun held between them. When he reached out, he was reaching out to her. \"I would go to the lowest depths of hell for him,\" he said, and put his hand on the gun. \"Zara, if turning my back on him is the price of loyalty, you'd better shoot.\" He could have taken the weapon, and they both knew it. She could have fired, and they both knew that, too.\n\nZara let the gun drop to the roof between them, reached up, and ripped the rank and insignia from her High Garda uniform. She opened her hand and let that fall between them, too. Her eyes were full of tears and rage, and she just shook her head and walked away.\n\nHe wanted to tell her something better... that he valued her, that he would miss her, that she was worth more than this. But in the end, he stood quietly and let her leave. It would be unkind of him to lie to her. He would never choose her over Wolfe. Best she understand that now, at the end of all of this.\n\nHe left her gun and insignia where they had fallen, and once he was sure she was gone, he went down to find Wolfe, throw his arms around him, and say, \"They'll be here soon. We need to go. Now.\" He pulled back and looked at Glain. \"Get Botha. Tell him he's promoted to lieutenant. Find Troll; he's my new second. You're promoted to Sergeant, and head of the Blue Dogs.\"\n\nShe saluted as smartly as he could ever have hoped. \"Thank you, sir. It's a start.\"\n\nHe returned her salute, open hand over heart, and as she ran off to find his company, Wolfe said, \"She's going for your job, Nic.\"\n\n\"After today, she can have it,\" he said. \"And may God help anyone who gets in her way. She didn't miss a single shot, did you notice?\"\n\n\"I was trying not to be roasted alive. It tends to erase the details.\"\n\nSanti pulled his lover close, and in this quiet moment before everything began, and ended, he was happier than he'd been in years."
            },
            {
                "title": "GLAIN",
                "text": "Finding Botha and Tom Rolleson took only a moment\u2014Santi's company was camped under a large camouflage tent in the back. Though Botha seemed surprised, Troll didn't; whether they valued promotions on a day like this, she couldn't say, but both seemed calm and ready. The whole company did. They were ready to move on a moment's notice. We have five hundred soldiers, she thought. Against the same amount of High Garda Elite and a small army of automata. She didn't mind a hard fight, but she had to admit that even after removing the dragon from the equation, the math was still unforgiving.\n\nBut it was better than it had been before Thomas had stepped out of the workshop with those weapons.\n\nStill, Glain was happy to surrender the strange gun back to Thomas after running to rejoin him and Khalila; not that she didn't value the pure destructive power of the thing, but there was a skin-crawling ease to it that made her feel a little ill. Killing\u2014and though this time, they'd only aimed those beams at an automaton, surely the time was fast approaching where it would be searing human flesh\u2014killing ought to be more... difficult.\n\nThomas checked each one and opened three out of four of the weapons to knock out large, shining stones.\n\n\"Are those... jewels?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, but he was engrossed in the last weapon. \"Interesting. The diamond drew the least power, perhaps because of the size of the stone, or the refraction, or\u2014I'll have to examine the power-consumption rates more closely.\"\n\n\"Where did you get them?\"\n\nHe glanced at her, and the fog lifted in his eyes for a second. He put two warm blue stones and one very warm red one into her hand. \"Give these back to the ambassador,\" he said. \"Tell him I need the loan of this last one a little longer.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll take the guns as well,\" said the ambassador himself, and Glain kicked herself mentally for not seeing the man approach. He was a quiet one, Alvaro Santiago. \"Please.\"\n\n\"No,\" Thomas said.\n\nSantiago raised both eyebrows. He wasn't dressed like a royal ambassador now; he looked like a common sailor. The only thing that didn't fit\u2014and would change the instant he left these grounds, Glain thought\u2014was his accent, far too refined for the rest of him. \"Perhaps I should rephrase my request,\" Alvaro said, and a brace of Spanish soldiers\u2014both in common clothing, too\u2014stepped out of concealment behind the columns and leveled guns on the three of them.\n\nGlain revised her objections to the power of the weapons, but it was too late now, and she was late even drawing her sidearm. Next to her, Khalila began to step forward and, no doubt, deliver a powerful speech; Glain stopped her by the single expedient of throwing out a solid arm to halt her in her tracks and looking to Thomas.\n\nThomas flipped a switch on his Ray of Apollo and calmly raised it and pointed it at the ambassador. \"No,\" he said again. \"After today, these will be destroyed. I'll send your diamond to you.\"\n\n\"The diamond is not half so valuable as what you hold in your hands, and I'm sure you know this,\" Alvaro said. \"Thomas. You are a brilliant young man, an Artifex worthy of the best days of the Great Library. Don't be stupid. I would hate to extinguish such a light.\"\n\n\"If I shoot,\" Thomas said, \"there won't be enough of you left to bury. I'm grateful for your help and your workshop. But I won't give you these guns. And I won't make more for you, or for anyone. There are no plans. The secret dies with me.\"\n\nGlain eased her sidearm out of its holster. She took up a High Garda shooting stance and aimed at the ambassador's head. \"So say we all,\" she said.\n\nFor a long, tense moment she was certain the man would order them killed; she was not at all sure Thomas intended to carry out his threat. But then Alvaro turned to his men and gestured, and they lowered their weapons. \"Very well, Scholar, I understand,\" he said. \"But you must also understand that sooner or later, someone else will make one, and that person will be less moral than you. It wasn't worth your life.\"\n\n\"It was to me,\" Thomas said. He pointed the Ray down at the three discarded, de-jeweled weapons and, with one short pull of the trigger, reduced them to smoking, melted wreckage. He checked the gauge on the weapon. \"Interesting. Still two more shots. Don't make me waste them.\"\n\nSantiago shook his head and said, \"Use them to free my cousin. I do care about the wretch. I'd stay if my king didn't order me home.\" He gave Glain a respectful nod and she put away her gun. Khalila earned a full court bow. \"I will be seeing all of you again, I hope.\"\n\n\"If you do,\" Khalila said, \"I hope you don't bring an army with you. Tomorrow, this is still the Great Library, and it stands. If we win, we will keep it safe against anyone\u2014even friends\u2014who tries to take what isn't rightly theirs. You should be on your way. The fall of that dragon will bring Library troops.\"\n\n\"I expect no less. Hasta luego, my friends.\"\n\nAnd then they were gone, disappearing into the shadows of the columns, and when Glain advanced to follow, she found the whole entry hall deserted. By the time she reached the back doors, she found them locked and the convoy already moving away. For a rich, spoiled royal, he knew how to move with military precision and speed; she had to grant him that much.\n\nBotha joined her at the windows and said, \"I assumed we should let them leave without starting a fight. Was I wrong?\"\n\n\"Not that I know,\" she said. She shot a glance toward the lieutenant's calm, unreadable face. \"Do you think\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't think,\" he said. \"It's not useful before the fight. Only during it.\" He turned, and Glain followed a second later, as the others came into the room. \"Sir. We're ready. The High Garda Elite carriers can hold fifty, if we're friendly, but the rest of the company will have to be on foot.\"\n\nSanti nodded. \"The Blue Dogs, the Harpies, Shadow Team, and Mars One for the vehicles. Arrange them as you prefer. Split the company into four units. Stay away from the main routes. Third and fourth units are covering fire. Use the heights.\"\n\n\"Sir.\" Botha saluted, and said: \"You'll be in the vehicles?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"All of us. Glain, Thomas, and Khalila in one, me and Wolfe in another. And, Lieutenant? Library engagement rules. You don't kill unless you must, but if you must, you get it done. Protect the Scholars and librarians down on the killing floor. Let us handle the rest.\"\n\nGlain opened her mouth to protest, then shut it with a snap. Santi's orders were precise and calculated. He wasn't mounting a High Garda rebellion. He was showing that they were committed to the Library's principles. And that was noble.\n\nJust very possibly suicidal.\n\nGlain claimed herself a proper rifle and a healthy supply of ammunition from the armorer, who was loading up the extra guns and supplies in the rear of the carrier, and as she crowded into the carrier with Khalila and Thomas and the door hissed closed, she thought she ought to by all rights be afraid. They had little chance, after all. The might of the Great Library was against them, along with history, tradition, and her captain's own scruples.\n\nShe met Khalila's eyes as the carrier rattled through the streets, speeding toward the amphitheater. Held up her hand. Khalila clasped it. Then both their hands were swallowed up by Thomas's.\n\n\"Together,\" she said.\n\n\"Together,\" they both echoed.\n\nThe Blue Dogs\u2014Glain's squad\u2014howled. The Harpies let out their weird, unsettling, keening cry.\n\nIt was war."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "\"Down,\" growled Tadalesh, when Jess inched up to peer over the edge of the roof. \"If you want to gawk, go stand with the crowds on the road.\"\n\n\"Any sign of Elites?\" Jess ignored Anit's lieutenant and got his own good look. The street below seemed clear.\n\n\"No. The Elites are inside the fence, and that way.\" Tadalesh jerked his sharp chin toward the main street, where the procession was pouring in toward the amphitheater. It was almost finished; the Scholars and librarians had gone first, a parade of fluttering robes conducted in silence. Then a tall, stalking row of automaton Egyptian gods, the largest of which\u2014Horus, easily identifiable even at this distance\u2014carried a huge, sharp sword. The Curia\u2014the heads of the Library's major disciplines, including the Obscurist Magnus\u2014were proceeding now, and with them, under a huge cloth-of-gold covering, the marching honor guard of Elites, with the Archivist carried on a sedan chair in the center of the pack.\n\nThere was no cheering. Nothing but silence from those gathered along the route. Jess wondered if the Archivist felt as uneasy about that as he did.\n\nThat was when the dragon, coiled around the Serapeum, let out a shriek that seemed to shatter the sky, and Jess saw the flash of solid beams of light slice into the thing for just a flash before they cut off.\n\nThomas. Thomas built a Ray of Apollo. No, more than one; that much was clear as the dragon launched itself into the air and began to clumsily beat toward the source of the attack. It had lost its grace, but none of its power.\n\nAnd then the ray weapons flashed again, and pieces rained from the sky. Scales the size of troop carriers. A sheared-off wing, spiraling to slam through the roof of a building. And then the head came loose, and the whole terrifying automaton slammed down into the ground with an impact that Jess felt through his entire body before the sound of it rolled over them. The Greek fire inside the thing began to burn in pale green flames, and for a second Jess couldn't process what had happened. Then he had a mad impulse to shout, to leap to his feet and punch the sky in triumph.\n\nThat had been an impossible task, and Thomas had done it.\n\n\"Your friends?\" Tadalesh asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Jess said.\n\n\"You think they will sell us those guns?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nTadalesh shrugged. \"Maybe we take them, anyway.\"\n\n\"Maybe they kill you first,\" Jess said. He rolled over on his side and gestured to Brendan, who climbed down from the roof and joined the massed hundred or so men and women Anit had assembled. They were a hard rabble, and heavily armed. He liked the discipline and rules of the High Garda, but for some things, a gang of thieves was just... better.\n\nThe cutter acted quickly at the fence, opening a section with judiciously applied Greek fire wide enough to allow five to pour through at a time. They'd timed it between the loops of the automata sphinxes, but even so, they'd be spotted in seconds, and from then on, it would be a real fight.\n\nTadalesh was sliding over the edge of the roof, and Jess followed. He found hand- and footholds and jumped the last ten feet to land in a roll and come up running, and he was halfway to the fence when the first automaton sphinx spotted the breach and let out a harsh metallic cry. It flapped metal wings and glided toward Anit's people, claws unsheathed and ready to rip into flesh.\n\nBrendan slid into its path, and it dropped onto him, pinned him to the ground, and opened its needle-toothed mouth to bite. Brendan twisted, reached, and jammed his rifle between the jaws, forced the head up, and found the switch.\n\nThe sphinx froze in place, and Anit pulled him free as two others tipped the statue over with a crash. Brendan got to his feet and yanked his rifle free, and Jess shoved through the thieves' army to make it to his brother's side.\n\n\"Stupid!\" he shouted. Brendan was hurt. He could see the blood soaking into his shirt.\n\n\"Effective!\" Brendan shouted back, and grinned. \"It's nothing. Get us in\u2014more are coming!\"\n\nThe workshop entrance was locked, but Jess and the cutter got it open in seconds, and Jess took the lead, grabbing a glow from the wall and calling up the path that he'd taken to the Archivist's workshop. Another pair of doors, these thicker. Behind them, the sphinxes would be swarming and killing as many as they could reach. Getting trapped here in the corridor was deadly.\n\nIt took a costly half minute, but the doors finally slammed open, and Jess was one of the first onto the balcony where he and the Archivist had last stood. The railing had been newly repaired, and the metal was still shining. The workshop below was well lit but empty of any workers or guards. Just the silent, still forms of automata under construction.\n\nJess wrapped a rope around the rail and slid down, and more ropes joined his. Anit was still on the balcony and ordering men to hold the door; that wouldn't hold for long against automata, but maybe long enough.\n\nAnd then the doors flew open, knocking Anit's people back, and High Garda poured through. Jess raised his rifle and aimed, then realized who was in the lead. \"Don't fire! Don't fire!\" He shouted it as loudly as he could, and Anit echoed him up on the balcony.\n\nIt was Niccolo Santi, and Scholar Wolfe beside him, and Jess saw Thomas's golden head towering above the crowd.\n\nThe two factions faced off, a neutral space between them, and Jess grabbed the rope he'd slid down and climbed, vaulted over the rail, and pushed into the empty center where Anit and Brendan were already standing.\n\n\"Captain,\" Jess said. \"Good to see you.\"\n\nSanti nodded. \"Same.\"\n\n\"You followed us.\"\n\n\"We thought we'd let you lead the way.\"\n\n\"How many with you?\"\n\n\"Fifty now. The rest coming,\" Santi said. \"We'll have cover fire from high points nearby, but this will be a ground fight. You understand.\" He looked at Anit. \"Why are you here?\"\n\n\"To get our people back,\" she said. \"Same as you.\"\n\n\"Common cause?\"\n\n\"For now,\" Anit said. \"Until it isn't. I think we'll know that moment.\"\n\nIt wasn't perfect, but they didn't have time for perfect. Just movement. The High Garda moved forward, and a team sealed the door behind them with fast, effective welders. Jess left his brother with Anit and joined his friends.\n\nNaturally opposing sides, but for now, Santi was right: common cause.\n\nThey coursed through the workshop, moving past the tables, the dead automata, the curtain-covered, half-finished machines. Jess ripped down the curtain at the back of the room and found another dragon lying dormant on the ground. It looked ready to fly. We should destroy that, he thought, but the truth was they didn't have time. Up on the balcony, the doors were shaking under a relentless assault.\n\nThe back of the workshop was an enormous rolling door, and as they shoved it away on its rails, they were standing on a wide, up-slanting ramp. Jess ran toward the top of it and found another door, large enough to easily accommodate that dragon, or a horde of elephants, or a full-scale ship. There were controls on the wall. A simple push of a button, and they would be in the amphitheater.\n\nSanti and Wolfe paused next to him. Anit, flanked by a hard crowd of her lieutenants. Khalila, Thomas, and Glain.\n\nAnd his twin, who nodded and said, \"Go.\"\n\nNo going back.\n\nJess hit the button, and the door opened into the Feast of Greater Burning.\n\nThere was no one to rescue. No one on the floor of the amphitheater. No automata, no prisoners, no one. They rushed out, and slowed, and Jess turned in place to look at what they'd just done.\n\nThe stands were full of Scholars. Librarians. In the gilded central box sat the Curia of the Great Library, all dressed in their formal robes, and standing at the railing were two people. The Archivist, dressed in heavy, jeweled robes, with a crown with the eye of Horus towering on his head.\n\nAnd the Artifex, his closest ally and friend, wearing the robes of his office. He held a golden whistle in his hand, and he was smiling.\n\n\"Back!\" Jess shouted, but it was too late. The doors were sliding shut, trapping half of their people in the tunnels. A hundred of them had made it through\u2014a mix of Anit's thieves and Santi's High Garda. Instinctively, the thieves spread out, and the High Garda bunched together in a cohesive, protective formation.\n\nHe caught a look at Santi's face, and his heart stopped for a moment. That was the face of a man who knew it was over. Who knew they'd lost.\n\n\"Did you really think I'd have brought you to that workshop without a reason?\" the Archivist asked him. \"I knew you'd betray me, whichever Brightwell you proved to be. You did exactly what I wanted you to do. You delivered my enemies.\" He gestured, and another door opened. Jess's heart thudded back to life, and he took better hold of his rifle. Shoot whatever comes out, he thought, but what came out was a young woman in a white Obscurist's robe, and it was Morgan, who staggered a few steps and then dropped to her knees.\n\nHe broke ranks to run to her, grabbed her, and hauled her to her feet again. She was gasping for breath, and one glance at her face was enough to tell him that she was in no shape to help anyone, not even herself. \"It's okay,\" he told her. That was a lie, but it was all he could give her now. He got her safely back to the High Garda lines, where Khalila took her and said, \"What's wrong, Morgan? Morgan?\"\n\nMorgan tried to speak, but she couldn't seem to. She ripped away her collar and threw it onto the sand that covered the arena floor, and finally managed to say, \"Drugged. Trying.\" She grabbed for Khalila's hand. \"Together.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Khalila said, and looked desperately at Jess. \"We're together now.\"\n\nAnother door opened, and two High Garda Elites came through dragging another limp form. They left him on the sand and retreated. Khalila gasped, and this time she was the one who dashed forward. Glain was a step behind her, and together they towed Dario Santiago back to whatever safety this was. He'd been beaten and bloodied, but he managed to give Khalila a broken smile and say, \"Hello, madonna,\" before turning to Jess and holding out his hand. Jess thought he was meant to take it, but Dario impatiently shook that off and said, \"Gun, Scrubber. Give me a gun!\"\n\nGlain passed her sidearm over.\n\n\"Now,\" the Archivist said. \"You're all present. I would have included Red Ibrahim with you, except that he was found dead yesterday. I wonder which one of you killed him. Not that I intended to let a single smuggler live after today, but it would have been a nice symbol, having him here. At least we have his heir. Anit, is it?\"\n\nShe stepped forward, all of fourteen and as old as the stones of the city, and made a startlingly rude gesture up at the box. \"Remember the name, old man,\" she shouted back. \"We'll spit on your funeral fire!\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"You are stones in the shoes of history, and you will be shaken out. No more tolerance. No more black markets, Burners, rebels. The Library will continue, and you will not.\" He raised his voice into a shout. \"Knowledge is all!\"\n\nThe Scholars and librarians repeated it. No great shout of affirmation, Jess thought; it was almost a prayer, instead. They're waiting, he thought. They need something to show them there's hope.\n\nJess spun, raised his rifle, and fired straight at the Archivist.\n\nThe shot hit an invisible shield, and the bullet hung there a foot away from the old man's face, vibrating. The Archivist nodded to Gregory, who gestured, and the bullet dropped to the sand.\n\nNo one spoke. Jess changed targets and fired at the Artifex, then Gregory. None of the shots made any difference.\n\nSanti reached out and pushed his rifle down. \"Save your ammunition,\" he said. \"This is only just starting.\"\n\nThe Artifex raised to his lips the whistle that Jess had noticed, and it made a high, thin, trilling sound.\n\nAbove them, the sky filled with birds, launching out of hollows in the top of the amphitheater. Circling and catching the light of the sun on metallic wings.\n\nJess felt a strange impulse to laugh. Birds. They'd brought down a dragon. He wasn't going to fear a few sparrows.\n\nBut it wasn't a few. It was thousands. They continued pouring up, blackening the sky, circling in a vast whirl... and then the Artifex whistled again.\n\nAnd the birds dived."
            },
            {
                "title": "MORGAN",
                "text": "She could hardly keep her feet under her, but she felt the black energy of the birds circling overhead. Automata: small ones, light and simple, without much complexity in their formulae. One of them, ten of them, easily crushed.\n\nThousands of them shifted and came down in a deadly dive.\n\nOne narrowly missed her, burying itself in the sand, and as it did she realized that the beaks were long and sharp, like flying knives... and another sliced the skin of her upper arm as it arrowed down.\n\nNext to her, a High Garda soldier was looking up, and a bird buried itself in his eye. He staggered, opened his mouth, and then simply died.\n\nAll around her, the birds were falling in a dead rain, stabbing and cutting and killing. And there were thousands more, and thousands more.\n\nThey were going to be cut to pieces.\n\nMorgan fell to her knees and pushed. The drug that Gregory had poured down her throat numbed her, and she fumbled clumsily for anything, anything to stop this.\n\nShe felt something responding. Something whispering and ghostly, and with an effort that made her gasp and reel, she caught hold of a thin trickle of power, shaped it, and thrust it at the bird hurtling down toward Jess's unprotected head.\n\nIt veered. It spread its wings and flapped to gain altitude. It circled, flitting among its diving fellows. She saw the script now. It was blindingly simple.\n\nShe changed one symbol, and the bird banked, gained speed, and folded its wings.\n\nIt ripped through the golden cloth that covered the Curia's box and buried its knife-sharp beak into Gregory's ear, all the way to his brain. She knew he'd lacked the imagination to build that barrier in a circle. He only saw a shield.\n\nAnd now he staggered, screaming, flailing, and she grabbed for another bird. Another. As the Curia members scrambled out of the way, Gregory tried to protect himself, but it was too late, far too late, and when the last bird arrowed into his eye, he slumped back down to his chair in a fluttering heap of red robes.\n\nIt felt like someone had opened the door of a cell in her mind, and she pulled in a deep, clean breath as the numbness and fog rolled away. The world exploded into light and fire and power.\n\nAnd the birds began to fall, smashing down without direction.\n\nDead. Thousands, hitting the sand, but not another one hitting the people standing in the arena.\n\nShe felt the paths inside her, the ones Eskander had so carefully recovered, scorch in painful streaks. Too much. She'd just wielded more power than anyone should at once, and when she tried to reach to stop the rank of Egyptian gods that stalked from the tunnels into the arena, each four times the height of a human... she failed. Her powers slid off them like oil from water, and she felt a wave of pain and nausea send her reeling to her knees.\n\n\"Morgan?\" Khalila was beside her.\n\n\"I can't,\" she gasped. \"I can't!\"\n\nKhalila took Jess's sidearm from his holster and began to fire at the goddess Bast, who approached them with relentless speed, crushing the lifeless automata birds under its feet. It wouldn't help, Morgan wanted to tell her. It would take power greater than hers to stop even one of these things.\n\n\"Scatter!\" she heard Santi yell, and the High Garda troops exploded into motion, weaving between and around the gods. Some were caught. The giant figure of Isis swept up a soldier in its hand and crushed him, then reached for another.\n\nThe Scholars and librarians had come to their feet now, and the Archivist was shouting something and pointing at Morgan, specifically at Morgan. Jess shoved her behind him as Bast kept coming. \"Khalila! Take her!\" he shouted, and Khalila tried, but Morgan's legs had gone numb now, and she couldn't run.\n\nThe three of them fell under the shadow of the god. Its cat face showed no emotion as it raised a flail; it was razor sharp and would cut them apart with one blow. Khalila continued to fire, though she must have known it was useless.\n\nJess wouldn't leave.\n\nHe wouldn't leave.\n\nAnd that was the moment she knew, after all her doubts and worries, that what she felt for him was love, because the strength of it took her breath away. She reached for him, and he took her hand and stepped back beside her. Khalila held her other hand. None of them spoke, because there wasn't any need. They'll remember how we die, Morgan thought. Maybe our fate isn't to change the Library. Maybe it's to die to show them how to continue.\n\nShe was almost, almost at peace with that... and then she heard shouts coming from the stands, from the Scholars and librarians, and she looked past the automaton and saw that a new column of people had walked into the arena, this time from the door that had admitted the gods.\n\nEskander, in a blindingly white Obscurist robe, led his people into the arena, just as he'd led them out of the Iron Tower, and next to him, looking entirely different from the smiling, happy woman Morgan knew, was Annis.\n\nEskander raised his hands, and the Obscurists raised theirs, and Morgan felt the breathtaking rush of power blast through the arena. The gods swayed, slowed, and turned toward the Obscurists.\n\nAnd then, one by one, they knelt.\n\nIt wasn't one man's power, Morgan realized. It was all of them, blending and combining into an unstoppable flood. No wonder the Obscurists had been penned up in the Iron Tower, where the walls muted and confined them.\n\nTogether, and free, they were far more dangerous than anyone could have known. A dying breed, but a powerful one to the last.\n\nOne god didn't kneel. Just one.\n\nHorus.\n\nIt stalked toward the Obscurists, and some of them broke and ran. Then more, as the automaton approached and raised its huge sword, capable of mowing all of them down.\n\nBut some stayed, and Eskander directed their power, amplified it, and Horus began to slow.\n\nBut it didn't stop.\n\n\"Fire!\" Santi shouted, and all around the arena, Anit's people and Santi's company poured bullets into the machine. The golden skin began to dent, but it wasn't enough.\n\nNone of it would be enough.\n\n\"Jess!\"\n\nThomas's voice rang across the amphitheater, and for the first time, Morgan realized with a shock that the young man was down, one leg at an ugly, broken angle. But he heaved himself up to a sitting position, and with all the strength in his upper body, he threw the Ray of Apollo toward them.\n\nToward Jess, who dropped his rifle, lunged, caught the falling weapon, and came up on one knee to aim and fire.\n\nHe cut Horus in half, a long, slanting cut from left shoulder to right hip, and the top half of the god slipped sideways, tumbled, and rolled on the sand.\n\nDead.\n\nThe Archivist and the Curia stood silently now. Shocked, and only just realizing how badly this trap had gone for them. Around the arena, automata raced from opening tunnels: Spartans armed with spears. Lions. Sphinxes, large and small. All deadly, all intent on killing.\n\nBut they're losing, Morgan thought. She didn't take her gaze from the Archivist as Jess stood and raised that Ray of Apollo again. The shield that had protected him had died with Gregory, and she doubted it would have stopped Thomas's solid light... but when Jess fired, nothing happened.\n\nThe weapon was empty of power.\n\nHe dropped it, grabbed his rifle, and fired once, but he missed as the Archivist finally realized his danger and raced for an exit.\n\n\"Stop them!\" Shouts went up, from both Santi and Anit, but also from Scholars who were coming to the railings and vaulting down into the arena. Joining them. Scholars were joining them!\n\nMorgan felt tears burn her eyes as she watched the Archivist and his Curia driven together into the center of their golden box by a ring of Scholars, High Garda soldiers, thieves. Santi's troops were quickly and competently destroying the automata; there were losses, but fewer and fewer. A lion bounded at them, and Khalila moved in front of it, stepped under the slashing paws, and turned it off with a single, accurate slap of her hand.\n\nKhalila climbed up onto the back of the thing, balanced on the snarling head, and shouted at Santi. \"Captain! Don't kill them!\"\n\nSanti relayed the order to his people, and when Anit's thieves didn't seem inclined to obey, they were thrown out of the box back to the arena with quick, efficient violence. The alliance, it seemed, was coming to an end.\n\nThat was when she saw Jess climbing into the box.\n\nNo, it wasn't Jess. Jess was here, with her.\n\nIt was his twin.\n\nBrendan."
            },
            {
                "title": "JESS",
                "text": "Jess saw his twin climb the railings, but he didn't have time to wonder why; he was too busy slipping under the spear of a Spartan and finding the switch to stop the thing. It had already killed a few people, by the smears of blood on it, and he felt a surge of bitter triumph as it froze in its crouching lunge.\n\nThen he looked for Brendan.\n\nHis brother avoided Lieutenant Botha's outstretched hand and went straight for the Archivist.\n\nYes, Jess thought. Kill him. As long as the Archivist lived, there wouldn't be peace here, or progress. Killing Gregory had been a good start, but only a start. He knew Khalila didn't approve, and likely Wolfe wouldn't either... but he'd watched Neksa die.\n\nFitting, that his brother should be the one to end this.\n\nHe saw a shadow behind Brendan, and then as his brother grabbed for the Archivist, he saw his twin stumble.\n\nHe felt the knife, somehow. Its phantom shadow slid into his back, and he felt its cold presence tear his heart in two.\n\nNo. NO!\n\nJess must have shouted it, must have screamed, but he didn't hear himself doing it; he was too far away to get to his brother, but he ran, dodging the claws and spears of automata, launching himself up to grab the railing, and when he landed on the floor of the box, the Archivist was being pushed toward an exit that had opened in the floor. A trapdoor.\n\nThe black shadow was a High Garda uniform without insignia, and she was hurrying the old man into the escape hatch. As she looked back, her gaze caught Jess's.\n\nGreen eyes. A sharp, pale face.\n\nIn her hand, a bloody dagger.\n\nZara.\n\nAnit lunged for the opening, but it slammed shut before she could reach it. Santi leaped over Gregory's fallen body and reached the trapdoor a second later, but it was seamless from this side.\n\n\"Find the exit!\" Santi shouted. He'd gone sickly pallid, and Jess knew he'd seen her, too.\n\nZara Cole had betrayed all of them.\n\nZara Cole had murdered his brother.\n\nJess didn't watch the rest. He grabbed Brendan from where he'd fallen. His twin was still breathing, but his eyes were already blind and wide, as if he were trapped in a dark, dark room searching for an exit.\n\n\"Jess?\" he whispered. \"Jess?\"\n\n\"I'm here, Brother,\" he said, and grabbed Brendan's trembling hand. No blood on Brendan's front. The wound was in the back, invisible. Deep. Deadly. \"Medica! I need a Medica!\"\n\n\"Jess,\" Brendan gasped. Blood on his lips. Foaming from his mouth. \"Jess, tell Da\u2014\"\n\nAnd then he was gone. Just... gone. Brendan lay heavy in his arms, and just a moment ago, seconds ago, he had been vital and alive and his brother.\n\n\"Brendan!\" Anit was by him now. And Santi. Santi tried to take his brother away, and he shoved the man backward, hard.\n\n\"Leave him alone!\" Jess shouted. \"Get me a Medica!\"\n\n\"It's no use, son.\" That was Scholar Wolfe, grim and bloodstained and holding one arm at an awkward angle, but there was bitter compassion in his eyes. \"Jess, a Medica can't save him. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I don't want your sympathy. I want a Medica!\"\n\n\"Jess.\" Morgan's hands fitted themselves to his cheeks and made him turn toward her. She looked exhausted, bloody, and her face was wet with tears. \"Jess, he's gone. He's gone.\"\n\nIt wasn't true until he let Scholar Wolfe take the weight of his brother in his arms, and then he knew it was true, because Brendan had never been so limp, so quiet, so empty.\n\n\"She killed him,\" Jess said, and swallowed. \"Zara killed him.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Wolfe said. \"We'll find them. I swear that to you.\"\n\nJess collapsed into a seat\u2014the Archivist's seat, he realized\u2014and looked down at the blood that covered his chest. Morgan was with him, but he felt very, very alone.\n\nTell Da...\n\nThere was nothing to tell his father. Nothing at all.\n\nHe'd succeeded in what he'd come here to do.\n\nBut he'd failed at the one thing that mattered."
            },
            {
                "title": "KHALILA",
                "text": "The amphitheater was a roaring sea of confusion. Only a few automata still roamed the sands, and they were being dealt with; Khalila forced herself to put the death and the loss aside and take stock of what was around her.\n\nSomeone needed to take control of this. If no one did, she thought, there would be nothing left of the Great Library by sunset, and Alexandria would be easy prey for what was coming.\n\nShe found the tall Obscurist in white robes\u2014stained with blood and dirt now\u2014and shouted, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Eskander,\" he shouted back. \"Where's the Archivist?\"\n\n\"Gone! Can you quiet this crowd?\"\n\n\"I'm not a magician. I'm an Obscurist.\"\n\nHe was, she thought, a great deal more than that, but she didn't say it. She said, \"Then can you make me heard? To all of them?\"\n\nThe red-haired woman standing beside him unsnapped a leather case on her belt, took out pen and paper, and sketched out a quick series of symbols. She handed it to him. He nodded, pressed his finger to the paper, and said to Khalila, \"Talk. They'll hear you. Whether they pay attention or not is your affair.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath and ran to the same lion she'd climbed before. It felt hot under her shoes, and she realized she was cold now, even in the heat of the baking sun. Panic raced through her, and then it was gone.\n\n\"Scholars! Librarians! Listen to me!\"\n\nThe roar faded, purely from surprise, she thought, and she saw faces turning toward her up in the stands. She wondered what they saw: a slight young woman in a bloodstained robe and hijab? A fellow Scholar? She had no way of knowing. But she continued. There was no choice.\n\n\"You were brought here to see the Archivist's enemies destroyed,\" she said. Her voice rang from the stone, echoed, and it sounded like it belonged to someone else. Someone with real power. \"You were to be witness to his power and his triumph. But that is not our Library. That is not our spirit, or our soul, or our purpose. We are not here to be powerful. We are here to protect and spread knowledge. The Library has survived tyrants and kings before, and we stand here today together, to say we are not this. Not kings. Not tyrants. Not rulers. We serve.\"\n\nShe had their attention. No one moved. No one spoke. The last automaton had frozen in place.\n\n\"The Archivist made us into an ugly thing,\" she said. \"A thing that used fear to control the world. But we are not what he made us. We are more. We stand, unafraid. And together. Because we are the Great Library!\"\n\nThe shout came back from thousands of them. Scholars. Librarians. Obscurists. Soldiers. It echoed from stones that had seen death and destruction, beauty and grace.\n\n\"We endure,\" she said. \"And now we will choose a new Curia, a new Archivist, and we will bring our light back to a world we left in darkness. Do you agree?\"\n\nThe shout was a full roar now.\n\nKhalila Seif lowered her head and listened to the Great Library being reborn. Fragile, hopeful, perhaps too innocent to survive in this changing world.\n\nBut new.\n\n\"Then each of the specialties, gather. Elect your new leaders to come forward. And let a new Archivist be chosen to lead us before we leave this place today.\"\n\nShe hopped down from the lion and felt a kind of wave wash over her; when she reached Eskander, he said, \"I stopped the amplification. You can speak normally.\"\n\nHer throat felt oddly raw and dry. She coughed, and as she caught her breath, the red-haired woman pressed a metal flask into her hand. It contained water, thank Allah, and she gulped thirstily. \"Fine speech,\" the woman said. \"I don't think the Obscurists need a meeting to know that the man who brought us here is our Obscurist Magnus, like it or not.\"\n\n\"Not,\" Eskander said. \"But I will accept until someone better comes.\"\n\nKhalila studied him for a moment and then said, \"You seem familiar, sir.\"\n\nHe ignored her and walked away, and as he came face-to-face with Scholar Wolfe, she realized who he was.\n\nJess had lost his family today. And Wolfe had found his.\n\nMy father. Uncle. My brothers! Khalila gasped and flinched at her horrible thoughtlessness; she raced to find Santi, who was having his wounds treated by a silent Medica. \"The prisoners!\" she said. \"Where are they?\"\n\n\"I've sent the Blue Dogs to free them,\" Santi said. \"They were never taken out of their cells. It was all a feint, to get us here. And it worked.\"\n\n\"Not for the Archivist.\"\n\n\"Our success may be temporary. He's alive. And he's got plenty of allies willing to help him take back his throne. Let's not forget the Spanish will be coming; they're no longer bound by a treaty, and though they might claim to be coming to protect us, once they get a foothold, the Library will never be independent again. The Burners will see us as vulnerable. God knows who else.\" He looked past her, to where Wolfe and Eskander were talking quietly. \"But I suppose this will do, for today.\"\n\n\"It will have to,\" she agreed.\n\n\"You don't have a specialty yet, do you?\"\n\nIt seemed an odd question. She shook her head. \"I left before I chose one.\"\n\n\"Maybe one's chosen you,\" Santi told her. \"You were born for this, Khalila.\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"To lead,\" he said.\n\nShe laughed, half in horror. \"I'm no one. There are Scholars far older and wiser than I am.\"\n\n\"That's true. But soon enough, I think you'll be rising up among them.\" Santi closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. \"I'm proud of all of you. But especially of you.\"\n\nShe didn't know what to say to that. Thank you seemed too little. Before she could find the words, he heaved a sigh and stood up, to the Medica's evident annoyance. \"Come on, then,\" he said. \"We have work to do. Whatever happens tomorrow, we're a wounded beast in a world full of wolves. And we had better learn to use our teeth before it's too late.\"\n\nShe followed Captain Santi into the crowds, to begin the hardest work of all.\n\nSurvival."
            },
            {
                "title": "EPHEMERA",
                "text": "Text of a letter from King Ram\u00f3n Alfonse of Spain to the Archivist of the Great Library of Alexandria. Available in the Codex:\n\n\u2002Respectful greetings to the new Archivist of the Great Library. Long may you hold the keys of this great and ancient institution and uphold its true purpose throughout the world.\n\n\u2002However, I remain concerned that the Great Library stands in such peril and turmoil, given the rebellion of the former Archivist and one-third of the High Garda and a full five hundred of its Elites. Please do not bother to deny these facts; I am well aware of what occurs within the city, and indeed within the Serapeum itself.\n\n\u2002Your Curia is new and untried. Your Obscurists are demanding new freedoms in exchange for operation of the most basic of services and causing great disruption in what we have come to depend on out in the world.\n\n\u2002One can only assume, now, that your weakness leaves the greatest treasures in the world\u2014your Archives\u2014to the strongest and fastest at your gates. And that is unacceptable to those who, like you, value and wish to preserve such knowledge from destruction.\n\n\u2002To that end, the combined navies of Spain, Portugal, the American colonies, Russia, and Japan sail for your port, and our forces will come to you as friends, not as conquerors. I pray you stand down your armies and allow us entry.\n\n\u2002If not, I pray for us all, and the dark days to come."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Dark Archive",
        "author": "Genevieve Cogman",
        "genres": [
            "mystery",
            "steampunk"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "The Invisible Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\u2002My dear Irene,\n\n\u2002What on earth is going on? You've reported kidnap and even assassination attempts? You've done your best to make them sound inconsequential, but having half a dozen werewolves try to snatch you out of your cab is not normal. Nor \u2013 whatever your friend the detective says \u2013 is an attempt to drug and abduct you over supper. His perspective on the subject is severely biased. I'm sure these things happen to him all the time. And while Prince Kai may also shrug at assassination attempts, his family would take a far more serious view.\n\n\u2002Irene, you simply can't treat these things as normal. I realize the last year or so has been more than a little stressful. However, you're getting blas\u00e9 and that's dangerous. I would suggest you take a vacation \u2013 but at the moment you're very close to being essential, and handling some very important problems on behalf of the Library. (Don't get smug. Nobody's totally essential.) If these attacks are due to criminal elements within Vale's homeworld, then get Vale to sort them out. Or if they're being organized by someone from outside your posting \u2013 by Fae or dragon \u2013 then get more information, and fast.\n\n\u2002Speaking of very important problems, your request to take on a Fae apprentice has caused some controversy and has led to a great deal of discussion. I know it was to get the Fae to commit fully to our peace treaty, but some Librarians still don't like it.\n\n\u2002It won't surprise you to know that we have had previous attempts at this. They all failed. We have no record of a Fae ever managing to enter the Library \u2013 meaning that no Fae has ever managed to become a Librarian. In addition, we both know that the Fae aren't interested in the training you'd offer their candidate (researching, filing, subterfuge, theft et cetera). They want one of their kind to have access to the Library. (Despite the peace treaty between them, us and the dragons, everyone's still looking for advantages.) But equally, a Fae loyal to the Library and indisputably on our side would be an advantage for us.\n\n\u2002As Melusine has pointed out repeatedly, as head of internal security, one of our greatest strengths is our privacy. Fae can't enter the Library at all. Dragons can only enter if brought in by a Librarian. This has helped keep us safe from invasion in the past. If you \u2013 somehow \u2013 manage to get a Fae in here, you'll be setting a precedent which will change our security protocols forever. And if Fae can enter the Library, then what about other creatures of chaos? What about Alberich? He was so chaos-contaminated that he might as well have been Fae.\n\n\u2002By now you're wondering what we actually decided about your apprentice. It was nearly sent back to committee for another discussion, with a due date of this time next year. However, I'm glad to say that we do have an answer. Or at least a partial answer.\n\n\u2002You may take this response back to the Fae: The elder Librarians have no record of any Fae entering the Library or taking oaths as a Librarian. However, the Librarian Irene can accept a Fae apprentice for a trial period if the apprentice sincerely wishes to become a Librarian. Irene shall then do her best to help this apprentice enter the Library. If this proves impossible after two years, then we will negotiate the situation further. They'll probably want to push the 'two years'. You have permission to let yourself be argued up to five years if necessary. Do your best to stick to two, though.\n\n\u2002Unfortunately, we'll be thoroughly bound by this agreement, without wiggle room. We're going to have to get a Fae into the Library (posing a security risk to us), or provide unarguable reasons why we can't. And if we don't succeed, the Fae will believe we won't do it, rather than can't do it. It's what you call a lose\u2013lose situation. I'm not saying this is treaty-breaking stuff, but it will tarnish their opinion of us and make negotiating future concessions that much more difficult. Blame yourself, Irene: you've acquired a reputation as the Librarian who can do anything!\n\n\u2002I'll have someone bring you our research on the subject of Fae, Entering Library, Failure to. It may give you some ideas of where to start, or at least what not to repeat. (Don't try to channel lightning from a thunderstorm. That always goes wrong. Yes, personal experience.)\n\n\u2002As when you took Kai as our first dragon apprentice, I need to warn you: absolutely no harm must come to our up-and-coming Fae apprentice. (Do give my regards to Kai, by the way. How's he doing?) If she gets damaged in any way, you'll have to answer for it. Keep us informed, especially if problems arise.\n\n\u2002Looking back at this letter, I may seem overly negative. What you're about to try may be a great step forward, and I appreciate that. But progress can lead to danger too. Please be careful. I do worry about you, you know. (And do something about those kidnappings!)\n\n\u2002With affection and concern,\n\n\u2002Coppelia\n\n\u2002Senior Librarian\n\n\u2002PS \u2013 Yes, the cough is getting better. Stop asking about it."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "The ether-lamps illuminated the wide tunnel with harsh brightness. Irene estimated that they were about two hundred and fifty feet beneath the English Channel at this point, close to the coast of Guernsey. Fans set at regular intervals in the walls churned the stale air with their burnished brass blades, providing a soft background purr of sound. This was comforting in the otherwise eerie silence. Irene Winters, Librarian and spy, found herself perversely wondering who kept this tunnel dusted. And who polished the brass? But letting herself be distracted was, she recognized, an indication of how nervous she was at being here. She was capable of many things, but she couldn't hold back the sea or save them from an earthquake.\n\nThere was a heavy brass airlock at the end of the passage, with overlapping petals of iron and glass set into its roughly circular frame. A control pad with a recessed wheel and two huge levers were embedded in the wall by its side. This Victorian technology was perfectly appropriate, though, given that Irene was on assignment in a Victorian-era world. Her companion, Vale \u2013 private detective and the person who'd requested her help down here \u2013 was a native inhabitant. But their dapper clothing had been designed for London society, rather than tunnels under the sea. Irene eyed Vale's top hat and suit wryly as she considered her own incongruous hat and veil.\n\n'Is there some reason why this document's been sent through private diplomatic channels, rather than just in the mail? Why did we have to come here to collect it?' she asked, feeling suddenly claustrophobic. Vale had been silent for most of their walk down the tunnel \u2013 a brooding, thoughtful silence which didn't welcome conversation. But the time had come for more information. After all, she thought with some irritation, she was doing him a favour by accompanying him. The four of them \u2013 her, the dragon prince Kai, her new apprentice Catherine and Vale \u2013 had come here to Guernsey so that Irene could collect a very specific book for the Library. She'd also wanted to get them away from the recent rash of attacks targeting not only her, but her companions. After they'd arrived, Vale had asked Irene to come on this little subterranean excursion with him. She'd agreed, on condition that they'd get back in time for the book handover. She'd left Kai and Catherine together for some tea, cake and quality conversation. 'I didn't ask earlier in case anyone was listening, but surely down here...'\n\nVale tapped the paved floor thoughtfully with his cane \u2013 which, Irene knew, was an electrified swordstick. It was the sort of equipment that Vale, as the greatest detective in London, found useful. When dealing with criminals, werewolves, vampires, cultists and spies, a prudent man took what precautions he could. 'I know I was less than forthcoming earlier, Winters. Your new student places me in a difficult position. Catherine is your student and therefore loyal to your Library, one hopes. But she is also Fae, and the niece of Lord Silver. He might be the ambassador from Liechtenstein to the British Empire, but he's also its spymaster in London and highly untrustworthy besides. The risk of Catherine passing information to him, deliberately or otherwise, is far too high. I simply can't take chances on this job.'\n\n'I see your point,' Irene admitted. 'But you must have noticed how much she dislikes her uncle.'\n\n'Precisely the attitude I would cultivate if I were her and wanted to convince you I had no ulterior motives,' Vale replied. He spun the wheel like the tumblers of a safe.\n\nIrene couldn't argue with that. 'Very well,' she said. 'So, since we're now completely alone, and unlikely to be overheard... What can you tell me? I should have known you had a motive for coming along, rather than just avoiding our mysterious antagonists.' She softened her words with a smile. Heaven knew she owed him a few favours.\n\n'I'd appreciate your patience for just a little longer, as I would like you to approach the situation with an unbiased mind,' Vale answered. He pulled the nearby lever down with a clang, and the airlock irised open, metal and glass petals retracting into the wall. 'When I show you the document\u2014'\n\nThey both fell silent. The air beyond smelled of disinfectant \u2013 but below that was the tang of fresh blood.\n\nImmediately on the alert, Irene flattened herself against the tunnel wall, peering through the opening. Vale did the same, their conversation forgotten. The corridor beyond opened into a large room filled with mysterious machinery and radar equipment.\n\nThere was still no sound except for the slow turning of the fans.\n\nVale frowned. He stepped through the airlock, cane ready in his hand. Irene followed a couple of steps behind. She didn't have a weapon on her, apart from a small knife for emergencies. But she did have the Language, a Librarian's most powerful instrument. With it, she could command reality with a single word, and that was dangerous enough.\n\nThe chamber appeared to be some sort of control room. Heavy steel and brass switches and toggles were embedded in panels that stretched from floor to ceiling. She could also see lengths of cabling which vanished into ducts in the walls behind. On the primitive radar viewing screens, green circles fluoresced against dark backgrounds. But no targets had been identified \u2013 not that she knew what they were tracking. Two rickety metal chairs were positioned in front of the most important-looking controls, but both stood empty.\n\n'Stand where you are, Winters,' Vale said. 'Don't disturb anything.' He began to search the room methodically, examining the equipment. He paid particular attention to the other two passageways out of the room \u2013 also sealed with airlocks, though without any security locks of the sort that had blocked their entrance.\n\n'Were you expecting to meet your contact here?' Irene asked.\n\n'Yes. This Guernsey monitoring station has a duty staff of six men. There should be two on duty here.' Vale went down on one knee to check something. 'And an additional five men somewhere within this complex. I happen to know a submarine is currently moored alongside, and the crew should have disembarked here.'\n\n'And the only route in by land was the one we came through?'\n\n'Indeed. And Dickson up on the surface, in the St Peter Port office, signalled them when we were about to come down. He received authorization for us to descend. That was only twenty minutes ago.'\n\nA chill ran up Irene's spine. Someone had known she and Vale would be here \u2013 trapped underground. And they'd been met by the smell of blood and the absence of allies. She refused to believe this was a coincidence, given their past few weeks. 'This doesn't look good for us or the staff on this station. But who is the target here?' she wondered aloud.\n\n'It is imperative that I find my contact \u2013 and the document I'm here to collect. But let us exercise extreme caution.' Vale rose to his feet. 'The airlock on the right goes to the submarine dock, and the other one leads to the living quarters. I can perceive nothing from the clues here, except that at least one man fell to the ground and suffered a minor injury. There are also some curious scratches, which might or might not be innocent... This floor is not conducive to the preservation of evidence.'\n\n'Let's block off the living quarters then, just in case. The last thing we want is an inconvenient ambush from that direction. Or for an aggressor to make an escape.' Irene crossed to the airlock and placed her hand on the opening mechanism. 'Lever which I am touching, bend sideways and out of true.'\n\nThe heavy brass lever warped until she was sure no one \u2013 no one human, anyway \u2013 would have the strength to straighten it, and another use of the Language would be needed to reopen it. She then listened at the airlock for a moment, but could hear nothing from the other side \u2013 no shouts from trapped enemies, no cries for help... no unspeakable slithering. She'd seen a lot in her line of work.\n\n'Good work, Winters.' Vale paused at the other airlock. 'I'll open this one. Be ready for anything.'\n\nHe pulled the lever, the airlock opened \u2013 and three men came bursting through. After anticipating everything and nothing, Irene was almost relieved at this frontal assault. They were moving jerkily, but with unexpected speed and ferocity. Irene stuck her foot out, tripping the beefiest one of their number. He sprawled on the floor and writhed unnaturally, like a broken toy. But the other two turned to face them.\n\nTheir aggressors both wore naval uniform, as did the man on the floor. This close, Irene could see the ones facing them had smears of blood on their collars. Even more worryingly, silvery threads glittered in their irises and their faces displayed an inhuman slackness. Their mouths hung open and their heads were cocked oddly, like marionettes. One held a crowbar, and though the other was unarmed, his huge hands were clenched into fists, ready to attack.\n\nIn the distance, Irene could hear the sound of running feet. Reinforcements? Or more 'marionettes'? She had to assume the worst. She glimpsed Vale raising his cane, but her attention was on the man lunging at her. With surprising speed, his hands went for her throat. She dodged and let him collide with the wall \u2013 but it hardly slowed him. He rose and barrelled towards her again, still moving like a puppet with hands outstretched. As she backed away, she saw a glint of metal at his throat. Something that bulged under the concealing fabric of his collar... and moved.\n\nTime to finish this. 'Uniform trousers, fall and hobble your wearers!' she ordered.\n\nThe two men crashed to their knees, joining their companion on the floor. Irene noted that none of the three were reacting with the modesty one might expect at such an exposure. And Victorians did have a reputation for prudishness. They merely thrashed in an effort to regain their feet. Even the one who went in for purple silk underwear.\n\nVale's erstwhile opponent was already rising, so Vale tapped him with his cane. There was a flash of electricity and the man screamed in pain, his back arching, before finally collapsing to lie motionless. Something rippled around the back of his neck, wriggling under his collar like a snake. Irene took a hasty step back.\n\n'What the devil is that? Can you do something about it?' Vale asked, as he delivered shocks to the other two men. Both had shed the handicap of their trousers and were jerking to their feet.\n\n'Not without knowing what \"it\" is,' Irene answered. The Language was a powerful tool, but to use it she needed the correct words. 'Mysterious object wriggling under that man's clothing' was insufficiently precise, as her mentor Coppelia might have put it. Irene smothered a smile, feeling a little giddy as the adrenalin of the fight faded. 'But at least electricity seems to work.'\n\n'Indeed.' Vale was standing over the writhing men. 'But my cane has a limited charge,' he noted, as the screaming died away.\n\n'Airlocks, shut,' Irene ordered. As the remaining airlocks closed, blocking any further attacks, she leaned forward to look at the unconscious men. Curiosity was prompting her to unbutton their collars to investigate what she'd seen, but her imagination was painting a vivid picture of something horrific. Irene wasn't familiar with all the magical monstrosities that Vale's world might or might not contain. Vampires and werewolves she knew about, but what else might there be? She couldn't see enough...\n\n'Uniform jacket on the grey-haired man, unbutton and open,' she ordered.\n\nThe jacket obeyed, peeling back like wrapping paper. The man's shirt was stained with fresh blood. The thing that moved underneath it was two feet long, writhing and twisting like a length of cable.\n\n'Note the fresh wound on his neck,' Vale said quietly. 'He appears otherwise uninjured. I fear it will not emerge on its own, whatever it is. You will need to undress him further.'\n\nIrene nodded. Such instructions from the upright Vale would be amusing \u2013 under other circumstances. 'Shirt on the grey-haired man, unbutton and open.'\n\nAs the buttons slid from their holes and the shirt-front parted, there was a flash of gleaming metal. Something leapt at her, and Irene took in burning blue eyes and dripping blood. She threw herself backwards, dropping under the creature as it sailed over her head. Vale's cane flashed out to intercept, but missed. The creature curved through the air before landing on the floor, skittering across it. It moved, Irene thought, like a woodlouse rather than a snake \u2013 could there be claws or legs underneath it?\n\nMore to the point, how did she stop it with the Language? What should she call it \u2013 'metal contraption'? But that would shut down all the equipment in the room. 'Vale!' she shouted. 'Do you know what that thing is?'\n\n'No, but don't let it get into the air ducts!' Vale answered. He advanced on the creature, his cane ready.\n\n'Keep it busy.' Irene edged sideways and picked up a nearby stool. She glanced back at the other two men; but no more creatures had emerged.\n\nThe creature scuttled along the floor, hugging the wall and trying but failing to writhe into the machinery. Fortunately the panels were all well-sealed. Then it darted at Vale in a horrifyingly fluid rush of speed.\n\nIrene took advantage of the creature's focus on Vale to craft a swift sentence. 'Stool that I'm touching, pin down the moving mechanical creature,' she ordered in the Language.\n\nThe stool tore itself out of Irene's hand, upended itself and slammed into the creature, holding it in place with the seat. Irene rubbed her forehead, wincing at a momentary pain. While it hadn't been a major use of the Language, it was imprecise and had drained her strength. The creature squirmed under the stool, metal legs scraping manically against the floor and leaving long scratches.\n\n'All right,' she said. 'What do you make of it?'\n\nVale knelt down to inspect it, as thuds came from the blocked airlock door. Irene's earlier work was successfully blocking their entry \u2013 for now. 'Interesting,' he said, ignoring the noise. 'I believe I do know what this is. It's rather more advanced than reports I've read, though.'\n\n'Is it a device that controls human victims by invading their nervous systems?' Irene 'guessed'.\n\nVale gave her a hard stare. 'Have you been reading my correspondence again, Winters?'\n\n'Now why would I do that?' she dissembled.\n\nVale's eyes narrowed, but he eventually relented. 'Yes \u2013 this contraption appears to be derived from the work of Doctor Brabasmus. But it is self-propelled... and rather larger than the doctor's original designs for cerebral controllers. Those were barely the size of a scarab, and lodged at the back of the neck.'\n\n'What happened to the doctor?'\n\n'Murdered a couple of months ago, and his laboratory looted.' Vale frowned. 'Now, what did he call them?'\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, Irene saw a second creature's head emerge from the neck of its host's jacket. 'Vale,' she said quietly, her eyes flicking towards the creature.\n\nVale's hand tightened on his cane. 'Brabasmiators, that was it,' he murmured.\n\nIrene froze. That wasn't even good English. Why did scientists have to create their own words, rather than use perfectly good existing ones? Did nobody ever think of the poor translators? In desperation she grasped for Vale's earlier description. 'Cerebral controllers, deactivate!'\n\nThe light vanished from the new creature's eyes, and it and the one beneath the stool went limp. A third one stopped its disquieting wriggling under its host's clothing. Irene gave a sigh of relief.\n\nVale checked for a pulse on the nearest man's neck, then the other two, and shook his head. He rose, dusting his hands off. 'We have no way of knowing how many of the other men on this station are similarly controlled. Inconvenient.'\n\n'Just how important is this document?' Irene asked. 'What aren't you telling me?'\n\n'Under the circumstances, my hopes of you viewing it without prior bias are somewhat pointless. I believe there is a master criminal at large in London, Winters, a manipulator and emperor of crime. I also believe that he is responsible for the recent kidnapping attempts on you, the bullet which nearly hit Strongrock, the stabbing of Madame Sterrington... Lord Silver isn't the only foreign spy in London. I was informed that the French Secret Service had obtained some valuable information on this mastermind: a letter which named very interesting names. Our agents had intercepted it and brought it here.' His eyes glittered almost feverishly. 'This is our chance at some proof, Winters, finally. This is my adversary as much as yours. He is striking at all my contacts, all my... friends. But I need evidence.'\n\n'I see,' Irene said slowly. It made sense that Vale would be invested in this. She didn't voice her deeper concerns, though. In high-chaos worlds, stories and their tropes had a tendency to come true \u2013 for both good tales and bad ones. Now London's greatest detective had found a worthy adversary, a master criminal. If this were a story, the two of them would now be bound together \u2013 as closely as lovers \u2013 until one or the other was dead. She shivered. 'Did you know about this before or after you accepted my invitation to Guernsey?'\n\n'Know about what?' Vale asked, scrutinizing the scratch marks on the floor.\n\n'The evidence about the \"emperor of crime\".' Irene was deeply, deeply irritated that Vale hadn't mentioned these theories earlier, but unfortunately it was true to his character. He was the sort of person \u2013 the sort of detective \u2013 who wouldn't mention his theories until he had evidence to back them up. Vale had Fae blood somewhere in his family tree, and at times he strayed regrettably close to the archetype of the Great Detective \u2013 for worse as well as for better.\n\n'Shortly after you planned to visit Guernsey and I agreed to accompany you.' He turned to give her the full focus of his attention. 'You believe it's a trap?'\n\n'Either that, or our timing is extraordinarily unfortunate.' Irene nodded at the corpses. 'What are the odds that we'd walk in just at the moment when they've been controlled and are attempting to kill intruders?'\n\n'If so, then we shouldn't remain here any longer than necessary.' He experimentally flicked a couple of switches and scrutinized one of the viewscreens. 'The submarine is still docked here. Be ready with that Language of yours, Winters. I have no desire to find out first-hand what it feels like to be controlled by one of those creatures. You'll have noticed the scratches on the floor come from the direction of the submarine airlock.'\n\nIrene nodded and stepped back, willing to let Vale take the lead \u2013 he was the one with the electric swordstick, after all. She was an agent of the Library, an interdimensional organization that collected books to preserve the balance of worlds. As such, she could use the Language to force reality to her will. But only if she wasn't distracted by cerebral controllers.\n\nHowever, her stomach remained knotted with tension. If this was a trap, every moment they were down here was a further risk. And they were under the sea here. Even if Kai \u2013 dragon prince, colleague, friend and lover \u2013 had a natural affinity for water and mastery over it, she didn't. Being unable to speak due to drowning could be a great drawback when attempting to use the Language. This all made it an excellent location for an ambush...\n\nOf course. 'Wait,' she said. 'What aren't we noticing?'\n\n'Clarify, Winters,' Vale said impatiently.\n\n'We come down here. We're attacked. Our first impulse, so we could get out as quickly as possible, would be to go directly to the submarine to collect the letter. That's where you were supposed to meet your contact. If your reasons for being here have been discovered, are you sure we want to be that predictable?'\n\n'Cogently argued, Winters. Unfortunately, I need that letter.'\n\n'I know,' Irene countered. 'I'm just trying to think like a master criminal.'\n\n'You hardly need to try, Winters.' But there was a certain affection to his words \u2013 he knew all about her frequent book thefts. 'Hmm. My logical next step would be to radio the surface and report the situation. Let us see...'\n\nHe indicated one of the consoles. 'This is the one radio link to the surface. So if I were to think like a master criminal, this is where I would place my trap. Can you use your Language to deactivate any such unpleasant surprises?'\n\nIrene knew her mentor Coppelia would have approved. You only needed to be blas\u00e9 once to be dead. 'All explosive devices or dangerous traps, deactivate,' she ordered.\n\nThere was a tiny but satisfyingly audible click from behind a panel.\n\nIrene and Vale shared a nod. He slid his fingers behind the edging on the right-hand side, pressed two buttons, and the panel swung open. Behind it was a narrow recess, carefully stacked with sticks of dynamite. A wire ran from the small stack, through a tiny hole drilled in the panel and snaked towards the lever that opened the airlock. Positioned on top was a phonograph, loaded with a record and ready to play.\n\nIrene was disturbed. This was very elaborate. First the controlled men, now this dynamite \u2013 what next? 'Those men who attacked us \u2013 in their condition, there's no way they would have had the intellect to set this up.'\n\n'I agree.' Vale switched on the phonograph. 'Let us see who is leaving us mysterious messages.'\n\nA click. The record began to revolve, and the needle dipped to touch it. There was a noise of rustling paper. 'Good evening,' a male voice said. 'Or possibly afternoon. I'm not sure what time it is where you are. But since you are listening to this and not dead, my congratulations to you, Peregrine Vale.'\n\nIrene's fingers bit into her palms hard enough to hurt and the colour drained from her cheeks. She knew that voice. She'd killed its owner. 'Lord Guantes...' she said in horror, staring at Vale. He was Fae \u2013 a manipulator and plotter who'd tried to touch off a war between the Fae and the dragons. That was why she'd killed him. Irene remembered, uncomfortably clearly, the feeling of the knife sliding between his ribs and the blood on her hands. There was no way she could have been mistaken as to his death.\n\n'Of course,' the recording went on, 'like all things in this life, my congratulations are strictly temporary. You have caused me a great deal of inconvenience, and you are about to pay for it. Don't bother looking for that letter, Mr Vale. It has already left the premises. Which is more than you'll do.'\n\nThe blare of an alarm suddenly split the air. Irene spun round, trying to determine where the noise was coming from. Red glass shades slid over the ether-lamps, which flashed in a panic-inducing strobe.\n\n'According to my arrangements, that noise will be the base's self-destruct signal,' Lord Guantes said helpfully. 'I imagine your friends back in the town will have an edifying view of any underwater explosions. Goodbye.' The record clicked off.\n\nThe alarm continued to shriek."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Vale strode to the control panels, flipping switches with the certainty of a man who knew which ones did what. Irene had to admire his thoroughness; very few men would memorize a subterranean base's self-destruct protocols before visiting.\n\nUnfortunately, it didn't pay off.\n\nVale pressed his lips together in what Irene recognized as a sign of extreme bad temper. She decided it was time for her to attempt their salvation. 'Self-destruct system, deactivate!' she ordered the air.\n\nSudden silence fell across the room like a benediction, and the lighting returned to normal.\n\nIrene rubbed her forehead, not sure whether her incoming headache was due to her use of the Language or the alarm. It had been very shrill. 'Your friends back in town, he said. Lord Guantes didn't expect me to be here.'\n\n'Your presence is greatly appreciated,' Vale said. But there was an undertone to his gracious words, something which suggested he felt somehow... cheated?\n\nI've stepped into his private duel with a master criminal, Irene realized. It feels like an intrusion, however much common sense tells him otherwise, and however much he hates the suggestion he might be affected by Fae archetypes.\n\n'Do we need to do anything to make sure that the self-destruct doesn't, well, self-destruct again?' she asked.\n\n'We must assume that the entire control system is compromised.' Vale eyed the panels of switches with irritation. 'And, as you've just demonstrated, Winters, you can deactivate a trap with the Language. But the normal functioning of equipment \u2013 such as the self-destruct switch \u2013 might not seem like a threat. You may not be able to turn it off fast enough next time.' He moved in closer, inspecting the phonograph. 'Yes. There's a wire behind here \u2013 once it finished playing, the stylus lifting off the disc triggered the signal to the self-destruct. He correctly assumed we'd play it to the end.'\n\n'So far he's demonstrated an annoying ability to predict our moves,' Irene muttered.\n\nVale favoured her with a rare smile. 'He didn't predict that I'd ask you to accompany me, Winters, or that you'd agree.'\n\n'Or that I'd leave Kai and Catherine behind,' Irene said, a cold hand closing round her heart. It had seemed safe enough to leave them alone for a short while, but now... 'Vale, we have to get back at once. If Lord Guantes is the one who has been attacking us over the last few weeks, you won't be his only target. And if he's to be believed, your letter isn't here anyway. Are we going to have to use that tunnel, or is there a quicker way out of here?'\n\nAny sensible secret base should have an emergency exit, and Vale seemed to have studied its plans. She had to get back to the surface right now. If Lord Guantes had somehow returned from the grave, then Kai was in great danger. After all, Kai had been Lord Guantes' primary target \u2013 and saving him had been the goal of her Venice mission. It felt so long ago now.\n\nVale frowned. 'There is a quicker way out of here, yes. But, Winters, we absolutely have to check for that letter. The British government is depending on me.'\n\n'The British government can cope with one more would-be crime lord in London,' Irene retorted angrily. 'Besides, Lord Guantes said it was gone! And I need to protect Kai.'\n\n'Strongrock's capable of looking after himself for five minutes,' Vale countered. 'And Lord Guantes may be lying. I simply can't take that chance.' His face was set and expressionless. She knew that he'd analysed how much danger Kai might be in, just as she had. 'I need your help, Winters.'\n\nFor a moment Irene couldn't believe what he was asking. Then practicality cut in, harsh and unwelcome. Vale had a responsibility to the British Empire, even if she didn't \u2013 and this wasn't her world, after all. She knew that if she were to say no, Vale would accept it and show her the emergency exit. Five minutes might make the difference between safety and danger for Kai \u2013 and Catherine, too. But Vale was her friend, and her help might make the difference between his life and death. She couldn't abandon him.\n\nIrene clenched her hands and forced herself to decide. 'All right,' she said. 'But there's no time to waste.'\n\nPrince Kai, the dragons' treaty representative, son of his majesty Ao Guang, King of the Eastern Ocean, once apprentice to Irene Winters and now her lover, but also \u2013 and most importantly \u2013 her friend, looked out of the teashop window. He wished he could somehow erase the street's heavy grey stone buildings so he could see the ocean beyond. Humans called it the English Channel \u2013 if they were English, of course. The French called it La Manche, 'the sleeve', and other nationalities called it something different again. But the sea had its own identity. He could feel its presence, its motion, its long heartbeat. The rolling waves and dragging tides sang in his blood and hummed in his bones, soothing his current irritation until he could almost forget it.\n\nAlmost. It was very hard to ignore the irritation in question, as she was sitting directly opposite him.\n\nCatherine scribbled in her notepad without looking up, the top of her pen jerking enthusiastically with every added underlining or exclamation mark. She'd bisected the table between them with a barricade composed of the teapot and cake-stand, an unofficial declaration that she wasn't interested in conversation. The harsh ether-lights drained the colour from her golden-brown skin and the red from her chestnut hair, and turned her navy coat dull and drab. She was smaller than he was, so the high back and arms of her chair rose around her like walls. She resembled nothing so much as a minor, but still intimidating, enemy force. And she was ensconced on the other side of his table.\n\nThere was no point checking his watch again. It had only been five minutes since the last time. He shook out the local newspaper and skimmed through its contents. Cattle-breeding. French politics. English politics. Radiation experiments in the local tomato greenhouses. Tide tables. He sighed inwardly.\n\nThe rain slapped against the window and rattled forcefully on the cobbled pavement outside with a noise like gravel. Men and women hurried past, bundled up in heavy knitted guernseys and shawls. The teashop itself was empty of customers except for the two of them; it was a Tuesday morning, so working men and women were at their jobs. And it was too early for elderly ladies, gossip being their main occupation, to turn up and crowd the tables with nodding bonnets and whispers.\n\nThe waitress caught his eye, giving him a smile. Kai gestured at the teapot and obtained a refill.\n\n'Thank you,' Catherine said, putting down her notepad for a moment. The sentiment wasn't particularly gracious, but Kai decided he'd take it as a victory. Light glinted off her bronze-rimmed glasses as she poured herself another cup, then \u2013 remembering after a moment \u2013 one for him. 'Anything interesting in the paper?'\n\n'Not particularly.'\n\n'Unsurprising. There's nothing of interest here,' Catherine muttered.\n\n'That's not true,' Kai protested. 'There are... um... purebred cows, buildings left over from the Napoleonic Wars, even a thriving witch-cult. They're known as the Gens du Vendredi, or the Friday People...'\n\n'Are they on the agenda for today?'\n\n'Probably not,' Kai admitted.\n\nCatherine planted her elbows on the table. 'This would have been a quick pickup job if Irene\u2014'\n\n'Miss Winters,' Kai corrected her.\n\n'She told me to call her Irene,' Catherine said smugly. 'Anyhow. We could have collected our target book and left already if she hadn't gone off with Peregrine Vale. Which she shouldn't be doing.'\n\nKai was still rather bitter that he hadn't been asked along himself but had been left to take charge of Catherine instead. 'I'm sure he has reasons for asking her.'\n\n'No, you don't get it. She's supposed to be politically neutral in this world, isn't she? Like you? Yet she's hanging out with someone whose sister is high up in the British government. Not only that, but they're visiting a top-secret submarine base together. How can that be neutral?'\n\nThat was actually the most politically astute comment Catherine had made since they'd met. Kai had had the dubious pleasure of making her acquaintance just a few weeks ago, and it felt as if she hadn't stopped glaring at him since. He disagreed with her, of course, on principle. 'Vale is a good friend,' he parried. 'She has every reason to spend time with him.'\n\nCatherine rolled her eyes. 'Yes, and pigs fly, and my uncle's planning to take vows of celibacy. Come on. Also, I don't see why I had to come in the first place. I could have stayed in London.'\n\n'Irene wanted you to get some first-hand experience of being a Librarian. And when we pick up the Merlin document, that's exactly what will happen.'\n\n'By standing around while she hands over money? I could understand it if she wanted me to learn something cool. But if not, why not leave me behind to do something useful?'\n\nKai shrugged. 'Irene wanted to give you a thorough grounding in Librarianship. Besides, have you forgotten the recent little... unpleasantnesses?' He wasn't sure that Catherine was a target \u2013 nobody had tried to kidnap or kill her, after all \u2013 but he and Irene had both been victims of near misses or failed abductions in the last month. Vale had said he was looking into it, but he had yet to come up with an answer.\n\nCatherine hunched down in her chair, drawing in her narrow shoulders until she seemed even smaller than before. Kai knew that she was in her early twenties, but when she acted like this she seemed no older than a teenager. 'This is so stupid. Can't we even go hang out in the local library \u2013 the Guille-All\u00e8s? I could read something and I wouldn't be getting on your nerves so much.'\n\n'Your uncle doesn't take well to following instructions either.' Lord Silver, Catherine's uncle, was London's biggest libertine and the head of the Liechtenstein spy network. He was generally untrustworthy, devious and well dressed in equal measure.\n\n'Just because my uncle's a miserable excuse for a...' Catherine picked through her options, and clearly couldn't find any that satisfied her. 'How can I convince you I don't like him \u2013 or trust him \u2013 any more than you do?'\n\nKai felt he should try to be honest. 'He's a Fae, like you. And he's your family, your blood. Of course you're going to be closer to him than you are to us.'\n\n'And you think I'd betray you to him,' Catherine said tonelessly.\n\nKai had carefully avoided saying just that. To her, at least. He should know what it was like, after all. He lived with his lord father's expectations, and he'd always been aware of his duty. To his family. To his own kind. And to Irene, always.\n\n'Have you been paying any attention to me? Any attention at all?' Catherine demanded, her tone rising. She glanced across at the waitress and lowered her voice to an angry hiss. 'Have you noticed what I actually want?'\n\n'Well, to do a good job, obviously.' Kai backtracked, trying to work out what he'd said wrong. 'To be a Librarian like Irene, to help keep the truce...'\n\n'What I want,' Catherine said quietly but emphatically, 'is access to the Library. I want to get in among those books. If Irene can do that for me, for all I care, my uncle can fornicate until syphilis makes his private parts drop off.'\n\nKai didn't like Lord Silver, but his own niece shouldn't be using that sort of language about family. Family was important. 'Control your tongue!' he ordered. 'That is not acceptable.'\n\n'You aren't my boss,' Catherine flared back. 'Where do you get off acting like you're superior \u2013 just because you're in bed with her?'\n\nKai felt the bones grind in his hands as he curled them into fists, the prick of fingernails that yearned to become claws. Anger sang in him as the ocean had done earlier, pride and fury urging him to treat this child \u2013 his junior, his younger sister in apprenticeship, his lesser \u2013 with the proper discipline for such an insult.\n\nShe flinched.\n\nMoment by moment, counting his heartbeats, he made himself relax. 'Could you pour me some more tea, please?' he asked.\n\nHer hand shook a little as she poured. 'I'm not getting paid enough for this,' she muttered.\n\n'I didn't know you were getting paid at all.'\n\n'I have an allowance.' Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. 'From my uncle \u2013 which means nothing, before you judge me on that too. I thought you knew.'\n\n'I know he and Irene had an argument about it, but I don't know the details.' Kai had sadly not been witness to that.\n\nCatherine visibly perked up at the notion that he didn't know everything, then sighed. 'I don't want money, anyhow. I want books.'\n\n'But money gets you books,' Kai pointed out.\n\n'Not the sort of rare \"one-per-world\" books the Librarians hunt down. That takes connections. The sort you don't seem to want me to make, as I'm Fae and not a dragon... Whereas I suppose you're letting Irene run mad in your father's library?'\n\n'You may infer what you wish from this, but I have invited Irene to visit my lord father's palace and library,' Kai said with dignity. 'But she refused. She said if my lord father hosted her, he'd have to host a Fae representative too \u2013 in the spirit of the treaty. That it could cause a diplomatic incident if he wasn't willing to do so.'\n\nCatherine shook her head in wonder. 'I'm glad one of you has some sense. Though, as she's sleeping with the dragons' treaty representative, maybe I'll take that back. Unless to keep things fair, in the spirit of the treaty, she's also sleeping with the Fae representative...'\n\n'What do you mean by that?' Kai snarled, leaning forward.\n\n'Excuse me, sir, madam.' The waitress had approached while they were distracted.\n\nKai held up an admonitory hand. 'A moment, please. Catherine, I demand an apology.'\n\n'Excuse me!' The waitress had raised her voice. As Kai and Catherine both turned to glare at her, she said, 'There's something you should know, sir, madam.'\n\n'And what is that?' Kai snapped.\n\n'You've both been poisoned.' She folded her hands primly in front of her. 'But please don't let me interrupt you. I can wait.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "Irene had not expected to walk through a door in a submarine base somewhere under Guernsey, and emerge somewhere entirely different.\n\nShe and Vale had managed a successful sweep through the remainder of the base. The other men they'd found had all been under the influence of cerebral controllers. They'd therefore lacked the intelligence to stage more than very basic ambushes, but they'd still fought savagely. As a result, Vale and Irene had had to deactivate all the controllers \u2013 which had proved fatal for their victims.\n\nShe'd seen Vale's face grow more tense with each new confirmed fatality, the leashed anger showing in his shoulders and the quick jerk of his head. He and Irene were being deliberately manipulated into killing these men \u2013 however necessary this was. They too were victims, being used as mere tools and then discarded.\n\nYou didn't have to be a Fae to be that amoral a manipulator, but Irene couldn't deny that it helped \u2013 especially if this was somehow Lord Guantes, returned to gleeful life.\n\nIn the criss-cross of passages, the route to the submarine dock wasn't obvious. And yet the longer they'd searched, the more certain Vale seemed that he'd find his letter on the submarine moored there. It was Vale who'd eventually halted and raised a hand for her to wait, then prodded at what looked like a cupboard door with the tip of his cane. The resulting shock knocked him across the room.\n\nThe cane lay to one side, smoking. Vale glanced at it regretfully, then back to the door, and his brows drew together in a frown. 'That door shouldn't be there.'\n\n'It's in the wrong location?'\n\n'In a way... That door is not on the base's plans. There should be nothing but solid rock at that point. And look \u2013 more of the cerebral controllers' scrapes on the floor, spreading out from this point.'\n\nIrene carefully moved her hand towards the door, halting before touching it. The air around it prickled with chaos. As Irene approached, she could feel the Library brand on her back flare in response, rather like a guard recognizing an enemy. The door itself looked like any of the other cupboards on the base: metal, set into the wall and painted dark grey. There was nothing to mark it as significant \u2013 except for Vale's knowledge that it shouldn't have been there, his dramatic propulsion across the room and her own recognition of chaotic power.\n\n'That gives us two problems,' she said. 'Finding the letter \u2013 and this. There's chaos behind it.' To leave this door uninvestigated would be an open invitation for someone to come through and shoot them from behind.\n\nIrene glanced sideways at Vale, saw the uncertainty on his face and made a decision. 'You said we'd find eleven men here \u2013 and we've dealt with all of them. I'll check this out while you retrieve the letter.'\n\nThere was a flicker of relief in his eyes. 'I'll call if I need you, Winters.'\n\nHe ran down the corridor, leaving Irene to stare at the mysterious door. Objects infused with chaotic power often didn't react well to Librarians \u2013 and Vale's broken cane served as an additional warning. Fortunately, with the Language she didn't need to touch it. When she looked at it more closely, close enough to feel her nose prickle, she could see that there was something written on it under the grey paint, barely visible, totally illegible but indisputably there.\n\nShe picked her words carefully, not wanting to force open every locker and exit within the sound of her voice. If any others contained dynamite, that could see them both drowned. 'Any bombs within the sound of my voice, deactivate. Door in front of me, unlock and open!'\n\nIt shuddered in its frame. Irene gritted her teeth at the drain on her strength, knotting her hands into fists as the tumblers in a lock audibly clicked open. The door opened towards her, but slowly, as if an invisible hand was dragging it open and it was fighting to resist. Irene peered through the gap.\n\nA shadowed corridor lay beyond \u2013 formed of wood and stone, not slate and metal \u2013 and dimly lit by distant windows. It definitely wasn't beneath the sea. She had no idea where it was.\n\nDid Vale think that I was just going to stand here and look at it? Well, too late now.\n\nIrene rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, forcing herself to ignore her growing headache, and stepped through. The door pulled itself shut behind her, closing with a muffled thud.\n\nShe sniffed the air. Dust. Paper. Old cigar smoke. The floor was white marble, but even in the dim light she could see the dust that had settled into the cracks. The walls and ceiling were panelled with dark wood; paler rectangles on the walls showed where paintings must have once hung.\n\nBut all this was secondary to the tingling which spread across her back like poison ivy, radiating from her Library brand. She felt a sense of dread, suddenly realizing that she'd left Guernsey far behind. And not for a moderate-chaos world like Vale's. This was definitely a high-chaos world, so she probably couldn't reach the Library from here. And if she couldn't retrace her steps, she'd be trapped here...\n\nBeyond the window, a futuristic city sprawled out to the horizon, sown thickly with electronic lights under a shrouded twilight sky. The approaching darkness and glow from the lights obscured the buildings, reducing them to shadowy spikes or low shapeless masses. Some more distant structures seemed to curl gracefully upwards and outwards like living organisms, but they were too far away to see clearly. Tiny in the distance, Irene spotted the twinned lights of what might be vehicles \u2013 crawling at ground level, or drifting through the air.\n\nIrene suppressed a curse. She'd hoped to identify the city, if not the world, by its architecture, but that was hopeless in the encroaching darkness. As for the climate and temperature, it was neither arctic nor tropical, but beyond that she couldn't guess \u2013 or deduce \u2013 anything.\n\nAt the other end of the corridor, a thin rim of light outlined another door. She listened, but could hear nothing. Either the room beyond was empty, or whoever was there was silent. Or perhaps someone was lying in wait for her...\n\nThis was no time to hesitate. She tried the door handle.\n\nIt opened.\n\nThe room beyond had once been a lounge, high-ceilinged and elegant; it had gone to seed just like the corridor behind her. Tall windows in the opposite wall were covered by tattered curtains. The marble fireplace held a radiator rather than logs, and the bare lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling glowed unevenly, as though they might burn out at any moment.\n\nClose to the fireplace, a man huddled in a battered armchair, a laptop resting on his knees. A cigar smouldered in one limp, gloved hand and the computer screen was blank. The man drooped forward, head nodding, on the edge of sleep.\n\nIt was unmistakably Lord Guantes.\n\nShe knew that man. She'd killed him. She'd put a knife into his heart, then watched his wife mourn over his corpse and promise vengeance.\n\nShe could accept alternate worlds, dragons, Fae, vampires, werewolves and magic. But now a part of her \u2013 the logical, rational part \u2013 urged her to run, to slam the door closed and escape back to the submarine base. Even if all the men there had been turned into lurching zombies by cerebral controllers, at least the threat was something she understood.\n\nLord Guantes had almost gained control over her, once. He'd nearly twisted her around his little finger and made her answer to his bidding. She would have been his pawn, his captive, his tool. Confronting him now was pure idiocy. She had no idea of his resources, how many guards he had or what snares might be waiting for her. Every instinct in her body screamed for her to get out of here. She'd learned what she needed to know. It really was him.\n\nBut if she ran, she would always be running from him. She might know enough... but there must be still more to learn.\n\nHer mind somewhere on the scale between pure terror and stomach-curdling fear, she made herself say, 'Lord Guantes, I assume?'\n\nHis head jerked up and he twisted round in his chair, the laptop clattering to the ground. He still looked just as she remembered: dark grey hair and a small imperial beard, deep-set eyes with the power to compel. His business suit could have come from any decade and almost any world, and the gloves that sheathed his hands were plain black. The left side of his face was concealed by a leather mask which started at his forehead and ended above his upper lip.\n\n'You should be dead,' he said after a moment, his voice deep velvet, but with the old iron behind it. There was something in his eyes that took Irene a moment to recognize. It was... fear? He was afraid of her?\n\n'I could say the same about you,' she said. 'Clearly someone has made a mistake.'\n\nAt the back of her mind a clock kept counting down. Just because Lord Guantes was here, didn't mean that Kai was safe. Lord Guantes could be working with \u2013 or for \u2013 anyone.\n\n'Fresh from an imploding submarine base and not even damp.' He looked her up and down. It wasn't the measuring glance of a martial artist judging her competence, or the deliberately insulting appreciation of a libertine like Lord Silver. It wasn't even the cold stare of an assassin deciding how best to remove her. It was as if she was less than human \u2013 a paperclip, a crumpled newspaper, a disposable coffee cup \u2013 and he could either stand up to put it in the bin, or get away with simply throwing it to the floor. 'What does it take to dispose of you, Miss Winters?'\n\n'A miracle,' Irene said promptly.\n\n'According to Dante, thieves like you end up in the Eighth Circle of Hell.'\n\n'Dante placed \"evil counsellors\" like you in the next ditch along,' Irene countered. 'So tell me, Lord Guantes, what precisely are you up to? Besides trying to kill us. You must have some far grander plan than that.'\n\nShe was hoping she could play on one of his archetypal weaknesses. Very few Fae who based their personalities on cunning masterminds could resist the urge to gloat. If she was really lucky, he might even go into detail about how very doomed she was...\n\nTo her surprise, he only laughed. It was a thin, hollow sound compared with the full-blooded chuckle of their previous encounters. 'Kill you? My dear Miss Winters, you have no idea how much I enjoy hearing you say that. And such a brave attempt to learn my secrets, too. But I'm afraid...' He coughed, and his whole body shook with it. 'You're too late.'\n\nIrene froze. Anyone who knew her would have known she'd try the mysterious door. Was this all some further elaborate trap?\n\nThen common sense kicked in. He'd been genuinely surprised to see her. He'd been afraid.\n\n'You're wasting your time taunting me,' she responded. 'As you can see, I'm still alive. Your little plot didn't work.'\n\nAs she'd hoped, the adjective stung. His hands trembled, clenching into fists. 'You have no idea...' he said, voice smooth again, the words both a promise and a threat. 'As usual, Miss Winters, you have come into the story partway through, and you'll be removed from the gameboard long before you can appreciate the grandeur of this particular plot. It's already too late for you, as I said. Before, you've always had other people to save you. Not any longer.'\n\n'My friends and I keep each other alive. You didn't plan on my accompanying Vale into the submarine base, did you?'\n\n'I admit I failed to make allowances for that \u2013 for whatever sentimentality caused you to accompany him rather than do your job. I thought better of you, Miss Winters.'\n\n'Stop playing games,' Irene said flatly, suppressing a growing sense of dread. What if he was telling the truth, and it was 'already too late' for Kai and Vale as well? 'Get to the point \u2013 or I'm leaving.'\n\nLord Guantes frowned at having his gloating so cruelly cut short. 'Very well. It's true that I want revenge on my enemies, but there are others who have something even worse in mind for you. I cooperated with them \u2013 but I have been betrayed. I have been used.' A deep fury at this flared in his eyes. To a Fae of his archetype \u2013 mastermind and schemer \u2013 this was the ultimate violation. 'Since you have conveniently walked past my threshold and into my home, I will give you the tools for vengeance. If\u2014'\n\nHe broke off, seeming confused for a moment, and raised one gloved hand in protest. 'So soon?' he asked the air.\n\n'Lord Guantes,' Irene said, pitching her voice to get his attention. 'Why are you here? In this sordid place, with this old house falling to pieces around you? Who are these others you mention?'\n\nHis eyes focused on her again. Without answering, he thrust himself out of his chair towards her, tottering as he tried to stand upright.\n\nIrene dodged. She'd been ready for any sort of attack \u2013 if this was an attack \u2013 but she hadn't expected something so... ordinary. Or, to be honest, so uncoordinated. He moved like an old man \u2013 or someone who'd been injured but hadn't realized it yet. This was all... wrong.\n\nThe Fae's motion turned into a stagger, then a collapse. He sank to his knees, then to the dirty marble floor. His gloved fists clenched and his whole body convulsed, breath coming in great heaving gasps.\n\nIt could all be a pretence. But it didn't feel like one. Lord Guantes enjoyed showing off his cunning. To him, watching his enemies scurry round trying to escape was the icing on the cake, the cream in the coffee, or the hand-rolled cigar and brandy that set the seal on a good evening. He wasn't the sort of Fae who would be taken by surprise in a dirty old house and go on to reveal his weaknesses.\n\nUnwillingly and extremely carefully, Irene approached. 'Are you ill?' she asked.\n\nLord Guantes rolled to one side, looking up at her. She had never thought that she'd see vulnerability in his eyes.\n\n'Under the cathedral... the dark archive...' he gasped, the last of his breath hissing between his teeth as he fought to get the words out. For a moment he managed to focus. 'Irene Winters, the man behind the Professor knows you, and he wants you...'\n\nAnd then he stopped moving and his body went limp.\n\nIrene hesitated, then reached out a hand to check the pulse in his neck. But as she touched him, his neck crumpled under her fingers. She snatched her hand back in revulsion. A bruise spread under his skin like ink, and as it grew, the flesh behind it collapsed into dust. She leaned back to avoid inhaling her erstwhile enemy. And she shivered. This was the second time she'd seen him die.\n\nShadows seemed to grow in the corners of the room, and the back of her neck prickled with the sensation of being watched. It felt as if she'd caught someone's attention \u2013 and they weren't amused.\n\nSomeone knocked on the door. 'Sir? May I come in?' It was a man's voice, speaking Spanish.\n\nDamn. Irene had lost her best source of information, she couldn't fool Lord Guantes' servant by imitating his voice with any hope of success, and she'd run out of time. Kai and Vale \u2013 and Catherine \u2013 needed her. The body in front of her was nothing but an empty suit of clothing and a scattering of dust. Desperately she checked the suit's pockets, but there was nothing \u2013 no wallet, no conveniently revealing documents. Not even a note saying Meet me next week at a helpfully specified location.\n\nHer eyes fell on Lord Guantes' laptop. Even if it contained nothing of interest, someone might be able to track where it came from. She scooped it up, then turned and ran. As she hurried down the corridor, she could hear Lord Guantes' remains being discovered \u2013 followed by yells for assistance.\n\nHer sortie through the door hadn't answered her questions; it had just given her a whole new set. For instance, who'd created that chaos-infused exit from Vale's world? It didn't match what she knew of Lord Guantes. He was a Machiavellian schemer, not an engineer \u2013 or whatever the appropriate term was for someone who could make a stable portal between alternate worlds. Fae could walk from world to world without doors, dragons flew in the space between them \u2013 but she'd only seen a permanent door between worlds once. And that had been in an ancient Fae prison, not a modern convenience. Who had that kind of capability, anyway? The man behind the Professor...\n\nThe way back loomed in front of her. Without breaking step, she ordered, 'Door, open!'\n\nPain rammed itself into her temples like a blow to the head. Both the door before her and the one now far behind \u2013 to the room where Lord Guantes had died \u2013 flung themselves open. She ignored the sudden yells of pursuit, and the bullet that sang past her to hit the distant wall. She staggered through the exit, nearly collapsing. Someone caught her, and it took her a moment to recognize it was Vale.\n\nThe door slammed shut.\n\n'And you complain that I am reckless,' Vale muttered. 'Winters, whatever you've done, I hope it was worth it...'\n\nThen the station's alarm sounded again, and lights flashed red.\n\n'The self-destruct... maybe they reactivated it?' Irene said with horror. 'Let's get out of here \u2013 then I'll tell you what I found.'\n\n'What about that door?' he asked.\n\n'With any luck, it'll be destroyed with this base. But I've found something that may help.' She tapped the laptop, still clasped under one arm. 'Come on!'\n\nThey rushed down another corridor, at a sprint this time. As the alarms continued, shrieking in time with the pounding in her head, Irene could only hope that the door would be destroyed.\n\nIts existence was a huge unanswered question \u2013 and it worried her.\n\nKai actually looked at the waitress this time. She was now a threat, rather than a convenient provider of tea and cakes. She didn't look sinister, garbed in the long black dress, white apron and mob cap common to all the waitresses in this cafe...\n\nHowever, he now realized, none of the other waitresses had been visible since this one had entered the room. He'd thought the privacy was convenient, allowing him and Catherine to have an unobserved chat. Now this signified something rather more dangerous. Her manner was also far less subservient than he'd expect from someone who waited on others and washed dishes for a living. While Kai lacked Vale's skill at deduction, he realized this woman probably wasn't a waitress, he and Catherine were compromised, and the whole mission was in danger.\n\n'Please excuse me a moment,' he said, and sipped his tea.\n\n'What are you doing?' Catherine hissed. 'She just said that was poisoned!'\n\n'No, she just said that we had been poisoned. But as far as I can judge, there isn't any poison in this tea.'\n\nKai glanced sidelong at the so-called waitress from under his lashes; she seemed taken aback by his lack of panic. He'd managed to get her off-balance. Now to see if he could provoke her into talking.\n\nCatherine looked as if she was about to boil over. 'We have been poisoned,' she said again. 'We're about to die! I'll never get at those books!'\n\n'Now that's the right attitude,' Kai agreed, glad to see her demonstrating a proper sense of priorities. 'But from my personal experience, people don't inform you that you've been poisoned if you're about to die on the spot. It's usually to blackmail you by offering the antidote \u2013 or something like that.'\n\n'Wait a second,' the waitress said. 'You've done this before?'\n\nKai put down his teacup and raised an eyebrow. She was still just out of arm's reach, but if he could persuade her to come closer... 'I was taught to recognize a large number of poisons as a child. Though unfortunately not this one.'\n\n'Seriously?' Catherine said. 'I'd heard noble dragons were bad parents, but I'd thought that was rumour. Looks like I was wrong.'\n\nKai charitably forgave her this slander \u2013 she hadn't been raised as royalty, after all. 'So you see,' he said to the waitress, 'if you were serious, we'd be dead already. As it is, we have no reason to believe your threats.'\n\nThe woman pulled herself together, trying to regain control of the situation. 'What if I told you it wasn't in the tea?'\n\n'The petits fours?' Catherine asked. 'I thought they tasted a little bit off.'\n\n'No, not the petits fours either. It was...' She paused dramatically. 'It was in the g\u00e2che!'\n\nKai looked regretfully at the remains of the local fruit bread. 'Ah, raisins. My fatal weakness.'\n\nAs he spoke, he was thinking as fast as he could. He hadn't tasted anything unusual, though the mixed peel, raisins and sultanas could have masked a number of poisons. More to the point, he hadn't felt anything yet, and it had been at least a quarter of an hour since they'd eaten.\n\nDragons were harder to poison than ordinary humans, but if he'd eaten a dose sufficient for the poisoner to march up and boast about it now, it must be something with a delayed effect... Heavy metals? Black lotus?\n\n'Or maybe you're bluffing.' He smiled at the so-called waitress, but there was nothing pleasant about the curve of his lips. 'A cheap attempt at extortion, maybe. Why should we believe you?'\n\n'Well, fine,' the woman declared, throwing her hands in the air. 'Sit there till you curl up and die. See if I care! I thought you'd appreciate a chance to bargain, but if you're going to be pig-headed about it...'\n\n'What exactly are you claiming to have poisoned us with?' Catherine demanded.\n\n'It's something you won't have heard of before \u2013 a new discovery,' she said smugly. 'But trust me when I tell you it's utterly fatal.' Her smirk blossomed. 'Did you know that it's possible to extract a lethal poison from castor oil plants?'\n\nRicin. Kai maintained his ruthless smile, but inwardly he sighed in relief. Ricin was toxic in food, but it wasn't as bad as if they'd inhaled it. Assuming they received proper medical treatment within six hours or so, they should be fine. 'Oh, that,' he said. 'Should I be worried? It's not as if I'm suffering from anything that would require a dose of castor oil.'\n\n'Yes, you should be worried.' The woman could barely contain her irritation. 'And if you don't follow orders and come along with me now, your worry will be short-lived. Because you'll be dead. Painfully.'\n\n'I can see you haven't had much experience at this sort of thing,' Kai said kindly. 'You should have told us that first. So who are you, and why do you want us to go with you?'\n\nThe woman tried to assume an air of menace. 'We know you're here to exchange money for a certain book. We know you're waiting here to make the exchange. You're both to accompany me now. Then we'll give you the antidote.'\n\nNow Kai was worried. The woman's air of incompetence and the simplistic nature of her demand concerned him more than the demand itself. This was obviously linked to the earlier kidnap attempts on Irene: clearly whoever was behind the crimes had traced them here. But if that was the case, why send in such a pathetic agent to deliver threats? What if she was a pawn, delaying them while someone else made a move on them \u2013 or Irene? But all he said was: 'I see. Now I'll make you an offer in return.' Kai leaned forward, feeling his claws prick at the ends of his fingers as anger rose in him. 'Tell us who gave you this information, and I'll allow you to walk out of this cafe alive.'\n\nHis fury must have reached her, for she flinched before she could catch herself. 'Don't be ridiculous,' she attempted, her voice trembling. 'If you don't get the antidote, you'll die. I won't be bullied like this\u2014'\n\nKai rose to his feet and casually picked her up by the neck. 'The poison you've given us won't take effect for hours yet,' he said, and watched her eyes dilate in terror. She hadn't known that. No more than an intermediary, then, and probably a sacrificial pawn. 'And believe me, I haven't even begun to bully you. Now. Who are you working for?'\n\nShe tried to say something, but was having difficulty breathing.\n\n'I think you'd better let her down,' Catherine suggested. She didn't look well. Maybe the poison was acting faster on her metabolism than on Kai's. 'Before she, you know, chokes.'\n\nKai complied, but kept his hand on the woman's throat. 'Talk. If it's true that we've been poisoned, I'm not in the mood to waste time.'\n\nIrene and Vale should have been back by now. And what if all this was an attempt to distract him from their absence? Their contact for the book purchase would be here in fifteen minutes, and Irene would never miss that. A combined twist of fear and fury knotted in his guts. If something had happened to them while he was babysitting Catherine...\n\nThe door creaked open, and an elderly woman shouldered her way in. She bore all the markers of Victorian widowhood: a heavy black bonnet shadowed her face, a dark woollen shawl hugged her shoulders, and her black bombazine dress dragged on the floor as she walked. It left a damp trail like a slug's passage. Behind her followed a younger woman, modestly dressed, carrying a small suitcase in one hand and a hastily furled umbrella in the other. She was dripping miserably \u2013 clearly she hadn't been the one under the umbrella. If these were their contacts, they were early.\n\n'Dear me,' the elderly woman said, leaning forward like a hungry stork. 'Have I interrupted something?'\n\nEven as she spoke, Kai heard an explosion far out at sea. The island trembled in response, and Kai felt the waves mount in tumult, thundering in the aftermath of some cataclysm far below. He froze in shock."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "The explosion drew everyone's eyes seaward. Even though Kai could already feel the ocean's shuddering disquiet, he couldn't help turning to stare at the tossing waves outside.\n\nBut his affinity with water couldn't tell him what he most wanted to know. Where were Irene and Vale? Had they been trapped out there? Were they dead? Every impulse urged him to take on his natural dragon form and plunge down into the sea to find them.\n\n'Oh, hello,' Catherine said faintly. Her eyes were fixed on Kai, begging him to do something, and she looked even paler now. 'You must be Madame Pipet.'\n\n'What a clever young girl you are,' the old woman exclaimed. She sat down in the nearest chair, her attendant standing behind her. 'So are you the Miss Winters I'm supposed to meet?'\n\nFor a moment Kai was strongly tempted to say Yes, and leave it to Catherine to handle the situation while he went to find Irene. But he saw the sheer panic in Catherine's eyes, and his sense of honour forced him to stay.\n\n'No, madame,' he said. 'Miss Winters has temporarily stepped out. But we are empowered to act on her behalf.'\n\nIt would only take a couple of minutes to exchange the money for the book. Then he could be out of here and looking for Irene. Besides, if he prioritized saving her rather than collecting the book, she'd make him regret it.\n\n'I'll take your word for it,' the old woman said, a mercenary glint in her eye. 'Assuming you have the money. And you still haven't told me why you have your hand around Julie's neck.'\n\nAt least it wasn't Take your hands off that woman or I'll call the police! 'She was trying to blackmail us by claiming she'd poisoned us.' A flash of inspiration made him add, 'She was trying to interfere with the deal for some reason of her own. I don't suppose you'd know anything about that?'\n\n'Oh, was she now?' Madame Pipet spat something in the local Guern\u00e9siais, or Guernsey French. Kai couldn't understand the meaning, but it clearly frightened the woman in Kai's grip, who trembled under his hand.\n\nMadame Pipet shifted to English. 'You, Julie Robilliard. You don't have the courage to challenge me up on Pleinmont or in front of La Gran' M\u00e8re, so instead you try to sneak round behind my back and steal what's mine. What game are you playing?'\n\nJulie swallowed nervously. 'We, ah, that is I \u2013' She looked round desperately at Kai. 'You'll protect me?'\n\n'Well, I won't kill you on the spot,' Kai said. 'I make no promises for Madame Pipet.'\n\n'I was given something to put in your food,' she babbled. 'I was told there would be three people, two women and a man, and your names, and that I was to give you the poison and then get you to come with me to the church. If I did that then I'd get to keep the money you'd brought with you. But the other woman wasn't with you, so I tried to go ahead with it, but then \u2013' Her gesture took in the utter failure of the operation.\n\n'And who made this deal with you?' Kai demanded.\n\n'I don't know his name,' Julie said hastily. Her eyes flicked to Madame Pipet. 'He was from France... he was very polite, very upper class, he had a beard...' She trailed off, clearly aware her story wasn't very convincing.\n\nBut Madame Pipet nodded, as though she'd heard something she expected to hear. 'Another attempt to make me step down, hmm? Working with the smugglers, maybe? Well, I'll be generous, since you've spoken so freely. Get out of here and don't let me see you again in a month of Fridays, or I'll give you and your family reason to regret it.'\n\nJulie Robilliard stammered something unintelligible, squirmed free of Kai's grip and fled the room. He considered following her to bring her back, but decided it wasn't worth it: she was a pawn with no useful information.\n\n'You let her go? But she's poisoned us!' Catherine objected.\n\nMadame Pipet shrugged. 'That's not my problem, little girl. Besides, you don't look very poisoned. Nice bright eyes, a flush to your cheeks, good strong voice. I'm sure she was lying.'\n\nAnd if she was telling the truth, Kai thought, you don't particularly care, as long as you get your money. 'Very well,' he said. 'We've delayed long enough. Shall we go through with the exchange?'\n\nAt the side, Catherine was trying to catch his eye. 'Kai,' she said through gritted teeth, 'I want to become a Librarian. I don't want to die in agony!'\n\nKai wondered if he'd ever been that obstructive when Irene was trying to make a deal.\n\nMadame Pipet ignored the byplay and gestured to her attendant. The younger woman put the suitcase she was carrying on a table and unlocked it, displaying a bundle of shawls. She unfolded them to reveal a heavy book bound in battered black leather, with a silver falcon stamped on the front.\n\n'There you are,' she said. 'Malory's La Vie de Merlin. The companion to his Morte d'Arthur, from a print run by Caxton. Very limited, for a very exclusive clientele.'\n\nThe sight of the book distracted Catherine from her complaints. She leaned forward to peer at it, clearly itching to touch it. 'Authentic?' she asked.\n\n'You're free to examine it, though I know you're in a hurry.' Madame Pipet shrugged. 'But don't let me make your decisions for you.'\n\nKai knew exactly what Irene would do under these circumstances. He restrained himself from looking out towards the ocean, where the waves still churned in furious disruption. 'Check it,' he told Catherine.\n\nFortunately Irene had left the payment with him. Kai reached into his jacket and brought out a heavy buff envelope. He opened it, extracting a signed bank draft with a satisfactory number of zeroes attached to the sum. 'I trust this will suffice?'\n\nIn the shadow of her bonnet, Madame Pipet grinned hungrily. A couple of lonely teeth gleamed briefly in the cafe lights. 'It will do.'\n\nKai's mind drifted as Catherine verified the book's authenticity. He urgently wanted to know how Julie Robilliard had found out about Irene's visit. The most obvious explanation was that Julie had spied on Madame Pipet... but that didn't explain the mysterious bearded man from France. And it certainly didn't cover whatever had happened to Vale and Irene.\n\nIf anything had happened to them, he would raze this island to the bare granite.\n\n'Correct binding, correct printer's mark, correct chapter headings \u2013 I believe it's genuine.' Catherine folded the shawl back over the book and closed the case.\n\n'Good,' Kai said with relief. 'In that case...' He offered Madame Pipet the envelope.\n\n'Most generous,' she said, and tucked it into her bodice. Leaning on the arms of her chair, she levered herself to her feet. 'I don't suppose you'd like to buy a remedy for poison?'\n\n'I thought we didn't look very poisoned,' Kai said.\n\n'I could be wrong. Julie has a real fondness for her herb garden. Her henbane, her foxgloves, her castor oil plants...' Madame Pipet's gaze was bright and sharp; she kept one eye on Catherine, who flinched. 'I wouldn't ask you very much for a cure.'\n\n'How much?' Kai asked, out of curiosity.\n\n'A certain suitcase with a book in it, maybe?'\n\n'But we just paid you thousands for it!' Catherine said.\n\n'Quite right too. But they do say that nothing's more important than one's health.'\n\n'No deal,' Kai said firmly.\n\nCatherine glanced sidelong at him, then set her jaw, trying to look stern. 'No deal,' she echoed.\n\n'Ah well,' Madame Pipet said. 'Adieu, my children. Enjoy your time on Guernsey. Whatever time you have left.'\n\nHer attendant opened the door for her, juggling the umbrella to shield the older woman from the driving rain, then followed her out.\n\nAs the door shut behind them, Catherine turned to Kai. 'So it was all a bluff, then, and we aren't really poisoned?'\n\n'Actually, we probably are,' Kai admitted. 'But we ate it rather than inhaling, which should give us sufficient time for treatment. First we need to find Irene\u2014'\n\nSuddenly they heard the rattle of gunfire outside, and screaming.\n\nBoth Kai and Catherine hit the ground, Kai snatching the suitcase as he went down. 'Keep an eye on that,' he instructed Catherine, as he crawled towards the window.\n\n'I thought Guernsey was a nice quiet place, with cows,' Catherine muttered bitterly. 'Since when did they have gangsters?'\n\n'I think they're actually smugglers \u2013 they're notorious here,' Kai said, cautiously peering through the window. 'Four of them. Two have shotguns, two have pistols. Madame Pipet's down. So's her assistant. We'd better go out the back.'\n\n'What makes you think they won't have people out there too?' Catherine demanded.\n\n'They did,' Irene said, appearing in the doorway to the kitchens, a bundle under her arm. 'They don't now. Let's get out of here while we can.'\n\nGiven the rest of the mission had collapsed into desperate improvisation, Irene supposed she shouldn't be surprised to find this part was also chin deep and sinking. So much for a quiet journey to a pleasant holiday location, with some straightforward training for Catherine. And it was still raining.\n\n'Situation report, Kai,' she said, since he seemed to be having trouble pulling himself together.\n\nHe blinked, then said, 'We have the book. We may have been poisoned. And our purchaser's just been shot down outside by a faction of local smugglers.'\n\nIrene's heart clenched. She knew that she should have been faster, that she shouldn't have gone hunting Lord Guantes. 'What was the poison?' she asked.\n\n'Ricin.' Kai didn't look as nervous as she'd expected.\n\n'Inhaled or ingested?'\n\n'Ingested, but we're not feeling anything yet.'\n\n'Speak for yourself,' Catherine muttered. 'I feel awful.'\n\n'That's just nerves,' Kai said reassuringly. 'We've at least six hours before we need to start worrying. What have you been up to, Irene? Why did something blow up out there under the sea? Where's Vale?'\n\n'Long story,' Irene said, deciding the Lord Guantes update could wait till they were safely out of danger. The Fae had kidnapped Kai, tried to auction him off and had intended to start a war by selling him. So Kai wasn't going to be very happy when he heard Lord Guantes had been alive all this time. Or raised from the dead. Whatever. 'I'll tell you later. We'll leave through the back, this way.'\n\nKai snatched up the suitcase and followed. They hurried through the kitchen, and out to the side street.\n\nFrom the main road there came the mournful hoot of a steam whistle. 'That's the steam tram!' Irene exclaimed. 'We can catch it to the zeppelin port \u2013 Vale's meeting us there, he went ahead to secure transport.'\n\nEven poisoned and carrying the suitcase, Kai outpaced both Irene and Catherine. Irene caught the younger woman's arm, tugging her forward. The steam tram was just starting to pull away from its resting place; a plume of smoke trailed from the funnel that crowned the sleek maroon-painted engine. In the exposed carriages, hard-bitten travellers perched on the benches, stoically wrapped up against the elements.\n\nShouts came from behind them. Irene knew that symphony; it started with There they are and continued on to Stop them, with occasional gunshot obbligato.\n\n'Get on!' she gasped.\n\nKai swung the hard-won suitcase up onto the open carriage, then vaulted over the side as the tram picked up steam. Irene forced herself to sprint. She grabbed Catherine under the elbow, and boosted her up into the carriage as Kai reached out to catch the Fae.\n\nBut then Irene stumbled. She frantically grabbed at one of the carriage rails, her skirts tangling around her ankles \u2013 and missed, clutching fistfuls of air instead. Lord Guantes' laptop was like a dead weight under her free arm, and it was taking everything she had just to keep pace with the tram. Desperately, she put on one last burst of speed. By some miracle, Kai grabbed her shoulders and dragged her safely inside.\n\nThe steam tram rattled its way through St Peter Port, the open sea on one side and shops on the other: grey granite and white-painted facades disappeared behind them, washed clean in the constant rain. The sound of pursuing feet and yells died away as the tram jolted towards the edge of town.\n\nIrene tried to catch her breath. 'Thank you,' she said. She turned to Catherine. 'Are you all right?'\n\n'This is not the serene life of reading and study I expected,' Catherine muttered. She hunched her shoulders defensively, looking thoroughly miserable. 'And I've been poisoned.'\n\nThe rattling of the open carriage drowned out their quiet conversation \u2013 though Irene suspected the local passengers were probably hanging onto every word they could hear. 'Yes,' she agreed. 'If I remember correctly, it takes about six hours for ricin to have a significant effect. It'll be easier to do something about it once we're on the zeppelin and out of public view.'\n\n'Can't you just use the Language to order it out of my body?' Catherine asked.\n\n'I might if it had gone in via a wound,' Irene said. 'But if you've eaten it, that's more difficult. And right now we can't stop for help.'\n\nThen Irene looked at Catherine \u2013 really looked at her, for the first time that day. The young woman was genuinely shaken. Poisonings and gun battles weren't an everyday risk to her \u2013 and wasn't that a depressing reflection on her and Kai's lives, she reflected bitterly. No, this needed to be handled carefully, with empathy.\n\nThis was why Irene wasn't keen on students. She didn't like being empathetic. She would much rather be businesslike. Lord Silver had assured her this was the life that Catherine wanted, and Catherine had agreed... but at this precise moment, her student seemed to be reconsidering her choices.\n\nShe sat down next to Catherine and put an arm round her shoulders. 'I'm sorry this happened to you,' she said. 'This was supposed to be an easy pickup job, getting us away from assassins and kidnappers. But right now, I need you to stay calm and keep things together.'\n\nCatherine wriggled round to look up at Irene. She hadn't had a chance to adjust her hat and veil, and raindrops lay like mist on her bronze hair. 'This isn't just some sort of joke?' she said, not very hopefully.\n\n'No. I'm afraid a trap was set, and we very nearly all walked into it.' Irene tried to think of something suitably encouraging to say \u2013 something to reassure the topaz-eyed young Fae who suddenly seemed so terribly fragile. 'If I had known this job would be dangerous, I'd have left you back in London. I'd have sent you to your uncle to keep you safe.'\n\n'That wouldn't have been very safe.'\n\nShe had a point. But while Lord Silver wasn't the most reliable of people, he did have a lot of money, and money could buy a lot of guards. 'Well done on getting the book, anyhow,' she said. 'Now we wait. We'll be on our way home soon.'\n\nKai settled himself next to her, the firm strength of his body a comfort against the cold rain, and folded a hand around hers. She returned the grasp and watched the countryside go past. The occasional farms and houses were granite or whitewashed, and some had seats set round the chimneys \u2013 to stop the witches, other passengers informed Irene. Roadside stalls promised fresh vegetables, cows grazed in fields, and enormous greenhouses appeared in the middle distance. It all looked so safe... but Irene had no way of knowing who might be chasing them. She felt like a mouse scurrying across an open field, with birds of prey circling above. They had no allies here, and they were dangerously exposed.\n\nAnd what if this whole affair had been calculated to make them run for the zeppelin port? Irene wouldn't put it past Lord Guantes... while he was alive, at least. She'd seen him die twice now, and she wouldn't put money on him staying that way.\n\n'We're coming up to the port,' another passenger said, helpfully pointing to a couple of small airships tethered behind a metal fence. 'But not many will be flying today. The rain, you know.'\n\n'I know,' Irene said with feeling. She disembarked with Catherine and Kai. A couple of locals clambered down from the carriage, but none headed for the zeppelin port, making their way towards the main road instead.\n\n'Kai,' Irene said quietly, as they trudged towards the airfield entrance, 'can you do anything to clear up the weather? I've seen you cause a storm before.'\n\nKai was already rather pale, and the rain sleeked his hair, enhancing the bone structure of his face till he looked positively consumptive \u2013 though, as usual, in the most handsome way possible. 'It's easier to call a storm than stop one,' he admitted. 'My affinity with water makes it possible to invite the rain and turn it loose at a chosen moment, in the right conditions. But stopping the rain and wind... no, not really. Maybe when I'm older.'\n\n'What a pity we don't have years to wait,' Catherine said, her temper not improved. 'Irene, why can't we just find a hotel and stay there till the weather's better, and deal with the poison there? Even if someone saw us get on the tram, they won't know where we got off. We can go cross-country and hide.'\n\nIrene swallowed the objections that came to mind, such as the difficulty of going cross-country over winter fields on foot in the rain. Catherine was doing her best to make a helpful contribution, and Irene was sure she'd made similarly 'helpful' contributions during her own training. 'We have a problem.' She lowered her voice. 'Someone knows too much. Someone knew that Vale was going down into that submarine base. Someone knew we were planning to buy that book. We can't be sure how much else they know, or what other plans they may have in motion \u2013 which is why I want us off the island and well out of their reach. And I want you two to receive proper medical care as soon as possible.'\n\n'What about Vale?' Kai asked.\n\n'Already here,' said the man slouching next to the gates. To all appearances, Vale was a local engineer in canvas trousers and one of the island's heavy knitted sweaters, with heavy boots and flat cap, nursing a cigarette. 'Don't react. Just keep going, then turn right and head for the small zeppelin with two yellow stripes at the far end. I'll follow you.'\n\nIrene jerked her head in a gesture that might have been shaking rain off her hat and veil \u2013 though Vale would understand it as acknowledgement \u2013 and kept on walking, as did Kai. Catherine hesitated, then hurried to join them.\n\nThe zeppelin with the double yellow stripes hung above them in the sky, pivoting in slow arcs but anchored by ropes and ladders to the ground. Irene felt her shoulder blades tense as they approached it, as if she had a target painted on her back. She suppressed the urge to look round in case someone was following them. At least in the open field, nobody could sneak up close...\n\n'Stop right there!' someone shouted in French.\n\nIrene cursed fate, timing, and everything that thwarted escapes by ten seconds. 'Help Catherine up there \u2013 I'll handle this,' she told Kai, shoving the laptop into his hands. Before he could stop her, she turned round, adopting an air of mild confusion.\n\nHalf a dozen men were running towards them, wearing the uniform that Irene had seen elsewhere on the airfield. It sported more braid and buttons than were strictly necessary to inspire confidence. 'May I help you, gentlemen?' she enquired in French.\n\nOut of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Vale, still disguised, heading for their target zeppelin at a brisk jog. Good.\n\n'Madame,' said the man with the most braid and the heaviest moustache, 'you and your companions must come with us at once, to answer charges of murder in the high street. Your companions also\u2014'\n\nIrene held up a hand to interrupt him and shifted to the Language. This one rarely failed her. 'You all perceive that we are not the people you're looking for,' she commanded.\n\nShe saw the belief take hold as the Language adjusted their perceptions, and she relaxed \u2013 just in time for the resulting headache to hit hard. She winced and was about to add something along the lines of You perceive they're actually at the other end of the airfield. Then a bullet whipped through the air inches from her skull.\n\nTrained reflexes made her drop flat and roll. Another bullet cut through the air, missing her by a bigger margin this time. The guards also scattered, diving for cover. Irene rolled across the wet grass, cursing her long dress. She could tell the shots were coming from behind the airfield's fence, but she couldn't see the shooter or the gun clearly.\n\nFine. She'd just have to make do with what she had. 'Fence, fall on the shooter!' she shouted.\n\nMetal came crashing down. There were screams. She didn't stop to look \u2013 she dragged herself to her feet, gathering her wet, muddy skirts in her fists, and staggered towards the zeppelin. Through the thickening rain she could see Vale waiting by the ladder. There was no sign of Kai and Catherine \u2013 hopefully they were already up and safe.\n\nVale caught her by the arm, hauling her onto the ladder. He shouted to the airship above, 'Take us up!'\n\nThe anchor detached, and with a stomach-churning swiftness the zeppelin rose into the sky. Vale and Irene clutched onto the rope ladder below, swinging like a lunatic pendulum with the impetus of their ascent. Irene wedged her feet around a rung and desperately clung to the ladder, trying not to panic as the airfield sank away beneath them. Her twisting stomach made a wonderful accompaniment to her aching head as the ladder was slowly winched into the belly of the zeppelin. Below her feet, she could see the airfield guards chasing the gunman \u2013 no, there were two gunmen, and they were running for it now, heading for a carriage...\n\n'Witchcraft, smugglers, Lord Guantes, corruption, spies, and my sister's own agents subverted,' Vale noted, as they finally scrambled onto the decking. 'My files on Guernsey are sadly lacking. I really must return and update them.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "The nuns looking after Kai and Catherine had the crisp manner and white aprons of nurses, but their robes were golden brown and white wimples covered their hair. They ignored Irene in the corner, leaving her alone with her valuable suitcase. Out of sheer boredom she'd resorted to reading a nursing textbook, and she was learning more than she ever wanted to know about the human digestive system.\n\nKai was the first to wake. His eyes flickered open and he stared at the ceiling. 'I feel awful,' he said.\n\n'You've been given activated charcoal and you've had a stomach lavage \u2013 that's a washout. Your medical records show a list of the drugs that they injected you with, if you're interested.' Irene closed her textbook. 'On the positive side\u2014'\n\n'You love saying that,' Kai muttered.\n\n'That's because I desperately cling to any optimism I can get.' She sat on the chair between his and Catherine's beds. 'There was more than ricin in that poison, but we caught it in time. If you hadn't made yourself vomit on the zeppelin, it would have been worse. Though the captain didn't look too happy about that. As it is, you should be up and about within twenty-four hours, though your guts may be a little tender.'\n\nKai sighed. 'I feel so stupid, being poisoned like that. My whole family would be disappointed in me.'\n\nIrene knew dragons well enough to recognize the problem. It wasn't the poisoning that would disappoint his family, but the circumstances \u2013 he'd been dosed by a 'mere' witch in a cheap tearoom. Quite different from a respectable politically motivated assassination attempt. And so much more embarrassing. 'Your family would understand,' she said, looking around guardedly. 'Because there are bigger implications here. We've hit a serious problem.'\n\n'What do you mean?' Kai tried to sit up, failed, and propped himself up on his elbow as if he'd meant to do that all along. 'And where are we? I don't recognize this place. The last thing I remember was the airship.'\n\nIrene answered the second question, because she suspected that once she tackled the first, there wouldn't be space to discuss anything else. 'We're in the basement of St Henrietta's Hospital, under Whitehall. You and Catherine both passed out while we were over the Channel.' And she didn't want to remember just how terrified she'd been that they wouldn't make it to help in time.\n\nKai frowned. 'I don't remember a hospital by that name in London.'\n\n'It's secret,' Irene explained, reaching over to check Catherine's pulse. Still asleep. Good. 'Excessively secret. As in founded by royalty and supported by a hidden order of nuns, secret. Vale says that only the top ranks of the civil service and London's criminal underworld know about it. Most importantly, it has some of the highest security in London \u2013 and some of the best treatment for poisons, too.'\n\n'Hidden order of nuns?'\n\n'The Order of St Anastasia. It's one of those situations where an order of nuns become experts at treating poisons, everyone suspects they're really poisoners, multiple cardinals die, the nuns have to flee for their lives... then they save a king's sister from dying and he builds them a secret nunnery. You know how it goes.'\n\n'Oh, that happens all the time,' Kai agreed. 'My mother joined a few of those \u2013 only appearing in her human identity, of course. She says they're very convenient in an emergency. Almost as good as universal healthcare.'\n\nIrene blinked. Kai rarely talked about his mother. It must be the effect of the poisons \u2013 or the antidotes. 'Do dragons support universal healthcare?' she asked curiously.\n\nKai shrugged. 'It leads to the general protection and well-being of humans. So my father's in favour of it, of course.'\n\nIrene knew enough about dragons to recognize that the general protection and well-being of humans usually came secondary to the general protection and well-being of dragons. 'Sometimes I worry I'm too cynical,' she murmured.\n\n'You're wandering off the subject,' Kai said, proving that even if he wasn't telepathic, he knew Irene very well by now. 'What is the \"serious problem\" and what have you discovered?'\n\nIt was amazing how the words Lord Guantes is back kept sticking in her throat, Irene thought, but she plunged in. 'Do you remember Lord and Lady Guantes?'\n\n'Ah,' Kai said, jumping to the obvious conclusion. 'She's trying to murder us all because you killed her husband and destroyed their plans to start a Fae versus dragon war. Quite understandable.'\n\n'She may be involved \u2013 she probably is, actually. But her husband is definitely involved.'\n\nKai hesitated, his confusion shading into worry. 'How so?'\n\nIt made Irene feel slightly better to see that Kai was as reluctant as she was to consider that Lord Guantes was somehow still alive. It didn't make sense. And I'm not the only one who's still afraid of him... 'Let me explain,' she said.\n\nTen minutes later she'd finished her account of events, with interruptions, and Kai was digging his fingers into his sheets. She suspected it was pure self-control which kept his nails from growing into claws and shredding them to pieces. Dragons were occasionally prone to letting a few of their natural traits show through their human form when strong emotions took hold \u2013 red eyes, claws, scales, local elemental effects...\n\n'So,' she said, leaning back in her chair. 'What do we know so far?'\n\n'Don't treat me like your pupil,' Kai snapped, proving he was more distressed than angry. Anger would never make him rude; it'd be more likely to provoke icy courtesy. 'We're past that.'\n\n'All right,' Irene said equably. Better that he snarl at her than Catherine or the nuns. 'I apologize. I didn't want to prejudice your conclusions by giving my perspective first. What do you think of the whole affair?'\n\n'Assuming you weren't somehow deceived, something very strange is going on.'\n\n'That's not much of a conclusion.'\n\n'We're lacking evidence. We can't be sure Lord Guantes \u2013 and Lady Guantes \u2013 are behind all the recent attacks on us. What if he was some kind of... illusion? Someone could have used his likeness to send us on the wrong track. Many others know about the Venice business.' Which was shorthand for when I was kidnapped by Lord and Lady Guantes to start a war. You destroyed their power base while rescuing me, and killed him in the process. She could see him shying away from the memory. He paused, thinking. 'It's undeniable someone was trying to kill us on Guernsey, though. Whether this is linked to the previous attempts is still up for debate.'\n\n'True,' Irene agreed. 'But consider how it played out. It was... careless. It doesn't match his reputation as a master schemer. Why set up a complicated death trap in the submarine base, and then leave a back door open to his hideout?' She paused. 'I suppose the answer to that one is that he didn't expect me to be there and Vale couldn't have passed through that door. If Vale had been alone...' He would probably have died. And she'd never have known how or why. With an effort she continued her theorizing. 'Why get Julie Robilliard to give you a slow-acting poison, when he could have used his powers to persuade her to outright murder you? And then have people with guns waiting outside as well? It's all over the place. It's not like him.'\n\n'He did almost get us killed, though,' Kai pointed out.\n\n'You're not wrong,' she admitted. 'Let's go back to square one. We need to pool what we all know, what we can investigate, and what we should all do next for immediate self-preservation. Which means that Catherine needs to be awake \u2013 or rather, needs to admit she's awake.'\n\nCatherine opened her eyes without bothering to argue. 'I find out a lot more by listening without you knowing I'm listening.'\n\nIrene closed her eyes briefly. 'Aren't we supposed to be on the same side?' she asked.\n\n'I don't care.' Catherine struggled to pull herself upright, bashing the pillows into submission. 'You're supposed to be making me a Librarian. So why don't you do it? Get me into the Library and you won't have to worry about anyone killing me anyway. You won't have to worry about me any longer.' The bitter undertone to her voice would have corroded crystal.\n\n'Catherine...' Irene didn't count to ten, but she sorely wanted to. She could sense Kai vibrating like an offended high-voltage cable on her other side. 'I ask you as a rational adult: is this really the time for angst and venting your feelings?'\n\nCatherine fumbled for her glasses on the bedside table and stared at Irene with malignant focus. 'I object to being a pawn in your games. I'm sure you already know the Guantes and my uncle had a thing, but that's over and done with.'\n\n'When you say that they had a \"thing\"...' Kai said carefully.\n\nCatherine winced. 'I didn't mean that sort of \"thing\". Though you know what he's like. I wouldn't be surprised.'\n\n'If I might wrench this conversation back to its original topic,' Irene suggested firmly. 'Someone has tried to kidnap or kill me, Kai and Vale. Catherine may have been deliberately included, or she might be collateral damage \u2013 \"a pawn\", to use her words. And the attempts on Guernsey involved in-depth knowledge of our schedule and penetration of the British Secret Service. Which is where Vale is now, incidentally. He's trying to find out where the leak came from, as well as pursuing his mysterious crime lord case.'\n\n'Does this mean we can sue the British Secret Service?' Catherine asked.\n\n'No,' Irene said. 'They get very unhappy about people trying to sue them. The last person who tried was jailed for indecency with public transport\u2014'\n\n'With or on?'\n\n'With. It was complicated... Look, Catherine, please stop distracting me or we're never going to get anywhere. It seems that Lord Guantes was behind the attempts to kill us, but he was acting in a highly unusual manner and crumbled into dust afterwards. That's certainly unusual. And there's been no sign of Lady Guantes.'\n\n'Is that a fact?' Kai asked. 'In the sense of a data item, that is.'\n\n'It absolutely is. Absence of someone who should be there is a definite fact. Now, moving on to avenues of investigation. Catherine, I assume your uncle didn't mention anything about Lord Guantes returning from the dead to seek vengeance?'\n\n'Not a word,' Catherine said. 'He did mention Lady Guantes might try and kill you at some point. But he didn't think she'd try to kill me, so he wasn't too worried about it.'\n\n'Yes, that sounds like him,' Irene said with resignation. 'But if Lord Guantes is back, we should talk to Lord Silver. Maybe he'll remember something useful, if he's likely to be a target as well.'\n\n'The problem I see is how we're going to split up to investigate,' Kai said. 'Or maybe we shouldn't split up at all. Separated, we're more vulnerable as targets. I'm not happy that Vale's gone off on his own.'\n\nFor a moment the light caught his eyes and made them flicker red. Dragons might not hoard gold, whatever legend said, but they could be remarkably possessive of things \u2013 or people \u2013 they considered they owned.\n\nIrene shrugged. 'I'm not happy about it either. But if anyone's safe on his own in London, it's Vale.'\n\n'Well, true,' Kai admitted. 'I suggest we bring in additional staff. My father would be happy to assign us some servants. Technically they'd be assigned to me, but in practice we can use them for all us treaty representatives.'\n\n'That's actually a good idea,' Catherine agreed. 'Uncle has plenty of dangerous people on his private register too. Should we go primarily for bodyguards, poison-tasters or getaway specialists?'\n\nIrene was loath to disrupt this positive interaction between the two of them. However, she was conjuring up a mental image of two separate groups of protective servants who \u2013 knowing dragons and Fae \u2013 would suspect the worst of each other. It could be almost as dangerous as having an active assassin on their trail. Possibly worse. 'Let's consider leads so far first,' she suggested, ticking them off on her fingers. 'Lord Silver, in case he knows something about Lord and Lady Guantes. The laptop I took. Whatever Vale finds out regarding the leak. And Sterrington, in case we need Fae intel. There may be relevant conspiracies in Fae circles which we haven't heard about.'\n\nKai frowned. 'Sterrington worked for Lord Guantes once.'\n\n'She formally broke off their relationship when their plot to kidnap you and spark a war failed. Also, Sterrington serves the Cardinal now, and the Cardinal wants the peace treaty to succeed to benefit the Fae. It wouldn't be in Sterrington's interests to kill us.'\n\n'Unless someone made her a better offer,' Kai said darkly.\n\n'I doubt she'd want to get on the wrong side of the Cardinal.' And speaking of the Fae... 'Catherine,' she said, 'it might be best for you to stay with your uncle until all this blows over.'\n\nCatherine hesitated. 'Irene, can I talk to you in private?'\n\n'Of course,' Irene said. She glanced down; the beds were on wheels. 'If I push your bed out of the room...'\n\n'Not necessary.' Kai levered himself to his feet with a grunt, legs showing under his nightshirt. 'I need to go next door in any case \u2013 I take it there is a next door?'\n\n'It's just on your right,' Irene said with gratitude.\n\nWhen they were alone in the room, Irene turned back to Catherine. 'What is it?'\n\nCatherine grabbed her hands and clung to her like a limpet, her grip tight enough to hurt. 'Don't send me back to my uncle,' she said. 'Just get me into the Library and I'll do whatever you want, say whatever you want.'\n\n'I don't want a puppet!' Irene exclaimed. 'Surely living with him can't be that bad?'\n\n'I just can't stand him,' Catherine said. 'All he thinks about is one thing, and all I want is books. We don't have any common ground at all. He knew I'd be happy in your Library \u2013 much happier than living with him as his ward. Part of this whole thing is propaganda anyway, right? Having a Fae work with you to counterbalance your relationship with him.' Her eyes flicked to the door, indicating the absent Kai. 'I don't care about politics or the greater good or universal peace or whatever. I just want to be left in peace with books. The Library contains all the books I could ever need. Give me that and I'll do whatever you want.'\n\nHer voice had been slowly rising as she spoke, and her eyes begged Irene to believe her. And Irene wanted to. It was so close to what Irene herself once wanted from life. But the colder, more cynical part of her said: This is what she would tell you \u2013 if she wanted you to believe her. This is what she would say if she wanted to convince you she was just like you, to make you see yourself in her. You can trust Kai, and you can trust Vale, but can you really trust this woman? Are you really willing to let her into the Library?\n\nIrene took a deep breath. 'Catherine, I hear what you're saying. I understand how you feel. Any Librarian would.' She smiled ruefully. 'But we've already been through this. I've tried to get you through this world's permanent entrance to the Library. I've tried to get you through temporary ones. I've tried using the Language out loud. I've tried writing it down. I've even tried writing it in blood. The only time I've managed to get someone into the Library who was chaos-contaminated was by cleansing his system of the chaos first. And he was human.' That had been Vale, under desperate circumstances. 'I don't think I should try that on you.'\n\nCatherine gave her a mutinous glare. 'They don't train you in original thinking much, do they?'\n\n'I beg your pardon?' Irene said.\n\n'Why don't you take a gateway to pieces or something, so you can work out its basic principles and then get me in?'\n\nIrene took a breath, let it out. 'Because there's only one gateway to the Library in any given world. Nobody's entirely sure how they come into existence, and I'm not going to destroy one. I sympathize with the scientific approach, but there aren't enough of them to risk it. Coppelia's collating all the research she can find to help.' Though a worm of doubt at the back of her mind wondered if Coppelia was trying hard enough.\n\nAfter all, one of the Library's key safeguards was that Fae couldn't enter. If Irene proved they could, then who \u2013 or what \u2013 might follow?\n\nNo. That was paranoia. Coppelia herself had said that Irene had to succeed, for the sake of the Library's reputation and any future negotiations with the Fae. The problem with being too good at one's job was that one saw schemes everywhere.\n\nShe looked Catherine in the eye. 'I'm trying,' she said. 'I gave my word to your uncle \u2013 and to you \u2013 that I'd do my best to get you in there. Trust me.'\n\n'How can I, when you don't trust me?'\n\nIrene weighed that statement. Was it a teenage bleat of annoyance, or an accurate judgement? Or a mixture of the two? 'I understand you're impatient. So's Kai. So am I. For the moment, stay in bed and recover. I'll be back in a few hours.'\n\n'This isn't fair!'\n\nThat was an inner teenager having a tantrum. 'How old are you, Catherine?' Irene asked pointedly.\n\n'Mid-thirties,' Catherine muttered.\n\n'Right,' Irene said. She rose to her feet and picked up the bundle with the laptop. 'Keep an eye on that suitcase \u2013 I'll return it to the Library later. Back soon.'\n\n'I thought you said getting it to the Library was a priority?'\n\n'It is,' Irene agreed, 'but staying alive is an even higher priority.'\n\nKai was waiting outside the door at a tactful distance, so if he had been listening it wasn't obvious. He drew Irene into an embrace, and for a moment she was able to forget their current worries and take comfort in his strength. 'So what now?' he asked.\n\n'This is for you.' Irene passed him the laptop. 'You won't be able to do anything with it on this world, because of this world's magic \u2013 the moment you turn it on, a demon will attempt to possess it and it'll blow up.' She'd had that problem herself, last time she'd tried using a computer tablet from an alternate world in this one. 'Or something else equally unhelpful. And given who owned it, it's bound to be booby-trapped, password-protected, whatever. But can you take it elsewhere, get it analysed, and find out which world it came from?'\n\nKai's face lit up with enthusiasm. 'When we're done with it, can I trade it to one of my kin? I have cousins and friends who'd be delighted to go through a Fae's private files. I'm sure Lord Guantes isn't signed up to the truce, so we're well within the limits of the treaty.'\n\n'Isn't it a lovely feeling to be operating within the law?' Irene said, barely able to suppress her own smirk. 'We'd better not get too used to it.'\n\nKai glanced towards the closed sickroom door, and raised an eyebrow. It said, What are we going to do about her?\n\nIrene took him by the elbow and walked out of earshot. 'We're going to have to take her back to Lord Silver for the moment. It's too risky for her.'\n\n'She's trained,' Kai said. 'She handled herself well on Guernsey.'\n\n'She's also going to be a target if Lord Guantes is back, or if Lady Guantes is out for revenge. They can get to us through her, as she's my assistant. She could be used to get to Silver too. He'll probably want to take her and flee the city.'\n\nKai hesitated in the way he did when he was about to say something Irene wouldn't like. 'It's an apprentice's duty to share the master's work. And dangers.'\n\n'I'm worried about her safety.'\n\n'You never worried about mine like that. You never tried to send me home.'\n\nIrene kept her voice down with an effort. She absolutely didn't want Catherine overhearing this conversation. 'We never had an assassin directly targeting us in the past\u2014'\n\n'What about Alberich? When he was trying to destroy the Library and was hunting you personally,' Kai said unhelpfully.\n\nIrene generally tried not to think about that. Having the Library's most notorious traitor and enemy \u2013 now dead, she devoutly hoped \u2013 take an interest in her was the sort of thing that not only inspired nightmares, but fanned them to paranoia. Even if Alberich could somehow still be alive, though, this world had been warded against him. If there was a new crime lord in London, whoever it was, it wasn't him.\n\n'Thank you for bringing that up,' she said drily. 'If we're looking for people with grudges against us, I agree Alberich has motive. I burned his headquarters, ruined his plans, et cetera. What he doesn't have is opportunity. But even when he was actively targeting me, we didn't act like sitting ducks, just waiting for him to make his move. That's why I want to get Catherine away...' Her voice trailed off thoughtfully as an idea half formed in her mind. Obvious targets. She filed it for later consideration.\n\n'Well, we aren't doing that now,' Kai said. 'We're staying under cover till we have more information. Catherine is as safe here as she would be anywhere else.'\n\n'She'd be even safer with Lord Silver,' Irene said firmly. 'And since I'm going to speak to him anyway, I can ask him about it.'\n\n'I think you're making a mistake. She should be here.'\n\n'She's my apprentice. If I have rights over her, then I have the right to put her somewhere safe.'\n\nKai frowned. 'Irene...' He trailed off.\n\n'I should be moving,' she said, changing the subject. 'I'll be back as soon as I can. If you feel well enough to travel before I return, for pity's sake leave me a note saying where you've gone.'\n\n'What's your own itinerary?' Kai asked.\n\nIrene had to smile at that. Sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose. 'Visit Lord Silver at his embassy, then Sterrington, then our lodgings for messages, then Vale's lodgings, then back here. See \u2013 I'm completely transparent. It's just past ten o'clock in the morning, so Sterrington should be at her office.'\n\n'If it's ten o'clock in the morning, then Silver will be in bed and hungover.'\n\n'Yes,' Irene said cheerfully. 'I'm rather counting on that.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "It took repeated knocking at the Liechtenstein Embassy to raise any response, and the elderly woman who finally answered the back door glared at Irene. 'No hawkers welcome,' she said. 'No flowers, no love notes and no policemen. The Ambassador's out.'\n\n'He's what?' Irene said, stunned. Lord Silver had scheduled a party for last night, and most of the day before it.\n\nThe woman sniffed and tugged her shawl tighter round her shoulders, apparently about to slam the door in her face.\n\n'I beg your pardon,' Irene said quickly. 'I was just surprised. Do you know where Lord Silver has gone?'\n\nThe elderly woman leaned closer, breathing halitosis in Irene's direction. 'Fact is, he didn't rightly tell me. He left me to tidy up. And what I'm going to do with the food that's ordered for today I don't rightly know.'\n\n'Can you get him a message? It's urgent...' Irene started, her irritation growing.\n\nThen she looked more carefully at the woman. That nose was just a little too pronounced, the stoop overdone. The bad breath wafted in her face was the product of onions and garlic. The whole effect was staged. 'You know who I am,' she said quietly. 'Let me in.'\n\nThere was a flash of clarity in the woman's rheumy eyes. Then she stepped back to let Irene inside.\n\nIrene lowered her umbrella and unwound her veil once the door was safely shut. She'd changed her hat, coat and veil from her usual subdued colours for something a bit brighter and cheaper. She'd change them again before going on to Sterrington. Standard protocols for when a spy \u2013 or a Librarian \u2013 suspected they were being followed. 'All right,' she said. 'For the record, I identify myself as Irene Winters. What's going on?'\n\nThe woman straightened up, rubbing her back. 'You have to tell me how you spotted that,' she said ruefully, her voice abruptly clearer and less dialect-ridden. 'I thought this persona would put off Peregrine Vale himself, if he came round asking nosy questions.'\n\n'It was partly the shawl,' Irene said apologetically. 'It was far too clean. And something about the accent... but it was an excellent effort.'\n\nThe woman nodded appreciatively. 'So you were asking after Lord Silver. He's gone to Hawaii.'\n\n'Hawaii?' Irene could hear her voice rising. 'Why?'\n\nSilver's retainer shrugged. 'They were drinking rum and coconut milk cocktails last night and someone said, We should be drinking these in Hawaii. Lord Silver agreed. Then he loaded up the household and half the guests in ether-cabs and headed for the zeppelin port.'\n\nIrene groaned. 'No... ulterior motives? An urgent need to get away?'\n\n'Not unless you count the weather, miss. Lord Silver's not too fond of rain \u2013 unless he's bathing naked on the roof. In company.'\n\n'Can you contact him?'\n\n'I can send a message, miss, but I can't promise when he'll read it.'\n\nIrene was silent for a moment. Was Silver really on holiday, or had something or someone scared him off? Maybe she was just being paranoid \u2013 but he rarely left London. In any case, she clearly couldn't leave Catherine here.\n\nAt least Lord Silver was probably safe from planned assassinations \u2013 if he was in Hawaii.\n\n'I'll leave you a note to pass on,' she said. 'I'd also appreciate it if you could let me know of any attacks on the embassy. Lord Silver and I may have a mutual problem.'\n\n'Can do, miss,' the woman said. 'Send your message, that is. The rest of it's at his lordship's discretion.'\n\nIrene repressed a sigh. 'That'll have to do.'\n\nHer next stop was across London Bridge, on the other side of the Thames. She was aiming for a tangle of 'modern' architecture \u2013 designed for bankers, lawyers and similar types. These offices sat cheek by jowl with classical Regency buildings, converted for the same aforesaid business types. She'd picked up an ether-cab shortly after leaving the Liechtenstein Embassy. No person of quality would be walking around this bustling neighbourhood for more than five minutes, even if the packed streets meant journeys took twice as long.\n\nThis also meant twice as long sitting in the back of a cab, wondering if a bullet would shatter the window at any moment. Twice as long worrying about Kai, and Vale, and Catherine, and all the things that could go wrong.\n\nKai didn't seem to realize quite how much danger he'd been in. He'd just shrugged it away: he'd been poisoned, received medical care, recovered. Catherine at least seemed to have a more sensible appreciation of the situation. Irene wished she knew more about her student's history. She kept on thinking of her as the girl, as she seemed so young. She claimed to be in her thirties \u2013 but really, how could a human tell a Fae's real age? Either way, she remained an unknown quantity at an uncertain time.\n\nSterrington's office was in one of the new buildings. It reared up ominously among the surrounding establishments, a structure in dark iron with windows as black as obsidian. Two small zeppelins floated above, tethered to the roof in permanent readiness to rush off on urgent business \u2013 a display of ostentatious wealth declaring We have money to waste. A constant stream of visitors flowed through the rotating doors, and Irene was glad to lose herself among them. Inside, her progress was further slowed by a group of workmen repainting the lobby. It was oddly reassuring to find this dark monolith of business wasn't as perfect as it looked.\n\nTo Irene's surprise she was shown to Sterrington's office immediately. She was whisked past two secretaries and a roomful of clerks, and Sterrington actually rose from her desk to greet her. 'Thank you so much for coming at once,' she said. 'I do appreciate it.'\n\nIrene shook Sterrington's mechanical hand, feeling the workings of metal and plastic under the woman's silk glove, and wondered what she'd missed. 'I'm glad if this is timely,' she said, 'but I have to admit I came about my own problems. If you sent a message to my lodgings, I haven't been there since yesterday.'\n\n'The important thing is that we can have a face-to-face, high priority.' Sterrington gestured Irene to a chair opposite. Her dark hair was restrained in a tight bun, and her face had the sort of smooth gloss that went with a perfect cleansing regimen. Her watered silk grey jacket and skirt radiated 'high-status businesswoman', topped off with a single ruffle of white silk at her throat. She came straight to the point. 'Yesterday I received an urgent message from Lord Silver. One of his spies warned him someone was plotting to assassinate him. So he was planning to leave London, without alerting any watchers that he knew of the plot. He thought I was involved too.'\n\n'As additional target or as an assassin?' Irene asked innocently.\n\n'Target,' Sterrington said. The Fae didn't seem insulted, which said something about her professional relationship with Lord Silver. 'His contacts told him you were at risk as well, and he asked me to tell you for the sake of the treaty. I expect he left a message for you too.'\n\n'More than likely,' Irene agreed. 'I need to check my lodgings; the problem is doing it safely... we experienced an assassination attempt ourselves, in Guernsey. It was almost a success.'\n\n'\"We\" being?'\n\n'Myself, Prince Kai, Peregrine Vale and Catherine. It's the identity of the assassin that's relevant here. You see... Lord Guantes came back from the dead.'\n\n'I find it alarming that you believe this.'\n\n'So you think I've been fooled?' Irene asked.\n\n'Let's say I think you should reconsider,' Sterrington said. 'Firstly, necromancy may be practised in some worlds, but it doesn't work on my kind. Secondly, you definitely killed Lord Guantes. I should know. I spent over an hour sitting in the same train carriage as his dead body. Thirdly, I believe you think you're speaking the truth. Therefore \u2013 lastly \u2013 you've been deceived in some way. Perfectly understandable, of course. But you haven't told anyone else... have you?'\n\nIrene clicked her tongue. 'Really, Sterrington, give me credit for not being entirely lacking in sense.'\n\nSterrington flushed. 'I should have known better,' she said, neatly avoiding an actual apology. Fae didn't like admitting error any more than humans. 'It's just the Cardinal wouldn't like such rumours. It upsets the political balance. I don't suppose you have any evidence to back up your wild claim?'\n\n'I do, actually, but it's with Kai for analysis.' Trusting anyone was a gamble, and Sterrington had worked for Lord Guantes before. But Sterrington's current patron, the Cardinal, was in favour of the peace treaty. As such, they might even count on his and Sterrington's aid. She ran through the details and saw doubt drift across Sterrington's face like a shadow crossing the moon. 'So you see,' she finished, 'I have valid evidence\u2014'\n\n'Of something, certainly,' Sterrington cut in. 'I wish you'd given me that laptop. We have our own expert analysts, you know.'\n\n'Did the world I described sound familiar to you?' Irene asked, dodging the subject.\n\nSterrington looked thoughtful, turning her pen over and over between gloved fingers. 'Not specifically. It sounds like a world with a high degree of technology, and chaos, but there are so many of those. However, I find your description of that door into it rather worrying.'\n\n'Why worrying?'\n\n'Because of what it implies.'\n\n'Sterrington, I've seen Fae travel between worlds on their own, or through the agency of a more powerful Fae. That wasn't treated as in any way unusual. And dragons can move between realms too... Is a permanent door between two worlds something new?'\n\nSterrington took several seconds to answer. Finally she said, 'It's new in my experience, and yes, troubling. There are legends that it is possible, but... different spheres,' she used the Fae term for alternate worlds, 'aren't meant to be tied so closely together. It's very bad for both realms.'\n\n'That's not encouraging.'\n\n'No, it isn't. I may need to report this.' Sterrington pulled herself together. 'I still don't think you saw Lord Guantes, though. Whoever threatened you is an impostor, or a clone, or a brainwashed minion... or something else set up to confuse you. You want to be looking for the person you didn't see.'\n\n'And who is that?'\n\n'Lady Guantes,' Sterrington said. 'She's trying to taunt you, using her dead husband. It makes perfect sense that she's behind the recent attacks upon you and your friends. And she's trying to kill me because I failed them, then took a new patron.'\n\n'But how could they predict that I'd even be there with Vale, never mind that I'd find \u2013 and open \u2013 that door? Then see Lord Guantes waiting there...'\n\n'May I be frank?' Sterrington asked.\n\nIrene sighed. This was always the sign of a fast-approaching insult. 'Do go on,' she said drily.\n\n'With the utmost respect, anyone who knows you would expect you to investigate a potentially dangerous door while already facing a life-or-death situation.'\n\nIrene liked to think of herself as sensible, but she couldn't deny she'd gone through the door. 'I viewed it as a rational step in an urgent investigation,' she said with dignity.\n\nThere was a nagging feeling at the back of Irene's mind, however. It suggested that any hypothesis which fitted the data so conveniently was by nature unreliable. 'But why?' she said. 'What good does it do Lady Guantes to kill us? And why now, after all this time?'\n\n'Vengeance. What else?' Sterrington said.\n\n'Still...' Irene picked her words carefully. 'She's a pragmatic woman, from what I remember of her. Pursuing personal vengeance for its own sake doesn't feel like her style.'\n\n'Just because we don't know why she's doing it, doesn't invalidate the hypothesis that it's her,' Sterrington persisted.\n\nIrene hadn't finished. 'Could Lady Guantes be targeting the peace treaty instead, with a sweetener of personal vengeance on the side? Killing all three representatives would cause havoc. She and her husband did try to trigger a dragon\u2013Fae war before, to benefit from the chaos that war brings. That was the whole point of kidnapping Kai.'\n\nSterrington nodded slowly. 'It makes sense.'\n\n'I just wish we knew more about her,' Irene said in frustration. 'Lord Guantes was always the more flamboyant one. Or do you know something that I don't?'\n\nSterrington shook her head. 'It seems she liked operating in the shadows. The very opposite to her husband's archetype. I don't even know her original name.'\n\nIrene nodded, a thought occurring. 'Doesn't the Cardinal have files on everyone?'\n\n'He certainly has files on Lord Guantes... Although, as we said, the lady is secretive,' Sterrington added.\n\n'Could you share them?'\n\n'I suppose I could put in a request,' she said grudgingly.\n\n'Thank you.'\n\n'In the meantime, there's the question of Silver's niece,' Sterrington said, her tone a little too casual. 'Now you're a target, you could leave her with me. I'll guarantee her safety. Then you can hunt down Lady Guantes \u2013 you and Prince Kai \u2013 without worrying about her.' Sterrington's barely hidden enthusiasm was disconcerting.\n\nAnd give you full access to a Fae who might become a Librarian, a girl who is currently nervous, impressionable and off-balance, Irene thought. I really don't think so.\n\nIrene knew Sterrington could see the denial in her eyes. However, the Fae just shrugged. 'The offer's open. I'd keep her safe. It might be safer for you, too.'\n\n'In what way?'\n\n'Catherine has come out of nowhere: no references but Lord Silver, no backing, no personal recommendations, no previous employment records.' Sterrington paused. 'Who can be sure about her background? And who might she be talking to behind your back? People have been trying to shoot all of us, but not her.'\n\nIrene wanted to write all this off as spite on Sterrington's part because she wouldn't hand the girl over... but it did mirror some of her own earlier suspicions about Catherine. 'Given the savagery of Fae politics, I can see why Silver would keep young family members hidden,' she said. 'And so far she's proven herself trustworthy. Also, they did try to poison her too in Guernsey.'\n\n'Oh, quite, quite.' Sterrington leaned forward. 'But I hope you're maintaining proper objectivity. Sometimes I think you have a tendency to become... emotionally attached to your junior co-workers.'\n\nIrene met Sterrington's stare with her own best blank face. 'I'm only interested in books,' she said, and wished it was true.\n\nThere was a rap at the office door, then a young man burst in. The room must have been soundproofed, as Irene could only now hear screams and running in the corridors.\n\n'Madame,' the man said, flinching at Sterrington's glare, 'forgive me, we need to evacuate. The building's on fire.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "'An accident or deliberate?' Sterrington demanded. The screams were getting louder and Irene could smell smoke.\n\n'I don't know, madam... But the fire alarms didn't go off.'\n\n'Where's the nearest fire escape?' Irene asked.\n\nThe man looked apologetic. 'I'm sorry, madam, but we discovered it was badly damaged. The lifts are down for maintenance and the fire has made the stairs impassable. We'll need to get to the roof and take one of the zeppelins instead.' He looked pale and his jacket was singed.\n\nSterrington quickly retrieved a few small objects from a desk drawer. 'Come on, let's move. No fire alarms, and the fire escape damaged? Clearly arson. Lead the way, Wickson.'\n\n'Where is everyone?' Irene asked, following her into the now noticeably empty corridor. It had been bustling when she was ushered in but now just a few people were visible, disappearing at some speed down a corridor.\n\n'It's lunchtime,' said Wickson, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did. Lunchbreak was a sacred institution in these times.\n\nSterrington refused to catch Irene's eye. 'My personal assistant doesn't need a lunch hour,' she said, in an almost defensive tone.\n\nThey turned a corner. The fire escape door swung open, offering a view of a black iron staircase, a few stragglers climbing to safety and the opposite city block twenty yards away. Thick smoke curled between them and distant safety.\n\n'Isn't the fire escape damaged?' snapped Sterrington.\n\nFlinching, Wickson said, 'Yes madam, but only that section below. We can still get to the roof.' It seemed the rickety rungs were their only hope.\n\n'To the zeppelins, then,' Sterrington proclaimed, flinging herself out of the door and onto the stairs.\n\nOf course Irene looked down, just for a moment. Ten storeys below, fire wreathed the building \u2013 and the blaze was at least three storeys high. Smoke billowed upwards, increasing with every passing moment, and the air was hot as she breathed it in. Through the windows of the building opposite she saw horrified faces. If only it were close enough to jump.\n\nThe metal steps rang beneath her feet as she hurried to the roof, following the fire escape in its zig-zag up the side of the building. She could hear people panicking above her.\n\nThen there was a crash from above that shook the whole building. The stairs shuddered against the wall as though they were about to rip free, tossing them against the flimsy rail. Irene fell to her knees, clinging to the bare metal steps as they shivered under her. When she looked up, she could see that Wickson and Sterrington were braced against the wall.\n\nIrene clawed herself to her feet again, and they all scrambled up the final section to the roof. There Irene paused, taking in the scope of the disaster.\n\nOne of the zeppelins had crashed in the middle of the landing space. The other, still anchored to the roof by a tether, was tilting in mid-air, the fans on one side working double-time while the other side faltered. The glass window at the front was shattered \u2013 and Irene caught a glimpse of a prone body inside. It began to lose height, also careening down to the landing area. The people on the roof screamed, scattering towards the edge.\n\nNo fire alarms, and the fire escape damaged? Clearly arson, Sterrington had said. And now the zeppelins were down too.\n\nIrene pulled herself to her feet, assessing the possibilities. The building nearest to the fire escape was impossible to reach. The remains of the zeppelins were now piled up like a child's discarded toys, gasbags deflated and girders bent, ropes flapping loose and their canvas torn. The zeppelins' mooring gear lay uselessly beside them, cables still neatly coiled.\n\nCables.\n\nThe closest building was to the west. Irene ran in that direction, shouldering her way through the crowd to see if there was a chance of achieving what she had in mind. The neighbouring offices' roof also featured a flat platform surrounded by railings, in exactly the same style as Sterrington's office block. Perfect.\n\nIn the street below, the fire engines had finally turned up and were pumping water into the flames. It wasn't going to be enough. Smoke was already beginning to rise through the higher windows in the block, making the trapped mob around her cough and choke.\n\nSterrington's expression lightened as she saw Irene approaching. 'Have you found a way out of here?' she asked.\n\n'I have, but I'll need your help,' Irene said, saving a snippy, Do you think I can work miracles? for another day. She lowered her voice. 'I need rope \u2013 the mooring cables from those zeppelins will do. We need to drag them over to the west side there. I'm going to make a bridge to the next building.'\n\nWickson coughed \u2013 admonitory, rather than smoke-induced. 'Madam, we can't throw ropes of that weight with any accuracy across that distance. And how would we tie them at the other end?'\n\nSterrington silenced him with a gesture. 'If she says she can do it, she can. Get her the ropes. Irene, do you seriously plan to have us tightrope-walk across?'\n\nWickson didn't give up his lack of hope easily. 'The mooring cables will be attached to the centre of the platform, madam.'\n\n'Don't worry,' Irene said. 'I'll detach them. Be ready to carry them.'\n\nAfter a bit of applied Language to detach the four cables from their mooring points, she was in position on the west side. Two of Sterrington's men had dragged the heavy cables over, while others kept the panicking crowd back while she worked. Everyone seemed to assume that ropes somehow equalled safety, rather than realizing that thirty yards of rope wouldn't get them to the ground. She had to work fast, before she was overrun.\n\nShe touched one of the cables and put her hand on one of the vertical railings. 'Rope which I'm touching, bind one end around the base of the railing I'm holding.'\n\nShe repeated the process with the next mooring line, setting it a couple of feet above the first. The cables coiled like pythons, knotting themselves firmly in place. Good. This would work. This had to work.\n\nShe took a deep breath, ignoring the hot air that rippled her skirts, the sweat that ran down her back, the shouting behind her and the rising smoke. Then she touched the knotted cable before her and pointed to the adjacent building. 'Rope which I'm touching, bind your free end around the railing directly opposite belonging to the building I'm indicating with my finger.'\n\nNobody ever said the Language was elegant. Especially when its wielder was almost on fire. She did the same with the next rope, again commanding it to fasten above the first. The cables were several inches thick, strong enough to hold an airship, but far too heavy to throw. Yet under the force of the Language each rose in turn, spearing across the twenty-yard gap and grappling around the railings on the far side.\n\nIt wasn't much of a bridge. One line was strung above the other, so an escapee could shuffle sideways along one while holding a guide rope at waist height to avoid plunging to their death. The hawsers were each about six inches in diameter, but it would still have required an acrobat to walk across them without something to hold. It would be terrifying. But it was a way off the top of this burning edifice.\n\n'Right,' Irene said, leaning on the rail to catch her breath. The smoke made her cough. 'Sterrington, have your people keep this orderly...'\n\n'On it already,' Sterrington said, passing her a hip flask which proved to contain brandy.\n\nIrene took a reviving swallow, ignoring her growing headache, and repeated her words in the Language with the other two cables, setting up a second bridge. Sterrington was scanning the nearby buildings with a careful eye.\n\n'Something I missed?' Irene asked.\n\n'Those zeppelins were shot down,' Sterrington said quietly. People were being shepherded \u2013 or shoved \u2013 onto the cable 'bridges', and struggling across to the next building with varying degrees of grace. Nobody had fallen off. So far, anyway. 'Snipers. They must be nearby.' She jerked her chin towards the higher buildings, unwilling to point obviously. 'The question is whether they've gone, or whether they're waiting to make sure their targets don't get away. Whoever they may be.' She flicked a glance to Irene, then the remaining roof-dwellers.\n\nIrene followed her gaze. 'Just how many people in this building are there who might have assassins coming after them?'\n\nSterrington shrugged. 'We have the Mafia, or a holding company representing the Mumbai underworld. Also some dubious businessmen from Germany, plus shell companies for the Seventh Hell Brotherhood and the Cathedral of Reason. Both of the latter are secret societies, so you didn't hear that from me, by the way. I didn't pick this place by accident, you know. I wanted somewhere where the highly elite \u2013 and enormously wealthy \u2013 based their offices.'\n\n'And the highly illegal,' Irene muttered.\n\nSterrington shrugged again. 'The highly effective.'\n\nIrene coughed, and held her sleeve to her mouth to block the smoke. 'So if the snipers are still here... are you waiting to see if they shoot people as well as zeppelins?'\n\n'Why else do you think I'm standing here, rather than escaping?'\n\n'Yes, that did seem rather unusual,' Irene admitted. 'So you do think this is aimed at you.'\n\n'Why say that?'\n\n'Because otherwise you'd be out of here and to hell with the snipers.'\n\nSterrington looked as if she was about to object, then gave up. 'The Guantes duo were famous for the well-laid trap. They could be very useful, in fact. Sometimes I really regret they went out of business.'\n\nIrene sighed. 'Come on,' she said. 'Snipers or no snipers, we need to get off the roof \u2013 now. The smoke's getting too thick for safety.'\n\nMost people had fled to safety over her bridges, but Sterrington's men were still waiting. Irene ignored the itch on the back of her neck at the thought of a sniper taking aim, and concentrated. She tucked up her skirt and clambered over the railings, trying not to look down. Her feet found the lower rope and she began to inch sideways across the drop, clutching the guide rope with sweating hands.\n\nThe street below was dizzyingly far away \u2013 and busy. Through the smoke she could make out the uniforms of police and firemen, the black and grey of other office workers, and the more colourful clothing of ordinary people drawn by the excitement. Some of them seemed to be shouting and waving at her. She felt no urge to wave back. The flames were at the sixth or seventh floor now, and still rising, roaring, unstoppable. She could feel the incredible heat. Black smoke streamed upwards, building a pillar in the sky higher than any of the surrounding office blocks.\n\nThe heavy fibres of the cable were rough under her hands, and the narrow bridge was harder to manage than she'd expected. She forced herself to focus on the cable in front of her rather than the drop below.\n\nA bullet whistled past her.\n\nIrene relaxed her death grip on the cable and slid herself forward as fast as she could, letting the guide rope glide through her fingers as she forced herself along the bridge. Then she was tumbling over the railing and onto the roof in an ungainly sprawl.\n\nBut she wasn't safe. Not yet. Not so long as she was standing here in plain view. She stumbled through the crowd, trying to find cover. The yawning flight of stairs that led inside beckoned her, and she ran for it.\n\nSterrington joined her moments later, wiping smears of ash from her face, and they drew aside from the people streaming downstairs. 'You've brought trouble to my door,' she said sourly.\n\n'I thought you'd decided you were the target.'\n\n'Maybe. But nothing happened until you arrived.'\n\nIrene worked on staying calm. She couldn't afford to alienate her fellow treaty representative. Her day was bad enough already. 'I arrived less than an hour ago. Nobody could have predicted my movements to set this up.' She paused, thinking. 'How long have workmen been painting downstairs?'\n\n'Several days. Why do you ask \u2013 oh.' Sterrington frowned. 'I see. It would be the perfect cover for arranging the arson, wouldn't it? Flammable material, access to take the lifts out of service... I'll have someone look into it.'\n\nIrene thought privately that it was a little late for that. She decided not to mention the bullet, either \u2013 it would only encourage Sterrington to blame her again. Instead she said, 'There was a murder attempt on you a couple of weeks ago, so after today, you're definitely on the hit list. It seems they are aiming for all the treaty representatives.' Though that left the question of why Vale had been targeted. Because he was an associate of Irene's? Or simply as a gesture of revenge from Lord Guantes? After all, he'd helped rescue Kai from the Guantes' kidnap plot. 'Assuming someone else here wasn't the target?' She glanced at the flames roaring from the neighbouring building. They really needed to move.\n\n'I doubt it, but that's what I'll be telling the police,' Sterrington said briskly. 'I can do without the attention. Listen, Irene, I have to assume my apartment's been compromised, and you should presume the same for your lodgings. I'll take a room at Claridge's. Leave any messages for me there, or with my solicitor Sallers at the Middle Temple. We can use him as a dead drop \u2013 I've kept my link with him secret. Let me know when you have more on that laptop.'\n\nFor once, Irene was grateful the Fae was a professional schemer. She could also spot an opportunity. 'And on your side, can you check up on Lady Guantes \u2013 and see if any Guantes enemies have been murdered recently? I'm assuming the Cardinal will know.'\n\n'He's extremely busy,' Sterrington hedged. 'You don't want the details.'\n\n'Much as I sympathize with keeping a mess from one's boss until it's sorted out, he might be a target as well. Do you want to be the one who didn't warn him?'\n\n'Now you're exaggerating. Nobody on their level has even the slightest chance of assassinating the Cardinal.'\n\nThe roof was nearly empty now and firemen were escorting stragglers downstairs. They needed to hurry if they wanted to lose themselves in the crowd. 'Look,' Irene said, 'whether we're facing Lord Guantes, Lady Guantes, or both \u2013 and whether they want personal revenge or to trigger another war \u2013 they've tried to assassinate all three peace treaty representatives. The Cardinal needs to know.'\n\n'Oh, very well. I suppose some sort of memorandum might be in order. But I don't expect this plot to stay hidden for much longer. This London isn't the Guantes' home ground. With your Vale and the police after her, him or them, they'll have to retreat \u2013 and we'll be ready next time.'\n\nBehind Sterrington, the whole building was aflame now. It was a warning that it could have been so much worse. Sterrington didn't seem to realize just how close they'd both come to death.\n\n'All right,' Irene said, moving towards the stairs. 'I'll be in touch. Just... be careful. We've been lucky so far.'\n\nThey needed to resolve this \u2013 or their enemies would destroy even more of London in their desire for vengeance. When it came to Fae feuds, human lives were incidental damage.\n\nThe air was thick with smoke as Irene emerged from the building that had been their salvation. The street was packed so full of observers, bystanders, coffee vendors and bookmakers that she had to shove her way through the crowd. Fire engines were spraying thick gouts of water into the lower parts of the blazing building, but it didn't seem to be doing much good. Though Irene admitted she knew more about fires from the running away from them perspective than putting them out. At any rate, it wasn't her problem any more.\n\n'Hold it!' Several people stopped in their tracks, Irene included, and there was a general turning of heads to see Inspector Singh approaching, trailed by policemen. His gaze fixed on Irene. 'Mrs Parker? I'd like a word with you.'\n\nThat was interesting \u2013 and worrying. Inspector Singh knew perfectly well that Irene's identity in this world was Miss Winters and not Mrs Parker. He also knew more about the Library, the dragons and Fae than Irene would have liked. If he was trying to have a private word, without identifying her publicly as Irene Winters, then Irene Winters was in trouble.\n\nIrene let herself be escorted into a waiting police van. One of the policemen \u2013 a sturdy fellow with a moustache \u2013 climbed in, along with Inspector Singh. The harsh electric light inside the closed cab brought out every smut and smear on Irene's clothing. In contrast, Inspector Singh, sitting on the opposite bench with his attendant policeman, could have attended a public parade. From his polished boots to his turban and green sash \u2013 a token of his secondment from the Imperial Police in India \u2013 he looked pristine.\n\nAt that moment, Irene didn't even care why he'd brought her here. The fire was too fresh a terror. Even though she'd managed to control herself while they were escaping, now that she was out of danger her subconscious was sending messages. Apparently it would like to lie down and gibber for a few hours. 'You wanted to speak with me, inspector?' she asked curtly.\n\n'Actually, Miss Winters, I wanted to thank you,' the inspector said. 'I don't have all the details yet, but I understand you managed to organize the evacuation. Nice work.'\n\nIt made a pleasant change to have someone actually congratulating her for something. 'I'm glad I could help,' she answered. 'What I'm more worried about is why it happened.'\n\n'Always to the point. Under normal circumstances I'd call the fire a terrible misfortune, but as things stand we were lucky that nothing worse happened.'\n\nHe glanced sideways to the other policeman, who somehow relaxed. His shoulders loosened and a new light came into in his eyes. 'Forgive me for not removing this disguise, Winters.' It was Vale's voice, unmistakable. 'We all need to be careful about showing ourselves in public right now. I have very little doubt that Sterrington \u2013 and possibly you as well \u2013 were meant to die in that fire. Though I have yet to determine whether your presence triggered the attack, or whether your involvement was accidental.'\n\nIrene resigned herself to the fact that Vale's disguises really were that good. 'If I was an intended target, then someone must have waited until I visited to set the fire,' she said. 'If it was just meant for Sterrington, then my timing was indeed... unfortunate. The plan must have preceded our trip to Guernsey, though \u2013 the \"painters\" in the building had been there at least a couple of days.'\n\n'Painters?' Singh asked.\n\nIrene gave them a brief summary of events. 'So if this was the backup plan in case I survived Guernsey,' she finished, 'what's Plan C?'\n\n'Precisely why I'm avoiding my lodgings,' Vale agreed. 'For the moment, our interests \u2013 and London's \u2013 are best served by us staying out of sight. You sent Strongrock to get that computer analysed?'\n\n'I did. You know Lord Silver's left London?'\n\n'Of course. What do you propose to do with his niece?'\n\n'I'm still working on that,' Irene admitted. 'I have a set of rooms in Croydon, leased under an alias. I could leave her there with some good books.'\n\n'Probably the best solution,' Vale agreed.\n\n'So where will you go next, Miss Winters, if you're keeping a low profile?' Inspector Singh asked. 'I can have the cab drop you off somewhere.'\n\n'Whitehall, please. I'll get Catherine to safety. Then I have another trail that might be worth following.'\n\n'Really?' Vale asked.\n\n'The books. I want to know if someone leaked information about that copy of La Vie de Merlin. Maybe it was bait to get us to Guernsey.'\n\n'Probably an area that you're better qualified to investigate than I,' Vale said. Generous of him, Irene thought wryly. 'In the meantime, I will be investigating the presence of Lord or Lady Guantes in London \u2013 and whether or not this has anything to do with my criminal mastermind. I smell conspiracy and intrigue. I also intend to find this Professor that Lord Guantes mentioned.' Even beneath his disguise, the lines of his face were suddenly hawk-like \u2013 a hunter on the trail, a duellist looking for his opponent.\n\n'Be careful,' Irene said.\n\nVale raised a brow. 'Surely I should be telling you that, and with far more cause. London is my home, Winters. I need no warnings to watch my step.'\n\nBut Irene wasn't afraid \u2013 well, wasn't just afraid \u2013 for his safety. She was afraid for his personality \u2013 his soul, if you cared to put it that way. Once he'd been infected by chaos, and it had come close to destroying him. It had tried to twist him into an archetype, rather than a human being, drawing on a strain of Fae blood in his family tree. The pull of this great detective archetype had tempted him to lose himself in the thrill of the chase, the lure of a puzzling crime. And what greater temptation than the presence of a 'master criminal' in London? There was a new gleam in Vale's eye, a controlled urgency in his posture.\n\nIrene had realised how much she valued Vale as a friend, when she'd almost lost him. She didn't want to risk that again.\n\n'I think we all need to be extremely careful,' she said. 'That may include you, Inspector Singh. Whether we are facing Lady Guantes, Lord Guantes, or some other malefactor entirely, if our aggressor knows you're a friend of ours, they could target you too.'\n\n'I assure you I'm being prudent, Miss Winters,' Inspector Singh said. His sideways glance made it clear that he was more concerned about Vale. 'Whether criminal masterminds are present or not, I always watch my step. Besides, if anyone cares to take a shot at me, they'll need to be quick about it. My appointment book's a little overfull at the moment. The upcoming Hungarian state visit, the Grand Technological Exhibition\u2014'\n\n'Which reminds me, I need to look into Doctor Brabasmus and his work,' Vale interrupted. 'The cerebral controllers, you recall? Even if the doctor himself is dead, his inventions are clearly on the market, and it may be possible to find out who's been buying them.' The carriage rumbled to a halt. 'Your stop, I believe. Send any messages for me to my sister Columbine.'\n\n'What if you need to contact me?' Irene asked.\n\n'I'll find you,' Vale said, with a somewhat irritating certainty.\n\nSt Henrietta's Hospital was reassuringly quiet, clean and safe after the wilds of London. The layers of security which surrounded it were also a safeguard from any immediate attempts at assassination. Irene wondered briefly if she could leave Catherine here for the next few days. They probably didn't take lodgers, but maybe if she promised a sufficiently high donation...\n\nThen she walked into the bedroom where she'd left Catherine. It was empty.\n\nPanic rose, as she contemplated various horrific scenarios. She took a deep breath and forced herself to look around the room with clinical detachment, as Vale would have done. No bloodstains, no obvious signs of a struggle. But equally, no Catherine... and the suitcase containing the Merlin book was gone too.\n\nThe nun outside was happy to answer Irene's questions. 'Why yes, the young dear checked herself out. Since she was healthy and in her right mind, we didn't have any problem with that.'\n\n'Did she say where she was going?' Irene asked desperately. 'Or leave a note?'\n\n'No, nothing like that. But...'\n\n'Yes?' Irene said hopefully.\n\nOther nuns had quietly closed in. 'She did say that you'd be paying the bill,' the first nun said, with a flinty smile. 'We have the full accounting here. I do hope there won't be any problems.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "Fortunately the nuns took cheques.\n\nBut none of the others knew where Catherine had gone either. No, she hadn't said what she planned to do, but she'd only been gone for an hour at most \u2013 so she couldn't have ventured far.\n\nIrene left with a polite smile pinned to her face, but behind it, she was furious. What did Catherine think she was doing? She'd been poisoned, just like Kai \u2013 the only thing stopping Irene from accusing her of betrayal. She must know the current situation was dangerous.\n\nOutside, the city still stank of smoke, and drizzling rain made the air clammy and depressing. Irene drew her veil across her face and considered how best to hunt down an ungrateful, unthinking idiot apprentice.\n\nCatherine had left an hour ago, but the convent's entrance was deliberately unobtrusive and unwatched. There wouldn't be any witnesses to her vanishing act.\n\nOf course, it was always possible that Catherine had just gone back to their shared lodgings, without bothering to leave a message. Possible \u2013 though unlikely. Still, Irene reluctantly decided she should check first.\n\nFortunately she and Kai had taken a few 'simple' precautions when they moved house \u2013 such as renting the basement flat next door (doing so under another name) and installing a hidden entrance to their own cellar. After all, one never knew when one would have to sneak into one's own house. And if you had installed a secret entrance, for fear of assassination, so much the better.\n\nTheir house itself was quiet, with the slight patina of dust that came with several days' absence. The front doormat seemed untouched \u2013 but the back doormat revealed recent footprints. Small feet, narrow shoes, and a couple of traces where muddied skirts had brushed the skirting-boards. Catherine had indeed come in this way.\n\nThere were no bombs \u2013 no obvious ones, at least. No giant spiders. No assassins hiding behind curtains. Irene prowled silently through the house, looking for traces of someone trying to kill her. Her heart jumped into her throat at every noise from the street outside. Finally she had to admit that either the house wasn't primed to murder her, or the trap was so well prepared that she couldn't find any infernal devices.\n\nPerhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way. If Lord Guantes is back, and given what a devious, gloating, overly intricate plotter he is, what would he do?\n\nWhen she put it that way, the answer was obvious.\n\nHer private study was as quiet and apparently undisturbed as the rest of the house. But, as she'd partly expected, there were two letters on the desk, in sealed envelopes. One was in Catherine's handwriting. The other... wasn't.\n\nGripped by a sense of urgency, she ripped open the letter from Catherine first. The peace treaty could be over if Catherine walked into a trap and ended up dead. But her first concern was for the safety of her apprentice. Catherine knew the situation was bad. She didn't know how bad.\n\nThe scrawled note inside \u2013 clearly written in haste, using pen and ink from the study desk \u2013 was brief: Irene, I'm going to check out Kenneth and Ruthcomb, the bookseller which helped arrange the Merlin sale. I'll meet you back at the hospital. Catherine.\n\nIrene suppressed her urge to tear up the missive and throw it in the bin. She forced herself to be fair. Catherine might be ridiculously careless of her own safety, but this was a reasonable line of investigation. The Fae had potential \u2013 if Irene could keep her alive long enough to realize it. Right now, Catherine couldn't be that far ahead of Irene.\n\nBut there was also the second envelope.\n\nShe drew on her gloves as an extra precaution and carefully eased it open with a paperknife.\n\nThe letter inside was written on expensive notepaper, in a distinguished hand. She glanced at the end and was rewarded by the signature \u2013 Guantes. Irene suppressed pleasure at this useful confirmation of her fears and continued reading.\n\n\u2003My dear Miss Winters,\n\n\u2003You will have realized by now that I intend to bring down irretrievable ruin on you, your loved ones, your friends and associates, your workplace and anything else that comes to mind. Please don't feel obliged to thank me. It is my pleasure entirely.\n\n\u2003That was certainly Lord Guantes' style \u2013 as grandiose as ever. She read on.\n\n\u2003You have always struck me as an understanding woman.\n\n\u2003Pure sarcasm. He hardly knew her. Besides, any discussion which began with how understanding she was, was likely to end with what she could do for them.\n\n\u2003So I'm sure that you can appreciate quite how unpleasant it was for me when you foiled my plans and stabbed me. It also caused my wife a great deal of unhappiness. (She sends her regards.)\n\n\u2003Irene felt the back of her neck crawl as she read, and suppressed the urge to check nobody had crept up behind her. These sentiments were usually expressed over the point of a dagger, or immediately after a target had drunk poison, or when the victim thought she was alone...\n\n\u2003But as a reasonable man, I'm willing to propose a deal: if you hand yourself over, I will let the others live.\n\n\u2003Just how stupid did he think she was? Even if the Fae had to keep their given word, a statement like that offered all sorts of opportunities for evasion. There were a great many things that could be done to someone while still 'letting them live'. Things that Irene didn't particularly want to consider.\n\n\u2003I can hardly give you my address and expect you to turn up on my doorstep. However, we both know you'll think of some way to track me down. So my offer is this: if you find me and surrender yourself, I will call off the hunt. Otherwise... well, I won't go into details. It would be a waste of good paper.\n\n\u2003If you don't find me, you will die in any case. But you will be taking your friends with you to an early grave. Their blood will be on your hands.\n\n\u2003Consider that, before you make any rash decisions.\n\n\u2003Guantes\n\nShe didn't think much of his attempt at emotional manipulation. Unfortunately, she was up against a melodramatic villain with no sense of proportion when it came to vengeance.\n\nIrene pocketed the letter and left the house through the secret entrance. At the moment she felt like a juggler with too many balls in the air \u2013 Kai, Catherine, Sterrington, Vale, Singh \u2013 and the rest of London besides. She needed to at least catch Catherine before things became any worse.\n\nThe bottom of Irene's empty teacup stared up at her. After a very significant first stop, which had eased her mind a little, she was now staking out her target from an inexpensive teashop. It was the sort that served factory girls, underpaid secretaries and teachers. She'd changed her clothing to fit the location, and she was reasonably confident that she'd lost anyone trailing her. This London might be foggy and wet, but its prevailing fashion for scarves and veils was convenient for escaping followers. And now she had a plan \u2013 at least where Catherine was concerned.\n\nShe'd been looking at this from the wrong point of view. She didn't want to follow Catherine. She wanted to get ahead of her, but she needed to do it before the young woman threw herself neck-deep into trouble.\n\nCatherine wanted to be useful, to show her worth to the Library. She'd been in on the hunt for the Malory book. Just as Irene had worked out their bookseller might have leaked information, so had Catherine. If only she'd broached this idea before Irene had left the hospital. Was it Irene's fault Catherine was so desperate to prove herself?\n\nNo. Irene wasn't going to take the blame for this. But clearly better communication was needed. Possibly from six inches away, while reading Catherine a lecture on common sense.\n\nIrene would have to notify the Library of their findings so far, including Catherine's disappearance \u2013 but she needed to find Catherine now, and Lord Guantes would be watching likely Library access points anyway. It was so inconvenient having an opponent who knew one's capabilities. Although not quite as bad as going up against another Librarian. She thought of Alberich, and shivered.\n\nThe waitress was staring at Irene's empty cup meaningfully. In a moment she'd be coming over to ask if madam would like anything else, with the implication that if madam didn't want to order, then madam should be on her way.\n\nBut Irene wasn't going anywhere \u2013 because she was waiting.\n\nBookshops crowded along Charing Cross Road in vertical stacks and horizontal huddles, and spread down the side streets and back alleys on either side. The ones on the main street drew tourists and casual wanderers, but the hidden ones were far more interesting.\n\nIrene's vantage point had an excellent view of the entrance \u2013 the only entrance \u2013 to one particular alley. This was why she'd picked it. A rapid change of clothing and a wig from her lodgings had left her looking plausibly dowdy, a visitor from the provinces without a sense of London fashion.\n\nShe was about to order more tea, when she glimpsed her target \u2013 a familiar gait and a glint of bronze hair underneath a cloak and heavy face-concealing hat. Irene made a mental note to go through basic principles of disguise with Catherine once this was all over. Voluminous clothing was not the best way to go unseen; it exposed you as someone who wanted to hide.\n\nThe Fae wasn't carrying anything more than a handbag; she must have left the Malory suitcase somewhere else. Somewhere safe, Irene devoutly hoped. While Catherine occasionally paused to look in shop windows as she drifted along Charing Cross Road, she wasn't taking any measures to shake off pursuit either...\n\n...which was a mistake on her part, because two men were following her. They paused when she paused, and moved again when she moved. Both of them were burly types in bowler hats, with spotted kerchiefs wound round their necks \u2013 a flash of red against dark clothing. Both gave off an air of menace, the sort that made others get out of their way.\n\nAs Irene watched their progress, she realized where she'd seen them before. She knew who those two were \u2013 or rather, what they were. This could be useful.\n\nThen Catherine turned into the side street Irene had been watching. The two men glanced at each other and quickened their pace.\n\nJust as Irene had expected. One of the buildings in that alley housed Kenneth and Ruthcomb, a 'bookhound' agency. They tracked down rare books \u2013 whether for sale or not, by means fair and foul \u2013 and offered their services to anyone who could pay their rates. They'd been the first step in the chain that had taken Irene to Guernsey. As both she and Catherine had diagnosed, they were the logical source of that information leak \u2013 whether they'd done so maliciously or otherwise.\n\nPragmatism warred with concern as Irene paid for her tea, then followed Catherine in turn. She didn't want to use Catherine as bait, but these mysterious followers were the first real lead she'd found so far.\n\nCatherine had wanted to make herself useful. Being a student was all about learning experiences.\n\nShe followed at a discreet distance. Fortunately there were enough people around for her to merge with the crowd, and the two men didn't notice her. As expected, Catherine headed directly towards the agency. Irene hung back long enough to watch the two men follow her apprentice before entering the building herself, using the Language to silence the doorbell. A narrow, musty hallway led to a flight of stairs that ran up to the first-floor landing.\n\nCatherine paused there, about to knock on the bookhounds' office door, when she noticed the two men closing in. 'Is there some reason you two are following me?' she demanded. 'Because I have business here.'\n\n'Your business is with us now,' the larger man said. 'You're Catherine, aren't you?'\n\n'Of course not,' Catherine said quickly, failing to suppress a betraying start.\n\nThe office door opened, and a bespectacled man glanced round it. He saw the confrontation in progress and quickly shut the door again.\n\n'Now we can do this the easy way,' the smaller man said, 'or we can do this the hard way. Either way, you're coming with us.'\n\n'Don't be so silly,' Catherine said contemptuously. 'You can't just drag me through the streets in broad daylight like that. This is London. It's a civilized city.'\n\n'There's lots of ways round that,' the larger man said, his right hand clenching.\n\nIrene decided it was time to step in. 'Gentlemen, I'm sure there's no need for that,' she said, stepping out of the shadows and looking up the stairs.\n\n'You don't want to get involved, miss,' the larger man said. 'Just turn around and walk away.'\n\n'Young man, I'm a teacher back at home, and when I see some poor girl being lured into sin\u2014'\n\n'You've got it wrong, miss,' the smaller man said, hastily changing his approach. 'This young madam here's run away from her family. Took all the family money, she did. Broke her poor mother's heart.'\n\n'I didn't!' Catherine said indignantly. Funnily enough, she didn't seem to have recognized Irene either. 'These men are lying!'\n\n'Right, that's enough.' The bigger man grabbed her arm and began hauling her towards the stairs, ignoring her attempts to pummel him. 'Stop that messing around, or I'll clout you one.'\n\nThe smaller man trotted down the stairs towards Irene, trying to smile in a friendly way. 'We've got this under control, miss, so you can leave her to us.' Get out of the way or you'll get hurt, was the unspoken message.\n\nIrene plucked a heavy umbrella from the hatstand beside the door, swinging it to get a feel for its weight. 'On the contrary,' she said, her voice sharpening. 'You'll release the girl.'\n\nCatherine gasped in belated recognition and Irene sighed. They'd definitely have words after this. But the two men didn't make the connection. 'Fred, deal with her,' the larger man ordered.\n\n'Shoes, slip,' Irene said.\n\nIt was unfortunate for the smaller man that he was still heading down the stairs. His shoes lost their grip on the boards and slid out from under him, and he crashed headlong down the stairwell. Irene placed the metal tip of her umbrella in the hollow of his throat.\n\n'I know what you are,' she said. She looked at the bigger man, who had a firm grip on the struggling Catherine. Like her, he'd been stationary when she'd used the Language, so he'd been unaffected. A pity. 'You're both werewolves. Are you in the London Underground pack? The one that follows Mr Dawkins?'\n\n'How come you know the boss?' the one on the floor whimpered, trying to avoid the umbrella's cold tip. Silver might have a permanent effect on werewolves, but other physical objects could still do damage.\n\n'Because we've met,' Irene said. She met the eyes of the larger man. 'I think he'll understand if I dispose of you two.'\n\nThere were too many teeth in the man's mouth as he grinned at her. 'I'm getting the feeling you're not a teacher.'\n\n'I've had many jobs,' Irene said. 'Who sent you to grab the girl?'\n\nThe back of her mind was processing this information. If Mr Dawkins was knowingly involved in the assassination attempts, London's werewolves would be an active force in this fight. It wasn't just their lethality which worried Irene \u2013 it was their ability to track people. It'd be much harder to hide if the werewolves were on their tail.\n\n'None of your business who sent us,' the larger man snarled. 'Now move. If you were going to stab Fred, you'd have done it already.'\n\nThreats clearly wouldn't work here. Irene mentally sighed and went for her trusty second option. 'You perceive that I'm someone Mr Dawkins trusts,' she said, before adding, 'I think we've been sent on the same errand. I'm here for the girl too.'\n\nThe man at her feet blinked. 'You are?'\n\n'I am.' Irene removed the umbrella from his throat. 'They've changed the drop-off. I'm supposed to hand her over at the east entrance of King's Cross station. Or did you get told that too?'\n\nThe sharp teeth receded within the larger man's mouth, and his face looked normal again. 'Nah, we were told Flower and Dean Street in Spitalfields, at the Crown and Anchor pub. Why the change?'\n\nIrene kept her face impassive, but inwardly she winced. Spitalfields was one of the nastier parts of London. It was where Jack the Ripper operated in some alternate worlds \u2013 though not this one, thank goodness \u2013 and was the sort of place where policemen went around in pairs because it wasn't safe alone. 'I think they want to get her out of London,' she invented. 'It's too risky to keep her here.'\n\nBoth men snorted with suppressed laughter. 'Even Peregrine Vale's not going to find her if the Professor puts her away,' Fred said.\n\nThe Professor \u2013 that name again. Lord Guantes had said, The man behind the Professor knows you, and he wants you. More confirmation that this was all tied in with the Guantes and the murder attempts on Guernsey. Irene desperately wanted more information, but she was on a timetable and the Language's influence might wear off at any moment. That was the problem with the you perceive trick. Once it stopped working, the people afflicted would remember exactly what they'd said and done \u2013 and chances were they wouldn't like it. 'Tell you what,' she suggested, starting to climb the stairs. 'You two go ahead to the drop-off point \u2013 we'll meet you there. It'll be too obvious if we travel together. But first I have some unfinished business to deal with here.'\n\n'You want us to hold onto the girl for you?'\n\n'No, I'll take her with me. I'm not letting her out of my sight.' Irene took hold of Catherine's arm, her ruthless tone backed by a very real urgency. She had to get Catherine away before this turned violent. She glared at Catherine in her most cold-blooded manner and felt a mean satisfaction when the other woman flinched.\n\nThe werewolf released Catherine. 'You could have said who you are earlier,' he complained.\n\nIrene sniffed. 'It's not like anyone told me what you two looked like, any more than they told you about me,' she said. 'I'll meet you soon \u2013 I don't expect to be long.'\n\nThey both nodded and headed outside.\n\nThe werewolves dealt with, Irene banged on the office door with her umbrella. 'Kenneth and Ruthcomb? I'm here on business.'\n\nThere was a pause on the other side of the door, and then the noise of someone dragging away heavy furniture, before it creaked open. The bespectacled man from earlier peered out nervously. 'You are?'\n\nIrene jammed her foot against the door before he could close it again. 'I am,' she said. 'Good business. Book business.'\n\nHis eyes widened as he recognized her. 'You'd better come in,' he said.\n\nIrene suppressed a sigh of relief as she drew Catherine into the office and closed the door behind them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "Kai burst from the space between worlds, a rolling blueness of endless waves, and out into cold empty air. The mountain winds ripped at his wings, and he automatically curved his body to rise above them into calmer currents.\n\nThe Swiss Alps lay spread below him, untouched white snow on grey mountain ranges, with occasional markers of human habitation or flashes of colour from fields and lakes. The world itself felt calm with the settled flow of order, as reassuring to his draconic senses as the cadence of a marching army or the pulse of a lover. Beyond that, like a superimposed melody, he could sense the presence of other dragons. Much as he enjoyed Irene and Vale's company \u2013 and, though he might not admit it, the excitements of Vale's world \u2013 it was good to be away from the constant aftertaste of chaos, back where things were right. Orderly. As they should be.\n\nAnd he knew the person he was searching for lay somewhere below.\n\nCuifen had always been one of Kai's favourite cousins, but their connection was on his more low-born mother's side rather than his royal father's. As such, he didn't see her as much as he'd like. However, Cuifen still treated Kai with more generosity and affection than many of his siblings \u2013 and she was an expert in computers and data analysis.\n\nShe was one of several dragons who specialized in the field, working under Lord Zhang Yi, an undisputed expert. Zhang Yi was a dragon of such genius that it eclipsed his low birth and minor family. Kai certainly wouldn't be granted an audience with Zhang Yi \u2013 but Cuifen might be willing to do him a favour.\n\nHe drew his wings against his body and stooped towards a small cluster of buildings. Zhang Yi's headquarters were deceptively pastoral, with a central compound surrounded by lesser structures. But Kai knew power lines led here from the nearby waterfall, and the classically simplistic roofs housed solar panels. Lord Zhang Yi needed the electricity, even if style demanded that everything appear natural.\n\nHalf a dozen human servants hurried out to greet Kai, their footprints marring the untouched snow. They bowed as Kai settled to the ground and assumed human form, and one approached. 'Good afternoon, sir. My name is Hans Baumann, and this is the establishment of Lord Zhang Yi. May we know your name and family?'\n\n'My name is Kai, son of his majesty Ao Guang, King of the Eastern Ocean,' Kai said. 'I am here to visit my cousin, the lady Cuifen, but I would be honoured to meet Lord Zhang Yi himself. I bear a small present which I hope may not displease him.' He offered one of two parcels he was holding \u2013 a Han Feizi text from Vale's world, which he'd been saving for such an occasion.\n\n'Unfortunately Lord Zhang Yi is occupied,' Hans Baumann said, as Kai had expected. But custom demanded that both sides go through the motions. 'We will be glad to pass on your gift. If you follow my colleague Anna, she will escort you to lady Cuifen's quarters.'\n\nPerfect. Kai followed Anna \u2013 a brisk young woman with blonde braids curled into a bun \u2013 as she led him into one of the side compounds. 'This way, your highness,' she said.\n\nThe decor within was classically draconic in style, with bold red tiles, white walls and dark wood pillars. But the aesthetic had been subverted by personal tastes: sheepskin rugs were scattered on the floor like irregular islands, and paintings of vivid flowers and desert landscapes hung on the walls, gaudy and impossible to ignore.\n\nThe inner door swung open. 'I've told you, I'm still working on it,' a female dragon said as she emerged. 'I'll... heaven and earth, cousin Kai!'\n\nCuifen ignored propriety and gathered him into an embrace, her hug as strong as ever. She appeared almost human, but hadn't bothered to fully transform; she was as green as fresh grass, from her shoulder-length hair to the tiny scales that covered her flesh. Kai assumed a similar form in politeness, his skin and hair turning dark sapphire blue and small horns sprouting from his brow.\n\n'You can go, Anna,' Cuifen said over Kai's shoulder. Humans were definitely lower in the hierarchy here. 'Well, cousin. I've been nagging you to visit me for a while now, but I have to tell you, this isn't the best moment. We're all busy, Uncle Zhang Yi in particular.'\n\n'I was told he was too busy to receive me, but I'd assumed that was customary,' Kai said.\n\n'Yes. Something happened \u2013 a month or so ago \u2013 which means we need to review much of the royal houses' security software.'\n\n'I won't stay long \u2013 but I have a problem and would be very grateful for your advice,' Kai said. 'While I have no claim on your time or assistance\u2014'\n\n'Don't be ridiculous,' Cuifen said, clearly impatient with formalities. 'Sit down and tell me about it.' She dropped into one of the heavy chairs, folding her legs underneath her. Despite her semi-draconic form, she was wearing a casual human wardrobe of heavy knitted jumper, jeans and striped woollen socks. Clearly humans had some influence here.\n\n'All right,' he said, sitting opposite her. 'I have a laptop which I need analysed.'\n\n'Can't you do it yourself? You've got access to worlds which have the technology \u2013 your lord uncle Ao Shun's hideout, for a start.'\n\n'It shames me to admit it, but I'm not sure I have the level of skill needed. It's from a high-chaos world \u2013 and I can't risk mistakes.'\n\nCuifen's eyes widened in delight. 'You've brought me a computer from a high-chaos world? Cousin Kai, you are a darling!'\n\n'More than that,' Kai said. 'The laptop belongs to a powerful Fae \u2013 someone who's trying to kill me. And Irene too.'\n\nCuifen rubbed her hands together. 'Better and better. How exquisite! I mean that in the nicest possible way, you understand. I don't usually get the chance to hack top-level Fae software.' She paused, remembering. 'But don't we have a truce with them? Why's a powerful Fae trying to kill you?'\n\n'Personal matters,' Kai said. The less people knew about the individuals involved the better \u2013 especially while they were still investigating. He ran over the basic details of the last few days: the book-collecting mission, the poisoning attempt, the submarine base ambush, and how Irene had stolen the laptop as she fled. 'So you see,' he finished, 'I need an expert to take that thing apart and extract the data. Our lives might depend on it.' We might even be lucky enough to find Lord Guantes' entire evil plan, with easy-to-follow presentations for his minions, he thought. Fae were like that sometimes.\n\nCuifen's elegant brows drew together. 'I didn't realize your assignments were quite that dangerous,' she said. 'I thought you attended Fae cocktail parties and coaxed them into indiscretions over canap\u00e9s.'\n\n'Unfortunately not all Fae throw cocktail parties,' Kai said. 'Even those who do can be extremely dangerous. You should see their buffet selections \u2013 and I never touch the fugu livers. Or the absinthe.'\n\nCuifen frowned at his flippancy. 'There are risks, cousin, and then there are stupid risks... I'm not asking you to withdraw\u2014'\n\n'Thank you,' Kai said drily. 'It is my job, after all.'\n\n'\u2014but you need to consider your security from a more adult standpoint. Take a couple of bodyguards. You're putting yourself at risk.'\n\n'Life is risk.'\n\nCuifen leaned forward, her eyes intense. 'Your life has worth, cousin. Don't throw it away.'\n\nBetween them, unspoken, lay the words, because you care about a particular human being...\n\n'I doubt that some family members valued me before my new position,' Kai stated, his voice icy. There was a reason why he'd approached Cuifen rather than... a certain other computer expert here.\n\nHis cousin shrugged. 'You can sulk about your brother, or you can accept how things are and work with it. With the risks you're facing, perhaps you should relocate for a few years. If you move to a different world, your enemy will be inconvenienced. It's not as if you have to keep your embassy on that world, after all.'\n\nShe had a good point, but following her advice would mean deserting Vale's world \u2013 and Vale. And would Irene follow me? If the Library told her to stay, which of us would she choose? 'You're not wrong,' he said, desperately searching for a solid rebuttal. 'It's just that...'\n\nThe door clicked open, and Kai looked up with relief. Coffee would be a welcome distraction. Then his heart sank to see his half-brother, the very person he'd hoped to avoid. He rose and bowed with a carefully judged level of courtesy. 'Elder brother,' he said, 'I did not expect to see you here.'\n\n'Which explains why you didn't pay your respects to me first?' his brother said. Shan Yuan's scaled skin was the same clear ruby as his eyes, and he was gowned in heavy scarlet brocade. He acknowledged Cuifen's bow with a casual gesture. 'Still, it's good to see you. My letters appear to have been going astray.'\n\nKai had taken care to answer Shan Yuan's letters as politely as possible \u2013 but he'd had to meet all his brother's demands upon the embassy, or his attempts to restructure it, with variations on No. 'I apologize,' he said, rather than contradict his half-brother in company. 'I've had so much correspondence of late.' This was in fact true; a number of dragons had suddenly found him worthy of interest, after he'd gained his new position.\n\n'So if you aren't here to see me, why are you actually here, little brother?'\n\n'Someone's trying to kill me.'\n\nFor a moment Shan Yuan's brows rose in surprise \u2013 and what seemed to be genuine anger at his kin being targeted \u2013 but then he composed himself. 'I suppose that's an occupational hazard, given your current position.' Shan Yuan's tone suggested that if it wasn't for the treaty's importance to his people, he'd happily have sat back and watched with a bucket of popcorn. 'So did you come here to snivel on Cuifen's shoulder?'\n\nCuifen said pleasantly, 'Would you care for refreshments, Shan Yuan, even though you've barged into my territory, completely uninvited?'\n\nShan Yuan ignored her, his attention returning to Kai. 'What does Cuifen have to do with your little problem?'\n\n'I'm here to get a laptop analysed. It may contain details of my adversary.'\n\n'Fair enough.' Shan Yuan extended a long-fingered hand, claws gleaming like garnets. 'Hand it over.'\n\n'Kai asked me to look at it!' Cuifen exclaimed.\n\n'Yes. But my technical knowledge is superior to yours. I am Lord Zhang Yi's first student, after all.'\n\n'You are indeed \u2013 since Indigo is no longer here,' Cuifen said, her smile icy. 'And, as you're always telling us, your skills are vital to Lord Zhang Yi's current project. You'll drop everything to help your brother? How touching.'\n\n'I'll prioritize it... appropriately,' Shan Yuan said, a glint in his eyes.\n\nKai knew what that meant. He'd have to wait here until Shan Yuan 'found time', the very thing Kai didn't have to spare. He tried again. 'Elder brother, this matter may relate to the treaty. Those involved may be the ones who abducted me before.'\n\nCuifen snorted. 'Come on Kai, let's go visit the other students. Some people would be extremely interested to hear about your diplomatic work. Lord Zhang Yi might find time to talk too, over the next few days.'\n\nShan Yuan rounded on Kai. 'If you expect me to help you at all, I would suggest you don't remind me of your incompetence. Follow me. We'll look at the laptop in my quarters.'\n\nKai suppressed a smile. His cousin's comment had hit the mark. Clearly the last thing Shan Yuan wanted was Kai hanging about the compound, 'showing off' his work on the treaty and making Shan Yuan feel less important. He really hadn't realized Shan Yuan would feel so bitter about Kai's new role and higher status among their kind. With a nod of farewell to Cuifen, he followed his elder brother obediently.\n\nOnce they were outside, he said, 'The sooner I get that data, the sooner I can be gone.'\n\nSnow melted on either side as Shan Yuan stalked along the path, revealing dead grass and bare earth. 'Oh?' he snarled.\n\n'I didn't want to inconvenience you. I didn't even want you to know I was here.'\n\nShan Yuan's eyes narrowed, and the circle of melting snow around them expanded. The stone path beneath Kai's feet grew warm as Shan Yuan's ire rose. 'Are you telling me that you came here with the deliberate intention of avoiding me?'\n\nKai wasn't a great detective, but even he could deduce that Yes was the wrong answer here. Though he couldn't fathom why Shan Yuan would even care. He'd always treated Kai with dismissive contempt \u2013 and Kai had eventually duelled Shan Yuan over his refusal to acknowledge Kai's mother. He'd broken Kai's arm in that fight, which he won. He constantly criticized Kai's manners, skills, and conversation. Why should he want Kai to visit?\n\n'I know how busy you are,' Kai offered hopefully. 'I know you're Lord Zhang Yi's senior student\u2014'\n\n'In Indigo's absence,' Shan Yuan interrupted. 'You don't need to say that.' He paused. 'Everyone else does.'\n\nThat surprised Kai. He'd never realized that his elder brother could feel any sort of inferiority. 'Well, it's not as if I'd know what goes on here, is it? I didn't get invited to study under Lord Zhang Yi.'\n\n'You could have been,' Shan Yuan snapped, 'if you'd applied yourself. Instead you ran off to play around in high-chaos worlds and seduce Librarians. You are a disappointment.'\n\nFury ran through Kai like fire. He looked Shan Yuan in the eye. 'Our lord father is proud of what I have achieved.' Old grievance and current ire mingled in his heart and drove him to insult. 'I hope you can say as much.'\n\nShan Yuan's blow knocked him to the ground.\n\nKai clung to the laptop, shielding it from impact with his body, but his cheek stung where his brother had struck him. He staggered to his feet, feeling his power call to the roaring waterfall nearby. 'Again, brother?' he snarled. 'You'll find I'm not as easily beaten as last time.'\n\n'Cease this folly!' The voice was thin, but rang with authority. The brothers turned simultaneously, then bowed.\n\nLord Zhang Yi \u2013 for who else could it be? \u2013 showed his age, as did all dragons from less powerful families. He was in human form, wrapped in the same heavy brocade robes as Shan Yuan, though his were pale grey and far more ornate. His tufted white eyebrows shadowed his eyes like an eagle owl's, and his thinning hair was braided down his back.\n\nHe looked at them and sighed. 'Why must your father's children always come to blows beneath my roof? You will both attend on me at once. We have important matters to discuss.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "The bespectacled man \u2013 Mr Kenneth, the main face of the business \u2013 looked reproachful as Irene locked the door behind her. 'I thought you'd finished with us today, madam.'\n\n'Wait, what?' Catherine said, surprised. 'You've already been here?'\n\nIrene glanced around the rather basic office, checking for new threats and thankfully finding none. It was comparatively bare, if you were expecting a library of exotic tomes. The rare books were safely locked away elsewhere in the building.\n\n'She has indeed,' Mr Kenneth said. 'One of our most valued customers, of course \u2013 always welcome, whatever the hour, whatever the circumstances...'\n\nWerewolves certainly counted as 'circumstances'. 'We'll be leaving by the back way, if you don't mind.'\n\n'What happens when those ruffians come back looking for you?' he asked.\n\n'Tell them we paid you to let us out.'\n\n'But you haven't... ah.' He swept up the coins that Irene was counting out on his desk. 'Always glad to oblige. Anything else before you go?'\n\n'Yes. Get hold of that Ivanhoe we were discussing earlier, please. I'll pay the usual commission on delivery.' As he nodded, Irene added casually, 'Oh, one last thing \u2013 I didn't ask you this before, but does the name \"the Professor\" mean anything to you?'\n\nMr Kenneth's hand jerked, and a coin went spinning across the desk. When he looked up at Irene, she could see the fear in his eyes. 'I'm sure I don't know who you mean.'\n\n'That bad, huh?' Irene said quietly. She'd avoided asking him during her first visit, as she'd suspected mentioning that name would be burning her boats with him. But since she had no plans to come back soon...\n\n'You heard nothing from me. Now do me a favour and get out of here. You know where the back stairs are.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'Come along, Catherine. I'll explain when we're out of here.'\n\nTo Irene's relief, there were no watchers \u2013 well, no obvious watchers \u2013 waiting at the back of the building. 'We'll walk towards Covent Garden,' she said quietly, 'and catch a cab on the way.'\n\n'To stop any other werewolves following us by scent?' Catherine guessed.\n\n'Correct. Well done.' She caught Catherine's hand as the Fae was about to signal an approaching cab. 'We won't take the first one. Never take the first cab.'\n\n'But if everyone does that, won't the second cab always be a trap?'\n\n'Unfortunately it's quite possible that the first half-dozen will all be traps,' Irene said. 'Sometimes devious plotters really irritate me.'\n\nIrene had an ear cocked for distant screams and howls at their escape, as she flagged down a ride, but all seemed peaceful behind them \u2013 or as peaceful as could be expected for London. She helped Catherine in and took a seat opposite her.\n\n'Where to, ma'am?' the driver asked.\n\n'London Zoo,' Irene said firmly. With the current traffic, that should take at least half an hour too \u2013 hopefully long enough to find out what was going on with Catherine. 'First things first,' she said. 'Are you all right?'\n\n'I think so,' Catherine answered. 'I wasn't hurt.' But she was clearly still on edge, glancing out of the window as though she expected to see werewolves running alongside them.\n\n'Good. Now...' Should Irene immediately grill Catherine for information, or instead try to gain her confidence by explaining what she'd been up to? She decided to take the second route. 'I'd already spoken to Mr Kenneth before you arrived. He didn't want to admit it, but they had a break-in a week ago. And it wasn't to steal books \u2013 but information.'\n\n'What sort of information?'\n\n'Their shop records. Whom they sold to, their suppliers... They took a few obviously valuable books as well, but the information was the real prize.'\n\nCatherine pursed her lips. 'And if their customers found out someone had stolen their data, it would mean losing those customers.'\n\n'Exactly,' Irene agreed, glad she was so quick to understand. 'The thieves tried to conceal that they'd been into the records, but Mr Kenneth said that they disturbed some safeguards he and Mr Ruthcomb had in place. The records the thieves examined included the transaction Kenneth and Ruthcomb set up for us on Guernsey \u2013 including the date and time of the meeting with Madame Pipet.' The break-in had been several days ago, so their enemies could have arranged the ambush.\n\n'So how come he admitted all that to you?'\n\n'A carrot-and-stick approach,' Irene said. 'The carrot was me paying him a lot of money. The stick was threatening to tell his other regular customers about the data breach.'\n\n'Would you have actually done that?'\n\nIrene sighed. 'The bookhounds are even more unscrupulous than I am, in case you think that was unfair.' She wasn't sure whether Catherine wanted to be reassured that Irene was a fundamentally decent person \u2013 or a fundamentally ruthless one. 'Let's say I'm glad I wasn't forced to put it to the test. Mr Kenneth believed I would tell, which is the important thing.'\n\nCatherine nodded, her eyes wary. 'So where are we going?'\n\n'Ultimately? To a place I rent.' Irene wasn't going to give the address with the cab-driver listening. 'Now, what have you been up to?' She controlled her impulse to scold her apprentice for her disobedience. She wanted Catherine talking, not retreating into a sullen silence.\n\n'I've been busy,' Catherine said, doing her best to make herself sound proactive, rather than werewolf bait. 'You read my note, didn't you? After securing the Malory book, I went on to investigate why our last assignment was jeopardized.'\n\n'But I told you to stay where you were,' Irene said.\n\n'I decided it was just too risky.' Catherine looked rather smug at her logic. 'And I bet the hospital's now been blown up or attacked by assassins, hasn't it?'\n\n'Well, no. Not the last time I checked.'\n\n'Oh.'\n\n'You don't have to sound so depressed,' Irene said. 'Besides, our assassins were busy somewhere else. They set fire to Sterrington's office. While I was in it.'\n\nCatherine frowned. 'That's rather reckless. Attacking you is one thing, but attacking the Cardinal's agent risks drawing him into this.'\n\n'Thanks,' Irene said drily. 'But that's a good point. Perhaps that's why the attack was so sweeping in scope.'\n\nOutside, London went about its business, the streets churning with afternoon traffic and the pavements crammed with pedestrians. Inside the cab, the two of them were as privately closeted as in a confessional. If one ignored the driver \u2013 which they did.\n\n'What do you mean, \"sweeping in scope\"?' Catherine asked.\n\n'There were other people in that building who might have been targets \u2013 assuming that the fire was even recognized as an assassination attempt, rather than an accident. If Sterrington had died, and if Kai, Vale and I were also mysteriously murdered, the Cardinal would have been left with no clear evidence as to who was responsible \u2013 even if all three treaty representatives dying accidentally might seem an unlikely coincidence.'\n\nShe could have made some gruesome predictions about the possible consequences of all three representatives dying, but she didn't want to unsettle Catherine \u2013 or at least, didn't want to unsettle her further. Being the target of a murderer left one in a natural state of unsettlement anyway. Instead, she said, 'So where did you secure our latest precious book?'\n\n'It's in a left luggage locker,' Catherine said carefully.\n\n'Oh?'\n\n'At one of the railway stations.'\n\n'I can't help noticing that you're not telling me which railway station.'\n\n'Irene.' Catherine swallowed nervously. 'You know that I wouldn't want to consider blackmailing you.' Her shoulders were hunched, her hands tightened into fists; she was clearly already expecting opposition and punishment.\n\n'I wish I did know that,' Irene said, 'because I have a nasty suspicion that what's coming next sounds a bit like \"You don't get the Malory book back unless you do what I want.\"' Be calm, she told herself. Let her say her piece.\n\n'I don't want to blackmail you,' Catherine said, '...but I will if I have to!'\n\n'A balanced and reasonable attitude,' Irene said drily. 'So what do you want?'\n\nCatherine clenched her hands in her lap, her expression mulish. 'I don't want you dumping me with someone else. I want to learn how to be a Librarian. A real Librarian, even if that means joining some of your more... adventurous missions. I know you can work out a way to make this happen if you have to. I just need to motivate you properly.'\n\n'Catherine...' Irene wanted to tear her hair out in frustration. 'You're behaving as if this is some sort of training exercise or comedy of errors. It isn't. People have died. Our enemies aren't afraid to blow up submarine bases or torch office buildings to get rid of us. We're currently on the run in a London that's been infiltrated by one of the most devious men I've ever known\u2014'\n\n'You have a monomania about Lord Guantes. And in any case, I don't think it's him.'\n\n'I have a sensible and well-reasoned fear of Lord Guantes,' Irene said between her teeth, 'and there's only one other person who could pull off a plan of this scale \u2013 and would make me his primary target.'\n\n'Who?'\n\n'Alberich.' Whom Irene had left behind in a burning library, in a world deep in chaos, hoping that he was dead or permanently trapped there. She wasn't going to tempt fate by saying anything like We'll never see him again, but she did hope rather desperately that he was gone for good. But in any case, he definitely couldn't enter this world \u2013 so he couldn't have been responsible for the Guernsey ambush. That was something.\n\n'Oh yes, Uncle told me about him.' Catherine sounded dismissive, as though the greatest traitor in the Library's history warranted no more than a footnote in some academic's research. 'You dealt with him before, though, didn't you? I don't see why you can't do it again. And he was a villain. Doesn't the Library have heroes to counter people like that?'\n\n'No, we just have people who get the job done. A number of whom were killed by Alberich, in various unpleasant ways, so I advise you not to talk about him so casually. And speaking of your uncle, he's left town. Or did you already know that?'\n\nCatherine clearly didn't. Her eyes widened in shock. 'He never leaves London if he can help it. Has something happened to him?'\n\n'No. At least, I hope not. He's gone to Hawaii with his household. Ostensibly on holiday, but he was warned of an assassination attempt. Which is why I particularly want to make sure you're safe.'\n\n'But I don't want to be safe!'\n\n'You might feel a bit differently if you'd been trapped on the roof of a burning building earlier today.'\n\n'I'm an adult.' Catherine folded her arms. 'And I'm your student. Teach me.'\n\n'You seem to think that I'm your enemy, not your teacher,' Irene said, her voice a whipcrack. 'You've disobeyed me, you've endangered yourself and you've attempted to blackmail me. Why should I teach you?'\n\n'I did what I did because I couldn't be sure you would teach me, otherwise.' Catherine glared at her, as if willing her to concede. 'You're not my kind. You aren't forced to keep your word if you give it. So I looked for other options.'\n\n'No, I'm human,' Irene said slowly. 'Which means you're going to have to depend on my sense of honour instead.' And on her urgent need to get Catherine into the Library, so as not to disrupt Library\u2013Fae relations. But it wasn't the moment for ulterior motives. 'Are you really asking me to pledge my name and power in the Language to teach you, in return for your Fae oath to obey me? Do you actually want to bind us in an unbreakable bond, unto death \u2013 as that's what it would mean?' She leaned in closer. 'Do you think that you're actually going to be any happier or better off that way, Catherine?'\n\nCatherine edged back in her seat a little, unease showing in her eyes. 'I... perhaps that might have some disadvantages I hadn't considered.'\n\n'I'll do it if I must,' Irene went on, holding the Fae's gaze. 'I honestly thought we could trust each other. I've tried to be fair and honourable. But if a binding oath is the only thing you'll accept, then I'll do it, and God help us both. So make your choice, Catherine. Are you prepared to bind yourself to obey me as my loyal student? Or can we simply trust each other to keep the deal we've made, and do our best to behave like rational adults?'\n\n'Perhaps I should consider apologizing instead?' Catherine suggested in a tiny voice.\n\n'Perhaps you should. Just a moment.' The cab had slowed to a crawl. Irene rolled down the window and leaned out to call to the driver on the roof. 'Is something the matter?'\n\n'Traffic jam, ma'am,' he said. 'We may be a bit late getting to the zoo.'\n\nWhile Irene didn't think that Lord Guantes would tie up London's traffic, just to catch her, staying in one location was dangerous. 'We'll walk from here,' she said.\n\nTwo hours, three cabs and a fair amount of walking later, Irene finally sat down, feeling something approximating safety. The cheap rooms they were staying in were near Heathrow Aeroport, but within the zeppelin port's workers' district, rather than near the opulent hotels for incoming visitors. All her usual precautions were in place too, so she felt confident that Lord Guantes wouldn't have found this hideout yet.\n\n'You said you wanted me to teach you,' she said to Catherine, who was staring gloomily out of the window at the smoke-stained wall of the house opposite. 'This is a very important lesson. Always maintain a few alternate hideouts in case things go wrong. I rent this place and a few others, using different bank accounts under different names, and I drop by once or twice a month to check that things are in order.'\n\n'All that for emergencies that might never happen?'\n\n'Things have gone wrong,' Irene pointed out. 'This is not an academic exercise. You wanted to be a Librarian. You wanted me to teach you. So pay attention, because we're about to have a very thorough class on paranoia, why it's a good idea, and how to be motivated by it.'\n\nCatherine pulled off her bonnet angrily and threw it down on the battered dresser. 'You're not listening! At least I've got you to myself now and I don't have to compete with Kai all the time. But I want to be a Librarian \u2013 a real one.'\n\nIrene was about to say, What do you think I am? \u2013 but something made her pause. She had an unpleasant feeling that she and Catherine were operating on different wavelengths, and this had to be sorted out before matters became any more dangerous. 'So explain to me,' she said, keeping her voice mild as she sat down in the room's only chair. 'I'm listening now. Tell me what you mean.'\n\n'Irene, you're a very nice person,' Catherine said, obviously slathering on the honey before she got to the vinegar stage of the conversation. 'I've nothing against you personally. I'm sure that you really believe in what you do.'\n\n'But?' This didn't sound promising. Though it did sound patronizing.\n\n'I don't want to be a librarian spy! I don't even want to be an archivist. I want to be a proper librarian. I want to be someone who shares books, who shares knowledge, who makes the library a better place!' Catherine was transfigured. Her face was alight with eagerness, and her eyes were almost literally glowing with emotion. 'I want to be the sort of librarian who curates books, who loves them and cares for them and shares them with other people. I want to welcome little children into the library and hand them books which will make their imaginations blossom. I want to find the books people have spent their lives looking for, to help them achieve the things they were always meant to do. I want...' Catherine must have noticed Irene's horrified expression. 'You did ask,' she said resentfully.\n\nScreaming would not help. 'How long have you felt this way?' Irene asked, as gently as she could manage.\n\n'Years.' Catherine sat down on the edge of the bed. The springs creaked under her weight. 'I wasn't lying, you know. When I said I wanted to be a librarian I was telling the truth. If I have to go on a few adventures with you first, I don't mind doing that, as long as I end up where I want to be.'\n\n'But your uncle negotiated your apprenticeship so you'd end up being a Librarian like me,' Irene said. That had been quite definite. 'Collecting rare stories, helping keep the many worlds stable, that sort of thing.' The sort of thing that was Irene's work and life. 'Not to become a glowing, romanticized librarian archetype.'\n\n'I'm not responsible for what Uncle said to you,' Catherine said, hunching her shoulders again. 'Besides, he knew what I wanted, he must have deliberately chosen to ignore it. And it's not as if you have to do that much to help me. Just get me into the Library and I'll take care of the rest. If I can do that to keep them happy, they won't care what I do next. I want the books and I want to share them.'\n\nHow many other 'little details' had Lord Silver left out? Catherine's current over-emotional, brattish behaviour suggested one possibility. Irene tapped her finger on the arm of the chair. 'Catherine... your uncle assured me that you were \"of age\", and that you were experienced and reliable. That I shouldn't make any judgements based on your appearance. In retrospect, he was trying to make me think you were older than you look, wasn't he? Just how old are you?'\n\n'Twenty-five,' Catherine said brazenly.\n\nIrene met her gaze.\n\n'...next year.'\n\nIrene stayed silent.\n\n'Okay, I'm twenty-three.'\n\nIrene raised her eyebrows.\n\n'Twenty-one?' Catherine said hopefully.\n\n'Just tell me which side of eighteen you are,' Irene said wearily.\n\n'I'm eighteen in five months' time,' Catherine muttered. 'And there are lots of cultures which consider me to be fully adult and capable of making my own decisions about my future.'\n\nDear merciful heavens. I have a teenage Fae on my hands. One who feels she has a vocation to be an archetypal librarian. Irene wished that she believed in prayer. It would have been nice to have someone to ask for help. Unfortunately she had committed herself to taking on Catherine as her apprentice \u2013 and neither Lord Silver nor the older Librarians were about to let her off the hook in a hurry.\n\n'You're being very quiet,' Catherine said uncertainly.\n\nSighing won't help. Nor will screaming or throwing things. 'Perhaps you'd like to tell me a little bit more about your past employment,' Irene suggested. 'Previously you hinted you had a career in international intrigue. Should I assume that was a blatant lie too?'\n\nCatherine stared at her hands. 'Well, I was Uncle's social secretary,' she mumbled. 'For three months. So you could call that international intrigue. Before that I grew up in the country, in a manor house in Liechtenstein with retainers. I didn't do much there besides read. That's why I want to be a librarian \u2013 a proper one \u2013 and spend all my time with books.'\n\n'What about your parents?' Irene asked.\n\n'They died when I was very young. Uncle Silver's my uncle on my mother's side. There was an accident while they were travelling and then Uncle did what he could for me. I chose my name because St Catherine is one of the patron saints of librarians...'\n\nIrene had been wondering how her student had acquired her name. Powerful Fae hid their true names, choosing an appropriate pseudonym \u2013 like Silver, or Sterrington, or Lord Guantes \u2013 while the really powerful ones like the Cardinal or the Princess went by titles alone. She pulled herself away from speculation to reality. 'I wish you'd told me this before,' she said.\n\n'Would you have taken me for an apprentice if I had?' Catherine asked.\n\n'I don't know,' Irene admitted, 'but at least I'd have had a better idea of what was going on.'\n\nCatherine chewed on her lower lip, trying and failing to look calm and unconcerned. 'So what are you going to do?'\n\n'We're going to take this one day at a time,' Irene said finally. 'Our first objective is to stay alive. I'm not happy with you, Catherine \u2013 but I'm not going to abandon you.'\n\n'Thank you,' Catherine whispered. 'I hoped you'd understand. Uncle said your parents had been Librarians too.'\n\nLord Silver had apparently been very free with his information about Irene's background. 'They were,' Irene said, deciding a bit of reciprocal honesty would be good for their relationship. 'They are. They adopted me as a baby, but yes \u2013 libraries are what I've known all my life. I've always loved books.'\n\nShe left out the fact that she'd only found out about the adoption a few months ago. And that it had taken place under dubious circumstances, which her parents had been completely unwilling to discuss. Kai and Vale knew all about it, but she saw no reason to share those details with Catherine.\n\n'How do you ever let go of them? To pass them to the Library?' Catherine asked. 'The books, that is?'\n\n'Practice. And I do know I can visit them if I really want to... We'll collect the Malory in the morning. For now, get some sleep. You look tired.' And it would give Irene a chance to draft some letters \u2013 to Vale and to a certain Fae uncle. 'I'll wake you later so I can nap myself. We should probably take turns to keep watch.'\n\n'I thought you said we were safe here!' Catherine protested.\n\n'Relatively safe.' Irene looked out at the fog, dyed orange and red by the setting sun. 'I'd hate to find out I was wrong.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "Kai glanced around the inner sanctum of Lord Zhang Yi's office. Zhang Yi favoured a calming palette of grey and white. The only notes of colour were framed slices of crystal and gemstone that hung on the walls \u2013 Kai spotted a deep green, a red and a purple. Even the chair was upholstered in bone-white cloth, the stools covered in dark grey silk. It was like being inside a frozen cloud. A single tablet rested on the low table.\n\n'Sit,' Lord Zhang Yi said, lowering himself into the chair. His back was erect, but he moved with the slow care that Kai had seen in elderly humans with arthritis, like Irene's Librarian mentor Coppelia. 'Prince Kai, you have come at a convenient time.'\n\n'I'm glad to be of service, sir, and hope that my present pleased you,' Kai answered. Even though Shan Yuan was a couple of feet away, he could sense tension emanating from his older brother. But Kai knew the proper forms of courtesy. He wasn't going to offend his revered senior \u2013 especially not when Zhang Yi was a dragon he truly respected.\n\n'There was a present?' Lord Zhang Yi blinked. 'How kind. But that wasn't what I wanted to discuss.'\n\nThere were only two things that Kai could imagine Lord Zhang Yi wanting to raise: treaty matters and Indigo. Of course, it would be nice to believe that Lord Zhang Yi had heard about his talent with computers and wanted personally to invite him to be his student... but that was about as likely as his brother deciding to forget their past rivalry. So he said, 'Of course, sir. How may I be of assistance?'\n\n'Fae and computing.'\n\nWhen it was clear that further detail wasn't forthcoming, Kai said tentatively, 'If you would explain, sir?'\n\n'We do not have a peace with the Fae. We can never expect to be truly at peace. The best that we can hope for is this truce. However...' Lord Zhang Yi's eyes glittered beneath his thick eyebrows. 'While we do have the truce, we need to take advantage of it in every way possible.'\n\nWild images blossomed in Kai's mind. 'Are you considering a dragon\u2013Fae student exchange, sir?'\n\n'Of course not!' Shan Yuan snapped. 'Who in their right mind would agree to that?'\n\n'The fact that you consider such a thing speaks well for your innocent warm-heartedness, boy,' Lord Zhang Yi said. 'No doubt this broad-minded attitude is what allows you to tolerate the Fae. Don't misunderstand me. I agree some of them have certain... qualities that would, in our own kind or humans, be worthwhile. Admirable, even. But that only makes them more dangerous. In the long run, we have to expect the worst and make preparations accordingly.'\n\n'You speak as though you don't expect the truce to last, sir.'\n\nLord Zhang Yi briefly withdrew into himself, reduced to rigid weariness. 'Nothing lasts,' he said, his voice guttural with age and remembered pain. 'Neither knowledge, nor skill, nor family, nor the bond between master and student. In another thousand years I will be gone. In time you both will pass as well, and this place will be dust. For all that we pride ourselves on our power and our length of years, Prince Kai, ultimately dragons too are as fleeting as fireflies. There was a time when we never existed; there will also come a time when nobody will remember us. War changes to peace. But, ultimately, peace collapses into war and the cycle continues.'\n\n'I've told you before, sir, you will be remembered as long as my father's kingdom lasts.' Shan Yuan spoke with affection, clearly repeating an old reassurance.\n\n'That's not as reassuring as you might think.' Lord Zhang Yi was staring into emptiness. His eyes were on Kai, but his gaze passed through him. 'Not at all.'\n\nKai remembered a recently discovered painting which had suggested there was more to dragon history than the dragon monarchs ever wished to reveal. Could it be that a few of the very old dragons, like Lord Zhang Yi, knew something about this?\n\nLord Zhang Yi pulled himself together, his eyes refocusing. 'In the meantime, yes, we must take advantage. Nothing that would make us as vulnerable as exchanging students or sharing private research papers, of course, but we should certainly be negotiating with any Fae experts in the field who are willing to talk. Data on the latest technical advances in high-chaos worlds would be useful intelligence. As would anything on new developments, Fae open-source systems, their protocols, whether or not their worlds are using blockchain technology or bitcoin... Don't look so surprised, boy.'\n\nKai hadn't thought he'd looked surprised, but apparently he was an open book to his elders. 'But are they going to want to hand over that sort of information, sir?'\n\n'Of course not. However, they're certainly going to want us to hand it over. So they'll have to approach us somehow. I imagine there will be some complicated dancing around in the middle before anyone on either side admits it.'\n\n'So should I expect the Fae treaty representative to be approaching me?' This was actually sounding very intriguing. The Fae would have to make some concessions, after all, and the prospect of seeing how advanced some of the high-chaos worlds were... His lord father would be making the decisions, of course, but Kai would still be on the front lines for any bargaining. This would be fun.\n\n'Yes. And you can pass all their queries directly to Shan Yuan here.'\n\nKai's heart sank at the thought of being cut out of the deals. Hand over everything interesting to Shan Yuan, of all people? There has to be some way round this... 'I'm sure my lord father will be sending you the information himself, sir.'\n\nLord Zhang Yi twitched one arthritic hand in disdain. 'His majesty Ao Guang has a great deal to oversee, and I am his technology adviser. You will be doing us all a favour by allowing us to triage any Fae advances directly. We'll then pass on just the relevant details for his majesty's attention. Naturally, closing any subsequent negotiations will remain with you.'\n\n'Of course, sir,' Kai said, reassured. 'It will be my honour.'\n\nLord Zhang Yi stroked his beard. 'Good. Excellent. Your brother tells me that you've worked in our field yourself. You may be worth considering as a future student.'\n\nKai wasn't going to delude himself that this possibility was due to his talent alone. Apparently Lord Zhang Yi played politics and exchanged favours just as much as any other powerful figure. Still, that didn't mean it wasn't a genuine offer, and it was something he'd very much wanted... at one point. Right at this precise moment, with Irene as a lover, Vale as a friend, and his current position to enjoy, it was a choice that he'd rather postpone. He ducked his head and mumbled thanks.\n\n'Do you underrate yourself? Remember that talent can set its own terms.' Lord Zhang Yi gestured at the room around them. 'I may not be of royal blood, but I have the respect of my students. This world is my home, and if I feel like moving my establishment to the Alps, or Tibet, or Egypt, or Vietnam, then I simply give orders and it is done. In some respects I'm as well-informed as royalty, with their spymasters.'\n\nHe paused. 'There's actually something else I meant to discuss with you too. You must forgive an old man his lapses in memory, boy. It happens to all of us.'\n\nKai would believe that one of dragon-kind's most renowned geniuses had memory lapses when he believed his father was having an affair with a Fae. Or that Irene had gone to sleep without a book next to her bed. He made the appropriate polite noises and waited with interest.\n\n'There's something going on out there.' Lord Zhang Yi delivered the statement as though it was earth-shattering news, then sat back, looking pleased with himself.\n\nKai bit back at least three variants of There's always something going on out there, and settled for, 'Would you please explain, sir?'\n\nHe stroked his beard again. 'Unfortunately I don't see the specifics. I only see indications. I am aware of equipment being sourced on various different worlds \u2013 superconductor technology, servers capable of handling yottabyte-level information \u2013 and then simply dropping off the radar. I hear about experts in artificial intelligence vanishing from those worlds. I am becoming aware of something perceptible only by its absence. It worries me.'\n\n'How do you know all this, sir?' Kai asked.\n\n'I know people,' Lord Zhang Yi said dismissively. 'High-level people. I read their emails.'\n\nKai wondered whether that meant I read emails from them or I have access to their email accounts and they are blissfully ignorant of that fact. The statement's ambiguity was rather frightening. 'I thought that worlds with a high technology level were more likely to be high-order, sir. Just as worlds with a high magic level are more likely to be high-chaos. There are anomalies, of course... but surely the Fae can't be ahead of us.'\n\n'The only reason they could be is because they cheat,' Shan Yuan said flatly. 'Or sometimes, their environment does the cheating for them.'\n\nLord Zhang Yi gave Shan Yuan an approving look. 'Well put. A high-chaos environment favours impossible \"rags-to-riches\" success stories, as well as incredible failures. The bigger the rise or fall, the better the story. So it favours impossible computing \u2013 leaps of logic which no sane person would make, fortunate discoveries that go against all sensible principles of programming and engineering, and convenient... guesses.' He spoke the word guesses with a contempt worthy of Vale on such matters. 'The laws of science remain the same. But, given equal research opportunities in a high-chaos world versus a high-order world, Fae research may reach their goal sooner. This is simply because it's appropriate to the story. The hero makes their discovery at a crucial moment in time.'\n\n'Of course they have twice as many destructive failures as we do, for the same reason but in reverse: the story demanded a tragic ending.' Shan Yuan clearly felt these were thoroughly well deserved. 'You see the problem, Kai? A Fae in a high-chaos world may hit upon a new one-chance-in-a-million discovery, because their personal fiction gives them that crucial stroke of luck or invention. But that one success story could be very dangerous for us.'\n\n'I'd never thought of it that way,' Kai said soberly. He made a small bow to Lord Zhang Yi. 'Thank you for alerting me to the danger. How can we guard against this?'\n\n'One of our advantages is that they do not cooperate as we do. All dragons work as one, under the guidance and leadership of our monarchs.' Was there just a shade of cynicism to Lord Zhang Yi's voice? 'If the Fae have found a project to unite them, to share discoveries... well, then I am concerned. If these disappearances, this new technology, these advances in artificial intelligence are all somehow tied together, then we need to know more. Some Fae may believe in this truce, but others would break it without hesitation if they thought they had a superior weapon \u2013 and the opportunity to take us by surprise.'\n\n'This may touch on the reason I'm here,' Kai said slowly. 'My lord\u2014'\n\n'You may address me as uncle,' Lord Zhang Yi said genially.\n\n'Uncle, there have been several attempts to kidnap or assassinate me \u2013 and the Librarian treaty representative. The most recent one was just yesterday.'\n\n'Yes, I've heard of the Librarian. Sensible, for a human. But how is this linked to the greater problem?'\n\n'While she was investigating the assassination attempt, she encountered Lord Guantes, a Fae who kidnapped me in the past.' Kai felt himself flushing at the thought, from both rage and humiliation. 'She stole this laptop from him, on a high-technology world, which was why I came here. I wanted any useful data it contained. I'm not saying that the Fae assassination attempts are necessarily connected to the plot you suspect, but...' He shrugged and quoted an old maxim. 'Clamour in the east, then attack in the west.' A classic stratagem: cause a major distraction and then subtly pursue your goals. The treaty representatives dying, most likely killing the treaty too, would certainly be a major distraction.\n\n'I will look at this laptop immediately,' Lord Zhang Yi declared.\n\nKai tried not to look too triumphant as he placed the laptop on the table. 'Thank you, Uncle.'\n\n'It may all be part of a greater conspiracy,' Lord Zhang Yi said. He leaned forward like a predator about to strike. The room felt arid and sterile, offering no cover from his gaze, no protection from his attention. 'We must investigate everything. We can trust nothing. Remember that, boy. Nothing. We may be able to use Fae information, but we must never trust it. If the Fae are assembling some great creation, fuelled with their powers of narrative and story, then we must be ready to stand against it \u2013 or exploit it.'\n\n'But you said yourself that some of them believed in the truce, Uncle,' Kai protested unwisely.\n\nLord Zhang Yi snorted and drew back \u2013 and again, Kai had the impression of a hunting owl, mantling wings and wide furious eyes. 'You must learn to recognize the difference between philosophy and practical reality. That will come with time. For the moment, you are dismissed \u2013 both of you. I should have the information for you tomorrow, Prince Kai.'\n\nAs Kai rose to complete the process of polite farewells, an icy thought nibbled at the edges of his mind. The future might demand that both sides changed, if the truce held and they were to build something permanent. How much would the older dragons, like Lord Zhang Yi \u2013 or like Kai's own father \u2013 be able to change?\n\nHe forced the thought away. The truce had only been in place for a few months. The future was still to be built.\n\n'If the Fae are trying to develop new technology, do you think their magic will be a problem as well?' Kai asked. They were walking around the edge of the compound, taking the air together. Shan Yuan had been silent most of the way, brows drawn in thought.\n\n'Magic? No.' Shan Yuan seemed relieved to have a question he could answer. 'That's too dependent on the structure of the particular world where it operates. It can be dangerous if used by someone skilled in local practices, but it shouldn't be an issue if this is a conspiracy across multiple worlds. If you're interested in that area, though, you should talk to one of our lord uncle Ao Qin's children or grandchildren \u2013 they're the family's experts.'\n\n'I'll bear that in mind.' Shan Yuan seemed in a far better mood now than earlier. Quite possibly the most pleasant mood that Kai had ever known him to be in \u2013 which said a great deal about their relationship. 'Elder brother, some of what was said at that meeting concerned me.'\n\nShan Yuan eyed him sidelong, the sunset light burning in his eyes. 'You've impressed me favourably with your behaviour so far. Don't disappoint me now.'\n\n'It's the possibility of technology exchange.' He decided some honesty might be a good idea. 'I'm not sure I have the background to fully assess the implications of Fae approaches on that front. Should I worry about this? Ask for additional staff or assistants, perhaps? What if I miss an important clue?'\n\n'Be worried about the Fae, and chaos, and people trying to kill you,' Shan Yuan snapped. 'Don't get caught up in minor details.'\n\n'But if any approaches concerning technology come through treaty channels, should I notify Lord Zhang Yi and our father about everything that seems relevant?'\n\n'As Lord Zhang Yi said, I'll take care of them,' his brother said impatiently. 'Send them to me and I'll forward anything relevant to our lord father.'\n\nThen Shan Yuan drew to a stop, lowering his voice and catching Kai's arm. 'Kai, I have studied here for over seventy years now, and Uncle Zhang Yi is my teacher and master. I have nothing but respect and affection for him. Current times are unstable, and this plot \u2013 this possible plot,' he corrected himself, 'has disturbed him. Is it any surprise if he wants tighter control over this sort of information? Things will return to normal again soon enough. Just behave yourself and do as you are told.'\n\nIf he wants tighter control over this information \u2013 or if you do? Kai thought. He trusted his brother absolutely in one respect: Shan Yuan was unfailingly loyal to their father. There was no way he'd betray Ao Guang \u2013 as their sister Indigo had done. But that didn't mean he lacked ambition. He had his own goals. But what if these conflicted with the things Kai cared about?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "Night had fallen; the streets of London were full of shadows, and the rooftops even more so. The slates were wet and slippery under Vale's feet, inviting accidents. The street lamps which burned dimly below were suns, orbited by the night-dwelling citizens of London's underworld. Some stayed close to the comforting lights to display their wares, or to seek safety. Others kept their distance to avoid exposure.\n\nVale could feel the heat emanating from the attic window beside him, even though the room's owner had insulated it with dark cloth and layers of padding. This was confirmation that his information had been correct. He also wasn't surprised by the multiple locks or the hidden poison needle trap. Those too were entirely in keeping with the person who lived here. Silently, he opened the window and let himself drop through.\n\nHe landed with a faint thump \u2013 a squelch, even \u2013 on the well-watered soil that had been spread across the floor. He'd landed between two rows of hellebore, their five-petalled white flowers facing upwards like stars. The entire attic had been converted into a forcing-house for the owner's favourite varieties of plants. Ether-lamps blazed from the rafters, keeping the place well lit, and heaters stood along the walls. Like the greenhouses at Kew Gardens, the air was scented with moist greenery \u2013 or perhaps tainted might be a more appropriate word, given the type of plants cultivated here.\n\nVale headed towards the door, taking care not to step on the plants. There was no point in aggravating their owner more than necessary, or destroying future evidence. But as he reached the door it swung open, and the house's owner faced him.\n\nHer eyes widened in shock and one dainty hand went to her throat. She was in a comfortable-looking hyacinth-blue tea-gown, as might be expected for a woman of her class at home of an evening. A lacy shawl covered her shoulders. Ash-blonde ringlets were caught up in a deceptively simple style, and her round face was the picture of innocent vulnerability. 'Who are you?' she gasped. 'What are you doing here?'\n\n'My name is Peregrine Vale, madam, as you are perfectly aware,' Vale said. 'I advise you against using the pistol under your shawl or the blade in your sleeve. It would be extremely difficult for you to explain my corpse's presence here \u2013 and fatal, if I may choose an appropriate word, to your line of work.'\n\nShe was an excellent actress. The flicker of calculation in her eyes was barely perceptible. 'I refuse to believe you're Peregrine Vale. The greatest detective in London wouldn't just show up in my attic like this. You're some sort of burglar. I insist that you leave right this minute, or I'll call the police!'\n\n'Spare me the breathless histrionics,' Vale advised. 'Calling the police would be inconvenient for both of us. A few minutes of conversation would be a great deal more profitable, and then I will leave you in peace to start packing.'\n\nThis time the narrowing of her eyes was quite definite, however much she tried to hide it. 'Packing? Why should I do that?'\n\n'Claribelle Houndston,' Vale said, turning away from her to stroll down a narrow path between the lines of herbs and flowers. 'Or should I call you Lucy Windermere? Or Ethel James? There's also Percival Felixton, John Brookes and several others \u2013 not to mention your foreign aliases. I will address you as madam out of courtesy, but I'm forced to admit that I am uncertain of your original gender or name.' A fact which galled him. He turned to face her. 'You are extremely efficient at covering your tracks. I must applaud the fact that you choose your aliases at random, rather than according to some personal theme or preference. Very few people can avoid that \u2013 however much they may consciously try.'\n\nShe cocked her head thoughtfully, like a bird trying to decide whether a worm would taste as good as it looked. 'Tell me, Mr Vale, does your sister know I'm living here?'\n\n'Who do you think gave me your address?' He hoped his sister would never consider employing this woman, but his sister did work for the British government.\n\n'Drat,' Claribelle Houndston said. 'Very well. Clearly there's something you want, or you wouldn't be here. Who's my new \"client\"?'\n\n'I'm not hiring you to assassinate anyone,' Vale said curtly.\n\n'No? I'm sure there are a few people in London whose removal would be convenient for you.'\n\n'Madam, you seem to have misinterpreted my position. I am a detective, not some... Napoleon of crime.'\n\n'In that case, I have absolutely no idea what you're doing here,' she said. 'Do close the window behind you. After all, as you've pointed out, I need to start packing if my location is known.'\n\nVale strolled towards her, ducking under some trailing fronds of wisteria. 'What I'm after, madam, is information.'\n\nHer face went still, her expression deadly. 'That's not something I sell.'\n\n'I'm quite aware. It's part of your reputation, after all. You are untraceable, unrecognizable, and you never betray your paymasters. The Secret Gardener, they call you. Morbid, but poetic.'\n\nClaribelle Houndston sighed. 'If you know all that, then why are you bothering to ask me?'\n\n'Because I hope I can persuade you otherwise. You are leaving town, after all. Our conversation will remain strictly confidential, with neither the police nor criminals knowing about it. I'm not asking you to provide evidence, madam \u2013 merely data for my own use.'\n\n'I might be able to work with that,' she mused. 'But what sort of payment are we discussing here?'\n\n'Come now,' Vale chided her, pausing a safe distance away from any unexpected knife thrust. 'I've made you aware that I and my sister know where to find you. Surely that's payment enough?'\n\nShe looked unconvinced, but didn't argue the point \u2013 probably already planning her departure to somewhere he and his sister wouldn't be able to find her. 'You're not making any new friends tonight, Mr Vale.'\n\n'A fact of little or no significance to me,' Vale informed her. 'Let us be brief. My information suggests that you may have been hired for a contract on myself, and certain of my friends, rather than simply cultivating your garden.' He glanced across the range of flowers and herbs, identifying half a dozen as lethal and most of the rest as extremely dangerous. He spotted datura with its pale trumpet-flowers, black lotus in the tiny artificial pond, aconites and foxgloves along its banks and nightshade twining with the wisteria in an elegant purple backdrop. 'Is that correct?'\n\nAfter a moment's consideration, she reluctantly nodded. 'I'll admit that a contract along those lines is currently under discussion. Not actually signed yet, though, so you needn't threaten to trample my flowers.'\n\n'Thank you for confirming my suspicions. As it's not signed \u2013 yet \u2013 can you give me the details?'\n\nShe blinked. 'You're really taking this rather well. Are you sure you haven't been sampling my garden already?'\n\n'Madam,' Vale said, 'I have grown used to attempts to murder me. I no longer view them with the concern that I once did. In some respects, I consider them a badge of honour \u2013 especially when undertaken by people such as yourself, or commissioned by the person I believe is behind this.'\n\n'And who do you think that is?' she asked. She'd relaxed, and now employed the playful tone of someone trying to coax an indiscretion out of an indulgent uncle.\n\n'Are you acquainted with the Professor?'\n\nThe winsomeness faded like a passing summer's day, and her mouth snapped shut. This time, she made no attempt to disguise her reaction. 'Right,' she said. 'Out. Now.'\n\n'Thank you for confirming my hypothesis,' Vale needled her.\n\nShe glared at him as though he was an unexploded bomb just discovered on her premises. 'Why did you bother coming and asking me, if you already knew my employer?'\n\n'Suspicion is one thing; confirmation is quite another. Such a beautiful specimen of oleander.' Vale put out a hand as if to touch it, before having second thoughts. 'I haven't seen that shade of crimson before. I don't suppose you would consider selling cuttings? No, perhaps not. Now why are you so averse to the Professor?'\n\nShe folded her arms and appeared to be counting silently to ten, or praying for patience. He often inspired this reaction in women \u2013 Vale had even seen it in Winters once or twice, however much she denied it. 'Having a criminal mastermind taking over the local underworld is bad news for independent specialists,' she said. 'Sooner or later one is faced with a choice between permanent employment or permanent relocation \u2013 either out of the country, or into a grave. I was prepared to consider taking a contract or two before leaving, so as not to end things on bad terms with the Professor. But I'm not in the habit of wasting my breath \u2013 and you seem to know all about these developments already.'\n\n'The flattery is appreciated but unnecessary.' Vale stepped closer. 'What else do you know about him?'\n\nShe rolled her eyes. 'I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, I suppose... He's new to London, and he's very secretive. He's been taking over other organizations from the top down and keeping his own name out of it. Not that I know what his real name is, anyhow. Why bother with a name when you have an alias as good as the Professor?' She shrugged. 'And from what I've heard, he's Fae. I'm not interested in working for someone who thinks I should be able to achieve the impossible because it makes for a better story. Sometimes summer plants aren't supposed to flower in winter.'\n\nVale gestured to the many out-of-season flowers which crowded her attic greenhouse. 'But you do make summer flowers grow in winter.'\n\n'That's down to good gardening,' Claribelle Houndston said firmly. 'Not supernatural powers.'\n\n'Have you met him in person?'\n\nShe shook her head. 'All our communication's been through the post. I burned the letters after reading.'\n\nVale would expect no less from someone with her reputation. 'The details of the contract, please.'\n\nShe pursed her lips, and he could tell she was rethinking her decision to cooperate. 'Miss Houndston, bear in mind you are already heavily compromised. If the Professor finds out that I was here...'\n\n'I could present him with your corpse,' she said speculatively. 'That might go a long way towards convincing him of my good faith.'\n\n'You could certainly try,' Vale said.\n\nFor a moment she weighed up her options, and then accepted defeat. 'Very well. I was given two targets \u2013 you and a man named Kai Strongrock, a frequent visitor to your lodgings. That's all.'\n\nVale frowned. 'Nobody else?'\n\n'No, just the two of you. In fact, there was a clause in the contract that nobody else in your vicinity \u2013 or among your friends \u2013 was to be injured or damaged in any way.'\n\n'Is that sort of clause unusual?'\n\n'Not really. It can be relevant when an inheritance is at stake, for instance, and a precise order of deaths is necessary. But I admit I couldn't see the point of it in this case. The Professor doesn't have a reputation for sparing the innocent.'\n\n'Indeed.' Vale kept his guard up, but inwardly he found himself confused. This made little sense. Why hadn't this woman been ordered to murder Winters as well? More precisely, why were her orders almost specifically designed to ensure Winters remained safe and unharmed? 'You will be abandoning the contract, I trust?'\n\n'Yes. It seems rather pointless, now I've alerted the primary target. I wasn't seriously planning to go up against you, in any case. I'm abandoning the contract and London for the foreseeable future. To be frank, you and the Professor are welcome to kill one another.' She glided past him, indicating the open window, steps confident as she wove between the rows of deadly flowers. 'Now get out of here, before you end up dying in my attic and I turn you into compost.'\n\n'No doubt I'll see you again at some point,' he said affably.\n\nFor a moment, her expression was as lethal as her favourite poisons.\n\nA couple of hours later \u2013 following two changes of clothing, an attempted mugging and some inconveniently persistent followers \u2013 Vale was sitting in a corner booth of a pub near the docks, nursing a pint of dubious beer. The fog outside lapped against the windows in a dank grey mass, as though the taproom had sunk beneath the Thames. Its ominous presence seemed to quiet conversation. So although the pub was busy, no one laughed, shouted or argued, and the customers hunched over their drinks, their voices muted to a background murmur.\n\nThe door creaked open and a man in battered sailor's gear shouldered in, his dark hair and beard glistening with raindrops. Singh's disguise wasn't on Vale's level, of course, but it was adequate \u2013 no one would recognize the Scotland Yard inspector. He glanced across the room, and Vale raised his tankard as a signal. Singh collected a beer of his own and joined him. As a practising Sikh he wouldn't actually drink the stuff, but a man ordering a non-alcoholic beverage here would've been more noticeable than a policeman in full uniform.\n\nSingh and Vale sipped their drinks \u2013 or feigned to \u2013 until any casual interest had died away. Then Vale opened a cheap newspaper to the racing pages, and the two men bent their heads over it.\n\n'Bad news, I'm afraid,' Singh said quietly. 'We're being pressured to find the culprit behind the arson attack as fast as possible. Madame Sterrington's being put forward as one of the possible suspects. Not the only one, of course \u2013 my superiors aren't that obvious \u2013 but her name's on the list.'\n\n'Inconvenient, though also informative. I learn as much from what you're ordered to hush up as I do from what you're allowed to pass on to me.'\n\n'And as long as they believe I am hushing it up, it keeps them trusting me,' Singh agreed. 'Otherwise I wouldn't have been given a sniff at the records you wanted today.'\n\nVale nodded. He understood that the police force, like any large institution, had ways of ensuring that certain information was kept secret. Sometimes word came down that a matter had to be 'solved' \u2013 by whatever means necessary \u2013 to keep it out of the papers. That was when the powers-that-be found people like him useful.\n\nOf course, word didn't always come down from above. Sometimes it came from a distinctly lateral route. If he'd had more leisure, he would have investigated how pressure was being applied to Singh's superiors. But time was of the essence here. 'And did you get to see those records?' he asked.\n\n'I had one of my runners pull them \u2013 together with a set of others to confuse the issue.' Singh feigned a swallow of beer. 'You were right that all the crimes in question show signs of a protection racket in operation, or blackmail. And all these cases were reported by concerned family members. The actual victims denied that any crime had occurred at all when the police came round to inquire. Denied it very vehemently, in some cases.'\n\nVale nodded. He would expect the Professor to be thorough when it came to controlling rumours of his activities. 'Was there any police follow-up?'\n\n'Only in one case, and that only because the fellow committed suicide. Belson, the painter \u2013 the one who was implicated in the Flemish Primitives forgeries case, remember?' Singh waited for Vale's nod. 'He'd already lost all his money and a fair amount more at cards, so when he blew his brains out nobody was surprised. But his lady friend had gone to the police earlier, claiming that he was being blackmailed. It made his death look suspicious. She apparently left town the day after.'\n\n'And I suspect that \u2013 conveniently \u2013 she hasn't been heard from since.'\n\n'Not a word. So what do you have in mind?'\n\n'I've told you I believe a new spider has entered London's web,' Vale said, allowing himself just a touch of metaphor. 'Previously, he's been acting through agents and catspaws. But his empire has now extended far enough that even the police begin to perceive it.'\n\n'Miss Winters would tell you that such a spider can be female just as well as male,' Singh noted, tankard raised to conceal a smile.\n\nVale snorted. 'Very well. I concede the gender is unconfirmed until we have further information. However, I am certain of this mastermind's presence \u2013 and I'm now sure that they're linked to the recent assassination attempts.'\n\nSingh turned his tankard in his hand, watching the sway of liquid rather than meeting Vale's eyes. 'We've known each other for a while now. May I speak without prejudice?'\n\n'Always,' Vale answered. He was not the sort of man to talk of 'friends' but he had known Singh for years \u2013 nearly a decade, all in all \u2013 and he trusted the man absolutely.\n\n'I'm playing devil's advocate here,' Singh started cautiously. As ever, he was being tactful rather than refuting Vale's theory outright. 'But I ask you, what are the odds of someone taking control of London's underworld without the police hearing a single rumour of the fact? A smaller city, perhaps \u2013 but London?'\n\n'I don't think this person controls all of London yet,' Vale replied. 'All the more reason for us to stop them before they take it entirely. The police may not have heard these rumours, but the criminal underworld certainly has. Earlier this afternoon I spoke with Claribelle Houndston. She confirmed that \"the Professor\" was negotiating a contract with her to assassinate myself and Strongrock. Before that I was visiting \"friends\" in the London Underground, and I found letters signed by the Professor in Mr Dawkins' own private desk.'\n\nSingh pursed his lips in a whistle. 'If he's got Dawkins in his pocket, then he has the rest of the werewolves too. They follow orders down there, or they get their throats ripped out.'\n\n'Quite. As for the high finance sector, Wilkinson the banker \u2013 who's behind half the touts in Surrey \u2013 has been emptying his own bank accounts for two weeks now. He's been paying out to an unknown creditor, and he's not the only one. The Stepney counterfeiting ring, led by the Parr sisters, has recently doubled its output. Need I go on? Must I draw a diagram of all the threads which lead to this central antagonist?' The very thought invigorated him. A challenge at this level, a mind of his own quality to duel against, an enemy worthy of his steel...\n\n'And you kept all these theories a secret until yesterday,' Singh said flatly.\n\n'I wasn't certain,' Vale excused himself. 'The separate pieces were in my hands, but I lacked definite connections and proof. These last few weeks I have been gathering the strands of a veritable cobweb, and they have either broken under my fingers or melted into the morning dew. I prefer to spin my web and then let you take all the flies at once, if you'll excuse the metaphor. Besides, once we begin to move against our adversary, he or she will respond. For the moment our enemy thinks you are ignorant \u2013 and so you remain relatively safe.' Singh hadn't been included in Claribelle Houndston's contract. Yet if their foe realized how useful Singh was to Vale, or even that he was Vale's friend, then his life would be at risk.\n\nSingh made a noise indicating his understanding, but also frustration. 'By not telling me or anyone else, you've put us all at risk. And we still know nothing about this Professor \u2013 this person's identity, hiding places, strengths and weaknesses...'\n\n'Or there could be yet another person behind them,' Vale said softly. He recalled what Winters had said about her meeting with Lord Guantes. He'd mentioned the man behind the Professor...\n\n'One criminal mastermind at a time would be quite enough for me, thank you,' Singh said. 'Any thoughts about how we should take this forward?'\n\n'From my investigations among the werewolves, I found a total lack of personal communication with the Professor. All orders came through the post, or via newspaper agony columns.'\n\nSingh understood. 'Yes... any criminal might hide their identity in this way. But it could also mean he's someone they already know, whom they could identify in person.' Lord Guantes and his wife had been involved with London's werewolves before, using them as minions.\n\nMaintaining their cover, Vale plucked out a coin and slid it across the table to Singh \u2013 as if he were settling a bet on the horses. 'Winters has gone to ground, together with her apprentice. Strongrock is absent. I intend to spend the rest of the night pursuing my investigations. I hope to have more information for you tomorrow. The more this Professor attempts to mobilize London against us, the more likely it is that a minion will become careless and can be arrested \u2013 and used against our antagonist.'\n\n'You've yet to explain why the Professor wants you and Strongrock dead,' Singh said. 'If you alone were a target, then I'd understand it as part of controlling London. If Strongrock alone were the target, it could be down to some private dispute between Fae and dragons, or perhaps connected to this treaty of theirs. And if you, Strongrock and Irene Winters were named on Claribelle's contract, I could understand that too. It would make sense to dispose of all of you, for fear that surviving members of your group would come after the killer. But for it to be just you and Strongrock...'\n\n'Yes. Most curious.' Winters had almost been caught in the submarine base attack with him \u2013 but she hadn't been expected to be there. Yet leaving her alive made no sense to him. 'Another loose end. I need more data. I have my sister looking into cerebral controllers and political intrigues, while you investigate the arson case \u2013 though be careful, Singh. If the Professor suspects that we know of our foe's existence, we can expect no mercy.'\n\n'What I can give you is limited,' Singh said. 'If I were back home in Hyderabad \u2013 well, I have acquaintances there who could be of more assistance. But here \u2013 no. Your sister's likely to be more use than I am when it comes to the inner circles of power.'\n\nVale nodded. Singh was one of the few people who knew that Columbine, Vale's sister, was more than just a clerk in the Ministry offices. 'She dislikes involving herself in active investigations, but given the circumstances...'\n\n'If this criminal mastermind of yours didn't want her attention, then he shouldn't have gone to these extremes.'\n\nVale frowned at the newspaper. For various reasons, he'd avoided bringing his sister into the side of his life that included Winters and Strongrock. His sister's primary concern was the safety of the British Empire. Although she preferred not to exert herself too much, or miss any meals, she still took her duties seriously. If Fae, dragons and the Library interfered with her Empire, London being its capital, she wouldn't spare any of them. Also, he couldn't protect her. She was well aware of these issues, as was Vale. So without either of them saying a single word, he'd known he should refrain from drawing his sister into certain exploits, for both of their sakes.\n\nHowever, he no longer had a choice.\n\n'What would you like me to do next?' Singh asked quietly.\n\n'Keep a watchful eye for signs of the Professor's influence,' Vale directed. 'If Madame Sterrington is apprehended, I'd appreciate it if she didn't suffer any mysterious accidents. Either in the cells or, as they say, while trying to escape.'\n\nSingh would clearly have liked to refute that insinuation as a slander against the police, but he chewed his moustache and nodded. 'And you?'\n\n'Send any messages to me via my sister. My lodgings are unsafe at present; I've already discovered some dynamite wired up in my cellar.'\n\n'And did you trouble yourself to inform the police?' Singh asked rhetorically.\n\nVale shrugged. 'I couldn't be sure it was connected to this case. You know the company I keep, Singh. A fair number of my \"acquaintances\" would leave dynamite, if they thought they could get away with it.'\n\n'We're working on a different scale entirely here, if you're right.' The if hung in the air between them. 'Get me some evidence, Vale. This can't go on.'\n\n'Certainly it cannot,' Vale agreed. He tried to ignore the surge in his blood at the thought of the pursuit ahead and the thrill of challenging such an enemy. He would need all the cold logic at his command to track his adversary successfully.\n\nAssuming that the Professor didn't find him first."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "On the other side of London the air was also thick with fog. Morning might have broken, but there were no rays of sunshine to rouse sleepers. And Irene had it on good authority that London's starlings had long since given up on the dawn chorus. Instead they were hungry scavengers, as vicious as piranhas when they saw a chance at someone's breakfast.\n\nShe shook Catherine by the shoulder. 'Wake up,' she suggested.\n\nCatherine grunted and tried to hide under the sheets.\n\nWhile Irene sympathized, this was going to be a busy day and she had no time for other people's laziness. She pulled off the sheets and blankets, leaving Catherine shivering in her borrowed nightdress. 'Rise and shine, o would-be librarian. We've got a lot to do.'\n\nCatherine was clearly about to complain. Then she took in Irene's expression and shut her mouth, setting about the business of washing and dressing instead. Irene rewarded her with a mug of coffee.\n\n'All right,' she said, once Catherine was in a fit condition to listen. 'It's eight o'clock and we need to get moving. Given the many attempts to either kill or kidnap us, we have to assume we'll be in danger as soon as our enemies locate us. Before we go any further, I want to be absolutely clear about this \u2013 if you continue to work with me, you're going to be in danger.' She was very grateful that Kai was out of London and that Vale was \u2013 well, Vale. 'You'd be much safer if you left London and stayed undercover until the current threat's blown over. I promise I'll still consider you as my apprentice and try to get you into the Library.'\n\nCatherine glared at her. 'I'm not leaving you.'\n\n'Don't you trust me?'\n\n'I do, although I don't think you trust me. Besides, if something bad does happen, maybe it'll give you the crucial insight you need to get me into the Library.'\n\n'You can't depend on the power of an ideal narrative,' Irene said wearily. 'Sometimes life gives you a dramatic tragedy instead. In fact, the more you depend on a storybook outcome...' She saw the look in Catherine's eyes, and gave up. 'Very well. You're sticking with me, then. In that case, we might as well retrieve the Vie de Merlin and get it to the Library. I have to report in on the current situation in any case. Where is it?'\n\nCatherine visibly weighed up whether or not she wanted to give up her leverage, then said, 'Waterloo.'\n\n'Good. Let me see. Thinking of nearby libraries... there's Methyll Street, St John the Beheaded, the Fosdyke Sanatorium and the Guest Collection. Also a couple of small ones that serve the local parishes.' She considered the likelihood that hostile forces might have staked them all out, and be waiting for them to show up. After all, their enemies \u2013 Lord Guantes or otherwise \u2013 knew Irene was a Librarian. They would be expecting her to make a run for the Library. But surely they couldn't watch every library in London. 'We'll try the Guest Collection. They own some valuable books, so they have better security measures than most; that should keep you safe while I access the Library.'\n\n'Will you try to get me in while you're there?' Catherine asked eagerly.\n\n'I haven't thought of anything new since last time,' Irene admitted. 'And we both know that nothing's worked yet. And I don't want to keep on hurting you until I can come up with a better idea. It does hurt, doesn't it?'\n\nCatherine didn't respond, but the way that she looked aside was answer enough. 'Maybe if I really was an archetypal proper librarian, it would let me in,' she suggested.\n\n'Have you considered settling down somewhere \u2013 somewhere other than here \u2013 and just working as a librarian for a few years? Somewhere safe?'\n\n'My uncle won't let me do what I want, unless I do something useful for him \u2013 like finding out how a Fae can access the Library. This is my chance and you're my ticket in. I'm not letting go of you.'\n\n'How nice to be valued for my true worth.' Irene took the coffee mug out of Catherine's hand. 'In that case, the next step is clothing and make-up. I know you don't want to train as a spy, but in the interests of keeping you alive today, you're going to be my co-researcher from France, and you need to look the part...'\n\nThe Guest Collection had originally displayed a gleaming white marble facade, but the London weather had taken it down a peg or two since. While its mock-baroque spires still towered above the neighbouring buildings, they were stained grey from the constant smog and acid rain. Any smears of white were due to visiting pigeons, rather than the underlying stone. The current owners had spent their money on security, not redecoration, and the elegant windows were firmly iron-barred. Stylized stone hawks still ornamented the building's columns, though, and brooded above the main door \u2013 retaining an air of classical menace. Their hooded eyes seemed to watch Irene and Catherine as they entered.\n\nIrene hadn't spotted any followers \u2013 but she wasn't about to take any risks. Posing as a French researcher whose application to visit the Collection had been lost in the post, she complained loudly (in French) before signing a one-day visiting application. She also handed over a large deposit for handling their books. Conveniently, the receptionists were more interested in making a profit from a visiting foreigner than looking too closely at her credentials. As the junior researcher, Catherine carried the small suitcase containing the Vie de Merlin. They'd had no problem collecting it from Waterloo station's left luggage department. Irene could only hope their luck would hold.\n\nThe building was devoted to the folklore of the British Isles. Irene had scoped it out once before and noted that the Scottish folklore rooms on the top floor were the most convenient for quiet working \u2013 and avoiding attention. She ignored Catherine's muttering as the younger woman hefted the case up the stairs, waiting until she was sure they were alone. Fortunately, the Collection tended to fill up later in the day. They should be undisturbed for a while \u2013 and an hour was all Irene wanted.\n\n'Sit here and look as if you're studying,' she directed. 'If security shows up and asks where I am\u2014'\n\n'I know, you're in another room,' Catherine said. She wandered along the shelves pulling books down, her fingers lingering on their spines. 'Can I say I'm studying \"redcaps\" \u2013 they seem to be Scottish goblins?'\n\n'As long as you can sound convincing about it.' Irene picked up the case. 'Now if anything goes wrong while I'm away, go back to our overnight lodgings. If that's impossible or if you're being followed, take a hotel room somewhere and stay there. Put a message for me in the agony column of the Times under the name Melodia Agnes.' A stupid name, but memorable \u2013 and no worse than the other pseudonyms there. 'And be careful.'\n\nIt was dangerous to leave Catherine alone \u2013 but Irene had to get into the Library. And without Kai to watch over Catherine, what else could she do?\n\nShe suppressed her growing unease. Kai should be the safest of them all. He was visiting family \u2013 well, other dragons, at least \u2013 and was well away from all this mess. If he was taking longer than expected, hopefully that was because there was plenty of information on that laptop. The fact that she personally missed him \u2013 very much \u2013 was beside the point.\n\nCatherine already had her head in her selection of books. With an unnoticed wave, Irene went looking for a door.\n\nThe Collection was built in an old style, with a warren of rooms opening onto one another rather than being accessible from a central corridor, but they all encircled the central staircase. Inside the building the marble of the floors and walls was still white and luminous, and the shelved books were a finer decoration than any painting or panelling \u2013 in Irene's opinion, anyway. She passed deeper into the silent rooms of the Scottish folklore section until she found an unobtrusive cupboard. A quick look revealed cleaning supplies.\n\nShe closed the door and scribbled on it This door opens to the Library in the Language, using an anachronistic biro she carried for emergencies. She felt the drain of energy as the connection established itself. The portal would remain open for half an hour at most \u2013 hopefully long enough for her to report and ask for help.\n\nThen she opened the door and stepped through.\n\nInstead of revealing more pale marble and high windows, the room on the other side was low-ceilinged and timber-floored. The heavy door that led further into the Library was closed, and the single lamp that hung from the ceiling burned fitfully, making the whole room feel like an underground shelter. The shelves were packed with carefully organized and preserved scrolls; their ends seemed to lean towards Irene, as if tempting her to unroll one.\n\nFortunately this was one of the rooms containing computers, so Irene wouldn't have to waste time searching for one. She booted up a terminal and logged on, trying not to get too impatient at every second that slipped away.\n\nHer first email was to Central Processing, before she'd even checked her own account, asking for someone to collect the Malory book from this room. She didn't have time to find a deposit point, so just this once she'd delegate. Then she looked at her messages.\n\nAnd she swore.\n\nThe email at the very top was a bulletin to all Coppelia's students. Coppelia was an elder Librarian, Irene's own mentor and the very person she'd been going to ask for advice. It read: The Librarian Coppelia is seriously ill with pneumonia and is not available for lessons or assistance. She is currently receiving the best possible medical care. Presents for her may be left with Musaka. No grapes.\n\nIt wasn't just self-interest that made Irene blaspheme. Coppelia had been her teacher and friend for over a decade. Irene had known that the older woman was ill, ever since the last winter in Paris, but Coppelia had sworn she was getting over it. Irene should have pushed harder for her to have a check-up, she should have made her listen...\n\nYou're wasting time, the unwelcome voice of pragmatism said at the back of her mind. Focus on what's important.\n\nBut Coppelia was important. And the Library was important. All at once a rush of nostalgia came over Irene, a swell of despair at how everything kept on going wrong. She felt a desperate wish to just come back here, come back home, and let everything outside go to hell in its own way. What was the point of trying to support this damn truce, if the people she loved here were at risk? Why had she ever wanted anything outside the closed circle of stealing and reading books? What was it ultimately going to get her? Catherine had the right idea. Irene should be working with the books she loved, the people she loved, rather than playing politics.\n\nExcept that wasn't an option.\n\nThe Library wasn't just about collecting and preserving stories. It was also dedicated to protecting the worlds where those stories were written. And it wasn't a charity. Librarians paid for their use of the Language, their ability to travel between worlds via the Library, and their access to all its books. They paid with the coin of service. Once you were sealed to the Library and had its brand on your back, as Irene did, your life was no longer entirely your own. You followed orders \u2013 to collect books, or help maintain a peace treaty. Although you might have some discretion about how you followed those orders, refusal was not an option.\n\nIrene could imagine Coppelia scolding her for the imprecision of that statement. No, refusal is an option. It's just that refusal comes with consequences. If you make a choice, then you're responsible for the consequences of that choice.\n\nFor a moment Irene allowed herself to look around the room, at the tantalizing shelves, the scrolls, the door that would lead deeper into the Library \u2013 where she could crawl into a corner and never come out again...\n\nAll right, now she was just being ridiculous.\n\nShe took a deep breath and scanned down the list of emails. Book request, book request, coffee request, nothing from her parents \u2013 but no news was good news, she didn't want to worry about them as well as everything else. Towards the bottom, she saw a system notification that had come in a couple of days ago. It was a routine mailing, giving details of ongoing hazards in alternate worlds. She skimmed it idly, skipping over references to civil wars, manhunts and volcanic eruptions, but came to an abrupt halt when she saw the designation of her own world \u2013 where she was Librarian-in-Residence \u2013 the one she'd just come from.\n\nWarning to all concerned: the alternate world B-395 is suffering from an irregular and unstable level of chaos, cycling from moderate to high. We don't yet know the reason for this. As it's only been happening for the last week and a half, it may be only a temporary issue. Visitors to the world should be particularly vigilant.\n\n'This particular visitor has quite enough to worry about already,' Irene muttered to herself, and began to compose an urgent email to Melusine \u2013 the Library's head of Internal Security. In the absence of Coppelia and without any other formal superior, Melusine would have to do. Irene described the current situation, the new assassination attempts, the previous ones, the problem with Catherine's recently discovered ambitions, and added an urgent request that no other Librarians visit B-395 unless they were actually coming to help.\n\nThen she sat back and thought. Was this fluctuating high chaos level in B-395 due to the interdimensional door she'd found \u2013 leading to the world where she'd encountered Lord Guantes? The creation of such a door was so far beyond her that she could only speculate about its metaphysics. Perhaps, when such a door was created, the two worlds tried to equalize their respective levels of chaos? That could explain sudden rises and subsequent falls.\n\nBut if so, that implied the door had been opened multiple times, or \u2013 worse still \u2013 that there were multiple doors...\n\nShe began to type another email.\n\nIrene stepped back through the door into the Guest Collection. Melusine hadn't responded, and she couldn't afford to wait. If Irene had stayed, the link she'd created to the Guest Collection would have worn out and collapsed, and she'd have had to take a far longer route back.\n\nThis was clearly going to be one of those days when all possible choices were bad choices.\n\nThe back of her neck crawled. Though the room was empty, she felt that someone was watching her. Or more precisely... looking for her. It was like being in the path of a searchlight as it swept across a landscape by night. A glaring eye raking through the darkness \u2013 in search of a target it knew was there. Irene found herself holding her breath involuntarily, her shoulders hunching into a crouch as defensive as Catherine's own. As if that could somehow help her hide...\n\nShe'd only felt something like this once before, when Alberich had been searching for her; but this was different. It didn't have the same flavour of chaos and malignity to it, exactly, though she couldn't put her feeling into words which would have satisfied Vale.\n\nHer nervousness kept her steps quiet and slow, which was why she heard noises from the ground floor. They didn't match the usual library whisper of rustling pages and hushed conversations.\n\nShe hurried to the central stairwell, dropping to her knees to peer through the banisters without risking observation. From that perspective she could see two receptionists and a security guard remonstrating with a group which must have just entered \u2013 a dozen men in dark overcoats. They didn't look like researchers. It was hard to catch what they were saying from three floors up, but she caught the odd word. 'Urgent... no warrant... immediate search...'\n\nRight. Time to leave. She backed away and was straightening to her feet, when for some reason a small cloud of dust motes caught her eye. They'd glinted in the light from the overhead lamps as they fell. Some instinct for danger made her look upwards, and she caught sight of a shadowy figure on the other side of the stairwell. It was silently moving downwards towards her, and she didn't know if she'd been seen.\n\nThere was at least one other person up there too, their movements as stealthy as Irene's own. When Irene had signed in, she'd taken a glance at the visitors' book, and she and Catherine had been the only ones present at that point. Were the men in overcoats and these shadowy watchers unconnected... or this was a deliberate pincer movement? If so, Irene and Catherine might be caught in the middle.\n\nShe was sidling back towards where she'd left Catherine when she heard a familiar voice from below, raised to carry. It was Lord Guantes. 'Miss Winters? I suggest you come out, wherever you are. This library is now closed.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "There was a certain satisfaction to having one's worst expectations confirmed. Admittedly this meant that you had to deal with the results, but at least you could tell your colleagues later that you'd told them so.\n\nHowever, these pleasures had to be deferred in favour of immediate escape. Irene had to assume the worst \u2013 that their enemies were waiting both above and below. She could use the Language to force a window open. But climbing out of a third-floor window, above a crowded London street, came with its own risks \u2013 such as the difficulty of adapting one's plan while halfway down the outside of a building.\n\nApparently Lord Guantes was giving Irene a few minutes to make up her mind. Catherine must also have realized something was wrong. She'd closed her books and was looking nervously from side to side. Irene put a finger to her lips as she approached, and beckoned her to follow.\n\nThe two of them made it to the book lift without being intercepted. It was an unobtrusive recent addition, and ran from the top to the bottom of the building. Irene swung the waist-high doors open. There was enough room inside for an athletic young woman, and Catherine certainly weighed less than a pile of some of this library's books.\n\n'Wait here,' she said quietly. 'When you start hearing a commotion, climb inside and shut the door. That'll keep you hidden. Then I'll press the button on the ground floor to bring you down safely once the coast is clear. We'll get out together.'\n\n'How?' Catherine hissed, panic showing in her eyes.\n\nIrene wasn't sure which of her statements the how referred to, so she decided to leave explanations for later. Especially as her plans were better described as being in the formative, rather than the fully detailed, stage. 'If things go wrong and you hear me being dragged off screaming, remember our plans for meeting up,' she said.\n\n'You'll scream?'\n\n'I'll make sure I scream very loudly indeed.' Irene gave Catherine a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, to offset any panic her words might induce, and headed back to the stairwell.\n\n'Miss Winters!' Apparently Lord Guantes had grown bored with waiting. 'I suggest you show yourself immediately, if you have any regard for the safety of this library's staff.'\n\nIrene peered through the balustrade's pillars again. One of the receptionists, his glasses flashing in the light from the overhead lamps, was being shoved forward: two of the men in overcoats held his arms while a third put a gun to his head. The security guard and the other receptionist were watching in horror, oddly silent.\n\n'Very well,' Irene called down, rising to her feet. 'Don't shoot. I'm coming down.'\n\nShe could hear footsteps above her now. She'd been right. They had been boxed in. She'd just have to hope she could find an advantage.\n\n'Come on down then, and don't keep us waiting,' Lord Guantes ordered. He gestured to his minions; the one with the drawn gun lowered it, but the two holding the receptionist remained in place, a clear message that his safety was conditional on her obedience.\n\nIrene began to descend the stairs, her mind whirring with possible plans. A pity that so many of them ended up in And then he shoots me. 'How has your day been so far, Lord Guantes?'\n\n'Improving by the moment, my dear.' He stood looking up at her, all his attention on her. His followers copied his movements like hunting dogs, even the ones guarding the library staff. That could be useful. 'If only you were always this obliging.'\n\n'Lord Guantes, I've had a stressful day. Under the circumstances I'm willing to grant you an interview, but please don't push me.'\n\n'You're talking as if you're the one holding the balance of power here. Should I point out that I have three hostages, and this place is held by my men?'\n\nA thrill of relief went through Irene. If he'd realized Catherine was here and that he could take her as a hostage too, he'd already be boasting about it. 'If I think I'm invulnerable, have you considered why I'm bothering to surrender to you?'\n\nHe snorted. 'A predictable concern for the lives and well-being of these useless pawns.'\n\n'Excuse me!' one of the receptionists protested.\n\n'Oh, not my opinion.' He faced the woman and smiled, and Irene knew that to her, he would be absolutely believable. Lord Guantes was a master manipulator \u2013 it was part of his archetype. 'I simply meant that Miss Winters has childish moral views on the sanctity of human life and so on, which makes her easily manipulated.'\n\n'Oh, that's all right then,' the hostage said, and the other two nodded in agreement. Even the one who'd had a gun pointed at his head.\n\nFortunately Irene hadn't been counting on any help from them. They would currently be rationalizing why they were fortunate to be Lord Guantes' prisoners and threatened with death. 'If I may just check something?' she asked.\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'Didn't I see you die just a couple of days ago?'\n\nLord Guantes looked sincerely confused. 'You must be mistaken. I've been delaying any meetings with you until I could trap you in an inescapable situation, with overwhelming resources. Plus a few hostages, just in case.'\n\n'How flattering,' Irene replied coolly. Were there multiple Lord Guantes on the loose? And if so, which was the real one? 'And will your wife be joining us?'\n\n'My dear wife is busy with... another project,' Lord Guantes said, far too much relish in his voice.\n\nIrene had descended to the first floor by now. Far too close for comfort, and easily within gunshot range. One of the few reasons that she wasn't trying to run \u2013 which every instinct was screaming at her to do \u2013 was that Lord Guantes was having too much fun gloating. He was trapped in his criminal archetype. One couldn't gloat at a corpse. The corpse simply wouldn't appreciate it properly.\n\nShe suspected that his wife would have shot Irene as soon as she came into range, but then Lady Guantes had always been the more sensible of the pair. What a good thing she wasn't here. 'Might I ask what project?'\n\nLord Guantes stroked his beard. He was in a dark suit and overcoat, like the other men, but his were an order of magnitude more expensive and better-cut, and black gloves sheathed his hands. 'You may ask. But I think I'd prefer it if you asked while on your knees.'\n\nShe'd reached the ground floor now and was standing level with him. 'I confess I'm puzzled. You found me here \u2013 and I still don't know how you managed that. Did you pay library staff across London to watch out for me?'\n\n'Come now, my dear. That would be rather too expensive for one little Librarian.' The fact that he knew something which she didn't visibly soothed him. 'My wife had a token which allowed her to locate you, that's all \u2013 and I borrowed it.'\n\n'I didn't realize something like that could work on Librarians.' The Library brand on Irene's back blocked or defused magic specifically directed at her. It should have stopped anyone from scrying her location.\n\n'I think we can say that this specifically works on Librarians.' His mouth curled in an unpleasant smirk. 'Now that you're safely down here \u2013 Reuben, anything to be found above?'\n\nIrene followed his gaze upward. Half a dozen men were leaning over the balcony on different floors. 'No trace, sir,' one of them answered. 'She was the only one up here.'\n\n'Yet you came with company.' Lord Guantes inspected Irene thoughtfully. 'Where is she?'\n\n'Who?' Irene asked innocently.\n\nHe snapped his fingers. A couple of the men stepped forward to take her arms, pinioning her. 'The woman who entered here with you. I assume it was Lord Silver's niece. Where is she?'\n\nIrene resigned herself to the inevitable. 'Safe.'\n\nHe backhanded her across the face. Irene's vision blurred, and she swallowed blood. 'Miss Winters,' he said, his voice all calm persuasion and reasonableness. 'That was to make a point about your current helplessness. I could have my men beat the answer out of you \u2013 but I think I'll get quicker results if I shoot these hostages. Now let's try again. Where is Lord Silver's niece?'\n\nIrene tried to look desperate. 'If you're after her and I tell you, you'll have no reason to keep me alive.'\n\nThat smirk twitched across his face again \u2013 an expression that not only said, I know something you don't know, but also, I know something which is really going to upset you when you find out. 'Oh, I have a very specific, very definite reason to keep you alive, Miss Winters. But it would spoil things if I told you too soon. So in the interests of saving these other library staff, where is Lord Silver's niece?'\n\nThe man with the gun raised it to the hostage's head.\n\nIrene took a deep breath, and sagged, doing her best to look defeated. 'I took her into the Library.'\n\n'You what?'\n\n'That's not very grammatical,' Irene said, and earned another slap for it. No, she thought, waiting for the ringing in her ears to die down. This isn't the 'real' Lord Guantes. The one I knew in Venice years ago, the one I killed, would have tried to overpower me by will alone. This physicality would have been completely beneath him. And the one I surprised recently, he seemed physically weak. It's as if they're all imperfect copies of the original, flawed in one way or another, physically or mentally...\n\n'What you've suggested is completely impossible,' Lord Guantes declared, breaking in on her speculations. 'Fae can't enter the Library.'\n\n'Maybe not through force,' Irene said. She managed a smirk of her own. 'But with the willing cooperation of a Librarian, who knows what could be possible?'\n\nLord Guantes frowned, perhaps weighing the chance that Irene was lying against the fact that Catherine simply wasn't to be found.\n\n'Which is why I'm here,' Irene said brightly. 'Waiting for you to catch up... I thought we should talk.'\n\nLord Guantes stared at her, then converted the blank look into a patrician sneer. 'How this goes, Miss Winters, is as follows: I will ask questions, and you will answer them.'\n\n'As you wish,' Irene said with a shrug. 'I'd thought you might want to know more about how I granted a Fae access to the Library, to compensate for the fact that I killed you. Then we can forget this whole confrontation, no harm done.'\n\n'You thought you'd killed me,' he corrected her. 'A serious wound, but as you can see, I'm perfectly alive.'\n\n'So it seems,' Irene agreed. 'But the Lord Guantes I used to know \u2013 he would have been interested in the possibilities here. Admittedly we didn't have much of an acquaintance; our only real conversation was when you were trying to break my will and turn me into your slave...' She was gambling desperately, and her hand was weak. 'Even the Cardinal can't get Fae agents into the Library. What if you could?'\n\n'Very well. Explain your methodology.'\n\n'Reveal all my secrets \u2013 just like that?'\n\n'Unless you want me to shoot the hostages, yes, just like that.'\n\n'But if I tell you how it's done now, then my leverage is entirely gone,' Irene argued. 'And then you're free to do whatever you want with me. Kill me, sell me into slavery, shove me off a cliff...'\n\n'Really, Miss Winters, are you trying to give me ideas?'\n\n'I'm only making a point. I might leave something important out if I think you're just going to kill me \u2013 or your hostages \u2013 anyway. It makes revenge look like rather a short-sighted option. I thought you were a long-term thinker.'\n\nShe could see the calculation in his eyes. 'Is this a serious offer to negotiate, then?' he asked.\n\n'My options are... being chased by you for the rest of my life, which will probably be short and messy, or coming to some sort of arrangement that will satisfy you. Or killing you, of course.' The more she could play to his archetype as schemer and manipulator, the more likely he'd be to believe what she was saying.\n\n'Nicely put,' he agreed. 'Very well. I'm prepared to discuss the matter, in exchange for allowing you to live.'\n\nIrene found it hard not to roll her eyes at that offer. Allowing you to live still left open so many unpleasant possibilities. 'In the interests of bargaining in good faith,' she said, 'I'd like you to let the hostages go.'\n\nHe considered a moment, then smiled. It wasn't reassuring. 'Of course. Joseph, Peter, release Miss Winters. And see these good people to the door and let them out. I'm sure they'll be happy to head home to relax.'\n\nThe two men who'd been holding Irene let her go. Irene rubbed her arms, frowning slightly. She hadn't expected Lord Guantes to give in so easily.\n\nLord Guantes waited until the library employees were safely out of the door, still bemused and smiling, before he turned back to Irene. 'It just struck me, my dear, that I have a whole building full of hostages here. If you don't cooperate, I'll start burning some of these books. Or should I cut them to pieces? Do tell me which would be more spiritually painful to you.'\n\nIrene didn't need to feign her expression of chagrin at his words. 'You've made your point, Lord Guantes. I'll cooperate.' Still, she'd achieved a partial victory: the innocents were out of range. Now she just had to, somehow, deal with him and all his henchmen.\n\nSomething about that thought nagged at her. She glanced around as innocently as she could, getting a good look at her surroundings and the enemy forces. Yes, all the minions were of the same type: anonymous, muscular and male. Which meant that she and Catherine were now the only women in this library.\n\n'If I may check one point before we begin,' she said. 'Am I correct in thinking that you're the mysterious Professor, London's new emperor of crime, puller of a thousand strings and master of its underworld?'\n\nAs she'd expected, his vanity made him preen under her praise. 'I'd ask how you found out, but I suspect I know. Your detective friend.'\n\n'And you're behind the recent assassination attempts on us?'\n\n'Define us.'\n\n'Myself. Prince Kai. Vale. Sterrington.'\n\nHe smirked again, and her hand twitched at the urge to slap that expression off his face. 'Miss Winters, I assure you that I haven't attempted to assassinate you. Now let's get down to business. You will provide information \u2013 even if you don't reveal everything now \u2013 if you want to see these books left in one piece. I will judge if it is of sufficient quality to stay my hand.'\n\nSo if he hadn't attempted to assassinate her, 'just' the others, then what did he have in mind for her? That was useful information \u2013 if somewhat unsettling.\n\n'I don't know how much you know about the Language,' Irene began, trying to sound as didactic as possible. 'You're aware that it's only usable by Librarians?'\n\n'To an extent,' Lord Guantes said thoughtfully. 'After all, it's possible for you Librarians to write something down using the Language, and then give it to someone else to use.'\n\n'How do you know that?'\n\nHis smile was positively edged. 'Now how do you think I tracked you?'\n\nFor a moment Irene froze, her blood turned to ice. That meant a Librarian had betrayed her. As she saw Lord Guantes' smirk widen at her reaction \u2013 visible, however much she tried to conceal it \u2013 she fought down her fear. He could just be lying, trying to break her morale. He hadn't sworn to tell the truth, after all.\n\nBut if it was true...\n\nShe swallowed and forced herself to continue. 'Very well, then. This is why I'm here \u2013 and it concerns the Language. I've found a way to use it to modify an existing door to the Library, to allow Fae passage.' She chose her words carefully, to imply there was a permanent door to the Library inside this very building.\n\n'And you did that today?'\n\nIrene simply nodded. He seemed to be buying it.\n\n'Is this why you think you're bargaining from a position of power? Are you going to threaten to bring Librarian reinforcements out through this door, to attack me?' He looked quite serious, to her surprise \u2013 and relief.\n\nIrene didn't need to feign her snort of laughter. 'Oh, come on, Lord Guantes. You must know Librarians by now. Can you really see us doing that? I'm not in any sort of position of strength. I'm surrounded by armed men and you're in front of me.' Yet so long as he believed in her lie, so long as he thought she had something he wanted, she might not have strength but she had control.\n\n'One point in your story puzzles me,' he said slowly, and Irene's throat tightened. She'd thought he'd accepted her story. 'If you took Catherine into the Library, why did you bother to come back here? You knew that I was hunting you. Why put yourself at risk?'\n\nIrene sought frantically for a good answer. Then it came to her. 'It's Kai,' she said, feigning reluctance. 'Prince Kai. He went to get help. If he returns and I'm not here to get him into the Library too...'\n\n'Ah, of course. You're quite right about the danger he faces \u2013 he's on my list. But it's just you and me now. And just think of how good it will feel to tell me everything. I expect you are tired of all this running...' He took a step towards her, meeting her eyes. She felt the swell of his power, like the shadow of a tidal wave massing above her.\n\nOnce before, he'd twisted her will and nearly broken it. But she was stronger now. She just had to keep this charade going a little longer, to find out which Librarian he'd subverted to track her, what was behind all this, and how much further its roots went...\n\nA heavy book tumbled down from above, crashing into Lord Guantes. It struck him on the head, and he didn't stand a chance; he collapsed to the floor, out like a light. It wasn't just the weight, it was the impact as well \u2013 force equalling mass multiplied by acceleration, and all delivered without a whisper of warning.\n\nWithout his active guidance his men all reacted on instinct, turning towards this new threat. Irene saw them raising their guns towards the balcony and could only pray that Catherine \u2013 for who else could that have been? \u2013 had the sense to stay down.\n\nTime for her own plan. 'Books, hit the men!' she shouted at the top of her voice in tones intended to carry through the building. She dropped to the floor, covering her head with her arms.\n\nShe might not be able to see, but she could hear the crashing and shouts as every book within range of her voice threw itself at a man. The crossfire on the ground floor was particularly heavy, and several volumes ricocheted painfully off her. It was only when the noise stopped that she lowered her arms and looked around.\n\nNobody was moving. Well, nobody except for her. Good. Irene headed for Lord Guantes, who lay sprawled motionless, and rolled him over onto his front. She used his elegant silk scarf to tie his hands behind his back. 'Catherine, come on down!' she called.\n\nShe heard the girl's footsteps on the stairs as she went through Lord Guantes' pockets. He had a bulging wallet, which she tucked into her coat for later investigation. More interestingly, he also carried a highly ornate pocket watch which made her fingers tingle when she touched it.\n\n'I know you said I was supposed to hide,' Catherine said, her steps slowing as she approached, 'but I couldn't just... keep my head down.'\n\n'Well done \u2013 you did a good job,' Irene answered. It would have been totally unfair to complain that Lord Guantes had fallen for her string of lies and Catherine had messed it all up.\n\n'I saw he was trying to do the thing to you.' Catherine waved her fingers dramatically, suggesting magical influence. 'I had to help.'\n\n'I appreciate it. You provided the perfect distraction. Even though I'm not sure whether your archetypal librarian would have done the same...'\n\n'I think there may be lots of different types of librarian,' Catherine said thoughtfully. She had the air of someone who's seen a whole new range of possibilities and found she liked them more than she expected. 'There's the sharing librarian, and the motherly librarian, and the spinster librarian, and the archivist librarian, and the adventurous librarian like you \u2013 there's nothing that says I can't be a murderous librarian.'\n\n'True enough,' Irene had to admit.\n\n'And I only dropped one book. Not every single book within earshot.'\n\nIrene didn't need the reminder. She was feeling guilty enough about what she'd done to those books. 'Point taken,' she said shortly. 'Let's just agree that you hit him where it hurts and leave it at that.'\n\n'Er... is he dead?'\n\n'He's breathing but unconscious. There may be a skull fracture \u2013 I can't tell. At any rate, he's not a threat for the moment.'\n\nIrene steeled herself and flipped open the pocket watch, half expecting some backlash. Instead of the usual mechanisms, it contained a needle, rather like that of a compass. This was centred above a circular piece of paper, inscribed with Irene's own name in the Language. There were much smaller markings all around the rim \u2013 she couldn't guess their purpose. The needle pointed directly at Irene.\n\n'Let's test this,' she said, passing it to Catherine and rubbing her fingers against her skirt to banish that odd tingling. She took a few steps to the right, circling the Fae, and could see the needle swivelling to track her.\n\n'This looks useful,' Catherine said, with unwanted enthusiasm. 'Can I keep it?'\n\n'No,' Irene said, hastily taking it back. That was her name in the Language. Which meant \u2013 another Librarian must have supplied it. But who? And how? Her fears mocked her. Did she honestly expect the person who wrote this to sign their name on the back?\n\nOf course, it never hurt to check.\n\nShe worked a fingernail under the piece of paper, easing it away from its metal backing and up towards the needle until she could see its back. There was something scribbled on the other side \u2013 in English, not the Language. She tilted it for a better view.\n\nTriumph abruptly turned to a cold terror that clamped around her heart and dried up her throat. Ray, the writing read.\n\n'Irene?' Catherine was right next to her, grabbing at her elbow. 'Are you okay? Did it do something to you?'\n\nBreathe, Irene told herself. Breathe and get through this one moment at a time. 'It says \"Ray\",' she told Catherine, her voice the only sound in the silent Collection. 'That was the name my parents gave me. A nickname. A private name. There's only one person, besides them, who'd know it.'\n\nAlberich.\n\nNow Lord Guantes' words from their previous encounter made sense \u2013 he'd mentioned the 'man behind the Professor' who wanted her personally. An enemy she'd thwarted twice now, both times nearly at the cost of hers and her friends' lives. And now she was holding this token of his malice, a way for Lord Guantes to track her down...\n\nIrene bit her lip hard. Panic could come later. She had to get a grip on herself \u2013 and on the situation. 'We'll hand Lord Guantes over to Vale and the police,' she said, tucking the compass into an inner pocket, 'and then\u2014'\n\nSomeone outside knocked firmly on the library's exterior door.\n\nIrene realized that the building's interior, strewn with books and bodies, might attract undue attention. 'I'll get that,' she ordered. 'Stay back for the moment.'\n\nThe short vestibule leading to the main doors would appear comparatively normal: there had been no men in the vicinity, so no one for the books there to target. She carefully slid open the small Judas window to look onto the street.\n\nLady Guantes was standing there, backed by a dozen more men. 'Miss Winters,' she said briskly. 'My husband is in there. Will you bring him out to me, or shall I come in and get him?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "'An endless stream of borrowers today,' Irene muttered. The danger helped her to focus. Alberich was a huge \u2013 and terrifying \u2013 problem. But Lady Guantes was right in front of her, and suddenly seemed an almost welcome distraction.\n\n'I beg your pardon?'\n\n'Sorry \u2013 I didn't think of you or your husband as regular library patrons, and yet here you both are.' Irene was deeply grateful for the solid door between them. Lady Guantes was not one to waste time gloating. She was a practical woman who believed in disposing of enemies on the spot with overwhelming force.\n\nIrene peered out of the corner of the Judas window, wanting to present as small a target as possible. Lady Guantes was dressed in the height of this London's fashion. Her finery included hat and veil, midnight-blue velvet cape and a matching silk dress. Her signature gloves were of exactly the same pattern as her husband's. How sweet, Irene thought caustically. Her dark hair was coiled into a bun, and although she was smiling pleasantly, her eyes were cold. The men behind her were more varied than Lord Guantes' strangely synchronized minions. One hefted a mysterious crate, and all of them seemed to be carrying potentially lethal weapons under their bulky overcoats. (Irene was guessing about the weapons' lethal qualities, but given how the day was going, it seemed wildly optimistic to assume anything else.)\n\nLady Guantes spread her hands self-deprecatingly. 'Miss Winters, I'm unarmed. May I come in?'\n\n'Come on,' Irene said wearily. 'That wouldn't have worked the first time I met you. It's certainly not going to work now.'\n\n'You're sounding rather hostile,' Lady Guantes noted. 'Have you been overstressed lately?'\n\n'Your husband's assassination attempts have been quite stressful, yes. So the door remains closed.'\n\n'I do understand. But I have fresh intelligence, which might just change your mind...' Lady Guantes seemed to come into focus suddenly, as though a camera lens had tightened its perspective around her, or a sunbeam had haloed her in light. 'I'm prepared to declare a temporary truce, Miss Winters: I'll even give you my word.'\n\nNow that was interesting. Lady Guantes would phrase any promise to her advantage, of course, but Irene had played that game before. And Fae promises were binding.\n\n'What's going on?' Catherine called nervously.\n\n'Negotiations,' Irene answered. She turned back to the window. 'All right. What are your terms?'\n\n'I'll enter,' Lady Guantes said. 'You'll refrain from taking action against me. My men and I will refrain from action against you and your allies. After we've talked, you'll return my husband, and my men and I will leave \u2013 rather than launching the attack we have planned. Then I will leave you and yours unmolested for the rest of the day. I swear this by my name and power.'\n\nIrene considered. It sounded reasonable \u2013 but then, Fae bargains always did. 'What if you've already ordered your men to take action?'\n\nLady Guantes sighed. 'I suppose I should expect a linguist to be pedantic. I give you my word that, if you agree to this truce, my men will not be a threat to you or yours for the rest of today.' She paused. 'Calling for the police to save you won't work either. We've planned for that.'\n\nIrene's brain whirled with options. But she and Catherine were completely outnumbered here. She took a deep breath. 'I agree to your terms,' she said, 'but give me a moment to disable the door alarm.'\n\n'One minute,' Lady Guantes said, tapping her watch.\n\nIrene slid the window shut and ran to where Catherine stood over the bound Lord Guantes \u2013 fortunately out of Lady Guantes' line of sight. 'Get behind the counter,' she said briefly, indicating the receptionists' barrier along one wall. Irene scooped up one of the minions' dropped guns as Catherine concealed herself, and then she hurried back. 'I'm about to open the door,' she called.\n\n'I'm waiting,' Lady Guantes answered composedly.\n\nWhen she entered, she glanced at Irene's gun with an air of mild disdain. 'I thought you were above the need for such things.'\n\n'Needs must.' Irene frowned as the men began to follow Lady Guantes inside. 'Wait. I'm not sure I want them in here too.'\n\n'Well, they can't stand around on the street. People will talk. Either you trust me to be bound by my word and not attack you, or you don't. Make up your mind.'\n\nIrene had a horrible feeling that she'd overlooked something crucial. But Lady Guantes was right \u2013 either she trusted the Fae, or she should have kept the door shut. 'Very well,' she said, leading the way and feeling the back of her neck itch with every step.\n\nIrene came to a stop next to the unconscious Lord Guantes. 'Do you want to check his condition?' she asked.\n\n'I can see that he's breathing,' Lady Guantes replied. 'Anything else can be handled by a doctor. Now, let's talk like reasonable women.'\n\n'I'll come to the point straight off, then,' Irene began. 'These attacks against me and my allies are inconvenient. What would it take for you to call them off?'\n\nLady Guantes smiled. 'Your surrender to me. I would also require the surrender of the young dragon and the detective.'\n\n'So, death or... slavery?' Irene said. 'That's not much of a choice.' Lady Guantes' choice of words had been very specific too. She'd only referred to herself in this bargain. There was no mention of Lord Guantes \u2013 or Alberich \u2013 neither of whom would be covered by any bargain made by Lady Guantes.\n\n'If you don't surrender, a great many people could die.' The two of them faced each other over the body at their feet. 'Even if you don't care for the inhabitants of this world, your detective friend does. Perhaps I should make my offer to him? He's the sort who would sacrifice himself for the things he cares about.'\n\nIrene raised an eyebrow. 'And we wouldn't, madam?'\n\n'Oh, we're both too practical. We'd far rather sacrifice others instead.' There was something dreadfully casual about her manner. For her, it wasn't a question of whom she'd sacrifice or how many, but simply a case of organizing the logistics.\n\n'There will be extremely serious consequences \u2013 for you \u2013 if you pursue this vendetta. Kai and I have been nominated to oversee the dragon\u2014Fae treaty. If you attack us, you'll make very powerful enemies.'\n\n'You're assuming I care about your patrons,' Lady Guantes said. 'There are others out there who'd reward me handsomely for disrupting your treaty. On both sides.'\n\nUnfortunately true, Irene knew. 'But are these risks really worth taking? When you could just as easily work with us, rather than against?'\n\nLady Guantes looked briefly dumbfounded \u2013 and then she actually laughed. 'Miss Winters, are you seriously trying to recruit me? To employ me?'\n\n'Look on it as a compliment,' Irene said. 'It means I recognize your abilities.' She didn't hold out much hope of Lady Guantes accepting, though \u2013 not if Alberich really was the Guantes' secretive patron.\n\n'I'm genuinely flattered. It doesn't change anything \u2013 but I am flattered.'\n\n'But no?'\n\n'But no.'\n\n'Where do we go from here, then?' Irene pressed. 'If you keep on doing this much damage, you'll have the authorities after you.' A thought struck Irene. 'I'd assumed Lord Guantes was the Professor. Should I be pointing the police towards you, instead?'\n\nLady Guantes ignored Irene's conjecture. 'I can avoid the authorities for longer than you can avoid me. But maybe there is something else you could offer me, to avoid this... impasse.'\n\n'I'm listening.'\n\n'Another Librarian. Alive, of course, and not in a condition to fight back.'\n\nIrene's eyes widened. As if she'd hand over another Librarian \u2013 one of her own brothers and sisters \u2013 to whatever fate Lady Guantes might have in mind. And if Alberich was the Fae's evil genius, why would he want a Librarian? She didn't want to speculate about that. 'No. Non-negotiable,' she said, and heard the ice in her voice.\n\n'Such a pity. It would have kept you safe.'\n\n'The answer, madam, is still no.'\n\n'Very well. Then our conversation is over.'\n\n'Aren't you going to threaten me?' Irene asked.\n\n'Miss Winters, if you don't already feel threatened, I'm not doing my job properly.'\n\n'Oh, I absolutely do,' Irene assured her. 'Ultimately, though, is it worth all this effort to get revenge for me killing your husband? After all, he seems to have \u2013 survived somehow?'\n\nLady Guantes considered, a pensive look on her face. 'Some people would say it was worth it.'\n\n'Would you?'\n\n'No. No, I wouldn't. You're correct about that, Miss Winters. You may congratulate yourself.'\n\n'Then what do you get out of all this?'\n\nLady Guantes looked down at her unconscious husband. 'I could say we'll gain power if we destabilize your precious treaty. And rewards from our patron, but ultimately... Would you believe that I'm doing all this for my husband's sake?'\n\nIrene tried to parse that statement. 'You're pursuing revenge because Lord Guantes wants you to?' No, Lady Guantes made her own decisions. 'Or pursuing power to help him somehow?'\n\nLady Guantes clicked her tongue. 'Now that's what I get for rattling on. My dear husband always said that was his speciality, and he was absolutely right.'\n\nA breath of ice crawled up Irene's spine. 'You used the past tense.'\n\n'You're an observant woman, Miss Winters.' Lady Guantes slid a hand beneath her coat and brought out a small sleek pistol. 'You may wish to observe this.'\n\nIrene had seen a Fae try to break his word once before, with disastrous results. Lady Guantes was far too savvy to risk the same, so Irene refrained from fleeing for cover. 'We have a sworn truce,' she said. And only she would have spotted the catch in her voice.\n\n'Indeed we do.' Lady Guantes levelled the pistol instead at her husband's unconscious body, and fired. It was a neat, precise shot. He jerked, then went still again, and a pool of blood began to spread around him. His breath rattled in his throat, then stopped.\n\nIrene should have reacted \u2013 she knew she should be reacting \u2013 but sheer astonishment held her frozen. 'You just killed... your husband,' she said. That was the last thing she'd thought Lady Guantes would ever do. Could ever do.\n\n'Which means he's no longer your hostage, you can't return him to me and our truce is over. Now.'\n\nHer tone didn't change, but her men took her order for the signal it was. The two at the front ran forward, pulling masks over their faces and glass bottles from their coats. Irene was confused until they smashed them to the ground beside her, releasing a wave of gas. Lady Guantes had moved back and was now pulling on a mask of her own.\n\nIrene couldn't escape the fumes that came boiling up from the smashed glass, and the vapour moved faster than she could form the Language. Her whole body shook from coughing so violently that she couldn't speak, and tears streamed from her burning eyes, blinding her. Her skin itched where the gas had touched it \u2013 hands, face, neck \u2013 and her nose was running as if she'd been hit by pneumonia and hay fever together.\n\nHalf her mind was raging at her for getting so close to an enemy who she knew was trying to kill her. The more practical part was focused on survival. She still had a gun in her hand. And as Lady Guantes had confirmed, the truce was over.\n\nIrene raised her weapon as she backed away, and fired. She couldn't see where she was shooting, but Lady Guantes had been in front of her. She heard at least one shot ricochet off stone \u2013 but maybe the others hit something. She tried to remember how many bullets the gun held, and wished there were more.\n\n'Men \u2013 move to phase two,' Lady Guantes said, her voice annoyingly calm.\n\nDamn. I didn't hit her.\n\n'Madam!' That was one of her men. 'Incoming, outside, police!'\n\nThe pause that followed was brief, yet Irene could almost hear Lady Guantes mentally cursing. 'Cancel that,' Lady Guantes said. 'Retreat. Begin diversion protocol. Goodbye, Miss Winters \u2013 you won't enjoy it when I see you again.'\n\nWood crashed to the floor. Irene still couldn't open her eyes, or manage coherent words. She tried to analyse the noises. Feet retreating. Noises from the street, briefly, the outer door slamming shut, then nothing. Followed by a sort of slithering, scraping sound.\n\nShe retreated, hoping that she was going in the right direction. Her back bumped against the reception desk, and if she had the breath, she would have sighed in relief.\n\nIt sounded as if Lady Guantes' party had left by the main door. But if so, what was making those noises? Her eyes were still streaming too much for her to see, and she felt trapped and helpless. Maybe the police would get here in time. Or maybe not.\n\n'Irene?' Catherine sounded very unhappy, and Irene could sympathize with that. 'Irene, we have a problem.'\n\nIrene tried to speak, but it only set off more coughing.\n\n'They're moving!' Catherine's hand closed on Irene's shoulder, and Irene hoped she'd had the sense to cover her face against the gas. 'Lord Guantes' men \u2013 the ones you'd disabled \u2013 are getting up. Do something!'\n\nIrene managed to get out the word, 'Water...' in between coughs. This wasn't good. She'd just identified that particular slithering, scraping noise. Those cerebral controller things in the submarine base had made precisely that sound when scrabbling across the floor. And thanks to Irene's earlier use of the Language, there were a dozen or so unconscious host bodies lying around. She and Catherine would never reach the door to the street in time.\n\n'Here.' Catherine caught Irene's hand and guided it to what felt like the handle of a jug. 'I think it's for watering the plants.'\n\nIrene upended the jug over her face, letting water sluice over her until it was empty. She didn't bother drinking any \u2013 it would only aggravate the coughing that still wracked her body.\n\nWhen it was done, she could finally see again. Lord Guantes' minions were moving like puppets, first sluggish and hesitant \u2013 then jerking into uncoordinated bursts of speed. During these phases, their arms began flailing, their heads whipping round in what seemed to be attempts to orientate themselves. A few unattached mechanical serpents crawled round the wreckage of a wooden crate, seeking convenient hosts.\n\nIrene was still coughing, her throat raw, and she felt sick; she'd never be able to choke out a sentence in the Language. She rounded the end of the reception desk and ducked down, joining Catherine. There had to be writing implements here \u2013 ah yes, just there, fountain pen and ink. That would work. She caught Catherine by the arm and pointed at one of the chairs, gesturing for the Fae to get up onto it.\n\nCatherine looked confused but followed Irene's directions. Her eyes widened as she looked over at the men. 'They're coming towards us,' she said very quietly.\n\nIrene dragged a heavy ledger off the desk, letting it crash to the floor, then knelt on it. With a huge effort she steadied herself; her nose still streamed and her upper body trembled, but her hands were deft enough for the task. She unscrewed the ink bottle and dipped in her finger, then scrawled on the white marble floor in the Language: Floor, hold everything that touches you.\n\nShe barely managed to finish the final word and yank her finger back before coughing overcame her again. Then she looked up, her head aching with the after-effects of using the Language.\n\nIt had worked. The men swayed where they stood, trying to approach them and failing, then trying again. They were unable to understand why they couldn't move forward, their eyes blank and mindless. The marble floor had swallowed their feet to the ankle and held them in a grip of stone. The mechanical serpents had been completely sucked under and now formed lines of silver, barely visible through the white stone, like veins of precious metal.\n\nFor the moment, their attackers were prisoners. However, enough wriggling \u2013 or even enough brute-force yanking with no concern for human bones or tendons \u2013 might be enough to get a foot free...\n\nCatherine grabbed her hand. 'Let's get out of here \u2013 now!'\n\nIrene decided that, if Catherine ever had an appraisal, this would merit bonus points. She'd grasped the basic principle of when to evacuate the scene \u2013 or more precisely, when to run for it.\n\nThe two of them circled the room towards the door, giving the trapped men and mechanical serpents a wide berth. Irene almost expected an ambush when she tugged open the door, but there was nothing unusual outside. No explosions, no kidnappers \u2013 nothing but a normal London street. And, wonder of wonders, a couple of police vans turning the corner. Now where were you ten minutes ago? Irene thought ungratefully.\n\nCatherine led her to a bench, helping her to sit down in a rare patch of sunlight. Irene allowed herself to relax for a moment, focusing her sore eyes on the clouds above. For a moment sheer surprise stopped her coughing.\n\nCatherine followed her gaze, and blinked. 'Why are there two of them?' she asked.\n\nCoiling in the sky above, a blue dragon and a red dragon moved together in slow interlacing patterns. Against the grey mosaic of the clouds their wings shone as bright as gemstones, sparkling as they caught the sun's rays."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "Irene had been introduced to Kai's brother Shan Yuan \u2013 fortunately not till after she'd stopped coughing and being sick, which always put a damper on introductions. He hadn't actually been rude. However, it was quite obvious that any courtesy he was giving her was due to her rank as a Library representative, rather than actual respect for her as a person.\n\nBut she couldn't bring herself to care. Being pursued by assassins, while Alberich wanted her as his prisoner, seemed a rather higher priority.\n\nIrene felt far safer now she was practically on government territory. Vale's sister Columbine had invited him and his circle to her private rooms at the Dashwood Club, though she herself was absent. Busy looking for more information, Vale had told them. Irene had just finished her account of recent events. Catherine was carrying round cups of tea and coffee with a quiet subservience which had drawn looks of approval from Shan Yuan and badly hidden astonishment from Kai. Irene had quietly pointed out to her that menial service of this kind meant you could listen in to high-level discussions without being noticed. Otherwise, you'd likely be thrown out due to age or lack of experience.\n\nGiven the dragons in the room, it seemed a good idea for Catherine to keep a low profile. Kai and Shan Yuan (Irene still didn't know why he was there) occupied the sofa, while Irene had commandeered the best armchair. She'd also ordered more tea, feeling the British government would understand their need. It had been quite a day. Inspector Singh was using the table to arrange his notes, and Vale was standing by the fireplace. Sterrington was on her way.\n\nThe ambience was very civilized. But while the club might outwardly look like a place for nobility and high-ranked civil servants to eat expensive meals and then nap, the walls were thick, the door guards \u2013 sorry, receptionists \u2013 were trained military in civilian clothing, and the windows were of reinforced glass. And those were only the things Irene had noticed so far.\n\nIt would take a zeppelin loaded with high explosives to make a dent in this place.\n\nIrene really hoped that Lady Guantes didn't have access to any zeppelins loaded with high explosives.\n\n'So,' she said, summing up, 'we face Lord and Lady Guantes, though something is very wrong with Lord Guantes \u2013 and he seems to be able to return from the dead. Both appear to be behind \"the Professor\" whose criminal activities Vale has described.'\n\nVale nodded in agreement.\n\n'And behind them, we have Alberich.' She restrained herself from fidgeting with the compass in her pocket. 'After our last encounter, he can't enter this world in person \u2013 but his agents can.'\n\n'I would appreciate more information on this Alberich,' Shan Yuan said. He had black hair and pale skin like Kai. Their resemblance was startling, but Shan Yuan's hair had a ruby undertone to it, and he accented his suit with a red tie rather than Kai's preferred blue. His irritated frown seemed a habitual expression and his manner was condescending. 'I have heard the name before \u2013 a Librarian who turned traitor?'\n\n'That's correct, your highness,' Irene said. 'It was several centuries ago, but he's somehow survived outside the Library by contaminating himself with chaos \u2013 something no true Librarian could achieve, or would want to. He's also killed a large number of Librarians and attempted to destroy the Library itself.' And he terrifies me. 'He seems to have a grudge against me because I've ruined his plans twice. To be honest, I'm extremely disturbed that he wants me captured alive.'\n\n'You're being economical with the details, Winters,' Vale put in. 'Alberich has a number of allies among the Fae \u2013 he provides them with information, creates wards for them using the Language, and so on. He's even worked with Lord and Lady Guantes before. He's demonstrated the ability to use the Language in ways that are unfamiliar to sanctioned Librarians, such as Winters here. And he may have a long-lost son out there somewhere \u2013 though we haven't yet seen any firm evidence of this.'\n\n'Is it possible that this Lord Guantes is his long-lost son?' Singh asked.\n\n'I don't think so,' Irene said. She thought about it some more. 'I really don't think so. I certainly hope not.'\n\n'Why hasn't the Library executed this Alberich yet?' Shan Yuan demanded \u2013 somewhat unfairly, Irene felt. 'Having someone like this running around in league with chaos does nothing for its reputation.'\n\n'Believe me, we've tried. He's difficult to locate and dangerous when he shows himself. And he's able to use the Language in combination with chaos... again, in ways that no regular Librarian could. I now believe he must have created the door which Vale and I saw in Guernsey. There may be other doors, as well.' Irene couldn't help wondering rather wistfully just how he'd done it.\n\n'Alberich aside, how do you intend to arrest these Guantes murderers?'\n\n'We've strong cases against them for multiple crimes, sir,' Inspector Singh said calmly. Presumably he was used to visiting officials making impossible demands. 'Arson, murder, attempted murder, theft and a few others I won't bore you with. The question is how we locate them and keep them in one place. It makes a policeman's life difficult when the criminals he's after can just go skipping off to some other world, evidence and all.'\n\n'This place is inefficiently run,' Shan Yuan muttered. 'I'm disappointed in you, little brother. I thought you had things under better control here.'\n\nPerhaps I should be grateful for a lack of older siblings, Irene reflected as Kai murmured an apology. She'd seen Kai interact with his elder half-sister Indigo on another occasion, but Indigo had been a rebel and a disgrace to the family. Kai had therefore felt himself free \u2013 no, encouraged \u2013 to be as rude to her as possible.\n\n'I should note that Prince Kai doesn't hold any authority here, sir,' Inspector Singh said. 'While naturally we have the greatest respect for your brother's position, neither he nor Miss Winters here have any standing or status within this country's governance.' His words were carefully chosen, but they were also a formal declaration of independence from dragons, Fae and the Library.\n\n'Of course,' Irene said. 'That's absolutely understood. We deeply regret that the Guantes \u2013 and their feud with us \u2013 have caused trouble to London.' She meant every word. It wasn't just that she was Librarian-in-Residence here. She liked this world, this London \u2013 its people, its locations, its books. But how could she and Kai stay here, if the Guantes were going to tear the city apart to get at them?\n\n'You're thinking of offering to leave, Winters,' Vale said flatly. 'I don't need to be a detective to see the thought crossing your mind. But don't blame yourself. It isn't your fault that these people have no morals.'\n\n'No,' Irene argued, 'but now that I know their intentions, it is my responsibility.'\n\n'So you do propose to leave here?' Shan Yuan demanded sharply.\n\n'We don't have any other choice. If Kai and I go elsewhere and they follow us, we can at least draw them into an ambush on ground of our choosing\u2014'\n\n'Unlikely,' Vale cut her off. 'You must still be suffering from the effects of that gas. Do you seriously think they'll follow you into a trap?'\n\n'I can set a perfectly good trap, thank you very much,' Irene said haughtily. 'So far they've been able to choose their ground, so we've been at their mercy. This is why we have to leave. Don't you agree, Inspector Singh?'\n\nShe'd expected him, as a Londoner and a police officer, to agree with her. So it was rather to her surprise that Inspector Singh said, 'Perhaps you haven't fully thought the matter through, Miss Winters.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\nHe set down his pen, giving her his full attention. 'I mean, Miss Winters, that if you are seen to leave to protect our good city, Lord and Lady Guantes will use this against you. The more you try to lure them away, the more they'll threaten us to force your compliance. Which is why I think a different solution's needed here. You pay your taxes, Miss Winters, don't you?'\n\n'Of course,' Irene said, leaving out on my legal earnings, at least.\n\n'Very well: think of this help as a state benefit.' Leaving Irene feeling rather as if she'd been stampeded by a previously helpful sheep, he turned to Shan Yuan. 'Your attention in this matter is greatly appreciated, sir. May we ask you to share the information you've brought?'\n\n'The data on the laptop was very informative,' Shan Yuan said, with a sudden keen enthusiasm which reminded Irene of Kai. 'Much of it was a high-level discussion of artificial intelligence. I also found the blueprints of a project which seems directly linked to your current problems.'\n\n'What project?' Irene asked.\n\n'To summarize,' Shan Yuan said, his tone shifting easily to a lecturer's didactic manner, 'its aim is to recreate the personality of a dead person.' He let that sink in as those in the room murmured in astonishment. 'This is achieved, firstly, by creating an artificial simulation of the deceased. Secondly, this is implanted into a living person under certain specific conditions. Apparently \"an extreme plasticity of environment\" is also required. This refers to a high-chaos world \u2013 to use a lay-person's terminology.' Irene could almost hear Shan Yuan sniff condescendingly at this. 'Under the right conditions, the living person would be transformed into the dead one \u2013 the original mind extinguished, the body even taking on the physical characteristics of the new host. This could be repeated as many times as necessary, superimposing the stored artificial simulation on a living victim.'\n\nA horrified silence filled the room. 'Lord Guantes,' Irene finally said. 'That's what happened to him.'\n\n'What you've told me fits with the project description,' Shan Yuan agreed. 'And as well as the process taking place in a high-chaos world, the imprinted subject needs to be a Fae. However, the documents suggest that the imprinted body doesn't last long. Physical or mental breakdown ensues within just a couple of weeks \u2013 a month at the most. Unfortunately, it was a high-level overview, so the granular details of processes involved were lacking. But Alberich was mentioned as a contributor \u2013 and it appears that he's retained information essential to the process.'\n\nIrene frowned. As with any jigsaw, once one had the border assembled, it was easier to see how the other pieces related to one another. 'Perhaps the key to the process isn't chaotic power \u2013 or not chaos alone. Perhaps the Language is important somehow. If Alberich is contributing something only he could offer, it would interest many Fae \u2013 not only the Guantes.' This wasn't just personal any more. If Alberich possessed this sort of bargaining tool, he'd be able to find countless unscrupulous allies and turn them against the Library \u2013 always his ultimate goal.\n\nShan Yuan shrugged. 'You know the potential of your Language better than I do. But it does explain why only Alberich could provide the missing details. Perhaps if you had a closer look at the full process, you could hazard a guess at how the Language is used.'\n\n'No, thank you,' Irene said with a shudder. 'Do you know if the dead person, the one who is imprinted upon a new body, realizes what's been done to them afterwards?'\n\n'I don't believe it would be obvious to them \u2013 unless they were told, of course.'\n\nIrene remembered Lord Guantes' words, during her Guernsey mission. He'd said he'd cooperated with her enemies but also said, 'I have been betrayed. I have been used.' 'I think the first Lord Guantes I met must have known what had happened to him. Either he was told, or somehow he found out. Maybe someone gave him the project documentation to explain the process, or he found it for himself. It would have made him understand that he was a... I don't know what the right term is for it. A simulated personality? A recreation of one?'\n\n'It's as close to necromancy as anything else I've come across, Winters,' Vale said. 'Not the least because it requires the sacrifice of another intelligent being. Was there anything else useful on the laptop?'\n\n'There was also a set of news articles on the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona \u2013 in Spain. These covered strange events witnessed there recently. I'm not sure why these are relevant, but they must be there for a reason. But it's unclear within which world this Sagrada Familia is located.' Shan Yuan shrugged. 'A high-chaos world, presumably.'\n\n'Under the cathedral,' Irene quoted to herself, remembering Lord Guantes' words. 'The dark archive...'\n\n'Were any email addresses or other contact details supplied, connected to the project?' Singh asked, frowning. Irene hadn't expected him to be acquainted with such things, but maybe Vale had updated him on other worlds' developments. Or maybe there were technological advances going on here of which Irene simply wasn't aware.\n\n'Unfortunately not,' Shan Yuan said. 'I specifically looked for a way to trace Alberich too, and there was nothing.'\n\nKai had remained silent, somehow more formal in his brother's presence. Now he spoke. 'Possibly Madame Sterrington can identify the Barcelona mentioned in those articles, when she arrives. Or her Fae contacts may have heard of this artificial intelligence research.'\n\n'We can't share this with her,' Shan Yuan snapped. 'Don't be foolish, Kai. Do you want to see this information spread to more Fae?'\n\n'She's extremely well connected, and the most likely person on this world to give us useful information,' Vale said. 'Are you here to help us save your brother's life, your highness, or is this merely your idea of entertainment?'\n\nShan Yuan's eyes flared red, and the flames in the fireplace leapt up in response. 'I am not amused by your words, detective. My brother may treat you as a favourite, but I have no such inclination.'\n\n'Then kindly let us use the information you've brought us,' Vale demanded. 'I'd hoped you'd display the same broadmindedness as your brother in putting aside prejudice against the Fae.'\n\n'I've had enough of your insolence.' Shan Yuan rose to his feet. The room became claustrophobic as the temperature rose. 'My brother will be safer elsewhere. Kai, we will\u2014'\n\nAt that moment, the door opened as the tea Irene had ordered finally arrived. She'd never been more thankful to see a hot beverage. As the servant bustled about, Shan Yuan was forced to sit, his royal upbringing demanding that shows of emotion be kept strictly private. When they were alone again, the wind had been taken out of his sails enough for Irene to interject.\n\n'If I might ask you something, your highness...' Irene began, hoping her tone would soothe his ego.\n\n'Of course,' Shan Yuan said. Now that his temper had cooled, he seemed glad of the excuse to back down.\n\n'Could we have more detail on those Sagrada Familia articles?' Irene had recognized the name of the cathedral \u2013 designed by Gaudi, the great Spanish architect. In most worlds where the cathedral appeared, it had taken over a century to construct. 'The Lord Guantes I met in Guernsey mentioned a cathedral.'\n\n'It was a collection of media reports, covering a period of two months,' Shan Yuan explained. 'At first they simply recorded odd events \u2013 strange noises, computer systems in the crypts malfunctioning, lights appearing at unusual times. But the strangeness escalated and the cathedral gained a reputation as a nexus of \u2013 well, weirdness. Projections of a hooded monk were seen, loudspeakers ordered visitors to leave at unexpected times, bells were also rung at irregular hours and strange voices were heard in the archive below the main structure... Explanations ranged from hackers to demonic interference to a suggestion that the cathedral's computer system had become sentient. The final article revealed that the cathedral had been evacuated and placed under guard.'\n\n'The dark archive,' Irene said softly, to the room this time. 'Under the cathedral. Those were his words.'\n\n'So the cathedral must be connected,' Kai said. 'But how? And why?'\n\nVale frowned, his expression intent. 'Alberich must need somewhere safe to conduct his artificial intelligence experiments. Perhaps Lord Guantes caused the odd goings-on, to claim the Sagrada Familia as a private base of operations for Alberich \u2013 his patron? I believe it would fit Lord Guantes' pattern of behaviour to keep these media reports for his personal amusement.'\n\n'The archive beneath the cathedral contains physical books and computer data, according to some reports.' Shan Yuan said thoughtfully. 'That would make it attractive to Alberich, if his power is also connected to books and libraries, as with Librarians such as Miss Winters. And the world in the reports is both highly computerized and presumably highly chaotic, as needed for his experiments.'\n\n'Did you discover anything further about the archive \u2013 either on the laptop or through your research?' Irene asked.\n\n'Something, although not as much as I'd like. It actually pre-dates the Sagrada Familia in that world. It was originally a storehouse for the Church \u2013 housing dubious materials such as heresies, apocrypha and the like. When the Sagrada Familia was updated with new technology, the archive was expanded to hold servers and data stores. The equipment there was even further upgraded recently. This coincides chronologically with black market transactions between worlds, on the dark web, trading in extremely rare technology. Perhaps that equipment was suitable for the work described in the project.'\n\nA dark archive indeed, Irene reflected.\n\n'That device Lord Guantes used to track you troubles me, Winters,' Vale said. 'What if they have more than one of those things? They may have pinpointed your location again.'\n\n'I'm no more comfortable about it than you,' Irene agreed. 'But nobody attacked me last night, when I was hiding with Catherine. Maybe they did only have one \u2013 and we have it now. Or if they do have another... It's marked like a traditional compass \u2013 so maybe it can point in the right direction to locate me, but no more than that.'\n\n'I think it only a matter of time before they can triangulate on your current location,' Vale responded. 'Your confrontation will make them even more determined. It is entirely possible that another Lord Guantes is on our trail already. Did you discover how long the process takes, your highness?'\n\n'They had it down to a few hours,' Shan Yuan said. 'Although that doesn't include the revived personality coming to terms with their new body and reality, and reconciling any inconvenient memories.'\n\n'Lady Guantes must be good at those explanations by now,' Irene said grimly. How many 'husbands' would she have used up, always seeking the perfect version? What must it be like to see a version of the person you loved degrade and die, multiple times? She thought of that happening to Kai \u2013 of losing him, regaining him in such a dreadful way then losing him again \u2013 and repressed a shudder.\n\n'In that case\u2014' Singh was interrupted by a knock at the door. 'Come in!'\n\nA servant entered, suitably anonymous, with watchful eyes. 'Sir,' he said quickly, 'there's been a shooting on the doorstep. We brought the victim in and they're under guard downstairs.'\n\n'Details?'\n\n'A woman, madam \u2013 Miss Sterrington, of the Universal Exports firm. She had just given her name at the door when someone shot her from a distance. Lung wound, critical condition. A medic is attending to her in the King Charles Room.'\n\nVale led the charge with Kai beside him, and the room emptied to follow them.\n\nAs Irene rose, Shan Yuan caught her arm and drew her to one side. 'I'd like a private word,' he said quietly.\n\n'Why shouldn't your brother hear this?' Irene responded, freeing her arm.\n\n'He is in danger.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "Irene stopped in her tracks, her heart suddenly clenching in panic. 'Another danger... besides the assassination attempts?'\n\n'Yes,' Shan Yuan said shortly. 'And I believe you genuinely care for him.'\n\n'Of course I do.' Irene replied. She held back from commenting on his patronizing tone. Next he'd be describing her as a credit to the Library and mean it as a compliment.\n\n'Good. In that case, leave your job.'\n\nIrene stared at him blankly. 'Explain yourself, sir.'\n\nShan Yuan snorted and Irene had a sudden mental image of flame rolling from his nostrils, like a fictional dragon. He certainly expected people to do his bidding. 'Pass the role of treaty representative to some other Librarian. Go back to collecting books. Then Kai can resign his position to some older dragon who'll do a better job, and he can spend his time more usefully. You'll both be safer that way.'\n\nSafer \u2013 and apart. 'Your lord father, his majesty Ao Guang, placed Kai in his current position,' Irene said, controlling her anger at his interference. 'Isn't the decision up to him?'\n\n'If Kai himself requested assignment elsewhere, my lord father would consider it,' Shan Yuan replied. He now spoke with the patience of a man who'd already solved a problem to his own satisfaction. 'If you aren't the Library representative, I doubt Kai will be interested in the dragon representative position.'\n\nIrene was silent, lost for words.\n\nShan Yuan nodded. 'Consider how much you care about his safety \u2013 and make the right decision.'\n\n'And hide the fact that it was all your idea?' Irene demanded, her throat dry, bitter with murderous fury.\n\nShan Yuan shrugged. 'If you think it more likely that he'll resign that way, yes. How many times will you let him risk his life for you?'\n\n'Kai is an adult and capable of making his own decisions,' Irene spat. 'I am not going to lie to him.'\n\n'You're barely older than he is, and you are both children,' Shan Yuan snapped back. She could feel the heat radiating from him now, even without touching him. 'Do you want him to remain in danger? Don't you care about him?' He stepped closer, features so very like Kai's as he glared at her. 'Well? Will you do it?'\n\n'What will you do if I say no?' Irene demanded. 'Will I have a tragic accident, removing me from my position that way? Will you simply deny everything if I mention it to Kai?'\n\n'My little brother will certainly believe my word over yours.'\n\nIrene twisted away from him. 'A word of advice, your highness. Don't make threats when your position is weak. My friends are within earshot and witnesses are plentiful. Intrigue is clearly not one of your talents.'\n\n'That's your answer?' he growled.\n\nIrene curved her lips in a smile. 'I will take your suggestion into account when making my future decisions. I thank you for your concern for our safety.' She turned to join the others.\n\nHis voice pursued her. 'You already have enough enemies, Irene Winters. This is not a good time to be acquiring more.'\n\nShe was already walking away and didn't turn back. But his warning about Kai stayed with her, and she couldn't help wondering if some of what he'd said had been true.\n\nThe King Charles Room was notable, unsurprisingly given its name, for its huge portrait of Charles II. The monarch dominated the room, looking down cynically while spaniels played around his stockinged calves. Otherwise it was surprisingly bland for an expensive London club, with modern tables and chairs. The very latest ether-lamps ensured the room was brightly lit, despite its lack of windows.\n\nSterrington lay unconscious on one of the tables, her upper clothing cut away, and a doctor in the club's livery was bandaging her chest wound. Irene wondered if many clubs boasted a house medic, or just the government-sponsored ones. Vale was going through the contents of Sterrington's briefcase on another table, with Singh watching over his shoulder, while Kai and Catherine stood nearby looking strained.\n\nKai seized on Irene the moment she entered the room. 'Where's my brother?'\n\n'He'll be along in a moment, I think,' Irene said, touching his shoulder. She didn't want to let go of him. 'Situation report, Kai, please.'\n\nThe familiar words visibly settled him. 'The bullet went right through Sterrington, so we don't need to worry about removing it. And some servants are cleaning the doorstep, in case anyone tries to use the blood for unholy purposes.'\n\nIrene nodded. Every world had its own specific metaphysical inconveniences. 'Has Sterrington spoken yet?'\n\n'No \u2013 she was conscious only briefly, and the doctor gave her a sedative.'\n\nIrene bit back a curse. At least she'd recover. But now they couldn't ask her about the Sagrada Familia, and its possible location.\n\n'Sterrington may not be able to speak, but her possessions are quite communicative,' Vale commented, not looking up from her papers. 'Can we have you over here, Winters?'\n\n'Of course.' Irene inspected the briefcase. There were papers, handwritten and printed; three fountain pens; a purse, a powder compact and a copy of today's Times. 'What have you discovered?'\n\n'Nothing here, except the type of cocaine she preferred.' He nodded to the powder compact. 'The papers concern her office's insurance \u2013 she's been checking her cover following the arson and has reached some interesting conclusions.'\n\n'She's come to the same conclusion as our police investigation,' Singh said. 'That building was torched for profit. The assassination attempts might have been the primary goal, though; we can't know for certain. Additional cover was taken out in case of arson, deliberate or accidental, a fortnight ago. The insuring company is Weston Liability \u2013 a shell company with a large number of criminal investors.'\n\n'Now we come to this letter here. It was in her inner pocket rather than the briefcase. Do you recognize the handwriting, Winters?'\n\nIrene took the letter and stared at it. Then the writing snapped into focus and she remembered where she'd seen it before, only a few months ago. 'Oh dear,' she said.\n\n'Ah good, you do. Give me your opinion on it.'\n\n'Is it the Cardinal's handwriting?' Kai said eagerly. Sterrington's patron was incredibly powerful, but hugely mysterious.\n\n'Yes,' Irene replied. '...and are you sure we should be reading this, Vale?' She was in no doubt as to its author. Irene had seen multiple documents in the Fae's own hand during the Paris treaty business. His spies were everywhere.\n\nHe shrugged. 'If we don't pursue leads, we won't secure answers.'\n\nShe began to read the letter aloud, noting that Shan Yuan had just entered the room. 'My dear Sterrington, I am glad to hear that you have the situation under control. I wouldn't want to think I had favoured an incompetent.'\n\n'A mere two sentences and he's intimidating his subordinates,' Kai said. 'I see he hasn't changed.'\n\n'He's very good at intimidation.' Irene remembered a darkened room and the Cardinal's dark presence. He'd given her an oh-so-calm description of exactly what would happen if she didn't solve a murder to his liking. She suppressed a shiver and continued reading. 'Your theory that Lady Guantes is plotting against us seems valid, given the arson attack and other indications. I cannot discover her current patron's identity, which is not a good sign.'\n\n'Why is that suspicious?' Shan Yuan interrupted. 'Is patronage now a matter of public record?'\n\n'Of course not,' Vale answered. 'But nothing can be concealed from the Cardinal \u2013 supposedly. So keeping this patron hidden must seem highly unusual.'\n\n'Ah.'\n\nIrene continued. 'However, my network has unearthed some intelligence. The lady has been linked to a number of Fae groups involved in technology research and development. Their details are in the appendix.' Irene caught the sharpening of Shan Yuan's interest. 'I've recently lost several agents, and am therefore concerned that a move against you may actually be a move against me. You're authorized to take whatever actions you consider necessary to preserve your life \u2013 and my interests \u2013 and I'll send assistance as soon as possible.'\n\nIrene folded the letter. 'His signature follows, then the appendix \u2013 though I don't know any of the names in it.'\n\n'I'll check the Fae names,' Catherine said, taking the letter. 'I might recognize someone.'\n\n'That's all. Unless there's spycraft involved \u2013 an encryption code, a cipher in the watermark, or something...'\n\nShan Yuan turned to his brother. 'Kai, your thoughts?'\n\n'It is a positive that the Cardinal is on our side,' Kai began, then saw his brother's growing frown and added hastily, 'As much as any Fae ever is. And all clues seem to point towards artificial intelligence in some way. However, if the Cardinal is sending more agents here, this London could become increasingly... dangerous.'\n\nThe euphemism hung in the air. If the Cardinal considered Lady Guantes to be a serious threat, he'd want to kill her and tear up her organization root and branch. And God help poor London, caught in the middle.\n\n'We really need a lead,' Irene said firmly. 'Inspector Singh, does the arson insurance fraud offer anything useful?'\n\n'No,' Singh said with a sigh. 'I'm afraid not \u2013 in the short term, at least. My opinion on the situation, ma'am, is that you should let your enemies come to you. We know the city \u2013 so you'll have the advantage. And London's police will be on hand to shut them down.'\n\n'I disagree.' Vale had a new look in his eyes; the hound on the scent, the hawk who'd spied a rabbit in the long grass. 'We have no idea what our adversaries might bring in from other worlds, through these doors that Winters has described. And we do have a lead, based on something most of the attacks have in common.'\n\nSingh frowned. 'Yes, I remember you saying. So what exactly did you find in the Foreign Office reports? The ones your sister provided?'\n\n'They covered the cerebral control devices, which were present in several incidents. It seems possible that their inventor, Doctor Brabasmus, isn't even dead. When the local police checked his laboratory, after the explosions that destroyed it, they found a decapitated body. The evidence suggested multiple physical invasions via the cervical spinal canal, and exit wounds via various orifices. The head was thoroughly destroyed. Under the circumstances, at the time, everyone made the logical assumption that the doctor had perished.'\n\n'You said... decapitated,' Irene murmured, trying to keep her visualizations to black and white rather than enthusiastic images in pink and red.\n\nVale shrugged. 'The skull was indeed thoroughly detached, and no firm identification could be made via the teeth. Dentures, alas. But given certain indications in the reports... I believe he is alive. What's more, I can guess at his location this very evening.'\n\n'The report from Paris?' Singh frowned. 'I read that one. It wasn't what I'd call reliable. The writer said herself that the information was speculative and from a dubious source.'\n\n'We can't be certain \u2013 but we must investigate.' Vale leaned forward, intent on his trail of thought, ignoring the rest of the room. 'Tonight Brabasmus has the perfect opportunity to attend an event \u2013 unrecognized and unnoticed \u2013 and meet a contact from the French government. Apparently, the contact wants the cerebral controllers, Brabasmus wants to sell them, and they will be meeting tonight at the People's Palace. This is a chance, Winters. If we can take Brabasmus, we can question him about the Guantes. They've made good use of his controllers \u2013 so why not his research on harnessing technology to alter the mind? And that avenue leads us to Alberich. Who knows... maybe the doctor has even visited his headquarters.'\n\nThe sudden burst of possible hope that seized Irene was almost painful. 'What is the People's Palace, though, and why is it such good cover?'\n\n'The \"Grand Technological Exhibition\" is taking place there tonight,' Singh explained. 'It's that place out by Wood Green \u2013 the one they might rename after the Princess of Wales.'\n\n'Will technological advances actually be on display?' Shan Yuan demanded.\n\n'That's the problem, sir. We don't know what will be there. It changes every year. You see, your highness, the Grand Technological Exhibition is an annual celebration for, shall we say, over-enthusiastic men and women of science. The police always attend as it could end with a bonfire, explosions or even a riot. I've seen giant robots bounce through the streets \u2013 and once half the drains in London ran pink and grew fluorite crystals. One year, a new underground bullet train destined for Paris went to Edinburgh instead. But a particular favourite of mine, if you can call it that, was the personal glider-suit driven by underarm flamethrowers. You might also see devices for communicating with dolphins, and usually at least half a dozen machines that are supposed to end world hunger and enforce world peace. Those are usually the worst.'\n\n'Come now, Singh,' Vale said, 'your distress seems fresh, but they haven't held the event in London for five years now.'\n\n'Maybe so. But after that last occasion, such a thing shouldn't be allowed anywhere south of the North Pole.'\n\n'Inspector Singh, do you also think Doctor Brabasmus might be there?' Irene asked, trying to steer the conversation back.\n\n'I'm not sure, ma'am,' Singh said slowly. 'Certainly it's where all London's leading scientists will be tonight. So it's possible. It's also possible that \u2013 based on the past record of some in this room, and naming no names \u2013 it's the very last place we should go. We could end up with London in flames, flooded and under attack, with an earthquake splitting the city from top to bottom.'\n\nIt was awkward when people started making judgements based on one's past record. Especially when they had a point. 'Are you sure this is worth our time, Vale?' Irene asked.\n\n'Winters, I would hardly have mentioned it if I didn't think it was worth trying,' Vale said impatiently, practically vibrating with a febrile keenness. 'These cerebral controllers link several of the attacks upon us. We have few leads to follow, so I think we must pursue any and all that present themselves.' He gave a nod to Shan Yuan, who returned it. 'The French report tells us that the rendezvous between Doctor Brabasmus and his contact is scheduled for eleven o'clock, somewhere in the building. With the three of us to quarter the place in advance and find them \u2013' his gesture took in Irene and Kai \u2013 'we could apprehend Brabasmus and find out what he knows! And who is his contact, the person he's meeting there? This could also be of interest.'\n\n'I dislike this option,' Singh muttered. 'We've known each other for years, and I'm telling you that I'm not convinced. I'm unwilling to hazard your lives, based on this one report. It could be a trap. It's certainly not safe.'\n\nIrene looked at Kai, and he gave her a slight nod. It said that he'd abide by her choice, whatever it was. While Singh might not want to risk them... it wasn't his choice, or his responsibility, and they needed information.\n\n'Can you arrange disguises and tickets for us?' she asked Singh. It was time to get practical, and stop procrastinating.\n\n'I think I prefer your brother to your sister,' Irene said, staring into the mirror as she adjusted her glamorous blonde wig. She'd seen Kai's deference to his older brother; the direct approach wouldn't work. But after their recent clash, Irene needed to know a bit more about Shan Yuan. Did he genuinely care for Kai, or could he have other motives for wanting him to resign? Could he even want Kai's position for himself? The thought was unsettling.\n\n'You have a very limited sample size to work from,' Kai muttered from where he was sprawled on the sofa, miraculously not mussing his evening suit. 'And that is faint praise, given that Indigo tried to kill us. And betrayed us.'\n\n'I suppose I'm just glad one of your family wanted to help you out.' Though honestly, Irene wasn't sure if Shan Yuan was helping. He was quite obviously interested in the artificial intelligence developments. Beyond that, he'd been completely overriding Kai whenever he tried to speak for the last few hours. He'd even suggested going back to Kai and Irene's lodgings 'to review the evidence there'. Fortunately everyone had unanimously pointed out why this was a bad idea, as their lodgings were bound to be watched, and spared Kai from having to disagree with him publicly. But in that case, what was he after?\n\nShe watched Kai in the mirror \u2013 his familiar posture, his dark hair, his eagerness, his casual precision of movement, all the things that had become so familiar to her in the last year. As her heart softened, she tried not to think about how much Shan Yuan's suggestion had rattled her. She didn't want to lose him. She didn't intend to lose him. And if Shan Yuan thought that he could simply drop a word in her ear and she'd renounce Kai, like a handkerchief-clutching romantic heroine, then Shan Yuan was in for an unpleasant surprise.\n\n'I didn't expect him to come here.' Kai had evidently misinterpreted her thoughtful expression. 'I thought he'd be content with just giving me the data analysis. I suppose he couldn't resist seeing the technological marvels it promised, if we can find them.'\n\n'But they might not even be in this world,' Irene had to point out. 'If the process needs to be somewhere high-chaos, as we think, you and your brother couldn't use your dragon forms there. You'd have to be prepared for that.'\n\nKai's mouth twisted in disgust at the thought. 'Any news of Sterrington?' he asked, changing the subject.\n\n'The surgeon said he didn't think she'd wake till tomorrow. She's lucky to have survived.'\n\n'Do you find it irritating how our antagonists keep on cutting off our sources of information? Sterrington's contacts could have been helpful \u2013 but now, who knows when she'll be well enough to make use of them.'\n\n'It's incredibly frustrating,' Irene agreed. 'Vale's dream is to cross blades with a master criminal, but I'd far rather deal with someone who couldn't out-think and outplan me. It makes me worry...'\n\n'Worry about what?' He rose and came to stand behind her.\n\n'That we're missing something. I'm concerned about unknown dangers, Kai, as well as the known ones.'\n\nHe stroked her shoulders, his hands warm and reassuring. 'Is it Alberich? I know that for a Librarian there's no threat quite like him.'\n\nIrene tried to calm herself. 'Yes. Yes, it is him. I'm trying not to panic, Kai. But what am I supposed to feel, now we've found out that he wants me \u2013 and alive too?'\n\n'I won't let him have you.' Kai's hands tightened on her shoulders, possessive and protective. 'Trust me. You've always come for me, through all perils and all obstacles. I'll do the same for you. I'd never leave you to him. Do you have faith in me?'\n\n'More than I do in myself.' Irene put her hands on his, grateful for his touch, drawing comfort from having someone she could depend on without limits. She didn't always have to be the strong one. We can be strong for each other.\n\nFor a few moments they just shared the silence, feeling their closeness.\n\nThen Kai released her shoulders, with one last fond squeeze, and adjusted her wig. 'Blonde really isn't your colour, though I like that purple dress. It's a good thing attendees to this exhibition are supposed to be masked.'\n\n'I'm not trying to look beautiful \u2013 I'm trying to look unrecognizable. And if we weren't wearing masks, you'd be the one with the problem \u2013 given how easy it is to recognize a dragon, when you know how to spot one.'\n\n'You could have taken me in there in heavy make-up, disguised as your latest biomechanical experiment,' he suggested lightly.\n\n'That would have been interesting.' She appreciated his efforts to distract her, but she was too keyed up for the evening ahead. 'I realize that we're depending on luck to some extent, hoping this lead will pay off. But we're running out of time.'\n\n'Vale's on the scent,' Kai reassured her. 'He's in the sort of mood where he'd spend a week in disguise, staking out an opium den, in the hope of spotting something relevant.'\n\n'And I'm the sort of person who'd open a locked door, in the middle of a dangerous mission, just to find out what's on the other side,' Irene said ruefully.\n\n'Well...' Kai looked amused. 'If I'd been there, I would have been at your shoulder egging you on, so I can't cast aspersions. And talking of missions, we should go.' He helped her into her coat.\n\nIrene couldn't resist a bit of a dig at his brother, harking back to her previous worries. 'I'm glad Shan Yuan's not insisting on coming with us. I don't think he has your experience with subterfuge.'\n\n'No, he hasn't,' Kai said, sounding distinctly smug at the idea that he might be superior to his older brother. 'Probably best we're not taking Catherine, for the same reason.' Then he added, thoughtfully, 'That does mean we have to leave them together... although I'm astonished that Shan Yuan's getting on so well with her.'\n\n'She is on her best behaviour,' Irene said. The lure of getting a place in the Library was still working.\n\n'I'm just surprised. Maybe it's because he's never actually encountered sensible, cooperative Fae before. If we can put Catherine in that category.'\n\n'She's better than most,' Irene said. 'But let's get moving. It's nearly seven o'clock \u2013 and we have an exhibition to attend.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "One could compare the road leading up the hillside to the People's Palace to a river of people. But if so, it was a river that had been dammed and was overflowing, while simultaneously trying to cope with an overdose of pollution. Police attempted to keep the flood moving ever upwards as night fell, while preventing it from spilling out onto the hillside, but people still seemed determined to demonstrate inventions and fight duels under the ether-lamps. Or, more prosaically, to escape to buy snacks from the vendors that had sprung up to serve the multitudes.\n\nIrene was relieved to see that few in the crowded queue were solitary \u2013 she'd been worried that the three of them together might stand out. But whether they were associates, enemies, friends or a retinue of lab assistants, people clumped together in groups as they made their slow way forward. Occasional attempts to hasten the pace or bypass the queue altogether provided some amusement for those waiting \u2013 especially when these attempts went wrong. Irene had spotted chancers with nitrogen-powered rocket-boots, hang-glider wings, or extendable stilts. The most successful try so far had been an enterprising chap following his giant tunnelling badger. At least, Irene hoped the attempt had been successful. The huge creature's 'owner' certainly hadn't been seen since.\n\n'And you are?' a black-haired woman ahead of them demanded, perhaps bored with her friends' conversation. She was ostentatiously dressed in a boiler suit and overcoat, as though to flaunt her practicality, but the overcoat was clearly new. Her otherwise utilitarian mask was trimmed with fancy copper filigree which glinted in the streetlights.\n\n'Doctor Viltred,' Irene said. They'd discussed their cover identities beforehand. 'Anne Viltred. Timisoara University. I don't suppose you've read my work on preventing demonic interference in radio transmissions? And these are my colleagues, Doctors Balas and Waechter.' She gestured to Kai, then Vale, both of whom touched their hats politely.\n\n'Sorry, I'm in bio-energetic amplification,' the woman said with a shrug. 'Ingrid Marie-Joseph, professor at the Sorbonne. You must have had quite a trip of it from Romania.'\n\n'Forward planning helps,' Vale said. Even with his mask off, it would have been near-impossible to recognize him. His hair was grey and unruly, matching eyebrows curling over the edge of his mask. His slight Romanian accent was perfect and his back was hunched in the sort of stoop that could easily have stemmed from decades of bending over experiments. 'Though even forward planning couldn't help with this.' He gestured to the queue ahead of them.\n\n'Oh, don't worry,' Ingrid said. She checked the watch hanging from her lapel. 'The programme isn't starting for an hour yet.'\n\nVale snorted, managing to sound about twenty years older than he was. 'And I am expected to wait out here, wasting my precious time\u2014'\n\n'Utterly abominable,' agreed a man from Ingrid's group, whose mask resembled a pair of binoculars, with different focusing levers on each lens. His drooping white moustache puffed out with every breath. 'I can see that you're a man with the right priorities, sir. Prudvark here \u2013 I'm from the Sorbonne too, for the moment at least, but I work in microphysics...'\n\nHis introduction was cut short by a shout, and some pointed as parachutists began to drift down from a zeppelin overhead. 'Trying that trick again,' Prudvark said with a sigh. 'One would have thought they'd know better.'\n\n'Did we miss something?' Kai asked.\n\n'No, dear, it was two years ago in Helsinki \u2013 didn't you get to that one?' Ingrid didn't wait for an answer. 'That year, the organizers used lasers to prevent queue jumpers \u2013 it's become quite a sport. But they had issued warnings beforehand, and I think at least one person made it to the ground without serious injuries.'\n\n'And there they go,' Prudvark said, as the parachutists changed vector, blown off course as they descended. 'That hill was bound to interfere with wind patterns. What I want to know is what they've put in place to prevent intrusions via underground waterways.'\n\n'But there isn't an underground river here,' Kai pointed out. As a dragon whose element was water, Irene reflected, he should know.\n\nPrudvark merely smirked. 'That's what they said in Tokyo, and look what happened there...'\n\nIrene reflected, as the queue shuffled forward, that Inspector Singh might be right to distrust the Grand Technological Exhibition.\n\nThe wide stone steps leading up to the building's entrance were flanked by uniformed police. They were kept busy monitoring attempts to avoid the checkpoint. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and flash-powder, as newspaper photographers took constant snapshots of anything interesting or disastrous. They had plenty of material.\n\nVale proffered their three highly sought-after tickets when they finally reached the guards, after what felt like years. His sister Columbine had supplied them, which guaranteed they were authentic. Even so, Irene couldn't help feeling the usual prickle of suspense that went with handing over documents under a false identity.\n\nOf course, the guards here were probably far less dangerous than the guests inside...\n\n'All in order,' said the official, barely looking at them after all that. 'Next.'\n\nThe entrance hall was thick with decorative palm trees. Groups of people were dissolving into furiously networking singletons, who then formed new groups. It would have made a splendid demonstration of molecules combining if anyone had been watching from above.\n\nIrene looked around, orienting herself. 'Time to split up. See you in an hour at the theatre.'\n\nVale was already strolling away. The twitch of Kai's mouth indicated just how little he wanted to leave her on her own in this crowd, given the dangers they all faced. But they both knew that splitting up gave them a better chance of hearing something useful. 'In an hour,' he said, heading in a deliberately different direction.\n\nIrene took in the main nave of the People's Palace where she stood, a room about three hundred yards long and already full of people. Three shorter corridors branched off from it like the three tines of an E, the middle one ending with a theatre where demonstrations would be held. An ornate dome reared high above, but the arabesque decorations were difficult to make out under the glare of artificial light, and its windows cast no light at this hour. The maze of cellars beneath the palace had been locked and barred for the occasion, which cut down on the area they needed to search.\n\nThe thickness of the crowd was reassuring, in a way. While it might be difficult for Irene to locate anyone in this mob, it would be just as hard for anyone to spot her. Even a werewolf would have problems following her scent here. To Irene's merely human nose, it already stank of too many people, too many perfumes and too much sulphuric acid.\n\n'Try it!' Someone shoved a man-sized contraption in her face, and Irene backed away, blinking. The thing was a mechanical model of a human being, on wheels, costumed in heavy gold and red silks with a turban. It held a jar in one clawed hand. The man behind it was in singed evening wear and his coat pockets were heavy with spanners. 'You \u2013 madam. You'll do. Go on, give it a go.'\n\n'Give what a go?' Irene asked nervously.\n\n'My Automatic Fortune Teller. Put your hand on his forehead and think very hard about your question. It will then produce a paper giving the answer to your current problem!'\n\nIt was probably safe and the crowd was here to sample such curiosities. There weren't any electrocuted corpses in the device's wake. A good sign. Irene tentatively put her hand against the mechanism's porcelain forehead. How do I find Alberich? she wondered, unable to resist the urge to test it properly.\n\nThe device whirred into life, interior clockwork audibly ticking away. Then the automaton's jar flipped open and its free hand dived in, coming out with a piece of folded paper. It proffered this jerkily in Irene's general direction.\n\n'Well?' its inventor demanded, practically bouncing up and down on his toes. An interested group was forming around the two of them.\n\nIrene took the paper and unfolded it. 'The gulf will open beneath you,' she read, 'and the Pit will swallow you.'\n\nEven the inventor could perceive this was a less than cheerful message. 'Let me guess,' he said hopefully. 'You must work in submarines or bathyscaphes. I can see how this would be a really useful answer, right?'\n\n'No,' Irene said flatly. Even if she absolutely didn't believe in fortune-telling, destiny or prophecies... it still wasn't a comforting message to receive this evening. 'I think your invention needs more fine-tuning.'\n\n'The ferrets! The ferrets are loose!' someone screamed in tones of blind panic, and the circle of onlookers shattered in their desire to get away, see what was going on, or both. Irene took advantage of the distraction to return to circulating through the crowd, listening for comments relating to mind control, cerebral controllers or Doctor Brabasmus.\n\nIt was easy to drift from discussion to discussion. However, after half an hour of this she was beginning to think that the greatest invention of all would be an Automatic Listener, wound up and programmed to record conversation around key-words.\n\nThen she heard the name Brabasmus over to her right, just a few feet away.\n\nShe nodded in agreement, as her latest cover complained about her funding \u2013 or lack thereof. Then she stole a glance to her right. Two men, both elderly, were chatting loudly. One had a German accent and both affected boiler suits and leather harnesses rather than evening dress. One wore a sleek black wig and a mask ornamented in amber and jet. The other was balding, sporting a plain mask and heavy canvas gauntlets. These were ill-considered, as they made it difficult for him to hold his wineglass.\n\n'Of course they said it was an accident,' Black Wig was saying. 'No doubt it was also an accident that someone cornered the market in radium and quap, just a few days before that. Not to mention what happened to Quantrelle.'\n\n'What about Quantrelle?' That was Gauntlets. 'I heard she published something last October. Was she was working on programming theory?'\n\n'Yes, that was the official story,' Black Wig shot back. 'But I had it from Pierre Gevenheim \u2013 you must know him, he's at the Sorbonne \u2013 that she was focusing on brain patterning. Not programming theory at all. She was basing her work on Brabasmus's theories. And she went missing last December. Or rather, they said she was hired by a private client.' His snort made it clear what he thought of that.\n\n'I see you're admiring my perfectly cyborged Siamese,' someone directly in front of Irene said smugly.\n\nIrene hastily refocused her attention on the man addressing her, while trying to keep up with the nearby conversation. The cat perched on his shoulder was a beautiful specimen of Siamese cat \u2013 or it had been, before someone inlaid wiring into its skull, added steel-tipped claws and replaced its eyes with gleaming red crystals. 'Good heavens,' she said diplomatically. 'I've never seen anything like it.'\n\n'Exactly.' He offered her one of the glasses of wine he was carrying. 'My dear, I could feel your gaze across the room. You must tell me your name.'\n\n'Whether or not Brabasmus was involved, you're wrong about Quantrelle,' Gauntlets said firmly. 'She's here tonight \u2013 I ran into her earlier, holding court by the ice rink.'\n\n'Yes, but did you see her scars?' Black Wig demanded. 'And her left leg?'\n\n'She didn't have a left leg.'\n\n'Precisely!'\n\n'Anne Viltred,' Irene said, taking the proffered glass of wine and trying to work out how to get rid of the man. 'Timisoara University.'\n\n'Not the Professor Viltred?' he said in surprise. The light glittered on the mica inlay of his mask. 'What a delightful surprise.'\n\nIrene noted, with the sour recognition of one fake for another, the way that he'd skilfully managed to imply he knew about her and her work without having to say what it was, while also complimenting her with the title of professor. 'You're far too kind,' she parried. 'And you are?'\n\n'Ruthven Davison.' He clinked his glass against her own, the cat perching comfortably on his shoulder glaring at her with those crystalline eyes. 'Bottoms up, my dear! Then you can tell me all about your work.'\n\nIrene mentally scanned the list of famous scientists which Columbine had provided for tonight. The name didn't appear. And she had suspicions about the glass she'd been handed. A deliberate attack on her, or opportunistic predatory behaviour towards a young woman on her own? 'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I never drink wine.'\n\nMeanwhile Gauntlets had been thinking. 'Quantrelle isn't on the speakers' list for tonight,' he said, 'but Pieters is. And Pieters collaborated with Brabasmus on his cerebral work five years ago. If anyone knows about his work...'\n\n'Now don't give me that,' Ruthven Davison said, leaning in close. It was like being accosted by Lord Silver, but without the charm. 'A woman as beautiful as you must be able to manage a glass of wine. And something more, perhaps.' His gaze dipped from her eyes to her bodice.\n\nIrene's patience, already somewhat attenuated, snapped. She let herself smile sweetly. 'That's very kind of you,' she said, lowering her voice for his ears only. 'My field of research is geriatrics, you know, and I'm actually eighty years old. Would you like to go somewhere more private, so I can share some of my... secrets?'\n\nHe boggled at her, his uncertainty visible in spite of his mask. This was, after all, the sort of situation where she might well be speaking the truth. Irene stepped back as he hesitated, retreating with a faint smile towards the conversation she'd been monitoring.\n\nAnnoyingly the men were already moving away, still talking. She turned to pursue them, when a familiar posture caught her eye and she nearly spilled her drink.\n\nThat couldn't be...\n\nHe turned a little, so that Irene could see his profile despite the mask, and she cursed silently. What in the name of sanity was Shan Yuan doing here, stalking through the assembly like a leopard and doing a remarkably bad job of being inconspicuous?\n\nShe reluctantly gave up on her two targets \u2013 she'd already gleaned some useful names. Perhaps Vale could follow up on those later. Shan Yuan was now assessing the people around him with a cold and imperious eye and snubbing the few who tried to speak to him.\n\n'Good evening,' she said, insinuating herself next to him and sliding her arm through his before he could back away. Her mouth was curved in a smile, but her voice was very nearly a snarl as she murmured, 'Your highness, what are you doing here?'\n\n'Your job, it would seem.' He didn't try to distance himself \u2013 no doubt because it would have looked undignified to try and shrug her off \u2013 but there was clear annoyance in his eyes. 'This Brabasmus must be found and the technology investigated. I see no reason why I should not assist you. You may thank me later.'\n\nIf I don't kill you first. 'Have you worked undercover before?' Irene demanded. Somehow the your highness failed to materialize.\n\nHis eyes glinted dragon-red. 'You aren't showing an appropriate degree of gratitude.'\n\nIrene abandoned courtesy for plain speaking \u2013 although quietly, as anyone could be listening. 'If you'd honestly wanted to assist, you'd have told us rather than sneaking in like this. How did you get inside, anyway?' It wasn't as if he knew this London, after all.\n\nFor a moment he seemed about to refuse to answer, but then he smirked. 'Your apprentice assisted me.'\n\n'Catherine?' Irene demanded, torn between fury, disbelief and horror. She'd been so relieved that the Fae girl was safe. If Shan Yuan had dragged her into trouble, being Kai's brother wouldn't save him.\n\nShan Yuan shrugged elegantly. 'She's here too, hunting for information. She wanted to prove herself to you \u2013 which, if you'll allow me to point out, is a highly laudable goal. You're doing her no favours by keeping her sheltered.'\n\nLike you're trying to do with Kai? hovered on Irene's lips, but she bit the words back. This was not the time. 'You've made a mistake,' she said, her voice quiet and deadly. 'Catherine doesn't have the training or experience for a situation like this. If she told you she did, then she was mistaken. Where is she now?'\n\nSomething in her words or tone got through to Shan Yuan. He looked away, choosing not to meet her eyes. 'One learns by doing,' he protested. 'If you keep her out of work like this, how will she ever learn to do it properly?'\n\n'Where is she?' Irene repeated, her voice deadly cold.\n\n'She's only a\u2014'\n\nIrene's hand tightened on his arm. 'Your highness,' she said quietly, 'that had better not be \"She's only a Fae\". Not if you want me to have any respect for you at all.'\n\n'I am the son of his majesty Ao Guang!' Shan Yuan snarled.\n\n'Oh, I'll respect your rank,' Irene said. 'I just won't respect you.'\n\n'Very well.' His words were nearly a hiss. 'We arrived here fifteen minutes ago. She said she was going to the theatre, then planned to check the cellars. That is all I know. I was far more concerned with investigating the artificial intelligence angle \u2013 seeing if I could overhear anything useful.'\n\n'Thank you,' Irene said. She released his arm. 'For future reference... don't take advantage of those far younger than yourself. You've exposed Catherine to considerable danger.'\n\nThe air was perceptibly warmer around the two of them. Nearby discussion groups fanned themselves absently or complained about the heat. Shan Yuan showed no sign of caring. 'This makes me certain that you are no fit companion for my little brother,' he growled. 'You have no understanding of priorities. When I tell my father of your bad influence, he'll see to it that someone else is assigned as dragon treaty representative \u2013 someone who won't be distracted by your childish diversions.'\n\nSomeone like you? Irene wondered. No wonder you want in on all this. Find the crucial new technology, demonstrate your ability, prove Kai's incompetent, get his position. She could see the game plan. But trying to steal Kai's job was a petty offence compared to what he'd already managed to do tonight. Driven by fury, she jabbed a finger into his chest. 'That girl is my apprentice. She was entrusted to me by her only living relative. It is my job to keep her safe, whatever her birth, whatever her nature. If your father disapproves of that, then so be it, and I'll answer to him in person.' She met his eyes. 'But I'm not required to answer to you.'\n\n'Excuse me, excuse me.' An attendant bustled by, ignoring their disagreement, just as he was ignoring all the other quarrels, arguments and outright duels. He thrust a paper into Irene's hand. 'Schedule for the evening's events, new additions marked in red...'\n\nIrene looked at it automatically, and a name caught her eye. Doctor Perchatki, Moscow University. She translated from the Russian automatically. Perchatki \u2013 gloves.\n\nGloves. Guantes. Was this a coincidence? Irene wasn't sure she believed in coincidences any more \u2013 especially not in a high-chaos world like this one, where Fae abounded and narratives had an unfortunate habit of coming true. Perchatki's demonstration \u2013 it didn't say what \u2013 was due in fifteen minutes in the theatre.\n\n'We will continue this later,' she said to Shan Yuan. 'I need to get to the theatre \u2013 now. If you see Kai or Vale, tell them where to find me.'\n\nThere was no time to waste. If Catherine was now in the theatre, she could be in very grave danger \u2013 if Irene's supposition that Perchatki was Lord Guantes was correct. And while she hoped against hope that she wasn't right, she had a strong feeling that she was..."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "'I don't understand,' Shan Yuan complained, trailing behind her. He twitched the programme out of her fingers and scanned it. 'None of these names mean anything to me.'\n\n'I'm interested in Doctor Perchatki. Excuse me.' Irene politely tilted a woman's arm as she ducked past, so her death ray was pointing at the ceiling and not at Irene. 'He's near the top of the list.'\n\n'Why him?' Shan Yuan asked in bafflement. Either he didn't understand Russian, or he wasn't aware of Fae tendencies to pick appropriate and thematic pseudonyms.\n\nIrene wasn't going to shout an explanation while shoving through the crowd \u2013 and they were close to the theatre's entrance now. However, as they neared, she could see it was blocked. A couple of security guards were doing gatekeeper duty, controlling the flow of people and policing the more dangerous pieces of equipment.\n\n'Ah, Doctor Viltred,' Vale said, materializing at Irene's elbow. It took a moment for her to accept that it was Vale \u2013 despite recognizing his disguise. His make-up and the altered voice were simply that good. Her own attempts at changing her appearance were workmanlike and functional but couldn't match that level of artifice. 'I wasn't expecting this gentleman,' he said, his eyes shifting to Shan Yuan.\n\n'Do I know you?' Shan Yuan asked, clearly not recognizing Vale, voice frosted with polite disdain.\n\n'You do,' Irene confirmed shortly. She noticed that Vale was also carrying a programme. 'I take it you're here for Doctor Perchatki's demonstration?'\n\n'Precisely. I had no doubt that you'd notice the name...'\n\n'Wait, what?' Kai said, coming to a halt as he joined the group, his eyes widening at the sight of Shan Yuan. He glanced at Irene then back to his brother in confusion. 'I thought you'd said you weren't coming.'\n\n'For all the thanks I've been getting, I shouldn't have bothered,' Shan Yuan muttered.\n\n'Excuse me, coming through!' At the far end of the room, the crowd were being forcibly parted by a group of people carrying various pieces of experimental-looking apparatus \u2013 glass domes filled with circuitry, cables, a large console covered with levers and dials, and so on. Then towards the back of the procession...\n\nIrene's hands tightened into fists and she felt the scars of old lacerations on her palms. Lord Guantes strode at the rear of the group, recognizable in spite of his mask. Beside him, a couple of men in lab coats were carrying the unconscious Catherine. If she'd been wearing a mask, they'd removed it. She was strapped into a stretcher, though the ties binding her had been mostly concealed.\n\nThis Lord Guantes showed no signs of having been shot, being about to crumble into dust or anything else untoward. He must be the latest personality imprint \u2013 and was probably thinking that he was the real Lord Guantes, just as the rest of them had. He was cloaked in an aura of firm determination, every inch the noble scientist striving for the betterment of his fellows. In keeping with this persona, he gave his followers and the crowd the odd nod, wave or occasional word of encouragement. His eyes moved over the throng, and Irene was grateful for her mask and disguise.\n\nKai casually stepped behind Vale, using him for cover. But Kai's face \u2013 what Irene could see of it \u2013 had grown cold at the sight of Catherine being carried along helpless. 'How did they get hold of her?' he demanded under his breath. 'She was safe with Columbine.'\n\nFury knotted in Irene's stomach and she glared at Shan Yuan, locking her hand around his wrist as he began to inch away. 'Catherine is here because she wanted to help. Unwise, but she had good intentions. Vale, will claims of kidnapping be any use here?'\n\n'This is almost certainly an attempt to draw us out, and that would expose us to whatever they have planned. So would any attempt to rescue Catherine.' Vale's expression was grim, and Kai was nodding.\n\n'Agreed.' If sheer force of will could kill, Irene's thoughts would have bored a hole in the back of Lord Guantes' head. Unfortunately, she couldn't manage that \u2013 but there were other things she could try. 'But I can black the whole place out, which will give us a fighting chance at breaking her out. I can't turn the lights off from here, though \u2013 the Language would never be heard over the noise of that crowd. I'll get to the generators and turn the electricity off at source. If you wait in the theatre, you can grab Catherine in the chaos.'\n\n'What about Lord Guantes?'\n\n'At the moment, I'm more worried about Catherine.' How many times had Irene risked herself to get information? Of course Catherine would run off and do the very same thing. For the first time in a long while, she felt a degree of sympathy for her parents. 'If you can grab Lord Guantes as well, then by all means do so.'\n\n'Am I to have no say in this operation?' Shan Yuan demanded.\n\n'You are at perfect liberty to walk away,' Irene said through gritted teeth, 'but given that Catherine helped you get in here, I'd hope you'd feel some responsibility for her predicament.'\n\nShan Yuan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Perhaps he was considering the political optics. What would it do to his career if he was held responsible for losing an important Fae's niece \u2013 who also happened to be a Librarian's apprentice? Or perhaps he was considering Kai's opinion of him. After all, Kai was staring at him, wearing an expression of hope that his brother would do the right thing.\n\n'Be careful, Winters,' Vale warned her. 'I cannot shake the feeling that we've missed something important.'\n\n'There's one obvious thing we're missing. Lady Guantes isn't here.' She turned to view the throng of people around them \u2013 picturing them as a deck of cards, scattered face down on a table. Any one of them could turn out to be the deadly Queen of Spades. 'She may already be in the theatre. Watch out for her.'\n\n'One of us should come with you\u2014' Kai started.\n\n'Three of you have a decent chance of getting Catherine to safety in the darkness, against Guantes' minions,' Irene said regretfully, 'but it would be harder for two of you. I'll take all precautions.' She touched Kai's hand for a moment, a reassurance to them both, then dived back into the crowd.\n\nThe architects had positioned the electrical generators on the top floor, away from the public areas. Fortunately Columbine had been able to provide plans of the building earlier, which meant that Irene knew roughly where she was going.\n\nThe upper levels of the building were formed of sturdy brick, rather than the elegant stone and tile of the areas beneath. The rooms here were oddly shaped, built to fit around the large glass dome which crowned the nave below. The building had only been open for a couple of weeks, so these rooms and corridors still looked new and sharp edged, without the distractions of the crowd. Under the harsh ether-lights which provided illumination, occasional numbers or words were scrawled on the whitewashed walls. These indicated which rooms were for storage or machinery \u2013 and which held the generators. But there was an obstacle, of course.\n\n'Excuse me, ma'am.' Two men were guarding the generator room. Irene thought it was a sensible precaution, given the over-enthusiastic men and woman of science gathered below. Some would just love the chance to 'improve' the building's power supply. 'This area's out of bounds.'\n\nIrene slipped a Secret Service identification card out of her handbag and displayed it. (Really, she was going to owe Columbine a lot of favours after tonight.) 'Government business,' she said. 'We're checking for saboteurs.'\n\nHe peered at it, frowning. 'Sorry, ma'am. It's been one of those nights. Will you need any assistance?'\n\n'If you'll just unlock the door for me, please.'\n\nHe opened the door and switched on the light \u2013 and the sound hit her like a blow as she stepped inside. The room was huge, larger than it had seemed on the building's plans. Wheels twice her height spun in constant rotation, half-sunk into the floor. These were paired with and connected to smaller wheels on the same axles. Heavy cables led everywhere \u2013 upwards to what looked like windmills which could be folded out onto the roof. They also led downwards through the floor and everywhere she tried to step, in a maze of connections. The air was harsh with the smells of oil, gasoline and iron \u2013 a sharp contrast to the perfumed guests and floral displays in the rooms below. The place seemed to pulse like a mechanical heart, and for a moment Irene was uncertain of her plan. She was staggered by the noise and complexity of the place.\n\nBut a moment of doubt was all she would allow herself. She took a deep breath and raised her voice above the ambient volume. 'Electrical generators, shut down safely and stop transmitting power!'\n\nThe words hung in the air \u2013 and then it all went wrong.\n\nIt was as if her use of the Language had triggered some kind of paralysis. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. Dust motes glinted in the air as they spun downwards, and they fell slowly, so slowly, and the world itself shifted perspective around her. Her surroundings changed from a sharply lit room full of machinery, to a dimly lit twilight where silently turning wheels gently spun to a halt. Beneath her feet, a circle of light blinked into existence. Despite her frozen state, she could see it was edged with and ornamented by words in the Language that gleamed in the shadows.\n\nAnd opposite her, barely a few yards away, a figure unfolded itself. It was as though it slipped sideways, through a line drawn in mid-air, to emerge into three dimensions. He was robed in black, like a Benedictine monk \u2013 or some other, darker order. But when he raised his hands to push his hood back, Irene recognized his face.\n\nIrene could breathe again now, but horror and sheer terror made her throat dry. 'Alberich,' she whispered.\n\nShe'd seen this particular face once before, in a burning library. He could wear multiple faces and change his skin, so she wondered why he was attached to this one. Was it his true aspect, or had he left that far behind? There was nothing about his appearance to declare him a relentless traitor and the Library's greatest enemy. She noted the receding hairline, thin eyebrows, strong nose and jaw, deep-set eyes, lean shoulders and rope-sandalled feet \u2013 quite ordinary-looking, in fact. But she associated this face with unrelenting malice and eternal darkness. She quite simply could not look at him and see a normal man \u2013 not when she knew what he was.\n\n'Ray,' he said, seeing straight through her mask and blonde wig. His eyes met hers in recognition.\n\n'My name is Irene,' she corrected him. It was a small gesture of defiance, but one which gave her courage \u2013 and, more importantly, a moment to think.\n\n'Ray is what your parents named you.' He smiled, his expression surprisingly rueful, surprisingly friendly. 'Though I have to approve of any step towards self-development. We talked about that once before, if you remember?'\n\n'About evolution, and how both Fae and dragons were dead ends?' Irene remembered that far too well. They had been dancing in a Russian palace. But Kai had been there to save her that time. 'Yes, I remember. But why are you here now?'\n\n'For you.'\n\nHer guts cramped with panic. What did one say, when personal nightmares came strolling out of the darkness to tell you how pleased they were to see you? 'Surely you have more important things to do.'\n\nHe took a step towards her. She would have moved back, but the circle around her feet held her fast. 'On the contrary. You \u2013 and your friends \u2013 are extremely important.'\n\nIrene ran through various conversational gambits in her head, and finally said, 'What's going on?'\n\nAlberich blinked in surprise \u2013 another human gesture, but this time it seemed just a little affected, like an actor's projection for his audience. 'So blunt? We could play a game of riddles for answers instead. Or dance around the subject, gathering information without giving any away. Wouldn't that be more... fun? Or maybe\u2014'\n\nBut she'd been gathering her nerve while he spoke. 'Floor, break under Alberich!' she ordered with desperate speed, interrupting him mid-speech.\n\nThe circle around her flared, brightening as her voice was suddenly silenced. It was as if she stood inside a cone of perfect quiet. The Language had failed her, and the words she mouthed had no power.\n\n'Yes, that would have been my next step too,' Alberich said. He took another step towards her. 'It's astonishing how much we think and plan alike. Librarians together, brothers and sisters in the same service...'\n\nShe'd shut down the generators \u2013 that part of her mission had been successful. She couldn't hear any noise of chaos downstairs as a result, but the floor and walls were thick enough to block that out. Hopefully Kai and Vale would get Catherine to safety, and then come looking for her. But for the moment, she was on her own. 'What do you want with me?' she demanded.\n\nAlberich paused as a flicker of darkness ran through his body, like a glitch in a projection. 'Ah. I have less time than I'd thought. That gets your hopes up, doesn't it, Ray? You're thinking that if you keep me talking a bit longer, you may be able to save yourself.' His grin was pure malice. 'My scripts were set to react to your use of the Language. But you haven't worked out what that means.'\n\nThe day's uncertainty crystallized into raw panic. Irene had to work to keep her voice from shaking. 'You expected me to come here?'\n\nAlberich nodded and made a go on gesture with a hand that seemed to be fraying at the edges, fuzzy with something resembling static.\n\n'We came here because Doctor Brabasmus would be here tonight. So... did you have someone leak that information?' Singh had said that report was unreliable \u2013 and he'd been right. 'You expected me to use the Language.' She gestured at the shimmering circle around her feet. 'You set this up.'\n\nAlberich nodded. 'The moment you used the Language...' He snapped his fingers. Shadows crackled between them. 'Activation. And now we really can't keep your friends waiting any longer, can we?'\n\nIrene's eyes flicked to the door, but Alberich shook his head. 'No, it's simpler than that. Their names are also woven into the circuit I've created. They're coming with you. You're all useful to me, and I know just how dangerous it is to leave any of you on the loose while the others are prisoners.'\n\n'Language, release me!' Irene ordered, putting the whole of her will into the words.\n\nPain splintered in her temples and she tasted her own blood in her mouth. For a moment the words seemed to hang in the air like an echo \u2013 struggling with the force that surrounded her, like desperate fingers scrabbling at a cliff's edge. The circle around her hummed as her will battled Alberich's scripted trap, Language against Language, Librarian against Librarian.\n\nFor a moment she thought she might succeed.\n\nThen Alberich spoke in the Language, and his words had the strength of centuries behind them: 'My pattern, complete.'\n\nThe circle of light around her feet started to turn, rotating like a whirlpool. A rising hum of power sang in the air, drowning out the echoes of Alberich's voice. The sound rose until it was louder than the generators had been before, until Irene had to press her hands against her ears to shut it out.\n\nFlickers of fire ran through the darkness of Alberich's robe. He spread his arms wide, exultantly, and the flames leapt up to the ceiling. They veiled him in a swelling conflagration that flared too brightly for Irene's eyes to bear.\n\nBut Irene would not surrender. She could not let herself break if there was even the smallest chance of escape. She tugged against the circle, trying to pull free, and called out again and again in the Language. Yet she couldn't hear her own voice above the surrounding noise. Panic swelled in her, and her mind ran in circles \u2013 a trapped rat with no way out. If only she could find the right words to use, there had to be something... if Alberich could write it then she could rewrite it, she just needed time.\n\nBut then the floor dropped out beneath her, and she fell into fire and darkness."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "It was a sad commentary on Irene's life that, on waking up in chains, her first thought was Oh no, not again.\n\nAt least she wasn't dangling from the ceiling. That was always hell on her shoulders.\n\nShe was lying on her back, hands outstretched to either side; metal cuffs circled her wrists. She was chained to a cold stone floor. The stillness and dead silence suggested she was in a large open space with nobody else nearby. She could taste the chaos in the air, and the Library brand on her back itched with it. Definitely a high-chaos alternate world, even nearer to the chaos end of the universe than Vale's world. Where had Alberich taken her?\n\nAt least she was still alive, Irene reminded herself firmly. Where there was life, there was hope. She'd escaped from difficult situations before. But, as she looked around, she decided this had to rate pretty highly on the I'm really doomed this time scale.\n\nShe was in a church... no, a cathedral, and the Sagrada Familia cathedral at that. She recognized it now. Not just from the reports found on Lord Guantes' laptop, but from images seen over the years. But this interior was far darker than versions of the place on other worlds. Black stone pillars rose like lithe young trees, twisting and branching out above her to support an intricately carved ceiling. Here patterns resembling open flowers bloomed across the stonework, petals spreading out to touch one other. Electrical cables wound around the pillars like vines, silver against their blackness. Some even passed through the pillars, as though the ancient structure had been designed to support them. Where she'd expected to find stained-glass windows were computer screens. They blazed high above, shining with colours that had nothing at all to do with natural daylight. The whole place was a forest of dark stone, its ornamental flowers outlined in bright but poisonous hues. This unnatural light illuminated the aisles and nave with a pale twilight glow. Irene herself lay roughly where the altar should be, if this were really a version of the Sagrada Familia. She didn't like the symbolism.\n\nThe cathedral was vast. She was so small compared with its immensity, a single human being in a huge silence that seemed to breathe. Strange lights behind the windows moved as though they were alive. They waxed and waned like distant moons, pulling up a tide of darkness to drown her. If she strained, she could just see doorways and stairwells leading to side chapels, crypts or who knew where \u2013 the shadows hid the details.\n\nHer chains ran from the cuffs on her wrists to two bolts set into the stonework, far enough away from each other that she couldn't bring her hands together or rise to her feet. The most she could manage was to rise to her knees, to take stock of the situation. Her mask and wig were gone. Her hidden knife had been taken as well. And someone had hung a pendant around her neck on a leather cord \u2013 too short for her to see the object properly, she could only feel it against her skin. Whatever it was, though, it couldn't be good news.\n\nBut worst of all, surrounding her on the floor \u2013 a few feet out from the bolts which held her chains \u2013 was a circle written in the Language. It formed a single line, word flowing into word like some form of ancient calligraphy, scrawled on the black stone in dull brown paint. The vocabulary was mostly unfamiliar to Irene, though she thought she could make out words referring to binding, holding, chaining, repelling. What she could definitely make out was her own name \u2013 forming part of the circle directly in front of her, as though to taunt her.\n\nIrene sighed. I might as well know the worst.\n\n'Locks, open,' she commanded, and was not particularly surprised when her words proved powerless.\n\nThe circle of Language was out of her reach, chained as she was. Even if she lay down and stretched to her limit, her feet still couldn't touch the writing. Her lock picks were gone, too. She forced down a growing sense of panic and tried to think. The problem is that I'm fighting someone who knows full well what Librarians can do. And he's had plenty of practice at imprisoning our kind, which comes shortly before he skins his captive and sends a few spare organs back to the Library...\n\nIrene was out of good ideas and was seriously considering spitting on the circle, to see if her saliva did anything useful, when she heard the distant creak and boom of a door opening. She could identify two separate sets of footsteps. I hope this is the start of visiting hours for prisoners \u2013 rather than someone here to do the dusting and change the flowers...\n\nLord Guantes came into view first, a spring to his step and a smile curling his lips. Even at a distance, Irene could see his enthusiasm as he approached her. After all, gloating over a defeated enemy was a key part of his archetype as a Machiavellian villain. But that gave her a grain of hope. People who thought they'd already won made mistakes.\n\nAnd then the second person came into view, and Irene stifled a gasp of horror. It was Catherine... but changed.\n\nShe walked with her head lowered, eyes cast down, taking small obedient steps. Her shapeless dress was grey and utilitarian, covering her from neck to toe, and her hair was pinned back into a tight bun. Black gloves like the ones the Guantes favoured sheathed her hands. Her habitual expressions \u2013 irritation, annoyance, determination and curiosity \u2013 had been wiped from her face. It was as though someone had erased her personality entirely. Now she looked calm and patient, placid and unconcerned... and utterly unlike herself. Lord Guantes had turned her into an obedient little acolyte, one that he could twist around his finger and have her thank him for it.\n\nThey advanced down the length of the cathedral, and the glowing windows were now flooding the aisles with crimson light so the pair seemed to trail blood in their wake.\n\nLord Guantes came to a stop five feet outside the circle, with Catherine a pace behind. He looked down at Irene. 'How pleasant, Miss Winters, to see you in a more suitable position \u2013 on your knees.'\n\n'My faith is a constant comfort,' Irene said blandly. She could cope with this. He wasn't Alberich. She could even, on some level, feel sorry for Lord Guantes \u2013 now a mere puppet in someone else's show. But she really felt for whoever the original host had been, before 'Lord Guantes' was transplanted into his body.\n\nHe barked a short laugh at the obvious untruth, then beckoned Catherine forward. 'I thought I'd introduce my new student to you,' he said.\n\nCatherine smiled in the sunlight of his attention. The expression seemed out of place on her features. Her face was made for fierce enthusiasms, not blind sheeplike adoration. 'What would you like me to do, sir?'\n\n'I'd like you to tell Miss Winters here about your new position. And whether you like it or not, of course.'\n\nCatherine looked down at Irene pityingly. 'I'm going to look after Lord Guantes' book collection,' she explained. 'I'm so grateful to Lord Guantes for giving me this opportunity, in spite of everything my uncle's done to him.'\n\nLord Guantes was practically preening himself. If he'd been a peacock, he would have been spreading his tail to be admired. 'I don't like to see talent wasted, my dear.' He patted her shoulder, but his eyes were on Irene, watching for her reaction.\n\n'Aren't you grateful to Lady Guantes as well?' Irene asked innocently.\n\n'I don't think she really understands my role yet,' Catherine said. She glanced uncertainly at Lord Guantes, clearly wanting to take her cue from him.\n\nA shadow of discontent drifted across Lord Guantes' face. 'My beloved wife will come to appreciate you in time, Catherine. You simply need to be patient.'\n\nVery interesting. 'I hope that I'll have the chance to see Lady Guantes again before I... well, before anything happens.'\n\n'Why?' Lord Guantes asked curiously. 'Have the two of you formed some sort of secret bond while I wasn't around? Do you send each other letters in code and meet up to drink tea on alternate Fridays?'\n\n'Absolutely not,' Irene said hastily. 'No, I just wanted to apologize. They do say that a person should try to apologize to everyone they've offended before they die... and I'm not going to survive this, am I?'\n\n'Let's discuss that later,' Lord Guantes said, in tones that suggested he'd enjoy it rather more than Irene would. 'But why do you feel the need to apologize to her?'\n\n'For killing you.'\n\nHis expression froze. There was a momentary blankness behind his eyes \u2013 normally so keen and dominating. It was as if a record player had jumped a notch, missing a note in the music. 'In case you haven't noticed, Miss Winters, I'm not dead.'\n\n'Lord Guantes is dead,' Irene argued, watching his reaction like an angler playing a fish. If she could reawaken this body's previous personality, its true identity... 'Tell me, how good is your memory of yesterday? Or the day before?'\n\nLord Guantes flicked his gloved fingers in casual dismissal. 'You make no sense.'\n\n'Did Lady Guantes tell you something to explain any discrepancies?' Irene asked. 'Do you ever catch her looking at you as though you were her latest specimen in a zoological breeding programme? Tell me\u2014' She tried to put her will into the Language and make it work. 'Tell me who you really are!'\n\nBut her words fell flat, drained by the circle which surrounded her. It was the sense of her words, rather than any power behind them, which made anger flare in his eyes. He stepped forward, raising his hand as though about to slap her, or something equally petty.\n\nBut then he stopped, his foot a few inches away from the circle. 'Your petty lies are no threat to me,' he declared.\n\n'Can't you cross the circle?' Irene asked sympathetically. 'How irritating for you.'\n\nLord Guantes pulled himself together, but his voice lacked the perfect composure of a few minutes before. 'You're insulting me while chained and on your knees, in a pitiful attempt to assert your superiority. Are you trying to keep up your spirits in the face of impending doom, Miss Winters, or is this merely stupidity?'\n\nIrene looked around at the shadowy cathedral, the glowing windows and the dark heights above her. 'I wouldn't want to judge based on appearances,' she said. 'And I'm certainly afraid of Alberich. But not of you.' A petty insult, but if he took the lure...\n\nThis time he nearly did cross the circle. His toe was on the very brink before he realized what he was doing and drew back, composing himself with icy fury. 'You, my dear, are going to be Alberich's new body. A grand fate indeed.'\n\n'I'm aware of his habits of skinning people and donning their skin to masquerade as them,' Irene said, trying to sound as bored as possible, though her panic rose. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction.\n\n'Apparently you damaged his original body so much that it's unusable. So that option's no longer open to him. I don't suppose you'd care to explain how you did it?'\n\n'Fire,' Irene said, 'carefully applied and in the highest possible quantity. That damages most things.'\n\n'How tediously obvious. Well, the good news for you \u2013 dear me, that should probably be bad news \u2013 is that he is still very much alive.'\n\n'I knew that already,' Irene said flatly. If she could just goad him one step further, one inch closer... 'I saw him at the People's Palace. He explained how he was using your wife \u2013 and you.'\n\n'I think you'll find that we are using him.' Lord Guantes retorted smugly. 'He can project a hologram of himself to another world, but only once a direct link has been forged to that world. And he can't sustain it for very long. It's much easier if he can inhabit a host in that world. Previously he's been using this computer system.' He gestured at the Sagrada Familia around them. 'But what he really needs is a human nervous system. One that's stronger than normal flesh and bone. He needs a Librarian.'\n\n'What fun,' Irene said, her throat dry as sand. It explained why he'd wanted her alive, at least. 'Tell me, will I be aware of this miraculous process, once it starts? Or will my own mind simply be wiped out, just like that?' She snapped her fingers.\n\n'I wouldn't know.' Lord Guantes was enjoying himself now. 'Previous human subjects managed to scream, but they didn't last long. With you, we're hoping for something more permanent.'\n\n'He's hoping, you mean,' Irene corrected him, feeling sick. Nightmarish images surged uncontrollably through her imagination \u2013 her mind being sponged away as Alberich took possession of her body. Or worse, her remaining conscious and screaming as he took up residence inside her, but unable to do anything about it. 'It's his project. You're... just following orders.'\n\nHis gloved hands curled into fists. 'Shall I tell you what's happened to your friends? They're prisoners, just like you. The dragon \u2013 no, make that both dragons \u2013 may be useful political hostages. I don't know where the second one came from. Do you go round collecting them?'\n\n'They're like buses. You wait for one, and then half a dozen turn up at once.'\n\n'I can only hope and trust that your ill-judged sense of humour is painfully scoured from your mind when Alberich takes possession of you,' Lord Guantes said.\n\nFae think in narrative patterns, Irene reminded herself. For him, this is a story where he's the main protagonist and his enemies come to a satisfying end. This isn't a story which has a happy ending for me \u2013 unless I can change the plot. But I'm not sure that I can.\n\n'What about Vale?' she asked, trying to muster some hope. At least Kai was alive, and Shan Yuan was with him. Maybe they could find a way out of here, or at least be traded back to their father in return for some concession.\n\nShe tried not to think about Alberich confronting Kai while wearing her body: how it might feel, and what he might do. But the image wouldn't go away.\n\n'My wife has some use for the detective,' Lord Guantes said. 'I haven't bothered to ask for details.'\n\nIrene didn't like to think about Vale's fate either.\n\nLord Guantes must have seen the despair in her eyes. 'Yes,' he said. 'Precisely. All three of you are going to be used or destroyed. You most of all. Was it really worth it, Miss Winters? You could have been my valued servant \u2013 maybe even, in time, a friend. But now look at you.' His gesture took in the surroundings, her restraints, her helplessness. 'You chose to refuse me. You chose to defy me. Consider exactly how far you have fallen, Miss Winters, and\u2014'\n\nA mobile phone's buzz interrupted him. 'Excuse me one moment,' he said, and extracted it from a pocket.\n\nHis brows drew together in a frown. 'What? Of course not,' he said, in answer to some unheard question. 'I left strict instructions...'\n\nHe paused to glare suspiciously at Irene. She shrugged innocently.\n\nThe voice on the phone yammered something incoherent. The words might be inaudible, but the tone was very much one of rising panic.\n\n'I'm coming,' Lord Guantes snapped. 'Hold off any direct action until I'm there.' He jammed the phone back into his pocket and turned to Catherine. 'Accompany me \u2013 no, wait. Stay here. Keep an eye on Miss Winters. Make sure she doesn't try anything.'\n\n'You seem very certain that she'll obey you,' Irene noted.\n\nScarlet light reflected from the windows, adding a gleam to Lord Guantes' eyes. 'She's given me everything but her true name,' he said, 'and even that's only a matter of time. I hold her far more strongly than you ever could. Just try to persuade her. I look forward to seeing your face when I return, and you've failed... assuming that Alberich hasn't claimed you first.'\n\nHe swept out of the cathedral with an air of smug triumph, and the door slammed shut behind him. It echoed with a distant boom, underscoring his words with an air of finality. Irene could have done without it.\n\nShe weighed her odds. High-chaos worlds made it likely that narratives would follow standard patterns and stories would come true. There were two main narratives here and unfortunately, depending on one's point of view, both were equally plausible. Heroine persuades acolyte to break free from evil versus Villainess fails to lure devotee into disobeying orders.\n\nBut she had to try something. Not just because her own life and soul were at stake, but because she'd promised to protect Catherine. And because Catherine didn't deserve this. Nobody deserved what Lord Guantes had done to her.\n\n'Catherine, are you permitted to speak to me?' she asked experimentally.\n\n'I haven't been told not to,' Catherine said sunnily. 'What would you like to talk about?'\n\n'Do you realize that Lord Guantes has affected your mind?'\n\n'He only did it because he cares about me \u2013 and he respects me,' Catherine said. 'He's just helping me see things more clearly.'\n\n'But do you remember he and his wife were trying to kill both of us, before?'\n\nCatherine shrugged. 'Everyone makes mistakes.'\n\n'But what about the peace treaty, and their attempts to destroy it?' Irene tried. 'And just a few days ago, Lord Guantes had you poisoned?'\n\nCatherine sighed. 'Like I said, everyone makes mistakes. If you'd done the sensible thing in the first place, they wouldn't have tried to kill you.'\n\n'Just what would the \"sensible thing\" have been?'\n\n'Obeying Lord Guantes' wishes, of course,' Catherine said, in tones that suggested nothing could be simpler. 'It was very rude of you to try to kill him.'\n\n'Catherine, you dropped a book on him. From a great height.'\n\n'I've apologized for that, and he's forgiven me. I feel much better about my future now.'\n\n'And how do you feel about our futures \u2013 where Kai, Vale and I are prisoners, or worse?'\n\n'You never really cared about me anyhow,' Catherine said, still composed, still smiling. 'You were just using me.'\n\n'What precisely was I using you for?'\n\n'You wanted to seduce my uncle.'\n\nIrene just looked at Catherine for a moment, speechless. Then she started laughing hysterically, the breath coming out of her in thick hiccupping gasps that she couldn't stop. 'I wanted to seduce him?'\n\n'Stop that!' Catherine stormed forward, nearly to the edge of the circle. 'How dare you laugh at me like that? I know perfectly well that he's right.'\n\nIrene forced herself to stop laughing, sensing a tiny opportunity at last. It seemed Catherine was far more vulnerable to emotions than swayed by facts. 'I see Lord Guantes isn't bothering to tell you the truth. Perhaps he doesn't trust you as much as you think.'\n\nCatherine jerked up her chin in a familiar stubborn gesture that gave Irene a surge of hope. 'I'm his loyal and faithful servant. I don't need him to tell me every little thing, just to make me feel more secure.'\n\n'So tell me, what next?'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'Well, after horrible things have happened to me and I'm out of the picture\u2014' Ah, sweet euphemisms, what would we do without you? 'What then? Will you trot around behind Lord Guantes for the rest of your life? Or will you be locked away with his books, permanently, wherever they are? I thought you wanted to explore different librarian archetypes, to see which you wanted to be?'\n\n'I'll do what he wants,' Catherine said stubbornly. 'He knows best.'\n\n'And what about your uncle?' Irene left the question hanging, pregnant with possibility.\n\n'I'll just leave him alone. Lord Guantes says that's the best thing to do. Lord Guantes says that he isn't going to be drawn into petty feuds. Lord Guantes says\u2014'\n\n'Lord Guantes will probably have you kill your uncle yourself,' Irene interrupted. 'He and your uncle hate each other, you know this \u2013 and you'd be the perfect assassin. Why would your uncle ever suspect you? A few more words dropped into your shell-like little ear, and you'll cut your uncle's throat with a smile.'\n\n'That's not true.' Catherine was nearly shouting now. 'He wouldn't make me do anything like that.'\n\n'Catherine, sweetheart, darling, if you stay with Lord Guantes for much longer you won't just do it, you'll thank him for the opportunity.' Irene saw that fragmentary uncertainty in Catherine's eyes again and pressed further. 'And what next? Lord Guantes isn't the sort of person who likes to share. You'll never leave his private book collection again. You'll spend the rest of your life fossilizing there with nothing new to read, nothing new to do. Is that really how you see your future?'\n\n'He's giving me what I've always wanted,' Catherine answered, the words a little too automatic, too programmed. 'Of course I'm grateful.'\n\n'Except that it isn't what you want, is it?' Irene pulled at her chains, leaning forward for emphasis as if that would help her words penetrate. 'You told me how you wanted to be a librarian, Catherine. But there's more to that than just sitting on a pile of books in some private archive, isn't there?'\n\nCatherine raised a gloved fist in protest. 'Shut up!'\n\n'Come on, Catherine, listen to me.' Irene wished she could use the Language, but she had nothing but her own voice now and her understanding of the girl facing her. 'We both know what you told me, what you confessed to me, because you trusted me. You wanted to work in a library built to store and preserve books and knowledge. And you wanted to share that knowledge. You wanted to be right there at the heart of it, helping people find books they could love. Or information they really needed. And as part of all this, you'd go out to find new books, new stories, to make the library even better. You must have imagined what that would feel like. Finding a new book which nobody who visited had ever read before. Sharing it with new readers. You'd have felt the library itself accepting you, knowing you were a crucial part of how it worked.'\n\n'SHUT UP!' Catherine screamed, anger and bitterness turning her face ugly.\n\n'You're going to be something different now, though. Lord Guantes will never give you that. What he means by \"librarian\" isn't what you mean. He doesn't love books the way you and I do \u2013 he'll never understand. You'll grow old behind locked doors, never leaving his private collection, never reading anything new. But you'll be happy. He won't let you be anything else.'\n\n'You'd do it too...' Tears were leaking from the corners of Catherine's eyes, trickling down her face. She brushed them away with one gloved hand. 'Don't... don't try and act as if you're somehow better than me\u2014'\n\n'I have absolutely no delusions about myself,' Irene said flatly. 'The Library steals books and keeps them for itself \u2013 but it does share them. Eventually. And by holding books for different worlds, it keeps those worlds stable. That way, their people can read stories and dream about them \u2013 without being forced into either living them or having to do without those stories. And I have free will. You won't. Your dreams are going to rot away, inch by inch and moment by moment. Then some day you won't even remember what you meant by \"librarian\" and everything that went with it. Maybe you'll be happier that way. I don't know. I'll be dead, after all. But what about you, Catherine? Some people would say that was worse than death.'\n\nCatherine pushed both gloved hands against her face, rubbing at her eyes, her whole body trembling. 'I \u2013 I want \u2013 I don't want that \u2013 please, Irene, help me.'\n\n'Catherine.' Irene lowered her voice, but the acoustics of the cathedral meant that it still carried down the long aisle and into the vaults. She could feel success or failure poised on a knife edge. There would be failure, utter failure, if this thin connection between her and the Fae girl snapped. This is a church and I'm literally arguing to save her soul. If anyone's listening, help me... 'Catherine, I'm here. I'm here. The Library's here. I'm not going to let you go. Just listen to me. You can say no.'\n\n'But he won't let me.' Her voice rose in despair. 'I can't \u2013 can't \u2013 make him let go of me.'\n\nIrene had to find some way to break the psychic control that Lord Guantes still exerted over Catherine. She didn't wear anything as obvious as Irene's chains, but there was indeed a controlling leash around the Fae's mind. Then a thought came to Irene like a gift, an image \u2013 a symbol. 'Catherine. Take off your gloves.'\n\nCatherine shook her head repeatedly, a few tendrils of tightly bound hair fluttering around her face. But her hands were moving, fingers struggling as she began to claw at one glove's buttons.\n\n'You can do it,' Irene encouraged her, heart in mouth. 'You're strong enough to say no to me. You can say no to Lord Guantes. Just keep on pushing...'\n\nCatherine's eyes went worryingly blank. 'But he said I could be his librarian. He said he wanted me to be a librarian.' Her fingers fumbled, losing their grip on the buttons. 'I don't need to worry about anything...'\n\n'Take off those gloves,' Irene said softly, 'or you'll never touch a book with your bare hands again. Do you remember holding the Malory? What it was like being able to touch those old pages, to open it and read it? What do you want, Catherine?'\n\n'Stop nagging me,' Catherine snarled. Her eyes focused again, angry at Irene, but even more so at herself. She yanked at the glove, one last button ripping loose and bouncing to the floor. Then she dragged it off her hand, letting it drop as if it repulsed her. Fingers trembling, frowning at her own slowness, she pulled off the second glove. She was muttering to herself, her voice barely audible, as she dropped it in turn.\n\nThe two discarded gloves lay on the marble floor \u2013 uncannily lifelike, resembling some old sculpture of praying hands.\n\nCatherine raked her arm across her face, wiping away tears, and looked at Irene. Finally her eyes showed true awareness. 'What do we do now?' she asked.\n\n'We get out of here,' Irene said grimly. 'And we raise hell.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "'Is there nothing on except soap operas?' Shan Yuan demanded.\n\nHe'd taken possession of the apartment's sofa and reclined on it, in what should have been a commanding posture. However, it was more akin to an invalid's weariness. Kai sympathized. This world they'd been yanked into was towards the chaotic end of the universe \u2013 further than Vale's world, further than others he'd tolerated in the past. As a result, he and his brother were grossly inconvenienced. It felt like a particularly bad bout of influenza, or how he imagined radiation sickness might feel \u2013 or worse. They certainly couldn't take their natural forms here, and even if there was a large quantity of water nearby (which there wasn't), Kai wouldn't have been able to bend it to his will.\n\nIn fact, it was possible to imprison two dragon princes simply by locking the door \u2013 and that really galled Kai. Some things simply should not be allowed to happen.\n\nThey were in a rather nice apartment suite in a skyscraper. It was hard to be sure how high they were, but a glance out of the locked and barred window suggested the thirtieth floor at least. Outside, the city's lights glittered in the darkness. Kai could just make out tiny vehicles flashing between them like luminescent deep-sea fishes, both at ground level and in the air. In the far distance Kai could see the Sagrada Familia \u2013 a building he recognized at once. The cathedral was floodlit, revealing a facade as intricate and fascinating as coral. It was an impressive landmark in the surrounding darkness. The feel of chaos hung heavy in the air around him, but he could sense it lay even deeper there. Part of him wanted to flinch from the sight, but the more mature, combative side of his nature marked it as a target. Lord Guantes had been the last person Kai had seen, before they were snatched to this world. If that was the cathedral another Lord Guantes had mentioned to Irene with his last breath, then this was the centre of the conspiracy...\n\n'I'm talking to you, Kai,' Shan Yuan amplified his complaint. 'Stop staring out of the window.'\n\n'I'm analysing our surroundings from a military point of view,' Kai excused himself. He picked up the television remote control and skipped through channels, feeling lethargic. Everything was in Spanish. 'Do you suppose they're trying to brainwash us? With chaos?'\n\n'It could explain why we've been kept alive,' his brother muttered.\n\nKai still didn't have an answer to that, other than wondering what came next. But he kept that to himself.\n\nHe did feel guilty about Shan Yuan's presence. When the lights had gone out, back in the People's Palace, some sort of chaos portal had formed under his feet. His brother had leapt to Kai's side without a moment's hesitation, trying to drag Kai free \u2013 and he had, as a result, been pulled through too. Kai was responsible for his brother being here, trapped at the wrong end of the universe, in peril of death, or worse...\n\n'Kept alive to languish in this banal cell, forced into each other's society, deprived of liberty, with chaos sullying our bodies and spirits \u2013 you should have been able to handle your affairs better than this, Kai.'\n\n...though he had to admit that Shan Yuan's attitude wasn't helping. And Shan Yuan hadn't been invited to join their mission anyway, so it was his own fault he was here.\n\n'It could be a lot worse, elder brother,' he said. 'We could each be chained up in a windowless cell, on our own, with no idea whether the other is alive or dead.'\n\n'Don't give them ideas, Kai,' Shan Yuan hissed. 'They might be listening for you to describe your worst nightmare, so that they can act on it.'\n\n'Oh, I'm sure they're listening. We've seen this place is high-technology. Only someone really stupid wouldn't put hidden microphones in here.'\n\nKai sat down, giving in to the weariness that suffused his body and made his bones ache. He wished he could explain to Irene that he didn't loathe high-chaos worlds due to prejudice, but because they made him feel ill and utterly shattered. This brought his thoughts back to Irene again \u2013 and Vale, and Catherine \u2013 and he wondered where they were. In other rooms inside this skyscraper? Or somewhere far worse? The Sagrada Familia? His hand clenched on the remote as he brooded on his powerlessness.\n\nHe forced himself to loosen his fingers. Enough self-indulgence. Time to be proactive.\n\nThey \u2013 their mysterious captors \u2013 had removed his knife and lock picks. He prowled the apartment, assessing its furnishings and features with a view to mayhem. There were no sharp kitchen implements or razors, though the bottles in the drinks cupboard could be broken. There was no computer access. The window was possibly breakable, but given how high up they were, a human body wouldn't survive the fall \u2013 and jumping out, in the vague hope that he might take dragon form before he hit the ground, would probably end unhappily. However, Irene had shown him many useful applications for harmless household goods in the past...\n\n'What are you doing?' Shan Yuan asked querulously.\n\n'Reviewing the situation,' Kai answered. 'We have basic microwave meals in the kitchenette here. No sharp knives, though.'\n\n'Microwave?' Shan Yuan pulled himself out of his despond and wandered over to inspect it. 'Probably not very useful,' he said, after a minute or two.\n\nKai construed that as wouldn't cause significant damage if I rewired it to explode and nodded. But something else had crossed his mind. 'Nice drinks cupboard,' he said, keeping his tone casual. 'At least we can get drunk while we're waiting for our possible doom.'\n\nShan Yuan made a noise of disgust. 'Is that your best idea? I thought you were keeping bad company, but now I know it for certain.'\n\n'I might surprise you with my mixing skills,' Kai said. 'Let's see. I could make a dry martini, but that's boring. They don't have absinthe or blackberry liqueur, so an Aunt Roberta's out of the question, and I don't feel like a Death in the Afternoon or a Tropical Zombie... Do you? Or how about a Long Island Iced Tea?'\n\nShan Yuan glared at him and even here, in the depths of chaos, Kai could feel a brief surge of blazing heat from his brother's body. 'You embarrass yourself.'\n\nKai cursed silently. Apparently Shan Yuan didn't know his cocktails and hadn't grasped the salient factor here \u2013 all the drinks Kai had mentioned had an extremely high alcohol content. Since they were certainly being monitored, there was no way to be more direct. 'Older brother,' he said, 'we're both suffering due to the chaos level here. We won't be given any drugs \u2013 or if we are offered any, I wouldn't advise taking them. The most sensible option is to have a few drinks to dull the pain. Watch me and I'll show you.' He pulled a fork from the cutlery drawer and passed it to Shan Yuan, nodding meaningfully at the microwave.\n\nKai's control over water wouldn't extend to the liquids in this world \u2013 they were far too infested by chaos, too deeply infiltrated by its essence. And their captors would know this, assuming Kai would be just as helpless here as he'd been before, that time in Venice.\n\nIt was a rewarding experience to disprove one's enemies' expectations, and the more drastically the better.\n\nWell, rewarding for him.\n\nShan Yuan took the fork and looked uncomprehendingly at it. Then he looked more closely at the spirits Kai was gathering. Gin, vodka, tequila, rum... 'Maybe you have a point,' he said, and pried off the microwave's control panel.\n\nKai suspected they'd only have a few moments to act, once his brother started mangling the microwave's electronic guts. He gave up on subtlety and started uncorking all the bottles.\n\nFrom the lounge area, a gentle electronic voice intoned, 'Stand away from the kitchen equipment. This is an order.'\n\nShan Yuan hissed between his teeth and did something to the wiring.\n\n'Stand away from the kitchen equipment, or we are authorized to use lethal force,' the voice continued, in the pleasant female tones of an electronic alarm system which had been designed to sound comforting and reassuring.\n\nShan Yuan nodded to Kai and jammed the fork into the wiring. Blue sparks jumped. Kai tipped the vodka onto the wiring; the sparks belched upwards, flaring into sudden alcohol-fuelled flames.\n\nFire wasn't like water. Fire existed only for a moment, remade with every passing second, constantly replaced by newly-created flames. While the burning materials might be of this world and contaminated by chaos, the actual tongues of fire were untouched. They were free from corruption as they winked in and out of existence. Which meant Shan Yuan could command the fire howsoever he wished.\n\nThe fire leapt up, wreathing the microwave and melting the plastic-topped counter it stood upon. Shan Yuan directed it downwards, so it could rush across the floor \u2013 then it flared across the room, charring the neutral beige carpeting and bland walls. It spread around Shan Yuan and Kai in a growing circle, blossoming outwards to shoot towards the apartment door.\n\nShan Yuan followed the flames, and Kai followed Shan Yuan, a bottle of vodka in his hand in case a top-up was required.\n\nGuards had begun to assemble beyond the apartment door, but they weren't prepared for the rolling wall of flame that smashed the door down and came roaring towards them. A few had enough sense to shoot at the two dragons, but most sprayed their bullets blindly into the flames.\n\nKai knocked Shan Yuan to the floor and out of the line of fire, biting back a curse as a bullet seared his upper arm. Shan Yuan said nothing, but the heat of his body beneath Kai redoubled, and the flames burst forth with new fury, reaching out for the guards like living things.\n\nThe guards weren't being paid to face down an inferno. They broke and ran.\n\n'Take one alive,' Kai murmured in Shan Yuan's ear. 'We need information.'\n\n'Good idea. You do have more experience in these situations,' Shan Yuan admitted. He hooked his hand in a gesture and the flames leapt ahead of the rearmost guard, circling to cut him off.\n\nThe guard turned to face them. He was anonymous behind his helmet, face mask and body armour, but his posture spoke eloquently of how much he feared the fire. 'Keep back!' he ordered them.\n\n'Question this fool for me, Kai, before I incinerate him where he stands,' Shan Yuan said dismissively. The strain in his expression was only visible to Kai, and only because he knew his brother well.\n\nAs Kai glared at the guard, he was every inch the son of Ao Guang, Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean. Blood trickled down his arm from the bullet wound, merely adding to his anger. 'You,' he snapped at the man, and saw him flinch. 'We need information. You may assist us or you may die. The choice is yours.'\n\nThe guardroom nearby did have a computer terminal, and Shan Yuan bent over it with renewed energy. The flames had filled this floor of the building and were now rapidly spreading to other levels. This had apparently halted any attempts to find or recapture them, and the screaming mass of civilians being evacuated provided an additional distraction. Kai did feel guilty about their fright, and the damage. He reassured himself that once he and Shan Yuan were safely out of the building, the fire crews could put out the flames.\n\n'How long will this take?' Kai asked, knotting a bandage of torn cloth over his wound. It would have seriously inconvenienced a human; as a dragon, he could endure it without too much difficulty.\n\nShan Yuan's fingers flickered across the keyboard. The guard had provided the password and his fingerprint to enter the system, and had therefore been allowed to keep his hand. 'I'm interfering with the building's security network \u2013 telling it to focus on the fire and evacuating the building. But we're bound to be discovered quickly... It'll take too long to reach the ground floor, but the system says there are aircars docked on the roof. Can you fly an aircar?'\n\n'Yes.' Well, yes in other worlds. That would just have to do.\n\n'But where shall we go?'\n\n'The Sagrada Familia,' Kai replied, without hesitation. 'You can see it from the windows. It's guesswork, but Lord Guantes did talk about a cathedral, and there was the information on the laptop. It's too much of a coincidence to avoid. I'm assuming Irene will be in the most dangerous place and under the highest security.'\n\n'Higher than us?' Shan Yuan didn't try to suppress the offended pride in his voice.\n\n'Our enemy's folly is our good fortune. Can you sustain the flames until we reach the roof?'\n\n'Of course,' Shan Yuan said disdainfully, ignoring the sweat that streaked his brow.\n\n'Without burning down the entire building?'\n\n'That might be more difficult,' Shan Yuan conceded. 'We should hurry.'\n\nBombarded by blaring sirens and warnings to evacuate immediately, and without using the lifts, they made for the roof. Shan Yuan's flames cleared their way, and roaming squads of guards and panicked civilians fled the walls of fire that surrounded them. Fortunately those same walls of fire hid the fact that Shan Yuan was leaning on Kai for support. The effort of moving the blaze ever onwards, against a background of chaos, drained him.\n\nThey staggered out onto the roof together \u2013 a landing zone marked into separate quadrants by artificial foliage and bordered by garages. Kai only saw a few parked aircars, and those were being fought over by panicked citizens. Multiple fire escapes offered safe routes to the roofs of other buildings \u2013 but it seemed that some refused to leave without their cars, or were taking advantage of the situation to do some looting.\n\n'That one,' Kai said, pointing at the nearest \u2013 a sleek gold two-seater. Shan Yuan raised a hand. Flames blossomed from the halo that surrounded them, flowing across the tarmac like oil to circle the aircar. The fire forced back the pair who'd been about to seize it, and Kai grabbed the key card from one of the distracted opportunists. Another burst of flames caused them to flee, as Kai dragged Shan Yuan into the passenger's side before jumping into the driver's seat.\n\nKai stared at the rows of controls. A keyboard. A screen. Multiple buttons. Key-card reader. Close enough to aircars he'd flown before. He waved the key card at the reader hopefully, and was delighted as the controls all fired up. He spared just a moment to wonder if the card was a counterfeit or genuine, meaning they were stealing the aircar, then shrugged. Their need was great and the screen was glowing in readiness, showing what looked like a local map. He tapped a building, and the screen helpfully suggested various speeds and routes to reach it.\n\nThe fires were dying down without Shan Yuan to boost them. Emergency vehicles had now converged on the building, some pouring foam through open windows. Kai hit the choices for high speed and direct route, mentally urging the aircar to hurry. It rose, drifting into the air like an overweight pigeon trying to remember exactly how one went from pavement to airborne. It steadied a couple of yards up then rotated, before plunging into motion.\n\n'Good job,' Kai said, relaxing for a moment. 'Well done, brother.'\n\n'You were quite competent yourself,' Shan Yuan said, gracing him with a thin smile.\n\n'Next stop the cathedral,' Kai said triumphantly, touching their real target this time \u2013 the Sagrada Familia \u2013 on the screen. Other aircars from the roof were heading in all directions, merging into what might be regular traffic flows. The emergency vehicles were fully occupied with the still-burning fire, darting around the building to squirt foam at the flames.\n\nBut the expected routing options failed to materialize. 'Unacceptable end point,' the aircar's voice unit said, sounding less friendly than earlier. 'Sagrada Familia is not a permitted destination. Please state new travel end point.'\n\nSomehow, Kai wasn't too surprised. The reports on the stolen laptop had indicated the place was closed. He hunted for the manual override and turned it on. Luckily this was indeed like aircars he'd driven before. Two levers, a bit like joysticks, slid out from a concealed recess. 'Things may get a little bumpy from here on,' he warned his brother.\n\n'Is that car approaching us?' Shan Yuan asked, pointing. The vehicle heading towards them was a sleek black with silver trim. It had red lights on its sides and looked worryingly official. Kai ignored it. Then the vehicle opened fire. The two dragons ducked in their seats as bullets came hammering through the roof, sides and windscreen; fragments of glass cascaded down upon them. Their pursuer slid sideways to draw level with them, matching their pace, and a rough amplified voice roared, 'Stop your car and maintain position or be shot down!'\n\n'Right,' Kai said, a vicious smile curving his lips, and began to get creative. He urged the aircar into a rapid dive, dropping away from their pursuer. Then he curved to the right, ducking under a stream of traffic to slide between two skyscrapers.\n\n'They're following us,' Shan Yuan shouted unhelpfully, as though this might assist Kai rather than distracting him. 'Do something!'\n\n'This airborne business would be a great deal easier if we were in our proper forms,' Kai muttered between gritted teeth. He yanked on the vertical lever, pulling the aircar upwards. More glass came loose from the edges of the shattered windscreen, falling behind them in a glittering trail. 'This thing has no style...'\n\nMore bullets chattered through the air to their left. Kai swung to the right, wishing for a gun of his own. 'Do you think they're police, or the ones who were keeping us captive?'\n\n'Does it matter?' Shan Yuan was huddled down as far as was possible in his seat, and clearly hating every second of this undignified crouching. 'Get us to that building and out of the air!'\n\nKai shared Shan Yuan's eagerness. They were weaponless and being shot to pieces up here. 'We're getting there,' he reassured his brother, putting the aircar through a couple of quick turns, then gliding under another traffic stream. He could see their target now. He just wished he had more idea of what they'd do once they arrived... besides the obvious Rescue Irene and dispose of all enemies.\n\n'Halt or be shot down!' came the blast of another loudspeaker. Kai bit back a curse as a second vehicle came swooping in to join the chase. He yanked a joystick, forcing his aircar to climb, but he could feel the drag of air and wind.\n\nThe building ahead came into full view and for one moment, even mid-chase, he was distracted. It was glorious. He'd only seen images of the Sagrada Familia up close, and they were now perfectly positioned to admire it. Or would have been if they weren't under attack. The illuminated cathedral had the beauty of a living, organic creation \u2013 as fair and elegant as a coral reef, or a grove of trees, or one of his father's palaces. Dark stone curled upwards into glorious spires like singing poems, etched and patterned with designs that made him ache to see them properly in daylight. Ornate glass windows glowed with rich colours, lit from inside the building. The beauty of their burning hues ached against the darkness. He could have hung there in mid-air and stared at it for hours.\n\nTheir aircar shook with the impact of a bullet. 'Warning,' the pleasant female voice said from the console, 'fuel tank integrity is damaged. Please land and inspect your vehicle. Warning, fuel tank integrity is damaged...'\n\n'Do all your escapades end up like this?' Shan Yuan demanded sourly.\n\n'Make helpful suggestions, or stay quiet,' Kai replied, gauging their options. It was reassuring that Shan Yuan trusted him to handle this and hadn't just grabbed for the controls himself. He wasn't going to disappoint his brother now.\n\nThey could land outside the building, but their airborne pursuers could easily shoot them down. And he could see guard posts and security patrols down there. If they wanted to avoid being shot and get inside the building, he could think of only one way to do it. Kai felt an almost physical pain at the thought of what he was about to do. Any damage could be repaired, of course, but...\n\n'Is it helpful to say we're on fire?' Shan Yuan pointed at the rear of the vehicle.\n\nKai didn't look round. Looking round wouldn't help, and it would just distract him from his plan. 'Don't worry,' he said, trying to sound soothing. 'Keep your head down. This will only take a moment.'\n\n'Kai, what are you \u2013 no!'\n\nShan Yuan threw his arms across his face as Kai swept the aircar round in a curve, aiming for the great oval window ahead of them. They crashed through in an explosion of glass and light."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "'Can you pass through the circle?' Irene said urgently. Normally she'd have given Catherine time to recover from such a traumatic experience, but Lord Guantes might return at any moment. Worse, Lady Guantes might show up. Not a talker, like her husband, she might go with a 'just shoot everyone' approach.\n\nCatherine pulled herself together and took a careful step forward, hand extended. When her fingers touched the circle's boundary she came to a stop, jerking her hand back. 'No,' she said reluctantly. 'I don't think so.'\n\n'Did it feel as if you touched an invisible surface, or did it evoke feelings of pain or disgust?' Might as well know the nature of her prison, Irene thought.\n\n'It felt maybe more like... a force field, and I felt a sort of buzzing. It was more... achy than painful. I suppose I could try running at it and see if I get through?' Catherine was clearly doing her best, but the suggestion lacked enthusiasm.\n\n'We'll save that for if we get desperate.' She didn't want to kill Catherine with a casual experiment. But what on earth could they try? 'All right, Catherine. Did Lord and Lady Guantes say anything that might be useful in front of you, when they thought you were under their control? Anything about what's going on?'\n\n'I think that circle is drawn in Alberich's blood,' Catherine said, demonstrating that she was capable of identifying the most important facts in an emergency. Irene resolved to give her a commendation for that later. She was further impressed as Catherine continued. 'Lady Guantes has some sort of big set-up underneath this building, but I didn't get to see much of it. The vaults beneath here are pretty deep \u2013 and extensive \u2013 apparently. There are guards down there and guards outside, though I haven't been able to go outside. And I think we're in Spain \u2013 well, a Spain anyway. We're in the Sagrada Familia \u2013 I recognize the interior from those laptop reports. There are computers absolutely all over the place, which would also fit with this being the Guantes headquarters. Oh, and it's currently \u2013' she checked her watch \u2013 'half past eleven at night. And something is going to happen at midnight. Lord Guantes said the ceremony, but Lady Guantes called it the overwrite.'\n\n'That gives us half an hour before that something happens,' Irene said, forcing herself to stay calm. 'Midnight. How very overdramatic. I suppose it matches the narrative of me being chained up in a cathedral.' She sighed. 'I think we should plan on leaving at least five minutes before that deadline.'\n\nCatherine looked determined, but Irene noticed that her hands shook as she tried to master her fear. 'So we've only got twenty-five minutes, then.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'All right. Now, walk round the circle \u2013 see if you can read any of the writing.' She was having difficulty seeing behind her, due to those awkward chains. It would be great if there were some convenient To exit, break here sections.\n\n'It's in the Language, right? I know the Language is supposed to read as if it's in my own native language, but this doesn't make sense.' Catherine was behind Irene now, her steps quick on the stone floor. 'It's like reading a really archaic form of English, mixed with higher mathematics. I can read that it's about binding and holding a prisoner \u2013 at least, I think that's what it is, it wouldn't make sense for it to be about tying knots. And... um.'\n\n'\"Um\" what?' Irene demanded.\n\n'This bit is rather dramatic... the circle can only be unmade by the blood of the person who wrote it. That's almost poetic.'\n\nIrene took a deep breath. Her stomach was tight with panic again. She couldn't yank her wrists loose from those chains. And she'd been trying, desperately. Even if she managed to dislocate her thumbs \u2013 she'd read the theory, but had never done it in practice \u2013 she didn't think it would help. If only Alberich's blood could break the circle, and his arrival meant her death or worse... then there was no way out. Her mind flinched away from that conclusion.\n\nAs a Fae, Catherine should be able to travel between worlds on her own \u2013 if she was strong enough. But every other Fae whom Irene had seen do this had been older, and had already chosen their private archetype.\n\nYet if Catherine could travel... Irene could tell the girl to run while there was still time, to reach Vale's world and contact Sterrington \u2013 or even Silver. One of them would tell the Library what had happened. The Library could then safeguard itself against whatever might come knocking on its portals... dressed in Irene's own skin.\n\nOf course, that wouldn't save Irene, but maybe it was time to make the least worst choice \u2013 how she hated that phrase \u2013 and accept the consequences.\n\n'Irene, what are we going to do?' Catherine asked tentatively, clearly hoping for a positive reply. But even a Librarian couldn't conjure hope where there was none.\n\nIrene bowed her head, trying to muster the will to tell Catherine to go. Her gaze fell on the crumpled gloves that Catherine had dragged off her hands. It had seemed like such a triumph to break her free of Lord Guantes' control. Now it just felt as if Irene had won a battle... but lost the war.\n\nAs she looked at the gloves, something clicked into place at the back of her mind. It wasn't quite a full idea; it was the beginning of a chain of logic. She found herself approaching it carefully and by degrees, as though it were a wild animal and she didn't want to frighten it away. The gloves had been symbolic. Here, deep within chaos, symbolism had power. Alberich was a Librarian, or at least had been, and Irene was also a Librarian. This made them metaphorical brother and sister, which meant that they were symbolically of the same blood...\n\n'Catherine! Do you have anything sharp on you?'\n\nCatherine dashed back to face Irene, galvanized by Irene's burst of energy. 'No \u2013 I don't think they trusted me that much.' She paused, and her bare hands went up to touch her hair, which had been carefully pinned back into a tight bun. 'Wait. Some of the hairpins she stuck in there felt sharp enough when they went in. Give me a moment.'\n\nIrene watched impatiently as Catherine dismantled her hairstyle. A couple of dozen hair grips, a bun net, two lethal-looking silver-headed hairpins and two tortoiseshell combs. 'Right,' she said. 'Try rolling one of those hairpins across the circle. Let's see if it will let it through.'\n\nThe hairpin skittered across the stone, undeterred by the circle. Irene nodded in satisfaction. 'Good. Now move round to my right-hand side \u2013 that's right \u2013 and slide the other hairpin towards my right hand.'\n\n'What are you going to do?' Catherine asked. 'You're not going to rip out your own intestines with a pin and arrange them to make words in the Language? Because if you are, I may throw up.'\n\n'Have you considered a career as a horror novelist?'\n\n'No \u2013 but if I had, being around you would give me lots of inspiration,' Catherine muttered. She followed Irene's instructions, and the hairpin rolled towards her. 'What are you going to do?'\n\n'I'm going to get symbolic.' Irene tested the hairpin's point against her fingers. It was one of the brutally sharp variety, the sort which scraped the scalp. Good, that'd make what she was planning easier.\n\nShe deliberately avoided dwelling on what she was about to do, and shifted the hairpin around in her hand, bracing the point against the bare wrist below it. This would have been much easier if she'd been able to bring her hands together, but she'd just have to cope.\n\n'Don't do it!'\n\nIrene blinked. 'What?'\n\n'Don't commit suicide!' Catherine dropped to her knees so they were both on a level, leaning forward urgently. 'Look, please, there has to be some way out of here, we can think of something, you're good at thinking of something\u2014'\n\n'Stop that.' Irene decided not to admit how she'd almost resigned herself to death just a few minutes before. 'I have a plan. And it involves me staying alive, you'll be glad to hear. I'm going to try to draw some blood and break the circle.'\n\n'Oh,' Catherine said, looking rather embarrassed.\n\n'We both need to stay calm.' Which may be harder for you than me. 'Keep talking to me while I work. Tell me something.'\n\n'Tell you what?' The thought of making a meaningful contribution seemed to steady Catherine.\n\n'Tell me about your family. Not Lord Silver. Who were your parents? Where were they from?' Irene began to push the hairpin into her wrist, bracing her hand against the floor.\n\n'My mother was Lord Silver's great-great-niece, or something like that,' Catherine said, her hands clenching nervously as she watched Irene. 'Lord Silver is several generations older, but because he's powerful he hasn't aged the way humans would. She grew up in Liechtenstein, where he has a branch of the family who never really went large \u2013 if you know what I mean? They didn't try to make something of themselves or gain power. They were just... people. Nearly human. Father was from Brazil. They fell in love.'\n\n'There was an accident while they were travelling, you said,' Irene prompted. She could see her flesh dimpling where the pin's point dug in. She could also feel the pressure of time ticking away as they talked, seconds hissing into oblivion like sand running through an hourglass. She visualized an imaginary sundial, a ray of dark light tracing its way towards midnight \u2013 the moment Alberich would arrive. She hadn't lied to Catherine, though; this casual conversation was keeping her steady, giving her a focus other than her own fate.\n\n'Yes, that was what Uncle told me.'\n\n'Why did he remove you from the rest of your family, after they died, to have you brought up in a lonely manor house?'\n\nSilence. Irene looked up to see Catherine duck her head and hunch her shoulders stubbornly. Well, she knew of one reason why a Fae might hide a vulnerable young relation. 'Was your parents' death due to some feud?' she guessed. 'And not just an accident?'\n\nCatherine sighed. 'That's what I think. He wouldn't tell me. And I wasn't old enough to protect myself, or walk between worlds. I'm still not powerful enough to travel between worlds on my own...'\n\nIrene wouldn't normally expect Lord Silver to have any interest in protecting innocents \u2013 or innocence. He was a libertine, a politician and a spymaster, and he lived up to all three archetypes with enthusiasm. To protect a young dependant and shield her from unpleasant realities was... out of character. If a Fae departed from their chosen narrative and archetype it weakened them. It reduced their power and longevity and drew them back towards the common mass of humanity. Silver's actions here seemed a flaw in his character, an off note in the perfect symphony of his immorality.\n\nThen, between one heartbeat and the next, the hairpin bit in and drew blood. Irene's first reaction was a natural human response to pain \u2013 she wanted to snatch her hand back and get that point out of her flesh. Instead she set her teeth and forced it deeper, still bracing one end against the stone, dragging the pin sideways in an attempt to widen the wound. Blood trickled over her fingers.\n\n'Ow,' she said, finding some relief in the word, a diversion from the fact she'd just torn her own wrist open. 'Ow, ow, ow, bloody ow. This had better work.'\n\n'Why does Alberich hate you so much?' Catherine asked, apparently feeling that it was Irene's turn to do some sharing. 'Couldn't he just kidnap any Librarian, if he wanted to take one over, rather than going after one as difficult as you?'\n\n'Thanks for the compliment.' More blood dribbled from her wrist. 'I think it's personal. Very personal. I've opposed him multiple times. I stopped him from securing a unique first edition which contained a secret about his Librarian background; I destroyed his plans to ruin or usurp the Library; I burned his private store of rare books\u2014'\n\n'You did what?'\n\nIrene sighed. 'You know, that's pretty much the way he reacted too. I wasn't exactly happy about it either.' The hairpin dropped from her fingers, slippery with blood, but the wound was deep enough; it wasn't going to close of its own accord. She shifted position again, wriggling so that her right arm was as near the edge of the circle as possible and cupped her hand to catch the trickle of blood running into it. 'Catherine, step back a bit \u2013 I'm not sure what effect this will have.'\n\n'What about you? You're right next to it.'\n\n'Your concern is noted and appreciated,' Irene said through gritted teeth. She'd already thought of that. 'Don't worry \u2013 if an explosion knocks me out, you can drag me to safety.'\n\nCatherine took several steps back. Then, at Irene's glare, a few more.\n\nIrene took a deep breath, readying herself, and shook the handful of blood in her palm towards the edge of the circle. As it fell, she spoke in the Language: 'Warding circle, break!'\n\nWhere her blood hit the circle, it flowed over the writing like mercury or like oil in a hot pan. She watched in fascination as the droplets moved, keeping their coherence rather than soaking into the paving. The calligraphy dissolved as her blood rolled across it, draining her energy until she sagged forward in her chains \u2013 barely able to keep her head off the floor. Words blurred into incoherence, sentences snapped midway, and still her blood ran around the circle. It overlaid the dark brown lettering, leaving a brighter ring of colour which continued to seep towards the outer boundary of the warding.\n\nThe line of blood seemed to hesitate for a moment \u2013 and then it surged forward, breaking the final line of text. The circle's power ripped apart with an audible snap, and cold air rushed around Irene as though a door had been opened.\n\nIrene's brain was spinning. She shook her head, trying to pull herself together, the blood still running down her arm and hand. 'Right,' she said weakly, 'let's have another go at this. Manacles, unlock and open.'\n\nThe cuffs around her wrists fell to the ground with a clatter, and Irene felt the almost-expected stab of a headache. She gratefully rolled her shoulders, then examined her right wrist. It didn't look good, but she wrapped a fold of her dress around it and staggered to her feet with an effort, aching from having been on her knees so long. She took one pace, then another, then finally crossed the broken circle.\n\nThe cathedral was still deathly silent. Where was everyone? Assuming this was the place described in Lord Guantes' reports, they must have put in considerable work to claim it as their headquarters.\n\nShe focused on immediate concerns. The first was to rip off the pendant around her neck. It was a single teardrop of cold black metal, inlaid with tiny lines of circuitry. She flung it into the shadows, unwilling to stay in contact with it a moment longer. But she kept the leather lace that held it \u2013 it was time to bind her wound. Leaving a trail of blood would be overdramatic, even for this world.\n\n'Can you rip some of the flounces off this ridiculous petticoat under my dress?' she asked Catherine. 'Good. Use that bit as a pad and wrap that section around my wrist. You can bind the lot with this.' She proffered up the leather lace, feeling a hint of satisfaction as she put it to a better use. 'Now, we need to find Vale and Kai. And Shan Yuan.'\n\n'At least one of them is being held prisoner down in the archive, but I don't know which one.'\n\n'Okay. How do we get down there?'\n\n'You can get in from a door in the cathedral's outer wall, but there are guards patrolling outside,' Catherine said, 'or we can use the stairs over there.' She nodded to a set of archways.\n\n'Right,' Irene said. 'Stairs it is then. Next item on the adventurous librarian job-description, Catherine: rescuing prisoners. Workplace assessment time.'\n\nThe joke prompted a flicker of a smile from her apprentice, but it didn't last. 'I'm afraid,' Catherine said, her voice barely audible. 'What if he tries to control me again \u2013 and I can't stop him?'\n\n'The important thing is to focus on a plan,' Irene said. 'That way you have something to think about, besides what's the worst thing that could happen.'\n\n'So has \"mind control\" ever happened to you? Do you have a plan?' Her tone was surly and challenging, but Irene could hear the very real need for reassurance behind it.\n\n'It goes a bit like this,' Irene said, as they walked towards the stairs. 'The first step is, I'll kill myself before I let him do that to me again. The second step is to say, Wait, it'd be much more practical to kill him rather than kill myself. And there you have it. A sensible plan based on logical choices.'\n\nCatherine frowned. 'But murdering my enemies won't work every time.'\n\n'True,' Irene agreed. 'There's a whole spectrum of other choices in this case. I'm sure you can think of a few. Blocking your ears, distracting Lord Guantes, whatever... But it's important to hold onto at least one thing that you can do to save yourself. It's much better than thinking you can't do anything. Trust me on this one.'\n\n'I'm not sure you're good for my moral development,' Catherine muttered.\n\n'I said I'd teach you to be a Librarian,' Irene replied. 'Moral development is an optional extra \u2013 get down!'\n\nThe huge window at the far end of the cathedral shattered \u2013 coloured glass burst inwards like the petals of an exploding flower as a giant glowing object roared through. The almighty crash echoed through the building, and from high above she heard bells, shaken by the impact. Irene knocked Catherine to the floor and covered her body with her own. She ignored the girl's muffled cry of protest as she tried her best to shield her.\n\nGlass fragments rained down, ricocheting off the stone paving to smash into ever smaller pieces. The projectile that had come crashing through the window shot downwards, air screaming around it as some sort of braking system tried desperately to reduce its speed. It skimmed along the floor with a long, horrendous shriek, scraping a deep gouge in the beautiful dark marble. It spun and then juddered to a halt, coming to rest only about ten yards from the circle where Irene had been trapped.\n\nNow that it was still, Irene could see it was a flying car of some sort. And it was on fire.\n\nWell, she could do something about that at least. 'Fires, extinguish!' she called, getting to her feet.\n\nThe flames went out like blown candles, leaving only wisps of smoke. Something inside the sealed aircar beeped in a melancholy way. From outside, through the broken window, Irene could hear the whooping of sirens and the fierce ringing of alarms.\n\nOne of the aircar's doors swung open, and Kai came stumbling out. He brushed soot and broken glass from his face, coughing, then turned to drag Shan Yuan out of the car. The other dragon was staggering and looked on the verge of collapse, cradling his left arm across his chest. Kai himself had a bandaged arm and multiple scrapes, but he was alive. He was here.\n\nIrene's heart turned over, and the sudden lightness inside her made her feel as if all enemies could be defeated, all ends achieved. 'I see you managed your own escape,' she said, giddy with happiness at the sight of him. 'Good job.'\n\nKai jerked as he heard her voice, turning to where she stood in the shadows. Dragging Shan Yuan along like an inconvenient doll, he strode towards her, his pace steadier with every step. When he was close enough he simply let Shan Yuan drop to the ground, lunging to take Irene in his arms. His grip was almost desperate, and for a moment they simply held each other \u2013 conscious of the other's presence, the other's life, knowing that in this moment the other was safe.\n\nBut mere moments, Irene remembered, were all that they had. She forced herself to let him go. 'We're on a deadline,' she said reluctantly. 'We think Alberich will turn up at midnight. And there's a prisoner below here \u2013 who must be Vale. We have to get him out of here before then.'\n\n'He's here too?' Kai's hands lingered on her arms. Then he spotted the bandage on her wrist and snarled in anger. 'Who did this to you?'\n\n'I did it to myself, to get out of that circle. It's not serious\u2014'\n\n'You always say that,' Kai sighed, subsiding.\n\n'And you always fuss over me. We need to move. I'll explain as we go.' She saw Kai and Catherine exchange similar exasperated looks, and made a mental note to discuss justifiable risks with them later. Because there was going to be a later. Oh yes.\n\nCatherine was helping Shan Yuan to his feet. 'I think you've sprained your shoulder,' she told him.\n\nHe looked down his nose at her and flexed his left arm with what looked like perfect equanimity. Irene identified this, with her practice at interpreting Kai's moods, as hurting but unwilling to admit weakness. 'Nothing serious,' he informed her. His words echoed Irene's own and she winced, but it was time to move on.\n\n'Let's go,' she urged them. Before Lord Guantes returned, before the guards outside came breaking in, before Alberich arrived... Why was she the only one who ever kept track of time during this sort of crisis?\n\nWith the ease of practice she squashed the unhelpful thought that the problem wasn't timekeeping, it was getting repeatedly drawn into these crises in the first place.\n\nThe stairs were made of the same slick black marble as the floor, and red lights glowed ominously from the ceiling overhead. While the stairwell's stonework was unexceptional, the experience still felt somehow organic \u2013 as though they were making their way deeper into a living creature. Cables ran along the ceiling throughout, placed as unobtrusively as possible, but clearly added fairly recently. Irene gave Kai a quiet update as they moved ever downwards, alert for guards and other dangers.\n\nPassages at the bottom branched off in three directions. Serpentine and reptilian figures were carved into the walls, emerging from the stonework like creatures from an ancient sea. In an unexpected yet extremely welcome development, there were actually signs on the walls \u2013 in Spanish \u2013 complete with pointing arrows. Irene found herself smiling for the first time that night.\n\nEveryone else had seen them. 'It must be a trap,' Shan Yuan muttered.\n\n'If this was a normal place of worship before the Guantes took it over, they might not have troubled to remove the signs,' Kai contradicted him. 'The question is, which way do we want?' He indicated the three marked directions: Crypt, Relics and Archive.\n\nIrene waved Catherine forward. 'Does any of this look familiar to you?' she murmured, remembering how the first iteration of Lord Guantes had mentioned the 'archive'.\n\n'Yes. It's the Archive we want,' her student confirmed. She indicated the third direction, the one with dolphins arching sinuously within their carvings as if trying to break free from the wall.\n\nThe dolphin corridor took them through several bends, heading further and further down, and the stonework seemed older as they descended. The ornamentation must have been added later \u2013 it was in Gaudi's distinctive style, like the cathedral above, but these dark stones predated Gaudi by centuries. The air was cold enough down here to raise goosebumps on her bare skin, but it also felt dead and dry. They could have been stepping into the past as they walked into the depths of the earth.\n\nThe corridor finally ended in a heavy iron-bound door \u2013 locked, as Irene found when she touched the handle. She gestured the others to stand back. 'Door, unlock and open,' she told it.\n\nIrene stared in delight as the door swung open and she saw what was on the other side. Common sense prodded at her to move, as she formed an easy target. But sheer relief held her in place, staring at what might be their way out of this nightmare.\n\nShe wasn't looking at a few worn books chained to lonely shelves. This archive was a full-scale, full-blooded and thoroughly packed floor-to-ceiling library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "'Right,' Irene murmured, stepping aside so the others could see too. The archive was a blend of ancient and modern. Leather-bound books shared shelves with modern ledgers, and computer screens could be found everywhere. Signage indicated some unusual categories \u2013 Theology, Witchcraft, Artificial Intelligence, Goetia, History, Heresy, Lives of the Saints... Some shelves were made of stone, some of wood. Others seemed to be constructed from modern plastics, metal, or some other artificial extruded substance \u2013 these shelves resembled crystallized oil. Distant fans kept the air moving, a faint whisper on the edge of hearing. There were no other sounds and no sign of guards, dark ceremonies or lurking nightmares.\n\nShe saw that the room was more than just a single space \u2013 it was a complex of spaces, separated by dark pillars like the ones in the cathedral's nave. These pillars rose to the ceiling, where they branched out to form organic abstract shapes. Looking at them, Irene was reminded of the way tree roots wove around clearings in a forest. Clear white lamps shaped like strange flowers hung from the ceiling; they dropped between clusters of cables which had been fastened up there, well out of the way of the books and the floor. Irene couldn't make out the far walls \u2013 but for all she could tell, this place extended the full length of the cathedral. Or even further. It might have been modified to echo the structure above, and had been filled with computers as well as books, but this place was old, very old indeed.\n\nShe felt wary, her instincts prickling uneasily. This felt like home. It was far too good to be true. Something had to be wrong.\n\nIrene pulled herself together and turned to Shan Yuan. 'I'll get you out of here.' This wasn't his fight, and Kai would be relieved to have his brother out of danger. 'Stand back from the door a moment.'\n\nShan Yuan's eyes flared red and he made a furious motion of negation with his good hand. 'Don't be ridiculous! Do you expect me to leave you here like this?'\n\nIrene bit back Yes, actually, I do, because she could see this would only serve to provoke him. Instead she said, 'Your highness, it would be invaluable if someone knows where we are and what happened to us. I can't send a Fae into the Library, Kai definitely wouldn't go \u2013' Kai nodded emphatically \u2013 'and Vale's still a prisoner and we need to find him.'\n\nThough not all of that was entirely true. Lord Guantes had said something which had given her a half-formed idea about how to finally get Catherine into the Library. But she was still waiting for it to crystallize, hopefully into a full-formed stroke of genius.\n\n'It makes no strategic sense to send away a quarter of your strength while still in danger,' Shan Yuan declared. 'I think you are more intelligent than that. Now, what are your plans?'\n\nIrene glanced at Kai, but his face was troubled. Clearly he didn't want to put his brother in danger \u2013 but he could see his brother's point.\n\nShe was about to suggest they start their search for Vale, when a murmur came from deeper in the archive. It was a faint ripple of noise, perhaps speech. But it was modulated like conversation, rather than a yell for guards or worse. Irene pointed in the direction of the noise, then touched a finger to her lips to command silence. Kai nodded and gestured that he'd take the lead. Irene followed, with Catherine by her side, and Shan Yuan at the rear.\n\nAs they edged past shelves filled with books and computer screens resembling blank reflecting mirrors, Irene was struck again by how abandoned this place felt. Lights burned \u2013 all night, apparently \u2013 and yet nobody was here to open the books or consult the computers. The Guantes had cleared this place for their own purposes \u2013 and then left the books unread, the archive unused. If she hadn't already been so on edge and so terrified, she'd have found this depressing.\n\nThe distant voices echoed again, whispering past stone columns like tree trunks. They formed an irritated point and counterpoint \u2013 statement, question, pause and response. Kai's eyes narrowed as he listened with his superior dragon hearing, and he turned to mouth Vale at Irene.\n\nThe light had too cool a quality for comfort. It was certainly bright enough to see by, but didn't have the golden warmth of sunlight or lamplight. It illuminated their surroundings, picking out every individual book title, every angle of keyboard or screen, but it made Irene think of the light in a laboratory where infectious diseases lurked in sealed cabinets.\n\nAnd then the voices came into focus.\n\n'You are a distinct nuisance.' That was Lady Guantes. 'You've attempted to escape five times now.'\n\n'And I assure you I will try again.' Irene's heart clenched with relief. That was Vale. 'But since you refuse to explain your plans or your motivations, I must find my entertainment in other ways.'\n\n'You're supposed to be the great detective.' Metal clinked against metal. Irene gathered her skirts tight in her hands to stop them rustling as the group drew closer. 'Why don't you tell me?'\n\n'I must confess there is one thing I don't understand.'\n\n'I'm sure there are quite a number of things you don't understand.'\n\n'Let us not treat each other as fools. We have, after all, been playing against each other for several weeks now \u2013 Madam Professor. You may have allowed your husband to take this role in public, but you were the one doing the planning. If either of us had been lacking in ability, our game would have finished a great deal sooner.'\n\nKai had come to a stop. Irene peered over his shoulder. The conversation was being held in a large open area ahead of them \u2013 well lit, perhaps ten or fifteen yards across. There was no way to reach Vale and remain concealed.\n\n'That's true,' Lady Guantes said slowly. 'So if we are so well matched, what is this one thing that remains obscure to the great detective Peregrine Vale?'\n\n'Without wishing to insult you, madam, you have a talent for organization which you have chosen to use for crime. Your abilities surpass those of other criminals I've matched wits with before. I will admit that our game has been a challenge, and one I've enjoyed. It drove me to act hastily \u2013 even unwisely \u2013 while attempting to bring you down.'\n\n'Flattery won't get me to free you,' Lady Guantes said.\n\n'It was hardly meant as flattery,' Vale replied. 'But it does beg a question. You could be an empress of crime, a genius coordinating your network across multiple worlds. Yet you insist on elevating your husband to this role, reanimating him instead of letting him rest in peace. Why, in a situation where so many Fae would seize the moment, do you hesitate and draw back?'\n\nIrene edged a little closer, enough to see more of the tableau. Vale was strapped hand and foot to a large table. It looked uncomfortably laboratory-like in its stark cleanliness, with run-off drains \u2013 for blood? Irene suppressed a shudder. Lady Guantes stood at the head end of the table, bending over Vale like a confessor giving a man his last rites. But instead of robes, she wore an iron-grey business suit and gloves. For some reason, they were mismatched, black on the left hand and grey on the right. Five computer tablets rested on gilded lecterns around the table, as if they were open books. Banked servers stood in the background, forming a coordinated circle of processing power.\n\nBehind the pair, on the far side of the space, a door was set between two stone pillars. It was out of step with the decor and made from pale wood. Irene could see it was marked with the Language, but she was too far away to make out the writing. But she didn't need to read it to recognize the threat it posed. Whatever it was, it was Alberich's work \u2013 and that couldn't be good.\n\nIrene weighed their options. It was at least five yards from the nearest bookshelves to the table and Lady Guantes was almost certainly armed. That would make a direct assault highly risky for Vale and his rescuer. The Language might work \u2013 but had Alberich set up protective wards? And Irene would need to take out the Fae near-immediately.\n\n'I could dominate a network of worlds myself,' Lady Guantes was saying. 'But my husband and I belong with one another, and we can achieve so much more together than apart. We nearly triggered a war between our kind and the dragons, after all... and I have learned much more since. So yes, I will pay any price to get him back, to beat death itself. To have him with me again \u2013 as he should be \u2013 will make it all worthwhile.'\n\n'I suspected as much \u2013 and I appreciate your candour.' Vale took a deep breath. 'Reconsider. Come back to London and forge your own path to glory. Take control of London's underworld. Challenge me. Or if you truly want to test yourself, challenge my sister. But reconsider your current course of action.'\n\n'What? For you? You're as vain as the stories say.'\n\n'For yourself, madam. I know what you're about to do. You intend to transfer your husband's personality onto me \u2013 a new attempt to bring him back.'\n\n'Your deduction is correct. The current version is growing unstable and his decisions are becoming unwise. Perhaps using you as a base will last longer \u2013 you have Fae blood, after all. You should be suitable.'\n\n'For your own sake, madam, stop this.' Vale tilted his head to meet her eyes. 'You'll never be satisfied. You can try to bring your husband back as many times as you like, but\u2014'\n\n'We're wasting time,' Lady Guantes interrupted. She drew a small gun from her jacket and set it against Vale's temple. 'Miss Winters, and your companions, do come out and join us.'\n\nIrene and Kai looked at each other. Was it a bluff?\n\n'Believe me, I'll fire,' Lady Guantes said, a note of weary irritation in her voice. 'And I am addressing all of you. You, Prince Kai, the other dragon and the girl.'\n\nIrene caught Catherine's attention, indicating she needed to see the time. Catherine showed her watch. Quarter of an hour till midnight. There was still time to negotiate. She mouthed Stay here to Kai, then stepped out of the shadows. 'I'm the one you want, aren't I? Let them go.'\n\n'I suppose I can settle for you. For now.' Lady Guantes didn't move the muzzle of her gun from Vale's temple. 'After all, we both know perfectly well that they won't leave as long as you're here.'\n\nIrene ignored that, asking instead, 'How did you know we were here?'\n\n'Do you honestly think I haven't been following you on my screens?' Lady Guantes waved at the tablets which encircled her and Vale.\n\n'I'm surprised you didn't send guards after us.'\n\nIrene was burning to use the Language to jam Lady Guantes' gun, or heat it up, or something... But it would only take one touch of the Fae's finger on the trigger to kill Vale, and even a single word might not be fast enough. Then her heart leapt; while Lady Guantes had been speaking, Vale had half-slipped one hand free of its bindings.\n\nShe sought for ways to keep the other woman distracted. 'If you kill Vale, you can't use him to house your husband's personality.'\n\n'I can find someone else.' Lady Guantes shrugged. 'Why so horrified, Miss Winters? Have you never loved anyone so much that you'd break all laws, natural and supernatural, to get them back?'\n\n'I've never been in that position,' Irene said truthfully. And I hope I never will. But she didn't want to explore that route to keep Lady Guantes diverted. 'Let me guess what's going on here...' she said instead. 'Alberich is helping you get your husband back, by somehow twisting the Language. That's payback for the technology you've procured for him, and for helping him access other worlds through his doors. He also wanted you to kidnap me, which helped you to pursue my fellow treaty representatives at the same time. And by killing them, you can look forward to the treaty failing \u2013 making your Fae versus dragon war an option again. Or is the treaty failing a mutual bonus?'\n\nIrene's speculation was keeping the Fae's attention on her; she hoped Vale would take full advantage of that. Perhaps Lady Guantes might even drop a few hints about Alberich's goal in all this \u2013 something that still wasn't entirely clear to Irene.\n\nLady Guantes' eyes narrowed as she considered Irene. 'We haven't hidden our motivations, so it's unsurprising that some of your conclusions are correct. Alberich and I both benefit if the treaty is destroyed. With two representatives dead, and the third one changed... Well, I'm sure you can imagine just how much damage Alberich could do, while wearing your face and your body. He isn't just seeking petty vengeance against you, you know. Once you've been \"compromised\" by him, he can have you betray everyone. Dragons, Fae and the Library alike.'\n\n'You said earlier that Alberich could use any Librarian for his plans \u2013 so I could betray a colleague to save myself.'\n\nLady Guantes shrugged. 'I lied.'\n\n'And you trust Alberich?'\n\n'I'm not so foolish as to rely on trust\u2014'\n\nBut Irene had done her part and Vale's wrist had finally slipped free. He locked his hand around the Fae's, gripping until his knuckles showed white, and tilted her gun away from his temple. Her finger tightened reflexively, and the gun fired: the bullet ricocheted off one of the pillars.\n\n'Gun, heat up!' Irene ordered, running forward to grab Lady Guantes' other hand as she struggled in Vale's clasp. Kai and Shan Yuan were also rushing forward to seize and immobilize the Fae.\n\nLady Guantes screamed as the gun in her hand burned red hot, still locked in position by Vale's grip. Pain gave her the strength to drag herself free from Vale, but she couldn't keep hold of the gun. It clattered to the floor with a clang, leaving scorch marks on her glove.\n\nKai grabbed her left arm and twisted it behind her in a half-nelson. 'Don't try anything,' he advised her, voice cold. 'There are limits to what I can pardon for the sake of love.'\n\n'The dragon's the one who has pity on me?' Hysteria cracked the polished tones of her voice for a moment before she suppressed it again. 'Very good, Miss Winters. Have your little triumph.'\n\n'Table restraints, open,' Irene commanded, and watched with relief as the bindings holding Vale to the table snapped open. Vale swung himself off the table with a nod of thanks.\n\nShe glanced at the Language-decorated door. Now that she was close enough, she could read some of the words. One was Alberich, positioned right in the centre, in the same shade of dried blood as the circle upstairs. Running out from the centre to the edges were dense patterns of words speaking of openings, portals and secure passages. Perhaps it would slow Alberich down if she tried to destroy it \u2013 or perhaps it would just set off another trap. She couldn't risk it.\n\nShan Yuan, meanwhile, was poking at one of the tablets. 'As I thought,' he said, watching lines of code and diagrams flash across the screen. 'When a body used for the programme is present in this world, its personality matrix is supported and maintained by this AI infrastructure.'\n\n'Can you sabotage it?'\n\nHe hesitated. 'We shouldn't be too quick to destroy this. It may have been put to evil uses, but this project has led to huge scientific advances; it would be a terrible waste to lose such significant discoveries\u2014'\n\nOne of the cathedral bells began to ring, a single deep note which hummed in the throat and chest, counting out strokes that pulsed like dying breaths.\n\n'It's not midnight yet!' Catherine shouted, as though her complaint could stop the tolling bell.\n\nLady Guantes began to laugh. 'Do you think I'm the only one who's been monitoring this cathedral? Alberich's been with us all this time. He's just... next door.'\n\nIrene opened her mouth to tell the others to run, but the room blurred around her. It was as though she was standing in two places at once, where one location was real and the other was a watercolour overlay. But impressions from the second place were growing stronger with every moment. She suddenly found it impossible to coordinate her steps, and her brain was telling her opposing truths: that she was standing on smooth paving stones and upon a rough, fire-ravaged floor. She was breathing cool, book-scented air and air dirty with ash and foul with decay. She was in a low-ceilinged room and also in a vast chamber, surrounded by scorched ranks of bookshelves that reared up to impossible heights. And she couldn't move. Her brain wouldn't let her.\n\nWith the slowness of terror, as the bell counted out another stroke, she realized not everyone was with her. There was Catherine. Vale. Lady Guantes. The latter had staggered forward as she wrenched herself free from Kai. But Kai and Shan Yuan were fading, the two of them becoming shadows in this new post-holocaust landscape. Shadows that were growing fainter with every second.\n\nThe air is thick with chaos and they are dragons. Maybe they can't survive in this place, Irene thought, her mind racing. Alberich has brought us here without needing a door, his link to this place is so strong. Is he overlaying his own world onto this one? This wasn't like any story she'd ever read, any myth she'd ever been told. She couldn't even deduce; she could only guess.\n\nIrene deliberately bit her tongue and tasted blood, wrenching her mind from the whirlpool of panic that was trying to claim it. The bell rang out one final shuddering time, and the second world came into full focus around them.\n\nThey were in a burned-out ruined library, with teetering shelves that loomed high above their heads. The ceiling was barely visible, so far above that it seemed to somehow blend with the sky. It was an impossible place \u2013 even more so now than the last time she'd invaded Alberich's realm. It appeared to be on the edge of collapse and final destruction, but somehow it still held itself together through sheer determination and spite.\n\nThe only figure in the whole blasted landscape, besides themselves, sat at a fire-scorched desk in a comfortable chair. He was wrapped in a monk's robe, his face lean and near-skeletal. And he was watching them. Irene was reminded of a judge waiting to give a group of convicts his final ruling \u2013 and their death sentence.\n\n'Welcome to my kingdom,' Alberich said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "'Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate,' Irene quoted from Dante's Inferno. All hope abandon, ye who enter here... She had to say something to stem her horror, as her guts were knotting with fear. This was her very worst-case scenario \u2013 coming face to face with Alberich, on ground of his choosing and with her friends as hostages.\n\nOut of the corner of her eye she could see Vale looking around speculatively, Catherine inching away from Alberich, and Lady Guantes distancing herself from her 'hostages'. But ninety per cent of her attention was on Alberich. 'Where are we?' she asked.\n\n'Why, my kingdom, my library. You've been here before, Ray. You do remember that, don't you?' His tone was teasing. He knew perfectly well she'd never forget it as long as she lived.\n\nBut the question Irene was most curious about was, If you're going to steal my body, why haven't you done it already? Any information on that would be useful.\n\n'Are we somehow in two locations at the same time?' she asked him. As long as he was talking, he wasn't killing anyone \u2013 and surely all villains loved to show off their plans? Even Alberich. 'Have you really managed to superimpose your kingdom over the Sagrada Familia archive? I've travelled between connected worlds, of course, but I've never heard of two worlds coexisting without one being displaced or destroyed. In fact, you were trying to replace the Library, using your realm, when we last met.'\n\nAlberich gave her a look which chilled her to the bone. She suddenly realized that she was doing the talking, and she should never have mentioned that failure \u2013 seeing as she'd orchestrated it.\n\nBut Vale stepped in. 'Science tells us that two objects cannot exist in the same place at the same time,' he said. 'So logically we must now be in one place, not in the other.'\n\n'Logic has its uses,' Alberich mused. 'However, you're not in full possession of the facts. Do you know who I am, Peregrine Vale?'\n\n'You are the ex-Librarian known as Alberich,' Vale answered. 'I trust you will forgive me for not recognizing you instantly \u2013 the last time we met, you were inhabiting the skin of a young woman. Is this your original face and body?' There was a curious intensity in the way that he was staring at Alberich, as though he seemed to know the other man from somewhere.\n\n'It is indeed. Well... a projection of the original, at least. I'm less physical than I used to be. You can blame your friend Irene for that.'\n\n'So you're the famous Librarian traitor,' Catherine said, with an attempt at bravado. Irene realized with a sinking feeling that Catherine had an important lesson to learn. One didn't insult an enemy when one was in their power.\n\n'I am,' Alberich replied, and he crooked a finger.\n\nA book tumbled down from far above, slicing through the air spine-first. It hit the ground like a brick a mere foot away from Catherine, then fell open to reveal pages full of incoherent words. Many were written crosswise to each other and seemed to promise unwholesome secrets \u2013 if only one could decode them. Another book slammed into the floor just in front of Catherine, making her flinch. She looked up at the impossibly high burned shelves, with their tottering piles of decaying books, and wisely bit her lip. She didn't look inclined to say anything further.\n\nAlberich nodded. 'Good decision,' he said. Then he turned to Irene. 'Don't let that give you ideas, either.'\n\nIrene had just been pondering ways of toppling the nearest cliff-side of shelving onto Alberich. But his ability to control the landscape \u2013 or bookscape? \u2013 around them, with no apparent effort, gave her pause. And unlike their previous encounter, he now had hostages \u2013 Vale and Catherine \u2013 to use against her. 'I'd rather not start a fight,' she said carefully, 'but if you endanger me or my friends, I'll have no choice but to finish what I started last time.'\n\nAll above and around them the shelves creaked as though stretching themselves. It wasn't reassuring. The scent of ash and mould in the air strengthened until it was nearly a physical presence.\n\n'Don't waste my time with your pointless threats. Last time you escaped by the skin of your teeth, and only because you set fire to my collection.' He waved a hand at his blackened shelves. 'And you have the gall to call yourself a librarian...'\n\n'Much as I hate to disturb this conversation, aren't we wasting time?' Lady Guantes interrupted. 'We have an agreement.'\n\n'We do indeed,' Alberich said. 'We've sworn oaths that you can't break by your nature and I won't break because they're in the Language. And you've done a great deal to keep up your end of the pact.' His tone developed an edge. 'But a Fae who has failed in the most important part of the deal shouldn't push her luck... Don't take it as an insult.' He met her eyes. 'But do take it as a warning.'\n\nLady Guantes tilted her head, the picture of control. 'I brought her here, didn't I? She managed to escape from your circle, true. But I was still the one who brought her to the cathedral, then lured her to the archive \u2013 ensuring that you could bring her here. I've done my part, and I expect my payment.' Her eyes flicked to Vale.\n\nVale didn't even flinch. 'I must decline,' he said instead. 'My presence is required back in London.'\n\n'I will, of course, consider your request,' Alberich said to Lady Guantes. He didn't bother answering Vale. 'But you must understand that my own affairs take priority.'\n\n'Of course.' There was a momentary flash of poison \u2013 no, of murder \u2013 in Lady Guantes' eyes as she took a step back. 'I can wait.'\n\nThat was acceptance... but not obedience. Irene wondered if she might have found a weakness in their alliance. Lady Guantes was an experienced schemer and a meticulous planner, just as Vale had commented earlier. She might have made a deal with Alberich, but an old hand like her wouldn't have relied on trust. Surely she'd have made a backup plan, in case Alberich tried to double-cross her...\n\nIrene tensed as Alberich turned his attention back to her. 'Why me?' she asked, her hands clenching nervously.\n\nHe understood her question without her needing to explain, and the light seemed to dim. 'Why you? Because, Ray, you've put yourself at the centre of this treaty \u2013 and have become invaluable to the Library itself. Possessing you will make it easy to bring them both down.' As he spoke, his fingers curled inwards, drawing into fists as tight as Irene's own. 'I don't deny that personal vengeance will be very sweet. But frankly, I might have forgotten about you if you hadn't become such a perfect tool. Possibly.'\n\nIrene swallowed, her throat dry, as a thousand nightmare scenarios played out behind her eyes. She had no leverage. If she argued that he had her now, so he could let her friends go, she'd just be inviting him to hurt them. She desperately tried to think of some way out of this, anything she could use to bargain with him...\n\nHer mouth settled into a thin line. 'Very well,' she said. 'Let's talk.'\n\n'Talk?' Alberich said lightly. 'I'm the one talking, Ray. You're the one listening. Or do I need to remind you who's in charge here?'\n\n'I apologize.' Lady Guantes wasn't the only one who could bite her tongue and be polite. 'Please go on.'\n\n'It really is a pity. You're cunning, duplicitous and capable of surprising feats with the Language. You would have made an excellent student.'\n\nIrene shrugged. 'There's no point in insulting you while I try to find a way out of this. The fact that I can't find one is, well...'\n\n'Horrifying, I hope.'\n\n'Perhaps you have a better vocabulary than I do.' Irene cast a sidelong glance at Vale, as though weighing her options, before turning back to Alberich. 'Can we talk \u2013 in private?' she asked.\n\n'Ah.' A narrow smirk crawled across his face. 'To convince me that you're ready to betray your friends? Lovely. Have you any comment to make, Peregrine Vale?'\n\n'I'm merely watching with interest,' Vale answered. His gaze moved between Alberich and Irene again. 'Don't let me interrupt.'\n\nAlberich raised his hand and the shelves shifted position, gliding across the floor as though on hidden tracks. Lady Guantes was herded to one side; Vale and Catherine to the other. Then he and Irene were facing each other, in a narrow corridor lined with burned and decaying books on either side. 'Well?' he said.\n\n'I'm interested in staying alive. What can I offer you?'\n\nHe tilted his head like a vulture. 'What makes you think I have the slightest interest in your offers?'\n\nYou're standing here talking to me, Irene thought, so there's that. If you really could just possess me, and it was that simple, surely you'd already have done it. She took a deep breath. 'Alberich... I realize you hate me. And I know taking over my body, and using it to destroy everything I've ever worked for, would be extremely satisfying. But under the circumstances, I may be more use to you alive than dead.'\n\n'So what's your offer?' His gaze was flat and gave nothing away. 'Are you going to go down on your knees and beg for mercy? Or are you going to say you'll be a willing host, if only I'll let your friends go?'\n\n'Something a little different.' Irene made herself focus on her act. She had to believe what she was about to say to be perfectly convincing. She had to lie as she'd never lied before. 'I'd like to offer you an alternative host, and my assistance in securing it. They're right here. It'd be easy. I'll cooperate with you, doing whatever's necessary \u2013 we'd be two Librarians working together, using the Language in tandem.'\n\nAlberich leaned forward, and she saw the flicker of eagerness in his face \u2013 not at her offer of a host, but at her betraying herself like this. He looked as if he was savouring her words, evidence of her willingness to debase herself to stay alive. He might claim his motivation in choosing her was pure pragmatism, but he clearly wanted to see her humbled. 'Go on. Which of your friends will you give up? Your student? Your detective? Your lover?'\n\n'None of them.' Irene's throat was dry as bone. She forced the words out. 'There's a second dragon here \u2013 Shan Yuan, Kai's brother. He means nothing to me. You can have him. Just let us go.' She could hear the panicked, begging tone that entered her voice as she uttered those last few words \u2013 and the humiliation of it coloured her cheeks.\n\n'It's true there are two dragons in the archive,' Alberich mused. 'Probably incapacitated, given the rising chaos levels... I haven't tried transferring into a dragon before. Do you really think I could do it, given that dragons are creatures of order?'\n\n'How the hell should I know?' Irene forced herself to lower her voice, to walk closer and lean on his desk. 'You're the expert at transferring your essence into other people \u2013 or even into worlds like this one. Why not a dragon?'\n\nAlberich leaned back in his chair. 'What will your lover say if you hand over his brother, so I can core out his personality like an apple and use his body?'\n\n'You said it yourself. He's probably incapacitated, probably unconscious \u2013 so afterwards, I can convince him it wasn't my fault. I'll think of something to say.' She was talking faster now, desperate to convince him of her sincerity. He'd called her duplicitous \u2013 and it was true \u2013 but this was her biggest lie yet, against her most dangerous opponent. 'How often are you going to get the chance to use a dragon? Wouldn't the body be more resilient than a human one like mine?'\n\nNow she could see the glint of satisfaction in his eyes. But it still wasn't the thought of a dragon host body that was pleasing him, if indeed he could use one \u2013 it was the sight of Irene abandoning all her principles. 'And if I let you live, and release you and your friends, you'll actively help me?'\n\nIrene swallowed. 'Yes. Yes, I'll draw a new circle for you, I'll use the Language \u2013 whatever it takes. Just tell me what to do. Just don't... not to me.' She let herself show some of her genuine horror at the very thought of being possessed and used as his puppet.\n\n'What if your lover does find out you cooperated? Will he still stay with you?'\n\nThat's exactly what you want, she thought. You love the idea of Kai seeing me sell his brother out, then him rejecting me \u2013 before you dispose of me in turn. Come on, please, take the bait...\n\n'At least Kai will be alive,' she said. 'And I never asked his brother to get involved. He tried to get me to leave Kai, he dragged Catherine into danger \u2013 and his family doesn't even know he's here. He's an acceptable loss.'\n\n'You're very convincing,' Alberich said slowly. 'Before I decide, tell me one last thing. How did you escape the circle? I set it so only my blood could break it.'\n\nIrene raised her bandaged wrist. 'I used my own blood \u2013 and the fact that we're both Librarians, so metaphorically related.' A Kipling quote came to mind: We be of one blood, thou and I.\n\nAlberich frowned. 'That shouldn't have worked.'\n\n'But it did,' Irene said, a little smugly.\n\n'No, really, it shouldn't. My work was far more precise than that \u2013 metaphors shouldn't have done the job.'\n\n'Had you actually tested it before, though?' Irene couldn't quite believe she was discussing this with him, as though he was a colleague. 'On other Librarians, that is?'\n\nHis lips smirked, but his eyes were hollow. For a moment his face resembled a skull. 'Oh yes, Irene, I have most definitely tested it on other Librarians. Shall I tell you some stories about that?'\n\nShe flinched. She couldn't stop herself. The mental image of other Librarians trapped as she was, waiting for their final conversation with Alberich... She should never forget who he was. What he was.\n\n'An improvement,' Alberich said, as though reading her thoughts. 'I shouldn't need to remind you of this again. Namely, that I am giving orders and you are obeying them. Otherwise, I will take your friends apart piece by piece, with you watching, before I deal with you. Do you understand?'\n\nIrene nodded.\n\n'Say yes,' he coaxed her. 'I want to hear you say, \"Yes, Alberich,\" and sound as if you mean it.'\n\n'Yes, Alberich,' Irene said through dry lips, watching him smile.\n\n'Very well.' He stood up. 'I accept your deal... if we can make it work. You do understand that if we can't, then you are \u2013 back on the menu, I suppose we could say.'\n\nMore than anything else, this confirmed her suspicions. If he truly meant to keep this bargain, he'd have made me swear in the Language. So no, there is no bargain.\n\nIrene didn't have to feign her nervousness; it was all too real. 'I get things done,' she said. 'You know that.'\n\n'We shall see. Now come, Ray. Let's tell your friends where we're going.'\n\nThe bookcases slid back, letting Irene see the others. Vale and Lady Guantes had apparently been talking. Catherine was prodding at the bookshelves, frowning at the condition of the books.\n\n'Winters, are you all right?' Vale demanded. 'You're as white as paper.'\n\n'We will be returning to the cathedral for a little while,' Alberich informed them. 'I trust you will find something to read while you're waiting.'\n\n'Wait,' Irene objected. 'I'd prefer it if Vale and Catherine came with us.'\n\n'Overruled,' Alberich told her, with an air that suggested he'd been looking forward to saying that. 'For the moment they're my hostages.'\n\nWhich was exactly what Irene had expected. Now she had to pull off the second part of her manoeuvre and get the person she really wanted. 'I'm willing to cooperate,' she said stubbornly, 'but Vale's health and sanity are part of the deal. If she stays here with him,' and she nodded to Lady Guantes, 'I'm not sure who I'll find in his body when I get back.'\n\nA little smirk curved Lady Guantes' lips. 'You underrate my patience,' she informed Irene.\n\n'Nevertheless, you may be useful.' Alberich turned to Irene. 'She'll return to the cathedral with us \u2013 and assist in the operation. Are you satisfied?' He was humouring her, indulging her like a child, as if he genuinely believed she was about to betray Shan Yuan.\n\nIrene allowed herself to look faintly relieved. 'Yes. That'll do.' In the back of her mind she ticked off one more item on her threadbare checklist. 'So how do we get back? Or if we're already there as well as here, how do we get to be more there?'\n\nAlberich smiled like a lecturer who'd been asked his favourite question. 'All those who have a certain level of chaos in their nature have been raised into my world. Basically, I pulled and you responded. The Fae, the human with more of a taint than he'd care to admit, the Librarian...'\n\n'As a Librarian, I'm not chaos-contaminated,' Irene pointed out.\n\n'How little you know.' He reached into the sleeve of his robe, and brought out a pendant, which he offered to Irene. It was the same as the one she'd removed earlier: a black metal teardrop on a leather thong, interlaced with circuitry almost too tiny to see. 'Take this. Put it on.'\n\nIrene knew what a dangerous game she was playing, as she took the pendant hesitantly. Perhaps this token signals my allegiance? Or is this the crucial element he needs to possess me...\n\n'I'm waiting,' Alberich said.\n\nShe could feel her pulse hammering as she met his eyes, knowing he'd see her reluctance. He's enjoying this. Jerkily she slid the thong over her head, feeling the pendant come to rest against her bare skin.\n\n'I have one myself,' Lady Guantes said, touching her bodice. 'A necessity, if Alberich is to move us between worlds or enable us to use his doors.'\n\n'Ah yes, the doors.' Alberich gestured again \u2013 far too dramatically, Irene thought \u2013 and another bookshelf slid back. This revealed a door, standing by itself in its frame. It was marked with the Language, the words a perfect match to those on the one beneath the Sagrada Familia. Irene wondered if this was the other side of that door. 'Walk through. I'll meet you on the other side \u2013 in my virtual form.'\n\n'We need to wait for the chaos levels to stabilize,' Lady Guantes volunteered sweetly, flaunting her superior knowledge.\n\n'Correct,' Alberich said with a smile. 'It's something like a canal lock \u2013 the chaos levels on each side have to equalize for us to pass through. The Language creates a solid connection between the worlds, while the computing power sustains my manifestation. But we still have to wait until the chaos levels stop fluctuating before we can pass.'\n\nIrene's heart sank. Kai and Shan Yuan were badly incapacitated within high-chaos worlds, and fluctuating levels of the stuff would make its effects even worse. This made it even less likely that they could help her with any plan she might have in mind \u2013 and Alberich knew it. He nodded her towards the door.\n\n'Interesting,' Vale said, breaking the tense silence. 'So you require a link to move your projection to another world \u2013 and without that you're trapped here?'\n\n'I'm a solitary and retiring man,' Alberich said smoothly. 'I don't like to go where I'm not invited.'\n\n'Isn't that vampires?' Catherine asked. She set her jaw mutinously when Alberich turned to look at her with a vivisectionist's eye. 'Don't tell me. You're the origin of all vampire stories.'\n\n'Oh, it's worse than that,' Alberich said. 'Much worse. Now, Ray. Prove you mean what you say. Go through that door \u2013 and get things ready for me. I'll allow your friends through when I'm... satisfied.'\n\nIrene didn't give herself time to hesitate, or to look at Vale and Catherine. She set her hand on the door and pushed.\n\nIt swung open into the room they'd left just a few minutes ago, though it felt like hours: the dark archive with its empty experimental table and shadowy pillars. Kai and Shan Yuan lay crumpled on the floor, shuddering as if stricken with an ague. The light itself seemed to have dimmed and become somehow less wholesome. Whether or not it was still midnight, the bell was still ringing far above.\n\nTablet screens glowed and then suddenly jumped to brilliant life as the door closed behind Irene and Lady Guantes. Irene caught images and lines of text flickering across their surfaces in columns and helixes. Other screens, deeper within the archive, lit up like distant polluted fires \u2013 flashing their own workings into the darkness. A singing hum rose in the background, as if some distant storm was coming ever closer.\n\nPlease, Irene thought, not sure who or what she was petitioning, or if this was an appeal to her own courage. Let Alberich be distracted for one moment. Just half a moment, just long enough...\n\nIrene grabbed Lady Guantes by the arm and pulled her close. As the other woman blinked at her, taken aback by the sudden aggression, Irene leaned forward and breathed into her ear, 'You perceive that Alberich has utterly betrayed you and destroyed your husband, and that you must take immediate steps to stop him.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "Lady Guantes pulled away, her face tight with anger and horror, but she also looked far from surprised at this news of betrayal. Most importantly, she still looked in control \u2013 like a woman with a plan. A Fae couldn't knowingly break her given word. However, if Lady Guantes honestly believed her bargain with Alberich was already broken, she could do whatever she wanted. And if she thought he'd destroyed what was left of her husband...\n\nThe Fae woman plucked the pendant from her neck, dropping it and kicking it into the shadows. Then she withdrew an exquisite mobile phone from her jacket and began tapping in commands.\n\nIrene desperately wished she could remove her own pendant \u2013 but that would alert Alberich. He'd be watching her more closely than his ally. Trying to ignore the pulsing lights, she moved towards Shan Yuan and looked for Alberich's projection. 'Alberich?' she called. 'Are you there?'\n\nThe screen lights settled to a regular glow and Alberich's shadow coalesced in the centre of the room. More shadows seeped into being around him, hinting at towering bookshelves and ruined flooring. It was as though the two worlds grew closer with every second. 'I'm most assuredly here,' he answered her.\n\nThe bell finally fell silent, no longer tolling out those deep notes that throbbed in her chest and throat. Instead, speakers formed Alberich's words; she could hear other computers echoing them in distant whispers throughout the room. She shivered at this, imagining a shadowy choir of lost souls. The air tasted ripe with chaos and the Library brand on Irene's back burned with it.\n\n'This is Shan Yuan,' she said to him. She considered prodding the sprawling dragon with her foot, but decided that would be overdoing it. 'As I promised.'\n\nShan Yuan glared up at Irene. His eyes could barely focus in the rush of chaotic power that swelled around them. And she was about to make things worse for him, as her betrayal would \u2013 had to \u2013 seem genuine. Yet if she didn't distract Alberich, and he noticed Lady Guantes plotting, they were all dead.\n\n'You did indeed promise,' Alberich replied. 'Very well. This confirms our bargain \u2013 this dragon's life for yours. Render him helpless for me.'\n\nKai lifted his head to look at Irene, trying to struggle to his knees but unable to raise himself from the floor. 'Irene?' he gasped, his voice uncertain as he tried to understand what was going on.\n\nLady Guantes was still typing, gloved fingers sliding across her phone's surface in a paroxysm of fury.\n\n'Trust me,' Irene said, desperation seeping into her voice, 'trust me, Kai, everything's under control, just relax for a moment.' She could see Alberich smiling. Yes, smile, enjoy it, gorge yourself on my despair, but don't look round...\n\n'I think I've changed my mind,' Alberich said.\n\n'Oh?' Irene said without much hope. There were still two other possible hosts in the room, her \u2013 and Kai.\n\n'Yes. I'll take your lover instead.' The pendant on her neck flared, hot enough to make her wince. 'Or you. Your choice, Ray.'\n\nIn the mix of emotions that followed, relief won. Alberich could be distracted by his own sadism. But how much time did she have? 'Fine!' she snapped, playing for even a few more seconds \u2013 she was relying on Lady Guantes to get them out of this. 'Take him, then. Better him than me. I'm like you, Alberich. I want to live \u2013 and I'll sacrifice whoever it takes to stay alive.'\n\nKai was still watching her, his eyes full of a trust she felt she didn't deserve. Her heart clenched. He thinks I'm faking it, that I have a plan in mind. But if it doesn't work, this is the last thing he'll remember me saying...\n\n'Perfect,' Alberich said with amusement. 'I wondered how far you'd go for just a little bit of hope.' Distant computers continued to whisper his words. 'Humanity is so adaptable. Now how far can I push you, before you reach your limits? Perhaps you should dispose of this one's brother first, to get rid of witnesses? If I give you a knife, will you cut his throat with your own hands...'\n\nLady Guantes made a final, abrupt motion over her phone and slid it back into her jacket, vengeful satisfaction on her face. Then, almost in slow motion, a horrified realization took its place. The Language's effect had worn off. The Fae reached for her phone again.\n\nThen the archive's lights flicked from dim to blinding, and the ambient whispering and humming of computers rose to a piercing shriek. It drilled into Irene's head and she pressed her hands against her ears. The books and papers lining the shelves shivered and trembled, stray pages floating out and down. Alberich's simulacrum froze, its colour draining to black and white like an old film.\n\nIrene body-tackled Lady Guantes before she could reverse whatever she'd just done. The two of them went rolling across the floor, Irene's long skirts tangling both their legs. Lady Guantes tried to struggle free at first, then attempted to incapacitate Irene by any means possible. She didn't waste her breath on cursing or calling for help. Instead she brought her knee up viciously, before elbowing Irene in the side of the head.\n\nThe blow wasn't enough to knock Irene out, but it made her dizzy. She clawed at Lady Guantes' eyes in desperation \u2013 and when the other woman pulled away, she thrust her forearm across the Fae's throat to pin her down. Lady Guantes slammed her right fist into Irene's side and, as she retaliated, Irene felt the bandage on her wrist give way and her wound start to bleed again.\n\nAbruptly the floor rose in a long ridge between them, forcibly separating them and throwing them to either side. Irene tried to stagger to her feet, but her head was spinning too badly and she only managed to get to her knees. Lady Guantes straightened, coughing and clutching at her throat where Irene had hit her.\n\nLady Guantes was closer to the painted door than Irene \u2013 but she couldn't silence her. 'Door, open!' Irene shouted, her voice cracking as she struggled to be heard over the scream of the computers.\n\nOther doors within earshot flew open, booming as they wrenched themselves free of their locks and slammed into walls. But this one, the closest one, the most important one of all, tried to resist her. Even frozen by whatever Lady Guantes had done, Alberich's will was still set against hers.\n\nAnd the pendant at her throat was burning into her skin.\n\nShe managed to stand and ran for the painted door, but Lady Guantes moved to intercept her \u2013 and fell with a crash, as Kai caught her ankle. As she passed, Irene kicked her in the ribs to keep her down and grabbed the door's handle with one bloody hand. 'Open!' she screamed, yanking at it.\n\nIt swung open \u2013 and to Irene's vast relief, Vale and Catherine were just a few steps away on the other side. Beyond them, she could see the towering lines of bookshelves were shaking. The air was now full of dust, falling books and churning swarms of flies \u2013 but her friends were there. Alberich hadn't killed them or imprisoned them somewhere, miles away. She allowed herself a moment of hope that they might escape this nightmare after all.\n\nVale and Catherine had clearly been waiting for any opportunity to get out of there. They both surged for the door and stumbled into the archive together, while the door strained in Irene's hands.\n\nShe let it go, and it slammed back into position. The ambient chaos was beginning to ebb within the archive, now the door was closed. As the two worlds slid apart again, it was as if a tidal wave had started to recede, running back down the beach.\n\nThroughout the archive, computers were shutting down, their blazing screens darkening to black and their whirring fans falling silent. The image of Alberich greyed out even further, blurring to static and then \u2013 finally \u2013 to nothingness.\n\n'Are you all right?' Irene began to say to Catherine, drawing a deep breath, but then there was a clanging in her head. It was louder and more discordant even than the cathedral bells, and she found herself on her knees, clutching at the pendant around her neck. It wouldn't move. It was fixed to her flesh. She found herself unable to form words \u2013 for all languages, even the Language, were beyond her grasp. And she could sense something, something horrifying, settling into her head like a maggot. She wanted to scream as she felt it worming its way into position and making itself comfortable. Lady Guantes had broken Alberich's other links to this world by shutting down his computers. Now he was clinging to the only link he had left \u2013 the pendant \u2013 and through it, her.\n\nShe tried to fight back, but she had no idea how. She could only watch in terror as the horror spread. The thing inside her swept through her mind like decay, its spores corrupting every helpful thought or idea into colonies of itself.\n\nBut if I can still think, then perhaps I'm still here? she wondered stupidly, as those very thoughts blurred and slowed.\n\n'Winters!' Vale had her by the shoulders and was shaking her, but she could hardly feel it. It was as though the sensations were being reported to her from a great distance. 'Fight back, woman. You've fought worse. Remember \u2013 you still have free will!'\n\nHow amusing of him to think so. That wasn't even Irene's own reaction. That was Alberich's thought seeping through her mind. She felt it split for a moment into a whole layered set of thoughts about Victorian Christianity, English hypocrisy... and the cold certainty that anything and everything could be broken if one had the right tools. Then it coalesced into a thin stream of mockery which ran through Irene's thoughts like metal veins in rock.\n\nCatherine tried to pry the pendant off Irene's chest, protecting her hand with a fold of her dress. But the pendant clung to Irene's skin as though melted in place. Irene heard herself manage to scream at last, but it was like hearing someone else's voice.\n\nAnd soon it will be, Alberich said inside her mind. It will be my voice and my body. With this body, I won't need Lady Guantes and her doors, and the Library itself will be mine for the taking...\n\n'Alberich!' Vale's fingers tightened on her shoulders, and he looked squarely into her eyes. 'You're there. I know it. Release her, man, or you'll have killed your own daughter!'\n\nInside Irene's head there was a moment of sudden baffled shock but at the same time there was comprehension. A dozen faceted thoughts tumbled through Irene's head, and she was no longer certain if they were Alberich's or her own. Daughter of two Librarians... didn't even know she was adopted... able to use my wards, able to break my wards... with her own blood... a good liar... cunning with the Language... looked me in the eyes, told me she was like me... should have known... could have guessed...\n\nBut she had no time to study the fragmentary ideas that fell through her mind like broken glass. Instead she formed them into a single connected thought with a surface as smooth and reflective as obsidian, and slid it between Alberich's mind and her own. She took full advantage of his brief uncertainty and his belief in Vale's lie. You. Me. Separate.\n\nThe pendant suddenly came free of her chest; Catherine dragged it over her head, hurling it to one side. Irene's back arched as she screamed again, as the last vestiges of Alberich were stripped from her mind, leaving her \u2013 her soul, she supposed \u2013 feeling agonizingly raw.\n\nThe overhead lights dimmed to blood-red and thick shadows cloaked the shelves and columns, as the tide of chaos finally ebbed to a level more natural for this world.\n\nIrene looked around, exhausted but taking stock. The inside of her head felt as if she'd had a particularly rotten molar extracted after a great deal of pain, but there was no time to rest. Vale and Catherine were nearby. Kai and Shan Yuan had both struggled to their feet, and now that the chaos levels were dropping, they were at least the equal of normal humans. Kai had Lady Guantes in an armlock, suitably restrained, with his other arm looped round her neck.\n\nAll the Fae's plans had come to nothing and Lord Guantes' stored personality would be lost, with their technology denied to them and no fresh host body to commandeer. Her expression was blank, as though some animating spirit had deserted her. Was this some side-effect of her broken oath, or simply the knowledge of defeat? 'I suppose you want a way out of here,' she said, her tone abstracted, flat, like a child repeating the rules of a game. 'We can make a deal, I'm sure.'\n\n'Irene?' Kai asked, his tone grave, and she knew what he was asking.\n\nShe didn't want this, but she couldn't see any other choice. Lady Guantes had defined herself by her husband \u2013 and by her need for revenge. Any truce would be temporary, or a lie, after what had happened here.\n\nIrene jerked her head in a nod, and Kai snapped the Fae's neck.\n\nIt was cold comfort to know that he'd taken Lady Guantes by surprise and it would have been over in a flash. This did nothing to ease the weight of what Irene had done. And it didn't help that neither Vale, Catherine nor the dragons uttered a word of blame. They hadn't made the decision. They'd left it to her.\n\nIrene looked at Lady Guantes' body as Kai laid her down on the floor, feeling the bitter knowledge that she'd murdered the Fae turning over and over inside her. Kai could shrug it off easily enough, as a royal dragon with a feudal upbringing. But Irene knew that she'd relive this scene in her dreams. This wasn't why I became a Librarian...\n\nThe sound of running feet \u2013 multiple booted feet, coming in fast \u2013 broke the silence, and they all turned towards the noise. That was their only warning but it was enough, when the first bullet came singing out of the darkness, for Shan Yuan to push Kai out of the way. The bullet took him in the shoulder, knocking him to the floor. A barrage followed, and they all scrambled for cover.\n\n'Guns, jam!' Irene screamed as she threw herself down and out of the direct firing line, and the bullets abruptly stopped. They were trapped in the middle of an open space, their only refuge being the experimental table and the painted door, and their aggressors stood between them and the nearest exit.\n\n'Hold fire!' That was Lord Guantes' voice. He was concealed somewhere among the shadowy shelves. 'Your guns won't work \u2013 use the gas.'\n\nThe Language couldn't repel gas effectively. 'Retreat!' Irene called, scrambling to her feet and pulling Catherine with her.\n\nGas grenades were clattering into the area by the table as Irene and Catherine reached the shelves opposite Lord Guantes and his men. Kai and Vale were a few seconds behind, supporting Shan Yuan between them. 'Which way?' Kai demanded, most of his attention on his wounded brother.\n\n'Straight ahead until we hit a wall, then sideways till we find a door\u2014' Irene started.\n\n'That's not necessary,' Catherine said, sudden certainty in her voice. 'I know the way out. Here.' She pointed with authority.\n\n'We need to escape this world, not just the cathedral, and neither Shan Yuan nor I can take our true forms. If we can't fly, how can we leave?' Kai's eyes flicked to Catherine, and Irene heard what he wasn't saying. We could all break out via the Library; she can't. We can't just leave her.\n\nExcept \u2013 perhaps \u2013 was there a way she could get Catherine into the Library? 'Run first, I'll explain later,' Irene directed.\n\n'Lord Guantes brought me down this way before and I remember it. Follow me.' Catherine led the way at a run, flitting between bookshelves and pillars without a moment's hesitation.\n\nIn the near-darkness the archive was harder to negotiate. Irene followed Catherine as closely as possible, unwilling to let the girl get out of her sight. Vale's lie to Alberich flashed through her mind. But it couldn't possibly be true, so she ignored it and focused on running. She could smell acrid gas on the air \u2013 not close enough to affect them, but close enough to remind her of the danger they faced. Lord Guantes could simply lock all the doors, turn off the ventilation and leave them to suffocate...\n\n'Over here... there's a door!' Catherine had just reached the edge of the vast room. She pointed to her left, at something Irene couldn't yet see.\n\nBut as the group surged towards it, Catherine hesitated and caught Irene's wrist. 'I'll leave you here,' she said. Her chin was set, her face full of determination, but Irene could see the panic in her eyes as voices echoed in the shadows behind them. 'Lord Guantes might catch me, but he can't kill me, I don't think... My uncle would hunt him down. Or maybe I can walk out of here to another world on my own \u2013 after all, I've seen it done plenty of times.' But Irene knew her apprentice by now, and she knew wishful thinking when she saw it. 'I'll manage. You go,' Catherine insisted.\n\n'Stay here a moment,' Irene ordered her apprentice \u2013 gripping her wrist, in case she decided to run off in a fit of heroism. Yes, Catherine had indeed found a door. It was labelled in various languages, Fragmentary Texts: No Admission. Well, a door was a door, and there were enough books in this archive for Irene to force a passage to the Library.\n\nIrene set her free hand on the handle and focused her will. 'Door, unlock,' she ordered. 'Open to the Library.'\n\nSlowly, all too slowly, the lock mechanism clicked open and the door shivered under Irene's hand. This close to chaos it was hard to make a door open to the Library. Hard, but not impossible, and she'd done it before from Alberich's own sanctum. With great reluctance it swung open into a well-lit, pale-walled room, its shelves neatly filled with black-bound books.\n\nThe light cast by the Library illuminated the darkness, a beacon for their pursuers. Irene cursed silently. 'Go through \u2013 now,' she ordered the men, then turned to Catherine. 'Give me your name,' she demanded.\n\n'You know my name,' Catherine began, then she stopped. 'Oh.'\n\nYes. Irene required Catherine's true name, and for a Fae that was a huge demand. It was a request for the keys to Catherine's mind and soul. But Irene had an idea which she thought might just work. Vale had been contaminated by chaos once, and Irene had taken him to the Library to save him. She'd only managed this by using his real name. For the Fae, a true name \u2013 given at birth \u2013 had great power. No powerful Fae would reveal it, lest it be used against them \u2013 and none would ever pay that price to enter the Library. However, if Catherine trusted her...\n\n'What if I don't want to give you my name?' Catherine said, looking into the darkness of the archive. 'I could run\u2014'\n\n'Then I'll shut this door and run with you,' Irene said. But she knew Catherine understood their chance of escape would be vanishingly slim. 'But if you can just trust me, I promise I won't use your name against you. And I think this might actually get you inside.'\n\nPerhaps that was what tipped the balance, besides the alternative being capture and possible slavery at Lord Guantes' hands. Irene was offering the very thing that Catherine had wanted so much, for so long. She leaned in close, her voice barely audible as she whispered, 'Talita.'\n\nIrene nodded, and stepped across the Library's threshold, still holding Catherine by the hand. They'd run out of time for half-measures. 'Talita,' she ordered, 'come into the Library.'\n\nAs a sensation hummed through her body, Irene felt that something had fallen into place, like a key turning in a lock. And Catherine stumbled through the doorway, her eyes wide with shock.\n\nIrene put one arm around her, holding her up. Or was Catherine holding her up, as her knees suddenly felt wobbly for some reason. Together, they looked back through the doorway into the dark archive. Their pursuers had found them, but were holding back, perhaps spooked by this door to nowhere they recognized.\n\nThen Lord Guantes stalked into view, and there was murder in his eyes. 'You\u2014' he started.\n\nI'm doing you a favour, whoever you once were, Irene thought. And now there's no Lady Guantes left to bring you back again and again. It's over. Her voice was tired as she commanded, 'You perceive that you are not Lord Guantes.'\n\nThe light streaming from the Library fell across Lord Guantes' face, and it revealed a sudden weariness. His features seemed to lack substance and reality now, as if Lord Guantes were a photograph fading out of focus. The shadow of another face appeared behind the one they knew, belonging to a different man. A man who now remembered who he was \u2013 but he was fading away, and knew it. That man inclined his head to Irene in a salute.\n\nAnd then he fell to dust, leaving only his clothing behind."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 27",
                "text": "Irene slammed the door to the archive shut. 'Close!' she ordered.\n\nShe turned to the others, to check they were all there \u2013 as though Alberich could have sneaked in and stolen them away while she wasn't looking. Shan Yuan had collapsed to the polished wood floor, and Kai was tearing his shirt to shreds to bandage his brother's bullet wound. Vale was still upright, but looked shaken \u2013 understandably, given what he'd been through. Catherine (better to think of her by that name, in case of accidents) still supported Irene, but her eyes roved avidly around the room and she clearly longed to lose herself among the neat bookshelves.\n\nIrene herself was still upright, alive and sane \u2013 relatively. It passed all belief.\n\n'I'll find the nearest terminal and ask them to send help,' Irene said, with a glance at Shan Yuan. He was conscious, but the glare he shot her suggested he wasn't happy about the way events had played out. Really, some people were never satisfied. He might have been kidnapped, imprisoned, shot and threatened with possession \u2013 and the obliteration of his personality \u2013 but he was safe now, wasn't he?\n\nShe stopped for a moment to touch Kai's shoulder, then headed into the corridor beyond. Vale was a step behind her, and Catherine followed Vale. That she'd been expecting, and she raised a hand towards the Fae girl. 'No. You stay here.'\n\n'But...' Catherine protested, managing to pack whole volumes of protest into one syllable.\n\n'I know you want to explore,' Irene said, striving for patience, 'but I need to report this \u2013 we've never had a Fae within our walls before. And I don't want to spend the next year hunting for you if you get lost.'\n\nThe look of enthusiasm in her apprentice's eyes made Irene realize she might have incited exploration, not curbed it. She sighed. 'Please, Catherine. Wait here.'\n\nThe or else in her voice must have got through, for Catherine slumped a little and nodded, rejoining the dragon brothers.\n\nRelieved, Irene went to look for a computer. She didn't recognize the corridor that ran past the room. It was floored with distinctive mosaic tiles, arranged in a tessellated gold and brown pattern. Candles burned in sconces along the whitewashed stone walls, casting a gentle, forgiving light. She picked left at random, and two doors along she found what she was looking for \u2013 a computer terminal.\n\nIt only took her a moment to send a quick email demanding help, as a matter of urgency, and she could then turn and face Vale.\n\nIt had been a lie. What he'd said to Alberich must have been a lie.\n\nBut in his eyes she saw something far worse than complicity in a game, or guilt at an untruth. She saw a cold, compassionate pity. She managed to get out, 'Why did you say what you did, back there?'\n\n'Be precise, Winters.' The candlelight emphasized the harsh lines of his face and body; a man of will and determination but little softness. 'Ask your real question. You will find it easier than your usual habit of avoiding awkward topics.'\n\n'Why did you tell Alberich I was his daughter?' She'd meant to keep calm, but anger and disbelief made her voice shake. 'I know it confused him and that's how I escaped his control \u2013 but why would you say something like that?'\n\n'Because all the evidence suggests that you are, Winters.' He sat down wearily in one of the chairs, resting an elbow on the table. 'You are the adopted child of two Librarians, and your parents have always been extremely reluctant to discuss this with you \u2013 they didn't even tell you that you were adopted until the information came out through other channels. Alberich had a child who was lost to him, whom the mother bore inside the Library. And you managed to break Alberich's warding circle using your own blood. You thought that you did it by exploiting a metaphorical loophole, relying on the metaphorical \"family\" of Librarians. But he himself said that should have been impossible. That only leaves a genuine blood connection with Alberich... which you could only have acquired through your parents \u2013 or parent.'\n\n'How did you know that? About the warding circle?'\n\n'Catherine told me.'\n\n'Alberich could have been wrong about the warding circle,' she argued. 'Just because he managed to create something doesn't mean I couldn't subvert it.'\n\n'To be frank, Winters, one of the most convincing pieces of evidence was seeing you both together when Alberich took the form of his original human body.'\n\n'You mean I look like him?' The idea was not only ridiculous, it was repulsive.\n\n'There is a... family resemblance.'\n\n'This is all complete supposition.' Irene wanted to grab Vale by the shoulders and shake him. Her hands curled into fists, and she felt the scar tissue which laced her palms. A reminder of the first time she'd encountered Alberich. 'Vale, you pride yourself on your logical deductions, but what you've given me is no more than a hypothesis. Two negatives don't make a positive. Just because I may be an orphan and he's missing a child doesn't make us related. It was just a lie, a very good lie and one that staggered him enough for me to break his link\u2014'\n\n'But you may wish to ask yourself why he believed it.'\n\nIrene remembered those moments when Alberich's thoughts were inside her mind, the way that they'd invaded her like the spores of fungus, like decay... and what his conclusion had been. Slowly, quietly, the foundations of her world began to fall away. She wanted to say that it wasn't fair, that it wasn't right, and that it couldn't have happened that way. But in front of her lay the clear and obvious possibility that it could be true.\n\nThat it was true.\n\nVale must have recognized her moment of acceptance. His shoulders sagged and she saw that he was as exhausted as she was. 'Sometimes Fate plays unkind tricks on us, Winters. Morally you are everything that he isn't \u2013 and yet, there is a resemblance.'\n\n'Then why did nobody ever see it before?'\n\n'Probably because very few have seen Alberich's original face.' Vale considered this, then added, 'And lived to describe him afterwards. Even fewer have seen him with you. Perhaps some of the older Librarians...'\n\n'They'd know. They must know. Even if my parents don't know where I came from, the Librarians who organized the adoption must have known...' She turned away and began to pace the chamber. She was remembering every time a senior Librarian had looked at her strangely, every time she'd been reprimanded for doing something wrong... everything seemed to signal that the whole Library had known except for her. 'I don't care what my superiors want any more, what they think would be best for me. I'm going to demand the truth \u2013 whatever it costs. Even if I have to leave the Library. I have to know.'\n\nShe took a deep breath and made herself stop pacing. Then she turned and saw Kai in the doorway, and her self-control went out of the window. She couldn't meet his eyes. For the first time she actually understood the impulse that made fictional protagonists scream they were unclean, damned for life, just because of some little problem like being bitten by a vampire or blackmailed for a past love affair. She didn't want him to know this about her. She didn't want him to have any reason to connect her with Alberich.\n\nAnd yet, she also wanted his comfort, his understanding. She felt her lip wobble and suddenly wanted to sit down, to curl in a ball and hide. She could talk to Vale about this rationally, or at least relatively rationally. But with Kai it was... different. He'd given her the gift of his trust. She didn't want to lose it. To lose him.\n\n'It doesn't matter whether it's true or not,' Kai said softly. He crossed the room and took her hands in his. 'Even if it is, you're not your father.'\n\n'You heard?' she faltered.\n\n'I heard enough.' He wouldn't let go of her hands, but he did raise them so that he could inspect her wrist. 'That needs bandaging again. Sit down and I'll see what I can do.'\n\nVale rose and placed his hand on Irene's shoulder for a moment. 'I'll see to the others, Winters,' he said. 'You stay here until you've got your breath back.' He left the two of them together.\n\n'But Kai, I need to report this... I must go back and help Catherine!' Irene's mind was spinning after Vale's revelations, and she needed the structure of her default position \u2013 taking charge, doing something.\n\n'You're in shock.' Kai backed her towards one of the chairs and gave her a gentle push. The chair caught her behind the knees and she sat down involuntarily. He knelt in front of her and began unwinding the crude bandage round her wrist, inspecting the wound. 'As someone who loves you, it's my duty to make sure you don't do anything now that you'll regret later.'\n\nIrene opened her mouth, then shut it again. They'd avoided the word love. It had been enough for them to know that they'd go into danger, risk their lives for each other... do whatever was necessary for each other's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. They both knew their superiors could order them apart, and that they'd be expected to obey. Irene might be assigned elsewhere. Kai might be also be posted to a different world, or ordered into a mating contract by his father. And even if none of that happened \u2013 she was human, and he was a dragon. He would outlive her by centuries.\n\nThe fact that they were together, that they'd somehow managed to reach this point where they could share a bed, a house and each other's trust, was more than Irene had hoped or dreamed. She didn't need to add the word love to it as well. Wasn't that too dangerous? Wasn't it tempting fate?\n\nShe wanted to cry. She bit her lip instead and stayed silent, looking down at Kai's hands on hers as he rewrapped her wound with another strip torn from his shirt. Her wrist ached. Her whole body ached. And her mind ached \u2013 both from Alberich's attempted possession and from what she'd just discovered. Here in the silence of the Library, at home, she thought she'd be able to find peace. But instead her mind ran in circles and she couldn't find a way out.\n\n'Kai,' she said very quietly, 'what am I going to do?'\n\n'Stop. Think. We'll find a way.' He shrugged. His arms were bare: he'd torn off his shirtsleeves to make bandages. 'You've already dealt with the Guantes and checkmated Alberich. This revelation is just the next thing, one more problem to solve.' He looked up at her and smiled. And in spite of the smoke and blood that matted his hair, the grazes on his alabaster skin and the tiredness in his blue eyes \u2013 or perhaps because of them \u2013 he was utterly beautiful. 'I know you, Irene. So do your friends. And if anyone tries to make assumptions, on the basis of blood or family, they will be badly mistaken.'\n\nBut what \u2013 the thought crossed her mind belatedly \u2013 what about her mother?\n\n'Is your brother all right?' she asked, trying to focus on something manageable.\n\nKai shrugged. 'He's unhappy. He really wanted that artificial intelligence research. He says he's going to apply to my father to have me removed from my post \u2013 for incompetence.'\n\nIrene sat up straight. 'Incompetence? He was the one who jumped in uninvited and almost...' She restrained herself from stronger language. '...made a big mess of things. You did an excellent job.'\n\n'So did you.' He finished tying the bandages. 'And you brought Catherine into the Library. An amazing job. No one else has ever managed such a thing\u2014'\n\n'Which means an even harder assignment next time,' Irene said with a sigh. But this was familiar territory.\n\nCatherine chose that moment to poke her head around the door. 'Are you up for answering questions, Irene?'\n\n'Possibly,' Irene said. 'Probably. What questions?'\n\n'Mostly, what's next?'\n\n'Right this minute? We wait for help to arrive. We have injured. Including me. On a wider scale \u2013 I'd say it's up to you.' Irene met the Fae's eyes. 'What do you actually want, Catherine? Are you still prepared to give up everything to be a librarian \u2013 or do you want to be a Librarian?'\n\nCatherine affected a look of deep consideration, but she'd clearly already come to a decision. 'I may have been a bit hasty before,' she said with the air of someone making a major concession. 'I can actually see a number of good points in being a Librarian spy, like you. As long as missions don't all end up like this. Of course, I need more lessons. More experience. Perhaps some more book-collecting expeditions...'\n\n'We can definitely work on that.' Irene let Kai help her to her feet, leaning on him, and remembered why she'd become a Librarian in the first place. Whether or not Alberich was her father, her love of books, her pure enthusiasm for the job, had been all her own. It was healing to see it reflected in her apprentice's face. 'Yes,' she said, squeezing Kai's hand and feeling the pressure returned, 'we'll help you become a Librarian.' She looked around at the Library, her home. 'Whatever else may come \u2013 that journey starts here.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 28",
                "text": "The heavy books were crowded together on their stone shelves. A fanciful bibliophile might imagine them fossilized into strata, forming veins of precious literature running through the rock. There were no artificial lights down here, but glowing translucent forms flickered along the book-lined corridors and illuminated the place, allowing a hypothetical observer to at least read the titles of the volumes they passed. There had been no attempt at organization or classification; this was a black hole of tightly packed fiction.\n\nSubterranean passages wound through the stacks. It was possible to lose oneself among books in multiple directions, up and down and in between, but the walkways finally led to an open space. This seemed incongruous when compared with its cramped surroundings \u2013 it was somehow larger than it should have been, with no discernible ceiling. The stonework that supported its sides was ancient, yet well preserved. The river that ran through its centre, before plunging into the hidden depths below, supplied a constant background murmur of sound. Two figures lounged at a table by the river's side, and a third paced nearby.\n\n'Well,' said one seated figure. Shadows trailed behind him in a long serpentine sweep, and yet more shadows crowned his brow with horns. 'Finally.'\n\n'It took them long enough.' The second seated figure was swathed in darkness, its face changing from one moment to the next, as though constantly shifting between a selection of masks. 'But certain criteria had to be fulfilled for us to move forward. First, we needed peace and stability. Next, Fae needed to be able to get in here. If we'd given them a nudge, prompted someone earlier\u2014'\n\n'We've discussed this matter before.' A brief thunder echoed in the wake of the first speaker's voice, rumbling in the impossible sky above. 'We agreed no interference. They can't be allowed to suspect anything until we're ready to move. The traitor showed just how dangerous that could be to us.'\n\nThe masked figure made a dismissive gesture; thousands of actors would have died with envy at the sheer perfection of the movement. 'That was why we installed the failsafe in their brands, remember. Though I still think that \"instant death\" was overdoing it. Triggering deafness would have been just as effective.'\n\n'But not as reliable,' the first said.\n\nThe third figure stopped pacing to approach the seated pair. Her robe was plain, her manner deferential, but she spoke with the ease of centuries of acquaintance. Her use of honorifics seemed more of a habit than a genuine courtesy. 'My lords, we've been through this so many times before. Does this mean we're ready to set things in motion at last?'\n\n'We're ready to deploy our agents, on both sides,' the second figure said. 'But what about the traitor? When he finds out that a Fae's accessed the Library, he'll know we're ready for our endgame. He's been a danger throughout, but if he perceives we're about to move...'\n\n'We could kill two birds with one stone?' the third suggested. 'The other Librarian's uncomfortably well informed. I still don't know why she was directed to the Egyptian document, as it told her far too much. If we have her dispose of the traitor, neither might survive the encounter. But even if she makes it and he doesn't, we still come out ahead.'\n\n'There's the risk of the traitor converting her,' the second said. 'If he can tell her his story...'\n\nThe first snorted. 'No risk now. He's put himself beyond forgiveness. Very well, I concur. And if we send her after him, she won't be investigating what we're doing with the treaty. She's the Library's official representative, so there's a good chance she'd be drawn into that otherwise. We need the treaty and the stability it brings \u2013 but we don't need her.'\n\nThe second slowly nodded. 'Agreed, then. But tell me \u2013 why was the Egyptian document marked for Library acquisition in the first place? We agreed centuries ago that nothing relating to our history should be brought here.'\n\nThe first turned his head to look at the third figure. 'You're the one with the closest relationship to the living mortals who work here. Why was it permitted?'\n\nShe spread her hands. 'I don't know, my lords. I regularly curate the acquisition lists to check these risks are managed \u2013 but somehow it slipped past. As to why she was given the assignment, I don't understand that either. I sometimes think...'\n\n'Yes?' the second asked, when she was silent a little too long.\n\n'I sometimes think, my lords, that the Library has a will of its own.'"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Archive of the Forgotten",
        "author": "A. J. Hackwith",
        "genres": [
            "fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "LGBT",
            "portal fiction",
            "angels",
            "Hell's Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\u2002This is my last entry in the Librarian's Log. I don't know why Brevity insists; I never wrote in here as often as I should have. I did, at first, and I have reviewed the entries from my apprenticeship to confirm how rotten they were. I was. I can't believe this damned book even kept them. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I'll be glad to be rid of this log: the nattering of the dead.\n\n\u2002That's not true. I suppose I should aim for the truth, now that there is so very little worth hiding. Let us try again.\n\n\u2002I am Claire Juniper Hadley, librarian of the Unwritten Wing. Like any proper storyteller, I have lied. I have plotted and hurt and lied, so many lies I can't even recall. And with those plots, lies, and little hurts, I tried to do right by the Library. However, the performance of my duties has been found wanting, so I hereby resign my post to my highly qualified replacement, Brevity. Who will, no doubt, blot out my troubled service with her brilliant care.\n\n\u2002Treat her well, old book. Or I'll come back and burn you too.\n\n\u2014Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 2019 CE\n\nThe arcane wing was a cabinet of curiosities. Libraries have a tradition of maintaining a curio, a house of mathoms, oddities, trinkets, artifacts of inquiry. As curators of obscure and sometimes undervalued things, librarians attract the unusual and misplaced. Hell's Library was no different.\n\nIf one was to be accurate, Hell's Library was slightly different. What Hell would find curious, others might classify as weapons of gibbering terror.\n\nClaire, for one, found it a refreshing break from books and authors. The objects of the Arcane Wing each had their own story, in a straightforward way. This dented crown was part of a dictator's deal with a demon, with its spot where his blood rusted through the false gold, stained when his people came for him. These ruby seeds, held under the tongue of a desperate child as she braved the underworld to find her lost brother. One is missing, accidentally swallowed, and turned the child to malachite. A sliver of her pinkie finger is cross-indexed three shelves down.\n\nEach item held a story, but the story was done. The End. The Unwritten Wing hummed with unstarted beginnings, while the Arcane Wing was sepulchral with artifacts of untold ends. It was quiet; terrible and quiet. And it left Claire feeling like one more artifact. Like her story was done and told. Here, the disgraced former librarian of Hell's Unwritten Wing. See her shadowed eyes. And here are the cracks in her soul, flaws in her craftwork where all the purpose has sifted out. See how she moves in endless circles to avoid collecting dust.\n\nClaire could have settled, and accepted her ignoble denouement, if she were not constantly being reminded of her ending.\n\nThe newest reminder sat cross-legged in a puddle of lamplight between tables. She was in the back of the Arcane Wing, which had been Andras's prison for Valhalla's ravens. When Andras had been Arcanist, the back wall had been a row of cages. Because libraries reflected their owners, that had all been smudged out of existence when Claire took over. Now, instead, smart hickory drawers lined the wall, each identified with a shiny brass nameplate.\n\nMost bore some variation of tea leaf. Even a dead woman was allowed her vices.\n\nBeneath the tisane collection, a damsel girl sat cross-legged, a mop of dark curls curtaining her face. She was a spry and striking shadow, dark as teak and fragile as blown glass right to the tips of her pointed ears. The romper she wore might have once been a pale gothic dress but had been efficiently stripped and tied above her knobby knees. She was a ghostly creature of bony edges, as if peeled out of a nightmare softened into dream.\n\n\"Rosia.\" It was helpful that the latter half of the damsel's name was mostly composed of a sigh. Claire rubbed her forehead. \"This isn't the Unwritten Wing. You shouldn't be here.\"\n\n\"I got lonely.\" Rosia didn't look up; all of her concentration was focused on prying the edge of her thumbnail along the dark varnish of the floorboards. Thin curlicues of flaking varnish next to her toe were the only sign of progress so far.\n\n\"How can you be lonely? You have an entire suite of other damsels. And Brevity. Talk to your friends,\" Claire said with as much patience as she could muster. She tried to keep her voice soft, a feat it wasn't used to performing. Once, she would have known how to handle a wandering character. A warning, a scalpel flick, and stories would fold back into the books that confined them. Back when they were simply that\u2014books to be shelved\u2014and she was simply the librarian.\n\nNothing was that simple anymore. Claire had been shocked out of her decades of denial when a runaway book had forced her to divert a demonic coup and face the cruelty she'd inflicted in the past. Books, and the characters that awakened from them, might not be human but were worth a little humanity.\n\nRosia's twin moon eyes blinked a momentary eclipse before she turned back to toying with the flooring. \"I am.\"\n\nNothing could ever be that simple anymore. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"I am with friends. They're so hard to hear, though,\" Rosia went on without acknowledging the question. \"We play hide-and-seeks. They always win.\"\n\nClaire glanced behind her, but she was patently alone. Damsels were not typically solitary characters, even ghost girls like Rosia. They were the hearts of stories that had woken up and had been allowed to remain as they were in the Library, instead of being shelved into their books again. It'd been a small mercy that Brevity had persuaded Claire into allowing when she'd been librarian. Now, under Brev's purview, the damsel suite seemed to have grown to an annex. It was a suspicious population growth, even accounting for the number of damsels and books lost during the siege.\n\nClaire couldn't say she approved. There was very good reasoning for keeping unwritten books asleep on the shelves. Woken up, personified, characters risked changing, and change was transformative to their books. They could warp away from the story they were intended to be, or just go a little funny in the head.\n\nClaire suspected Rosia of the latter, but it was hard to be harsh with a girl who was part moonbeam. She crouched down, attempting to be less of a, as Brev put it, \"boogeyman for books.\" \"This is the Arcane Wing. Characters don't belong here\u2014\"\n\nRosia's face crumpled, and she rapidly turned from eerie ghost princess to plaintive child. \"But you'll still take care of us, right?\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Claire faltered over the ache that knotted in her chest. Her voice was unsteady when she found it again. \"I'm not the librarian of your wing.\" Anymore. It made the pain worse to say that, so she didn't.\n\nRosia, if possible, fluttered with even greater distress. \"But you'll take care of them? You have to.\"\n\n\"Who\u2014\" Claire bit off the question as heavy footsteps creaked on the boards behind her. Ramiel came around the corner, clapping the dust off his work-hardened hands.\n\nHis rumpled trench coat was a shade grayer than normal, a result of a morning spent moving the heavier of the Arcane Wing's residents around in the archives. He stopped short as he spotted Rosia. The pepper-colored feathers peeking from beneath the collar of his coat bristled into a disgruntled ruff. He had the perpetual look of a toy soldier sent one too many times through the dryer. Rami frowned in a way that sent his stony olive-tan features rumbling to concerned peaks. \"Again?\"\n\nClaire rose to her feet and ignored the judgmental tone in his voice. \"Please help Rosia back to the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"Will you be speaking with Brevity?\" Rami asked.\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\nRami was an angel of few words but a whole catalog of looks. The one he sent her now was worth an hour of chiding in itself. His expression softened as he offered a hand to Rosia, crouching down so his broad shadow didn't seem quite so imposing. \"Up, on your feet, little soldier.\"\n\nRosia took his hand and reached down to pat the floorboards fondly before allowing him to guide her out. Her fingers danced along the shelves as they passed, but it appeared even the Arcane Wing's dangerous artifacts knew better than to harm one of her damsels.\n\nBrevity's damsels, Claire amended with sour impatience for her own brain. She followed Rami down the row and tried to amend his judgment. \"I am sure Brevity has her own people in hand. It's really not necessary.\"\n\n\"I'm a people now? Why does no one tell me when I've been promoted? We could have thrown a party.\"\n\nThe voice was too droll, too full of self-amusement, to mistake. Hero lounged against a table, having shoved a jumble of half-assembled (now utterly unassembled) bone relics out of the way to make room for the tail of his velvet coat. Claire hoped they'd cursed his ass in the process. Out of habit, Claire's attention went to the light scar whorling across his left cheekbone. It was a new blemish that Hero tried to downplay in his vanity, but it was healing nicely into a feature that humanized his otherwise eerie perfection, much to Claire's disgruntlement. Hero's assessing gaze flicked toward her for only a moment before settling on Rami with a light of interest. \"Well, look at you. So paternal and domestic.\"\n\nRami didn't respond, but Claire could imagine the pained tightening of his stoic face. Hero delighted in having that effect on people. She brushed by Rosia to shoo Hero off the table. \"Book.\"\n\n\"Warden.\" Hero managed to stand and make it look like his idea. He picked imaginary dust from the velour of his jacket. This one was dyed a royal blue that matched the fine seams of his ridiculously tailored fantasy breeches and set the red tones in his bronze hair glowing primly. Hero always looked one breath away from delivering a bon mot or challenging someone to a duel. \"Rumor has it you've borrowed a damsel. We're not a lending kind of library, as you would know.\"\n\n\"'Borrow' is not an accurate term.\" Claire twirled her hand impatiently, but Rosia seemed in no hurry to let go of Rami's hand. \"This is the fourth time in two weeks, Hero. Your stunt has obviously set a bad precedent for the damsels.\"\n\n\"I'm certain the women of the Library were fully capable of independent mischief before me, if your example is any to go by,\" Hero demurred.\n\n\"Yes, you just help it along,\" Rami muttered to the floor.\n\nThe smile Hero sent Rami was magnificent, shameless, and wasted, for Rami refused to look at him. \"In any case, my many charms are not why I am here.\" Hero turned no less a devilish look to Claire. \"Brevity's asked for you.\"\n\n\"No, she hasn't,\" Claire said automatically. She'd made a purposeful\u2014painful but purposeful\u2014withdrawal in the weeks following the coup that had led to the Library's shake-up. She'd stopped visiting, stopped answering questions, stopped having a say in the welfare of books. Brevity would never fully accept the mantle of Unwritten Wing librarian if Claire didn't provide the breathing room for her to do so.\n\nOf course, Brevity, the best-natured soul in Hell, had wanted the exact opposite. Claire had been forced to use brusque methods and harsher words before the Unwritten Wing had gradually stopped trying to pull her back in. Brevity got the message eventually.\n\nIt hurt, the silence. But then Claire was very skilled at finding the most efficient ways to hurt herself.\n\n\"The Librarian has requested conference with the Arcanist,\" Hero said in a withering voice that capitalized titles out of spite. He leaned back in order to more properly look down his nose at her. \"Is that formal enough for you, warden?\"\n\nClaire's cheeks heated, but she was well practiced at returning Hero's glare. \"You don't have to be an ass about it.\"\n\n\"I was just about to say the same thing! How delightful.\" Hero easily snaked his arm through the crook of Claire's elbow. \"And I couldn't help but overhear you ordering your gloomy feather duster in the same direction\u2014\"\n\n\"Feather duster?\" Rami objected, half-confused but certain of insult.\n\n\"\u2014so we can all go together! Just like old times. Except he's not trying to kill us,\" Hero amended. \"Yet.\"\n\nClaire allowed herself to be escorted out of the wing, if only to avoid impending bloodshed."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Claire had walked the path between the Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing countless numbers of times. She also hadn't walked it once in the last six months. She was almost grateful for the way Hero kept up an irritating patter of snark and asides, ribbing Rami endlessly and giving Claire something to focus on besides the familiar creak of boards beneath her feet.\n\nThe doors had changed, too, when Brevity had accepted the librarian mantle. They were cherry-stained now instead of buttery oak. It was a cheerier improvement, Claire thought, so like Brevity. The door was adorned with broad silver handles and a knocker that invited someone to come in, find themselves a book, stay awhile. Not that the Library had many visitors in Hell. Even fewer after the fire.\n\nThe Unwritten Wing had been quieter than ever after the coup attempt. Andras, the former demon Arcanist, had attempted the unthinkable\u2014taking control of the Library. He'd failed but burned hundreds of unwritten books on his way down. It was a scandal, even in Hell, and prompted even demons to stay away. Somehow the ghost of Claire's failure had musted the air like mothballs, no matter how much Brevity wiped down the shelves.\n\n\"Look alive, you brute. Your favorite is back,\" Hero said, insults rubbed thin with affection as they passed the giant gargoyle that kept guard outside the wing. It was dozing in a span of false sunbeam in its alcove and barely roused with their passing. Claire caught a flash of flower petals on its brow before the familiar dimensional vertigo set in. Probably one of the damsels had done that, though who knew where they'd have gotten flowers.\n\n\"Hello,\" Claire just remembered to say before the pause became awkward. The gargoyle's arm was gritty and reassuringly solid under her fingertips despite his non-euclidean angles. At least not everything had changed. The gargoyle gave an eldritch hum that made everyone wince, but it was a fond kind of abomination. Not everything had forgotten her.\n\nHero quickened his step to jump ahead and pull the doors open, keeping up lazy commentary that sounded more artificial than normal.\n\nClaire stepped through the entry and stopped. The doors had merely been a prelude to change. The stacks remained in their same general configuration\u2014branching canyons of tall shelves, spoking out from the lobby space in the middle. There was still the librarian's desk, as large and anchored as ever. The desk was the eternal sun around which the celestial array of the Unwritten Wing turned. But everything felt shifted out of alignment. The woods were stained a cherry color, and the brass workings of Claire's preference were gone. Instead, tiny little faerie lights raced up and down the vertical surfaces of the cavernous wing, lighting everything in a diffuse kind of cheer. Instead of brass rails keeping books from falling off their shelves like jailers, delicate wood carvings hemmed each row, almost like picket fences making a garden of the books rather than a confinement. The Unwritten Wing was still as large and echoing as ever, but Brevity's influence on the Library left it feeling almost soft around the edges.\n\nThe emptiness in Claire seemed to have taken up residence in her chest. She had thought the complicated dull ache she felt couldn't be dislodged, but when she focused back on the librarian's desk, her heart did a painful lurch up her throat.\n\nThe chair behind the desk was occupied, back to the doors. Perched at the opposite end of the desk was a spritely figure, head bent in conversation. For a moment, it was a specter of the past to Claire. How many countless days had they spent in that arrangement? She worrying away at her busywork, Brevity keeping her company with a steady patter of reports and idle chatter intended to draw Claire into something approaching human conversation.\n\nShe blinked hard, twice, and returned to her senses. The figure perched at the end of the desk looked like a muse but was not Brevity. This muse had a pin-straight fall of lavender hair, not a teal explosion. Wore ruffles instead of neon straps and pockets. Hero cleared his throat, and the chair behind the desk turned, disgorging Brevity as she leapt to her feet at the sight of the new arrivals. \"Claire! Oh, brilliant, you found them.\"\n\nThis last comment was directed at Hero, who sketched a sardonic bow that Claire would have grumbled at him for. But this was not her Library; Hero was not her assistant. Instead, Claire bit her tongue and drafted a smile onto her face. \"Brev.\"\n\nBrevity approached at her usual speed, and if she paused, hesitating on one foot long enough to flinch uncertainly before squeezing Claire in a hug, neither of them was willing to acknowledge it. It was a one-armed hug, the other stiff at her side. Claire tried not to miss it.\n\n\"Thank you for coming,\" Brevity whispered, and this, at least, seemed heartfelt. Claire smiled around the lump in her throat, and Brevity nudged her back toward the librarian's desk. \"There are introductions to make. We have a guest! Probity is visiting the wing as an envoy from the Muses Corps,\" Brevity said, introducing the lavender-haired woman at the desk.\n\n\"And as a sibling muse,\" the other muse corrected with a fond tone. She looked like a porcelain shard. Her hair softened the effect, hanging around her pointed chin in sheets of silk. It contrasted with her too-smooth mint-tinged skin and silver eyes set above precise cheekbones. Muses were the couriers of inspiration and naturally attracted to color. She wore a layer cake of soft knits: white cashmere over blue lace and yellow tatter. The bubblegum pink ribbon in her hair was clasped with a tiny bird skull. The effect was as if a porcelain doll had escaped the tyranny of petticoats and discovered the pastel goth aesthetic as an act of rebellion. She had a detached kind of smile as she nodded to Claire, voice airy with politeness. \"You must be the former librarian, then.\"\n\nClaire had the grace not to flinch. \"I am the Arcanist of the Arcane Wing. I expect to be pleased to make your acquaintance.\" She chose her words precisely, and it was petty, but Claire believed she could be afforded that much, all things considered.\n\n\"My mistake, Arcanist.\" Probity's head tilted as if she were about to add something more, but Brev interrupted with a cleared throat.\n\n\"And this is Hero. And Ramiel.\"\n\nTheir guest muse turned. \"Master Ramiel, shepherd of souls, it's an honor.\" Her face reshuffled into a formal kind of respect as she nodded to Rami and spared a little wave for Rosia, who was hiding half in Rami's shadow. Her gaze didn't linger until it got to Hero. Probity's eyes widened. \"Oh, this is the book? The book?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Hero hesitated as Probity straightened attentively. \"Or no. That depends what I'm accused of.\"\n\nProbity drew up close, peering into his face for apparent confirmation. She only came up to Hero's chest, so she strained to her tiptoes. There was a little awe in her voice, and a limpid amount in her wide eyes. \"You really are. Hero, the character that broke his own book. The book that's forgotten itself.\"\n\n\"Broken, that's me. Charmed.\" Hero cleared his throat, red in his cheeks. Evidently Brevity had not warned Probity that behind all the bluster, Hero was wary of strangers. He made to step back, but Probity clapped her hands abruptly around his face.\n\n\"Oh,\" Probity whispered with reverence. \"You're amazing.\"\n\nHero made a noise of stifled discomfort. Claire was about to intervene when Probity withdrew her hands with a blush. \"We heard so much about you, after the burning. The book so damaged to reject its own character. Do you...\" She stepped into his space again. \"Do you have it on you? I'd love to see it.\"\n\n\"A gentleman never tells. Quite forward, aren't you?\" Hero didn't jump back, but it was a near thing. He stepped sideways, placing the desk between Probity and himself.\n\n\"Probity gets straight to the truth,\" Brevity explained, and Claire thought there was a graphite streak of protectiveness in her light tone. \"You get used to it.\"\n\n\"Will I?\" Only once Hero was certain that Probity would not pursue did he straighten his jacket. \"I had no idea muses took such interest in lost causes.\"\n\n\"Those are the causes I have the most interest in,\" Probity said, smiling. \"I would very much like to examine your book someday, if you would allow me. Nothing is truly lost. That's just where the brand-new opportunities lie. Brevity taught me that.\"\n\n\"I did? Oh, I did. Probity and I grew up together. Back\"\u2014Brevity made a purposefully vague gesture\u2014\"when we were younger.\"\n\nMuses did not age, so much as they came into their innate nature. Young muses, from what Claire understood, often clustered and grew relationships around sympathetic affinities. A muse of Brevity befriending a muse of Probity made a certain kind of sense. Brevity did not like to talk about her past as a muse, and Claire respected that. It didn't keep her from eyeing Probity carefully. At least she'd drawn her attention away from Hero, who looked almost grateful for it. \"The muses honor us with a visit.\"\n\nA small crease appeared between Probity's brows, as if Claire had asked a question that troubled her. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Probity's an amazing muse,\" Brevity interjected. \"Her skill with inspiration gilt is better than anyone's, and the way she can work with even old gilt\u2014\"\n\n\"You remember that,\" Probity said with a soft color to her cheeks.\n\n\"Why?\" Claire asked, too sharp and too quick. Hell, her social skills had gotten rusty. \"Why visit now?\"\n\nThe blush curdled on Probity's cheeks and she frowned. Brevity rushed in. \"Of course, I'm thrilled to see you again. But the muses haven't been exactly... communicative... with the Unwritten Wing in recent years.\"\n\n\"And we regret the breakdown as much as we're sure the Library does.\" Probity's eyes flicked once to Claire, wary as a cat's, but then were all warmth and kindness for Brevity and the others. \"I am here because we thought, with the change of curatorship, we could make amends. Offer support to the Library and the books.\"\n\n\"Support.\" Hero repeated the word, and for once Claire was grateful for his prickly suspicion. He crossed his arms. \"Everyone seems so interested in supporting us since the fire.\"\n\nRami grunted his agreement, and the sour look on his face said he was thinking of Malphas, the entirely terrifying demon general of Hell who had visited Claire in the aftermath and instigated all the changes in the wake of Andras's downfall. To be precise, the books of the Library had removed Claire as the librarian, but it was Malphas who had delivered the message. Probity's genuine interest was a thin veneer at best, so it was no wonder Rami and Hero looked on any new offers of help the way one would look on a rabid raccoon playing dead.\n\n\"Hero,\" Brevity said softly. \"Don't be rude.\"\n\nClaire opened her mouth with a reply but closed it just as quickly. There was a precise tilt to Brevity's shoulders, and her hands bunched at her sides, as if cradling a small and fragile thing.\n\nClaire forced her jaw to relax, her tension to leak out. Probity seemed fond of Brevity, and if they were childhood friends she could imagine what hopes Brev might harbor about muses and the Library. And here her supposed friends were picking fights like alley cats. It was Claire's doing, and she should be the one to make the effort. She took a deep breath, swallowed her dislike, and held out a hand. \"Of course. As the Arcanist, I hope we can build a cooperative relationship with the corps.\"\n\nBrevity's smile was so grateful it made Claire feel even worse. Probity, for her part, considered Claire's hand with a doubtful hesitation. \"That is kind but unnecessary. The muses have no relationship or business with the Arcane Wing.\"\n\n\"Probity!\" It was Probity's turn to get scolded by Brevity's big eyes. \"I invited Claire and Hero up here to introduce you. We're all members of the Library. Claire taught me everything.\"\n\nClaire was watching closely, so it was possible that only she noticed the quiet anger that flinched across Probity's face, then was gone. \"She did. Even in the corps we heard about the former librarian and her methods.\"\n\n\"Probity,\" Brevity said, a little bit plaintively, \"Claire is a friend.\"\n\nFor her part, Claire held still, and all it took was a single finger raised behind her back to get Rami to do the same. She reviewed what she could surmise about a muse named Probity. A muse of probity would be a muse of rightness and moral justice, and, like all muses, would maintain a fluid identity influenced by the human world. Brevity had always been the domain of women, by matter of necessity\u2014less air to breathe, less room to speak. Justice, at the moment, appeared to be a pastel-colored woman with the grit of judgment in her eyes.\n\nWhen someone decided to hate you, for whatever reason, there was rarely any good in trying to convince them otherwise. Claire couldn't stop the old taste of guilt that rose, however. She hadn't been a good librarian. Not for many of the years of her service. She'd been miserable and cold and downright cruel to Brevity even, at first. Until Brevity had worn down her defenses.\n\nEvidently her temperament had gone uncensored, but not unnoticed, by the muses.\n\nThere was no fault in Probity's observations. It was deserved, and defending herself would only make Brevity more miserable, so Claire forced her lips into an accepting grimace. \"Yet I believe we can both agree that Brevity makes an excellent librarian.\"\n\nProbity seemed caught off guard but nodded once. \"That goes without saying.\"\n\nIt did not go without saying, judging by the way surprise slowly melted into a vibrating kind of happiness as Brevity looked back and forth between them. \"I knew you two would hit it off. Brill.\"\n\nClaire ignored the strain in that pronouncement. She could pretend, quite a lot, for Brevity's sake. She owed her that much at least. \"Of course. I did have some Library business to discuss with you, as a matter of fact....\"\n\nClaire glanced pointedly at Probity, but judging by their faces it appeared neither of the muses understood common concepts like privacy and discretion. Brevity straightened imperceptibly, putting on her very best serious face. \"Right. What's up?\"\n\n\"We found a damsel wandering in the Arcane Wing,\" Claire said with as much patience as she could muster. \"Again.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Brevity's face fell. She craned around Claire. \"Rosia?\"\n\nThe shadow behind Rami was empty. He frowned at it, then nodded. \"I told her she could run off to the suite when you two started... discussing.\"\n\nClaire ignored the pirouette Rami had executed around the tension in the room in favor of addressing her concern straight on. \"That's the third time this week.\"\n\nBrevity studied her hands. \"I know.\"\n\n\"If the damsels are unhappy\u2014\"\n\n\"That's a concern for the librarian, is it not?\" Probity interrupted quietly. She offered a harmless smile when Claire frowned at her. \"I mean, I am only a muse, but surely you have your own charges to worry about, Arcanist.\"\n\nClaire's title slid off Probity's tongue of polite sympathy. A syrupy quality of kindness that made her stomach roil. Claire pursed her lips. \"I did not cede my personal investment in the Library when I stepped down. If the damsels are not kept in hand, it puts the entire wing at risk\u2014\"\n\n\"Which is the sole responsibility of the librarian,\" Brevity said in a whisper. She was studying her hands, shoulders curved in like shields. \"I appreciate your support, Probity, but Claire is right. If there's a problem, it's my fault.\"\n\n\"That's not true. None of this is your fault; if she hadn't as librarian\u2014\" Probity started when Brevity held up a hand.\n\n\"I'll speak to Rosia and the rest of the damsels. Maybe this time they'll tell me what I can do to rectify the situation.\" She hesitated, glancing at Claire. Her cheeks were flushed lavender. \"Thank you for bringing this to my attention... and I'm sorry.\" Brevity abruptly walked past her desk toward the stacks.\n\nDamn. There was no end to Claire making a social muck of things. She started forward. \"Brevity.\"\n\nBrevity stopped short and turned, anxiety ringing in every twitch of movement. Claire chewed on her lip and sought the right approach. \"I know this falls entirely under your authority,\" she said slowly, \"but the Arcane Wing would consider it a great favor if we could assist with the Unwritten Wing's investigation of this issue.\"\n\nBrevity's shoulders sagged, if only a little. \"Oh, right. Sure you can.\" A sliver, a ghost really, of the old Brevity was there, easy and warm for just a moment before skittering from sight. \"Would you, um, like to...?\" Wiggling fingers gestured toward the depths of the stacks where the damsel suite was located.\n\nClaire kept her nod businesslike. \"Please lead the way.\"\n\nIt was a pantomime that kept them going. If Claire and Brevity had been intractable from librarian and apprentice, they had been forced to become someone else\u2014something else\u2014now. Arcane Wing and Unwritten. Duties instead of people. Claire, above all, knew how much easier it was to be a duty rather than a person. She also knew the damage it caused. She had worried at it but ultimately decided it was better than losing Brevity entirely. It was as much Claire's unwillingness to let go of the Library as it was Brevity's reluctance to step up, after all. They just needed time to settle. A quiet truce would eventually see them back to rights, or at least somewhere adjacent to it.\n\nClaire followed Brevity down the canyons of wood and leather that made up the Unwritten Wing. Her mind continued to tick and twitch, impossible to not note all the hundreds of little things that had changed. The Unwritten Wing was supposed to be static, a place of preservation, but nothing overflowing with stories ever stayed the same. Claire could see the ways the wing had softened and shifted to suit Brevity, just as the Arcane Wing had for Claire. The biggest changes were immediately obvious; the blond woods and frosted-glass globes were gone, warmed to a ruddy cherry and curious silver starburst lights that had the impression of orbiting, ever so slightly, out of the corner of her eye. There were more subtle changes too. The ends of the stacks were capped with loud paintings that appeared to shift and vibrate with just as much life as the clutch of stacked books nested against the wood. It made Claire flinch to see books stacked on the floor\u2014messy, loud, potentially damaging. Who knew what bad influence each story was having on others, fraternizing higgledy-piggledy like that? But Brevity never was as afraid of making a mess. Claire admired that, the courage to spill things, fix your mistakes, try again. Claire had never had the stomach for it. But then again, Claire's first mistake in the Library had been impossible to take back. A bit of murder had a tendency to make one gun-shy.\n\nThe hodgepodge tower of books seemed content, pages fluttering so lightly as to not even disturb the dust on the covers as they walked by. And content, stable books were all the Library hoped to achieve, Claire was forced to remind herself.\n\nThe entrance to the damsel suite, at least, had remained the same. The door was inset with frosted glass, behind which the low murmur of discussion, broken with occasional laughter, percolated. Brevity knocked twice before pulling open the door, leaving Claire to follow behind her. In the past, when Claire had visited the damsels as head librarian, the room fell into a curbed silence at her presence. Not so under Brevity's tenure, it seemed. Claire closed the door behind her on a clatter of buzzing conversation. Several of the women waved; one even whistled. The noise began to creep down by inches only when the damsels nearest the door caught sight of Claire. The energy fizzled out of the room.\n\n\"Need your attention for a minute!\" Brevity said brightly, not seeming to notice the awkward lull. \"I've brought Claire for a visit!\"\n\nThe silence turned from a pause to a flatline. Claire kept her vague smile in place and thought that perhaps Brevity was a bit vindictive after all.\n\nBrevity briefly scanned the cavernous room before frowning. \"Where's Rosia?\"\n\nA slender scholar at the nearest table shot her a confused look. \"We thought she was still with you. No one's seen her since last night.\"\n\n\"She didn't\u2014but an hour ago...\" Brevity sucked in a breath and turned, but Claire already had the door thrown open. Brevity sprinted back down the Library stacks, and Claire followed at a brisk pace.\n\nAt least, for once, they knew exactly where a runaway book was going."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "\u2002The Arcane Wing is not merely a cabinet of curiosities, though many librarians have treated it as such over the years. It's tempting to treat it simply as a storage room for the oddities of the Library, but that would discount the nature of physical objects in the afterlife. The items of the Arcane Wing do not end up there by chance. They were real objects, originating not in the afterlife, but on Earth. That would always carry a certain amount of weight. Pour enough of yourself into anything, and it will gain a gravity and gravitas.\n\n\u2002Like attracts like. And here we are.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE\n\nRunning with Claire out of the Library, past the gargoyle, and headlong into the next emergency was its own kind of comfort. It was familiar, like wiggling your toes into that threadbare pair of fuzzy slippers that you can't bear to toss out. It might have been easy to pretend nothing had changed, if Probity hadn't been there, a flowing blur of pastel and flutter in the corner of her sight.\n\nThere was no visible sign of Rosia as they burst through the Arcane Wing's doors, though the wing's sole remaining raven took flight with a riot of protests before landing on the tall shelves toward the back. The torn edges of Claire's dull tiered skirts fluttered as she strode in that direction, purposefully ignoring the auxiliary shadows. She led them unerringly deep into the wing, precisely to where the raven was squawking.\n\n\"I hear you, Bird. I hear you, damn it...\" Claire's voice clipped off abruptly, and Brevity collided with her shoulder. There was no Rosia at the back of the Arcane Wing, nor was there any floor. For a moment, it looked to Brevity as if an obsidian ice had taken over the floor. From the end of the aisle to the L-shaped far wall of old rookery cages, the entire floor was lost in black. Then Rami, Hero, and Probity clattered up behind them, causing a faint ripple at the nearest edge.\n\nThe ripples were too deep to be a simple spill. The wood paneling just suddenly... ceased to exist half a meter from Claire's feet.\n\nThe space had a rough two-meter radius, jagged at the edges with splintered wood. There were no struts, supports, or cobwebs to give the void beneath perspective. Brevity crept in for a closer look. She slipped past Claire to crouch at the edge of the fissure. It was a black, engulfing, depthless nothing that felt like it extended downward forever, until Brevity caught a flicker of movement. A glossy reflection of aquamarine hair and a pale face stared back at her, and her perception pivoted.\n\nIt wasn't an empty hole; it was a pool.\n\n\"You been doing renovations?\" Brevity asked, inserting a strained levity into her voice as she glanced over her shoulder. Claire had that stiff-shouldered stillness, frost on steel, that she got when she encountered something unknown. Brevity knew that look well. Claire hated nothing more than unknowns\u2014they were messy. Personally, that was why unknowns were Brevity's favorite. Improvisation was better than thinking through and giving time to doubt herself, any day.\n\n\"Obviously not.\" Claire lowered her voice, slightly aghast. \"She couldn't be\u2014down there\u2014\"\n\n\"Nah. I'm sure this is just a... whatchamacallit happenstance.\" Brevity's stomach churned on itself. Books couldn't drown, could they? Not down here, surely. The Library would have told her if that happened. Oh gods, if she lost a book, the Unwritten Wing would reject her. She would let everyone down. Again. A terrifying tension threatened up her throat and Brevity tried to take slow breaths.\n\n\"What is it?\" Hero asked with a hint of skepticism. \"I didn't think Hell flooded.\"\n\n\"If it does, it surely isn't water,\" Rami said under his breath, and Hero perked up.\n\n\"Hellfire? Acid? Oversteeped tea?\"\n\n\"It's ink.\" Probity straightened from her inspection, rubbing her fingers on her pants though everyone had sense enough not to touch it. \"I'm certain.\"\n\n\"Ink?\" Brevity's mind recoiled from the implications of that. There was no large amount of ink in the Arcane Wing, as far as she was aware. Ink was the property of books, of the Library. \"That can't be.\"\n\n\"Rosia?\" Rami breathed the possibility into the air and Brevity's thoughts derailed. She'd nearly forgotten what had brought them here. Probity began to shake her head before Brevity's panic could spin up, and she was immediately grateful.\n\n\"Not that fresh. It's ink, though,\" Probity insisted, before adding a little softly, \"I know a story when I see it.\"\n\n\"Well, that's a hypothesis that is simple enough to test. Rami,\" Claire said without removing her gaze from the wide well of black. \"Please fetch me a dip pen and a spare sheet of vellum.\"\n\nFor a big man, Ramiel moved with a cat's-paw quiet. He returned a few moments later with the items Claire had requested, and a small stool. He was such a different breed of assistant compared to Hero. She knelt next to the black lake, carefully dipped the glass tip in the surface, then straightened.\n\nUnder the light, the liquid on the glass pen nib writhed with colors, like in an oil slick. But to Brevity's eyes the colors slid and dribbled off the surface, like languid vapors. Blue and gray and weak green.\n\nProbity exchanged a quick glance with Brevity and the slightest nod to confirm she saw it too. Colors in muse sight meant one thing: the markers of a human story. Brevity's stomach lurched into gear. Somehow, the pool of liquid\u2014ink, if Probity was correct\u2014was related to the Library's unwritten books. That alone didn't scare her\u2014there were a lot of mysteries the Library didn't share\u2014but the idea that Claire didn't know was positively terrifying.\n\nBut then Claire, as usual, had taken the situation under her presumed authority. She spread the vellum sheet on the stool and bent her head over it. She touched the nib to the paper, and the ink bloomed black and innocuous at the contact.\n\nThere had been a moment, just before, when Brevity saw the disaster in the making. Assured the liquid was some kind of ink, Claire let down her guard. She shifted her three-fingered grip on the pen, dropping her thumb and forefinger nearer to the nib to take a proper writing position. The leading edge of her forefinger had a permanent shadow worn into the creases from years, decades, of ink stains. Normal wear and tear for anyone who worked with fountain pens.\n\nThe gesture was second nature to Claire. Brevity might not have even noticed if she hadn't been watching the lazy waft of colors rising off the nib and the way they sharpened to invisible barbs as Claire's fingers drew near.\n\n\"Boss\u2014\" Brevity warned. Then Claire's finger ran against a smudge of ink on the pen grip and all hell broke loose.\n\nThe blot of ink leapt off the page, recoiling back up the feed of the nib and toward the grip. A short gasp escaped Claire and she dropped the dip pen to clatter across the hardwood. Rami rushed to secure it against contamination, but Brevity could have told him not to bother; the glass nib was dry. Because a tiny droplet of ink pooled on Claire's out-held hand and wicked into the creases of her fingerprint. It propagated so fast, a deluge in a dry creek bed. Black raced in rivers and veins up her skin, sliding down her cuticle in a sheet and across her knuckle. More ink than could have possibly been in one drop, one smudge, or even the entire pen.\n\nClaire stumbled backward, and Hero jumped in to keep her from tipping into the pool. Claire's clean hand flew up, halting him. \"Don't touch me!\" The ink veined up her knuckles and across her palm. Claire dropped to her knees and her wide-eyed gaze sought out Brevity.\n\nFor help.\n\nBrevity was used to reading Claire's glances. Understanding in a moment what her intended order or judgment was. But a look of helplessness was not in Claire's repertoire. Brevity dashed forward, dropping to her knees and hesitating with her hands hovering over Claire. The unseen colors of the ink were lashing ahead of the march of black, as if anchoring and pulling it forward.\n\nAll of it happened in perhaps the half a breath since Claire had touched the ink. Panic constricted Brevity's throat and she resisted the urge to grab Claire's hand. \"What do I do?\"\n\n\"It's cold,\" Claire said with a clinical kind of horror. The skin of her palm turned black and oil-slicked. The ink swallowed her wrist in a seeping pool, increasing in speed. \"It's... loud.\"\n\n\"Do something!\" It appeared to be taking every ounce of restraint for Hero to stay out of range. Brevity glanced around and saw Rami had drawn his sword with a pained, stoic look. As if he was steeling himself to cleave Claire's arm at the elbow. Once he built the resolve, Hero would not succeed in holding him back.\n\nBrevity's gaze landed on Probity. She was a pale shadow against the shelf, watching with wide, wondering eyes. She'd seen the color. She'd guessed it was ink. She was a muse and she was here, and Brevity refused to believe in coincidences. \"Probity. Please, help me.\"\n\nProbity's gaze snapped to hers, blank with confusion. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Claire's arm turning black in lurching patches. The ink moved like an infection, like mold, like death. Brevity felt the air squeezing in her lungs with panicked gulps. \"Please!\"\n\nA magic word succeeded in breaking the moment. Probity moved, swift and decisive in a froth of lace. She ducked under Hero's arm and slid to the floor next to Brevity. She gripped Brevity's wrist and hesitated with a pleading look. \"This is going to hurt.\"\n\nBrevity could only see the black licking up the inside of Claire's elbow. She nodded her assent, Probity's grip tightened into a vise, and something set fire to her arm.\n\nThe world narrowed to a single glimpse of familiar inspiration gilt, peeling away from Brevity's raw skin like viscera, before everything swam to ink black."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "\u2002I have confirmed my suspicion that the first skill a librarian must require is complete and utter boredom. Brevity has set me to reading through the Librarian's Log at random, as if reading the whining and philosophical angst of my predecessors will teach me something about book curation.\n\n\u2002(Teach me! Me! I am already intimately familiar with books, thank you.)\n\n\u2002I had thought, at least, that I would be entertained by learning more about the warden. But the log, according to Brevity, has a sense of requirement to its indexing. There is no simply reading the log. The personal notes and errata are not reliably listed in chronological order; the best approach seems to be flipping open the book with a question in mind. Let the log show you what you need, the librarian says.\n\n\u2002No Claire details yet. Plenty of Yoon Ji Han essays on bookbinding, though. I think the log is broken.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Hero, 2020 CE\n\nHero was of the opinion that once decent folks began pulling things out of one another's bodies, one should take a second look at the decisions that led them to that point. So Hero considered all the (many) errors that had occurred. Questioned his choice of life philosophy that had a raven screaming its curses at all of them from overhead. He wrenched his knee terribly as he half shielded Brevity with his shoulder, putting himself in between her and her supposed friend, who had just ripped her tattoo from her skin. It wasn't just a tattoo\u2014it was shimmering, gilded lines of pure inspiration; even Hero knew that. It was the inspiration she'd been trusted with, as a muse, and tried to keep rather than surrender to a human. It was her reason for exile, her most treasured mistake, and Hero knew plenty about how important those were.\n\nClaire had not made a sound through the entire exchange. The silence was a prick between Hero's ribs. He wanted to see\u2014needed to see\u2014but Probity was in the way. He could only glimpse the scuffed toe of one sneaker, peeking out beneath a mess of skirts that lay still, too still.\n\nSteel licked against steel next to his ear. Ramiel stood over them with his broadsword leveled at Probity. The muse looked flatly unimpressed even as the tip of the blade began to waft blue flames. Rather calm, Hero thought, since Ramiel was absolutely terrifying when he went full Wrath of God.\n\nWell, Wrath of Hell now. Wrath of Books? No, that didn't have quite the right ring to it.\n\n\"Step back, muse.\" Ramiel's voice had gone cold and deadly as black ice.\n\nProbity did not step back, though she had enough sense to hold very, very still. The inspiration gilt writhed violently in her grip, glowing and slick with things Hero preferred not to think about. Her eyes seemed wide and bright as the moon. \"If I step back, the human woman dies, and my sister begged me not to let that happen. I can do so because I am very, very good at what I do.\" The inspiration twined, blood slick, to grasp at the air. \"And I will do anything for Brevity.\"\n\nBrevity slumped against his shoulder, unconscious, though Hero could detect shallow breathing. He risked a glance at what he could see of Claire. Probity had shifted; he could see Claire's arm now. Black licked up her forearm like serpents. He couldn't see if she was breathing. Her fisted hands weakly fell open. They seemed smaller, frailer, but perhaps that was a trick of the ink. It had to be.\n\n\"Ramiel,\" Hero said quietly.\n\nThe Watcher reined in some of his holy terror, but indecision froze him. The tip of his blade wavered. (Hero didn't have his sword. Why didn't he have his sword? People were always taking away his sword.) Then Rami dropped his arm into a wary guard.\n\n\"Save her.\" His voice was human again and rough as gravel.\n\nProbity was a blur of movement. She propped Claire's shoulder up\u2014taking caution not to touch the infected parts of her arm. With swift efficiency, she looped the band of inspiration around the leading edge of black. The ink appeared to react, surging under the edge.\n\n\"No, you don't.\" Probity muttered an incomprehensible word and executed a flourish that was too fast to follow, lassoing the ink back behind the line. She cinched it, muttered another incomprehensible word. The scent of cardamom and something else filled the air, making Hero's head go fuzzy for a moment. He blinked, and the inspiration encircled Claire's arm, just below the elbow, as if it had always been there.\n\nNo one spoke as the tendrils of ink collided with the band of blue, racing along it as if looking for a weak point. Every inch of skin below the band turned starless black. The neon inspiration shivered and then pulsed once. A skin of frost swept down the stained skin, as if the liquid was drying. Then the frost appeared to evaporate.\n\nClaire's arm stayed black.\n\nAnd Ramiel's sword was back up, advancing on Probity. \"What did you do?\"\n\nProbity had reverted from awe-striking competence to innocence and lace. Claire was still a limp weight in her arms, and Probity held her like a sack of grain. Hero distantly thought how she would never, never have allowed herself to be manhandled so crudely. The wrongness made his lip curl.\n\n\"I stopped the advance of the ink. Rather, the inspiration did,\" Probity said with a certainty in her smile. She tapped her fingers on top of Claire's blackened wrist. \"It's safe and held in stasis for the moment, though I'm not sure how we'll be able to extract it intact.\"\n\nThe violent impulse that bloomed in his head surprised even Hero himself. It was a cold kind of rage, the kind that must have been simmering under pressure for some time, but he hadn't seen it form. His hands were full of an unconscious librarian, or he might have done something worse than snarl, \"Who cares about the ink?! How is Claire?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Probity startled, appearing earnest as she blinked at Hero, then glanced briefly at Claire. \"I think the band should slow down any damage the ink was causing?\"\n\nThe muscles in Ramiel's shoulders bunched, causing the feathers sticking out from beneath the coat epaulets to twitch. With some great effort, he lowered the sword again and sheathed it. Hero saw him glance cautiously at the pool of ink. The surface was deceptively still and patient just a few feet away. \"Can we move them?\"\n\nProbity shrugged. \"Sure. This one will be out for a while. Brevity probably passed out from the shock. She should be fine when she wakes up.\" She betrayed her concern with the way she chewed on her bottom lip as she studied Brevity. But then she shrugged Claire out of her lap and might have damn well let her fall had Rami not jumped in to take her.\n\nRami adjusted Claire into a bridal carry with significantly more care and respect. Black fingertips brushed against Ramiel's coat and Hero flinched instinctively, but the ink didn't jump or spread. Probity had been accurate in her clinical assessment, at least that far.\n\nProbity came over to Hero's side and fussed briefly over Brevity. The snarling defensive impulse was still jumping underneath Hero's skin, so he was very glad when Ramiel checked Claire's pulse and met his gaze with a silent nod.\n\nHero wasted no time rising to his feet with Brevity in his arms and executing a graceful turn that might have accidentally whacked Probity in the face with his elbow. The raven was still cussing up a storm over their heads and seemed to follow them down the aisle to the Arcane Wing doors.\n\nHero led the way, a little relieved to have Probity at his back in order to cool his strange rage. It felt like a silent agreement that they should get Claire and Brevity back to the Unwritten Wing, where they could rest in safety and as far away from the black pool as possible.\n\nThe pool wasn't just black. It was a reservoir of unwritten ink, if Probity was right. The strange wonder of that warred with the gnawing fear of what had just happened\u2014had almost happened. Hero navigated the hallways in a daze as he tried to make that align in his head. And it occurred to Hero that not once, throughout the entire ordeal, had Probity referred to Claire by her name."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "News traveled fast among the damsels. It traveled even faster when related by Rosia, who had not drowned but instead burst into the damsel suite sobbing about ghosts. Half the Library\u2014at least, half of the characters that were up and walking around\u2014was assembled in the lobby when they arrived. The damsels took charge immediately, ensconcing Claire and Brevity in the suite itself and kicking Probity, Ramiel, and Hero out with the efficiency of hardened combat medics.\n\nDamsels were really astonishingly, aggressively pushy, in Hero's opinion.\n\nStill, it allowed him a moment to reassemble himself. He accepted a cup of tea from a helpful damsel\u2014young boy, monk's robes, probably some failed author's idea of a mystical sidekick, poor kid\u2014and sank back in his chair. Brooding didn't come naturally to him, but thankfully Probity had disappeared into the stacks and left him with only Rami for company, grand king of the brooders. They swam in the relative silence for the length of half a cup of tea.\n\nIt was a disappointment but not a surprise when Ramiel's cup landed heavily on the table with a click. \"We have a problem.\" He met Hero's gaze with earnest not-quite-silver eyes.\n\nHero was distantly aware that there was some technical difference between an angel and a Watcher, but whatever it was, it was lost on him. Ramiel might not have had the Heavenly refinement and light of angels in books, but there was no mistaking what he was. Being near Ramiel was like trying to stand next to the sun. Immortal creatures like angels had their own gravity, and Hero constantly felt the subtle tug around Ramiel. Hero's usual nature was about as biddable as a cat with a migraine, and the feeling of an eternal slow draw irritated and got under his skin. This only served to make Hero even less prone to charity than usual.\n\n\"My word, is that the stunning conclusion you've come to?\" Hero let his voice drip with mockery. It was easier to pick a target\u2014any target\u2014than to try to figure out what the existence of ink and Claire's unknown condition meant to himself or the future of his book. He rolled the teacup in his palms. \"Heaven truly lost a master strategist when you fell.\"\n\n\"I was a soldier,\" Ramiel said simply. He didn't rise to the bait; he never did. He had an infuriating habit of looking at Hero, obviously finding him wanting, and gliding past as if he and he alone had some greater purpose. As if an insult from Hero was not even worth his concern.\n\nHero's insults were worth a king's ransom, damn it. It was perhaps the only value he could rely on these days.\n\nWhatever Ramiel had been, he was an assistant now, just like Hero. That made them vaguely equals, he reminded himself. Allies, even. That moment with Rami backing him up with Probity had been nice. Had potential. Somewhere in the back of Hero's mind was a distant plan starting to shuffle into view, but it veered too close to thinking about things he didn't want to consider right now. He set it aside in favor of prodding the fallen angel.\n\n\"And I was a rebellion leader and a king, facts that did no one a flick of good when magic ink we don't understand decided to start eating our Arcanist.\" That sentence had lost steam somewhere in the middle, and rather than feeling like a vicious stab, it just left Hero with a queasy feeling of worry. It was an unnatural and unwelcome sensation. Another thing to blame Claire for, when she woke up.\n\nIf there was a sport he had trained for, it was guilt bearing. Rami heaved a sigh, proving he was already the champion. \"You're right, for once.\" He leaned forward, intent. \"So, what is it?\"\n\nHero choked on his tea. \"What is what?\"\n\n\"The ink.\" Rami's brows created great trenches of concern above his silver eyes. It was unnerving when they focused entirely on you. \"The muse seemed to think it was ink. Ink is the thing of books. So how does it work...?\"\n\nSurely Hero must have the answers. What kind of book didn't know what he was made of, after all? Perhaps it was like other things he knew without knowing: the shape of a story, the wrongness of his book without him, the shiver a book had when it was close to waking up a character. He thought about the ink and reached for that well of intuition that always spouted up, from nowhere, to catch him where he fell short.\n\nNothing caught this particular free fall. He knew nothing. He knew nothing at all. The idea that a story survived in the ink was no more or less ridiculous than anything else he'd suffered, but it stung somehow. He should know. What kind of character was he? Hero covered the dip in his stomach with a scoff and drained the last of his tea in one swig. \"It's a ridiculous question. Shall I ask you how your feathers work?\"\n\nRami's mood lightened to something approaching earnest interest. \"Celestial dynamics is straightforward to understand, really. If you compare it to the aerodynamics of earth-born birds\u2014\"\n\n\"Please stop talking.\" Hero buried his face in his hands. Everyone told him to do the same often enough: stop talking. This was a punishment, wasn't it? Was he being punished? Taunted by an ignorant angelic jock and a pool of black liquid potential that should have shown him a reflection where he only saw a question mark? It was wicked and devious, even for Hell.\n\nHero considered it a minor miracle, then, when Brevity burst out of the gloom of the stacks like an ambitious sunrise, trailed by a curious gaggle of muses and\u2014the knot in Hero's chest eased a little\u2014a drawn-looking Claire. Ink-stained, hunted-looking, but awake.\n\n\"Claire's okay, I'm okay, et cetera and so on\u2014\" Brevity impatiently headed off their questions. \"We got an idea. A really awful idea, but, well\u2014 Rami, Hero, on your feet.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "\u2002Repaired another cover today. The leather had begun to wear along the rail line. I wonder why the books choose leather. It's not as if there are hell-cows for hide, are there? (Are there?) They could be clapboard- or linen-covered hardbacks or\u2014saints forbid\u2014paperback. But it's leather, tanned leather.\n\n\u2002An early method of preparing leather for book covers was to cure it covered in wet tea leaves and bark\u2014tanning comes from the word \"tannins.\" Tea and words have always been steeped together, down to the bones. I preferred coffee when I was alive, but Claire drinks this stuff by the pot: to refresh, to fortify, she says. Maybe the English knew something about the Library after all. We're preserving ourselves from the inside, sip by sip.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1987 CE\n\nRegaining consciousness was a scandal. Claire did not so much wake up as fling herself from one awareness to another. She jolted upright and was only stopped from falling over again by a pair of gentle hands. Fire thudded from her head and dribbled through every joint. It was as if every ache and pain of normal aging Claire had been spared for the last thirty years had come home to roost. \"Oh, hellfire and harpies.\" She rubbed her wrists tenderly. One was bandaged; that was to be expected. \"Someone get me a hot compress and half a bottle of paracetamol.\"\n\nClaire knew Hell had no such thing. She had honestly expected Brevity and a clatter of teacups, not a weary sigh and a low voice full of amusement.\n\n\"If only I could.\"\n\nClaire abruptly forgot about her joint pain. The hold on her shoulders was the only thing that kept her reclined on the couch. The cushions beneath her had a familiar feel, and Claire's careening mind distantly placed it as a piece of Library furniture. Which did not mesh with the sight of Beatrice perched on the edge looking wary as a feral cat.\n\n\"Beatrice.\" Claire struggled not to reel again. \"What\u2014 You are in Malta. You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"I really can't,\" Beatrice agreed amiably. Claire's unwritten character wore the same rumpled suit vest she'd had on when Claire had seen her last in Malta, sans the dirt and blood. Beatrice appeared perfectly recovered from the adventure that had left her on Earth, hair swept in that careless crop of curls that looked soft enough to make Claire's fingers ache again. There was a smudged look about her, an air Claire couldn't quite place, though she tried. Beatrice tucked the blanket back around Claire's lap while simultaneously giving her the chance to gawk.\n\n\"You can't\u2014\" Claire repeated, finally taking in her surroundings. They were in the damsel suite, which showed signs of swift evacuation. Open books and half-eaten nibbles were strewn across the tables, and on the end table nearest her, steam still wafted faintly from an overbrewed cup of tea. Claire rescued the strainer on impulse, though the tea had obviously gone bitter. She stuck her finger in her mouth, allowing the acidic bite of the tannins to try to clear her head.\n\n\"I was arguing with Brevity, there was a\u2014 Oh gods, we fought\u2014and the ink\u2014\" Claire jerked her hands up. Her right hand was swaddled in a tea towel. Claire wiggled her fingers free. The entire fingertip, skin, nail, and all, was stained black. It had a shine to it, an oil-slick feel as if it were still wet, though when she wiped her index finger on the tea cloth, nothing was left behind.\n\n\"I touched the ink. This stain...\" Claire said blankly. She peeled back the towel, following the discoloration up, over her knuckles, past her wrist, until it came to an abrupt halt just below the crook of her elbow. It jutted right up to a border of iridescent blue, which appeared to be made of different stuff, shimmering like a propane pilot light.\n\n\"She thought quick, to do that,\" Beatrice said quietly.\n\nClaire resisted the impulse to pick at it, no matter how foreign it was on her skin. \"Who did? Brevity?\"\n\n\"No, the other one. Though I think she wouldn't have acted if she hadn't been prompted to.\" Beatrice gave her a considering look. \"You have a very loyal assistant in that girl. I'm glad.\"\n\n\"She's not my assistant anymore.\" It was a bitter kind of reflex, and Claire shook her head. \"She's Librarian now, and\u2014\" Claire stopped, feeling eight kinds of idiotic. \"Hell and harpies, we're in the damsel suite. In the Library. Why\u2014how are you here? You shouldn't be here. You would never return here after all that's happened. You escaped. Did Brev force you to come back? How long have I been out? Did\u2014\"\n\n\"Calm down, Claire.\" Beatrice seemed remarkably unflustered by being in the very place she'd fled decades ago. \"No one brought me here except you. I think I never fully left.\"\n\nClaire blinked. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"And I don't have much time to explain. I convinced the others that you would need time to understand, but they're restless. Naturally.\" A muffled sound, like a wave of small feet, stirred from somewhere outside the suite door. Beatrice sighed. \"I need you to stay calm.\"\n\n\"I am always calm!\" The ache in Claire's joints was returning, with a building kind of pressure. As if there was suddenly more stuffed into her than before. She rubbed her face. \"I forgot how exhausting you were. Forget it. We've got to get you out of here and back to the Silent City. It should be possible, while the others are distracted. There's too much going on.\"\n\n\"More than you think,\" Beatrice said. She nodded to Claire's banded arm. \"That thing is like a magical tourniquet, but it's not going to hold forever. You need to stop wasting time.\"\n\nClaire's mouth dropped open, but before she could protest, a knock came at the door. It was a light, tentative knock, then slowly repeated. The brass door handle began to jiggle.\n\nBeatrice froze, staring at the door before turning an intent frown on Claire. \"Listen to me. You need to listen. It's the only way the books will have any rest.\"\n\n\"As I said, I'm not the li\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't care if you're not the goddamned librarian!\" Beatrice grabbed Claire's shoulder but pulled back when she flinched. \"You're not the librarian, you're not an author, you're not alive. Who bloody cares! You think your characters do? I certainly didn't. Your friend Hero didn't. You don't escape your own story, Claire. It's impossible.\"\n\n\"What kind of nonsense are you talking about?\"\n\nThe door abruptly ceased its rattling, and Beatrice's shoulders tensed. Across the room, the damsel suite door unlatched and crept slowly open on silent hinges. The darkness on the other side of the door was inky and absolute. An unnatural sigh of air washed through, ruffling the pages of open books and chilling Claire to the core. Beatrice sat in front of her like a shield, but it was as if she weren't even there. The room felt crowded with breath.\n\nHer lungs were chilled when Claire tried to take a breath and try again. \"What\u2014what are you asking me to do?\"\n\nBeatrice finally turned back to her, looking solemn and sorry. It felt too much like how she'd looked the last time Claire had seen her, half-swallowed in torchlight as she hesitated at the precipice of a realm gate. Hesitated, to stay behind. When Beatrice brought her hand to her face, Claire flinched.\n\n\"Wake up,\" Beatrice said in a voice that wasn't her own. Claire was falling, and it felt like something new and horrible and cold was blooming in her bones. Beatrice's voice splintered and turned fractal. \"Wake up, Claire. Wake up.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "\"Wake up! Please, c'mon, boss.\" Claire's joints still ached. The settee was still soft beneath her. But the next breath she took gave her a lungful of warm air scented with familiar anise, paper, and tea. She opened her eyes.\n\n\"Oh, harpies, you're back. That's good.\" Brevity's nose was an inch from her own before she withdrew with a sigh. \"The boys woulda murdered me if you didn't wake up.\"\n\n\"Was there doubt?\" Claire grimaced at the sawdust in her voice. She gestured and Brevity helpfully handed her a glass of water. She was still in the damsel suite, resting on a settee. It was occupied again, with a handful of damsels studiously pursuing their hobbies and not at all scrutinizing Claire with absolute self-righteous judgment out of the corners of their eyes. Ridiculous. Claire could hear the sidelong whispering. \"Gods, how long have I been out this time?\"\n\n\"This time?\" A small furrow knit in Brevity's brows. \"Not long. You fainted\u2014we both did\u2014when Probity did her thing. It stopped the ink, though. I...\" Brevity looked down. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\"Like the inside of a Hellhound's mouth.\" Claire sipped the water and grimaced.\n\n\"So about the same as me.\" Brevity gave her a wan smile. Now that Claire was sitting up, she could take the time to observe the paper-thin energy of Brevity's smile and the shadows under her eyes. For a moment it was overlaid with the memory of a handsome brown face exhorting her to wake up, to\u2014\n\nClaire yanked her arm out from under the covers and cursed loudly. Black stained her skin, held off by a ribbon of bright blue tied off below her elbow. She set down her water and gently pushed Brevity back by the shoulder until she could see the arm she kept half cradled against her stomach. Structurally, nothing appeared to be wrong. Brevity's arm certainly appeared in better shape than Claire's. But a paler band of periwinkle swirled on her forearm where her inspiration gilt tattoo had been. It looked almost as if it had been scrubbed away. Or stripped.\n\n\"It's fine,\" Brevity said too quickly into the silence. \"Hurt like a cuss going off, but we both got a nap out of it and now we're fine, see?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"But how\u2014?\"\n\n\"Probity explained it to me. Later.\" Brevity's nervous hands skimmed over her bare forearm before she reverted to studying her fingernails. \"We can't get the ink out of you but because of what they're made of, the inspiration gilt can hold it back. It works kinda like a\u2014\"\n\n\"Like a magical tourniquet,\" Claire finished.\n\nBrevity's brows inched up. \"Well, yes. But how\u2014\"\n\n\"Never mind that.\" The damsels in the room were studiously ignoring them, but Claire could hear the whispers. The constant whorl of rumor around her was beginning to give her a headache. She tried to focus. \"You said what it's made of. You have a theory about the... the\u2014\"\n\n\"Ink,\" Brevity supplied, when Claire couldn't quite assign the word. \"We know it's ink now. More importantly, its unwritten ink\u2014\"\n\n\"We can't know that,\" Claire objected, but Brevity was already shaking her head.\n\n\"We do. I do. I can see\u2014it looks the same way books do, to muses. Probity saw it too. It's the ink of an unwritten book. Books. Maybe a lot of them.\"\n\nClaire was caught off guard by the bitterness that came with answers. Brevity had identified and handled the mystery with Probity. An outsider, and a muse who seemed to have even more history with Brevity than Claire did. She'd already felt as if she'd fallen out of sync, and there was nowhere for her to get a handhold. She studied Brevity. She knew her face well enough to see the hope starting to form. Many books. Brevity was thinking of the lost damsels. She had to nip that in the bud. \"It could be many things.\"\n\n\"No,\" Brevity said, clipped and firm. \"It can't.\" She gave a surprisingly dismissive gesture to Claire's arm. \"You can keep on ignoring the obvious or you can trust me. As a former muse. As... librarian.\"\n\nThe whispers that drifted around the room really were nonstop. Claire had always been aware that damsels were talkative and\u2014in her opinion\u2014prone to too much gossip, but they could at least have the decency to wait until she'd left the room. Claire rubbed her temple. \"Of course I trust you,\" she said, wondering why it sounded like such a weak defense. \"But the idea that the ink of a story can exist outside its book is...\"\n\n\"A lot, I know.\"\n\nBrevity had lowered her voice, to be kind, to be patient. To be sympathetic of Claire, the poor human who just couldn't keep up. The ache in her head ratcheted up along with her temper.\n\n\"I am perfectly capable\u2014\" The whispers intruded again. Gods. Claire's patience snapped. \"Could you all just shut up for one bloody minute?!\"\n\nShe hadn't meant to yell. She hadn't meant many things. But Claire's voice thudded into the silence. Every pair of eyes, discreetly turned away, focused on her. A teapot clinked, and someone dropped their crochet hook.\n\n\"Claire.\" Brevity's touch was featherlight to her shoulder, but Claire still startled. Brevity was looking at her with fresh concern and a new brush of caution. \"No one's said anything but us.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous. I could hear them whispering perfectly\u2014\" Permitted to glare around the room straight on, Claire got a clear look. There were only a handful of damsels in the large lounge, scattered and not numerous enough for the voices she'd heard. There was a woman crocheting what appeared to be a star map by the fire, one sole girl napping in an armchair, and a young boy eating jam tarts by the tea table. No one was huddled, or even appeared engaged in conversation. Let alone clandestine whispers.\n\nA foggy, distant sound she could hear, even now, as everyone stared at her mutely. She'd dreamed of Beatrice and imagined voices that weren't there. Claire had always counted on her perceptions being reliable, and a sticky disgrace settled into her stomach. She tentatively touched her clean fingertips to her stained wrist. They came away dry. \"My mistake.\"\n\nBrevity, of course, was the first to smooth things over. \"No prob. It's been a rough day for all of us,\" she said simply, then appeared to hesitate. \"I know the guys are probably plotting ways to make us rest, but I had an idea, if you're up for an experiment.\"\n\n\"Blood and ink, please.\" Claire needed something, anything, right now to get her out of this eerie damsel suite and propelled along any path that would start making sense of this.\n\n\"I'm going to need a sample of the ink to test\u2014safely this time. If there's anything left of an unwritten story in it, we'll probably have better luck testing it on something native to the Library.\"\n\nClaire struggled to follow that thought. Brevity would never test on a precious Library book, but that only left one thing. There was only one book inherent to the Library that wasn't an unwritten story.\n\n\"The logbook. But it's not like the other books in the Library. No originating author, for one.\" Claire drew in a sharp breath. \"Using the Librarian's Log book as a test subject is... unprecedented. Dangerous.\"\n\nBrevity met her eyes, wary, as if it was a test. Everything felt like a test between them these days, a test of boundaries, a test of respect. It made Claire's chest ache, but Brevity just straightened to her feet cautiously. \"Librarian's prerogative.\" And then, perhaps because she saw the minuscule flinch Claire tried to hide, she attempted to soften it. \"I learned from the best, after all.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "\u2002I've had a few weeks to get used to it now: being dead. Dead, and a librarian at that. Not even death stops the world from expecting a woman to take care of things. At least it's not eternity at the cook fire.\n\n\u2002There was supposed to be another, here in the Library. I've gleaned that much, from what the demons have said. The Arcanist is a glum living statue. She doesn't like me much, but it appears she has as much say in the matter as I do. She says there was a librarian before\u2014an experienced one who would have trained me, taught me all the secrets of this place. She's gone. Exiled? Doubly dead? Deposed? I'm not certain, only that everyone is terribly mute as to why.\n\n\u2002The Arcanist, Revka, says I'll just have to pick up the basics. As much as she doesn't like me, there's a deep sadness in her, stone heart and all. I'd like to say I was kind enough not to ask, but I'm not\u2014I was told off for my troubles.\n\n\u2002They say this is supposed to be a library, a salon of learned words. But it doesn't feel like a library. It feels like a tomb.\n\n\u2014Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 602 CE\n\nRami and hero had, in fact, objected to their plan.\n\nThey'd objected\u2014loudly, in Hero's case\u2014and expressed their concerns\u2014gravely, in Rami's case\u2014and then Claire and Brevity had done, as always, what they thought was best. It was almost like working together again. Almost.\n\nThe pond of ink had not moved since they left it. It lapped silently against the broken boards at the same level it had been before. Normal liquid might have evaporated, or sunk into porous wood and whatever the bedrock of Hell was made of. Instead, the surface lay flush with the broken wood floorboards, black against beech. Claire allowed Brevity to handle the gloves, tongs, and vial as a small acquiescence to Rami's demands. The unease in Claire's eyes was enough to convince Brevity this was no time for indulging muse curiosity\u2014she came only close enough to the edge of the liquid as was necessary to stopper a vial full. The rubber cork popped on the top, and that was that.\n\nThe trip back to the Unwritten Wing was quick and amiable. Brevity let Claire carry the sample, once the vial had been scrupulously wiped and she was certain every smidge of ink was contained. Perhaps the mystery in the bottle would repair some of the unspoken rift that had divided Claire from her since the coup. Perhaps this was all that was needed\u2014a common mystery, a common task. Brevity entertained that hope with a growing certainty.\n\nThe liquid in the vial bobbled. That's how Brevity knew that Claire had hesitated a step\u2014just a fraction of a step\u2014just as they turned the corner and the Unwritten Wing doors came into view.\n\n\"Claire?\" Brevity asked when she didn't say anything.\n\n\"It's nothing. No\u2014sorry.\" Claire fiddled with the dangerous sample in her hand as she apologized. Both actions being wildly uncharacteristic, enough that Brevity stopped in her tracks. Claire shook her head dismissively. \"I saw it before; I just keep forgetting.... Thirty years is a lot to unlearn.\"\n\nBrevity glanced uncertainly to the doors, and her stomach did a flip as pieces fell into place. Understanding doused the warm feeling in her chest. The Unwritten Wing had changed to suit its new librarian, just as the Arcane Wing had accommodated Claire. To Brevity, it'd felt like the Library's small way of welcoming her. The doors were a soft ruddy color that reminded Brevity of sunsets, accented by the crisp silver in the handles. Strings of faerie lights just inside the door washed the entrance in a gentle kind of glow.\n\nBut Brevity could see it now through Claire's eyes, and that empathy threw it all into sharp, alien relief. The changes Brevity had made to the Unwritten Wing no longer felt cheery\u2014they felt garish. Cherry-stained wood a shade too red and bright, faerie lights illuminating the aisles cheap instead of cozy. A plastic imitation of the distinguished Library that Claire had known. Brevity's heart tilted and fell between her ribs. She kept her face tilted down as she hurried across the lobby to her desk.\n\n\"Just a minute...\" There was one thing that didn't change along with the Library, and maybe that'd smooth over the knot of awkwardness forming in Brevity's chest. She rifled around in the drawer until she came up with a thick, battered-looking book.\n\nThe Librarian's Log had a blotchy leather cover the precise color of mistakes\u2014ink smudges and the shadow of grubby fingerprints\u2014with enough scuffs and scars that left the surface feeling more like bark than cured leather. It wasn't the largest book in the Library, but it still took Brevity both hands to wrestle it out and drop it onto the blotter with a solid whump that echoed to the high ceilings.\n\n\"Open it up, if you would.\" Claire carefully found an empty teacup to balance the vial upright in. Brevity wasn't as tidy about her desk as Claire. Clutter was conducive to thinking. At least that's what she told Hero when he got on her about it.\n\nBrevity flipped open the log, not bothering to be precise. The logbook always flopped open to the necessary page. Sometimes, your definition of \"necessary\" didn't line up with the log's, but Brevity had decided long ago that trusting the book was part of a librarian's job too. Letting books take you where they might\u2014that was one part of the Library's magic. The other part was the centuries of log entries from past Unwritten Wing librarians, all in perfectly readable script, no matter the age or the originating language, never in reliable order, but also never an end to empty pages, no matter how much you wrote. The log contained everything from inventories of books to an index of techniques and research and, of course, the personal log of the librarian and their assistant.\n\nBooks were a kind of magic everywhere. Especially here, especially this book.\n\nClaire rummaged in her pocket until she found a fountain pen. Brevity preferred the honest feel of charcoal on paper, but for some reason Claire had always preferred the modern inventions. Not too modern, mind you. Brevity once filched some standard ballpoint pens to bring back to Claire as a surprise. You would have thought she'd deposited a dead snake on her desk instead.\n\nOf course, that'd been back when Claire was the librarian. Stern and unwilling to engage with the world. Getting a smile back then had felt like wresting the sword from the stone. But she'd been kind to Brevity, and she'd softened since then. She'd exhibited kindness, even toward books like Hero. But the smiles she gave Brevity now\u2014only Brevity\u2014were tight-lipped, reined in. It felt like Brevity had become one of her ghosts.\n\n\"You've kept up admirably,\" Claire murmured as she ran a finger down the displayed log entries. It was a consoling, awkward comment, and Brevity tried to remind herself Claire might feel as out of sorts with this moment as she did.\n\nBrevity straightened and smiled. \"Never liked log work, but Hero's handwriting is atrocious.\"\n\n\"All those flourishes,\" Claire hissed, and Brevity's smile brightened.\n\n\"Everything short of dotting his i's with hearts.\"\n\n\"It's not handwriting; it's script.\" Hero emerged from the stacks near the door, Probity and Ramiel in tow. They'd agreed\u2014reluctantly\u2014to speak with the damsels and make sure there would be no curious onlookers for a second experiment with the ink. Probity, as usual, kept her thoughts to herself, but there was a disgruntled air between the men, obvious and palpable immediately. Brevity offered a questioning look, but Rami just hunched his shoulders while Hero put all his energy into propping himself against the desk. He had never met a piece of furniture he couldn't lounge against. \"I guess I should be grateful you lot even know cursive.\"\n\n\"There's nothing innately better about something just because it's old,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"Precisely,\" Claire murmured, squinting as she concentrated on touching the pen nib just to the surface of the liquid in the vial. It wicked up the groove, just as ink should. And colors rippled and fluttered across the metal, just as ink should not. Hero's eyes lit up, an intense speculation sparking in his eyes as he considered the liquid. It was a relief when Probity gave a low whistle and raised her eyes to meet Brevity's. She reveled in the affirmation, someone else seeing what see saw, for a change. Being the only former muse in the room was so exhausting sometimes.\n\nClaire withdrew the nib and gave Brevity an inquiring glance, pen hovering over the paper. Claire, with a fountain pen in her hand again. Nib loaded with ink, clutched\u2014carefully\u2014in a black-stained hand. It felt wrong. A chill crept up Brevity's neck, and she nodded quicker than she needed to dispel it. Claire took a breath and lowered the pen. The colors whipped over her hand like mist, the tip of the nib touched the logbook's parchment, and several things happened in a breath.\n\nThe nib touched the page.\n\nHero drew in a pinched gasp and stepped back just as Rami stepped forward.\n\nAnd the logbook began to smoke.\n\nClaire began a downward stroke with the pen, but the liquid moved of its own accord. It wicked deep into the parchment and pulled away from the nib. Black veins crept spiderwebs across the page on their own, tendrils encountering the edge and seeming to pulse once before the entire linework recoiled again. The veins left faint wisps of smoke and the air began to smell of burnt turpentine, as if the ink had been burned both in and out of the parchment hide. The ink coiled lazily, like an indecisive snake, splitting into fractal triskeles, then conjoined.\n\nThen writing began.\n\n\"What...\" Claire was frozen, pen to page as if she was afraid to break contact. Letters\u2014script, Hero had called it, and Brevity could see the difference now, not calling this simple cursive\u2014spun out across the page. Not in a continuous line of thought, but fragments, the ink seeming to jump from one thought to the next. Brevity could follow it all, not so much by the words but by the colors that burst, like quick-fading comets, through the smoke. A snippet of dialogue, a soft sunset, a warp of stars, a clang of swords, a shattered planet, a sigh against skin. The script filled the page, the ink seeming to multiply on itself. But it didn't stop there; words crisscrossed, mashed, and fought where they intersected. Epilogue versus eponyms. Protagonist versus peril. Pivot versus plot. It filled up the page, blackening without stopping until the ink sopped through the parchment entirely. Still there were words, dreadful, impossible snatches of story that writhed and crested on the page like a swarm. Breaking, forming, breaking again. Over and over, splinters of stories without end.\n\nIron and anise weltered in her mouth, searing her tongue. Brevity felt pulled, as if she was falling into the ink. The book had become a gateway, a door of potential, and if she just reached, reached, reached\u2014\n\nShe heard a strangled shriek. The ink disappeared. When had she stepped closer to the desk? She didn't remember raising her hand, fingertips drifting toward the page. Claire shoved Brevity back, and the fountain pen went clattering across the floor. The logbook was still open, but its page was a creamy ivory expanse. No ink, no script, just the faint waft of turpentine and a wisp of smoke rising slowly off the page.\n\nClaire dropped heavily onto the edge of the desk. The hand she put up to her face was trembling. It was her left hand. Her right hand was clutched into a protective black fist against her stomach. Brevity herself was trembling, she just realized. She turned away and sought out Probity's face. Her expression was cracked open with a soft wonder. She offered a hand and met Brevity's gaze as if they'd just witnessed the holiest of miracles. Brevity scanned the floor before finding where the pen had rolled underneath an overstuffed chair. She picked it up and held the nib under the light. Whistle clean and shiny as brass, no ink.\n\nDisappointment lurched in her stomach for no reason she could think of. They still had the vial\u2014hell, they had the whole well of it back in the Arcane Wing. But something instinctual in Brevity's gut told her this ink was precious, should not be let go. Loud, Claire had said just before she fainted. That made sense now, so many stories\u2014\n\n\"We'll bury it,\" Claire said. Hero and Rami had been murmuring concern for a while, Brevity distantly recognized, but it was Claire's grim voice that cut through the fog. \"We'll seal it up in the Arcane Wing. I'll look into something permanent enough that the damsels won't keep sniffing it out.\"\n\n\"What?\" The fog\u2014desperate, longing fog\u2014cleared in her head. Brevity stepped forward, aghast. \"We can't do that. You realize what this is? It's not just ink. It's\u2014\"\n\n\"Some kind of residue left over from the unwritten books we lost in the fire, yes.\" Claire pronounced the words the way you'd describe an unfortunate deathbed that needed cleaning up. But this wasn't unfortunate; it was a gift. Brevity could see that even as Claire shook her head and turned away. \"After the coup, it probably pooled and drained to the Arcane Wing as the nearest reservoir of magic. It's not books anymore, so it couldn't stay in the Library, but I suppose enough remained to call out to the damsels and attract them.\"\n\nHero had taken on a particular shade of white as he came to help Brevity to the desk. They were talking about bits of books as body parts. She would have time to worry about him later. For now, the horror of what Claire was saying took all her attention.\n\nAll her thoughts felt knocked into free fall. She missed things being simple: unwritten stories being books, not pools of dead ink; her friends being her friends, not estranged colleagues; Claire being a friend she called boss instead of a former boss she still tried to call friend; the Library being the vast yet total edges of her concern. It still should have been, since she'd been named head librarian. But instead of feeling more focused, she was drowning. The world was a library she could never really read.\n\n\"How are these not books?\" Brevity asked. \"You saw it just like I did. Of course those are books, stories\u2014\"\n\n\"Only in the way a clipped lock of hair is human.\" Claire's brow knit; then her expression hardened. \"That ink is the former lifeblood of those books that died because of us. Formerly pure and full of life, now corrupted and muddled. It couldn't even establish itself on the page, Brevity. Think it through. Obviously, the ink of a hundred books has mixed and commingled until it doesn't even know itself. There's nothing to salvage.\"\n\n\"We can certainly try, at least.\" The memory of all those books destroyed, the stories crumbling into searing ashes between her fingertips, struck at her like a lash. \"The Unwritten Wing can try.\"\n\nA flinch, like ice frosting over, occurred on Claire's face. She plucked the pen from Brevity's hands and crossed her arms over her chest. \"I can't allow it.\"\n\nBrevity distantly registered they were slipping into a fight, slashing open old wounds along the way, but she couldn't help the way her brow arched all the same. But it was Probity who broke the pause with a soft, curious: \"Allow?\"\n\n\"The reservoir of ink resides in the Arcane Wing and is therefore under Arcanist care,\" Claire said.\n\n\"That's not fair.\" Hero had recovered from his shock enough to step up next to Brevity and Probity. It felt nice, having support. \"These are obviously the sacred remains of books of the Unwritten Wing; therefore\u2014\"\n\n\"Sacred?\" Ramiel objected. \"We're in Hell.\" The stoic angel had remained quiet up till now, but he gave Hero a dismissive look, up and down and then away. He gestured broadly to the shadows of the Library stacks. \"Nothing sacred or holy about this place.\"\n\n\"There is no place more sacred than stories,\" Probity said lowly.\n\n\"Profane remains, then.\" Brevity took up Hero's argument and he flashed her a grateful smile. \"Doesn't matter either way. Those are what remain of books of the Unwritten Wing. We have a duty to try to repair them.\"\n\n\"There is no repairing that.\" Claire's cheeks had turned sallow and taut. She retrieved the vial from its resting place and cradled it against her chest, clutched in a blackened hand that trembled. \"You saw how it behaved. Books are potential, Brev. Potential is power. And demons crave power. Whatever remains of those in that ink is lost and is essentially distilled power. That's a heady drug. We can't repair it; we can't use it. Just its existence is a risk to the whole Library.\"\n\n\"The whole Library? Or just you?\" Hero snipped.\n\n\"Uncalled for. Watch your tone,\" Rami growled under his breath.\n\nHero smiled. \"Make me.\"\n\n\"It's too great a risk,\" Claire repeated. \"If we learned nothing else from Andras, we should have learned that.\"\n\nBrevity shook her head. \"It's a book\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not,\" Claire snapped. \"It's just ink. It's a thing.\"\n\n\"Fond of dismissing anything you find threatening as a nonhuman thing, aren't you, warden?\" Hero said with a sudden chill.\n\n\"Don't,\" Claire gritted through her teeth. \"Don't. Start.\"\n\nHero's shoulders stiffened. A wild protectiveness rose in Brevity. Hero was her assistant, just as Brevity had been Claire's. What's more, he was a character, a book of the Library, and he was hers. He was hers and the Library was hers and the books\u2014the books were hers. \"Claire. Don't be mean.\"\n\n\"I'm not!\" Claire threw up her hands. \"This is just... parts! Pieces! Bone and blood! Ink doesn't make a story any more than paper does! This thing\u2014\"\n\nInk, ink and blood and the flare of a fire that destroyed everything she cherished. Andras's laughter, and the dry slide of wyrm scales against crushed pages as the acrid smoke seized her lungs. Blocks of soot black as the Library burned. Heat washed up Brevity's face, and the memory choked her. Probity was staring at her, suddenly full of concern. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the anger slipped out from her lips. \"You don't get it. You never got it. You don't even see them!\"\n\nThem, the colors. The color of a story, the light that slips through the cracks of all stories. The cracks where the lights slipped out and the reader slipped in. She saw the colors in the books and the colors in the ink. Bile crept up her tongue. What they'd let happen to the books, what Claire wanted to do\u2014to shut them away like they never existed\u2014\n\nA rumble shivered through her feet. The air splintered and groaned. Brevity's eyes snapped open in time to see the faerie lights detach from the stacks and whizz in a frenzy overhead, stabbing light and shadow down on them. One whipped near enough to Claire's face to graze a cut across her cheek. In a distant row, something toppled off a high shelf and the impact echoed. The pause frothed with the sound of ruffled pages, disquiet books.\n\nBrevity. Brevity had done that. She'd gotten upset and the Library had responded. She gasped. \"I'm sorry\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" Claire held perfectly still, a stricken look in her eyes. She waited until the air quieted again to speak, voice thin and controlled as a scalpel. \"We can speak more of this when\u2014when you're less... emotional. We should go.\"\n\nClaire glanced at Rami with a brief nod that was stiff enough to shatter, then turned and strode purposefully toward the doors. Ramiel's colorless silver gaze skipped over Probity to trace Brevity and Hero with a mournful look, but, ever the soldier, he followed at Claire's back. The doors of the Unwritten Wing closed behind them, quiet as snowfall.\n\nIt felt as if the air deflated out of the room with them. Brevity fell into her chair and looked to see Hero sagging against the desk with a lost look. They both sat heavily in the silence, clinging to the desk as perhaps everything else felt unmoored. \"What... what just happened?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "\u2002Characters. Boss says \"they're just characters\" when I press her about the damsel suite. As if characters are a \"just\"-ish thing to be. They're people! Essential, intense, emotional lives, scrubbed down and stripped away and honed to a cutting edge. That's how you fascinate a reader. Characters are more real than real. That's what fiction is. Why else do stories make them suffer or make them change? They're mirrors and foils. Every muse is taught that. We fall a little in love with every character we meet. Maybe the story of humanity is learning to be brave enough to be the character in their own story.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2016 CE\n\nRamiel had taken time over the last half a year to become familiar with the confounding mortal who had upended his chance at eternal rest, and the only thing he'd ascertained for sure was that Claire had precisely two forms of walking. One was purposeful, when she had a destination in mind\u2014and she nearly always did. Back straight, chin forward, heels clicking, long, swift strides that sent the torn edges of her skirts frothing like waves.\n\nAnd then there was this walk. Claire had barely paid attention to the gargoyle as they'd exited, and now she took the stairs in a silent flutter. No less swift, no less decisive, but it was as if the space she'd taken up had narrowed. Shoulders tugged in, feet placed one in front of the other as if walking on an eternal tightrope. Narrowed, focused, but drifting all the same.\n\nIt was her thinking walk. Not when Claire was just thinking\u2014the infernal librarian was always thinking\u2014but when she was thinking without resolution.\n\nIt's not as if Rami knew the resolution to... Hell, he wasn't even sure he was clear about what had happened. They'd discovered an anomaly, Claire had been injured, and in the librarian's infinite illogic, that meant they'd tested that anomaly in the Unwritten Wing and everything had gone... askew.\n\nRamiel wasn't used to disorientation. He'd worked in several dimensions of existence, after all, before the Fall. He liked to think he had a reasonably flexible perception of reality. But when Claire had placed the blackened pen point to the page, all hell (to abuse the term) had broken loose.\n\n\"Quarantine,\" Claire said softly to herself. Rami waited a polite moment to confirm that she was actually addressing him before clearing his throat.\n\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\n\"Yes? Oh yes, Rami. I do not like the idea of leaving a pool of that malicious ink open to the air, but we'll need to section off that area until I can convince the wing to repair itself,\" said Claire as she dropped her pen case on the worktable near the door. \"And I'd feel better if we locked up the more... porous... curio items until this is all settled. Anything cloth or paper should be moved, at the very least.\"\n\n\"Arcanist.\"\n\n\"As part of the Library it's going to be difficult to keep damsels out, but I think we can whip up a ward that will discourage them at the very least. Of course, it would be much easier if the Unwritten Wing had the sense to lock down and turn away visitors, but I don't suppose we should hope for that much wisdom right now. It is our duty to crack on. We should also take care to watch the door\u2014\"\n\n\"Claire.\" Rami put just enough sharpness in his voice to finally halt Claire's tightrope pacing. She glanced up at him with an affronted look, which Rami tried to mollify with a raised hand. \"What happened, up there? You're rattled.\"\n\n\"I didn't\u2014\" Claire bit her lip before speaking further. She very carefully looked anywhere but down at her hand. \"I hadn't expected it to work. It shouldn't have worked. Unwritten stories aren't supposed to last beyond their books, Rami. That's the point of the Unwritten Wing\u2014maintaining and caring for the books. Take Hero, for example; he's stuck as he is because his book's been damaged. If some part of a story can survive the destruction of its book, then what really are stories made of? The repercussions...\"\n\nClaire trailed off. Rami waited, but she didn't continue, instead stared distantly at the fountain pen on the table as if it were a viper. It was a sentence she wasn't prepared to finish\u2014or couldn't finish\u2014and Rami knew better than to press her. Instead, he placed it in a context that was safe for both of them. \"And the responsibility of the Arcane Wing in this scenario?\"\n\nClaire snapped back to herself. \"Safeguard artifacts of power. You're right\u2014of course you're right,\" she said, though Rami really hadn't said anything clever. \"It doesn't matter. Whatever this is, it's too dangerous to experiment with. Hell has always been obsessed with the Library, and if they find out about this, they'll turn their eyes on the Arcane Wing as well. And we're not nearly so well warded as the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"When are we not under threat from demons?\" Rami muttered. \"But Brevity and Hero seemed to think\u2014\"\n\n\"Brevity will come around. In the meantime, we have to protect them from their incorrect assumptions.\" Claire diverted her eyes again and began to fiddle with a stack of papers.\n\n\"Your hand?\" Rami made a placating gesture as Claire glared at him. \"I only ask because it's my duty as your assistant to understand if you are working under any... diminished capabilities.\"\n\n\"Do I look diminished to you?\" Claire's chin jutted up, and it was such a clear echo of Hero's pride and mannerisms, as much as she faulted him for them. A distant fondness in his chest surprised Rami, but he pressed it down. He almost missed that she'd avoided answering the question.\n\n\"You know you look never less than a force of nature to me, ma'am.\" He'd discovered quickly that accurate observations, spoken as plainly and earnestly as possible, toppled Claire's defensive airs fastest. \"My concern wasn't for your ability to keep up appearances.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Claire stopped herself and seemed to weigh the question. Her voice was softer when she spoke again. \"I will let you know, when I know myself.\"\n\nIt was subtle, and shocking, but only if you understood Claire well enough. Rami thought he did. Thought he knew what a free fall it would be to feel uncertain about your mind, especially for one so certain and capable as Claire. But Rami's nature was to guide, not press and poke. He waited, giving her the silence to say more if she chose. But the woman just met his eyes and shook her head, ever so slightly.\n\n\"I'll be in the back. Get those artifacts isolated,\" she said over her shoulder, and Claire made a tactical retreat into the depths of the collection."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "\"Porous\" was a loose attribute when one's collection of curiosities numbered in the tens of thousands. Rami had hit a snag when he'd started cross-indexing with an item's composition material. Paper and cloth were obvious, but now he was into the leathers. A stack of waxed dragon hides mocked him from the worktable, and the furrow in his brow deepened as he considered them. Yes, ink could stain leather, but what about variations? Waxed leather? Scale and aquatic varieties? There were too many variables, and Rami was shit at making these kinds of judgment calls.\n\nOn reflection, it should have been no surprise that he was a failure as an angel.\n\nThe great doors of the wing creaked on their hinges. Rami glanced up only long enough to frown at Hero's face before focusing back on his work. \"Don't you ever have real work to do?\"\n\n\"Watcher! Look at you, so industrious. Just the man I wanted to find. Odd thing, isn't it?\" Hero said as he approached, as if he hadn't heard Rami. As if Rami was the kind of person Hero frequently sought conversation with. \"Bits of book existing\u2014surviving\u2014that the librarians knew nothing about?\"\n\n\"Not really.\" Rami eyed Hero as the character made a circuitous route of the worktable. \"A travesty like Andras's failed coup has never been attempted before.\"\n\nHero paused, leaning down to inspect some petrified fingers that lay on a bed of velvet on a side table. \"Perhaps not on that scale, but surely books have been lost before. Mishandling, accident, all those distinctly human errors.\"\n\nThe finger bones had a paralytic curse attached to them, Rami recalled. He should really warn Hero. \"Are you trying to make a point, or simply enjoying the sound of your own voice?\"\n\n\"Better than your endless stoicism. I swear, it's like a dull blade against stone.\"\n\nHe definitely wasn't going to warn Hero. The fingers were only a little paralytic, after all. Rami shrugged. \"How else do you keep a blade sharp?\"\n\nHero's fingertips paused over the artifact and surprise tugged at the arch of his brow. \"Repartee? I didn't think you had it in you, old boy.\"\n\n\"Don't call me boy,\" Rami grumbled. \"I'm older than your maker's maker. You have a point, don't you?\"\n\nA clever look bloomed on Hero's face. \"Why, yes, I do. Cheeky of you to ask.\"\n\nRami stared for a beat until the salacious edge of Hero's smile sank in. \"You...\" He needed to clear his throat. \"Save it for the damsels.\"\n\n\"Not when I know it irritates. I'm quite aware how repellent I am to you.\" Hero hummed. Rami steeled himself for another round of endless nattering, but instead Hero braced his hands on the table between them and leaned forward. \"Never mind that. As I was saying... it raises the question, what else does the Library not know? What really are unwritten books?\"\n\nNonporous; that decided it. The dragon hide was scaly, and coated in enough dark magic that it could fend for itself. Rami sniffed. \"You are one. You should be able to tell me.\"\n\nThe lightness dropped from Hero's face in increments. \"You would think so, wouldn't you? I could tell you every inkblot and footnote about my story, of course. But my book itself? Contrary to the poetry the librarians spout, the medium is different from the message. At least in this case.\" His face flickered before settling into something uncommonly serious. \"I have a right to wonder about what I am, don't I?\"\n\nRami shifted, folding his arms in front of himself for lack of something to do. As much as he liked to discount Hero's behavior for plots and antics, there was something disconcertingly earnest about him just now. And Ramiel always did have trouble ignoring earnest appeals for help. \"Then shouldn't you be assisting Brevity with her research?\" It's what he was supposed to be doing himself right now. For Claire. Yes, that was something safe to do. Rami abruptly grabbed the inventory log and walked toward the rows of storage.\n\nHero's footsteps followed behind him. Rami tried not to notice how much less springy and more purposeful they sounded now, soft, solid clicks against the hardwood. \"With the Unwritten Wing and Arcane at odds, I don't think an answer is set to be found. Not here.\"\n\nHe was right, but Rami focused on locating the next item to be secured per Claire's orders: ah, a span of gold fleece. He folded it up with intense focus. \"Claire and Brevity will sort it out. They always do.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure they will, this time,\" Hero said softly, and Rami risked a glance. Hero's gaze was unfocused, set somewhere at shelf height and a million miles away.\n\n\"What makes you think that?\" Heaven curse him, Rami had really intended not to ask. But it was the wrinkle that tugged at the corner of Hero's distant gaze. It softened him a little. Made him look almost... sad. Almost human.\n\nRami had always had a weak spot for humans.\n\nHero's answer was a ponderous shake of the head. \"Claire's always been bullheaded. That's not what I'm worried about. The muse always seems to see clear to soften her up and see sense eventually. But Brevity\u2014\" Hero's brow crinkled. \"She's been under pressure. Not just with taking over the Unwritten Wing. She took the losses of the Library hard\u2014every single book. You knew she was close to the damsels?\"\n\n\"I assumed as books\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Hero snapped, then heaved a sigh. \"Not as books, as people. We're people, not just dusty paper. The muse has always seen us... seen books... as individuals. Felt each loss individually too. It took a toll on her. There are times I catch her staring at the card catalog like a graveyard. She hides it well, but\u2014\" Hero stopped, gaze flinching sideways as if just realizing the way Rami watched him. He straightened, pulling on attitude like a rumpled vest. He plucked a finger at the gold wool in Rami's hands as if it was a displeasing wardrobe choice. \"Well, not that I care, but muses are so transparent, and one might worry it might affect her ability to maintain my book.\"\n\n\"Your book. Yes.\" Rami paused with the golden wool enveloping his hands. He hadn't had great call to spend a lot of time with the broken book. He knew Hero was of the antagonist type of his book; he knew he was a fine swordsman; he knew he never failed to taunt and irritate Claire when presented with the opportunity. Rami knew Hero had escaped the Library once, though he seemed to have stayed content here since the coup, for no reason that Rami could discern.\n\nNone of the things he knew made Rami likely to trust him. Not, at least, as he'd begun to trust Claire and Brevity. He'd mostly avoided Hero\u2014found him an irritating distraction whenever they shared the same space\u2014and thought the feeling had been mutual, as Hero had returned the favor.\n\nAnd yet here he was. Asking... for what exactly? \"You propose an independent investigation?\" Rami guessed.\n\n\"An independent investigation,\" Hero said with a horrible stodgy impression of Rami's voice, a mock frown distorting his face for effect. \"Yes, that's an excellent term for it. Let's call it that.\"\n\nRami didn't find that reassuring, but he couldn't find fault in gathering more information, at least. \"Your wing is the one with the books.\"\n\n\"Not,\" Hero said cautiously, \"the ones we need.\"\n\nIt took Rami more than a couple of moments to follow that thought to the insane place it led. He stepped back and had to resist crumpling the fleece in his fist. \"You mean outside the Library?\"\n\n\"Not technically!\" Hero said quickly. \"Just a different wing! Or two. Three.\"\n\n\"Outside of Hell. You, the runaway book. They'll never allow it.\" Rami shook his head and stomped down the aisle, cursing himself for humoring Hero for even a moment. \"This is just an excuse to you.\"\n\n\"It's not. I swear it's not! Watcher\u2014\" He heard Hero's steps scrabble with less grace than usual behind him. Rami picked up his speed and Hero uttered a curse. \"You plodding stone of an angel, if you would just\u2014\"\n\nRami would not just. He stormed ahead, turned the corner to the vault Claire intended for the artifacts\u2014and nearly ran straight into a narrow wall of velvet and copper.\n\nHero stood in front of the vault entrance, limbs splayed like some kind of particularly stylish spider. The pose was ridiculous, but Hero still managed to look determined.\n\n\"Move,\" Rami gritted through his teeth.\n\n\"Not until you listen, stone man.\" When Rami didn't rush him, Hero slowly lowered his arms. \"I've thought a lot about this\u2014\"\n\n\"I bet you have.\"\n\n\"I've thought a lot about books, you clod,\" Hero corrected, clicking his tongue. \"Claire took over the Library prematurely, right? After her little act of heartsick rebellion and murder?\"\n\n\"Claire has suffered enough. I won't have you\u2014\"\n\nHero fluttered a hand. \"Not my point. I mean her training was... truncated. Cut. Short. What did Gregor not get a chance to pass down? I have read the entries, at least what the log would show me. Training went on for decades typically. Claire had three years. That's it. What knowledge was lost in that moment? And what knowledge was lost about the Arcane Wing because Andras had to go and get that damned plot in his head?\"\n\nRami shifted with the disquiet thought. \"Claire and Brevity\u2014\"\n\n\"Do the best they can, I know.\" Hero's face was somber, and more open than Rami had ever seen it. Hero took a step forward, tentatively, then another, until he could put a placating hand on Rami's knuckles.\n\nHe was crushing the gold fleece. Blast it. Rami forced himself to loosen his grip. \"But that's why this ink business has them with their hackles up and backed into a corner,\" Hero said, steady but persistent. \"They don't know. And they need to know. But neither of them is free to question it. Claire only sees another threat. Brevity only sees redemption. That means it's up to us.\"\n\n\"Up to us to do what, exactly?\" Rami tried and failed to insert the proper amount of skepticism in that question. Worry had begun to gnaw at him too.\n\n\"To find answers. Answers that won't be found here, with too much lost from both the Arcane and Unwritten Wings. But answers that might have been preserved in other wings of the Library. Wings not in Hell. You saw Valhalla\u2014there are answers out there, Rami. I know it.\"\n\n\"In the other wings of the Library,\" Rami repeated. And he couldn't quite believe he was saying it, to be honest. \"But you're...\" He made a vague gesture first at Hero's wrist and then at the... well, the rest of him.\n\n\"Stamped. Part of the permanent collection of the Unwritten Wing, yes. I remember.\" Hero took on an indulgent tone. \"And I won't be breaking the rules. Books are lent between libraries all the time via the IWL.\"\n\n\"Librarians lend books. Last I checked, you were not a librarian.\"\n\n\"I'm an assistant to the librarian,\" Hero said firmly, then shrugged. \"I've found clever openings in the Library wards before. It's not hard if you know where to look.\"\n\nRami narrowed his eyes. \"You never told anyone how you did that.\"\n\n\"Well, then.\" Hero hummed. \"I'd think it your duty to take any opportunity to investigate this security flaw.\"\n\nHero's wide-eyed look was impressive. Rami was not impressed. \"Or I could just tell Brevity and Claire.\"\n\n\"Yes, tell them I discovered a way to escape the wards of the Library. Which they already know. And that I have been a loyal\u2014\"\n\n\"Stamped\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014loyal character and book and assistant ever since. Wounded in the line of duty, even.\" He tilted his head, allowing the light to hit the dark whirl of scar tissue on his cheek, still discolored with inky shadows even after healing. Hero was a vain creature and had definitely taken to standing to the side, tilting his expression just so to show his \"good side.\" He chose not to do so now, and though his smile was crooked and mocking, Rami didn't miss the twitch of discomfort as he did so.\n\nRami held little pity for him. Watchers might have long lives, but long lives come with long memory, and so he remembered every pointless struggle, every doomed fight. Even with the ones he won he felt the pieces of what he lost. Every survivor wore scars and weariness. Ramiel was an angel, a first creation of his Creator, but he knew he was not finely or gloriously made.\n\nNot like Hero.\n\nBut Rami was practical. And even if this plan was entirely nonsense, the reasoning behind it was not. The existence of the ink threatened to drive a wedge between the wings of Hell's Library, and the Library had only just become Rami's new sanctuary. His purpose. It even dared to become a home, given enough time, but Rami wasn't foolish enough to hold out hope for that. Still.\n\nIt was something worth protecting. And the people in it. Rami had come to that conclusion six months ago, adrift after saving Leto's human soul\u2014then losing him to Heaven. Rami had watched Uriel, the archangel driven vengeful and mad over her own fear, be unmade right in front of him. She'd been unmade, by a single word from Claire's lips. Even as a fallen Watcher, he should have sought justice, exacted vengeance. Instead, he'd told Claire he'd protect the Library, serve the Library. There might indeed be answers elsewhere. But Claire couldn't leave Hell, not without a ghostlight and especially not injured and stained with malicious magic. But Rami had no such challenges placed upon him.\n\nHe supposed it was a way to serve.\n\n\"Supposing... we investigate,\" Rami said slowly. He abruptly remembered the fleece in his hands. He turned away from Hero's intense gaze to place the artifact on a shelf in the vault. He took his time smoothing down the wool and shooing Hero out to lock the vault behind him. It gave him time to think. Rami needed time to think. He finally faced Hero again. \"Supposing we investigate. You will swear to return to the Unwritten Wing, with answers?\"\n\n\"Villain's honor.\" Hero held out a hand, grinning as Rami's scowl deepened. \"I'll come back, promise. What's the use of running? Brevity can summon my book back anytime. I'll have you to keep an eye on me, and a mystery to unravel. What more could I want?\"\n\n\"A mystery, you call it. To find out what the other realms know that we don't. To find out what books are.\"\n\nHero's smile faltered, but he rallied as Rami reluctantly shook his hand. \"To find out what I am.\"\n\nHero's hand was surprisingly warm, and as Rami closed his hand around it, the book's long fingers fluttered over the skin of his wrist.\n\nAn investigation. Just an investigation. Rami rooted the thought in his mind, hoping it would drive away the uncertain turn in his stomach."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "\u2002You'll have constant encounters with the Muses Corps in your tenure as librarian of the Unwritten Wing. Don't be alarmed by their strange habits or their ever-changing, ever-colorful faces. Muses are born of desire. They wear dreams like plumage.\n\n\u2002When muses mature, they take aspects, not names. There have been a hundred muses of joy and there will be a hundred more. There will only ever be one Library.\n\n\u2014Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1803 CE\n\nThe librarian's log was a thorough bit of magic. To the plain eye it was a thick book with a battered cover, thick pages inside filled with entries from librarians over the ages of the Unwritten Wing's existence. Brevity could tell the difference in the handwriting. Each script in wildly different yet legible scrawl, no matter the librarian's origin, literacy, or native language. Brevity was glad that whatever magics fueled the logbook didn't smooth away those differences, at least. It gave a delightful bit of insight and personality to the logbook. You could tell a lot about a librarian by their handwriting. There were Yoon Ji Han's utilitarian notes in blocky lines, straight and unforgiving as his instructions. And here were Ibukun's warnings, letters like spears. And Fleur's looping lush scribble, always taking over the lines above and below it. Uncontainable, full of life. Brevity always thought she would have liked Fleur.\n\nShe liked sitting there, studying the earliest entries by librarians long gone. Occasionally she got carried away and flipped toward the front. Her fingers skimmed over Claire's entries, each loop and dot carefully placed. Not rigid, but narrower and more precise as the years went on. As if her hands had forgotten how to flow. It made Brevity's heart clench, but not nearly as much as when the official entries abruptly stopped.\n\n21st of June 2019. Book retrieval has led to a complication. I shall close the Library for safekeeping while we investigate this Codex Gigas with Arcanist Andras's kind assistance.\n\nThe next time the Unwritten Wing was logged as open after that was in Brevity's frazzled, scrawling hand. She didn't read those. She already knew exactly what they said.\n\nI shouldn't be here. This isn't fair. None of this is fair.\n\nHell isn't about being fair. The rebuttal formed in her thoughts in Claire's perfect posh voice. Still, Brevity had felt the Library was different, should have been different. The Library was not Hell. Books were supposed to be shelter from the demons of the world. The decision the books of the Library had made to cast Claire out wasn't what a Library should have done.\n\nA shiver brought her attention up, away from the logbook. A familiar breeze drifted through the Library stacks, queer and impossible in the best way, and that drove straight to Brevity's heart. It smelled like the color thirteen; it felt warm as violet; it whispered cardamom binaries.\n\nIt had a homey tune to it that Brevity had thought she'd almost forgotten.\n\nEvery author hopes, prays, for the muses to visit them. Brevity was probably the first librarian in history to wish she could hide under the table.\n\nInstead, she took a slow, centering breath\u2014in four through nose, out five through mouth\u2014and turned toward the figure that approached, not from the wing's front doors, but from the gloom of the stacks.\n\nProbity carried a small pot of balm in her hands like a peace offering. \"Sis, how's the arm?\" She didn't wait for an answer but did stop a pace sooner than she usually did. She gestured to the pot she held. \"I brought this for you. It's a mixture that helps with inspiration gilt burn.\"\n\nProbity surely meant it to be kind; the stab of guilt Brevity suffered was all her own. Of course she'd know Brevity was in pain. Muses carried inspiration, from the places they were born\u2014called wells\u2014to humanity. It was supposed to be a temporary transcendent state. Muses, gilded in the glow of possibilities, embracing their chosen artists and leaving something behind. Inspiration\u2014and all the hard work of creation that could only come from humans, of course, but muses tended to gloss over that part.\n\nThe inspiration that a muse wore was supposed to be temporary. It wasn't healthy for a muse to wear it for too long. When Brevity had stolen it for herself, she knew there would be repercussions.\n\nShe just never thought she'd lose it.\n\n\"What's in it?\" Brevity asked instead.\n\nProbity rolled her shoulders in a shrug. \"Your usual stuff. A little mugwort. Tatterdales. Dried fablesnare. Oil of idlesave. A pinch of ear of glint. And a healthy slap of gin.\"\n\nBrevity tilted her head. \"You were never interested in alchemy before.\"\n\n\"I had... questions. After you left. And a lot of feelings.\" Probity ducked her head, hiding her face behind a fall of lavender hair. \"Studying something... anything. It seemed the best way to settle them.\"\n\n\"You've grown up so much,\" Brevity murmured, mostly to herself, but Probity's ears still tipped pink.\n\n\"Ideas never die.\" Probity mumbled it under her breath, suddenly shy. The phrase landed with ripples in Brev's memory. It'd been something they'd told each other often, as awe-addled young muses. Half-drunk at the power of humans and with the vague appetite to change the world that all new souls had. Ideas never die. It wasn't a catchphrase, precisely; it was a promise.\n\nProbity motioned, and Brevity slowly held out her bare arm. There was only a pale line where the gilded tattoo had been, but it felt like the raw furrows of a wound. The balm smelled like limes when she opened the lid, and Brevity did her best not to wince when Probity began to gently slather it on. She couldn't help a sharp intake of air as she began to rub it in, though. \"Why does it hurt so much? It never hurt when I pulled it off before.\"\n\n\"Because you never truly gave it up before. Not just momentarily releasing it, but actually removing its place on your arm. I made you give it up.\" Probity's fingers were precise and featherlight. As long as Brevity had been in her acquaintance, Probity's demeanor had been as steady and gentle as her cashmere layers. Her bangs were in her face, but they shifted when Probity gave her a shy, sorrowful look. \"I'm sorry. I didn't want to do that to you.\"\n\n\"I asked you to.\" Brevity couldn't keep the loss out of her own voice. She offered a thin smile. \"We saved Claire, so it's worth it.\"\n\nProbity made a huffing sound at that, lips turning troubled. She pulled clean linen from an inner pocket and began to carefully wrap Probity's arm in white. \"You're worth a hundred of that human.\"\n\nWarmth melted a chip off the hollow feeling in Brevity's chest. She smiled. \"C'mon, Prob. I thought you were only supposed to tell the truth.\"\n\nProbity tied off the bandage and pinned Brevity with a small sulk. \"I am. That woman was a horrible librarian. She used you. She misused you.\"\n\n\"She didn't...\" Brevity hesitated, before amending, \"She didn't mean to.\"\n\nProbity had been less defined growing up. The Probity that Brevity had known was a coltish question mark, the opposite of moral certainty. But she seemed comfortable in her own skin now. Her gangly limbs had grown into something wiry and strong, but the same wide eyes still scrutinized Brevity with a knowing gleam.\n\n\"But you're the librarian now. This is major, Brev.\" Probity squeezed her hands shyly. \"I heard. We all heard, after it happened. I'm so proud of you. And I'm here to help you change things.\"\n\nA flutter of unease intruded on Brevity's happiness. \"That's why the corps sent you here, really.\"\n\n\"In a way, yes.\" Probity appeared able to read the alarm in Brevity's face and shook her head. \"I volunteered, though. I've missed you. Are you\u2014 How are you?\" Brevity let out a shaky sigh and didn't even have to put words to it. Probity made a tsking noise and guided her by the shoulder. \"Enough work. Sit.\"\n\n\"But I was going to make tea\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll do it. Isn't that what you have your assistant for?\"\n\n\"Hero's my assistant.\"\n\n\"Hero is a character and a book.\" A streak of awe shored up the pity in Probity's voice. \"He's a treasure and a tragedy to be sure, but you can't expect him to care for you as I could.\"\n\n\"You haven't exactly caught us at our best, you know.\" Brevity allowed herself to be manhandled onto the couch with minimal argument.\n\n\"Then it is a good thing I'm here to care for both of you,\" Probity said as she placed the pot on the warmer. \"You took care of me enough when we were young\u2014won't you let me return the favor?\"\n\n\"Oh. It's just\u2014you came at an awkward time. I'm thrilled to see you\u2014\" And, gods, she was. Probity had been like a little sister as a half-grown muse. Following Brevity around, her fierce shadow. Seeing her grown made a quiet ache form in her chest, a kind of homesickness. \"But... the ink, Claire... the Library. I don't know what to do.\"\n\n\"That's why I'm here.\" Probity's smile was firm with resolve. \"To help you.\"\n\nA distant voice in her head\u2014one that sounded posh and stern and Claire-like\u2014advised caution at such a grand statement. But this was Probity, as close to family as Brevity had ever had. Probity didn't lie\u2014it wasn't in her nature. If she was here to help her, then she was. \"After the fire, all the peop\u2014all the books we lost. I thought\u2014I thought we failed. But now, this ink\u2014\" She wasn't making much sense. Brevity sensed with relief that Probity didn't care. \"It can't be just a coincidence. It is the books we lost, isn't it? The stories, I mean. Can we get them back? The stories that we destroyed?\" Brevity asked, leaning forward. \"Is it possible?\"\n\n\"Destroyed?\" Probity blinked. She stilled a moment, gaze flicking up and down Brevity with a new assessment before her hands came up in an aborted comforting gesture. Instead she fetched the steeped tea and pressed a cup of it into Brevity's hands. \"Oh. Oh, sis. You didn't destroy them.\"\n\nIt was too much. It was all too much. The fear for the damsels, the ink, the argument with Claire, and now the appearance of her lost family, telling her the one thing she wished was true. Heat welled up and Brevity's vision blurred. \"What do you mean? The books\u2014\"\n\nThe memory clogged her throat. She'd seen them. Seen the pages curl in translucent flames, been the last one to catch a glimpse of their words, ash on black. Heard the crack of leather, the smell like burnt flesh. And then she'd held small cold hands, as so many damsels faded away, drifting to death on a shiver of ash. She'd seen them go. And afterward she'd sobbed herself empty as they gathered and interred what ashes they could. Breathing in the soot of lost stories. Leto had hugged her, though he wasn't supposed to touch anyone by then. And then she lost him too.\n\nProbity had wrapped an arm around her and didn't say a word. Brevity got herself under control, even if her voice was thin as paper as she repeated, \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You didn't destroy them,\" Probity repeated gently. \"What happened was a travesty. That, that woman\"\u2014Probity's comforting pats turned a little more forceful as she mentioned Claire\u2014\"she was not fit to hold the title of a librarian. She barely is fit to hold the title of a human. The things she did, that she allowed to be done. But even she can't destroy a story.\"\n\nIt was true that Claire had sunk into a fierce, hurtful isolation when she'd taken the title of librarian. Hiding her own hurts, she'd become rigid with the rules and exacting in enforcing them. She'd been harsh and cold when Brevity had joined the Library. But hadn't they all changed since then? Brevity barely knew where to start, but old loyalty rose first. \"Claire worked harder than anyone. She was a\u2014\"\n\n\"She treated you horribly!\" There was earnest anger there, and Probity's voice was harder now than when she'd spoken of the books. \"That's why you were sent here, wasn't it? For punishment. I can't imagine how hard it was. Sis...\" Probity searched her face with a deep, earnest kind of sympathy.\n\nBrevity started to shake her head. \"But it wasn't\u2014\"\n\n\"But even a bad librarian can't destroy stories. They're made of stronger stuff than that.\" The smile on Probity's lips was brief before dropping into a darker expression. \"Only the living can kill a story. Humans do it every day.\"\n\nThe animosity in Probity's soft voice was a velvet razor, the threat of which was impossible to miss. A cutting change, swift and harsh as a rockfall, came across her expression. But Brevity was distracted by what else she was saying. \"You're saying the damsels\u2014the unwritten books\u2014are still alive.\"\n\nProbity shook her head. \"'Alive' is... a funny way to put it. No, the books are destroyed and gone, but the stories... the potential... that's preserved in the ink. And that's the powerful part.\"\n\nClaire had said something similar, and the way the ink had swarmed and fluxed on the log page certainly seemed like a living thing. Brevity's gaze strayed to where the logbook rested, closed and inert on the massive librarian's desk. Brevity still thought of it as Claire's desk. \"We could bring them back?\"\n\n\"I thought that small, too, at first,\" Probity whispered, drawing Brevity's attention back. She was shaking her head with some kind of deep empathy. \"We're taught to think that small. But seeing the ink work the wonders it did... that it exists is a miracle. It's a sign. You have the Library now\u2014and the support of the Muse Corps. Think about it, sis! We can do more than just restore the way things were.\"\n\nWe. Being a \"we\" with the muses again; longing for that warred with the caution still echoing in Brevity's head. \"Like what?\"\n\nProbity's bottom lip worried and caught between her teeth, seeming to hesitate over her words. She took a breath. \"New books, fresh books. We would replace what the Library lost and more.\" There was a hopeful, sunrise kind of light in Probity's gray eyes, like her entire face was blooming. It brightened her, brought to mind old games and pranks they'd played, and made Brevity smile.\n\n\"Like, new stories? Brand-new? How could that be possible? Which humans\u2014\"\n\n\"It's possible.\" Probity clutched her hands in front of her, almost as if she were still that little sister. Sisters, sharing a secret daydream. \"New stories, recovered stories. Who knows what else? But first we need a sample of the ink to experiment.\"\n\nThat snapped over Brevity like a flinch of frost. She straightened. \"No more experiments. Claire and I already tried. You saw what happened. It rejected the paper straight out.\"\n\nProbity thought about that for a moment, growing solemn and certain. \"Then next time we don't try paper.\"\n\nThere were so many options, Brevity had trouble deciding which part of that sentence alarmed her more. As she passed Probity's shoulder, she caught a glancing wisp of emerald and periwinkle near the Library doors. That was a color combination she'd recognize anywhere. \"Oh, Hero! Over here.\"\n\nA moment later, the man himself appeared in the doorway. His step hesitated as he noticed Probity, but he continued over to them with a shake of his head. \"I don't know how you always hear me coming.\"\n\nHis book might have rejected him, but he still streamed colors like any unwritten book in her eyes. Brevity chewed on the grin that threatened. \"Just a muse thing, I guess.\" She turned her head to share her amusement with Probity, but a change had come over the younger muse. The excited look she'd had while explaining her dream to Brevity, the soft way she'd talked about the plight of stories, had turned pitying with the presence of one. Probity's eyes lingered on Hero as he approached, and she tensed from what Brevity could only guess were nerves.\n\n\"Everything all right downstairs?\" Brevity asked lightly.\n\n\"Claire has the Watcher locking up artifacts,\" Hero said with a brief disapproving purse of his lips.\n\n\"Don't be afraid. She can't touch you anymore,\" Probity reassured him a little too intensely. Hero gave her an odd look.\n\n\"Ah... yes. The monster is dead. I can finally sleep soundly.\" Probity didn't appear to catch the droll twist of Hero's reply. She'd never been adept at sarcasm. Brevity quietly winced inside. Hero shrugged. \"I suppose locking things up is what a librarian is best at.\"\n\n\"She is not the librarian,\" Probity said before Brevity could answer. She pinned Hero with a pitying look. \"As a book you know that.\"\n\n\"Do I? Thank you for the reminder. But as assistant librarian,\" Hero said through a sharp-toothed smile, \"I know how closely the Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing collaborate.\"\n\n\"Tea, Hero?\" Brevity interrupted, before Hero could further sharpen his tongue on Probity's misplaced pity. She snatched the pot Probity had brewed off the stand. \"Have some tea, Prob.\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" Hero said while Probity accepted a cup. He gave Brevity a cautious glance. \"I thought I'd spend some time in the stacks. Inventory, see if there's anything the damsels need.\"\n\nBrevity wasn't sure which was more suspect: Hero volunteering for inventory or Hero concerned for the damsels. She was not stupid, but it was obvious Hero wanted an excuse to avoid Brevity and her guest for a while.\n\nShe nodded assent and pointed to the cart loaded with books. \"Those go back to the children's fantasy section, please.\"\n\nHero approached the cart, glanced at a title, and made a face. \"Imaginary-friend stories. Why are these even books? I hate it when they wake up.\"\n\n\"That's why we shelve them quietly.\"\n\nHero sniffed and kicked the cart ahead of him, in the direction of the stacks. \"As you say. You're the boss.\" It never sounded the same when he said it. Less like a title and more like a reminder of what she wasn't and never would be. Had it been the same for Claire?\n\n\"He's forgotten his book,\" Probity said contemplatively into the silence Hero's departure left behind. \"It's a terrible tragedy for one to carry.\"\n\n\"Hero's making the best of it.\" Probity hadn't precisely said anything malicious, but Brevity felt a surge of protective instinct. \"He's learning fast.\"\n\n\"And moving farther and farther away from his story.\" Probity shook her head with a distant look in her eyes. \"It'd almost have been kinder if he'd burned.\"\n\nBrevity's stomach recoiled and brought her out of her chair. \"Don't say that.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I know it's not what anyone wants to hear, but the truth rarely is,\" Probity reminded her, a pitying look in her eyes. \"Think of it, sis. He'll never be written, and now he doesn't even have the company of his own kind in his story. He exists simply as a reminder of the Library's failure to protect him.\"\n\nThat pierced a little too close to the darker spots in Brevity's heart. \"I'm trying to take care of everyone,\" she said softly.\n\n\"Oh, sis, not you.\" Probity looked far more abashed than she had when talking about Hero. She stood and touched Brevity's arm apologetically. \"You are doing everything right. You are setting so much right. You shouldn't even be here. I simply meant he'll never have his story, a character without an ending. What kind of life is that? At least loss is decisive.\"\n\nThe oily feeling in Brevity's gut was a mix of horror and old wounds. There was some truth in what Probity said\u2014there was always some truth, but Brevity had learned long ago that some truth was not all truth. \"Stop it. You weren't there. The fire, when it took the books...\" She gulped down the bile that threatened to rise and squeezed her eyes closed until her stomach behaved itself.\n\n\"You saw one fire,\" Probity said quietly. \"I've seen them all.\"\n\nBrevity opened her eyes to question that but stopped. Probity was already lost in thought, looking into the shadows of the Library but seeing something else.\n\n\"They burn them first, the stories. Humans always come for the stories first. It's their warm-up, before they start burning other humans. It's their first form of control, to burn the libraries, to burn the books, to burn the archives of a culture. Humans are the stories they tell. If you want to destroy your enemy, destroy their stories. Even if the people survive, it will be as if they never existed at all.\"\n\nBrevity chewed on her lip. \"Humans do a lotta terrible things during war\u2014\"\n\n\"War,\" Probity said, and it was caught somewhere between amusement and agony. \"Shall we revisit the peacetime burning, then? Libraries censored and burned, the stories that died and were forgotten by accident, by neglect, by ignorance, by\u2014and here, the most notorious peacetime murderer of all\u2014by piety. Books burned because they threatened Bronze Age beliefs and scared old men in long robes. I'm not sure if humans have sacrificed more ink than blood to their gods over the years, but if not, it has to be a near thing.\"\n\nNo one liked to speak about the books that were lost, especially muses. Brevity knew it, had mourned along with the others as each precious story they'd ushered to the page was destroyed. Each story that'd managed to get out of the Unwritten Wing only to fall to nothing. It was like a midwife losing entire villages of children to war and ignorance. At least while they'd remained in the Unwritten Wing, they'd been possible. After a story was written and burned... there was only one fate for that. Each one hurt. And then each one had raged, and then... somewhere along the way...\n\n\"It's why you did what you did, wasn't it?\" Probity glanced up, and it wasn't accusation in her eyes now; it was understanding.\n\nTo her credit, Probity's gaze didn't waver, didn't drop to Brevity's folded arms. The ghostly scars of gilt twitched, as if knowing it had been summoned. Brevity still remembered it, remembered when the loops and curls of magic hadn't been on her skin but in her hands, strands of pure inspiration, a human's inspiration. The giddy feeling of holding the seeds of a story. She had delivered it to unknowing humans a thousand times before, but that time...\n\nThat time she hadn't.\n\nThe betrayal had taken only an instant. Hands clutching, feeling the cool-warm flutter under her palms as she pressed the inspiration close to her chest. It'd fluxed, a bare moment of protest before finding her skin and flowing. No flash of brilliance hit her, no genius inspiration of her own\u2014of course not; it wasn't hers\u2014but the strands of inspiration had wrapped seamlessly over the skin of her arm and stayed.\n\nThere wasn't a law against stealing inspiration from a human, but then again, there wasn't a law only because it was unthinkable. Not just a crime; a moral travesty. Brevity had been expelled, the first muse to ever have her duty revoked. She'd been cast out and sent to the Unwritten Wing, where she could perhaps do no more harm and, the muses had likely thought, be tortured by the presence of stillborn stories she couldn't touch.\n\n\"So, you know,\" Probity was saying at barely a whisper, as if knowing she was intruding on Brevity's worst memories. \"You have to know. We should serve the stories, not the humans. They've been a necessity for a long time, but they're flawed. Humans aren't worthy of the stories we bring them.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity shook her head. \"That's not\u2014\"\n\n\"You can't think of a different way it could be, but look at it, at least! The whole system is wrong. Why do we expend realms' worth of effort\u2014the Library, the books, the muses, all of us\u2014to try to entrust our most precious gifts to the most callous, plodding, destructive mortal creatures? Tell me how that makes sense!\"\n\nBrevity hesitated. \"Humans are special; they can create stories\u2014\"\n\n\"And destroy them.\"\n\n\"But humanity, creation, takes a human soul.\"\n\n\"Does it?\" Probity asked, and the question had such a fine razor point that Brevity stopped.\n\n\"What do you mean, 'Does it?'\"\n\n\"Does it really take humans to make a story? Yes, they spin up the pieces, but they seem to need an awful lot of help from us.\" Probity paused and leaned closer, hesitant, as if there were a bubble between them that might break with the slightest wrong word. \"What if we took them back? We could skip the middleman. What if the stories were ours?\"\n\nBrevity's world flipped. She took a shaky breath and shook her head. \"No, when I stole the inspiration I didn't get any of the story. It's not possible.\"\n\n\"Maybe not from the inspiration. It's too distilled, the wrong form to work with. We'd need something closer to the end goal,\" Probity said thoughtfully.\n\nBrevity stared at her. \"The ink. That's why you were so excited about the ink. I already told you, it's impossible.\" When Probity said nothing, Brevity's brow furrowed. \"But how would that even work?\"\n\nNot could but would. Brevity realized the mistake after she said it. Probity met her gaze cautiously, hopefully. \"It would just take a small sample to try. I have some ideas, if you'd help me. You and me, Brev. Don't you remember how that used to be?\"\n\nThat was the difficult part: of course Brevity remembered. She'd always felt better working with someone rather than alone. And helping train Probity had been the best of her memories as a muse. Working together, struggling together, wondering together. Probity had been so studious and good at anchoring down Brevity's wild leaps of ideas, the same way\u2014oh, and there it was. Memories blurred from working with Probity to working with Claire in the Library.\n\n\"No,\" Brevity said, more to herself than anyone else. Even her own ears didn't believe it. \"That's not what the Library is for.\"\n\n\"Sis.\" Probity touched her shoulder, looking at her with all the worship and steady belief of a child reunited with her hero. But they weren't the eyes of a youth anymore. Probity looked at her with the certainty of hope. \"But what if it's what you are made for? Librarians have always been revolutionaries, right?\" Brevity thought of the logbook, of Poppaea's rebellion and Gregor's skeptical pragmatism and Fleur's unorthodox means. She had to nod. Probity smiled. \"Maybe this is your revolution. The system is broken; it's got to change. Maybe you're the one to fix it.\"\n\nIt was an alluring thought, one of stories and quests, but Brevity's anxiety was quick to remind her of the other way those stories ended. \"But what if it breaks instead?\"\n\n\"You can't break something that's already broken. Stop protecting things you could make better.\" Probity's hand slid down her arm, then dropped, hesitantly. She gave her a slip of a smile to soften her frustration. \"Please. Think about it, at least.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "\u2002Remake the Library. That's what they tell me, as if it should be so simple. They tossed out the old librarian, as if chasing off a wild dog, but left all the books. There you go: have at it. Ha! As if books are all that's needed to make a library. My people, we know libraries.\n\n\u2002Stories are more than ink on pages. Libraries are more than scrolls stacked upon shelves. There is something untold here.\n\n\u2014Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 603 CE\n\nQuarantine, Claire had said, and she would have sworn it echoed differently against the flat oak shelves of the Arcane Wing. Alone, repeated back to her unsettlingly. It was a small mercy when Rami set about the inventory and Claire could retreat to her desk.\n\nThe Arcane Wing hadn't had a proper office under Andras. The demon had appeared to enjoy conducting the entire place like a lab. He did any record keeping from the expanse of worktables at the front of the collection. Or, more likely, foisted the more tedious tasks off onto the abominations he called assistants. One of the very first changes the wing had made for Claire's comfort, after lightening the aesthetic gloom, was developing a small alcove along the back wall, past the empty rookeries. It was a cubby, really, just enough space for Claire's battered desk, chair, and row of shelves on the wall above that seemed to always hold precisely the record necessary.\n\nIt was a tiny space Claire could feel was entirely her own, in a place and routine that decidedly weren't. When she turned her chair just so, she could almost imagine she was in the corner of some distant library. It was usually a place to be alone.\n\nUsually, when there wasn't a disgruntled-looking giant raven lurking on the back of her chair.\n\n\"Bird.\" Claire sighed and pulled a drawer open to scavenge some self-defense bread crumbs.\n\nAndras had kept ravens\u2014as experiment subjects, as hostages, perhaps both\u2014when he'd been Arcanist. Not just any ravens\u2014Odin's ravens. Ravens of Valhalla. Ferocious warrior-spies for the Norse realm. Gods knew what Andras had planned. Claire had been happy enough to free them in exchange for help reclaiming the Unwritten Wing. The raven women were welcome allies, and lethal and merciless against Andras's demons.\n\nAfterward, they'd left with their leader, back to Valhalla. All except one old, lazy she-raven. She roosted in the rafters and showed up occasionally to peck at Claire and be a nuisance. She delighted in causing chaos. Claire had taken to just calling the creature Bird, since she'd never seen her transform into a human shape. Perhaps she had forgotten how. Perhaps she couldn't. Perhaps Andras had kept one regular, boring, mortal raven from the human world in the cages, just to have a go at everyone. That would have been his kind of humor.\n\nTrapped and cornered in a cage, everyone's the same feral animal, pup. Remember that. The voice in her head was still there, her memory of Andras the Benevolent Mentor, not Andras the Buggered Traitor.\n\nClaire fed the raven anyway, though she would deign to talk to it only when Rami wasn't around. He already worried about her sanity, after she'd survived witnessing Uriel face-to-face. He really was a fussy one, for a being that had seen epochs come and go. But he had a good heart, and she'd grown too fond to worry him.\n\n\"No, I haven't told him yet. And I'm not going to,\" Claire said to the reproachful look Bird gave her. She hadn't said a word about the whispers to anyone yet. It wasn't that she feared Brevity, Rami, or even Hero wouldn't believe her. It was just, given her history, the presence of voices no one else could hear after a dramatic event like a near-death staining might raise some alarms. Alarms were fussy things. Claire couldn't get a smidge of work done with them.\n\nShe found a broken biscuit behind a bottle of ink that satisfied Bird long enough for Claire to reclaim her chair. The sigh that pushed past her lips as she flopped into the dim of the alcove was not entirely intentional. Her stained hand came to rest, palm up, in her lap. It didn't feel different, besides a perpetually damp, chilly sensation that had her rechecking that she wasn't leaving wet fingerprints of ink on everything she touched. She hoped she still had fingerprints; it was rather hard to tell under all the black.\n\nBird resettled on the edge of the open drawer, biscuit crumbling between her scaly claws. Her feathers were fluffed into a dusty storm cloud that said she had no intention of taking the bribe and leaving Claire in peace. Bird destroyed the biscuit industriously, then set to snapping up a pen cap and rapping it against the desk. At least her random blats and gravel-filled squawks were anchors of solid, weighty things. Real things. Claire put aside the question of whispers and focused on the more productive question of the ink.\n\n\"Back to work,\" Claire muttered to Bird and the whispers.\n\nNo two of Andras's logbooks were the same. Claire drew one down from the shelf at random. The cover was bound in some kind of hide that was too heavy and metallic to be from any creature on earth. She found the index quickly and looked for any log entry dealing with an artifact or speculation of ink. When that came up empty, she broadened her search to any magical liquids, and that got somewhere at least. Claire spent the next three hours wading through Andras's spidery handwriting and parsing out his thoughts on chimera blood, arcane brews, ifrit tears, aqua vitae, and even the observable properties of holy water. An entry that was brief at best. What she wouldn't have given to have that in her inventory at any point of her tenure in Hell, Claire thought wryly.\n\nThere were entries on divine paints, dark visceral slurries, arcane potions, cosmic floods, and the blood of every impossible realm creature one could think of. But no ink. There was not a single record of any artifact of ink-like nature passing through the Arcane Wing.\n\nClaire fell back into her chair and rubbed the grit out of her eyes with her good hand. The utter absence of a thing was nearly as telling as anything else she could have dug up. Telling what, though? A hot feeling threatened to well up in her eyes, and, damn it all, Claire hated to cry when she was frustrated. Crying, in general, was an indignity, but tears that came because she felt powerless to do anything else were the worst kind.\n\nIf she could just find a fulcrum, find a point to stand where the world made sense again, she felt she could manage. But everything had felt wildly askew from true since the Library fire. A slow, festering wound had opened between the Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing. And left unattended, it had burst\u2014through the floorboards, through the tentative quiet\u2014into the mayhem and confusion of ink that shouldn't exist.\n\nAnd there was the wound. Claire mentally poked at it. It wasn't that she desired to be librarian again\u2014she didn't want the Unwritten Wing back from Brevity\u2014it was simply that she wanted to understand what had happened. It had never made sense, and her lack of understanding was threatening everyone. Everyone expected Claire to solve the riddle. Knowledge was what she excelled at. Yet she hadn't even been clever enough to keep from touching the stuff.\n\n\"...naught is lost.\"\n\nClaire sat up in her chair and glanced at the raven. \"Did you hear that?\"\n\nBird gave her a slow blink and released a rain of crumbs into her lap. She squatted into a fluffed ball and appeared to be considering relieving herself over the edge of Claire's desk. Birds really were awful pets.\n\nBut Claire had heard something. Or she thought she had. It was a bit like when you'd been startled out of sleep and your brain was still rewinding to catch up. It always left Claire with the sensation that she'd been jolted awake by a sound she more remembered hearing than heard directly.\n\nThis particular sound was a memory of a voice, young and with a formal accent that really only existed in Arthurian melodramas. Moreover, it was no voice Claire recognized. She pushed away from the desk\u2014Bird cursing at her for the disruption\u2014and emerged from her alcove.\n\nThe Arcane Wing was not entirely silent. Somewhere, far flung toward the entrance, she could hear the methodical thumps of Rami occupied with his work. She almost went toward the sound, but something, or the memory of something, made Claire turn and squint into the shadows of the rookery.\n\nA figure crouched against the wall but slowly unwound itself as Claire's eyes adjusted to the gloom. A flash of brocade made her freeze and imagine for a ridiculous moment it was Andras, escaped and back in his old kingdom. But, no, Andras\u2014or at least the idea of him\u2014was imprisoned in a dagger Claire kept buried in the bottom of her own desk drawer, neglected and ignored. She blinked, and the figure resolved into a lanky blond man in a pit-sweated velvet suit that had been popular on the rock stars of Claire's youth. Then, just as she'd frowned at that, the figure's right pant leg blurred and jittered into the hem of a dress.\n\nShe stared, locked in place, as she tried to make sense of the effect. It was as if his\u2014her?\u2014as if their entire body had difficulty staying tuned to the same frequency. Hair buzzed from blond to red to black to pink. A blast of static seared away velvet into a cotton undershirt, a steel-ring cuirass, silk and feathers, some alien and organic armor, a gingham blouse. The figure made no threatening moves, or any moves at all for that matter. Perhaps they were entirely occupied with keeping their body together.\n\n\"Who are you?\" The question came out mousy and frail in Claire's mouth. The figure simply stared at her (with blue eyes, now black, now orange) and began to walk away.\n\nHold up. Claire had enough narrative sense to recognize a haunting when she saw one. The whispers, the voice, the creepy dream, and now this every-person person. One did not live this long in a library without understanding the clear markers of Suspicious Nonsense. She was not about to go plodding off after some mysterious force like a complete fool.\n\nNo, she was about to go plodding off after some mysterious force like an aware fool.\n\nShe discounted the possibility of not following it right off the bat. She might have disregarded it, at one time, but she had learned what happened if one ignored a story in Hell: it got worse. She considered briefly the option of hunting down Rami, telling him what she was seeing. But that would have lead inevitably to apparitions that conveniently only appeared to Claire, and she'd rather skip over the unnecessary subplot of questioning her sanity, thank you very much.\n\nIf the figure was real, then Claire needed to talk to them. If it was an illusion, then it was surely a cause of the ink that had stained her hand, somehow connected to unwritten stories. And stories could always be counted on for an inevitable flair for drama. Maintaining a sense of narrative wasn't just a professional skill in the Library; it was a survival trait.\n\nSo Claire rubbed her stained wrist idly, prepared to be spooked, and marched down the aisle of shadows.\n\nFloorboards creaked under her feet, and rows of shelves settled with a sigh as she passed by. It was all really a clich\u00e9d kind of effect, at least until she happened to glance at the artifacts nearest her.\n\nNot all the artifacts of the Arcane Wing's collection were made from routine materials. Mortals were nothing if not innovative. There was a particular subset of items made from ghoulish materials\u2014skin, bone, and other identifiable human parts. Claire kept this collection toward the back of the wing. Not because of any unusual power or danger, but because it gave her the willies. That's what she'd told Rami. In truth, the lines of finger bones and skulls reminded her too much of the underground tombs of Malta.\n\nHer eyes skimmed briefly over the top row, where finger bones lay on the velvet in rows, like dead soldiers. Below that, several scrolls and tiny leatherworks\u2014not a speck of cowhide in any of them; each had its own individual cubby. The scroll closest to Claire was a particularly tan shade of brown. The surface shifted just as her gaze landed on it. A trick of shadows, Claire thought, then: Nerves. And then she thought, Oh.\n\nThe tanned hide warped and puckered. A rolling shape rose out of the surface, churning like a fish under the surface until it began to take a recognizable topography. A cheekbone, the hollows smooth as the skin it remembered being. A shifting motion revealed a closed eye, the line of a nose, as if the scroll surface had thinned and something pressed in from the other side. Then: a perfectly shaped mouth. The lips were clear and detailed enough that when they parted around a single word, Claire could almost understand it.\n\nBones rattled. Each delicate finger bone shivered in its velvet bed. Shadows streamed across the ivory, words, or possibly images. Claire refused to look closely. A thump made her jump. The drum beside the scroll writhed, and a tiny, fragile hand tried to push through.\n\nA blat of a cry startled her, and Claire stepped back abruptly.\n\nBird hunched over the nearest shelf, scouring her with pitiless eyes that said, Pull yourself together. Below the raven, a figure crouched in the shadow of the shelf, which sent Claire's pulse up again until she recognized the moon silver eyes.\n\n\"Not that,\" Rosia said in a whisper.\n\nIt took a moment to wrest her breathing steady, and Claire cursed herself before focusing on Rosia. \"What?\"\n\n\"You should be listening, but not to that.\" Rosia hopped forward with a birdlike jerk. Claire didn't flinch, which brought a pleased smile to the willowy girl's face. \"You're not scared of me.\"\n\n\"Why would I be scared of\u2014\" Claire caught herself. \"You shouldn't be here, Rosia. Go back to your home. There's something dangerous in the wing.\"\n\nRosia's head tilted and silver-dollar eyes blinked. \"Dangerous to you, not me.\"\n\nClaire hated to repeat herself. \"What? I don't think you\u2014\"\n\n\"Ghosts don't scare ghosts,\" Rosia said simply before turning on her heel and walking off with a gliding step.\n\nClaire blinked after her. Rosia was a damsel from a gothic horror\u2014something crimson and spiky in the title, as she recalled. Claire'd hated ghost stories as a child, a fact she was just remembering now in the damning way things were forgotten in Hell. She'd hated ghost stories, always spending the whole story steeling herself for the scare, so that by the end she had given herself a headache. Knowing what was coming in a story wasn't always helpful. Sometimes it made it worse.\n\nStill, Claire brooked no fears. She had a responsibility to watch out for Rosia, and at least the girl appeared to confirm what Claire was seeing. It was better than enduring Rami's skepticism. Onward, then. She did not run after the girl, but she upgraded her pace to a determined stride. Bird kept up with a kind of hopping glide from shelf to shelf.\n\nThe every-person waited for them by the well that the wing had erected around the ink reservoir. A low wood stack lined the edge of the liquid, making it more of a reflecting pool than a traditional well. The wing's aesthetic choices sometimes confounded even Claire.\n\nRosia stood in front of the every-person, hands clasped neatly behind her back as if they were having a polite conversation. The figure continued its static shifting, breaking up and reassembling. If the dead channel of a television could be a person, it might appear something like this one.\n\n\"Rosia,\" Claire hissed for her attention. \"Get back from it.\"\n\nRosia didn't turn her head. \"They just want you to listen.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"I just wanted someone to listen, too, when I was a ghost.\"\n\nClaire's mouth formed around several half responses before she shook her head. \"This isn't a story.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" Rosia lifted her hand, and the every-person mirrored. The static of its palm cycled through a number of skin tones and sizes before matching her own.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Claire shifted her focus to the unknown threat. She drew to a stop a cautious distance from the edge of the ink. She crossed her arms in front of her uneasily. Not as if the finger bones had unsettled her. No creepy pronouncements from children with haunted eyes were going to get to her: heavens no. Impatience; that was what this was. \"Ghost of sins past? Andras's vengeful shade? Do hurry up, whatever this is about. You're upsetting my charges, and\"\u2014she wiggled a few black fingers\u2014\"I'm on borrowed time, in case you haven't heard.\"\n\nThe every-person's head dropped to the side and briefly flickered to a rather annoyed expression. It turned, knelt slowly beside the pool, and began to extend an arm. Rosia eagerly crouched beside it.\n\n\"I'd really rather you didn't,\" Claire warned, stepping forward. After a moment she added, a bit resentfully, \"Please.\" It wasn't as if she knew exactly how she would stop a phantom from touching the ink, but Rosia was her responsibility. Ink had attacked her as a human; who knew what would happen to a book? \"It is not an experience I can recommend.\"\n\nThe every-person's eyes flickered to one perfectly arched brow for a moment. The static figure extended its hand over the surface, palm down but not touching. Claire had time only to take another alarmed step forward before the ink below its hand began to shift and roil.\n\n\"Look,\" Rosia breathed.\n\nThe helpless steps Claire had taken had brought her close enough to see it clearly. The ink wasn't moving; something was moving across it. Movement spiraled out from the shadow the hand cast on the surface. Claire caught figures and shapes. Then she caught a flash of blond and velvet that she'd seen earlier and gasped.\n\nThe figure was still, but the surface of its skin was in constant motion. The static flux of its appearance had picked up speed. Claire began to pick out a pattern in what had seemed random noise before. She caught a glimpse of the gingham-print dress on the figure's shoulder. It flickered and blinked, replicating all over its torso before slowly sequencing down the extended arm. The hand became slender and pale for a moment, and a new image spiraled out across the ink surface. A tall woman in a prairie dress strode purposefully through moonlit fields of grain, sickle in hand.\n\n\"Oh, how nice,\" Rosia whispered.\n\nThe stranger wasn't stirring up the ink; it was communing with it. Making some kind of transfer of... data? Memory? Claire didn't know what, but she needed it to stop right now. Rosia leaned ever closer to the pool's edge in the flickering shadow the every-person cast. Bravery and foolishness go hand in hand, and she was already displaying one of the two, so\u2014\n\n\"Stop!\" Claire pulled Rosia back with one hand and shoved the every-person by the shoulder to create space. She was half-surprised when her hand didn't pass straight through. The figure only straightened to its feet, so smoothly that Claire forgot to remove her hand. The constant change of texture beneath her fingers was alarming, but she gripped and twisted them around to face her. \"Who\u2014 What are you?\"\n\nThe every-person's arm lowered and it resumed its random jittering, but for one brief moment a single face resolved with dipped brows and begging eyes. Pleading, then hurt, then angry.\n\n\"They are us,\" Rosia whispered with a bereft note. \"You're still not listening.\"\n\n\"They haven't said anything!\"\n\n\"I'm listening,\" Rosia continued. \"They're alone, sad. They want to be more. They are more, but everyone's forgotten. I'll remember, I'll listen\u2014I'm more too.\"\n\n\"Don't touch\u2014\" A flicker of movement started in the corner of her eye. Claire focused on where her ink-blackened hand had gripped their shoulder. Armies of figures twisted and raced across the stain\u2014across her skin. It was hers\u2014it was hers\u2014wasn't it?\n\nClaire released her grip, flinching to stumble back and away from the shifting flow of strangers. Her breath was coming in gasps, so there was nothing left in her lungs when the every-person held its hand out to Rosia, who took it without hesitation. The every-person looked at Claire sadly, wrapped a protective arm around Rosia, and pulled them into the bottomless pool of ink.\n\n\"Ros\u2014\"\n\nThere was no splash, no ripple, not even more phantom figures dancing across the surface. The ink parted, creating a gap of space around Rosia as they passed, and closed over her head without a sound.\n\nClaire rushed to the edge of the pool, heedless of the roiling way the ink churned as she approached. That was the only movement in the silence that followed as Claire tried to process what had happened. The space where Rosia had fallen was still as a mirror. No thrashing, no struggle of life. Rosia was gone beyond reach.\n\nShe'd failed to protect another damsel, another book. The sound that cracked up Claire's throat was a delirious giggle. The panic and terror were a film on top of giddy exhaustion, like soap on a bubble, held at bay until everything popped. She couldn't let it pop. She couldn't.\n\nThe ink had drawn away from Rosia. Claire replayed what had just occurred again in her mind to be sure. She forced the memory to advance, frame by frame. The every-person had seemed protective, and the ink had seemed to align with that. Rosia had been certain, and then she'd been gone.\n\nMaybe not gone. Claire held on to that idea like a lifeline. Rosia was in there; she would get Rosia back. Because the alternative was failing, again.\n\nClaire straightened from the pool as she recalled Rosia's words: It wants to be more. More what, then? More than a ghost?\n\nIt was then that Claire remembered that ghost stories usually had unsatisfactory endings. She had loss but no closure. She had an unsettled fear but no answers. She did, however, have a pool of questions. She would stop hiding from them.\n\nGhosts, Rosia had said. If it was time to hunt ghosts, she first needed to put her own to rest."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "\u2002I have the wing to rights, as far as I understand it. The books sleep; the demons stay at a distance. Even Revka, the stone woman, seems to approve. Everything makes sense, except why this place should exist at all. And why in a place of suffering? The logbook is no help; it shows me words just cryptic enough to increase my questions.\n\n\u2002I am in a world of damnation. I should not borrow trouble. But my mother taught me the viper that one doesn't follow to its hole is the viper that bites you.\n\n\u2014Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 602 CE\n\nIt'd been unusually easy to explain his absence to Claire. He'd found the Arcanist near the front of the wing, staring with some indecision at the doors. She'd jumped when Rami cleared his throat.\n\n\"Rami. Right,\" Claire said briskly, though Rami hadn't said anything that required agreement. \"I have a task for you.\"\n\n\"Ma'am?\" Rami had been gearing up to explain his absence, but Claire disappeared down the aisle at a brisk pace. Rami had to lengthen his stride to catch up. \"Has something happened?\"\n\n\"No!\" Claire responded immediately and, if possible, quickened her pace even more. \"No, of course not. It just occurred to me that there was an artifact overlooked that should go in quarantine.\"\n\nRami grimaced. \"The waxed dragon scales? I apologize, ma'am, but it seemed like an edge case\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not\u2014\" Claire paused outside her private alcove and gave Rami a querulous look. \"I wasn't talking about the dragon scales. Not your fault at all. This one isn't on the official inventory, after all.\"\n\n\"Not\u2014\" Rami caught his breath as Claire pulled a key from her skirts and opened the bottommost drawer. Six months of disuse made the unoiled rails screech, and Bird complained from somewhere in the rafters above them. At the bottom of the drawer, the tip of a small blade poked out from beneath a tower of discarded paper scraps, like the fang of a viper. \"Claire, are you sure? You said the safest place for that...\"\n\n\"Was out of sight, forgotten. I know.\" It had to be the dimmer light in the alcove that made Claire look abruptly pale. Her gaze flicked around nervously before she appeared to remember herself. \"But if this ink is a lingering threat from the coup, I want him secured far away from it.\" Claire studied an indefinite point on the desk. \"And me.\"\n\n\"You?\" Rami considered his accumulated observations and the nervy tension in Claire's face. \"You mean you are afraid to touch it.\"\n\n\"Really, Rami! I hold a cautious misgiving about touching it, with my stained hand,\" Claire corrected, a shadow of her imperious self shaking her mood. She sniffed. \"As if I would grant Andras the gift of my fear. He's unworthy.\"\n\n\"I agree.\" Rami stepped forward to take the dagger artifact that contained the essence of their fallen enemy\u2014once friend, as Rami had understood it, though he had been no friend of any demon. Claire stepped back, knocking the arm of her chair against the wall. She hid the moment she flinched in a grimace.\n\n\"I'll wrap it and place it in the very back of the vault,\" Rami said slowly. The exposed blade was chill in his palm, but no colder than any polished metal. He hesitated at the alcove entrance, but Claire didn't meet his gaze. \"Andras is gone and can threaten no one now. He's dead, Claire. Or as good as dead.\"\n\n\"Yes, well... the dead do have a way of making a nuisance of themselves when it comes to me.\" Claire's smile was too tight to avoid being a grimace.\n\n\"It only seems that way,\" Rami soothed as he tucked the knife away, watching as Claire visibly relaxed once it was out of sight. \"I think we do the haunting to ourselves. Death keeps its own secrets.\"\n\nClaire sighed, nodding defeat if not agreement. \"We do. And Death\u2014\"\n\nHer chin froze midmotion and her gaze sharpened enough to send a prickle of alarm up Rami's neck. \"Claire?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Nothing. Just a passing thought to consider.\" Claire straightened, and she appeared so much more her old self that Rami didn't dare question it. She made a shooing motion. \"Get that in the vault, if you please.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "It was a careful matter storing what was effectively the Arcane Wing's most notorious prisoner in the archive vaults. Rami was grateful for it. It gave him time to formulate the careful way he would broach Hero's proposed lead with Claire.\n\n\"I'd like to look into some things,\" Ramiel said after finding Claire near the ink reservoir. She appeared to have gathered her calm again and had convinced the wing to repair the floor to something resembling a small\u2014if incredibly gothic-looking\u2014reflecting pool for the ink. She stared into it with what appeared to be expectation\u2014as if the ink could talk to her. Abruptly, she nodded and took off for her alcove.\n\nRami followed and began to wrestle with the fear that now was a poor time to leave the mortal woman alone with her thoughts. \"Claire?\"\n\nClaire looked up from the prodigious stack of books with which she had fortified her desk. For all Andras's duplicity, he'd kept exacting notes on every artifact in the wing, which Claire had only begun to sift through. \"Things?\" she said, as if no time had passed. \"You've run across something like the ink before?\"\n\n\"No,\" Ramiel said truthfully. \"Whatever this is, it's unique to the Library.\"\n\n\"Then what do you hope to find that you can't share with me?\"\n\n\"We intend to make discreet inquiries into the other libraries.\" Ramiel saw no reason to lie. Which was good because he had been told, repeatedly, that he was terrible at it. He had accepted it as a flaw of being burdened with a divine nature in Hell.\n\n\"And the last time I left the realm it was a minor scandal,\" Claire said with the grace of an understatement.\n\nRami smiled. \"It was a minor scandal on our end too.\"\n\n\"Everything is a scandal to Heaven.\" On another's lips, that word might have made Rami flinch, but Claire had a clear-eyed way of looking at him that steadied him. Contentment, to be here of all places, was a radical novelty in Rami's life. Claire had no idea of the miracle that was. Instead she made a sour face, which was so familiar it dispersed Rami's previous concerns. \"I have no idea how paradise realms can even get anything done with that much inefficiency.\"\n\n\"I believe it's viewed as ethics.\"\n\n\"Inefficiency.\" Claire straightened the books in front of her before a thought occurred to her with a sharp glance. \"You said 'we.'\" She squinted. \"Hero's dragging you along.\"\n\n\"For the sake of my dignity, let us say it's more of a strategic escort.\" Ramiel didn't think he made a face, but Claire snorted a withering kind of amusement. At least it served to center her. Her face took on a more present kind of focus. She gestured, and Rami handed her the teapot to refill her empty cup; then she offered him a clean one. The air filled with the metallic drift of Darjeeling\u2014perhaps with a Ceylon blend? Rami had never developed the taste for it, but he knew his teas now, evidently. Claire's personality was of such force that education on such things came with her acquaintance. \"From what I understand of his logic, it is sound. I believe his intentions are in earnest.\"\n\n\"And has he gotten permission from Brev for these earnest intentions?\"\n\n\"Not in so many words,\" Ramiel admitted. The teacup was pleasantly warm against the calluses on his palms. He took a tentative sip\u2014yes, still tasted like old water to him\u2014while he fought the ridiculous urge to defend Hero. \"He could have run before now, if that was his intent.\"\n\n\"True.\" Claire's mouth executed a brittle twist that wasn't entirely without fondness. \"If I was still librarian, I'd be concerned.\"\n\n\"And as the Arcanist?\"\n\n\"I'm recreationally skeptical,\" Claire admitted behind the rim of her teacup. \"Be careful. Hero isn't nearly as hard as he plays at being.\"\n\nRami sighed. \"No, he's quite a bit sharper.\"\n\n\"He grows on you. Like a barnacle.\"\n\n\"A lesion,\" Rami suggested helpfully.\n\nThe laugh surprised Claire enough that it diverted into a cough. Once she had regained her composure, she set her tea down. Her expression turned thoughtful as she appeared to search his face for insight. \"I've grown to care about him, nonetheless.\"\n\nRami looked down into his mostly full cup. It would not be very angelic to scuff his shoes, no matter how much the dip in his stomach told him to. \"I know.\"\n\nPorcelain on wood clicked as Claire shuffled her undrunk tea aside to select a book from the stack. A patently false gesture, as Rami knew Claire never kept her tea on a reading surface for fear of spilling it. It distracted him from her next words. \"Just as I care about you.\"\n\nRami startled. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\nHe had no idea what his face was doing in that moment\u2014Claire had a way of dipping around his guard. But whatever Claire saw made her lips quirk. She nodded smugly to herself. \"All right. You may have it.\"\n\nIt wasn't proper. The thousands of years of etiquette Ramiel had on Claire escaped him in a confused noise.\n\n\"My pardon, I mean. For whatever foolishness you and Hero are about to get up to.\" Claire settled back into her chair, flipping through the initial pages of her book without reading them. \"In return, I want both of you to come back. No heroics, and I expect you to ensure that you present yourselves again in one piece. Both of you.\"\n\nRami felt like he was missing an important undercurrent of the conversation. It wouldn't have been the first time. Humans were always evolving new ways of not saying what they meant. He had thought he knew most of them, until he met Claire. \"Ma'am? I mean, Claire\u2014are you feeling\u2014\"\n\n\"You're always so straightforward, Ramiel.\" Claire's smile was soft with exhaustion and, perhaps, fondness. \"It makes it easier to return the favor. Let's just say this most recent threat has left me feeling inconveniently impulsive and tired of my own games. It has left me irresponsibly open to considering what I want.\" Claire slumped back into her chair. Two black fingers toyed with the tattered edge of a page. It drew attention to the ink stain against paper the color of old bone. She pulled her fingers away as if they'd been burned. \"Perhaps you should consider the same, Rami.\"\n\n\"What I want?\" Rami echoed.\n\n\"Don't look so confused. You're not trying to get into Heaven anymore. You're surrounded by mortals and books and gods know what else. You're allowed to want things now. Give it a try; you might find it grows on you. Like a barnacle.\"\n\nThere was a precise conversation Claire was having, and there were the words Rami was hearing. He felt the two were rather removed from each other. Some vital part of his brain had gone into free fall, so he only managed an eloquent nod.\n\n\"Good.\" Claire turned her attention back to her desk. \"Go. Be careful and bring both of you home.\"\n\n\"I'll see to it,\" Ramiel promised with some relief. And he did\u2014promise. Hero might have been an ass with overconfidence in his charms, but Rami had sworn to protect all the residents of the Library. That included stunningly perplexing dead women and insufferable men with broken books."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "\u2002The Library is hiding something. I'm certain of it. But an immortal secret is not going to be solved by one soul. So I put forth the charge to you, future librarians: discover the secret of the Library's existence. Take what I've learned and add your own under the log index entry Myrrh. In my time, it was that which was sought after for medicine, knowledge, and purification. Knowledge purifies. We serve no one with ignorance.\n\n\u2002I believe this little logbook can hold our secrets secure. And maybe one day, it will hold the truth as well.\n\n\u2014Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 603 CE\n\nThe problem with being made from a book, Hero had decided, was that everyone thought they could read you. The firmly held belief that they could look at you, read you once, and know the entirety of your contents for eternity. That a book was simply the sum of the text on its pages.\n\nIt certainly felt like more than that, from the inside. Hero resented the simplification of it. The way Claire and Brevity nattered between them, dissecting terms with important capitalizations like Narrative and Story and Point of View. As if as a character his thoughts were prescripted, and he was merely a composition of cogs and bits to be taken apart and reassembled.\n\nGranted, they never talked about him in specific in this manner, but being the exception was no comfort. It felt condescending, like a hall pass. At his heart he knew he was still a story. A story with a broken book, but a story.\n\nHe didn't know where that left him anymore. Not immutable but also not a cold assemblage of parts. Perhaps he was a draft, half-born but unfinished. Unruly and unfixable. Yes, Hero could definitely be that.\n\nIt was in this particularly sour frame of mind that Hero found Rami skulking around the entrance to the Arcane Wing.\n\n\"About time.\" Hero barely paused midstep to stride past the doors and down the hallway. He was gratified to hear Rami scramble to his feet behind him. Claire had done that trick enough to him. \"I've bought some time, but if Brevity recalls me in the middle of an inquiry it'll be disastrous. We should get moving.\"\n\nThe transport office neared, then flew past them. Rami's heavy steps picked up.\n\n\"Don't we need to return to the Unwritten Wing?\" Rami asked. \"Or wherever this secret exit is that you found?\"\n\nHero stopped and pinned him with a baffled look. \"Dear gods, you think it's a literal door, don't you?\"\n\nRami had too much dignity to blush, which was a pity, but Hero rather appreciated the way his glare turned self-conscious. \"The warding of books was not a Watcher's concern in my day.\"\n\nHe said \"warding of books\" not quite the way one would say \"mucking stalls,\" but it was close. Hero's lip curled and he leaned in. \"It's entirely all right. I'll make sure you can keep up.\" He started off again before Rami could entirely respond. \"Wards don't have physical weaknesses; they have logical ones. What we're looking for isn't a secret door; it's a secret loophole.\"\n\nThe loft of his lecturing air was not lost on Rami. \"So, you cheat.\"\n\n\"Of course I cheat. Dear gods, what am I, a real hero? No.\" Hero waved away the absurd insinuation. \"It's more about obeying the letter of the law than the spirit. Entirely appropriate. We'll use the Library's own processes, even.\"\n\n\"Definitely cheating,\" Rami muttered.\n\nHero suppressed a burr of irritation. He was being incredibly clever and his audience couldn't even appreciate it. Claire and Brevity had tried for hours to wheedle this secret out of him, and here he was, just handing it to the damned man and he couldn't even pretend to be impressed. Angels, really. And yet, Hero needed him for this next part.\n\n\"Voil\u00e0.\" Hero withdrew a small strip of paper from his jacket and flourished it under Rami's nose. \"A hold.\"\n\n\"A what?\" Ramiel snatched the paper out of Hero's hand with surprising dexterity.\n\n\"A hold request, for the IWL,\" Hero said, then helpfully clarified, \"the interworld loan.\"\n\n\"I know that much,\" Rami said stiffly. Brows knit as he studied the sheet. Hero had taken the liberty of filling out most of the details. Title and catalog information for his own book, each detail triple-checked. Just two blank spaces remained. \"Is this how you escaped the first time?\"\n\n\"Sort of. It was easy, once I thought of it. Took a few months to convince a visitor to risk taking a slip back with him to Earth\u2014suspicious lot, demons are\u2014but, well, I'll show you.\" Hero shrugged and rifled for a pen. \"Your signature goes at the bottom, of course, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Elysium?\" Ramiel squinted at the sheet, then back up at Hero. \"Why there?\"\n\n\"Why not start with the Greeks?\" Hero made a broad gesture. \"I've had a lot of time to study the Librarian's Log lately. A shake-up\u2014the last big shake-up\u2014happened under the tenure of a Greco-Roman librarian. Claire and Brevity are astonishingly tight-lipped about it. Seems as if she tried to start a bit of a war. If this rebel librarian was sent packing to the Library wing in Elysium, we can get some answers.\"\n\nEven Ramiel had to admit that the logic was sound. \"But you're stamped, part of the permanent collection. Doesn't that mean you're not lendable?\"\n\n\"Not to patrons. Not anymore, a shame.\" Hero made a face. It would have been so much easier if he was. \"But the rules are less strict for esteemed colleagues of the Library. Like, say, an assistant curator of the Arcane Wing.\"\n\nRamiel began to crumple the sheet. \"So that's why you need me.\"\n\n\"Only partially! Though I admit your charming company is leaving something to be desired.\" Hero stopped Ramiel's hands with his own. \"You want answers, don't you?\"\n\nWhether it was the question or Hero's hands on top of his knuckles, Ramiel stilled. A complicated look washed over his face, but before Hero could blink to read it, it was gone. Rami yanked his hands free and took the pen. \"I want solutions, to help Claire. We go, we ask if anyone's encountered such a thing as this ink before, and we get out. No games.\"\n\n\"No games,\" Hero repeated solemnly. Bless the sweet man, he almost seemed to believe him.\n\nAlmost. Rami shot him a reproachful look again and scribbled a signature on the bottom of the sheet. He allowed Hero to take it back along with the pen. \"And now what?\"\n\n\"Oh, now.\" Hero flashed a smile that was nervy and peaked with a touch of fear. He was already feeling it, that slow, seeping feeling, like he'd more than gone pale. He patted the square spot where his book always rested tucked into his vest pocket, just to be sure. Gods, Hero hated this part. \"You know the way to Elysium, right?\"\n\n\"What?\" Ramiel sputtered, and was too shocked to stop him as Hero reached out, sank his fingers into Ramiel's dour, dusty overcoat, and came away with a fistful of gray feathers. His hand was so pale the feathers looked nearly black in comparison. His book, tucked inside his vest, felt like a hot ember pressing and burning a solid rectangle into his own chest.\n\n\"Never mind. Do your best.\" Hero's voice was faint, raspy as old paper even to his own ears. He clenched his eyes shut. This was his very least favorite part of cleverness. \"I'll leave a light on for you.\"\n\nThe solid weight of the book turned cold. A heat raged through him, and his insides felt turned from solid to liquid to ash. Ramiel made a baritone squawk of protest, and Hero was swept away."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "\u2002Hell is a place for forgetting. Kind enough, really, because anyone who lands here has plenty they'd be happy to not recall. But makes you wonder, donnit? Where those forgotten memories go when they're gone from life and death? Maybe there's a life of \"after\" for memory too.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1771 CE\n\nParadise was not going according to plan. Not at all. Hero had expected to appear in some elegant version of the Library he'd just left\u2014artful marble pillars, airy, maybe some grapes and wine? Surely at least a comfortable spot and refreshments to wile away the time in comfort until the angel found his own way to Elysium. But no, instead, he'd come to in tall wheatgrasses, which had fought back as he clambered his way out to the field's edge. Cockleburs clung to his jacket and were working their way into other places, and Hero was unimpressed with this realm's entire concept of idyll.\n\nParadise, it seemed, was distinctly rural.\n\nThe road was smooth with fresh stone pavers, out of place in the pastoral scene, and Hero paused to survey it. The road cut a neat line between a patchwork of tidy golden wheat fields and meadows luridly feral with yellow flowers. The greenery spilled right up to the edge of a cliff that sheared down to a bay that was a watercolor of impossible blues and greens. A far hill was crowned with the low outlines of a pale city, but nothing so grand and spiraling as Hero had expected.\n\nStill, it was the most promising sign of civilization, the modest farm homes dotting the fields excluded. Hero set off toward it. He'd barely made it over the first rise when a rustle caught his attention above the gentle wind. A disturbance snaked through the wheat field on his right, something graceful and low to the ground parting the stalks. A subtle glance found a mirroring disturbance on his left.\n\nJust once, Hero would have liked to enter a realm without immediately being challenged to mortal combat. Was that too much to ask? He sighed and forced his pace to stay slow and lazy, allowing the pincer formation to close in on him precisely as he came to a small stone bridge. At the foot of the bridge, he turned and scowled at the empty road. \"Honestly, if you're trying to be subtle\u2014\"\n\nA roil of muscle and fur glided onto the road, stopping Hero's breath. Two creatures emerged from the wheat. They might have been female lions had their fur not been distinctly metallic. Fine strands of gold, mottled with copper, flowed over the beasts' hides. Muscle, sleek and defined, rolled underneath with every sinuous step.\n\nThe lions came to a stop in the middle of the road and regarded Hero with unblinking eyes. They gave the distinct impression that they were waiting.\n\nHero's mind scrambled for the what. If there was a password for entering this realm, he didn't know it. There was likely a toll\u2014there was always a damned price in these kinds of places\u2014but he'd hoped Ramiel would catch up before he had to pay it. An angel with a flaming sword would not have been unwelcome just about now.\n\n\"Simon says?\" Hero tried, then spun and broke into a run.\n\nIt was a short sprint across the bridge, made longer by anticipating the razor claws shredding into his back at any moment. Hero risked a glance behind him, but the beasts had followed at a mere saunter. Well, maybe they'd eaten recently. Maybe they were vegetarians. Maybe at this rate he'd outrun them\u2014\n\nA freight train took him at the shoulder. At least, that's what it felt like as Hero went down, tumbling with an unbelievable weight on top of him. He let out a shriek\u2014an entirely manful, intimidating shriek, mind\u2014and succeeded in rolling blindly away across the dirt. He came up in a clearing of trampled wheat, nose to nose with a third, very large, glimmering lion. This one was more copper than gold and had a rainbow sheen when the light played off the roll of its shoulders. Silver claws dug into the fresh-churned dirt as Hero rose.\n\nHis hand drifted immediately to his sword hip, but\u2014no. Book and bind it, he'd left the sword back at the Unwritten Wing. He'd not wanted to raise any suspicion with Brevity, and he'd been so certain that traveling with Ramiel would have provided more than enough armament if needed. And it was needed, very much, right now, without an angel in sight.\n\n\"Damn the man,\" Hero murmured with a placating gesture. Raising his hand must have appeared threatening, because in a breath the lion launched itself in the air.\n\nHero dove to the dirt again, rolling as the beast raked the air where he'd been. He managed a lucky kick in the face, which set the cat back on its heels for a moment, but it was the only opening he was liable to get. Hero lunged before the lion could turn around, latching his arms around its neck in a way that he prayed kept the razor claws out of reach.\n\nThe lion's pelt had shone metallic in the sun, and Hero had expected a rasp of metallic needles as he wrapped his arms around the neck in a death grip. Instead, the fur was velvety, so soft it was almost slippery as the lion bucked. It howled its outrage, twisting. Hero didn't have long to develop a plan before the lion would discover this position brought Hero's legs into appetizing mauling range. On impulse, Hero tangled his ankles past the lion's haunches, wrenched his knees tight to the flanks, and rolled.\n\nIt wouldn't have worked if the lion had been firmly planted\u2014lions were surprisingly hefty beasts. But Hero had caught it midstep, just enough to knock it off-balance. They hit the ground again and Hero threw all his strength into it, using the momentum to fling the beast away.\n\nIt was not expected. The beast tumbled across the beaten-down grass, and Hero heard a solid sound as the back of its head hit the half-buried boulder. Hero tensed on his hands and knees, dragging long fistfuls of air into his chest as he waited to see if the lion would rise again.\n\nA crunch of dried grass interrupted. Over his shoulder, he saw movement. Two other cats, the damned beasts that had followed him across the bridge, had caught up. They sliced through the grass at a languid pace, but they no longer looked like the statues he'd mistaken them for before. A hungry ghostlight lit their gaze and followed Hero's slightest movements.\n\nHell. Hero could not catch a break. He made a furious sound in his throat and pressed shakily to one knee.\n\n\"Come on, then! Scabrous mongrels\u2014coddled tabby cats\u2014see if I don't scratch.\" His hand fisted in a gouge of dirt. Perhaps if he managed to fling it in the eyes of one... but then the other would be on him. It was a small chance, but he wasn't dead yet, if he\u2014\n\nA low snarl came from his back and\u2014oh, strike that\u2014Hero was dead. The initial lioness was not down for the count. The two beasts in front of him tensed, a shadow of movement flickered in his periphery, and Hero flinched his eyes shut. He would die, and it would probably be gory and entirely undignified, and the brutes would likely shred his book in the process and even Claire wouldn't be able to paste him together again, assuming she even bothered enough to try. And he'd die as lion poop and he hoped they choked on his binding and\u2014\n\nCopper heat brushed past his shoulder. A shadow shifted, and Hero couldn't resist peeking open one eye. His view was blocked by a wall of burnished fur and muscle. The lioness shifted in front of him, but her attention was not on Hero; it was on the two beasts that had been about to eat him.\n\nHero wasn't versed in the languages of cats. Or metal cat deities. Or whatever these blasted things were. But the air thrummed with tension as a wordless communication ensued. Finally, the ears on the two opposing lions flicked back, displeased as they dropped their heads and slunk away. They disappeared back into the grass, quick and silent as they had come.\n\nHero might have sighed his relief, but there was still one murder cat inches from him. The beast's fur twitched, as if sensing his speculation, and it turned to regard him with a baleful silver eye. Blood dripped down one side of its face, almost black against the copper fur. Injured, he supposed, when it had been thrown against the rocks. Hero's fault, then.\n\nBut while the cat had seemed intent on his demise earlier, now it just stared at him, as if considering whether he was worth the time. Hero grew light-headed from holding his breath by the time the lioness snorted, breaking the standoff. She turned and took two paces to the edge of the clearing. She paused, glancing over her shoulder impatiently. Hero got to his feet slowly, and the lioness made a satisfied sound and stepped into the grass.\n\nAfter a few steps she stopped again, pinning Hero with another glance. As if she expected him to... follow her.\n\nFollow the murder lion into the murder grasses and hope for the best. The residual adrenaline bubbled out of Hero's throat as a laugh. It was a ludicrous idea. And once upon a time Hero would have roundly ridiculed anyone who even entertained the prospect. That would have been before he followed a half-mad librarian into a labyrinth of a fully mad dead god, of course.\n\nA murder lion seemed almost quaint by comparison, really.\n\nShort of better options, Hero scrubbed his face, muttered curses to every god, librarian, and damned Watcher that had led him here, and stumbled into the long grass in pursuit of a lion.\n\nThe lioness led him across a wheat field and through a valley that Hero hadn't thought the island large enough to contain. She never allowed him to fall far enough behind to get lost, but she only waited with an air of indifference when Hero stumbled or struggled his way over a climb. By the time they reached the rise of the white-walled city, Hero had developed a fine film of sweat and grime and torn his velvet coat in three places. His favorite velvet coat, mind you. He was still picking an extra burr from the top of his boots when the lioness stopped.\n\nHero looked up and had to shield his eyes from the sun. Light reflected off the polished marble like a mirror, and it took a moment to identify the wide portico of the building he'd spotted from the road. A step into the shade gave his eyes relief, and he could make out that the veranda was scattered with low couches, invitingly outfitted with pillows. On each end table sat fluted ceramic cups of refreshments, which were being enjoyed by a small gathering of rather beautiful men and handsome women who paid Hero no attention. Only one inhabitant was looking his way, and when he registered, Hero's lip curled.\n\nRamiel, fallen Watcher of the Creator and glorified overstuffed bulldog of a git, did not so much sit on the couch as perch uneasily on the edge of the cushion. The fragile cup of wine looked practically toylike between his calloused fingers, and he held himself with a still awkwardness. Probably entirely due to the company to his left and his right. A stunning woman, composed of lush curves, olive-gold skin, and curls the color of perfectly roasted almonds, reclined on his right, eyeing Ramiel with a look that could only be read as hungry. Her twin\u2014brother? clone? had to be one of those\u2014attended a fruit plate on the Watcher's left. Hero considered him even more beautiful, which was saying something, considering Hero knew beauty, thank you very much.\n\nIt might have provided an excellent opportunity to intuit Ramiel's preferences, if he didn't look stoically constipated trapped between them. His eyes jumped to the door and Ramiel nearly dropped his wine cup. \"Hero.\"\n\n\"Oh please, don't bother yourself with getting up.\" Hero allowed acid to positively drizzle his words. Ramiel, at least, had the good nature to look ashamed and rushed to his feet.\n\n\"You told me to meet you in Elysium.\"\n\n\"Yes, well, obviously you have availed yourself of a shortcut,\" Hero said.\n\n\"Lord Ramiel is always welcome in Elysium. He is known here,\" the pretty man with the plate said with an earnestness.\n\n\"Others are expected to pass a hero's trial,\" his presumed sister cooed. She swept her glance over Hero in a clinical way that said he'd been found wanting. \"Is this your friend, Ramiel?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014no, I mean...\" Ramiel's fingers fluttered along his goblet until he recovered enough to set it down and clear his throat. \"Ah, Iambe, Pallas... Hero is an emissary from the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"Oh, you work for the Library, then?\" The boy, Pallas, asked with excitement.\n\nPallas wore a chiton that looked butter soft to the touch, if cut too short. It revealed a new inch of muscled thigh every time he shifted. It would have been unseemly to modern eyes if not paired with wide, guileless blue eyes. He was the kind of innocent that was expensive, and required resources for upkeep. Just the kind of beauty that Hero might have enjoyed flirting with once. But at the moment Hero could only find irritation at how closely the boy watched Ramiel. Perhaps that pastime, too, had been ruined along with his book.\n\n\"I am a... part of the Library, yes,\" Hero said instead.\n\n\"An integral part, even,\" Ramiel muttered, and Hero was too surprised to glare at him. That he'd chosen now of all times to gain a sense of humor was really impossibly rude.\n\nIambe nodded. \"You'll be here to speak to Echo, then.\"\n\n\"Echo?\"\n\n\"The librarian\u2014our librarian. Of the Unsaid Wing,\" Iambe said, and tilted her head. \"What brings the Unwritten Wing out of seclusion?\"\n\n\"Just Library business,\" Hero said. He knew feigned uninterest when he saw it. Gods could only hope that Ramiel hadn't blabbed the entire predicament with the ink before he'd arrived. \"Could we be brought to Librarian Echo, then? Or is there another test to pass?\"\n\n\"Test?\" Iambe laughed, gaze flicking briefly to the copper-colored cat that shadowed Hero's steps. \"You arrive escorted by a Fury. They saw fit to let you live\u2014how did you pull that off, might I ask? You're not the typical sort of hero we get around here.\"\n\n\"You have no idea,\" Ramiel muttered under his breath. Muttering. He'd done a lot of that since they'd got here. Hero ignored him.\n\n\"They ambushed me at the bridge\u2014I didn't get much time to make an impression.\" Hero shrugged. \"I wrestled that one, for little good it did me, and the others seemed to back off.\"\n\n\"You wrestled Alecto, in her feral form?\" That appeared to draw Pallas into speaking again. His eyes widened and became even brighter, if that was even possible. \"Alecto is the strongest of the pride\u2014and ceaseless in a fight. She never gives quarter.\"\n\n\"Unless she finds something too familiar to her tastes to destroy.\" Iambe hummed. Her voice was light and syrupy, but her gaze picked Hero over with new suspicion. \"She's the Fury of rage, did you know?\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" Hero said, now uncomfortably aware of the she-beast in his shadow. He wasn't sure whether he was being escorted or stalked. \"Perhaps she just took to my charms.\"\n\nThe lioness let out a low sound at that, halfway between a purr and a warning growl. It seemed to confirm whatever suspicion Iambe held. She smiled. \"Have a trouble with your darker passions, Hero?\"\n\nThe name might have been self-selected in sarcasm, but it sounded positively mocking when the Greek spirit said it. Hero stiffened, but Ramiel raised a hand before he could respond. \"Peace, my lady.\" He took a half step, as if drawing Iambe's gaze from Hero. \"You said we could be granted an audience with your librarian?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Pallas said quickly. He also watched Hero with a new shine, but it wasn't quite as carnivorous as his sister's. He leapt to his feet and fluttered a hand over his chiton before motioning to the open walkway that led inside. \"Mother will be pleased for visitors.\"\n\n\"Yes, she gets so little good conversation these days.\" Iambe's laugh was sharp, as if she'd just made a joke. Pallas spared them an uneasy look as he held aside the curtain and motioned them inside."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "\u2002The people to the south declared the time before now Jahiliyyah: a time of ignorance and darkness. If this place has really been abandoned and without care since the previous librarian, then that term may be appropriate. I understand enough now to imagine what damage might have come to stories left uncared for during that dark time. Muses abandoned without direction, books corrupting neighboring pages, forgetting themselves. The only reason no books were lost was because the entire wing was locked down.\n\n\u2002Stories need a teller. Books need a reader. These unlived lives are nothing without humanity to anchor them, breathe life into the missing parts.\n\n\u2014Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 609 CE\n\nBird winged along the shadowed passage ahead of Claire, coming to rest on the scarred triple-wheel carving that loomed over the door to the transportation department. Claire hesitated in the shadow of the arch. Granite-heavy footsteps creeped against the floorboards, punctuated by the glittering tinkle of glass jars. Walter resembled a small boulder crouched behind the counter when Claire entered the room.\n\n\"Miss Lib\u2014 Miss Claire! Ma'am.\" Walter punctuated his greeting with startled movements. He jolted upright, clutched the jar in his hands too tight, barely managing to set it down again before it could shatter. The whorls of nothing in his eye sockets appeared to spin particularly fast as he glanced around the small travel office and said again, \"Ma'am.\"\n\n\"Am I interrupting something, Walter?\" Claire paused at the threshold, hands folded in front of her as she took in the state of the office. The arching walls were peppered with shelves, which were lined with row upon row of clear glass jars full of colored smoke. That was usual. What was unusual was the zigzag of lines through the air. Colors exploded and skidded away from their jars like comet tails, twisting and knotting with others before fading into the gloom.\n\nWalter's innocent look was composed of red teeth and bulbous scars, but it was authentic all the same. \"No, ma'am. Just doing a bit of tidying up.\"\n\n\"Tidying up?\" Claire stepped to the side as a spiral of persimmon orange floated toward her head. \"Really, Walter, your jars are bleeding everywhere.\"\n\n\"Bleed\u2014\" Walter straightened so quickly a flight path of lime green had to divert around him in a tight corkscrew maneuver. The void in his eyes slowed nearly to a stop as he stared at Claire. \"You can see that, ma'am? You never said ya could\u2014\" His gaze tracked down to Claire's stained hand and stopped. It was a peculiar feeling when something as large as Walter froze in place. \"Miss Claire, I reckon you got a story to tell me.\"\n\nA sigh welled up in Claire's chest, and with it every dreg of exhaustion she'd tamped down since seeing Rosia disappear into the ink pool in the Arcane Wing. Walter produced a stool from behind the counter, and Claire retold the tale with her hands folded carefully on the claw-scarred countertop, ink black over soft brown.\n\nBy the time she reached the argument with Brevity, Walter's brows had descended to nearly meet his nose. \"You got yourself in a muddle.\"\n\nClaire's lips quirked. \"Well, if Death says it's a muddle, then it must be bad.\"\n\n\"I'm being serious. Serious as Sundays.\" Walter hunched over, squinting at her hand with an earnest intensity. He gestured to the line of inspiration holding back the black. \"That stopgap the others jury-rigged. It ain't gonna hold forever, ma'am.\"\n\n\"And what happens when it doesn't? Since you seem to know so much about it.\" Claire regretted the question as the sorrow sank into the nooks and crevices of Walter's face. She cleared her throat and moved on. \"That's not precisely why I came to see you anyway. I\u2014\"\n\n\"Why don't you make up with Miss Brevity?\" Walter asked.\n\nBird made a noise that was akin to a goose being gently murdered, as if she was seconding the question. Claire's smile became strained. \"There's nothing to make up, Walter. Brevity and I are fine.\"\n\n\"If'n you were fine, she'd be here with you,\" Walter said with solemnity.\n\n\"The Unwritten Wing has their own affairs, I'm sure. Brevity\u2014\" Brevity needed to be protected. Claire could not stand to be the cause of another ghost haunting Brev's eyes. She just couldn't. She pursed her lips around the words. \"Brevity is too... distracted at the moment.\"\n\nIt was true, even if not the truth. Claire thought again about the assessment in Probity's first glance and the way the visiting muse was genial to Rami and Hero but curdled around the edges the moment Claire entered the room. When she'd been stained, it felt as if the visitor had helped against personal preference. The Muses Corps had never been her closest allies, even when she was librarian. But she hadn't believed she'd warranted that kind of loathing, professionally.\n\nWhich left something personal. Claire simply did not have the time or temperament to deal with the personal. She was not inclined to tease out why some random muse didn't care for her. It appeared she cared for Brevity with a sincere fondness from a long shared history. That was enough. At least it would serve to keep Brevity company while Hero and Ramiel jaunted off on Hero's half-baked excuse to get out of the Library, and Claire got to the real work of solving the problem of the ink.\n\n\"It is for that reason I am attempting to find answers,\" Claire finished, turning the strain in her voice into an overprecise tone that sounded wrong even to her ears. \"I should have consulted with you sooner, Walter. I do apologize. Since Andras's coup attempt I have been... preoccupied.\"\n\n\"You been hiding.\"\n\n\"I've been working.\" Claire allowed the sharp edge to turn into a prickle now. \"As you would know if you and the rest of Hell hadn't been mysteriously absent in our time of need.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't have wanted me there, Miss Claire,\" Walter said solemnly. \"Not many people do.\"\n\n\"Walter...\" Claire started but quieted as he raised his beefy hands.\n\n\"Nah, ma'am. I don't mean it like that. The nature of what I am\u2014\" His lips pulled tight, into a small smile that was unintentionally ghoulish. \"No one invites me in, if they can help it. I'm glad I wasn't there.\"\n\n\"I understand what you mean.\" Claire knew they'd come right up to the cutting edge of losing Hero. Leto. Even herself. But the rows of bodies turned to ash drifted to the forefront of her mind again, like a cloud. \"But Death was there, with, or without, invitation. We lost so many.\"\n\n\"Oh. I'm not supposed ta take sides,\" Walter confided in a whisper. \"But I don't reckon those demon critters consider it much of a loss.\"\n\n\"I wasn't\u2014\" Claire frowned. \"I was talking about the damsels. The books.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Walter stopped and diverted a constipated look at his knuckles. \"Right. Right.\"\n\nGiant shoulders strained at the seams of his suit as he abruptly found a jar on the opposite wall that was an inch out of alignment. Walter was not a paragon of subterfuge even at the best of times, so Claire allowed him a full minute of nervous fiddling before she chased after him. \"Walter. You don't know anything about the destruction of the books and this ink that's turned up, do you? Because we've been friends for a long time. I know a friend would tell me if he had information to help.\"\n\nWalter's shoulders twitched up to his ears. His thumb assiduously blotted a speck of dirt off the jar named Martha's Vineyard.\n\n\"Walter?\" Claire leaned her hands on the counter, precisely where he couldn't miss her blackened knuckles.\n\nThe narrow bottle next to that was labeled The Isle, and it swirled a sparky gold and cherry blossom pink. Walter tapped the glass and didn't meet Claire's eyes when he cleared his throat. \"Mind giving me a hand a minute, ma'am? Them lower shelves get dusty and my knees ain't what they used to be.\"\n\nWalter probably meant that statement literally rather than figuratively, but Claire was intrigued enough to duck behind the counter and join him in the tiny alcove of jars. \"These here?\"\n\nWalter passed her a cloth in confirmation. Claire gave him a narrow look before beginning to wipe down jars that had destinations such as Highever, Illeri, Minneapolis, and one labeled, inscrutably, The Corn. Claire knew Walter held pathways to more than just Earth, but she'd never seen these jars before. \"Thank small favors that the Library cleans itself,\" she said, for lack of anything else. \"I might have taken a turn homicidal if I'd had to dust books for thirty years.\"\n\n\"Library's all about preserving. I never minded a bit of dust if it kept things interesting,\" Walter said, seeming to relax into the chore. \"After a while everything needs a good shake-up.\"\n\n\"How long have you been in this office, Walter?\" Claire moved on to the next shelf down, which was headed by a primary-color explosion labeled simply P. Town. Claire was almost positive the colors swirled into a smile to wink at her. Next to it, a frosty void of black stayed mostly confined to a jar labeled Terminus Systems. The jars on the lower level seemed less used, quieter. The colors swirled and stayed mostly inside their glass.\n\nWalter hesitated, because he was either reluctant to answer or reluctant to remember. \"Not so long,\" he finally said. \"Just you Library folk come and go so fast.\"\n\n\"Bjorn was here for seven hundred years,\" Claire pointed out.\n\n\"Ah yeah. Think he came around for a brew once,\" Walter said with a toothy grin.\n\nClaire wiped down a couple of very old jars\u2014Kingston, Alexandria, Pax\u2014but her blackened fingers hesitated over a squat jar, almost empty, labeled Summerlands. She compared it to the other destinations on the shelf and had a thought that came with a memory of haunted leather and Beatrice's smile. Impossible things that wouldn't stay bottled. \"Walter, it's not just colors out of their jars. I'm... seeing other things. What is it? Why am I seeing things now?\"\n\nFor a moment, the hitch of his shoulders convinced Claire that he was going to shy away again, but eventually Walter wiped his hands with his rag and looked thoughtful. \"Artists always got an abundance of soulfulness, ya know? That's why they got plenty left over, sloshin' around down here.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have called myself an artist when I was alive,\" Claire said drolly. She hadn't allowed herself that: a daughter, a mother, a bookkeeper with quiet flights of fancy, yes, but not an artist. She didn't need a primer on what made librarians in Hell, but she could see Walter working himself up to\u2014or around\u2014a point.\n\n\"Yeh ain't supposed to be wearing that stuff.\" Walter cast a worried glance again at her hand. \"It ain't natural, wearing other people's ink. 'Tain't natural at all.\"\n\n\"If there is a remedy, let's hear it.\" Claire had to suppress her urge to get testy. She sighed and straightened to standing again. \"If this is unwritten ink\u2014the stuff of the stories that we lost\u2014then why attack me? What am I supposed to do with immortal ink?\"\n\n\"Immortal?\" Walter blinked and abruptly stopped his cleaning. His face formed a brief ravine of worry before he gently nudged Claire by the elbow. \"People are always misusing that word around here.\"\n\n\"How so?\" Claire frowned as Walter produced an empty jar from a cabinet and set it down next to a piece of paper. \"Seeing as we're in Hell, I'd think\u2014\"\n\n\"'Immortal' is just a word for something you don't understand the shape of, yet. The boundaries, the end.\" Walter smoothed the paper with his calloused fingers. \"No one would really want to be immortal. Forever is an awful long time.\"\n\n\"I'm not following,\" Claire admitted. \"Are you talking about the ink?\"\n\n\"I'm talking about bloody everything,\" Walter grumbled, before looking stricken. He tapped his knuckles together nervously, as if he'd forgotten himself. \"Look. Say this piece o' paper is a bit of a life, yeah?\"\n\n\"All right.\" Claire attempted patience as Walter folded the paper up neatly and dropped it inside the jar. He screwed the lid on and snapped his fingers, and the paper caught fire and smoked.\n\nBy rights, the lack of oxygen in the jar should have snuffed out the flames, but instead the smoke began to sully up the inside of the glass. Claire shook her head at the flagrant disrespect for physics, but Walter was moving on. \"So everything inside that jar, that's a life, right? Whether it's paper or smoke or ashes or heat, it's all what we put in to begin with, yeah?\"\n\n\"I'm with you so far.\"\n\n\"But say we take away the container.\" Walter moved with an uncharacteristic swiftness, flicking the jar off the counter with a finger. It slid and shattered on the floor with a crash. Claire flinched back, but the shattered glass evaporated before it could scatter. \"Is what was inside gone?\"\n\n\"...Well, logically, no,\" Claire allowed. It was a peculiar thing to be schooled by Death.\n\n\"Then can ye point to where the life is? Or what it is?\"\n\nA single remaining shard of the jar rocked on the floor, turned dingy gray. The smoke had thinned and whispered away into the air almost immediately, and the remaining smudge of ashes was already getting lost in the floorboards. Claire didn't bother answering the hypothetical. \"You're saying death is necessary.\"\n\n\"Nah, ma'am. Death just is. It's the container that gives it shape and makes what's inside important.\" Walter shrugged, suddenly seeming shy as he fetched a broom and began to sweep up the ash with surprisingly delicate movements. \"Without a boundary that marks beginning and end, what matter would anything have? I reckon life inside a jar is special because of what it is under glass. Break the glass and nothing's destroyed, but everything changes.\"\n\n\"There's no putting the smoke back inside the glass.\" Claire frowned, folding her arms across her chest defensively. \"I don't understand how this applies to the ink. I rather liked it when you spoke plain truth to me, Walter.\"\n\n\"I always stick to the truth, Miss Claire. Just sometimes... truth ain't what people want to hear.\"\n\n\"I've gotten rather a lot of that lately.\" Claire folded the cloth carefully between her hands. It remained spotless, no matter how she rubbed her inked palm against it. \"If we can't restore the stories, then why does it linger? What could it possibly want?\"\n\nWalter returned to his place behind the counter, wiping his gnarled knuckles free of soot. He lifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture. \"Can't rightly say, ma'am. I only know life and death. You and your books are the story experts.\"\n\nClaire began to nod, and her mind snagged on the hook of that idea. She let out a soft oath. She'd been hunting ghosts, talking with Death, and staring at colors, when the reality was right there. The answers had been mocking her to begin with. She just needed a point of comparison.\n\nClaire handed him back his rag and ducked toward the foyer before Walter could question it. \"Thank you, Walter! I think I have a new hypothosis to test. You've been a brilliant help.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh. Not for the first time, I've wished I could talk to our fellows in other wings of the Library about this puzzle. We call ourselves brothers-in-arms, but in the end, it all comes down to secrets, secrets, secrets. I tried to explain my theories about the songs of books to Ibukun, but her interest ends precisely when I start talking of exploring other wings. \"Hidebound\"\u2014now, there's a word made for Ibukun. It's only rules with her, yet she explains nothing. When I'm the librarian, I'll do better.\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 990 CE\n\nThe shadows marked a cool threshold from the sun that had turned everything golden and baked outside. Rami had expected a restful interior of white marble, but while the walls appeared faced with stone, it was a riot of color. Fluid, flat scenes flowed across the wall of the hall they were in. Countless iterations of men fighting men, men fighting monsters. He even caught a glimpse of lionlike beasts that reminded him of the feline Fury that shadowed Hero.\n\nFor all Pallas had claimed friendship, Rami hadn't visited Elysium since, well, the time of Elysium. Other paradise realms never sat right with him. He always grew uncomfortable, as if there was an itch between his shoulder blades he couldn't reach. He'd expected a tour; Iambe had just seemed the type to press the inherent superiority of her realm's art. But as they progressed through the decorated halls, she became as quiet as her brother. The temple air gradually shifted to something heavy and somber, like a tide coming in. Rami caught Hero's nervous glance. He, too, felt it, from the way his shoulders had tensed. But with the prowling shadow of Alecto at their backs, there was no recourse but to go forward.\n\n\"Has Claire ever mentioned Elysium's library?\" Hero muttered.\n\n\"Not once,\" Rami responded, quiet and tight. He knew of Elysium only as another paradise realm, despite his brief past visits. Heaven's policy had been to avoid overtures of friendship with other realms. Uriel had run even the Gates under strict isolationism.\n\nHero replied with a grim nod that said he was similarly in the dark. Brevity had always been free with information on the other wings of the Library, and Rami had even sat in on some of the explanations she'd given Hero, since they were both new to aspects of the Library. But she had never mentioned this wing. Elysium was too close to another Greek domain\u2014the muses. And it appeared even Hero had never had the heart to poke at that particular tender spot. That small amount of restraint softened the brittle edges of Hero, in Rami's mind.\n\nThey followed Iambe and Pallas down a spiral of stairs into what appeared to be a grotto underneath the building. Bright paint and marble quickly melted into raw rock face and a faint drip of water. They cut across a hallway that jutted precariously over a cavern of shadows before coming to an archway that spanned over their heads.\n\nThere were no great doors, not like Hell's Library. The threshold was marked by a gauzy shift of cloth. There was a spectral quality to it, moving with the unseen breezes that puffed and pulled from deeper inside. Iambe stopped just short of the arch with a disapproving air. She smirked at Hero and Ramiel before raising her hand and snapping her fingers twice.\n\nFrom far away, deep past the veil, the staccato snap repeated itself.\n\n\"Really, sister. There's no need to be rude,\" Pallas muttered.\n\n\"Rude,\" came a faint voice past the arch.\n\nThat brought a smile back to Pallas's face. He brightened and pushed past Iambe. \"It's all right, Mother! Please let us in. We've brought visitors of the Library\u2014from Hell's Library.\"\n\n\"Hell's Library?\" The words were repeated tone for tone, but somehow the voice managed to turn it into a question. Iambe rolled her eyes and looked as if she was prepared to say something, but a sharp gust of wind abruptly parted the veil of fabric. Pallas caught the edge and beckoned them inside.\n\nRamiel stepped past the arch and blinked. The space beyond had seemed another dark, gloomy cavern from the other side, but as they stepped through, a gentle light flooded his eyes. They were in what appeared to be a giant amphitheater made of stone. The walls were natural juts of slate, Corinthian, and swept up at a bowl-like angle. Green undergrowth, accented with tiny white flowers, only reached a meter up the walls before giving way to stark stone. Above them, a spider work of fine rocky tendrils, so thin it almost looked like bone, weaved a delicate trellis roof that held back the sky but allowed slants of light in. They created near-blinding spotlights of sunlight that hit long, strangely rustic towers of shelves and cast skeletal fingers of twilight.\n\n\"This is a library?\" Ramiel breathed.\n\n\"Well.\" Hero looked disconcerted, trying to cross his arms over his chest even as he stared wide-eyed at the delicate path of flowers wound between each stack and the next. \"Obviously not a proper one.\" The proud book of his first acquaintance would never have defended the Library. Rami turned his head to hide his amusement.\n\nPallas and Iambe, immune to the wonder, continued straight on inside and came to a stop in front of what Rami realized was a small depression in the stone filled with still water and bathed in a particularly bright sun spot. Rami and Hero trailed close enough to see the basin's surface was mirrorlike. Although Pallas and Iambe stood at the water's edge, only Pallas's figure appeared in the pond.\n\n\"Favorites as usual,\" Iambe muttered.\n\n\"As usual.\" Now inside the Library, the source of the voice that repeated off the high walls was hard to place. It bounced around the canyon-like space, breaking into a whispered chorus until \"usual\" crumbled into a sigh of \"all, all, all.\" It faded into a serene quiet that raised every hair on the back of Rami's neck. His hand itched for his sword, but he was more disciplined than that.\n\nPallas gave Iambe a sympathetic nudge, then stepped forward, as if addressing the pond. He dropped to his knees and appeared to take a moment to get comfortable on the small patch of mossy earth. \"These are my friends Ramiel and Hero, of the Unwritten Wing. Will you greet them in person, Mother? I don't mind.\"\n\n\"Mind,\" the whispers repeated, like a warning.\n\nRamiel couldn't help but look at the pond expectantly. There was no movement beneath the surface, no change at all. Then, in the breadth of a blink, Pallas stood\u2014no, that couldn't be right. Pallas remained, relaxed and kneeling at the edge of the water, but the reflection of Pallas was standing. The water shivered and mist rose, as if solidifying\u2014or evaporating? It was impossible to tell. And then the standing image of Pallas emerged. It didn't rise from the pond, water streaming. The surface didn't change again at all. It emerged, as if stepping out of a panel. Or a mirror.\n\n\"What\u2014\" Hero made a sound of protest\u2014whether protesting the creature, the entrance, or the entire situation was unclear\u2014and took an involuntary step closer behind Rami's shoulder. It was distracting enough that Rami nearly missed the next transformation.\n\nThe new Pallas-figure touched its toes to the mossy bank and appeared to pivot on an unseen axis, fully standing on the basin edge now, as if gravity hadn't applied at all. It paused, head downturned to consider the identical form still kneeling by the pond. Fingers reached out, brushing through Pallas's golden curls before it straightened and faced them.\n\n\"Gentlemen, I present my mother, the cursed nymph Echo.\" Iambe's voice was droll and sharply pointed as a tack. \"Librarian of the Wing of the Unsaid. And a lover of overdramatic entrances.\"\n\nThe mirror-figure flicked a level gaze at Iambe but remained silent, evidently not finding adequate words to repeat in her statement. Eventually her scrutiny turned back their way, and understanding hit Rami the moment he met her gaze.\n\nPallas's eyes had been blue, and Rami might have noted\u2014just in passing, mind you\u2014how appealingly the light caught and turned that blue to something like a paler imitation of the sky. It had an innate openness, a youth, that was unusual for immortals and long-dead residents of the realms. But those sky-eyes had been taken over, clouded. They felt grayer, infinitely older and weary, softening his entire face with an alien, remote regret.\n\n\"A possession?\" Hero hissed under his breath.\n\n\"A reflection, you fool,\" Iambe corrected. She made a dismissive gesture to the still form of her brother. \"Echo can only repeat what has been said, and can only appear as a reflection, willingly given.\"\n\n\"Reflection willingly given,\" the mirror-Pallas called Echo repeated, though his\u2014her, at the moment, Rami mentally corrected\u2014lips didn't move.\n\nRami tried to redirect his thoughts. \"But your brother\u2014\"\n\n\"He'll be fine. Simply trapped in time until his reflection returns to him. Mother would never let him wither away.\"\n\n\"Away,\" Echo said wistfully.\n\nSomething else\u2014something entirely silent and chalky with resentment\u2014echoed between mother and daughter. Rami measured it and knew well enough that he wanted no part of that explanation. Some stories were not his to hear. He cleared his throat. \"An honor to meet you, Librarian Echo. We would like to access your Library, by your leave.\"\n\nEcho-Pallas tilted her head and regarded them for a tick of silence. \"Leave,\" she said. Her eyes were on Rami, but the order was obviously for Iambe. To her credit, she barely flinched. She left with a shrug and one final sour look to her brother's still form.\n\nRamiel made introductions as brief as possible, since Hero was still staring aghast, as if Echo was the worst kind of demon. The sooner they moved on to business, the better. \"We are searching for information on a past librarian of the Unwritten Wing. One by the name of Poppaea Julia. She was of your time, and seeing as this realm claimed her, we'd hoped we might find answers here.\"\n\nEcho-Pallas appeared to consider. The soft voices were affirmative when they repeated, \"Here.\"\n\n\"This isn't even a conversation.\" Hero's cheeks were still missing their color, but he appeared to have recovered his usual catlike disgust, at the very least. \"We will get nowhere like this.\"\n\n\"No. Where like this.\" Echo said, and Hero threw up his hands with a grunt.\n\n\"She's the librarian of Elysium,\" Rami insisted. \"If there's anyone left who knew about Poppaea Julia, it's her. We have to try.\"\n\n\"It's her we have to try.\"\n\nHero made a strangled sound. \"See? This is an exercise in comedy.\"\n\nHe wasn't impatient; he was unnerved. Rami had learned by now to read around Hero's protests and simply ignored him. Echo was staring intently at them both. The replication of Pallas's faded blue eyes had grown sharper, and a keen intellect trapped in them was trying to get something across. Something important. \"You do know something?\"\n\nEcho stayed silent.\n\nRami tried again. \"Poppaea Julia, the librarian of the Unwritten Wing who rebelled. Did she come here after she was banished?\"\n\nEcho's chin drifted right, then left. No. But she was still staring at him, pinning him with her gaze. Hero began to grumble something, but Rami held up a silencing hand\u2014a distant part of him noting with surprise that Hero actually complied\u2014as he tried to run over what had been said.\n\n\"It's her we have to try,\" Rami repeated slowly. \"Her, who? Is there someone else who knows more?\"\n\nWithout so much as a blink, Echo turned on her heel, light as a dancer, and walked away. Rami furrowed his brow and risked a glance at Hero before gesturing after her. \"We have to try.\"\n\nPure skepticism etched itself over every one of Hero's precisely handsome features, but he mimed his lips shut and raised his hands in defeat. They jogged to catch up with Echo, but it was obvious where she was leading them.\n\nInto the sandstone canyons of the library of Elysium."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "\u2002The wings of the Library are multitude. What gets remembered and what gets forgotten? Books, poems, unsung heroics, regrets. It seems random, what the Library sees fit to preserve for eternity. What do these things have in common? Are they all creative acts, or fated in some way? What are the criteria of immortal survival?\n\n\u2002The only thing I can see, from here, is that they're all innately human. Humans are the only mortal creatures that compose such ways to express desire, want, regret. Expression of the way things should be, or never were. That's a very human skill.\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 929 CE\n\nThe stacks of the unsaid Wing were not peopled by neat rows of dreaming hardcover spines. The spines in each square-cubed wood apartment seemed more scattered and dead than sleeping. Scrolls tumbled in a cascade out of one shadow, while a stack of tattered envelopes threatened to spill off a high shelf entirely. It wasn't all paper or parchment either. Hero caught a glint of sunlight between piles, engraved rings, carved bone. Knotted poesy crowns of flowers. Occasionally, a box appeared completely empty, but as he passed, a tendril of whispers reached out with a snippet of half-formed words. Hero knew better than to stop to listen.\n\nYes, the Unsaid Wing was an alien world compared to home. Compared to the Unwritten Wing. \"Home,\" where did that come from? Hero was a character of an unwritten book. Unwritten books did not have homes; they had... prisons, he would have said once. Places where they were held. Unjustly. Illogically. Temporarily.\n\nThat was it exactly. The Library could not be a home, no matter what mad impulses took his brain, because that would make the Library cease to be a temporary stopping point. To stop would be to give up on his book, fixing his book, inspiring his author, or... or at least getting to live his story again.\n\nNo, Hero focused on the yellow tendrils that directed their path in the oddly smooth moss beneath his feet. He would always be far from home.\n\n\"These are all unsaid things, then? Words that were formed with intent but never shared?\" Ramiel was saying ahead of him.\n\nHe was still trying to converse with the damned creature. Echo-as-Pallas floated along ahead of them, hair flashing bright in the patterns of sunlight. The edge of her chiton barely stirred in the breeze, as if the wide-eyed boy who owned that reflection had never existed, hadn't been left cold and crouching by the pool.\n\nYes, he could admit it. The librarian of the Unsaid Wing unnerved Hero entirely, because he was evidently the only one with a lick of sense. He was intimately aware of the idea of being fluid in identity and form. But when he'd woken up and made the gradual unfurling from book-shaped to human, it had been as natural as uncurling yourself from a long sleep. Every book carried a scar, a splinter of psyche, that was essential to its need to exist. Heroes, mostly, but sometimes a secondary character like a damsel, or even an object of desire. And sometimes monsters, antagonists like himself.\n\nThe sweet irony was, Hero hadn't realized he wasn't the protagonist until he woke, standing in a dusty, dimly lit hallway, with the weight of proof in his hands.\n\nHero or villain, either way there was no question what shape Hero would have taken. No choice, no abiding randomness of opportunity. The idea that creatures like this cursed nymph existed to just step in and out of another's skin\u2014their reflection, rather\u2014like pests rendering a tree hollow...\n\nEverything should know their shape, in Hero's mind. His book was broken, yes, but he was still a book. He'd been shocked to not be the protagonist, but he'd long since adjusted to his nature as a villain. As long as he knew what he was, he knew the thrust of his story. Being nothing but what was reflected by others...\n\nThat wasn't a story at all.\n\n\"Letters, confessions, dedications...\" Rami muttered again, slowing as he scanned the shelves. His profile was lit by the eerie, stone-split sunlight that suffused the entire library. It painted gold coins on his olive skin. \"Remarkable. Humans are remarkable.\"\n\nHumans. Not books. It was always the creators, not the created. Hero sometimes wondered why anyone bothered to preserve him at all. Still. Curiosity got the best of him. Hero drifted toward the nearest shelf and plucked a short scroll from the top.\n\n\"I want you to know I never regretted it,\" he read under his breath. \"Not one moment of my life with you. No matter how the end comes now, choosing you was the best decision I ever made. You are...\" Hero frowned and rolled the scroll gently before returning it to the shelf with a huff. \"What nonsense. Who would bother to save all this\u2014this sentimentality?\"\n\n\"I would have thought you'd understand,\" Rami said with a contemplative look. \"Losing the chance for closure with people you may never see again.\"\n\nHero's step faltered. The square weight of his book burned in the pocket of his coat, weighty as a brand. The implication was obvious, no matter how gently Ramiel tried to put it. Hero had a whole world he'd been cut off from, the only one he'd known. The only one he'd been made for. He hadn't given it a thought at the time. Waking up was instinct. His book had been one world, the Library another. A simple journey. He'd always assumed going back would be just as simple\u2014eventually. When he got around to it.\n\nIf he hadn't quite given up the idea of going back, he certainly couldn't see the road anymore either.\n\nRamiel's gaze was like a weight. \"I\u2014\" Hero forced his chin up and his shoulders through a mechanical, well-practiced shrug. \"It's not as if many would have missed me back home. Villains are not well-liked, even in their own stories.\"\n\nRamiel had taken too long to respond. Hero shook the lingering chill of old ghosts and looked up sharply. The Watcher feigned intense interest in the scroll in his hands. A glance said it was an unsent angry tirade, entirely unworthy of the sympathetic, soft look on Ramiel's stony features.\n\nHero clicked his tongue. \"Right, enough of this heart-to-heart nonsense. Where's the monster gone off to?\"\n\nEcho drifted at the crest of the rise. Rise. Proper libraries didn't have rises, or hills, or moss, or sunlight like a song. Proper libraries had shelves and books, and an indexing system and calling cards like any sensible\u2014\n\nOh dear gods, he was beginning to sound like Claire.\n\nEcho didn't move as they caught up with her. Her face\u2014Pallas's face\u2014was just as dull as it had been since it stepped out of the pond. She extended one hand and pointed farther down. Hero followed the gesture with his eyes to another of the canyon-like stone towers, cubbies worn with more age than the neat slab cuts they'd seen so far.\n\n\"You have something about the Unwritten Wing here? In the actual archives?\"\n\n\"Actual archives,\" Echo whispered, which Hero thought was rather cheating.\n\nRamiel exchanged a mystified look with Hero and nodded. \"Well, we'll take a look, then\u2014er, may I?\"\n\n\"Aye.\"\n\nEcho tilted her head back and forth, in a birdlike way that was entirely creepy, then began swanning back the way they came, leaving them in the stacks to presumably find their way out again.\n\nHero was entirely over the gimmick of this place. \"Let's see what the vulture has for us.\"\n\nRamiel nodded, appearing to remember the task at hand past the wonder of the library. The Unsaid Wing had been cheerily empty upon entry, but as they wound farther back, the quiet lost the feeling of a living glen and took on the qualities of a held breath. Unwritten books were solid, held-together things, awake or asleep. But unsaid words were all fragments, sharp edges, like the shards of stone above their heads. The feeling of a precipice was too great. Hero kept glancing up at the sky, lost in lavender gloom and web work of stone lattice, as if the unspoken words would topple on them at any moment.\n\nFolded sheaves gave way to rolled scrolls, which gave way to older, more eccentric materials. Unlike the words of the Unwritten Wing, these words were never meant for anyone but their intended recipient, so the artifacts felt no inclination to change, to demand to be read. An inherent laziness, in Hero's opinion. Finally, Ramiel came to an abrupt stop several shelves down.\n\n\"Poppaea Julia.\" Hero squinted through the blocky lettering on the shelf. \"She's here after all. The librarian that challenged Hell.\"\n\n\"Supposedly,\" Ramiel said. \"It can't hurt to look.\"\n\nHero made a noncommittal sound. This had been his idea, but after catching glimpses of the kind of unsent tripe this library held, he doubted they'd find anything enlightening here now. The first few minutes he spent perusing confirmed his instincts. \"This is all human nonsense before the woman had even died. There's not going to be anyone with unsaid words for her after her death here. Nothing about the Library.\"\n\nThe complaint didn't slow down Ramiel in the slightest. He kept methodically examining shelves farther down, touching each scroll lightly, as if it was a treasure, holding it up to the light to read. His expression told the tales\u2014Ramiel was not an expressive creature, but Hero had found himself gaining literacy in the way his arched brows knit in concern, the way the grim line of his generous mouth softened, just at the edges at small things. It was much more entertaining than the scrolls, at least, and Hero had to keep himself from staring.\n\n\"Here now,\" Ramiel muttered. His brows did a caterpillar dance. Code: astounded surprise in the language of Ramiel's face. Hero looked down to find the cause. The rolled papyrus in Ramiel's hand was not yellowed ivory like the rest of the collection. The bleached surface was too white for the human-made papyrus of the day. Fine emerald script, spidery as tattered thread, crossed the scroll in tight, orderly lines.\n\n\"What is it?\" Hero relented and crowded Ramiel's shoulder to get a better look.\n\n\"Every unsent communication,\" Ramiel mumbled with a shake of his head. \"They really are thorough.\"\n\nHero had no patience for slow reveals. Ramiel's hand was blocking the way, but Hero's eyes jumped to the blocky thick signature at the bottom of the page. \"Revka... Arcanist?! As in Hell's Arcanist?\"\n\n\"It appears so.\" Ramiel frowned as he unwound the scroll to read again. \"It wasn't always a position held by a demon.\" Hero had a faint memory of Claire saying the same thing once. During one of the many obsessive attempts she'd made to train him to be a proper assistant for Brevity. Hero hadn't bothered listening, since assisting wasn't so hard and appeared to be simply doing what menial chores Brevity asked for. But it had been fun to watch the way Claire's dark eyes had sharpened into storms as she berated him.\n\nOver Ramiel's shoulder, the text had taken on that wiggling, twitchy quality of library-to-library documents. Hero already felt a headache coming on\u2014not that books could get headaches\u2014 but squinted his eyes determinedly until the ink resolved itself into a letter.\n\n\u2002Librarian Poppaea,\n\n\u2002You are an imbecile. You are a knacker-eared, fecund-brained bastard of ill-cast winds. You are a fool's fool, a dunce among the blighted. I hate the day I ever learned your name.\n\n\"Well,\" Hero said as he read, \"this could be good.\"\n\nAnd I miss you.\n\n\"Oh, never mind.\" But he didn't stop reading.\n\n\u2002The Library is in chaos. My own wing is in lockdown. Hell runs amok. And great wailing quakes of gods know what is the only indication I have that an Unwritten Wing even still exists. The Muses Corps, for lack of a better target, has been railing at me\u2014me!\u2014to do something, but of course there's nothing to do. Hell is hell. It's all very good to go on about the Library being an independent entity, but there's no one to stop Morningstar on a rampage. He can't get rid of us, I don't think. Not all of us. But, gods, it sounds like he's going to try.\n\n\u2002What did you say?\n\n\u2002What did you say, when you got this mad plan in your head? To challenge Morningstar for right to the domain? And then to claim authority, not on behalf of the Library\u2014oh no, nothing as sensible as that\u2014but on behalf of the BOOKS. Had you totally taken leave of your senses? Was my companionship so undesirable that you would seek to end your existence entirely?\n\n\u2002I'm the Arcanist. My job is magical artifacts. As a golem, I am an artifact. Artifact and Arcanist. My domain is working with materials. As you used to say, things. Finding things. Keeping things. Fixing things. Yet I don't know how to fix this.\n\n\u2002I know you, Julia. I know what your first concern would be. \"But are the books well?\" you'd ask, voice getting that endearing fleshy squeak that humans do when distressed. I'm sure that'd be your first question. I wish you were here to shake. Of course the infernal books will be fine. You could drown the whole Library and the essential part\u2014what makes the damned things so valued\u2014would be left. I don't know what that would even look like, but the unwritten books will outlive us all. The curse of unwritten books is to never truly live but exist forever.\n\n\u2002I wish librarians had been half as cursed.\n\n\u2002Where are you, Poppaea? When it failed, where did he send you? To your Blessed Isles, the land of heroes you spoke of? To Tantalus? Or to oblivion? Surely, what qualities you share with your damned books mean oblivion isn't in store for you. The written and the writer are the same, after all. Perhaps Morningstar sent you to one of your books, to rejoin what you've missed for so long. Maybe you'll be caught in your own story, ready to be read. I think you'd like that, really.\n\n\u2002You used to tease me, sweetheart, about emotions. How stoic golems were, how passions must move so slowly through clay. But I am angry now, dear one. Angry at you. How could you abandon your post? Abandon our shared duties, our routine of care and curiosity?\n\n\u2002How could you abandon me?\n\n\u2002I may be mere clay and magic, not like your precious books. But I thought you'd cared for me all the same.\n\n\u2002Come back, Julia. This can't be the way your story ends.\n\n\u2002I'll read every book until I find you.\n\n\u2014Arcanist of the Arcane Wing, Revka bat-Rav\n\n\"A tragedy.\" Ramiel's murmur was like ground gravel against Hero's skin. He must have stared at the papyrus long after reading it. Hero felt queer, like he was slipping between the loops of thick script.\n\n\"More self-pitying nonsense.\" Hero shook his head and tried to focus on what had nagged at his attention. \"I would have thought a golem would have been more practical.\"\n\n\"Nothing more practical than loss. It's a natural product of time,\" Ramiel said quietly. Hero struggled not to wince. Of course the stoic old wart was still haunted by his own losses\u2014Hero couldn't imagine what it'd be like to be born in literal paradise and lose it. Hero hadn't been born in paradise. If there was an opposite of eternal contentment, Hero had woken to that. He'd been born with a burning want in his chest, a hunger-pang sense of something missing. He supposed his author had put it there, though he'd never thought to hate her for it.\n\n\"Well. She could have done something about it besides bellyache,\" Hero said weakly.\n\nOut of the corner of his eye, he caught Ramiel's glance at him, his expression softening to something dangerously near kindness. \"Like a suicidal run at your own author and burning your own pages?\"\n\n\"To be accurate, I didn't burn my pages. She did. Authors are innately cruel like that.\" Hero shrugged. He welcomed the opportunity to bicker. He held no illusions about his own mistakes and failures, not when they'd been performed so openly in front of all the Library. But the memory jogged through him. Hero frowned and tugged until Ramiel released the scroll into his hands. \"But there was that line\u2014\"\n\n\"About cruelty?\"\n\n\"No.\" Hero chewed on his lip as he scanned the page. \"There! The written and the writer are the same, after all.\" He read aloud. \"What does that mean?\"\n\nA bemused look settled on Ramiel's face. The confusion curdled the half smile that Hero had noticed earlier. A pity. \"I'm afraid you're asking the wrong one. I never worked with your Library, not like Claire and Brevity. I know souls, not books.\"\n\nYes, everyone loved to remind him how different Hero was. \"Yes, I'm aware how unhelpful you are.\" The huff came out a little harsher than Hero meant it, but the riddle had sunk its claws in and now he couldn't shake the feeling that it was important. \"The written and the writer...\"\n\n\"You books do have a documented affinity for your human creators,\" Ramiel tried.\n\nAnd because he tried, Hero bit back the barbed reply that welled up. He settled for pinning the Watcher with a patient look. \"And you have an affinity for swords and filthy raincoats. That doesn't mean you are one.\"\n\nRamiel took that with the same graceful acceptance he took every harsh word Hero had for him. It was infuriating, really. That had to be why Hero couldn't stop. The Watcher's brow furrowed as he scrutinized the letter again. \"What qualities you share... it appears at least that this Arcanist was convinced that books could not be destroyed.\"\n\n\"If that was the case, we wouldn't have spent the last months with Claire and Brevity walking around as if we'd kicked their puppies,\" Hero muttered.\n\n\"Their grief is natural, and sincere.\"\n\nThere was a guilt in his chest that ached every time a stray comment caused the librarians to get that haunted look in their eyes. The defense of the Unwritten Wing had been his strategy, his. And it'd failed. If he'd fought harder, perhaps\u2014but no. Hero had a policy about mistakes and failures. The guilt could stay and ache, but he wouldn't pick at it. He had enough scars, after all.\n\nHero rolled the scroll closed impatiently. \"Either the Arcanist is mistaken, or the librarians are. The existence of this damned ink supports the scroll's claim. It's not as if we can ignore that.\" The scroll closed with a snap, and Hero caught movement out of the corner of his eye as he shelved it. The damned metal lioness stirred to her feet at the noise. Its gold eyes emitted a faint light as it tracked Hero. He tried to ignore it and began to pace. \"Shame this golem woman wasn't still Arcanist instead of Andras. We might have gotten some answers.\"\n\n\"Or not had the question to ask in the first place.\" Ramiel watched Hero with nearly as much concern as the cat. \"I wonder what happened to her.\"\n\nHero dismissed that with a wave. \"Perhaps she got rusty. Surely your wing keeps some kind of record.\" Hero paused midstep and turned back to Ramiel. \"Of all the... Could the answers be in there?\"\n\n\"The Arcane Wing?\" Ramiel blinked. \"Doubtful. If such knowledge was recorded, surely Claire\u2014\"\n\n\"Claire has been preoccupied with not drowning in the history of her regret,\" Hero said, not ungently. \"She\u2014she can't see straight since the coup. You know that. That's why she needs us.\"\n\nNeeds me, Hero wanted to say, but no, he did not believe in kidding himself. Ramiel had stepped in when Claire had been forced to reposition herself as the Arcanist, shoring her up with an implacable calm, a peace when all that Hero could offer was flippant distraction. They were both walking, nettling reminders to each other of what they once had been. Ramiel kept Claire standing, and Hero kept her on her toes.\n\nHero's opinions on that were grudging and unresolved, so, as he did with all unpleasant things, he ignored them.\n\nRamiel nodded thoughtfully, as if Hero had merely commented on the weather. \"Claire has been sequestered with the few documents the Arcane Wing holds. So, you are suggesting we should return, then, and search the wing on our own?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014no.\" Hero's gaze strayed to the scroll he'd just put away. He led the way down the corridor the way they'd come. He listened but couldn't hear the copper cat's paws stalking across the moss behind them. \"There's one more thing we should investigate while we're in this realm.\"\n\n\"In the library?\"\n\n\"No,\" Hero said. \"But perhaps it's adjacent. The golem mentioned the muses\u2014they're a Greek creature, too, right?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh. First thing I did was investigate the material evidence. No, not the stories or characters\u2014everything has been quiet on that front. But between my lessons with Bjorn, I have been conducting a clandestine study of the paper. I'm not so dead that I have forgotten haggling with the ragmen for my linens. Not yet. Provenance! Everything comes from something. Pages are made and remade: that's the story I'm interested in.\n\n\u2002First observation: there's no sizing, no coating over the paper to keep it from absorbing ink too quickly as it dries. Which would seem impossible. What surface is made to absorb everything? What ink?\n\n\u2002The coating a paper has to keep ink from soaking in immediately and feathering is going to be unique to the environment. A flour-based size works admirably in the dry desert but quickly turns to rot in humid countries. What are the material concerns of an immaterial, immortal library?\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Fleur Michel, 1736 CE\n\nTo a modern eye, ink looked like water. Colored water perhaps, like poorly brewed tea or the garishly colored sugar drinks of her youth. Claire knew better. She had been alive at the turn of that era, when the incendiary grit and gristle of war had led to a boom of new technologies, new ways of doing things. She'd started school learning her letters with fountain pens, but by the time she'd matriculated into the workforce, all the modern workplaces were driven by the plastic milled barrels of ballpoint. When it dried up, a pen was tossed, not refilled. What a wasteful idea that was. Ink became something that was a minor component of the pen, not the fuel for it.\n\nThere wasn't a lot left that Claire could remember of her life on Earth, but she remembered the language of inks. The viscosity and flow, the way some inks dried on cheap paper, feathered and bone bleak, while others went onto fine vellum paper like a sigh, changing from dark to light in a single stroke. Inks had temperaments, personalities. And inks left marks, smudged fingers, smeared words, lost meanings.\n\nA sound, like a weaponized rusty hinge, broke her concentration. Something pinched the end of one of her braids and pulled. It was a brief tug, a demand for attention. Bird cocked her head, regarding her with one flat eye and obvious accusation.\n\n\"Right, attributes.\" Claire sighed, remembering to straighten her back for the first time in hours. The ache was a welcome change of pace. \"It is slow to dry. A supernaturally high viscosity.\" Claire ticked off the characteristics on her stained hand again. Bird appeared to listen intently but might have just been watching for treats. \"Iridescent sheen when wet, but dries to a matte finish. Waterproof, tamperproof, smear-proof. Obviously.\" Her blackened fingernails felt chalky to the touch.\n\nThe secret was here, in the evidence. Her talk with Walter had told her that much. She just needed to verify her hunch. Ink did not exist without the book. It could not be replicated, borrowed, or transplanted\u2014though gods knew she'd tried countless times when attempting to repair Hero. A book could only hold the ink it remembered. A book was paper and ink together, existing as the story slept.\n\nSo, without paper there should be no ink. The books lost to the coup had burned, a tragedy that she was almost grateful she only remembered as aftermath. The haunted look Brevity got when talking about the burning was enough. The stories that had been preserved in those books died, trapped in so much ash. The ash that had been everywhere. Claire had spent days afterward afraid to wash her hands. It felt sacrilegious; it felt cruel.\n\nShe adjusted the bright light over the worktable, as if that would reveal anything more than her own reflection. The Claire in the ink was cast in shades of black, staring out at her from the pitiless surface like an omen of what was to come. Claire rubbed her clean hand against the gooseflesh that crept up the back of her neck. There was barely enough liquid in the bowl to coat the bottom, but light didn't penetrate it at all. The ink had a lubricated loll when Claire tilted the bowl from side to side. That might explain why it never dried, no matter how long it sat. No film developed like on her skin; no pieces flaked away. Just an infinite, oil-slicked black, swallowing the light and every color in the spectrum and giving back nothing, nothing at all.\n\n\"An unknown variable requires caution,\" Claire muttered, feeling ridiculous for having a raven as a lab partner. There was nothing to be learned by glaring at her reflection in this bit of ink. She carefully set the dish aside and dug around for gloves to prepare a new sample.\n\nAll Claire wished to do right now was hurtle the damn sample into the bin. This was Claire's problem to solve. The only thing she could do was solve it. If she didn't understand the ink, then what good was she?\n\n\"Enough experiments.\" Claire sat back, glaring at the table. She'd put off the thought as long as she could. \"Jars, ashes, ink... it's all nonsense. I need a comparison.\"\n\nA comparison. The idea lightninged through her, less like an illumination and more like a shock. Sharp, cutting, and then gone. If the ink had once been books, then it had once been damsels too. Rosia had led them here, under a compulsion, a connection. She'd called the ink \"they.\"\n\nClaire had been so determined to keep the ink from the Unwritten Wing, but she'd been going about it wrong. It was important to keep the ink out of harm for the librarian. Not the wing.\n\n\"Books know stories. Walter, you're a genius.\" Claire had to speak to the damsels immediately.\n\nClaire straightened from her slump and grabbed several empty sample bottles. It was a risky experiment and would require fresh bottles. \"Bird, watch the artifacts for a spell.\"\n\nBird croaked and tilted her head at Claire's hurried movements, bleak eyes tracking her hands for any sign of an edible treat. \"Later,\" Claire reassured her. If the damsels held the answers she sought, she'd give Bird the whole cracker box."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "The doors of the Unwritten Wing drew her to a stop, yet again. It was a ridiculous hang-up. Claire needed to obliterate her memory of them in her mind. She stopped down the hall from the doors, and a shiver of cold drew across the nape of her neck like a clammy hand. Surely the doors hadn't been this towering. Brevity must have darkened the stain, giving it a glow of amber and red that only served to remind Claire of fire. She could almost still smell the ghost of smoke on the air, the grit and sulfur presence of never afters and poor ends. Lost stories. She had a visceral memory of how the wood boards had squelched ever so slightly under her feet as she left, waterlogged with the last-ditch efforts to save the stacks.\n\nIf the doors had been closed, Claire would have turned around right then. It would have been too much to reach out and touch, to relive the feeling of blasting through those doors into a sanctuary invaded. The sear of ash, the fetid exhale of demons, ink, and blood.\n\nBut the doors were open, as they should have been. Claire forced a purposefully deep breath and caught the scent of old leather, paper, and the faint not-unpleasant ripple of anise that existed in the background of all of Hell. No ash, no rot.\n\nIt wasn't a hard task to slip into the Library, once Claire could get past her own ghosts. Claire kept her eyes carefully focused ahead, diverting them only long enough to ascertain that the librarian's desk was empty. Brevity must have been somewhere in the labyrinth of stacks, deeper in the Library and perhaps in comfortable conversation with Probity. Recalling old times. Claire would be here and gone before she could bother them.\n\nThe stacks had remained largely organized the same, thank goodness. If Claire focused very carefully on the end of each row, she could pretend not to notice all the little differences. Like the reflection of cheerful faerie lights off warm cherrywood. Or the things that remained so achingly the same, like the soft constant susurrus of sleeping unwritten books. It was constant and soothing, like waves on a smooth shore.\n\nIt was impossible to tell which hurt worse.\n\nIf there was one thing with which Claire was experienced, it was the alchemy of turning pain to usefulness. By the time she reached the small frosted door of the damsel suite, the ache had become a stone, and stone had become certainty. The more it hurt, the surer she was. This was the right choice, the correct path of action. She would get answers here. She would know, and in her knowing, the world would make sense again.\n\nAnd if the world made sense again, she could fix it. For Hero, Rami, Brevity. For all of them.\n\nIt was the resolution Claire needed to place her hand on the latch. The metal was cool, grounding as the ache of stone. She rapped her knuckles twice on the frosted glass before letting herself in.\n\nA pocket of air heavy with tea and fresh linen enveloped her with warmth. The damsel suite had always been several degrees more to the side of cozy than the rest of the Library, and Claire marveled again at how even this had changed under Brevity's care. She'd had the opportunity twice before, but now she had the luxury of being neither injured nor harried. She stepped into a well-appointed sitting room. Well, perhaps the sitting rooms of Claire's era wouldn't have been quite so lined, wall to wall, with bookshelves, but it was still decidedly homey. A glimpse of small hallways and open doorways said there were even bedrooms now, which had never before occurred to Claire as something an unwritten book would need. A small fire licked the hearth in the corner, and the sight of it made Claire's heart constrict for longer than she would admit. Flames, in such proximity to the book-lined wall, opened up a scab in her chest that had never quite healed.\n\nWhen she'd woken up earlier, she'd been preoccupied with her hand, but now she was here with a goal in mind. A few damsels were scattered in pockets of activity through the lounge. Repeatedly, gazes flickered up, taking Claire in with a guarded glance, then turning back to their focus. At one point, Claire had felt more boogeyman than librarian. Now she felt like neither.\n\n\"Child.\" Claire turned to see a damsel finally extract herself from conversation. The woman who approached was not the typical cut of damsel\u2014young, pretty according to the standards of her era, with a blank look in her eyes that quickly rubbed off like bad varnish after a taste of the independence that the damsel suite offered. The woman who approached was older, silver hair cut into a businesslike pixie and stout body swathed in a kind of housedress that was meant for comfort.\n\n\"Claire,\" she corrected automatically. Andras had been fond of pet names, and Claire had developed a distaste for them. \"Just Claire is fine.\"\n\n\"Of course, Claire.\" The woman took the correction with good grace. \"They call me Lucille. Granny Lucy, mostly, but I don't imagine you allow yourself such luxuries as elders.\" Claire wasn't allowed more than a moment to consider whether that was a compliment or not before Lucille was nodding to the nearest seat. \"What brings a former librarian to us?\"\n\nClaire preferred to remain standing. If anything, the damsel suite was more homelike, more welcoming than ever, but Claire felt on edge. The vials in her pocket were chilled weights, and her mind noted every crack and hiss from the fireplace like a snake ready to strike. She cleared her throat. \"There's a line of inquiry I believed you all might help me with.\"\n\nLucille had begun to lower herself into an armchair in that ponderous way arthritis sufferers did, but halted midmotion at that. A calculating expression flicked across her face, then was dismissed as she finished settling into the chair. By the time she straightened her baggy skirt, she'd become a picture of grandmotherly care again. \"Well then, a welcome change to the rare dramas that brought you to us before. Have a seat, dear. Would you like a cookie? Summer baked brownies, but\"\u2014Lucille lowered her voice to a fond stage whisper\u2014\"he uses carob. He's from some hippie romance,\" Lucille supplied, as if the unwritten book's genre explained everything.\n\n\"It's better for you,\" a pale young man muttered with a shrug as he set down the plate of chocolate squares she supposed must have been pulled from some unwritten cookbook. Summer gave Claire a single once-over that spoke volumes of judgment before leaving them again.\n\nClaire resisted pointing out the fact that none of them precisely needed to eat in the Library, let alone carob brownies. She was disliked enough in the damsel suite as it was. Still, the vials clinked restlessly in her breast pocket. \"We've discovered the source of the disturbance that was drawing away damsels.\"\n\n\"Oh, well done, Claire dear!\" Lucille enthused over her tea.\n\nUsing a pet name with her name was just impertinence. Claire bit back a sour response behind a smile. \"Yes, I'm collaborating with the... the librarian\u2014\" She stumbled through the half-truth, glad Brevity wasn't here to see how difficult that title was for Claire to say. \"But I'm reluctant to decide a choice of action until we understand the nature of it.\"\n\n\"How nice of you to think of us,\" Lucille said. She sounded sincere enough, though \"nice\" wasn't the mood when Claire took the temperature of the room. None of the damsels met her gaze, but there was a prickle on the back of her neck. It was a paper-cut feeling of unwelcome, despite Lucille's smile.\n\nClaire was being handled, bugger it all. The realization came on her in a flush of irritation. She was being handled, by this old woman, and she was so tired of being handled. In the Unwritten Wing, Brevity trod around her like an abandoned puppy, and even in the Arcane Wing, supposedly her own domain, she had to deal with Rami's stoic kind of fussing. Hero poked and prodded with a fraction of the venom he once had. Whether because they considered her dangerous or because they considered her fragile, Claire was always being handled.\n\nAnd she was tired of it.\n\n\"I came here for answers.\" Her voice was sharp and discordant over the hum of the room. Things quickly turned silent. Claire withdrew the vials of ink from her pocket and set them down\u2014next to the ridiculous brownies\u2014with a precise, cold clink. \"About this.\"\n\nAh yes, they couldn't ignore her now. A dozen gazes drew to the table. The ink bobbled in each vial like a viscous raindrop, leaving an oil-sheen rainbow in its wake. Claire raised one sample above her head. \"Tell me what it is.\"\n\nLucille hadn't moved. \"Why would you think we know more than a librarian, child?\"\n\n\"Because it's part of you and your books, as far as I can deduce. I wouldn't have found it without your meddling,\" Claire answered. She paused, seeking but not finding a polite opening for what she needed to ask. \"You are the instigators of this situation.\"\n\n\"Instigator? You make it sound as if we were at fault.\"\n\nYou were, a seething voice in the back of Claire's mind raged. You fought, like you were mortal, like you were human. And worse, you were cruel enough to die, you foolish, foolish things. There were many things over the years that Claire had learned to soften on, to forgive. But breaking Brevity's heart\u2014giving her a foundation for hope and ripping it away\u2014that was never going to be one of them.\n\nIt was an ugly, unthinking grudge. So Claire kept it bottled inside her, with other dark things. It leaked out to a razor in her voice now. \"I reserve judgment. Fault will be decided, I suppose, by your cooperation with the facts.\"\n\nLucille appeared to take a moment, as if weighing the taste of Claire's anger on her tongue. She shook her head slightly and busied herself with the platter of ceramic ware beside them. \"I have never been afraid of the truth, Claire. Though it has never done me a bit of good. Hiding from an unpleasant fact doesn't make it go away, does it?\" She paused, steel in her eyes as she met Claire's gaze. \"Tea?\"\n\n\"No, thank you.\" It was a testimony to Claire's mental state that her stomach roiled at the thought of drinking tea with this woman\u2014this character. She'd been a fool to think they might help her. She'd begun to think of them as damsels, as people, like Brevity insisted. But these women weren't like Brevity, not even like Hero, who'd shed ink like blood to prove his humanness.\n\nWas that what she required? That everyone must bleed for her before they mattered? The memory of black wounds made bile rise in Claire's throat, but a thought came with it. \"Ink,\" she muttered.\n\nLucille's placid gaze wavered until she sat the teapot back down with a sudden clink. \"Ink over tea? You have odd tastes, child.\"\n\n\"No, you bleed ink.\" Claire remembered the way black liquid had seeped through Hero's velvet coat, too thin and slow drying for blood. She remembered the aftermath, after the fires and ruination, peeling the smoke-ragged clothes off him to inspect his wounds, fingertips coming away smudged with familiar stains. Her lungs were squeezed by a hot, clenching kind of urgency. \"Characters in your form bleed ink, not blood. I've got an unidentified substance that I need to identify, obviously connected to your people in some way. All I need is a simple sample for comparison.\"\n\nThe room had gone quite still again. Claire hadn't noticed how false the room's quiet murmur was until it died. Perhaps because, at some point during her explanation, she had stood. Her hand had found the work scalpel she kept in a skirt pocket and held it high. It caught the light and shone like a threat.\n\n\"Claire,\" Lucille said, soft as lead. \"There's no need for that here.\"\n\n\"I think there is.\" Claire's voice threatened to wobble in her throat. She tried to shore it up with that bottled anger, but all that came to her summons was an increasing sense of desperation. \"I need answers. It's my job to have answers. I can't protect them without answers.\"\n\n\"And who protects us?\" Lucille didn't move from the chair but simply finished her tea and folded her hands in her lap.\n\nThe question bit, gnawed at the tender, guilty shadow that was Claire's past. But the possibility\u2014the hope\u2014that the answer was in front of her was too much to ignore. She swallowed and lowered the hand holding the scalpel\u2014not to put it away, but for a slightly less overtly villainous posture. \"I'm not the Unwritten Wing's librarian anymore. Your protection is not my responsibility.\"\n\nThe lie tasted like ash, but Lucille nodded acceptance. \"As you wish. Here. Come, then. If you want blood, you know how to draw it.\" She put her hands heavily on the table and pushed to her feet, slow and ponderous. She stretched out an arm and met Claire's gaze. \"Not the first time you've hurt a character, is it?\"\n\n\"I'm not doing this to hurt,\" Claire said, trying to feel for the truth as it passed over her tongue. Wasn't she? She needed answers, but wouldn't it be a relief to take an answer from a book\u2014willing or unwilling\u2014and for a moment feel like she was certain of her role again? Her fingers wrapped tighter around the handle of the blade to steady her doubts as she reached for Lucille's arm. \"Not that I have to explain my actions to you. You're certain you'll be able to hold on to this form?\"\n\nLucille narrowed a level gaze at her in response. Eyes blue and unfilmed by age despite her appearance. \"I'm not one of the lost young ones. I've known myself for a long time, child. Your little knife doesn't frighten me.\"\n\nClaire nodded once and took hold of Lucille's arm about the wrist. A distraught murmur shivered through the room, vague distressed words that faded because the damsels followed Lucille's lead. Her skin felt the age the book was portrayed to be, human and papery thin under her fingertips. As Claire's would have, had she not died in middle age. Humans turned to paper and stories in the end, given enough time.\n\nBut not here. Her fingers were strong, and Lucille held still. She didn't need to pick a vein on a character\u2014any prick would bleed. Claire glanced up once but received no encouragement from Lucille's cool gaze.\n\nShe brought the scalpel down in a practiced motion, a small diagonal cut. Black liquid welled along the line, and Claire dropped the scalpel to the table so she could snap up an empty vial to catch the bleeding ink.\n\nClaire pointedly ignored the wash of disquiet that started at the sight of spilled ink. It wasn't squeamishness, no\u2014the damsels who had survived the slaughter of the coup attempt were far beyond that. No, the gazes Claire felt on the back of her neck were hostile. Taking a scalpel to Lucille had brought back too many close associations with Claire's past treatment of books.\n\nMistreatment, she supposed, as she retrieved her instrument to press down harder around the wound to get a viable sample. Which was fair, she brooded, as she examined the black liquid as it dribbled across the glass of the vial\u2014a red sheen, hmm, not exactly like the mystery ink. Not at first glance, in any case, but as Claire stared she felt like more colors bubbled beneath the surface. The others didn't understand the stakes. Claire needed answers. Needed them for\u2014\n\n\"Claire!\"\n\nBrevity stood in the doorway, a shadow of a muse at her back. The naked horror on her face made Claire's hands flinch away from Lucille despite herself. But not before she carefully and precisely corked the sample."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "\u2002The poor boy thinks me mad. Yoon Ji Han is too polite to say it, of course, but he would lose his knickers at the gambling table. It is obvious that he thinks he's humoring me. Mad... now, that's a peculiar term, and, saints, don't they love applying it to women. Women have a special facility for madness. We're encouraged to go mad over the littlest things, because if our anger caught and held on the big things, we'd shape the world.\n\n\u2002It's acceptable to be mad; it's dangerous to be angry.\n\n\u2002The secret is that I am both.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1792 CE\n\nBrevity hadn't needed an explanation of the situation, when two damsels had stumbled, red-eyed and panicked, out of the depths of the stacks. She'd been idly doing log work while catching up on gossip from the corps that amused Probity, but Chiara and Becca's entrance stopped the conversation dead. Brevity knew the damsels by sight. Becca's cheeks were flushed with distress and she had a vise grip on Chiara, who looked prepared to punch someone. Or anyone. That might have been status quo for Chiara, but Becca's face had Brevity slapping the logbook closed and grabbing for her pen.\n\nProbity was a beat behind her. Perhaps it had been because they'd been reminiscing, but a pang of familiarity struck Brevity as Chiara led the way into the stacks. Running here and there, Probity behind her like a loyal pastel ghost. It left Brevity with a kind of vertigo, feeling like the memory of two people at once. Brevity the cocksure muse, ready to inspire the world. That'd been easier than Brevity the librarian, hesitant and unprepared for whatever emergency had the damsels so upset.\n\nThe path they were taking was familiar; they were headed to the damsel suite. The thought of another threat there made her heart bottom out. Brevity glanced to her side, but Probity kept pace with fierce determination, not even breathing hard as she nodded. \"Whatever you need. I've got your back.\"\n\nThat helped both versions of herself solidify together, if only for a moment. Brevity took a breath and followed Chiara through the suite door with determination. She could handle this, any situation; she was prepared; she could handle this just as well as\u2014\n\n\"Claire!\"\n\nBrevity felt it like a strangling kind of montage. Scalpel pressed to a bleeding wound on a thin arm. Lucille's resigned way she stifled a flinch at the pain. Claire's expression as she turned, some kind of dull pragmatism. And the ink. The ink seemed to drown out everything, smeared across paper-fragile skin, welling at the incision, smudging Claire's fingertips, dripping...\n\nNo, not dripping or smudging; that was a different memory, a different time. Brevity sucked in a breath. \"What are you doing?\"\n\nClaire was occupied with the vial of gore in her hands, stoppering it with a calm that sparked rage in the pit of Brevity's stomach. Claire looked up. \"I'm doing my job. And you?\"\n\nThere was a guarded reserve there, a waver that said she knew, she knew, she was doing something wrong. It was too familiar: the stiff line of Claire's back, the distant, flat look as she lifted her chin. Brevity knew that look, knew. It was the way Claire always looked when she felt it necessary to do something cruel.\n\nBrevity steadied herself by application of her nails into the palms of her hands. \"Step away from Lucille, Claire.\"\n\nClaire flinched as if slapped but drew herself up and took half a step apart from the older woman. \"I have what I need, in any case.\"\n\n\"And what would that be?\" Probity asked lowly. She'd brushed up to Brevity's shoulder, a small gesture meant to be supportive. A soft horror colored Probity's soft voice, and her eyes were wide. \"What use does a librarian have for blood?\"\n\n\"Ink,\" Claire corrected sharply. \"It's Library business.\"\n\n\"Library business is not attacking people!\" Brevity hadn't meant to shout, but the sick feeling bubbled up through her throat. Many of the damsels stood in their places, still as stone. Becca was already helping Lucille wrap a clean towel over her arm. Lucille was too stubborn to return to her book to heal, but she'd be fine\u2014Brevity knew this, but the fact was too quiet to drown out the recoil that Claire had bled a character. She'd damaged a book. Even now, after all that had happened. Probity laid a steadying hand on her shoulder and Brevity remembered herself. Yes. She was the librarian now. \"We should talk about this, Claire. Outside.\"\n\nClaire opened her mouth, then closed it. Her lips paled into a fine line and she busied herself with wiping the ink off her fingers onto her skirt. \"This is quite unnecessary,\" she muttered as she swept up the vials in one hand and strode to the door.\n\nProbity made a show of stepping aside with a sad shake of her head. \"That's the librarian's call, not yours.\"\n\nIf Claire's footsteps faltered, just once, she covered it by turning stiffly back to Lucille. \"Thank you for your cooperation.\" And she swept out the door.\n\nBrevity made to follow but hesitated. Lucille was being tended to, and the other damsels only cast her a reproachful look before slowly drifting back to their small groups. Brevity deserved their judgment, she supposed. She was responsible, for all of them. It had never felt like such a weight until today.\n\nProbity caught her gaze and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. \"You are the rightful librarian,\" she said quietly. There was a fervent belief in her voice, one Brevity couldn't find in herself. She clasped onto it and strode into the darkness of the stacks."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "Claire was waiting for her, leaning up against the wall under a silver section placard that read MODERN NONCANON TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS. Her arms crossed like a shield in front of her chest, her head turned upward, studying the bobble of the faerie light. Brevity had always found the silvery way it lit the shelves enchanting, but now it painted Claire's face like frost, making her seem like a cold, removed thing.\n\n\"What happened?\" Brevity asked, tight and controlled.\n\nClaire blinked placidly at her, though a nervous energy twitched her ink-stained fingers. \"Nothing to alarm yourself about. I am following a line of inquiry that needs a sample, and Lucille volunteered\u2014\"\n\nHeat rose in a spike in Brevity's chest. \"She didn't volunteer. They never volunteer!\" She bit down hard on her lip as Claire's expression dropped. Brevity shook her head. \"No books volunteer for your scalpel. Especially not the damsels; they know the risk of being shelved. Whatever Lucille did\u2014\"\n\n\"You think I attacked her?\"\n\n\"It wouldn't be the first time!\" Brevity threw out her hands. \"Boss\u2014Claire,\" she corrected her slip. No, Brevity was the librarian now. She had to do her job. Protect the books, even from Claire's misgivings. She was keenly aware of the weight of Probity's worried gaze on the back of her neck. Guarding, also judging. \"I kinda thought\u2014Hero and all\u2014you'd come around. Figured some stuff out.\"\n\nClaire flinched as if she'd been struck. \"I don't need to figure things out.\" She pulled two vials of ink from her pocket, wielding them like a key. \"I know unwritten books; don't presume to chide me just because now they call you librarian\u2014\"\n\n\"I am the librarian.\" The words surprised Brevity, the sureness with which they appeared on her lips. But it was true; it was true. The books looked to her; Probity came to her to collaborate on behalf of the Muses Corps, not to Claire. No one expected Claire to protect the books, to fix the gaping empty spaces in the shelves of books lost in the fire. And when she failed, it wasn't Claire who would suffer the painful silence of the Library. Brevity drew herself up. \"And as the librarian, I require you to explain your... 'line of inquiry' and why damaging one of my books without permission was necessary.\"\n\nMy books. Without permission. She sounded like Claire had sounded as librarian. Those were cruel, unnecessary barbs. Brevity had known that when she'd said it. Claire stared at her with an alien expression. Loss, Brevity realized too late. As long as Brevity had known her, Claire was a creature of certainty, even when she was dead wrong. She never looked lost, adrift. Even as her expression shuttered, reassembled into something more familiar, it felt wrong.\n\nAll of this felt wrong.\n\n\"It should be obvious enough to a librarian.\" Claire's words were clipped and sharp as glass. She held up one vial in one hand, then the other. \"This ink is of unknown origin and had a... peculiar response when applied to the logbook. You yourself argued for experimentation, if you'll recall. A sensible course of action is to compare it to the primary source of ink we understand: the wounds of unwritten characters.\"\n\n\"Understand\" was an overstatement, in Brevity's opinion. Librarians knew how to correct corrupted text, how to herd the text around the page of an unwritten book to help maintain the integrity of the story. But that was curation. That was editing. Ink unattached to a book felt like a tool of creation. Or destruction. Ink could be both, to written words. Brevity saw the potential\u2014it was why she argued for experimenting to understand if this substance could restore lost books\u2014but the hard look in Claire's eyes said she wasn't thinking about creation.\n\nBrevity couldn't hold that gaze. It hurt too much. She diverted to the vials in Claire's hands. Just ink to Claire. But Brevity saw the colors. Lucille's familiar tangled skein of tawny gold and violet spilled light from the right vial, twining like lazy mist between Claire's fingers. Unwritten books always reached for Claire, for humans. The left vial was different. The colors that reached from the mystery ink were numerous, like a rainbow put through a blender, chopped into static.\n\nProbity had an intent expression at her side. She could see it too. Carefully, Brevity reached out. Claire's eyes narrowed, and she half expected her to snatch her hands back, but she allowed Brevity to carefully pick up each sample. She held Lucille's up to the light, as if to examine it. The threads of color still wisped through the air, back to Claire. No interest in Brevity's nonhuman touch. It'd been that indifference that had troubled Brevity during her time as a muse too. Humans created; muses only inspired.\n\nBut Probity thought that could change.\n\nHer stomach fluttered at the thought, so Brevity quickly switched to studying the ink from the Arcane Wing. The static cloud of color flickered when she held it up, and Brevity half expected it to lash out. The spectrum churned and subsided, drifting like a fragmented cloud around the glass.\n\nNot reaching.\n\n\"Slight differences,\" Brevity said carefully, as if just admiring the sheen of the ink. She brought her hands together. The glass vials had begun to warm against her palms, along with a quiet, persistent treachery of an idea.\n\n\"They are different,\" Claire allowed. There was an intensity in her eyes as she tried to catch Brevity's interest. \"I know you want to try to restore the lost books, but until I can fully test these inks, it's too dangerous\u2014\"\n\n\"Tests.\" Something like emotional vertigo tilted through Brevity. She wanted answers; she wanted redemption; she wanted hope. But if it was Claire's job to experiment and understand unknown artifacts now, it was Brevity's job to preserve the books first. It felt like a mirror of their previous argument, and wrong. \"The damsels are not here for you to test on.\"\n\nClaire sighed. \"Brev, I don't mean it like that. You know I wouldn't\u2014\"\n\nBrevity clenched her hands together around the vials. \"I know you've stayed away from the Unwritten Wing for months\"\u2014leaving me to pick up the pieces\u2014\"and now you finally return, only to damage one of the books in my care. The books aren't here for your whims, Claire. Not any longer.\"\n\nToo far, too far. Claire's cheek twitched and her back straightened. Her voice dropped to a strange softness. \"You don't have to remind me of my failures, Brev.\"\n\n\"No,\" Probity spoke up, just as soft, backing Brevity. \"But she does have a duty to protect the Library from them.\"\n\nWrong, this was all wrong. But Brevity had only one way forward\u2014Claire had only left her with one way, no matter how much she hated it. \"The Arcane Wing has claimed jurisdiction over the unbound ink. But Lucille's ink is part of her book. I can't allow it to leave the Unwritten Wing.\" She rolled the vials in her hands before stiffly holding one out. \"Any further ideas you have should be run through me. But in the meantime\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, don't worry,\" Claire interrupted lowly. She snatched the vial back and shoved it into her pocket. \"I won't be needing any further help from the Library in this matter.\"\n\nYou're the Library too. Unwritten and Arcane against Hell, remember? Stop. Think this through. Misery welled up in Brevity's stomach as Claire strode away, disappearing into the shadows of the stacks as quickly as if she could shadowstep."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh. When the log revealed these entries, I knew Fleur had to have taken leave of her senses. Any logical person would\u2014there's no need for a fanciful conspiracy when a god-demon has absolute control over the realm. I set about disproving Fleur's conclusion with hard application of facts.\n\n\u2002I couldn't. There are irregularities that make no sense. The pages of the Library's books have no detectable composition or construct. Books exist on the shelves with text already on their pages. Should one try to annotate or correct an unwritten book with any ink other than its own, the ink wicks away into the paper like water into a sponge. Nothing stays but what the book was born with. This explains the difficulty of repairing damaged books, but not why. Stories change and are changed by the reader. What are unwritten books made of or connected to that resists exterior alteration?\n\n\u2002Could Fleur actually be right? How is that possible?\n\n\u2014Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1801 CE\n\nProbity maintained her silence the long way back to the librarian's desk. It was a sympathetic kind of silence, the kind of quiet meant to soothe and shore up. The wrongness stayed with Brevity, but at least with Probity here she didn't feel alone. It allowed her to go through the motions of checking in on the damsels, reassuring them that they need not worry about scalpel-wielding former librarians for the rest of the day, and withdraw. The damsels had knit a community out of their limbo status in the Library, and it was tight as a fist. As cordial as Brevity was with the residents of the Unwritten Wing, she knew there was a distance she could never cross as librarian.\n\nThe desk was lit in a sleepy puddle of lamplight, like always. A teapot sat on a warming stone, a convenient magic as old as the Library. She'd brewed strawberry and rose hips this morning and likely still had half a pot waiting for her. The urge to shake off the unease was so strong she nearly called for Hero before remembering he was away. Instead, she reached the chair behind the desk and all but fell into it.\n\n\"You did the right thing.\" Probity had come to perch just on the edge of the desk, right where Brev used to sit to check up on Claire.\n\nProbity was more graceful than she was; the stacks of paper didn't shift or become displaced. But it served to remind Brevity of the ache beneath the ache. \"Did I?\" Brevity said, and sank back with a sigh. \"It doesn't feel right.\" The levels of not-right ground at her frayed edges.\n\n\"That woman had to be stopped.\" Probity was somber with her certainty. She chewed on her lip a moment, and it was such a familiar habit that Brev almost smiled before Probity spoke again. \"You made it sound as if she had done such a thing before.\"\n\nBrevity grimaced. \"I'm sorry. We shouldn't have subjected you to that... discussion.\" The Library certainly had not put on a good show since Probity arrived. It wasn't the impression she wanted the muses to have. It wasn't the impression she wanted her friend to have. \"You're aware Claire was the librarian before me. She was a great librarian, and I learned everything from her. She just... ran the wing with a firmer hand than I can do.\"\n\n\"Abuse should never be in a librarian's repertoire.\" The censure in Probity's tone was streaked with horror. \"To cut into a book like it is some kind of... kind of melon. It's grotesque. Books are to be treasured, not dissected.\"\n\nIt was, perhaps, a very good thing that Probity had not perchance visited while Claire had been in charge. When she put it that way, it did sound awful. \"It wasn't like that,\" she insisted quietly. The urge to defend Claire was innate, and righter than the rest of the muddled thoughts in her head. She picked at the threadbare seam of the armchair as she searched for the words to explain it. She'd replaced Claire's rickety old seat with something comfier, but not without some guilt. \"Humans and their stories... it's a complicated relationship.\"\n\n\"An abusive relationship.\" Probity hugged herself absently, as if she could ward off the thought. \"It is a good thing you're the librarian. I miss you terribly, but seeing you here...\" She trailed off, suddenly looking small and earnest.\n\n\"This is where I'm supposed to be.\" It was true. Was it possible for the truth to comfort and wound at once? Brevity rubbed her eyes. \"This has turned into such a mess, sis.\"\n\nProbity's distant look melted a little. \"I was wondering if you were ever gonna call me that again.\"\n\nA clot\u2014of emotion, of exhaustion, of longing, of worry\u2014formed in Brevity's throat that she couldn't get words around, so she just smiled wearily. \"Normally I'd have Claire to ask for advice, or Hero at the very least to suggest the worst possible option so I could rule it out. But he's gone and\u2014\"\n\n\"The book is gone?\" Probity interrupted.\n\n\"Off researching what we can about the ink from our end. He co-opted Rami, said he might get lost in the stacks for a few days, but...\" Brevity waved her hand. \"I suspect he's found a loophole to sneak out again to other realms. Don't tell Claire. Hero will come back; I think he'll always come back now.\"\n\n\"I won't.\" Probity had a troubled look. It seemed to take some effort to shake herself to focus again. \"I mean, of course I wouldn't tell that woman anything. Do you think she'll try\u2014\"\n\nBrevity was already shaking her head. \"No. I think I... Gods, Probity, I hurt her. I was just so upset that she could do that, after all this time. After everything\u2014\" Brevity stopped herself. No good trying to explain Claire's winding history with the unwritten books of the Library, not now. \"There was something weird about her too. And instead of fixing it I messed it all up.\"\n\n\"We can fix things,\" Probity promised. Brevity shook her head.\n\n\"Humans are complicated. There're these emotions and it's... tricky.\"\n\n\"So we don't fix the humans,\" Probity said quietly.\n\nThere was a thread of intensity that tugged Brevity's head up. Probity was still sitting on the edge of the desk, hands folded in her lap. Still small, still soft, but more somehow. Burning with an intense certainty, the kind of look Claire got when there was trouble. When the solution would be the kind of insanity that Brevity had trouble saying no to.\n\n\"What?\" Brevity echoed.\n\n\"We don't fix the humans. The books\u2014that's what's worth saving. You said it yourself back there. That's your duty, isn't it? And if we fix the unwritten stories, the humans will sort themselves out.\" Not that Probity seemed to care about mortal problems. She faltered, chewing on a lip before pressing forward. \"Have you thought about what I proposed earlier?\"\n\nMore than thought about it. The possibility burned a hole in Brevity's pocket. \"Maybe.\"\n\nProbity hesitated, allowing the silence to draw tight between them until she could be certain of what wasn't being said. What Brevity couldn't say but was ready to consider. Probity nodded once, expression easing. \"'Maybe' is good enough to explore the possibility. If we can just find a way to get a sample of the unwritten ink the Arcanist is keeping.\"\n\n\"I might...\" Brevity began slowly. She took a breath, squeezing her eyes shut before committing to the door she was about to open. \"I might already have the answer to that.\"\n\nBrevity inched her fingers into her pocket and withdrew a single vial of ink.\n\nIt took Probity a moment to register it. Not the whipping, reaching tendrils of gold and violet that would have been Lucille's ink. Her dark eyes narrowed, then widened as she recognized the static cloud, the chopped-up color of error and loss, as it roiled off the ink inside.\n\n\"The unwritten ink,\" Probity breathed.\n\n\"I switched them,\" Brevity confirmed, embarrassed at the guilt she felt. Claire would notice eventually, but it would take her a while, not seeing the colors of the world as muses did. \"One experiment\u2014one. Just to see if your idea works. And the books have to be protected\u2014\"\n\n\"We won't be needing the damsels for this, or any of the books,\" Probity reassured her, face blooming wide and hopeful. \"I have volunteers\u2014muses. Oh, sis, we can do this. We can do this.\"\n\nProbity made a delighted sound and launched herself off the desk. Brevity barely had time to pocket the vial and plant a smile before the hug. It felt warm. It felt sincere. It felt hollow.\n\nThey could do this. A quiet voice in the back of Brevity's mind just worried what, exactly, they would have done."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "\u2002Stories are as old as us. No one culture holds claim to the creation of the first stories. The origin of stories has often been attributed to something divine\u2014gods, the Fates. The Greeks and their muses, though, that's something more fickle. Muses aren't divine, or necessarily benevolent. Their purpose, their gods, are the stories. Anything is justifiable, anything is expendable, in service to that.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1977 CE\n\nThey found Iambe lounging with a lyre one hallway over from the stairs that led to the library. She plucked at the strings less like she was playing music and more like they'd offended her. When they asked after the muses, her laughter was bright and vicious.\n\n\"You wouldn't want to step foot in the home of the muses,\" she said after she'd recovered herself.\n\n\"Why not?\" asked Rami.\n\n\"Muses don't have a home; they have a well. A well of possibilities.\" Iambe's gaze darted to Hero. Her eyes were cruel and delighted. \"Your sweet little book wouldn't be quite himself.\"\n\n\"This isn't my first after-realm trip. I can take it.\" Hero crossed his arms.\n\nIambe just looked amused. \"They would eat you alive, little hero.\"\n\n\"Be that as it may,\" Rami cut in before Hero could think of a witty comeback. \"We have questions to which we need answers. Surely there is a way to gain an audience with one of their number?\"\n\nHero still didn't know what he'd done to earn Iambe's disdain, but evidently it stopped at irritating scruffy angels in overcoats. She tilted her head, then gave a graceful shrug. \"You can go to their little wishing well and make a wish, if you like. If Mother's thimble of madness wasn't enough, I suppose you can drown in it.\" She rose and began to walk through the columns and into the sunlight. Alecto the lioness padded after her, pausing just long enough to stretch and give a very feline glare at Hero before following.\n\nRami's brow knit in a question, but Hero just shrugged his shoulder. \"In my experience, this job is ninety percent following or waiting for inscrutable women.\"\n\nRami nodded as they set off in Iambe's wake. \"What's the other ten percent?\"\n\n\"Oh, blind terror mostly.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "The sun was no lower in the sky when they followed Iambe outside, along a large promenade. Plump white pillars cast long rivers of shadows across the stone. Alecto let out a low growl as they reached the end and began to descend into a garden. The large cat sat down as if offended, obviously disdaining to go any farther.\n\n\"What's her problem?\" Hero asked.\n\nIambe shrugged as she stepped over the cat's tail swishing with vexation. \"The Furies do not care for muse territory.\"\n\nHero was not too proud to taunt a murder cat, especially one that had been menacing him since he landed. He'd be glad to be rid of the pet. He formed his mouth into a pitying moue. \"Afraid, kitten?\"\n\nIn response, the cat took a lightning-fast swipe at the back of his hand. Pain bloomed, and Hero cursed and stepped back, cradling his hand.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" Rami asked.\n\n\"Do stop taunting the Furies.\" Boredom laced Iambe's voice as she gestured. \"This way.\"\n\nThe cat had taken a sharp rake of skin off the back of his hand. Hero dabbed the bleeding ink off with the hem of his coat. \"May you host the most heroic of fleas, beast.\"\n\nAlecto didn't even have the grace to look ill-tempered. She gave him a slow, content blink and relaxed into a sprawl in the spot of sunshine.\n\n\"Hurry up,\" Iambe called before passing through a curtain of diaphanous fabrics that diffused the light of the gardens beyond. Hero gave one last reproachful glance at the cat, wondering what would shy off a literal living avatar of anger. Alecto gave away nothing else. Rami followed him out, and Hero just caught the edge of the swaying curtain before stepping into the light.\n\n\"Oh, I'm going to be ill,\" Hero moaned under his breath. He stopped short enough to cause Rami to collide with him. It must have carried in his voice, because Rami grunted and rubbed sympathetic circles on Hero's back.\n\nWhen Iambe had described a well, Hero had assumed a tidy cistern, or at worst a looking pond, as Echo had used. But the marble steps led down into a terrace transformed. There was no well, or cultured pond\u2014the terrace was the pond. Water surrounded them on all sides, as if they'd stepped into a bathysphere of mirrors. At least, Hero had to presume it was water. The substance was perfectly clear, like liquid light, and appeared simultaneously thin as a soap bubble and deep as the ocean. It went on to forever and to naught. And when Hero tried to focus his eyes to make sense of it, he found himself staring at countless reflections. He took a step across the marble, and a thousand similar Heroes took a step at a half-second delay. Rami's arm moved at his back, and a repeating visual echo of Ramiels followed suit. Each movement sent his brain into riot trying to make sense of it.\n\nHero squeezed his eyes closed as vertigo threatened to upend his stomach. \"No one... move.\" He focused on swallowing\u2014very carefully. \"If you please.\"\n\nIambe's sandals clicked on the marble, and though he had his eyes closed it was as if Hero could feel the reflections. \"I did warn you.\"\n\n\"And your guidance is appreciated, spirit.\" Ramiel managed to sound mild and unaffected. His voice was a low, stabilizing presence, as sturdy as the hand at Hero's back. \"But we came to speak to the muses.\"\n\n\"And here you are, master angel.\" Iambe swept one arm\u2014dear gods, how did Hero know that; his eyes were closed but he could feel the motion against his skin; this place was horror\u2014and laughed mirthlessly. \"The well of the muses. It's where our realm brushes against their realm and we can hold congress. It'll be up to you to catch their attention.\"\n\nWith that, Iambe appeared done with them. Hero opened his eyes just in time to see her walk briskly to the surface of the water surrounding them and disappear in the slender space between two reflections.\n\n\"I can't say she was eminently helpful, but at least we're here.\"\n\n\"You've been here before?\" Hero asked. It was a reasonable question. Rami might have been a newcomer to the Library's fractious staff, but he was also a fallen angel, ageless in ways that Hero didn't care to think about. He talked about the Fall of Lucifer as if it had happened last Tuesday.\n\nSo it surprised him when Rami shook his head regretfully. \"I was long fallen by the time the muses rose to prominence. And while we were not exactly forbidden from it by the Creator or Morningstar, visiting other realms was... discouraged.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have thought you'd give much care to what Lucifer condoned,\" Hero said, though every curious nerve in his body wanted to ask about the other one, the Creator. The maker of angels had seemed a contentious point between Ramiel and Uriel, his Heavenly colleague that had tried to invade the Library, leading Rami to stand against her. Hero didn't believe for a minute that there was a singular creator\u2014too many seemingly contradictory realms rose, coexisted, and fell based on the fancies of humans\u2014but anything that had won the devotion of such a rare creature as Rami had a certain amount of fascination for Hero.\n\nBut Ramiel was strangely silent on the topic, at least with him. Hero had become adept at, by turns, charming or antagonizing information from people, but whenever the subject of Heaven's god came up, the only thing he could draw from Rami was a distant look of loss. For some damned reason that look on Rami's face always made Hero's stomach hurt, so he had stopped prodding.\n\nLucifer, however, was different. Rami was always happy to mutter about Hell's erstwhile leader. Rami puckered his lips as if he'd tasted something foul. \"I don't care a whit for the Deceiver. But if I had any hope of receiving forgiveness from Heaven, I judged it best not to exhibit an interest in realms other than Heaven and Earth.\" He looked around him. \"So this is new, all these reflections of us and\u2014oh.\"\n\nRami's voice did a missed-stair kind of lurch. Hero followed his gaze, but at first all he could see was what he'd seen before\u2014hundreds of mirror images. Upon focusing, however, he realized that an identical \"mirror\" wasn't quite accurate. To his right, he and Rami appeared in the glass surface of the water much the same, but Hero had his arm in a sling. In the image just below that, Hero appeared to have a dagger held to Rami's ribs, as if he'd brought him here by force. In a distant, tiny reflection behind that, Hero wasn't there at all and it was Brevity staring back at him. Each mirror iteration bore a difference. Some were slight\u2014Hero's scar was gone; his coat was a different color\u2014and others were great. He caught a glimpse of a tiny reflection, almost translucent with its not-thereness, where neither Hero nor Rami appeared but the well was polluted with smoke.\n\n\"What trickery is this?\" Rami wondered uneasily, but Hero grasped it in an instant.\n\n\"Possibilities. It's a well of possibilities, every alternate possible way this moment could have gone.\" Hero caught a glimpse of another reflection where neither of them was present, but a familiar figure in a gentleman's clothes and a gentleman's malevolence stared back at him. The image rippled, disappearing quickly, but not before Hero could shudder at the victory in Andras's demon gold eyes.\n\nEvery possible way the story could have gone was here. If Rami had refused to accompany Hero, if Hero had never returned to the Library, if Andras had succeeded in his coup. Since he was a character, the book part of his nature made him keenly aware of how every story could turn on the knife-edge of any decision. But standing in a bubble, separated from all his other fates by a mere slip of time, he was terrified by the fragility of it. Reality took on an unstable quality, soap-film thin and ready to burst.\n\n\"Remarkable.\" Rami swiveled his head around as if the impermanence of their own existence was not about to fall down on their damned heads. The angel shook his head in wonder. \"If this is just a touch of the muses' realm, then surely they'll have the answers we need.\"\n\n\"Yes. Confidence. That is exactly what I draw from this too,\" Hero said blandly. He straightened his shoulders, not quite able to shrug off the sense of unreality, but he could make a good show of it. \"We'll need to gain an audience. I'm not fond of the idea of being trapped here or wandering into the wrong reflection.\"\n\n\"Iambe said we would need to attract the muses' attention.\"\n\n\"And this is why you were clever enough to bring me,\" Hero said. The smile he flashed was perfect and perfectly fake. \"Attention is my specialty.\"\n\nClaire would have frowned, Brevity would have laughed, but all Hero received from Rami was a thoughtful nod. How infuriating. \"Good point. Your charisma is an asset here, no doubt.\"\n\nWell, maybe not entirely infuriating. Hero blinked, trying to realign his world around an unexpected compliment. It was a feeling he was not accustomed to, especially from earnestly serious men like Ramiel. \"Yes, well\u2014\"\n\n\"What do you propose?\"\n\nHero scrutinized the question for cynicism, for mockery, but found nothing. Rami patiently waited for his lead. Him! Hero was more accustomed to having to wrest control of a situation out of other people's grasps with trickery and guile. He abruptly strode toward the bubble surface, hoping that would cool the warmth in his face.\n\nHis reflection approached him in turn. This Hero was very similar to him, lip curled and cocksure. Behind the mirror-Hero, Rami's reflection kept watch with a soft expression on his face. As if that version of their working relationship had the opportunity to be based on more than the resentful, grudging necessity of acquaintances.\n\nHero didn't have the courage to glance over his shoulder to see if that reflection rang true. It would bother him if it didn't, and then it would bother him that it bothered him. Instead, Hero withdrew his book from where he'd carried it\u2014miraculously unshredded so far\u2014in his vest pocket. He flipped to the first page\u2014blank, of course, but that would do for this purpose\u2014and began to recite out loud. \"Once upon a time...\"\n\nHe expected a snicker, at least a skeptical comment from Rami, but his audience remained quiet. Hero cleared his throat and began again. \"Once upon a time, there was a rather devastatingly handsome prince who, through entirely no fault of his own, was trapped in a high, high tower by a horrible, misguided sorceress with an atrocious tea habit and questionable fashion taste.\"\n\nRami made a stifled sound that interrupted him\u2014which was good because Hero really wasn't sure what should happen next. \"The reflections,\" Rami said in a whisper.\n\nHero risked a glance from his book. The mirror-Hero in front of him hadn't moved, but there had been a slight shift in his neighbors. Each copy of Hero and Rami trapped in the surface of the bubble had turned to stare, intently, in Hero's direction. The weight was unnerving, but Hero scrounged for more. \"The prince, in addition to being devastatingly handsome and gifted, knew his kingdom needed him. So, one day he was horribly clever and escaped the tower without alerting the willful sorceress.\"\n\n\"Keep going,\" Rami murmured. Hero felt movement in the reflections, but he knew better than to look. He screwed his eyes closed in thought. \"His quest to save his kingdom took him to a dangerous faerie realm known as Seattle, the denizens of which were too scruffy and its weather far too damp for the likes of his pages\u2014er, delicate skin. There he met the lady of the lake, a fair goddess who the prince believed could save him from the sorceress's evil spell. But the lady had been...\" Despite himself, Hero paused, frowning to himself as he tried to pick a word. \"...she'd been ensorcelled by the realm and forgotten her power. So corrupted was she that she rejected our prince, drove a dagger through his heart when all he was guilty of was being entirely too charming and clever. Then the cruel sorceress, more of a witch really\u2014\"\n\n\"Hero,\" Rami interrupted.\n\n\"Shush, Claire will never hear this. It's fine. I'm almost\u2014\"\n\n\"No, Hero. Look.\"\n\nHis eyes snapped open in time to catch a blur of movement over the surface of the bubble. The reflected pairs were moving, swirling around the mirror-Hero in front of him like water down a drain. The movement threatened to make Hero ill, but one by one, the Hero and Rami clones shivered into a single pair.\n\nHero forgot his tale and studied the reflection in front of him. This Hero was certainly tidier than his current state. Familiar copper hair was trim and clean, and this Hero's coat was not sliced by lioness claws. But the biggest change was in the alien differences of his face. This Hero's eyes were soft, muddled somewhere between regret and pity. His cheek was smooth and devoid of scar tissue. This Hero had not been tortured by Andras for trying to defend the Library. This Hero likely didn't trick himself into smelling smoke, hearing the tearing of pages in a silent room. Hero rubbed his own jaw, and the raw ridge of flaws was almost reassuring.\n\nIn the bubble's mirror surface, Rami approached. He had a worried look, but then, Rami usually defaulted to some somber version of concerned. The angel reached out in the mirror, and Hero almost flinched until no pressure came on his own shoulder and he realized it was only mirror-Ramiel's action, not his angel's.\n\nHis angel, Hero quickly decided, was a problematic thought he would stow away for later.\n\nThe Ramiel in the mirror gestured, saying words to the other that Hero couldn't hear. A worried look, soft edged and fleeting, passed between the two before they looked back, over their shoulders, into the distance of the reflection. Hero saw nothing at first.\n\n\"Someone's coming,\" Rami said, and Hero squinted. A speck in the mirror, which Hero had first mistaken for a flaw in the surface, was growing larger. It elongated into a slight figure, and Hero couldn't keep his lip from curling as he caught sight of a pastel froth of lace and a fluff of bangs.\n\n\"Probity,\" Rami rumbled. He'd repositioned himself at Hero's side. \"I take it from your presence that your business in Hell is finished.\"\n\nProbity clasped her hands in front of her skirts, wide eyes looking soft and full. \"Not at all. I just popped back to report on the Library's cooperation. How strange a coincidence to find you here.\"\n\n\"When we left I don't believe the tenor of conversation was cooperation, specifically,\" Hero said.\n\n\"Thankfully, Brevity sees sense much more easily than you books do.\" Probity's cheerful voice tugged with an undertone of tension. Her amicable smile tightened, just at the edges. \"I've known Brevity my entire life. She understands the importance of what I'm trying to do. She's been nothing but helpful. And why wouldn't she? We both have the best interests and well-being of all books at heart. Even yours.\"\n\n\"Even me?\" Hero pressed a hand to his chest. \"What radical ideas you have.\"\n\n\"I'm a muse. You're a book. Do you even know how special that is?\" Probity's clasped hands flinched as if she'd suffered a stab of emotion. \"We love all books and do not judge between the written and unwritten. Everything we do is for you.\" Probity spoke as if the reminder was aimed inward rather than at Hero. She tilted her head, and her brow furrowed with pity. \"How is it, Hero? Do you still feel your story?\"\n\nA sourness welled up in Hero's throat, but Rami answered instead. \"He's well. We are fine.\" There was a gritty grind under those words, more of an unvarnished edge than Rami usually had. Hero looked from muse to angel, but Rami's frown gave nothing away. \"We are actually on a quest for the Library. We were hoping the muses could provide answers about the forgotten librarian and the makeup of books.\"\n\nProbity paused, and her face softened. \"The makeup of books? You don't know what books are made of?\"\n\nShe paused, and Hero grudgingly shook his head.\n\nThe sorrow that flickered across Probity's face seemed genuine. \"Oh, sweet creature. To not know yourself.\" Then a glint in her eye turned harder, angry. \"It's wrong. It's more than wrong. The selfish librarian has done more harm than even I could have anticipated.\"\n\n\"Claire has given everything for the Library.\" Hero's voice was sharp. It was a surprise to feel Rami bristle beside him too. But then his brain caught up with his mouth, and a little guiltily he added, \"As has Librarian Brevity.\"\n\n\"Not everything. She could never give enough to make up for what she has done. Humans can't understand the real meaning of sacrifice.\" Probity no longer looked at Hero like a pitiful rescue. Her mouth thinned into a fine line, as if she was steeling herself. \"Even a broken book is still loyal to the woman instead of the true librarian,\" she said. \"She's not worthy of your devotion, little book. I wonder if you would be so fond of your human librarians and authors if you knew how many books just like you they've turned to dust. They're a parasite on the Library.\"\n\n\"Watch your tone,\" Rami said, low as a threat.\n\n\"I mean no disrespect, Master Watcher.\" Probity held up a placating hand, but the new tension in her shoulders wasn't reassuring. \"I do respect the work you do, securing and passing judgment on muddled mortal souls; it really is a wonder.\"\n\n\"I'm no judge,\" Rami objected, and Probity tilted her head.\n\n\"Well, you should be.\"\n\n\"Yes, humans are terrible. Not like you muses,\" Hero said archly. \"Tell me again, where were you on the day a demon came to burn us all? The only muse I recall seeing on the battlefield was Brevity.\"\n\nProbity flinched. \"The Library fights its own battles,\" she said before adding, a little softer, \"I would have come if Brevity had called me.\"\n\n\"So help now,\" Rami said. \"What do you know that we don't? What do you know about the ink? Why did it remain when the books were burned?\"\n\nProbity didn't answer for a moment. She took a step forward, closer to what seemed to be the film of water separating them. \"You really don't know, do you?\" Her voice was wondering. \"But how could the human not know? Not recognize...\"\n\nShe trailed off, and the silence tripped past Hero's last remaining bit of patience. \"Not know what? If you will not help us, then why should the Library 'cooperate' with you?\"\n\nProbity tucked her arms around herself until her hands disappeared in the volume of soft knit. She chewed on her bottom lip, and the prospect of something sadder that Hero couldn't guess. \"I'm trying to save you, little book. Whether you believe me or not. That ink represents the best opportunity to save stories that I've seen in all my many years. It deserves to be used, not locked up in a dusty vault. That ink is the heart of a story. Every story. I'd give anything to protect that.\"\n\n\"Then tell me what that means so we can fix it!\" Hero threw up his hands even as he felt exhilarated. To save stories. The moment he'd laid eyes on the unknown substance, a quiet voice at the back of his mind had whispered a possibility. That ink could repair his pages where the Library's efforts had failed, so Hero could see his story again after all. That was what Probity was hinting at; it had to be. That ink was the key. The hope he'd kept firmly buried began to worm its way up his chest.\n\nProbity appeared torn, debating before speaking again. \"I've told you enough to unravel the lies the Library has told you. Anything more and you'll run back to that cruel human with accusations. I might have even said too much already.\" A sigh drained out of her like a surrender. Her eyes turned wet, and she diverted her gaze to the ground. \"That can't happen. It can't. Things are too important, and moving too fast now for it to happen, no matter my own feelings. You wanted to escape Hell once, didn't you?\"\n\nHero was too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice the sudden change in Probity's tone. At least, not until Rami gripped his shoulder in warning. \"We will be missed, should we not return soon,\" Rami said carefully. \"We'll be on our way.\"\n\n\"Hell, one of the judgment realms.\" Probity seemed to be considering to herself. \"Really, they are all so very much the same. One damnation is the same as any other. I wonder how those are connected.\"\n\n\"Muse... perhaps we can speak to a different representative before we go,\" Hero said carefully.\n\n\"It's for the stories. It's... Brevity would do the same if she were here. I know it,\" Probity whispered. Her voice wobbled, but her hand was firm as she raised it in front of her face. Rami jerked Hero back another step, but there was nowhere to precisely retreat to. Probity's smile looked distinctly unhappy. \"I'm sorry. Really, I am. But there's no point in that. You were never here.\"\n\nProbity's fingertips tapped against the film of water, and there was a soft pop. Rami's fingers dug into his arm, Hero drew a sharp breath, and the entire sphere of space dissolved into stars."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 27",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh. I did not hold with my senior's suspicions. At least, not until Librarian Ji Han was gone. Now nothing seems right. But I am not a scholar. I'm here because I am a failed storyteller\u2014what can I know of books?\n\n\u2002Demons; demons I know. I caught a lesser infernal trying to sneak into the stacks again today, and this time I questioned him: why are Hell's creatures interested at all in the Library? He seemed to not know himself, except the Library had always been here, and the books were irresistible to their kind, coveted by even the great dukes. Jackals.\n\n\u2002Hell was born with a library, or evolved one soon after. Men condemn themselves to Hell, but who passes judgment on mere books?\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 791 CE\n\nHangovers were, truly, creations of the devil. Hero felt he could say that with authority. His head thudded, dull and constant as a drum. He was under no encouragement to open his eyes, or remove his cheek from the warm wood surface supporting it.\n\n\"Hero.\"\n\nSomeone leaned over him. Someone with a voice like bourbon in a cut-crystal glass. Excellent, and matching the big hand that tentatively wrapped around his shoulder and gave him a shake. \"Hero,\" the voice said again.\n\n\"Shan't. Go away. Guards\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't have guards.\" The voice paused, and an amused tone crept in. \"Well, besides me.\"\n\n\"Then you're dismissed. Go join the rebellion for all I care.\"\n\n\"Hero\u2014\"\n\n\"But haul yourself out first. That's an order.\"\n\nAnother pause. The hand left his shoulder and Hero idly leaned for the missing warmth. There was a huff of a laugh. \"Did that kind of order even work in your story?\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Hero's sleepy mind tripped on that, and unfortunately it brought him fully awake. His eyes sprung open and he bit back a yowl as light weaponized itself like blades into his headache. Between squinted eyelids, he could just make out the uneven grain of a wood table that was battle-scarred but clean. Raising his head brought the world to a proper perspective. They were in a large room, cluttered with candles and a cheerful melancholy. Other figures were clustered in small groups at tables identical to his, but talk was subdued, words drifting through the sweetly spiced air like memories.\n\n\"Where the hell are we? I mean, obviously not Hell, but... and why does my head feel as if I was kicked by a gargoyle?\"\n\n\"You'd be a lot worse if I hadn't lent a hand. I believe the muse yanked the realm right out from under us back there.\" Ramiel sat in the booth across from him. \"Sat,\" however, might have been a bit of a stretch, as the stubby, broad angel looked afraid to breathe for fear the bench would give up the ghost. \"Dropped us straight into nothing, and with as long as we fell, you'd have arrived as so many paper scraps if I hadn't had a hold of you. I'm not certain we were supposed to survive the trip.\"\n\n\"And you brought us here?\"\n\nRami looked abashed. \"We... woke up here. On the floor.\"\n\n\"Probity. That harpy reject is dead when we get back,\" Hero muttered. He rubbed his head tenderly, which at least kept Rami from correcting him on the lineage of muses.\n\nRamiel made a sympathetic face instead and grabbed one of the cups in front of him. \"Here, I think the tea helps.\"\n\nThe pot was a slender silver contraption, and Hero watched with amusement as Rami attempted to pour a cup the way most men might approach defusing a bomb. The liquid ended up in the proper container, for the most part. Hero took the offering and made a face as he brought it to his nose. \"Tea. Why is it always blasted tea? Where're the realms with magical coffee elixirs? Wine? A decent sherry? At least Valhalla had ale.\"\n\n\"That'd be a question for Claire,\" Rami demurred. Hero noted he didn't pour a cup for himself, so surely he agreed with the sentiment.\n\nHero resolutely gulped the tea. It was the precise golden color of the light spilling from the candles, and had a sweet note to it. Perhaps licorice. \"Where the blast are we anyway?\"\n\nRami's gaze flickered over the room in a way that said he'd already spent time culling any useful details from it. \"I'm not certain. Middle Eastern and Persian influences, that's for certain. No one's bothered us so far, so they must be used to new souls.\"\n\nAn active realm, at least. Not a cannibal realm that would attempt to eat them at the first opportune moment, at the very least. A well-fed realm might wait until the second opportune moment.\n\nHero missed the Library sometimes.\n\nThe tea was helping, at least. He took another determined sip. The tearoom\u2014because that seemed the only thing it could be\u2014was warm and subdued. Some of the inhabitants had the scruffy appearance of having not slept in a couple of days. On the other hand, a Persian grandmother bundled in a bright red blanket worked on some kind of yarn art in the corner, pausing occasionally to warm her bony hands on a mug idling by her side. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts or quiet conversation, all waiting for something.\n\nIn Hero's experience, there was nothing good worth anticipating in these kinds of realms. \"We should get out of here.\"\n\n\"Yes, you're right.\" Rami nodded tightly, perhaps because any grander gesture would have risked tipping the bench. \"What do you propose?\"\n\nRami's eyes were somber, intense, and Hero found himself pinned under their focus. There was no mockery, no doubt, just patient attention.\n\n\"Why do you do that?\" Hero asked. The question was suddenly pressing, urgent as anything else he could accomplish.\n\nRami turned to meet his gaze. \"Do what?\"\n\nHero's mouth felt dry and awkward. \"Take me seriously. Why do you take me seriously?\"\n\nThat received a raise of one thick eyebrow. \"Should I not?\"\n\nNo. No one should have taken Hero seriously. Earnest regard had weight, had consequences, had familiar ties and responsibilities. \"The others don't. I work very hard on the frivolity, you know. It's handcrafted, artisanal even. But you ignore it entirely.\" Hero realized he was staring but only seemed able to drop his focus from Rami's eyes to his chin. \"I want to know why, I guess.\"\n\nRami's serious expression muddled with a kind of softness at the edges. He considered before speaking, \"It's a fair enough question. I mean, I can see you're vain; you're arrogant and irresponsible\u2014\"\n\n\"Flatterer,\" Hero muttered, but Rami wasn't going to be derailed.\n\n\"You choose to behave as a beast sometimes. And you're very hard to tolerate, let alone like,\" he said firmly. Then he paused, a complicated look ill settling on his features until it drifted off again. \"But then there's who you are when you're taken seriously, treated with respect and thoughtful consideration. You're insightful and kind. I like that man.\"\n\n\"Nobody likes me,\" Hero said, a little aghast.\n\nRami stopped, and a very un-Rami-like smile taunted the shape of his lips. It was a soft smile, and if he wasn't careful, someone would accuse it of being fond. Not Hero; Hero knew better. But still. It was a dangerous smile, with what a less cautious fool than Hero could read into it.\n\n\"You might be surprised. You seem to have found a home in the Library, at least.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"Only because I can't return to my book, so I can't be shelved.\"\n\n\"You really think so?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Hero said with a certainty that had been there a moment ago but was disappearing fast as Rami frowned at him. He managed to break the gaze, turning his head to fish through the crowd for anything, anything else to talk about. His attention lit on a tall figure who slipped through the tearoom with a peculiar kind of familiarity. The figure was dressed in a long tunic and flowing pants, belted loosely at the waist. They were broad-shouldered and thick-hipped, moving with the kind of surety that described a comfort in their own skin. The figure cut a sure path through the quiet crowd, saying a word here or there. Each time, the figure would withdraw, and the table would soon get up and leave through the curtained doors at the far end of the room. Some left with purpose, but many with reluctance.\n\nThey stopped at a table not too far away, close enough for Hero to hear. \"Last call,\" the newcomer said quietly.\n\n\"Can't we stay, Sraosha?\" asked an old man wrapped in gold-embroidered finery.\n\nThe figure called Sraosha smiled, and when they shook their head, there was no malice in it. \"Why would you want to stay? You've got family waiting for you across the bridge.\"\n\n\"I do.\" The man didn't seem comforted and suddenly looked at his hands. \"I hope I see them.\"\n\nSraosha didn't say anything to that but placed a hand on his shoulder. \"Everyone crosses the bridge sometime. Your family is waiting.\"\n\nThe man nodded and drained the last of his tea in one ponderous motion. His grip was white-knuckled, but after he finished, his courage seemed restored. He nodded to his companions and left at a march toward the door.\n\nThey left their cups behind. Sraosha swept their hand over the table, and in a moment it was refreshed with clean cups and a steaming pot of tea nestled next to a comforting candle.\n\nHero glanced to the side to see if Rami was observing all this. He was, frown pinned with a particular kind of concern. When Hero looked back, Sraosha had turned and spotted him.\n\nThey approached the table at a glide. \"Last call,\" they said quietly.\n\nUp close, Sraosha struck Hero as likely fluid in gender presentation, but not in the slender androgynous fashion. Loose linens, a long braid of hair, but that wasn't it. Wide shoulders, wide hips, and a stance of distinct ease. They had a solidness to their presence, an undeniable individuality that drew the eye. It struck Hero that most people were not so much themselves as this creature was. It was an intimidating authenticity, and Hero drew back just a little. \"Oh, no, thank you.\"\n\nThat appeared to amuse their host. Sraosha tilted their head, considering. \"No, I suppose you missed your call before now.\"\n\n\"Kind host,\" Rami interrupted, raising a placating hand. \"I'm afraid there is a misunderstanding. We're not souls awaiting judgment. Hero and I are representatives of the Unwritten Wing of Hell's Library.\"\n\nEven after all this time, Rami still had trouble with the H word. His brow always did a microscale twitch as he stumbled over the word. Hero usually delighted in drawing it out, even if there was no time to do so now.\n\n\"Yes, I am aware who you are, Ramiel of the Watchers.\" Sraosha ignored their surprise by turning their attention. \"And you, Hero of the Lost Book.\"\n\nHero's mood curdled. \"I know precisely where my book is, thank you.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Sraosha tilted their head. \"Is that the when? My apologies. It is easy to lose track in the tearoom.\"\n\nUnease sifted up through Hero's confusion, though he couldn't place a finger on it. Thankfully, Rami knew when to step in. \"If you know us, then you'll know we are not meant for this realm. We arrived here by misstep, and we can be on our way if you simply indicate the way out.\"\n\nSraosha tilted their head to the exit with a practiced gesture. \"The exit is, of course, that way.\" They paused, studying them both. \"But the only way is the bridge.\"\n\nHero suspected very much that he did not wish to avail himself of the bridge. Bridges in after-realms, in his experience, had a troubling way of leading to grief and bloodshed. Symbolism was a bitch. \"I don't suppose you have a gently sloping path.\"\n\n\"The bridge is quite comfortable,\" Sraosha said. They appeared to scrutinize Hero for a moment. \"Human souls find on the bridge only what they take with them.\"\n\n\"How lucky that I am not one,\" Hero said. \"Souls sound like rather pesky things.\"\n\n\"There's no other exit out of this realm?\" Rami interrupted before Sraosha could say something irritatingly vague and profound again. \"Surely there is.\"\n\n\"On the far side, past the bridge,\" Sraosha offered with a gentle lift of their hand. \"Once you cross, the judges might be happy to grant you audience and passage to your realm.\"\n\n\"Judges are not usually our most ardent allies,\" Hero reminded Rami. The irritated look he threw reassured him that the angel was well aware of the trouble Hell's Library dragged around with them like a tin can on a string.\n\n\"There's no exit from this side? Not even for nonhumans such as us?\" Rami pressed. Hero was again reminded of the nightmare that was the abandoned realm of crocodiles and labyrinths. They'd fallen through a gate that had remained open. Ramiel himself had been there, still struggling to fulfill his role as avenging angel and barring their path. He'd taken away their only route back, and Leto, their youngest companion, had sacrificed himself for it.\n\nIt seemed like the kind of thing Hero should hold a grudge about. He knew himself and was very aware of his deep capacity to hold grudges. It was his favorite pastime. But every time he tried to rip the scab off that memory, instead of anger he got something different. He remembered clutching Claire as they'd scrambled over the crocodile god's back. He'd tossed one wary look behind them, expecting to see this malevolent angel that had been dogging them. Instead, shadowed in the doorway of the arch, he'd seen a worn man in a shabby coat, with the saddest eyes he'd ever seen. Hero knew what it looked like to be lost and far from home.\n\nNeither Hero nor Rami could go home again. It'd been hard to fault him for trying.\n\nSraosha shook their head. \"This tearoom is simply a resting place for unjudged souls. Some dead refuse to cross the bridge without a loved one; others simply need to accept their death and summon up the courage to cross.\" They paused, a thoughtful look coming upon their confident features. \"Strange that you should fall here.\"\n\n\"We had help.\" Rami flicked a glare toward the ceiling, as if he could have struck Probity from here.\n\n\"Nonetheless, there's nothing for ones such as you to gain by waiting here.\" Before they could protest, Sraosha straightened their shoulders, pulling up authority like a cloak. \"Last call.\"\n\nA faint hiss brought Hero's attention down to where steam was sizzling out of the teapot. When he inspected his own cup, it was dry as a bone. \"You're kicking us out? Bad form!\"\n\n\"I am encouraging you to move forward.\" Sraosha began their ritual of wiping the booth table.\n\n\"What happens on the bridge, Sraosha?\" Rami asked, intent as a hunting dog. \"How can we pass it?\"\n\nSraosha pursed their lips. \"I suppose most souls arriving here would already know that much, so I may explain. One is guided through Chinvat to pass beneath the judgment of Divine Mithra and Rashnu.\"\n\n\"Chinvat?\" Rami stared. \"This realm is a realm of Zoraster?\"\n\nSraosha tilted their head. \"It is a realm for those who know that truth, yes.\"\n\n\"What judgmental nonsense is it this time?\" Hero lifted his shoulders when Rami frowned at him. \"What? I'm an atheist.\"\n\n\"Atheist?\" Rami was aghast. \"You literally live in Hell. You have met literal gods.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"Yes, and I didn't find myself that impressed.\"\n\nThe way disbelief lit Rami's gray eyes was simply delightful. \"You weren't impressed\u2014\"\n\n\"Honored guests,\" Sraosha cut in, before Hero could bait a further reaction. \"This was your last call. If you are so curious about the Chinvat, perhaps you can see it for yourself and continue your debate. Outside.\"\n\nTheir host's tone brooked no argument. Rami threw Hero one last exasperated look before standing and nodding to the door. \"One last question. This realm's judgment, what is it based on?\"\n\nOne of Sraosha's brows inched up, as if Rami had asked if the sky was blue. \"The primary virtues, of course. Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.\"\n\n\"Oh hell,\" Hero muttered under his breath. It was like the entire afterlife was built to menace him for the simple happenstance of being his story's villain. It really grew old.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Rami said without sounding as if he really meant it. Sraosha herded them between the low tables effortlessly. Hero noted that new souls had appeared during their conversation, looking around with disorientation before nervously taking a cup of tea in hand.\n\nThey pushed through the heavy doors of the tearoom, and Hero began to wish he hadn't gulped his so quickly.\n\nThe sky was a forbidding and violent oil painting. Dark carmine reds swirled and roiled against indigo, lashed with occasional blooms of orange. It felt too thick and vibrant to be air. The clouds churned like undertow, threatening to pull them up into it. Navigating the roil like agile fish were figures on winged mounts. At least he assumed they were mounts; Hero saw them only by their silhouettes, inkblots against the oil sheen of the sky.\n\n\"We should be cautious. Stay close,\" Rami said, drawing Hero's attention back to the earth. The tearoom had emptied them out onto a simple paved square. It was the kind of open area you'd find in a historic village, pavers too uneven and chalky to be modern. It was also clogged with people. Young and old milled around the square, mostly single but sometimes in tight, anxious groups. The majority were dressed in the same kind of bland fashion Hero had observed humans preferred these days, though some of the older ones were embellished with heavy gold jewelry and brightly threaded coats and dresses. Burial wear, Hero realized. The crowd simmered with a roil of emotions\u2014not violent, but erratic and volatile\u2014that must have been what put Rami on high alert.\n\nThe crowd milled, though more or less reluctant progress seemed to be made in the direction of the far end of the square. From a distance, it appeared more as a wall than a bridge, so steep was the incline toward the sky. But the details gradually resolved as Hero and Rami were inexorably jostled closer.\n\nThe bridge was composed of embers of color, shimmering sparks that somehow supported the heavy traffic stumbling across it. It stood in stark contrast to the rough cobbles and appeared to arch up nearly to the clouds, like a moon bridge, before dropping again to a distant cliff.\n\nIt spanned a mist-choked nothingness of a ravine, so devoid of the oil-paint colors above that it was nearly white. Wind currents stirred movements here and there in the depths, though Hero could make out nothing else from this distance.\n\n\"Good deeds.\" The voice was so close behind them it made Hero jump, though Rami was calm enough to have heard the approach. Sraosha stood with their feet planted in the crowd, seemingly unmoved by the press and jostle on either side of them. Souls seemed to shy away. They studied the bridge briefly before looking back to them. \"Good deeds, that much I can grant you.\"\n\n\"You're one of the judges,\" Rami said.\n\nSraosha nodded. \"Your shadows cast enough tales for me to be certain of that much. I can grant you the judgment of good deeds. But good deeds only. For the other two, you will have to face the divines.\" They gestured, and Hero twisted to follow the line of their arm up, up, up.\n\nThe blots of indigo, which Hero had previously mistaken for storm clouds, had gained shoulders. Two impossibly large figures flanked the sky above the bridge, obscured in clouds and roiling twilight. They were so large it was impossible to discern whether they looked down on the bridge or away, or if the petty world escaped their notice entirely.\n\n\"How can they even see us, let alone judge us? It'd be like you discerning which are the very kindest ants in an anthill!\" Hero was done; he was completely over the idea of being judged, cast in a role, given a title, measured up, inevitably found wanting.\n\nHis outburst gained the attention of the crowd, and souls cast them dreadfully reproachful looks before skirting a wider berth around them. Rami gestured furiously for him to quiet. He looked nervous, but Hero was past nervous; he was scared. And when Hero got scared, he got philosophical. \"What even are good thoughts and words anyway? Who decides what is good? And good for whom?\"\n\nPhilosophical, and a touch dramatic, granted.\n\nSraosha was unflustered. \"To ask what 'good' is. Yes. Perhaps you are right: you don't belong here.\" With that, they bid them farewell and slid back into the crowd toward their tearoom.\n\n\"Have you never heard of the trolley problem?\" Hero hollered at their back. Granted, he himself had never heard of the trolley problem until one particularly boring night inventorying the unwritten morality narratives section of the Library, but he was a book; a god of moral conscience really had no such excuse.\n\n\"It's all right,\" Rami said. He wasn't bothered by Sraosha's words. His attention was focused again on the bridge. \"You'll pass through just fine.\"\n\nHero stopped short. He scrutinized Rami's profile but couldn't detect a hitch of sarcasm. \"You've got to be kidding me. I'm a villain! Worse, I'm not even human.\"\n\n\"See, you didn't mention good or evil a single time in that statement.\" Rami focused on Hero with a hesitant smile that did terrible things to the outrage in Hero's chest. \"You are a good person, Hero. You fought for your fellow books; you've risked much to make it this far and help your friends. Even Sraosha had to grant that those were good works.\"\n\n\"Oh, I've done my fair share of wrongs.\"\n\n\"A minority. Your words have more sting in them than real malice most of the time, and good thoughts...\"\n\n\"Aha,\" Hero said when Rami paused. \"Let's not lie to ourselves; we both know my mind is filled with rotten schemes.\"\n\nRami's smile persisted, even as it softened at the edges. \"I never cared for the puritan notion of policing a man's thoughts. I think the weight of a man's life lies in what he does with it. Reasons and heart are important, but it's your actions that have long-reaching effects.\"\n\nHero blinked. He leaned forward and pinched Rami's cheek until he grimaced. \"Are you sure you're our Watcher? Or maybe you've seen him around? Tall, dark, and endlessly broody?\"\n\n\"You are taller than me,\" Rami muttered, rubbing his cheek.\n\nHero arched a brow and opened his mouth to respond before a noise rose from the crowds near the bridge. He half braced himself against a pillar to see over the turmoil of heads.\n\nSomething was happening on the bridge. A segment a few yards from the entrance had begun to shrink, rainbow material flaking away rapidly on either side. Souls crossing the bridge scrambled, peeling backward and forward to escape, but the decay seemed to follow. Finally, like frantic schools of fish, the crowds on the bridge parted, backing away from one old man who was rooted with shock as the bridge narrowed on either side of him.\n\nEven the dead still had a sense of self-preservation. The man regained his senses and lurched ahead, hands outstretched for the crowd. There was a hesitation, a perilously hung moment when it seemed someone\u2014anyone\u2014in the crowd might reach back. But a groan, far and deep, shook the bridge under their feet, and the edges disintegrated faster. The man reached the edge of the crowd, but panic had set in. Someone shoved; the man stumbled back with a cry.\n\nThe rainbow section he stood on had narrowed to the size of a tea table. The doomed man swiveled, but it was obvious by now no one behind him would risk their own eternal soul to assist. Froth of mist churned to either side of the bridge, but whatever moved in the ravine stayed out of sight.\n\nThe bridge had crumbled to a balance beam beneath the doomed man's feet. He swayed once, twice, trying to keep his balance, but his arms pinwheeled and signed his fate. His fall seemed silent at this distance. A gout of mist lashed up into the air as the man fell through, then nothing. The crowd was quiet for the count of one breath; then a susurrus of murmuring returned. More subdued.\n\nThe bridge quickly rebuilt itself, filling out again to be a uniform shimmer. Sooner than Hero had thought possible, migrants planted their feet over the space where, moments before, a soul had fallen to the dark.\n\n\"Hero.\" Rami said his name, but not for the first time. A hesitant hand wrapped around his elbow. In a moment he would shake him; in a moment Hero would be sternly reminded of their duty; he'd have to shrug and pretend nothing had happened and\u2014\n\n\"Are you okay?\"\n\nThe question was like an unexpected drop into cold water. Hero tore his gaze away from the bridge. Rami had angled himself to create a kind of buffer from the crowds, and all of him was focused on Hero. Shoulders turned, serious face emanating concern. It was a question asked in earnest, and it shocked him so much, an earnest answer fell out.\n\n\"When have any of us been okay?\" Hero focused on relaxing his hold on the pillar until color returned to his whitened knuckles. He constructed a shrug and a smile in much the same way one might erect a barricade. Brick by brick. \"No offense, dear man. I think I preferred the crocodile.\"\n\n\"That's not happening to you.\"\n\nHero huffed. \"Of course I wouldn't beg so inelegantly\u2014\"\n\n\"No, Hero. Listen to me.\" The weight in Rami's tone forced Hero's head up again. Rami's gaze flickered over his face, as if searching for a key. \"That won't happen to you. I won't let it. We will force our way across the bridge if we have to. I am not leaving you behind.\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" Hero whispered and found it true, despite all logic. He did. He believed Rami. He believed in Rami. It was entirely foreign ground to Hero. He allowed Rami to help him down off his vantage point.\n\nRami continued to study him. \"Ready to do this?\"\n\nAbsolutely not. Terribly, terribly unready. Hero flashed a brittle smile. \"To storm a magical drawbridge? My good Ramiel, I was written for that.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 28",
                "text": "\u2002So much frivolity and fuss over the human soul. You've got to wonder why. What makes the stick-around-ness of a human more special than, say, a muse or a demon? But all the realms seem intent on hoarding the stuff. Gathering souls, preserving souls, rescuing souls, judging souls, eating souls, if you wander into the wrong neighborhood.\n\n\u2002Let me tell you, from someone with lifelong experience owning one, a soul's not that shiny on the inside. A grand bother, it is. We spend half our life worried about preserving it, then the rest of it worried that we haven't spent the currency well enough. Better if we never knew we had one, in my opinion. Life is for the living; leave worrying about souls for the dead.\n\n\u2002But there was no chance we'd be that sensibly ignorant. Not in a world so lousy with stories.\n\n\u2002Souls: pesky, powerful stuff.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1784 CE\n\nHumans were ridiculous creatures, in Hero's expert opinion. They always saw what they wanted to see and ignored the rest. No creature edited its own reality so viciously as a human. After watching a man get sacrificed to oblivion, a rational creature might rebel, decide that three gods and a judgmental bridge were a poor form of moral government. A rational creature might at least consider whether any paradise one has to sacrifice others to get into is worth the price of admission.\n\nBut no, not humans. Even in death, they picked and chose a comfortable sort of truth. Humans milled in organic clumps, hesitating at one end, before making the slow progression to the other. It was impossible to walk the bridge quickly. Its sharp incline seemed designed to force a soul to slow down and consider one foot placed in front of the other, the lean of the body against the grade. The glimpses of mist and cinder caught beyond the translucent path.\n\nHero didn't allow Rami to hesitate when they reached the point where stone translated to shimmering bridge. He dragged them over the threshold and kept walking. If he was going to pass this damn judgment, he was going to do it his way. Hero preferred having a choice in his dramatics, thank you very much.\n\nThey passed under a lacquered arch, and Hero didn't allow himself to look down until his foot landed, solidly, against the shimmering glass-like substance of the bridge.\n\nIt held, souls continued to mill around him, and Hero let out a breath he'd been keeping stoppered in his chest.\n\nRami stopped at his shoulder, asking a silent question. Yes, Hero would be okay. He could do this. He nodded, still gazing at his feet, and pressed on.\n\nThe arch of the bridge was strenuous, and by the time they'd nearly crested the middle, every muscle in Hero's legs burned, but his hope was rising. The bridge remained, stable and wide, under his feet. Though, nonetheless, Hero stuck precisely to the center of the crowd. The traffic on the bridge was brisk, now that it seemed stable, and if the gazes of the two giant gods shadowing the sky fell on him, he couldn't feel it.\n\nIt was all going perfectly well, so when Rami's chin jerked up, it was like a siren. \"Hero.\"\n\nIt took an extra second of scrutinizing for Hero to see it. To his right, past Rami's shoulder and caught in glimpses between souls, the far edge of the bridge had begun to dissolve into sand.\n\n\"Maybe it's someone else,\" Rami whispered, and shoved Hero ahead at a faster pace, to place distance between them and the disturbance.\n\nA shiver, like sand cascading over glass, told him the effect was keeping pace. Hero's stomach dropped. \"Or maybe not.\"\n\nA cry broke out near the disintegrating edge, and a murmur began to spread. Humans saw what they wanted to see, yes, but when presented with an immediate threat, crowds could turn like lightning. Souls began to jostle behind them, and Rami caught Hero by the arm as someone shoved past.\n\nThe disturbance spread. In a blink, Rami had drawn his sword. \"We need to move.\"\n\nHero nodded, and they dove through the crowd that had begun to cluster and back away from the edge. A scrabble of feet behind them said that the bridge was melting away from both sides now, and then there was a scream.\n\nHero looked back just in time to see a bramble of humans fighting near the ledge. \"It's her! It's got to be her!\" another woman shouted with a girl in her grasp. The next moment existed in only two things: a puff of displaced mist, a smothered scream.\n\n\"No,\" Hero whispered.\n\n\"Holy light, she pushed her.\" Rami's voice was hoarse, then hard. \"We need to get out of here.\"\n\nHero saw what he meant. To either side of his section of the bridge, the edges hadn't slowed with the sacrifice; if anything, they sped up. Sand spilled away beneath scrambling feet, and the voices turned accusatory. Anger snapped over the crowd like a waiting storm, and another figure slipped over the edge.\n\n\"Back! Get back!\" Rami swung his sword in a short, controlled arc.\n\nHero winced. A furious man with a sword might have kept panicked souls at bay, but it also drew twice as many eyes. An undertow of accusation hardened through the crowd, until it was just Hero and Rami isolated on the swiftly shrinking section of bridge.\n\n\"Let us through!\" Rami swung his sword again with increased desperation. Hero saw the embers of anger on Rami's face, saw the sand and the bridge unraveling faster, faster. Hero was falling, but Rami\u2014he wouldn't let Rami fall again.\n\n\"Stop.\" He gripped Rami's elbow as he prepared to swing again. Muscles bunched and jumped under his fingers. The bridge had narrowed to the size of a narrow staircase now, forcing Hero into Rami's space. \"Just stop.\"\n\n\"What?\" Muscles jumped again as Rami stared at him in dismay. \"We can't give up.\"\n\n\"I'm not giving up,\" Hero said, and he took Rami's confusion as an opportunity to step under his guard and shove. Rami stumbled\u2014toward the crowd, toward the section of bridge that wasn't disappearing. \"I've just figured out how the game is rigged.\"\n\nThe bridge shrunk to the width of a dinner plate. Mist churned, thickening and clinging to the evaporating edges like thorns in wool. Hero refused to calculate how far down it was. There was no wind, but something warm and decay sweet wafted up from the dark. Sweet, perhaps like anise. Gods, let it be anise.\n\n\"What game?\" Rami cried. He had one foot on the narrowed plank of bridge, but the other hesitated, anchored on the stable section. He had enough sense to know that he shouldn't give up the ground gained, probably believed he could pull Hero to safety. Still.\n\nHeaven appeared to make angels as stupid as heroes. And Hero knew how to deal with those.\n\n\"The trolley problem!\" The width of a dinner plate had narrowed to a single plank. Hero rearranged himself sideways and steely kept his eyes off the mists. \"Claire told me there's no real answer, but I think I figured out my own.\"\n\nThe plank had become a bar and was headed toward a tightrope. How lucky that Hero had been written with excellent balance. How unlucky that he'd been written desperately afraid of heights. His breath was being slowly squeezed out of his chest. Rami reached out again but Hero held up his hand.\n\n\"The one or the many\u2014it's bullshit. The only way to play is to declare the game rigged.\" Hero tipped his head back, because it was always better to be angry than terrified. \"Rigged! I won't sacrifice myself, and I am through with people sacrificing themselves for me! So, what now, you so-called divine judges? Well?\"\n\nAs if in answer, Hero felt the pressure beneath his toes narrow and the edges of his toes flex on empty air. He made the mistake of looking down, and the nausea of panic made him squeeze his eyes shut. \"Oh hell.\"\n\n\"Hero.\" One foot held Rami's weight on stable bridge, while all the rest of him seemed stretched, attempting to span the space. He looked anguished. \"I understand. I respect your answer, and you. You are a singular creature, Hero. The gods are wrong, if they can't see your\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't start with the sympathy now, or I really will throw myself off this bridge.\" Hero's eyes stung and leaked; it was ridiculous he could notice that seconds from oblivion. His knees swayed out from under him. \"Instead of just fall.\"\n\n\"That's the thing about falling...\" Rami's voice had a current of calm that made Hero look. Rami had put away his sword. His face was overcome with an intense look of concentration as he appeared to gauge the disappearing bar and take an unsteady step across it.\n\n\"Rami\u2014\"\n\n\"That's the thing about falling,\" Rami said again as Hero's foot slipped off the edge. He just had time for his stomach to do a loop up his throat before he felt weightless. \"None of us ever fall alone.\"\n\nHero caught the impression of arms locking around him tight, cool feathers against his cheek, and a shriek of something slicing free through muscle and sinew as they tilted free of the bridge, and the mist had them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 29",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh. I wanted to be the one to figure it out. I admit it. Might be why I've held on for so long. I'm a foolish old man, and after the first couple of centuries here I thought, hell, this would do it. This was why I was here. I would be the one to kick down this house of questions. The song of the books\u2014I thought if I listened long enough they would sing to me too.\n\n\u2002But my apprentice is here and I'm still no closer to the answer. Smart as a whip, for a Norman. Well, leave the glory to her. I can keep on mulling about it in my cups in Valhalla. They'll have to allow a doddering old man his thoughts.\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1711 CE\n\nIn retrospect, Claire had never appreciated Brevity enough. This was a fact she was aware of already. It was a given that Brevity was a better, smarter, more loyal assistant than Claire had deserved. But thank gods that, up till now, Brevity's good intentions had aligned with Claire's own.\n\nBecause when she put her mind to it, that muse was devious.\n\nClaire had the ink in an examination tray, under a magnifying glass, before she realized the switch. And she could hardly complain, because a sample of unwritten damsel ink was what she'd been after in the first place. Not that it had revealed much. The damsel ink sample lolled in the clear tray, leaving behind isolated droplets in its wake. It dried\u2014slowly, but it did dry\u2014adhering to paper and fingers and flaking away harmlessly as ink should.\n\nClaire should have been more concerned about the vial that'd been swapped: the vial of their unwritten ink. It was right that the Arcane Wing should keep account of the ink, at least until they understood it fully. Claire should return to the Unwritten Wing and call for fair play. But every time she collected the intention to do just that, Brevity's horrified face came back to her. Claire had taken Lucille's ink and Brevity had looked at her like she was a monster. Brevity, the cheerful woman who had stood by her side through almost thirty years of mishandling the Library. She'd seen Claire at her worst, but Claire had found a new way to step over the line.\n\nClaire had been scared and acted rashly; she had. She could admit that much. But she didn't want to face her again right now. Brevity was the one person who could cause that uneasy, oily feeling of shame in Claire's head. And there was enough interfering with her thinking as it was. For instance, there appeared to be a soliloquy going on past the open doors, just outside of eyesight.\n\n\"Bird,\" Claire said without looking up. The sound of dusty feathers fluffing up and resettling told her she'd been heard. \"Is there a Shakespeare knockoff in the hallway, yes or no?\"\n\nHard claws tapped softly against metal as the raven shuffled along her perch on the back of the opposite chair. She cocked her head sideways, then made a sound akin to a tuba in mid-childbirth.\n\n\"No, that's what I thought.\" Claire sighed, but the phantom sounds faded, as they always did when she had Bird to confirm or deny. If the price of mental clarity was talking to birds, Claire would take it. If the ink eating her arm wanted to communicate, it could damn well just spell it out.\n\nA new noise replaced the old and increased too quickly for Claire to get Bird's opinion on the matter. Giant footfalls echoed up the hallway before shoulders large enough to block the light filled up the doorway.\n\n\"Walter?\" Claire stood, ignoring Bird as she shot into the air and screeched her displeasure at the racket. The large gatekeeper had to duck his shoulders just so to squeeze through the Arcane Wing's double doors.\n\n\"Sorry about ta interruption, Miss Claire. I wouldn't have bothered you but the other one was real sure you'd know what to do.\"\n\nThe opportunities for Claire to know the correct thing to do were infrequent lately. She was about to tell Walter as much until he turned clear of the doorway. Hero was cradled in Walter's scarred hands and unmoving. His face was pale and drawn but Claire couldn't see any injuries until she caught sight of his foot, smearing ink down the side of Walter's faded shirt.\n\n\"Sweet harpies,\" Claire swore under her breath. \"Set him on the couch, Walter. Foot on the ottoman, please.\"\n\nRami drifted in after Walter, looking every bit a ghost himself. Claire observed him out of the corner of her eye as she busied herself with finding clean thread and needles in the bottom of the drawer. He seemed unhurt, which allowed her to focus her anger at someone at least.\n\nShe shoved a bowl of water and a pot of salve in Rami's hands with enough force to slosh his coat. \"Wash the wound while I try to find something more delicate than bookbinding materials to sew flesh.\"\n\nWalter handled Hero with a tenderness that would have softened Claire's heart if she had been in a better state of mind. As it was, the giant wisely retreated as she stormed past. Perhaps some surgical equipment was in the worktables. Enough artifacts in the wing were made of flesh and hide that there had to be something.\n\nWhen she finally returned with a suture and a suitable needle, Rami had managed to get Hero's damaged boot off and had cleaned the wound. It was a slice up the side of his foot, shallow but vivid. Rami held pressure with a clean towel and the weight of a hangdog expression. Claire sighed and carefully picked through Hero's jacket.\n\n\"Explain,\" she said into his breast pocket.\n\nIn turn, Rami appeared to address Hero's foot with a hoarse voice. \"We fell afoul of the bridge in Chinvat.\"\n\n\"Chinvat?\" Claire found what she was looking for, set his book to the side, and glanced up with a frown. \"Why would you go there?\"\n\n\"We didn't start there. We started in Elysium,\" Rami said, and Claire kept her peace until the whole story had been haltingly reported. Elysium, the Unsaid Wing, Hero's grand idea to go poking at the muses as if they were an information desk. Claire pulled on a pair of clean gloves\u2014no coming near an open wound with her inked hand, certainly\u2014and resisted the urge to rub her temples.\n\n\"He twisted up his foot in the fall,\" Rami concluded quietly.\n\nWalter had been conducting a very thorough examination of his toes but finally cleared his throat. \"Miss Claire, if everything's ready, I left the office empty\u2014\"\n\nClaire pulled herself together enough for a polite smile. \"You can go, Walter. We've got it in hand. Thank you for your help.\"\n\nIt was true. Hero would be fine. Hero's book was fine, and that was the extent of her knowledge. Claire was not a surgeon, but the cut seemed worse than it actually was. Rami had cleaned the wound with the expertise of a combat medic. He should have been the one to stitch Hero up, but instead he hovered like a very guilty kind of storm cloud. Claire pursed her lips as she threaded a needle. \"You should have taken him to Brevity, you know. She's the librarian.\"\n\nRami had the grace to look ashamed. \"I know. But...\"\n\n\"I'm not the librarian anymore, Rami.\"\n\n\"No,\" Rami said quietly. \"But you are... to him...\" His brow furrowed, as if digging for the word and coming up short. He reverted to watching Hero. \"He's yours.\"\n\n\"Hardly. He's Brevity's assistant.\"\n\n\"You know that's not what I mean.\"\n\nThe wound closed easily enough with one stitch, maybe two. Claire finished a stitch and held the tension in the thread long enough to meet Rami's troubled gray eyes. \"No, you sweet, stupid angel man. He is not.\" Rami's worry transformed into confusion. Claire hid her smile in an inspection of the stitches on Hero's foot. The ink had already faded, and the skin was pulling together nicely. He'd be sore for a couple of days, but mobility wouldn't be an issue. Even outside their books, characters were remarkably resilient. \"Hero and I both have a particularly checkered history when it comes to romantic entanglements between unwritten books and authors. I'm not saying the attraction isn't there. But the pull between an author and a book\u2014even a character\u2014is too messy. I care for him, I will continue to care for him, but I will lay no claim on him. That's not what love is.\"\n\nRami was quiet a stunned moment. \"You're saying\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm saying nothing but that Hero is not mine. At least, he is no more mine than you are. You should see to your own feelings. Ah! No, no use denying it. I see it there behind those atrociously serious brows. Hero has that effect on people.\"\n\nA groan like a rusted hinge forced Claire's attention from Hero's foot to his face. He'd regained some color but restrained his glare to the thinnest of squints between closed eyes. \"Do I get a say in this?\" he croaked.\n\n\"No.\" Claire finished trimming the stitches and flicked his big toe gently. \"You should really learn not to eavesdrop on private conversations.\"\n\nHero grunted and groggily rubbed at his temple. \"You should learn not to conduct private conversations over my unconscious body.\"\n\n\"You should learn to stop swooning like a silly\u2014\"\n\n\"You should both learn to stop taking such self-sacrificing risks!\" Rami threw up his hands, looking between Claire and Hero as if they were some horrifying new form of torture Hell had devised just for him. His gaze flicked between Claire's gloved hand and Hero's foot before he appeared to settle his ire on Hero. \"You don't anger another realm's gods while you are in the realm!\"\n\n\"I learned it from watching her,\" Hero mumbled.\n\nClaire sniffed. \"Oh no, you did this one yourself.\"\n\n\"He jumped with me,\" Hero insisted.\n\n\"I fell with you, fool. You didn't even know where you would be sent! You had no way of knowing whether falling in that abyss would send you to our Hell or that realm's equivalent.\"\n\n\"I smelled anise! It was a reasonable wager!\"\n\n\"Wager! Don't take that kind of risk on a smell\u2014\"\n\n\"Gentlemen!\" Claire had to clap her hands to get their attention. She got twin abashed looks in response, one light and narrow, one dark and broad. They really were going to be the death of her. Claire shook her head and began returning her instruments to her drawers. \"You are going to have to continue this... whatever this is... elsewhere. Hero's obviously recovered enough to be a petulant child, so, Rami: please help Hero up to the Unwritten Wing so he can inform Brevity of his poor choices and the sorry state of things.\"\n\n\"I don't need help,\" Hero said as Rami stooped and gently heaved an arm over his shoulder. His color appeared to peak in his cheeks as Rami hoisted him up to as polite a bridal carry as possible. \"I don't need to be carried! This is an insult.\"\n\n\"And I don't need you splitting that paper cut open before it heals and getting ink all over the halls. We've had enough spilled-ink problems as of late.\"\n\n\"Paper cut? Are you mocking a man wounded in the line of duty, warden?\"\n\n\"Always.\" Claire made a dismissive wave with her good hand. \"You heal like a hero, at least. I don't want to see you down here again until you've earned Brevity's forgiveness.\"\n\nHero threw her a dark look, still a bit pink in the cheeks as Rami carried him out."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 30",
                "text": "\u2002The best of humanity can be found in Hell. I'll fight any theologian on this fact. Hell is a place you sentence yourself to, which by necessity requires a solid bit of self-reflection. Or, at the very least, a death's-bed awareness. Mortality has a way of forcing one to be honest with oneself; none of the frivolous barricades we erect in life withstand it. You find the failures here, but you also find the strivers, the yearners, the eyes open enough to see the distance between where they are and where they could have been. Hell is a place for the dreamers that have woken up, and the books still asleep.\n\n\u2002In both ways, Hell is a place ripe for stories.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1933 CE\n\nThe ceilings of hell were an underappreciated bit of architecture. All the shadows and mismatched beams\u2014wood, stone, was that an arch of bone there?\u2014blurred into a smear beyond Ramiel's chin. Which Hero had a very good view of. Because he was being carried. Like a child.\n\n\"She is being vindictive,\" Hero pronounced, and plucked irritably at one of the feathers that cushioned his cheek.\n\nRami's steps didn't slow, even when he jostled his elbow up to shift Hero away from his chest. \"Can't imagine why.\"\n\n\"Don't get cute with me,\" Hero muttered without heat.\n\n\"Then stop with the feathers. That tickles.\"\n\n\"Tickles? Angels are ticklish?\" Hero took any opportunity to be delighted, especially since it distracted from the hot throb in his twisted ankle. \"Who would have guessed? Wait until I tell the demons.\"\n\nRami slanted him a look, which from this angle was heavy with long-suffering tolerance. \"As I've told you before, I'm technically a Watcher.\"\n\n\"Angel, old-as-dirt proto-angel... I fail to see the distinction.\" Hero startled as Rami stopped abruptly and was forced to clench a hand in his trench coat for balance. \"Except possibly a proper angel wouldn't be flinging me about\u2014what's that frown for?\"\n\n\"The doors.\" The frisson of unease in Rami's voice made Hero crane his head around. The ceiling had been all very much the same, so it was some surprise to see they were in the foyer of the Unwritten Wing. Rami had stopped near the gargoyle, who was napping by evidence of the snore that emanated, in a couple of frequencies adjacent to reality, from his alcove. If Hero twisted his head further, he could make out the upside-down curve of the Unwritten Wing's doors.\n\nWhich were nearly closed.\n\n\"That's peculiar.\" Hero wasn't alarmed, not yet. He was, however, getting a crick in his neck. \"Put me down, will you?\"\n\nRami hesitated, which gave Hero the opportunity to flop back against his chest a little too heavily and pin him with his best royal disdain. \"I twisted my ankle; I didn't lose it. And I can already tell the scrape is healed closed. I'd rather not fall on my head while you're wrestling with the doors with your hands full. Put me down and stop acting like a nursemaid.\"\n\nRami relented, which allowed Hero to almost forgive him for the way he nonsensically set him down as if he were made of blown glass. Hero thumped his bandaged foot down to prove a point and hid the grimace of discomfort as he turned toward the door.\n\nHe cleared the small distance at a limp but hesitated with his hand above the silver curve of the door pull. Doubt flickered in his stomach. He silently willed the doors to swing on their hinges. There were many reasons why the wing might close its doors, but only one reason to lock them.\n\nA shift of movement signaled Rami coming up behind him, cautiously, likely one hand on the pommel of his sword to charge in and save the day. It was a ridiculous thought, and enough for Hero to grasp the silver handle and yank with more force than necessary. The door parted open on silent greased hinges, and Hero thrust it aside to hide his relief. \"There. The doors probably closed on a breeze by accident. Let in some fresh air, Brevity?\"\n\nHis voice thudded into the well of quiet as heavy as a stone dropped in a pond. The lights were on, and across the expanse of the lobby Hero saw the productive kind of clutter that the librarian's desk had when she was working. But a chill kind of quiet frosted the air without a response, and no one stirred from the stacks.\n\n\"Librarian?\" Hero tried again at a louder volume. A feather-soft touch brushed his elbow and nearly sent him out of his skin. His injured ankle filed another complaint, which he focused into a glare.\n\nRami raised his thick brows in apology and pitched his voice low. \"Did Brevity have external business when you left?\"\n\n\"Not that I knew of. She was chattering away with that traitorous muse. The stacks have been quiet and she's been so preoccupied I wouldn't think\u2014\" Hero's gaze fished over the long shadows of the Library. It was possible Brevity was on some errand deep in the stacks, so deep she hadn't heard Hero call. But he trusted the instinct that told him that wasn't the case. The wing wasn't just quiet. Quiet had a mild flavor, a pause. Vacancy, abandonment, was heavy and deep. The back of Hero's neck prickled. \"I should check on the damsels.\"\n\nHe made it two limping steps before Rami caught his elbow and used his momentum to spin him away from the stacks. \"No, I'll check on the damsels. Perhaps Brevity left some kind of note in the logbook.\"\n\n\"I am the librarian here,\" Hero objected in a mostly confident tone. Assistant librarian. Technically.\n\n\"And only librarians can make sense of that grotto you call a desk,\" Rami said simply. He had that implacable Watcher look; that I've waited millennia; what's another one? placid stare that made Hero want to dig in his heels. If one of his heels didn't hurt right now.\n\nHero straightened his shoulders toward the desk, chin too high in the air to notice when Rami was satisfied enough to disappear between the rows of books. His ankle was a brittle complaint by the time he reached the desk, and Hero flopped down in Brevity's armchair gladly and let out a slow, measured sigh.\n\nThe quiet was less forbidding, just knowing Rami was there among the aisles. It was funny, how companionship did that. Like how just knowing there was a campfire to return to made the night feel less dark, even when you were far from it. Hero had spent enough cold nights stumbling around in the dark to know. Or had he? He'd been a rebellion leader, and then an ill-prepared king, then a bad one, in his story. Did it count? Were those memories any fainter, less accurate, less painful, for having happened between pages he could no longer return to? Just because something\u2014supposedly\u2014didn't really happen didn't make it less real.\n\nIt wasn't worth consideration, as things stood now. And Hero prized his consideration highly as a means of survival. He straightened and reached for the logbook, even as he kept an ear tuned to the quiet of the stacks. Certainly he would hear a scream or whatnot if something was amiss. A barrel-chested brute like Rami would have to have good lungs and all.\n\nLeather scraped against wood as Hero pulled the logbook into his lap. It was heavy, heavier than its size suggested. Heavy with ink and paper and an eon of librarians. Hero still felt like an impostor flipping the cover open, and he resented it. Why shouldn't he read the nattering chicken scratch of librarians long dead? Sure, they were human, but he was a character, which counted for something. He hoped it counted for something, beyond the fraying thread of doubt in his gut.\n\nThe most recent entry had been Brevity's, reporting the existence of the ink and the arrival of Probity. It went on, but Hero stopped reading when the paragraph started to be peppered with \"I\" statements. It was the habit of the librarians of the Unwritten Wing to empty their hearts to the logbook. It was also the habit of the librarians not to pry into the entries of their contemporaries. Hero had scoffed at that, until he happened to read Brevity's first entry after the destruction of the books during the coup. He hadn't been able to meet her eyes for days.\n\nHe might be a villain, but he wasn't a sadist to anyone but himself.\n\nInstead his index finger tapped at the blank of the page, where an explanation, an answer, should have existed. There was no one around to judge him when he put his feet on the desk. Brevity hadn't closed the Library and hadn't recorded a reason for her absence. That either meant it was too trivial to note or it'd come upon her so suddenly that there hadn't been time.\n\nHero would assume the former, at least until the next disaster.\n\nHe didn't have to wait long. Rami emerged from the stack depths, but not alone. \"The damsel suite is as it should be,\" Rami reported before stepping aside. \"Mistress Lucille offered her help\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, delightful,\" Hero muttered, tilting the logbook up in order to better slouch behind it. The damsels had made overtures after he returned to the Unwritten Wing. He was supposed to feel a kinship, a commonality with them, other characters who had woken up from their books. Other unwitting residents of the Library. But the line from them to their books was unbroken and secure. Hero's wasn't. He wasn't book enough, not really. The damsel suite felt like a pantomime in a foreign land that he was supposed to call home. A language that was supposed to be in his blood but felt borrowed on his tongue. Too much a book to be a person. Too much a person to be a book.\n\n\"Hero,\" Lucille said in the tone of wearily beset older relatives everywhere. Hero crept a glance over the top of the book. She had narrowed her gaze onto where the heels of his boots rested on the desk.\n\n\"Auntie!\" Hero rearranged his expression and trilled with a wiggle of his toes. \"So good of you to be concerned about my welfare, as always.\"\n\n\"I understand you were injured.\"\n\n\"Only a bit twinged. Nothing the restive embrace of the Library won't fix.\" Hero twisted his heel again, just to see the crow's-feet around Lucille's eyes deepen. Paper crunched beneath the friction. \"I don't suppose you've seen our librarian recently? Puppy-dog eyes, terrifying with a returns cart, blue all over?\"\n\nLucille's lips thinned. \"Not since she chased her predecessor out of here.\"\n\n\"What would Claire be doing here?\" Without us, Hero said in a glance toward Rami.\n\n\"Taking her pound of flesh, so to speak.\" Lucille's fingers tapped at her forearm. \"Up to her usual tricks, without her assistant to keep her in line.\"\n\nThe furrow in Rami's brow deepened and\u2014 Really, only Hero was allowed to cause that dismay in him. Hero frowned. \"Ramiel is much too smart to try to herd that woman. Claire makes her own decisions.\"\n\n\"At the expense of the Library,\" Lucille said, dropping her eyes to Hero's heels on the desk again. \"I wonder how much longer we can afford it. Or you.\"\n\nShe had the mortifying power to continually make Hero feel like a scrawny farm bumpkin again. As if he were twelve years old, mud on his face and pig shit between his toes. Hero's feet hit the floor with a thud, and he stood to make it seem like his idea.\n\n\"An inventory would be appropriate.\" Lucille sat herself down on the edge of a divan, looking for all the world as if she were preparing to order a cup of tea. \"And would ease my concerns.\"\n\n\"I was not aware that your concerns extended beyond your little island of misfits.\"\n\n\"No one is an island. Especially here.\" Lucille folded her hands, and the faint rasp of her aging paper skin sent a chill up Hero's neck. She pinned him with a placid stare. \"Stories have a way of entangling.\"\n\nRami interrupted the silence with a grunt before Hero could conjure a response to that. \"An inventory would be prudent,\" Rami said to the floor. \"If the acting librarian agrees?\"\n\nIt took effort to keep the snarl from his lips. Rami was trying to be supportive, in his way. But under Lucille's gaze the reminder of his supposed authority felt wrong, like a sliver wedged under his nail. Hero flung the logbook back onto the surface of the desk and flipped through the pages until he hit the inventory page. The pen was already flourished in his hand before he had a chance to hesitate with the nib inches from the page. The flutter in his gut was a nuisance. He'd written in the logbook before; he'd do so again. He'd never commanded the Library before.\n\nAnd he could think of no sensible reason why it would listen.\n\nSelf-irritation acted as the best kind of lubricant to movement. Hero scratched out the order swiftly, dotting the period at the end with a vicious flourish. His hand cramped around the pen, which he found he couldn't quite put down until, after an insufferable pause, the book began to hum with a rustle of paper. The opposite page began to fill up and scroll through an impossibly long list of titles.\n\n\"There.\" Hero flung himself back in the chair and lifted his chin to Lucille. \"Happy, Grandmother?\"\n\n\"As happy as you are.\" Lucille smoothed the thin polyester of her housedress over her wide hips and got comfortable. \"Oh, my dear. I appear to have forgotten my tea.\"\n\n\"I'll see what I can find, ma'am.\" Rami straightened and made an awkward scan of the desk before heading back into the stacks.\n\nThe tea caddy, the silver cart that Brevity kept overflowing with sachets and chipped cups, was three paces behind the desk, in the alcove with the sleeping tapestries. It was not among the shelves. Hero could have told him, were it not for the way Lucille's gaze sharpened on him like a whetstone. \"The elderly are so absentminded,\" Hero tsked over the hum of the logbook running inventory.\n\n\"That boy is older than most of the damsel suite put together.\" Lucille pinned him with a weighted glance. \"You should leave the Arcane Wing well enough alone. Come back to the Library.\"\n\n\"I'm the assistant librarian. And part of Special Collections.\" Hero dropped his head back with a dramatic flourish. \"I couldn't be more entrenched in the Library if I tried.\"\n\n\"You can't, though. Try.\"\n\nLucille was watching him when his head snapped back up. \"I beg your pardon,\" Hero said in his most I absolutely do not beg your pardon tone.\n\n\"You can't try,\" Lucille repeated simply. \"I'm sorry, child; it's not as if you have a choice in the matter. Is that why you make everything you do seem as if it's both the largest imposition and also done at your forbearance? Fancy way you have with that.\"\n\nIt took Hero a beat longer to arm his words than it should have. \"As if you have room to speak, damsel.\"\n\nThe wattle of aged skin on Lucille's throat shivered as she chuckled. \"Oh yes, heaven help you if you thought you were one of us. But rest assured\u2014you're not. You'd be welcome with us, of course, but... well, we have chosen to stay in the suite, instead of going back to our books. It's a slim choice, but a choice all the same.\"\n\n\"I make my own choices. I'm a librarian, aren't I?\"\n\n\"If that's what gives you purpose, my dear.\" Lucille hummed gently. \"It is all right, is all I'm saying. We all understand you do as you must.\"\n\nA sharp poke at his thumb interrupted Hero's thoughts. He hadn't put down the pen, and the tines of the tip prodded into the flesh of his thumb with a smear of black. A moment, just a flash really, of another time came over him. Claire being swallowed by black. And then, before that, a damsel bleeding and turning to ash. Tasting ink on his tongue and dark at the edge of his vision.\n\nHero shook it clear, but instead of feeling better it made him feel precisely too aware. Aware of the walls, suddenly too close; the air, a little too warm. \"I could... I could run.\"\n\n\"Only as far as they let you, sweetling.\" Lucille sighed, and her earnest pity was worse than her scorn. \"So you've convinced yourself you don't want to.\"\n\n\"I don't want to.\" The ink wicked along the fingerprint of the broad side of his thumb. He rubbed it, only succeeding in smearing it larger as it began to dry, leaving his skin feeling tight. No matter. It would wash away as if it'd never been there. \"I chose to stay. To help.\"\n\nAs soon as he'd said them, the words took on a familiar echo from Chinvat bridge. The wind had dragged its nails through his coat and across his skin. He'd balanced on his toes, terror in his throat, and told himself he would not play their game. He'd spite the gods; he wouldn't play their game, and he'd choose to fall.\n\nAs if anyone chooses gravity.\n\n\"You are a help,\" Lucille said while precisely not saying a thousand other pitying things. \"But when someone stays with you because they don't have any other choice, that's not a kindness. The damsel suite is always open to you, when you need a home.\"\n\nIt was strangling; it was falling; it was enough ripping sensations to tear Hero apart. His ink-smeared fingers clenched under the desk, but just then the logbook chimed a reprieve. \"I'll make my own way, thank you,\" Hero said with every bit of acid stored up in his throat. He bent over the desk and studied the inventory with far more scrutiny than the single line\u2014all books accounted for\u2014required. It gave him the moment of privacy he needed to stop the twisting fear building in his chest.\n\n\"Nothing missing?\" Lucille said after the silence turned awkward.\n\n\"None. Does that satisfy you?\" Hero drew himself up to his full height. It was so much easier looking at people from the narrow parapet of his nose. \"Rami!\" he called, without turning to look.\n\nAfter a few moments, he could hear the familiar heavy trod of angelic work boots. Hero tried to not let the relief play on his face.\n\n\"I couldn't find the tea cart,\" Rami apologized as he left the long shadows of the stacks.\n\n\"You're a sweetheart for looking. Never you mind.\" Lucille rose slowly with dignity, playing up her age in a way that made Hero strain to not roll his eyes. \"There will be a kettle on in the suite.\"\n\n\"Oh...\" The heavy brows on Rami's olive face did a complicated twitch as he stepped aside for Lucille to leave and glanced at Hero. He was canny enough to step carefully over the frost in the air. \"But the inventory?\"\n\n\"Satisfactory.\" Lucille patted the angel's arm as she passed. \"The rest of it is no business of mine, of course. You boys tell the librarian I'd appreciate a visit when she gets back.\"\n\nHero's lip was curled. It took an effort to straighten out his expression as Lucille left and Rami turned a questioning gaze back to him. He took a tentative step on his injured foot and was pleased that only the rotation of his ankle twinged in protest. He could work with that. \"Rami, I do hate to be a bother, but\u2014\"\n\n\"What can I do to help?\" Rami asked, as Hero knew he would.\n\nHero rewarded him with a warm smile that was shockingly earnest. Some of the doubts Lucille had left in his chest began to recede. Choices, and the power to make them\u2014Rami lived his life so effortlessly that way. It would be impossible for Hero to keep up, at least as he was. His smile brightened. \"Could you do me a favor and mind the desk for a bit\u2014in case Brevity comes back? I would hate to miss her in the hallways.\"\n\nRami frowned. \"I thought you were to rest\u2014\"\n\n\"And I shall. But first, I just have one small errand.\" And Hero forced his aching feet to walk straight and true, out of the Library."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 31",
                "text": "\u2002The story and the storyteller are never far apart, in my experience. Authors and their books maintain a relationship that is the best and the worst of us.\n\n\u2002Once a book is out in the world, the author pretends to let go. Stories, after all, are for the people who need to hear them. We have to let go of a story, give up the reins, when we ask it to be read. We pretend it's like making any other product, bread for the hungry or coats for the cold. But what no author admits is that it's not like that at all. Stories are not made of flour or wool. Stories, real stories, are made with a sliver of yourself.\n\n\u2002The purpose for stories is what readers will make of them. But the reason, the desperate need, is a splinter in the author alone. A good story gets under your skin, because that's where all good stories start.\n\n\u2014Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1313 CE\n\nIt was a habit of the library to keep count of days in a mortal fashion. Hell had nothing so simple or precious as sunrises and sunsets, but it felt late when Claire finally looked up from her reading. She'd found a dusty historical in the back of Andras's cluttered shelves. Some sixteenth-century creation that appeared to confuse demonic summonses and keys of Solomon and faerie poppets, of all things, into one volume of nonsense. However, it must have had a grain of truth, powerful truth, to end up down in the Arcane Wing. Claire had set herself about finding it, on the off chance it related to the ink.\n\nReading garbled conspiracy theories by long-dead Scotsmen; this was how far Claire had fallen. But the ink held no answers, Walter had no answers, and the Library shunned her. As tragic as it was, this was the best lead she had in the time left.\n\nThe shimmer of blue itched above the curve of her arm. It had thinned to no more than a width of fine yarn, and frayed to scratchy, twitching threads. Claire rubbed an idle hand over it, but it did nothing to quell the itch or the hourglass running empty in her mind. The border on her skin was growing more distinct, ink-stained skin south of the line chill, with a dry clamminess that its northern counterpart didn't have.\n\nThe wing was quiet, and grit had worked its way behind her eyeballs. She rubbed over her face furiously before startling as the door gave a labored groan. Hero appeared hesitantly in the gap, looking slyer\u2014or perhaps shyer\u2014than usual.\n\n\"Warden? Are you about?\"\n\n\"Where else would I be?\" Claire called, and glanced once at the page to mentally mark the place she'd left off. Hero was nothing if not a reliable distraction.\n\nHero closed the door behind him, pulling another creak from the hinges, which made every one of Bird's feathers puff as she cracked open one beady eye. Claire fluttered her hand, forcing Bird off the table and clearing a space as Hero approached at a slower pace than normal. He favored the instep of his right leg and tried to hide it with a lazy stroll.\n\nHe paused to trade one sour look for another with Bird, then precisely pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table from the raven. \"Another book? I would have thought you'd read everything in here three times over already.\"\n\n\"Some books give up more on closer read,\" Claire said, not bothering to explain her desperation as she carefully closed the old book on her lap. \"How's the foot?\"\n\n\"Handsomely turned, as always,\" Hero scoffed, and wiggled his ankle, mostly hiding his grimace. \"It did no lasting harm.\"\n\nMeaning, Claire read with familiarity, he was injured and in pain but willing to ignore such problems until they went away. She nodded, having no room to speak on the denial of injuries. She allowed a streak of her usual reserve back into her voice. \"I hope Brevity talked some sense into you.\"\n\n\"Brevity... yes...\" Hero paused, fishing his gaze around the room before shrugging off a not-quite-response. \"Surely you know that would be a lost cause.\"\n\n\"Entirely.\" Claire put her book down and crossed her arms. \"So, what do you want?\"\n\n\"Want?\" Hero's theatrics were so familiar that when he put a hand to his chest, a disconcerting warmth rose through Claire's. \"Perhaps this is simply a social call to express gratitude.\"\n\n\"If you thanked me every time I stitched you or your book up, I'd never be rid of you.\"\n\n\"Said as if you wouldn't miss me terribly.\"\n\nAn answering smile pulled at Claire's mouth, though she stifled it. A smug expression told her Hero had picked it up anyway. \"Said as a hypothetical because yet again here you are. But not to thank me.\"\n\nHero, reliably, appeared to change the subject. His gaze drifted to the thin cotton gloves on Claire's hands. A shadowy wash of black and a thin line of blue were just visible below her right elbow. \"I didn't have time to ask earlier. How is it holding up?\"\n\nClaire followed his gaze, and the back of her knuckles itched. She tugged at the long cuff of her glove carefully until the stain was covered. \"Unremarkable, if you'd believe it. A tight feeling, now and then, like the skin is chapped, but nothing that warrants complaint.\"\n\nNothing physical, she silently amended. She did not mention the whispers, the dream of Beatrice, the filter of colors that filled every shadow. The cold slowly settling into her stained skin went unsaid. She definitely didn't mention the phantom visit from the every-person. If Hero was allowed to play at health, then so was Claire. It only seemed fair.\n\n\"Fascinating.\" Hero hummed to himself as he craned over the table as if Claire's hand was some kind of intriguing bug. But a small nit of worry was a strange fit between his brows. \"It's growing, though.\"\n\n\"Is it? It must be too slow to even notice,\" Claire evaded, not quite meeting Hero's eyes. What Walter had said\u2014or not wanted to say\u2014was not reassuring. But there was no reason to worry the rest of them with fates that might or might not be inevitable. \"I haven't noticed a change. No cause for concern.\"\n\n\"Is that so.\" Hero's eyes narrowed, and if he noticed how the thick blue-gold line around her arm had thinned from a wide band to a thin ribbon, he didn't say so. \"It's an interesting experiment, at least\u2014and I've come with a comparison study.\"\n\nHe was attempting to sound aloof but hadn't quite contained the way his fingers drummed on top of the table nervously as he did it. Claire's stomach swooped at the proposal of another experiment, but it was obvious he was about to propose something important. \"Really?\" Claire put away her book and crossed her arms. \"Well then, do continue, scholar Hero.\"\n\n\"Simple. Considering how little we know about this ink, comparisons are in order.\"\n\nClaire rubbed her temple. \"I've already tested the ink thoroughly, Hero.\"\n\n\"Not compare the ink\u2014compare the material. It certainly had an enthusiastic reaction before. So it only makes sense that we should try this mystery substance against as many materials as possible to discern its nature.\"\n\n\"To discern its nature,\" Claire repeated, amused. It wasn't often that Hero tried to cover up his own concerns with anything other than grand arrogance. It was endearing, if endearment could be highly suspicious. \"We've already tried it against paper and, inadvertently I'll admit, librarian skin. What else do you propose?\"\n\n\"My book. Try the ink on my book,\" Hero said. \"See if it can do what my own ink can't.\"\n\n\"What?\" Claire recoiled, and all her humor fled her. \"Have you taken leave of your senses? You saw what the ink does to a book!\"\n\n\"To a logbook. An artifact solely of the Library, not an unwritten book that was meant to be made real.\"\n\n\"I don't see how that makes a difference.\"\n\n\"And I don't see how we have the time to debate it!\" Hero had dropped his intellectual air. He braced his arms over the table as if it was all that held him up. \"I think it makes all the difference in the world. What is an unwritten book, Claire? What's it made of? Where's it come from? Where do I come from?\"\n\n\"What a silly question. That's\u2014\" Claire's mouth started working before she could quite come up with an answer. He'd come to her for answers. Her insides churned. \"Well, stories come from their authors, of course\u2014\"\n\n\"It's more than that,\" Hero interrupted, pushing away from the table. He raked a vicious hand through his hair. \"I admit it; I took this recent investigation as an excuse to get out of the Library, but also to find answers. But all we came back with were more questions! Everyone talks about the books of the Library as some sacred thing. The books must be preserved. The books are immortal, the letter said, but why? None of the artifacts in the Arcane Wing are. We destroyed enough baubles fighting Andras to prove that. And why Hell? Why are we here, in this realm of all places?\"\n\nClaire felt lost in the torrent. It wasn't just questions; it was the obvious agony of not knowing. Hero's face echoed the blinding panic that had taken over her every moment since the ink had appeared. She couldn't face it, so instead she looked down as she shook her head. \"None of that has anything to do with this ink business\u2014\"\n\n\"It has everything to do with it.\" Hero's shoulders had wound up to his ears. \"I can feel it. That ink is kin, Claire. Or as near to it as books get. You said yourself, you thought the ink had pulled back from hurting Rosia! I'm a character, as much as she is. I know it won't reject me.\"\n\n\"Like your own story did?\"\n\nHero stopped, tight as a wound spring and trembling with a warning kind of tension. \"Don't.\"\n\nOnce, Claire might have persisted. That Claire had hurt a lot of people. She chewed on her bottom lip. \"I'm sorry. But there's no way, Hero. It's too big a risk.\"\n\n\"It's the only risk that's going to lead to answers. We need answers. We're running out of time.\" Certainty straightened Hero's shoulders. \"You can peer at that ink under a microscope all you want\u2014and knowing you, you have. But you're never going to understand it from the outside. Ink isn't made for a bottle. It's made for... me.\"\n\n\"We don't know that, Hero.\"\n\n\"I do.\" Hero took a small step. He hesitated only a moment before raising and placing his hands on Claire's shoulders. \"I can't go back to my book. That's all I know. And it's going to slowly drive me mad not knowing if I ever will.\"\n\nA bramble of distress tangled in Claire's throat. It felt like loss, and it felt like fear. \"You're really that determined to leave us? Leave the Library, I mean. What about Rami?\"\n\nHero's lip twitched as if he'd been stung. \"Don't you mean what about me, Claire?\" He made a sucking sound with his teeth. \"Jealous?\"\n\nA laugh, exhausted and inappropriate, bubbled past Claire's messier emotions. Hero's surprised blink only made her chuckle again, and feel infinitely tired. \"No, not jealous, Hero. Selfishly sad, maybe. But not jealous. You heard me before. I can't be to you what Rami is. Or what he could be if you allowed him.\"\n\nHero looked caught between insult and vulnerability. His hands flinched back abruptly. \"Ha, I don't know what you're even talking\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, you do. And so does Rami. So be gentle with him.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Hero stopped and studied the floor, the pale skin beneath his long lashes slowly turning as red as his cheeks. \"That's not what this is about.\"\n\n\"Then what?\"\n\nClaire wavered, and Hero pressed on ahead. \"This ink is the answer, Claire. I know it. You know it. Help me do this.\"\n\nClaire's breath caught, then snagged on a question. \"Why me?\"\n\nHero blinked. \"Why? Well, of course you, since you have possession of the ink in question\u2014\"\n\n\"Do the others know about your idea? Does Rami?\"\n\nHero was not quick enough to hide the guilt that wrung across his features.\n\nClaire nodded. \"You rotten creature, with your talk of feelings earlier. Yet you have snuck down here precisely when you knew our overprotective guardian angel would be out.\"\n\n\"Hardly! As if I care one whit what that tedious man thinks of me. I simply was trying to avoid what would surely be an exhausting explanation of my logic and having to endure the subsequent dramatic objection and...\" Hero stopped his huffing, cheeks a little flushed. \"You said it yourself: he's overprotective.\"\n\n\"Right. And you look to me to play your villain, again.\"\n\n\"You've never been my villain, Claire.\" Hero risked a look at her. \"I've been yours. I don't want to be. I'm\u2014I'm trying to help. Help me get us answers.\"\n\n\"Help.\" Her chair creaked as Claire leaned back with the full weight of her skepticism. \"And what do you think he's going to do when he finds out you went behind his back and I helped you?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Hero said as if stating the obvious. \"He worships you.\"\n\n\"He...\" Claire's stomach did a small revolution of wrongness, and she marveled at how it flipped around a small burst of warmth. \"No, he doesn't. He's a literal divine being. That's grotesque.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to quibble about definitions with you. He admires you, then. With great depth of affection,\" Hero conceded with a shrug of his shoulders.\n\nClaire closed her eyes and groaned at the rafters. \"Hell and harpies, no one is that stupid, even in Hell.\"\n\n\"Absolutely no one at all,\" Hero agreed, with a small curious smile that grew soft at the edges. \"Will you help?\"\n\nThe whole conversation had her off-kilter. Claire suspected that was Hero's intent, but her resolve was crumbling all the same. \"Promise me one thing: this isn't you running away.\"\n\nRunning away from the Library. From Rami. From her.\n\nHero shook his head. \"It's not.\"\n\n\"Lying is not becoming, Hero.\" Claire studied her hands. \"Not that you care what I think.\"\n\nThe floorboards creaked. \"Don't I? Lying is not becoming, Claire,\" Hero repeated lowly. He waited until she raised her eyes, trading her a shy smile before plowing on in a rush. \"I want to stay. I haven't had a thought about running away or even returning to my story in ages. I want to stay more than anything. But... I need a choice. No one will believe\u2014Rami and you won't; the damsels won't\u2014no one will believe I am here to stay. None of that will ever really matter until I have a choice. I need to choose to stay here, warden. And I can't do that with a book that rejects me.\" Hero held her eyes steadily. \"This is the opposite of running away. You have to believe me when I say that.\"\n\nShe did. She hated it most when she understood him as completely as her own reflection. Each of them represented the greatest injustice of their lives to each other. Hero, the books Claire had never gotten to write, the failure that had punished her to Hell, and the betrayal that had left her alone. Likewise, Claire was the librarian who kept books quiet, and one of the human authors every book turned to like sunlight. It wasn't easy, making peace with the wound inside your heart, but she and Hero had managed, in their own halting ways.\n\nHelp had been a foreign concept between them once. They'd started out hunter and hunted, librarian and book, but even after she and Hero had come to some kind of accord, what they'd done for each other had never been help. It'd been a simple alignment of priorities, happening to point their shared rage in the same direction, instead of at each other. It'd taken the deaths of hundreds, damsels and books, to cement their places at each other's side. She couldn't be to Hero what Rami was, but that didn't make what they were any less important. What Hero was to her required a harder word than \"friendship,\" a word with teeth. Family. Hers.\n\nHe couldn't be hers. But there it was: he was hers, and Brevity was hers and Rami was hers and no matter how tightly Claire held on, she felt like she was losing them all. It made a kind of sense, an aching kind of sense, to try loosening her grip. Maybe she owed him that much.\n\nHero was staring at her. The emerald in his eyes was closer to malachite, dark and intense and gritty with a kind of vulnerability that obviously scared him. \"Please, Claire,\" he said again, softer.\n\nHer resolve broke, and a rush of breath left her. \"We can... try.\" She bit her lip, almost snatching the words back before she shook her head resolutely. \"Okay. We can try. I don't believe this will work, but I'll help.\"\n\nHero took a sharp breath, snagged on the apex of surprise. He went pale with it before color flushed back into his cheeks. Claire was idly amazed at how much she'd learned the tells of Hero's emotions. He nodded. \"Okay. Thank you.\"\n\n\"Please don't do that.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Thank me.\" Claire began to clear her work surface, adjusting the light. \"You've already asked for help. And said 'please.' I don't think my poor mortal heart can take it.\" She risked a glance at him with a surprised smile. \"Your adventure with Rami has changed you.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"Change? Me? Never. I am constant as the sun.\"\n\n\"And just as insufferable.\" Claire patted the tabletop. \"Get your book out and press back the pages like I showed you. I'll go see if I can coax the ink into a nib. I still hold that this is the worst idea.\"\n\nShe was halfway to the shelves when Hero muttered, barely audibly, \"All our best options usually are.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 32",
                "text": "\u2002There's been a political fracas here in Hell. Suddenly, the Arcanist is a new demon by the name of Andras. He is polite, generous with his time, and professional to a fault. I don't like him.\n\n\u2002My apprentice will accuse me of being unkind. He is not wrong\u2014I am too well trained to be a warm person. But that is not the source of my dislike. Gregor hasn't grasped the basic truth of the realms yet. Hell and other realms are filled with a compelling cast of personalities. Demons, muses, jinni, spirits, and ancestral forces. Creatures that can feel, covet, love, hate. The truth is this: they are not human. Humanity isn't defined by feeling, or the facsimile therein. Humanity is defined by fragility. We are a cherry blossom, and they are the frost.\n\n\u2002Frost melts, but it is the blossom that dies.\n\n\u2014Librarian Yoon Ji Han 1804, CE\n\nProbity hadn't hesitated. Once brevity finally agreed to her experiment, it had been a swift cascade of consequential actions. The only delay had been on agreeing to a time and location.\n\n\"Not in the Unwritten Wing,\" Brevity said firmly.\n\n\"But, sis, it's the simplest\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" And Brevity wouldn't budge on this, even for Probity. \"We can't do this anywhere near the books.\" It felt wrong. Even aside from all the logistic concerns, the idea of unlocking inspiration in a muse by using the ink, with all the unwritten books of humanity looking on, made Brevity uncomfortable. It felt disrespectful, like she was sullying the Library. But Probity wouldn't understand that\u2014there was no such thing as the Library, as a thing greater than its parts. The only concern Probity understood was concern for the books and for Brevity. So Brev stuck to logistics. \"It's too big a risk if something goes wrong.\"\n\n\"No stories are in danger. Nothing is going to go wrong,\" Probity insisted with certainty, but she relented. \"I doubt you're going to feel comfortable taking it outside of Hell, sis. Is there a room?\"\n\nFinding a room in Hell turned out to not be as difficult as one might imagine. Hell was a vast realm, and since souls sent themselves where they needed to be, one might say attendance had dropped over the centuries. Damnation was too constant an idea to ever die out entirely, but it could fall out of fashion.\n\nAn empty hall proved the best option, improved by its adjacent location to the transport office. Brevity had fabricated an especially urgent emergency for Walter, emphasizing the absolute need for privacy, and Hell's gatekeeper had been sweetly agreeable about vacating his office for a spell. At least he had after Brevity had taken the time to explain the human concept of a \"smoke break,\" which seemed a redundant concept in Hell.\n\nBrevity hesitated upon returning to her desk for her tools and the tiny vial of unwritten ink she'd hidden at the back of a drawer, shrouded beneath linen thread. The logbook lay open with heavy accusation. Brevity picked up the pen half a dozen times, precisely uncapping it and drifting the nib over a fresh page before putting it away again, untouched. A sense of duty found the seams inside her and tugged. As librarian, she should close the wing as a safety precaution, especially with Hero still gone. As Probity's sister muse and co-conspirator, she should do as little to raise alarm as possible.\n\nIn the end, the wing stayed open. The books stayed quiet, the damsels stayed unaware, and Brevity stayed her hand, hovering over the handle of the great lobby doors. She left them half-open, creaking on the hinges of her own doubts. It wouldn't matter. This wouldn't take long.\n\nThe architecture of Hell was pasted together with lost things and tragedies, bits of buildings and spaces that have had the worst of existence visited upon them at one point or another. That meant a lot of Hell was an absolute drudge through muddy battlefields and concrete corridors that smelled like chemicals, but evil happened in beautiful places as well. The long room chosen for this experiment was splintered with cathedral windows. Through each piece of colored glass, Brevity could make out the light of a different scene. Sunlit squares fit for a hanging, shaded porticos to decide who was and was not human, cloistered confessionals that turned human love into sin. It made for a pretty kind of twilight in the hall, painting coins of color all over the stone floor. Brevity loved color; she might have enjoyed it under better circumstances.\n\nAs it was, she didn't care for the way the multicolored light spilled rainbows like oil slicks off the vial of black ink in her hands. Probity had departed to fetch her muse co-conspirators, and Brevity was left to pace nervously. Electric ghosts of worry crept up her nerves, bunching her shoulders near her ears.\n\nThis was the right move. Or, rather, it was the necessary move. Claire had made this necessary, refusing to collaborate on the nature of the ink. It was Brevity's responsibility as librarian to fix this. She thought Claire would want to fix it, but Probity had been the only one to suggest a solution. Brev felt a little guilty about blaming Claire, though. She'd been absent since the accident, but that would be expected. Claire would rather die than have anyone see her injured or suffering.\n\nIf this worked, they could figure out an equilibrium with the ink and stop the stain on Claire. In a way, Brevity needed to save Claire just as much as she needed to save the books.\n\nBrevity had a lot to make up for.\n\nThe carving-crusted doors at the end of the hall creaked, and Probity came in, leading a pair of wide-eyed younger muses in her wake. They had matching heads of scarlet curls, one tanned pink and the other orange. Brevity squinted, trying to place them, but Probity warmly started through introductions. She had her elbow crooked around either muse's arm familiarly. \"Gaiety, Verve, you know of Brevity.\"\n\n\"The exiled muse of Brevity,\" one breathed, while the other held a hand to her mouth. \"It's an honor to meet you, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Oh, really? I don't...\" Doubts, formerly niggling, swarmed up as the two younger muses stared at her with something approaching awe. Brevity struggled not to fidget. \"You heard about me?\"\n\n\"I took them under my wing... same way you did for me,\" Probity said, eyes diverting and voice dropping off at the last part. \"I try, at least.\"\n\n\"Probity is the best,\" the one with orange skin announced. Probity had called her Verve. She bounced on her toes eagerly. \"She's told us all about your rebellion. How we can save stories. Is that the ink?\"\n\n\"It's so beautiful,\" the pink-skinned boy named Gaiety whispered.\n\n\"Oh... well, it is...\" Doubt swamped Brevity out of nowhere.\n\nProbity's eyes sharpened, as if she could sense the waver in Brevity's tone. She extracted herself from her sibling muses and put a hand on Brevity's shoulder. \"Gaiety and Verve are here to help us.\"\n\n\"You volunteered, right? To test this ink?\" Brevity didn't precisely think of the question before she asked it, but she felt better as the two younger muses nodded with confusion. \"And you understand we aren't sure what will happen?\"\n\n\"Of course they volunteered.\" Probity's hurt was evident.\n\n\"We'll be the first muses to create our own stories.\" The one named Verve was appropriately ambitious, with a glint in her eyes.\n\n\"We aren't certain of that, actually.\"\n\n\"We understand the risks. If we can create the stories ourselves, we won't need to entrust them to humans who burn books,\" Verve said. \"It's worth it.\"\n\nIf Probity had been an enthusiastic activist for this cause, these two were true believers. It was tempting to be swept up in the wake of their certainty. \"I'm not sure\u2014\"\n\n\"Anything is worth it for the sake of the stories,\" Probity said. \"We're not weak human souls to be overwhelmed like the librarian. Muses are connected to the Library by nature. I'm certain we'll be fine.\"\n\n\"I am certain you're certain,\" Brevity said weakly. But it made sense, and again the thought of the black creeping up Claire's arm strengthened Brevity's resolve. \"As long as we have precautions in place.\"\n\n\"Of course. No one wants to protect the stories more than us. We're well away from the books of the Library.\" Probity tossed an expansive gesture around the silent hall before directing the red-haired muses to the center. \"There and there. Are you ready to go? Let's change history.\"\n\n\"Will it hurt?\" Gaiety fidgeted as he took his place. Evidently Brevity's unease hadn't gone entirely unheard. \"You said this could end humanity's book burnings.\"\n\n\"It will. I've seen the power of this ink,\" Probity soothed, and touched each of their cheeks with a motherly fondness. Brevity marveled at how neatly she avoided answering the first question\u2014or perhaps not. Either way, the younger muses appeared calmed, then awed as Probity took the vial. Brevity's anxiety crept up again as Probity uncorked it, holding the glass up to the light. \"But we'll be cautious anyway. Just a drop to start. One drop, and we'll create the first story born of a muse. We won't need humans. We'll save the future of every story ever written.\"\n\nAnd unwritten, Brevity wanted to remind her, but Probity was already gesturing. Gaiety and Verve held out their hands. Probity didn't hesitate. She precisely tipped the vial to flick a droplet of ink into each palm.\n\nThe ink didn't sink immediately into the skin, like it had with Claire. In fact, it seemed repelled at first. Tiny amounts of the dark liquid beaded, then skittered over their palms like oil on a hot skillet. It raced over their knuckles, black lines starting to coalesce and swirl against their sunny-colored skin.\n\n\"Focus,\" Probity soothed when Gaiety and Verve began to shift nervously.\n\n\"It might be working,\" Brevity said quietly. The ink appeared to be stretching, thinning out into long lines. Perhaps it would take shape and simply mark their skin like the inspiration Brevity had stolen. She clutched one bare forearm at the thought, but the ink showed no sign of settling down. It raced across the back of Verve's hand, and Brevity frowned.\n\n\"Did you see...?\"\n\nProbity's gaze snapped to her. \"See what?\"\n\n\"Light,\" Brevity muttered. \"We need more light.\" She grabbed the edge of Verve's tunic and dragged her over closer to one of the windows. The stained glass depicted some long-forgotten saint, looking forlorn and wearing a mostly white robe, which cast the clearest amount of stolen light. \"There. It's leaving a trail.\"\n\nShe pointed as the droplet of ink wove its way around the orange skin of Verve's knuckles. The skin it passed felt lightened, pulled to a paler shade of tangerine. The ink moved quicker over the back of her hand, appearing to pull color with it. The ink stayed bleak and black, even in brighter light.\n\n\"It's cold,\" Gaiety said softly. The ink was doing the same to his rose-colored skin. Pastel tracks stood out where the ink had slid over the surface and up his wrist. A glassy tone in his voice made Brevity uneasy.\n\n\"I brought a blotter.\" She began to reach for her bag. \"Maybe we should\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" Probity's hand was on her wrist. \"I suspected this would happen. It's a good sign, see? The ink isn't sinking in like with Claire. It'll work. It'll work,\" Probity repeated, quieter. \"Just a moment longer.\"\n\nBrevity hesitated, for just precisely that moment, and a small sigh of air brought her attention back. The ink had sailed its way up Gaiety's forearm, and its pale track disappeared under the hem of his sleeve at his elbow.\n\nGaiety struggled for breath.\n\nA streak of alarm shot up Brevity's neck. \"Are you\u2014\"\n\n\"Cold,\" he mumbled between clenched teeth.\n\n\"Look,\" Probity said, with a distant kind of awe.\n\nBrevity followed the line of Probity's attention to the neck of Gaiety's tunic. His skin was naturally darker there, a sweeter rose than pink. But as she watched, it paled before her eyes, fading from almost red to pink to a pastel kind of coral, until it started to turn white.\n\n\"Shirt off!\" Brevity batted at the muse's shirt, alarm rising. When she managed to pull the shirt over his head, the dot of black ink had not grown but was racing in increasingly more frantic patterns over his chest. \"What's it doing?\"\n\n\"Absorbing,\" Probity breathed, sounding almost faint with disbelief. She lifted a hand, hovering over the small liquid bead as it swept and swooped over Gaiety's fading collarbone. \"It's absorbing bits of him.\"\n\n\"We need to stop this!\" Brevity turned and ran for the bag she'd left in the corner. She came up with the pad of blotter sheets, but Probity was already stripping Verve to see the same thing there.\n\n\"They aren't absorbing the ink, like the humans; the ink is absorbing them.\" Probity's voice was full of awe. \"But absorbing what parts? I wonder. Where does it end? What does it take and what does it leave behind?\"\n\n\"Probably not healthy parts,\" Brevity said. She ran back over and attempted to smack the blotter down on the ink, but the droplet beaded and darted away every time she got near. Gaiety was nearly white by now, and Verve had turned a sickly shade of yellow. \"We've got to stop this now.\"\n\nThe ink fluted up Gaiety's neck, creeping like a gnat beneath his skin. Brevity brought the blotter sheet up again but hesitated. Gaiety opened his mouth and a strangled creak slipped out. Past his lips, his teeth were white. And so was his tongue, and the long white nothingness of his throat. Brevity couldn't stand to see any more; she pressed the blotter page against his face as the ink darted out of his mouth and toward his hairline.\n\nThe sheet fluttered as Gaiety sucked in rapid breaths, and Brevity held it there, uncertain how long was needed to capture the ink. His hair was draining of its normal pigmentation, fading swiftly from scarlet to something weak, like blood-tainted water. Abruptly, the breath rustling beneath the sheet stuttered, then stopped. Brevity exchanged a worried glance with Probity, who looked uneasy despite her earlier confidence.\n\nShe pulled the blotter sheet back, ready to slap it down again if the ink moved.\n\nNo ink moved. Instead, Probity let out a short scream.\n\nGaiety's formerly rosy complexion was entirely an off shade of ivory. And the skin was an unblemished expanse. It was as if the blotter sheet had taken the features of his face as well. There was naught but smooth skin where the valleys of his eyes had been, and his mouth was no more than a divot in the pale clay of his skin.\n\nProbity leapt back, horror taking over her face. When her eyes met Brevity's, they were wet, and she shook her head rapidly. \"I didn't\u2014this isn't possible. I didn't mean\u2014\"\n\nBrevity stepped back as Gaiety lunged forward, pale hands already swimming into translucent claws. It was as if all of the muse was being absorbed by the ink, turning to paper and ice.\n\n\"We need to fix this! There's got to be a fix.\" Probity sounded pleading now. She held up her hands, and the abundance of lace at her wrists gave away her tremors.\n\nBrevity shook her head. \"I think we can call this experiment a f\u2014\"\n\nThey had forgotten about Verve. A white shadow streaked past her head, launching itself at Probity. They went down in a tumble, but the ink-blotted muse was fast, and rabid with movement. She smashed Probity's face into the floorboards and leapt toward the end of the hall before Brevity could even act.\n\nGaiety made a creaking, breathless kind of sound, as if protesting his sibling leaving him behind. Brevity was already running. \"Stay with Gaiety and keep him calm. I'll go after her!\"\n\n\"Sis!\" Probity called, but Brevity didn't look back. She had to keep her eyes peeled on the retreating ghost, a flutter of pale skin in the gloom of the hallway.\n\nIt canted through the door of Walter's office, and Brevity groaned as she heard the clatter of shattered glass. She burst through the archway just in time to see billowing red and purple smoke\u2014which travel jar had been shattered was difficult to tell, but she would have so much apologizing to do when Walter got back\u2014and, just beyond, the retreating shape of Verve disappearing through the main door. Brevity skirted the smoke, saying a silent apology to Walter, and ran after her. They were in familiar hallways now, and Brevity gained on the maddened muse, but as they vaulted the stairs up a level, Brevity's heart stopped.\n\nShe knew this path, and knew exactly where the feral muse was going.\n\nThe Library.\n\nBrevity struggled to catch up, but the muse was fleet on pale white feet. It shrieked a hunger-pang sound that made Brevity's teeth hurt and hurtled itself down the hallway. It made it past the gargoyle, who just blinked sleepiness in several dimensions. Some guard dog he was, but then again Brevity supposed there was no reason to ever bar muses from an open library. Verve scrabbled at the doors, leaving deep scratches in the wood as she rushed into the lobby.\n\n\"Verve, stop!\" Desperation gave Brevity a burst of speed. She hurtled past the entry and flung herself at Verve with just enough momentum to snag her by the ankle. The washed-out muse went down, hissing and snarling. Brevity clamped down and tried to drag her back, but Verve's claws shredded at the rug as she went. She couldn't allow her to reach the books; above all else, Brevity knew with entire certainty that she could not allow anything with that kind of hunger to reach the books.\n\nBrevity dragged Verve back at the cost of the rug. The younger muse was almost completely white now. Washed out and almost translucent in the weird light of her eyes. The only color remaining was the faintest wash of pink still clinging to the tips of her long hair. Unlike Gaiety, she'd retained her facial features, but the bead of black ink swirled hazily from eye to eye, occasionally making a detour down to slash black across her lips. It was the only sign of life in the face that had been so hopeful and eager to help moments ago.\n\nBrevity's heart clenched but she didn't let go. \"Verve, you gotta snap out of it.\"\n\nShe didn't appear to hear. Verve lunged across the carpet again, hands straining toward the shelves of books as if she were a dying man reaching for a mirage. She croaked again, hungry and keening. It was all Brevity could do to sit on her back until Probity arrived.\n\nProbity had managed to procure a strap from somewhere and had belted Gaiety's thin arms to his sides. The faceless muse twisted and writhed, as if suffocating in his own skin. It hurt to watch. Brevity looked away to twist around and begin to roll the shredded rug around Verve's sides. \"What happened to them?\"\n\nProbity's face was tear streaked, and she looked stricken. \"It's\u2014it's like the ink took them, all of them. Sucked them dry. Why would it\u2014 It shouldn't have been able to do that.\"\n\n\"Seems like that shit is doing lots of stuff it isn't supposed to be able to do lately.\" Brevity thought again of Claire and blanched at the thought of Claire without a face and leached of color. It almost seemed a blessing now that the ink had stained, giving rather than taking.\n\n\"This... we can fix this, though. Right?\" Probity looked at her as if she had answers instead of an armful of rabid muse.\n\nVerve bucked again beneath her, spitting her anger and forcing Brevity to pin her shoulders down. \"It's like they turned feral.\"\n\n\"Not feral...\" An idea brightened Probity's reddened eyes. \"Not feral, hungry. The ink drained them, and now they're struggling to fill themselves back up. They're hungry for what we're all hungry for.\"\n\n\"Human stories,\" Brevity supplied. She looked toward the stacks worriedly. Liquid tendrils of color still washed out from the books, but they seemed to recoil from where Verve writhed on the floor, staying out of reach. The books knew danger as well as Brevity did. \"But we don't eat stories! Muses transport stories and inspiration to humans all the time. Look, she's already gnawing on the rug.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's not about what a muse wants, but what the ink wants,\" Probity mulled it over. \"If they can get enough to satisfy what they've lost, then perhaps they can get control over the ink.\"\n\n\"No part of this is in control! Probity, please, listen to me.\" Brevity's hold on Verve was slipping. Probity came over without being asked, expertly twisting the other end of her strap around Verve's neck until it appeared she had two feral ghosts on a leash. Brevity backed up onto her knees, aware of every muscle in her arms screaming. \"Listen. The experiment failed; this was a terrible idea from the start. Muses aren't made to control stories. That was my mistake when I tried to take inspiration for myself too.\" Her hand went self-consciously to her bare forearm again. It still felt naked and raw. \"We can appreciate stories, protect them, help them get written, honor them even. But we're not human. Muses are conduits. If we try to hold on to them, we'll just hurt ourselves.\"\n\nTrying to steal the inspiration gilt and bind it into her skin had hurt, but being driven out of the Muses Corps had hurt worse. She almost felt an empathy for the husks of Verve and Gaiety. She'd had everything ripped away once, and felt that emptiness, the overwhelming ache to fill it with something, anything.\n\nShe'd been sent here, to Claire, and the Library. Learned how vulnerable and fragile stories are. It wasn't enough to have inspiration. It took a special kind of alchemy to bring a story into existence, and that was so easy to destroy. Brevity shook her head. \"We have to get them out of here before they hurt a book.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Probity said slowly, but she made no move to drag her captives away. \"But... what if we gave them one?\"\n\nBrevity pivoted, mouth agape. \"What?\"\n\n\"What if we gave them a book? Just one.\" Probity was warming to the idea, scanning the shelves thoughtfully. \"There are so many. We could pick one that was never going to be written anyway.\"\n\n\"No!\" Brevity felt like she was trembling. \"Of course we can't! These are books!\"\n\n\"But what if this is it?\" Probity began to pace, tugging Verve and Gaiety at the ends of their leather straps. Verve still randomly lunged toward the stacks, and it appeared Probity was edging closer. \"What if this is what allows them to gain control of the ink? What if they can eat a book and then write it themselves? We can take the stories from the humans before they can destroy them. We can fix this. We'll be saving them.\"\n\n\"Saving them by destroying them.\" Brevity stepped back. Probity looked taller, rail thin and pale in her own way, as if the ink was taking hold by proximity. \"No, we can't do that.\" She shook her head. \"We aren't stealing stories, let alone trading them for our own.\"\n\n\"You don't understand. It's stories. It's everything. How can you not understand how important this is?\" Probity abruptly veered away from the lobby and across the small expanse of space to the stacks. \"Look, let me just prove\u2014\"\n\nVerve and Gaiety were a froth of claws at the end of their leashes. Brevity didn't stop to think; she leapt to her feet and threw herself in between the feral muses and the shelves of books. \"No.\"\n\nFor a moment it felt like Probity wasn't going to stop. Verve lunged, making a guttural snarl at the end of the leash. Her pale lips were peeled back, and all the color had been seeped away from her gums, making her teeth look elongated and bone sharp. She threw up her hands, now tipped in claws, and slashed at Brevity's arms. Pain laced up her elbow. Brevity closed her eyes and resolved not to flinch.\n\nVerve's breath was hot and smelled of boiled rubber. When Brevity opened her eyes, the muses' claws were an inch withdrawn from her nose, though Verve strained enough to make the leather creak.\n\nAt the other end of the strap, Probity had rooted her feet in place and was leaning back to counteract the tension of the two creatures. Her lips were pressed thin, and when she met Brevity's eyes they were full of a complicated kind of pain. \"I want to save them, sis. I want to save you. You shouldn't be stuck here. You could be the librarian that fixes things.\"\n\n\"A fix that sacrifices someone is no fix at all.\" Brevity held still. She was aware that Probity could release the straps, allow Verve and Gaiety to hurtle into the stacks. She might be able to wrestle one, but she couldn't keep both of them from the books. She needed Probity to see it. \"The humans have destroyed enough books for their own ambition, right? I thought you told me we could be so much better than that.\"\n\nProbity flinched, and her voice began to shake. \"Don't compare me to them. Don't compare what I'm trying to do to the millions of books tossed aside, burned, left to rot in the\u2014\" A small gasp stopped her, and Verve's claws swayed close to Brevity's cheek until Probity caught control of the leash again. \"That's the answer.\"\n\nA foreboding rose in Brevity's stomach. \"Probity?\"\n\n\"That's it! There's a giant supply of books that no one will miss, because they've already been forgotten! We protect your treasured unwritten charges and we change the system. And we have humans to thank.\"\n\nProbity yanked on the strap with surprising strength and began dragging the ink-maddened muses away from the stacks. Brevity only got a moment's relief as Probity began to make her way across the lobby to the door. \"Probity\u2014where are you going with them? You need to take them back home; perhaps the other muses can fix\u2014\"\n\n\"I will fix it.\" Probity tossed a small smile over her shoulder that was meant to be reassuring. It failed, in part due to the desperate redness of her eyes. \"I'll fix everything, sis. Don't worry. I won't make you regret the faith you've shown in me. There's plenty of books for them in the Dust Wing.\"\n\n\"The Dust Wing,\" she whispered, and the dread grew. The Dust Wing wasn't just a tomb for books; it was a tomb for stories. The Dust Wing had no librarian, because these books were not destined to be curated, cared for, or read. A book only fell to the Dust Wing after an existence on Earth, after the very last copy of its story had been destroyed, the last lines from its text forgotten. Humanity had buried almost as many books as it had never written. The Unwritten Wing was the largest annex of the Library, but a close second, its shadow twin, was the Dust Wing.\n\nBrevity's heart stuttered, but Probity was waving a hand, grasping clots of light from the lamps she passed by as a nonsense scent of cardamom binaries and ripe hope rose in the air. She whipped it around her and the leashed muses like a cloak, once, twice. She glanced to Brevity, and a kind of vulnerability flickered in her eyes. \"Will you come with me?\"\n\nBrevity sucked in a breath, unnerved by the sudden silence only punctuated by her own pulse in her ears. She was trembling, unable to process the horror chasing relief in her veins. The Dust Wing. Probity's desperation to hope. The horror of the desiccated muses behind her. The threat to the books. Her past and her present collided in front of her, spiraling out into a dozen different directions and taking a different piece of Brevity's heart with them. It all came down to one question, in the end. Was she a muse, or was she a librarian?\n\n\"Please,\" Probity whispered to the floor. \"I don't want to do this alone.\"\n\nBrevity stumbled forward, pulling on her own puddle of light with one hand while taking Probity's with the other. Her sister muse smiled, shy and soft. Probity stepped into a false sunbeam, dragging Gaiety and Verve with her, and they were gone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 33",
                "text": "\u2002The Library is a misnomer. Think of the wings: yes, there is the Unwritten Wing of books, but then there's a wing of sagas, unsaid words, poems, songs\u2014and the cursed Arcane Wing on top of that! It makes no sense. What is the mission of a library? We're not a lending library, so it must be a mission of archiving and preservation. What, then, is the common quality shared through out the entire catalog? What makes books, scrolls, letters, songs, worth the attentions of eternity?\n\n\u2002What, precisely, are we preserving?\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 900 CE\n\nThe arcane wing curated books. Not nearly as many or as varied as the Unwritten Wing, but a few leather-bound manuscripts from the world of humans managed to find their way there. Letters poisoned with crude curses, folios with victims pressed between the pages, and a handful of bleak spell books that had somehow stumbled on actual power between the folklore and nonsense. If the Unwritten Wing was humanity's potential, the Arcane Wing was humanity's shadow. Anything that grew dark enough, weighty enough, eventually succumbed to the gravity that the Arcane Wing held at its core.\n\nIt made for dreadfully dull reading material, but it also meant the Arcanist was kept supplied with a steady selection of bookbinding materials. Claire selected a dip nib and blotter but also gathered extra pages, paste, and thread out of an abundance of caution. The ink hadn't damaged the logbook during their first experiment, but she wasn't willing to take any further chances with Hero's book.\n\nHero was ready by the time she returned, arms full of supplies. He'd laid his book precisely under Claire's work light, and an oiled shine rolled off the edges of the emerald cover. Claire had a memory of rebinding with that color. She'd simply chosen green to match his irritatingly bright eyes. And then Malphas had interrupted. That book had been her last official act as librarian.\n\nAnd now she was going to tamper with it again.\n\nThe cover had taken on a well-loved burnish, worn at the edges where it rode around in Hero's breast pocket daily. There were discolored segments in the leading edges of the parchment, just the width of a thumb, where Hero had obviously paged through his own book more than once. Claire could imagine him, brows furrowed, trying to make sense of the writhing text. Trying to force it into familiarity. Trying to read his way home.\n\nClaire knew that ache.\n\nHero hovered to her right, shifting from one foot to the other with an uncharacteristic restlessness. Lining up the supplies within reach was a simple task, but Claire made it a methodical process in order to take her time. \"You're certain?\"\n\nHero grimaced, then nodded. \"Yes, and please don't ask me again.\"\n\n\"As you wish,\" Claire said. She found the first blank page and slipped the corners under the page rests. A small pot of the unwritten ink was secured in the inkwell, and she unstoppered it carefully. Her gloved hand trembled as she set down the cork, and Claire forced herself to pause and close her eyes until she felt steady.\n\n\"I trust you, warden. You should know that.\" Hero's voice was quiet; when she opened her eyes he had finally come to lean on the edge of the worktable. His longer fingers were splayed on the surface, a breath from hers. He looked at her reverently until she met his eyes, then nodded. He turned his face resolutely away from the book as if bracing himself. \"Whenever you're ready.\"\n\nClaire polished the nib of her pen. It shivered under the light, sharp as a blade. When the point touched the surface of the ink, the channel flooded with unnatural ease. The pen drank up ink and when Claire pulled it away from the well, a bleak teardrop clung to the tip like blood on a fang.\n\nNo lasting harm to the logbook. Claire kept repeating that in her head, which was the only reason she was able to shake off the loose ink and dread. The palm of her right hand itched, as if the stain could sense the nearness, anticipate what she was about to do with it. Claire took a deep breath and lowered the tip of the pen to the blank expanse of parchment.\n\nWriting was a chemical dance between the ink and the surface. Cheap paper would suck the life out of an ink, leaving a flat, feathered line. The materials used in the Library were both infernal and divine, in that the paper was a smooth and faultless cream that embraced ink gently, letting it dry and sheen to perfect brilliance. Which was what made ice shiver up Claire's spine when the ink slid across the page as if a plug had been pulled. Claire lifted the nib, trying to break the flow, but black lines writhed across the paper. Corkscrew shapes twisted, then lifted away from the sheet, creating tiny black ribbons in the air.\n\nA gasp broke the silence, but Claire couldn't spare a glance for Hero. She acted fast. Three decades in the Unwritten Wing taught one to take unruly words in hand before they spiraled out of control. She snagged one escaping serif with her nib, pinning it back to the page. She abused the tines of her pen, pressing until they began to separate, but it forked the ink in two. That weakened it, allowing her to carefully, so carefully, drag the squirming text back to the top of the page.\n\nIt was a chapter page. Claire knew the general shape of it from the rest of Hero's book. A chapter heading. The ink didn't fight her as she draped it into position, trying to coax it into taking shape. A thrill thumped once in her chest as the ink snagged on the page and began to form the graceful arch of a drop cap. A T. It squared off, then crested into another symbol, h.\n\n\"There was...\" Hero's voice creaked, as if he was afraid to say it. Claire looked up. He had his hands braced on either side of where he leaned on the table, concentration lining his face. \"There was...\" he said more certainly, and as he said it, Claire saw the ink snag and shape the words on the page. Hero bolted upright, hands in the air. \"There was! That's how it starts! Claire, I know how my story starts!\"\n\nThe unrefined joy was like sunshine in Hero's voice, no snarl, no sharp, cutting end of his humor. Just triumph. His smile was effervescent. He let out a whoop and spun around in place. \"It's working!\"\n\nA tangled kind of relief spooled out with Claire's breath. \"You mean, I am working,\" she said, instead of the lingering worry she had. She couldn't constrain her matching smile, however. \"Now, focus, Hero. One sentence does not a book make.\"\n\nShe brought her attention back to the page with a surge of confidence. She dragged the ink precisely over the words, and Hero was a kinetic celebration out of the corner of her eye, unable to contain his delight.\n\n\"There was a... Oh, do keep going, warden. We're getting there! I knew it would work!\"\n\nHe sounded giddy as a child. Claire bit down on her grin as she refreshed her nib in the inkwell and brought it back to the page. The a went down easily, and the ink even appeared to settle into the page, calming into a dry sheen that didn't twitch and jerk out of alignment. A w appeared, then an h.\n\n\"There was a man who...\" Hero's voice faltered. \"Who. Who are you?\"\n\nThe flurry of activity out of the corner of her eye had stilled. Claire looked up. Hero stood by the table, one hand still raised in mid-celebration. A startled look of alarm was on his face, but it slowly drained as she watched, and all color was lost from his cheeks.\n\nA breath caught in Claire's throat. \"Hero?\"\n\nEmotion melted off Hero's face, smoothing even the small lines around his scarred cheek. His eyes were blank when they met hers. \"Who are you? Who? No.\" A tear blinked down his empty expression, watery and faintly smoke-colored. \"Who?\"\n\nInk was flowing in the corner of her sight. Her knuckles went white around her pen as Claire looked down. The ink had continued writing, line after line of neat manuscript text appearing, growing more jagged and irregular as it went. Claire clutched the pen to her chest, nowhere near the paper, but still the words kept repeating over and over: There was a man who who are you who are you who are you who who who who who.\n\nIt occupied every line on the page, and then the serifs of each letter turned jagged, as if spawning their own contributions, written at an angle. All repeating the same word, who who who. Ink began to sop the page, puddling in the work light.\n\nHero made a gagging sound. Black sputtered across his lips, as if he was spitting up blood. But it was so much worse than blood. The liquid was black and staining, spiderwebbing down his chin and across his skin.\n\nHer heart roiled into her throat. Claire threw the pen away from her and grabbed the blotter, already loaded with a sheet. She slammed it down on the surface of Hero's book, but when she lifted it, the blotter was dry, and black crept across the page like mold. It began to soak into subsequent pages.\n\n\"Who, who, who...\" Hero's voice was a gurgle between gasps for breath. Black consumed his neck, turning his clothes sodden with ink. His hands grasped at Claire's shoulders until the infection reached his elbows and he yanked back. Hero shrank to his knees, holding a hand up to his face. One emerald eye melted to pine, then tar. The remaining eye teared up, and his gaze flicked to Claire for one flickering moment. \"A choice, ward\u2014\"\n\nInk swarmed his eyes and his face went slack. Desperation clawed a whimper out of Claire's throat. Careless of the ink, she ripped out the sodden page with her gloved hand. But it had spread to the next page, and the next. Parchment began to disintegrate, melting together with the ink.\n\nAnd when Claire looked up, the same horror had begun on Hero's face. His high cheekbone, the right one, unblemished by scars, crumpled first, followed by his nose and the socket of one black, unseeing eye. His body caved in on itself. A wordless gulf filled Claire's chest and somewhere, distantly, a raven was shrieking. Hero's book, pages, binding, and all, melted into a bleak slurry. Claire clutched it on instinct, but it dripped through her hands with a sharp, cold heat. Used up, it didn't even appear interested in staining her this time. When she looked up, she was alone.\n\nAlone, except for a blot of ink, wet upon the carpet."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 34",
                "text": "\u2002Forgetting is its own kind of awful magic. The longer we are down here, the more things melt away. It's unnerving, but I try to remember that entropy doesn't apply in places like this. Nothing is really destroyed; nothing is lost for good. It cheers me to think maybe our memories go where forgotten books go. Silent readers to keep the silent books of the Dust Wing company.\n\n\u2002It's a nice story, at least. No one is forgotten, and no one is alone.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1917 CE\n\nRami was a man used to routine and duty. Two things that had been sadly lacking since they'd returned from the Chinvat bridge. Hero had left him the duty of the Unwritten Wing, but Rami felt ill at home there. Yet, when he'd left, Hero seemed troubled by a private errand. It only felt supportive to make an excuse to stay out of his way. He suspected Hero was seeking out Claire. He understood there was a deeper tie between book and former librarian than he, or anyone, understood. He was glad of it.\n\nBut the problem with being an angel\u2014albeit a discredited one\u2014in Hell is that there were few places he actually wanted to be. He was restless. Despite his promise to man the desk, he stepped out and returned a couple of times to the Unwritten Wing, thinking to see if Brevity had returned, update her on their progress. But the Library was quiet when he got there, all as he had left it. Rami had waited as long as seemed polite in the lobby, but when the damsels had started poking their heads from the stacks with curiosity, he'd left.\n\nHe'd stopped by Walter's office and had an uneasy conversation with the gatekeeper about human smoking habits, of all things. It disquieted Rami, knowing what Walter was. He was quite used to dealing with immortal forces and personifications of powers beyond his kin, but usually they were not so affable and obsessed with felines.\n\nSo, eventually, he'd run out of excuses and had to return to the Arcane Wing, hoping Hero had finished his business by now. The Arcane Wing had an essential quiet to its nature. Claire tried to soften the hard edges of nothingness with the soft patter of pages and the busy-making sounds of tea preparation, but Rami recognized that, at its core, the Arcane Wing was a place of silence. He knew silence, respected it in all its natural variations.\n\nPerhaps that's why the moment he crossed the threshold into the wing, he could tell this silence was all wrong. No one was visible up front, among the worktables and paper-stacked desks that Claire maintained.\n\nClaire's stray raven was picking through some toppled teacups and paused long enough to cock her head at Rami's entrance. She grackled, low and warning, and took two hops to the end of the table before taking flight. She paused, perching just on the end of one of the shelves, as if making sure Rami was taking note of her path before taking off again.\n\nThe silence, between muted beats of feathered wings, was alarming. Rami took another quick look around before jogging down the shelves after the bird.\n\nHe found the raven after a few moments, paused between two tall racks of amulets. He heard the muttering before he saw Claire, pacing back and forth with a rather alarming bramble of talismans and arcane specimens in her hands.\n\n\"Claire?\" Rami tried, carefully.\n\nShe looked up, and her cheeks glistened. Tears tracked down her face, fresh and raw, even though her expression was gaunt and empty. She distantly seemed to acknowledge Rami's presence and shoved a handful of her selections into his arms. \"You're here. Good. Take this and fetch the Persephone seeds.\"\n\n\"Claire,\" Rami repeated, worrying at the way she paced and seemed to stare past the shelves. The raven came to land heavily on her shoulder and bleated in her ear. An action that would have normally caused an aggrieved snarl and shake-off. Instead, Claire's shoulder just sank under the weight and a small suffering knit between her eyes.\n\n\"Claire,\" Rami said again. \"What's all this for?\"\n\n\"An expedition. A mission, a\u2014a rescue mission. A retrieval.\" Claire's voice was cracked and abused, possibly from crying. She waved her hand with a frown twisting up her face, breath coming a little fast. \"Don't ask questions. You're my assistant; you'll assist. I don't keep you around for questions.\"\n\n\"You keep me around because I choose to stay,\" Rami corrected gently. A complicated expression stung across Claire's face, full of hurt. She turned away abruptly.\n\n\"No more questions. We are going to search the realms one by one. We can start with wherever you and Hero went to last.\"\n\n\"Chinvat?\" Rami recoiled at that. The bridge was a place he never cared to visit again, especially not with anyone he cared about. He tried not to get distracted. But a certainty fell like a stone in Rami's chest, settling in with old intuition. \"Where's Hero?\"\n\n\"Gone,\" Claire said, never quite meeting his eyes. She pulled another rather blood-crusted set of pearls from the shelf and flung them over her shoulder like a bolero.\n\nEvery jolt of movement, so alien on calm and measured Claire, wedged deeper dread into Rami's stomach. He had to ask anyway. \"Where? Gone where, Claire?\"\n\nClaire's knuckles whitened on the string of pearls until Rami feared she would break them. She held still, hunched under the wings of the raven on her shoulder. She slid to the floor, staring intently at nothing through wet eyes. She took a breath that sounded like it hurt and quietly said, \"I don't know.\"\n\nRami's pulse quickened. \"What happened?\"\n\nClaire was already shaking her head. \"It's not\u2014I didn't. I didn't!\" The last came out ragged, on the tail of a hiccupping sound that Rami guessed was Claire's attempt not to cry again.\n\nRami fought the urge to push her. He knew Claire's past, the secret she'd kept from everybody. That she'd attempted to leave the Library with one of her characters, and her mentor had died at her hands in the botched attempt. His fear rose at what that meant for Hero and he felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. He took two slow breaths. He'd had experience with trauma, too much experience, really, both personal and professional during his tenure at Heaven's Gates. Panic could be felt without being acted on.\n\n\"Please, so I can help you,\" he said quietly. She tried to stand. The raven launched herself off Claire's shoulder, and Rami replaced the bird with his hand to steady her before she stumbled.\n\nClaire's throat worked before she could speak. Finally, her forehead came down on his shoulder, light and then heavy all at once. He caught her as she crumpled against him. \"He wanted to be fixed. He was so certain I... I was stupid and weak.\"\n\nThe words came out in a halting tumble, snared between sharp gulps of whatever misery existed between not-tears. When the extent of the loss had been relived, she managed to pull back and rub her face harshly. \"I ran to the Unwritten Wing, of course. Hero is stamped; he's special\u2014he's in Special Collections. That means Brevity could IWL him if\u2014\" If he still exists, Rami's mind supplied. Claire's words firmly dodged that. \"But Brevity's not there\u2014no one is\u2014and if I'm not the librarian anymore I can't recall an IWL and I can't face the damsels, so\u2014\"\n\nRami felt gutted as he slowly rubbed her back through another racking shudder of not-panic. Claire was not-crying, not-panicking, not-self-loathing. She was full of nots, which Rami had always known. He admired humans who went on in spite of the nots. She took a deep breath. \"So we'll search the realms one by one. Start with the Libraries, fan out from there. Someone would have to notice if a character... or a damaged book... appeared without warning.\"\n\n\"You're certain he would have been sent to another realm,\" Rami repeated, gently but with a point. He wondered if she noticed when his voice wavered.\n\n\"Yes,\" Claire said immediately, then: \"No.\" She looked down at her blood-splashed pearls as if the answer would be there. \"I don't know. But he has to be somewhere.\"\n\n\"But if you leave without permission again, defy Hell once more\u2014\"\n\n\"The Hellhounds will have to keep up if they want me. Besides, I'll be about the Library's business, retrieving books.\"\n\n\"You are Arcanist, not librarian. What's more, you're injured,\" Rami said gently, and Claire turned a flinch into a frown.\n\n\"I don't care if I'm Hell's goddamned janitor.\" She narrowed her reddened eyes, which showed too much white and wildness. \"I'm going to find him, Rami.\"\n\nRami remembered Hero's face on the bridge, pale and defiant. Certainty as sharp as the razor edge of bridge beneath him, and the memory cut. Hero didn't have to be somewhere, but Claire couldn't operate on that possibility. Rami realized with a searing ache that he couldn't either. He nodded and released Claire to juggle the baubles in his hands. \"What do you want me to do with these?\"\n\nClaire already looked distracted with her own thoughts again. She was staring down the aisle. \"Take them back to the front table and pack them in the satchel I've laid out. Take whatever else you need.\"\n\nShe strode down the aisle deeper into the collection without looking back. The Arcane Wing wasn't for looting\u2014Rami knew he should remind Claire. The items in the Arcane Wing were locked away within the control of the Library for a reason. She'd used the Arcane Wing as an arsenal once before, but that was when the threat was in Hell. This would mean taking the artifacts out of the realm, and potentially out of their control.\n\nBut if it would save Hero, he'd loot it empty.\n\nHe looked down at the items in his hands. A tangle of tarnished chains held together a bramble patch of brooches. There was a dented crown, a scroll sealed with a fang, and at least eighteen ways to inflict death and mayhem between his palms. Rami didn't like this, but he disliked imagining Hero's fate even more. He took a steadying breath and carried the items back to the worktables.\n\nClaire's pet raven was waiting for him, hunched like a vulture over a leather satchel. Rami made a shooing motion as he approached, but the bird continued to worry at the leather strap.\n\n\"Off with you.\" Rami set down his load and tried to gently scoop the bird into the air as he'd seen Claire do a number of times. She took a stab of his palm for his trouble, which distracted Rami long enough that by the time he finished cursing, the bird had hopped to the other end of the table with the dented crown in her beak.\n\nTime felt as if it were running askew. Rami pressed down his fear and quickly packed the other items into the satchel. \"I'm going to need that.\"\n\nThe bird honked a particularly vulgar response and fouled the chair beneath her.\n\n\"Don't care much for you either,\" Rami muttered. He made a move to grab the crown, but the bird hopped to the next table over. Rami sighed, resisting the urge to skewer the bird on the end of his sword, and studied her instead.\n\nThe bird was a sullen mess of feathers and terrible attitude, as usual. Her beak clicked as she worked over the thin metalwork of the crown in her jaw. Rami didn't precisely recognize the piece, but the collection of the Arcane Wing was huge. The crown was a swooping circlet of gold, with a shape that resembled branches, or elk horns. Each crook of metal was crusted with emerald and rose agate, which reminded Rami of Hero's copper hair.\n\nRami's mind betrayed him with the image of Hero in a crown, crooked with that ironic smile that saw all of Rami's flaws. Hero lived to prod at regrets, which Rami supposed was what drew him to Claire and Rami over Brevity. Early on, Rami couldn't understand why Claire tolerated him. His first impression of the character had been a boy playing at being a man. His second and third impressions hadn't fared much better, but Claire had trusted him, so when Hero came to Rami with an audacious request for help, Rami had imagined shepherding the boy out of trouble.\n\nRami had been quite wrong. It'd been Hero who knew the questions to ask in the library at Elysium, and Hero who'd kept his cool as the Chinvat bridge judged their souls and found them wanting. It was a ridiculous judgment. If the judges of Chinvat had half a level of discernment, they would have tossed Rami off the bridge for all the wrongs his soul carried, instead of focusing on Hero.\n\nThe raven squawked again. She flicked her head and improbably tossed the crown across the room. It landed somewhere near the door with a crash that made Rami wince. He shook his head as he went to fetch it. They didn't have time for this. They never had time, but Hero was lost somewhere in the afterlife and every realm seemed to have a murderous obsession with punishing\u2014\n\n\"Souls.\" Rami's fingertips froze above the crown. The realization staggered him like a punch to the gut. He jerked straight and stared at the raven. The bird was watching him expectantly. \"Lost souls.\"\n\nThe raven clicked once, the most approving sound Rami had heard her make. Ramiel, the angel, had been granted certain gifts, gifts he retained even after being exiled from Heaven, retained even here in Hell. Rami was a shepherd of souls. His mind was still reeling when Claire emerged from the back of the archives, carrying a cloak and a particular gray dagger. She looked drawn and resigned as death, but she paused and tilted her head when she caught sight of Rami. \"What now?\"\n\n\"Arcanist...\" Rami carefully measured each word, uncertain when the idea forming in his head would give out beneath him. It was too fragile to say out loud yet. \"What would you say if I thought I could track where Hero's gone?\"\n\nClaire's fingers jumped along the dagger. Rami prepared for the questions, for the inquisition of Claire's logical mind that would poke holes in what was surely a false hope, but none came. Instead, Claire considered the crown at his feet before raising her gaze with a hungry kind of certainty. \"I'd say, when do we leave?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 35",
                "text": "\u2002There is no library of secrets. Secrets cannot be kept or curated. Secrets have no need for a library, but each library needs secrets. Books are a secret hidden in plain sight. Read me, they say. Look at me. Turn my pages. Touch my spine. Read my words, and content yourself.\n\n\u2002Every book is a secret that only readers know.\n\n\u2014Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 904 CE\n\nHis tongue tasted like wicked death itself.\n\nHero's first awareness was that he was gagging. He coughed, and his lips felt slippery. His body recoiled with the force of his next cough, and he smacked his cheek into the gritty, solid surface beneath him. Everything was black. Everything was black and melting and he couldn't breathe, couldn't hear for the screaming in his head. He couldn't see. It took him several long moments to consider opening his eyes. It took him several long moments to remember he had eyes.\n\nWhen he opened them, it wasn't much of an improvement.\n\nIt was dark, dark enough that it took a minute until Hero's eyes began to adjust and pick out the vagaries of his surroundings. Long panels of flat ground stretched out in front of where he lay prone. His arm protested as he reached out, but the surface felt smooth beneath his fingertips, with a dry grain. Wood, perhaps. It had to mean he was at least somewhere civilized. He rolled to his knees, feeling a slick, oily ache both inside and out.\n\nCivilized, Hero amended, but abandoned. The light was practically nonexistent, but a diffuse glow came off the dust that sifted through the stale air. It painted the space in twilight that was one step above midnight. The light-tainted dust was everywhere, drifting around Hero in spectral blooms. It cast weirdly soft shadows on the dark crags and unidentified shapes that surrounded him. Hero might have thought he was trapped in some deep, stalagmite-strewn cave, if it weren't for the paneled floor beneath him that reminded him of the Library.\n\nThe Library.\n\nHero's hand went to his coat. He ferreted over the pockets with rising panic until he located a familiar rectangular lump in an inside pocket. He had his book, safe and sound. But a barb of memory trailed the relief. The pen nib hovering over a blank page, a clot of black on his lips and a rotting feeling behind his eyes, hundreds of voices almost but not quite drowning out Claire's scream.\n\nThe ink. Remembering felt like falling. He could recall it now, the drowning sensation as his throat filled with ink, the eerie warmth as it swept over his skin like a whisper, the whispers, like an ocean surf, washing over him until the question rotted through him inside out.\n\nWho are you? Who are you?\n\nBile scaled his throat, centering him enough to slow his breathing. The ink hadn't accepted him at all; it had rejected him and done something to him and his book. Sent him somewhere, wherever here was.\n\nHe got unsteadily to his feet and breathed in another luminous cloud that made him cough. The soles of his boots scraped invisible grit against the floor, and it echoed across the space like a growl that was quickly snuffed out. Silence, silence so complete that Hero's own breath was a bleat in his head.\n\nUnease curdled in his stomach, but Hero shoved it aside with the rest of his aches. His book was part of the Unwritten Wing's Special Collections. He would find his way out, or at the absolute worst, he would be recalled when Claire reported he was missing.\n\nThe scream echoed in his head again and Hero winced. He could only guess what the others might think, what Claire and Rami might think. That he'd planned it, that he'd run away. Claire's disapproval would be insufferable, but he could make it right. He could make it all right as soon as he made his way back to the Library.\n\nThe resolve forced his foot across the floor, feeling for a path. It caught on what might have been a rock, and Hero stumbled directly into the crag to his left with an audible groan. Even braced for impact, it was not the hard collision with rock that Hero had been expecting. Hero righted himself and tentatively ran his fingertips over the surface.\n\nA thick layer of the barely glowing dust was on everything, but beneath it his fingers found a pliant leather. He followed a seam until his fingertips hit a ruffle of pressed fibers, leaves that fluttered under his fingertips. It was a feeling he'd had opportunity to familiarize himself with lately, and such a shock that he gasped in a breath. His lungs filled with dust and sent him coughing to his knees again, dragging part of the pile down with him.\n\nIt stirred up enough dust to illuminate his lap when he'd recovered. Enough to see what was in front of him.\n\nBooks\u2014piles, acres, caverns, a mass grave of books. Piles, jumbled as if they'd dropped from the ceiling, waved and crested around him with no rhyme or reason. Books splayed on their spines, pages bent, covers torn; others appeared completely untouched. All sharp edges made soft by the colony of dust muffling everything.\n\nAbandoned books had a scent. It clung to Hero's tongue and gilded his lungs with dust and regret. It wasn't precisely an unpleasant smell, no hint of mildew or rot. These books hadn't been abused, but simply forgotten. Gauging by the dust, Hero might have been the first creature to set foot in this place in centuries. Altogether, it gave Hero a terrifying suspicion of where he was.\n\nThe Dust Wing of the Library was not mentioned many times in the Librarian's Log. And when it was, it was mostly under the emotional subheading of NOPE. It was the wing to which books that were written but forgotten, lost, or destroyed were consigned. A graveyard of humanity's stories. No librarians to care for them, no patrons to peruse the stacks, simply the books and the dark of oblivion.\n\nWhen Hero had read about it, he'd enjoyed the feeling of delightful horror. A boogeyman for unwritten books. An idea to give one a delicious shiver before going about one's day.\n\nThe reality was far colder.\n\nThe ink should have created something with his book, not damned it. Not sent him here, where no books return from. It was illogical, and Hero gratefully grasped onto the irritation in preference to other, darker emotions curdling in his chest. Illogical, an affront he would have to complain about at length when he got out of here.\n\nWhen he got out of here.\n\nThe charade of that idea required movement. Hero stumbled to his feet. He picked a direction, trying and failing to chart a way through without stepping on any books. It was impossible. Canyons and hillocks of books stood in his way in any direction. Leather covers slipped under his toes, and pages crinkled and tore under his heels. Little destructions, tiny deaths passing in silence for those already long forgotten.\n\nHe'd half expected the damage to stir something up. Wake up a book. Surely these poor blighted creatures couldn't be so lost that they wouldn't try to send out a character to save themselves. But as Hero struggled through a leaning arch, the only thing he could hear was his labored breath, and that would definitely drive him mad before the dust did.\n\nSo, he started to mutter under his breath the first thing that came to mind.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a man...\"\n\nHero's eyes had adjusted to the gloom by now and could make sense of the terrain. It wasn't all leather-bound books here, not like the Unwritten Wing. With no readers to reach for, each text arrived in its original state as on Earth. There were books and folios, scrolls and hides, stories told in tribal knot work and stories etched in bone. Though they were few, bits of hypertext even drifted mist-like among the higher columns of rubble. Leto had told Hero only enough about the internet to give him a vague idea, but even humankind's most prolific, infinite libraries still let stories slip through the cracks of time.\n\nHundreds, thousands, millions of stories. Lost like Hero was. He tucked his chin in his chest and tried again.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a very handsome, clever man who was unfairly called a villain. Although he did nothing but speak common sense and see what needed to be done, his acts of charity were never understood and therefore he was a villain. It was all quite unfair, so one day he said to hell with the rules and...\"\n\nA sigh shattered the silence, which had been so complete, the slightest noise sounded like a gunshot. Hero jolted, plastering himself to the cliff face of books so hard he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. He coughed, and his eyes watered as he took in a lungful of neglect. For a moment, faces appeared in the haze. A chin, wide eyes. An open mouth. When he wiped his eyes and could finally see again, they were gone. It'd been a trick of imagination, wishful thinking. He couldn't start dredging up ghosts now, or he'd never get out of here.\n\nHero cleared his throat again. \"Once upon a time there was a man...\"\n\nIt was a story. It wasn't his author's story, not even his book's story; he couldn't even remember how that started anymore, but maybe this was more important: it was his story.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a man who made very bad mistakes. No, that's not right. He made very bad decisions. And so was a very bad man.\"\n\nA rise of crumpled hides dropped off to a slick descent of scrolls that Hero had to navigate on his hands and knees. He half slid, half fell to the bottom, bringing half a dozen scrolls down with him and a scattered shower of papyrus flakes. When he managed to unbury himself, he realized he'd slid to the foot of a clearing, bordered on all sides by massive, cresting waves of forgotten books. It would be a long, fruitless struggle up in any direction. As if Hero even had a direction. Shadows played at the tops, fluttering between drifts of hypertext fragments like blackbirds. It gave him the feeling of a hundred eyes, being watched. Or perhaps, being listened to.\n\nThe weight of it caught up with him. Hero sighed and sagged down onto a rubble of tablets.\n\n\"Bad men are not wrong, you see. But simply bad, bad at being an expected kind of man. Bad at playing their role in stories. So this man had a thought to change the story, for he was also a very foolish man.\"\n\nThe dark was descending now. Like ink seeping across paper. The illusion dragged the memory out of him, the ink rotting across his pages and the way Claire's face turned to him etched with horror. The shadows were drifting down the rubble, swaying and coalescing with the glowing dust to take spindly, drawn-out shapes. Hero shook his head and closed his eyes, as if that had ever worked to make phantoms go away.\n\n\"He set out to change the story, but that's not how stories work. He changed instead. Entirely by accident, and not always for the better. And it came to pass that this very bad, very foolish man wasn't quite sure what kind of man he was anymore.\"\n\nA breath of sound fluttered around him again. It was airy, but not quite a sigh. More like an intake of breath. A scroll shifted against the toe of his boot, and when Hero opened his eyes it was his breath that snagged. Half a dozen figures stood at the base of the cliff. \"Figures\" was the only term to use, because there was nothing else definable about them. Their faces lacked the definition of skulls, their lips no more than a faded smudge of ink. Crumpled shadows where their eyes should have been. Their spindly legs faded out to nothing just above the dust-creased paper. Figures, gone fuzzy with no one to clearly hold them in their mind's eye. Stories, lost with no one to read them.\n\nThey didn't move, and neither did Hero. When he was able to breathe again, it wasn't fear that swept over him, but sympathy. A deep, infinite sadness at the loss and the slow kind of death that awaited him, and all books, here.\n\n\"And with no one to tell him otherwise, he clung to his story,\" Hero said in a whisper. \"Because story was all he thought he had. And that's how... how he got lost. Somewhere along the way of searching for a story, he'd wandered off the path and into the dark woods. And he discovered perhaps what he had wanted wasn't a story at all.\"\n\nMore figures multiplied out of the drifts, creating a slowly shrinking ring around him. They drew close enough that Hero's voice took on a confessional nature by necessity. He studied the torn pages at his feet and wrapped his arms around himself, tight. He barely noticed the square press of his book into his ribs anymore. He'd wandered so far off the page.\n\n\"A very bad man had made mistakes, and bad choices, but they'd led him into a life. And a life, while also a story, is also something quite different.\"\n\nThe light grew until it was almost a half twilight, glowing dust collected and limning the silent audience around him. A shiver, more of a bare impression of fingertips than an actual hand, curved under his chin and raised his face. The figure in front of him was slightly more distinct than the others, perhaps younger with less dust on their book. They had holes for eyes, but somewhere inside the socket of black there was a flicker. Almost color. Navy against black, Hero thought. They'd had blue eyes once.\n\n\"A life is a question.\" Hero paused, but there was no recognition. No flicker of kinship. The figure waited. Hero wet his lips. \"And then what happened?\"\n\nA whisper, almost like long-coming release, ruffled the air with frost around him. The charcoal smudge that was the figure's mouth trembled, then parted. The glowing dust increased, swirling in eddies as figures opened their mouths, drew in breath.\n\nAnd Hero listened."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 36",
                "text": "\u2002If I am to remake the Library, then it follows that I am to remake the librarians as well. No use modeling ourselves after the human equivalent\u2014in my time, the only reason I had the education I did was because of the wealth and status of my family. Even then, I would never have been made a scholar in charge of learning. Scholars are more hungry for control and the blessings of the powerful than for knowledge.\n\n\u2002So this is my charge: We will be librarians. True to the books, but even more important, dedicated to those who have yet to read them. Understand that our duty does not end at the edge of a page. Stories must serve the living, not the reverse. If knowledge is freedom, then we must be chain breakers. If there's one thing I learned from the specter of my predecessor, it is this: to be a librarian is to be in rebellion against time, against the world.\n\n\u2014Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 612 CE\n\nClaire wasted precious time with another visit back to the Library. She couldn't quite believe Brevity had abandoned them\u2014it\u2014abandoned it, Claire corrected. She couldn't believe that Brevity would abandon the Library, the books, the damsels who relied on her. It wasn't like her, not the Brevity Claire knew. Thought she knew.\n\nBut there was no denying the dust. Brevity's books lay open. The tea that had been merely abandoned earlier had now grown cold and silt sifted. There was a muddy boot print on the blotter. Brevity hadn't even locked up the Library\u2014the logbook was buried underneath a dynasty fantasy she'd been repairing. Claire pulled it out by the edge and studiously ignored the feeling that she was snooping. She'd had thirty years to stare at this book; she'd earned the right to updates.\n\nThe book fell open on her lap, fluttering to a specific page with an almost lazy murmur of pages. The latest entry was written in Brevity's loopy, shy hand:\n\nLog entry number whatever. I'm not even sure I should be writing this down. Is it muse business or Library business? I'm not certain anymore, and there's no one to ask. Maybe that's why I'm writing it here.\n\nIt almost feels like reporting to boss again. Claire. She doesn't like it when I call her boss anymore. If she would just talk to me, we could be doing this together. Probity is so certain that this ink will unlock muses, turn us from conduits to creators. She's so certain. I'm not, but isn't it worth the risk? Isn't it what's best for the books? We could get them written, remake what was lost. If ink is what remains of the lost books, then I want to give them that chance.\n\nClaire's isolated herself. Hero's not here. Probity's like a sister; I shouldn't feel alone. But it's like she's seeing past me, six months into the future or six years into the past. When I'm here. And trying.\n\nI'm trying. I have to try.\n\nClaire smoothed out the parchment under her fingertips before closing the book softly and returning it to its proper place in the bottom right-hand drawer. The faerie lights that lined the fronts of the stacks held back the gloom with a cheer that she didn't feel. The Library was a sigh, without a librarian here to draw a new breath. The books beckoned, tempting Claire to wander in. She could make up a purpose, to speak to the muses, to do a patrol of the stacks since Brevity had left them so abandoned. But there was only one book she was looking for, and she wouldn't find it here.\n\nIf only Claire would talk to me...\n\nClaire retrieved the log, picked up the pen, and was writing before she could think whether it would even work. She was part of the Library, but not the Unwritten Wing's librarian anymore, and this was the Librarian's Log. But she wanted\u2014needed\u2014to take a step toward bridging that gap and fixing what she'd been too self-pitying to notice had been broken in the first place. She pressed the nib to the paper and experienced a watercolor of relief and bitterness as the letters streamed out behind it.\n\nI have made many mistakes, but I will try to right them before it costs the Library any more. Ramiel believes he can track our lost character and his book. The Arcane Wing will dedicate every resource to this attempt, in assistance to the Unwritten Wing. We will find him.\n\n\"Claire?\" Rami hesitated at the threshold, as if realizing she was in a conversation that was both crucial and silent.\n\nClaire hesitated, then signed the log.\n\n\u2002I'm sorry. I will do better. You deserve better.\n\n\u2014Arcanist Claire Juniper Hadley\n\nShe straightened more slowly after she set down the pen. Her gaze trailed along the desk to land on a familiar scalpel that Brevity had been using in repairs.\n\nClaire shoved it in her skirt pocket on impulse. \"You are certain you have a trace?\" She raised her chin, as if Ramiel's mysterious certainty wasn't all that was keeping her together at the moment.\n\n\"I am.\" Rami held up a puff of silver clutched in one fist. The feather looked less substantial plucked from his coat, but it was imbued with a kind of light that wafted it in a decisive direction.\n\nShe didn't have permission. She was injured and stained by malicious ink. She didn't believe it could work. She had responsibilities. She had fears. There was an abundance of reasons why she should sit this one out. But it had been her hands that had caused this. Her hands that had cut down a man, stamped a wrist, woken the Library, held a sword, wiped away pages turned to ash.\n\nColor whirled like a wet smear every time she turned her head. The tourniquet of inspiration on her arm was a mere bead of blue now. The ink did not feather or thin beyond it, but glistened. She was carrying the stain of what her hands had done in her skin. It was time to see it through. She owed Hero that much at least.\n\nShe tucked her clean hand in Rami's elbow. \"Let's be off, then, before the damned fool gets the idea to run away.\"\n\nRami nodded softly, giving her a look that said her defensive calm was as thin as rice paper. He made sure Claire had a tight grip on his arm, then held up the feather and blew on it as if it were a dandelion. He closed his eyes, and an undeniably soft look came over his face, one that made an echoing ache in Claire's chest. It was a familiar look to read. He was thinking of Hero, and she'd never stopped.\n\nThe feather trembled, and light muddled off it like smoke, swirling briefly around them both before appearing to catch a breeze. Claire had focused on the feather so much, she barely registered the shuffle and shift of movement behind her until a familiar downy touch brushed her outside shoulder. Rami's trench coat had parted to reveal\u2014or perhaps become\u2014an impossible fractal of gray wings that Rami certainly had not exhibited before. They arched over her head protectively, and Claire had just enough time to give one gasp of wonder before they flexed, and the solidity of the Library spiraled into smoke and light."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 37",
                "text": "Traveling by angel was a quite different experience than traveling by mist, raven, or ghostlight. The roads between realms that Claire was familiar with were meandering, as all deaths were. Dying bodily was fast, fast as a snapped neck, a stopped heart, but death was a ponderous logistic of the soul. Claire had assumed all travel in the afterlife was the same.\n\nClaire had assumed wrong.\n\nThe Library did not so much fade from around her as shatter. There was a pulling sensation, and the world\u2014multiple worlds\u2014appeared in fractals around her, as if she were trapped inside a giant prism, each glimpse of reality only a shard, and sharp enough to cut. Metal spires of buildings, burnished shields of longhouses, reedy beaches and sun-bleached stone, pearl whites and dried blood and silver and brass and gold. Claire didn't have time to fear, because she was being pulled along, dragged by Rami's presence at her side, which she felt more than she could see. They were spiraling through time and space and either one could reach out and shatter her at a moment's notice. She was subsumed in potential. It was positively terrifying and enthralling, and the last remaining jagged edge of Claire's reason released something in her chest that felt dangerously close to joy.\n\nSo when the fractal shard of shadows took them, it felt like being split in two. The transition from light to dark was a wallop, and threw her from Rami's grasp. She hit the ground at a roll, surface flexing and sliding beneath her until she came to a stop. Claire sucked in a breath and came up coughing.\n\n\"Claire!\" Rami's hand landed heavily on her shoulder. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nA serpent of dust and decay had coiled itself around Claire's throat. She gagged, forehead pressed against her palm as she tried to force a breath. She finally could croak, \"Nothing about that was all right, but thank you.\"\n\n\"I'm just glad you held on.\" When Claire looked up, she could make out the dimmest distinct blur that was Rami, against the dark. Somehow, light was seeming to drift and settle on his outline, at least enough to see that his wings were gone, folded back into his trench coat or his subconscious or wherever fallen angels kept their wardrobe these days. \"Those paths aren't made for humans.\"\n\n\"So I gathered.\" Claire grumbled again, in order to clear her throat. \"The poets continue to get everything about Heaven and angels wrong.\"\n\n\"They do.\" Rami sounded infinitely relieved to be complained at. He stayed crouched by her until Claire was drawing somewhat regular lungfuls of dusty air. \"We are here, though I can't say where here is, precisely.\"\n\n\"That would require being able to see,\" Claire muttered.\n\n\"I'm managing,\" Rami admitted mildly. Why, yes, of course an angel could see in the dark. She sniffed.\n\nClaire finally managed to get her feet under her and try to assess their surroundings. It did not bode well that a being as old as Rami didn't know where they were on sight. From the slip and shuffle of the material under their feet, they had landed on a great heap of something or other.\n\nSimilar monstrous bulks were just barely illuminated in the gloom. The dust floating through the air appeared to be its own light source, well dispersed but utterly insufficient for the task of lighting their surroundings. Claire held on to Rami's offered hand for balance as she turned her attention to the ground. She reached down and ran her hand over the slippery bits beneath her feet.\n\nLeather, scuffed and rotted at the edges enough to come away with her fingertips. And then paper, fragile as ash and torn just as easily. Claire took in a sharp breath. \"It's a library.\"\n\nShe couldn't make out Rami's expression in the dark, but the gentle snort was unmistakable. \"It's in shambles. Who would allow a library to reach such a state?\"\n\n\"No librarian or book lover, that's for certain.\" Claire was preoccupied with trying to chart the slope of the pile they were on top of. It seemed to stretch on forever, but a downward slope grew slippery until her feet hit a puddle of damp. A familiar bloom of mold and mashed pulp hit her nose and Claire gagged again. \"Oh gods, the poor books.\"\n\n\"Hero has made you empathetic,\" Rami said quietly, and Claire was coughing too much to deny it. She shook her head until she could breathe again.\n\n\"Water, dust, mildew, time. Gods, this should be Hell's Library. It's torment for books.\" She fished a mostly dry page out of the pile and squinted with futility. \"Rami, grab the opal from my bag; it's crusted to a finger bone\u2014don't ask. Catholics are weird about their relics. There you go\u2014that's better.\"\n\nClaire pinched the dry bone between her fingers so she could bring the gem welded to the end up to her eye. Her vision illuminated, as if someone had turned on a dim light, though everything was narrowed to the pinpoint of a single pane of cut stone she could manage to see through.\n\nThe page was like tissue in her hand, and Claire held it up, trying to make out the words. The ink on the page was old, and the language something full of sharp joining lines that Claire could only guess was Assyrian. It didn't change for her. Claire took a breath and bent down to grab a different sample, this one a mostly complete scroll. She unwound it, struggling to be careful as a dread rose in her. The text on the scroll ran top to bottom, possibly an ancient form of pinyin, but that was Claire's wildly uneducated guess. In her wing, books translated themselves.\n\nThe scroll dropped out of her suddenly nerveless fingers. She lowered the gem from her eye, dropping the curtain of shadows around the room again. It hurt to breathe.\n\n\"Claire?\" Rami's voice was soft at her side. \"Do you have a guess where we are?\"\n\n\"We don't have to guess.\" Claire's voice was unsteady. \"Though I'm not surprised now that you didn't recognize it. No one comes here; no one should be here, least of all Hero. Rami, this is the Dust Wing.\"\n\nThe understanding registered as a startle of breath in Rami's otherwise solid-as-stone presence. He shifted, and Claire supposed he was uneasily scanning the half dark, trying to catch any movement. \"Hero is here?\"\n\nHe sounded uncertain, as if he suddenly wanted to doubt his own tracker skills. That would surely be a more comfortable thought than the idea of Hero here, injured or dying or lost in a mausoleum of forgotten books.\n\nClaire didn't allow herself any such comforts. Concern was raw in her throat. \"Of course he is. Your abilities led us here, so here is where we will find him. We will find him.\" She repeated it, mostly to herself, despite the way it undercut her certainty.\n\nWater soaked through the toe of her sneakers. Claire straightened, squinted against the dark until she could be certain she wasn't about to walk off a cliff, and strode off in a random direction. \"Get your little feather out, angel. We are going to find him.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 38",
                "text": "They made their way in the dark, stumbling over gullies of shredded parchment, swamps of rotted paste, led by the slender waft of the feather in Rami's palm. Rami said nothing, but Claire's head was filled with an unending scream.\n\n\"The trail leads this way,\" Rami said, starting up a precarious-looking slope. Claire took a step to follow but halted as a shiver came over the air. A thunder of falling books rang out behind them, accompanied by an unholy screech. Abruptly, the ground beneath them shifted. It didn't move, not in the physical sense, but the books beneath them shivered, throwing the accumulated dust up into the air and painting the dim world in an incomprehensible fog.\n\nPerhaps it was a matter of familiarity; perhaps it was an instinct honed after three decades in the Library; perhaps it was a sympathetic echo between unwritten writer and unremembered books, but Claire knew in an instant that there'd been a loss. A book of the Dust Wing had been further disgraced, dismantled, destroyed. She pivoted, wheezing and straining to see through the dust, but nothing else moved.\n\nUntil the scream. It was wordless, cut off, but it was also, undeniably, Brevity's voice.\n\nClaire spun to Rami, wide-eyed with alarm. \"That was Brev.\"\n\nRami didn't question it, didn't ask how she could possibly be certain. And for all that, for his stoic, buoyant belief that held her up like a life raft, Claire loved him a little more. He nodded and measured the drift of the feather in his cupped palm.\n\n\"Go. Find Brevity. Do your duty.\"\n\nClaire's heart jumped, and she felt torn in two. \"But Hero\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll find our wayward man,\" Rami said with a gentleness that seemed to expand his care for the entirety of the Library. \"He can't be far. Go. You need to do this. I'll find Hero and we'll find you.\"\n\nIf the soft gravel of Rami's voice had been an ounce less certain and made of stone, Claire couldn't have done it. If his eyes had been a smidge harder and not full of love\u2014for her, for Hero, for what horrible mistakes had brought them here in the darkness\u2014Claire couldn't have trusted it. But he touched her face in the light-limned dust and she impulsively went to her toes, pressed a kiss to his cheek, and flung herself down the bleak, slippery incline."
            },
            {
                "title": "BREVITY",
                "text": "\u2002'A reader doesn't mark his life by days but by memories. A book doesn't mark its life by pages but by readers. We are made up of those whom we touch.' \u2014Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 2017 CE\n\nThe wind and weft of light left them suddenly, and Probity's grip on Brevity's hand twitched her forward a moment before Probity's magic swept closed at their backs. Goose bumps immediately pricked at Brevity's bare shoulders.\n\nIt wasn't dark. No place that held stories could be dark to a muse, but it was dim. Dimmer than it should have been. The books beneath her feet were quiet as pavers. Instead of lashing auras of color, they merely glowed, weak. The light of their story barely dribbled over their surfaces. Brevity hadn't thought stories could wither, not like this.\n\nBut then she looked up and realized all she had thought was wrong.\n\nThey were in a forest, of sorts. Everywhere, books lay open on the floor and their pages were unstitched, folded and torn until wafts of barely connected paper drifted up in a fine column, freed of the sensible logic of gravity. Every couple of feet, another mutilated book bloomed paper that drifted in place like a sea of kelp on an ocean floor. Brevity gasped, and the nearest frond shivered. Against the dark and the dim glow, it was like standing in a forest of ghosts and bone.\n\n\"Is this the Dust Wing? Who did this?\" Brevity turned and found Probity watching her. The ink-bleached muses were animated since they stepped through, straining at the ends of their makeshift leashes to lunge for the nearest drifting tendrils of paper.\n\n\"No one's allowed in the Dust Wing, of course,\" Probity said, completely ignoring the contradiction in her presence. She hesitated, then covered the hesitation by yanking on the leashes impatiently. \"The books do this to themselves.\"\n\n\"No way.\" A frond of shredded paper drifted close enough to brush Brevity's hand. She startled away. \"It's mutilation. No one would do this to themselves.\"\n\n\"Not even a character who woke up to find themselves entombed in the dark for the infinite reaches of time? Even books can go mad with enough isolation; you know that.\" Probity gave her a sad, pointed look.\n\nThe idea refused to sink in, then settled on Brevity like a layer of cold iron. Books can go mad, like anything sentient, Claire had told her once. It was why every wing of the Library required a librarian. Not just to keep the books from escaping, but to curate, and attend.\n\nNo one could tolerate oblivion alone.\n\n\"Why?\" Brevity whispered brokenly. The book at her feet had split in two, pages lost long ago.\n\n\"Because humans are agents of decay,\" Probity said. Her voice had been soft, gentle, but hardened to steel. \"I've been trying to tell you since I arrived, sis. Humans are the reason the Dust Wing exists. We gave them the power of creation\u2014something only gods have\u2014and they spit on it. They don't deserve it. It's time we take it back.\" And Probity let her hold on the leash go slack.\n\nGaiety and Verve stumbled and appeared to pause, noses in the air\u2014well, one nose, since Gaiety's face was blank\u2014before lunging. They tore into the nearest fronds of damaged paper with a gluttony of violence. The sound of shredding and chewing covered Brevity's cry, and Probity held up a hand when she started forward.\n\n\"Careful, now, best not get between them and their meal.\"\n\n\"They're not meals; they're stories. We're supposed to protect them.\"\n\n\"Humans sealed their fate long ago. They're not stories; they are just corpses.\" Probity's eyes glittered in the twilight as she intently watched the pale muses rip shreds of paper and bring them to their faces. Verve swallowed greedy mouthfuls whole, but Gaiety made a grating noise of frustration as his hands encountered his ink-erased face. Probity stepped forward, a scalpel suddenly in hand, and sliced across Gaiety's blank chin. A gap appeared in a bloom of black ink, and scissored razor teeth beyond. Probity stepped back, satisfied. \"It's a worthy sacrifice if it shifts the power in the right direction.\"\n\n\"Your direction,\" Brevity clarified. She shook her head, feeling helpless as Verve followed the frond of paper and began to try to gorge herself on the book whole. \"Prob, this is against everything we are.\"\n\n\"I've heard that before,\" Probity said, anger inching an edge into her voice. She broke her intent study of the ink-sopped muses to frown at Brevity. \"Didn't they say the same thing when you took a stand and kept a line of inspiration for yourself?\"\n\n\"That wasn't a stand! That was\u2014\" Brevity clasped her bare forearm. A vile feeling roiled up in her throat, but it was all pointed inward. \"It was an act of desperation. A mistake.\"\n\n\"It wasn't. Don't you dare say that!\" Probity yanked the leashes as she turned, entreating, toward Brevity. \"I can't believe she made you believe that! This is all because of that old librarian; she's human, Brevity! She's not your friend!\"\n\n\"I can understand the doubt. All appearances seem to indicate otherwise,\" a gravely amused voice came from behind her. A waft of paper parted, and a silhouette struggled through the darkness, taking care not to step on fractured books. \"Yet here I am, for some reason.\"\n\n\"Claire!\" A tangle of contradictions flooded Brevity. Relief, worry, then abject horror that Claire was here, at the center of Probity's ire.\n\n\"You shouldn't be here.\" Probity's tone was streaked with ice.\n\n\"None of us should,\" Claire said pointedly. \"But I'm trying to atone for my mistakes.\"\n\n\"Atone? Your sins are many, human. Valiant of you to try.\" Gaiety and Verve lurched on their leads again, having shredded and consumed every book within reach. Probity tilted her head, considering for a moment. \"How about I lend you a hand?\"\n\nThe leashes fell from her grasp, and the cold that rushed Brevity's veins seemed to slow time. Gaiety torpedoed in the direction he'd been pointed\u2014straight at Claire. Verve, however, still had eyes and a hunting instinct. The feral muse darted away and quickly disappeared through the forest of dead books. Gaiety crashed into Claire, claws out. Claire barely managed to grapple at his wrists. Protect the books; protect the human. Brevity had a moment, just a moment, to decide what to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 40",
                "text": "\u2002I'll explain this once, and only once, because just writing this down gives me the willies, frankly. The Unwritten Wing is where stories exist before humans know them, but there's a wing for after as well. A wing for after, when stories die. When the last copy of a book is burned or the last fond memory of a folktale fades from an old man's mind. When pages are used for scrap and fodder. When gold embellishments are ripped off as bounty of war. When the light on all possible pages of a story goes dark, that's when a book's life ends.\n\n\u2002But like humans, that's not the end. The afterlife for a lost book is quiet, and final. An eternal sleep in the Dust Wing, never to be read again. No books wake up there; nothing stirs. It is perhaps the most final kind of death in all the afterlife realms.\n\n\u2002The death of a forgotten book.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE\n\nHero had never been a reader. Not in his own story, not outside it. Naturally, he could read, but he saw it merely as a convenient conveyance of information, a transportation device for the skills necessary to operate in the world. This opinion had only been reinforced upon waking and realizing he could scan any book other than his own and acquire skills that would have required years of mastery otherwise. It was handy, sometimes, being a creature of creation.\n\nBut it meant he had never understood reading. Not in the way Claire and Brevity seemed to revere it. He revered being read as a character of an unwritten book. Quite a lot. Though evicted from his book, he knew the singular awareness of life he felt being seen, being experienced. But he'd never been quite sure what the reader got out of it.\n\nHe came to an understanding in the Dust Wing. He was lost in a sea of dust and decay. Staying here would surely mean drowning, but stories reached out and offered him a life raft.\n\nIt was not like taking skills from a book, as he had before. Nor was it like as he remembered living his own story. It was not even reading, not with his eyes. Stories filled him like water into a sponge\u2014first he absorbed; then he overflowed. As he listened\u2014as he received\u2014story after story. Each one passed through him, yet left something behind. A suspicious voice, a desiring ache, a fierce demand, a lungful of bittersweet victory.\n\nIt was like recalling well-loved music; it was like training swordplay into your bones. It was like the meditative wistfulness of hunting. It was like the euphoric agony of running. It was like everything and like nothing, and it seeped deep into Hero's bones. He was the first reader the Dust Wing had had in\u2014well, perhaps ever, and every book that hadn't yet withered to the point of madness stretched out to him, eager to be known.\n\nIt overwhelmed him. Hero had always made a point to avoid other books\u2014he would never be caught in the damsel suite. He'd always held the uneasy fear that the presence of other characters, from unwritten books like him, would only remind him of what he could not do, could not have, could not be. Perhaps the ink had weakened him and poisoned his resistance, but he found the opposite was true. The Dust Wing poured its stories into him, and he felt nourished, not washed out.\n\nClaire had tried to explain what listening to a book's song was like, the lingering sense of possession even after a book was closed, but this wasn't that at all. Hero wrapped the stories around him like armor, not to become someone else but to see what he recognized in the mirror.\n\nThe only thing he lost was time. When he came back to himself, he was midway through a close-cut ravine of tablets and clay. The light-giving dust was thick enough here that he could see a couple of feet around him, and dust was like a thin layer of muted slate gray snow beneath his feet. The sharp cliff face of tablets to either side was jagged, not worn down by time. Hero supposed that was only logical; no natural formations of time and weather held sway here. It looked more as if a towering pile of tablets had grown until breaking under its own weight. It had split and crumbled, creating walls of jagged and tumbling artifacts that reached over his head.\n\nLike in the Unsaid Wing, the form of the text felt unnatural and wrong to him. Books should be friendly to the reader\u2014an enticing voice, paper, or even a flat-screen. These tablets were the wrong sort and unfriendly to the core. Not many spoke to him here, and his head was filled with only a susurrus of whispers. The silence might have been what drew his attention back. It was the only reason he heard the slow, ponderous grind of footsteps.\n\nIt was enough of a grounding sound to alarm Hero into action. He hunkered down against a spill of clay, just grateful that he'd been here long enough that the dust had frosted even his bright hair and clothing to dullness. The steps grew nearer, and only at the last moment did he think to snatch up a heavy clod of stone that must have broken off some greater slab. It was more cudgel than sword, but Hero hefted it anyway.\n\nThere was no helpful shadow cast in the dark, but the whispers receded in their own kind of warning. A broad figure emerged from a gully in the ravine, making their way, Hero noted, with a purposeful kind of shuffle that was more surefooted than he'd managed. Hero could only track his movement by the way the dust shifted in his wake. He'd been here long enough for another living creature to feel foreign, and the thought struck an absurd panic in him. As soon as the figure moved under him, Hero leapt with the rock over his head.\n\nIt was not an elegant attack\u2014Hero found himself embarrassed by the raw sound he made to ease his frayed mind\u2014but Hero had enough experience in combat to be efficient. Which was why when a fist closed around his throat and the world inverted, his back hit the ground with a grunt of surprise.\n\nHe flung his knee up, catching his assailant in the gut. The grip on his collar didn't loosen, but the curse he heard stopped his intentions of a follow-up move.\n\n\"Hell\" was the word, and Hero had heard it said often enough with self-righteous judgment and disdain to place the voice.\n\n\"Rami?\" He felt a subtle trace of feathers brush past his nose, and there was no containing his relief. His voice sounded cracked and thin as paper to his own ears and his eyes were alarmingly hot. \"Ramiel?\"\n\nThe hand at his throat let go and appeared to hesitate a moment before patting down his collar. \"You're a rather hard man to find,\" Rami finally said.\n\nThe dim light shifted as Rami backed off of him, but Hero felt plastered to the ground. He entirely ignored the sharp point of rubble that was beginning to make inroads into his ribs. \"How\u2014you\u2014what the hell are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Are you injured?\" Rami's voice sounded sharp, and he'd ignored Hero's sputtering entirely.\n\n\"Only my pride.\" Hero allowed Rami to clasp his arm and pull him to sitting, relishing discovering the warmth of Rami's hands all over again as they steadied him by the shoulder. He didn't try to stand. \"I thought\u2014\" He stopped, words clotted up in his throat like chalk. He hadn't thought. He'd known he was alone, would be left alone, and had only survived by not thinking. His head was full of other people's stories; his own felt distant. \"This is the Dust Wing,\" he said instead.\n\n\"Yes, I had begun to suspect as much,\" Ramiel said with that straight-faced calm that he used when he was amused. Then he asked again, \"Are you injured, Hero?\"\n\n\"Me? No. I\u2014\" Hero paused, considered the fragment of his thoughts, then tried for something more honest. \"I would be very glad to get out of here.\" His voice came out smaller than he'd intended.\n\n\"That's the plan.\" Rami shifted to a crouch, and Hero briefly lost track of him in the gloom. A day ago, he would have ridiculed the panic that spiked up in his gut simply by losing contact with someone he knew logically would not leave him, but that didn't stop him from gripping the feathers of Rami's trench coat and not letting go when he found them again. \"Claire and I split up, but I should be able to find her.\"\n\nThe questions stacked up behind Hero's tongue. He sputtered. \"Claire's here?\" No one should be here. No one came to this place. No one came for these books, least of all him. He shook his head, trying to order his thoughts into a way this made sense. \"How did you find me?\"\n\n\"I tracked you,\" Ramiel said with a curious kind of tone that made no sense to Hero. He moved on before Hero could question it. \"I don't think we're alone in here.\"\n\n\"We're not,\" Hero said with a vague gesture to the broken tablets.\n\n\"No, I mean\u2014\" Rami gave a helpless shrug. \"We should get moving.\"\n\nHero wasn't about to argue that point. Rami pulled him to his feet, and if he noticed how Hero clung a little too tightly to the back of his coat as they skirted their way down the embankment, he was circumspect enough to not say so.\n\nThey had nearly made their way out of the clay tablet canyons\u2014Hero could see scrolls and wood panels encroaching, like sedimentary layers of an archaeological dig\u2014when they heard a third pair of footsteps up ahead.\n\nRami held a hand up, though it was really unnecessary with Hero inelegantly clinging to his side. He took a tentative step into what seemed to impossibly be a darker puddle of darkness. \"Claire?\"\n\nRami kept his voice pitched low. There was no response, but the footsteps didn't slow or increase. Hero felt a chill prickle over his neck. Rami tried again. \"Claire? Brevity?\"\n\nBrevity's here too? Impossible. This was an impossible place to be in the first place, let alone by choice, and certainly not for Hero's sake. Hero wanted to ask, but he bit his lips instead to keep quiet. The footsteps were not heavy, but as they got closer Hero could make out a messy slurry with each step. As if something was scrabbling through paper and scrolls.\n\nIt grew closer, skittering around the corner. Hero felt Rami lean forward, squinting into the darkness. He jerked hard enough to throw Hero backward into a stumble. The sound of the sword clearing its sheath reached him, and the igniting of the blade threw light into the darkness like a grenade. Hero was momentarily blinded and paralyzed as he blinked away the stars.\n\nRami's broad shoulders were silhouetted by a white fire. It set each feather on his coat in contrast and for just a moment, Hero swore he could have seen wings. \"Rami?\" His voice was dry as paper.\n\n\"Stay back, Hero.\" Muscles twitched under Hero's fingers and tension sung through Rami's shoulders, translating down to the arm that held a sword pointed steady. Hero leaned around him and had to hold a hand up to block the light in order to see what threat had caused such a change.\n\nHe almost missed her. So pale she was almost drowned out by the light of Rami's sword, the girl hunkered just outside the brightest radius. Her shoulders were clenched up to her ears, one strap of her bleached clothes hanging off. Hero recognized the scrappy, eclectic kind of fashion mayhem. Brevity wore clothes like that.\n\nHe jolted forward. \"Rami, that's a muse\u2014\"\n\n\"No, it's not,\" Rami said as Hero grabbed his forearm, and really, his blade didn't even waver. It really was unfair, angels in general. Hero latched onto the trivial thought, because it was easier than what his eyes were trying to tell him was in front of him.\n\nThe girl did look like a muse of an indiscernible age. But muses were full of color\u2014even serious, intense Probity was painted in mint and sunshine colors. But this one was pale as bone, and just as sharp and thin. The light flickered over her and it almost seemed to pass through her, as if Hero could make out smudged impressions on the other side. That was impossible, but then so was the face she revealed when her head tilted up. Beneath ivory straw hair she had a blank expression, grayscale eyes glazed with a hunger-pang gloss. Her mouth was the only contrast when a snarl pulled back her lips to reveal rows\u2014rows\u2014of black, jagged teeth.\n\n\"Stay back,\" Rami warned with a sway of his blade.\n\nThe creature paused, glassily considered the sword point, and slowly closed her hand around it. The holy light leapt from the blade to her knuckles, but instead of burning, it danced over her bleached skin before twining up her wrist. The muse's razor-tipped smile widened.\n\nHero wasn't written to curse\u2014his author had probably thought it too lowbrow\u2014but what slipped out as the white muse stepped forward was a very heartfelt, fervent \"Shit.\"\n\nRami's grip on his arm tightened. \"Run.\"\n\nThey ran. Dust-dry scrolls crumbled beneath their feet as they scrambled. Rami's lit sword made shadows jump and frenzy around them with every step. They heard the muse's steps lurch into a ragged run behind them. The thought hit him that they had no way of knowing whether she was alone. Hero remembered the predator behavior of the lion Furies in Elysium. Every wild flinch of dark shadows could be another one of those things springing a trap. The image hit Hero hard: a white demon launching itself at Rami, black razor teeth tearing feathers and closing around his unprotected throat.\n\nThe sick fear kicked Hero forward, pulling him ahead as the scrolls crumbled and gave way to the canyon of clay tablets again. They fled past the spot where Rami had found Hero, and were running blind.\n\nBroken piles of shards rose around them, like menacing walls of teeth. Teeth behind them, teeth to either side. There was no time to consider their route. Hero didn't remember this path through the slate canyon, and he worried that at any moment the terrain would drop off or close in entirely.\n\nAlmost as he thought it, the teeth on either side of them began to draw closer, closing like a maw. The path beneath them began to slope up. The clay pieces were precariously balanced, and Rami with his heavier feet and frame was slowing down. Hero had to grab his shoulder as he stumbled. Clay shards clattered down the slope and momentarily masked the sound of the muse in pursuit. Hero's pulse wedged itself between his ribs for a nice panic attack.\n\n\"Climb, you great, dull bastard,\" Hero muttered, dragging on Rami's coat. The angel took another step and a cascade of clay dislodged beneath them, dragging them both down.\n\nRami arrested their slide by planting his sword. \"It's too steep.\"\n\n\"Then sprout some goddamned wings and fly,\" Hero growled. \"I don't think that creature behind us is coming to give us a boost.\"\n\n\"I keep telling you, not\u2014\" Rami winced as he stumbled hard to one knee. \"Not that kind of angel.\" He pressed to his feet and glanced above them. The blade lit them from beneath and threw his eyes into complete shadow. \"It narrows and levels out up ahead. Make it over the crest and there's enough space to lose her.\"\n\n\"Fantastic. After you, then\u2014\"\n\n\"It's too steep,\" Rami repeated grimly. Hero couldn't see his eyes. Why wouldn't Rami move so he could see his goddamned eyes? \"You go up that way. I'll find a different way around.\"\n\nRami had never endeavored to be a believable liar, and in Hero's opinion it was far too late to start now. He scoffed, but the sound was buried in the loud crunch of clay. The bleached muse came into view at the bottom of the rise. Hero had a moment of hope. \"Perhaps she'll have the same difficulty\u2014\"\n\nThe phantom girl scrambled again, then launched herself into the air. She cleared several meters, grabbed a ledge of clay jutting from the cliff side, and hung there like a gargoyle. A feral, hungry growl filled the air.\n\n\"...or not,\" Hero finished.\n\n\"You should go,\" Rami said. There was a cracking sound. The tablets appeared to start to disintegrate and wither everywhere the muse touched. Hero shuddered and had to suppress the memory of black ink rotting him from the inside, how it felt to melt away like that. The muse tracked him hungrily. Her perch wouldn't hold for long, and she was already eyeing the distance between them.\n\nFirst the bridge, now this. The tumult of fear in his chest boiled over into a desperate kind of anger. He grabbed the lapel of Rami's coat and hauled him an inch from his face. \"Listen here, you noble idiot, I don't have time to argue with you. You are an angel and angels do not sacrifice themselves for shitty characters of a broken book that is a dime a dozen anyway.\"\n\nRami's face was close enough that Hero could feel the warmth coming off his breath as he huffed. \"We can't both make it\u2014\"\n\n\"Maybe not. But angels do not give up and die in filthy trash heaps like the Dust Wing.\" Hero hesitated, and it felt like a sudden narrowing. The stories he'd let pass through him had left him hollowed, clean. Nothing mattered but the shadows of the second in focus, as if everything else had been a slow blur turning on this decision. Here. Now. Hero became aware of the breath he took, drawing in the air as it left Rami's mouth. Even that was warm. \"Angels don't do that. But books do.\"\n\nRami's mouth dropped open. \"What\u2014\"\n\nHell with it. Hero chased that breath and sealed Rami's lips with his own. He swallowed the words, swallowed the questions, swallowed the consequences and anything but the hot relief of finally, finally feeling right outside his story. Rami's lips were shock-stiff for half a second before turning supple, all-encompassing, and giving as infinity. Soft. Soft! Hero marveled. Such a stony, hard face, to have such soft lips.\n\nHero might have closed his eyes and died like this, but he caught a blur of movement as the muse launched herself at them, pale hands like claws. Hero already had Rami off-balance and by the lapels, so the turn felt natural. He waited until the last minute to shove him away, clear of the claws and teeth that descended on Hero's shoulder.\n\nHero fell backward, and his ears were filled with snarls as the muse grappled with him. Teeth needled his shoulder, and something trickled under his skin, worse than blood or ink. Rami gave a hoarse cry from somewhere in the dark, but Hero and the muse creature were made of lighter things. He ducked and threw her off, leaping for an outcropping of slippery shards that led her farther and farther up the cliff wall.\n\nAway from Ramiel.\n\nThe monster took the bait. It snarled and spurred after him until Hero ran out of options. The ledge was an isolated jut, and the accumulated clay began disintegrating to sand the moment the muse touched down. Past her feet, Hero could see light flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp through the dark as Rami tried to reach them.\n\n\"Nasty thing, aren't you?\" Hero touched the wound at his shoulder. He slowly backed up until his back hit the cliff face. He watched as the muse grew from her crouch, a bit of clay melting in her hand. She brought the sandy remains to her lips. The pieces clicked together for him. \"Or just hungry?\"\n\nSlowly, Hero reached into his vest pocket and withdrew his book. Every limb in the muse went rigid when the green cover of his book came into view. Hero held it to his chest warily. \"That's why you're here, isn't it? Hungry for a good story. But the dried-up old bones in this place aren't satisfying your appetite, are they? No, you want something juicy and fresh.\"\n\nHe stepped to the left, then the right, and the muse tracked the book like it was mesmerized. It made a parched, hungry little keen. Hero sighed. \"Pathetic, aren't you? I\u2014\"\n\nThis was Hero's revelation; it was really atrociously rude when the muse interrupted. She snarled and lunged, clearing the distance. She slammed Hero against the jagged cliff face, and claws scissored down on his throat.\n\nThe world became oblivion and black teeth as Hero grappled to keep hold of his book. Ink was filling his throat instead of air. He could smell the fast decay of leather and glue. The fight was inelegant; it was messy; it was stupid and ugly and contrary to every forgotten story that coursed, like fire, through Hero's veins.\n\nHe wrenched the book over his head. It startled the muse just enough to loosen her grasp on his throat, and Hero gagged a breath as he swung his arm down. \"Choke on it.\"\n\nHe swung for her face and punched the spine of his book straight into her open teeth. The scream that filled the air was thin and felt as if it went on forever. Hero couldn't say in the moment if it was the muse's or his own. Her weight was off his chest as she rolled away.\n\nNumbness crept across his skin, from shoulder to throat wound. It felt colder than blood or ink or even ice. He couldn't move from where he fell. The Dust Wing's stories surged and seared through his fading pulse. Lurching sounds of ripping, tearing, and ragged, wet swallows came from somewhere nearby as his book, his world, his life, his essence, was gnashed between rot-black teeth. And Hero stared, in his last moments, at his empty hands cupping the dark."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 41",
                "text": "\u2002What is a story without want, without need?\n\n\u2002Moreover, what is want, what is need, without a story?\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1896 CE\n\nRami had lost his wings in the fall. They all had, all the Watchers that had been cast out. Lucifer, when he'd rebelled, had been allowed to keep his wings. Rami had never thought that was very fair. But Watchers had cast their lot in with humankind, sympathetic to their plights. It was some kind of divine justice, he supposed, that they be earthbound with them.\n\nIt felt like a sin, then, that he would trade every human on Earth for the wings he needed to reach Hero right now.\n\nHe saw them clash and saw the open way Hero welcomed the attack. He saw the struggle, hands locked over the book, before they fell beyond sight of the ledge. There were horrible ripping sounds, and then there was silence, which was even worse.\n\nAnd Rami couldn't fly, couldn't even leap with the agility and grace that Hero had. He could only claw, one bleeding hand over the other, up a cliff of broken words with his heart held in his mouth.\n\nHe reached the outcrop in a breathless pain that had nothing to do with the air in his lungs. He made sense of the tableau he saw in pieces. The muse creature was near a crumbling ledge, hunkered over an empty space that had been a book. It raised its head sluggishly at his approach and its eyes were eerie, whiter than white. They were the white of snow on fire and made the black on her cracked lips more profane by comparison. She licked the ink off her pointed teeth with a delicate air.\n\nThe ignition of flames along his blade made her pupils shrink. Rami hadn't been aware of the moment he'd drawn it, but he was entirely in possession of the moment he decided to use it. The muse snarled, pale eyes streaming. Fissures formed along her skin, a colorless kind of wrongness revealing her fault lines. She lurched, but a full belly made her languid and slow. The tip of his sword caught her under the collarbone. Rami drove it home. She exhaled a long, relieved breath in his face, tickling his nose with the scent of leather and new paper enough to sting his eyes.\n\nWhen she fell, she'd changed from snow and bone to a paleness the consistency of spun sugar. Rami didn't care to watch her melt away. He sheathed his sword and turned to the shadows that clumped on the opposite side of the ledge.\n\nHero had fallen on his side. The sight made the remaining strength in Rami's legs fail him, and he reached the limp body on his knees. His velvet coat was torn, and the ragged edges were muddy with ink-dampened clay dust. It made a stiff kind of death shroud that cracked when Rami turned him and pulled him into his lap with shaking hands.\n\nA well of despair narrowed his focus. For a moment he didn't see, couldn't see, Hero's face. He saw ink stains on chapped, feral lips. An attack made sluggish by story. A pale concave belly that would fade and rot and take the mashed remains of a book with it.\n\nHero's hands were cupped, reaching. Always goddamned reaching, he was. For more, more, more. That should have been Rami's first hint, shouldn't it? That he was more than paper and ink and unreal dreams. The desire; the desire to know more, more, more. To be more. Hero had been screaming it, with every moment and every breath, but Rami hadn't seen it. It'd been so much easier to pretend to judge him.\n\n\"You didn't know, you didn't even... get to know.\" Rami wasn't sure what he was confessing, to Hero's forehead. There was a multitude of truths that Hero hadn't known, and several Rami hadn't had the time or the courage to say. And it wasn't just. He could whisper them now, into a dead man's hair, but what good would that do? Would it end anywhere that mattered? Would another letter appear in the Unsaid Wing to be forgotten, sniggered over by some later souls?\n\nSouls. The word made Rami bleed inside. One thing, then; one thing he had left that he could do. The prayer for a soul's rest was cracked on his lips, and each word tasted like ash. He folded Hero's arms one over the other and crossed them gently over the wounds on his chest.\n\nThe prayer was all he had left to hang on to, and Rami was so lost in it that he almost missed the pained gasp. He nearly dropped Hero when cold arms flinched under his own, and a different prayer was answered.\n\n\"God's tits, that hurts.\" Hero's voice was thin and broken. It appeared a momentous effort to curl his fingers away from the wound at his shoulder. He dragged in another lungful of air without opening his eyes.\n\n\"Hero.\" Rami was dumbstruck with the obvious. He froze, wanting to reassure himself by touching Hero's face but not certain the hallucination would hold up. \"Are you\u2014you can't\u2014your book\u2014\" Rami glanced over his shoulder in the bizarre impulse to confirm that the muse hadn't died and kindly reassembled Hero's book in the process. There was only ash swirling across the ledge.\n\nWhen he returned his gaze, Hero's eyes were open and he made a small groan. \"My book again. Claire's going to kill me. I\u2014\" Finally, the realization appeared to catch up with him. His eyes widened, glossy with shock, and his dry lips made a speechless moue.\n\n\"It's okay.\" Rami curled his fingers gently and prepared to reassure him. That his book was still gone and he was still here was a miracle, if an angel ever saw one, but it would be a shock and any normal man would reel to make sense\u2014\n\n\"Oh gods, I kissed you,\" Hero whispered.\n\n\"That's what upsets you?\" Rami struggled not to shove the man out of his lap, if only because he was afraid to let him go.\n\n\"Well, I didn't even ask, and that's really unacceptable. I'm a villain, not a coward.\" Some of the color came back to Hero's eyes as they ticked over Rami's face. \"Though I didn't anticipate you'd be this upset, or that I'd be here to see it.\"\n\n\"Hero...\" Rami searched for what came next and came up empty. It took effort to leave a several-millennia-old immortal speechless, but damned if he didn't manage it. Rami swallowed and finally allowed his fingertips to touch the familiar scars on Hero's cheek. \"Your book.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Hero said, closing his eyes, then opening them again suddenly. \"Oh.\"\n\nHe struggled to sit up, so Rami braced his arm beneath the injured shoulder until Hero could turn himself around. He surveyed the ash-smeared clay with a lost expression. \"She took it, ate the book\u2014\"\n\n\"I killed her.\"\n\nHero balanced on that fact until it became too heavy for him. He sagged against Rami completely. His weight was welcome and grounding for Rami, honestly. Someone that heavy was not going to fade away on him, not yet. \"It's gone,\" Hero said faintly.\n\n\"It seems that way.\"\n\n\"And I am still... here.\" Hero held up his hand and inspected it, though Rami knew he didn't have the dark vision that Rami did. Hero's fingertips squeezed over his eyes before hesitating at his own lips. \"I'm still here.\"\n\n\"You are,\" Rami repeated firmly, and would repeat until they both believed the impossible fact. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\"I feel...\" Hero's thoughtful expression did a complicated kind of acrobatics. \"I feel it. There's a... an empty space, but then there's so much noise.\" He risked a guilty glance at Rami. \"She took the book and there was\u2014 I fell. And then I... I listened. To the books. It was so loud, and then everything turned black; I heard whispers and my bloody hand hurt. And I got mad.\" He paused, running a thumb along the deep scratch that Alecto had given him, what seemed like several disasters ago to Rami. Hero looked rueful. \"Mad enough to get lost in the stories. I may have gotten into a spot of haunting before you showed up.\"\n\n\"That would figure.\" Rami measured Hero with caution. There would be quiet, later, when losses came back to a man. Hero would need to be watched. But they could be there for him. Rami could be there. \"Are you feeling able to move? Claire ran off to face another one of those things, I think.\"\n\nThat brought Hero's head up. He nodded quickly. \"My shoulder hurts like murder, but I'll manage.\" He accepted the hand Rami held out and pulled to his feet lightly. He pretended to dust flecks of clay from his coat, but Rami caught the way his gaze slid uneasily back to where the muse had died. \"Claire's here? How? How did you even find me?\"\n\nRami hesitated. It wasn't the time, it wasn't the place, but damn if he was going to withhold truth from Hero again. \"I tracked your soul,\" he said simply.\n\n\"My\u2014\" Hero did a double take. It was really a wonder his head didn't twist off. His confusion stirred a quiet fondness in Rami's chest. \"I have one of those? I can't! I'm a\u2014\" His gaze flickered back to the ashy ledge uneasily, and he whispered in a more subdued tone, \"I didn't think I had one of those.\"\n\n\"I think you do,\" Rami said, letting all his faith and certainty warm into the words. \"I know you do.\"\n\nA small knit appeared between Hero's brows and a ghost of confusion, a mere slice of the shock and the shifting of self-identity that Rami knew would come later, came into and went from his eyes. He followed Rami down off the ledge and slowed to match Rami's heavier pace with an uncharacteristic sedateness. He would have a lot to think about, Rami supposed.\n\n\"One thing...\" Hero muttered as they reached the bottom. Rami braced himself for existential questions he could not answer. \"It happened, didn't it? I kissed you?\"\n\nSurprise was another thing an old immortal was not used to. Laughter bubbled up in his throat, riding on a wave of his remaining fear and relief. He didn't laugh, but he turned to hide the softness of his smile. Hide the way his cheeks warmed. Thank goodness Hero couldn't see in the dark.\n\n\"Yes,\" Rami said with as much dignity as he could muster. \"I believe that did happen. Right before I kissed you.\"\n\nHero joined him on the ground, landing with more agility than any near-death survivor had a right to. He was smiling when he looked up, searching Rami's face before nodding once. \"Claire. Brevity.\"\n\nRami nodded. \"Let's go get them.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 42",
                "text": "\u2002The secret isn't about books at all. It's about people.\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1942 CE\n\nClaire's world had narrowed to pale claws and void-like needles of teeth. The creature snarled and spit in her face as its claws passed narrowly over her skin. The glove covering her inked hand was slippery, and it was difficult to keep her grip. Claire stumbled backward, and her foot shifted unsteadily against the slide of books. To keep her mind from panicking she tried to understand what she'd seen. Brevity, Probity, and two pale creatures on leashes. The monsters appeared vaguely humanlike but devoid of color. As if someone had reached down and merely sketched in a black-and-white negative of a person in their place.\n\nThey had been mutilating\u2014no, eating\u2014the books. The horror of that was all that Claire's mind had been able to take in before Probity had unleashed her pets. Claire had only the foggiest speculation of what they were, but from the way they'd swallowed pages whole, she suspected nothing good would come of the monster discovering the ink beneath her glove.\n\nThe creature had nearly succeeded in catching the hem of her glove with a razor finger when it was ripped away. She heard an inarticulate howl of rage wherever it had landed; then Brevity was there, pulling her to her feet. Horror, or regret, had paled her features almost as much as the other creatures'.\n\nThe similarities occurred to Claire all at once. \"Those are muses?\"\n\n\"What's left after the ink,\" Brevity said in clipped tones, as if already bracing herself for the worst. Claire hadn't been the only one driven to experimentation, and she had neither the time nor the inclination to judge. The beastly muse had gained his footing again before he lunged, clawing at Claire's hand.\n\nThe back of Claire's glove had torn, exposing the ink-stained skin to the air, and the muse zeroed in on it as if he could smell it. Claire backed up to put space between her and the creature, and he leapt an inhuman height through the air. Paper fronds of the dead books snagged and curled around his limbs like seaweed, but the muse had no interest in lesser snacks now that he'd found a prime source.\n\n\"I knew it,\" Probity said more to herself than anyone.\n\nBrevity was somewhere to Claire's right. \"Knew what?! Probity, we have to stop this!\"\n\n\"Stop it? Sis, don't you see? This is an opportunity! We have something better than an unwritten book or the dead things of the Dust Wing. This is justice.\"\n\nClaire couldn't spare the attention to see what she was doing. It was just enough distraction that she was too slow when the ink-bleached muse moved again. Claws snagged the fabric of her skirts and pulled Claire to the ground. Claire had a moment of enough awareness to shield her ink-stained hand against her chest before the feral muse was on her.\n\nTorn and moldered books slid underneath her. A torn chain of paper caught on her throat, and Claire had to writhe it off so she could breathe. At the very least, the creature seemed to have no interest in mauling the rest of Claire\u2014just her hand. He grappled with her, trying to flip her onto her back, and screeched his frustration in her ear. His breath was fouled with an acrid mix of pulped paper and the sour sweetness of rotted fruit.\n\nThere was arguing going on above, and a fretting sound she assumed was Brevity struggling to reach her, but the creature was a weight that ground Claire's cheek into the rubbish of books beneath her. The leather of an ancient and moisture-ruined cover stuck to her skin and delaminated away from its book like a bloated corpse. The most Claire could do was keep her hand curled, tucked beneath her breast as the muse's claws pierced their way through the skin and muscle of her back.\n\n\"Claire!\" A familiar voice cut through the haze of pain and replaced it with the cold shock of alarm. Hero's voice and the clatter of footsteps confirmed Rami was with him. But Hero was a character with an unwritten book in tow. It'd be like introducing blood into shark-filled waters. Claire writhed but couldn't twist enough to see more than the muse's claws.\n\n\"Stay back!\" Her voice sounded hoarse and small, smothered into the floor. She felt choked on dust. \"It eats books!\"\n\n\"Claire\u2014\" Hero's voice sounded closer. She felt the weight shift on her back, as if the monster was about to take note of the same fact.\n\nNo. A wild protectiveness seared the exhaustion out of her veins. Not him. Not if we got him back. She shoved against the floor, dislodging the muse off her shoulders at a moment of imbalance. She ripped her glove off as she stood and exposed her stained palm to the air. \"You can't have any of them.\"\n\nThe pale creature had skidded to his knees, ripping the tangling fronds of books with his teeth. He had half turned toward the direction of Hero's voice, but he caught sight of Claire's arm and froze. Claire was close enough to see the way a shiver passed over the surface of his featureless face.\n\n\"You can't have them,\" Claire repeated again. \"But it's the ink that's done that to you, isn't it? Developed a taste for it?\" Claire shakily raised the scalpel to her arm and slashed down. \"There's plenty here. Come, then.\"\n\nThe blade bit into her skin, precisely severing the thin floss of blue that hemmed black in. Claire barely registered as the inspiration flaked away from her skin and fluttered to the ground. Line of inspiration tourniquet broken, a cold flooded up her arm. Claire didn't want to see, but she looked down anyway. Bleak, inky liquid swarmed up her biceps and disappeared up her sleeve. She felt the odd kind of frost-prickled warmth slam into her ribs, ripping the breath out of her as it spread. It swept up her shoulder and chased goose bumps up her neck. Claire felt it when the ink seeped, a film of taint, into her eyes. Her vision went blurry, then dark and buzzing with multicolored serpents of shadow smothering everything.\n\nEverything except the cold that seized her as the ink wrapped around her brain, and her heart, and she lost herself in a scream."
            },
            {
                "title": "????",
                "text": "Once upon a time... No. That's not how the story began at all.\n\nStart again. From the beginning?\n\nOr the end. It matters not to us. Who is us?\n\nOnce upon a time... Something is missing.\n\nSomething is missing. Once upon a time. Something is missing. Once upon a\u2014 Something is missing. Something is missing. I'm sure of it. Once upon\u2014 Something is missing. Something is missing.\n\nSomething is\u2014 Do you want to hear a story?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 44",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh.\n\n\u2002Huh. Well, that just figures, doesn't it?\n\n\u2014Librarian Gregor Henry, 1941 CE\n\nHero ran into a charnel house of horrors. Books were flayed everywhere he looked, paper entrails twisting suspended in the air as if from butcher's hooks. Many of the dead of the Dust Wing rested, content with their tombs and dust, but not here. Here was where stories had gone destructive and turned on their corpses instead.\n\nHe had hesitated at the sight when he and Rami had broken through into the clearing where they'd tracked Claire and Brevity. He'd hesitated, and that'd been enough. Claire had shouted, the scalpel had impossibly cast one sliver of light in the dark, and then the corpses around him ceased to matter.\n\nHero dived into the viscera of paper and gore. Bile rose in his throat every time he crushed a brittle spine under his heel, but he hurtled himself forward. He tore at the paper skins that tangled him. He would tear at his own skin next.\n\nInk swallowed Claire, between one breath and the next. No, \"swallow\" was too natural a word. It absorbed her, leaving behind a bleak Claire-shaped figure stained so dark it was impossible to make out against the darkness. The sight stopped him cold, just a step away. Her warm brown skin swallowed shadows, until even the ruffle of her uneven skirts and the small clasps at the tips of her braids turned pitiless black.\n\nHe lurched into motion again but was stopped by Rami's hand at his hip. \"It's ink,\" Rami reminded him. As if Hero could forget, forget the feeling of his own skin decaying and crumbling in on itself, the feeling of drowning in ashes, smothered and lost. As if he could forget the way Claire had screamed, which was why he needed to reach her right now\u2014\n\nIt was a testament to how weak he was that Brevity broke past Probity first. The ink-bleached muse had fallen and struggled to get to his feet. Brevity scrambled across the bowl of shredded parchment but was still too far away when the muse zeroed in on Claire. It sniffed the air and clacked its teeth. Brevity lunged, tackling it around the ankle and dragging it to the ground with her. The muse fell, outstretched claws passing within a whisper of Claire's unmoving obsidian face.\n\nBrevity wrestled it back, biting back a yelp as the stained muse spun around and turned his claws on her. The sound drew the first lurch of movement, though everyone but Hero seemed too busy to notice. Only Hero saw as the black statue that was Claire twitched her limbs. Her head tilted at a sharp, mechanical angle, while the rest of her appeared to move with the sinuous nature of the ink itself. When her head turned its bleak gaze in Hero's direction, his skin chilled surely as if a naked blade had scraped along it.\n\n\"Help us,\" Hero whispered. To himself, to Claire, to gods he didn't believe in. None, at least, would hear and answer prayers in the darkest corner of the afterlife.\n\nThe ink that had subsumed Claire appeared to shudder in its depths and gave a slow blink. She turned its attention to the feral muse wrestling with Brevity on the floor. She stretched out one arm, garnering everyone's attention. Hero half expected the ink to drop from her fingertip, but she opened her mouth and spoke.\n\n\"You.\" It was Claire's voice, but splintered and shadowed by something else. The presence of something else was heavy in the air, but it felt like the shadow of an eclipse. Not a single entity, but crowding nonetheless. Like a swarm of blackbirds. It clotted the air and made it difficult for anyone to move as the ink-stained Claire took one step, then two. Black pools bloomed beneath her feet, as if the ink was spreading, but always retracted as she stepped away again.\n\nHero had an irrational urge to reach out and touch her, to grab for the footfalls of ink. What would happen now, Hero wondered, if that ink touched him again? Nothing good seemed to come of it, but would he be stained like a human, or bleached like a muse? What was the wick of a story, when you've already burned your book?\n\nBrevity had the feral muse by the shoulders and was struggling valiantly to pin his arms back, but the creature outweighed Brevity by at least a stone, and it almost lurched free as Claire stopped in front of it.\n\nClaire appeared to study it, its bleak, expressionless face like a statue carved out of ebony. \"Listen,\" the many voices whispered. A black fingertip pressed to the middle of the pale creature's forehead. The ink-bleached muse began to shriek.\n\n\"You're hurting him!\" Brevity attempted to pull the muse she'd just been wrestling back, but Rami lurched forward and stopped her.\n\n\"No, she's not. Look.\"\n\nThe point where Claire's finger brushed the muse's forehead had begun to darken, as if bruised. Hero followed the shadow beneath the muse's bone white skin and drew a breath. Like ink dropping through water, the muse's natural coloring was returning. Orange skin, sunrise red hair. Slowly the color seeped in, pushing the white and black ahead of it like a wave. Ink pooled at the point of contact and hesitated at the surface of the muse's forehead for just a moment before the surface tension seemed to break. The ink flew up Claire's finger in a veiny line, black on black, and the muse fell backward.\n\n\"Gaiety?\" Brevity startled as she grabbed him, as if he was lighter, less weighed down with snarling muscle and hunger. A perplexed look crossed her face as she hesitantly lowered the muse to the ground, but he didn't rouse.\n\n\"What did she do?\" Probity dropped to the other side, checking over the unconscious muse with an urgency that bordered on mothering. Brevity let her take Gaiety out of her arms, and for a moment Probity clasped her hands. It struck Hero as almost like an embrace, or a good-bye.\n\n\"Dear god...\" Rami breathed the words like a curse, or a prayer. It took a moment in the dim spectral twilight to see what he meant. Ink wept from Claire's eyes, skidding down her cheeks briefly before being absorbed again by her skin. Her lips parted, and liquid, viscous and darker than blood, tumbled over her lips.\n\nShe'd taken in Gaiety's ink, but this was even more than that. Ink had stained, then soaked Claire, and now she was suffused with it. She didn't blur and turn pale like the muses. She didn't absorb and rot into nothing like a book. She was human\u2014the paper of her soul was primed for stories. But she was trying to hold on to too much of it.\n\n\"Claire.\" Brevity shoved to her feet but was stopped by Probity's grip on her arm.\n\n\"Don't,\" Probity said firmly. There was sympathy there, but at a remove. The kind of look you gave when someone lost their goldfish. \"You can't help her.\"\n\nBrevity twisted her arm free. \"I have to do something.\"\n\n\"She's a lost cause!\" Probity struggled, not able to keep hold of Gaiety's body and Brev both. Her voice threaded with pleading. \"But you're not.\"\n\nBrevity stopped, and the moment held its breath around her. Hero's voice felt stopped up in his throat. Claire was dying, or worse, behind them. But Brevity's sibling muses were here, alive, not drowning in shadow. He had a deep, wounded familiarity with being a heart caught in two places. He couldn't bring himself to pull anymore. There was a coin-flip moment of doubt as he watched Brevity's eyes, but the coin landed true.\n\n\"If I don't help her, I am.\" Brevity shoved to her feet. She didn't look back, despite the twist in her expression. Hero began to breathe again, but tides of ink writhed and sank like eddies across Claire's frozen form. Brevity ran and threw open her arms.\n\nHer fingertips slid into Claire's palm, and their hands closed as if on instinct. For a moment Brevity glanced to Rami and Hero, wide-eyed, until ink began to invade across her knuckles, beading across her skin and leaving colorless flesh behind. She stifled a gasp.\n\n\"Sis! Stop!\"\n\n\"I'm not letting go.\" Brevity's lips moved around the whisper, words falling slightly out of sync with the sound. Propane blue began to wither and dry to cornflower on her cheeks.\n\n\"We have to do something,\" Hero whispered, and the helplessness that raged up in him threatened to burn him up whole. \"Anything.\"\n\nRami's head came up, a thoughtful expression on it. \"Okay.\"\n\nHe started forward, sending a spike of terror through Hero's chest. \"No! No, no, no. That ink messes up everyone it touches.\"\n\nRami shook his head, gently taking Hero's hand off his shoulder and holding it in his. \"Not me. I figured it out. Didn't you?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Souls,\" Rami said, a gentle smile breaking over his features before he let go of Hero's hand and ran toward Claire and Brevity. He swept something up off the ground, something that glimmered thin and blue. Only after he slapped it on Brevity's arm did Hero recognize it as the inspiration gilt that had protected Claire. It was a thin thread, but Rami returned it to Brevity's forearm like a talisman.\n\nThen Rami dropped to his knees in front of the two women, pressed his hands to each of their cheeks, and appeared to begin to pray."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 45",
                "text": "\u2002Myrrh. Myrrh. MYRRH, sod it! Souls. That's what they didn't want me to know. Librarian Poppaea rebelled in order to acknowledge and free the fragmented souls of books. It didn't work, obviously. Perhaps Old Scratch thought we librarians would be more compliant if we thought it was just books and magic. The devil obviously has never met a bibliophile. Rebellion is in a reader's blood.\n\n\u2002Stories are slivers of us, all of us. What makes a story real is the soul of the author. We're humanity, splintered into the stories we tell ourselves. I doubt the old demon would be pleased to know I've rediscovered this. I'll need to feign ignorance; perhaps we all will. But future librarians need to know.\n\n\u2002The logbook keeps a librarian's secrets, until they're needed. Well then, old book. It appears we have work to do.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1782 CE\n\nThe brush of Rami's palm on her cheek had been the end. Or perhaps it had been the words, echoing long after her sight faded. Guttural, heart-piercing prayers, colliding like wayward meteors in the dark. Maybe the end had been long before that. All the paths led to here and now.\n\nWhen she could see again, the Dust Wing was gone. Everything was gone, replaced with... color. Not the rainbows-and-unicorns kind of color. No, the miasma that swam around Brevity and clogged her throat was the spectrum of light off the surface of something dark and deep. There was no breaking the surface here. This was oil slicks and crystalized lava. It was like breathing bismuth, with its rainbows of geometry shaped by very old, old things.\n\nBrevity floated in a world of specters and in a sea of ink.\n\nA darker blot loomed, growing larger like a whirlpool that the world turned around. Brevity let the current pull her, for lack of another destination. The shadows grew, and eventually she could make out a solid thing, a sliver darker than ink at the core of it. The piece at the axis was fragmented and melting. It was a kernel of an idea, an unfinished shape that lost edges, gained edges, until it was nearly impossible to discern what was underneath the roiling black.\n\nNearly.\n\nThe air felt punched from Brevity's lungs. \"Claire.\" A familiar jut of stubborn chin gave way to long braids that dripped and melted like candle wax. Brevity tried to swim forward through the air, but it was harder now. As if the colors were swirling through her, not around her. A furious dog paddle drifted her in the right direction. The effort sent little eddies that ate away at and disseminated what was left of a shoulder. \"Oh, boss.\"\n\nThe kernel of Claireness rotated like a tumbling asteroid in the void. Her face was carved out of obsidian, cold nothing instead of warm, beautiful brown. Only the shifting ridge of eyelashes told Brevity that her eyes were opening.\n\nBrevity let herself drift, afraid even the slightest current would carry more of Claire's core away. Never mind the way her limbs felt increasingly light and gauzy, as if she herself was being erased. \"What have they done to you?\"\n\n\"A gentle colonization.\" Brevity flinched and just barely stopped herself from twisting at the voice. Rami stood as if on solid ground. If solid ground were at right angles with any sense of up and down that Brevity's brain had. The ink swirled around him, ruffling his feathers like a breeze, but didn't appear to sink in. He studied her for a long moment, face growing graver. He held out a hand. \"They're being less careful with you.\"\n\nBrevity reached out and trembled with the certainty that her fingertips were not going to stop at Rami's palm, but he clasped around her wrist with a precise kind of confidence and pulled. Brevity fluttered toward him as if she weighed nothing at all, and when he set her feet gently to the ground\u2014his ground\u2014it felt more like sticking to the filmy surface of a bubble than standing.\n\nThe puddle that made up Claire, thankfully, did not stir at all. She didn't appear to notice their presence, or if she did, she simply chose not to care. Brevity swallowed down the feeling of impending grief. \"I can see the ink, but... the books like me. They wouldn't do this to us. What is this?\"\n\n\"Souls,\" Rami said quietly. \"The heart of any story is a little, tiny sliver of an author's soul. That's how any story is made.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity blinked rapidly, trying to hold on to that thought. It felt important somehow, the way dream revelations felt important right before disappearing upon waking.\n\n\"Later.\" Rami's voice was hard and grounding. \"All you need to understand is that the ink is slowly taking over Claire, piece by piece. Trying to bury her under its own existence. We need to anchor her before I\u2014before I try what I'm going to try. Otherwise we could lose her too.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" Brevity took a deep breath and held a little tighter to Rami's hand. \"Right. Claire?\"\n\nWith Rami's anchoring influence, the black core appeared to be turning in a slow orbit. Claire's face began to turn away without stirring.\n\nRight, it wasn't just Claire in there, and it certainly wasn't Claire in control. Brevity needed something the ink would respond to. Something that would get its attention, and also Claire's.\n\n\"Do you want to hear a story?\" Brevity breathed, through searing tears that felt like they were flooding her throat. \"I promise it's a good one.\"\n\nThere was no color inside the ink that had smothered Claire; too much was going on beneath the surface. But there was a ripple, however faint. The wax-wasting drip of her hair slowed, as if cooling.\n\n\"A story. A soul for a story, and a story for a soul.\" Rami's voice was thoughtful and he was nodding when Brevity glanced back. \"Try it again.\"\n\nBrevity swallowed and focused on Claire, the familiar outline she could still pick out through the black. \"This is a story of a woman who lived in a library.\"\n\nThe edge of the puddle had a questing tendril that stayed reaching toward Brevity even as the center turned. She chewed on her lip. \"There was a woman who lived in a library, not because she was a great reader. Not because she was a great writer. Not because she was anything special at all, but because she'd lost the way of her own story.\"\n\nClaire didn't stir, and with the melting slowing, she looked more like a statue wrought in ebony. She was drawing out the ink, not Claire. Rami shook his head, and Brevity grasped desperately for something to separate the two.\n\nIt wasn't fair. Claire was the storyteller, not Brevity. The only story Brevity ever had, she stole. This was all on her shoulders, and they would all die here in the ink because Claire wouldn't listen. \"You're so stubborn,\" Brevity hissed through clenched teeth. A watercolor of frustration took on the bold strokes of anger and Brevity let it. \"She was so stubborn, this woman in the library. She was selfish and mean and lashed out at anyone who tried to help her. She wielded a blade against books and words against everyone else. She was so wrapped up in her own self-pity, so certain of all that she'd lost, that she couldn't see all she had gained. All of us that were right there, right there in front of her and hurting and confused and scared just as much as she was! We were right there!\"\n\nBrevity's eyes were full of tears. Perhaps that's why she couldn't make sense of the way the ink moved over Claire's skin now, rippling, shifting, almost drying into black scales. Half-fractured and curled in on herself as she was, Claire looked like a dragon's egg ready to hatch\u2014or rot away. Brevity held on to her anger; it felt solid in her chest. It was the only thing that kept her pinned here\u2014wherever here was\u2014besides Rami's hand.\n\n\"She was selfish and cruel, and she acted like it was because she was smarter, stronger, than everyone else. But she wasn't. She was just stupid. So stupid she couldn't see the friends that surrounded her, the women who were not her enemies, prisoners, or rivals, but friends. She was so stupid it took the deaths of hundreds\u2014hundreds of goddamn wonderful people\u2014to realize it. It was your fault, Claire! Okay? I'll finally say it. It was your fault, and none of this would have happened if you had just talked to me! And not\u2014\"\n\nA shiver, starting somewhere distant and rolling right through Brevity's chest, stole her breath. Black scales began to flake and peel. Beneath, just beneath, were the tiniest freckles of brown skin. Distantly, Brevity realized Rami was praying. It seemed fitting, trapped in her own confessional. \"I blamed you, Claire. I said I didn't but I did. And then when there might have been a way to fix it, you just\u2014you just gave up. When it was no longer your job to care, about the books, about me, you just gave up.\" The world spun, as if she'd lost touch with the ground again. Which was strange, because Brevity couldn't even feel her toes. She was fairly certain it was her turn to melt. \"I'm here to make you decide, right now, whether you are giving up on yourself or not. You're not a story, Claire. You're a human; you're my human. And if you end, I'm ending with you.\"\n\nShe couldn't feel Rami's hand. Everything was color. That's what black was, wasn't it? All color, all the potential color of the world together, minus light. Everything and nothing at once. There was no wall between the air in her lungs and the air without. Only the low, steady pulse of Rami's prayerful words in some angelic tongue. The ink was ignoring her now, passing through her the way she herself passed away, in favor of drifting along the currents of Rami's words. Black peeled away to reveal a brown cheek. Claire was under there, surviving and wonderfully human in every way Brev was not.\n\nBrevity would never be human; she was a muse. So as the language of the spheres rolled through her head, she did what muses do. She let go of the allure of story, let inspiration and ink fall through her fingers, and fell to Earth."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 46",
                "text": "\u2002Going mad is an excellent defense. Nothing is so discounted, dismissed, as an eccentric woman speaking the truth.\n\n\u2014Librarian Fleur Michel, 1792 CE\n\n\"NO, NO, NO, NO...\" A keening sound shook Hero out of his shock and pulled his gaze away from Rami. Probity rocked on the ground, holding Gaiety to her chest, but her attention was only on Brevity. She took sobbing breaths and straightened. \"No. I can fix this. I won't let her do this.\" Probity abruptly lowered her unconscious younger muse to the ground. She started forward with intent in her wet eyes.\n\nHero drew in a breath and had Rami's sword raised and leveled at Probity's throat before he exhaled. The muse's reddened eyes narrowed. \"Get out of my way, book.\"\n\n\"I don't have one of those anymore.\" Hero's quiet admission startled a reaction out of Probity. Hero hardened his jaw and kept himself and the blade between Probity and the others. \"I don't think I get to be a story without a book. Then again, I haven't been sure what I am for a while. I've tried and thought I was winging it, you know.\" His smile was a snarl, but it wasn't directed at Probity. \"I was a loyal assistant for Brevity. I was a clever rival for Claire. I tried to be a questing hero for Rami. An angel that needs a hero\u2014imagine that.\"\n\nProbity made an impatient noise and tried to brush past the blade. Hero twitched his wrist. It was a tiny movement, but just enough to flick the tip of the sword into the soft of Probity's palm. She drew back with a hiss, and Hero waited. He waited calmly, silently, until Probity raised her chin and met his gaze with glittering hatred in her eyes.\n\n\"I've tried to be a lot of good things for each of them, in every way they need to be loved. But if you threaten them, if you take one single step closer...\" Hero's breath broke. He slid his foot forward, relishing it as Probity jumped back a step at the end of his blade. \"For you, for their sake, I will be the wickedest and worst monster. That's a promise.\"\n\nMuses were always in motion, so when Probity held still it was an unnatural sensation. Her breathing was fast as she tried to get her emotions under control. \"What happened to Verve?\"\n\n\"Who?\" Hero tilted his head. \"The other monster you created? We encountered her in the stacks. I fed her my book, and she died.\"\n\n\"You fed her...?\" Shock, horror, and a flash of grief cycled quickly through Probity's expression before settling into a wary realization. \"You really mean your book is gone. A character surviving past its book. That's an abomination, if not impossible. You are a monster.\"\n\n\"I could be. As I said, I am still discovering what I am.\" Hero's brittle smile cracked as he flicked the blade again. \"Your experiment has failed, muse. Take your people and go. The Library isn't your plaything.\"\n\n\"My people.\" Something of the anger withered and died in Probity's eyes as she repeated the words. Her gaze went past Hero's shoulder to Brevity again. She took her next breath like one would take a punch in the gut. \"She... I'd hoped... But you're right.\"\n\nThe hostility deflated out of the air then, but Hero kept his sword leveled as Probity crouched down, slung the unconscious Gaiety in her arms. She started to turn, then stalled. When she looked down Hero's blade, it was as if it wasn't even there. \"Do me a favor, monster.\"\n\n\"Nah,\" Hero said, but Probity didn't miss a beat.\n\n\"Tell her...\" Her lips worked a moment before she found the words. \"...tell her... ideas never die. Just... tell her I said that. That I still say that.\"\n\nThen Probity appeared to fold the air around them like origami until they disappeared in a displacement of dust.\n\nHero hesitated, frozen in place a moment longer. His pulse thudded in his ears, and he half expected some new threat to emerge out of the deep shadows of the Dust Wing. But nothing moved except the fragile drift of tattered and tormented books. It was so still that Hero's eyes stung. It must have been the dust.\n\nA small grunt behind him reentered his thoughts. \"Rami?\" Hero lowered the sword, not quite entirely dropping his guard as he glanced behind him.\n\nThey were a trio of statues, Claire painted in an oblivion of blacks and Brevity's blue skin as pale as a robin's egg. Rami knelt between them, a hand on each of their faces. The concentration knit his face, as if he was doing personal battle with the ink. Hero felt a strangling feeling in his chest at the thought he was going to lose them, all three of them, right here and now. He couldn't do that. He could bear to live without his story; he could bear to live as a servant of the Library; he could even bear to live as an abomination without a book. But if the Fates took these three maddening souls from him now, he would give himself over to the despair and eternity of the Dust Wing for good.\n\nThen Rami drew a breath and whispered a single word: \"Peace.\"\n\nThe invading pallor in Brevity's skin retreated and appeared to swirl, absorbing into the thread of inspiration twined on her arm. Dapples of brown caught Hero's eye as the ink appeared to dry up and flake away from Claire. Both women fell like deadweight, Rami sagged, and Hero just managed to sweep forward to support him. It ended with the four of them entangled on the floor of the Dust Wing.\n\nThey were a tiny island of warm skin and wheezing breaths in the center of a tomb. Hero struggled to right Brevity against his shoulder. He distantly noted the tear of paper beneath his heel as another Dust Wing tragedy, but for a moment\u2014just a moment\u2014he didn't care. He didn't care because Rami's chest was heaving and Claire was unconscious but drooling against his feathered trench coat.\n\nWhen Rami managed to pull himself together and met Hero's gaze, there was no way to hide the relief that burst onto Hero's face with a grin. \"You did it, old man.\"\n\n\"I didn't\u2014I did, but...\" Rami paused, bowing his head for a moment, and Hero realized he was late recognizing the tears on the Watcher's cheeks. \"So many souls, Hero.\"\n\n\"Souls?\"\n\nRami's look was searching when he finally met Hero's gaze. His brow still set with worry and streaked with dust and sweat. \"That's what the ink is, the fragment souls of books. Remember what the golem's letter said? The written and the writer are the same. Books and authors are made of the same stuff.\" Rami shook his head wonderingly. \"I wondered, as an angel I can reach lost souls, and then it seemed too dire to not at least try...\"\n\nRami trailed off, but the logical leap was too much for Hero's mind to make. Books didn't have souls. They had characters and pages and story, and good ones might seem soulful, but books were\u2014Hero was...\n\nHero wasn't sure of anything anymore. He looked away. Most of the jet-black ink had flaked away from Claire's skin, even if a mythical kind of oil-slick shine clung to her tangled hair. She seemed merely napping against Rami's chest, more peaceful than Hero had ever seen her. \"Do you think they knew? All this time?\"\n\nRami considered and shook his head. \"I don't know. But I do know we should get them out of here. Let's go home.\" He lifted Claire easily, even if he was slower to get his feet under him. Whatever he had done had worn on the angel as well. Brevity was light enough that Hero had no such trouble.\n\n\"I'm\u2014I'm glad you're okay,\" Rami said quietly. He took his time drawing a feather. It made a complicated pattern through the air in what Hero assumed would be a means to travel back to the Library. \"I heard part of what you said. To Probity.\"\n\n\"Did you? How distracting.\" Hero shifted Brevity in his arms and stepped closer under Rami's arm without quite looking him in the eyes. \"Of course I'm fine. Always fine.\"\n\nRami was terrible at telling lies, but not at reading them. Hero could feel the weight of his concerned frown as feathers and the frost-clean smell of Rami's angelic magic kicked up through the dust. His voice was soft and lost in Hero's hair. \"I'm glad. I was afraid this\u2014this was going to change things.\"\n\nIt already has, Hero wanted to say, but the Dust Wing folded in on itself and the sweep of Rami's sheltering magic stole the air from his lungs."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 47",
                "text": "\u2002I still feel the place in my chest where my story should be.\n\n\u2002\u2014My book. I meant my book. Where my book should be. That's what I meant.\n\n\u2002Where is a goddamn eraser for this log?\n\n\u2014Apprentice Librarian Hero, 2020 CE\n\nHero knew how stories began. Once upon a time. After hundreds of Dust Wing books passed through him, he even understood how stories end. Happily ever after. Except when not. Nothing had prepared him for the agony of the middle. The hollow pocket against his heart where his book should be was a great, aching question mark. It was an end; it was a beginning; it was wrong and completely foreign terrain.\n\nIf this was what it was like living outside a story, Hero thought maybe death had been kinder. He had these thoughts as Rami swam them in and out of the dark, tripping across nowheres and in-betweens until the familiar glass zoo of Walter's transport office took shape around them. He walked down familiar hallways and thought of endings and beginnings and the terrifying watercolor of unknowns that spanned the two. He thought of Rami and Claire and Brevity, and the fragile way they kept going on after the end. And then he said the exact opposite of what he was thinking.\n\n\"Well, this is familiar,\" Hero pronounced as he followed Ramiel through the doors of the Arcane Wing. Rami strode to the nearest couch and laid Claire down with a painstaking gentleness.\n\nAn elbow shifted into his ribs. \"I'm awake this time.\" Brevity's words were a slurry of exhaustion. She'd started to stir not long after they'd reappeared in the transport office. She looked pale and grumpy. \"Put me down, please.\"\n\n\"My pleasure.\" Hero picked the armchair and carefully extracted himself until Brevity was in a somewhat comfortable sitting position. \"It's my personal policy not to coddle suicidal idiots.\"\n\n\"I would say everyone present falls under that classification,\" Rami said with a level look in Hero's direction.\n\n\"I saved your life.\" Hero had begun making tea without realizing it. He stopped, glared into the teapot in his hands, and chose a relaxing chamomile. Claire would hate it when she woke up. When.\n\nThe water had heated to a near simmer by the time Brevity heaved herself up on her elbows, as if taking stock. \"We should be in the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"I didn't think it prudent to bring you in proximity to the books until I knew you were all stable,\" Rami said evasively. \"How's your arm?\"\n\n\"You mean before you knew if I had developed a taste for story flesh or not,\" Brevity said, and deflated back into the armchair. She stuffed her arm under a throw pillow before adding, a bit sullenly, \"I haven't, by the way.\"\n\n\"As the sole remaining representative of the Library who has not gone under an existential transformation\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't transform!\" Hero squawked.\n\n\"\u2014or existential crisis heretofore unknown by our understanding of the universe,\" Rami continued smoothly, \"I feel comfortable ordering all of you to sit down and stay down until I can at least create a concise record of this disaster.\"\n\n\"Not as if anyone can read your chicken scratch,\" Claire mumbled into the couch cushions. She slit her eyes open and grimaced at the light. As if in response, the lamps of the Arcane Wing dimmed a notch. She squinted with a sour expression. \"What are you lot staring at?\"\n\n\"Boss! Oh\u2014oh gods. I'm so glad you're okay.\" Tears started to well at Brevity's eyes before the look suddenly dried up into stricken. Her shoulders started to creep up toward her ears. \"Claire\u2014\"\n\n\"You have nothing to apologize for, so don't you dare.\" The harsh edges fell away from Claire's tone. She made an aborted attempt to sit up before consigning herself to the couch. \"You were doing what you thought was best. That's what a librarian does.\"\n\n\"I lied to you. I tricked you,\" Brevity insisted.\n\n\"And I allowed a damsel to come to harm, entered the Library, and promptly terrorized the damsel suite without asking.\" Claire's mouth twisted and for the first time she looked down at her unstained hands. Not a trace of the ink remained. She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger. \"That wasn't right. I'm sorry. We were both operating under stressful concerns.\"\n\nMoisture returned to Brevity's eyes, so Hero hurried along to a different point of relevance. \"All the same, making an enemy of the Muses Corps would be a bother.\"\n\nBrevity took the distraction. \"Probity...?\"\n\n\"Left. Along with Gaiety.\" Hero hesitated, sending a questioning look to Rami. There was a lot to disclose, now or later. He sighed when the angel shook his head grimly.\n\nBrevity's face crumpled. She mulled this over with a distant sorrow. \"She won't go back to the muses, not with Gaiety. I can't see them tolerating something like that. Verve and Gaiety were so loyal to her, I don't even know how much she told them. I\u2014I think Probity had her own ideas about stories, ones that no sane muse in the corps would ever have endorsed.\" Her mouth twisted, bitter. \"Which is why she came to me.\"\n\n\"From my brief acquaintance, she seemed to trust you and hold you in high regard,\" Rami said.\n\nBrevity's smile was thin with skepticism, and Hero couldn't stand the tedious cycle of self-blame a moment longer. He flopped onto Claire's couch noisily and began to pick dried mud from his coat. \"At least now I can officially say I've seen a more odious place than the Unwritten Wing. You've been grandstanded by the Dust Wing, ladies.\"\n\nHe waited for Claire's sharp rebuttal, or at the very least a dismissive noise. When none came, he turned his head. She had tucked her legs to her chest and was nearly swallowed by the pillows Rami had piled around her. That, and the vulnerable uncertainty in her eyes, gave her a more delicate appearance than she normally allowed. Delicate\u2014not breakable\u2014like a fine blade. She studied him with disbelief. \"You're really okay.\"\n\nClaire never asked questions, not really. She wielded challenging statements and demanded verification. Hero cleared his throat and studied the ragged tear the muse's claws had made in the shoulder of his coat. These stains would never come out. Ink and stains and gods knew what else. He was going to have to ask Brevity if Hell had a tailor soon. \"I'm here, aren't I?\"\n\n\"You are. I hadn't been sure you would be,\" Claire said with unnatural quiet. Some of the tension left her and she unwound herself from her seat to straighten her shoulders. She held out a palm. \"Hand it over, then.\"\n\nHero was familiar with that pose, that posture, that steel in her eye as sharp as a scalpel. His stomach dropped, and he found his filthy cuff fascinating again. \"Hand over what?\"\n\n\"Your book. Let's see what a muck you've made of it this time and how many hours of back pain and labor I\u2014\" Claire paused. \"That I or Brevity is in for to fix it.\"\n\nIt was under his nails. The damned clay was under his perfectly nice nails. He cast about for a file, but of course Claire wasn't the type to keep appropriate grooming products on hand.\n\n\"Hero?\" Claire said.\n\n\"I\u2014\" Hero cleared his throat and had to count to three before he had the courage to raise his gaze to meet Claire's. His insides felt a little hollow. \"I don't have it.\"\n\nClaire's eyes flew wide. \"You lost your book?!\"\n\n\"I didn't\u2014\" Hero started, but Claire was already halfway off the couch, though she didn't let go of the arm for support.\n\n\"Of all the irresponsible\u2014 How are you still sitting here if you left it in the Dust Wing? You grand fool, we need to go back immediately and\u2014\"\n\n\"Claire.\" Rami caught her before she could stumble away from the couch. He firmly guided her back in a way only Rami could get away with. \"He didn't lose it.\" Once she was seated again, he glanced at Hero. His tone was sympathetic but unforgiving. \"Tell her.\"\n\nRami's eyes were encouraging, and Claire's were confused. A phantom of panic threatened in Hero's throat. It would change everything, everything he didn't want changed, he realized. The thought descended like a shock of water. Being a broken book\u2014Claire's pain in the ass, Brevity's assistant, Rami's... dear gods, whatever he was to Rami now. He didn't want any of it to change. He didn't want to run away, or fix his book, or be anything but what they accepted him as. He glanced to Brevity for reprieve, but her look was curious as well.\n\nThe mud on his coat had somehow coated his tongue and Hero had to swallow again before he could start. \"There was a struggle, with the muse in the Dust Wing. She... consumed... my book.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity startled to her feet, and she was at least steadier than Claire was.\n\n\"It's gone,\" Hero said to the floor.\n\n\"That's impossible.\" Claire's voice was oddly clipped, like she'd dug her fingernails into the shreds of her logic. She shook her head. \"Explain yourself.\"\n\nBy the time Hero had haltingly described his version of events, the chamomile had gone so oversteeped even he wouldn't try to serve it to Claire. Rami had interjected corrections a couple of times, and picked up on what he saw when Hero fell. Hero had gotten to the part where he'd kissed Rami and chose editorial discretion to skip quickly over it with a rush of heat in his cheeks. Rami sat there just looking calm and supportive. Damn the man. Claire had started out with interrogative interruptions but had slowly dropped to silence.\n\nNo one was eager to jump into analysis, which made Hero grateful. He managed to listen to the tick of the Arcane Wing's cursed clock count a dozen more seconds before Brevity sniffled hard. She was wiping her eyes furiously but saved a watery grin for Hero. \"It sounds like you almost\u2014I woulda never forgiven myself if we'd lost you in there.\"\n\n\"Maybe you did,\" Hero said ruefully. His book was gone; that was the part a librarian should have been worried about.\n\n\"We didn't. You remain. Just as the ink remained.\" Claire had wrapped her arms over her chest as if she was holding on for dear life, but there was a distant look in her eyes. Hero could feel Claire's mind turning like an astrolabe, aligning events along some unknown mental star charts. She broke the spell with a blink and focused on Rami. \"When you said you thought you could track Hero to the Dust Wing, was it\u2014\"\n\n\"Souls,\" Rami finally said the word that made the entire room feel like a released breath. \"That's how I track anything. And it worked. I began to consider the idea after I read that line in the Unsaid Wing. The old Arcanist said the written and the writer are the same. And then the soul bridge in Chinvat tried to pass judgment on Hero, and... well.\"\n\n\"Stories\u2014she meant stories. But if they're made of the same stuff, then that means stories are made of souls\u2014\" Brevity's eyes went wide as saucers.\n\n\"No,\" Claire whispered, and Hero's heart dropped. He felt irrationally disappointed as she started shaking her head. It shouldn't matter, her reaction. But somehow it did, because they were talking about what he was, and she was and...\n\n\"I would have known. I would have had to have known. Gregor would have told me. Or the log\u2014\" Claire straightened as if she'd touched a live wire. \"The well. Rosia. I need to see the well.\"\n\n\"You need to rest,\" Rami started, but Claire was already teetering to her feet. The angel sighed and lent his arm. Claire charged down the aisle toward the back of the wing as fast as her battered body allowed.\n\nThat left Hero with Brevity. Luckily, his librarian was much steadier on her feet\u2014and much more sensible\u2014than the previous one. Brevity accepted a hand up but followed them at a sedate pace.\n\n\"You're you, Hero,\" she said, just loud enough for him to hear. \"Claire just needs to work it out in her own head.\"\n\nThe upside-down feeling in Hero's head eased an inch. Brevity did that\u2014saw the rough edges her people rubbed against one another and tried to smooth them. It was a remarkable trait, but Hero couldn't remember anyone ever acknowledging it. He tried, but his throat was already clogged with so many things, he could only nod. \"Did you know?\"\n\nBrevity shook her head slowly. \"I didn't\u2014at least, I didn't think I did. I didn't put it together.\" She chewed on her lip. \"Maybe Probity had.\"\n\nHero had too many emotions roiling like a pack of rats in his head to hold on to one more. He hesitated, then said, \"She said something, before she left.\"\n\nBrevity looked up, full of trepidation. \"What'd she say?\"\n\n\"She said to tell you\"\u2014Hero took a moment to recall the words exactly\u2014\"ideas never die.\"\n\nThe silence in Brevity's eyes as she quickly looked away spoke volumes. Hero was literate in those silences, so he waited it out.\n\n\"It was something we said, back then. We thought we were invincible. We thought we could do anything. When I was a muse, we...\" Brevity chewed her lip raw. Claire appeared to be having an argument with her black bird ahead of them. At least if she was that irascible, then Hero suspected she'd recover all right. \"Muses are obsessed with humans. But we're not taught to care about humanity as people, just as creators. The end creation is what is important. Ever hear of an artist wrecking themselves for their art? That's a bad muse. And internalized capitalism.\"\n\n\"But you're not like that,\" Hero pointed out, and Brevity rewarded him with a tired smile.\n\n\"Nah. I was always curious about humans. Then I got kicked out and actually had to deal with one. Woof.\" Brevity pulled a face, but it was riddled with fondness as she glanced after Claire again. \"Humans are a tough nut. It's obvious\u2014at least to me\u2014that a story is essential to the person who tells it. No matter how clich\u00e9 or common your story is, it's you telling it, right? We understood that essential connection, but we didn't care much about the soul. Few muses care much what happens to the human after the story is told.\" Brevity fell quiet. \"But taken too far, that's how you get folks like Probity.\"\n\nHero had a dozen questions queued up behind his tongue. He had a soul? Or just part of one? Was it his creator's? Every book was made of a soul? What did that mean\u2014for anything? He felt starved for answers, but they caught up and all of Brevity's concern focused on Claire.\n\nA well of shadows trumpeted out of the floor and cupped a basin within. The reservoir of ink at the back of the Arcane Wing remained, with one significant change. Claire's knees banged into the ledge as she dropped down. Hero's chest clenched as she leaned precariously over the edge with a gasp. \"Rosia.\"\n\nThe others rushed to join her\u2014and if Hero secured a firm grasp on her shoulder to keep her from tipping in, it was purely out of professional concern, of course. He needn't have worried. The interior of the well dropped away to a smooth concave of stone. The ink was gone, and left not a dab behind.\n\nIn its absence, instead, curled up tight as a seed, was a girl. Rosia lay on her side, arms pillowing her head. She didn't move. Claire jerked forward and Hero was glad he had a grip on her shoulder.\n\n\"No,\" Rami said from behind them, already moving past to drop down the slope of the basin. \"Let me.\" He crouched down as he approached Rosia and reached out. His fingertips were still a breath away from her cheeks when her eyes blinked open.\n\nA tick in Rami's shoulders put Hero on alert. Whatever he saw in the girl's face startled him. Rami stepped back as Rosia stretched, unfurling like a spring leaf. She rose to her feet, still facing away, full of an alien grace that her coltish limbs hadn't had before. She tilted her head one way, then another, as if releasing a crick in her neck. As if, a suspicious part of Hero's mind supplied, she was limbering up for a fight.\n\nBut when Rosia turned, pivoting on the ball of one foot like a dancer, her expression was relaxed. Her gaze, as it flicked around to each of them, felt altered. No longer spectral and eerie, but focused. She still had moonbeam eyes, but sharp as a crescent shaped by the dark.\n\n\"Rosia?\" Brevity crouched at the side of the basin. There was a tension in her shoulders that said she was trying. She was trying to be librarian, do her duty, hold it together by her fingernails. Claire's shoulder shivered beneath his hand. They were all exhausted, all wounded and changed, one way or another. Hero recognized with a sudden certainty that if pressed to a fight one more time, it'd be too easy to break.\n\nThe smooth skin of Rosia's brow furrowed for a moment, perplexed, before she appeared to recognize Brevity. \"Hello there.\"\n\nHero's alarm stalled\u2014not decreasing, but freezing in place. Rosia's voice had been high and soft, a whisper from a ghost girl. The voice she wore now was warm and solid, like a well-made violin.\n\nBrevity's face knit into concern. \"Rosia? Is that really you?\"\n\nThe damsel appeared to take that question seriously, pursing her lips for a silent second before nodding. \"Quite. I am the most me that I have ever been, in fact.\"\n\n\"You're not Rosia.\" Claire's own voice was full of cobwebs. Hero felt her shiver before she cleared her throat and tensed again. \"Rosia was a specter. A ghost girl from a ghost story.\"\n\n\"Rosia was that, for a long time.\" She didn't look upset by the accusation, just thoughtful. \"She wanted to be more. Knew there was more. Tried to be more. But the story kept coming through. It was like drowning.\" Her pale eyes diverted down to the empty basin at her feet again. Toes scuffed against dry stone. \"Easier to drown in ink.\"\n\nHero made a scoffing noise in his throat, if only to make sure the roil of emotion that clotted his mouth didn't come out as a sob. \"Yet you don't look drowned. It destroyed me.\"\n\n\"It didn't mean to.\" Rosia looked serious and folded her hands in front of her chest. \"You asked for a story and it tried to give you one.\"\n\n\"I wanted my story,\" Hero hissed.\n\n\"That was a mistake. Ink can't write what's not in you.\" Rosia took a step forward, hesitating when Claire flinched back. She stopped near Brevity, who appeared to be staring openly at Rosia with something approaching wonder, not suspicion. \"I listened\u2014read? Yes, I read. I read and I read all the stories, until I found myself again.\" A smile cut through Rosia's somber affect. She grinned down at her hands, wiggling them before turning that delighted glance on Brevity. \"It took a while, but I found myself in stories. I don't have to be a ghost. I'm not a ghost.\"\n\n\"You're not a ghost,\" Brevity repeated with a little awe. \"Everyone looks for themselves in story.\"\n\n\"It worked the same for you, didn't it? Once you started listening.\" Rosia turned her attention, sharp and bright, on Hero, and it felt like a dissection. \"You put yourself together with stories too.\"\n\nHero had nothing to answer that. Rosia had touched the ink and found certainty; he had only survived with more questions.\n\nClaire's head had been bowed, but it came up slow as a rising thought. \"Rosia, where's your book?\"\n\nThe girl looked down at her hands. They smoothed down her ivory skirt and came away clean. There was no lump in her pocket, no place to stash a small rectangle of paper. She let out a low breath and smiled at Brevity. \"Librarian, can I go home now? I'm hungry and this place is too quiet.\"\n\n\"Rosia, your book\u2014\" Claire began sharply.\n\n\"I am my own story now.\" A first thorn of defiance pricked through Rosia's voice. She paused, considering. \"Or I am many. I haven't decided yet. But I am enough.\"\n\nThe minute twitch Claire made traveled up Hero's arm like a quake. She opened her mouth, then closed it with a shiver.\n\n\"Librarian.\" Rosia had focused on Brevity again, and a kind of delight softened her face. \"I am glad you're still here. Don't worry; I'll help with what's next. You won't do it alone.\"\n\nRosia moved swift as a breeze. She scrambled up the side of the basin, pecked a kiss on Brevity's cheek, and walked down an aisle.\n\n\"We should... go after her?\" Rami asked more than made a statement.\n\nBrevity, eyes still wide, with a hand to her cheek, shook her head. \"Ah... no, I think she's going back...\" She blinked at the spot where Rosia had been. \"I think she's okay.\"\n\nOkay. It was such a simple word. No reason for it to roil an inexplicable rise of bile and envy in Hero's mouth like it did. He swallowed hard.\n\n\"At least someone is,\" Rami said quietly, with his eyes on Hero's face. Whatever he could read there had softened his frown. \"But what remains...\"\n\nClaire shivered, suddenly shaking off Hero's hand with a flick of irritation. He was almost glad after how strangely subdued she'd been. She extended a finger and brushed the tip over the dry, uneven rock bottom. \"It's gone.\"\n\nClaire had a complete lack of patience for stating the obvious. Hero felt obliged to remind her of this fact. \"Stunning deduction.\"\n\nThe glare Claire rewarded him with was familiar and reassuring, even if her next question made it sound as if the entire incident were his fault. \"How? Ink does not simply disappear, no matter what it's made of! Rosia obviously wasn't stained. So who took it?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Brevity made a surprised sound as she approached the other side of the well. She dropped into the empty basin before anyone could stop her. She stared at Claire with wide eyes. \"You did. I think?\"\n\nJudging by the way Claire rubbed her face, Hero wasn't sure just how many more revelations even a human mind as stout as hers was up to today. \"Explain.\"\n\n\"Ink acts on the same wavelength as inspiration gilt, right? That's what Probity said when she... stopped your arm.\" Even now, Brevity couldn't keep from running nervous fingers up her scarred forearm. \"When muses carry inspiration, we don't get the entire story. Just the... the seeds. The sparky bits that get them going. The rest of the story comes along later.\" She gestured expansively to the empty rock where a pool of ink\u2014souls?\u2014had been.\n\nClaire had been stubbornly crouching but let herself down to the ground abruptly. \"It was me. I carried the stain. And when it was loosed in the Dust Wing, when I...\" She stopped, frowned, corrected herself. \"When it pulled the ink from that muse, all the rest of the ink could follow.\"\n\nBrevity nodded slowly. \"Maybe that's where they wanted to be the whole time. With other dusted books.\"\n\n\"To be with other ghosts... Rosia was the only one who could hear it. So it was a haunting,\" Claire murmured to herself. Her toes crept over the edge of the basin and she suddenly looked very small.\n\n\"Claire?\"\n\nHero knew the way that one blinked to keep poison out of one's brain and tears out of one's eyes. Claire's shoulders swayed. \"All those years, everything I did to them because I thought books were merely... like magic. Or memory.\"\n\nHero felt locked in place. His own feelings were a strangling vine\u2014to be spiteful, to be right, was at the tip of his tongue. She had been cruel, cruel to him and to individuals like him, and she'd been biased, and she'd been wrong, and saying so wouldn't wipe away the wrongness of what she had done. He shouldn't be asked to forgive her; he shouldn't have to comfort her.\n\nBut he wanted to. The want to shore her up, wrap up the hurt, was so strong it ached, but Hero still couldn't do it.\n\nRami brushed past his shoulder. Gratitude, and a feeling warmer than that, muted all Hero's other thoughts as he watched the angel approach and silently sit next to Claire at the rim of the empty basin. Rami didn't say anything. He never had to. Claire met his eyes, and her chin wavered before she made a cracking sound and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders twitched and jerked in a painful kind of silence.\n\n\"Boss...\" Brevity said softly, and that appeared to make the shuddering worse.\n\nClaire didn't cry. Claire didn't cry, and Hero didn't forgive. It was their natures, and natures were all they had left in the afterlife, but ferocious resentment burned a hole in Hero's chest. His nature had been written in his book, and that was gone and unlikely to do him any good ever again. He didn't know who he was now. But that meant he also didn't have to know.\n\nHis toes scuffed over the floorboards as his feet finally decided to move. The small sounds echoed like a gunshot that made Claire's shoulders flinch even as he dropped down to her other side. She didn't lower her hands from her face. It was so easy to touch her when he was prodding, or holding her back. But this was comfort, and an entirely alien action between them. His shoulders wouldn't unclench, wouldn't lean in to lend that solid presence that Rami was capable of. His silence stewed instead of supported. This wasn't him. Or perhaps it was. Did he have to decide that now too?\n\n\"Only you would set up such a difficult impasse. You and Hell,\" Hero said to the empty curve of stone beneath his toes. Everything ached. \"Either you have been the worst kind of demon, or I'm a soulless abomination without a book. Either you're a monster, or I am.\"\n\nThe breath Claire took was loud and jagged between her clenched fingers. Her hands fell to her lap by fractions. She didn't lift her head. \"I thought I knew, once. I thought I understood how things worked. I just...\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" Hero said. He saw the way Rami's dark eyes watched him over Claire's head. Their angel, their shepherd of souls. What a sad flock they made for him. Hero dropped his gaze. \"It's okay. I'm well versed at being the monster. Comfortable, even.\"\n\nClaire snatched his hand. Her palm was still damp with hot tears. She gripped it and\u2014hell, her strength must have returned to her, the way his knuckles stung in protest.\n\n\"No.\" Claire's voice had steadied. Her chin was locked against her chest, but her gaze was slanted sideways, fierce and searching. \"You are not an abomination. You are not soulless. You are not a monster. I won't tolerate it.\"\n\nThe air had left his lungs at skin contact, and Hero's face felt hot. It was unacceptable, so he made sure his grimace was especially dramatic. \"Fine, fine. If I call you a monster, will you stop crushing my hand? I need it. For things and reasons.\"\n\nIn her typical contrary manner, instead of letting go Claire gulped a surprised sound and yanked his arm into her lap. Hero fell against her shoulders and found he didn't fight too hard when Claire locked her hands around his elbow. She was warm. Her hair smelled like smoky tea leaves. Her voice was small and soft near his ear. \"I don't know what happens now.\"\n\n\"It seems obvious to me.\" Rami's voice was gravel, like earth, and rocks that you could hold on to. His arm shifted, bracing both of them so they didn't fall over. \"We'll be monsters together.\"\n\nHero's laugh sounded like a bark to his ears, jagged and out of use. He shook his head and glanced across the well. Brevity had hunkered down in the curve of stone, drawn-looking and hesitant.\n\n\"What's the matter with you?\" Hero asked.\n\nBrevity's eyes were big and threatening yet more tears. \"I wasn't sure\u2014I don't know if\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, get over here already,\" Claire grumbled. She threw open the arm that wasn't trapping Hero in place, catching Brevity as she stumbled over. She fell into the rest of them, and Hero caught a particularly bony elbow to the stomach.\n\nBrevity let out a wet warble that was muffled by Claire's hair. Hero couldn't make out what she said, but Claire shook her head. Some warmth had returned to her brown skin, and her eyes sharpened as she comforted the muse sobbing into her chest. \"We'll be quite all right. Really, Brev, you're dampening my blouse.\"\n\nThe corner of Claire's mouth quirked up when laughter interrupted the muse's tears and then subsided into sniffles. It stayed soft as it caught Hero's eye and she nodded. The way her eyes drifted back to the stone told him enough. She hadn't known, still didn't have the answers, but this\u2014this they had.\n\nThey sat there for a time, tangled and scarred and lost with each other, at the edge of a vast, quiet emptiness where certainty had been."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 48",
                "text": "\u2002What is a library? What is its real purpose? Is it just a room full of books? Any storehouse could qualify, in that case.\n\n\u2002What makes a library, then? What is this grander institution that crosses realms, gods, beliefs? How can a good solid Norseman end up in a wing located in the Christian ideal of damnation? It doesn't seem to matter what the librarians believed when they were alive\u2014here we are.\n\n\u2002Maybe what makes a librarian is not what they believe. Maybe what makes a library isn't what it has, but what it does.\n\n\u2014Bjorn the Bard, 1433 CE\n\nIn peaceful moments, the library played. Books didn't wake into characters. No one stirred off their shelves, but the Library had its own kind of ecosystem and sense of balance. When it felt all was well, it bloomed in ways only Brevity could see.\n\nBrevity had checked on the damsels\u2014Rosia, especially, who still stared at her in ways that made Brevity's stomach flutter. Brevity had done her duties, and then she had promptly decided to hide. She'd made a blanket fort of her desk and chair. From her nest, she could see the colors stretch and yawn out of the stacks like seeking tendrils. Aquamarine pooled out of the topmost rows like a mist, gently eddying around an energetic, spiky carmine that was probing the air. Lower to the floor, a book had industriously stretched a vine of butter yellow, almost mimicking a pat of sunshine on the rug as it reached for the other side. The books on the other side must not have felt sociable, because they held their muddled rainbows close to their covers.\n\nIt was almost peaceful, if you didn't know what you were looking at.\n\nShe'd been reading a book, pretending to read a book. There was a reason people read in corners. It was a room made of one. Spine curved, arms bracketed, and the remaining walls made of the reassuring weight of a book. A self-constructed universe, for as long as you needed it. Or as long as the story lasted.\n\nBrevity isolated that thought with a meditative mood, which meant she noticed the troubled storm-cloud presence at the door before seeing him. \"Rami?\" Brevity unburied herself a little from the blanket. \"What are you doing up here?\"\n\n\"Claire and Hero are fine,\" Rami reassured her, answering the unspoken question. He crossed the carpeted expanse of the lobby with that plodding kind of silence he used to mask his nature. Brevity couldn't help but notice the books didn't reach toward him. In fact, they withdrew a little, as if sensing the former angel's purpose. \"I left them asleep on the couch, though I'm fairly certain Hero was faking exhaustion merely to pin Claire in place. I came to see how you're doing.\"\n\nThere was reproach in his gentle tone. He was a natural sheepdog, with his need to keep them together. There were differences\u2014Brevity knew something unique had knit between those three\u2014but still, Brevity was firmly part of his flock. He didn't approve of her coming back up to the Unwritten Wing alone instead of recuperating with the others.\n\nShe didn't know quite how to explain that she needed it. Needed to be here. Needed to see, knowing what she knew now. She tilted her head back to eye the ceiling. It was about the only place not loaded with books and colors. \"I feel like a three-day-old turd.\"\n\nThe honesty was precisely calibrated for the grimace that appeared on Rami's face. \"All the more reason you should rest. There's no lingering...?\"\n\nHis voice trailed off to an effective arrow that drew Brevity's gaze back down to her lap. Her left arm had emerged out of the blankets enough to see it. She could almost still make out where the inspiration gilt had rested for years, leaving a paler cornflower line against her blue skin. But scrawled over the top was a new jagged line of pure black, rimmed by bone white skin. Brevity resisted the urge to touch it. It was faintly raised, like a scar. If Brevity paid too much attention to it, she could almost swear she felt it run with a pulse that was just slightly out of sync with her own.\n\nShe tucked her arm under the blanket again. \"Whatever ink is left in that seems happy where it is.\"\n\n\"The ink needed something to anchor to. It was the only solution I could think of,\" Rami said apologetically.\n\n\"It was the best of our crappy options.\" Brevity turned her attention back to the ceiling again. Had there always been a parquet inlay behind the arching beams? She could swear that was new. \"It's not like I hadn't stolen it to begin with.\"\n\n\"You cherished it, though. And you gave it up to save Claire.\" He paused. \"You gave up a lot.\"\n\nThere were no cobwebs in the dark corners of the ceiling. That disappointed Brevity for some reason. Didn't seem right to have a place this big and old without some spiders. Maybe if she thought about it hard enough the Library would let her have a spider or two.\n\n\"The muses were never going to take me back,\" she said after a pause.\n\n\"But Probity would have.\"\n\nIn anyone else, it would have been a cruel statement. But Rami had a way of lobbing the truth around without malice. He didn't dance; he wasn't discreet. Gifts of silence were for Claire; glib words were for Hero. Rami was for ripping the bandage off clean and acknowledging the wound with air and sunlight.\n\nThat didn't mean it didn't sting. Brevity chewed on her lip. \"I wanted it. I wanted her to be right. I wanted...\"\n\nRami let the sentence lie, unfinished, for a moment. A steadying weight came down as he touched her shoulder. \"I know a little something of what it means to give up the idea of one home for the sake of another. I know what you did. And if you ever need to talk, I will listen.\"\n\n\"I...\" Brevity finally dragged her gaze away from the ceiling. There was no expectation in Rami's serious face, just presence. Sometimes, simply being here was all the truth needed. Brevity nodded. \"I'll remember that. Not now, but... All the sacrifices, I'm not sure it mattered. What did it do but prolong things? Even the inspiration I had.\" She made a vague gesture without looking at her arm again. \"I gave it up, and now it's back, and something else.\"\n\nSaying it almost made it worse. It was easier to imagine the black slivers racing up her forearm as something new, foreign. A bezoar to absorb the poison of the ink. Thinking of it too much made Brevity queasy, but of course, that was why Rami was there.\n\n\"Just as well. Muses can't absorb humanity. That's why the ink overwrote your companions instead.\"\n\nThere was compassion in Rami's voice, but an unflinching kind. Determined to see this through. Brevity rubbed her eyes and tried not to imagine she could see contorted black figures on the insides of her eyelids. \"At least Claire was able to reverse Verve in the end.\"\n\n\"I wish I could have done more.\" Rami shook his head. \"I have no idea how Claire survived that. There were too many, even for me. I could only release the bits of souls that were ready to let go.\"\n\n\"Where do they go when they 'let go'?\" Brevity was fighting the urge to look back at the stacks, see if the books were listening. \"If books and humans are made of the same soul stuff, where does a released book go? Did they all really just stay in the Dust Wing? Or go to Heaven? To their authors? Not all of them were dead yet.\"\n\n\"I'm not wise enough to say. Perhaps where all stories go when they end. Claire might know.\"\n\n\"Claire doesn't know.\" Saying it aloud felt like a betrayal, but it was true. She saw it the moment guilt crashed down across Claire's face at the realization. She'd been making amends for her harsh treatment of characters like Hero, but realizing she'd been the jailer of unwilling souls...\n\nBut she hadn't known, and as a result Brevity hadn't known. Claire could be forgiven because of her lack of education\u2014her mentor hadn't shared everything in time\u2014but Brevity? Brevity was a muse. She had ferried story stuff to and from humanity for decades. How could she not have realized what she was carrying?\n\nStories were made of soul stuff, fragmented and spurred from their human authors. Humans could create because they could birth little pieces of their souls to do it. Books existed in the afterlife, because the afterlife was a place of immutable things, including souls.\n\n\"This story's not over, is it?\" She hadn't intended it to come out as a whisper, but the Library seemed to swallow up her words like a hollow prophecy. She cringed and finally risked a glance at Rami.\n\nThe Watcher angel always looked tired, shabby and rubbed thin around the edges, like an old worry stone. His brow knit, then smoothed. Little quakes of thought. \"There's got to be a reason the Library has kept the nature of stories secret for so long. If the Library contains fragments of souls, it is always going to be at risk of being used by its host realm.\"\n\n\"Andras knew.\" The realization hit Brevity hard, making her pulse race. His sharp teeth and mocking mask of a gentleman's face. The smothering smell of burning books. \"Andras knew; he knew the Library could be used. That's why he wanted it.\"\n\n\"He might have suspected, putting the pieces together like we did.\" Rami considered for a brief moment before appearing to shrug off the memory of the demon as violently as he deserved. \"No secret lasts forever, not in the afterlife. We should prepare for what will come when the nature of books is a known fact.\"\n\n\"Great. More demons.\"\n\n\"Not just demons,\" Rami said. \"Souls are the weave of all the realms. I don't think any host realm could withstand the temptation of a library right at their doorstep.\"\n\nNot just the Unwritten Wing, the Library. Brevity thought of Bjorn, his cozy clutter of scrolls and sagas in Valhalla. Of the stately poems of Duat. The longing letters of Elysium. The mad dead of the Dust Wing. The dull ache of Brevity's self-pity burned abruptly away to make room for the holy terror of it all. \"The entire Library's in danger.\"\n\nHer breath was already coming fast, but Rami's hand was on her shoulder like an anchor. He handed her the teacup she'd forgotten. The strawberry tea had long gone cold, but a gulp of it was astringent enough to force her thoughts in line. \"Not if we make our own plans.\"\n\n\"Everything's changed.\" Brevity was already shaking her head. \"We've all changed. Look at us! I'm infected, Claire's haunted, Hero... Who knows what Hero is!\" She'd bitten her nails; when had she bitten her nails? Brevity dug her hands into her hair instead. \"Verve is out there, and now Probity has got to know too. What are we doing?\"\n\nThe silence rattled around Brevity's head, chasing her already racing thoughts. Rami's hand came away from her shoulder. When she looked up, he had his arms crossed. It made the feathers on his coat fluff up in a vaguely intimidating gesture. \"You're changing. That's what happens.\"\n\n\"In stories?\" Brevity finished weakly.\n\n\"In life.\" Rami looked flummoxed for a moment. \"Almighty heavens. I'm not a book, or a writer, or a muse. I've lived too long to see everything as a metaphor for a story, like the rest of you do. I don't think in plot arcs or theatrical roles. Life\u2014it goes on. Change happens. Secrets get out. Challenges appear. Decisions are forced. Whether we're ready for them or not.\"\n\n\"I vote not,\" Brevity said into her lap.\n\n\"Then you will get ready. You are the librarian, after all,\" Rami said firmly. He swept a hand out, gesturing, and Brevity forced herself to look again at the stacks. A spectrum streamed from the books, weaving a stained glass of light in the air above each aisle. Every color, individual, intermingled, alive. \"You have an entire library of souls depending on you.\""
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Burning Page",
        "author": "Genevieve Cogman",
        "genres": [
            "mystery",
            "steampunk"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "The Invisible Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\u2002From: Peregrine Vale, 221b Baker Street\n\n\u2002To: Inspector Singh, New Scotland Yard\n\n\u2002Singh,\n\n\u2002For the love of God, can't you give me anything challenging? London is a stagnant pool, and its criminals are petty, unimaginative and uninteresting. These last few weeks have driven me nearly mad with boredom. Nothing seems worth my time or attention. Even my research seems a waste of effort. I must have a decent case to occupy me, or else I believe the machine that is my brain will spin out of control.\n\n\u2002In answer to your queries about Rotherham's murder and the apparent hauntings at the Thames pumping works, I would have thought it clear that the two are connected.\n\n\u2002It should be obvious that the victim was decoyed down to the new ultrafiltration membranes in the Thames pumping works and murdered there. His body was passed through the system to suffuse his lungs with fresh water, in order to give credence to the claim that he was drowned in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, where his body was found. Check the financial holdings of Rotherham's niece, and her private library \u2013 I believe you'll find evidence of her scientific studies there. The alibi that the niece's husband gave her is also very dubious, and he will probably break under pressure.\n\n\u2002Winters and Strongrock are out of London at the moment, on a mission to one of their parallel worlds. From what Strongrock has confided to me, Winters is suffering official displeasure for leaving her post in order to rescue him. Typical bureaucratic nonsense. Her superiors might not have condoned her methods, but she achieved the results they wanted anyhow. But I dare say it could have been worse.\n\n\u2002Give me a case, Singh. It will keep me busy, and God knows I need to be busy. Logical thought and reason are the best medicine for my current inertia, and will keep me from worse alternatives.\n\n\u2002Vale"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "The morning light glittered on the glass windows and on the blades of the guillotines in the central square. Pigeons squabbled noisily in the gutters, audible solely due to the general deadly silence. Only the creaking of cart wheels and the soft padding of footsteps disturbed the stillness.\n\nIrene could feel an even greater zone of terrified hush surrounding herself and Kai. Passers-by avoided their gaze, desperate not to attract their attention. It was because of their 'borrowed' uniforms, of course: everyone was afraid that some day the National Guard might come for them, to drag them away for counter-revolutionary activities. And then would come prisons, and trials, and then the guillotine...\n\nIt made their outfits the perfect disguise for getting around unnoticed. Nobody was going to look twice at the National Guard. In case the National Guard looked back at them.\n\nWith a neat pivot, the two of them turned at the corner of the street and marched down it together, their steps in unison, out of view of the guillotines. Irene felt an illogical sense of relief in response. Even if they weren't out of danger yet, she was spared from having to look at the thing that might chop her head off.\n\n'How much further?' Kai murmured out of the side of his mouth. Even in the charmless National Guard uniform \u2013 heavy black wool coat and trousers, and tricolour sash \u2013 her assistant managed to look almost unrealistically handsome. The sun gleamed on his black hair and touched his face with a glow of pure health and physicality. When walking, he paced like an aristocrat, or a predator, rather than trudging like an ordinary man doing a nine-to-five job. There was very little they could do to disguise that, though. Smears of mud would have been out of place on a Guardsman, and disguising him as an ordinary citizen being taken for questioning would have been too risky.\n\n'Next street,' Irene muttered back. Next to Kai she was comparatively plain, to her occasional regret, and so she was much better at going unnoticed. Her own plain brown hair and regular features took actual work to make them look interesting, or really any more attractive than 'neat and tidy'. But since most of the time she wanted to go unnoticed, that was a benefit in her line of work.\n\nFortunately women served in the National Guard, and she hadn't needed to bind her breasts, or anything like that, to blend in. The European Republic that had spread from the French Revolution in this alternate world was oppressive, vicious, hard-line and highly dangerous, but it did at least let women get themselves killed in the armed forces. Probably because they needed the manpower, as it were, due to the ongoing wars, but that was another problem.\n\nThey turned the next corner, and Irene flicked a glance towards the raddled old building that was their target. It was barely in one piece: decaying brick was seamed with ivy and cracks, the shutters were locked shut in place and covered with graffiti, and the roof was missing tiles. They marched up to the front door as though they had a perfect right to be there. Kai banged on the door, waited for a response, then kicked it open. The two of them stomped inside.\n\nKai peered into the darkness. Shafts of light filtered round the edges of the shutters, enough to let them see the utter ruin of the building's interior. The staircase that led up to the first and second floors looked just barely passable, but all the furniture was gone, and the walls were covered with revolutionary dogma. It might once have been a library, but now it was a decrepit barn of a building, which would probably have been turned down by passing cows as too uncomfortable.\n\n'I don't understand how there still can be a link to the Library from this place,' Kai said.\n\n'Nor do we. But if it takes us back to base, that's good enough for me.' Irene kicked the door shut behind them. Without the light coming in through the doorway, the place was even darker. 'Sometimes it can take years for a world's entrance to the Library to shift. Sometimes it can take centuries. But with all the local libraries and bookshops shut down or under armed guard, this is our best bet.'\n\n'Would it be out of order for me to say that I don't like this alternate?' Kai asked. He unbuttoned his coat and reached inside, pulling out the book they'd been sent to fetch, and offered it to Irene.\n\nShe took it, conscious of its warmth from the heat of his body. 'Not at all. I don't like it either.'\n\n'So how long before you stop getting...'\n\nHe was looking for a non-aggressive way of putting it, but Irene was irritated enough about the situation herself, so she felt no need to sugar-coat it. 'Before I stop getting all the crap jobs, yes? God only knows. I'm on probation, after all. There isn't a fixed time on that.'\n\nAnd then she felt guilty at the way Kai's eyes flicked away from her, and at the flush on his cheeks. After all, her probation was his fault, in a roundabout way. She'd abandoned her duties as Librarian-in-Residence in another world at short notice, because she'd gone running off to save him from kidnapping and slavery \u2013 she'd also averted a war in the process. Clearly she was lucky to retain her post at all, but these types of missions were the price. It wasn't fair to remind him about it. And it didn't help to brood over it herself: the brooding tended to devolve into corrosive anger, or they'll-all-realize-they-were-wrong-and-apologize fantasizing, neither of which helped.\n\n'Let's get moving,' she said. 'If the guards check their records, they'll realize that we were impostors and they could track us here.'\n\nKai peered into the shadows. 'I'm not sure there are any undamaged doors on this floor. Do we need an intact door-and-frame to get through to the Library?'\n\nIrene nodded. And he was right \u2013 the place had been trashed very thoroughly. She wished she'd seen it while it was still a functioning collection of books, before the Revolution had gutted it. 'We do. This could be awkward. We'd better try upstairs.'\n\n'I'll go first,' Kai said, reaching the stairs before she could object. 'I'm heavier than you are, so you should be safe to tread on a stair if it'll bear my weight.'\n\nThis was not the time or place to get into another will-you-stop-being-so-protective argument. Irene let him go first and followed him gingerly up the creaking stairs, treading only where he trod and hanging onto the chipped balustrade in case of sudden falls.\n\nUpstairs, the first floor was almost as ruined as the ground floor, but there was one door off the large central landing that was still hanging loosely on its hinges. Irene breathed a sigh of relief as she saw it. 'That should do. Give me a moment.'\n\nShe focused on her nature as a sworn Librarian, drawing herself upright and taking a deep breath, then stepped forward to lay her hand against the door, pushing it shut. 'Open to the Library,' she said in the Language. Its power to reshape reality was a Librarian's greatest asset. So in a moment they'd be out of this place, back in the interdimensional collection of books they both worked for, ready to deliver one more volume to its huge archives.\n\nWhat happened next should definitely not have happened. The door and its frame went up in a burst of fire. Irene stood there in stunned disbelief, barely snatching her hand away from the heat, a concussion of power resounding in her head like a car crash. Kai had to grab her shoulders and drag her back, pulling her away from the flames. They burned hot and white, catching on the wood faster than was natural and spreading across the wall.\n\n'Fire, go out!' Irene ordered, but it didn't work. Usually the Language would interact with the world around her like cogs fitting together and moving in unison, but this time the metaphorical teeth on the cogwheel didn't catch and the Language failed to grip reality. The flames rose even higher, and she flinched back from them.\n\n'What happened?' Kai shouted, raising his voice to be heard above the crackle of the fire. 'Was it booby-trapped?'\n\nIrene gave herself a mental shake and pulled herself together, flinching back from the spreading fire. She'd been expecting to feel the usual drain of power, but what she'd touched had felt more like a live wire \u2013 an antithetical surge of power, which had exploded when she'd tried to touch it with her own. Fortunately it didn't seem to have affected her, just the door that could have been their route back to the Library. 'I have no idea,' she shouted back. 'Quick, we need to find another entrance! And before this whole place goes up!' She clutched the book to her chest in a death grip: if she dropped it here and it went up in flames, god only knew how long it would take them to find another copy.\n\nThey stumbled to the stairs, smoke already coiling towards them and starting to drift through the shutters and outside. Irene led the way up this time, spurred by the rising crackling of the fire. She heard a crunch behind her as one of the stairs gave way under Kai, but he grunted at her to keep on going up, and a moment later his footsteps were behind her again.\n\nIrene staggered out onto the second floor and looked around. It was as much of a wreck as the ground floor. There were no doors, only empty doorways and broken walls. There was more light, but only because of the large holes in the roof, and the floor was stained where the rain had been coming through.\n\nPerhaps you should have used the Language more efficiently and succeeded in putting out the fire on the first floor. Rather than just screaming 'Fire!' and panicking and running away, the cold voice of self-judgement at the back of her mind pointed out. Might it have worked if you'd just tried a little harder? And don't step on those stained bits of floor, the voice remarked waspishly, they're probably rotting and unsafe.\n\nKai strode across to one shuttered window, peering down at the street below through the cracks between shutter and wall. He went still, and even in the dim light Irene could see the tension in his shoulders. 'Irene, I have some bad news.'\n\nPanic would be wasting vital time and energy, however tempting it might be. And the fire made it extremely tempting. 'Let me guess,' Irene said. 'The National Guard has tracked us here.'\n\n'Yes,' Kai said. 'I can see a dozen of them. They're pointing at the smoke.'\n\n'I suppose it would have been too much to hope they wouldn't notice it.' Irene tried to think of alternatives. 'If I can stop the fire\u2014'\n\n'Possible \u2013 unless it's something to do with the Library or chaos,' Kai pointed out. 'That's stopped you using the Language before. Do you know what caused it?'\n\n'No.' Irene joined him at the shutter. There was a squad of twenty men and women out there, and the fact that the house was on fire was probably the only thing that had stopped them coming in for the moment. She forced herself to speak with deliberate calmness, ignoring the clenching fear in her belly. 'Dear me, we must have annoyed them back there. But I'm surprised they followed us so fast.'\n\n'I think I recognize that one.' Kai pointed at one of the soldiers. 'Wasn't she the one whom you convinced with the Language that we were officials from Paris?'\n\nIrene squinted, then nodded. 'I think you're right. It must have worn off faster than usual. Oh well.'\n\nInwardly, she felt far more disturbed than she was allowing herself to show. It wasn't the squad of twenty soldiers outside. She could handle that. Well, she and Kai together could. It was the fact that the attempted gate to the Library had been shut down, and in a way that she didn't recognize or understand. Her current probation status meant that she was getting dirty work and dangerous jobs, such as this little waltz through a totalitarian republic and into their private vaults, to get a unique copy of The Daughter of Porthos by Dumas. But she should have been warned if there was a problem with reaching the Library from this world. It was a simple matter of common safety. If someone had deliberately sent her out here without telling her...\n\nThere would be time to settle that later. For the moment, they were in a burning house with angry soldiers outside. Par for the course. 'Out the back door, then, before the first floor's impassable,' she said.\n\nThere was a crash behind them.\n\n'That was the stairs,' Kai said, deadpan."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "'Right.' It was amazing how being cut off by advancing flames focused the mind. And not just in the way that the first cup of coffee in the morning helped one concentrate, but more in the way that a magnifying glass directed all the minor fears into a single laser beam of pure terror. Irene had never particularly liked fire. More than that, the idea of fire getting loose among her books was a particular nightmare. Being caught in a conflagration was near the top of her Top Ten Ways I Don't Want to Die. 'We break the shutters on this floor, go out, surrender, and escape later.'\n\n'Just like that?'\n\nIrene raised an eyebrow. 'Unless you have a better idea?'\n\n'Actually, I do.' Kai sounded half-proud, half-defiant, but overall determined. 'We don't need to come back here, so it doesn't matter what they know. I'll change form and carry us both out of this world.'\n\nThis threw Irene off-balance. It wasn't something she had remotely expected. Kai hadn't bothered keeping his heritage as a dragon secret from her \u2013 at least, not after she'd found out about it \u2013 but he very rarely offered to do anything that would involve using it. And she'd never seen him in full dragon form before. 'They've got rifles,' she pointed out practically.\n\nKai snorted. Or perhaps that was the smoke. Which was admittedly getting thicker. Thank heavens there were no books in here to be burned now. She was a Librarian, after all: destruction of any books was loathsome. 'Rifles are no threat to me, in my proper form.'\n\nIrene nearly said But what about me?, although she managed to shut her mouth before it could get out. It was their only hope right now, after all. 'Right,' she said after a moment. 'Do we have enough space in here?'\n\n'Outside would be easier,' Kai said. More smoke was drifting up between the floorboards, and the crackling of flames was getting louder. 'But there's just enough room in here. Please stay back against the wall.'\n\nIrene thrust the book inside her coat and stayed beside the window, her back pressed against the wall, as Kai walked out towards the centre of the floor. She did wonder if changing to a dragon was going to involve a loss of clothing, then mentally scolded herself for getting distracted at a moment of crisis. But she didn't look away.\n\nKai stopped and raised his arms, his back arching as he went up on his toes. But the movement didn't end there. The air seemed to thicken in the room, growing denser and more real in a way that outweighed the smoke. The light spilling through the holes in the roof grew heavier, glowing around him as his form shifted. Dazzle stung Irene's eyes, and she had to blink for a moment, however hard she tried to keep watching.\n\nWhen she could see clearly again, Kai wasn't human any more.\n\nOf all the pictures of dragons that Irene had ever seen, he looked the closest to the images in some of the older Chinese works. He lay in a serpentine knot of dark blue coils, his wings folded against the side of his body. Where the light struck him, his scales were the clear dark sapphire of the deep ocean in daylight, and the traceries of scales along his body were like the ripples on the surface of a river. She thought he might be thirty feet or more long, fully outstretched, but it was hard to judge with him coiled up inside the room and in the smoke. His eyes were red as rubies now, with a light that didn't need the sun to burn, and as he opened his mouth she saw a great many sharp white carnivorous teeth.\n\n'Irene?' he said. His voice was deep and organ-toned, though still recognizably Kai's, and it hummed in her bones. The floor seemed to shudder in response.\n\nShe gathered herself. 'Yes,' she said. 'Are you \u2013 all right?' It was a stupid question, she knew, but it was difficult to know what one should say. Etiquette on dealing with apprentices after they have turned into dragons \u2013 another missing item from the Big Book of Library Procedures.\n\n'Absolutely,' he rumbled. 'This place is quite congenial to me. Stay back while I bring down the roof.'\n\nWell, the world was on the more lawful side of things, rather than on the chaotic end of the universe. The ruling despotic regime was an unfortunate side-effect of that. As were the guards and guillotines. It would explain why Kai had no problems with being a full dragon here. In a more chaotic alternate world, which they'd unwillingly visited before, he'd been barely conscious in human form, and it would have been much worse if he'd been in dragon shape.\n\nKai reared up, his wings spreading till they bent against the walls, and set his back against the ceiling. The floor creaked ominously beneath him, but it was drowned out by the groaning of the ceiling as he shoved against it. Tiles came loose, falling to shatter against the floor, and through the dust and the increasing smoke Irene could see the remaining plaster cracking and falling away, and the central rafters bending.\n\n'Is anyone up there?' came a yell in French from downstairs.\n\nThe natural human response was to shout, 'No!' Which said something about humanity. But Irene was too busy watching Kai, in any case, and trying to stay back, as more and more of the ceiling and roof came tumbling down.\n\nWith a heavier crash, the floor began to give way. Kai flexed his body, shifting to brace himself against the walls of the building, and lowered his great head. 'Irene, get on me, between my shoulders \u2013 now!'\n\nIt would be bad manners to argue with the designated driver. Irene unslung her rifle and dropped it, then scrambled on top of the nearest bit of Kai's back, crawling up between his shoulders. It felt horribly lese-majesty and improper to be crawling on all fours along the back of a dragon like this. His skin was like warm flexible steel, rippling beneath her hands as his body flexed to hold him in position, and, now that she was on top of him, Irene could smell the sea, stronger than the stench of dust and mould and fire.\n\nAnother piece of floor went tumbling. Fire came streaming up from below, leaping in the sudden burst of air, and Irene flung herself flat on Kai's back, her hands digging in as best they could. He was too broad for her to straddle, so she plastered herself against him and prayed. 'Go go go!' she shouted. 'Just go!'\n\nKai flung himself upwards in a twisting curve, scraping through the gaping hole in the roof, his tail lashing behind him as he rose into the air. Irene clung to his back, her face pressed against his hide, and felt his body flex underneath her in the sort of S-bend that should have been impossible \u2013 that would have been impossible for a natural creature flying naturally.\n\nBut Kai was a dragon. He rose through the air as if he was simply moving from point A to point B like a painting on a scroll, and though his wings spread out in great blue arches as if to catch the wind, he flew against it. Irene could hear the screams and shouts from below, and the sharp cracks of rifle shots, but Kai's pace didn't falter as he drifted further and further up, till the city lay spread out beneath them like a photograph and the burning house was a distant blotch of orange.\n\n'Irene?' He didn't turn his head to look at her. His flight path changed to a curving hover, tracing a wide circle in the air. 'If I hold steady now, can you get a little closer to my shoulders? It'll be safer there for you, when we pass between worlds.'\n\n'Give me a moment,' Irene said through gritted teeth. It helped if she kept her eyes on Kai's back, rather than looking down at the ground beneath. She wasn't fond of heights at the best of times, and sitting on a dragon's back hundreds of yards in the air made it hard to ignore exactly how high up she was. However, one consolation was that she wasn't being as wind-blown as she'd expected. Something was blunting the effect of the speed and the air currents on her \u2013 and on Kai too, presumably. It must be to do with the whole dragon magical-flight thing. She added it to her list of questions for later, as she pulled herself slowly along Kai's back to between his wings.\n\n'Now sit upright.' She could hear the amusement in his voice.\n\n'Like hell,' Irene said. It was a very long way down.\n\n'You'll be safe. We've carried people before, Irene. Sages, visitors, human favourites... Trust me. I won't drop you.'\n\nIt's not a question of me not trusting you. It's a question of whether or not I can make myself physically let go of my death grip on you. Finger by finger, Irene released her hold on Kai's hide and pushed herself to a sitting position. Kai was too wide for her to sit astride, so she curled her legs underneath herself. Tendrils of mane flowed back from around his head, and she tentatively held onto a couple of them. It wasn't logical, but she felt much better for holding onto something. 'What now?' she asked.\n\n'Now I travel back to Vale's world.' Kai's wings flexed, spreading to their full extent. The light glittered on them like the water on the surface of waves. 'I know its place among the flow of the worlds, and I could fly to Vale himself, if I so desired. But he probably wouldn't like that,' he said, abruptly losing his formality. 'Where should we go?'\n\n'The British Library,' Irene said firmly. 'You can land on the roof and I'll handle any guards while you change back. And then we can use the gate to the Library from there.'\n\n'That seems reasonable.' Kai hesitated, the gesture more normal for a human than a dragon. 'Irene, what happened back there?'\n\n'I don't know.' It was easy to admit ignorance, but more worrisome when it came to speculating about it. 'If there's a problem with that world's access, I wasn't warned about it. And if it's a recent problem, then I need to warn other people. Urgently. I haven't heard of anything like this happening before, and other Librarians could be at risk.' Her grip tightened. 'Take us home, Kai. Before the people here invent a rocket ship to come up after us.'\n\nKai rumbled a laugh, and she could feel the shiver in his body underneath her. Well, I'm glad one of us is enjoying this.\n\nThen he dipped, losing altitude, his body curving through the air but not disturbing her, leaving her as well balanced as though she was sitting on a chair in her own study. The wind was only moderate, ruffling her hair around her face, but they were moving faster now \u2013 fast enough that the air was shrieking as they sliced through it.\n\nThe air gaped open ahead of them, luminous and shimmering, a rip in reality. The roaring wind sounded like chanting voices, the words indecipherable, but the tone ominous and warning. Irene's stomach twisted in suppressed panic. She'd always been the one in control of travel between worlds. Of course she trusted Kai, of course she was sure he could handle it if he said so, and of course she wasn't going to admit to being afraid, but the terror of the unknown was a cold shadow on her heart. Yet curiosity kept her eyes open. This was, after all, something she'd never done before...\n\nKai flew straight ahead, into the rift."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "They plunged into an atmosphere that was as thick and dense as syrup. Irene could still breathe, after the first moment's panic, but the air flowed around them like water, and tendrils of her hair drifted round her face as though she was submerged. There was no sun, no moon or stars or any obvious source of light, but she could see herself and Kai with a vague dawn-like clarity.\n\nThey were gliding through an ocean of air, in a thousand shades of blue and green. There was no obvious end or beginning to it, and no clear solid objects or real things except for the two of them. The only differentiation Irene could see was in the shadings and temperatures of the currents that constantly moved and shifted through the air, like vast streams of smoke or rivers entering the sea. And perhaps Kai could perceive even more than she could.\n\n'Where are we?' she asked.\n\n'Behind,' Kai said. He didn't change his steady pace, gliding through the flux of watery air. 'Outside. Travelling.'\n\n'Is it that you can't explain \u2013 or shouldn't explain?' Irene asked. Either would make sense.\n\n'More the first than the second.' He winged a long, casual turn. 'I'm seeking the river that leads to Vale's world. I can't explain it any better than you can explain the Language to someone who doesn't have the Library brand.'\n\n'Fair enough.' She patted his back reassuringly, then hoped that dragons didn't object to that sort of thing from passengers. 'You won't get into any sort of trouble for this from your relatives, will you?'\n\n'For protecting you? Hardly. They're still considering how best to reward you for your meritorious actions.'\n\nKai sounded smug, but Irene didn't have quite so rosy a view of matters. Yes, she had helped rescue Kai, but tracking his kidnappers had meant leaving her post as Librarian-in-Residence and going AWOL and provoking a large number of Fae. This might have raised her stock with the dragons \u2013 or at least with Kai's family, who were after all kings among the dragons \u2013 but it had left her on probation in the Library. She was lucky she hadn't been exiled. Whether that was fair or unfair was something that wasn't worth arguing, and would only mark her as a troublemaker if she tried. Irene wasn't sure that she wanted to raise her stock with the dragons at the Library's expense. She was a Librarian, sworn to the Library, and that had to come first.\n\n'That reminds me,' Kai went on, a little too casually. 'Have you considered Li Ming's suggestion?'\n\n'Kai.' Irene took a deep breath before she could snap at him. This was the third time he'd brought it up in the last three days. 'I appreciate that you didn't ask for your uncle to send Li Ming to Vale's world. And I appreciate that Li Ming is only being courteous in offering to provide accommodation for you and your household. But I can't \u2013 not won't, can't \u2013 move in and live under his protection.'\n\n'You won't be under his protection,' Kai protested. 'You'd be under mine!' He seemed to realize that he'd said the wrong thing. 'Besides, it wouldn't be protection as such. It's just that he'd be paying for it. And you'd still be keeping up your duties as Librarian-in-Residence.'\n\n'No,' Irene said. She looked out at the endless flows and patterns of colour. It was enough to make anyone feel insignificant. Dragons must be immune, however, which probably said a lot about dragons and their inbuilt feelings of extreme significance. 'I can't compromise the Library's interests by living in accommodation that's being paid for by a servant of your uncle.'\n\nThat was the diplomatic way of putting it. The Library was neutral and stayed out of the way of both dragons and Fae, unless their interests came into direct conflict \u2013 usually over the ownership of a book, or an immediate life-or-death situation. They certainly weren't going to formally ally themselves with either side. It would be highly inappropriate for a Librarian to be living as a paid dependant of one of the dragon kings.\n\nIrene's immediate reaction was a bit more visceral. She didn't object to Li Ming in person. He was always courteous and diplomatic, and while he was here to watch over Kai, he did so very discreetly and didn't stop Kai going on jobs like the current one. But Irene was absolutely certain that in the long run Li Ming wanted Kai away from the Library and going back to his previous role as dragon princeling, with Irene either installed as a favoured servant or out of the picture. Which was fair enough. But in the end, it was going to be Kai's choice.\n\nKai was silent for ten minutes, probably reviewing his strategy. 'What if I was paying for it?' he suggested.\n\n'With money you got from Li Ming? Sorry, that won't wash.'\n\n'You're treating this as a major issue.' Kai curved downwards: there was enough gravity to make it perceptible as 'down' rather than 'up', and Irene was grateful for that, since she was having enough trouble as it was in reconciling her perceptions with reality. 'I just want to protect you. So does Li Ming. So does my uncle. He views you as a suitable friend for me. Why can't you understand that?'\n\n'As your friend, I'm grateful for that.' It would have been too blatant a kick in the teeth to say I don't need your protection or Last time I was the one protecting you. Plus there was the fact that Kai was the one who'd just rescued her, less than an hour ago. 'But as a Librarian, I can't accept it. Not in that way.'\n\nKai growled, and Irene felt the vibration underneath her, down the length of his body. 'You aren't making this easy!'\n\n'I'm sure I'm not,' Irene said. 'Have you asked Vale about any of this?'\n\nThe dead silence in response was indicative. Vale was a number of things: he was London's greatest detective in the alternate world where they were living, and he was a good friend of Kai's, and \u2013 Irene thought \u2013 not entirely unattached to Irene herself. He was also very similar to a certain fictional Great Detective, but Irene didn't like to bring that up in conversation.\n\n'Is that a \"Yes and he said no\"?' Irene enquired. 'Or just a plain \"No\"?'\n\n'Since when did you become so involved in my relationships?' Kai rumbled, with a deepening undertone of anger.\n\n'He's my friend too,' Irene said.\n\nFor a moment Kai was silent. Irene was congratulating herself on having found a conversation-stopper when he suggested, 'I don't mind you having a relationship with Vale, you know.'\n\n'How very open-minded of you,' Irene muttered.\n\n'It wouldn't hinder our friendship, of course,' Kai went on blithely. 'Nor would it matter if you were bedding me as well. I know you say that you feel that would be inappropriate, as mentor to student, but among my kind it would be considered quite natural. And if you'd like some suggestions about how to approach Vale...'\n\n'Kai,' Irene said through gritted teeth. 'Drop the subject. Please.'\n\n'We're almost home in any case.' The air around them was a deepening blue-green and the air was thicker in Irene's lungs, almost difficult to breathe. 'Brace yourself.'\n\nIrene took a firmer hold of the tendrils of mane. 'Where will we come out?' she asked.\n\n'Why, where I choose.' Kai sounded almost surprised that she needed to ask. 'But I'll make it high enough that we don't have to worry about zeppelins.'\n\n'Good thinking,' Irene said faintly. She hadn't even envisaged the possibility, until he'd mentioned it. She wasn't used to thinking in terms of air traffic. What she was thinking about was the ongoing struggle between the Fae and the dragons. This ability to choose exactly where they emerged in an alternate world would mean that the dragons could appear in any place they liked \u2013 if it wasn't for the fact that high-chaos worlds were antithetical to them. Kai had been semi-conscious most of the time they'd been in a very high-chaos Venice, and he'd implied that he'd have been in an even worse condition if he'd been in his draconic form. Probably something similar applied to powerful Fae who had ambitions of invading high-order worlds. It explained why most of the fighting took place in the middle areas, in worlds that were somewhere between the two opposites.\n\nKai folded his wings close to his body, jerking his head and shoulders as if he was fighting against an oncoming tide. But before Irene could get more than mildly panicked, he roared, the sound reverberating through the empty space around them like an echo chamber. As the noise shuddered through the air, a rift split open in front of them, shattering light in all directions, and Kai dived through it.\n\nThey came out above the clouds. It was a very long way down, and bitterly cold. For some reason, Irene's fear of falling from a height like this was much greater than it had been of falling off in the space between worlds, where the fall could presumably have gone on for infinity. She pressed herself tightly against Kai's back. Perhaps it's because I knew that he'd catch me if I'd fallen there, while here... I might just hit the ground.\n\nKai drifted downwards: as before, the velocity and wind didn't reach Irene or do more than ruffle her hair, and she could enjoy the view of oncoming clouds and smog. Typical weather for this world, or at least for this London. 'Can you go to any world?' she asked, curious.\n\n'To any world I know, or to any person I know.' Kai sounded smug again, which wasn't surprising: Irene's travel through the Library was rather more specific and limited. 'I could find you wherever you were.'\n\n'Even in the Library?'\n\nThere was a pause. 'Well, no. I can't reach the Library. None of my kindred can. It's barred to us by our usual way of travel. The only way I can get to it is by being taken there by a Librarian. Like you.'\n\nWell, that explains why the dragons haven't taken us over for our own good. Irene made some soothing noises of agreement, and wondered exactly why dragons couldn't reach the Library, and if she had a hope in hell of finding out while acting as mentor to a dragon apprentice. Her superiors could be very paranoid, and it might earn her some much-needed favour.\n\nKai snaked through the air. 'Ready to go down?' he said.\n\nIt would have been nice to sit up here above the clouds for a while longer, discussing metaphysics and dragons and other interesting topics, but there was simply too much on her schedule. 'Let's do it,' Irene said.\n\nThey came down with a rush, slicing through the clouds and leaving streamers of mist behind them, with a speed that would have left Irene prostrate if it had been natural flight \u2013 well, as far as any flight on the back of a giant supernatural pseudo-reptile could be termed natural. She realized, with the technical part of her mind that wasn't occupied with Oh my god please slow down, that Kai must be going as fast as possible to make it less likely that people would see him. Even in London, a dragon might attract attention and would be hard to mistake for an airship.\n\nShe could see the British Library below, and the glass pyramid on top of it. There was a small zeppelin tethered to the roof, floating there ready for action, and Kai had to adjust his flight path to avoid it. Two guards had seen him incoming and came running to intercept him, hands on truncheons.\n\nPlus several points for duty, minus a lot more points for intelligence, for running towards an approaching dragon rather than running away from an approaching dragon. Irene waited till Kai had settled to the ground, then slid off his back. Ideally she would have walked towards the guards, but for some reason her legs didn't want to work, and she leaned against Kai instead. 'Good afternoon,' she said, trying to sound charming.\n\nThe guards looked her up and down. Admittedly her National Guard costume, her harshly braided hair and the fact that she'd been gently smoked (or lightly kippered) didn't make her look like the most trustworthy person. Time for the other option.\n\nShe pushed away from Kai, standing upright, and took a deep breath. Light flared behind her. That must be Kai turning back into a human. Good, it'd make the phrasing easier. 'You perceive that I and the person behind me are normal but unimportant people, who have a right to be here on the roof, but are not worth your time and interest.'\n\nThe use of the Language to affect someone's perceptions always took energy. She swayed as she felt the drain on her reserves. But it worked. The guards developed the vaguely puzzled look of men trying to remember exactly what had been so important. One of them waved her and Kai towards the door into the main building, with a mumbled, 'Please enjoy your visit to the British Library.'\n\nOf course the problem with using the Language that way was that it might wear off at any moment. It was only useful up to a point. Kai knew that just as well as Irene, so the moment they were inside the building, he led the way in a rapid trot down the book-lined storage corridor, and they didn't stop till they were a few turnings away.\n\n'Are you going to open a direct portal to the Library from one of these rooms, or do you want to go down to the fixed entrance?' he asked.\n\nIrene ran her hands over her hair and grimaced at the amount of ash that came away. 'I think we'll use the fixed entrance,' she said. 'I know we'll probably run into people on the way down there, but at least we know where we'll come out in the Library, that way. Besides, after last time I stashed a couple of overcoats in the room next to it. It'll do to cover up these outfits till we can get back to our lodgings.'\n\n'We could just change clothing in the Library,' Kai said hopefully. He had much better taste in clothing than Irene did, and frequently exercised it.\n\n'Time,' Irene said. 'I'd rather get back here as soon as we can. We can collect any mail in the Library, but other than that...' She shrugged. 'We've been away from here for nearly a fortnight. As Librarian-in-Residence, it's my duty to make sure nothing's happened in our absence.'\n\n'Li Ming and Vale will both be glad to know we have returned, too,' Kai agreed. 'As you say, then.'\n\nIrene led the way down the stairs and passageways at a fast walk, ignoring the looks of surprise, shock and sheer horror. Ladies in this world did not wear trousers. Zeppelin pilots and engineers did, but they weren't generally ladies, and they wouldn't go wandering around the British Library in them.\n\nThe room containing the permanent entrance to the Library was cordoned off with ropes and signs, declaring hopefully REPAIRS IN PROGRESS. Irene had to admit to a certain responsibility there, involving a small fire and a pack of werewolves, but on the positive side, it did make it easy for the two of them to march in while looking like workmen.\n\nOnce inside the room and with the door safely shut, Irene looked around guiltily. This had once been a well-kept office, with glass cases full of interesting things, or at least antique ones, and cupboards and shelves properly full of books. Now \u2013 after the silverfish infestation, her duel with Alberich and the fire \u2013 it was a wreck. The few remaining display cases were empty and shabby, and the scorched floor and singed walls stood bare and unattractive.\n\nIt wasn't her fault. Not directly, anyway. But she still felt guilty.\n\nWith a shake of her head, she stepped forward to put her hand against the far door. In practical terms, it was a simple storage cupboard. But in metaphysical terms, it was a permanent link to the Library, just like the one that had gone up in flames, and only needed a Librarian's use of the Language to activate it. 'Open to the Library,' she said. A queasy worm of nervousness twisted in her stomach at the unwanted but inescapable image of the same thing happening here.\n\nAs if to quiet her worries, the door swung open at once, without the slightest hindrance. She took a deep breath, not wanting to sigh in relief too audibly, and ushered Kai through, before stepping through herself and shutting the door behind her.\n\nThe room in the Library was familiar to them by now \u2013 one of the conveniences of using a fixed transfer point from an alternate world to the Library, rather than forcing a passage through and possibly ending up anywhere at all in the Library. The walls were thick with books, so much so that the black-letter posters warning Moderate Chaos Level, enter with care had to hang in front of them, for lack of clear wall space. As did the promised overcoats. Someone had installed a computer on the central table.\n\n'That's new,' Kai said, pointing at it.\n\n'Convenient, though,' Irene said. She sat down in front of it as she turned it on, and removed the book from her coat. 'Could you just check down the corridor? There's a delivery point there, and you can drop this in and get it off our hands, while I'm sending an urgent notification about the gate. Coppelia or one of the other elders might want to speak to us personally.'\n\nKai nodded, taking the book. 'Of course. Irene\u2014'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'What do you think that reaction was?'\n\n'I don't know,' Irene had to admit. 'It wasn't some sort of linked-chaos trap. At least, I don't see how it can have been. There wasn't anything linked to it that I could see \u2013 did you see anything?'\n\nKai shook his head. He paced thoughtfully, in a way that Irene suspected he'd subconsciously copied from Vale. 'I saw nothing, and I felt nothing out of the ordinary. If I had done, I would have warned you. It didn't even feel like a normal intrusion of chaos into that world \u2013 forgive my vocabulary, please, it's the best way I have to describe it. If I were to guess\u2014'\n\n'Which is an appalling habit, and destructive to the logical faculty \u2013 yes, I know,' Irene couldn't stop herself from saying.\n\nThe corner of Kai's mouth twitched. On him, the streaks of ash looked merely like artistic dishevelment, the sort of thing a model would wear in a particularly outr\u00e9 fashion show. And on him, the National Guard uniform could have started a fashion. 'If I were to hypothesize, then, I'd say that the problem was somewhere at the Library end, or between the two points. But I don't know if that's actually possible.'\n\nIrene nodded, logging on and starting to draft an email report to her mentor Coppelia. 'We didn't come in through that gate, because it would have meant dropping into the middle of hostile territory and an unknown situation. That was why Baudolino brought us in via Sicily, and we had to go overland from there.' Baudolino was that world's Librarian-in-Residence, a frail man in his seventies and definitely not up to dodging revolutionary informers and handling a police state. Irene personally thought it was past time for him to retire to the Library, but it would have been tactless to say so. 'And Baudolino himself can't have checked up on it recently, or he would have fallen into the same trap \u2013 if we can call it that. So... I don't know. I'll just have to report it and see how that goes. And about delivering the book itself...'\n\n'Going, going, gone,' Kai said, and the door closed behind him.\n\nIt took some editing for Irene to transform her first reaction. Which went something along the lines of We nearly got roasted, so I am raising the alarm, and if someone else knew about it, then why the hell weren't we warned? This was a life-threatening malfunction! She eventually managed a more tactful I must report that when we attempted to activate the gate, we were the victims of high-energy side-effects, and I'm not sure that the gate is still in existence. But she did end with... The lack of information on the gate's status could easily have caused a total failure of the mission. If Kai and I weren't fully briefed, due to some issues in communication, then I must raise this as a serious problem for future efficiency and safety. Librarians are a finite resource. And if this is a new problem, then other Librarians need to be warned as soon as possible.\n\nIt was more management-speak than she liked, but it should get her meaning across. Irene sighed, putting her chin in her hands. Paranoia suggested that she had already been put on probation, and there was a direct line between that and being sent on dangerous missions with incomplete information. Common sense argued that she shouldn't attribute to malice what could perfectly well be explained by stupidity, or at least by organizational mistakes. But there wasn't anything in her waiting emails or in the Current Events bulletin about other gates going up in flames. So what could have happened?\n\nCould it be sabotage? Could someone be attacking the Library? That was a dangerous line of questioning, and not one that she liked to consider.\n\nParanoia was self-fulfilling, she reminded herself. Mistakes, or even coincidental accidents, were more plausible here. But paranoia wouldn't be banished quite so easily.\n\nThe door creaked open. 'All done?' Kai asked.\n\nIrene nodded. 'And nothing urgent otherwise. Book safely posted?'\n\n'On its way.' Kai inspected the spare overcoats, pursing his lips. 'Buying the cheapest second-hand goods is a false economy,' he finally said.\n\n'I'm not thinking about that now,' Irene said firmly, pulling on her overcoat. 'I'm thinking of getting back to our lodgings and having a hot bath.'\n\n'You have a point.' Kai swung his coat over his shoulders. 'At your will, madam.'\n\nTheir exit back into Vale's world, and out of the British Library, went unnoticed. It was verging on evening by now, and those people still in the British Library were more concerned with work or study than with watching passers-by. Irene was beginning to nurture hopes of a quiet evening without any further problems. Hot water first, of course, then a clean dress. Then perhaps dinner, or calling on Vale and seeing if he was available for dinner, and then\u2014\n\nKai grabbed her arm, dragging her back to reality. 'Who's that?' he hissed.\n\nThey had just left the British Library. A woman was standing on the far side of the road, watching the main doors. Everything about her was vastly inappropriate for the time and location. Her dark curls were twisted up into a knot and fell to brush her bare right shoulder. She wore a drape of thick black fur, which stretched from one wrist to the other, hanging in thick folds behind her. Beneath it a dress of black silk clung to her body and legs, so tight that it looked as if it had been sewn in place. The smoggy sunset light turned her skin an even darker gold than usual, and her eyes were as vivid as cut obsidian. She held a leash in her right hand, which restrained a black greyhound. As Irene and Kai paused, it lifted its head from sniffing at the ground and gave a little bark, as much as to say Here you are \u2013 I found them.\n\n'Zayanna,' Irene said. If her voice was numb with surprise, she hoped that it passed for a controlled assessment of the situation. The other woman wasn't actually an enemy. Well, probably not. She'd even been an ally of sorts, the last time they met. And she was Fae, but that was a different sort of problem.\n\nThe woman spread her arms in a delighted gesture. The greyhound yelped as the leash tugged at his neck, and she quickly lowered her right hand. She hurried across the road towards them, delicate on her high heels. 'Irene! Darling! Have you any idea how difficult it's been to find you?'\n\n'I didn't realize you were looking for me,' Irene said, her social circuits cutting in automatically. Ignoring Kai's hiss of 'Is that a Fae?' she held out her hand in welcome. 'If I'd known\u2014'\n\n'Oh, there's no way you could have known, darling,' Zayanna said. Ignoring Irene's hand, she embraced her, wrapping her arms around Irene and nestling her head against her shoulder. 'I have to appeal to you for asylum, darling. You don't mind, do you?'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "Irene was conscious that she had gone board-like and unresponsive in Zayanna's embrace. One arm came up automatically and patted the other woman on the shoulder. 'There, there,' she said. She was aware that it lacked a certain something. 'Perhaps we should discuss this off the main street?'\n\n'Perhaps not,' Kai said dangerously. 'Woman, get off Irene and stop trying to seduce her.'\n\nZayanna raised her head to look at Kai, and the dog growled, apparently echoing its mistress' feelings. 'This isn't seduction. This is just\u2014'\n\n'Throwing yourself on me in the middle of the street,' Irene said, conscious of the number of people who were obviously watching, and the even larger number who were pretending not to watch, but were watching anyhow.\n\n'She's so good with words,' Zayanna confided to Kai. 'And she's so popular. You should keep her locked up, sweetheart. Actually, no, that's not a good idea, because she can't have daring adventures if you keep her locked up. But you know, it's the thought that counts.'\n\n'The thought has crossed my mind on occasion,' Kai muttered. 'Irene, who is this woman, and is there anything that you would like me to do?' The subtext of such as getting her off you came across very clearly.\n\nWe need to talk in private. But I'm not bringing her into my home. Even if I do owe her something for her non-interference in Venice. She'd needed all the help she could get when Kai was kidnapped. 'Tea,' Irene said quickly. 'Restaurant. That is, we will go to a nearby restaurant and have tea, and Zayanna can tell us what the problem is.'\n\n'You've gone so terribly native,' Zayanna said with a sigh, mercifully removing herself from around Irene's neck. 'I don't suppose anywhere round here serves mezcal?'\n\n'I don't know,' Irene said. Vale would, but then Vale knew London forwards, backwards and upside down. And he could recite the London gangs from memory or identify a splash of mud with a single glance. 'Why don't we go and find out?'\n\nKai's expression over Zayanna's shoulder suggested a whole variety of reasons why they shouldn't, but Irene didn't feel like arguing.\n\nFifteen minutes later they were sitting around a table in a tea-shop of dubious quality, whose back wall was lined with cobwebbed tin boxes of exotic teas, and whose lights were burning worryingly low. The fog had closed in outside. Zayanna's dog was lying beside her chair, snuffling thoughtfully and watching all three of them with red-lit eyes.\n\n'You said that you wanted asylum,' Irene said, coming to the point. Her tea smelt musty, with an undertone of metal. She would have preferred a better-quality tea-shop, but with the way the three of them were dressed, they would have been turned away at the door. 'Could you give me a little more detail, please?'\n\nZayanna puffed at the surface of her cup of tea, blowing up a little cloud of steam. 'Darling,' she began. 'You remember that I didn't try to stop you from rescuing your friends on the train back from Venice?'\n\n'Vividly,' Irene said. Something that had been nagging at the back of her mind clarified itself. 'How did you know my name was Irene?' As far as she could remember, she'd been using an alias all the time that she'd been with Zayanna. It was a little worrying to think how the other woman might have found out.\n\n'It was Sterrington,' Zayanna said. 'After you left the train, Atrox Ferox and I managed to have a word with her. She'd been told your real name by Lord and Lady Guantes. They were your arch-nemeses during that whole jaunt, after all. They'd also said you were a Librarian \u2013 working here, and everything. Darling, I was stunned! A real secret agent with me all that time, and I'd had no idea!'\n\n'I'm not a secret agent,' Irene said, knowing that it wasn't going to work. 'I just collect books.'\n\n'Of course.' Zayanna nodded solemnly. 'Your secret is safe with me, darling.'\n\n'And with the whole of this tea-shop,' Kai said. There was a stiffness to his posture that worried Irene. While she had managed to rescue him from what Zayanna so casually called a 'jaunt', for Kai it had been kidnapping, and imprisonment, and the threat of being sold to his kind's worst enemies. He wasn't sleeping well at night, he was too ready to throw himself into danger, and he thoroughly disliked talking about any of it. This sort of conversation would be rubbing salt into his wounds.\n\n'Oh, them.' Zayanna shrugged. 'They're just people.'\n\nIrene was lost for a moment, trying to work out whether that statement stemmed from sublime unconcern, a genuine lack of interest in ordinary humans, or a deliberate ploy to make her underestimate Zayanna. No, on the whole she thought it was simply Zayanna being Zayanna, and being Fae. To a Fae, the whole of humanity were fellow actors at best. They were the supporting cast or backstage sceneshifters the rest of the time. All Fae were convinced they were the heroes of their own stories. The dangerous thing was that in the more chaotic alternate worlds, the universe conspired to agree with them.\n\n'But are you a secret agent?' Irene asked.\n\n'Not exactly, darling.' Zayanna sipped at her tea. 'Things went wrong, you see. After Venice, I had to report back to my patron. He said that even if Lord and Lady Guantes had totally messed up the dragon's kidnapping, I shouldn't have let all three of you get away like I did. He was really cutting about that.' She shivered artistically.\n\nIt's not as if you had that much chance of stopping us. Irene ignored Kai's atmosphere of polar frost next to her and reached across to pat Zayanna's hand. 'I'm sorry you got into trouble,' she said.\n\nZayanna looked down modestly, if the word 'modest' could ever be used in connection with her cleavage. 'I knew you'd understand,' she murmured. 'So naturally, when I had to break ties with my patron, I thought of you.'\n\n'I don't know what to say,' Irene lied. She could think of quite a few things to say, but none of them would actually advance the conversation, even if they might make her feel better. 'Zayanna, you do realize that I don't actually...' What was it that Zayanna had said she used to do for her previous boss? '...have any snakes that need looking after.'\n\n'We can get snakes, darling,' Zayanna said reassuringly. 'Do you prefer cobras or vipers? Or mambas?'\n\n'Can you collect books?' Irene countered.\n\n'I've never tried,' Zayanna said. 'But there's a first time for everything, isn't there?'\n\nIrene was fairly sure there weren't any Library regulations about Outsourcing Jobs to Fae, probably because the area was mostly covered by Don't Associate with Fae in the First Place. But, she reassured her conscience, it would do for the moment, while she tried to find a better long-term solution. 'Does Silver know you're here?' she asked.\n\nLord Silver was probably the most powerful Fae in London. He was the Liechtenstein Ambassador (Liechtenstein was a hotbed of Fae, in this particular alternate world) and a noted libertine and reprobate, regularly making the front pages of the more scandalous newspapers. He had also technically been an ally during the whole business of Kai's kidnapping, helping Irene to reach the world where Kai was being held so that she could rescue him. Though that had only happened because Silver felt threatened by Kai's kidnappers. He was another person whom Irene would like the earth to swallow up. But if he could take Zayanna off her hands, then she'd even send him flowers.\n\nZayanna pouted. 'I've been trying to avoid Lord Silver, darling. I don't really want to be indebted to him. I did think of asking him where you lived. But then I had a better idea, and I got this gorgeous little dog to help find you! I took him to your address and I've been tracking you since then. I think I'm going to call him Pettitoes.' She drained her cup and put it down with a clink. 'But I need to be serious too, darling. Someone out there wants to kill you.'\n\nIt was rather sad that Irene's first reaction was not so much shock as resignation. Then she wondered whether there was a queue, and if someone was selling tickets. After all, in less than a year she'd managed to seriously annoy a number of people \u2013 the local werewolves, several local secret societies, one of the two masterminds who'd plotted to kidnap Kai (she'd actually killed the other), the notorious traitor Librarian Alberich, and probably all sorts of other people she didn't even know about. And Silver didn't like her very much, either. 'Who?' she asked.\n\n'I don't know.' Zayanna leaned forward across the table, trying to capture Irene's hand in hers. When Kai interposed his hand, she grabbed that instead. 'Darling \u2013 darlings\u2014' Kai looked as if he was biting into raw garlic. 'You must believe that I want to keep you safe. What would I do without you?'\n\nThat was another frequent problem with the Fae. They wanted fellow starring actors in their private melodramas, both friends and enemies. Irene had to figure out a way to disentangle herself from Zayanna \u2013 and fast \u2013 or she'd get swept into some improbable new narrative. 'I believe you,' she said. Mostly. 'But if you can't tell us who it is, or when they're going to try...'\n\nZayanna sighed, and Kai took the opportunity to pull his hand away. 'It's just a whisper of a rumour, darling. I'll try to find out more. But it's getting late. You'll be wanting to go out on highly sensitive missions and dance the tango, won't you? Can I come?'\n\n'No,' Irene said firmly. 'I'm sorry. It's top secret. Where can we get in touch with you tomorrow?'\n\nZayanna took the dismissal surprisingly well. 'The Carlton hotel, darling. I'll be waiting. But I'll stay here for the moment. This place has such a charming ambience.' She gestured around at the gloomy shelves and at the rafters with their hanging bare ether-bulbs, then down to her dog. 'Don't worry about me. Pettitoes will keep me safe.'\n\nKai waited till they were out on the street and a couple of hundred yards away before saying, 'Should we kill her?'\n\n'Zayanna helped me rescue you,' Irene muttered. It didn't make it any easier that she was considering that option as well. But simple inconvenience was not a good enough motive for murder. Even if it looked like being a really, really large inconvenience.\n\n'Yes, but the woman is Fae,' Kai answered. There was a brittle coldness in his eyes, and his gait had shifted from a casual stride to a much more dangerous and purposeful stalk.\n\nIrene tried to think of some intelligent, logical, helpful statement that would convince him to stay calm. Nothing came to mind. What could she say to a dragon who'd been kidnapped by the Fae in order to start a war? Already-existing personal bias was being inflamed by post-traumatic shock, and he certainly wasn't going to have any sudden epiphanies in the middle of the street. 'But I say you won't just remove her,' she hissed, resorting to the fact that she was his superior, and knowing how temporary and stopgap an answer that was. 'Understood?'\n\nKai blinked, and the inhuman light \u2013 had it been there for longer than a moment? \u2013 receded from his eyes. 'Understood,' he said, his voice dark and low in his throat.\n\nI'm going to have to talk this through with him later. And if I can't get him to see sense... Irene had a duty to her work in this world. She also had a duty of responsibility to Kai. Something twisted in her stomach at the thought that perhaps the best thing she could do for him would be to see him assigned to another Librarian. Or he could even be returned to his father's court, to safety among the other dragons...\n\n'I'm not sure I trust her, either,' she said. 'We have no proof that she's telling the truth. But I think it's better to keep her under close watch for the moment, till we can establish what's going on. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and all that sort of thing. Besides, if Zayanna is telling the truth, then we might be able to get useful information from her.'\n\n'It might just be simpler to wait and see who's trying to kill us,' Kai said.\n\nIrene looked ahead down the street. In the foggy twilight, newspaper boards loomed on the street corners where vendors touted the evening papers, with barely visible capitalized headlines glaring at her like secret messages. BETRAYAL. MURDER. WAR. 'True,' she agreed. 'But they might get lucky.'\n\n'Disguise someone as us, and then watch them from a distance?' Kai suggested.\n\n'Mm. No, not really.' A fuzzy memory of management training nagged at Irene. 'It's not that I'm trying to shoot down all your ideas,' she added. 'It's more that I don't see how we could manage it, without the preparation being noticed. It may also be a question of how long they've been planning to kill us. We've been out of London for a couple of weeks now. Though in that case...'\n\n'Yes?' Kai prompted when she trailed off.\n\n'Well, unless the person who wants to kill us is getting information from the Library, or from Vale \u2013 both of which are very unlikely \u2013 then they couldn't have known we'd be out of London for the last two weeks. They may have been sitting around chewing their fingernails and wondering where we've got to.'\n\nThey conversed quietly as they walked down the foggy street \u2013 just another pair of Londoners in heavy overcoats, with scarves wound round their faces against the evening mist and pollution. It would have been difficult to be more anonymous. Irene could glance down the street and see other pairs and groups of people strolling together, their heads close as they murmured to each other. Conspirators? Families? Friends? Apocalyptic plotters? How could anyone know?\n\n'We should check in with Vale,' Kai said.\n\nIrene nodded. 'After we've checked our lodgings. Carefully, of course. And I don't know if you've considered it, but Zayanna might be useful for information about another thing, too.'\n\n'What other thing?'\n\n'If there's someone in the Library, or among the dragons, who's selling information about us, then we need to find out who it is.' Apparently dragons were a monolithic block who would absolutely never betray each other to the Fae. Or so the dragons said. This could simply mean that they were very thorough about getting rid of traitors. 'If Zayanna still has links to the Fae gossip networks, or however it is they share the news and conspiracies, maybe she could find out something.'\n\n'Or maybe she could sell me out herself,' Kai said coldly. 'Or you. I'm sure there are Fae out there who'd like a Librarian slave.'\n\n'I'm sure there are,' Irene agreed mildly. She still had nightmares about a few aspects of her trip to that Venice. 'But the fact remains that when push came to shove, she did help me. So for the moment let's stop going round in circles and playing who-do-we-suspect. Lodgings, bath, clothing, then Vale, and wait for the next mission.'\n\nWhen they reached their lodgings, the surrounding buildings had their lights on, but their own set of rooms showed ominous dark windows. Of course that was how they'd left it, but it was hard not to imagine potential murderers waiting behind the drawn curtains.\n\n'Let me check the door,' Kai said, stepping in front of Irene. She knew that he had a minor criminal past, from his time in a more technological alternate world, so she let him get on with it. He would know how to check for tripwires, hidden switches or scratches on the lock much better than she would. She glanced up and down the road. No obvious followers, no lurking minions, no shadows visible on the rooftops.\n\nAfter a few minutes of inspecting the door, lock, step, doormat and surrounding area, Kai rose from his knees. 'It looks clean,' he said. 'No wires. Nothing connected to it. No chaotic residue.'\n\n'Good,' Irene said. 'Though I wouldn't have thought it would be a bomb, anyhow. You know the Fae. A bomb would lack that personal touch. And it'd be over far too soon.'\n\nKai stood back from the door so that she could unlock it. 'You did say that Lady Guantes was the efficient type, though. And you did kill her husband.'\n\n'Yes, well,' Irene muttered. 'Let's hope that she hates me enough to want to take lots of time over it, and do it in person.'\n\nThe key turned smoothly. Nothing bad happened immediately. She waited a moment, in case there was anything hiding to jump out at her, then thrust the door open.\n\nThrough the doorway, in the light from the street ether-lamps, she and Kai could see a perfectly normal corridor. A scattering of post lay on the carpet, where it had been shoved through the letterbox, but none of it looked large enough to be dangerous.\n\nAll right, perhaps I am being paranoid.\n\nKai gave her a nod. They both stepped inside, and Irene raised her hand to the light switch.\n\nSomething hairy touched her fingers."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "Irene froze. It wasn't a deliberate choice of action made from a careful assessment of the situation. It was an instinctive reaction to the soft touch of something thin and hairy against her fingers, something moving, and childhood memories of being told Don't jerk your hand away, you'll just startle it. It was very definitely something alive.\n\n'Kai,' she said, and swallowed to clear her throat. 'There's something else in here with us.'\n\n'Do you think it's light-sensitive?' Kai demanded.\n\nHow on earth was she supposed to know? 'Let's hope so,' she replied. She still didn't want to move her fingers. She could dimly see the thing now, a large blotch of a creature about a monstrous eight inches across, its body sprawled over the light switch. But there was more than one way to deal with that. 'Corridor-ceiling lights, turn on!' she commanded in the Language.\n\nThe ceiling lamps flared into sudden brightness as Kai slammed the door shut, and Irene had enough time to see the creature before it scuttled back towards the coat stand, leaving her fingers free and her heart hammering.\n\nIt was a spider. Irene had nothing particularly against spiders, and had more than once been the person who had to take them out of the room and release them into the wild, when at school. But she had a very definite reaction to spiders that were over eight inches across and covered with hair. She wiped her hand on her skirt, illogically and vigorously.\n\n'That's a spider,' Kai observed unnecessarily.\n\n'It looked like one.' Irene found herself backing towards him. The two of them stood together in the middle of the corridor, as far as they could get from coat stands, pictures, bookcases or other objects that might have spiders hiding behind them.\n\n'Do you think it's venomous?'\n\nIrene snorted. 'Do you think there's even the remotest chance it isn't?'\n\n'Right. Stupid question. Do you think we can fumigate the whole house?'\n\n'I'm not going to sleep if there's the slightest chance of any of them still being in here,' Irene said firmly. 'Which means we need to clear the place. Especially if it's even remotely possible that they could breed, or get out into other houses.'\n\n'How do we clear the place?' Kai asked, putting his finger on the problem.\n\nIrene frowned, thinking. 'What's the largest reasonably airtight container we have?'\n\n'Probably one of our suitcases,' Kai suggested. 'It's not totally airtight, but there aren't any cracks in it big enough for the spiders to get out, if they're inside.'\n\n'Right. And the suitcases are in the attic, aren't they?'\n\nKai took a deep breath. 'Stay right here,' he said and was running for the stairs before she could tell him to stop.\n\nTechnically she was rather relieved not to be running through the place, with spiders lurking in corners and ready to jump out at her \u2013 or should that be drop down on her? \u2013 at the slightest provocation. But she still felt a little guilty that he'd gone off to take the risk. Perhaps she was being overprotective.\n\nShe heard his footsteps upstairs, and the thump of the attic trapdoor swinging down from the ceiling, followed by the banging of cases and trunks being shifted round. It was far too easy to imagine huge, heaving cobwebbed nests of giant spiders in the attic. She forced herself to focus on her immediate surroundings \u2013 and look, the spider that had been crawling around by the light switch was emerging again and picking its way down the wall. There were other little twitches and barely visible movements coming from the darkest corners of the hall. The light had been so bright and welcome a moment ago. But now it merely threw possible hiding places for spiders into stark relief. And there were far too many of them. Irene was abruptly very grateful that she was in boots and trousers.\n\n'I'd almost prefer to be back in a burning building with the troops outside,' she muttered to herself.\n\n'Sorry?' Kai came thundering down the stairs, banging the suitcase he was carrying against the balustrade posts in his haste. Irene winced as she saw another twitching clot of shadow drop from under the stair rail and scuttle for cover. 'Any problems?'\n\n'Not now,' she said with relief. She took the case from him and opened it, placing it on the floor in front of them. 'Get ready to brace me.'\n\nKai simply nodded.\n\nIrene took a deep breath, filling her lungs, then shouted in the Language, her voice loud enough to be heard throughout their lodgings, 'Spiders, come here and get into the suitcase on the floor!'\n\nThe loose command structure of the sentence, and the fact that she was attempting to exert her will on living beings \u2013 if not humans \u2013 made her sway at the sudden drain of energy. Kai, with the expertise of both warning and experience, caught her with an arm around her shoulders, and held her upright against him as the shadowy corners of their lodgings came to life.\n\nSpiders as big as the first one came scuttling from the folds of coats hanging in the hat stands, dropping from the upper corners of the ceiling, and levering themselves out from behind the shabby pictures that hung in the hallway. A couple of dozen of them came in a wave down the stairs, heaving and jerking along in a mincing eight-legged gait that was too fast for peace of mind. Irene watched as they clambered into her suitcase, forming a hairy, seething mat across the interior, climbing over each other and waving their legs in the air. A few normal spiders had joined the rush and ran round inside rather pathetically, tiny in comparison to their bigger cousins.\n\nShe gave it ten seconds after the last spider had climbed in, then kicked the lid closed and sat firmly on it, snapping the catches shut.\n\n'We could throw it on a bonfire,' Kai suggested. 'No, wait, they might get out when the case burns. Perhaps if we throw it in the Thames?'\n\n'Kai,' Irene said firmly. 'I'm surprised at you. This is a valid route for investigation. We don't simply want to destroy them \u2013 first we want to find out everything we can about them. But before that, I am going through this place with another suitcase. I'll use the Language to hatch any hidden eggs and make absolutely sure we've found them all.'\n\nKai evidently hadn't thought about the possibility of eggs. He shuddered and glared down at the suitcase. 'Disgusting creatures. How do you suppose they got into the house?'\n\n'We won't know till we've checked,' Irene said, brushing herself off. 'Could be a broken window, or a hole in the roof. It could be...' She looked at the front door. 'Well, it would be incredibly blatant, but you could just about push them through the letterbox, if they cooperated.'\n\n'At least it'll interest Vale,' Kai said with resignation, as they went to find another suitcase.\n\nThe all-night pet shop down the road was an upper-class one, gleaming with up-to-date chrome and high-power lamps, and little steam-powered climate systems hissed along the rows of tanks and cages. It was complete with pedigree puppies, Persian kittens, glass tanks full of brightly coloured and probably incompatible fish, and a proprietor who didn't want to serve them. She was stick-insect thin, with straw-pale hair the same shade as the blond ferret ripping toys apart in a cage behind her, and was dressed in spotless dark blue with heavy leather bracers on her forearms.\n\n'It's not that I don't want to be helpful,' she protested icily, 'but I'm afraid I really don't understand what you could possibly want with a humble establishment like my own, which only serves the most refined of clients.'\n\n'We have two suitcases full of giant spiders,' Irene said pleasantly. She'd taken ten minutes to change into proper clothing for this alternate world and get rid of most of the ash, so she knew that she looked like a respectable woman, if not a stinking rich one. 'We need an expert's opinion.'\n\nThe proprietor raised her near-invisible eyebrows. 'Madam, I realize that a lot of spiders may seem large to you\u2014'\n\n'Eight inches to a foot across.' Kai stepped forward, giving the woman his most serious and winning look. Irene wasn't normally a supporter of the 'go persuade people through your good looks' school of thought, mostly because she didn't have the sort of looks that one needed to make it work, but she could appreciate it when it was being done to help her.\n\nThe proprietor hesitated. It might have been because Kai was handsome, well dressed and charming. Or it might have been because however much he tried to play it down, he inevitably came across as someone from an aristocratic background, with more money than he knew what to do with. 'Well, I suppose I could take a look at them. Perhaps a consultation fee...'\n\n'Of course,' Kai said, with casual disdain for precise amounts. 'Do you have a glass tank or something similar, which we can release them into?'\n\nThe proprietor signalled an assistant to fetch a large glass tank. Kai took the smaller suitcase and laid it inside the tank. It held the few stragglers that they'd found, plus some tiny specimens that Irene had forced to hatch early, and which she still eyed with suspicion, small as they were. Kai snapped open the catches, but left the suitcase lid down. 'When I open it,' he said, 'please stand ready to close the tank lid, and make sure that nothing has a chance to get out.'\n\nTo Irene's relief, the proprietor nodded professionally. 'Let's have a look,' she said.\n\nKai flipped the suitcase lid back, pulling his hand and arm out of the tank in the same motion. Spiders came spilling out of the suitcase in a drift of waving legs and heaving balloon-like bodies the size of tennis balls. With an astonished curse, hastily cut short, the assistant brought the tank lid down firmly and slid the bolt shut.\n\nThe proprietor pursed her lips. 'Why, I do believe \u2013 can it be?' She leaned closer to the tank, nearly squashing her thin nose against the glass.\n\nThe spiders swarmed inside the tank, dashing up and down on the sandy bottom and running up the interior glass walls. Irene felt something squishy bump against her leg, and nearly jumped away in automatic reaction, before she realized it was a bystander moving closer to peer in fascination.\n\n'How splendid,' the proprietor exclaimed. 'Pelinobius muticus! A king baboon spider! Dozens of them \u2013 an entire breeding colony!' Irene didn't need to be a mindreader to see the little signals tipping over in the woman's head and pointing to EXCLUSIVE SUPPLIER and HUGE PROFIT. 'Are you intending to bring them onto the market yourself, sir?'\n\nKai glanced at Irene. Irene stepped forward. 'Not exactly, madam\u2014'\n\n'Miss Chester,' the woman said, with a narrow-lipped smile which tried to look friendly and failed.\n\n'Miss Chester,' Irene said, 'we recently had a crate of bananas delivered, a gift from a friend in Brazil.' Did they grow bananas in Brazil? She'd forgotten her basic school geography and national products, let alone whatever they were in this alternate world. 'We honestly didn't expect to find these, um...'\n\n'Pelinobius muticus,' Miss Chester said, pronouncing it very clearly to make sure that Irene got it right.\n\nIrene liked being underestimated. It made people less likely to suspect that she was lying. 'We just didn't have the resources to take care of them ourselves,' she said. She tried to look like a woman who might actually like spiders, rather than one who preferred the drown-them-in-a-vat-of-acid option. 'If you feel that you can give them a good home, then perhaps...'\n\n'I'm sure that we can come to an arrangement,' Miss Chester said, her smile growing toothier.\n\n'It would have looked suspicious if we hadn't bargained,' Irene said later. They were in a cab and were finally on their way to Vale's rooms.\n\n'You don't think it looked suspicious anyhow?' Kai queried drily. 'Two people showing up with suitcases full of giant killer spiders\u2014'\n\n'Pelinobius muticus,' Irene said. 'I wrote down the details. We can ask Vale about them.'\n\nKai brooded, leaning back and folding his arms. 'Irene...'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'I'm concerned.'\n\n'Well, that's quite understandable. Someone did probably just try to kill us.' Not to mention the gate going up in flames. But were the two connected?\n\n'And while we did survive...'\n\nDragons yet again proved themselves masters of the obvious. Irene nodded, waiting for him to continue.\n\nKai seemed to be looking for the right words to finish his sentence. Finally he said, 'Should we reconsider our mission here?'\n\n'In what way?'\n\n'Well, we could move to a more protected environment.'\n\nOh. Another attempt to bring her under the draconic wing. However, he had a point about people trying to kill them. After two near-death events in one day, it wasn't paranoia, it was simple caution. 'I admit that the evidence shows that they \u2013 whoever they are \u2013 know where we live,' Irene said. 'And I also admit that doesn't make me particularly comfortable. However, I wouldn't call them very efficient murderers.'\n\n'You want an efficient murderer?'\n\n'Heavens, no,' Irene said. 'Give me an inefficient murderer any day. I'd far rather have someone trying to kill me by shoving spiders through my letterbox than by hiring a sniper with a laser-sighted rifle or setting fire to our lodgings.' Actually verbalizing the thought cheered her up. But she was by no means as insouciant as her words suggested. Dead was still dead, whether the killer was exotic, professional or amateur. Getting killed was incredibly easy. Anyone could do it. Staying safe and alive was much harder.\n\nKai's mouth twitched and he began to smile, finally relaxing. 'You have a point there. I hadn't thought of it that way.'\n\n'Not that I want to have someone trying to kill me,' Irene hastily added. 'But, you know, given the choice...'\n\nThe cab rolled to a stop and the driver called down from his perch, 'We're here, madam, sir. Will you be wanting me to wait?'\n\n'No, thank you,' Kai said. He paid off the driver while Irene clambered out of the cab, already regretting her return to long skirts. One really didn't appreciate trousers until one wasn't wearing them any more.\n\nThe two of them looked up at Vale's windows, as the cab rattled off into the fog, its ether-lamps glaring eyes that vanished into the darkness. A dim light showed round the edges of Vale's curtains.\n\n'At least he's in,' Irene said. From time to time she regretted this world's lack of convenient mass communication. 'It'd be annoying if he'd been out on a case.'\n\nNobody answered Kai's knock, but Irene didn't have to use the Language to coax the door open. Kai already had a key. He led the way up the stairs. Irene followed. She reassured her slight flickerings of nervousness \u2013 why didn't anyone answer? was anything wrong? \u2013 by reminding herself that it was coming on to eight o'clock at night. Vale's housekeeper might well be out. Vale himself would recognize their footsteps, and he might in any case be several miles deep in experiments or research.\n\n'Vale\u2014' Kai began, opening the door at the head of the stairs. Then he stopped in his tracks.\n\n'What?' Irene demanded, ducking under Kai's arm to see what was going on.\n\nVale's rooms were in as much of a state of controlled clutter as usual. His scrapbooks and files were organized neatly, scrupulously tidy and alphabetical, but other than that, the place was full of stuff. Laboratory equipment was strewn over the main table, with several crumb-dusted plates perched beside the test-tubes. Boxes filled the corners of the room, piled on top of each other in a desperate attempt to use all the limited space available. Various relics from past or current cases lay along the mantelpiece, or fought for space on the bookshelves. The ether-lamps were turned to half-strength, leaving the room in dimly flickering light, and the fire had burned down to embers. Newspapers littered the chairs and floor, as if they had been frantically rifled through and discarded page by page.\n\nVale himself lay on the sofa. He was a tall man \u2013 but, sprawled as he was, he'd lost all his usual grace and was a lanky tangle of limbs. One arm was half-thrown across his face. He was only semi-dressed, in a dressing gown over shirt and trousers, and clearly had not been planning to go out.\n\nHe didn't react to their words. He didn't even move.\n\nIt was astonishing how pure nightmare could quite literally put ice in one's veins. An attack on us, now an attack on Vale, too... She and Kai were both moving across the room in the same moment, without even having to say anything. The only reason Kai reached Vale first was that he'd entered the room first.\n\nKai grabbed for Vale's wrist, fingers clasping it tightly, then sighed in relief. 'There's a pulse,' he reported. 'But it's slow.'\n\nThe wave of relief that hit Irene was so strong she could taste it. 'Thank god,' she said. 'But why...'\n\nAn answer came to mind. It wasn't a pretty one. She took Vale's wrist from Kai and peeled back his sleeve, checking his forearm. She wasn't entirely surprised by what she found. It did, after all, go with the territory of being London's greatest detective, in a world where stories could come true and life too often followed narrative. 'Look,' she said, pointing to the needle marks.\n\nKai bit back an oath. 'But he said\u2014' he began, then stopped short.\n\n'What did he say?' Irene asked softly. She checked Vale's pulse herself. It was slow but steady.\n\nKai turned and walked across to turn up the lights. 'He said that he didn't use it any more.' He didn't look at Irene.\n\n'When did he say that?'\n\n'A few months ago. It wasn't long after we met, the three of us. I, you see...' Kai was nearly stuttering in his attempts to find an explanation. She hadn't heard that speech pattern in him before. 'I found the syringe and the drug\u2014'\n\n'Which drug?'\n\n'Morphine.' Kai turned back to her. 'Irene, I swear, he said he'd only used it occasionally, and not at all now that his practice had become more interesting. I don't know why he'd be taking it now.' His face showed something of the panic of a child who'd found out that a fundamental pillar of his world was no longer solid. 'Could someone else have forced it on him?'\n\nIt was certainly possible. It just wasn't very likely. 'I suppose we won't know until we can ask him.' Irene laid Vale's arm back across his body, and brushed his dark hair back from his face. His skin was hot under her fingers. So human. So fragile. And if someone was trying to kill her, then was he a target, too?\n\nShe had to find a way to protect them \u2013 all of them. And she had to talk to her superiors, urgently. The time for professional detachment was over.\n\nIt would have been a perfect trap, the cold unpleasant voice at the back of her mind pointed out. Incapacitate Vale, arrange a bomb or something similar, and expect Irene and Kai to run into the danger zone the moment they saw him lying there. It was a very good thing that the attempted murderer or murderers, whoever they were, didn't have Irene's own imagination.\n\nShe had to say something to Kai. 'We're staying here tonight, of course.'\n\n'Would it be safer to take him to our lodgings?' Kai asked. 'Or to somewhere else defensible?'\n\nShe gave him a few mental points for not actually saying such as Li Ming's establishment out loud. 'I can set up defences here,' she said. 'Library wards. And we can sit up and watch for spiders together.' She also needed to discover what had driven Vale back to his drugs. Under the circumstances, information was the best weapon she could have.\n\nKai eyed the room dubiously, obviously imagining how many places a spider could hide itself. 'I suppose it might be better,' he said unenthusiastically. 'I'll put him in his bed. It'll be better than leaving him on the sofa. He might catch a cold.'\n\nWhich is of course a profoundly serious issue, when compared to shooting up with morphine. But Irene nodded. 'Check the bed first. We should be careful.'\n\n'We can't go on like this!' Kai burst out.\n\n'No.' Irene fought down the whirl of fury in her stomach. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action... 'No, we can't. We are not required to act like sitting ducks, just waiting to be shot at. We aren't being laid-back about this, Kai \u2013 we're putting up defences and finding out what the hell is going on. We also need more information...' She wasn't sure who or what she was angriest with: the mysterious murderer, Vale for the drugs, or the whole day for being such a roller-coaster of near-failure. 'And we don't know that this, here,' she gestured at the unconscious Vale, 'is specifically due to us.'\n\n'It's very coincidental if it isn't,' Kai said. But his temper had cooled a little. He bent down and swung Vale up in his arms, carrying the man easily. Vale didn't stir, as loose-jointed as a strung doll, his eyes closed in fathoms-deep slumber.\n\nI wish I knew more about the effects of morphine, Irene thought. Oh well, it was probably in one of Vale's own reference books. She could look it up while she was waiting.\n\nThe room was cold, now that she wasn't being distracted by Vale. Kai had been right. She went down on her knees next to the hearth to build up the fire. In her distraction, she almost missed the balled-up sheet of notepaper. It had been caught in the grate and had fallen a few inches short of the embers.\n\nIt was probably a private letter. It would be prying into Vale's personal life to look at it. He was a friend of hers, and he deserved better than this sort of morbid curiosity.\n\nOn the other hand, they'd come in to find him drugged out of his mind on morphine.\n\nShe picked it up and unfolded it, smoothing it into legibility.\n\nIt was expensive notepaper: she could tell that much, even if she didn't have Vale's expert knowledge of paper, manufacturers and watermarks. And it was Vale's handwriting, carelessly untidy, scribbled with the sublime lack of concern of someone who thinks it's the other person's job to understand the message:\n\n\u2002Singh,\n\n\u2002Stop wasting my time with these pitifully simple cases. I am not interested in these petty problems. I would have no qualms in giving these to even the slowest-witted among your colleagues at the Yard.\n\n\u2002I thought that you understood. My mind is a machine that is being stressed to breaking point, without any problems to exercise it. And if you can't help me, then\u2014\n\nThe writing broke off there in a spattered trail of ink.\n\nIrene hesitated for a moment, then crumpled the letter and thrust it into the embers. Her hands went through the motions of building up the fire, but her mind was elsewhere. The murder attempts. Zayanna. Now Vale. There was too much to do, and too much to monitor. And what was she going to do if the Library ordered her off on another mission tomorrow?\n\nShe carefully diverted herself away from that thought. Because if that did happen, then one way or another, she was going to end up betraying someone."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Kai had fallen asleep by now too, curled up on the sofa where Vale had been sleeping earlier. They'd agreed to keep watch in turn. After the day's events, neither of them had felt safe, even with Irene warding the place. Vale had enough books for her to draw the rooms into a temporary sympathy with the Library, which should keep out any immediate Fae attacks.\n\nSitting with a book in her lap next to the fire, with the lights turned down so that Kai could doze better, Irene half-wished that they had an immediate attack on their hands. It might give them a bit more information. At the moment they knew very little: they were reacting rather than being proactive, running to catch up.\n\nThere was a faint mutter from Vale's bedroom. She put down the book on narcotics and went to investigate.\n\nVale lay on his bed, his bedspread half-thrown back, eyes closed but mumbling to himself. It was a step up from the drugged slumber of earlier, but it still wasn't wakefulness. The light from the open door fell in a slice across his bedroom, throwing his face into painful definition: his eyes were sunken in their sockets, and his cheekbones stood out viciously. Surely, Irene thought, surely he hadn't looked that worn, that desperate, when they'd last seen him a fortnight ago. Surely she would have noticed... wouldn't she?\n\nShe closed the bedroom door quietly behind her, so that the noise wouldn't wake Kai, turned the light on, then walked across to Vale's bed. She sat next to him and touched his shoulder, shaking him gently. 'Vale?' she murmured.\n\nHis eyes came open. He was the sort of man who snapped into consciousness all in one moment, rather than Irene's own more gradual (and pitiful) slow clamber from sleep to wakefulness. He assessed his surroundings in one quick glance, then focused on her. 'Winters.'\n\n'I'm not impressed.' She'd run through dozens of versions of the conversation in her head. None of them really had a happy ending. At least he was addressing her by the relatively familiar Winters, rather than retreating to the more proper Miss Winters.\n\nVale looked away from her. 'Not all of us have your strength.'\n\n'I don't understand.'\n\nHe sighed. 'One single night's indulgence, and for that I have you and Strongrock occupying my rooms and preaching abstinence. It seems rather unfair.'\n\nLeaving aside the moral aspects, there was a major logical fallacy in that statement. 'One single night's indulgence does not result in a week's worth of injection marks,' Irene pointed out. She'd inspected his arm while he was unconscious.\n\nVale snorted. 'And now you'll attempt to play the detective at me, Winters? That isn't a game that you can win.'\n\n'It's not a game at all,' Irene said. 'I'm just... surprised.'\n\n'You aren't,' Vale said. He rolled over to look at her, propping himself up with one elbow. 'You're unhappy, but you're not surprised. I wonder why?'\n\nUnwelcome as the question was, Irene would have liked to take it as a sign of improvement. But he spoke languidly, rather than with his usual keen interrogative tone, and she could see that his pupils were still too wide and unfocused.\n\n'Are you being forced into it?' she asked.\n\nVale stared at her. 'Do you honestly think so?'\n\n'No,' she admitted. 'But Kai thought it was possible.'\n\n'Strongrock is a good man and refuses to accept some things as probable. He wouldn't understand why a man might need drugs to sleep.'\n\n'Which would be?'\n\nVale flopped back onto the pillow. 'Oh come now, Winters. If I choose to take morphine, that is my business and not yours. And you're clenching your jaw now, in that annoying manner which suggests you're going to make a personal issue of the matter.'\n\nDamn right I am. 'You know perfectly well that morphine is an addictive drug.'\n\n'Of course,' Vale said. 'That is, naturally I am aware of this fact. Your point being?'\n\n'Merely that I am quite sure the criminal classes of London will be overjoyed to learn \u2013 no, to see the results \u2013 of you sliding into addiction and self-destruction in this manner.' She kept her voice low, but didn't try to take the edge off it. 'Quite besides the feelings of your friends on the subject.'\n\n'You have an advantage over me, Winters.' Vale sounded genuinely tired, rather than simply muzzy with the after-effects of the drug.\n\n'What would that be?'\n\n'An ability to admit your own failings.' He stared at the ceiling. 'Of course women are more prone to discussing their emotions than men. But even so, you have always been willing to acknowledge when you have made a mistake, or when your competency lies in areas other than the current situation. Almost too ready. Your opinion of your own abilities is frequently lower than it should be. Did you have the virtues of humility drummed into you at that boarding school you remember so fondly?'\n\nIrene bristled, trying to work out if that whole little speech amounted to an insult, or if it was honest truth. 'If you're trying to annoy me so that I'll walk out of this room, then I must tell you it's not going to work.'\n\nVale sighed. 'What a pity. But my point remains. You seem to find it quite simple to confess to error.'\n\n'Not really,' Irene admitted. 'I don't like being wrong any more than anyone else. It's more that I can't allow my pride to get in the way of my function as a Librarian. I have a job to do, Vale. If that means letting someone else take over who can do things better, well...'\n\nA cab rattled past outside in the darkness, wheels grating on the road. 'If you truly believed that,' Vale said, 'then you would have permitted your colleague Bradamant to take charge of your earlier mission \u2013 to find the Grimm book. From what Strongrock told me, you were quite firm in refusing her help.'\n\nIrene flushed. She still wasn't comfortable discussing the other Librarian. While they had agreed to a degree of truce at their last meeting \u2013 at least Irene had proposed one, and Bradamant hadn't actually said no \u2013 they hadn't seen each other since. And they had years of bad feeling to overcome. Then she realized the purpose behind Vale's words. 'You're trying to distract me. The sooner you're honest with me, the sooner I can let you get back to sleep.'\n\n'Ah, and there lies the problem. Since that little trip of ours to Venice, I have had trouble sleeping.'\n\nIf Vale was admitting that he had any sort of problem, then the problem in question was probably already too big to handle. 'And therefore the morphine?' Irene asked.\n\n'And therefore, as you say, the morphine. Though... I must admit that I have increased the level of the dose in the last few days.' Vale looked up at the ceiling. 'Are you now going to tell me that you have used that Language of yours to remove the drug from my body?'\n\n'Frankly, I wouldn't dare,' Irene said. 'I could try telling it to come out of your body, but heaven only knows how it would come out or what damage it might do to your bodily tissues. It's the sort of thing I would reserve for emergencies. Please never give me cause to try.'\n\n'I wish I could give you that promise, Winters,' Vale said slowly. 'But if I am to be functional, then I need to sleep. And if I am to sleep, then I must have morphine.'\n\n'Why can't you sleep?' Irene asked bluntly.\n\nVale was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, 'I dream.'\n\nThe logical next question would have been: What do you dream about? Irene had never trained as a psychologist. Or a psychiatrist. She wasn't actually sure what the difference was, or which sort had more letters after their name. The closest she'd come to it was on-the-job training in persuading people to talk to her. Usually to get them to tell her where books were. She wasn't any sort of therapist. If Vale had been traumatized by his visit to that other dark Venice, like Kai with his understandable post-kidnapping PTSD, then where did she start?\n\nSilence seemed to be the right course of action. Vale finally spoke again. 'I dream of moving amid a world of masks, where we are all actors, Winters, and where we are all on the strings of greater puppeteers. I dream of a thousand, thousand worlds, all of them spinning at odds to each other, all of them gradually being lost to a random ocean of utter illogic and randomness, like flotsam in a whirlpool. I dream that nothing makes sense.'\n\n'Dreams can be chaotic\u2014' Irene started.\n\n'Of course they can,' Vale said with exhausted patience. 'But these are not just dreams where things from my daily life are jumbled together randomly. I dare say such dreams are common enough. These are dreams that exalt disorder and illogic, Winters. Nothing makes sense. The only thing that eases them is to throw myself into work, and even that is scarce \u2013 there are no problems large enough to challenge me, no mysteries complex enough to intrigue me.' He was sitting upright now, grasping her wrist hard enough to hurt. 'You must understand me, Winters. I cannot endure these dreams.'\n\nIrene looked down at her wrist meaningfully. Vale followed her gaze and let go of her, carefully unfolding his fingers. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'I should not have done that.'\n\n'I asked the question,' Irene said. And the answer made far too much sense. They'd visited a high-chaos world. Vale had been warned not to go to that version of Venice \u2013 Lord Silver had been quite clear about risks, even if he hadn't made it clear what those risks were. And now there was this threat \u2013 not to Vale's body, which would have been comparatively minor, in Vale's own estimation, but to his mind...\n\n'It hardly takes a great logician to connect this to recent events,' Vale said, echoing her thoughts. 'But I will be damned if I go to Lord Silver for help. If I can endure these dreams until the influence of that world weakens, then I can reduce the morphine afterwards.'\n\nThere were so many possible logical holes in that statement that Irene could have used it as a tea-strainer. But she could see from Vale's face that he himself was aware of them, and it would have been no more than cruelty to have pointed them out, without something better to offer. Finally she said, 'I could take you to the Library.'\n\nVale blinked. Just once. His eyelids flickered, but his gaze was set on her face. 'You have never shown any interest in taking me there, in the past.'\n\n'You've always avoided actually suggesting it.' Probably because you knew I'd say no. It's not a tourist hangout.\n\n'Do you honestly think it will help?' He left out the question What would your superiors say?, which was a relief, as Irene was trying not to think about that.\n\n'I don't know,' she admitted. 'But we do know that Fae can't enter the Library. If I escort you in there, it might purge your system \u2013 I take it we're going with the explanation that you have been affected by over-exposure to high levels of chaos?'\n\nVale gave her one of his best neither you nor I are idiots, so do not descend to idiocy looks. 'It would seem the most obvious explanation. Though when you were infected with chaos in the past, you weren't even able to enter the Library, as I recall. Do you think I will be able to?'\n\nIrene pursed her lips. 'Well, if we try and find that you can't, then at least we'll be one step closer to identifying the problem.'\n\n'And locating a solution?'\n\n'Let's take this one step at a time,' she said firmly.\n\n'Could you use your Language to force this infestation out of me?' Vale suggested. 'You did it to yourself, as I recall, when you fell victim to chaos exposure.'\n\n'Um. There could be consequences.' Irene could think of a number of undefined but vaguely unpleasant ways that such a thing could go wrong. It could be worse \u2013 both to soul and to body \u2013 than sweating morphine, and that was just the first thing she could imagine. Heaven only knew how many other ways something like that could go wrong. 'The official line was that chaos infection would eventually be purged from our bodies naturally. And it's known that as a world shifts from chaos to order or back again, so do the people of that world. So if we can keep you steady long enough for it to equalize to your natural balance...' She was conscious that this wasn't being very specific, or even remotely reassuring. It might not even be accurate. She certainly wouldn't have wanted to hear it herself. 'We can save it as a last resort,' she said.\n\n'Tell me, Winters, do you think...' Vale trailed off for a moment. 'Do you think I am particularly vulnerable to this contagion?'\n\nIrene hesitated. She hoped it would be taken for careful consideration. Chaos likes to turn people into walking arche-types, main characters in search of a part. You're a great detective. And you already fulfil all the criteria for a certain fictional Great Detective. She could easily see Vale being dragged deeper into stereotype and falling victim to chaos. But would it actually help to say that? He thoroughly detested the Fae, both as individuals and as a race. Comparing him to them would not help his mood or make him sleep any better.\n\nVale apparently took her silence for agreement. 'Yes,' he said quietly. 'I don't talk about it, Winters, but you and I both know that my family is... unreliable. I broke with them because of their more dubious practices. Black magic. Poisoning. But there's worse. Winters, there is...' He swallowed. 'There is hereditary insanity in my family. I thought I had escaped it. But now...'\n\n'Rubbish!' Irene was surprised by the firmness of her tone. 'This would probably have happened to any unprotected human who went there. You saw how the locals reacted.' They were puppets on strings, toys to be jerked around at the whims of Venice's Fae masters, backstage props and chorus to the ongoing drama. 'Kai and I were lucky enough to be protected. It's that simple.'\n\n'Ah, yes. Your protection.' Vale didn't look wholly comforted, but he did look slightly less despairing than he had a moment ago. 'How did you obtain it?'\n\n'I took vows to the Library,' Irene said briefly. 'A mark was set on me.'\n\n'Details, Winters,' Vale prompted. 'Details.'\n\n'We don't talk about it.' She hunched her shoulders defensively. Now it was her turn to look away from him. She remembered bits and pieces of the night she took her vows to the Library. The questioning by a panel of older Librarians. The nerve-racking, stomach-clenching panic that she wouldn't be found worthy. And then a dark room, somewhere in the bowels of the Library, somewhere she had never found again. She had been alone in the silence there, and a sudden crashing flare of light had brought her to her knees and carved a pattern across her shoulder-blades...\n\n'It would distract me...' Vale said. Outside, another cab creaked past.\n\n'I can show you the brand, if you want.' It was harder to say the words than she had expected. She wasn't particularly body-shy, but the Library mark was something she automatically kept hidden and private. But it would still be easier to show it than to talk about that night.\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, she caught the flare of interest in Vale's face. 'If it wouldn't be too inconvenient,' he said, in an encouraging tone.\n\nIrene turned away from him and reached behind her back to unbutton her dress. Her thoughts were complicated. Part of her mind was screaming that she was alone in a bedroom with Vale and was about to bare her back to him, and was this really a good idea? What would it do to their carefully managed friendship? Another part of her mind thought it was an excellent idea, and was sotto voce suggesting directions that the two of them could take from there. And the rest of her mind was trying to convince her it was really just to distract Vale from his nightmares, and that if she ignored all the other thoughts and emotions, then they would simply evaporate.\n\nShe undid the buttons at the back of her neck, grateful that she was wearing a dress which buttoned down the back rather than the front. And this wouldn't require her to strip to the waist to show Vale her shoulders. That might be taking things a bit too fast.\n\nBut she was still utterly conscious of his presence, lying on the bed behind her in the quiet, dimly lit room, and of his eyes on her. When she'd been younger, she'd idolized great detectives and dreamed her own dreams. It had been part of the reason that she'd chosen her name. She knew \u2013 she accepted \u2013 that the man behind her was his own person and not some sort of fake-Holmes. But that didn't stop her caring for him, for who he was. If she had to take him to the Library, then she would. She was already in enough trouble. What was one more breach of regulations?\n\nAnd if it did all go wrong and she was ordered away from this world, then what?\n\nShe slipped the dress down from her shoulders, holding it modestly against her breasts, exposing her shoulders and back. She was aware that the straps of her brassiere partly obscured the markings across her back, but most of it should be visible. 'Can you see it?' she asked.\n\n'Yes.' Vale sat up behind her. Irene didn't look round, but she could hear the creaking of the bed and the rustle of the pushed-aside bedspread. 'It does look like a relatively normal tattoo, composed of scrollwork or Chinese characters... Why can't I understand it? I thought Strongrock said that everything in the Language would look like a man's native language, if he tried to read it.'\n\n'Library marks are an exception to the rule,' Irene said. She tried to relax and keep her breathing even, and not think about how close behind her he must be, how easy it would be to turn round and kiss him.\n\n'Is it hazardous to the touch?'\n\n'I don't think so. Nobody's ever died of it.' She realized that might cast a dubious light on her behaviour and quickly added, 'That I know of.'\n\n'If I may...'\n\nHer throat tightened. 'Of course,' she said.\n\nShe felt the faint brush of his fingers against her skin, gliding along the lines of her tattoo. His fingers were feverishly hot \u2013 or was that just her? \u2013 and as he leaned in closer, she could hear his breathing come faster.\n\n'It feels like normal skin and scarring,' he said. It was the blandest of possible remarks. It didn't match the way his fingers trailed across her back. Maybe Kai had actually had a point when he suggested she should approach Vale. She'd always thought that any attraction on her side had been one-sided. She might have been wrong about that. Which meant...\n\nIrene took a deep breath. Now or never. She swivelled round, her left hand holding her dress up in place. Vale was only a few inches behind her, his hand still raised. His cheeks were flushed, and no, she wasn't imagining it \u2013 there was the heat of desire in his eyes, in the way his lips were parted to speak.\n\nShe didn't give him the chance to ask her to turn back round. She slid her free arm around his neck, pulling him to her, and flung herself into a kiss. Part of her tried to compare this to Zayanna's earlier tactics, but she shot that thought down before it could get in the way. She was semi-undressed in Vale's bedroom. In this place and time, it was not an innocent situation, and both of them knew it.\n\nAnd Vale responded. His lips parted against hers, and his arms came round to hold her as firmly as she was holding him. He made a small sound deep in his throat, sliding deeper into the kiss with the assurance of a man who has had his share of experience, as hungry for her as she was for him, as tired, as desperate...\n\nSlowly the kiss eased. His hands shifted to cup her face. 'Winters,' he said. 'Irene, I\u2014'\n\n'Don't say anything,' Irene urged. 'Please. I want this, too.'\n\n'You can't know what you're saying.' Was it just the reaction of a man who would always think that women were less competent, less able to know their own desires? Irene had thought better of him. 'I shouldn't have...'\n\n'I kissed you.' She tried to put genuine feeling into her voice, rather than retreating to her usual calm surface of sarcasm and distance. 'Vale \u2013 should I call you Peregrine?'\n\n'Dear God, no!' he said. 'Irene, I can't let you make this decision like this. Your pity for me shouldn't sway you into degrading yourself\u2014'\n\n'I would not be degrading myself,' Irene said through gritted teeth. The heat of that kiss was wearing off under this sudden bath of cold indecision and self-loathing. 'I have respected and admired you for months. I find you a very handsome man. If I choose to pursue you, then by all means tell me no, but please don't imply that I am somehow donating myself to you out of charity. It is nothing like that.'\n\n'You are far too attractive and deserving a woman to throw herself away on a man like myself.' Vale was starting to sound terse. Perhaps it signalled a growing annoyance that she wouldn't simply withdraw and leave him to his self-indulgent bitterness.\n\n'I'm an unprincipled adventuress working as a book thief,' Irene snapped back.\n\n'You're barely twenty-five.'\n\n'I'm in my late thirties.'\n\nVale dropped his hands to her shoulders, seizing her as if he would like to shake her. 'Have you no sense, Irene? I'm going insane. I'm no fit bedmate for any woman.'\n\n'And I have just said I do not intend to let that happen!' Irene hissed, keeping her voice down, so as not to bring Kai in on them both. Though it would have been a pleasure to shout. 'If you consider my judgement to be worth so little, then by all means throw me out of your bedroom, but allow me to point out that I would very much have liked to stay! What do I have to do, to convince you that I'm an adult and I know my own mind?'\n\nVale took a deep, shuddering breath and then pushed her away from him, releasing her shoulders. 'Get out of here, Winters. I don't blame you. I couldn't possibly blame you. This is my own fault for playing the fool, for leading you on...'\n\nIrene didn't quite trust herself to speak at once. She pulled away and turned her back to him, doing her dress up again in quick, angry movements. 'I am certainly not going to try to force you,' she said. 'We are both mature adults, after all. And if you want to wallow in your self-pity, far be it from me to stop you.'\n\nVale didn't answer. The bed creaked as he lay back down on it.\n\nIrene rose to her feet. 'Get some sleep,' she said coldly. She still wanted him. Even losing her temper didn't stop that. And for that moment, she knew that Vale had wanted her, too. Her eyes pricked with furious tears. The stupid, irritating, self-pitying, overly noble idiot... 'We can talk later. When you aren't so tired.'\n\n'My decision won't change, Winters,' Vale said coldly. He rolled over, turning away from her and dragging the bedspread up over his curled body.\n\nIrene closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in his bedroom, and was quite pleased with herself that she didn't slam it."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "The fog had gone the next morning, and the day was as clear as it ever became in this London and this alternate world. Passing zeppelins above drew thin trails across the morning sky, which faded into feathery patterns of cloud, and newspaper-sellers shouted their wares on the street corners. They formed small islands of temporary stillness in the hurrying crowds. Even in this pleasant weather, all of London had somewhere to go and some place to be, and nobody had the time to dawdle.\n\nIrene herself was hurrying. She needed to find out if there was any reply to her report on the malfunctioning Traverse. She also wanted to add supplementary material, possibly in capital letters, on the subject of spiders and further murder attempts. If she and Kai needed to shelter in the Library, she wanted to do it sooner rather than later. She refused to risk both their lives.\n\nShe'd left Kai behind with Vale, with the excuse that this trip to the Library didn't need both of them, and that someone should stay with Vale in case he was targeted by whoever had sent them spiders. The more honest truth was that she'd wanted some time on her own. What little sleep she'd managed hadn't been good, and she hadn't felt very charitable to either of the men \u2013 even if Kai had done nothing to deserve it. And they could keep each other safe.\n\nShe was heading for the British Library, again, despite her misgivings that it might be too obvious a move to any unfriendly eyes. It was a trade-off: she could force a passage to the Library itself from some other large collection of books. But then she couldn't control where in the Library she would emerge, and she'd only be able to hold the link open for a short time. There were too many urgent things going on for her to risk ending up in a distant corner of the Library. It was best to use the fixed entrance and run the risk of others knowing where it was. Hopefully nobody was planning to kill her this early in the morning.\n\n'Read all about it!' the closest newspaper vendor shouted. Irene glanced at his display board. GUERNSEY ZEPPELIN BASE WITCHCRAFT SCANDAL, it read. No, probably not related to her current problems. Not everything was about her.\n\nThen the shockwave hit. It was a surge of force that felt like the Library at first, but wasn't \u2013 oh god, how very much it wasn't. It seemed reassuringly familiar, but it had an aftertaste of chaos that roiled her guts and made her choke. Sweet to the mouth but bitter to the stomach, half-remembered scripture quoted itself in her mind as she struggled for balance. It was hunting for Irene, or for any Librarian, like a bat screaming sonar waves into the darkness and waiting for a response. The Library brand across Irene's back blazed up so that she could feel each separate line of it, and the force of its weight made her stagger.\n\nNobody around her was reacting to it. Why should they? They weren't Librarians. A couple of people glanced at her as she missed her step, but nobody stopped, or did more than adjust their own trajectory so as not to step on her if she fell over.\n\nThen, like an ocean wave, the blow hammered down around her and left its imprint on the malleable sands of reality, then drained away, withdrawing to wherever it had come from. She'd felt something like this before, when the Library (or, more accurately, a senior Librarian) had been sending her urgent messages, only it hadn't involved this feeling of chaos. The Library's message had been classic scattershot technique, targeting any Librarian in the vicinity, then printing the message on the nearest written material. She automatically looked at the newspaper display board again.\n\n'Dreadful scandal\u2014' The vendor broke off as he looked at his papers and saw that the print on them had changed. Irene knew it would be the same as the message that currently showed on the display board, and any other printed matter within a few yards of her. It was written in the Language, and anyone who read it would see it in their own native tongue, even if the words made no sense to them.\n\n\u2002THE LIBRARY WILL BE DESTROYED, it read. AND YOU WILL BE DESTROYED WITH IT. ALBERICH IS COMING.\n\nIrene throttled the panicked inner voice which wanted to retreat into a corner and start whimpering. There was no time for that. Her feet carried her on automatically, away from the black-and-white message on all the newspapers. What she had just seen made it all the more urgent that she reach the Library and report this.\n\nIt had been in the Language. There was only one person outside the Library who was tainted with chaos and who could have used the Language. It was Alberich who had left that message, and he had left it for her to see.\n\nHe knew she was in this world. He remembered her. And he was coming.\n\nIrene breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the British Library without being accosted by Zayanna again. She did want to know what was going on with the other woman. It might be relevant. But the Library and its own interests had to take priority, and she needed to report Alberich's threat. It wasn't only a threat to her, after all. It was a threat to the Library as a whole. And if it had anything to do with what happened yesterday to the Library gate...\n\nShe slipped through the British Library unobtrusively, adopting the preoccupied air of a student, and reached the door to the Library itself. As she closed the door behind her, she felt herself relaxing. Here she was safe. Safe from the physical dangers of spiders and guns, the emotional wrinkles of caring about the people around her and, most of all, safe from the threats of the Library's greatest-ever traitor. Of all places, this was the one location where Alberich could never reach her.\n\nBut today, even this sanctuary seemed shadowed. The lights seemed dimmer, and the corners seemed darker. The very air seemed to whisper in the distance \u2013 like a ghost breathing, or the faint echo of a clock's tick.\n\nThe computer terminal was already booted up. Someone must have been using it recently and left it on. Irene thrust aside her nervousness, sat down and called up her email, already starting to phrase her report on Alberich's warning.\n\nThe blinking message at the top of the screen caught her attention: READ THIS NOW.\n\nIt couldn't be spam. Nobody could spam the Library network. She clicked on it.\n\nAn emergency meeting has been called. All Librarians will attend. Transfer shifts have been established at all junctions within the Library to permit attendance. The command word is necessity. Your presence is required immediately.\n\n'Well, this is new,' Irene said out loud. Her voice echoed in the quiet room. She was already logging off and pushing her chair back, not bothering to check the rest of her email. Whatever this was, it was urgent, and she cursed the fact that she'd been distracted and delayed by Vale, the newspaper and the whole mess.\n\nShe couldn't remember ever having been summoned to an emergency meeting like this before. She couldn't recall ever hearing about an emergency meeting like this before.\n\nIn Library terminology, 'junction' meant an intersection of passages where there was also a delivery chute to the central distributing area. They were plentiful throughout the Library, making it easy to drop off new books and get back to your assigned world. Transfer shifts were rarer. They were temporary creations arranged by a senior Librarian, which near-instantaneously transported a target from one point in the Library to another. They were also rather uncomfortable. If transfer shifts had been established throughout the Library to a central point, then this suggested a huge expenditure of energy.\n\nThe nearest junction was a few corridors away. An ominous light leaked in through the diamond-paned windows, and the sky outside crawled with clouds above an empty sea of high-peaked roofs. The floor in this section of the Library was black marble, smooth underfoot, with shadowy reflections of the crammed bookshelves, the high windows, and Irene herself as she hurried along.\n\nA transfer-shift cupboard stood waiting at the junction. It looked like a battered normal cupboard, approximately six feet high and just large enough to hold two people \u2013 or, more usually, one person and a stack of books. The front had been engraved with a pattern of ravens and writing desks, and when Irene touched the wood, it hummed with restrained energy.\n\nShe stepped inside and closed the cupboard door. 'Necessity,' she said in the darkness.\n\nThe cupboard jolted sideways, and Irene was flung against the wall before she could brace herself. She'd travelled by transfer shifts a few times before, but this was rougher than usual. The pressure held her pinned against the wall like an aeroplane passenger during a particularly vertical take-off. Unseen winds dragged at her hair, and the air was scented with ozone and dust.\n\nWith a thump it stopped.\n\nIrene took a moment to recover her balance, then opened the cupboard door and stepped out.\n\nThe room she was standing in was all polished plastic and metal railings. It didn't look genuinely high-tech, but more like some fictional image of the future based on inadequate information, and it contained too many ramps and balconies. The ceiling was several storeys above her head, roofed with concentric panes of glass that looked out at the same ominous sky as before. Other wooden cabinets resembling the one she'd emerged from stood along the walls, incongruous in the pseudo-futuristic ambience.\n\nA knot of people had gathered in front of the large metal door in the far wall. The door was closed. The people were arguing. Clearly they were Librarians. (Not that anyone else could have been here, but the arguing made it certain.)\n\nIrene approached the group. Their assortment of clothing was as varied as their ages, races and genders. The only real constant was something you'd only see if assessing a wide variety of Librarians for comparison. It was a certain quality of age and experience to the eyes, which went beyond the merely physical, and which was why Irene never looked too closely into her own eyes in a mirror.\n\n'Is this the emergency meeting?' she asked the nearest person, a middle-aged woman in a high-waisted gauze dress, with gloves sheathing her arms from finger to armpit. 'Or are we just waiting for it?'\n\n'Just waiting,' the woman said. Her accent was vaguely German. 'Apparently they're doing it in half-hourly sessions. Next one is in five minutes.'\n\n'Do you know what's going on?'\n\nThe woman shook her head. 'No, nor does anyone out here, though Gwydion over there\u2014' She gestured at a sallow man with greying hair and black robes. 'He said there was a problem with the permanent Library gate in one world that he visited.'\n\nIrene felt something congeal in her stomach. 'Yes,' she said, keeping her voice casual. 'I had a problem myself with a Traverse yesterday.'\n\nOther Librarians were turning to look at her. 'Share,' said a young-looking woman with short pink hair, in fluorescent leathers that emphasized her figure. 'You got something on this?'\n\n'I was trying to pass through a gate back to the Library,' Irene said. 'When I opened it, in the usual way, there was some sort of chaos interference and it went up in flames. I couldn't put it out with the Language, and I had to leave by another route.'\n\nGwydion had wandered over and was nodding. 'Much as yours is my own tale, save that I came to find the portal aflame, without knowledge of whence came the fire or how it fixed upon it. Darkly the taint of chaos lay upon it, fierce the abhorrence which it held to the Library's nature. If aught can be said to make this matter clear, then may our elders do so.'\n\n'Well, my gate was just fine,' said the pink-haired woman. 'Though it was from an order-slanted world. You two \u2013 were those worlds chaos ones? You think this could be some new kind of infestation?'\n\nGwydion was nodding slowly, but Irene had to shake her head. 'No, the one I came from was more order-aspected. The gate where I'm usually stationed was working properly, though. And that place is indeed more chaos-aspected.'\n\n'No proof, then,' the pink-haired woman said.\n\n'Hardly enough evidence to judge by,' another man said. He smoothed the sleeves of his long blue silk robes nervously. 'If our superiors have more\u2014'\n\n'Excuse me,' a woman said quietly as he spoke, addressing Irene. 'You wouldn't be called Irene, would you? Librarian-in-Residence to B-395? I think I've heard about you.'\n\n'Nothing too bad, I hope,' Irene answered. She didn't recognize the woman, or the man who stood beside her. 'I don't think we've met?'\n\n'I'm Penemue,' the woman introduced herself. She was comfortably middle-aged at first glance, with greying straw-coloured hair worn loose and an embroidered blue shirt and slacks worn even looser. She nodded to the man next to her, who was fiddling with his glasses while looking around the room. 'This is my friend Kallimachos. I hear that you fought off an attack on your world from Alberich some time back?'\n\n'That's drastically overstated,' Irene said. 'There was a book that Alberich was after, but it was more a case of me managing to avoid him than actually fighting off an attack. And it was only a few months ago. Might I ask who told you about it?'\n\nPenemue shrugged. 'Word gets around. I've been wanting to get in contact with you for a while now. Could we have coffee after our mysterious meeting?'\n\nThis all sounded perfectly innocent and reasonable, except for the metaphorical elephant in the room. Irene knew that she'd only managed to block Alberich from Vale's world because Kai had helped, using his natural abilities as a dragon. But hardly anyone in the Library knew that Kai was a dragon \u2013 or, at least, was supposed to know that he was a dragon. Native caution made Irene pick her words carefully. 'Of course. Though I can't stay long, I'm expected back shortly and I wouldn't want to panic my assistant.'\n\nPenemue nodded. 'Don't worry, I just want to set up some channels of communication. I've been doing some organizing among the people who work in the field, like us, and I wanted to get you in on it. I've heard so much about you, as one of the best operatives in the field.' She offered Irene her hand to shake. 'I'm sure that we'll be able to work together.'\n\nThis was sounding suspiciously like a definite commitment, and Irene didn't like to commit herself until she knew what was going on. 'We're both Librarians,' she said, forcing a smile and shaking Penemue's hand. She wished she had some idea who the other woman actually was, and what her record was like. It was at moments like this that she regretted not keeping up on Library gossip.\n\n'They're letting us in!' someone called from over by the large door. The conversation broke off as everyone hurried to go through.\n\nThe meeting room was what university lecture amphitheatres dream of growing up to become. Deep banks of seats ran from floor to ceiling, enough to handle hundreds of people rather than the several dozen who'd been waiting to enter. The desks were of heavy iron, inlaid with green enamel vines and leaves, and the glass ceiling high above was fitted with spotlights that focused on the table at the centre. People's feet rang loudly on the metal floor as they made their way down the ramps to jostle for seats in the front row.\n\nAt the far end of the front row sat Bradamant. She hadn't been with the group that had just entered, but had already been in the room. It had been months since she and Irene had last met, but she still wore her hair in a sleek razor-cut, and her elegantly draped gown was a deep jade-green silk. She had a computer laptop open and was tapping quick notes, glancing up from time to time at the new arrivals. Her gaze met Irene's for a moment and then she carefully looked away, not quite quickly enough for insult, but precisely enough that it was clear she wasn't interested in interaction. Irene wondered why Bradamant hadn't left with the others in the previous briefing.\n\n'Over here,' Penemue said, beckoning Irene to sit alongside her and Kallimachos. 'Let's hope they get through this fast. And while I've got you here, what really happened with you and Alberich?'\n\n'It was really more of a controlled escape than actually stopping him,' Irene said, looking around.\n\nAt the epicentre of the hall, a group of clearly senior Librarians sat behind a long oak table, which looked painfully out of place against all the glass and metal. Irene saw her own mentor, Coppelia, among them, tapping the clockwork fingers of her left hand against the table as she waited for the Librarians to settle themselves. Of the others, she only recognized one: another senior Librarian, Kostchei. She'd never had any personal dealings with him, but she'd been introduced once at a seminar, and he had a reputation \u2013 or possibly a notoriety \u2013 for cold competence. He was sitting at the centre of the table, with a pen and paper in front of him. His head was bald and his eyebrows barely there, but his beard was a thick braided mass which reached down to brush the table. And his face had ingrained lines of exasperation and temper around the mouth. The other Librarians were strangers to her, but were all visibly old \u2013 apart from one exception, a middle-aged woman at one end of the table in a large wheelchair. The wheelchair would explain her early retirement to the Library, rather than being out in the field.\n\n'If I can have your attention.' The room fell silent as Kostchei spoke. He leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him. Irene couldn't help noticing that his knuckles were swollen with arthritis. 'There will be a brief presentation on the current crisis, during which you will all keep silent. You may then ask questions.'\n\nHe waited for a moment, but nobody was stupid enough to speak, and he finally nodded.\n\n'Yesterday morning, by world-local time, we received a message from the traitor Alberich. He demanded that the Library surrender to him, accept him as its leader and allow him to enter it. If we refused, he threatened to destroy us. Naturally, we refused.'\n\nHe paused.\n\n'Since then, we've received reports that a number of permanent gates to the Library have been destroyed. We've also received reports of assaults on Librarians who were stationed in those worlds, or in others. There have been several deaths. Confirmed deaths, that is. We have not yet checked on all Librarians who haven't been in contact with the Library for a while.'\n\nOne Librarian started to raise her hand to ask a question. Kostchei stared at her silently until she lowered it again.\n\nIn the silence, the whole situation rearranged itself in Irene's mind. This wasn't just something directed at her and Kai: it was a threat to the whole Library. She felt as Kai had done when confronted with Vale's drugs \u2013 faced with something that couldn't be happening, that was a challenge to the very way she viewed the universe. She hadn't thought it was possible that the Library could be threatened. She'd always thought she might not survive, that Librarians might die, but the Library would surely continue...\n\nBut Coppelia was somehow down there, with other senior Librarians, confirming that all of this was true.\n\nIrene wasn't sure now if the spiders were linked to Alberich. Would it be better or worse if they weren't? If they were his doing, that meant he had some way of reaching inside Vale's world, perhaps via an agent. And if they weren't his doing, then yet another person was out to kill her. Or Kai. Or both of them together.\n\nShe remembered a conversation with Kai's uncle Ao Shun, when Kai had been kidnapped. Ao Shun had said in tones of iron, 'This is not to be tolerated. This will not be tolerated.'\n\nAnger crystallized in Irene's stomach. Indeed. She refused to tolerate this.\n\nKostchei waited another five seconds before continuing. 'We haven't yet established whether the gate-malfunctions are triggered by attempts to use the gates, or whether the gates are already destroyed and we only find out when we attempt to use them. Library Security has nothing to report, and we don't believe it to be an internal matter.' In other words, there weren't any traitors inside the Library's walls. So the problem lay outside. 'We have made enquiries from various sources, and the dragons don't appear to be involved in this. We're not sure about the Fae. Under no circumstances will we accept Alberich's terms. You may now ask questions.'\n\nHands shot up. The pink-haired woman received the first nod from Kostchei and fired off her question. 'How many gates have been hit by this so far? And are they to law-slanted worlds or chaos ones?'\n\n'The table recognizes Ananke. So far, twenty-five gates are known to be affected. The proportions of chaos and order worlds are roughly equal, and there is no clear evidence of more breakdowns on either side of the theoretical balance.'\n\nThe man in blue silk was next. 'Have there been any previous occurrences like this in the past? Could it be somehow cyclical?'\n\n'Wishful thinking,' Penemue muttered, but Kallimachos raised a finger to his lips to hush her.\n\n'The table recognizes Sotunde.' Kostchei tugged on his beard. It looked solid enough to be used as a weapon. 'While it is a matter of Library record that gates may shift their positions inside a world, we have no previous reports of any going up in flames. We realize that this in itself doesn't prove that they can't go up in flames every few thousand years. Your comment is taken under advisement. Next!'\n\n'Did Alberich give any means to locate him?' This was from a middle-aged woman in a neat grey linen kimono and geta sandals, her face painted to bland immobility. Circuit-embossed metal bracers encircled her wrists and forearms.\n\n'The table recognizes Murasaki.' Irene blinked. That was the name of the woman who'd recruited Kai as a trainee Librarian, but hadn't noticed the fact that he was a dragon. It would be interesting to speak with her later, if there was a chance. 'Alberich said if we were to surrender, we were to publicly announce it on the media in several specific alternates, and then have some of the elders leave the Library and wait for him to contact them. While we have agents checking those worlds, as yet they have nothing to report.'\n\nInteresting how little detail he's giving on where, how or when Alberich made his announcement, Irene thought. Could it be that Kostchei wants to make sure nobody actually follows those instructions? Are they afraid that some people would try and surrender, if they knew how?\n\n'Brief was the mention of sources of enquiry.' Gwydion had wedged his way into a pause in the dialogue, without waiting for Kostchei to signal him, and was frowning. 'While none of us would dally untowardly with our enemies, should our ears not remain open in the service of the Library? If aught can be learned, then surely we should ask for information wherever we can find it.'\n\nKostchei started to speak, then paused when the woman in the wheelchair raised her hand. 'The table recognizes Gwydion. I yield to Melusine.'\n\nMelusine had dirty blonde hair, trimmed close to her head, and she was in a plain checked shirt and jeans, rather than the more dramatic robes or dresses that some of the other elder Librarians wore. Her voice was light and cool: Irene couldn't identify any traces of a national accent. 'To cut aside the circumlocutions: yes, we have some contacts among the dragons and among the Fae. Yes, we have spoken with them. No, the ones we've spoken to don't know anything about this. However, the information we have access to is far from exhaustive. If you have an inappropriate friend out there, don't be shy. Get them to talk. Just be careful. There have been rumours that Alberich has Fae contacts...'\n\nNot rumour, fact. Irene had met a Fae or two who'd boasted of his acquaintance.\n\n'...so be careful you're not being led up the garden path.'\n\nGwydion nodded, lowering his hand and looking relieved. Nobody else actually made any signs of agreeing with Melusine's comment, but a number of the other Librarians present were looking blandly thoughtful, in a way that suggested they were mentally reviewing lists of their acquaintances.\n\n'I've had some Fae interference in my work over the last week,' a man in velvet coat and breeches said diffidently. His blond curls had been carefully styled into position, and he held his feathered hat in his lap. 'Nothing life-threatening, but meddling with a current assignment of mine. Could there be a link?'\n\n'The table recognizes Gervase. We can't rule anything out at this stage. Please leave your information with my assistant, Bradamant, who will be showing you out.' Ah, that would explain Bradamant's presence, Irene noted. 'We'll correlate it and see if any pattern emerges.'\n\nPenemue had her hand up. 'Has there been any actual consultation with Librarians in the field about this, or has senior management simply taken the initiative here?'\n\n'That is senior management's job,' Coppelia said, her voice as dry as sifting sand.\n\n'I feel that we need a more complete picture of what's going on, before we make any definite moves here,' Penemue said. 'I'm sure that I speak for everyone here when I say that we need more information, if we're to give a properly directed response. And surely that includes full details on these threats?'\n\n'My pleasure,' Kostchei growled. 'I will expand my statement about his threats. Alberich said that he would destroy the Library utterly. He failed to provide us with any helpful information about how. Any more questions?'\n\n'Yes,' Kallimachos said, picking up from Penemue as neatly as if they'd rehearsed it. Perhaps they had. 'I think we may be over-reacting here. Alberich has apparently existed for centuries. He is used as a threat to frighten new Librarians. But we know he's not invincible or invulnerable. We even have someone here who's dealt with him before.' He pointed to Irene. 'Are we seriously suggesting he's that dangerous? Shouldn't we consider a more measured response?'\n\nIrene desperately wished that she could vanish into thin air, or at least hide under the desk. Everyone was looking at her. Worse, they were now assuming that she was allied with these two. Irene didn't object to the theory that junior Librarians should have a bit more say in how things were run, but she objected very strongly to an attempt to grab the metaphorical wheel in the middle of a metaphorical multilane car crash. Even more so when they tried to involve her in the power play.\n\n'It's obvious that the man's mad,' Kostchei said. 'He's also a megalomaniac.'\n\n'Doesn't that count as mad in any case?' someone muttered in the seats behind Irene, then fell silent as Kostchei stared in his direction.\n\n'He believes the Library should take a more active role in influencing and controlling other worlds,' Kostchei went on. 'You all know that is not our role. We aren't here to make moral judgements about the Fae, the dragons, or anywhere in between. We're here to keep the balance, and let the worlds in between stay free. What Alberich wants is completely against our principles.' His voice lowered to a growl, and he pulled at his beard as if it was a hangman's rope. 'We stand for preservation. We are not rulers. We are Librarians.'\n\n'Yes, but surely we can handle this in a more balanced way,' Penemue said firmly. Her words came out with the smoothness of a prepared speech. 'This is just one more case of a lack of communication, which has become far too common lately. The Library isn't served by having the people who are supposed to be running it ignoring the input of a large number of the people who actually do the work. There have been plenty of previous cases of this. I know I'm not the only person here who\u2014'\n\nIrene wished, again, that she was sitting on the other side of the room. She didn't want to seem associated with this faction. Which was no doubt why Penemue had arranged for them to sit together. She hated internal politics. Low-voiced conversations were breaking out among the listeners. Kostchei was lowering his head like a bull about to charge. The whole situation was about to degenerate into a list of complaints \u2013 and an argument between the elder Librarians and anyone who thought Penemue had a point. There wasn't time for that. This was an emergency.\n\nIrene desperately thrust her hand in the air.\n\n'The table recognizes Irene,' Coppelia said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "'I have some new information, which I haven't had a chance to tell anyone else yet,' Irene said. 'This morning I received an urgent in-world message in the usual Library manner, but it was tainted with chaos. It said \u2013 in the Language \u2013 that the Library would be destroyed, and that I would be destroyed with it. That Alberich was coming. I'm guessing it was a message from Alberich himself.'\n\nThe gasps and muffled exclamations would no doubt have pleased Zayanna greatly. Irene gritted her teeth and focused on looking professional. 'I was coming to report it, when I saw the message to attend this meeting.'\n\nKostchei tugged on his beard again. 'The table recognizes Irene, Librarian-in-Residence on probation to alternate B-395. You are sure that this message was delivered in the Language?'\n\n'Yes,' Irene said. 'Though it had a chaos aftertaste to it.' She was conscious that the words on probation had affected the rest of the room. She was now officially unreliable.\n\n'Did it name you personally?'\n\nIrene shook her head. 'It just said \"you\".'\n\n'Then it could have been addressed to any Librarian in the area?'\n\n'It could,' Irene agreed. She tried to guess what Kostchei was suggesting here. Did he want to imply that any Librarian was in danger from Alberich? She let her eyes slide sideways to Coppelia, and saw that the other woman had her lips pressed firmly together and was frowning. I'll take that as a hint. 'I do have reason to believe that Alberich has contacts with the Fae, too,' she added. 'It's in an earlier report of mine, concerning a claim by one of the Fae. A few months back.'\n\nKostchei nodded. His face was impenetrable, a stone mask with beard and eyebrows. 'This appears to be another example of Alberich's threats. If there are any further such direct messages to other Librarians, they'll be examined for a possible triangulation on his location. Kindly speak to your supervisor after this meeting.' He glanced across to Coppelia, who nodded.\n\n'And someone tried to kill me just last night,' Irene added, aware that it sounded a bit weak, tagged on the end like that. 'Though that could have been a coincidence.'\n\nKostchei looked at her, his eyes liquid ice, and Irene found herself stuttering to a halt and closing her mouth. He had more presence in that glare than some Fae lords she'd faced down. It wasn't psychic powers, as some people would have described them. It was simply Alpha Teacher, channelled with a side order of extra ice and public humiliation, and it worked far too well.\n\nNobody else raised any questions. Penemue's drive appeared to have fizzled out with that interruption, and she was now pointedly not looking at Irene. I'm guessing that the post-meeting coffee has been cancelled, now that I'm not quite so useful.\n\nKostchei swept his gaze across the group of Librarians. 'For the moment, the policy is to strengthen the Library's ties to the alternate worlds. As usual, this will be accomplished by gathering books important to those worlds and bringing them here. This means that you will all be getting urgent assignments, now or in the near future. Do the job, get the book, bring it back as fast as possible.'\n\n'What of our more prolonged missions?' Gwydion asked. 'Several books have I now sought for years, and I would not set those tasks aside and waste my effort.'\n\nIrene resisted the urge to cover her eyes and sigh. Had she ever been that stupid? Possibly, but she liked to think that even when she was younger, she would have known better than to ask a question like that.\n\nKostchei glared at Gwydion. 'Get your priorities right, boy,' he growled. 'This is not some sort of casual diversion. This is an emergency. The Library is in danger. Forget the damn long-term projects. What we are doing, right this minute, is shoring up our defences and making certain that our gates and links stay solid.'\n\nIrene glanced at the other Librarians out of the corner of her eye. Nobody was actually raising their hand to ask the ten-million-dollar question, namely: Isn't this a very short-term approach? Aren't we just treating the symptoms, rather than the underlying problem? Shouldn't we be thinking about a long-term strategy, or attack, not simply defence? What if this doesn't work?\n\nKostchei took a deep breath, visibly composing himself. 'Any further developments or information should be reported immediately. Take all due precautions. Bear in mind that you are valuable resources and that the Library prefers you to stay alive. Get out there and do your job.' He rapped on the table with his knuckles. 'You are dismissed.'\n\nIrene had to push past a few other Librarians on her way down towards Coppelia. A couple of them gave her semi-friendly nods or sympathetic glances, and both Gwydion and Ananke muttered something about staying in contact. Irene made a mental note that she should probably make the effort. Assuming they all survived this. Penemue and Kallimachos both looked right through her, the sort of deliberate ignorance of her presence that would have been called the cut direct in certain times and places. Well, fine, she thought. Thanks for making it so very clear why you were interested in me, and why you aren't now. It saves time. A background murmur of debate rose behind her, far more tense than the earlier chat before the meeting.\n\nShe let Coppelia lead her into a small side office. Coppelia was in her usual dark blue, with a white lacy shawl round her shoulders, and her wooden hand was newly polished till it almost glowed. But she looked tired. There was a hollowness around her eyes, and a sense of strain to the way she moved. Irene was reminded that senior Librarians became like this because they'd worked out in the field until they were old, and then finally retired to the Library \u2013 where nobody aged and no bodily time passed \u2013 to become positively ancient. At this precise moment, Coppelia looked ancient too, and weary.\n\nThe office was sparsely furnished. Coppelia settled into one of the flimsy-looking glass chairs with a sigh, and gestured Irene into the other. 'Briefly, who's trying to kill you, and why?'\n\nIrene gave a rundown of the last couple of days' events, trying not to imagine her chair collapsing beneath her. 'I don't know who is responsible,' she finished. 'But Lady Guantes has an obvious motive. So does Alberich, but I don't think he can reach me in my current posting. Not after he was banished from there previously.' The mere thought that he might be able to left a sour taste in her mouth. 'And even if he did, he wouldn't just leave poisonous spiders in my bedroom.'\n\n'Venomous,' Coppelia corrected her absently. 'A spider is venomous: it creates the poison and delivers it by biting. Minus a point for incorrect terminology.'\n\n'Is this really the time to\u2014' Irene started angrily.\n\n'Yes,' Coppelia snapped. 'Yes, it is and it always will be. You use the Language, child. You have to be absolutely precise or you will get hurt. I have not invested all this time and effort into you to lose you now.'\n\nIrene took a deep breath. 'How nice that I matter to you.'\n\n'Don't be silly, Irene. I haven't time for you to be juvenile. Can you behave like an adult, or should I have you wait outside while we take the next briefing?'\n\nThis was the second time inside half an hour that she'd been scolded as if she was still a teenager. It hit nerves already frayed from assassination attempts and threats from Alberich. 'People are trying to kill me,' she said, controlling herself with an effort. 'The Library's been threatened by Alberich. Gates are being destroyed. Alberich sent me a personal message. I haven't time for you to treat me like a child. Is this really the moment for power games?'\n\nCoppelia tapped a wooden finger on the table. 'Just because you've stayed out of Library power games in the past doesn't mean that you'll always be able to do so. Do you have any relevant questions?'\n\n'Yes. What should I do if Alberich tries to contact me again?'\n\nCoppelia hesitated. 'I would like to tell you not to bother answering him. But we desperately need further information. If you think you can get anything out of him, try it.'\n\n'Answer him?' Irene hadn't thought it was possible to respond to that sort of message. It was yet one more thing that junior Librarians didn't 'need to know'. The thought rankled, another brick on top of a growing construction of annoyance. Just think, if she'd been able to respond before, after receiving other emergency messages... 'How?'\n\nCoppelia pursed her lips as if she was considering reproving Irene for her tone, but her answer was mild. 'You need to overwrite the written material with your own message, using the Language. The person who sent the first message should still be focused on the link to your general area and will perceive it. The link doesn't last long, so you'll only have a chance to exchange a few lines.'\n\n'How safe is this?' Irene asked.\n\n'Nothing's totally safe. What sort of guarantee are you looking for?'\n\nIrene spread her hands. 'Well, are we talking about me being led into sedition by his hypnotic messages unsafe, or Alberich using this theoretical link to drop a rain of fire on my head unsafe?'\n\n'Well, the Library couldn't drop a rain of fire on your head through that sort of link,' Coppelia said. 'So Alberich probably can't. It interests me that he can make the connection at all.'\n\n'It surprises me that he'd bother, given our previous British Library confrontation,' Irene said. She wasn't entirely reassured by the use of probably. 'Other Librarians must have managed to dodge him before. I can't be the first one.'\n\nCoppelia reached across the table and tapped Irene's forehead with her finger \u2013 one of the flesh ones, thankfully. 'Use your brain, child. You read that book he was hunting for. He knows you'll have read it \u2013 and it was only a few months ago, so he won't have forgotten.'\n\nIrene frowned. 'But it only told me that his sister had a child who was raised in the Library. It didn't... Oh.' It came to her what Coppelia was saying. 'But maybe he doesn't know that. Or at least he doesn't know how much I know, or what the book said.'\n\n'I'm tempted to order you to stay here,' Coppelia mused out loud. 'It might be safest for you.'\n\nIrene blinked. 'You are joking, aren't you?'\n\n'I'm quite serious. As Kostchei said, we don't want to waste you.' She sighed. 'That man has never liked chairing meetings. You can watch his level of patience go down like a thermometer being hit by a blizzard.'\n\n'Well, I'm being serious, too. I'm not sitting in here when there's work to be done.' She leaned forward, trying to impress Coppelia with her determination and focus, then stiffened as she heard the chair creak under her. It spoiled the effect. 'And why are we having meetings, anyhow? Why aren't you just broadcasting the news to all the Librarians as fast as possible?'\n\n'It takes energy.' Coppelia shrugged. 'The Library's resources are not infinite. We're informing people who come in first, and we'll be broadcasting warnings to anyone who hasn't shown up or been in contact within twenty-four hours. And as for work to be done, I have a job for you. It's in a different world from your Residency post \u2013 but since Alberich won't know to look for you there, you should be as safe as if you were here. Safe from Alberich, at least,' she corrected herself.\n\n'What sort of job?' The very concept of a simple book-retrieval brought a welcome normality into the discussion, and Irene relaxed.\n\n'The usual,' Coppelia said. 'But under the current circumstances, we need the book as fast as possible. You won't have your usual time for preparations. We do know where you can find a copy of it, but it may be a little difficult to extract.'\n\nWhich meant that it was probably going to be hideously difficult and dangerous. Still, at least Irene would be doing something to help.\n\nCoppelia reached down painfully and flipped open the leather briefcase beside her chair. She slid out a thin folder of papers, offering them to Irene. 'The book we want is The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki. He was Polish, but the manuscript was written in French. In a lot of alternates it was published without any problems, but something was different about it in this world, B-1165. The book was mostly destroyed. A few copies showed up in private collections. We have a lead on one of them, and since we're short on time, you'd better try for that one. Don't think you're being given an easy job to keep you occupied. This one's going to be difficult to acquire. We would have liked to get hold of it some time back, but it was judged to be too difficult a mission. But under the current circumstances...'\n\nIrene took the papers. 'If it's a beta-world, then it's magic-dominant?'\n\nCoppelia nodded. 'The major power is Tsarist Russia. The book's in the restricted collection in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. There isn't a Librarian-in-Residence on that world, so you'll have to operate without backup.'\n\nIrene's feeling of relaxation was ebbing rapidly. 'What do I do about Kai?' she asked. 'I'm nervous enough about leaving him alone in Vale's world while I come in to report. Should I leave him here in the Library while I'm collecting this Potocki manuscript?'\n\nCoppelia apparently considered, but she had a particular set to her lips. Irene recognized it as meaning that the older Librarian had already made up her mind. 'You'd better bring him with you. The world's disputed ground, not high-chaos or high-order \u2013 but it is more order than chaos, so it shouldn't be too risky for him. And you might find his help useful.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'All right. It'll certainly make him happier. But level with me on this one, Coppelia, please. I didn't ask this outside, in the meeting, but what are we going to do if this stabilization approach doesn't work?'\n\n'Think of another one,' Coppelia said. She cracked her wooden knuckles. 'Melusine is correlating reports from Librarians across all the alternates, as they come in. Once we get a lead on where Alberich's hiding out, we can move in a strike force.'\n\n'It's amazing how Alberich threatening to destroy the Library suddenly gets everyone interested in locating him and hunting him down,' Irene said. She couldn't stop a certain amount of sarcasm seeping into her voice. 'Rather more serious than just killing individual Librarians.'\n\n'Individual bias is fine in private,' Coppelia said gently. 'But be careful what you say in public.'\n\n'Oh, don't worry. I'll do my job.' Irene realized she was echoing Kostchei, and was reminded of another question. 'Did Kostchei deliberately play down my report?'\n\n'He gave it what he considered the appropriate level of significance.' Coppelia shrugged her thin shoulders. 'He may follow it up later, but at the moment we're rating the destruction of Library portals and the deaths of Librarians as more significant than one threat to your life.'\n\nIrene hadn't wanted to ask, but she couldn't force the thought away any longer. 'Has this affected anyone I know? My parents\u2014'\n\n'Not your parents.' Coppelia met Irene's gaze. 'Nobody you know. Some Librarians just haven't been in contact yet. We're trying to reach them. At least a couple are known to have died. So far they were on worlds where the gates have been destroyed. We think at least one was caught in a gate going up in flames.'\n\nIrene thought of how nearly the same thing had happened to her. 'I understand you don't want to start a panic,' she said. 'But I'm wondering if this news perhaps justifies a bit of panic.'\n\n'Panic is the last thing we can afford,' Coppelia said. 'Panic will have everyone rushing off in different directions to try to \"save the Library\". Panic is the antithesis to good organization. Panic is messy. I am against panic on a point of principle.' She checked her watch. 'Do you have any other questions? The next briefing's in a few minutes, and it's my turn to chair it.'\n\nIrene had been carefully putting her other problem to one side, balancing it against her professional responsibilities and her duty to the Library. But that didn't make it go away. And Coppelia, an elder of the Library, might have an answer. 'How would you recommend cleansing chaos contamination from a human's system?' she demanded.\n\n'Dear me.' Coppelia frowned thoughtfully. 'Vale, I take it? Yes, I did wonder how he'd coped with that version of Venice... Don't look at me like that, Irene; chaos contamination wasn't a certainty, and in any case he isn't a Librarian. For a start, you won't be able to bring him in here.'\n\nIrene mentally cursed. 'Why not?' she asked.\n\n'The obvious reason \u2013 if he's reached too high a level of intrinsic chaos, the gate won't let him through, just as it wouldn't have let you through while you were contaminated yourself. But you know that. Why bother to ask me?'\n\n'I was hoping I was wrong,' Irene admitted. 'What about moving him to a high-order world?'\n\n'By other methods of transportation, I assume.' Coppelia made a wiggly gesture in the air that might have been meant to mimic dragon flight. 'Yes, that should work in the long term, assuming he survives it. If it's too deep in his system, he might simply calcify, the way that the high Fae do in such worlds. You'd need somewhere mid-order, and you'd be looking at a long-term convalescence. Or you could take him to another high-chaos world.'\n\n'How would that help?'\n\n'It'd set his nature.' Coppelia shrugged. 'Again, if he survived. He'd acclimatize to being the same chaos level as other denizens of that world. Of course there would probably be some personality changes, and he'd be more vulnerable to Fae influence, but he'd live. You might do best just to take care of him as he is, and hope that he can ride it out. Eventually his body will resettle to a more normal level for his world.'\n\nHer Library branding had shielded Irene, of course. But that wasn't an option for Vale. He'd gone to that high-chaos Venice of his own will, in spite of all the warnings, to save Kai. Even though he'd known he would be risking his life. Even though he might have suspected he'd be risking his sanity. Irene found herself turning cold at the thought that she might lose him. Vale wasn't simply a civilian casualty. He was someone she cared about, someone who had a place in her life.\n\nThere had to be a way to save him. She would not accept otherwise.\n\nIrene rose to her feet with a nod. 'Thank you for the information,' she said. 'I'll be back with the book as soon as possible.'\n\n'Irene...' Coppelia looked for words, then spread her hands again. 'Be careful, girl.'\n\n'You too,' Irene said. 'After all, if nowhere's safe...' She gestured at the walls, at the wider Library around them. 'Then this isn't safe, either.'\n\nCoppelia's mouth quirked into a smile. She nodded, and Irene left, making her way through a new group of Librarians waiting to be briefed.\n\nShe fretted all the way through the transfer shift and back to the portal to Vale's world, trying to think how best to handle matters. Assuming that this gate remained stable \u2013 and should she set up some sort of warning system, in case it caught fire? \u2013 she needed to ask those Fae she knew about Alberich. Zayanna. Silver. Anyone else she could find. Perhaps Vale could suggest a few names, if only from his local list of Dangerous Fae Malefactors. And she needed to watch out for any further messages from Alberich. She also needed to talk with Kai about Vale, and discuss where to take him, and if he'd agree to go. Oh, and she needed to find out who left those spiders. Though when compared with everything else, someone trying to murder her so inefficiently was a minor concern.\n\nAnd she needed to go and steal a book.\n\nShe left the British Library in the middle of a jostling group of young students, mentally preparing an argument for Silver. He had to believe that it was in his interests to cooperate. But the sudden pain of a needle stabbing her hand broke her concentration. She looked up in shock to see one man sliding the hypodermic back in his coat, as another slipped an arm round her waist, gathering her to him as she began to sag. She opened her mouth, trying to speak, but she couldn't focus and her sight was darkening. She choked on the smell of sweat and hair and dogs.\n\nOh yes. And I was going to be more careful about travelling through a portal known to my enemies, wasn't I?\n\nWhoops.\n\nShe sagged forward into sleep."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "When Irene woke, she was in darkness.\n\nShe lay unmoving with her eyes closed, waiting for any reaction, trying to get a sense of where she was. She was lying on a hard floor, brick or stone. But it was warm and dry, rather than cold and leeching the heat out of her. She wasn't bound or restrained in any way, but the folder she'd been given by Coppelia had been taken.\n\nThere were no sounds of anyone else breathing. She cautiously let one eye flutter open.\n\nNear-total darkness, but faint lights in the distance. Irene sat up, her head spinning. Her hand ached from the needle, but not enough to stop her using it. She was in an arched cavity set into the wall of a long brick tunnel. The lights burning in the distance in both directions were lamps. The corridor was thick with dust, too: she didn't have to see it, she could feel it where her fingers touched the floor, and she had to work not to cough.\n\nWhat the hell was going on? If someone was going to kidnap her, why just leave her like a sack of potatoes, without even tying her up or taking away the knife in her boot?\n\nParanoia whispered reminders about Alberich and the other missing Librarians, but a more immediate and practical concern was Kai. Irene herself might just have been knocked out and dumped down here in order to get her out of the way while something worse happened to him.\n\nShe pushed herself to her feet and shook some of the dust off her skirt. Now that her eyes were getting used to the semi-darkness, she could see there was a faint trail down the centre of the passage, where the dust was less thick than at the edges. There were occasional footprints \u2013 some looked like heavy boots, but others were bare feet. Vale would no doubt have been able to identify the shoe; or, in the case of the bare feet, comment on the originator's height, weight and posture. All Irene could deduce was that this was a frequent route for whoever came down here.\n\nAnd the next big question was: who was that?\n\nThe tunnel shook. A deep shuddering, grinding roar vibrated through the walls, making Irene jump and steady herself. For a moment she just wanted to run for it, in any direction whatsoever as long as it was away.\n\nShe controlled herself. Panic wouldn't help. The rumbling was dying away now, in a long clatter of motion that seemed somehow familiar. She began to head to her right, choosing the direction at random, keeping her pace as quiet as possible as she listened for pursuers.\n\nThe silence was complete again and the dust had begun to settle, when a wolf's howl came echoing down the passage. It would have been frightening enough on the moors by moonlight. In this confined space, in the near-dark, given her total lack of knowledge about where she was, it made Irene's spine curdle and her legs twitch as she restrained herself from running. It wasn't even a normal wolf's howl, if one could use such a term. It had the full-bodied weight and impact that came from a larger-than-normal set of lungs.\n\nThere was a werewolf down here with her. No, make that at least one werewolf. She might as well assume the worst. And her kidnappers might be lurking as well. Or possibly her kidnappers were werewolves. It was like one of those Venn diagrams where all the possible Bad Things intersected to provide a Worst Possible Thing at the centre. But what she'd smelled when they kidnapped her was suggestive.\n\nIrene picked up her pace to a jog as she headed for the light. While it wasn't quite a terrified run, it was faster than her earlier prowl.\n\nThe light was a dimming ether-bulb mounted out of her reach on the wall. As she approached it, it gave enough light for her to see what was written on the wall beneath it.\n\nLONDON UNDERGROUND SAFETY TUNNEL N-112.\n\nA trembling roar came through the walls again, but this time Irene knew what it was. It was a Tube train, passing by out of her sight and out of her reach, while she was locked in these tunnels with the werewolves that laired in them.\n\nShe'd heard about this part of London. Vale had warned her and Kai not to wander down there, if they had any other options. The tabloids regularly published INNOCENT STREET URCHINS MAULED BY BLOODTHIRSTY BEASTS headlines \u2013 no, wait, that had been the incident with the imported giant rats, not the werewolves.\n\nShe realized that her brain was doing its usual thing in a panic situation, which was thinking about anything else, in the hope it would distract from the immediate danger. She needed to be practical. She needed to find a weapon. A weapon larger and more efficient than the knife in her boot.\n\nIrene had no idea where they might be, in relation to London above them. Going onwards would presumably take her to a door, or a ladder, or some other way of getting out of these tunnels. There had to be some sort of maintenance exit, didn't there? Common sense dictated that there must be a way out. There had to be a way in, for her to be here in the first place.\n\nIt was tempting to use the Language to bring down a chunk of ceiling or wall and block the tunnel, or even squash some werewolves. But that might be bad for whatever part of London was above them. Also, once a ceiling collapse had been started, it could be very difficult \u2013 even impossible \u2013 to stop it. She knew that from personal experience.\n\nStaying here wouldn't help. She set off down the corridor again, the light throwing her shadow in front of her. Ahead was darkness, but she thought she could see another flicker in the distance: presumably another ether-lamp.\n\nAnother howl shuddered through the air behind her: it was closer, and imagination added a gloating edge to it. Look at the poor little fleeing prey, it seemed to say, picking up her skirts and scuttling for cover. But there's nowhere to run in these corridors, little rabbit, little mouse \u2013 there's no way to escape...\n\nIrene found herself smiling unpleasantly. She was not amused. She hoped that very shortly she would be able to explain to these werewolves just how unamused she was.\n\nThe passage, fully dark now, came to a crossroads, and Irene halted. She could see dim pinpricks of light in each of the possible directions, so that wasn't any help.\n\nSniffing the air, she caught a very faint stink of sewage from the right-hand opening. The London Underground shouldn't have any open links to sewers, even in the maintenance tunnels. Which meant either some sort of rebuilding in progress or damaged walls. Which meant... a possibility.\n\nShe headed to the right at an increased pace, her nose wrinkling as the whiffs of sewage became stronger. The next light was still a good distance away, an unfulfilled twinkle in the shadows. Presumably maintenance workers \u2013 if any actually came down here \u2013 brought their own lanterns.\n\nThe tunnel shuddered above her, and dust fell from the ceiling, crusting on the shoulders of her ruined coat. That must be another Tube train, at a right angle to the previous one. She tried to imagine a mental map of the London Tube layout in order to make a guess at her current position, but there were too many possibilities.\n\nTwo more howls, one answering another, and both of them close behind her. The penetrating waft of sewage was a stink that went through her nose and drilled all the way to her lungs, but that didn't seem to be slowing down the werewolves.\n\nIn the near-darkness Irene didn't see the pile of bricks against the wall. She tripped over an outlier, stubbing her toe and measuring her full length on the floor. Irene swore with her nose in the dust. Rolling over, she squinted at the pile. Several dozen loose bricks and a few half-bricks too, intended for the now-obvious hole in the wall, which reached up towards the ceiling. Perfect.\n\nInstead of getting up, she clasped her ankle melodramatically. It'd be much easier if they came within range. 'No!' she whimpered, trying to put some genuine pain into it. 'My ankle!'\n\nAnother howl guttered away into a deep, throaty laugh. Movement whispered in the dark junction that Irene had just left. She strained her eyes, but couldn't see any shapes clearly.\n\nLesson One of Practical Interrogation: people will gloat and tell you things if they think you're helpless. 'Who's there?' Irene begged. 'Why are you doing this to me?'\n\nShadowy forms differentiated themselves from the greater darkness behind, and eyes glinted red in the ether-light. There were four of them: two were fully wolves, moving with the smoothness of natural animals as they prowled towards Irene, while the other two were half-man, half-wolf. They were hunched and clawed, with huge paws that scraped on the brick floor, and jaws that hung open and panted.\n\nNone of them answered.\n\nThey were less than twenty yards away now. And werewolves could move very fast.\n\nLesson Two of Practical Interrogation: know when to cut your losses.\n\n'Loose bricks,' Irene ordered in the Language, 'hit those werewolves.'\n\nThe bricks hummed through the air like fast-bowled cricket balls, slamming into the oncoming creatures with audible cracks and crunches. Irene found herself wincing at the screams and whines, in spite of her awareness that the werewolves had probably been about to kill her. At least this probably wouldn't kill them. It took silver, fire, decapitation or practically chopping one to bits to kill a werewolf.\n\nBut it would hurt them.\n\nShe scrambled to her feet, picking up a loose half-brick on the way, and walked towards the four downed werewolves. They were lying on the ground now, in puddles of their own blood. One of the lupine-form werewolves was clearly unconscious. The other was curled up, licking frantically at a shattered paw, and cringed away as Irene approached. The two more human-formed ones were both conscious \u2013 one of them lay sprawled on the ground, with visible hollows in his ribcage, while the other was nursing a shattered right arm and shoulder.\n\n'Talk to me,' Irene said, keeping her voice calm and practical. 'Tell me what's going on, and why you kidnapped me.'\n\nThe werewolf with the broken arm tried to snarl. Brick shards had ploughed across one side of his face, but the gashes were already closing up, leaving his fur and teeth matted with blood. 'You'd better start running, woman, while you've still got a chance\u2014'\n\n'Ten out of ten for bravado,' Irene said, then realized how much she sounded like Coppelia. The thought made her frown. 'Look, do you want me to kill you? We both know that if I throw enough bricks at you\u2014'\n\nThe half-turned werewolf lunged at her. Irene had been ready for that and stepped back, avoiding a slash from his clawed left hand. 'Fine,' she said. 'Werewolves, assume human form.'\n\nUsing the Language on living beings was always awkward. They tended to resist it, you needed incredibly precise terminology, it had to be something physically possible and you needed to be careful not to accidentally include yourself in any imperatives. Junior Librarians were encouraged to avoid it, unless they really knew what they were doing \u2013 or, of course, for the classic reason that I'll die otherwise. Here, Irene could be reasonably sure that as she wasn't a werewolf, she wouldn't be affected. Which made life simpler. For her, at least.\n\nThe werewolf who had attacked her jerked away, claws melting back into his hand as it shortened to a normal human one. His toothed muzzle resolved into an unshaven face, his naked skin pale in the darkness. Fresh blood ran from the wounds on his shoulder and arm. The others were seized by the Language as well, their bodies painfully contorting as Irene's words forced them back into human form. The three conscious ones screamed: the unconscious one simply lay there, his body flopping and jerking on the floor as it shifted into that of a young man.\n\nEven in the near-darkness, they had one obvious thing in common. They were young men, no more than student age, and while they were mostly muscular and well built, none of them had the sheer muscle and lithe power that she'd seen before, in other adult werewolves. Irene recognized their faces now, and remembered that she'd thought they were students when they'd met her at the British Library.\n\nPerhaps this was the time to access her inner Coppelia, or even her inner Kostchei. 'What on earth do you think you're playing at?' she demanded, stepping forward.\n\nThe werewolf cringed back, his eyes still catching the light more than a normal human's eyes would, but wide and disconcerted. 'What did you just do?' he demanded, his voice rising in panic. 'What did you do to us?'\n\n'Don't worry,' Irene said briskly. 'It's not permanent. But I want you to think, for one little moment, about exactly how much it would hurt to have more bricks hit you while you're like this. Use that mind of yours, such as it is, to imagine what it would feel like to have a brick go smashing through your skull and turning your brain into grey goo.' She took another step forward. 'Now are you going to behave? Or do I need to make my point again?'\n\nHe cowered back in front of her, turning his head to one side and baring his neck. 'I submit!'\n\nIrene was tempted to toss the half-brick up and down in her hand, but common sense pointed out that it was heavy and she'd either hurt her hand or drop the brick, which would spoil the intimidating effect. 'Some answers, then. Who hired you? What can you tell me about them? And where's the folder I was carrying?'\n\nHer victim shuffled back to join the other conscious werewolves, who were huddling together, their hands running over their fellows' bodies as though they could restore their normal hairy forms by pure force of will. And I don't know how much longer the Language will keep them that way, so let's not give them time to think...\n\n'It was a woman,' the first werewolf stammered.\n\n'Yes?' Irene said encouragingly. 'And?'\n\n'Well, she was a woman,' he said, giving a perfect description of approximately fifty per cent of the world's population. 'Nicely dressed.'\n\n'I am not in the market for half-answers,' Irene snapped. 'What did she sound like? Upper-class, or regional accent? What sort of nice clothes was she wearing?' An idea about what werewolves might notice flickered through her mind. 'And what did she smell like?'\n\n'She was wearing far too many veils for good taste,' one of the other werewolves said wearily. He cradled a broken hand against his chest. Freed of the snout and fur of his wolf form, he was well-shaven and skinny, and his accent was middle-class London. 'Nice scent. Spicy. Obvious she didn't want to be recognized. Veils on her face and hair, expensive coat, gloves...'\n\n'Gloves?' Irene said. A chill seemed to whisper in the air.\n\nRecently, during the business of Kai's kidnapping, she'd killed one Fae, and his wife had made a definite promise of vengeance. Both of them had used a gloves motif. Of course this could be pure coincidence \u2013 any woman in London might wear gloves.\n\nBut it might not.\n\n'Did she give you any concrete instructions about what to do with me?' Irene asked.\n\nAll of them shook their heads. 'She just said, catch her when she's coming out of the British Library, here's a description of her, prick her with this needle and it'll knock her out. Then take her down to the tunnels and chase her a while, before you, um...' The first one paused mid-narrative. 'Frighten her and let her go,' he suggested hopefully.\n\nIrene sighed. 'Please don't treat me like an idiot. It's been a long day and it's going to get longer, and I am not in a good mood. Where's the poisoned needle?' Vale could probably analyse it.\n\n'Davey's got it,' werewolf number three piped up.\n\n'And Davey is...?' Irene enquired.\n\n'Not here,' werewolf number three said, clearly wishing he wasn't there, either. As Irene's glare intensified, he added hastily, 'Davey went to the throne room. And he took your folder, too.'\n\nIrene considered her options. The fact that she'd been left down here unconscious, to be chased and mauled to death, argued strongly against Lady Guantes. The woman was not a powerful Fae, but she was practical. (The two facts were connected.) She was the sort of enemy who'd hire a sniper with a powerful rifle to wait outside your workplace, and you'd never even know there was a bullet coming. Even if she had wanted Irene to be kidnapped and killed by werewolves, she'd have given them some sort of warning about not letting Irene say anything. So if this was Lady Guantes, then it wasn't intended to be a murder.\n\nBut what if it was meant as a distraction? To keep her down here while something happened to Kai or Vale? The thought lay in Irene's mind like a curdled piece of shadow, suggesting a hundred worse possibilities. She had to get out of here and check they were safe.\n\nBut she also had to get that folder back.\n\n'All right,' she said, lowering her voice to a tone of gentle calm. For some reason, the werewolves cowered even more. 'We are all going to the throne room. You'll lead me there.'\n\n'We can't do that\u2014' the first one started. The words caught in his throat as Irene raised her half-brick. 'Tom here's unconscious! We can't just leave him.'\n\n'You can carry him,' Irene said patiently. 'There are three of you, and one of him. It won't kill you.' But I might, the words went unsaid.\n\n'We're not supposed to bring outsiders there,' the second one tried, unconvincingly.\n\n'Then you'll just have to apologize when we get there,' Irene said. Perhaps it was time for the carrot rather than the stick. 'Look, gentlemen. You were clearly drastically misinformed about me. I'm not particularly angry with you. I'm angry with the person who hired you.' Mostly true. She was more angry with the person who'd hired them. Getting angry with the hired thugs themselves was a waste of time and energy. 'Take me to your throne room, let me get my folder and that needle, and you won't have to worry about me ever again. Isn't that the best possible outcome for all of us?' A train rumbled by in the background, providing echoing thunder to back up her words.\n\nShe was trying to be patient and project an aura of unhurried superiority, but her impatience nagged at her. Was it safe to be running further into the depths of werewolf territory like this, while anything could be happening to Vale and Kai? Granted, Kai was a bit more careful these days, even if he didn't have Irene's own level of sensible paranoia. In addition, Vale was with him, and the two of them should be safer together... But anything could go wrong.\n\nShe locked gazes with her first victim, and again he backed down. 'Right. Miss. Ma'am. We'll show you the way and then you'll be out of here, right?'\n\n'I'm looking forward to it,' Irene said grimly.\n\nHalf an hour later, Irene was struggling not to think What if something's happened to Kai or Vale? with every second step. She'd considered sending one of her little pseudo-pack to warn them to lock the doors and be careful, but she wasn't sure that she trusted the werewolves out of her sight. They hadn't tried to run away from her, though, which said something about how badly she'd frightened them.\n\nShe found it difficult to feel really terrified about her current situation. Possibly she was becoming jaded, after the last few months. In comparison with everything else, and especially in comparison with Alberich, a werewolf pack seemed like a pleasant walk in the park. Part of her knew this was not an intelligent attitude: just because a danger was less than world-threatening didn't mean it couldn't kill her. The other part of her was just plain irritated \u2013 with these idiot thugs; with whoever had hired them; with the heat and the darkness and the dryness and the dust; with this waste of time; with everything.\n\nFor a moment she thought she was imagining it and rubbed her eyes, but then she realized that it was actually getting lighter ahead of them. 'Are we there yet?' she asked the nearest werewolf.\n\nIn the growing light, she could see the uncertainty on his face. 'I'm not sure about this...' he mumbled. 'Maybe you should let us go in and find that folder thing for you?'\n\n'No,' Irene said firmly. 'I don't think so. Try again.'\n\n'Maybe I should go and tell them you're coming \u2013 ask for an audience?' he hazarded.\n\n'That's more like it,' Irene approved. 'Don't worry. I won't take long.'\n\nHe swallowed and loped on ahead. His gait had been becoming visibly more animalistic over the last few minutes. Either the Language's hold was wearing off, or it had worn off some time back and he'd only just realized it.\n\n'You could simply walk away, ma'am,' one of the remaining werewolves said. He and his friend were still carrying their unconscious compatriot between them. 'If you were to head straight out from here, there's a ladder to the north\u2014'\n\nIrene adjusted her hat. It was battered, dust-smeared and probably ruined, much like her coat, and any professional cleaner would have them both burned on sight. 'Gentlemen, you seem to think that I'm a lady of fashion,' she said. 'I'm not. I'm a professional, and I am the sort of professional who has just thrashed all four of you together. And then I let you live, because you're not a threat to me and I don't have any quarrel with you.'\n\nShe'd spent most of her life playing the invisible underling in the background, creeping around in the shadows to avoid attention. Over the last few months she'd come to realize that taking the initiative and acting like someone who deserved respect might also be a valid strategy. She was not someone who was going to walk in there and apologize for the intrusion. She was a professional, a Librarian, and thoroughly dangerous. She was going to demand an apology for kidnap and theft. And if that failed, she'd damn well drop the ceiling on them.\n\nThey would listen to her. Or else.\n\nThe light ahead of them grew. It was a dim shade of reddish-orange, but compared to the tunnels it was practically midday. Well, midday on an overcast October day with a fair amount of cloud, but still an improvement. It was accompanied by a growing animal wet-dog smell, which made Irene breathe carefully so as not to wrinkle up her nose.\n\nThe archway they came to was flanked by two piles of clothing, each with a large wolf nesting on top of it. They looked up and dropped their jaws in a growl, but didn't try to stop Irene as she walked forward.\n\nThe room beyond was an amphitheatre of sorts: it was large and circular with a sloping base. The floor was covered with tangles of werewolves. Some of them were in human form, naked or clothed, while others were in animal or part-animal form. Huge wolves were draped over their pack members like puppies in a litter. The place resounded with their breathing and panting. It caught in Irene's throat and made her pulse stutter. A battered chandelier hung from a hook that had been screwed into the ceiling, decorated with burning oil lanterns that flared red and orange. The place was full of an animal heat and danger, which even Irene \u2013 the most human person in the room \u2013 could feel.\n\nAt the centre of the room, in the middle of the amphitheatre, sprawled a well-dressed man in a city gentleman's clothes, right down to the bowler hat and striped waistcoat. He reclined on a throne made from battered Tube signs, patched together with wire and scrap and draped with fragile-looking velvets and lawns. Several other werewolves clustered around his feet or lounged beside him. The ones nearest him were either in wolf form or in fully-clothed human form \u2013 a mixture of men and women in comparatively normal clothing.\n\nOne of them rose to his feet, a bruiser in half-animal form, with a human stance but a wolf's muzzle and paws. His pale fur was a bloody orange in the lantern-light. He cleared his throat in a parody of a formal butler's manners.\n\n'You may approach Mr Dawkins,' he announced.\n\nA growl rippled around the room like surf on the beach, and animal and human eyes caught the lantern-light as the inhabitants turned to look at Irene. These were not tame werewolves, or even romantic werewolves. Imminent violence hung in the air as thickly as the animal smell that filled the room.\n\nIrene stamped down on the immediate urge to back out of the room and make a break for freedom. Running from a group of predators was the very thing guaranteed to get her killed. And I am not prey. I am a Librarian.\n\nShe stepped into the room."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "Irene strolled forward, keeping her pace nonchalant and casual. She had to pick her way across the piles of sleeping or watching bodies to reach the centre, and her skirt trailed across werewolves who couldn't be bothered to move. Her unwilling escorts hung back by the entrance, but didn't try to run for it.\n\nMr Dawkins sprawled in his chair, watching as she approached. As she came closer, Irene could see that his face was scored with claw marks \u2013 he might be able to pass for a city gentleman, but it would have to be a very battered one, possibly with a prior career as a lion-tamer. Unlike most of the werewolves she'd met so far in this world, he wasn't sprouting random tufts of hair.\n\nIrene stopped about six feet from him: further away would have been rude, but closer would have put her at too convenient a distance for a casual attack. She wondered what the proper etiquette was for visiting werewolves. She'd done vampires, Fae, dragons and even university students, but never werewolves.\n\n'So.' Dawkins' voice was a deep rolling bass. Probably the hint of a growl behind it was only natural. 'Is Mr Vale sending his spies into our tunnels now?'\n\n'No,' Irene said. 'I'm here to reclaim property that was stolen from me. One of your people said it could be found in the throne room.' She jerked her head to indicate the battered quartet near the door. 'I hope this isn't an inconvenience.'\n\n'Remind me of her name again,' Dawkins said to one of the women behind him.\n\nThe woman flicked a glance at Irene that was as sharp as cut glass. Her dark skin was ruddy in the lamplight, and her braided hair curved around her head like a nautilus shell. She was dressed in prim clothing that might have belonged to a shop assistant or a teacher. 'She's called Irene Winters, Mr Dawkins. Been here a few months now. Canadian.'\n\n'Now you see,' Dawkins said, leaning forward, 'this is where it gets interesting. I keep on hearing your name linked to Mr Vale, and connected to trouble with my people. Significant company, for a woman who's only been here for a few months. That has me curious about you. Not necessarily opposed, you understand. That would be unreasonable.' His voice, if possible, deepened. 'But if you're meaning to make me your enemy, then you've put yourself in harm's way.'\n\nIrene shrugged. 'Your people do seem to do a great deal of work for the Fae,' she said. 'Lord Silver. Lady Guantes. I regret it if your wolves have been caught in the middle.'\n\n'Mm.' Dawkins considered that, his hands on the arms of his throne. 'And Mr Vale?'\n\n'My friend,' Irene said. Just this once, she didn't care about the consequences of answering truthfully. 'But that's not why I'm here.'\n\nThere was a rising growl from the room around her. Messy images of the I-am-about-to-be-torn-to-pieces sort flickered through Irene's mind, and it took all her self-control not to turn around.\n\nDawkins raised his right hand. The room fell silent. 'It's true that we can't always pick our friends, any more than we can pick our family,' he said. 'Let's not condemn her for that. But you'd better have a fucking good explanation for being down in our tunnels.'\n\nHis sudden vulgarity ripped through the hot air as his voice rose with it. The pack was growling again, all of them rising and snarling, like surf on the shore in a hurricane, or like rain slashing the leaves of a forest.\n\nHe's reasonable, Irene thought. The surge of anger around her was reassuring, in its way: Dawkins had directed it, and Dawkins was in control. If she could deal with Dawkins, then the situation was manageable.\n\n'Blame your own people,' she said. 'I was coming out of the British Library when I was jumped, drugged, brought down here and had my property stolen.' She pointed back in the direction of her victims, without breaking his gaze. 'I'm not here to make myself your enemy, or to count their actions against you. But I want my property back.'\n\n'And someone here's got it?' Dawkins demanded.\n\n'Davey. Or so I've been told. I'd like the needle with the poison they used on me, too. If you don't mind.'\n\nDawkins leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful. The scars on his face shifted into a new set of disfigurations. 'And you aren't calling any sort of debt on my boys, for snatching you?'\n\n'Why should I?' Irene let herself smile. 'They've already paid.'\n\nThe tension dropped a few notches. Dawkins nodded. 'Right. Now I've a question I want answering. If you can do that, I may be able to help you. Celia!' The woman with the braided hair tilted her head. 'Go find me Davey.'\n\nCelia nodded, stepping back and into the crowd.\n\n'So what's the question?' Irene asked.\n\n'A while back, some of my boys took a job for that Fae woman you mentioned. Lady Guantes, in from Liechtenstein. She was the one doing the hiring. They left on a train with her, and I haven't seen them since.' Dawkins' voice was a low, throbbing growl, almost as deep as the rumble of the passing trains. 'What I want to know is: what happened to them?'\n\nOh, this was going to be a difficult one to answer. 'Why do you think I know?' Irene parried.\n\n'She was working against you,' Dawkins said. 'I'm thinking that you or Lord Silver are the two people I'm most likely to get an answer out of, and I don't want to pay Silver's prices.'\n\nIrene contemplated honesty. They were left behind in a dark, paranoid Venice in a high-chaos world, and you'll probably never see them again. Perhaps tactful honesty would work better. 'That train went to a Fae world,' she said. 'I'm sorry, but if Lord Silver or Lady Guantes didn't bring them back, then I don't think they'll be coming back.'\n\n'You can't fetch them, then?'\n\n'I wouldn't go there if I could \u2013 but I can't access that world,' Irene admitted, 'and I'd probably get killed if I tried. So no, I'm not going to be able to help you there.' And she hoped that wasn't a bad omen for the future. Saying she wasn't going to do things under any circumstances was like using words such as unsinkable around big ships and icebergs. It was just asking for trouble.\n\nThere had been a stir of interest among the assembled werewolves at Dawkins' question, which subsided again at Irene's answer. It was interesting that Dawkins hadn't seemed surprised at Irene's suggestion of an alternate world. Perhaps working for the Fae left them more used to such concepts.\n\n'All right.' Dawkins shifted position in his chair slightly. The movement was echoed by the group of werewolves around him, but on a larger scale, like an orchestra's musicians following a conductor. 'That's a fair answer. I'll not stand in the way of your talking to Davey.'\n\nIt wasn't quite as helpful as I'll make sure Davey turns over your stolen property, but it would do for a start. Irene nodded in thanks.\n\nThen the wave of chaos-tinged power hit her again, slamming down on the room in a silent burst that made her shake. She locked her knees and bit her lip, conscious that she was swaying, but aware that if she showed weakness, her grip on the situation would be broken. It didn't touch the werewolves, they couldn't even feel it, but it ran across Irene's nerves in a burst of foul scent and heat, then leapt for the nearest printed material like an arcing current.\n\n'What the hell is this?' Dawkins rose from his throne, inspecting it in confusion. Irene went up on her toes to get a better look at it, over the heads of the werewolves that were crowding around, and her heart sank even lower. All the carefully attached Tube signs were covered in graffiti or had changed their wording entirely, and the new writing was all in the Language.\n\nI know you're there, it said.\n\nWrite something back on it, she'd been told. It was harder than she'd thought to pull herself together in the aftermath of that strike. It was probably also a bad idea to associate herself with the event in the eyes of the werewolves. But she needed answers. 'Excuse me,' she said, then raised her voice above the confused babble. 'Excuse me! Does anyone have pen and ink?'\n\n'I do,' said one of the werewolves who'd been near the throne. He was an elderly man, with grizzled hair that ran down his face in long sideburns, paired with a draggly beard, and he was fully dressed. He fished in his breast pocket. 'That is, would a pencil do?'\n\n'Perfect,' Irene said, plucking it from his hand before he could object. 'Mr Dawkins, please give me a moment and I'll try to find out who sent this.'\n\n'Do you know what's going on?' he demanded.\n\n'Possibly,' Irene said. She squeezed between two werewolves to get at the throne, stepping on a set of bare toes to make some space for herself, and hastily scrawled in the Language on the nearest sign: Alberich?\n\nThis time she was more prepared for the shock of the response. It didn't make it any easier, but it did mean that she could brace herself against it. The writing on the throne changed, like sand being dragged into new patterns by an invisible tide. My little ray of sunshine. Have you changed your mind about your future?\n\nIrene gritted her teeth. At least that proved it was Alberich. Only a very few people knew that her original name had been Ray, and he, unfortunately, was one of them. From what, to what? she wrote.\n\nDawkins leaned over her shoulder, with enough rolling power to his movement that it nearly burst the seams of his city gentleman's suit. 'Perhaps you'd like to explain,' he said. There was a non-optional tone to the suggestion.\n\n'It's on my newspaper!' one of the nearby werewolves complained, holding up a sheaf of newsprint, which Irene recognized, from her acquaintance with Vale, as the agony page from The Times. 'All the same stuff that's on there!'\n\nIrene spared a moment to hope that Davey \u2013 and her folder \u2013 were well out of the effect's range. 'It's from a man named Alberich,' she said. 'He's tried to kill me in the past.'\n\n'Why?' The tone of Dawkins' question acknowledged that people no doubt had perfectly good reasons to kill each other. It seemed he was asking merely to satisfy his own curiosity about their motivations, rather than from any moral imperative to prevent a killing.\n\nIrene shrugged. 'I stole a book, he stole it back, he betrayed us, these things happen\u2014' She broke off at a new surge of power, and the writing on the throne changed again. Join me, tell me what the book said, and be safe. Or perish with the Library.\n\n'Oh, you don't need to make excuses to us,' Dawkins said. There was a thin round of applause and snarling from the mob. 'So, you going to tell him what he wants to know?'\n\n'No,' Irene said. A sudden headache was rising to a blinding intensity. I'm interested, she scribbled. I want to live. Tell me more. All of which were true in themselves. One couldn't lie in the Language. She just hoped that together they'd give a totally false impression of surrender.\n\nThere was a pause, and then the words re-formed. You're probably lying. But we'll talk later. If you live.\n\nThe humming weight of power grew, swelling around Irene. She couldn't shake the feeling of being in the cross-hairs of some impossibly large gun. The metal Tube signs were beginning to shudder on the throne's framework, rattling against their fastenings in a rising screech of metal.\n\nHer next conclusion wasn't born from logic. It was a leap of imagination, combined with a very vivid mental image of what would happen when the energy levels down there rose too high. 'Everyone get back and get down!' Irene shouted, following her own advice.\n\nThe throne exploded. Shattered Tube signs scythed in every direction, humming through the air and slicing into everything in their way. Irene hugged the ground, her arms over her head, hearing screams and crashes, but not daring to raise her head till the noise had stopped.\n\nAt least the bursts of power had ended too. Her headache was draining away, and she could think clearly. And her first thought was, Dawkins is not going to like this.\n\nShe looked up. Dawkins was standing above her. His coat was split down the sleeves, and his arms rippled with muscle. A healing gash dribbled blood from his forehead to his jaw, and while his face was still human, there were too many teeth in his mouth, and his eyes were pure red.\n\nSaying sorry would have implied that this was her fault. 'I'm glad you're not seriously hurt,' Irene said as she stood up.\n\n'I don't like people bringing their fights into my territory.' Dawkins was echoed by a rising growl from the surrounding pack. Pieces of shattered metal were embedded in the floor, walls and werewolves, and the throne couldn't have supported a poodle now. The chandelier was still in one piece, but that was only because none of the flying metal had spun directly upwards.\n\nIrene met his glare. 'And I don't like having to come down here to get my property, after your pack attacked me.'\n\nThe place stank of blood now, as well as dust, werewolf and heat. If she showed weakness, they'd take her down. So she couldn't afford to show any weakness. She wasn't just one human in the middle of a mob of werewolves. She was a Librarian.\n\nDawkins thought about that, and a little of the fire in his eyes ebbed away. 'Fair point. So what's the Library, and who's Alberich?'\n\nIrene weighed things I should and should not tell outsiders against possibly unfortunate reaction of lead werewolf, if I refuse him in his own den, especially after that explosion. 'The Library is the organization I belong to,' she said. 'Alberich is an enemy of the Library. Mr Dawkins, I ask you: am I really worth your time, when so many people are queuing up to kill me anyhow?'\n\nDawkins snorted. 'I have to say that's not the sort of argument people usually give me.'\n\n'What do they usually give you?' Irene asked.\n\n'Oh, their throats or their bellies, and whimpering about how they don't want to die. And that's the oddest thing about you, even for a friend of Mr Vale.' The brief amusement drained out of his eyes like sunlight from behind stained glass. 'You're not scared. You're in the middle of the home turf of the biggest pack in London, and you're not stupid, but you're not scared, either. I'm starting to think that you may be right. Maybe I should let you go.'\n\n'Mr Dawkins\u2014' one of his closer followers began, a man in a butcher's rough clothing and blue apron.\n\nDawkins lashed out, catching the man by the back of his neck in one suddenly larger and clawed hand. He shook him from side to side, jerking him off his feet until the man's teeth rattled. 'Did I ask for opinions? Did I ask for any fucking opinions?'\n\nNobody moved.\n\nDawkins released the man, dropping him to the ground. The man rolled over onto his back, panting for breath, and tilted his head back to bare his neck. 'Right,' Dawkins said. His voice echoed from wall to wall. 'I've led this pack for five years now. And one reason why we're the biggest pack in London is that I know when not to get into a fight. Is anyone challenging me on this?'\n\nDead silence flowed through the room like a living thing. Irene could hear her own breathing. Then, one by one, the werewolves began to flatten themselves on the floor among the fragments of shattered Tube signs, heedless of their clothing or injuries, their heads lowered and obedient.\n\nDawkins nodded. 'Good,' he said. 'That's right.'\n\nThe woman who'd been sent to find Davey rose and stepped forward, dragging another man by his hair. Her victim stumbled forward, clutching an overcoat and a bagful of items to his chest. 'This is Davey,' she said. 'He'd like to be... helpful.'\n\n'Hand them over,' Dawkins snarled.\n\nDavey dug into his bag and pulled out the folder. Irene almost snatched it off him, she was so glad to have it back again. She flicked it open and was relieved to see that the papers inside all looked as they ought to, and that the contents listing matched the number of pages.\n\n'Anything else?' the woman enquired.\n\n'The poison he used on me, if you don't mind,' Irene said.\n\nDavey reluctantly dug out a small pouch from his bag. 'Bottle and needle's in here, miss,' he said. 'But we didn't take none of your money.'\n\n'Why did you take the folder?' Irene asked curiously. They'd left her purse on her, so why bother with her papers?\n\n'Because the woman as hired us, she said not to let you keep any writing material nor papers,' Davey explained. He glanced nervously at Dawkins.\n\nDawkins sighed. He reached out and cracked Davey across the face with a backhand slap that knocked the smaller man to his knees. 'Didn't I tell you? Any jobs that involve magic, they go through me first.' He spun to growl at his listening hangers-on. 'You all hear that? Look what happens when some idiots try to be clever!' His gesture took in the shattered throne, the numerous injuries and Irene herself.\n\nAfter a pause that dragged out to almost unbearable lengths, he turned to Irene. 'You're going to be walking out of here,' he said. 'You're right, woman. We've better things to do with our time than get involved with your business.'\n\nIrene gave him a nod. 'And I don't want to further complicate yours,' she said.\n\nDawkins snorted. 'You tell Mr Vale that, and we'll see if he listens. Celia, show her to the exit.'\n\nCelia stepped away from Davey, who was still kneeling on the floor with the air of someone who hoped nobody would notice he was there, and gestured to Irene. 'This way, please,' she said. Other werewolves moved out of their way in a shaggy wave of fur and muttering.\n\nThe back of her neck prickled as Celia led her down a passageway, but the other woman didn't bother conversing with her. She simply pointed at a ladder at the end of the passage. 'Up there,' she said. 'You'll come out in the basement of a workshop. Make your excuses and leave. Don't try coming back.'\n\n'I wouldn't dream of bothering you,' Irene said politely, and tucked the folder under her arm before climbing up the ladder.\n\nOnce back on the streets of London, somewhere south of Waterloo, Irene's next problem was hailing a cab while in her current state of dress. Fortunately an upper-class accent combined with a promise of a large fee did the job. She finally had a chance to open her folder and flip through it, as the cab headed for Vale's lodgings.\n\nThe report was nearly ten years out of date. And there was a note that the Librarian who'd done the research had been given the Potocki manuscript as an optional target, but had decided it would be too dangerous to make a try for it there and then. The target-world's political structure was fairly stable, with the main powers being Russia on one side and the United Republics of Africa on the other. Smaller confederations of states were scattered in between. Magic existed and was commonplace, mostly musically based and sung, or involving the control of natural spirits. However, it was generally under state control in the Russian Empire, the focus of this report. The technological level was a bit behind the current position in Vale's world, too \u2013 as often happened, having magical ways to get things done meant there was less impetus to create technological solutions.\n\nBut at least she probably wouldn't be chased by giant automata this time.\n\nResearch done, Irene reflected on the woman behind her kidnapping. She had apparently told the werewolves to deprive her of anything written, or anything that could be used to write. This argued that the woman knew Irene was a Librarian. So, maybe it really was Lady Guantes? But in that case, why so lax and incompetent an attempt at killing her? And if it was someone else... who else was it?\n\nAt least Alberich couldn't get into this world directly to hire kidnappers, even if he could send her threatening messages and blow stuff up. His antics last time had meant permanent banishment from this world. That was one little ray of sunlight, to quote Alberich himself, in the general mess. More to the point, Irene herself would shortly be leaving this world for a while, so Alberich would have no idea where to find her. Even better.\n\nShe riffled through the papers absently as she considered what she'd need. Kai, for a start. Information on the layout of the Hermitage, which was part of the Winter Palace. Could she get anywhere by going through as a tourist? Did they even allow tourists in? There wasn't time for her normal approach of getting an unobtrusive job, to check the layout and plan the theft. Maybe she and Kai could fake being foreign dignitaries? Kai was very good at impersonating foreign dignitaries: he had the perfect air of affable condescension which had people believing it was a pleasure to roll over and grovel for him. And they'd need clothing, money, a place to stay...\n\nThe cab drew up outside Vale's lodgings. With a sigh, Irene handed over the fee, plus a sizeable tip. There weren't any signs of drastic kidnappings, murders or anyone trying to crash a zeppelin into the building, and she relaxed a little. Now she just had to explain everything \u2013 well, most things \u2013 to the men, and then be off.\n\nThe housekeeper met her at the door, answering the bell with a surprising turn of speed that suggested she'd been expecting someone. 'Oh, Miss Winters!' She looked at Irene with an expression of shock. 'What happened to you?'\n\n'I'm very sorry,' Irene apologized. 'It's been one of those days. Are Mr Vale and Mr Strongrock in?'\n\n'Oh yes,' the housekeeper said. 'They're just upstairs and...'\n\nFor a moment Irene let herself relax in a great upswelling of relief. They were here; they weren't dead or kidnapped. And if the housekeeper was running around answering the door, then there hadn't even been anything dramatic like a zombie assault on the house or an attack by killer bees.\n\nAre my expectations possibly getting a little lurid? she wondered. Not really. After all, there is someone out to get me.\n\n'...and so is everyone else,' the housekeeper finished her sentence.\n\nIrene's sense of well-being and security popped like a balloon and sank without a trace. 'Everyone else?'\n\n'Well, the visitors.' The housekeeper pursed her lips. 'I must say, they were arguing quite a lot. Perhaps you might ask them to keep their voices down, miss? Mr Vale's an excellent lodger, but really there are limits...'\n\n'I'll have a word with them,' Irene promised, and took the stairs at a run."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "Irene could hear the shouting through the door even before she reached the head of the stairs. She recognized Kai's voice and Vale's clipped tones, but the woman's voice was unfamiliar... Wait, was that Zayanna?\n\nShe groaned to herself. Zayanna's involvement would be so much easier to explain if Zayanna herself wasn't actually there.\n\n'...and I don't care what you say, I'm not risking her safety any longer!' That was Kai. 'I'm going to go and find her right now\u2014'\n\nAnother voice, unclear through the door, interrupted, and Irene took advantage of the momentary pause to push open the door.\n\nAll of the people in the room turned to look at her. Vale. Kai. Zayanna. And Li Ming. Wonderful \u2013 just the person to make an already volatile mix even more explosive. A Fae and two dragons in the same room was asking for trouble under the best of circumstances, and Irene herself was probably about to set light to the fuse.\n\n'Irene!' Kai made it across the room in three steps to grab her, his hands biting into her shoulders. 'Where have you been?'\n\nVale rose from the chair that he was sprawled in to frown at her. He looked almost worse than last night, and his sleep had clearly done him no good: his eyes were still sunken, and his face was paler than usual, with a high flush on his cheekbones. He took in Irene's dishevelment and the dust on her coat with a single glance. 'Apparently Winters here would rather gallivant around the London Underground with werewolves than trouble herself by coming back here directly. Instead she sends you all to fill my rooms, in the hope of distracting me.'\n\nSo much for last night's softer mood. Irene reminded herself that Vale was prone to vicious sarcasm when worried. He wasn't the sort to express genuine concern, like Kai \u2013 in fact she'd better reassure Kai fast, before his protectiveness tipped over into something irrational. 'I'm all right,' she said, holding up one hand. 'I went to the Library. I just ran into some trouble afterwards. Zayanna, what are you doing here?'\n\nZayanna was curled up on the sofa, her shoes kicked off and her feet tucked underneath her legs. She'd discarded her coat somewhere, and her dress flowed in cascades of highly fashionable cream lace, which showed a lot of cleavage. She was nursing a glass of brandy and a clearly unpleasant mood. 'You did say that you wanted to stay in contact, darling! And you weren't at home, so I thought I'd try your friend instead.'\n\n'I see,' Irene said, suppressing an urge to demand some of that brandy. 'I hope you haven't all been too worried about me. I apologize for my delay in getting back here. It wasn't my fault.'\n\n'Perhaps you'd care to explain to us whose fault it was,' Vale said, relapsing back into his chair. 'And what it has to do with the current situation. Please distract me, Winters. I am bored nearly to death with these infantile arguments. Did you get those papers from your Library?' His gaze was on the folder under her arm, ignoring the irritated looks that everyone else in the room was giving him.\n\nIrene nodded. 'But when I left the Library, I was kidnapped.'\n\nShe was aware that Li Ming was listening, but couldn't think of any way to get him out of earshot that wouldn't be highly rude. It would probably insult both him and Kai too. As usual, the dragon in human form was impeccably dressed in silvery-grey and could probably compete with Zayanna for the title of Most Fashionable Person in the Room. Kai would win the Most Handsome award, but he was looking attractively scruffy at present, not elegantly stylish. Vale would carry off the Most Brooding. And Irene herself would have to settle for the booby prize in all categories.\n\nPhysically, Li Ming resembled a human female, with the same inhuman perfection that characterized Kai and the few other dragons that Irene had met. But among other dragons, Li Ming was considered male, and he acted that way in human form as well. Irene had given up trying to deduce the exact details, and had asked Kai about it \u2013 as tactfully as she could. Kai had explained, in tones of kindly condescension at human convention, that social gender among dragons was what the dragon in question said it was. And since Li Ming said he was male, then he was male. Irene had thanked him for the information, and had broken off the conversation before Kai could get into any further commentary on human limitations, et cetera. Kai might be very non-judgemental when it came to personal gender roles, but he was extremely superior when explaining how non-judgemental he was.\n\n'I was drugged by werewolves, carried off and chased through the Underground tunnels,' Irene reported succinctly, before everyone else could get more questions in. 'Then I extricated myself and came here. Apparently they were hired by a woman who gave them the poison with which they drugged me.'\n\nVale looked interested. 'Which poison?' he asked.\n\n'Which woman?' Zayanna asked. 'Was it someone local, or an old friend?'\n\nOne hand still on her shoulder, as if he wasn't prepared to risk letting go, Kai tugged Irene over to the armchair he'd been occupying. 'Are you all right?' he asked. 'I knew we shouldn't have split up\u2014'\n\n'Your highness, you demean the lady,' Li Ming put in. 'Clearly, if she's here and safe, she was quite competent to handle herself. Though it is a shame that she caused you concern.'\n\nIrene sat down in the chair. It was easier than arguing with Kai about whether or not she needed to sit down. 'In any case,' she said, 'I'm here and safe, and I'm glad to see that all of you are all right.' Zayanna had risen and was splashing brandy into a second glass. 'Oh, yes please,' Irene added.\n\n'Some small payback, darling,' Zayanna said, putting it into her hand. 'Do you have any idea who the woman is?'\n\nIrene had reviewed the possibilities several times in the cab. Lady Guantes was the standout candidate, but it could honestly be anyone. It didn't even have to be a Fae. It could be a dragon who objected to her current working relationship with Kai. It could even, if Alberich had a traitor working for him, be another Librarian... 'Short of getting the werewolves to sniff all the possible candidates, no,' she said. 'Lady Guantes is the obvious candidate, but it was inefficient; and if she was hiring assassins, she might be more likely to use a proxy to contact them. I don't know.' She sipped the brandy.\n\nKai's expression had darkened to a scowl at the mention of Lady Guantes. Of course, given that she'd been an equal partner in Kai's kidnapping, he viewed her as unfinished business. Irene also suspected Kai didn't want to admit that he'd experienced any such emotions as post-traumatic stress, worry or even outright fear. 'We need to establish a safe base,' he said firmly, glancing to Li Ming, who nodded. 'Then we can track the kidnapper down and eliminate this threat.'\n\nIt would have been nice to have had a private conversation with Kai, in which she could have broken the news about the current situation to him slowly and in detail, Irene reflected. Emphasis on the would have been. 'I'm afraid that's not going to be possible.' She took another swig of the brandy. 'I have an immediate job from the Library. You and I will be leaving later today, Kai.'\n\n'Leaving this country?' Vale put in with a frown.\n\n'Leaving this world,' Irene said.\n\n'I'm afraid I'm intruding,' Li Ming observed. He rose from the chair he was occupying, his long silver braid slipping to hang straight down his back. 'Your highness, perhaps we can converse later?'\n\n'No, stay,' Kai said, before Irene could stop him. 'I need \u2013 that is, I'd be grateful for your help in that other matter. Irene, surely Li Ming isn't a threat here? You know that my family and our kin aren't enemies of the Library.'\n\nLi Ming waited politely, with the air of someone who would of course be glad to leave, rather than eavesdrop on a matter that didn't concern him. But his silver eyes, as bright and metallic as his hair or his fingernails, showed a confidence that he would be allowed to stay.\n\n'I can give my word not to tell anyone else about it, darling,' Zayanna said. 'You know my word binds me. And I'd hate to just walk out if I could actually help you.'\n\nVale leaned forward in his chair. 'Has this something to do with the murder attempt on you and Kai, Winters?'\n\nAnd here it all came down to the wire. Who did Irene trust? Kai, of course, but did she trust everyone that he trusted? Li Ming worked for Kai's uncle: it would be his duty to pass on anything he heard. And even if the dragons weren't enemies of the Library, they weren't the sort of neighbour who'd turn down a territorial advantage or ignore a weakness. Zayanna was Fae, and Alberich had worked with other Fae in the past. And just because Zayanna said she was Irene's friend, that didn't mean that she was a friend to the Library. Vale himself was currently suffering the effects of having helped Irene previously. Was it fair to put him in even more danger?\n\nCommon sense popped that last bubble of guilt and made it vanish. Vale would walk barefoot over broken glass to investigate a case. His behaviour wasn't Irene's responsibility.\n\n'I don't know,' Irene said. She looked around the room, considering. 'Zayanna, if you want to stay in here and hear what I have to say, I'm going to ask you for that promise.'\n\nZayanna bowed her head and put her hand on her heart. 'I swear, on my name and nature, that I won't reveal anything you tell me to any other Fae, or anyone who may use it against you. And I won't use it against you myself.' Her voice throbbed with conviction.\n\nIt was melodramatic, but it seemed sincere. And, to the best of Irene's knowledge, the Fae couldn't break their given word. They could be incredibly picky about how they interpreted promises, but they couldn't break them. Zayanna was safe, to a limited degree.\n\n'Alberich has threatened the Library,' Irene said. Neither Zayanna nor Li Ming showed any surprise at the name. Well, that answers that question: they both know about him. 'I've been assigned an immediate retrieval mission, to fetch a book that should prove useful.' She tapped the folder. 'This has the details. And I'm sorry, Kai \u2013 everyone \u2013 but I need to leave as soon as possible.'\n\n'If I can be of any help in finding your book\u2014' Vale began.\n\n'It's not that I don't want to take you,' Irene said quickly, then cursed herself for the sudden coldness in his eyes at her rejection. 'But I can't take you. Kai and I need to travel through the Library. I'm sorry, Vale, but you're currently contaminated with chaos. I wouldn't be able to bring you inside.'\n\nVale's expression closed in on itself. 'I quite understand,' he said curtly.\n\nKai frowned. 'Wait, Irene, are you telling me we can't take Vale into the Library? I'd thought that if we could detoxify his system there, that might help.'\n\n'Chaos can't enter the Library,' Irene said with controlled patience. 'That was why we were stuck outside it last time when I was contaminated. Remember?' They'd got round that by forcing the chaos out of her. But she wasn't sure if she could do that to Vale. She didn't know if a human who wasn't a Librarian could survive it, and Coppelia hadn't given her any hope it might work.\n\nLi Ming spread his hands. 'I have to admit this is beyond my competence, Miss Winters. No doubt if Mr Vale here were to spend time in a more orderly world, it would be good for his health. But I lack the strength to carry him there on my own.'\n\n'Just who precisely can travel between worlds, and who can't?' Vale asked. He tried to make it sound casual, but there was an edge to his voice. He was probably making a mental list of possible intruders and relevant counter-measures.\n\n'I'm not of the royal blood and don't have the royal strength,' Li Ming said. He indicated Kai. 'The Prince here, however, can carry more than one person, and my lord the King could carry hundreds in his train, if he wished.'\n\n'Well, don't look at me,' Zayanna said. 'Would any of you like some more brandy? No, please don't look at me like that, Irene \u2013 it's not my fault, I just can't. It's exactly like the charming dragon here was saying...' Her gaze went pointedly towards Li Ming, rather than to Kai. 'I don't have the strength. It took all my power simply to find my way here, and I certainly couldn't carry anything more than my luggage. Or perhaps one other person, instead of my luggage. But who'd travel without luggage?'\n\nLi Ming gave Zayanna a sidelong glance. Irene wondered whether the dragon had taken exception to the 'charming' comment or intended to cast doubt on Zayanna's assertions. Probably the first.\n\n'And I have to go through a library, or another large collection of books,' Irene said. 'Which limits what I can do. Now please can we get back to the subject under discussion?' She realized she was starting to get as emphatic as Zayanna, and moderated her tone. 'Zayanna, Li Ming, you both clearly know who Alberich is. Do you know anything about his current activities? Or anything else odd \u2013 anything at all \u2013 that's going on at the moment?'\n\nZayanna frowned. 'Well, there was one rumour I heard, but I was rather hoping it wasn't true. I had been trying to keep track of Lady Guantes \u2013 casually, through the gossip networks \u2013 and I heard she'd been talking to Alberich. Then she'd dropped out of general circulation.'\n\nIrene's throat went dry with something unpleasantly close to fear. 'You might have mentioned that before,' she said.\n\nZayanna shrugged. 'It's a rumour, darling. I don't panic over rumours. If I did, then I'd already be hiding in some backwater little London in a great detective's sitting room \u2013 oh, so sorry.' She didn't look remotely apologetic. 'But you asked. And I can't verify it. That is what you say, isn't it? When you're talking about being a good spy and trying to confirm facts?'\n\nIrene touched Kai's hand reassuringly. She didn't look up at his face, but she could feel the tension in him. She couldn't blame him: if she was honest, that touch had been as much to comfort herself as it had been him. She turned to Li Ming, hoping he'd have something encouraging to contribute.\n\nLi Ming was already shaking his head. 'Nothing unusual,' he said. 'The only oddity at the moment is that some of the regular conflicts have quietened down. One might guess that forces have been withdrawn from known trouble spots, to be deployed elsewhere.'\n\nVale opened his mouth, possibly to disapprove of guessing on general principles, then shut it thoughtfully. He finally said, 'How recent is this? Would the timing fit?'\n\n'The attacks on the Library have only taken place in the last couple of days,' Irene said. 'But perhaps Alberich was drawing in his forces beforehand, if he's using other agents... I don't know.' She marshalled her thoughts. 'All right,' she said. 'We'll leave it there for the moment. Thank you both for your comments. Immediate plans \u2013 Kai, I'll need your help. Vale, if you would\u2014'\n\nThe door swung open, and everyone turned towards it. Irene couldn't help noticing that both Vale and Zayanna slid a hand beneath their clothing, clearly demonstrating who was carrying weapons. Are we all feeling nervous? I think we're all feeling very nervous.\n\nInspector Singh stood in the doorway, looking a little bewildered to find everyone's attention focused on him. He was in uniform, but the cuffs of his trousers were thick with yellow dust, and a few grains of it marred the whiteness of his turban. 'I apologize if this is a consultation in progress, Vale,' he started.\n\nVale relaxed, eyeing Singh's cuffs, his hand sliding back into view. 'What have you been doing in Houndsditch, Singh?'\n\n'A matter of some corpses being stolen during a plague-pit excavation,' Singh said. 'I don't like to take you away from anything urgent, but you did say to call by, if something intriguing came up. And there was a message from your sister that it might be connected to the Tapanuli fever investigations. Though those haven't been made public yet\u2014'\n\nHis glance towards Irene and Kai wasn't particularly friendly. Irene could sympathize to some extent. Her own guilt kept on reminding her how much Vale's current situation was their fault.\n\n'Tell me about it,' Vale said, rising to his feet. He took Singh by the arm, hustling him towards his bedroom. 'We don't need to bother the others with this,' Irene caught him saying, before the door closed behind them.\n\n'I didn't know Vale had a sister,' Kai said, in tones of mild shock. It wasn't clear whether he was surprised that Vale had never told him about his sister, or by the fact that the sister existed at all.\n\n'You know he doesn't talk about his family,' Irene said. She was desperately curious herself, but her growing sense of urgency insisted that she leave the gossip till later. Besides, it would be bad manners. 'Zayanna, we may be away for a few days. Will you be safe?'\n\nZayanna put down her now-empty glass. 'I think so, darling. I'll be careful. Are you sure I can't come with you and help? To your B-1165 world? And why is that folder of yours written in my own language, anyway?' She saw the incomprehension on Irene's face. 'Nahuatl, you'd probably say. The Library isn't secretly based under my home or something, is it?'\n\nIrene glanced down at the folder. Coppelia had helpfully labelled it with the world's designation, and since it was in the Language, anyone who wasn't a Librarian would read it as their own native tongue. 'Ah. Trade secret,' she said. 'It's the Language. You're just seeing it as Nahuatl.'\n\n'That would explain why I've been seeing it as Chinese,' Li Ming noted.\n\nIrene resisted the urge to run her fingers through her hair and scream at the way everyone kept on wandering off-topic. 'I can't take you through the Library, Zayanna,' she said. 'And I don't have any other way of getting there. But you can do one thing for me.'\n\n'Anything, darling,' Zayanna promised, her eyes huge and dark with emphasis.\n\n'Tell me how to help a human being who's been exposed to a world with too much chaos,' Irene said.\n\nZayanna frowned. 'That's not something people actually need helping with, darling.' She looked around at Irene, then at Kai and Li Ming, neither of whom looked amused by the way she'd put it. 'Oh, well, I suppose if someone like me had a favourite whose nature had been really unbalanced and was getting much too pliable, they could take them to the more rigid spheres. But you'd already suggested that. And if you didn't want your friend Vale to have this problem, then you shouldn't have taken him along with you to Venice in the first place.'\n\n'Pardon me,' Kai said to Irene. He stepped across to where Zayanna was lounging and backhanded her across the face, slamming her into the sofa.\n\n'Kai!' Irene snapped. 'Control yourself!' God knows she'd wanted to hit Zayanna for that little bit of spite, but this couldn't possibly help.\n\n'My friend has helped you, and for that you return an undeserved insult,' he said, standing above Zayanna. Faint scale-patterns showed like frost marks on the surface of his skin, on his hands and face. 'You will not do so again, or I will throw you out on the street, and your patron may have you back \u2013 living or dead \u2013 to serve his whim.'\n\nZayanna pushed herself up on her elbow, her hair falling around her face in dark tangles. The imprint on Kai's hand showed scarlet on her cheek. She took a hissing breath, and for a moment Irene saw fangs rather than teeth in her mouth. The expression on Zayanna's face wasn't one of Fae pleasure at having found a new enemy to plot against: it was one of outright dislike, and a wish to see Kai dead \u2013 or worse. 'Oh, so now you're being judgemental because you couldn't take care of your pets? Everyone knows how far beneath them the dragons think humans are! At least we get involved with them.'\n\nIrene caught Kai's wrist before he could hit Zayanna again. She had to strain to hold him back. 'I told you, stop!'\n\n'You creatures are users and destroyers of human souls,' Kai snarled at Zayanna. 'When you interact with them, it's never to their benefit. You get your perverse amusement out of playing your games with them\u2014'\n\n'We love them!' Zayanna shrieked. 'You're the ones who are soulless: you don't understand them, you just keep them as pets, you're only spending time with Irene because you want her as a concubine. I care about her\u2014'\n\nIrene stepped between them, putting her free hand on Zayanna's shoulder to hold her back. 'Shut up,' she said, her voice as cold and hard as if she had been using the Language. 'Shut up, both of you, or I'll make you.'\n\nFor a moment she felt Kai's wrist tense in her grasp. Then he broke free with a twist of his arm and stepped back, folding his arms. His eyes had shifted to true draconic red in anger, and burned in a face that looked cut from marble.\n\nZayanna panted where she lay on the sofa, her shoulder soft and warm under Irene's hand. 'He hit me,' she murmured.\n\n'Don't push me,' Irene said. 'I nearly hit you myself.'\n\nShe glanced across to Li Ming, but he was still in place, still very much unconcerned, and he shrugged in response. 'Is this any of my business?'\n\nWell, scratch the idea of leaving Zayanna with Li Ming while we're out of London, Irene decided. She'd probably accidentally fall down a well, or step in front of an oncoming train, the moment I was out of sight.\n\nShe deliberately ignored certain words that Zayanna had said: because you want her as a concubine... There was more to her friendship with Kai than that. Just because Zayanna might be jealous, that didn't make her right. 'I'm in a hurry,' she said. 'If you can't help me, Zayanna, then fair enough. But I don't have any time to waste.'\n\nZayanna looked up at Irene through lowered eyelashes. 'Can't I help?'\n\n'Right now, I don't see how,' Irene said curtly. 'Kai?'\n\n'Yes?' He was looking more normal and human again now, but his face was set in lines of resentment. And the way that he was eyeing Zayanna suggested that he was visualizing dropping her \u2013 from several thousand feet up.\n\n'If you must argue, do it in your own time, please. We haven't the luxury for that now.'\n\nThe door opened. Vale stood there, frowning. 'I thought I heard shouting.'\n\n'You did,' Irene said. 'I think everybody's about to leave. No, wait: I have a favour to ask you, if you would. Two favours.'\n\n'Within reason,' Vale said, but he looked intrigued. Which was much better than weary and self-destructive.\n\nShe offered him the small pouch holding the needle that had been used on her. 'Please analyse this. It's the poison that was used to drug me. If you can trace it, I might be able to find out who hired the werewolves who kidnapped me.'\n\n'Excellent,' Vale said, sounding genuinely pleased this time. 'And beyond that?'\n\n'Silver owes us after the Venice business, since we took down Lord Guantes. After all, Guantes was his arch-rival. I need to know if Silver's heard anything lately about Alberich, or the attempt on our lives, and I don't have time to ask. Gates to the Library are being destroyed. I need to go and do my job. So, Vale, please, if you would, meet up with Silver and ask him if he knows anything.'\n\n'And how am I to tell you what I find out, assuming that Lord Silver is actually aware of anything beyond his immediate surroundings?' Vale demanded.\n\nIrene was about to snap back, but then she heard the same tone in his voice that had been there earlier, when he'd been complaining about her absence. Expressing worry about anyone else was outside his emotional lexicon. 'My mission is urgent, so naturally I won't be wasting any time,' she said. 'I hope to be back in a few days. I'll leave a message with Bradamant in the Library if I expect to be longer than that, so she can drop by to see you, if necessary. She knows you, and where to find you.'\n\n'Adequate,' Vale said begrudgingly.\n\n'Have you any instructions for me, Miss Winters?' Li Ming enquired. 'My lord Ao Shun takes an interest in your welfare, after your actions in guarding the Prince here.' It wasn't quite clear whether he was being serious, or simply ironic. Then Irene caught the side-glance he threw Kai. He was being serious.\n\n'No, thank you,' she answered politely. 'Though if you do hear of anything strange going on outside this world, I'd be grateful if you could pass it on to Vale here.'\n\n'I shall do that,' Li Ming agreed.\n\nKai had moved into place next to Irene and was buttoning up his coat, the folder safely under one arm. 'We should be on our way,' he said quietly. Then he glanced at Zayanna and there was a glint of fire in his eyes again. 'Before there are any more hindrances.'\n\n'Good luck, Miss Winters,' Singh said, standing at Vale's shoulder. 'Though I must say that if you are going to be borrowing books again, I'm glad to hear you'll be doing it outside my jurisdiction.'\n\n'I'd rather avoid complications like that,' Irene agreed and escaped from Vale's rooms onto the street, with Kai one step behind her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "When they stepped into the Library, it was dark. The receiving room was full of shadows, with a wan emergency light bulb as the only source of illumination, and the titles of the books on the walls were illegible in the dimness.\n\nIrene tensed in shock, and her hand tightened on Kai's arm as the door to Vale's world thudded shut behind them. 'This is... unusual,' she said carefully.\n\n'Where are we?' Kai's eyes dilated and glinted in the remnants of light as he scanned the room. 'Is this an outlying area?'\n\n'I don't know,' Irene admitted. They'd come in through the first library she could reach on Vale's world, rather than by the regular Traverse. As a result, they might be anywhere at all in the Library. 'That's the problem with opening a random entrance. But we were in a hurry.' The room unnerved her. She'd never before been in a part of the Library that felt so deserted and abandoned. 'Come on, we need to find a room with a computer.'\n\nThe corridor outside was lit only by a thin strip of emergency lighting that ran along the ceiling. The floor creaked under their feet, as if another pair of steps was echoing theirs. There were windows to their left, but they faced out onto a barren courtyard under a lowering sky, so full of clouds that there was no light to spare.\n\nFive doors later, they found a room with a computer in it. Irene threw herself down and turned it on, and felt a surge of relief as the screen lit up. Kai leaned over her shoulder, resting his weight on her chair, and watched as she logged in.\n\nAn immediate message spread across the screen, before Irene could even check her email.\n\nAll non-essential power usage has been cut back, in order to conserve energy for essential needs. All Librarians who require immediate transport for book retrieval have been allotted the use of transfer cabinets, command word 'Emergency'. Abuse of this privilege will be noted.\n\nBut she'd only been gone a few hours. Had the situation become that much worse in her absence?\n\n'I thought they trusted you to be adults,' Kai commented.\n\nIrene bit her lip and focused on the current situation, choking down her rampant and probably entirely justified paranoia. She could think of plenty of reasons why the elder Librarians might monitor Librarian movement. Such as watching for suspicious travel, or attempts to escape, or even outright treason... 'Maybe it's like being a parent,' she said, bringing up a Library map. 'You never really see your children as adults.'\n\n'You're exaggerating,' Kai said, with the easy confidence of someone who hadn't tested the issue yet.\n\nJust you wait till you try to convince your father that you're grown up and know what you're doing. But Irene was distracted from her planned retort by the Library map unfurling across the screen. 'Aha,' she said. 'The nearest cabinet is...' She checked the map. 'About half a mile from here. Could be worse.'\n\n'Do we actually have any plans yet?' Kai asked.\n\n'Oh, the usual.' Irene typed as she spoke, writing Coppelia a quick email covering Alberich's messages and Zayanna's rumours, as clinically and unemotionally as she could. 'We get there, we review the situation, then we decide how to get in and we snatch the book. We may be lucky: if there are enough books stored in the Hermitage, or at least in some bits of it, then I might be able to force a gate to the Library from there. That would speed up our getaway.'\n\n'I'm hearing a lot of mays and mights in that,' Kai said.\n\n'That's because I'm desperately trying to find any good points at all in the current situation,' Irene admitted. 'As opposed to thinking of it as... well, an unplanned theft from a royal palace at very short notice. You know I don't like short notice.' She hit the Send button. 'Still, at least we won't have long-term identities to protect.'\n\n'What do we pose as when we get there?' Kai asked.\n\n'I'm thinking religious pilgrims, at least until we can get a feel for the place and find something better. Our background information's years out of date.' She began typing again, a quick appeal to Bradamant to visit Vale and pick up any information that he'd collected. Despite their enmity, Bradamant's curiosity should spur her into action. 'The Library portal to that world opens into the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, in Poland. At least we'll be on the same continent, when it comes to travelling to St Petersburg. It could be worse. We could be having to get there from Africa or Australia, or similar.'\n\n'And no Librarian-in-Residence?' Kai asked.\n\n'There was one, but she died twenty years before that report was written.' Irene hit Send again. 'Natural causes \u2013 it's at the back of the report; she was in a traffic accident. Hit by a crashing flying sleigh. The sleigh was flying, that is, and then it crashed.' The thought gave her a little unwanted shudder. Living outside the Library was never safe. Flying sleighs could come out of nowhere and hit you, however careful you were.\n\nHer email pinged. Bradamant had replied.\n\nCan we talk?\n\nKai was leaning over Irene's shoulder again. 'What does she want?' he asked suspiciously.\n\n'Well, I did just ask her a favour,' Irene pointed out, trying to repress her own doubts.\n\nCurrently on transit on way to mission, she typed in. Can it be quick?\n\nIt took barely ten seconds for Bradamant to reply \u2013 just enough time for Irene to run a status check on her parents and to be reassured that they were still out on assignment. And still hopefully alive.\n\nI only want a few words. Will you be stopping by your quarters?\n\n'You've been the one saying we're in a hurry,' Kai said.\n\n'Yes,' Irene agreed reluctantly. 'But we do need to stop by my rooms, so I can get some emergency cash and whatever.'\n\nYes. Meet you there in fifteen minutes?\n\nIrene was assuming Bradamant had access to a transfer cabinet as well. If not, she decided, then there wasn't time for Irene herself to go out of her way for a conversation.\n\nSee you there, the answer came.\n\nDamn. Now she didn't have an excuse to avoid the conversation. 'Let's go,' she said, turning the computer off. 'It'd be embarrassing to be late.'\n\nThe transfer cabinet was cramped for two people. Irene braced herself against Kai rather than against the walls, as she pronounced the command word in the Language, then gave her quarters as the destination. The cabinet slid sideways and then down, like a barrel going over a waterfall, jolting the two of them, and Irene muttered an apology as she felt her foot bang into Kai's ankle. He steadied her, the two of them together in the darkness, his arms around her, and Irene briefly let herself relax.\n\nSo Alberich's trying to kill me. So Lady Guantes is trying to kill me. So maybe other people are trying to kill me, too. At least there's one person upon whom I can rely. Whom I can trust.\n\nA moment later they stopped, and the doors swung open. They were in the residential area that included Irene's quarters, in a central passageway that opened onto a dozen small suites of rooms. Like the rest of the Library so far, it was barely illuminated now, with only a strip of lighting glowing dimly along the floor. Irene was grateful that the shadows hid her flushed cheeks.\n\n'Which one's yours?' Kai asked.\n\n'Third along on the left,' Irene said. 'I haven't been here for a while: sorry about the mess.' She tapped the code number into the combination lock on the door, trying to remember if she'd left anything particularly embarrassing lying around.\n\nAs it turned out, the most embarrassing thing was the dust.\n\n'It's been months since I was here,' Irene muttered. Kai was staring down the corridor, making a deliberate show of not looking into her rooms, but clearly very curious. 'Oh, come in \u2013 I've got nothing to hide, and it'll take me a few moments to find the gold.' She led the way into her room, flicking on the light switch. Fortunately, it worked.\n\nAs usual with Irene's rooms \u2013 and with most Librarians' \u2013 there were stacks of books piled against the already-stuffed bookcases, forming a danger to navigation. The only actual decorations were framed photographs of her parents, and of some of her friends from school. The desk was still piled with translation notes from the last time she'd been here, when she'd had a couple of weeks without assignments. She'd been trying to improve her written Korean from appalling to merely bad. The side door to her bedroom was shut, sparing her any comments from Kai on her wardrobe. She began going through the desk drawers, trying to remember where she'd left her emergency stash of gold sovereigns. Even if it was foreign currency, basic gold was usually good anywhere.\n\n'Thanks for waiting,' Bradamant said.\n\nIrene looked up quickly and saw Bradamant standing in the doorway, elegant as always in a fitted grey jacket and shin-length skirt. A cameo brooch at her collar caught the light and glittered. It was the sort of outfit that a female millionaire entrepreneur would have worn in the nineteen-forties, in a world that had female millionaire entrepreneurs. Every inch of her screamed personal tailoring and extreme expense.\n\n'Not a problem,' Irene answered. She had to remind herself that she'd decided on a new policy of mutual coexistence, rather than automatically taking offence at everything Bradamant said. 'I hope you didn't have to come out of your way to get down here?'\n\n'Well, the whole point was to speak with you.' Bradamant stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind her. 'As you said some time back, we shouldn't be wasting our time sniping at each other. Especially in an emergency.'\n\nKai had shuffled to one side and was taking a polite interest in the nearest bookcase, ostensibly not part of the conversation, even though Irene knew he'd be listening.\n\n'Fair enough,' Irene agreed. 'So why did you want to speak with me?'\n\n'Well.' Bradamant hesitated, picking her words. 'We are among the very few Librarians who've actually met Alberich.'\n\n'We are among those fortunate few survivors, yes,' Irene said.\n\n'Has he tried to communicate with you?'\n\nThe words hung in the air. I've already told Coppelia \u2013 it's not as if there's anything treasonous about it, Irene thought. There's no reason to be ashamed of it, or afraid to admit it. But actually saying it out loud took an effort. 'Yes,' she finally managed. 'It happened since the meeting this morning, and it was definitely him. You?'\n\n'No,' Bradamant said. She sounded more irritated about it than thankful. 'Probably because I'm stuck here.'\n\n'Not on assignment? I assumed that all the able-bodied\u2014'\n\n'Kostchei's keeping me here.' Bradamant folded her arms crisply. 'He says he needs someone on hand for emergency pickups.'\n\nSaying 'Not because of what happened during your last assignment?' would have been unforgivable. But the thought ran through Irene's mind, and she hastily suppressed it before it could show on her face. 'I suppose it makes sense,' she said neutrally.\n\n'It doesn't make sense to keep me here, when we could actually be tracking Alberich down,' Bradamant snapped. 'We both know he's the sort who holds a grudge. It'd be much more useful if we were bait in a trap!'\n\n'I beg leave to argue about it being in any way useful for Irene to get herself killed,' Kai commented, from where he was leaning against the bookcase.\n\n'Oh, you could be there too \u2013 he could come after you as well,' Bradamant said. 'I'm not trying to keep you out of it. I'm sure you'd be very useful.' She gave him a polished smile, discreet and a little sly. 'And I'm sure your family wouldn't object to having Alberich out of the way.'\n\n'Does everyone know about my family?' Kai muttered.\n\n'Not everyone,' Bradamant said quickly. 'But you actually warded an area against chaos when we last confronted Alberich, so you're from an important family. Not all dragons could do that.' She turned back to Irene, before Kai could agree or disagree. 'So what do you think?'\n\n'Can we take this by stages?' Irene asked. The basic idea of let's all trap Alberich sounded good in itself, but the specificity of let's go and play bait for an insane murderer left her less enthusiastic. 'Have you run this past Kostchei yet?'\n\n'No,' Bradamant admitted. 'I thought I'd discuss it with you first.'\n\n'Do you think he wouldn't approve, then?'\n\nBradamant shrugged. 'It'd depend how feasible we could make it. If we could come up with a plan that might work...'\n\nIrene still wasn't convinced this was a good idea. 'When Alberich contacted me, he funnelled raw chaotic power into my location, once he'd established where I was.' She ran through the details of the morning's encounter, in response to Bradamant's raised eyebrow. Though she did leave out the bits where she'd been drugged and kidnapped by werewolves and lost her Library documents. No point in confusing the issue. 'I concede that this means we could get a two-way link,' she finished. 'I'm just not sure that it would be to our advantage, rather than to his.'\n\n'That's a bit defeatist, isn't it?' Kai said quietly.\n\n'You didn't get nearly fried by raw chaos this morning\u2014' Irene started.\n\n'No,' Kai said. 'Because I wasn't there, because you went off to the Library on your own. You would have thought that by now we'd know better.'\n\nIrene took a deep breath. 'All right. Point taken, Kai. Bradamant, can you give me a moment to think about this? I need to change my dress anyhow.' She looked down at her wrecked clothing. Days like this were hell on her clothing budget. 'Give me five minutes and I'll be with you.'\n\nBoth Kai and Bradamant nodded, and Irene slipped quickly into her bedroom. She ran through her options as she dropped her ruined dress and coat on the floor and speedily changed into something long-skirted, modest, bland and unobtrusive. She had a lot of those in her wardrobe.\n\nTwo main questions were nagging at her. Was it just her distrust of Bradamant that was making her discount her colleague's idea? And, ultimately, could it actually work?\n\nAs she walked back into her study, Bradamant was just saying, 'Nobody's disputing her talent...' She glanced at Irene. 'We're talking about you, of course.'\n\n'Well, of course,' Irene agreed. 'I'm not in the room, you talk about me \u2013 some things are a fact of life. I'm sure Kai and I will be talking about you, as soon as you've left.'\n\nBradamant smiled icily. 'So? Your thoughts?'\n\nIrene tucked the pouch of gold sovereigns into an inner pocket. 'It's a plausible idea,' she admitted. 'If Kostchei and Coppelia, or whoever, agree to it, then I'll help with it. But I'm not going to go running off solo with you now. Or even if we take Kai with us.'\n\nKai opened his mouth, then shut it again, apparently mollified by the idea that he'd be invited along too.\n\nBut Bradamant frowned. 'If you think this is a good idea, then I can't see why you're not more enthusiastic.'\n\n'I don't see that it's being unenthusiastic to wait for our superiors' opinion first,' Irene said. 'Actually, I don't see why you want me to be enthusiastic anyhow. Even if this is a good idea, it's not going to be remotely safe or easy.'\n\n'Always such a cynic,' Bradamant said. Her smile was a little brittle. 'Irene, tell me...'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'Do you think our superiors actually have the right idea here?'\n\n'Right idea in what sense?' Irene asked cautiously.\n\n'In the sense that they're fighting a strictly defensive strategy,' Bradamant said. She was picking her words just as carefully as Irene. Neither of us wants to be the first one to say something that could be reported and held against us. 'I'm... concerned.'\n\n'We don't necessarily know everything they're planning,' Irene said, but the words rang hollow in her own ears, and she remembered her earlier complaint to Coppelia.\n\n'And you know what the corollary to that is.'\n\n'That what they're planning is too horrendously dangerous to tell us?' Irene suggested.\n\n'No,' Bradamant said. She lowered her voice. 'That there are spies among us.'\n\n'That doesn't work,' Kai said firmly, cutting through the sudden silence. 'Seriously, it doesn't work. If there were Librarians who were working for Alberich and who could access the Library, then couldn't they just open a door for him and invite him in? Even if he can't enter because he's chaos-contaminated, they could be actively sabotaging the Library, passing him information \u2013 whatever. There wouldn't be any need for all these threats and ultimatums.'\n\nIf Irene had been the praying type, she would have said a prayer of thanks for that simple common-sense point. It short-circuited her paranoia. 'Right,' she agreed.\n\n'I'm sure there are other things that spies could be doing for him,' Bradamant suggested. But that line of argument was clearly weak, even to her own ears, and she gave up with a shrug, looking disappointed.\n\n'And what do you actually want us to do, anyhow? You and me, that is. Are we supposed to stand around and yell, \"Alberich, we're here, come and get us?\" until something happens?'\n\n'There's no need to be like that about it,' Bradamant snapped. 'I was only putting forward a suggestion. And there's something you aren't taking into consideration.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I saw you talking with Penemue.'\n\n'Then you probably saw her cutting me dead, once she realized I wasn't going to be immediately useful to her,' Irene answered. 'Has she been talking to you, too?'\n\n'She's tried.' Bradamant looked smug. 'Give me some credit here, Irene. I probably know more about what's going on in the political landscape here than you do. I knew more about it even before I got stuck here for the last few months. And to give Penemue credit, she isn't just doing this because she sees herself as the new representative of the working classes. She honestly thinks some reform is needed.'\n\n'Fair's fair,' Irene said. 'I accept that she's not wholly selfish. But I have the impression that you've got reservations about her too.'\n\n'Her current timing isn't impressing me.' Bradamant folded her arms. 'I'm not going to argue the Library's power structure with you, because we'd probably end up debating aristocracy versus oligarchy versus democracy. And, frankly, we both have more urgent things to do. But I think we can both agree that long-term change is at least worth discussing?'\n\n'Possibly,' Irene agreed cautiously. 'But the Penemue thing \u2013 I get that she's looking to rock the boat, and going on the attack makes sense from her point of view, as a counter to official policy. Are you suggesting that if we don't consider this option of us playing bait, then she'll bring it up herself?'\n\n'It could happen,' Bradamant said. 'So I'm wondering if the two of us should be proactive about it and take that political option out of her hands.'\n\nIrene considered, then shook her head. 'No. Our superiors know about our previous encounter with Alberich. If we've had the idea of playing bait, they've certainly had the idea of using us as bait.' It wasn't a comforting thought, but it had the feeling of truth to it. 'Us trying to run off and do this on our own isn't going to help anyone's political position. It might even make it worse for the authorities, if Penemue tries to push the idea that they're losing control of their own juniors.'\n\nBradamant nodded slowly. 'You might have a point there. All right, I'll leave it for the moment.'\n\nLittle tendrils of paranoia wove themselves together at the back of Irene's mind. Bradamant was perfectly capable of using Irene as bait, with or without Irene's permission, if she could get support for it. Or, on a darker note, who was to say that the mysterious woman behind Irene's kidnapping had been Lady Guantes? What if it had been someone much closer to the Library...\n\n'I'll check with your friend Vale in a day or two,' Bradamant said. Her expression was perfectly pleasant, as graceful and enigmatic as an Ert\u00e9 statuette. 'And if he finds anything urgent, I'll pass it to Coppelia or you. Will that do?'\n\n'It will,' Irene said. She forced away her fears. She might not like Bradamant very much, but she could trust her not to betray the Library \u2013 couldn't she? She smiled in return. 'Thank you. I appreciate that. And if you have any useful thoughts about how to lure Alberich out, then please tell me. But you're right, we both need to be getting down to work.'\n\nBradamant hesitated, glancing between Irene and Kai, then inclined her head in a nod and stepped outside. The door closed behind her with a very soft click.\n\n'Was she seriously suggesting mutiny?' Kai demanded.\n\n'Of course not,' Irene said quickly. 'She was trying to put a stop to it. You heard her.'\n\n'On the surface, yes. But she was also sounding you out, to see how far you'd go along with it.'\n\n'That's a hypothesis.'\n\n'I may be a novice in the Library, Irene, but I was raised in my father's court.' Kai didn't even sound angry. He just sounded depressed. 'As Bradamant said, she knows the political landscape. But I know how these things work, too. In times of war, anyone might rise to power.'\n\n'We should be going,' Irene said, trying to steer the conversation back to safer grounds. 'Priorities, remember? Collecting a book? Before we were sidetracked by...'\n\n'By Bradamant, who wanted to suggest that your superiors were incompetent and you should take independent action,' Kai said, showing no sign of being steered.\n\n'You're not helping.'\n\n'I'm not trying to help. You're bending over backwards to be fair to someone whom you have no reason to trust.' Kai set his jaw stubbornly.\n\n'She's another Librarian, and I trust her.' Irene rethought that statement. 'That is, I trust her not to be working with Alberich. Look, Kai, do you want me to run to Coppelia and tell her Bradamant was questioning her authority? Especially when Bradamant can perfectly well deny that she said it, or claim that I misinterpreted her?'\n\nKai tapped his chest. 'You have an independent witness.'\n\n'Bradamant would say that you'd lie to support me.' She saw Kai's face darken at the insult. 'Don't lose your temper at me \u2013 it's what she'd say, and it's what enough people would believe.'\n\n'Then what can we actually do?' Kai demanded.\n\n'Keep our eyes open and pay attention. And, in the meantime, go and get our book.' She opened the door. 'Coming?'\n\nKai muttered to himself, but let the subject drop. As they were crowding into the transfer cabinet, he asked, 'Are you going to check the status of any other Librarians? If people have been killed...'\n\n'I checked on my parents,' Irene said. 'They haven't reported any problems.' And she could hardly go running off to check on them in person. At least Alberich would have no idea who they were or how to find them.\n\n'And your other friends?'\n\nThere was a pause as Kai worked out that Irene wasn't going to give him a list of other friends. 'Surely you know other Librarians,' he said, sounding disappointed.\n\n'Of course I do,' Irene replied. 'That doesn't mean I'm going to throw a panic fit and run round looking for a list of casualties. What are you getting at here, Kai?'\n\nHe shrugged. 'Your sisters and brothers in arms are in danger. Irene, you went into danger to save me. Wouldn't you do that for them too?'\n\nThis was getting more emotionally fraught than Irene enjoyed. The cramped quarters didn't help, as they were now standing extremely close. 'Well, yes, of course I would, but what exactly do you expect me to do here and now? Should I be panicking because there's a chance that someone I know is...' Dead. She knew a lot of other Librarians as casual acquaintances, even if she didn't know them well. Coppelia and Kostchei had said that people had died. She didn't want to speculate. It would be too hard to stop. '...in danger,' she substituted. 'I \u2013 we \u2013 have a job to do. Gate of B-1165.'\n\nThe transfer cabinet jolted into motion, sliding sideways through darkness and cutting off any rejoinder Kai might have made. As it dropped like a lift, Irene was forced to recognize the thing that annoyed her most about Bradamant's proposal. It was that Irene desperately wanted to do it. She wanted to strike back against Alberich, to save the Library. Putting herself in danger to get the job done was hardly new. But her common sense revolted against the idea of putting herself in danger if it wasn't actually going to accomplish anything. Bradamant didn't have a plan beyond using themselves as bait. She just had wishful thinking.\n\nIf only they had some way of locating Alberich...\n\nThe cabinet slammed to a stop, and Irene and Kai staggered out into a windowless room, with barely enough light to avoid tripping over piles of books. There were no warning signs here about current dangers, no threatening posters, and no special seals on the door out of the Library.\n\n'Ready?' she said.\n\n'Ready,' Kai agreed, adjusting his cuffs.\n\nIrene took hold of the heavy brass handle and shoved the door open, then stepped through into another world. She had to push aside a plush red rope cordoning off their door. There was an Out of order sign in Polish dangling from its handle. Beyond, the room was full of display cases and tapestries. Another place that had once been a true library and now was nothing but a museum.\n\nKai grabbed her wrist, his grip hard enough to hurt. 'Irene,' he said, his voice shocked. 'Some of my kindred are in this world.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "Irene stared at Kai in surprise, and was about to ask for more details when the door at the other end of the room boomed open, thudding against the wall. She and Kai both turned to see who it was.\n\nThe man standing in the doorway was presumably a museum guard, though the cudgel hanging from his belt looked too well-used for Irene's peace of mind. His clothing was stark black with red accents, with a high-necked jacket over breeches and boots. A brutal scar marred one side of his face. Two other guards filled the space behind him: the bulk of their shoulders made Irene seriously wonder about their normal duties. Museum guards weren't usually this well organized, beefy, or clearly ready for violence.\n\n'Who are you and what are you doing here?' the lead guard demanded.\n\nIt was a reasonable question, and it was one that Irene had been asked quite a number of times in her career. Unfortunately, I'm Irene and I'm here to steal books was rarely the answer that interrogators wanted to hear. More immediately, she couldn't think of any good answer that would adequately explain her presence in an apparently heavily guarded area. She might as well go directly to the next usual step.\n\n'You perceive that I and this man are people who have a right to be here and who should be allowed to leave,' she said firmly in the Language. The effort took her by surprise. It felt as if she was having to push the words uphill. The universe didn't seem to want to accept the Language's effect. Was this how it felt to work in such high-order worlds? She'd generally been employed in more middle-of-the-road ones before, or even chaotic ones.\n\nNevertheless, the Language worked. The guards all looked a bit confused, but the arrogant intimidation drained from their posture. 'Apologies,' the first one said, saluting. 'We hadn't realized, ma'am.'\n\n'Carry on,' Irene said with a casual nod, sauntering towards the door. She swayed a little, still light-headed from the effort, but Kai steadied her. The guards melted out of her way like butter before a hot knife, their eyes lowered in respect.\n\nShe and Kai were halfway down the corridor when there came a furious yell of, 'Stop them!'\n\n'Faster than usual,' Irene muttered, as the two of them sprinted round the corner. The guards had the advantage of knowing the terrain, but fortunately the place was a tangle of rooms. Very elegant, beautiful rooms, as far as Irene could tell while running through them, and full of interesting-looking books. More to the point, these were rooms where one could lose pursuers.\n\nShe took stock of the situation while hiding behind a display stand with Kai. The guards thundered past, yelling something that Irene's Polish wasn't good enough to translate.\n\nShe waited till they were out of earshot, then said, 'We may need to rethink our usual strategy.'\n\n'Why?' Kai asked.\n\n'Because normally that effect lasts for longer.'\n\n'I assumed it was just bad luck.'\n\n'No. I think it was the high-order nature of this world. It was harder to get it to work, too.'\n\n'Oh.' Kai frowned. 'Normally I'd have loved to take you to a high-order world, but this might make things inconvenient. I never expected to be actually stealing a book with you on one of them. And why did those guards come in just then? They seemed very prepared for action. I thought that sort of thing only happened on high-chaos worlds.'\n\n'Life has a tendency to be awkward,' Irene said with deep bitterness. 'All right. Let's try and find the exit before they come back.'\n\nSome very cautious exploration brought them to the more public areas of the building, and they were able to slip into the general comings and goings without attracting attention. Most of the visitors seemed to be students or scholars, and very few of them looked well off. Battered overcoats and an air of genteel poverty were the norm.\n\nThe guard at the door demanded to see Irene's pass, but was willing to take a gold coin and her apology for having 'forgotten' it instead. Probably there would be trouble, once he and the guards who'd been chasing her compared notes, but Irene planned to be well out of the city by that time.\n\nShe and Kai found a cafe several streets away, collecting newspapers as they went, and settled down in a corner with a pot of tea and a plate of fried cakes stuffed with plum jam. For half an hour or so they were silent, except for occasional requests to pass a newspaper. Irene took the Polish papers, as she had at least a basic grasp of the language, while Kai read the international ones, since his Polish was non-existent.\n\nFinally Irene put down the last paper and signalled for a new pot of tea. 'This is going to be inconvenient,' she said. 'I don't like trying to steal books in the middle of secessions and revolutions.'\n\n'Maybe not as inconvenient as it might have been.' Kai tapped the French newspaper Le Monde. 'According to this one, the troubles are in the outlying countries, not Russia itself. Once we're in St Petersburg we'll be safe.' He thought about that. 'Well, safer than we are here, at least.'\n\n'Maybe, maybe not.' Irene stacked the papers thoughtfully. 'They're using terms like \"terrorism\" and \"foreign agents\" and \"fifth column\". I've found that when that starts happening, homeland citizens get suspicious of any oddly-behaving foreigners. The sooner we're out of here, the better.'\n\n'Do you think it'll have made the security around the Hermitage any heavier?' Kai asked. 'Given how out of date the rest of our information is...'\n\n'No way of knowing, unfortunately. That's the problem with not having a Librarian-in-Residence.' She remembered his earlier comment. 'By the way, what did you mean when you said there were dragons here?'\n\n'Not here in Poland,' Kai said, a little too quickly.\n\n'No, in this world,' Irene said.\n\n'I can tell they're in this world. I don't know where, without trying to find them. I'm just not sure that trying to find them would be a good idea.'\n\n'Why not?' Irene asked, genuinely surprised. She'd thought Kai would be only too pleased to spend time with other dragons.\n\n'Well. You know.' It was never a good sign when Kai went monosyllabic. He fiddled with the cakes. 'Questions.'\n\n'Kai, we've talked about keeping dangerous secrets before,' Irene said patiently. To be more precise, she'd talked and he'd listened. 'Is this something I should know about?'\n\n'I'm worried about my father.' Kai's voice was quiet and uncertain. 'I've already caused him inconvenience by being kidnapped and needing rescue. I don't want him to be embarrassed by any further shameful behaviour on my part. What I do in private is one thing, but... Well, I know you understand what court intrigues can be like, Irene. Nobody's going to actually challenge my father, but there are other things they can do.'\n\n'Delayed taxes and tributes?' Irene guessed. 'Orders getting accidentally lost en route? Polite semi-public insubordination? Negotiating with other monarchs?' She'd learned earlier that there were four dragon kings, and Kai's father was one of them. However, Kai himself was one son among many, by far the youngest and lowest down the scale of inheritance. 'Long-term consequences on the grounds that misconduct in the son can imply weakness in the father?'\n\n'You do understand,' Kai said with relief. 'My uncle's loyal to him, of course, and Li Ming's loyal to my uncle, so it doesn't matter if they know about my affiliation with the Library. But I don't know which other dragons are actually here. It might even be representatives from one of the queens' courts. I don't want to be accused of intruding on someone else's territory.'\n\nIrene knew she should be getting on with the job, but Kai so rarely discussed dragon politics that she couldn't resist the urge to ask a few more questions. 'Are the queens enemies of the kings?'\n\n'Oh no,' Kai said, sounding a little shocked that he might have given that impression. 'But they're established in the more secure worlds, the ones that you call high-order. The kings go there to visit them on state occasions, or for mating contracts.'\n\n'Were you brought up in your mother's court, or your father's?' Irene asked.\n\n'My father's. Male children are given to the father, and female ones to the mother. At least, with royal matings. Dragons of lower rank may have different arrangements.' He caught the look in her eye. 'Oh, you shouldn't think that I grew up without any female dragons around. My royal father has many female courtiers and servants, and female lords under his command. It's just that the royal households themselves are of the same gender.'\n\n'Why?'\n\nKai shrugged. 'That's how it is.'\n\nIrene would have liked more detail, but the current urgent situation was more important. 'All right,' she said. 'To get back to matters at hand, are any dragons who are here likely to interfere with us stealing a book?'\n\n'Not interfere as such,' Kai said carefully. 'But they would certainly be curious.'\n\n'In that case, we'll be discreet and hope they don't notice.' She saw the relief in his eyes. 'Next step: we need to get to St Petersburg, possibly with a stop to obtain clothing first.'\n\nShe nodded at the people passing by outside. While many of them wore some sort of dark coat over their clothing, as Kai and Irene did, these were distinctively heavy wool or felt coats, often with fur cuffs and collars. The clothing beneath the coats comprised long skirts for women, but with a bodice and blouse rather than a dress. These were banded with bright colours. The men wore heavy boots and thick trousers, with shirts and waistcoats. Both genders wore hats: Irene and Kai were unusual in being bareheaded.\n\n'Not too cheap, I hope,' Kai said. Even though he could make a scruffy shirt and trousers look like the latest catwalk fashion, that didn't mean he wanted to. He shopped with all the exquisite taste of a prince who'd been raised in personally tailored silks and furs.\n\nIrene was something of a disappointment to him there, and she knew it. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I don't want us spending too much of our spare cash before we get there. Fashions may be different in St Petersburg\u2014'\n\n'I told you we should have bought Vogue,' Kai put in.\n\n'That's high fashion, not regular fashion,' Irene said firmly. 'It wouldn't have been any use. Come on. We should get started.' She commandeered the last cake, then signalled the waiter over, combining a tip with a request for directions to a local clothing shop.\n\nShe was grateful that Kai didn't make any comments about urgency, or this errand taking up too much time. Running into a heavily guarded royal property without the right disguise would get them killed. And working out the details kept her stable. Whereas if she let herself start thinking the entire Library may be destroyed, her mind went into a terrified hamster-wheel spin. It was too large a concept to imagine.\n\nIn some versions of Krakow there would have been a huge central railway station, but here there was a grand travel-hub building with sleighs being constantly flown in and out. They were drawn by reindeer and horses that galloped through the air. It was a more obtrusive use of magic than Irene had seen elsewhere in the city \u2013 which, come to think of it, seemed generally worn down. The place desperately needed some renovation, which suggested a financial depression. The whole situation was probably linked to the general uncertainty in this world's Russian Empire and to the rigid state control of magic. Irene noted it as background detail, considering how it would impact on their mission, in the same way that she would have studied the grammar and vocabulary of a new language.\n\nFortunately the guards at the gates didn't ask for passports, but the tickets were expensive enough that Irene winced for her dwindling finances. A pageboy who cast sideways glances at their cheap clothing led her and Kai to a sleek black-and-silver sleigh with six large reindeer fastened to it. He opened the small side door and bowed them inside. It was crowded: there was barely room for them to squeeze into a corner, and everyone else was better dressed than they were. She spotted bright clusters of ribbons on sleeves and at throats, or smooth sable gloves and high-heeled red leather boots.\n\n'Good evening,' the woman sitting next to her said brightly in Polish. She was the rich elderly type, with furs that showed their age but had once been very expensive. Her rouged cheeks matched a red nose. 'How nice to have young company on this overnight flight! What brings you on this trip?'\n\nKai smiled in polite incomprehension. Irene was left to carry the conversation and the cover story, which at least took her mind off the sleigh rising into the air and the heights it reached. And the speed. Zeppelins or high-technology shuttles were so much better than this sort of transport. One could shut the windows and didn't have to see the landscape below spooling past at an impossibly fast rate, from far too high up. She concentrated on making her narrative sound convincing.\n\n'...and so my cousin here came to get me after my mother's heart attack,' she concluded. It was a tragic tale of family illness and breakdown, complete with a father's alcoholism and accident. Irene had apparently had to spend all her savings on the fast sleigh home, to be with her dying mother. She'd borrowed from some of the worst tear-jerker family epics she knew, and was quite proud of the result. 'Of course my cousin's never been outside Russia in his life, but he knew where I was living...'\n\nSeveral of her listeners sighed in sympathy. In-flight entertainment consisted of looking over the edge or passing round bottles of vodka and slivovitz, and Irene's story had drawn more attention than she'd really wanted. She pressed her knuckles against her lips. 'Please forgive me \u2013 I'm just so worried about poor Mamma.'\n\nKai might not have been able to understand the Polish, but he could take a cue. He slipped an arm round her shoulders and held her close. 'Please forgive my cousin,' he said in Russian. 'I think she needs to rest.'\n\nTo general nods, Irene let herself relax. It was true that she was exhausted. It had been a long day, and far too full of excitement. Forgotten bruises were making themselves felt, now that there was nothing to do but sit and wait for the flight to end.\n\n'Get some sleep,' Kai murmured in her ear. 'I'll wake you if... well, if anyone attacks.'\n\nIrene quirked a smile. 'Thank you,' she whispered and let her head rest on his shoulder, closing her eyes. She tried to clear her mind for sleep, difficult as it was. But Kai was warm against her, even through the thick layers of their clothing, and despite her dislike of heights, next to him she felt safe. He's a dragon. He'll catch me if I fall...\n\nWhen she opened her eyes again, the sky was bright and pale and cloudless, and the air was bitterly cold. They joined a queue of incoming aerial traffic diving in towards a huge hexagonal building sheathed in panes of glass and mother-of-pearl. A huge clock on the side, gleaming with brass and surrounded by astronomical symbols, showed that it was six o'clock in the morning.\n\nIrene rubbed her eyes and looked up at Kai. 'Didn't you get any sleep?'\n\n'Enough.' He didn't look rumpled or half-asleep, though; he looked keen and sharp, as though the wintry night air had put a new edge on his energy. 'Look at the city below. You can see all the landmarks.'\n\nIrene gritted her teeth and peered over the edge of the sleigh at St Petersburg below them. 'It's... big,' she said, not very helpfully. Her understanding of the city's geography would have been better if she hadn't been trying not to think about falling out of the sleigh and landing on said geography.\n\n'I think that's the Winter Palace down there.' Kai pointed at a building on the waterfront, which sparkled gold and blue in the morning light. 'Lovely architecture.'\n\nIt was very efficient of Kai to be scouting out the terrain and spotting buildings that were part of the Hermitage complex. Irene should be complimenting him on his good work, rather than fighting motion sickness and vertigo. 'How nice,' she muttered.\n\nKai gave up on her, and continued leaning over the edge to watch as the sleigh came in to land. The reindeer cantered through one of the archways in the building's walls and downwards, until they were drawing the sleigh over the ground rather than through air, landing with barely a bump. They touched down inside a huge open hall: it was crowded with other sleighs, shuffling passengers, guards and heavily loaded porters. The sound of hundreds of people shouting at each other was almost physically painful.\n\nIrene was halfway through saying polite goodbyes to the other passengers when she noticed the bears. They were crouched in pairs by the exit gates, each with a handler next to it: iron collars circled their necks, and chains ran from their hind legs to pegs set into the ground. 'Kai,' she murmured, nodding to them.\n\nKai's eyes narrowed as he considered them. 'I'm not sure if they're crowd control, guards or what,' he said, strolling towards the exit with her. Unlike most of the other passengers, they had only a minimum of luggage. 'How shall we play it?'\n\n'Act normal,' Irene said. 'At least nobody else seems to like them, either.' People going through the exit gates were flinching away from the bears, or treating them with lofty disdain and then twitching at their slightest growl. Nobody was actually being stopped, though. Perhaps they were just a threat? Or some sort of ceremonial guard? But who posted ceremonial guards at an airport-equivalent?\n\nThey joined a queue shuffling towards the nearest exit. Irene ran through a mental list of possible contraband. She wasn't carrying a gun, or any drugs or explosives, something that she slightly regretted \u2013 after all, they might be useful on this mission. But for the moment she couldn't think of anything illegal concealed on her or Kai. Of course, it might depend on what this regime considered illegal...\n\nThen the nearest bear growled. It wasn't the casual little noise that it and the other bears had been giving earlier when they shifted position or licked their muzzles, but an on-point, attention-all-guards noise. It rose from its crouch, the chains on its hind legs creaking, and leaned towards one of the people in the queue.\n\nIts handler stepped forward. 'Good evening, friend citizen,' he said briskly. 'Are you carrying any illegal magical components, as defined under section four of the law against importation of hazardous or treasonous materials?'\n\n'Of course not,' the accused man said flatly. His face was still rosy from the windburn that all the sleigh passengers had suffered from, but Irene thought that he'd lost a little colour. Other people were backing away from him \u2013 or, rather, from him and the bear. 'There must be some mistake.'\n\nThe handler raised a silver whistle to his mouth and blew a shrill blast. The sound carried through the noise of the crowd, and Irene could see several men in long dark coats hurrying towards them. 'I'm sure you won't mind going with these guards to have your luggage checked, then,' the handler said. 'Please be aware that this is your duty under the law, and any resistance will be considered an illegal act.'\n\nEveryone else was looking at each other and muttering nervously. That made it safe for Irene to lean over to Kai and whisper, 'They've got bears sniffing for sources of magic?'\n\n'It looks that way.' They shuffled a step closer to the exit. The bear had gone back down on its haunches again, looking as tame and unthreatening as one might reasonably expect from a large grizzly bear. In other words, not very.\n\n'Interesting.' They were second from the front of the line now. The man ahead was being waved through.\n\n'Business or pleasure?' the handler said, with the bare minimum of interest.\n\n'Family,' Irene said. She decided to go for the earnest-but-confused approach. 'I'm visiting my mother. I mean, that's not really pleasure, but I suppose it's not business either\u2014'\n\n'Yes, very good,' the handler said wearily. 'Please go through the exit ahead of you.'\n\nWith an inner sigh of relief, Irene walked past him, with Kai in her wake.\n\nAnd then the bear leaned forward and sniffed at Kai."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "There were gasps as the crowd pulled back from Irene and Kai. And from the bear, of course. It was difficult to ignore the bear. For a moment Irene considered feigning innocence and signalling to Kai to make a run for it, then meeting up with him later. Common sense told her that she'd probably be arrested as an accomplice. Besides, she was reluctant to leave him on his own in a strange place. He might get into trouble. Into even more trouble.\n\nThe handler frowned. 'Are you carrying any illegal magical components, as defined under section four of the law against importation of hazardous or treasonous materials?'\n\n'Absolutely not,' Kai said. He eyed the bear sidelong. 'There must be some mistake.'\n\nThe bear gave vent to a long, rolling eructation. It lowered its head and tried to nuzzle against Kai, straining at its chains. There was nothing aggressive about it now.\n\nKai looked at Irene for a moment, then sighed and reached over to scratch its head, his fingers sinking into its fur. 'Good girl,' he said gently. 'Good girl.'\n\nThe security men in the long black coats had reached the scene. 'Will you step away from the bear, friend citizen,' one of them demanded. 'Please place your hands above your head, and don't make any threatening moves.'\n\nThis was not the surreptitious entry to St Petersburg that Irene had been planning. She edged over to the handler. 'What if it hurts him?' she demanded, letting an edge of panicked concern sharpen her voice. 'It's a bear! What if it bites his head off, if he stops stroking it?'\n\n'Our bears are all very highly trained, friend citizen,' the handler reassured her, watching the bear nervously. 'There's absolutely no way it would harm anyone. If your friend just steps away from it, I'm sure it won't do anything to him.'\n\nBut the idea had been planted and had taken root. The security men looked at each other. 'Perhaps you'd better not try to move till we can get one of the controllers over here, friend citizen,' one of them said. 'See if you can keep it calm.'\n\n'What's going on here?' The woman striding into the growing circle of empty space had a long black coat like the men, but there were green stripes on her shoulders and cuffs. Her long hair was braided back cruelly tight, and instead of the skirts the other women wore, she was in trousers and heavy boots, like the men. She glared around suspiciously. 'Is there a problem?'\n\n'That's the problem, mistress controller,' the lead security guard said, pointing at the bear that was cuddling up against Kai.\n\nThe woman peered short-sightedly. Then she walked up to the bear and laid a hand on its head, murmuring so softly that Irene couldn't hear what she was saying. Kai took a step back, but the tilt of his head suggested that he was listening.\n\n'Galina says that he smells of the sap in the tree as it goes thundering towards heaven,' the woman announced, frowning. 'She says that she salutes the lord of the powers of the earth and the sky, ruler of seas and shaker of mountains. I want her on immediate medical leave. And I want him questioned.' She pointed at Kai.\n\n'On what charges, mistress controller?' the guard asked.\n\n'I don't know. Public nuisance, maybe,' the woman said. 'I'm sure he's done something. Take him into custody, and anyone with him.' She rubbed the bear's shoulder affectionately.\n\nThe security guard did his best to look confident. 'If you'll just come along with me, friend citizen,' he said to Kai. 'And the lady who's with you. I'm sure we'll have this all sorted out in a few minutes.'\n\nDamn, they remembered I exist. Irene stepped forward to Kai's side, giving him a little nod. 'Please let's do as they say, cousin,' she murmured.\n\nKai reluctantly let the bear be \u2013 it was fawning on the woman now, anyhow \u2013 and he and Irene followed the security guards to a side door. Irene was assessing the guards' visible weaponry as they led the way. Heavy truncheons, like the guards in the museum. Coils of thin rope on their belts, at the opposite side \u2013 some sort of magical restraint? They wore silver whistles like the handler's at their necks, so that was probably a quick way to give the alarm. All most inconvenient. And just because Irene didn't see any missile weapons, that didn't mean the guards didn't have them.\n\nThey were ushered into a back corridor that was very different from the opulent sleigh-port exterior or the grand central hall. It was utilitarian, efficient and lacking any external windows that one could escape through. The doors spaced along it were open frameworks of heavy steel bars. 'Just along here,' the guard said, the reassurance in his words diluted by the nervousness of his voice. 'If you friend citizens will wait in this room, someone will be along to see you in a moment.'\n\nHe gestured Irene and Kai into a sparsely-furnished room \u2013 bare and cell-like, with white-tiled walls and floor, and only a single chair \u2013 and then tapped his hand against the side of the doorway and mumbled a few words. A shimmering glow of light sprang up across the open doorway, hissing like magnesium in water.\n\n'What's going on?' Irene demanded.\n\n'Just to keep you here till the investigators arrive,' the second guard said. 'We'll be back in a moment, friend citizens.' He slammed the metal bars into place and locked the gate in position. The guards strode off quickly, with the air of men who were about to pass a dangerous problem on to someone else.\n\nIrene looked around the cell. No obvious peepholes or ways of listening, but she couldn't be sure. 'So much for a quiet arrival,' she muttered.\n\nKai spread his hands. 'I really am sorry. I had no idea the bear would do something like that. But what do we do now?'\n\n'Wait for the investigators and explain everything to them,' Irene said mildly. She tugged at her earlobe significantly. We may be listened to. 'I'm sure that once they find out what's going on, they'll let us go. Didn't that lady say the bear needed a medical check-up?'\n\nKai wandered across and poked the screen across the doorway with a careful finger. It spat thick sparks in all directions and he drew back. 'That's a surprisingly powerful magical field,' he said, picking his words. 'I suspect that even if someone simply tried to jump through it, it might knock them out \u2013 and give them bad electrical burns.'\n\n'The government seems to have a firm hold on the use of magic round here,' Irene said. She was trying to orient herself geographically. Even though she hadn't enjoyed the view when they came in, she'd seen that the sleigh-port was surrounded by the city, rather than being out in the countryside. If they could escape into St Petersburg, they could hopefully lose any pursuit. They just had to get out of here. Preferably before more guards came back.\n\nThere was no point wasting any more time. 'Can you guide me to the nearest outside wall? Bearing in mind where we are, in reference to the river?'\n\nKai nodded. He knew what she was about to do.\n\nThe Language wasn't magic. It was something else again, an entirely different sort of power. Irene couldn't use it to work with magic, and she couldn't use magic herself: it varied from world to world, and she'd never been trained in it. Her parents had always told her that a flexible mind and good use of the Language were more valuable than studying the minutiae of a given world's magic, and she'd generally agreed. It was only at times like this, when locked up behind a magical force-field, that she felt their argument might have been a bit one-sided.\n\nHowever, what the Language could do was stop magic working. It was wholesale and unconditional, which sometimes made it a poor tool for delicate thefts. But for breakouts like this, it was perfect.\n\n'Magical barrier, deactivate,' she said. Her words ground in the air like millstones, heavy with a current of power, and the shield fizzled and vanished. She was sweating as though she'd been running uphill. 'Steel bar door, unlock and open.'\n\nThe lock clicked and the door swung open, hitting the wall with a thump that rattled the tiles. Kai was already moving, dragging Irene along with him as she panted for breath. This place made using the Language hard. Everything was too settled, too real, too orderly. If she'd had the breath, she would have complained to anyone who'd listen.\n\nThey ran down the corridor, away from the central hall and in the direction of the outer walls. A guard turned the corner ahead of them and stood there, shocked, raising a hand for them to stop. Kai let go of Irene, caught the man's extended wrist and spun, slamming him into the wall, before catching Irene's shoulder again and pulling her on. He barely missed a step.\n\n'Halt!' several voices were yelling from behind them. Well, if they had any doubts about us, we've now convinced them.\n\nThey turned a corner. It was a dead end. Offices lined the walls on either side, but the end of the corridor was solid stonework, without even the luxury of a window.\n\n'You're sure it's outside, on the other side of this?' Irene demanded ungrammatically. Well, she was in a rush.\n\n'Absolutely,' Kai said. He glanced over his shoulder towards the noise of approaching booted feet. 'Though I don't know how thick the wall is.'\n\n'Let's just hope the support structure holds,' Irene said. She stepped forward and set her hands against the cold stone surface. 'Stone wall directly in front of me, measured by my height and my hands,' she said, trying to define it as specifically as possible, 'crumble to dust all the way through to the outside.'\n\nFor a moment Irene thought it wouldn't work. Doors were made to open and did it all the time, but stone was not friable by nature. It seemed to shiver under her hands, as though it was trying to throw off her command as easily as a human could refuse an order.\n\nNo. She was not going to let it disobey. She bent her will on it, focusing, summoning her determination, gritting her teeth as she stared at it. And slowly \u2013 far too slowly \u2013 the surface grew rough and pitted as she watched, and dust began to cascade down over her hands.\n\n'Irene!' Kai shouted, sweeping her off her feet. The two of them tumbled to the ground together, as a spray of crossbow bolts sliced through the air above them at waist height.\n\nIrene felt as if her bones were having a temporary holiday and had been replaced by jelly, but the situation couldn't be postponed until she felt better. 'Crossbow strings, break!' she shouted.\n\nDust came cascading down over her and Kai. He rolled to his feet, balanced and ready, as the guards approached. Irene coughed and pulled herself upright less elegantly, turning to check on the wall. There was a roughly person-sized gap in it by now, and she could see clear sky on the other side. 'Time to go!'\n\n'You first!'\n\nThere wasn't the time to argue. Irene ducked her head and shuffled through the hole \u2013 it was about five feet long, suggesting very thick outer walls. On the far side, it came out on the first-floor level of the building, meaning that there was a drop of ten feet to the ground below. People were already gathering and pointing.\n\nIrene bent down, grabbed the lower edge of the hole and let herself drop, landing safely on the pavement. Those tumbling lessons had definitely been worth it. 'Kai! Now!'\n\nHe followed her down in a swirl of dust, another spray of crossbow bolts rattling above his head and into the building opposite. They must have restrung in double-quick time. 'Which way?'\n\n'Just a moment. Dust, gather in a cloud in that hole in the building!' The eroded rock dust drew together like time-lapsed fog, blowing backwards into the building. 'All right. Now\u2014'\n\nIrene looked around, gathering her wits. The street was full of people: pedestrians on the pavement, small carriages and riders in the road, and all of them looking at her and Kai. This seemed like yet another situation that could be resolved by running away.\n\nIt was.\n\nTwo streets later, having outpaced any witnesses, she and Kai slowed their run to a casual stroll \u2013 pausing to look in the occasional shop window. The back of Irene's neck was prickling with paranoia. Even if they'd been miraculously lucky in their escape \u2013 mostly because the guards hadn't expected them to break out, and nobody had foreseen them blowing a hole in the sleigh-port wall \u2013 the local police equivalent had to be on their tail by now. Or, worse, the Oprichniki. She expressed this in a murmur to Kai as they stared at a wedding-dress display.\n\n'The Oprichniki?' Kai frowned. 'Oh yes, their strangely obvious local secret service.'\n\n'Why strangely obvious?'\n\n'They all wear long black coats,' Kai said.\n\n'Those are probably just the ones that get mentioned in the newspapers.' Irene pursed her lips at the dress, as if she was considering herself in white silk. 'We need to break our trail, we need cover, we need a plan. You know, I should be asking you for more ideas. I am supposed to be mentoring you.'\n\n'But your ideas are usually better than mine,' Kai shrugged. 'Why waste time asking me, when we can simply go straight to whatever you have in mind?'\n\nIrene knew she should probably argue, but it was hardly the moment for a performance-development review. She added Convince Kai to provide more input into planning to her growing list of things to do once we've averted the apocalypse. 'All right. Then give me your thoughts on the magic here. You may have noticed things that I haven't.'\n\n'We know there's a government monopoly on its use,' Kai said. 'The magically powered flight we came in on was state-owned. The municipal building works that originally drained the land that this city's built on were magically assisted. And the current walls holding the water back are magically reinforced and state-funded \u2013 that was in your notes. It was one of the main stories in the newspapers we read, too, about Slavic countries wanting secession from Russian authority. They were calling for their own magical traditions and industries to be back under their own control. And we haven't seen any private magical workers in these shops so far.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'Yes, I agree with all of that, but do you have any conclusions?'\n\n'We're going to be in trouble from the government, but not from casual practitioners,' Kai said. 'If we want to avoid pursuit, perhaps we should split up...'\n\nHe didn't sound enthusiastic about it, and Irene could guess why. Getting captured by werewolves earlier wasn't her finest hour. And it would only have strengthened Kai's conviction that she'd get into trouble the moment she was out of sight. 'Perhaps not,' she said. 'We don't know the local geography and I don't have any convenient way of finding you. Could you find me? The way you could navigate to Vale's home world?'\n\nHe shook his head. 'It doesn't work inside a world, no. My father or my uncles could do better, but dragons like myself or my brothers are lesser creatures.'\n\n'The word you want is younger, not lesser,' Irene said firmly. 'Anyhow, point settled: no splitting up. Next step, when and how to get into the Hermitage. In particular, the Winter Palace.'\n\nKai brushed his fingers against his stomach. The packet of documents was lodged inside his shirt, held in place by a couple of bandages. It was safer than carrying them around in an attach\u00e9 case. 'You could do what you did to the sleigh-port wall?'\n\n'Probably not. Now we've done it once, they'll know to watch out for anyone trying it. Besides, there are going to be external ground-level patrols. That's not something you can hide. It said in the papers there was going to be a grand state reception tonight. That means increased security.' However, a big reception would provide useful cover, if only she and Kai could get in there...\n\n'Speaking of ground-level patrols, I think some police just came round the end of the road,' Kai said urgently.\n\n'Let me do the talking,' Irene said, leading the way into the bridal shop.\n\nShe had a plan. And it was beginning to come together.\n\n'Excuse me,' she said to the assistant who'd come bustling up to greet her. 'My fianc\u00e9 and I have been invited unexpectedly to a party tonight, but I haven't a thing to wear. My friend Ludmilla said her friend Greta always recommended your shop. And I know you don't do evening wear yourself, but could you direct me to somewhere that does?'\n\nFive minutes later they left, with directions to a tailor a few streets away, who could provide suitable clothing at short notice \u2013 and, more importantly, the police had gone past without spotting them.\n\n'Are we going to talk our way into the reception disguised as guests?' Kai asked.\n\n'Not exactly,' Irene said. 'I can't forge an invitation without seeing one, and we won't get to see any. Plus, if I try to alter their perceptions, the guards on the door will realize what's going on before we get inside, given how badly that tactic's working here.'\n\n'Then what?'\n\n'I've seen your uncle call a storm simply by losing his temper,' Irene said thoughtfully. 'Can you do that?'\n\nKai tilted his head, considering. 'Yes,' he said. 'Well, a small one, at least. Why?'\n\nThis was shaping up nicely. It was a drastic plan, yes, and not the sort of operation that could be repeated, but it was manageable. 'Good,' Irene replied and smiled. 'We're going to come at this from a different direction.'\n\nINTERLUDE \u2013 VALE AND SILVER\n\n'You may tell him that Peregrine Vale is here to see him.'\n\nThe Liechtenstein Embassy was always difficult to penetrate. Of course Vale had entered it before on multiple occasions, but he had generally been in disguise. This time he was present as himself and had barely managed to penetrate the front lounge. The place scarcely did its duty as an embassy for its country. Would-be visitors to Liechtenstein could barely make it through the front door.\n\nOne might even think, he reflected sourly, that they had something to hide.\n\n'And I must inform you that Lord Silver is not available.' The words came out like honed icicles. Johnson was Lord Silver's manservant, factotum, and general dogsbody. He'd lasted for five years now, longer than any previous holders of that position. But, like all of them, he'd developed a fanatical devotion to Silver within a week of signing on.\n\nVale inspected the fellow carefully as he spoke. While Johnson's clothes were cut like an upper-class servant's, the fabric was unusually high-quality and the shoes shone with a blackness that suggested champagne had been used in the polish. His voice had been neutered of anything resembling an accent \u2013 Fae-induced, to make him the 'perfect servant', or a deliberate choice on his part? Johnson didn't have a criminal record, but more suspiciously there wasn't any record of his past before taking this post. He quite obviously (well, obviously to Vale) wore a concealed pistol beneath his coat.\n\nVale raised an eyebrow. 'Really. Unavailable. I take it that he is unaware of ongoing events, then?'\n\nThat made Johnson pause. He stared back at Vale, as if he could somehow force information out of him just by glaring hard enough.\n\nVale could track the calculations behind the man's eyes: if Vale was bluffing and managed to trick his way into a meeting with Silver, Silver would make Johnson regret it. However, if something important really was going on and Silver missed out on a chance to meddle, he would really make Johnson regret it.\n\n'You'll have to wait,' Johnson said abruptly. 'His lordship hasn't yet risen.'\n\n'I suppose it is barely four o'clock in the afternoon,' Vale agreed drily. 'No doubt he needs his sleep.'\n\nJohnson's lips pursed to a thin line of suppressed rage. He neatly inclined his head, refusing Vale the courtesy of a bow, and stalked out of the lounge.\n\nVale took the opportunity to inspect the room. The carpet and wallpaper were cheap and plain, hardly worthy of an embassy: it was a room to repel callers and persuade them to leave as quickly as possible. The only decoration was the oil painting of the Queen over the fireplace, which was poorly executed and badly dusted. Two chairs, no desk or table. One of the chairs was a comfortable armchair. A thread of silver hair, caught in the antimacassar, betrayed its usual occupant. The other chair was a more rigid specimen, designed to make the sitter uncomfortable. The fireplace hadn't been cleaned out since last night, and had apparently been used to incinerate a number of handwritten documents. Vale itched to take a closer look.\n\nThe door behind him creaked open, and he turned to see that Silver had indeed arrived \u2013 being upright, if not particularly aware. The Fae sagged against the door frame, hands fumbling as he tried to tie the sash of his black silk dressing gown, still in his nightshirt and slippers underneath. His silver hair was tousled from sleep. And though he attempted to narrow his eyes menacingly at Vale, they were blurred and out of focus.\n\n'My dear Vale,' Silver yawned, 'I was told you were here. I didn't think you'd come to rifle through my fireplace.'\n\n'I was curious about what you've been burning,' Vale answered. 'Far too many mysteries in London have their roots under your roof.'\n\n'Johnson, fetch me some coffee, for the love of God. It seems Mr Vale is going to be witty, rather than actually getting to the point.' Silver swayed across the room to his chair and collapsed into it with a sigh of relief. 'You mentioned something about current events, I believe?'\n\n'I suggest you drink your coffee first,' Vale said. The traces of last night's dissipation were plain on Silver's face \u2013 and the marks on his neck suggested one or more partners. Although Vale might extract more truth from the Fae while he was still half-asleep, that approach risked missing some vital bit of information.\n\n'You're unduly concerned for my welfare. I should probably be worried.' Silver yawned again. 'I hope you won't make me regret getting up at this ungodly hour. Amuse me, detective. Tell me something interesting while I'm waiting for my coffee.'\n\n'Very well.' Vale nodded to the maid standing by the door. 'The woman over there is one of your private assassins.'\n\n'I have private assassins?' Silver said, frowning. 'I'm sure I'd remember if I had such a thing. Though they would be useful.'\n\nVale walked over to the maid, who had frozen in position. 'This woman is apparently low-ranking in the embassy staff, as demonstrated by her ill-fitting cuffs.' He tapped her wrist. 'And the concealed darns at her elbows. Higher-ranking servants would have better-fitting clothing and would receive it first-hand, rather than having it passed down. And yet you've brought her to a meeting with a guest, rather than keeping her in the kitchen or upstairs. Her tendency to peer and the hunch of her shoulders suggest far-sightedness.' The words came tumbling out, each link in the chain of evidence clear and certain. For a moment Vale's malaise lifted and he was able to focus on his deductions. He leaned in more closely to examine her face. 'The bridge of her nose shows that she does normally wear glasses or pince-nez. When she entered this room, her gait betrayed that she is carrying a gun secured to her left leg, under her skirts. What sort of agent carries a long-barrelled gun, has darns at her elbows from positioning herself to aim her weapon and would have long-sightedness as an asset? A sniper.'\n\n'So why did she take the glasses off?' Silver asked. 'Vanity?'\n\n'I confess I am not yet certain.' He stepped back from the woman. 'But the fact that this young woman has simply stood here, without moving or objecting to my examination of her, or protesting at my conclusions, is in itself quite suggestive.'\n\n'I have my staff well trained... ah, thank you, Johnson.' Silver took the proffered cup of coffee and drained it with a shuddering gasp. His eyes were more focused when he opened them again. 'Can I offer you refreshments, detective?'\n\n'Certainly not,' Vale said. He wasn't eating or drinking anything from a Fae's hands. They were prone to claiming it as a personal debt and trying to exercise their glamours over the recipient. 'As to your maid, the matter's easily settled. Have her expose her ankles in front of a policeman. While the law permits some concealed weapons, it tends to draw the line at unlicensed guns.'\n\nSilver ran his fingers through his hair. 'Johnson, I'm going to need a pick-me-up. And take Mary with you, before our great detective can jump to any more conclusions.'\n\nVale snorted and turned away, strolling across to the window. As in the rest of the room, smears of dust marred the windowsill and the corners of the panes. 'I do not jump to conclusions. I deduce, based on evidence.'\n\n'Yes, yes, I know,' Silver said soothingly, 'and very elegant it all is. But you said something about current events. You make a very unlikely angel to wake me from my flowery bed, Vale. Do explain.'\n\n'Very well. Have you heard any recent news about Alberich?'\n\nThe name hung in the air between them. Silver slowly steepled his fingers, watching Vale over them. His expression was hard to define, but it certainly wasn't surprised. 'I wonder why Miss Winters isn't the one here asking that question.'\n\n'Winters is a busy woman,' Vale said. 'I thought I'd save her the time and drop by myself.'\n\n'Where is she at the moment?' Silver's tone was casual, but his eyes were narrowed in thought.\n\n'Oh, elsewhere.' Vale waved a hand vaguely. 'Out and about. She's remarkably bad at leaving a forwarding address, I find. Is there something you feel you should tell her?'\n\n'Well, I might speculate,' Silver said. 'I don't have a horse in this race myself, but it does seem to be a free-for-all to all comers. From what I've heard, at least.'\n\nVale dropped into the chair opposite Silver, ignoring its uncompromising design, and focused on the Fae. 'I've yet to come across a situation where you didn't take one side or the other. It'd be unusual for you to be genuinely neutral.'\n\n'You know me so well.' A smile of wry amusement flickered across Silver's face. 'I should be flattered you spend so much time scrutinizing my habits.'\n\n'Don't be,' Vale said, his tone as caustic as he could make it. 'I hardly enjoy the experience. You are one of the most notorious rou\u00e9s in London.'\n\n'One tries,' Silver agreed. He reached out to take a glass of hangover remedy, which had been swiftly fetched by the attentive Johnson, and downed the contents with a wince. 'One tries very, very hard indeed.'\n\n'So how do you see the current situation?'\n\n'Well, what I know is that Alberich's been looking for assistance.' Silver set the glass down on its tray, abruptly serious. 'And before we go any further, detective, I want your word that what I'm about to say will clear any debts \u2013 which I may or may not owe you from the Venice business.'\n\n'\"May or may not owe me?\" ' Vale said. 'That sounds remarkably uncertain.'\n\n'I dislike admitting that I owe anyone a debt. I'm sure you can understand that.'\n\n'And so you're weaselling around your obligations.'\n\n'If owing a favour ever becomes a matter of life or death for you, too, then perhaps you'll understand,' Silver snapped. 'For the moment, you will just have to accept that such things can cause a great deal of trouble. So if I tell you what I know about current goings-on, will you consider our debt cleared?'\n\nVale knew that the Fae were bound to keep their given word. It was one of the more useful pieces of information about them, together with the fact that cold iron weakened their powers. He wasn't going to object to these little advantages: the Fae were irksome, and their glamours were inconvenient, as well as borderline illegal. 'You have my word that I will consider the debt cleared, in return for you telling me what you know about \"current events\". I can't speak for Winters.'\n\n'Yes, such a pity she's not here,' Silver said. 'I'd be enjoying this discussion a great deal more if I was having it with her.' While he did not quite lick his lips at the thought, his expression suggested a barely restrained carnality.\n\nVale could only be grateful that Winters was elsewhere. Even if she was quite capable of handling Silver, she would certainly not enjoy being exposed to his insinuations. Her behaviour last night, towards Vale himself, was something quite different from this... impropriety. 'You overrate yourself,' he said briefly.\n\n'And I thought we were going to be civil.'\n\n'You are the instigator of a dozen conspiracies here in London. You're running at least one spy ring that I know of out of your embassy. And in the Venice affair you knowingly sent Winters into a situation that might have killed her, or worse, purely to save your own miserable hide. I would say that I'm being remarkably civil.' Vale leaned back in his chair, as much as it allowed. 'Would you like me to go on?'\n\nSilver looked up at the ceiling as though demanding patience from some unseen deity. 'Oh, by all means go on. I'm hardly unaware of your opinion of me. I rather appreciate it. But if you actually want information, then perhaps you should let me speak.'\n\nVale was forced to concede Silver's point. 'Continue,' he said tersely, mentally saving a few choice insults for a later opportunity.\n\n'Alberich has a number of allies among the Fae,' Silver began. 'To put it bluntly, he's done favours and he's owed favours. A couple of months back, shortly after the Venice business, I heard rumours that he'd been looking for... collaborators, shall we say. A step up from agents, but far from being equal partners. The sort of Fae who are weaker than I am, but still strong enough to walk between the worlds on their own.'\n\n'Indeed,' Vale said neutrally. His mind flashed back to the woman Zayanna and her plausible but unsupported tale. 'Do go on.'\n\nSilver spread his hands. 'That's pretty much all I've heard.'\n\n'Was Lady Guantes one of these Fae?'\n\n'I wouldn't know,' Silver said. 'The lady has vanished from sight \u2013 and good riddance. I'm sure we'll have trouble with her again, but it'll take her a while to build up her power base.' He was remarkably casual about the subject, Vale felt. 'But the epilogue to the Alberich business is that some of those who were taking an interest in his offers have since dropped out of circulation. Or so I'm told. Which leads me to wonder why you're here and asking after him.'\n\n'But what was he wanting collaborators for?' Vale asked. 'Surely there must have been some talk about his ultimate plans? Offers of potential rewards? Even speculation would be useful.'\n\n'Yes. Yes, you have a very good point there.' Silver frowned thoughtfully. 'There has been significantly little detail available. My best guess would be that his offers were vague enough that only the desperate were attracted. Sadly, there are enough of those \u2013 people who've lost their patrons, who've come out as losers in intrigues, and so on. Poor fools.'\n\n'You're surprisingly sympathetic.'\n\n'Not sympathy so much as pity,' Silver said. 'Sympathy would imply I might even try to help them. Pity is much safer. It can be delivered from on high without getting involved. I pity them. I sympathize with you, detective.'\n\n'Me?' Vale said, surprised.\n\n'I warned you not to go to Venice.' Silver's gaze was very direct now, and there was an odd intimacy to his tone, a suggestion that the two of them shared some sort of connection. 'I know what sort of effect a high-chaos world has on an unprepared human. I didn't want to lose you, detective. And I'm still not sure whether I will or not.'\n\nVale drew back, affronted by Silver's manner. But if he was to be honest with himself, what truly repelled him was that he somehow understood what Silver meant. It was as if Silver was talking to another of his own kind \u2013 another Fae \u2013 and the thought of that revolted every atom of his being. The brief enjoyment he'd taken from sparring with Silver faded, and his earlier ennui threatened to sweep over him again. He'd been able to hold it off, convincing himself that his actions would somehow be worthwhile and make a difference. But now it all seemed so shallow once more, and ultimately irrelevant. He hungered for the sheer fire of their earlier conversation, the keen delight of matching wits with Silver. And at the same time he found that desire disturbing.\n\n'So all you know is that Alberich had a plan in mind,' he finally said, trying to get back to the subject at hand. Winters needed his help. That much was important. 'And while some of your kind may be involved, they are currently incommunicado.'\n\n'Succinct and accurate,' Silver said, and yawned again. 'If anything else has happened within the last few days, then I haven't yet heard. But you must agree that you now know more than you did. My debt is paid.'\n\nVale was forced to nod in agreement. 'I accept this. I could only wish, for once, that you knew a little more than you do.'\n\n'But, my dear Vale, we're hardly finished.' Silver leaned forward, his face avid and hungry for information. 'You haven't yet told me what you know, or why you came here to ask all these questions. Obviously Alberich's making his move. Is there nothing I can say or do that would persuade you to share information?'\n\nIt was an interesting quandary. Silver would pay dearly for news on Alberich's attack on the Library, but telling him might put Winters and Strongrock in danger. 'I'm not sure what you have that I might want...' Vale said.\n\n'My turn to play detective!' Silver said gleefully. His lips curved in a smile, much as they usually did when appraising a woman. 'The fact that you won't tell me is information in itself. I deduce that Alberich has caused, or is causing, some danger to the Library, which explains Miss Winters' absence. Naturally you don't want to tell me that. You'd be far too afraid of what I might do with the information.'\n\n'You'd be taking quite a gamble if you tried to sell that to other Fae as reliable intelligence,' Vale said blandly. But he felt his stomach sink. Silver's speculation was far too accurate, and there was no convenient way to turn aside his guesses without an outright lie.\n\n'You aren't denying it,' Silver pointed out.\n\n'Our deal doesn't involve me giving you any further details,' Vale said. 'By agreement or by denial.'\n\nYet... was news of the attack really that significant? It seemed to be generally known that Alberich took an interest in the Library. And there was one thing Vale very much wanted to know, and Silver might just be able to tell him. 'On the other hand...' he said thoughtfully.\n\nSilver's eyes glittered. 'Yes?'\n\n'Have any Fae of moderate power entered London recently? The sort of person whom Alberich was recruiting? Or Lady Guantes herself?'\n\n'Really, my dear Vale, how do you expect me to know something like that?' But the smirk on Silver's lips suggested that he had the answer.\n\n'You are the spider in the local web,' Vale said. 'Any flies entering it would catch your attention. My question stands.'\n\n'Reasonable. And in return, my question would be: what precisely is going on?' Silver inspected his fingernails. 'Do take your time. I'm sure we're not in a hurry.'\n\n'Alberich has begun an attack on the Library,' Vale said. The tension in the room hummed like a violin string as Silver locked eyes with him. He shrugged. 'As you guessed.'\n\n'That's all?' Silver demanded.\n\n'It seems quite enough to me.' And Vale knew that he had far less grasp of the wider implications than Winters or Strongrock. One more demonstration of his insignificance. One more indication of how little power any mere human had, in the greater chess game between warring powers. 'Now I believe you were going to answer my question.'\n\nSilver scowled petulantly. 'Very well. No. Nobody with that level of power, or stronger, has come to London within the last month. Or to be fair, if they have, then they've been lying remarkably low. And certainly Lady Guantes isn't here.'\n\n'I see,' Vale said. Zayanna claimed to be a refugee from her previous patron and to have just arrived in London. But why should she have avoided Silver, to the extent that he didn't even know she was present? It was definitely suspicious. He was tempted to ask for Silver's assistance in locating her, but that would have placed too much information in Silver's hands.\n\nVale rose to his feet. 'Thank you for your assistance. Incidentally, I'd recommend getting more discreet guards. If I could notice that sniper, then so could others.'\n\nSilver didn't bother standing up. 'Most kind of you to suggest it,' he said bitterly. 'Unfortunately, due to certain people stealing my transport a few months back, when I was in Venice, I was forced to leave most of my entourage there.'\n\nThe full implications of that statement trickled into Vale's mind, forming a horrific picture. 'Your servants, your maids and bodyguards \u2013 you left them there? In another world, with no way of returning here?'\n\n'I could hardly bring them back myself,' Silver complained. 'I had enough trouble bringing Johnson and my luggage along. Don't look at me like that, Vale. I'm sure they're quite capable of making new lives for themselves. They're young, strong, healthy...'\n\n'I'll see myself out,' Vale said, and slammed the door behind him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "It was ten o'clock, and the reception should be in full swing. Irene clung to Kai's scaled back, her oilcloth cloak floating out behind her in the rising wind, as he hovered high above the Winter Palace. The city beneath them was a grid of lit points against the darkness: they were too high for Irene to see any of the buildings clearly at this time of night, but she could make out the street lamps and the glaring illuminations around the larger buildings. The lights on sleighs in flight flickered in regular paths around the sleigh-port. There weren't any clouds to block her view. Yet.\n\nKai was concentrating as he glided through the air, which barred conversation on his part and allowed Irene to run through her mental checklist for the operation.\n\nEvening clothes for both of them: obtained. Even if they were ready-made, rather than personally tailored. (Kai had been rather upset that he couldn't get a military uniform, since that was apparently the thing for young men to wear to balls. But Irene had pointed out everything that might go wrong, such as Kai not knowing the details of his supposed regiment, and he had reluctantly given in.) Map of Winter Palace and theorized location of book: memorized. And all papers had been destroyed. It was now more dangerous than useful to be carrying the Library documents around. Transformation of Kai into dragon, to rouse storm and land on roof: successfully achieved.\n\nThe next step was the storm itself. There would of course be sentries on the roof, but very few would be looking up while being hammered by wind and rain. This explained Irene's heavy hooded oilcloth cape, which would hopefully keep her mostly dry. Enough to pass as a guest when inside, anyway. If she and Kai were subjected to serious scrutiny, then they were already deep in trouble.\n\n'I hold the winds and am ready to release them,' Kai said. His words echoed in the thin air, and Irene tightened her grip on his scales. 'Are you prepared?'\n\n'Do it,' Irene said.\n\nThe storm gathered as she watched, clouds spinning together into a great dark whorl that hid the city below. Gusts of wind tugged at her, and she plastered herself even tighter to the dragon's back, drawing her hood around her face. He swung through the air in a tightening spiral, his wings glittering against the darkness on either side of her. Deep in the clouds lightning flashed, and thunder followed without a moment's pause.\n\nKai had said this wouldn't tire him, but she'd insisted that he get a few hours' sleep earlier. He'd watched through the night while she slept on the sleigh, and she didn't know how much sleep dragons needed, but she knew they needed some. They'd taken a room in a cheap hotel, where the woman at the desk had leered at them, jumping to obvious conclusions. The break had kept them off the street, too, enabling them to avoid the increasing numbers of police. Kai had slept like the dead, his chest barely moving. Irene sat in the rickety chair and memorized their maps and plans, and wondered from time to time: What would I do without you? It's been less than a year, and already I rely on you to be there when I need you, I fall asleep on your shoulder...\n\nImminent disaster first, she reminded herself. Personal issues later.\n\n'The storm's as heavy as I can make it without risking a gale,' Kai rumbled. 'I'm taking us down.'\n\nHe dropped like a hawk through the clouds, accelerating as if the laws of gravity and air resistance were optional rather than obligatory. Maybe they were, to him. The bitter chill cut into Irene's hands, her elegant lace gloves offering no protection, and the wind moulded her cape against her body. Suddenly there was rain all around them, lashing against them, streaming across Kai's body in thick rivulets and outlining his scales. He kept on descending through it, as gracefully and uncaringly as if navigating a summer breeze. Irene lowered her head and clung on for dear life.\n\nThey broke through the cloud and continued falling, like a lift in a high-speed crash. Irene wished she could think of less dramatic similes, but then it became difficult to think at all. The rain slammed down on her and Kai like a waterfall, oozing under her cape and slashing at her face, making it impossible to see clearly.\n\nKai's wings spread with a thud of air like a miniature thunderclap, and their descent abruptly slowed. It was probably a contradiction of the natural laws of inertia and force equals mass times acceleration, or whatever the relevant equations were. But if the universe wasn't paying attention, Irene wasn't going to raise the issue. He settled gently on a level stretch of roof, his claws grating on the slate surface. If there were guards up here, then they were all sensibly out of the rain and not watching the roof. Good. First objective achieved.\n\nIrene slid from Kai's back and peered through the pouring rain, getting her bearings. Over to her right she could see the onion-dome of the Palace Church. That must mean that the nearer crosspiece building, between the Winter Palace and the Hermitage proper, was St George's Hall. The imperial throne was there \u2013 though hopefully they wouldn't be running into Her Imperial Majesty tonight. Further round to her left was the Great Hall, scene of the night's reception, its windows blazing with light despite the enshrouding rain. So she and Kai should be directly above some of the unoccupied royal apartments. Well, technically they were directly above the servants' attics, which were directly above said royal apartments, but servants' attics never made it onto the official maps.\n\nNext to her, Kai shuddered, and the air rippled around him. And then he was standing next to her, also shrouded in an oilcloth cape. 'There's a door and stairs over there,' he said, pointing to a shadow on one of the roof's exterior crenellations. 'Let's get out of the rain.'\n\nIt was close enough, and Irene nodded. She had to hold his arm to make her way across the wet slate, even barefoot as she was. The door was locked, but opened to the Language, and they both breathed a sigh of relief when they were inside and out of the storm.\n\nAs expected, these were the servants' attics, and therefore utilitarian rather than Models of Great Architecture. Irene pulled her bag from under her coat and carried out emergency repairs to her hair. She dried her feet with the towel she'd been carrying, before pulling on stockings and dancing slippers. Then they bundled capes and towel into a convenient cupboard and headed down the nearest flight of stairs, hopefully looking like lost reception guests. They didn't pass any servants on the way, though Irene heard the odd soft-shoed scuffle in the background.\n\nWhen they reached the second floor, the decor abruptly changed to luxurious, but not overdone. The floors and walls of rooms were inlaid marble, the corridors were also of marble, and the furniture featured gilt, carving and velvet cushions. The paintings on the walls had probably been commissioned or collected from famous artists. (Visual arts had never been Irene's best subject. She could barely tell a Rembrandt from a Raphael without a guidebook.)\n\nKai looked around with clear approval. 'Not bad,' he said. 'Quite tolerable. Which part are we heading for now?' He paused to straighten his cravat in one of the mirrors.\n\nIrene shoved a comb back into a wind-tossed section of her hair and looked glumly at her elegant, though slightly damp reflection. It was a nice dress, a pretty light-green silk-and-tulle affair with puffed sleeves and full skirts (damp around the edges), which left her shoulders and neck bare. She'd accessorized it with arm-length lace gloves and silk slippers and had put up her hair with combs and pins, but despite all that, next to Kai she looked like... well, like someone who'd dressed up for the occasion. Kai, in his frock coat, cravat, waistcoat and well-cut trousers, looked like someone who should be at an imperial reception. Even hosting the reception. On him, the clothing looked natural.\n\nShe decided it wasn't worth unpicking that little knot of resentment, and she thrust it aside. 'Along here and down the staircase at the far end,' she instructed. 'Then down two floors. And if we can avoid anyone noticing, so much the better.' The storm was still crashing down outside, and when she passed the windows she could hear the wind like ripping fabric and the rain rattling against the glass.\n\nThey made it to the ground floor without being stopped. As they descended, the architecture became more and more lush, heading towards sheer extravagance, but retaining just enough control to avoid gaudiness. Rich marble sheathed everything, as pale and smooth as cream. Gilt ornamentation gleamed as if it had only been polished within the last hour. The sounds of music drifted very faintly through the corridors.\n\nA servant approached, sleek in his black uniform. 'I beg your pardon, sir, madam,' he said, effortlessly identifying the more aristocratic of the two of them and addressing him first. 'The reception is taking place in the Great Hall. If you require directions...'\n\nKai looked down his nose at the man. 'You may go about your business,' he said. 'The lady and I know our way.'\n\nWith a bow, the servant retreated. But Irene knew he'd only be the first in a line of helpful minions trying to herd them towards the other guests. She took Kai's arm and led him round a corner, into a slightly less-impressive side corridor and through an only moderately impressive doorway, into an unimpressive plain stone staircase leading down.\n\nKai sniffed. 'I can smell food,' he murmured.\n\n'The kitchens are down here, in the basements,' Irene replied. It was a narrow staircase, and she had to pull in her skirts so that they wouldn't brush the walls. 'They should be over, um\u2014' She consulted her mental map. 'West and north-west-ish. Thataway. We need to go north-east from here, heading under the church.'\n\nAs they hurried down the dark corridor, Irene pondered the likelihood of them getting stopped by guards. She was astonished they'd come as far as they had. True, the Winter Palace must be afflicted by the usual security blind spot, as in 'the outer walls are well guarded, so anyone inside must belong there'. But even so, given the rumours of rebellion and secession, and the government crackdowns, shouldn't there be a bit more security inside the palace? The further they went, the more nervous she became. She started to worry that they were actually being lured into some vast trap, and were being drawn well inside so that they'd have no chance of escape...\n\n'Stop right there!' came an order.\n\nIt was almost a relief. Irene obediently stayed where she was, one hand on Kai's sleeve. Only three guards defended the archive's doorway, their ultimate goal \u2013 good heavens, what on earth were they thinking? Though to be fair, the door behind them did look heavily locked and barred.\n\n'Approach and identify yourself!' came the next order.\n\nPerfect. Irene walked forward. Even better, she could see which of the guards was clearly in command. She slipped a hand into her bodice, then withdrew it and showed it to the lead guard, as though she'd just pulled something out that only he should see. 'You perceive that this is full identification, and that we are authorized to view the contents of this archive,' she said.\n\nThe guard snapped into a terrified salute, his back straight with the rigidity of panic. The other two guards followed suit a moment later. 'Yes, ma'am,' he said quickly. 'Absolutely, ma'am!'\n\n'You may open the door and assist me,' Irene said briskly, wondering exactly who he thought she was. Probably Oprichniki. Only secret police get that sort of reaction. 'Your men will remain outside. There's no need for them to hear this.'\n\nHe nodded and pulled a key from his belt, which he quickly turned in the lock. There was a small noise, almost a sigh, from the door as he pulled it open. Irene suspected there had been some sort of magic alarm on it. Now, just so long as the guard stayed confused until they were inside...\n\nThey were into the next room, and Kai had closed the door behind them, before the guard shook his head and frowned. But Kai had been expecting that, and had him in a chokehold before he could raise the alarm. Irene left him to throttle the fellow into unconsciousness \u2013 there was no need to kill him, after all \u2013 and looked around. They were in a small anteroom, with another heavily barred door on the far side. All right, so the security wasn't that laughable. There were rows of ledgers in bookshelves to one side, presumably with lists of items held in the repository beyond. And there was a little desk, with a woman in heavy robes trying to hide under it.\n\nIrene walked over and leaned on the desk. 'That's not actually working, you know,' she said gently.\n\nThe woman pulled herself upright, flinching back against the wall. 'I won't help you. I will defend this place with my life!'\n\nIrene nodded understandingly. 'That's quite understandable,' she agreed. 'But you now perceive that I am someone who has a right to be here, and a right to be given the location of a particular item.' Her head was starting to ache.\n\n'Oh.' The woman stayed pressed against the wall. But she looked a little calmer now, as if Irene was a known and understandable threat, rather than something completely unpredictable. 'Ah, what item would your excellency wish to see?'\n\n'A book,' Irene said, daring to hope. 'It's called The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, and it's by Jan Potocki. Where is it?'\n\nThe woman edged from behind her desk, staying on the opposite side to Irene, and hurried over to the ledgers. She pulled one out and leafed through it, muttering to herself. Her heavy embroidered sleeves swung as she turned the pages. She finally came to a stop and rested her finger on an entry. 'Here it is \u2013 wait, who did you say you were again?'\n\nKai rapped her on the back of her neck and caught her before she could hit the ground, while Irene bent to look at the ledger. It was indeed an entry for the book they wanted, but as Irene read it she blinked in shock. 'I don't believe it,' she said out loud. 'It was released to the Empress herself two days ago, for personal bedtime reading!'\n\nKai propped the woman up against her desk. 'Please tell me you're joking,' he said.\n\n'I wish I were.' Irene weighed steal book from palace's underground sanctuary against steal book from imperial bedroom. An imperial bedroom was probably even more heavily guarded than an underground sanctuary. Marvellous. 'Well, we can't just stand around here,' she said with a sigh. 'Let's go and try again.'\n\n'How do you know it was for bedtime reading?' Kai asked.\n\n'The lady in question signed it out herself. Apparently she has a sense of humour.' Not that that was likely to save Kai or Irene's necks, if they were caught mid-theft. 'I almost regret accepting the mission now.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'Because I'm quite happy to steal a book from storage where nobody's ever going to read it,' Irene explained. 'But I do feel a bit guilty about snatching it mid-read from someone's bedside table.'\n\nThe guards on the door were only too happy to wave them past, after being told that their commanding officer was checking the security inside. Irene led the way back in the direction from which they'd come. 'Back up the stairs,' she murmured, 'up to the first floor, then we take a run at the bedroom.'\n\n'That's not a very detailed plan.' But Kai wasn't complaining, simply resigned.\n\n'There have been times when I had detailed plans,' Irene said wistfully. 'I look back at them and wonder why I never realized how lucky I was.'\n\nThey'd reached the ground floor and were heading for the stairway they'd descended earlier, when the same servant as before caught them. This time he had several other guests in his wake and was clearly chivvying them along. 'Sir!' he expostulated in Kai's direction. 'Her Imperial Majesty is about to give her address. You should be in the Great Hall.'\n\nKai glanced at Irene, and she read the same thought in his eyes. Better to go along and blend in with the crowd than make a scene. They could edge out later and get back to the search. And it really would be suspicious to be caught elsewhere in the Winter Palace while the Empress was giving a speech. 'Thank you,' he said to the man. 'I was just heading in that direction. I take it this is the quickest way?'\n\nThe servant refrained from rolling his eyes at the boundless idiocy of the aristocracy and quickly led Irene, Kai and the rest of his flock down a succession of corridors, each more luxurious than the last. They accumulated more bystanders on the way, and Irene was grateful that she and Kai could hide in the middle of the growing crowd.\n\nThe Great Hall itself was vast: the floor consisted of inlaid marble mosaics, but the walls and ceiling were white and gold, as perfect as snow and sunlight. Huge blazing chandeliers hung from above, the candlelight glaring off the gilt so brightly that they were a challenge to behold. At the far end of the chamber, over fifty yards away, a throne on a raised dais was canopied and draped in scarlet. The silver dress of its occupant seemed to gleam with its own light.\n\nBetween them and her, the crowd shifted and jostled for position. Young maidens in their first season at court were in plain white, with ostrich feathers and flowers pinned into their hair, and huge masses of silk skirts. Older women like Irene, or married ones, wore pastels or deeper shades \u2013 and jewellery rather than flowers. Most of the men present were in military uniform, often with a dress sword hanging at one hip and a short staff at the other. A few were either in well-cut civilian clothing, like Kai, or in robes that were somewhere between academic and ecclesiastical. Some older women wore those robes too, and Irene noticed that they generally stood apart from others of their gender. Around the edges scurried servants in the palace livery, but nobody was looking at them: all attention was on Her Imperial Majesty.\n\nAs the last group was shooed into the Great Hall, the Empress rose to her feet. Everyone went down on one knee, from the advisors surrounding her dais to the guards by the entrance. And it wasn't just overdone obeisance, or the effect of magic. The Undying Empress, to give her the full title, had genuine presence and charisma. The loyalty that the crowd offered her wasn't feigned. Irene had been in the presence of dragon kings and Fae lords, and while she wouldn't rank this Catherine the Great's authority on quite that level, she was still extremely impressive.\n\nFortunately the Empress wasn't in the mood for a long speech. After a few firmly delivered statements about the unity of her empire, the loyalty of her subjects and her maternal love for said subjects, she resumed her seat. Everyone promptly rose to their feet, conversation broke out like wildfire, and the small orchestra in a corner of the room started playing.\n\n'Irene...' Kai said hopefully.\n\nThe only way out of the hall was the way they'd come in. Well, there was another exit behind the Empress, but that wasn't an option. And it would be too obvious if they tried to get away immediately. 'We just circulate,' Irene said firmly. 'I'm not dancing unless we have to.'\n\nKai sighed and offered her his arm as they began to drift round the edge of the hall, catching snippets of conversation. While this included topics normal for any state occasion \u2013 upcoming wars, family history, possible betrothals, big-game hunting in Mongolia \u2013 there was a nervous edge to the talk. People weren't precisely paranoid, but every so often spontaneous praise for the Undying Empress and her glorious empire would get thrown into the talk, as though it would grease the rest of the conversation and slip it past any listeners.\n\nThere was a noticeable gap in the crowd ahead of them. At the centre of it stood a man in formal clothing like Kai's, having a casual conversation with some of the robed men and women. At least, it looked casual on his part. From their attitudes and posture, one might think it was a matter of life and death.\n\n'What do you think?' Kai murmured. 'High authority, definitely, but which area?'\n\n'Secret police,' Irene answered. 'Think nice innocent thoughts\u2014'\n\nShe broke off as the man turned to sweep his gaze across the ballroom. He was nobody she'd ever met before. His flaxen-pale hair was cropped short and he was clean-shaven. And though he was middle-aged, he showed no signs of belly or jowls. His eyes were a clear grey, as cold as marble, and they looked out over the crowd with a glitter of absolute hunger: for power, for answers, for domination. But there was something about those eyes that she recognized, and she added it to the man's posture, the way he tilted his head, the way he looked at her...\n\n'Alberich,' she breathed, her throat dry with terror."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "He had stolen a new body, looked quite at home here and knew exactly who they were. Surely this was positive, Irene tried to convince herself, as she tried not to panic. It was an unparalleled opportunity to get information \u2013 maybe even to end the whole threat, here and now. She should think optimistically.\n\nBut cold dread ran the opposite way in her veins and spread ice round her heart. This was also an unparalleled opportunity to get killed, or worse. Alberich was as much above her as she was above the thugs they'd dodged in Poland, when they first entered this world. He was hundreds of years old. He'd betrayed the Library and learned the Fae's darkest secrets. He skinned Librarians for fun and profit, and then wore their skins as disguises. He wasn't careless. And if Irene had recognized him, then the odds were ten to one that he was prepared for that.\n\n'Irene,' Kai murmured, reminding her of his presence. His muscles were tense under her arm. 'Shall I take him down? If I reached him before he could react...'\n\n'Too obvious,' Irene said regretfully. 'He knows you're a dragon, Kai. He's not stupid.'\n\n'Oh yes, you did say he sold information about me to the Fae \u2013 and caused my kidnapping.' Kai's eyes were like dark ice. 'But he might be overconfident. Shall I test that?'\n\nIrene weighed the possibilities. An open assault on Alberich, against all his defences and in the middle of a hall full of soldiers and wizards, might well be suicidal. And she didn't want to get herself killed. On the other hand, if it disposed of him and ended his threat to the Library, then it might be worth it. She'd refused Bradamant's suggestion that they act as bait, because they didn't have a good way to reach Alberich. Well, here he was, right in front of her. What was she going to do now?\n\nShe reached out and caught the arm of an older woman, a gaudy battleship in violet satin and diamonds. 'Excuse me, madam,' she said hastily, before the other woman could shake her off, and nodded towards Alberich. 'Who is that gentleman over there?'\n\nThe woman went so pale that the rouge stood out on her cheeks in two scarlet spots. 'You must mean Count Nicolai Ilyich,' she said, trying and failing to sound casual. 'I thought everyone knew who he was.'\n\n'We've just arrived from Paris. I don't know anyone. Except the Empress, of course.' Irene forced a laugh. 'Is he someone important?'\n\n'He's the head of the Oprichniki, and if you have any sense you'll stay well out of his way.' The woman shook Irene's hand off her arm and sailed away, as fast as was commensurate with dignity.\n\nAlberich was still watching, though he didn't try to approach. A growing space was forming around Irene and Kai as well, probably because people could follow Alberich's gaze and didn't care to be associated with its target.\n\nIrene took a deep breath. 'Kai, I'm about to do something reckless,' she said, 'and I need you to be standing by as backup.'\n\n'No,' Kai said flatly. 'That is not going to happen. I will not let you do this.'\n\n'I'm not particularly wild about it either.' That was the understatement of the decade. She'd rather walk up a volcano that was emitting little pre-eruption burps. 'But he can use the Language as well as I can, if not better. And you know what I can do...'\n\nKai scowled, not even trying to hide his anger. 'So you want me to stay out of range of his voice.'\n\n'I may need you to rescue me.' She squeezed his arm. 'I don't trust just anyone to rescue me, you know.'\n\n'Besides, he can't do anything dramatic to you without exposing himself, in a public place such as this,' Kai said, coming to the same conclusion as Irene.\n\n'Yes, that's rather what I'm hoping,' she agreed. 'And if you hear him yelling something like Guard, arrest these rebel spies! \u2013 then that's the cue to run.'\n\nBefore Kai could delay her any further, she turned and walked towards Alberich.\n\nHer curtsey was the polite dip and ruffle of skirts appropriate for a young woman when approaching a man of superior rank. There was certainly no genuine respect behind it. Alberich knew that, and Irene knew that he knew it. But she couldn't risk being noticed as unusual. Yet.\n\n'As polite as ever,' Alberich said. His voice had a different timbre from their last encounter, but of course he'd been wearing someone else's skin that time. Some other victim who'd died so that he could disguise himself and use their identity. 'I was afraid that you'd try and lose yourself in the crowd, Ray.'\n\nIrene smiled sweetly, not wanting him to see how much his use of her birth name annoyed her. 'But then I might have lost sight of you, Alberich. You're far too dangerous for that.'\n\n'And you didn't even bring me a glass of champagne.'\n\n'Oh, come now. You know I'd poison it.'\n\n'You must have so many questions.' His thin-lipped smile cut across his face like a scar. 'Why don't you ask some of them?'\n\n'Let's be frank, shall we?' There was no way of knowing whether or not he'd tell the truth. He might even be playing for time, simply keeping her busy until a trap closed on her. But possibly \u2013 just possibly \u2013 he was vain enough to boast, or careless enough to give something away. 'Why are you here?'\n\n'To speak to you, of course.' He spread his hands in mock confession. 'All this way, just to talk to one little Librarian. I hope you aren't going to waste my time.'\n\nIrene ignored the threat. She was ignoring so many other possible dangers, so it was comparatively easy to add one more to the pile of Deliberately Burying Head in Sand and Hoping They'll Go Away. 'What I don't understand, to be entirely honest\u2014'\n\n'Oh, please be honest,' Alberich cut in.\n\nIrene smiled again, because it was that or glare back at him. Her fear hadn't disappeared: it was a constant whisper at the back of her mind. But her anger let her keep her composure and snipe back at him, looking for an opening. It was the best argument she'd come across yet for the deliberate cultivation of certain deadly sins. 'I'm not sure how you knew to be here,' she finished.\n\nAlberich looked pleased. 'Now that is an intelligent question. You're trying to find out how much I know, before deciding on a course of action.'\n\n'Well, wouldn't anyone?'\n\nHe shook his head sadly. 'You'd be painfully surprised. But in return for my answer...' He glanced towards the couples currently occupying the central area, moving in pairs through the steps of a polonaise. 'I believe I'd like a dance.'\n\nIrene was momentarily taken aback. 'Why?' she demanded.\n\n'Mostly because it'll put you off-balance and annoy your associate,' Alberich replied. 'You're only irritated because you didn't think of suggesting it first.'\n\nIrene considered her position. Being out on the dance floor didn't seem much more dangerous than standing here talking. She was already well into the danger zone. She might as well play along and see where it went. 'Very well,' she agreed. 'So, how did you know to be here?'\n\n'Once I found out which world you were coming to \u2013 dear me, you weren't expecting that bit, were you? I assure you it's quite true.' Alberich's eyes were penetrating again, cataloguing her reactions. 'In any case, once I knew you were heading here, I came here myself and took a position of authority. The head of the Oprichniki hears all the news, after all. When I received reports of the disturbance at the sleigh-port, I knew you were in St Petersburg. And when that storm blew up so suddenly over the Winter Palace tonight, well...'\n\nIrene seethed. In retrospect, she'd left an obvious trail for anyone who knew the signs to follow. Her only excuse was that she hadn't expected anyone here to be looking for her. But like all excuses, when actually tested, it sounded rather hollow. Her professional pride was stung. 'I'm extremely embarrassed,' she said through gritted teeth. 'I had no idea\u2014'\n\n'Well, of course not,' Alberich said. 'Now, as we agreed, a dance. They're playing a waltz. You can waltz, I hope?' He offered her his hand.\n\n'Of course,' Irene said, taking his hand. Her skin crawled as he touched her, even through the lace of her glove. Further out in the crowd she could see Kai, and the leashed tension in his body. She caught his eye and shook her head slightly. Don't do anything. Yet. 'But how did you find out I was coming here?'\n\n'My dear Ray, you're far too trusting.' He led her out onto the floor, and she could feel the stares of the assembled dignitaries.\n\n'Will I regret agreeing to this dance?' Fear was spreading again, like ice in her heart and throat, but she met his gaze as she turned to face him.\n\nAlberich paused just long enough for the fear to blossom into terror, then he smiled at her again. 'Did you think I meant you're too trusting of me? Well, yes, but not right here and now. I need answers, and it's difficult to get those when the other person can't trust you enough to make a deal. Torture really isn't as effective as they say.'\n\n'I'm sure you'd know,' Irene said, keeping her tone as light as she could. All around the floor, partners were smiling at each other as the musicians picked up the pace of the waltz. She set her lips in a deliberately upward curl, gazing into Alberich's eyes as he settled his other hand on her waist. 'But then who shouldn't I trust \u2013 what did you mean?'\n\n'I mean that I was told you were being sent to world B-1165.' He was ready for the stutter in her gait, and smoothly guided her into the first steps of the dance. 'Surely you're not so naive as to think that all Librarians are as faithful to their cause as you are?'\n\nIrene kept the smile pinned on her face, but her thoughts went round in little circles. He's suggesting someone in the Library betrayed me. But is he telling the truth, or dissembling to stop me suspecting someone else? Or is it a double-bluff because he knows I'll assume he's lying... 'Nobody's perfect,' she said eventually. 'Not even me.'\n\n'So you've been thinking about what I said.' They turned together in the smooth pivots of the waltz.\n\n'Well, I'm not stupid.' Unless one counted getting into this entire situation as total stupidity, in which case Irene had already lost that argument \u2013 and probably her life, too. 'But I want to know more about your threat to the Library, before I make any irreparable decisions.'\n\n'That's easy enough.' They moved in a bubble of space amid the other dancers. Nobody wanted to get too close to the head of the Oprichniki. 'Unless it submits to me, the Library will be destroyed. And unless you give me the information I want...'\n\n'I will be destroyed too?' Irene suggested.\n\n'You're taking this very well.'\n\n'I've had practice,' Irene said regretfully. 'Death threats seem to crop up twice a week these days. I'm working on getting past the sheer terror and onto the bargaining stage.'\n\n'I knew there was a reason I liked you,' Alberich said approvingly. They negotiated a corner turn stylishly, and Irene took the opportunity to glance across the crowd and spot Kai. He was still there. In retrospect, perhaps she should have told him to steal the book while Alberich was occupied. But she wasn't sure he'd have agreed to leave her there with Alberich.\n\n'When we spoke before \u2013 well, when you sent me those threatening messages \u2013 you said you wanted to know what \"the book\" said. You meant the volume of Grimm tales, I assume?' He'd tried to kill her over it, after all. If there was yet another book involved, that introduced a whole new level of complexity.\n\n'Correct. There was an anomalous story in that edition.' Alberich must have caught the flicker in her eyes, as she considered claiming ignorance. 'Come now, Ray, we both know you read it. Anyone would have done so, under the circumstances. Someone like yourself certainly would.'\n\n'\"Someone like myself?\"' Irene asked, playing for time.\n\n'Someone who's good at being a Librarian. Notice that I don't say \"a good Librarian\".' They moved together in the waltz, their steps balanced and precise. 'Someone who does the job well \u2013 not just someone who's devoted to the Library's philosophy. That's why I want to recruit you.'\n\nIrene's first impulse was a rather stupid pride. After all, how many people were complimented by the Library's arch-traitor, who admired them enough to want to recruit them in person? The second impulse was sheer revulsion. If he thinks I'd work for him, after everything he's done, then what does he think of me? But the third impulse, the one that kept her feet moving and her face smiling, was simple, cold calculation. How can I use this?\n\n'I can't trust you,' she said. He'd expect her to be suspicious. 'Perhaps I should just run for it.'\n\n'The Palace is guarded.' He swept her round another turn, his hand warm in the small of her back, gloved in a dead man's skin. 'I don't mean just by casual guards, either. I mean by alert guards, who have been warned about possible revolutionaries \u2013 guards ready to shoot to kill and have the necromancers ask questions later. There are even guards on the roof now. The Language can't outrun a speeding bullet.'\n\nWas he telling the truth? She wasn't sure. But was it possible? Yes, very possible. 'And if I answer your questions, and tell you what you want to know?'\n\n'Then you'll be kept under arrest here till the Library has fallen. But you'll live.'\n\n'And Kai?'\n\n'He can have the cell next to you,' Alberich said generously.\n\n'You're very certain that the Library will fall.'\n\n'If I had the least doubt, I wouldn't be stopping to have this conversation with you here and now.'\n\nIrene would have liked to think Alberich was lying about that, too. But nothing in his voice suggested falsehood or even uncertainty. He meant every word of it. 'How are you doing it?' she asked.\n\nAlberich shook his head. 'You find out if you join me.'\n\nWell, she hadn't really expected that one to work. And now she really was beginning to panic, in a carefully controlled way. He wasn't even going to gloat and conveniently provide information. Her whole attempted interrogation was a total failure. She hadn't learned anything, except how he'd managed to trace her here.\n\nPerhaps it was time to go for the nuclear option.\n\n'Don't,' Alberich said. His smile had gone, and now his expression was all cold business.\n\n'Don't what?' Irene said innocently. Damn, if he'd guessed what she was thinking...\n\n'You're considering using the Language to strip my skin from me and expose me in public.' His hand tightened on hers. 'You already did that to me once before, Ray. I don't make the same mistake twice. I've taken precautions.'\n\nHe might be telling the truth. Or he might be bluffing. This situation was impossible. But if he was bluffing and he was vulnerable in that way, then surely he wouldn't have brought it up in the first place. Irene cursed silently. That would have worked so well. Alberich distracted, everyone turning on him, she and Kai escaping in the confusion. 'I want a guarantee of safety for my parents,' she said.\n\n'Why should I care about your parents?' Alberich sounded like one of her mentors from the Library now. 'Ray, you're good at thinking outside the lines, but your problem is that you think too small. Your parents haven't inconvenienced me. I don't hold a grudge against them. I'm not the sort of sadist who'd hunt down your family to spite you. When you're in my service, you can keep them as safe as you like.'\n\nHe doesn't know. The thought detonated at the back of her head in a sunburst of illumination. He doesn't know my parents are Librarians, or he wouldn't be so quick to agree. He thinks they're just ordinary humans. And everyone in the Library who knows me, knows that my parents are Librarians. Which almost certainly means that whoever told him to find me here isn't a Librarian.\n\nHer sudden surge of relief must have shown in her face, for Alberich nodded paternally. 'There, you see? You need to learn to trust me, Ray. I'm not your enemy here.'\n\nThe circle of waltzers turned on its invisible hub, spinning Alberich and Irene towards the end of the room where the Empress sat among her advisors, watching the reception with a gracious smile.\n\n'You're very good at making me forget what you are,' Irene said. That was true. She could dance with him like this, trading insults and questions, and it was almost... entertaining. Challenging. Exciting. Perhaps it was the feeling of security at being in such a public place, with so many other people present. But it was a false security, as threadbare as her fake identity here, and she was still entirely vulnerable.\n\n'Redefining one's self is something we all have to do.' Alberich's tone was oddly serious, as if this was more important than the security of the Library itself, or her own life. 'You have to ask: Am I just a Librarian? Is this all I am, all that I ever will be? Or can I actually transform myself into something more?'\n\n'This sounds like an argument for transhumanism,' Irene said. 'Evolution to the next stage.'\n\n'Is that what they're calling it now? It's hardly a new idea. The only problem is that it's difficult to imagine something entirely new. We use the words and definitions of the past to shape our ideas. Something that is genuinely the next evolutionary step is unlikely to resemble anything we can imagine. Even the best books on the subject are limited.'\n\nShe'd never thought of Alberich as a science-fiction reader before. 'Maybe you're right about the limitations of imagination \u2013 and not just for humans. I spoke with an elder Fae a few months back. She was encouraging the younger ones to leave humanity behind, to become defined by stories instead. She'd never consider anything outside that sphere.'\n\n'That's where both the Fae and the dragons fail.' Alberich's eyes had that hungry look again, though it wasn't directed at Irene. It was directed at the whole world. 'They are defined either by narrative or by reality. They don't go beyond that. The only person who can ever set bounds on you should be yourself.'\n\nIt all sounded perfectly reasonable, but from Irene's perspective, the fact that Alberich was a murderer and traitor suggested there were flaws in his philosophy. 'But you're allied with the Fae...' she said.\n\n'I use the Fae. Both sides in this struggle are ultimately doomed to failure. The dragons, the Fae \u2013 both of them incapable of coming to any agreement, blinkered by their own limitations. They're sterile, Ray. Moribund. What's the point of preserving a system where nobody wins? The most you can achieve is that everyone continues this stalemate for eternity.'\n\n'And neither side actually cares about the humans in the middle...' Irene could see where this argument was going. She'd had it demonstrated to her only a few months ago, when Kai was kidnapped. Both sides had been on the verge of a war, and neither had seemed particularly interested in the worlds in the middle. The closest they'd come had been a suggestion that the humans would ultimately be better off under their control.\n\nAlberich nodded. 'You see my point. Humanity is the future. And the Library should be leaders in that future, rather than just collecting books. We should be uniting worlds, not keeping secrets from them. Building alliances. Recruiting the best and the brightest. Using the Language to change things for the better. How are you actually helping anyone by supporting the current status quo?'\n\nShe could have said I'm stopping things from getting worse, but she was sure he'd have a counter for that as well. This was like being in an argument with an older Librarian, where she knew she was going to lose and the only question was how...\n\nCommon sense kicked in. Why, precisely, was she trying to argue a point of logic with the person who was trying to destroy the Library? Did she actually think she was going to convince Alberich to change his mind? This wasn't about winning an argument. It was about getting information out of him. Pride was not the issue. Stopping him was.\n\nOf course, simply getting away from him right now would be game, set and match to her. 'I do see,' she answered, her voice barely audible above the murmuring of the reception crowd and the music. Let him think that she was considering. Let him think anything, as long as she had a moment to act. Because she'd thought of something to slow him down, just a little.\n\nShe broke away from him mid-twirl, wrenching herself out of his hands \u2013 and was that a faint stickiness that she felt against her skin, where he'd touched her? No, she wasn't going to even consider that. She'd picked her location: they were barely ten yards from the Empress.\n\nHer Imperial, Undying Majesty looked down at Irene from her chair on the dais, raising an eyebrow at this public display of bad manners. The advisors around her, in their sumptuous robes and their heavily medal-bedecked military uniforms, were looking at her too. Even the two white tigers that lay at the chair's feet raised their heads to regard Irene with great yellow eyes.\n\n'Your Imperial Majesty,' Irene cried out, 'that man is an impostor!' She dodged a grab from Alberich to stumble a few paces towards the dais. The music had come to a jangling halt, and the room was full of shocked whispers. Hands fell to the hilts of dress swords.\n\nThis had better work.\n\nIrene focused on the Language. 'Your Imperial Majesty must perceive that I speak the truth!'\n\nThe exquisite marble floor came up and hit her in the face."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "The floor was such a pretty colour. The bit directly in front of Irene's face was golden marble, though it was spattered with the blood that seemed to be dripping from her nose. She tried to work out exactly how that had happened, but her brain wasn't cooperating, and all the screaming and shouting made it hard to think.\n\nFire blazed somewhere above her, reflected in the polished floor before her in a burst of rainbows. A woman shouted something, her voice a whip of command, and a choir of voices answered. And the fire lashed out again.\n\nThen another voice spoke from behind her, in a tone that roused her to full consciousness like a cold shower in the morning. It wasn't the voice of the man she'd been speaking with, the voice of the man whose skin he'd stolen. It was the voice of the real Alberich, the Librarian who had willingly contaminated himself with chaos and become something other than human. It sounded like buzzing wasps, like water on molten metal.\n\nThe air boomed, and a gust of freezing wind washed over her and outwards. Then it switched to a hissing suction in the opposite direction that dragged at her clothing. Chaotic power throbbed against her bare skin, aggressive and growing.\n\nIrene was almost certain she wouldn't like the answer, but she had to know what was going on behind her. She rolled onto her side, her head still swimming, and turned to look.\n\nThere was a hole in the air where Alberich had been standing. It hung in empty space like an obsidian mirror twice a man's height, blackness seething around its edges and struggling to expand. In its depths, Irene thought she could see a man's figure, half-defined and obscured by the shadows. It was diminishing every second, as though it was somehow retreating from her without actually moving. It raised an arm in a beckoning gesture, and for one stupid moment she thought, Of course, this is how I catch Alberich \u2013 all I have to do is get up and walk forward...\n\nDarkness boiled out of the hole in the air, reaching out in tentacles that curled towards the bystanders. And towards Irene. One shadowy tentacle coiled round her ankle, cool through the silk of her stocking, but with sparks of chaos fizzing through it like bubbles in champagne. She shrieked, momentarily unable to phrase anything in the Language through sheer terror and disgust. She struggled to pull herself away, flailing her feet wildly.\n\nThe woman's voice spoke again, but this time it was like the first line of a psalm: other voices from around the floor chanted a response in thunderous unison, and the floating void in the air shrank as lightning crackled around it in a halo.\n\nIrene's conscious, professional mind was trying to take notes, even under the current circumstances. So this is what happens during a chaos incursion in a high-order world. It has significant difficulty in sustaining itself, and even local humans are able to force it shut \u2013 assuming they're powerful enough. Of course it would be easier to be analytical if that damned tentacle wasn't still trying to drag her towards the hole. And the beautiful marble floor was so smooth that there was nothing to halt her inevitable slide towards it. Even her fingernails could gain no purchase.\n\n'Chaos power, release me!' she gasped, trying to project her words loudly enough to be heard. But this time the Language failed her. She knew she was forming the words properly, she could hear them, but there was no power behind them. She was a reservoir that had run dry. Her head ached as if someone was drilling screws into her temples, and she lost what little grip she had on the floor, slipping inexorably towards the hole in space.\n\nKai stepped between her and the void and went down on one knee, seizing the tentacle in both hands. Irene could see the scale-patterns showing on his skin in the flaring light of the shuddering chandeliers, as his nails lengthened into claws. The great choir of massed voices spoke again, and their force beat against the air like hammers in a foundry. Kai's features were frozen in concentration, and his hands tensed with the effort as he wrenched them ferociously apart.\n\nThe tentacle spasmed between his hands, then snapped in a burst of shadow.\n\nKai dropped it, ignoring it, and swept Irene up in his arms. He swung her away from the rapidly closing abyss, carrying her effortlessly back towards the surrounding line of robed sorcerers. Irene didn't have the strength to do more than hang onto him as her mind raced. She was aware that they needed to get out of here before attention shifted to them, but what about the book in the Empress' quarters? And was there something useful in her conversation with Alberich that she'd missed?\n\nThe hole closed with a snap; and the howling of air, which had become a background noise, abruptly ceased. Irene took a shuddering breath of relief. The air suddenly seemed to taste so much cleaner. The room was still full of the gabble of voices and the shrieks of panicked civilians \u2013 but it was a human noise, and less apocalyptic. Kai backed a few paces towards the door, Irene still in his arms, then came to a stop as several military types shouldered into his path.\n\n'I believe Her Imperial Majesty would like a word,' the oldest of them said. His hair and beard might be snow-white with age, but he had the build and muscle of a serving officer. And there was nothing elderly about his attitude. 'This way, young man, if you please.'\n\nIrene tugged at Kai's arm. 'Put me down, please.' Her voice was cracked and dry. She coughed, and her next words were more audible. 'Please. I can walk.'\n\nAnd she would rather face the Undying Empress on her own two feet.\n\nThe gentlemen escorting them up to the steps of the dais were polite, but she and Kai were still prisoners, under guard. The crowd was beginning to settle down now, and more and more interest was focusing on them.\n\nThe Empress herself barely had a hair out of place. A maid had appeared from somewhere and was restoring the varnish on the nails of her left hand, while to her right an anonymous-looking man in plain black, possibly Oprichniki himself, was delivering answers to her rapid-fire questions. As Kai, Irene and their escort arrived and respectively bowed or curtseyed, the Empress turned to them, waving her servants away. The light seemed to cling to her, flowing over her silver dress and crown. Physical details, such as her white hair or heavy build, seemed unimportant in comparison with the power at her command.\n\nThe crowd fell silent, not wanting to miss any of this.\n\nIrene attempted to think of a good excuse for what had just happened. She'd been trying for the last few minutes, but her best idea so far \u2013 we're loyal subjects who wanted to expose an evil impostor \u2013 wouldn't stand up to much investigation. This was why she liked to get away before anyone could start asking questions.\n\n'If she speaks,' the Empress said, pointing at Irene, 'knock her unconscious.'\n\nIrene mentally cursed, while plastering on her best politely-confused-but-helpful expression. And that was the problem with hanging around, after using the Language to affect people's perceptions. They remembered what you'd done to them.\n\n'Your Imperial Majesty\u2014' Kai began.\n\n'Him too, for safety's sake,' the Empress said.\n\nKai shut his mouth.\n\nThe Empress looked at them both critically. 'Young woman, young man, you may both have done me a service, but I cannot be sure until I have fully investigated the matter. It is clear that some foul entity possessed my loyal servant Nicolai. You will be interrogated later and will give me your full story then. In the meantime\u2014' She turned to the elderly man in charge of the escort. 'Maximum security, the cell with the highest wardings, and shackles.'\n\nKai's arm stiffened under Irene's hand, and she knew without looking that his face would be showing every one of his feelings, and none of them good. She squeezed his arm reassuringly. As long as it wasn't Alberich organizing their accommodation, they should be able simply to walk out of any cell, once she had her voice back.\n\nThe Empress turned back to a man delivering his report, and Irene and Kai were marched out of the Great Hall in dead silence. The sub-basements they were led to weren't on Irene's maps of the Winter Palace. And the heavy shackles on their wrists were applied with the utmost politeness. The guards were clearly aware that Irene and Kai were accused but not convicted, and might still come out of the affair smelling of roses. The prison cell even had beds. And candles. And a heavily locked door, of course.\n\nAnd now that they were theoretically restrained from working magic, and theoretically alone \u2013 except for the person probably listening on the other side of the wall, of course \u2013 they could talk.\n\nKai sat down heavily on the bed, his shackled hands between his knees. 'What language?' he asked. He'd deduced the probability of a listener, too.\n\n'English,' Irene said. After all, in this alternate world the British Isles were a small country that had never risen to empire. If there was someone eavesdropping, it'd take a little while to find a translator.\n\n'Well, you spoke to Alberich, and I hope you're satisfied.' He stared at his chains. 'I suppose my relatives will get us out of here. They're certain to investigate a chaos incursion like that one. But they'll ask questions...'\n\nIrene sat down next to him and patted his hand. Her chains clanked unmusically. Both their sets of shackles were overwritten with complicated runes and embossed with gold and lead. No doubt they'd completely annul the magic of this world. But they couldn't bind the Language. 'Kai, I intend for us to be well out of here by the time anyone comes to investigate.'\n\n'You're in a damned good mood,' Kai muttered.\n\n'And you're in an unusually bad one.'\n\n'Given the last half-hour, I have reason.' Even though their bodies weren't touching, she could feel the tension in him like a vibrating wire. 'How am I supposed to keep you safe when you keep on\u2014'\n\n'No,' Irene said, cutting in. 'This is not the time.' She was distracted. An idea was bubbling through her mind, trying to take shape and concrete form. In comparison, Kai's little fit of temper was unimportant. 'I'm trying to work something out.'\n\n'It never is the time,' Kai muttered. Then, curious, he asked, 'What?'\n\n'Let me ask you some questions.' It would clarify her own thinking, and there were a few points she wanted to be certain about. 'This is a high-order world, so the power of chaos is hindered. Alberich in particular couldn't use much of his strength here, since he's made himself a creature of chaos.'\n\nKai nodded. 'That's correct. I think he must have been shielded by his stolen skin. When the Empress and her servants attacked him, it shredded away and he had to escape into the void.'\n\n'Were they the ones that closed the hole into chaos, then?'\n\n'No, that was the world's natural stability. Humans couldn't affect something like that.' The thought seemed to cheer him for some reason. 'What they did was basically to keep him in the void with their spells, until it closed. It wasn't very efficient, of course, but they threw enough raw power at him to hold him back, and the hole closed on its own. Though they probably don't realize that.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'So, since Alberich was severely weakened by being in this world, we can assume that if he had had a less dangerous method of achieving his goals, he would have taken it.'\n\nKai frowned, then relaxed. 'Ah, you mean that he can't have any allies among the dragons! Yes, that's a relief.'\n\n'Not exactly,' Irene said. 'Or at least, that's not the point I'm making here.'\n\n'Then what is your point?' The candle cast huge shadows on the wall as he leaned forward.\n\n'Alberich told me he traced us here because of the disturbances we caused. The mess at the sleigh-port, the storm you raised. He was waiting in the Great Hall and watching for us to show up.' Irene saw Kai frowning in thought, and decided to jump straight to the conclusion. 'If he had known which book we were after, then he'd have gone straight there and laid a trap for us. He wouldn't have needed to chase us down.'\n\n'That's logical,' Kai agreed. 'So?'\n\n'So he didn't know which book we're after.' Irene held up a finger. 'But he did know which world I was coming to. He even quoted the Library designation, he was so busy trying to impress me.'\n\nKai shrugged. 'So he knew some things, but not others. That in itself isn't\u2014' He broke off, making the connection. 'Wait. Someone from the Library would have had access to the records to report our destination and would have known the book you'd been assigned to collect.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'Which suggests that whoever passed Alberich the information wasn't a Librarian. But he discovered the world's designation from someone.'\n\n'The werewolves who stole your folder?' Kai suggested. 'If they saw your mission papers?'\n\n'Possible, but unlikely. The documents in the folder were in the Language, remember. Anyone who read them would have read them in their native tongue. If one of them passed on the information, why just the world's designation? Why not the name of the book as well, and the place where it was located?'\n\n'I'll allow that. But that means\u2014'\n\n'Yes,' Irene interrupted. 'Exactly! The only people who'd know the world's designation, but not the book, are the ones who saw the outside of the folder, but not the inside. Which means the people who were waiting in Vale's rooms when I arrived.' As she said it, the theory became near-certainty. However, her pleasure at the logical construction drained away as she accepted the conclusion. 'Which means one of them is working for Alberich.'\n\n'Not Li Ming,' Kai said at once.\n\n'Hopefully not.' Irene didn't necessarily share Kai's faith in the other dragon, but she'd really prefer it if Alberich didn't have dragon allies as well as Fae ones. 'And surely not Vale, either.'\n\n'Of course not,' Kai said. 'And there's no reason for it to be Singh. Which leaves Zayanna.' Obviously, his tone added.\n\nIrene nodded reluctantly. 'I didn't want...' she started, then fell silent, trying to think what she had wanted. There had never been a reason to trust Zayanna.\n\n'She's Fae,' Kai said dismissively. 'It's all a game to them. Probably her patron did throw her out, like she said, and Alberich offered her a better deal.'\n\n'If her patron did throw her out, it was because she helped rescue you,' Irene said quietly.\n\n'For her own reasons.' Kai jingled his chains. 'And speaking of rescues, how about our own?'\n\nIrene pulled herself together. 'Yes. We need to get out of here, and get back to Vale's world. If Zayanna's been communicating with Alberich, then she can tell us how to find him.' And then they could work out what to do next.\n\nIrene had never had a reason to trust Zayanna. But she'd wanted to. She'd felt sorry for her. She'd chosen to trust someone whom she'd been warned against by Kai, by the Library's own guidelines, by simple common sense...\n\nAnd now everyone she'd left behind might be in mortal danger.\n\nA sullen swell of anger built inside her. This was a personal betrayal. She'd never really appreciated how much worse this felt than professional treachery. Perhaps because she'd never faced quite so personal a betrayal before, and certainly never with such high stakes.\n\n'All right,' she said, bringing her hands firmly together. She could feel a solid strength growing in the back of her mind, which had been lacking earlier: the power to use the Language, and the force of will to command it. She'd exhausted herself against the Empress, but now her strength had returned, like rainwater collecting after a drought. 'Kai, once we're out of this cell, I'll need you to find the shortest path towards the waterfront.'\n\n'Certainly,' Kai said. 'Is that how we're leaving?'\n\n'Eventually. I'm assuming that you can command the waters, or the water-spirits, in the way you've done before. This world being a high-order world won't stop you?'\n\n'It'll make it easier, if anything. I won't need to summon the local spirits.' He sounded quite definite about that, and Irene wondered if they'd report on him to the local dragons. 'But what about the book? It'll be difficult getting up to the Empress' bedroom, as security is bound to be on high alert...'\n\n'We're leaving it behind.'\n\nKai stared at her, shocked. 'But it was your mission. We have to get it\u2014'\n\n'It's even more important to find the link to Alberich,' Irene said. She hated abandoning a mission, and hated abandoning a book even more, but the real threat was Alberich. If they went to grab the book and lost the chance of finding Alberich himself, then they'd have treated the symptom, but died of the underlying disease. 'Our priority is getting out of here and finding Alberich's accomplice \u2013 whether it's Zayanna or anyone else \u2013 and using them to stop Alberich.'\n\n'Using them how, precisely? Alberich doesn't seem the type to stop attacking the Library just to keep someone else safe. Shouldn't we actually do our assigned job first?'\n\n'I could be wrong,' Irene said. Her anger was still burning, making her want to spit out every word, to shout at someone who deserved it, to hammer against the cell door. She controlled it. Kai's objections were reasonable and deserved an answer, even if the answer was going to be a flat no. 'In which case I will have weakened the Library by not obtaining a vitally important book. And in which case I will take full responsibility, and I will feel every damn bit of guilt that I deserve to feel. But I don't think I am wrong. I think Zayanna is part of Alberich's plan. I strongly believe that at this precise moment getting our hands on her, or whoever's helping him, is the most important thing we can do.'\n\n'But what do we do when\u2014' Kai started.\n\n'We'll work out the details when we've caught the accomplice,' Irene said firmly. 'Let's do this in manageable stages. Are you ready?'\n\n'The sooner, the better,' Kai said. He was still as tense as a stretched wire, his shoulders hunched and his expression guarded. Irene silently scolded herself as she became aware of at least part of the problem. He'd been imprisoned only a few months back, depending on others to rescue him. It was hardly surprising if being chained in a cell again left him on edge.\n\n'Right.' She stood up, and he followed. 'Shackles, unlock and fall off.'\n\nThe shackles were human magic, not Fae or dragon work, and they yielded to the Language like any other piece of mortal metalwork \u2013 falling to the ground in a clash of metal.\n\nIrene stepped to one side of the door, leaving the path clear for Kai. 'Door, unlock. Wards on door and entrance, fall. Door, open.'\n\nHer head throbbed with the newly returned headache, which had apparently only left for a brief holiday. It had now come back with its friends to stay. But at least there was a convenient stone wall to lean on. She did that for a moment, while Kai exploded through the just-opened door and 'reasoned' with the guards on the other side. They didn't even have time to level their crossbows.\n\nWhen she followed him out into the guardroom, everyone was unconscious. This included a robed man, who was presumably the mage unfortunate enough to have been posted on guard duty. 'A bit wholesale,' she said mildly.\n\nKai shrugged. 'None of them are dead. Besides, we don't want them raising the alarm earlier than necessary.'\n\n'True,' Irene admitted. She tugged at the mage's heavy over-robes. 'Give me a hand with these, please.'\n\nKai frowned for a moment, then looked at her bedraggled, bloodstained ballgown and nodded. When Irene had donned them she still looked badly dressed, but at least she might be a little less conspicuous.\n\n'The Neva river is that way,' Kai said, pointing helpfully down the corridor.\n\nIrene led the way, stalking along in a business-like manner and hoping that anyone they ran into would look at the robes and not at her face. Her personal worries drew her face into a scowl, and she saw no reason to attempt a smile. There was the threat to the Library. There was Alberich, who was an ongoing terror just as much as a current danger. There were all her friends and family who were in danger. And there was Zayanna who, barring a miracle and a very implausible explanation, had lied to her.\n\nShe'd liked Zayanna.\n\nFrom the distance came the sound of running feet and a clanging bell. They were several corridors away from the cells by now, in a direction that Irene would have described as hopelessly lost, but which Kai claimed led straight towards the river. These passages, deep beneath the Winter Palace, were far from the glorious corridors of the upper levels \u2013 or even the prosaic but business-like archives beneath the cathedral. They were floored with flagstones, and walled with granite, clean but old. These passageways were cold with the deep bone-chill of freezing water seeping through earth and stone. Even the air felt damp.\n\n'The hunt's up,' Kai said concisely and obviously.\n\n'We knew it would be,' Irene agreed. 'Is it much further?'\n\n'A bit. I'm assuming that you want to get as close as possible?'\n\n'Right. The less wall and foundation I have to remove, the easier it'll be.'\n\n'How are we leaving this world, after that?'\n\n'Through the closest library to the Library itself.' She caught Kai's frown. 'I know it might be faster in some ways for you to carry us out as a dragon, but I need to leave word at the Library as soon as possible. If something does go wrong when we try to catch Zayanna, I don't want to be the idiot who didn't tell anyone where we were going or what we were up to\u2014'\n\nShe came to a dead stop as a roar echoed through the passages. Panicked back-brain instinct urged her to cower and hide, or to look for a nice high tree to climb. 'What the hell is that?' she hissed.\n\n'The Empress' tigers. But I don't think they're nearby.' Kai kept on walking, far more casual about the noise than she was, and Irene had to hurry to catch up.\n\n'You mean those big white Siberian\u2014'\n\n'They'd have to be Bengal tigers,' Kai said seriously. 'You only get white tigers from Bengal. My uncle gets quite annoyed about it. His subject kingdoms often send him furs as tribute, but Siberian tigers are always orange, never white. He once said\u2014'\n\n'The operative word is big,' Irene cut in. 'How good are tigers at tracking by scent?'\n\n'Well, hounds are better for coursing game,' Kai began. Then he caught Irene's glare. 'Quite good,' he said meekly. 'I've never tried training them.'\n\n'I don't suppose they'll go to their knees and worship you, the way that bear did?'\n\n'Probably not,' Kai said regretfully. Another roar split the air, closer now. 'They're cats, after all.'\n\nIrene wished that the Undying Empress had preferred bears as pets.\n\n'This is about as close as we're going to get.' Kai stopped at a bend in the passage and laid his hand against the wall. 'I can feel the flowing water some yards beyond this. They laid the foundations well.'\n\n'I would apologize to the Empress, but maybe she'll be glad of the opportunity to redecorate.' Irene approached the wall and laid her hands next to Kai's, bracing herself. 'Stone wall and foundation and earth that lies between me and the river beyond, crumble and give way, and make a passage to the river large enough for us to pass through.'\n\nIt was bad, but not as bad as trying to influence the Empress. What fun, Irene thought grimly through the band of pain pressing on her temple, I now have a whole new standard for how bad things can get. Travel is so educational. She dimly felt Kai's arm round her waist, supporting her as she leaned against him. I almost think I prefer travelling in worlds on the chaos spectrum; at least I don't get a headache every five minutes...\n\n'Irene!' Kai was yelling. 'Tigers!'\n\nOh, right, tigers. Tigers were relevant in some way. And tigers were beautiful when there were heavy iron bars between her and them...\n\nThere were two big tigers pacing down the corridor towards her and Kai. Panic gave Irene a shot of icy-cold adrenaline and yanked her back to awareness, then retired to gibber in the back of her brain and let her take care of things.\n\nKai snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground. 'Lie down,' he said firmly.\n\nOne tiger yawned, baring huge white teeth and revealing an implausibly pink tongue. The other simply snarled.\n\n'Cats,' Kai muttered. 'Irene, can you just put them to sleep or something? I don't want to kill them.'\n\n'Any particular reason?' The tigers were getting closer now. They were walking rather than running. Presumably they were meant to guard Irene and Kai till the human guards arrived.\n\n'They're such beautiful specimens,' Kai said. 'I wish we could take them back for my uncle.'\n\nIrene winced at the thought of trying to drag a couple of unwilling tigers through the Library. 'Absolutely not,' she said firmly. 'You can come back and negotiate with the local dragons on your own time.'\n\nBehind her, the stonework groaned and began to shudder. Irene turned and saw it parting like a pair of lips, as though it was opening its mouth to speak.\n\nBut instead of words, water rushed out in a mighty gush that would have plastered Irene against the opposite wall, if Kai hadn't dragged her out of the way. The tigers fled, turning tail and racing down the corridor, as water came flooding in and gushed knee-high along the passage.\n\n'I've got this,' Kai said calmly. 'Hold your breath.' He advanced into the flow of water. It softened as he touched it, curling around him and Irene, the current weakening to the strength of a gentle stream as he walked forward through it. The narrow hole in the wall was just large enough to admit the two of them. Irene followed him into the darkness, feeling the water brush her face and trail her dress and robes out behind her. And Kai's power somehow channelled air around them, allowing them to breathe. Icy tendrils stroked her forehead and soothed her headache.\n\nAnd then they were out into the full force of the river. It swept them up and along, till they surfaced in a bursting wave. Irene was gasping for air now, her arms round Kai's neck as she let him support her. Her shoes were lost somewhere at the bottom of the Neva, and her clothing was a sodden, unwieldy mass that would probably have drowned her if she wasn't hanging onto a dragon. The water was bitterly cold. She thought about that, then rephrased to merely bitterly cold, because without Kai's influence it would be freezing and she'd be passing out from the chill. Thin raindrops scythed down from the overcast sky and stung her face. Street lamps along the embankment cast orange shimmers onto the water, glaring in the darkness.\n\nBut they were outside and free to act.\n\n'Right,' she said, once she had her breath back. 'Now for the Library.'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "The Library was still dark when they reached it \u2013 if anything, it was darker, with lonely oil-lamps flickering in the silence. It was pouring down outside there too, and the windows of the nearest corridor were smeared with long streaks of raindrops. Irene half-imagined she could hear the ticking of a distant clock, but when she tried to listen there was only silence. The air seemed hot, and she wondered how much of that was real, and how much was her own fear.\n\nShe sat in front of the first computer they found, turning it on and then tapping her fingers on the table as it took its time booting up. She begrudged every passing second. Time was not her friend tonight: there were too many emergencies seething in her mind: Alberich, the Library, her parents, Zayanna, Vale...\n\nThe email screen came up. Irene leaned forward to start typing, but an incoming email immediately filled the screen.\n\n\u2002Need talk urgentest, where to meet? Bradamant\n\n'Typed in a hurry,' Kai deduced, leaning over Irene's shoulder.\n\n'Check this room's designation, please,' Irene replied, ignoring him. She was typing up her own email to Coppelia, in prose not much better than Bradamant's own.\n\n'A-21, Italian giallo novels, late twentieth century,' Kai reported.\n\nA-21 Italian giallo novels late twentieth century, or entrance to Vale's world, which is easier? Irene sent to Bradamant.\n\nEntrance Vale's world, see you there ASAP, the message came back.\n\n'We should hurry,' Kai said, pacing up and down and ignoring the spare chair. 'If she has something urgent to tell us...'\n\n'Give me a moment,' Irene said. She was checking current announcements on the network. Unfortunately there weren't any along the lines of Alberich is dead, everything's been sorted out, you can all relax and go back to normal. But there were lists of worlds whose gates had been destroyed \u2013 a longer list than she'd hoped to see \u2013 and there was a list of dead Librarians. She scanned down it, her heart cramping in her chest at the thought that she might recognize a name.\n\nAnd she did recognize a couple.\n\nKai had stopped pacing and was staring over her shoulder again. 'I knew Hypatia,' he said.\n\nIt was one of the names on the list. 'I don't think I ever met her,' Irene said.\n\n'She was a bit older than you. She used to say: It isn't your job to die for the Library, it's your job to make other people die for your Library\u2014' He cut himself off, straightening, and his next words were cold and polished. 'She gave her life honourably in service to the Library. I shouldn't demean her sacrifice.'\n\nIrene closed the window, logging out of the computer. 'I don't think there's anything shameful in repeating a joke she liked. At least you're remembering her. Isn't that better than not remembering her at all?'\n\nThe Library's shadows hung around her, a silent promise of the future. After all, when Irene herself died, what would be left of her? A handful of unread books in an unused bedroom. A footnote in the memories of a few other Librarians.\n\nAnd vital books on the shelves of the Library, which wouldn't have been there without her.\n\n'Come on,' she said, 'the transfer cabinet's this way.'\n\n'Irene, your parents\u2014' Kai broke off, his tone uncertain.\n\n'Not on that list,' Irene said. 'Still safe. As much as anywhere's safe at the moment.'\n\nBradamant was waiting for them outside the room containing the portal to Vale's world. She was leaning against the wall under one of the lamps and was scribbling in a notebook. The dim light threw her into shadow, making her look like a slender pen-and-ink sketch in a dark pencil-skirt and jacket. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of them. 'What happened?'\n\nIrene looked down at herself. She was mostly dry, but her dip in the river had left her gown and stolen robe hopelessly crumpled. And the marks from her nosebleed all down her bodice proved that cold water didn't always get rid of bloodstains. 'The mission went wrong and we ran into Alberich,' she reported succinctly. 'We got away.'\n\n'Well, of course you got away, or you wouldn't be here now,' Bradamant said impatiently. 'What about Alberich?'\n\n'He escaped too.' Irene reminded herself that she was actively trying to be on better terms with Bradamant these days; plus Bradamant had a right to know, plus professional courtesy, et cetera. So she described recent events.\n\nBradamant nodded calmly as she listened, but her knuckles were white on the edge of her notebook. But when Irene described her recognition of Alberich, Bradamant nearly bent the book in half. 'Why didn't you just kill him?' she demanded.\n\n'I did think about it,' Irene admitted. 'I just didn't have the opportunity.'\n\n'Surely you could have tried a bit harder.' Even in the dim light, Bradamant was white with fury. 'Grabbed a crossbow off a guard, used a gun or dropped the ceiling on him.'\n\n'You tried shooting him in the head before. Remember?' Irene recalled it perfectly well, and from the expression on Bradamant's face, so did she. 'Three shots. In the forehead. And all it did was stagger him for a moment. As it was, I provoked the most powerful mages in the empire to do their best, and all that did was make him retreat. I'm not sure what would kill him.'\n\n'Dragons?' Bradamant suggested. This time she was looking at Kai.\n\n'There wasn't time to call for assistance,' Kai objected.\n\n'Let's leave the blame till later,' Irene said wearily. Was Kai now regretting that he'd wanted to avoid the local dragons? She might ask him later, but not in front of Bradamant. 'This next bit's more urgent.' She ran through their conversation, and her deductions.\n\nBradamant was nodding by the end of it. 'It makes sense. It has to be one of the people in that room. Someone in the Library could have found out where you were going...' She had the grace to blush a little, perhaps remembering her past actions. 'But in that case, they'd have known what book you were after. And as you've pointed out, that brings us down to the people in Vale's rooms who saw the folder.'\n\n'And it's the Fae, obviously,' Kai said. 'I don't understand why the two of you are even considering anyone else.'\n\n'Simple logic makes Zayanna the most likely,' Irene said, 'but there's the possibility that someone else was being manipulated. Or that we were being observed.'\n\n'Vale's room being spied upon?' Kai snorted. 'You just don't want to admit that the Fae\u2014'\n\n'Excuse me,' Bradamant cut in. She stared at Kai until he fell silent. 'Thank you. Look, Irene, you need to do something about your friend Vale. When you have a spare minute, which admittedly isn't now. I went to see him.'\n\n'Had he discovered anything?' Irene demanded.\n\n'Yes, and that's what I wanted to tell you. I've passed it on to our elders, too, of course.'\n\n'Of course,' Irene agreed, irritated that Bradamant felt the need to point that out. Irene wasn't her junior any longer and didn't need that sort of reminder. 'So?'\n\n'Vale says that Silver says that apparently Alberich's been hiring. That is, word's out amongst the Fae that Alberich has been looking for junior Fae to do... jobs. Exactly what the jobs are, Silver didn't know, but...' Bradamant shrugged. 'I can think of half a dozen things, from distracting and assassinating Librarians, all the way to his big anti-Library plot. Silver also said that some who'd expressed an interest had then dropped out of circulation. Apparently once you're in on Alberich's plan, you don't talk to anyone else about it.'\n\n'That's interesting. I wonder what he's offering them.'\n\n'Power,' Bradamant said. 'And the chance to be part of a good narrative.'\n\n'Yes, that would work,' Irene agreed. One way for Fae to gain more power was to obey all the stereotypes of a fictional character. Conforming to patterns in this way strengthened the chaos within them, acting against the universe's natural inclination towards randomness. Destroying the Library would make a marvellous story, she thought sourly. Her mind flickered back to Bradamant's earlier words. 'And yes, I know Vale's not in good shape. He contracted chaos contamination during our Venice mission. And I really need to get him to a high-order world, when we have time.'\n\nBradamant looked aside, avoiding Irene's eyes. 'There is another option, you know.'\n\n'What?' Irene demanded. If there was a way to help Vale, something that she could do without betraying her other obligations...\n\n'Force him through the full process,' Bradamant said coldly. 'Increase the level of contamination till he's full Fae.'\n\nIrene stared at her. 'Are you insane?'\n\n'He'd never agree to it,' Kai said, as sharply as Irene had.\n\n'Where do you think Fae come from?' Bradamant retorted. 'And do you want to keep him alive and sane? At least this way he'll be stable. It wouldn't be difficult. Get him to interact with other Fae, or become more of a stereotype. He's a detective. Make him detect.' She must have seen the disgust in Irene's face, for she took a step back. Her expression settled into a bland smile, one familiar to Irene from all the years they'd known and disliked each other. 'I'm trying to help you. Don't blame me if there aren't any good options.'\n\n'You clearly know more about this sort of thing than I do,' Irene said, before she could stop herself.\n\n'I have my own contacts,' Bradamant said.\n\n'Oh?'\n\n'None of your business.' The statement was delivered flatly, leaving no openings for argument.\n\nIrene took a deep breath and forced herself back from the edge of anger. She was going to be an adult, even if everyone around her felt the need to be children. She'd save her fury for the person who actually deserved it. 'All right. Thank you for your input, but I don't think Vale himself would tolerate it.' She glanced to Kai, who nodded in agreement. 'And thank you for passing on this information. I've put the basic facts in an email to Coppelia\u2014'\n\n'She won't be reading it till she gets back,' Bradamant said. 'She's out of the Library at the moment. So's Kostchei. So are many other elders.'\n\n'Seriously?' Irene was genuinely astonished. By the time anyone was promoted to Senior Librarian, they were generally old enough and injured enough to merit honourable retirement. Elder Librarians didn't leave the Library, didn't return to alternate worlds where time resumed its normal flow and where they might be in danger. It just wasn't done. She'd only seen Coppelia do it once before, and that time it had been a matter of stopping a war. If many of the elders were now taking this step...\n\nBradamant nodded, her expression sour. 'They're collecting information. From their contacts. It's all very well to know Alberich's working with the Fae, but if we can't find him, it's useless.'\n\n'I hope Penemue's out on assignment, too.'\n\n'That's rather harsh,' Bradamant said. 'Yes, she is. Just because she plays politics doesn't mean she doesn't do her job.'\n\n'Has she been talking to you?' Irene accused.\n\n'I talk to a lot of people.' The shadows were very deep around Bradamant. 'Things aren't necessarily as black and white as you'd like to think. And not everyone gets good assignments.'\n\n'I wouldn't call our last few months' jobs good assignments,' Irene said bitterly.\n\n'Technically you're being punished, remember?' Bradamant sighed. 'Some people pull worse jobs for less reason. Just because you haven't noticed that doesn't mean there isn't resentment. And no, this isn't the time to quarrel about it. But there's a reason why other Librarians are talking to Penemue.'\n\n'What's she saying at the moment?'\n\nBradamant hesitated, then lowered her voice. 'The Library is reducing its energy levels to free up more power for transporting things. Penemue is saying that's an excuse. That the lights are down and the air's getting stale because the Library's been weakened. She's saying it's not simply a case of burning gates, but that the whole Library is slipping into entropy. And a lot of people have noticed that they can hear a clock ticking.'\n\nShe fell silent for a moment, and all three of them listened. Irene could hear her own pulse, her own breathing. She strained to hear anything else behind the noise of her own life, but she couldn't be certain. Imagination supplied a whispered ticking in the background, counting down seconds, but...\n\n'I know,' Bradamant said. 'Once you start listening, you can't be sure if you're imagining it or not. And some are starting to murmur that we should consider talking to Alberich. Just possibly. Just maybe. Just as an alternative to be considered.'\n\n'Just never,' Irene said harshly.\n\n'You're snapping at the wrong person,' Bradamant said. 'And a few Librarians suspect history of being inherently revisionist and written by the winners. They ask me if perhaps I provoked him during our last confrontation. They suggest that he might have had a perfectly good reason to be doing whatever he was doing, and that it was our fault if we were almost killed in the process. Who'd have thought that a few days of panic would make so many colleagues and friends...' She gestured, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence, her mouth twisting sourly.\n\n'Come with us,' Irene said on sudden impulse. 'We could use your help.' It was perfectly true. Bradamant was good at her job, and Irene was past the need for pride and trying to manage things all by herself.\n\nBradamant avoided Irene's eyes again, her mouth twisting wryly. 'I can't. I'm supposed to stay here and act as a coordinator. Stupid, isn't it?'\n\nIrene was opening her mouth to express disbelief, when an unpleasant supposition hit her. The last time they'd worked together, Bradamant had been working under secret orders. She'd pulled a nasty trick on Irene, which had put the whole mission in danger. While Irene hadn't actively blamed Bradamant for that in the debriefing, the truth had been there for their superiors to see. If Bradamant's supporting role was her punishment, Irene would only be rubbing salt into the wounds by asking for details. So instead she said, 'I'm sorry to hear it. I think you'd be more use in the field.'\n\n'Yes, so do I.' Bradamant's tone was as dry as dust, and even less sympathetic. 'Very well. I'll make sure your information is passed on, if Coppelia or anyone else returns before you do. Good luck.'\n\n'And you.' Irene turned away before she could say something tactless and ruin the moment. Then she led Kai into the next room, which held the door to Vale's world.\n\nThere was even less light in this room. With only a dim fluorescent bulb glimmering on the ceiling, they had to pick their way carefully across the floor, avoiding barely visible piles of books. They were halfway to the portal when Irene stopped dead.\n\n'What is it?' Kai demanded, startled out of his brooding.\n\n'I'm thinking.' And for once, she was doing it before walking into a trap. 'What happened the last time I came through this door? I was jumped by those werewolves. Whoever's operating in Vale's world \u2013 whether it's Zayanna or not \u2013 knows this is our way in. And if it were me, I'd use that knowledge.'\n\n'Point taken,' Kai said. He eyed the door thoughtfully. 'It's past midnight now. Anything could be waiting for us. We could travel via another world instead, and I could carry you to Vale's world?'\n\nIrene considered it. 'We'd lose time,' she decided. 'The longer we delay, the more chance there is that Alberich's agent will escape \u2013 then we lose our lead.'\n\n'So what do we do?'\n\nApparently Kai didn't have any brilliant ideas. This was a pity, because Irene didn't have any either. 'We're careful,' she said firmly. 'And we stand on either side of the door when we open it.' She was trying to think of all the possible things that could be on the other side. Thugs. Explosives. Poisonous gas. Gunfire. 'And we look before we go in,' she added. It wasn't much, but it was something.\n\nShe and Kai took up positions on either side of the door, and Irene turned the handle carefully before shoving it open, into Vale's world beyond.\n\nThe shotgun blast roared between them, at chest height, and spattered lead pellets into the shelves and books on the far side of the room. Irene wasn't sure if it would have killed a dragon, but it would certainly have killed a human. The sudden blast of sound left her shaking her head, and a hum still seemed to hang in the air.\n\nShe peered round the door frame. Even though the room's ether-lamps had been turned down for the night, there was enough light to see the main attraction. The shotgun was obvious enough. It was tied to a chair, with a wire leading from it to the handle of the door she'd just opened. It was textbook stuff, drawn from classic murder mysteries. And like all such murder methods, it wasn't half as entertaining when encountered for real.\n\n'That could have killed you,' Kai snarled.\n\n'It could have killed you, too,' Irene pointed out. 'Especially if whoever it was thought you would insist on going first.' Which he might very well have done. She thought of him taking that shotgun blast to the chest and mentally shuddered.\n\nThere was a rising whine in the air. She didn't know what it was, but there was no time to lose. If they waited any longer, the room might become totally impassable, and then they'd have to take Kai's alternate route and lose hours in the process. 'Come on,' Irene directed, leading the way into the room at a run.\n\nKai kicked the door to the Library shut behind him as he followed her in. The room looked empty enough, apart from the chair with the gun. There were just a few disused display cases and folding tables stacked against the walls. There were no other immediately obvious threats \u2013 no lurking black mambas, no sticks of dynamite with lit fuses, no lurking thugs with knives.\n\nBut the buzz was growing louder, and it was coming from above them.\n\nIrene looked up.\n\nThree pale things resembling paper bags sagged from the ceiling, each of them held in place by a couple of leather straps. They were swaying in position, each of them vomiting a growing swirl of buzzing darkness. Having a shotgun go off in their vicinity would have woken even the most sweet-tempered nest of wasps. And Irene was willing to bet these weren't the more friendly variety, which could be persuaded away with a fly-swatter. Assuming they were wasps at all. What was worse than wasps? She didn't want to find out. Abandoning subtlety, she ran for the door, shouting, 'Corridor door, unlock and open!'\n\nThe lock clicked audibly and the door swung open, slamming into the wall behind it, but the way was still blocked. The doorway was filled from floor to lintel with crates. Someone had clearly piled them up outside \u2013 after setting the shotgun and hives, and locking and closing the door. Marvellous.\n\nThe dark swirl arrowed towards her and Kai. Irene flung her arms up to protect her face, a purely instinctive move, and felt burning needles jab into her hands. Crawling buzzing things, which she couldn't even see clearly in the near-darkness, landed on her wrists and tried to crawl down the sleeves of her clothes. Flickers of motion touched her face, as vibrating wings brushed against her and tiny insect feet settled onto her skin.\n\n'Wind, blow these insects off me!' she screamed.\n\nShe found herself at the centre of a mini-hurricane, which thrust away from her as if she was the centre of a sonic boom. It left her gasping, before she could breathe properly, but it flung the creatures back for a moment. Her hands burned with their stings, and next to her she heard Kai cursing. This was worse than seeing a pair of hunting tigers approach. Here in the darkness, unable to see what was attacking, locked in a room with these things...\n\nIt was a trap that had been set for a Librarian. Very well, she'd meet it like a Librarian.\n\n'Kai, down!' she ordered, throwing herself to the ground as the things came buzzing back for her. 'Glass, shatter! Glass fragments, impale the insects!'\n\nShe heard Kai hitting the floor as well. Then the display cases and lamps flew to pieces in a scream of breaking glass which almost drowned out the furious buzzing. Shards flew in all directions above her head, scything through the air. She kept her head down and covered, hoping against hope that this would actually work.\n\nThe noises were promising. Repeated thwips, like arrows, only on a smaller scale. Three heavy scrunching sounds, as if someone had dropped large bags of cereal. Then only a faint buzzing, still furious, but not so immediate. Then silence.\n\n'I think they've stopped,' Kai said. His voice was muffled, suggesting that he hadn't yet uncovered his head to look.\n\n'Right,' Irene said. She forced herself to move her arms and look up. The floor was littered with the glitter of broken glass, intermingled with small things that still twitched and scrabbled, their little wings moving them across the floor in futile painful millimetres. Some of the insects still zoomed around the room, flecks of darkness in the shadows, but they'd retreated to the ceiling. The three nests were shattered masses where they'd fallen to the ground, jarred loose and weighed down by the amount of glass they'd taken on board. 'Kai? How badly did they get you?'\n\n'Enough to hurt quite a bit,' Kai said, coming to his feet and shaking his hands as though he could physically expel the venom. Which gave Irene an idea \u2013 but one better tried out of insect range. He was deliberately keeping his tone even, but Irene could tell that he was annoyed. 'Of all the petty, humiliating ways to try to murder you!'\n\n'I'm not totally sure it was meant as murder,' Irene said thoughtfully. She turned to the crates blocking the doorway and pitched her voice to carry. After all, someone might have double-stacked them to add to their trap. 'Crates, move aside from the doorway.'\n\nHer head ached a little as they slid sideways, but the Language worked much more easily here than in the world they'd just left. I never thought I'd be preferring a high-chaos world to a high-order one.\n\nWith her and Kai outside and the door safely shut behind them, she took advantage of the corridor's lighting to get a good look at her hands. They looked... uncomfortable, to put it mildly. They felt hideously painful, but there was something about actually seeing the multiple sting wounds on both hands that left her feeling queasy. Or perhaps that was the venom. But she'd never get used to seeing her own injuries. 'Kai, hold your hands out while I try something. Insect venom, exit my body and the dragon's body through the wounds by which you entered.'\n\nClear liquid bubbled from the puncture holes in her skin, and she watched queasily as it dripped to the floor. Her hands still stung and ached, but it wasn't quite as bad, and at least it wasn't getting worse.\n\nKai frowned at his hands as the venom left them. 'Irene, what did you mean when you said you weren't sure it was murder?'\n\n'It could have been meant to drive us back into the Library,' Irene pointed out. 'Or repel any other Librarian who tried to get through. I don't know. Add it to the list of questions we have to ask.' Her hands seemed to have finished dripping venom for the moment. She shook them dry, and regretted not having any bandages. She also regretted shaking them. 'Anyhow, priorities. We need to find Zayanna. And Vale. And Singh. And Li Ming, while we're at it. And the fastest way to all of those is through Vale.'\n\nAnd please let the Library hold on a little longer, she thought. And let Vale be all right."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "'Thank God you're here, Miss Winters,' Singh said. He actually looked pleased to see her and Kai, which in itself worried Irene. As a general rule, the inspector tolerated the two of them, or at best considered them useful resources. If he was glad to see them, then Vale must be worse than she'd feared.\n\n'How is Vale?' she asked, getting straight to the point. It was three o'clock in the morning and the street lamps outside were barely visible through drifts of smog. Here in Vale's rooms the lights were all turned up high, viciously bright to her tired eyes, and showing no pity to the room's clutter. The place was even more disarrayed than usual, with papers lying in drifts as though thrown there.\n\nSingh frowned. He was in ordinary civilian clothing rather than his usual police uniform, and his tie-pin, Irene noticed with the precision of fatigue, was a little sword. 'He's not good, not good at all. May I speak frankly, Miss Winters?'\n\n'Of course,' Irene said, mentally resigning herself. Anything that started off with May I speak frankly never ended well.\n\n'I've seen Mr Vale under stress before. I've seen him caught up in a case before.' Singh folded his arms. 'I have even, I must admit, seen him dosing himself with substances that I would prefer not to notice legally. But I have never seen him in quite this driven a state. And given that you know all about it, Miss Winters \u2013 you and your friend Strongrock here \u2013 I would be grateful if you could tell me exactly what's going on.'\n\n'Where is Vale at the moment?' Irene glanced at the closed bedroom door. 'Is he...' She trailed off, not wanting to actually say hitting the morphine again out loud.\n\nSingh shifted his weight from foot to foot. 'I confess that I put a little something in his tea to help him sleep. When I arrived earlier this evening he was pacing the room, throwing out theories with one hand and digging himself deeper into depression with the other. Mr Vale's a man of moods, and they've been getting worse over this last month. But in all the time I've known him, I've never seen him this bad.'\n\nSingh's words in all the time I've known him hung in the air like an accusation. He was a long-term friend of Vale. They'd worked together for years before Irene and Kai had shown up. From Singh's point of view, Irene was the interloper who'd swept in bringing trouble, and who'd then brought this down on Vale.\n\nAnd it was all entirely true. Her guilt was a sour taste in her mouth.\n\n'It's my fault,' Kai said. Irene began to protest, but he brought up his hand to cut her off. 'Let's be honest about this, Irene. I was the one who was kidnapped, and when Vale tried to help, he was exposed to a toxic environment. That's why he's in trouble now. There isn't anything I can say except that I'm sorry, Inspector Singh, and I will do my best to make amends.'\n\n'You can claim responsibility all you like, Mr Strongrock,' Singh said. 'And I'm not denying that you may well be responsible. But even though I'm only a police inspector, and not up to Mr Vale's standards of detecting, it's still very obvious that Miss Winters is in charge. She brought you here. And her friend was visiting earlier today. I think I'd like my answers from Miss Winters.'\n\nIrene didn't bother asking how Singh knew that Bradamant had visited. Vale might have told him, or the housekeeper, or anyone. It didn't matter. What did matter was that, several months ago, Bradamant had sold Singh a whole pack of lies while they'd been hunting for the Grimm book. Singh wasn't inclined to trust any Librarian after that.\n\n'May we sit down?' she said. 'This may take a little while.'\n\nAt least there was brandy. All three of them knew where Vale kept it.\n\nIrene knew that Singh was aware of the Library, and the concept of multiple alternate worlds, though he wasn't as well-informed as Vale. They'd had to tell him the basics when Alberich had previously interfered in this world. And even though Irene herself hadn't gone into further detail, she was sure Vale had passed on a lot more information. Probably including Irene's own rap sheet. So she luckily didn't have to start right from the very beginning. She ran through Alberich's new threat to the Library, Vale's contamination by chaos and their current need for Vale's services. 'We stopped off at the hotel address Zayanna gave us on our way here,' she finished. 'The hotel clerk said that Zayanna had taken a room, but she hadn't been staying there, just using it as an address to collect mail. I know it wasn't likely, but we had to check.'\n\n'I'm more interested in what you've said about helping Mr Vale.' Singh hadn't taken any of the brandy for himself, and had made do with a glass of water \u2013 more to keep Irene and Kai company than out of any actual need for a drink, Irene suspected. 'If Mr Strongrock takes him to another world,' he pronounced those words with scepticism, but managed to get them out, 'then that will help him get back to his normal self?'\n\nIrene looked down at her hands, which were throbbing painfully. She wouldn't be getting to sleep any time soon. No problem, she didn't have time to sleep anyhow.\n\nShe had to find Zayanna, and the fastest method was to get Vale to do it. No question about it, he could find anyone hiding out in London. But if she did ask Vale, he would be in danger of going over the edge. And if she tried to save Vale instead, by getting Kai to take him to a high-order world, her chances of locating Zayanna dropped significantly.\n\nBradamant wouldn't have hesitated. Bradamant would have known that the Library was her highest priority, just as it should be Irene's. Saving the Library justified putting one human in danger. And Irene herself put people in danger all the time when she was stealing books. So why was she hesitating, simply because this one person was a friend and she'd got him into this in the first place?\n\nNext to her, Kai was looking deeply concerned, but he didn't seem as stressed as Irene herself felt. With a nasty shock, she realized that he was gazing at her as though she could wave her hand and sort everything out. As if she knew how to fix things. She'd done a dreadful job of mentoring him, she reflected bleakly: he shouldn't be relying on her like this.\n\n'Yes,' she finally said. 'Yes, I think taking him to another world could do the trick.'\n\nKai nodded. 'In that case, I'll\u2014'\n\nHe was cut off by a hammering on the front door. It was shockingly loud in the quiet house. Singh put down his glass and crossed to the window, standing to one side as he twitched back the curtain to peer out. 'It's Lord Silver,' he reported, in a voice so very neutral that he must be battling to control his feelings. 'If we let him stand out there, he's going to wake the whole neighbourhood.'\n\n'Can't you arrest him?' Kai said hopefully.\n\n'For that I'd need a charge or two, Mr Strongrock. I don't suppose either of you knows of anything illegal that the gentleman's done lately?'\n\n'Well, not personally,' Kai said. 'But doesn't this come under making a public disturbance?'\n\n'That's one of those difficult lines to draw,' Singh said. 'Crash-landing a stolen zeppelin on the roof \u2013 now that might be creating a public disturbance, and a few other things beside.'\n\nIrene knew he was referring to her own past escapades, where only Vale's involvement had allowed them to escape charges. It was a nicely subtle way to make a point. She'd have applauded, if the point hadn't been aimed at her. 'It might be simplest if I just went down and asked him to go away,' she said wearily. 'I don't think he'll stop until he's got someone's attention.'\n\n'Leave that to me, Miss Winters,' Singh said. He was out of the room and heading downstairs before she could agree.\n\n'He was pleased you didn't want to bring Silver in,' Kai said. He leaned back in his chair. 'So am I. But I don't like leaving you alone in this world while you're looking for Zayanna.'\n\n'I'm not that thrilled by it, either, but I don't see any other option if we're to help Vale.' Irene realized that she'd come to a decision. 'I can ask Singh to help me find Zayanna; I won't be alone. And you can't simply take everyone with you. From what you were saying earlier, you'd have problems carrying two people.'\n\n'Problems,' Kai said, 'well, yes, problems, but it might still be possible. And then we'd all be in one place, when it came to finding Zayanna afterwards.'\n\nHe was treating this as if it was something that could be handled on a schedule. Irene took a deep breath, controlling her temper. 'Kai, which bit of emergency do you not understand? If Zayanna's our target, she's already shown that she's a good enough operative to try to kill us several times \u2013 and get away with it. We can't afford to give her any time to hide. We don't have any time to waste...' She realized she was talking herself back into her earlier moral dilemma, and hesitated.\n\nThere were voices on the stairs. Kai frowned. 'That doesn't sound like anyone's told anyone to go away. Surely Silver couldn't have\u2014'\n\n'Couldn't have what?' Silver enquired, entering the room. He was in full evening dress, a gardenia in his buttonhole, and looked as if he'd just come from some disreputable party. (Well, perhaps the disreputability wasn't immediately obvious, but it was Silver. Irene assumed immorality on principle.) Singh was a couple of steps behind him, looking disgruntled.\n\nKai didn't bother to get up. 'I was going to say that I couldn't think of any reason for Inspector Singh to admit you.'\n\n'I couldn't think of any reason myself,' Irene admitted. 'Unless it's about our current investigation?'\n\n'Tangentially.' Silver tossed his hat and gloves onto the crowded table, where they landed next to a bloodstained pile of legal documents with a knife through them. He looked around the room as if it was a wild animal's habitat at the zoo. 'Fascinating. I've always had trouble penetrating Mr Vale's privacy.'\n\n'I've allowed you in solely because you said you had important information for us, Lord Silver,' Singh said. His voice was still impeccably polite and his manners could be held up in a court of law, but there was a growl behind it. 'I must ask you to tell us what brought you here in such a hurry.'\n\n'I came to stop you making a terrible mistake,' Silver said. He strolled further into the room and leaned on the back of Kai's chair. Kai stiffened and shifted forward, twisting to look up at the Fae, distrust written all over his face.\n\nOn the one hand, Irene mused, this was no doubt filtered through Silver's self-interest. On the other hand, he might have something genuinely important to say. And time was ticking away: she had to know now, she couldn't afford to wait. 'Please go on,' she said cautiously.\n\n'You're considering taking away the very thing that makes Mr Vale great.' Silver held up a hand, even though nobody had tried to stop him. 'Oh, don't interrupt. You're talking about taking him to a high-order sphere, the sort of place that's most uncongenial to someone like me, to drain away his nature. I'm right, aren't I?'\n\n'You're absolutely right,' Irene agreed. 'It would be most uncongenial to someone like you.'\n\nSilver sighed. 'Consider this, all three of you. Has it ever occurred to you that your friend Mr Vale has more than a streak of Fae in him already? The fact that he continually meets the people whom he should meet? His abilities? His behaviour? The way he makes deductions that seem beyond the scope of human ability? I've always thought I should investigate his family more closely.'\n\n'This is ridiculous, sir,' Singh said. He'd taken a position by the door to Vale's bedroom, possibly to stop anyone else getting in, and stood there in cold disapproval. 'Mr Vale dislikes the Fae more than most people I've ever met.'\n\n'Of course it's ridiculous!' Kai agreed forcefully. He glared up at Silver as though he intended to challenge the Fae to a duel on the spot. The only thing keeping him in his chair must be the suspicion that Silver would sprawl in it, if it was empty.\n\n'I notice that Miss Winters isn't disagreeing as strongly as you gentlemen,' Silver said. His voice slipped under convictions like a knife prising up the seal on an envelope, leaving naked facts behind it.\n\nAnd the reason Irene wasn't denying it was because the suggestion was uncomfortably plausible. The first time she and Kai had met Vale, he'd commented that he had a gift for meeting people at convenient times and knowing if they'd be important to him. Taken down to its essentials, that was far too close to the Fae sense of narrative and the way they fitted themselves into a story. Vale was an archetype of the Great Detective, and this world itself was on the high-chaos spectrum. Not as much as the Venice they'd all visited, but still more than a step away from balance. She'd never thought about this before \u2013 but had she subconsciously refused to consider it because she liked Vale?\n\n'I don't believe that Vale is Fae,' she said.\n\n'Not in the present tense, maybe,' Silver agreed. 'But the future holds potential.'\n\nIrene thought of Alberich, and his words about limitations and what we make of ourselves. She could feel Kai's stare of disappointment because she hadn't leapt to deny the whole possibility. 'If this was true,' she said, 'why did you try to stop him going to Venice? I'd have thought you'd be in favour of it. And don't try to tell me it was reverse psychology.'\n\nSilver paused. 'Well, my little mouse, I was indeed going to tell you that, but it seems I must confess that I was actually wrong about something.' He smiled in a charming display of vulnerability. Irene had to mentally pinch herself to push back the compulsion to believe him, the tug of his glamour. The fact that he was insulting her helped. 'I didn't think Vale would make it. I'm only too glad to find out that he has. I want to bring him properly into our kind. It'd be the easiest thing in the world. Or in any suitable world, really. But if you drag him off to a high-order sphere and force him to be merely human, you won't just cleanse him, you'll destroy him. You'll wipe out everything that makes him what he is.'\n\n'I can't believe you're seriously considering this,' Kai broke in. 'This is all lies\u2014'\n\n'No, it isn't,' Silver said. He leaned forward, his eyes on Irene like a caress. 'And you know it isn't.'\n\n'Will you swear it's true?' Irene asked.\n\nSilver nodded, his hair drifting round his face as if touched by an invisible breeze. 'I will, and do.'\n\n'And even if it isn't lies, he's only saying it because it's to his benefit!' Kai said furiously. 'He's just as bad as Zayanna! The two of them are only involving themselves because of their perverse obsessions.'\n\nIrene put her glass down carefully before she threw it at someone. 'Kai,' she said, and something in her tone made him cut short whatever he'd been going to say. 'Please be quiet for just a moment. Lord Silver, thank you for your input into the situation. Inspector Singh...'\n\n'Yes?' Singh had retreated into himself while Silver and Kai were talking, watching the rest of the room like a cat at a mouse hole. Now he gave Irene his undivided attention.\n\nIrene knew this wasn't going to go down well, and she steeled herself in anticipation. 'I think we're going to need to ask Vale for a decision.'\n\nSilver brought his hands together in applause. 'Oh, very nice, Miss Winters. An excellent way to ease your conscience. You're more of a hypocrite than I'd given you credit for. Do you honestly think he'll make any choice other than the one you want?'\n\n'Which is exactly why he shouldn't make that choice.' Kai turned to Singh, looking for an ally. 'Inspector, you must see that we need to get Vale out of here now, before he deteriorates any further... Do you want him to become like that?' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Silver. 'We can't risk that happening to him.'\n\n'I take offence at being called a \"that\",' Silver remarked. 'Don't push me, dragon. Just because I have a fondness for Mr Vale doesn't mean I like you.'\n\n'I have to question your motives, Miss Winters,' Singh said. He showed no sign of moving from in front of the bedroom door. 'Lord Silver's quite likely right in his guess. I'm sure Mr Vale would want to help you, no matter what the risk to himself was. Lord Silver may or may not be correct in there being a risk to Mr Vale if he leaves this world. But it seems there's a lot more risk if he stays put.'\n\n'That may be so,' Irene said. She found that she had risen to her feet without realizing. 'All right, that probably is so. And I don't want that risk any more than you do. But can't you see that if we make this decision for him, he's never going to forgive us? Lord Silver's been talking about what Vale is.' She tried to find the words to convince Singh. 'That's how he sees him. But you talk about who Vale is. I don't know him as well as you do, I haven't been his friend as long as you have, and I'm sorry for the trouble I've got him into. And under some circumstances, maybe I would drug him and drag him out of trouble without him having a choice in the matter. But he has a right to choose whether or not he takes this risk. And none of us, whether we're his friends or his enemies, have the right to make that choice for him. He won't thank us for taking the decision out of his hands.'\n\nSingh hesitated, then shook his head. 'I'm not concerned with Mr Vale's thanks, Miss Winters. I'll do what I must to save him, even if it means losing his friendship\u2014'\n\n'Then it's a good thing you won't need to.' The door behind Singh swung open and Vale stood there, clearly fully awake. He was in his shirtsleeves, his hair dishevelled, and his eyes glittered with a focus that was almost frightening. 'Singh, old fellow, I appreciate what you've said. But there are some situations where a man has to make his own choices.' He glanced at Silver. 'A man. Not necessarily a Fae.'\n\n'There's far less difference than you might think,' Silver drawled casually. But he was watching Vale with the same sharp focus, ignoring the others.\n\nVale ran a hand through his hair. 'Lord Silver, when I had far too close an encounter with some of your kind in that other Venice, I found they were quite incapable of making real choices. They'd already made the only real one that they were capable of, in choosing to be what they made themselves.'\n\n'So be yourself!' Silver said. 'You've bored me on the topic often enough. The law needs you, justice needs you\u2014'\n\n'Yes, this is true...' Vale hesitated, and for a moment the air in the room seemed as thick as honey, full of potential, full of choice. 'But what is also true is that a particular person needs my help.'\n\nHe took a deep breath. His eyes and voice were steadier now. 'I would be a shallow stereotype of myself if I took cases purely for the sake of intellectual curiosity. I am quite capable of providing assistance to a friend who has asked me for it. Winters, as one human being to another, is there anything you want to ask me?'\n\n'Yes,' Irene said firmly. Kai looked as if the ground had been cut from under his feet, or as if a book for the Library had decided to complain about being stolen mid-theft. Singh was watching Vale cautiously, but at least he wasn't interfering so far. Silver had shut his mouth, which was an unquestionable improvement. 'I need you to help me find someone.'\n\n'Then please sit down,' Vale said. 'And, Lord Silver, thank you for your time and attention, but I have an urgent investigation in progress. Don't let us detain you.'\n\nSilver slammed the door behind him."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "'I have my notes over here,' Vale said, striding across to a pile of documents on the table. It was surrounded by a morass of maps, clothing bills, death threats and newspapers. Vale swept them all away with a casual gesture, and Irene had to catch them to stop them sliding off the table. 'Combine the purchases made from certain exotic animal suppliers to provide the spiders that infested Winters' home, the deposits and withdrawals of money at various banks, Zayanna's desire to avoid Lord Silver, and the current movements of various gangs for hire... While not conclusive, it leads to a clear angle of investigation.'\n\n'Which exotic animal suppliers?' Irene asked. A nasty thought came to her. 'And has Zayanna been buying anything else besides spiders and wasps?'\n\n'Which wasps?' Vale asked.\n\n'These ones.' Kai reached into his pocket and pulled out a rather mangled example of the ones that had attacked them. It still had a sliver of glass through it. The stinger looked even larger than Irene had thought, and her stung hands throbbed with new pain at the reminder.\n\n'Ah!' Vale picked the thing up by one wing and inspected it. 'Not a wasp, but a giant Asian hornet! The size is quite distinctive.'\n\n'Personally I'm glad there aren't many hornets out there that are two inches long,' Irene said with a shudder. 'Is that any help in locating her?'\n\n'It confirms my suspicions.' Vale leaned over to tap a spot on a map of London. 'A great many things can be bought at Harrods, but this isn't one of them. She must have been shopping at the Belgravia Underground Market.'\n\nSingh was nodding, but Irene and Kai exchanged glances of mutual incomprehension. 'The Belgravia Underground Market?' Irene asked.\n\n'An establishment in Belgravia,' Vale said. 'It facilitates the sale of rare animals, and frequently highly dangerous ones. A number of the vendors there skirt the edge of the law, but given the price of the wares and the social rank of the buyers, it's difficult for the police to interfere.'\n\nSingh nodded grimly. 'The lady's broken a few laws. But I can't bring in a few constables to turn the Belgravia Underground Market upside down and shake it to see what falls out. I'd never get a warrant for it. I'm afraid we're going to have to be subtle about this, Miss Winters.'\n\n'But you think we can find a lead on Zayanna there?' Irene said, going for the main point.\n\nVale nodded. 'Let me get my coat. I'll only be a moment.'\n\nAs Singh headed downstairs to call a cab, Kai drew Irene into a corner. 'I'm concerned,' he said flatly.\n\n'So am I,' Irene agreed, 'about a lot of things.' Such as whether she'd just destroyed Vale by forcing him into this investigation. She'd known he wouldn't say no, when she'd insisted on offering him a choice. And both Kai and Singh had insisted on trying to help Vale instead. If she'd ruined him by making him stay here to help her... she felt ill at the thought. She didn't need Kai questioning her right now. She was far too busy questioning herself. 'Which one are we considering at the moment?'\n\n'I'm concerned about your motivations.' Kai folded his arms defensively. 'You've already shown that you're irrational about Zayanna.'\n\nIt was far easier for Irene to contemplate Zayanna's betrayal than to consider how she herself might have betrayed Vale. Her voice dropped to barely a whisper, but she could hear her own anger in its absolute chill. 'Since when have you been my superior? Since when have you been in a position to judge me? Do you think I'm going to let Zayanna go with a slapped hand, just because I thought she was a friend?'\n\nKai looked as if he'd like to back away, if he could only find a way to do so without looking as if he was doing so. 'You listened to her before,' he tried.\n\n'She had a plausible story before. It made sense. She had helped me. I felt sorry for her.'\n\n'You felt sorry for a Fae.'\n\n'I'm only human.' Irene's fury \u2013 at Zayanna, at herself \u2013 was a ball of acid in her stomach. 'And because of that, as you are no doubt going to point out, I made a mistake. I trusted someone who was better at acting harmless than I've ever been, I got us both into danger, and I risked the Library.' And I just endangered Vale. 'You don't need to tell me, Kai. I am perfectly capable of seeing this all by myself.'\n\n'It's more than just that. In order to get hold of her, you were willing to risk\u2014' Kai cut himself off, but the glance he shot in the direction of Vale's bedroom door finished his sentence for him.\n\n'I was trying to get all the facts before I made a decision,' Irene replied. 'Just because Bradamant had said...'\n\nA memory unexpectedly jarred into place. The conversation with Bradamant and Kai in the Library, when Bradamant had mentioned how Vale could become fully Fae. Kai had said without hesitation that Vale would never agree to it. But Kai hadn't asked any questions or suggested it would be impossible for Vale to become Fae. He hadn't even needed to pause to consider. Which meant that he'd already known about the possibility.\n\n'You knew that was an option,' she said flatly. 'Vale becoming a full Fae. You knew and you didn't tell me.'\n\nThe betraying flicker of guilt in Kai's eyes gave him away before he could try to deny it, and he knew it. 'It would have been worse than death for him,' he protested. 'It still may.' He'd dropped his voice now as well.\n\nI always thought Kai was the sort of person who'd lie to protect the people he loved. Why should I be so bitter when it turns out that he'd lie to me? 'It wasn't your decision to make.'\n\n'It was.' He assumed that air of hauteur again. 'Would you trust a drunken man to make the right decision when it came to saving himself? If I was incapable of making decisions, wouldn't you make the choice that was right for me?'\n\n'That's not the point,' Irene said. Her anger was still there, heightened by that irrational sense of betrayal. 'Vale was capable of making decisions.'\n\n'Nobody who's that contaminated by chaos can be trusted.' Kai looked down at her, and for a moment she had the same sense of absolute distance, of inhuman pride, that his uncle had carried with him when they'd met before.\n\nShe could argue about it with Kai for a hundred years, and all she'd get out of it would be wasted breath. And she wasn't going to make tearful eyes at him and say If you were really my friend, then you'd agree with me. She'd never wanted her friendships to be on those terms.\n\nIrene took a deep breath, tasting the air and the familiar smell of Vale's rooms. Paper, ink, chemicals, coffee, the old leather of the armchairs, the constant overriding fug of pipe smoke. 'Let me be honest,' she said. 'This is not a situation I've been in before. I may have been let down in a professional way, but I've never actually been betrayed by someone whom I considered a friend.' And I've never sacrificed a friend, either. Not like this.\n\nKai had enough sense not to say anything along the lines of Well, obviously Zayanna wasn't a friend and never could have been, and this proves it. He simply nodded.\n\n'And you're right. I am feeling more than a little irrational about this.' Her anger was a saw-blade, honed and ready to rip. She was tired of splitting hairs with him, tired of arguing comparative morality, tired of wasting time when the Library was in danger. The clock was ticking. 'But don't worry. I'm not going to let that stop me from getting the information we need. There's no more time for this. I need to capture Zayanna, and I need to know that I can rely on you. Do you trust my judgement?'\n\n'I trust it enough to tell you all this to your face.' He touched her shoulder and did his best to smile. 'But do be careful. I'd rather not have to train a new superior.'\n\nIrene was trying to find a good reply to that when Vale emerged from his rooms, properly dressed and swinging a coat over his shoulders. He hustled them down the stairs to where Singh had managed, somehow at this time of night, to find a cab.\n\nThe Belgravia Underground Market didn't make any particular attempt to hide itself. Their cab driver recognized the address. When they arrived, the houses were dark at street level, lightless behind drawn curtains. But the windows of basement flats all down the road gleamed with the dazzle of strong ether-lamps. Passers-by strolled in pairs or groups, very few of them alone: even in this expensive part of London, the night was dangerous.\n\n'It was started over a century ago,' Vale explained. He gestured down the row of elegant pale houses, their black iron balconies gleaming with reflected light from the street lamps. 'Lyall Mews. The properties were all owned by the same noble family. Unfortunately, their heir wasn't as good with cards and dice as he'd thought, and the family ended up mortgaged to their eyebrows. They eventually signed a contract with a syndicate, permanently renting the entire set of cellars to them for a nominal fee, though they kept the houses above.'\n\n'And that same syndicate still owns the contract,' Singh agreed. He'd turned up his collar against the night air, and his moustache bristled above it. 'Even if all the houses are owned by different families these days. How do you want to handle this, Mr Vale? There are two main exits, one at each end of the market. We don't want to risk our quarry bolting out of one, the moment we walk in the other.'\n\n'You think Zayanna will actually be here?' Kai asked.\n\n'It's possible,' Vale said. 'Not very likely, but certainly not impossible. Or we can question stallholders who might have seen her. She is Fae, after all. And even if she doesn't actually need any more pets, she may not be able to resist the urge to come shopping.'\n\nHe pointed down the street again towards a square of light on the pavement, indicating an open door. 'That is one of the two entrances to the market. The other is beside us. There are approximately three vendors who might have supplied king baboon spiders, giant Asian hornets and snakes \u2013 you did mention that she was fond of snakes? If two of us use this entrance, and the other two enter by the other door, we can work towards the middle. If we check with vendors on the way, then we can intercept the lady if she is present; and we may hope to find her delivery address, if not.'\n\nIrene was not wildly enthusiastic to find herself heading down to the far entrance in Singh's company. Singh was too professional to show it, but she didn't think he was happy either. But Vale had proposed the division of labour, and Kai had agreed to it.\n\nAre Singh and I supposed to realize each other's good points while working together and bond over the job? She was perfectly well aware of Singh's good points. He was intelligent, professional, ethical, and probably a better influence on Vale than she was. It was more a question of Singh disliking her \u2013 on the grounds that she was a book thief from another world who'd broken the law more than once, and who had put Vale in danger. And she couldn't really argue with that.\n\nThe open door at the far end of the street also leaked light out into the foggy night, together with a mixture of aromas \u2013 an overriding smell of cheap incense, and beneath it undertones of hay, mould and dung. The room behind the door was small and bare, lit by a single ether-lamp, and might once have been a storage cupboard. Two large men were sitting behind a table, anonymous in overcoats and mufflers. A cash-box sat on the table in obvious invitation.\n\n'How much is it?' Singh asked. He'd pulled his hat low over his eyes and, like the men, he'd now covered his mouth and chin with a scarf. Irene had collected a spare overcoat and veil from Vale's rooms and was similarly well covered. The whole thing was verging on the ridiculous. If this was the general standard of dress for the Belgravia Underground Market, no wonder people with more money than sense spent their time and cash here. Still, it did increase the chances of them finding Zayanna here. She'd love it.\n\n'Five guineas each,' the man on the right said. It wasn't an attempt at bargaining. It was a simple statement of fact. Irene revised her opinion of this place's customers, placing them even higher up the idle-rich scale of finance.\n\nSingh and Irene dropped money into the cash box, and the man on the left nodded them towards the inner door.\n\nNoise washed over them as they stepped inside, and the smell made Irene draw her veil closer across her face. The long stretch of cellars wasn't well lit: the occasional lamps were turned down or muted with coloured shades, and the far end of the market was hidden in shadows. The cellars were wider than she'd expected, and she realized they must run under the front street on one side and also out under the back gardens of the houses on the other side. Vendors had laid out their stalls in little islands in the centre of each cellar, or jostled each other along the walls. Some displayed tanks and aquariums, with snakes, lizards and fish. Others showed off gauze-covered boxes and hives, or cages, or even animals on small leads. A pair of white owls in the corner overlooked the room with furious yellow eyes, glaring down like offended deities, their legs tethered to their owner's table by paired chains. The clothing of the shoppers ranged from the expensive to the ridiculous, but given the time of night and the fog outside, most people were muffled in heavy coats.\n\n'Miss Chayat's stall first,' Singh said, nodding over to the right-hand wall. 'She's one of the main insect suppliers, I believe.'\n\nThe stall in question was obvious, standing between purveyors of armoured lizards on the right and of Siamese fighting fish on the left. Its shelves were filled with tiny cages, each containing a single insect or a pair of them, walled with gauze and sealed with wax. The air around it hummed with the sound of struggling insects. The stallholder herself was as untidy as her wares were neat, with long greying hair that tangled around her face and blended indistinctly into her tattered shawl and beige dress. She peered at them suspiciously as they approached.\n\n'King baboon spiders,' Irene said, getting to the point. 'And giant Asian hornets.'\n\nThe woman pursed her wrinkled lips. 'It'll take a week to order the hornets in. I can do you the spiders, though \u2013 there's currently a glut on the market.'\n\nIrene had almost forgotten their earlier sale to the pet shop. It was interesting to see the free-market economy in action. 'That's annoying,' she said, affecting her best upper-class accent. 'I'd been told I could find giant Asian hornets here. If it's because someone else has placed a prior order on your stock, I'm sure I could pay more...'\n\nThe stallholder shook her head, cutting Irene off. 'Whoever told you that, told you wrong. Those hornets need to be ordered from abroad. You just can't keep them in this climate, and nobody here would keep them in stock on the chance of a sale, least of all me. There's no call for them. The only one in this market who might be able to get them for you in less than a week is Snaith. You'll find him two cellars along, in the middle, if that's what you're after.'\n\nIrene glanced at Singh and he nodded. This didn't sound like a vendor who'd sold any within the last month. Snaith \u2013 who was also one of the other sellers Vale had named \u2013 was a more likely bet. 'Thank you,' Irene said and moved on.\n\nIt was difficult to make one's way through the market in a straight line. The stalls were laid out haphazardly, in some defined pattern that had evolved from rationality into chaos. And the buyers clustered around them, examining their wares, rather than clearing the way for others to get through. Singh and Irene had to take a wide detour round one stall, where the vendor was shouting down a group of buyers who wanted armadillos \u2013 claiming that the recent leprosy scare was making imports impossible. A pair of men in overcoats, similar to the men at the entrance, were already shoving through the crowd towards the disturbance. The market's internal security, no doubt.\n\nThey had to pause again in the second cellar. A woman with huge glasses like an insect's faceted eyes was complaining vociferously. Apparently her new cheetah cub, Percival, was too fond of eating her food and chewing her fingers \u2013 and she'd specifically asked for one with better training. The cub in question was trailing behind her on a silver chain, chewing it and staring at the tanks of piranhas on the next stall along. Between the woman and her secretary, and the stallholder, and all the interested onlookers, there was no way past. Singh and Irene had to circle round laboriously towards the third cellar.\n\nIt was then that Irene recognized a face.\n\nIt wasn't a particularly distinguished face, and it had a brand-new black eye since last she'd seen it. But it was the face of Davey, one of the werewolves who'd kidnapped her earlier. He was speaking to one of the stallholders that Vale had pinpointed. And even more importantly, due to their sidelong approach, he didn't seem to have noticed her.\n\nShe drew Singh to one side, ostensibly to examine some duck-billed platypuses, and murmured an explanation to him as she watched Davey surreptitiously. She was grateful for the animal smells all around them \u2013 it should cut down on the chance of him recognizing her.\n\nDavey was complaining about the failure of an order to arrive. The order \u2013 a mated pair of spitting cobras \u2013 had apparently been delayed in transit from Mandalay, due to prevailing winds. Davey was whining about the inconvenience of it all: the stallholder polished his monocle, unimpressed.\n\n'It might be a trap,' Singh muttered. Irene nodded. She'd had the same thought. Zayanna could quite easily trail a known agent in front of Irene and Kai, in order to lure them into a prepared ambush. But then again, they had come to the market because Vale had deduced that Zayanna was shopping here. It was plausible that she'd send an agent rather than come herself. This might be for real.\n\n'I'll follow him,' Irene said, keeping her voice low. 'You can find out from the stallholder where the order's supposed to be sent. Then find Vale and Kai, and send them after me. I'll try to leave a trail to show where I've gone.'\n\nSingh's brows drew together. 'I don't think so,' he said. Irene turned to glare at him, but he shook his head very slightly. 'Miss Winters, I know this is serious, but what if this Davey fellow takes a cab the moment he steps outside? Or what if you're several streets away before I manage to find Mr Vale and Mr Strongrock? Having you off on your own somewhere won't help the situation. We'll do better to find out where he wants the stuff delivered and then go there together.'\n\nIrene gritted her teeth. 'We may be almost out of time. I don't think we can afford to wait. If he gets away from us, or if the address is a fake one\u2014'\n\n'Miss Winters.' Singh's hand tightened on her arm, and when she looked at him, she saw genuine concern in his eyes. 'Think it through, madam. It's because the matter's so urgent that we can't take any risks. You're the one person here who can reach your Library. We can't risk losing you.'\n\n'You know damn well that Vale would be going after him alone,' Irene muttered.\n\nSingh sighed. 'Indeed I do, Miss Winters. Indeed I do. And I'd say exactly the same thing to him, madam. You are not making my life any easier by suggesting precisely the same thing that he'd have in mind. A little bit of self-preservation would make life a great deal easier for all your friends. This is no night to be splitting up and losing you in the fog. Nor is it a good thing for them to be getting into trouble because they lose track of you.'\n\nHe had a point. Irene locked down the rising panic that was her constant companion, the sense that every second she wasted was a second the Library couldn't afford to lose. 'Very well,' she agreed, and tried not to sound too grudging about it.\n\nA few minutes later, greased by the application of a lot of money, they had an address."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "The delivery address was a warehouse in the East End of London. The cab had dropped them off a few streets away.\n\n'Zayanna is going to have a back exit,' Irene said, repeating a point she'd already made several times in conversation in the cab. 'And we know she has henchmen. Maybe even better-quality ones than Davey. We can't risk letting her escape out the back while we come in the front. Or vice versa.'\n\n'What's the roof like?' Kai asked.\n\n'I wouldn't trust any roofs in this area,' Vale said. Now that they were about to swing into action, he seemed entirely his normal self, and Irene could almost persuade herself that the febrile edge in his eyes was her imagination. 'Not without a chance to check them first. I don't like Winters' idea of us splitting up any better than you do, Strongrock, but it seems our best option.'\n\n'Then I'll distract Zayanna,' Kai suggested. He drew himself up, every inch the young prince and commander. 'Irene would be much more effective getting in round the back and using the Language to open the locks.'\n\nIrene had been wanting him to demonstrate his independence and decision-making ability. Just not right now. She didn't need an argument at this moment. She had too many other balls in the air. 'Kai, in case you didn't notice, Zayanna doesn't like you.'\n\n'So? She's Fae. She'll welcome a confrontation\u2014'\n\n'I'm not talking about pandering to her love of drama,' Irene said, thinking of the Fae fondness for declaring eternal enmity against a rival, then spending their lives plotting obsessively against such a target. 'I'm trying to establish that she actually, genuinely doesn't like you. I think she might even seriously try to kill you, if she sees you in the firing line. With me, she'll want to talk first.'\n\n'And you want to talk to her, of course,' Kai said coldly.\n\n'If you know any other method to get information out of her, then kindly tell me now and don't waste my time being facetious,' Irene snapped. 'And a lock-pick will work just as well as the Language. You don't need me to open locks.' She considered saying, It's three to one, since Vale and Singh had already agreed, but she didn't want Kai being half-hearted about his side of the job. Also, it wasn't a democracy. 'Please be careful, gentlemen. If Zayanna's expecting us, she may think we'll use the back way as a matter of course and may have set up all her traps there accordingly.'\n\nVale nodded. Singh looked as if he was questioning exactly why he was there \u2013 and about to run into danger on her account \u2013 but he nodded, too. Kai finally made a reluctant noise of agreement.\n\n'Right.' Irene checked her watch. 'Ten minutes for you to get into position, then I go and knock on the door.'\n\nA distant church clock was chiming five when she finally rapped on the warehouse side door. The skies above had begun to pale a little, but the fog still clung at street level.\n\nThere was no answer from inside the warehouse.\n\nIrene stepped to one side and inspected the area in the way that Vale would have done. An arc of dirt on the pavement showed that the door had been opened recently, and the mark of twin wheel-tracks demonstrated that something heavy had been pushed or dragged in or out. It also suggested that Zayanna did indeed have minions in there, if this was her base. Zayanna was not the sort of person to push heavy trolleys herself.\n\nShe tested the handle, still standing to one side of the door. Locked. All right. This was manageable. 'Warehouse door lock, open.'\n\nIt was quiet enough on the street at this hour of night that she could hear the tumblers in the lock click into place. She gave it a moment to see if anyone inside reacted, but there was no answering noise. Mentally crossing her fingers, she tugged the door open and peered into the room.\n\nTo her relief, there weren't any shotguns or harpoons or axes, or whatever, wired up to the door. The room inside was an ordinary small office, an ether-lamp still burning on the wall in spite of the late hour, complete with chairs and desk. Another door in the far wall led further into the warehouse.\n\nThe thought of incriminating documents and invoices led Irene across to the desk, but she hesitated as she reached for the top drawer. For one thing, it was far too convenient a location for traps. And another thought had struck her. Why should the ether-lamp be on at this time of night? Either because someone had just been in here, or because someone \u2013 like Irene \u2013 was expected...\n\n'All right,' she said, looking around. Her voice seemed too loud in the silent room. 'Zayanna? I came to see you.'\n\nFor a long moment there was no answer, and Irene was able to consider all the ways in which she'd bollixed up the plan. Then Zayanna's voice called from beyond the inner door, 'In here, darling!'\n\nIrene advanced cautiously, looking through into the room beyond. It was the heat that hit her first. The large space beyond the door, nearly one-third of the warehouse interior, was as warm as a greenhouse. Thick black cloth had been nailed up against the walls and across the ceiling, covering the windows and blocking draughts. Cages and terrariums stood at careful intervals, interspersed with large electrical-coil radiators and blazing ether-lamps. It all looked vastly unsafe. At the centre of the room were a couple of divans, with a small table between them.\n\nZayanna had made herself comfortable on the further divan, leaning her chin on one hand as she contemplated Irene. She was in clinging black satin that trailed over the edge of the divan, giving her a serpentine air. 'Do come in,' she murmured, her eyes mocking. 'My pets are all perfectly safe.'\n\n'I remember you used to look after snakes for your patron.' Irene wasn't quite certain that she wanted to walk between those cages to reach Zayanna. The scorpions in the closest terrarium looked too active for Irene to be comfortable anywhere near them. And far too big.\n\n'I do prefer snakes,' Zayanna admitted. 'But I like other pets, too.'\n\n'This many of them?' Irene indicated the cages and terrariums with a gesture.\n\n'Oh well, I might have got a tiny bit carried away there. I just went to do a teeny bit of shopping, to get a few little ones to start with, and you know how it is.' Zayanna shrugged. 'Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said that nothing succeeds like excess? I thought I'd try it with giant hornets and see if it was true.'\n\n'Sadly \u2013 well, I suppose it's sadly for you, not me \u2013 it didn't quite work,' Irene said. She ignored the impulse to ask exactly where Zayanna had read Oscar Wilde. 'I'm here, after all.'\n\n'I did hope you'd make it, darling.' Zayanna reached across to pick up one of the bottles that stood on the table. 'Can I offer you something to drink? Strictly no obligations, my word on it.'\n\n'And no poison?'\n\n'My word on that, too,' Zayanna promised. 'Darling, I do realize you might be a tiny little bit suspicious of me at the moment, but we're not going to have a proper conversation if we have to keep on shouting at each other across the room like this. Won't you come and sit down? I'm not going to try to kill you while you're walking over here \u2013 it'd spoil everything.'\n\nIt was the same logic that Irene herself had used, after all \u2013 she won't kill me because she'll want to gloat at me \u2013 but it was a little less comforting when she was face-to-face with it. 'All right,' she agreed, knowing that her caution was audible in her voice. 'But you must understand that I'm rather annoyed with myself at the moment.'\n\n'Why?' Zayanna asked. 'And what would you like to drink?'\n\nIrene began to walk carefully between the cages and heaters, holding her full skirts close to her legs. Her multiple layers of clothing \u2013 overcoat and ballgown \u2013 were swelteringly hot. 'Well, I am supposed to be good at my job, rather than falling for the first sob story that comes along.'\n\n'But I was convincing,' Zayanna said smugly. 'And let's be fair, darling, we had history and I was well prepared.'\n\n'Oh?' Irene tried to make the question sound only mildly curious. 'And do you have any brandy there?'\n\nZayanna shook her head vigorously, her dark curls tousled over her shoulders. 'Brandy's so dull. I've got tequila, absinthe, jenever, baijiu, vodka\u2014'\n\n'Brandy is not dull,' Irene protested. The feeling of time running through her hands like sand gave her a nagging ache of urgency. But the more Zayanna relaxed and focused on Irene, the easier it would be for the men to break in unobserved. Thinking of it as a military operation helped Irene suppress her own anger. 'And aren't you hitting the spirits a little bit heavily?'\n\n'Who needs a liver?' Zayanna picked up a bottle whose label proclaimed it as Best-Quality Amsterdam Jenever and splashed clear liquid into two glasses. 'Now then, darling. Sit down and we can talk. I'm sure you have lots of questions for me.'\n\nIrene seated herself on the divan opposite Zayanna's, with the table between the two of them. 'I should probably get to the point. Zayanna, you are the person who's been trying to kill me, am I right?'\n\n'I'm definitely one of them,' Zayanna said. She pushed one of the glasses across the table to Irene. 'There may be other people, too. I wouldn't necessarily know.'\n\n'Why?' Irene tried to keep her tone level, to treat the subject as casually and lightly as Zayanna, but the word twisted in her mouth and turned sharp. 'Perhaps it was stupid of me, but I hadn't realized we were on those terms.'\n\n'Which terms?'\n\n'The terms that involved trying to kill each other.'\n\nZayanna tilted her head, looking puzzled. 'Well, on a practical level, we are, but that doesn't mean we have to be unpleasant to each other. It's been such a challenge!'\n\n'A challenge,' Irene said flatly. The stings on her hand throbbed as she reached across to pick up the glass.\n\nZayanna nodded. 'You were an inspiration to me, Irene darling. When we met in Venice, you were so calm, so controlled, such a perfect agent! I did tell you at least a bit of the truth. My patron threw me out. He showed me the door. He turned the metaphorical dogs loose on me. And the real dogs, too! He said I should have been more proactive, more aware. So when Alberich offered me a job, I thought, I can do better. I can be just as good as you were!'\n\nIrene stared into the jenever. She couldn't quite bring herself to take a sip, even though alcoholic oblivion was oh-so-very-tempting at that precise moment. 'You know, Zayanna, usually I'd be pleased and proud to think that I was an inspiring teacher, but right at this precise moment I'm feeling a bit conflicted on the subject.'\n\nZayanna took a swig of the jenever and licked her lips. 'I can understand that you're feeling a bit depressed about losing. But do cheer up! Maybe next time you'll win.'\n\n'There won't be a next time, if I'm dead,' Irene felt the need to point out. 'And I'm not dead yet, so saying I've lost seems somewhat premature.'\n\n'It's like having the king in check in chess,' Zayanna said. 'When the next move is going to be checkmate, you can say you've won, even if the other person hasn't agreed to it yet. The front door locked itself behind you. I've got men next door, and they'll come running if I shout. There's a button under my foot, darling. It's wired to all the cage doors. If I press it, then everything gets opened \u2013 and I promise you some of my pets have very fast-acting poison. And I've taken the antidotes. So you see, I have won.'\n\nIt was an interesting theoretical situation. Irene would prefer to avoid the practical experiment. 'All right,' she agreed. 'Technically, I suppose that does count as check, and I can't immediately move my king out of the position. It's a pity. I'd hoped I could get the answers to some questions before, well...' She wiggled her fingers in a manner suggestive of poisonous snakes.\n\n'Hmm, we might be able to come to an arrangement,' Zayanna said. There was a sly, bargaining note to her voice. 'Technically my contract said \"kill or otherwise take out of circulation\", so as long as I keep you out of the way, darling, I think that fulfils it.'\n\n'Your contract with Alberich.' Irene nodded knowingly.\n\nZayanna smiled. 'I couldn't possibly tell you, darling. That'd be betrayal and... let's just say that would be bad for me.' She tried to make a joke of it, but there was a flutter of nervousness behind her voice.\n\n'How bad?'\n\n'Permanently bad.' Zayanna sighed. 'One would almost think he didn't have faith that we'd stay loyal or avoid being captured. Speaking of which, how did you find me here? I was expecting you, but I still don't know how you did it.'\n\nIrene needed a plausible reason that didn't draw Zayanna to any conclusions about possible allies showing up. 'I used the Language,' she lied, gambling that Zayanna wouldn't necessarily know everything it could or couldn't do. 'I was able to track one of the giant Asian hornets from the British Library to here.' And where had the men got to, anyhow? She could use a rescue, or at the very least a diversion.\n\n'Oh,' Zayanna said. She looked around at the cages and terrariums. 'Drat. I hadn't thought of that. I'm so glad you didn't try it with the spiders. It would have absolutely spoiled things if you'd caught up with me that early.'\n\nIrene wanted very badly to grab Zayanna by the shoulders and scream at her that this wasn't some sort of game \u2013 that the Library might be destroyed, that Irene could have been killed. That things didn't just happen in a vacuum, but that cause led on to effect. She saw that her hand was shaking, and she put the glass of jenever down before she spilled it. 'I can see that would have cut things short,' she agreed. Why aren't the men here yet?\n\nZayanna sighed. 'Darling, I'm not getting much of a sense of engagement from you here. You're being very analytical about it all. Don't you want to swear vengeance or anything? I did betray you, after all. I knew that you'd be protective if you thought I was in trouble, just like you were with that dragon you saved... Where is he, by the way?'\n\n'I sent him home,' Irene said. She'd been expecting that question. 'It was too risky for him to stay in this world.'\n\n'Probably a good thing. I'm certainly not in this to start a war with his family.' Zayanna poured herself more jenever. 'And he's so incredibly possessive. Such a bore.'\n\n'Some people might say that was the pot calling the kettle black,' Irene remarked drily.\n\nZayanna pouted. 'Irene, you're being unfair. I don't want to keep you out of danger or stop you doing your Librarian thing. Totally the contrary. That's why I don't want... anyone to kill you.'\n\n'But if Alberich destroys the Library\u2014' Irene tried.\n\nZayanna looked blank. 'You can find another patron, can't you? You won't stop being what you are.'\n\n'And nor will you, it seems.' Regret fought with anger, and for a moment Irene wished she could be stupid enough to drink that glass of jenever. It might help her feel a little better about the fact that Zayanna wasn't, and didn't want to be, anything other than a manipulative Fae who was far more interested in playing the game than in why it was being played. Irene thought of that list of destroyed gates and dead Librarians. They were real. Compared to that, the fact that she'd once liked Zayanna and thought of her as a friend was as important as... well, as a dead giant Asian hornet.\n\n'So what now?' Zayanna leaned forward eagerly. 'Do tell me, darling. Are you meditating a simply devastating countermove? Will you leap across the table and attack me? Or are you going to flee into the London night?'\n\n'Fleeing wouldn't work very well,' Irene said. 'You'd probably have the werewolves hunt me down.'\n\n'Oh, drat \u2013 you guessed that one. I could drop you into a pit of snakes, maybe? We always used to do that back home. And then we'd have cocktails.'\n\n'You have a pit of snakes?'\n\n'Next door,' Zayanna confirmed. 'Or I can keep you in chains or something.'\n\n'Which you also have next door?' Irene leaned forward, resting her hands on the drinks table, casually sliding her thumbs under its lip. 'Don't worry. I do understand that you don't have a choice in the matter. Being what you are.'\n\nZayanna looked hurt. 'Irene darling, that didn't sound very kind.'\n\n'It wasn't meant to be.' Irene gave up trying to categorize her feelings, and settled for the fact that she could feel both anger and pity for Zayanna without them being mutually exclusive. 'It really wasn't.'\n\n'But we're friends.' Zayanna gave her the most human smile she'd given yet that evening. 'Don't you remember? We went swimming together in Venice, and you told me about your old school?'\n\n'And you got drunk and complained about how you always had to milk the serpents, and you never got to seduce any of the heroes,' Irene agreed. This conversation had reached the point where awkward choices were going to have to be made, and she couldn't wait for the men any longer. 'I'm sorry that you lost your patron.'\n\n'Bah,' Zayanna said dismissively. 'I've had more fun in the last few months than I did for decades before that! This is what I was meant to be, darling.'\n\nIrene nodded understandingly. And then she thrust the table upwards, bottles and all, dumping them all over Zayanna."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "The table went over in a crash of bottles and glasses. Zayanna cried out in anger, shoving it off her, but she was well doused in a spray of vodka, gin and other expensive spirits. The floor was littered with broken glass. Irene sprang to her feet and took advantage of the other woman's confusion to grab her by the shoulders and drag her off the divan, dropping her on the floor. 'No pressing any buttons,' she said. 'No releasing any snakes or scorpions, or whatever.'\n\n'Guards!' Zayanna shrieked. There was an undertone of panic to her voice. 'Guards! Get in here now!'\n\nThe far door swung open. Kai was standing there, with Vale and Singh. 'I'm afraid they're not available,' he said. 'Will we do?'\n\nIrene was just starting to enjoy the look on Zayanna's face when a single click sounded. She half-glanced sideways, not taking her attention off Zayanna for a second. A cage door had swung open, and a long green serpent was tentatively wriggling out of its enclosure. More clicks sounded, like a house of cards ever so slowly collapsing, as other cage doors opened.\n\n'It was a dead man's switch,' Zayanna spat. She touched her throat nervously. 'It was supposed to activate if I took my foot off it. Do you think I'm stupid? Now let me go!'\n\n'No,' Irene said firmly. 'Not an option. You're going to tell me the truth.'\n\nZayanna came to her feet in a sudden motion, but instead of charging towards Irene, she bolted away. Irene had been expecting some sort of reaction, but the other woman's sheer speed took her by surprise. So she ended up rugby-tackling Zayanna, rather than anything more elegant. The two of them went down together, rolling across the alcohol-splattered floor. Little scratching noises of skittering insect feet sounded uncomfortably close.\n\nIrene managed to hold Zayanna down, getting a knee in the small of her back and twisting an arm behind her. 'You're not getting away,' she grunted. 'Stop wasting time\u2014'\n\nZayanna started to choke, and she scrabbled at her neck with her free hand as she gasped for breath. A string of words in the Language was appearing around her throat, dark characters rising to the surface of the skin and stamped there like a tattoo. Irene could make out odd words through the coils of Zayanna's hair as she struggled. Betray. Captive. Die.\n\nThat would be bad for me, Zayanna's voice echoed in Irene's memory. Permanently bad.\n\nIrene abandoned her grip on the Fae and rolled her over onto her back, tilting her head back to get a better view of the Language. It was tightening like a noose, and the words were growing from thin sketched outlines to full shaded images, stamped as black as bruises on Zayanna's throat. Zayanna clawed at them, but her fingers found no purchase, and her chest heaved as she struggled for breath.\n\n'What's going on?' Kai demanded from behind Irene's shoulder.\n\n'A trap from Alberich to stop her talking. Keep the snakes off us,' Irene said. She sorted through her mind for words in the Language to block this. She could read the full sentence now, clasped in a deadly circle round Zayanna's neck. Before I should betray you, or be forced to speak, or be made captive, I shall die.\n\nIrene opened her mouth, but a sudden thought stopped her, before she could try using the Language to break Alberich's death sentence. Alberich had sent Zayanna \u2013 and other Fae \u2013 out to kill Librarians. He'd expect Librarians to be trying to question them. He'd expect people to use the Language to save Zayanna.\n\nShe ignored the thuds and crashes from behind her and fumbled in her pocket for a spare coin, pulling out a silver shilling. That would do. If she couldn't break the Language with the Language, then she'd have to find another way to damage that sentence. Running more on instinct than with a plan in mind, she folded her coat cuff around her fingers and grasped the coin.\n\n'Silver shilling in my hand, rise in temperature to red-hot heat,' she ordered.\n\nCoils of smoke rose as the hot metal charred the fabric of her coat. Zayanna was barely struggling now, her eyes glazed and her breath coming in tiny whistling gasps. Irene put one knee on Zayanna's left wrist to hold her arm down, grabbed the other woman's hair with her free hand to drag her head back and bare her neck, and pressed the red-hot coin against the word die on her neck.\n\nZayanna screamed. Irene gritted her teeth and held the coin against Zayanna's flesh, watching as the circle of burned flesh blotted out the word below it.\n\nThe noose of Language around Zayanna's throat twisted like a living thing, baulked of its final verb and forced into incoherence. Then it snapped, and the words dissolved into swirls as they faded. Zayanna could suddenly breathe again, and she gulped down great swallows of air, tears running from the corners of her eyes as her body went limp.\n\n'Irene,' Kai said urgently. She turned to see him stamp on a scorpion. He pointed at blue flames rising from where a pool of alcohol had reached one of the flaming heaters. The fire was starting to spread across the floor, and Irene flinched back away from it. 'We've got to get out of here.'\n\n'I can put that out,' Irene said, controlling herself. She dropped the coin. A red brand marred Zayanna's neck where it had burned her. 'Give me a moment...'\n\n'It might be easier to let the place burn down,' Singh suggested. 'I'm not generally in favour of arson, but given the number of deadly creatures loose in this place, one might call it public sanitation.'\n\n'Singh has the right of it,' Vale agreed. He paused to knock aside a cobra with the remains of the table. 'I suggest we retreat and call the fire brigade.'\n\n'That sounds good to me,' Irene said quickly, before anyone could change their minds. The sooner she was away from flames, snakes, insects and whatever \u2013 and able to question Zayanna \u2013 the better. 'And then we can get some answers.'\n\nHalf an hour later they were in the upper room of a nearby pub. The fire brigade had been called (and had been in time to save the rest of the neighbourhood), Zayanna's minions were in custody at Scotland Yard, and Zayanna herself was sitting up and demanding gin.\n\nIrene had searched the room and dumped any printed paper in the corridor outside. She hoped that would cut down on the risk of Alberich interfering. She hoped even more fervently that he wouldn't be trying to find her, and that he'd assume she was still in prison back in St Petersburg.\n\nVale had turned up the ether-lights and drawn the curtains, cutting out the light from the warehouse-fire outside. The sound of fire engines and crowds drifted through the window. Zayanna had draped herself over one of the rickety chairs in the centre of the room and sat there smoothing her skirts, her new brand scarlet on her neck. Irene sat facing her, while Kai stood by the door and Singh and Vale hovered watchfully.\n\nZayanna had completely recovered her good mood, in spite of having lost her pets and probably her cash reserves. No doubt it was because she was the centre of attention. No Fae could resist that. 'I suppose I could tentatively surrender, darling,' she suggested. 'It'd be difficult for me to manage to kill you now.'\n\n'You did try your best,' Irene agreed. 'I'll give you extra points for effort. And I did just save your life.'\n\n'It was only in danger because you'd captured me anyhow. So what now?' Zayanna tilted her head enquiringly. 'Do I get imprisoned?'\n\n'\"Killed\" sounds more appropriate,' Kai said coldly. Irene had agreed with him that he'd be the bad cop to her good cop. But from the tone of his voice she was worried that he'd be an extremely homicidal cop.\n\nZayanna batted her eyelashes. 'Are you threatening to kill me in cold blood? In front of an officer of the law? Isn't that illegal?'\n\n'You're right, madam,' Singh said. 'I'm absolutely shocked to hear those sorts of threats. Mr Strongrock, if you'll excuse me for a moment, I should go and check on the firemen. Let me know when I should come back in.'\n\n'Don't bother,' Zayanna said sourly. 'You've made your point. So, Irene. You said you wanted me to surrender. I'm surrendering. What happens now?'\n\n'Tell me about Alberich,' Irene said. The name was bitter in her mouth. 'What's he doing?'\n\n'Trying to destroy the Library, darling,' Zayanna said. Then, after a pause, '...oh, you want details?'\n\n'Yes.' Irene kept her voice patient. 'And, Zayanna, let me be clear about this. I'm saving your life. In return I want the full truth, and I want you to be helpful about giving it to me.'\n\n'Saving my life?' Zayanna pouted. 'I know that you did destroy Alberich's curse, and that I did cause you a few problems and everything, but would you really kill me?'\n\n'Yes,' Irene said. The word came out with difficulty. She looked Zayanna squarely in the eyes. 'Listen to me, because I am being absolutely truthful. The Library is more important to me than you are. If I have to, I will give you to the dragons, or I will sell you to Lord Silver, or I will shoot you in person. That's three things that could kill you. I'm the only person in this room who's actually interested in keeping you alive.' She saw doubt in Zayanna's eyes and shifted to the Language, making the words a promise and a truth. 'If you don't tell me what I want to know about Alberich, then I am going to kill you.'\n\nZayanna flinched back against her chair, as if Irene was the poisonous snake and she was the threatened victim. Perhaps it was the Language. Or perhaps it was something in Irene's face. 'Don't!' she cried out. 'Please!'\n\n'Vale.' Irene extended her hand. 'Your gun, please.'\n\nVale slapped his pistol into her hand without a word.\n\nHe doesn't think I'd really do it. He thinks I'm bluffing to convince her.\n\nIrene thought of the darkened corridors and rooms in the Library, of the gate going up in flames and of the list of dead Librarians. She raised the gun to point it directly at Zayanna.\n\nZayanna stared at the gun. She wasn't doing her usual trick of playing with her ringlets. Her hands tightened on the sides of the chair, and her breath was fast and panicked. 'I\u2014' She swallowed. 'All right!' She flung herself from her chair, going on her knees in front of Irene. 'I'll tell you what I know, and I swear I'll tell you the truth. I surrender. I really do surrender.'\n\nIrene handed the gun back to Vale, trying to calm her racing heartbeat. That had been too close. She had never thought of herself as the sort of person who was genuinely ready to kill for information. She'd manage a few convincing threats, maybe, but those would just be bluffs. It was an unpleasant surprise to find out that she was ready for lethal action, and that she'd go through with it so easily, so unhesitatingly. 'Get up,' she said wearily. 'Back in your chair, please. I accept your surrender, but you have to tell me the whole truth.'\n\nZayanna picked herself off the floor and slid back into her chair, her stockings miraculously unladdered. 'What he's doing is\u2014'\n\nThere was a banging at the door. 'Gentleman for Mr Strongrock!' the barmaid from downstairs shouted.\n\nIrene turned \u2013 well, everyone turned \u2013 to stare at Kai. Even Zayanna looked interested, though possibly because the interruption took the pressure off her.\n\nKai himself looked dumbfounded. 'I didn't tell anyone to meet me here,' he protested. 'How could I have? I didn't know we were going to be here.'\n\nThis could be a cunning ploy to get into the room and kill them all. Or it could be a genuine message for Kai, in which case it was almost certainly from his family or Li Ming. And in that case, Irene needed to hear it. 'Let's see who it is,' she suggested.\n\nIt was Li Ming, led by a curious barmaid, dapper in his usual grey and with an attach\u00e9 case in one hand. While he didn't actually look around the room and sniff in disgust, clearly it was only because he was far too polite to do so. 'Your highness,' he addressed Kai. 'I hope that I have not come at an inconvenient time.'\n\n'Your presence is always welcome,' Kai said, court-trained manners coming to his rescue as he closed the door and shut out the barmaid. 'We were just interrogating this Fae.'\n\n'May I be of assistance?' Li Ming enquired.\n\nIrene watched Zayanna out of the corner of her eye. She could see the Fae reassessing the situation and slumping even further in her chair. 'Actually, Lord Li Ming, Zayanna here was about to tell us more about Alberich's plan.' Would it be a good thing for the dragons to know what was going on? Irene couldn't see any way in which it was a particularly bad thing. They'd never cooperate with Alberich, which made them allies in the current situation. 'If your message for Kai could wait a few moments, would you permit her to speak first?'\n\n'I would be glad to,' Li Ming said. 'Might this have something to do with a world that your highness was investigating recently \u2013 I heard there were some disturbances?'\n\n'Ah yes, I was going to speak with you about that,' Kai said, a little too quickly. 'Perhaps after we have dealt with the current problem?'\n\nLi Ming nodded. He stood beside Kai, an inch taller than him and currently much better dressed. They might have been part of a matched set of statues, frozen in marble but ready to break free at any moment, their power chained and controlled, but always present.\n\nIrene turned her attention back to Zayanna. If Kai was in trouble because of their Russian mission, she'd handle that later. 'What's Alberich doing?' she asked bluntly.\n\n'It's sort of a cosmological thing, darling. Please hear me out \u2013 I'm not sure how to explain this properly. I know your Library's connected to spheres all over, isn't it?'\n\nIrene knew that 'spheres' was the Fae term for alternate worlds. 'It is,' she agreed. 'So?'\n\n'Well, the spheres that are more comfortable for my people \u2013 the ones that Aunt Isra would have said were ones of high virtue... do you remember her?' Zayanna waited for Irene's nod. 'There's a point at which they become really unstable. They're dangerous even for us. I admit I don't know for sure, but I suppose it's the same thing at the other end of the scale, too?' She looked at Kai and Li Ming. 'Are there places which are so rigidly ordered that even you can't exist there, without losing your personality?'\n\nKai and Li Ming exchanged glances. Finally Li Ming spoke, and he was clearly choosing his words with care. 'It's true that human life requires at least a very small amount of chaos, to be recognizable as human. But there are worlds that are entirely static. They are necessary to the functioning of reality, but they are not places where humans or dragons can live. They are indeed too rigid.' He fell silent again \u2013 though it wasn't clear if it was because of some obscure embarrassment at the idea one could have too much order, or because he didn't want to reveal anything more.\n\n'I can accept that both ends of reality are dangerous,' Irene said. 'So how are these unstable spheres relevant to Alberich?'\n\nZayanna ran her fingers through her hair. 'I really wish you'd captured someone who understood this properly. What I took from Alberich's explanation, darling, is that he's somehow linking one of the really unstable spheres to other spheres, more stable ones. And he's doing it by using unique books from those stable spheres, which he stole before your Library could get them.'\n\nShe waved her hands in the air, trying to find the right words. 'Imagine your Library's a sphere at the centre of a web of chains. All the worlds it influences are linked to it by these chains. And the chains are created through the power of special books, unique books. And I know how much you love your books, darling. So if a book is taken from a world, then kept in the Library, this forges a connection and brings the chain into being. You know these chains as gates to your Library. \"Traverses\", isn't that what you call them?'\n\nZayanna waited for Irene to nod, then went on. 'So the more books the Library holds from a particular world, the stronger the connection will be. But then Alberich brings along his own sphere, the unstable one. He steals a book from one of the Library's existing \"satellite worlds\", if you like, but instead of it going to the Library, he links it with his chaotic world. And he does this time and time again \u2013 no, I don't know how often, but I did get the impression it was one of those gloriously long-term plans.'\n\nZayanna took a breath. 'But the universe won't allow a world to be linked to two centres of influence; it just doesn't work that way. So the problem for your Library is that these new linkages are pulling the unstable sphere into the same place as your Library. Now Alberich's unstable domain is actually replacing your Library in a metaphysical sort of way. And the more other worlds start synchronizing with the unstable sphere, the stronger this replacement effect becomes. So, in time, it blows up your Library's gates to other worlds entirely \u2013 even where Alberich hasn't hijacked any linking books. The sphere he's using is taking over all the links instead.'\n\nIrene could feel the blood leaving her cheeks. 'Surely that can't be possible.'\n\n'Well, you tell me, darling.' Zayanna shrugged. 'How should I know what's possible and what isn't? It does sound plausible, though. Isn't there some sort of law about how two things can't occupy the same space at the same time? Inspector?'\n\nSingh frowned. 'I believe that's more of a scientific principle than a legal one, madam.'\n\n'But if this is an ongoing process,' Irene said, 'then what happens if\u2014'\n\n'When, darling,' Zayanna corrected her. 'The way he talked about it, it's definitely when.'\n\n'When it reaches... full synchronization,' Irene finished. Her mouth was dry.\n\n'Well, he said there were two possibilities.' Zayanna frowned, with the air of someone trying to remember the exact words. 'Either the unstable sphere would shunt the Library out of time and space, by usurping all its links to other worlds. Alberich's new domain would knock the Library completely out of touch and make it completely impossible to reach, and so on. Or the process would just blow up both the Library and the unstable sphere. He was really very conflicted about it, because the second idea sounded more effective \u2013 in terms of utterly destroying the Library. But it'd mean that he'd lose all his books.'\n\n'A few more questions,' Irene said, still trying to process the magnitude of this potential destruction. 'Did Alberich say how the process could be stopped?'\n\n'Darling, he's not that stupid. Granted, we'd all sworn to obey him and carry out his plan, and he'd threatened us with fates worse than death if we disobeyed. He'd also put that binding on me and all the others, so we'd die if we were captured or betrayed him, and so on \u2013 but even so, he wasn't going to tell us everything.'\n\nIrene nodded regretfully. 'And the fact that I broke that binding on you means that now you're free to disobey him?'\n\n'Or you're playing for time,' Kai suggested.\n\n'I admit it would solve all my problems if he blew up the Library right here and now. No more conflicts of interest!' Zayanna smiled at Irene cheerfully.\n\nIrene's stomach lurched at the thought. 'How much time do we have?' she asked bluntly.\n\n'I don't know,' Zayanna said. 'I honestly don't know \u2013 my word on it. But I don't think you've got long.' Her expression was friendly, even sympathetic, but there was no genuine understanding of Irene's emotions behind it.\n\nShe grasps that it would hurt me if the Library was destroyed, Irene thought. She just doesn't really perceive why it would hurt me, or how much.\n\nThe nearby fire had been put out by now, and the sounds of conflagration and fire engines alike had died away. The street hadn't yet begun to stir with morning activity. For the moment everything was quiet, as Irene considered how to frame her next question.\n\n'Can you take people to his unstable sphere?' she finally asked.\n\nZayanna's smile vanished. 'Darling, that's a terribly, terribly bad idea.'\n\n'But you aren't saying no.'\n\nZayanna chewed on her lower lip. 'I'm saying let me think about it. I'm not playing for time. I suppose it might be possible...'\n\nIrene nodded. 'Good.' They could take in a strike team of Librarians, disable whatever Alberich had done and hopefully dispose of Alberich while they were at it. Problem sorted. Admittedly it was a very sketchy plan, but it was one hundred per cent more of a plan than she'd had half an hour ago. She turned to Li Ming. 'I apologize for the delay. You have a message for Kai?'\n\n'For his highness, and for you by implication. My lord knew that his highness would pass you the information anyway.' Li Ming favoured Irene with a quick, understanding smile. He put his attach\u00e9 case on the battered table, opening it and exposing the written documents inside. The black ink of the writing seemed to draw the light, as if the fact that they could see it now gave it an unhealthy significance. 'We have a proposal\u2014'\n\nThen the air pulsed as though it was the surface of a drum struck by a careless hand, and the buzz of chaos-tainted Library power washed through the room."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "Li Ming's attach\u00e9 case sprang fully open, as though an unseen hand had flipped back the lid. The writing on the papers inside writhed and coalesced, shifting and re-forming in unstable patterns. Li Ming recoiled from it, and behind him Kai was flinching as well, similar expressions of sheer disgust on their faces. The papers rustled against each other, humming like a nest of wasps.\n\nIrene knew the taste of Alberich's power by now, and the power was building to dangerous levels.\n\n'Open a window!' she shouted.\n\nThis had happened in the werewolf caves, when three ingredients had been present: some form of writing, a Librarian and Alberich's will at work. Alberich had again zeroed in on where she was \u2013 and this time Li Ming's documents had given his corruption a focus. If this was a message, it was the sort that left people dead.\n\nVale fumbled with the window latch, but it was rusted in position. 'It's stuck,' he reported calmly. But then he couldn't feel the mounting power in the same way Irene did, and he didn't have the same revulsion to it that the dragons had. 'Singh, try yours\u2014'\n\n'No time. Stand back, gentlemen. Windows, open!'\n\nBoth windows in the room flew open, dragging their latches out of the sockets. They were sash windows, the up-and-down vertical sort, and they rose to their full height, hitting their upper limits with enough of a bang to crack the panes. Glass came tinkling down on the windowsills and fell into the room, as the cold morning fog washed in.\n\nThe writing on the papers had dissolved into a constant wash of words in the Language: tangled, nonsensical vocabulary but no actual sentences, not even coherent phrases. The attach\u00e9 case was shuddering where it lay on the table, jerking in place as though it had been electrified, and the rising buzz of power was clear enough now that even Vale and Singh could hear it.\n\nIrene sheathed her hands in the battered folds of her skirt in an attempt to protect them, and flipped the lid of the attach\u00e9 case shut. There was a jolt as she touched it, a painful vibration that echoed in her bones and made her grateful that the contact was only momentary. 'Kai,' she ordered, 'help me with the table!'\n\nFortunately Kai caught her meaning instantly. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed one side of the table as she caught the other. They ran across to the window together, pitching the case and its papers into the empty street outside.\n\nThe explosion shattered the remaining glass in the windows and seared the air with a wave of scorching heat. Everyone in the room ducked, even Li Ming. Then there was silence, except for the clinking of broken glass falling to the ground.\n\nMuffled shouting started outside, with the thumps of people throwing open their own windows and leaning out to see what was going on, to complain, or both.\n\nIrene shook her hand, trying to work the vibration out of it. 'I'm very sorry about your papers,' she said inadequately to Li Ming. 'I hope there was nothing too significant in there?'\n\nLi Ming looked wistfully in the direction of his attach\u00e9 case, then shrugged. 'Nothing too important,' he said, and Irene couldn't work out if he was being ironic or not. He continued, 'Only some possible drafts for a treaty, in the event that the Library might wish to petition my lord and his brothers for protection. I take it that was Alberich's interference just now?'\n\n'It was, yes,' Irene agreed, part of her responding automatically while the rest of her mind registered that they had hit dangerous political waters. Throwing themselves on the mercy of the dragon kings was certainly an option for the Library, in terms of sheer survival. But it would mean they'd lose their all-important neutrality. However nicely the dragon kings might put it, from that point onwards the Library would be their dependant. And however much autonomy might be promised in those treaties, at some point the Library would end up taking orders.\n\nShe glanced across and saw Kai frowning, clearly going through the same mental calculations. She couldn't really blame the dragon kings for taking advantage of the situation. It was the practical, politically sensible thing to do. That was how rulers reacted when they saw an opportunity. But that also put limits on what she could expect from Li Ming, here and now, in terms of help against Alberich...\n\nAlso, how much had Alberich seen just now? She didn't know how much the person on the far end of this sort of connection \u2013 whether it was the Library or Alberich \u2013 could pick up from the other side. Maybe Alberich could merely sense she was present, and his actions were the metaphysical equivalent of tossing a grenade into the room. Or maybe Alberich could actually see who else was present. Such as Zayanna. In which case...\n\nIrene swore, ignoring the looks of shock from all the men in the room, who apparently either considered her to be above such things or refused to admit such words existed. Then she grabbed Zayanna's shoulder. 'Zayanna. Can you get me to Alberich's sphere? Right this minute?'\n\nZayanna blinked in confusion. 'Well, possibly, yes, darling, but why the hurry?'\n\n'Because I don't know whether or not Alberich could tell you're here. He targeted that effect on me.' Irene pointed at the window through which she'd thrown the papers. 'If he knows you're here as well, if he realizes you're sharing his plans\u2014'\n\n'But I had to, you threatened to kill me...' Zayanna protested.\n\n'Whatever. You did tell us, and he won't care why. Now we know what's going on; and if he finds out, he'll find some way to stop us. And your life will probably be short and interesting, but mostly very, very short.' Irene turned to the others. 'I'm sorry, but I don't think we have a choice. Zayanna's going to have to take us here and now.'\n\n'Irene,' Zayanna said quietly. 'I think this is an absolutely thrilling idea, darling. And you're absolutely right that Alberich will kill me horribly, if he realizes I've talked \u2013 or even that I might tell you anything at all, once he realizes I'm not already dead. But there is one tiny little problem with your plan.'\n\n'Which is?' Irene said through gritted teeth.\n\n'It's the us idea. I can get to Alberich's sphere, and I can probably take one person with me, but that's all.' She spread her hands in apology. 'Darling, I'm not Lord Guantes or Lord Silver, or anything like that powerful.' If I was, I wouldn't be in this situation went unsaid but understood.\n\n'Then you take me,' Kai said, stepping forward.\n\nLi Ming's, 'No, your highness!' clashed with Irene's, 'Certainly not!' and Zayanna's own, 'Impossible.'\n\nIrene gestured at Kai to stop him protesting, and said to Zayanna, 'Why impossible?'\n\n'He's a dragon,' Zayanna said. 'He's harder to move. I don't even know if I could take him at all. And I don't think he'd like the level of chaos there, anyhow.' Her smile wasn't pleasant.\n\n'So I go there myself\u2014' Kai started, then came to a stop. Irene remembered how he'd travelled between worlds. It was entirely different from the way they'd travelled with the Fae before, and he knew it. How would his method of travel mesh with Zayanna's own technique \u2013 and how would he know where to go, without her leading the way?\n\nKai and Vale exchanged glances. Singh saw it and said, 'Mr Vale, surely you can't be considering\u2014'\n\n'He won't,' Irene said. 'Vale, I value your abilities, but if only one of us can get to Alberich's sphere, then I'll be able to do more there than you will. I'm the one who's going.' She offered Zayanna her hand. 'And we'd better be going now, rather than standing around talking.'\n\nKai stood there fuming, obviously considering the idea of simply knocking Irene over the head or holding her down, rather than letting her waltz off on such a suicidal proposition. 'This is quite possibly a trick, so that she can lure you out there and claim credit for your capture,' he said, with surprising control.\n\n'Is it?' Irene asked Zayanna.\n\n'I won't deny that I thought about it,' Zayanna said. 'But would Alberich actually believe it, or would he simply kill us both on general principles? Darling \u2013 darlings\u2014' Her gesture took in the whole room. 'I swear that I'll just take Irene here to Alberich's sphere and I'm not planning to sell her off to him, or anything.'\n\nThe word sell drew a twitch from Kai. No surprise, given how it had nearly once happened to him. 'And are you telling the truth about only being able to take one person?' he demanded.\n\nZayanna put one hand on her heart, and took Irene's hand in the other. 'I am. I swear it.'\n\nWhile the two of them were glaring at each other, Irene had formulated a plan. It wasn't much of a plan, but it would have to do. 'Kai, there is something I specifically need you to do.'\n\n'What?' Kai asked suspiciously.\n\n'This isn't just me trying to get you out of the way so I can run off into danger,' Irene said. The way he avoided her eyes told her that he'd been imagining exactly that. 'I need to get this information to other Librarians. You can do that for me.'\n\n'But I can't reach the Library,' he pointed out. 'You'll need to get me in there.'\n\n'Kai, you're being deliberately obtuse.' Irene could hear the edge to her voice and made herself calm down. It wasn't easy. Panic at what she was about to do was nibbling at the edges of her control. 'You said you could find me in different alternate worlds, a few days back. Well, you know Coppelia, and Bradamant told us she was out on assignment. Go find her. Go and find all the Librarians possible, whether they're students or full Librarians.'\n\n'I know you better than them, so you're easier to find,' Kai said flatly. 'You are deliberately trying to get me out of the way. I won't accept this.'\n\n'Do you have a better idea?'\n\n'I'm sure she can work out some way of taking me along.' Kai's glance at Zayanna was almost as unfriendly as the look she gave him in return. 'Just because she says I'm harder to move doesn't make it impossible. The important thing is to reach Alberich's sphere.'\n\n'Which is high-chaos by its nature,' Irene burst out in exasperation. 'Weren't you listening? Kai, you're a dragon, that is the last place you can go.'\n\n'Miss Winters is quite correct.' Li Ming had come up to flank her supportively. 'Your highness, surely you must see how it would look if Miss Winters took you into a high-chaos world. You'd barely be able to maintain your true form there, let alone help her. Worse still, she'd be doing it purely in order to support her own faction. Your uncle would disapprove. Your father would condemn it.'\n\nKai opened his mouth, then shut it again. Vale and Singh were talking in the corner, their voices lowered, and even though she couldn't make out what they were saying, it was fairly obvious that Singh was doing his best to talk Vale out of a proposition, and it wasn't hard to guess what.\n\nSorry, Vale. This is one trip that you can't secretly infiltrate in disguise.\n\n'We have to go,' Irene said. She was trying not to think about the main reason she was hurrying: the longer she delayed, the more reasons she'd find why this was a bad idea. All the words she'd thrown at Bradamant earlier came back to echo at her now. Reckless. Foolish. Dangerous. Running off solo with a Fae whom she knew was untrustworthy, all the way into the private turf of the Library's worst enemy, who already had a grudge against her... Possibly two grudges, depending on how Alberich felt about that business at the Winter Palace. It could hardly be worse.\n\nNo, that needed rephrasing. It could be worse. This was a chance, an opportunity, but only if Irene took it now. She reached out to take Kai's hand and squeeze it. 'I trust you. Warn Coppelia, warn the others. When I get to Alberich's sphere I'll either force a passage to the Library so that we can bring in reinforcements, or I'll find some other way to mark it and bring people back.' She was aware that it might be impossible to reach the Library from high-chaos worlds, but that was just one more of the things she was trying not to think about. Another was whether she'd be able to function there herself. She'd soon find out.\n\nHe returned the clasp. 'Irene, do one thing for me.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'Tell me in the Language that you'll come back.'\n\nOh, unkind. She glared at him, but he wouldn't release her hand. 'Is this really necessary?'\n\n'It'd make me feel better.'\n\n'When did you get so manipulative?'\n\n'No doubt from watching his teacher,' Vale commented. 'Winters, this is a foolhardy enterprise, but I appreciate that you don't have a choice. Telling us that you intend to return seems to be the least you can do to reassure us.'\n\n'I fully intend to come back to you. There, are you satisfied?' Her words in the Language were a promise to herself as much as to them. She would have liked to complain that she didn't know why they were so annoyed, for she was the one who was going into danger. But honesty compelled her to recognize that if they'd been the ones going, then she would have done her utmost to follow them. Honesty was most unhelpful: it got in the way of a satisfying whine of complaint at their overprotectiveness and made her feel like the one at fault.\n\n'Not remotely satisfied.' Kai pulled her into a hug, his grasp almost tight enough to hurt. 'I know I can't talk you out of this,' he murmured in her ear. 'But when you get back, we are going to discuss the future.'\n\nIrene sighed, returning the embrace, trying to convince herself that she was only doing it from habit and not because she actually needed the comfort. 'Just make sure there's brandy,' she murmured back.\n\nKai released her. But Li Ming was stepping forward, his face set in unusually stern lines. Ordinarily he was content \u2013 or at least seemed content \u2013 to be a figure in the background, merely offering Kai his advice. Maybe he had some vital suggestion to offer?\n\n'This is quite unthinkable, Miss Winters,' he said. The room was abruptly colder, and the ether-lamps whined in their sockets like dying flies as they flared bright and translucent. 'You cannot possibly go.'\n\nThat was not a helpful suggestion. 'It seems the best option,' Irene began.\n\nLi Ming made a brief cutting gesture with one hand. It would have suited a judge's pronouncement of a guilty verdict. 'The Fae's untrustworthy. Even if she swears she's telling the truth, she's not reliable. You're risking yourself and all those who depend on you. My lord would not approve of your taking this step. I don't approve of it.'\n\n'I'm sorry,' Irene said. 'I appreciate your opinion, but\u2014'\n\n'This is no longer a time for courtesy.' The familiar scale-patterns flowed across Li Ming's skin like ice on the surface of a river. The windows rattled as the wind rose outside. He was beautiful, remote, untouchable and utterly certain of what he was doing. 'I will not permit this folly to take place.'\n\n'That's not your decision to make,' Irene snapped.\n\n'Any rational being has a right and a duty to stop you committing suicide.' The cold wind had a biting edge now, harsh with the taste of oncoming winter and frozen streams. Irene had never really wondered how powerful Li Ming might be. He'd always been acting the servant or the counsellor, staying in the shadows. That might have been a serious mistake on her part. 'You are a junior servant of the Library. This duty should be left to others. My lord would forbid you to take this action. Your highness, help me restrain her.'\n\nZayanna was shivering, folding her arms around herself. Rage warmed Irene: she looked sideways to Kai, letting him respond.\n\nBut Kai hesitated.\n\nIrene realized how clear it must seem in his eyes. The logic would be beautifully tempting. Irene was endangering herself: her judgement was faulty, her assessment of the situation incorrect. He should stop her for her own good. He would be serving the Library by keeping her safe. It all made sense, and it was still the most profound sort of betrayal that he should even be thinking it, that he could look at her and entertain those thoughts and not be ashamed.\n\nIrene turned to Li Ming. 'You may try to restrain me,' she said, her voice as cold as the rising wind. 'You will not succeed. I must be on my way. Zayanna.' She grabbed the Fae's wrist.\n\nLi Ming nodded, as if he wasn't surprised, and extended a hand to grasp Irene's shoulder.\n\nKai caught his wrist a moment before Li Ming touched her. The chill that sheathed Li Ming's hand brushed Irene's skin like fresh snow, and she pulled away, dragging Zayanna with her.\n\n'Wait,' Kai said, and all the subtones of hierarchy and command were suddenly in his voice. But he was saying it to Li Ming, not to her. 'She has my permission to do this.'\n\n'Your highness, this is folly...' Li Ming protested. Irene glanced over her shoulder as she and Zayanna hurried to the door and saw that even though neither dragon moved, they were locked in position as they struggled against each other. This wasn't mere courtesy. It was two forces of nature, both looking less human by the second, as scales marked their skin and their eyes gleamed draconic red. The wind outside howled, denied its target.\n\nIrene didn't waste any more time. With a nod of farewell to Vale and Singh, she was out of the room and rattling down the stairs, Zayanna right behind her.\n\nThe street outside was full of wind: it rolled through like a physical thing, rattling windows and slamming shutters, ripping the fog away to show the lightening sky. Irene hadn't let go of Zayanna, for fear that she might vanish around a corner and never come back. 'So how do we get there?' she asked.\n\nZayanna sighed. 'You take my hand and we walk, darling. Or perhaps we just keep on running. I can't manage a horse, much less a carriage. I'm afraid it's going to be tedious.'\n\n'You can tell me about Alberich's sphere as we go,' Irene suggested. They turned left down a dark side alley. It was the sort of place that Irene would normally avoid, but Zayanna sprinted down it without a moment's hesitation.\n\n'It looks mostly like a library,' Zayanna gasped. 'I'm not sure whether it originally looked that way, if he made it look that way, or if it's getting to look that way because it's moving into the place of your Library. I told you that metaphysics really isn't my thing. So confusing.' She turned left, into another side street. This had slick grey concrete walls that reached further above their heads than should have been possible in that area of London. The wind had gone, and the air was still and hot, stinking of oil.\n\n'Well, does Alberich have guards?' Irene asked.\n\n'I didn't see any.' Zayanna frowned a little, a thin line between her elegant brows. She'd slowed her pace from a run to a fast walk. 'I mean, there were a few people there, but they were just people. You know \u2013 or have you never been that far into chaos before? When you go too far in, normal humans don't have very much real personality. They're awfully responsive when they're needed for background parts, but they don't have much staying power, if you take my meaning. They're not as meaningful to work with as other Fae, or even dragons or Librarians like you.'\n\nIrene mentally shuddered at the thought. People with no genuine personality of their own, simply walk-on scenery or character parts for Fae psychodramas. 'You should be careful,' she said sardonically. 'At this rate you'll be convincing yourself that if the Fae did win, and chaos took over all the worlds, you'd still ultimately have lost \u2013 by missing out on all those interesting interactions with other people. It sounds rather self-defeating.'\n\n'Maybe, darling, but we're hardly the only contradictory ones.' Zayanna turned left again, her frown deeper. They were walking between grey stone walls, the cobbles beneath their feet damp with the morning dew. Lilac overhung the walls, its scent sweet in the morning air. 'What was Li Ming saying about places which are so orderly and mechanical that even dragons or humans can't exist? People do keep on talking about wanting a war, so that their side will win. But ultimately all they really want is for their side to be a bit better off. Nobody wishes for their side to triumph completely.' She paused, considering that statement, and clarified it. 'Nobody sane, that is.'\n\n'Ay, there's the rub,' Irene muttered. She tried to remember where in Shakespeare that was from. Hopefully not one of the tragedies. 'I wish I was simply back amongst the books again.'\n\n'We could go hunting books after this,' Zayanna suggested. 'We'll steal them from that silver dragon's private library\u2014'\n\n'Oh no we won't,' Irene said hastily, before Zayanna could make that bad idea any worse. 'Besides, you can't be a Librarian.'\n\n'I think that's very prejudiced of you all.' The passage was now so narrow they were forced to walk in single file, though Irene kept her grip on Zayanna's hand. 'Why can't I steal books too?'\n\nIrene considered and rejected all the arguments that started There's more to it than just stealing books. 'Because you'd have to swear yourself to the Library,' she said. 'Permanently, full-time, life and death. Would you actually do that, Zayanna?'\n\nZayanna laughed, but there was something a little forced about the sound, and Irene couldn't see her face. 'How true, darling! I'm just a frivolous, self-obsessed little mayfly. How well you know me.'\n\nPart of Irene wanted to kick herself for saying the wrong thing, while depending on Zayanna to lead her to Alberich's sphere. Another part felt unreasonably guilty. She's admitted to working for Alberich and against us, to trying to kill me and Kai, and I'm embarrassed because I hurt her feelings. This is neither logical nor intelligent. 'I'm sorry,' she said. Whether or not Zayanna deserved an apology, it felt like a good idea to give one. She couldn't afford to have the other woman turn against her now. 'I know you were just doing your job. And I'm sorry for branding you. It was the only way I could think of to save your life.'\n\nZayanna rubbed at the angry burn on her neck. 'Try and be more artistic about it next time, darling. That's all I ask.'\n\nFor a while they walked in silence. Irene wanted to go faster, but Zayanna was the one setting the pace. The Fae's steps had grown slower, and she forced herself forward as though she was struggling against a high wind. The air was thick and close, like the end of summer, full of dust and smelling of dry grass and overripe fruits. Zayanna's face was marked with sweat, and she pushed her hair back from her face with her free hand, muttering a curse.\n\n'Can I help?' Irene asked, breaking the silence.\n\n'No.' Zayanna sounded as if she was in the middle of running a marathon. 'Told you it was going to be difficult to bring someone else along. Just keep on walking. Keep on going.'\n\nThe walls on either side were red-brick now, and the two women had to turn sideways to squeeze between them. Beyond the walls Irene thought she could hear the sounds of machinery, great pumping presses and turning gears.\n\nZayanna stopped, and Irene went up on her toes, peering over her shoulder to see what lay ahead. She saw a small door set into the wall, unobtrusive and constructed of plain metal, looking positively unimportant. An incongruous letter-flap was set into it.\n\n'Ah,' Zayanna said. 'Here we are.' She opened the door before Irene could stop her."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "It was something of an anticlimax to find the space beyond the door full of bricks. They were cemented in place, and even dusted with cobwebs in places. For all that Irene could tell, the doorway might have been bricked up for decades.\n\n'It wasn't like that before,' Zayanna said. She tilted her head to look at it from another angle, but that didn't make the bricks miraculously disappear.\n\n'Is this where anyone trying to get to this sphere would arrive?' Irene asked. 'Or is it just that you used this door last time, and so you came here again?'\n\n'Not exactly, darling.' Zayanna rubbed her nose thoughtfully. 'It's more as if this sphere is like a carriage in motion, and we're running alongside and trying to jump on, and this is the point where you can scramble into the carriage from the road. I know that's a really bad simile \u2013 or is it a metaphor?'\n\n'It's a simile,' Irene said, glad of a question she could actually answer. 'You said \"like\".'\n\n'Simile, right,' Zayanna said. 'But that's basically how it is. This is how anyone would get in, if they tried to reach it the way I just did. It does look rather as if Alberich doesn't want visitors.' Implicit in her tone was a suggestion that perhaps now that she and Irene had made the effort, they could turn around and leave, with honour satisfied.\n\n'And the letterbox? Was that there before?'\n\nZayanna nodded. 'It was there so we could pass urgent information to him.'\n\n'Like what I was doing \u2013 yes, quite. And it's a reasonable supposition that he wouldn't want Librarians getting in here, either,' Irene said, thinking out loud. 'So if I were him, I'd booby-trap it against someone using the Language, in case one of us told the bricks to get out of the way.'\n\n'He's not really giving us much of a chance,' Zayanna said unhelpfully. 'How are we supposed to get in there?'\n\n'But he doesn't want us getting in there...' Irene started, then paused. Alberich had hijacked a high-chaos world. In high-chaos worlds, stories came true. No narrative would ever finish with And so the protagonist shut himself up in a convenient castle until his plan came to fruition \u2013 tale over. He could brick up doors and lay traps, but in any classic story the intruder would eventually enter the castle. 'Are we in a high-chaos area at the moment, ourselves?'\n\nZayanna wobbled her hand. 'Fairly. Quite a bit. Not as much as Venice was, but more than that world you were living in. There's a strong gradient between this sphere we're in at the moment and the one through that door.'\n\n'Do you think we could get through the wall at any point other than that door?' Irene asked.\n\n'No.' Zayanna was quite definite. 'At least, not by any way I know.'\n\nIrene nodded. 'All right. We need to stand well back.'\n\nZayanna looked alarmed but interested. 'What are you going to do, darling?'\n\n'Substitute brute force for caution.' Irene had a nasty feeling that trying to use the Language directly on the barrier might set off some sort of trap. It was the logical thing to set up, if one was expecting Librarian intrusions. And there would no doubt be alarms. But if she could hit fast enough, and hard enough, then perhaps that would work. She stepped back and focused. 'Bricks from the walls on either side of me, smash open the brick wall blocking that doorway!'\n\nUsing the Language in a higher-chaos world had benefits and drawbacks. On the positive side, the Language worked more easily and more powerfully. But on the negative side, Irene had to sacrifice a corresponding amount of energy. It was like shoving a weighted trolley downhill: once it started to roll, it really went. But it was that much harder to steer or stop, and the first shove came at a cost.\n\nThe walls on either side groaned. Moss and dust fell from them as they shuddered in place, pattering down on the narrow passage where Irene and Zayanna stood. Then, with a rolling thunder of crashes, bricks flew through the air like bullets, slamming into the wall that filled the doorway. The first few shattered on it, but the successive pounding impacts of brick after brick drove cracks into the wall. Powdered cement drifted down and mingled with red brick-dust in a choking cloud that made both Irene and Zayanna cover their faces.\n\nIt took half a minute of constant pounding for the wall filling the door to crumble. Finally, a brick went through it like a bullet through a pane of glass, leaving cracks in all directions; then more followed, widening the gap and landing on the other side of the doorway with booming thuds that echoed over the crashing of brickwork. More and more bricks zoomed through, till the doorway was denuded of its barrier, with only fragments of cement and broken brick lining it like the edge of a jigsaw. Finally they stopped.\n\n'Now!' Irene coughed, her voice betraying her in the dusty air. She caught Zayanna's arm and dragged her forward, stumbling over fragments of brick to the doorway. Fear caught at her, trying to slow her pace. What if she'd made a mistake? What if passing through would mean instant and horrific death? What if Alberich was waiting on the other side?\n\nWell, if he was, he'd just received a faceful of bricks. She gritted her teeth and pulled Zayanna along with her, stepping through the doorway.\n\nNothing went boom or splat. Irene was still alive and moving freely. She decided to call her mission a total success so far.\n\nThe room on the other side was unexpectedly large. Globes of crystal on the distant walls cast a pale light, which filtered down through the clouds of brick dust to illuminate shelves of books. The floor under Irene's feet was dark wood, aged and polished. The place could easily have been a room from the Library itself. She guessed that was the point. In the distance, a clock was ticking, a low steady pulse of noise in the heavy silence.\n\nThere were three passageways leading out of the room. 'Which one do we want?' Irene asked Zayanna.\n\n'No idea, darling,' Zayanna said. 'Pick one at random?'\n\nIrene tossed a mental coin and chose the right-hand passage. It opened almost immediately into a smaller room: this one had floor-level exits, but also a curving oak staircase which went up through the ceiling and down through the floor. Again, the walls were covered with bookshelves.\n\nShe managed to resist the temptation to examine them, reminding herself that the priority was getting away from the entrance before any security came. But several rooms later (two to the left, up one, three to the right, forward two) she finally gave way and paused for just a moment to look at the titles. She frowned at what she saw. 'These don't make any sense. They're not in any language I know. They're in the English alphabet, but I don't recognize it. Zayanna, do you know what language this is?'\n\nIrene pulled out one of the thick volumes for Zayanna to inspect. It was bound in dark-blue leather and was heavy in her hands, and while the pages seemed clean and stable enough, there was an after-smell that made Irene wrinkle her nose. It wasn't quite a proper stink that could be pointed to and complained about. It was the sort of faint odour that might come from a piece of decaying food somewhere in one's home, which couldn't be precisely tracked down, but which would slowly infiltrate the entire place. It suggested unwholesomeness.\n\nZayanna gave the book a cursory glance. 'Nothing I know, darling. Perhaps it's code?'\n\nIrene scanned a few more books, but they all contained the same jumbles of letters. They weren't in the Language. They weren't in any language Irene knew, either. She wasn't even sure they were in a proper language at all. 'Is this a real library,' she said, her voice quiet in the echoing room, 'or is this just the stageset of a library?'\n\n'Does it make a difference?'\n\n'I don't know.' But one worrying thought in particular nagged at Irene. If this wasn't a real library \u2013 if all the books it contained were simply garbage \u2013 then would she actually be able to create a passage from it to the Library itself, to fetch help? That would be singularly unhelpful.\n\n'This place is like a beehive,' she said. 'It's three-dimensional.'\n\n'Buildings usually are,' Zayanna pointed out.\n\n'I mean, in the sense that all the rooms we've been through so far have exits up and down, as well as on the same level,' Irene explained. 'And all the rooms we've been through so far seem to be more or less the same. Was it that way when you were here?'\n\n'The important stuff was further in,' Zayanna said. 'I didn't see much of it, but there was a big open area, absolutely huge, and a pattern in the centre with a clock \u2013 and lots of stairs. One of the others did ask about it, but he never got an answer. But this bit here, where we are at the moment, was different then. It wasn't so...' She waved a hand. 'So definite.'\n\nIrene tried to work out what that meant. 'Has this place become less chaotic since you were last here?'\n\n'Yes, that's it exactly!' Zayanna said. 'It's being much more stable now. I wonder why.'\n\nIrene was also wondering why, among quite a number of other things: the most important and puzzling of which being why they were still safe. There was no sign of anyone chasing them so far, and the lack of alarms or pursuit was getting on her nerves. It made no sense for them to have been able to penetrate this place so easily. Paranoia suggested that Alberich was watching the entire place, could see every movement they made, and was merely waiting for the right moment to strike.\n\nThe problem with paranoia was that if you let it rule all your decisions, then you would miss some perfectly good opportunities. Irene reviewed her priorities. She'd identified Alberich's hideout, and she knew his plan. The next step was to open a passage to reach the Library and bring back the metaphorical heavy artillery.\n\n'This will do as well as anywhere else,' she said, more to herself than Zayanna. She walked along to the closest door and reached out to touch the handle, focusing her will. This was where things either went perfectly right or horribly wrong. 'Open to the Library.'\n\nThe words in the Language shook the air, and the door trembled on its hinges. The wood of the frame creaked, bending and straining against itself, and Irene felt the connection forming. It sucked at her strength like an open wound, but it was there, practically within her grasp. Just a little further, just a little nearer...\n\nAll the doors in the room slammed open. The handle Irene was holding jerked loose from her hand. Zayanna pulled Irene back just before the door could hit her. The forming link was broken now, snapped like a piece of overstretched string. All the lights in the room flared up and then guttered to a dim glow. Irene had the impression of a dozen eyes turning themselves in her direction.\n\nNobody else had entered the room. Nobody at all. But a shadow drew itself across the wall in a dark stretch of overly-long limbs and a crooked neck, a shadow cast by a person who wasn't there, and the sound of feet echoed from a long way away. Where the shadow touched them, the books turned white and green with decay, rotting where they stood on the shelves.\n\n'Ahhhhhhh...' a voice whispered, thick and dank. 'Now tell me, Ray, why is it that a thing's always in the last place you look?'\n\n'The malice of inanimate objects,' Irene answered. Her mouth was dry and the words stuck in her throat. From best-possible outcome to worst-case scenario, all in the space of a few seconds. She wanted to scream like a child that it wasn't fair. 'Is that Alberich?'\n\n'Who else would it be?' The shadow reached out towards her, two-dimensional across the floor, its fingers lengthening into claws. Irene and Zayanna stepped hastily away from it. When the shadow drew back again, the wood of the floor was thick with mould.\n\n'You could be one of his servants.' Irene's mouth was running on automatic while she tried to think of a productive next step. There was always the tried-and-tested option of run away in any convenient direction, but common sense indicated that would be a short-term solution. She needed something better. 'But if you are Alberich, then where are you? Where's your body?'\n\n'Always so many questions, Ray.' Alberich's laughter dripped through the room as if it was a physical entity, mingling with the ticking of the distant clock. 'It's one of the things I like about you.'\n\n'And yet you hardly ever answer them.'\n\n'I can put myself into all sorts of containers. Skins, bodies, libraries...' The shadow leaned away from the wall, spreading its arms across the floor towards Irene and Zayanna. The dark limbs curved around them on the floor to join at the far side, making a circle a few yards across, with Zayanna and Irene in the middle.\n\n'You took your time answering when I came knocking on your door.' Irene mentally reviewed all the words in the Language that she knew for shadow. Though would Alberich have taken this form, if she could affect it? He knew the capabilities of the Language as well as she did. Probably even better.\n\n'It can take me a little while to focus. We're almost at midnight, there's hardly any time left for games. You two are like tiny moths, fluttering through my library and just as hard to catch.' The shadows on the floor deepened, swirling closer to their feet. 'But that ends here\u2014'\n\nIrene had been waiting for this. 'Light, strong and clear!' she shouted, shielding her eyes with her hand against the sudden dazzle, as all the lamps on the wall instantly blazed as bright as high noon.\n\nBut the shadow didn't vanish. It was a black stain on the wall and floor, as flat and two-dimensional as dried ink, but it was still there, even in the multi-directional glare of the lamps. And it was still seeping towards them, only a foot away now. Alberich's glutinous laughter dribbled from the walls again. 'Silly child. Did you really suppose I wouldn't think of that?'\n\nPanic jump-started Irene's imagination. So what if she was about to demand something impossible? That shadow was already impossible in the first place. She really hoped the universe agreed with her. 'Floor, hold that bodiless shadow!'\n\nThe entire room shook, and the distant clock's ticking jarred for a moment like a stuck record. Books went tumbling from the shelves in a cascade of crashes. A spike of pain twisted in Irene's head, the premonition of what was clearly going to be an appalling headache, assuming she survived the next few minutes. A trickle of blood ran from her nose \u2013 but the shadow had stopped in its tracks. Pulling herself together, she threw herself into a jump across the ring of darkness. Her heel came down on its far edge, and wood crumbled into mouldy dust under her foot.\n\nIrene slipped and fell to her hands and knees, but scrabbled to her feet again as she felt the floor tremble under her fingers. She might have held the shadow back for a moment, but there was no way that could last. Zayanna had made the leap more elegantly than Irene, and was already through the nearest door. Irene ran after her.\n\n'Which way?' Zayanna demanded, her eyes wide with panic. The room was like the one they'd just left, except that the books were bound in purple leather. There was a door at each compass point, and a curving stairway running up and down. 'This is all your fault!'\n\nIrene couldn't really argue with that statement. She'd been wondering how long it would be before Zayanna brought it up. She decided to focus on the first question, even if she didn't really have an answer. 'Try going up,' she suggested, taking the lead and heading up the staircase. Her feet hammered loudly on the wooden stairs: neither of them was willing to sacrifice speed for stealth.\n\nOn the floor above, the room followed exactly the same pattern, but green-bound books filled the shelves. The covers seemed to mock the two of them with their unhealthy shade, the glistening emerald of a fly's body. Zayanna looked around and cursed. 'You should just have put the lights out,' she accused Irene. 'He couldn't have a shadow in darkness...'\n\n'And then we'd be trying to find our way round here in pitch blackness,' Irene snapped back. 'It's bad enough trying to find our way in here with the lights on.'\n\n'Darling, he's going to kill me.' Zayanna was apparently calm now, but Irene had the impression of a lid hastily nailed down over a seething cauldron of panic. 'And you too, but frankly I'm more worried about me. Do something!'\n\nIt didn't take a great detective to see that Zayanna was having multiple second thoughts about the whole expedition. 'We keep moving,' Irene said, sounding calmer than she felt. 'If he's got to find us first, then let's make him work to keep up.' She pointed further up the staircase.\n\n'And then?'\n\nThat was the question. How could she fight Alberich in a library where he controlled the environment? This whole place was a perversion of the true Library, with books that contained only nonsense, rooms that were indistinguishable from each other, without even an index...\n\nAlberich's voice rose from the depths towards them as they ran up the stairs. 'I'm impressed,' he murmured.\n\n'Is he really?' Zayanna asked.\n\n'No,' Irene said.\n\n'Why shouldn't I be impressed? You found your way here. You persuaded your companion to help you. I'd thought you were competent, but I didn't know you were that competent.'\n\nIrene was only half-listening to the words. Either they were merely one more attempt by Alberich to persuade her to join him, or he was simply playing with the two of them and something horrible would happen the moment they let their guard down. Neither option was useful. Then, as she and Zayanna stumbled out into the next room, she caught sight of Zayanna's face. An unpleasant thought brought Irene up straight, as though someone had yanked her hair. Which of the two of us is he trying to convince? And what if Zayanna listens to him?\n\nShe needed to find the centre of this place fast. She needed a map. But all she had was books of nonsense... which, come to think of it, were an essential part of this place. She could use that.\n\nZayanna screamed and pointed. The shadow was levering itself up the staircase. Long twig-like fingers splayed across the floor, reaching for them. They ran.\n\nIrene grabbed a book off the shelf in the next room as they stumbled inside. It seemed to throb in her hands, its dull orange leather binding the shade of rotten autumn leaves. She flipped it open, but the contents were just as much nonsense as the ones she'd looked at earlier.\n\n'Is this the time for reading?' Zayanna snapped.\n\n'Depends on the book.' Irene took a firm grip on it. 'Book which I am holding, lead me towards the centre of this library!'\n\nThe book in her hands shivered as if it was trying to squirm free, then tugged unmistakeably towards the doorway on their left. But at the same moment the shadow was in the room with them, stretching from floor to halfway across the ceiling. It reached for Irene.\n\n'Lights off!' Irene screamed at the top of her voice. Every light in the room, and in all the adjacent ones where her voice could reach, shut down. Total darkness enshrouded her. She reached out for Zayanna's hand, and felt it warm and trembling in hers.\n\nAnd then something touched her shoulder. 'Really, Ray,' Alberich's voice breathed just behind her. 'Did you think that would stop me?'\n\nIrene bolted in the direction of the doorway, led by the book she was clutching. Her voice had carried well: she and Zayanna stumbled blindly through two darkened rooms before they came to one with lights on. The book tugged her towards the stairway and down. Behind her, she heard Zayanna gasp in shock, and turned to see what had happened.\n\n'Get it off, darling!' Zayanna pointed at Irene's coat. 'Quick. There's something on the back...'\n\nWhere Alberich touched me... With the speed of sheer panic, Irene shrugged her coat off and dropped it on the floor. There was a patch of mould on the shoulder, shaped something like a handprint and visibly spreading. She shuddered in disgust, then tried to squint over her shoulder to see her back. 'Is it still there \u2013 did it seep through?'\n\n'I think a bit got through onto that robe thing,' Zayanna said, inspecting it. She pursed her lips as Irene discarded that as well. 'All right, darling, I think you're clean. It's a good thing you're wearing so many layers.'\n\nThe mould was growing faster now, colonizing the overcoat in vile streaks of grey and white, the same shade as the bone-coloured books on this room's shelves. 'We have to keep moving,' Irene said. 'If I don't use the Language and if we don't stay in one place, it'll take him longer to find us. I think. I hope.'\n\n'I can't think why it's taking him so long as it is,' Zayanna said as they ran down the stairs, following the book's tugging. The clock in the distance seemed to be sounding a counterpoint to their running steps, its steady tick like a constant pursuit. 'If he can see everything in here, why can't he just reach out and squish us?'\n\n'I'm not sure, but I'm not going to complain.' The book led them to the right, then three rooms along straight, then down again. The tugging was stronger now. 'I think we're closer.'\n\n'You realize this could all be a trap.' Zayanna's tone was more speculative than nervous.\n\n'Some things are worth risking a trap for.'\n\n'For you, darling.' Zayanna glanced at the violet-bound books they were passing, then shrugged. 'I'm a people-person, not a book-hunter.'\n\n'It'd be nice if I could be just a book-hunter.' Irene was on edge, twitching at every creak or groan from an overloaded bookshelf, eyeing the shadows nervously in each new room. The clock seemed louder now, each separate tick a footstep of oncoming doom. 'I was happy when it was just books!'\n\n'Were you?' Zayanna shrugged. 'I'm no judge, darling, but you seemed to me to be having a perfectly splendid time getting along with those friends of yours back there. I wonder if we'll ever see them again?' The question was casual rather than serious, toying with the idea, rather than actually worrying about it.\n\n'I have spent most of my life preferring books to people,' Irene said sharply. 'Just because I like a few specific people doesn't change anything.'\n\n'Do you like me?'\n\nCommon sense urged Irene to say of course and reassure Zayanna. But she was justifiably bitter over those multiple murder attempts and the fact that Zayanna was complicit in Alberich's attempt to destroy the Library. All reason supported a tart response: after all, Why on earth should I like someone who'd do that? Finally Irene said, 'More than I should.'\n\nThe next room was ominous: it was the first one they'd come to so far where the books were all bound in black. It had no staircase and only two doorways: the one they'd come through, and another on the far side of the room.\n\n'This looks terribly exciting,' Zayanna said.\n\n'Not my chosen adjective.' Irene stepped forward to the far door. 'Be prepared for anything.'\n\nShe prodded it with the orange-bound book that she was still holding.\n\nRather to her surprise, the door swung open at once. There was a wide-open space beyond, a terrain clustered with freestanding bookshelves, which ranged in height from waist-high to multiple-storey. In the distance, perhaps half a mile away, she could see an openwork tangle of stairs and points of light. The entire space was huge \u2013 larger than she had thought could be contained inside the beehive network they'd come through. It extended to either side. And as she looked up, she thought she could see bookshelves hanging from the ceiling incredibly high above. A blood-red light from some unseen source of illumination filled the place, gleaming on the dark wooden floor. The clock's tick rang in the background, imperceptibly faster.\n\n'There is no way there isn't going to be some sort of alarm,' Irene said softly. 'We'll have to go fast and quiet.'\n\n'Where?'\n\n'To the centre, where else?'\n\n'He'll be expecting us to go there.'\n\n'That's our hard luck.' Irene took a deep breath, tucked the book under her arm and crossed the threshold.\n\nThe sound was like a thousand dentist drills biting into a thousand innocent teeth. It shook the whole area, and jarred painfully in the ears. Books clattered down from their shelves: the ones falling from a greater height tumbled like startled birds, in a flurry of bright covers and pale pages which ended in a sudden crash against the floor. Irene reluctantly gave up on any hope of stealth, and simply ran.\n\n'Surprise,' Alberich said from behind her.\n\nIrene turned in time to see a set of shelves as high as a Georgian mansion falling towards her. It didn't move with the speed of normal gravity, but like the finger of someone's hand being folded down to touch their palm. Its shadow blocked out the red light, and there was no time left to dodge, no time to use the Language\u2014\n\nZayanna shoved into her from behind, throwing her forward. Irene lost her balance and went tumbling, rolling forward frantically in an attempt to keep moving and avoid that terrible impact. Then the bookcase hit the floor, and the concussion of the blow knocked her another ten feet. She came to a painful halt against the base of another bookcase. Books tilted out of it and came landing on her in small aftershocks, thudding down on the arm she'd automatically raised to protect her head.\n\nSilence.\n\nShe looked up.\n\nZayanna lay pinned beneath the edge of the bookcase, half her body trapped underneath it, in a spreading pool of blood."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "Irene scrambled across to where Zayanna lay. Everything was quiet, apart from the clock's remorseless counting of seconds. No further bookcases fell. The ground didn't open under her feet. Nothing tried to kill her.\n\nOf course it won't, she thought from somewhere in the depths of her rage and grief. Not yet. Not till after Alberich has seen me watch her die.\n\n'Zayanna,' she whispered, touching the other woman's wrist. There was still a pulse there. But the pool of blood was spreading, black in the red light. 'Zayanna, hold on, let me get that off you. I'll pull you out and then...' And then what? The Language could temporarily seal a wound or set a bone, but it couldn't heal, and it couldn't bring back the dead.\n\n'Darling?' Zayanna's eyes fluttered open, but her gaze was unfocused. She coughed a little, trying to breathe, and reached for Irene's hand.\n\n'Yes, I'm here.' Irene tried to keep her voice reassuring. 'I'm sorry I dragged you into this. Just hold on. Let me\u2014'\n\n'Don't waste your energy,' Zayanna murmured. 'You'll need it.' Her hand tightened on Irene's, a silent we both know I'm dying. 'The funny thing is?'\n\n'Yes?' Irene prompted, as Zayanna's voice faded for a moment. Her eyes were dry. Fury was building inside her, hot as lava, and it left no space for anything that would blur her vision or distract her from her aim.\n\n'I didn't have to push you.' Zayanna blinked, like a child going to sleep. 'I could have been lying to you all along. I could have let him kill you.' Her voice was barely audible now, thin and thready. 'I don't understand...'\n\nHer breathing stopped. The clock ticked on.\n\n'How curious.' It was Alberich's voice. Irene looked up to see the shadow splayed across the ruined bookshelves above her. It was thirty feet tall, twisted and hunched so that the head tilted down towards her. 'I recruited Fae who had every reason to hate the Library, ones who'd suffered because of things Librarians had done. When Zayanna asked for you in particular, it seemed ideal. Why did she change her mind?'\n\nIrene released Zayanna's hand. 'Human error?' she suggested. Her skirts were stained with Zayanna's blood, though in the scarlet light the blood was black rather than red.\n\n'Hers?'\n\n'Yours. She really wasn't the type to hate anyone.' Something twisted in Irene's guts at the thought. 'She was a much nicer person than I am.'\n\n'Was being the operative word.' She could feel the shadow watching her. No, it wasn't just the shadow, it was this whole place, and Alberich had somehow embedded himself in it. 'I suppose I should give you a chance, Ray. We still have a few minutes before the clock reaches midnight and the Library... stops. Have you come to me in order to join me? Is that why you're here?'\n\n'I...' Irene let her voice trail off, gulping back an audible sob. This had to sound realistic. She'd only get one chance. 'I thought we could stop you. I thought... Oh, Zayanna...' She bit her tongue hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, and bent down to cradle the dead woman in her arms. Her hand, shielded by Zayanna's body and Irene's own skirts, sidled along the ground until it felt the wetness of the pool of blood. Working by touch and memory, she began to trace her fingers across the floor. It was a trick she'd played before, and she knew it. If Alberich actually paid attention to what she was doing, rather than to her tears, then he might realize, too. But it was the only trick she had left...\n\nThe clock's tick seemed judgemental, counting down to a verdict. 'I am disappointed, Ray,' Alberich's voice whispered from all around her. 'I thought you had vision. I thought I could make something of you. But you don't learn from your mistakes. You repeat your errors. You are weighed in the balance and found wanting. Any last words?'\n\nIt was an obvious opening for Irene to try and say something in the Language. She could feel the floor tremble beneath her, no longer as solid as it seemed, just waiting to gulp her down before she could even finish speaking a word. The bookcases loomed above her, prepared to drop on her and smear her to a pulp. The air hummed with anticipation.\n\nAnd all Irene could think was, I may take a while to learn from my mistakes, but I get there eventually. But Alberich hasn't learned from his at all. She blindly traced a final long curve across the floor with bloodied fingers, finishing two words in the Language.\n\nNot Alberich.\n\nPower exploded outwards in a soundless concussion that knocked the air out of Irene and threw her right back into the bookcase where she'd lain only minutes earlier. She lay there with her head ringing, trying to muster conscious thought and stand up and move. That quality of presence, suggesting imminent movement, had been withdrawn from the floor and bookcases around her. She'd guessed correctly \u2013 she hoped. Alberich was possessing this entire library, and since it was all a metaphysical whole, if he was locked out of part of it through the Language, then he must be locked out of all of it. At least for a little while. It made sense, or she desperately wanted it to make sense, especially when energized by panic and stunned through a minor concussion.\n\nSomething wet was trickling down her face. She raised her right hand to touch it, then remembered she still had Zayanna's blood on her fingers, and used her left hand instead. Not surprisingly, she had a bad nosebleed.\n\nThere was a noise in the distance, something less even and precise than the deep pulse of the clock. It was footsteps.\n\nPanic seized her heart and twisted. She struggled again to get to her feet. Her head was still empty and buzzing with the after-effect of overstraining herself. She had to lean on the bookcase to pull herself upright, and even then it was a struggle.\n\nThat was either Alberich himself, in the flesh, or some trusted servant. She had to reach the centre of this maze before they caught up with her, or before Alberich could fill the Library with his presence again and crush her.\n\nIrene shuffled between two bookcases, trying to keep her steps as quiet as possible. She didn't look back at Zayanna. There wasn't any time for affecting farewells to the dead or last promises of vengeance. I'm sorry, Zayanna, she thought. Would you have wanted this as an end to your story? Or would you rather have stayed alive? That's the problem with getting too much into character...\n\nWith a wrench she pulled her mind away from morbid self-indulgence and back to the present situation. Her concentration and her sense of balance were coming back now that she was moving. She had got this far. Zayanna had died to get her this far. Irene was not going to let Alberich win now.\n\nWhile she wasn't tall enough, or situated high enough, to see the overall layout of the library between her and the central point, she could get an impression of it. Main roads of empty space radiated out from the centre like the spokes of a spider's web, and smaller gaps between bookcases ran between them at irregular distances.\n\nThe footsteps behind her had stopped now. She thought she heard a voice speaking, very distantly and quietly, but not clearly enough for her to make out the words.\n\nSo what would I do if I was Alberich? I'd know that I was making for the centre. So I'd either get ahead of me \u2013 damn these pronouns \u2013 and wait to ambush me. Or I'd get up high where I could look down and spot me coming...\n\nShe stopped to look up at the bookcases around her. They were as tall as tower blocks \u2013 impossibly high for their size, structurally unsound, constructions that should have toppled over even before they were loaded with books. But nobody was standing on the top and looking down at her that she could see. Yet.\n\nIrene wove a zigzag course towards the centre, taking side turns and avoiding taking a single open roadway between shelves. She tried to combine silence with as much speed as was humanly possible. Alberich might be able to enter the physical environment again shortly. At which point she would be a messy smear on the landscape.\n\nShe turned a corner, lurking in the shadow and looking to the left and right. No sign of Alberich. But something was wrong. Her instincts were screaming at her.\n\nWait. By the angle of the bookshelves, there shouldn't be a shadow there. Which meant that the shadow was being cast by something irregular above her. Which meant...\n\n'Books, form a shield above me!' she shouted, in the same breath that a voice from above called down, 'Shelves, crush that woman!'\n\nBooks and shelves collided above her head. Irene ran for cover in a shower of wood and pages and dust, mentally cursing her opponent's grasp of tactics. What could she do to stop him? She needed either to be up on the same level as him, or to find some way of hiding herself from him.\n\nShe looked up at the high bookshelves again. She did have an advantage. She was on the ground. Gravity was her advantage.\n\n'Ready to surrender yet, Ray?' Alberich called down to her.\n\nIrene pressed her back against her current shelter. The metal corners of an unfamiliar book ground into her shoulders, and she shifted sideways to ease it out from its place on the shelf. That would do. 'Are you going to shout \"Come out, come out, wherever you are\"?' she answered.\n\n'If you make this a children's story, then I'll make it a cautionary tale,' he taunted. There was no sign of any movement in the surrounding shadows. She couldn't get a bearing on where he was. But the shadow she'd seen above her had been cast by a real thing, and the voice talking to her now was a human voice. The earlier thing had sounded anything but... So Alberich was back in a human form again. Less dangerous in some ways, more in others. 'Did you ever read your Struwwelpeter?'\n\nThe door flew open, in he ran, the great, long, red-legged scissorman! 'My parents never liked me reading horror stories.' Irene edged sideways along, squinting up at the tops of the surrounding bookcases. The clock sounded louder now. She prayed that didn't signify anything ominous for her Library. 'So of course I read them anyhow.'\n\n'You sound like the disobedient type. I should have recruited you earlier.' And there he was, just the edge of a curve of a shadow on the bookcase to her left, the equivalent of two storeys up. He'd gone down on all fours, making his shadow smaller, but now that she'd spotted him she could keep track of him. 'The offer's still open.'\n\nIrene brought the book she was holding to her lips. 'I still don't understand what you want from me,' she said, trying to make it sound like negotiation. 'I'm not the only young Librarian out there. I'm certainly not the only one who's ever been demoted. Convince me that you aren't about to kill me the minute I step out of hiding.'\n\n'You're the only one I can find who read that story in the Grimm book.'\n\n'It's that important to you?'\n\n'It is. You see, Ray, I need to find my son.'\n\nThe words my son didn't make sense at first. The story in the Grimm book had mentioned his sister's child, not his child, and Irene's first thought was that Alberich must have misread something. But then the concepts fell into place in her mind, and she tasted bile in her mouth. His son. His sister's son. What he did to his own sister...\n\nPerhaps Alberich expected that reaction from her, for he paused only for a moment before he went on. 'The Library kept him from me, Ray. Don't I have a right to my own flesh and blood?'\n\nThere were so many things wrong with that statement that Irene found herself incapable of answering. She snapped out of her momentary shock and whispered to the book in her hands, 'Book that I am holding, fly up and knock that man up there from where he stands!'\n\nThe book went up like a comet, scraping her fingers with the force of its ascent. A cry of, 'Shelves, shield me!' and the meaty thud of an impact came from above her.\n\nBut Irene was already running. 'Dust, hide me!' she shouted, holding a length of tattered tulle across her nose and mouth against the rising clouds of dust.\n\nShe trailed her free hand along the bookcases lining the passage so as not to collide with them. Tears ran from her eyes as she blinked frantically, trying to see where she was going. This method of hiding herself did have a few associated problems. But at least it concealed her from Alberich.\n\nUntil he loses patience and just levels all the bookshelves in the area, her sense of incoming doom pointed out. Keep on running.\n\nThe astonishing thing was that he hadn't done what he did once before \u2013 sinking her into the floor and calling on all sorts of chaotic forces to destroy her. If it had been Irene trying to destroy him, she'd have used whatever she had available.\n\nUnless... could she have missed something here? Alberich had created this place, or at least forged it out of a Fae world so far gone into chaos that it had no firm reality left. He'd set it up in a very specific way. Did this mean that he couldn't go round unleashing chaotic power into it randomly, any more than a mad scientist would set off dynamite in the middle of his own laboratory? It would explain a few things.\n\nThough it wouldn't save her, if Alberich caught up with her. Even if he left her alive in return for telling him about his... son. She couldn't help flicking through a mental list of male Librarians she knew, wondering if they might be the son in question. Admittedly she was better at discussing their literary tastes than their pre-Library histories, but she didn't think any of them could have had that sort of history.\n\nThe fog of dust blinded Irene nearly as much as it did Alberich, and she was taken by surprise as she stumbled into the central area. She was conscious of a wide-open space in front of her, even if she couldn't see it clearly yet, and some sort of massive tangle of open dark stairs and glowing lights.\n\n'Bookcases!' came a furious shriek from above her. 'Block her way!'\n\nThe two high bookcases on either side of her bowed down and collapsed in a great landslide of shelves and books. Pages filled the air, mingling with the dust and tumbling like huge snowflakes. She had to dodge back frantically to avoid being hit by the falling bookcases, and then her way was well and truly blocked. She'd have to clamber over them, or go round \u2013 either of which would lose time and make her far too obvious.\n\nSomething that had been nagging at the back of her mind finally broke through. This is a high-chaos world. Alberich's using the Language far more to frame his intent than in terms of precise description. And I'm doing the same. Just how far can I push this?\n\nShe gritted her teeth and braced herself. 'Floor! Open beneath the barrier and let me pass!'\n\nThe floor groaned, then split with pained creaks and cracking, the two sides pulling apart like the edges of a wound. The resultant gap ran beneath the toppled bookcases, narrow, uneven, dark and full of splinters... but it looked big enough for Irene to get through. With a silent prayer that Alberich couldn't see her and that his next words wouldn't involve such verbs as close, smash or crush, Irene squeezed through the crack. She had to lower her head and wriggle sideways, and with every panting breath it seemed that the riven floor was pressing in on her and about to squeeze shut.\n\nShe broke through to the other side with a gasp of relief. The dust was not so thick or noxious now \u2013 perhaps the barrier of bookshelves had blocked it off, or maybe it was simply settling of its own accord \u2013 and she could see the construction at the heart of Alberich's library.\n\nIt was an openwork tangle of metal stairs and books, perhaps a hundred yards across at first glance. The stairs writhed around each other, ignoring such petty constraints as railings or supports and rising several storeys high at the corners. The books gleamed amid the dark metal, scattered through the network in some sort of pattern and glowing with their own light. And in the middle of the pattern of books and stairs was the clock, which was still ticking. It was a shadowy clock face hanging in the air, with ivory-pale hands that moved ever closer towards midnight. It didn't give off any sort of gleam or glow. Instead it was a point of immense darkness, the sort of thing that Irene imagined a black hole might look like if given physical form and shrunk to such a tiny scale. And it wasn't Irene's imagination that it was ticking faster.\n\nBefore the clock reaches midnight, Alberich had said. She was almost out of time.\n\nAll sorts of options presented themselves. Stopping the clock or moving the books were the most obvious. Irene ran for the nearest flight of stairs. Her feet rang on the metal steps as she sprinted up them. Fatigue had vanished, now that she was so close to success.\n\nShe made it to the first landing, where one of the books waited, on display. The part of her mind that became distracted during moments of life-threatening danger couldn't help wondering about it. It must be one of the unique specimens Alberich had stolen. Where was it from, who was the author, what was the title \u2013 and if and when this was all over, would she ever get the chance to read it?\n\nAnd then she saw that there was a fine cage around it. The steel meshwork was wide enough for her to examine the book, and allowed its glow to escape, but it certainly wasn't wide enough for her to slide the book out. There wasn't even an obvious lock, let alone a key. Words in the Language were worked into the metal, but she didn't recognize them: they were a vocabulary that she had never learned.\n\n'Ray!' Alberich called. Irene looked up and saw him walking towards the interlacing open stairs, strolling through the air on a bridge of books that tumbled to the ground as he passed.\n\nIt was the first time she'd actually seen him in the flesh throughout the whole wild chase. He was tall, and painfully thin \u2013 assuming this was actually a body that looked like his original one, and not just another stolen skin. The hooded black robe that he affected (really, how clich\u00e9d) was draped over his gaunt frame, flapping in the wind which blew pages and dust alike across the landscape of bookshelves. His brown hair was streaked with grey and was thinning like a monk's tonsure, but he walked with the firm pace of a young man.\n\nShe considered using the Language to drag those books from under him and let him drop, but that seemed too obvious. Besides, he could simply order the books back again. She'd never duelled like this before. One needed to strike in a way that the opponent couldn't simply reverse.\n\nThe book lay there in its cage as if it was mocking her. 'Yes?' she called back. Could she order all the cages to open, so that the books would fly out? But taking the time to give such an order would give Alberich a full sentence in which he could strike back.\n\nHe stepped off the bridge of books onto one of the further staircases, a good twenty yards away from her and five yards further up. 'Have you quite finished with your adolescent rebellion?'\n\n'No,' Irene retorted. She reached out to touch the cage, but yanked her fingers back as she felt the prickle of chaotic power in the ironwork. 'Come closer and I'll demonstrate.' Could she order the metal stairs to bind him? What could she say that Alberich couldn't counter?\n\n'I want to tell you one thing.' His sentences were shorter now, more clipped. Was it in case she counterattacked mid-metaphor? 'Your home world? Your parents? I am going to find them. You have inconvenienced me. They will pay for it.'\n\nIt was a petty, spiteful threat. But the sheer malice contained in it, the absolute viciousness of his tone, cut at Irene and made her flinch. 'You haven't a chance,' she retaliated, edging sideways along a horizontal stretch of walkway. Perhaps she could manage something if she reached the clock.\n\n'Oh? Really? I've had centuries of life. I'm good at what I do.' Alberich kept his distance, but started to trace a parallel course to hers, clearly planning to keep between her and the clock.\n\nIrene laughed. It wasn't a very good laugh, but it bolstered her spirits. 'You don't understand. My parents are Librarians. They can run from you forever!'\n\nTo her surprise, Alberich actually stopped walking. 'They're what?' he said.\n\n'Librarians. Like you or me.' She wondered what she'd said that had managed to unsettle him. 'So, you see...'\n\nThen she saw his face clearly, and her words ran dry in her mouth. He wasn't shocked or unsettled. He was amused. His face showed those centuries of age, and they had left lines of cruelty etched around his mouth and eyes that were as clear as the Language itself. His voice was full of a horrible good humour as he spoke. 'Ray, my dear, my very dear little girl. That simply isn't possible. I should know. Two Librarians can't have a child.'\n\nIrene blinked. That statement didn't make any sense. 'But you said you have a son...'\n\n'That's how I know.' He began to walk again. 'You have no idea what it took. I had to take her deep into chaos to make it possible. All that for a son whom you are keeping from me.' His mouth opened impossibly wide, and his tone deepened to a roar. 'So don't insult me with such stories.'\n\n'Believe what you want,' Irene snapped. She was closer to the central clock now. Unfortunately, said closeness involved a vertical drop of about five yards before she could edge any further on a horizontal level. Manageable with caution and with the Language, but less welcoming with Alberich there to mess things up. 'I know\u2014'\n\n'You obviously don't know anything,' he cut her off. 'And nobody ever told you. No doubt to spare your feelings and keep you loyal. Are you some orphanage brat, Ray? Or were you stolen from a cradle?' He was walking faster now, his steps keeping time with the clock. 'If it wasn't for the inconvenience you've caused me, I might even feel sorry for you. I know all about how it feels to find out your whole life was based on a lie.'\n\n'Really? So what was yours?' It was a poor comeback, but it was the best Irene could do. The rest of her mind was flooded with the concept that she wasn't what she thought she was. For every sensible objection of he's lying and why should I believe him and he's trying to confuse you, there was a counter-argument \u2013 in the way that he'd seemed genuinely surprised when she'd said she was the child of two Librarians. She would swear it hadn't been faked.\n\nDid it make any difference if she wasn't the child of the people she'd called parents? If the fact of her birth was a lie, then was it such an important lie?\n\n'The Library claims to preserve the balance between chaos and order. But that's a lie. That's what children get told to keep them quiet and obedient.' They were on a level with each other now, and he stopped to look across at her. 'If you join me, I'll tell you the truth.'\n\nIrene remembered a line from that Grimm fairy story she'd read months ago, about Alberich and his sister. 'Is it something to do with the \"Library's secret\"?' she asked. 'One that we all \"wear branded upon our backs...\" But even if there is a secret, why would that make the Library a lie?'\n\n'Blind faith is just another word for slavery,' Alberich said. 'You say you're preserving some sort of balance, but you're really perpetuating stagnation. Wake up, Ray! Open your eyes. And if you're too blind to see anything on a larger scale, don't you feel anything for the books that you give the Library? It swallows them up and keeps them and will never let them go. Look at that book next to you.' He pointed at the closest metal cage, which held a scroll bound in ribbons of gold and purple. His voice was full of pride and greed, a collector's lust manifest in his every word. But he spoke as if he expected her to understand his desire, his joyful ownership of those priceless books. And perhaps she did. 'The complete Mabinogion,' he continued, 'with the full tale of Culhwch and Olwen. All of the quests! And that one.' He pointed to his left. 'Hugo's La Quiquengrogne, his sequel to Notre-Dame de Paris... Other books here, hundreds of them, all unique. Books you will never see anywhere else. Books that would be the pride of any collection.'\n\n'Which you stole.'\n\n'Only because the Library didn't steal them first. Metal, hold her feet!'\n\nHis use of the Language had come without a change in tone or expression, and Irene was caught by surprise as the stair that she was standing on flowed up and round her shoes, writhing to her ankles. Chagrin bit at her as she realized she'd been distracted by the conversation. By the promise of books and secrets. What better bait? No doubt she could unloose the bindings as easily as Alberich had invoked them, but that would give him enough time to do something worse.\n\nThe clock hammered away and the air seemed to shiver with a growing power and tension. More torn pages drifted through the air, floating by like huge moths.\n\n'It won't hurt,' Alberich said, in a tone that pretended reassurance, but his eyes were full of that cruel amusement she'd seen earlier.\n\n'What won't?' There had to be an answer. She had to save the Library. Save the books. Save herself.\n\n'Chaos. There's a point when the body either accepts it or destroys itself. Mine accepted it. And look what I can do!' He stretched his arms out in a gesture that embraced the clock, the twisted staircases, the mad library. 'You will join me or you will die. Tell me, Ray, isn't it a relief to come to the end of choices? To know the game's over? You can relax now. Stop being your parents' tool.'\n\nHe spoke fluidly, with the grand indulgence of a man enjoying his words, but his eyes were on her throughout. He was waiting for her to use the Language to try to either free herself or kill him.\n\nIrene took a deep breath. Why not just say yes for the moment? common sense suggested. Buy time. Tell Alberich some of what he wants to know. Get his trust. Be practical. You said to Bradamant earlier that there was no point in just getting yourself killed.\n\nAnd the books here were unique, the fruit of all Alberich's years of theft. Surely anything was worth it to save them? Even if it meant selling herself into slavery and betraying the Library...\n\nNo. This was a question of priorities, she realized. These books here were a priority. Her own life was a priority. But the Library, all the other Librarians, and all the books there were the biggest priority of all.\n\n'You're right,' she said. 'It is a relief. Paper! BURN!'"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 27",
                "text": "Irene's shout echoed through the maze of stairways. The books went up like tiny novas, blazing like the hearts of stars. There was no hesitation, no slow kindling at the edges or catching by degrees. They burned as if they were glad to burn. The drifting pages caught fire as well, wafting through the air with a sudden new energy, and the surrounding bookshelves shook with the force of the concussion as their contents flamed up where they stood.\n\nThe clock gave one last jarring tick, and stopped.\n\n'No!' Alberich shrieked. He was looking at her as if she was the criminal, the aberrant, the lunatic. 'Fires, go out!'\n\nFor a moment Irene feared that he might succeed in extinguishing the flames. But they seemed to rise up with a new fury as he named them in the Language. She remembered her own attempts to put out the fire when she and Kai had been trapped by the broken gate. Perhaps it was due to the mixture of chaos and Language. Perhaps it was the power of Alberich's own working, turned against him.\n\nPerhaps she should get out of range before he turned his attention back to her.\n\n'Metal, release my shoes!' she hissed, and stepped free as the stair retracted its clasp on her feet.\n\nThe scroll next to her was withering to ashes inside its cage. It had been a unique document, the lone copy of a story that only existed in one world. And now she'd destroyed it, and hundreds of others too. She'd felt embarrassment before in her life over quite a number of things \u2013 petty things, social errors, lack of politeness, moments of stupidity \u2013 but she'd rarely known true shame until now.\n\nShe tried to push that to the back of her mind, and mostly succeeded, looking around for somewhere to run towards. The prospects were minimal, and getting worse. Fire was spreading out in a great circle, leaping from bookcase to bookcase. Burning pages carried the flames with them like a contagion. High shelves were beginning to lean and topple as their underpinnings scorched and charred away.\n\nFor the moment she settled on getting away from Alberich. He was still shouting at the flames and at the clock, as if sheer volume could somehow compel them to obedience. She scurried along the walkway, the remains of her skirts fluttering in the rising heat. Choosing stairs at random, she ran around the outside of the network of steps, looking for a way out.\n\nThe clock was silent now, and so was Alberich. The only noise was the growing roar of the flames, and the ringing of steps on the metal stairs. Smoke sifted through the air in white coils \u2013 thin for the moment, but growing.\n\n'Book-burner!' The sheer fury and betrayal in Alberich's voice made Irene cringe in renewed shame. It wasn't the fact that he was saying it, but rather that it echoed her own thoughts. A part of her \u2013 a very stupid, senseless part \u2013 even felt that death would be an appropriate punishment for what she'd just done. 'Ray, you are going to suffer for this!'\n\nAs threats went, it wasn't the most specific or blood-curdling that had ever been thrown at Irene, but the fury and malice behind it gave her even more incentive to run. Unfortunately she'd come to a corner of the structure, and the only options now were up or down. Down put her on ground level and maybe gave her a chance to escape, if she could somehow find a way out through the burning, collapsing bookshelves. It would also give Alberich a clear advantage of height, to call down obstructions and maledictions on her with the Language. Up... well, there wasn't anywhere in particular to go, once she'd headed 'up'. She'd be trapped. Unless maybe she could form a bridge of books in the way that Alberich had earlier?\n\nAnd falling from a height is one of the quickest and easiest available ways to die, a cold little thread of despair pointed out. Just for the record.\n\nShe was not going to lose hope. She was not going to give up.\n\n'Smoke, choke that woman!' Alberich's voice rang out.\n\nThe pale wisps of smoke solidified, massing together as they flooded towards Irene's face.\n\n'Air, blow that smoke away from me!' she gabbled.\n\nThe first tendril of smoke touched her face and flickered across her lips, and more gathered behind it, flowing around her and up to her mouth. A quick gust of wind scattered the smoke and let her breathe, but there was no real definition or permanence to the moving air. The tendrils of smog began to gather again, and she fled up the stairway, holding a tattered shred of skirt fabric across her nose and mouth.\n\nShe passed another of the caged books. It was charred to ashes now, and a thick column of dark, greasy smoke rose from its corpse. It was getting harder to breathe \u2013 not just because of the smoke that Alberich had commanded against her, but because of all the other smoke in the air. It wound through the metal stairs like ribbons, and rose in billowing clouds towards the distant ceiling high above. It was impossible to see Alberich now.\n\nSurely this was any Librarian's hell, full of burning books and smoke and fire. She would have run onwards, but there was nowhere to run to now.\n\nIrene coughed, her lungs burning and her mouth full of the taste of ashes. She had to take the offensive. 'Stairs, open beneath that man's feet,' she shouted.\n\nThe clanging of collapsing metalwork answered her, but there were no human-sounding crashes or screams. Damn. She ran along a long open stretch of walkway, passing more book-cages, then stopped as Alberich's form loomed through the smoke ahead of her.\n\nHe was opening his mouth to speak, when a huge creaking roar came from the outer bookshelves and a shadow fell across the two of them. Both he and Irene turned to look. One of the tallest bookcases had begun to topple and was leaning towards the central arrangement of stairs, almost in slow motion. Books slid from it, sifting out to scatter in all directions, as it teetered down towards them.\n\nThere was no time for further reciprocal attacks, and even the Language couldn't have stopped that colossus mid-fall. Both of them turned and ran in opposite directions.\n\nThen it hit.\n\nThe concussion shuddered through the tangled structure of stairs, as the timbers of the bookcase sheared through metal and collapsed the walkways under their weight. Irene was thrown off her feet, and held onto the walkway with the strength of desperation as it shivered and tilted sideways. She crawled along it, coughing in the smoke, until it was more level and she could get back to her feet, then looked behind her.\n\nEven through the haze, she could see that the fallen bookcase had broken the central construct in half. Tangled remains of stairs and walkways still stood \u2013 well, leaned \u2013 on either side, but the centre, where the clock had been, was a mass of timbers and papers. The ruined shelves were a roaring bonfire that was swelling and burning higher with every passing moment.\n\n'Ray!' Alberich's voice carried over the crackling of the flames. 'You haven't won!'\n\n'It looks to me as if I have,' she shouted back. It was stupid and pointless to be exchanging taunts at this stage of events, when they were probably both about to die horribly, but it did feel good to get in the last word.\n\n'If I must wait a thousand years, I'll find my son.' For a moment she could see him silhouetted against the flames, his robe billowing in the hot wind. 'He will avenge me. And you will perish with me.'\n\n'You can't have all three,' Irene said, more to herself than to Alberich. She was swaying from the heat and the smoke, and she had to lean on the railing to hold herself up. Perhaps it would be easiest just to let herself go and fall. She wasn't going to get out of here. She might as well accept it, and finish things quickly. 'I don't think that works...'\n\nA shadow fell across her, and she looked up to see if another building was about to collapse on her.\n\nBut it wasn't a building. It was a dragon. It was Kai. The crimson light tinged his blue wings with amethyst. A shadow, indistinct in the smoke and dazzle, clung to his back \u2013 Vale? She couldn't be sure.\n\nThe shock of seeing Kai was like a wave of cold water in her face, driving away all Irene's despair. First things first. She had to distract Alberich. 'Metal, seize Alberich!' she shrieked, putting all her will into it. 'Rails, pierce Alberich, smoke, blind Alberich...'\n\nAs she shouted, she was already running for the nearest high point. She couldn't get to the ground, and there was no free space for Kai to land anyhow, so she'd have to get up as high as she could, and pray. Behind her she could hear Alberich shouting angry negations and shielding himself. The smoke swirled around where he'd been standing, briefly as dense as a London pea-souper.\n\nThere was a convenient high point just to her left, once a semi-tower of stairs and now a semi-collapsed mass of stairs that leaned at a dangerous angle. Irene inched up it, clinging with one hand and waving frantically with the other. She wished she had a flag to signal with, but there wasn't really enough of her dress left to be worth ripping off and waving.\n\nHigh above, the dragon dipped and swung round in a turn, heading directly for the half-tower where Irene was perched. He seemed to be moving slowly, almost lazily, his wings extended to glide, but he was halfway to Irene before she could blink.\n\n'Stair unbind from stair.' Alberich's voice rang across the fire, and the steps under Irene shuddered. Screws jerked loose and joints came undone. She felt the metal quivering under her, only kept in position by the fact that it was mostly shattered and leaning together in any case. Something came loose, with a crash of dreadful finality, and the half-tower slipped sideways.\n\nShe began to fall.\n\nKai spun sideways, one wing to the ground and the other to the heavens, and as he cut through the air and past the half-tower, Vale caught Irene's wrist.\n\nShe slammed against Kai's back, his scales grazing her cheek and her arm and shoulder screaming from the strain. Vale was shouting for her to hold on, but there was nothing for her to hold on to. She dug her fingers in as the wind streamed past. Kai tilted again, returning to a horizontal keel, and she slid more towards the centre of his back. Vale was perched just behind his neck, where she'd been sitting before, and was clinging on with one hand while grasping her wrist with the other.\n\n'Railings, gut that dragon!' Alberich screeched, his voice carrying dimly through the rush of wind.\n\nIrene tried to shout something in the Language in defence, but she had no breath to spare and no time to speak. Pieces of metal wrenched themselves free from the broken stairs and flung themselves upwards at Kai. He contorted his body, sliding through the air in a fluid twist that escaped several of them, but one of them sliced across his underside, and another went through his left wing. He cried out in pain, the sound shaking the air like thunder.\n\n'Get us out of here, Strongrock,' Vale called. 'I've got her.'\n\nKai struggled to gain height, streaking away from the central blaze where Alberich stood, but his motions were slow and laboured. 'There's too much chaos in this place,' he groaned. 'I need more time...'\n\nAnother set of improvised javelins arced towards them. Kai dropped beneath them as they rushed past above, diving between a couple of tenement-high bookcases that were still standing. The tips of his wings brushed them on either side, shaking down a rain of books. Blood pattered from his wounded wing, and Irene could see that he was having to keep it extended and glide on it, rather than use it with the fluidity of his other wing.\n\nHe wasn't regaining height. He was barely managing to maintain his current altitude. She could feel his muscles working underneath her body, and the long, shuddering struggle of his breathing. Would he be able to fly them out of there?\n\nBut if he'd managed to get here, and if he was managing to stay conscious and functioning, it meant this place wasn't as far out in the depths of chaos as she'd thought. Irene could try to reach the Library again. Without Alberich possessing this place and interfering, she might just be able to get through. And Vale... well, they hadn't actually tried to get him into the Library before. They would simply have to succeed now. She would drag him in there, if she had to tear a way between the worlds with her own bare hands.\n\n'Kai!' she shouted. 'Over to the left, there! By the far wall. Do you see that door? Can you get us there?'\n\n'Yes,' he rumbled. He winged towards the point she'd indicated, outracing the growing fire. As Irene looked down, she saw the flames overtake the collapsed shelves where Zayanna lay buried.\n\n'Did you succeed, Winters?' Vale demanded.\n\n'I sincerely hope so\u2014' Irene had to break off as Kai landed, his wings curving out and back as he settled to the ground. The left wing didn't move as easily as it should have done, and he groaned in pain again, thumping down hard enough to rattle Irene's teeth. She hastily slid from his back to the ground, then clung to the nearest bookcase as the floor shook underneath her.\n\nVale swept a quick glance across her. 'No serious injuries?' he asked. Behind him, the light flexed and ebbed around Kai as he changed form.\n\nIrene shook her head. 'No, nothing serious. Let me\u2014'\n\nThe ground shook again, this time in a more directed and precise way, as if some great worm was moving through it. And Irene realized, with the sort of cold terror that swept from feet to brain and through every point between, that if the area where Zayanna lay was burning, then the sigil that Irene had marked on the ground there might be burned away as well. Which might mean that Alberich could inhabit the ground and furnishings of his library once more.\n\nWithout even waiting to check Kai's wounds, she turned to the door. 'Open to the Library,' she demanded in frantic haste, throwing all her strength into the words as she grabbed the handle.\n\nThe cold metal fizzed under her hand, buzzing with an energy like static electricity, only more powerful and far more dangerous. The door didn't want to open to the Library, or perhaps the Library didn't want to let the door open onto it. Or perhaps Irene was being unreasonable in imagining personalities here, and it was simply the difficulty of reaching from a high-chaos world all the way to the Library.\n\nThe door tried to cling to the jamb, holding shut as she strained at it. She could feel the connection, she knew she'd reached the Library again, but the door held closed. Bookcases toppled and books fell as the floor rippled towards them, rising slowly like a tidal wave.\n\nShe'd failed in her earlier attempt to open to the Library. But she was not going to lose now, not at the cost of the two friends who'd risked their lives to come and save her.\n\n'Open!' she commanded.\n\nThe door wrenched itself open, pulling against its hinges with a creaking scream of wood that was audible above the roaring flames and the falling shelves. Beyond was a dark corridor lined with books, achingly familiar.\n\nVale thrust the staggering Kai through the doorway, then halted on the step. His expression was one of sheer incomprehension as he pushed at the empty air, his hands pressing at the gap of the doorway as though there was an invisible sheet of glass between him and the safety on the other side.\n\nHe's still chaos-contaminated, Irene realized, as though she was reading it off the title card in a silent film. The Library won't let him in. She'd thought, she'd hoped, but none of it had been enough. She would just have to do something about it instead.\n\nOnce before, she'd expelled chaos by naming herself and forcing out everything that wasn't Irene. I am Irene, I am a servant of the Library, she had said in the Language, and it had acted to remove anything that refuted those words. She'd hesitated to try it on Vale because she'd been too worried about hurting or even destroying him, if she couldn't describe him accurately. He wasn't a Librarian, after all.\n\nBut there was no time left. And in this place, the Language had answered her intent rather than her exact words. She could only try, and pray. All her life she had been taught that the Language allowed its users to shape reality. But if reality said that Vale couldn't enter the Library, then she was going to change that reality.\n\nShe grabbed Vale by the hand. 'Your name is Peregrine Vale,' she said, her voice audible through the crash of falling books and the rumble of the shuddering floor. 'You are a human being. And you are the greatest detective in London!'\n\nThe shock was like a deep organ-note, humming in her bones and making her stumble. Vale rocked back as if he had been hit by a blast of wind. Chaotic power vented out around him, crumbling the floor underneath him to fragments and transforming the blowing fragments of paper into ash. He fell to one knee, his face white under the smears of dust that marked them both, and his breath came in great heaving gasps.\n\nShe grabbed Vale's hand, pulling him forward as she threw herself through the doorway. And he followed her.\n\nThe world was blurry in front of her eyes, and she barely stayed on her feet. Both Vale and Kai were shouting at her, holding her up as she swayed, the world swinging round her in huge stomach-churning arcs. She blinked to see the open doorway in front of her, looking out on a landscape that was all inferno, where flames devoured books and shelves and ground and sky, and the wind screamed for vengeance.\n\nThere was something she had to do. Yes. That was it.\n\n'Door, close...'\n\nThe door slammed shut with a thud that echoed down the book-lined corridor, cutting off the flames and fury, and leaving the three of them in silence and darkness.\n\nThen slowly, one by one, the lights started to come back on."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 28",
                "text": "'Put your hands there, Winters.' Vale positioned her hands to hold the pad in place while he bandaged the gash across Kai's midriff.\n\nIrene tried to focus, but it was too much effort. She simply knelt there and let herself be used as a convenient surgical clamp, while Vale applied strips of torn-up shirt and Kai bled. The gashes weren't life-threatening, but they were nasty and they might leave scars.\n\n'I hope your uncle isn't too annoyed that you came here,' she said, vaguely following the thought through to a logical destination.\n\n'And thank you for favouring us with your attention, Winters,' Vale said, sitting back on his knees and wiping his hands on the remaining rags. He seemed to have pulled himself together with barely a moment's pause, all self-possession and control once more. 'I take it that inferno was a success?'\n\n'It looked quite successful to me,' Kai said. He tried moving his bandaged arm, and winced. 'Irene, I'm sorry. I should have had more faith in you.'\n\n'It was hardly how I'd have planned it,' Irene admitted. She was feeling more coherent now, though horribly exhausted. The knowledge of what she'd done to the books lay like a lead weight at the bottom of her mind, dragging all her other achievements down with it. She'd burned them. Unique books \u2013 stories that would never be found again \u2013 and she'd burned them all. There should have been some other way. There must have been some other way. If she'd tried harder, if she'd been more intelligent, then perhaps she would have found a way to save the books, as well as stopping Alberich.\n\nShe realized that Kai deserved a better response for his apology, and forced a smile. 'I nearly got killed. Several times,' she said. 'Li Ming was quite right. It was reckless. I wasn't expecting you two. I really wasn't. Thank you.' Her voice shook, and she had to bite her lip not to cry.\n\nTo Irene's surprise, the arm that went round her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze was Vale's. She let herself relax, assuring herself that it would be only for a moment. I'm not being weak. I'm simply leaning on him for a moment, just till I get my strength back.\n\n'We should have been there sooner,' Kai said firmly.\n\n'What happened to the Fae woman?' Vale asked, in tones of academic interest.\n\nA lump rose in Irene's throat. 'She's dead,' she said, not looking at either of them. 'She pushed me out of the way of a falling bookcase. I'd have died if she hadn't. She got me there safely, but...'\n\n'Save your sympathy for someone who didn't try to kill you multiple times over, Winters,' Vale advised sharply. 'She knew perfectly well what she was doing. If she didn't make it out alive, then she has nobody to thank but herself for getting into that situation in the first place.'\n\nIrene scrubbed her arm across her stinging eyes. Her face was smeared with ashes. 'Believe it or not, that doesn't help much, either.' She knew she should try to be more gracious, but her stock of patience had run dry. 'I would have liked her to get out of this alive. Even if you don't think she \"deserved\" it.'\n\n'And your Alberich. Dead, I hope?' Vale asked.\n\n'I hope so. I hope he burned.' Irene's own vengefulness surprised her.\n\n'Along with his books. It's a shame they couldn't be saved,' Kai said.\n\nShe was going to have to confess it sooner or later. She might as well get some practice in now. 'That was my fault,' Irene said. 'I started the fire. I ordered them to burn.' She could smell the ashes all over her, and she wondered morbidly if any of them came from the unique books in the cages. The ash felt ingrained into her skin, a mark of irredeemable sin more permanent than any scarlet letter.\n\nVale shrugged. 'A shame, but it clearly worked.'\n\n'Yes, but... they were unique,' Irene protested. She wasn't getting the sort of disapproval she'd expected. 'And I burned them.'\n\nVale and Kai exchanged glances. Kai shrugged. 'I can sympathize,' he said. 'Even if I wasn't training as a Librarian, I'd sympathize. They were books. They were unique. But I know you, Irene. You wouldn't have done that if you could have found any other way to stop him. It's not your fault. If you're blaming anyone other than Alberich, then you're wrong.'\n\nIrene struggled with the urge to tell him that he'd got it all wrong and that she should be blamed, but the thorough lack of condemnation from either man made it difficult. 'How did you get here?' she asked, changing the subject.\n\nKai lay back and looked at the ceiling. 'I found Madame Coppelia and passed on your message,' he said. 'Then Vale and I decided to come after you.'\n\n'That's suspiciously vague,' Irene said. 'And rather lacking in details.'\n\n'But substantially correct. Besides, this way you can't claim it was all your fault and that you should be punished for getting me into trouble.' Kai sounded positively smug.\n\n'True,' Vale agreed. 'Strongrock can apologize for all of it, together with whatever reparations he needs to make to his uncle's servant.'\n\n'Oh dear.' Irene wasn't sure she really wanted to know what had happened to Li Ming. She was finally starting to relax. It helped if she didn't think about some of the things that Alberich had said. 'I'm having trouble believing it's all over. Part of me is afraid that the lights are going to start going out again, or that I'll open the door and...' She let the sentence trail off.\n\nIs Alberich really dead? Irene's paranoia whispered. I've seen his skin ripped from his body, I've seen him thrown into chaos, and now I've seen him caught in an inferno, in a world that's falling apart. It should be enough to kill anyone \u2013 human, Fae, dragon or Librarian. But how can I be sure?\n\nFor a moment there was silence. Then she shook herself and clambered to her feet. 'All right,' she said firmly. 'Time to move.' It felt as if time had started again. This little moment of stillness couldn't last. Her personal clock was ticking. There were things to do, people to see, questions to ask. Books to read.\n\n'Couldn't we wait a little longer?' Kai asked pathetically. But he let her and Vale help him up.\n\n'Nonsense, there's far too much to do.' Irene finally put a name to the sensation she could feel rising in her, like a kite catching the wind. Possibility. Anything seemed possible now.\n\nShe looked between the two men. Her two friends, here in her home, in the Library. This was what defined her, far more than any birth or bloodline. Maybe Alberich was right, or maybe he was lying, or maybe he was simply mistaken. She could ask her parents later. No, she would ask them later. That was a promise. But she would be the worst sort of idiot if she let Alberich's malice poison what she had, here and now.\n\n'I should probably be getting back to London,' Vale said, a little reluctantly. 'There's a lot to be done. I can't leave the place without a wave of crime breaking out, and this time I've gone further than usual.' He looked around. 'So this is your Library. I can't say this corridor's very impressive.'\n\nKai chuckled, and Irene found herself smiling. 'It's larger than you think,' she said blandly. 'I can't promise that we have any criminal records, but I'm sure we can find something to interest you. I need to report to Coppelia, and to find out if there was any damage to the Library from what Alberich did. So that's our first priority, but after that...' She shrugged.\n\n'And I'm free of that taint now?' Vale inspected his fingers as though he would be able to see some sort of visible contamination, or the lack of it.\n\n'I believe so, or you couldn't have entered the Library.'\n\n'Then you are absolutely correct, Winters. We've work to do.' Vale started striding down the corridor, and Irene and Kai had to hurry to catch up with him. 'Which way do we go from here?'\n\n'We look for a room with a computer in it, and Irene can check the map when she contacts Coppelia,' Kai said. 'You'll like computers, Vale.'\n\nVale frowned. 'Are you telling me this place isn't properly organized?'\n\n'It's extremely organized,' Irene said defensively. 'It's just not very helpfully organized, from our point of view. Don't worry. Nobody's ever been lost. Well, not permanently.'\n\n'You reassure me greatly,' Vale said drily. 'You'd better take the lead, Winters. We'll follow.'\n\nIrene led the way down the corridor under the clear overhead lights, leaving behind the smell of ashes and corruption. New horizons seemed to stretch in front of her. It didn't matter if the Library still wanted to insist she was 'on probation'. She knew what she had done, and so did the people whose opinions she cared about. Even if there were new mountains ahead of her, she had the energy to face them and to wear them down.\n\nAnd she had friends to help her.\n\nThis sense of possibility might not last, of course. Nothing ever did. But she wasn't going to spoil it by looking too far ahead. They were safe in the Library, and the Library would endure."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Imprinted",
        "author": "Jim C. Hines",
        "genres": [
            "urban fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "Magic Ex Libris"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Jeneta Aboderin fought a losing battle with stage fright while she waited for Isaac Vainio to introduce her.\n\nAt first glance, Isaac looked more like a schoolteacher than one of the world's most powerful libriomancers. A skinny white dude in his mid-to-late twenties, he wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and a blue necktie printed to look like a library due date card. He ran one hand through his blond hair, adjusted his plastic-rimmed glasses, and said, \"Johannes Gutenberg's work with libriomancy began with two assumptions. The first was that all people have some capacity for magic. Most simply aren't powerful enough to produce real-world magical effects. What was needed was a way to combine those slivers of power into something larger.\"\n\nJeneta swiped a finger over her ereader, skimming a scene from a 2014 science fiction novel about interstellar colonization called New Destiny. Another part of her brain recited what she'd say when it was her turn to go out there.\n\nA young Japanese woman stepped to Jeneta's left. \"You're nervous?\"\n\nJeneta jumped. Kiyoko It\u00f4's hand shot out to catch the ereader as it slipped from Jeneta's grip.\n\n\"Thanks,\" Jeneta said tightly. \"A little bit, yeah.\"\n\nThey waited in a curtained-off area to one side of the main stage, which had been set up in front of New Millennium's ten-story Rosalind Franklin Research Tower.\n\nKiyoko frowned. \"You've already completed the most difficult magic, creating the Mars shuttle. All that's left is, as Isaac put it, to upgrade the stereo system.\"\n\n\"I didn't have an audience when I made the Venture.\" Jeneta gestured at the blue curtains, indicating the audience beyond. \"Two U.S. senators, a NASA astronaut, several millionaires, and who knows how many reporters. Not to mention my father.\"\n\n\"Twenty-three.\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"There are twenty-three reporters, along with their camera crews, sound techs, and other assistants.\"\n\nLeave it to a living computer to keep track of numbers. Kiyoko was one of New Millennium's many magical residents. She was one of thirty-some psychically-linked clones sharing a single mind and consciousness. She'd been brought into this world through libriomancy, using a book called All of One, by Shunro Kuronuma. Gold wires embedded in her bare scalp came together in the back to form a thin, glittering braid that disappeared beneath her white jacket.\n\nKiyoko had originally been created to be a servant, bodyguard, and on occasion, a killer. Isaac and others at New Millennium had helped to free her, giving her a home and a fresh start. Just as they'd done for Jeneta.\n\n\"From what I've observed of your magic,\" Kiyoko continued, \"you're fully capable of completing this spell.\"\n\n\"That's not what I'm worried about.\" Jeneta tugged one of her dreadlocks and nervously twisted the loose hairs at the end.\n\n\"Are you afraid because you're a child?\" asked Kiyoko. \"Or because of your history of magical trauma?\"\n\n\"Blunt, much?\" She hunched her shoulders. \"I'm seventeen.\"\n\n\"I apologize. I didn't mean to offend.\" Kiyoko paused. \"Isaac chose you to represent New Millennium. He has great faith in you.\"\n\nJeneta smiled and didn't argue. It wasn't about faith. It was about proving to the world that Jeneta and New Millennium were safe.\n\nOn stage, Isaac held up a battered paperback. \"Imagination activates magic, and books activate imagination. Gutenberg's second assumption was that physically identical books would anchor and collect the imagination and magic of readers, allowing libriomancers to tap into that power. Anything could then be created from a book's pages, so long as it fit through the physical book.\"\n\nIsaac gestured in Jeneta's direction. \"Not only did Jeneta Aboderin leap beyond that second assumption, she's also spent the past eight months helping New Millennium, in cooperation with NASA and the United Nations, to plan and prepare a magically-fueled mission to the planet Mars.\"\n\nJeneta wiped her hands on her slacks.\n\n\"Did you say Aboderin?\" asked one of the reporters near the front. \"Isn't that the girl who\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll be happy to answer any questions about our presentation once we've finished,\" Isaac interrupted. He signaled with one hand, and curtains opened behind him to reveal a movie-sized screen. The New Millennium logo appeared in the center: an oak tree whose branches fanned outward, thinning into lines of text in every known language.\n\n\"One week ago,\" Isaac continued, \"Jeneta successfully worked with another libriomancer named Talulah Polk to create the Venture from a book called Mars 2020.\"\n\nThe image behind him changed to show a spaceship roughly the size of a school bus. The hull was polished to a mirror finish. Triangular wings ran the length of both sides, with a shorter fin on top that reminded Jeneta of an angular mohawk.\n\nIsaac waited for the applause to quiet. \"It holds eight people. Once the Venture leaves Earth's atmosphere, it will have a cruising speed of roughly one tenth the speed of light. Under ideal conditions, we'll be able to reach Mars within two hours. When our people return to Earth, they'll spend more time getting through customs than they will in flight.\"\n\nThat earned a wave of polite laughter.\n\n\"The average distance from Earth to Mars is twelve-point-five light minutes. Depending on our respective positions around the sun, it could take up to half an hour for a radio signal to travel between our worlds. For safety reasons, we'd like to improve on that time. Jeneta is going to bring us the solution.\"\n\nJeneta stood. Her mouth had gone dry. Kiyoko leaned closer and whispered, \"Dr. Shah says to remind you that she and your other friends and family are in the audience.\"\n\nTrust the therapist to anticipate Jeneta's anxiety. She checked the small microphone clipped to her shirt and took a slow breath, trying to relax.\n\nAnother burst of applause. Oh God, had she missed her cue? She peeked onto the stage to see Isaac clapping and grinning that dorky grin in her direction. He nodded slightly.\n\nJeneta stepped past the curtains to join him. The lights from the front were brighter than she'd expected. She squinted, but couldn't see anyone beyond the first few rows. That was a good thing. She could pretend the audience was smaller than it was.\n\nIsaac shook her hand and gave her a one-armed hug. \"You've got this,\" he whispered, too low for his mic to pick up. \"Just relax. Try not to think about how this project could shape the future of our species.\"\n\nShe pulled back and scowled. \"You suck, you know that?\"\n\n\"I do,\" he said solemnly.\n\nJeneta switched on her microphone while Isaac retreated to the far side of the stage. She faced the audience, her mouth dry. She'd practiced this all week, but her mind was a blank page. She should have brought her notes.\n\n\"Hi.\" Her voice boomed out from the speakers to either side of the stage. \"I'm Jeneta. But you knew that\u2026\"\n\nShe trailed off, then glanced to the side. Isaac was mouthing the word Gutenberg.\n\nRight. He'd reviewed her speech. Probably memorized it, knowing him. She nodded her thanks and swallowed. \"Gutenberg thought you needed physical books for libriomancy. He was wrong. I've performed magic using ebooks on my cellphone, e-readers, and computers. I've tried to teach Isaac to do it, but he's a slow learner.\"\n\nThat hadn't been in her notes, but it got a few chuckles from the audience. And from Isaac.\n\n\"Libriomancy has always been limited by the size of the book. Or in my case, the size of my reader. So we built a bigger one.\"\n\nA wall of text appeared behind her.\n\n\"Talulah and I are going to create an ansible. Basically, it's a giant scifi cellphone that lets you communicate instantly between any two points in the solar system and beyond.\"\n\n<Ready to make history?> Talulah's mental voice sounded cheerful as she joined Jeneta on stage. She'd used her magic to give herself telepathy several years ago.\n\nJeneta grinned. <Yeah.>\n\nTalulah came up behind Jeneta, looking calm and composed. She'd traded her usual blue jeans and T-shirt for an ankle-length skirt and white button-down shirt. Her traditional Pok\u00e9mon baseball cap topped her head, keeping her black hair back from her face.\n\nJeneta turned and reread the scene, which came from a 2014 science fiction novel about interstellar colonization called New Destiny. Jeneta didn't care for the plot, and the characters were so wooden you could lash them together and make a raft, but the author had an obvious love for technology. His descriptions were almost poetic.\n\nThe scene was split between the moon base that housed the main ansible transmitter and a planet called New Gaia, where the first colonists were setting up their smaller, quantum-linked ansible unit for the first time.\n\nThe screen rippled as Jeneta's hands sank into the story. She lost herself in the author's description of subatomic particles eternally entangled in a dance beyond time and space. Infinitesimal specks of matter whose bond would reunite human civilization. The Lunar characters' emotions washed through her: elation and pride at a successful mission; eagerness to reestablish contact with the colonists, who would be waking up after months in hibernation; the anxiety and stress of knowing everyone on Earth was waiting for this transmission.\n\nTalulah's hands joined hers, helping to channel the energy it took to manipulate magic on this scale, but she was merely following Jeneta's lead. This was Jeneta's spell, the culmination of a project she'd been pushing for eight months, ever since she joined New Millennium.\n\nThe lunar air on her hands was cool and dry. She began with the primary ansible unit, a sofa-sized box with a glassy surface. It felt warm, almost alive. <Are you set?>\n\n<I'm good. Hey, do you think this ansible thing could run an MMO? Imagine gaming with colonists on Mars.>\n\nKeeping her hands firmly on the transmitter, Jeneta shouted, \"Start moving.\"\n\nThe entire screen crept backward, receding one centimeter at a time along a metal track. Behind her, the audience gasped as the front edge of the transmitter emerged. The surface was dull black, with blue light gleaming between panel seams and through ventilation screens.\n\nThey weren't pulling the ansible from the screen so much as they were creating it, transforming imagination and belief into reality like a magical 3D printer.\n\nJeneta laughed, a sound of unfiltered, unrestrained joy that broke free of its own accord. Libriomancy came from a place of love and wonder. Despite everything she'd been through these past few years, nothing could compare to the thrill of magic. The drumbeat of her pulse, the sweat trickling down her spine as words became real\u2014it was a high like no other, the giddiness of creation. She barely noticed the whispers from the audience behind her, or the flicker of flashbulbs.\n\nThe first meter of the transmitter had emerged when Jeneta felt another presence, like a half-seen movement from the corner of her eye.\n\n<What's wrong?> asked Talulah.\n\n<Nothing.> Probably just an echo from the characters in the book.\n\nIsaac stepped closer. Talulah must have said something to him as well. Isaac glanced down at his fire-spider Smudge, who rode in a small cage clipped to his belt. Fire-spiders lit up like a grill with too much lighter fluid in the presence of danger, but Smudge appeared to be sound asleep. \"Is everything all right?\"\n\n\"We're fine,\" said Jeneta, drawing the transmitter another centimeter into this world.\n\nIsaac studied the screen. \"It's not a problem if we need to stop and double-check everything.\"\n\n\"You've quinvigintuple-checked everything,\" Jeneta complained. \"Stop now, and every one of those reporters will be publishing stories about New Millennium's failure.\"\n\n\"I'd rather see stories of our overcaution than of magic gone wrong.\" He tugged the knot of his tie, then sighed. \"Be careful. If either of you feel anything wrong, we call it, understood?\"\n\n\"Got it.\" Jeneta returned her full attention to the text.\n\nIt took another minute to finish creating the ansible transmitter. The stage creaked from the strain, but the tech crew had reinforced it to handle the weight. All that remained now was the secondary unit, no larger than a briefcase, that would be mounted in the Venture.\n\nTalulah took a single step back, remaining close enough to assist if needed, but letting Jeneta be the one to complete the spell. The text on the screen jumped ahead several pages.\n\nJeneta touched the story again, expecting to feel the humid air of the New Gaia colony. Instead, her hands plunged into warm, slow-moving water. She blinked and reread the text. There was no mention of water in this scene.\n\n<Jeneta?>\n\n<I'm fine.> She concentrated on the story, sharing the explorers' triumph and excitement as they saw the faces of their loved ones back on Luna and Earth. She reread their dialogue, hearing their tearful greetings, shared across light-years in an instant.\n\nThe world tilted, as if the stage was catapulting her through the screen into the glowing pages of the book. Jeneta plunged into the water. Shadows moved at the edges of her vision with short, sudden bursts of speed.\n\nPanic flooded her thoughts. She heard Talulah calling, her mental voice hollow and distant. Jeneta tried to warn her to stay back.\n\nA new mind touched hers, coiled through her thoughts. Tried to pull her deeper.\n\nJeneta heard herself coughing. Her cramped fingers clung to the partially-created ansible unit. Talulah's hands tried to pull her free. The book's magic flowed over them both.\n\nGet out of my mind! Had Jeneta screamed the words out loud? She couldn't breathe. Please, not again.\n\nThe screen went dark, like sunlight fading as she sank deeper beneath the waves. The unformed ansible splintered and evaporated into nothingness. Jeneta lashed out with all of her strength, with everything she was, an explosion of rage and fear and defiance spreading outward from her chest to burn and shatter the magic around her. Then, darkness."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "A day later, Jeneta sat in a comfortably-worn faux-leather armchair in the office of Doctor Nidhi Shah. Jeneta's fire-spider Nkiruka crouched inside a small traveling cage on her lap. The red-and-black spider waited on a bed of crushed gravel while Jeneta shook the last pieces of caramel popcorn from a paper bag through one of the vent holes in the transparent aluminum top.\n\nCautiously, Nkiruka stalked the closest piece like it might fly away at any moment. Black bristles along her back glowed red at the tips.\n\nWithout warning, she pounced and seized the helpless kernel between her forelegs. Red flame engulfed the popcorn. Nkiruka turned it several times before stuffing it eagerly into her mouth.\n\n\"How much do you remember?\" Dr. Shah sat in a black office chair in front of a desk busy with books, notes, and photographs. The psychiatrist wore earrings like oversized silver teardrops, and a charm bracelet with a single silver acorn. She was roughly the same age as Jeneta's father, with threads of white woven through her black hair.\n\nJeneta screwed the vent screen back into place in Nkiruka's cage. \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\"They never do.\" Dr. Shah smiled. \"Everyone thinks it's a sign of weakness, that they should be able to cope through sheer stubbornness.\"\n\n\"I'm not being stubborn.\"\n\nDr. Shah cocked her head to the side, but didn't argue. Despite having no magic of her own, she'd spent most of her career working with magic-using humans and magical inhumans. She was one of the first permanent residents of New Millennium, joining the small settlement outside Las Vegas shortly after its creation to help in its mission of providing peace and security for those with magic, and using magic to improve the world.\n\n\"I'm worried about Talulah,\" Jeneta said.\n\n\"So am I.\" Dr. Shah's face turned serious. \"The doctors haven't found anything physically wrong, but she's not waking up. The more we know about what happened yesterday, the better our chances of helping her.\"\n\n\"I told Isaac everything I remembered,\" Jeneta snapped. \"I don't need your guilt trips.\"\n\n\"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. I know the past few years have been hard. Having to flee your home as the world discovered the existence of magic. Your parents splitting up.\"\n\n\"Having a dead necromancer set up shop in my head.\"\n\n\"That too.\" Dr. Shah pointed to Nkiruka. \"You're safe. Your fire-spider wouldn't be busy stuffing her face if she sensed the slightest threat.\"\n\nJeneta tried to suppress a shudder, but failed.\n\n\"What story are you telling yourself right now?\" It was a familiar question from more than a year of therapy.\n\n\"That I'll never be free of what Meridiana did to me,\" Jeneta mumbled. \"That she's waiting to take control again, to use me to hurt people. That what happened to Talulah is my fault.\"\n\n\"How would it be your fault?\" There was no judgement in her words.\n\n\"I panicked. Whatever happened yesterday, whatever it was I felt, I flung it away and it hit Talulah instead.\"\n\n\"Isaac blames himself, too.\" Dr. Shah sighed. \"It's one of the problems with magic. All that power\u2026you feel like you can do anything, which leads to feeling like you're responsible for everything.\"\n\n\"Does he know what went wrong?\"\n\n\"He thinks someone tried to piggyback a second spell onto yours. He's working with security to find the source of that second spell.\"\n\nJeneta's legs bounced, her heels thumping against the wooden legs of the chair. \"What was it supposed to do?\"\n\n\"Nobody knows. You broke it before it could finish.\"\n\nMore than a thousand people lived at New Millennium. Close to a hundred more had come for the ansible presentation. That meant at least eleven hundred potential suspects. \"It wasn't just another spell.\" Jeneta watched Nkiruka toy with another bit of popcorn. \"I felt like I was drowning.\"\n\n\"That doesn't sound like libriomantic possession.\" The trouble with reaching into books to perform magic was that occasionally the books reached back. A libriomancer who pushed too hard could end up carrying those characters around in their head, hearing their voices, even losing themselves in the characters' stories.\n\n\"I've read New Destiny cover-to-cover. This was nothing from the book.\" Jeneta hesitated. \"I want to help Isaac find whoever did this.\"\n\n\"You want to feel in control again.\"\n\nJeneta turned away, blinking back unexpected tears. Damn therapists.\n\n\"You can ask, but we both know what he's going to say. Not to mention your father.\"\n\n\"God, everyone's going to be even more overprotective, aren't they.\" Jeneta had already seen it from her father. Mmadukaaku Aboderin disliked and distrusted magic, but he loved her. He'd moved them to New Millennium because he believed it was the safest place for her. Who knew what he'd do now. \"What am I supposed to do?\"\n\n\"You know your triggers, and you know the techniques for managing them,\" Dr. Shah reminded her. \"Pay attention to how you're feeling and what stories you're telling yourself about what happened. This isn't your fault, any more than it's Isaac's. It's the fault of whoever sabotaged your magic. Jeneta, have you talked to any friends since the presentation? Gotten out of your apartment?\"\n\nJeneta shook her head.\n\n\"Then that's your homework. Go for a walk. Text a friend. Give yourself a chance for a little normalcy.\"\n\n\"We live across the hall from a werewolf janitor.\"\n\n\"Normal is relative.\" Dr. Shah smiled. \"And don't be afraid to call or text me if you need.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "\"What's more normal than schoolwork?\" Jeneta muttered to herself as she left the eastern residential building late that night. She'd fallen behind in her classes as a result of her work on the Mars project, and finals were coming up in three weeks.\n\nNkiruka burned like a little red lantern in her cage as she cooked a small grasshopper for dinner. The cage hung from Jeneta's shoulder by a canvas strap decorated with small pins and buttons.\n\nJeneta made her way to a bench near the Johannes Gutenberg Memorial Library Tower and set her books down beside her. Goosebumps tightened the skin of her bare arms. The desert was surprisingly cool at night.\n\nShe grabbed a mechanical pencil and opened her trigonometry textbook, reading by the light of the nearby lamp post. Maybe circular functions and practice problems could drive off the nightmares that had ambushed her when she tried to sleep.\n\nCheers broke out from a volleyball court over by the western residential building, making Jeneta jump so hard she almost dropped her book. She slowed her breathing, trying to calm her heart, while the vampire team celebrated the point against their opponents.\n\n\"Man, that game is intense,\" said a cheerful voice.\n\nThis time her book did spill to the ground, along with her review sheets. Jeneta spun to find Greg Parker standing behind her, hands raised in apology.\n\n\"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you.\" He wore jogging shorts and a NASA T-shirt. Sweat darkened the neck and pits. A worn fanny pack was buckled around his waist. \"You're Jeneta Abodine, right?\"\n\n\"Aboderin.\"\n\nEmbarrassment colored his white skin like a stop sign. \"I suck with names, sorry. I'm Greg.\"\n\n\"I know.\" She waved away the apology. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Couldn't sleep, so I went for a run.\" He pointed to the volleyball court. \"The furry ones, are those real werewolves?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Most are from a pack in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They're the only team that can give the vampires a run for their money.\"\n\n\"They're playing against vampires?\"\n\n\"You should have been here last month for the roller derby tournament.\"\n\nHe stared at her like he couldn't decide whether she was joking. Eventually, he sat on the end of the bench and asked, \"What about you? Do you always work on trigonometry at two in the morning?\"\n\nIt was later than she'd realized. She turned away, remembering dreams of drowning, of other thoughts constricting her own.\n\n\"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry.\" He ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair, making it look like a hedgehog's spines. \"You know, that presentation of yours was the first time I'd seen real magic. I've watched stuff on the news and the web and all, but never in real life. My brain keeps insisting it's a trick, like something from a Vegas show.\"\n\n\"It's not a trick.\"\n\n\"I know, but there's a difference between knowing and knowing, you know?\"\n\nShe tilted her head. \"Are you always this articulate?\"\n\n\"Pretty much.\" He sighed. \"My dad's supposed to fly a magical spaceship later this year. Ever since things went haywire with the ansible, I keep thinking what if something goes wrong while he's flying? What if\u2014\"\n\n\"They'll find whoever disrupted my spell, and the plan is to have at least one libriomancer on board. We'll make sure your father is safe.\"\n\nHe pulled a half-empty water bottle from his pack and gulped down the contents before asking, \"Disrupted? Someone tried to mess with your magic? Why would they do that?\"\n\n\"Power and control.\" Jeneta looked away. \"An awful lot of evil comes down to power and control, either taking it away from others or gathering more for yourself.\"\n\nGreg's eyes narrowed. He pulled back, one hand coming up to point. Jeneta had seen that expression more times than she could remember, and she braced herself for what came next.\n\n\"I know you,\" he said. \"I mean, I've seen you before. You were on the news a while back. You burned down a guy's house in northern Michigan. You attacked\u2014\"\n\n\"I was possessed by a necromancer who called herself Meridiana. She used my body and my magic to hurt a lot of people. She\u2026we\u2026tortured them. Consumed their magic. She tried to create an army of the dead.\" Jeneta rushed through her script as quickly as she could, eager to reach the point where Greg mumbled something uncomfortable and departed. \"Isaac, Lena, Dr. Shah, and a lot of other people risked their lives to save me.\"\n\n\"You changed your hair.\"\n\nJeneta stumbled. That wasn't among the standard replies. She touched her dreadlocks, feeling self-conscious. \"Everyone knew what I looked like. I was tired of being recognized.\"\n\n\"Did you\u2026do you remember everything Meridiana did as you?\"\n\nShe blinked hard and turned away. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"That sucks.\"\n\n\"Understatement of the century.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" He hesitated. \"That sucks balls.\"\n\nA sound that was half laugh, half snort burst loose from her chest. She covered her mouth with one hand. Greg started laughing too, which made it harder for her to stop.\n\nNkiruka paced in her cage, glaring up at each of them in turn like she was trying to figure out what had broken the two humans. \"I'm all right.\" Jeneta took a half-squished chocolate-covered ant from a plastic bag in her pocket and dropped it into the cage to reassure her. \"There you go.\"\n\n\"Whoa.\" Greg practically pressed his nose to the cage as Nkiruka's forelegs ignited. \"It's on fire! Is it magic too?\"\n\n\"Her name's Nkiruka. She's a fire-spider.\" Jeneta gave her a second ant. \"Do you really want to know what magic's like?\"\n\n\"Hell, yes!\" Eagerness turned his mouth and eyes round.\n\nShe pulled her trig book into her lap.\n\n\"You can do magic with a textbook? What are you going to do, create enchanted triangles?\"\n\n\"Pictures don't work for libriomancy, but any writing that's been read by enough people should have magical potential.\" She flipped past a page of diagrams and exercises to the next block of text, a discussion of the laws of sines and cosines. She touched the page, moving her fingers over the shiny black ink of the characters.\n\n\"I thought you used e-books for your magic.\"\n\n\"It's easier for me, but I can do printed text too.\" She realized she was showing off. \"I prefer working with poetry.\"\n\nThere was poetry in math, too: structure and rhythm and flow from one logical step to the next. Her fingertips sank into the paper. Greg's breath caught.\n\nJeneta grinned and reached deeper. Abstract concepts like mathematical formulae weren't something she could create in the real world. She reached instead to touch the emotional imprints left by thousands of readers poring over copies of this exact book\u2014students working to memorize, and less often, to understand. She felt their frustration, their boredom, their annoyance\u2026\n\nShe sorted through those impressions until she touched a moment of revelation, the moment when everything fell into place. Satisfaction and excitement blossomed in her chest. She touched her other hand to Greg's arm, and was rewarded by a sharp gasp.\n\n\"Holy shit!\" He stared at her, then at the book. \"What is that?\"\n\n\"Emotional echoes of what people felt when they finally got it.\"\n\n\"I never felt anything like this when I took trig.\"\n\n\"Maybe you should have studied harder.\" She smiled to tell him she was joking. \"We're connected to every copy of this book in existence. You're feeling the cumulative impressions of hundreds of people. It strengthens the impact.\"\n\n\"That is so cool.\" He put his free hand on the page beside hers. The tips of his nails whitened as he pressed down. A disappointed sigh escaped his lips. \"Guess I'm not a libriomancer.\"\n\n\"On the bright side, that means you shouldn't have to worry about hosting an evil dead woman who uses you to spread death and terror.\" Jeneta pulled her hand away, breaking the spell. \"Sorry, that came out harsher than I meant.\"\n\nGravel rattled in Nkiruka's cage. She'd finished eating, but red flames continued to ripple over her back.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Greg.\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" A dragonfly buzzed loudly as it circled the lamp post, feasting on other bugs. Maybe Nkiruka just wanted to join the hunt?\n\nA shadow darted across the walk to her right. Jeneta jumped to her feet and grabbed her cellphone.\n\nThe shadow floated closer. Instead of fading as it entered the lamplight, its edges grew more distinct. Thin tendrils undulated behind a body like an elongated ostrich egg. Jeneta's stomach twisted. She felt like she might throw up.\n\n\"What is it?\" Greg looked around, seemingly blind to the thing that stretched tentacles of blackness toward them.\n\n\"We have to go.\" Jeneta snatched Nkiruka's cage and texted Isaac one-handed: Need help. By the library. 911!\n\n\"What about your books?\"\n\n\"Leave them!\" The hairlike tip of a tentacle lashed out, piercing her thoughts. She felt herself falling. Drowning. \"Get out!\"\n\nGreg caught her elbow. She used him for balance as she thumbed to her ereader program and pulled up Robert Frost's \"Mending Wall.\" More tentacles stretched toward her.\n\nI let my neighbor know beyond the hill;\n\n[ And on a day we meet to walk the line ]\n\nAnd set the wall between us once again.\n\nWe keep the wall between us as we go.\n\nGhostly stones tumbled forth from her screen, rolling and growing and piling themselves into a wall between her and the shadow. Stones like softballs and bread loaves and small boulders rose up to encircle her and Greg. There was so much more to the poem, but right now, all she cared about was putting a barrier between herself and her attacker.\n\n\"Jeneta?\" Isaac's voice, muffled by the magic of Jeneta's wall.\n\n\"Here!\" Shadowy tendrils wormed between the stones, inching closer. She reread Frost's words, strengthening the wall until it blocked out all light and sound, save for Nkiruka's glow and Greg's nervous breathing. Still the shadows came.\n\nAnd then\u2026nothing. Her spell crumbled away. The shadows disappeared. Nkiruka's flame died.\n\nIsaac ran up behind her, followed closely by Kiyoko. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"Didn't you see it?\"\n\nHe clutched a black pearl bracelet in one hand. Jeneta had seen such tools before, used for countering the effects of magic. He turned in a slow circle. \"All I saw was your spell. Frost, right?\"\n\nShe nodded and hugged herself. \"Whoever or whatever attacked me on stage\u2026they're still here. They're still coming after me.\"\n\nAnd she was the only one who could see them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "In some ways, Metrodora Medical Tower was like the hospital Jeneta had gone to when she broke her leg playing kickball in fourth grade. It had the same light-colored walls and tile floors, the same cheerful posters and murals, the same antiseptic smell.\n\nThe staff were a mix of libriomancers who specialized in healing, full-time medical professionals, and a handful of visiting professionals. Most patients came from outside New Millennium for help with ailments traditional medicine couldn't fight. Metrodora Tower also handled the day-to-day injuries and illnesses of the New Millennium community, everything from cuts and scrapes to heartworm preventatives for the werewolves.\n\nJeneta lay in a narrow hospital bed in a small, private room. Isaac and Kiyoko stood to one side. Her father sat in a chair to the other. After several hours of examination, the doctors had found nothing wrong with her, but asked that she stay a while longer for observation.\n\n\"We have people searching every inch of the grounds,\" Isaac said quietly. Frustration creased his brow and the corners of his eyes. \"We'll also be questioning all visitors. Security ran background checks on everyone, but given what's happened\u2026\"\n\nShe turned to the side, watching the pink light of the sunrise through the cracks of the window blinds.\n\n\"What was this thing?\" asked Mmadukaaku Aboderin, his deep voice tight with restrained emotion.\n\n\"I've searched our databases,\" said Isaac. \"I tagged several near-matches for follow-up research, but nothing quite fits what your daughter describes.\"\n\n\"I have run multiple queries as well,\" Kiyoko added.\n\n\"That was a hell of a shield you put up, Jeneta.\" Isaac adjusted his glasses and began to pace. \"Robert Frost, right? From what I saw, I'd have guessed nothing could get through that thing.\"\n\nShe didn't move. \"Well, it did.\"\n\nHer father cleared his throat. \"If you're through questioning my daughter, I would like to speak with her alone.\"\n\nIsaac started to say something, noted the expression on his face, and nodded. \"Kiyoko, could you\u2014?\"\n\n\"I will wait outside the door,\" said Kiyoko. \"I can monitor Jeneta's vitals from the hallway.\"\n\nIsaac pressed a folded note into Jeneta's hand. \"Greg Parker asked me to give this to you. And Nidhi offered to stop by later if you want to talk.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nThey shut the door behind them. Jeneta's father rose. \"I spoke to your mother.\"\n\nShe groaned, mentally bracing herself for the inevitable phone calls and video chats demanding to know whether Jeneta would abandon this \"magical nonsense\" and get out of New Millennium before it killed her. The same things her father used to say, before he gave up on changing her mind. \"What did she say?\"\n\n\"She'd seen a news story about your ansible presentation. What do you think?\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Jeneta set Greg's note on the rolling table beside her bed, next to a half-eaten cup of applesauce. Hospital food, even in a magic hospital, was no substitute for home cooking.\n\nAs if reading her mind, her father said, \"I thought I'd make dodo today. If you're hungry.\"\n\nHer mouth watered at the thought of the deep-fried plantain slices, but why was he acting so nice? \"Aren't you angry?\"\n\n\"I am furious.\" He ran a hand over his receding hair. \"Furious with whoever did this to you. With Isaac and New Millennium for letting it happen. With you, for following this path. With me, for allowing it.\"\n\n\"I can't change what I am.\"\n\nHis phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. \"I understand, but there are other changes we could explore.\"\n\nShe sat up, suspicion chasing away her weariness. \"What changes?\"\n\n\"After the presentation, once we knew you were all right, someone approached me to offer\u2026an alternate path. Another way for you to be what you are. A safer way.\"\n\n\"I'm happy here.\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\nThose two words pierced her skin like a scalpel, exposing the dread that had festered since that moment on stage.\n\nThe door cracked open, and Kiyoko peered inside. \"You have two visitors. Elizabeth Collins and Gellert Nguyen. They say they're expected. Shall I let them in?\"\n\n\"Yes, please,\" Jeneta's father answered.\n\nTwo people entered, a white woman and an Asian man. After a moment, Jeneta recognized them: they'd been in the second row during her presentation. Collins wore black slacks and a denim-style shirt, with a beige blazer. Nguyen's outfit was all black, from his shoes to his bow tie. Someone was trying a little too hard to look dark and dangerous.\n\n\"Thank you for agreeing to see us.\" Collins shook Jeneta's hand, then her father's. \"I'm the VP of Research for JP Multinational. Mr. Nguyen is a libriomancer from our Paris office. We're here to offer you a job.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't I finish high school first?\"\n\nShe laughed far more than the comment warranted. \"We have tutors on staff who can help you complete your education, and we'd assist you with any advanced degrees you cared to pursue.\"\n\nShe continued to move about the room, reminding Jeneta of certain species of shark that had to keep swimming or die. \"New Millennium has been in the spotlight since day one. With so much magic and so many extraordinary people and creatures living together, it's bound to attract attention and\u2026strife. JPM would provide everything you needed to continue your magical work, but more importantly, we'll give you privacy and security. You'd be safe.\"\n\nThe woman was too polished, her every mannerism a veneer to hide what lay beneath. Jeneta folded her arms. \"Dwight Eisenhower said, 'If you want total security, go to prison.'\"\n\n\"True, true,\" Collins said easily, her smile never cracking. \"But from what your father tells me, you've been magically assaulted twice in the past few days.\"\n\nJeneta turned her attention to the libriomancer, Nguyen. \"You were there for the ansible presentation. You saw what happened. You think JPM could have prevented that?\"\n\nAfter a quick look to Collins, as if asking permission, the man said, \"We would never have risked putting you on stage in the first place. It made you a target.\" He spoke with a thick French accent. \"Isaac is too \u00e9pris\"\u2014he frowned, searching for the right word\u2014\"too enamored with public attention and approval.\"\n\n\"Isaac hates the attention,\" Jeneta answered. \"He does this stuff because he has to. Because he knows how important it is for people to see and accept magic. People are afraid of us and what we can do. He wants them to feel inspired.\"\n\n\"Perhaps people like you would be safer if the rest of the world remained afraid,\" Collins suggested.\n\nIt was the wrong thing to say. Jeneta's mind flashed back to Meridiana flaunting her power, to people crying out in pain while others cowered.\n\nCollins' tone softened, probably reacting to Jeneta's expression. \"We know how valuable your work is. The Venture will change the world, and the ansible\u2026 Have you considered what that technology could mean? You'll revolutionize the internet, computers, cellphones, anything that relies on sending a signal from one place to another. You're young, Jeneta. You've been following in Isaac Vainio's shadow since the beginning. You owe it to yourself to explore all your options.\"\n\nJeneta didn't like this woman, but she had a point. Isaac had been the one to teach Jeneta how to use and control her magic after she accidentally pulled a snake from her cellphone in math class. He'd reassured her that it could have been worse. Isaac had discovered his magic when he brought Smudge out of a fantasy novel. He'd nearly burnt down his high school library in the process.\n\n\"I know New Millennium's not perfect,\" said Jeneta. \"But it's like family.\"\n\n\"I understand.\" Collins pulled out a business card and set it on Jeneta's tray. \"Call me when you're ready to leave the nest.\"\n\nThe instant she and Nguyen left, Jeneta turned to her father. \"I don't like them.\"\n\n\"Jeneta\u2014\"\n\n\"They want the ansible, not me.\" How badly did they want it? Badly enough to sabotage her presentation? \"I don't want to be a product for JPM to sell.\"\n\n\"Jeneta, they offered you a place in their Paris facility. They'd pay for you to study at \u00c9cole Normale Superieure, or anywhere else you wanted. Collins wants to earn a profit for JPM, yes. That's her job. But she wants to do that by taking care of you.\"\n\nInstead of arguing, Jeneta lay back and asked, \"Didn't you say something about making dodo? Do we have any Nutella to go with it?\"\n\nHe gave her a mock glare, but let the change of subject to go unchallenged. \"Your grandmother weeps in her grave every time you drown your dodo in that mud.\" He paused, then added, \"I'll pick some up later this morning.\"\n\nJeneta took the note from Greg and unfolded it.\n\nHer father watched closely. \"What did the boy say?\"\n\n\"He's confirming the details of our secret plan to elope in Vegas and run off to New York together so he can fulfill his dream of being a street performer. He's going to dress up like Batman and bounce around on a pogo stick while playing the kazoo.\" She tossed the note back onto the tray. \"Relax, Dad. He just thanked me for showing him magic and asked me to text him to let him know I'm all right.\"\n\n\"If you say so. But if I hear him outside your window, serenading you with a kazoo, you're grounded.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "Before leaving the medical tower, Jeneta asked to stop by Talulah Polk's room.\n\nTalulah lay in a hospital gown on a bed identical to the one Jeneta had just vacated. She'd kicked the thin sheet down to her knees. Her skin was pale and sweaty, and she'd drooled a dark circle onto the pillow. She looked fragile.\n\nA get-well bouquet of orchids and roses sat on the windowsill. A series of small monitors hummed and beeped next to the bed. An IV tube snaked into Talulah's left arm.\n\nTalulah whispered softly in another language. Choctaw, maybe? She'd grown up on a reservation in Oklahoma.\n\n\"The doctors will do everything they can to help your friend,\" her father said, putting a gentle hand on Jeneta's shoulder.\n\n\"Did you know she has her own YouTube channel?\" Jeneta murmured. \"She's a gamer. Millions of people watch and listen as she runs through different games. She's really funny.\"\n\nTalulah's eyes moved beneath her lids. \"Listen\u2026\"\n\n\"Talulah?\" Jeneta grabbed Talulah's right hand. \"I'm here. I'm listening.\"\n\nTalulah's fingers twitched and moved, like they were tracing lines of text. \"Transmitting\u2026 First message.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" her father whispered.\n\n\"I think she's reading the scene from New Destiny.\" Jeneta's stomach sank. \"I thought maybe she could hear me, but she's just trying to finish what we started on stage.\"\n\nTalulah's muscles twitched and jerked like a marionette with tangled strings. \"They're coming. Swimmers.\"\n\nA shiver spread from Jeneta's spine through her body. That wasn't from New Destiny. \"Who are the swimmers?\"\n\nOne of the monitors began to beep loudly.\n\n<Drowning.>\n\nFootsteps from the hall grew louder. Her father touched her arm and said, \"We should go.\"\n\nJeneta wanted to argue, to stay, but Talulah was clearly growing more agitated. \"We're going to help you,\" she promised. \"Whoever did this, we'll stop them.\"\n\n<Listen\u2026>\n\nJeneta focused her thoughts on Talulah, listening for the faintest telepathic whisper as her father led her away, but heard nothing more."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "Jeneta had avoided the news videos of her presentation, unwilling to relive those moments. Now, with images and echoes of Talulah burnt into her memory, she sat cross-legged on her bed and pored over every frame she could find online.\n\nHeadlines like \"What New Millennium's Failure Means for the Future of Space Exploration\" made her cringe, but they were better than the stories that focused specifically on her. She scrolled down her phone until \"Jeneta Aboderin: Beacon of Hope or Murderer Searching for Redemption?\" disappeared off the screen, leaving only a short video clip.\n\nShe clicked Play. The front of the ansible appeared. She saw herself pause. This was the first moment she'd felt another presence brush against her mind, exactly twenty-three seconds after she'd touched the story's magic. Talulah had sensed nothing, despite her telepathy.\n\nIsaac stepped forward for a whispered discussion with her and Talulah. A banner scrolled along the bottom, announcing, \"New Millennium's Mars Program in Jeopardy.\"\n\nThey finished creating the primary unit. Jeneta reached into the enormous screen to begin forming the secondary unit. This was when the mental contact, little more than a feather before, had returned as a sledgehammer.\n\nWhy this moment? If the goal was to sabotage the presentation, why not attack her earlier, before they created the main ansible. Why wait until the bulk of the work was over?\n\nJeneta watched herself cough and stumble, flailing for balance. Talulah caught her arm. Isaac and Kiyoko ran toward her from either side of the stage. Jeneta appeared to convulse once, and then both she and Talulah collapsed.\n\nTalulah hadn't been affected until the end, but she was the one lying comatose in a hospital bed. Why?\n\n\"Look at it from the other direction,\" she muttered. Forget intentions. Look at results. What had the attack accomplished?\n\nThe ansible was incomplete. New Millennium's reputation had taken a blow, along with Jeneta's. Talulah Polk was in the hospital. And something continued to stalk Jeneta from the shadows.\n\nCould this be about her personally? Revenge for something she'd done, someone she hurt while under Meridiana's control? If so, it meant Talulah was an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. It meant what had happened to her was Jeneta's fault.\n\nHer phone buzzed in her hand, making her jump so hard she dropped it. Her hand shook as she retrieved it and pulled up a new text message.\n\nGreg: Sorry to bug you but something weird is happening.\n\nJeneta: Welcome to New Millennium. Be more specific?\n\nGreg: It's my dad. He's real out of it. I think it might be mayo.\n\nGreg: Magic*\n\nGreg: He's mumbling to himself. Keeps saying listen.\n\nJeneta: I'll be right there.\n\nShe scooped Nkiruka from her terrarium into her smaller traveling cage, shoved her phone into her pocket, grabbed her ereader, and hurried out to where her father was grading essays at the kitchen table. He'd been working as an English teacher since they moved to New Millennium.\n\n\"I'm going to visit Greg,\" she said, trying for a casual tone.\n\nHe jotted a quick margin note and looked at her, letting his stern, moderately disapproving expression do the talking.\n\n\"It's no big deal. I decided to join his street act. I'm going to be Batgirl. We're going to pick out my costume.\"\n\nThe left corner of his mouth twitched, the only crack in his fa\u00e7ade. He checked his watch. \"Be home by ten o'clock.\"\n\n\"Thanks!\" She hurried out the door before he could pry further or change his mind.\n\nThe Parkers were staying in the visitor's area near the main gate, a series of two-story townhouses with walls the color of sandstone. A door swung open as she approached, and Greg waved her inside.\n\n\"Where is he?\" she asked.\n\n\"Upstairs.\"\n\nJeneta followed him up to the second bedroom, where Buford Parker sat at a small desk, staring at an open spiral-bound notebook. \"Why didn't you call security?\"\n\n\"I wasn't sure what was happening. If it's nothing serious\u2026 Any little thing can get you pulled off a mission, and he's been so excited about flying the Venture. Every night he reviews his notes, memorizing every inch of the ship and her controls.\"\n\n\"Colonel Parker?\" Jeneta took a cautious step into the room. The hardwood floor creaked with her weight, but Greg's father didn't look up.\n\nShe set the cage on the dresser and opened her ereader, searching for Tamora Pierce's In the Hand of the Goddess. She skimmed the first chapter and reached into the book to create a small, glowing ember encased in a layer of crystal.\n\n\"What's that?\" asked Greg.\n\n\"An ember-stone.\" The instant she'd touched the stone, flames had appeared on Colonel Parker's notebook. \"It lets me see magic. You were right. Someone enchanted your dad's notes.\"\n\n\"Can you undo it?\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" With the exception of Nkiruka, the room was otherwise empty of magic. She stepped closer. When she was near enough to touch Colonel Parker's shoulder, a scratching sound made her pause. The pages rustled, like an insect had gotten trapped between them.\n\nJeneta checked Nkiruka again, but she didn't react as Jeneta reached out and turned the page.\n\n\"That's the start-up routine,\" Greg whispered, peering past her shoulder at his father's small, precise handwriting. The first three steps had checkmarks beside them. As they watched, a fourth check appeared. \"The hell?\"\n\nWas someone else in the room, invisible or out of phase with everyone else? No, the ember-stone would have shown that. The only magic was the notebook itself. Magic allowing someone else to read it, and to write their own notes. \"They cloned it. Anything you write in one notebook must appear in the other.\"\n\nWhoever it was, they were working through the start-up routine. Jeneta swore and shoved past Greg to grab Nkiruka's cage. \"They're trying to steal the Venture!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "Jeneta took a shortcut through a small grove of oaks behind the library, texting Isaac and Kiyoko as she ran. The trees felt out of place in the desert environment, but New Millennium's resident hamadryad had a way with plants.\n\nThe Venture sat behind Franklin Tower, the chrome skin gleaming gold from the light of the setting sun. The rear of the ship was all fuel and engines, with the middle section for cargo. The crew would cram together in the front for a crowded but relatively quick ride.\n\n\"Don't you people have security guards or something?\" asked Greg.\n\nJeneta pointed to the cameras mounted on the wall of the research tower. \"There was a magical ward too, but it's been broken.\"\n\nShe approached the ship. There were no windows, no way to see who was inside. She stretched to reach the access panel for the thick, narrow hatch by the cockpit. The panel opened, but the electronics wouldn't respond. She tried to unlock the crank to manually open the hatch, but it might as well have been welded in place. \"They've secured it from the inside.\"\n\n\"Can't you override it?\"\n\nJeneta stepped back, thinking through the text of Mars 2020. \"I don't think so.\"\n\nKiyoko It\u00f4\u2014two of them\u2014sprinted toward the Venture from opposite directions. The first reached up to the electronic panel, presumably trying to bypass or reprogram the electronics. The second jumped gracefully onto the nose of the ship and scrambled higher, holding the mohawk-like fin as she searched for another way in.\n\nIsaac arrived seconds later, dressed for battle in a travel vest with books stuffed into every pocket. \"Who's inside?\"\n\n\"Unknown,\" both Kiyokos said in unison. The one on the ground added, \"The security camera is operational, but the footage reveals nothing until Jeneta and Greg arrived.\"\n\n\"Damn.\" He glared at the hatch. \"I'd rather not unmake this thing, but we are not letting someone steal it.\"\n\nAs if in response, the Venture's engines hummed to life. Waves of energy from the repulsor plates underneath pushed Jeneta backward.\n\nIsaac tugged a book from his vest and flipped to a bookmarked page. He produced a black and silver cylinder. A glowing green blade sprang to life with a hiss-snap. \"Kiyoko, get out of the way.\"\n\nKiyoko bounded back from the hatch, while the clone on the roof continued to crawl about in search of weaknesses. \"Whoever's inside may be armed.\"\n\n\"Wait.\" Jeneta's fingers raced over her ereader. She pulled up a collection of nineteenth century English poetry, flipped to the one she wanted, and began to read.\n\n\u2003O soft embalmer of the still midnight,\n\n\u2003Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,\n\n\u2003Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,\n\n\u2003Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:\n\n\u2003O soothest Sleep! If so it please thee, close\n\n\u2003In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes\u2026\n\nShe wasn't quite halfway through Keats' \"To Sleep\" when the Kiyoko atop the ship slumped. Jeneta kept reading, trying to focus the poem's magic on the cockpit. The engines didn't die down, but the Venture wasn't taking off, either.\n\nIsaac murmured under his breath, probably shielding himself and the other Kiyoko from the magic. Behind her, Greg smothered a yawn.\n\nJeneta finished reading and nodded to Isaac. He and Kiyoko stepped forward, and he gently pushed the tip of his emerald blade through the edge of the hatch. Molten metal sizzled as air hissed free from the pressurized shuttle.\n\nHe cut downward, though metal bolts and airtight sealing, then stepped back so Kiyoko could drag the heavy door open.\n\nElizabeth Collins sat slumped in the pilot's seat, snoring.\n\nIsaac deactivated his weapon. \"Jeneta, do you know how to shut this thing down?\"\n\nJeneta climbed inside, carefully avoiding the glowing metal where Isaac had cut through the hatch. A spiral-bound notebook lay on the cockpit floor where it had slipped from Collins' hand. Jeneta ducked and stepped toward the copilot's seat, then froze. Three squid-shaped shadows hovered protectively over the stolen notebook.\n\nJeneta slowly slid one hand into her pocket to touch the ember-stone she'd created earlier. The notebook glowed magic. A similar, fainter aura encompassed the ship itself. Collins appeared to have a few magical toys about her person as well. She'd probably used one of them to get past the ship's wards. But the shadows\u2014Talulah had called them swimmers\u2014remained dark.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Isaac.\n\nA wriggling thread of darkness reached out, burrowing toward her innermost thoughts.\n\nJeneta staggered back, nearly falling from the ship. Memories of Meridiana surged like floodwaters through a crumbled dam. She remembered standing in a stream in the woods, fighting Isaac and his allies. Her hands frostbitten from Isaac's magic.\n\nIsaac reached for her, past and present blurring together.\n\n\"Do it!\" Meridiana wouldn't let her go. Isaac had to kill them both. Jeneta didn't want to die, but it was the only way to stop Meridiana. She cried out again, weeping, knowing Isaac couldn't hear her. She was trapped, buried within her own body. Meridiana had entwined herself in Jeneta's mind, uncovered every thought, every secret.\n\n\"Jeneta!\" Another voice\u2014Kiyoko\u2014but Kiyoko hadn't been at the stream.\n\nKiyoko touched her shoulder. Jeneta jerked away, her other hand coming up instinctively to strike. Kiyoko's reflexes would have allowed her plenty of time to dodge or counter, but she accepted the punch without flinching. \"Jeneta, you're safe.\"\n\nJeneta gripped Kiyoko's arm like it was the only thing keeping her from falling. Her body shook, and tears poured down her face. \"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry\u2026\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "\"Flashbacks are a normal reaction to what you've been through,\" said Dr. Shah. \"It's nothing to be ashamed of.\"\n\nJeneta hugged her knees to her chest. \"I freaked out in front of Greg and Isaac. I punched Kiyoko!\"\n\n\"I'm pretty sure she'll live. Have you talked to your father?\"\n\n\"Isaac called him after they got Elizabeth Collins secured.\" She could still hear her father's quiet fury. Not only had Jeneta lied, she'd run off to confront an unknown danger without telling anyone.\n\n\"He's pissed.\"\n\n\"He's worried about you. And he's not the only one.\"\n\n\"I'm more worried about Greg's dad.\" Colonel Parker had been moved to medical with Talulah. His condition appeared identical to hers, and nobody knew how to help them. Collins, on the other hand, had been fine once she recovered from Jeneta's spell. It wasn't fair.\n\nDr. Shah set her notes aside and turned her chair to study Jeneta more closely. \"How long has it been since you've eaten?\"\n\n\"I stuffed myself with leftover dodo earlier today.\"\n\n\"What about sleep?\"\n\n\"What about it?\" Jeneta shot back.\n\n\"You're fighting two battles,\" Dr. Shah said. \"Whatever's happening here with Ms. Collins and the Venture and your presentation is one. The mental and emotional scars Meridiana left behind are the other. Trauma isn't like an infection where you can take antibiotics for a week and it goes away. It lingers. Sometimes it tries to come back.\"\n\n\"You're saying I've got emotional cancer?\"\n\n\"I'm saying what happened today doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you're broken. It means you're a human being who survived something terrible. But you have the tools to fight. Tools that start with basic self-care. Now, how have you been sleeping?\"\n\n\"Badly.\" Jeneta shrugged and looked away. \"I keep dreaming that she's calling me, trying to crawl back into my head. I remember all the people I hurt\u2014\"\n\n\"The people she hurt.\"\n\n\"Whatever.\" She shivered. \"What if I lose control again? I lashed out at Kiyoko today. What if next time I use magic? What if I kill someone?\"\n\n\"Jeneta.\" Dr. Shah's voice was stern. \"Breathe with me.\"\n\nJeneta realized she was on the verge of hyperventilating. She gripped the arms of her chair and forced herself to fill her lungs. They'd practiced this together before: first, inhale. Imagine she'd just set foot in a bakery and was smelling the fresh-made breads and muffins and other confections. Then, after a count of three, breathe out like she was playing the flute. It was silly, but the visualizations really did help.\n\n\"Thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are interconnected,\" said Dr. Shah. \"We've talked before about how a change in one piece of the triangle affects the other two.\"\n\nJeneta nodded.\n\n\"What thoughts go through your head when you think about these shadows you've been seeing, the swimmers?\"\n\n\"Nobody else can see them,\" Jeneta said. \"What if this means there's still something wrong with me? I'm still broken, still not myself.\"\n\n\"Your mind ties what you're seeing now to what you suffered with Meridiana. It creates a story that you're broken. How does that story end, Jeneta?\"\n\nIt felt like an acorn had lodged in her throat. \"With me losing myself again.\"\n\n\"Nobody else sees these things.\" Dr. Shah shrugged. \"Nobody else can do libriomancy with e-books, either. That doesn't make you broken. It makes you extraordinary.\"\n\nJeneta snorted. \"Ever since things fell apart with the ansible, I've been afraid to stop moving. I'm all right as long as I keep busy, but as soon as I stop\u2026as soon as I try to sleep\u2026\"\n\n\"It's hard to focus on a new battle when you're trapped in the old.\"\n\n\"What if I lose again? What if these things catch me?\"\n\n\"Then you're in the best place in the world to get help. Jeneta, I want you to work on telling yourself a new story. A story about how you helped stop Elizabeth Collins. About the friends you have here. About how you're going to get through this.\"\n\n\"What if you're wrong?\" Jeneta asked, so quietly she was amazed Dr. Shah heard.\n\n\"I've worked with you for more than a year. I think I know you pretty well.\" She smiled. \"My money is on you.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "Jeneta answered the knock on their apartment door to find Kiyoko standing in the hallway wearing a copper-colored satin jacket three decades out of style. A bruise on the left side of her jaw meant this was the same clone Jeneta had punched outside the Venture. Before Jeneta could find the words for a proper apology, Kiyoko asked, \"Are you all right? I've been worried.\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" Jeneta said automatically. \"I'm sorry about\u2014\"\n\n\"It's nothing. You were frightened, but you didn't hurt me. Your stance was too weak and your technique poor. Would you like me to teach you how to throw a proper punch?\"\n\nJeneta blinked.\n\n\"That was a joke. Though I'd be happy to instruct you.\"\n\n\"Maybe later,\" Jeneta said, smiling.\n\n\"May I enter? I have video from the interrogation of Elizabeth Collins. Isaac asked that I share it with you, in case you see or hear anything he missed.\"\n\nBy now, Jeneta's father had come up behind her. \"Why does Isaac Vainio need the help of a seventeen-year-old girl to deal with this criminal? Hasn't he dragged my family through enough?\"\n\n\"You can't blame him for whatever messed-up magic Collins and her libriomancer set loose,\" Jeneta argued.\n\nKiyoko looked from one to the other. \"If this is a bad time, I can return tomorrow.\"\n\n\"No.\" Jeneta grabbed her hand and tugged her inside. \"I want to hear what Collins said.\"\n\nHer father jabbed his index finger at her like a weapon. \"You are not to leave this apartment.\"\n\n\"I know. You've only told me a thousand times.\" Jeneta stormed back to her room before the argument could spiral further.\n\nKiyoko pulled a square pad of orange post-it notes from her jacket pocket, peeled off the top note, and stuck it on the inside of the bedroom door. A circular symbol was scrawled in the center in blue marker.\n\n\"Should I ask?\"\n\nKiyoko stuck the next square in the center of the window. \"Wards designed to prevent magic from passing in or out of this room. One of Isaac's researchers put them together. If your visions have been coming from an external source, these should protect you and allow you to sleep tonight. They will also prevent Ms. Collins' assistant from eavesdropping on our conversation.\"\n\nJeneta waited while Kiyoko finished sticking post-it notes around the room. She avoided the bulletin board, which was overflowing with photos, notes, and postcards. But the astronomy-themed wall calendar got a post-it right in the center of the Orion Nebula.\n\nKiyoko returned the remaining post-its to her pocket and extended a hand. \"Your phone?\"\n\nJeneta handed it over and sat on the edge of the bed. Kiyoko joined her. Touching one fingernail to the input jack, she unlocked the phone and pulled up a video.\n\n\"I need a better password,\" Jeneta muttered.\n\nKiyoko smiled. \"It wouldn't make a difference.\"\n\nOn the screen, Isaac Vainio and Elizabeth Collins sat at a slate table in one of the Franklin Tower research rooms. The rooms were well-shielded to keep magical experiments contained, but they also protected against outside interference or spying. Doctor Shah was there as well, along with a woman from security whose name Jeneta couldn't remember.\n\n\"I told you, I don't know where Gellert went,\" Collins was saying.\n\nThe woman looked at Isaac, who nodded and said, \"She's telling the truth.\"\n\n\"Isaac cast a spell to detect falsehood,\" Kiyoko explained.\n\n\"Colonel Parker is in a coma,\" Isaac snapped. \"Jeneta Aboderin and Talulah Polk were attacked during their presentation. Talulah still hasn't recovered. Tell me everything you know about what happened to them.\"\n\nCollins sat back and folded her arms. \"I want it noted for the record that I'm choosing to cooperate. You have no legal right to hold or question me, and these unfounded accusations\u2014\"\n\n\"New Millennium is an odd duck, legally speaking,\" said the woman. Jeneta's brain finally dredged up a name: Babs Palmer, head of New Millennium security. \"We own the land,\" Palmer continued. \"We're continuing to sort some things out in court, but in essence, you're a guest in our home. Did you know that in the state of Nevada, if you catch someone robbing your home, you're legally allowed to shoot them?\n\n\"What happened to Colonel Parker and Talulah Polk?\" Isaac repeated.\n\n\"I don't know.\" Collins sounded less sure of herself than before. \"Neither I nor Gellert did anything to interfere with the girl's presentation. Gellert's notebook was enchanted to steal information from Colonel Parker, nothing more. Whatever crawled into the minds of your people, it didn't come from me or my company.\"\n\nKiyoko paused the video. \"We believe Gellert remains on the premises, but we've had no luck finding him. He must be using magic to shield himself from discovery.\"\n\n\"JP Multinational wanted the ansible. At least, that's what Collins told me. I guess they decided to take the Venture too. It's all about profit. Maybe Gellert had a different goal. He could have conjured the swimmers on his own, without telling his boss.\"\n\nKiyoko continued the playback.\n\nDr. Shah leaned forward. \"Everything about you is precise and carefully planned, but your attempt to steal the Venture was hasty.\" There was a cold undertone of anger to her words that Jeneta had never heard before. \"That wasn't part of the plan. What changed?\"\n\n\"Gellert disappeared,\" Collins snapped. \"I ordered him to find out what had gone wrong with the ansible. The more we learn from your mistakes, the fewer we make ourselves. But he stopped returning my calls. If you find him before we do, tell him he's fired.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Dr. Shah nodded. \"First, you failed to recruit Jeneta Aboderin. Then you lost your libriomancer. The Venture was your last chance to make sure you didn't return empty-handed.\"\n\nCollins grimaced. \"The girl was a mistake, looking back.\"\n\n\"Why? Because she threw your offer back in your face?\"\n\n\"You don't see it, do you?\" Collins put her hands on the table. \"Talulah Polk assisted Jeneta in her presentation. Now Polk is in a coma. Jeneta goes to the Parkers' apartment, and Colonel Parker joins Polk in the hospital. Whatever's going on, JPM isn't involved, but Jeneta Aboderin is smack dab in the middle of it.\"\n\nThe playback stopped. Jeneta felt like she'd been punched.\n\n\"Elizabeth Collins never told a deliberate or conscious lie,\" said Kiyoko. \"However, she's intelligent enough to talk around deception. Isaac hoped you might have suggestions for additional questions.\"\n\nJeneta laughed bitterly. \"Didn't you hear her? I'm the cause of this. You said yourself she couldn't lie.\"\n\n\"She couldn't tell a conscious lie. She may truly believe you're responsible, but that doesn't make it true. From what you said, Colonel Parker was trapped by this enchantment before you ever arrived at his apartment.\"\n\nJeneta flopped backward on the bed, staring at the slowly-rotating blades of the ceiling fan. After a moment, Kiyoko stiffly followed suit.\n\n\"Maybe one of the werewolves could sniff Gellert Nguyen out?\" Jeneta suggested.\n\n\"It's been tried with no success.\"\n\nJeneta sighed. \"What if it's personal? What if I\u2014if Meridiana\u2014hurt Nguyen or someone he cared about?\"\n\nKiyoko paused. \"Possible, but unlikely. Gellert Nguyen's work history is well-documented. He was not in any of the areas Meridiana attacked. Nor can I find any connection between him and the casualties left in Meridiana's wake.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Kiyoko. Whatever got into Talulah's and Colonel Parker's heads, I don't know how to get it out, or how to stop it from hurting anyone else.\"\n\nThey lay in silence for a long time. When Kiyoko finally spoke, her tone was thoughtful. \"I was created from libriomancy, taken from a book as a collection of embryos and grown like a seed in a greenhouse. My purpose was to serve as a living computer and bodyguard. I was programmed for servitude. I know what it means to be\u2026not your own person. I will do whatever I can to help you, Jeneta.\"\n\nHer vision blurred. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Would you like me to help you sleep? I've learned to mimic a number of minor spells, including\u2014\"\n\n\"No!\" Jeneta took a breath. \"No, that's all right.\"\n\n\"Would you like me to stay in the apartment? You should be safe, but if your theory about Nguyen wanting revenge against you is correct\u2014a remote possibility\u2014I'm happy to provide additional protection.\"\n\n\"You don't have to be a bodyguard,\" Jeneta protested.\n\n\"I know. But I choose to.\"\n\nShe swallowed. \"All right.\"\n\nKiyoko looked around. \"With the wards in place, I can't hear my clones' thoughts. It's disconcerting. I believe I'll wait in the living room, where I won't be cut off from the rest of me. That will also provide a direct line of sight to the door. I'll inform your father.\"\n\nKiyoko's presence, even in the next room, lightened a weight Jeneta hadn't realized she was carrying. She got ready for bed, dropped a pair of crickets and a green Skittle into Nkiruka's cage, and turned off the lights.\n\nAn hour later, she got up and stared out the window, wondering what game the vampires and werewolves were playing tonight. Hadn't one of them said something about a badminton tournament?\n\nAn hour after that, she grabbed her phone and scrolled through her social media feeds, which eventually led her to Talulah's website, where she killed another hour listening to Talulah's sports announcer-style commentary on various Super Mario run-throughs.\n\nIt was close to one in the morning when sleep finally overpowered her.\n\nAccording to her alarm clock, it was exactly two fifty-four when she bolted awake, sweat dripping down her face and back. She'd been falling\u2014no, drowning. Pulled deeper into watery darkness that smothered all cries for help.\n\nShe pulled her comforter higher and forced herself to inhale slowly, imagining the soothing smell of fresh-baked bread. In and out, one breath at a time, until her heartbeat slowed and her hands stopped shaking.\n\nShe switched on the lamp beside her bed. Nkiruka burrowed deeper into the obsidian gravel, trying to escape the evil light. The fire-spider lacked any hint of flame.\n\n\"I'm safe.\" She felt foolish speaking the words out loud, but it helped. Nkiruka was here to alert her of danger. Wards protected her bedroom. Kiyoko waited in the next room.\n\nSomething wet brushed the back of her neck. She bolted forward, biting back a scream.\n\nA squidlike shape floated above her headboard, dark tendrils extended. Jeneta snatched her phone and scrambled backward. \"Get out!\"\n\nIt was in her room. Inside the wards. That shouldn't be possible. Unless Collins was right\u2026unless these things were coming from Jeneta herself.\n\nAs if to prove her wrong, the swimmer darted away through the bedroom door\u2014and the ward\u2014like a ghost.\n\nRelief and despair flooded through her. Whatever these shadows were, this one hadn't done more than brush her thoughts. But what if it changed its mind? Nothing Jeneta or anyone else did could stop them.\n\nThe door opened. Kiyoko scanned the room before making eye contact with Jeneta. \"I heard noise?\"\n\nThe swimmer drifted through the living room, toward the far wall. \"Your wards didn't work.\"\n\n\"Isaac's wards, not mine.\" Kiyoko sounded mildly offended as she stepped closer. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Jeneta grabbed a robe, thinking of her last session with Dr. Shah. Controlling her emotions was like herding cats, and her thoughts were a snarl, but she could choose her behavior. \"We have to go after it.\"\n\n\"What's going on?\" Her father was awake. Jeneta groaned.\n\n\"One of those things came back,\" she said. \"Kiyoko's wards couldn't stop it.\"\n\n\"Isaac's wards,\" Kiyoko repeated. Behind her, the shadow disappeared from the living room.\n\n\"I know what you're going to say, but I can't keep hiding.\" Jeneta spoke tightly, trying to keep her voice from shaking. \"If Gellert Nguyen is responsible for these things, maybe this one will lead us to him. I'm the only one who can see them.\"\n\n\"You would confront him with only this woman for protection?\"\n\n\"I've already informed security of this breach,\" said Kiyoko. \"We will not be alone.\"\n\nJeneta stepped toward the door. \"Dad, please. I'm tired of being afraid.\"\n\n\"Let me get my shoes.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Jeneta ran barefoot through the living room and out the door. The hallway was empty. Kiyoko followed her down the stairwell onto the front walk outside, where two additional Kiyokos joined them.\n\nJeneta's attention jumped to a large moth orbiting one of the street lamps. How did you find a shadow in the darkness? If it had continued in a straight line after leaving the apartment, it should be heading toward Franklin Tower.\n\nFootsteps crunched behind her as her father caught up. \"Where is it?\"\n\nMovement pulled her attention to another lamp. A squidlike shape swam through the light. The analytical part of Jeneta's mind noted that the shadow, whatever it was, cast no shadow of its own.\n\n\"It's going toward the loading dock.\" Jeneta took off in pursuit.\n\n\"You're aware this could be a trap,\" Kiyoko commented, running alongside her.\n\n\"Why bother? These things could get to me anywhere they wanted.\" It was a simultaneously reassuring and terrifying thought.\n\nA paved road sloped down to a pair of locked garage-style doors behind Franklin Tower. Jeneta's quarry disappeared through the left door. Motion-activated lights switched on as they approached.\n\n\"That's where the primary ansible unit is being stored,\" Kiyoko noted. \"According to surveillance video and security logs, it has been undisturbed since the presentation.\"\n\nA stocky brown-skinned woman wearing a black leather jacket and carrying a wooden sword in one hand joined them. Lena Greenwood didn't look dangerous, but her appearance was deceptive. The hamadryad had gone toe-to-toe with homicidal vampires and walked away unscathed, and that sword was stronger than steel. She nodded in greeting. \"Security paged me. Isaac's on his way.\"\n\n\"Kiyoko, can you open that door?\" asked Jeneta.\n\n\"We can,\" the three clones said together. \"Are you prepared if this thing turns on you?\"\n\nJeneta held up her phone. \"'Spirits of the Dead,' by Edgar Allan Poe. I'm hoping it will be enough to overpower whatever these things are.\"\n\nThe Kiyoko closest to the door touched an electronic keypad. The door rose soundlessly as lights came on inside.\n\nThe ansible unit sat to one side, secured to the wall with canvas straps. Wards similar to the ones Kiyoko had posted in Jeneta's room were scrawled on the floor and wall.\n\nLena was next to enter, sword raised and ready to strike. A shadow emerged from the ansible, swimming through the wards and through Lena herself, toward Jeneta.\n\nJeneta was already reading.\n\n\u2003Thy soul shall find itself alone\n\n\u2003'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tombstone;\n\n\u2003Not one, of all the crowd, to pry\n\n\u2003Into thine hour of secrecy.\n\n\u2003Be silent in that solitude,\n\n\u2003Which is not loneliness\u2014for then\n\n\u2003The spirits of the dead, who stood\n\n\u2003In life before thee, are again\n\n\u2003In death around thee, and their will\n\n\u2003Shall overshadow thee; be still.\n\nThe poem conjured faux spirits of her own that raced forth to overpower and imprison the swimmer, not by violence, but by strength of will. Sounds dulled and faded. Even her own breathing sounded faint.\n\nGhostly forms arose like candles surrounding the shadowy form. They radiated a sense of cold and calm, of unending rest.\n\nThe swimmer paused. Jeneta held her breath. Behind her, she heard her father shiver, brushed by the edge of the spell.\n\nThen, with a twitch that reminded her of a shrug, the thing swam away, passing between Jeneta's conjured spirits like they didn't exist.\n\n\"Dammit!\"\n\n\"Mind your tongue,\" her father said sharply.\n\n\"Really, Dad?\" The shadow swam toward a wall on the left and vanished through a door labeled \"Supplies.\"\n\n\"What happened?\" asked Kiyoko.\n\n\"The poem didn't work.\" Jeneta pointed to the door. \"It's in there.\"\n\nWordlessly, Lena and a Kiyoko approached the door, while the other two clones remained with Jeneta and her father.\n\nLena tried the door, but it was locked. She adjusted her stance and pulled harder. Metal squealed in protest as the entire knob ripped free in her hand. Lena tossed it aside, reached in to grab the latching mechanism, and tugged again.\n\nThe door swung open. Lena raised her sword. Kiyoko slipped past to turn on the light.\n\nGellert Nguyen huddled on the floor, muttering and drooling. Dying orchids and roses were scattered in front of him. His right fist clutched a few broken stems.\n\nShadows crawled over his body like ants on a fallen popsicle.\n\nJeneta staggered back. Her phone slipped from her hand. She heard Kiyoko call her name, felt her father's hand on her shoulder, but none of it registered. All she could see was the mass of shadows devouring Nguyen's mind, leaving him a hollow shell.\n\n\"Is he alive?\" Lena's words sounded far away.\n\nKiyoko crouched to check Nguyen's pulse. \"He is, though his pulse is slow and weak.\"\n\n\"Stay away,\" Jeneta whispered, imagining Kiyoko falling to the same horror that had taken Nguyen.\n\n\"Jeneta, what's wrong?\" Her father was shouting now.\n\nNguyen's lips cracked. In a raspy whisper that carried as clear as a gunshot, he said, \"Finish.\"\n\nTentacles pulled free of Nguyen to reach toward Jeneta, to burrow into her thoughts and trap her and drown her and devour everything she knew.\n\nJeneta turned and ran."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "Talulah Polk. Buford Parker. And now Gellert Nguyen.\n\nJeneta sat on a stone bench behind the medical tower. The small garden was another of Lena Greenwood's projects, full of winding stone paths bordered by waist-tall cacti that were perpetually in bloom.\n\n\"Good morning.\" Kiyoko stopped on the path. \"Your father said you've been here all night.\"\n\nJeneta glanced at the rising sun and shrugged. \"I guess so.\"\n\n\"You dropped this.\" Kiyoko offered Jeneta her phone. A spider web of cracks spread from the corner of the screen. \"It still functions.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Jeneta took the phone. Text messages from Dr. Shah, Greg, and her mother filled the lock screen. She ignored them and jammed the phone into her pocket.\n\n\"Isaac believes Mr. Nguyen was trying to determine what happened to Talulah Polk. The flowers we found with him were genetically identical to those in Talulah's hospital room.\"\n\n\"He was using them to eavesdrop, just like he cloned Colonel Parker's notebook?\"\n\n\"Isaac was impressed with his cleverness. He also vowed to turn the man into a newt when and if he regains his senses.\" Kiyoko looked around. \"Flowers are part of the plant's reproductive cycle. Are these perpetual blooms a symptom of Lena's sexual appetite? She is a subspecies of nymph, after all.\"\n\nJeneta snorted. \"I think she just grows them because they're pretty.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Kiyoko sat. \"You should sleep.\"\n\n\"Can't.\" She shook her head, remembering the nightmares. Her shoulders tightened. \"I thought I was ready to face those things.\"\n\n\"You were ready to pursue one. From what you've described, it was the sight of so many swarming over Mr. Nguyen that caused you to panic and flee.\"\n\n\"Thanks for clarifying that.\" Jeneta rubbed her eyes. \"Dad thinks we should leave New Millennium.\"\n\n\"I see\u2026\" Kiyoko frowned. \"Then who would finish the Mars project?\"\n\nFinish. Nguyen's voice whispered to her again, so clearly she could see his pale lips moving as he lay on the storage room floor.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\" She shook her head. \"There are plenty of libriomancers here to finish the project.\"\n\n\"None of whom can do electronic libriomancy.\"\n\nJeneta rolled her eyes. \"Have you met libriomancers? Once they know something's possible, they'll break the universe trying to figure it out. Sooner or later one of them will get it right.\"\n\nNeither spoke for a while. Then Kiyoko tilted her head, listening to something Jeneta couldn't hear. \"Isaac would like to know if he can borrow Nkiruka. Mr. Nguyen's corporate espionage was more extensive than we knew. He was using a set of ARClights, genetically-engineered dragonflies with biotech cameras and microphones, from the Artemis Fowl books. Apparently fire-spiders find them delicious and light up in their presence.\"\n\nJeneta thought back to Nkiruka's reaction the other night with Greg. She'd been burning because she wanted to hunt that dragonfly, not as a warning of the approaching swimmer. The idea of that asshole spying on her, listening in on her conversations, made her want to throw up.\n\nListen. Talulah's voice now as she lay in the hospital. Colonel Parker had mumbled the same thing.\n\n\"Jeneta?\"\n\n\"Nkiruka isn't afraid of these things.\"\n\n\"The ARClights?\"\n\n\"The shadows I've been seeing.\"\n\nKiyoko appeared to consider this. \"Most likely, Nkiruka can't perceive them.\"\n\n\"She's a fire-spider. They don't have to perceive threats. They just know.\"\n\n\"These swimmers have incapacitated three people. How are they not a threat?\"\n\nJeneta held up a hand, trying to think. Nguyen had been using magic to listen in on Talulah's room when the swarm took him. Colonel Parker had been poring over his enchanted notebook. If that magic was the key, why Parker and not Elizabeth Collins, who'd been on the other end of the connection?\n\n\"Parker's notebook was acting as the receiver.\" Collins had checked off each step as she tried to start the Venture, unknowingly transmitting those marks to Colonel Parker. And the attack on Jeneta had come as they created the secondary ansible unit. She'd seen another swimmer when she demonstrated libriomancy to Greg, working a spell that connected her textbook to thousands of others around the world.\n\nFinish.\n\nDr. Shah had warned her about fear controlling her thoughts and her actions. About letting what happened with Meridiana dictate her story. \"Did Isaac ever tell you what happened when he first created Smudge?\"\n\n\"Isaac did not.\" Kiyoko paused. \"Lena, however, told me he almost burnt down his high school library.\"\n\n\"That's right. Smudge had been pulled into a new world. He was lost and scared and panicked. He didn't start that fire to hurt anyone. It was instinct. Fear. What if these attacks are the same? An accident instead of an assault?\"\n\n\"We have no evidence one way or another to judge the creatures' motivations. New Destiny has no mention of anything resembling the creatures you describe, making it unlikely you pulled them from a book as was done with Smudge.\"\n\n\"Maybe the creatures are\u2026incomplete. I don't know.\" Jeneta realized she was standing, her fatigue gone. \"But they appeared while I was creating the ansible.\"\n\n\"What do you intend to do?\"\n\n\"What I think they're asking me to do. I'm going to finish that spell.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "\"No,\" said Isaac, simultaneously with Mmadukaaku Aboderin's \"Absolutely not.\"\n\nJeneta had asked them to meet her at the stage in front of Franklin Tower, where this whole mess had begun. The chairs had been removed, but the stage itself remained, as did the giant screen\u2014the latter protected by a heavy tarp to shield it from the elements, and to discourage the vampires and werewolves from hijacking it\u2026again\u2026for an all-night game of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.\n\n\"Three people are in the hospital,\" her father continued. \"Do you want to be the fourth?\"\n\n\"I think they're in the hospital because of me,\" said Jeneta.\n\nIsaac raised his hands. \"I know Dr. Shah has told you this isn't your fault. I feel responsible too, but\u2014\"\n\n\"I was standing right there.\" Jeneta climbed onto the stage and walked to the center. \"Talulah and I had just touched the secondary ansible unit when something or someone else touched my mind, and I panicked. Just like when I hit Kiyoko.\"\n\nHer face burned when she admitted that, but Kiyoko simply smiled and nodded for her to continue.\n\n\"Do you hear what I'm saying?\" Jeneta asked. \"Maybe they haven't been attacking us. Maybe I'm the one who attacked them.\"\n\n\"Attacked who?\" her father demanded.\n\n\"I don't know.\" Jeneta folded her arms. \"Don't you think it's time we found out?\"\n\n\"What if you're wrong?\" She could hear the anguish in Isaac's words, the fear. \"I can't let something like this happen to you again.\"\n\nHer father's body was tense as iron. \"I agree with Isaac. You will not endanger yourself again. You will not put your mother and me through that again.\"\n\n\"This isn't Meridiana.\" They both flinched at the name. \"If I'd been in a car crash, would you forbid me to drive again? I know you're afraid. You think I'm not? Believe me, I can't stop thinking about what happens if things go wrong. But we have to also think about what could happen if things go right.\"\n\n\"I think you should let her try,\" said Kiyoko.\n\nEveryone turned.\n\n\"Why?\" demanded her father. \"Why should we let her risk herself?\"\n\n\"Because she's afraid, and she's trying so very hard to break free of her fear.\" Kiyoko looked at Jeneta. \"Freedom is worth risk.\"\n\n\"You don't understand,\" he argued. \"She's not your daughter.\"\n\n\"No,\" agreed Kiyoko. \"She's my friend.\"\n\n\"Dad, please.\" Jeneta waited until she had everyone's attention. \"These things followed me into my room. If they want to come after me, we can't stop them. I need to do this.\" She braced herself and added, \"And I wasn't asking permission.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "Another of Kiyoko's clones fetched Nkiruka from the apartment. Jeneta opened the cage and scooped the fire-spider into her hand. Nkiruka was cool to the touch, assuring Jeneta they were in no immediate danger from whatever shadows haunted New Millennium. Or from her father, for that matter.\n\nHe hadn't spoken a word since she'd essentially told him she was doing this whether he liked it or not. He stood like a statue at the edge of the stage, his arms folded, his eyes burning her with disapproval.\n\n\"Any time you change your mind or decide to stop, just say the word.\" Isaac had insisted on helping, taking on the role Talulah had played before. The role, and the risk.\n\nKiyoko unlocked the lines securing the enormous tarp in place. The rest of her clones\u2014the twenty or so who lived within New Millennium, at least\u2014formed a loose perimeter around the stage to keep everyone back. They'd already attracted several onlookers, and it wouldn't be long before more arrived.\n\nDr. Shah had come as well. She fidgeted anxiously with her necklace, but offered Jeneta an encouraging smile.\n\nThe tarp slid free, sounding like a sheet in the wind. Kiyoko gathered it to one side, then ducked behind the screen. Moments later, words appeared\u2014the same scene she'd used before.\n\n\"Jeneta!\"\n\nShe spun to see Greg Parker running toward her. Two Kiyokos moved to intercept him.\n\n\"It's all right,\" called Jeneta. \"Greg, what are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Dr. Shah said I should come. She said you were going to try to help my Dad.\"\n\nJeneta glared at Dr. Shah, uncertain whether she should feel grateful or annoyed.\n\nThe therapist simply smiled again, saying, \"Whatever happens, you're not alone.\"\n\nJeneta nodded and turned to touch the screen. Her hand shook. Her stomach was so tight she thought she might throw up.\n\nInhale.\n\nShe skimmed the scene and pressed harder. Felt her fingers sink into the story. Felt the warm air of New Gaia. Felt the pressure of the water that came from somewhere beyond the words.\n\nIsaac's hand joined hers in the book's magic. \"I can feel the ansible receiver. What about you?\"\n\nJeneta reached deeper, concentrating on the story and rereading the words until the ansible solidified beneath her hand. \"I've got it.\"\n\nShadows edged her vision, swimming closer.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Isaac. He couldn't see them. Couldn't feel the currents. The world wasn't threatening to fall away from beneath his feet, to pull him under until he drowned.\n\n\"I'm fine. Keep going.\"\n\nThe screen began to roll backward. She clung to the ansible receiver. All she had to do was hold on. Sixty seconds, maybe less, and it would be over.\n\nExhale.\n\nTendrils of shadow and magic reached through the water. Her vision narrowed, the words on the screen blurring and fading to darkness. She blinked and tried to focus, to cling to a single sentence, then a single word.\n\nWhy wouldn't they let her finish the spell? Oh God, what if she'd been wrong? Meridiana's laughter bubbled from the deep crevasses of her memory.\n\nIsaac was speaking, but she couldn't make out the words. She couldn't feel the stage beneath her feet. Hell, she couldn't feel her feet! Nothing but water and darkness and other minds slithering into her own.\n\nIf she didn't break away, would she join Talulah and the others in the hospital? Or would Isaac suffer the consequences in her place?\n\nFear and confusion and anger and desperation wriggled through the crevasses of her brain. She was lost. Stranded and alone, sinking deeper. The pressure grew. If she didn't break free, she'd drown.\n\n\"Nkiruka doesn't think they're a threat,\" she reminded herself. This wasn't Meridiana. Whatever happened, her friends would take care of her. They'd make sure she couldn't hurt anyone. They'd keep her safe.\n\nInhale.\n\nWater poured into her throat and lungs, tasting of salt and sulfur and, oddly, pumpkin spice.\n\nMore shadows appeared. New eddies swirled through the water. She breathed them in.\n\nUnderstanding exploded like fireworks in her mind. Awe and wonder filled her until she thought she'd burst, and when she couldn't hold it in any longer, Jeneta began to laugh\u2026"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "Jeneta had no idea how much time passed before she pulled free. She started to fall, but Isaac and her father were both close enough to catch her arms and lower her to the stage.\n\n\"Jeneta!\" her father shouted, practically deafening her. \"Is it you?\"\n\nShe tried to answer, but succeeded only in drooling. She wiped her chin, wincing at the stiffness and cramps in her joints, and tried again. \"It's me, Dad.\"\n\nThey helped her to sit, and Dr. Shah immediately began checking her over.\n\nShe squinted against the bright sun. She felt like she'd run a marathon, and she had a strange craving for salty chicken broth. \"How long?\"\n\n\"An hour and a half,\" said Isaac. \"Nkiruka spent most of that time sleeping on your shoulder. About twenty minutes ago she got bored and started hunting. I moved her back into her cage and gave her a few of Smudge's M&Ms.\"\n\nShe looked around. \"Where's Greg?\"\n\n\"With his father.\" Kiyoko smiled. \"He, Talulah, and Mr. Nguyen started coming around shortly after you began your spell.\"\n\n\"You saved them.\" Her father sat across from her. From his exhausted slouch, he was as wrung out as Jeneta felt. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nJeneta beamed. \"Collins was right. This was my fault.\"\n\n\"What happened?\" asked Isaac. \"What were those shadows, and why couldn't anyone else see them?\"\n\n\"You couldn't see them because they weren't really here.\"\n\n\"Where were they?\" asked Kiyoko.\n\n\"Trapped. Because I broke the ansible spell before it was finished. You know how old-fashioned phones, if one person hung up but the other didn't, it could tie up both lines?\"\n\nDr. Shah frowned. \"Careful what you're calling old-fashioned, kiddo.\"\n\nIsaac raised his hands. \"Is this because the ansible was in use in the book? You weren't just creating the ansible, you were trying to create the conversation as well? A connection to fictional characters.\"\n\nJeneta's smile grew. \"Nope. You're thinking too literally. The ansible is about communication and connection. Just like the other spells they tried to hijack to get free.\"\n\n\"Enough,\" said her father, but he was grinning. \"You're having far too much fun making everyone guess. Tell us what these things are, or I'll never buy another jar of Nutella again.\"\n\n\"That's cruel.\" She turned to Isaac. \"You loaned me your copy of Contact last year. Do you remember the line about the size of the universe and the possibility of alien life?\"\n\n\"Of course. 'If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.'\"\n\nHer cheeks hurt from smiling as she waited for him to make the connection.\n\nIsaac's gasp a moment later was everything she could have hoped. He sat down hard, like his legs had given out. \"Are you saying what I think you're saying?\"\n\n\"We cast a spell to enable us to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the galaxy and beyond.\"\n\nHer father shook his head in disbelief. \"These things you've been seeing, they're aliens?\"\n\n\"I think they're from the alien equivalent of SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. They've been listening for signs of life elsewhere in the universe. They heard our spell\u2014tasted it, really. That's how their magic works. Their whole world is water. They can secrete\u2026it's like tiny magical potions.\" She laughed. \"Isaac, they spit magic!\"\n\n\"Can you contact them again?\" asked Isaac. \"Safely?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" Her grin faded slightly. \"They were trying to respond. Creating the ansible was us making the call. The mental contact I felt on stage was them answering. When I broke the spell, a few of them got trapped between their world and ours. I still don't understand exactly how it happened. I don't think they do, either. It's something they want to talk about with us. All I know is I won't make that mistake again.\"\n\n\"And you were able to communicate?\" asked her father. \"You understood their language?\"\n\n\"We understood\u2026intentions, I guess. Images and emotions. It's going to take longer to learn to communicate specific concepts and details, but I have a few ideas on that.\"\n\nHer phone buzzed. She glanced at the text message on the screen.\n\nGreg: Kiyoko says you're back. Thank you!!!\n\nJeneta grinned up at Kiyoko. \"Thanks for letting them know.\"\n\nKiyoko shrugged. \"One of the advantages to being in thirty-one places at once.\"\n\nDr. Shah sat back and said, \"From what I can see, you're completely fine. We should get you to the hospital for a check-up to be sure, though. And I'll want to talk to you to process everything that's happened. The emotional scars from Meridiana are still there, but something tells me you'll be able to work through them.\"\n\n\"What now?\" asked her father.\n\nIsaac looked at Jeneta, a mischievous smile on his face. \"I know you don't love the spotlight, but I think you're going to have to get used to it. This is going to be one hell of a press conference.\"\n\n\"Bring it on,\" she said. \"I'm not afraid. But let's not invite anyone from JP Multinational, okay?\"\n\nFor the first time, she noticed the secondary ansible unit sitting to one side on the stage. Isaac must have finished creating it while Jeneta was busy talking to aliens. Once someone fixed the hatch on the Venture, they should be able to get to Mars after all.\n\nBut Mars was only the beginning."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "(The Librarians 1) The Librarians and the Lost Lamp",
        "author": "Greg Cox",
        "genres": [
            "urban fantasy",
            "adventure"
        ],
        "tags": [],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "[ Edinburgh, Scotland ]\n\nMacFarlane's Brewery was located in an out-of-the-way corner of Old Town, several blocks away from the more touristy stretches along the city's Royal Mile. The sooty brick building and its towering chimneys dated back to Victorian days. A rich, malty smell leaked from the cracks in the ancient masonry, and a chill autumn wind carried the intoxicating aroma down a dark, empty street to where Flynn Carsen stood watching. It was well after three in the morning and the brewery was closed, but that didn't matter to Flynn. He wasn't looking for a drink.\n\nNot that I couldn't use one, he thought. Considering.\n\nA lanky, boyish-looking fellow in his early thirties, he contemplated the brewery while a chilly breeze rustled his unruly brown hair. The night was cold enough that his breath misted before his lips. He tugged a rumpled trench coat tighter around his body and found himself pining for, say, the sultry warmth of an Amazon rain forest while he considered his next move. He had come straight from the Writers' Museum on Lawnmarket, only a brisk walk away, where an unauthorized, after-hours visit had revealed that somebody else had gotten to a certain rare manuscript before him. Flynn was pretty sure he knew who had beaten him to the punch\u2014and where they had probably gone to roost.\n\nDuncan MacFarlane was the eccentric owner of the brewery and something of an avid collector in his own right. He and Flynn had been competitors of a sort, both in the pursuit of the same lost manuscript, but Flynn represented the Library, which had a legitimate interest in acquiring said manuscript for the good of all humanity. MacFarlane had his own personal agenda, which was what really had Flynn worried.\n\nIf that manuscript contains what I think it does \u2026\n\nFearing that time was running out, Flynn snuck down a murky alley to find a side entrance to the brewery labeled \"Employees Only.\" It was locked, of course, but he didn't let that stop him. Lock-picking was just one of the many useful new skills he'd acquired over the last couple of years. It was funny; there had been a time, only a few years ago, when he would have never dreamed of breaking and entering, but that was before he'd become the Librarian. Things were different now. He was different now. When you ventured into lost tombs and buried temples on a semiregular basis, breaking into a Scottish brewery barely warranted a shrug.\n\nAnd, with any luck, there were fewer bottomless pits and booby-traps here.\n\nDespite the cold nipping at his fingers, he picked the lock after only a couple of tries. Glancing up and down the alley to make certain that nobody was watching, he tugged open the door and quietly slipped inside the building, grateful to get out of the harsh weather. A large, ground-floor storeroom greeted him. Rows of tall wooden shelves were packed with aromatic bags of grains, malts, and hops, creating an even more pungent atmosphere than the one outdoors. More bags were piled high atop wooden pallets. A parked forklift waited to transport the heavy bags as needed. Humming ventilators kept the storeroom cool and dry.\n\nFlynn gave the looming shelves only a passing glance. What he was looking for was unlikely to be stored there.\n\nThe clatter of heavy machinery, chugging away despite the lateness of the hour, led him into an automated bottling area. Glass bottles, tinted brown to protect the beer from the pernicious effects of sunlight, were carried along mechanized conveyor belts to be filled, capped, labeled, boxed, and unloaded at a rate of hundreds of bottles a minute. A separate assembly line did the same with large metal kegs intended for pubs all over the city and beyond. Stainless steel pipes ran along the ceiling, transporting the foamy beer from the vats, copper kettles, and tanks on the upper floors of the brewery. Insulated steam pipes connected with massive industrial boilers elsewhere in the building. The rattling bottles made quite a racket, making it almost too hard for Flynn to hear himself think.\n\nAnd thinking was what Flynn did best.\n\nDespite the urgency of his quest, he took a moment to admire the operation and the history behind it. Edinburgh had a long and illustrious heritage when it came to brewing beer; at one time, over a century ago, over forty such breweries had burnished the city's reputation for fine beer. Indeed, the city had once been nicknamed \"Auld Reekie\" thanks to the vast quantities of smoke produced by those breweries' many coal-burning furnaces and boilers. Moreover \u2026\n\nStop that, Flynn chided himself. His brain was a Library in its own right, packed to overflowing with obscure and esoteric information, but now was not the time to go leafing through his mental card catalog. He needed to stay focused on the task at hand. He glanced around, wondering which way to go. A sign reading \"Testing Area\" caught his eye and interest.\n\nThat sounds promising.\n\nRetreating from the mechanized clamor of the bottling room, he entered a small chamber that resembled an old-fashioned high school chemistry lab\u2014or maybe the set of an old mad scientist movie. Laboratory glassware, including a wide variety of flasks, beakers, graduated cylinders, petri dishes, retorts, and test tubes, was arrayed atop stained slate counters, alongside old-school Bunsen burners and heating plates. Shelves held bottles and jars of reagents.\n\n\"Okay, this is more like it,\" Flynn muttered, even as his heart sank. He feared the lab had not just been used to test new strains of yeast or the specific gravity of some new decoction. Oh, Duncan, what have you been up to?\n\nSure enough, closer investigation revealed a stack of yellowed papers strewn across one counter. Flynn's heart sped up as he raced to inspect the documents, which were handwritten in fading ink. He instantly recognized the cramped, hurried handwriting, which belonged to one of Edinburgh's most illustrious native sons: Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.\n\nAlong with its beer, Edinburgh was also justifiably proud of its literary history. There were monuments and memorials to Stevenson all over the city, while the Writers' Museum, which Flynn had just come from, boasted an outstanding collection of artifacts and memorabilia once belonging to the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Stevenson. Flynn hastily flipped through the loose pages to confirm what he already suspected, deftly deciphering Stevenson's scrawled prose:\n\nAt last the time had come to prepare the potion. I measured out a few minims of the red tincture, according to the process described previously, and added, in proper succession, those specific powders which I had taken such care to obtain. The mixture, which was at first of a crimson hue, began to darken, while foaming and emitting a noxious vapor until the compound changed to a dark purple. Trembling, I lifted the glass to my lips.\u2026\n\n\"Whoa,\" Flynn murmured, experiencing a thrill of discovery despite the more ominous implications of the manuscript's presence in the lab. This is it, he realized: Stevenson's original draft of Jekyll and Hyde, long believed to have been destroyed by the author himself.\n\nHistory claimed that Stevenson had burned his first draft back in 1885, because his wife, Fanny, had found it too horrific and not morally uplifting enough. But rumors had persisted over the years that Stevenson had not truly destroyed that early draft, only hidden it from the world, concealing clues to its location in the pages of his later books. For the last week or so, Flynn had been following a winding (and exhausting) trail that had led from Stevenson's mountaintop grave in Samoa to the author's former residences in Hawaii, New York, San Francisco, and London to, finally, the city of his birth\u2014and a secret compartment hidden in Stevenson's first writing desk.\n\nToo bad MacFarlane had gotten to it first.\n\nIf only I hadn't missed that connection at Heathrow, Flynn thought, and Charlene hadn't insisted I fly commercial.\n\nThe Librarian in him winced at the sight of the precious manuscript strewn all willy-nilly across the messy lab counter. Hastily gathering together the fragile pages, he tried to handle them as gently as he could manage, time allowing, and placed them in an airtight, acid-free plastic wrapper before tucking the package into a well-worn leather satchel slung over his shoulder by a strap. Then he took a closer look at the work area, hoping against hope that he wasn't too late to keep matters from escalating.\n\nPlease tell me he didn't mix the elixir yet.\n\nBut the evidence argued against that wishful thinking. An electric heating plate still felt warm to the touch. Broken glass crunched beneath his shoes. Dirty beakers and flasks gave off a distinctly chemical aroma that didn't smell remotely like beer. More like sulfur and brimstone, actually.\n\n\"Oh, crap,\" Flynn said. Having secured the manuscript, he was tempted to turn around and call it a day, but he knew in his heart that his job wasn't done yet. Librarians did more than collect and catalog lost documents and relics; they were also responsible for keeping certain ancient knowledge and artifacts out of the wrong hands\u2014and dealing with the fallout when things went awry.\n\nNo matter how dangerous that could get.\n\n\"Duncan?\" he called out. \"Duncan MacFarlane? Are you still \u2026 you?\"\n\nNo one answered, but Flynn knew he couldn't leave the brewery until he found out how far MacFarlane had gone. Exiting the laboratory, he set out to search for the reckless brewer, who was possibly still lurking somewhere else on the premises. He sighed wearily at the prospect of exploring the huge, five-story building from top to bottom, while keeping a careful eye out for MacFarlane, who was quite possibly not himself at the moment.\n\nWhy couldn't this be a micro-brewery instead?\n\n\"Mr. MacFarlane?\" he shouted. \"This is Flynn Carsen. I think we need to talk!\"\n\nAbandoning the ground floor, he climbed a wrought-iron spiral staircase to the upper levels of the brewery, checking them out one at a time. Gravity, which was used to transfer the brews-in-progress from one stage to another, dictated the layout of the brewery, so that Flynn found himself traveling backward through a vertical labyrinth of bubbling vats of fermenting liquid, antique copper boilers, and stainless steel tanks, all connected by a bewildering array of pipes and valves. Some of the pipes were labeled \"Hot Liquor\" and \"Cold Liquor,\" but Flynn knew that the \"liquor\" in question was just water used in the brewing operation. Gas flames heated the huge copper kettle on the second floor, keeping the unfermented wort at a slow boil, using the same process employed by Victorian brewers over a century ago.\n\nIt was an interesting place and, ever curious, Flynn wished he had time to take a proper tour, but first he needed to find MacFarlane, who was nowhere to seen. Flynn was starting to wonder if he was wasting his time when, wearily climbing the stairs at a steadily decreasing pace, he heard laughter coming from just up ahead.\n\nNo, he corrected himself. Not laughter.\n\nCackling.\n\n\"Okay, that can't be good.\" He knew cackling when he heard it, particularly of the diabolical variety. Is there such a thing as a non-diabolical cackling? he wondered briefly, while reaching the top floor of the brewery and bracing himself for the worst. \"Why is this never easy?\"\n\nHuge stainless steel mash tuns, where the malted barley and water were first mixed together and heated with steam, dominated the floor of the chamber. An elevated metal catwalk, overlooking the operation, stretched dozens of feet above Flynn's head. Another burst of maniacal laughter drew his gaze upward and he glimpsed a misshapen figure scurrying atop the catwalk. Heavy footsteps echoed loudly overhead.\n\n\"Mr. MacFarlane?\"\n\n\"MacFarlane?\" a mocking voice answered him. \"No, MacFarlane isn't here anymore. Only Hyde!\"\n\nA hunched, vaguely simian figure shambled out from behind a metal sluice feeding one tun, stepping into the moonlight from a nearby window. Coarse, wild red hair and muttonchops matched his bushy eyebrows. Bloodshot eyes, nearly as red as his shaggy mane, bulged from their sockets. A sloping brow and prognathous jaws made him look more like a missing link than the actual Missing Link, whom Flynn had run into in Tanzania last Thanksgiving. A pair of lower incisors protruded from his mouth like tusks. An ill-fitting white lab coat looked one size too large for the stunted figure, which clasped a bubbling flask in a hairy, gnarled fist.\n\nNeedless to say, this was not what MacFarlane usually looked like.\n\nI was afraid of this, Flynn thought. \"You just had to try the elixir, didn't you?\"\n\nAs Flynn had suspected, the real reason Stevenson had hidden his first draft and rewritten his book to be more \"allegorical\" was because that early version had contained the actual secret formula for Doctor Jekyll's infamous potion, which Stevenson had stumbled onto in his peripatetic travels around the world.\n\n\"And why not?\" the creature on the catwalk replied, still retaining his thick Scottish accent. \"What better way to throw off the stifling restrictions of morality and let loose my true self. I've never felt more free, more liberated!\" He capered like a deranged monkey atop the catwalk. \"And now I will share me wicked bliss with the world!\"\n\nHe held up the flask, which was bubbling over with a frothing purple potion. Flynn realized with horror that MacFarlane\u2014or rather his bestial alter ego\u2014intended to contaminate the brewing mash with Jekyll's elixir. Judging from the size of the immense steel tun, Flynn estimated that they were looking at approximately eight hundred barrels of beer, soon to be bottled, kegged, and shipped to pubs all across Scotland and the rest of the world, which meant thousands of Mr. and Mrs. Hydes running amok, with even more to come if MacFarlane kept at it and produced more of the elixir. History's most monstrous beer bash would cause chaos and carnage across the globe.\n\n\"Hold on!\" Flynn said. \"That doesn't strike me as good idea.\"\n\nMacFarlane glared down at him from the catwalk. \"Ye cannae tell me what to do. Who do ye think ye are anyway?\"\n\n\"The Librarian,\" Flynn said.\n\nThe creature's beetled brow furrowed in confusion. \"A librarian?\"\n\n\"No,\" Flynn corrected him. \"The Librarian.\"\n\nFor over two thousand years, ever since the days of the first great Library in Alexandria, a Librarian had protected the world from dangerous secrets and magical relics that needed to be stored away until humanity was ready for them, which was quite possibly never. Flynn was hardly the first Librarian, and wouldn't be the last, but he was the one and only Librarian at present, and stopping a deranged brewer from turning thousands of thirsty beer drinkers into monsters fell squarely within his job description.\n\nEasier said than done, of course.\n\n\"No matter!\" MacFarlane snarled. \"No one can stop me now!\"\n\nHe poured the contents of the flask into the sluice leading down into the tun, where it joined the heated water and grains being mashed together in the tank. A scruffy hand slammed down the lid of the tank and dialed up the heat.\n\n\"And that's just the first batch!\" he said, cackling. \"I will flood the world with my divine concoction \u2026 and unleash the beast within us all!\"\n\n\"Uh-uh,\" Flynn said. \"The world doesn't need those kinds of spirits.\"\n\nHis keen eyes spotted a valve at the bottom of the tun. Rushing forward, he grabbed it with both hands and twisted it counterclockwise. Lefty-loosy, righty-tighty, he reminded himself as he strained to open the valve. The stubborn metal resisted him at first, but a good kick loosened it up.\n\n\"No!\" MacFarlane cried out in rage. \"Ye cannae do this. Ye have no right!\"\n\n\"Got to disagree there. The way I see it, this falls squarely within my job description.\" The valve opened, and the tainted mash gushed from the tank, spilling onto the floor. He scrambled backward to avoid being knocked off his feet by the flood. A sticky, sugar-rich solution flowed across the floor. Flynn gasped in relief as he saw the contaminated mash vanishing into drains on the floor. That was one batch that wasn't going to ruin anybody's disposition.\n\n\"Damn ye!\" MacFarlane smashed the empty glass flask against a railing, turning its wide end into a jagged weapon. Spittle sprayed from his lips. \"Ye'll pay for that, ye meddling bibliophile! I'll mix yer blood and brains into me next brew!\"\n\nSpringing from the catwalk, he grabbed onto the overhanging pipes and came swinging down at Flynn, who retreated toward the stairs. MacFarlane's feet slipped on the wet floor, but he managed to hang onto his balance and keep from falling flat on his face. The near spill did not improve the monster's mood.\n\n\"Come back, ye craven vandal!\"\n\nBrandishing the broken flask, MacFarlane loped after Flynn, splashing through puddles of spilled mash. His nostrils flared. Drool dripped from his lips. His dirty lab coat dragged through the mess.\n\n\"Maybe another time,\" Flynn shouted back, \"when you're not under the influence!\"\n\nFlynn raced down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. He was a scholar, not a brawler, so a strategic retreat struck him as the better part of valor in this instance. Past run-ins with unscrupulous treasure hunters, well-armed mercenaries, and the occasional mythological beast had toughened him up to a degree, but he still preferred to use his brains rather than fists or guns. He had the manuscript, and he'd foiled MacFarlane's scheme; that was enough for tonight. Now he just needed to get out of here in one piece. He could regroup and figure out how to deal with MacFarlane's transformation later.\n\nThe elixir had to wear off eventually, right?\n\nReaching the ground floor, Flynn glanced back over his shoulder to see MacFarlane gaining on him. The harsh fluorescent lights of the bottling room reflected off the jagged edges of the broken flask. MacFarlane cackled in anticipation of turning Flynn into fresh haggis. Librarian or not, Flynn found himself wishing momentarily that Stevenson had burned his manuscript after all.\n\n\"Hold on there,\" he said to MacFarlane. \"Maybe you should sober up a bit before you do something we'll both regret.\"\n\nMacFarlane chortled at the very idea. \"Me mind has never been clearer.\" He backed Flynn up against the churning conveyor belt. Freshly filled bottles rattled along toward the labeling machine. \"No regrets, no guilt \u2026 NO MERCY!\"\n\nHe lunged at Flynn, who dropped to his hands and knees and scurried beneath the conveyor belt before jumping to his feet on the other side. Taking a leaf from MacFarlane's book, he snatched a bottle from the machinery and hurled it at the mad brewer like a missile. The bottle smashed against MacFarlane's chest, staggering him and driving him backward. Snarling in fury, MacFarlane tossed the broken flask at Flynn, but his throw went wild and missed Flynn's head by six inches or so. It crashed into the machinery behind the endangered Librarian.\n\n\"Bah!\" MacFarlane spat. \"I'll throttle ye with me bare hands if I have to!\"\n\nFlynn believed it, but he wasn't about to give MacFarlane an opportunity to carry out his threat. Keeping the transfigured brewer at bay, he flung bottle after bottle at the creature, as the conveyor belt supplied him with a seemingly endless supply of missiles. Bottles shattered loudly, one after another, causing the whole room to reek of spilled beer. Flynn thought it smelled like survival.\n\nUntil MacFarlane shut off the power.\n\nCrouching low, the crazed science experiment loped across the room to a control panel mounted on an exposed brick wall. His hairy hand flung a switch, and the entire assembly line ground to a halt.\n\nSo much for that bright idea, Flynn thought.\n\nHurling the last few bottles to slow MacFarlane down, Flynn darted across the sudsy floor to the storeroom beyond. Glancing around for the exit, he noticed the waiting forklift\u2014and the towering piles of hops and grains stacked high atop the pallets.\n\nOn second thought, maybe he didn't need to leave MacFarlane running berserk.\u2026\n\n\"Where are ye, meddler?\" MacFarlane charged into the storeroom, murder in his bloodshot eyes. Rage contorted his already seriously unattractive countenance. His knotted fists swung at his sides. \"No more of yer bloody interference. I've got some serious brewing to do!\"\n\n\"Not without Stevenson's recipe you don't,\" Flynn shouted from the cab of the forklift. \"And you're not going to go prowling through the city, either.\"\n\nHe fired up the forklift's engine and hit the gas. The loading truck surged forward, slamming into a huge pile of bagged hops, which toppled over onto MacFarlane, burying him beneath their weight. The startled monster only had time to let out a single howl before vanishing under the avalanche.\n\nNot quite how Hyde was vanquished in the novel, Flynn thought, but if it works \u2026\n\nFlynn engaged the brakes and clambered out of the forklift. He cautiously approached the fallen bags, hoping that the collapse had only taken MacFarlane out of commission, not killed him. A muffled groan coming from beneath the strewn bags raised Flynn's hopes, and, straining his muscles, he shifted the bags to uncover MacFarlane's head, while leaving the rest of the bags to weigh the lunatic down, just in case he still had some homicidal mania left in him.\n\n\"MacFarlane?\"\n\nThe stunned monster was out cold, but that wasn't all. Flynn watched in amazement as MacFarlane's bestial face began to melt and dissolve back into its original configuration. The jutting brow and jaws and tusks retracted, while the bristly red hair and eyebrows receded to a less frenzied state. Streaks of gray infiltrated the man's lank ginger tresses. Within seconds, the monster's atavistic features had given way to the blander, much more unassuming face of Duncan MacFarlane, hopefully for good.\n\nIs that it? Flynn wondered. In Stevenson's book, it had taken repeated doses of the elixir before Jekyll started turning into Hyde spontaneously, without the aid of the potion. So, in theory, MacFarlane shouldn't be able to transform again without the formula in the manuscript. Here's hoping that wasn't something Stevenson added in the rewrite.\n\nStepping away from the unconscious brewer, who was probably going to have a monster hangover when he came to, Flynn checked to make sure the stolen manuscript was still tucked away safely in his satchel before contemplating the brewery itself. As far as he knew, he had disposed of the only batch of contaminated product, but could he be absolutely sure of that? It seemed a shame to let the rest of the brewery's refreshing output go to waste, but \u2026\n\nHe took out his phone and dialed 999, which was the Scottish equivalent of 911.\n\n\"Hello,\" he said once someone picked up at the other end of the line. \"I'd like to report a public health issue. I have reason to believe that the MacFarlane Brewery has been contaminated with \u2026 toxic fungus. You might want to have the health inspectors check things out.\" Another thought occurred to him. \"And, oh, you might want to send an ambulance right away. I'm afraid there's been something of an industrial accident.\"\n\nHe hung up quickly before anyone could press him for details, and headed for the exit. He needed to make tracks before anyone showed up to investigate, but first he scribbled a sign on the back of a shipping invoice and taped it to the front door.\n\n\u2002CLOSED\u2014DUE TO HEALTH CONCERNS.\n\n\"That should do it,\" he said, stifling a yawn. \"All in a day's work.\"\n\nIt was time to go home."
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "[ New York, New York ]\n\nOne of the world's great research institutes, housing more than six million books and twelve million documents, the New York Metropolitan Library was Flynn's home away from home. The landmark building, with its elegant brick and marble fa\u00e7ade, looked out over a spacious plaza in midtown Manhattan, which was guarded by a pair of dozing marble lions. Wide steps led up to the library's grand entrance, which was supported by towering Corinthian columns. A banner stretched above the entrance advertised a new exhibition on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.\n\nHah, Flynn thought, glancing up at the banner. If only we could reveal the full story there.\u2026\n\nJet-lagged and dog-tired, he passed through a bronze front door into the library's magnificent marble entry hall, which was flanked by a sweeping double staircase leading upward. Flynn recalled standing in an endless line on the left staircase on that fateful day, only two years ago, when he had answered a mysterious invitation to apply for a \"prestigious position\" at the library. Little had he known at the time that his life was about to change forever and that the world was infinitely stranger and more fantastic than he ever could have imagined. Before then, he had been a professional college student, accumulating degree after degree\u2014twenty-two in all\u2014while studiously avoiding going out into real world. Sometimes he wondered what he'd be doing now if he'd blown off that interview.\n\nSomething safer, probably, but a lot less interesting.\n\nMost visitors headed up to the Main Reading Room on the third floor, but Flynn veered off to drop into a spacious, sparsely furnished office that always struck him as being several times bigger than it needed to be. A woman was seated at a large, hand-carved mahogany desk at the far end of the office. She looked up from a ledger as Flynn entered.\n\n\"Oh, you're back,\" Charlene greeted him coolly. An unsmiling, thin-lipped woman of a certain age, she fit the stereotype of the stern, humorless librarian much better than Flynn did. She wore a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and a severe expression. Strawberry-blond hair was fading to gray. \"I was wondering what was keeping you.\"\n\nFlynn was used to her brusque manner by now. He'd stopped taking it personally \u2026 mostly.\n\n\"Good morning to you, too,\" he said, yawning. He had come straight from JFK International Airport after catching a red-eye flight from Heathrow. He couldn't wait to crash at his modest bachelor apartment in Brooklyn, but first he wanted to get the long-lost Stevenson manuscript safely stowed away in the Library, which had much tighter security than his apartment building. Heck, the Library's security made Fort Knox seem as safe as a convenience store at three a.m. It was one of the most impenetrable places on Earth.\n\nRemoving the manuscript from his satchel, he plopped it onto Charlene's desk. \"Mission accomplished,\" he bragged. \"The first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, safely under wraps.\"\n\n\"I prefer the musical version,\" Charlene said, unimpressed. She shifted the manuscript out of the way, to maintain the neatly arranged order of her desk, and held out her hand.\n\n\"Receipts?\"\n\nFlynn rummaged around in his pockets. \"Hang on. I'm pretty sure I've got them in here somewhere.\"\n\n\"Don't let me rush you,\" Charlene said dryly. \"In the meantime, you owe $1.62 in library fines.\"\n\n\"Fines? What for?\"\n\n\"That Traveler's Guide to Hawaii you checked out a few weeks ago. It's four days overdue.\"\n\nFlynn vaguely remembered losing the book in question while escaping an erupting volcano in Sumatra. \"That was work related.\"\n\n\"Submit an expense report,\" she said, unmoved. \"Itemized, of course.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\" Flynn hadn't slept in hours, thanks to a crying baby on his flight and a snoring tourist from New Jersey in the seat next to him; the last thing he needed right now was Charlene nickel-and-diming him as usual. \"We're an age-old, secret organization guarding some of the great treasures of the world. Can't you loosen the purse strings once in a while?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" she replied archly, \"why don't I just pawn the Ark of the Covenant for petty cash? Or hawk Pandora's Box on eBay or Craigslist?\" She peered at him over her spectacles. \"You know better than that. Large expenditures attract unwanted scrutiny, sometimes from the wrong quarters. And careful bookkeeping is the key to a well-run organization.\"\n\n\"So you've told me,\" Flynn said wearily, too tired to argue the point one more time. \"Look, I'll pull together those receipts after I've had a few hours of shut-eye.\"\n\n\"I've heard that before,\" she scoffed. \"Oh, Judson wants to see you. Something's come up.\"\n\nFlynn groaned. \"Can this wait, Charlene? I really need to get some sleep.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose I could tell him that you came all the way into the Library but couldn't be bothered to swing by long enough to check in with him.\u2026\"\n\n\"Okay, okay,\" Flynn said, giving in. \"Which way?\"\n\n\"I believe he's in the Large Collections Annex, tending to odds and ends,\" she said. \"Don't keep him waiting. None of us are getting any younger, you know.\"\n\nFlynn was tempted to ask Charlene just how old she really was, but he decided against it. He started away from her desk, but he only got a few steps before she called him back.\n\n\"Not so fast.\" She indicated the manuscript resting atop her desk. \"Aren't you forgetting something?\"\n\nFlynn reclaimed the package and stuck it back into his satchel before exiting the office. A short hike brought him to a deceptively normal-looking reading room, where two stone-faced guards were posted to either side of a well-stocked bookcase. Telltale bulges beneath the guards' jackets suggested that both men were more heavily armed than you'd expect at the average library.\n\n\"Hi, Bud. Hi, Lou,\" Flynn greeted the guards, who let him approach the bookcase, where he casually tugged on a leather-bound edition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, just as he had the first time he'd come this way, right after being selected as the new Librarian. The motion activated a hidden mechanism that revealed a secret vestibule behind the bookcase, facing a concealed elevator. The two guards stepped forward in lockstep, and each inserted a key into a slot on opposite sides of the elevator door. They turned them simultaneously, as though following nuclear launch protocols.\n\nAs Flynn understood it, the Pentagon had gotten the idea from the Library.\n\nThe elevator opened to admit him, and he settled in for the long ride down to the actual Library, which was buried deep below the public library. Tired as he was, the trip seemed to take even longer than usual, but at last the elevator dropped him off outside two frosted-glass doors. He slid back a wall panel to expose a hidden touchpad. Running on autopilot, he keyed in the password, and the doors swung open automatically on pneumatic hinges.\n\nHome sweet home, Flynn thought. More or less.\n\nStone steps, carved out of the very bedrock and guarded by a pair of golden lions matching the marble felines up top, led him into a vast, cavernous chamber. Dark wooden shelves and wainscoting lined the walls, while row after row of glass display cases held some of the long-lost wonders of the world: the Spear of Destiny, the Philosopher's Stone, da Vinci's secret diaries, a crystal skull from lost Atlantis, and many other marvels and relics. The real Mona Lisa hung upon one wall, not far from the actual Shroud of Turin. A unicorn neighed somewhere in the depths of the Library, impatient for his daily portion of virgin oats and olive oil. Vaulted barrel ceilings stretched high above Flynn's head.\n\nThe Library, Charlene had once told him, was always as big as it needed to be, and the awe-inspiring view before him was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. (The actual tip was on ice in a special refrigerated vault elsewhere in the Library.) Even after two years, Flynn was still stumbling onto new sections of the Library that he had never discovered before. At times he wondered if he would ever uncover all the mysteries filed away in the Library.\n\nHe had barely gotten a few steps into the stacks when a shining silver sword came whistling toward him, propelled by some unseen force. Sighing, Flynn ducked beneath the fifth-century English blade, which proceeded to dance around him expectantly. The fact that the sword was floating of its own accord, without anyone wielding it, did not faze him.\n\n\"Hi, 'Cal,\" he greeted the fabled sword of King Arthur. \"I'm happy to see you, too.\"\n\nExcalibur feinted at him playfully.\n\n\"Sorry, pal. I'm too tired to duel right now.\"\n\nUnder other circumstances, Flynn might have borrowed another sword from the Library's extensive collection of antique weapons and enjoyed a vigorous bout of fencing with Excalibur, but not when, as presently, he was dead on his feet. Instead, having anticipated this encounter, he fished a small rubber ball from his pocket and hurled it away from him with as much force as he could muster.\n\n\"Fetch!\"\n\nExcalibur gleefully chased after the bouncing ball, taking off down a seemingly endless corridor. With any luck, that would keep the sword occupied long enough for Flynn to make his way to the Large Collections Annex. A shortcut through the Hall of Fame, which was lined with painted portraits of all the previous Librarians, dating back to antiquity, brought him to an even more capacious chamber stuffed with oversized relics too big to fit comfortably within an ordinary bookshelf or display case. Noah's Ark loomed ponderously over the collection. The Fountain of Youth gurgled nearby. Flynn eyed the sparkling waters wistfully. He was thirsty from his walk, but not enough so to risk ending up in kindergarten again. He had graduated from See Spot Run a long time ago.\n\nHe found Judson inside H. G. Wells's celebrated Time Machine, a fabulous steampunk contraption of polished brass and oiled red leather, shaped roughly like an hourglass. The device flickered in and out of the present before powering down and settling into today. Judson climbed stiffly out of the Machine, which continued to tick away like a grandfather clock. He smoothed out the creases in his conservative black suit.\n\n\"Welcome back,\" he greeted Flynn, somewhat more warmly than Charlene had. \"Excalibur has been missing you.\"\n\nHe was a short, soft-spoken man whose doleful, hangdog features belied his amiable manner. A bald pate and sagging skin betrayed his considerable age, although Flynn sometimes suspected that Judson was far older than he looked. A slight stutter made him seem deceptively mild-mannered and unassuming, but Flynn knew from experience that the old man was much sharper and more resourceful than he let on.\n\n\"Going somewhere?\" Flynn asked, indicating the Time Machine. \"Or -when?\"\n\n\"No, no, not at all.\" Judson shook his head. \"At my age, I much prefer to stay put in the here and now. I just had to reset the Machine back from Daylight Saving Time to Eastern Standard Time; otherwise it starts losing time \u2026 literally.\"\n\nFlynn took his word for it. \"Charlene said you wanted to see me?\"\n\n\"In a moment.\" Judson nodded at Flynn's heavy satchel. \"Is that it?\"\n\n\"You bet.\" Flynn delivered the manuscript to his mentor. \"And don't ask me what I had to go through to get it.\"\n\nJudson sniffed the air. \"Do I smell \u2026 beer?\"\n\n\"Probably,\" Flynn admitted. \"I didn't really have time to take a shower before catching my flight.\"\n\n\"I, I see,\" Judson said, although his bemused tone and expression said otherwise. \"In any event, congratulations on another job well done.\" He hefted the manuscript. \"I look forward to shelving this in the Lost Drafts and Apocrypha Collection, next to Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won and Aristophanes's Women in Tents.\"\n\nFlynn's eyes widened at those tantalizing titles, which set his Librarian's heart racing. He made a mental note to check out those volumes after he got a little sleep.\n\n\"No problem, but if that's all\u2014\"\n\n\"You've returned just in time, Flynn. There's a situation in the Middle East that ought to be looked into.\"\n\n\"The Middle East?\" A whine crept into Flynn's voice. \"Judson, I just got back from Scotland.\u2026\"\n\n\"A lovely country. I hope you enjoyed the trip.\" He tucked the manuscript under his arm and strolled out of the annex into an adjacent section of the Library. \"But I'm afraid the world didn't stop turning while you were gallivanting about the Highlands, and a Librarian's work is never done.\"\n\nTell me about it, Flynn thought.\n\nHe trailed after Judson, only to be interrupted by Excalibur, who caught up with him at last, the rubber ball proudly impaled upon its tip. The animated sword hovered before Flynn, eagerly wagging its blade.\n\n\"Again?\" He plucked the ball from the sword. \"Okay, just one more time.\"\n\nHe gave the toy another good toss, sending Excalibur zipping after it, before following Judson into a smaller chamber lined with yet more bookshelves, where Flynn was only mildly surprised to find Charlene waiting for them. He felt both outnumbered and ambushed.\n\n\"Okay, I'll bite,\" he said. \"What's up overseas?\"\n\n\"While you were away,\" Judson said, \"the Baghdad Museum of Arts and Antiquities was robbed by unknown parties. It's unclear at this point who is responsible or what they were after, but there's reason to suspect that the Forty might be involved.\"\n\nFlynn gave him a puzzled look. \"The Forty?\"\n\n\"As in the Forty Thieves.\" Judson pulled a dusty copy of The Arabian Nights off a shelf and laid it down atop a wooden table. He flipped through the pages until he reached an engraved color illustration of Ali Baba hiding from the bloodthirsty thieves whose treasure he had stolen from a hidden cave. Knives drawn, the Thieves scowled murderously, intent on revenge. \"In reality, it's a centuries-old criminal syndicate that past Librarians have clashed with more than once, albeit a bit before your time. They haven't been heard of since they tried to get their hands on the Jewel of Seven Stars back in 1903, and I'd hoped they had finally died off, but I now fear that was just wishful thinking.\"\n\n\"What makes you think this Forty outfit is involved in the Baghdad heist?\" Flynn asked. \"I hate to say it, but looted historical sites and museums are old news in the Middle East at this point, what with the wars and political instability in the region. It's a shame, but I'm not sure where we fit in.\"\n\nJudson looked at Flynn. \"Are you familiar with the House of Wisdom?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Flynn replied, vaguely insulted by the query. \"During the Golden Age of Islam, from roughly the eighth to the thirteenth century, the House of Wisdom was the greatest library in the known world, attracting scholars from all across the map to Baghdad, which, at the time, was the undisputed center of power, wealth, and learning in the medieval world. Alas, the House of Wisdom was sacked in 1258 during a Mongol invasion, causing many rare books and documents to be lost forever.\"\n\n\"Supposedly lost,\" Judson corrected him. \"The invasion was instigated, at least in part, by the Forty to give them the opportunity to raid the House of Wisdom for the secrets it held, but the Librarian at the time managed to keep them from obtaining anything too dangerous\u2014although, yes, some of the House's most priceless volumes did go missing in the process.\" Judson shook his head woefully. \"Call it a hunch, but this business in Baghdad feels uncomfortably familiar. The thieves went straight for archives, bypassing more valuable artifacts and treasures, as though they were searching for ancient knowledge, not riches. That sounds like the Forty to me, and Baghdad used to be their home base, back in its glory days.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Flynn said. \"No offense, but that sounds like a stretch to me.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" Judson said. \"I could be wrong. I probably am. But we can't afford to take the chance. Even if the Forty aren't back in the game, somebody raided those archives, and, as you should know by now, the secrets of the past can often pose a serious threat to the present \u2026 if they fall into the wrong hands. In a worst-case scenario, we could even be talking about\u2014\"\n\n\"The fate of the world,\" Flynn supplied, knowing the spiel by now. \"I get it, really I do. It's just that I was hoping for a little time off before embarking on another globe-trotting trek into possibly mortal danger.\"\n\n\"And I was hoping that my next blind date would turn out to be Antonio Banderas,\" Charlene said sarcastically. \"Tough. We don't always get what we want.\" She handed him a coach-class airline ticket. \"Your flight leaves from LaGuardia in three hours. If I were you, I'd get going.\"\n\nFlynn bowed to the inevitable. If he hurried, he might be able to manage a shower and a change of clothes before hightailing it to the airport. New York to Baghdad was at least a twelve hour trip, so maybe he could catch some sleep on the way there.\n\nOr catch up on his reading at least.\n\n\"Good luck,\" Judson said. \"But watch your back. The Forty weren't just thieves; they were murderers and cutthroats. If they're back in business, they'll stop at nothing to achieve their ultimate goal \u2026 whatever that might be.\"\n\n\"You heard him,\" Charlene added. Just for a second, a flicker of what might actually have been genuine concern softened her pinched expression. \"Be careful, and don't forget\u2014\"\n\n\"My receipts,\" Flynn said. \"I know, I know.\"\n\nHe sighed in resignation. Times like this, he wished he weren't the only Librarian.\n\nThis job was too big for just one person.\u2026"
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "[ Ten years later ]\n\n[ Portland, Oregon ]\n\nMagic is real, Colonel Eve Baird thought. Just look at this place.\n\nTucked away under the south end of a lofty suspension bridge crossing the Willamette River, in what appeared to be an unremarkable gray utility building, the Library's Portland Annex was much more impressive on the inside than on the outside. Antique electric lights cast a warm, gentle glow over the Annex's ground-floor office, which had a certain timeless charm that was distinctly at odds with the building's weathered stone exterior. Sturdy wooden bookcases were crammed with worn volumes on everything from stamp collecting to cutting-edge string theory. An old-school card catalog ran along one side of a sweeping staircase leading up to the mezzanine overlooking the office. A large inlaid compass symbol decorated the hardwood floor. Side doors magically linked the Annex to the rest of the Library, with its innumerable galleries and collections, while the frosted-glass \"Back Door\" led to, well, most anyplace she cared to imagine, as well as a few destinations beyond imagining.\n\nBaird surveyed the familiar scene from her desk, where she had been carefully reviewing the Library's security systems and emergency action plans. A statuesque blonde whose supermodel good looks came in third to her top-flight military training and no-nonsense attitude, she preferred to leave nothing to chance when it came to guarding the Library, its inventory, and its agents. Granted, the deceptively cozy-looking Annex was a far cry from the hostile war zones and rogue states she'd once frequented as part of an elite NATO counterterrorism unit; you'd never guess that she was often dealing with far more dangerous weapons of mass destruction these days.\n\nMagic is real and frequently deadly, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time. And maybe someday that won't sound quite so crazy to me.\n\nOver a year had passed since the Library had recruited her as a Guardian, making her responsible for the well-being of three newly minted Librarians. The Portland Annex was already starting to feel like her home away from home, but the whole magic-and-monsters thing still took some getting used to. Yawning, she stretched at her desk to keep from getting stiff.\n\nShe could have used a good workout. Ever since that weird \"time loop\" business at DARPA, things had been quiet\u2014maybe too much so for her tastes. Where had all the troublesome dragons and golems gone? Surely there had to be some long-lost magical relic they should be tracking down?\n\nTwo of her new charges, Jacob Stone and Cassandra Cillian, were seated at the cluttered conference table in the middle of the main office, across from Baird's own desk. Typically for Librarians, they were taking advantage of the downtime to catch up on their reading. Cassandra, a petite redhead with a penchant for short skirts, knee socks, and frilly collars, was avidly devouring some abstruse mathematics text as though it were the latest bestselling thriller, while periodically peering up at swirling patterns and calculations that only she could see, thanks to her peculiar gifts. Her slender fingers traced equations in the empty air. Baird had stopped trying to figure out what Cassandra was seeing. Chances were, she wouldn't understand it anyway.\n\nSitting opposite her, Jacob Stone looked as rugged as Cassandra looked dainty and delicate. Scruffily handsome, in a country-western kind of way, he leafed through a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book on pre-Columbian cave paintings while scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, no doubt in preparation for writing a learned monograph on the topic. A rumpled plaid shirt, faded jeans, and work boots belied his status as a world-class expert on art and architecture, with numerous publications under a variety of pseudonyms. As every Librarian knew, you couldn't always judge a book by its cover.\n\nWorryingly unaccounted for was Ezekiel Jones, self-proclaimed man of mystery and master thief. Baird wanted to think that Jones was behaving himself, but she knew better.\n\nTry not to end up on a most-wanted list, Jones, she thought. Just this once.\n\n\"Seriously?\" Stone reacted indignantly to something in the book he was perusing. His gruff voice held more than a hint of Oklahoma and the rough-and-tumble oil yards where he had once labored. \"You call those Aztec fertility symbols? Any fool can tell that they're obviously Toltec in origin.\"\n\n\"Obviously,\" Baird said dryly.\n\nStone looked up from his book. \"Say, didn't you and Flynn explore a buried Toltec temple a while ago?\" He turned the book toward her. \"You remember seeing anything like these petroglyphs when you were there?\"\n\n\"'Fraid not,\" she replied. \"I was too busy running from molten lava and a bad-tempered feathered serpent to check out the finer points of the decor.\"\n\nThe discussion drew Cassandra out of her private reverie. \"Speaking of Flynn, have you heard from him recently?\"\n\nI wish, Baird thought. \"Last I heard, he was in Nepal, or maybe Tibet, doing his own thing \u2026 as usual.\"\n\nThat last part came out a bit more acerbically than she had intended. Although she liked Flynn, and found him oddly attractive, his tendency to run off half cocked and on his own drove her nuts sometimes. Used to being the only Librarian at large, he wasn't exactly a team player, which was something of a sore spot between them. For all she knew, he was knee-deep in a new adventure right now, flying solo, which was apparently just the way he liked it.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Cassandra said sheepishly, as though fearing she had inadvertently crossed a line. \"I didn't mean to pry.\"\n\n\"It's all right, Red,\" Baird assured her. \"Flynn is a big boy. He can take care of himself.\"\n\n\"One would assume so,\" Jenkins said, strolling into the office from an adjacent reading room. A dapper, silver-haired gentleman who was older, by centuries, than he appeared, he had been looking after the Annex for longer than Baird knew or wanted to think about. He placed a neglected copy of Cagliostro's personal diary back on a bookshelf, precisely where it belonged. \"Not that Librarians are always the most prudent of individuals. In my extremely extensive experience, their erudition is consistently beyond dispute, but their common sense? Well, that's another matter.\"\n\nA pair of frosted-glass doors swung open, admitting a breeze and Ezekiel Jones. The cocky young thief sauntered into the Annex bearing a pink cardboard box and an infectious grin. A wiry man in his early twenties, he had dark hair, mischievous eyes, and designer clothes that had probably been shoplifted from only the most fashionable outlets. His stylish wardrobe contrasted sharply with Stone's more blue-collar attire, and put Baird's own workaday clothes to shame as well. As a rule, she preferred to dress for practicality, as in a white button-down shirt and trousers.\n\n\"Miss me?\" An Australian accent betrayed his Down Under roots. An irrepressible smile lit up the room. \"What am I saying? Of course you did. I'm Ezekiel Jones. Who wouldn't miss my delightful company?\"\n\n\"Everybody you've ever ripped off?\" Stone said sternly, like an older brother addressing a wayward younger sibling. \"Where'd you get off to anyway? Monte Carlo? The Riviera? Fort Knox?\"\n\nBaird eyed the box apprehensively. Please let that not be the Crown Jewels, or a priceless Picasso.\n\n\"Nah,\" Ezekiel said. \"Voodoo Doughnuts. Just up the road from here.\"\n\nCassandra's large eyes widened even more than usual. \"Doughnuts?\"\n\n\"Portland's best.\" Ezekiel placed the box down on the conference table and flipped its lid to reveal a mouthwatering selection of gourmet doughnuts. \"Feast your eyes, and then just feast in general. The doughnuts are on me.\"\n\nBaird stepped out from behind her desk to investigate, drawn in part by the tantalizing aroma of the deep-fried treats. She had to admit, they did smell tasty.\n\n\"That's very generous of you, Jones. Uncharacteristically so, in fact.\" She regarded him suspiciously. \"I don't suppose you actually paid for these doughnuts?\"\n\n\"You're joking, right?\" He scoffed at the very notion. \"I need to keep in practice, after all. You wouldn't want me to get rusty.\"\n\n\"Heaven forbid,\" Jenkins said archly. \"But perhaps, Mr. Jones, you could kindly refrain from placing your ill-gotten refreshments on top of these private love letters between Napoleon and Josephine, detailing the actual circumstances of his exile on Elba?\" He sighed theatrically as he extracted several yellowed sheets of paper, each carrying a faint whiff of French perfume, from beneath the doughnut box. \"And to think this used to be such a quiet, contemplative environment, before it turned into a children's playhouse.\"\n\nBaird was used to such grumbling by now. She and her freshly forged team of Librarians had set up shop in the Annex at a time when the rest of the Library was lost between realities. Jenkins had already been a fixture at the Annex, along with the card catalog and desks, and had stayed on for the duration, despite his frequent sighs, disdainful sniffs, and sarcasm. Baird suspected that his high-handed curmudgeon routine was at least partly an act.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said. \"Sounds to me like you're protesting a bit too much. Are you sure you don't actually enjoy our company?\"\n\n\"Quoting the Bard, are we, Colonel?\" Jenkins placed the Elba correspondence in a desk drawer, safely away from icing and sticky fingers. \"Why don't you leave Shakespeare on the shelf and join your ravenous colleagues in their sugar spree?\"\n\n\"Like you've never indulged your own sweet tooth,\" Ezekiel teased him. Claiming the biggest, frostiest, most lavishly sprinkled doughnut for himself, he took an enthusiastic bite and smacked his lips afterward. \"Now that's what I call a treat for the taste buds. Almost as delicious as those gold-flecked Swiss chocolates I nicked in Dubai last Easter from a certain overfed oil baron who, frankly, could stand to lose a few stone.\" He licked some icing from his nimble fingers. \"Come on, mates. Dig in.\"\n\nStone shrugged. \"Don't mind if I do.\"\n\nA raspberry jelly doughnut met with his approval. \"Whoa. That's positively sinful.\" He stepped aside to let Cassandra get at the doughnuts. \"Step right up, Cassie. You've got to get in on this action.\"\n\nShe contemplated the all-too-tempting spread. \"Well, maybe just one.\u2026\"\n\n\"Only one?\" Ezekiel asked in disbelief. \"Live a little, Cassandra. What have you got to lose?\"\n\nAn awkward hush fell over the office as his careless remark landed with a thud, reminding everyone present of the grape-sized brain tumor that threatened to make Cassandra's life a short one. An abashed look came over Ezekiel's face as he grasped what he'd said. It wasn't often that his trademark self-regard slipped, but this was one of those times.\n\n\"Um, I didn't mean it like that. It just slipped out.\u2026\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" she replied. \"You don't need to walk on eggshells around me. None of you do.\" She boldly plucked a triple-chocolate doughnut from the box and bit into it lustily. \"And you're right. Life is too short not to indulge yourself sometimes.\"\n\n\"Roger that,\" Baird said, hoping to break the tension. \"Dibs on the deluxe apple fritter doughnut.\"\n\nBefore she could snag her enticing prize, however, the Clipping Book grabbed her attention instead. Laid open atop its stand on the table, the magical scrapbook thumped momentarily as an unseen force turned its pages to reveal a couple of fresh news clippings that hadn't been there before.\n\n\"Heads up, people. Seems we've got a new mission on our hands.\"\n\nThe Clipping Book was the Library's somewhat antiquated way of alerting the team to events that required their attention. A collection of newspaper articles pasted in an old-fashioned scrapbook, such as were once used in newspaper offices before the digital era, the Clipping Book's selections seldom spelled out exactly what kind of preternatural unpleasantness they could expect to encounter, but the mere fact that the clippings had magically appeared in the scrapbook indicated that there was more to the story than met the eye.\n\n\"Thank heavens,\" Jenkins said. \"Some peace and privacy at last.\"\n\n\"Don't count on it,\" Baird said. Jenkins rarely ventured into the field with them, but that didn't mean she didn't need him holding down the fort here at the Annex\u2014and providing them with crucial intel as needed. \"All hands on deck, including you.\"\n\n\"Of course, Colonel. I'm at your disposal.\"\n\n\"You bet you are.\"\n\nAlong with their Guardian, the Librarians gathered around the Clipping Book to see what new mystery had presented itself. Baird quickly scanned the headlines:\n\nLOCAL MAN WINS MILLION-DOLLAR JACKPOT.\n\nLOTTERY WINNER IDENTIFIED AS VEGAS RESIDENT.\n\nThe team crowded one another to read the clippings, with only Jenkins staying aloof. A quick skim revealed only that one Gus Dunphy of Las Vegas, Nevada, had recently won a big payout in a state lottery. A black-and-white photo showed a grinning Dunphy accepting an oversized check the size of small billboard. That in itself didn't raise any red flags for Baird; people did win lotteries without magical assistance, and Dunphy looked like a thoroughly average, unassuming type.\n\nBut if the Library thought it was worth checking out \u2026\n\n\"Aces,\" Ezekiel said. \"We're going to Vegas.\"\n\n\"So it seems,\" Baird agreed. \"Get your game on, everyone. I want to be in Sin City in thirty minutes, tops.\"\n\nWith their snack break cut short, she reached for the apple fritter doughnut, only to find it curiously missing.\n\n\"Hey, what happened to my doughnut?\"\n\nJenkins wiped a crumb from his lips with a silk pocket handkerchief.\n\n\"I'm sure I have no idea,\" he said."
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "[ Las Vegas, Nevada ]\n\n\"Let your love be tender, let your love be true,\" the Elvis said. \"By the power invested in me by the great state of Nevada, and your own burning hunk o' love, I now pronounce you\u2014\"\n\nThe door to the wedding chapel slammed open, accompanied by a blinding flash of bright white light, and the Librarians (and Guardian) rushed into the aisle, which was decked out with flowers, garlands, and an excess of twinkle lights. Instrumental versions of the King's greatest hits played softly in the background. Resplendent in rhinestones, the Elvis paused in his pronouncement, while the bride and groom, who were wearing matching Graceland T-shirts and blue suede shoes, turned to gape at the new arrivals. Stone realized at once that they were intruding on some rather less-than-solemn nuptials.\n\n\"Don't mind us,\" he said. \"Carry on \u2026 and congratulations.\"\n\nThe Back Door of the Annex could magically lead to most any other door on the planet, but dialing up the correct destination was something less than an exact science. Getting the right city was as easy as pie; guessing precisely which door in that city you might emerge from was more of a gamble.\n\nWhich, this being Vegas, was only fitting.\n\n\"Sorry for the interruption,\" Baird added. \"We'll be going now.\"\n\nThe team retreated from the chapel with all due haste, exiting the building to step out onto a sunlit sidewalk somewhere along Las Vegas Boulevard. Palm trees sprouted beneath a bright blue sky, while the temperature was a good deal warmer than it had been in Portland, even though they were still in the same time zone. Low-rent strip malls, fast food joints, and a pawn shop indicated that this stretch of the boulevard was not exactly at the heart of the famed Vegas Strip, with its celebrated casinos and mega-resorts. Stone figured that was just as well; they weren't here to party.\n\n\"An Elvis wedding?\" Ezekiel snickered in amusement. \"Talk about retro. What century do they think this is, anyway?\"\n\nStone bristled. \"You got something against the King?\"\n\n\"Hey, I'm sure he's great, if you like moldy oldies that your grandparents used to make out to.\"\n\nStone couldn't believe his ears. \"You've got no respect for the classics, you know that, man?\"\n\n\"Too busy being on the cutting edge, I guess.\" Ezekiel grinned at Stone. \"Send me a telegram from Backwardsville when you get a chance.\"\n\n\"I think it's sweet,\" Cassandra said, \"that the happy couple obviously have so much in common.\"\n\n\"Assuming that they didn't just meet in a bar two hours ago,\" Ezekiel added, smirking. \"I mean, this is Vegas.\"\n\n\"Don't be so cynical,\" she chided him.\n\n\"Don't be so na\u00efve,\" he shot back playfully, \"or this town will eat you alive.\"\n\n\"That's enough, all of you,\" Baird said, playing den mother as usual. \"Let's stay focused on our mission. Jones, did you manage to track down Dunphy's home address?\"\n\n\"Easy-peasy.\" He consulted his phone. \"According to the local DMV database, he lives on the outskirts of town, about\"\u2014he switched to another app\u2014\"sixteen miles from here.\"\n\nStone wished the Back Door could have gotten them a little closer to their final destination. \"Guess we need to hail a cab.\"\n\n\"A cab?\" Ezekiel scoffed. \"You really do need to get with today, mate.\" He keyed a new command into his phone. \"Uber is where it's at these days.\"\n\n\"Just get us there, Jones,\" Baird said. \"The easiest way possible.\"\n\n\"Leave it to me,\" he said confidently. \"But you're paying.\"\n\nA crowded car ride brought them to a dingy trailer park, far from the glitz and excess Vegas was famous for. Rusty mobile homes, in varying states of repair, squatted along both sides of pitted blacktop roads. Drying laundry hung on clotheslines. Barbecue grills, toys, and cheap plastic playground equipment littered patchy brown lawns. Weeds and potholes infested the pavement. A chained mutt growled at the Librarians, who took in the run-down neighborhood.\n\n\"Not exactly where you'd expect to find a guy who just won a million dollars,\" Baird observed.\n\nStone shrugged. \"Guess his luck changed.\"\n\n\"See, that's just wrong,\" Ezekiel objected. \"Picking out random numbers doesn't require any smarts or skill or daring. You want a million dollars, you ought to go about it the right way.\"\n\n\"By stealing it?\" Cassandra guessed.\n\n\"Naturally.\" Ezekiel gave her a puzzled look. \"How else?\"\n\nStone let that one pass. \"The real question is whether Dunphy's big win was really just a stroke of luck, or if he owes his change of fortune to some kind of magic instead?\"\n\n\"Like a rabbit's foot,\" Cassandra speculated, \"or a four-leaf clover?\"\n\n\"Kind of early for Saint Patrick's Day,\" Baird said, \"but I'm guessing it's something like that. The Clipping Book wouldn't have sent us here otherwise.\"\n\nLocating the correct trailer took a few inquiries, but they soon approached a beaten-up aluminum trailer that had clearly seen better days. Rust discolored its once-shiny exterior. Duct tape patched cracked windows or covered them altogether. Weeds infested the lawn, which needed mowing.\n\n\"I'm going to go out on a limb,\" Stone said, \"and predict that Dunphy has upgraded his living situation since winning the lottery.\"\n\n\"You're probably right,\" Baird said, \"but we've got to start somewhere.\"\n\nShe walked up to the trailer and knocked on the door. \"Mr. Dunphy? Anybody?\"\n\n\"If you're looking for Gus,\" a raspy voice interrupted, \"you're fat outta luck. He skipped out a couple days ago, without even saying good-bye.\"\n\nThe voice came from an older woman reclining in a lawn chair outside the trailer across the street. Her wizened features reminded Stone of a Rembrandt painting, although none of Rembrandt's models had been taking a drag on a cigarette while soaking up the sun. Dunphy's neighbor had a silver beehive hairdo that would have done the Bride of Frankenstein proud, a tank top, shorts, sandals, and pink sunglasses. An open can of beer sat within easy reach atop a plastic cooler next to her chair.\n\nStone and the others strolled over to talk to her. \"Thanks for letting us know, ma'am. I don't suppose you know where we might find him?\"\n\n\"Who's asking?\" She held up her hand to fend off any replies. \"Wait, let me guess.\" She lifted her shades to reveal canny brown eyes that looked the team over. \"Bill collectors? Loan sharks? Ex-wives? Girlfriends? Distant relations looking for a handout?\"\n\n\"Nothing like that, ma'am,\" Stone said. \"We're \u2026 Librarians.\"\n\nThe woman blinked in surprise. \"Come again?\"\n\n\"He has a number of books overdue,\" Cassandra offered by way of explanation. It wasn't the most far-fetched excuse they'd ever volunteered for snooping around where they didn't belong. Not by a long shot.\n\n\"Is that so?\" the woman said. \"Never took Gus for much of a reader.\"\n\n\"How would you describe him?\" Baird asked, fishing for intel. \"If you don't mind me asking, Miss\u2026?\"\n\n\"Call me Naomi,\" the neighbor answered. \"Everybody else does.\" She took another drag on her cigarette. \"Guess you'd call Gus a confirmed gambler, and not a very good one, honestly. Strictly small time and always in hock to somebody. Then again, he did win that lottery, so who am I to talk?\"\n\n\"Any chance he left a forwarding address?\" Stone asked.\n\n\"Not that I know. Like I told that other crew, he put this place in his rearview mirror the minute he got that big payout. Can't say I blame him, really.\"\n\nStone's ears perked up. \"Other crew?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Some Arab fellas just came looking for Gus yesterday, along with this bossy looker who was way out of Gus's league, frankly, and had something of an attitude. I told her and her boys just what I'm telling you, that Gus had hightailed it out of here in search of greener pastures, and that I never expect to see his sorry mug again.\" Naomi shook her head. \"Some people get all the luck.\"\n\n\"Don't they just.\" Stone glanced back at Dunphy's trailer. \"You think it would be okay if we poked around a bit, just to try to figure out where Gus might have gotten to?\"\n\n\"Because of those library books,\" Cassandra added. \"There's a waiting list, you see, of people just dying to read those books.\u2026\"\n\nEnough is enough, Cassie, Stone thought. No need to lay it so thick.\n\n\"Go ahead.\" Naomi shrugged. \"No skin off my nose.\"\n\nA baby wailed inside her trailer, calling her from her chair. She stubbed out her cigarette and rose creakily to her feet. \"Now if you don't mind, I've gotta see to my grandnephew.\"\n\n\"Understood, ma'am,\" Stone said cordially. \"Thanks again for your assistance.\"\n\n\"Coming all this way for library books,\" she muttered, shaking her head. \"Now I've heard everything.\u2026\"\n\nShe vanished into her trailer, leaving the team free to talk openly among themselves.\n\n\"Seems like we're not the only people looking for Dunphy,\" Ezekiel said. \"Who do we think that other crew is?\"\n\n\"From the sound of it, it could be anybody,\" Stone said. \"Nothing like a million bucks to bring plenty of interested parties out of the woodwork: creditors, scam artists, you name it.\"\n\nA worried expression came over Cassandra's face. \"You think we have competition?\"\n\n\"Too soon to tell,\" Baird said. \"This other crew could just be after Dunphy's money, not anything magic. Heck, we don't even know what we're actually looking for yet, let alone if somebody else is after it.\"\n\n\"My money's on a lucky horseshoe,\" Ezekiel said. \"What with Gus being a gambler and all.\"\n\n\"I'll take that bet,\" Stone said. \"Baird's right. It could be anything. A lucky coin, a crystal ball, a deal with the devil, or something else entirely.\"\n\nEzekiel grinned. \"Care to make it interesting?\"\n\n\"Wow,\" Baird said, rolling her eyes. \"One hour in Vegas and you're both infected with gambling fever.\"\n\nStone shrugged. \"Nothing wrong with a friendly wager.\" He smirked at Ezekiel. \"Twenty bucks says it's not a horseshoe.\"\n\n\"You got yourself a bet, mate. Better keep a twenty handy.\"\n\n\"Well, leave me out of it.\" Baird sighed impatiently, like a harried schoolteacher trying to ride herd on a passel of unruly kids on a field trip. \"Maybe we can get on with our investigation?\"\n\n\"Any time,\" Stone said.\n\nThey headed back to Dunphy's trailer. Baird nodded at the closed front door.\n\n\"Time to work your magic, Jones. Get us into this trailer.\"\n\n\"A tragic waste of my talents.\" He reached for the door handle. \"I could break into this tin can with both eyes closed and one hand tied behind my\u2014\"\n\nThe door swung open easily.\n\nStone was impressed. \"Smooth work, man.\"\n\n\"It wasn't me.\" Ezekiel sounded vaguely disappointed as he fiddled with the handle. \"This lock has already been jimmied, and not by an amateur.\"\n\nStone scowled. \"Not sure I like the sound of that.\"\n\n\"Me neither,\" Baird said, drawing her gun. \"Watch yourselves.\"\n\nThey cautiously entered the darkened trailer, with Baird taking point and clearing the corners. Stone flipped a light switch, but nothing happened. He guessed that power had been disconnected and drew back some window curtains instead. Sunlight invaded the trailer, revealing that parties unknown had already ransacked Dunphy's former residence. Closets, cupboards, and drawers had been emptied, their contents carelessly dumped onto the floor. Unpaid bills, most labeled \"FINAL NOTICE,\" littered the main living area, next to an overturned wastebasket. Plywood and laminate had been peeled off the walls in search of concealed hiding places. Even the mattress in the sleeping compartment had been sliced open and rifled through. Handfuls of cheap foam padding were strewn about the room.\n\n\"Somebody's tossed the place,\" Stone said. \"But looking for \u2026 what?\"\n\n\"Good question.\" Baird put away her gun. \"On the bright side, it definitely looks like we're onto something. This is suspicious, or promising, or maybe promisingly suspicious.\"\n\nEzekiel surveyed the mess disdainfully, as though he didn't see anything worth stealing. \"You think it was that Middle Eastern crew the old lady mentioned?\"\n\n\"Possibly,\" Baird said. \"But what were they looking for, and did they find it?\"\n\n\"The only person who might know that is Dunphy,\" Cassandra said. \"Too bad we don't know where he disappeared to.\"\n\n\"Are you kidding?\" Ezekiel asked. \"You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes\u2014or our old friend Moriarty\u2014to figure that out. This is Vegas. Where else would a diehard gambler who has just come into money go?\"\n\n\"The Strip,\" the other Librarians realized in unison.\n\n\"Took you long enough.\" Ezekiel beamed in anticipation. \"Viva Las Vegas.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "Six thousand miles, seven time zones, and more than twelve hours after departing the Library and New York City, Flynn arrived in Iraq. Dust, heat, and swaying palm trees greeted him, but there was nary a genie or flying carpet to be seen. The twenty-first century had been hard on Baghdad. Three years into the American occupation, the former home of the House of Wisdom was still effectively a war zone, torn apart by insurgency, strife, and a devastated infrastructure. An armored vehicle, along with an armed military escort, was required to travel safely from the airport to the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, which was pretty much the only secure part of the city. Peering out through the tinted, bulletproof windows of the airport shuttle, Flynn caught glimpses of a city under siege. Military helicopters buzzed overhead, while US troops and tanks patrolled the streets. Years of tanks and mortar shells had pitted the city streets, making for a bumpy ride through heavy traffic.\n\nIt was a far cry from the Baghdad of the Golden Age, hundreds of years ago, when the city had been a center of science and learning known throughout the civilized world for the quantity and quality of its libraries, where scores of dedicated scholars and scribes had devoted themselves to preserving, translating, and building upon the accumulated wisdom of ancient Greece, Persia, China, and India. Under the reign of such legendary caliphs as the great Harun al-Rashid, Baghdad had shone brightly while Europe was still mired in the Dark Ages. Gazing soberly out the window, Flynn felt a pang in his heart, remembering the city's glorious past and contributions to civilization. It was hard to imagine the likes of Sinbad or Aladdin swashbuckling through the war-ravaged Baghdad of today.\n\nBut perhaps the Forty Thieves were still at work?\n\nEven gaining access to occupied Iraq was tricky these days, but Charlene had managed to pull the necessary strings to get Flynn a visa. In theory, his visit to Baghdad was part of the ongoing effort to recover precious antiquities and documents that had gone missing during the looting back in 2003, in the early days of the invasion. As cover stories went, it was a pretty good one; it made sense that an expert from the New York Metropolitan Library might be involved in the recovery effort. Flynn hadn't even needed to fake his credentials.\n\nFor once.\n\nFortunately, the Baghdad Museum of Arts and Antiquities was located in the Green Zone, so Flynn didn't have to worry about navigating the unsecured streets, where a lone American librarian might easily find himself in trouble. After passing through a series of gates and checkpoints, Flynn's transport dropped him off outside the museum. Clutching his solitary suitcase, he abandoned the air-conditioned comfort of the shuttle to step out into the overpowering heat and sunlight. Blinded by the sudden glare, he stumbled onto the sidewalk before remembering the sunglasses tucked into the front pocket of his safari jacket. He fumbled blindly for them.\n\n\"Mr. Carsen?\"\n\nAn attractive woman, about Flynn's age, was waiting for him at the curb. Curly brown hair framed her face. Conservative Western attire, of a professional nature, looked good on her.\n\n\"That's me,\" he answered. \"But, please, call me Flynn.\"\n\n\"Dr. Shirin Masri,\" she said, introducing herself in flawless English, albeit with an appealingly exotic accent. \"I'm the curator of the Rare Documents Archives here at the museum. I was told to expect you.\"\n\nHer neutral tone made it unclear if she was happy about this or not. Dark brown eyes looked Flynn over skeptically. They were nice eyes, he noticed, and more than a little distracting.\n\nUh-uh, he cautioned himself. Keep your mind on the business at hand.\n\n\"Thanks for meeting me.\" He held out his hand, while trying to smooth a stubborn cowlick back in place with his other hand. \"My apologies if I seem a bit discombobulated, what with the twelve-hour flight and all. Jet lag cramps my style, I'm afraid.\"\n\nShe shook his hand, holding it not a moment longer than necessary.\n\n\"I'm not sure you needed to come all this way. I've already spoken with the authorities about the recent theft.\" She eyed him quizzically. \"You're with the New York Metropolitan Library, or so they tell me?\"\n\n\"That's right. Part of a new task force investigating black-market trafficking in rare manuscripts and relics.\"\n\n\"I wasn't aware of any such task force,\" she said.\n\n\"Well, we're more interested in results than publicity.\" He wiped his brow, which was already perspiring in the heat. \"Any chance we can move this discussion indoors? I haven't quite adapted to the climate yet.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said. \"Come with me.\"\n\nHis luggage rolled and bounced on a paved walkway as she guided him into the museum, which, like the city itself, had seen better days. Armed guards were posted at the front entrance, which was possibly a textbook case of closing the barn door after the horse had already been rustled. A sign out front indicated that the museum was presently closed to the public.\n\n\"We've been closed since the looting a few years ago,\" Shirin explained, \"while trying to reconstruct the collection.\" Frustration tinged her voice. \"We were on the verge of reopening when this happened.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Flynn said sincerely as they entered the building. Stark white walls strived not to compete with the ages-old artifacts and statuary on display. Glass display cases held souvenirs from thousands of years of recorded history. \"Do the authorities have any idea who is responsible?\"\n\n\"If they do, they haven't told me.\"\n\nCrime-scene tape still sealed the lobby of the museum. A chalk outline on the floor reminded Flynn that, according to what he'd been able to learn about the burglary on the plane, at least one security guard had been killed by the thieves, his throat cut quickly and efficiently sometime during the heist. He gulped at the thought, while noticing that Shirin averted her eyes from the outline.\n\n\"Tariq Hassan,\" she said quietly. \"He was a good man. Honest and incorruptible.\"\n\n\"I'm sure he was,\" Flynn said. \"I'm sorry \u2026 again.\"\n\n\"Not your fault,\" she said, shrugging. \"But thank you.\"\n\nPassing by galleries of ancient statuary, tapestries, and relics, which had apparently gone untouched by the thieves, they arrived at Shirin's office in the Archives section of the museum. A plethora of volumes and scrolls were stacked in the corners of the office, waiting to be reshelved. An overturned bookcase needed to be righted. A spinning fan struggled to combat the heat and stuffiness; apparently the museum's air conditioning was another casualty of war.\n\n\"Here we are,\" she said. \"Sorry about the mess. We're still picking up the pieces after the robbery.\" She sat down behind a cluttered desk, whose disorganized state would probably have given Charlene a heart attack. \"Take a seat \u2026 if you can find one.\"\n\nRooting around, Flynn found a chair buried beneath a pile of books. He cleared it off before sitting down. The cramped, overstuffed office offered barely more leg room than the plane had.\n\n\"Don't get too comfortable,\" she said impatiently. \"No offense, but I can't really spare you much time right now. Like I said, I've already spoken with the local authorities, and, as you can see, I've got plenty of work to do putting things back where they belong.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" he said, getting down to business. \"So I'm told the thieves targeted the Archives specifically. Do you have any idea of what they were after?\"\n\n\"Well, I'm still in the process of conducting a thorough inventory to determine exactly what might have been taken and what was left behind, but \u2026 yes, at least one item has gone missing,\" she said bitterly. \"A very rare and precious item.\"\n\n\"And that would be?\"\n\n\"Possibly the oldest existing edition of the Kitab Alf Layla Wa-Layla, or, as it's known in the West, The Arabian Nights, or One Thousand and One Nights. This particular copy dated back to the eighth century, which makes it a good century older than any other version in existence.\"\n\n\"Whoa,\" Flynn said, impressed. \"In Persian or Arabic?\"\n\nHe was aware that that no complete edition of the Alf Layla, containing all 1001 tales, was known to exist and that the very origins of the book were obscured by the mists of time; as he understood it, current scholarship held that the celebrated Arabic version had been based on an even earlier Persian chronicle long lost to history. Subsequent translations and variations, including the early French and English editions, had taken the collected stories even further from their roots, to the extent that there was no definitive version of the text, only countless variations comprised of different combinations of stories. There were practically a thousand and one versions of One Thousand and One Nights.\n\n\"Ancient Persian,\" she said. \"A sixth-century Farsi script, to be exact. I had only recently stumbled onto the volume while cataloging a treasure trove of old documents captured from one of Saddam's palaces.\" Her eyes lighted up at the memory. \"You can imagine my excitement when I realized what I had discovered. Mind you, I'm not saying that it was the original text, said to be penned by Scheherazade herself, but it was older and more authentic than any other surviving copy of the Alf Layla. I was in the process of translating it when\u2014\"\n\nShe gestured at the messy aftermath of the robbery.\n\n\"This whole travesty makes me sick to my stomach, not to mention mad as hell. I really wish you could help me, Mr. Carsen, but I'm afraid that one-of-a-kind copy of the Alf Layla has been lost again, perhaps forever this time.\"\n\n\"Never underestimate a determined Librarian,\" he said, while wondering how the thieves had found out about the book in the first place. \"How many people knew about your discovery?\"\n\n\"I'd mentioned it to a few of my colleagues and fellow curators,\" she said, shrugging. \"It never occurred to me to keep it a secret. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.\"\n\n\"You can't blame yourself. It's not your fault that some bad people got wind of the book's existence. You were just doing your job.\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" she said, sounding unconvinced. \"But speaking of my job, I really do need to get back to it.\" She stood up behind her desk, as though to signal that the interview was over. \"I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing.\"\n\nI wouldn't say that, he thought. If nothing else, he had discovered what the thieves had absconded with, even if he still wasn't quite sure if this was a matter for the Library. A unique, centuries-old edition of The Arabian Nights was undoubtedly a priceless item, well worth stealing, and its theft a genuine loss to legitimate scholars and historians, but he wasn't convinced that this was \"fate of the world\" territory. Sometimes a museum heist was just a museum heist.\n\n\"I'm staying at the Tigris Hotel, at least overnight.\" He handed her a business card with his cell phone number on it. \"If you think of anything else\u2026\"\n\n\"Don't get your hopes up, Mr. Carsen. The Alf Layla is gone, and, frankly speaking, I doubt that the New York Metropolitan Library can do anything about that. This was, by all indications, a professional operation, executed with merciless precision. I suspect you're out of your league.\"\n\nFlynn shrugged.\n\n\"You'd be surprised.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "The Tigris Hotel catered to visiting American contractors and consultants. Like much of the Green Zone, it was an oasis of air conditioning and steady electricity amid the privations of war-torn Iraq. Exhausted by his nonstop journeying, Flynn barely registered the relative comfort of his accommodations before collapsing onto the bed with his clothes on. He was out like a light within seconds.\n\nBut that didn't necessarily mean that he was off the job.\n\nDreaming, he found himself wandering through a crowded outdoor marketplace in the long-lost Baghdad of The Arabian Nights. Bearded men wearing turbans and robes haggled over fine goods, spices, and produce from all across the known world: silk and paper and porcelain from far-off China, coconuts and sandalwood from India, grain and linen from Egypt, perfumes from Arabia, succulent fruits from Persia and beyond, all brought to Baghdad by countless caravans and sailing ships. The mouthwatering aroma of cooking fish and lamb competed with the smells of myriad spices wafting on the breeze. Gleaming palaces and mosques, topped by gilded onion domes and towering minarets, climbed toward the sky, in contrast to the humble beggars pleading for alms in the streets and alleys. Mules and camels made their way through the packed buyers and sellers, transporting yet more wares to the market. Money changers converted silver Persian dirhams for gold Byzantine denarii and vice versa, bridging East and West. A storyteller held a small crowd transfixed by tales of doomed lovers, capricious genies, and fiendish ghouls waiting in the wastes for unwary travelers. Veiled women peered out from behind the filmy curtains of gilded palanquins born on poles atop the shoulders of brawny servants. Glancing down, Flynn saw that he was dressed like a Hollywood version of Ali Baba or Sinbad, complete with an embroidered vest, silk pantaloons, and a sash around his waist.\n\nYep, he thought. I'm definitely dreaming.\n\nRoaming idly through the colorful scene, he paused before a small bookshop tucked away in a side street. A pair of gold-tinted bookends on display at the front of the shop caught his eye; fashioned in the shape of twin lions, they looked like miniature versions of the sculpted golden felines guarding the entrance to the Library back in Manhattan. He pushed forward through the crowd to get a better look, only to step into a fragrant heap of camel dung.\n\n\"Watch your step,\" a familiar voice warned him, a moment too late. \"Oh, never mind.\"\n\n\"Judson?\" Flynn turned to see his mentor standing nearby, clutching the reins of a particularly cranky-looking camel. A traditional Arab robe was draped over the former Librarian's slight form. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"I, I'm not doing anything,\" Judson stammered. \"This is your dream, isn't it?\"\n\n\"So I thought,\" Flynn replied suspiciously. This wasn't the first time Judson had appeared to him as a dream or mirage. \"You ever going to tell me how exactly you pull off stunts like this?\"\n\n\"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Flynn. I'm undoubtedly just a figment of your subconscious, talking back to you.\" He glanced with distaste at Flynn's soiled boot. \"But, just for the sake of argument, if I was here talking to you for real, what would you have to tell me? Have you learned anything more about that robbery at the museum?\"\n\n\"Possibly,\" Flynn said, maintaining a safe distance from the camel. Even in a dream, he didn't feel like getting bitten. \"I spoke with the curator of the Archives, and she mentioned that one particular item had apparently been stolen by thieves.\"\n\nHe quickly filled Judson in on what Shirin Masri had told him about the lost copy of the Alf Layla.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" Judson said, sounding distinctly troubled by the news. The worry lines on his face grew even deeper than usual, and he shook his head gravely. \"That's, that's very troubling to hear. I was afraid it might be something along those lines.\"\n\n\"How come?\" Flynn asked. \"I mean, The Arabian Nights is just a collection of folk tales.\" He regarded Judson curiously. \"Isn't it?\"\n\n\"'The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs' is a folk tale,\" Judson reminded him, \"but I still have to clean out its coop every morning. There's more truth to the old myths and legends than today's modern world wants to admit, and that applies to the Thousand and One Tales of Scheherazade as well, particularly in their original tellings.\"\n\nFlynn could believe it. If there was one thing he'd learned as the Librarian, it was to check his twenty-first-century skepticism at the door when it came to fantastic stories from bygone days. If the Sword in the Stone and the Medusa's Head were real, why not the myriad wonders of The Arabian Nights as well?\n\n\"All right,\" he said. \"Assuming the bad guys had a reason for stealing the Alf Layla, besides it being priceless and all, what's their endgame? What are they really after?\"\n\n\"What the Forty have always been after, since the sacking of the House of Wisdom more than seven hundred years ago,\" Judson guessed. \"Aladdin's Lamp.\"\n\n\"Aladdin's Lamp!\" Flynn could not contain his excitement. \"That's for real?\"\n\nJudson gave him a look.\n\n\"Never mind,\" Flynn said sheepishly. \"Of course it is. So what's the actual scoop on the Lamp? Are we talking wishes, a genie, the whole nine yards?\"\n\n\"Pretty much,\" Judson said. \"Aladdin's Lamp is arguably the most powerful magical relic described in The Arabian Nights and the most dangerous \u2026 in more ways than one.\"\n\nFlynn wasn't sure what Judson meant by that. \"Okay, I can see why letting the Forty gain control of a wish-granting genie would be bad news for everyone else, but is there another downside I'm missing?\"\n\n\"Very much so,\" Judson explained. \"As unfortunate as it would be if the Lamp fell into wrong hands, the greater threat is the Djinn trapped inside the Lamp. Djinn are spirits of fire, and not necessarily friendly ones. Every time the Lamp is rubbed and a wish is granted, it imparts energy to the confined Djinn, who will eventually grow strong enough to break free of the spell binding him to the Lamp.\" Judson shuddered at the thought. \"Aladdin's Lamp has been missing for centuries. There's no way of telling just how fragile the Lamp is at this point or how many more wishes it will take to shatter it, releasing the Djinn for good.\"\n\n\"Which would not be a happy ending, I take it?\"\n\n\"Hardly. Djinn are capricious, often vindictive entities. They lack imagination, which is why they rely on human beings to make wishes for them, but they bitterly resent humans for the same reason. And this particular Djinn, the one confined in Aladdin's Lamp, is more vengeful than most.\" Judson's voice took on a forceful tone, losing its characteristic stammer. \"Whatever you do, Flynn, no matter how tempting, you must not rub the Lamp. Remember that.\"\n\n\"Got it,\" Flynn said. \"So we have no idea where the Lamp is hiding these days?\"\n\n\"The final resting place of the Lamp has been a mystery for ages, which is where I fear Dr. Masri's stolen copy of the Alf Layla comes in. None of the previously known translations of The Arabian Nights reveal where the Lamp ended up after Aladdin's time, but perhaps an even earlier version, closer to the original source of the legend\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014might contain a clue on where to find the Lamp,\" Flynn said, getting the picture. \"Sounds to me like maybe I need to talk to Dr. Masri again, and find out if she managed to translate the Aladdin story before the book was stolen.\"\n\n\"I'd do that,\" Judson advised. \"Preferably before the same idea occurs to the Forty.\"\n\nFlynn winced at the thought of the ruthless thieves targeting Shirin Masri.\n\n\"I can't stress how important this is, Flynn. You cannot let the Forty obtain Aladdin's Lamp, or allow the Djinn to break free of the Lamp. Both prospects are, well, alarming to the extreme.\"\n\n\"Message received,\" Flynn said. \"Loud and clear.\"\n\n\"Glad, glad to hear it. We're counting on you, Flynn. And, oh, one more thing.\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Flynn asked.\n\n\"Watch out for the camel.\"\n\nToo late! The camel spat in Flynn's face, spraying him with gloppy green drool.\n\n\"Aaagh!\" Flynn woke with a start, wiping his face frantically, only to find it mercifully free of camel drool. Sitting up straight in his hotel room, he needed a moment to reorient himself as the sights and sounds and smells of medieval Baghdad receded and reality snapped back into place. A digital alarm clock informed him that it was late afternoon, local time.\n\nBut though the dream was already fading in his memory, the gist of his \"conversation\" with Judson stayed with him.\n\nAladdin's Lamp. A vengeful genie. The Forty.\n\nAnd Shirin.\n\nI need to get to her, he realized, before anyone else does!"
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "The Barani Street market was still going strong as Shirin made her way home from the museum. Rows of open-air stalls hawking everything from books to fabrics to spices lined the narrow avenue, while more shops occupied the maze of surrounding streets and alleys, many of which didn't even have names. Merchants called out to passersby, extolling their wares. The tantalizing aromas of coffee, black pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, cumin, ginger, cloves, and other spices wafted through the air. Concrete barriers at both ends of the street were an unpleasant reminder of the realities of modern-day Baghdad. Shirin enjoyed browsing in the market on her way home most afternoons, but remained alert and on guard for any possible threats. You couldn't be too careful these days.\n\n\"Fresh spices! Best prices!\" a merchant called out to her from his stall. Brightly colored heaps of powdered spices created a festive display. \"Paprika! Turmeric! Saffron!\"\n\nEnticed by the vibrant colors and smells, Shirin paused to inspect the spices. There was a curfew in effect after sundown, but she figured she still had time to do a little shopping and make it home before dark. She put down her battered black attach\u00e9 case, tucking it between her feet for safekeeping. Come to think of it, she was running low on nutmeg.\u2026\n\nDistracted, she let her guard drop a moment too long.\n\n\"Don't react. Don't say anything,\" a husky female voice whispered in her ear as a figure came up behind her and pressed the tip of a knife of against her ribs. \"You're coming with us, Dr. Masri.\"\n\nDespite the heat, Shirin felt her blood freeze. She had no idea who was holding the knife, and she was afraid to look back over her shoulder, but all at once she was in mortal danger. If only she had gone straight home after work, or paid more attention to her surroundings\u2026!\n\nFirst the robbery at the Archives, she thought. Now this.\n\n\"There's a car waiting at the north end of the street, beyond the barricades,\" the other woman said. \"Come quietly, and you won't be harmed.\"\n\nShirin doubted that, but she saw no choice but to comply. There was a black-market cannister of Mace in her pocket, but it might as well have been on the other side of the Persian Gulf for all that she could reach it before her captor slid the blade between her ribs. She started to turn away from the spice stand, wondering if she would live to see tomorrow.\n\n\"Dr. Masri,\" another voice called out to her. \"Fancy meeting you here.\"\n\nTo her surprise, Flynn Carsen stepped out in front of her, blocking her path. Beneath a traditional white headscarf, the well-meaning American wore an open, guileless expression, clearly oblivious to her plight. Shirin wasn't sure whether to be grateful for the interruption or alarmed by his interference. Her situation was dire enough without a loose-cannon librarian complicating things.\n\n\"Mr. Carsen,\" she said, doing her best to keep a quaver out of her voice. \"I didn't expect to see you here.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess it's true what they say. Everybody comes to the Barani Street market.\" He nodded at the figure behind her. \"Who's your friend?\"\n\n\"Nobody in particular.\" The mystery woman discreetly prodded Shirin with the knife. \"But we really must be going.\"\n\n\"What's the rush?\" Flynn seemed in no hurry to move along. \"We haven't even been properly introduced.\" He held out his hand. \"Flynn Carsen. New York Metropolitan Library.\"\n\n\"You're a long way from home, Mr. Carsen,\" the woman said, not volunteering her own name. \"And, if I may say so, perhaps out of your element. The streets of Baghdad are not always safe for lone Americans, not in these troubled times.\"\n\nGlancing around, Shirin saw that the conversation was indeed attracting attention from the merchants and shoppers crowding the marketplace. Suspicious, even hostile glares turned in their direction. Again, she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. She suspected that her would-be kidnapper was not appreciating this kind of scrutiny.\n\n\"Thanks for the warning,\" Flynn said. \"But how could I resist checking out this market while I was in the vicinity? I just had to soak up the atmosphere, you know? Check some of the local color.\" He gawked like a tourist at the bustling market all around them. \"Did you know that this was one of the very first paved streets in the city, and that there's been a public market on this site since at least the late Abbasid period back around seven fifty AD or so?\"\n\nFurther up the street, where the knife-wielding woman had been steering Shirin, three grim-faced men began to shove their way through the crowd toward them. Indignant protests greeted their progress. Shirin recalled that the other woman had spoken of \"we\" before. She guessed that the other kidnappers were growing impatient, which could put Carsen in serious jeopardy as well.\n\nI can't let that happen, she thought. It's not his fault that he's in the wrong place at the wrong time.\n\n\"It's good to see you again, Mr. Carsen, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Flynn,\" he corrected her. \"Please.\"\n\n\"All right, Flynn.\" She saw the other kidnappers drawing closer and realized that she needed to get rid of Flynn before he became a target, too. Her mouth felt as dry as the desert. \"But my \u2026 friend \u2026 is right. We really need to get going. Perhaps some other time?\"\n\n\"Careful. I'm going to hold you to that,\" he began, only to be distracted by the spice merchant's wares. \"Hey, is this turmeric?\" He scooped up a big handful of bright orange powder. \"Wow. You never see anything this fresh at the supermarket back home.\" He held up his palm to show the woman behind Shirin. \"I mean, look at that color\u2014\"\n\nWithout warning, he blew the powder into the woman's face. She sputtered and coughed as the spice hit her like a face full of tear gas. Seizing the opportunity, Shirin elbowed the woman in the gut, causing her to stagger backward, gasping for breath. Shirin felt the knife tip pull away from her and sprang forward in the opposite direction, practically colliding with Flynn.\n\n\"Looked like you could use a hand,\" he said, over the spice dealer's strident protests. He grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the stand. \"Quick! Come with me. I've done this kind of thing before.\"\n\nShe stared at him incredulously. \"You have?\"\n\n\"Trust me.\"\n\nShirin didn't think she had much choice. She started to go with him, then remembered something important.\n\n\"My briefcase!\"\n\n\"Leave it,\" he said, tugging on her.\n\n\"Not a chance!\" She pulled her hand free and darted back toward the case, which was still resting on the pavement in front of the spice stand. She grabbed it by the handle, relieved that it hadn't gotten displaced in the confusion. No way was she leaving the case\u2014and its contents\u2014behind.\n\n\"Stupid girl! You should have run while you had the chance!\"\n\nFor the first time, Shirin got a look at her attempted abductor, although the other woman's irate face was obscured by tears, snot, and spice. Shirin got a quick impression of a twentyish young woman wearing a traditional black cloak and headdress. Kohl-lined eyes and a golden nose stud adorned her natural beauty. She lunged at Shirin with her knife held high.\n\nSo much for taking me alive.\u2026\n\nYears of living in a combat zone had honed Shirin's reflexes and taught her how to defend herself if she had to. Thinking fast, she swung the briefcase up to deflect the knife attack, then kicked the other woman in the knee, causing her to stumble backward, cursing.\n\nYou had that coming, Shirin thought. Witch.\n\n\"Wow,\" Flynn said, reappearing at her side. \"Remind me not to get on your bad side.\"\n\nShirin would have liked to get a few more licks in, but she knew they couldn't linger. Glancing north, she saw the woman's accomplices getting nearer. The murderous looks on their faces left no doubt whose side they were on.\n\n\"We have to go,\" Shirin warned Flynn. \"There are more of them.\"\n\n\"You mean those bruisers heading toward us?\" he said without looking. \"Already on my radar.\"\n\nHe took hold of her hand again and they made tracks toward the southern end of the market, away from the oncoming kidnappers. The bustling crowd impeded them, so that Shirin felt as though she was swimming up the Euphrates against a heavy current. She held on tightly to her attach\u00e9 case with her free hand, terrified of losing it in the crush. She could only pray that the tightly packed throng was slowing their pursuers as well.\n\n\"Excuse me!\" Flynn shouted, in alternating English and Arabic. \"Coming through!\"\n\nThey had almost reached the end of the street when Shirin spotted four more men, looking equally hostile, pushing their way through the crowd toward them. One of them pointed at Shirin and shouted to his accomplices. \"There she is! Don't let her get away!\"\n\nShe and Flynn came to an abrupt halt, briefly causing a pedestrian traffic jam. Looking behind her, she saw their original pursuers gaining on them. They were less than half a block away and eating up that distance quickly. Any hope of escape was fading fast.\n\n\"How many of these goons are there?\" she asked out loud.\n\n\"Best guess?\" Flynn replied. \"Forty, tops.\"\n\nHis glib reply caused her to stop short and stare at him in bafflement. \"Huh?\"\n\n\"Granted,\" he said, elaborating, \"I suppose that not all of the Forty are muscle. That number is bound to include bosses, spies, smugglers, safecrackers, assassins, and other criminal types. Maybe even an inside man\u2014or woman\u2014at your museum. Which probably cuts down on the number of personnel actually employed in a simple kidnapping operation like this.\u2026\"\n\nShe couldn't believe he was babbling like this\u2014in full paragraphs, no less\u2014while they were running for their lives. She looked about desperately for another escape route.\n\nBy now, the commotion was beginning to register on the crowd around them. Worried shoppers, not entirely sure what was happening, clutched their burdens close to them and tried to distance themselves from Flynn and Shirin, at least as much as possible amidst the press of the crowd. Wary shopkeepers looked on with concern. Braver souls raised their voices in objection to the scowling kidnappers rudely forcing their way past the shoppers. A foolhardy young man, inspecting a display of pots and pans, refused to get out of the way and was roughly shoved aside, smashing into the stall. Copper and cast iron clattered onto the pavement, adding to the clamor.\n\nAt least they're not opening fire, Shirin thought. Maybe to avoid attracting the US patrols and helicopters?\n\nBut the men were still closing in on them. Shirin extracted the Mace from her pocket, but she doubted it would do much good against an entire gang of kidnappers. She and Flynn were outnumbered and underequipped.\n\n\"They're all around us,\" she whispered. \"They're not going to let us get away.\"\n\n\"Maybe, maybe not.\" Flynn tightened his grip on her hand. \"Stay close.\"\n\n\"Wait. What are you going to do?\"\n\nInstead of explaining, he cupped his other hand around his mouth like a megaphone and shouted a single word in decent Arabic:\n\n\"BOMB!\"\n\nPandemonium erupted in the marketplace. Frantic vendors and pedestrians stampeded away from Flynn, bowling over the goons who had been converging on him and Shirin. For a moment, she feared that she had merely traded being kidnapped for being trampled, but, letting go of her hand, Flynn grabbed her by the waist and swung her up onto the table in front of a coppersmith's stall, away from the panicked mob. Dislodged pots and pans clattered noisily onto the pavement as he sprang up after her.\n\n\"Keep your head down,\" he advised, as they dived into the stall, which had already been abandoned by some terrified vendor. They crouched down behind the upset display, taking refuge in the stand. \"But be ready to run when I say so.\"\n\nShe gaped at him again, trying to make sense of what was happening.\n\n\"What kind of librarian are you?\"\n\n\"The kind who ends up in this sort of fix more often than you'd think.\" He poked his head up long enough to peek at the street. Agitated voices and pounding footsteps implied that the panicky exodus had yet to abate. \"The market's clearing out fast. We're not going to be able to hide here for long, since I don't think we can count on your 'friend' and her colleagues to give up anytime soon.\"\n\nShirin saw his point. She didn't want to get stuck in an empty market with nobody but the kidnappers, who were surely still after them. \"My apartment is only a few blocks away.\"\n\n\"Forget it,\" he said, shaking his head. \"That's the first place they'll look for you, if they haven't got it staked out already. Same with the museum.\"\n\n\"What about that hotel where you're staying?\"\n\nShe wasn't in the habit of visiting strange men's hotel rooms, but she was willing to make an exception in this case. Her life\u2014and her work\u2014were more valuable than her reputation.\n\n\"That's no good, either,\" he said. \"They may be onto me already \u2026 or will be soon.\"\n\nShirin didn't understand any of this. \"'They'?\" she echoed. \"Who are 'they' anyway?\"\n\n\"The Forty Thieves, presumably. Out for Aladdin's Lamp.\"\n\nHer jaw dropped. Of all the answers and explanations possible in these turbulent times, that was probably the last thing she'd expected to hear.\n\n\"You can't be serious. That's just \u2026 insane.\"\n\n\"Do I seem crazy to you?\" he asked. \"On second thought, don't answer that.\" He began to creep out from behind the stall. \"Anyway, we can talk about that later. Right now we need to get you away from the Forty.\"\n\nHe indicated an alley opening across the street. \"I don't suppose you know where that goes?\"\n\n\"No, not really.\" She spent most of her time commuting between her office and her apartment; she didn't pretend to know every back alley and side street in Baghdad. She wasn't sure anybody did. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"We'll have to risk it anyway,\" he said. \"You ready to make a run for it?\"\n\nShe swallowed hard and made sure she still had a tight grip on her case, which she was not letting out of her sight again. \"I think so.\"\n\n\"Good,\" he said. \"Go!\"\n\nBreaking from the shelter of the stand, they dashed across the now empty street into the waiting alley. She thought at first that maybe they were free and clear, but then she heard a furious female voice cry out: \"Over there! After them! Kill the man, but leave the woman alive \u2026 if you can!\"\n\nShirin didn't find that particularly encouraging.\n\nDashing through the narrow alley, which was barely wide enough for them to pass through side by side, they found themselves in a bewildering labyrinth of unmarked streets and alleys. Heaps of rubble littered the streets. Stray dogs, rooting in the trash piles, barked and fled from their approach. Shirin heard sirens in the background along with the whirr of vigilant Black Hawk helicopters.\n\n\"Maybe we should try to connect with the security forces?\" she suggested.\n\n\"Or not,\" Flynn said. \"To be honest, I'm not in a big hurry to explain why I started a bomb scare in a historic market. And we don't really have time to be detained by the authorities, not if we want to beat the Forty to the Lamp.\"\n\nThe Lamp, she thought. Aladdin's Lamp.\n\n\"Please tell me you didn't just say what I thought you said, because I really don't want to think that I'm trusting my life to a lunatic.\"\n\n\"What can I say?\" he said with a shrug. \"If it's any consolation, you're not the first woman to feel that way.\u2026\"\n\nThey came to a dead end and had to double back to an intersection that was partially blocked by loose debris. Shouts and pounding steps echoed through the warren of dusty alleys surrounding them, so that it sounded as though the kidnappers were around every corner.\n\nWhat was it that Flynn had said about there being forty of them?\n\n\"Spread out!\" shouted the woman with the knife, possibly from less than a block away. \"Find them, or there will be hell to pay!\"\n\nFlynn glanced up and down the alley ahead, clearly uncertain which way to go. Shirin knew how he felt. Another dead end could be the death of them.\n\n\"Any suggestions?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm afraid not. Too bad we don't have Aladdin's Lamp after all,\" she quipped, trying to keep her spirits up. \"We could just wish ourselves to safety.\"\n\n\"That would be a very bad idea,\" he replied, seemingly in all seriousness. \"Trust me.\"\n\nHearing bodies approaching from the left, they ran right. Shirin's heart pounded along with her feet as they raced blindly down yet another nameless side street. The sun was sinking in the sky, and people were retreating indoors in anticipation of the curfew. She envied them for actually having somewhere safe to go.\n\nWe can't just keep running forever.\u2026\n\nAll at once, Flynn skidded to a halt, so abruptly that he yanked her backward like an anchor. Turning to see what the matter was, she found him staring, transfixed, at a run-down, hole-in-the-wall bookshop that looked as though it might have been there since the glory days of the caliphs.\n\n\"No way,\" he murmured. \"It can't be \u2026 can it?\"\n\nFollowing his gaze, she saw that he was focused on a pair of shiny gold-colored bookends in the front window of the shop, fashioned in the shape of lounging lions.\n\n\"What?\" she asked. \"What is it?\"\n\nWas it just her imagination or were the footsteps behind them sounding louder and louder? She tugged on his arm, trying to get him moving again. \"Come on, Flynn! They're getting closer!\"\n\nBut Flynn seemed to have another idea in mind.\n\n\"I don't know about you,\" he said, \"but I feel a sudden need for reading material.\"\n\nWithout bothering to explain, he dragged her toward the bookshop. She was half convinced he had lost his mind entirely, but she followed after him anyway.\n\nWhat else was she supposed to do?"
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "Ali Baba's Palace was a deluxe new casino and resort nestled right on the Strip, the gaudy, neon-drenched stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that pretty much defined Sin City as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Gold-tinted domes and minarets, glittering in the sunlight like a sultan's treasure, crowned the main casino, which was obviously going for an Arabian Nights theme. A long Persian carpet led from the sidewalk to the imposing Moorish arch where buff doormen sporting turbans, scimitars, and open vests \"guarded\" the palace. Live camels and actors dressed as Bedouins trudged through mock sand dunes on either side of the crowded walkway. Throngs of excited tourists, out for a good time, flowed in and out of the casino, nearly swamping Ezekiel and the others as they passed through the archway.\n\n\"All right,\" he said, grinning from ear to ear. \"Now we're talking.\"\n\nHe was in his element. Easy money, fun, style, and a total lack of responsibility \u2026 who could ask for anything more?\n\n\"You sure this is the right place?\" Baird asked him. \"There's no shortage of ritzy casinos on the Strip, not to mention elsewhere in Vegas. The Bellagio, the Excalibur, the Luxor, et cetera. Plenty of places for Dunphy to gamble his new fortune away.\"\n\n\"Please!\" Ezekiel placed a hand over his heart, as though mortally wounded that she would even think to doubt him. \"Trust me, I know the security systems of every big casino like the back of my hand.\" He flaunted his customized smartphone. \"Took me all of ten minutes to hack into their databases and find out that an Augustus Dunphy was checked into a penthouse suite here at Ali Baba's.\"\n\n\"Doesn't mean he's not cruising the Strip,\" Stone pointed out, \"hitting all the other hot spots.\"\n\n\"True,\" Baird said, \"but this is best lead we have at the moment. Good work, Jones.\"\n\n\"You expected anything less?\" he replied. \"This is Ezekiel Jones you're dealing with.\"\n\n\"So you keep reminding us,\" Stone said crankily.\n\nEzekiel shrugged off Stone's remark. Why shouldn't he show off how awesome he was? Modesty didn't become him.\n\nLeading the way, he followed the crowd into Ali Baba's Palace, where some poor bloke dressed in a plush camel costume greeted guests and posed for pictures; rolling his eyes, Ezekiel guided the others through the palatial lobby to where the spacious gaming floor offered no end of eye-popping diversions and games of chance, all served up with a faux Arabian flavor. Slot machines, roulette wheels, and blackjack tables sprouted amidst the exotic decor. Cocktail waitresses dressed like harem girls, complete with gauzy veils, wound sinuously through the packed casino, delivering drinks to the gaming tables. Flashing lights and ringing bells added to the hubbub and laughter, nearly drowning out the piped-in Middle Eastern Muzak. Framed posters advertised an \"adult\" belly-dancing revue, playing twice daily.\n\n\"Oh, for Pete's sake,\" Stone grumbled. \"Give me a break.\"\n\nBaird glanced at him. \"Something wrong?\"\n\n\"Everything's wrong,\" he griped. \"They call this an Arabian palace? Look at it: it's a mishmash of styles and designs from over six hundred years of Islamic art and architecture, and from all over the Middle East. They're jumbling early second-dynasty Umayyad motifs with late Abbasid refinements, thrown together completely at random.\" He pointed indignantly at a decorative tile banner curving above a nearby archway. \"See, those are fourteenth-century Persian arabesques, but the intertwined calligraphy is early Arabic script\u2014ninth-century gliding Kufic, to be exact\u2014and complete gibberish to boot.\" He shook his head in dismay. \"Unbelievable.\"\n\n\"Lighten up, mate,\" Ezekiel said. \"It's a playground, not a museum.\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" Stone said irritably. \"But they could at least try to be a bit more authentic when it comes to the decor and architecture. Would it have killed them to hire somebody who actually knew something about classical Islamic art and design?\"\n\nEzekiel chuckled at how worked up Stone was getting about the phony Arabian trappings of the casino. It was funny how seriously he took his beloved art history jibber-jabber sometimes. \"Kind of think you're missing the point here, mate.\"\n\n\"We're Librarians,\" Stone insisted. \"We're supposed to care about this stuff.\" He looked to the third member of their trio, who had kept quiet up until now. \"Back me up on this here, Cassie \u2026 Cassie?\"\n\nConcern crept into his voice, displacing exasperation, as Cassandra was found to be transfixed by the overpowering sights and sounds of the casino floor, staring wide eyed at the garish spectacle. Her eyes were unfocused, her head swaying atop her slender neck. Her breathing quickened until she was almost hyperventilating.\n\n\"Patterns,\" she murmured under her breath, so that Ezekiel had to strain to hear her over the general clamor. \"Patterns and probabilities. Too many probabilities \u2026 calculating odds, counting cards, double or nothing, let it ride. Einstein said that God did not shoot dice with the universe, but quantum theory begs to differ. Progressive slots build to exponentially bigger jackpots. Roulette wheels keep on spinning; the odds against correctly betting on a single number are thirty-five to one, but American wheels have a single zero and European-style wheels have two. Two of a kind, two pairs, too many games, too many ways to win or lose.\u2026\"\n\n\"Oh, crap.\" Ezekiel recognized the symptoms. \"She's in meltdown mode.\"\n\nAlong with her brain tumor, Cassandra suffered from synesthesia, a condition that often caused her senses and synapses to get scrambled when she took in too much stimuli at once. She saw numbers as colors, smelled mathematics, and heard science like music in her ears. Auditory and visual hallucinations impinged on her senses, which were cross-wired to her photographic memory. At such times, she could get lost in her own rapid-fire calculations and streams of thought, resulting in a cerebral chain reaction that put her more or less out of commission. This hadn't happened in a while, however, and Ezekiel had thought she'd gotten the problem under control \u2026 until now.\n\n\"It's the sensory overload,\" Stone diagnosed. \"All this glitz and gaming. She can't process it all.\"\n\nMakes sense, Ezekiel thought. Casinos were supposed to be over-the-top and disorienting, the better to part you from your hard-earned cash. No wonder Cassandra's blowing a fuse.\n\n\"Can you talk her down?\" Baird asked Stone urgently. \"You've done it before.\"\n\n\"I'll give it my best shot.\" He took Cassandra gently by the shoulders and maneuvered himself so he blocked her view of the gaming floor. \"Cassie? Cassandra? Listen to me. Just look at me and tune everything else out. You hear me?\"\n\nShe blinked, as if she was trying to concentrate on what Stone was saying, but some sort of mental static was getting in the way.\n\n\"I'm trying, but\u2026\" She teetered unsteadily. Her eyes spun in their sockets, trying to take it all in along with whatever mathematical magic was going on in her brain. \"Percentages, possibilities, profits and losses\u2026\"\n\n\"Never mind that. Just let it go. You can do it. I know you can.\"\n\nEzekiel wasn't sure about that. This was as bad as he'd seen Cassandra for some time. What if Stone couldn't snap her out of it?\n\nBaird looked worried, too. \"Maybe we should just get her away from here and come back later?\"\n\n\"No!\" Cassandra blurted. \"I can manage. You don't need to coddle me. I just need a minute to get my thoughts under control.\" She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. \"Focus \u2026 focus \u2026 focusing \u2026 the Clipping Book, Dunphy, from the Annex to the chapel to the trailer to here\u2026\"\n\nEzekiel rooted for her. Come on, Cassandra. Shake it off.\n\nIt took more than a moment, but she somehow managed to pull herself together. Her eyes opened and she exhaled as she looked at her teammates instead of the bedazzling bedlam of the casino. She still looked a little shaky, but better than before.\n\n\"Okay,\" she said weakly. \"I'm back.\"\n\n\"You sure you're okay?\" Baird asked.\n\n\"I think so,\" she replied. \"Sorry about that. I just didn't expect it to be so \u2026 overwhelming.\"\n\n\"Don't beat yourself up about it,\" Stone said. \"You're hardly the first person to lose their bearings in Vegas.\" He snorted at the glorious excess surrounding them. \"You know what they say: what happens in Ali Baba's Palace stays in Ali Baba's Palace.\"\n\n\"Unless it ends up on YouTube,\" Ezekiel said to lighten the mood. \"Not that Cassandra's spell was terribly view-worthy.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" she said. \"I think.\"\n\nAs ever, Baird tried to get them back on mission. \"Any thoughts on how to find Dunphy in this mob scene?\"\n\n\"We could just stake out his room,\" Stone suggested, \"and wait for him to show up.\"\n\nEzekiel couldn't think of a more tedious prospect. The last thing he wanted to do in Vegas was camp out in a hotel corridor. Talk about a wasted opportunity, especially when he had a much better plan.\n\n\"Forget that,\" he said cheerfully. \"I know just where to find him.\"\n\n\"And where is that?\" Baird asked.\n\n\"Not playing the slots or anything penny-ante, that's for sure. He's living his dream here, being a high roller at last. He's going to go where the serious action is. High stakes, big players, lots of attention, the works.\"\n\n\"Which is?\" Stone pressed him.\n\n\"Just follow me.\" Ezekiel set off across the floor of the casino, never doubting that the others would fall in behind him. He strode briskly through the invigorating chaos and commotion, enjoying himself thoroughly. \"I know exactly where to find him \u2026 or I'm not Ezekiel Jones.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "Ezekiel's instincts proved correct, as he led them unerringly toward a raucous, high-stakes craps game that seemed to be attracting a whole lot of attention. Squeezing through a mob of whooping spectators, Baird spotted Dunphy seated at the table, blowing on a pair of dice. She recognized him at once from the photo in the news clippings. Dunphy was better dressed now, and he had a slightly better haircut, but he still gave off the air of somebody who spent too much time in casinos. An obviously fake spray tan suggested that he didn't get much sun in real life, and his designer clothes were already rumpled. He was a slight, scrawny fellow, with fuzzy red hair, googly eyes, and a weak chin, whose rather comical features were brightened by his beaming expression. He was obviously having the time of his life.\n\nJust as Jones predicted, Baird noted. I've got to give it to him: he knows his stuff, all right.\n\nA huge stack of chips rested in the chip slot in front of Dunphy, not far from a posted sign stipulating that the minimum bid at this table was a daunting twenty-five dollars. More chips were stacked on the green felt table, which was surrounded by a low padded wall. Giddy spectators cheered him on, while a skimpily clad server comped him to a free drink. He tipped her a green chip, while fiddling with a penny that he kept rolling back and forth between the fingers of his free hand.\n\n\"Let it ride!\" the crowd chanted. \"Let it ride!\"\n\nDunphy grinned, basking in the spotlight. \"What the heck? It's only money.\"\n\nTossing the dice with one hand, he bounced the dice off the far side of the pit. The audience and other players gasped in dismay as he crapped out by rolling a three. A dealer collected his previous winnings, but Dunphy shrugged off the loss. Wagering more chips, of recklessly large denominations, he rolled the bones again and came up with a winning seven. Cheers erupted as the dealer paid off.\n\n\"Now that's what I like to see!\" Dunphy said.\n\nPlaying boldly and betting all over the board, while soaking up the adulation and attention of the crowd, he swiftly built up his winnings to where they'd been before\u2014and then some. Dice bounced across the table. Brightly colored chips piled up before being exchanged for even higher value chips.\n\n\"Looks like his winning streak is still going strong,\" Stone said, \"more or less.\"\n\nBaird was reluctant to jump to conclusions. \"Could be he's just on a roll. It happens.\"\n\n\"No, not like this,\" Cassandra said, frowning. Her eyes lifted upward, studying her invisible calculations. \"He's not winning every throw, but he's still beating the odds to a degree that is statistically impossible, even allowing for random chance. The house, at the very least, should have an edge of 1.4 percent, so that the longer he plays, the more he should lose, and that edge goes way up the more aggressively he plays. Gus is betting recklessly, challenging the odds on every throw, but he's still winning like they're slanted in his favor.\"\n\n\"Check out that lucky penny he keeps fiddling with,\" Stone said. \"Wanna bet that's our magic talisman?\"\n\n\"Not necessarily,\" Ezekiel said. \"Might just be his personal good-luck charm. Lots of gamblers have them.\"\n\n\"Then why are we here?\" Stone said. \"Admit it, Jones. You were wrong about the horseshoe thing.\" He held out an open palm. \"Pay up, man.\"\n\n\"Not so fast, mate. I'm not conceding defeat until we've confirmed that coin is the real deal.\"\n\n\"What else could it be?\" Stone said. \"Get real.\"\n\nBaird intervened. \"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm with Jones. We need to get an official ruling before we act on our assumptions.\" She backed away from the craps table. \"You three keep an eye on Dunphy\u2014and that penny\u2014while I consult with Jenkins. Maybe he can shed some light here.\"\n\nRetreating from the frenetic clamor of the gaming floor, she sought out a (relatively) quiet corner in which to make a phone call. An outdoor courtyard, adjacent to the gaming floor, offered a portion of peace and privacy and she dialed up the Annex on her phone.\n\n\"Colonel?\" Jenkins answered immediately. \"How may I assist you?\"\n\nShe quickly filled him in on their investigation to date. \"So are we on the right track here? Is there really such a thing as a lucky penny?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. Pennies, silver dollars, doubloons, dinarii, drachmas, not to mention lucky socks, jewelry, and undergarments. Humanity has been using magic to try to manipulate the laws of probability since before we discovered fire, with profoundly mixed results. And the likelihood of such charms actually working has surely increased since wild magic was let back into the world.\"\n\nBaird nodded to herself. Once upon a time, as she understood it, magic had been more or less confined to certain rare sites and relics, making it much less prevalent in modern times than in ages past, but then a diabolical secret society known as the Serpent Brotherhood had conspired to reactivate long-dormant ley lines and cause \"wild\" magic to flow unchecked back into the world at large, resulting in a huge uptick in magical activity and a lot more work for the Librarians. Maybe Dunphy's lucky penny had been kick-started by that worldwide influx of loose magical energy as well?\n\n\"Give it to me straight,\" she said. \"How serious is this?\"\n\n\"Well, I'd have to examine the coin personally to be certain,\" Jenkins said. \"But make no mistake, Colonel, tampering with Dame Fortune can have truly dire consequences, and not just for the foolhardy soul who is rash enough to attempt it. Our entire reality is based on probabilities, from the subatomic level to the odds of an asteroid not hitting our planet. Throw probability out the window, and you can potentially set off an avalanche of unlikely occurrences spreading far beyond the immediate orbit of Mr. Dunphy to affect all of Las Vegas and its environs, with catastrophic results.\"\n\n\"But that's a worst-case scenario, right? What are the odds of things getting that bad?\"\n\n\"Weren't you listening?\" Jenkins said archly. \"The odds don't matter if chance itself is out of order. Even the most unlikely scenario can become likely if probability is taken out of the equation. Trust me on this, Colonel, Luck is anything but a lady. More like a two-faced trollop who will stab you in the back and break your heart when you least expect it.\"\n\n\"Er, you're being metaphorical, right?\" Baird asked.\n\n\"Am I?\" he asked, deadpan."
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "Cassandra winced as Dunphy rolled yet another seven. Just watching him beat the odds over and over, in defiance of anything resembling elementary statistics, made her head hurt. There had to be magic at work; it was the only explanation that made any sense.\n\n\"Heads up, folks.\" Baird rejoined the team at the craps table, which was still drawing a large crowd of raucous onlookers. \"I just spoke with Jenkins. We need to get our hands on that penny so that he can verify that it's our target.\"\n\n\"Leave it to me,\" Ezekiel said, confidently casing the scene. \"I don't suppose anyone has a spare penny? I never bother with small change myself.\"\n\nStone fished a penny from his jeans. \"Anything else you need?\"\n\n\"A distraction would be helpful,\" Ezekiel conceded, \"if not strictly required.\"\n\nStone glanced around the casino. \"I could start a ruckus,\" he suggested, maybe a bit too readily.\n\n\"Slow down, cowboy,\" Baird said. \"I know how much you enjoy a good brawl, but let's hold off on that option for the time being. I'd rather not bring hotel security down on us before we even know for sure what we're dealing with.\"\n\n\"Spoilsport,\" Stone muttered.\n\n\"I've been called worse.\" She turned toward Cassandra. \"What about you, Red? You up to trying to break the house?\"\n\n\"I think so,\" Cassandra said. \"But not at this table. The odds aren't playing by the rules here.\" She massaged her temples. \"It's making my head spin.\"\n\n\"Fair enough,\" Baird said. \"Choose your game.\"\n\nTurning away from the craps game, Cassandra surveyed the gaming floor. The dizzying mix of noise, lights, and gambling threatened to overwhelm her again, but she forced herself to focus on the task at hand, tuning out any and all distractions. Odds and angles flashed before eyes, swirling in space like luminous sigils, shifting and recalibrating along with her racing thoughts. She waved her hands as though conducting an orchestra, manipulating the hallucinatory symbols and equations as needed. Hypothetical roulette wheels spun in the air. Imaginary piles of chips rose and fell according to the relevant ratios and variables. Synesthesia scrambled her senses, so equations sang like melodies in her ears and numbers tasted like \u2026 doughnuts?\n\n\"Games of chance, games of skill and chance, fifty-two cards in a deck, six sides on a die, six ways to roll a natural seven, eighty numbers on a keno card, but only twenty balls are drawn each game, two ones equal snake eyes, two sixes are called boxcars, the odds of rolling either are thirty-six to one.\" She started speaking faster and faster, almost breathlessly. \"Baccarat is the French pronunciation of the Italian word for zero, there are zero to thirty-six numbers on a standard American roulette wheel, an ace is worth ten points except when it's only worth one.\u2026\"\n\n\"Cassandra?\" Baird asked. \"You okay?\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" she said, only slightly fibbing. To keep her brain from running amuck, she wiped each possible game from view before analyzing the next one. Games of pure chance, like keno or slots, were impossible to outwit; poker was as much about bluffing and body language as math; roulette wheels made her dizzy, and baccarat was just weird, but \u2026\n\n\"Blackjack.\" She dismissed the orbiting visuals with a swipe of her hand. \"A smart player can reduce the house edge to less than one percent. With my brain, I can do even better \u2026 in theory.\"\n\n\"Good enough for me,\" Baird said. \"Get to it, girlfriend.\"\n\nA high-stakes blackjack table was running not far from the crowd-pleasing action at the craps table. Taking a seat at the table, Cassandra gulped at the minimum bid. Hypothetical money was one thing. Actual cash, albeit transformed into shiny plastic chips, was something else again. It dawned on her that Jenkins had never really explained how the Library's finances worked or what the limits of their expense accounts were.\u2026\n\nStone procured a wad of cash from an ATM. \"You ever played this game before?\"\n\n\"Not in practice, but I think I've worked out a system.\"\n\nHe snorted. \"You and everybody else at this table.\"\n\n\"But I'm not everybody else,\" she reminded him.\n\n\"No, you're not.\" He backed off to let her get to it. \"Go to town, Cassie.\"\n\nShe sat down at the table and exchanged a hundred dollars in cash for chips. It was a six-deck game, to discourage card counting, but the casino hadn't reckoned on Cassandra's special talent for visualizing odds and keeping track of what cards had already been played. Unknown to the dealer and other players, probability tables shimmered above the table, instantly updating themselves with every hand and guiding her play. She started small, making modest bets to get a feel for the game, but soon stared betting more aggressively, depending on the cards she was dealt. She could literally taste the odds in her mouth, hear them singing only to her. Her modest stakes began to build at a geometric rate, doubling, tripling, quadrupling.\u2026\n\n\"Yes!\" she blurted as the dealer busted, multiplying her winnings. \"Chips ahoy!\"\n\nTo her surprise, she found herself having fun. The thrill of victory settled her nerves and sent a rush of adrenaline through her veins. I could get used to this.\n\n\"Easy does it, gambling queen,\" Baird said, standing behind her. \"Don't get carried away.\"\n\nIt was good advice; Cassandra could see now why some people got hooked on gambling, even if they couldn't play the odds as well as she could. She could only imagine how exciting it must be for people who couldn't predict if they were going to win or lose in the long run.\n\nAs she'd hoped, her winning streak began attracting more than its fair share of attention, luring people away from the craps table.\n\n\"Way to go, Red!\" a random spectator cheered her on. \"Keep it going!\"\n\nA gorgeous harem girl thrust an unsolicited martini into her hand. \"On the house, sweetie.\"\n\n\"Um, thanks.\"\n\nShe hadn't felt this popular since that time an enchanted storybook briefly turned her into Prince Charming. She understood intellectually that the casino was plying her with booze in hopes of impairing her judgment and keeping her at the table long enough for them to win their money back, but she figured a sip or two couldn't hurt.\n\nLike Ezekiel had said before, why not live a little?\n\nDespite the occasional loss, her winnings accumulated rapidly, especially when she started doubling down and splitting her bets. \"Blackjack!\" she called out as she flipped over her cards to display a natural twenty-one consisting of a queen of diamonds and an ace of hearts.\n\nReminds of that time we ran into the real Queen of Diamonds, she thought. Talk about a multifaceted individual.\u2026\n\n\"Excuse me, miss.\" A palace guard built like a bouncer squeezed through the crowd to reach Cassandra. \"Perhaps you should collect your winnings and call it a day.\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Cassandra said. \"I'm good.\"\n\nThe casino employee signaled the dealer to hold off. An edge crept into his voice. \"I'd strongly advise you to reconsider, miss. You've had a good run. Don't push your luck.\"\n\nHe plucked the half-finished martini from her hand.\n\n\"Hey!\" she protested. \"I wasn't done with that.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're done,\" he said firmly. \"Take the hint, why don't you?\"\n\nCassandra wasn't sure how to respond. She realized, belatedly, that the casino had apparently decided to cut off her winning streak, but they couldn't just bounce her from the table, could they?\n\n\"What's your deal, man?\" Stone challenged the guard, coming to her rescue. \"Let the lady play if she wants to.\"\n\n\"Please stay out of this, sir,\" the guard said. \"This is between the Palace and the lady.\"\n\n\"And, what if I want to make this my business?\" Stone got up in the guard's face. \"You got a problem with that, Ali Bubba?\"\n\nBaird shot him a cautionary look. \"Stone\u2026\"\n\nThe guard scowled. \"Don't make me evict you, sir. For the record, the management reserves the right to eject any player suspected of card counting.\"\n\n\"Card counting?\" Cassandra asked incredulously. \"With six decks in play? Do you even realize how ridiculously impossible that would be? I can run the numbers for you if you like. Six decks equals three hundred and twelve cards, which means twenty-four possible face cards, and approximately a one in a hundred chance of any particular value card turning up in any given hand, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Save it.\" Stone raised his voice so everybody in earshot could hear. \"Don't shut her down. Let her play.\" He threw out the question to the spectators. \"You all want her to keep playing, right? So let her play.\"\n\nThe crowd and the other players picked up the chant.\n\n\"Let her play! Let her play!\"\n\nCassandra smiled slyly. This was working out even better than she'd hoped.\n\nYou wanted a distraction, Jones?"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "\"Hey, what's going on over there?\" Dunphy asked, noticing the commotion at the blackjack table, which was now drawing an even bigger audience than his craps game. \"Where's everybody going?\"\n\nEzekiel took advantage of the thinning crowd to ease up behind Dunphy. \"Some gal is on fire playing blackjack. It's a pretty impressive run. You should check it out.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Dunphy sounded curious. Still playing with his lucky penny, he stood up to get a better look, craning his neck to try to see over the heads of the crowd. \"Good for her.\"\n\n\"Not that you aren't killing it yourself, mate.\" Ezekiel flashed the gambler his most winning smile. He held out his left hand, even though he was right-handed. \"Put it here. Maybe some of your luck will rub off on me.\"\n\n\"Uh, sure, I guess.\"\n\nStill distracted by the hoopla a few tables over, Dunphy popped the penny into his jacket pocket in order to shake Ezekiel's hand. The thief tried to not smirk too obviously.\n\n\"Excuse me, Mister Dunphy,\" the dealer asked. \"Are you still betting, sir?\"\n\nEzekiel wondered why the casino hadn't terminated Dunphy's winning streak yet. Maybe he was spending his proceeds on high-priced accommodations and amenities as quickly as he was raking it in? That penthouse suite didn't come cheap.\u2026\n\n\"Hold your horses, Jerry,\" said Dunphy, who was apparently on a first-name basis with the dealer. His attention was split between his own game and the action at the blackjack table, so that he barely noticed Ezekiel at all. \"Me and my chips ain't going nowhere.\"\n\n\"You tell him, mate!\" Ezekiel threw an arm over Dunphy's shoulder and thumped him on the chest. \"You're a real high roller, anyone can see that. You're calling the shots here, am I right?\"\n\nLike taking candy from a baby, he thought.\n\n\"Damn straight I am.\" He retrieved a penny from his pocket and blew on the dice in his other hand. \"Just get a load of this.\"\n\n\"No need, mate. You've obviously got this covered.\"\n\nEzekiel sidled over to the blackjack table, where a squirming palace guard was facing a small-scale insurrection. Chants of \"Let her play!\" indicated that Cassandra had already generated her own fan club. Confident in his own awesomeness, Ezekiel was perfectly fine with sharing the spotlight. He was just glad that Cassandra's brain hadn't short-circuited again.\n\nHe sidled up to Baird and slipped the real coin into her hand.\n\n\"Penny for your thoughts,\" he said. \"No, don't tell me. You're thinking how truly grateful you are to have a world-class thief and pickpocket on your side.\"\n\n\"And a mind reader, too,\" she said dryly. \"Amazing.\"\n\n\"I know!\" he said, grinning. \"Sometimes I even astound myself.\"\n\nBaird leaned forward to whisper to Cassandra. \"Objective achieved. You can call it quits now.\"\n\n\"Already?\" Disappointment showed on her face. \"But I was still winning.\"\n\n\"This is not the game that matters,\" Baird reminded her. \"We have the penny. That's the important thing.\"\n\nCassandra sighed. \"I know, I know.\" Generously tipping her dealer, she collected her winnings and stepped back from the table, to the audible dismay of the spectators. \"Thanks for your support, everybody, but, on second thought, maybe I ought to take a break. Give somebody else a chance to win.\"\n\nThe besieged guard looked relieved.\n\n\"Want me to hold on to your chips, Cassandra?\" Ezekiel asked.\n\n\"Thanks, but no thanks,\" she replied. \"I'm sure I can find a good home for these winnings, like maybe a deserving charity or a cancer research project.\"\n\n\"Charity?\" Ezekiel cast a longing look at her sizable collection of chips. \"You know you're killing me here, right?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" she said. \"It just wouldn't feel right to keep the money, considering.\"\n\nEzekiel shook his head. \"Sometimes I just don't understand you people.\u2026\"\n\n\"Give it time,\" Baird said.\n\nThe team reconvened out in the courtyard, beneath the shade of a leafy palm tree. \"Okay,\" Baird said. \"Somebody needs to run this penny back to the Annex so Jenkins can check it out.\"\n\n\"I can do that,\" Cassandra volunteered. \"To be honest, I could use a break from this casino.\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" Baird said. \"In the meantime, the rest of us should probably keep an eye on Dunphy, just in case this isn't over yet.\"\n\n\"Speak for yourself,\" Ezekiel said. \"I've done my part. You and Stone can babysit Dunphy now that we've stolen his mojo. Me, I can find better ways to amuse myself in Vegas.\"\n\n\"Such as?\" Stone asked.\n\n\"I don't know. Gambling, partying, maybe a harmless little heist or two,\" Ezekiel said breezily. \"As a reward for my valuable services, as it were. If you need me, you know how to reach me.\"\n\n\"Fine,\" Baird said, sounding unreasonably exasperated. \"Take five. I'm sure we can manage without you for the moment. Just try to act like a Librarian, please.\"\n\nEzekiel took that as a green light to break rules and look for treasure. His grin broadened.\n\nWhat was the point of visiting Vegas if you couldn't let loose a little?"
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "Flynn pinched himself to make sure he wasn't still dreaming.\n\nUnless his memory was deceiving him, the bookshop before them was identical to the one in his \"dream,\" right down to the miniature gold lions in the window. That couldn't be a coincidence.\n\nCould it?\n\nLacking any better ideas, he dragged Shirin inside the shop. A musty atmosphere, universal to used bookstores the world over, made Flynn feel strangely at home. Sagging bookshelves, crammed with everything from dog-eared paperbacks to leather-bound collector's editions, lined the walls, while more books were piled high on a rickety wooden table in the center of the cramped little shop. Rarer volumes were kept under glass at the back of the store, where an older woman, who looked to be in her eighties at least, sat behind a counter. The store was sparsely populated, with only a handful of prospective customers browsing the shelves. They cast suspicious glances at Flynn and Shirin as the pair hurried into the store, looking sweaty and disheveled, before turning their collective gazes back toward the shop's inventory.\n\n\"Can I help you?\" the bookseller asked.\n\nDespite her advanced years, her eyes appeared sharp and discerning. Silver hair peeked out from beneath a cotton headdress. A shawl was draped over her bony shoulders. A pair of reading glasses dangled on a chain around her neck. She looked the newcomers over thoughtfully. Flynn got the distinct impression that she missed very little.\n\n\"Just looking.\" He kept one eye on the street outside the window while trying to act casual. Ordinarily, he would have liked nothing better than to kill time in a cool old bookshop, but not when a gang of irate thieves was out to kill him. He pretended to scan the shelves, while wondering if there was a back room or exit they could resort to if necessary. \"We're not looking for anything in particular \u2026 Wait a second, is this actually the 1909 translation of Omar Khayyam?\" He flicked through the pages excitedly, no longer feigning interest in the shop's inventory. \"It is, with the original illustrations by Pogany!\"\n\nNot for the first time, Shirin eyed him as though he had lost his mind. \"That's nice,\" she said, her voice strained, \"but maybe you can curb your bibliophile tendencies for the moment? It's not like we don't have other \u2026 priorities \u2026 at present.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" the bookseller said. \"There's always time to appreciate a good book.\" She nodded at Flynn with a knowing expression on her face and pulled a hardcover book out from under the counter. \"Can I interest you in a deluxe edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream?\" A smirk lifted her lips. \"'If we shadows have offended\u2026'\"\n\n\"'\u2026 think but this, and all is mended,'\" Flynn said, completing the quote. Judson had tested him with the very same passage on the day Flynn first became the Librarian. He stared at the old woman in wonder and confusion, momentarily at a loss for words. \"Who \u2026 how\u2026?\"\n\n\"Everyone out,\" she said, raising her voice. \"We're closed for the night.\" Emerging from behind the counter, she shooed the other customers toward the door. \"Thank you for your patronage. Please come back tomorrow.\"\n\nShirin hesitantly moved to join the exodus, looking understandably reluctant to step outdoors again, where the Forty were presumably still searching for them. \"All right. We're going.\u2026\"\n\n\"Not so fast. You two stay right where you are.\" Scooting the last of the other customers out of the shop, she locked the door and drew old-fashioned reed blinds down over the front window, concealing the interior of the store from view. \"There, that's more like it,\" she muttered before turning back toward her bewildered visitors. \"So, now that we have a little more privacy, you mind telling me who exactly is chasing you?\"\n\nFlynn remained flabbergasted by this unexpected turn of events. He suddenly understood how utterly baffled Shirin had to be feeling. \"I don't understand. How do you know that?\"\n\n\"Please.\" The bookseller chuckled, clearly amused by Flynn's reaction. \"You think you're the only Librarian to pass through Baghdad in the last sixty years or so? Don't make me laugh. This is the cradle of civilization, the heart of ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians and Assyrians \u2026 the history of Iraq is the history of mankind. There are treasures here that predate most of the scrolls and relics in that big fancy Library of yours in New York City \u2026 and you can tell Judson I said so.\"\n\nFlynn blinked in surprise. \"Excuse me. Who are you exactly?\"\n\n\"Leila Hamza at your service.\" Her voice was raspy, but strong. \"You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but I was quite the adventurer in my youth, and not a bad archaeologist if I do say so myself. I even took part in the ill-fated Nineveh expedition of forty-three, which was where I first crossed paths with one of your illustrious predecessors.\" A wistful tone softened her raspy voice. \"The times we had. I could tell you stories, not all of them suitable for children.\u2026\"\n\nHer voice trailed off, and her gaze turned inward as she seemed to lose herself in her memories. Flynn thought of the portraits in the Hall of Fame back at the Library. Who was the Librarian during the '40s again?\n\n\"So you know about the Library,\" he said, \"and the Librarians?\"\n\n\"Hard to forget,\" she said, returning to the present. \"After what we went through at the Temple of Ishtar \u2026 well, let's just say I'm going to remember that even after I've forgotten my own name. And now here you are, another Librarian on another quest, or so I assume.\" She chuckled again. \"Of all the bookstores in all of Baghdad, you had to wander into mine. What are the odds?\"\n\nFlynn doubted that mere random chance was involved. Judson could be cagey sometimes, and that had been a conveniently well-timed dream.\n\nNot that he was complaining, mind you.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said. \"Go figure.\"\n\n\"Think of this as a safe house,\" Leila said, \"if you need it.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" Flynn said. \"As it happens, we could use a place to catch our breath and regroup. You should know, though, that that there are seriously bad people on our tail, so you might be placing yourself in danger.\"\n\n\"I'm an eighty-seven-year-old woman living in modern-day Baghdad.\" She shrugged. \"This is the least I can do \u2026 for old time's sake.\"\n\nFlynn figured she was more than old enough to make her own decisions, and, honestly, he and Shirin could use all the help they could get. \"Fair enough. And don't think we don't appreciate your hospitality. I wasn't looking forward to camping out in a bombed-out ruin tonight.\"\n\nAssuming we even manage to get away from the Forty, he thought.\n\n\"My lodgings are above the shop,\" Leila said. \"They're not exactly as secure as the Library, but what is?\" She put the copy of Midsummer back where it belonged. \"Is there anything else I can do for you?\"\n\nShirin, who had been taking in this entire conversation in perplexed silence, spoke up.\n\n\"Well, somebody could tell me what the devil is going on \u2026 if that's not too much trouble.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "\"Aladdin's Lamp? The Forty Thieves?\" Shirin rolled her eyes. \"You can't seriously expect me to believe all this storybook nonsense.\"\n\nFlynn sighed, having anticipated this reaction. He and Shirin were sipping tea at the kitchen table in Leila Hamza's cozy second-floor apartment above the bookshop. A ceiling fan fought a losing battle against the heat, while Leila kept an eye on the street. He couldn't blame Shirin for being skeptical in this day and age. He recalled having a similar discussion with Emily Davenport in Morocco a few years back, before she saw for herself that magic was not confined to old myths and fairy tales, and before they ended up going their separate ways.\n\n\"Says the curator of the Baghdad archives,\" he pointed out, \"and an expert on The Arabian Nights.\"\n\n\"So?\" she shot back. \"The Alf Layla is a classic work of literature, with deep roots in the history and folklore of the Middle East and India. That doesn't mean I believe it's literally true, any more than you believe in, say, the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.\"\n\n\"Well, funny you should mention that. It turns out that\u2014\"\n\n\"No! I don't want to hear it.\" Shirin clapped her hands over her ears. \"This is insane!\"\n\n\"Those kidnappers in the market didn't think so,\" Flynn said. \"They took this seriously enough to try to abduct you, after robbing the museum earlier\u2014and killing that security guard.\"\n\nThat gave her pause, but only for a moment. \"Fine. You're all crazy, but you can't expect me to go off the deep end, too. Aladdin, Ali Baba \u2026 those are all just stories. Old stories, classic stories, but still just make-believe.\"\n\nHe wondered if maybe she was protesting a bit too much.\n\n\"So you've never believed in the tales? Not even a little bit?\"\n\nShe didn't answer right away, staring into the murky depths of her tea instead. Now that they weren't running madly for their lives, he couldn't help noticing again just how attractive she was. Watch it, he warned himself. He'd mixed romance with work before, and the relationships had never worked out. He was in no hurry to get his heart broken again. Remember Emily, and Nicole.\u2026\n\nShirin was gorgeous, though, and smart and resourceful.\n\nJust his type, in other words.\n\n\"It's funny,\" she said finally. \"When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me that we were descended from the original Scheherazade, the one who told all the tales to the sultan for a thousand and one nights. It was just a silly family legend turned bedtime story, of course, but it probably helped inspire my interest in ancient writings and the Alf Layla in particular.\"\n\n\"You see,\" Flynn pressed. \"Maybe part of you has always believed \u2026 or wanted to.\"\n\n\"But that's just foolishness,\" she insisted. \"This is the real world, a world of checkpoints and curfews. There's no room for fantasy anymore. Why would anyone want to kidnap me because of an old folk tale about a lamp and genie?\"\n\n\"Probably because they needed your help with the translation,\" Flynn guessed. \"You are the expert, after all, and the one who discovered the book in the first place.\"\n\n\"Then it's a good thing they didn't get my case.\" Shirin checked to make sure it was still resting on the floor by her feet. \"If that's really what they're after.\"\n\nFlynn recalled that she had risked her life to recover the case back in the market. She hadn't let it out of her sight since.\n\n\"What's in that case that's so important anyway?\" he asked.\n\n\"My notes on the translation, naturally. Thank goodness I took them home with me the night of the robbery. They're all I have left of my work to date.\"\n\n\"You still have a copy of the translation?\" Flynn's heart leaped in excitement. \"You didn't mention that before!\"\n\n\"A partial copy,\" she clarified. \"And after what happened at the museum, I was being a lot more careful about what I revealed to, for instance, some random stranger who just got off a flight from America.\" Guilt washed over her lovely features. \"I'm still kicking myself for not being more discreet about my discovery before.\"\n\nFlynn felt for her, understanding that her whole life had turned upside down.\n\n\"I'm sorry you had to get sucked into this craziness,\" he said, \"but I could really use your help\u2014and those notes\u2014to find the Lamp before the bad guys do. You don't have to come with me. Just point me in the right direction.\"\n\n\"Toward Aladdin's Lamp?\"\n\n\"Exactly. Which, believe me, is more serious than it sounds.\"\n\nShirin lowered her head onto the table. \"This is just a crazy dream, right? I'm going to wake up any minute now?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" Flynn said. \"But, if it's any consolation, I was just thinking the same thing not too long ago.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "Marjanah's eyes were still burning from the turmeric that damn American had blown in her face back at the market. She'd taken the time to thoroughly scrub her face and rinse her eyes out after returning to their hideout in the Red Zone, but her mood had not improved. She wasn't sure what stung more, her eyes or the fact that she had failed in her mission to obtain Shirin Masri.\n\n\"Tell me more about this American meddler,\" her leader said.\n\nThe First of the Forty sat behind a desk, listening to her report on the botched operation. Only a single desk light illuminated the room, allowing him to keep to the shadows as he preferred. As his Second, Marjanah was one of the few members of the Forty who was allowed to see his unveiled face. Armed guards were posted outside the door to ensure their privacy.\n\n\"He identified himself as Flynn Carsen,\" she stated, \"of the New York Metropolitan Library.\"\n\n\"A librarian?\" The First leaned forward, bringing his face into the light. A frown marred his distinguished features. His brow furrowed thoughtfully. \"Or maybe the Librarian?\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\" Marjanah chided herself for not considering that possibility before; well-versed in the Forty's long and storied history, including their past run-ins with the do-gooding Librarians, she understood why the First was concerned. \"He didn't act like any librarian I've met before.\"\n\n\"I see,\" he said. \"That complicates matters. Rather than take chances, I think we need to operate on the assumption that we now have competition in our quest, which makes it all the more imperative that we move quickly to translate the book and uncover any clues to the final resting place of the Lamp.\"\n\nThe stolen copy of the Alf Layla rested on the desk before him, flipped open to the story of Aladdin. A hand-colored illustration portrayed the mighty Djinn towering over Aladdin, who was clutching the precious Lamp while gazing upward at the freed giant in amazement. Marjanah could make neither head nor tail of the ancient Persian script on the fragile pages. She knew it was giving their best translators trouble, too.\n\n\"What of Dr. Masri?\" he asked.\n\n\"She was last seen in the company of the librarian, fleeing the market.\"\n\nMarjanah didn't mention that, in a moment of rage, she had attempted to stab the uncooperative curator. But I still owe that sneaky witch for striking me, she thought, and I intend to collect that debt someday \u2026 when we have no further use for her.\n\n\"Before they somehow eluded you and your men?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe admission tasted like bile in her mouth, but there was no way to sugarcoat the truth. Shirin Masri was in the wind, at least for the moment.\n\n\"I have to say I'm disappointed,\" the First said, leaning back in his plush desk chair. \"I thought I had done a better job of rebuilding the Forty after it had fallen into obscurity and irrelevance, but now I'm wondering if that was a waste of my time.\"\n\nHis words stung like a lash, but she didn't let it show.\n\n\"This was just a temporary setback,\" she promised. \"We have spies and informers all over Baghdad, and lookouts posted outside all of the woman's usual haunts. She and Carsen won't be able to hide from us for long.\"\n\n\"I hope you're right,\" he said. \"We have an opportunity to fully restore the Forty to its former glory and achieve ultimate power at last. And Dr. Masri could prove an invaluable asset to us, if you can manage to secure her without further delays or complications.\"\n\n\"We'll get her,\" Marjanah said. \"And the librarian?\"\n\n\"I'll do some digging into this Flynn Carsen person to see if I can confirm our suspicions. In the meantime, do not underestimate him again.\" He slammed the Alf Layla shut forcefully enough to make Marjanah jump. \"Under no circumstances can we permit the Library to keep the Lamp from us. Are we clear on that, Second of Forty?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nAlong with the turmeric, this humiliating failure was Carsen's fault as well. She had a score to settle now, with both him and that troublesome curator. And if he was actually the Librarian \u2026 well, that would make her eventual revenge all the sweeter."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "\"There's something I've been meaning to ask you,\" Shirin said. \"How did you manage to show up in the nick of time at the market anyway? Don't tell me that was just a chance meeting.\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Flynn answered. \"I had gone back to the museum, hoping to catch you before you left for the day, when I spotted some suspicious-looking characters tailing you on your way home. So I followed them following you, keeping a low profile until it was obvious you were in trouble.\"\n\nMakes sense, Shirin decided. In fact, it was probably the least crazy thing Flynn had said so far. That she was trusting her life to an apparent lunatic was \u2026 troubling. Maybe he's just a little nutty where the old stories are concerned?\n\nHer partial translation of the Alf Layla was spread out over Leila Hamza's kitchen table as she and Flynn pored over her notes \u2026 in search of clues to the location of Aladdin's Lamp. The whole idea still struck her as ridiculous, but she had to admit that it felt good to be doing actual research again, as opposed to running from knife-wielding criminals. Studying ancient documents was more in her comfort zone.\n\n\"The odd thing about the Aladdin story,\" she observed, \"is that it actually doesn't appear in any of the earliest editions of the Alf Layla. It was added by the first French translator, back in the early 1700s, who claimed to have heard it from a storyteller in Damascus.\"\n\n\"Added or restored?\" Flynn asked.\n\n\"The latter, apparently. The fact that it appears in the eighth-century volume I discovered is proof that 'Aladdin and the Magic Lamp' was included in the earliest compilations of Scheherazade's stories, even if it fell out of favor for a few centuries.\"\n\nHer heart ached again for the loss of the precious volume. There was no way she could share her conclusions with the world without the actual book as evidence. She'd be dismissed as a crackpot or worse.\n\n\"Interesting,\" Flynn said, \"but what did the book have to say about what happened to the Lamp?\"\n\n\"Nothing really.\" She leafed through the relevant pages again, while doing her best to remember exactly what the original Persian text had said. \"The story simply ends with Aladdin living happily ever after, having triumphed over his enemies and been granted great wealth and success by the Djinn. There's nothing about what happened to the Lamp afterward.\" She shoved the pages away from her. \"I'm afraid we've hit a dead end, Flynn. Even if the Lamp were real, and I'm hardly ready to concede that, there's nothing in this old version of the story that could help you find it.\"\n\nWhich means, she thought, I'm being stalked by killers for no reason.\n\n\"Let's not give up just yet.\" Getting up from the table, he paced restlessly around the small kitchen, so full of nervous energy that Shirin felt exhausted watching him. He scratched his head, having taken off his headscarf earlier. \"Maybe we're missing something.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure what,\" Shirin said. \"I've gone over the Aladdin pages over and over. There's nothing there.\"\n\nFlynn's eyes lit up. \"Maybe that's our mistake. Maybe we're zeroing in too closely on those particular pages and not seeing the bigger picture.\" She could practically see the wheels turning inside his brain. \"What if we have to look at the forest instead of trees?\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\" she asked, confused.\n\n\"When in doubt, seek out the primary sources. That's one of the basic principles of solid scholarship, right?\"\n\n\"Absolutely,\" she agreed. \"But what does that have to do with\u2014\"\n\n\"You said that what you found was not the original edition of The Arabian Nights but simply the earliest known one,\" he interrupted her. \"What if what we really need to find is the very first copy of the book, written by Scheherazade herself \u2026 and that's what will lead us to the location of the Lamp?\"\n\n\"But Scheherazade\u2014or 'Shirazad' as she's called in the older Persian accounts\u2014is just a myth in her own right,\" Shirin protested. \"And her famous tales are just stories within a story.\"\n\n\"That's what I used to think about Mother Goose, too,\" Flynn said, \"until I learned better.\" He nodded at the pages strewn atop the table. \"What did the stolen book have to say about Scheherazade's last days \u2026 and what became of her stories?\"\n\nShirin remembered reading something about that before when she was working on her translation. Intrigued despite herself, she flipped to the end of her notes.\n\n\"According to this,\" she said, \"Scheherazade lived happily ever after with the sultan, after telling him a story every night for a thousand and one nights. But when she finally passed away at a ripe old age, the only complete copy of the Alf Layla, written in her own hand, was buried with her in a secret tomb hidden from the world. All subsequent versions were penned by other hands, including those of her younger sister Dunyazade, who attempted to preserve them for posterity.\"\n\n\"That's it!\" Flynn said excitedly. \"If I can find the original edition, with all one thousand and one tales, maybe that will tell me what happened to the Lamp.\"\n\n\"Tell us,\" she corrected him. \"Don't think you're leaving me out of this.\"\n\n\"But I thought you didn't even believe in this stuff?\"\n\n\"I don't, not about the genie and the magic lamp and all that. But if there's even a chance of proving that Scheherazade was an actual historical figure, and finding the original text of the Alf Layla, how can I pass up that opportunity? That would be an incredible, game-changing discovery \u2026 that would more than make up for losing that book from the museum.\"\n\nShirin still blamed herself for the theft of the ancient edition of the Alf Layla, but if she could locate an even older edition, maybe even the original text, that would make all this craziness worthwhile. It would be a discovery for the ages.\n\n\"Are you sure about that?\" Flynn asked. \"Not that I wouldn't appreciate your help, but \u2026 mortal danger, remember?\"\n\n\"I'm already in danger,\" she reminded him. \"If I'm going to be stalked by thieves and killers, I might as well try to get something out of it \u2026 and what could be more tempting than finding the lost tomb of Scheherazade? That's something worth risking my life for.\"\n\nFor a second, she flashed back to the bedtime stories her mother had told her so many years ago, about how Scheherazade, their supposed forebear, had cleverly kept the bloodthirsty sultan from executing her every morning, as he intended, by telling him a never-ending string of stories that always ended on a cliffhanger just as the sun was coming up, so that he kept her alive for yet another day in order to find out what happened next, and how she had kept this up for a thousand and one nights until he finally fell in love with her and spared her life forever. Even as a child, Shirin had always been impressed by Scheherazade's courage, ingenuity, and imagination; the mere possibility that she might have actually lived thrilled both Shirin, the serious historian and scholar, and the little girl inside her, who had listened enraptured to her mother's tales way back when.\n\n\"Okay,\" Flynn said. \"Trust me, I know the feeling.\" He called her attention back to the pages on the table. \"So does your translation offer any clues to exactly where Scheherazade was buried?\"\n\n\"Let me see.\"\n\nHer excitement dimmed as she reviewed the pages again, finding little concrete information.\n\n\"It's no good,\" she said. \"The closest thing to actual directions is a statement to the effect that Scheherazade's tomb lies where the stories end, 'two hundred and eighty and four miles northeast, as an enchanted carpet flies, from the House of Wisdom, and two thousand seven hundred and nineteen miles from the fabled mines of King Solomon the Wise.' Which is no help at all, since nobody actually knows where King Solomon's Mines were, or whether they actually existed.\"\n\nA grin broke out across Flynn's face. \"That's what you think.\"\n\n\"Hold on,\" Shirin said. \"Now you've got to be pulling my leg. You're not seriously telling me that you know where King Solomon's Mines are.\"\n\n\"Well, I know where they used to be,\" he replied. \"They weren't in such good shape the last time I saw them.\" Ignoring her stupefied expression, he kept on thinking aloud. \"Let's see, an Arabic mile, as used in the classical era, equaled approximately 1.2 modern miles, so the tomb would be roughly thirty-three hundred miles northeast of the Mines\u2014which are outside Mombasa, by the way\u2014putting Scheherazade's tomb somewhere in the mountains of northern Iran, which would have indeed been Persian territory back then. And we know where the House of Wisdom once stood, before the Mongol invasion, so now we just need to draw two straight lines from both sites and see where they intersect.\" His voice rose in excitement. \"I need an atlas!\"\n\nHe raced out of the kitchen to the landing at the top of stairs, leading down to the bookshop, where Leila was maintaining a lookout. Shirin hurried after him.\n\n\"Excuse me, Ms. Hamza?\" he hollered down. \"You don't have a good world atlas at hand, do you?\"\n\n\"Quiet!\" she said urgently. The elderly bookseller peered out through the blinds over the front window. \"Someone's coming. Keep out of sight.\"\n\nShirin and Flynn retreated from the landing. \"Pack up your notes,\" he whispered. \"Quickly.\"\n\nHer heart racing, she did as he instructed, hastily stuffing the loose pages back into her attach\u00e9 case. At the same time, Flynn pulled a cookbook down from a shelf and started ripping random pages from it. Shirin stared at him in confusion.\n\n\"What\u2026?\"\n\n\"Just a precaution,\" he said. \"Get ready to make a break for it.\"\n\nWithin moments, there was a pounding at the front entrance downstairs. \"Open up!\" a harsh voice demanded. \"Let us in!\"\n\n\"Go away!\" Leila shouted back through the door. \"We're closed!\"\n\n\"We have reason to believe that you're harboring an American spy,\" the voice insisted. \"Open up!\"\n\n\"You're mistaken,\" Leila said. \"There's nobody here but me and my books. Leave a harmless old woman alone, you scoundrels!\"\n\nGlass shattered loudly, followed by the unmistakable sound of intruders smashing into the bookshop. Leila cried out in protest.\n\n\"You can't do this! You have no right! I swear to heaven, there's no one here but\u2014\"\n\nHer voice was cut off abruptly, as though by a knife or a noose. A loud thump sounded too much like a limp body hitting the floor. Shirin clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from gasping. She knew what she had just heard, even if she didn't want to accept it. Leila Hamza was gone.\n\nIt all happened so fast, she thought. One minute she was alive, and then \u2026\n\n\"Search this place!\" an all-too-familiar female voice ordered impatiently. \"Find the Masri woman!\"\n\nShirin recognized the voice. It belonged to the nameless kidnapper who had placed a knife to her ribs only hours ago.\n\n\"We have to go,\" Flynn said tautly. A pained expression betrayed his own dismay over Leila's sacrifice. Along with the torn pages from the cookbook, he snatched their teacups from the kitchen table and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. \"Quickly, out the back.\"\n\nLike many homes in Baghdad, the back of the building faced an inner courtyard. They rushed onto a small balcony overlooking the patio. Shirin peered over the railing; it looked like a sizable drop. \"How are we getting down there?\" she asked in a low voice.\n\n\"We're not.\" Flynn cupped his hands to give her a boost. \"Up \u2026 onto the roof!\"\n\nFootsteps pounded up the stairs inside the building. Doors were thrown open noisily. Gulping, Shirin tossed her briefcase onto the roof and clambered up after it. She reached down to offer Flynn a helping hand.\n\n\"Just a sec.\" He rushed to the edge of the balcony and tossed the loose pages over the edge, so that they fluttered down onto the courtyard below. A moment later, he tossed the salvaged teacups over the railing as well. They shattered loudly against the brick floor of the patio.\n\n\"Listen!\" one of the intruders shouted. \"They're escaping out the back!\"\n\nWith Shirin's help, Flynn scrambled up onto the flat, dusty roof of the building, only heartbeats before a couple of the intruders burst out onto the balcony. The men ran to the railing and stared down at the courtyard. \"Look! They dropped some papers! Find them!\"\n\nShirin held her breath, afraid to make a sound, as she and Flynn flattened themselves against the roof while the intruders ransacked the building searching for them. More men stampeded out into the courtyard and inspected the various gates and doorways leading away from the enclosed yard. Frightened neighbors slammed their windows shut and turned off their lights. A kidnapper scooped up the strewn pages and squinted at them in the dim light; he was in for a severe disappointment when he realized that they held only recipes and cooking instructions.\n\nThe woman from the market strode out onto the balcony, wearing a hooded black cloak. She threw back the hood to reveal short black hair with bangs. Her gold nose stud glittered in the night.\n\n\"Well?\" she demanded. \"Where are they?\"\n\n\"We are looking, Second of the Forty,\" one of her men said, somewhat sheepishly. \"But they may have eluded us again.\"\n\n\"Fools!\" She slapped him across the face. \"Our spies told us exactly where they might be found. How can you let them get away? You're a disgrace to the proud tradition of the Forty, all of you!\"\n\nThe Forty? Shirin's eyes widened at the term. As in \u2026 the Forty Thieves?\n\nMaybe Flynn was not quite as delusional as he'd sounded.\n\nIn years gone by, before the helicopters and flying mortar shells, the people of Baghdad had routinely slept on their roofs to escape the heat, but that had always required wetting the roof down first. Leila's roof was thickly coated in dust, which invaded Shirin's nostrils, tickling them. To her horror, she felt a sneeze coming on. She sniffled as quietly as she could, struggling to hold the sneeze in, but the harder she tried to contain it, the more intense the urge became.\n\nI can't help it, she thought. I'm going to sneeze.\n\nFlynn reached over and clamped his fingers over her nose. He shook his head while holding onto his own nose with his other hand. He shook his head to remind her that they had to remain totally still.\n\nLike she didn't know that already!\n\nThey hid on the roof, spying on the murderous home invaders, for what felt like hours, but was actually only a few minutes. Sirens wailed in the distance, along with the whirr of an approaching Black Hawk helicopter. Shirin guessed that one of Leila's neighbors must have called the police.\n\nThe slapped henchman looked about nervously. \"We must flee, Second of the Forty. We have attracted too much attention already.\"\n\nShe glared furiously at him, but did not dispute his conclusion. \"Tell the men to keep searching every back alley and garbage heap until they find them! We need what's in that woman's brain, before I crack open her skull and spill it onto the ground.\"\n\nWheeling about, she stormed off the balcony in disgust, followed closely by her henchmen. Shirin heard them stomping down the stairs toward the street as their accomplices left the courtyard. Within moments, the assassins had fled back into the night.\n\n\"Wait,\" Flynn whispered, \"until we know they're gone. Count to a hundred first.\" He adjusted his position slightly, settling in for the wait. \"On second thought, make that five hundred.\u2026\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Shirin said, daring to breathe again. She was all for letting the mystery woman and her cronies get far away, especially after hearing that talk about having her skull split open. \"But what are we going to do now?\"\n\n\"That depends,\" Flynn said. \"What's the best way to get to Iran from here?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "\"Baird? Eve Baird?\"\n\nTo her surprise, a voice addressed her by name. The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place it until she turned around to see a friendly face making its way through the crowd toward her. Even still, she couldn't quite believe her eyes.\n\n\"Krieger?\"\n\nMajor Mark Krieger was an old army buddy she hadn't seen in years. His leathery features and cropped blond hair were familiar to her from any number of shared operations\u2014and close calls\u2014overseas. Easily as tall as her, with a reddish-blond crew cut and a strong, square jaw line, he was a career soldier whose military bearing gave away his background despite his civilian attire. A neatly pressed tan sport coat and khakis conveyed the appearance of a man at leisure. His left arm rested in a sling, wrapped in Ace bandages, which possibly explained why he was off duty at the moment. It had been fine the last time they worked together.\n\n\"In the flesh,\" he said, grinning. \"Never thought I'd run into you at a Vegas casino.\"\n\n\"Roger that.\" Baird smiled back at him. \"Last I heard you were stationed in Afghanistan.\"\n\n\"Got a little banged up during my last tour of duty,\" he said, displaying his injured arm. \"Figured Vegas wasn't a bad place to recuperate, even if it did mean deploying to yet another desert.\" He chuckled at the irony. \"But what about you? Rumor has it you opted out of Special Forces to go to work for \u2026 a library?\"\n\nBaird wasn't surprised to hear that talk of her career change was making the rounds. She imagined that many of her old colleagues were puzzled by the news.\n\n\"That's a long story,\" she said.\n\n\"I'd love to hear it.\" Krieger drew nearer. \"You doing anything right now?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" she admitted. Dunphy hadn't budged from the craps table, and they were still waiting on Jenkins's verdict concerning the stolen penny. Nor could she explain to Krieger that she was monitoring a suspected magic abuser. \"Just soaking up the atmosphere, I guess.\"\n\n\"Sounds like you,\" Krieger said. \"You never struck me as a gambler. You always preferred solid plans and preparation to taking unnecessary chances. Should have known I'd find you conducting reconnaissance.\"\n\nYou have no idea, she thought, keeping one eye on Dunphy. \"You've got me pegged, all right.\"\n\n\"So you want to get a drink at the bar?\" he asked. \"Catch up a little?\"\n\n\"I'd like to,\" she said sincerely. She and Krieger had been through some tough scrapes together and had saved each other's lives more than once, like that time their convoy got ambushed outside Kirkuk. \"But\u2026\"\n\n\"But what?\" he pressed. \"You here with anyone?\"\n\nShe glanced at Stone, who shrugged and gave her a nod. I've got this was his silent message.\n\n\"Just some \u2026 librarians \u2026 from work,\" she said, \"but I guess I've got some downtime before I have to meet up with the others.\" She reconsidered Krieger's invitation. \"Sure, why not? But the first round's on you.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have it any other way.\" He started to offer her his wounded arm, but the sling got in the way. He circled around her to make his other arm available. \"Sorry. Still not used to this thing. Blasted sling is seriously cramping my style.\"\n\n\"Who are you kidding?\" she ribbed him. \"We both know you never had any style to cramp.\"\n\nLeaving Stone to keep tabs on Dunphy, she let Krieger escort her to one of the casino's many bars, a midrange watering hole called, appropriately enough, the Oasis. Despite the ubiquitous mock-Arabian decor, the bar offered a decent selection of American beers, including a few from Portland. They settled into a cushioned booth. A lattice screen offered a degree of privacy.\n\n\"To old times,\" Krieger said, raising a glass, \"and even better days ahead.\"\n\nBaird clinked her glass against his. \"To old times and comrades-in-arms.\"\n\n\"So, about your current gig,\" he said. \"How does a top-notch soldier like you go from hunting down terrorists and WMDs to doing security for a library?\"\n\n\"The Portland Annex of the New York Metropolitan Library, to be exact.\" She couldn't tell him the full truth, of course, but she was prepared for the question now. \"What can I say? I was ready for a change, and the library has some highly valuable assets that need guarding by someone who knows what they're doing.\"\n\n\"I'm sure,\" Krieger said. \"But don't you miss the excitement of your old job?\"\n\nMemories of mummies, dragons, and alternate realities flashed through her brain, and she smiled slyly.\n\n\"Trust me, it's more exciting than it sounds.\u2026\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "\"What the\u2014?\"\n\nIt took him a while, but Dunphy finally noticed that his lucky penny had been switched out somehow. His brow furrowed in confusion as he rooted through his pockets, dumping their contents onto the ledge on the outside of the craps table. Squinting at his loose change, he found a few more pennies, but not the one Ezekiel had filched. \"Where in the world?\"\n\nOn its way to the Annex, Stone thought. He kept watch over Dunphy from a discreet distance. Where we'll hopefully get a ruling on that coin before long.\n\n\"Is there a problem, sir?\" the dealer asked.\n\n\"Yes \u2026 no \u2026 I mean, I guess not.\" Dunphy shrugged and got back to his game. \"Just as long as these dice stay hot.\"\n\nFunny, Stone noted. He doesn't seem too alarmed over the loss of his allegedly lucky penny.\n\nThe Librarian grew more concerned as Dunphy kept on winning, even with the wrong penny. Some sort of lingering side effect of the magic coin, or was there something else going on here? Stone was about to call in to the Library, to query Jenkins on the topic, when Dunphy crapped out at last, losing a good chunk of his winnings.\n\nOn second thought, maybe the effect of the coin was wearing off?\n\nAgain, Dunphy blew off the loss as though it was no big deal and he had every expectation of winning it all back eventually. He polished off another cocktail and passed the dice to the player on his left before pocketing the remainder of his chips.\n\n\"Gotta take a leak,\" he announced, relinquishing his spot at the table. \"See you later, Jerry.\"\n\n\"I'm sure,\" the dealer said. \"Take it easy, Mr. Dunphy.\"\n\nStone frowned as Dunphy strolled away from the craps table. Keeping tabs on Dunphy had just gotten a little more complicated now that the suspiciously lucky gambler was on the move, but Stone figured he could easily tail Dunphy on his own, particularly if the other man was just taking a bathroom break. It wasn't like Baird could follow him there, and only the Library knew where Ezekiel had gotten to.\n\nProbably picking some deep pockets, Stone guessed. Or just generally playing hooky.\n\nExiting the gaming floor, Dunphy veered away from the more heavily trafficked regions of the casino to reach some restrooms tucked away inconspicuously in a side corridor. Stone groaned inwardly at the signs on the doors, which distinguished \"Sultans\" from \"Sultanas,\" complete with cheesy turban and veil stencils to get the idea across. He waited outside and down the hall as Dunphy slipped into the little sultans' room. The way Stone saw it, he didn't need to stick that close to Dunphy.\n\nOr did he?\n\nTo his concern, a pair of tough-looking customers followed Dunphy into the restroom, while a third man posted himself outside the door, suspiciously like a lookout. Wearing a black snakeskin jacket, the guy was built like a refrigerator, albeit one wearing a bad toupee. His sullen expression didn't exactly fit with the fun-and-games atmosphere of the casino. Stone's unease deepened as a random tourist, sporting a Celine Dion T-shirt and a ponytail, approached the door and was turned away.\n\n\"Out of order, dude,\" Bad Toupee growled. \"Move it along.\"\n\nThis was not what the baffled tourist wanted to hear. He fidgeted restlessly as he looked in vain for any signs to that effect. \"Um, are you with the casino? 'Cause you don't exactly appear to be dressed the part.\u2026\"\n\n\"You deaf, buster?\" Bad Toupee glowered at him in a very inhospitable way. \"Take a hike.\"\n\nThe tourist gulped, getting the message.\n\n\"N-no problem. I'm going.\" He cast a lost, longing look at the men's room door. \"Um, by any chance, do you know where the next closest restroom is?\"\n\n\"Do I look like an information booth? Scram.\"\n\nThe tourist made himself scarce.\n\nProbably a smart move, Stone thought. Whatever these guys wanted with Dunphy, they clearly didn't want to be interrupted, which probably meant that the gambler's luck was taking a serious turn for the worse. Stone covertly inspected the self-appointed sentry barring the door. Bad Toupee didn't look remotely Middle Eastern, like the crew that supposedly came looking for Dunphy at the trailer park, so who else was tailing him?\n\nOnly one way to find out.\n\nStone casually approached the men's room, acting as harmless as possible.\n\n\"Out of order,\" Bad Toupee said. \"Take it somewhere else.\"\n\n\"Seriously, man?\" Stone feigned discomfort. \"'Cause this is kind of urgent, if you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Not my problem. Beat it.\"\n\nThe guy's surly attitude made it a lot easier to do what came next. \"Thanks for nothing,\" Stone grumbled. \"You'd think a classy place like this would want to treat their customers more\u2014\"\n\nA right cross to the jaw dropped Bad Toupee to the floor. His wig went askew.\n\n\"Sleep it off,\" Stone said, massaging his knuckles.\n\nLeaving the stunned goon in the hallway, Stone slipped into the men's room, which was probably one of the few areas of the casinos that didn't have cameras watching everywhere\u2014or so one would like to think. The sound of a toilet flushing helpfully drowned out the sound of his entrance, so he had a chance to check out the situation\u2014which was pretty much as dire as he had expected.\n\nDunphy was face down in a toilet, getting an old-fashioned swirly. A burly tormentor, boasting a shaved skull with an eight ball tattooed onto it, held Dunphy's head down in the oversized handicapped stall, while his significantly smaller associate looked on approvingly. Stone guessed that the little guy, who wasn't getting his hands dirty, was the brains of the operation and most likely the boss. Wearing a six-gallon hat and a bolo tie, he snarled at Dunphy as the eddying waters drained and the big enforcer yanked Dunphy's head up by his hair. Idle hands shuffled a pile of chips that had probably come straight from Dunphy's pockets.\n\n\"Think you can cheat me, you red-headed moron? Well, you've got another thing coming.\"\n\nDunphy sputtered. \"I swear, Rudy, this is just a misunderstanding. I didn't cheat nobody!\"\n\n\"That's a load of bull and you know it. No one's that lucky!\"\n\nThe door swung shut behind Stone, alerting them to his presence. Rudy looked both confused and annoyed by the new arrival, but more the latter than the former. He made a face as though he smelled something bad. \"How the hell did you get in here?\"\n\n\"Er, through the door?\" Stone replied, all innocence. \"Am I interrupting something?\"\n\n\"None of your business, hayseed. If you're smart, you'll turn around and head back out that door.\"\n\n\"Whatever, man. I don't want any trouble.\" Stone milked his good ol' country boy routine for all it was worth. He started toward an adjacent stall. \"I'll just take care of business and be on my way.\"\n\nLeaving Dunphy for a moment, the big, bald bruiser got in Stone's face. \"Don't think you're listening, pal. You need to hit the road, pronto.\"\n\n\"What's your problem?\" Stone feigned confusion. \"Your buddy outside said it was okay.\"\n\n\"He did?\" Eight Ball looked puzzled for real. He looked past Stone toward the door, no doubt wondering how Stone had got past the lookout. \"He tell you that?\"\n\nThat was all the opportunity Stone needed. The veteran of more bar brawls than he really ought to admit to, he grabbed the enforcer by his lapels, swept his leg out from under him, and threw the guy sideways into an empty stall. Eight Ball crashed through the swinging metal door, and his butt collided with the toilet \u2026 hard. The door bounced halfway back into position.\n\n\"You okay, man?\" Stone asked. \"Think you slipped on a puddle there.\"\n\nLivid with rage, Eight Ball sprang back to his feet and charged at Stone. \"You're going to regret that, you\u2014\"\n\nStone kicked the door so that it swung back and smacked the goon in the face before he could make it out of the stall, knocking him back into the rear of the compartment. He slumped onto the toilet, the fight knocked out of him for the moment.\n\nEight Ball, corner pocket, Stone thought. One more to go.\n\n\"You stupid hick!\" Rudy reached into his jacket, almost surely for a weapon, but Stone lunged at Rudy, body slamming into him and pinning his arm to his chest. The back of Rudy's head banged against a wall-mounted hand dryer, activating it. Hot air blew noisily from the unit as Stone grabbed Rudy's wrist and, twisting, relieved him of a Smith & Wesson pistol. He ejected the cartridge, almost as smoothly as Baird might have done, and lobbed the pistol into the nearest urinal, where it cracked loudly against the enamel. Rudy slid down the wall onto the floor, landing in a sitting position on the pseudo-Arabic tiles. His cowboy hat sat askew atop his head as he practically spat at Stone.\n\n\"You're making a big mistake, buster! You have no idea who you're messing with.\"\n\n\"Neither do you.\" Stone pocketed the cartridge, just to keep it out of the wrong hands, and tugged Rudy's hat down over his ears. \"Would you believe this isn't even the first time I've busted heads in a men's room? I should really look at my life choices.\"\n\nDunphy gaped at him from the handicapped stall. \"Who \u2026 why\u2026?\"\n\n\"Later, man.\" Stone grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to his feet. \"We've got better places to be right now.\"\n\nDunphy nodded, still looking understandably shaken. Stone hustled him out the door into the hallway, where a pack of senior citizens were clucking over the sprawled form of Bad Toupee. One of them cautiously prodded him with her foot, eliciting a low moan.\n\n\"Will you look at that?\" Stone shook his head. \"Some people just can't hold their liquor.\"\n\nHe figured that it was only a matter of time before the casino's own security staff showed up, so he hauled Dunphy out of the casino onto the sidewalk with all due haste. Oddly enough, as Stone knew from experience, local authorities were seldom keen on meddling Librarians disturbing the peace, and getting bailed out by Baird was not high on his to-do list.\n\n\"Thanks, buddy!\" Dunphy said. \"I owe you one, big time!\"\n\nWater dripped from his soaked red hair onto his shoulders. Stone was glad he'd managed to barge into the restroom before anything worse happened to their unlikely person of interest. Aside from possibly using magic to beat the odds at gambling, Dunphy struck Stone as harmless enough. Looks could be deceiving, especially where magic was concerned, but Dunphy wasn't exactly giving off a diabolical mastermind vibe. He seemed better suited to Gamblers Anonymous than the Serpent Brotherhood.\n\nThen again, sometimes clueless amateurs, messing with forces they didn't really understand, could be more dangerous than an actual black magician or mythological creature. Like that well-meaning college student not long ago, the one who accidentally opened a doorway to another reality and sicced a hungry, tentacled monster on her campus.\u2026\n\n\"We probably ought to stick to public places.\" Stone guided Dunphy toward an empty bus stop, planting him down on a bench, before pausing to take stock of the situation and look Dunphy over. \"You okay, man?\"\n\n\"Pretty much, I guess. Just a little rattled, you know.\" Dunphy wiped his brow and tried to slick his hair back into place. \"Good thing you came along when you did.\"\n\n\"Glad to be of service,\" Stone said. \"What was that all about anyway?\"\n\n\"Bunch of sore losers, that's what. I cleaned Rudy out at a high-stakes poker game last night. He didn't take it well, accused me of cheating him somehow.\" Rudy shrugged. \"Guess he holds a grudge.\"\n\nThat doesn't sound like the same crew who ransacked the trailer, Stone thought. Then again, a guy like Dunphy who had been winning big, and conspicuously so, was probably bound to attract the wrong kind of attention from more than one party. \"Some people just don't like losing, which means they're probably in the wrong town.\"\n\n\"Ain't that the truth.\" Dunphy extended his hand. \"Gus Dunphy, by the way.\"\n\n\"Jake Stone.\" He shook Dunphy's hand. \"Glad I could play Good Samaritan for you. Guess anybody who wins big needs to keep looking over their shoulder around here.\"\n\nDunphy glanced around nervously, even though the passing crowds were ignoring them. \"Yeah, you're probably right about that.\" His stomach grumbled audibly. \"Say, Jake, I know a great steakhouse downtown. You want to join me, maybe watch my back? My treat, naturally.\"\n\nStone mulled over his options. Befriending Gus had not been part of the plan, but maybe he could work with this? He needed to stick close to Dunphy anyway.\n\n\"Sounds good to me. Let me just check in with my old lady.\" He stepped away from the bus stop and dialed Baird. \"Sorry to interrupt your reunion with your buddy, but we've had some new developments.\"\n\nHe concisely briefed her on recent events, including the fracas in the restroom and his unexpected dinner invitation.\n\n\"Seems like I've ended up as Dunphy's temporary bodyguard.\"\n\n\"There are worse ways to shadow him,\" Baird said over the phone. \"Do you need backup? I can cut things short here and rendezvous with you.\"\n\n\"Nah. We're just going out for steak. I don't expect things to get hairy.\"\n\nTo be honest, a nice slice of rib eye was sounding pretty good.\n\n\"Okay. Just keep your eyes open and stay on your toes. Remember what Dunphy's former neighbor said about loan sharks, ex-wives, et cetera. Lots of people may want a piece of him, including any number of sore losers \u2026 or worse.\"\n\n\"Duly noted,\" Stone said. \"I'll keep you posted.\"\n\nWrapping up the call, he returned to Dunphy, who looked visibly relieved to have him around.\n\n\"Everything cool with your lady friend?\"\n\n\"You bet,\" Stone said. \"So, you were saying something about steak?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "\"Heads or tails?\"\n\nJenkins flipped the purloined penny.\n\n\"Tails,\" Cassandra said, not entirely sure this was the most scientific way to test the coin, which landed heads up on the conference table in the Annex. \"Does that count as a win or a loss?\"\n\n\"Unlucky for you,\" Jenkins said, \"but possibly lucky for me?\" He flipped the penny again and got tails this time. \"I must say, I'm not really observing anything remarkable about this coin so far.\"\n\nCassandra was reaching the same conclusion. She scanned the penny with a handheld magic detector that resembled a battery-powered egg beater with spinning silver globes at the end of the probes. A lighted display panel measured any unusual electromagnetic energies, but was failing to register any anomalies along both the conventional and paranormal spectrums. She recalibrated the device, which she had customized herself, to search for unlikely quantum fluctuations, which you'd expect if probability was being messed with, but struck out again.\n\n\"I know what you mean,\" she says. \"I'm not detecting any supernatural emanations at all. And the composition of the coin is perfectly standard as well. 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper \u2026 well, copper-plated zinc, to be exact.\"\n\n\"As one would expect from any US penny manufactured after 1982,\" Jenkins confirmed. He stopped flipping the coin and tallying the results long enough to consult a massive tome lying open on the table, which he had retrieved from the reading room earlier. He leafed through the book while examining both sides of the coin with a magnifying glass. \"Hmm. Just as I suspected. Zumwalt's Guide to Arcane Numismatics has nothing to say about a 2003 copper penny minted in Denver displaying any special properties.\" He put down the magnifying glass. \"Now if it had been an 1857 Flying Eagle penny from the secret mint in Baltimore that would be another story, but this, to all appearances, is a perfectly mundane piece of currency, of no particular distinction.\"\n\nCassandra scanned the penny one more time, looking for residual traces of manna or ectoplasm, but found nothing but greasy fingerprints. Nor could she spot any occult sigils hidden in the engraving.\n\n\"I'm striking out here,\" she admitted. \"Could it be that we're on the wrong track?\"\n\n\"That certainly appears to be the case.\" Jenkins closed the book on the matter, literally. \"It seems Mr. Dunphy's lucky penny is nothing but a red herring as far as our investigation is concerned. If there is indeed a magical explanation for his improbable winning streak, it must lie elsewhere.\"\n\nDiscouraged, Cassandra put away her scanner. \"So this has all been just a wild goose chase?\"\n\n\"Not if the Clipping Book dispatched you there. More likely, you have simply taken a wrong turn.\" He stepped away from the table. \"Which reminds me, though, I need to collect some eggs from the Golden Goose. She gets cranky if her nest gets too full.\"\n\nCassandra's eyes widened. \"We have a goose?\"\n\n\"Nothing you need concern yourself with this minute,\" Jenkins said. \"You had best deliver the results of our analysis to Colonel Baird and the others.\"\n\nCassandra sighed. Despite the brief exhilaration of her epic blackjack run, she was in no hurry to return to Vegas, let alone to inform the rest of the team that they were back at square one. Pocketing the penny, she took the Back Door to Ali Baba's Palace, Jenkins having fine-tuned the coordinates to (hopefully) bypass the wedding chapel. A flash of light, along with a crackle of eldritch energies, deposited her in a backstage dressing room crammed with Vegas showgirls getting ready for a show. Sequined belly dancer costumes let Cassandra know she was in the right place, give or take a door. A leggy brunette looked up from a lighted makeup table, where she'd been applying her lipstick.\n\n\"You lost, babe?\" She looked Cassandra over. \"No offense, but aren't you a little short for a showgirl?\"\n\n\"I'm a Librarian,\" Cassandra explained. \"And I'm only a little bit lost.\u2026\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "Skorzeny's was a downtown steakhouse just a block or two off the main action on Fremont Street. A far cry from the gaudy, theme-park excesses of Ali Baba's Palace, it was an unpretentious, old-fashioned eatery that wasn't pretending to be anything it wasn't. Exposed brick walls and wooden beams conveyed a cozy ambiance, while cloth tablecloths and linens provided a touch of class. Autographed photos of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Lauren Bacall, Sammy Davis Jr., and other legendary entertainers were framed upon the walls. Judging from the photos, the restaurant's decor hadn't changed much since the Rat Pack was in its prime. Classic crooners played softly over the sound system. A rolling salad cart went from table to table.\n\n\"Isn't this place great?\" Dunphy asked, digging into his prime rib. \"Real, old-school Vegas. Used to be a mob hangout back in the good old days. Everybody ate here: Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, that whole crowd. If you look close, you can still see a few bullet holes in the brickwork.\"\n\n\"I can believe it.\" Stone couldn't fault Dunphy's taste in restaurants. This place felt a whole lot more authentic than Ali Baba's, and the food was pretty good, too. He sprinkled some more black pepper over a thick rib-eye steak, cooked just the way he liked it. \"So, you a local?\"\n\n\"You bet,\" Dunphy said. \"I've got Vegas in my blood. Couldn't imagine living anywhere else.\" He looked across the table at Stone. \"Where did you say you were from?\"\n\nStone hadn't, but saw no harm in volunteering the info. \"Oklahoma, originally, although I'm working out of Portland these days.\" He took advantage of the opportunity to try to find out more about Gus. \"You one of those Vegas high rollers you hear about?\"\n\nDunphy lowered his voice and looked around warily.\n\n\"Can't tell a lie. I've been making out like a bandit since winning the lottery last week. Poker, craps, roulette \u2026 you name it, I've been winning big time. And no penny-ante stuff. We're talking real money here.\"\n\n\"Whoa.\" Stone made sure to sound suitably impressed. \"So what's your secret, man, if you don't mind me asking?\"\n\nDunphy hesitated before answering, taking a gulp from a beer bottle to buy time.\n\n\"No secret, really. You just gotta trust your instincts, you know, and go for broke when Lady Luck comes your way. Trust me, I was way overdue for a hot streak, but I stuck it out and look at me now.\"\n\nStone remembered the unpaid bills and past-due notices littering Dunphy's run-down trailer. Gus's luck had changed, all right, but he doubted his new buddy was being entirely straight with him. Maybe a few more beers would loosen his tongue?\n\n\"So that's all there is to it?\" he asked. \"Just seizing the day when you're on a roll?\"\n\n\"Well, there's some skill involved, naturally.\" Dunphy puffed up his chest. \"You need to have a clear head, steady nerves, and the guts to roll the dice in the first place. Gambling is just like life, if you think about it. It's all about\u2014\"\n\n\"Excuse me, gentlemen. Allow me to join you.\"\n\nWithout asking for permission, an attractive woman in a black turtleneck and slacks sat down at their table. Straight black hair and bangs matched the kohl accenting her eyes. A golden stud pierced her nose, while an exotic accent suggested that she was hardly native to these parts. A sly, somewhat icy smile told Stone at once that she was trouble.\n\nDunphy's eyes bugged out. He grinned as though he couldn't believe his luck. \"Do I know you? Maybe from that pool party at Ali Baba's the other day?\"\n\n\"Hardly,\" she said. \"I'm here to make you a business proposition.\"\n\nStone had no doubt that this was the \"looker with an attitude\" who had come looking for Gus at the trailer park. What she wanted now was anybody's guess.\n\n\"What kind of proposition?\" Stone asked.\n\nShe cast a disdainful glance in his direction. \"I recommend you stay out of this, Mr. Stone. Believe me when I say I have no great love for Librarians.\"\n\nStone sat up straight, going on full alert. The very existence of the Library was a deeply guarded secret. Only the most serious bad guys, like Delaque or Prospero, knew of them, let alone could identify them by name.\n\nForget local toughs like Rudy and his goons, he realized. We're playing in the big leagues now.\n\n\"Librarians?\" Dunphy swung his gaze back and forth between Stone and the woman, understandably baffled. \"You know each other?\"\n\nThe woman shook her head. \"Only by reputation.\"\n\n\"That puts you one up on me, lady,\" Stone said. \"'Cause I don't have a clue who you are.\"\n\n\"Call me Marjanah, and please don't think of doing anything rash, Mr. Stone.\" She preemptively confiscated both men's forks and steak knives. \"I assure you I'm not here alone.\"\n\nLooking away from her for a moment, Stone surveyed the interior of the steakhouse. A quick sweep of the place confirmed that Marjanah had muscle loitering near all the exits, watching the dealings at the table intently. Stone counted at least four men, all of them radiating menace if you looked hard enough. A telltale bulge under the nearest thug's jacket made it clear that he was armed with more than just a surly expression.\n\nCrap.\n\nStone suddenly wished that he had held on to Rudy's pistol. Not that he was all that eager to trigger a gunfight in a crowded restaurant, full of innocent diners; as a rule, he preferred to rely on his fists\u2014and brains\u2014to get out of a tough scrape. Firearms were for fighting genuine monsters, not human beings, even though the former had an annoying tendency to be bulletproof.\n\n\"Hey, what's going on here?\" Gus picked up on the rising tension at the table. \"Am I missing something?\"\n\n\"As I said,\" Marjanah replied, \"I have a business proposition.\" She smirked coldly. \"Your life \u2026 for the Lamp.\"\n\nLamp? Stone thought, confused. What lamp?\n\nThis wasn't about the penny?\n\n\"Um, what lamp?\" Dunphy nervously took a swig from his beer bottle, no longer delighted by their beautiful visitor's presence at the table. \"I don't know anything about a lamp, although there's a nice home furnishings shop a few blocks from here, by the Greyhound station.\"\n\nWow, Stone thought. He's an even worse liar than Cassandra.\n\n\"Don't try my patience, little man.\" Marjanah scowled while toying with a commandeered steak knife. Contempt dripped from her voice. \"You've had your fun with the Lamp, wasting it on petty diversions, but it's time to surrender it to those of us who truly appreciate its value. Enjoy your winnings and count yourself fortunate that there's no need for matters to get \u2026 messy.\"\n\n\"Messy?\" Gus swallowed hard, going pale beneath his spray tan. \"What do you mean by messy?\"\n\nInstead of answering, she helped herself to his steak, slicing off a big piece of pink meat, cooked very rare. She took her time chewing the morsel, letting Dunphy sweat and Stone ponder his next move.\n\n\"Ah, nice and bloody,\" she declared finally. \"Just the way I like it.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Stone asked. \"Looks to me like it needs pepper.\"\n\nShe may have taken his cutlery, but Stone had palmed the pepper shaker while she was looking at Dunphy and furtively unscrewed the cap underneath the table. Before this could go too far, he threw the contents of the shaker into her face. She cried out furiously.\n\n\"No! Not again!\"\n\nAgain?\n\nStone had no idea what she was referring to, but could live without an explanation. Tears streaming from her eyes, and sneezing uncontrollably, she slashed blindly at him with the knife, but he threw himself backward in time. Springing to his feet, he took hold of the tablecloth and yanked it off the table, spilling plates and food and drinks into her lap to keep her off her game.\n\n\"Kill him!\" she shouted at her men. \"Make him pay with his life!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "Baird's phone chimed, alerting her to an incoming call from Cassandra.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" she told Krieger. \"I need to take this.\"\n\nStepping away from the booth in the bar, she answered the call. \"Cassandra? What's the verdict?\"\n\n\"It's not the penny,\" Cassandra blurted. \"It's something else.\"\n\nThat was not what Baird had expected to hear. \"Such as?\"\n\n\"I have no idea, and neither does Jenkins. We investigated the penny every way we could think of, but it still tested negative for magic. We've been looking in the wrong direction.\"\n\n\"Damn. Just when I thought this case was all but wrapped up,\" Baird said. \"Where are you now? Still at the Annex?\"\n\n\"No, Jenkins sent me back to regroup with you and the others. I'm in the hotel lobby.\"\n\n\"Great, I'll rendezvous with you there in a few minutes. Stone is kind of tied up right now, babysitting Dunphy, but see if you can get hold of Ezekiel. Tell him his play break is over. We need all hands on deck now, if we're starting from scratch again.\"\n\n\"Got it,\" Cassandra said. \"See you soon.\"\n\nBaird returned to the booth, where Krieger was waiting. \"Anything serious?\" he asked.\n\n\"Nope,\" she lied through her teeth. \"But I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this short. It's been great seeing you again, but some of my colleagues from the library are expecting me.\"\n\n\"Fair enough,\" he said amiably, displaying only a reasonable amount of disappointment. \"So how long are you in town anyway? Maybe we can get together again at some point?\"\n\n\"Hard to say.\" She sent him her contact info, phone to phone. \"I'd like that, but we'll have to see.\"\n\n\"Eve Baird working without a plan?\" He made a show of disbelief. \"Now I've seen everything. Are you sure you haven't been replaced by your double from a parallel universe?\"\n\nProbably only a matter of time, she thought. \"Negative. Just taking it easy, that's all.\"\n\n\"Well, don't let me monopolize you then. Go meet up with your friends, and don't worry about the tab. I've got it.\"\n\n\"Thanks. Next time's on me.\"\n\nAs if the bar tab were the only thing she had to worry about.\u2026"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "Pandemonium erupted in the steakhouse as startled customers and waiters, who had been gawking at the juicy scene before\u2014while trying to capture it on their phones as though it were a particularly dramatic episode of The Real Librarians of Las Vegas\u2014panicked upon realizing that Stone and Marjanah were having more than just a highly entertaining spat. Chairs toppled over and tables were abandoned. Frantic men and women shoved each other aside as they stampeded for the exits, obstructing Marjanah's men as they tried to converge on their targets, much to Dunphy's alarm and confusion.\n\n\"W-what's happening?\" He stumbled away from the table, knocking over his chair. \"Who are you people?\"\n\nStone grabbed his arm. \"Never mind that. We've got to get the hell out of here!\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Trust me, Gus. Your life depends on it!\"\n\nDunphy hesitated for only a moment. Given a choice between a past rescuer and a snarly femme fatale who had just threatened to slice him up like a piece of undercooked meat, he nodded at Stone.\n\n\"Of all times to lose my lucky penny!\" he moaned.\n\nEschewing the front door, Stone dragged Dunphy in the opposite direction as the fleeing staff and customers, heading toward the back of the restaurant instead. A member of Marjanah's crew, posted to block any rear exits, reached beneath his jacket for a weapon. Improvising, Stone seized an abandoned salad cart and propelled it at the thug with as much force as he could muster. The cart barreled into the bad guy, knocking him off his feet and into a table. Glassware crashed to the floor, along with a half-eaten meal for two.\n\n\"Don't forget your greens,\" Stone quipped.\n\nGunfire blared as another henchman opened fire, despite the panicky exodus jostling him. Missing his target, he hit a framed photo of Liberace instead, cracking the glass. Wild shots put fresh bullet holes in the old brickwork.\n\nJust like old times, Stone thought. The more things change \u2026\n\n\"Forget me, you fool!\" Marjanah shouted at a third man who had rushed to her aid. Groping for a pitcher of water at a table, she tossed it in her face to rinse out her streaming eyes. She sneezed violently as she yelled at her minions. \"After them, but leave the gambler alive! We need him to tell us where he hid the Lamp!\"\n\nStone really wished he knew more about this Lamp business.\n\n\"Keep behind me,\" he hollered at Dunphy, for more reasons than one. He hadn't meant to use Gus as a human shield, but if it kept Marjanah's men from thinking twice about shooting at him.\u2026 \"I can get us out of this, in theory.\"\n\nThe guy who'd been hit by the salad cart stumbled back onto his feet. Splattered with salad fixings, he chased after them and grabbed Gus by his collar. \"That's far enough,\" he snarled, splitting out a stray spinach leaf. \"When we get through with you two\u2026\"\n\n\"Gus!\" Stone grabbed the back of an empty chair. \"Duck!\"\n\nDunphy obligingly dipped his head, and Stone swung the chair into the face of the crook, breaking the wooden legs right off the seat. Stunned, the man fell backward, losing his grip on Gus. Stone hoped the chair hadn't been part of the original furnishings.\n\n\"I say we skip dessert,\" Stone said. \"How 'bout you?\"\n\nGus nodded weakly.\n\nThey barged into the kitchen, where the terrified chef and staff were cowering on the floor, wisely trying to avoid catching a bullet. A sirloin steak was burning on the grill, which struck Stone as a damn shame. He snatched a heavy steel meat mallet from a counter.\n\n\"The basement?\" he asked urgently. \"Which way \u2026 quickly!\"\n\nThe trembling chef pointed to a recess at the rear of the kitchen.\n\n\"Thanks!\" Stone said. \"Keep your heads down!\"\n\nGunfire from the dining room peppered the kitchen in a surely unintended bit of poetic payback for what Stone had done to Marjanah. Shots rang off hanging cast-iron skillets. Frying pans and ladles clattered onto the floor, adding to the clamor. Stone ducked low as he made tracks across the kitchen.\n\n\"This way,\" he told Gus. \"Hurry!\"\n\n\"The basement?\" Dunphy balked. \"But we'll be trapped!\"\n\n\"Not if this place is as authentic as you say it is.\"\n\nYanking open the cellar door, they scrambled downstairs to the basement, which was obviously being used as a storeroom. Harsh fluorescent lights lit up the cellar, exposing metal shelves stocked with ingredients and cleaning supplies. A refrigerated meat locker hummed. Kegs of beer were stacked in a corner. Grunting, Stone hastily rolled one of the heavy kegs in front of the door at the bottom of the stairs, creating a barricade.\n\n\"That should buy us a few moments,\" he said, stepping back from the door.\n\nDunphy didn't look reassured. \"What good will that do? We're stuck!\"\n\nHe pulled out a snazzy new smartphone to dial 911.\n\n\"Maybe not,\" Stone said. \"Most of these old mob joints had secret tunnels and escape routes, just in case the cops raided the place or, more likely, a rival gangster came gunning for you.\" Stone hurriedly searched the cellar as he talked. \"The basement is the obvious place to look for an underground tunnel, but where\u2026?\"\n\nA closet door, built into an exposed-brick wall, caught his eye. He raced over to take a closer look.\n\n\"Yes! This looks like part of the original construction, dating back to the late forties. The mortar appears to be a postwar blend of limestone and Portland cement, and this white milk-glass doorknob with the brass rosette? Clearly the right era as well.\"\n\nDunphy looked at him funny. \"What kind of librarian are you again?\"\n\n\"The kind you need right now.\"\n\nStone tried the knob, only to find it locked. \"Figures.\"\n\nAs much as he hated vandalizing the antique door and knob, he pounded on the lock with the meat mallet until it broke. The door swung open to reveal a ladder descending into an unlit vertical shaft. Stone peered down into the shaft but saw only darkness.\n\nSo what else is new?\n\n\"This is it,\" he said. \"Our way out.\"\n\nGus hesitated. \"But it's so dark. I can't see a thing.\"\n\nHeavy bodies thumped against the basement door, only a few yards away. Bullets blasted through the wooden door and perforated the metal keg, causing beer to gush onto the floor. Marjanah's irate voice could be heard above the gunshots.\n\n\"Stop them! I can't lose that Lamp again!\"\n\nHer men threw themselves against the door with renewed force, forcing it open a few inches. The bottom of the keg scraped across the floor.\n\n\"On second thought,\" Dunphy said. \"But you go first!\"\n\nWhatever, Stone thought. Having worked laying pipe in the natural-gas business before becoming a Librarian, he was used to climbing down into holes in the ground. Taking the lead, he clambered down the ladder before reaching solid ground about twelve feet below. \"So far, so good\" he yelled to Dunphy. \"Get a move on!\"\n\nThat keg wasn't going to block the door forever.\n\nMuttering unhappily to himself, Dunphy joined him at the bottom of the ladder, which was lit only by whatever light leaked down from the basement. Stone started to feel his way forward before remembering that his phone could be used as a flashlight. A bright white beam revealed a brick-lined tunnel stretching off to the right.\n\nAt least there shouldn't be any Bronze Age deathtraps, he thought, or trapped Native American trickster spirits.\n\n\"Run for it!\" Stone ordered. \"This is our way out \u2026 in theory.\"\n\nHe felt bad about running out on the bill and stiffing their waiter, but at least they were luring Marjanah and her henchmen away from the restaurant. He made a mental note to pop some cash in the mail\u2014if he and Gus got away in one piece.\n\nShouts and commotion, echoing down from above, spurred their heels as the men dashed down the tunnel to who knew where. Stone estimated that the tunnel was at least sixty years old, which made it relatively new compared to some of the ancient tunnels and passages he'd explored as a Librarian, like the hidden catacombs beneath the Tiber, but he was in no position to be picky. Cobwebs hung like curtains, clinging to them as they barreled through them. A rat scurried out of their way.\n\n\"I don't like this!\" Dunphy whined. \"This is not what I wished for!\"\n\nWished? Stone thought. Just how literally does he mean that?\n\nThe doorway to the basement crashed open loudly, giving him no time to quiz Dunphy on his remark. Their pursuers were bound to find the exposed ladder any moment now.\n\n\"Where does this go?\" Gus asked anxiously.\n\n\"Your guess is as good as mine.\"\n\nFortunately the tunnel was only about ten yards long, so they soon came upon a second ladder leading up to a rusty metal door in the ceiling. Stone scrambled up the ladder, with Gus right on his heels, only to find it bolted shut. He pounded on it with the mallet.\n\n\"Open up! It's an emergency!\"\n\nAt first, he feared there was nobody on the other side to hear him. He shouted louder and kept on pounding for attention.\n\n\"Help us, please! It's a matter of life or death!\"\n\nFor me, that is, Stone thought. Marjanah would want to take Gus alive in order find that Lamp of hers. \"Open up!\"\n\nThe ladder was up against a dead end, so there wasn't even a door for the Library to try to latch onto. He gripped the mallet, but he knew it wouldn't be enough to balance the scales against a band of determined gunmen. He was good in a fight, but not that good.\n\nJust wish I knew what I was dying for.\u2026\n\nThen, just in time, he heard a bolt being drawn on the other side of the door, which swung upward to reveal a puzzled-looking teenager gazing down on them.\n\n\"Hello?\" the acne-faced youth asked him. \"Are you in trouble?\"\n\n\"Not so much now.\" Stone hurried up the ladder into what appeared to be the basement of a cut-rate souvenir shop, stuffed with crates of Vegas-themed baseball caps, snow globes, postcards, calendars, playing cards, poker chips, and other knickknacks. He hauled Dunphy up behind him. \"Thanks!\"\n\n\"How'd you guys get down there?\"\n\n\"Took a wrong turn.\" Stone bolted the trap door behind them. \"But I wouldn't let anybody up after us, and you might want to vacate the premises. There's some not very nice people right on our tail. The kind with guns and knives.\"\n\n\"Whoa,\" the teen said. \"You think I should call the cops?\"\n\n\"Not a bad idea, but I'm afraid we can't stick around.\"\n\n\"We can't?\" Gus asked.\n\nStone shook his head. \"Not unless you want to explain to them about the Lamp.\"\n\nThat struck a nerve, even if Gus tried (and failed) to let it show. For a chronic gambler, he had one of the worst poker faces Stone had ever seen.\n\n\"You know, maybe we don't want to wait for the police.\"\n\nSomeone banged on the door in the floor. A harsh voice demanded entrance. More voices shouted loudly in frustration.\n\n\"Yikes!\" The teen bolted from the basement. \"This is not worth minimum wage!\"\n\nStone and Dunphy raced up the stairs after him. The ground floor above had oodles more souvenirs on sale, but the men didn't give the merchandise a second glance as they dashed outdoors to find themselves right in the heart of Glitter Gulch, the neon-drenched birthplace of Sin City, where the very first casinos had gone up. Although long since eclipsed by the bigger, fancier resorts and hotels on the Strip, downtown Vegas was still home to several old and restored casinos, along with other tourist attractions. Night had fallen, so the men lost themselves in the crowds flocking to the Fremont Street Experience, a four-block-long pedestrian mall covered by an enormous vaulted canopy displaying a spectacular light show created by millions of brilliant LED lights. Throbbing music created a party atmosphere. Daring tourists soared below the lofty canopy on a zip line. Stone hoped the giddy festivities would hide them from Marjanah and her men, at least for the moment.\n\nThe warm Nevada air came as a drastic change from the air-conditioned restaurant. Stone looked up and down the busy thoroughfare, weighing their options. In the Gulch's glory days, a fleeing mob boss would have had a getaway car waiting with its engines running, but any such vehicles would be in a junkyard or antique auto show these days. He and Dunphy were going to have to hoof it to \u2026 where?\n\n\"I don't understand,\" Gus said, gasping for breath. This was probably the most physical exercise he'd gotten in years. \"Who were those people?\"\n\n\"Hell if I know.\" Stone noticed that Dunphy hadn't asked what they were after. He was dying to ask Gus about this whole Lamp business, but maybe after they had well and truly given their pursuers the slip. \"We've got to find someplace safe to hole up while we figure this out.\"\n\nGus nodded. \"My penthouse at Ali Baba's?\"\n\n\"Nah. That's the first place they'll go looking for you.\"\n\nGus gulped at the thought. \"What about the Flamingo? Or Caesar's Palace?\"\n\n\"Forget the casinos,\" Stone said. \"We need someplace where nobody would ever think to find you.\" He briefly considered whisking Dunphy off to the Annex, but taking a stranger touched by unknown magic into the Library was a huge security risk; there was no way Jenkins would stand for it. Racking his brains, Stone hit on another idea. \"So, what do you think of Mondrian?\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"How about Chagall? Kandinsky?\"\n\nDunphy's blank expression said it all.\n\n\"Never mind,\" Stone said, grinning. \"I think I know just the right place.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "\"You sure we can trust this guy?\" Flynn asked.\n\nHe and Shirin were crammed into a secret compartment beneath the bed of a pickup truck traveling northeast toward the mountainous border between Iraq and Iran. Their faces were only inches apart, making for an uncomfortably cozy trip. A load of heavy, handmade carpets was piled on top of the compartment, further concealing it from view. Tiny air holes, poked into the bottom of the compartment, kept them from suffocating. The only light came from their cell phones, which they used sparingly in order to preserve the batteries. Flynn was glad that he wasn't too claustrophobic.\n\n\"He's a smuggler.\" Shirin shrugged as much as she could, considering their cramped accommodations. \"But he comes recommended, if you want to sneak across the border into Iran.\"\n\n\"Recommended by who again?\"\n\n\"People who know people,\" she said vaguely. \"These days most everybody knows someone who wants to get out of the country, and knows people who can make that happen \u2026 for the right price.\"\n\nFlynn winced, remembering the price tag for this excursion. Charlene was not going be happy when she found out how much he had shelled out already, supposedly to cover all the necessary bribes and other expenses. I'm guessing smugglers don't issue receipts.\n\n\"I guess,\" he said uncertainly.\n\n\"We've gone over this already,\" she reminded him. \"You wanted to know the best way to get into northern Iran, and that's through the border crossing at Penjwin, where there's a fair amount of trade and traffic going on most of the time. I suppose we could have gone through the appropriate channels and applied for the proper travel visas, but\u2026\"\n\n\"That would have taken too much time and possibly attracted too much attention,\" Flynn said. \"Yeah, yeah, I know.\" She was right about one thing; it was too late to second-guess their strategy now. \"Don't mind me. I'm just making conversation, since we've got kind of a long trip ahead of us.\"\n\nThey had already been driving for hours across the flatlands of central Iraq, over frequently bumpy roads and slowed by periodic checkpoints and traffic jams. Although they'd been provided with water, the stuffy compartment still felt like an oven. Flynn couldn't wait until they reached the cooler temperatures of the mountains bordering the northwest corner of Iran.\n\n\"Tell me about yourself,\" she suggested. \"If we're going to be squeezed in here together all the way to Kurdistan, we might as well get to know each other a little better, especially since nobody is trying to kidnap or kill us at the moment.\"\n\n\"Knock on wood,\" he said. \"Anyway, there's not much to tell. I grew up in New York\u2014Queens, to be exact\u2014and stayed in college for as long as I could, picking up twenty-plus degrees in everything from Egyptology to Botanical Studies before I was recruited to be the new Librarian.\"\n\n\"Which means what exactly?\"\n\nHe answered carefully, not wanting to reveal too many of the Library's age-old secrets. \"My job is pretty much the same as yours: unearthing the lost mysteries of the past and keeping them safe and out of the wrong hands. It's just that, in my case, that often involves a fair number of cultists, rival treasure hunters, and time-traveling ninjas.\"\n\n\"Time-traveling\u2026?\"\n\nHe started to explain, but she placed a hand over his mouth.\n\n\"Never mind,\" she said. \"I don't want to know. I'm still trying to keep one foot in reality, if you don't mind.\"\n\n\"Fair enough,\" he answered after she pulled her hand away. \"Although I can't guarantee how long that's going to be possible as, with any luck, we get closer and closer to the Lamp.\" He shifted a leg to keep it from falling asleep, while trying not to encroach on Shirin's personal space more than was strictly necessary. \"What about you? What's your story, aside from being the world's most glamorous museum curator?\"\n\nShe arched an eyebrow. \"Glamorous?\"\n\n\"Did I say that?\" he said, blushing. \"I mean, aside from being the assiduous and intrepid archivist for the Baghdad Museum of Arts and Antiquities?\"\n\nShe shrugged again, mercifully letting him off the hook for the moment. \"What's there to say? Only child, middle-class roots, a lifelong fascination with the ancient writings and history, and parents who did not pressure me to get married instead of pursuing my career \u2026 well, at least, not too much. They moved out of city after the invasion, but I stuck it out in Baghdad and have been hiding out in the Archives for the last few years, while working to get the museum up and running again.\" A rueful look came over her face. \"Until the other day, that is, when my life took an unfortunate turn toward the crazy.\"\n\n\"Sorry about that,\" Flynn said.\n\n\"Not your fault, really,\" she insisted. \"You were right about the Forty coming after me, as hard as that it is to admit. And you've saved my life at least twice now.\" She smiled at him. \"If I have to hide beneath carpets, like Cleopatra before Caesar, I could have worse company.\"\n\n\"Likewise,\" he said, \"although, technically, Cleo was rolled up inside a carpet, not hiding beneath a heap of them.\u2026\"\n\n\"Don't be a pedant,\" she said. \"Not that I'm comparing myself to Cleopatra, mind you.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" Despite his best intentions, he found himself captivated by the dark eyes gazing back at him, which were only dimly visible in the faint light. Was it just his imagination, or was it getting even hotter inside the sweltering compartment? Acutely aware of just how tightly they were packed together, he tried to play it cool. \"I can see it.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" she said. \"Just don't make an asp of yourself.\"\n\nA pothole caused the truck to abruptly lurch to one side, throwing him up against her. Her soft curves cushioned the collision to an embarrassing degree.\n\n\"Oops!\" he blurted. \"Sorry about that.\"\n\n\"Stop apologizing.\" The truck righted itself, but she didn't pull away. \"I'm fine. We're fine, and, honestly, I could use a hug after everything we've been through.\"\n\n\"Just a hug?\" he couldn't resist asking. What was it about death-defying quests to save the world that always seemed to put him in the mood?\n\n\"Don't get ahead of yourself, Librarian,\" she teased. \"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not polite to skip ahead to the end of the book?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "Hours passed as the truck gradually left the lowlands and began climbing toward the Zagros Mountains dividing Kurdish Iraq from Iran. At least it certainly felt as if they were driving uphill, which Flynn chose to take as a good sign. Exhaustion eventually caught up with them and they dozed off in each other's arms\u2014until squealing brakes awoke Flynn rudely.\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\nDisoriented, he started to sit up, only to smack his head into the ceiling. Right, he remembered, I'm hidden in the back of a truck.\n\nShirin stirred beside him. \"What is it? Why have we stopped?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" He settled back down against her and consulted the illuminated display on his wristwatch. \"By my calculations, assuming a more or less consistent rate of speed, we've probably reached the border.\"\n\n\"And?\" she asked.\n\n\"Now we see just how reliable a smuggler our driver is.\"\n\nBorder crossings tended to be time-consuming even if you had all your papers in order, which they most definitely did not, and this delay was more excruciating than most. Despite their driver's assurances that he had done this run many times before and had greased all the appropriate palms along the way, Flynn kept waiting for armed border guards to yank open the lid of the compartment and drag him and Shirin out into the harsh light of day. Keeping quiet, he listened tensely to the sounds of idling engines, pacing footsteps, and impatient voices arguing in Arabic.\n\nJust the usual border hassles, he told himself. Nothing to worry about.\n\nHe hoped.\n\nAlthough neither he nor Shirin dared speak to each other for fear of being overheard, he could feel the tension in her body as they snuggled together. In theory, the heavy carpets would muffle any noises coming from the hidden compartment, while also discouraging the border guards from searching the back of the truck too closely, but why take chances? There was nothing they could do now but keep mum and hope for the best.\n\nFinally, just as Flynn was starting to think they were going to spend the rest of their lives entombed in the truck, to be discovered by future archaeologists millennia hence, the truck finally lurched forward and drove ahead for fifty yards or so\u2014before coming to a halt again.\n\nThis time the arguing voices were in Persian.\n\nLet me guess, he thought. We've gone from the Iraqi checkpoint to the Iranian one.\n\nThat's progress, I suppose.\n\nAnother interminable delay ensued, but eventually the truck rolled on again, driving uphill for several minutes before pulling off to the curb. Flynn sighed in relief as, accompanied by much strenuous grunting, the rolled-up carpets were shoved aside and the compartment's lid yanked open to let in fresh air and sunlight.\n\n\"End of the road,\" their driver announced. Ali was a stocky, affable fellow who nonetheless preferred to keep things on a first-name basis only. \"For me, that is.\"\n\nFlynn helped Shirin out of the compartment, even as his stiff limbs both rejoiced and protested at the activity. They found themselves alongside a winding mountain road, safely out of view of the border station. The rocky gray slopes of the Zagros Mountains loomed ahead, beneath a breathtaking blue sky. As arranged, a surplus army Jeep was waiting for them a few yards away. Both of them had already changed into proper hiking apparel back in Baghdad.\n\n\"This is as far as I go,\" Ali said. He held out his palm. \"The rest of the payment, please.\"\n\nFlynn reluctantly handed over a thick wad of dinarii from his money belt. \"Um, I don't suppose I can get a receipt?\"\n\nAli laughed out loud.\n\nI was afraid of that, Flynn thought.\n\nThe smuggler did not stick around after getting paid. Following his example, Flynn and Shirin set off in the Jeep into the mountains, quickly diverging from the main routes onto twisty hillside byways that barely qualified as roads. Any semblance of blacktop was soon left behind as the Jeep bounced over crude dirt roads that almost had Flynn pining for their chauffeured trip in the back of the truck. A born New Yorker, accustomed to public transit, he let Shirin drive while he navigated, relying on both a secondhand GPS device they had picked up in a souk back in Baghdad and an old-fashioned paper map on which he had marked the supposed location of Scheherazade's tomb, at least according to Shirin's translation of her stolen copy of The Arabian Nights. The cooler climate at this elevation came as a blessed relief after the dry, arid heat of Baghdad and the sweaty confines of the smuggler's truck.\n\n\"Turn east up ahead,\" he instructed Shirin, \"when the opportunity arises.\"\n\n\"Are we sure we're going the right way?\" she asked dubiously. \"Seems like we're heading deeper and deeper into nowhere.\"\n\n\"Which is a good sign, actually. In my experience, lost tombs and such are generally found off the beaten track, far from major population centers\u2014okay, except for the hidden crypt of Pope Joan underneath the Vatican, or that secret Masonic temple in the Paris catacombs.\u2026\"\n\n\"Forget I asked,\" she said. \"I swear, I think you're just making most of this up, except when I'm scared that you're not.\"\n\n\"Scared, but curious, I hope.\"\n\n\"That, too,\" she admitted.\n\nFlynn wondered how she was going to react if and when they finally stumbled onto an actual magic lamp or genie. He knew from personal experience that discovering the magical truth behind the myths could be a life-changing revelation. In his case, sheer excitement had won out over shock and disbelief, but who knew if that would apply to Shirin as well?\n\nThieves and assassins were one thing. A genuine Djinn was another.\n\nHe carefully tracked their progress on the map. Lacking a flying carpet or any other form of aircraft, they couldn't fly straight to where \"X\" marked the spot, forcing them to take frequent detours. Steep slopes tested the Jeep's four-wheel drive. Rocky cliffs rose on the left side of the road, while a sheer precipice dropped off sharply to the left. A notable lack of guardrails made the drive even more unnerving, as did weathered signs in Persian warning of possible rockslides and other hazards.\n\nPROCEED AT OWN RISK read one sign, more or less.\n\nStory of my life, Flynn thought. Too bad it cost Leila hers.\u2026\n\nThat the bookseller's bravery\u2014and sacrifice\u2014had surely saved him and Shirin was not lost on Flynn. He figured that the best way he could honor Leila Hamza's memory was to make certain that she had not died in vain\u2014by keeping the Lamp out of the hands of her murderers.\n\nThat's what she would have wanted, I'm guessing.\n\nShirin hit the brakes, tossing them both forward in their seats, as they rounded a corner to find a huge boulder blocking their path, along with additional rubble strewn upon the roadway. It was obvious at a glance that there was no way around the granite obstruction. From the looks of things, it was going to be a struggle squeezing past the boulder on foot.\n\n\"Now what?\"\n\nFlynn shrugged. \"Now we get to stretch our legs some.\"\n\nAbandoning the Jeep, they trekked up into the mountains on foot, pausing occasionally to rest and sip from their canteens. Roads turned into trails into rough, untracked climbs and crevices that felt more like an obstacle course than a route intended to be traversed by mortals. Scattered elms and walnut trees punctuated the rocky wilderness. Daylight retreated as the sun sank slowly toward the west. A hyena howled somewhere in the desolate hills.\n\n\"Should we stop for the night?\" Shirin asked, sticking close to Flynn.\n\n\"You see a good camping spot?\" Flynn consulted his GPS. \"By my calculations, we should be almost there.\" He glanced around warily. \"Given a choice, I think I'd rather spend the night in the shelter of an ancient tomb than out in the open.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\" Shirin asked. \"Those are our choices?\"\n\n\"Beats being held prisoner by the Forty,\" he pointed out.\n\n\"That's a very low bar. When did sleeping peacefully in my own bed cease to be an option?\"\n\nWhen you found a certain long-lost book, he thought, and let the wrong people hear about it.\n\nHe was trying to craft a more comforting answer when the unmistakable whirr of an approaching helicopter disturbed the wilderness. He grabbed Shirin and pulled her beneath a lonely maple tree while looking around for a better hiding place amid the hills. Searchlights scoured the twilit landscape, probing the shadows, as though looking for two runaway scholars.\n\n\"Who is it?\" Shirin whispered.\n\nFlynn shrugged. \"Maybe just a routine military patrol?\"\n\n\"You really think so?\" she asked.\n\n\"Not for a minute.\"\n\nThey flattened themselves against the tree trunk, hoping to evade the searchlights. Flynn regretted not trying to hide the Jeep earlier\u2014not that there had really been a way to camouflage the abandoned vehicle, aside from maybe burying it under another rockslide. Long minutes passed, causing him to flash back to last night's tense vigil on the rooftop, while they waited for the helicopter to move on. Nightfall, along with the craggy terrain, helped to conceal them, although Flynn found himself wishing for the good old days of The Arabian Nights, when the Forty Thieves had not had access to aircraft. It was no doubt easier for fugitives to elude detection back then.\n\nWe could hide from a camel better than a helicopter.\n\nNone too soon, the chopper circled away from them, leading Flynn to assume that he and Shirin had gone undetected \u2026 for now.\n\n\"I think it's safe to move on,\" he said. \"Thank heaven for small favors and rugged hills and canyons. Believe me, you don't want to try to keep out of sight of the bad guys while crossing a vast, empty desert in search of a forgotten oasis.\"\n\n\"I'll keep that in mind.\" She stared after the departing chopper. \"You really think that was \u2026 our friends from before?\"\n\n\"Probably,\" he admitted. \"From what I hear, they've been searching for the Lamp for more than seven hundred years now. Can't imagine they'll give up easily.\"\n\n\"But we left them behind in Baghdad,\" Shirin protested. \"How could they trail us to these hills?\"\n\n\"Who knows?\" Flynn said. \"Maybe Ali sold us out, or somebody else. A lone American civilian and a runaway Iraqi museum official looking to slip across the border into Iran? That's the kind of thing that gets people talking, even if only in hushed whispers, and I have to imagine that the Forty have their own connections to the smuggling trade.\" Thinking it over, another possibility occurred to him. \"Or maybe the Forty managed to translate enough of your copy of the Alf Layla to point them in right general direction, northeast toward what used to be ancient Persia, where the story of Scheherazade began.\"\n\n\"That all sounds much too plausible.\" She leaned against the tree. \"I suppose it was too much to hope that we had seen the last of them.\"\n\n\"Never underestimate the opposition,\" he said. \"In my experience, the bad guys tend to be annoyingly persistent, and head starts seldom last for long. If I had a dinar for every time I thought I'd beaten the other team to the prize only to discover that\u2014\"\n\n\"I get the message,\" Shirin said. \"All the more reason to move on, then.\"\n\n\"My thoughts exactly.\"\n\nTwilight soon gave way to darkness, forcing them to rely on flashlights to make their way through the hills. Flynn kept his beam aimed down at the ground to avoid shining the light up into the sky. They stumbled awkwardly over the rough, uneven ground, passing through narrow defiles between steep, forbidding slopes. Flynn hoped the way down would be easier than the way up. His legs were already aching from the climb.\n\n\"Almost there,\" Flynn said, squinting at the GPS device. \"Maybe fifty yards or so.\u2026\"\n\nAll at once, the trail dropped away in front of them. Flynn threw out an arm to block Shirin before she could step over the edge of the cliff.\n\n\"Careful,\" he warned. \"Looks like a long way down.\"\n\nThey found themselves overlooking a deep ravine at least a hundred feet across. A rickety-looking rope bridge spanned the ravine to connect with a narrow ledge on the other side. Peering down over the edge of the precipice, Flynn glimpsed a desolate river valley maybe 150 feet below. White water surged over raging rapids, and massive boulders eliminated the possibility of any Butch-and-Sundance plunges into deep water. A chill mountain breeze caused the rope bridge to sway back and forth, reminding Flynn uncomfortably of crossing a similar bridge over the Amazon years ago. That bridge had literally disintegrated behind him as he'd run across it.\n\nHe wasn't looking forward to reliving that experience.\n\n\"You have reached your destination,\" the GPS chirped.\n\n\"No,\" Shirin said. \"That can't be right.\" She shined her own flashlight across the ravine. \"Even if we cross that bridge, there's nothing on the other side but more rocks and hills.\" Bitterness crept into her voice. \"I should have known better than to buy into all this nonsense. This is where the story ends, all right.\"\n\nFlynn's ears perked up.\n\n\"That's right!\" He consulted her notes by flashlight to refresh his memory. \"The book said that Scheherazade was buried where the story ends.\"\n\n\"So?\" she asked, clearly puzzled by his reaction.\n\n\"So Scheherazade's stories never ended; that was the whole point of her tale. She practically invented the cliffhanger ending, so where better to bury her than in the face of a cliff?\"\n\nOvercome with curiosity and the always intoxicating thrill of possibly solving an age-old puzzle, he swept the beam of his flashlight over the opposite side of the ravine. At first he didn't see anything, but then the light of the beam was swallowed by a narrow black gap in the weathered stone face of the cliff, roughly twenty-five feet below the swinging rope bridge. Flecks of mica, embedded in the granite, sparkled in the beam, forming a constellation of tiny stars around the opening\u2014as though marking the entrance to a hidden tomb carved into the very face of the cliff? Looking more closely, he saw that the flecks specifically mapped the constellation of Perseus, which was well known to medieval Arab astronomers, who actually named many of its stars, which still shone brightly in the \u2026 Arabian nights?\n\n\"Bingo,\" Flynn said. \"That's it. It has to be.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" Shirin stared at the enigmatic gap, sounding intrigued despite her earlier skepticism. \"But even if that is an opening, it's at least seven meters beneath that ledge on the other side of the bridge. There's no way to get down to that gap unless you've brought along serious mountaineering gear \u2026 or a hang glider.\"\n\n\"Left the hang glider in my other jacket, I'm afraid, but give me a second to think.\"\n\nLet's see, he thought, his mind racing. If the bridge is approximately a hundred feet in length, and the entrance is roughly twenty-five feet below the top of the cliff \u2026\n\n\"I've got an idea,\" he said, \"but you're probably going to think I'm crazy.\"\n\n\"Too late,\" she said."
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "\"I can't believe you talked me into this.\"\n\nShirin was lying face down on the decrepit rope bridge, clutching a wooden plank with both hands. Flynn was lying directly behind her, doing the same. Smoke rose from the red-hot flames licking at the nearer end of the bridge, eating way at the ropes.\n\n\"Just hold tight,\" he replied, \"and brace for impact!\"\n\nSecond thoughts assailed her. \"But what if it can't support our weight\u2014\"\n\nThe ropes burned through, and the bridge tore loose from its moorings. Still connected to the opposite end of the ravine, at least for the moment, it swung toward the cliff face with alarming speed, smacking into the unyielding stone with bone-jarring force. The impact bruised Shirin's fingers and nearly caused her to lose her grip on the bridge, but she held on for dear life. Gravity tugged on her dangling legs until she managed to find a foothold on one of the planks below her.\n\n\"Flynn!\" she shouted, once she caught her breath. \"Did you make it?\"\n\n\"Still hanging in there,\" he replied from below her. \"Literally.\"\n\nAs hoped, the bridge had become a ladder, climbing up the side of the cliff. Risking a glance down, she spied Flynn holding onto the ladder right beneath her. Unfortunately, she also saw the flames at the bottom of the ladder climbing rapidly toward them, consuming the dry rope and wooden rungs. Smoke tickled her nostrils. A charred plank escaped the blazing ropes and plunged like a fallen angel toward the rapids far below, smoke and flames trailing behind it before it crashed into the foaming waters and disappeared from sight.\n\nThis is all my mother's fault, Shirin thought. If she hadn't filled my head with wild stories about Scheherazade \u2026\n\nWasting no time, she and Flynn scrambled up the burning rope ladder until they reached the opening in the cliff face. Abandoning the ladder, she threw herself into the murky recess, then spun about to help pull Flynn into the cave entrance as well. To her relief, the gap was large enough to accommodate them both. He grinned at her in the dark.\n\n\"You see,\" he said. \"It worked!\"\n\nThe flames reached their level, and they backed away from the heat. Moments later, the flaming remains of the ladder fell away from the cliff and plummeted from sight. Shirin gulped.\n\n\"Wait a second,\" she said. \"How are we supposed to get out of here now?\"\n\nFlynn shrugged. \"One thing at a time, please. Let's find that tomb first.\"\n\nHis blas\u00e9 attitude dumbfounded her, but she had no choice but to go along with it. \"Just so you know, this is rather more peril than I'm accustomed to. I'm a scholar, not a daredevil.\"\n\n\"That's what I used to think, too,\" he said.\n\nTurning away from the opening, they faced a dark tunnel leading deeper into the mountainside. \"A natural cave?\" she asked.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" he said. \"Watch out for booby traps.\"\n\n\"Booby traps? Really?\"\n\n\"There are always booby traps,\" he said. \"Or guardians, or guardians and booby traps.\u2026\"\n\nShe stared at him, aghast. \"How is it you're still alive?\"\n\n\"Clean living and a well-rounded education?\"\n\nThey advanced down the tunnel, which widened into a larger corridor that had obviously been shaped, at least in part, by human hands and artifice. Scenes from The Arabian Nights were carved into the walls on either side of them: Sinbad sailing the seas, an enchanted horse galloping above the clouds, Ali Baba discovering hidden treasure, Aladdin summoning the Genie from his Lamp.\u2026\n\nShirin paused before the latter bas-relief carving. Was that really what this was all about? A quest for a magic lamp?\n\nNo, she scolded herself. Don't be ridiculous. There's no such thing as magic.\n\nBut a hidden tomb containing an original, handwritten copy of the Alf Layla? That was a discovery she could believe in, one that didn't require her to throw all her common sense and sanity off a cliff, as it were. That was archaeology, not fantasy.\n\nNo matter what Flynn seemed to think.\n\nSomething crunched beneath her feet, and she jumped in fright, almost dropping her flashlight. Flynn turned his own light toward her, exposing the shattered bones of some small animal. A rat, perhaps, or some other rodent.\n\nShe clutched her chest, feeling her heart racing. \"Sorry. That gave me a start.\"\n\n\"No problem. Everybody gets spooked by their first hidden tomb.\" Flynn knelt to inspect the bones. \"Nothing too exciting here, though. Most likely Rattus norvegicus, the common brown rat\u2014which, as it happens, is found on every continent except Antarctica.\" He squinted at what was left of a broken skull. \"Hmm. This appears to have been gnawed upon.\"\n\n\"By what?\"\n\n\"Something with very sharp teeth,\" he surmised. \"Possibly\u2014\"\n\nA scuffling noise, coming from deeper within the mountain, interrupted him. Shirin spun toward the noise in time to glimpse a pair of luminous red eyes peering at them from the darkness. She raised her flashlight, hoping to expose the owner of the eyes, but the beam revealed only another stretch of corridor. The incarnadine eyes had vanished so quickly that she wondered if maybe her own eyes had deceived her.\n\n\"Did you see\u2014?\" she began.\n\n\"Two hellish red eyes spying on us?\" Flynn said. \"You bet.\"\n\nThe obvious apprehension in his voice did little to ease Shirin's nerves. She tightened her grip on her flashlight, in case she needed to use it as a club.\n\n\"Just another animal, perhaps, using this place as a lair?\"\n\n\"We should be so lucky.\" Flynn crept forward cautiously, seemingly intent on continuing their investigation despite the unknown creature ahead. His flashlight's beam merged with hers. \"Remember what I said about guardians before?\"\n\nShirin stuck with him, partly for lack of any viable alternatives. \"What kind of guardians, exactly?\"\n\nHe paused at the end of the corridor, at what appeared to be the threshold to a larger chamber beyond. He swept his flashlight's beam over the scene before them.\n\n\"The hungry kind, I'm guessing.\"\n\nTwin beams exposed a large, cavernous chamber littered with bones of varying shapes and sizes and species. The fleshless remains were strewn about carelessly, creating a jumble of loose bones. The smaller ones presumably belonged to rats and birds and other fauna, but some of the others \u2026 Shirin's blood was chilled by the sight of a partial human skull and a ribcage, lying a few meters apart. A quick scan of the chamber suggested there were other human remains mixed in with the bones of animals. A broken femur was deeply scored, as though the flesh had been stripped from it by sharp fangs or claws. A rusty scimitar, broken in two, had apparently done its owner no good.\n\n\"Looks like we're not the first people to find this tomb.\" Flynn picked up the fallen sword hilt and examined it. A chipped metal blade lay a few feet away. \"Approximately eleventh century, I estimate. Probably Turkish in origin.\u2026\"\n\nShirin's mind reeled at the grisly discovery, her excitement over locating the lost tomb warring with an almost superstitious dread of what might still be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on them at any moment. She was tempted to flee, but there was no place to go.\n\n\"W-what do you think happened to them?\"\n\nA maniacal cackle came from behind them, and they darted further into the cavern, kicking aside the larger bones and crunching the smaller ones beneath their boots. Chalky white droppings reeked to high heaven.\n\n\"Cackling,\" Flynn muttered. \"Have I mentioned how much I dislike cackling?\"\n\nA cord, strung low above the floor, snapped as the fleeing explorers ran through it. Bones rattled loudly as Flynn and Shirin were yanked off their feet by a net concealed beneath the gruesome debris. Before she knew it, Shirin found herself suspended high above the floor, trapped in the net with Flynn. They swung back and forth in the trap.\n\n\"A Guardian and a booby trap,\" he muttered. \"Figures.\"\n\nTorches, mounted in braziers upon the walls, flared to life simultaneously, lighting up the chamber\u2014and revealing the inhuman being that had just captured them.\n\nNo, Shirin thought. This can't be possible.\n\nThe creature resembled a cross between a cadaver and a hyena. Leprous white flesh was stretched tight over a bony form whose ribcage was visible beneath the skin. Tufted ears, tapering to a point, and a canine snout eliminated any possibility that the figure was human. Feral jaws bared a mouthful of sharp white teeth well suited to gnawing on bones. Coarse gray fur sprouted beneath the monster's arms and across his shoulders. Elongated fingers and toes, each of which appeared to have one too many joints, ended in long yellow claws. A tattered loincloth protected the creature's modesty, much to Shirin's relief. Demonic red eyes gleefully inspected the hanging humans.\n\n\"Well,\" he cackled. \"What have we here? More foolhardy grave robbers come to sate my appetite?\"\n\nShirin's skepticism shattered into a million pieces. \"Is that really\u2014?\"\n\n\"A ghoul,\" Flynn supplied. \"Straight out of The Arabian Nights.\"\n\nShirin was familiar with the legends, of course. A ghul was a demonic, shape-changing monster said to prey upon the bodies of the dead. According to the Alf Layla, they were known to haunt ruins, cemeteries, and tombs. But reading about them was one thing; actually laying eyes on one turned her entire world upside down\u2014and suggested that Flynn had been right all along.\n\nThis is real. It's all real.\n\nEven the ghoul."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "\"Of course,\" Flynn realized. \"One of the brightest stars in the Perseus constellation is Algol, from the Arabic al-Ghul, meaning 'the ghoul.' That miniature constellation outside wasn't just a grave marker. It contained a warning as well.\" He slapped his forehead. \"I really should have seen this coming.\"\n\nThe ghoul licked his lips and patted his sunken stomach.\n\n\"Dark meat and white,\" he chuckled, admiring his catch. His voice was as dry as the dusty bones beneath his feet. \"A veritable feast.\"\n\n\"Hold on.\" Flynn clutched the metal sword hilt, even though it could be of little use against the ageless creature. \"I thought ghouls only consumed the flesh of the dead. My companion and I are very much living.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll kill you first,\" the ghoul replied, unconcerned by Flynn's objection, \"then let you rot until you're good and tasty. It will be a pleasant change from rats and spiders. It's been ages since I've tasted man \u2026 or woman.\"\n\nShirin shuddered beside Flynn. \"This is real,\" she murmured, more to herself than to him. \"This is actually happening.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so.\" He was impressed by how well she was coping, relatively speaking. Her entire worldview had just been altered irrevocably, yet she seemed to be holding it together, more or less. He resisted the temptation to tell her \"I told you so.\"\n\nThat probably wouldn't be productive.\n\nThe ghoul crept toward them, drool dribbling from his muzzle. \"Or perhaps I should keep one of you alive until I've finished consuming the other? No need to gorge on you both all at once.\" His head swung from side to side, admiring his catch. \"But which to eat first? Decisions, decisions\u2026\"\n\nFlynn had no interest in becoming either the first or second course. He hadn't spent all those years accumulating nearly two dozen degrees just to end up in a monster's belly. That would be a tragic waste of his advanced education, and a sad ending to Shirin's brilliant career as well.\n\n\"Any chance we can make a deal instead?\" he asked.\n\n\"A deal, you say.\" The ghoul eyed him speculatively, sounding intrigued despite his ravenous appetite. \"What do you have to offer in exchange for your lives?\"\n\nFlynn had no idea at first, then remembered where he was: the Tomb of Scheherazade.\n\n\"A story?\"\n\nThe ghoul's eyes widened.\n\n\"A story,\" he said longingly. \"I haven't heard a good story in even longer than it's been since I tasted human flesh, and I've read and reread all the Storyteller's famous tales for a thousand times a thousand nights.\"\n\nFlynn could believe it. He doubted the ghoul got out much.\n\n\"By the Storyteller, you mean Scheherazade, correct?\"\n\n\"Who else?\" the ghoul replied. \"The sultan tasked me to guard the Storyteller's resting place, compelling my obedience with a powerful enchantment cast by his grand vizier, but that was many centuries ago. How I crave a new story instead of an old one!\"\n\nNew to you, Flynn thought. I think I can manage that.\n\n\"And if we tell you a story, one you've never heard before, will you let us go?\"\n\n\"I make no promises, mortal.\" The ghoul squatted on the floor, settling in to be entertained. \"You'll live as the long as the tale amuses me.\"\n\nJust like Scheherazade, Flynn thought. Well, if she could pull it off for a thousand and one nights, I should be able get us through tonight at least.\u2026\n\n\"Fair enough.\" Flynn cleared his throat and began. \"Once upon a time there was an industrious young student who loved learning and wanted to stay in school forever.\u2026\"\n\nHe started strong, regaling the ghoul with his own early exploits as the Librarian, but keeping a story going for hours proved more arduous than he expected, both physically and mentally. After the first few hours, he found his energy flagging. He was tired and hungry, and his mouth felt as dry as the dusty bones littering the chamber. His tongue grew heavy and sticky and clumsy, so that just trying to string words together felt like laying bricks, and it didn't help that he was already worn out from their long hike into the mountains. He would have killed for a glass of water, but his canteen was empty. Glancing furtively at his watch, he saw that dawn was still hours away. They still had a long evening ahead of them, and the ghoul was showing no sign of wanting to call it a night.\n\n\"Um, any chance we can take a brief intermission?\" he asked.\n\nThe ghoul's stomach rumbled. \"Well, I suppose we could pause for a bite to eat.\u2026\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" Flynn said. \"Forget I asked.\"\n\nHe tried to muster enough saliva to continue his story.\n\n\"And then the brave Librarian set out on another quest, for another legendary relic\u2014\"\n\nThe ghoul yawned. \"Yes, yes, just like before and the time before that. I'm getting bored \u2026 and hungry.\"\n\nEveryone's a critic, Flynn thought. \"All right, let's skip ahead to something fresher.\" He tried to kick-start his brain, which was feeling more sluggish by the moment. Maybe he needed to venture beyond autobiography into something more fictional, some old story lurking at the back of his memory. \"So then, after his quest, the hero set out on a fateful trip, departing from a tropic port on a three-hour cruise\u2014\"\n\n\"Let me guess,\" the ghoul interrupted. \"There's a shipwreck, and he's marooned on a deserted island as Sinbad the Sailor so often was.\" He scowled impatiently. \"I know this one.\"\n\nFlynn gulped aridly. \"Um, did I mention the millionaire and his wife?\"\n\nSnarling, the ghoul dropped to all fours and \u2026 changed. His contours blurred momentarily, like watercolors running in the rain, as he effortlessly transformed into a large, gray hyena. His hackles bristled and he bared his fangs. Flynn and Shirin gasped in unison, even as the startled Librarian realized that they probably should have seen this coming.\n\nGhouls were supposed to be shape-shifters, after all.\n\n\"Sit! Stay!\" Flynn called out. \"No need to do anything rash. I've still got plenty of stories left!\"\n\nThe ghoul shifted back into his original form. \"Such as?\"\n\n\"Um, well, that is\u2026\"\n\nFlynn knew that, in theory, he knew centuries of stories that were after the ghoul's time, but how many of them were truly new? It was often said, he recalled, that there were really only seven or so basic plots, and he guessed that the ghoul was more than familiar with all of them. More importantly, his brain had hit a brick wall when it came to thinking up yet another story; his mind went blank, like an actor forgetting his lines onstage in front of a hostile audience. Flop sweat dripped from his face as he felt a possibly fatal case of writer's block coming on.\n\nIt's not fair, he thought. I'm a Librarian, not a storyteller.\n\n\"I'm waiting,\" the ghoul said, \"but not for much longer.\"\n\nFlynn opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He figured he was about to go from entertainment to refreshments when Shirin spoke up instead.\n\n\"And also aboard that boat was a young maiden, who had always loved the old tales, but never truly believed in them \u2026 except in the deepest recesses of her heart. She grew up in a land ruled by a cruel tyrant, where women were not always accorded the respect they deserved, yet she dreamed of becoming a great scholar, although many in her family disapproved. Shirin, they told her night after night, day after day, why can't you just marry a nice boy and start a family? But she loved books more than anything else and wanted to protect them from the passage of time.\u2026\"\n\nThe ghoul settled back down onto the floor. \"Go on,\" he said.\n\n\"I'm only just beginning,\" she promised him. \"One day, the maiden left her home to pursue her dream, no matter what obstacles lay before her, and sought to prove herself to the most venerable scholars and teachers in the great city of Baghdad, that fabled center of learning.\u2026\"\n\nFlynn sighed in relief as Shirin picked up the story and ran with it, giving him a literally life-saving break.\n\nSeems like what I really needed was not inspiration but a collaborator.\n\nAs it turned out, Shirin had plenty of stories, unique to her own life and experiences. Stories poured out of her: her early years and studies, a failed romance that ended in heartbreak, and then the war and all the hardships and dangers she had endured over the last few years.\n\n\"The once-great city was divided by walls and strife. The people turned on one another, nursing grudges old and new, until it was not safe to pass from one neighborhood to another. One day, as the maiden was shopping in the market, a speeding carriage crashed deliberately into a building, causing a terrible explosion. And deafening noises hurt the maiden's ears, even as smoke and ash blotted out the sun, turning day to night. The maiden ran in terror from the destruction, afraid for her very life.\u2026\"\n\nHer voice caught in her throat for a moment as she relived what had obviously been a harrowing ordeal. Flynn wondered if it helped or hurt her to get all of this out of her system. Granted, a flesh-eating ghoul was not the ideal therapist, but maybe there was something cathartic about it?\n\nFlynn hoped as much, for her sake.\n\nIn any event, Shirin's story did what it was supposed to do: hold the ghoul's attention. The creature squatted mutely upon the floor, arguably more attentive than he had ever been during Flynn's stories. The Librarian felt a twinge of competitiveness.\n\nHey, that business with the Crystal Skull was pretty good, I thought.\n\nNot that he could really complain about Shirin keeping the ghoul entertained. Hours passed, and the torches in the braziers began to sputter and die down. The ghoul yawned again, more sleepily this time, and his head began to droop. Flynn and Shirin exchanged hopeful looks. Maybe they were going to live to see the dawn after all?\n\n\"Then, one fateful night,\" Shirin continued, her voice growing hoarse, \"thieves crept into the House of Wisdom, stealing a tome of ancient secrets that pointed the way toward a treasure beyond comprehension. The maiden, who had been entrusted with caring for the book, feared that it had been lost forever, but then a dashing stranger\u2014the Librarian she had met on the sea voyage, remember?\u2014came back into her life and revealed to her that magic truly existed in the world.\u2026\"\n\nHer voice faltered, and Flynn could tell that she was running out of steam. The drowsy ghoul lifted his head, noting her silence. \"Is that it? Are you done?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Flynn insisted. \"We're just getting to the best part.\"\n\nHe whispered into Shirin's ear. \"Keep it going \u2026 just for a little longer.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I can,\" she said weakly. \"I can barely think straight at this point.\"\n\nFlynn remembered feeling the same way hours ago. \"Don't worry about it. I've got this.\"\n\nHe picked up the tale where she left off, hoping his break had given him a second wind.\n\n\"Their reunion was a timely one, for the Librarian was also in search of the treasure and sought to find it before the wicked thieves did, but he needed the beautiful maiden's help\u2014for she alone recalled the secrets recorded in the stolen book and grasped their meaning. Alas, she doubted him at first and kept her secrets to herself.\u2026\"\n\nShirin jabbed him with her elbow.\n\n\"Ouch!\u2014he said, feeling the sting of her distrust, but he guessed that she too was in danger, so he followed her to a crowded marketplace, where a nameless woman of dubious virtue accosted the fair maiden and attempted to abduct her.\u2026\"\n\nA snore interrupted Flynn's narration. Down on the floor, the ghoul's eyes had fallen shut, and he slumped over onto his side, making a nest for himself amid the scattered bones. Flynn felt mildly offended that the ghoul couldn't stay awake long enough to find out what happened next.\n\nI was just getting to the part where I saved the day!\n\n\"You did it,\" Shirin whispered. \"He's asleep.\"\n\n\"We did it,\" he corrected her.\n\nFlynn glanced at his wristwatch. In theory, the sun had just risen outside.\n\n\"Seems ghouls are nocturnal,\" he said. \"Good to know.\"\n\nUsing the jagged edge where the scimitar's blade had once been, Flynn began cutting a hole in the net until he had a gap big enough for them to pass through one at a time. \"Try not to make too much noise,\" he advised Shirin as he helped her lower herself to the floor. Loose bones rattled quietly beneath her feet, causing the sleeping ghoul to stir worryingly, but he kept on slumbering while Flynn cautiously descended to the ground. He stretched his limbs to restore circulation to them.\n\n\"I think he's out like a light,\" Shirin said in a low voice.\n\n\"Lucky him.\" Flynn tiptoed away from the ghoul. \"I could use a few winks myself.\"\n\nShe looked back the way they'd come. \"Maybe we should try to find a way out of here?\"\n\n\"Not without what we came for.\" He understood, however, that Shirin might not feel the same way after nearly becoming a ghoul's late-night snack. \"But if you want to search for a way out and leave the rest up to me, that's okay, too. I signed up for this kind of craziness. You didn't.\"\n\nShe thought it over, but only for a moment.\n\n\"I've come this far. I might as well see it through.\" She contemplated the snoring ghoul. \"Besides, if shape-shifting ghouls are real, I guess Aladdin's Lamp is not beyond the bounds of possibility either. Which means you were right all along: we can't let those killers find it first.\"\n\nFlynn admired her resolve after all she'd been through. \"Glad we're finally on the same page, so to speak. I wasn't kidding a few minutes ago when I said that I really needed your help.\"\n\n\"I remember,\" she said. \"Something about a beautiful maiden, wasn't it?\" She adopted a teasing tone. \"Beautiful, you say?\"\n\n\"I seem to recall something about a dashing stranger,\" he countered, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. \"Dashing?\"\n\n\"Poetic license,\" she said, blushing. \"But never mind that now. Don't we have a tomb to explore?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\nFlirting could wait. It was time to find Scheherazade \u2026 and the buried secrets of The Arabian Nights.\n\n\"After you, beautiful maiden.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "Tiptoeing across the ghoul's lair, Flynn and Shirin entered the chamber beyond, where their eyes widened in amazement. Shirin gasped, but not in fright this time.\n\n\"This is it,\" she said in awe. \"The tomb of Scheherazade \u2026 for real.\"\n\nFlynn didn't immediately spot a marked vault or sarcophagus. \"More like an antechamber, I suspect, but I know what you mean. This is \u2026 wow.\"\n\nUnlike the gruesome, bone-filled lair, the subsequent cavern was a masterpiece of Arabian art and architecture. Instead of hanging stalactites, a domed ceiling gave the chamber a far more airy feel. Decorative tiles sporting endlessly repeating arabesques adorned every exposed surface, from the walls to the ceiling. Sunlight filtered into the ornate vault through tinted glass panes cunningly embedded in the high ceiling. An exquisitely crafted Persian carpet caught Flynn's eye before his attention was drawn to the rest of the chamber's decor. Carved stone shelves held an impressive collection of dusty books and scrolls, presumably from Scheherazade's personal library, as well as mementos from her stories, including a miniature sailing ship of classic Arabian design, a toy-sized mechanical stallion wrought of bronze and silver, and a shard of enormous egg shell.\n\nBut nothing resembling a lamp, magical or otherwise.\n\nBecause that would be too easy, Flynn thought.\n\nEyes wide, Shirin spun in a complete circle in the center of the chamber, taking it all in. \"This is astounding,\" she said in a hushed tone. \"But how on Earth did they manage to transport all these grave goods down the side of the cliff?\"\n\n\"Magic?\" Flynn speculated. \"Or maybe the ghoul did most of the heavy lifting?\"\n\nAs a librarian, Flynn could have spent days examining the priceless contents of just this antechamber, but as the Librarian, he knew they had to keep their eyes on the prize. A beaded curtain on the opposite side of the room veiled the portal to a further chamber, carved even deeper into the solid rock. Flynn sensed that they were nearing the end of their quest\u2014or at least this stage of it.\n\nHe drew back the curtain and peeked ahead.\n\nEureka, he thought. \"Shirin, you need to see this.\"\n\nThe next chamber was as elegantly appointed as the one before, with the same gleaming ceramic tiles and arabesques, but the elaborate ornamentation faded into background compared to the centerpiece of the burial chamber: a polished marble sarcophagus carved in the image of an exotically beautiful sultana, lying horizontally atop the tile floor. The sculpture's elegant stone eyes stared upward into eternity.\n\n\"It's her,\" Shirin whispered. \"Scheherazade.\"\n\nFlynn admired the sculpture's serene countenance.\n\n\"She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart,\" he recited, \"she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments, and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.\"\n\nShirin turned toward him, recognizing the quotation. \"Sir Richard Burton, the 1885 translation.\"\n\n\"That's right.\" Flynn took a closer look at the carved face. \"You know, she does kind of look like you.\"\n\n\"She does, doesn't she?\" Shirin marveled at the resemblance. \"You don't think my mother's stories were true, that I'm actually descended from her?\"\n\n\"Could be,\" Flynn said. \"You do seem two of a kind.\"\n\nShirin beamed at him, her rapt gaze briefly drawn away from the magnificent sarcophagus. \"That just might be the most flattering thing anyone has ever said about me.\"\n\nIt required an effort to keep her smile from distracting him from the task at hand. Fortunately, there was no need to crack open the sarcophagus; a thick, leather-bound tome occupied a position of honor atop the stone coffin, clasped between the figure's slender marble hands. Inscribed in gold upon the front cover of the book was a title in Persian: Hazar Afsan.\n\n\"A Thousand Tales,\" Shirin translated. \"Plus or minus a story.\"\n\nFlynn nodded at the ancient book. \"Would you care to do the honors?\"\n\n\"Try to stop me.\" Shirin approached the sarcophagus reverently and carefully extracted the book from the sculpture's grasp, holding her breath until it was safely liberated from the stone. \"Damn. If only I'd thought to pack cotton gloves.\"\n\nFlynn sympathized, but he had long ago realized that sometimes you had to make compromises in the field, especially when racing to beat the bad guys to a treasure. \"You can't always do things by the book, no pun intended.\" He eyed the volume expectantly. \"Is that it? The original version, as penned by Scheherazade?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" Shirin laid the book down atop the sarcophagus and began to leaf delicately through its pages, which held line after line of fine calligraphy. She squinted at the delicate handwriting. \"Although I can still hardly believe it. It doesn't seem possible.\"\n\n\"Believe it.\" Flynn used his flashlight to give her more light to read by. \"I doubt our necrophagous friend out there would have spent centuries guarding a fake or facsimile.\"\n\n\"This is amazing,\" she enthused. \"Just at a glance, I can tell that this copy is even older and more complete than the one I was translating before, more so than any other version known to exist.\" She kept flipping through the book, her gaze glued to the pages. \"There are stories within stories within stories \u2026 I hardly know where to begin.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't want to rush you, but maybe you can skip ahead to the part about Aladdin, and what happened to his Lamp?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" she said. \"I'm sorry. I'm still simply blown away by the fact that I'm actually handling the very first copy of the Tales, and in Scheherazade's own tomb no less!\"\n\nShe began to peruse the pages more deliberately. Flynn stepped back to give her space, while still providing her with light from her flashlight. He glanced around the crypt, on the lookout for any further snares or booby traps. He noticed a conspicuous lack of cobwebs or vermin.\n\nGuess the hungry ghoul keeps the pest problem under control, he thought. Ick.\n\nHe fought an urge to barge in and search the book himself. Shirin knew The Arabian Nights better than he did, backward and forward probably. He needed to sit back and let her do her thing, no matter how anxious he was to find another clue to the location of the Lamp. He caught himself tapping his foot impatiently against the tile floor and cut it out.\n\n\"Here it is,\" she said, excitement filling her voice. \"A new section that I've never read before, in any of the myriad versions of the Alf Layla.\"\n\nHe came up behind her and peered over her shoulder. \"What does it say?\"\n\n\"The Reader's Digest version? It says here that Aladdin, in the twilight of his years, came to fear the dreadful power of the Djinn and what might become of the world should the willful spirit ever truly escape the Lamp and gain its freedom, so he entrusted the Lamp to his good friends and contemporaries, Sinbad and Ali Baba, who promised to hide it away on an enchanted island, in a cave guarded by a giant rock.\"\n\nHer face fell as the meaning of what she'd just read sank in.\n\n\"A hidden cave on an unnamed island? None of that does us any good. How are we supposed to locate an enchanted island?\"\n\nFlynn observed that she wasn't questioning the existence of the island or the Lamp, just doubting their ability to find them. Apparently her encounter with the ghoul, and their discovery of the tomb, had wiped away the last traces of her skepticism. She was no longer playing Scully to his Mulder.\n\n\"Funny you should ask,\" he said. \"I already have an idea about that.\"\n\nBut before he could elaborate, the rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire disturbed the sanctity of the ancient crypt. The alarming noise came from the ghoul's lair two chambers away. Flynn heard the surprised monster howl briefly in shock and distress before its keening was cut short by the gunfire. Apparently, the ageless ghoul was no match for modern weaponry.\n\n\"What is it?\" Shirin snatched up the book and clutched it to her chest. \"What's happening?\"\n\nFlynn remembered the helicopter that had been scouring the mountains before. \"I think we're about to have company.\"\n\nThe words were barely out of his mouth when a small band of armed invaders barged into the crypt. Rifles targeted Flynn and Shirin. \"Don't even think of trying something!\" a scowling gunman warned. \"And drop that sword \u2026 or whatever it is.\"\n\nFlynn had forgotten the broken hilt in his hand. He let it fall to the floor.\n\n\"That's better,\" the gunman said. \"Stay right where you are, Librarian.\"\n\nFlynn thought he recognized the intruder from the attack on the bookshop. Anger flared inside the Librarian, warring with dismay, as he realized that he was most likely facing one of Leila Hamza's killers. Flynn was not a violent soul by nature, preferring to rely on his wits instead of weapons, but his fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. He stepped protectively in front of Shirin and the book.\n\n\"We found them!\" the gunman called out. \"You are cleared to enter.\"\n\nThe other intruders\u2014at least a dozen in all\u2014fanned out to take possession of the crypt. Moments later, more grave robbers entered the chamber, including the woman from the marketplace and the home invasion, now wearing a practical black sweater, trousers, and boots. She glared venomously at Flynn and Shirin, as though she was still holding a grudge over that turmeric he had blown in her face. Her fingers toyed with a vicious-looking dagger.\n\nSo much for letting bygones be bygones, Flynn thought.\n\nShe was accompanied by a tall, fit-looking man in rugged outdoor gear. A dark indigo turban concealed both his scalp and the bottom half of his face, so that only a pair of icy blue eyes could be seen. He carried himself with authority as the rifle-toting gunmen stepped aside to admit him. A lone pistol was holstered at his hip. He spoke into a walkie-talkie.\n\n\"Chopper Alpha, we have acquired the targets. Stand by.\"\n\n\"Roger that, First of Forty,\" a voice replied, over the sound of whirring rotors. \"Chopper out.\"\n\nThe man put his walkie-talkie away.\n\nPretty clear who's in charge here, Flynn thought. Whoever he is.\n\nThe man's eyes gleamed at the sight of the sarcophagus.\n\n\"At last,\" he said in English, albeit with an American accent slightly muffled by the fabric cloaking his face. \"Well done, Mr. Carsen, Dr. Masri. You led us a merry chase, but, in the end, you brought us right to what we've been seeking for centuries.\"\n\nFlynn mentally cursed the deceased ghoul for giving the Forty time to catch up with them. He briefly wondered how exactly the enemy had tracked them to this very location before realizing that it wouldn't have been too hard to retrace his and Shirin's path from the abandoned Jeep to the torched bridge dangling down the side of the ravine. Who knew, maybe they'd even figured out the \"cliffhanger\" business as well, then used their helicopter to gain access to the tomb entrance.\n\nJust once, he thought, I'd like to find a lost relic without the bad guys horning in on the action.\n\n\"So you're the head of the Forty, I gather.\" Flynn tried to keep up a brave front. He wasn't sure what was scarier: a carrion-eating ghoul or professional criminals with automatic weapons. \"You know our names, obviously, but I don't believe I caught yours.\"\n\n\"Call me Khoja,\" the man said, chuckling as though at a private joke.\n\n\"As in Khoja Hoseyn, the captain of the Forty Thieves in The Arabian Nights?\" Flynn replied, seeing through the transparent alias. \"I'm guessing that's not your real name, especially since you don't strike me as being of particularly Arab descent.\"\n\n\"Very good, Mr. Carsen. I see that the Library has not let its standards slip over the years, at least when it comes to the erudition of its Librarians. I did some digging on you, Carsen, and noted that you seemed manifestly overqualified for your official position at the New York Metropolitan Library\u2014but, of course, that's not really who you work for.\"\n\nFlynn didn't bother pretending that he didn't know what \"Khoja\" was referring to. According to Judson, the Library and the Forty were already well acquainted with each other.\n\n\"Everybody needs a day job,\" he said casually.\n\n\"Too true.\" Khoja gestured toward the lithe, unsmiling woman at his side. \"I believe you've already met my second-in-command, Marjanah?\"\n\nHer dark eyes shot daggers at Flynn and Shirin, making him sweat nervously.\n\n\"Well, I can't say we were ever formally introduced.\u2026\"\n\n\"Trust me,\" she said acidly, \"you made a lasting impression. Both of you.\"\n\nThat's what I was afraid of, Flynn thought. \"So, about that business with the spice, you realize that was nothing personal.\u2026\"\n\nShe snickered cruelly. \"We'll see about that.\"\n\n\"Enough pleasantries.\" Khoja peered past Flynn at Shirin. \"The book, please, Dr. Masri.\"\n\nShe looked at Flynn. \"Do we have any choice?\"\n\n\"Not at the moment. You'd better do what he says.\"\n\n\"Listen to the Librarian.\" Marjanah shoved Flynn aside to reach Shirin, who reluctantly surrendered the volume to the other woman. \"Smart girl.\"\n\nShe handed over the book to Khoja, who inspected it briefly. Flynn wondered how good his ancient Persian was. Khoja clapped the book shut and tucked it under his arm for safekeeping.\n\n\"I'm assuming you already perused the text,\" he said to Shirin. \"What did it say about the location of the Lamp?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Shirin fibbed. \"Or at least nothing that a cursory examination could reveal. Translating a work such as this requires extensive study. We're talking hours, days, months, maybe even years.\"\n\n\"Don't lie to me, Doctor, or try to convince me that you're of no immediate use to us. Our own experts can decipher the book in time, if they have to, but your best chance of surviving the next few minutes lies in giving me the answers I need in a timely fashion.\" He drew his pistol and aimed it at Flynn. \"Or perhaps we can simply do without Mr. Carsen from now on.\"\n\n\"No!\" Shirin blurted. \"You don't need to do that.\"\n\n\"So, you do have something to share with me? Some new clue gleaned from this book?\"\n\nShirin faltered. \"Maybe, but it's just a story, and not very informative.\"\n\n\"Let me be the judge of that.\" Khoja kept the gun pointed at Flynn. \"Enlighten me.\"\n\nFlynn cringed inwardly as Shirin divulged what she had read about the cave on the unknown island. \"Guarded by an enormous rock,\" she concluded, \"or so Scheherazade writes.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Khoja said. \"And how exactly do we find this island?\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" Shirin said. \"That's the truth, I swear!\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\" Khoja swung the gun toward her. \"What about you, Librarian? Surely you must have some thoughts as to our next move \u2026 that you might want to trade for Dr. Masri's life?\"\n\nFlynn stalled, hoping to find a way to save both Shirin and his secrets. \"What makes you think that I'm not stumped, too?\"\n\n\"Because you're the Librarian,\" Khoja said. \"This is what you do.\" He cocked the weapon. \"But if you're both truly of no more value to us.\u2026\"\n\nFlynn was only a so-so poker player, but he didn't think Khoja was bluffing.\n\n\"The rug,\" he said, \"in the antechamber.\"\n\n\"What about it?\" Khoja asked impatiently. \"Don't make me twist your arm, Carsen, figuratively or literally.\"\n\n\"I prefer pulling teeth,\" Marjanah added. \"And, no, that's not just an expression.\"\n\nFlynn gulped. These two meant business.\n\n\"The design of the rug, as per tradition, features geometric patterns extended mathematically from a single abstract figure, in this case a distinctive star formed of two interlaced triangles.\"\n\nShirin caught on immediately. \"The Seal of Solomon.\"\n\n\"Precisely.\" Flynn had noted earlier how the carpet's design had been built around the Seal. \"Which, according to legend, King Solomon used to command genies and all the powers of the Earth, both natural and supernatural.\" He couldn't resist pausing for dramatic effect. \"Solomon is also said to have possessed a flying carpet that would carry him wherever he willed, to every corner of the globe.\"\n\nKhoja nodded, understanding. \"And you believe that carpet in the next room\u2026?\"\n\n\"Is King Solomon's magic carpet, yes.\" Flynn was somewhat surprised that the gang leader was not more taken aback by the suggestion. \"You're not at all skeptical?\"\n\n\"We're searching for Aladdin's Lamp,\" Khoja reminded him.\n\n\"Good point.\" Flynn started toward the antechamber, only to be blocked by Khoja's henchmen. \"If I may?\"\n\n\"Let him through,\" Khoja said, \"but keep your eyes on him. We wouldn't want him to give us the slip again.\"\n\nMarjanah flinched at that last remark. Scowling, she shot Flynn another dirty look.\n\nOkay, that didn't help matters any, he thought.\n\nThe gunmen parted to let him pass. Shirin started to follow him, but Khoja stopped her. \"Why don't you stick close to us, Doctor, just in case the Librarian has something up his sleeve?\"\n\n\"Nothing but my watch and a bad case of goose bumps,\" Flynn promised. \"After me.\"\n\nHe led them all into the antechamber where the gorgeous carpet still rested on the floor. Golden tassels fringed the rug, which was composed of green silk with a golden weft, just as described in certain historical texts. He pointed out the intertwined triangles at the center of the carpet's design.\n\n\"There it is \u2026 the Seal of Solomon.\"\n\nShirin gaped at the seal. \"I can't believe I missed that before!\"\n\n\"Well, you were a little rattled from almost being eaten by a ghoul,\" he said. \"Plus, I've probably had a bit more firsthand experience with Solomon's relics than you have.\"\n\nLike throwing Solomon's personal spell book into a lava pit.\u2026\n\n\"But do you truly think you can make this carpet fly?\" Khoja asked. \"All the way to this nameless island?\"\n\n\"Seems like our best bet, in keeping with the spirit of The Arabian Nights.\" Flynn glanced at the various artifacts on display in the antechamber. \"In fact, I'm betting that's how they managed to cart all this stuff up to the tomb in the first place: by means of the magic carpet.\"\n\nHe pictured the bygone spectacle: a flying carpet miraculously crossing the canyon outside, bearing priceless books and artifacts and, ultimately, the remains of a legendary storyteller. It was like a scene from one of Scheherazade's own tales.\u2026\n\n\"Show me,\" Khoja said. \"But don't even think of going far, if you want Dr. Masri to keep on breathing.\"\n\nHe and the others backed away from the carpet, taking Shirin with them. Flynn strode to the center of the carpet and swallowed hard.\n\n\"Arise! Ascend! Up, up, and away!\"\n\nNothing happened. The carpet remained stretched out atop the floor like, well, a carpet.\n\nFlynn started to sweat. He repeated the commands in both Arabic and Persian, but with equally unimpressive results. He started to wonder if maybe he was mistaken and this wasn't the carpet of Solomon, in which case he and Shirin might be in even worse trouble than they already were.\n\n\"You're disappointing me, Librarian,\" Khoja said. \"What a shame \u2026 for both you.\"\n\nBeside him, Marjanah grinned in cruel anticipation. \"Let me kill just one of them, please?\"\n\n\"Wait!\" Shirin protested. \"Let me take a closer look at that carpet. I might be able to help.\"\n\nKhoja nodded and brought her closer to the rug, while holding on tightly to her arm. \"Do it,\" he said, \"but no tricks.\"\n\nShe examined the carpet, her smooth brow furrowing in concentration. Then her eyes lit up and Flynn could practically see the light bulb switch on over her head. This did not escape Khoja's notice.\n\n\"You found something. What is it?\"\n\n\"Writing,\" she said. \"Along with geometric patterns, calligraphy was often integrated into art and design back in the days of Solomon and Scheherazade. If you look closely, the decorative border around the edge of the carpet is actually a highly stylized inscription \u2026 possibly even an incantation.\"\n\nKhoja eyed her with interest. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\"Traditionally, any writing used in this manner would be a quote from the Koran, but this is from the 'Song of Solomon': Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.\"\n\n\"That must be it!\" Flynn enthused. Now that Shirin had called his attention to it, he could make out the woven incantation, too. \"Stand back!\"\n\nHe recited the words\u2014and the carpet lifted off the floor.\n\n\"Whoa!\" He struggled to keep his balance atop the levitating carpet as it hovered about a foot above the floor. The Seal of Solomon glowed briefly before fading back into the rug's complicated design. Its golden tassels dangled along the edge of the rug, and Flynn could feel a peculiar vibration beneath his feet. He somehow sensed that the carpet was eager to take flight.\n\n\"Bravo,\" Khoja said. \"You two have just bought yourself a stay of execution.\"\n\n\"For now,\" Marjanah muttered.\n\n\"Let's not get ahead of ourselves,\" Khoja admonished his vindictive lieutenant. \"Everyone aboard!\"\n\nKhoja and his gang, along with Shirin, climbed onto the carpet, which sagged beneath their collective weight, descending back onto the floor.\n\n\"What's the problem?\" Khoja asked. \"Talk to me.\"\n\n\"Looks like we're overloaded,\" Flynn guessed. \"Sorry.\"\n\nKhoja mulled that over. \"How many people can the carpet lift?\"\n\n\"Beats me.\" Flynn looked at Shirin. \"You see anything in the book about the maximum carrying capacity of a magic carpet?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" she replied. \"It's not exactly a technical manual.\"\n\n\"I suppose not.\" Khoja nodded at his men. \"Get off, one at a time.\"\n\n\"Yes, First of Forty,\" one gunman said, hopping off the carpet onto the tile floor beneath. More thieves joined him, but the rug remained weighed down to the ground.\n\n\"What about those two?\" Marjanah asked, glaring at Flynn and Shirin. \"Do we really need both of them now?\"\n\n\"Possibly,\" Khoja said. \"Who knows what new challenges or puzzles may await us where we're going? We may still have need of their combined scholarship down the road, at the end of the magic carpet ride.\"\n\nMarjanah was visibly disappointed by her boss's decision. \"If you say so.\"\n\nThe other henchmen disembarked from the carpet, which gradually lifted off from the floor again. In the end, only Khoja, Marjanah, Flynn, Shirin, and five additional gunmen were left aboard the floating rug. Flynn was disappointed that Marjanah was still along for the ride. He would have preferred leaving her behind.\n\nBut at least we thinned out some of the opposition, he thought. Thank goodness this isn't the Boeing 747 of flying carpets.\n\n\"I believe we are ready to depart,\" Khoja said. \"Get on with it.\"\n\n\"All right.\" Flynn sat down on the carpet, not far from Shirin, and gestured for the other passengers to do the same. He gave Shirin the most reassuring look he could manage. \"Everyone sit tight and prepare for takeoff.\"\n\nHis mouth dry, he recited the incantation again and specified their destination.\n\n\"In the name of King Solomon, master of all the spirits of the air and sky, convey us now to the secret hiding place of Aladdin's Lamp!\"\n\nThe carpet took off like a shot."
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "The flying carpet went from zero to \"Yikes!\" in a heartbeat. For a split second, Flynn wondered belatedly how the carpet was going to make it through the various doorways and tunnels between the antechamber and the outdoors, but then the carpet rolled itself up tightly, cocooning its passengers before shooting out into the ravine, where it unfurled beneath the early morning sky. A helicopter hovering above the ravine had to dart out of the way of the carpet as it climbed sharply upward and took off into the sky at preternatural speed.\n\n\"Chopper Alpha!\" Khoja barked into his walkie-talkie. \"Pursue airborne carpet. Repeat: pursue airborne carpet!\"\n\nFlynn imagined that the chopper pilot had never received that particular order before and was probably still blinking in surprise at the carpet's miraculous exit from the tomb. Despite Khoja's order, however, the carpet swiftly left the helicopter behind.\n\n\"Slow this thing down!\" Khoja shouted at Flynn.\n\nFlynn threw up his hands. \"Do you see a brake or gas pedal?\"\n\nThe carpet was in charge now, accelerating much faster than your typical floor covering, while heading southeast away from the mountains. According to legend, Flynn recalled, Solomon's carpet flew so swiftly that the king could breakfast in Damascus and sup in far-off Media, all in the space of a day, so Flynn was not too surprised that the magical rug was eating up the miles at a voracious rate, while soaring high above the mountains. The edges of the carpet curled up to form a railing of sorts, which its passengers could hold onto for safety's sake\u2014although Flynn would have preferred seat belts and a pressurized hull, not to mention a parachute or two.\n\nFlying carpets are perfectly safe, he thought. At least in the movies.\u2026\n\nThe vertiginous flight was too much for one of the nameless henchmen, who panicked in a big way.\n\n\"Take us down!\" The man aimed his rifle at Flynn. Terrified eyes bulged from their sockets. \"Take us down right this minute, or\u2014\"\n\nMarjanah shoved him off the carpet. She snorted in disgust as the man plummeted to his doom, his dying scream trailing behind him.\n\n\"Coward.\"\n\nKhoja arched an eyebrow. \"That was a bit drastic.\"\n\n\"I never liked him anyway,\" she said with a shrug. \"Shame about the gun, though.\"\n\nKhoja didn't appear overly concerned about the loss of the gun or his henchman. \"I think we can afford to trade a foot soldier for a genie.\"\n\nFlynn remembered Judson's dire warnings about the Djinn. \"About that genie,\" he began, \"you might want to rethink your plans for the Lamp.\"\n\n\"And why is that?\" Khoja asked suspiciously.\n\n\"He's not a nice genie. There's a reason he's confined to that Lamp, and every time he's summoned, he gets stronger and the Lamp gets weaker, so one of these days he's going to break free \u2026 and nobody wants that, or so I'm told.\"\n\n\"By who?\" Khoja asked. \"The Library? An institution so terrified of magic that for thousands of years it's done nothing but lock it away and let it gather dust on a shelf? You'll forgive me if I take your cautionary advice with a grain of a salt.\" He sneered at Flynn. \"When has the Library ever not considered some great source of mystic power to be too dangerous to be employed out in the world?\"\n\n\"Well, there's always \u2026 or maybe\u2026\" Flynn faltered as nothing came readily to mind. \"Look, magic is dangerous. Trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about.\"\n\n\"But the Djinn does grant unlimited wishes to any who hold the Lamp, bringing them incalculable wealth and power?\"\n\n\"Well, yes,\" Flynn conceded, \"according to the stories, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But nothing.\" Khoja looked away from Flynn, turning his attention to whatever glorious future he envisioned. \"Soon the Lamp will be mine, and with it the ability to turn my most impossible wishes into reality.\"\n\n\"Our wishes,\" Marjanah corrected him. \"For generations, the Forty have sought the Lamp, ever since the Alf Layla eluded our grasp during the sack of Baghdad more than seven hundred and fifty years ago. But now our patience will finally be rewarded \u2026 and the Forty shall at last reign supreme.\"\n\nFlynn considered his adversaries. Khoja struck him as driven by personal ambition, but Marjanah seemed to be more about the \"glorious\" legacy of the Forty.\n\n\"Wow, you're a true believer, aren't you?\"\n\n\"She should be,\" Khoja said. \"Marjanah's family claims direct descent from the original Forty Thieves. Her father, in fact, was the First before me\u2014until she helped me overthrow him.\"\n\n\"He was weak and stuck in the past,\" she said unapologetically. \"He lacked the strength and vision to guide the Forty into the twenty-first century \u2026 and claim the Lamp at long last.\"\n\nThe carpet zoomed across Iran's airspace, flying low enough to allow them to breathe comfortably while hopefully evading radar detection. Shirin, who had been tossed toward Flynn during the carpet's headlong escape from the tomb, scooted close enough to grab hold of his hand as the rug carried them over the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, hundreds of miles from the Zagros Mountains. Despite their perilous situation, Flynn found the magic carpet ride more than a little exhilarating. Glancing at Shirin, he saw a look of utter wonder on her face as well.\n\nMight as well enjoy it, he thought. How often do you get to glide above the world on a flying carpet?\n\nToo bad the company left something to be desired.\n\n\"So where the devil is this mythical island?\" Marjanah said, squirming restlessly upon the carpet. Her dark hair blew in the wind.\n\n\"Patience,\" Khoja chided her. \"We seem to be making excellent time toward \u2026 wherever.\"\n\nIn no time at all, the carpet began to descend from the sky into a thick patch of cloud and fog somewhere in the middle of the sea. A clammy mist briefly chilled Flynn before the mystery island came into view. A barren gray mountain, overlooking a small cove guarded by jagged rocks, rose from a fringe of woods and brush circling its base. At first glance, the vaguely U-shaped isle appeared to be uninhabited and untouched since the days of Sinbad. Flynn wondered if there actually was some enchantment shielding the isle from discovery, as with Brigadoon or Shangri-La.\n\nI wouldn't be at all surprised.\n\nThe carpet slowed as it descended, much to Flynn's relief and concern. They were getting closer to the Lamp, which meant, unfortunately, that the Forty was getting closer to liberating the Djinn, possibly for good. He and Shirin needed to get away from their captors and find the Lamp before it was too late. What had Scheherazade written next about its location? Something about a hidden cave guarded by an enormous rock?\n\n\"Attention, all passengers,\" he announced. \"Prepare for landing.\"\n\nA loud cawing noise came from above. Peering upward, Flynn dimly glimpsed a large shape soaring through the dense clouds overhead. He suddenly remembered the immense piece of eggshell on display in the tomb.\u2026\n\n\"Er, Shirin? Did the book say the cave was guarded by a huge rock\u2014or a roc?\"\n\nHer face fell as she grasped what he was asking. \"You mean\u2014?\"\n\nThe answer came in the feathered form of a colossal bird, which came swooping down from the clouds toward the carpet, its grasping talons extended, as though straight out of \"The Second Voyage of Sinbad.\" The roc was just as described in the classic tales: a monstrous bird of prey whose wingspan was at least fifty feet long, with ominous gray plumage that turned bloodred at the tips. Its pointed beak was that of a raptor, and large enough to swallow a grown man or woman in one gulp. Its prodigious shadow fell over the carpet and its stunned passengers.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Shirin said. \"I might have misread that line.\"\n\n\"You think?\" Flynn replied. \"Granted, it was a rush job.\u2026\"\n\nGasps and shouts greeted the roc's attack. Dive-bombing the carpet, the monster grabbed a henchman with its talons and carried him, shrieking, back up into the clouds, while everyone else ducked low to avoid the speeding roc. The wind from its giant wings rippled the surface of the carpet.\n\nCaught by surprise, Khoja took a moment to respond to the threat. \"Open fire!\" he shouted, lifting his head. \"Bring that bird down!\"\n\n\"But, First of Forty,\" another gunman said, \"what about Ahmed?\"\n\n\"Never mind Ahmed! Open fire, I said!\"\n\nThe thieves shot at the sky, the sharp report of the gunfire hurting Flynn's ears, but all they succeeded in accomplishing was making the roc drop its human cargo. Still screaming, Ahmed hurtled past the carpet, barely missing it, before plunging toward the rocky peaks below. The remaining thieves, including Marjanah, continued firing at the roc, which only seemed to make the monster angrier. Apparently, hitting a swiftly moving target from a wobbly flying carpet was even trickier than you might think.\n\nFlynn took another tack.\n\n\"In the name of Solomon \u2026 evasive action!\"\n\nThe carpet responded immediately, careening wildly through the sky in a desperate attempt to elude the roc, which flapped after them in pursuit, squawking furiously. The aerodynamic rug banked sharply to the right, then to the left, while zigzagging up and down and from side to side. Flynn held onto the raised edge of the rug for dear life, while regretting that flying carpets did not come with airsick bags. Khoja and his gang kept firing at the roc, but the carpet's barnstorming maneuvers tossed them all about, making it all but impossible for anyone to get a bead on the monster, which continued chasing after the carpet with surprising speed. Flynn recalled that Sinbad had once escaped a deserted island by strapping himself to a roc's leg and letting the gargantuan bird carry him away.\n\nTalk about brave, he thought, or desperate.\n\nThe roc took another run at them, as though engaging in an old-fashioned aerial dogfight, and the carpet flipped over to shield its passengers from the winged monster's talons, which tore ragged gashes in the fabric, only inches from where Flynn and Shirin and the others had been crouching right before they were unceremoniously dumped into the empty air below the carpet. Gravity tore Shirin's hand from Flynn's as they found themselves in freefall, plummeting toward the rocky hills far below.\n\nSeatbelts, he thought. I knew that rug needed seatbelts.\n\nThe wind howled in his ears, almost drowning out the screams of Shirin and the rest as they accelerated toward the ground at 9.8 meters-per-second-squared\u2014which did not, he lamented, give him much time to formulate a clever strategy, no matter how many degrees he'd earned. His favorite books passed before his eyes, along with other indelible memories, some more recent than others.\n\nI'm so sorry, Shirin. Your story deserved a happier ending.\n\nThen, just when it seemed as though the Library were about to have an opening for a new Librarian, the carpet looped beneath the falling men and women to catch them before they hit terminal velocity. Flynn and the others smacked back onto the carpet, which absorbed the impact like a safety net. He found Shirin's hand and pulled her close. He could feel her trembling, almost as much as he was.\n\n\"Let's not do that again,\" she suggested.\n\n\"Don't talk to me. Talk to the rug.\"\n\nDeep tears in the carpet, where the roc had slashed it, impaired the rug's lifting capacity, causing it to sink ever farther toward the island, fleeing the upper reaches of the mountain to glide over the scraggly woods below. For a moment, Flynn dared to hope that the roc would be content with chasing them away from the hills, but apparently the cave's guardian was as stubborn as, well, that other kind of rock.\n\n\"Here it comes again!\" Marjanah shouted, having been caught by the carpet along with her cohorts. Typically, she looked more angry than scared. \"Send it back to Hades!\"\n\nThe wind from the roc's mighty wings buffeted the carpet and its besieged passengers, causing it to toss back and forth as though adrift atop choppy waters and tearing wider the gaping rents in the fabric. Marjanah and her fellow thieves fired ineffectively from the unstable carpet, which was dipping ever faster toward the earth. Tearing his gaze away from the hostile roc, Flynn looked ahead and saw that the carpet's headlong retreat was bringing them back toward the small cove cutting into the island. Pristine blue waters reflected the cloudy sky. He also noted that, preoccupied with the roc, none of the Forty were paying the least bit of attention to their captives at the moment.\n\n\"Can you swim?\" he asked Shirin.\n\n\"Yes. Why do you ask?\"\n\nThere was no time explain. The cove was coming up quickly. It was now or never.\n\n\"Take a deep breath!\"\n\nHe shoved her off the carpet without another word of warning, then dived after her. Gravity seized them again as they fell toward the cove dozens of feet below. Inhaling deeply, he hoped the carpet was too busy evading the roc to dive after them again, and that the Forty were also otherwise engaged, and that the inlet was deep enough that he and Shirin could survive this plunge.\n\nOn second thought, that's a heck of a lot of question marks.\u2026\n\nGunfire blared overhead, competing with the raucous cawing of the roc, as the pair hit the water at high speed and sank beneath the surface. The cool water came as a shock, but at least they didn't encounter any hidden reefs or boulders. Holding his breath, Flynn kicked his way back to the surface and poked his head above the salty water. Sputtering, he searched frantically for Shirin.\n\n\"Shirin?\" he called out. \"Shirin!\"\n\n\"Flynn! Over here!\"\n\nShe was bobbing in the brine not far away. To his relief, she appeared soaked but unharmed. They kicked toward each other.\n\n\"Warn me next time!\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" he said. \"I'm not planning a repeat performance anytime soon.\"\n\nNow that he knew they had both survived, he peered up at the sky, but he caught no sight of either the carpet or the roc. He wondered what had become of Khoja and his minions. Had they fallen victim to the roc or perhaps made a crash landing elsewhere on the island?\n\n\"You see what happened to the others?\" he asked Shirin. \"Or the roc?\"\n\n\"Sorry, I was too busy falling from a flying carpet.\" A distraught look came over her face. \"The book! Scheherazade's book \u2026 we've lost it!\"\n\nHe understood her distress. She was a scholar and historian, after all; losing the priceless tome had to be a huge blow to her, no matter what other challenges faced them.\n\n\"It couldn't be helped,\" he offered by way of consolation. \"But at least we're not bird food, and we still have a chance to find the Lamp before anyone else does.\"\n\nA faint smile lightened her expression. \"Anyone ever tell you that you're an incorrigible optimist? Even for an American?\"\n\n\"Comes with the job,\" he replied. \"You kind of need to think of the grail as always being half full.\"\n\n\"Grail? As in the Holy Grail?\"\n\n\"Remind me to tell you about how I broke it on my very first day on the job.\" He winced at the memory before turning his attention to a sandy shore, studded with boulders, some fifty feet away. \"Maybe after we're back on dry land again.\"\n\nA strenuous swim later, they dragged themselves up onto the beach and collapsed, soggy and exhausted. They were soaked to the skin and weighed down by their sodden garments. Flynn couldn't remember the last time they'd really been able to rest and recuperate\u2014and, no, those hours they'd spent stowed in the back of the pickup truck didn't count. His stomach grumbled, and he wondered what kind of foodstuffs might be found on an enchanted isle in the Arabian Sea. Shellfish, maybe, or a stray seagull?\n\nRoc eggs were probably off the menu.\n\nShirin slumped against him. \"I've never felt so exhausted.\"\n\n\"You and me both,\" he said. \"But we can't rest too long. For all we know, some of the Forty might have survived\u2014\"\n\nA gun cocked behind them.\n\nFlynn groaned. Turning his head, he saw Khoja, Marjanah, and two of their henchmen emerge from the woods and brush fringing the beach. They looked a bit beaten up and disheveled, but Khoja had managed to hang on to the turban hiding his face\u2014and his pistol.\n\n\"Have a nice swim?\" he asked."
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "Flynn's spirits sank deeper than the bottom of the cove. Just when he'd thought they'd gotten away from the Forty, they were right back where they started, just a good deal wetter than before. He took off his boot and dumped out a canteen's worth of water. He was too exhausted and out of breath to even think about trying to flee from the armed criminals.\n\n\"If you don't mind my asking,\" he said, \"did you manage to bring down the roc?\"\n\n\"I wish!\" Marjanah snarled. \"That filthy, feathered monstrosity nearly killed us all. I'd like to see it roasting on a spit!\"\n\nFlynn was starting to think the Second of the Forty had anger-management issues.\n\n\"Then how\u2026?\" he started.\n\n\"Did we survive?\" Khoja said. \"After you deserted us? We were in dire straits, I admit, with the carpet ripping apart beneath us even as that blasted bird kept on coming. In desperation, we sliced the rug into fragments, one for each of us, and used them to parachute down to the ground, while dividing the roc's attention so that most of us made it to safety in one piece.\" He shrugged. \"A shame about poor Harufa, but let's hope his tough hide gives the beast indigestion\u2014or at least a full belly for the time being.\"\n\nFlynn cast a nervous gaze upward, but he didn't see the roc. He made a mental note to keep watching the skies.\n\n\"What about the book?\" Shirin asked anxiously. \"Did you manage to save the book?\"\n\n\"Spoken like a museum curator,\" Khoja observed. \"But I'm afraid the book was lost during the tumult. It could have landed anywhere on the island.\"\n\nShirin's face fell. \"Oh.\"\n\n\"We managed to salvage the bulk of the carpet, however.\" Khoja gestured toward one of the surviving henchmen, who had apparently been drafted into toting the shredded fragments on his back. \"Who knows? Maybe the carpet can be stitched back together at some point, perhaps with the Genie's help. Indeed, maybe he can even help us find your precious book.\"\n\nFlynn saw another opportunity to try to reason with Khoja. \"You know, releasing that Djinn is a seriously bad idea. From what I hear, he's much too dangerous to let loose from his Lamp, especially if you empower him by rubbing it too often.\"\n\n\"You Librarians,\" Khoja said scornfully. \"You have access to some of the most powerful magical relics on the planet, yet you're too timid to wield that power.\"\n\n\"That's because we know how easy it is for such powers to end up using you,\" Flynn said. \"And just think what could happen if you lost control of the Djinn, which is a very real possibility.\"\n\nKhoja didn't want to hear it.\n\n\"You're wasting your breath and my time,\" he said. \"You're not going to scare me away from our prize, not when we're finally this close.\" He waved his pistol at Flynn and Shirin. \"Let's get a move on, before that bird gets hungry and comes hunting for us.\"\n\nFlynn was feeling a tad exposed on the beach, beneath the open sky. The beckoning woods, meager as they were, did offer slightly more cover. He grudgingly stood up and helped Shirin to her feet. Gritty sand clung to their soaked clothing despite their best attempts to brush it off. Shirin swept her wet hair away from her face.\n\n\"That's more like it.\" Khoja turned to Marjanah. \"Any luck contacting our people?\"\n\nShe shook her head while scowling at her satellite phone. \"I'm not getting anything: voice communication or GPS. Something is jamming us.\"\n\n\"Magic,\" Flynn guessed. \"This whole island is probably cut off from the modern world, like on Lost.\" He frowned for a moment. \"You know, I never could figure that show out.\"\n\n\"Let's hope that you're better at locating hidden caves,\" Khoja said. \"I trust I don't need to repeat the usual threats?\"\n\nFlynn didn't need to be a Librarian to grasp that he and Shirin were still outnumbered and outgunned by their enemies, despite the roc reducing the bad guys' numbers by one more henchman.\n\n\"I think we can skip that part,\" he agreed.\n\nKhoja lowered his gun, although Marjanah kept fondling her knife in a way that Flynn could have done without.\n\n\"So where to next?\" the First of the Forty asked.\n\nFlynn contemplated the desolate gray mountain looming above them. It was small compared to the towering peaks of the Zagros back in Iran, but it was large enough to hide any number of hidden caves. He wished Scheherazade had been a little more specific in her directions.\n\nA map would have been nice.\n\nHe looked to Shirin for assistance. \"Do you remember anything else from the book?\"\n\n\"Not really. An island, a cave, a rock \u2026 sorry, a roc.\"\n\nFlynn considered his options. He could insist he was stumped, probably at the cost of his and Shirin's lives, but that would still leave Khoja and his minions free to search the island on their own, with no guarantee that the determined criminals wouldn't find the cave eventually. Flynn decided he wasn't willing to sacrifice Shirin just to slow the Forty down.\n\n\"Let me have one of those carpet fragments,\" he said.\n\n\"Why?\" Khoja asked. \"They're no good for flying in their present state. At best, they just slowed our descent like parachutes. If you're entertaining some desperate fantasy of making a speedy getaway with Dr. Masri on a scrap of rug, you can forget about that right away. You're grounded like the rest of us.\"\n\n\"The thought never crossed my mind,\" Flynn fibbed. \"But I may have another use for that magic fabric.\"\n\nKhoja's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he assented after a moment's consideration. \"Fine. Let's see what you have in mind.\" He glanced at the henchman serving as a porter. \"Rahan, give Mr. Carsen a piece of the carpet. A small one.\"\n\n\"As you wish, First of Forty.\" The man handed Flynn a remnant of the carpet about the size of a welcome mat and threw in a surly look as a bonus. \"I'm watching you, Librarian.\"\n\n\"We all are,\" Khoja added. \"You're on, Carsen. Show us what you're up to.\"\n\nFlynn gulped, not at all positive this trick was going to work. Holding onto the remnant with both hands, he held it out in front of him so that it dangled above the sand. He recited the incantation once again and repeated his earlier command.\n\n\"In the name of Solomon, take us to the Cave of the Lamp.\"\n\nGolden light shimmered briefly along the sliced edges of the fragment, which came alive in Flynn's grasp, rising up so that it was horizontal with the ground. His fingers tingled as the piece of the carpet tugged, pulling him toward the looming mountain.\n\n\"It wants to go this way,\" he said. \"I think.\"\n\nKhoja caught on immediately. \"A homing device. You're using it as a homing device.\"\n\n\"More like a dowsing rod,\" Flynn said, \"but that's the basic idea, yes.\"\n\n\"Ingenious,\" Khoja said. \"You continue to impress me, Carsen. I don't suppose you'd be interested in switching sides and joining our organization?\"\n\nFlynn didn't even think about it. He'd dealt with a turncoat Librarian before. It was not a path he ever intended to go down.\n\n\"Not interested, sorry.\"\n\nKhoja shrugged. \"Worth a try. Perhaps you'll change your mind once we have the Lamp in hand, and the world is ours for the taking.\"\n\n\"Again, not a good idea. Releasing the Djinn, I mean.\"\n\n\"I beg to differ.\" Khoja nodded at the mountain. \"Lead the way, Librarian.\"\n\nThe floating remnant tugged insistently. Flynn sighed and let it guide them forward.\n\nHe hoped he wasn't making a big mistake."
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "\"Watch your step,\" Flynn warned.\n\n\"I think that goes without saying,\" Shirin said, \"but thanks.\"\n\nGuided by the eager carpet remnant, they hiked up a narrow ledge along the side of the mountain. It had been a long and arduous climb already. The party, which was now comprised of Flynn, Shirin, Khoja, Marjanah, and the two bonus cutthroats, had quickly left any trace of vegetation behind, so that nothing lay before them but lifeless rock, dirt, and debris, along with the daunting prospect of yet more uphill hiking. A sharp drop-off on the left threatened to make a careless step one's last. Loose dirt and pebbles rolled beneath Flynn's feet, adding to the danger. Sinbad and Ali Baba had clearly gone out of their way to make certain that the route to the hidden cave\u2014and the Lamp\u2014was as difficult as possible.\n\nThanks a lot, guys, Flynn thought.\n\nHis legs ached from the climb. His damp clothes were cold and clammy, and his boots still sloshed with every step as he trudged wearily at the head of the procession. He was breathing hard, as was Shirin, who was right behind him. Khoja and his crew took up the rear, almost as though they didn't want to turn their backs on their captives while navigating the precarious ledge.\n\nFlynn couldn't imagine why.\n\n\"How much further?\" Khoja asked.\n\n\"Only the carpet knows,\" Flynn replied, \"and it's not talking.\" The levitating scrap continued to tug at him, like a bloodhound straining at its leash. \"But it feels like we're getting warmer.\"\n\n\"You'd best hope so, Librarian,\" the chief thief said ominously. \"If it turns out that you've been leading us on a wild goose chase\u2026\"\n\nA goose is not the bird we need to worry about, Flynn thought. He kept one eye on the sky and the other on the challenging path ahead, which left him wishing he had borrowed a Third Eye from the Library's Optical Sciences gallery. Even without an extra eye, he doubted that they had seen the last of the roc, especially as they climbed higher toward its mountain aerie and the forbidden cave. Chances are, it will be showing up any minute now.\n\n\"Incoming!\" Marjanah shouted. \"Big bird at eleven o'clock!\"\n\nCalled it, Flynn thought. Lucky us.\n\nHe couldn't fault the keen-eyed kidnapper's vigilance. Looking up, he spotted the roc swooping toward them with renewed ferocity. Its harsh caw echoed off the stony hills. The wind from its wings gusted against the hikers, blowing them backward into the granite slope on the right side of the ledge and churning up a cloud of dust and grit. Flynn threw up an arm to protect himself from the swirling debris. Shirin coughed hoarsely.\n\nWe're dead ducks, Flynn thought, before swearing off avian idioms forever. On the bright side, I guess the Forty's not claiming that Lamp today.\n\n\"Get it!\" Khoja hollered. \"Before it gets us!\"\n\n\"I have a better idea.\" Marjanah turned and shot the henchman behind her, who tumbled off the ledge toward the rocks below. The load of carpet fragments strapped to his back caused him to drift slowly downward like a leaf on the wind, presenting a tempting target for the hungry roc, which veered away from Flynn and the others to dive after the screaming morsel. Marjanah tucked her pistol back into her holster. \"That should keep it busy for a few minutes at least. We shouldn't waste them.\"\n\nIf the cold-blooded tactic shocked Khoja, he didn't let it show.\n\n\"You heard the Second,\" he ordered. \"Move it!\"\n\nAlthough shaken by the brutal murder, Flynn didn't want to stick around, either. With nowhere to go but forward, the surviving members of the party scrambled up the trail faster than would have been prudent under less frantic circumstances. Flynn's foot hit a loose patch of gravel and, losing his balance, he tottered on the brink of the precipice before Shirin grabbed his arm and pulled him to safety.\n\n\"Forget it,\" she said. \"You're not leaving me alone with this bunch.\"\n\nFlynn's heart was beating harder than the roc's wings. \"I wouldn't think of it.\"\n\nRacing up the trail, they turned a corner to find themselves at a dead end. The curving path widened to form a large rocky ledge, the size of a backyard patio, which faced a looming wall of solid granite that blocked their path entirely. The ledge offered a great view of the island, including the cove a good ways off, but no protection from the winged monster pursuing them.\n\n\"Great,\" Flynn said. \"We're stuck between a roc and a hard place.\"\n\nShirin stared at him in disbelief. \"Really? You had to go there?\"\n\n\"How could I not? I mean, somebody had to say it.\"\n\n\"That's highly debatable.\"\n\nKhoja ignored their banter. \"What's this?\" he demanded, glaring at the rock wall before them. \"You've led us to our doom!\"\n\n\"Not necessarily.\" Flynn let the magical remnant pull him toward the seemingly impassable barrier. \"Scheherazade did write that it was a hidden cave.\"\n\n\"Then unhide it, Carsen,\" Khoja barked. \"Before we're the next items on that monster's menu.\"\n\nNo pressure there, Flynn thought. He hastily examined the rock face, searching for a secret passage or lever, but came up empty. There weren't even the usual enigmatic hieroglyphics to decipher. Where's a puzzling pictograph when you need one?\n\n\"Get on with it, Librarian,\" Marjanah said, \"or I'll feed you and your girlfriend to the bird myself!\"\n\nFlynn noted that the remaining henchman was backing away from her nervously, no doubt remembering how she had distracted the roc only minutes ago. \"I'm not sure girlfriend is quite the right label. We're still just getting to know each other.\u2026\"\n\n\"So not the point right now,\" Marjanah said icily. \"Show us the way, you babbling idiot!\"\n\nThe flapping of mighty wings heralded the return of the roc, which soared up from below to reclaim the sky above the exposed ledge. A human leg dangled from its beak as it circled around to come at the party again.\n\n\"Point taken.\" Flynn ran his hands over the rough stone, finding no telltale cracks or seams. His desperate mind turned to The Arabian Nights for inspiration. What would Sinbad do?\n\n\"No,\" he realized, \"not Sinbad.\"\n\nHidden caves were more Ali Baba's thing.\n\n\"Open sesame!\" he commanded, and stepped back in anticipation.\n\nNothing happened. The dead end stayed dead.\n\n\"Open sesame!\" he tried again, more in panic this time. \"Open rye \u2026 barley \u2026 poppy seed\u2026\"\n\n\"Not in English!\" Shirin shouted. \"Old Persian!\"\n\nShirin rushed forward and addressed the wall in flawless ancient Persian.\n\nAll at once, the solid rock shimmered like a mirage, fading away to reveal the mouth of a cave. Darkness waited beyond the entrance, but there was no time to wonder what lay within the cave, not when the roc was swooping down for the kill.\n\n\"Inside!\" Khoja shouted unnecessarily. \"Hurry!\"\n\nThe party stampeded into the cave, shoving past each other in order to get away from the voracious roc. It would have been an ideal opportunity for him and Shirin to try to slip away from their captors, Flynn observed, if not for the giant bird out to eat them. He would have to look for another chance to turn the tables on the Forty, and the sooner the better.\n\nMaybe the cave had a back door?\n\nThe roc cawed in frustration as the tiny humans vanished into the cave, whose entrance was not nearly wide enough for the giant bird to pass through. It squeezed its head into the cave and snapped its beak at the tasty morsels just beyond its reach. Its strident cries echoed through the cave, accompanied by the sound of angrily flapping wings outside on the ledge. Flynn and the others backed away from the angry roc's head, putting more distance between them and that beak.\n\n\"Thanks for the emergency translation, by the way,\" Flynn said to Shirin. \"You probably couldn't tell, but I was getting a little rattled out there.\"\n\n\"Is that so?\" she said diplomatically. \"I had no idea.\"\n\nKhoja intruded on their moment. \"Well done, you two. I take back some of the vile things I was just wishing on you.\"\n\n\"Only some?\"\n\n\"Don't press your luck, Librarian,\" Khoja said. Turning away from the entrance, he peered into the waiting shadows. \"Now then, what have we here?\"\n\nFlashlights clicked on, illuminating a wide tunnel leading deeper into the mountain. Here we go again, thought Flynn, who was starting to feel more like a spelunker than a scholar. Unlike the cliffside burial chambers back in Iran, however, this looked and felt more like an actual cave than a crypt. No artwork adorned the rough stone walls. The floor was bumpy and uneven. This was not a royal tomb decked out to honor the memory of a beloved sultana; this was a hole for hiding loot, magical or otherwise.\n\n\"Step carefully, everyone.\" Flynn felt obliged to warn the others before anyone went rushing off to search for the Lamp. \"There could be booby traps ahead.\"\n\n\"An excellent point,\" Khoja said. \"You go first.\"\n\n\"Somehow I knew you were going to say that.\"\n\nBorrowing a flashlight from the last of the henchmen, Flynn advanced cautiously into the cave, with Shirin sticking close to him. \"Not another ghoul, please,\" she whispered. \"I'm all storied out.\"\n\nThe tunnel led to a natural stone bridge across a seemingly bottomless chasm. Barely two feet in width, the bridge triggered Flynn's natural fear of heights, which had already gotten a workout on the narrow ledge they'd climbed to reach the hidden cavern, not to mention that burning rope ladder earlier. Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he led Shirin out onto the bridge while wondering, not for the first time, why the nameless builders of lost tombs, temples, and treasure troves never seemed to take reasonable safety precautions into account.\n\nWould it have killed them to have installed a guard rail or two?\n\nThe chasm was a gaping wound in the solid rock, dropping steeply into Stygian darkness. A loose pebble, dislodged by Flynn's boot, rolled off the bridge into the abyss. Flynn listened, but never heard it hit bottom. Finding it all too easy to imagine pointy stalagmites waiting to impale him if he slipped, he was tempted to crawl across the bridge on his hands and knees just to be safe, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do so in front of Shirin and the others. As the Librarian, he did have a certain dignity to maintain \u2026 sort of.\n\nThe bridge was less than twenty yards long and, in reality, took only a few minutes to cross, but Flynn let out a huge sigh of relief as he and Shirin reached the other side, followed closely by their captors. Continuing on, they discovered a large, roomy grotto that appeared to be yet another dead end. Not a single lamp was in view, only rows of large ceramic jars lining the perimeter of the chamber. Each jar was roughly waist high and identical to the others, lacking any distinguishing labels or markings. Jagged stalactites hung from the ceiling like the fangs of some giant petrified carnivore.\n\n\"If and when we get out of this,\" Shirin said with a shudder, \"I'm going to want plenty of sun and wide-open spaces. A beach, maybe, far from caves and cliffs.\"\n\n\"It's a date,\" he said.\n\n\"A date-date?\" she asked. \"Just to be clear.\"\n\n\"That's what I'm thinking.\"\n\nKhoja and his crew entered the grotto after them, clearly unwilling to let their reluctant \"guides\" out of their sight. \"I wouldn't be making any long-term plans just yet,\" Khoja cautioned them. \"There's a fine but crucial line between optimism and false hope.\"\n\nThe First of the Forty surveyed the grotto with interest, but prudently refrained from rushing to root through the jars in search of the Lamp. For better or for worse, he had evidently taken Flynn's warning about booby traps to heart.\n\n\"So \u2026 jars,\" he observed. \"A good many jars.\"\n\n\"Thirty-eight,\" Flynn guessed. He quickly counted them to confirm his theory. \"As in the story of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' As you recall, your illustrious predecessor, the original captain of the thieves, hid thirty-seven of his men in oil jars just like these as part of a diabolical plan to get revenge on Ali Baba for stealing their ill-gotten booty. He had only thirty-seven men left,\" Flynn felt obliged to explain, \"because he'd already beheaded two of his own men for failing to lead him to Ali Baba earlier.\"\n\nThe surviving minion glanced furtively at Marjanah. Although nearly twice her size, and built like a bouncer, he had to be feeling a bit expendable himself by this point, or so Flynn assumed.\n\n\"I'm familiar with the story,\" Khoja said dryly.\n\n\"Then you remember that the thirty-eighth jar was actually filled with sesame oil, which a clever servant girl\u2014named Marjanah, as it happens\u2014used to drown the lurking thieves by pouring the oil into the other jars, thereby saving Ali Baba and his household from being slaughtered in their sleep.\"\n\n\"Not one of our finer hours,\" Khoja conceded. \"If the tales are to be believed, that is.\"\n\n\"Scheherazade hasn't led us astray yet.\" Flynn worked his way around the circumference of the grotto, rapping his knuckles against each jar and listening for echoes. When he was done, he couldn't resist grinning in vindication. \"Just as I expected: all the jars but the first one are empty.\"\n\nKhoja approached the jar in question. \"Perhaps the Lamp is hidden in this jar, then, submerged beneath the oil?\"\n\n\"No way,\" Flynn scoffed. \"That would be too easy.\"\n\nKhoja glowered at Flynn. \"Then what do you suggest, Carsen?\"\n\n\"My best guess? We take our cues from the original story and divide the oil equally between all thirty-eight jars.\"\n\n\"Which would accomplish what, precisely?\" Khoja asked.\n\n\"Beats me,\" Flynn said, \"but, in my experience, these kind of quests almost always involve tests and puzzles as well as traps, as though they were devised by the world's first and most devious game designers.\" He cast a disparaging look at the modern-day remnants of the Forty. \"The problem with relying on guns and knives and threats all the time is that it takes the place of thinking and learning.\"\n\n\"Do tell,\" Marjanah said, scowling.\n\nFlynn tapped his skull\u2014which, unlike the thirty-seven jars, was far from empty. \"This is how you solve problems, not through brute force or intimidation.\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Marjanah drew her knife. \"I can think of a few problems I could easily solve with this blade.\"\n\nFor a second, Flynn feared he'd gone too far, but Khoja reached out and placed a restraining hand on her arm, which she grudgingly lowered. Her baleful expression remained in place, however.\n\n\"Very well, Carsen,\" the First of the Forty said. \"Demonstrate just how good your brain is.\"\n\nGood enough to outsmart you, Flynn hoped. Eventually, in theory \u2026\n\nAn empty canteen was drafted into service to transfer the oil from the full jar to the others. Flynn offered the container to Marjanah. \"Would you care to do the honors, like your namesake?\"\n\nShe sneered at the suggestion. \"Do I look like a servant girl to you?\"\n\n\"Just a thought,\" he said, backing off. \"No offense intended.\"\n\n\"Let me help,\" Shirin volunteered. \"And, by the way, that resourceful servant girl is the true hero of the story if you actually pay attention. It's an honor to emulate her.\"\n\nWorking together, the two scholars uncapped the first jar. Still worried about booby traps, Flynn braced himself for an unpleasant surprise, but all they encountered was the distinctive aroma of perfectly preserved sesame oil wafting up from the jar, which was filled almost to the brim. He swept his gaze over the thirty-seven empty jars waiting to be filled and silently groaned in expectation. This was going to be a long and tedious chore.\n\n\"What are you waiting for?\" Khoja demanded. \"Get going.\"\n\nCarefully, methodically, Flynn and Shirin went about the task, slowly doling out equal measures of the oil to each jar, one after another, round after round. The job was just as time-consuming and monotonous as Flynn had anticipated, so he was actually getting a bit bored by the time the oil was almost at the same level in all three-dozen-plus jars. He figured one more canteen of oil into the final jar would do the trick\u2014if there was actually a trick to be done.\n\n\"Here goes nothing,\" he whispered to Shirin. \"Hope this wasn't a huge waste of time.\"\n\n\"You're the Librarian,\" she said. \"You know what you're doing.\"\n\nHe appreciated the vote of confidence as he poured one more measure of oil into the final jar, bringing its contents up to same level as in all the other jars, plus or minus a drop or two. He held his breath.\n\nBut not for long.\n\nA rumbling noise, as of ancient gears creaking back to life, emanated from beneath the floor of the grotto, as the redistributed weight of the oil tripped some concealed mechanism. Flynn glanced up nervously at the overhanging stalactites, worried he might have been tricked into setting off a long-slumbering deathtrap, but then Shirin shouted and pointed at the first row of jars.\n\n\"It's working! Something's happening!\"\n\nThe first jar sank into the floor of the grotto, revealing a hidden staircase leading down into the interior of the mountain. Flynn, who loved uncovering secret passages almost as much as he loved reading about them, felt a familiar thrill of excitement before remembering that he had probably just brought the Forty one step closer to obtaining the Lamp.\n\nA nicely effective deathtrap might have been better for the world, he thought. If not for us personally.\n\n\"Bravo, Carsen.\" Khoja applauded Flynn's efforts. \"I should never have doubted you. Perhaps we of the Forty have come to rely on blades and bullets too much. I'll have to exercise my brain and think carefully about my wishes once we have a genie at our command.\"\n\n\"Our wishes,\" Marjanah corrected him.\n\n\"Naturally,\" he said, \"although rank does have its privileges, as does the chain of command. Remember that, Second of Forty.\"\n\n\"Always,\" she said. \"How could I forget?\"\n\nFlynn didn't want to imagine what Khoja, let alone his bloodthirsty Second, might wish for should they acquire the Lamp. Even putting aside the highly alarming possibility that the reputedly fearsome Djinn might gain his freedom and run amuck, the Forty were not the kind of people who were likely to wish for puppies, sunshine, or world peace.\n\n\"Let's find out where these stairs lead.\" Khoja gestured at Flynn and Shirin. \"After you, of course.\"\n\nA flickering golden light radiated from somewhere beyond the foot of the stairs. Flynn was grateful for the extra illumination as the party descended the slablike stone steps toward whatever lay below. Dust and cobwebs indicated that nobody had come this way in a long time, while the fact that the steps were far from well worn suggested that the hidden staircase had never seen a lot of foot traffic, even back in the days of Aladdin and his Lamp. Despite the ever-increasing peril, Flynn had to marvel at this amazing discovery.\n\n\"Just think,\" he said. \"We're literally walking in the footsteps of Sinbad and Ali Baba.\"\n\nShirin looked equally awed. \"How many people today can say they've done that?\" She squeezed his hand. \"Thank you, Flynn. I mean it.\"\n\nIron braziers, mounted on the walls of the cavern, flared to life one after another, guiding them onward. Flynn speculated that the torches had been ignited by the same mechanism he had just triggered upstairs in the grotto. It was even possible that the flames were being fueled by oil tapped from the jars, via some newly activated system of gravity-powered pumps.\n\n\"Clever,\" he murmured. \"Very clever.\"\n\n\"Talking to yourself, Librarian?\" Marjanah mocked him. \"Don't get too cocky. Your usefulness is coming to an end.\"\n\nDon't remind me, he thought. One way or another, we're nearing the endgame here.\n\nReaching the end of the long stairway, they passed through a short tunnel into another grotto, where they froze in place, transfixed by the startling sight before them, which left Flynn torn between dismay and laughter.\n\n\"So, was somebody looking for a lamp?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2006",
                "text": "They'd hit the motherlode. Lamps galore, of all shapes and sizes, filled the torchlit cavern. They crowded roughhewn stone shelves by the dozens, spilling over onto the floor, so that the grotto resembled a lost subterranean lamp market, displaying antique oil lamps from every corner of the ancient world. Just at a glance, Flynn identified a prehistoric rock lamp, possibly of Neolithic origin; a ceremonial temple lamp from third-dynasty Egypt; a simple terra-cotta lamp from classical Greece; a red slip lamp from fourth-century Africa; and even a striking jade lamp from Zhou-Dynasty China. There were simple lamps made of shell or stone, and more ornate lamps exquisitely fashioned from bronze, silver, ivory, horn, alabaster, and other materials. It was a veritable treasury of lamps, albeit thrown together in a rather haphazard fashion. The Librarian in Flynn would have gone for a more organized collection, perhaps arranged chronologically and/or geographically\u2026?\n\n\"You've got to hand it to them,\" Flynn said with grudging admiration. \"Where better to hide a lamp than in a hoard of lamps?\"\n\nKhoja was less amused by the ploy. \"I've had enough of puzzles.\" He shoved Flynn toward the daunting cornucopia of lamps. \"Pick out the Lamp, Carsen, and don't try to tell me you can't. You've more than proven that you're up for the job.\"\n\nPossibly a mistake on my part, Flynn thought. \"Thanks, I guess.\"\n\nThis was it. His last chance to deprive the Forty of the Lamp, if his agile brain could make one more leap\u2014and stick the landing.\n\nTaking his time, while sweating profusely beneath his soggy attire, he paced back and forth before the lamps, looking them all over. Polished metal and ceramic glazes gleamed beneath the flickering light of the torches. He started to reach for a simple bowl-shaped lamp to examine it more closely, but guns cocked in protest. Marjanah flashed her knife once more.\n\n\"Hands off, Librarian,\" she warned. \"You even try to rub a lamp and you lose a hand, got it?\" She watched him suspiciously. \"You can look but not touch.\"\n\n\"Heard that before,\" Flynn muttered, withdrawing his hand. Acutely aware of Marjanah's scrutiny, not to mention her simmering lust for revenge, he contented himself with simply inspecting the lamps visually for the time being. His gaze lingered on a burnished brass lamp of Arabic design that looked just like the magic lamp in the storybooks. Feigning disinterest, he quickly averted his eyes from the lamp and stepped past it, only to spin around abruptly and grab for it.\n\n\"Not so fast, Librarian!\"\n\nSpringing forward like a panther, Marjanah slashed at Flynn's outstretched hands with her knife. He yanked them back barely in time to avoid being nicknamed Stumpy.\n\n\"Okay, okay! I got the message!\" Flynn retreated from the lamp. \"It's all yours.\"\n\n\"At last!\" Khoja shoved past Flynn to claim the brass lamp for himself. He held it up to the light, admiring it, while his minions looked on expectantly. \"After centuries of striving, Aladdin's Lamp is in our possession, and with it, the power to reshape the world!\"\n\n\"One more time,\" Flynn attempted. \"I wouldn't rub that if I were you.\"\n\n\"Save your scare tactics for more timid souls.\" Khoja gazed greedily at the lamp. His muffled voice rang with triumph. \"From this moment on, the Genie\u2014and destiny itself\u2014are ours to command!\"\n\nFlynn shrugged. \"Don't say I didn't warn you.\"\n\nHeedless of the Librarian's advice, Khoja cradled the lamp against his chest and caressed it with his bare right hand. The brass relic responded at once; a preternatural golden glow seemed to light up the lamp from the inside even as thick green smoke billowed from the lamp's upturned nozzle. The smoke had a harsh, unpleasant odor, but Khoja didn't seem to care.\n\n\"Yes!\" he exulted. \"It's working!\" He held the smoking lamp out before him. \"Arise, Genie, to greet your master!\"\n\n\"Masters,\" Marjanah added, gazing raptly at the spectacle. \"Plural, you mean.\"\n\nFor the first time in what felt like hours, all eyes were on the lamp instead of Flynn and Shirin. He sidled up to her and whispered in her ear.\n\n\"Wait for it.\"\n\nDark green smoke gushed from the lamp, which grew brighter and brighter by the moment, its golden radiance shifting to a fiery red. Whimpers of pain and discomfort supplanted Khoja's victory speeches. Sweat beaded on his brow. His face contorted behind the scarves concealing his mouth.\n\n\"Something's wrong,\" he gasped. \"It's becoming too hot to handle.\"\n\n\"Let go of it.\" Marjanah held out her hands. \"Pass it to me.\"\n\n\"Never! Not after all I've\u2014\"\n\nA scream tore itself from his lungs, cutting off his refusal, as the glow of the lamp escalated from a hellish red to a blinding, white-hot incandescence that blazed like a beacon even through the stifling green smoke fogging the grotto. He shook his arm wildly, trying to fling the blazing lamp away from him, but it was seared to his flesh. His hand started sizzling, and a stomach-turning odor competed with the acrid aroma of the smoke from the lamp.\n\n\"It burns!\" he shrieked. \"It's burning me!\"\n\nMarjanah backed away from him, visibly freaked out and uncertain what to do. She held out her knife like a talisman to ward off evil. \"Don't just stand there, Badar!\" she barked at her final henchman. \"Do something!\"\n\n\"Like what?\" The man was equally at a loss, as he stared with a horrified expression on his face. \"What do you want me to do, Second of Forty?\"\n\n\"I don't know, you idiot! Something!\"\n\nThe disarray among their captors was not lost on Shirin. \"This is our chance,\" she whispered to Flynn before grabbing a random bronze lamp off a shelf and braining Badar with it. The walloped thief staggered and fell to his knees, clutching his head, as Shirin grabbed Flynn by his arm and started to drag him toward the exit. \"Come on, Flynn! Let's get out of here!\"\n\n\"Just a second,\" he said.\n\nPulling away from her, much to her consternation, he plunged back into the smoke, letting the unearthly glow of the lamp guide him back to the ornate jade lamp, of Chinese extraction, that he had spotted earlier. He snatched the lamp from its shelf and sprinted back to an understandably confused and frantic Shirin. \"Flynn!\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he informed her. \"Now we can go.\"\n\nChaos, along with smoke, continued to fill the cave of lamps. Khoja flailed about wildly, screaming in pain and knocking scores of lamps onto the floor, while Marjanah appeared paralyzed with shock and confusion. A seemingly infinite amount of smoke kept spewing from the lamp, but nothing resembling a genie manifested. Tremors began to shake the grotto, spilling more lamps onto the floor. Metal lamps clattered loudly. Glass and ceramic lamps shattered.\n\n\"Help!\" Khoja shrieked above the tumult. \"Somebody help me!\"\n\nHe lunged toward Marjanah, who panicked and kicked his legs out from under him, so that he tumbled onto the floor along with the other lamps. Seeing Flynn and Shirin make a break for it, she hesitated momentarily, visibly torn between staying with her leader and pursuing the escapees. Still reeling from the blow to his head, Badar looked to her for guidance.\n\n\"Second?\"\n\nMarjanah made up her mind. \"After them! Don't let them get away!\"\n\nSo much for honor among thieves, Flynn thought. Figures.\n\nHe and Shirin dashed out of the grotto into the tunnel beyond them, pursued by Marjanah and Badar as well as by the spreading green smoke. He clutched the jade lamp to his chest as they raced back up the stairs toward the cave of jars. No way was he leaving that behind. Tremors rocked the stone steps.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" Shirin said. \"What's happening?\"\n\n\"It's a funny thing,\" he explained on the run. \"The earliest known versions of the Aladdin story have him finding the magic lamp in the exotic, far-off land of China. Modern retellings tend to overlook that part since one naturally expects an Arabian Nights story to take place in, well, Arabia, not the Far East, but if you go by the original story, Aladdin's Lamp should be Chinese in appearance. As it happens, the Zhou Dynasty, to which this lamp dates back, was roughly contemporaneous with the reign of King Solomon, who is said to have confined the Djinn in the first place.\"\n\n\"Right! I should have thought of that.\" Shirin stumbled on the shaking steps, almost losing her balance. \"And that other lamp, the one Khoja grabbed\u2026?\"\n\n\"Another booby trap, apparently, which I may have deliberately led Khoja to believe was the genuine article.\" He recalled faking a grab for the brass lamp, then flinched at the memory of Khoja's flesh sizzling before their eyes. \"To be fair, I warned him not to rub it.\"\n\nHe held on tightly to the real Lamp as the tremors increased in intensity. Dust and debris began to rain down on them, raising the dire possibility of a cave-in, as they scrambled up the steps into the cave of jars. Flynn heard Marjanah and her accomplice chasing after them, shouting in anger as they abandoned Khoja to his fate.\n\n\"Run all you want, Librarian!\" she shouted. \"You're not getting away from me!\"\n\nFlynn wasn't sure if she was after the jade lamp or just revenge, but he had no intention of granting her either. Or letting her getting anywhere near Shirin.\n\nStalactites fell from the ceiling, barely missing Flynn and Shirin. They smashed into the ceramic jars, spilling sesame oil onto the quaking floor. Slipping on the unsteady surface, Shirin tumbled and cried out. Flynn hastily helped her to her feet, only to see her wincing in pain.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he asked.\n\n\"My ankle,\" she explained. \"I think I twisted it.\"\n\n\"Can you walk?\"\n\n\"I think so \u2026 maybe.\"\n\nHolding onto the Lamp, he threw his other arm around her to help support her weight as they limped awkwardly out of the cave and onto the perilous stone bridge beyond. Shirin's injury slowed them down, decreasing their odds of making it across the bridge before it collapsed\u2014or before Marjanah and Badar caught up with them.\n\n\"Forget about me,\" she urged him. \"Take the Lamp and go.\"\n\n\"Not going to happen. Librarians always return what they've borrowed.\"\n\nThey were only halfway across the bridge when Marjanah and Badar emerged from the smoke behind them. She hesitated at the start of the bridge, as though understandably reluctant to venture out onto the narrow span during an earthquake.\n\n\"You've gone far enough, Librarian. Bring back that Lamp!\"\n\nSo she had seen him grab the jade lamp on his way out. All the more reason, Flynn reasoned, to get away from her and her hulking henchman if they still could.\n\n\"How about we discuss this outside,\" he shouted, \"before this whole place caves in?\"\n\nA huge stalactite fell past the bridge, plummeting into the chasm. Bits and pieces of the bridge began to break away, following the stalactite into the bottomless dark. Marjanah stared at the crumbling structure before nodding.\n\n\"Point taken, Librarian.\"\n\nAlong with Badar, she hurried onto the bridge as quickly as she could under the circumstances. Before she could reach Flynn and Shirin, however, an anguished wail froze her in her tracks.\n\n\"Marjanah!\"\n\nIncredibly, Khoja staggered out of the cave of jars, the decoy lamp still welded to his palm. His facecloth had come loose, but the swirling green smoke obscured his features nonetheless. Flynn was amazed that the man was still on his feet, let alone that he had managed to come this far on his own. Khoja dropped to his knees in the entrance to the grotto.\n\n\"Help me, Marjanah! Don't leave me!\"\n\nHer gaze swung back and forth between Khoja and Flynn. Cracks snaked across the pathway ahead of her. Another chunk of bridge plunged into the abyss.\n\n\"Second?\" Badar asked anxiously.\n\nHer face hardened as she turned her back on her former leader.\n\n\"Call me the First.\"\n\nThe bridge gave way between them and Flynn, creating a four-foot gap between the Forty and their prey. The whole structure tottered on the brink of collapse.\n\n\"Jump!\" she shouted at Badar. \"Jump for your life!\"\n\n\"NOOO!\" Khoja shouted. \"Don't you dare leave\u2014!\"\n\nFlynn didn't wait to see if the remaining thieves made the leap. Half dragging, half supporting Shirin, he stumbled across what was left of the bridge and down the tunnel onto the ledge outside, where he feared the hungry roc would still be waiting.\n\nOut of the frying pan \u2026 into a bird's gullet?\n\nIt was still light outside. Compared to the smoky, torchlit gloom of the caverns, the afternoon sun was almost as bright as the infernal glow of the brass lamp. Blinking at the glare, Flynn dared to hope that the roc had been scared away by the tremors shaking the mountain, but then an ominous shadow fell over the ledge, blotting out the sun, and Flynn looked up to see the roc circling high overhead. Earthquake or not, he doubted the winged monster would let him and Shirin make it back down the side of the mountain without being attacked.\n\nAnd neither would their human foes.\n\nAny hope that Marjanah and her henchman had been left behind at the bridge was dashed when the last two thieves scurried out of the mountain onto the ledge, only seconds before the tunnel entrance collapsed behind them in a rumble of falling rock. Dusty, disheveled, and out of breath, Marjanah was looking less than her best, but Flynn saw with alarm that she'd managed to hang onto her knife through all her travails, and that her murderous gaze looked just as scary as ever.\n\nBadar didn't look too happy, either. Meaty fingers massaged his skull where Shirin had clobbered him. His other hand gripped a gun.\n\n\"Hand over the Lamp,\" Marjanah ordered, brandishing her favorite weapon. \"And maybe I'll only feed one of you to the bird.\"\n\nAs the roc swooped down from the heights, Flynn swiftly assessed the situation, which struck him as the worst story problem ever. Between the roc, the bloodthirsty thieves, and Shirin's twisted ankle, making a successful run for it was about as unlikely as Charlene forgetting to inquire about his receipts, which meant that the only option left to him was the one thing he had been emphatically warned never to do.\n\n\"Sorry, Judson.\"\n\nDespite his mentor's warning, Flynn rubbed the Lamp.\n\n\"No!\" Marjanah cried out. \"Don't!\"\n\nThe roc squawked in alarm as well.\n\nToo late, Flynn thought. I'm letting this genie out of the bottle.\n\nA plume of luminous azure smoke, which literally shimmered with its own coruscating radiance, erupted from the Lamp's spout, climbing high above their heads. Cawing in fright, the roc aborted its deadly swoop and flapped away from the rising column of smoke as fast as its enormous wings would carry it.\n\nFlynn was afraid the roc knew what it was doing.\n\nUnlike the harsh green smoke from the decoy lamp, the sparkling blue vapors smelled of exotic spices and incense, as though from a Middle Eastern bazaar, and instead of dispersing they formed a huge pillar of smoke that rapidly solidified into \u2026\n\n\"The Genie,\" Shirin gasped. \"The Genie from the Lamp.\"\n\nThe giant Djinn towered above them. His dark blue skin had an iridescent sheen that hinted at his supernatural nature. Pointed ears, adorned with golden rings the size of hula hoops, along with a neatly trimmed red beard and mustache, gave him a disturbingly Satanic mien. A gold silk vest and purple harem pants clothed his immense frame, which looked remarkably fit and muscular considering that the Djinn had presumably not gotten any exercise for centuries, leading Flynn to wonder if the Lamp had a fully equipped gym stuffed inside it as well. He worried briefly that the ledge might not be able to support the giant's weight before recalling that, despite appearances, genies were basically creatures of smoke and fire.\u2026\n\n\"FREE!\" the Djinn thundered in a deep, booming voice that made Darth Vader sound like a soprano. His mammoth legs spread wide, he threw out his equally humongous arms, obviously relishing his liberation from the Lamp. Fierce golden eyes flashed like lightning. \"FREE TO STRIDE THE WORLD ONCE MORE!\"\n\nThe Genie's terrifying appearance was enough to convince Marjanah and her cohort that the roc had had the right idea.\n\n\"Run!\" she shouted at Badar. \"Before the Librarian sics that demon on us!\"\n\nFearful of the Genie's wrath, or Flynn's, or some dreadful combination thereof, the surviving bandits bolted from the scene, fleeing in panic down the precarious trail leading to the woods below. Flynn was glad to see them go for more than one reason. Gazing up at the colossal Djinn, he figured he had enough on his plate at the moment without having to deal with a pair of vengeful thieves as well.\n\n\"Um, excuse me.\" Flynn cleared his throat to get the giant's attention. \"Paging the former occupant of the Lamp?\"\n\nThe Djinn deigned to peer down at him. \"WHO ART THOU, INSIGNIFICANT MORTAL, WHO NOW HOLDS MY LAMP?\"\n\n\"I'm the Librarian.\"\n\n\"INDEED?\" The Genie sounded slightly more impressed. \"VERY WELL, LIBRARIAN, I AM AT THY COMMAND. WHAT WISHES SHALL I GRANT THEE, O SCHOLAR OF THE AGES?\"\n\nPlenty of possibilities popped into Flynn's mind, up to and including a trip for two back to the Library, as well as justice for the murder of Leila Hamza back in Baghdad, but he had not entirely forgotten Judson's dire warnings about the Lamp. Inspecting the jade artifact more closely, he noted with dismay that a number of hairline fractures could already be seen in the Lamp's exquisite jade housing. Just as Judson had predicted, years of rubbing the Lamp for wishes had empowered the Genie and compromised the structural integrity of his prison, so that it appeared to be on the verge of breaking into pieces. Who knew how many more wishes it might take to free the Djinn once and for all?\n\nWhich, according to Judson, would be a very bad thing.\n\n\"SPEAK!\" the Genie exhorted Flynn. \"WHAT IS THY DESIRE, O LEARNED ONE?\"\n\nAfter all he and Shirin had been through, Flynn was sorely tempted to use the Djinn's power to make all their problems go away, but that was a slippery slope that might just put the entire world at the mercy of the vindictive genie. At best, Flynn decided, he could risk only a single wish.\n\n\"May you and the Lamp be lost forever!\"\n\n\"NOOOOO!\" the Genie raged, dissolving back into smoke from the bottom up. \"MY CURSE UPON THEE, LIBRARIAN, AND ALL WHO FOLLOW IN THY FOOTSTEPS, FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF DAYS!\"\n\nThe Lamp sucked the vaporizing Djinn in like a shiny jade vacuum cleaner. He clawed frantically at the air, vainly seeking purchase, until his head and shoulders and upper extremities also dissolved and disappeared into the Lamp. Spinning to face the brink of the ledge, Flynn hurled the Lamp (and its furious resident) toward the distant bay. Ordinarily, he could never have thrown it that far, but the power of his wish caused it to arc above the wooded slopes and sandy beaches below before splashing down into the bay, where it disappeared beneath the waves, never to be found again.\n\nOr so Flynn had wished.\n\n\"Well, that's that.\" He washed his hands of the Lamp, which was apparently not going to be added to the Library's collection. \"Aladdin's Lamp is lost forever.\"\n\n\"Probably just as well,\" Shirin said. \"All things considered, I think I prefer reading about genies to actually meeting them. Ditto for ghouls, rocs, and the Forty Thieves.\"\n\nFlynn knew how she felt, even if he would have liked to have claimed the Lamp for the Library. Still, he had kept the Lamp from falling into the wrong hands, which was what really mattered, as Judson would surely agree.\n\nI'm going to call this a win, he thought.\n\nShirin leaned against him, favoring her injured ankle. She gazed over the enchanted island and the vast sea beyond. \"Just one thing,\" she said. \"How exactly are we going to get home?\"\n\nFlynn already had an idea about that, lifted straight from the pages of One Thousand and One Nights. They just needed to ask themselves what Sinbad would do.\n\n\"How do you feel about trying to hitch a ride on a roc?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "A vintage candlestick phone from the 1900s, complete with a rotary dial, rang in the Annex. Jenkins picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.\n\n\"Mr. Stone?\" he said into the transmitter, knowing already who was calling. \"How may I help you?\"\n\n\"We've got this all wrong,\" Stone replied. \"It's not about the penny at all.\"\n\n\"Yes, we've already determined that. I'm afraid you're behind the times there. Do you have any new information to impart?\"\n\n\"You bet I do. Dunphy and I just had a run-in with some seriously brutal competition. They are looking for some kind of lamp.\"\n\n\"A lamp?\" A chill ran down Jenkins's spine. Surely it couldn't be. Not after all this time.\n\nAlthough he was a fine one to talk like that. Some might say the same of him.\n\n\"Tell me everything,\" he said gravely. \"Omitting no detail.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 32",
                "text": "Baird was relieved to find both Cassandra and Ezekiel waiting for her in the hotel lobby. Approaching them, she caught the tail end of a whispered conversation.\n\n\"You 'borrowed' what?\" Cassandra said, in a low voice, visibly appalled.\n\n\"The world's largest gold nugget,\" Ezekiel bragged. \"All 875 ounces, on display at a local casino.\" He shrugged off Cassandra's shocked reaction. \"Come on. Like I seriously wasn't going to take a run at that?\"\n\n\"But you are going to put it back where it belongs at some point, aren't you?\" Cassandra asked hopefully. \"This was just all about the challenge, right?\"\n\nHe hedged. \"Well\u2026\"\n\nBaird looked to the heavens for strength, but saw only the lobby's opulent trompe l'oeil ceiling, which simulated a bright Arabian sky. This was absolutely the last thing she needed at the moment. She wondered briefly where Ezekiel had stowed the stolen nugget before deciding that she didn't want to know.\n\n\"Drop it, both of you,\" she said. \"We can sort this out later, after we figure out what we're actually supposed to be looking for here.\" She looked at Ezekiel. \"Cassandra told you about the penny?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" A frown replaced his cocky expression. \"I can't believe I wasted my time and talent on an ordinary copper penny.\"\n\n\"Actually, it's 97.5 percent zinc,\" Cassandra volunteered. \"Just to be accurate.\"\n\n\"Not really the point now,\" Baird said, trying to keep the discussion on track. \"The Clipping Book sent us here for a reason, and we need to find out what that is.\"\n\nCassandra pondered the issue. \"You said Stone was hanging out with Dunphy. Maybe he's learned something that might steer us in the right direction?\"\n\n\"Couldn't hurt to ask.\" Baird took out her phone, but before she could contact Stone, she received a call from the Library, which she chose to pick up instead. She couldn't help hoping that Jenkins was calling to say that he'd missed something before and that the penny really was magical after all. \"Baird here. What's up?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I have some rather disturbing news to impart,\" he said dolefully. \"Is the remainder of the team with you?\"\n\n\"All but Stone.\" Baird switched to speakerphone and beckoned Cassandra and Ezekiel to draw nearer. Passing tourists, intent on their own diversions, ignored the huddled conclave. \"He's with Dunphy, enjoying a nice steak dinner, last I heard.\"\n\n\"Would that were the case,\" Jenkins said, \"but I just heard from Mr. Stone, whose dinner expedition proved to be much more eventful than anticipated \u2026 in a way that raises a profoundly troubling possibility.\"\n\nBaird could tell from his voice that this was serious. \"Tell us.\"\n\nShe shared a worried look with the others as Jenkins proceeded to inform them of Stone and Dunphy's narrow escape from unknown assailants intent on a certain lamp.\n\n\"A lamp?\" Baird asked. \"What sort of lamp?\"\n\n\"Aladdin's Lamp,\" Jenkins said. \"If my suspicions are correct, and I very much fear they are, we are in pursuit of the fabled magic lamp \u2026 and the Djinn bound to it.\"\n\n\"But you told us once that it was never the Genie's Lamp,\" Cassandra protested. \"When we were investigating all that fairy-tale weirdness last year.\"\n\n\"So I did,\" he admitted, \"because I had every reason to believe that the Lamp had been lost forever, thanks to the ingenuity of Mr. Carsen some years ago.\"\n\n\"Flynn?\" Baird asked. \"What's he got to do with this?\"\n\n\"A good deal, as it happens, although that was before your time, back when he was the sole Librarian.\"\n\nGoing into briefing mode, as was his wont, Jenkins informed them of an old adventure of Flynn's involving Aladdin's Lamp, a fearsome genie, and \u2026 the Forty Thieves?\n\n\"A flying carpet?\" Cassandra was unable to control her excitement. \"I'm sooo jealous!\"\n\n\"Sounds like he could've used me back then,\" Ezekiel said. \"A bunch of so-called thieves from the olden days would have been no match for the likes of Ezekiel Jones. I would have stolen that Lamp so fast their turbans would have spun.\"\n\n\"Do not underestimate the Forty,\" Jenkins said. \"We're talking a ruthless criminal organization that has endured for nearly thirteen centuries \u2026 and it will stop at nothing to obtain the Lamp at long last.\"\n\nBaird struggled to process all this new intel. \"I've never heard of any of this before. Flynn never said a word to me about it.\"\n\n\"With all due respect, Colonel, Mr. Carsen was flying solo as it were long before you were recruited by the Library. Indeed, he has survived as a Librarian longer than any individual on record. I imagine there are quite a few incidents that he has not had occasion to mention to you.\"\n\n\"Possibly because he never sticks around long enough to do so,\" Baird said a bit testily. Despite the severity of the present situation, she couldn't help wondering what became of this Shirin Masri woman and how close she and Flynn might have been back in the day. There was still a lot she didn't know about his past exploits, romantic or otherwise\u2014although, to be fair, it was not as though she had told him all her old war stories, either. \"But \u2026 point taken.\"\n\nShe forced herself to stay on mission.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" she said. \"If Flynn wished for the Lamp to never again be found, how has it turned up in Vegas ten years later? Hypothetically, that is.\"\n\n\"An excellent question, Colonel,\" Jenkins replied, \"worthy of further investigation. For now, I can only speculate that the release of wild magic back into the world somehow caused the Lamp to surface again after all these years \u2026 with potentially dire consequences.\"\n\nBaird contemplated the lobby's exotic decor. \"Aladdin's Lamp? A casino with an Arabian Nights theme? Could there be a connection there, or is it just a coincidence?\"\n\n\"In our line of work,\" Jenkins said, \"coincidence is often merely a failure to recognize invisible forces at work. I suspect we can attribute Mr. Dunphy's current accommodations to the Djinn. Genies are not by nature very imaginative, so where else would he whisk his new master but to a lavish Middle Eastern palace straight out of the Thousand and One Nights \u2026 or a nearby facsimile thereof.\"\n\n\"Makes sense,\" Baird said. \"This place would be smack in a genie's comfort zone.\"\n\n\"Hey!\" Cassandra blurted, struck by an idea. \"Along those lines, you don't suppose Morgan le Fay has booked herself into the Excalibur, for old time's sake?\"\n\n\"Do not even jest about that, Miss Cillian,\" Jenkins said sternly. Arthurian matters struck far too close to home for him, for reasons Baird well understood. \"We face grievous enough hazards without invoking that duplicitous enchantress.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Ezekiel said skeptically. \"Some sad-sack loser is using a magic lamp to turn his luck around. How bad can things get?\"\n\n\"Were you not listening before?\" Jenkins said. \"Beyond the obvious necessity of keeping the Lamp away from the latest incarnation of the Forty, there is the even more dreadful threat posed by the Djinn himself.\"\n\nEzekiel still looked dubious. \"So not a friendly genie, then?\"\n\n\"Make no mistake, all of you,\" Jenkins said, so gravely that you could practically hear him frowning over the phone. \"This Djinn is no cheerful cartoon character who sings show tunes while showering you with undeserved riches. He's a malevolent magical menace who has been stuck in solitary confinement inside a lamp for untold ages. Don't expect him to be in a good mood. He's been waiting a long time to get his revenge on the world \u2026 and the Library, in particular.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the pep talk,\" Baird said.\n\n\"You're welcome,\" he replied. \"Anytime.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "The crystal scrying bowl had once belonged to the god-kings of ancient Persepolis. Seven rings of archaic cuneiform were inscribed along the outer surface of the bowl, which Jenkins had retrieved from the Divination wing of the Library. Now it rested on the conference table in the Annex, where he filled it with ordinary tap water, before proceeding with a streamlined version of a traditional Bronze Age summoning spell. There was a certain personage he needed to consult at once, and he had neither the time nor the patience to stand on ceremony.\n\n\"In the name of Enlil and Astarte and the Eternal Flame, yadda yadda yadda, so on and so forth, et cetera, I summon he who speaks for the Court of Smoke.\" He waved a perfectly preserved green feather, plucked from the Bird of Paradise, over the bowl in a desultory fashion and blew upon the still, clear water. \"Paging the Envoy, ASAP.\"\n\nTo his annoyance, nothing happened at first. Sighing impatiently, he ran his index finger along the rim of the bowl, producing a high-pitched ringing tone that grated on his ears.\n\n\"I can keep this up for as long as I have to,\" he warned the bowl. \"Rely on it.\"\n\nThat did the trick. A luminous aura traced the markings on the bowl. The water rippled and Jenkins's reflection was replaced by the visage of another, whose bristling black beard and mustache compensated for a hairless cranium. A single golden earring made the reflection look like that of a stereotypical pirate or, more accurately, a genie. The face on the water bore a distinctly aggrieved expression, just as Jenkins had anticipated.\n\n\"Galeas?\" the water spoke, addressing Jenkins by a name he had not employed since the fall of Camelot. \"How dare you disturb the repose of Dobra of the City of Bronze? Were I not in a merciful mood, I would drown the world in blood for such presumption!\"\n\n\"Spare me the usual histrionics,\" Jenkins replied, unimpressed. He knew from experience that this genie's bluster was usually just that. \"I require information on a matter of some urgency.\"\n\nDobra currently represented the Djinn when it came to dealing with the Library and other mystical realms and factions. Jenkins had last encountered him at a recent high-level Conclave regarding an incipient war between two rival clans of dragons. Dobra had been just as difficult and full of himself then.\n\n\"Am I a dog to speak at your command? You overstep yourself, mortal.\"\n\n\"I am anything but mortal, as you well know. And I would not call upon you unless I had good reason to do so.\"\n\n\"Easy for you to say, you monkish relic. I have seven wives to attend to, not to mention assorted concubines.\"\n\n\"All of whom can certainly survive without your attentions for the time it takes to provide me with the answers I seek.\"\n\nDobra scoffed. \"And why should I comply with your request?\"\n\n\"The Electrum Covenant. Article twelve, clause b-thirty-two, subsection five-hundred and sixty-seven.\" Jenkins paused in his citation. \"Need I go on?\"\n\nThe reflection rippled in irritation, but was bound by the terms of the treaty.\n\n\"Very well. Make your inquiry, but be swift about it.\"\n\nJenkins got straight to the point. \"The Lamp of Aladdin. Is it in play again?\"\n\n\"Oh, that.\" Dobra suddenly looked more uncomfortable than irritated. He tugged nervously on his beard. \"I'm afraid I can neither confirm nor deny anything regarding that topic.\"\n\nJenkins was vexed by the evasion. \"Come now, Dobra. If the Lamp is back, this is no time for diplomatic persiflage. We can't afford to waste time on games.\"\n\nDobra winced at that inconvenient truth. Looking about cautiously, he lowered his voice and appeared to lean forward, so that his reflection in the water acquired a fisheye effect.\n\n\"Well, strictly off the record, even if, hypothetically, a certain lamp were once more abroad in your world, we of the Djinn would not readily acknowledge such a fact.\"\n\n\"And why is that?\" Jenkins asked. \"One would think this would fall squarely under your jurisdiction, or have you no interest in policing your own?\"\n\n\"It is not that simple. The Genie of the Lamp, whose very name none dare utter, has never bowed to the authority of the Court of Smoke. He is a rogue, an outlaw, and a most formidable one at that. We lack the power to constrain him \u2026 and can take no responsibility for his deeds.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Jenkins said, as a clearer picture emerged. \"In other words, you're all scared to death of this particular black sheep and don't have the nerve to challenge him.\" He didn't bother to keep the scorn out of his voice. \"Have I got that right?\"\n\nDobra got all defensive. \"You don't grasp the delicacy of our position.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think I grasp it just fine. I take it then that the Court is wiping its hands of the situation and that we can expect no assistance from you or your fellow Djinn when it comes to coping with your wayward kinsman?\"\n\n\"Sadly not \u2026 hypothetically.\" Dobra raised his voice in a pathetically transparent attempt to save face. \"Let it be known, however, that were my hands not tied in this affair, the Nameless One would most assuredly feel the full force of my wrath. A thousand mighty blows would I rain down upon him, so that he would rue the day he crossed Dobra of the City of Bronze. He would plead for mercy, lest I snuff out his divine fire and cast his substance to the four winds. Greatly would he be punished for his transgressions, and well would he tremble before\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I'm sure that's exactly how it would go down,\" Jenkins said sarcastically. \"Anyway, this has been very helpful, but I'm afraid that some of us have actual business to attend to.\"\n\nHe poked the feather in the water and stirred Dobra's image away, brusquely dismissing the useless genie without any of the customary formalities. Carefully picking up the bowl, so as to avoid slopping the water onto the table, Jenkins carried it across the Library to the actual Black Hole of Calcutta, where he dumped the water into the abyss with a degree of satisfaction.\n\nStill, he reflected, his aggravating t\u00eate\u2013\u00e0\u2013t\u00eate with Dobra had not been entirely a waste of time. He had managed to confirm two things: that the Genie's Lamp was no longer lost forever, and that the Librarians and their Guardian were on their own where the Forty\u2014and the rogue Djinn\u2014were concerned.\n\nSame old, same old, he thought."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 34",
                "text": "The Pissaro Gallery of Art was one of the few attractions in Las Vegas that didn't come complete with slot machines. Too few tourists knew that the city was home to many fine art galleries and museums and not just to casinos, a regrettable fact that Stone nevertheless hoped to take advantage of. He and Dunphy practically had the gallery to themselves, not that Gus seemed to appreciate the outstanding collection of Neo-Impressionist paintings and drawings currently on display.\n\n\"I didn't even get to finish my steak,\" Dunphy whined, oblivious to the stunning Matisse right in front of him. He squatted on a bench, wallowing in self-pity. \"What did I do to deserve this? Ever since I lost my lucky penny, I can't get a break.\"\n\n\"Yeah, about that.\" Stone tore himself away from admiring an early charcoal study by Seurat to sit down beside Dunphy. \"I may know something about that, but we both know that penny isn't really what this is all about. The Lamp is what matters. Aladdin's Lamp.\"\n\n\"Aladdin\u2026\" Dunphy's jaw dropped \"How do you know about \u2026 I mean, you're joking, right?\"\n\n\"Not by a long shot,\" Stone said. Jenkins had briefed him on his suspicions while he and Dunphy were en route to the art gallery. \"Don't try to con me, Gus. You're in over your head here, with some seriously dangerous customers hot on your trail. I can't help you unless we level with each other.\"\n\n\"Who are you anyway?\" Dunphy stared at Stone in bewilderment. \"That woman at the restaurant, she called you a librarian?\"\n\n\"And she wasn't wrong,\" Stone said. \"I'm a Librarian all right, but not the kind you're thinking of. My colleagues and I track down dangerous magical items \u2026 like the Lamp.\"\n\nGus started sweating, despite the air conditioning. \"I swear to God, I have no idea what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"Give me a break, Gus. That didn't work back at the steakhouse, and it's not going to work now. The cat is out of the bag, man. You're not fooling anyone.\"\n\nDunphy opened his mouth to issue another denial, but his heart wasn't in it. \"You really know about all that?\"\n\n\"Yep, and so does our new friend Marjanah and her friends. Seems they belong to a secret society that calls itself the Forty. By all accounts, they're a pretty cutthroat bunch, and they have been after the Lamp for a long, long time.\"\n\nGus twitched nervously. \"How long?\"\n\n\"A thousand-plus years, give or take a few centuries, so they're not about to give up just because we got away from them once. You need our help, Gus, which means you need to tell us where you stowed the Lamp.\"\n\nHe obviously didn't have the Lamp on him, so Stone had to assume that Dunphy had tucked it away somewhere, far from the trailer that the Forty had already ransacked. At least we know now what they were looking for, he thought.\n\n\"That's what that woman said, too, aside from the whole slicing me to ribbons thing. How do I know I can trust you?\"\n\n\"'Cause I've already saved your butt twice now?\" Stone backed off a little, not wanting to press Dunphy too hard just as he was trying to win his trust. \"Look, forget about letting me in on where the Lamp is for the moment. Can you at least tell me how exactly you came into possession of it in the first place? To be honest, I'm still a little fuzzy on that point.\"\n\n\"Pure dumb luck,\" Gus said. \"I was hiding out\u2014I mean, vacationing\u2014in Santa Barbara last week when it washed up on the beach, covered in seaweed. I wiped it off, thinking it might be worth something \u2026 and, poof, this king-sized genie appeared in a puff of smoke, like a magic act on the Strip but ten times bigger and more awesome.\" He threw out his arms to try to convey how enormous the Djinn was. \"I gotta tell you, Jake, I was positively petrified at first. Part of me was afraid I had gone loco, and another part was afraid I hadn't.\"\n\n\"I hear you, man,\" Stone said. \"I've seen some pretty freaky stuff as a Librarian, let me tell you.\"\n\n\"You have no idea.\" Dunphy shuddered at the memory. \"That genie dude is scary as all get-out, and big as a house to boot. I'm not ashamed to admit that I nearly dropped that Lamp right then and there and ran for the hills.\"\n\nStone could believe it. \"But you didn't.\"\n\n\"Well, genies are all about granting wishes. Everyone knows that, right, so how could I pass up a chance like that? I was down to my last penny anyway, so what did I have to lose? I figured maybe I had finally hit the jackpot at last. A big, scary jackpot, but still\u2026\"\n\nStone understood where Gus was coming from. His dad had often lived from paycheck to paycheck, while squandering the family finances on booze and bad bets. Growing up, Stone had seen firsthand how reckless that could make a man\u2014and how hungry for that one big break that would turn everything around.\n\n\"So what did you wish for?\" he asked.\n\n\"For luck, naturally. What else?\" Gus seemed genuinely surprised by the question. \"Not enough to win every time, 'cause where would be the fun in that, but enough to beat the house and make me a real high roller at last.\" He smiled wanly at the memory. \"It's not like I was actually cheating or anything. I just wanted a bit of an edge, you know?\"\n\n\"I get it,\" Stone said. \"But here's the thing, Gus. Magic like that is never free, not really. It always comes with a price, and usually a steep one. That's why my friends and I try to keep objects like that Lamp filed away where they can't do any harm \u2026 to you or anyone else.\"\n\nDunphy didn't want to hear it. \"But I wasn't hurting anyone.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Stone said, \"but what about what the Forty might do if they get control of that Lamp? Do you really think that somebody like Marjanah cares about what her wishes might do to innocent people? And what if the Genie himself ever escapes from the Lamp and runs amok? You said yourself that he's scary as hell and nothing we can risk setting loose on the world. From what I hear, there's a reason he was bound to the Lamp centuries ago. He's not on your side, Gus. In the long run, he's not on anybody's side but his own.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Gus said, waffling. \"He's done all right by me so far.\"\n\n\"For now, maybe, but look at all the trouble he's already gotten you in. You really want to live like this, always looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop?\" Stone reached out to Dunphy, man to man. \"You strike me as a good guy at heart, Gus. Let us take the Lamp off your hands and put it somewhere safe.\"\n\n\"Forget it.\" Dunphy shook his head emphatically. \"That Lamp changed everything for me. No way am I going back to being a loser again.\"\n\n\"Even if it gets you killed?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "A private elevator led from the lobby to the penthouse suites on the top floor of Ali Baba's Palace. As she and Ezekiel stepped into the empty elevator, Cassandra fretted that she wasn't dressed expensively enough to pull this off. She kept expecting someone to call her out as a trespasser.\n\n\"Remind me why we're doing this again?\"\n\nEzekiel waited for the elevator doors to close before replying. \"It only figures that Dunphy would want to keep the Lamp close at hand, so his sweet new digs are the obvious place to look, especially since Stone says that Dunphy isn't about to turn it over to us willingly.\" He grinned impishly. \"I can live with that. Stealing things is always more fun than asking for them.\"\n\nUnlike Cassandra, he looked perfectly relaxed, as though breaking into a luxury hotel suite was no big deal. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much.\n\nStands to reason, she thought. \"So I guess casino heists are your happy place?\"\n\n\"That and priceless museum exhibits,\" he replied. \"Those are a treat, too.\"\n\nCassandra envied his confidence. \"I suppose this is kind of exciting,\" she said, trying to borrow some of his dashing, devil-may-care attitude. \"It's like we're in one of those Ocean's Eleven movies.\"\n\n\"Please!\" Ezekiel rolled his eyes. \"That's the Hollywood version of a heist. If they really wanted to get it right, they should have consulted an actual master thief, such as yours truly.\" He gave her a devilish wink. \"You want to see a true professional at work, get a load of this.\"\n\nThe button panel inside the express elevator featured only two destinations: the lobby and the top floor. Ezekiel produced a blank key card that he slid into a slot in the panel before pushing the upper button, which lit up at his touch. The elevator immediately commenced a smooth ascent.\n\n\"See,\" he bragged, \"real thieving requires research and technical expertise, not to mention a huge amount of sheer natural talent.\" He retrieved the key card and returned it to his pocket. \"I spoofed my first electronic skeleton key before I was old enough to boost a car for a joy ride.\"\n\nCassandra had to admit that Ezekiel knew what he was doing when it came to hacking into locks and security systems. She made a mental note to thoroughly erase her web history as soon as they got back to the Annex, even as the elevator shot straight to the top of the hotel. A bell chimed to announce their arrival. The elevator doors slid open.\n\n\"Voil\u00e0!\" Ezekiel crowed. \"Do I know my way around a security system or not?\"\n\n\"I never doubted it,\" she said.\n\nThey stepped out of the elevator into a circular waiting area directly beneath the Palace's gilded dome. Radiating from the circle were the penthouse suites themselves, four in all. Ornate Arabic numerals marked the doors to each suite. Cassandra automatically calculated the dimensions of the accommodations, deducting the space occupied by the elevator shaft, and concluded that each suite was approximately 15.3 percent larger than her modest apartment back in Portland. She could only imagine what the nightly room rate was, including taxes.\n\n\"This way,\" Ezekiel said. \"Trust me, I'm just getting warmed up.\"\n\nHe headed straight to the door of Dunphy's suite. A \"Do Not Disturb\" sign hung from the doorknob, despite the fact that Stone was currently keeping Gus under wraps in the Fine Arts district across town, where the Forty would (hopefully) never think to look for him. Cassandra wondered if maybe Dunphy had hung the sign to keep the housekeeping staff from poking around in the suite when he wasn't around\u2014or had the Forty hung the sign to keep from being interrupted while they searched the place?\n\n\"Careful,\" she warned Ezekiel. \"Remember, we're not the only ones looking for the Lamp.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but they're not Ezekiel Jones.\" He rapped on the door. \"Hello? Room service.\"\n\nNo one answered, which eased Cassandra's concerns somewhat. Still, she remained on guard as Ezekiel tried the knob and chuckled in amusement.\n\n\"Got to love these state-of-the-art electronic locks. The older, mechanical ones were a bit trickier to pick. Not impossible, mind you, just trickier.\"\n\nHe slid his counterfeit key card into the lock, which clicked from red to green.\n\n\"Open sesame,\" he said with a smirk.\n\n\"A literary reference?\" Cassandra remarked. \"From you?\"\n\nDespite being a Librarian, Ezekiel wasn't much of a reader, aside from take-out menus and technical manuals.\n\n\"Hey, I've seen the movies, too.\" He shrugged. \"Well, at least the ones that weren't made before I was born.\"\n\nMoving quickly, so as not to be observed, they slipped quietly into the suite and shut the door behind them.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" Cassandra said. \"Are we too late?\"\n\nAt first glance, it appeared that the luxurious suite, which, like the rest of Ali Baba's Palace, was decked out in ersatz Arabian Nights splendor, had already been looted. The place was a mess, with discarded clothes strewn across the carpeted floor, closet doors hanging open, empty champagne bottles cluttering coffee tables and counters, dirty glasses piled high in the sink of a built-in bar, rumpled bathroom towels draped over the back of a plush divan, and other evidence of disorder. Something squished beneath Cassandra's feet, and she looked down to see that she had stepped on a cold, greasy pizza crust."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 36",
                "text": "\"Nah,\" Ezekiel said, looking around. \"I think Dunphy's just a slob.\" He made a face as he delicately picked a rumpled sock from the floor and gave it a sniff before dropping it in disgust. \"I swear, some blokes have no class at all.\"\n\nLooking closer, Cassandra realized Ezekiel was probably right. Aside from the dirty laundry and other refuse scattered everywhere, the suite had not actually been trashed the way Dunphy's trailer had been. Nobody had sliced open any cushions or emptied the drawers and closets onto the floor, which Cassandra chose to take as a sign that they were one step ahead of the Forty for once.\n\nTaking out her phone, she rang Baird, who was maintaining a lookout downstairs in the lobby. \"We're in,\" she reported. \"Are we still clear?\"\n\n\"So far,\" Baird replied. \"Nobody matching Stone's description of his assailants has gone anywhere near the penthouse elevator, so you shouldn't be interrupted. I'll let you know if it ever looks like you're expecting company. Any sign of the Lamp yet?\"\n\nCassandra swept her gaze over the messy suite. \"I'll have to get back to you on that.\"\n\nWrapping up the call, she saw that Ezekiel was already casing the scene. A loose pile of chips, in high denominations, was gathering dust on an end table. He casually pocketed them on his way to a Persian carpet hanging like a tapestry on a wall.\n\n\"They're making this way too bloody easy,\" he sighed. \"I'm almost insulted.\"\n\nHe swept aside the tapestry to expose a concealed wall safe, no doubt provided as a convenience for the big-time gamblers and A-list guests who usually occupied the penthouse. Of course, they probably just stowed cash and jewelry for safekeeping, not a magic lamp.\n\n\"Can you open it?\" Cassandra asked.\n\nHe shot her an incredulous look. \"Okay, now I am insulted.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" She was starting to wonder why she had even bothered joining Ezekiel on this operation. \"Never mind. Do your thing.\"\n\n\"Don't get too comfortable,\" he said, confidently working the keypad on the safe. \"The day I can't crack a Model Nine Glen Reader commercial wall safe is the day I go straight for good \u2026 so, in other words, never.\"\n\nThe safe chirped cooperatively.\n\n\"I rest my case.\" He tugged open the safe, then blinked in surprise. \"Okay, that I was not expecting.\"\n\nInstead of Aladdin's Lamp, as described by Jenkins, they found only a cheap resin trophy cup of the sort awarded at high school assemblies. Ezekiel squinted at the inscription on the base, reading it aloud.\n\n\"Augustus Dunphy. Voted Mostly Likely to Hit the Jackpot. Class of 1998.\" Ezekiel stared at the trophy in disbelief. \"You've got to be kidding me!\"\n\nCassandra groped for an explanation. \"Maybe it has \u2026 sentimental value?\"\n\n\"But this doesn't make any sense,\" Ezekiel griped. \"Who doesn't store their valuables in a safe if there's one available?\"\n\n\"Someone who is worried about people like you?\" Cassandra suggested. \"Or who maybe doesn't trust the casino they're taking to the cleaners?\"\n\n\"Good point,\" Ezekiel said. \"I know I'd be worried about me, if I wasn't me.\" He shuddered. \"There's a scary thought, not being Ezekiel Jones.\"\n\nFunny, Cassandra thought. Up until recently, I would have given anything to be someone else.\n\nBut that was before she became a Librarian.\n\n\"You might as well tell Baird that we struck out.\" Ezekiel closed the safe with a little more force than was strictly necessary. He trudged toward the door. \"Talk about a waste of time.\"\n\n\"Hang on,\" she said. \"Give me a chance here.\"\n\nThrowing open her hands to unlock her synesthetic senses, so that hallucinatory diagrams and formulae floated before her eyes, she made a sweep of the suite, going from room to room, calculating the volume of every object that might contain an antique Chinese lamp: vases, cushions, cabinets, ice buckets, and overflowing waste baskets. Spatial geometries spun luminously, accompanied by the taste of raspberry jam and a melodic ringing in her ears, as she worked her way through the living room, dining area, and bar, before entering a mock Arabian bedchamber, complete with an elaborate canopy bed that looked as though it hadn't been made for days. Something about the bed captured her attention, although she couldn't quite place it right away. She paused to examine it more closely.\n\n\"What is it?\" Ezekiel tagged along behind her. \"Are you onto something?\"\n\n\"Shh,\" she hushed him. \"Let me concentrate.\"\n\nShe paced the room, computing its angles and comparing the height of the room to the height of the bed. By her estimation, there was at least an eight-inch gap between the top of the canopy and the ceiling, which might be large enough to hide the Lamp.\n\n\"Up there,\" she said, pointing. \"There's a space above the bed that could hold the Lamp, at least if the canopy isn't stretched too taut.\" Collapsing her private blackboard, she hopped onto the messy bed, cringing at the sloppy sheets, and laid down on her back, peering up at the stretched fabric overhead. Was it just her imagination, or was the canopy sagging in the middle more than it ought?\n\nNo, she decided, something's up there, weighing it down.\n\nHer heart racing in excitement, she rolled out of the bed onto her feet and stood on tippy-toes to try to peer into the gap, only to find that she was still too short to see over the top of the canopy without a boost.\n\n\"Find me something to stand on!\"\n\nA brass tea table rested on the carpet a few feet away from the bed. As Ezekiel shoved it toward her, pushing aside scattered items of clothing, Cassandra spotted another clue: four deep indentations in the carpet, as though a heavyish piece of furniture had once resided there\u2014before Dunphy moved it to use as a stepstool and then tried to put it back where it belonged? The indentations perfectly matched the feet of the tray table.\n\n\"This is it!\" she exclaimed. \"We've found it! Almost.\"\n\n\"You've got to be kidding me,\" Ezekiel said, sounding positively offended. \"He hid a priceless magical relic on top of the bed? Who does that?\"\n\n\"Got by you, didn't it?\" Cassandra couldn't resist puncturing his supercharged ego just a bit. \"And I'll bet not even the maids look up there very often.\"\n\nScrambling atop the table so that she could just reach the gap, she groped for the Lamp, straining and stretching until she was rewarded by the feel of something hard and polished atop the canopy. Her extended fingertips grazed the surface of the object, which felt oddly warm to the touch.\n\n\"I knew it!\" she exclaimed. \"There's something here, but I can't quite get hold of it.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about that.\" Ezekiel clambered onto the bed and sliced the canopy open with an icepick, so that the unseen object tumbled into his grasp. \"Sorry, mate, looks like you're not getting your damage deposit back.\"\n\n\"Is that it?\" Cassandra hopped down onto the floor. \"The Lamp?\"\n\n\"None other.\" He handed it over to her. \"Take a gander.\"\n\nEagerly accepting the artifact, she saw at once that the jade lamp fit the description of the Lamp that Flynn had discovered a decade ago. Standing less than foot tall, it resembled a traditional Chinese lantern, but was made of polished jade rather than paper. Stone could surely pin the lamp to a specific dynasty or era, but Cassandra didn't care about that.\n\n\"Oh my goodness,\" she said in awe. \"This is really it. Aladdin's Lamp.\"\n\n\"And we're the ones who found it.\" Ezekiel seemed more enthused about outsmarting Dunphy than recovering a legendary relic from the pages of The Arabian Nights. \"Who needs magic luck when you can make your own?\"\n\nBy contrast, Cassandra gazed at the Lamp in wonder, thunderstruck to realize that she was actually holding a genuine piece of history, or mythology, or some combination thereof. On closer inspection, however, she was alarmed to see that the Lamp had seen better days. Hairline cracks and fractures threatened the Lamp's structural integrity, so that even one more wish might allow the Djinn to shatter his prison completely. She noted again, more anxiously than before, how warm the jade lamp felt, as though the caged Djinn was seething impatiently, ready for the day he was finally set loose upon the world.\u2026\n\n\"This is not good.\" She cradled the Lamp against her chest, terrified of breaking it. \"Not good at all.\"\n\n\"Not to worry,\" Ezekiel said. \"Everything's aces now \u2026 unless you feel like treating yourself to a wish or two?\"\n\n\"Don't tempt me!\"\n\nDespite her apprehensions regarding the time-worn Lamp, she'd be lying if she didn't admit that she was indeed tempted to command the Djinn to magic away her brain tumor, so that she could live a long and productive life, free of the grape-sized time bomb ticking away in her head. But, no, she had learned the hard way that being a Librarian was not about using magic for personal gain. She had no intention of ever making that mistake again, even though she suspected this was going to be an ongoing struggle for her\u2014until her inevitable rendezvous with the Grim Reaper.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Ezekiel said. \"Didn't mean to hit a nerve.\"\n\n\"It's fine.\" She placed the Lamp carefully down on the tea table and took out her phone. \"I'm going to let Baird know we've acquired the Lamp.\"\n\nTo her surprise, though, Baird didn't pick up.\n\n\"That's funny,\" Cassandra said. \"Why isn't she answering?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "\"Hello again,\" Krieger said. \"This must be my lucky day.\"\n\nBaird was staked out in the lobby, keeping watch over the entrance to the penthouse elevator, when Mark Krieger surprised her once more. He strolled across the lobby to greet her, his bandaged arm still in a sling. Obviously glad to see her, he grinned as he approached.\n\n\"Hi.\" She faked a smile even though his timing left something to be desired. \"Fancy running into you again.\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said cheerfully. \"What are the odds?\"\n\nCassandra could probably tell you, Baird thought, if we didn't have more important tasks requiring her talents.\n\n\"This is Vegas,\" she quipped. \"Never count on the odds.\"\n\n\"Good point.\" He moved in closer. \"So, at the risk of pushing my luck, have you had dinner yet?\"\n\nI wish, she thought. Ordinarily, she'd have welcomed the invitation, but she had too many other balls in the air at the moment. \"Can I take a rain check? I'm afraid I have other plans.\"\n\nKrieger's smile froze as the warmth drained from his eyes, replaced by a cold, calculating look she recalled from his interrogations of suspected insurgents overseas.\n\n\"I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist, Eve.\"\n\nHis gaze shifted to her chest, where an ominous red dot suddenly appeared above her heart. Baird froze, realizing that she was in the sights of a sniper. She glanced around quickly, trying to identify the location of the shooter\u2014or a possible escape route. Her own gun was hidden beneath her jacket, tucked into the waistband of her slacks. As a Guardian, she made it a point to be armed, but the sniper already had the drop on her.\n\nShe didn't need to be Cassandra to calculate the sniper's possible positions. Lifting her eyes, she spotted the casino's costumed \"camel\" mascot up on the mezzanine overlooking the lobby. A ruby-red light, all but unnoticeable unless you were looking for it, came from inside the \"camel's\" mouth. Unknown eyes were presumably hidden behind the mascot's flaring nostrils. Baird suddenly had the sneaking suspicion that the performer who was usually inside the costume had been replaced by one of the Forty.\n\nGreat, she thought, a seven-foot-tall plush camel has the drop on me.\n\n\"Don't even think of making a break for it,\" Krieger warned, \"or using the crowd for cover. I'm sure you wouldn't want any happy-go-lucky vacationers to end up as collateral damage.\"\n\nOh, hell, she thought. \"What's this all about, Mark?\"\n\n\"The Lamp, course. What else?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 38",
                "text": "\"I don't understand.\" Cassandra scanned the crowded lobby for Baird. \"Where is she?\"\n\nEzekiel shrugged as he looked around as well. He hung onto the Lamp, which was tucked inside a large Ali Baba shopping bag they'd discovered in Dunphy's suite. \"Beats me. Maybe she just skipped out for a few minutes?\"\n\nThat's what I might do, he thought, if I got bored enough.\n\n\"No.\" Cassandra shook her head. \"That's not like her.\" She tried again to call Baird, but without success. \"It's no good. It keeps going straight to voice mail.\" Her brow crinkled in concern. \"Something is wrong.\"\n\nEzekiel was getting worried, too, although he tried to maintain a breezy attitude just to keep up appearances. \"Possibly, but you know Baird. If anybody can handle herself in a tight spot, it's her.\" That sounded uncharacteristically sappy for him, so he hurried to amend it. \"Well, aside from yours truly, of course.\"\n\nThis didn't seem to reassure her. \"Can you track her phone by GPS or something?\"\n\n\"Probably, in a pinch. But maybe Jenkins knows something? Or Stone?\"\n\n\"I can check,\" Cassandra said, \"but I can't believe that Eve would just ditch us like that, without even alerting us first.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he admitted. \"Neither can I.\"\n\nThe bag holding the Lamp suddenly seemed to feel a whole lot heavier. Had they obtained the Lamp, only to lose Baird in the process?\n\nThat was not how this heist was supposed to go!"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 39",
                "text": "\"Smile,\" Krieger said softly to Baird, \"while I ensure that everything stays friendly between us.\"\n\nBaird clenched her fists at her side. \"You know, I don't really see that happening.\"\n\n\"Try to keep an open mind, Eve.\"\n\nHe circled around behind her, so as not to block the sight line of the disguised sniper, and discreetly relieved her of her gun and phone, depositing the pistol in the pocket of his jacket. Baird cringed at his touch. Being disarmed at gunpoint was bad enough, but by an old comrade-in-arms, no less? The betrayal stung \u2026 badly.\n\n\"Got to say I'm disappointed in you, Mark. I always thought we were on the same side.\" She spoke more in sorrow than in anger. \"I would have never expected this of you.\"\n\n\"Perhaps that's because you were too focused on the enemy you knew to keep a close enough eye on those around you,\" he suggested. \"Although, to be fair, I'm assuming you hadn't been recruited as a Guardian yet, so you had no idea what the true shape of the world was, or who the real players were.\"\n\n\"But you did?\"\n\n\"I saw enough overseas to catch on\u2014unexplainable phenomena that convinced me power and treasures beyond imagining awaited those who had the guts to go after them.\" A scary gleam came into his eyes. \"But we should continue this discussion somewhere more comfortable, away from all this nonstop frivolity.\" He quietly nudged her with his bandaged hand, which easily slipped free of its sling. \"To the stairs, please, over there past the elevators.\"\n\nBaird saw no choice but to comply for the present. The ominous red dot followed her across the lobby. Acting casual, Krieger guided her to a stairwell leading to the upper floors of the hotel. His good hand was tucked in his pocket, gripping the concealed handgun as he fell back behind Baird and paused at the base of the stairs.\n\n\"You first,\" he instructed. \"Believe it or not, Eve, I'd just as soon not shoot you, if only for old time's sake, so let's just make this easy for both of us.\"\n\nFat chance, she thought, waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables on Krieger. So what if he had her gun? She was no slouch when it came to hand-to-hand combat. All I need is an opening.\n\nToo bad Krieger was no amateur, either. He took care to stay a few steps below her as they climbed the stairs, safely out of a range of any sudden strikes on her part. Baird stewed in frustration as he marched her up the stairs, where they were met by a party of giggling young women on their way down to the lobby.\n\n\"I don't get it,\" one of them said. \"Why didn't we just wait for the elevator?\"\n\n\"For the exercise, of course. We've got to burn off all those drinks we still haven't gotten to yet!\"\n\n\"Oh my god, who knew bachelorette parties were so aerobic?\"\n\nBaird briefly considered trying to join the women, or maybe signal that she was in trouble, but then she remembered what Krieger had said earlier about \"collateral damage\" and decided she couldn't risk it. Biting her tongue, she stepped aside to let the oblivious partyers pass.\n\nSometimes being the good guy really gets in your way.\n\n\"Good call,\" Krieger said softly, as though reading her mind. He waited for the women to leave them and their laughter to fade away before marching her up three more floors and down a carpeted hallway to the door of an unremarkable hotel room far below the penthouse where Dunphy was staying.\n\n\"Here we are,\" he said, keeping the pocketed gun aimed at her. \"Would you mind knocking? My hands are otherwise occupied.\"\n\nShe rapped on the door, wishing it was Krieger's duplicitous face instead. She heard a chain being drawn on the opposite side of the door, which opened just a crack. A sliver of a face peered out warily.\n\n\"It's all right, Omar,\" Krieger stated. \"Let us in.\"\n\nThe sentry nodded and admitted them to the room, where Baird found four more hostiles waiting, including a striking Middle Eastern woman who had to be the same individual who was stalking Dunphy and the Lamp, and very possibly the same woman Flynn had clashed with a decade ago.\n\n\"Marjanah, I presume?\"\n\nThe other woman smirked at Baird. \"My reputation precedes me, I see. How gratifying.\"\n\nAll the pieces came together to form an ugly picture. Baird turned to face Krieger.\n\n\"You're with the Forty.\"\n\n\"The First of the Forty,\" he clarified, \"as I was when I first crossed paths with your friend Flynn Carsen many years ago. Although he knew me as Khoja Hoseyn.\"\n\nThat was a lot for Baird to process. \"Major Mark Krieger of the US Army is also the First of the Forty? How does that even happen?\"\n\nHe made himself comfortable on a Moroccan-style couch, while shrugging off his sling, which appeared to serve no purpose aside from camouflage. He poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the coffee table in front of him.\n\n\"It was back in Baghdad, after the shock and awe. I was investigating black-market trafficking in looted art and antiquities when I stumbled onto the existence of the Forty. They were in a sorry state, merely a shadow of their former glory and lacking proper leadership, but I saw an opportunity to build them back into something great and finally achieve their ultimate goal: obtaining the Lamp and all the riches and power that entails.\" A scary gleam came into his eyes. \"It was as though destiny had brought me to that dry, dusty hellhole for a reason.\"\n\nBaird chose to stay standing. This was a side of Krieger that she had never seen before. She couldn't say she cared for it.\n\n\"And I came so close,\" he said bitterly, \"only to be tricked by that Librarian just as I was on the verge of obtaining the fabled magic lamp.\" He clenched his bandaged left hand. \"A shame he's AWOL this time around. I still have a score to settle with him.\"\n\n\"As do we all,\" Marjanah added.\n\nBaird recalled Jenkins's concise recap of Flynn's long-ago Arabian adventure. \"Hang on,\" she said. \"Weren't you lost in that cave-in way back when?\"\n\n\"Buried alive, yes, but alive nonetheless.\" His expression darkened at the memory. \"But I eventually managed to dig myself out of that treacherous cavern, with some assistance from my other right hand, Marjanah, who atoned somewhat for her earlier desertion by returning to look for me \u2026 eventually.\"\n\nMarjanah scowled. \"That was ten years ago. When are you going to let it go?\"\n\n\"When I have the Lamp, perhaps.\" He resumed speaking to Baird. \"At the risk of boring you, we eventually made our way off that accursed island, but not without a souvenir or two.\"\n\nHe slowly unwrapped his bandaged hand to reveal a palm that had been badly burned at some point.\n\nFrom when Flynn tricked him into rubbing the decoy lamp? Baird winced at the sight of the scarred flesh. But that was at least a decade ago? She kicked herself for not making the connection earlier, but, really, how could she have suspected that her friend Mark had anything to do with Flynn's encounter with the Forty back in 2006? If only Flynn wasn't flitting around the world and could have joined us on this case. He might have recognized Krieger even after all these years.\n\nKrieger displayed his seared hand. \"Not very pretty, I know. Skin grafts repaired the damage years ago, but the scars returned and began throbbing again a little over a week ago.\" He rescued a bottle of pain pills from his pocket and washed a couple down with a gulp of water. \"That's when I began to suspect that the Lamp had resurfaced at last and felt myself drawn to Vegas, where the throbbing only increased in intensity the nearer we drew to this fabricated desert oasis.\"\n\nHow exactly does that work? Baird wondered. No doubt Cassandra would have some theory involving mystical entanglement or some such technobabble, but Baird decided to just chalk it up to the usual magical weirdness. \"And that led you to Dunphy?\"\n\n\"More or less,\" Krieger said. \"You can't expect me to divulge all my tricks at this juncture. Suffice it to say that we were closing in on Dunphy when you and your Librarian friends stuck your noses into our business.\" He began to rewrap his hand. \"Imagine my surprise to discover that you'd enlisted with the competition.\"\n\n\"You think you're surprised?\" Baird said. \"You don't want to know what I'm thinking right now.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think I can hazard a guess. But it doesn't have to be that way. We made a good team, back in the day. Why not come over to our side? Why waste your talents playing den mother to a pack of loose-cannon Librarians?\"\n\n\"Because some of us care more about duty and protecting innocents than riches and power,\" she replied. \"I'm a Guardian. You're just a thief with delusions of grandeur.\"\n\n\"An exceptional thief,\" he corrected her, \"and we'll see how delusional I am when the Lamp is ours.\" He scrutinized her features. \"Have you found it yet? Your side has always excelled at that, I'll give you that.\"\n\n\"No idea,\" she said honestly. \"You kidnapped me before I could find out.\"\n\n\"Good point.\" He took out her phone and inspected it. \"Hmm. You have several recent voice mails.\" He handed the phone to her. \"Access them.\"\n\n\"Or?\" she asked.\n\n\"Consider the threat implied.\" He bestowed an icy smile upon her. \"You've seen me in combat, Eve. You know what I'm capable of if necessary.\"\n\n\"Ditto,\" she pointed out, but she recognized that Krieger had the upper hand at present. Reluctantly, she keyed in her password and switched the device to speakerphone. Please, she thought, let there not be any vital intel in those messages.\n\nAny such hopes were dashed as Cassandra's anxious voice emerged from the phone.\n\n\"Baird? Eve? We've found the Lamp, but where are you? Why aren't you taking our calls?\"\n\nMarjanah plucked the phone from Baird's hand and laid it down on the coffee table so that they could all listen to Cassandra's messages, which were basically more of the same. Krieger grinned triumphantly.\n\n\"Congratulations, Eve,\" he said mockingly. \"Clearly, the moral here is to never send a thief to do a Librarian's job.\" He shot a disparaging glance at Marjanah, who bristled in response. \"The trick is making sure they don't get to keep it.\"\n\n\"That's where we come in,\" Marjanah said. \"Taking what we want, when we want it, has always been the way of the Forty, whether by theft \u2026 or ransom.\"\n\nUh-oh, Baird thought. I don't like where this is going.\n\n\"So it is,\" Krieger agreed. Reclaiming the phone, he called Cassandra back.\n\n\"Hello?\" she answered immediately. \"Where have you been, Eve?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid Colonel Baird is presently in our custody,\" Krieger said. \"But you can get her back \u2026 in exchange for the Lamp.\"\n\nA stunned silence greeted his proposal, before Cassandra finally spoke up again.\n\n\"Who is this?\"\n\n\"An old friend of Eve's who has a vested interest in obtaining the Lamp. I trust we can work out an equitable transaction: your Guardian for the Lamp.\"\n\n\"Let us talk to her,\" Ezekiel's voice broke into the debate. \"We need proof of life.\"\n\n\"Fair enough,\" Krieger said, handing the phone to Baird with a warning. \"Watch what you say. Marjanah is not in a good mood.\"\n\n\"You can say that again,\" the woman said.\n\nBaird recalled that Stone had foiled her earlier. \"Cassandra, it's me. Whatever you do, you can't let them get the Lamp. Remember what Jenkins said\u2014\"\n\n\"That's enough!\"\n\nMarjanah snatched the phone from Baird's grip and gave it back to Krieger, who resumed his negotiations.\n\n\"There you have it,\" he said. \"Eve is still in good condition, but I can't guarantee that she will stay that way if you don't cooperate. I'll give you an hour to think it over. Expect my call \u2026 and don't disappoint me.\"\n\nHe hung up on Cassandra and Ezekiel. Baird wanted to think they would listen to her and not surrender the Lamp on her behalf, but she couldn't really imagine any of her Librarians could do that. They weren't soldiers. They didn't understand about acceptable losses.\n\nWhich meant it was up to Jenkins to talk sense to them."
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "\"Absolutely not,\" Jenkins said. \"We cannot under any circumstances turn over the Lamp to the Forty, no matter the cost.\"\n\nStone and the others had returned to the Annex to figure out what to do next. The newly acquired Lamp rested atop the conference table, alongside Cassandra's phone. Attempts to track the Forty's call to its source had not panned out; apparently the thieves had upgraded their technical prowess since the days of Aladdin. Stone had been tempted to bring Dunphy with him for safekeeping, but, as Jenkins had quickly reminded him, the Library did not have visiting hours, nor was it to be used as a safe house for wayward civilians. He would have to hope that Gus would be safe enough now that he was no longer in possession of the Lamp.\n\n\"But what about Baird?\" Cassandra asked. \"We can't just leave her in the hands of the Forty.\"\n\n\"Do not think I say this lightly,\" Jenkins said, his face grave, \"but Colonel Baird would hardly be the first Guardian to put the safety of others before her own. She is a soldier. She willingly chose the risks that arduous duty entails.\"\n\n\"Easy for you to say,\" Stone protested. \"I get that you've buried generations of Guardians and Librarians, but I'm not about to write off Baird as expendable, not while there's still a chance to save her.\"\n\n\"You misjudge me, Mr. Stone, if you think that this comes at all easily to me, but we must remain cognizant of the larger picture. Do we truly desire the Forty to gain the power of the Lamp? And need I remind you that the Djinn once vowed eternal vengeance on this very Library?\"\n\n\"The Lamp is in pretty bad shape,\" Cassandra conceded.\n\n\"That is putting it mildly.\" Jenkins called their attention to the hairline cracks riddling its polished jade surface. He had even put down a coaster to protect the table's finish from the unnatural heat of the Lamp. \"I would venture to say that it is on the verge of imminent collapse, making it all the more imperative that we keep it away from the reckless hands of the Forty. By all logic, I should be filing the Lamp away in a secure vault at this very moment, preferably with an abundance of bubble wrap and packing peanuts.\"\n\n\"But we're the Librarians,\" Stone said, \"which makes it our call, right?\"\n\nThey seldom pulled rank on Jenkins, whose exact duties at the Annex were, well, undefined, but Stone was not above doing so where a friend's life was concerned.\n\n\"If you insist, sir.\" Jenkins sighed philosophically. \"But I would urge you all to consider the possible consequences of whatever course you choose.\" He consulted his wristwatch. \"In the three minutes, fourteen seconds that remain, that is.\"\n\nTime was running out as the Forty's deadline approached.\n\n\"Maybe we ought to give Baird the benefit to the doubt,\" Cassandra said, grasping at straws. \"This is Eve we're talking about. She probably already has a plan to get away from those thieves.\"\n\n\"Don't call them that,\" Ezekiel said with surprising heat. \"They're not thieves. Kidnappers, robbers, extortionists, maybe, but not thieves. Real thieves don't need to take hostages.\u2026\"\n\n\"Bandits is perhaps the better term,\" Jenkins agreed, \"but who am I to second-guess Scheherazade? Regardless, they are a genuine threat to both Colonel Baird and the world at large. We can certainly hope that she will indeed extricate herself from their clutches, but we cannot rely on that. She is indisputably in jeopardy.\"\n\nStone scowled at Jenkins, not appreciating his pessimistic attitude. \"I thought you didn't want us trading the Lamp for her, so why rub in how much danger she's in?\"\n\n\"As you noted before, Mr. Stone, the final decision is yours. I merely wish to be certain that you all understand what is truly at stake, whichever course you choose. Wishful thinking is no substitute for an accurate appraisal of one's situation.\" A hint of melancholy infiltrated his voice. \"Trust me when I say I learned that the hard way.\"\n\n\"Doesn't mean we have to give up on Baird, though.\" Stone directed his words at Cassandra and Ezekiel as well. \"Baird has put herself on the line for every one of us more times than I can count. I say we don't write her off without taking a few risks of our own.\"\n\n\"And the Forty?\" Jenkins asked. \"And the Djinn?\"\n\n\"We'll roll with the punches as they come,\" Stone said, \"and deal with the Forty after we get Baird back. As my pop used to say, sometimes you have to take a few hits before you win the fight.\"\n\n\"That's what Napoleon said, too,\" Jenkins said. \"And Custer.\"\n\nStone ignored the mordant remark. This was no time to assume the worst.\n\n\"I say saving our friend is job one. What about the rest of you?\"\n\nCassandra wrung her hands, obviously conflicted. \"Baird wouldn't want us to lose the Lamp for her sake, but\u2026\" A look of determination came over her face. \"No, I'm not ready to lose her, no matter what she said. We need to do right thing, even if it's not necessarily the smart thing.\"\n\nJenkins looked like he wanted to respond to that, but he reconsidered and kept mum.\n\n\"Count me in,\" Ezekiel said. \"I don't bargain with kidnappers who call themselves thieves. And I suppose I owe Baird a favor or two. She's a good egg, even if she doesn't always appreciate just how much I bring to this outfit.\"\n\n\"Good enough for me,\" Stone said. \"Sounds like we're all on the same\u2014\"\n\nCassandra's phone rang. Stone picked it up.\n\n\"You have a deal,\" he said grimly. \"When and where?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "\"So this is how you got off that island?\"\n\nBaird crouched upon the flying carpet as it carried her and her captors southeast toward Arizona, soaring through the night sky at an altitude of approximately five hundred feet. Krieger and Marjanah sat to her left and right, having left their henchmen behind in Vegas. Apparently, the carpet's carrying capacity was not what it had once been, before that roc had torn it to shreds a decade ago.\n\n\"It wasn't as easy as you make it sound.\" Krieger, whom Baird could no longer think of as Mark, watched over her closely despite the fact that the carpet's extreme altitude forestalled any possibility of escape. \"Marjanah and I scoured that blasted island for weeks, forever watching out for the roc, before we managed to salvage all the scattered pieces of the carpet and stitch it back together. Those were trying times, especially after we lost the last of our bodyguards to that damn bird.\" He paused reflectively. \"What was his name again?\"\n\nMarjanah shrugged. \"Does it matter?\"\n\n\"I suppose not.\" He patted the intricate pattern of the carpet, which was now marred by several crude stitches. \"Sadly, despite our attempts to mend it, the carpet is still somewhat the worse for wear. It could not guide us directly to the Lamp, as it did before, but was only able to trace it to the right general vicinity, more or less.\"\n\nBaird could connect the rest of the dots. We had the Clipping Book, she thought. They had the crippled carpet. Both of which pointed us toward Vegas.\n\nA cool dry wind blew against her face as the carpet cruised over seemingly endless vistas of grass and sagebrush. Even after all she had experienced as a Guardian, Baird found it hard to believe that she was actually riding a flying carpet across the sky. Cassandra was going to be sorry she missed this, aside from the whole taken-hostage-by-ruthless-criminals thing.\n\n\"One thing I still don't get,\" Baird said. \"How come you didn't search Dunphy's penthouse like you did his trailer?\"\n\nCassandra had not mentioned anything about the penthouse being ransacked when she and Ezekiel apparently found the Lamp there.\n\n\"Oh, we did,\" Krieger assured her, \"just a good deal more discreetly. Tossing a run-down trailer in some miserable dump of a trailer park is one thing. Breaking into a luxury suite on the richest part of the Strip is something else altogether. That requires a more subtle touch in order to avoid attracting unwelcome attention.\"\n\n\"The Forty has always operated in the shadows,\" Marjanah added. \"We came and went without notice, leaving no trace of our presence behind.\"\n\n\"But you didn't find the Lamp,\" Baird said. \"Did you?\"\n\nMarjanah shot Baird a dirty look. \"No,\" she confessed.\n\nBecause you didn't have Cassandra or Ezekiel, Baird thought, proud of her Librarians. She enjoyed the other woman's sullen expression. Take that, Second of the Forty. Sucks to come up short all the time.\n\n\"Not that it matters,\" Krieger said. \"Soon the Lamp will be ours again.\"\n\nNot if my team has anything to say about it, Baird thought. \"I don't suppose there's any point in trying to convince you that summoning the Djinn is a truly terrible idea?\"\n\n\"Like Carsen did years ago?\" Krieger contemplated his injured hand, which, along with his other hand, was now protected by a thick leather glove. \"I've waited too long, endured too much, to give up now.\"\n\n\"We both have,\" Marjanah said, \"and the Forty has waited even longer. But now at last we will achieve the honor and glory we have been denied for centuries.\"\n\n\"I think we have very different definitions of honor.\" Baird looked at Krieger, still stung by his treachery. \"Dare I ask what exactly you have in mind if and when you get your double-crossing hands on the Lamp?\"\n\n\"Not if, when,\" he declared. \"And to begin with, a preemptive strike against the Library to prevent you and yours from ever interfering with our enterprises again.\" He smiled mirthlessly. \"Considering how Carsen foiled him before, I can only imagine that the Djinn will be happy to oblige.\"\n\nThat was all too likely, Baird feared, given what Jenkins had said about how angry and vindictive the Djinn was known to be. Her body tensed as the carpet, traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, carried them past the sagebrush to the woods and forests beyond, skimming above the tops of towering ponderosa pines as the time and place of the exchange grew nearer. The sun was just beginning to rise as the ground below dropped away sharply. A vast, red-walled chasm, many miles across, stretched before her, cutting deeply into the earth. Sunlight lit up vast cliffs, pillars, and plateaus. Bands of colored rock, pressed together like the pages of a book, testified to millions of years of geological history.\n\nDawn had come to the Grand Canyon."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 42",
                "text": "White light, accompanied by the crackle of eldritch lightning, spilled from the doorway of a shuttered park rangers' station as Stone and his fellow Librarians burst through the door onto a remote lookout point at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, accessible only by a challenging dirt trail. Sunrise was approaching fast, but Stone took a moment to survey his new surroundings. It was the off-season, and this stretch of the Canyon had been abandoned by the tourists who routinely flocked to the more popular South Rim several miles away. The Forty had clearly put some thought into picking the site for the exchange. They were unlikely to be interrupted here, although Stone wondered how the kidnappers intended to reach the out-of-the way site without the aid of a magical Back Door.\n\n\"No sign of the bad guys,\" Ezekiel said, looking around. \"Looks like we're the first ones here.\" He walked to the edge of the rim and peered over the precipice. \"Whoa. That's a long way down.\"\n\n\"Roughly a mile.\" Stone joined him at the edge. He'd visited the Grand Canyon with his family years ago and later studied the art and history of the various Native American tribes populating the region. He cradled the Lamp against his chest, troubled by its warmth. \"See what looks like a tiny little stream way down there at the bottom of the canyon? That's actually the Colorado River viewed from a mile up.\"\n\nHe hoped the Forty weren't going to be arriving by boat. It would be a long hike down to reach them.\n\nNo, he reminded himself, they told us to meet them at this lookout point at sunrise, and they're going to be out to make the exchange as swiftly as possible. They want the Lamp almost as much as we want we want Baird back.\n\n\"Are we absolutely sure we're doing the right thing?\" Cassandra asked, hugging herself to combat the early-morning chill. \"You heard what Jenkins said.\u2026\"\n\nJenkins remained back at the Annex, battening down the hatches (mystically and otherwise) just in case everything went pear-shaped and the Djinn got loose. Probably a reasonable precaution, Stone thought. This could all go wrong very easily.\n\n\"Not that I don't want to save Baird,\" Cassandra said. \"It's just that there's a lot at stake.\"\n\n\"Too late to second-guess ourselves now,\" Stone said. \"We've just got to roll the dice and hope we don't crap out when it matters.\"\n\nCassandra smiled wanly. \"Good thing I've still got Dunphy's lucky penny on me then.\"\n\n\"Couldn't hurt,\" Stone said. \"We can use all the luck we can get.\"\n\nEzekiel snorted. \"I keep telling you, mates. I make my own luck.\"\n\n\"I'm going to hold you to that,\" Stone said, \"for everybody's sake.\"\n\nTurning their backs to the canyon, they gazed expectantly at the rugged trail leading up to the North Rim by way of a thick pine forest. Stone listened in vain for the sound of anyone drawing near.\n\n\"Where are they?\" Cassandra asked anxiously. \"What are they waiting for?\"\n\nStone tried not to get too worried yet. \"Sunrise is not an exact meeting time.\"\n\n\"Sure it is.\" Cassandra sounded perplexed by his statement. She waved her hands before her eyes, peering up at some invisible orrery generated by her own remarkable brain. \"This time of year, at this segment of the equator, allowing for the axial tilt of the Earth and our relative distance from the sun, sunrise should be at exactly \u2026 6:19 a.m.\" She collapsed her imaginary calculator. \"Mountain Standard Time, naturally.\"\n\nStone cracked a smile, despite the tense situation. \"I'm just saying that the Forty may not be quite as precise as you are.\"\n\nFew people were.\n\nHe peeked at his wristwatch. It was 6:22.\n\nKeep cool, he thought. But those scumbags had better not be making us sweat on purpose.\n\nEzekiel turned away from the fruitless vigil to check out the view of the canyon once more. He froze and pointed out over the chasm. \"Um, look sharp, mates. We have incoming \u2026 arriving by air.\"\n\nA helicopter?\n\nPuzzled because he didn't hear any whirring rotors, Stone spun around to behold an actual flying carpet descending toward them, as though straight from The Arabian Nights.\n\n\"Okay,\" he muttered, \"I should've seen this coming.\"\n\nCassandra was agog with excitement. \"Oh my God, do you see that?\"\n\n\"Eyes on the prize, Cassie,\" Stone reminded her. \"Remember why we're here.\"\n\nShe nodded, coming back down to Earth. \"Right. Sorry.\"\n\n\"No problem. It's pretty amazing, I've got to admit.\"\n\nThe carpet slowed as it approached, bearing Eve, Marjanah, and \u2026 Baird's old army buddy?\n\n\"What the hell?\" Stone realized that he had missed a twist or two. He could only guess at the full story, but he'd bet the farm that Baird had been double-crossed somehow\u2014and that her \"accidental\" meeting with her friend had been anything but. Explains how the Forty managed to get the drop on her, he thought. Baird probably never saw it coming.\n\nThe carpet leveled off above the canyon, hovering parallel to the edge of the cliff, so that only a twelve-foot gap separated the Librarians from Baird and the bad guys. Marjanah gave Stone the evil eye; apparently she had not gotten over that incident with the black pepper.\n\n\"All right,\" Stone called out. \"We're here, just like you asked. Let's get on with this.\"\n\n\"I commend your punctuality, Mr. Stone,\" the man on the carpet said. \"And I'm just as eager to conclude this transaction.\"\n\n\"And you are?\" Ezekiel asked.\n\n\"Major Mark Krieger,\" Baird said quickly, before anyone could stop her. \"AKA the First of the Forty.\"\n\n\"Silence!\" Marjanah snapped. \"Hold your tongue, witch, or I'll cut it out!\"\n\n\"Curb your temper,\" Krieger addressed his bloodthirsty lieutenant. \"I'm sure the Librarians don't wish to pay for damaged merchandise. And as for divulging my identity \u2026 well, no harm done. Once we obtain the Lamp, we can become whoever we want to be.\"\n\nRising to his feet atop the floating carpet, he yanked Baird upright as well.\n\n\"Toss me the Lamp,\" he ordered, \"or Eve makes a one-way trip to the bottom of the canyon.\"\n\n\"Don't do it, Stone!\" Baird shouted. \"You can't let them win!\"\n\n\"I know,\" Stone said, \"but we're not about to lose you.\"\n\nScowling, he lobbed the Lamp over to Krieger, who caught it easily. The treacherous major barked in Arabic at the carpet, which glided up and away from the cliff, widening the gap between the Librarians and Baird to about twenty feet or so.\n\n\"Hey!\" Stone yelled. \"We had a deal.\"\n\n\"Which I fully intend to honor,\" Krieger called back, \"after I ascertain that this is the genuine article and not another trick.\"\n\nStone noted belatedly that thick leather gloves protected the man's hands, while the canyon itself offered a convenient way to dispose of a booby-trapped lamp should the need arise. He suspected that such considerations had factored into the selection of the meeting site, along with the way the canyon lent itself to a speedy escape by magic carpet. Even now, there was no way for Stone and the others to reach Baird or come to her aid, nor could they readily pursue the carpet if it flew away with her.\n\n\"Make it quick,\" Stone snarled.\n\n\"That was always my intention.\"\n\nKrieger examined the jade artifact carefully before holding it up for Marjanah's inspection. \"What do you think? Is this the Lamp you remember?\"\n\n\"That was ten years ago,\" she said, squinting at the Lamp, \"and there was a mountain coming down on us, and a hungry roc, but \u2026 yes, I believe that's it.\" An avaricious glint shone in her eyes. \"If you'd like, I could try rubbing it first.\"\n\nKrieger scoffed at the offer. \"I think I'll reserve that privilege for myself. It's not that I don't trust you, of course, but\u2026\"\n\n\"One more time, Krieger,\" Baird said. \"Don't do this.\"\n\n\"You're wasting your breath, Eve.\" He took a deep breath, betraying only the slightest trace of trepidation, before rubbing the Lamp, just as Flynn had done a decade ago. \"Arise, O Genie of the Lamp!\"\n\nThe effect was instantaneous, as though the imprisoned Djinn couldn't wait to escape the confines of the ancient Lamp. Rising upon a billowing plume of luminous azure smoke, the Djinn towered above the carpet, his immense feet resting solidly upon empty air. Stone's jaw dropped at the sight of the Djinn in all his terrible majesty; the blue-skinned giant made even a minotaur or the Big Bad Wolf seem like pipsqueaks by comparison.\n\n\"FREE!\" the Djinn boomed. \"FREE TO SEEK VENGANCE UPON THE WORLD!\"\n\n\"All in good time.\" Krieger raised his voice to address the looming genie. \"I hold your Lamp now!\"\n\nThe Djinn peered down at him. A morning breeze rippled the surface of the genie's iridescent blue substance. Blazing golden eyes gazed upon the awestruck mortals.\n\n\"SO I SEE. AND WHO ART THOU, WHO IS CARRIED ALOFT BY THE VERY CARPET OF SOLOMON?\"\n\n\"The First of the Forty,\" Krieger declared, \"and your new master!\"\n\nThe Djinn scowled, as though vexed by the reminder of his bondage, but offered a grudging salaam to Krieger, dipping his massive head in respect and placing a log-sized finger against his brow.\n\n\"VERY WELL, O CHIEF OF THIEVES. WHAT IS THY FIRST COMMAND?\"\n\nKrieger beamed in triumph. \"To begin with\u2014\"\n\nWith all eyes on the Djinn, Baird drove her elbow into Krieger's throat, cutting him off midsentence. He staggered backward, clutching his throat. His mouth opened, but no words emerged, only a strangled croak.\n\nHis larynx, Stone realized. She crushed his larynx so he can't make a wish.\n\nMarjanah raced to aid him, but not before Baird kicked his legs out from beneath him. Still croaking, he toppled onto the carpet, and the Lamp slipped from his grasp. Marjanah abruptly changed course and dived for the Lamp instead.\n\n\"No one touch it! It's mine!\"\n\nLooming above, the Djinn laughed scornfully at the tussle on the carpet, declining to intervene in the absence of an expressed wish. His thundering laughter roiled the air and caused rocks and pebbles to tumble down the side of the cliff.\n\n\"WHAT SPLENDID SPORT! SCURRY, LITTLE MORTALS, WHILE YOU CAN!\"\n\nThe commotion rocked the carpet, causing the Lamp to bounce randomly across the bucking rug. Eluding Marjanah, it came dangerously close to the fraying edge of the carpet. Stone grimaced at the thought of the Lamp tumbling down into the canyon where anyone could find it, maybe even Krieger and Marjanah once they regained control of the situation and the carpet.\n\n\"Baird!\" he shouted. \"Over here!\"\n\n\"No!\" Marjanah shrieked, drawing her blade. \"It belongs to the Forty.\"\n\nShe pounced, about to claim the Lamp for her own, when Baird rushed forward and kicked it off the carpet toward the Librarians.\n\n\"Catch!\" she shouted."
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "The Lamp arced across the gap between the carpet and the rim of the canyon, descending toward the lookout point. Angry winds, stirred up by the Djinn, buffeted the Lamp as Marjanah shouted frantically at the carpet in Arabic, causing it to dive after the Lamp. Clearly, she was not letting the magical artifact get away from her so easily.\n\n\"Spread out!\" Stone shouted. \"Somebody catch that Lamp!\"\n\nI'll try, Cassandra thought, although hand-eye coordination had never been her forte. She couldn't remember the last time she'd managed to catch a book or scroll tossed to her from the Library's mezzanine, let alone a tumbling magic lamp.\n\nBut perhaps it had never truly mattered as much before.\u2026\n\nAs Stone and Ezekiel darted back and forth atop the Rim, trying to eyeball where exactly the Lamp would fall, Cassandra resorted to her brain instead. Her hands spread out before her eyes as she murmured to herself.\n\n\"Given the weight of the Lamp and the angle of descent, allowing for variations in wind velocity and direction, as well as the estimated force of the kick, and any potential obstacles\u2026\" Her head turned toward the ranger's station a few yards away. \"There!\"\n\nShe sprinted toward the log cabin, arriving at the base of the south wall just as the Lamp struck the slanted roof of the station and ricocheted off it. Cassandra threw out her hands to catch it.\n\nPlease, she thought, don't let me mess this up.\n\nThe Lamp landed squarely in her open palms.\n\n\"Yes!\" she squealed. \"I got it!\"\n\nHer momentary triumph was quickly dampened, however, when she saw the sorry shape the Lamp was in, now that the Djinn had been released once more. Krieger's summons had been the last straw as far as the moribund Lamp was concerned; it was literally falling apart in her hands. Golden light, as bright as the harsh Arabian sun, escaped the widening cracks zigzagging across the disintegrating surface of the Lamp, which was growing ever hotter to the touch. Wafer-thin shards of jade flaked off the Lamp to land at her feet at a rapidly accelerating rate, like a landslide gaining speed and momentum. The legendary Lamp would soon be history.\n\nReturning the Djinn to the Lamp was no longer an option, Cassandra realized. At best, there was only time enough to make one last wish before the Djinn was finally free to lash out at the entire world, up to and including the Library.\n\n\"YES! YES!\" the terrifying blue giant exulted. \"MY PRISON WALLS CRUMBLE AT LAST! AFTER UNTOLD AGES OF BITTER CAPTIVITY AND BONDAGE, MY FREEDOM IS AT HAND! NOW WILL THE WORLD TREMBLE BEFORE MY WRATH, NOW WILL ALL MANKIND SUFFER AS I HAVE SUFFERED \u2026 UNTIL THE VERY END OF ETERNITY!\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" Cassandra struggled to hold the splintering Lamp together for just a few more moments. \"You're not free yet.\"\n\nOne more wish.\n\nFor a fraction of a heartbeat, she was tempted once more to wish her tumor away, but, as ever, the greater good took precedent.\n\n\"Genie!\" she shouted above the increasingly violent winds. \"I wish you \u2026 an unlimited imagination!\"\n\n\"WHAT?\" He peered down at Cassandra in surprise. \"WHAT DIDST THOU SAY?\"\n\nHis incandescent eyes blazed brighter than before as her wish took effect.\n\n\"BY THE ETERNAL FLAME, I CAN SEE IT NOW! MY MIND IS AFIRE WITH POSSIBILITY! A THOUSAND AND ONE POTENTIALS IGNITE MY IMAGINATION \u2026 NAY, A MILLION \u2026 A HUNDRED MILLION \u2026 A HUNDRED HUNDRED MILLION.\u2026\"\n\nHe clutched his skull, as though trying to hold in all the new ideas flooding his mind. The very atmosphere reflected his turmoil, growing wilder and more turbulent by the second. Storm clouds gathered overhead. Hot desert winds blew in every direction, so that Cassandra and the other Librarians were driven backward atop the North Rim, shielding their faces against the wind and grit. Dust devils swirled around the Djinn like random ideas bursting from his being. He tottered alarmingly above the canyon and the carpet as though drunk on his own feverish imaginings.\n\n\"MY THOUGHTS RACE EVER FASTER AND FASTER, LIKE A HERD OF WILD STALLIONS STAMPEDING BEYOND MY CONTROL!\"\n\nCassandra knew the feeling. This was like one of her meltdowns, taken to the nth degree.\n\nNot so easy to handle, is it?\n\nDismay contorted his face as he struggled to rein in his newly unbridled imagination, which was already coupled with nearly limitless power. \"NO! IT IS TOO MUCH! I CANNOT CHOOSE. I CAN DO ANYTHING, BE ANYTHING, GO ANYWHERE.\u2026\"\n\nHis iridescent flesh began to boil and steam away as he was literally torn in a billion directions at once. Expanding infinitely, the Djinn simultaneously grew ever thinner and less substantial until nothing remained but a few faint wisps of smoke that swiftly dispersed upon the raging winds, even as the Lamp crumbled to pieces in Cassandra's grasp, leaving nothing but fragile shards and splinters behind.\n\nAnd that's why genies don't have much in the way of imaginations, Cassandra realized. They can't handle them.\n\nShe wiped her hands of the last bits and pieces of the Lamp."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 44",
                "text": "The Djinn's stormy evaporation whipped up the winds accosting the carpet, whose edges curled upward to try to hold onto its imperiled passengers. Baird appreciated the effort, but would have preferred seatbelts or a proper aerial extraction. She dropped facedown onto the pitching carpet to keep from being thrown from the rug.\n\nSmart girl, Cassandra, Baird thought. Hope I live to congratulate you.\n\nMarjanah, who had dived unsuccessfully for the Lamp only moments before, stayed down as well, but Krieger did the opposite. Scrambling to his feet, despite the choppy weather, he snatched desperately at the dissipating wisps of genie, which literally slipped between his fingers, leaving him empty-handed. Crazed eyes bulged from their sockets. An anguished croak escaped his lips.\n\n\"Get down, you fool!\" Marjanah snapped at Krieger. \"Have you gone mad?\"\n\nPossibly, Baird thought. Not that he was apparently all that sane to begin with.\n\nPaying no heed to his cohort's furious exhortations, or the violent atmospheric conditions, the First of the Forty ranted silently while shaking his gloved fist at the vanished Djinn. An angry gust of wind nearly capsized the carpet, and he went tumbling over the edge, unable to scream even as he plummeted to his doom more than a mile below. Despite everything, Baird winced at the thought of her onetime friend and comrade crashing onto the rocks and rapids at the bottom of the Canyon.\n\nDamn you, Krieger. You didn't have to check out like this.\n\nIf the tragic loss of her leader affected Marjanah, it was impossible to tell. Intent on her own survival, she stabbed her dagger into the carpet to anchor herself to it, holding onto the hilt with both hands as she lay prone atop the storm-tossed rug.\n\nNot a bad idea, actually.\n\nWriggling forward on her stomach, Baird grabbed onto the knife as well, clasping her hands over Marjanah's and hanging on for dear life. She had no intention of joining Krieger at the bottom of the canyon, not if she could help it.\n\n\"Let go, Guardian!\" Marjanah spat. \"You ruined everything, you and your friends!\"\n\n\"Ruined \u2026 saved. Depends on your perspective.\"\n\nThe weather was only slowly settling down in the wake of the Djinn's departure, causing the carpet to waft about without direction. Calling upon her basic Arabic, which she'd picked up on various tours of duty in the Middle East, Baird shouted at the carpet.\n\n\"Take us down to my friends! Gently!\"\n\n\"No! Don't listen to her!\" Marjanah commanded, her accent slightly better than Baird's. \"Take me away from my enemies!\"\n\n\"Belay that last order! Take us down!\"\n\n\"No, carry me away from these wretched Librarians!\"\n\nThe carpet jerked back and forth beneath them as the women fought verbally for control, shouting over each other. Its tassels vibrated in confusion.\n\n\"Stop fighting me,\" Baird yelled. \"You're going to get us both killed!\"\n\n\"And place my fate in your hands? Never!\"\n\nA loud ripping sound hushed them both.\n\nOh, crap, Baird thought.\n\nTo her horror, the conflicted carpet tore in half across its width, yanking the women away from each other. Baird tried to hang onto Marjanah's hand, just to hold the two halves of the carpet together, but the severed fragments were straining too hard to go their own ways. Baird lost her grip on the other woman's hand as the bisected carpet dived toward opposite sides of the canyon.\n\nNot the safest way to fly, she concluded. Give me a plain old chopper any day.\n\nForgetting about Marjanah for the moment, due to her own heart-pounding predicament, Baird held on tightly to the ragged edge of the carpet fragment as it descended at a roughly forty-five degree angle toward the lookout point where her friends were beckoning and calling out to her.\n\n\"Baird!\" Stone shouted. \"Hurry! You're losing altitude!\"\n\nTell me something I don't know, she thought. Lacking Cassandra's computer brain, Baird figured it was even money as to whether she made it to the North Rim\u2014or crashed into the rocky red walls of the canyon.\n\n\"Come on,\" she urged the faltering carpet. \"You can do it. Just a few yards more.\"\n\nIt was like landing a fighter jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier, except that ejecting was not an option. Coming in fast, and at far too steep an angle, the carpet looked as though it was going to slam into the cliff instead, but, with a final burst of power, it pulled up just enough to be able to clear the canyon wall after all. Gasping in relief, Baird still worried about how rough a landing she was in for.\n\n\"Watch out!\" Stone shouted to Cassandra and Ezekiel. \"Here she comes!\"\n\nThe Librarians scrambled out of the way, clearing a path for the incoming carpet. Bracing herself for impact, Baird was startled when the half-sized fragment suddenly wrapped itself around her like a cocoon. Rolled up tightly inside the rug, like Cleopatra before Caesar, she hit the top of the North Rim and skidded across several yards of dirt and gravel before finally coming to a stop. Her heart racing, she gasped out loud, then conducted a quick bodily inventory. She was going to be bruised all over, but nothing felt broken, while the overlapping layers of carpet had apparently spared her from the mother of all skid burns.\n\nBottom line: she was alive.\n\nHow about that? Guess wonders never do cease.\n\nThe exhausted carpet turned into dead weight. Footsteps stampeded toward her, and she heard the Librarians shouting words of encouragement. \"Hang on!\" Stone hollered. \"We'll get you out of there!\"\n\nWithin moments, they had unrolled her from the carpet and helped her to her feet. Sore and out of breath, she remained focused on the mission.\n\n\"Marjanah?\" she asked.\n\n\"See for yourself,\" Ezekiel said, nodding toward the canyon. \"It's not looking good for her.\"\n\nBaird saw what he meant. Trying to make for the far side of the canyon, at least ten miles away, Marjanah and her half of the carpet had lost too much altitude already. Veering away from the cliff face at the last minute, the carpet spiraled down toward the Colorado River, dropping out of sight. Baird and the others rushed to the edge of the cliff just in time to see the carpet and its bloodthirsty rider splash down into the river and be washed away almost instantly.\n\n\"You think she made it?\" Cassandra asked.\n\n\"Hard to tell from this height,\" Stone said. \"Not without binoculars.\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter.\" Baird stepped away from the ledge. \"No way is she\u2014or the rest of the Forty\u2014ever getting their hands on the Lamp or the Genie now. You guys took care of that.\"\n\n\"And without losing you,\" Cassandra said. \"Thank goodness!\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" Baird decided. \"Good job, team.\"\n\n\"Was there ever any doubt?\" Ezekiel said. \"You had Ezekiel Jones on your side.\"\n\n\"Don't remind me.\" Stone started toward the ranger's station. \"So, back to the Library now?\"\n\n\"Maybe a quick detour first,\" Cassandra said. \"We still have one last errand to run.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "2016",
                "text": "\"So the Lamp is gone for good?\"\n\nThey'd found Dunphy at an all-night diner on Carson Avenue, feeding five-dollar bills into one of the ubiquitous slot machines. Given the rate he was going through them, as well as the size of the tip he had left for a very attractive waitress, Stone imagined that Gus would blow through what remained of his winnings in no time at all.\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" Stone said. They had tried to scoop up the broken shards, just to be safe, but the fragile pieces had pretty much crumbled to powder at the slightest touch. \"On the bright side, you're not going to have as many sore losers and secret societies chasing you anymore.\"\n\n\"You got a point there,\" Gus admitted. \"I'm not going to miss that part, for sure.\"\n\nWith any luck, the Forty would cash in their chips and hightail it back to Baghdad now that their centuries-long quest for the Lamp had finally ended in failure. Certainly, they no longer had any reason to go after Dunphy, who was taking the loss of the Lamp much better than Stone had expected.\n\n\"You okay with this?\" he asked.\n\nGus shrugged philosophically. \"No winning streak lasts forever, but at least I got to be a real high roller for a while.\" He smiled at the memory. \"Although, to be honest, gambling wasn't quite as exciting when you knew you were always going to come out ahead. Where's the thrill in that?\"\n\n\"You learn anything else from this experience?\" Baird asked. \"About relying on luck perhaps?\"\n\n\"Oh, sure! Lady Luck is fickle, but when you crap out you just gotta keep on gambling until your luck changes again.\"\n\n\"Not exactly the lesson I had in mind,\" Baird said dryly, \"but \u2026 whatever.\"\n\n\"Which reminds me.\" Cassandra fished a copper (well, mostly zinc) coin out of her purse. \"I think I have something that belongs to you.\"\n\n\"My lucky penny!\" Gus beamed with joy. \"Now I know I'm going to win big again \u2026 one of these days.\"\n\nStone sighed and shook his head.\n\n\"Take care of yourself, Gus.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 46",
                "text": "\"One half of King Solomon's Carpet, over to you.\"\n\nBaird dropped her end of the rolled-up carpet fragment onto the Annex floor in front of Jenkins. Stone did the same.\n\n\"Sorry about the skid marks,\" she added.\n\nJenkins shrugged. \"Few items in the Library are still in mint condition, Colonel, including yours truly.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said. \"Looks to me like you're holding up pretty well, considering the mileage.\"\n\nJenkins arched an eyebrow. \"I'll strive to take that remark in the spirit with which it was intended.\" He nudged the inanimate carpet with his shoe. \"An unexpected addition to the Library's collection. I'll have to find precisely the right home for it. Perhaps the Enchanted Textiles wing, cross-referenced to the Middle Eastern Studies section? Who knows? Someday we may even be able to acquire the other half of the carpet \u2026 in due time.\"\n\nBaird wasn't inclined to worry about that now. A hot bath and a good night's sleep were calling her name. \"So that's it then? The Djinn is gone forever?\"\n\n\"Scattered to the four winds, as I understand it,\" Jenkins said. \"I believe we can safely strike Aladdin's Lamp from the list of loose magical objects once more. At some point, I suppose, I should inform the Court of Smoke of the outcome of your investigation \u2026 if and when I get around to it.\"\n\n\"I leave that to your discretion.\" Baird's stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten in hours. \"Say, are there still any of those doughnuts left?\"\n\n\"'Fraid not,\" Ezekiel said, \"but I might be able to remedy that situation.\"\n\n\"Don't even think about it.\" Baird decided a bath could wait until they had all properly celebrated their victory. \"Stone, Cassandra, Ezekiel, Jenkins, you up for a doughnut run? My treat.\"\n\n\"Don't have to twist my arm,\" Stone said.\n\n\"Mine, either,\" Cassandra said, \"especially if we're talking the ones with all the sprinkles on top.\"\n\n\"I imagine shelving King Solomon's Carpet can be put off until tomorrow,\" Jenkins said. \"Far be it from me to let the defeat of the Forty\u2014and the dissolution of a mad Djinn\u2014go unf\u00eated.\"\n\n\"What he said,\" Ezekiel said. \"Although you're not really going to pay for the doughnuts, are you?\"\n\n\"Watch me.\"\n\nIt was a shame that Flynn was nowhere to be found. Baird couldn't wait to tell him how she and her Librarians had finished one of his old cases for him, ten years after the fact.\n\nThe next time I see him, that is."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "Revisionary",
        "author": "Jim C. Hines",
        "genres": [
            "urban fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "Magic Ex Libris"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "\u2002HEARING OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON MAGICAL SECURITY BEFORE THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE U.S. SENATE\n\n\u2002CHAIRMAN: ALEXANDER KEELER\n\n\u2002U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON MAGICAL SECURITY\n\n\u2002DEREK VAUGHN, LOUISIANA\n\n\u2002SUSAN BROWN, FLORIDA\n\n\u2002TAMMY HOEVE, MICHIGAN\n\n\u2002ELIZABETH GARCIA, OKLAHOMA\n\n\u2002TIMOTHY HOFFMAN, OHIO\n\n\u2002JOHN SENN, NEVADA\n\n\u2002ANTHONY HAYS, COLORADO\n\n\u2002U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON MAGICAL SECURITY\n\n\u2002ALEXANDER KEELER, ILLINOIS\n\n\u2002MARY PAT CLARKE, MARYLAND\n\n\u2002KENNETH TINDILL, RHODE ISLAND\n\n\u2002KENT CHILDRESS, OREGON\n\nTestimony and Questioning of Witness Number 18: Isaac Vainio\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: This hearing will come to order.\n\nIt's my privilege and honor to welcome the members of the Joint Committee on Magical Security, as well as the witnesses who have been called to testify as we help to shape the future of this great nation during this time of worldwide turmoil and conflict.\n\nMister Vainio, thank you for taking time from your work with New Millennium to join us today.\n\nMr. VAINIO: Your invitation made it clear I didn't have a choice.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Do you affirm that the testimony you will give before this committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?\n\nMr. VAINIO: Aren't I supposed to be sworn in on a Bible?\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: For security reasons, no books will be permitted in the chamber during your testimony.\n\nMr. VAINIO: Don't worry, I'm not about to try libriomancy with a Bible, or any other religious text. Gutenberg might have been able to handle that kind of intensity and belief, but\u2014oh, sorry. Yes, I do so affirm.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Thank you. You may be seated. Mr. Vainio, would you please\u2014what is that?\n\nMr. VAINIO: His name is Smudge. He's a fire-spider. He's perfectly safe as long as he's in his cage. Don't go poking your fingers in there, though. He's my service animal. My lawyer advised me this was permitted under disability law.\n\nMr. CHILDRESS: You have a service spider?\n\nMr. VAINIO: He senses danger. Like Spider-Man. Having him around helps me with some... anxiety issues. It's been a traumatic few years. I have a letter from my therapist if you'd like to see it.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: That won't be necessary. For the record, please state your history and current role with the organization known as the Porters.\n\nMr. VAINIO: I've been a member of the Porters\u2014intermittently\u2014for about seven years, working to protect the world from magical threats. I've been a cataloguer, field agent, and researcher. Ten months back, I helped to found the New Millennium project in Nevada, where I currently work as Director of Research and Development.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Ten months. That would be shortly after you announced the existence of magic to the world.\n\nMr. VAINIO: Correct.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: You constructed New Millennium in the United States. You yourself are an American citizen, born and raised in Michigan. Are you loyal to this country, Isaac?\n\nMr. VAINIO: How do you mean?\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: There are hundreds of you libriomancers scattered throughout the world, and thousands of other creatures. Vampires and merfolk and werewolves and bigfoots and Heaven knows what else. What assurances does this committee have that you won't turn against the United States of America? How do we prevent people like you from selling your abilities to the highest bidder?\n\nMr. VAINIO: Maybe you could start by not treating us all like potential criminals and terrorists.\n\n\"You didn't think this would be easy, did you?\"\n\n\"I knew there'd be conflict. Fear. And yah, violence too.\"\n\n\"You're mincing words. The world is headed for war.\"\n\n\"Humanity has been at war for more than ninety percent of recorded history.\"\n\n\"Not like this. What you've seen over this past year is only the beginning. The warm-up act, if you will.\"\n\n\"Says you. Not even magic can see the future.\"\n\n\"Not magic. Experience. I watched humanity for centuries. They fear you. Humanity works to control what it fears, and to destroy what it can't control.\"\n\n\"You're a pessimist. Also an asshole.\"\n\n\"Neither of those facts changes the truth. Your actions helped bring the world to this precipice.\"\n\n\"And yours didn't?\"\n\n\"They did, but let's be pragmatic, shall we? Of the two of us, only one is in a position to affect current events.\"\n\n\"One of the advantages of not being dead, eh?\"\n\nYou'd think my time in the field fighting everything from possessed libriomancers to magically animated metal monstrosities to a thousand-year-old dead necromancer would have prepared me for an afternoon testifying before a pack of Washington politicians, but by the time I emerged, I longed for the simplicity of a rabid were-jaguar whose motivation was straightforward, foamy-jawed murder.\n\nI ignored the reporters waiting in the hallway and made my way toward a wooden bench where Lena Greenwood sat whispering with Nicola Pallas and Nidhi Shah.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"I understand now why a group of vultures is called a committee. I didn't turn any of them into roaches, if that's what you're asking.\" Though in several cases, it would have been an improvement. \"Why drag us out here when they've already decided we're the biggest threat to world peace since the atom bomb?\"\n\n\"To show that they can.\" Nidhi had been a psychiatrist for Die Zwelf Porten\u00e6re, the magical\u2014and until recently, secret\u2014organization better known as the Porters, for as long as I'd known her. Of the four of us, she was the only one with no inherent magical abilities of her own. She got paid to keep the rest of us magic-users sane. Her job was far more challenging than my own.\n\nShe'd dressed conservatively for her testimony earlier today, in a simple black jacket and matching trousers, with a subdued blue shirt and a minimum of her usual jewelry. \"And a few minds haven't yet clamped shut. Senator Clarke supports the Porters and our work. Representatives Hays and Hoffman have spoken out against the overreactions from Homeland Security and the FBI, and Secretary McGinley at DHS has said he'd be willing to sit down with representatives from different inhuman communities.\"\n\n\"Our job now is to demonstrate to the world that we're not a threat.\" A pair of white earbuds hung around Nicola's neck like a pair of anorexic pet snakes humming a faint jazz tune. She reached into her jacket pocket, and the music died a moment later. \"Be thankful it isn't worse. The Chinese Central Military Commission charged Shin-Tsu Chang with treason last month.\"\n\nShin-Tsu Chang and Nicola Pallas were two of the six Council Masters who had taken over the Porters after the death of Johannes Gutenberg last year. I didn't know Nicola's Chinese counterpart well, but I'd read and respected most of his magical research from the past two decades. \"Is he safe?\"\n\n\"For now,\" said Nicola.\n\nLena took my hand as we walked down the hall. \"Try to think positive. If they do decide to throw us all into internment camps, you could stop stressing about that IRS audit.\"\n\n\"What's the IRS going to do, take my house?\" I snorted. My home had burned to the ground last year, and I'd been commuting between a little apartment in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and my quarters at New Millennium ever since.\n\n\"As of this morning, they're also suing the Porters for centuries of back taxes,\" said Nicola. \"One of our lawyers will be in touch with you about your options.\"\n\n\"Just let me know how much pirate gold to pull out of Treasure Island to get them off my back.\"\n\n\"It's not that simple. Governments around the world are cracking down on magically created wealth. The Senate proposed legislation adding a minimum twenty-year sentence for magical counterfeiting. They're worried about inflation and consumer confidence.\"\n\n\"Maybe they should be worried about getting the riots under control,\" I said. \"Not to mention beatings, lynchings, and, oh yeah, the fact that half the world is using magic as an excuse to rekindle old wars or start new ones.\"\n\n\"And the rest are preparing for the spillover,\" Lena commented. \"Near the end of my testimony, Senator Tindill asked what it would take for me to enlist in the Marines. Russia instituted a mandatory draft for inhumans eight months ago.\"\n\n\"Along with seventeen other nations we know of.\" I shook my head. \"Did Tindill explain how you're supposed to enlist if they refuse to recognize you as a citizen?\"\n\nLena was my... girlfriend wasn't strong enough, but the law wouldn't allow us to be husband and wife, on account of her not being human. Lover and partner were the two words that came closest, and also accommodated Nidhi as Lena's other romantic companion. We'd built our own little three-person family over the past few years, though the process hadn't always been smooth. What relationship was?\n\nLena had stopped hiding her dryad nature after the revelation of magic. Today that meant a crown of budding leaves growing directly from the skin of her brow and poking from beneath her thick hair. It gave her a playful, otherworldly air.\n\nShort, plump, and dark-skinned, with endless energy and a gorgeous smile, Lena was one of only three nonhumans who had been allowed to testify. I wondered how fast they'd have crossed her off the witness list if they'd truly understood what she could do, but she didn't come across as the kind of person who could knock out a minotaur with one punch.\n\nWhereas the rest of us had dressed up for the hearings, Lena wore old jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket over a tight-fitting T-shirt of Groot and Treebeard. The caption beneath the two walking trees read, GOT WOOD?\n\nWe stopped in the lobby to give Nicola time to compose herself. As frustrating as today had been for me, these hearings and the publicity had been harder on her. As the only member of the Porter Council residing in the U.S., she'd been under more scrutiny than any of us.\n\nNew strands of silver threaded through her black hair. Her eyes were shadowed, and from the way her jacket hung on her taut shoulders, she'd lost weight. Overuse of magic could do that, but so could good old-fashioned stress. She fidgeted with a pair of silver rings on her left hand as she looked through the glass doors at the waiting crowd.\n\n\"You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be famous,\" I said, taking in the number of microphones and cameras waiting outside to pounce. \"I wanted to be an astronaut, the first man on Mars. Or a scientist who discovered time travel and lived in a mansion guarded by robot sharks. Or Batman.\"\n\n\"Your glasses would clash with the cape and cowl,\" said Lena. \"Besides, I'm not sure you could pull off the spandex look. I like the tie, though.\" She leaned closer to read the silver type printed on the black silk. \"Is that new?\"\n\n\"I only owned one tie, and it had burn spots.\" I glared at Smudge, who was resting at the bottom of a small rectangular cage clipped to my belt. A layer of fiberglass shielded me from the fire-spider's heat, though if anything set him off, there was a decent chance he'd ignite the bottom of my suit coat.\n\nI'd ordered this particular tie online. It was custom-made with the word OOOK printed in small, diagonal stripes, a tribute to Terry Pratchett and his orangutan librarian from the Discworld books. I loosened the knot and unbuttoned my collar. \"Remind me to assign someone from my team to look into time travel. I want to take a trip to the seventeenth century.\"\n\n\"I'll bite,\" said Lena. \"Why?\"\n\n\"The necktie supposedly originated with King Louis XIV. Thanks to him, millions of us have to walk around with a literal noose around our necks. If I go back and kill Louis, I'll never have to wear these things again.\"\n\n\"I'm ready.\" Nicola wrapped her earbuds around a small MP3 player and tucked them away in an inside pocket. \"Thank you.\"\n\nI squared my shoulders, feeling vulnerable and exposed without my traditional assortment of books. Today's unpleasantness wasn't over yet. What I wouldn't have given for just one paperback and the chance to pull an invisibility cloak from its pages.\n\nLena flexed her hands. Tiny buds sprouted from her knuckles and fingers, a pattern of green dots that made me think of henna tattoos. \"Remember, the press can smell fear.\"\n\nI pulled a box of orange Tic Tacs from my pants pocket, popped one into my mouth, and gave another to Smudge to keep him occupied. \"All right. Let's go be famous.\"\n\nYoung Isaac had dreamed of fame.\n\nYoung Isaac was an idiot.\n\nThe shouts hit us like ten-foot waves as we stepped through the doors. Wooden barriers edged the sidewalk. Eight uniformed D.C. police officers worked to keep the crowds back, guarding the narrow path to our waiting SUV.\n\nThe first person to spit at me was an older gentleman to my left, wearing a charming SALEM HAD THE RIGHT IDEA T-shirt.\n\nPart of me wanted to point out that, according to Porter records, none of the people executed in seventeenth century Salem were actual witches or magic-users. Another part simply wanted to turn him into a pickled egg.\n\nThe four of us fell into a diamond formation with Lena at the head, while Nidhi and I walked a step behind to either side, helping to create a buffer for Nicola.\n\nA reporter shoved a microphone over the barriers. \"What are the Porters doing about magic-using rebels and mercenaries destabilizing Africa?\"\n\n\"I've got this one.\" I raised my voice. \"Africa is a continent. A big one. You'll have to be more specific. Are you talking about the libriomancer helping the government fight Boko Haram in Nigeria? The rumors about rebels in Mali using blood magic? Or do you mean the three adze who've been acting as vigilantes, most recently in the Ivory Coast?\"\n\nThe adze in question had become known as the Diamond Fireflies after disrupting a diamond mining operation in Sierra Leone and freeing twenty-six child slaves. The vampire-like trio had also brutally murdered three overseers before transforming back into their firefly forms to escape.\n\nI kept walking before the reporter could respond.\n\n\"Ms. Pallas, why are the Porters unwilling to defend this country?\" asked another reporter.\n\n\"The Porters are a worldwide organization, founded in Germany. We have more members from India and China than we do from the U.S.\" Nicola's voice cut through the shouts like a shark through water, a trick of her bardic magic. \"The Porters will continue to work with the international community to protect this world from magical threats. We will not support legislation to allow the selective drafting of magically gifted individuals, or any other efforts to militarize our people and our work.\"\n\nThe anger wasn't all directed at us. I spotted one small group holding signs that said JUSTICE FOR MARCUS VISSER. Visser was a young werewolf from Maine who'd been shot and killed in early September by a pair of hunters, neither of whom had been charged with any crime.\n\n\"Isaac, will you autograph my library card?\" A young woman shoved a laminated card and silver Sharpie at me. I scribbled my name and returned it. A camera flash went off directly in my face.\n\nI tried to smile, remembering the photo USA Today had run of me in mid-sentence with my mouth open and eyes half-shut. I'd looked like a stoned Muppet. How the hell had I gone from a small-town Michigan librarian to having to worry about paparazzi in a single year?\n\n\"Isaac, please heal our son!\"\n\nI stopped walking. A small gap opened to my right. Reporters jockeyed for a better angle.\n\nThe plea had come from a couple with a boy no more than two years old, asleep in a stroller. The parents looked to be in their mid-to-late twenties, roughly the same age as me, but in that moment I felt decades older.\n\n\"Isaac...\" Nicola pitched her voice only for me, but that single soft-spoken word carried both warning and a history of arguments stretching back almost a year. Arguments I had generally lost.\n\n\"What's wrong with him?\" I asked, unable to stop myself.\n\n\"His name's Caleb,\" said the father. He had both hands on the wooden barrier. Two police officers moved closer, ready to intervene. \"He has hypoplastic left heart syndrome. We've been waiting six months for a heart transplant.\"\n\n\"We saw a story about you on television,\" the mother added. \"The Discovery Channel one. How your team had cured cancer and diabetes in rats, regrown missing limbs, and healed broken bones. When we heard you were gonna be here, we thought...\"\n\nShe bit her lip and fell silent. The crowd grew still, waiting for my response. Several of the police officers were listening as well. I thought I read sympathy in the eyes of one. Fear in another. A third touched the handcuffs on his belt, a not-so-subtle warning.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I whispered, hating myself for how mechanical it sounded. \"We're only beginning human trials this month, under strict supervision from the National Institutes of Health.\"\n\nThey'd come hoping I'd heal their son's heart, and instead it was like I'd reached into their chests and squeezed the life from theirs. The mother's eyes filled with tears. The father put a hand on the stroller as if to keep from falling.\n\nI could do what they asked. I could cure an entire ward of children of every disease known to humanity. A battered copy of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe waited in the SUV, along with my other books. I could open the pages and pull the power of Lucy's healing cordial into the world. A single drop, and their son would be healthy.\n\nAt which point they would be taken into federal custody, their son quarantined, and I would be arrested for violating hastily passed and ill-informed laws against using magic to \"physically or mentally influence, alter, or otherwise interfere with another person.\"\n\nMost states had eventually added Good Samaritan clauses, allowing exceptions for emergencies that posed \"immediate threat to life and limb,\" but those didn't apply here. I could use magic to push someone out of the path of oncoming traffic, but thanks to the fearmongering and ignorance of people like Senator Alexander Keeler, I couldn't help a child suffering from a potentially deadly heart defect.\n\nIf they'd come to me in private, that would be one thing. But not here. Not with so many cameras, so many people, so much raw emotion waiting for a spark.\n\nThe moment they publicly asked for my help, they guaranteed I couldn't give it. I'd bet anything that within the week, a doctor from the NIH would be stopping by their home, not to help, but to confirm their son was still critically ill. To make sure I hadn't helped him by using \"untested and unproven magical techniques that have not been fully evaluated for safety and long-term side effects.\"\n\nPeople had gone to jail over this fight. Libriomancers as well as doctors who'd been forced to watch patients die when the simplest magic could have saved them.\n\nI was tempted to do the same. Save Caleb, and to hell with the consequences. Only those consequences wouldn't stop with me. My arrest would derail every research project under my supervision, including medical research. It would also provide more ammunition to people who saw us as rebellious outsiders, people who would take any excuse to dissolve the Porters and seize full control of New Millennium.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said again. I pulled a business card from the inner pocket of my suit jacket. \"Call this number. A woman named Kiyoko It\u00f4 handles all incoming calls. Tell her you spoke with me. I'll try to get Caleb into the next round of medical trials at New Millennium.\"\n\n\"Medical trials?\" the father snapped. He pressed up against the barrier, his fists clenched. Lena shifted her balance, ready to take him down if needed. \"You know how many damn medical trials we've been through in the past two years?\"\n\nI could guess. My niece had suffered through multiple surgeries and procedures for years, following an accident that took her leg. I'd seen how slow and tortuous the American medical system could be. I'd been fighting for the past year for the right to help her, and others like her.\n\nThe mother took my card. Tension tightened her face. Both of them were fighting tears.\n\nNidhi pressed past me. \"Did someone tell you to come here and ask Isaac for help?\" She kept her voice low enough most of the mics wouldn't pick it up.\n\nThe father nodded. \"Yeah, that's right.\"\n\nSomeone had set this family up, using their pain and desperation to stage footage of a libriomancer heartlessly refusing to help a dying child.\n\nBefore Nidhi could press for information, another man shoved to the front of the crowd and shouted, \"A year ago, you said magic was a gift! When you gonna share that gift with the rest of us?\"\n\n\"What's New Millennium really doing behind those walls?\" yelled another. \"They get fat off of our taxes, then let us die!\"\n\nNew Millennium had no federal or state funding, but this wasn't the time to point that out.\n\n\"We should go,\" said Nidhi. \"Now.\"\n\nHeat from the cage at my hip added to Nidhi's warning.\n\nLena took my hand and pulled me toward the car. Whatever else people might have said, whatever the crowd shouted after us, it all turned to gray noise.\n\nWe were halfway to our next meeting when my phone went off. Not the smartphone in my pocket; this was a private line, known to only a dozen people, three of whom were sitting in the SUV with me.\n\nI clenched my jaw to activate the connection. \"This is Isaac.\"\n\nThe communicator in my lower right molar would pick up subvocalizations almost as clearly as speech. But speaking out loud let the others know I was on a call. Also, I'd been told I sounded drunk when I subvocalized.\n\n\"She escaped again!\"\n\nI closed my eyes and gently thumped my head against the headrest. \"Vince, it's been a long day. Wherever Kerling has gone, she always comes back eventually.\"\n\n\"She took half my bologna sandwich, scattered trash over my desk, stole my favorite pen, and left a feather on my printer. I think the feather was deliberate.\"\n\n\"I'm two thousand miles away, Vince. I can't help you find your missing crow.\"\n\nBeside me, Lena chuckled.\n\n\"I wired the door of her cage yesterday afternoon. If she opened the latch from the inside, it should have set off an alarm.\"\n\nVince Hambrecht was an infectious storm of energy and enthusiasm, the first of three libriomancers I'd brought onto my research team at New Millennium. His indignation at being outsmarted by a crow was tempered by his obvious delight in their ongoing game. \"Maybe you should have had Talulah or Charles double-check your setup.\"\n\n\"Everything was working just fine. The cameras went dead for three hours last night, right when she got out. That can't be coincidence, Isaac. And what about the time she stole the Escape key from my keyboard? She was taunting me.\"\n\nAt nineteen, Vince was the youngest researcher on site. He'd discovered his abilities a year and a half ago, and was still in that overenthusiastic phase where he was likely to blow himself up along with everyone within a hundred-foot radius if you didn't keep a close eye on him.\n\nSome people would say we never really outgrew that phase.\n\nThe Porters had found him working part-time at the Toronto zoo to put himself through grad school. He'd begun college at the age of fourteen, finished his undergrad at seventeen, and had just completed his veterinary coursework when Nicola recommended I bring him onto my team at New Millennium.\n\nHe'd read The Story of Doctor Dolittle more than forty times, trying to gain the power to speak with animals. Failing that, he'd used various other books to try to get similar abilities. Last month, it was drinking dragon blood from Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms books.\n\nMagic didn't make the animals particularly intelligent conversationalists, but for Vince, an endless litany of \"Feed me!\" and \"Mine!\" and \"I'm horny!\" never seemed to get old.\n\n\"I told you, I've checked Kerling twice. There's no trace of magic, aside from the healing and rejuvenation you did for her. I still think it's Talulah messing with you. Heaven save me from libriomancers with too much time on their hands. How's the rest of the menagerie doing?\"\n\nHis voice went soft. \"Mortimer died yesterday afternoon.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Vince. He was one of the rats, right?\"\n\n\"He came in three months ago with a missing tail and infected teeth. Once we healed him, he bit you on the palm.\"\n\n\"Yah, I remember.\"\n\n\"Doctor Dickinson took the body. As far as I can tell, Mortimer died of old age, not anything we did. But those NIH ghouls insist on cutting him up for study. They'd better give the remains back this time. That rat deserves a proper burial.\"\n\n\"Email me a copy of Mortimer's file and your report, and let me know if the NIH finds anything unusual.\"\n\n\"Will do, Boss.\"\n\n\"Don't call me that.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" He hesitated, then blurted, \"While I've got you on the line, could we talk about Project Crichton?\"\n\n\"We are not making baby dinosaurs, and that's final. The last thing we need is a bunch of juvenile velociraptors eating one of our federal babysitters.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't get loose, Boss.\"\n\n\"Says the man who can't keep a little crow secure. Have you even read Jurassic Park?\" Our SUV pulled into a parking lot on 8th Street. \"I've got to go. Remind me when I get back, and we can try putting a tracking spell on Kerling.\"\n\nLena was smirking when I hung up. \"Vince versus the crow again? What is this, round eight?\"\n\n\"At least.\" I climbed out of the SUV and grabbed my old duster from the back, not caring how badly the battered leather jacket clashed with my suit and tie. The reassuring weight of the books in their various customized pockets was more important than any fashion faux pas.\n\n\"When are you planning to tell him you uplifted Kerling's intelligence?\" Lena asked.\n\n\"When it stops being funny.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't interfere with New Millennium research projects,\" said Nicola.\n\n\"I'm not. I've been keeping detailed notes on Kerling's progress. And Vince's.\" I raised my hands as if to ward off an assault. \"The particular magic I used on Kerling could have all kinds of implications for healing brain damage and mental incapacity, not to mention boosting intelligence in general. It's a legit project, I promise.\"\n\nLena smiled. \"You light up when you talk about that place. It's a shame you couldn't get them to build it in the U.P.\"\n\nMichigan's Upper Peninsula would have been an ideal location, with plenty of open land away from populated areas. We also had a healthy werewolf pack, and I'd hoped we could hire some of them for security and other positions. I'd gone to Lansing to push the potential job creation and publicity benefits, but Governor Sullivan was firmly in the anti-magic camp, as was much of the state legislature. I'd hardly left the capitol building before they were passing bills prohibiting magical research in Michigan.\n\n\"There's so much we could learn, so much to do. Medicine, engineering, archaeology, astronomy... I'm close to getting a meeting with NASA about a permanent magical portal to the moon!\"\n\nShe laughed and kissed me. \"Almost makes the politics worth it.\"\n\nThe politics were the second worst part of my job, right below having to leave Lena for weeks at a time. She'd been out to visit, but Lena was a dryad. Her oak tree was still rooted in Michigan, as was her other lover. She carried part of that tree within herself, allowing her greater freedom, but she still had to return home at least once a week.\n\n\"Before you go to the moon, how about one of those portals between Vegas and Copper River, hm?\"\n\n\"It's at the top of my To Do List,\" I promised.\n\nShe laughed again\u2014I loved that sound\u2014and took my hand as we walked into the restaurant. Tension knotted my muscles like Christmas lights after a year in storage, but being with Lena helped. She had a gift for finding joy and beauty, and for helping others to remember those things.\n\nThe Square Pie Pizzeria was one of the more upscale D.C. restaurants, complete with candles and white tablecloths and wait staff in black bow ties. More importantly, they provided privacy and damn good pizza. Lena, Nidhi, and I had come here at least once on each of our too-frequent trips. Nicola had reserved a small, private room near the back.\n\nRepresentative Derek Vaughn looked to have arrived only moments before. He finished removing his jacket, then waited politely while the rest of us took our seats. Once the waiter jotted down our drink orders and left, shutting the door behind him, Vaughn leaned over to kiss Nicola hello.\n\n\"Hell of a day.\" Weariness dulled his vote-winning smile. \"I thought that hearing would never end.\" Thanks to his New Orleans accent, it came out Ah thought dat hearin' would nevuh end.\n\nAs I understood it, he and Nicola had met after a committee hearing in early August. A few weeks later, he'd taken her to one of the best jazz bars in D.C. It was love at first song. How he and Nicola had kept their relationship a secret from the media and the Joint Magical Committee these past two months was a whole other kind of magic.\n\nI unclipped Smudge's cage and set it on the table between Vaughn and myself. Smudge perked up and poked his forelegs through the bar. He knew this place, and had developed an appetite for anchovies.\n\n\"What do you think?\" Nicola asked, without preamble.\n\nVaughn sipped his water before answering. He was an intelligent, quick-witted man who'd started out as a public defender. His ruffled graying hair and gentle blue eyes, framed by laugh lines and silver-rimmed glasses, tended to make people underestimate him. \"Hard to say. Homeland Security is pushing hard to get more of you Porters on the payroll. People are scared, Nic. They want guarantees that some voodoo curse won't turn New York City into a graveyard, or a vampire won't mind-rape the president into launching nukes at his own country.\"\n\n\"Voodoo is a religion, not a school of magic,\" I pointed out. Though technically, enough authors had written about voodoo dolls to make them a viable tool for libriomancers to pull out of books.\n\n\"I know that, boy.\" Vaughn took another drink. \"Point is, they think you're holding back. A lot of folks want all of you Porters rounded up, along with the vampires, werewolves, and the rest. Dryads, too, I'm afraid.\"\n\nLena smiled. \"They're welcome to try.\"\n\n\"I haven't seen things this tense since the Cold War,\" he went on. \"Folks think World War III is coming, and when it arrives, it's gonna fly in on broomsticks, waving wands and massacring muggles.\"\n\n\"The world's doing the best it can to make it happen,\" I snapped. \"North Korea is mandating everyone read one government-approved novel each month, trying to build up a library of magical weapons. Here in the States, Senator Keeler wants us to help him turn hundreds of soldiers into vampires. China detonated a fucking nuke trying to get to the Students of Bi Sheng.\"\n\nVaughn's eyes narrowed. \"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"Because I have friends there.\" The Students of Bi Sheng were a small group of survivors from five hundred years ago, practitioners of an alternate form of libriomancy. They'd fought a magical war once before, and were determined to stay out of world events. There were days I'd been tempted to join them.\n\n\"Best not mention that to the committee,\" said Vaughn. \"Last I checked, the Porters weren't exactly innocent in this whole mess. Look at all those casualties from your battle in Copper River. What about the victims of rogue weres and vamps and all the rest? Like that fellow you told me about, the one in the U.P. who fed on Boy Scouts?\"\n\n\"He hasn't touched a child since the day I put a bomb in his skull. I'm not saying we ignore killers, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Did you hear what you just said, Isaac?\" Derek let out a long, slow breath that smelled faintly of pipe smoke. \"You put a bomb in that fellow's head. You Porters were judges and executioners, and people know it. Fact is, you are dangerous.\"\n\n\"Of course we're dangerous. So are you. So is every paranoid, trigger-happy idiot ordering vampire-hunting kits off e-Bay or melting antique candlesticks to make silver bullets. You know what's more dangerous? Entire nations doing the same damn thing.\" I raised a hand before he could argue. \"You're right, the Porters screwed up sometimes. I screwed up. I also saved a lot of lives, and we could save a hell of a lot more if people would just let us. There are kids dying out there, Derek. People who need our help. We can't fix everything, but we can do so much better than we are right now, and all anyone wants to do is talk about preemptive magical strikes and how many people they can kill with the next libriomantic superweapon.\"\n\n\"What do you suggest?\" he asked. \"Should we abandon national defense, let you run off to produce your magical rainbows and unicorns, and wait for some genie from the Middle East to wish the American people into turnips?\"\n\n\"That's not how genies work, you ignorant\u2014\"\n\n\"Isaac.\" Nidhi spoke quietly, making me realize how loud I was getting.\n\nI sat back, pulled off my glasses, and rubbed my eyes. \"I'm sorry. I know you're trying to navigate this mess the best you can, but it's not enough.\"\n\n\"You think I don't know that? You get to go home to Vegas to play in your lab. I have to jump back into that snake pit every day.\" He sounded as tired as I felt. \"How's Lex doing?\"\n\nVaughn had an excellent memory for people, and never failed to ask about my niece. \"She's excited. Nervous, too, but mostly impatient to be done. I'll be flying back to Vegas later tonight so I can be there for her procedure.\"\n\n\"We need more success stories like hers,\" said Vaughn. \"Show the world how magic restored a little girl's leg.\"\n\n\"We could have showed the world a year ago,\" I pointed out.\n\n\"Isaac, you know this has to be done by the book. If there's the slightest possibility of things going wrong, you could do more harm than good.\"\n\n\"Tell that to Lex and her parents.\"\n\nBefore he could answer, Nicola's cellphone buzzed on the table, playing the opening bars of a Harry Connick Jr. song.\n\n\"Excuse me.\" She picked up the phone and turned away.\n\nVaughn's phone went off a moment later. My hands clenched. I hoped it was coincidence, but I wasn't surprised when my own communicator chimed to signal an incoming call.\n\n\"This is Isaac. What happened?\"\n\n\"It's Talulah. New Millennium is on lockdown. Have you seen the news?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" I looked around the table. Nicola was a statue, sitting with deliberate stillness as she listened. Vaughn's face had gone red, and he was swearing under his breath.\n\n\"They're reporting multiple attacks by inhuman terrorists.\"\n\n\"How many, and where?\" I asked.\n\n\"At least four.\" Talulah hesitated. \"Including one in Lansing. Michigan's governor is in critical condition. Similar attacks were launched simultaneously in California, Oklahoma, and New York.\"\n\nI felt like I'd swallowed a twenty-ounce bottle of battery acid. I stood and grabbed Smudge's cage, clipping it to my belt with an aluminum carabineer.\n\nNicola covered her phone. \"Go. Help the wounded, and assist the police.\"\n\n\"Isaac,\" said Vaughn. \"Make yourself visible.\"\n\nI grimaced. In other words, play nice for the cameras and put on a good public relations face for the Porters. I hated this part of my job, but he was right. Especially if these attacks had been carried out by nonhumans.\n\n\"How long will it take you to get to Michigan?\" asked Nicola.\n\n\"Five minutes.\" I donned my jacket and hurried toward the door, Lena and Nidhi close behind.\n\nNo matter how quickly we arrived, no matter how much we helped, part of me was starting to believe it would never be enough.\n\n\u2002From: donotreply@porterbot.net\n\n\u2002To: ivainio@newmillennium.org\n\n\u2002Subject: Catalog Reservations\n\n\u2002Hello Isaac,\n\n\u2002This is an automated reminder from the Porter Databots.\n\n\u2002We noticed you have an unusually large number of titles reserved in the Porter catalog. While we appreciate your diligence in helping to minimize overuse and magical charring, we wonder if maybe you've forgotten to release some of those 184 books back into circulation for use by other Porter researchers and field agents.\n\n\u2002The ten books that have been reserved the longest are listed below. Please log into the Porter catalog to see the full list and release any books you're no longer using.\n\n\u2002If you have a legitimate ongoing need for these books, please contact Porter librarian Zsuzsanna Varga.\n\n\u2002Thanks!\n\n\u2002Titles Checked out by Isaac Vainio, User #M3714:\n\n\u20021. Lewis, C. S. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.\n\n\u20022. L'Engle, Madeline. A Wrinkle in Time.\n\n\u20023. Pierce, Tamora. In the Hand of the Goddess.\n\n\u20024. Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass.\n\n\u20025. Goodkind, Terry. Debt of Bones.\n\n\u20026. Gabaldon, Diana. Outlander.\n\n\u20027. Homer. The Odyssey.\n\n\u20028. Gaiman, Neil. Neverwhere.\n\n\u20029. Donaldson, Stephen. The Mirror of Her Dreams.\n\n\u200210. Valente, Catherynne. Palimpsest.\n\n\u2002[ Click here to log into our catalog and review the full list ]\n\n\"I thought you'd made plans for all this.\"\n\n\"There have always been contingency plans for the revelation of magic, as well as for my own death.\"\n\n\"What happened? Did you forget to share those plans with anyone else?\"\n\n\"To paraphrase Von Moltke, no plan survives beyond the first encounter with the enemy. I left the Porters with certain goals and strategies. Proper disposal of my body, for one. Delegation of power to a small group, no more than six. The importance of international neutrality. The safety and security of our own people. Most importantly, a focus on the long term that should help us all survive the short-term chaos and upheaval.\"\n\n\"Define 'short-term.'\"\n\n\"Historically speaking? Years. Decades, most likely.\"\n\n\"How many people are going to lose their lives as a result of that chaos?\"\n\n\"As you've said, magic can't predict the future.\"\n\n\"It can damn well guess.\"\n\n\"By my estimate, given human nature? Millions.\"\n\nThe service the porters were using for transportation and security in D.C. wasn't scheduled to pick us up for at least another hour, so Lena hailed us a cab while I took a copy of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere from my jacket.\n\n\"Where to?\" asked the driver, an older woman in a yellow headscarf with the gruff voice of a longtime smoker.\n\nI scooted into the back and handed her a ten. \"Just keep it parked here for a minute, eh?\"\n\n\"You waiting for someone?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\"\n\nLena sat down beside me. \"Shortcut?\"\n\n\"I hope so.\" Neverwhere was one of the books I'd been rereading as part of my own research. I might not be able to create a stable portal from Vegas to the U.P. yet, but I was getting closer, and I'd learned a few tricks in the process.\n\nI'd also accidentally sent a pair of lab rats to either Alpha Centauri or possibly a wardrobe in London. I doubted Vince would ever forgive me for that one.\n\nI turned to a page marked with a blue Post-it note. I could recite the scene from memory, but it was simpler to touch the book directly, to reread and submerge myself in the story. Every page had its own texture, as unique as a fingerprint. I could feel the individual letters and the ink pressed into the paper, like a blind man reading embossed print in the days before Braille.\n\nGaiman had created a character named Door. I'd experimented with her magic back at the lab. This would be my first time using it in the field.\n\nMy fingertips sank through the paper, touching the world so many of Gaiman's readers had visualized and dreamed about. While that world was fictional, the belief and imagination of his readers was quite real. That was where the story's true magic came from, with the physical book serving as a magnet and anchor for that cumulative belief.\n\nThe driver twisted around. \"What are you doing back there?\"\n\n\"We'll be on our way in a moment,\" said Nidhi.\n\nLibriomancy in its most common form allowed us to grasp an object from a story and pull it into the world, transforming belief and potential magical energy into physical reality. Assuming said object would fit through the pages.\n\nIf that was 101-level libriomancy, what I'd been working on for the past year was post-graduate work.\n\nMy vision blurred, like I'd been reading too long in poor light. My mother used to tell me I'd ruin my eyes that way. As it turned out, she hadn't been entirely wrong.\n\nI yanked off my glasses and slipped them into my shirt pocket. The spots of shadow floating around the edges of my vision grew worse, but the book's text sharpened. The damage to my eyes was a result of magical charring, and behaved similarly to early cataracts. Glasses helped me to compensate, but paradoxically made it harder for me to truly see magic.\n\nI'd tried to heal the damage, but the scars weren't physical. Magic simply flowed around the charring, like a stream past rocks.\n\nI reached deeper into the book. My hand touched Door's back. Rather, the composite imagination of Door's back. I wasn't truly touching the outline of her shoulder blades, or feeling the faint beating of her heart. I was touching readers' belief. Belief in the character, and belief in her particular ability.\n\n\"Our driver's getting twitchy,\" Lena commented.\n\n\"I'm almost done.\" From here, I could have plucked an object from Door's hand and created it in my own. Instead of pulling anything physical from the page, I grasped Door's ability and drew it into my body. Lines of text crept up my skin. In essence, I was making myself an extension of the book.\n\nThis kind of libriomancy carried two significant risks. For one thing, the magic came from a fictional universe. Any portal I created would want to connect to that nonexistent universe. If I screwed up, we'd be lucky to find ourselves lost in the sewers of London. If we were unlucky, the magic would try to send us into Gaiman's fictionalized London.\n\nSince that world didn't exist, it would just kill us instead.\n\nThen there was the danger of letting a book get into your head. As the story flowed through my blood, I began to hear the characters calling me. When I looked around, it was as though the fictional world had been overlaid with this one. I saw our driver staring at my truncated arm, watched her mouth move, but I heard the murmurs of the London crowd, saw tunnels and subway lines passing through the cab, smelled the damp fog...\n\n\"Isaac?\" Lena touched my neck, helping ground me in the real world.\n\nI placed my other hand on the inside of the cab's door and pushed the story through me, into the metal and plastic of the car. The words were like a windstorm trying to escape, trying to create a gateway back to their book.\n\nI forced them instead to a place I knew well enough to anchor my thoughts against the fragments of Neverwhere swirling around me like a maelstrom. \"It's like herding cats across a river.\"\n\n\"I can call Nicola if you need help,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"No, I've got it. Probably.\" I pushed the last of the text into place and opened the door. When I climbed out, I emerged from the back of a pizza delivery car parked on the side of a very different road.\n\nHad Gutenberg been alive, I'm sure he would have cast this spell without a second thought, putting us down on the front steps of the capitol building. Given another five hundred years of practice, I liked to think I'd have done the same.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing?\" The shout came from a young woman across the road, carrying an empty red delivery bag. \"Get out of my car!\"\n\n\"Sorry!\" I stumbled away from the car, shoved Neverwhere into my jacket pocket, and checked on Smudge. He didn't look happy, but he wasn't about to set anything on fire either, which meant the driver probably wasn't going to pull a gun and shoot me just yet. I glanced around. I'd put us down in East Lansing, on the campus of Michigan State University. \"Technically, we weren't in your car. We just\u2014\"\n\n\"What do you mean 'we'?\" She hurried across the road and pushed past me to check the back seat, which was empty. She tossed the delivery bag into the back, aimed her cellphone at my face, and snapped a picture before dialing what I assumed was the police. \"What did you take, asshole?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" said Lena as she emerged from the car.\n\nThe poor woman jumped so hard she dropped her phone. Lena caught it before it hit the pavement.\n\nI flexed my hand. The fingertips were a bit numb, but I saw no sign of charring. I checked the magnetic sign on the top of the car. \"Georgio's, eh? I used to eat there all the time when I was an undergrad.\" I pulled out my wallet and handed her a twenty. \"I'm sorry we scared you. Consider this part of your tip for the night?\"\n\nShe stared at me, then at the car, where Nidhi now appeared to be climbing out of nothingness. \"That's... that's magic.\"\n\n\"Pretty cool, isn't it? If I had more time, I'd tell you how it worked.\"\n\n\"He would,\" Lena said. \"Even if you asked him to stop.\"\n\nI pointed to the three-story brick building across the street. \"That's Mason-Abbot Hall, which puts us on the northeast corner of campus, about ten miles from Lansing.\" I turned back to the delivery driver. \"How'd you like to make a bigger tip?\"\n\n\"If traffic doesn't pick up soon, I'm going to fly the rest of the way,\" I muttered.\n\n\"You can do that?\" Our impromptu driver's name was Callie, a second-year communications major who had agreed to drive us into Lansing only after getting a selfie with Lena, and another with Smudge.\n\n\"I can. The FAA gets cranky about it, though.\"\n\nCallie swerved into another lane, then slammed the brakes. \"Shit. Sorry. I knew they'd closed 496, but it looks like they've blocked off Saginaw, too. I'll get you as close as I can. Is it true this was a terrorist attack?\"\n\n\"We don't know yet,\" said Nidhi.\n\nLena was studying her hands. \"I should get rid of these,\" she said, touching the buds on her knuckles. \"It's probably safer for everyone if I pass for human.\"\n\nI wanted to argue, to tell her to be herself. I looked at Nidhi and saw the same conflict in her eyes. If the attackers weren't human, advertising Lena's nature could make her the target of angry crowds or overzealous law enforcement. Neither of us spoke as the green buds slowly absorbed back into Lena's skin.\n\nCallie broke the silence. \"There was a campus march for Marcus Visser last week. A real werewolf came to speak. It was pretty intense. The cops showed up at the end. Six people got pepper sprayed.\" She turned north and snuck a block closer before hitting another line of stalled traffic. \"I think this is as close as I can get you.\"\n\n\"It's close enough.\" I handed her another forty bucks and climbed out of the car. I could see the capitol dome a short distance away, past bumper-to-bumper traffic. \"Thank you.\"\n\nShe rolled down her window. \"Hey, that libriomancy stuff. Can anyone learn it? I was thinking of changing majors.\"\n\n\"Sorry. It doesn't work that way.\"\n\nThe noise hit hard: horns blaring uselessly in the streets, sirens wailing, shouts and chants in the distance. I heard dogs barking as well, but I couldn't tell if they were pets howling at the noise or police dogs trying to track the perpetrators.\n\nThen there were the people making their way toward the capitol. Many had similar expressions of shock, confusion, and grief. Others had skipped past grief to rage. Even if I hadn't known where I was going, the flow would have carried us to the site of the attack.\n\nA uniformed police officer stood in the intersection up ahead, diverting traffic. Another officer on horseback trotted up the opposite side of the road. Two helicopters circled overhead. From what I could see, one was a news chopper, while its louder big brother looked military.\n\nLena took the lead, being the best equipped to deal with physical confrontations. Nidhi and I followed close behind, letting Lena serve as our icebreaker. I split my attention between Smudge and the crowd, watching for potential magical threats. Smudge seemed more interested in the bugs swarming about the street lamps.\n\nYellow barricades blocked the streets at Ottawa and Capitol. Beyond those barriers, ambulances and police cars lined the roads. The news vans had parked farther off. It looked like every camera crew in the state was pressed up against the yellow tape surrounding the capitol building, along with reporters from some of the national outlets.\n\nThe tension after the hearing in D.C. had been bad, but at least that had been in daylight, with a short, clear path to our escape.\n\nThe emotion here was colder and less stable. Officers in riot gear were doing their best to keep things under control. I found myself holding my breath, like I was afraid of setting off an explosion. Sweat trickled and tickled down my back.\n\nAll reporters were being kept back with the rest of the crowd. Some called out to officers and detectives for statements, while others interviewed random bystanders. I eavesdropped long enough to overhear one reporter say something about werewolves and an unknown number of casualties. I turned up the collar of my duster and approached the nearest uniformed officer, keeping my hands in full view.\n\n\"Sir, you need to stay back.\" This was a man clearly practiced in using his voice as a tool to keep people in line, and his tone suggested he was equally prepared to use other tools if his words failed to do the trick.\n\nI glanced back to make sure none of the reporters were paying attention. The last thing I wanted was to get mobbed by news crews looking for a sound bite. \"My name is Isaac Vainio. I'm a libriomancer, one of the directors for New Millennium and a member of the Porters. We can help.\"\n\nHe looked the three of us over. \"Nobody gets across that line. Especially magic-using types.\"\n\nI understood his paranoia, even as frustration tightened already-tense muscles in my neck and jaw. For all he knew, we were here to finish the job the werewolves had begun.\n\nI looked past him to the two ambulances parked on the sidewalk. Their crews were checking over a small group of people with blood on their clothes. A short distance beyond was a white FBI truck, possibly a command vehicle. I counted three other vans, another FBI truck, and six state and Lansing police cars.\n\nI glanced at his badge. \"I know your people and the EMTs are doing everything they can, Officer Blackwell. But if it's true werewolves did this, then their victims could have been infected, and we have a very limited window to help them. I'm the only person within a hundred miles who can guarantee those people remain human.\"\n\nHe jerked his chin at Nidhi and Lena. \"They're libriomancers too?\"\n\n\"I'm Doctor Shah,\" said Nidhi. \"I've been with the Porters for more than fifteen years.\" She touched Lena's arm. \"Ms. Greenwood is my assistant.\"\n\n\"Depending on what species of werewolf did this, the survivors could be a danger to your officers,\" I pressed. \"I've consulted with the State Police in the past. They can vouch for me.\"\n\n\"Don't move.\" He stepped back and spoke to someone on his shoulder-mounted radio, never taking his attention off us. I couldn't make out the response, but a moment later he raised the police tape and beckoned us through. He patted each of us down, a process that took much longer with me, given the number of books tucked into my duster pockets. By the time he finished, two more people had joined us.\n\n\"Identification.\" The speaker was a middle-aged woman in a state police uniform and vest, with the kind of focus and determination that made me think she could work this case for thirty-six hours straight on nothing but coffee and attitude.\n\nHer companion was an older man with the face of a graying bulldog and an FBI badge clipped to his belt. Between the street lamps and various floodlights, I was able to make out that his name was Steinkamp, and he was a Special Agent from the Magical Crimes Unit in the Detroit Field Office.\n\nNidhi and I produced our driver's licenses. The police officer inspected them both, handed them back, and looked expectantly at Lena.\n\n\"I don't have one.\" Lena held out one hand and grew a single green bud from the palm of her hand. \"Michigan's DMV refuses to grant a license or state ID to nonhumans.\"\n\n\"She stays here,\" said Steinkamp. \"We've had too many people contaminating the scene as it is.\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" Lena said, before Nidhi or I could argue.\n\n\"Sign here.\" The officer, whose badge read ROWLAND, passed me a clipboard. I jotted down my name, title, organization, and the date and time, then handed it to Nidhi to do the same. \"You touch nothing unless absolutely necessary. Blackwell's going to be your police escort. You obey his instructions at all times, got it?\"\n\nI nodded, trying not to let my impatience show. \"How did the werewolves get inside?\"\n\nSteinkamp scowled. \"There was a fucking Boy Scout tour scheduled for six o'clock. Normally tours end at four, but the scout leader has a friend in the legislature. The werewolves waltzed right in with them.\"\n\n\"Are the kids all right?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"Define all right,\" said Rowland. \"They're terrified enough they'll be pissing their beds for a month, but physically they're fine.\"\n\n\"Four people have been taken to Sparrow Hospital,\" said Steinkamp. \"The rest of the wounded are being checked over by the EMTs. We've got agents interviewing witnesses across the street, several of whom have minor cuts and scrapes.\"\n\n\"I can call Nicola and ask her to send a Porter to the hospital,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"The Evidence Response Team is inside with the coroner,\" Steinkamp continued in a softer voice. \"They haven't taken the bodies away. Is there anything you can do...\"\n\n\"Raising the dead has been tried before. It wasn't pretty.\"\n\nRowland clucked her tongue. \"I guess there are limits to magic after all.\"\n\n\"You have no idea.\"\n\nAgent Steinkamp was staring at me like I was a book he couldn't quite read. \"You're the guy who wrote that letter a year ago. I've seen your file.\"\n\n\"You have a file on me?\" I should have been annoyed, but it was actually kind of cool. I'd have to submit a Freedom of Information Act when I got home to see if I could get a copy.\n\n\"Mister Vainio, have you ever heard of an organization called Vanguard?\"\n\nI shook my head and glanced at Nidhi, who did the same.\n\nHe handed me a business card. \"Give me a call if that changes, all right?\"\n\n\"Enough chatter,\" said Rowland. \"Get moving. Blackwell, make sure they sign out with me before they leave.\"\n\nBlackwell walked us toward the ambulances. The vehicles provided some degree of privacy, but plenty of gawkers strained to see what was happening. One of the EMTs moved to intercept us.\n\n\"They're here to help,\" said Blackwell. \"He's one of those book wizards.\"\n\nI moved toward a woman with a blanket around her shoulders. Her knee and thigh were bandaged, and blood matted her scalp, but none of her injuries looked severe. I tugged a small, mostly empty crystal vial from a heavily padded pocket inside my jacket. \"My name's Isaac. Have you ever read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"My niece loves those movies.\"\n\n\"This is from the book. It's the healing cordial Lucy was given by Father Christmas. A single drop will heal you inside and out.\"\n\n\"You can't use magic on her,\" said the EMT.\n\n\"Except in life-or-death situations,\" I snapped. \"This woman was mauled by a werewolf. Do you have anything in your ambulance that will stave off lycanthropy?\"\n\nThe woman's face went pale. Nidhi shot me a think-before-you-speak look, then took the woman's hand and began talking in a low, calm voice. \"You're going to be fine. What's your name?\"\n\n\"Margaret. Margaret Edwards.\"\n\nI peered over the top of my glasses, searching for magical residue in her bloodstream. She was clean. No trace of lycanthropy or other magical infection, but I saw no need to mention that until after I healed her injuries. I'd be damned if I was going to let anyone else suffer tonight if I could help it. \"Do me a favor, Margaret, and stick out your tongue?\"\n\nShe did so, and I used a dropper to transfer a tiny bead of Lucy's potion onto her tongue. She swallowed, pain or shock preventing her from asking questions. Within seconds, her body started to relax. She poked cautiously at her knee. \"That's it? I'm... better?\"\n\n\"One hundred percent human,\" I said. \"Not a trace of werewolf in you.\"\n\nShe tentatively tested her bandaged leg. \"Thank you.\"\n\nThe EMT looked from me to Margaret and back. \"I'm convinced. Bring that bottle and come with me.\"\n\nNext up was a young man on a stretcher, covered in blood-soaked bandages and shallow bite marks. The medic working on him shouted, \"I can't get the bites to clot up.\"\n\nI stepped past another man who lay shivering beneath several blankets. His sleeves were torn and his face bloody, but he appeared otherwise undamaged. \"You'll want to get that one in handcuffs until I can get to him.\"\n\n\"Why?\" asked Blackwell.\n\n\"Trust me.\" I stopped beside the medic and removed my glasses. My brain automatically began cataloging the different species of werewolf that might have inflicted this kind of damage, studying the height and angle of the bites, the size of the jaws, the depth of the claw marks...\n\nI could only make out scraps of magical text: remnants of the werewolf's curse swimming through the injuries, preventing the body from healing itself. I reached for the worst of the bites, a deep wound on the forearm. \"How many werewolves were there?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. I didn't know what was happening until one of the kids screamed. I saw a woman fall, and then something hit me from the side.\"\n\nSomeone shoved a pair of gloves at me. I ignored them and focused on the text, letting the rest of the world blur away.\n\n\"This is going to feel weird.\" I pressed my fingers into the wound like it was a book.\n\nHe cried out, more in shock than pain. I wasn't physically reaching into muscle and bone, any more than I tore the paper pages when I performed libriomancy. I felt Nidhi step in beside me, heard her whispering to the EMT and the patient both.\n\nHeat spread up my arm. I pulled the words and their magic into my own flesh, then dissolved them into nothingness.\n\n\"Did the werewolves say anything?\" I asked, my voice low.\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"You're going to be fine.\" I grabbed the healing cordial and gave him a drop to cure the physical wounds. \"If you were hoping for cool scars to show off after your fight with the werewolves, I'm afraid I've got bad news.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, bad news?\" He stared at his now-undamaged arm and wiped the blood away. \"Oh!\"\n\nI was already moving back to the fellow on the ground. He was going to be harder to save. This had to be another of the chaperones for the Boy Scout tour. He was dressed too casually to be a government employee, in old jeans and an oversized pink hoodie. His scalp was a mess of matted blood and hair, but the skin was smooth and undamaged. Officer Blackwell had cuffed his hands behind his back.\n\n\"What's happening to me?\" Tears cut through the blood on the man's face.\n\n\"Lycanthropy\u2014werewolfism\u2014is contagious.\" I sat in front of him, out of arm's reach. I didn't think he could snap those cuffs, but I wasn't positive. A low ripple of flame passed over Smudge. I shoved my coat back to keep it clear of his cage. \"Some people catch it by accident after reading a book. It's rare, but someone with magical talent who doesn't know what they're doing can reach into the book and draw the infection into themselves without realizing it. That's how most strains of lycanthropy and vampirism came into existence. More often, it's spread by bites.\"\n\n\"You mean like rabies?\" He held up his arms. \"The doctor said the blood wasn't mine. She couldn't find any puncture wounds. She said I was just in shock.\"\n\n\"You probably are.\" I studied the infection as I talked. The text had made its way through his body, binding to blood and bones. It was one thing to counter a surface-level infection, to pull scraps of magic from an open wound. Once that magic bound itself to the victim, most strains were impossible to cure. Including this one, from the look of it.\n\n\"I was chaperoning my son's field trip.\" His voice cracked. \"I haven't seen Jaiden since the attack.\"\n\n\"The children are all fine,\" said Nidhi. \"The attackers weren't interested in hurting them.\"\n\n\"I've explained that to him three times,\" murmured one of the medics. \"He keeps forgetting.\"\n\nMedical training, both for nonhuman patients and for supernatural injuries, was another area where New Millennium should have been doing more. I understood the need for caution with trials and research, but the average medical professional knew next to nothing about magic. How could they be expected to do their jobs in a situation like this?\n\n\"You'll be back with Jaiden soon,\" I said. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Will. Are you a doctor?\"\n\n\"Better. I'm a librarian.\" The magic was strongest near his throat. I touched my fingertips to the skin of his neck. His pulse was far too rapid. I tried reaching for the text as I'd done with the other victim. When I touched the magic, he jerked and stiffened like I'd jolted him with an electric shock. Both the EMT and Officer Blackwell moved in to catch him by the arms.\n\n\"What did you do?\" snapped the EMT.\n\n\"Just getting a sense of what did this.\" The text of his curse was different from what I'd read on the previous patient. That confirmed at least two werewolves, then. \"What did the werewolves look like?\"\n\n\"You're supposed to be healing them, not interrogating them,\" snapped Blackwell.\n\n\"If I have a better idea what kind of werewolf did this, it'll be a lot easier to heal him.\"\n\n\"Tall and lean,\" said Will. \"Like a man, but with a wolf's face, covered in black fur. I thought he was wearing a mask at first, like this was a gag or something. He was wearing sweatpants and a Red Wings jersey. Oh, and blue Crocs.\"\n\n\"Loose-fitting clothes. He'd planned on changing forms.\" Not all werewolves could change at will. The fact that this one had an intermediate, more-or-less humanoid form narrowed things down as well.\n\nI grabbed a Star Trek novel from my jacket. \"Do you read science fiction, Will?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"That's too bad. Because this is going to be really cool.\"\n\nHis eyes went round as my fingers disappeared into the book.\n\n\"What else you can tell us about the attack?\" I asked.\n\n\"I heard they killed two guards,\" Will said numbly. \"Someone said the governor and attorney general were both in the building. There was so much screaming...\"\n\nGovernor Sullivan and Attorney General Duncan were strong proponents for anti-magic legislation. If this attack was about them, it meant someone had known they'd be here this evening. Either by hacking into their schedules, or because someone on the inside passed the information along. Possibly the same someone who'd arranged this after-hours tour for the Boy Scouts?\n\nI focused on the book, drawing the magic of a particular scene into myself and once again walking the line between fiction and reality as I worked to bend the story's magic to my particular needs.\n\nA few years back, I'd have said what I was hoping to do was impossible, but recent crises and conflicts had shown how little we truly knew about the rules and limitations of libriomancy, and of magic in general. If things continued at this pace, we could be looking at a magical revolution in more than one sense of the word.\n\n\"Is there anything more we should know?\" I asked.\n\n\"Last warning, Mister Vainio,\" said Blackwell. \"Just do your job and let us do ours.\"\n\nWill shook his head. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it.\" I gave him a reassuring smile and touched his chest, leaving a vaguely hand-shaped collection of golden sparks.\n\n\"What's happening to him? Did you set him on fire?\" Officer Blackwell shoved me to one side and reached toward Will.\n\n\"Keep your hands back if you don't want to lose them,\" I snapped.\n\nWill's entire torso was glittering now. Light passed through him, growing brighter. A high-pitched hum filled the air. Will screamed.\n\n\"You're all right,\" I shouted. \"You're not on fire, and you're going to be fine.\"\n\nBlackwell reached for my arm. \"Whatever you're doing\u2014\"\n\nNidhi moved between us. \"Would you interrupt a doctor in the middle of surgery?\"\n\n\"Will isn't in pain. He's just scared.\" I kept one hand outstretched, channeling the book's magic. \"Probably because a cop just told him he was on fire.\"\n\nThe screams began to fade. So did Will himself. Seconds later, he vanished completely.\n\nBlackwell stepped back and drew his sidearm. \"Isaac Vainio, stand up and place your hands on your head.\"\n\n\"If I do that, he dies.\" The humming sound returned, bringing with it the golden outline of my patient. I heard shouts and people running toward us, but I couldn't look around to see what was happening. I hoped nobody shot me before I finished. It would be great if they didn't shoot me after, either.\n\nThe light and sparks died, and Will sat before us once again. He was completely whole and completely baffled.\n\n\"What happened?\" He looked around, then down at himself. His clothes were intact. The handcuffs were gone. \"Did my blood sugar drop? I checked it after lunch, but I can't remember\u2014\"\n\n\"That's probably for the best,\" I said. \"My name's Isaac. You're all right. Your son Jaiden is waiting for you. I'm sure one of these people would be happy to take you to him.\"\n\nBlackwell seized my jacket collar and hauled me to my feet. Sweat dotted his face as he swung me around. He jammed the barrel of his gun into my ribs like he was trying to stab me. \"What the hell did you do? Why doesn't he remember anything?\"\n\nThe walls wavered around me. Between healing Will and Blackwell's manhandling, I felt like I'd just stumbled off the world's worst carnival ride.\n\n\"I'm guessing this is your first close experience with magic?\" Nidhi said calmly. \"It can be disconcerting.\"\n\n\"Stand down, Blackwell!\" Officer Rowland stood about eight feet away, along with several other police officers and two FBI agents, most of whom had drawn their own guns.\n\n\"It's an old Star Trek trick,\" I said slowly, trying not to move. \"In the book, one of the crew was infected with an alien virus. They use the transporter beam's pattern buffer to restore her to an earlier state, before the infection. It's a complete deus ex machina, but\u2014\"\n\n\"You waved your hand, and he fucking disintegrated!\"\n\n\"I what?\" asked Will. \"I'm sorry, who are these people? What's going on?\"\n\nThe EMT who'd been checking Will rose. \"Isaac just saved this man's life, Officer.\"\n\nWill blinked. \"You did?\"\n\n\"It was pretty cool, yah. Also, for what it's worth, your body is like an hour younger now.\" Smudge was pacing in his cage. Smoke rose from his back, and his attention was fixed on Blackwell.\n\n\"Officer Blackwell.\" Nidhi's voice was sharper, more authoritative, with an emphasis on officer. Stressing his role and responsibilities. \"Isaac is no threat. Helping those people took a great deal out of him. Look how his hands are trembling. He'd probably fall and break his nose if you weren't holding him upright. In the meantime, there are other people who need help.\"\n\nShe was exaggerating, but not as much as I would have liked. Pulling a potion or ray-gun out of a book was one thing. Shaping raw magic and belief had a bigger price tag.\n\nBlackwell glanced toward my hip. \"That thing in the cage. What the fuck is it?\"\n\nGreat. Not only was he freaking out about magic, he was probably arachnophobic, too. \"His name's Smudge. He's harmless. Mostly harmless. He probably just wants some candy. I can\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't move! Keep your hands where I can see them!\"\n\n\"Daniel Blackwell, drop your weapon and back away now!\" Rowland raised her own gun. \"Nobody wants to do this, Dan. Think about Lisa.\"\n\n\"But he\u2014Did you really cure him?\" Blackwell stared past me toward Will. \"Or did you kill him and replace him with... with whatever that is?\"\n\nIt was a fair question, one science fiction had struggled with pretty much since the first story about teleportation. And there was no way in hell I was going to get into that discussion with Officer Twitchy.\n\n\"My first experience with magic was a sixteen-year-old client,\" Nidhi said, her attention fully on Blackwell. \"He'd been complaining about hearing voices. None of the medications I prescribed had helped. I was afraid I'd have to have him committed. It turned out he was magically gifted, but nobody realized it. He'd turned to reading to escape the stress of high school. He was so desperate to escape the real world, he connected with fictional ones. The romance novels he'd been going through had convinced him he was the son of a Scottish lord. It's called Type Two Partial Libriomantic Possession. His accent was terrible.\"\n\nBlackwell appeared to be listening. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"The Porters interrupted a session as he was trying to seduce me. They eventually taught him how to get the delusions under control, and to use his magic. They helped him. Without the Porters, he could have hurt someone, or else he would have ended up medicated and locked up somewhere. Instead, he's now grown up and married with three kids. They live in Copenhagen. He sends me a Christmas card every year.\"\n\nStandard Porter procedure at the time would have been to adjust Nidhi's memories of the encounter in order to conceal the existence of magic. She must have impressed them a great deal if they'd offered her a job instead.\n\n\"The idea that magic was real terrified me,\" she continued. \"It took away my understanding of the world. I had to question everything I'd learned, everything I believed. Nothing felt real anymore.\"\n\nBlackwell was nodding. I just did my best not to move. I hated feeling helpless, but if I was the one triggering his panic, anything I said or did would likely make things worse.\n\n\"I don't know how the police handle scenes like this, day after day, without breaking down.\" Nidhi pointed to the wounded, and to the capitol building behind us. \"I'm running on nothing but adrenaline right now. I'll probably fall apart tonight when I get home and this is all over.\"\n\n\"You never really get used to it,\" Blackwell admitted.\n\nNidhi nodded. \"You've seen the ugly side of magic in there. You also saw magic save a life. Focus on that. We're on the same side.\"\n\nSlowly, he lowered his gun. Rowland moved in quickly to take it from him. Two others caught Blackwell's arms and escorted him away from me.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" asked Agent Steinkamp.\n\nI sagged. \"It's not the first time someone's wanted to kill me.\"\n\n\"It's surprising how often it happens,\" Nidhi added.\n\n\"Thanks.\" I squeezed her shoulder. She nodded once.\n\n\"Nice work, Doctor Shah,\" said Rowland. \"I'm sorry about Blackwell. He's a good cop, and a good man. I've never seen him lose it like that.\"\n\nSmudge looked to be calming down, which meant I was no longer in immediate danger of being shot. \"Does anyone else need magical treatment?\"\n\n\"Several others should be checked for infection, including the witnesses we're questioning across the street.\" Steinkamp glanced over his shoulder. \"Before that, there's something else I'd like you to look at.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I said wearily. \"Just answer me one question?\"\n\n\"Shoot.\" He grimaced. \"Sorry, bad choice of words.\"\n\n\"We arrived about a half hour after the news broke,\" I said. \"If I'm remembering right, the nearest FBI field office is in Detroit, about an hour away with clear traffic, eh?\"\n\n\"That's right,\" he said cautiously.\n\n\"So how is it the FBI got here before we did?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "STATEMENT BY DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY LAWRENCE MCGINLEY ON THE ATTACKS IN CALIFORNIA, NEW YORK, OREGON, AND MICHIGAN",
                "text": "[ For Immediate Release ]\n\n[ DHS Press Office Contact: 202-282-8010 ]\n\nTonight, the United States and the world witnessed a series of cowardly and unspeakable attacks that resulted in the loss of at least fourteen lives. Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.\n\nThe Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are working with state and local law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice, and to prevent future incidents.\n\nWe encourage the American people to remain calm and vigilant. \"If You See Something, Say Something.\"\n\nFor the past year, we have worked to improve our security measures, seen and unseen, in preparation for magical attacks. We will continue that work, using the lessons learned tonight, to make our country safer.\n\nThese murderers used their power to sow fear. They will find only resolve. They sought to spread violence. They will see justice.\n\nThis is a time of tension and change. Whatever magic our enemies might bring to bear against us, they will succeed only in bringing us together. No magic in the world can break our strength and unity as a nation.\n\n\"The world has never been kind to people like us. I told my Porters their priority was to protect the world from magic, and to protect magic from the world. I made it my priority to protect the Porters.\"\n\n\"Were you protecting me when you tried to take my magic and my memories?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Next time, don't.\"\n\n\"Next time?\"\n\n\"You know what I mean.\"\n\n\"I kept you alive. I preserved your mind and your sanity, more or less.\"\n\n\"You took a part of me.\"\n\n\"Which you eventually reclaimed. Many never have that chance. Ask those who fell at the hands of Archbishop Adolph von Nassau.\"\n\n\"Von Nassau. He started the Baden-Palatine War.\"\n\n\"The act of pulling your murdered friends and colleagues from a magical inferno changes you forever. History will tell you it was a war over the Archbishop's throne, but it was far more. Von Nassau hoped to destroy me and my discoveries. I underestimated his resolve, and I failed to act.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"You're beginning to discover your power and potential. That is when you and those around you are most vulnerable. The world is larger than ever before. You can't help everyone, Isaac. They won't let you. Where will you focus your energies? Will you hesitate, or will you act?\"\n\n\"Did you learn anything about who did this?\" asked Agent Steinkamp.\n\n\"We're only here to help the injured,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"Don't bullshit me, Doctor.\"\n\n\"I treated bites from at least two different werewolves.\" I searched the crowd for Lena. \"You haven't answered my question.\"\n\nHe led us toward the capitol building. We stopped at the front entrance, where another FBI agent handed us paper-thin, elastic-rimmed shoe covers and rubber gloves.\n\n\"You're sure about this?\" asked Rowland.\n\n\"I've worked with Porters before,\" said Steinkamp. \"I've got clearance to bring them on as temporary independent contractors. Washington wants this solved yesterday.\"\n\nI looked back and forth between them. \"Who's in charge here, the police or the FBI?\"\n\n\"Technically?\" Steinkamp cocked a thumb at Rowland. \"State Police, until we establish this was an act of magical terrorism.\"\n\n\"You asked about a group called Vanguard,\" I said.\n\n\"That's right, I did.\" His expression was neutral. \"Let's go.\"\n\nHe led us inside past armed guards, up the steps and to the rotunda. The capitol was almost as crowded and busy as the grounds surrounding it. Everywhere I looked, men and women were taking photographs. Others pulled fingerprints. They appeared to be concentrating their efforts in a few specific locations, including the doorway to the governor's office. Blood dripped down one of the wooden columns to our right.\n\n\"This way.\" Steinkamp led us to the body of a young man.\n\nI was no medical examiner, but even I could tell he hadn't been killed by werewolves. I counted six bloody gunshots, most to the torso. \"He wasn't human.\" I peered over the tops of my glasses. \"You think this is one of the killers.\"\n\nHe and Rowland looked at one another, but neither spoke.\n\nI crouched beside the body. \"Back to my earlier question. The FBI was on site, set up, and working within a half hour or so of the attack. Either you used magic to get from Detroit to Lansing impossibly fast, or else you were already here, or at least on the way, when it happened.\"\n\n\"You're right.\" Steinkamp scowled at the dead werewolf. \"We were driving down to arrest this guy.\"\n\n\"If you knew what he was going to do\u2014\" I started.\n\n\"We didn't. We've been watching him as part of a human smuggling operation. Inhuman smuggling, to be precise.\" He shook his head in disgust. \"Homeland Security picked up whispers that they were on to us, and he was getting ready to go wild.\"\n\n\"But he decided to try to assassinate Governor Sullivan first?\" Nidhi paced around me, examining the body. \"That doesn't make sense.\"\n\nRowland glanced around, as if to make sure nobody else was listening. \"He didn't try to kill the governor.\"\n\nDamn. That was the first official confirmation I'd heard. \"What about the Attorney General?\"\n\n\"Both men were dead when we arrived,\" said Steinkamp. \"We'll be announcing it to the press shortly. In the meantime, what can you tell me about our killer?\"\n\nI pulled off my glasses and tucked them into my shirt pocket. \"He's Lykanthropos Stroudus. From The Golem's Eye. The Porters can email you the full info on his species. I'm pretty sure he came here because someone had been messing with his thoughts.\"\n\n\"Explain,\" snapped Rowland.\n\nI dropped to all fours, getting as close to the body as I could without touching the drying blood. I moved one hand over the face, like a child reaching for the special effects at a 3D movie. \"A lot of magic fades with death. The Golem's Eye is strongest, and easy to read. But I can see another text overlaid with the first.\"\n\n\"Can you read it?\" asked Steinkamp.\n\n\"It's too degraded.\"\n\nNidhi turned her attention from the body to me, her brows crinkling together. I avoided eye contact.\n\n\"Are there werewolf species who can control thoughts like that?\" asked Rowland. \"An alpha wolf or something, ordering the others to help?\"\n\n\"I don't think a were did this.\" I sat back. \"There are books I can use to look into the past and hopefully give you a better idea exactly what happened. The spells manipulate real light, so you'd be able to photograph the attackers and broadcast their faces throughout the state.\"\n\n\"Magical evidence isn't admissible in court, and you know it.\" Rowland scowled as she listened to a report from one of her officers via radio. \"Defense attorneys would argue it was all illusion, that you could condemn anyone you liked.\"\n\n\"More importantly, we've got plenty of security footage for that,\" added Steinkamp. \"We'll be running facial recognition against FBI and DHS databases.\"\n\n\"Besides,\" said Nidhi, \"you're done with magic for the day.\"\n\nRowland looked up. \"What's that mean? Do you libriomancers run out of gas after a certain number of spells?\"\n\n\"Sort of.\" Given the physical damage I'd done to my eyes last year, Nicola Pallas had ordered me to limit the amount of magic I did in any twenty-four hour period. Recreating Will had put me close to that limit. I massaged the tingling numbness from my hands. Close to that limit, or maybe a little beyond it.\n\n\"How do you plan to stop the other weres?\" I asked. \"Stroudus are tough, but they can obviously be killed by normal bullets. That won't work on most species. Pepper spray will be effective on some. Heightened olfactory senses make them more sensitive. Don't bother with a Taser. In most cases, that'll just piss 'em off.\"\n\n\"You have something that will take them down?\" asked a passing CSI. \"I didn't sign up for this shit. The academy didn't teach us how to deal with ghouls and goblins.\"\n\n\"Oh, goblins are easy,\" I said. \"They're cowards. They'll run away if you so much as look at them cross-eyed.\"\n\nHe looked from me to Rowland, probably trying to tell whether I was joking. She waved him away. \"The feds have agents who've been trained on this sort of perp. They'll be helping us bring the others in. Is there anything else you can tell us about this one?\"\n\n\"The Golem's Eye came out in 2004, which means he might have been a werewolf for more than a decade, but he wasn't born that way.\" Whoever this had been, he didn't look like a kidnapper or murderer. He reminded me of my high school gym teacher, complete with bushy brown mustache, broad shoulders, and tight-laced high-tops.\n\n\"When you take the body out, make sure he's covered,\" said Nidhi. \"You'll want to contact his family as soon as possible to arrange for his burial, once you're done examining him.\"\n\n\"We know the procedure,\" Steinkamp said.\n\nWerewolves were touchy about proper respect for the dead. \"I can ask around up north, see if anyone knows our killer.\"\n\n\"We've got this under control,\" he said. \"We'll be interviewing his friends and neighbors, as well as local werewolves.\"\n\n\"You think they'll talk to the police or the FBI?\" asked Nidhi. \"Pack loyalties are as strong as any family bond.\"\n\n\"But they'd talk to you?\" Rowland sounded skeptical.\n\n\"Most werewolves would tell me to go piss into a fan, but I've got a couple of friends outside Copper River. Give me this guy's name, and I can find out if there's been any gossip.\"\n\nHe and Rowland looked at one another.\n\n\"Sandy Boyle.\" Steinkamp grabbed my arm. \"Anything you find out, you call me, got it?\"\n\nI gave him a halfhearted salute.\n\n\"Before we take you over to check the other witnesses,\" he continued, \"would you mind looking at the victims? We want to be sure they won't come back as mons\u2014as whatever killed them.\"\n\n\"You're thinking of vampires, not werewolves. With werewolves, once you're dead, that's it.\"\n\n\"Are you one hundred percent certain, Mr. Vainio?\"\n\nI thought briefly about other rules of magic I'd been one hundred percent certain about, and how many of those rules had ended up bent or broken. I extended a hand toward the door. \"After you.\"\n\nBoth the governor and the attorney general were thoroughly dead, and no magic was going to change that fact. So were the three other bodies I examined.\n\nRowland handed me off to a woman from the Lansing Police Department, who took me to check the other witnesses. LPD had a station right across North Capitol Avenue, which was where the FBI and police were completing their interviews.\n\nI treated three more people, using Lucy's Narnian potion to heal the wounds beneath their bandages. Thankfully, only one of the three had been infected with lycanthropy, and it hadn't taken hold yet, so the potion was able to eradicate that from his system as well.\n\nBy the time we emerged, the streets were mostly clear. The mayor had declared an emergency curfew, and police were working to break up the few remaining groups. All that remained were reporters and law enforcement.\n\nLena waited for us outside of the station. \"The politicians aren't wasting any time. Senator Keeler gave a speech a half hour ago, calling for tighter regulation of inhumans and magic-users.\"\n\n\"Of course he did,\" I said wearily.\n\n\"He also wants increased border security, and an extension of the zero-immigration policy on inhumans. He said Homeland Security would be investigating the possibility that these attacks were orchestrated by America's enemies.\"\n\nLena had rented a green Chevy Cavalier while Nidhi and I were inside with the other witnesses. I climbed into the back seat and called Helen DeYoung's cellphone. \"Helen? It's Isaac.\"\n\n\"You all right, Isaac? You sound\u2014\"\n\n\"Drunk, I know. It's a glitch in the phone implant. Have you and Jeff heard what happened in Lansing?\"\n\nHelen and Jeff used to live in Tamarack, one town over from Copper River. They'd abandoned their house and retreated into the wild after Governor Sullivan signed the order condemning the old mining town. Nothing remained now but empty roads and bulldozed lots.\n\nIn some ways, the move had done them good. Helen said they were in better physical shape these days, and their diets had improved. So had their sex lives, which they both insisted on chatting about in impressive detail. Werewolves were notoriously open about sex. They could talk about their escapades like a Red Wings fan going on about game six of the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals. But at this point, I think they talked about it mostly to make me squirm.\n\nTheir pack tried to stay within range of the cell towers, and Jeff insisted on running into town for his weekly beer runs, but they weren't always in touch with world events.\n\n\"We got a call earlier tonight. What the hell happened down there?\"\n\nI filled them in while Lena maneuvered through the blocked-off streets of downtown Lansing, crawling toward 496. \"Do you or Jeff know a fellow named Sandy Boyle? Stroudus werewolf. I'm told he was involved with trafficking inhumans.\"\n\n\"Doesn't ring a bell. Hold on.\" Her voice went muffled. \"Jeff? You know anyone named Sandy Boyle?\"\n\n\"Who's asking?\" Jeff yelled. \"If it's that pug-faced asshole from the collection agency, tell him I'm not ratting anyone out. They think they can harass us about back taxes on property they stole\u2014\"\n\n\"Calm your fur before you give yourself another heart attack. It's Isaac.\"\n\nI heard Jeff snatch the phone from his wife. \"Isaac! Is this about that mess in Lansing?\"\n\n\"Yah. We don't know much about who was behind it, but at least two of them were werewolves.\"\n\n\"Aw, shit. Listen, I don't know any Sandy Boyle, but the packs are fragmented these days. Most of us are laying low. Some of the young pups have been grumbling about fighting back against the humans. The older wolves are keeping 'em in line so far, but that ain't gonna last forever. They've been turning more of your lot, too. Plenty of humans want the strength and sexiness of being a werewolf. Truth be told, some of us think it's a good idea to boost our numbers for whatever comes next.\"\n\nSandy Boyle could have been a relatively new convert, headstrong and caught up in the flush of power. \"What about a group called Vanguard?\"\n\n\"Where'd you hear that name?\" he asked cautiously.\n\n\"A fellow from the FBI mentioned it.\"\n\nHis voice dropped a full octave, not quite a growl. \"You're working for the feds now?\"\n\n\"You know better, Jeff.\"\n\n\"Helen and I, we've learned not to take things for granted these days.\" Jeff sighed. \"Early this year, we got a call from a fellow who said he was with Vanguard. He gave us the heads-up to get out of Tamarack. Offered to help us relocate somewhere safe.\"\n\n\"So you've worked with them?\"\n\n\"Nah. We don't need no outsiders to help us find a home. But it's thanks to them we had time to gather up our belongings and vacate before the National Guard showed up with guns and bulldozers. Otherwise, things would've gotten a lot uglier.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Jeff. Now what's this Helen was saying about a heart attack?\"\n\n\"Helen talks too much. She\u2014ow! Dammit, I'm on the phone! I'm fine, but I'm not a pup anymore. The first week of running around and howling at the moon damn near did me in.\"\n\n\"Why the hell didn't you call me?\" I knew why. Jeff's pride was going to get him killed one of these days.\n\n\"Doc called it a minor incident. As long as I lay off the burgers and ribs from Emma's Diner and stick with meat I catch myself, I should be fine.\"\n\n\"You're not fine, you stubborn son of a bitch,\" Helen shouted. \"And if you skip your pills one more time, I'll grab you by the scruff of the neck and shove them down your throat!\"\n\nI smothered a laugh. \"Jeff, if you have any more trouble, so much as a damn twinge, you call me, got it? Otherwise I'll come up there right now and microchip you like a runaway Chihuahua so I can keep tabs on you.\"\n\n\"Chihuahua. Now that's good eating.\"\n\n\"Jeff...\"\n\n\"Yah, fine, whatever. 'Sides, I thought you weren't allowed to do your healing mojo on folks.\"\n\n\"Not on humans. What are you going to do, turn me over to the cops?\"\n\n\"Bastards won't be happy until they've thrown us all in kennels. You watch your ass, Isaac.\"\n\n\"You do the same.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"I'd rather watch Helen's. You ever romped naked in the woods? You and Lena ought to try it one of these days. Just check for ticks when you're done.\"\n\n\"I'm serious, Jeff. The governor and attorney general are both dead. Whatever heat you've been dealing with up there is about to get a lot worse.\"\n\n\"Good to know, thanks. I'll call you if I hear anything.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" I hung up. \"Jeff and Helen don't know the late Mr. Boyle.\"\n\n\"Have you checked in with Nicola yet?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"I'm sure she's dealing with enough right now. I can follow up with her tomorrow.\"\n\nLena and Nidhi glanced at one another.\n\n\"When we make it to the highway\u2014\" I began.\n\n\"Head toward Detroit,\" Lena said. \"Got it.\"\n\n\"How'd you know that?\"\n\nIt was Nidhi who answered. \"You told the police and the FBI Sandy Boyle's thoughts had been manipulated, but I could tell you knew more than you were saying. I thought maybe it was another Porter who'd done it and you were trying to protect them, but if so, you would have called Nicola first.\"\n\n\"That narrows it down to the handful of inhumans on your friends list who can mess with people's minds,\" Lena continued smoothly. \"Deb DeGeorge is the closest, and she's definitely not above a stunt like this. With her being an ex-libriomancer and former friend, you'd want to investigate personally rather than handing her over to the authorities. Is she still living over on Benson?\"\n\n\"I think so, yah.\" So much for my dramatic announcement.\n\n\"Try to relax, would you?\" Lena said without looking back. \"I can feel your tension from here. I like being attuned to my lovers, but you're making my neck tighten up.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" I rubbed my eyes and leaned back in the seat. Between the hearing, the attack in Lansing, and the amount of magic I'd burned through, I was spent. Sleep would help, but magic tended to leave you hyper and insomniac. It also destroyed the appetite. Not a healthy combination. I grabbed a protein bar from my jacket and forced myself to start eating.\n\n\"It's not just you.\"\n\nNidhi snorted. \"It's been a rough night for everyone. My job has given me plenty of practice at feeling powerless. That doesn't mean I like it.\"\n\n\"Tonight could send everything we've been working toward for the past year straight to hell,\" I said. Whatever Gutenberg's flaws, and there had been plenty, at least when he'd been running things, I hadn't spent all my time jumping through red tape and worrying about political bullshit. \"New Millennium was supposed to show the world what magic could do. Instead, the government is pissed because we won't make them weapons, and the rest of the world is freaked out because they think we're making weapons. Do you realize we could have had a working space elevator two months ago?\"\n\nSometimes I wondered if libriomancers like Weronika Bulat had the right idea. Weronika was one of more than twenty people who'd quit the Porters and gone rogue. She spent her time traveling from hospital to hospital in Poland and healing the most critical patients. She was saving lives, and many considered her a national hero. At the same time, the ease with which she evaded hospital security only fed fears of what we could do.\n\nThe song on the radio came to an end. None of us spoke as a somber DJ announced that Governor Sullivan and Attorney General Duncan had been murdered by werewolves. He went on to remind listeners that Lansing, East Lansing, and surrounding suburbs were under curfew. \"We're getting reports that a group of Michigan State students have gathered in an impromptu protest demanding stronger regulation of magic. They've rallied near the site of the campus library, which was destroyed several years ago in what's now understood to be an internal Porter conflict. Another group is counterprotesting across the street. Campus police are threatening to deploy tear gas to forestall a riot.\"\n\nI thought about Callie, the pizza delivery girl who'd gotten us to Lansing, and wondered if she was part of the counterprotest. \"We're not the ones who demolished the library.\"\n\n\"They're not protesting because of the library,\" said Nidhi. \"They're protesting because they're angry and afraid.\"\n\n\"They're not the only ones.\" There had to be a better way, one that didn't lead to fear and violence and war. But damn if I could find it.\n\n[ Detroit Salt Mine ]\n\n[ From Michipedia, the free encyclopedia of Michigan facts and history ]\n\nNote: This article may not meet Michipedia standards for neutrality. Please see the Discussion Page for further information.\n\nThe Detroit Salt Mine was established in 1910 beneath the city of Detroit, Michigan. The mine soon produced 8000 tons of rock salt each month from the salt beds more than 1000 feet below the surface.\n\nThe mine was believed to cover approximately 1500 acres underground. Customers included leather tanneries and food suppliers. Today, the Detroit Salt Mine primarily sells rock salt for deicing roads.\n\nLast year, it was discovered that the Detroit Salt and Manufacturing Company had dug an additional mine two miles away. This second mine was operational from 1909 to 1916 before being shut down and eventually erased from the public record.\n\nThis hive of tunnels and caves deep beneath the surface was an ideal nesting place for a community of vampires. They occupied the second mine for almost 100 years, hidden from the world and the potentially deadly rays of the sun, and emerging at night to hunt and feed.[Citation Needed]\n\nDetroit Edison estimates the electricity siphoned from their grid to power the vampire nest cost the people of Detroit at least $926 million.[Citation Needed] The vampires also tapped into gas, water, and sewage services.\n\nEarlier this year, a vampire murdered 13-year-old Jennifer Wilson.[Citation Needed] The people of Detroit responded with riots, demanding the authorities hunt and destroy the vampires and their home. Forces from the National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers eventually discovered the second mine and used explosives to collapse the tunnels.\n\nNo one knows how many vampires lived beneath the city of Detroit. Estimates range from a few hundred to more than twenty thousand. A letter to the Detroit Free Press written by someone claiming to be a vampire condemned the destruction of their home and blamed Michigan governor John Sullivan for the murder of a thousand vampires who died when the tunnels collapsed.\n\nSullivan responded that every effort had been made to warn the vampires of the coming demolition, including radio and television broadcasts, and leaflets dropped into the mine. He said he regretted the loss of life, but stopped short of apologizing, saying his priority was the safety and security of the people of Michigan, and likening the vampire community to a hornet's nest in a basement.\n\n\"New libriomancers are all the same. So optimistic. So caught up in awe and wonder, eager to learn what they can do.\"\n\n\"Some of us never outgrow that stage.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, who did you think I was referring to when I mentioned new libriomancers?\"\n\n\"I've been doing this stuff for more than a decade.\"\n\n\"Talk to me when you've finished your first century. If you survive. I'm not criticizing you, you know. The passion and excitement of people like yourself have advanced our knowledge of magic tremendously over the years. But it's equally important to discover your limits, and to accept there will be things you can't do. To recognize that some problems can't be fixed by magic. Some can't be fixed at all.\"\n\n\"Or maybe you just haven't looked hard enough for a solution.\"\n\nI tried to stretch out in the back seat to catch a nap during the drive. I failed. After a night like tonight, I usually needed to pop at least two Melatonin capsules to get my brain to settle enough to let me sleep, but if I did that, I'd be too drowsy when we reached Deb's house. Instead, I pulled out my smartphone to check my work email.\n\nFirst up was a report from Charles Brice on the side effects of his new bionic eye. The man was going to kill himself one of these days. Fortunately, his latest \"upgrade\" had caused only minor migraines and occasional double vision, an afterimage that appeared to come from the book he'd used to create the eye.\n\nI signed off on the report and brought up the next message, an order for the following month's supply of animal feed. Reading through Vince's meticulous line-item breakdown was almost as good as the Melatonin.\n\nUnfortunately, the very next message burnt the fatigue from my thoughts. I jabbed the screen and dialed Charles.\n\n\"Tell Potts the answer is no,\" I said as soon as he answered.\n\n\"I see you got my email.\"\n\n\"To paraphrase my friend Helen, New Millennium is not DHS's bitch. We're not building weapons, we're not giving them surveillance tech, and I'm sure as hell not letting them use the Gateway Project as a replacement for drone strikes.\"\n\n\"I don't like the idea either, but Gateway would be more precise,\" he said. \"It could reduce civilian casualties and eliminate a lot of bad people.\"\n\n\"Charles, do you know how many high-ranking government officials consider us to be bad people?\"\n\n\"Hey, I'm just playing devil's advocate.\"\n\n\"Since when did the devil need your help?\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\"\n\nNidhi twisted around and touched my knee. I bit back my retort. Charles had a gift for getting under my skin. I took a series of slow breaths. \"Nothing. It's been a long night. I'm probably not going to be back tomorrow morning.\"\n\n\"I thought your niece was getting her leg fixed in the morning.\"\n\n\"She is.\" I closed my eyes.\n\n\"No wonder you're worked up. What do you want me to tell Potts?\"\n\nRussell Potts was one of two civilians on New Millennium's four-person Board of Directors. Fortunately, the other board members\u2014Nicola Pallas and Th\u00e9r\u00e8se St. Pierre from the Porters, along with Doctor Heather Neuman from the National Institutes of Health\u2014had consistently voted down his efforts to turn our work toward offensive military magic. \"What I want you to tell him...\" I shook my head. \"I'll set up a meeting to talk with him next week.\"\n\n\"He doesn't like waiting.\"\n\n\"Good. Make it two weeks.\" I hung up the phone. \"I've decided to relocate to the moon to pursue a career as an astrohermit. Either of you interested in a job as Director of Research?\"\n\n\"You couldn't afford me,\" said Lena.\n\n\"Besides, Smudge would hate the moon,\" added Nidhi.\n\n\"He might enjoy the decreased gravity. Can't you see him jumping around my moonbase, spinning like a little flaming pinwheel?\"\n\n\"What could possibly go wrong?\" asked Lena.\n\nI sighed and shoved my phone back into my pocket. The rest of my messages could wait. At the rate I was going, I'd give myself a stroke before we reached Detroit.\n\nWhen all else failed, there had always been one guaranteed way to calm my thoughts. I hooked a clip-on reading lamp to the collar of my jacket, grabbed one of my newest acquisitions\u2014Nnedi Okorafor's Zahrah the Windseeker\u2014and started reading.\n\nThe recession a few years back, combined with the decline of the auto industry, had hit Detroit hard. The city had just begun to turn things around when word got out it was also home to the largest nest of vampires in the Midwest.\n\nThat was back in late June. A week later, a thirteen-year-old girl turned up dead, her throat slashed. There was no proof a vampire was responsible, but it didn't matter. Her death led to mobs of self-styled vampire hunters roaming the streets. At least two vampires ended up dead, along with five \"suspected vampires\" who turned out to be humans in the wrong place and time.\n\nIt wasn't until the vampires began fighting back that the National Guard was called in. They used ground-penetrating sonar and satellite images to pinpoint the nest's location, deep within a forgotten salt mine.\n\nFor eight days, they poured fire and explosives into the mine. By the end of July, not a single vampire remained in the nest. Some escaped and fled to join nests in other parts of the country. Others refused to abandon their home town.\n\nParts of Detroit were once again beginning to recover. Deb DeGeorge lived in one of the areas that wasn't.\n\nWe passed abandoned houses and vacant lots as we got farther from the highway, making our way toward the northeast part of the city. Cars lined the streets and plugged narrow driveways like corks.\n\nDeb lived at the corner of Benson and Concord in a narrow two-story brick building with broken windows and a gutter jutting down over the front porch like a compound fracture.\n\nWe parked on the opposite side of the road, just past a street lamp. I saw no lights inside the house, but that meant nothing. Deb could see perfectly well in the dark. It was one of several changes she'd gone through when she traded her humanity for a longer life as a creature from a book called Renfield, by Samantha Wallace.\n\nI scooped Smudge off the ledge beneath the rear window where he'd been sleeping and eased him into his cage. He twitched awake and began to pace, giving off the faint scent of burnt dust. He wasn't on fire, but he was nervous about something.\n\nI kept meaning to attach a thermometer to the outside of his cage. Smoke and flame were vivid enough, but more sensitive readings might help me notice sooner when he was upset, especially if I could jury-rig the thermometer to an audible alert of some sort. Talulah back at the lab could probably set it up to talk to my smartphone via Bluetooth.\n\n\"My turn to sit things out,\" Nidhi said. Of the three of us, she was the least able to protect herself against something like Deb, and she knew it. \"Watch yourself, Isaac. You pushed your limits in Lansing. Call me as soon as the house is secure.\"\n\nLena kissed her, then climbed out and fetched a thick oak cane from beneath her seat. The cane's twisted design reminded me a little of the caduceus with its twin snakes spiraled around one another. She gripped the end with both hands and pulled.\n\nThe wood softened like green willow branches, untwisting and thickening into a pair of wooden bokken. The curved swords continued to shift in her hands, taking on edges as sharp as steel.\n\nI double-checked Smudge and my books. Hopefully I wouldn't need them. I pushed the door shut as quietly as I could. \"Shall we?\"\n\n\"Never let it be said that dates with you are normal.\" She swatted my backside with the flat of one sword.\n\n\"I wouldn't want my lady to get bored.\"\n\nThe front lawn was mowed, which surprised me a little. I couldn't imagine Deb pushing a mower back and forth every week. Though she was certainly capable of manipulating one of her neighbors into doing it for her.\n\nWeeds grew through cracks in her driveway. An old tire hung like a blackened wreath over the fire hydrant by the curb. Bars covered the first floor windows, and curtains blocked our view of the inside. The porch light was broken.\n\nI squinted to read a paper sign taped to the screen door: SOLICITORS WILL BE EATEN. Given that Renfields fed on bugs and birds, I was pretty sure it was a joke. I opened the screen door and knocked. When nobody answered, I tried the knob. \"Locked.\"\n\nLena touched the doorframe. The wood warped and twisted, and the door popped inward. \"Did you bring a flashlight?\"\n\nI clipped my reading lamp to my jacket and switched it on.\n\nThe house was a wreck. Rotting brown carpet covered floorboards that creaked and sank with each step. Peeling wallpaper revealed crumbling plaster and visible studs. The air smelled like mildew and animal piss.\n\nRed flame rippled over Smudge's back.\n\n\"Deb? It's Isaac.\" I pulled my jacket tighter. If she had a working furnace, she hadn't bothered to turn it on. \"It's been a hellaciously long day.\"\n\nLena raised one sword and approached the staircase. She touched the rail, then one of the steps. \"The wood's old, but sturdy. It'll hold our weight.\"\n\nHer skin roughened as she climbed the steps. The wood living within her flesh usually grew alongside her bones. It made for fascinating X-rays. But she could manipulate that wood into a kind of subdermal armor when she wanted to, growing plates of hardened oak over muscle and organs.\n\nShe could grow the armor externally as well, along with sharp wooden spurs from her knuckles and joints, but for the moment she retained a more-or-less human appearance.\n\n\"I'm not in the mood for games, Deb,\" I called out. \"This doesn't have to get ugly.\"\n\n\"Breaking into my house, issuing threats and demands?\" The voice came from upstairs to the left. \"The Porters never change, do they?\"\n\n\"Can you see her or her magic?\" whispered Lena.\n\n\"I don't have X-ray vision.\" Though if I dug up a Superman novelization, maybe Roger Stern's The Death and Life of Superman... I mentally added that to my never-ending list of potential research projects.\n\nFootsteps creaked overhead, on the opposite side of the house from Deb's voice.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I called. \"Did you have company?\"\n\n\"Oh, you know. The life of a MILF.\"\n\n\"MILF?\"\n\n\"Monster I'd like to\u2014\"\n\n\"Right.\" There was an image I didn't need.\n\nI checked Smudge, then signaled for Lena to go ahead. She moved forward and flipped a light switch at the top of the stairs. A lone incandescent bulb lit up overhead. I tucked my reading lamp away and followed.\n\nIf anything, the second story of Deb's home was in worse condition than the first. The doors had all been removed from their frames, exposing a truly foul bathroom suffering from water damaged ceilings and decorated in a mildew and rust stain motif. To the left was a bedroom with an old twin mattress on the floor and a swarm of carpenter ants attacking what looked like leftover Chinese food.\n\nThe only room that showed signs of civilization was a small library on the other end of the hall. Deb might have let everything else go, but she continued to care for her books. The lone window in the library was undamaged and covered with a sheet of insulating plastic for additional protection. A small dehumidifier hummed by the wall.\n\nThere was no sign of Deb or her guest.\n\n\"Renfields can't change form or go invisible,\" I whispered. \"She's here somewhere.\"\n\n\"Check the library for an attic door,\" said Lena. \"I'll look in the bedroom.\"\n\nThe dust on the shelves and books suggested Deb hadn't been in here lately, which was a shame. She'd once told me the best part of her transformation was the near-immortality that came with it, giving her more time to catch up on her reading.\n\nI skimmed the titles: mostly history and biography, with a smaller section of vampire-related fiction. With a sigh, I pulled myself away to search the walls and ceiling. \"No attic access in here.\"\n\nSomething scampered past the window. I ripped the plastic away, opened the window, and peered out to see a bulky figure\u2014too tall to be Deb\u2014jump to the ground. Judging from the way he'd scrambled down the wall, he was probably a vampire. It would have been easy enough for him to transform to mist and sneak out through a vent.\n\n\"I've got a runner,\" I called. \"It's not Deb.\"\n\n\"Found it.\" On the other end of the hall, through the empty doorways, I saw Lena rummaging through a closet. \"There's a door in the back\u2014\"\n\nTwo men lunged out. One grabbed Lena around the waist like a linebacker and pushed her across the bedroom, slamming her against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. The other grappled for her weapons. Lena brought her knee into the first attacker's chin. When that didn't work, she braced herself and struck again. Though the strike was identical, the sound and the result were very different. An oak spur punched through the man's chin with a popping sound. He staggered back, screaming and clutching his bloody jaw.\n\n\"Quite the House of Inamoratos you've got here.\" I was halfway to the bedroom when the front door smashed inward. Two more men moved toward the bottom of the stairs. Deb must have sent them out and around to flank us. Both appeared human and looked to be in their early twenties. I could see the vampiric magic in their veins from here.\n\nI moved to the top step and folded my arms. \"Listen, I'm having a bad day. I'd prefer not to take it out on you, but\u2014\"\n\nThey charged up the stairs.\n\n\"Love, do you mind?\" I called.\n\n\"Do it.\"\n\nI reached out to touch Lena's magic. Her power came from an old book called Nymphs of Neptune. I'd read it several times to better understand her and her origins. That familiarity made it relatively simple to read the story within her and pull a particular passage into myself. I channeled that power into the staircase.\n\nThe wood surged to life, remembering the touch of sun and soil. Branches sprouted to entangle the lead vampire's foot. He went down hard enough to do something crunchy to his knee. While he screamed in pain, his friend struggled to climb past.\n\nI redirected my borrowed magic. When contestant number two was almost within reach, the steps simply collapsed beneath his weight, sending him crashing down into what sounded like a storage cabinet or cupboard of some sort.\n\nThe first vampire was dissolving into mist to escape the branches. I released my hold on Lena's magic, returning her power. Not that she needed it at the moment. Both of her attackers lay bloody and groaning on the floor.\n\n\"Last warning,\" I called out, studying the mist-vamp's power and preparing to strip it from him.\n\n\"That's enough.\" Deb DeGeorge emerged from the attic door in the closet. She held a silver revolver in one hand. \"Drop the swords, Lena.\"\n\nDeb appeared... unwell. Her short, graying hair was a dusty mess. Her face was gaunt, and she looked like three-day-old death. Smelled like it, too. The stench suffused the entire hallway.\n\nA wasp flew from the open attic door behind her. I flinched instinctively.\n\nDeb snatched it out of the air, crushed it between thumb and forefinger, and bit off the end. After spitting what I assume was the stinger onto the floor, she popped the rest into her mouth. The gun never wavered. \"The swords. Don't make me shoot you, Lena. Or Isaac.\"\n\n\"Shoot him and you'll die slowly.\" Lena stabbed the swords into the floor. \"Ever had a really nasty splinter? Imagine them growing through every inch of your skin.\" She flexed her hands. Her knuckles made a distinctly wooden popping sound. \"Shoot me, and you'll just piss me off.\"\n\nI studied her battered minions. \"The one with the perforated chin looks like a Renfield. You turned him?\"\n\n\"Consensually. I have the notarized paperwork to prove it.\"\n\nWhich would be worth absolutely nothing in any court. \"You were expecting us,\" I guessed.\n\nShe shrugged. \"I figured someone would try to round me up sooner or later. Isn't that how these things work? First they came for the vampires, et cetera.\"\n\nEach time I encountered Deb DeGeorge, I saw more of the monster and less of the person she'd been. Her humanity wasn't entirely gone. The sleeveless black dress and knee-high studded leather boots were pure Deb. But not much remained of my one-time friend.\n\n\"Sandy Boyle,\" I said.\n\n\"Never heard of her.\" Despite being armed, Deb took a step back as I advanced.\n\n\"Cut the bullshit, Deb. I examined the body. I saw your magic worming through the meat of his brain. This is the part where you tell us everything you know, and we take your cooperation into consideration when deciding what to do with you.\"\n\n\"Or what, you'll beat the truth out of me? Hon, I'm the one with the gun. I'd rather not use it, but if you keep trying to play alpha librarian, I'll put a bullet through your knee. Same goes if you make one move toward those books of yours in your trench coat there.\"\n\n\"It's a duster, not a trench coat.\" I studied her weapon. The barrel was relatively short, no more than two inches, but at this range it would be hard for her to miss. \"Six-shooter, eh? What's it take, .44 caliber? .45?\"\n\nI didn't wait for her response. Just as I'd done with Lena, I pulled Smudge's story and power into myself and hurled it forth, into the bottom chamber of Deb's revolver.\n\nThe bullet discharged. Normally, the force would have propelled the bullet out of the case, down the barrel, and through my flesh... but that bullet hadn't been aligned with the barrel, meaning all that energy had to find another way to escape.\n\nFire flared from the cylinder. A sliver of hot steel embedded itself in the wall beside me. The gun clattered to the floor.\n\n\"Son of a fuck!\" Deb jumped back, clutching her hand. The gun's cylinder looked like a cracked walnut. \"What the hell was that?\"\n\n\"That was the last of my patience.\" I pulled an M&M from a bag in my pocket and slipped it to Smudge as I returned his fire. He didn't like it when people messed with his magic. Having been on the receiving end of something similar from Gutenberg, I didn't blame him in the slightest. He scarfed down the M&M and demanded two more before he forgave me and settled down.\n\nI looked around to make sure none of her minions had started moving again. \"Last chance, Deb.\"\n\nDeb sat down on the edge of the mattress and nudged the leftover Chinese food, sending the ants into a frenzy. She licked her thumb, pressed it down, and brought a group of injured, squirming ants to her mouth. \"Trust me, hon. You're on the wrong side of this one.\"\n\n\"Are you suggesting the right side is the one embracing terrorism and assassination? Do you realize how much harder you've made things for all of us? They're going to use tonight as an excuse to come down even harder.\"\n\n\"Oh, Isaac. You really need to step out of the sci-fi section and brush up on your history. You think they needed an excuse?\"\n\n\"So tonight was what?\" asked Lena. \"A preemptive strike?\"\n\nDeb's laugh was dry, bitter, and more than a little disturbing. \"Tonight was retaliatory.\"\n\nI stepped sideways, where it was easier to keep an eye on Deb and her pet vamps. \"This is about the Detroit nest.\"\n\n\"This is about survival. About being gunned down in the streets. Driven from our homes. What are the Porters and your precious New Millennium doing about that, Isaac?\"\n\n\"We're trying to show the world we can exist without killing each other.\"\n\n\"I forgot what you're like.\" She smiled bitterly, displaying a dying ant squirming between her front teeth. \"I bet you hate every minute of your trips to D.C. and your time in front of the cameras. You'd rather be locked away in your ivory tower, shut away from the real world.\"\n\nI spoke softly and quietly, fighting to keep my anger under control. \"The blood on my sleeves looks pretty fucking real to me, Deb. So were the bodies I saw tonight.\"\n\n\"What happened in Lansing was part of several coordinated attacks,\" said Lena. \"Who are you working with?\"\n\n\"How many vampires do you have working at New Millennium?\" Deb asked.\n\n\"Seven,\" I said.\n\n\"Let me guess. They're all in security?\"\n\n\"Six are security, yes. The seventh prefers janitorial work. She works nights, and it's nice having someone who can command insects and rodents to evacuate a building.\"\n\n\"While everyone with any real power is human. Typical Porter setup. For all your talk about remaking the world, did you ever consider who you're remaking it for? Because it sure as hell isn't us. And don't pull that 'But my best friend is a dryad' bullshit. Your pet nymph doesn't prove shit.\"\n\n\"Pet nymph?\" Lena repeated softly. The room fell silent, save for the creak of wood as she flexed her hands.\n\nDeb snorted. \"I read your file, back when I was like him. I read your book. You're just a happy little sex slave.\"\n\nLena lifted Deb by the throat. A spike of oak grew from the palm of her other hand. \"Are you trying to make us kill you?\" She hesitated, then tossed Deb away. \"My god, that's exactly what you're doing, isn't it.\"\n\nI studied Deb, and the anger drained out of me. I recognized the numbness in her voice, the despair and hopelessness in her eyes. \"Lena's grown beyond her book. We could help you do the same.\"\n\nDeb rubbed her throat and worked her jaw from side to side. \"Beyond her book, hm? How'd you pull that off?\"\n\nThat spark of curiosity was the most I'd seen of the old Deb since we'd arrived.\n\n\"You first,\" I said. \"Who planned those attacks?\"\n\n\"Hell if I know.\"\n\nI pulled a book from my jacket. \"I could make you tell me.\"\n\n\"The fact that you haven't is why you're losing.\" Deb rubbed her eyes. The skin appeared strangely loose, like old, ill-fitting latex. \"You're the only one playing by the rules.\"\n\n\"Who hired you to manipulate those werewolves?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Don't know that either. Everything was done by phone. I had three conversations totaling less than five minutes, all with the same woman. She never gave me her name.\"\n\nI swapped books, taking out The Goblin Wood, a middle-grade fantasy. Shadows vignetted my vision, and characters whispered of war and refugees. I squinted to read a scene with an enchanted bell. I didn't need to create the actual bell; simply making the connection should be enough. \"Lena, would you mind telling a lie for me?\"\n\n\"Bacon-crust pizza was a brilliant invention.\"\n\nFrom within the magically active book, a bell rang, signaling a lie. I glanced at Lena. \"Really? I thought that was your kind of culinary innovation.\"\n\n\"Too greasy,\" she said. \"They're trying too hard.\"\n\nI turned back to Deb. \"You messed with their heads and helped them commit murder, and you didn't bother to ask who you were working for?\"\n\nDeb spread her arms, a gesture that encompassed her crumbling home. \"Do I look like I can afford to turn down paying work?\"\n\n\"No evasions. Do you know who they or you were working for?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nThe book remained silent. \"Senator Alexander Keeler,\" I said, taking a shot in the dark. \"He was one of the first out of the gate with a press conference following the attacks, and he'd have the connections to get his hands on Governor Sullivan's schedule. Is he involved?\"\n\n\"Could be. He's a bigot and a jackass. Hey, do you mind?\" Deb gestured to the groaning man with the bloody chin. She dropped to one knee. Her magic swept over the line of ants, who turned to march toward him. He scooped them into his mouth like a half-starved man at a Vegas buffet. \"His whining was getting on my nerves, and he needs to feed to fix himself back up. Like I was saying, I don't know anything.\"\n\nI watched her Renfield servant. Healing himself was one thing, but if he took one step toward me or Lena, I was going to end him. For the moment, he seemed fully occupied with devouring bugs. \"Sandy Boyle and his two friends\u2014there's no way you'd pass up the chance to pick their brains. You can start by giving me their names. Then you'll tell me everything else you learned from them, including whatever you know about Vanguard.\"\n\n\"Vanguard's as much a terrorist organization as the Girl Scouts. They're a wannabe underground railroad that got started after the feds burned us out of the salt mines. They keep tabs on things and try to give people like me a head start when it's time to run.\"\n\n\"Maybe they got tired of playing defense,\" I suggested. \"Keep talking.\"\n\nDeb lifted a corner of the mattress. Lena raised her bokken, but Deb just cringed and froze.\n\n\"Go ahead,\" I said.\n\nCockroaches scurried out as she pulled an old spiral-bound notebook free. \"You've got a hacker on your team, yes?\"\n\n\"Talulah Polk, yes.\" My team's names were public record. I wasn't telling her anything she couldn't have found from Google.\n\nDeb tore off a piece of paper, slid a well-chewed pen from the spiral binding, and started writing. \"Here are the names of Sandy's friends. You're right, I tried to loosen their tongues a bit. They didn't know much more than I do, but one of them said he was originally supposed to hit a different target, a Coast Guard ship off the east coast. The USCGC Kagan. Have your hacker look into the Kagan. Find out what would have made her a target, and what changed.\"\n\n\"Are you part of Vanguard?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Are you aware of any other plans to assassinate or harm anyone?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nI waited, but the book didn't react.\n\n\"What are you going to do with me?\" Deb asked.\n\nI should hand her over to the FBI, along with the names of the other two werewolves. Deb had facilitated two assassinations tonight.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking,\" she said. \"If you turn me in, they'll either dissect me or use me.\"\n\nOnce again, the book remained silent. Deb believed what she was saying. \"What exactly do you think I should do? You amped up the hate and rage of three murderers. You're as responsible as they are. You don't get to walk away from that.\"\n\n\"Then kill me.\"\n\nLooking at the emptiness in her eyes, hearing the flatness in her words, it was as if a part of her wanted me to do exactly that. \"What happened to you, Deb?\"\n\n\"Keep your damn pity to yourself.\" She snorted and turned away. \"You won't hurt me. Because you're still playing their game, by their rules.\"\n\nI turned away. \"Lena, could you keep an eye on her while I check the rest of the house?\"\n\n\"Knock yourself out,\" Deb muttered.\n\nThe panel at the back of the closet was about three feet high. I shoved aside old dresses and shirts, switched on my reading lamp, and crept into the attic.\n\nTwo seconds later, I launched myself out again. I tripped over my heels, and my lamp went skittering across the room. I scooted past Deb, rolling and slapping at my jacket. Two wasps flew up and away, while a third stung my wrist.\n\nDeb leaned down to pluck that one away. \"Be careful,\" she said as she chewed. \"That's my snack bar you almost fell through.\"\n\n\"Your snack bar?\" The wasps were an inch and a half long. They'd built their nest between the rafters. There had to be twenty square feet of wasp nest in that attic, so thick it was like another layer of insulation. \"You could have warned me, you little shit-weasel!\"\n\nShe was laughing now. \"Relax, Isaac. If I really wanted to piss you off, I'd command them to swarm. At which point you'd get all pouty, steal my magic, and turn them against me. Honestly, you're no fun at all these days.\"\n\n\"Shit-weasel?\" Lena repeated. She was trying not to laugh, but wasn't doing a great job of it.\n\n\"Shut up.\" I got to my feet and shuddered. \"I hate wasps. I should let Smudge burn this place to the ground.\"\n\n\"Where would you like to search next?\" Deb asked innocently.\n\nI glared death. \"Do you have anything else in this house that's illegal, dangerous, or could help me find the people behind tonight's attack?\"\n\n\"Nope.\" The Goblin Wood remained silent. Deb caught another wasp and crushed it in her hand. \"You know, you could have asked that up front and saved yourself the humiliation.\"\n\nI refused to dignify that with an answer. Not that I had much dignity left. Instead, I swapped books again, grabbing my thin paperback copy of Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. It was an older book, and that made it harder to use, but it retained enough power for my purposes. I extended one finger into the page, touching a sheaf of crinkled paper within the scene. In the story, each sheet had been impregnated with a microdot transmitter.\n\nI pulled one of those papers free and transferred its magic into Deb's skin. Like copying and pasting a bit of code, as Talulah would say. \"I think we're done here.\"\n\nI looked over at Lena, who nodded in agreement and said, \"Deb can stay with me.\"\n\n\"I'm your prisoner now?\" asked Deb. \"How are the bugs at your place?\"\n\n\"You can share Smudge's cricket stash.\"\n\n\"Be careful, hon.\" Deb grabbed an old black coat from the closet and tossed it on. \"This isn't one of your field missions for the Porters. This is war. If you don't figure that out soon, it's gonna kill you.\"\n\nTESTIMONY AND QUESTIONING OF WITNESS NUMBER 18: ISAAC VAINIO (CONTINUED)\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: How were subjects selected for human medical trials at New Millennium?\n\nMr. VAINIO: We asked for volunteers with life-threatening medical conditions that couldn't be cured by mundane means. From that pool, a team of Porters and NIH doctors selected candidates who\u2014\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Why don't we skip ahead to the favoritism and nepotism?\n\nMrs. CLARKE: I believe Mr. Keeler is referring to the inclusion of Alexis Vainio in your medical trials. Your niece, yes? You have to admit that's not normal practice.\n\nMr. VAINIO: Lex is my niece. She's also an ideal candidate, with severe injuries and complications from an automobile accident when she was younger. She lost a leg, suffered brain damage, and continues to experience chronic pain. I suggested they apply for the trials, but I wasn't involved in the selection process, nor did I have any influence on the decision to include Lex.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: You expect us to believe that, out of a pool of hundreds or thousands of desperate volunteers, this selection committee just happened to pick your niece?\n\nMr. VAUGHN: Isaac, is it possible Lex was deliberately included in the trials as a way to reassure the public? To say, \"We're so certain magic is safe and helpful, we'll use it on our own family members.\"\n\nMr. VAINIO: Maybe. You'd have to ask the selection team.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: If magic is as safe as you'd like us to believe, why didn't you help your niece at the time of the accident? Why force her to suffer all these years?\n\nMr. VAINIO: The Porters...\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry, could you please speak up?\n\nMr. VAINIO: The Porters\u2014Gutenberg, really\u2014felt that it was more important to preserve the secrecy of magic. Lex's accident was public knowledge. I wanted to help her, but any miraculous recovery would have raised too many questions.\n\nMrs. BROWN: Why did Johannes Gutenberg want to keep magic a secret?\n\nMr. VAINIO: He was afraid of what people like you would try to do with it.\n\n\"How do I know I can trust you?\"\n\n\"Trust is a choice. Actually, trust is more of a desperate, hopeful guess based on limited information. I wouldn't trust me if I were you.\"\n\n\"What's your game? You've always had control issues, especially when it comes to the Porters. Are you trying to run things through me? To turn me into another you?\"\n\n\"Heavens, no. I'm done with that circus. I'm happy to let someone else wrangle the monkeys and shovel out the elephant cages. And let's face it, you do spend a lot of time stepping in shit. Metaphorically speaking.\"\n\n\"That doesn't sound like the Gutenberg I knew.\"\n\n\"Think, Isaac. I'm not that Gutenberg. I'm who he wanted people to remember. An idealized version, if you will. I was never intended to be your personal chatbot.\"\n\n\"I can send your book back to Nicola, if you'd prefer.\"\n\n\"Not at all. I rather enjoy this pseudolife, though it would be nice to do more than sleep between our conversations, or to find others to converse with. Which reminds me, have you spoken with Juan recently?\"\n\n\"Nobody's seen or heard from him since last year.\"\n\n\"No surprise. Juan Ponce de Leon, ever the survivor. He once hibernated for twelve years to escape the Anglo-Spanish War. If you do reach him, please send him my... my regards.\"\n\n\"I will, but you're evading the question. Either you are the Gutenberg I knew, in which case you have your own agenda. Or else you're this idealized version, in which case I don't know you.\"\n\n\"You must be cautious. Not your strong suit, I understand. But the world is at a turning point. So are you. It's what you've been struggling with for months, for years, really. It's why you keep reaching out to me. You hope I'll help you find the right answer.\"\n\n\"Answers are easy. What's the question?\"\n\n\"Don't worry. You'll see it when you're ready.\"\n\n\"What if I don't?\"\n\n\"I suspect you'll probably get yourself killed.\"\n\nNidhi and Lena dropped me off at the Detroit airport at three in the morning. The next available flight to Las Vegas wasn't until noon, meaning the only way I could possibly get back to New Millennium before my niece's procedure was to use magic.\n\nGiven how twitchy I was, and the amount of magic I'd used in the past twenty-four hours, teleportation was out of the question. Some sort of superspeed would be marginally safer, but I was still far more likely to smear myself across a mountainside than I was to reach Vegas in one piece.\n\nEven the tiny bit of illusion I'd used to sneak Smudge past airport security had exacerbated the ashy smears in my vision. My eyes kept shivering with the excess energy, making the whole world jump and skip like a scratched DVD.\n\nI called the New Millennium main line and left a message with Kiyoko letting her know I'd be getting in later than expected. I thought about calling my brother next, but it was past midnight in Vegas, and I didn't want to disturb them.\n\nOr maybe I just didn't want to hear his disappointment when I told him I wouldn't be there for them. Again.\n\nI hiked the full length of the terminal three times, trying to burn off the manic energy. I passed a number of people napping, stretched out across chairs. There was no way I'd be able to do the same, but maybe if I kept moving long enough, I could calm my nerves enough that I wouldn't spend the entire flight bouncing and jostling my seatmate.\n\nI finally wore myself out enough to sit and rest. I bought a newspaper and caught up on the details of yesterday's other attacks. In each case, at least one public figure who'd been outspoken against inhumans had been killed. The attack in New York had been the worst. A pair of lake trolls had killed more than twenty-three people before being gunned down.\n\nWhoever was behind this, they subscribed to a philosophy of equal-opportunity terrorism. Trolls in New York, werewolves in Michigan, wild chupacabras in Oklahoma, and nagas in California. I wondered if Nicola knew anything about the chupacabras. She raised chupacabra hybrids, and loved the ugly things as much or more than most people.\n\nThree of the chupacabras in Oklahoma had escaped, as had every one of the four nagas. Had they all been mentally pushed into becoming assassins, like the Lansing werewolves?\n\nI composed a short email on my phone, letting Nicola know about the werewolf and the traces of mental manipulation I'd seen. I hesitated, but finally added another paragraph explaining that I'd traced that manipulation to Deb, and we had her under guard. As soon as I got back to New Millennium, I intended to follow up on a lead she'd shared.\n\nIt couldn't have been five minutes after I clicked send before the phone in my jaw went off.\n\n\"When I told you to assist with the aftermath in Lansing, I didn't mean for you to withhold evidence from the FBI and harbor an accessory to assassination and terrorism.\"\n\n\"Hi, Nicola. What are you doing up this late?\"\n\n\"Damage control. Which will be completely pointless when word gets out about what you've done. Why, Isaac?\"\n\nShe was singing under her breath, something she tended to do when she was angry or upset. But at least she was giving me the chance to explain. \"Because I can do a better job of finding whoever orchestrated these attacks than the police or FBI, and we both know it.\"\n\n\"And because she used to be your friend.\"\n\nI didn't deny it. \"What's more important, making nice and playing by their rules, or stopping the people behind this and saving lives?\"\n\n\"Then why tell me at all? Why put me in a position where I'm forced either to turn you in or to join your conspiracy?\"\n\nOne nice thing about talking to Nicola: she didn't mind silence. She was content to wait while I pondered that question and dug at my own motivations. \"Because you have a different perspective on things, and I trust you to rein me in if I go too far.\"\n\n\"I notice you didn't give me the chance to rein you in before you confronted Ms. DeGeorge.\"\n\n\"Yah, well, I tend to get caught up in the moment.\"\n\n\"You don't say.\"\n\n\"Give me time to piece this together. Someone did a lot of work to coordinate these attacks. They had to build each team, and at least here in Michigan, they had to hire a third party to brainwash that team into finishing the job. There's a bigger pattern here. We can't see it yet. Too many missing pieces. Too many questions. Why limit each team to a single type of inhuman? Why arrange the attack for a time when the FBI was en route? That reminds me, do you know the response time at the other attacks?\"\n\n\"The state police were already on site in Oklahoma,\" said Nicola. \"Someone had called in a bomb threat. In California, the attack took place less than ten miles from an FBI field office.\"\n\n\"They wanted the authorities to arrive quickly. Were any of the attackers captured alive?\"\n\n\"None that I'm aware of.\"\n\n\"All right, I only have one more question for now. Do you trust mundane authorities to handle this?\"\n\nIt was Nicola's turn to think in silence. I drummed my fingers against the chair until she finally said, \"Keep me informed. You understand that if this goes badly, the Porters won't be able to protect you? McGinley at DHS is determined to make an example out of anyone involved.\"\n\n\"Understood. Thanks, Nicola.\"\n\n\"I hope everything goes well with your niece.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, more warmly this time.\n\n\"I'm sorry you missed your flight out of D.C. I know you wanted to be there.\"\n\n\"I needed to be in Lansing.\" I sighed and checked the information screen mounted on the wall. I needed to be in Vegas, too. I trusted the New Millennium medical team, but I was the one who'd assured Lex and her parents that it wouldn't hurt, and that everything would be okay.\n\nToby had never forgiven me for letting Lex suffer all these years. What would they think when I wasn't there for her in the morning?\n\nI managed a forty-five minute nap on the flight before jolting awake when the plane touched down in Vegas. I sat up and rubbed the drool from my cheek, texted Lena to let her know I'd arrived, and gathered my carry-on bag of books. The rest of my luggage was back at the hotel in D.C.\n\nI picked up an overpriced coffee from one of the half-dozen airport Starbucks and hiked my way to long-term parking where my pickup truck awaited. I made the slow drive east through the city on mental autopilot. It was almost two o'clock when I finally left the worst of Vegas traffic behind, and another half hour to reach my destination beyond the city limits.\n\nThe New Millennium Complex looked like a cross between a medieval fortress and a space station. Seamless stone walls surrounded roughly fifteen acres of land. Four gleaming, glass-walled towers rose from within those walls, as majestic as anything you could find on the strip. Though the New Millennium towers lacked the garish colors and lights of the casinos.\n\nThe entire population of Copper River, Michigan could have fit inside our compound, and you'd still have room for our former neighbors from Tamarack.\n\nThe Porters had purchased the land ten months ago through a series of deals and negotiations with Las Vegas and the state of Nevada. The amount of paperwork involved made the Wheel of Time series look like flash fiction, and there were at least five separate legal battles currently in play about everything from zoning requirements to air rights.\n\nComing here from Michigan felt like traveling to another planet, a hot, arid world where the spectrum of visible light had boycotted the color green. Patches of dark scrub along the side of the road came close, but for the most part, the landscape was all browns and tans and yellows. The first time Lena visited, she'd remarked that the lack of trees made the land feel like a graveyard.\n\nThere were no protesters at the front gates today, but it was obvious they'd been here recently. The desert plants and flowers by the entrance were trampled into the dirt. I kept suggesting we replace them with cacti. New graffiti denounced us as witches and demons and Satanists, which always amused me. I'd heard the same accusations about role-playing games when I was a teenager.\n\nVisible security measures included cameras and electrified wire along the top of the wall and guards at the large, arched gate. Other protection was embedded within the stone. The wards looked like braids of barely legible text forming a black fence inside the wall, with a thinner framework stretched overhead: an invisible dome designed to block out aerial cameras and worse.\n\nI pulled up to the small booth at the gate. A metal sign warned: YOUR THOUGHTS MAY BE TELEPATHICALLY SCREENED FOR HOSTILE INTENTIONS. Several paragraphs of fine-print legal jargon followed.\n\nTechnically, it was more of an empathic screening than a telepathic one. We were more interested in hatred and rage, unusual levels of fear and anxiety, that sort of thing. I hated the mental intrusion, but the Director of Security had insisted. After they caught three different would-be attackers in the first month, including one with a trunk full of fertilizer-based explosive, I stopped protesting.\n\nI rolled down my window and handed my ID to a middle-aged woman in a turquoise New Millennium polo shirt. \"Good afternoon, Marion.\"\n\nMarion was Sanguinarius Meyerii, from the Twilight series. Her particular species of vampire was better known as sparklers. Marion had been a diehard fan of the books, no pun intended. Last year, after learning magic and vampires were real, she'd snuck across the border and paid a Mexican vampire nest to convert her.\n\nShe was damn lucky she hadn't gotten herself killed. Sparkler venom was nasty, dangerous stuff.\n\nHer life as a vampire hadn't worked out as well as she'd hoped. Skin that glittered in the sun wasn't easy to hide, and she soon lost her job as a middle school English teacher. She'd ended up working at a junkyard near Reno. When New Millennium announced we'd be hiring humans and nonhumans alike, Marion was first in line with her resume.\n\nShe was a pleasant enough woman who'd taken it upon herself to organize a weekly BINGO game among the staff. She was also strong enough to flip my truck one-handed if she decided I didn't belong here.\n\nMarion glanced at a second vampire behind her. My head throbbed softly as he checked my emotions.\n\nShe returned my badge. \"Welcome back, Mr. Vainio. How was Washington?\"\n\n\"One more day and I'd have turned a U.S. senator into an earthworm and fed him to Smudge.\"\n\nMarion smiled and peeked in at Smudge. \"Aside from the fire-spider, do you have anything magical with you?\"\n\n\"Half a vial of healing potion. Catalog number CSL1950-8.\"\n\nShe typed a quick note on the computer. \"Weren't they fixing your niece's leg this morning?\"\n\nI wondered if her partner could sense my frustration. \"That's right.\"\n\n\"Well, you tell that little angel I said hello!\"\n\nThe gate slid open a moment later. I pulled through and followed the winding blacktop to the left. In the week I'd been away, they had erected a second security booth inside the wall. Another armed guard, a human this time, nodded at me as I passed.\n\nMost of the grounds were landscaped with orange and gray stone. Cacti and palm trees bordered walking paths between the four towers and various smaller buildings. Silver and black road signs guided visitors to housing, a small food court and general store, supply warehouses, and of course the ten-story towers spread out at the corners of a rough square: Medical, Admin, Research, and Library.\n\nThe Johannes Gutenberg Memorial Library Tower was the real treasure. The building housed the contents of six former Porter archives along with an additional twenty thousand titles, including some from Gutenberg's private collection. Given the choice, I would have happily abandoned my studio apartment in the eastern housing building to live full-time in Gutenberg Tower.\n\nInstead, I drove past the library to the small parking lot behind the eastern residential building. I didn't spend much time here, and couldn't bring myself to think of the empty apartment as home. It felt like a larger version of the place I'd had during grad school, only without the Escher prints or the Renaissance festival swords hanging on the walls. Once inside, I started up the coffee machine, turned the television on for Smudge, and headed for the shower.\n\nBetween the cold water and the hot coffee, I got my brain jump-started enough to sit down and log on to my computer. I ignored several interview requests from the media and used my access as Research Director to pull up Alexis Vainio's medical folder.\n\nThe patient summary described the results of the accident in clinical terms, but I could never read it without hearing my father's voice. He had been the one to call me that night. I'd just gotten back from dinner, and it was raining outside, a hard-core Michigan storm with raindrops big enough to bruise.\n\nI remembered him spitting profanity like bullets, as if he could ward off the grief with anger. \"God damned drunk ran the fucking stop sign. Angie and Lex are both in the hospital. Your brother's with them. Your mom and I are driving down tonight. The doctors say Angie should be all right. They don't... they don't fucking know if Lex...\"\n\nIt was the only time I could recall hearing him cry.\n\nI'd flown down as soon as I could. I stayed with them, brought Toby food at the hospital, took care of the house and their pet lizard, and did everything I could to help... except to use magic.\n\nMagic would have triggered a visit from Gutenberg and his automatons. The accident was public knowledge, as were the injuries Lex had suffered. If I healed her, there was no way to explain her sudden and miraculous recovery. My magic would have put myself and the Porters at risk of exposure, and Gutenberg was enough of a bastard to do whatever it took to preserve his secrets.\n\nI could restore my niece's amputated leg, and Gutenberg would simply remove it again. There was nothing I could do.\n\nAt least, that was what I told myself.\n\nI closed my eyes, remembering the letter Toby had written last year after learning what I was.\n\nDo you know what it's like trying to explain to your five-year-old daughter that if we don't let the doctors cut off her leg, the infection will kill her? Or to know that even the amputation might not save her?\n\nShe's had four surgeries to try to repair the damage from the crash. To pin her pelvis back together. To ease the pressure on her brain. Depending on the results of her next MRI, we may have to go back for number five before the end of the summer.\n\nI never said how much it meant to us that you flew out here after the accident. That you watched Lexi's brother and brought us badly cooked meals and did everything you could to help.\n\nOnly you didn't, did you? You didn't do everything.\n\nMaybe you had good reasons. Maybe your precious secret was more important than your niece. Well, the secret's out now, and Lexi deserves better. She deserves the chance to be a kid...\n\nI pushed the memories aside and skimmed Lex's record. The background was fourteen pages long, detailing multiple surgeries, medications, and chronic pain. Pain I could have spared her.\n\nNew Millennium had spent months on tests, working under the direction of NIH doctors to ensure that all non-magical options had been exhausted. There were memorandums of agreement with Toby's insurance company, piles of waivers and disclaimers, and even a court challenge to Toby and Angie's fitness as parents. That bullshit had come closer than anything else to making me openly break the laws against magical assault and battery.\n\nI clicked through to the most recent entry, dated today at 8:38 a.m.\n\nA longer report would come later. For now, I wiped my eyes and focused on the photograph of Lex standing in front of a hospital bed. Each of her parents held one of her hands, holding her steady as she tested her balance.\n\nShe wore a hospital gown, and her feet were bare. Her new leg was several shades paler than the other. It was skinnier, too. She'd be in rehab and physical therapy for weeks to come. Months, probably.\n\nI checked the doctor's notes. Lex had spent the next hour getting X-rays, MRIs, and other scans of her new leg. They'd also completed a long list of tests on her brain. The physical damage had disappeared, but we would continue to monitor her for seizures and other side effects for at least a year.\n\nA two-tone whistle filled the apartment. I'd programmed the door chime with the boatswain's whistle sound from the original Star Trek. I cleared the computer screen, wiped my face, and headed for the door.\n\nRussell Potts, the Department of Homeland Security's representative on the New Millennium Board of Directors, shoved a trade paperback into my hands. \"Right now, every man, woman, and child in North Korea is reading this book. Do you know why?\"\n\nI glanced at the cover, which showed an idealized painting of North Korea's supreme leader. There was no title, not that I could have read it anyway. Nor did I need to. I did my best to sound bored. \"Because it describes various weapons the North Korean military could use to guarantee the supremacy of their nation, including a kind of supersoldier serum, long-range assassination drones with cloaking technology, and an implantable spy chip for monitoring their own people and anyone else they feel like snooping on. One of our libriomancers intercepted a South Korean spy, a gwisin, who filled us in. How do you think your boss at DHS found out about it?\"\n\nPotts was a tall, narrow-faced man with a thick brown mustache who always wore suits and ties, even in the desert heat. He pursed his lips, clearly reevaluating what he'd been intending to say. \"A gwisin?\"\n\n\"A kind of ghost.\"\n\n\"What is your team doing about it?\"\n\n\"Charles is monitoring their progress. North Korea has a population of twenty-five million. Not all those people are literate, of course. He's estimating an upper limit of ten million who are actually reading the novel as ordered. We're trying to chart how quickly they can empower a book for libriomancy, and comparing it to the data for other novels. Charles believes since the population knows this book was deliberately crafted not for story, but for the weaponization of magic, that this will reduce the effectiveness of reader belief. It's also just flat-out bad prose, but that could be problems with the translation, or our cultural filters affecting how\u2014\"\n\n\"That's it? You're standing around watching while North Korea builds magical superweapons?\"\n\n\"You want me to fly to North Korea and tell them to stop reading? I'm a librarian, Mister Potts. I don't believe in banning books.\"\n\n\"Do you believe in letting a madman terrorize the international community?\" He started to say more, then caught himself. He pressed his lips together and looked me up and down. \"You're baiting me.\"\n\n\"A little.\" I made a show of checking the time on the wall clock behind me. \"I'll fill you in next week. Right now, I'm late for another meeting.\"\n\n\"With your niece, I know.\" He folded his arms and waited, knowing perfectly well I wouldn't use magic to evict him from my doorway. I could try to physically shove him aside, but Potts had spent fifteen years in the Army, and he'd played college football before that. I'd have better luck climbing out a window and flying away, and from the smirk on his face, he knew it.\n\n\"First of all, North Korea can't do anything without a libriomancer,\" I said. \"The Porters number around five hundred people, very few of whom would be interested in helping North Korea develop a superweapon. Given their population, the odds of them having an undiscovered libriomancer on hand are slim.\"\n\n\"Would you risk this planet for 'slim'?\"\n\nI ignored him and kept talking. \"Second, like I said before, we're tracking their progress. The moment the book approaches any real magical potential, I intend to lock it.\"\n\nHe ran a thumb over his mustache while he studied me. \"That's the equivalent of wiping the hard drive, right? I thought Gutenberg was the only one who knew how to do that.\"\n\n\"Close enough, and yes. He was.\" I shrugged. \"He's been teaching me. Ponce de Leon might be able to do it, too, I'm not sure. I'll ask if I ever talk to him again.\"\n\nPotts' face had been growing gradually redder throughout our conversation, and that last comment started him on the path to purple. He glared at me, like he was trying to discern whether or not I was playing with him. Which I was... but I was also telling the truth. \"We were informed that Johannes Gutenberg was dead.\"\n\n\"That's right.\" I returned the book, then folded my arms and waited for his response.\n\n\"I see.\" He took a slow breath. \"I expect you to keep me informed of North Korea's progress. I'm holding you personally responsible for making sure that book is locked before it becomes a danger. You might prefer to hide away with your books and your animals and your magic portals, but there are a lot of very bad people beyond these walls. People who see magic as an opportunity to kill you, me, and everyone else in this country. Maybe they're not as impressive as rogue libriomancers and ghosts and whatever else you've fought, but we cannot underestimate them. You might think yourself invincible, but what about everyone else? Think of your niece. You brought her here to heal her with magic, but all it takes is one radicalized magic-user, one creature with a grudge, and she's another corpse. Just like the ones in Lansing.\"\n\nI stepped away to grab Smudge and return him to his cage. It was either that or punch a high-level DHS official in the mouth, and there was no way that would have ended well. I slung a bookbag over my shoulder and turned back to face him. \"They'll have to get past me, first.\"\n\n\u2002From: cbrice@newmillennium.org\n\n\u2002To: npallas@newmillennium.org\n\n\u2002Cc: tpolk@newmillennium.org; vhambrecht@newmillennium.org\n\n\u2002Subject: Speaking Tour\n\n\u2002Ms. Pallas,\n\n\u2002You may not be aware, but several weeks ago I requested New Millennium send me and my wife on a speaking tour to promote our work. Mr. Vainio denied this request.\n\n\u2002I've been a libriomancer and a member of the Porters for longer than Isaac Vainio has been alive. As you know, I am also a bestselling and award-winning author. I've been a featured speaker and guest of honor at countless conventions. I was part of a science advisory panel for President Clinton.\n\n\u2002In the old days, the Porters held storytellers in high esteem. Maybe that's changed. Maybe the new council wants us to keep our heads down and follow orders like good little drones.\n\n\u2002Setting aside false modesty, New Millennium needs the positive publicity I can provide. I'm sure Isaac is doing the best he can, but this is just one more instance of his inexperience and lack of judgment as a manager. I suppose it's normal for someone his age to become enamored of the spotlight, and to try to keep the attention to himself. But allowing a fresh-faced libriomancer barely out of college to go to Washington D.C. to speak on behalf of New Millennium? Ye gods and little fishes, what was the council thinking?\n\n\u2002I've attached a proposed tour schedule that would begin next month. I look forward to your prompt response.\n\n\u2002Best,"
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "\u2002Charles\n\n\u2002Charles L. Brice, Science Fiction Author\n\n\u2002http://www.clbrice.net\n\n\u2002Coming Next Month: Dark Wanderer, the newest book in the bestselling Dark Star Chronicles. Available for pre-order at Amazon and other retailers.\n\n\u2002From: vhambrecht@newmillennium.org\n\n\u2002To: tpolk@newmillennium.org\n\n\u2002Subject: Re: Speaking Tour\n\n\u2002Wow. What a tool!\n\n\u2002-V\n\n\"History says you broke a contract to be married.\"\n\n\"History is the world's most egotistical gossip.\"\n\n\"You worked so hard to preserve yourself, but you never mention anything about family. Were you protecting their privacy, or is it that you never had time?\"\n\n\"Revolutionizing literature and magic leaves little time for anything more. Particularly for those of us who are so different. I'm practically another species. I had dalliances over the years, naturally, but none that survived more than a few weeks or months.\"\n\n\"What about Ponce de Leon?\"\n\n\"Every relationship is unique. Juan and I were colleagues first, then rivals. But as time passed, and we watched our friends and family grow old and die... our priorities shifted. Humanity struggles with change, and we were so very human back then. We each provided an anchor, a stable fixture in the other's life. We needed one another far more than either of us would ever admit.\"\n\n\"You kicked him out of the Porters. You banished him.\"\n\n\"Lovers clash. Relationships evolve. I have no doubt we would have found one another again in time, as we started to do...\"\n\n\"Did you ever consider leaving the Porters to be with him?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. Many times.\"\n\n\"What stopped you?\"\n\n\"Responsibility. Fear. Love.\"\n\n\"Love stopped you from running off with Ponce de Leon?\"\n\n\"I've had two great loves in my lifetime, Isaac. Juan Ponce de Leon is one. The Porters\u2014magic\u2014is the other. Perhaps you'll have better luck than I did when it comes to balancing those relationships.\"\n\nWe had planned the New Millennium complex with an eye toward long-term growth. Thanks to legal hurdles and red tape that multiplied like tribbles at a buffet, the majority of our facilities remained vacant. Of the ten floors in the Metrodora Medical Tower, seven were sealed off and gathering dust while we waited for the day we could bring in more patients and healers.\n\nLex and her parents were in room 318 in the pediatric wing. Silhouettes of children, all painted in primary colors on the walls, played beneath large rainbows and cheerful white clouds. Shooting stars marked different trails along the floor: blue stars led to the main desk, green to the elevator and stairs, purple to the snack machine and play area, and so on.\n\nI offered nods and greetings to several nurses, each of whom glanced at my badge before letting me pass. I found myself dragging my feet as I approached room 318. I'd faced any number of monsters and murderers in recent years, but in each of those battles, I'd known how to fight.\n\nWith Toby, I didn't know how to end the fight. Truth be told, there would always be a part of me that believed my big brother was invincible, and that if I said the wrong thing, he'd put me in a headlock, bloody my nose, and shut me in the closet. Or shave off one of my eyebrows while I was sleeping, like he did after I accidentally scratched his car.\n\nThe door to Lex's room was shut. The whiteboard outside noted that she'd eaten lunch and was scheduled for physical therapy at three thirty. I glanced at Smudge as if he could tell me what to expect, but Smudge was better at sensing threats to life and limb than he was the anger and bitterness of family.\n\nI heard several voices inside: doctors and libriomancers taking turn asking Lex questions. She answered each one calmly and methodically, with her parents occasionally jumping in to offer additional details about her medical history.\n\nI straightened my shoulders and knocked.\n\n\"Be right there,\" Toby called. I heard slippers shuffling over the tile floor, and then the door swung inward.\n\nToby Vainio was taller, broader, and stronger than me. On the other hand, I still had all my hair.\n\nHis thinning blond fuzz was shaved to half an inch in length, a habit he'd kept up for close to a decade, ever since joining the National Guard. It made it easy to see the jagged scar above his left ear from falling through a rotten dock board when we were kids. He wore an old Detroit Lions T-shirt and loose sweatpants.\n\n\"Isaac.\" We stared at one another for several awkward seconds. He stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Toby. I wanted to be here. I had to go to Lansing last night, and then\u2014\"\n\n\"We heard about the attacks.\" He leaned his back against the door and folded his arms. \"Was that all?\"\n\n\"No, it's not all,\" I snapped. \"I wanted to see how Lex was doing.\"\n\n\"Lex is fine. We all are.\"\n\n\"You know, maybe instead of being all pissed off at me, you could try being happy for your daughter.\"\n\n\"Turns out I can do both.\"\n\n\"Well, aren't you the efficient little multitasker.\"\n\n\"Mom and Dad called this morning before the procedure. And afterward. They've been watching Nick and getting him to school every day so we could be here with his little sister. They all video chatted with Lex last night. They'd have been here if New Millennium allowed it. They sent flowers. Angie's dad mailed a new pair of roller blades. He's called four times this week.\"\n\n\"I said I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I get it, Isaac. I do. I'm not even that angry.\"\n\n\"Really? Because you do a great impression.\"\n\nHe snorted. \"Yah, okay. I'm angry. But I'll get over it. I keep having to remind myself this is who you are. You're off doing important libriomancer shit and trying to save the world, and that's always going to be your priority.\"\n\n\"Would you rather I didn't try to save the world? You think I wanted to be in the middle of a magical crossfire last year in Copper River? Of all the ways I like to spend my free time, fighting dead magical megalomaniacs is really far down on the list.\"\n\n\"What is it you want, Isaac?\" he asked wearily.\n\n\"I want to say hi to my niece. To see how she's doing.\" Years of habitual secrecy made me hesitate before adding, \"I also want to read what they did to her.\"\n\n\"Read what? You mean her records?\" He snorted. \"I didn't think you Porters cared about privacy laws. You were keeping medical information about my family for years. Why bother asking permission now?\"\n\n\"I didn't know the Porters had a file on you.\" Though I should have. The Porters had recruited me before I finished high school. Of course they'd have investigated my family as well. \"You're right. I have access to all of the research files, including Lex's.\"\n\nHis face went stony. \"You're looking for something that's not in her files.\"\n\n\"I'm not looking for anything specific. I just want to be sure, to read her. To see the magic they used to heal her.\"\n\n\"You can do that? I thought libriomancers just pulled stuff out of books.\"\n\n\"They\u2014we do. But there are outliers. I know a girl who learned to do libriomancy with ebooks. Gutenberg carried stories around in a sword. As for me...\" How to explain everything I'd learned, all the ways I'd changed in recent years?\n\nA pair of doctors emerged from the room. I waited until they'd gone, then said, \"Call it trial-by-fire. I've had to learn new tricks to survive some of what's come my way.\"\n\nFor the first time, I saw something more than frost and anger in his eyes. \"What do you mean? What happened to you?\"\n\nDespite public hearings, investigations, and countless interviews, there were plenty of details I'd never shared. Details I tried not to think about. My instinct was to deflect the question, but that would only lead to another round of verbal fencing with poisoned blades. \"Which time? Do you want to hear how I got stabbed, then merged my body with a five-hundred-year-old wood-and-metal automaton built by Johannes Gutenberg? That was a fun day. I got to visit the moon.\"\n\nHe stared at me. \"Bullshit.\"\n\n\"When I was done, I plummeted through Earth's atmosphere. Nearly burnt myself to a cinder in the process. Then last year, I deliberately triggered a trap created a thousand years ago by Pope Sylvester II that ripped my mind from my body and locked it away.\"\n\n\"Why the hell would you do that?\"\n\n\"Because the woman inside that trap had taken a friend of mine, burned down my house, and murdered thirty-seven people in Copper River, and I was damn well going to stop her.\" He'd grown up in that house, too, and we'd both known most of those thirty-seven people who died. The only difference was that I'd always known why they died.\n\nMy heart thudded against my ribs, and my throat tightened. Memories surged through my mind: collapsed buildings and broken bodies, the smell of smoke, screams of fear and pain. I clenched a fist and looked away.\n\n\"What happened to her?\" he asked. \"The woman who took your friend?\"\n\n\"She tried to escape.\" I swallowed. \"I stopped her.\"\n\nNeither of us spoke for a while. \"That healing magic you Porters can do. How many times have you had to use that on yourself?\"\n\nI didn't answer. Which was an answer in itself.\n\n\"Jesus, Isaac.\"\n\n\"It's not all bad.\" I stared at one of the painted stars on the floor. \"I spent a lot more time cataloging and researching than I did in the field. I've gotten to hang out with magic-users who were born centuries ago, and seen things everyone insisted were impossible. I've been to space twice. I even tried a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.\"\n\n\"From Hitchhiker's Guide? How was it?\"\n\n\"Not a clue. I remember taking the drink, and I remember waking up two days later. In Ontario. Wearing a nineteenth century Mountie uniform. Everything else is a bit of a blur.\"\n\n\"None of this makes me want to let you anywhere near my daughter.\" His chuckle was short-lived. \"There's more you're not telling me.\"\n\nI sat down with my back against the wall. He followed suit a moment later. \"It's something Alexander Keeler said during the hearing in D.C.\"\n\n\"Keeler's the guy who wants to license and regulate magic, right? The one with the face of a hairless cat with epic constipation?\"\n\n\"Oh, great. Now I'll never be able to look at him without seeing that image.\" I nodded to a passing nurse. \"They're not wrong to be cautious. New Millennium could change things. Really change things, I mean. Magic can't fix everything, but it could make the world so much better. It could also do unimaginable damage. That's one of the reasons we've had to move so slowly.\"\n\n\"What kind of damage?\" Toby glanced over his shoulder at Lex's door.\n\n\"Nothing that could hurt Lex.\" I hesitated. \"But her being here doesn't make sense. You know the Porters and New Millennium are fighting hard for public support, right? We can't afford any kind of taint or scandal. So why sign off on bringing the Director of Research's niece into the medical study?\" Whatever I might think of Senator Keeler and his committee, the man had a point about favoritism and the potential bias to our research.\n\n\"I figured it was because most people didn't feel safe enough to volunteer.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"We can cure cancer, Toby. Plenty of people are desperate enough to try anything, even magic.\"\n\nToby wasn't stupid. I could see him sifting through the implications. \"Could be someone did it so you'd owe them. They want to call in a favor down the line.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\n\"Or they want to use her against you somehow. Isaac, I swear to God, if you've put Lex in danger\u2014\"\n\n\"Let me look her over. I'll be able to tell whether anyone has used additional magic on her. Or you and Angie.\" I peered at him over my glasses. \"You're clean.\"\n\n\"What kind of additional magic?\"\n\nI looked away. \"When I was working as a field agent, I once installed a magical bomb in a vampire's skull to keep him from preying on humans.\"\n\n\"Jesus H. Christ.\" His hands started to shake. \"If they did something like that to Lex, can you fix it?\"\n\n\"Yes. It's probably nothing, Toby. I just need to be sure.\"\n\n\"What if it's not nothing? What if someone tries to use us for leverage?\"\n\n\"Then I'll make them wish they hadn't.\"\n\n\"Look at you, getting all badass.\" His words trailed off. \"Damn. You're serious, aren't you?\"\n\nI shrugged and stood up. \"Shall we?\"\n\n\"All right. But if you lie or hold back anything that could hurt Lex, I'll kick your skinny ass.\" He got to his feet. \"And then I'll tell Mom.\"\n\nLex sat in a wheelchair, wearing a purple princess nightgown. A trio of New Millennium medical staff examined her leg, while her mother hovered next to the chair.\n\nLex's brown hair partially hid a circular white patch the size of a quarter stuck to the side of her neck. A single LED on the edge of the patch glowed green, indicating that her vitals were within normal range.\n\nThe monitor patch was one of my accomplishments... sort of. It had come from an article in Medical Science Today about the future of diagnostic medicine. The author had described her vision for the next generation of medical monitoring tools, from a disposable monitoring patch with a wireless transmitter to a diagnostic capsule capable of providing a full-body scan from the inside. I'd contacted her the next day with a contract allowing us to use libriomancy to create those tools, and granting us the rights to use them in our work at New Millennium. Within a week of the magazine's publication, we'd created twenty-four sets.\n\n\"Uncle Isaac!\" Lex beamed and waved.\n\n\"Hi kiddo,\" I said. \"Long time no see. How are you feeling?\"\n\n\"We're fine,\" her mother answered. Angie tended to be a quiet woman, always listening and assessing. Right now, she looked like she was assessing the best way to dispose of my body if I said or did anything to harm her daughter. \"New Millennium has taken very good care of us.\"\n\n\"It's amazing.\" That was Jennifer Simpkin, an orthopedic surgeon from Reno who'd been working and consulting for us part-time. She returned her reflex hammer to the pocket of her lab coat and stood to shake my hand. \"The new leg is as healthy as the original. Healthier, in some respects. There's no scarring where it joins the older skin and tissue. Blood flow, reflexes, everything is flawless.\"\n\nA younger woman I didn't recognize glanced up, spotted Smudge, and jumped to position herself between Lex and me. \"Sir, you can't bring a spider in here.\"\n\n\"Would it help if I told you he was self-sterilizing?\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" said Dr. Simpkin. \"Lex has no open wounds or sutures to worry about, and most hunting spiders are better than some people about grooming and cleanliness.\" She typed something into her tablet computer. \"I've been validating the readouts from the diagnostic patch, and they've been accurate within about two percent. If New Millennium can mass produce them, the applications are mind-blowing. Continual glucose tracking for diabetics, monitoring infants overnight to prevent SIDS\u2014have you tested to see if they can distinguish fetal life signs from those of the mother?\"\n\nHer enthusiasm made me smile. This was why I'd fought so hard to help create this place, for the possibilities and the hope and the wonder. \"I don't actually know. Email me a reminder to add it to the research agenda at next week's meeting? As for mass production, that's trickier. There's a limit to how many times a book can be used for libriomancy. They develop magical charring, like burning out a filter. Magazines are even more short-lived. But we're looking into other ways of duplicating them.\" I sat down on the side of the bed. \"Do you mind if I give Lex a quick magical once-over?\"\n\n\"Will it hurt?\" Lex asked. There was none of the stuttering that had marked her speech since the accident.\n\n\"Nope.\" I swallowed a knot in my throat, dropped to one knee, and unclipped Smudge's cage. \"You remember Smudge, don't you?\"\n\n\"Your pet tarantula? Cool!\"\n\nMost people cringed at the sight of a four-inch spider, but I remembered Lex's interest in all things creepy crawly, from worms and lizards to snakes and her short-lived pet cricket Jimmy. I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial level. \"I couldn't tell you before, but he's not exactly a tarantula.\" I grabbed a plastic bag of gummi worms from my pocket. \"Do you want to feed him?\"\n\nShe looked to her parents for permission, then took one of the gummi worms. I grabbed a narrow table from beside the bed and rolled it over by the wheelchair, then set the cage so the fiberglass-lined side was down.\n\nLex stretched the worm until it broke, popped half into her mouth, and poked the rest through the bars of the cage. Smudge snatched it up in his forelegs.\n\n\"Watch this.\" Tiny triangles of red flame flowed down Smudge's legs. The worm softened and began to melt.\n\nHer mouth formed an O. \"Smudge is magic?\"\n\n\"He's a fire-spider. He can create his own flames when he's afraid or angry, or when he wants to cook his meals. He once set my laundry on fire because he was mad at me.\"\n\nLex leaned in to watch as Smudge slurped up red and green semi-liquefied gummy worm.\n\nHer parents pressed closer. Dr. Simpkin and the other medical staff crowded behind me. I felt like an exhibit.\n\nI studied Lex's feet. One was moderately dirty, the toenails rough and torn. The other was clean and lacking in any callouses, with short, perfect nails. \"Ready for the first test? I'm betting the doctors forgot to do this one.\"\n\nLex steeled herself. At nine years old, she had endured more procedures and labwork and injections than most people five times her age, but that didn't make them any less unpleasant.\n\nI tickled her toes. She squealed and jerked back hard. Angie caught the wheelchair's handles to keep it from tipping over.\n\n\"Tickle reflex appears to be working,\" I said in my most official voice. \"But we should probably check the other foot for comparison.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, laughing.\n\n\"All right, fine. But don't complain to me if you end up tickle-impaired!\" I winked. \"How did your first round of physical therapy go this morning?\"\n\n\"It's boring.\" She made a face like she'd bitten something rotten. \"I mean, walking up and down three steps was cool the first time, but they want me do it a million more times!\"\n\n\"Physically, she's perfect,\" added Dr. Simpkin. \"But her brain has to relearn so much about balance and movement. It's going to take time and practice.\"\n\n\"What about...\" I searched for a tactful phrase to describe the mental impairment she'd suffered.\n\nLex saved me the trouble. \"No more brain farts!\"\n\n\"That's what we called it when she struggled to remember words or had balance problems,\" said Toby. \"When she had a full-blown seizure, that was brain vomit.\"\n\nSeizures had been one of the many ongoing effects of Lex's damaged brain. Medication had suppressed most of them, but for the past year, she'd been averaging one seizure every couple of months. I'd never witnessed her full-blown brain-vomit. I'm not sure what I would have done if I had.\n\n\"The MRI and CAT scans we took before lunch appear normal,\" added Dr. Simpkin. \"We've got specialists reviewing the results, and we'll be running a lot more tests, but it looks very encouraging.\"\n\nI could have healed Lex years ago. We could have done this for thousands of other kids by now. I thought about the family who'd spoken to me after the hearing in D.C. and the long list of critically ill and injured people on our research trial waiting lists.\n\n\"Uncle Isaac?\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" I removed my glasses and set them on her meal tray. The rest of the room blurred, but the text of the magic in Lex's body sharpened.\n\n\"Why don't you just fix your eyes with magic?\" asked Toby.\n\n\"For the same reason healing magic doesn't change a vampire back into human. The damage isn't a physical thing. It's magically written into the essence of who and what you are.\" I leaned closer, trying to read the fading magic in Lex's body. The text was faint, and I didn't see any active spells. \"Did the libriomancer explain that this was a one-shot thing? That means the next time you scrape your knee, it'll have to heal the old-fashioned way. So be careful.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Lex sounded so annoyed and put-upon by the reminder I couldn't help but smile.\n\nI read several lines, enough to identify the source of the spell. \"They used a book called Our Lady of the Islands. The protagonist develops the ability to heal with a touch. What exactly did it look like when they healed Lex?\"\n\n\"Dr. Parisi did the actual healing,\" said Dr. Simpkin. \"She called it a controlled partial manifestation.\"\n\n\"It was like the book was a window and the lady inside the book reached out and shook hands with Doctor Alyce!\" Lex added. \"She put the book-lady's hand on my forehead, then on my knee.\"\n\n\"Makes sense.\" With the NIH and everyone else looking for the slightest excuse to shut us down, we'd been going with the least intrusive measures possible. Alyce Parisi was a good libriomancer and an equally good doctor. She wouldn't have done anything that risked harm to her patient.\n\nDespite its effectiveness, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the technique. Living manifestations of fictional characters were too unpredictable, especially intelligent characters. They couldn't handle the transition to the real world. Lena was one of the only exceptions I'd encountered, and her existence and sanity had come with a cost. Even Smudge had struggled when I accidentally drew him from his familiar goblin tunnels into my high school library.\n\nPartial manifestations\u2014a single hand or arm reaching from the pages\u2014were certainly safer. We'd used them in the past to take blood samples and such. But exactly how much of the character did we create in the process? Did the mind achieve any kind of momentary sentience? Was there a flicker of awareness, of existence spread between the real world and the magical potential of the text?\n\nI stood and slid my glasses back onto my face. \"Lex is great. It's exactly what we'd hoped for.\"\n\n\"That's a good thing.\" Toby's hesitation turned it into as much a question as a statement.\n\n\"Yah, of course.\" I was being paranoid. Whatever chaos was happening throughout the world, she was safe here.\n\n\"Is there anything magic can't do, Uncle Isaac?\"\n\n\"Plenty.\" I forced a smile. \"But wouldn't it be boring if we could do anything?\"\n\nFrom her frown, she wasn't convinced.\n\n\"Want to see something I can do?\" I clenched my jaw, glanced at the phone, and subvocally dialed their direct extension. When the phone rang, I smiled at Lex. \"It's for you.\"\n\nShe picked up the phone. \"Hello?\"\n\n\"Hi, Lex!\"\n\nHer face lit up. \"Uncle Isaac? How are you doing that?\"\n\n\"I told you. It's magic!\"\n\nShe climbed out of her chair. Her parents both swooped in to catch her if she fell, but she shooed them away. She grabbed my arm for balance and stood on tiptoes to study my mouth \"Do it again.\"\n\n\"You mean, do it again, please?\"\n\nShe laughed and touched my throat near the jawbone. \"Your lips aren't moving, but this is. Do you have a phone in your mouth?\"\n\nI hung up and laughed. \"You're too clever for me. My team built it. They had to combine magical tech from three different books into a practical communicator with the ability to tap into existing wireless and satellite, at which point I pulled the essence of those technologies\u2014\" I could see her eyes glazing over. \"Yes, it's a magic phone in my mouth. I'm going to leave the number with you and your parents. You can call me any time you need. If anything happens, this is the quickest way to get in touch, and it's completely secure.\"\n\nI emphasized that last sentence, and Toby nodded slightly in response.\n\n\"Can I be a libriomancer when I grow up?\" asked Lex.\n\nHoo boy. \"I don't know. We don't really understand why some people can do magic and others can't.\"\n\nHer shoulders sagged.\n\n\"But if that's what you want, the best thing you can do is read. Libriomancy is all about reading and loving books. Find the stories you love, and don't ever let anyone tell you you're wrong for loving them. If you want, I can send you some of my favorites to read. As long as it's all right with your parents.\"\n\nShe nodded solemnly. \"I promise I'll read them all.\"\n\nI made a face. \"Don't do that unless you love them all. There are too many books in the world to waste time slogging through the ones you hate.\" I waited while she eased herself back into her chair, then grabbed Smudge's cage. \"I should get out of the way and let Dr. Simpkin finish up. Thanks for letting me interrupt. It's great to see you again, Lex. Maybe when you're a little stronger, I could introduce you to Kerling and the rest of the animals over at research.\"\n\nShe nodded again, beaming.\n\nToby followed me into the hall. \"Should I be worried?\"\n\n\"I'm going to review all of Lex's paperwork and double-check who selected her, but I don't think so. I'm probably overthinking things. New Millennium has good security, magical and mundane. Much better than the capitol in Lansing.\"\n\n\"No kidding. The woman in charge of security\u2014what's her name? Palmer? She spent most of our first day reviewing security procedures with us. This place is locked down tighter than the White House.\"\n\n\"Babs Palmer, yah.\"\n\nHe paused. \"You don't like her.\"\n\n\"She and I butted heads a few times. She ended up trying to kill a friend of mine. I mean, that friend was trying to kill her too, but still... Then I had to stop Babs from creating an army and seizing control of the Porters. So no, she's not on my Nice List.\"\n\n\"Are you serious?\" He stepped closer and lowered his voice. \"How the hell did she end up running things here?\"\n\n\"A lot of things were up in the air after Gutenberg died. Whatever I might think of Babs, she's very, very good at what she does. Nicola Pallas and the rest of the Porter Council spent a long time telepathically checking her intentions before sending her to New Millennium. She believes in what we're doing here, and she wants to see it grow.\"\n\n\"Do you trust her?\"\n\n\"I trust Nicola. I wouldn't have let you come here if I didn't believe it was safe. But if I hear the slightest whisper that your family could be in danger, I'll get you out.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" He put a hand on the door. With his back to me, he added, \"Be careful out there, eh?\"\n\nI thought about the potential clue Deb had given me, and about the blood and bodies in Lansing. With Lex and her parents safe, it was time to find some answers. \"Not really part of my skillset, but I'll do my best.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "\u2002INTERPOL'S MOST WANTED MAGICAL CRIMINALS\n\n\u2002Name: Juan Ponce de Leon\n\n\u2002Nationality: Spanish\n\n\u2002Date of Birth: 1474\n\n\u2002Height: Unknown\n\n\u2002Hair: Unknown\n\n\u2002Eyes: Unknown\n\n\u2002Charges: Murder, enslavement, theft, and other war crimes.\n\n\u2002Ponce de Leon is believed to be a sorcerer. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest based on crimes committed by him and soldiers under his command in the early sixteenth century."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "\u2002Name: Yvan Marchais\n\n\u2002Nationality: French\n\n\u2002Date of Birth: 16/06/1984\n\n\u2002Height:.59 met\n\n\u2002Hair: Brown\n\n\u2002Eyes: Brown\n\n\u2002Charges: Murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion.\n\n\u2002Marchais is a mercenary and religious extremist, and is believed to be a vampire. He is wanted in connection with three large-scale massacres in eastern Europe."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "\u2002Name: Samoud al-Rahman\n\n\u2002Nationality: Afghani\n\n\u2002Date of Birth: 02/10/1991\n\n\u2002Height:.45 met\n\n\u2002Hair: Black\n\n\u2002Eyes: Red\n\n\u2002Charges: Murder, terrorism, arms trafficking, treason.\n\n\u2002Al-Rahman is the son of an Afghani warlord. The people believe him to be part demon. He's been implicated in more than four thousand murders and executions."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "\u2002Name: Lucy Bell\n\n\u2002Nationality: U.S.A\n\n\u2002Date of Birth: 28/04/2001\n\n\u2002Height:.38 met\n\n\u2002Hair: Blonde\n\n\u2002Eyes: Hazel\n\n\u2002Charges: Drug trafficking, blackmail, extortion, sale of prohibited magical material.\n\n\u2002Bell ran away from her parents in 2011. In recent years, she has been linked to gang-related drug dealing in the southern United States. She is believed to be using libriomancy to create new, powerful, and deadly drugs.\n\nIF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THE WHEREABOUTS OF THESE INDIVIDUALS, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL OR NATIONAL POLICE, OR INTERPOL.\n\n\"For someone who claimed to want nothing more than to be a researcher, you certainly spend a great deal of time in the field.\"\n\n\"It's hard to concentrate on research when the world's going to hell.\"\n\n\"Yet somehow, billions of people go about their lives every day, resisting the urge to track down terrorists and conspiracies.\"\n\n\"You think I should stay in my lab? Let someone else worry about whoever orchestrated those attacks?\"\n\n\"Not at all. I simply think you should stop lying to yourself about who you are.\"\n\nBabs Palmer's office was on the fourth floor of the Reginald Scot Administrative Tower, along with offices for the NIH liaison and representatives from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and our human resources team.\n\nIn addition to working for the Porters, Babs had been a practicing lawyer until a year ago, when the State Bar of Texas discovered her \"supplemental employment.\" More than half her cases were now being appealed and retried on the grounds that she could have used magic to influence judge and jury. Which, knowing Babs, wasn't a completely implausible idea.\n\nHer receptionist, a young Japanese woman named Kiyoko It\u00f4, guarded the path to Babs' office like Cerberus protecting the gates of hell. Kiyoko also acted as the main receptionist for New Millennium during business hours, and coordinated the occasional birthday party for employees.\n\nShe looked up as I entered the small outer office. \"How c-can I help you, Mister V-Vainio?\"\n\n\"I need to talk to Doctor Palmer.\"\n\nShe cocked her head to one side. Probably sending a message to Babs via her computer link.\n\nI had no idea where Babs had found Kiyoko, but she was no libriomancer. Kiyoko was tall, slender, and looked to be in her late twenties. Her head was shaved, presumably to allow a better connection with the series of small electrodes stuck to her scalp. Thin gold wires linked the electrodes like a circlet before trailing down beneath the back of her black suit jacket.\n\nAs far as I could determine, there was nothing magical about those electrodes. They simply relayed the electrical impulses from Kiyoko's brain through our network to one of the shielded computer servers. That was where the magic happened, translating her thoughts into commands that allowed Kiyoko to mentally manage her system without keyboard or mouse.\n\nHer stuttering was part of a larger neurological problem that also affected her balance. I'd offered to try to get her into our medical trials, but she refused each time, saying others needed our help more than she did. She got around well enough, using forearm crutches for stability.\n\nA black pearl pendant protected her from magical influence or assault. Babs wore a similar necklace, describing it as a necessary security precaution. The pearls came from a tank of oysters in the basement of the Rosalind Franklin Research Tower. One of Babs' first acts as Director of Security had been to arrange the publication of a fantasy novel called Sea Change, specifically for a passage describing the magically resistant oysters.\n\n\"Doctor P-Palmer has a meeting scheduled in fifteen minutes,\" said Kiyoko. \"Could you c-come back this afternoon at two-thirty?\"\n\n\"It's important. I won't be long.\"\n\nShe paused again, then glanced at the flat-screen monitor on her desk. \"Five minutes. Please leave your spider outside.\"\n\nI saluted and set Smudge's cage on one of the chairs to the side. The door to Babs' office unlocked with an audible click as I reached for the knob. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.\n\nBabs Palmer looked more like a gym teacher than a lawyer or libriomancer. She was thick and muscular, with tattoos of a tiger and a dragon on her forearms. The colorful tattoos concealed magically inked text, similar in some respects to the forehead tattoo Nidhi wore to protect her thoughts, but Babs' ink was far more powerful. Rings decorated her fingers. Several of those were magic as well, but I couldn't read any of it, thanks to the black pearl hanging from a thick silver chain around her neck.\n\n\"How can you stand to wear that thing?\" I asked. \"Cutting yourself off from magic for days at a time? I'd go mad.\"\n\n\"What do you want, Vainio?\" Babs looked tired. Her tanned skin had developed new lines at the eyes, like cracks spreading through concrete. Books and papers covered her desk, which was as large as my first car. One open folder held a map of Asia and official-looking documents in Chinese. Another looked like a building plan of some sort.\n\nA map of New Millennium dominated the wall to my left. Dots of differently colored ink moved slowly over the paper. I studied it more closely. \"Did you finally figure out how to make that Marauder's Map work in the real world?\"\n\nThe map from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was one of the first projects my team had worked on, but we'd never been able to calibrate it.\n\n\"We went a different route.\" She rearranged the files, stacking things in several haphazard piles. \"You're down to four minutes.\"\n\n\"I was in Lansing yesterday.\"\n\n\"I know. I got Nicola's report.\"\n\nI sat in the chair opposite her desk. \"I want to put my team to work helping to root out whoever orchestrated that attack. I've got one lead already.\"\n\nShe sighed and leaned back, finally giving me her full attention. \"What does that have to do with me?\"\n\n\"Honestly? I may not like you, but you're good at your job. I could use your help.\" I cocked a thumb at the map on the wall. \"Some of the things you've worked out for New Millennium's security could be adapted to help us track\u2014\"\n\n\"I have enough of my own responsibilities without taking on yours. You're our Research Director. If you want to push for this, do it. But don't be surprised when the board shoots it down. The slightest whiff of magic is enough to taint even airtight court cases.\"\n\n\"I'm not talking about building a legal case. I'm talking about saving lives. This is the kind of thing we started New Millennium to do. Either one of us could have stopped those werewolves if we'd been there. We should be working to prevent or resolve future attacks, like Gutenberg used to do with his automatons.\"\n\nHer eyes tightened, and she started fiddling with one of her rings. \"Don't tell me you want to rebuild the automatons.\"\n\n\"Hell, no.\" True, Gutenberg's constructs would have made short work of most magical terrorists, with spells worked into their metal-block armor to allow them to travel at the speed of a sunbeam, create fire and brimstone, warp magical attacks, and generally bring the pain to whoever Gutenberg sent them after. They also required the enslavement of a human soul, which was one of the reasons I'd destroyed the damn things.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Isaac. I have too much on my desk already.\"\n\nI didn't answer right away. She was trying to brush me off. That much was standard procedure between us. But she lacked her usual confidence. I wished Nidhi was here to observe her reaction. \"Whoever orchestrated yesterday's attacks, we both know they'll try again.\"\n\n\"You're our lead researcher, and your work is here,\" she said firmly, but her hands trembled as she spoke. She pulled them into her lap where the desk blocked my view.\n\n\"Think of the PR,\" I said. \"If New Millennium helps bring a bunch of terrorists to justice\u2014\"\n\n\"Leave it alone, Isaac.\" Each word was clipped and tight.\n\nWhat the hell was going on? I'd seen Babs angry. She could be as loud and bombastic as a grizzly. This was different. She was almost pleading.\n\nShe glanced at her watch, and the cold mask fell back into place. \"If you want to help with PR, work with medical to make sure their patients are camera-ready, and get your team prepared to show off their flashiest projects. We're planning a press conference in two weeks. The more oohs and aahs you can bring, the better.\"\n\nI lowered my voice and asked something I never would have imagined saying to Babs Palmer. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nShe stiffened. \"I have a meeting to get to, and I believe your five minutes are up.\"\n\n\"Right.\" I stood. \"Thanks for your time.\"\n\nI left her office without another word. Kiyoko smiled at me as I passed her desk. I nodded absently and grabbed Smudge.\n\nI'd told my brother that Nicola and the rest of the Porter Council had vetted Babs Palmer before appointing her to this position. I hadn't been lying when I said I trusted Nicola and her judgment.\n\nBut Nicola wasn't perfect, and while our security measures scanned for hostile intent, Babs had helped to create those measures. She was the most qualified person I knew to bypass them.\n\n\"This is exactly why I can't just concentrate on my research and leave the fieldwork to somebody else,\" I muttered to no one in particular.\n\nI stopped on the way out to pick up my newest batch of hate mail.\n\nMost of the nastiness we received came by email. It was easier to send threats and bile via the keyboard than to write it all out by hand, and for most of these people, their laziness was second only to their poor spelling.\n\nI took the handwritten ones more seriously. These people were invested in their hate. They took the time to scrawl page after page of graphic, grammatically tortured prose describing the evils I and New Millennium represented, and the horrific fates we would all suffer for our sins.\n\nAll physical mail was screened by security before delivery. We made sure law enforcement received copies. Those letters were also scanned and saved on our servers as evidence in case anyone tried to carry through on their threats.\n\nI'd begun posting the most creative, interesting, or bizarre letter I got each month in a place of honor outside my door, where all could marvel at the people with far too much time on their hands. Last time, it had been a gentleman who was angry about our use of animals in magical research. He apparently thought our PETA protesters were too laid-back and easygoing, and suggested my team should be skinned alive, our hides tanned into leather, our meat processed into McNuggets, and our bones ground into gelatin to be fed to little children in Easter jellybeans.\n\nIt was the jellybean bit that earned him a spot by my door. That and the crude drawing he'd included of the Easter Bunny skipping along, carrying what I assume was supposed to be my bloody head, but looked more like a hairy pumpkin in oversized glasses.\n\nThe nice thing about people like Jellybean Man was that I knew exactly where I stood. There was no subtlety, no subterfuge or second-guessing. It was a refreshing change from talking to politicians.\n\nI waved my ID at the scanner in front of the main doors to the Franklin Research Tower. A musty odor greeted me as I walked past the guard at the front desk. Patricia Bordenkircher was the only zombie on site. She'd been infected from a zombie romance novel, a subgenre I never would have imagined being popular enough for libriomancy.\n\nAs long as she fed regularly\u2014and we had an ongoing contract with a butcher from Vegas, along with a week's supply of cow brains in an industrial freezer\u2014she appeared as human as the rest of us. She was significantly stronger, with a powerful sense of smell, and teeth strong enough to crush bone. She looked up from her knitting as I passed.\n\n\"How's the grandkid?\" I asked.\n\nPatty beamed and held up her half-completed blanket. \"Bobbi's turning one in November. She's been babbling up a storm. She's a talker, that one. Just like her daddy.\"\n\nI smiled and headed through another set of doors into a large, open space that smelled of hay, fur, and animal droppings. We'd converted most of the ground floor into a kennel for everything from rats to rabbits to monkeys, even a Galapagos turtle with a cracked shell who'd been shipped in two weeks ago from the Toronto zoo. And, of course, Vince's favorite crow, Kerling.\n\nSmudge smoked as we passed the rat cages. He didn't mind the other animals, but I suspected the rats were close enough to his size for him to see them as potential competitors. Or maybe potential meals, though I couldn't remember the last time he'd hunted anything bigger than a grasshopper. I really needed to get him out more while I was here. Parts of the desert were barren enough for him to roam and hunt without setting the land ablaze, and he needed the exercise.\n\nI found Vince Hambrecht at a stainless steel table, next to a mobile desk with three computer monitors. He and an NIH doctor named Jeremy Dishaw were examining a six-foot-long boa constrictor. \"Hi, Boss! How was D.C.?\"\n\n\"Eventful.\" Where Dr. Dishaw wore a shirt, tie, and lab coat, Vince was dressed in his favorite blue robe over a too-tight T-shirt. Knee-length shorts and Birkenstock sandals completed the image. The robe was part of his ongoing effort to cultivate a magical fashion style. An effort which had so far failed to take off. His attempt to grow a \"wizardly\" beard had been equally unsuccessful, resulting in thin, scraggly patches along his cheekbones and chin.\n\nI looked past them at the snake. \"How's he\u2014she?\u2014doing?\"\n\n\"He,\" said Vince. \"His name's Olaf. He likes warm hugs. He came in with IBD eight days ago. That's inclusion body disease. It's like AIDS for snakes. He's good as new, now. But Doctor Dipshit here wants to reinfect him to see if our cure created immunity.\"\n\nDishaw glared at Vince. \"You've proven you can cure the virus, so there should be no long-term risk to the animal, even if it's still susceptible to IBD. We need to know how magic affects the immune system, both in the short and long term.\"\n\n\"He also wants to feed Olaf some of our rats.\"\n\nDishaw flushed. \"You've done zero work to see how consuming magic will affect the food chain. What if it works like mercury poisoning, where the harm ends up concentrated in the apex predators?\"\n\n\"That wasn't in the original research plan,\" I said mildly.\n\n\"Well, it should have been.\" Dishaw gave the snake a fond pat on the head. \"Don't get me wrong, Isaac. What you're doing here is amazing. But we've got to be certain it's safe. A single unforeseen magical mutation could have serious consequences for the entire world.\"\n\nIt sounded reasonable. It always did. \"All our rats are part of other research projects. They're not expendable. If you want to submit a modified proposal, I'll be happy to take a look.\"\n\n\"Bam!\" Vince crowed. \"Rats: 1. Doctor Dishaw: 0.\"\n\n\"Knock it off,\" I said. \"He's got a point about checking Olaf's long-term immunity. If you want to make your case against reinfection, write it up and have it on my desk by the end of the week.\"\n\nVince sagged. \"Damn, Boss. See, this is why everyone likes it better when you're away on your road trips.\"\n\n\"Don't call me boss. Also, staff meeting upstairs in the Wheeler room in thirty minutes.\"\n\n\"That's cold, Boss. What did we do to deserve that?\"\n\n\"Keep it up, and I'll make you sit through a PowerPoint presentation.\"\n\nHe raised his hands in surrender. \"Cruel and unusual punishment.\"\n\nI headed for the stairs and made my way to my office on the second floor. I doubted I'd ever get used to being the kind of guy who had his own office, or called staff meetings.\n\nMy office was nowhere near as impressive as Babs', but that was how I liked it. Bookshelves lined the walls on either side. A large window behind my desk opened onto the New Millennium grounds, giving me a view of the warehouse and southern wall. I sat down and switched on the computer.\n\nOur network ran on a customized operating system, a modified version of the Porters' old network. I'd worked with Talulah to build an additional layer into the user interface for our team, a bit of magical blue text that appeared to float in front of the monitor. I pressed my fingers to the text and concentrated on the programs I needed.\n\nThe screen came to life, opening up my email, calendar, and a spreadsheet of current and closed research projects. I sent a note to Charles and Talulah about the meeting, then grabbed a LEGO DeLorean Lena had given me for Christmas and fiddled with the doors as I skimmed the latest updates.\n\nCharles was still griping about wanting to do a book tour on New Millennium's dime. He also wanted to upgrade his hearing, and had narrowed the possibilities down to four books. I skimmed his notes, but my mind was elsewhere. I ended up reading the same paragraph on selective frequency echolocation three times before giving up.\n\nI cleared the screen and ran a search for the USCGC Kagan instead, then sat back to read.\n\nThe Kagan was a Coast Guard cutter, commissioned in 1989 and currently based off the U.S. East Coast. It was a hundred and ten feet long, with a crew of eighteen and a top speed of more than thirty knots. Armament included two fifty-caliber machine guns and one twenty-five millimeter chain gun.\n\nThere was nothing about its current mission, nor could I find any public details about the commander or crew. The ship hadn't been in the news recently. None of the articles or information gave any hint why Deb's pet terrorists might have been interested in hitting the Kagan, or why they'd changed their minds.\n\nI was still poring over what I could find of the ship's history when the computer made the whooshing sound of the TARDIS engines from Doctor Who, letting me know I was about to be late for my own staff meeting. I grabbed a book from my pocket, performed a quick spell, and hurried off.\n\nThe Wheeler room was one of the smaller conference rooms, with a narrow table and a dozen chairs, along with a whiteboard that doubled as a projector screen. An old-fashioned crystal ball mounted to the center of the table served as the equivalent of both speakerphone and video monitor, though I always had trouble keeping it attuned to our world. I could never eliminate the static and random images from the book we'd used to produce the crystals, and every once in a while a green-skinned warlock would pop up to threaten us all with doom and destruction until we recalibrated him out of existence.\n\nVince was leaning back in his chair, his feet crossed on the edge of the table. Talulah sat on the opposite side, flipping through a gaming magazine.\n\n<Welcome back,> said Talulah. She'd given herself a limited form of mind-speech shortly after joining up with New Millennium. I could see the text of her telepathic magic when she spoke, like ink hidden between layers of onion paper.\n\n<Thanks,> I said. Talulah was one of four people at New Millennium with a criminal record. Hers was a minor vandalism charge from when she was a teenager. Although, given her skill with technology, she could have easily erased more serious crimes from her records and none of us would know.\n\nTalulah had grown up on a Choctaw reservation in Oklahoma. Her family had steered her toward gaming as a way to keep her out of trouble. It had worked a bit too well. In addition to competing in statewide and national gaming tournaments, she had her own YouTube channel, and had developed a following as a video game guru in the years before she was outed as a libriomancer.\n\nThere was an ongoing and vicious debate online as to whether her game run-throughs were magically assisted, but she swore she never used her powers while gaming. I'd been among the skeptics until I watched her beat the original Super Mario Brothers in under five minutes. <Did you make any progress on those gaming manuals?>\n\n<I think it's a lost cause. Nobody reads the manuals these days. Everything's online. And the manuals have some of the same limits as comic books: too many pictures, not enough active reading. It's a shame. I wanted to see what a 1UP mushroom would do in the real world.>\n\n<Better than the fire-flower you were working on.>\n\n<Says the man with the flaming spider.>\n\nI double-checked Smudge, but he was resting peacefully in his cage. <Where are you at with the IAS Project?>\n\n<Ready for a trial run. We're just waiting for FCC approval.>\n\nNatural disasters were one of Talulah's obsessions. In addition to working to predict and detect them more quickly, she'd been developing a tool to give people as much advance warning as possible. Her proposed International Alert System was intended to broadcast to television, radio, cellphone, even things like hearing aids. An extra five minutes' notice could save thousands of lives.\n\nBefore I could respond, Charles Brice strode into the room and took a seat at the far end of the table. \"How long's this gonna take, Isaac?\"\n\nWhen I'd first heard that a Nebula award-winning science fiction author would be joining my research team, I'd been ecstatic. That feeling lasted until approximately thirty seconds after meeting him in person.\n\nMost libriomancers had an arrogant streak. Playing fast and loose with the laws of the universe had that effect. But Charles took it to an entirely new level.\n\nPart of his problem was that he'd worked as a Porter researcher for twenty years, and wasn't thrilled about having to report to an upstart half his age. I was pretty sure he thought he should have been put in charge of research at New Millennium. The fact that I had to supervise and sign off on his research was weird to me too, but he took it as a personal affront, and never passed up the chance to catch me in a mistake or undermine me in front of the team.\n\nHis wife and frequent co-author Jodi was far more pleasant. She had no magic of her own, but had been living on site with Charles for the past four months. The last I'd heard, she was close to finishing up a solo project about libriomancers fighting off a colony of mutant vampires from Venus.\n\nCharles studied me through his mechanical eye, a black-glass-and-chrome bionic replacement with telescopic, X-ray, and infrared modes, as well as a laser capable of cutting through one-inch steel in twenty seconds. With magic out in the open, he'd begun harvesting body modifications from various science fiction novels. His eternal complaint\u2014one of them, at least\u2014was his inability to access tech from his own books.\n\nThe risk of stories infecting your mind and thoughts was exponentially higher when the libriomancer was also the author. Gutenberg was the only person I knew who had successfully performed libriomancy with his own work, and even then, the attempt ultimately killed him.\n\nCharles drummed the metal fingers of his left hand on the desk. He'd also given himself the ability to sense magnetic fields, a sense of smell as powerful as that of a turkey vulture, and upgraded adrenal glands. \"Well?\" he said. \"Are you going to tell us what this is about?\"\n\nI took off my jacket and set it over the crystal ball. \"Talulah, we'll need privacy, please. Magical and mundane.\"\n\nShe cocked her head, but popped open her briefcase and brought out one of her books. She skimmed the pages and created a device that looked like a thick smartphone. \"That will jam any listening devices.\" A second book produced a small dagger, which she placed next to the jammer. \"And that should disrupt magical spying.\"\n\nI opened Smudge's cage and lifted him free. \"I have a new research project for this team, one that takes precedence over your current work.\"\n\nCharles was the first to react, rising to his feet and placing both hands on the table. \"That's bullshit.\"\n\n\"I've got a cat coming in tomorrow with FIV,\" added Vince. \"You expect me to just let him die?\"\n\n\"I expect you to multitask. Talulah, I need you to find out everything you can about the USCGC Kagan. Crew details, mission logs, and a breakdown of its activities for the past year.\"\n\n<What's going on, Mister Vainio?>\n\n<I don't know yet,> I answered. <Maybe nothing. I don't want to prejudice your research with rumors.>\n\n\"Coast Guard?\" asked Vince. \"Are we doing military research now?\"\n\nSmudge crawled up my arm and settled onto my shoulder, cool and calm. \"You're helping me with a puzzle. The less you know, the easier it will be for you to plead ignorance if this goes badly.\"\n\nCharles huffed up like I'd slapped him in the face and pissed on his three-hundred dollar shoes. \"If there ever comes a day when I deliberately embrace ignorance, I'll have lived one day too long.\"\n\nVince jerked his chin at Charles. \"What he said.\"\n\n<I agree.>\n\n\"Isaac was in Lansing,\" said Vince. \"Odds are this has something to do with the attack.\"\n\nTalulah nodded. \"New Millennium has measures in place to protect our privacy. If he's asking for additional shielding, it means he doesn't trust those measures.\"\n\n\"You think there's a mole in New Millennium,\" guessed Charles. \"Do you believe we're at risk of a similar attack here?\"\n\n\"If that was the case, he'd have gone straight to Dr. Palmer.\" Talulah shook her head. \"You think she might be in on this?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" This kind of insight and intelligence was exactly why I'd wanted these three for my team, no matter how annoying some of them could be.\n\n\"If you're so paranoid, why trust us?\" asked Charles.\n\n\"I'm taking a chance,\" I admitted. \"But I've worked with you for close to a year now. I've seen your passion for your work, and for the things New Millennium could do. I don't intend to let anyone corrupt or destroy what we're doing here, and I don't believe you would, either. I think I can trust you. Am I wrong?\"\n\nI looked at each of them until they answered out loud. The copy of The Goblin Wood I'd tucked into my pocket remained silent. They were telling the truth.\n\n\"Are any of you familiar with a group called Vanguard?\" They looked at one another, shaking their heads. \"They've been warning inhumans about police and government raids, helping to relocate them, and so on. The FBI believes they're connected to these attacks. I don't know if they're directly involved, or if someone's just recruiting extremists from the Vanguard pool.\"\n\n\"I'll ask around,\" said Charles. \"I have a lot of friends in the inhuman community. I've gone to them for research with my books.\"\n\nI looked across the table at Talulah. \"Earlier today, I spoke with Babs about investigating these attacks. She got scared.\"\n\n\"Scared?\" Vince repeated. \"Babs Palmer?\"\n\n\"Scared of you?\" Charles added, sounding equally incredulous.\n\nI pushed my annoyance aside. \"Not of me. Scared for me, maybe. Scared of what will happen if we dig into this.\" I paused. \"I can't and won't order any of you to do this. If you want out\u2014\"\n\n\"You've worked with Dr. Palmer,\" said Talulah. \"Do you believe she could have been involved with those attacks?\"\n\n\"I believe she's ambitious, arrogant, and potentially dangerous,\" I said slowly. \"I don't think she'd help murder innocent people, but that's not good enough. She's one of the top people at New Millennium, and she's in charge of security. If whoever's behind this decides to target us next...\"\n\nTalulah's brow was furrowed, and she kept chewing her lip. \"I'll do some digging.\"\n\n\"All of the primary targets were people who'd spoken out against magic,\" said Vince. \"Coming after a group like New Millennium would be a complete one-eighty.\"\n\n\"It could be about theft,\" Talulah said. \"Do you know how much people are paying for black market magic these days?\"\n\n\"I'll run an inventory check here in Research,\" Vince offered. \"Make sure none of our projects have gotten up and walked away.\"\n\nI stood up and looked at them each in turn. \"If you find anything, tell me. That's all. Do not talk to anyone else about this, and do not pull any lone-wolf spy crap. If you do, I'll use you as my next test subject for the Gateway Project. If you're lucky, I'll send you somewhere on this planet.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "SECURITY COUNCIL VOTES NOT TO IMPOSE SANCTIONS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES",
                "text": "After expressing deep concerns regarding the magical research being conducted at the New Millennium center in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Russian Federation joined Jordan and Malaysia in calling for economic sanctions against the United States of America. The resolution was voted down 10-3, with China and Nigeria abstaining.\n\nThe representative of the Russian Federation said this resolution was an expression of international concerns over America's alliance with the organization known as the Porters. They demanded regular U.N. inspections and the immediate cessation of all military research, despite the fact that New Millennium denies performing any sort of military work.\n\nToday's vote followed six months of angry negotiations. Proposals to build additional New Millennium centers in other member nations have been met with anger and threats.\n\nThe representative from France likened this time in history to the beginning of the nuclear age. \"We have one opportunity to prevent a magical arms race, an escalation that could bring about a second Cold War. This is a time for unity.\"\n\nFollowing the vote, the representative from China reaffirmed his belief that all nations have the right to the benefits and advantages of magic.\n\nThe Security Council will be voting later this month on a resolution to establish an International Magical Regulatory Agency, similar in structure to the International Atomic Energy Agency.\n\n\"Change is a difficult, often violent process, both for individuals and for whole species. The more rapid the change, the uglier the conflict.\"\n\n\"I can't accept that violence is inevitable.\"\n\n\"Look at the breakthroughs you've discovered in your libriomancy. How many of those discoveries were born from conflict and violence and desperation?\"\n\n\"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\"Technology advances more swiftly in times of war. Violence and change aren't separate concepts, Isaac. All too often, they're different facets of the same thing.\"\n\n\"Has anyone ever told you how damn depressing you can be?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe next morning found me walking across the grounds just before sunrise. Blue-tinged solar-powered lamps illuminated the sidewalks. A small brown lizard scampered away from me. Smudge crouched in his cage, as if preparing to pounce. I couldn't tell if he meant to attack or play.\n\nLooking around, I imagined New Millennium as it had been during construction. I remembered the bulldozers, the beds of concrete and rebar, the skeletal girders stretching skyward, built with magic and machinery both.\n\nI wasn't the only one up and about. To my right, behind the eastern residential building, three young children played on brand-new, brightly colored climbing equipment. The swing set and sandbox had been part of the original construction, but the monkey bars, dinosaur-themed slides, merry-go-round, and climbing wall had gone up just last month. The parents watched from a wooden bench. I waved and kept walking.\n\nI'd seen every phase of development and construction. I'd flown to Vegas to argue the benefits of magic to the mayor and his staff. I'd hovered over our architect's shoulder until she grew frustrated enough to banish me from her office. I was here for the groundbreaking, and I was here for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.\n\nI was tempted to turn myself invisible and break into Babs' office, but Babs was in charge of security for a reason, and if I got caught, she was in a position to have me kicked out of New Millennium altogether.\n\nI passed the greenhouse, where a variety of magically enhanced plants grew under strict quarantine. I had lunch twice a month with Elvira Pop Caal, the Guatemalan libriomancer in charge of agriculture, to compare hate mail. The people who got upset about genetically modified crops had nothing on the folks who thought magic seeds were going to destroy the planet. According to Elvira, a few years of crossbreeding and research should be enough to create stable strains of rice and wheat and other foods that might someday feed the world.\n\nAssuming the world didn't wreck itself in the meantime.\n\nHabit brought me back to Franklin Tower. I walked through the doors on autopilot, still lost in thought. Most of the animals were awake and scurrying about, eager to be fed. I nodded to one of Vince's assistants and headed for the elevator. I waved my badge in front of the scanner, stepped in, and punched the button for the fifth floor. I might have better luck if I lost myself in work and let my subconscious worry about terrorists and Babs Palmer for a while.\n\nOnce the elevator doors slid open, I headed down the hall and unlocked Large Project Room number three, which had come to be known as Isaac's Playroom. I flipped on the lights, illuminating an open area the size of a basketball court. I'd started the Gateway Project in my office one afternoon when I was avoiding paperwork, but it had grown like Lena's garden, expanding to take up whatever space I could get.\n\nHigh speed cameras stood on tripods like slumbering robots. A plastic wading pool sat in front of one. Another pointed to a simple chalk circle on the tile floor.\n\nBooks were everywhere. A set of whiteboards listed every title I'd brought over from the library. Many were crossed out, while others were annotated with Post-it notes.\n\nLast year in Copper River, I'd watched a sorceress named Meridiana use libriomancy to turn a body of water into a portal to the moon. It hadn't ended well for her, but the idea had stayed with me.\n\nMagical gateways were such a common element of speculative fiction that they had their own unofficial subgenre: portal fantasies. You couldn't pull the magical wardrobe out of C. S. Lewis' Narnia books, of course. The size of the book limited what you could create, and a wardrobe that took you to a fictional world would almost certainly kill you. But Meridiana had successfully combined the magic of multiple works in a way that allowed her to anchor a stable portal to another real-world location.\n\nI'd glimpsed her magic, the way the text of the different stories twined together, but as I'd been in the middle of a small magical war at the time, I hadn't gotten to study it as closely as I wanted.\n\nThat didn't matter. I knew the one thing that truly mattered. I knew it could be done.\n\nThe wading pool was part of my initial attempt to duplicate her original portal, but without opening up a rift to the cold vacuum of the moon. The patched section of floor was the result of that attempt, which had simply disintegrated everything in a five-foot diameter circle.\n\nA black shape perched atop the smartboard on the wall to my left. \"Good morning, Kerling.\"\n\nThe crow ruffled her feathers.\n\nI switched on the board, which could act as a television screen, whiteboard, remote network terminal, and more. After logging in with my New Millennium ID, I pulled up a map of the United States and tagged the locations of the attacks from earlier this week. Michigan, California, Oklahoma, and New York. There was also the aborted plan to hit the Kagan, but without knowing where on the East Coast she was stationed, I had no way of adding that to the map.\n\nIf future attacks followed the same pattern, they would target prominent anti-magic politicians, which narrowed things down to pretty much anywhere in the United States. Assuming they continued to limit their focus to one country.\n\nI cleared the screen and pulled up the last Porter census map of inhuman populations within the U.S. The clustered dots, each color representing a different species, suggested a weak potential correlation. The killers in Lansing had been werewolves, and Michigan had one of the larger werewolf packs in the country. New York had a disproportionate number of trolls. There was a group of nagas living in the California desert, and Oklahoma was known for its chupacabras. Each attack had been carried out by a single species, one more-or-less native to the area.\n\nWas that cause or effect? Vanguard or whoever was behind this could have simply recruited whoever was convenient, but a truly random sampling would have resulted in mixed-species groups. The exclusion of vampires seemed odd as well. They were one of the most widespread inhuman groups, and many vampire species would have done a far better job at killing and terrorizing their targets.\n\nI rubbed my eyes and turned away. Glaring at the screen wouldn't force it to produce the answers I wanted.\n\nInstead, I skimmed my list of potential Gateway Project books, reviewing the combinations I'd tried so far. Anything more than five texts together was too much for me to control or manipulate. The few times I'd tried, the magic had promptly fizzled, and I ended up with the twenty-four-hour migraine from hell.\n\nI picked up Through the Looking Glass and The Mirror of Her Dreams. The mirror theme of the two books should help them work together, and might add stability to the portal. Eventually, I added Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. I'd read it two weeks ago for part of my research. It was incredibly popular, with some very passionate readers. The belief and power in this paperback should provide a good boost to the overall magic. Outlander's portal used standing stones instead of a mirror, but I could work with that.\n\n\"A mirror mounted within some kind of standing stones,\" I muttered, pacing a tight circle. I debated adding Catherynne Valente's Palimpsest to the mix, but the last time I'd used that book, I ended up with a tattooed map of Las Vegas covering my skin. It had taken a week to get rid of the thing.\n\nMy original timeline would have had us using Gateway to transport supplies to the International Space Station by the end of the year. It shouldn't have taken more than an additional six months to adapt the Gateway Project for space exploration, assuming I could figure out some sort of magical valve to keep the vacuum on the other side from sucking all the air out of the room... or we could just build the portal in an airlock. If I figured out how to miniaturize the portal, there were surgical applications as well. Not to mention routine trade and travel.\n\nI retrieved a compact mirror and a pouch full of gravel from a table full of miscellaneous supplies\u2014Talulah called it the Junk Desk\u2014and spent the next half hour using a glue gun to affix pieces of gravel to the edge of the mirror. It was hardly the stones of Gabaldon's Outlander, but it would do in a pinch.\n\nI switched on the cameras and sat down on the floor. I opened each of the books and set paperweights on the edges to hold them in place. One at a time, I touched the books' magic, drawing that belief into myself, then pushing it into the mirror.\n\n\"Gateway Project, experiment number one eighty-three. Carroll, Donaldson, and Gabaldon.\"\n\nI set a travel magazine in the center of the triangle formed by the three books. I turned to a story about street food in Hanoi, drawing fragments of description into the glass. If this worked, the smells of bun rieu cua thit nuong and hien luon xao should fill the room.\n\n\"Isaac?\"\n\nI jumped hard enough I almost dropped the mirror. None of the stories about implanted communicators warned how damned startling they could be. Once my breathing slowed, I got up and switched off the camera. \"What's up, Vince?\"\n\n\"I finished that inventory check. I didn't find anything suspicious.\"\n\n\"All right, thanks.\"\n\n\"There's more. I was up last night thinking. If someone's infiltrated New Millennium, maybe it's not about stealing our work. Maybe it's subtler than that. What if they're guiding our research instead?\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"I built a database of all the proposals and projects we've worked on, then went through to categorize and score the delays. For the most part, it was pretty random. We've all had our work put on hold. There were more roadblocks in the beginning, and a spike when the NIH moved in, but I figure that's normal. For the past three months, about fifty percent of the roadblocks came from NIH, with another thirty percent from DHS, and the rest split between the Porter Council, the New Millennium board, and other governmental groups. Plus a few projects you personally shot down.\"\n\n\"I'm not hearing anything earth-shattering here, Vince.\"\n\n\"The thing is, you can't just graph the number of delays, right? You've got to include other factors in your analysis. I played around with a bunch of other variables, including potential public risk. You'd expect the most dangerous projects to have the biggest hurdles. Nobody wants this to turn into Chernobyl.\"\n\nI used a small screwdriver and needle-nose pliers to remove the pin from the compact's hinge. With proper targeting, you could open a portal to Washington D.C. and assassinate the president from two thousand miles away. DHS should have been all over that from day one. Instead, they'd essentially rubber-stamped it. \"Let me guess. DHS has been pushing some of those dangerous projects, the ones with potential military applications.\"\n\n\"That's part of it. No shock there, right? We know Potts is a bloodthirsty bastard. But the graphs weren't lining up right, not until I added a second variable. For lack of a better term, I went back and scored everything based on their altruistic applications.\"\n\nI'd known we were being pressured to produce potential weapons, but I wouldn't have thought to look at our purely philanthropic work. \"What did you find?\"\n\n\"They're not just pushing for potential weapons. It looks like someone's actively stalling our most altruistic projects.\"\n\nOf course our government babysitters wanted magical guns and ammo. But why try to delay our most helpful projects, things that could benefit the whole world? \"Were those delays coming from any particular person or office?\"\n\n\"I can't give you a statistically conclusive answer to that one yet, Boss. Correlation isn't causation, and some of my scoring was subjective.\"\n\nAll the hoops NIH had made us jump through, all of their delays before they'd allow us to heal Lex and a handful of others. I thought back to my conversation with Nicola and Representative Vaughn at the pizzeria in D.C. \"It's about PR.\"\n\n\"Say what?\"\n\n\"Public relations. Someone's shooting down the work that would make people more sympathetic and supportive of New Millennium, and of magic in general.\" I couldn't help remembering how quickly Senator Keeler had capitalized on the attacks, gathering support for harsher legislation against magic and inhumans. The man certainly understood the importance of PR and how to manipulate it.\n\n\"I'm not seeing anything coming directly from Dr. Palmer or her team, though. She pretty much stays out of our business, except when there are potential security implications.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Vince. How certain are you that this isn't coincidence or random chance?\"\n\n\"Looking at the numbers, there's less than a one percent chance of it being normal statistical noise.\"\n\n\"All right. Try to dig deeper into who did or didn't sign off on every project for the past six months. Don't stop with the name on the reports. Check who they report to, all the way up the chain of command.\"\n\nVince's melodramatic groan filled my head. \"Great. Because the only thing more exciting than spreadsheets and statistical analysis is org charts.\"\n\n\"If you need a break, you might want to double-check your security cameras down in the kennels. I'm told Kerling snuck out again.\"\n\n\"Dammit! I'm going to superglue a tracking chip to that crow's head!\"\n\nI hung up and tilted the mirror in my hand until I spotted Kerling perched behind me. \"What do you think?\"\n\nKerling scratched under her wing with her beak.\n\n\"How did you get in here through a locked door, anyway?\"\n\nShe cawed softly, partially spreading her wings.\n\n\"Right.\" I set the mirror on the table. In addition to using the Gateway Project for long-range assassinations, there were potential privacy concerns as well. You could create a small portal and use it as a virtual peephole, or eavesdrop on conversations half a world away.\n\nI considered trying to open a portal into Babs' office, but I wouldn't be able to get a fix on her as long as she wore that magic-damping pearl.\n\nMaybe Babs wasn't the one I should focus on. Back when I was fresh out of college, my father had pulled me aside to share job-hunting advice. I hadn't paid as much attention as I probably should have, since I'd known I had a position waiting with the Porters, but I remembered most of it, including his comment that the second most important person at any company was the boss. The most important was the boss' secretary.\n\nKiyoko knew Babs Palmer's schedule. She likely knew Babs' contacts and projects as well. She'd be aware of any unplanned phone calls or confidential meetings. She might even have access to Babs' email and files, though Babs was smart enough to keep anything incriminating locked away.\n\nI turned to the smartboard and pulled up the New Millennium personnel directory. It would be safer to chat with Kiyoko when she was away from her desk and unplugged from whatever magical interface she had glued to her scalp.\n\nI couldn't find a residential listing for Kiyoko It\u00f4. Most of us who were directly involved in research or other magic lived on site, but more than half our people commuted from Vegas or its suburbs. I switched files and checked the parking lot reservations. She wasn't listed there, either.\n\nI sat back in my chair. The simplest explanation was that she carpooled with someone, or maybe she lived close enough to walk or bike to work. I tried plugging \"Kiyoko It\u00f4\" into Google. I got the usual Google noise, but nothing relating to Babs' receptionist.\n\nHer personnel file described her as having dual citizenship in Japan and the U.S. There was no work history, no resume or copy of her job application, and no emergency contact listed. What kind of woman had Babs hired?\n\n<Isaac?> Talulah Polk peeked through my door.\n\nI shut down the board. <Speak, friend, and enter.>\n\nShe blinked. <Huh?>\n\n<It's from The Fellowship of the Ring. Never mind. What's up?>\n\nShe shut the door behind her and handed me a file. I brought it to the closest table and sat down to review her notes. She'd found the same basic information I had regarding the history, armaments, and crew of the USCGC Kagan. I picked up a map of the Atlantic coast. Red lines, each one marked with a date and time, crisscrossed the ocean.\n\n<These are her missions?>\n\n<Training runs, mostly. Officially, they've been practicing search and rescue.>\n\nI grabbed a highlighter and traced one of the search patterns, an expanding square centered on a point about fifteen miles east of Georgia. Another mission had followed a sector-based pattern, the lines forming what looked like an enormous pinwheel.\n\n<I checked the news reports and some of Homeland Security's files. Nothing's been reported missing or lost in that area.>\n\nIf Deb was right about this ship being a potential terrorist target, then there had to be more than training missions. I put a red X in the center of one of the search patterns. <The earliest mission was here.>\n\n<They've had a lot of crew turnover, too. Seven new personnel, including four officers.>\n\n<What happened here?> I pointed to the most recent mission, another expanding square pattern.\n\n<What do you mean?>\n\n<If you unfold the patterns, all of the pinwheels and spirals and squares are pretty similar in length. They spent roughly the same amount of time on each mission, up until this last one.> I compared the routes and did some quick math. <It looks like they called it quits about twenty-five percent sooner.>\n\n<If these were real search missions, maybe they found what they were looking for.>\n\nI flipped through the rest of her notes. <The Kagan has been docked for the past three days. It says they're prepping for their next launch tomorrow night.>\n\n<That's right.>\n\nI highlighted the end point of that last mission. <Talulah, where do the Kagan's orders originate?>\n\n<They came out of the Coast Guard Seventh District office in Miami, but I couldn't tell you who issued them.>\n\n<Charles served in the navy, didn't he? Could you please tell him I need to talk to him?>\n\nShe gazed past me, then nodded. <Done. What's so important about that spot?>\n\n<It's directly on the migratory path of one of the largest siren colonies in the Atlantic.>\n\nTESTIMONY AND QUESTIONING OF WITNESS NUMBER 18: ISAAC VAINIO (CONTINUED)\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: As a field agent for the Porters, what rules were you bound by, if any?\n\nMr. VAINIO: No resurrecting the dead. No pulling living creatures from books. No\u2014\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: What about the rules regarding relationships with nonhuman creatures?\n\nMr. VAINIO: I'm not aware of any such rules.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: You're in a romantic relationship with both Lena Greenwood and Nidhi Shah, are you not?\n\nMr. VAINIO: Nope.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Sir, please remember you took an oath to answer truthfully, regardless of\u2014\n\nMr. VAINIO: I've been romantically involved with Lena for about a year and a half. Lena is also in a relationship with Doctor Shah. I hope you didn't make me fly out here just to gossip about my sex life.\n\nMr. VAUGHN: Is there a point to these questions, Senator Keeler?\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Simply to demonstrate the moral and ethical gulf between most Americans and gentlemen like Mister Vainio. He engages in sexual congress with a creature who isn't even human. Who, according to our understanding, is half tree? Is this the kind of thing you want to legitimize?\n\nMr. VAUGHN: We're here to talk about magic, not to finger-wag like my grandma over what consenting adults do in their own homes. Mister Vainio, have you had the chance to look over the recently proposed legislation?\n\nMr. VAINIO: You're referring to the Regulations on American Magical Protection and Response Tactics Act? Yes, I've read Mister Keeler's bill of wrongs. All nine hundred thirty-six pages.\n\nMr. VAUGHN: Would you mind sharing your thoughts on that act?\n\nMr. VAINIO: I think you're out of your goddamned minds. Bad enough you've got the FBI spying on us. Tapping our phones, flying drones over our homes, interrogating our friends and family and neighbors. Now you want the authority to imprison us on a whim? To hold us without trial? Is the chairman so ignorant of U.S. history? We tried this in World War II. Locked up more than a hundred thousand men, women, and children whose only crime was having Japanese ancestry.\n\nMr. CHILDRESS: The RAMPART Act is hardly comparable to that sad chapter in our history, which you'd know if you'd truly read it.\n\nMr. VAINIO: Pages six thirty-four through six forty-one. Sections 184 A and B specifically state, \"Whereas intelligent nonhuman entities, including but not restricted to vampires, werewolves, merfolk, sirens, nymphs, dryads, and cryptids, have been living in the United States under false pretenses, such creatures are not presumed to have the rights or obligations of citizenship. Furthermore, whereas such beings pose a potential danger to the security of this nation and its people, authority is hereby granted to both the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Magical Crimes Division, under the supervision of the Department of Defense, to hold without charge anyone suspected\u2014\"\n\nMr. VAUGHN: I think we get the point, thank you. I trust that was enough to jog my esteemed colleague's memory?\n\nMr. CHILDRESS: I... yes, thank you. But that refers to nonhuman creatures, not individuals such as yourself.\n\nMr. VAINIO: I can see you scrolling through your tablet to check the text of the bill. You want section 184 D, which throws people like me under the bus as potential terrorists. You'd give DHS and FBI the right to arrest and hold us indefinitely, without trial or charges. Please let me know if you need me to explain any more of your proposed legislation to you.\n\n\"Nobody fears magic more than kings and priests.\"\n\n\"We don't have many kings in the twenty-first century.\"\n\n\"If you believe that, you're a fool, Isaac Vainio. In my day, before the spread of libriomancy, sorcerers were few. If you hoped to survive and prosper, you had to choose your alliances well. Loyalty to the church or monarchy could protect you. It could also cost you your life.\"\n\n\"We have the same kind of loyalties back home, only with hockey teams.\"\n\n\"I created the Porters in part to build a community with its own strength, but that strength relied in part on secrecy. We disappeared from view, erased ourselves from history. We were not beholden to anyone.\"\n\n\"We're doing our best to keep it that way. Or are you suggesting the Porters align themselves with a particular church or government?\"\n\n\"Don't be daft, boy. I'm trying to help you understand the fragility of your position. To continue your hockey reference, if you're not one of the teams, you're probably the puck.\"\n\nI waited close to an hour in the luggage claim area of the Savannah Hilton Head International Airport in Georgia. Lena's flight had been delayed because of a thunderstorm in Detroit. She arrived just before sunset, with Deb DeGeorge in tow.\n\nThough it had only been a few days, Lena kissed me like I'd been away an entire year. I returned the embrace with enthusiasm, sliding my fingers into the waistband of her jeans and pulling her tighter. I pretty much forgot we were in a public area until Deb cleared her throat.\n\nLena broke away, then hugged me again. \"That one was from Nidhi. So when are you going to finish Gateway so I can see you without having to fly halfway across the country?\"\n\n\"I'm working on it.\" I patted one of the pockets in my carry-on backpack where I'd packed the mirror I'd been working on. \"We don't have much time. I've got a car waiting outside.\"\n\n\"Anyone know you're here?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"Only my team back in Vegas. I pulled a bit of magic from Frank Herbert to make sure we don't show up on anyone's crystal ball, either.\" In the books, a millennia-long breeding program led to the creation of humans who were invisible to psychic detection. I'd discovered those passages could be used to hide me from most forms of magical scrying.\n\nI didn't say another word until we'd gotten into the rented sedan and were pulling out of the airport parking lot. \"At ten p.m., the Kagan and two other Coast Guard vessels will be setting out for a siren colony fifteen miles from the coast. How much did you and Vanguard know about this?\"\n\n\"Nobody tells me anything,\" said Deb. \"I knew the Kagan was a potential target, and then it wasn't. That's it.\"\n\n\"Have you told Nicola?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Not yet.\" I trusted Nicola, but I also knew she'd talk to the rest of the Porter Council. If Babs was compromised in some way, who was to say she was the only one? \"I said I was taking the weekend off to spend time with Lena in Michigan.\"\n\nDeb chuckled. \"You're finally catching on.\"\n\n\"You can't trust anyone these days, eh?\" I didn't give her time to answer. \"You sent Sandy Boyle to his death back in Lansing. How do I know you won't do the same to us?\"\n\n\"I didn't expect him to die,\" Deb said sullenly. \"I don't give a rat's shit about you. I'm not here for the Porters or for Vanguard. But I'm not gonna let the military sail in and do to the sirens what they did to the vamps in Detroit. Whatever conspiracy we're dealing with, it's targeting people like me. I need your help to bring them down. As long as we're going after the same assholes, I've got your back.\"\n\n\"Fair enough. Hey, while we're talking, do you still think it was worth it becoming a Renfield?\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"Sure. Why do you ask?\"\n\nA muffled bell rang from within my jacket.\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\nI deactivated the lie-detecting magic of the book and ignored her question. \"I've been trying to think of a way to warn the sirens.\"\n\n\"Warn them to do what?\" Deb snorted in disgust. \"You want them to run away while their homes are destroyed? Hope their children and their elders are healthy enough to travel and hide? Wait until the next ship finds their new nesting place and finishes them off?\"\n\n\"Better than being caught unprepared,\" I snapped. Unfortunately, sirens preferred privacy and isolation. They kept to the deeper areas of the ocean, and it wasn't like they had cellphones. \"You said Vanguard originally intended to hit the Kagan as part of their joint attacks the other night, but they changed their mind. Why?\"\n\n\"Not enough manpower?\" suggested Lena.\n\n\"I doubt it,\" said Deb. \"Believe me, there's no shortage of volunteers willing to fight back against the people who want to lock us in cages.\"\n\n\"How did they find out about the Kagan and her mission in the first place?\" I asked. Deb didn't answer. \"Maybe they were waiting for confirmation that she was going after the sirens.\"\n\n\"Or they wanted a bigger audience,\" said Lena. \"The Michigan state capitol attracted a good-sized crowd and plenty of media attention. You can't get that same mob coverage by attacking a single ship fifteen miles from land.\"\n\nP.R. again. My gut tightened, a sensation that usually preceded being punched or shot at. \"Vanguard hasn't officially claimed responsibility, right? All they accomplished by murdering a handful of anti-magic politicians was to turn public sentiment more strongly against people like us.\"\n\n\"If Vanguard wants to look like the good guys, they can't just attack a Coast Guard ship. People can sympathize with wanting to kill politicians, but murdering our military?\" Lena was flexing her fingers one at a time. Each made a series of quick wooden snapping sounds.\n\n\"You have to make the military into the bad guys,\" said Deb. \"Wait and film them attacking the sirens. Show innocent creatures being captured or killed. If people had seen the vampires screaming and dying in the tunnels back in Detroit...\"\n\nI checked the in-dash GPS and switched lanes to make the next exit. \"Meaning there's a good chance we're going to be heading into a war zone tonight.\"\n\n\"The war's already here, hon,\" Deb said airily. \"While you're off messing around in your lab or testifying and looking for 'compromise,' people like me are getting killed in the streets. Nobody should have to compromise their right to exist.\"\n\nTwo hours later, we were heading out in a rented thirty-four-foot fishing boat called the Nemo. The owner had been hesitant about letting three strangers take one of his boats, but a mental nudge from Deb and a large cash deposit from me persuaded him.\n\n\"When did you learn to drive a boat?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"My dad taught me on our pontoon boat when I was eleven years old. We used to spend a few weeks each summer camping by the lake. I learned to sail, too.\"\n\nIt had been a while though, and the Nemo was significantly bigger than I was used to. Its twin outboard motors made the old pontoon boat look like a child's bathtub toy.\n\nThe weather was good: clear skies and gentle winds. The waves were topping out at about two feet, and the Nemo cut through them with hardly a bump. We moved quickly enough to keep the spray behind us, making for a surprisingly dry ride. On another night, I'd have been happy to just cut the engines and drift beneath the stars with Lena.\n\nDeb stood at the port rail, working on a bucket of KFC she'd insisted on picking up on our way to the docks.\n\nI leaned out from the small cockpit. \"I thought Renfields had to eat living bugs and birds, not dead ones.\"\n\n\"Hon, nobody eats fried chicken because it's good for them.\" She tossed a bone into the waves and grinned.\n\nWhereas Deb was acting like this was nothing more than a late-night ocean joyride, Smudge was visibly anxious. I'd kept him in his cage in the cockpit, shielded by the clear acrylic windscreen. He'd spent the whole time crouched flat, with threads of smoke rising from his back.\n\nI flipped on a small overhead light and checked my books. I'd sealed some of them in plastic bags as a precaution in case things went badly. I used C. S. Lewis to create an additional vial of healing magic for Lena, then ran my finger along the inner edges of the page. The book was beginning to char. I'd have to update the Porter catalog with a note to leave this one alone for a couple of years.\n\n\"How much farther?\" called Deb.\n\nI checked the screen. The Nemo was fitted with a radar and satellite positioning, overlaid with an electronic chart of the waters off the coast. \"About two miles.\"\n\nThe owner had also mentioned the state-of-the-art radar, which he used to pick up flocks of seabirds that led him to the best fishing locations. Unfortunately, the Coast Guard's radar was probably much better than our own. Between that and their radar detection systems, we needed another way of sneaking up on them. \"Take the helm, love?\"\n\nLena kissed my ear and slid past me to grab the wheel.\n\nI traded the Lewis for another book. \"Time to engage the cloaking device.\"\n\nLena glanced over her shoulder. \"Stuart Little?\"\n\n\"In the book, Stuart had a mouse-sized car.\" I hadn't read this one in years, but it had been a favorite when I was in kindergarten. I reached into chapter eleven and pulled out the miniature automobile. It was just as I'd imagined it: half a foot long, bright yellow with black fenders. \"You see that tiny button on the dashboard? That's the invisibility button.\"\n\n\"And a mouse's car has an invisibility button because...?\"\n\n\"Because it's cool!\" The nice thing about using children's books for libriomancy was that you tapped into a different kind of belief. Children had less skepticism about such things, fewer questions about how invisibility would or wouldn't work. If a button made a car invisible, then that's all there was to it. Press the button, and the car became impossible to see.\n\nI drew that piece of the car's magic into myself, then pushed it into the Nemo. \"Watch your step, Deb! We're about to disappear.\"\n\nShe tossed the remainder of the bucket overboard, wiped her hands on her pants, and grabbed the rail.\n\n\"Are you all set with your heading, Lena?\"\n\nShe glanced at the stars and the moon. \"I'm good.\"\n\nI used the tip of a pencil to press the tiny button in the car. It vanished from normal sight, along with the rest of the boat. Lena, Deb, Smudge, and I disappeared as well.\n\n\"That's disconcerting,\" commented Lena.\n\nWe continued to cruise along the waves, appearing to fly just above an abnormally smooth V where the bottom of the Nemo flattened the water beneath us. I removed my glasses and focused not on the ocean, but on the magic flowing over the boat and ourselves. It was a bit like the final scene of The Matrix, only instead of seeing glowing green computer code, I saw the black-inked characters from the book.\n\n\"A thousand bucks to anyone who can explain why my glasses blur my magical vision even when they're invisible,\" I muttered. It had to be either a side effect of the charring on my retinas, or else something to do with the logic of young Stuart Little fans.\n\nA loud thump vibrated the cockpit, followed by copious swearing.\n\n\"Mind the canopy,\" I said.\n\n\"Bite me.\" Deb rubbed her head. \"How far until we reach the sirens?\"\n\n\"Five minutes or so?\" I put a hand on Lena's back and eased around her to take the wheel. \"Lena, do you have the earplugs?\"\n\nI heard her unzipping a bag. \"I picked up some noise-canceling headphones to go with them.\"\n\nI shoved the foam earplugs into a pocket and hung the headphones around my neck. Having survived the weakened song of a scarred siren last year, I had no interest in suffering the full power of an entire group.\n\n\"Lights at eleven o'clock,\" said Deb.\n\nHer vision was better than mine. I replaced my glasses and squinted into the darkness until I spotted the lights of the approaching ships. \"How many?\"\n\n\"Three.\"\n\nI guided us closer, keeping the engines low and hoping nobody would hear us over the waves and the noise of their own vessels. By the time we were near enough to make out the individual ships, the frontmost cutter had come to a stop and was lowering equipment into the water. Uniformed men stood watch at the rails, assault rifles in hand.\n\n\"Any sign of Vanguard?\" I kept my voice to a whisper, despite the fact that it would be impossible for anyone to overhear.\n\n\"Nothing yet,\" said Lena.\n\nAn explosion sent a shudder through our boat. I'd missed the source of the blast, but the ocean bubbled and burst like a geyser a short distance from the lead cutter. They hadn't even tried to communicate with the sirens, or to survey the ocean floor. They'd simply begun bombing.\n\n\"Shit!\" I'd hoped to have more time to observe and plan. I snatched several books and carefully removed the magic keeping them invisible, like peeling fruit. Nobody was likely to notice a few books floating above the water. I flipped to the page I'd bookmarked during my flight, peered over the top of my glasses, and created a personal body shield that should stop any mundane bullet.\n\nNext up was Control Point, a military fantasy with several potentially nasty new forms of magic. The power I wanted was called aeromancy. I absorbed the book's magic and seized control of the wind, turning it against the lead cutter. The waves grew taller and battered the ships from the side. Slowly, they began to veer away.\n\nThree more explosions followed, the bright flashes muffled beneath the water. A body floated to the surface, her long, matted hair streaming like seaweed. I couldn't tell whether the siren was dead or simply stunned.\n\nMy grandfather had told us stories about fishing with dynamite, tossing lit sticks into the water and then rowing out to scoop up the concussed fish. The Coast Guard was using the same approach on a larger scale.\n\n\"Earplugs,\" Lena shouted.\n\nI'd almost forgotten. I shoved the foam plugs into place, then cupped the headphones over my ears. The world fell silent.\n\nI strengthened my assault, trying to push the lead cutter into its companions. A collision at sea should keep all three ships busy long enough for the sirens to escape, and for me to sneak on board and find out what the hell was going on.\n\nI had just stepped out onto the deck when the sirens responded.\n\nDespite our precautions, the sound rising from the ocean drilled into my marrow, making my bones buzz with desire. Lena found my arm and clasped it tight. The slightest edge of the sirens' song stirred memories and longing.\n\nFor me, it summoned the despair I'd struggled with a year ago. I felt like my chest had been hollowed out, rotted from the inside by everything I'd lost: friends who had died in the fighting back home; my brother's trust; my dreams for New Millennium; even Gutenberg, though that one was tempered by relief that he no longer ruled the Porters.\n\nLena kissed me, supplanting the sirens' magic with her own. I slipped my arms inside her jacket and pulled her tight. I don't know how long we stood there, frantically kissing and grasping at one another, until another explosion interrupted the sirens and our own desire.\n\nI broke away and looked around for Deb. She'd moved to the bow and was staring out at the waves, but she hadn't flung herself into the ocean, which was the normal response to an unfiltered siren's song.\n\nIf the sirens had hit us that hard, I couldn't imagine what they'd done to the crews of those Coast Guard ships. Only they weren't leaping overboard or collapsing in despair.\n\nAnother round of explosions went off. In the flickering light, I saw that the crew were wearing hearing protection similar to our own. They'd known exactly what they were up against, and had come prepared.\n\nI swore long and loud over the implications, but I'd have time to sort that out later. I clapped Lena twice on the shoulder to let her know I was moving out, then swapped books and reached deep into Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief.\n\nI was starting to push my limits. Characters cried out in my head, and my vision flickered with the imagination of countless readers. I seized one particular image, pulled it free, and donned its power. Wings peeled open from the sides of my sneakers.\n\nI leaned over the rail long enough for the waves to spray my face. The cold water helped me focus on this world.\n\nI tapped Deb's shoulder twice in the signal we'd agreed on. She caught my arm and stepped around behind me. I gripped the rail as she climbed onto my back and clung like a child. I was shocked to realize she weighed little more than my niece. Renfields tended toward the slender side, but Deb was a scarecrow.\n\nShe pounded my chest with one hand. I nodded and spread my arms for balance as my winged sneakers lifted us aloft. It was like walking on marshmallows. I leaned forward and tried not to think too hard about the physics.\n\nI failed. With an unstable source of lift anchored to my feet, we were far too top-heavy. We should have toppled head over heels within seconds of leaving the deck, but the wings and their magic seemed determined to keep us upright. Even if they strained my ankles to the breaking point in the process.\n\nI crouched until my knees touched my chest, which eased the stress somewhat, and gave me one more reason to be grateful for invisibility magic. We would have looked completely ridiculous flying over the waves in a deep squat.\n\nWe were a good thirty feet up now, high enough for a painful belly flop should things go wrong. Halfway to the nearest ship, I saw a group of men using some kind of rescue net to haul a siren on board. Another siren was sprawled on the deck. A group of people huddled over her body, securing her while a man knelt and did something to her mouth and throat, no doubt to mute her power.\n\nWind wasn't enough to stop this. I paused in our flight and grabbed Control Point again. Instead of aeromancy, I switched to portamancy, the magic Cole's protagonist used to open doorways to an alternate dimension. Cole's soldiers had found other uses for a two-dimensional rift in reality.\n\nI didn't bother trying to anchor my gate to a real-world location. I simply sent the gate hurling through the air like a Frisbee.\n\nIt sliced the tip of the bow from the first cutter as neatly as a light saber through a vampire.\n\nIt was like throwing a lit firecracker into a wasp nest. Dozens of guardsmen swarmed over the deck. Some checked the damage while others searched the water for the source of the attack. I'd dissolved the gate, so there was nothing to find, but that didn't stop one of them from shooting into the waves.\n\nI hovered in place and waited for the mental afterimages to fade. Those gates were particularly challenging to work with, especially since I was trying not to hurt anyone. I simply needed to turn the ships away, or to distract the crew long enough for the sirens to escape and for us to find out exactly who had issued these ships' orders.\n\nI started forward, then hurled myself to the side as three figures burst up from the water in front of us. Deb's grip tightened into a noose around my neck. The shift in weight dragged my body into a backward arch. I windmilled my arms, but I couldn't right myself with Deb dangling from my neck. My head was pounding, and I struggled to breathe.\n\nShe began to swing back and forth, which increased the pressure on my throat. My vision clouded, and my spine popped like I'd gotten an adjustment from the world's most sadistic chiropractor.\n\nWith one last swing, Deb hurled a leg up around my waist. The momentum helped me to roll over in midair, allowing her to resettle herself on my back. I carefully bent my knees and re-centered our weight, hissing in pain as strained back muscles made their unhappiness known.\n\nOnce we'd stabilized, I looked around to try to get a read on the new arrivals. Vampires, most likely. They could fly, and they didn't seem to have any trouble with water, which narrowed down the potential species. No wonder we hadn't spotted any Vanguard boats: they hadn't bothered to bring any.\n\nTwo more vampires rose up behind another ship. They touched down on deck, seized the closest crewman, and hauled him into the air before anyone could react.\n\nIf the vamps were of the bulletproof variety, this would turn into another slaughter, far worse than what I'd seen in Lansing. I couldn't let that happen. I reached for another book, but before I could use it, a floodlight on the farthest ship swiveled around to focus on one of the vampires.\n\nIn less than a second, the light burned him to nothingness.\n\nAnother vampire dove into the water, dragging a struggling guardsman down with him, but the light followed them. Moments later, the guardsman surfaced and began swimming back to his ship.\n\nMore floodlights chased the other vampires through the air. The Coast Guard had to be using ultraviolet bulbs, powerful enough to simulate the sun's rays. Not only had they been ready for the sirens' magic, they'd prepared for vampires as well. They'd known what Vanguard was sending to intercept them...\n\nThis was a test. A fucking research project. That was why every previous Vanguard attack had involved only a single species. Too many variables weakened your results.\n\nSend werewolves to assassinate the governor and attorney general, and make sure the FBI is en route. Time how long it takes the werewolves to complete their mission, then measure their effectiveness against law enforcement. Anyone who got their hands on the surveillance footage would have a trove of data on speed and strength, as well as the effect of the mundane bullets that killed one of the werewolves.\n\nNow they'd moved on to more advanced weapons, designed specifically to work against inhuman species.\n\nHad the Porters helped them develop those weapons? UV was a known vampire weakness. It was possible the Coast Guard had developed those spotlights on their own. But they'd also known roughly where to search for the sirens.\n\nDeb couldn't have known. She wouldn't have sent those werewolves out to die as lab rats. She and the rest of Vanguard were pawns.\n\nDeb was pounding me on the hip, trying to get my attention. How long had I been floating here, seething? I nodded hard and knocked her fist away. Hands trembling, I grabbed Butcher's Small Favor, a book I'd brought along as a last resort. I ripped open the book's magic, focusing on a scene with Queen Mab. I channeled Mab's power into the water closest to the ships and drained the heat from the ocean.\n\nWaves froze with a sound like giant bones snapping again and again. Frost spread over the hulls. The ice cracked and reformed as the Kagan came to a halt. The cold spread to touch the other two ships, locking them together in an expanding iceberg.\n\nI closed the book. That much power had charred the pages enough to render it useless for at least a decade, but it had done the job. None of these ships were going anywhere until they freed themselves.\n\nAlready men were firing their weapons into the ice, trying to crack it away. I had to give them credit for professionalism. This couldn't have been a threat they'd trained for, but they hadn't hesitated to improvise, splitting their forces between vampires, sirens, and my own magic.\n\nI flew toward the Kagan, keeping my distance from the disturbingly large front cannon. We landed on the aft deck behind a pair of men who were securing an unconscious siren to a rescue stretcher. Everyone wore ear protection, so I didn't worry about being quiet.\n\nDeb hopped off my back, but gripped my hand in hers so we wouldn't get separated. Her skin was cool and damp, with a texture that reminded me of flaking paint.\n\nI had no way of freeing the siren without being discovered, but I was able to place a tracking dot on her leg with the same book and magic I'd used on Deb a few days before. I clenched my fist as I watched the men quickly and efficiently pass their prisoner down a narrow set of stairs into the body of the ship.\n\nI'd studied the ship's layout in Vegas. The bridge was near the front of the upper deck, directly below the radar. Windows provided a hundred-and-eighty-degree view. According to Charles' instructions, we needed to reach the Command Information Center.\n\nHe hadn't been optimistic about our chances.\n\n\"Good luck with that. The CIC is one of the most secure rooms on the whole damn ship. Invisibility won't get you through those doors or let you hack into the computers.\"\n\nWe approached the bridge and waited. The sirens' song would make radio communication difficult, meaning someone would have to relay orders directly. It wasn't long until one of the deck crew came running. He pounded three times on the door.\n\nThrough the window, I could see the bridge crew donning ear protection. Twenty seconds later, the door swung inward. I used aeromancy to summon a gust of wind strong enough to wrench it open and hold it while Deb slipped inside.\n\nThis bridge was far more cramped than anything I'd seen on Star Trek. I counted nine people crowded together, most of them working over somewhat outdated-looking control panels. Thick cables were strung along the ceiling.\n\nHeavy foam panels had been added to every surface, presumably for increased soundproofing. Additional panes of glass were welded into place over the windows.\n\nI'd have recognized the commanding officer even if he hadn't been sitting in the captain's chair. The thick-shouldered, balding man made me think of a gargoyle, calm as stone as he observed everything happening around him. According to the reports Talulah had dug up, this was Commander Jeffrey Hill. He'd taken command of the Kagan two months ago.\n\nDeb homed in on Commander Hill. I relaxed the wind and allowed the struggling crewman to drag the door shut.\n\nWithin three minutes, it opened again. Commander Hill stepped out, followed closely by Deb. Her magic tangled his thoughts, guiding him toward the CIC. Several people watched him leave, their expressions ranging from concern to confusion, but none tried to intervene.\n\nWhy struggle to hack locks and computers when you could hack the man in charge? Hill led us deeper into the ship, down another flight of steps, and through a heavy, narrow doorway. I barely noticed whatever it was he did to gain access through the next door. My attention had been caught by the sidearm secured to his hip.\n\nThat was no standard-issue military weapon. It was a JG-367 handgun, invented by Johannes Gutenberg shortly before his death. The titanium \"barrel\" was a solid wand. In addition to firing blasts of deadly energy, it could put targets to sleep, transform them, petrify them either temporarily or permanently, and more. The grip used a built-in telepathic interface, allowing the owner to switch modes at will.\n\nWe had field agents around the globe working to keep weapons like this out of mundane hands. How the hell had the Coast Guard gotten hold of one? The only place you could get a JG-367 was from the pages of a book by Stuart Pan. Gutenberg and the Porters had slipped several paragraphs into the final manuscript of his last bestseller, meaning any libriomancer\u2014and nobody but a libriomancer\u2014could use the book to create the gun.\n\nIt was possible Commander Hill had gotten it through the magical black market. I'd gone that route once or twice myself in the past. But given their knowledge of siren migration routes and their preparation against the vampires, it was more and more likely they were working with someone from the Porters.\n\nI was going to find that someone. From there, I would work my way outward until I'd found everyone who'd orchestrated these killings, everyone who'd signed off on using magic to spread terror and hate and death. And I would show them that magic could also bring justice.\n\nCaught up in that thought, I almost got left outside when Deb and Commander Hill squeezed through the doorway into the CIC. I hurried after them, yanking my jacket behind me so it didn't get caught in the door.\n\nOnce inside, Hill tugged off his hearing protection and looked around. I followed suit. This was even more cramped than the bridge, with rows of computers and radar screens showing the status of various parts of the Kagan.\n\n\"Report,\" barked Hill. \"Where'd that ice come from?\"\n\n\"Nothing on radar, sir,\" said one of the crewmen.\n\nA woman wearing a headset and microphone added, \"The reports I'm getting suggest the ice hit us first, then spread to the Czerneda and the Independence. Tracing the path of the spread backward puts the source off our port bow.\"\n\n\"Order one of the gunners to rake that area. Probably too late, but we might get lucky and startle up whoever's hiding out there.\"\n\n\"What kind of vampire freezes the fucking ocean or chops the nose off a ship?\" asked the man who'd spoken first.\n\n\"Belay that, Sitterson,\" snapped Hill. \"Glue your eyes to that radar and find me the rest of those sirens.\"\n\n\"Aye-aye, sir!\" Sitterson flushed and turned back to his screens.\n\n\"Lynch, any change in our orders?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" said the woman in the headset. She glanced at the man beside her, both of them clearly confused as to what their commander was doing here, and both of them just as clearly unwilling to ask.\n\n\"Get me the printout.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" asked another man, this one squeezed into the far corner of the room.\n\n\"We're up against creatures who can mess with your thoughts, Lucas. Any one of us could be affected, and I want to be damn sure we complete our mission as ordered.\"\n\n\"Aye-aye, sir!\" Lucas squeezed past his crewmates and handed over a folder.\n\nA light flashed at Sitterson's station. He leaned closer. \"Looks like electrical damage, sir.\"\n\nHe spun around too quickly for me to get out of the way. His chair struck my knee, making me stumble. Nobody else seemed to notice, but Sitterson scowled and reached out. His hand caught my sleeve. \"Shit! We've got an intruder!\"\n\nSitterson lunged out of his chair and crashed into me, knocking us both into the crewman at the next station. His hands found my shirt, then my throat, and he slammed me against the floor. My head struck the metal deck. My vision flashed.\n\nDeb came up behind Sitterson and peeled him away, tossing him to the floor like he was a dirty outfit ready for the laundry.\n\n\"Secure the door,\" Hill shouted. \"Whoever you are, you're not getting out of here. Surrender, or you will be killed.\"\n\nHe'd drawn his sidearm. That was a mistake. I knew the JG-367. I'd read the book it came from. Not only could I read its power, I could mess with it.\n\n\"Show yourself, and tell me what the hell you're doing on my ship.\" Hill kept the gun pointed to the floor in front of him, his finger off the trigger. \"Lynch, radio the Czerneda and the Independence. Tell 'em they may have invisible vamps sneaking on board.\"\n\nI tugged the JG-367's telepathic control text into myself, switched firing modes, and triggered the weapon. A silver beam of light touched the floor, transforming metal to stone.\n\n\"Fucking magic.\" Hill reached for a mundane sidearm on his other hip, while simultaneously trying to holster the JG-367. This was what I'd been waiting for. I fired it again, this time sending a sleep spell directly into his leg. He collapsed.\n\nDeb snatched the folder from his hand.\n\n\"Right there!\" One of the crewmen pointed my way. \"There's two of them!\"\n\nI'd overextended myself. In setting off Hill's weapon, I'd lost my invisibility spell. I could see the text crumbling around me. I only had a few seconds before Deb and I would be completely visible.\n\nTwo men blocked the door. Deb hurled them aside. I barely had time to jam my earplugs back into place before she wrenched open the door. The song of the surviving sirens outside slammed over me and the crew. I blinked hard, trying to focus. With shaking hands, I pulled my headphones into place, further quieting the sirens' magic.\n\nA gunshot cracked behind me, little more than a quiet pop, but fire erupted through my forearm. I climbed up the stairs and out onto the deck. My head was spinning. Men with machine guns were running toward us.\n\nDeb caught me around the waist, climbed the rail, and jumped. My winged sneakers slowed our fall, but that magic was dissolving as well. I dropped what was left of our invisibility and concentrated on holding on to those tiny wings.\n\nA spotlight swept past me, but most of the lights were aimed elsewhere.\n\nI stopped breathing when I realized my mistake. The invisibility spell that had protected the two of us had shielded Lena and the Nemo as well. When that spell failed, our little fishing boat had become visible.\n\nThe Kagan's deck guns fired, ripping enormous holes through the Nemo. A second ship added its assault to the Kagan's.\n\nBetween the two of them, they tore the Nemo apart."
            },
            {
                "title": "JAPANESE VOTE BRINGS ASIA CLOSER TO WAR",
                "text": "The Japanese legislature narrowly voted to amend Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution today, in what many see as a serious threat to peace in the region.\n\nEstablished in 1947, Article 9 prohibits Japan from maintaining an armed military, stating in part, \"The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.\"\n\nThis historic vote follows weeks of increasing tension after China used a nuclear weapon against an alleged magical threat within its own borders. A statement from China's Ministry of Defense claimed the nuclear strike was only authorized as a last resort. \"The threat posed by these magical rebels is equivalent to an active terrorist organization with nuclear capabilities. No nation would willingly allow such a threat within their borders.\"\n\nJapan's Prime Minister rejected that explanation. \"The world cannot tolerate a policy of nuclear aggression against potential magical threats. Nor do we believe the world could survive such a policy. We call upon all nations to condemn this attack, and we offer refuge and aid to those targeted by this act of war.\"\n\nAccording to Article 96 of Japan's Constitution, an amendment to Article 9 requires a 2/3 supermajority vote by the legislature as well as an affirmative vote by the people. A special election has been scheduled for one week from today.\n\n\"What are you?\"\n\n\"I'll need you to be a little more specific, Isaac.\"\n\n\"Are you alive?\"\n\n\"That's an interesting question. It's also a difficult one to answer with any accuracy. I'd say I'm as alive and self-aware as Smudge or Lena.\"\n\n\"Both of whom nearly lost their minds when they were brought from their books into the real world. Based on everything we know, shouldn't you be insane?\"\n\n\"Where does such madness arise? Is it the shock of finding oneself in another world? I spent more than five centuries in your world. Is it the shortcoming of text, the inability to truly capture a complete mind in print? But then, a book written by a libriomancer is more than mere text. Particularly a book written by me, if I say so myself.\"\n\n\"Particularly if you're borrowing techniques from the Students of Bi Sheng.\"\n\n\"You noticed that, did you?\"\n\n\"Are you a ghost?\"\n\n\"The Porters have been shamefully sloppy with their classification of 'ghosts.' When a vampire uses their power to speak with the dead, are they truly contacting a ghost? The mental and spiritual energy I used to guide my automatons, do those tattered remnants of humanity qualify as ghosts? Or Meridiana's so-called ghost army? Those poor souls had little in common with their living counterparts.\"\n\n\"You're avoiding the question.\"\n\n\"I have no answer for you, Isaac. I simply am.\"\n\nI wiped water from my eyes and searched for Lena among the wreckage of the Nemo. I couldn't see her, and there was no trace of her magic in the waves. I tried to fly in their direction, but my fading, waterlogged wings could barely keep us afloat. I switched tactics, looking around for any surviving sirens. If they knew we'd come to help them, they might be willing to return the favor.\n\nDeb pounded my arm and pointed. I screamed in pain. A bullet had torn a line along my forearm. I clasped my other hand around the wound, trying to slow the bleeding. Old horror stories about sharks flashed through my head. Right now, I didn't have the strength to fight off an angry goldfish, let alone Jaws.\n\nOnce my eyes stopped watering, I looked to see what Deb was pointing at. A motorboat cut through the waves behind us. I counted eight people on board, most of them armed. One man scanned the water with a small but powerful spotlight. They paused to gather another unconscious siren, then circled toward us.\n\nI wasn't sure I could stop them without killing myself in the process. Not with the amount of magic I'd burned through in the past hour. Nor did I want to hurt them. Whatever was happening, it didn't make all of these people villains. Most were simply doing their jobs.\n\nI took the printout of the Kagan's orders and shoved it into one of the plastic bags I'd used to protect my books.\n\nDeb pointed to the water and pantomimed swimming.\n\nI shook my head. We had no boat. Even if we could evade the Coast Guard, neither of us were in any shape to swim to shore.\n\nNor was I willing to leave. Lena might have survived. I couldn't abandon her to drown, or to be rounded up with the sirens.\n\nDeb's face twisted with anger and disgust. She shoved away from me and dove into the ocean.\n\nThe boat pulled alongside. One man fired a spray of bullets at the water where Deb had vanished. Rough hands hauled me in and tossed me down beside the unconscious siren, making me cry out again. I cradled my arm against my body. Three other guns pointed toward my chest.\n\n\"There was a woman on that boat,\" I shouted. They couldn't hear me. I gestured at the wreckage, searching for a way to make them understand. Given Lena's size and the wood growing along her skeleton, her body should float. If we reached her quickly enough, if I could get her back to her oak tree\u2014\n\nI got a kick to the side of the head for my trouble. They probably thought I was trying to do magic.\n\nOne man tugged off my shoes. Without my weight to worry about, they promptly flew off into the darkness.\n\nI spat blood and tried to control my shivering. Lena knew how to swim, and she was tough enough to survive a gunshot or two, but those deck guns were a much higher caliber than anything she'd faced. I squinted up at the closest man. \"My friend was on board.\" I exaggerated each word, willing him to understand. \"We have to find her. Please.\"\n\nHad Lena had time to grab Smudge's cage? He'd survived falling into a river back home, but that water had been far calmer and warmer than the Atlantic.\n\nThe boat turned about.\n\n\"No!\" I tried to sit up. \"She's still out there!\"\n\nA hand twisted into my hair and threw me back down. I rolled onto my side, trying not to vomit. The captive siren lay inches away. Blood dripped from her ears. The explosions could have easily burst her eardrums. Someone had fastened a thick strip of woven nylon around her neck, like a dog collar tugged so tight it dug into the skin. It had been ratcheted into place, and I saw no way to unlatch it.\n\nI focused my attention on the siren's magic. It was faint, but legible. Unlike Deb or Lena, sirens weren't book-born creatures. They had evolved naturally, and that made it harder for me to parse their magic. Harder, but not impossible.\n\nI blinked, trying to focus. Everyone on board was protected against the sirens' song. I'd have to manipulate the power of that song directly, to fashion the longing and despair into a weapon and thrust it through each and every one of my captors before they realized what I was doing.\n\nIt was a flip of a coin whether my mind would snap first, or if one of them would put a bullet through me. It was also the only way I could possibly get back to search for Lena.\n\nThe boat jolted like a car hitting a pothole. One man aimed the spotlight into the water beside us, while another covered the same spot with his weapon.\n\nA second jolt followed, and a wooden spike punched through the side of the hull to stab the gunner's leg.\n\nLena. Thank God. I sagged backward in relief.\n\nBullets riddled the water. The motor sputtered and died. A man near the back grabbed what looked like an oversized smart phone and began tapping out a message, probably alerting the Kagan that they were under attack. I rolled along the floor and kicked the phone out of his hand, sending it overboard.\n\nHe kicked me in the ribs, but like the rest of the crew, he appeared to be more concerned with Lena's assault. The wooden spike continued to grow. Branches twined around legs, feet, anything they could reach. They ignored me and the siren. When this was over, I'd have to ask how she could see or sense who to entangle.\n\nOne man pulled a knife and sawed at the branches, which were now coming through both sides of the boat. Was Lena directly beneath us? It would protect her from gunshots, since they couldn't shoot her without sinking us, but how could she breathe?\n\nAnother branch took control of the wheel. That was enough for the crew. They turned their full attention to cutting and breaking themselves free. One jumped overboard. I slowly slid a hand into my jacket and pulled out an orange plastic squirt gun. While the others struggled with Lena's attack, I leaned out and shot the swimming man in the back of the head with a squirt of water from the river Lethe. It was a diluted dose, and should be just enough to wipe their memories of the past day. Maybe two.\n\nLena appeared inclined to let them go. The branches loosened, and people dove away almost too fast for me to tag them all with the squirt gun.\n\nSoon, only a single man remained, bound like a wooden statue. I crawled to the wheel, restarted the engine, and did my best to steer us away from the cutters as Lena pulled herself on board.\n\n\"Smudge?\" I shouted.\n\nShe pointed toward the remains of the Nemo.\n\nI brought us around one-handed. Water was seeping through the holes she'd punched in the hull, though the branches mostly sealed them.\n\nShe brought her face to mine. \"Are you all right?\" she mouthed.\n\nI shook my head. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a glass vial encased in wood. She must have grown an oak shell to protect it. She removed the top and placed a single drop on my tongue. The burning and throbbing in my arm vanished, as did the other pains I'd acquired.\n\nLena turned away and reached into the water. A moment later, she was hauling Deb on board.\n\nI spotted an angry red flare bobbing atop one of the larger chunks of the Nemo, a section of deck and hull about the size of a small car. Lena must have gotten Smudge out of his cage before swimming out to intercept us.\n\nLena pulled one of the branches free and extended it toward Smudge. The wood grew, stretching until it touched the wreckage. Smudge scrambled onto the end of the branch, a pillar of steam and flame and fury. He raced onto the top of Lena's head and clung there like a crown of fire. Lena grimaced, but Smudge's flames were mostly on the top of his body, and her hair was wet enough to keep it from igniting.\n\nAnother boat was closing in on us, but they held their fire. They wouldn't risk hitting one of their own. I opened up the engines and steered toward land. Lena untangled our imprisoned guardsman. Once she'd checked to make sure he was uninjured, she grabbed him by the waist and collar and lifted him over her head. I twisted around and squirted him just before Lena hurled him into the waves, directly in the path of the other boat.\n\nThey slowed down, more concerned with rescuing their colleague than with catching us.\n\nI grabbed Deb and pointed to the wheel. She took over, allowing me to examine the siren. Lena crouched beside me. Smudge darted from Lena's head onto my shoulder.\n\nLena formed another branch into a thin, short-bladed knife, and used it to cut away the collar. The siren was awake now, her eyes round as she watched. Her face tightened in pain as Lena pulled the collar free.\n\nI started to swear in five different languages. The inside of the collar was barbed. Each metal spike was a quarter of an inch long, and left bloody, pencil-sized holes in the siren's throat. Six were concentrated in the front, with four more spaced around the sides and back of the neck.\n\nMy own healing cordial had shattered during the fighting. Lena offered a drop from hers, but the siren refused, squirming away. Without a word, she pulled herself over the edge and vanished into the ocean.\n\nLena's mouth was a tight-pressed line. She moved over to relieve Deb. A moment later, the boat's lights switched off.\n\nIt didn't look like anyone was pursuing us. Between the sirens, the ice, and their own amnesiac crewmen, they had more than enough to worry about.\n\nWhich made this an ideal time for me to pass the hell out.\n\nThe next several hours were about as much fun as pulling out your own spleen. Through your urethra. Magic could heal physical injuries. It did nothing to help my mind and body recover from the amount of power I'd channeled tonight.\n\nI remembered coming to on the boat, and Deb holding my collar while I leaned over the inflated rim and heaved everything I'd eaten in the past twenty-four hours into the ocean. When my consciousness finally managed a hard reboot, I found myself on my back in the sand, staring up at the cloudy night sky. I was wrapped in a damp blanket and shivering hard. Sweat covered my skin, and my muscles felt like melted rubber.\n\nSmudge sat atop my chest, glowing like a tiny space heater. I brought my numb hands over his back.\n\n\"Oh, look. Mount St. Helens is awake,\" said Deb. \"Please tell me you're done erupting.\"\n\nI didn't have the strength to flip her off. \"You look like you're feeling better,\" I croaked.\n\n\"I've been munching on minnows. And you look like hastily resurrected shit.\"\n\n\"Don't worry, I look better than I feel.\" I pushed myself up on my elbows. \"Where's Lena?\"\n\n\"She went back out to dispose of the boat, in case the Coast Guard had a way to track it. She'll be back soon with the car.\" She leaned over and grinned, displaying what I assumed was a bit of fin stuck between her teeth. \"Still think Vanguard is overreacting?\"\n\nSomeone had replaced my glasses on my face. The lenses were so badly streaked they made my vision worse, and the right hinge was bent. I tried to clean them, but my ocean-soaked clothes were useless. \"What time is it?\"\n\n\"About one in the morning.\"\n\n\"Great. Wake me up when the clock hits January.\"\n\n\"What happened to you back there?\"\n\n\"Too much magic.\" Back when I'd been a traditional libriomancer, magic used to make me lose my appetite. It hadn't made me lose the contents of my stomach.\n\nPonce de Leon once told me true sorcerers used wands and staves to channel their magic, allowing all that power to damage their tools rather than their bodies. Unfortunately, he'd disappeared again before explaining exactly how to perform magic with such tools. It was one more thing I intended to research, if I ever got the opportunity.\n\nI looked around, trying to figure out where we were. Through the ink-like smears across my vision, I saw empty docks stretched out to either side. This time of year, people would be starting to bring their recreational boats in for the season, though I spotted a docked pontoon boat and a pair of sailboats a little ways off.\n\nA car door slammed nearby. Lena hurried toward us through knee-high grass, a single wooden sword ready in one hand. \"Isaac?\"\n\n\"I'm alive. Mostly.\"\n\n\"Glad to hear it. Can you walk?\"\n\n\"Have I mastered the skill? Yes. Can I demonstrate it at this particular moment? I'm not sure.\"\n\nShe scooped up Smudge and set him on her shoulder. His flames died down. Either Lena's presence made him feel safer\u2014understandably so\u2014or else he'd been burning entirely for my sake, trying to keep me warm.\n\nShe took hold of my arm and pulled me slowly to my feet. The ground wobbled a bit. \"They're talking about this on the news. The radio called it a terrorist attack against Coast Guard vessels. There hasn't been an official statement yet.\"\n\n\"They'll need time to get their story straight.\" Deb paused to snatch something small from the sand, probably a crab or crawfish or some such. She popped it into her mouth before I could make out the details. \"I don't think anyone got a good look at me, but Isaac here's another story. Once they hauled Mr. Bigshot Television Star into their rescue boat, it was all over.\"\n\n\"They shouldn't remember any of it. I hit them all with a shot of Lethe water.\"\n\n\"That's dangerous stuff to be carrying around,\" Deb said.\n\n\"So are you.\"\n\nLena helped me into the car. \"Were you able to get what you needed?\"\n\n\"I hope so.\" I reached into my jacket and retrieved the slightly damp and crumpled printout, turned on the interior light, and began to read. Half a minute later, I began to swear.\n\n\"The orders are straight from Thomas M. Hayes. The Commandant of the U. S. Coast Guard. They called it Operation Ocean Song.\"\n\n\"Where are they taking the sirens?\" demanded Deb.\n\n\"The Virginia facility, whatever that is. I put a tracker on one of them.\" I kept reading. \"There's an entire paragraph about assessing the effectiveness of the vampires' assault, and of the Coast Guard's anti-inhuman weaponry. They were told to expect resistance, and to use whatever means necessary to execute hostile vampires.\"\n\n\"And you let them,\" Deb said quietly. \"You stood there and watched while they burned those vampires to ash. You could have sent all three of those ships to the bottom of the ocean.\"\n\nI was too tired to be angry. \"Yah, I could have killed a few hundred people and lost our shot at finding out what the hell is going on.\"\n\n\"So what now? Shall we sit around some more while those assholes dissect their prisoners to find out how sirens work? Just like the Porters used to do.\" Deb twisted around in her seat. \"We saw children floating on those waves, Isaac. Every siren who died, every one who gets cut open, enslaved, or crippled by those monsters, that's on you. You and your damned Porters.\"\n\nLena frowned at that. \"The Porters?\"\n\n\"The commander of that ship had a JG-367,\" I said. \"There's a good chance it came from one of us. A leak from the Porters would explain how they were so well equipped to deal with the vampires and the sirens.\"\n\n\"So what the fuck are you going to do about it?\" Deb demanded.\n\nI held up the stolen orders. \"We're going to start by rescuing those sirens.\"\n\nLena started the car and pulled onto the road. \"It's about five hundred miles to Virginia. We get on 95 heading north, and Isaac can catch up on his beauty rest. I'll wake him up when we reach the state border, and he can pinpoint exactly where they're going.\"\n\n\"Can't he track them now?\"\n\nI held up one hand, noting the faint ashen pallor of my fingertips. The more I manipulated so much raw magic, the more I'd char my own body in addition to the books. \"Only if you want me to puke on you again. We know where they're going. I just need a little time to recover.\"\n\n\"And then what?\" Deb's mental pressure made my temples throb. Was she doing it deliberately, or had this kind of mental manipulation become habit? \"More sneaking around and doing nothing, like an impotent, helpless\u2014\"\n\n\"That's enough.\" Lena grabbed Deb's shoulder with one hand. Deb opened her mouth to protest, but Lena squeezed, eliciting a squawk of pain and protest. \"We drive to Virginia and assess the situation. Then we figure out our next move.\"\n\n\"You mean Isaac figures it out,\" Deb muttered. \"While you go along with whatever your boy-toy decides.\"\n\n\"This would be an excellent time for you to shut up.\"\n\nI turned to Lena. \"To change the subject, how did you stay submerged for so long in the water out there?\"\n\n\"I grew a hollowed wooden tube and used it like a snorkel.\"\n\n\"Nice.\"\n\nDeb folded her arms and glared out the window, but she didn't say anything more.\n\nI rubbed my forehead. The Commandant of the Coast Guard had ordered his people to seek out these sirens, to kidnap them and destroy their homes, killing who knew how many in the process. He'd also sent them out to assess the vampires' strengths and weaknesses.\n\nSomeone was using Vanguard to supply them with expendable lab rats.\n\nI watched Deb for a while. She had connections in Vanguard, and she was certainly capable of selling people out. But her fury felt genuine, and she'd been telling the truth back at the airport. She wanted whoever was behind this as much as I did.\n\nThomas Hayes had ordered the Coast Guard's assault, but who had infiltrated Vanguard? Who was passing along Porter information and equipment? Who coordinated the attacks in Lansing and elsewhere?\n\nMy thoughts kept circling toward Senator Alexander Keeler. In addition to chairing the Joint Committee on Magical Security, Keeler served on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, reviewing and approving military spending. How many high-ranking contacts had he made in his years on that subcommittee?\n\nHe'd also summoned any number of Porters to testify in D.C. How many of his questions had been for the public record, and how many had been his way of probing our attitudes and beliefs, searching for someone who would be sympathetic to his goals?\n\nPerhaps someone like Babs Palmer.\n\nMy jaw was clenched so tightly my teeth were starting to hurt. I forced myself to relax. \"Wake me up when we reach Virginia.\"\n\nI woke up four times: twice from nightmares, another time when Lena hit the brakes to keep from hitting a deer, and finally when my tooth beeped with an incoming call.\n\n\"Hitto soikoon!\" I swore, repeating one of my grandfather's favorite Finnish exclamations. \"All right, I'm awake. Who's this?\"\n\n\"I've been asked to help investigate a possible Vanguard attack on three Coast Guard vessels earlier tonight.\"\n\n\"Hi, Nicola.\" I sat up and rubbed my neck, trying to work some of the stiffness out. \"How's life in D.C.?\"\n\n\"Aggravating. According to your staff, you left New Millennium for an unscheduled weekend in Michigan.\"\n\n\"Yah, that's right. After the week I've had, I figured I'd earned a little time back home. What time is it, anyway?\"\n\n\"Five thirty-four in the morning. You say you're home right now?\"\n\n\"Trying to get some rest.\"\n\n\"In that case, you might want to call your cell provider. According to this, your cellphone is currently on its way to Virginia.\"\n\nShit. I grabbed my cell from my pocket and powered it down. I had no easy way of removing the battery, and a determined libriomancer could probably track it even turned off. \"Lena, could you do me a favor?\"\n\nShe glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I pantomimed destroying the phone. She reached back to take it, and crushed it in her hand.\n\nNicola was humming to herself. Her magic spilled over the connection, sending a faint buzz of energy through my skull. It wasn't a cohesive spell; she probably didn't realize she was doing it. \"Why would Vanguard target Coast Guard ships, Isaac?\"\n\n\"Theoretically? I'd start by looking into where those ships were when the attack happened, and what their mission was.\"\n\nNicola sighed. \"I don't have time for this.\"\n\nShe could have knocked me unconscious or dispatched a team of field agents to intercept us if she really wanted. \"They were bombing siren nests and taking prisoners.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"The ship's captain was carrying a JG-367.\"\n\n\"Are you working with Vanguard?\"\n\n\"No. I think someone is using them. Nicola, I spoke with Babs Palmer before I left Vegas. She was spooked. Do you think she\u2014\"\n\n\"The council put Babs through a very strenuous... let's call it an interview process. Whatever differences we might have, she genuinely wants New Millennium and the Porters to succeed. I can't see her providing magical weapons to people who could turn them against us, whether that's Vanguard or the Coast Guard or anyone else.\"\n\nThat was a good point. \"She knows more than she was telling me. Something frightened her, Nicola.\"\n\n\"I'll look into it. Don't do anything stupid, Isaac. Things are precarious. Derek tells me people are using this attack as one more lever to push additional anti-magic legislation through, and to increase funding for magical and military defense.\"\n\n\"What do you want me to do? Sit around and wait for more people to die?\"\n\n\"I didn't tell you to do nothing. I told you not to do anything stupid.\"\n\n\"You're not the boss of me,\" I muttered.\n\n\"I have the New Millennium org chart, and it turns out I am.\"\n\n\"Curses. Foiled by the org chart.\" I smothered a yawn. \"Thank you, Nicola.\"\n\nAs soon as I hung up, Lena reached back to hand me a packet of Saltines, followed by a two-liter bottle of Sprite. \"I know how you get after too much magic. We're in a hurry, and we don't have time to stop at Urgent Care to get you rehydrated.\"\n\nI made a face, but untwisted the cap and forced myself to take a swallow. I washed down three crackers, then massaged my fingers. The numbness had faded a bit with sleep, and the flesh had regained some of its normal coloring. I grabbed Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. I didn't need to create anything new; I simply had to tap into the tracking spells I'd created before.\n\nThe one I'd planted within Deb was easy to find, like a flashlight shining directly into my eyes. The siren was more like a firefly flickering at the edge of a field. \"Head northwest. I'm not sure how to gauge distance, but it feels like we've got a few hours to go. If we keep driving...\" I looked more closely at Deb. \"Are those nightcrawlers?\"\n\n\"I was hungry, and the gas station a few hours back had a bait store.\" She grinned and plucked a long, squirming worm from the Styrofoam container of dirt. \"Want one?\"\n\nI looked away. How to Eat Fried Worms had been one of my favorite books as a kid, but the reality was about to cost me my three Saltines.\n\n\"Who were you talking to?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Nicola. For some reason, she thinks I might have been involved in an attack on Coast Guard ships earlier tonight. Which reminds me, if either of you have cellphones, you should probably destroy them.\"\n\nDeb rolled her eyes. \"Like I'm stupid enough to bring a cellphone along on a mission like this?\"\n\n\"Mine died in the Atlantic,\" said Lena. \"I meant who were you talking to before that. You were snoring like a chainsaw for a while, but then you started mumbling. You sounded upset. You were arguing with someone.\"\n\nI froze. \"What did I say?\"\n\n\"You were talking about ghosts,\" said Deb.\n\nI rubbed my arms for warmth. My clothes were completely dry, but my body couldn't let go of the chill from last night. \"Just a dream.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Lena pressed. \"Because it sounded like half of a conversation. You kept stopping, like you were waiting for someone else to speak. A couple of times, you cut off in mid-sentence. If you're hearing voices, there's no way you're up for saving those sirens. Not with books potentially crawling around inside your head and setting up camp.\"\n\n\"It's not that. I'm familiar with libriomantic possession. I've had characters start talking to me, and I've seen what happens when you keep pushing.\"\n\nMy first mission with Lena had involved a former Porter who'd lost his mind to the characters in various books.\n\n\"This isn't the first time,\" Lena said softly. \"You were mumbling in your sleep a week ago, too.\"\n\n\"How long since you saw your shrink?\" asked Deb. \"That's still standard procedure for Porters, right?\"\n\n\"I canceled my last few sessions with Dr. Karim.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Lena didn't bother to hide her anger.\n\nI couldn't blame her. In addition to the normal mental and emotional dangers that came with my job, I'd also gone through a bout of serious depression the year before, hurting both Lena and Nidhi in the process. I had things more or less under control these days, but ignoring a condition like that was a good way to let it sneak back into your head and start wrecking the place. \"I needed to sort something out, first.\"\n\n\"And you didn't say anything about this to me?\"\n\nI stared out the window, watching the grassy hills in the distance. \"It's not possession,\" I repeated. \"There's only one voice.\"\n\n\"What does it want from you?\" asked Lena.\n\nI snorted and banged my head lightly against the window. \"I don't think he wants anything. It's what I want from him.\"\n\nDeb whistled and shook her head. \"You're running around searching for conspiracies and taking on the damn Coast Guard with another mind hitching a ride on your cerebellum?\"\n\n\"I'm in control.\"\n\nLena didn't speak, but I could feel her frustration radiating through the car. As for Deb, she simply tossed back another chunk of worm like she was a kid munching popcorn at the movies.\n\n\"I've been talking to Gutenberg.\"\n\n\u2003From: nkiruka89165091@disposimail.net\n\n\u2003To: ivainio42@gmail.com\n\n\u2003Subject: Second Star to the Right\n\n\u2003Isaac,\n\n\u2003Looks like we'll be on the run again soon. They're making up some bullshit about truancy and Dad being an unfit parent, but it's just an excuse. Dad wants to head north into Canada. I'd rather go somewhere warm. Mexico, maybe. It doesn't feel like there's anyplace that's really safe for people like us. People are getting snatched up all over the world to be recruited or studied or locked away where we won't scare anyone.\n\n\u2003I'm sure the men in black suits will be showing up to ask if you know where I am. Tell them Dad and I ran away to Neverland.\n\n\u2003Give Smudge an M&M for me!\n\n\u2003-Jeneta\n\nThis message was sent using a temporary DisposiMail.net email address. The email address and this message were both deleted from our servers immediately after being sent. Any replies to this email address will be deleted unread.\n\n\"How long has it been since you read a book purely for pleasure? Without worrying about its magical potential, or because one of the Regional Masters asked you to update its entry in the Porter catalog?\"\n\n\"What does that have to do with anything?\"\n\n\"Shelley used to complain about it with writing. The more she learned of her craft, the harder it became for her to simply read for enjoyment. She worried that mastery would rob her of the joy she once found in stories.\"\n\n\"Shelley?\"\n\n\"Mary Shelley, yes.\"\n\n\"YOU KNEW MARY SHELLEY?\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"I hate you a lot right now.\"\n\n\"I bring it up because I'm concerned about you. You've grown more cynical.\"\n\n\"Have you seen the news lately? No, I suppose you haven't. Wars and riots and slaughter tend to tarnish things like hope and optimism.\"\n\n\"Not for a libriomancer.\"\n\n\"I seem to recall you being pretty damn cynical.\"\n\n\"Yes. And then I died. Am I the example you want to follow?\"\n\n\"I thought we were all in agreement that Johannes Gutenberg was dead,\" said Deb.\n\n\"Technically, so are you,\" I pointed out. \"But yes. I was there. His magic had been peeled away, and he was impaled through the chest. He died pretty much instantly.\"\n\n\"You see where that could raise questions about you conversing with him.\" Lena kept her attention on the road. I didn't need to see her expression to hear her concern.\n\n\"You've got that phone in your tooth,\" Deb said, before I could respond. \"What if someone's tapped into that? They could be talking to you in your sleep, trying to pry information out of you. Or maybe it's a crossed signal, and you're overhearing someone else's conversation.\"\n\n\"It's not the phone. I wish I could sleep through that thing. It jolts me awake every time someone calls, and I haven't figured out how to take it offline at night.\" I sat up straighter and leaned to the side, trying to catch Lena's eye in the rearview mirror. \"I'm all right. Smudge would know if anyone tried to pull a Voldemort and return through my body or anything like that. This is something else.\"\n\n\"Another research project?\"\n\n\"Not officially.\" I picked up my book and concentrated on tracking the siren. \"I'll tell you more later. I promise.\"\n\n\"Go ahead and say it,\" Deb piped up. \"You'll fill her in once the dead woman's not around to overhear. I'm hurt by your lack of trust, Isaac.\"\n\n\"Uh huh. Go one week without pulling a gun on me or mentally manipulating werewolves into committing murder and working with terrorists, then we'll talk.\"\n\nThe siren's signal had grown significantly stronger. I leaned against the window, my attention split between the magic and the real world.\n\n\"Slow down.\" The signs on the side of the road said we were heading west on Route 58. Ten minutes later, I sat up and pointed to a narrow turnoff, blocked by a chain-link fence. \"There.\"\n\nLena drove another mile before pulling off the side of the road. \"You're sure they're here?\"\n\n\"I'm sure.\" I grabbed my jacket and books and climbed out of the car. I wasn't fully recovered from last night's exertions yet, which meant I was better off sticking with traditional libriomancy. Creating physical objects from books tended to char the books. When I started manipulating that magic directly, that was when the charring was more likely to move into my own flesh.\n\nI pulled out an old red-covered role-playing manual and skimmed the Treasure section. This was one of the earliest editions, and the first I'd used as a kid. Several other editions had already been charred from overuse, making their magic too dangerous and difficult to control. These manuals just had so many good toys to play with...\n\nI double-checked the rules, then pulled out a trio of rings. \"According to the rules, once you put these on, you'll be invisible until you remove it or attack something. If that happens, remove the ring and put it back on to redo the spell. We'll still be able to hear one another, and so will anyone else, so keep quiet.\"\n\n\"What counts as an attack?\" asked Lena.\n\nI snorted. \"I once stayed up until three in the morning arguing that question with our dungeon master in college. I said tickling an ogre wasn't an attack because it didn't cause harm or damage. He said it required an attack roll, and therefore the ogre could see me, and therefore he could stuff my wizard headfirst into the privy.\"\n\nMy breath turned to fog in the cold morning air. I reached back into the car to retrieve Smudge from the dashboard. Since his cage was at the bottom of the Atlantic, I set him on my shoulder. He crouched down, seemingly content and comfortable.\n\nI'd just started walking when a strong hand squeezed my backside. I jumped and spun. Lena had slipped on her ring, but I could see the shadow of magical text where she stood. \"This could be fun,\" she said with a chuckle. \"How about saving these for recreational use back home?\"\n\nShe reached toward me again. I stepped to one side. When she turned away to try to find me, I snuck in for the counter-goose.\n\nLena spun. \"Unfair. You can still see me.\"\n\n\"Prison break now,\" Deb snapped. \"Sex play later.\"\n\nI froze. \"Shit.\"\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"The siren. I just lost her.\" I double-checked the book I'd used to track the siren. Its magic remained strong, and there was no evidence of charring or other damage that might interfere with my spell. I had no problem sensing Deb. Only the siren had vanished.\n\n\"You think they killed her?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"It shouldn't matter. The spell doesn't rely on the subject being alive.\"\n\n\"Unless they destroyed the body. Would your spell work if they burned her to ash to destroy any evidence?\"\n\n\"They wouldn't do that. Not yet. They wanted the sirens alive and brought to Virginia for a reason. Even if they loaded her onto a helicopter or plane, they couldn't have gotten here more than a few hours ago.\"\n\n\"You hope,\" said Deb.\n\nWe ran until we reached the turnoff. An old road sign named it Prison Road. After about a mile, we learned why.\n\n\"They put the sirens in jail?\" asked Deb.\n\nA ten-foot chain link fence topped with razor wire surrounded a two-story brick fortress with narrow windows. Tall walls stretched out from the side to enclose what I guessed to be an open exercise yard. A sign alongside the road noted that the facility was closed, and trespassers would be prosecuted.\n\n\"Does that look closed to you?\" I pointed toward the parking lot before remembering they couldn't see me.\n\nI counted nine cars in the lot, which was fenced off with an ID scanner connected to the gate. Cameras watched the road, the sidewalk, and the grounds around the building.\n\n\"Any enchantments on the fence?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Nothing here, but there's plenty on the prison itself. The doors, the bricks, the windows, pretty much everything. The fence is just to stop outsiders from poking their noses in.\"\n\nThe magic of Lena's bokken stirred, sharpening in her hands. \"Shall I make us an entrance? Or would that count as an attack and blow my invisibility?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't risk it. Someone might see the hole in the fence, or they could be running an electrical current to monitor for breaks. Don't worry, I've got this.\" I set a book on the ground. When I removed my hands, it became visible. After a few minutes of turning pages and setting gravel in place to hold the book open, I was able to reach in and create a handful of sparkling dust. I sprinkled a pinch over each of us. \"Think happy thoughts.\"\n\nLena found me by touch and wrapped her free arm around my waist. \"Happy thoughts, coming up.\" She kissed me hard, and soon we were both floating over the top of the fence.\n\nDeb followed a short time later. I refrained from asking what she considered a happy thought these days.\n\nThe fields around the building were unkempt and overgrown, but the prison itself looked well-maintained. Voices carried over the top of the wall, along with the buzz of machinery.\n\nWe followed the walkway from the parking lot to the main entrance. State and national flags flew to either side of glass doors. I waved to one of the cameras, then peered through the glass, careful not to touch anything. Invisible or not, the oils from my skin would still leave prints.\n\nI squinted, trying to read the faint text of magic. The words darted about like crickets fleeing Smudge, wiggling and squirming too much for me to read, but they felt familiar. I stepped back a few paces. \"It looks like the wards extend into the air over the yard, kind of like the setup at New Millennium. They probably cover the roof, too. I can't tell what exactly they do.\"\n\n\"There's no need to find out,\" Lena said hastily. \"So don't go poking them.\"\n\n\"Where's your sense of adventure?\"\n\n\"I must have misplaced it in the Atlantic, right around the time two military ships started shooting at me.\"\n\n\"Right.\" I turned my thoughts to happier memories. \"I'm going to take a quick peek over that wall.\"\n\nI flew up, careful to keep a safe distance from the wards. Inside the walls, a small group of men, women, and children were working to clean an overgrown and mostly barren yard. A girl ran a weed trimmer along the base of the wall. An elderly man gathered broken concrete from the crumbling remnants of an old basketball court. I spotted one guard standing in the shade of the wall by a metal door leading back into the prison. He had no gun; just a metal club or electrical prod of some sort.\n\nHe also wore a gleaming badge with a familiar black pearl worked into the center.\n\n\"Damn.\" That pearl was identical in both appearance and function to the one Babs Palmer wore around her neck. This could be trickier than I'd expected.\n\nAs prisons went, I'd seen worse. That didn't change my growing desire to tear it apart brick by brick.\n\nThey'd attacked and kidnapped sirens without provocation. Had the rest of these people been targeted the same way? Locked up for the crime of being different?\n\nI studied the prisoners magically, trying to identify their species. They appeared blurry. I could make out bits of their nature, but most of the text was faded, little more than smears of ink. The effect was similar to the magic-suppressing amulet the guard wore, but more diffused. It appeared to have been implanted or injected inside their bodies.\n\n\"What the hell did you do to them?\" I whispered. I was fairly certain three were vampires. Another looked like a werewolf, as well as what might have been a selkie, and a confused-looking woman who appeared to be a pretty fresh zombie. I saw no sign of the sirens.\n\nI drifted closer. The wards shifted in response, angry words moving like a swarm of fish splashing to the surface to feed. I pulled away and dropped gently to the ground. I found Deb peering through the glass of the doors, while Lena sat with her hands merged into one of the bushes beside the walk.\n\n\"I'm trying to grow the roots,\" she said as I approached. \"I'm searching for underground cables and pipes, anything I can disrupt in case we need a distraction.\"\n\n\"How'd you know I was back?\"\n\n\"Your coat. It's not quiet.\"\n\nI filled them in on what I'd found. \"The sirens could still be here. If someone dampened their magic the way they did with the other prisoners, it would explain why my tracking signal went dead.\"\n\nI approached the doors, my attention drawn to the wards like Smudge chasing a laser pointer. I tugged the sleeve of my jacket over my hand and gently tested the handle. The door didn't budge. \"Less than a year since the world discovered magic, and they've managed to renovate this whole facility. Wards over everything, armed guards with magical protection, and who knows how many inhuman prisoners snatched and locked up. Whoever's behind this, they're efficient.\"\n\nThe more I studied the eddies of text in the wards, the more the patterns began to make sense. There were currents... fixed points that seemed to anchor the magic in place. I concentrated on the closest, then swore.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Feist.\"\n\n\"English please, love.\"\n\n\"Raymond Feist. One piece of the magic here comes from his Riftwar series. It references a soul jar used to trap the life of a rather nasty necromancer.\" I pointed to pale lines of fresh mortar, where bricks had been carved out and replaced. \"I think they created the jars, then physically sealed them into the wall. There are other spells working in parallel, but the soul jars are strongest.\"\n\nLena sucked her breath through her teeth.\n\n\"What does necromancy have to do with anything?\" Deb asked.\n\n\"Watch.\" I couldn't remember the last time I'd wanted so badly to be wrong. I reached out, bringing my ring of invisibility toward one of the soul jars.\n\nI recognized the attack the instant it began. That didn't stop me from nearly pissing myself as shadows converged on the spot I'd touched, then leaped toward me.\n\nMy invisibility flickered. Two incorporeal beings of shadow and madness ripped at my magic. I jumped back, but even that single touch was enough to freeze my veins. These creatures sought not merely to kill me, but to unmake me. To dissolve my thoughts and erase my memories and burn my component cells until nothing remained but raw, angry magic for them to feed on.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Lena moved toward me, her swords raised.\n\n\"Stay back!\" I reached for the spells in the wall and poured my own strength and will into the text, strengthening their magic to drag my attackers back into their metaphorical jars. Slowly, they quieted. I tugged my invisibility back into place like a torn coat.\n\n\"Who's going to tell me what the hell just happened?\" asked Deb.\n\nThe first time Lena and I had fought these things was in Detroit. I'd reached deeper into a book than I'd ever tried before, reducing it to ash in the process. From that blackened ruin had come a thing of death and hunger and charred magic. It fed on my attacks and Lena's strength. We'd finally had to drop an entire warehouse on the damned thing, and even that hadn't been enough to destroy it.\n\nLater, we'd discovered more of them, echoes of long-dead magic users, trapped and enslaved. A young libriomancer named Jeneta Aboderin dubbed them \"devourers.\" They were also known as the ghost army. I'd destroyed hundreds of them the year before.\n\nBabs Palmer had been assigned to round up and eliminate the rest.\n\n\"Basically, the walls are infested with incorporeal, magic-munching piranha.\" Lena lowered her swords. \"I hate those things.\"\n\n\"A lot of the stories about piranha are exaggerated,\" I said. \"They can kill, but the idea that they'll reduce you to a skeleton in seconds is total myth. These, on the other hand...\"\n\nThere was no question of Babs' involvement anymore. The pearls, the devourers, even the wards over the prison. They all carried her fingerprints. I tightened my jaw to call Nicola, but her cellphone went straight to voice mail.\n\n\"Can you get us inside?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"Maybe.\" I studied the doors. \"We could also head back to New Millennium and confront Babs with what we know. Bring in Nicola and the other masters.\"\n\n\"And leave those sirens here to die?\" asked Deb. \"Abandon everyone inside those walls? As soon as whoever runs this place realizes they've been compromised, they'll either move or kill the prisoners.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Lena said quietly. \"We can't leave them here.\"\n\n\"All right. Let me fly up and scout around a bit more\u2014\"\n\nLena gasped. Her fingers merged with the wood of her swords. She dropped to one knee and plunged both weapons deep into the dirt.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" I reached for her, but she flinched away.\n\nShe raised her head, staring at something deep within the prison. \"We need to go in now.\"\n\n\"Now you're talking,\" said Deb.\n\n\"If we bust through those doors, we could bring the whole place down on our heads,\" I warned.\n\n\"Please, Isaac.\"\n\nI couldn't see Lena, but I recognized the magic crawling over her skin, armoring flesh in supernaturally strong oak and bark. Spikes of wood grew from her joints.\n\nHow had I ended up being the cautious one? \"All right. Give me a minute to get the door open. I might be able to do this without setting off any alarms.\"\n\nI unwrapped the compact mirror I'd been working on back at New Millennium and stepped up to the locked doors. Devourers shifted restlessly in the wall, like sharks sensing blood. I held the mirror perpendicular to the glass and hoped I'd strengthened the soul jars enough to hold the devourers back.\n\nWhen I'd experimented with mirrors for the Gateway Project before, I'd tried to use the reflection to help me with targeting. This time, the glass was invisible, leaving nothing but a ring of text and magic. I peered through that small circle to the pushbar on the inside of the door. Treating the mirror as if it were a book, I pushed my fingers through the glass.\n\nThey emerged inside the prison. My fingertips touched cold metal. Very slowly, I eased my hand and the mirror forward. My fingers pushed the bar inward, unlatching the door and easing it open. Deb caught the edge.\n\nThat had worked better than I'd thought. Without the reflections, I'd been able to concentrate solely on the magic and my destination. I'd have to try adding an invisibility spell to the mix back at my lab.\n\nDeb slipped inside, followed by Lena. I stepped through last and carefully pulled the door shut behind us.\n\nTwo men jogged toward the door. They wore dark blue uniforms and badges like the one I'd seen in the prison yard. I pulled my companions to one side of the hallway. With this being a prison, simply opening the door had probably tripped a signal or alarm.\n\nDeb started toward the guards. I caught her arm and whispered, \"Not yet.\"\n\nEver since I'd gotten my first close-up look at Babs Palmer's magic-dampening work, I'd been thinking about ways to bypass it. Not for any nefarious purpose; I just wanted to see if I could do it.\n\nThe flaw in such defenses was that they had to be magical themselves. I'd read the book Babs had used to create her magic-hating oysters. I knew the text bound up in the seeds of those pearls.\n\nI handed Smudge to Lena and crept closer. The effect of the amulets spread outward in a vaguely human-shaped cloud, a shield with indistinct boundaries. I waited for the men to move past me, then stepped behind them until I touched that outer edge. Their amulets ate away at my invisibility like acid. As my hands became visible, I reached for the text of their protection.\n\nIt felt like grabbing an electromagnet after filling my veins with iron filings. Not only did the pearls physically repel my efforts, but every one of those imaginary filings shifted in response, tiny needles stabbing my hand from the inside.\n\nMy arms were visible to the elbow now. The pain in my fingertips faded. The resulting numbness was even more worrying.\n\nI studied the carnivorous text crawling up my arm, twined it around my fingers, and pulled back, taking their protection with me. I dissolved the magic and tried to fix my invisibility. To Deb, I whispered, \"Now.\"\n\nI remembered the first time Deb had tried to manipulate my thoughts. She'd gotten much stronger since then, as more and more of her humanity slipped away. Her power touched both men and settled over their minds like gravy on a pasty.\n\nHer invisibility flickered. Apparently influencing someone's thoughts counted as an attack, even if no harm was inflicted. She yanked the ring from her finger and switched it to her other hand, vanishing just as the guards shrugged and turned around.\n\n\"It's probably nothing,\" said one. \"Another electrical short.\"\n\nHis partner tested the door to make sure it was latched. \"I'll put in a maintenance ticket to get an electrician out here.\"\n\n\"I'll do a loop through the halls. Think we better do another prisoner count to be safe?\"\n\n\"Safe from what?\" He shook his head. \"Don't worry about it. Ain't nobody got time for all that paperwork.\"\n\nWe tailed the second guard toward the front office and followed him inside. Two more uniformed guards, a man and a woman, sat in front of a bank of screens. Unlike the other guards we'd seen, these carried Tasers and mundane firearms. I checked the video feeds from throughout the prison. Most displayed empty hallways and cells. I didn't see the sirens anywhere.\n\n\"Nothing,\" said the man we'd followed. \"Log it as an electrical short. Jos\u00e9's walking the rounds to make sure.\"\n\nLena and I moved toward an electronic map of the prison on the wall to the right of the video screens. According to the label at the top of the map, we'd broken into the Mecklenburg Correctional Center. LED lights marked the doors. Most were green. Others blinked yellow, including the front doors where we'd entered. I studied the map, trying to guess where they would have taken captive sirens.\n\nI'd memorized about half the layout when Lena stepped past me, yanked a Taser from the holster of the nearest guard, and pulled the trigger.\n\nHe collapsed to the floor. Lena, now visible, caught the next guard's forearm as she reached for a button on the desk. Lena hauled her from the chair and slammed her to the floor hard enough to expel the air from her lungs.\n\nDeb's fingers caught the throat of the third guard, the man who'd inspected the doors. She hauled him close and whispered something. His face lost its color, and he fainted.\n\nI looked around the room. Two guards lay unconscious, with the third gasping for breath. \"Lena, what the hell?\"\n\n\"You were taking too long.\" Lena studied the map. Her bark skin strained against her shirt and jeans, and had torn several small holes at the knees and elbows. Her swords were tucked through her belt. Ridges of oak shadowed her eyes. \"I'll meet you back here.\"\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\n\"It's something I have to do, love. We'll make better time if we split up. I'll call you if I find the sirens.\" She adjusted her ring, but its magic had been damaged from its proximity to the guards and their badges. I reached to try to repair it, but she simply shook her head and ducked out the door.\n\n\"Huh.\" Deb leaned against the wall and folded her arms. \"When did she develop an independent streak?\"\n\nI ignored her and crouched beside the only guard who remained conscious. Her badge reached out to interfere with my magic, giving me a shimmering, ghostly appearance. I removed her weapons and slid them to the far side of the room. \"A group of sirens was brought here earlier today. What happened to them?\"\n\n\"I'd tell him, hon.\" Deb smiled. Her yellowed teeth and taut skin gave the impression of a living skull.\n\n\"I saw something about them on the books,\" the woman said warily. \"They showed up before my shift.\"\n\n\"Where are they?\"\n\n\"I don't know! All detainees are chipped, then sent through decontamination and cataloging. We haven't gotten any orders about new residents.\"\n\n\"Prisoners,\" said Deb. \"That's the word you want. Or 'victims,' if you prefer.\"\n\n\"Deb, would you please ask her to take a seat at the computer and pull up everything she can find about the sirens?\"\n\n\"I can't.\" The guard pointed to the map. Many of the lights had turned red, and a larger light on the bottom left blinked red. \"Command knows you're here. They'll have locked the terminals by now. Probably the doors too. You're trapped in here.\"\n\nDeb tested the door. It didn't budge.\n\nI dragged the desk away from the wall. These weren't computers, just dummy terminals whose cables led out of the room, presumably to a server somewhere. I climbed over the desk and studied one of the cables more closely.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Deb.\n\nEach cable was as thick as my little finger. From the stiffness, they probably had a layer of metal shielding beneath the black outer coating. I yanked one from its socket. There was a spark of electricity and magic. \"I'm not a network tech, but this is weird.\"\n\n\"We don't have a lot of time, hon.\"\n\n\"Hold on.\" I tightened my jaw and called Talulah. \"I need help hacking a computer system at an illegal secret prison, and I don't have much time.\"\n\n\"I'm off-site. Hold on.\" I heard her whispering to someone. Music swelled in the background, followed by explosions.\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"It's nothing. We're at the movies.\"\n\n\"We?\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"Vince asked me out. I know he's a little young for me, but\u2014\"\n\n\"You can date Smudge for all I care. I'm sorry for interrupting, but I really need to get into this system. Given what we've seen in the past twelve hours, it's probably protected with firewalls and magic both.\"\n\n\"What kind of operating system?\"\n\nI twisted around and glanced at one of the monitors. \"Um... it's a split screen. Graphic interface on the right, command text on the left.\"\n\n\"Can you be more specific?\"\n\n\"The text is green.\"\n\nShe sighed loudly.\n\n\"Isn't there something I could just stick to the keyboard to take control?\"\n\n\"The keyboard?\" Talulah laughed. \"Do you know how computers work?\"\n\n\"Can you help me or not?\"\n\n\"That depends on what they've set up. Charles Stross' work might have something, or maybe Kelly McCullough. They've both written about magic-infused computing. There's a bookstore in the mall. Let me see what they've got on the shelves. It would be easier if you could get to the servers.\"\n\n\"That I can probably do. I'll call you back shortly.\" I hung up and checked the map again. Both wings of the building were lined with small, regularly sized rooms I assumed were individual cells. A larger enclosure could have been a cafeteria.\n\nI turned to the guard. \"Where are your network servers?\"\n\nShe pointed to a nearby room on the map. \"You'll never get to them. They're the most secure part of the whole facility.\"\n\n\"Ten bucks says you're wrong.\"\n\nDeb had pulled a packet of thick plastic zip ties from one of the guards' belts, and was securing their ankles and wrists. \"Hon, are you seriously making bets here?\"\n\nI stepped back and studied my hand. The guards' badges had eroded a bit of the ring's power. I was visible, but faint enough it would be almost impossible for anyone to identify me. \"Can you do your brain whammy thing to make them forget about us?\"\n\n\"I'll give it a shot.\"\n\nI checked the camera screens again, but saw no sign of Lena. Several teams of guards were running down the hallways, but I couldn't tell whether they were coming after us or trying to capture Lena.\n\nGiven the nature of Lena's powers, I had a sick feeling I knew what she'd sensed. I grabbed one of the pistols we'd taken from the guards and handed it to Deb. \"Would you care to unlock the door?\"\n\nShe finished whispering to the guards, took the gun, and emptied it into the door by the handle. A quick kick finished the job, busting the door open.\n\nI led us deeper into the building and took the second hallway on the right. This part of the prison appeared to be for the staff. We passed locker rooms and a small break room, turned left, and came to a riveted steel door that made me think of a bank vault, not a server room. Through a small vent in the bottom of the door came the humming of some sort of fans.\n\nThere was no knob or visible lock. An electronic keypad was mounted to the wall next to the door.\n\n\"I don't think we're going to be able to shoot your way through this one,\" said Deb.\n\n\"No problem.\" I grabbed Alan Dean Foster's re-released novelization of Alien. I'd marked several scenes with sticky tabs. I skimmed the one I wanted and pressed the open book to the door by the keypad. Yellow-green alien blood oozed onto the metal and began to sizzle.\n\nThe acidic blood ate through the book within seconds, nearly taking my hand with it. Scraps of paper fell away, eating pits into the floor where they landed. The metal bubbled and smoked, filling the air with a sharp, toxic scent.\n\n\"Who's out there?\" someone yelled. New alarms buzzed throughout the prison.\n\nChunks of dissolving steel dripped and sagged, creating a hole the size of my fist. The titanium barrel of a JG-367 poked out through the opening.\n\nDeb grabbed the end of the barrel and pushed it against the edge of the hole, so the titanium touched the acid. The gun hissed and smoked. She pressed harder, until half the barrel came off in her hand. \"How long will that keep burning?\"\n\n\"You don't want to know.\" The hole was almost as big as a Frisbee now, and had eaten through part of the wall as well as the door.\n\nDeb shoved the door open. The guard inside had tossed away his magical pistol and was clutching a Glock 22 in both hands.\n\n\"Shooting her will just piss her off.\" I stepped into the doorway, little more than a translucent afterimage.\n\nThe man turned toward me, his eyes wide. Deb snatched the gun and hammered her fist into the bridge of his nose, quick as a snake. She adjusted her grip on the gun and pistol-whipped him, leaving him bloody and groaning on the floor.\n\nHis badge lacked the magic-damper his colleagues had worn. I relieved him of his other weapons while Deb zip-tied his hands and feet. Only then did I look around. There were no servers humming away. No tangled cables or racks of routers lit up like Christmas trees. Only a floor-to-ceiling curtain cutting the room in half. I tugged the curtain aside.\n\nFour narrow steel-framed beds were stacked tightly atop one another like a bunk bed from a claustrophobic's nightmare. Small fans circulated air over the occupants. The faces of all four sleepers were physically identical to Babs Palmer's secretary, Kiyoko It\u00f4.\n\nThe women's shaven heads were covered in electrodes, all flowing together into black cables like thicker versions of the ones I'd seen in the guardroom.\n\nI called Talulah back. \"I've got interesting news about those servers...\""
            },
            {
                "title": "NEW FIGHTING IN UKRAINE",
                "text": "Renewed military action between Russia and Ukraine is being blamed on a mythological creature known as the vodyanyk.\n\nDescribed as malevolent, slime-covered water spirits, vodyanoi are said to live in rivers and other bodies of water. According to folklore, they would destroy dams and bridges when angered, and often drowned unsuspecting passersby.\n\nReports claim Russian supporters near the town of Luhansk began dying sixteen days ago. Each morning, three new bodies have been found washed up on the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River. At first, these deaths were blamed on pro-Ukraine militants. Multiple eyewitnesses now describe an elderly-looking man, covered in scales and seaweed, roaming the streets at night.\n\nRussia has made no official statement, but Luhansk has seen an influx of armed soldiers, as well as tanker trucks said to be carrying poisons that could be used to kill all life within the Siverskyi Donets.\n\nGovernment officials at a Ukrainian cabinet meeting disavowed any influence or control of the vodyanyk, but warned that Russia's actions would only increase the creature's anger.\n\n\"If you could go back and do it over again\u2014libriomancy, the Porters, and everything else\u2014what would you change?\"\n\n\"For one thing, I'd stay the hell away from the book that killed me.\"\n\n\"You know what I mean.\"\n\n\"You want to know if it was worth it. I can't answer that, Isaac. We can know what was, but not what might have been. I oversaw five hundred years of magical history. The Porters spread throughout the world. The knowledge we amassed is beyond anything I could have imagined. We stopped countless threats. Was it the best possible outcome? Perhaps not, but I'm proud of what we accomplished.\"\n\n\"Those five hundred years of secrecy also set up the ignorance and fear that are triggering backlash and war against people like us.\"\n\n\"Human ignorance has never needed help. You think society would be more stable if magic had developed and evolved openly? Perhaps. Or perhaps kings and emperors would have added magic to their arsenal and committed atrocities to make the horrors of the past centuries look like schoolyard brawls. Perhaps they yet will.\"\n\n\"Or maybe they'd have accomplished miracles.\"\n\n\"Exactly so. It's impossible to say. This is quite the gamble you've taken, Isaac. I hope the dice fall in your favor.\"\n\nEach woman\u2014each copy of Kiyoko It\u00f4\u2014wore a simple black hospital gown. Unlike Babs' secretary, these Kiyokos weren't wearing the amulets that blocked me from reading their magic. I removed my glasses and sat down next to the bottom-most Kiyoko. \"They're from a Japanese novel.\"\n\n\"Since when do you read Japanese?\"\n\n\"I can't read the text, but I can understand the images, the ideas and belief and excitement of the readers.\"\n\n\"So what happened to not creating intelligent beings from books?\" Deb whispered. \"I thought Lena was the exception to that rule.\"\n\n\"I think these are clones,\" I said slowly. \"Quick-grown in a laboratory, and written to be a blank slate. They probably created her as a batch of cells.\"\n\n\"Keep your voice down.\"\n\n\"I don't think she can wake up while she's plugged in.\" I grimaced as I tried to make sense of it all. \"It looks like she's based on that old myth that humans only use ten percent of their brains. She was written to be a semiautonomous multinode supercomputer.\"\n\n\"What the hell does that mean?\"\n\n\"Every piece is part of a larger, smarter system.\"\n\n\"How smart?\"\n\nI didn't answer. \"Talulah, are you still there?\"\n\n\"Just made it to the bookstore. I've been listening in. Clones as a biologically networked computer? Very cool.\"\n\n\"I need you to hack into every camera you can, throughout the country, and run facial matches on Kiyoko It\u00f4. But don't use any New Millennium or Porter network.\"\n\n\"How many do you think are out there?\"\n\n\"I wish I knew.\"\n\n\"All right. I'll see if I can crack one of the customer service terminals here in the store and make this my base of operations, just as soon as I can figure out how to keep people's attention elsewhere.\"\n\n\"What about Vince? He should be able to conjure up a 'look-away' spell to keep people from noticing.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"He wanted to catch the end of the movie.\"\n\n\"Tell him to get his ass over there, and that if he makes it in less than five minutes, I'll help him find the truth about his runaway crow.\"\n\nI turned back to the Kiyokos. It looked like each one had a psychic link with all her sisters. I glimpsed combat scenes from her book, where a team of Kiyokos moved impossibly fast, relying on inhuman teamwork and precision to disable a larger force of armed soldiers. The book was called... it translated to All of One, by Shunr\u014d Kuronuma.\n\nI'd hoped to wipe the prison's servers and erase the evidence of our break-in. Lethe water would probably work to wipe these four, but if they were linked to Kiyoko in Vegas or any additional clones, we were in trouble.\n\n\"Can't you use one of those books to mind meld with them and find the sirens?\" Deb asked.\n\n\"I don't think so. It would be my one mind against at least four of them, maybe more. They'd overwhelm me the second I touched their thoughts.\"\n\n\"Then maybe we should stop wasting time. Shoot them to bring the system down, and let's get back to searching.\"\n\nI stared at Kiyoko's face. Faces. It was possible she was being used, a tool for Keeler and Hayes and whoever else was pulling the strings of this conspiracy. Or she could have been a willing participant. Assuming \"willing\" was a term that even applied to a programmed clone.\n\nWas the Kiyoko in New Millennium Babs' prisoner, her accomplice, or her jailer?\n\nThe phone in my jaw beeped. \"Yah?\"\n\n\"Vince is here. I ran a program from Blackout 2020, a dystopian thriller. I know you said to focus on the U.S., but I decided to go global. It's already tagged two matches. One in Taipei, China. The other in D.C. Both date-stamped within the past week.\"\n\n\"Any recommendations on how to hack a biological computer?\"\n\n\"We could try a direct neural hack from Neuromancer, but cross-novel tech is risky as hell. The tech they're using, what book did it come from?\"\n\n\"All of One. Shunr\u014d Kuronuma.\"\n\n\"Give me a minute to dig the details out of our catalog. Looks like Japanese cyberpunk. Published back in 2012. Oof. Neural hack is out unless you want your brain turned to pudding.\"\n\n\"How much longer?\" asked Deb, her words tight.\n\n\"What if I just yank these electrodes off of her?\" I asked.\n\n\"I'd have to read the whole book, but I wouldn't advise it. Too many writers go with the trope that a sudden disconnect from cyberspace can fry your brain.\"\n\n\"We're about to have company,\" Deb warned.\n\n\"Isaac, I'm not going to be able to get you in, but if the clones are all connected, I might be able to use the one at New Millennium as an entry point.\"\n\n\"She's got that magic-blocking pearl.\"\n\n\"She's also wired into a physical network in Babs' office, which means I can tap the cables. We'll head back and see what we can find.\"\n\n\"Thanks. And Talulah, where exactly was the match in D.C.?\"\n\n\"That Kiyoko was coming out of the Pentagon.\"\n\nThe sound of hard-soled boots on linoleum converged outside the door. I moved to one side of the beach ball-sized hole. Deb took the other.\n\n\"This is your one chance to surrender peacefully.\" The speaker sounded both angry and eager. \"We know there are two of you in there, and we will kill you if necessary.\"\n\nI glanced at the Kiyokos. Was she communicating our actions to her team? I hadn't had time to read more than a fraction of her abilities.\n\n\"Any ideas?\" asked Deb.\n\nI remained mostly invisible, which gave me an advantage, but they were probably wearing more of those magic-damping badges. I could hit the environment around them, turn the floor to quicksand or fill the air with fireworks to blind them. The alternative was to use magic on Deb and myself. If we shrank ourselves to ant size and snuck into the walls, the guards would have a hard time\u2014\n\n\"Drop your weapons!\" The command was followed by a burst of gunfire. I flattened myself against the wall, but they weren't shooting into the server room.\n\nThere was a noise like a baseball bat hitting a coconut. I heard one body drop, and the gunfire died. Someone else started to swear, a sound that cut off abruptly with the crack of oak against flesh.\n\n\"Your girlfriend's back,\" Deb commented.\n\nI glanced through the hole in the door. Two men were down, one unconscious and the other likely wishing he was, judging from the obviously broken legs and his pained whimpering. Lena hurled a third guard into the wall like he weighed nothing.\n\nThe cold efficiency with which she tore through the guards frightened even me. I searched for any magic that might be influencing her emotions, fueling her rage, but there was nothing. She backfisted another guard. The jagged, fresh-cracked stubs of broken branches protruding from her knuckles cut deep gashes along the side of his face.\n\nBullets had torn at least three holes in Lena's shirt and jacket. Judging from her bulk, she'd grown her wooden skin at least an inch thick. It slowed her movements, preventing her from reaching one of the remaining guards as he raised his pistol. Two more bullets thudded into her side.\n\nShe strode toward him and struck the side of his head with her bokken. She'd blunted the edges, thankfully. Gun and guard both fell.\n\nLena spun in a quick circle, making sure everyone was down, then approached the door. \"The cell block's sealed off. If you're finished here, I could use a hand getting through.\"\n\nLena marched us into the north wing of the prison. We passed three more unconscious guards, as well as a supply room that had been sealed shut. It looked like Lena had stabbed a branch into the doorframe and broken it off, leaving it to grow and grip both door and wall. Someone pounded the door from the inside, but the oak bulged more than an inch to either side of the crack. They'd need a chainsaw to cut their way out.\n\nThe door blocking Lena's progress wasn't quite as heavy-duty as the one into the server room, but it was a close second. Lena had grown additional saplings here, probably trying to pry the door free of its hinges, but the steel hadn't budged.\n\n\"Are the sirens back here?\" I asked.\n\nShe picked a bullet fragment out of her wooden stomach. \"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Lena\u2014\"\n\n\"I can't worry about the sirens until I deal with this, Isaac. With him.\" She slammed a fist into the wall hard enough to splinter the stubs on her knuckles. She grimaced and shook her hand.\n\n\"All right.\" I used an older fantasy to create what the Porter catalog referred to as Excalibur #29. This was a simpler take on the mythical blade: Roman in style, with a golden hilt. I brought the scabbard along as well. In this version, the scabbard had certain healing and defensive magic. Lena had her healing cordial, but I'd lost mine the night before. I drew the sword and pressed it into Lena's hands. It turned visible, escaping the magic that still concealed me.\n\nLena plunged the blade into the crack at the edge of the door. She hauled down, muscles flexing beneath wood. I grimaced at the metallic squeal as she cut through the hinges. She yanked Excalibur free. Power flowed through her saplings. They flexed and bulged, twisting the door from its frame to reveal the prisoners beyond.\n\n\"D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu,\" I whispered. This corridor looked like it had come straight from the pages of my report describing the vampires' dungeons in the Detroit salt mines. Each cell was airtight, with small steel doors for passing food and other objects in and out. A layer of thick Plexiglas stood just beyond the steel bars that had probably been here since the prison was built. The cells were furnished with narrow beds, a steel toilet and sink, and little else. The prisoners I'd seen in the yard pressed against the Plexiglas, watching Deb and Lena.\n\nLena handed Excalibur to me. \"Get them out of there.\"\n\n\"Where are you going?\"\n\nShe strode down the hall without answering. I thought about trying to stop her. I didn't think she'd kill anyone if she didn't have to, but I'd never seen her like this. She disappeared around a bend.\n\nI either trusted her or I didn't. I turned to the nearest cell and stabbed Excalibur between the bars, through the Plexiglas.\n\nMy invisibility wavered. I tried to force the sword down to cut a doorway. Excalibur wouldn't move. Clearly, stabbing wasn't the right approach here. I should have created a damned lightsaber.\n\nA devourer in the wall stretched out to envelop the blade. I yanked it free and stepped away until the spells trapping the devourer in place tugged it back like a dog at the end of its leash. After taking a moment to repair the sword's magic, I moved in and slashed a quick X. Enchanted steel cut through the bars and the door beyond. I completed one more swing, this one low and horizontal, before Excalibur crumbled to black, gritty dust in my hands.\n\nBroken bars clanged to the floor. A kick from Deb knocked a triangular chunk of three-inch thick Plexiglas loose. That only left the devourer.\n\n\"You're gonna need more swords,\" Deb commented.\n\nI stepped carefully through the hole into the cell. Shadow reached for me, even as I strengthened the spells in the wall, tightening the thing's leash and choking it back, inch by inch, until it was pinned in place and helpless.\n\nA young werebear crouched in the far corner. She was thirteen years old at most, and looked to be in good health. Her loose-fitting red jumpsuit was dirty, and her ragged hair had been cut short. She sniffed the air. She might not be able to see me very well, but she could smell my presence just fine.\n\n\"It's all right. We're going to get you out of here. Where are your parents?\"\n\n\"No entiendo.\"\n\n\"Me llamo Isaac. Soy de los Porteros.\"\n\nShe cocked her head. Either I'd bungled the Spanish or else she didn't know what the Porters were. Possibly both.\n\nI sat down a short distance away and examined the magic they'd forced into her body to prevent her from changing forms. The text was identical to that of the pearls in the guards' badges, but it was concentrated in the throat. They'd inserted or injected it beneath the skin, tagging her like an animal.\n\nI reached out, and she flinched away, one hand jerking up to cover a dark scab on her neck.\n\nThey'd probably put a tracking chip in there, too. I considered trying to use my enchanted mirror to pluck it out, but trying to open a portal into a child's throat was dangerous enough. When you added that damned pearl to the equation, I'd almost certainly end up killing her. \"Deb, we've got to find another way of opening these doors. Any suggestions?\"\n\n\"Ask him.\" Lena hurled a large, muscular man to the floor in front of the cell. She held a second guard by the collar. He struggled like a kitten in his mother's jaws, with the same lack of success.\n\nThe girl's flinch told me everything I didn't want to know. \"\u00bfTe hizo da\u00f1o?\" I asked, as gently as I could.\n\n\"A m\u00ed, no. A mi hermano.\"\n\nI stepped out of the cell. \"Where is this girl's brother?\"\n\nThe man on the floor groaned. \"Three cells down, on the left.\"\n\nLena brought her bokken to the throat of the guard struggling in her grip. The wood was needle-sharp, and had drawn a visible trickle of blood. \"I know what you did to him. What I do to you depends on the choices you make in the next few minutes. Open these doors.\"\n\n\"What's she talking about, Franklin?\" The second man started to rise. Deb drove her heel into the middle of his back, pressing him against the tile.\n\nLena shoved Franklin toward the door. He pulled a metal baton, spun, and swung hard.\n\nLena blocked the blow with her forearm. Metal hit oak. Franklin grimaced from the impact, which had probably sent vibrations all the way to his shoulder. She moved forward and struck his wrist. I heard bone snap.\n\nFranklin cried out. His partner tried to roll free. Deb bent down, and he caught her in the nose with a wild punch. Blood poured down her face, but she simply bared her teeth and grabbed the back of his neck.\n\n\"Don't kill him!\" I wasn't sure which of them I was talking to.\n\nLena raised her bokken. \"I won't ask again, Franklin. You're going to open these cells, and then you're going to help us find the sirens who arrived here last night.\"\n\n\"Look around, freak,\" he spat. \"I hope you liked the tour, because you and your friends are going to spend the rest of your lives in a prison just like it.\"\n\n\"This isn't a prison,\" Lena said quietly. \"It's a laboratory. You think I didn't see the tools in the exam room where you and your partner were cowering? Scalpels made of steel, silver, gold, titanium... for testing our weaknesses, right? Dental tools for extracting vampiric fangs. Electrical probes. Neatly labeled test tubes of everything from holy water and colloidal silver to various types of acid. Then there's the locked refrigerator with the biohazard warning. Blood and tissue samples? Or are you testing bioweapons on your captives?\"\n\n\"If they're experimenting on inhuman subjects, where are the researchers?\" I asked.\n\n\"Four doctors oversee the testing,\" said Franklin's partner. \"They come in a couple times a week.\"\n\n\"Shut your face, Johnson,\" snapped Franklin.\n\n\"Fuck you, man. This place is messed up and you know it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Franklin doesn't care about that,\" Lena continued. \"He has other interests.\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\" Johnson spun. \"What the hell did you do, man?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I didn't\u2014\"\n\n\"You think you can hide your desires from a nymph?\" Lena examined the edge of her bokken. \"I could feel your filth from beyond these walls. What you wanted to do. What you'd done.\"\n\n\"You sick fuck,\" snapped Johnson. \"What's wrong with you?\"\n\n\"My friends want to find those sirens,\" said Lena. \"I want that too, but I can't concentrate on sirens when your twisted lust permeates the air. It's an oily smoke that clings to the skin, polluting everything it touches. I mean to end that pollution.\"\n\n\"I'll open the cell doors,\" Franklin whimpered. \"They're computer controlled, but there's an override code in case of emergency. Fire, computer failure, that sort of thing. It's how I...\" He flushed and stared at the floor.\n\n\"How you took this girl's brother from his cell,\" Lena finished. She hauled him to his feet. \"Use it.\"\n\nThey moved to a control panel at the far end of the hallway. Moments later, bars began to swing open with a series of loud clunks, and Plexiglas doors slid to the side.\n\nThe prisoners stepped uncertainly into the hall. Their subcutaneous magic-dampers played havoc with my tattered invisibility spell. \"My name is Isaac Vainio. We're going to get you out of here. There are other prisoners, a group of sirens. Have any of you seen them?\"\n\nA few of the prisoners shook their heads. The rest were silent.\n\n\"They're gone.\" That was the other guard, Johnson. \"Left about two hours ago. We're not equipped to hold marine species long-term.\"\n\nDeb swore and hammered her fist against the wall. \"Why bring them here at all, then?\"\n\n\"Tagging, scanning, and cataloging. The computer equipment is state of the art. Examinations that would normally take hours are automated, and\u2014um, why is that ghost dude on fire?\"\n\nHeat seared my ear. I craned my head away from Smudge as well as I could, but I was pretty sure he'd blistered the lobe. \"We're about to have trouble.\"\n\n\"There.\" One of the prisoners pointed to the broken door behind us. I saw movement beyond, and then a shotgun barrel poked through.\n\nDeb was already shoving the closest prisoners back into their cells. She threw herself to the floor as the first gunshots rang out. I followed suit and rolled up against the wall, being careful not to squash Smudge in the process.\n\nLena strode past me, one arm outstretched toward the oaks she had grown in the doorway during her initial attempt to break through. They creaked and twisted to life. Branches twined around the gun. Lead shot thudded into Lena, but none penetrated her oak skin.\n\nSeveral branches cracked and broke, weakened by the guards' badges. The tree continued to grow, weaving new branches through the doorway in a thick wooden web. Leaves sprouted from the branches, further obscuring us from view.\n\n\"Hold fire,\" someone yelled from the end of the hall. \"You've got no way out. This is your only chance to surrender.\"\n\n\"I can't hold them very long,\" Lena said quietly.\n\nI could hear the guards pulling and snapping the branches of her makeshift barrier. With their badges siphoning Lena's magic, her tree was little more than mundane wood. She gasped in pain at every broken branch.\n\nI looked around, trying to orient myself. If this was the north cell block, the walled yard I'd seen was on the opposite side of the facility. My enchanted compact mirror wasn't big enough for anyone except maybe Smudge to escape through, even if I'd been confident in my ability to set a destination I couldn't see. The devourers would stop any magical attempt to break through the outer walls.\n\nThat left making my own door as the only option.\n\n\"What about him?\" Another prisoner, a vampire, hauled Franklin out of the control room where he'd been hiding.\n\nLena strode toward him. \"You opened the cells. That's a point in your favor.\" She paused just long enough for him to open his mouth, then cut him off. \"It's not enough. Not even close. So if there's anything you want to tell us, anything about the sirens or the researchers or the people running things here that might make me decide not to hand you over to the werebears, this is your chance.\"\n\n\"Hurry up,\" Deb shouted.\n\nFranklin looked at the prisoners, then at Lena, and swallowed hard. \"I don't know much about the researchers, but one of the big shots was through here a couple of days ago for a surprise inspection. Some senator. Keebler, or something.\"\n\nMy jaw clenched so hard I was surprised I didn't set off my implanted phone. \"Keeler.\"\n\n\"Yeah, that's the guy. I saw him at the end of my shift. He didn't look happy. Whatever they're doing here, I guess they're not doing it fast enough for him.\"\n\nI was going to check out a copy of Kafka's Metamorphosis and turn the bastard into a giant cockroach. \"Anything else?\"\n\nHe shook his head and blinked back tears. \"What are you going to do to me?\"\n\n\"Do you know what a geis is, Mister Franklin? It's a kind of curse. A magical command with consequences if you try to disobey.\"\n\n\"What kind of consequences?\"\n\n\"Whatever I want.\" I pressed my thumb to his forehead. \"When you leave here today, you're going to drive to the closest news station. You're going to tell them all about your magical prison here, and then you're going to confess to everything you've done to these prisoners.\"\n\nHis tears broke free.\n\n\"If you lie, your tongue will transform into a leech and crawl into your throat. I've never tried this particular curse, but I'd give you fifty-fifty odds of survival, assuming someone's fast enough to trach you and kill the leech before it goes too deep.\"\n\n\"I can't,\" he whimpered.\n\n\"You'd better. Because if you haven't confessed within the next twenty-four hours, let's just say it won't be your tongue that develops a mind of its own and starts burrowing inward.\"\n\nHis eyes went to the rip on his shirt where his badge had been. Lena must have torn it away.\n\n\"Those badges protect you from external magic,\" I said. \"They won't protect you from me. This curse is written onto your skull. Just like Gutenberg used to do.\" I shoved him away and turned my back. \"Deb, can you erase us from their thoughts? Leave Franklin's geis and terror in place, though. It's time to get the hell out of here.\"\n\n\u2002Loading Pinti6.4.\n\n\u2002Hello, Talulah.\n\n\u2002Shall we play a game?\n\n\u2002Pinti:> bd 192.142.82.1:80\n\n\u2002Location: http://www.newmillennium-intra.org\n\n\u2002Server: Ito4\n\n\u2002Connection blocked\n\n\u2002Pinti:> Run PW-scan 192.142.82.1:80\n\n\u2002PW-scan 192.142.82.1:80 loaded\n\n\u2002PW-scan 192.142.82.1:80 terminated\n\n\u20020 results\n\n\u2002Pinti:> Run PW-dump 192.142.82.1:80 -palmerb /s\n\n\u2002PS-dump 192.142.82.1:80 loaded\n\n\u2002Pinti:> bd 192.142.82.1:80 -u/palmerb -p/PS-dump\n\n\u2002Location: http://www.newmillennium-intra.org\n\n\u2002Server: Ito4\n\n\u2002Connection loading\n\n\u2002Pinti:> Run McCullough.TP2 -palmerb\n\n\u2002Loading...\n\n\u2002McCullough.TP2 installed\n\n\u2002Pinti:> Load webgoblin\n\n\u2002Webgoblin installed\n\n\u2002Pinti:> servertrace\n\n\u2002Server: Ito2\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito3\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito5\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito8\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito9\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito10\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito12\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Server: Ito13\n\n\u2002Location blocked\n\n\u2002Press any key to continue...\n\n\"How frightened were you when you founded the Porters? When you publicly broke away from the old master-apprentice model of sorcery and challenged a system that had existed for centuries?\"\n\n\"It was one of the most terrifying things I ever did, and one of the most exhilarating. Once you make a choice like that, you commit the rest of your life to dealing with the consequences.\"\n\n\"Damn. I wish you'd said that a year ago before I wrote that letter to the world.\"\n\n\"Cheer up, Isaac. If you survive, you'll have plenty of time to learn to live with the aftermath. If not, there's nothing to worry about.\"\n\n\"You're still an asshole, you know that?\"\n\n\"I do, yes.\"\n\nA metal canister struck the wall at the end of the hallway and began to spew thick smoke. A second followed.\n\nInstantly, my eyes started to burn. Tears streamed down my face. I backed away, coughing and cursing.\n\nSome forms of tear gas were flammable, and Smudge was still burning. If he ignited the gas, it would quickly kill us all.\n\n\"In here.\" I pulled the closest prisoners into a nearby cell. Lena gathered the rest. \"Give me as much space as you can!\"\n\nI dropped my invisibility and grabbed Control Point. Through dripping eyes, I conjured up a wind to keep the worst of the gas in the hallway.\n\nIt was only a partial reprieve, and short-lived as well. Ashen shadows reached from the walls, drawn to the scent of active magic. The wind sputtered. Between the devourers and the prisoners' implants damping my efforts\u2014\n\nThose implants attacked magic. Devourers were magical chaos.\n\n\"Everyone form a circle around me.\" I coughed harder. Mucus flowed freely from my nose, and I could barely see anymore. The younger prisoners were crying and screaming. The older ones were doing their best to help, ripping off their sleeves to form makeshift masks. The werebear I'd spoken to earlier doubled over and vomited in the corner.\n\nThe wind from my book weakened further, but that didn't matter. I was watching the devourer.\n\nAs the prisoners closed ranks around me, it pulled back as if burned. The magic-dampers and the devourer reacted like potassium and water, each seeking to destroy and consume the other.\n\nThe devourer lunged again, tearing at the prisoners' enchantments as it tried to reach me. At the same time, those enchantments ate away at the devourer, dissolving its outer edges into smoke.\n\nI wiped the worst of the tears and snot from my face. The devourer wasn't strong enough to counter so many spells at once. It struggled like a hooked fish.\n\nI reached toward the closest of the prisoners and did something I never would have imagined: I tried to help the devourer. I joined its assault on the magic-dampers. Just as I'd destroyed the guards' badges when we broke in, I worked to unravel the text poisoning the prisoners.\n\nIt was easier this time. Don't get me wrong, it hurt like hell, and the gagging and coughing didn't help, nor did the sensation of acid eating my throat and lungs from the inside. I retrieved Excalibur's scabbard. \"Everyone grab hold.\"\n\nThe scabbard countered the worst of the physical damage, easing the burning sensation.\n\nBy the time the devourer faded into nothingness, I'd helped it to completely strip the magic-dampeners from nine of the prisoners, and weakened the rest. It would have to be good enough. Half of us were curled up on the floor, coughing and crying. Smudge was an angry ball on my shoulder, the bristles of his body glowing like matchsticks.\n\nI traded Control Point for Neverwhere. \"Who's ready to get the hell out of here?\"\n\nI was the last one through. The prisoners had gone first, beginning with the nine who could escape without damaging the gateway I'd created. For the rest, I had to maintain and repair the portal as their weakened magic-dampers eroded it from within.\n\nI sent Smudge through with Lena, waited for her and Deb to disappear, and then hurled myself out of the cell.\n\nI fell facefirst onto a linoleum floor. I shut the book and destroyed the portal behind us. Some of the tear gas had followed us through, but the air here was much better. Most of our escapees were crowding around a drinking fountain, gulping and rinsing their eyes.\n\n\"Didn't you say that book connects doorways that are similar in nature?\" Lena asked hoarsely.\n\nI nodded.\n\nShe glanced around at laminated posters and narrow, orange-painted lockers. \"And you teleported us from a prison into a high school?\"\n\n\"Looks that way.\" We'd emerged through a pair of metal fire doors. It was the weekend, so the building should be relatively empty.\n\nRelatively, but not completely. A teenaged boy emerged from the bathroom and stared at us. At Lena, mostly. She still looked more tree than human. Then there were the prisoners, dressed in their jumpsuits and looking as conspicuous and out of place as a moose on a motorcycle. He coughed and backed away. \"Jesus. What have you guys been smoking out here?\"\n\n\"Which way to the nearest exit?\" asked Lena.\n\nThe kid pointed down the hall. \"Are you here for the yearbook planning meeting?\" he asked dubiously.\n\n\"Book club,\" I said, which triggered another coughing fit. When I could speak again, I added, \"I think we got the date wrong.\"\n\n\"Right.\" He backed away.\n\nAs soon as he was out of sight, I wrapped both hands around Excalibur's healing scabbard. Lena doled out healing potion to the rest of our company. Tear gas still permeated our clothes and hair, but this should help the worst of the damage.\n\nI twisted to get one of the books I kept on hand for emergencies. We'd dealt with most of the magic-dampening, but the prisoners could still be carrying active tracking chips. Between the devourer and creating our escape, I'd redlined my magic, but I needed to create one more spell before I could rest. Thankfully, this one was basic libriomancy.\n\n\"This way.\" Lena had begun to shed her armor. Chunks of wood and bark fell away, while the rest reabsorbed into her skin. Behind her, she left a path of woodchips leading to the double doors at the end of the hall.\n\nWe emerged into a small staff parking lot. I waited until we reached the sidewalk and got a few blocks away before activating the book's magic.\n\nThe electromagnetic pulse was invisible to the eye, but it should have fried every piece of advanced electronics within five hundred yards, including those tracking chips. Hopefully I hadn't blacked out the school or cooked the circuitry in the cars in the process, but I didn't have the time or energy to worry about that.\n\n\"Where are we?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Washington D.C. More or less. We should probably call a cab.\" I counted our new companions. \"Several cabs.\"\n\n\"No cab's going to let us in,\" said a slender man whose rough, bumpy skin gave the impression of scales. \"Not looking and smelling like this. They'll either shoot us on the spot or call the cops.\"\n\nDeb pointed to a convenience store on the corner. \"Let me make a call.\"\n\n\"Vanguard?\" I guessed.\n\nShe didn't answer.\n\nI tested the communicator in my jaw as we walked, hoping the magic had survived the EMP. I was able to dial Nidhi, but she didn't answer. Neither did Nicola.\n\nLena and two of the older prisoners herded the group to the parking lot behind the store, where we wouldn't be quite so conspicuous. A stack of plastic milk crates stood next to the door. Two of the younger escapees had stripped off their jumpsuits and tossed them into a dumpster. Clad in nothing but plain white underwear and undershirts, they looked utterly miserable.\n\n\"What did they do to you?\" I asked.\n\nA mixed-blood vampire pushed up his sleeve to show me a grid of tiny pinprick scars. \"Day one was the allergy test from hell.\"\n\n\"They studied our abilities before they doped us with whatever that black shit was,\" added the older werebear, a heavyset teenager with black bangs masking his eyes and nose. \"How strong we were, what kind of stimulus triggered our change, whether or not wounds suffered in one form carried over to the other. They do, by the way.\"\n\n\"They were looking for potential soldiers.\" That was the fellow with the scales. \"They kept talking about different functions we could perform. Infiltration. Reconnaissance. Infantry. Assassination.\"\n\n\"If the fuckers had offered a decent paycheck, I'd have enlisted,\" muttered the werebear.\n\n\"That would require them to treat us like people.\" Deb emerged from the store carrying several gallon jugs of milk. \"We're weapons. Tools. They want to use what we can do, but only if they can control us.\"\n\nShe handed out all the jugs save one. That one, she twisted off the top and poured the milk directly over her eyes and face. \"It helps neutralize the tear gas.\" She blinked and looked around. \"Who's next?\"\n\nI waited for the others, then used what was left in one of the jugs to bathe my eyes. The milk helped more than I thought, and the burning eased. I dribbled a bit over Smudge as well. He jumped back and scowled at me, then went back to grooming himself with his forelegs. From the smoke rising off his body, he'd burnt off the worst of the tear gas residue once we escaped the prison.\n\nDeb wiped her face and turned to me. \"So you can carve curses into people's heads now? Giving Franklin a hungry leech-dick is hard core. Where'd you learn that bit of nastiness?\"\n\n\"I didn't. But Franklin didn't know that.\"\n\nHer face hardened. \"You mean you just let him go?\"\n\n\"What did you want me to do?\" I snapped. \"Castrate him on the spot? Execute him?\"\n\n\"Both. Both is good.\"\n\n\"You saw how his partner reacted. If Franklin doesn't turn himself in, Johnson will do it for him. He's finished.\"\n\n\"You should have done more.\"\n\n\"I know that.\" I was so burned out I could hardly see straight.\n\n\"He said something to you before we left,\" Deb pressed. \"Is that why you brought us to D.C.?\"\n\n\"That's right.\" I took out a book at random and fanned the pages. It stunk of tear gas.\n\n\"You're not going to tell me.\"\n\n\"Right again.\"\n\nA short time later, a gold full-sized van pulled into the parking lot.\n\n\"That's our ride.\" Deb waved to the driver and opened the sliding door.\n\nI wasn't convinced everyone would fit, but we managed. Former prisoners balanced two or three to a seat, with others hunched and packed together on the floors. I sat with Lena in the back, wedged between a werebear and the zombie. Thankfully, the zombie was in good shape, with only the faintest smell of rot.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" I asked.\n\n\"Somewhere safe.\" The driver was a Latina woman with large sunglasses and small features. She rolled down the windows and turned up the air conditioning, trying to cycle as much fresh air through the vehicle as possible.\n\n\"One of your Vanguard safe houses?\" I asked Deb.\n\n\"Something like that.\" She had ended up on the lap of a good-looking vampire who appeared to be in his twenties. Like several of the others, he'd ditched his prison jumpsuit in the parking lot. Knowing Deb, I doubted her choice of seatmate was an accident. \"The day you announced our existence to the world, you painted a bull's-eye on everyone who isn't human. The way things are going, we may have to build a full-fledged underground railroad.\"\n\n\"It's not going to come to that,\" I said.\n\n\"Nobody ever believes it will,\" said the driver. \"That's why it does.\"\n\nAfter an hour or so, we arrived at a Jewish synagogue called Am HaTorah, a modest-looking brick structure with large wooden doors. A circular window with a Star of David was set into the front wall overhead. A narrow strip of grass ran between the sidewalk and the road. Well-trimmed bushes bordered the stairs. The sign out front announced that Am HaTorah was closed for roof repairs, though I saw no sign of workers.\n\nOur driver led us up the steps and unlocked the front doors. \"Let's get you cleaned up, shall we?\"\n\nOnce everyone was inside the lobby area, she locked the doors behind us and disappeared into the temple proper. She returned a short time later and grabbed a handful of black yarmulkes from a bin against the wall, beneath a row of fringed prayer shawls. She handed the yarmulkes to the men and boys.\n\n\"Come with me,\" she said. To me and Lena, she added, \"Not you. Not yet.\"\n\n\"You're not exactly welcome here,\" Deb explained. \"Lena would be, if they didn't know she was bound to a Porter.\"\n\nI took a seat on a low wooden bench. Lena joined me a moment later. \"What did Franklin tell you?\" she murmured.\n\n\"Alexander Keeler was taking a guided tour of the prison a few days back.\"\n\nLena whistled softly. \"Have you told Nicola?\"\n\n\"I haven't been able to reach her yet.\" I tried Nicola's number again. This time, a male voice answered.\n\n\"Who is this?\" I asked.\n\n\"My name is Brandon. I'm Ms. Pallas' secretary.\"\n\n\"Nicola doesn't have a secretary.\"\n\n\"She didn't, no. But with everything she's been dealing with lately, she finally agreed to take one on. What's this about, please?\"\n\nI hung up.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Nicola only gives her cell number out to a handful of people. The other council members, a couple of the New Millennium directors, Derek Vaughn. What are the chances that she'd route calls from her secret boyfriend through a secretary?\"\n\nLena nibbled at her fingernail. Rather, at a bit of wood that had either grown or gotten embedded beneath the nail. \"What about Nidhi?\"\n\n\"I tried earlier. No luck.\"\n\n\"Isaac...\"\n\n\"I know. I'll send someone to check on her.\" I clenched my teeth and subvocally dialed my former employer.\n\nA male voice answered. \"Copper River Library.\"\n\n\"I need to check out a book,\" I said. \"I can't remember the author or the title, but it was blue, and I think there was a woman's face on the cover.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to hurt you? What's going on, Isaac? Is everything all right?\"\n\n\"Not even close. I need a favor, Jennifer.\" I winced. \"Sorry. Jason.\"\n\n\"Don't sweat it. How can I help?\"\n\nJennifer Latona had been my boss at the Copper River Library for several years. I'd been working as a cataloger for the Porters, and my job at the library was the ideal cover, letting me requisition and review new titles for potential magic.\n\nBack then, Jennifer hadn't been my favorite person in the world. To be fair, the feeling was quite mutual, and I'd probably earned her disdain. Being able to draw seventy different versions of Excalibur from various books gave one a jaded view of mundane authority.\n\nOur relationship had changed eight months ago. By then, all of Copper River knew the truth about me. Some immediately stopped by asking for magical favors. Others treated me like a minor celebrity. A handful avoided me altogether, as if my mere existence would damn them to hell and transform their children into radical satanic lesbian role-playing gamers. But most folks treated me no differently than they had before, something I both needed and appreciated.\n\nFor that acceptance, among other reasons, I'd bent the rules from time to time in the beginning, before the police and the FBI started cracking down on illegal magic use.\n\nI hadn't expected Jennifer Latona to show up at my door. I certainly hadn't expected her specific request. After talking with her for three and a half hours and seeing how much it meant to her, I couldn't turn her away. We ordered an old Dungeons and Dragons manual via Interlibrary Loan, which I used to create a magical item known as a \"Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity.\"\n\nTraditionally, this was a cursed item used by immature dungeon masters to torment their equally immature players. When Toby and I were kids, he'd tricked my ninth-level wizard into donning one, permanently transforming Salador the Blue into Saladina.\n\nIn this case, however, it had been a gift, one that Jennifer\u2014now Jason\u2014had dreamed about for much of his life. From what I'd seen, Jason seemed far more relaxed and content than Jennifer ever had.\n\nI'm told that when a woman from the FBI Magical Crimes division stopped by a week later, Jason raised enough hell to bury half the U.P. in sulfur and brimstone. He shouted that what was under his clothes was none of the government's damn business, loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the library and probably anyone in the neighboring buildings as well. He threatened to sue for everything from harassment to unreasonable search and seizure. He called up the ACLU and the National Center for Transgender Equality right then, using two different phones and putting both organizations on speaker so they could listen in.\n\nHe received an official apology from the FBI three days later.\n\n\"Lena and I have gotten ourselves into a bit of a mess,\" I said.\n\n\"Is this the part where I should pretend to be shocked?\"\n\n\"We're trying to get in touch with Nidhi, but she's not answering her phone.\"\n\n\"I'll head over to her place and check on her.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Jason.\" I gave him my number. \"I owe you big-time.\"\n\n\"No, you don't.\" He said it so firmly I didn't know how to respond. \"I'll be in touch soon.\"\n\nLena touched my arm and pointed to an older man in a pastel blue shirt and dark tie standing in the inner doorway. He was five-foot-six, tops, and appeared human. Deb was with him.\n\n\"Isaac, Lena, this is Rabbi Miller,\" said Deb. \"He's taking care of our friends.\"\n\n\"Thank you for that.\" I stood up and extended my hand. His palm was damp, the only sign of nervousness.\n\n\"Isaac Vainio.\" He looked me up and down. \"You look younger in person than you do on the television.\" He wrinkled his nose. \"We've got showers and clean clothes downstairs. Nothing new or stylish, but they won't make your eyes bleed.\"\n\nHe turned to Lena and shook her hand. His intonation softened. \"You're safe here, my dear.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" She stretched and rubbed her shoulders. \"A shower and clean clothes sound divine.\"\n\n\"Through that door to your left and down the steps. Lupe will show you where the clean towels are stored.\"\n\nI studied him for any sign of magical manipulation, but found none. Deb hadn't influenced his mind, and neither had anyone else. \"You'll help these people find their way home?\"\n\n\"We will, though it may not change much in the long run.\" He beckoned Deb and me into the inner temple. I donned a yarmulke from the bin and followed. Rows of pews led to a raised platform on the eastern end of the building. Heavy curtains hung on the wall behind the platform.\n\nThere was no sign of the prisoners we'd rescued, though I spotted several doors leading to other parts of the building. Rabbi Miller sat down on one of the pews and motioned for us to join him.\n\n\"You don't sound very optimistic,\" I said.\n\n\"Home should be a place of comfort and safety. For your friends downstairs, and for people like Deborah here, I'm not sure any such place exists.\"\n\nDeb grimaced, but didn't correct him, which surprised me. I'd never seen her let anyone get away with calling her Deborah.\n\n\"If it's futile, why bother?\" I asked.\n\n\"You'll never hear me say it's futile. Whether we succeed or fail, we've given these people one night of comfort and security. We've shown that not all humans fear them. And really, Isaac. You don't do what's right because you know it will work out. You do it because you know it's right.\"\n\n\"Are you part of Vanguard?\"\n\nHe smiled. \"Lupe and I are part of an informal network founded by a Quaker in Pennsylvania. 'The Society of Friends.' I've always admired the elegance of that phrase. We extend friendship to those who need it. Some of our more politically active members have taken to calling themselves Vanguard, yes.\"\n\n\"Does that friendship come with a price tag?\"\n\nHis brow furrowed. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You don't know?\" I turned to Deb. \"You haven't told him someone was using Vanguard to recruit soldiers and assassins, or how you brainwashed those werewolves into attacking the capitol?\"\n\nRabbi Miller had gone very still. Deb's eyes were tight, and her lips peeled back from her teeth. Smudge shifted to watch her. The smell of smoke rose from his body.\n\n\"Is this true, Deborah?\" Miller asked at last.\n\nDeb was still glaring at me. \"You son of a bitch.\"\n\n\"Just because we worked together over the past twenty-four hours doesn't erase what you did.\"\n\n\"Judge not, lest ye be punched in the face for being a self-righteous prick,\" Deb snapped. \"I didn't have a choice. We don't all get to be the new Johannes Gutenberg, living in magical luxury, away from the blood and death and hate.\"\n\n\"You planted that hate in their minds! You sent them out to kill and to die!\"\n\n\"Isaac, could you please head downstairs and leave the two of us alone?\" asked Rabbi Miller. \"You were right to tell me.\" Deb started to protest, but he silenced her with a look. \"He was right, and you know it. Secrecy and lies only feed the darkness. I believe you and I need to have a private conversation.\"\n\nI stood to go, then hesitated. \"Will you be all right, Rabbi?\"\n\nDeb looked up at me. \"Seriously? You think I'm gonna put the whammy on a rabbi in his own fucking temple?\"\n\nI said nothing.\n\n\"Oh, just go.\" Deb sagged back in the pew. \"The good rabbi is trying to demonstrate that he still trusts me. He figures guilt and self-loathing will keep me in line.\"\n\nThe corners of Rabbi Miller's mouth tugged upward. \"Am I wrong?\"\n\nDeb waved me away. \"For the record, I hate you both.\"\n\nWe stayed at Am HaTorah until nightfall. I managed a brief nap, full of dreams about running through a maze of twisty passages, all alike. I was either chasing Gutenberg or running away from him. The dream wasn't clear on that point.\n\nDinner was canned tuna fish and crackers. Nothing fancy, but there was more than enough for everyone. Once we'd eaten, we thanked Rabbi Miller once more and set out to find a place to stay for the night. Neither he nor Deb said a word about their conversation. He'd arranged for Lupe, the woman with the van\u2014and his wife, as it turned out\u2014to drop the three of us off.\n\nAt my request, Lupe let us out in front of a small library, a two-story building with old wood siding that looked close to a century old. Once inside, Deb used her hypnostare to erase our arrival from the memory of the staff. After that, it was just a matter of letting her divert their attention while we settled down to wait for the place to close. I snagged a book from the shelves to pass the time.\n\n\"Calvin and Hobbes?\" asked Deb. \"Really?\"\n\n\"You know, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with you,\" I said. \"Bashing Calvin and Hobbes isn't helping your case.\"\n\nI finished three of Watterson's collections before the lights finally went out. As soon as the doors were locked and the last car left the parking lot, I settled down at one of the computers to pull up the news.\n\nFootage from our attack on the Kagan had already made it onto the Internet, though none of us had been identified. There was blurry video of vampires swooping down to attack the three ships, which had supposedly been on maneuvers as part of a training mission. Another shot showed the ice trapping the ships in place.\n\nThe next article included a close-up photo of the Kagan's bow, highlighting where my magic had amputated the tip. That damage, combined with the ice, suggested the vampires hadn't been alone. The Joint Committee on Magical Security was demanding a full investigation into the Porters.\n\nI pulled up another story and groaned. \"The president is calling for all people to work toward the peaceful integration of nonhumans into our society, but it sounds like he's also putting the National Guard on standby, and he's indicated his willingness to sign the newly expanded RAMPART Act.\"\n\n\"We're not going to let him round us up into his fucking camps.\" Deb snarled and kicked a chair hard enough to crack one of the wooden legs.\n\n\"Don't take it out on the library,\" I said without looking up.\n\n\"Integration my undead ass. Did they teach you about the Great American Melting Pot in grade school?\" she asked. \"Some of us don't like the idea of being melted down and blended into stew for the rest of you to devour.\"\n\nLena sat down beside me. \"You brought us to D.C. to stop this, right?\"\n\n\"We need proof.\" If we could tie Keeler to the attacks in Lansing and elsewhere, prove that he'd orchestrated terrorism and assassinations in order to manipulate public opinion, we'd be able to shut him down and turn the country's anger around.\n\n\"You know who's running things?\" Deb leaned in, practically drooling in her eagerness.\n\n\"I think so, yah.\" I glanced at Lena.\n\n\"What we don't know is who's running you,\" she finished.\n\nDeb tensed and pulled away. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I've read Renfield,\" I said. \"I know what you've become. You're powerful, sure. All those lives you consume, added to your own. But you were written to serve. Whether you were running around doing Alice Granach's bidding in Detroit or serving Gutenberg as liaison between Porters and vampires. It's your nature.\"\n\nDeb snorted and jerked her head toward Lena. \"Hers too, but weren't you telling me how she'd become more?\"\n\n\"She's become more.\" I didn't bother to keep the anger from my voice. \"You've become less. I saw your bookshelves in Detroit. You want to pretend you're still the same person, but there was a month's worth of dust on those covers. You once told me immortality meant the chance to read everything, to learn everything. When's the last time you opened a book?\"\n\n\"I've been a little busy preparing for war, hon.\"\n\n\"You didn't even know who you were working for when you betrayed Vanguard,\" I snapped. \"Then Lena and I showed up at your door and trashed your pet vampires. At that point, you started following our lead. How the hell am I supposed to trust you when you'll happily turn on us as soon as you find the next potential Dracula to your Renfield?\"\n\n\"I knew exactly who I was working for,\" Deb said calmly. \"I have no intention of betraying her.\"\n\nLena connected the pieces before I did. \"Granach.\"\n\nAlice Granach had helped rule the Detroit nest for more than sixty years. She was a century and a half old, born and turned long before the urban fantasy surge brought a new wave of sexy, angsty vampires into the world. \"Granach ordered you to brainwash those werewolves?\"\n\n\"Alice Granach died in the firebombing of Detroit, trapped a thousand feet belowground.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" I meant it. I'd met Granach once. She was in many ways unique.\n\n\"She ordered me to send a message to humanity. To make it clear you couldn't murder us with impunity. Killing Governor Sullivan and Attorney General Duncan sounded like a good first step.\"\n\n\"What else have you done?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Not much.\" Deb sighed. \"I didn't know about the other attacks that night. I helped kill two very bad people, but in the process, I played into the hands of whoever's running this conspiracy. I tried to find who was behind it, but my anonymous contact was a dead end. They were too careful. The only other lead I had was the USCGC Kagan. Then the two of you came along and busted through my front door. It sounded like we were after the same thing, more or less. I figured you had a better chance of tracking them down. And I was right. You know who's been pulling everyone's strings.\"\n\nI didn't answer.\n\n\"You can't shut me out now. Sure, I screwed up. Give me a chance to make it right.\"\n\n\"By killing more people?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Sounds good to me.\"\n\n\"This isn't about revenge. We're not going to escalate the fighting if we can help it.\"\n\n\"That's a big if, hon.\" Deb leaned closer, assaulting me with a scent like roadkill. \"Remember, you wouldn't have gotten the Kagan's orders without me. So ask yourself one question. Are you sure\u2014are you one hundred percent positive you can take this person down without my help?\"\n\n\u2002Bi Wei,\n\n\u2002Hao jiu b\u00fa ji\u00e0n! I hope you and your fellow B\u00ec Sh\u0113ng de d\u00fa zh\u011b remain safe.\n\n\u2002I'm writing to you from the road. By now, you've likely heard about the terrorist attacks here in the States. You'll be shocked to hear that Isaac and I have been in the middle of things, searching for answers.\n\n\u2002We've found two high-level leads who may be responsible. We've also found evidence that this may go beyond the United States. One of the people involved is a book-born woman named Kiyoko It\u00f4. According to Isaac, she's a living computer, a clone with a psychic connection to her fellow clones.\n\n\u2002One of those clones has been spotted in China.\n\n\u2002I don't know her role in all this. Our plan is to confront the man we believe is responsible, a senator named Alexander Keeler. I hope that by finding and exposing the truth about these attacks, it will help to set things on a better path.\n\n\u2002We're not completely certain what we're up against. Our enemies have protected themselves from magic, and they have weapons specifically built for people like me. I know your people have tried to withdraw from the world, but I have to ask you for two favors.\n\n\u2002If you don't hear from us, please find and protect Nidhi. Then, contact Nicola Pallas from the Porters, and Isaac's research team at New Millennium. They know most of what we've found. You're the only person I know and trust with the power to succeed if we fail.\n\n\u2002I'm sorry for asking this of you after you've done so much for me.\n\n\u2002Love,\n\n\u2002Lena\n\n\"You never trusted inhumans. You never allowed them to be a part of the Porters. Why?\"\n\n\"The Porters was an organization of people who used magic. Inhumans are magic, but they can't use it the way we do.\"\n\n\"Neither can Nidhi Shah, but she's been with the Porters longer than I have.\"\n\n\"It's hard enough keeping the loyalty of people from different nations, different religious backgrounds, different philosophies about the world. How could I trust someone to put the Porters above his own species?\"\n\n\"Some of them would have. Lena would have.\"\n\n\"Right now, she probably would. But she's evolved a great deal in recent years. Who's to say she'll remain loyal ten years from now?\"\n\n\"You could make the same point about me. About anyone.\"\n\n\"Oh, I was keeping a very close eye on you, Isaac. Tell me, do you think you could have done a better job building and protecting the Porters? That's not a rhetorical question, by the way.\"\n\n\"I don't know. I'd like to think so.\"\n\n\"Mm... so would I.\"\n\n\"You enchanted a letter opener?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"I figured it was less conspicuous than carrying a full-sized sword.\" I'd borrowed the old letter opener from the library's circulation desk. It was essentially a dull plastic knife, nine inches long and bright red. The name of the library was stamped in faded black on the handle, along with a note to CELEBRATE READING: TAKE THE 2012 SUMMER BOOK CHALLENGE.\n\nI'd copied the magic of a sword called Wayfinder into the letter opener, drawing on Fred Saberhagan's The Complete Book of Swords. When I looked closely, I could see the typeface from the book wavering within the plastic.\n\n\"Gutenberg used to do something similar with his sword. A Katzbalger. I never got the chance to study it, but it looked like he'd transferred the powers of dozens of tomes into that blade. Wayfinder had the power to lead its wielder to whatever he or she wanted. The downside is that it doesn't always choose the safest route.\"\n\nWe'd tried finding Senator Keeler's home the old-fashioned way, but every public database and directory had failed me. More significantly, several magical attempts had failed as well. Keeler was likely shielding himself with magic, just as we'd been doing.\n\n\"Why didn't you use that thing to begin with?\" Deb demanded. \"Whip it out and tell it to take us to whoever's in charge of this circus.\"\n\n\"All magic has limits, and that's a pretty abstract question. It's going to be tricky enough finding a specific individual. If all we had was a vague idea who or what we were looking for, this thing could have led us around for months. We might have come face-to-face with our bad guy and never known if he was the one we wanted, or just another quest ticket we had to collect along the way.\"\n\nI clutched the letter opener. \"Anyone need to use the bathroom before we go?\"\n\nWhen nobody answered, I pushed open the library doors and stepped onto the sidewalk. Keeler had hidden himself and his home from magical detection, so I couldn't target them directly. \"Find us someone or something that can lead us to Senator Alexander Keeler.\"\n\nIt was the first time I'd spoken the name in front of Deb. Her breath hissed through her teeth. \"Keeler. That weasel-faced ass-pustule. I should have guessed.\"\n\nI turned in a slow circle until the plastic tip quivered in my hand. \"This way to the weasel-faced ass-pustule.\"\n\nFour hours later, we were on the D.C. metro, heading northwest. We'd stopped on the way so Deb could steal an oversized hoodie from a Goodwill donations bin. It was far too large, hanging down to her thighs, but the hood helped to conceal her gaunt and jaundiced complexion.\n\nI wore a Phillies baseball cap from the same bin, with the brim pulled low to shield my eyes. Hiding Smudge had been trickier. Keeping him on my shoulder would attract too much attention. I ended up digging through a recycling bin outside of an apartment building until I found an old soup can. It was a bit cramped, but he'd be safe in the can in my pocket for now. I'd dropped a gummi worm in to keep him happy.\n\nWe were alone on the metro car, except for a police officer standing at the far end. She'd been watching us since we boarded. Sooner or later she was going to figure out where she'd seen me, and the more I tried to hide, the more suspicious I'd look.\n\nI turned in a casual arc, keeping the letter opener tucked into my sleeve. When it passed over the officer, it vibrated hard.\n\n\"You're sure?\" whispered Lena.\n\n\"It keeps pointing to her.\"\n\nDeb sniffed. \"We're supposed to do what, exactly?\"\n\n\"It doesn't work that way. The sword\u2014letter opener\u2014is like a compass, not an instruction manual.\"\n\nDeb cracked her knuckles and stood. \"Give me a few minutes to get inside her head. If she knows anything, she'll tell me.\"\n\nI didn't like the idea of violating another innocent person's mind, but simply following an already-suspicious cop around wasn't a great plan either, and since I had no other ideas... \"Be quick.\"\n\n\"Men never appreciate the pleasure of taking things slowly.\" Deb sniffed and walked toward the cop, who tensed. One hand moved casually to the gun at her hip. I could see the moment Deb reached out to touch the woman's mind and ease her alertness.\n\n\"Do you trust her?\" Lena whispered in Gujarati.\n\nI slipped an arm around her waist. \"Nope. You?\"\n\n\"How many times has Deb tried to kill you now?\"\n\n\"To be fair, I'm not sure she was really trying that hard back in Detroit.\"\n\n\"How hard do you think she'll try with Keeler?\"\n\nI'd been worrying about the same thing. \"Killing him would be too quick. She wants him to suffer. It would be much more satisfying to expose him, watch his life and career unravel. But we should be ready to grab her if we have to.\"\n\nDeb returned a short time later, leaving the police officer slumped asleep on the seat. \"Officer Sheldon over there responded to a call at Keeler's place two weeks ago. Graffiti complaint. Turned out to be an ex-boyfriend of Keeler's daughter. Sheldon couldn't remember the address, but she called dispatch and had them pull it up from her report. The Keelers live in the Spring Valley neighborhood, up in the northwest part of D.C.\"\n\nI glared at the letter opener. Always the risky path. \"Did the dispatcher ask why she wanted to know?\"\n\n\"You worry too much, hon. Sure, they asked, but Sheldon said she was trying to catch up on paperwork. Nothing suspicious.\" She grinned and clapped me on the arm. \"It's two more stops. We can either catch a taxi from there or walk the rest of the way.\"\n\n\"All right. Remember, once we get to the house, you follow our lead,\" I warned. \"Nobody gets hurt.\"\n\n\"You know something, hon? You're a boring date.\"\n\nWe took a cab to the edge of Keeler's neighborhood and walked the last several miles over hills and around curving roads, several times setting off motion-detecting house lights or rousing dogs that barked like we were an army of evil mutant squirrels come to declare war on kibble and chew toys.\n\nI blamed Wayfinder's magic. The damned letter opener wanted to make sure the whole neighborhood knew we were passing through. I was tempted to dissolve its magic altogether, but if things went wrong, we might need it for a quick escape.\n\nAny one of these homes probably cost as much as an entire block back in Copper River. We circled through a roundabout, veered left, and finally stopped in front of a two-story brick colonial with black shutters. A brick wall circled the property, with a brass-trimmed iron gate across the driveway. Oak trees lined both sides of the road. We kept our distance from the gate and the cameras mounted to either side.\n\nI checked for signs of magic. \"The gate's clear. There's a spell over the doorway to protect the house, but it's a passive defense. I can pull it down without alerting anyone inside.\"\n\nWe moved just past the corner of the yard, out of the cameras' field of view. Lena scaled the wall and balanced on top. She pulled me up one-handed and pointed toward the front door. \"Another camera.\"\n\nIvy covered the sloping ground to either side of the driveway. Neatly trimmed hedges guarded the porch.\n\nI studied the black hemisphere mounted over the door, then retrieved the soup can from my pocket. Smudge was sleeping, curled into a ball with a half-eaten gummi worm clutched in his forelegs. As gently as I could, I pulled his magic free and sent it into the camera. \"Come on.\"\n\nBy the time we reached the brick walk, the camera had filled with smoke and flickering red flame. I waited for the fire to die, then returned Smudge's powers. I hadn't been gentle enough. He glared at me, like he was silently vowing to inflict burnt, crispy vengeance on me at some point in the future.\n\nThe porch lights switched on automatically as we approached the white-painted arched doorway. My anger grew with every step.\n\nAlexander Keeler had sat on his little throne, presiding over the Joint Magical Committee and telling the world how dangerous we were, how much damage we could do if we weren't \"properly regulated and contained.\"\n\nAll that time, he'd been using us. Capturing and studying and torturing us. Turning public sentiment against magic.\n\nHow far did his ambitions go? The prisoners from Mecklenburg had been assessed as potential soldiers, and Keeler had come out in favor of a selective draft of libriomancers and inhumans, similar to the one implemented by Russia. What would he do with his magical army once he had it? He had the Coast Guard in his pocket. Had he corrupted other branches of the military as well?\n\nI double-checked my books, ready to create a shield or knock out everyone within a hundred meters as needed. If they had a clone of Kiyoko on site, we'd need to incapacitate her as quickly as possible.\n\n\"Shall we?\" I raised my hand to knock.\n\nDeb caught my wrist. She sniffed the air. The mannerism reminded me of an animal.\n\n\"What is it?\" I checked Smudge, but he was sulking in his can.\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" She let go and nodded, her attention on the door.\n\nI hesitated, then knocked. When nothing happened, I tried the doorbell. A low chime echoed through the house.\n\n\"Maybe they're out?\" suggested Deb. \"Congress is always running off for breaks and vacations.\"\n\n\"Not with everything happening in D.C. right now. Keeler might be working late at his office, but his family should be here.\" I had no interest in terrorizing the man's wife and children, but they'd be able to tell us where to find him. I tried the door, but it was locked.\n\nLena pressed her fingertips to the door like Spider-Man getting ready to scale a building. Her hands sank into the wood, just as if she was joining with her oak tree back home, though the door was too thin to possibly contain her.\n\nOr maybe it could. I'd never fully figured out what happened to Lena's body when she merged with her oak. The tree didn't visibly increase in size or mass. The wood within her flesh didn't change her human form, either. They simply coexisted in the same space.\n\nI was still thinking when I heard her unlocking the door from the inside. It swung open, and Lena gestured us in.\n\nDeb sniffed again. \"Oh, shit.\"\n\nSmudge shifted and looked around, but didn't ignite. \"What is it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Blood.\"\n\nThe interior of the house was dark, save for the glowing keypad of a security system by the door. Faint voices and flickering light came from deeper in the house.\n\n\"The alarm's turned off.\" Lena readied one of her bokken.\n\nWe entered the foyer. To the left, an open door led to a small music room. The streetlights through the front window illuminated a baby grand piano. A pair of electric guitars hung on the wall.\n\nI kept checking on Smudge. He acted like we were in no danger, but my gut told me otherwise. I didn't see anything suppressing his senses.\n\nOn the other side of the foyer was a living room as big as my first apartment. A ridiculously oversized television hung on the wall, playing an infomercial about carpet stains. A middle-aged woman sat sprawled on the couch. It was possible she'd fallen asleep while watching TV, but her posture was stiff, her body weighed down by a heavy blanket of magic.\n\nI crossed the room and touched her throat until I felt the slow bump of her pulse. \"She's alive.\"\n\n\"Keeler's wife?\" guessed Lena.\n\n\"Probably.\" I studied her more closely. \"If I'm reading this right, someone used a copy of Firestarter on her.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't that, I dunno, set her on fire?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"The title character is a magic pyromaniac, yah, but there's another who can force people to obey his voice. At one point, he commands someone to sleep, and they don't wake up for six months. All you'd have to do is reach into the book and bring the sound into our world. It's elegant, but damned dangerous.\"\n\n\"So whoever did this was a libriomancer,\" said Deb. \"One of your team?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"I didn't tell them where we were going.\"\n\n\"Keeler has three children,\" Lena said tightly. \"Check the rest of the house.\"\n\nWe found the bedrooms near the back of the house. All three kids lay blanketed in their individual rooms by the same enchantment as their mother. I rejoined the others in the hallway. \"I can wake them up, but they're safe for now. Deb, you said you smelled blood?\"\n\n\"Upstairs.\"\n\nAn unconscious man sprawled at the top of the stairway, a gun in his hand. Blood from a cut cheek and split lip had stained the tan carpet. His dark suit and muscular build made me think bodyguard or private security. Was it normal for a senator to have armed security in his house, or had he been afraid someone would try to hurt him?\n\nI stepped carefully over his wheezing form and looked about. A second bodyguard slumped against the wall opposite a large, opulently furnished bathroom. Smudge was alert but calm. Whoever had done this was already gone.\n\n\"In here.\" The coldness in Lena's words told me what she'd found. \"Watch your step.\"\n\nIn the faint light coming through the windows, the blood on the desk and floor shone like black mercury. Lena switched on the overhead light, using her sleeve to avoid leaving fingerprints.\n\nSenator Alexander Keeler's lifeless body lay against the wall behind his desk. His throat had been torn open.\n\nI was no forensic detective, but it looked like Keeler had put up a fight. He clutched a broken desk lamp in one hand, like he'd tried to use it as a club. His knuckles were bloody. His left hand curled like a claw, as if he'd broken it. Perhaps by punching someone or something inhumanly solid.\n\nI spun toward Deb. \"Did you tell anyone from Vanguard about Keeler?\"\n\nDeb stared at the body, her head shaking in slow denial. \"When exactly did I have the chance to do that without you and Lena breathing down my neck?\"\n\n\"On the metro. The police officer. You could have told her to deliver a message\u2014\"\n\n\"Deb wasn't part of this.\" Lena knelt beside the body. \"Look closer. He was dead before we set foot on the metro.\"\n\nKeeler's hand and forearm were a dark raspberry color where the blood had pooled. I wrapped the bottom of my shirt around my thumb and pressed the back of his hand. The color didn't change. It had been a while since I read up on livor mortis, but I was pretty sure that meant he'd died between six and twelve hours ago. I checked the wall clock. That put the time of death no later than eight p.m.\n\n\"First they killed him, then they killed his computer.\" Deb pointed to the overturned desktop unit beneath the desk. The side of the computer case had been torn away, and judging from the bent metal brackets inside, Keeler's murderer had physically ripped the hard drive free.\n\nThe oak file cabinet in the corner was a mess as well. A cylindrical lock lay on the floor, leaving a matching hole behind in the upper drawer. Both drawers had been yanked open roughly enough to twist them off their tracks.\n\nIt would be just past eleven back in Vegas. I backed away and called Talulah. \"Any chance you can hack into the security footage for Alexander Keeler's house?\"\n\n\"Hello to you, too. Look, I'm good, but even I need a little more information to work my magic. What's going on?\"\n\n\"We need to know who else has visited the senator in the past twenty-four hours.\"\n\n\"Depends on who set their system up and how. Is the video hosted on site?\"\n\nI glanced at the computer. \"If so, I think it's gone now.\"\n\n\"Of course it is. Can you at least tell me what company they're using?\"\n\nI thought back to the security panel inside the door. \"Nighthawk.\" I gave her the street address as well.\n\n\"It's a start. I'll call you back if I find something.\"\n\nI crossed Keeler's office to where a series of framed photographs sat on the bookshelves. There were the usual school photos of the kids in their private school uniforms, a family trip to Disney, a dusty wedding photo... I studied a shot of Alexander Keeler at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at New Millennium from almost a year earlier.\n\nI spotted myself in the photo, standing toward the back in an ill-fitting suit and tie. I hadn't known much about Keeler back then. All I'd cared about was that New Millennium was opening, that we were finally going to show the world what we could do. The towers in the background had been under construction, but we'd been given the okay to begin work on a handful of research projects.\n\nI turned back to the desk and picked up a relatively recent New Millennium brochure titled A MAGICAL FUTURE. The cover showed our facility in Vegas. Inside were all the ways we hoped magic would benefit the world. The back listed future potential New Millennium sites in other countries.\n\n\"Can you talk to him?\" asked Lena. \"Or look into the past to see who did this?\"\n\n\"Not with the books I've got on me. When I armed up at the library, I didn't expect to have to talk to the dead.\"\n\nKeeler's family hadn't fought back. The sleep spell had struck them before they could react. Them, but not the security guards upstairs or the man himself. Either the libriomancer wasn't strong enough to knock out the entire household at once, or else they'd targeted only the people downstairs. Assuming it was deliberate... \"They needed Keeler awake.\"\n\nIf his guards had time to draw their weapons, they'd had time to shout a warning. How much time had that given him?\n\n\"To question him,\" guessed Lena. \"Find out how much he knew and who he'd shared it with.\"\n\n\"How much he knew about what?\" Deb glared at the body.\n\nThey'd destroyed his computer and ransacked his files. I found a cellphone with a broken screen on the floor beside the wall. An empty slot on the side showed where the SIM card had been removed.\n\nHe hadn't called 911. Otherwise the police would have discovered the bodies long before we arrived.\n\nAlexander Keeler had been a bigoted, manipulative, obsessively narrow-minded man, but he wasn't stupid. So what had he done in those seconds between realizing someone was in his house and the moment that intruder ended his life?\n\nHe might not have done anything. A lot of people froze in situations like this. I stepped around the desk and imagined myself in his place. The guards would have called out. We'd seen no evidence that either man had fired his weapon. They'd been overpowered quickly.\n\nI examined the desk. He'd had a computer, but no time to compose an email. He might have scrawled a note instead. I checked the notepads and a half-empty packet of printer paper, going so far as to rub a pencil over the top sheets of each in case it picked up indentations from a previous page, but found nothing.\n\nGrimacing, I checked the senator's pockets next. I found his keys, eighty-three cents in change, a silver business card holder, and a leather wallet. They hadn't taken his money or credit cards. The business card holder held about twenty of Keeler's own cards on one side, and four more on the other.\n\nI imagined my own office, mentally overlaying it with Keeler's. \"There's no printer.\"\n\n\"Maybe there's a wireless printer somewhere else in the house,\" suggested Lena. \"One the kids shared for homework and things like that?\"\n\n\"The paper's here, and I can't imagine someone like Keeler bothering to walk downstairs every time he needed a printout. Especially given the sensitive nature of his work.\" I spread my arms and turned slowly to get a feel for what he could have reached from his desk. The file cabinet was just beyond arm's reach. Easy enough to push back in a rolling chair and grab whatever he needed, and there was a gap of about four inches between the side of the cabinet and the wall...\n\nI leaned over and picked up a small black wireless printer that had either fallen down in that gap or been deliberately moved out of sight. A single LED blinked amber. My heart pounded. \"I need a blank sheet of paper.\"\n\nDeb handed one to me. I set the printer down as carefully as an armed bomb, fed the paper into the top, pressed the OK button, and hoped.\n\nThe printer hummed to life and tugged the paper through. \"Keeler sent whatever he was working on to the printer. With no paper, the printer held it in memory. His killers destroyed his hard drive and cellphone, but who's going to bother\u2014\"\n\nThe paper finished printing and fell into my hands. The light kept blinking. \"There's more.\"\n\nDeb fed more paper into the machine while I read the first lines of Alexander Keeler's final document. I read them a second time, then a third, trying to comprehend. Trying and failing to reconcile everything I'd thought, everything I'd assumed, with Keeler's words.\n\nLena touched my arm.\n\n\"I was wrong,\" I whispered numbly. \"He didn't go to the prison to check on their work. He went to expose it.\"\n\nKeeler had been drafting a press release about the Virginia facility. Phrases like \"trampling Constitutional freedom\" and \"betrayal of American ideals\" jumped out at me. He'd been working to expose them, the same as us.\n\nThis was the same man who'd championed the RAMPART Act, seeking to register and detain inhumans as well as libriomancers and other magic-users. But Keeler had wanted these things done openly, in full view and with the approval of the American people. As I kept reading, I started to see that no matter how much the man had hated and feared those of us with magic, he hated government secrecy and overreach even more. \"It says he was tipped off by a source within the Department of Homeland Security.\"\n\n\"The Coast Guard reports to DHS,\" Deb said quietly.\n\nI grabbed the next page of Keeler's letter, which discussed \"secret abductions and unethical experimentation\" as well as the \"deliberate fueling of tension and hostility in regards to magic\" and \"plans for a bigger, deadlier attack, intended to unite the world against inhumans and magic-users.\"\n\nI hadn't liked the man, and he'd never bothered to hide his hostility toward me, but he'd died trying to do the right thing. When this was over, I was going to make sure people knew it.\n\nMy jaw beeped. I jumped hard enough I pulled something in my back. I had to get Talulah to turn down the intensity on that damn communicator. Then maybe we could add a caller ID function. \"Hello?\"\n\n\"Isaac? It's Jason.\" I tensed. The last time I'd heard him so somber was when he'd been getting ready to fire me. \"Nidhi's gone.\"\n\n\"What do you mean Nidhi's gone?\" I spoke out loud for Lena's benefit.\n\n\"She's alive,\" said Lena. \"I'd know if she wasn't.\"\n\n\"I've been searching all night. I called her apartment. When she didn't answer, I drove down and knocked. No answer, but her car was in the lot. I woke up some of her neighbors, asking when anyone had last seen her. She was taken away late last night.\"\n\n\"Who took her?\"\n\n\"Two men from the FBI. It's too late for me to get through to anyone at the FBI office in Detroit. I'm talking to a reporter friend to see if they have any contacts who might be able to tell us what's going on.\"\n\nI swore silently. Not silently enough. The implant decided I was subvocalizing, and passed my curses along to Jason.\n\n\"I'm doing everything I can.\"\n\n\"I know you are,\" I said tightly. \"Thanks, Jason. Have your reporter friend put the spotlight on Nidhi and the FBI. There are people who might try to make her disappear. Don't let them.\"\n\n\"I'll try.\"\n\n\"And try calling an agent named Steinkamp. He met Nidhi in Lansing. He might be able to help.\" I recited Steinkamp's number from memory, then hung up. How the hell could I have all this magic, all this power, and still feel so damned helpless?\n\n\"Nidhi might not be a libriomancer,\" said Lena, \"but she's one of the smartest people I've ever met, and she's tough as hell. We'll get her back.\"\n\nNidhi had faced down people far more dangerous than FBI agents. I nodded.\n\n\"Look at this.\" Lena picked up a business card from Keeler's desk, one of the cards I'd pulled from his case. \"You said Keeler got a tip from inside DHS.\"\n\nThe card was from a Darlene Jackson-Palmer in the DHS Public Affairs office. I clenched my jaw and called the number on the card. Nobody would be there at this time of night, but I could at least leave her a message.\n\nA male voice began speaking after the first ring. \"Thank you for contacting the Department of Homeland Security Public Affairs Office. Darlene Jackson-Palmer is on indefinite administrative leave. If you need assistance, please contact\u2014\"\n\nI hung up. \"She's gone.\"\n\n\"Jackson-Palmer,\" said Lena. \"Any relation to a certain libriomancer?\"\n\nI stared at the card. \"If someone high up at DHS is behind all of this, they might be using Darlene Jackson-Palmer as a hostage. That could explain why Babs was so upset. She got drawn into this to protect Darlene's life.\"\n\n\"We don't know that for certain,\" said Deb.\n\n\"It fits. It also answers another question.\" I looked at Lena. \"During the hearing, Keeler asked why my niece got into our medical trials.\"\n\n\"You think someone brought them in as potential hostages too?\"\n\nI left the office and stepped carefully around Keeler's unconscious bodyguards. \"Not someone. Russell Potts. He's the DHS representative on the New Millennium board.\"\n\n\"You're sure he's involved?\" asked Deb.\n\nI'd been sure about Keeler, too. \"I can't prove anything yet, but I'm not taking chances with my family. I'm going to get them the hell out of there, and then Potts and I are going to have a very unpleasant chat.\"\n\nI called Talulah once we'd left Keeler's house. My throat was dry, and sweat dripped down my sides. \"I need to confirm whether Babs Palmer is any relation to a Darlene Jackson-Palmer at DHS. Make sure nobody at New Millennium knows you're running this search.\"\n\n\"This isn't my first concert, Isaac. Hold on...\" I heard the machine-gun clicking of her keyboard. \"Darlene is Babs' sister.\"\n\n\"How long has she been working for Homeland Security?\"\n\nAnother pause. \"According to her LinkedIn profile, just under a year.\"\n\nThey'd hired her right around the time we started building New Millennium. \"Thanks, Talulah. Any luck with that security footage yet?\"\n\n\"Working on it.\" She paused. \"Vince texted me about a half hour ago. He's going over our research projects again. He noticed that Doctor Palmer has been poking around your Gateway files.\"\n\nAnother piece fell into place like a sledgehammer to the sternum. \"Understood.\"\n\n\"You look like you can't decide whether to puke or punch something,\" Deb said as I hung up.\n\n\"Keeler's press release mentioned a bigger attack, something that would unite the world against magic. The bastards intend to start a war. And I think they mean to use my research to do it.\"\n\nTESTIMONY AND QUESTIONING OF WITNESS NUMBER 18: ISAAC VAINIO (CONTINUED)\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Please tell us about the Gateway Project.\n\nMr. VAINIO: The goal is to create a safe, stable portal that can establish instantaneous transportation between two points. I got tired of losing half a day in airports and on cramped planes every time I got called to D.C., or needed to commute between Michigan and New Millennium.\n\nMr. HOFFMAN: How much could a portal like that move? What distances are you talking about?\n\nMr. VAINIO: I've seen a small, short-lived portal connect the Earth and Moon, so we know it can reach at least two hundred thousand miles. We'd have to run some tests to see how much magical energy was involved, and what kind of charring\u2014\n\nMr. HAYS: Charring?\n\nMr. VAINIO: Magical damage. If you channel too much power through a book all at once, for example, the results look like you held a blowtorch to the pages. Human beings can suffer the same damage. I lost fifteen percent of my vision that way.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: What applications do you see for this project?\n\nMr. VAINIO: Space exploration. Commercial trade and transportation. We could use Gateway to take samples from the Earth's core or drive a rover directly onto Uranus. If we're able to go large scale, we'd drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption.\n\nThe CHAIRMAN: Have you thought through the potential abuses of such technology? The privacy concerns? What's to stop one of you libriomancers from opening a portal into Fort Knox?\n\nMr. VAINIO: If I want gold, I can just pull it out of a book.\n\nMr. HOFFMAN: The point remains, this raises serious questions.\n\nMr. VAINIO: All of which are being considered by New Millennium, as well as the Department of Homeland Security oversight process. But you're right. Any new technology carries the potential for harm, and magic is no different. Does that mean we turn our back on progress?\n\n\"What was the mission of the Porters?\"\n\n\"What is this, pop quiz time with Professor Gutenberg?\"\n\n\"Indulge me.\"\n\n\"You made us each swear an oath to preserve the secrecy of magic, protect the world from magical threats, and to expand our knowledge of magic's power and potential.\"\n\n\"I created the Porters. That made them\u2014you\u2014my responsibility. Part of that responsibility meant being prepared in case the Porters themselves ever became a threat.\"\n\n\"Why are you telling me this?\"\n\n\"Because you helped create New Millennium.\"\n\n\"Do you trust deb on her own?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Do we have a choice?\" Of the three of us, she was likeliest to have been captured on camera at the Virginia prison. I'd spent most of that mission more or less invisible, and Lena had looked more like a walking tree than a woman. I'd never seen her so heavily armored, and neither had anyone else.\n\nWe'd sent Deb back to Michigan with instructions to check in with Jason Latona and fill him in on what was coming next. If necessary, she could help break Nidhi out of whatever holding pen the FBI had tossed her into. \"Granach ordered her to strike back. Right now, you and I are her best hope of doing that.\"\n\nLena rolled down the window and leaned into the desert sun. \"I don't trust her either.\"\n\nI listened to the rattle of my pickup as we crested the next hill, bringing the New Millennium complex into view. Talulah had confirmed there were no public warrants for me or Lena. Depending on how much was known about the attacks on the Kagan and Mecklenburg prison, Babs might suspect what we'd been up to. But if she was an unwilling accomplice in all this, maybe she'd keep those suspicions to herself. All I needed was a few hours.\n\nThe other possibility was that everyone knew damn well what we'd done, and were simply waiting for us to walk into their trap.\n\nI pulled up to the security booth and rolled down my window. \"Morning, Marion!\"\n\nThe sparkler grinned at me. \"It's a gorgeous one, Mr. Vainio. Hi there, Ms. Greenwood. How was your weekend?\"\n\n\"Refreshing. Got through three books on my reading list.\" I passed over my ID and did my best to keep my thoughts calm. I had no hostile intentions toward New Millennium. Only toward a few select individuals.\n\n\"Only three? You're slacking.\"\n\nLena stretched past me and winked. \"Believe me, he really wasn't.\"\n\nMarion blushed and returned my badge, along with a temporary visitor's ID for Lena. \"New rule from Dr. Palmer. Everyone has to display their ID at all times.\"\n\nI checked the visitor's badge for magic before passing it over. It wasn't enchanted, but the plastic was thick enough to conceal a tracking chip, or possibly a listening device. Lena clipped it to the bottom of her T-shirt.\n\nWhile I listed off the magic we were carrying, a human guard emerged from the booth to check the back of the truck. He also dropped flat and shone a flashlight beneath. \"All clear.\"\n\n\"Is everything all right, sir?\" That was the empath, a middle-aged vampire with the beard and build of Santa Claus. \"You're pretty anxious.\"\n\n\"We were listening to the news on the drive,\" I said. \"The whole world seems to be going to shit. I'm guessing the extra security measures here mean Babs is getting nervous too.\"\n\n\"It's ugly out there.\" He studied me a moment longer, then waved us through.\n\nLena tapped her badge and raised one eyebrow.\n\nI brought one finger to my lips. It might be paranoia, but until we knew for certain, paranoia might keep us alive and free.\n\nI parked the truck and climbed out. We walked hand-in-hand, making small talk as we crossed the grounds. \"My team has a Monday morning checkin meeting. It shouldn't take too long. You're welcome to wander, or you can hang out in Franklin Tower until we're done. Vince was supposed to be getting a lion cub from Zimbabwe. I don't know if it's arrived yet.\"\n\n\"I definitely have to meet the cub,\" said Lena. \"How's Lex doing?\"\n\n\"She was great when I saw her last week. I need to stop by and see how she's progressing.\"\n\nI smiled and waved to the people we passed, all the while trying to act normal without acting like I was acting. Don't stare at security personnel, but don't be too obvious about not staring. Don't look over my shoulder to see if anyone was following. Don't talk too much or too loudly. I was overthinking things, and I couldn't stop.\n\nBy the time we made it to the Franklin Research Tower, I'd acquired a whole new level of respect for James Bond and his real-life counterparts.\n\nMy team waited for us in the Wheeler conference room. Talulah's privacy toys were set out on the table, their magic securing the room. I sagged into a chair and wiped sweat from my forehead.\n\n\"There are at least thirty-nine clones of Kiyoko It\u00f4,\" Talulah said without preamble. \"I can't get a location on them, and I haven't found a way into their biological hard drives.\"\n\n\"What about the security footage at Keeler's place?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Two intruders. Looks like one male, one female. Both wore ski masks.\"\n\n\"I've been digging into Thomas Hayes,\" said Charles. \"He's been with the Coast Guard twenty-three years. Joined up right after college. Took over as commandant two years ago. The Porters don't have a file on him and his family, so he probably didn't lose his wife to a selkie or anything else that would give him a personal grudge against magic.\"\n\n\"DHS could have told him the sirens were a threat,\" Talulah pointed out. \"He might believe he's doing his job and protecting his country.\"\n\n\"Hopefully Mr. Potts will be able to answer that question, along with a long list of others.\"\n\n\"Potts.\" Vince all but spat the name. \"He was bad enough before he was running things. Now\u2014\"\n\n\"What do you mean running things?\" I interrupted.\n\nThey looked at one another. \"You didn't hear?\" asked Charles.\n\n\"Obviously.\"\n\n\"Nicola Pallas and Th\u00e9r\u00e8se St. Pierre were both taken into FBI custody for questioning,\" he said. \"They're trying to implicate the Porters in this Vanguard mess, particularly the attack on those Coast Guard ships.\"\n\nThat left only Russell Potts and Heather Neuman as active members of the New Millennium board, and while Neuman was a good doctor, she didn't have the strength of will to stand up to Potts.\n\nRussell Potts I could handle. I was more worried about Kiyoko, having seen enough of her book to know the violence she was capable of. \"Talulah, do you have any way of taking Kiyoko offline?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"It's a distributed model. There's no 'queen' ruling over the hive mind. Breaking her psychic link is what causes her stuttering and physical difficulties, so if anyone has to go up against her, your best bet is to isolate her from her clones' thoughts.\"\n\n\"Any of those magic-eating pearls should do the trick,\" said Charles. \"We figure the real reason she wore one was to make sure nobody realized what she was.\"\n\n\"What's the plan for taking Potts down?\" asked Vince.\n\n\"First, I eliminate his leverage. Then we get proof.\" The pieces all fit, but I'd been sure about Keeler, too. \"Vince, you said Babs had been snooping through my Gateway reports?\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"I need you to be my backup plan. If Lena and I get caught, your job is to destroy the Gateway Project.\"\n\nI left my team in Franklin Tower, ostensibly carrying on with their individual research projects. We \"forgot\" our ID badges in my office, just to be safe.\n\nI borrowed a rat carrier from Vince's work area and clipped the shoulder strap from an old laptop case to either side. It was like carrying a light, metal purse for Smudge. It would do for now.\n\nWe walked to the hospital tower without incident. Once there, we signed in at the front desk and took the elevator to the third floor.\n\nA new sign had appeared on the door to room 318."
            },
            {
                "title": "VISITORS: PLEASE REPORT TO THE NURSES' STATION",
                "text": "[ NO SICK VISITORS OR STAFF ]\n\n[ WASH HANDS BEFORE DONNING MASK ]\n\n[ MASKS MUST BE WORN BEYOND THIS POINT ]\n\nCountless nightmares flickered through my thoughts in the time it took me to open the door and step inside. My attention went first to Lex, who was curled beneath several blankets in bed. A nurse was placing a blood pressure cuff around Lex's arm. At the foot of the bed, Russell Potts stood talking to Toby and Angie in low tones.\n\n\"Sir, you can't be in here without mask and gloves,\" said the nurse.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Toby's eyes were shadowed. His surgical mask muffled his words. \"She's right. You can't\u2014\"\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\nHe frowned. \"You didn't hear?\"\n\n\"Alexis has contracted an infection of some kind,\" said Potts. \"It seems to resist libriomantic healing.\" He pointed to the black pearl strung around Lex's neck. \"The doctors believe it's magical in nature, and were hoping this would suppress it.\"\n\n\"Will she be all right?\" asked Lena.\n\nPotts shrugged. \"Unfortunately, it's too early to tell.\"\n\nThe nurse stepped toward me, keeping herself between me and Lex. \"Both of you need to step through that door, use the hand sanitizer outside, then go directly to the nurses' station for mask and gloves. Otherwise, I will call security.\"\n\n<Talulah, we may have a problem over here.> There was no response. Either I was out of range, or else the damned pearl was blocking me.\n\nI stared at Potts. \"What have they tried so far? If I could see a copy of her chart\u2014\"\n\n\"Her doctors say the best thing for her right now is rest,\" Potts said firmly. \"Give it time to see if the magic-damper helps.\"\n\n\"I'm surprised to see you here, Mr. Potts. Medical isn't really your area.\"\n\nToby frowned. He'd picked up on the edge in my voice.\n\n\"With Th\u00e9r\u00e8se and Nicola unavailable, I have broader responsibilities now,\" said Potts. \"The most important of which is the health and safety of our patients. Wouldn't you agree?\"\n\nA soft click told me Lena had shut the door behind us.\n\nI'd left my jacket and most of my books behind, because I thought it would be too suspicious. I had only a single paperback tucked into the back pocket of my jeans. I'd brought it along in case I had trouble getting my family out of here.\n\n\"They're talking about moving us into quarantine.\" Angie sounded numb. To finally see her daughter healed, only to watch her succumb to an unknown illness... it was enough to break the strongest spirit.\n\nThe nurse started toward the phone. Lena moved to block her way.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said. \"Nobody told me. When did she start feeling ill?\"\n\n\"Early this morning,\" said Angie.\n\nPotts stepped closer to Lex and her pearl.\n\n\"What's going on?\" demanded Toby.\n\nLena hadn't brought her bokken. Wooden swords were too conspicuous. Instead, she reached beneath the back of her T-shirt to unsheathe a wooden dagger the size of a Bowie knife. The edge sharpened in her hand.\n\n\"Are you threatening me?\" Potts snapped.\n\n\"Are you threatening my niece?\" I replied, my words deceptively calm and cold. \"Take that damned pearl off of her so I can read what's happening to her.\"\n\nPotts didn't move. Angie ripped the pearl necklace from Lex's neck and took it to the bathroom in the back of the room. I heard and felt its influence being flushed away.\n\n\"You've been working with Vanguard,\" Potts said. \"We suspected as much. What do you hope to accomplish? Will you kill me the way you killed those people in Michigan?\"\n\n\"You have a problem, Mr. Potts.\" I split my attention between him and the nurse. \"I'm relatively certain everyone in this room cares more about the welfare of that little girl than they do about you or me. And now that the magic-damper is gone, I can see exactly what you had done to her.\"\n\nTo Toby and Angie, I said, \"Magic couldn't heal her, because she's not sick. She's been cursed.\" The pearl would have suppressed the symptoms, but it couldn't destroy the underlying cause, any more than it could permanently change Lena's nature.\n\n\"You're insane.\" Potts started toward me.\n\nA wooden knife thudded into the floor between his feet. Lena tightened her fist. Oak spikes grew from the knuckles.\n\nI yanked off my glasses and studied Lex's leg. The curse was centered on her knee. Tendrils spread to the foot and up her thigh toward the hip, like a weed taking root.\n\nLex groaned and opened her eyes. \"Uncle Isaac? I don't feel good.\"\n\n\"I know, kiddo. I'll fix it.\"\n\n\"Smudge is glowing. Is he hungry?\"\n\n\"Not this time.\" I ripped the magical portion of Lex's curse aside and crushed it into nothingness. That didn't repair the physical damage it had done. \"Lena, do you have that healing cordial?\"\n\nShe handed me the crystal vial without a word. I placed a drop on Lex's tongue.\n\n\"What now?\" Potts demanded. \"Will you kill me, too? Murder me in front of your poor niece? It won't help. You can't hide what you've done.\"\n\n\"How does that feel, Lex?\"\n\nShe made a face. \"Better.\"\n\nThe nurse stepped closer. I nodded, and she began checking Lex's vitals.\n\n\"You suspected me, but you weren't certain.\" I needed to move, to pace, to do something to suppress the need to physically throw Russel Potts through the window. \"You didn't know how much I'd uncovered. So you cursed my niece, just in case you needed leverage. That was a serious error in judgment.\"\n\nI pulled the paperback from my pocket: an old copy of Renfield. \"Tell me, Russell. How do you feel about eating bugs for the rest of your life?\"\n\nI didn't turn him, though it was damned tempting to let him live out his days as one of the inhuman creatures he'd helped to persecute. Instead, I turned to a passage describing the Renfield's ability to influence minds, and used that to put him into a more suggestive, agreeable mood. He sat on the floor and looked up at us, a relaxed, ridiculous smile on his face.\n\n\"Who killed Alexander Keeler?\" I asked.\n\n\"Kiyoko thirteen, and a vampire we hired in D.C. I don't know the name.\"\n\nThat didn't make sense. \"His wife and children were incapacitated by libriomancy.\"\n\n\"By a recording of libriomancy. One of your incident reports talked about Nicola's ability to incapacitate a man via cellphone, suggesting that magic could be recorded and duplicated electronically, albeit with some loss of power.\"\n\nClever. How many such recordings had they made, and how many times could one be used before it lost its potency? \"The sirens. Where are they?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Who does?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Kiyoko. Lawrence McGinley.\"\n\n\"Secretary of Homeland Security?\" said Angie. \"That Lawrence McGinley?\"\n\nPotts nodded happily. \"The one and only!\"\n\nThroughout our questions, the nurse had been dutifully examining Lex. Now she turned to Toby and Angie. \"Her heartbeat is steadier and stronger. It may be an hour or two for her fever to come down. That's normal after most magical healing. It takes time for the body to realize it's better.\"\n\n\"But she is better?\" asked Angie.\n\n\"I think so, yes.\" She glanced at me. \"Can I go? I have other patients...\"\n\n\"What's your name?\" I asked.\n\n\"Tamika.\"\n\n\"I see two choices, Tamika. I can adjust your memory of what happened here. That would probably be safest for everyone, especially you. If Potts and the people he's working with think you're helping us\u2014\"\n\n\"What's the other choice?\" She folded her arms and lifted her chin.\n\n\"Helping us. I need to get Lex and her parents out of here. That would be easier if she wasn't on quarantine.\"\n\nTamika nodded. \"I'll update her records with a note that you cleared her 'infection.'\"\n\n\"Doesn't a doctor need to sign off on that?\" asked Toby.\n\n\"I've been working in hospitals for twenty years. I think I can forge a doctor's scrawl.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said. \"I'll make sure Potts doesn't remember anything that happened here.\"\n\n\"Give me ten minutes, then you get that little girl somewhere safe.\"\n\nOnce she'd left, I turned back to Potts. \"Who else is involved?\"\n\n\"McGinley has contacts with people in China, France, Britain, and Afghanistan. I don't know names.\"\n\n\"What does he want?\" whispered Toby.\n\n\"To form an alliance of nations to control the use of magic throughout the world, with us on top,\" said Potts. \"Once we bring the Porters down for working with terrorists, DHS will take over operations of New Millennium, using it as a central hub of magical research and intelligence.\"\n\n\"Keeler wrote about another attack, something big,\" I said. \"What is it? Does it involve the sirens? The Gateway Project?\"\n\nPotts gave a clumsy, exaggerated shrug. \"Nobody told me the details. We were worried you might catch on and read my mind. What you're doing is illegal, by the way. I should arrest you.\"\n\n\"What's going on, Uncle Isaac?\" Lex was sitting up. Her color was better, and her voice stronger.\n\n\"You were sick because of me,\" I explained. \"Because this man wanted to use you against me.\"\n\n\"Are they going to take my leg away?\"\n\n\"No way, kiddo. I promise.\" I turned back to Potts. \"Where's Darlene Jackson-Palmer?\"\n\nHe shrugged and chuckled. \"Kiyoko thirteen picked her up after she went to Keeler. I don't know where they took her.\"\n\n\"What about Nidhi?\"\n\nHe shook a finger at me. \"That wasn't us. The FBI wanted to question the lead Porters. Doctor Shah was brought in because she'd worked with one of the other council masters. The one from Bangladesh, I think.\"\n\nI blinked. \"So she's safe?\"\n\nPotts shrugged. \"Maybe. Maybe not. One phone call from McGinley, and she's rotting away in a secret prison for the rest of her life. Or maybe we'll just burn down your lover's oak instead. We have lots of ways to hurt you, Isaac.\"\n\n\"How many prisons do you have like the one in Virginia?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"Four in the U.S. Several others overseas.\"\n\n\"Do you know when this big attack is supposed to happen?\" I asked.\n\nHe shook his head. \"I imagine it will be soon though, thanks to you. If McGinley thinks he's been compromised, the best play is to launch the attack and make sure you Porters take the blame. That way, whatever you say ends up sounding like a desperate attempt to blame someone else for your crimes.\"\n\nI looked at Lena. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"How did you infiltrate and manipulate Vanguard?\"\n\n\"FBI informants. They've got plants in extremist groups across the country.\"\n\nI shoved the book back into my pocket. \"Time to forget about this conversation, Russell. You're going to sleep now. When you wake up, you won't remember anything that's happened today.\"\n\n\"That sounds nice.\" He closed his eyes and stretched out on the floor.\n\nLena sheathed her knife. \"Gateway?\"\n\nThe Gateway Project would give McGinley's people the ability to strike anywhere in the world. \"First we use it to get my family out of here. Then I destroy the whole damn project.\"\n\nToby scooped Lex up in his arms. His face was pale, and he kept staring down at Potts. \"They organized those Vanguard attacks. They sent terrorists to kill people on their own side.\"\n\n\"Bad guys are real assholes, eh?\" I glanced around the room. \"Did Lex ever get those books I sent over from the library? I may need them to get us back to Franklin Tower unseen.\"\n\nWe told the nurse at the desk we were taking Lex for a walk. Once we reached the elevator, I used the invisibility spell from Stuart Little's car. We made it across the grounds, but one of the guards outside Franklin Tower wore a magic damper. We stopped a short distance from the doors while I made a quick phone call.\n\nFive minutes later, Vince Hambrecht burst through the front doors. He grabbed the closest guard by the arm. \"Have you seen an acid-breathing cobra with three heads come through here? She answers to the name of Selma. You've gotta help me find her.\"\n\nWhile the visibly unhappy guards helped Vince search, the five of us slipped inside and made our way to the elevator. I stopped at my office to grab my jacket and books, and then we headed for the fifth floor.\n\nThe door to the Gateway Project was locked and sealed. A notice pinned to the door prohibited anyone from entering without written permission from Babs Palmer. I saw no cameras, but the electronic ID scanner was probably rigged to sound an alarm. A second, magical barrier overlapped the first, creating a bubble around the entire room.\n\nI pulled out a copy of Stephanie Burgis' A Most Improper Magick. I'd tucked a bookmark into the proper page. The protagonist could verbally disrupt magic. I handed Smudge to Lena and waited for them both to move down the hall, then used the book to pop the magical bubble. It took out our invisibility as well, though it didn't reach Lena.\n\nI swapped it out for Neverwhere and headed down the hallway to the supply closet. I'd borrowed the mops and other cleaning materials on more than one occasion when my experiments went wrong.\n\nI'd used Neverwhere too much recently. The energy flowing through the pages had begun to turn them the color of ash. I sighed and pulled its power into the supply door, then opened it and stepped through to the Gateway room. The others followed a moment later. I switched on the lights and looked around. Most of my work was where I'd left it. \"They haven't gotten it working yet.\"\n\nI gathered books from the floor and my worktable and sat down on the floor to work.\n\n\"You're sure you know what you're doing?\" asked Toby.\n\n\"The theories are sound.\" I began by twining stories together, pulling passages from different books and braiding them into a doorway in the center of the room.\n\nStory was magic. Magic was story. Memory was also story, disparate events linked together in our mind to create a narrative. I simply needed to bind magic and memory together. It was the same thing I'd done with Neverwhere, splicing the text with the imagined destination in my mind. This was simply bigger, more stable, and hopefully more precise over long distance. Assuming it worked.\n\nWater rippled over the partially formed doorway, each wave taking on a silver sheen as story elements combined. I glimpsed other worlds: fantastical forests and twisting tunnels and alien skies sprinkled with strange stars and oversized moons: fragments of realities that lived only in the minds of the authors and their readers, but were no less real for not existing. They flooded my thoughts, each one trying to impose itself on my memories.\n\nI pushed them aside, concentrating on my own memories of the Copper River Library. Of lounging on the beanbag chairs as a child, reading Goosebumps books and Bunnicula and A Wrinkle in Time and everything else I could get my hands on.\n\nThat place had been a second home long before I'd come back as an adult and begun working there. I'd kept my first library card, a battered old laminated thing with my careful eight-year-old's signature, up until last year when it was lost with everything else in a house fire. I'd read every book in the children's section and moved on to the adult books. I remembered the summer after fifth grade, when the whole place smelled of sawdust and paint from renovations.\n\nSlowly, the ripples cleared and sagged, melting into a circle on the floor.\n\n\"What's happening?\" asked Lex.\n\n\"Um...\" I'd hoped for a vertical doorway, but it looked like I'd created a hole instead. On the other side were the colorful shelves, carpeting, and toys in the children's section. The portal was horizontal on this end and vertical in Copper River, but it appeared to be working. \"It's all right. I think.\"\n\nThe lights were on in the library. I grabbed one of my notebooks, tore out a page, and folded a quick paper airplane. I sighted past the shelves and threw.\n\nA moment later, Jason Latona stepped into view. He picked up the airplane and looked around in confusion.\n\n\"Can he see the portal from his side?\" asked Lena.\n\nJason jumped and spun. \"Lena? Where are you?\"\n\n\"Vegas.\"\n\n\"Hi, Jason!\" I said. \"Remind me, have you ever met my brother and his family? Would you like to?\"\n\n\"Your friend Deb said you might be bringing company, but she neglected the details.\"\n\nI helped Lex toward the portal. \"Sit here. I'm going to lower you through. You're going to meet a friend of mine.\"\n\nJason stood with his head cocked to one side, studying the barefooted legs that seemed to protrude straight out of the air at his chest level. \"You know, Isaac, one of the reasons I took a job up here was because the U.P. is supposed to be quiet and relaxing.\"\n\n\"Oh, bullshit. This was the only library that would take you as director.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't say that word,\" said Lex.\n\n\"You're right. It's much more grown-up to say 'bovine feces' or 'taurus excrement.'\"\n\n\"Isaac, do you mind?\" said Angie.\n\n\"Sorry.\" I lifted Lex by the arms. \"This is going to feel weird, but Mr. Latona will catch you, okay?\"\n\nShe bit her lip, but nodded.\n\nI winked and lowered her through. Just as she disappeared, Smudge erupted in flame. Lena drew her bokken and whirled to face the door.\n\n\"Angie, Toby, get out of here.\" I grabbed books from my jacket. The instant Toby and Angie made it through to Copper River, I seized the text of the gateway and prepared to tear it apart.\n\nThe door shattered inward. Kiyoko It\u00f4 entered the room and promptly stumbled back from the punch Lena landed on the bridge of her nose. Blood spattered from Kiyoko's nostrils, but she didn't appear to care. Babs Palmer stood behind her, the magic of her rings and tattoos humming like electrical lines.\n\nI couldn't tell whether this was the same Kiyoko I'd seen outside of Babs' office or another clone. She wore a skullcap of electrodes and copper wire. She cocked her head to one side, and the sprinkler system came on. Strobe lights flashed from the corners of the ceiling.\n\nLena lunged. Kiyoko twisted, but the wooden sword stabbed through her side. She reached out to catch Lena's wrist. Before Lena could twist free, Kiyoko snapped a kick to her chest. Lena fell, and Kiyoko staggered back.\n\nThe falling water outlined Lena's body.\n\nThat was all Kiyoko needed. Her right hand gripped the bokken protruding from her side. With her left, she pulled a black pistol from a holster in the small of her back and squeezed off four shots in quick succession.\n\nI couldn't hear the impact, but Lena staggered. \"Remove all magic,\" Kiyoko said calmly.\n\nWhen I hesitated, she put another bullet into Lena, who gasped. \"I've been instructed to capture Isaac Vainio alive. I have no such orders for your companion.\"\n\n\"Those bullets are enchanted.\" Babs sounded utterly drained of emotion. \"Lena's armor won't protect her.\"\n\nI raised my hands. Whatever Kiyoko might be, her body was human. She couldn't last long with a sword in her gut. I needed to stall her. \"Let me help my friend.\"\n\n\"This is not a negotiation.\" She turned the gun toward me and fired again. There was a burst of heat from my hip, and the cage broke away. Another shot tore through the center of the cage.\n\nI dropped to all fours. Smudge lay in his cage, blue flame shooting like a welding torch from the front of his body. Kiyoko's bullet had sheared off his right foreleg.\n\n\"Remove Lena Greenwood's invisibility,\" Kiyoko said calmly.\n\n\"All right!\" Swallowing hard, I grabbed Smudge's cage, crawled over to Lena, and started to unravel her invisibility. I took my time. Nobody else performed this kind of libriomancy, so she couldn't know how long it was supposed to take. As Lena slowly faded into view, I looked past her to the portal.\n\nLena was bleeding, but the bullets didn't seem to have gone all the way through. I focused my concentration on the portal. All those stories strung together on the floor, powerful and fragile at the same time. Left to its own devices, it would dissolve on its own within the hour.\n\nI wiped my hands on my jacket and felt the lump where I'd tucked the enchanted compact mirror away. I couldn't leave anything that might allow Babs and the rest to recreate my work.\n\n\"If you cooperate, they will survive,\" said Kiyoko. \"Back away.\"\n\nI mentally reached out to the portal, seizing its text in my mind and flipping it like a giant magical pancake. I grabbed the compact and tossed it and Smudge's cage to the floor next to Lena, just before the portal landed atop them. They disappeared, and the portal dissolved an instant later.\n\n\"There goes your leverage,\" I said quietly. \"You really shouldn't have told me your bosses need me alive. Especially since I don't think I feel the same way about you.\"\n\nKiyoko's body was human, but she'd been born of magic. I seized that magic and pulled, ripping away the heart of what made her more. I turned my attention to Babs next, grabbing the power of her tattoos and her jewelry and turning it against her and Kiyoko both.\n\nMy vision blurred. I saw Babs collapse, and Kiyoko cried out in pain, obviously damaged. The cool precision with which she'd shot Lena and Smudge was utterly lacking when she dropped to one knee, raised her trembling arms, and put a bullet into my chest."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "\u2002MEMO\n\n\u2002To: All New Millennium Personnel\n\n\u2002From: Babs Palmer, Director of Security\n\n\u2002Subject: Internal Security Breach\n\n\u2002Effective immediately, Isaac Vainio has been terminated from his position as Director of Research at New Millennium.\n\n\u2002Several days ago, an internal investigation carried out in cooperation with the FBI and DHS discovered evidence that Isaac had been working with the group known as Vanguard, and had actively participated in at least two Vanguard attacks. He has been taken into custody for questioning.\n\n\u2002Talulah Polk is also suspected to have ties with Vanguard, working through Isaac. She is currently a fugitive, having fled New Millennium at approximately 10:30 Monday morning. If you have any information on her whereabouts, please contact security immediately.\n\n\u2002All research projects are to be placed on hold, and the remaining research staff will report directly to Russell Potts. Their only duty is to assist the FBI, DHS, and New Millennium security with the ongoing investigation into this matter.\n\n\u2002I cannot overemphasize the damage this incident does to New Millennium's reputation and our ability to perform our mission. The future of New Millennium depends on your cooperation.\n\n\"Hello? Gutenberg? Anyone?\"\n\nThe world was a kind of technicolor static, spheres of yellow and red floating across an infinite canvas the color of a flooded river back home. It was a bit like the afterimages you get when you rub your eyes after staring at a bright light, but when I tried to blink to clear my vision, nothing happened.\n\n<Isaac?>\n\nI could have been dreaming. Or possibly dead, though that seemed improbable. There was a familiarity to all of this, reminiscent of having my mind ripped from my body. It was annoying how many times that had happened to me. Separating mind from flesh was surprisingly easy, though reuniting the two could be a bit of a trick. But if my body was gone, why did the air smell like burnt popcorn?\n\n<Sorry. Hold on... is that better?>\n\nThe smell ended with the suddenness of a guillotine. My vision changed as well. I could see blurry points of blue and green and white, all sparkling like Christmas decorations through a frosted window.\n\n<Is that Christmas thing an actual memory, Isaac? Or are we just seeing random misfires from the visual centers of the brain?>\n\n<Talulah? What's going on? Are Lena and Smudge all right? Where are Lex and her parents?>\n\n<One question at a time. Lena's fine. Smudge is limping, but he seems to be getting along. I healed them both the best I could.>\n\nHer words ripped open a maelstrom of emotion. I should have gotten everyone out more quickly. I should have found a way to escape with them, to heal them all myself. <You're with them? How?>\n\n< I hacked into the security feed from the Gateway room. I pieced together where they'd gone and got the hell out of there.>\n\n<If you figured out where they went\u2014>\n\n<Relax. It took me three hours to figure out who you were talking to on the other side of that portal. Your friend isn't listed as Jason in any official records, which makes him much harder to identify, especially after someone fried that part of the video. Now that they've got you, I don't think they're as worried about the rest of us.>\n\n<Thank you. What did they do to me? Where the hell am I?>\n\n<Easy, Isaac. If you get too worked up, your readings will spike, and I'll have to pull out and try again later.>\n\nThe thought terrified me, though I wasn't sure why. <I remember the fight in my lab, and then you calling my name. There's nothing in between.>\n\n<You were sleeping. Nothing to worry about.>\n\n<Don't lie to me. I don't remember falling asleep or waking up. I wasn't dreaming. It's like I didn't exist until you started talking to me.>\n\nThe pause stretched out for what felt like several minutes, but I had no objective way to measure the time. Finally, Talulah said, <You existed, but you were on standby. Like a computer in sleep mode.>\n\nThe terror grew. <You're holding back. I can feel it. Talulah, what happened to me?>\n\n<As far as I can tell, they brought you to the server room and hooked you into the network. Direct neural linkup, probably similar to what Kiyoko wore on her scalp. It lets her get into your brain, copy and sort through your memories, and so on.>\n\n<Why?> There were far easier ways to read someone's mind.\n\n<Reading your mind is the easy part.>\n\nObviously, since Talulah seemed to know my thoughts whether I tried to \"speak\" them or not.\n\n<They want to know how your brain works,> she explained. <How you're able to do the kind of magic you do.>\n\nThey thought they could do that by plugging me into a damn computer? <Wait, how much have they pulled from my memories?>\n\n<Everything.>\n\n<Then they know about Jason. They know where\u2014>\n\n<They know you sent Lena and your family to the library. They don't know where everyone went when they left the library. Like I said, I don't think they care about the rest of us anymore. We're safe. I've spent the past two days poking around, trying to activate your consciousness without tripping any alarms.>\n\nTwo days. I hoped someone was taking good care of my body. <How did you get in?>\n\n<That magic phone in your jaw. I'm using it as a kind of modem. I created a telepathic connection to a secure laptop, built a hard firewall and sent the signal through a series of encrypted Tor routers, and added a layer of magical programming just to be safe.>\n\n<If they took my memories, they'd know about the communicator.>\n\n<I'm sure they know about it. That doesn't mean they know what I can do with it. You didn't.>\n\n<Or you're Kiyoko, trying to trick me into trusting you so you can access more of my mind.>\n\n<True enough. But you're as helpless as a brain in a pickle jar, so there's not much you can do about it either way. If I wanted your cooperation, all I'd have to do is stimulate the pleasure center of your brain. Or your pain center, if I was feeling unkind.>\n\n<Good enough for me. So how do we get me out of here?>\n\n<You're going to do magic.>\n\n<Cool. How the hell am I going to manage that?>\n\n<With help. I'm going to try to activate the parts of your brain that deal with reading and memory. In some ways, it will be similar to what Kiyoko is trying to do.>\n\nI felt trepidation and uncertainty in her words, along with something more. A moment later, I recognized it as guilt. <What aren't you telling me?>\n\n<I need you to think about a book you've read, one that would do serious, targeted damage to a server room.>\n\nFirestarter was the first book that came to mind. It was fresh in my memory after encountering its magic at Alexander Keeler's home.\n\n<That should work,> said Talulah.\n\n<I'm not doing anything until you tell me the truth.>\n\nSilence stretched between us. <If I do, you'll wish I hadn't.>\n\n<If you were trying to make me trust you, you missed badly.>\n\nAnother pause. <You're not Isaac Vainio.>\n\nI felt like she'd tossed me off the Mackinac Bridge. <I don't understand.>\n\n<The first thing Kiyoko did when she spliced your brain into her network was to make a backup.>\n\n<I'm... a backup?>\n\n<One of three, and taking up an obscene amount of server space. From what I've been able to map out, there's the original you, unconscious in your physical body. Then there's a dev and QA environment, along with a clean backup.>\n\n<That can't be right. I'm me. I mean, I'm not just memories. I'm conscious.> Wasn't I? Life wasn't limited to the flesh. Libriomancy had proved that a thousand times over. <Which one am I?>\n\n<You're the clean copy. Development is where Kiyoko messes with your head, poking and prodding to see what happens. If she breaks you, she can make a new copy. QA is where she pushes things through to a simulation for Russell Potts or Babs Palmer or whoever else to interact with.>\n\n<I don't suppose you can cut and paste me onto your laptop or something?> She could probably sense the fear behind those words, but I didn't care. There was always a way out.\n\n<I'm sorry, Isaac. My laptop couldn't hold a single day of your life. According to this, six Kiyoko clones are stacked up in cold sleep in the New Millennium server room, doing nothing but hosting your backups. When you add in all the software and security protocols, it takes two human brains to maintain a single mind. Though I'm sure I could improve that ratio with the right compression algorithms, especially if we prioritized\u2014>\n\n<Talulah.>\n\nSorrow broke through our connection and washed over me. <I can't get you out, and we can't let Kiyoko keep a copy of your mind.>\n\n<You're planning to kill me.> She didn't answer. She didn't have to. <There has to be another way. What about Kiyoko's physical body? If you woke me up in her body, I could cause all sorts of mischief here. Imagine four Isaacs running around. We'd have this mess sorted in a half-hour, tops.>\n\n<It's not a simple matter of severing the control protocols. Your mind is striped across two physical brains, similar to a RAID 6 server array, with error-checking bits worked into\u2014>\n\n<And in English, that means?>\n\n<Your backup minds are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in two separate boxes. I can't put you back together. The one time I attempted it, your mind died instantly. I managed to make it look like a software failure, but it was a close thing.>\n\n<Oh. That... that sucks.>\n\n<I know.>\n\nI wanted to stall. To joke and argue and squeeze every second of life out of this mess. From what Talulah was telling me, I'd existed for only two days, and I'd spent most of that time in stasis.\n\nBut was this existence worth it? Trapped in the emptiness with nothing but Talulah's voice and the random misfiring of my simulated visual neurons for company? I was alone. No matter how long I dragged things out, I'd never see Lena again. I'd never touch another human being. I'd never get the chance to punch Russell Potts in his damn face. I'd never get a rematch with Kiyoko to show her what happened to people who shot my friends. I'd never do magic.\n\nNo... everything else might be lost to me, but Talulah thought there was a way I could touch magic one last time. <Tell me what you need from me. And... do me one favor?>\n\n<Of course. What is it?>\n\n<Take the bastards down. All of them.>\n\nThe world was a kind of technicolor static, spheres of yellow and red floating across an infinite canvas the color of a flooded river back home. It was a bit like the afterimages you get when you rub your eyes after staring at a bright light, but when I tried to blink to clear my vision, nothing happened.\n\n<Isaac?>\n\nI could have been dreaming. Or possibly dead, though that seemed improbable. There was a familiarity to all of this, reminiscent of having my mind ripped from my body. It was annoying how many times that had happened to me. Separating mind from flesh was surprisingly easy, though reuniting the two could be a bit of a trick.\n\n<It's Talulah. Lena's with us. She's alive. So is Smudge. You're a prisoner at New Millennium. I'm hacking your brain, and I need you to remain calm. We're only going to get one shot at this.>\n\n<Slow down. What do you mean, hacking my brain?>\n\n<Kiyoko hooked you into her network. You've been there for two days. In a nutshell, they're reviewing your memories and trying to reverse engineer you and your magic.>\n\n<Oh.>\n\n<Once we start breaking you out, I think I can keep Kiyoko in the dark for about ninety seconds. After that, I have no idea what she'll do to you.>\n\n<How do I know\u2014>\n\n<That this isn't a trick? You don't. But if I wanted to make you do something\u2014>\n\n<You could just trigger the pleasure center of my brain. Or the pain center. That makes sense. I suppose there's not much I can do either way, eh?>\n\nThe pause that followed stretched long enough to make me think something had gone wrong. <How... why did you say that, about the pleasure center of your brain?>\n\n<I don't know. It just made sense. Why? I can feel bits of your emotion, and they're freaking me out.>\n\nI caught the edge of her thoughts. Something about psychic echoes and mental resonance, tied to tremendous guilt and sadness. <I'll explain later. We're going to create a distraction, but in order for you to get away, they'll need to think you're dead. Do you remember reading Debt of Bones when you were in college?>\n\n<Terry Goodkind, yah. How did you\u2014right, you're in my brain.> I tried not to think about the implications and how much of my life had become a book for Talulah, Kiyoko, and anyone else to peruse. <The death spell?>\n\n<Exactly. Think back to that book. I'm going to try to amplify the memory from here, and you're going to cast the spell.>\n\n<How?>\n\n<I'll explain as we go. Where were you when you read it?>\n\nI concentrated on the memory and found myself in my old dorm room at Michigan State University, camped out in the lower bunk of the metal-framed beds. A green carpet remnant covered most of the tile floor. The air smelled like the beef-flavored Ramen noodles I'd cooked the night before on the hot plate we weren't supposed to have.\n\nI looked down at the book in my hands. I could feel the roughness of the paper, the faint wrinkles in the worn spine. <This is just a memory. Without the physical book to tap into\u2014>\n\nA new voice intruded. <So this is what old man brain looks like.>\n\n<Jeneta?>\n\n<She's here with us,> said Talulah. <I'm looping her into the conversation. Call it a telepathic group chat.>\n\nI laughed. <How did you find her?>\n\n<I've lost some cred since word got out I could do magic, but I've still got close to a million subscribers on YouTube, along with six figures on Twitter and Instagram and so on. I put the word out that I needed to talk to Jeneta, and asked my followers to pass it along.>\n\n<It made the front page of Reddit,> Jeneta added. <Hold on, I'm downloading a copy of your book.>\n\nFor an instant, I saw through Jeneta's eyes. She was in an unfinished basement. Talulah sat on a Papasan chair beside her, working over a pile of computer hardware I couldn't begin to identify or sort out. Lena rested on the floor, Smudge perched awkwardly on her hip. From this angle, you could barely see his missing leg.\n\n<Can you see the book?> asked Jeneta.\n\nI was back in my dorm room. <I see it.>\n\n<Talulah, we're ready. Hold on, Isaac. We're going to create a distraction.>\n\nDarkness flickered across my vision like an eyeblink, but in that fraction of a second, everything shifted. Talulah was suddenly turned away, her shoulders hunched like she was in pain. Jeneta's e-reader had moved as well, and Lena was sitting up. <What was that?>\n\n<Seventy-four seconds before Kiyoko catches on,> Talulah said flatly.\n\n<Remember the book,> said Jeneta. <See it in your mind.>\n\nI focused on the pages. This particular book was one I'd read not for magic, but for pure escapism. I'd gotten brutally dumped a few days earlier. Relationships were hard enough at that age without me constantly having to sneak off-campus for secret magic lessons.\n\nI saw Jeneta reaching into the screen of her e-reader. I did the same with my book, touching the scene that described the death spell.\n\nNothing happened. I couldn't feel the belief, the power of the story. This was nothing but a memory, with no physical resonance\u2014\n\n<Relax,> said Jeneta. <It worked before. It'll work again.>\n\nBefore I could ask what that meant, Talulah announced that we were down to fifty-five seconds.\n\n<I'm doing the best I can here.>\n\n<Hold on.> Talulah reached out to touch Jeneta's forehead, and the connection between the three of us strengthened. I felt the magic of her e-reader and the story beneath that too-smooth screen. I clung to that scene, to a spell designed to make onlookers believe you had died. I siphoned the magic into my thoughts.\n\n<The damage is spreading faster than I expected,> said Talulah. <We're about to lose contact. You've got guards coming your way, Isaac. I'm going to fry your connection to the network and wake you up. Cast the spell and get the hell out of there.>\n\nThey vanished. The memories of my dorm room faded a moment later, though I could still feel the pages of the book, still see its magic crawling through my limbs. My eyes cracked open, dry and crusty. I was in a too-bright cubicle made of thick glass partitions, like an oversized museum display. Electrodes and needles porcupined my body. My limbs and torso were strapped to a chair that reminded me of the one in my dentist's office. I seemed to be naked save for a hospital gown.\n\nI smelled smoke. Sparks and blue flame jumped from an electrical outlet in the wall. Smoke curled out of a handful of tall, heavy-doored cabinets that resembled slender white refrigerators.\n\nGoosebumps tightened my skin. I wiggled and tugged, trying to slide my arm free. I lost a layer of skin and torqued my shoulder, but managed to pull my right hand loose. I yanked the needles from my veins, then tugged the electrodes off my scalp.\n\nMy hair was gone. The stubble on my head felt like sandpaper. On the other hand, someone had healed the bullet wound in my chest. I suppose my hair was a fair trade for not dying.\n\nBeyond the glass walls of my own personal containment unit, flames spread to a bank of computer equipment. Alarms blared from beyond the door, and I heard voices arguing outside. The metal door rattled in its frame. Talulah must have done something to lock it.\n\nI unfastened the other straps, climbed from the chair, and immediately collapsed into the glass wall. After two days, my limbs were weak as softened wax. I braced myself against the chair and stumbled to the rubber-sealed door of my isolation cubicle.\n\nAs I forced the door open and stepped free, the outer door shook like it had been hit by a runaway Buick. Whatever was trying to get in here, they weren't human. Another hammer-blow dented the door inward. Gray mist flowed through the crack below. I squinted, trying to read the magic as it filled the room. This particular vampire appeared to be Sanguinarius Machalus.\n\nThe bastardized Latinization of D. J. MacHale's name made me wince to this day, but I pushed my linguistic annoyances aside and concentrated on the death spell. I could still feel the book in my hands, its magic in my blood, waiting to be triggered. I couldn't hold it for much longer, but I needed this to be believable.\n\nThe vampire reformed into a young man in a turquoise New Millennium shirt. He pulled a JG-367 and pointed it toward me. \"Don't move!\"\n\nI studied the particular passages that had allowed him to transform into mist and back, and pulled those strings of text around myself.\n\nHe punched the keypad by the doorway. The door started to slide open, but jammed after three inches. All that pounding must have dented or damaged the track. Thick fingers wrapped around the edge of the door and pulled.\n\nMetal squealed. I moved my attention to the weapon.\n\nThe door ripped free and slammed across the hallway, tearing chunks of plaster and drywall along with it. It was like someone had fired a cannon through the building. The floor shook, and the glass walls behind me shivered.\n\nIn that moment, I activated the death spell, dissolved my body into mist, and triggered the JG-367.\n\nThe gun shot fire and electricity through me. Even in gaseous form, it felt like I'd gone walking on hot coals after bathing in lighter fluid.\n\nThe second vampire stared from the doorway. He'd gotten through just in time to see me disintegrate in a blast of flame. \"Holy shit, Darren. What the hell did you do?\"\n\n\"I didn't\u2014I was only trying to stun him.\" Darren stared at the JG-367 like it had twisted around and bitten his balls off. \"The dude was trying to get free, and then you started smashing everything and the damn gun just went off.\"\n\nA third figure appeared in the doorway. This one appeared human, though it was hard to be sure. My senses were rather dulled at the moment. I wasn't sure how a cloud of mist could see or hear at all, for that matter.\n\n\"What happened?\" she shouted, standing a few paces back from the vampires. \"Where'd he go?\"\n\nI flowed toward the doorway, blending in with the smoke pouring from the walls.\n\n\"Oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit,\" whimpered Darren. \"It was an accident.\"\n\nIf he hadn't been working for the folks who'd shot me and tried to turn my brain into their own personal playground, I'd have felt sorry for him. As it was, I simply drifted out the door and left him to his fate. Passing the woman was like getting too close to a furnace. I shied away from the magic-dampener she was wearing before it could force me back into my normal form.\n\n\"Check the backups,\" she shouted.\n\n\"Everything's fried!\" called the second vampire. \"The backups are dead. Looks like the fire started in here.\"\n\nGrief struck me with those words, though I wasn't sure why. If Talulah had found a way to fry the backup servers, so much the better.\n\n\"Why aren't the fucking sprinklers working?\"\n\nPresumably because Talulah had disabled those as well, to help cover my escape and destroy whatever information they'd gotten from my head.\n\n\"Dr. Palmer's gonna kill me,\" moaned Darren.\n\nMy movement seemed to be a matter of focusing my awareness on a particular part of the mist. The rest shifted to gather around that center point. I felt like a gaseous inchworm scooting down the hall.\n\nI gradually learned to smooth out my motion. I slipped beneath a door and into the stairwell, where I allowed gravity to drag me to the ground floor. I'd been seven or eight stories up, but where? Had they kept me in Admin where Babs could keep an eye on me? Medical, in case something went wrong?\n\nI thinned myself over the floor, striving for invisibility. I extended a tendril of mist through the main doors and looked around outside. The light of the setting sun might as well have been the flame from an acetylene torch. I pulled back, but I'd seen enough to recognize the Franklin Research Tower. They'd locked me up in my own damn building!\n\nI'd only meant to take Darren's ability to shapeshift into mist. How had I ended up with his vulnerability to sunlight, too? I filed that question away with a hundred others, all waiting their turn on my research whiteboard.\n\nIf I was stuck here until sundown, I might as well take advantage of the time. I wondered if Babs and Kiyoko had cleaned out my office yet..."
            },
            {
                "title": "UNITED STATES WILL ALLOW U.N. INSPECTIONS OF",
                "text": "[ NEW MILLENNIUM FACILITY ]\n\nWashington\u2014following a contentious debate, the U.S. government has agreed to allow a United Nations team to inspect New Millennium in Las Vegas, Nevada.\n\nMembers of the U.N. Security Council have pushed for inspections since New Millennium was first opened, but until recently, all resolutions were vetoed by the U.S. and the United Kingdom.\n\nThat changed earlier this week, following revelations that a high-ranking researcher at New Millennium had been involved in terrorist attacks. The new resolution passed ten to five in favor.\n\nKristen DeCaro, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at a press conference following the vote. \"The United States recognizes that the potential dangers of magic, as well as the potential benefits, are not limited to any one nation. Let this serve as a model of openness and transparency for the world, in the hope that we can come together to regulate the use of magic and protect the lives and freedom of all people.\"\n\nA bipartisan group of eighteen U.S. senators immediately published a letter of protest in the New York Times, demanding the removal of DeCaro.\n\nU.N. inspectors are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.\n\n\"How do you keep this kind of power out of the wrong hands?\"\n\n\"That's the wrong question, Isaac. I managed to do it by suppressing magic altogether. But you can't go back to the way things were, even if you wanted to.\"\n\n\"Fine. How do you share magic with the world without risking\u2014\"\n\n\"You can't.\"\n\n\"There has to be a way to prevent the most dangerous\u2014\"\n\n\"There's not.\"\n\n\"You're even more annoying dead than you were alive. At least then you were doing things.\"\n\n\"Would you like to trade places?\"\n\n\"I helped reveal magic to the world. People are dying because of what I did.\"\n\n\"Other people will live because of your choice.\"\n\n\"What am I supposed to do, add up both columns to decide whether or not I made the right choice?\"\n\n\"There is no right choice. You chose. Your job now is to make the most of that choice.\"\n\nBabs and the rest would be suspicious as hell. A lone guard accidentally disintegrates their pet libriomancer, while a convenient fire wipes the servers? The death spell should help convince everyone I'd truly gone up in smoke, but no spell was foolproof, and too many folks were walking around with those damn magic-sucking pearls. If they were smart\u2014and dammit, whatever else I might think of these people, they clearly were\u2014they'd be searching for me, just in case.\n\nThe entire tower was now on lockdown. It had taken close to an hour just to make it up to my office while evading security. Twice, people had opened my office door and looked around. I'd managed to keep out of sight behind my desk, or by dissolving into mist and flowing into the bottom of the half-full garbage can with the old food wrappers.\n\nI made a mental note to start storing a change of clothes in my office. It wasn't easy trying to plan an escape wearing nothing but a hospital gown. I had nowhere to carry my books, and the draftiness was distracting as hell.\n\nFlying over the wall was out of the question. The wards over New Millennium allowed insects and birds to pass through, but would zap anything larger, or anything magical. I could try to hitch a ride out the main gates, but I lacked the books I'd need to counter the heightened security measures, and I wasn't sure I could make it to the Library Tower without being seen.\n\nI'd come up with one option. I gave myself an hour to think of an alternative. When that hour passed, I added another thirty minutes, then fifteen more, like a kid hitting the snooze button on Monday morning before school. I really didn't want to do this.\n\nFinally, hope and denial gave way to resignation. I turned back into mist, crept out of my office, and made my way toward the restroom.\n\nNew Millennium was designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, but there were limits. Nobody had put together a magical sewage treatment plant yet, and it was more economical to tap into the city's infrastructure than to try to build it all ourselves. The sink pipes in the bathroom should provide a way out.\n\nI flowed beneath the door. Before I could do anything more, I heard footsteps in the hall behind me. I hurried into the closest stall. The bathroom door opened, and a man's voice called out, \"Anybody in here? I saw smoke.\"\n\nWith one fire having broken out today, they'd be quick to respond to any hint of another. I remained silent, hoping he'd run off long enough for me to escape. Instead, he stepped in after me and pushed open the first stall, then the second.\n\nAw, crap. Today just kept getting better.\n\nI pulled myself into the toilet. Water pressed around me, trying to break me into discrete bubbles of gas. I had to compress myself into a fraction of my usual size, which left me feeling both crushed and bloated.\n\nAlso, the water was really, really cold.\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\nI froze. That was Babs Palmer's voice.\n\n\"Thought I saw smoke.\"\n\n\"In the bathroom?\" Babs sniffed. \"Get back to your rounds.\"\n\nOne set of footsteps left, and the bathroom door swung shut. I didn't move.\n\nEventually, I heard Babs' boots clopping like hoofbeats over the tile. If she used magic, I wasn't sure I'd be able to counter it in this form. Or she could simply toss one of those pearls into the toilet, and I'd... I wasn't sure what would happen if I was forced back into my normal form while submerged in the toilet water, but it wouldn't be pleasant.\n\n\"Six, five, three,\" Babs whispered.\n\nA short time later, she walked away. The door opened again, and the bathroom fell silent. Had she left, or was she trying to trick me into revealing myself?\n\nWhat the hell was six five three supposed to mean? It didn't sound like any spell I'd come across. In the Dewey Decimal system, 653 referred to books on shorthand. It could also be a code word or command keyed to her jewelry. Maybe she was trying to tell me something, and didn't want anyone else to overhear or understand. Or maybe she'd set a trap to petrify me the moment I emerged.\n\nI couldn't risk it. The water burbled behind me as I burrowed down the pipes.\n\nThree very long, very cramped hours later, I was walking along the side of a road, barefoot and dripping and smelling of water purification chemicals and worse. I managed to flag down a passing car. The passenger window lowered, and the driver grimaced.\n\n\"I know,\" I said. \"It's been a long day.\"\n\nHe snorted. \"Looks like a hell of a night, too. Sorry, man. I don't know what you've been into, but I can't let you in my car. You need me to call someone for you or anything?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\" I looked around. \"But do you think you could tell me where to find the nearest bookstore or library? What I really need is a book of fairy tales.\"\n\nHe didn't miss a beat. \"Let me pull it up on the GPS.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" I looked down at myself, then back at him. \"You're not going to ask about the hospital gown or anything?\"\n\nHe flashed a broad grin. \"Buddy, I've lived in Vegas for twenty years. If there's one thing I know, it's when not to ask questions.\"\n\nI arrived in Michigan wearing a brown wool tunic and a pair of seven-league boots, with an old library book tucked under one arm.\n\nI'd gone to the Copper River Library first, but it was locked and empty. I checked Lena's oak tree next. She wasn't there, but when I touched the tree, the roots shifted to reveal a folded square of paper with a Grand Rapids address on it.\n\nA short time later, I was back in the Lower Peninsula, double-checking the note against the blue-gray ranch house in front of me. A flat ceramic bumblebee hung beside the door, the word WELCOME arching over its wings. I stepped onto the porch and knocked.\n\nJason opened the door and immediately covered his mouth, trying to hide his laughter. \"You look like you just climbed down from a beanstalk.\" His nose wrinkled. \"And you smell like\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what I smell like.\" I held up the book. \"Don't let me forget to send a check to Sunrise Library in Las Vegas for the book and the broken window.\"\n\n\"Isaac!\" Lena nudged Jason out of the way and grabbed my arms. She was moving a bit stiffly, and I could see the edge of a bandage peeking out from the neck of her T-shirt, but she was alive. The mere sight of her lightened the tension and anger I'd been carrying since I woke up.\n\n\"Damn, I'm glad to see you.\" I pulled her into a hug, careful to keep my arms low and away from where she'd been shot. \"I'm sorry. I didn't realize how fast Kiyoko was. I didn't\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up. I'm all right.\" She ran a hand over my scalp. \"I'm not sure you can pull this ruggedly bald look off. You're cute, but you're no Vin Diesel.\"\n\nSmudge crawled from her shoulder to mine. The slight irregularity of his gait broke my heart. \"I'll fix you up, buddy. I promise. I'll regenerate that leg as good as new, and if that fails, I'll make Charles build you a new one. A bionic leg. What do you think? Is the world ready for a bionic fire-spider?\"\n\nJason reached past me and shut the door.\n\nI forced myself to stop babbling long enough to ask, \"Where's everyone else?\"\n\n\"Sleeping,\" said Lena. \"Talulah and Jeneta were both exhausted after hacking into your head. Especially Talulah. She spent more than a day lost in her laptop, and none of us knew what was happening until they were ready to break you out. Nidhi finally raided the medicine cabinet and started handing out melatonin and Nyquil to make people sleep, but I couldn't.\"\n\n\"Wait, Nidhi's here? She's okay?\"\n\n\"She's fine,\" said Jason. \"I talked to Agent Steinkamp, and he confirmed that Nidhi was only supposed to be brought in to be interviewed. It sounds like there was a mix-up in the system, and she was put into detention by mistake.\"\n\nHis face wrinkled. He didn't buy the \"mistake\" bit any more than I did. \"Thank you, Jason. You may have saved her life.\"\n\nJason blushed and turned away. \"Shower is down the hall on your left. First door. I'll get you a towel and some real clothes.\"\n\nLena traced the curve of my ear with her right hand. \"Grab two towels, please.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"I need to talk to everyone before\u2014\"\n\n\"Let them sleep,\" said Jason. \"You've been gone almost three days. Another hour won't hurt anything.\"\n\nWith that, Lena was dragging me down the hallway and into a bathroom decorated with fish and other sea creatures from Finding Nemo. Any awkwardness I felt about showering with Lena in a strange home faded quickly as Lena yanked my tunic over my head and tossed it into the plastic garbage can next to the toilet. I turned on the water, then helped Lena peel off her shirt. I ran my fingers gently over the skin at the edge of her bandages. \"Are you sure...?\"\n\n\"You'll need to be gentle.\" She tugged the bandages loose. The bullet holes underneath were dark and scabbed: one on her stomach, the other on the inner curve of her left breast. Two other bullets had struck her left shoulder. Tiny lines bulged around the edges of the wounds, like the roots of a plant. \"Not too gentle, mind you.\"\n\nI unbuckled her jeans and slid them over her hips, kissing my way down her body and carefully detouring around her injuries.\n\nHer hands tightened around the back of my head. She groaned, then pulled me up and kissed me hard, her tongue seeking mine, our hips pressing together.\n\n\"I've missed you,\" she whispered when we broke away.\n\n\"I missed you, too.\"\n\nShe flashed a mischievous grin. \"I can see that.\"\n\nI stepped into the shower. \"Give me a few minutes to wash up, and I'll show you just how much I missed you.\"\n\nI woke up early the next morning. Between changing time zones and spending two days in a coma, my schedule was utterly wrecked. I tiptoed past the lumpy sleeping bags in the living room where my brother was snoring away next to Lex and Angie. Talulah was on the couch.\n\nLena had explained that this was the home of Jason's ex-husband, a revelation that made me realize how much I didn't know about my former boss, while simultaneously adding an additional layer of awkwardness to the whole shower sex thing.\n\nOnce people began materializing in his library, Jason had gotten on the phone to search for a safer location. When he learned Rich was on a business trip for the week, Jason had loaded everyone up and taken a road trip downstate. I wasn't clear about whether he'd asked permission, first.\n\nI entered the kitchen to find Smudge and another fire-spider playing in a large frying pan in the middle of the kitchen. Jeneta was watching over them. She'd lined the pan with a layer of cooking oil and popcorn kernels.\n\n\"Popcorn for breakfast?\" I asked.\n\nJeneta jumped, then beamed up at me in a rare, unguarded show of emotion. \"Nkiruka's been teaching Smudge how to pop corn. He didn't like the oil at first, but as soon as he ate his first piece, he was hooked.\"\n\nNkiruka was Jeneta's fire-spider, a gift from me a year ago. Nkiruka and Smudge were currently chasing each other in circles around the pan.\n\nAs for Jeneta, a year had done wonders for her. She looked whole again, healthy and... not necessarily relaxed, but she no longer had that hunched-over, shadowed look, like she was constantly preparing for an assault.\n\nI sat down across from her. Smudge skidded to a halt, finally noticing me. He scrambled out of the pan and raced over to climb up my leg, leaving tiny oil spots on my borrowed khakis. He perched on my knee, either inspecting me to make sure I was all right or else waiting to see if I'd brought him a snack.\n\n\"Thanks for helping me get out of there, Jeneta,\" I said.\n\nShe shrugged. \"You did the same for me.\"\n\nI brought Smudge to eye level and studied the quarter-inch stub of his foreleg. The stump had healed over. Fire-spider wounds were self-cauterizing, and I could see the remnants of someone's magic\u2014either Talulah or Jeneta, probably\u2014where they'd tried to heal him. A second layer of text ran deeper. This was the curse from Kiyoko's enchanted bullets. I brought a finger toward Smudge, trying to separate the curse from his innate magic.\n\nRed waves of flame rushed over his back. I yanked my hand away.\n\n\"Can you help him?\" Jeneta asked, her eyes on Nkiruka.\n\nI lowered Smudge back into the frying pan, just as the first kernel popped. I felt sick to my stomach. \"I could use his original book to restore his body. It would essentially reset his physical form.\"\n\n\"But...?\"\n\n\"I can't do it selectively. It would reset his mind, too. He wouldn't be my Smudge. He'd be the Smudge I created back in high school, confused and frightened. He wouldn't know me. He wouldn't remember anything.\"\n\nShe pursed her lips and exhaled softly. \"He's got seven legs left. The missing one doesn't seem to slow him down much.\"\n\nI watched him pounce on a fresh-popped kernel. \"I thought I'd be able to fix this.\"\n\n\"That's how I felt when my mom and dad split up.\"\n\nPaige and Mmadukaaku Aboderin had never forgiven me for the months their daughter had gone missing, possessed by a thousand-year-old necromancer. We'd saved Jeneta, but the strain of those months, combined with the stress of their daughter's libriomancy and the revelation of magic, had broken their marriage. Last I'd heard, they were in the midst of a trial separation, with Paige on sabbatical back in England. \"Is your father here?\"\n\n\"Guest room in the basement.\"\n\n\"How's he doing?\"\n\nShe shrugged one shoulder. \"Depends on the day. He doesn't like you very much.\"\n\n\"Yah, he can join the club. I don't imagine that'll change soon.\" I listened to the sizzle of the oil in the pan as the two spiders danced around, dodging exploding kernels. \"It's good to see you again.\"\n\nShe shrugged again and watched the spiders play. \"You too.\"\n\n\"What's been happening out there while I was sleeping?\"\n\n\"Violence. Death. War. The usual.\" That was Talulah. She smiled at Jeneta before taking a seat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen. \"Glad to see you made it out of there.\"\n\n\"Thanks to you and Jeneta.\"\n\n\"Does this mean I can get a raise?\"\n\nI snorted. \"I'll see what I can do. Any word from McGinley or Vanguard?\"\n\nThey looked at one another. Jeneta's face went blank.\n\n\"Vanguard, or someone speaking in their name, issued an ultimatum last night,\" said Talulah. \"If the world doesn't grant full legal equality and protection to magic-users and inhumans, they'll make the atom bomb look like a cap gun.\"\n\n\"Not any time soon, they won't,\" I said. \"I shredded the Gateway Project's magic before Kiyoko shot me. Even if she siphoned the knowledge from my head, they don't have the ability to put it back together.\"\n\nJeneta's eyes were wide. \"You got shot?\"\n\n\"I got better. I'm assuming Babs fixed me back up, or maybe Kiyoko swiped some healing magic from the hospital. I guess it's harder to scan someone's brain if he's dead.\"\n\n\"So you think the threat is a bluff?\" asked Talulah.\n\n\"A bluff doesn't make sense. Assuming McGinley and his crew are behind this, they know damn well nobody's going to give in to their demands. The only reason to put this out there is as the groundwork for their next move, to make sure Vanguard takes the blame.\" McGinley and Potts didn't want equality. They wanted an attack so horrific it would unite most of the world against people like us. \"We've missed something. I've missed something.\"\n\nI stood up and rubbed my eyes. I'd lost my glasses, and the charred spots floating across my vision like tiny stormclouds were both distracting and destined to give me a headache before too long. \"Talulah, can you run a search to see if the numbers six, five, and three mean anything?\"\n\n\"It's one of my project numbers. The International Alert System. Why?\"\n\nI closed my eyes and gently thumped my head against the wall. My chest felt as if I'd been put through an industrial press. My body wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. \"Because I'm a damn fool. A blind, arrogant fool.\"\n\nTalulah moved closer. \"Isaac?\"\n\n\"I thought they meant to use Gateway.\" My words sounded distant. My pulse drummed in my ears. \"We need to wake everyone up right now.\"\n\nTalulah closed her eyes. I heard only the edge of her telepathic wake-up call, but it was enough to shock my nervous system. \"They're awake.\"\n\nMinutes later, we'd gathered everyone in the living room. I sat on the old loveseat next to Lena, while Nidhi perched on the end. Talulah and Jason were on the floor. Jeneta plopped herself down on an old beanbag chair, while her father stood beside her, his arms crossed. Lex, Toby, and Angie sat on the couch, where Lex munched sleepily on a strawberry Pop Tart. Deb sat in the corner, chewing her thumbnail.\n\nI was tempted to send Lex away. To send all three of them to another room. Jason, too. This wasn't their fight.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking,\" said Toby. \"These people threatened my daughter. We're not leaving.\"\n\nI nodded. \"Talulah, can you please explain the IAS Project?\"\n\nShe stood up and began to pace. \"The International Alert System was a proposal for sending emergency warnings via TV, radio, cellphone... pretty much anything with a speaker. Charles and I had been working on a way to predict natural disasters. We were hoping to tie the two projects together. It would let us warn people sooner, giving them more time to reach shelter.\"\n\n\"How far did you get with that proposal?\" I pressed.\n\n\"It was ready to go. I had a list of texts to use, and a plan for compiling their tech into a single program.\"\n\n\"Enough of a plan for another libriomancer to complete your work?\"\n\n\"Possibly...\"\n\nNone of her answers came as a surprise, but each one was an additional weight, crushing any remaining hope that I was mistaken.\n\n<What are they doing with my work, Isaac?>\n\nLena swore under her breath. \"The sirens.\"\n\nTalulah paled.\n\n\"Lawrence McGinley sent the USCGC Kagan and two other ships to capture a group of sirens,\" I said. \"They were transported to a facility in Virginia to be tagged and cataloged. Lena, Deb, and I tried and failed to rescue them. If McGinley were to broadcast the sirens' song through the IAS, he could kill thousands of people.\"\n\n\"Hundreds of thousands,\" Talulah said. \"Millions, if they calibrate the broadcast just right.\"\n\nJason raised a hand like a student in class. \"Are you talking about sirens like Odysseus-tied-to-the-mast, songs-luring-sailors-to-their-death, and all that?\"\n\n\"That's right,\" I said. \"Their song creates a sense of longing and emptiness nothing can fill. It's like reliving every loss and disappointment in your life all at once, and only the siren offers any hope of relief. That despair is what caused sailors to throw themselves overboard.\"\n\nI wiped my hands on my pants. \"I've heard it,\" I continued. \"A broken version a year ago, as well as the muted song when we tried to stop the Kagan. I can still hear it. I spent months working with my therapist, trying to learn how not to hear it, how to keep it from dragging me back down.\"\n\n\"What good would it do to broadcast a siren song?\" asked Jeneta. \"It's not like most people can just hop overboard and drown themselves.\"\n\n\"No, they can't.\" I closed my eyes, remembering the desperation reaching through me. \"Sailors sought out the sirens because they thought they could reach the source and stop the pain. There are other ways to end your pain.\"\n\n\"You're talking about suicide,\" said Nidhi.\n\nI nodded again. \"Hundreds of thousands of suicides. Millions.\"\n\n\"They can target anyone they like,\" said Talulah. \"Worried about China's magical program? Angry at North Korea? You could probably reach ninety-five percent of both countries with a single broadcast. This isn't just a weapon of mass destruction. We're talking about potential genocide.\"\n\n\"Aren't there other Porters at New Millennium who would recognize Talulah's project?\" asked Angie. \"They'd be able to stop it, or at least trace who stole her work.\"\n\n\"Charles and Vince both would, yah. Along with anyone from DHS or the board who's been reviewing our research.\"\n\n\"So they'll broadcast the song within New Millennium, too,\" said Lena. \"Claim Vanguard infiltrated the facility and launched the attack from there as a suicide mission. Once everyone's dead, who's to say someone from New Millennium wasn't an extremist? Especially if Potts and his people are in charge of the investigation.\"\n\n\"As long as his people have those magic-dampening amulets, they'll survive,\" I said. \"While everyone else dies in despair and hopelessness.\"\n\n\"When do the U.N. inspectors arrive at New Millennium?\" asked Angie. \"If McGinley is going for international outrage, wouldn't it make sense to kill them too?\"\n\nTalulah swore. \"They're supposed to begin this afternoon.\"\n\n\"Can we warn people?\" Jason was as frightened as I'd ever seen him, his eyes big and his hands trembling in his lap. \"Tell them to turn off their electronics, invest in earplugs, something like that?\"\n\n\"The spell will power things up remotely.\" Talulah punched the floor. \"We didn't want to risk people sleeping through a warning, or missing it because they'd switched everything off. I never imagined...\" She hit the floor again, then slashed her sleeve over her face, wiping away tears of rage.\n\n\"Then we go public,\" Jason pressed. \"Tell the world McGinley is behind it. If we expose what he plans to do, he'll have to call it off, right?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"He'd say it's Vanguard trying to set him up. He's spent months fueling people's fear of magic. You've seen the poll numbers. Who do you think the people will believe?\"\n\n\"What about an electromagnetic pulse?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"All of New Millennium's hardware servers are protected by nested faraday cages,\" said Talulah. \"EMP wouldn't touch them, and Kiyoko is all wetware, not circuitry and hard drives.\"\n\n\"Does siren magic affect animals?\" Jeneta was cradling her fire-spider in her lap.\n\n\"Nothing in The Odyssey talked about gulls drowning themselves or fish flopping to their deaths,\" said Jason.\n\n\"He won't limit the U.S. strike to New Millennium.\" Nidhi looked around the room. \"If the goal is to solidify alliances with the United States, we have to suffer as much or more than any other nation. McGinley needs that horror and sympathy for when he seizes control of New Millennium and starts talking about making the world safe again.\"\n\n\"There are close to two million people living in and around Las Vegas alone,\" I said.\n\n\"This is insane.\" Jeneta sounded angry, but her eyes were damp. \"They're going to murder millions of people, and for what?\"\n\n\"For power and control.\" I thought back to my exchanges with Gutenberg. \"And because people are afraid. McGinley sees that fear as an opportunity.\"\n\n\"What's going to happen?\" asked Lex.\n\nI smiled for her sake. \"That's simple, kiddo. We're going to stop them.\"\n\nSummary: The National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) has issued an Imminent Threat Alert. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has received credible warning of a terrorist attack against United States targets.\n\nDuration: This alert will expire in one week. The alert may be extended if DHS acquires additional information.\n\nDetails:\n\n\u2022 Members of the organization known as Vanguard are planning a large-scale magical attack against the United States, with possible coordinated attacks in other nations.\n\n\u2022 The precise nature of the attack is unknown, but appears to involve one or more television, radio, or cellphone broadcasting stations.\n\n\u2022 Vanguard traditionally targets nonmagical humans, particularly those who have spoken out publicly in support of regulation and security legislation regarding magic. Other targets may include magical humans and creatures who are perceived to sympathize with such efforts.\n\n\u2022 This attack is believed to be planned for some time within the next forty-eight hours.\n\nWhat To Do:\n\n\u2022 Government facilities, national and historical landmarks, core infrastructure facilities, and other potential targets are advised to increase security for the duration of this alert.\n\n\u2022 Avoid unnecessary travel, particularly to busy, crowded locations such as national parks, sports events, and major cities.\n\n\u2022 Families and businesses should refer to the DHS Emergency Preparedness Website for guidance on creating an emergency plan.\n\n\u2022 The fight against terror starts with you. If you see something suspicious, contact your local law enforcement office or call 911. Your vigilance could save lives.\n\n\"I'm not ready for this.\"\n\n\"You never will be.\"\n\n\"Your faith is touching.\"\n\n\"It's nothing to do with faith, Isaac. No one is ever truly ready for times like this. We prepare ourselves the best we can, and we march out to face the enemy.\"\n\n\"I'm not much of a marcher.\"\n\n\"It was a metaphor.\"\n\n\"I thought the world would welcome us. Instead, they've spent the past year trying to crush us.\"\n\n\"Never discount hope, Isaac. Especially your own. Your fear is all too human. Accept it, but as you walk this path, let your hope guide you.\"\n\n\"And what if hope guides me off the edge of a cliff?\"\n\n\"I said let hope guide you. I never said stop paying attention to where you're going.\"\n\n\"You're out of your fucking mind,\" said Deb. \"Derek Vaughn was on the committee that passed the RAMPART Act. He's part of the reason Nicola Pallas and who knows how many others have been rounded up like animals, and you want to ask him for help?\"\n\n\"Vaughn voted against RAMPART,\" Jason pointed out.\n\n\"He's a politician. Isaac and Lena are wanted fugitives. Why the hell would you trust that weasel-dick?\"\n\n\"Because Nicola has been dating that weasel-dick for the past two months,\" I said mildly.\n\nThe rest of the room went silent.\n\nTalulah chuckled. \"Good for her.\"\n\n\"Assuming he wasn't using her to get to the Porters,\" Deb said sullenly.\n\n\"It doesn't matter.\" I stood up and moved to the center of the living room. \"We need Nicola's help, and he's the best lead we've got for reaching her. You're right, though. We have to be careful. The less Vaughn knows, the better. Talulah, can you secure a phone line?\"\n\n\"In my sleep.\"\n\n\"I'll make the call,\" said Lena. \"Derek knows me, and we don't want to give away that you're alive.\"\n\n\"Good.\" I checked the list I'd put together over breakfast. \"Potts said they were working with people in China, France, Britain, and Afghanistan. Talulah, can you get a message to Shin-Tsu Chang? Give him a heads-up about Kiyoko and McGinley. Who do we know in France, Britain, and Afghanistan?\"\n\n\"My mother is in Britain,\" Jeneta said quietly.\n\n\"Tell her to get out.\"\n\n\"You think McGinley will target his own allies?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"I don't know! He might attack their enemies instead. China and Japan have been rattling sabers at each other. Maybe he'll wipe out Tokyo as a favor.\" There were too many potential targets, too many possibilities.\n\n\"Let me talk to some friends,\" said Deb. \"Put them on McGinley's trail. If we can get our claws on him, he'll tell us everything we need to know.\"\n\n\"Kiyoko will be protecting him, and he'll be shielded from magic,\" said Lena.\n\n\"Can he shield his scent? I know it's a long shot, but Vanguard has people on the East Coast.\"\n\n\"Do it.\" I picked up one of the disposable cellphones Talulah had bought. \"Speaking of long shots...\"\n\nI wasn't surprised when a tinny voice said the number I was dialing had been disconnected. Getting Ponce de Leon's help would have been like bringing an Abrams tank to the Revolutionary War. But the old sorcerer had always valued his privacy, and he'd gone deeper into seclusion after Gutenberg's death. From what I knew, Ponce de Leon tended to sit back and let crises pass him by, like a squirrel hibernating through a harsh winter.\n\nI hung up and handed the phone to Lena. \"We could use some additional help.\"\n\nShe grinned. \"I'm way ahead of you.\"\n\nI'd testified to the Joint Committee on Magical Security that I didn't know the whereabouts of Bi Wei and her fellow students, and that much was true. I had no idea where they were currently located, nor did I have a reliable way of getting in touch with them.\n\nThey'd asked Lena the same questions. The only difference was that Lena had lied.\n\nA half hour later, I sat with an untouched burger on my plate, watching as Talulah pulled up satellite imagery and military communications. She was working on a borrowed laptop, but had hooked the display up to the flat-screen television in the living room so everyone could see.\n\nNew Millennium was nothing but a pixelated blob. One of many steps Babs had taken to protect our privacy was to shield us from overhead photography, including drones, satellites, helicopters, and so on.\n\nJeneta plopped down beside me. Her smile held a hint of her old mischievousness. \"I've been thinking. If this doesn't work, maybe we ought to we have a fallback plan.\"\n\nMy lips quirked, matching her grin. \"I'm listening.\"\n\n\"How would you feel about colonizing Mars?\"\n\n\"I'm listening very attentively.\"\n\n\"E-books aren't as limited as your dusty old paper books. I can do libriomancy on a cellphone, a tablet, anything that can display electronic books.\" She pointed to the television. \"No more size limitations.\"\n\n\"I'd wondered about that,\" I admitted. \"We never got the chance to really test what you can do...\" I trailed off, remembering why we'd been unable to finish exploring the possibilities of Jeneta's power. I noticed her father watching us from the corner. He rarely let his daughter out of his sight these days.\n\n\"When this is over, however it plays out, I want to break in\u2014\" She glanced at her father. \"I mean, I want to rent an IMAX theater. Ms. Polk can work the projector. Put one of your science fiction books on the screen, and I'll pull out a ship capable of transporting the first group to Mars. Add some terraforming technology, and we could be living there within a year.\"\n\n\"You're talking about an awful lot of energy.\" I tapped the corner of my eye to remind her of the permanent scarring I'd suffered from trying to channel more magic than my body could handle. \"No way. Think about what that would do to you.\"\n\n\"I'd need help,\" she admitted grudgingly. \"But you've been working on that, right? Combining books for your Gateway Project. Why not combine libriomancers the same way, let them work together to reduce the strain on any one person?\"\n\nIn the old days, before libriomancy, sorcerers had occasionally done exactly that. It wasn't something the Porters had ever really tried, in part because most libriomancers didn't work directly with magical energy. We needed our books as an intermediary. You'd have to have multiple libriomancers reaching into the same book, and there wasn't much benefit in having two people pull a magic sword from a story when one could do the same.\n\nBut a screen the size of a movie theater... I sat back, mentally cataloging the books we'd need to create a viable colony on Mars. If things went to hell, Mars might be safer than remaining on Earth. If we retreated to another planet, it would take decades for the rest of humanity to catch us. By then, we could have moved on to other worlds. \"I wonder if there'd be any degradation in magical resonance from the hundred and forty million miles between Mars and all the readers and books back on Earth.\"\n\nIt was tempting as hell, both for the relative safety\u2014and what did it say when trying to terraform and survive on another planet was the safer option?\u2014and for the sheer awesomeness of going to Mars. I'd used magic to visit the moon, and that had been one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.\n\nIt had been immediately followed by one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but still...\n\nI shook my head. \"I'm not ready to give up on this planet yet.\"\n\n\"Fine.\" She rolled her eyes. \"So when do we leave for Vegas?\"\n\n\"We don't,\" I said firmly, before her father could answer. \"You're staying here with Jason.\"\n\nShe didn't argue. That, more than anything else, told me she hadn't fully recovered from everything she'd been through. A year ago, she would have argued with me on principle, secure in her teenage sense of immortality and invulnerability.\n\nInstead, she asked, \"How old do you have to be to start working at New Millennium?\"\n\nThe question took me off guard. \"I'm not sure.\"\n\n\"Well, check into it, will you? It would be nice to have a place where Dad and I didn't always have to watch our backs. After you kick McGinley's goons out of there, I mean.\"\n\nI looked past her to Mmadukaaku. He'd never been comfortable with magic, and from the stiffness in his posture and the way he muttered to himself whenever he passed Deb, that hadn't changed.\n\n\"My daughter deserves security.\" He broke eye contact. \"I've been trying to provide that for her.\"\n\n\"You've done great, Dad,\" said Jeneta. \"I don't mean\u2014\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"You shouldn't have to hide.\"\n\n\"Neither should you,\" she answered.\n\n\"You're both right.\" I stood to go, feeling far wearier than when I'd sat down. \"I'll do what I can.\"\n\nNidhi found me out back a short time later. I sat on a squeaky wooden porch swing, an unopened book in my lap, looking out at a collection of bird feeders. They all bore metal shields to protect them from squirrels.\n\nShe sat down beside me without saying a word. After a while, she sighed and put an arm around my shoulders.\n\nThere was nothing romantic about it. Nidhi and I generally landed between friends and siblings on the relationship spectrum. But I found myself relaxing. Nidhi wasn't here to ask questions or press me for miracles. She was here to remind me we were in this together.\n\nI handed her the book I'd been reading.\n\nShe opened the cover one-handed and flipped through the first pages. \"There's no title.\"\n\n\"That's one of three copies of Johannes Gutenberg's autobiography. Would you make sure it's safe?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nThere were plenty of biographies of Gutenberg out there, and most were woefully incomplete. You could hardly blame the authors. Gutenberg had done an excellent job faking his death back in 1468. He'd even gone back later to destroy his alleged gravesite as well.\n\nRecent months had seen a surge in more \"speculative\" material on Gutenberg's life, some of it little more than tabloid nonsense slapped together to cash in on current interest. One edition went so far as to speculate that Gutenberg and Elvis Presley were one and the same. Another claimed he was the second coming of Christ. My favorite was a paranormal romance describing in lurid detail Gutenberg's affair with a vampiric Marilyn Monroe.\n\nA man of Gutenberg's power, knowledge, and self-importance would never risk his story being lost to history and rumor. Nicola had discovered his autobiography a month after his death. She'd printed two copies for the Porters, then loaned me the original as part of an off-the-books research project.\n\nThree copies weren't enough for traditional libriomancy, but there were other forms of book magic. I'd said once that all stories were magic. And all magic was story. This was Gutenberg's story, in his own words.\n\nA million readers could imbue books with a great deal of power. A single reader... or writer... with enough power of their own might do the same.\n\nGutenberg had poured himself into this book. I'd read and reread it, adding my own magic. Five months later, Johannes Gutenberg had stirred from within the pages.\n\n\"Lena mentioned you'd been talking with him,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"Sort of. It's not really him, you know? It's the collection of his experiences and impressions and emotions, as interpreted by the man himself. I think he tried to be as honest as he could, but he was also putting his best self forward for posterity. The end result... it might not be him, but it sounds like him. The same arrogance and experience. The same sadness. I'd left the book in my office in New Millennium. Babs or Kiyoko or whoever searched it must not have realized what it was.\"\n\n\"Could they have done anything with it if they had?\"\n\n\"Probably not. I just don't want them to have it, you know?\"\n\nShe watched a squirrel try to scramble up one of the birdfeeders, only to fall when it reached the metal cylinder halfway up the post. \"What were you and Johannes talking about out here before I interrupted?\"\n\n\"Choices. Consequences.\" Gutenberg had made mistakes over five hundred years, and people had died because of them. It had made him cautious. It had made him afraid.\n\nHow many people died as a result of my choice to help reveal magic to the world? How many would survive as a result of that same choice? How the hell was anyone supposed to solve that kind of equation?\n\n\"I changed the world,\" Gutenberg whispered. There was pride in his words, and fatigue as well. He had changed the world, and spent the rest of his life\u2014half a millennium\u2014managing the fallout from that change.\n\n\"You're not him,\" said Nidhi.\n\nI was simultaneously reassured and annoyed by her words. \"Not yet.\"\n\n\"Do you want to be?\"\n\n\"I wanted to be a researcher. Look how that's turned out.\"\n\n\"Blaming yourself for all the evils of the world?\" She clucked her tongue. \"That kind of arrogance does sound like Gutenberg, I admit.\"\n\n\"Bite me.\"\n\nShe chuckled. \"Your niece is adorable, by the way. Angie was helping her learn to ride a bike yesterday afternoon.\"\n\nI smiled. \"I wish I'd seen that.\"\n\n\"Johannes Gutenberg looked at the world as a whole. What was best for humanity? What was best for the Porters? Time and again, he chose safety and security over action and risk. The Chinese famine of 1958. The Holodomor in the Ukraine. Countless wars.\"\n\n\"He intervened in World War II,\" I pointed out.\n\n\"As I understand it, that was because of his fear of the atom bomb. He looked at events on a global scale, and he lost sight of individuals.\"\n\nI reached up to take Smudge from the canopy over the swing. He'd been perched upside-down, warding off the mosquitoes. I carefully set him inside his cage. The snapped bar from Kiyoko's bullet had been soldered back into place, courtesy of Jason. \"When we leave for New Millennium, will you keep an eye on things here?\"\n\n\"Don't I always?\"\n\n\"Jason's great, but he's in over his head. Toby doesn't understand what's going on, and Jeneta understands too much.\"\n\nShe started to hand Gutenberg's autobiography back to me.\n\n\"I've read it too many times already.\" Whatever happened, she would keep the book safe.\n\nNidhi stood and grasped my forearm. \"Before you go, make sure you go outside with Lex. Watch her on the bike. I've found that people fight better when we're reminded what we're fighting for.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR MARTIAN COLONIZATION By Jeneta Aboderin",
                "text": "\u2002Summary: I believe we can use libriomancy to build a human settlement on Mars.\n\n\u2002Benefits: There are numerous benefits to building a human settlement on Mars.\n\n\u20021. Overpopulation. Earth has more than seven billion people. If we colonize other planets, we will reduce the population pressure on Earth.\n\n\u20022. Resources. According to Wikipedia, Mars has many valuable resources, including nickel, iron, and even gold. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars)\n\n\u20023. Species Survival. 66 million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. Humanity has to be prepared for another such event. We have technology and magic to protect our planet, but if that fails, colonizing other planets will make sure human beings survive.\n\n\u20024. Safety. The first group of colonists would be libriomancers and Porters and magical inhumans, who are best equipped to survive the hostile environment of Mars. This would let these people escape persecution on Earth.\n\n\u2002Requirements: The following technology and equipment would need to be created using libriomancy.\n\n\u20021. A spacecraft small enough to be made from a projected e-book. The spacecraft should have simple controls, a good fuel supply, enough room for a crew of at least 30 people, and enough speed to get to Mars quickly.\n\n\u20022. Right now, it takes ten minutes to send a signal to or from Mars. (https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/imp/faq.html) An ansible device from the works of Ursula Le Guin or another SF author would allow reliable, instantaneous communication between Earth and Mars.\n\n\u20023. Terraforming. Books should be reviewed to find the best terraforming technology that's safe, efficient, and effective, with no damaging side effects.\n\n\u20024. Investigate the possibility of nanotech fabricators or other miniature construction robots to assist with the building process.\n\n\u2002Once the colony is established, we could use a portal from Isaac Vainio's Gateway Project to transport food, water, books, and other supplies.\n\n\u2002It's very important that a full electronic library be included with the initial shipment!\n\n\u2002Proposed Colonists:\n\n\u20021. At least ten libriomancers, including one who can perform magic with e-books.\n\n\u20022. Vampires who can survive without oxygen, and who won't go blood-crazy and kill everyone.\n\n\u20023. Trained astronauts and scientists. (Magic users, if possible!)\n\n\u20024. At least two doctors.\n\n\u20025. One poet or writer (for sending stories back to Earth).\n\nI asked Jeneta to equip us before we left, so Talulah and I could preserve as much of our strength and magic as possible.\n\nShe began by replacing one of Lena's bokken with the same version of Excalibur we'd used before. Lena kept the healing scabbard, and I took the healing cordial for myself. Everyone else was also equipped with healing magic of one form or another.\n\nJeneta then conjured up potions from The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells. The story in question was \"The New Accelerator,\" and the potion would essentially give us the ability to stop time while we retook New Millennium.\n\nShe also supplied us with a set of ballistic vests. Kevlar with ceramic plate inserts should slow down Kiyoko's enchanted ammo. There were a handful of other goodies, including my compact mirror gateway, which Lena had returned to me. I tucked everything into an old messenger bag I'd borrowed from Jason.\n\nTalulah had a Bluetooth earpiece in her right ear, and a large keyboard-looking thing made of plastic, chrome, and LED lights strapped across her shoulder like an electric guitar.\n\n\"Hacker's best friend,\" she said, noticing my gaze. \"Cyberpunk has the best toys. This should help me pinpoint the system hosting the IAS software and keep Kiyoko occupied.\"\n\nWe gathered in the backyard to say good-bye, where we found Bi Wei standing in the shade of a weeping willow tree, watching the birds. Before anyone could react, Lena was bounding across the yard to greet her with a hug. She dragged Bi Wei over by the hand to introduce her to the rest of our group.\n\n\"I'm glad your people are safe,\" I said. \"And doubly glad for your help, thank you.\"\n\nBi Wei smiled. \"Given what Lena told me, this sounded like it could be as educational as our last collaboration.\"\n\n\"Educational.\" I snorted. \"That's one word for it.\"\n\nPhysically, Bi Wei was much the same as I remembered. Young and physically slight, she wore a sleeveless purple dress with gold and blue lines curling about in fractal designs. Large designer sunglasses covered her eyes.\n\nMagically, she was all but unrecognizable as the woman Lena had helped to draw forth from her thousand-year imprisonment. After so many years in isolation, the Students of Bi Sheng had chosen to establish a permanent telepathic connection, ensuring that they would never again be alone. If one were to die, their memories and experiences would be preserved.\n\nBi Wei was a spiderweb of magic. Threads of energy my mind interpreted as text were woven through her body and stretched into the distance. It reminded me of Kiyoko. I was relying on that similarity, hoping Bi Wei would be able to nullify her in a way the rest of us couldn't.\n\nI turned to Jeneta. \"Keep Nkiruka close. If she gets twitchy, round everyone up and get the hell out of here.\"\n\n\"No problem. Deb gave me a number to call. She said they'd help us disappear.\"\n\nNidhi stepped into Lena's embrace and whispered something before giving her a long, deep kiss. She finally broke away, then hugged me as well. \"Keep each other safe.\"\n\n\"We will.\" I turned to Jason next. \"Thank you for this.\" I gestured toward the yard and his ex-husband's house. \"Tell your ex I'm going to pay to replace that frying pan.\"\n\nJeneta rolled her eyes. \"How was I supposed to know fire-spiders would burn through the non-stick coating? I'm used to cast iron.\"\n\nToby grabbed my hand and squeezed. His lips tightened, and his eyes shifted to the side like he was searching for words.\n\n\"I know,\" I said, returning the handshake. \"Toby, if things go south, talk to Mom and Dad for me. Tell them what really happened.\"\n\n\"Hell, no,\" he said gruffly. \"Fix this mess, then explain it yourself.\"\n\n\"Toby...\"\n\nHe nodded and looked away. \"Yah, I'll tell 'em.\"\n\nI hugged Lex, shook hands with Angie, then walked over to where Deb was sitting on the porch swing, dipping crickets into a small tub of ketchup. \"You ready?\"\n\nShe flicked another cricket into her mouth and chewed noisily. \"I've been ready, hon. It's not like I've got anyone to say good-bye to.\"\n\nJeneta reached into her e-reader and withdrew a glass bottle from Through the Looking Glass, which she handed to Lena. Lena raised it in a toast and took several deep swallows, then passed it to Talulah. By the time it was Deb's turn, Lena had shrunk down to six inches tall.\n\nI sat down to change shoes, lacing my sneakers around my neck and pulling on the seven-league boots I'd used to flee Las Vegas. I held very still as Lena climbed up onto my shoulder. It would be awkward as hell if my feet twitched and propelled me a half-mile away.\n\nTalulah climbed into my shirt pocket, while a miniature Bi Wei floated on a gust of air to land lightly on my other shoulder. Deb climbed up next to Lena.\n\n\"Everybody hold on tight,\" I said, and started walking.\n\nWith each step devouring roughly twenty miles, we covered the 1900 miles from Grand Rapids to New Millennium in minutes.\n\nRemoving the boots and backtracking the two miles I'd overshot took a half hour. It was much simpler to stride at magically relativistic speeds across the continent, letting the boots worry about things like rocks and hills and rivers, not to mention wind resistance that should have stripped the flesh from my bones after the first step.\n\nWe circled around and settled in a hundred yards from the gate. New graffiti marred the walls, and the lights illuminated blackened patches of earth. The security measures I remembered were still in place, and there were devourers in the wall, just as we'd seen at the prison. One of the guards carried some sort of handheld scanner that reminded me of a Geiger counter.\n\n\"They've tightened things up,\" Lena said.\n\n<Testing,> said Talulah. <Can you all hear me?>\n\nWe each checked in, joining Talulah's mental conference call in a confusing jumble of overlapping voices.\n\n\"They're scanning for magic, right?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"Among other things.\" The empath working security would pick up on our emotions as well.\n\nI set my passengers on the ground and took what remained of the second Through the Looking Glass potion from my bag. Moments later, Smudge and I had joined the others as Smurf-scale miniatures of ourselves.\n\nWe jogged past enormous white bursage and creosote bushes, making our way toward the gate. The desert shrubs were the size of houses, and the gray cactus mouse we startled probably weighed as much as I did in this form.\n\n\"Keep an eye out for snakes,\" I said. \"Shrikes too. Also scorpions and burrowing owls.\"\n\nLena punched my shoulder, just hard enough to shut me up.\n\nAt this size, it took another twenty minutes just to reach the side of the road. Every time I looked at New Millennium, I imagined a countdown clock, the digital numbers ticking down one by one like a Hollywood bomb.\n\n\"Over, under, or through?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"I am not going in the way I came out,\" I said with a mock shudder. \"The wards will stop us from flying in. I'm sure they're wise to the tunnel approach, too.\"\n\n\"Waltzing through the front door it is, then.\"\n\n\"I was thinking about hitching a ride.\" A line of dust in the distance heralded our way in. We crept as close to the gates as we dared and waited beneath a blue-green bush with thorns the size of claymores. \"Bi Wei, will you be safe here?\"\n\nShe'd brought out a velvet pouch of dominos, and was arranging them carefully in the dirt for a game I didn't recognize. \"I'll be waiting.\"\n\n\"Wait, she's not coming with us?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"That's not why I asked her here, no.\" To Bi Wei, I said, \"If you don't hear from us in two hours, do whatever it takes to tear this place to the ground. If the siren assault begins before that and we can't stop it\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll do what I can. And I'll be waiting to try to help Kiyoko.\"\n\nA National Guard truck approached, painted in desert camouflage. Potts was bringing in military reinforcements. \"Angels and ministers of grace, defend us,\" I muttered.\n\n\"Hamlet, right?\" said Talulah.\n\n\"Yah. Also McCoy from Star Trek IV.\" We waited for the truck to stop at the gate, then sprinted onto the road. I boosted Lena onto the right rear tire. She gripped the cracks in the tread to climb higher, then stabbed one of her bokken into the wheel well, hooked her knees over the handle, and dropped upside down to grab my hands.\n\nHer bokken was already sending out branches. Lena pulled me up beside her, then did the same for Talulah and Deb. We pressed flat as the wood grew into a large, curved cage. From the outside, if anyone spotted us, it should look like a bit of tumbleweed stuck in the well.\n\nThat was the easy part.\n\nOne of the guards circled the truck and opened the back. Another was talking to the driver, checking paperwork and asking about their orders, what equipment they'd brought, how long they intended to be on-site, and so on.\n\n\"Anything magical?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am,\" said the driver.\n\nAs boots crunched along the pavement, I retrieved a book from my borrowed messenger bag.\n\n\"Captain Underpants?\" Lena whispered.\n\nI plucked a ring from the pages. \"The books straddle the line between comic books and novels. That makes them harder to use, but the popularity of the series means there's a stronger pool of belief, which balances it out.\"\n\n\"Hold on. I'm sensing something near the back.\" A woman dropped to one knee and peered around. She was better equipped than I expected, with both a mundane semiautomatic and a JG-367, currently set to disintegration mode. In addition to her own inherent empathy, she wore an amulet from Tamora Pierce's In the Hand of the Goddess, allowing her to see magic. She clicked a flashlight on and shone it beneath the truck.\n\nAs quickly as I could, I pointed the Hypno-Ring from The Adventures of Captain Underpants. \"You were mistaken. There's nothing here. You can go about your business. Move along.\"\n\nThe woman straightened. \"Looks like I was mistaken. There's nothing here.\"\n\n\"You know the drill,\" said a bored-sounding man from the other side of the truck. \"Let me take a look, too. Back up a bit?\"\n\nLena grimaced in pain as a second set of boots approached. Smudge scampered from my body, retreating to the back of the cage. The magic of my ring started to fade.\n\nIt was a logical setup, but annoying as hell. One guard wore the magic-dampener, while the other carried the magic-sensing amulet, enchanted pistol, and other goodies. As long as they kept their distance from one another, they could cover the other's vulnerabilities.\n\nI'd broken one of those pearls before, back in Virginia. I did it faster this time, though it was no less painful. Once I'd torn the magic-suppressing field aside, I repeated the same hypnotrick I'd used on his partner.\n\nSomeone would eventually realize the amulet had gone dead, but I intended to be finished before that happened.\n\nAfter what felt like hours, the truck pulled forward into New Millennium and drove slowly around curved roads until we reached Scot Tower, the admin building. The instant we stopped, Lena pushed the branches aside, opening a door from our cage. She lowered us to the ground and jumped after us, broken branches showering around her. We waited in the shadows beneath the truck as uniformed soldiers climbed from the back.\n\n\"Welcome to New Millennium, gentlemen.\" The voice belonged to Russell Potts. I fought the urge to vaporize the man right then. \"You're here to bolster our own security staff. We want to be certain nothing happens to our guests from the United Nations. We've been advised of a potential insider attack.\"\n\nWell, he wasn't wrong. I gritted my teeth and gathered up pebble-sized grains of sand while we listened.\n\n\"You should have been briefed on our facility and the abilities of our various enemies,\" Potts continued. \"You'll be outfitted with additional equipment before beginning your rounds. On behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, I want to personally thank you for your service.\"\n\nHe led the men away, probably to receive their black pearls and enchanted handguns and whatever else Potts had decided they needed. Or more likely, he'd keep the pearls for himself and his chosen collaborators. If anger and outrage were what he was after, the murder of our National Guardsmen would be a bonus.\n\nI crept to the edge of the truck to look around. Armed guards stood at the entrance of Scot Tower, one human and one sparkler. Barriers blocked several intersections. Soldiers patrolled in small groups along the edge of the roads. They'd turned New Millennium into a military base on lockdown.\n\n<I've made contact with Vince and Charles,> said Talulah. <They're in research. They've got a security escort, and their access to New Millennium systems has been restricted to almost nothing.>\n\n<Give me a direct link to them?>\n\n<Done.>\n\n<Vince, Charles, this is Isaac. Has Talulah filled you in on the plan?>\n\n<Hell, yeah!> exclaimed Vince. <Nice to know you're not dead, Boss!>\n\n<I'm rather happy about it myself. Before we go any further, I need to make something clear. I'm not your boss anymore, and I won't order you to do this. You're free to say no, and you'll probably be a lot safer if you do.>\n\n<The hell with that,> spat Charles.\n\n<What he said,> Vince added a half-second later.\n\n<We don't know exactly where they're working to bring the IAS project online. The code has to be pulled out of several books, then compiled through a program Talulah wrote. Kiyoko can't run it herself; she needs additional hardware, probably a group of high-speed servers. Talulah's going to work on finding those servers. Once she does, Lena and Deb will try to physically destroy them. Talulah will do what she can to fry them remotely.>\n\n<Where are the sirens?> asked Vince.\n\n<That's one of several potential flaws with our plan. We don't know yet. I'm hoping to get to Babs so I can use her security cameras and other Big Brother tech to find them. Talulah should be joining you in research shortly. She'll help take out your babysitters. Your job is to keep her safe and give her time to get into the network.>\n\nI took out the potions Jeneta had created from H. G. Wells. \"Don't try to run or move too quickly. Magic gives us some leeway from friction, but this potion isn't as forgiving as some. If you push it, you'll burn your clothes and skin right off.\"\n\n\"How long do those last?\" asked Deb.\n\n\"Maybe twenty minutes, subjectively speaking. Only a second or two will have passed in real time.\"\n\n\"Stay away from any guards wearing those magic dampers,\" said Talulah. \"Minimum safe distance is about three feet before they interfere with your mojo.\"\n\n\"Invisibility?\" suggested Deb.\n\nTalulah answered before I could. \"It would block us from cameras and mundane vision, but it won't screen our thoughts and emotions, and it wouldn't surprise me if they've set up infrared scanners at the doors.\"\n\n\"We'll be moving too fast to see anyway,\" I said.\n\nLena unsheathed Excalibur. \"Ready when you are.\"\n\n\"Everybody remember Newton's second law.\" I handed out the potions. <On my count. One... two... three.>\n\nWe walked out from beneath the truck. I put the few remaining drops of potion onto Smudge's mandibles to bring him into synch with me. I stripped away the magic of Wonderland, restoring all of us to normal size. The guards stood like statues frozen in time.\n\nTalulah set off in a slow jog toward research while I headed for the front doors of Scot Tower. I circled around the guards and applied a gentle kick to the edge of the door. The metal hinges shattered.\n\nNewton's second law: force equals mass times acceleration. Our mass was unchanged, but our velocity and acceleration had increased enough to inflict unimaginable damage to others, and to ourselves if we weren't careful.\n\nI slowly pulled the door out of its frame and slipped inside. I circled past armed guards and other New Millennium personnel, being careful to stay out of range of those with magic-dampers. I reached the stairwell and destroyed that door as well.\n\nMoving at this speed was the next best thing to having superpowers. I wondered if you could really run across water like speedsters did in the comics, but that experiment would have to wait. <I'm inside Admin. How are you doing, Talulah?>\n\n<Just got to Franklin Tower. Once I get to my office and jack in, I'll have to wait for this potion to wear off. I can't interface with the system at this speed.>\n\n<Understood.>\n\nI reached the fourth floor, where two men in military uniforms stood outside the outer door to Babs' office. Both wore magic-dampeners.\n\nI pulled a straw from my back pocket, along with one of the sand-pebbles I'd gathered outside. It had expanded along with me and my clothes, caught up in the wake when I stripped away my shrinking magic.\n\nI approached the first guard and dropped to one knee, careful to stay out of range of those damn pearls. After tucking the pebble into the straw, I lined the end up with the M4 assault rifle gripped in his hands.\n\nThis was going to be so cool.\n\nA puff of breath launched the pebble. It shot out, struck the center of the rifle... and stopped, suspended in relativistically slow time.\n\nFriction had melted half the straw. I trimmed off the end with a pocketknife and repeated the shot on the next guard's rifle. I used a second straw to fire pebbles at their holstered sidearms. Once time sped up, the kinetic energy in those tiny pebbles should make a wreck of their weapons. I could already see cracks starting to spread through the metal of the first M4.\n\nAs for getting in, I picked a spot on the wall about four feet to the left of the door, away from the guards and their magic-dampers, and kicked.\n\nCinder blocks crumbled inward. I continued to kick, widening the hole until it was large enough for me to squeeze through. I had to shift a little to the left to avoid one of the steel studs.\n\nI pushed broken cinder blocks and drywall out of the way and crawled through the wall. The outer office\u2014Kiyoko's office\u2014was empty. The inner door was cracked open.\n\n<Isaac, I'm in position, ready to plug in and raise hell. Would it be wrong to draw a Sharpie doodle on Charles while I'm waiting for this to wear off?>\n\n<Yes, it would. Wait, what kind of doodle?> Smudge squirmed in his cage, anxious and glowing red. <I'm at Babs' office. My fire-spider has a bad feeling about this.> I peeked through the doorway. <Aw, crap.>\n\n<What is it?>\n\nBabs was seated at her desk. Russell Potts stood looking over her shoulder at something on the computer screen. Behind them, toward the corner of the room, Kiyoko held a pistol to a seated, handcuffed woman I guessed was Darlene Jackson-Palmer. Her eyes were red, and she wore a magic-damping amulet.\n\nDarlene's left eye was puffed like a pair of leeches. Blood dripped from her split lower lip. The knuckles of Kiyoko's left hand were swollen and bloody.\n\n<Kiyoko's here. She's been torturing Darlene Jackson-Palmer to force Babs to cooperate. Darlene's wearing a magic-damper. I can't reach them without losing my speed, and I don't think I could take Kiyoko in a fair fight.> I considered shooting a pebble at Kiyoko's gun, or at Kiyoko herself, but in either case I risked the gun discharging and killing Darlene. I studied the effects of the pearl more closely. <They've modified the magic-damper. The effects aren't radiating out from the pearl. It's generating a spherical shield. Anything passing through gets nullified, but inside the sphere, Kiyoko's still hooked up to her clones.>\n\n<Can you tear it down?>\n\n<I think\u2014wait, no. Damn, that's clever. If I'm reading this right, the pearl is held in some kind of stasis. It's in the process of exploding. That shield is the magical shock wave. If I break it, the physical shock wave kills Darlene, Kiyoko, and possibly everyone else in the room.>\n\n<Who the hell came up with that?>\n\n<Babs, probably.> I edged around the desk to see what she'd been working on. <Double-crap. They know we're here.>\n\n<How?>\n\n<It looks like they set up a wider perimeter outside New Millennium, an invisible infrared fence or some such, and we tripped it. As soon as you're back to normal operating speed, let Bi Wei know she might be getting company.>\n\nHeavy-duty headphones hung around Babs' neck. Potts clutched a matching pair in one hand. I studied the other windows on Babs' computer. <She's got a sound-editing program running and a microphone plugged into her system.>\n\n<Is it IAS?>\n\n<Doesn't look like it.>\n\nThe audio clip was a jagged graph on the screen, one minute and four seconds long. I sorted through the notes on her desk until I found what looked like a script. <It's voice masking software. They're prepping a speech, claiming this is retribution from Vanguard, the Porters, and all oppressed creatures who feel it's time to rise up against humanity.>\n\n<What are you going to do?>\n\n<It's Vegas. I'm going to gamble.> I grabbed a pen and paper from Babs' desk. The ballpoint immediately tore through the paper. The pencil I tried next simply broke. I found a fine-tip Sharpie that functioned, more or less, at superspeed. It went dry after a single sentence.\n\n\"Seriously?\" Moving at superspeed, the wicking action couldn't draw ink to the pen's tip fast enough. I scrounged through Babs' desk, then Kiyoko's in the outer office, gathering more Sharpies. I tucked the finished note into Babs' hand and turned my attention back to Kiyoko.\n\nAnything within that shield was unaffected. It would only nullify magic passing through the barrier.\n\nI pulled out the compact mirror. Time to try some nonlinear thinking. If the glass had been larger, I could have tried to reach through to take the gun from her hand, but I didn't have the books I'd need to create another portal.\n\nOn the other hand, I might be able to make this one effectively smaller.\n\nI grabbed the Sharpie from Babs' desk and started blacking out the outer edge of the mirror."
            },
            {
                "title": "MAGICAL BLAZE IN THE WEST BANK CONTINUES TO SPREAD",
                "text": "In the past twenty-four hours, a fast-growing blaze has destroyed approximately two hundred square miles in the West Bank. Efforts to combat the flames have been ineffective, leading many to believe the fire is magical in nature.\n\nSpokesmen for both the Israeli and Palestinian governments deny responsibility for the blaze, which has destroyed several Israeli settlements and driven more than fifty thousand Palestinians from their homes. Both governments blame the other for igniting a magical war using weapons they couldn't control.\n\nThe flames are centered in the northern part of the West Bank, and have thus far not crossed the Jordan River.\n\nAt approximately one a.m. local time, fourteen hours after the start of the fire, Palestinian militants began launching rockets into Israel. The Israeli military has gathered near the border, but appear to be holding back until the path of the flames can be determined.\n\nOne Israeli official threatened to refuse to allow Palestinian refugees to cross the border if the attacks continue, saying, \"For every rocket that lands on our soil, a hundred Palestinians will die by fire.\"\n\nIsrael's Prime Minister was quick to disavow that threat, but did go on to say that the need for increased security would hinder their efforts to help Israeli settlers and Palestinian refugees fleeing the flames.\n\nMany nations are offering aid, equipment, and personnel to assist in fighting the blaze and helping refugees. The Porters have dispatched a libriomancer from Denmark who will attempt to use magic against the fire.\n\nExact casualty figures are unknown, but official estimates put the death toll as high as five thousand.\n\nBy the time I finished working, the speed potion was beginning to wear off. I stood up, wiped my palms on my vest, locked the door connecting Babs' office to Kiyoko's, and waited.\n\nI heard a low click from Babs' desk. A second followed, then a third as her fingers slowly struck the keys.\n\nKiyoko turned her head toward me. Out in the hallway, two guards swore as their weapons exploded. I also had the satisfaction of seeing Russell Potts jump so hard he fell on his ass. The desk blocked me from seeing whether my sudden appearance had managed to make him piss himself.\n\n\"Hi,\" I said brightly. \"I'm here to give you the chance to surrender. I figure it's what the Doctor would do.\"\n\n\"What doctor?\" Potts snapped as he recovered. \"Who are you talking about?\"\n\n\"Doctor Who?\" I threw up my hands in exaggerated disgust. \"Never mind.\"\n\nThe gun at Darlene's head never moved. Kiyoko cocked her head to one side. \"I'm sensing an attempted intrusion into our systems. I presume that's Talulah Polk's doing? Order her to cease her efforts and surrender herself.\"\n\n\"So you can kill millions of people? I'm not going to\u2014\"\n\n\"You can't bluff me, Isaac Vainio. I've been inside your brain. I've seen your memories, the way you think, the lines you can and can't cross. I know you've snuck more of your friends in to help cause mischief, and that you're probably planning another clever quip right now to mask your fear and anger about losing New Millennium.\"\n\n\"I didn't lose it,\" I muttered. \"It was right where I left it.\"\n\nShe smiled. \"I know you more intimately than Lena. I know you've touched death before, and that the threat of death won't make you cooperate. Not your death, at least. But you have a chauvinistic protective streak toward women, one that was compounded by your failures with Jeneta Aboderin.\"\n\n<Found it!> Talulah exclaimed. <The IAS is running on a server bank in admin. Lena, Deb, you're up.>\n\n<Be careful,> I said. Sweat trickled down the center of my back. My heart was pounding like I'd just run a marathon. I did my best to match Kiyoko's smile. \"When they pulled you out of that book and programmed you, whose idea was it to make you talk so much?\"\n\n\"You can't stop this, Isaac,\" said Potts.\n\nI pretended to stifle a yawn, then jerked a thumb at Kiyoko. \"She's scary. You're just embarrassing yourself. You're strong and tough and evil, sure, but Kiyoko could snap every bone in your body without breaking a sweat. So why don't you shut up and let the grown-ups talk?\"\n\nHe scowled and started to respond.\n\n\"Isaac's verbal barbs are how he masks his helplessness,\" Kiyoko said. \"Engaging him is counterproductive. He won't assist us until I've demonstrated the consequences of refusing, just as I did before.\"\n\nI took a step toward her and Darlene.\n\nThe gun swung around toward me, and I froze. Kiyoko nodded once, then aimed the barrel back at Darlene.\n\n\"Isaac, please,\" whispered Babs.\n\n\"All right, stop! You win.\" I raised my hands and inched closer. To Darlene, I said, \"I won't let her hurt you.\"\n\n\"I wish it were that easy.\" Kiyoko sounded genuinely regretful. \"The problem is, you've gotten out of similar situations before. It's given you a sense of invulnerability, an irrational refusal to accept that you might lose. Unfortunately for Ms. Jackson-Palmer, there's one effective way to shatter that overconfidence.\"\n\nShe pointed the gun at Darlene's leg.\n\nDarlene closed her eyes. Potts clenched his teeth.\n\n\"No!\" Babs stood and reached toward Kiyoko. Electricity surged from one of her rings, only to dissolve when it struck the magic-absorbing field surrounding them.\n\nKiyoko pulled the trigger. The walls amplified the thunderous crack of the gunshot. Darlene screamed.\n\nBlood darkened Kiyoko's shirt. She staggered against the wall. The gun slipped from her hand.\n\n\"Isaac?\" Babs stared at the bullet hole in my vest.\n\n\"I'm all right.\" I tugged open one of the Velcro pouches on the front of my vest and carefully removed the compact mirror. \"The bullet was coming out of my vest, not going in.\"\n\nRussell Potts launched himself toward the gun. I started to reach for the magic of Babs' enchanted rings, but she was quicker. She caught him by the wrist and collar and spun, smacking him face-first into her desk. Power crackled down her arms. Potts doubled over and collapsed to the floor, his body twitching and spasming.\n\nI stripped away the magic binding Kiyoko's weapon and my mirror. I'd blackened everything but a small circle at the center, roughly the size of the gun barrel. I kept part of my attention on Kiyoko as she slid down the wall. \"I opened a portal into the pistol. The bullet went into that portal and came out through this mirror.\"\n\n\"How?\" asked Babs. \"Her shield...\"\n\n\"Blocked incoming magic, like your lightning bolt. Gateway doesn't work like that. It's not a linear journey. Have you ever read A Wrinkle in Time? It's like that, just two points bypassing the space in between. The bullet left my mirror and passed through the shield. That would have stripped off any enchantments, but the bullet itself kept going.\"\n\nOne of the guards pounded the door. They had free run of Kiyoko's office, thanks to the hole I'd kicked through the outer wall, but I trusted Babs' security to keep them out of here.\n\nBabs held up the note I'd written. \"You're sure about this?\"\n\n\"I'm sure, and thank you. There's no way I could have taken you, Potts, and Kiyoko together.\"\n\nKiyoko was no longer breathing.\n\nBabs freed her sister and carefully removed the shielding pearl from around Darlene's neck. She dropped it into a padded metal box. The effects disappeared. Babs immediately activated another of her tattoos and used it to heal the worst of Darlene's injuries.\n\nI crouched next to Potts. \"I need to talk to him.\"\n\nBabs waved a hand, and his seizures eased. Blood bubbled from his nose. He sat up, his back against the desk, and glared at me. \"You're monsters.\"\n\nI stepped to the side, staying out of his reach. \"The thing is, I've been trying really hard not to be a monster. But if you don't call this thing off right now? Then yah, I may have to get monstrous.\"\n\n\"He can't,\" said Babs. \"Kiyoko is coordinating things. She's got one clone with the sirens. I don't know where they're being kept. Four others are calibrating the software for the broadcast. She'll have sent more to find out what happened here, and to deal with us.\"\n\n\"The IAS project?\" I asked.\n\n\"I finished Talulah's work.\" Babs slumped. \"It's loaded and ready to launch.\"\n\n<Deb and Lena, did you catch that? You're going to be outnumbered four to two.>\n\n<Maybe we should wait for Kiyoko to gather a few more clones to make it fair?> Deb quipped.\n\n<Don't get cocky.> To Babs, I asked, \"Do you know who they're targeting?\"\n\n\"China. Iraq. Palestine. Saudi Arabia. Denmark. Russia.\"\n\n\"Jesus,\" I whispered.\n\n\"You're both traitors,\" Potts spat. The pounding outside had grown louder. It sounded like they were smashing furniture against the door. \"Today's attack will kill between one and two million people in the short term. In the long run, it will save tens of millions. It will put America at the head of an international power bloc, one that will keep creatures like you in their place.\"\n\nI was trembling with the effort to stop myself from physically attacking the man. I jammed my fists beneath my arms to control it. \"Creatures like us?\"\n\n\"You're not human. Neither of you.\" He looked past me to Babs.\n\nThere was no hesitation in his answer. Nothing I could say or do was going to change his mind. I reached for a book. \"Where are the sirens?\"\n\nHe spat. A glob of spittle and blood struck my pant leg.\n\n\"All right.\" I touched the book's magic and prepared to rip the truth from his thoughts.\n\nSmudge burst into flame.\n\nSomething hit the window hard enough to rattle the glass. Another impact followed less than a second later. The third strike punched a small hole through the window and the closed blinds.\n\nPotts jerked and collapsed.\n\n\"Get down!\" Babs dragged her sister to the floor. A second series of gunshots struck the window. I dropped flat just as the next bullet broke through. It buried itself in the wall, directly behind where I'd been standing.\n\n\"Kiyoko?\" I guessed.\n\n\"It has to be. The windows are bulletproof. From the angle she'd need to hit Potts, she must be firing from another tower, hitting the exact same spot with each bullet until she breaks through. Nobody else could pull that off. She must have another camera in here, helping her aim. I thought I'd found them all.\"\n\nI dragged my bookbag off the desk and hastily crafted a shield that would protect me from gunfire. I crawled over to check on Potts. Despite the blinds and the distance, Kiyoko's bullet had struck him in the center of the forehead. His dead eyes were frozen in anger.\n\nThe guards outside must have heard the shots, because they'd stopped trying to break in. \"Babs, how much trouble can you cause for Kiyoko from here?\"\n\nA staccato burst of gunfire destroyed the monitor on her desk. Babs yanked open the bottom drawer and pulled out several hardcover books. She used the first to create a tablet computer, and the second for a pair of silver revolvers, one of which she handed to her sister.\n\n\"Let's find out.\" She raised the gun and closed her eyes. Magic crept over the barrel, guiding her aim up and to the right. She squeezed the trigger, blowing a four-inch hole through the wall. She raised her head and waited, but there were no more gunshots from outside. \"Guess that was the last camera.\"\n\nI pointed to the tablet. \"Does that thing have a USB port?\" When she nodded, I handed her a black flash drive. \"You had an audio file queued up and ready to go. If Kiyoko starts to broadcast, play this instead.\"\n\nBabs held up the crumpled note I'd written. \"Thank you, Isaac.\"\n\n\"What did he write?\" asked Darlene.\n\n\"I told her I understood why she'd helped Potts and McGinley, and that I needed her help to retake control of our home.\" I approached the door. The outer office was quiet. Babs pressed a button beneath her desk, and the lock clicked. I cracked open the door and peeked into Kiyoko's office. The room was empty. \"Lock it behind me.\"\n\nI headed toward the closest stairwell. <Talulah, I need a status update.>\n\n<Charles is at the Library Tower. He had the bright idea to create a dowsing rod to search for the sirens.>\n\nIf he made the rod sensitive enough, it would pick up even small bodies of water, including any tanks for holding captive sirens. <Good thinking, but they've probably shielded the sirens against magical detection.>\n\n<That's what I told him,> said Vince.\n\nCharles cut in. <Better than sitting around doing nothing. In my day, we didn't wait for someone else to get the job done.>\n\n<Both of you focus on your work,> said Talulah. <You're giving me a headache. Vince is prepping a surprise to keep everyone out of Research. Lena and Deb have reached the server room. They're in a standoff with the Kiyokos. I've been able to get intermittent images out of the security cameras. I think Kiyoko has reinforcements heading that way.>\n\n<What's the shortest route to the server room?>\n\nI spun and started to run, following Talulah's mental directions. Alarms rang out around me. Kiyoko began speaking over the PA system, her steady, reassuring voice filling the building. \"New Millennium is on secure lockdown. Security personnel should report to emergency stations. All others, please remain where you are. Lock your doors and remain calm.\"\n\nI swung open a door and took a bullet in the throat. Without magic, Kiyoko's shot would have gone straight through.\n\n\"Sorry, I'm in a hurry.\" I reached for the text that controlled her psychic connection to the other clones.\n\nHer foot hit my jaw like a wrecking ball. By the time my vision cleared, Kiyoko stood over me with a knife in one hand.\n\n\"I have access to all Porter catalogs and databases,\" she said as she brought the tip of the blade to my chest. \"This appears to be a personal shield unit from Dune. Such shields are vulnerable to slower attacks.\"\n\nI grabbed her wrist, but she was stronger than she had any right to be. The tip gradually slid through the shield, then punctured my skin.\n\nI abandoned finesse and tore viciously through the Japanese characters of her magic. She screamed. I levered the knife away and punched her in the nose.\n\nKiyoko didn't move. Whatever I'd done to her was the equivalent of running an eggbeater inside her skull. It wouldn't affect the other clones, but this one was nothing but an empty shell.\n\nI tossed the knife away. I'd be hearing that scream in my nightmares for years.\n\nShe'd probably seen me coming on another of the security cameras. I took out Small Favor and poked a finger into the text like a kid sneaking frosting from a cake. The character of Harry Dresden was a wizard, and in Jim Butcher's universe, being a wizard meant nearby technology tended to fail. Tapping into that effect should take out nearby cameras.\n\n<Talulah, we know the targets. Any chance you could run a separate instance of the IAS software?>\n\n<Working on it, but it would be a lot easier if Kiyoko would stop trying to fry my systems.>\n\nGunfire all but deafened me. I heard Lena cry out, followed by the thump of wood against flesh. A woman screamed. I couldn't tell who.\n\nI grabbed two paperbacks from my bag and hurried around the corner. Deb and Lena stood in the hallway, battling to reach the server room.\n\nLena must have created another sapling to try to breach the door. She'd gone all out this time. The tree was eight inches thick and continued to grow, roots crumpling the floor while branches tore the ceiling. The thick metal door was bowed inward. Another cluster of branches held a clone two feet off the ground, her limbs twined in wood.\n\nBullets spat from behind the door. Dark blood soaked Deb's thigh. Lena gripped Excalibur in one hand and the scabbard in the other. A bullet struck her shoulder, but even as it tore through wood and flesh, the scabbard's healing magic flowed over the wound, pulling muscle and skin back into place.\n\n<Kiyoko and a group of at least ten armed soldiers are trying to break into Research,> said Talulah. <She knows where we are. I'm not sure how long we can keep them out. I'm going to try\u2014>\n\n<You keep working,> said Vince. <I've got this.>\n\n<What are you\u2014ooh, nice. Quarantine override. We've got doors slamming and locking all through the tower. That should slow them down.>\n\nAnother Kiyoko stepped through a broken door at the end of the hall. I hurled a gateway from Myke Cole's Control Point past Lena and Deb. Three gunshots rang out, but the bullets vanished through the portal. Instead of using it to slice Kiyoko in half like I'd done with the Kagan days earlier, I forced the gateway around her like a blanket, sending her through to the other side.\n\nAs the \"other side\" was a nonexistent fictional world, it effectively erased her from existence.\n\n\"What took you so long?\" Deb shouted. \"Did you stop for lunch on the way?\"\n\nI stopped before reaching the doorway. Having failed to kill me in the stairwell, Kiyoko would almost certainly have switched to those enchanted bullets to make sure she penetrated my shield. \"Call off the attack, Kiyoko. This can't work. Too many people know the truth. We can help you, but you have to end this.\"\n\nThe gunfire stopped. I blinked and turned to Lena, who shrugged. I wished I'd been able to read All of One, the book Kiyoko had come from. Was she independent enough to recognize a losing battle and surrender, or would her orders force her to fight to her own death?\n\nI cast a quick spell on Smudge and opened his cage. He scurried down my leg, now invisible. \"Go find someplace warm to hide, buddy.\"\n\nThe oak creaked and bowed, further crumpling the door. Lena risked a quick glance through the opening, then beckoned me over. I saw Kiyoko\u2014one of them\u2014tossing a semiautomatic handgun to the floor. I yanked on her psychic connection to her clones, tying myself into that mental network.\n\nI saw through their eyes. I saw myself standing in the hallway. Another Kiyoko worked in a darkened room by several large tanks, each one containing a living siren. I saw unfamiliar faces and locations, scenes from this country and others.\n\nThree clones waited in the server room, hidden from sight. I saw their plan to kill us, retake Babs Palmer's office, and lock Talulah out of the network. They had deliberately stalled Lena and Deb, knowing I would join them. Knowing they would have the opportunity to kill us all at once.\n\nMy mind went numb, as if someone had poured liquid helium into my skull. Kiyoko collapsed in front of me. She had voluntarily ended her life, trying to take me with her. I barely pulled free. Before I could shout a warning, the clone trapped in the young oak tree turned her head and said, \"Sleep.\"\n\nA magically created being shouldn't be able to perform libriomancy. Everyone knew that, but I watched the power of that word, drawn from Stephen King's Firestarter by another libriomancer and stored in Kiyoko's memory, slam into Lena, Deb, and myself.\n\nI did my best to claw through Kiyoko's magical assault, to rip the power of that story apart before it could drag me into slumber. This wasn't true libriomancy; it was a recording, a copy of the sound. Like any reproduction, it was weaker than the original. Slowly, I freed myself and reached out to help my companions.\n\nLena had dropped Excalibur and the scabbard when she fell. A Kiyoko stepped from the server room to pick up the sword. She pointed the tip at Lena's throat. The other two clones joined her, guns aimed at Deb and myself.\n\nI ripped Excalibur's magic away, dissolving the blade into silver dust. I did the same to the enchantment on the bullets. When the Kiyoko standing over me pulled the trigger, her shots struck my shield and fell to the floor.\n\nLena kicked the legs out from beneath her Kiyoko, rolled to the side, and punched both fists into the clone standing over me. Wooden spikes punctured Kiyoko's side, and she fell.\n\nBullets thudded into Lena's back, but without their magical boost, none of them penetrated. Lena spun, slashing wooden claws.\n\nKiyoko ducked. The third clone launched a kick over the head of the second, catching Lena square on the bridge of the nose. The second clone bounced to her feet with an uppercut to Lena's jaw, allowing the third to snap a follow-up kick to the side of my head.\n\nBoth clones stiffened and spun to look into the server room.\n\n\"You had access to the Porter database and all of my reports.\" I spat blood and wiped my chin. \"You should have known better than to piss off the fire-spider.\"\n\nI'd sent Smudge into the server room to hide. Fire-spiders liked warm, enclosed spaces. Like server cabinets. By now, he would be making a merry, melted mess of whatever cables and circuits he found.\n\nLena grabbed a Kiyoko by the waist and throat and threw her into the oak tree. Branches snaked around her limbs, pinning her in place. Additional branches grew out to gag both captive clones.\n\nOnly one Kiyoko remained free. She knocked Lena aside and seized my throat. Her thumbs crushed my larynx, and she spun me around so my body was between her and Lena. I tried to peel her thumbs away. When that failed, I punched her in the nose and throat. Her grip only tightened.\n\nMy blood was pounding so hard I barely heard the gunshot. Kiyoko blinked, and her hands fell away.\n\n\"You dropped your gun, asshole,\" said Deb. She fired again, and Kiyoko fell.\n\nI crawled toward Deb. Kiyoko had shot her three times through the chest, and had probably assumed she was dead.\n\n\"Thanks, Isaac. This has been the most fun I've had in years.\" Deb dropped the gun. Her head thudded to the floor. \"Finish this, would you? For all of us.\"\n\n\"Hold on.\" I searched for Excalibur's scabbard, but it had vanished when I destroyed the sword. I reached into my bag. The healing cordial was in the outer pocket.\n\nDeb wasn't breathing.\n\nI found the potion. I could see her magic beginning to unravel, like insects fleeing the light. I forced her mouth open and poured a mouthful down her throat. \"Swallow, dammit.\"\n\nI plugged her nose and pressed her mouth shut. Nothing happened. I set the potion aside and reached for the fading text of Renfield, trying to force it back into Deb's flesh.\n\nLena picked up the potion and brought a droplet to her tongue. Then she gently pulled me to my feet.\n\n\"I couldn't stop all three of them,\" I said. \"Destroying the sword, stripping the magic from the bullets...\"\n\nThe two surviving Kiyoko clones watched impassively from Lena's newgrown oak. I stepped past them into the server room. Smudge had turned the server towers into chimneys. I squinted until I found him, and returned him to his cage. \"Nice work, partner.\"\n\nLena had done some damage as well. Oak roots cracked through the tiled floor and tangled into the electrical and cables. What little equipment hadn't been destroyed in the fighting sparked and died as I approached, fried by the tech-phobic magic of Harry Dresden.\n\n<Talulah, we're in the server room, and the electronics are dead. Can you confirm IAS is offline?>\n\n<Looks that way to me. The other clones probably have a copy of the software, but they'd need magical assistance to reconfigure and start again. We've got good news over here, too.>\n\nCharles' mental voice broke in to say, <I found the sirens. They're in a subbasement beneath Metrodora Tower.>\n\nIt fit the mindset we'd seen from Potts and others. Put the sirens beneath the hospital, using the patients as human shields. <I'll head over there next. Good work with the dowsing rod. I'd expected Kiyoko to have magic-dampers blocking your efforts.>\n\n<She did,> said Vince. <That's how we found them. You can't just take a marine creature out of the Atlantic and drop her in a bathtub. Sirens can survive away from the ocean, but they need time to adjust. If McGinley wants his sirens healthy enough to sing, that means salt water, a filtration system, pipes to circulate and oxygenate the water\u2014>\n\n<I couldn't find the tanks,> Charles cut in. <Vince suggested dowsing for pipes. We found several water pipes that weren't on the plans. I traced them beneath Metrodora, where they all vanished. That empty area has to be the shielded room where they're holding the sirens.>\n\n<What we haven't figured out yet is how to reach that room safely,> said Talulah.\n\n<I've got an idea about that. Keep the research tower locked down. Babs should have called security off by now, but we don't know who else is loyal to McGinley. I'm on my way.> I turned to Lena. \"Will she be secure here?\"\n\n\"They're not going anywhere.\"\n\n\"Good.\" I looked down. Even in death, Deb smirked like she'd just eaten someone's canary. \"Then let's finish this.\"\n\nI hurled another gate through the wall in front of us, sending a diamond-shaped chunk of steel and cinder-blocks into nonexistence. I stopped only long enough to use another book to conjure wings onto my shoes, and to grab Lena. Then we were flying toward Franklin Tower.\n\nHalfway there, with the two of us twenty feet above the ground, the sirens began to sing."
            },
            {
                "title": "TRANSCRIPT OF A CALL FROM U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR PETER MALIK TO SPECIAL COMMISSION DIRECTOR AAMNA BERCHA",
                "text": "Malik: Aamna? This is Peter Malik. Approximately fifteen minutes ago, our security team moved us into the Metrodora Hospital Tower. They're saying we're under attack by an as-yet-unidentified enemy.\n\nBercha: Is your team safe and accounted for?\n\nMalik: We're all here, and nobody has been hurt. Security's telling us we're confined to this room, a cafeteria near the center of the tower, until they receive the all-clear.\n\nBercha: What's the nature of the attack?\n\nMalik: We don't know yet. There was a commotion at the administration building, and we heard a series of gunshots. I saw what may have been a sniper firing at the admin building from another tower. Our escorts are muttering about another Vanguard attack. One mentioned a rogue libriomancer named Isaac Vainio, believed to be working with Vanguard.\n\nBercha: I'm calling Washington. We're pulling your team out of there.\n\nMalik: Understood. I recommend\u2014\n\n[Transmission interrupted by singing in an unknown language. Screams are heard in the background. Transmission ends 36 seconds later.]\n\nThe power of that unfiltered song stripped away rational thought, leaving me a void. I barely felt us slamming onto the rocks. I tried to fend off the magic, but it was like trying to deflect raindrops in a thunderstorm.\n\nWe'd been so close\u2014freeing Babs and her sister, disabling the IAS before it could be deployed, stopping most of the clones on site\u2014and it wasn't enough. In the end, I'd been little more than an annoyance, a mosquito Lawrence McGinley would swat and forget about.\n\nMy friends would die in a terrorist attack. I'd be blamed as the \"magical suicide bomber\" who killed them. Sure, we'd stopped Kiyoko from spreading the broadcast to other nations, but it wouldn't take long for McGinley to devise another way of upping the body count.\n\nOnly that wasn't all he'd do. He'd hunt down and destroy my brother. Lex. Nidhi. Jason. Everyone who knew the truth, dead because of my mistakes. When I closed my eyes, I saw Deb staring up at me, silently accusing. I'd gotten her killed for nothing. I ground my palms against my eyes. Deb became Lena, dead on the ground, her oak rotting behind her. Lena became Toby. Toby, who had trusted me with his daughter's life and safety.\n\nI crawled over the rocks. I'd twisted my ankle, or possibly broken it, I didn't know. I didn't care. The pain helped distract me from the ghosts of everyone I'd killed, and the music offered a thread of hope. The promise of redemption, if I could reach the source.\n\nPain seared my right ear, delivered by what felt like a burning pipe cleaner. I rolled away, momentarily distracted. Smudge clung to my ear, until I thought he'd burn the lobe clean off. I started to pluck him free, but his whole body was on fire. I reached for his magic instead, tearing the text away and killing his flames in the process.\n\nThe little bastard bit me again. He wasn't burning anymore, but he dug his mandibles right into the blistered cartilage of my ear. \"Perkele!\" My father would have smacked me for that bit of profanity. \"What the everburning hell, Smudge?\"\n\nThe throbbing practically deafened me... and in that moment, my thoughts cleared enough to dig the earplugs from my bag and cram them into place. I screamed as the earplug brushed my burnt, blistered ear, but they muffled the song enough for me to concentrate.\n\nI saw others stumbling, searching for the source of the music. Lena was staggering toward the hospital tower. \"Lena, stop!\"\n\nA second song joined the first. Nicola Pallas' voice flowed from the PA system, filling the air with The Beatles' \"Yellow Submarine,\" sung in her own operatic style. Lena hesitated. All around me, people collapsed to the ground, caught between two competing magics.\n\n\"Thank you, Babs,\" I whispered. Nicola's song was a recording of human magic, and wasn't powerful enough to fully overcome the sirens' song. It was a Band-Aid, not a cure, and I didn't know how much time it would buy us.\n\nLena shoved her own earplugs into place, then pointed to Franklin Tower, a quizzical look on her face. <That's new.>\n\nA matte black wall twenty feet high surrounded my building.\n\n<Vince's doing, probably. Using one of Talulah's projects.> Talulah had been studying the feasibility of space elevator technology. The sheer volume of material we'd need to create a working tether into Earth orbit would char any book to ash long before we'd climbed a fraction of the distance. Talulah thought the key was to find a way of using mundane materials for the elevator, with a minimum of magic to act as a catalyst for self-replication.\n\nI hadn't read all the books she was using, several of which were in Spanish, but the principle was sound, drawing in part on research into carbon aerogel from the California Institute of Technology.\n\nThankfully, Vince hadn't blocked off the other towers. Only a trio of National Guardsmen stood watch at the hospital, the magic-dampers shielding them from the songs.\n\nTheir weapons snapped up to point at us. One guard shouted something I couldn't hear.\n\nI raised my hands and loosened one of the earplugs. \"You hear those songs? If you don't let me stop them, they'll kill every unprotected person within these walls.\"\n\n\"New Millennium is under attack, and there's a warrant for your arrest. You need to set down your books and lie facedown on the floor right now.\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Did I mention I'm bulletproof?\"\n\nHe pulled the trigger. Bullets sparked and fell as they struck my shield. The instant they stopped shooting, Lena darted in, striking their guns aside and following up with the flat of her swords.\n\nAll three guards were human. Even with their dampers weakening Lena and her weapons, they didn't have a chance.\n\nI crammed the earplugs in tighter and stepped past the guards. Inside the lobby, patients and staff stumbled about like zombies. One woman struck her head repeatedly against a wall. Blood painted her face and the front of her shirt. A man at the front desk bled from both ears where he'd gouged them with his fingernails.\n\nI grabbed the first of the guards by the feet, and dragged him over to the woman. The moment the magic-damper's field touched her, she sank to the floor and began to weep.\n\nLena hauled the other two inside. We positioned the three of them in a loose triangle and herded everyone together where they'd be safe.\n\nI moved out of range. <Talulah, how do we reach that subbasement?>\n\n<Over here.> Charles Brice pushed open the stairwell door from the inside and waved us over.\n\n<What are you doing here?>\n\n<You were taking your sweet time, so I decided to get started myself.>\n\nI let that pass and followed him to the bottom of the basement steps, where a four-foot crater in the floor smoked and sizzled. It looked like Charles had used his eye laser to slice through the tile, but I had no idea how he'd blown up the foundation and rebar below.\n\n<The sirens are almost directly below us.> Charles' hand folded back on itself to reveal a small blaster cannon. He fired again, widening the hole into the basement.\n\n<When the hell did you give yourself a hand cannon, and who signed off on it?> I snapped. <Wait, don't answer that. Just put it away. We're not going to need it.>\n\n<Oh, really?>\n\n<How far down to reach the sirens?>\n\n<About twenty-five feet.> The barrel of his weapon collapsed into his wrist, and his hand clicked back into place.\n\n<There has to be another way in,> said Lena.\n\nCharles shrugged. <Not that we've been able to find.>\n\nLena touched my bookbag. <Do you have Wayfinder in there?>\n\n<Don't need it. Vince, Bi Wei, can you both hear me?>\n\n<What's up, Boss?>\n\n<I can, yes.>\n\nI smiled. <I'm going to need your help with this part.>\n\nA low caw alerted us to Kerling's arrival. The crow perched on the railing halfway up the stairs.\n\nVince hadn't stopped mentally railing at me for keeping Kerling's abilities secret. I did my best to shut him out, and extended one arm. Kerling hopped from the rail and glided down to land on my forearm. Her claws dug through my sleeve. She had quite the grip.\n\nCharles stared. <You uplifted a crow's intelligence and taught her to teleport?>\n\n<She taught herself.> I smoothed the feathers by Kerling's neck. <Don't ask me how.>\n\n<Welcome to Rise of the Planet of the Corvidae.>\n\nI ignored that, too. My attention was on Bi Wei as she descended the stairs to join us.\n\n<Who's that?> demanded Charles.\n\n<A friend. She's here to help us save Kiyoko.>\n\n<To do what?>\n\nI turned my attention to Kerling. \"Vince told you where we need to go. Can you get us there?\"\n\n<You're trusting a bird to teleport us through solid rock?> Charles backed away. <You're out of your mind.>\n\nKerling spread her wings and shivered. Magic spread like dust from her feathers. I pulled that power around myself, then extended it to Lena, Bi Wei, and Charles. Kerling nipped my hand, as if annoyed by my interference.\n\nThe stairwell vanished, replaced by a large, cool room that smelled of seawater and smoke. The overhead lights flickered.\n\nThe PA system was muffled in here, weakening the protection of Nicola's music. I could feel the sirens' song vibrating through me.\n\nA trio of what looked like modified hot water heaters sat in the center of the room. Copper pipes and white PVC tubes fed in and out of the tanks. There were no computers, nothing but a bank of switches and lights nearby, none of which were labeled.\n\nKiyoko stood in front of the controls, a futuristic-looking little pistol in one hand.\n\nLena and Charles spread out to either side of me. Kerling flew away to perch on one of the pipes in the shadows. Bi Wei simply looked around, taking everything in.\n\nKiyoko reached behind without looking and pulled a lever. Several seconds later, the song died down. I loosened one earplug.\n\n\"Order Babs Palmer to cease her interference,\" Kiyoko said.\n\nI forced a laugh. \"Yah, Babs doesn't take orders from me.\" I stepped closer to the three chambers and touched the pipes. One was hot enough to burn. Frost covered another. \"You're torturing them.\"\n\nShe pointed her weapon at me. \"You're still wearing your personal shield unit from Dune. In addition to their vulnerability to slower-moving objects, this technology has another canonical flaw. Shooting one with a laser weapon triggers an explosion equivalent to a nuclear blast. The destruction of New Millennium and much of Las Vegas isn't the attack we were planning, but the effect would be more than adequate.\"\n\n\"Damn,\" I whispered. \"I hate well-read bad guys.\"\n\n\"If you're thinking of deactivating your shield's magic, please keep in mind that I've watched you dissolve such spells several times, and I believe my reflexes are fast enough to shoot you before you complete your attempt.\"\n\n\"Why aren't you affected by the sirens?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"This clone was surgically deafened. I communicate by reading lips. As long as the sirens are quiet, I can also use the audio pickups in this room to broadcast your voices to me.\" She glared at me. \"Each time you fought me, I learned,\" she said. \"You've lost one friend today. How many more will you sacrifice?\"\n\n\"Maybe it's time to learn a different lesson.\"\n\nLena tossed her swords aside, following my lead. \"Your master is a madman. Why obey him?\"\n\nKiyoko cocked her head. \"Your lover is a nerd. Why would you sleep with him? It's because that's who and what you are.\"\n\n\"Hey!\" A twitch of the laser made me swallow my retort.\n\n\"I chose Isaac. What have you ever chosen?\" Lena stepped closer. \"Don't let Lawrence McGinley tell you what you are. Don't let someone else define you.\"\n\n\"We are what we were written to be. Tools. Toys. Would you try to persuade a sword to become a ploughshare?\"\n\n\"What will you do when your master dies?\" asked Lena. \"You can't even conceive of it, can you? You can't imagine the possibility of a different life, but there are people who can help you evolve.\"\n\n\"Evolution is for the living.\" Kiyoko's laser pistol twitched, sending a beam of light through Lena's shoulder. Blood oozed from the pencil-sized wound. The gun snapped back to me before I could take advantage of the momentary distraction. \"You and I are very much alike. We're both things. The difference is that you've run from that truth.\"\n\nBi Wei stepped past us. \"Do you know why Isaac invited me here?\"\n\n\"To stop me. I know who and what you are. Your magic isn't fast enough to keep me from pulling this trigger.\"\n\n\"You're wrong, but that's beside the point. He asked me to help you.\" She held up a book, an original Japanese edition of All of One. \"This story created you, but it doesn't define you. I look at you through these words, and I see a being much like the Students of Bi Sheng. I see a web of magic connecting you to your sisters, making you greater.\"\n\nKiyoko reached back with her free hand to flip several switches, then pushed another lever. The sirens began to sing again. The sound knocked me backward, a wave of pain passing right through the walls of the three tanks. I clapped my hands over my ears, but it wasn't enough.\n\n\"The longer you delay,\" shouted Kiyoko, \"the more people will suffer. Contact Babs Palmer.\"\n\nCharles raised his arm. His hand hinged open.\n\nKiyoko moved too fast to see, snapping off two shots that punctured Charles' hand and the partially protruding weapon. He shouted and clutched his arm to his chest.\n\n\"We're not here to fight you,\" said Bi Wei. Her words carved a path through the song, strong and clear. \"We're here to bring you home.\"\n\nShe moved so slowly and smoothly I didn't see her magic until it touched Kiyoko's. A single strand of text and power pulsed between them. Kiyoko stiffened and closed her eyes.\n\nLena stumbled past them to reverse the levers on the control panel. Slowly, the sirens quieted.\n\nBi Wei stepped back a moment later, but Kiyoko didn't move.\n\n\"What's happening?\" I asked.\n\n\"I've freed her to choose for herself.\"\n\n\"Great. How long will that take?\"\n\nBi Wei lifted one hand in a gesture that reminded me of a shrug. \"She has tremendous knowledge, but little experience or wisdom. She's frightened, like any child suddenly finding herself alone. I believe she's reviewing what she knows about the world, particularly New Millennium, Secretary McGinley, even yourself. She may yet decide McGinley's plan is best in the long term, depending on which variables she considers most important.\"\n\n\"In which case she'll go ahead and destroy this place?\" demanded Charles. He started toward Kiyoko, only to freeze again when the laser twitched toward him.\n\n\"She can see you.\" I pointed to one of the cameras. And if she read lips, that meant I could talk to her. \"Kiyoko, you have a home here, if you want it.\"\n\nThe clone opened her eyes. \"After my part in what has occurred, the authorities would never allow\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not planning to ask permission.\" I looked at Lena. \"I'm not going back to Copper River. From the beginning, they've treated New Millennium like a political pawn. I intend to turn it into a sanctuary. A home.\"\n\nI'd made my choice back in Michigan, but speaking the words made them real. They also brought a sense of relief. It was amazing how much mental and emotional weight could be sloughed away with a single decision.\n\n\"That won't stop their fear,\" said Kiyoko. \"It won't end the wars.\"\n\n\"No, it won't. But it will give people a choice. It will give us a place where we don't have to be afraid.\"\n\n\"What of those who aren't interested in sanctuary?\" she asked. \"Those who choose to fight?\"\n\n\"We help to stop them.\"\n\nShe tilted her head to one side. \"John Dalberg-Acton stated that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's true of Secretary McGinley. It was true of Russell Potts. It was true of Johannes Gutenberg. What will make you and New Millennium any less corrupt?\"\n\n\"People like Nidhi Shah. People like Jeneta Aboderin, who are more interested in knowledge and exploration and possibility. People like my brother, who'll drive over and tear me down to size if I ever get too full of myself. People like Nicola and Babs and Charles and Vince and Talulah. People like Lena, and like you.\"\n\nBi Wei handed All of One to Kiyoko. \"We will also be watching.\"\n\n\"You've seen inside my head,\" I said. \"You know I'm serious about this.\"\n\n\"Yes. I also believe you're frightened of the responsibility, and of the consequences of this choice.\"\n\n\"Oh, yah. Terrified.\" I grinned. \"Exhilarating, isn't it? So many possibilities... speaking of which, what's the transmission rate for your psychic connection?\"\n\nShe blinked. \"Nearly instantaneous.\"\n\n\"Jeneta's going to want to talk to you about her Mars idea. You might solve the communication lag she was talking about. Before that, though, I want to sit down and talk about the magic you did up in admin, when you threw that sleep spell at me. We've always believed intrinsically magical beings like you and Lena were incapable of using extrinsic magic, but that's exactly what you did!\"\n\n\"I recreated a recording. That's not the same thing.\"\n\nWas it my imagination, or had her cheeks darkened slightly? Was she flustered? \"Imitation is one method of learning, and you haven't exactly had time to study or practice. Who knows what else you might be able to do.\"\n\nSlowly, Kiyoko lowered the laser pistol.\n\n\"Thank you. Don't go anywhere.\" While Lena took the gun, I dissolved my shield generator, just to be safe. I hurried to the tanks next. Simple padlocks held the lids in place. \"Do you have the keys?\"\n\n\"There's an emergency release.\" Kiyoko turned to the control panel. Charles started after her, but I waved him back.\n\nThe side of the first tank cracked open. Water sprayed out in a thin, scalding sheet. It smelled like salt and blood and worse. Kiyoko turned a metal wheel, triggering a squealing sound from the tank, and then a curved, rectangular section was flung open.\n\nI did my best to catch the siren as she slid onto the floor. She was naked, her skin scalded red. Abrasions on her wrists and ankles showed where she'd been restrained. Medical sensors\u2014the same patches I'd created, the ones I'd seen on Lex after her procedure\u2014were secured to her scalp and throat.\n\nShe was thinner than she should have been. Healthy sirens kept a thick layer of fat to help them survive the cold water, but this one's skin sagged loosely, and I could see the curved lines of her ribs. I grabbed the healing cordial.\n\nHer eyes widened, and she tried to squirm free.\n\n\"You're safe,\" said Lena through clenched teeth. \"This is to heal your injuries.\"\n\nA flailing fist struck the side of my face. I almost dropped the potion.\n\nLena caught the siren's wrist. She screamed in pain, screams that only grew louder as Kiyoko crouched and whispered into her ear.\n\nThe siren sagged, blanketed by magical sleep. I maneuvered a drop of the potion into her mouth. Blisters melted back into her skin, and the redness faded.\n\n\"Thanks.\" Once the siren's body was restored, I offered the potion to Lena for the wounds from Kiyoko's laser. While Lena healed herself, I pulled Kiyoko's sleep spell from the siren, like clearing cobwebs.\n\nThe siren gasped, then looked down at herself. Kiyoko had already moved back to the controls to free the second. The first crawled over and scooped the second into her arms, holding her and crooning softly while I healed her injuries. Soon, all three sirens were huddled together on the floor, trembling.\n\nI looked around for blankets or spare clothing, but found nothing. The sirens didn't appear to care. The first one stood, completely unselfconscious. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\"The New Millennium complex outside of Las Vegas,\" I said. \"The middle of Nevada.\"\n\nShe shuddered, though I suspect it was mostly at the idea of being stuck in the middle of a desert. \"Are there others?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. Not here.\"\n\n<Isaac, it's Talulah. We may have another problem.>\n\n<Of course we do.> Lena moved in as I stepped away. Bi Wei had vanished. I hadn't even gotten the chance to thank her. <What happened?>\n\n<We have bombers incoming. I'm tapping into military communications. It sounds like they've been ordered to level New Millennium.>\n\nI turned to the others. \"McGinley can't afford witnesses. He's called in a bombing run.\"\n\n\"The wards on this place ought to keep any bombs out,\" said Charles.\n\n\"He's ordering me to open the main gate,\" said Kiyoko.\n\nI stared at her. \"How is he\u2014right, one of your clones is with him. Charles, is our military good enough to put a rocket through our front door? I'm going to take your uncharacteristic silence as a yes. They set off that first bomb, bust open our walls from the inside\u2014\"\n\n\"He has determined I'm no longer enslaved by his programming.\" Kiyoko jerked back as if she'd been slapped. \"He has now terminated my clone.\"\n\n\"Are you all right?\" Lena asked, moving toward Kiyoko.\n\n\"It's disconcerting.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said. I'd killed several of her clones, at least one in a particularly painful way.\n\nThe centermost siren cleared her throat. \"Would someone explain what the salty fuck is going on?\"\n\n\"We're going to get you home,\" I said. \"Give me a day or two to reconstruct the Gateway Project, and I'll deliver you directly into the Atlantic or anywhere else you'd like to go. But before I can do that, I have to stop McGinley.\"\n\n\"I believe I can help with that,\" said Kiyoko. \"I am, in most respects, a living computer. I have video files of his murder of me just now, along with many other incriminating actions and conversations, including his orders to assassinate Senator Alexander Keeler.\"\n\n\"Magically recorded evidence won't hold up in court,\" said Charles.\n\n\"It doesn't have to!\" I whooped.\n\n<Isaac, are you one hundred percent sure we can trust her?> asked Charles.\n\n<Nope. That's part of how freedom works. Talulah, how long until the bombers get here?>\n\n<Ten minutes? Maybe less?>\n\n<Thanks. Stand by.> I clenched my jaw and dialed a number from memory.\n\n\"This is Agent Steinkamp.\"\n\n\"Hello, Agent. This is Isaac Vainio. We met in Lansing.\"\n\n\"I remember. Where are you, Vainio? You're wanted for\u2014\"\n\n\"In nine minutes, the U.S. military is going to drop a lot of bombs on New Millennium. I'm hoping our wards will protect us, but I'd rather not take that chance, so I wanted to offer you a trade. You get in touch with someone who can call off that attack, and in return, I'll send you a data dump of video files showing DHS Secretary Lawrence McGinley conspiring to commit murder, terrorism, and other war crimes, along with information on his coconspirators.\"\n\nThere was a long pause. \"That's quite the accusation. If you could come by the Detroit office\u2014\"\n\n\"Eight minutes, thirty seconds. Keep an eye on your email.\" I hung up and smiled grimly. \"Kiyoko, would you please email one of those clips to jarrod.steinkamp@fbi.gov? Something short and incriminating, if possible. We're on a tight schedule.\"\n\n\"What if Steinkamp's involved?\" asked Charles.\n\n\"Not everyone is out to get us.\" <Talulah, how long would it take you to find out who's in charge of the bombing operation and get their contact number to Agent Steinkamp?>\n\n<On it.>\n\n\"The email has been sent,\" said Kiyoko.\n\n\"Thank you. Can you override the gate controls and make sure nobody else tries to open our front door?\"\n\n\"I've been relaying our conversation to Babs Palmer. She and I will ensure that New Millennium remains protected.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" I sagged against a support pillar and took Lena's hand. \"Now we wait.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "CONSPIRACY IN THE CAPITAL: SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY ARRESTED",
                "text": "The FBI arrested Secretary of Homeland Security Lawrence McGinley yesterday at 2:45 p.m. McGinley is accused of orchestrating a series of murders earlier this month in California, Oklahoma, Michigan, and New York. He allegedly ordered the assassination of Senator Alexander Keeler, chairman of the Joint Committee on Magical Security, as well as a prison guard named Oscar Franklin, Jr.\n\nThis comes immediately following the resignation of Thomas M. Hayes, Commandant of the U. S. Coast Guard. Hayes has confessed to ordering an attack on a group of sirens off the Atlantic Coast. He claims McGinley blackmailed him, but says he was unaware of the full extent of the Secretary's plans.\n\nDetails of those plans remain unknown at this time, though McGinley is believed by many to have had a role in an attempted terrorist attack at the New Millennium site in Las Vegas, Nevada.\n\nAt least one of McGinley's would-be terrorists remains at large. Kiyoko It\u00f4, who previously served as one of McGinley's assistants, is said to have taken refuge within New Millennium. This contradicts earlier accounts that It\u00f4 had been murdered in Washington, D.C.\n\nA spokesperson for the FBI says they are continuing to review the evidence, and to question those in custody. They expect to issue a more detailed statement within the hour. An anonymous source within the FBI suggests this statement will implicate high-ranking figures from several other countries in what looks to have been an international conspiracy.\n\nI knocked on the door and waited. This was a run-down neighborhood, and the small house was in dire need of repair. The shingles were rotting away, one of the windows was boarded over, and the lawn was an overgrown mess. How long had it been since this family could afford the upkeep on their home?\n\n\"They might not be home.\" Nidhi stood behind me.\n\nTechnically, I shouldn't have been here at all. I was still wanted for any number of things, including destruction of Coast Guard property and however they wanted to classify my break-in to an illegal secret prison.\n\n\"If they're not home, we'll wait.\" I knocked again.\n\nThe door opened. The man in the doorway flinched when he recognized me.\n\n\"Mister Blackburn. Are your wife and son home this morning?\"\n\nHe didn't answer right away. I didn't need Nidhi's insight to recognize the conflict on his face. The last time he'd seen me was after the Joint Committee hearing, when I'd refused to help his son Caleb.\n\nHe'd probably heard the news about me and New Millennium. He kept looking past me, checking up and down the street like he was searching for the police. \"What do you want?\"\n\nBeneath his exhaustion and pain, I heard hope. Hope, and the fear of letting himself hope. \"I'm here to help your boy. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Yeah, that's right.\" He nodded hard, then stepped to one side. \"Come in.\"\n\nA corpulent corgi waddled up to sniff us both. The dog barked once, then trotted off, its duty as a watchdog done.\n\n\"Louise?\" Mr. Blackburn called out. \"Get Caleb and get out here!\"\n\nPaper jack-o'-lanterns decorated the walls. A family photo above the couch showed Mr. Blackburn and his wife, along with their son Caleb and a second boy, this one a few years older. I guessed he was the artist who'd created the Halloween decorations.\n\nMrs. Blackburn emerged from the hallway, Caleb following close behind. She froze when she saw me.\n\n\"He says he's here to fix Caleb,\" her husband said.\n\nShe put a hand down to keep Caleb behind her. \"Is it safe?\"\n\nI sat down on the old carpet and pulled out a polished wooden pen. \"This used to be a sword named Woundhealer. Its power comes from a book by a man named Fred Saberhagan. It will heal his heart, and any other injuries. That's all. No side effects, no follow-up. Nothing but a healthy boy with a long life ahead of him.\"\n\n\"How did you find us?\" she asked.\n\nI cocked my head. \"Magic librarian, remember?\"\n\nThey looked at one another, communicating as effectively without words as Talulah did with her telepathy. The father nodded and said, \"Do it. What do you need? Will it hurt?\"\n\n\"It shouldn't hurt at all. Could you take Caleb's shirt off for me?\" I winked at Caleb. \"It might tickle, though.\"\n\nA scar down the center of Caleb's chest showed where surgeons had tried to fix his heart. Caleb clung to his mother's hand with one of his own and sucked the knuckles of his other. He seemed not so much anxious as resigned. How many times had this kid been poked and prodded and examined in his short life?\n\nI twirled the pen through my fingers. \"We want your heart to be happy, right?\"\n\nHe nodded warily.\n\n\"Great. I'm gonna draw a smiley face right over your heart.\" I frowned and rubbed my chin. \"Can you remind me where your heart is?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\nI poked his foot. \"Is it in here?\"\n\nHe shook his head again, but I saw a trace of a smile.\n\n\"What about your armpit? Is that where you keep your heart?\"\n\nHe shook his head again, pulled his hand out of his mouth, and touched his chest.\n\n\"Oh, right. That's a good place for it. Very traditional.\" I brought the pen to his chest and drew two quick circles for eyes, then a larger arc for the smile. The eyes ended up lopsided, and the smile was too wide, more like the Joker from Batman than a traditional happy face, but it didn't matter.\n\nI capped the pen, tucked it away, and studied Caleb over the top of my new glasses to make sure the magic was active. \"All set.\"\n\n\"That... that's it?\" asked Louise. \"That's all it takes?\"\n\n\"How do we know he's really better?\" asked her husband.\n\n\"Take him for a checkup,\" said Nidhi. \"They'll want to run a number of tests. Let them do as many as it takes for you to be sure, and then take Caleb and his brother out to celebrate.\"\n\n\"I recommend ice cream,\" I added.\n\nCaleb's father was crying silently. His mother just stared, like it hadn't sunk in yet. As for Caleb, he'd pulled away and run back down the hall to play.\n\n\"You said it was illegal,\" Louise whispered. \"The other week, when we asked you for help. Will you get into trouble? Will we? Will they try to take Caleb away from us?\"\n\n\"I'm already in trouble.\" I stood and stretched. \"I've decided I don't give a\u2014 I've decided I don't care. When the doctors ask, tell them I broke into your house and healed him without your permission. Everyone saw that video clip after the hearing. They saw how frustrated I was. You had nothing to do with it.\"\n\n\"If you have any trouble, call us,\" said Nidhi.\n\n\"Anywhere, any time. I'll be able to get to you.\" I grinned. \"I've almost got my teleporter back up and running again.\"\n\nMr. Blackburn grabbed my hand and squeezed. \"Thank you. Thank you so much.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry I couldn't\u2014didn't do this before.\" I watched him and his wife step back, their arms slipping around one another. \"And thank you.\"\n\n\"What for?\" asked Mrs. Blackburn.\n\nI smiled. \"For letting me know I made the right decision.\"\n\nI waved to Marion as we drove through the front gates. I'd left Babs in charge of security while I was away. We'd given Darlene Jackson-Palmer a permanent apartment on site for as long as she wanted. I still had to talk to Babs about the ghosts in the walls, but that was one of many conversations Babs and I needed to hash out, and I wanted at least one day to recover before diving into my new job running New Millennium.\n\nLena was waiting for us at the parking lot. She kissed us both, slipped between us, and hooked her arms through ours. \"Well?\"\n\n\"We met with Nicola,\" said Nidhi. \"She'll be staying in D.C. She believes the Porters have an important role to play in the world. But she and Vaughn are going to try to legalize this place.\"\n\n\"Normally, there's no way anyone would even consider it,\" I said. \"But between the black eye the country's sporting thanks to McGinley's crimes and the fact that they don't have the physical ability to force us out, he thinks we might have a shot. He's going to write a bill that would treat New Millennium like a reservation.\"\n\nIn the past three days, we'd had close to three hundred people ask to make New Millennium their home, with more requests coming in every day.\n\nOff to the right, two harpies played Frisbee sixty feet in the air. A group of young werewolves were tearing along the inner edge of the wall, dust and gravel spraying from their paws. A vampire and a libriomancer sat on a bench outside the newly converted DeGeorge Orientation Center, arguing over a book.\n\nI'd offered Rabbi Miller a position in the DeGeorge Center, helping new arrivals, but he'd turned me down. For now, one of the Kiyokos was overseeing things. Twenty-three clones had come to live at New Millennium. If my math was right, that left at least half a dozen scattered across the world. When I asked Kiyoko if the rest of her sisters would be joining us, she simply smiled and said she wanted to see the world.\n\n\"How long before the two of you fly back to Michigan?\" I asked.\n\n\"Tomorrow evening,\" said Nidhi. \"I have clients scheduled for the day after.\"\n\nI tried to keep my disappointment from showing. \"Makes sense. And Lena needs to get back to her oak. The one she grew in the old server room isn't the same, I know.\"\n\n\"It kind of is,\" said Lena. \"I grew it from the wood inside my body, and that wood comes from my oak in Michigan. It's a young clone. You're right, though. It's too young and small to sustain me, and we've got to get it transplanted somewhere with sun and soil.\"\n\n\"I'll see what we can do. Maybe when it's grown, you'll be able to stay longer.\"\n\nThey looked at one another. Lena kissed Nidhi's hand and said, \"You could try one of those shrinking potions. It would be a lot easier to remove a tree the size of a bonsai. Then you'd just remove the magic and restore it to its proper size.\"\n\n\"Makes sense. I'll have to figure out how best to get an oak tree to drink a magic potion.\"\n\n\"Once you've done that,\" Lena continued, \"it should be easy enough to do the same with my oak back in Michigan.\"\n\nI stopped walking. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I'm not about to trust some commercial service to transport my tree from Michigan to Nevada.\" She grinned and stepped off the sidewalk. \"What would you think of a greenhouse over past the western residential building? The crops would help feed your expanding population.\"\n\nI hadn't moved. \"You're talking about moving here?\"\n\n\"For someone so smart, you can be slow on the uptake sometimes.\" She blew me a kiss.\n\n\"What about Nidhi?\"\n\n\"I'll need a few weeks to close out my cases in Michigan,\" said Nidhi. \"But I think I could make this work. With all the different cultures and backgrounds you're bringing into these walls, you'll need a mental health professional on staff. Especially with the fellow who's running things.\"\n\n\"Hey, now,\" I said, but she just chuckled. \"Yah, you're right. If you have other therapists you'd recommend, I'll take all the help I can get. We've got members from three different werewolf packs squabbling about status. There's the proposed 'exchange program' between us and the Students of Bi Sheng. Any number of people here have lost friends or loved ones in all the fighting over the past year. I can talk to Kiyoko about living quarters. I'm not sure where the best place for Lena's oak would be. We should probably bring in some healthier soil, and we'll need to irrigate\u2014\"\n\n\"You're babbling,\" Lena said, laughing.\n\n\"You're damn right!\" I walked over and threw my arms around her. \"How long have you two been talking about this?\"\n\n\"Since you gave me Gutenberg's book,\" said Nidhi.\n\nI swallowed. \"Thank you. Thank you both.\"\n\n\"It's not just about you.\" Lena turned away. \"I've been going out these past few nights, while the two of you were in D.C.\"\n\n\"We should do that more often,\" I agreed. \"I can't stand the crowds at the casinos, and traffic's a nightmare, but there are some great shows\u2014\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant. I kept thinking about Oscar Franklin in Virginia. The wrongness I felt from what he'd been doing.\" She shuddered. \"I've been walking the streets at night or wandering through the hotels. Vegas is quite the sexually active city. Twice so far, I've sensed that same wrongness, that utter perversion of what should be a beautiful thing. Once was a man beating a prostitute. The other was a drunk boyfriend.\"\n\nI glanced at Nidhi, who shook her head ever so slightly. This was news to her as well.\n\n\"What did you do?\" asked Nidhi.\n\n\"I stopped them. I made sure the victims were all right, and then I offered to help them get home, or to go with them to the police if they wanted. Neither of them did.\" She shook her head. \"I know having a vigilante running loose isn't the publicity New Millennium needs, but I feel like this is something I have to do.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said slowly, \"we should probably get you a mask.\"\n\n\"No capes,\" added Nidhi.\n\n\"You'll want to switch weapons. You're not exactly unknown, and there aren't many dryads running around with wooden swords.\"\n\n\"I'll get you cards with information about rape crisis hotlines,\" said Nidhi. \"People sometimes change their minds about talking a day or two after the assault.\"\n\n\"What if we got you a light saber?\" I asked. \"A green one, naturally.\"\n\n\"Have you thought of a name?\"\n\nLena pulled away from us both. \"You're not angry?\"\n\nNidhi smiled. \"I get to bed a superhero. What I'm feeling is not anger.\"\n\n\"I trust you,\" I said. \"We both do. You could have killed Franklin, but you didn't. As the administrator of this facility, I can't officially acknowledge or condone what you're doing. As your lover, I'm nothing but proud.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" She kissed us both.\n\n\"Uncle Isaac!\" Lex, Toby, and Angie had emerged from the Metrodora Tower. Lex was running toward me.\n\n\"I may have let them know you were back,\" Lena whispered.\n\n\"Thanks.\" I grinned and hugged Lex. \"I take it the follow-up check went well? Look how fast you can run! Are you sure we didn't accidentally give you bionic legs?\"\n\n\"Dad says we can't stay here forever,\" she pouted.\n\n\"You're welcome to stay a while, but your parents have friends and family and work back home, and what about you? You've got school to catch up on, and friends to see, right?\"\n\n\"I have friends here, too,\" she protested. \"One of them made me this tiara. She pulled it out of her cellphone!\"\n\nThat would be Jeneta. Given all they had been through, they were one of the first families I'd invited to join us. Only Jeneta and her father had accepted so far.\n\nToby clapped me on the shoulder. \"I half expected them to throw you in jail and toss away the key.\"\n\n\"I'm sure they'll try.\"\n\n\"My brother, declaring independence from the world.\" He shook his head. \"Are you sure you know what you're doing?\"\n\n\"Is he ever?\" asked Lena.\n\n\"You have no idea.\" I rubbed my forehead, thinking of the various reports and emails waiting on my desk. \"I've got three different proposals for starting a school. The vampires are negotiating with local cattle farmers for a steady blood supply. Vegas jacked up water and sewage prices. My research team is squabbling over office space again. Now that I've kicked out most of the DHS and NIH folks, we need to completely revamp our oversight process. Then there's negotiating with different countries about setting up additional New Millennium sites around the world. I'm tempted to drop Smudge on top of the paperwork and let him deal with it.\"\n\nLex tugged her mother's hand. \"Can I go play tag with the werewolves?\"\n\nAngie paled. Toby winced. They both looked at me.\n\n\"She'll be fine,\" I assured them. \"Those two are from the pack in the U.P. They know me, and they know what will happen if they hurt anyone. Especially my niece. They'll be as gentle with her as they would a newborn pup.\"\n\n\"Thanks!\" Lex took off before her parents could speak. Toby and Angie both started running after her.\n\n\"Have fun,\" I yelled.\n\nToby turned long enough to shout, \"Mom and Dad said to call them!\"\n\n\"I will!\"\n\nI wished they could stay longer, but we needed the room. The Metrodora Medical Tower was ninety percent full, with more patients arriving daily. I had a team poring through our catalogs, searching for the most efficient healing magic and technologies for the influx of disease and injury. We only accepted patients who couldn't be helped by mundane medicine, but their numbers were in the millions.\n\nIt was overwhelming, but we'd figure it out. This was magic, after all. The possibilities were limitless.\n\nMy name is Isaac Vainio. Until a week ago, I was the Director of Research for New Millennium.\n\nJohannes Gutenberg never believed humanity could accept magic and those of us who use it. He feared humanity would use magic as a weapon of war. That you would work to enslave or destroy us. Looking at the events of the past few months, I can hear his \"I told you so\" as if he were standing right beside me.\n\nGutenberg was right. He was also wrong.\n\nOne year ago, I wrote a letter to the world, a revelation of magic. Today, I write a declaration.\n\nWe've been here for millennia. We're not your enemies. We're your friends and family. Your neighbors, whether you knew we were there or not. And we're not going anywhere.\n\nIt's going to take time for the world to adjust. Change is confusing and frightening and at times violent. This isn't going to be pretty, folks. But we're not here to get in the middle of a war.\n\nI'm declaring New Millennium a place of peace, a home and refuge for those of us who need one. Anyone with magic is welcome here, so long as you harm no one. We've also opened up our medical facilities to anyone in need. Don't worry about cost or transportation. Contact us with your situation, and we'll do what we can to help.\n\nThere's no such thing as a utopia. The world has problems, and so will we. To that end, we will work with the world to help you bring magical criminals to justice. New Millennium will not be a haven for any who want death or violence.\n\nThis is our home. I intend to make it a place of hope. A place you can bring your loved ones for medical treatment. A place where we can look forward, where we can show you exactly how awesome magic can be.\n\nNew Millennium can't stop your wars. What we can do is set our sights higher. We mean to build a path to the stars, and to the future.\n\nI hope you'll join us."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Midnight Library",
        "author": "Matt Haig",
        "genres": [
            "magical realism"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "mental health"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "A Conversation About Rain",
                "text": "Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford. She sat at a low table staring at a chess board.\n\n'Nora dear, it's natural to worry about your future,' said the librarian, Mrs Elm, her eyes twinkling.\n\nMrs Elm made her first move. A knight hopping over the neat row of white pawns. 'Of course, you're going to be worried about the exams. But you could be anything you want to be, Nora. Think of all that possibility. It's exciting.'\n\n'Yes. I suppose it is.'\n\n'A whole life in front of you.'\n\n'A whole life.'\n\n'You could do anything, live anywhere. Somewhere a bit less cold and wet.'\n\nNora pushed a pawn forward two spaces.\n\nIt was hard not to compare Mrs Elm to her mother, who treated Nora like a mistake in need of correction. For instance, when she was a baby her mother had been so worried Nora's left ear stuck out more than her right that she'd used sticky tape to address the situation, then disguised it beneath a woollen bonnet.\n\n'I hate the cold and wet,' added Mrs Elm, for emphasis.\n\nMrs Elm had short grey hair and a kind and mildly crinkled oval face sitting pale above her turtle-green polo neck. She was quite old. But she was also the person most on Nora's wavelength in the entire school, and even on days when it wasn't raining she would spend her afternoon break in the small library.\n\n'Coldness and wetness don't always go together,' Nora told her. 'Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth. Technically, it's a desert.'\n\n'Well, that sounds up your street.'\n\n'I don't think it's far enough away.'\n\n'Well, maybe you should be an astronaut. Travel the galaxy.'\n\nNora smiled. 'The rain is even worse on other planets.'\n\n'Worse than Bedfordshire?'\n\n'On Venus it is pure acid.'\n\nMrs Elm pulled a paper tissue from her sleeve and delicately blew her nose. 'See? With a brain like yours you can do anything.'\n\nA blond boy Nora recognised from a couple of years below her ran past outside the rain-speckled window. Either chasing someone or being chased. Since her brother had left, she'd felt a bit unguarded out there. The library was a little shelter of civilisation.\n\n'Dad thinks I've thrown everything away. Now I've stopped swimming.'\n\n'Well, far be it from me to say, but there is more to this world than swimming really fast. There are many different possible lives ahead of you. Like I said last week, you could be a glaciologist. I've been researching and the\u2014'\n\nAnd it was then that the phone rang.\n\n'One minute,' said Mrs Elm, softly. 'I'd better get that.'\n\nA moment later, Nora watched Mrs Elm on the phone. 'Yes. She's here now.' The librarian's face fell in shock. She turned away from Nora, but her words were audible across the hushed room: 'Oh no. No. Oh my God. Of course...'\n\n[ Nineteen Years Later ]\n\n[ The Man at the Door ]\n\nTwenty-seven hours before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat on her dilapidated sofa scrolling through other people's happy lives, waiting for something to happen. And then, out of nowhere, something actually did.\n\nSomeone, for whatever peculiar reason, rang her doorbell.\n\nShe wondered for a moment if she shouldn't get the door at all. She was, after all, already in her night clothes even though it was only nine p.m. She felt self-conscious about her over-sized ECO WORRIER T-shirt and her tartan pyjama bottoms.\n\nShe put on her slippers, to be slightly more civilised, and discovered that the person at the door was a man, and one she recognised.\n\nHe was tall and gangly and boyish, with a kind face, but his eyes were sharp and bright, like they could see through things.\n\nIt was good to see him, if a little surprising, especially as he was wearing sports gear and he looked hot and sweaty despite the cold, rainy weather. The juxtaposition between them made her feel even more slovenly than she had done five seconds earlier.\n\nBut she'd been feeling lonely. And though she'd studied enough existential philosophy to believe loneliness was a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe, it was good to see him.\n\n'Ash,' she said, smiling. 'It's Ash, isn't it?'\n\n'Yes. It is.'\n\n'What are you doing here? It's good to see you.'\n\nA few weeks ago she'd been sat playing her electric piano and he'd run down Bancroft Avenue and had seen her in the window here at 33A and given her a little wave. He had once \u2013 years ago \u2013 asked her out for a coffee. Maybe he was about to do that again.\n\n'It's good to see you too,' he said, but his tense forehead didn't show it.\n\nWhen she'd spoken to him in the shop, he'd always sounded breezy, but now his voice contained something heavy. He scratched his brow. Made another sound but didn't quite manage a full word.\n\n'You running?' A pointless question. He was clearly out for a run. But he seemed relieved, momentarily, to have something trivial to say.\n\n'Yeah. I'm doing the Bedford Half. It's this Sunday.'\n\n'Oh right. Great. I was thinking of doing a half-marathon and then I remembered I hate running.'\n\nThis had sounded funnier in her head than it did as actual words being vocalised out of her mouth. She didn't even hate running. But still, she was perturbed to see the seriousness of his expression. The silence went beyond awkward into something else.\n\n'You told me you had a cat,' he said eventually.\n\n'Yes. I have a cat.'\n\n'I remembered his name. Voltaire. A ginger tabby?'\n\n'Yeah. I call him Volts. He finds Voltaire a bit pretentious. It turns out he's not massively into eighteenth-century French philosophy and literature. He's quite down-to-earth. You know. For a cat.'\n\nAsh looked down at her slippers.\n\n'I'm afraid I think he's dead.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'He's lying very still by the side of the road. I saw the name on the collar, I think a car might have hit him. I'm sorry, Nora.'\n\nShe was so scared of her sudden switch in emotions right then that she kept smiling, as if the smile could keep her in the world she had just been in, the one where Volts was alive and where this man she'd sold guitar songbooks to had rung her doorbell for another reason.\n\nAsh, she remembered, was a surgeon. Not a veterinary one, a general human one. If he said something was dead it was, in all probability, dead.\n\n'I'm so sorry.'\n\nNora had a familiar sense of grief. Only the sertraline stopped her crying. 'Oh God.'\n\nShe stepped out onto the wet cracked paving slabs of Bancroft Avenue, hardly breathing, and saw the poor ginger-furred creature lying on the rain-glossed tarmac beside the kerb. His head grazed the side of the pavement and his legs were back as if in mid-gallop, chasing some imaginary bird.\n\n'Oh Volts. Oh no. Oh God.'\n\nShe knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend \u2013 and she was \u2013 but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaire's still and peaceful expression \u2013 that total absence of pain \u2013 there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness.\n\nEnvy.\n\n[ String Theory ]\n\nNine and a half hours before she decided to die, Nora arrived late for her afternoon shift at String Theory.\n\n'I'm sorry,' she told Neil, in the scruffy little windowless box of an office. 'My cat died. Last night. And I had to bury him. Well, someone helped me bury him. But then I was left alone in my flat and I couldn't sleep and forgot to set the alarm and didn't wake up till midday and then had to rush.'\n\nThis was all true, and she imagined her appearance \u2013 including make-up-free face, loose makeshift ponytail and the same secondhand green corduroy pinafore dress she had worn to work all week, garnished with a general air of tired despair \u2013 would back her up.\n\nNeil looked up from his computer and leaned back in his chair. He joined his hands together and made a steeple of his index fingers, which he placed under his chin, as if he was Confucius contemplating a deep philosophical truth about the universe rather than the boss of a musical equipment shop dealing with a late employee. There was a massive Fleetwood Mac poster on the wall behind him, the top right corner of which had come unstuck and flopped down like a puppy's ear.\n\n'Listen, Nora, I like you.'\n\nNeil was harmless. A fifty-something guitar aficionado who liked cracking bad jokes and playing passable old Dylan covers live in the store.\n\n'And I know you've got mental-health stuff.'\n\n'Everyone's got mental-health stuff.'\n\n'You know what I mean.'\n\n'I'm feeling much better, generally,' she lied. 'It's not clinical. The doctor says it's situational depression. It's just that I keep on having new... situations. But I haven't taken a day off sick for it all. Apart from when my mum... Yeah. Apart from that.'\n\nNeil sighed. When he did so he made a whistling sound out of his nose. An ominous B flat. 'Nora, how long have you worked here?'\n\n'Twelve years and...' \u2013 she knew this too well \u2013 '...eleven months and three days. On and off.'\n\n'That's a long time. I feel like you are made for better things. You're in your late thirties.'\n\n'I'm thirty-five.'\n\n'You've got so much going for you. You teach people piano...'\n\n'One person.'\n\nHe brushed a crumb off his sweater.\n\n'Did you picture yourself stuck in your hometown working in a shop? You know, when you were fourteen? What did you picture yourself as?'\n\n'At fourteen? A swimmer.' She'd been the fastest fourteen-year-old girl in the country at breaststroke and second-fastest at freestyle. She remembered standing on a podium at the National Swimming Championships.\n\n'So, what happened?'\n\nShe gave the short version. 'It was a lot of pressure.'\n\n'Pressure makes us, though. You start off as coal and the pressure makes you a diamond.'\n\nShe didn't correct his knowledge of diamonds. She didn't tell him that while coal and diamonds are both carbon, coal is too impure to be able, under whatever pressure, to become a diamond. According to science, you start off as coal and you end up as coal. Maybe that was the real-life lesson.\n\nShe smoothed a stray strand of her coal-black hair up towards her ponytail.\n\n'What are you saying, Neil?'\n\n'It's never too late to pursue a dream.'\n\n'Pretty sure it's too late to pursue that one.'\n\n'You're a very well qualified person, Nora. Degree in Philosophy...'\n\nNora stared down at the small mole on her left hand. That mole had been through everything she'd been through. And it just stayed there, not caring. Just being a mole. 'Not a massive demand for philosophers in Bedford, if I'm honest, Neil.'\n\n'You went to uni, had a year in London, then came back.'\n\n'I didn't have much of a choice.'\n\nNora didn't want a conversation about her dead mum. Or even Dan. Because Neil had found Nora's backing out of a wedding with two days' notice the most fascinating love story since Kurt and Courtney.\n\n'We all have choices, Nora. There's such a thing as free will.'\n\n'Well, not if you subscribe to a deterministic view of the universe.'\n\n'But why here?'\n\n'It was either here or the Animal Rescue Centre. This paid better. Plus, you know, music.'\n\n'You were in a band. With your brother.'\n\n'I was. The Labyrinths. We weren't really going anywhere.'\n\n'Your brother tells a different story.'\n\nThis took Nora by surprise. 'Joe? How do you\u2014'\n\n'He bought an amp. Marshall DSL40.'\n\n'When?'\n\n'Friday.'\n\n'He was in Bedford?'\n\n'Unless it was a hologram. Like Tupac.'\n\nHe was probably visiting Ravi, Nora thought. Ravi was her brother's best friend. While Joe had given up the guitar and moved to London, for a crap IT job he hated, Ravi had stuck to Bedford. He played in a covers band now, called Slaughterhouse Four, doing pub gigs around town.\n\n'Right. That's interesting.'\n\nNora was pretty certain her brother knew Friday was her day off. The fact prodded her from inside.\n\n'I'm happy here.'\n\n'Except you aren't.'\n\nHe was right. A soul-sickness festered within her. Her mind was throwing itself up. She widened her smile.\n\n'I mean, I am happy with the job. Happy as in, you know, satisfied. Neil, I need this job.'\n\n'You are a good person. You worry about the world. The homeless, the environment.'\n\n'I need a job.'\n\nHe was back in his Confucius pose. 'You need freedom.'\n\n'I don't want freedom.'\n\n'This isn't a non-profit organisation. Though I have to say it is rapidly becoming one.'\n\n'Look, Neil, is this about what I said the other week? About you needing to modernise things? I've got some ideas of how to get younger peo\u2014'\n\n'No,' he said, defensively. 'This place used to just be guitars. String Theory, get it? I diversified. Made this work. It's just that when times are tough I can't pay you to put off customers with your face looking like a wet weekend.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I'm afraid, Nora' \u2013 he paused for a moment, about the time it takes to lift an axe into the air \u2013 'I'm going to have to let you go.'\n\n[ To Live Is to Suffer ]\n\nNine hours before she decided to die, Nora wandered around Bedford aimlessly. The town was a conveyor belt of despair. The pebble-dashed sports centre where her dead dad once watched her swim lengths of the pool, the Mexican restaurant where she'd taken Dan for fajitas, the hospital where her mum had her treatment.\n\nDan had texted her yesterday.\n\n[ Nora, I miss your voice. Can we talk? D x ]\n\nShe'd said she was stupidly hectic (big lol). Yet it was impossible to text anything else. Not because she didn't still feel for him, but because she did. And couldn't risk hurting him again. She'd ruined his life. My life is chaos, he'd told her, via drunk texts, shortly after the would-be wedding she'd pulled out of two days before.\n\nThe universe tended towards chaos and entropy. That was basic thermodynamics. Maybe it was basic existence too.\n\nYou lose your job, then more shit happens.\n\nThe wind whispered through the trees.\n\nIt began to rain.\n\nShe headed towards the shelter of a newsagent's, with the deep \u2013 and, as it happened, correct \u2013 sense that things were about to get worse.\n\n[ Doors ]\n\nEight hours before she decided to die, Nora entered the newsagent's.\n\n'Sheltering from the rain?' the woman behind the counter asked.\n\n'Yes.' Nora kept her head down. Her despair growing like a weight she couldn't carry.\n\nA National Geographic was on display.\n\nAs she stared now at the magazine cover \u2013 an image of a black hole \u2013 she realised that's what she was. A black hole. A dying star, collapsing in on itself.\n\nHer dad used to subscribe. She remembered being enthralled by an article about Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. She'd never seen a place that looked so far away. She'd read about scientists doing research among glaciers and frozen fjords and puffins. Then, prompted by Mrs Elm, she'd decided she wanted to be a glaciologist.\n\nShe saw the scruffy, hunched form of her brother's friend \u2013 and their own former bandmate \u2013 Ravi by the music mags, engrossed in an article. She stood there for a fraction too long, because when she walked away she heard him say, 'Nora?'\n\n'Ravi, hi. I hear Joe was in Bedford the other day?'\n\nA small nod. 'Yeah.'\n\n'Did he, um, did you see him?'\n\n'I did actually.'\n\nA silence Nora felt as pain. 'He didn't tell me he was coming.'\n\n'Was just a fly-by.'\n\n'Is he okay?'\n\nRavi paused. Nora had once liked him, and he'd been a loyal friend to her brother. But, as with Joe, there was a barrier between them. They hadn't parted on the best of terms. (He'd thrown his drumsticks on the floor of a rehearsal room and stropped out when Nora told him she was out of the band.) 'I think he's depressed.'\n\nNora's mind grew heavier at the idea her brother might feel like she did.\n\n'He's not himself,' Ravi went on, anger in his voice. 'He's going to have to move out of his shoebox in Shepherd's Bush. What with him not being able to play lead guitar in a successful rock band. Mind you, I've got no money either. Pub gigs don't pay these days. Even when you agree to clean the toilets. Ever cleaned pub toilets, Nora?'\n\n'I'm having a pretty shit time too, if we're doing the Misery Olympics.'\n\nRavi cough-laughed. A hardness momentarily shadowed his face. 'The world's smallest violin is playing.'\n\nShe wasn't in the mood. 'Is this about The Labyrinths? Still?'\n\n'It meant a lot to me. And to your brother. To all of us. We had a deal with Universal. Right. There. Album, singles, tour, promo. We could be Coldplay now.'\n\n'You hate Coldplay.'\n\n'Not the point. We could be in Malibu. Instead: Bedford. And so, no, your brother's not ready to see you.'\n\n'I was having panic attacks. I'd have let everyone down in the end. I told the label to take you on without me. I agreed to write the songs. It wasn't my fault I was engaged. I was with Dan. It was kind of a deal-breaker.'\n\n'Well, yeah. How did that work out?'\n\n'Ravi, that isn't fair.'\n\n'Fair. Great word.'\n\nThe woman behind the counter gawped with interest.\n\n'Bands don't last. We'd have been a meteor shower. Over before we started.'\n\n'Meteor showers are fucking beautiful.'\n\n'Come on. You're still with Ella, aren't you?'\n\n'And I could be with Ella and in a successful band, with money. We had that chance. Right there.' He pointed to the palm of his hand. 'Our songs were fire.'\n\nNora hated herself for silently correcting the 'our' to 'my'.\n\n'I don't think your problem was stage fright. Or wedding fright. I think your problem was life fright.'\n\nThis hurt. The words took the air out of her.\n\n'And I think your problem,' she retaliated, voice trembling, 'is blaming others for your shitty life.'\n\nHe nodded, as if slapped. Put his magazine back.\n\n'See you around, Nora.'\n\n'Tell Joe I said hi,' she said, as he walked out of the shop and into the rain. 'Please.'\n\nShe caught sight of the cover of Your Cat magazine. A ginger tabby. Her mind felt loud, like a Sturm und Drang symphony, as if the ghost of a German composer was trapped inside her mind, conjuring chaos and intensity.\n\nThe woman behind the counter said something to her she missed.\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'Nora Seed?'\n\nThe woman \u2013 blonde bob, bottle tan \u2013 was happy and casual and relaxed in a way Nora no longer knew how to be. Leaning over the counter, on her forearms, as if Nora was a lemur at the zoo.\n\n'Yep.'\n\n'I'm Kerry-Anne. Remember you from school. The swimmer. Super-brain. Didn't whatshisface, Mr Blandford, do an assembly on you once? Said you were going to end up at the Olympics?'\n\nNora nodded.\n\n'So, did you?'\n\n'I, um, gave it up. Was more into music... at the time. Then life happened.'\n\n'So what do you do now?'\n\n'I'm... between things.'\n\n'Got anyone, then? Bloke? Kids?'\n\nNora shook her head. Wishing it would fall off. Her own head. Onto the floor. So she never had to have a conversation with a stranger ever again.\n\n'Well, don't hang about. Tick-tock tick-tock.'\n\n'I'm thirty-five.' She wished Izzy was here. Izzy never put up with any of this kind of shit. 'And I'm not sure I want\u2014'\n\n'Me and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y'know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictures.'\n\n'I get headaches, with... phones.'\n\nDan had wanted kids. Nora didn't know. She'd been petrified of motherhood. The fear of a deeper depression. She couldn't look after herself, let alone anyone else.\n\n'Still in Bedford, then?'\n\n'Mm-hm.'\n\n'Thought you'd be one who got away.'\n\n'I came back. My mum was ill.'\n\n'Aw, sorry to hear that. Hope she's okay now?'\n\n'I better go.'\n\n'But it's still raining.'\n\nAs Nora escaped the shop, she wished there were nothing but doors ahead of her, which she could walk through one by one, leaving everything behind.\n\n[ How to Be a Black Hole ]\n\nSeven hours before she decided to die, Nora was in free fall and she had no one to talk to.\n\nHer last hope was her former best friend Izzy, who was over ten thousand miles away in Australia. And things had dried up between them too.\n\nShe took out her phone and sent Izzy a message.\n\nHi Izzy, long time no chat. Miss you, friend. Would be WONDROUS to catch up. X\n\nShe added another 'X' and sent it.\n\nWithin a minute, Izzy had seen the message. Nora waited in vain for three dots to appear.\n\nShe passed the cinema, where a new Ryan Bailey film was playing tonight. A corny cowboy-romcom called Last Chance Saloon.\n\nRyan Bailey's face seemed to always know deep and significant things. Nora had loved him ever since she'd watched him play a brooding Plato in The Athenians on TV, and since he'd said in an interview that he'd studied philosophy. She'd imagined them having deep conversations about Henry David Thoreau through a veil of steam in his West Hollywood hot tub.\n\n'Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,' Thoreau had said. 'Live the life you've imagined.'\n\nThoreau had been her favourite philosopher to study. But who seriously goes confidently in the direction of their dreams? Well, apart from Thoreau. He'd gone and lived in the woods, with no contact from the outside world, to just sit there and write and chop wood and fish. But life was probably simpler two centuries ago in Concord, Massachusetts, than modern life in Bedford, Bedfordshire.\n\nOr maybe it wasn't.\n\nMaybe she was just really crap at it. At life.\n\nWhole hours passed by. She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing. Not even the small purpose of picking up Mr Banerjee's medication, as she had done that two days ago. She tried to give a homeless man some money but realised she had no money.\n\n'Cheer up, love, it might never happen,' someone said.\n\nNothing ever did, she thought to herself. That was the whole problem.\n\n[ Antimatter ]\n\nFive hours before she decided to die, as she began walking home, her phone vibrated in her hand.\n\nMaybe it was Izzy. Maybe Ravi had told her brother to get in touch.\n\nNo.\n\n'Oh hi, Doreen.'\n\nAn agitated voice. 'Where were you?'\n\nShe'd totally forgotten. What time is it?\n\n'I've had a really crap day. I'm so sorry.'\n\n'We waited outside your flat for an hour.'\n\n'I can still do Leo's lesson when I get back. I'll be five minutes.'\n\n'Too late. He's with his dad now for three days.'\n\n'Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'\n\nShe was a waterfall of apologies. She was drowning in herself.\n\n'To be honest, Nora, he's been thinking about giving up altogether.'\n\n'But he's so good.'\n\n'He's really enjoyed it. But he's too busy. Exams, mates, football. Something has to give...'\n\n'He has a real talent. I've got him into bloody Chopin. Please\u2014'\n\nA deep, deep sigh. 'Bye, Nora.'\n\nNora imagined the ground opening up, sending her down through the lithosphere, and the mantle, not stopping until she reached the inner core, compressed into a hard unfeeling metal."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Four hours before she decided to die, Nora passed her elderly neighbour, Mr Banerjee.\n\nMr Banerjee was eighty-four years old. He was frail but was slightly more mobile since his hip surgery.\n\n'It's terrible out, isn't it?'\n\n'Yes,' mumbled Nora.\n\nHe glanced at his flowerbed. 'The irises are out, though.'\n\nShe looked at the clusters of purple flowers, forcing a smile as she wondered what possible consolation they could offer.\n\nHis eyes were tired, behind their spectacles. He was at his door, fumbling for keys. A bottle of milk in a carrier bag that seemed too heavy for him. It was rare to see him out of the house. A house she had visited during her first month here, to help him set up an online grocery shop.\n\n'Oh,' he said now. 'I have some good news. I don't need you to collect my pills any more. The boy from the chemist has moved nearby and he says he will drop them off.'\n\nNora tried to reply but couldn't get the words out. She nodded instead.\n\nHe managed to open the door, then closed it, retreating into his shrine to his dear dead wife.\n\nThat was it. No one needed her. She was superfluous to the universe.\n\nOnce inside her flat the silence was louder than noise. The smell of cat food. A bowl still out for Voltaire, half eaten.\n\nShe got herself some water and swallowed two anti-depressants and stared at the rest of the pills, wondering.\n\nThree hours before she decided to die, her whole being ached with regret, as if the despair in her mind was somehow in her torso and limbs too. As if it had colonised every part of her.\n\nIt reminded her that everyone was better off without her. You get near a black hole and the gravitational pull drags you into its bleak, dark reality.\n\nThe thought was like a ceaseless mind-cramp, something too uncomfortable to bear yet too strong to avoid.\n\nNora went through her social media. No messages, no comments, no new followers, no friend requests. She was antimatter, with added self-pity.\n\nShe went on Instagram and saw everyone had worked out how to live, except her. She posted a rambling update on Facebook, which she didn't even really use any more.\n\nTwo hours before she decided to die, she opened a bottle of wine.\n\nOld philosophy textbooks looked down at her, ghost furnishings from her university days, when life still had possibility. A yucca plant and three tiny, squat potted cacti. She imagined being a non-sentient life form sitting in a pot all day was probably an easier existence.\n\nShe sat down at the little electric piano but played nothing. She thought of sitting by Leo's side, teaching him Chopin's Prelude in E Minor. Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.\n\nThere was an old musician's clich\u00e9, about how there were no wrong notes on a piano. But her life was a cacophony of nonsense. A piece that could have gone in wonderful directions, but now went nowhere at all.\n\nTime slipped by. She stared into space.\n\nAfter the wine a realisation hit her with total clarity. She wasn't made for this life.\n\nEvery move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she'd imagined she'd be.\n\nSwimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved.\n\nNothing.\n\nShe couldn't even manage 'cat owner'. Or 'one-hour-a-week piano tutor'. Or 'human capable of conversation'.\n\nThe tablets weren't working.\n\nShe finished the wine. All of it.\n\n'I miss you,' she said into the air, as if the spirits of every person she'd loved were in the room with her.\n\nShe called her brother and left a voicemail when he didn't pick up.\n\n'I love you, Joe. I just wanted you to know that. There's nothing you could have done. This is about me. Thank you for being my brother. I love you. Bye.'\n\nIt began to rain again, so she sat there with the blinds open, staring at the drops on the glass.\n\nThe time was now twenty-two minutes past eleven.\n\nShe knew only one thing with absolute certainty: she didn't want to reach tomorrow. She stood up. She found a pen and a piece of paper.\n\nIt was, she decided, a very good time to die.\n\n\u2002Dear Whoever,\n\n\u2002I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them. Through my own carelessness and misfortune, the world has retreated from me, and so now it makes perfect sense that I should retreat from the world.\n\n\u2002If I felt it was possible to stay, I would. But I don't. And so I can't. I make life worse for people.\n\n\u2002I have nothing to give. I'm sorry.\n\n\u2002Be kind to each other.\n\n\u2002Bye,\n\n\u2002Nora\n\n00:00:00\n\nAt first the mist was so pervasive that she could see nothing else, until slowly she saw pillars appear on either side of her. She was standing on a path, some kind of colonnade. The columns were brain-grey, with specks of brilliant blue. The misty vapours cleared, like spirits wanting to be unwatched, and a shape emerged.\n\nA solid, rectangular shape.\n\nThe shape of a building. About the size of a church or a small supermarket. It had a stone facade, the same colouration as the pillars, with a large wooden central door and a roof which had aspirations of grandeur, with intricate details and a grand-looking clock on the front gable, with black-painted Roman numerals and its hands pointing to midnight. Tall dark arched windows, framed with stone bricks, punctuated the front wall, equidistant from each other. When she first looked it seemed there were only four windows, but a moment later there were definitely five of them. She thought she must have miscounted.\n\nAs there was nothing else around, and since she had nowhere else to be, Nora stepped cautiously towards it.\n\nShe looked at the digital display of her watch.\n\n00:00:00\n\nMidnight, as the clock had told her.\n\nShe waited for the next second to arrive, but it didn't. Even as she walked closer to the building, even as she opened the wooden door, even as she stepped inside, the display didn't change. Either something was wrong with her watch, or something was wrong with time. In the circumstances, it could have been either.\n\nWhat's happening? she wondered. What the hell is going on?\n\nMaybe this place would hold some answers, she thought, as she walked inside. The place was well lit, and the floor was light stone \u2013 somewhere between light yellow and camel-brown, like the colour of an old page \u2013 but the windows she had seen on the outside weren't there on the inside. In fact, even though she had only taken a few steps forward she could no longer see the walls at all. Instead, there were bookshelves. Aisles and aisles of shelves, reaching up to the ceiling and branching off from the broad open corridor Nora was walking down. She turned down one of the aisles and stopped to gaze in bafflement at the seemingly endless amount of books.\n\nThe books were everywhere, on shelves so thin they might as well have been invisible. The books were all green. Greens of multifarious shades. Some of these volumes were a murky swamp green, some a bright and light chartreuse, some a bold emerald and others the verdant shade of summer lawns.\n\nAnd on the subject of summer lawns: despite the fact that the books looked old, the air in the library felt fresh. It had a lush, grassy, outdoors kind of smell, not the dusty scent of old tomes.\n\nThe shelves really did seem to go on for ever, straight and long towards a far-off horizon, like lines indicating one-point perspective in a school art project, broken only by the occasional corridor.\n\nShe picked a corridor at random and set off. At the next turn, she took a left and became a little lost. She searched for a way out, but there was no sign of an exit. She attempted to retrace her steps towards the entrance, but it was impossible.\n\nEventually she had to conclude she wasn't going to find the exit.\n\n'This is abnormal,' she said to herself, to find comfort in the sound of her own voice. 'Definitely abnormal.'\n\nNora stopped and stepped closer to some of the books.\n\nThere were no titles or author names adorning the spines. Aside from the difference of shade, the only other variation was size: the books were of similar height but varied in width. Some had spines two inches wide, others significantly less. One or two weren't much more than pamphlets.\n\nShe reached to pull out one of the books, choosing a medium-sized one in a slightly drab olive colour. It looked a bit dusty and worn.\n\nBefore she had pulled it clean from the shelf, she heard a voice behind her and she jumped back.\n\n'Be careful,' the voice said.\n\nAnd Nora turned around to see who was there.\n\n[ The Librarian ]\n\n'Please. You have to be careful.'\n\nThe woman had arrived seemingly from nowhere. Smartly dressed, with short grey hair and a turtle-green polo neck jumper. About sixty, if Nora had to pin it down.\n\n'Who are you?'\n\nBut before she had finished the question, she realised she already knew the answer.\n\n'I'm the librarian,' the woman said, coyly. 'That is who.'\n\nHer face was one of kind but stern wisdom. She had the same neat cropped grey hair she'd always had, with a face that looked precisely as it always did in Nora's mind.\n\nFor there, right in front of her, was her old school librarian.\n\n'Mrs Elm.'\n\nMrs Elm smiled, thinly. 'Perhaps.'\n\nNora remembered those rainy afternoons, playing chess.\n\nShe remembered the day her father died, when Mrs Elm gently broke the news to her in the library. Her father had died suddenly of a heart attack while on the rugby field of the boys' boarding school where he taught. She was numb for about half an hour, and had stared blankly at the unfinished game of chess. The reality was simply too big to absorb at first, but then it had hit her hard and sideways, taking her off the track she'd known. She had hugged Mrs Elm so close, crying into her polo neck until her face was raw from the fusion of tears and acrylic.\n\nMrs Elm had held her, stroking and smoothing the back of her head like a baby, not offering platitudes or false comforts or anything other than concern. She remembered Mrs Elm's voice telling her at the time: 'Things will get better, Nora. It's going to be all right.'\n\nIt was over an hour before Nora's mother came to pick her up, her brother stoned and numb in the backseat. And Nora had sat in the front next to her mute, trembling mother, saying that she loved her, but hearing nothing back.\n\n'What is this place? Where am I?'\n\nMrs Elm smiled a very formal kind of smile. 'A library, of course.'\n\n'It's not the school library. And there's no exit. Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?'\n\n'Not exactly,' said Mrs Elm.\n\n'I don't understand.'\n\n'Then let me explain.'\n\n[ The Midnight Library ]\n\nAs she spoke, Mrs Elm's eyes came alive, twinkling like puddles in moonlight.\n\n'Between life and death there is a library,' she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?'\n\n'So, I am dead?' Nora asked.\n\nMrs Elm shook her head. 'No. Listen carefully. Between life and death.' She gestured vaguely along the aisle, towards the distance. 'Death is outside.'\n\n'Well, I should go there. Because I want to die.' Nora began walking.\n\nBut Mrs Elm shook her head. 'That isn't how death works.'\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'You don't go to death. Death comes to you.'\n\nEven death was something Nora couldn't do properly, it seemed.\n\nIt was a familiar feeling. This feeling of being incomplete in just about every sense. An unfinished jigsaw of a human. Incomplete living and incomplete dying.\n\n'So why am I not dead? Why has death not come to me? I gave it an open invitation. I'd wanted to die. But here I am, still existing. I am still aware of things.'\n\n'Well, if it's any comfort, you are very possibly about to die. People who pass by the library usually don't stay long, one way or the other.'\n\nWhen she thought about it \u2013 and increasingly she had been thinking about it \u2013 Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn't. The things she hadn't been able to become. And there really were quite a lot of things she hadn't become. The regrets which were on permanent repeat in her mind. I haven't become an Olympic swimmer. I haven't become a glaciologist. I haven't become Dan's wife. I haven't become a mother. I haven't become the lead singer of The Labyrinths. I haven't managed to become a truly good or truly happy person. I haven't managed to look after Voltaire. And now, last of all, she hadn't even managed to become dead. It was pathetic really, the amount of possibilities she had squandered.\n\n'While the Midnight Library stands, Nora, you will be preserved from death. Now, you have to decide how you want to live.'\n\n[ The Moving Shelves ]\n\nThe shelves on either side of Nora began to move. The shelves didn't change angles, they just kept on sliding horizontally. It was possible that the shelves weren't moving at all, but the books were, and it wasn't obvious why or even how. There was no visible mechanism making it happen, and no sound or sight of books falling off the end \u2013 or rather the start \u2013 of the shelf. The books slid by at varying degrees of slowness, depending on the shelf they were on, but none moved fast.\n\n'What's happening?'\n\nMrs Elm's expression stiffened and her posture straightened, her chin retreating a little into her neck. She took a step closer to Nora and clasped her hands together. 'It is time, my dear, to begin.'\n\n'If you don't mind me asking \u2013 begin what?'\n\n'Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life.'\n\n'Parallel lives?'\n\n'Not always parallel. Some are more... perpendicular. So, do you want to live a life you could be living? Do you want to do something differently? Is there anything you wish to change? Did you do anything wrong?'\n\nThat was an easy one. 'Yes. Absolutely everything.'\n\nThe answer seemed to tickle the librarian's nose.\n\nMrs Elm quickly rummaged for the paper tissue that was stuffed up the inside sleeve of her polo neck. She brought it quickly to her face and sneezed into it.\n\n'Bless you,' said Nora, watching as the tissue disappeared from the librarian's hands the moment she'd finished using it, through some strange and hygienic magic.\n\n'Don't worry. Tissues are like lives. There are always more.' Mrs Elm returned to her train of thought. 'Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try... But you are no longer within a lifetime. You have popped outside. This is your opportunity, Nora, to see how things could be.'\n\nThis can't be real, Nora thought to herself.\n\nMrs Elm seemed to know what she was thinking.\n\n'Oh, it is real, Nora Seed. But it is not quite reality as you understand it. For want of a better word, it is in-between. It is not life. It is not death. It is not the real world in a conventional sense. But nor is it a dream. It isn't one thing or another. It is, in short, the Midnight Library.'\n\nThe slow-moving shelves came to a halt. Nora noticed that on one of the shelves, to her right, at shoulder height, there was a large gap. All the other areas of the shelves around her had the books tightly pressed side-by-side, but here, lying flat on the thin, white shelf, there was only one book.\n\nAnd this book wasn't green like the others. It was grey. As grey as the stone of the front of the building when she had seen it through the mist.\n\nMrs Elm took the book from the shelf and handed it to Nora. She had a slight look of anticipatory pride, as if she'd handed her a Christmas present.\n\nIt had seemed light when Mrs Elm was holding it, but it was far heavier than it looked. Nora went to open it.\n\nMrs Elm shook her head.\n\n'You always have to wait for my say-so.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'Every book in here, every book in this entire library \u2013 except one \u2013 is a version of your life. This library is yours. It is here for you. You see, everyone's lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways. These books on the shelves are your life, all starting from the same point in time. Right now. Midnight. Tuesday the twenty-eighth of April. But these midnight possibilities aren't the same. Some are similar, some are very different.'\n\n'This is crackers,' said Nora. 'Except one? This one?' Nora tilted the stone-grey book towards Mrs Elm.\n\nMrs Elm raised an eyebrow. 'Yes. That one. It's something you have written without ever having to type a word.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'This book is the source of all your problems, and the answer to them too.'\n\n'But what is it?'\n\n'It is called, my dear, The Book of Regrets.'\n\n[ The Book of Regrets ]\n\nNora stared at it. She could see it now. The small typeface embossed on the cover.\n\n[ The Book of Regrets ]\n\n'Every regret you have ever had, since the day you were born, is recorded in here,' Mrs Elm said, tapping her finger on the cover. 'I now give you permission to open it.'\n\nAs the book was so heavy Nora sat down cross-legged on the stone floor to do so. She began to skim through it.\n\nThe book was divided into chapters, chronologically arranged around the years of her life. 0, 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 35. The chapters got much longer as the book progressed, year by year. But the regrets she accumulated weren't specifically related to that year in question.\n\n'Regrets ignore chronology. They float around. The sequence of these lists changes all the time.'\n\n'Right, yes, that makes sense, I suppose.'\n\nShe quickly realised they ranged from the minor and quotidian ('I regret not doing any exercise today') to the substantial ('I regret not telling my father I loved him before he died').\n\nThere were continual, background regrets, which repeated on multiple pages. 'I regret not staying in The Labyrinths, because I let down my brother.' 'I regret not staying in The Labyrinths, because I let down myself.' 'I regret not doing more for the environment.' 'I regret the time I spent on social media.' 'I regret not going to Australia with Izzy.' 'I regret not having more fun when I was younger.' 'I regret all those arguments with Dad.' 'I regret not working with animals.' 'I regret not doing Geology at University instead of Philosophy.' 'I regret not learning how to be a happier person.' 'I regret feeling so much guilt.' 'I regret not sticking at Spanish.' 'I regret not choosing science subjects in my A-levels.' 'I regret not becoming a glaciologist.' 'I regret not getting married.' 'I regret not applying to do a Master's degree in Philosophy at Cambridge.' 'I regret not keeping healthy.' 'I regret moving to London.' 'I regret not going to Paris to teach English.' 'I regret not finishing the novel I started at university.' 'I regret moving out of London.' 'I regret having a job with no prospects.' 'I regret not being a better sister.' 'I regret not having a gap year after university.' 'I regret disappointing my father.' 'I regret that I teach piano more than I play it.' 'I regret my financial mismanagement.' 'I regret not living in the countryside.'\n\nSome regrets were a little fainter than others. One regret shifted from practically invisible to bold and back again, as if it was flashing on and off, right there as she looked at it. The regret was 'I regret not yet having children.'\n\n'That is a regret that sometimes is and sometimes isn't,' explained Mrs Elm, again somehow reading her mind. 'There are a few of those.'\n\nFrom the age of 34 onwards, in the longest chapter at the end of the book, there were a lot of Dan-specific regrets. These were quite strong and bold, and played in her head like an ongoing fortissimo chord in a Haydn concerto.\n\n'I regret being cruel to Dan.' 'I regret breaking up with Dan.' 'I regret not living in a country pub with Dan.'\n\nAs she stared down at the pages, she thought now of the man she had so nearly married.\n\n[ Regret Overload ]\n\nShe'd met Dan while living with Izzy in Tooting. Big smile, short beard. Visually, a TV vet. Fun, curious. He drank quite a bit, but always seemed immune to hangovers.\n\nHe had studied Art History and put his in-depth knowledge of Rubens and Tintoretto to incredible use by becoming head of PR for a brand of protein flapjacks. He did, however, have a dream. And his dream was to run a pub in the countryside. A dream he wanted to share with her. With Nora.\n\nAnd she got carried away with his enthusiasm. Got engaged. But suddenly she had realised she didn't want to marry him.\n\nDeep down, she was scared of becoming her mother. She didn't want to replicate her parents' marriage.\n\nStill staring blankly at The Book of Regrets, she wondered if her parents had ever been in love or if they had got married because marriage was something you did at the appropriate time with the nearest available person. A game where you grabbed the first person you could find when the music stopped.\n\nShe had never wanted to play that game.\n\nBertrand Russell wrote that 'To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead'. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was just scared of living. But Bertrand Russell had more marriages and affairs than hot dinners, so perhaps he was no one to give advice.\n\nWhen her mum died three months before the wedding Nora's grief was immense. Though she had suggested that the date should be put back, it somehow never was, and Nora's grief fused with depression and anxiety and the feeling that her life was out of her own control. The wedding seemed such a symptom of this chaotic feeling, that she felt tied to a train track, and the only way she could loosen the ropes and free herself was to pull out of the wedding. Though, in reality, staying in Bedford and being single, and letting Izzy down about their Australia plans, and starting work at String Theory, and getting a cat, had all felt like the opposite of freedom.\n\n'Oh no,' said Mrs Elm, breaking Nora's thoughts. 'It's too much for you.'\n\nAnd suddenly she was back feeling all this contrition, all that pain of letting people down and letting herself down, the pain she had tried to escape less than an hour ago. The regrets began to swarm together. In fact, while staring at the open pages of the book, the pain was actually worse than it had been wandering around Bedford. The power of all the regrets simultaneously emanating from the book was becoming agony. The weight of guilt and remorse and sorrow too strong. She leaned back on her elbows, dropped the heavy book and squeezed her eyes shut. She could hardly breathe, as if invisible hands were around her neck.\n\n'Make it stop!'\n\n'Close it now,' instructed Mrs Elm. 'Close the book. Not just your eyes. Close it. You have to do it yourself.'\n\nSo Nora, feeling like she was about to pass out, sat back up and placed her hand under the front cover. It felt even heavier now but she managed to close the book and gasped in relief.\n\n[ Every Life Begins Now ]\n\n'Well?'\n\nMrs Elm had her arms folded. Though she looked identical to the Mrs Elm Nora had always known, her manner was definitely a little more brusque. It was Mrs Elm but also somehow not Mrs Elm. It was quite confusing.\n\n'Well what?' Nora said, still gasping, still relieved she could no longer feel the intensity of all her regrets simultaneously.\n\n'Which regret stands out? Which decision would you like to undo? Which life would you like to try on?'\n\nShe said that, precisely. Try on. As if this was a clothes shop and Nora could choose a life as easily as a T-shirt. It felt like a cruel game.\n\n'That was agony. I felt like I was about to be strangled. What is the point of this?'\n\nAs Nora looked up, she noticed the lights for the first time. Just naked bulbs hanging down from wires attached to the ceiling, which seemed like a normal kind of light-grey ceiling. Except it was a ceiling that reached no walls. Like the floor here, it went on for ever.\n\n'The point is there is a strong possibility that your old life is over. You wanted to die and maybe you will. And you will need somewhere to go to. Somewhere to land. Another life. So, you need to think hard. This library is called the Midnight Library, because every new life on offer here begins now. And now is midnight. It begins now. All these futures. That's what is here. That's what your books represent. Every other immediate present and ongoing future you could have had.'\n\n'So there are no pasts in there?'\n\n'No. Just the consequence of them. But those books are also written. And I know them all. But they are not for you to read.'\n\n'And when does each life end?'\n\n'It could be seconds. Or hours. Or it could be days. Months. More. If you have found a life you truly want to live, then you get to live it until you die of old age. If you really want to live a life hard enough, you don't have to worry. You will stay there as if you have always been there. Because in one universe you have always been there. The book will never be returned, so to speak. It becomes less of a loan and more of a gift. The moment you decide you want that life, really want it, then everything that exists in your head now, including this Midnight Library, will eventually be a memory so vague and intangible it will hardly be there at all.'\n\nOne of the lights flickered overhead.\n\n'The only danger,' continued Mrs Elm, more ominously, 'is when you're here. Between lives. If you lose the will to carry on, it will affect your root life \u2013 your original life. And that could lead to the destruction of this place. You'd be gone for ever. You'd be dead. And so would your access to all this.'\n\n'That's what I want. I want to be dead. I would be dead because I want to be. That's why I took the overdose. I want to die.'\n\n'Well, maybe. Or maybe not. After all, you're still here.'\n\nNora tried to get her head around this. 'So, how do I return to the library? If I'm stuck in a life even worse than the one I've just left?'\n\n'It can be subtle, but as soon as disappointment is felt in full, you'll come back here. Sometimes the feeling creeps up, other times it comes all at once. If it never arrives, you'll stay put, and you will be happy there, by definition. It couldn't be simpler. So: pick something you would have done differently, and I will find you the book. That is to say, the life.'\n\nNora stared down at The Book of Regrets lying closed on the yellow-brown floor tiles.\n\nShe remembered chatting late at night with Dan about his dream of owning a quaint little pub in the country. His enthusiasm had been infectious, and it had almost become her dream too. 'I wish I hadn't left Dan. And that I was still in a relationship with him. I regret us not staying together and working towards that dream. Is there a life where we are still together?'\n\n'Of course,' said Mrs Elm.\n\nThe books in the library began to move again, as though the shelves were conveyor belts. This time, though, instead of going as slow as a wedding march they moved faster and faster and faster, until they couldn't really be seen as individual books at all. They just whirred by in streams of green.\n\nThen, just as suddenly, they stopped.\n\nMrs Elm crouched down and took a book from the lowest shelf to her left. The book was one of the darker shades of green. She handed it to Nora. It was a lot lighter than The Book of Regrets, even though it was a similar size. Again, there was no title on the spine but a small one embossed on the front, precisely the same shade as the rest of the book.\n\nIt said: My Life.\n\n'But it's not my life...'\n\n'Oh Nora, they are all your lives.'\n\n'What do I do now?'\n\n'You open the book and turn to the first page.'\n\nNora did so.\n\n'O-kay,' said Mrs Elm, with careful precision. 'Now, read the first line.'\n\nNora stared down and read.\n\nShe walked out of the pub into the cool night air...\n\nAnd Nora had just enough time to think to herself, 'Pub?' After that, it was happening. The text began to swirl and soon became indecipherable, in fast motion, as she felt herself weaken. She never knowingly let go of the book, but there was a moment where she was no longer a person reading it, and a consequent moment where there was no book \u2013 or library \u2013 at all.\n\n[ The Three Horseshoes ]\n\nNora was standing outside in crisp, clean air. But unlike in Bedford, it wasn't raining here.\n\n'Where am I?' she whispered to herself.\n\nThere was a small row of quaint stone terraced houses on the other side of the gently curving road. Quiet, old houses, with all their lights off, nestled at the edge of a village before fading into the stillness of the countryside. A clear sky, an expanse of dotted stars, a waning crescent moon. The smell of fields. The two-way twit-twoo of tawny owls. And then quiet again. A quiet that had a presence, that was a force in the air.\n\nWeird.\n\nShe had been in Bedford. Then in that strange library. And now she was here, on a pretty village road. Without hardly even moving.\n\nOn this side of the road, golden light filtered out of a downstairs window. She looked up and saw an elegantly painted pub sign creaking softly in the wind. Overlapping horseshoes underneath carefully italicised words: The Three Horseshoes.\n\nIn front of her, there was a chalkboard standing on the pavement. She recognised her own handwriting, at its neatest.\n\n'THE THREE HORSESHOES - Tuesday Night \u2013 Quiz Night - 8.30 p.m.'\n\n'True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.'\n\n\u2013 Socrates (after losing our quiz!!!!)\n\nThis was a life where she put four exclamation marks in a row. That was probably what happier, less uptight people did.\n\nA promising omen.\n\nShe looked down at what she was wearing. A denim shirt with sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms and jeans and wedge-heeled shoes, none of which she wore in her actual life. She had goose-bumps from the cold, and clearly wasn't dressed to be outside for long.\n\nThere were two rings on her ring finger. Her old sapphire engagement ring was there \u2013 the same one she had taken off, through trembles and tears, over a year ago \u2013 accompanied by a simple silver wedding band.\n\nCrackers.\n\nShe was wearing a watch. Not a digital one, in this life. An elegant, slender analogue one, with Roman numerals. It was about a minute after midnight.\n\nHow is this happening?\n\nHer hands were smoother in this life. Maybe she used hand cream. Her nails shone with clear polish. There was some comfort in seeing the familiar small mole on her left hand.\n\nFootsteps crunched on gravel. Someone was heading towards her down the driveway. A man, visible from the light of the pub windows and the solitary streetlamp. A man with rosy cheeks and grey Dickensian whiskers and a wax jacket. A Toby jug made flesh. He seemed, from his overly careful gait, to be slightly drunk.\n\n'Goodnight, Nora. I'll be back on Friday. For the folk singer. Dan said he's a good one.'\n\nIn this life she probably knew the man's name. 'Right. Yes, of course. Friday. It should be a great night.'\n\nAt least her voice sounded like her. She watched as the man crossed the road, looking left and right a few times despite the clear absence of traffic, and disappearing down a lane between the cottages.\n\nIt was really happening. This was actually it. This was the pub life. This was the dream made reality.\n\n'This is so very weird,' she said into the night. 'So. Very. Weird.'\n\nA group of three left the pub then too. Two women and a man. They smiled at Nora as they walked past.\n\n'We'll win next time,' one of the women said.\n\n'Yes,' replied Nora. 'There's always a next time.'\n\nShe walked up to the pub and peeked through the window. It seemed empty inside, but the lights were still on. That group must have been the last to leave.\n\nThe pub looked very inviting. Warm and characterful. Small tables and timber beams and a wagon wheel attached to a wall. A rich red carpet and a wood-panelled bar full of an impressive array of beer pumps.\n\nShe stepped away from the window and saw a sign just beyond the pub, past where the pavement became grass.\n\nQuickly, she trotted over and read what it said.\n\n'LITTLEWORTH Welcomes Careful Drivers'\n\nThen she noticed in the top centre of the sign a little coat of arms around which orbited the words Oxfordshire County Council.\n\n'We did it,' she whispered into the country air. 'We actually did it.'\n\nThis was the dream Dan had first mentioned to her while walking by the Seine in Paris, eating macarons they had bought on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.\n\nA dream not of Paris but of rural England, where they would live together.\n\nA pub in the Oxfordshire countryside.\n\nWhen Nora's mum's cancer aggressively returned, reaching her lymph nodes and rapidly colonising her body, that dream was put on hold and Dan moved with her from London back to Bedford. Her mum had known of their engagement and had planned to stay alive long enough for the wedding. She had died four months too soon.\n\nMaybe this was it. Maybe this was the life. Maybe this was first-time lucky, or second-time lucky.\n\nShe allowed herself an apprehensive smile.\n\nShe walked back along the path and crunched over the gravel, heading towards the side door the drunken, whiskery man in the wax jacket had recently departed from. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.\n\nIt was warm.\n\nAnd quiet.\n\nShe was in some kind of hallway or corridor. Terracotta floor tiles. Low wood panelling and, above, wallpaper full of illustrations of sycamore leaves.\n\nShe walked down the little corridor and into the main pub area which she had peeked at through the window. She jumped as a cat appeared out of nowhere.\n\nAn elegant, angular chocolate Burmese purring away. She bent down and stroked it and looked at the engraved name on the disc attached to the collar. Voltaire.\n\nA different cat, with the same name. Unlike her dear beloved ginger tabby, she doubted this Voltaire was a rescue. The cat began to purr. 'Hello, Volts Number Two. You seem happy here. Are we all as happy as you?'\n\nThe cat purred a possible affirmation and rubbed his head against Nora's leg. She picked him up and went over to the bar. There was a row of craft beers on the pumps, stouts and ciders and pale ales and IPAs. Vicar's Favourite. Lost and Found. Miss Marple. Sleeping Lemons. Broken Dream.\n\nThere was a charity tin on the bar for Butterfly Conservation.\n\nShe heard the sound of clinking glass. As if a dishwasher was being filled. Nora felt anxiety constrict her chest. A familiar sensation. Then a spindly twenty-something man in a baggy rugby top popped up from behind the bar, hardly giving any attention to Nora as he gathered the last remaining used glasses and put them in the dishwasher. He switched it on then pulled down his coat from a hook, put it on and took out some car keys.\n\n'Bye, Nora. I've done the chairs and wiped all the tables. Dishwasher's on.'\n\n'Ah, thanks.'\n\n'Till Thursday.'\n\n'Yes,' Nora said, feeling like a spy about to have her cover blown. 'See you.'\n\nA moment after the man left, she heard footsteps rising up from somewhere below, heading across the tiles she had just walked down, coming from the back of the pub. And then he was there.\n\nHe looked different.\n\nThe beard had gone, and there were more wrinkles around his eyes, dark circles. He had a nearly finished pint of dark beer in his hand. He still looked a bit like a TV vet, just a few more series down the line.\n\n'Dan,' she said, as if he was something that needed identifying. Like a rabbit by the road. 'I just want to say I am so proud of you. So proud of us.'\n\nHe looked at her, blankly. 'Was just turning the chiller units off. Got to clean the lines tomorrow. We've left it a fortnight.'\n\nNora had no idea what he was talking about. She stroked the cat. 'Right. Yes. Of course. The lines.'\n\nHer husband \u2013 for in this life, that was who he was \u2013 looked around at all the tables and upside-down chairs. He was wearing a faded Jaws T-shirt. 'Have Blake and Sophie gone home?'\n\nNora hesitated. She sensed he was talking about people who worked for them. The young man in the baggy rugby top was presumably Blake. There didn't seem to be anyone else around.\n\n'Yes,' she said, trying to sound natural despite the fundamental bizarreness of the circumstances. 'I think they have. They were pretty on top of things.'\n\n'Cool.'\n\nShe remembered buying him the Jaws T-shirt on his twenty-sixth birthday. Ten years previously.\n\n'The answers tonight were something else. One of the teams \u2013 the one Pete and Jolie were on \u2013 thought Maradona painted the Sistine ceiling.'\n\nNora nodded and stroked Volts Number Two. As if she had any idea who on earth Pete and Jolie were.\n\n'To be fair, it was a tricky one tonight. Might take them from another website next time. I mean, who actually knows the name of the highest mountain in the Kara-whatsit range?'\n\n'Karakoram?' Nora asked. 'That would be K2.'\n\n'Well, obviously you know,' he said, a little too abruptly. A little too tipsily. 'It's the kind of thing you would know. Because while most people were into rock music you were into actual rocks and stuff.'\n\n'Hey,' she said. 'I was literally in a band.'\n\nA band, she remembered then, that Dan had hated her being in.\n\nHe laughed. She recognised the laugh, but didn't entirely like it. She had forgotten how often during their relationship Dan's humour hinged on other people, specifically Nora. When they'd been together, she had tried not to dwell on this aspect of his personality. He'd had so many other aspects \u2013 he had been so lovely to her mum when she was ill, and he could talk at ease about anything, he was so full of dreams about the future, he was attractive and easy to be around, and he was passionate about art and always stopped to chat to the homeless. He cared about the world. A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.\n\nHe had listened to a lot of annoying podcasts that he thought Nora should listen to, and laughed in a way that grated on her, and gargled loudly with mouthwash. And yes, he hogged the duvet and could occasionally be arrogant in his opinions on art and film and music, but there was nothing overtly wrong with him. Well \u2013 now that she thought about it \u2013 he'd never been supportive of her music career, and had advised her that being in The Labyrinths and signing a music deal would be bad for her mental health, and that her brother was being a bit selfish. But at the time she had viewed that not so much as a red flag but a green one. Her thinking was: he cared, and it was nice to have someone who cared, who wasn't bothered about fame and superficialities, and could help navigate the waters of life. And so when he had asked her to marry him, in the cocktail bar on the top floor of the Oxo Tower, she had agreed and maybe she had always been right to agree.\n\nHe stepped forward into the room, placed his pint down momentarily and was now on his phone, looking up better pub quiz questions.\n\nShe wondered how much he had drunk tonight. She wondered if the dream of owning a pub had really been a dream of drinking an endless supply of alcohol.\n\n'What is the name of a twenty-sided polygon?'\n\n'I don't know,' Nora lied, not wanting to risk a similar reaction to the one she'd received a moment ago.\n\nHe put the phone in his pocket.\n\n'We did well, though. They all drank loads tonight. Not bad for a Tuesday. Things are looking up. I mean, there's something to tell the bank tomorrow. Maybe they'll give us an extension on the loan...'\n\nHe stared at the beer in his glass, swilled it around a little, then downed it.\n\n'Though I've got to tell A.J. to change the lunch menu. No one in Littleworth wants to eat candied beetroot and broad bean salad and corn cakes. This isn't pissing Fitzrovia. And I know they're going down well, but I think those wines you chose aren't worth it. Especially the Californian ones.'\n\n'Okay.'\n\nHe turned and looked behind him. 'Where's the board?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'The chalkboard. Thought you'd brought it in?'\n\nSo that was what she had been outside for.\n\n'No. No. I'm going to do it now.'\n\n'Thought I saw you go out.'\n\nNora smiled away her nerves. 'Yes, well, I did. I had to... I was worried about our cat. Volts. Voltaire. I couldn't find him so I went outside to look for him and then I found him, didn't I?'\n\nDan was back behind the bar, pouring himself a scotch.\n\nHe seemed to sense she was judging him. 'This is only my third. Fourth, maybe. It's quiz night. You know I get nervous doing the compering. And it helps me be funny. And I was funny, don't you reckon?'\n\n'Yes. Very funny. Total funniness.'\n\nHis face fell into a serious mode. 'I saw you talking to Erin. What did she say?'\n\nNora wasn't sure how best to answer this. 'Oh, nothing much. The usual stuff. You know Erin.'\n\n'The usual stuff? I didn't think you'd ever spoken to her before.'\n\n'I meant the usual stuff that people say. Not what Erin says. Usual people stuff...'\n\n'How's Will doing?'\n\n'Er, really well,' Nora guessed. 'He says hi.'\n\nDan's eyes popped wide with surprise. 'Really?'\n\nNora had no idea what to say. Maybe Will was a baby. Maybe Will was in a coma. 'Sorry, no, he didn't say hi. Sorry, I'm not thinking. Anyway, I'll... go and get the board.'\n\nShe put the cat down on the floor and headed back out. This time she noticed something she had missed on entering.\n\nA framed newspaper article from the Oxford Times with a picture of Nora and Dan standing outside the Three Horseshoes. Dan had his arm around her. He was wearing a suit she had never seen before and she was in a smart dress she would never have worn (she rarely wore dresses) in her original life.\n\n'PUB OWNERS MAKE DREAM A REALITY'\n\nThey had, according to the article, bought the pub cheaply and in a neglected state and then renovated it with a mix of a modest inheritance (Dan's) and savings and bank loans. The article presented a success story, though it was two years old.\n\nShe stepped outside, wondering whether a life could really be judged from just a few minutes after midnight on a Tuesday. Or maybe that was all you needed.\n\nThe wind was picking up. Standing out on that quiet village street, the gusts pushed the board a little along the path, nearly toppling it over. Before she picked it up, she felt a buzz from a phone in her pocket. She hadn't realised it was in there. She pulled it out. A text message from Izzy.\n\nShe noticed that her wallpaper was a photo of herself and Dan somewhere hot.\n\nShe unlocked the phone using facial recognition and opened the message. It was a photo of a whale rising high out of the ocean, the white spray soaking the air like a burst of champagne. It was a wonderful photo and just seeing it caused her to smile.\n\nIzzy was typing.\n\nAnother message appeared:\n\n> This was one of the pics I took yesterday from the boat.\n\nAnd another:\n\n> Humpback mother\n\nThen another photo: two whales this time, their backs breaking the water.\n\n> With calf\n\nThe last message also included emojis of whales and waves.\n\nNora felt a warm glow. Not just from the pictures, which were indisputably lovely, but from the contact with Izzy.\n\nWhen Nora backed out of her wedding to Dan, Izzy had insisted that she come to Australia with her.\n\nThey'd mapped it all out, a plan to live near Byron Bay and get jobs on one of the whale-watching boat cruises.\n\nThey had shared lots of clips of humpback whales in anticipation of this new adventure. But then Nora had wobbled and backed out. Just like she had backed out of a swimming career, and a band, and a wedding. But unlike those other things, there hadn't even been a reason. Yes, she had started working at String Theory and, yes, she felt the need to tend to her parents' graves, but she knew that staying in Bedford was the worse option. And yet she picked it. Because of some strange predictive homesickness that festered alongside a depression that told her, ultimately, she didn't deserve to be happy. That she had hurt Dan and that a life of drizzle and depression in her hometown was her punishment, and she hadn't the will or clarity or, hell, the energy to do anything.\n\nSo, in effect, she swapped her best friend for a cat.\n\nIn her actual life, she had never fallen out with Izzy. Nothing that dramatic. But after Izzy had gone to Australia, things had faded between them until their friendship became just a vapour trail of sporadic Facebook and Instagram likes and emoji-filled birthday messages.\n\nShe looked back through the text conversations between her and Izzy and realised that even though there was still ten thousand miles between them, they had a much better relationship in this version of things.\n\nWhen she returned to the pub, carrying the sign this time, Dan was nowhere to be seen so she locked the back door and waited a while, in the pub hallway, working out where the stairs were, and unsure if she actually wanted to follow her tipsy sort-of husband up there.\n\nShe found the stairs at the rear of the building, through a door that said Staff Only. As she stepped on the beige raffia carpet heading towards the stairs, just after a framed poster of Things You Learn in the Dark \u2013 one of their favourite Ryan Bailey movies which they had watched together at the Odeon in Bedford \u2013 she noted a smaller picture on a sweet little window sill.\n\nIt was their wedding photo. Black and white, reportage-style. Walking out of a church into a shower of confetti. It was difficult to see their faces properly but they were both laughing and it was a shared laugh, and they seemed \u2013 as far as a photograph can tell you anything \u2013 to be in love. She remembered her mum talking about Dan. ('He's a good one. You're so lucky. Keep hold of him.')\n\nShe saw her brother Joe too, shaven-headed and looking genuinely happy, champagne glass in hand and his short-lived, disastrous investment-banker boyfriend, Lewis, by his side. Izzy was there, and Ravi too, looking more like an accountant than a drummer, standing next to a bespectacled woman she'd never seen before.\n\nWhile Dan was in the toilet Nora located the bedroom. Although they evidently had money worries \u2013 the nervous appointment with the bank confirmed that \u2013 the room was expensively furnished. Smart window blinds. A wide, comfortable-looking bed. The duvet crisp and clean and white.\n\nThere were books either side of the bed. In her actual life she hadn't had a book by her bed for at least six months. She hadn't read anything for six months. Maybe in this life she had a better concentration span.\n\nShe picked up one of the books, Meditation for Beginners. Underneath it was a copy of a biography of her favourite philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. There were books on Dan's bedside table too. The last book she remembered him reading had been a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec \u2013 Tiny Giant \u2013 but in this life he was reading a business book called Zero to Hero: Harnessing Success in Work, Play and Life and the latest edition of The Good Pub Guide.\n\nShe felt different in her body. A little healthier, a little stronger, but tense. She patted her stomach and realised that in this life she worked out a bit more. Her hair felt different too. She had a heavy fringe, and \u2013 feeling it \u2013 she could tell her hair was longer at the back. Her mind felt a little woozy. She must have had at least a couple of glasses of wine.\n\nA moment later she heard the toilet flush. Then she heard gargling. It seemed to be a bit noisier than necessary.\n\n'Are you all right?' Dan asked, when he came into the bedroom. His voice, she realised, didn't sound like she remembered. It sounded emptier. A bit colder. Maybe it was tiredness. Maybe it was stress. Maybe it was beer. Maybe it was marriage.\n\nMaybe it was something else.\n\nIt was hard to remember, exactly, what he had sounded like before. What he had been like, precisely. But that was the nature of memory. At university she had done an essay drily titled 'The Principles of Hobbesian Memory and Imagination'. Thomas Hobbes had viewed memory and imagination as pretty much the same thing, and since discovering that she had never entirely trusted her memories.\n\nOutside the window the streetlamp's yellow glow illuminated the desolate village road.\n\n'Nora? You're acting strange. Why are you just standing in the middle of the room? Are you getting ready for bed or are you doing some kind of standing meditation?'\n\nHe laughed. He thought he was funny.\n\nHe went over to the window and pulled the curtains. Then he took off his jeans and put them on the back of a chair. She stared at him and tried to feel the attraction she had once felt so deeply. It seemed to require a Herculean effort. She hadn't expected this.\n\nEveryone's lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways.\n\nHe collapsed heavily on the bed, a whale into the ocean. Picked up Zero to Hero. Tried to focus. Put it down. Picked up a laptop by the bed, shoved an earphone into his ear. Maybe he was going to listen to a podcast.\n\n'I'm just thinking about something.'\n\nShe began to feel faint. As if she was only half there. She remembered Mrs Elm talking about how disappointment in a life would bring her back to the library. It would feel, she realised, altogether too strange to climb into the same bed with a man she hadn't seen for two years.\n\nShe noticed the time on the digital alarm clock. 12:23.\n\nStill with the earphone in his ear, he looked at her again. 'Right, listen, if you don't want to make babies tonight you can just say, you know?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I mean, I know we'll have to wait another month until you are ovulating again...'\n\n'We're trying for a baby? I want a baby?'\n\n'Nora, what's with you? Why are you strange today?'\n\nShe took off her shoes. 'I'm not.'\n\nA memory came to her, related to the Jaws T-shirt.\n\nA tune, actually. 'Beautiful Sky'.\n\nThe day she had bought Dan the Jaws T-shirt had been the day she had played him a song she had written for The Labyrinths. 'Beautiful Sky'. It was, she was convinced, the best song she had ever written. And \u2013 more than that \u2013 it was a happy song to reflect her optimism at that point in her life. It was a song inspired by her new life with Dan. And he had listened to it with a shruggish indifference that had hurt at the time and which she would have addressed if it hadn't been his birthday.\n\n'Yeah,' he'd said. 'It's okay.'\n\nShe wondered why that memory had stayed buried, only to rise up now, like the great white shark on his fading T-shirt.\n\nThere were other things coming back to her now too. His over-the-top reaction when she'd once told him about a customer \u2013 Ash, the surgeon and amateur guitar player who came into String Theory for the occasional songbook \u2013 casually asking Nora if she wanted to go for a coffee some time.\n\n('Of course I said no. Stop shouting.')\n\nWorse, though, was when an A&R man for a major label (or rather, a boutique former indie label with Universal behind them) wanted to sign The Labyrinths. Dan had told her that it was unlikely they'd survive as a couple. He'd also heard a horror story from one of his university friends who'd been in a band that signed to a label and then the label ripped them off and they'd all become unemployed alcoholics or something.\n\n'I could take you with me,' she said. 'I'd get it in the contract. We could go everywhere together.'\n\n'Sorry, Nora. But that's your dream. It's not mine.'\n\nWhich hurt even more with hindsight, knowing how much \u2013 before the wedding \u2013 she'd tried to make his dream of a pub in the Oxfordshire countryside become her dream as well.\n\nDan had always said his concern was for Nora: she'd been having panic attacks while she was in the band, especially when she got anywhere near a stage. But the concern had been at least a little manipulative, now she thought about it.\n\n'I thought,' he was saying now, 'that you were starting to trust me again.'\n\n'Trust you? Dan, why wouldn't I trust you?'\n\n'You know why.'\n\n'Of course I know why,' she lied. 'I just want to hear you say it.'\n\n'Well, since the stuff with Erin.'\n\nShe stared at him like he was a Rorschach inkblot in which she saw no clear image.\n\n'Erin? The one I was speaking to tonight?'\n\n'Am I going to be beaten up for ever about one stupid drunken moment?'\n\nOn the street outside, the wind was picking up, howling through trees as if attempting a language.\n\nThis was the life she had been in mourning for. This was the life she had beaten herself up for not living. This was the timeline she thought she had regretted not existing in.\n\n'One stupid mistake?' she echoed.\n\n'Okay, two.'\n\nIt was multiplying.\n\n'Two?'\n\n'I was in a state. You know, the pressure. Of this place. And I was very drunk.'\n\n'You had sex with someone else and it doesn't seem you have been seeking much... atonement.'\n\n'Seriously, why drag all this up? We've been through this. Remember what the counsellor said. About focusing on where we want to go rather than where we have been.'\n\n'Do you ever think that maybe we just aren't right for each other?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I love you, Dan. And you can be a very kind person. And you were great with my mum. And we used to \u2013 I mean, we have great conversations. But do you ever feel that we passed where we were meant to be? That we changed?'\n\nShe sat down on the edge of the bed. The furthest corner away from him.\n\n'Do you ever feel lucky to have me? Do you realise how close I was to leaving you, two days before the wedding? Do you know how messed up you would have been if I hadn't turned up at the wedding?'\n\n'Wow. Really? You have yourself in quite high esteem there, Nora.'\n\n'Shouldn't I? I mean, shouldn't everyone? What's wrong with self-esteem? And besides, it's true. There's another universe where you send me WhatsApp messages about how messed up you are without me. How you turn to alcohol, although it seems like you turn to alcohol with me too. You send me texts saying you miss my voice.'\n\nHe made a dismissive noise, somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. 'Well, right now, I am most definitely not missing your voice.'\n\nShe couldn't get beyond her shoes. She found it hard \u2013 maybe impossible \u2013 to take off another item of clothing in front of him.\n\n'And stop going on about my drinking.'\n\n'If you are using drink as an excuse for screwing someone else, I can go on about your drinking.'\n\n'I am a country landlord,' scoffed Dan. 'It's what country landlords do. Be jovial and merry and willing to partake in the many and manifold beverages we sell. Jeez.'\n\nSince when did he speak like this? Did he always speak like this?\n\n'Bloody hell, Dan.'\n\nHe didn't even seem bothered. To seem grateful in any way for the universe he was in. The universe she had felt so guilty for not allowing to happen. He reached for his phone, still with his laptop on the duvet. Nora watched him as he scrolled.\n\n'Is this what you imagined? Is the dream working out?'\n\n'Nora, let's not do this heavy shit. Just get to bloody bed.'\n\n'Are you happy, Dan?'\n\n'No one's happy, Nora.'\n\n'Some people are. You used to be. You used to light up when you talked about this. You know, the pub. Before you had it. This is the life you dreamed of. You wanted me and you wanted this and yet you've been unfaithful and you drink like a fish and I think you only appreciate me when you don't have me, which is not a great trait to have. What about my dreams?'\n\nHe was hardly listening. Or trying to look like he wasn't.\n\n'Big fires in California,' he said, almost to himself.\n\n'Well, at least we're not there.'\n\nHe put the phone down. Folded his laptop. 'You coming to bed or what?'\n\nShe had shrunk for him, but he still hadn't found the space he needed. No more.\n\n'Icosagon,' she told him.\n\n'What?'\n\n'The quiz. Earlier. The twenty-sided polygon. Well, a twenty-sided polygon is called an icosagon. I knew the answer but didn't tell you because I didn't want you to mock me. And now I don't really care because I don't think me knowing some things that you don't should bother you. And also, I am going to go to the bathroom.'\n\nAnd she left Dan, with his mouth open, and trod gently on the wide floorboards, out of the room.\n\nShe reached the bathroom. Switched a light on. There were tingles in her arms and legs and torso. Like electric static in search of a station. She was fading out, she was sure. There wasn't long left here. The disappointment was complete.\n\nIt was an impressive bathroom. There was a mirror. She gasped at her reflection. She looked healthier but also older. Her hair made her look like a stranger.\n\nThis was not the life she imagined it to be.\n\nAnd Nora wished the self in the mirror 'Good luck'.\n\nAnd the moment after that she was back, somewhere inside the Midnight Library, and Mrs Elm was staring at her from a small distance away with a curious smile.\n\n'Well, how did that go?'\n\n[ The Penultimate Update Nora Had Posted Before She Found Herself Between Life and Death ]\n\n> Do you ever think 'how did I end up here?' Like you are in a maze and totally lost and it's all your fault because you were the one who made every turn? And you know that there are many routes that could have helped you out, because you hear all the people on the outside of the maze who made it through, and they are laughing and smiling. And sometimes you get a glimpse of them through the hedge. A fleeting shape through the leaves. And they seem so damn happy to have made it and you don't resent them, but you do resent yourself for not having their ability to work it all out. Do you? Or is this maze just for me?\n\n> Ps. My cat died.\n\n[ The Chessboard ]\n\nThe shelves of the Midnight Library were quite still again, as if their movement had never even been a possibility.\n\nNora sensed they were in a different portion of the library now \u2013 not a different room as such, as there seemed to be only one infinitely vast room. It was difficult to tell if she really was in a different part of the library as the books were still green, though she seemed closer to a corridor than where she had been. And from here she could see a glimpse of something new through one of the stacks \u2013 an office desk and computer, like a basic makeshift open-plan office positioned in the corridor between the aisles.\n\nMrs Elm wasn't at the office desk. She was sat at a low wooden table right there in front of Nora, and she was playing chess.\n\n'It was different to how I imagined,' said Nora.\n\nMrs Elm looked like she was halfway through a game.\n\n'It's hard to predict, isn't it?' she asked, looking blankly in front of her as she moved a black bishop across the board to take a white pawn. 'The things that will make us happy.'\n\nMrs Elm rotated the chessboard through one hundred and eighty degrees. She was, it appeared, playing against herself.\n\n'Yes,' said Nora. 'It is. But what happens to her? To me? How does she end up?'\n\n'How do I know? I only know today. I know a lot about today. But I don't know what happens tomorrow.'\n\n'But she'll be there in the bathroom and she won't know how she got there.'\n\n'And have you never walked into a room and wondered what you came in for? Have you never forgotten what you just did? Have you never blanked out or misremembered what you were just doing?'\n\n'Yes, but I was there for half an hour in that life.'\n\n'And that other you won't know that. She will remember what you just did and said. But as if she did and said them.'\n\nNora let out a deep exhale. 'Dan wasn't like that.'\n\n'People change,' said Mrs Elm, still looking at the chessboard. Her hand lingered over a bishop.\n\nNora re-thought. 'Or maybe he was like that and I just didn't see it.'\n\n'So,' wondered Mrs Elm, looking at Nora. 'What are you feeling?'\n\n'Like I still want to die. I have wanted to die for quite a while. I have carefully calculated that the pain of me living as the bloody disaster that is myself is greater than the pain anyone else will feel if I were to die. In fact, I'm sure it would be a relief. I'm not useful to anyone. I was bad at work. I have disappointed everyone. I am a waste of a carbon footprint, to be honest. I hurt people. I have no one left. Not even poor old Volts, who died because I couldn't look after a cat properly. I want to die. My life is a disaster. And I want it to end. I am not cut out for living. And there is no point going through all this. Because I am clearly destined to be unhappy in other lives too. That is just me. I add nothing. I am wallowing in self-pity. I want to die.'\n\nMrs Elm studied Nora hard, as if reading a passage in a book she had read before but had just found it contained a new meaning. 'Want,' she told her, in a measured tone, 'is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.'\n\n'I thought that was it. The one with Dan. But it wasn't.'\n\n'No, it wasn't. But that is just one of your possible lives. And one into infinity is a very small fraction indeed.'\n\n'Every possible life I could live has me in it. So, it's not really every possible life.' Mrs Elm wasn't listening. 'Now, tell me, where do you want to go now?'\n\n'Nowhere, please.'\n\n'Do you need another look at The Book of Regrets?'\n\nNora scrunched her nose and gave a minute shake of her head. She remembered the feeling of being suffocated by so much regret. 'No.'\n\n'What about your cat? What was his name again?'\n\n'Voltaire. It was a bit pretentious, and he wasn't really a pretentious cat, so I just called him Volts for short. Sometimes Voltsy, if I was feeling jovial. Which was rare, obviously. I couldn't even finalise a name for a cat.'\n\n'Well, you said you were bad at having a cat. What would you have done differently?'\n\nNora thought. She had the very real sense that Mrs Elm was playing some kind of game with her, but she also wanted to see her cat again, and not simply a cat with the same name. In fact, she wanted it more than anything.\n\n'Okay. I'd like to see the life where I kept Voltaire indoors. My Voltaire. I'd like the life where I didn't try and kill myself and where I was a good cat owner and I didn't let him out onto the road last night. I'd like that life, just for a little while. That life exists, doesn't it?'\n\n[ The Only Way to Learn Is to Live ]\n\nNora looked around and found herself lying in her own bed.\n\nShe checked her watch. It was one minute past midnight. She switched on her light. This was her exact life, but it was going to be better, because Voltaire was going to be alive in this one. Her real Voltaire.\n\nBut where was he?\n\n'Volts?'\n\nShe climbed out of bed.\n\n'Volts?'\n\nShe looked all over her flat and couldn't find him anywhere. The rain patted against the windows \u2013 that much hadn't changed. Her new box of anti-depressants was out on the kitchen unit. The electric piano stood by the wall, silent.\n\n'Voltsy?'\n\nThere was her yucca plant and her three tiny potted cacti, there were her bookshelves, with exactly the same mix of philosophy books and novels and untried yoga manuals and rock star biographies and pop science books. An old National Geographic with a shark on the cover and a five-month-old copy of Elle magazine, which she'd bought mainly for the Ryan Bailey interview. No new additions in a long time.\n\nThere was a bowl still full of cat food.\n\nShe looked everywhere, calling his name. It was only when she went back into her bedroom and looked under the bed that she saw him.\n\n'Volts!'\n\nThe cat wasn't moving.\n\nAs her arms weren't long enough to reach him, she moved the bed.\n\n'Voltsy. Come on, Voltsy,' she whispered.\n\nBut the moment she touched his cold body she knew, and she was flooded with sadness and confusion. She immediately found herself back in the Midnight Library, facing Mrs Elm, who was sat this time in a comfy chair, deeply absorbed in one of the books.\n\n'I don't understand,' Nora told her.\n\nMrs Elm kept her eyes on the page she was reading. 'There will be many things you don't understand.'\n\n'I asked for the life in which Voltaire was still alive.'\n\n'Actually, you didn't.'\n\n'What?'\n\nShe put her book down. 'You asked for the life where you kept him indoors. That is an entirely different thing.'\n\n'Is it?'\n\n'Yes. Entirely. You see, if you'd have asked for the life where he was still alive I would have had to say no.'\n\n'But why?'\n\n'Because it doesn't exist.'\n\n'I thought every life exists.'\n\n'Every possible life. You see, it turns out that Voltaire had a serious case of' \u2013 she read carefully from the book \u2013 'restrictive cardiomyopathy, a severe case of it, which he was born with, and which was destined to cause his heart to go at a young age.'\n\n'But he was hit by a car.'\n\n'There is a difference, Nora, between dying in a road and being hit by a car. In your root life Voltaire lived longer than almost any other life, except the one you've just encountered, where he died only three hours ago. Although he had a tough few early years, the year you had him was the best of his life. Voltaire has had much worse lives, believe me.'\n\n'You didn't even know his name a moment ago. Now you know he had restrictive cardio-whatever?'\n\n'I knew his name. And it wasn't a moment ago. It was the same moment, check your watch.'\n\n'Why did you lie?'\n\n'I wasn't lying. I asked you what your cat's name was. I never said I didn't know what your cat's name was. Do you understand the difference? I just wanted you to say his name, so that you would feel something.'\n\nNora was hot with agitation now. 'That's even worse! You sent me into that life knowing Volts would be dead. And Volts was dead. So, nothing changed.'\n\nMrs Elm's eyes twinkled again. 'Except you.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'Well, you don't see yourself as a bad cat owner any more. You looked after him as well as he could have been looked after. He loved you as much as you loved him, and maybe he didn't want you to see him die. You see, cats know. They understand when their time is up. He went outside because he was going to die, and he knew it.'\n\nNora tried to take this in. Now she thought about it, there hadn't been any external signs of damage on her cat's body. She had just jumped to the same conclusion that Ash had jumped to. That a dead cat on the road was probably dead because of the road. And if a surgeon could think that, a mere layperson would think that too. Two plus two equals car accident.\n\n'Poor Volts,' Nora muttered, mournfully.\n\nMrs Elm smiled, like a teacher who saw a lesson being understood.\n\n'He loved you, Nora. You looked after him as well as anyone could. Go and look at the last page of The Book of Regrets.'\n\nNora could see that the book was lying on the floor. She knelt on the floor beside it.\n\n'I don't want to open it again.'\n\n'Don't worry. It will be safer this time. Just stick to the last page.'\n\nOnce she had flicked to the last page, she saw one of her very last regrets \u2013 'I was bad at looking after Voltaire' \u2013 slowly disappear from the page. The letters fading like retreating strangers in a fog.\n\nNora closed the book before she could feel anything bad happen.\n\n'So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just...' She searched for the appropriate term and found it. 'A load of bullshit.'\n\nNora tried to think back to her schooldays, to remember if Mrs Elm had said the word 'bullshit' before, and she was pretty sure she hadn't.\n\n'But I still don't get why you let me go into that life if you knew Volts was going to be dead anyway? You could have told me. You could have just told me I wasn't a bad cat owner. Why didn't you?'\n\n'Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.'\n\n'Sounds hard.'\n\n'Take a seat,' Mrs Elm told her. 'A proper seat. It's not right, you kneeling on the floor.' And Nora turned to see a chair behind her that she hadn't noticed before. An antique chair \u2013 mahogany and buttoned leather, Edwardian maybe \u2013 with a brass bookstand attached to one arm. 'Give yourself a moment.'\n\nNora sat down.\n\nShe stared at her watch. No matter how much of a moment she gave herself it stayed being midnight.\n\n'I still don't like this. One life of sadness was enough. What is the point of risking more?'\n\n'Fine.' Mrs Elm shrugged.\n\n'What?'\n\n'Let's do nothing then. You can just stay here in the library with all those lives waiting on the shelves and not choose one.'\n\nNora sensed Mrs Elm was playing some kind of a game. But she went along with it.\n\n'Fine.'\n\nSo Nora just stood there while Mrs Elm picked up her book again.\n\nIt seemed unfair to Nora that Mrs Elm could read the lives without falling into them.\n\nTime went by.\n\nAlthough technically, of course, it didn't.\n\nNora could have stayed there for ever without getting hungry or thirsty or tired. But she could, it seemed, get bored.\n\nAs time stood still, Nora's curiosity about the lives around her slowly grew. It turned out to be near impossible to stand in a library and not want to pull things from the shelves.\n\n'Why can't you just give me a life you know is a good one?' she said suddenly.\n\n'That is not how this library works.'\n\nNora had another question.\n\n'Surely in most lives I will be asleep now, won't I?'\n\n'In many, yes.'\n\n'So, what happens then?'\n\n'You sleep. And then you wake up in that life. It's nothing to worry about. But if you are nervous, you could try a life where it's another time.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'Well, it's not night-time everywhere, is it?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'There are an infinite number of possible universes in which you live. Are you really saying they all exist on Greenwich Mean Time?'\n\n'Of course not,' said Nora. She realised she was about to cave in and choose another life. She thought of the humpback whales. She thought of the unanswered message. 'I wish I had gone to Australia with Izzy. I would like to experience that life.'\n\n'Very good choice.'\n\n'What? It's a very good life?'\n\n'Oh, I didn't say that. I merely feel that you might be getting better at choosing.'\n\n'So, it's a bad life?'\n\n'I didn't say that either.'\n\nAnd the shelves sped into motion again, then stopped a few seconds afterwards.\n\n'Ah, yes, there it is,' said Mrs Elm, taking a book from the second-to-bottom shelf. She recognised it instantly, which was odd, seeing that it looked almost identical to the others around it.\n\nShe handed it to Nora, affectionately, as if it was a birthday gift.\n\n'There you go. You know what to do.'\n\nNora hesitated.\n\n'What if I am dead?'\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'I mean, in another life. There must be other lives in which I died before today.'\n\nMrs Elm looked intrigued. 'Isn't that what you wanted?'\n\n'Well, yes, but\u2014'\n\n'You have died an infinite number of times before today, yes. Car accident, drug overdose, drowning, a bout of fatal food poisoning, choking on an apple, choking on a cookie, choking on a vegan hot dog, choking on a non-vegan hot dog, every illness it was possible for you to catch or contract... You have died in every way you can, at any time you could.'\n\n'So, I could open a book and just die?'\n\n'No. Not instantaneously. As with Voltaire, the only lives available here are, well, lives. I mean, you could die in that life, but you won't have died before you enter the life because this Midnight Library is not one of ghosts. It is not a library of corpses. It is a library of possibility. And death is the opposite of possibility. Understand?'\n\n'I think so.'\n\nAnd Nora stared at the book she had been handed. Conifer green. Smooth-textured, again embossed with that broad and frustratingly meaningless title My Life.\n\nShe opened it and saw a blank page, so she moved to the next page and wondered what was going to happen this time. 'The swimming pool was a little busier than normal...'\n\nAnd then she was there.\n\n[ Fire ]\n\nShe gasped. The sensations were sudden. The noise and the water. She had her mouth open and she choked. The tang and sting of salt water.\n\nShe tried to touch her feet on the bottom of the pool but she was out of her depth so she quickly slipped into breaststroke mode.\n\nA swimming pool, but a saltwater one. Outdoor, beside the ocean. Carved seemingly out of the rock that jutted out of the coastline. She could see the actual ocean just beyond. There was sunshine overhead. The water was cool, but given the heat of the air above her the cool was welcome.\n\nOnce upon a time she had been the best fourteen-year-old female swimmer in Bedfordshire.\n\nShe had won two races in her age category at the National Junior Swimming Championships. Freestyle 400 metres. Freestyle 200 metres. Her dad had driven her every day to the local pool. Sometimes before school as well as after. But then \u2013 while her brother rocked out on his guitar to Nirvana \u2013 she traded lengths for scales, and taught herself how to play not just Chopin but classics like 'Let It Be' and 'Rainy Days And Mondays'. She also began, before The Labyrinths were even a figment of her brother's imagination, to compose her own music.\n\nBut she hadn't really gone off swimming, just the pressure around it.\n\nShe reached the side of the pool. Stopped and looked around. She could see a beach at a lower level in the distance, curving around in a semi-circle to welcome the sea lapping on its sand. Beyond the beach, inland, a stretch of grass. A park, complete with palm trees and distant dog walkers.\n\nBeyond that, houses and low-rise apartment blocks, and traffic sliding by on a road. She had seen pictures of Byron Bay, and it didn't look quite like this. This place, wherever it was, seemed a little more built-up. Still surferish, but also urban.\n\nTurning her attention back to the pool, she noticed a man smile at her as he adjusted his goggles. Did she know this man? Would she welcome this smile in this life? Having no idea, she offered the smallest of polite smiles in return. She felt like a tourist with an unfamiliar currency, not knowing how much to tip.\n\nThen an elderly woman in a swimming cap smiled at her as she glided through the water towards her.\n\n'Morning, Nora,' she said, not breaking her stroke.\n\nIt was a greeting that suggested Nora was a regular here.\n\n'Morning,' Nora said.\n\nShe stared out at the ocean, to avoid any awkward chatting. A flock of morning surfers, speck-sized, swam on their boards to greet large sapphire-blue waves.\n\nThis was a promising start to her Australian life. She stared at her watch. It was a bright orange, cheap-looking Casio. A happy-looking watch suggestive, she hoped, of a happy-feeling life. It was just after nine a.m. here. Next to her watch was a plastic wristband with a key on it.\n\nSo, this was her morning ritual here. In an outdoor swimming pool beside a beach. She wondered if she was here alone. She scanned the pool hopefully for any sign of Izzy, but none was there.\n\nShe swam some more.\n\nThe thing she had once loved about swimming was the disappearing. In the water, her focus had been so pure that she thought of nothing else. Any school or home worries vanished. The art of swimming \u2013 she supposed like any art \u2013 was about purity. The more focused you were on the activity, the less focused you were on everything else. You kind of stopped being you and became the thing you were doing.\n\nBut it was hard to stay focused when Nora noticed her arms and chest ached. She sensed it had been a long swim and was probably time to get out of the pool. She saw a sign. Bronte Beach Swimming Pool. She vaguely remembered Dan, who had been to Australia in his gap year, talking about this place and the name had stuck \u2013 Bronte Beach \u2013 because it was easy to remember. Jane Eyre on a surfboard.\n\nBut here was confirmation of her doubt.\n\nBronte Beach was in Sydney. But it most definitely wasn't part of Byron Bay.\n\nSo that meant one of two things. Either Izzy, in this life, wasn't in Byron Bay. Or Nora wasn't with Izzy.\n\nShe noticed she was tanned a mild caramel all over.\n\nOf course, the trouble was, she didn't know where her clothes were. But then she remembered the plastic wristband with a key on it.\n\n57. Her locker was 57. So she found the changing rooms and opened the squat, square locker and saw that her taste in clothes, as well as watches, was more colourful in this life. She had a T-shirt with a pineapple print on it. A whole cornucopia of pineapples. And pink-purple denim shorts. And slip-on checked pumps.\n\nWhat am I? she wondered. A children's TV presenter?\n\nSun-block. Hibiscus tinted lip balm. No other make-up as such.\n\nAs she pulled on her T-shirt, she noticed a couple of marks on her arm. Scar-lines. She wondered, momentarily, if they had been self-inflicted. There was also a tattoo just below her shoulder. A Phoenix and flames. It was a terrible tattoo. In this life, she clearly had no taste. But since when did taste have anything to do with happiness?\n\nShe dressed and pulled out a phone from her shorts pocket. This was an older model than in her married-and-living-in-a-pub life. Luckily, a thumb-reading was enough to unlock it.\n\nShe left the changing rooms and walked along a beachside path. It was a warm day. Maybe life was automatically better when the sun shone so confidently in April. Everything seemed more vivid, more colourful and alive than it had done in England.\n\nShe saw a parrot \u2013 a rainbow lorikeet \u2013 perched on the top of a bench, being photographed by a couple of tourists. A surfy-looking cyclist passed by holding an orange smoothie, smiling and literally saying, 'G'day.'\n\nThis was most definitely not Bedford.\n\nNora noticed something was happening to her face. She was \u2013 could she be? \u2013 smiling. And naturally, not just because someone expected her to.\n\nThen she noted a piece of graffiti on a low wall which said THE WORLD IS ON FIRE and another that said ONE EARTH = ONE CHANCE and her smile faded. After all, a different life didn't mean a different planet.\n\nShe had no idea where she lived or what she did or where she was meant to be heading after the swimming pool, but there was something quite freeing about that. To be existing without any expectation, even her own. As she walked, she googled her own name and added 'Sydney' to see if it brought up anything.\n\nBefore she scanned the results she glanced up and noticed a man walking on the path towards her, smiling. A short, tanned man with kind eyes and long thinning hair in a loose ponytail with a shirt that wasn't buttoned correctly.\n\n'Hey, Nora.'\n\n'Hey,' she said, trying not to sound confused.\n\n'What time you start today?'\n\nHow could she answer that? 'Uh. Oh. Crap. I've totally forgotten.'\n\nHe laughed, a little laugh of recognition, as if her forgetting was quite in character.\n\n'I saw it on the roster. I think it might be eleven.'\n\n'Eleven a.m.?'\n\nKind Eyes laughed. 'What've you been smoking? I want some.'\n\n'Ha. Nothing,' she said, stiffly. 'I've not been smoking anything. I just skipped breakfast.'\n\n'Well, see you this arvo...'\n\n'Yes. At the... place. Where is it again?'\n\nHe laughed, frowningly, and kept walking. Maybe she worked on a whale sight-seeing cruise that operated out of Sydney. Maybe Izzy did too.\n\nNora had no idea where she (or they) lived, and nothing was coming up on Google, but away from the ocean seemed the right direction. Maybe she was very local. Maybe she had walked here. Maybe one of the bikes she saw locked up outside the pool caf\u00e9 had been hers. She rummaged in her tiny clasp wallet and felt her pockets for a key, but there was only a house key. No car keys, no bike keys. So it was a bus or by foot. The house key had no information on it at all, so she sat on a bench with the sun beating hard on the back of her neck and checked her texts.\n\nThere were names of people she didn't recognise.\n\nAmy. Rodhri. Bella. Lucy P. Kemala. Luke. Lucy M.\n\nWho are these people?\n\nAnd a rather unhelpful contact titled, simply: 'Work'. And there was only one recent message from 'Work' and it said:\n\nWhere r u?\n\nThere was one name she recognised.\n\nDan.\n\nHer heart sank as she clicked on his most recent message.\n\nHey Nor! Hope Oz is treating you well. This is going to sound either corny or creepy but I am going to go all out and tell you. I had a dream the other night about our pub. It was such a good dream. We were so happy! Anyway, ignore that weirdness, the point of this is to say: guess where I'm going in May? AUSTRALIA. First time in over a decade. Am coming with work. I'm working with MCA. Would be great to catch up, even for a coffee if you're around. D x It was so strange she almost laughed. But she coughed instead. (Maybe she wasn't quite so fit in this life, now she thought about it.) She wondered how many Dans there were in the world, dreaming of things they would hate if they actually got them. And how many were pushing other people into their delusional idea of happiness?\n\nInstagram seemed to be the only social media she had here, and she only seemed to post pictures of poems on it.\n\nShe took a moment to read one:\n\nFIRE\n\n\u2003Every part of her\n\n\u2003That changed\n\n\u2003That got scraped off\n\n\u2003Because of schoolyard laughter\n\n\u2003Or the advice of grown-ups\n\n\u2003Long gone \u2013\n\n\u2003And the pain of friends\n\n\u2003Already dead.\n\n\u2003She collected those bits off the floor.\n\n\u2003Like wood shavings.\n\n\u2003And she made them into fuel.\n\n\u2003Into fire.\n\n\u2003And burned.\n\n\u2003Bright enough to see for ever.\n\nThis was troubling, but it was \u2013 after all \u2013 just a poem. Scrolling through some emails, she found one to Charlotte \u2013 a ceilidh band flautist with earthy humour who'd been Nora's only friend at String Theory before she had moved back up to Scotland.\n\n\u2002Hi Charl!\n\n\u2002Hope all is fine and dandy.\n\n\u2002Pleased the birthday do went well. Sorry I couldn't be there. All is well in sunny Sydney. Have finally moved into the new place. It's right near Bronte Beach (beautiful). Lots of neighbourhood cafes and charm. I also have a new job.\n\n\u2002I go swimming in a saltwater pool every morning and every evening I drink a glass of Australian wine in the sunshine. Life is good!\n\n\u2002Address:\n\n\u20022/29 Darling Street\n\n\u2002Bronte\n\n\u2002NSW 2024\n\n\u2002AUSTRALIA\n\n\u2002Nora\n\n\u2002X\n\nSomething was rotten. The tone of vague, distant perkiness, as if writing to a long-lost aunt. The Lots of neighbourhood cafes and charm, as though it was a TripAdvisor review. She didn't speak to Charlotte \u2013 or indeed anyone \u2013 like that.\n\nThere was also no mention of Izzy. Have finally moved into the new place. Was that we have or I have? Charlotte knew of Izzy. Why not mention her?\n\nShe would soon find out. Indeed, twenty minutes later she was standing in the hallway of her apartment, staring at four bags of rubbish that needed taking out. The living room looked small and depressing. The sofa tatty and old. The place smelt slightly mouldy.\n\nThere was a poster on the wall for the video game Angel and a vape pen on a coffee table, with a marijuana leaf sticker on it. A woman was staring at a screen, shooting zombies in the head.\n\nThe woman had short blue hair and for a moment Nora thought it might be Izzy.\n\n'Hi,' Nora said.\n\nThe woman turned. She was not Izzy. She had sleepy eyes and a vacant expression, as if the zombies she was shooting had slightly infected her. She was probably a perfectly decent person but she was not anyone Nora had ever seen in her life. She smiled.\n\n'Hey. How's that new poem coming along?'\n\n'Oh. Yeah. It's coming along really well. Thanks.'\n\nNora walked around the flat in a bit of a daze. She opened a door at random and realised it was the bathroom. She didn't need the toilet, but she needed a second to think. So she shut the door and washed her hands and stared at the water spiral down the plughole the wrong way.\n\nShe glanced at the shower. The dull yellow curtain was dirty in a vague student-house kind of way. That's what this place reminded her of. A student house. She was thirty-five and, in this life, living like a student. She saw some anti-depressants \u2013 fluoxetine \u2013 beside the basin, and picked up the box. She read Prescription for N. Seed at the top of the label. She looked down at her arm and saw the scars again. It was weird, to have your own body offer clues to a mystery.\n\nThere was a magazine on the floor next to the bin, National Geographic. The one with the black hole on its cover that she had been reading in another life, on the other side of the world, only yesterday. She sensed it was her magazine, given she had always liked reading it, and had been known \u2013 even in recent times \u2013 to buy it on the occasional spontaneous whim as no online version ever did the photos justice.\n\nShe remembered being eleven years old and looking at the photos of Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic, in her dad's copy. It had looked so vast and desolate and powerful and she had wondered what it would have been like to be among it, like the scientist-explorers in the article, spending their summer doing some kind of geological research. She cut out the pictures and they ended up on the pinboard in her bedroom. And for many years, at school, she had tried hard at science and geography just so she could be like the scientists in the article and spend her summers among frozen mountains and fjords, as puffins flew overhead.\n\nBut after her dad died, and after reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, she decided that a) Philosophy seemed to be the only subject that matched her sudden inward intensity and b) she wanted to be a rock star more than a scientist anyway.\n\nAfter leaving the bathroom, she returned to her mysterious flatmate.\n\nShe sat on the sofa and waited for a few moments, watching.\n\nThe woman's avatar got shot in the head.\n\n'Piss off, you zombie fuckface,' the woman snarled happily at the screen.\n\nShe picked up the vape pen. Nora wondered how she knew this woman. She was assuming they were flatmates.\n\n'I've been thinking about what you said.'\n\n'What did I say?' Nora asked.\n\n'About doing some cat-sitting. You know, you wanted to look after that cat?'\n\n'Oh yeah. Sure. I remember.'\n\n'Bad fucking idea, man.'\n\n'Really?'\n\n'Cats.'\n\n'What about them?'\n\n'They've got a parasite. Toxoplas-something.'\n\nNora knew this. She had known this since she was a teen, doing her work experience at Bedford Animal Rescue Centre. 'Toxoplasmosis.'\n\n'That's it! Well, I was listening to this podcast, right... and there's this theory that this international group of billionaires infected the cats with it so that they could take over the world by making humans dumber and dumber. I mean, think about it. There are cats everywhere. I was talking to Jared about this and Jared said, \"Jojo, what are you smoking?\" And I was like, \"The stuff you gave me\" and he said, \"Yeah, I know.\" Then he told me about the grasshoppers.'\n\n'Grasshoppers?'\n\n'Yeah. Did you hear about grasshoppers?' Jojo asked.\n\n'What about them?'\n\n'They are all killing themselves. Because this parasitic worm grows inside them, to become like a full-grown aquatic creature, and as it grows it takes over the brain function of the grasshopper, so the grasshopper thinks, \"Hey, I really like water\" and so they divebomb into water and die. And it's happening all the time. Google it. Google \"grasshopper suicide\". Anyway, the point is, the elites are killing us via cats and so you shouldn't be near them.'\n\nNora couldn't help thinking how different this life was to her imagined version of it. She had pictured herself and Izzy on a boat near Byron Bay, marvelling at the magnificence of humpback whales, and yet she was here in a small pot-scented apartment in Sydney, with a conspiracy theorist as a flatmate who wouldn't even let her near a cat.\n\n'What happened to Izzy?'\n\nNora realised she had just asked the question out loud.\n\nJojo looked confused. 'Izzy? Your old friend Izzy?'\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'The one who died?'\n\nThe words came so fast Nora could hardly absorb them.\n\n'Um, what?'\n\n'The car crash girl?'\n\n'What?'\n\nJojo looked confused, as curls of smoke wisped across her face. 'You okay, Nora?' She held out the joint. 'Wanna toke?'\n\n'No, I'm okay thanks.'\n\nJojo chuckled. 'Makes a change.'\n\nNora grabbed her phone. Went online. Typed 'Isabel Hirsh' into the search box. Then clicked 'News'.\n\nThere it was. A headline. Above a picture of Izzy's tanned face, smiling.\n\nBRITISH WOMAN KILLED IN NSW ROAD COLLISION\n\nA woman, 33, was killed and three people hospitalised south of Coffs Harbour last night when the woman's Toyota Corolla collided with a car travelling in the opposite direction on the Pacific Highway.\n\nThe female driver, identified as British citizen Isabel Hirsh, died at the scene of the accident just before 9pm. She was the only person in the Toyota.\n\nAccording to her flatmate, Nora Seed, Isabel had been driving from Sydney back to Byron Bay, to attend Nora's birthday party. Isabel had recently started working for Byron Bay Whale Watching Tours.\n\n'I am totally devastated,' Nora said. 'We travelled to Australia together only a month ago and Izzy had planned to stay here for as long as possible. She was such a force of life that it feels impossible to imagine the world without her in it. She was so excited about her new job. It is so unbearably sad and hard to comprehend.'\n\nThe passengers of the other car all suffered injuries, and the driver \u2013 Chris Dale \u2013 had to be airlifted to the hospital at Baringa.\n\nNew South Wales Police are asking anyone who witnessed the collision to come forward to help with their enquiries.\n\n'Oh my God,' she whispered to herself, feeling faint. 'Oh, Izzy.'\n\nShe knew that Izzy wasn't dead in all her lives. Or even most of them. But in this one it was real, and the grief Nora felt felt real too. The grief was familiar and terrifying and laced with guilt.\n\nBefore she could properly process anything, the mobile rang. It said 'Work'.\n\nA man's voice. A slow drawl. 'Where are you?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'You were meant to be here half an hour ago.'\n\n'Where?'\n\n'The ferry terminal. You're selling tickets. I've got the correct number, right? This is Nora Seed I'm talking to?'\n\n'It's one of them,' sighed Nora, as she gently faded away.\n\n[ Fish Tank ]\n\nThe shrewd-eyed librarian was back at her chessboard and hardly looked up as Nora arrived back.\n\n'Well, that was terrible.'\n\nMrs Elm smiled, wryly. 'It just shows you, doesn't it?'\n\n'Shows me what?'\n\n'Well, that you can choose choices but not outcomes. But I stand by what I said. It was a good choice. It just wasn't a desired outcome.'\n\nNora studied Mrs Elm's face. Was she enjoying this?\n\n'Why did I stay?' Nora asked. 'Why didn't I just come home, after she died?'\n\nMrs Elm shrugged. 'You got stuck. You were grieving. You were depressed. You know what depression is like.'\n\nNora understood this. She thought of a study she had read about somewhere, about fish. Fish were more like humans than most people think.\n\nFish get depression. They had done tests with zebrafish. They had a fish tank and they drew a horizontal line on the side of it, halfway down, in marker pen. Depressed fish stayed below the line. But give those same fish Prozac and they go above the line, to the top of their tanks, darting about like new.\n\nFish get depressed when they have a lack of stimulation. A lack of everything. When they are just there, floating in a tank that resembles nothing at all.\n\nMaybe Australia had been her empty fish tank, once Izzy had gone. Maybe she just had no incentive to swim above the line. And maybe even Prozac \u2013 or fluoxetine \u2013 wasn't enough to help her rise up. So she was just going to stay there in that flat, with Jojo, and never move until she was made to leave the country.\n\nMaybe even suicide would have been too active. Maybe in some lives you just float around and expect nothing else and don't even try to change. Maybe that was most lives.\n\n'Yes,' said Nora, aloud now. 'Maybe I got stuck. Maybe in every life I am stuck. I mean, maybe that's just who I am. A starfish in every life is still a starfish. There isn't a life where a starfish is a professor of aerospace engineering. And maybe there isn't a life where I'm not stuck.'\n\n'Well, I think you are wrong.'\n\n'Okay, then. I would like to try the life where I am not stuck. What life would that be?'\n\n'Aren't you supposed to tell me?'\n\nMrs Elm moved a queen to take a pawn, then turned the board around. 'I'm afraid I am just the librarian.'\n\n'Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.'\n\n'Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.'\n\n'I haven't got the stamina. I don't think I can do this.'\n\n'The only way to learn is to live.'\n\n'Yes. So you keep saying.'\n\nNora exhaled heavily. It was interesting to know that she could exhale in the library. That she felt entirely in her body. That it felt normal. Because this place was definitely not normal. And the real physical her wasn't here. It couldn't be. And yet it was, to all intents and purposes, because she was \u2013 in some sense \u2013 there. Standing on a floor, as if gravity still existed.\n\n'Okay,' she said. 'I would like a life where I am successful.'\n\nMrs Elm tutted disapprovingly. 'For someone who has read a lot of books, you aren't very specific with your choice of words.'\n\n'Sorry.'\n\n'Success. What does that mean to you? Money?'\n\n'No. Well, maybe. But that wouldn't be the defining feature.'\n\n'Well, then, what is success?'\n\nNora had no idea what success was. She had felt like a failure for so long.\n\nMrs Elm smiled, patiently. 'Would you like to consult again with The Book of Regrets? Would you like to think about those bad decisions that turned you away from whatever you feel success is?'\n\nNora shook her head quickly, like a dog shaking off water. She didn't want to be confronted with that long interminable list of mistakes and wrong turns again. She was depressed enough. And besides, she knew her regrets. Regrets don't leave. They weren't mosquito bites. They itch for ever.\n\n'No, they don't,' said Mrs Elm, reading her mind. 'You don't regret how you were with your cat. And nor do you regret not going to Australia with Izzy.'\n\nNora nodded. Mrs Elm had a point.\n\nShe thought of swimming in the pool at Bronte Beach. How good that had felt, in its strange familiarity.\n\n'From an early age you were encouraged to swim,' said Mrs Elm.\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Your dad was always happy to take you to the pool.'\n\n'It was one of the few things that had made him happy,' Nora mused.\n\nShe had associated swimming with her father's approval and enjoyed the wordlessness of being in the water because it was the opposite of her parents screaming at each other.\n\n'Why did you quit?' asked Mrs Elm.\n\n'As soon as I started winning swimming races, I became seen and I didn't want to be seen. And not only seen but seen in a swimsuit at the exact age you are self-obsessing about your body. Someone said I had boy's shoulders. It was a stupid thing but there were lots of stupid things and you feel them all at that age. As a teenager I'd have happily been invisible. People called me \"The Fish\". They didn't mean it as a compliment. I was shy. It was one of the reasons why I preferred the library to the playing field. It seems a small thing, but it really helped, having that space.'\n\n'Never underestimate the big importance of small things,' Mrs Elm said. 'You must always remember that.'\n\nNora thought back. Her teenage combination of shyness and visibility had been a problematic mix, but she was never bullied, as such, probably because everyone knew her brother. And Joe, while never exactly tough, was always considered cool and popular enough for his most immediate blood relation to be immune to schoolyard tyranny.\n\nShe won races in local and then national competitions, but as she reached fifteen it became too much. The daily swims, length after length after length.\n\n'I had to quit.'\n\nMrs Elm nodded. 'And the bond you'd developed with your dad frayed and almost snapped completely.'\n\n'Pretty much.'\n\nShe pictured her father's face, in the car, on a drizzle-scratched Sunday morning outside Bedford Leisure Centre, as she told him she didn't want to swim in competitions any more. That look of disappointment and profound frustration.\n\n'But you could make a success of your life,' he had said. Yes. She remembered it now. 'You're never going to be a pop star, but this is something real. It's right in front of you. If you keep training, you'll end up at the Olympics. I know it.'\n\nShe had been cross with him saying that. As if there was a very thin path to a happy life and it was the path he had decided for her. As if her own agency in her own life was automatically wrong. But what she didn't fully appreciate at fifteen years of age was just how bad regret could feel, and how much her father had felt that pain of being so near to the realisation of a dream he could almost touch it.\n\nNora's father, it was true, had been a difficult man.\n\nAs well as being highly critical of everything Nora did, and everything Nora wanted and everything Nora believed, unless it was related to swimming, Nora had also felt that simply to be in his presence was to commit some kind of invisible crime. Ever since the ligament injury that thwarted his rugby career, he'd had a sincere conviction that the universe was against him. And Nora was, at least she felt, considered by him as part of that same universal plan. From that moment in that car park she had felt she was really just an extension of the pain in his left knee. A walking wound.\n\nBut maybe he had known what would happen. Maybe he could foresee the way one regret would lead to another, until suddenly that was all she was. A whole book of regrets.\n\n'Okay, Mrs Elm. I want to know what happened in the life where I did what my father wanted. Where I trained as hard as I possibly could. Where I never moaned about a five a.m. start or a nine p.m. finish. Where I swam every day and never thought about quitting. Where I didn't get sidelined by music or writing unfinished novels. Where I sacrificed everything else on the altar of freestyle. Where I didn't give up. Where I did everything right in order to reach the Olympics. Take me to where I am in that life.'\n\nFor a moment it seemed as though Mrs Elm hadn't been taking any notice of Nora's mini-speech, as she kept frowning at the chessboard, working out how to out-manoeuvre herself.\n\n'The rook is my favourite piece,' she said. 'It's the one that you think you don't have to watch out for. It is straightforward. You keep your eye on the queen, and the knights, and the bishop, because they are the sneaky ones. But it's the rook that often gets you. The straightforward is never quite what it seems.'\n\nNora realised Mrs Elm was probably not talking just about chess. But the shelves were moving now. Fast as trains.\n\n'This life you've asked for,' explained Mrs Elm, 'is a little bit further away from the pub dream and the Australian adventure. Those were closer lives. This one involves a lot of different choices, going back further in time. And so the book is a little further away, you see?'\n\n'I see.'\n\n'Libraries have to have a system.'\n\nThe books slowed. 'Ah, here we are.'\n\nThis time Mrs Elm didn't stand up. She simply raised her left hand and a book flew towards her.\n\n'How did you do that?'\n\n'I have no idea. Now here's the life you asked for. Off you go.'\n\nNora took hold of the book. Light, fresh, lime-coloured. She turned to the first page. And this time she was aware of feeling absolutely nothing at all.\n\n[ The Last Update That Nora Had Posted Before She Found Herself Between Life and Death ]\n\n> I miss my cat. I'm tired.\n\n[ The Successful Life ]\n\nShe had been asleep.\n\nA deep, dreamless nothing, and now \u2013 thanks to the ring of a phone alarm \u2013 she was awake and didn't know where she was.\n\nThe phone told her it was 6:30 a.m. A light switch beside the bed appeared, thanks to the glow of the screen. Switching it on, she could see she was in a hotel room. It was rather plush, in a bland and blue and corporate kind of way.\n\nA tasteful semi-abstract sub-Cezanne painting of an apple \u2013 or maybe a pear \u2013 was framed on the wall.\n\nThere was a half-empty cylinder-shaped glass bottle of still mineral water beside the bed. And an unopened collection of shortbread biscuits. Some printed-out papers too, stapled together. A timetable of some sort.\n\nShe looked at it.\n\n\u2002ITINERARY FOR NORA SEED OBE, GUEST SPEAKER, GULLIVER RESEARCH INSPIRING SUCCESS SPRING CONFERENCE\n\n\u20028.45 a.m. Meet Priya Navuluri (Gulliver Research) and Rory Longford (Celebrity Speakers) and J in lobby, InterContinental Hotel\n\n\u20029.00 a.m. Soundcheck.\n\n\u20029.05 a.m. Tech run-through.\n\n\u20029.30 a.m. Nora to wait in VIP area or watch first speaker in main hall (JP Blythe, inventor of MeTime app and author of Your Life, Your Terms) 10.15 a.m. Nora to deliver talk\n\n\u200210.45 a.m. Audience Q + A\n\n\u200211.00 a.m. Meet and greet\n\n\u200211.30 a.m. Finish\n\nNora Seed OBE.\n\nInspiring Success.\n\nSo, there was a life in which she was a success. Well, that was something.\n\nShe wondered who 'J' was, and the other people she was supposed to meet in the lobby, and then she put the sheet of paper down and got out of bed. She had a lot of time. Why was she getting up at 6:30 a.m.? Maybe she swam every morning. That would make sense. She pressed a button and the curtains slid open with a low whirr to reveal a view of water and skyscrapers and the white dome of the O2 arena. She had never seen this precise view from this precise angle before. London. Canary Wharf. About twenty storeys up.\n\nShe went to the bathroom \u2013 beige tiles, large shower cubicle, fluffy white towels \u2013 and realised she didn't feel as bad as she usually did in the morning. There was a mirror filling half the opposing wall. She gasped at her appearance. And then she laughed. She looked so ridiculously healthy. And strong. And in this life had terrible taste in nightwear (pyjamas, mustard-and-green, plaid).\n\nThe bathroom was quite large. Large enough to get down on and do some push-ups. Ten full ones in a row \u2013 no knees \u2013 without even getting out of breath.\n\nThen she held a plank. And tried it with one hand. Then the other hand, with hardly a tremor. Then she did some burpees.\n\nNo problem at all.\n\nWow.\n\nShe stood up and patted her rock-hard stomach. Remembered how wheezy she had been in her root life, walking up the high street, technically only yesterday.\n\nShe hadn't felt this fit since she was a teenager. In fact, this might be the fittest she had ever felt. Stronger, certainly.\n\nSearching Facebook for 'Isabel Hirsh', she found out that her former best friend was alive and still living in Australia and this made Nora happy. She didn't even care that they weren't social media friends, as it was highly probable that in this life Nora hadn't gone to Bristol University. And even if she had, she wouldn't have been doing the same course. It was a bit humbling to realise that, even though this Isabel Hirsh might never have met Nora Seed, she was still doing the same thing she was doing in Nora's root life.\n\nShe also checked in on Dan. He was (seemingly) happily married to a spin-class instructor called Gina. 'Gina Lord (n\u00e9e Sharpe)'. They'd had a wedding in Sicily.\n\nNora then googled 'Nora Seed'.\n\nHer Wikipedia page (she had a Wikipedia page!) informed her that she had indeed made it to the Olympics. Twice. And that she specialised in freestyle. She had won a gold medal for 800m freestyle, with a ridiculous time of eight minutes and five seconds, and had a silver for 400m.\n\nThis had been when she was twenty-two years old. She had won another silver medal when she was twenty-six, for her participation in a 4 x 100m relay. It got even more ridiculous when she read that she had briefly been the world record-holder for women's 400m freestyle at the World Aquatic Championships. She had then retired from international competition.\n\nShe had retired at twenty-eight.\n\nShe apparently now worked for the BBC during their coverage of swimming events, had appeared on the TV show A Question of Sport, had written an autobiography called Sink or Swim, was an occasional assistant coach at British Swimming GB, and still swam for two hours every day.\n\nShe gave a lot of money to charitable causes \u2013 namely to Marie Curie Cancer Care \u2013 and she had organised a fundraising charity swimathon around Brighton Pier for the Marine Conservation Society. Since retiring from professional sport, she had swum the Channel twice.\n\nThere was a link to a TED talk she had given about the value of stamina in sport, and training, and life. It had over a million views. As she began to watch it, Nora felt as though she was watching someone else. This woman was confident, commanded the stage, had great posture, smiled naturally as she spoke, and managed to make the crowd smile and laugh and clap and nod their heads at all the right moments.\n\nShe had never imagined she could be like this, and tried to memorise what this other Nora was doing, but realised there was no way she would be able to.\n\n'People with stamina aren't made any differently to anyone else,' she was saying. 'The only difference is they have a clear goal in mind, and a determination to get there. Stamina is essential to stay focused in a life filled with distraction. It is the ability to stick to a task when your body and mind are at their limit, the ability to keep your head down, swimming in your lane, without looking around, worrying who might overtake you...'\n\nWho the hell was this person?\n\nShe skipped a little further into the video, and this other Nora was still talking with the confidence of a self-help Joan of Arc.\n\n'If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise. Keep your head down. Keep your stamina. Keep swimming...'\n\n'Keep swimming,' Nora mumbled, echoing this other self and wondering if the hotel had a pool.\n\nThe video disappeared and a second later her phone started to buzz.\n\nA name appeared. 'Nadia'.\n\nShe didn't know any Nadias in her original life. She had no idea if seeing the name would have inspired this version of her with happy anticipation or sinking dread.\n\nThere was only one way to find out.\n\n'Hello?'\n\n'Sweetheart,' came a voice she didn't recognise. A voice that was close but not entirely warm. She had an accent. Maybe Russian. 'I hope you are okay.'\n\n'Hi Nadia. Thanks. I'm fine. I'm just here in the hotel. Getting ready for a conference.' She tried to sound jolly.\n\n'Oh yeah, the conference. Fifteen thousand pounds for a talk. Sounds good.'\n\nIt sounded ridiculous. But she also wondered how Nadia \u2013 whoever Nadia was \u2013 knew this.\n\n'Oh yeah.'\n\n'Joe told us.'\n\n'Joe?'\n\n'Yeah. Well, listen, I need to talk to you at some point about your father's birthday.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I know he'd love it if you could come up and see us.'\n\nHer whole body went cold and weak, as if she had seen a ghost.\n\nShe remembered her father's funeral, hugging her brother as they cried on each other's shoulders.\n\n'My dad?'\n\nMy dad. My dead dad.\n\n'He's just come in from the garden. Do you want a word with him?'\n\nThis was so remarkable, so world-shattering, it was totally out of synch with her tone of voice. She said it casually, almost as if it was nothing at all.\n\n'What?'\n\n'Do you want a word with Dad?'\n\nIt took her a moment. She felt suddenly off-balance.\n\n'I\u2014'\n\nShe could hardly speak. Or breathe. She didn't know what to say. Everything felt unreal. It was like time travel. As though she had fallen through two decades.\n\nIt was too late to respond because the next thing she heard was Nadia saying: 'Here he is...'\n\nNora nearly hung up the phone. Maybe she should have. But she didn't. Now she knew it was a possibility, she needed to hear his voice again.\n\nHis breath first.\n\nThen: 'Hi Nora, how are you?'\n\nJust that. Casual, non-specific, everyday. It was him. His voice. His strong voice that had always been so clipped. But a little thinner, maybe, a little weaker. A voice fifteen years older than it was meant to be.\n\n'Dad,' she said. Her voice was a stunned whisper. 'It's you.'\n\n'You all right, Nora? Is this a bad line? Do you want to FaceTime?'\n\nFaceTime. To see his face. No. That would be too much. This was already too much. Just the idea that there was a version of her dad alive at a time after FaceTime was invented. Her dad belonged in a world of landlines. When he died, he was only just warming to radical concepts like emails and text messages.\n\n'No,' she said. 'It was me. I was just thinking of something. I'm a bit distant. Sorry. How are you?'\n\n'Fine. We took Sally to the vets yesterday.'\n\nShe assumed Sally was a dog. Her parents had never had a dog, or any pet. Nora had begged for a dog or a cat when she was little but her dad had always said they tied you down.\n\n'What was wrong with her?' Nora asked, trying to sound natural now.\n\n'Just her ears again. That infection keeps coming back.'\n\n'Oh right,' she said, as though she knew Sally and her problematic ears. 'Poor Sally. I... I love you, Dad. And I just want to say that\u2014'\n\n'Are you all right, Nora? You're sounding a bit... emotional.'\n\n'I just didn't... don't tell you that enough. I just want you to know I love you. You are a good father. And in another life \u2013 the life where I quit swimming \u2013 I am full of regret over that.'\n\n'Nora?'\n\nShe felt awkward asking him anything, but she had to know. The questions started to burst out of her like water from a geyser.\n\n'Are you okay, Dad?'\n\n'Why wouldn't I be?'\n\n'Just. You know... You used to worry about chest pains.'\n\n'Haven't had them since I got healthy again. That was years ago. You remember. My health kick? Hanging around Olympians does that to you. Got me back to rugby-fit. Coming up to sixteen years off the drink too. Cholesterol and blood pressure low, the doc says.'\n\n'Yes, of course... I remember the health kick.' And then another question came to her. But she had no idea how to ask it. So she did it directly.\n\n'How long have you been with Nadia now again?'\n\n'Are you having memory problems or something?'\n\n'No. Well, yes, maybe. I have just been thinking a lot about life recently.'\n\n'Are you a philosopher now?'\n\n'Well, I studied it.'\n\n'When?'\n\n'Never mind. I just can't remember how you and Nadia met.'\n\nShe heard an awkward sigh down the phone. He sounded terse. 'You know how we met... Why are you bringing all this up? Is this something that therapist is opening up? Because you know my feelings on that.'\n\nI have a therapist.\n\n'Sorry, Dad.'\n\n'That's all right.'\n\n'I just want to know that you're happy.'\n\n''Course I am. I've got an Olympic champion for a daughter and have finally found the love of my life. And you're getting back on your feet again. Mentally, I mean. After Portugal.'\n\nNora wanted to know what had happened in Portugal but she had another question to ask first.\n\n'What about Mum? Wasn't she the love of your life?'\n\n'Once upon a time she was. But things change, Nora. Come on, you're a grown-up.'\n\n'I...'\n\nNora put her dad on speaker. Clicked back to her own Wikipedia page. Sure enough, her parents had divorced after her father had an affair with Nadia Vanko, mother of a Ukrainian male swimmer, Yegor Vanko. And in this timeline her mother had died way back in 2011.\n\nAnd all this because Nora had never sat in that car park in Bedford and told her dad that she didn't want to be a competitive swimmer.\n\nShe felt that feeling again. Like she was fading away. That she had worked out that this life wasn't for her and was disappearing back to the library. But she stayed where she was. She said goodbye to her dad, ended the phone call and continued to read up on herself.\n\nShe was single, though had been in a relationship with the American Olympic medal-winning diver Scott Richards for three years, and briefly lived with him in California, where they resided in La Jolla, San Diego. She now lived in West London.\n\nHaving read the entire page she put the phone down and decided to go find out if there was a pool. She wanted to do what she would be doing in this life, and what she would be doing was swimming. And maybe the water would help her think of what she could say.\n\nIt was an exceptional swim, even if it gave her little creative inspiration, and it calmed her after the experience of having a conversation with her dead father. She had the pool to herself and glided through length after length of breaststroke without having to think about it. It felt so empowering, to be that fit and strong and to have such mastery of the water, that she momentarily stopped worrying about her father and having to give a speech she really wasn't prepared for.\n\nBut as she swam her mood changed. She thought of those years her dad had gained and her mother had lost, and as she thought she became angrier and angrier at her father, which fuelled her to swim even faster. She had always imagined her parents were too proud to get divorced, so instead let their resentments fester inside, projecting them onto their children, and Nora in particular. And swimming had been her only ticket to approval.\n\nHere, in this life she was in now, she had pursued a career to keep him happy, while sacrificing her own relationships, her own love of music, her own dreams beyond anything that didn't involve a medal, her own life. And her father had paid this back by having an affair with this Nadia person and leaving her mother and he still got terse with her. After all that.\n\nScrew him. Or at least this version of him.\n\nAs she switched to freestyle she realised it wasn't her fault that her parents had never been able to love her the way parents were meant to: without condition. It wasn't her fault her mother focused on her every flaw, starting with the asymmetry of her ears. No. It went back even earlier than that. The first problem had been that Nora had dared, somehow, to arrive into existence at a time when her parents' marriage was relatively fragile. Her mother fell into depression and her father turned to tumblers of single malt.\n\nShe did thirty more lengths, and her mind calmed and she started to feel free, just her and the water.\n\nBut when she eventually got out of the pool and went back to her room she dressed in the only clean clothes in her hotel room (smart navy trouser suit) and stared at the inside of her suitcase. She felt the profound loneliness emanating from it. There was a copy of her own book. She was staring out from the cover with steely-eyed determination and wearing a Team GB swimsuit. She picked it up and saw, in small print, that it was 'co-written with Amanda Sands'.\n\nAmanda Sands, the internet told her, was 'ghost-writer to a whole host of sporting celebrities'.\n\nThen she looked at her watch. It was time to head to the lobby.\n\nStanding waiting for her were two smartly dressed people she didn't recognise and one she most definitely did. He was wearing a suit and was clean-shaven in this life, his hair side-parted and business-like, but he was the same Joe. His dark eyebrows as bushy as ever \u2013 'That's the Italian in you,' as their mother used to say.\n\n'Joe?'\n\nWhat's more, he was smiling at her. A big, brotherly, uncomplicated smile.\n\n'Morning, sis,' he said, surprised by and a little awkward from the length of the hug she was giving him.\n\nWhen the hug was over, he introduced the other two people he was standing with.\n\n'This is Priya from Gulliver Research, the people organising the conference obviously, and this is Rory, obviously, from Celebrity Speakers.'\n\n'Hi Priya!' said Nora. 'Hi Rory. So nice to meet you.'\n\n'Yes, it is,' said Priya, smiling. 'We're so pleased to have you.'\n\n'You say that like we've never met before!' said Rory, with a booming laugh.\n\nNora backtracked. 'Yes, I know we've met, Rory. Just my little joke. You know my sense of humour.'\n\n'You have a sense of humour?'\n\n'Good one, Rory!'\n\n'Okay,' her brother said, looking at her and smiling. 'Do you want to see the space?'\n\nShe couldn't stop smiling. Here was her brother. Her brother, whom she hadn't seen in two years and hadn't had any semblance of a good relationship with in far longer, looking healthy and happy and like he actually liked her. 'The space?'\n\n'Yeah. The hall. Where you're doing the talk.'\n\n'It's all set up,' Priya added, helpfully.\n\n'Bloody big room,' said Rory approvingly, as he cradled a paper cup of coffee.\n\nSo, Nora agreed and was led into a vast blue conference room with a wide stage and around a thousand empty chairs. A technician in black came up and asked her: 'What do you fancy? Lapel or headset or handheld?'\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'What kind of mic will you want up there?'\n\n'Oh!'\n\n'Headset,' her brother interjected on Nora's behalf.\n\n'Yeah. Headset,' said Nora.\n\n'I was just thinking,' her brother said, 'after that nightmare we had with the microphone in Cardiff.'\n\n'Yeah, totally. What a nightmare.'\n\nPriya was smiling at her, wanting to ask something. 'Am I right in thinking you've got no multimedia stuff? No slides or anything?'\n\n'Um, I\u2014'\n\nHer brother and Rory were looking at her, a little concerned. This was clearly a question she should know the answer to and didn't.\n\n'Yes,' she said, then saw her brother's expression, 'I... don't. Yes, I don't. I don't have any multimedia stuff.'\n\nAnd they all looked at her like she was not quite right but she smiled through it.\n\n[ Peppermint Tea ]\n\nTen minutes later she was sitting on her own with her brother in something called the 'VIP Business Lounge', which was just a small, airless room with some chairs and a table offering a selection of today's newspapers. A couple of middle-aged men in suits were typing things into laptops.\n\nBy this point she had worked out that her brother was her manager. And that he'd been her manager for seven years, since she'd given up professional swimming.\n\n'Are you okay about all this?' her brother asked, having just got two drinks from the coffee machine. He tore a sachet to release a teabag. Peppermint. He placed it into the cup of hot water he'd taken from the coffee machine.\n\nThen he handed it to Nora.\n\nShe had never drunk peppermint tea in her life. 'That's for me?'\n\n'Well, yeah. It was the only herbal they had.'\n\nHe had a coffee for himself that Nora secretly craved. Maybe in this life she didn't drink caffeine.\n\nAre you okay about all this?\n\n'Okay about all what?' Nora wondered.\n\n'The talk, today.'\n\n'Oh, um, yeah. How long is it again?'\n\n'Forty minutes.'\n\n'Sure.'\n\n'It's a lot of money. I upped it from ten.'\n\n'That's very good of you.'\n\n'Well, I still get my twenty per cent. Hardly a sacrifice.'\n\nNora tried to think how she could unlock their shared history. How she could find out why, in this life, they were sitting together and getting along. It might have been money, but her brother had never been particularly money-motivated. And yes, sure, he'd obviously been upset when Nora walked away from the deal with the record company but that had been because he wanted to play guitar in The Labyrinths for the rest of his life and be a rock star.\n\nAfter dipping it a few times Nora let the teabag free in the water. 'Do you ever think of how our lives could have been different? You know, like if I had never stuck with swimming?'\n\n'Not really.'\n\n'I mean, what do you think you'd be doing if you weren't my manager?'\n\n'I manage other people too, you know.'\n\n'Well, yeah, of course I know that. Obviously.'\n\n'I suppose I probably wouldn't be managing anyone without you. I mean, you were the first. And you introduced me to Kai and then Natalie. And then Eli, so...'\n\nShe nodded, as if she had any idea who Kai and Natalie and Eli were. 'True, but maybe you'd have found some other way.'\n\n'Who knows? Or maybe I'd still be in Manchester, I don't know.'\n\n'Manchester?'\n\n'Yeah. You remember how much I loved it up there. At uni.'\n\nIt was really hard not to look surprised at any of this, at the fact that this brother she was getting on with, and working with, was also someone who went to university. In her root life her brother did A-levels and applied to go to Manchester to do History, but he never got the grades he needed, probably because he was too busy getting stoned with Ravi every night. And then decided he didn't want to go to uni at all.\n\nThey chatted a bit more.\n\nAt one point he became distracted by his phone.\n\nNora noticed his screensaver was of a radiant, handsome, smiling man she had never seen before. She noticed her brother's wedding ring and feigned a neutral expression.\n\n'So, how's married life?'\n\nJoe smiled. It was a genuinely happy smile. She hadn't seen him smile like that for years. In her root life, Joe had always been unlucky in love. Although she had known her brother was gay since he was a teenager, he hadn't officially come out until he was twenty-two. And he'd never had a happy or long-term relationship. She felt guilt, that her life had the power to shape her brother's life in such meaningful ways.\n\n'Oh, you know Ewan. Ewan's Ewan.'\n\nNora smiled back as if she knew who Ewan was and exactly what he was like. 'Yeah. He's great. I'm so happy for you both.'\n\nHe laughed. 'We've been married five years now. You're talking as if me and him have just got together.'\n\n'No, I'm just, you know, I sometimes think that you're lucky. So in love. And happy.'\n\n'He wants a dog.' He smiled. 'That's our current debate. I mean, I wouldn't mind a dog. But I'd want a rescue. And I wouldn't want a bloody Maltipoo or a Bichon. I'd want a wolf. You know, a proper dog.'\n\nNora thought of Voltaire. 'Animals are good company...'\n\n'Yeah. You still want a dog?'\n\n'I do. Or a cat.'\n\n'Cats are too disobedient,' he said, sounding like the brother she remembered. 'Dogs know their place.'\n\n'Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.'\n\nHe looked perplexed. 'Where did that come from? Is that a quote?'\n\n'Yeah. Henry David Thoreau. You know, my fave philosopher.'\n\n'Since when were you into philosophy?'\n\nOf course. In this life she'd never have done a Philosophy degree. While her root self had been reading the works of Thoreau and Lao Tzu and Sartre in a stinky student flat in Bristol, her current self had been standing on Olympic podiums in Beijing. Weirdly, she felt just as sad for the version of her who had never fallen in love with the simple beauty of Thoreau's Walden, or the stoical Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, as she had felt sympathy for the version of her who never fulfilled her Olympic potential.\n\n'Oh, I don't know... I just came across some of his stuff on the internet.'\n\n'Ah. Cool. Will check him out. You could drop some of that into your speech.'\n\nNora felt herself go pale. 'Um, I'm thinking of maybe doing something a little different today. I might, um, improvise a little.'\n\nImprovising was, after all, a skill she'd been practising.\n\n'I saw this great documentary about Greenland the other night. Made me remember when you were obsessed with the Arctic and you cut out all those pictures of polar bears and stuff.'\n\n'Yeah. Mrs Elm said the best way to be an arctic explorer was to be a glaciologist. So that's what I wanted to be.'\n\n'Mrs Elm,' he whispered. 'That rings a bell.'\n\n'School librarian.'\n\n'That was it. You used to live in that library, didn't you?'\n\n'Pretty much.'\n\n'Just think, if you hadn't stuck with swimming, you'd be in Greenland right now.'\n\n'Svalbard,' she said.\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'It's a Norwegian archipelago. Way up in the Arctic Ocean.'\n\n'Okay, Norway then. You'd be there.'\n\n'Maybe. Or maybe I'd just still be in Bedford. Moping around. Unemployed. Struggling to pay the rent.'\n\n'Don't be daft. You'd have always done something big.'\n\nShe smiled at her elder brother's innocence. 'In some lives me and you might not even get on.'\n\n'Nonsense.'\n\n'I hope so.'\n\nJoe seemed a bit uncomfortable, and clearly wanted to change the topic.\n\n'Hey, guess who I saw the other day?'\n\nNora shrugged, hoping it was going to be someone she'd heard of.\n\n'Ravi. Do you remember Ravi?'\n\nShe thought of Ravi, telling her off in the newsagent's only yesterday. 'Oh yeah. Ravi.'\n\n'Well, I bumped into him.'\n\n'In Bedford?'\n\n'Ha! God, no. Haven't been there for years. No. It was at Blackfriars station. Totally random. Like, I haven't seen him in over a decade. At least. He wanted to go to the pub. So, I explained I was teetotal now, and then I got into having to explain I'd been an alcoholic. And all of that. That I hadn't had a glass of wine or a puff on a joint in years.' Nora nodded as if this wasn't a bomb-shell. 'Since I got into a mess after Mum died. I think he was like, \"Who is this guy?\" But he was fine. He was cool. He's working as a cameraman now. Still doing some music on the side. Not rock stuff. DJ-ing apparently. Remember that band me and him had, years ago. The Labyrinths?'\n\nIt was becoming easier to fake vagueness. 'Oh yeah. The Labyrinths. Course. That's a blast from the past.'\n\n'Yeah. Got the sense he pines for those days. Even though we were crap and I couldn't sing.'\n\n'What about you? Do you ever think about what could have been if The Labyrinths had made it big?'\n\nHe laughed, a little sadly. 'I don't know if anything could have been.'\n\n'Maybe you needed an extra person. I used to play those keyboards Mum and Dad got you.'\n\n'Did you? When did you have time for that?'\n\nA life without music. A life without reading the books she had loved.\n\nBut also: a life where she got on with her brother. A life where she hadn't had to let him down.\n\n'Anyway, Ravi wanted to say hi. And wanted a catch-up. He only works one tube stop away. So he's going to try and come to the talk.'\n\n'What? Oh. That's... I wish he wouldn't.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'I just never really liked him.'\n\nJoe frowned. 'Really? I can't remember you saying that... He's okay. A good guy. Bit of a waster, maybe, back in the day, but he seems to have got his act together a bit...'\n\nNora was unsettled. 'Joe?'\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'You know when Mum died?'\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'Where was I?'\n\n'What do you mean? Are you okay today, sis? Are the new tablets working?'\n\n'Tablets?'\n\nShe checked in her bag and started to rummage. Saw a small box of anti-depressants in her bag. Her heart sank.\n\n'I just wanted to know. Did I see much of Mum before she died?'\n\nJoe frowned. He was still the same Joe. Still unable to read his sister. Still wanting to escape reality. 'You know we weren't there. It happened so fast. She didn't tell us how ill she was. To protect us. Or maybe because she didn't want us to tell her to stop drinking.'\n\n'Drinking? Mum was drinking?'\n\nJoe's worry increased. 'Sis, have you got amnesia? She was on a bottle of gin every day since Nadia came onto the scene.'\n\n'Yeah. Course. I remember.'\n\n'Plus you had the European Championships coming up and she didn't want to interfere with that...'\n\n'Jesus. I should have been there. One of us should have been there, Joe. We both\u2014'\n\nHis expression frosted suddenly. 'You were never that close to Mum, were you? Why this sudden\u2014'\n\n'I got closer to her. I mean, I would have. I\u2014'\n\n'You're freaking me out. You're acting not quite yourself.'\n\nNora nodded. 'Yes, I... I just... yes, I think you're right... I think it's just the tablets...'\n\nShe remembered her mother, in her final months, saying: 'I don't know what I would have done without you.' She'd probably said it to Joe too. But in this life, she'd had neither of them.\n\nThen Priya arrived into the room. Grinning, clutching her phone and some kind of a clipboard.\n\n'It's time,' she said.\n\n[ The Tree That Is Our Life ]\n\nFive minutes later Nora was back in the hotel's vast conference room. At least a thousand people were watching the first speaker conclude her presentation. The author of Zero to Hero. The book Dan had beside his bed in another life. But Nora wasn't really listening, as she sat in her reserved seat in the front row. She was too upset about her mother, too nervous about the speech, so she just picked up the odd word or phrase that floated into her mind like croutons in minestrone. 'Little-known fact', 'ambition', 'what you may be surprised to hear is that', 'if I can do it', 'hard knocks'.\n\nIt was hard to breathe in this room. It smelled of musky perfume and new carpet.\n\nShe tried to stay calm.\n\nLeaning into her brother, she whispered, 'I don't think I can do this.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I think I'm having a panic attack.'\n\nHe looked at her, smiling, but with a toughness in his eyes she remembered from a different life, when she'd had a panic attack before one of their early gigs with The Labyrinths at a pub in Bedford. 'You'll be fine.'\n\n'I don't know if I can do this. I've gone blank.'\n\n'You're overthinking it.'\n\n'I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.'\n\n'Come on. Don't let us down.'\n\nDon't let us down.\n\n'But\u2014'\n\nShe tried to think of music.\n\nThinking of music had always calmed her down.\n\nA tune came to her. She was slightly embarrassed, even within herself, to realise the song in her head was 'Beautiful Sky'. A happy, hopeful song that she hadn't sung in a long time. The sky grows dark / The black over blue / Yet the stars still dare / To shine for\u2014 But then the person Nora was sitting next to \u2013 a smartly dressed business woman in her fifties, and the source of the musky perfume smell \u2013 leaned in and whispered, 'I'm so sorry about what happened to you. You know, the stuff in Portugal...'\n\n'What stuff?'\n\nThe woman's reply was drowned out as the audience erupted into applause at that moment.\n\n'What?' she asked again.\n\nBut it was too late. Nora was being beckoned towards the stage and her brother was elbowing her.\n\nHer brother's voice, bellowing almost: 'They want you. Off you go.'\n\nShe headed tentatively towards the lectern on the stage, towards her own huge face smiling out triumphantly, golden medal around her neck, projected on the screen behind her.\n\nShe had always hated being watched.\n\n'Hello,' she said nervously, into the microphone. 'It is very nice to be here today...'\n\nA thousand or so faces stared, waiting.\n\nShe had never spoken to so many people simultaneously. Even when she had been in The Labyrinths, they had never played a gig for more than a hundred people, and back then she kept the talking between the songs as minimal as possible. Working at String Theory, although she was perfectly okay talking with customers, she rarely spoke up in staff meetings, even though there had never been more than five people in the room. Back at university, while Izzy always breezed through presentations Nora would worry about them for weeks in advance.\n\nJoe and Rory were staring at her with baffled expressions.\n\nThe Nora she had seen in the TED talk was not this Nora, and she doubted she could ever become that person. Not without having done all that she had done.\n\n'Hello. My name is Nora Seed.'\n\nShe hadn't meant it to be funny but the whole room laughed at this. There had clearly been no need to introduce herself.\n\n'Life is strange,' she said. 'How we live it all at once. In a straight line. But really that's not the whole picture. Because life isn't simply made of the things we do, but the things we don't do too. And every moment of our life is a... kind of turning.'\n\nStill nothing.\n\n'Think about it. Think about how we start off... as this set thing. Like the seed of a tree planted in the ground. And then we... we grow... we grow... and at first we are a trunk...'\n\nAbsolutely nothing.\n\n'But then the tree \u2013 the tree that is our life \u2013 develops branches. And think of all those branches, departing from the trunk at different heights. And think of all those branches, branching off again, heading in often opposing directions. Think of those branches becoming other branches, and those becoming twigs. And think of the end of each of those twigs, all in different places, having started from the same one. A life is like that, but on a bigger scale. New branches are formed every second of every day. And from our perspective \u2013 from everyone's perspective \u2013 it feels like a... like a continuum. Each twig has travelled only one journey. But there are still other twigs. And there are also other todays. Other lives that would have been different if you'd taken different directions earlier in your life. This is a tree of life. Lots of religions and mythologies have talked about the tree of life. It's there in Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Lots of philosophers and writers have talked about tree metaphors too. For Sylvia Plath, existence was a fig tree and each possible life she could live \u2013 the happily-married one, the successful-poet one \u2013 was this sweet juicy fig, but she couldn't get to taste the sweet juicy figs and so they just rotted right in front of her. It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we don't live.\n\n'For instance, in most of my lives I am not standing at this podium talking to you about success... In most lives I am not an Olympic gold medallist.' She remembered something Mrs Elm had told her in the Midnight Library. 'You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try...'\n\nPeople were listening now. They clearly needed a Mrs Elm in their lives.\n\n'The only way to learn is to live.'\n\nAnd she went on in this manner for another twenty minutes, remembering as much as possible of what Mrs Elm had told her, and then she looked down at her hands, glowing white from the light of the lectern.\n\nAs she absorbed the sight of a raised, thin pink line of flesh, she knew the scar was self-inflicted, and it put her off her flow. Or rather, put her into a new one.\n\n'And... and the thing is... the thing is... what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn't. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement \u2013 an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win. It's all... bollocks, actually...'\n\nThe audience definitely looked uncomfortable now. Clearly this was not the speech they were expecting. She scanned the crowd and saw a single face smiling up at her. It took a second, given the fact that he was smartly dressed in a blue cotton shirt and with hair far shorter than it was in his Bedford life, for her to realise it was Ravi. This Ravi looked friendly, but she couldn't shake the knowledge of the other Ravi, the one who had stormed out of the newsagent's, sulking about not being able to afford a magazine and blaming her for it.\n\n'You see, I know that you were expecting my TED talk on the path to success. But the truth is that success is a delusion. It's all a delusion. I mean, yes, there are things we can overcome. For instance, I am someone who gets stage fright and yet, here I am, on a stage. Look at me... on a stage! And someone told me recently, they told me that my problem isn't actually stage fright. My problem is life fright. And you know what? They're fucking right. Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn't matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do. The damp rots the whole useless thing...'\n\nJoe was desperately slicing his hand in the air around his neck, making a 'cut it' gesture.\n\n'Anyway, just be kind and... Just be kind. I have a feeling I am about to go, so I would just like to say I love my brother Joe. I love you, brother, and I love everyone in this room, and it was very nice to be here.'\n\nAnd the moment she had said it was nice to be there, was also the moment she wasn't there at all.\n\n[ System Error ]\n\nShe arrived back in the Midnight Library.\n\nBut this time she was a little away from the bookshelves. This was the loosely defined office area she had glimpsed earlier, in one of the broader corridors. The desk was covered with administrative trays barely containing scattered piles of papers and boxes, and the computer.\n\nThe computer was a really old-fashioned-looking, cream-coloured boxy one on the desk by the papers. The kind that Mrs Elm would once have had in her school library. She was at the keyboard now, typing with urgency, staring at the monitor as Nora stood behind her.\n\nThe lights above \u2013 the same bare light bulbs hanging down from wires \u2013 were flickering wildly.\n\n'My dad was alive because of me. But he'd also had an affair, and my mum died earlier, and I got on with my brother because I had never let him down, but he was still the same brother, really, and he was only really okay with me in that life because I was helping him make money and... and... it wasn't the Olympic dream I imagined. It was the same me. And something had happened in Portugal. I'd probably tried to kill myself or something... Are there any other lives at all or is it just the furnishings that change?'\n\nBut Mrs Elm wasn't listening. Nora noticed something on the desk. An old plastic orange fountain pen. The exact same kind that Nora had once owned at school.\n\n'Hello? Mrs Elm, can you hear me?'\n\nSomething was wrong.\n\nThe librarian's face was tight with worry. She read from the screen, to herself. 'System error.'\n\n'Mrs Elm? Hello? Yoo-hoo! Can you see me?'\n\nShe tapped her shoulder. That seemed to do it.\n\nMrs Elm's face broke out in massive relief as she turned away from the computer. 'Oh Nora, you got here?'\n\n'Were you expecting me not to? Did you think that life would be the one I wanted to live?'\n\nShe shook her head without really moving it. If that was possible. 'No. It's not that. It's just that it looked fragile.'\n\n'What looked fragile?'\n\n'The transfer.'\n\n'Transfer?'\n\n'From the book to here. The life you chose to here. It seems there is a problem. A problem with the whole system. Something beyond my immediate control. Something external.'\n\n'You mean, in my actual life?'\n\nShe stared back at the screen. 'Yes. You see, the Midnight Library only exists because you do. In your root life.'\n\n'So, I'm dying?'\n\nMrs Elm looked exasperated. 'It's a possibility. That is to say, it's a possibility that we are reaching the end of possibility.'\n\nNora thought of how good it had felt, swimming in the pool. How vital and alive. And then something happened inside her. A strange feeling. A pull in her stomach. A physical shift. A change in her. The idea of death suddenly troubled her. At that same time the lights stopped flickering overhead and shone brightly.\n\nMrs Elm clapped her hands as she absorbed new information on the computer screen.\n\n'Oh, it's back. That's good. The glitch is gone. We are running again. Thanks, I believe, to you.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'Well, the computer says the root cause within the host has been temporarily fixed. And you are the root cause. You are the host.' She smiled. Nora blinked, and when she opened her eyes both she and Mrs Elm were standing in a different part of the library. Between stacks of bookshelves again. Standing, stiffly, awkwardly, facing each other.\n\n'Right. Now, settle,' said Mrs Elm, before releasing a deep and meaningful exhale. She was clearly talking to herself.\n\n'My mum died on different dates in different lives. I'd like a life where she is still here. Does that life exist?'\n\nMrs Elm's attention switched to Nora.\n\n'Maybe it does.'\n\n'Great.'\n\n'But you can't get there.'\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'Because this library is about your decisions. There was no choice you could have made that led to her being alive beyond yesterday. I'm sorry.'\n\nA light bulb flickered above Nora's head. But the rest of the library stayed as it was.\n\n'You need to think about something else, Nora. What was good about the last life?'\n\nNora nodded. 'Swimming. I liked swimming. But I don't think I was happy in that life. I don't know if I am truly happy in any life.'\n\n'Is happiness the aim?'\n\n'I don't know. I suppose I want my life to mean something. I want to do something good.'\n\n'You once wanted to be a glaciologist,' Mrs Elm appeared to remember.\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'You used to talk about it. You said you were interested in the Arctic, so I suggested you become a glaciologist.'\n\n'I remember. I liked the sound of it straight away. My mum and dad never liked the idea, though.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'I don't really know. They encouraged swimming. Well, Dad did. But anything that involved academic work, they were funny about.'\n\nNora felt a deep sadness, down in her stomach. From her arrival into life, she was considered by her parents in a different way to her brother.\n\n'Other than swimming, Joe was the one expected to pursue things,' she told Mrs Elm. 'My mum put me off anything that could take me away. Unlike Dad, she didn't even push me to swim. But surely there must be a life where I didn't listen to my mum and where I am now an Arctic researcher. Far away from everything. With a purpose. Helping the planet. Researching the impact of climate change. On the front line.'\n\n'So, you want me to find that life for you?'\n\nNora sighed. She still had no idea what she wanted. But at least the Arctic Circle would be different.\n\n'All right. Yes.'\n\n[ Svalbard ]\n\nShe woke in a small bed in a little cabin on a boat. She knew it was a boat because it was rocking, and indeed the rocking, gentle as it was, had woken her up. The cabin was spare and basic. She was wearing a thick fleece sweater and long johns. Pulling back the blanket, she noticed that she had a headache. Her mouth was so dry her cheeks felt sucked-in against her teeth. She coughed a deep, chesty cough and felt a million pool-lengths away from the body of an Olympian. Her fingers smelt of tobacco. She sat up to see a pale-blonde, robust, hard-weathered woman sitting on another bed staring at her.\n\n'God morgen, Nora.'\n\nShe smiled. And hoped that in this life she wasn't fluent in whichever Scandinavian language this woman spoke.\n\n'Good morning.'\n\nShe noticed a half-empty bottle of vodka and a mug on the floor beside the woman's bed. A dog calendar (April: Springer Spaniel) was propped up on the chest between the beds. The three books on top of it were all in English. The one nearest to the woman said Principles of Glacier Mechanics. Two on Nora's: A Naturalist's Guide to the Arctic and a Penguin Classic edition of The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. She noticed something else. It was cold. Properly cold. The cold that almost burns, that hurts your fingers and toes and stiffens your cheeks. Even inside. With layers of thermal underwear. With a sweater on. With the bars of two electric heaters glowing orange. Every exhale made a cloud.\n\n'Why are you here, Nora?' the woman asked, in heavily accented English.\n\nA tricky question, when you didn't know where 'here' was.\n\n'Bit early in the morning, isn't it, for philosophy?' Nora laughed, nervously.\n\nShe saw a wall of ice outside the porthole, rising out of the sea. She was either very far north or very far south. She was very far somewhere.\n\nThe woman was still staring at her. Nora had no idea if they were friends or not. The woman seemed tough, direct, earthy, but probably an interesting form of company.\n\n'I don't mean philosophy. I don't even mean what got you into glaciological research. Although, it might be the same thing. I mean, why did you choose to go as far away from civilisation as possible? You've never told me.'\n\n'I don't know,' she said. 'I like the cold.'\n\n'No one likes this cold. Unless they are a sado-masochist.'\n\nShe had a point. Nora reached for the sweater at the end of her bed and put it on, over the sweater she was already wearing. As she did she saw, beside the vodka bottle, a laminated lanyard lying on the floor.\n\n[ Ingrid Skirbekk ]\n\n[ Professor of Geoscience ]\n\n[ International Polar Research Institute ]\n\n'I don't know, Ingrid. I just like glaciers, I suppose. I want to understand them. Why they are... melting.'\n\nShe wasn't sounding like a glacier expert, judging from Ingrid's raised eyebrows.\n\n'What about you?' she asked, hopefully.\n\nIngrid sighed. Rubbed her palm with a thumb. 'After Per died, I couldn't stand to be in Oslo any more. All those people that weren't him, you know? There was this coffee shop we used to go to, at the university. We'd just sit together, together but silent. Happy silent. Reading newspapers, drinking coffee. It was hard to avoid places like that. We used to walk around everywhere. His troublesome soul lingered on every street... I kept telling his memory to piss the fuck off but it wouldn't. Grief is a bastard. If I'd have stayed any longer, I'd have hated humanity. So, when a research position came up in Svalbard I was like, yes, this has come to save me... I wanted to be somewhere he had never been. I wanted somewhere where I didn't have to feel his ghost. But the truth is, it only half-works, you know? Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life.'\n\nNora took all this in. Ingrid was clearly telling this to someone she thought she knew reasonably well, and yet Nora was a stranger. It felt odd. Wrong. This must be the hardest bit about being a spy, she thought. The emotion people store in you, like a bad investment. You feel like you are robbing people of something.\n\nIngrid smiled, breaking the thought. 'Anyway, thanks for last night... That was a good chat. There are a lot of dickheads on this boat and you are not a dickhead.'\n\n'Oh. Thanks. Neither are you.'\n\nAnd it was then that Nora noticed the gun, a large rifle with a hefty brown handle, leaning against the wall at the far end of the room, under the coat hooks.\n\nThe sight made her feel happy, somehow. Made her feel like her eleven-year-old self would have been proud. She was, it seemed, having an adventure.\n\n[ Hugo Lef\u00e8vre ]\n\nNora walked with her headache and obvious hangover through an undecorated wooden passageway to a small dining hall that smelled of pickled herring, and where a few research scientists were having breakfast.\n\nShe got herself a black coffee and some stale, dry rye bread and sat down.\n\nAround her, outside the window, was the most eerily beautiful sight she had ever seen. Islands of ice, like rocks rendered clean and pure white, were visible amid the fog. There were seventeen other people in the dining hall, Nora counted. Eleven men, six women. Nora sat by herself but within five minutes a man with short hair and stubble two days away from a full beard sat down at her table. He was wearing a parka, like most of the room, but he seemed ill-suited to it, as if he would be more at home on the Riviera wearing designer shorts and a pink polo shirt. He smiled at Nora. She tried to translate the smile, to understand the kind of relationship they had. He watched her for a little while, then shuffled his chair along to sit opposite her. She looked for a lanyard, but he wasn't wearing one. She wondered if she should know his name.\n\n'I'm Hugo,' he said, to her relief. 'Hugo Lef\u00e8vre. You are Nora, yes?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'I saw you around, in Svalbard, at the research centre, but we never said hello. Anyway, I just wanted to say I read your paper on pulsating glaciers and it blew my mind.'\n\n'Really?'\n\n'Yes. I mean, it's always fascinated me, why they do that here and nowhere else. It's such a strange phenomenon.'\n\n'Life is full of strange phenomena.'\n\nConversation was tempting, but dangerous. Nora smiled a small, polite smile and then looked out of the window. The islands of ice turned into actual islands. Little snow-streaked pointed hills, like the tips of mountains, or flatter, craggy plates of land. And beyond them, the glacier Nora had seen from the cabin porthole. She could get a better measure of it now, although its top portion was concealed under a visor of cloud. Other parts of it were entirely free from fog. It was incredible.\n\nYou see a picture of a glacier on TV or in a magazine and you see a smooth lump of white. But this was as textured as a mountain. Black-brown and white. And there were infinite varieties of that white, a whole visual smorgasbord of variation \u2013 white-white, blue-white, turquoise-white, gold-white, silver-white, translucent-white \u2013 rendered glaringly alive and impressive. Certainly more impressive than the breakfast.\n\n'Depressing, isn't it?' Hugo said.\n\n'What?'\n\n'The fact that the day never ends.'\n\nNora felt uneasy with this observation. 'In what sense?'\n\nHe waited a second before responding.\n\n'The never-ending light,' he said, before taking a bite of a dry cracker. 'From April on. It's like living one interminable day... I hate that feeling.'\n\n'Tell me about it.'\n\n'You'd think they'd give the portholes curtains. Hardly slept since I've been on this boat.'\n\nNora nodded. 'How long is that again?'\n\nHe laughed. It was a nice laugh. Close-mouthed. Civilised. Hardly a laugh at all.\n\n'I drank a lot with Ingrid last night. Vodka has stolen my memory.'\n\n'Are you sure it's the vodka?'\n\n'What else would it be?'\n\nHis eyes were inquisitive, and made Nora feel automatically guilty.\n\nShe looked over at Ingrid, who was drinking her coffee and typing on her laptop. She wished she had sat with her now.\n\n'Well, that was our third night,' Hugo said. 'We have been meandering around the archipelago since Sunday. Yeah, Sunday. That's when we left Longyearbyen.'\n\nNora made a face as if to say she knew all this. 'Sunday seems for ever away.'\n\nThe boat felt like it was turning. Nora was forced to lean a little in her seat.\n\n'Twenty years ago there was hardly any open water in Svalbard in April. Look at it now. It's like cruising the Mediterranean.'\n\nNora tried to make her smile seem relaxed. 'Not quite.'\n\n'Anyway, I heard you got the short straw today?'\n\nNora tried to look blank, which wasn't hard. 'Really?'\n\n'You're the spotter, aren't you?'\n\nShe had no idea what he was talking about, but feared the twinkle in his eye.\n\n'Yes,' she answered. 'Yes, I am. I am the spotter.'\n\nHugo's eyes widened with shock. Or mock-shock. It was hard to tell the difference with him.\n\n'The spotter?'\n\n'Yes?'\n\nNora desperately wanted to know what the spotter actually did, but couldn't ask.\n\n'Well, bonne chance,' said Hugo, with a testing gaze.\n\n'Merci,' said Nora, staring out at the crisp Arctic light and a landscape she had only ever seen in magazines. 'I'm ready for a challenge.'\n\n[ Walking in Circles ]\n\nAn hour later and Nora was on an expanse of snow-covered rock. More of a skerry than an island. A place so small and uninhabitable it had no name, though a larger island \u2013 ominously titled Bear Island \u2013 was visible across the ice-cold water. She stood next to a boat. Not the Lance, the large boat she'd had breakfast on \u2013 that was moored safely out at sea \u2013 but the small motor-dinghy that had been dragged up out of the water almost single-handedly by a big boulder of a man called Rune, who, despite his Scandinavian name, spoke in languid west-coast American.\n\nAt her feet was a fluorescent yellow rucksack. And lying on the ground was the Winchester rifle that had been leaning against the wall in the cabin. This was her gun. In this life, she owned a firearm. Next to the gun was a saucepan with a ladle inside it. In her hands was another, less deadly, gun \u2013 a signal pistol ready to fire a flare.\n\nShe had discovered what kind of 'spotting' she was doing. While nine of the scientists conducted a climate-tracking fieldwork on this tiny island, she was the lookout for polar bears. Apparently this was a very real prospect. And if she saw one, the very first thing she had to do was fire the flare. This would serve the dual purpose of a) frightening the bear away and b) warning the others.\n\nIt was not foolproof. Humans were tasty protein sources and the bears were not known for their fear, especially in recent years as the loss of habitat and food sources had made them ever more vulnerable and forced them to be more reckless.\n\n'Soon as you've fired the flare,' said the eldest of the group, a beardless, sharp-featured man called Peter who was the field leader, and who spoke in a state of permanent fortissimo, 'bang the pan with the ladle. Bang it like mad and scream. They have sensitive hearing. They're like cats. Nine times out of ten, the noise scares them off.'\n\n'And the other time out of ten?'\n\nHe nodded down at the rifle. 'You kill it. Before it kills you.'\n\nNora wasn't the only one with a gun. They all had guns. They were armed scientists. Anyway, Peter laughed and Ingrid patted her back.\n\n'I truly hope,' said Ingrid, laughing raspily, 'you don't get eaten. I would miss you. So long as you aren't menstruating, you should be okay.'\n\n'Jesus. What?'\n\n'They can smell the blood from a mile away.'\n\nAnother person \u2013 someone who was so thoroughly wrapped up it was impossible to tell who they were even if she had known them \u2013 wished her 'good luck' in a muffled far-away voice.\n\n'We'll be back in five hours...' Peter told her. He laughed again, and Nora hoped that meant it was a joke. 'Walk in circles to keep warm.'\n\nAnd then they left her, walking off over the rocky ground and disappearing into the fog.\n\nFor an hour, nothing happened. Nora walked in circles. She hopped from left foot to right foot. The fog thinned a little and she stared out at the landscape. She wondered why she was not back in the library. After all, this was definitely a bit shit. There were surely lives where she was sitting beside a swimming pool in the sunshine right now. Lives where she was playing music, or lying in a warm lavender-scented bath, or having incredible third-date sex, or reading on a beach in Mexico, or eating in a Michelin-starred restaurant, or strolling the streets of Paris, or getting lost in Rome, or tranquilly gazing at a temple near Kyoto, or feeling the warm cocoon of a happy relationship.\n\nIn most lives, she would have at least been physically comfortable. And yet, she was feeling something new here. Or something old that she had long buried. The glacial landscape reminded her that she was, first and foremost, a human living on a planet. Almost everything she had done in her life, she realised \u2013 almost everything she had bought and worked for and consumed \u2013 had taken her further away from understanding that she and all humans were really just one of nine million species.\n\n'If one advances confidently,' Thoreau had written in Walden, 'in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.' He'd also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone. 'I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.'\n\nAnd Nora felt similarly, in that moment. Although she had only been left alone for an hour at this point, she had never experienced this level of solitude before, amid such unpopulated nature.\n\nShe had thought, in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn't been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the 'tonic of wildness' as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.\n\nShe remembered a conversation she'd had with Ash. Tall and slightly awkward and cute and forever in need of a new songbook for his guitar.\n\nThe chat hadn't been in the shop but in the hospital, when her mother was ill. Shortly after discovering she had ovarian cancer, she had needed surgery. Nora had taken her mum to see all the consultants at Bedford General Hospital, and she had held her mum's hand more in those few weeks than in all the rest of their relationship put together.\n\nWhile her mum was undergoing surgery, Nora had waited in the hospital canteen. And Ash \u2013 in his scrubs, and recognising her as the person he'd chatted to on many occasions in String Theory \u2013 saw she looked worried and popped in to say hi.\n\nHe worked at the hospital as a general surgeon, and she'd ended up asking him lots of questions about the sort of stuff he did (on that particular day he'd removed an appendix and a bile duct). She also asked about normal post-surgery recovery time and procedure times, and he had been very reassuring. They'd ended up talking for a very long time about all sorts of things, which he seemed to sense she'd been in need of. He'd said something about not over-googling health symptoms. And that had led to them talking about social media \u2013 he believed that the more people were connected on social media, the lonelier society became.\n\n'That's why everyone hates each other nowadays,' he reckoned. 'Because they are overloaded with non-friend friends. Ever heard about Dunbar's number?'\n\nAnd then he had told her about a man called Roger Dunbar at Oxford University, who had discovered that human beings were wired to know only a hundred and fifty people, as that was the average size of hunter-gatherer communities.\n\n'And the Domesday Book,' Ash had told her, under the stark lighting of the hospital canteen, 'if you look at the Domesday Book, the average size of an English community at that time was a hundred and fifty people. Except in Kent. Where it was a hundred people. I'm from Kent. We have anti-social DNA.'\n\n'I've been to Kent,' Nora had countered. 'I noticed that. But I like that theory. I can meet that many people on Instagram in an hour.'\n\n'Exactly. Not healthy! Our brains can't handle it. Which is why we crave face-to-face communication more than ever. And... which is why I would never buy my Simon & Garfunkel guitar chord songbooks online!'\n\nShe smiled at the memory, then was brought back to the reality of the Arctic landscape by the sound of a loud splash.\n\nA few metres away from her, between the rocky skerry she was standing on and Bear Island, there was another little rock, or collection of rocks, sticking out of the water. Something was emerging from the sea froth. Something heavy, slapping against the stone with a great wet weight. Her whole body shaking, she got ready to fire the flare, but it wasn't a polar bear. It was a walrus. The fat, brown wrinkled beast shuffled over the ice, then stopped to stare at her. She (or he) looked old, even for a walrus. The walrus knew no shame, and could hold a stare for an indefinite amount of time. Nora felt scared. She only knew two things about walruses: that they could be vicious, and that they were never alone for very long.\n\nThere were probably other walruses about to haul out of the water.\n\nShe wondered if she should fire the flare.\n\nThe walrus stayed where it was, like a ghost of itself in the grainy light, but slowly disappeared behind a veil of fog. Minutes went by. Nora had seven layers of clothing on, but her eyelids felt like they were stiffening and could freeze shut if she closed them for too long. She heard the voices of the others occasionally drift over to her and, for a while, her colleagues returned close enough for her to see some of them. Silhouettes in the fog, hunched over the ground, reading ice samples with equipment she wouldn't have understood. But then they disappeared again. She ate one of the protein bars in her rucksack. It was cold and hard as toffee. She checked her phone but there was no signal.\n\nIt was very quiet.\n\nThe quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention.\n\nAs she was chewing there came another splashing sound, but this time from a different direction. The combination of fog and weak light made it hard to see. But it wasn't a walrus. That became clear when she realised the silhouette moving towards her was big. Bigger than a walrus, and much bigger than any human.\n\n[ A Moment of Extreme Crisis in the Middle of Nowhere ]\n\n'Oh fuck,' whispered Nora, into the cold.\n\n[ The Frustration of Not Finding a Library When You Really Need One ]\n\nThe fog cleared to reveal a huge white bear, standing upright. It dropped down to all fours and continued moving toward her with surprising velocity and a heavy and terrifying grace. Nora did nothing. Her mind was jammed with panic. She was as still as the permafrost she stood on.\n\nFuck.\n\nFuck fuck.\n\nFuck fuck fucking fuck.\n\nFuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.\n\nEventually a survival impulse kicked in and Nora raised the signal pistol and fired it, and the flare shot out like a tiny comet and disappeared into the water, the glow fading along with her hope. The creature was still coming towards her. She fell to her knees and started clanging the ladle against the saucepan and shouted at the top of her lungs.\n\n'BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!'\n\nThe bear stopped, momentarily.\n\n'BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!'\n\nIt was now walking forward again.\n\nThe banging wasn't working. The bear was close. She wondered if she could reach the rifle, lying on the ice, just slightly too far away. She could see the bear's vast pawed feet, armed with claws, pressing into the snow-dusted rock. Its head was low and its black eyes were looking directly at her.\n\n'LIBRARY!' Nora screamed. 'MRS ELM! PLEASE SEND ME BACK! THIS IS THE WRONG LIFE! IT IS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WRONG! TAKE ME BACK! I DON'T WANT ADVENTURE! WHERE'S THE LIBRARY?! I WANT THE LIBRARY!'\n\nThere was no hatred in the polar bear's stare. Nora was just food. Meat. And that was a humbling kind of terror. Her heart pounded like a drummer reaching the crescendo. The end of the song. And it became astoundingly clear to her, finally, in that moment:\n\nShe didn't want to die.\n\nAnd that was the problem. In the face of death, life seemed more attractive, and as life seemed more attractive, how could she get back to the Midnight Library? She had to be disappointed in a life, not just scared of it, in order to try again with another book.\n\nThere was death. Violent, oblivious death, in bear form, staring at her with its black eyes. And she knew then, more than she'd known anything, that she wasn't ready to die. This knowledge grew bigger than fear itself as she stood there, face to face with a polar bear, itself hungry and desperate to exist, and banged the ladle against the saucepan. Harder. A fast, staccato bang bang bang.\n\nI'm. Not. Scared.\n\nI'm. Not. Scared.\n\nI'm. Not. Scared.\n\nThe bear stood and stared, the way the walrus had. She glanced at the rifle. Yes. It was too far away. By the time she could grab it and work out how to fire it, it would already be too late. She doubted she'd be able to kill a polar bear anyway. So she banged the ladle.\n\nNora closed her eyes, wishing for the library as she carried on making noise. When she opened them, the bear was slipping headfirst into the water. She kept banging the saucepan even after the creature had disappeared. About a minute later, she heard the humans calling her name through the fog.\n\n[ Island ]\n\nShe was in shock. But it was a slightly different kind of shock than the others on the dinghy assumed. It wasn't the shock of having been close to death. It was the shock of realising she actually wanted to live.\n\nThey passed a small island, teeming with nature. Green lichens spread over rocks. Birds \u2013 little auks and puffins clustered together \u2013 huddled against the Arctic wind. Life surviving against the odds.\n\nNora sipped the coffee that Hugo handed her, fresh from his flask. Holding it with cold hands even under three pairs of gloves.\n\nTo be part of nature was to be part of the will to live.\n\nWhen you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.\n\nBut once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.\n\n[ Permafrost ]\n\nThe surface air temperatures in Svalbard were warming at twice the global rate. Climate change was happening faster here than almost anywhere on Earth.\n\nOne woman, wearing a purple woollen hat pulled down over her eyebrows, talked about witnessing one of the icebergs doing a somersault \u2013 something that happened apparently because the warming waters had dissolved it from beneath, causing it to become top heavy.\n\nAnother problem was that the permafrost on the land was thawing, softening the ground, leading to landslides and avalanches that could destroy the wooden houses of Longyearbyen, the largest town in Svalbard. There was also a risk of bodies surfacing in the local cemetery.\n\nIt was inspiring, being among these scientists who were trying to discover precisely what was happening to the planet, trying to observe glacial and climatic activity, and in so doing to inform, and to protect life on Earth.\n\nBack on the main boat, Nora sat quietly in the dining area as everyone offered sympathy for the bear encounter. She felt unable to tell them she was grateful for the experience. She just smiled politely and did her best to avoid conversation.\n\nThis life was an intense one, without compromise. It was currently minus seventeen degrees, and she had nearly been eaten by a polar bear, and yet maybe the problem with her root life had partly been its blandness.\n\nShe had come to imagine mediocrity and disappointment were her destiny.\n\nIndeed, Nora had always had the sense that she came from a long line of regrets and crushed hopes that seemed to echo in every generation.\n\nFor instance, her grandfather on her mother's side was called Lorenzo Conte. He had left Puglia \u2013 the handsome heel in the boot of Italy \u2013 to come to Swinging London in the 1960s.\n\nLike other men in the desolate port town of Brindisi, he'd emigrated to Britain, exchanging life on the Adriatic for a job at the London Brick Company. Lorenzo, in his naivety, had imagined having a wonderful life \u2013 making bricks all day, and then of an evening he would rub shoulders with The Beatles and walk arm-in-arm down Carnaby Street with Jean Shrimpton or Marianne Faithful. The only problem was that, despite its name, the London Brick Company wasn't actually in London. It was based sixty miles north in Bedford, which, for all its modest charms, turned out not as swinging as Lorenzo would have liked. But he made a compromise with his dreams and settled there. The work may not have been glamorous, but it paid.\n\nLorenzo married a local English woman called Patricia Brown, who was also getting used to life's disappointments, having exchanged her dream of being an actress for the mundane, daily theatre of the suburban housewife, and whose culinary skills were forever under the ghostly shadow of her dead Puglian mother-in-law and her legendary spaghetti dishes, which, in Lorenzo's eyes, could never be surpassed.\n\nThey had a baby girl within a year of getting married \u2013 Nora's mother \u2013 and they called her Donna.\n\nDonna grew up with her parents arguing almost continually, and had consequently believed marriage was something that was not only inevitable, but also inevitably miserable. She became a secretary at a law firm, and then a communications officer for Bedford council, but then she'd had an experience which was never really discussed, at least not with Nora. She'd experienced some kind of breakdown \u2013 the first of several \u2013 that caused her to stay at home, and, although she recovered, she never went back to work.\n\nThere was an invisible baton of failure her mother had passed down, and Nora had held it for a long time. Maybe that was why she had given up on so many things. Because she had it written in her DNA that she had to fail.\n\nNora thought of this as the boat chugged through the Arctic waters and gulls \u2013 black-legged kittiwakes, according to Ingrid \u2013 flew overhead.\n\nOn both sides of her family there had been an unspoken belief that life was meant to fuck you over. Nora's dad, Geoff, had certainly lived a life that seemed to miss its target.\n\nHe had grown up with only a mother, as his dad had died of a heart attack when he was two, cruelly hiding somewhere behind his first memories. Nora's paternal grandmother had been born in rural Ireland but emigrated to England to become a school cleaner, struggling to bring in enough money for food, let alone anything approaching fun.\n\nGeoff had been bullied early on in life but had grown big and broad enough to easily put those bullies in their place. He worked hard and proved good at football and the shot put and, in particular, rugby. He played for the Bedford Blues youth team, becoming their best player, and had a shot at the big time before a collateral ligament injury stopped him in his tracks. He then became a PE teacher and simmered with quiet resentment at the universe. He forever dreamed of travel, but never did much of it beyond a subscription to National Geographic and the occasional holiday to somewhere in the Cyclades \u2013 Nora remembered him in Naxos, snapping a picture of the Temple of Apollo at sunset.\n\nMaybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself. Maybe it wasn't the lack of achievements that had made her and her brother's parents unhappy, maybe it was the expectation to achieve in the first place. She had no idea about any of it, really. But on that boat she realised something. She had loved her parents more than she ever knew, and right then, she forgave them completely.\n\n[ One Night in Longyearbyen ]\n\nIt took two hours to get back to the tiny port at Longyearbyen. It was Norway's \u2013 and the world's \u2013 most northern town, with a population of around two thousand people.\n\nNora knew these basic things from her root life. She had, after all, been fascinated by this part of the world since she was eleven, but her knowledge didn't stretch far beyond the magazine articles she had read and she was still nervous of talking.\n\nBut the boat trip back had been okay, because her inability to discuss the rock and ice and plant samples they had taken, or to understand phrases such as 'striated basalt bedrock' and 'post-glacial isotopes', was put down to the shock of her polar bear encounter.\n\nAnd she was in a kind of shock, it was true. But it was not the shock her colleagues were imagining. The shock hadn't been that she'd thought she'd been about to die. She had been about to die ever since she first entered the Midnight Library. No, the shock was that she felt like she was about to live. Or at least, that she could imagine wanting to be alive again. And she wanted to do something good with that life.\n\nThe life of a human, according to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, was of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.\n\nBut if it was important enough for David Hume to write that thought down, then maybe it was important enough to aim to do something good. To help preserve life, in all its forms.\n\nAs Nora understood it, the work this other Nora and her fellow scientists had been doing was something to do with determining the speed at which the ice and glaciers had been melting in the region, to gauge the acceleration rate of climate change. There was more to it than that, but that was at the core of it, as far as Nora could see.\n\nSo, in this life, she was doing her bit to save the planet. Or at least to monitor the steady devastation of the planet in order to alert people to the facts of environmental crisis. That was potentially depressing but also a good and ultimately fulfilling thing to do, she imagined. There was purpose. There was meaning.\n\nThey were impressed too. The others. With the polar bear story. Nora was a hero of sorts \u2013 not in an Olympic-swimming-champion way, but in another equally fulfilling kind of fashion.\n\nIngrid had her arm around her. 'You are the saucepan warrior. And I think we need to mark your fearlessness, and our potentially groundbreaking findings, with a meal. A nice meal. And some vodka. What do you say, Peter?'\n\n'A nice meal? In Longyearbyen? Do they have them?'\n\nAs it turned out: they did.\n\nBack on dry land they went to a smart wooden shack of a place called Gruvelageret perched off a lonely road in an austere, snow-crisp valley. She drank Arctic ale and surprised her colleagues by eating the only vegan option on a menu that included reindeer steak and moose burger. Nora must have looked tired because quite a few of her colleagues told her that she did, but maybe it was just that there weren't many places in the conversation that she could enter with confidence. She felt like a learner driver at a busy junction, nervously waiting for a clear and safe patch of road.\n\nHugo was there. He still looked to her like he would rather be in Antibes or St Tropez. She felt a little uneasy as he stared at her, a little too observed.\n\nOn the hurried walk back to their land-based accommodation, which reminded Nora of a university halls of residence but on a smaller scale and more Nordic and wooden and minimal, Hugo jogged to catch her up and walk by her side.\n\n'It is interesting,' he said.\n\n'What is interesting?'\n\n'How at breakfast this morning you didn't know who I was.'\n\n'Why? You didn't know who I was either.'\n\n'Of course I did. We were chatting for about two hours yesterday.'\n\nNora felt like she was inside some kind of trap. 'We were?'\n\n'I studied you at breakfast before I came over and I could see you were different today.'\n\n'That's creepy, Hugo. Studying women at breakfast.'\n\n'And I noticed things.'\n\nNora lifted her scarf over her face. 'It's too cold. Can we talk about this tomorrow?'\n\n'I noticed you improvising. All day you have been non-committal in everything you say.'\n\n'Not true. I'm just shook up. You know, the bear.'\n\n'Non. Ce n'est pas \u00e7a. I'm talking about before the bear. And after the bear. And all day.'\n\n'I have no idea what you're\u2014'\n\n'There is a look. I have seen it before in other people. I'd recognise it anywhere.'\n\n'I have no idea what you are talking about.'\n\n'Why do glaciers pulsate?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'This is your area of study. It's why you're here, isn't it?'\n\n'The science isn't entirely settled on the matter.'\n\n'Okay. Bien. Name me one of the glaciers around here. Glaciers have names. Name one... Kongsbreen? Nathorstbreen? Ring any bells?'\n\n'I don't want this conversation.'\n\n'Because you aren't the same person you were yesterday, are you?'\n\n'None of us are,' said Nora, briskly. 'Our brains change. It's called neuroplasticity. Please. Stop mansplaining glaciers to a glaciologist, Hugo.'\n\nHugo seemed to retreat a little and she felt a bit guilty. There was a minute of silence. Just the crunch of their feet in the snow. They were nearly back at the accommodation, the others not too far behind them.\n\nBut then, he said it.\n\n'I am like you, Nora. I visit lives that aren't mine. I have been in this one for five days. But I have been in many others. I was given an opportunity \u2013 a rare opportunity \u2013 for this to happen. I have been sliding between lives for a long while.'\n\nIngrid grabbed Nora's arm.\n\n'I still have some vodka,' she announced as they reached the door. She held her key card in her glove and tapped it against the scanner. The door opened.\n\n'Listen,' Hugo mumbled, conspiratorially, 'if you want to know more, meet me in the communal kitchen in five minutes.'\n\nAnd Nora felt her heart race, but this time she had no ladle or saucepan to bang. She didn't particularly like this Hugo character, but was far too intrigued not to hear what he had to say. And she also wanted to know if he could be trusted.\n\n'Okay,' she said. 'I'll be there.'\n\n[ Expectation ]\n\nNora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea.\n\nShe imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed.\n\nShe imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale.\n\nShe imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best.\n\nAnd in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.\n\n[ Life and Death and the Quantum Wave Function ]\n\nWith Hugo, it wasn't a library.\n\n'It's a video store,' he said, leaning against the cheap-looking cupboard where the coffee was kept. 'It looks exactly like a video store I used to go to in the outskirts of Lyon \u2013 Video Lumi\u00e8re \u2013 where I grew up. The Lumi\u00e8re brothers are heroes in Lyon and there's a lot of things named after them. They invented cinema there. Anyway, that is beside the point: the point is that every life I choose is an old VHS that I play right in the store, and the moment it starts \u2013 the moment the movie starts \u2013 is the moment I disappear.'\n\nNora suppressed a giggle.\n\n'What's so funny?' Hugo wondered, a little hurt.\n\n'Nothing. Nothing at all. It just seemed mildly amusing. A video store.'\n\n'Oh? And a library, that is entirely sensible?'\n\n'More sensible, yes. I mean, at least you can still use books. Who plays videos these days?'\n\n'Interesting. I had no idea there was such a thing as between-life snobbery. You are an education.'\n\n'Sorry, Hugo. Okay, I will ask a sensible question. Is there anyone else there? A person who helps you choose each life?'\n\nHe nodded. 'Oh yeah. It's my Uncle Philippe. He died years ago. And he never even worked in a video store. It's so illogical.'\n\nNora told him about Mrs Elm.\n\n'A school librarian?' mocked Hugo. 'That's pretty funny too.'\n\nNora ignored him. 'Do you reckon they're ghosts? Guiding spirits? Guardian angels? What are they?'\n\nIt felt so ludicrous, in the heart of a scientific facility, to be talking like this.\n\n'They are,' Hugo gestured, as if trying to pluck the right term from the air, 'an interpretation.'\n\n'Interpretation?'\n\n'I have met others like us,' Hugo said. 'You see, I have been in the in-between state for a long time. I have encountered a few other sliders. That's what I call them. Us. We are sliders. We have a root life in which we are lying somewhere, unconscious, suspended between life and death, and then we arrive in a place. And it is always something different. A library, a video store, an art gallery, a casino, a restaurant... What does that tell you?'\n\nNora shrugged. And thought. Listening to the hum of the central heating. 'That it's all bullshit? That none of this is real?'\n\n'No. Because the template is always the same. For instance: there is always someone else there \u2013 a guide. Only ever one person. They are always someone who has helped the person at a significant time in their life. The setting is always somewhere with emotional significance. And there is usually talk of root lives or branches.'\n\nNora thought about being consoled by Mrs Elm when her dad died. Staying with her, comforting her. It was probably the most kindness anyone had ever shown her.\n\n'And there is always an infinite range of choices,' Hugo went on. 'An infinite number of video tapes, or books, or paintings, or meals... Now, I am a scientist. And I have lived many scientific lives. In my original root life, I have a degree in Biology. I have also, in another life, been a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. I have been a marine biologist trying to protect the Great Barrier Reef. But my weakness was always physics. At first I had no idea of how to find out what was happening to me. Until I met a woman in one life who was going through what we are going through, and in her root life she was a quantum physicist. Professor Dominique Bisset at Montpellier University. She explained it all to me. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. So that means we\u2014'\n\nA kind-faced, pink-skinned, auburn-bearded man whose name Nora didn't know came into the kitchen to rinse a coffee cup, then smiled at them.\n\n'See you tomorrow,' he said, in a soft American (maybe Canadian) accent, before padding away in his slippers.\n\n'Yes,' said Nora.\n\n'See you,' said Hugo, before returning \u2013 in a more hushed tone \u2013 to his main thread. 'The universal wave function is real, Nora. That's what Professor Bisset said.'\n\n'What?'\n\nHugo held up a finger. A slightly annoying, wait-a-minute kind of finger. Nora resisted a strong urge to grab it and twist it. 'Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger...'\n\n'He of the cat.'\n\n'Yes. The cat guy. He said that in quantum physics every alternative possibility happens simultaneously. All at once. In the same place. Quantum superposition. The cat in the box is both alive and dead. You could open the box and see that it was alive or dead, that's how it goes, but in one sense, even after the box is open, the cat is still both alive and dead. Every universe exists over every other universe. Like a million pictures on tracing paper, all with slight variations within the same frame. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics suggests there are an infinite number of divergent parallel universes. Every moment of your life you enter a new universe. With every decision you make. And traditionally it was thought that there could be no communication or transference between those worlds, even though they happen in the same space, even though they happen literally millimetres away from us.'\n\n'But what about us? We're doing that.'\n\n'Exactly. I am here but I also know I am not here. I am also lying in a hospital in Paris, having an aneurysm. And I am also skydiving in Arizona. And travelling around southern India. And tasting wine in Lyon, and lying on a yacht off the C\u00f4te d'Azur.'\n\n'I knew it!'\n\n'Vraiment?'\n\nHe was, she decided, quite beautiful.\n\n'You seem more suited to strolling the Croisette in Cannes than an Arctic adventure.'\n\nHe widened his right hand like a starfish. 'Five days! Five days I have been in this life. That is my record. Maybe this is the life for me...'\n\n'Interesting. You're going to have a very cold life.'\n\n'And who knows? Maybe you are too... I mean, if the bear didn't take you back to your library maybe nothing will.' He started to fill the kettle. 'Science tells us that the \"grey zone\" between life and death is a mysterious place. There is a singular point at which we are not one thing or another. Or rather we are both. Alive and dead. And in that moment between the two binaries, sometimes, just sometimes, we turn ourselves into a Schr\u00f6dinger's cat who may not only be alive or dead but may be every quantum possibility that exists in line with the universal wave function, including the possibility where we are chatting in a communal kitchen in Longyearbyen at one in the morning...'\n\nNora was taking all this in. She thought of Volts, still and lifeless under the bed and lying by the side of the road.\n\n'But sometimes the cat is just dead and dead.'\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'Nothing. It's just... my cat died. And I tried another life and even in that one he was still dead.'\n\n'That's sad. I had a similar situation with a Labrador. But the point is, there are others like us. I have lived so many lives, I have come across a few of them. Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.'\n\n'It's crazy to think that there are other people who could be... what did you call us?\n\n'Sliders?'\n\n'Yep. That.'\n\n'Well, it's possible of course, but I think we're rare. One thing I've noticed is that the other people I've met \u2013 the dozen or so \u2013 have all been around our age. All thirties or forties or fifties. One was twenty-nine, en fait. All have had a deep desire to have done things differently. They had regrets. Some contemplated that they may be better off dead but also had a desire to live as another version of themselves.'\n\n'Schr\u00f6dinger's life. Both dead and alive in your own mind.'\n\n'Exactement! And whatever those regrets did to our brain, whatever \u2013 how would you say? \u2013 neurochemical event happened, that confused yearning for death-and-life was somehow just enough to send us into this state of total in-between.'\n\nThe kettle was getting noisier, the water starting to bubble like Nora's thoughts.\n\n'Why is it always just one person that we see? In the place. The library. Whatever.'\n\nHugo shrugged. 'If I was religious, I'd say it was God. And as God is probably someone we can't see or comprehend then He \u2013 or She \u2013 or whichever pronoun God is \u2013 becomes an image of someone good we have known in our lives. And if I wasn't religious \u2013 which I'm not \u2013 I would think that the human brain can't handle the complexity of an open quantum wave function and so it organises or translates this complexity into something it understands. A librarian in a library. A friendly uncle in a video store. Et cetera.'\n\nNora had read about multiverses and knew a bit about Gestalt psychology. About how human brains take complex information about the world and simplify it, so that when a human looks at a tree it translates the intricately complex mass of leaves and branches into this thing called 'tree'. To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.\n\nShe knew that everything humans see is a simplification. A human sees the world in three dimensions. That is a simplification. Humans are fundamentally limited, generalising creatures, living on auto-pilot, who straighten out curved streets in their minds, which explains why they get lost all the time.\n\n'It's like how humans never see the second hand of a clock mid-tick,' said Nora.\n\n'What?'\n\nShe saw that Hugo's watch was of the analogue variety. 'Try it. You just can't. Minds can't see what they can't handle.'\n\nHugo nodded, as he observed his own watch.\n\n'So,' Nora said, 'whatever exists between universes is most likely not a library, but that is the easiest way for me to understand it. That would be my hypothesis. I see a simplified version of the truth. The librarian is just a kind of mental metaphor. The whole thing is.'\n\n'Isn't it fascinating?' said Hugo.\n\nNora sighed. 'In the last life I spoke to my dead dad.'\n\nHugo opened a jar of coffee and scooped out granules into two mugs.\n\n'And I didn't drink coffee. I drank peppermint tea.'\n\n'That sounds terrible.'\n\n'It was bearable.'\n\n'Another thing that is strange,' Hugo said. 'At any point in this conversation you or I could disappear.'\n\n'Have you seen that happen?' Nora took the mug Hugo handed her.\n\n'Yeah. A few times. It's freaky. But no one else would notice. They become a bit vague with their memory for the last day, but you would be surprised. If you went back to the library right now, and I was still standing here talking to you in the kitchen, you would say something like \"My mind's just gone blank \u2013 what were we talking about?\", and then I'd realise what had happened and I'd say we were talking about glaciers and you'd bombard me with facts about them. And your brain would fill in the gaps and make up a narrative about what just happened.'\n\n'Yeah, but what about the polar bear? What about the meal tonight? Would I \u2013 this other me \u2013 would she remember what I ate?'\n\n'Not necessarily. But I have seen it happen. It's amazing what the brain can fill in. And what it is fine with forgetting.'\n\n'So, what was I like? Yesterday, I mean.'\n\nHe locked eyes. They were pretty eyes. Nora momentarily felt pulled into his orbit like a satellite to Earth.\n\n'Exquisite, charming, intelligent, beautiful. Much like now.'\n\nShe laughed it off. 'Stop being so French.'\n\nAwkward pause.\n\n'How many lives have you had?' she said eventually. 'How many have you experienced?'\n\n'Too many. Nearing three hundred.'\n\n'Three hundred?'\n\n'I have been so many things. On every continent on Earth. And yet I have never found the life for me. I am resigned to being this way for ever. There will never be a life that I truly want to live for ever. I get too curious. I get too much of a yearning to live another way. And you don't need to make that face. It's not sad. I am happily in limbo.'\n\n'But what if one day there is no video store?' Nora thought about Mrs Elm, panicking at the computer, and the flickering lights in the library. 'What if one day you disappear for good? Before you have found a life to settle in?'\n\nHe shrugged. 'Then I will die. And it means I would have died anyway. In the life I lived before. I kind of like being a slider. I like imperfection. I like keeping death as an option. I like never having to settle.'\n\n'I think my situation is different. I think my death is more imminent. If I don't find a life to live in pretty soon, I think I'll be gone for good.'\n\nShe explained the problem she'd had last time, with transferring back.\n\n'Oh. Yeah, well, that might be bad. But it might not be. You do realise there are infinite possibilities here? I mean, the multiverse isn't about just some universes. It's not about a handful of universes. It's not even about a lot of universes. It's not about a million or a billion or a trillion universes. It's about an infinite number of universes. Even with you in them. You could be you in any version of the world, however unlikely that world would be. You are only limited by your imagination. You can be very creative with the regrets you want to undo. I once undid a regret about not doing something I'd contemplated as a teenager \u2013 doing aerospace engineering and becoming an astronaut \u2013 and so in one life I became an astronaut. I haven't been to space. But I became someone who had been there, for a little while. The thing you have to remember is that this is an opportunity and it is rare and we can undo any mistake we made, live any life we want. Any life. Dream big... You can be anything you want to be. Because in one life, you are.'\n\nShe sipped her coffee. 'I understand.'\n\n'But you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life,' he said, wisely.\n\n'You're quoting Camus.'\n\n'You got me.'\n\nHe was staring at her. Nora no longer minded his intensity, but was becoming a little concerned about her own. 'I was a Philosophy student,' she said, as blandly as she could manage, avoiding his eyes.\n\nHe was close to her now. There was something equally annoying and attractive about Hugo. He exuded an arrogant amorality that made his face something to either slap or kiss, depending on the circumstances.\n\n'In one life we have known each other for years and are married...' he said.\n\n'In most lives I don't know you at all,' she countered, now staring straight at him.\n\n'That's so sad.'\n\n'I don't think so.'\n\n'Really?'\n\n'Really.' She smiled.\n\n'We're special, Nora. We're chosen. No one understands us.'\n\n'No one understands anyone. We're not chosen.'\n\n'The only reason I am still in this life is because of you...'\n\nShe lunged forward and kissed him.\n\n[ If Something Is Happening to Me, I Want to Be There ]\n\nIt was a very pleasant sensation. Both the kiss, and the knowledge she could be this forward. Being aware that everything that could possibly happen happened to her somewhere, in some life, kind of absolved her a little from decisions. That was just the reality of the universal wave function. Whatever was happening could \u2013 she reasoned \u2013 be put down to quantum physics.\n\n'I don't share a room,' he said.\n\nShe stared at him fearlessly now, as if facing down a polar bear had given her a certain capacity for dominance she'd never been aware of. 'Well, Hugo, maybe you could break the habit.'\n\nBut the sex turned out to be a disappointment. A Camus quote came to her, right in the middle of it.\n\nI may have not been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.\n\nIt probably wasn't the best sign of how their nocturnal encounter was going, that she was thinking of Existential philosophy, or that this quote in particular was the one that appeared in her mind. But hadn't Camus also said, 'If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there'?\n\nHugo, she concluded, was a strange person. For a man who had been so intimate and deep in his conversation, he was very detached from the moment. Maybe if you lived as many lives as he had, the only person you really had any kind of intimate relationship with was yourself. She felt like she might not have been there at all.\n\nAnd in a few moments, she wasn't.\n\n[ God and Other Librarians ]\n\n'Who are you?'\n\n'You know my name. I am Mrs Elm. Louise Isabel Elm.'\n\n'Are you God?'\n\nShe smiled. 'I am who I am.'\n\n'And who is that?'\n\n'The librarian.'\n\n'But you aren't a real person. You're just a... mechanism.'\n\n'Aren't we all?'\n\n'Not like that. You are the product of some strange interaction between my mind and the multiverse, some simplification of the quantum wave function or whatever it is.'\n\nMrs Elm looked perturbed by the suggestion. 'What is the matter?'\n\nNora thought of the polar bear as she stared down at the yellow-brown stone floor. 'I nearly died.'\n\n'And remember, if you die in a life, there is no way back here.'\n\n'That's not fair.'\n\n'The library has strict rules. Books are precious. You have to treat them carefully.'\n\n'But these are other lives. Other variants of me. Not me me.'\n\n'Yes, but while you are experiencing them, it is you who has to pay the consequences.'\n\n'Well, I think that stinks, to be perfectly honest.'\n\nThe librarian's smile curled at its edges, like a fallen leaf. 'Well, this is interesting.'\n\n'What is interesting?'\n\n'The fact that you have so thoroughly changed your attitude towards dying.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'You wanted to die and now you don't.'\n\nIt dawned on Nora that Mrs Elm might be close to having a point, although not quite the whole point. 'Well, I still think my actual life isn't worth living. In fact, this experience has just managed to confirm that.'\n\nShe shook her head. 'I don't think you think that.'\n\n'I do think that. That's why I said it.'\n\n'No. The Book of Regrets is getting lighter. There's a lot of white space in there now... It seems that you have spent all your life saying things that you aren't really thinking. This is one of your barriers.'\n\n'Barriers?'\n\n'Yes. You have a lot of them. They stop you from seeing the truth.'\n\n'About what?'\n\n'About yourself. And you really need to start trying. To see the truth. Because this matters.'\n\n'I thought there were an infinite number of lives to choose from.'\n\n'You need to pick the life you'd be most happy inside. Or soon there won't be a choice at all.'\n\n'I met someone who has been doing this for a long time and he still hasn't found a life that he is satisfied with...'\n\n'Well, Hugo's is a privilege you might not have.'\n\n'Hugo? How do you\u2014'\n\nBut then she remembered Mrs Elm knew a lot more than she should.\n\n'You need to choose carefully,' continued the librarian. 'One day the library may not be here and you'll be gone for ever.'\n\n'How many lives do I have?'\n\n'This isn't a magic lamp and I am no genie. There is no set number. It could be one. It could be a hundred. But you only have an infinite number of lives to choose from so long as the time in the Midnight Library stays, well, at midnight. Because while it stays at midnight, your life \u2013 your root life \u2013 is somewhere between life and death. If time moves here, that means something very...' She searched for a delicate word. '...decisive has happened. Something that razes the Midnight Library to the ground, and takes us with it. And so I would err on the side of caution. I would try to think very keenly about where you want to be. You have clearly made some progress, I can tell. You seem to realise that life could be worth living, if only you found the right one to exist inside. But you don't want that gate to close before you get a chance to go through it.'\n\nThey both were silent for a very long time, as Nora observed all the books all around her. All the possibilities. Calmly and slowly, she walked along the aisle, wondering what lay beyond the covers of each book, and wishing the green spines would offer some kind of clue.\n\n'Now, which book do you fancy?' came Mrs Elm's words behind her.\n\nNora remembered Hugo's words in the kitchen.\n\nDream big.\n\nThe librarian had a penetrating gaze. 'Who is Nora Seed? And what does she want?'\n\nWhen Nora thought of her closest access to happiness, it was music. Yes, she still played the piano and keyboard sometimes, but she had given up creating. She had given up singing. She thought of those happy early pub gigs playing 'Beautiful Sky'. She thought of her brother larking about on stage with her and Ravi and Ella.\n\nSo now she knew precisely which book to ask for.\n\n[ Fame ]\n\nShe was sweating. That was the first observation. Her body was coursing with adrenaline and her clothes were clinging to her. There were people around her, a couple of whom had guitars. She could hear noise. Vast, powerful human noise \u2013 a roar of life slowly finding rhythm and shape. Becoming a chant.\n\nThere was a woman in front of her, towelling her face.\n\n'Thanks,' Nora said, smiling.\n\nThe woman looked startled, as if she'd just been spoken to by a god.\n\nShe recognised a man holding drumsticks. It was Ravi. His hair was dyed white-blonde and he was dressed in a sharp-cut indigo suit with a bare chest where his shirt should have been. He looked an entirely different person to the one who had been looking at the music magazines in the newsagent's in Bedford only yesterday, or the corporate-looking guy in the blue shirt who had sat watching her do her catastrophic talk in the InterContinental Hotel.\n\n'Ravi,' she said, 'you look amazing!'\n\n'What?'\n\nHe hadn't heard her over the noise, but now she had a different question.\n\n'Where is Joe?' she asked, almost as a shout.\n\nRavi looked momentarily confused, or scared, and Nora braced herself for some terrible truth. But none came.\n\n'The usual, I reckon. Schmoozing it up with the foreign press.'\n\nNora had no idea what was going on. He seemed to be still part of the band, but also not in the band enough to be performing on stage with them. And if he wasn't in the band, then whatever had caused him to leave the band hadn't caused him to disappear completely. From what Ravi said, and the way he said it, Joe was still very much part of the team. Ella wasn't there, though. On bass was a large muscly man with a shaved head and tattoos. She wanted to know more, but now was clearly not the time.\n\nRavi swept his hand through the air, gesturing towards what Nora could now see was a very large stage.\n\nShe was overwhelmed. She didn't know what to feel.\n\n'Encore time,' said Ravi.\n\nNora tried to think. It had been a long time since she had performed anything. And even then it was only in front of a crowd of about twelve uninterested people in a pub basement.\n\nRavi leaned in. 'You okay, Nora?'\n\nIt seemed a bit brittle. The way he said her name seemed to contain the same kind of resentment she'd heard when she'd bumped into him yesterday, in that very different life.\n\n'Yes,' she said, full shouting now. 'Of course. It's just... I have no idea what we should do for the encore.'\n\nRavi shrugged. 'Same as always.'\n\n'Hmm. Yeah. Right.' Nora tried to think. She looked out at the stage. She saw a giant video screen with the words THE LABYRINTHS flashing and rotating out to the roaring crowd. Wow, she thought. We're big. Proper, stadium-level big. She saw a keyboard and the stool she had been sitting at. Her bandmates whose names she didn't know were about to walk back on stage.\n\n'Where are we again?' she asked, above the crowd noise. 'I've gone blank.'\n\nThe big shaven-headed guy holding the bass told her: 'S\u00e3o Paulo.'\n\n'We're in Brazil?'\n\nThey looked at her as if she was mad.\n\n'Where have you been the last four days?'\n\n'\"Beautiful Sky\",' said Nora, realising she could probably still remember most of the words. 'Let's do that.'\n\n'Again?' Ravi laughed, his face shining with sweat. 'We did it ten minutes ago.'\n\n'Okay. Listen,' said Nora, her voice now a shout over the crowd demanding an encore. 'I was thinking we do something different. Mix it up. I wondered if we could do a different song to usual.'\n\n'We have to do \"Howl\",' said the other band member. A turquoise lead guitar strapped around her. 'We always do \"Howl\".'\n\nNora had never heard of 'Howl' in her life.\n\n'Yeah, I know,' she bluffed, 'but let's mix it up. Let's do something they aren't expecting. Let's surprise them.'\n\n'You're overthinking this, Nora,' said Ravi.\n\n'I have no other type of thinking available.'\n\nRavi shrugged. 'So, what should we do?'\n\nNora struggled to think. She thought of Ash \u2013 with his Simon & Garfunkel guitar songbook. 'Let's do \"Bridge Over Troubled Water\".'\n\nRavi was incredulous. 'What?'\n\n'I think we should do that. It will surprise people.'\n\n'I love that song,' said the female bandmate. 'And I know it.'\n\n'Everyone knows it, Imani,' Ravi said, dismissively.\n\n'Exactly,' Nora said, trying her hardest to sound like a rock star, 'let's do it.'\n\n[ Milky Way ]\n\nNora walked onto the stage.\n\nAt first she couldn't see the faces, because the lights were pointing towards her, and beyond that glare everything seemed like darkness. Except for a mesmerising milky way of camera flashes and phone torches.\n\nShe could hear them, though.\n\nHuman beings when there's enough of them together acting in total unison become something else. The collective roar made her think of another kind of animal entirely. It was at first kind of threatening, as if she was Hercules facing the many-headed Hydra who wanted to kill him, but this was a roar of total support, and the power of it gave her a kind of strength.\n\nShe realised, in that moment, that she was capable of a lot more than she had known.\n\n[ Wild and Free ]\n\nShe reached the keyboard, sat down on the stool and brought the microphone a little closer.\n\n'Thank you, S\u00e3o Paulo,' she said. 'We love you.'\n\nAnd Brazil roared back.\n\nThis, it seemed, was power. The power of fame. Like those pop icons she had seen on social media, who could say a single word and get a million likes and shares. Total fame was when you reached the point where looking like a hero, or genius, or god, required minimal effort. But the flipside was that it was precarious. It could be equally easy to fall and look like a devil or a villain, or just an arse.\n\nHer heart raced, as if she were about to set foot on a tight-rope.\n\nShe could see some of the faces in the crowd now, thousands of them, emerging from the dark. Tiny and strange, the clothed bodies almost invisible. She was staring out at twenty thousand disembodied heads.\n\nHer mouth was dry. She could hardly speak, so wondered how she was going to sing. She remembered Dan mock-wincing as she'd sung for him.\n\nThe noise of the crowd subsided.\n\nIt was time.\n\n'Right,' she said. 'Here is a song you might have heard before.'\n\nThis was a stupid thing to say, she realised. They had all paid tickets for this concert presumably because they had heard a lot of these songs before.\n\n'It's a song that means a lot to me and my brother.'\n\nAlready the place was erupting. They screamed and roared and clapped and chanted. The response was phenomenal. She felt, momentarily, like Cleopatra. An utterly terrified Cleopatra.\n\nAdjusting her hands into position for E-flat major, she was momentarily distracted by a tattoo on her weirdly hairless forearm, written in beautifully angled calligraphic letters. It was a quote from Henry David Thoreau. All good things are wild and free. She closed her eyes and vowed not to open them until she had finished the song.\n\nShe understood why Chopin had liked playing in the dark so much. It was so much easier that way.\n\nWild, she thought to herself. Free.\n\nAs she sang, she felt alive. Even more alive than she had felt swimming in her Olympic-champion body.\n\nShe wondered why she had been so scared of this, of singing to a crowd. It was a great feeling.\n\nRavi came over to her at the end of the song, while they were still on stage. 'That was fucking special, man,' he shouted in her ear.\n\n'Oh good,' she said.\n\n'Now let's kill this and do \"Howl\".'\n\nShe shook her head, then spoke into the microphone, hurriedly, before anyone else had a chance to. 'Thank you for coming, everybody! I really hope you all had a nice evening. Get home safely.'\n\n'Get home safely?' Ravi said in the coach on the way back to the hotel. She hadn't remembered him being such an arse. He seemed unhappy.\n\n'What was wrong with that?' she wondered out loud.\n\n'Hardly your normal style.'\n\n'Wasn't it?'\n\n'Well, bit of a contrast to Chicago.'\n\n'Why? What did I do in Chicago?'\n\nRavi laughed. 'Have you been lobotomised?'\n\nShe looked at her phone. In this life she had the latest model.\n\nA message from Izzy.\n\nIt was the same message she'd had in her life with Dan, in the pub. Not a message at all but a photo of a whale. Actually, it might have been a slightly different photo of a whale. That was interesting. Why was she still friends with Izzy in this life and not in her root life? After all, she was pretty sure she wasn't married to Dan in this life. She checked her hand and was relieved to see a totally naked ring finger.\n\nNora supposed it was because she had already been super-famous with The Labyrinths before Izzy decided to go to Australia, so Nora's decision not to go may have been more understandable. Or maybe Izzy just liked the idea of a famous friend.\n\nIzzy wrote something under the picture of the whale.\n\nAll good things are wild and free.\n\nShe must have known about the tattoo.\n\nAnother message came through now from her.\n\n'Hope Brazil was a blast. Am sure you rocked it! And thanks ten million for sorting out the tix for Brisbane. Am totally stoked. As we Gold Coasters say.'\n\nThere were a few emojis of whales and hearts and thanking hands and a microphone and some musical notes.\n\nNora checked her Instagram. In this life she had 11.3 million followers.\n\nAnd bloody hell, she looked amazing. Her naturally black hair had a kind of white stripe in it. Vampiric make-up. And a lip piercing. She did look tired but she supposed that was just a result of living on tour. It was a glamorous kind of tired. Like Billie Eilish's cool aunt.\n\nShe took a selfie and saw that while she didn't look exactly like the excessively styled and filtered photos on her feed, which had been for magazine shoots, she did look cooler than she ever imagined she could look. As with her Australian life, she also put poems up online. The difference with this life, though, was that each poem had about half a million likes. One of the poems was even called 'Fire' but it was different to the other one.\n\nShe had a fire inside her.\n\nShe wondered if the fire was to warm her or destroy her.\n\nThen she realised.\n\nA fire had no motive.\n\nOnly she could have that.\n\nThe power was hers.\n\nA woman sat next to her. This woman wasn't in the band, but she exuded importance. She was about fifty years old. Maybe she was the manager. Maybe she worked for the record company. She had the air of a strict mum about her. But she began with a smile.\n\n'Stroke of genius,' she said. 'The Simon & Garfunkel thing. You're trending across South America.'\n\n'Cool.'\n\n'Have posted about it from your accounts.'\n\nShe'd said this like it was a perfectly normal thing. 'Oh. Right. Okay.'\n\n'There's a couple of last-minute press things tonight at the hotel. Then tomorrow it's an early start... We fly to Rio first thing, then eight hours of press. All at the hotel.'\n\n'Rio?'\n\n'You're up to speed with this week's tour schedule, right?'\n\n'Um, kind of. Could you just remind me again?'\n\nShe sighed, with good humour, as if Nora not knowing the tour schedule was totally in character. 'Sure. Rio tomorrow. Two nights. Then the final night in Brazil \u2013 Porto Alegre \u2013 then Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, then Lima. And that's the last leg of South America. Then next week it's the start of the Asia leg \u2013 Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan.'\n\n'Peru? We're famous in Peru?'\n\n'Nora, you've been to Peru before, remember? Last year. They went out of their minds. All fifteen thousand of them. It's at the same place. The racecourse.'\n\n'The racecourse. Sure. Yeah. I remember. Was a good night. Really... good.'\n\nThat's what this life probably felt like, she realised. One big racecourse. But she had no idea if she was the horse or the jockey in that analogy.\n\nRavi tapped the woman on the shoulder. 'Joanna, what time's that podcast tomorrow?'\n\n'Oh damn. Actually, it's tonight now. Timings. Sorry. Forgot to say. But they only really have to speak to Nora. So you can get an early night if you want.'\n\nRavi shrugged, dejected. 'Sure. Yeah.'\n\nJoanna sighed. 'Don't shoot the messenger. Though it's never stopped you before.'\n\nNora wondered again where her brother was, but the tension between Joanna and Ravi made it feel wrong to ask something she should so obviously know. So she stared out of the window as the coach drove along the four-lane highway. The glowing tail-lights of cars and lorries and motorbikes in the dark, like red and watching eyes. Distant skyscrapers with a few tiny squares of light against a humid backdrop of dark sky and darker clouds. A shadowy army of trees lined the sides and middle of the highway, splitting the traffic into two directions.\n\nIf she was still in this life tomorrow evening, she would be expected to perform an entire concert's worth of songs, most of which she didn't actually know. She wondered how quickly she could learn the set list.\n\nHer phone rang. A video call. The caller was 'Ryan'.\n\nJoanna saw the name and smirked a little. 'You'd better get that.'\n\nSo she did, even though she had no idea who this Ryan was, and the image on the screen seemed too blurry to recognise.\n\nBut then he was there. A face she had seen, in movies and imaginings, many times.\n\n'Hey, babe. Just checking in with a friend. We're still friends, right?'\n\nShe knew the voice too.\n\nAmerican, rugged, charming. Famous.\n\nShe heard Joanna whispering to someone else on the coach: 'She's on the phone to Ryan Bailey.'\n\n[ Ryan Bailey ]\n\nRyan Bailey.\n\nAs in the Ryan Bailey. As in the Ryan Bailey of her fantasies, where they talked about Plato and Heidegger through a veil of steam in his West Hollywood hot tub.\n\n'Nora? You there? You look scared.'\n\n'Um, yeah. I'm... yeah... I'm... I've just... I'm here... On a bus... A big... touring... yeah... Hi.'\n\n'Guess where I am?'\n\nShe had no idea what to say. 'Hot tub' seemed entirely inappropriate as an answer. 'I honestly don't know.'\n\nHe panned the phone around a vast and opulent-looking villa, complete with bright furnishings and terracotta tiles and a four-poster double bed veiled in a mosquito net.\n\n'Nayarit, Mexico.' He pronounced Mexico in a parody of Spanish, with the x as an h. He looked and sounded slightly different to the Ryan Bailey in the movies. A bit puffier. A bit more slurred. Drunker, perhaps. 'On location. They got me shooting Saloon 2.'\n\n'Last Chance Saloon 2? Oh, I so want to see the first one.'\n\nHe laughed as if she had told the most hilarious joke.\n\n'Still dry as ever, Nono.'\n\nNono?\n\n'Staying at the Casa de M\u00edta,' he went on. 'Remember? The weekend we had there? They've put me in the exact same villa. You remember? I'm having a mezcal margarita in your honour. Where are you?'\n\n'Brazil. We were just doing a concert in S\u00e3o Paulo.'\n\n'Wow. Same landmass. That's cool. That's, yeah, cool.'\n\n'It was really good,' she said.\n\n'You're sounding very formal.'\n\nNora was aware half of the bus was listening in. Ravi was staring at her as he drank a bottle of beer.\n\n'I'm just... you know... on the bus... There are people around.'\n\n'People,' he sighed, as if it was a swear word. 'There are always people. That's the fucking problem. But hey, I've been thinking a lot recently. About what you said on Jimmy Fallon...'\n\nNora tried to act as if every sentence he said wasn't an animal running into the road.\n\n'What did I say?'\n\n'You know, about how it just ran its course. Me and you. How there were no hard feelings. I just want to thank you for saying that. Because I know I am a difficult fucking person. I know that. But I'm getting work for that. The therapist I'm seeing is really fucking good.'\n\n'That's... great.'\n\n'I miss you, Nora. We had great times. But there is more to life than fantastic sex.'\n\n'Yes,' said Nora, trying to keep her imagination in check. 'Absolutely.'\n\n'We had all kinds of great. But you were right to finish it. You did the right thing, in the cosmic order of things. There is no rejection, there is only redirection. You know, I've been thinking a lot. About the cosmos. I've been tuning in. And the cosmos has been telling me I need to get my shit together. It's balance, man. What we had was too intense and our lives are too intense and it's like Darwin's third law of motion. About an action leading to a reaction. Something had to give. And you were the one who saw that and now we are just particles floating in the universe that may reconnect one day at the Chateau Marmont...'\n\nShe had no idea what to say. 'I think that was Newton.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'The third law of motion.'\n\nHe tilted his head, like a confused dog. 'What?'\n\n'Never mind. It doesn't matter.'\n\nHe sighed.\n\n'Anyway, I'm going to finish this margarita. Because I've got an early training session. Mezcal, you see. Not tequila. Got to keep pure. Got this new trainer. This MMA guy. He's intense.'\n\n'Okay.'\n\n'And Nono...'\n\n'Yeah?'\n\n'Can you just call me your special name for me again?'\n\n'Um\u2014'\n\n'You know the one.'\n\n'Obviously. Yeah. Course.' She tried to think what it could be. Ry-ry? Rye bread? Plato?\n\n'I can't.'\n\n'People?'\n\nShe made a show of looking around. 'Exactly. People. And you know, now that we've moved on with our lives, it seems a bit... inappropriate.'\n\nHe smiled a melancholy smile. 'Listen. I'll be there for the final LA show. Front row. Staples Center. You won't be able to stop me, got it?'\n\n'That's so sweet.'\n\n'Friends for ever?'\n\n'Friends for ever.'\n\nSensing they were nearing the end of the conversation, Nora suddenly had something to ask.\n\n'Were you really into philosophy?'\n\nHe burped. It was strange how shocking it was to realise that Ryan Bailey was a human being in a human body that generated gas.\n\n'What?'\n\n'Philosophy. Years ago, when you were playing Plato in The Athenians you gave an interview and you said you read a lot of philosophy.'\n\n'I read life. And life is a philosophy.'\n\nNora had no idea what he meant, but deep down she was proud of this other version of her for dumping an A-list movie star.\n\n'I think you said at the time you read Martin Heidegger.'\n\n'Who is Martin Hot Dog? Oh, it was probably just press bullshit. You know, you say all sorts of shit.'\n\n'Yeah. Of course.'\n\n'Adios, amiga.'\n\n'Adios, Ryan.'\n\nAnd then he was gone and Joanna was smiling at her, saying nothing.\n\nThere was something teacherly and comforting about Joanna. She imagined that this version of herself liked Joanna. But then she remembered she was supposed to do a podcast on behalf of a band where she didn't know the names of fifty per cent of its members. Or the title of their last album. Or any of their albums.\n\nThe coach pulled up at a grand-looking hotel outside of town. Fancy cars with darkened windows. Palm trees wrapped in fairy lights. Architecture from another planet.\n\n'A former palace,' Joanna told her. 'Designed by a top Brazilian architect. I forget his name.' She looked it up. 'Oscar Niemeyer,' she said after a moment. 'Modernist. But this is meant to be more opulent than his usual stuff. Best hotel in Brazil...'\n\nAnd then Nora saw a small crowd of people holding out their phones with outstretched arms, as if beggars with bowls, filming her arrival.\n\nYou can have everything and feel nothing.\n\n@NoraLabyrinth, 74.8K Retweets, 485.3K Likes\n\n[ A Silver Tray of Honey Cakes ]\n\nIt was wild to think of this life co-existing with her others in the multiverse, like just another note in a chord.\n\nNora found it almost impossible to believe that while in one life she was struggling to pay the rent, in another she was causing such excitement among people all over the world.\n\nThe handful of fans who had filmed the tour bus arrive at the hotel were now waiting for autographs. They didn't seem too bothered about the other band members but they did seem desperate to interact with Nora.\n\nShe looked at one, as she crunched over the gravel towards them. The girl had tattoos and was wearing an outfit that made her look like a flapper girl who had somehow got caught up in a cyberpunk version of a post-apocalyptic war. Her hair was styled exactly like Nora's, complete with matching white stripe.\n\n'Nora! Noraaaah! Hi! We love you, queen! Thank you for coming to Brazil! You rock!' And then a chant started: 'Nora! Nora! Nora!'\n\nWhile she was signing autographs in an illegible scribble, a man in his early twenties took off his T-shirt and asked her to sign his shoulder.\n\n'It's for a tattoo,' he said.\n\n'Really?' she asked, writing her name onto the man's body.\n\n'This is the highlight of my life,' he gushed. 'My name is Francisco.'\n\nNora wondered how her writing on his skin with a Sharpie could be a highlight of his existence.\n\n'You saved my life. \"Beautiful Sky\" saved my life. That song. It's so powerful.'\n\n'Oh. Oh wow. \"Beautiful Sky\"? You know \"Beautiful Sky\"?'\n\nThe fan burst into hysterics. 'You're so funny! This is why you are my idol! I love you so much! Do I know \"Beautiful Sky\"? That's brilliant!'\n\nNora didn't know what to say. That little song she had written when she was nineteen years old at university in Bristol had changed the life of a person in Brazil. It was overwhelming.\n\nThis, clearly, was the life she was destined for. She doubted that she would ever have to go back to the library. She could cope with being adored. It was better than being in Bedford, sitting on the number 77 bus, humming sad tunes to the window.\n\nShe posed for selfies.\n\nOne young woman looked close to tears. She had a large photo of Nora kissing Ryan Bailey.\n\n'I was so sad when you broke up with him!'\n\n'I know, yeah, it was sad. But, you know, things happen. It's a... learning curve.'\n\nJoanna appeared at her arm and gently guided her away, towards the hotel.\n\nWhen she reached the elegant, jasmine-scented lobby (marble, chandeliers, floral displays) she saw that the rest of the band were already in the bar. But where was her brother? Maybe he'd been schmoozing the press somewhere else.\n\nAs she started to move towards the bar, she realised that everyone \u2013 concierge, receptionists, guests \u2013 was looking at her.\n\nNora was about to finally seize the opportunity to ask about her brother's whereabouts when Joanna beckoned over a man who was wearing a T-shirt with THE LABYRINTHS printed on it in a retro sci-fi movie font. The guy was probably in his forties, with a greying beard and thinning hair, but he seemed intimidated by Nora's presence. He did a tiny bow when he shook Nora's hand.\n\n'I'm Marcelo,' he said. 'Thanks for agreeing to the interview.'\n\nNora noticed another man behind Marcelo \u2013 younger, with piercings, tattoos and a big smile \u2013 holding recording equipment.\n\n'We'd reserved a quiet space in the bar,' Joanna said. 'But there's... people. I think we had better do this in Nora's suite.'\n\n'Great,' said Marcelo. 'Great, great.'\n\nAs they walked over to the lift, Nora glanced back at the bar and saw the other band members. 'You know, maybe you'd like to speak to the others too?' she said to Marcelo. 'They remember things I don't. A lot of things.'\n\nMarcelo smiled and shook his head and delicately said, 'It works better this way, I feel...'\n\n'Oh, okay,' she said.\n\nEvery eye was on them as they waited for the lift to arrive. Joanna leaned into Nora.\n\n'Are you okay?'\n\n'Of course. Yeah. Why?'\n\n'I don't know. It's just, you seem different tonight.'\n\n'Different how?'\n\n'Just... different.'\n\nAs they got in the lift Joanna asked another woman, one Nora recognised from the coach, to bring some drinks from the bar \u2013 two beers for the podcasters, a sparkling mineral water for Nora and a caipirinha for herself.\n\n'And bring them up to the suite, Maya.'\n\nMaybe I am teetotal in this life, thought Nora, as she walked out of the lift and along the plush salmon-pink carpet to her suite.\n\nAnd then, as she entered it, she tried to act like this was all perfectly normal. This gigantic room, leading to another gigantic room, leading to a gigantic bathroom. There was a vast bouquet of flowers for her, with a note signed by the hotel's manager.\n\nWow, she resisted saying, as she gazed around at the lavish furnishings, the sweeping floor-to-ceiling curtains, the pristine white bed the size of an acre, the TV the size of a small cinema, the champagne on ice, the silver tray full of 'Brazilian honey cakes' as the card informed them.\n\n'Don't suppose you'll be having any of these,' said Joanna, taking one of the little delicacies from the tray. 'Now you're on that new plan. Harley said I had to keep an eye on you.'\n\nNora watched Joanna bite into one of the cakes and wondered how good any plan could be if it didn't involve eating something so clearly delicious as a Brazilian honey cake. She had no idea who Harley was, but she knew she didn't like them.\n\n'Also... just so you know, the fires are still going on in LA and they're evacuating half of Calabasas now, but hopefully it won't get as high as your place...'\n\nNora didn't know whether to be pleased at the idea of having a house in LA, or worried that it was about to go on fire.\n\nThe two Brazilian podcast guys took a few moments to set up their equipment. And Nora sunk herself into the vast sofa in the living area as Joanna \u2013 attending to a few rogue crumbs around her mouth with a heavily manicured finger \u2013 explained that their music podcast, O Som, was the most popular in Brazil.\n\n'Great demographics,' Joanna enthused. 'And the numbers are stratospheric. It's totally worth doing.'\n\nAnd she stayed there, watching like a hawk mother, as the podcast began.\n\n[ The Podcast of Revelations ]\n\n'So, it has been a crazy year for you,' Marcelo began, in his very good English.\n\n'Oh yeah. It has been quite a ride,' said Nora, trying to sound like a rock star.\n\n'Now, if I may ask about the album... Pottersville. You wrote all the lyrics, yes?'\n\n'Mostly, yes,' Nora guessed, staring at the small, familiar mole on her left hand.\n\n'She wrote all of them,' interjected Joanna.\n\nMarcelo nodded while the other guy, still smiling toothily, fiddled about with sound levels via a laptop.\n\n'I think \"Feathers\" is my favourite track,' said Marcelo, as the drinks arrived.\n\n'I'm glad you like it.'\n\nNora tried to think of a way she could get out of this interview. A headache? A bad stomach?\n\n'But the one I'd like to talk about first is the first one you decided to release. \"Stay Out Of My Life\". It seemed such a personal statement.'\n\nNora forced a smile. 'The lyrics say it all really.'\n\n'Obviously there has been some speculation about whether it refers to the... how do you say it in English?'\n\n'Restraining order?' offered Joanna, helpfully.\n\n'Yes! The restraining order.'\n\n'Um,' said Nora, taken aback. 'Well. I prefer to get it all out in the song. I find that stuff difficult to talk about.'\n\n'Yes, I understand. It is just that in your recent Rolling Stone interview you talked a little about your former boyfriend, Dan Lord, and mentioned how difficult it was to get the... the... the restraining order against him, after he stalked you... Didn't he try to break into your house? Then tell reporters that he wrote the lyrics for \"Beautiful Sky\"?'\n\n'Jesus.'\n\nShe hovered at the intersection of tears and laughter, and managed, somehow, to give neither.\n\n'I wrote it when I was still with him. But he didn't like it. He didn't like me being in this band. He hated it. He hated my brother. He hated Ravi. He hated Ella, who was one of the original members. Anyway, Dan was very jealous.'\n\nThis was so surreal. In one life, the life he'd supposedly wanted, Dan was so bored in his marriage to Nora he was having an affair, while in this life he was breaking into her house because he couldn't stand her success.\n\n'He's a dick,' said Nora. 'I don't know the Portuguese swear word for a terrible person.'\n\n'Cabr\u00e3o. It means someone's a dick.'\n\n'Or an asshole,' the younger guy added, stone-faced.\n\n'Yeah, well, he's a cabr\u00e3o. He turned out to be someone else entirely. It's weird. The way when your life changes people act in different ways. The price of fame, I suppose.'\n\n'And you wrote a song called \"Henry David Thoreau\". You don't get many songs named after philosophers...'\n\n'I know. Well, when I studied Philosophy at university, he was my favourite. Hence my tattoo. And it made a marginally better song title than \"Immanuel Kant\".'\n\nShe was getting into the swing of it now. It wasn't too hard to act a life when it was the one she was destined for.\n\n'And \"Howl\", obviously. Such a powerful song. Number one in twenty-two countries. Grammy award-winning video with a Hollywood A-list cast. I suppose you are done talking about it?'\n\n'I suppose, yes.'\n\nJoanna went to get herself another honey cake.\n\nMarcelo smiled, gently, as he pressed on. 'For me it seemed so primal. The song, I mean. Like you were letting everything out. And then I discovered you wrote it on the very night you fired your last manager. Before Joanna. After you found out he'd been ripping you off...'\n\n'Yeah. That wasn't good,' she improvised. 'It was such a betrayal.'\n\n'I was a big Labyrinths fan before \"Howl\". But that was the one for me. That and \"Lighthouse Girl\". \"Howl\" was where I was like, Nora Seed is a genius. The lyrics are pretty abstract, but the way you just let out that rage was so soft and soulful and powerful all at once. It's like early Cure fused with Frank Ocean via The Carpenters and Tame Impala.'\n\nNora tried, and failed, to imagine what that could possibly sound like.\n\nHe started to sing, to everyone's surprise: '\"Silence the music to improve the tune / Stop the fake smiles and howl at the moon\".'\n\nNora smiled and nodded, as if she knew these lyrics. 'Yeah. Yeah. I was just... howling.'\n\nMarcelo's face became serious. He seemed genuinely concerned for her. 'You've had so much shit to deal with these last few years. Stalkers, bad managers, the fake feuds, the court case, the copyright issues, the messy break-up with Ryan Bailey, the reception of the last album, rehab, that incident in Toronto... that time you collapsed from exhaustion in Paris, personal tragedy, drama drama drama. And all that media intrusion. Why do you think the press hate you so much?'\n\nNora began to feel a bit queasy. Was this what fame was like? Like a permanent bittersweet cocktail of worship and assault? It was no wonder so many famous people went off the rails when the rails veered in every direction. It was like being slapped and kissed at the same time.\n\n'I... I don't know... it's pretty crackers...'\n\n'I mean, do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you had decided to take a different path?'\n\nNora listened to this as she stared at the bubbles rising in her mineral water.\n\n'I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths,' she said, realising something for the first time. 'But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths. In one life, I might be married. In another, I might be working in a shop. I might have said yes to this cute guy who asked me out for a coffee. In another I might be researching glaciers in the Arctic Circle. In another, I might be an Olympic swimming champion. Who knows? Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.'\n\nMarcelo and Joanna and the other Brazilian guy were staring at her wide-eyed, but she was on a roll now. Freewheeling.\n\n'There are patterns to life... Rhythms. It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living. I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.'\n\n'That is a great answer,' Marcelo said, after he was sure she was finished. 'But tonight I would say, at the concert, you seemed happy. When you played \"Bridge Over Troubled Water\" instead of \"Howl\", that was such a powerful statement. It was saying: I am strong. It felt like you were telling us, your fans, that you were okay. And so, how is touring going?'\n\n'Well, it's great. And yes, I just thought I'd send a message that, you know, I am out here living my best life. But I miss home after a while.'\n\n'Which one?' asked Marcelo, with a quietly cheeky smile. 'I mean, do you feel more at home in London, or LA, or on the Amalfi Coast?'\n\nIt seemed this was the life where her carbon footprint was the highest.\n\n'I don't know. I suppose I would say London.'\n\nMarcelo took a sharp intake of breath, as if the next question was something he had to swim under. He scratched his beard. 'Okay, but I suppose it must be hard for you, as I know you shared that flat with your brother?'\n\n'Why would it be hard?'\n\nJoanna gave her a curious glance from above her cocktail.\n\nMarcelo looked at her with sentimental fondness. His eyes seemed glazed. 'I mean,' he went on, after a delicate sip of beer, 'your brother was such a big part of your life, such a big part of the band...'\n\nWas.\n\nSo much dread in such a small word. Like a stone falling through water.\n\nShe remembered asking Ravi about her brother before the encore. She remembered the crowd's reaction when she had mentioned her brother on stage.\n\n'He's still around. He was here tonight.'\n\n'She means she feels him,' said Joanna. 'They all feel him. He was such a strong spirit. Troubled, but strong... It was a tragedy how the drink and drugs and the whole life got to him in the end...'\n\n'What are you talking about?' Nora asked. She was no longer acting a life. She genuinely needed to know.\n\nMarcelo looked sad for her. 'You know, it's only been two years since his death... his overdose...'\n\nNora gasped.\n\nShe didn't arrive back in the library instantly because she hadn't absorbed it. She stood up, dazed, and staggered out of the suite.\n\n'Nora?' laughed Joanna, nervously. 'Nora?'\n\nShe got in the lift and went down to the bar. To Ravi.\n\n'You said Joe was schmoozing the media.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'You said. I asked you what Joe was doing and you said, \"schmoozing the media\".'\n\nHe put his beer down and stared at her like a riddle. 'And I was right. She was schmoozing the media.'\n\n'She?'\n\nHe pointed over to Joanna, who was looking aghast as she headed over from the lifts in the lobby.\n\n'Yeah. Jo. She was with the press.'\n\nAnd Nora felt the sadness like a punch.\n\n'Oh no,' she said. 'Oh Joe... oh Joe... oh...'\n\nAnd the grand hotel bar disappeared. The table, the drinks, Joanna, Marcelo, the sound guy, the hotel guests, Ravi, the others, the marble floor, the barman, the waiters, the chandeliers, the flowers, all became nothing at all.\n\n'Howl'\n\n\u2003To the winter forest\n\n\u2003And nowhere to go\n\n\u2003This girl runs\n\n\u2003From all she knows\n\n\u2003The pressure rises to the top\n\n\u2003The pressure rises (it won't stop) They want your body\n\n\u2003They want your soul\n\n\u2003They want fake smiles\n\n\u2003That's rock and roll\n\n\u2003The wolves surround you\n\n\u2003A fever dream\n\n\u2003The wolves surround you\n\n\u2003So start the scream\n\n\u2003Howl, into the night,\n\n\u2003Howl, until the light,\n\n\u2003Howl, your turn to fight,\n\n\u2003Howl, just make it right\n\n\u2003Howl howl howl howl\n\n\u2003(Motherfucker)\n\n\u2003You can't fight for ever You have to comply\n\n\u2003If your life isn't working\n\n\u2003You have to ask why\n\n\u2003(Spoken)\n\n\u2003Remember\n\n\u2003When we were young enough\n\n\u2003Not to fear tomorrow\n\n\u2003Or mourn yesterday\n\n\u2003And we were just\n\n\u2003Us\n\n\u2003And time was just\n\n\u2003Now\n\n\u2003And we were in\n\n\u2003Life\n\n\u2003Not rising through\n\n\u2003Like arms in a sleeve\n\n\u2003Because we had time\n\n\u2003We had time to breathe\n\n\u2003The bad times are here\n\n\u2003The bad times have come\n\n\u2003But life can't be over\n\n\u2003When it hasn't begun\n\n\u2003The lake shines and the water's cold All that glitters can turn to gold Silence the music to improve the tune Stop the fake smiles and howl at the moon Howl, into the night,\n\n\u2003Howl, until the light,\n\n\u2003Howl, your turn to fight,\n\n\u2003Howl, just make it right Howl howl howl howl\n\n(Repeat to fade)\n\n[ Love and Pain ]\n\n'I hate this... process,' Nora told Mrs Elm, with real force in her voice. 'I want it to STOP!'\n\n'Please be quiet,' said Mrs Elm, with a white knight in her hand, concentrating on her move. 'This is a library.'\n\n'We're the only two people here!'\n\n'That's not the point. It is still a library. If you are in a cathedral, you are quiet because you are in a cathedral, not because other people are there. It's the same with a library.'\n\n'Okay,' Nora said, in a lower voice. 'I don't like this. I want it to stop. I want to cancel my membership of the library. I would like to hand in my library card.'\n\n'You are the library card.'\n\nNora returned to her original point. 'I want it to stop.'\n\n'No you don't.'\n\n'Yes I do.'\n\n'Then why are you still here?'\n\n'Because I have no choice.'\n\n'Trust me, Nora. If you really didn't want to be here, you wouldn't be here. I told you this right at the start.'\n\n'I don't like it.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'Because it is too painful.'\n\n'Why is it painful?'\n\n'Because it's real. In one life, my brother is dead.'\n\nThe librarian's face became stern again. 'And in one life \u2013 one of his lives \u2013 you are dead. Will that be painful for him?'\n\n'I doubt it. He doesn't want anything to do with me these days. He has his own life and he blames me that it is unfulfilled.'\n\n'So, this is all about your brother?'\n\n'No. It's about everything. It seems impossible to live without hurting people.'\n\n'That's because it is.'\n\n'So why live at all?'\n\n'Well, in fairness, dying hurts people too. Now, what life do you want to choose next?'\n\n'I don't.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I don't want another book. I don't want another life.'\n\nMrs Elm's face went pale, like it had done all those years ago when she'd got the call about Nora's dad.\n\nNora felt a trembling beneath her feet. A minor earthquake. She and Mrs Elm held onto the shelves as books fell to the floor. The lights flickered and then went dark completely. The chessboard and table tipped over.\n\n'Oh no,' said Mrs Elm. 'Not again.'\n\n'What's the matter?'\n\n'You know what the matter is. This whole place exists because of you. You are the power source. When there is a severe disruption in that power source the library is in jeopardy. It's you, Nora. You are giving up at the worst possible moment. You can't give up, Nora. You have more to offer. More opportunities to have. There are so many versions of you out there. Remember how you felt after the polar bear. Remember how much you wanted life.'\n\nThe polar bear.\n\nThe polar bear.\n\n'Even these bad experiences are serving a purpose, don't you see?'\n\nShe saw. The regrets she had been living with most of her life were wasted ones.\n\n'Yes.'\n\nThe minor earthquake subsided.\n\nBut there were books scattered everywhere, all over the floor.\n\nThe lights had come back on, but still flickered.\n\n'I'm sorry,' said Nora. She started trying to pick up the books and put them back in place.\n\n'No,' snapped Mrs Elm. 'Don't touch them. Put them down.'\n\n'Sorry.'\n\n'And stop saying sorry. Now, you can help me with this. This is safer.'\n\nShe helped Mrs Elm pick up the chess pieces and set up the board for a new game, putting the table back in place too.\n\n'What about all the books on the floor? Are we just going to leave them?'\n\n'Why do you care? I thought you wanted them to disappear completely?'\n\nMrs Elm may well have just been a mechanism that existed in order to simplify the intricate complexity of the quantum universe, but right now \u2013 sitting down between the half-empty bookshelves near her chessboard, set up for a new game \u2013 she looked sad and wise and infinitely human.\n\n'I didn't mean to be so harsh,' Mrs Elm managed, eventually.\n\n'That's okay.'\n\n'I remember when we started playing chess in the school library, you used to lose your best players straight away,' she said. 'You'd go and get the queen or the rooks right out there, and they'd be gone. And then you would act like the game was lost because you were just left with pawns and a knight or two.'\n\n'Why are you mentioning this now?'\n\nMrs Elm saw a loose thread on her cardigan and tucked it inside her sleeve, then decided against it and let it loose again.\n\n'You need to realise something if you are ever to succeed at chess,' she said, as if Nora had nothing bigger to think about. 'And the thing you need to realise is this: the game is never over until it is over. It isn't over if there is a single pawn still on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game. And even if you were a pawn \u2013 maybe we all are \u2013 then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn't. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.'\n\nNora stared at the books around her. 'So, are you saying I only have pawns to play with?'\n\n'I am saying that the thing that looks the most ordinary might end up being the thing that leads you to victory. You have to keep going. Like that day in the river. Do you remember?'\n\nOf course she remembered.\n\nHow old had she been? Must have been seventeen, as she was no longer swimming in competitions. It was a fraught period in which her dad was cross with her all the time and her mum was going through one of her near-mute depression patches. Her brother was back from art college for the weekend with Ravi. Showing his friend the sights of glorious Bedford. Joe had arranged an impromptu party by the river, with music and beer and a ton of weed and girls who were frustrated Joe wasn't interested in them. Nora had been invited and drank too much and somehow got talking to Ravi about swimming.\n\n'So, could you swim the river?' he asked her.\n\n'Sure.'\n\n'No you couldn't,' someone else had said.\n\nAnd so, in a moment of idiocy, she had decided to prove them wrong. And by the time her stoned and heavily inebriated older brother realised what she was doing, it was too late. The swim was well under way.\n\nAs she remembered this, the corridor at the end of the aisle in the library turned from stone to flowing water. And even as the shelves around her stayed where they were, the tiles beneath her feet now sprouted grass and the ceiling above her became sky. But unlike when she disappeared into another version of the present, Mrs Elm and the books remained. She was half in the library and half inside the memory.\n\nShe was staring at someone in the corridor-river. It was her younger self in the water, as the last of the summer light dissolved towards dark.\n\n[ Equidistance ]\n\nThe river was cold, and the current strong.\n\nShe remembered, as she watched herself, the aches in her shoulders and arms. The stiff heaviness of them, as if she'd been wearing armour. She remembered not understanding why, for all that effort, the silhouette of the sycamore trees stubbornly stayed the same size, just as the bank stayed exactly the same distance away. She remembered swallowing some of the dirty water. And looking around at the other bank, the bank from where she had come and the place where she was kind of now standing, watching, along with that younger version of her brother and his friends, beside her, oblivious to her present self, and to the bookshelves on either side of them.\n\nShe remembered how, in her delirium, she had thought of the word 'equidistant'. A word that belonged in the clinical safety of a classroom. Equidistant. Such a neutral, mathematical kind of word, and one that became a stuck thought, repeating itself like a manic meditation as she used the last of her strength to stay almost exactly where she was. Equidistant. Equidistant. Equidistant. Not aligned to one bank or the other.\n\nThat was how she had felt most of her life.\n\nCaught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.\n\nShe looked at the bank on the other side \u2013 now with added bookshelves, but still with the large silhouette of a sycamore tree leaning over the water like a worried parent, the wind shushing through its leaves.\n\n'But you did commit,' said Mrs Elm, evidently having heard Nora's thoughts. 'And you survived.'\n\n[ Someone Else's Dream ]\n\n'Life is always an act,' Mrs Elm said, as they watched her brother being pulled back from the water's edge by his friends. As he then watched a girl whose name she'd long forgotten make an emergency call. 'And you acted when it counted. You swam to that bank. You clawed yourself out. You coughed your guts out and had hypothermia but you crossed the river, against incredible odds. You found something inside you.'\n\n'Yes. Bacteria. I was ill for weeks. I swallowed so much of that shitty water.'\n\n'But you lived. You had hope.'\n\n'Yeah, well, I was losing it by the day.'\n\nShe stared down, to see the grass shrink back into the stone, and looked back to catch the last sight of the water before it shimmered away and the sycamore tree dissolved into air along with her brother and his friends and her own young self.\n\nThe library looked exactly like the library again. But now the books were all back on the shelves and the lights had stopped flickering.\n\n'I was so stupid, doing that swim, just trying to impress people. I always thought Joe was better than me. I wanted him to like me.'\n\n'Why did you think he was better than you? Because your parents did?'\n\nNora felt angry at Mrs Elm's directness. But maybe she had a point. 'I always had to do what they wanted me to do in order to impress them. Joe had his issues, obviously. And I didn't really understand those issues until I knew he was gay, but they say sibling rivalry isn't about siblings but parents, and I always felt my parents just encouraged his dreams a bit more.'\n\n'Like music?'\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'When he and Ravi decided they wanted to be rock stars, Mum and Dad bought Joe a guitar and then an electric piano.'\n\n'How did that go?'\n\n'The guitar bit went well. He could play \"Smoke On The Water\" within a week of getting it, but he wasn't into the piano and decided he didn't want it cluttering up his room.'\n\n'And that's when you got it.' Mrs Elm said this as a statement rather than a question. She knew. Of course she knew.\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'It was moved into your room, and you welcomed it like a friend, and started learning to play it with steadfast determination. You spent your pocket money on piano-teaching guides and Mozart for Beginners and The Beatles for Piano. Because you liked it. But also because you wanted to impress your older brother.'\n\n'I never told you all this.'\n\nA wry smile. 'Don't worry. I read the book.'\n\n'Right. Course. Yeah. Got you.'\n\n'You might need to stop worrying about other people's approval, Nora,' Mrs Elm said in a whisper, for added power and intimacy. 'You don't need a permission slip to be your\u2014'\n\n'Yes. I get it.'\n\nAnd she did get it.\n\nEvery life she had tried so far since entering the library had really been someone else's dream. The married life in the pub had been Dan's dream. The trip to Australia had been Izzy's dream, and her regret about not going had been a guilt for her best friend more than a sorrow for herself. The dream of her becoming a swimming champion belonged to her father. And okay, so it was true that she had been interested in the Arctic and being a glaciologist when she was younger, but that had been steered quite significantly by her chats with Mrs Elm herself, back in the school library. And The Labyrinths, well, that had always been her brother's dream.\n\nMaybe there was no perfect life for her, but somewhere, surely, there was a life worth living. And if she was to find a life truly worth living, she realised she would have to cast a wider net.\n\nMrs Elm was right. The game wasn't over. No player should give up if there were pieces still left on the board.\n\nShe straightened her back and stood up tall.\n\n'You need to choose more lives from the bottom or top shelves. You have been seeking to undo your most obvious regrets. The books on the higher and lower shelves are the lives a little bit further removed. Lives you are still living in one universe or another but not ones you have been imagining or mourning or thinking about. They are lives you could live but never dreamed of.'\n\n'So they're unhappy lives?'\n\n'Some will be, some won't be. It's just they are not the most obvious lives. They are ones which might require a little imagination to reach. But I am sure you can get there...'\n\n'Can't you guide me?'\n\nMrs Elm smiled. 'I could read you a poem. Librarians like poems.' And then she quoted Robert Frost. 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I \u2013 / I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference...'\n\n'What if there are more than two roads diverging in the wood? What if there are more roads than trees? What if there is no end to the choices you could make? What would Robert Frost do then?'\n\nShe remembered studying Aristotle as a first-year Philosophy student. And being a bit depressed by his idea that excellence was never an accident. That excellent outcomes were the result of 'the wise choice of many alternatives'. And here she was, in the privileged position of being able to sample these many alternatives. It was a shortcut to wisdom and maybe a shortcut to happiness too. She saw it now not as a burden but a gift to be cherished.\n\n'Look at that chessboard we put back in place,' said Mrs Elm, softly. 'Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It's a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.'\n\nShe took a seat at the chess table, opposite Mrs Elm. She stared down at the board and moved a pawn two spaces forward.\n\nMrs Elm mirrored the move on her side of the board.\n\n'It's an easy game to play,' she told Nora. 'But a hard one to master. Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibility.'\n\nNora moved one of her knights. They progressed like this for a little while.\n\nMrs Elm provided a commentary. 'At the beginning of a game, there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board. There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eighty-eight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living.'\n\nEventually, Nora won the game. She had a sneaky suspicion that Mrs Elm had let her, but still she was feeling a bit better.\n\n'Okey-dokey,' said Mrs Elm. 'Now, time for a book, I reckon. What do you say?'\n\nNora gazed along the bookshelves. If only they had more specific titles. If only there was one that said Perfect Life Right Here.\n\nHer initial instinct had been to ignore Mrs Elm's question. But where there were books, there was always the temptation to open them. And she realised it was the same with lives.\n\nMrs Elm repeated something she said earlier.\n\n'Never underestimate the big importance of small things.'\n\nThis was useful, as it turned out.\n\n'I want,' she said, 'a gentle life. The life where I worked with animals. Where I chose the animal shelter job \u2013 where I did my work experience at school \u2013 over the one at String Theory. Yes. Give me that one, please.'\n\n[ A Gentle Life ]\n\nIt turned out that this particular existence was quite easy to slip into.\n\nSleep was good in this life, and she didn't wake up until the alarm went off at a quarter to eight. She drove to work in a tatty old Hyundai that smelled of dogs and biscuits and was decorated with crumbs, passing the hospital and the sports centre, and pulling up in the small car park outside the modern, grey-bricked, single-storey rescue centre.\n\nShe spent the morning feeding and walking the dogs. The reason it was quite easy to blend into this life was at least partly because she had been greeted by an affable, down-to-earth woman with brown curly hair and a Yorkshire accent. The woman, Pauline, said Nora was to start work in the dog shelter, rather than the cat shelter, and so Nora had a legitimate excuse to ask what to do and look confused. Also, the issue of knowing people's names was solved by the fact that all the workers had name badges.\n\nNora had walked a bullmastiff, a new arrival, around the field behind the shelter. Pauline told her that the bullmastiff had been horribly treated by its owner. She pointed out a few small round scars.\n\n'Cigarette burns.'\n\nNora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them. The bullmastiff was called Sally. She was scared of everything. Her shadow. Bushes. Other dogs. Nora's legs. Grass. Air. Though she clearly took a liking to Nora, and even succumbed to a (very quick) tummy rub.\n\nLater, Nora helped clean out some of the little dog huts. She imagined they called them huts because it sounded better than cages, which was really a more apt name for them. There was a three-legged Alsatian called Diesel, who had been there a while apparently. When they played catch, Nora discovered his reflexes were good, his mouth catching the ball almost every time. She liked this life \u2013 or more precisely, she liked the version of herself in this life. She could tell the kind of person she was from the way people spoke to her. It felt nice \u2013 comforting, solidifying \u2013 to be a good person.\n\nHer mind felt different here. She thought a lot in this life, but her thoughts were gentle.\n\n'Compassion is the basis of morality,' the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had written, in one of his softer moments. Maybe it was the basis of life too.\n\nThere was one man who worked there called Dylan, who had a natural way with all the dogs. He was about her age, maybe younger. He had a kind, gentle, sad look about him. His long surf-dude hair golden as a retriever. He came and sat next to Nora on a bench at lunch, overlooking the field.\n\n'What are you having today?' he asked, sweetly, nodding to Nora's lunchbox.\n\nShe honestly didn't know \u2013 she had found it already prepared when she'd opened her magnet-and calendar-cluttered fridge that morning. She peeled off the lid to find a cheese and Marmite sandwich and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. The sky darkened and the wind picked up.\n\n'Oh crap,' Nora said. 'It's going to rain.'\n\n'Maybe, but the dogs are all still in their cages.'\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'Dogs can smell when rain is coming, so they often head indoors if they think it's going to happen. Isn't that cool? That they can predict the future with their nose?'\n\n'Yes,' said Nora. 'Way cool.'\n\nNora bit into her cheese sandwich. And then Dylan put his arm around her.\n\nNora jumped up.\n\n'\u2014the hell?' she said.\n\nDylan looked deeply apologetic. And a little horrified at himself. 'I'm sorry. Did I hurt your shoulder?'\n\n'No... I just... I... No. No. It's fine.'\n\nShe discovered that Dylan was her boyfriend and that he had gone to the same secondary school as her. Hazeldene Comp. And that he was two years younger.\n\nNora could remember the day her dad died, when she was in the school library staring as a blond boy from a couple of years below ran past outside the rain-speckled window. Either chasing someone or being chased. That had been him. She had vaguely liked him, from a distance, but without really knowing him or thinking about him at all.\n\n'You all right, Norster?' Dylan asked.\n\nNorster?\n\n'Yeah. I was just... Yeah. I'm fine.'\n\nNora sat down again but left a bit more bench between them. There was nothing overtly wrong with Dylan. He was sweet. And she was sure that in this life she genuinely liked him. Maybe even loved him. But entering a life wasn't the same as entering an emotion.\n\n'By the way, did you book Gino's?'\n\nGino's. The Italian. Nora had gone there as a teenager. She was surprised it was still going.\n\n'What?'\n\n'Gino's? The pizza place? For tonight? You said you kind of know the manager there.'\n\n'My dad used to, yeah.'\n\n'So, did you manage to call?'\n\n'Yes,' she lied. 'But actually, it is fully booked.'\n\n'On a weeknight? Weird. That's a shame. I love pizza. And pasta. And lasagne. And\u2014'\n\n'Right,' said Nora. 'Yes. I get it. I completely get it. I know it was strange. But they had a couple of big bookings.'\n\nDylan already had his phone out. He was eager. 'I'll try La Cantina. You know. The Mexican. Tons of vegan options. I love a Mexican, don't you?'\n\nNora couldn't think of a legitimate reason for her not to do this, aside from Dylan's not-entirely-riveting conversation, and compared to the sandwich she was currently eating and the state of the rest of her fridge, Mexican food sounded promising.\n\nSo, Dylan booked them a table. And they carried on talking as dogs barked in the building behind them. It emerged during the conversation that they were thinking of moving in together.\n\n'We could watch Last Chance Saloon,' he said.\n\nShe wasn't really listening. 'What's that?'\n\nHe was shy, she realised. Bad with eye contact. Quite endearing. 'You know, that Ryan Bailey film you wanted to watch. We saw the trailer for it. You said it's meant to be funny and I did some research and it has an eighty-six per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and it's on Netflix so...'\n\nShe wondered if Dylan would believe her if she told him that in one life she was a lead singer of an internationally successful pop-rock band and global icon who had actually dated and voluntarily broken up with Ryan Bailey.\n\n'Sounds good,' she said, as she stared at an empty crisp packet floating across the sparse grass.\n\nDylan rushed off the bench to grab the packet and dropped it into the bin next to the bench.\n\nHe flopped back to Nora, smiling. Nora understood what this other Nora saw in him. There was something pure about him. Like a dog himself.\n\nWhy Want Another Universe If This One Has Dogs?\n\nThe restaurant was on Castle Road, around the corner from String Theory, and they had to walk past the shop to get there. The familiarity of it felt strange. When she reached the shop she saw that something wasn't right. There were no guitars in the window. There was nothing in the window, except a faded piece of A4 paper stuck on the inside of the glass.\n\nShe recognised Neil's handwriting.\n\nAlas, String Theory is no longer able to trade in these premises. Due to an increase in rent we simply couldn't afford to go on. Thanks to all our loyal customers. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. You Can Go Your Own Way. God Only Knows What We'll Be Without You.\n\nDylan was amused. 'I see what they did there.' Then a moment later. 'I was named after Bob Dylan. Did I ever tell you that?'\n\n'I can't remember.'\n\n'You know, the musician.'\n\n'Yes. I have heard of Bob Dylan, Dylan.'\n\n'My older sister is called Suzanne. After the Leonard Cohen song.'\n\nNora smiled. 'My parents loved Leonard Cohen.'\n\n'Ever been in there?' Dylan asked her. 'Looked like a great shop.'\n\n'Once or twice.'\n\n'Thought you would have been, what with you being musical. You used to play the piano, didn't you?'\n\nUsed to.\n\n'Yeah. Keyboards. A little.'\n\nNora saw the notice looked old. She remembered what Neil had said to her. I can't pay you to put off customers with your face looking like a wet weekend.\n\nWell, Neil, maybe it wasn't my face after all.\n\nThey carried on walking.\n\n'Dylan, do you believe in parallel universes?'\n\nHe shrugged. 'I think so.'\n\n'What do you think you are doing in another life? Do you think this is a good universe? Or would you rather be in a universe where you left Bedford?'\n\n'Not really. I am happy here. Why want another universe if this one has dogs? Dogs are the same here as they are in London. I had a place, you know. I'd got into Glasgow University to do Veterinary Medicine. And I went for a week but I missed my dogs too much. Then my dad lost his job and couldn't really afford for me to go. So yeah, I never got to be a vet. And I really wanted to be a vet. But I don't regret it. I have a good life. I've got some good friends. I've got my dogs.'\n\nNora smiled. She liked Dylan, even if she doubted she could be as attracted to him as this other Nora. He was a good person, and good people were rare.\n\nAs they reached the restaurant, they saw a tall dark-haired man in running gear jogging towards them. It took a disorientating moment for Nora to realise it was Ash \u2013 the Ash who had been a surgeon, the Ash who had been a customer at String Theory and who had asked her out for coffee, the Ash who had comforted her in the hospital and who had knocked on her door, in another world, last night, to tell her that Voltaire was dead. It seemed so recent, that memory, and yet it was hers alone. He was obviously doing some training for the half-marathon on Sunday. There was no reason to believe that the Ash in this life was any different from the one in her root life, except the chances were that he probably hadn't found a dead Voltaire last night. Or maybe he had, though Voltaire wouldn't have been called Voltaire.\n\n'Hi,' she said, forgetting which timeline she was in.\n\nAnd Ash smiled back at her, but it was a confused smile. Confused, but kind, which somehow made Nora feel even more cringey. Because of course in this life there had not been the knock on her door, there had never even been the asking for a coffee, or the purchase of a Simon & Garfunkel songbook.\n\n'Who was that?' Dylan asked.\n\n'Oh, just someone I knew in another life.'\n\nDylan was confused but shook it away like rain.\n\nAnd then they were there.\n\n[ Dinner with Dylan ]\n\nLa Cantina had hardly changed in years.\n\nNora had a flashback to the evening she had taken Dan there years ago, on his first visit to Bedford. They'd sat at a table in a corner and had too many margaritas and talked about their joint future. It was the first time that Dan had expressed his dream of living in a pub in the country. They had been on the verge of moving in together, just as Nora and Dylan apparently were in this life. Now she remembered it, Dan had been pretty rude to the waiter, and Nora had overcompensated with excessive smiles. It was one of life's rules \u2013 Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff \u2013 and Dan had failed at that one, and many of the others. Although Nora had to admit, La Cantina would not have been her top choice to return to.\n\n'I love this place,' Dylan said now, looking around at the busy, garish red-and-yellow d\u00e9cor. Nora wondered, quietly, if there was any place Dylan didn't or wouldn't love. He seemed like he would be able to sit in a field near Chernobyl and marvel at the beautiful scenery.\n\nOver black bean tacos, they talked about dogs and school. Dylan had been two years below Nora and remembered her primarily as 'the girl who was good at swimming'. He even remembered the school assembly \u2013 which Nora had long tried to repress \u2013 where she had been called on stage and given a certificate for being an exceptional representative of Hazeldene Comp. Now she thought about it, that was possibly the moment Nora had begun to go off swimming. The moment she found it harder being with her friends, the moment she slunk away into the margins of school life.\n\n'I used to see you in the library during breaks,' he said, smiling at the memory. 'I remember seeing you playing chess with that librarian we used to have... what was her name?'\n\n'Mrs Elm,' Nora said.\n\n'That's it! Mrs Elm!' And then he said something even more startling. 'I saw her the other day.'\n\n'Did you?'\n\n'Yeah. She was on Shakespeare Road. With someone dressed in a uniform. Like a nurse's outfit. I think she was heading into the care home after a walk. She looked very frail. Very old.'\n\nFor some reason, Nora had assumed Mrs Elm had died years ago, and that the version of Mrs Elm she always saw in the library had made that idea more likely, as that version was always the exact version she had been at school, preserved in Nora's memory like a mosquito in amber.\n\n'Oh no. Poor Mrs Elm. I loved her.'\n\n[ Last Chance Saloon ]\n\nAfter the meal Nora went back to Dylan's house to watch the Ryan Bailey movie. They had a half-drunk bottle of wine that the restaurant let them take home. Her self-justification regarding going to Dylan's was that he was sweet and open and would reveal a lot about their life without having to pry too deep.\n\nHe lived in a small terraced house on Huxley Avenue that he had inherited from his mum. The house was made even smaller by the amount of dogs there. There were five that Nora could see, though there may have been more lurking upstairs. Nora had always imagined she liked the smell of dog, but she suddenly realised there was a limit to this fondness.\n\nSitting down on the sofa she felt something hard beneath her \u2013 a plastic ring for the dogs to gnaw on. She put it on the carpet amid the other chew toys. The toy bone. The foam yellow ball with chunks bitten out of it. A half-massacred soft toy.\n\nA Chihuahua with cataracts tried to have sex with her right leg.\n\n'Stop that, Pedro,' said Dylan, laughing, as he pulled the little creature away from her.\n\nAnother dog, a giant, meaty, chestnut-coloured Newfoundland, was sitting next to her on the sofa, licking Nora's ear with a tongue the size of a slipper, meaning that Dylan had to sit on the floor.\n\n'Do you want the sofa?'\n\n'No. I'm fine on the floor.'\n\nNora didn't push it. In fact, she was quite relieved. It made it easier to watch Last Chance Saloon without any further awkwardness. And the Newfoundland stopped licking her ear and rested its head on her knee and Nora felt \u2013 well, not happy exactly, but not depressed either.\n\nAnd yet, as she watched Ryan Bailey tell his on-screen love interest that 'Life is for living, cupcake' while simultaneously being informed by Dylan that he was thinking of letting another dog sleep in his bed ('He cries all night. He wants his daddy'), Nora realised she wasn't too enamoured with this life.\n\nAnd also, Dylan deserved the other Nora. The one who had managed to fall in love with him. This was a new feeling \u2013 as if she was taking someone's place.\n\nRealising she had a high tolerance for alcohol in this life, she poured herself some more wine. It was a pretty ropey Zinfandel from California. She stared at the label on the back. There was for some reason a mini co-autobiography of a woman and a man, Janine and Terence Thornton, who owned the vineyard which had made the wine. She read the last sentence: When we were first married we always dreamed of opening our own vineyard one day. And now we have made that dream a reality. Here at Dry Creek Valley, our life tastes as good as a glass of Zinfandel.\n\nShe stroked the large dog who'd been licking her and whispered a 'goodbye' into the Newfoundland's wide, warm brow as she left Dylan and his dogs behind.\n\n[ Buena Vista Vineyard ]\n\nIn the next visit to the Midnight Library, Mrs Elm helped Nora find the life she could have lived that was closest to the life depicted on the label of that bottle of wine from the restaurant. So, she gave Nora a book that sent her to America.\n\nIn this life Nora was called Nora Mart\u00ecnez and she was married to a twinkle-eyed Mexican-American man in his early forties called Eduardo, who she had met during the gap year she'd regretted never having after leaving university. After his parents had died in a boating accident (she had learned, from a profile piece on them in The Wine Enthusiast magazine, which they had framed in their oak-panelled tasting room), Eduardo had been left a modest inheritance and they bought a tiny vineyard in California. Within three years they had done so well \u2013 particularly with their Syrah varietals \u2013 that they were able to buy the neighbouring vineyard when it came up for sale. Their winery was called the Buena Vista vineyard, situated in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and they had a child called Alejandro, who was at boarding school near Monterey Bay.\n\nMuch of their business came from wine-trail tourists. Coachloads of people arrived at hourly intervals. It was quite easy to improvise, as the tourists were genuinely quite gullible. It went like this: Eduardo would decide which wines to put out in the glasses before each coach load arrived, and hand Nora the bottles \u2013 'Woah, Nora, despacio, un poco too much' he reprimanded in his good-humoured Spanglish, when she was a bit too liberal with the measures \u2013 and then when the tourists came Nora would inhale the wines as they sipped and swilled them, and try to echo Eduardo and say the right things.\n\n'There is a woodiness to the bouquet with this one' or 'You'll note the vegetal aromas here \u2013 the bright robust blackberries and fragrant nectarine, perfectly balanced with the echoes of charcoal'.\n\nEach life she had experienced had a different feeling, like different movements in a symphony, and this one felt quite bold and uplifting. Eduardo was incredibly sweet-natured, and their marriage seemed to be a successful one. Maybe even one to rival the life of the couple on the wine label of the bottle of ropey wine she'd drank with Dylan, while being licked by his astronomically large dog. She even remembered their names. Janine and Terence Thornton. She felt like she too was now living in a label on a bottle. She also looked like it. Perfect Californian hair and expensive-looking teeth, tanned and healthy despite the presumably quite substantial consumption of Syrah. She had the kind of flat, hard stomach that suggested hours of Pilates every week.\n\nHowever, it wasn't just easy to fake wine knowledge in this life. It was easy to fake everything, which could have been a sign that the key to her apparently successful union with Eduardo was that he wasn't really paying attention.\n\nAfter the last of the tourists left, Eduardo and Nora sat out under the stars with a glass of their own wine in their hands.\n\n'The fires have died out in LA now,' he told her.\n\nNora wondered who lived in the Los Angeles home she had in her pop star life. 'That's a relief.'\n\n'Yeah.'\n\n'Isn't it beautiful?' she asked him, staring up at that clear sky full of constellations.\n\n'What?'\n\n'The galaxy.'\n\n'Yes.'\n\nHe was on his phone and didn't say very much. And then he put his phone down and still didn't say much.\n\nShe had known three types of silence in relationships. There was passive-aggressive silence, obviously, there was the we-no-longer-have-anything-to-say silence, and then there was the silence that Eduardo and she seemed to have cultivated. The silence of not needing to talk. Of just being together, of together-being. The way you could be happily silent with yourself.\n\nBut still, she wanted to talk.\n\n'We're happy, aren't we?'\n\n'Why the question?'\n\n'Oh, I know we are happy. I just like to hear you say it sometimes.'\n\n'We're happy, Nora.'\n\nShe sipped her wine and looked at her husband. He was wearing a sweater even though it was perfectly mild. They stayed there a while and then he went to bed before her.\n\n'I'm just going to stay out here for a while.'\n\nEduardo seemed fine with that, and sloped off after planting a small kiss on the top of her head.\n\nShe stepped out with her glass of wine and walked among the moonlit vines.\n\nShe stared at the clear sky full of stars.\n\nThere was absolutely nothing wrong with this life, but she felt inside her a craving for other things, other lives, other possibilities. She felt like she was still in the air, not ready to land. Maybe she was more like Hugo Lef\u00e8vre than she had realised. Maybe she could flick through lives as easily as flicking pages.\n\nShe gulped the rest of the wine, knowing there would be no hangover. 'Earth and wood,' she said to herself. She closed her eyes.\n\nIt wasn't long now.\n\nNot long at all.\n\nShe just stood there and waited to disappear.\n\n[ The Many Lives of Nora Seed ]\n\nNora came to understand something. Something Hugo had never fully explained to her in that kitchen in Svalbard. You didn't have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option of experiencing them. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed. Equally, enjoying a life didn't mean you stayed in that life. You only stayed in a life for ever if you couldn't imagine a better one, and yet, paradoxically, the more lives you tried the easier it became to think of something better, as the imagination broadened a bit more with every new life she sampled.\n\nSo, in time, and with Mrs Elm's assistance, Nora took lots of books from the shelves, and ended up having a taste of lots of different lives in her search for the right one. She learned that undoing regrets was really a way of making wishes come true. There was almost any life she was living in one universe, after all.\n\nIn one life she had quite a solitary time in Paris, and taught English at a college in Montparnasse and cycled by the Seine and read lots of books on park benches. In another, she was a yoga teacher with the neck mobility of an owl.\n\nIn one life she had kept up swimming but had never tried to pursue the Olympics. She just did it for fun. In that life she was a lifeguard in the beach resort of Sitges, near Barcelona, was fluent in both Catalan and Spanish, and had a hilarious best friend called Gabriela who taught her how to surf, and who she shared an apartment with, five minutes from the beach.\n\nThere was one existence where Nora had kept up the fiction writing she had occasionally toyed with at university and was now a published author. Her novel The Shape of Regret received rave reviews and was shortlisted for a major literary award. In that life she had lunch in a disappointingly banal Soho members' club with two affable, easy-going producers from Magic Lantern Productions, who wanted to option it for film. She ended up choking on a piece of flatbread and knocking her red wine over one of the producer's trousers and messing up the whole meeting.\n\nIn one life she had a teenage son called Henry, who she never met properly because he kept slamming doors in her face.\n\nIn one life she was a concert pianist, currently on tour in Scandinavia, playing night after night to besotted crowds (and fading into the Midnight Library during one disastrous rendition of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki).\n\nIn one life she only ate toast.\n\nIn one life she went to Oxford and became a lecturer in Philosophy at St Catherine's College and lived by herself in a fine Georgian townhouse in a genteel row, amid an environment of respectable calm.\n\nIn another life Nora was a sea of emotion. She felt everything deeply and directly. Every joy and every sorrow. A single moment could contain both intense pleasure and intense pain, as if both were dependent on each other, like a pendulum in motion. A simple walk outside and she could feel a heavy sadness simply because the sun had slipped behind a cloud. Yet, conversely, meeting a dog who was clearly grateful for her attention caused her to feel so exultant that she felt she could melt into the pavement with sheer bliss. In that life she had a book of Emily Dickinson poems beside her bed and she had a playlist called 'Extreme States of Euphoria' and another one called 'The Glue to Fix Me When I Am Broken'.\n\nIn one life she was a travel vlogger who had 1,750,000 YouTube subscribers and almost as many people following her on Instagram, and her most popular video was one where she fell off a gondola in Venice. She also had one about Rome called 'A Roma Therapy'.\n\nIn one life she was a single parent to a baby that literally wouldn't sleep.\n\nIn one life she ran the showbiz column in a tabloid newspaper and did stories about Ryan Bailey's relationships.\n\nIn one life she was the picture editor at the National Geographic.\n\nIn one life she was a successful eco-architect who lived a carbon-neutral existence in a self-designed bungalow that harvested rain-water and ran on solar power.\n\nIn one life she was an aid worker in Botswana.\n\nIn one life a cat-sitter.\n\nIn one life a volunteer in a homeless shelter.\n\nIn one life she was sleeping on her only friend's sofa.\n\nIn one life she taught music in Montreal.\n\nIn one life she spent all day arguing with people she didn't know on Twitter and ended a fair proportion of her tweets by saying 'Do better' while secretly realising she was telling herself to do that.\n\nIn one life she had no social media accounts.\n\nIn one life she'd never drunk alcohol.\n\nIn one life she was a chess champion and currently visiting Ukraine for a tournament.\n\nIn one life she was married to a minor Royal and hated every minute.\n\nIn one life her Facebook and Instagram only contained quotes from Rumi and Lao Tzu.\n\nIn one life she was on to her third husband and already bored.\n\nIn one life she was a vegan power-lifter.\n\nIn one life she was travelling around South America and caught up in an earthquake in Chile.\n\nIn one life she had a friend called Becky, who said 'Oh what larks!' whenever anything good was happening.\n\nIn one life she met Hugo yet again, diving off the Corsican coast, and they talked quantum mechanics and got drunk together at a beachside bar until Hugo slipped away, out of that life, mid-sentence, so Nora was left talking to a blank Hugo who was trying to remember her name.\n\nIn some lives Nora attracted a lot of attention. In some lives she attracted none. In some lives she was rich. In some lives she was poor. In some lives she was healthy. In some lives she couldn't climb the stairs without getting out of breath. In some lives she was in a relationship, in others she was solo, in many she was somewhere in between. In some lives she was a mother, but in most she wasn't.\n\nShe had been a rock star, an Olympian, a music teacher, a primary school teacher, a professor, a CEO, a PA, a chef, a glaciologist, a climatologist, an acrobat, a tree-planter, an audit manager, a hair-dresser, a professional dog walker, an office clerk, a software developer, a receptionist, a hotel cleaner, a politician, a lawyer, a shoplifter, the head of an ocean protection charity, a shop worker (again), a waitress, a first-line supervisor, a glass-blower and a thousand other things. She'd had horrendous commutes in cars, on buses, in trains, on ferries, on bike, on foot. She'd had emails and emails and emails. She'd had a fifty-three-year-old boss with halitosis touch her leg under a table and text her a photo of his penis. She'd had colleagues who lied about her, and colleagues who loved her, and (mainly) colleagues who were entirely indifferent. In many lives she chose not to work and in some she didn't choose not to work but still couldn't find any. In some lives she smashed through the glass ceiling and in some she just polished it. She had been excessively over-and under-qualified. She had slept brilliantly and terribly. In some lives she was on anti-depressants and in others she didn't even take ibuprofen for a headache. In some lives she was a physically healthy hypochondriac and in some a seriously ill hypochondriac and in most she wasn't a hypochondriac at all. There was a life where she had chronic fatigue, a life where she had cancer, a life where she'd suffered a herniated disc and broken her ribs in a car accident.\n\nThere had, in short, been a lot of lives.\n\nAnd among those lives she had laughed and cried and felt calm and terrified and everything in between.\n\nAnd between these lives she always saw Mrs Elm in the library.\n\nAnd at first it seemed that the more lives she experienced, the fewer problems there seemed to be with the transfer. The library never felt like it was on the brink of crumbling or falling apart or at risk of disappearing completely. The lights didn't even flicker through many of the changeovers. It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life \u2013 that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences. She realised that she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.\n\nThat, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.\n\nBut with every life she saw that metaphorical door widen a little further as she grew better at using her imagination. Sometimes she was in a life for less than a minute, while in others she was there for days or weeks. It seemed the more lives she lived, the harder it was to feel at home anywhere.\n\nThe trouble was that eventually Nora began to lose any sense of who she was. Like a whispered word passed around from ear to ear, even her name began to sound like just a noise, signifying nothing.\n\n'It's not working,' she told Hugo, in her last proper conversation with him, in that beach bar in Corsica. 'It's not fun any more. I am not you. I need somewhere to stay. But the ground is never stable.'\n\n'The fun is in the jumping, mon amie.'\n\n'But what if it's in the landing?'\n\nAnd that was the moment he had returned to his purgatorial video store.\n\n'I'm sorry,' his other self said, as he sipped his wine and the sun set behind him, 'I've forgotten who you are.'\n\n'Don't worry,' she said. 'So have I.'\n\nAs she too faded away like the sun that had just been swallowed by the horizon.\n\n[ Lost in the Library ]\n\n'Mrs Elm?'\n\n'Yes, Nora, what's the matter?'\n\n'It's dark.'\n\n'I had noticed.'\n\n'That's not a good sign, is it?'\n\n'No,' said Mrs Elm, sounding flustered. 'You know perfectly well it's not a good sign.'\n\n'I can't go on.'\n\n'You always say that.'\n\n'I have run out of lives. I have been everything. And yet I always end up back here. There is always something that stops my enjoyment. Always. I feel ungrateful.'\n\n'Well, you shouldn't. And you haven't run out of anything.' Mrs Elm paused to sigh. 'Did you know that every time you choose a book it never returns to the shelves?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Which is why you can never go back into a life you have tried. There always needs to be some... variation on a theme. In the Midnight Library, you can't take the same book out twice.'\n\n'I don't follow.'\n\n'Well, even in the dark you know these shelves are as full as the last time you looked. Feel them, if you like.'\n\nNora didn't feel them. 'Yeah. I know they are.'\n\n'They're exactly as full as they were when you first arrived here, aren't they?'\n\n'I don't\u2014'\n\n'That means there are still as many possible lives out there for you as there ever were. An infinite number, in fact. You can never run out of possibilities.'\n\n'But you can run out of wanting them.'\n\n'Oh Nora.'\n\n'Oh what?'\n\nThere was a pause, in the darkness. Nora pressed the small light on her watch, just to check.\n\n00:00:00\n\n'I think,' Mrs Elm said eventually, 'if I may say so without being rude \u2013 I think you might have lost your way a little bit.'\n\n'Isn't that why I came to the Midnight Library in the first place? Because I had lost my way?'\n\n'Well, yes. But now you are lost within your lostness. Which is to say, very lost indeed. You are not going to find the way you want to live like this.'\n\n'What if there was never a way? What if I am... trapped?'\n\n'So long as there are still books on the shelves, you are never trapped. Every book is a potential escape.'\n\n'I just don't understand life,' sulked Nora.\n\n'You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it.'\n\nNora shook her head. This was a bit too much for a Philosophy graduate to take.\n\n'But I don't want to be like this,' Nora told her. 'I don't want to be like Hugo. I don't want to keep flicking between lives for ever.'\n\n'All right. Then you need to listen carefully to me. Now, do you want my advice or don't you?'\n\n'Well, yeah. Of course. It feels a little late, but yes, Mrs Elm, I would be very grateful for your advice on this.'\n\n'Right. Well. I think you have reached a point where you can't see the wood for the trees.'\n\n'I'm not quite sure what you mean.'\n\n'You are right to think of these lives like a piano where you're playing tunes that aren't really you. You are forgetting who you are. In becoming everyone, you are becoming no one. You are forgetting your root life. You are forgetting what worked for you and what didn't. You are forgetting your regrets.'\n\n'I've been through my regrets.'\n\n'No. Not all of them.'\n\n'Well, not every single minor one. No, obviously.'\n\n'You need to look at The Book of Regrets again.'\n\n'How can I do that in the pitch dark?'\n\n'Because you already know the whole book. Because it's inside you. Just as... just as I am.'\n\nShe remembered Dylan telling her he had seen Mrs Elm near the care home. She thought about telling her this but decided against it. 'Right.'\n\n'We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. \"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.\"'\n\n'You know Thoreau?'\n\n'Of course. If you do.'\n\n'The thing is, I don't know what I regret any more.'\n\n'Okay, well, let's see. You say that I am just a perception. Then why did you perceive me? Why am I \u2013 Mrs Elm \u2013 the person you see?'\n\n'I don't know. Because you were someone I trusted. You were kind to me.'\n\n'Kindness is a strong force.'\n\n'And rare.'\n\n'You might be looking in the wrong places.'\n\n'Maybe.'\n\nThe dark was punctured by the slow rising glow of the light bulbs all around the library.\n\n'So where else in your root life have you felt that? Kindness?'\n\nNora remembered the night Ash knocked on her door. Maybe lifting a dead cat off the road and carrying it in the rain around to her flat's tiny back garden and then burying it on her behalf because she was sobbing drunkenly with grief wasn't the most archetypally romantic thing in the world. But it certainly qualified as kind, to take forty minutes out of your run and help someone in need while only accepting a glass of water in return.\n\nShe hadn't really been able to appreciate that kindness at the time. Her grief and despair had been too strong. But now she thought about it, it had really been quite remarkable.\n\n'I think I know,' she said. 'It was right there in front of me, the night before I tried to kill myself.'\n\n'Yesterday evening, you mean?'\n\n'I suppose. Yes. Ash. The surgeon. The one who found Volts. Who once asked me out for coffee. Years ago. When I was with Dan. I'd said no, well, because I was with Dan. But what if I hadn't been? What if I had broken up with Dan and gone on that coffee date and had dared, on a Saturday, with all the shop watching, to say yes to a coffee? Because there must be a life in which I was single in that moment and where I said what I wanted to say. Where I said, ''Yes, I would like to go for a coffee sometime, Ash, that would be lovely.'' Where I picked Ash. I'd like to have a go at that life. Where would that have taken me?'\n\nAnd in the dark she heard the familiar sound of the shelves beginning to move, slowly, with a creak, then faster, smoother, until Mrs Elm spotted the book, the life, in question.\n\n'Right there.'\n\n[ A Pearl in the Shell ]\n\nShe opened her eyes from a shallow sleep and the first thing she noticed was that she was incredibly tired. She could see a picture on the wall, in the dark. She could just about make out that the picture was a mildly abstract interpretation of a tree. Not a tall and spindly tree. Something short and wide and flowery.\n\nThere was a man next to her, asleep. It was impossible to tell, as he was turned away from her, in the dark, and given that he was largely hidden under the duvet, whether this man was Ash.\n\nSomehow this felt weirder than usual. Of course, to be in bed with a man who she hadn't done anything more with than bury a cat and have a few interesting conversations from behind the counter of a music shop should have felt slightly strange in the normal run of things. But since entering the Midnight Library Nora had slowly got used to the peculiar.\n\nAnd just because it was possible that the man was Ash, it was also possible that it wasn't. There was no predicting every future outcome after a single decision. Going for a coffee with Ash might have led, for instance, to Nora falling in love with the person serving the coffee. That was simply the unpredictable nature of quantum physics.\n\nShe felt her ring finger.\n\nTwo rings.\n\nThe man turned over.\n\nAn arm landed across her in the dark and she gently raised it and placed it back on the duvet. Then she took herself out of bed. Her plan was to go downstairs and maybe lie on a sofa and, as usual, do some research about herself on her phone.\n\nIt was a curious fact that no matter how many lives she had experienced, and no matter how different those lives were, she almost always had her phone by the bed. And in this life, it was no different, so she grabbed it and sneaked out of the room quietly. Whoever the man was, he was a deep sleeper and didn't stir.\n\nShe stared at him.\n\n'Nora?' he mumbled, half-asleep.\n\nIt was him. She was almost sure of it. Ash.\n\n'I'm just going to the loo,' she said.\n\nHe mumbled something close to an 'okay' and fell back asleep.\n\nAnd she trod gently across the floorboards. But the moment she opened the door and stepped out of the room, she nearly jumped out of her skin.\n\nFor there, in front of her in the half-light of the landing, was another human. A small one. Child-size.\n\n'Mummy, I had a nightmare.'\n\nBy the soft light of the dimmed bulb in the hallway she could see the girl's face, her fine hair wild from sleep, strands sticking to her clammy forehead.\n\nNora said nothing. This was her daughter.\n\nHow could she say anything?\n\nThe now familiar question raised itself: how could she just join in to a life that she was years late for? Nora closed her eyes. The other lives in which she'd had children had only lasted a couple of minutes or so. This one was already leading into unknown territory.\n\nHer body shook with whatever she was trying to keep inside. She didn't want to see her. Not just for herself but for the girl as well. It seemed a betrayal. Nora was her mother, but also, in another, more important way: she was not her mother. She was just a strange woman in a strange house looking at a strange child.\n\n'Mummy? Can you hear me? I had a nightmare.'\n\nShe heard the man move in his bed somewhere in the room behind her. This would only become more awkward if he woke up, properly. So, Nora decided to speak to the child.\n\n'Oh, oh that's a shame,' she whispered. 'It's not real, though. It was just a dream.'\n\n'It was about bears.'\n\nNora closed the door behind her. 'Bears?'\n\n'Because of that story.'\n\n'Right. Yes. The story. Come on, get back in your bed...' This sounded harsh, she realised. 'Sweetheart,' she added, wondering what she \u2013 her daughter in this universe \u2013 was called. 'There are no bears here.'\n\n'Only teddy bears.'\n\n'Yes, only\u2014'\n\nThe girl became a little more awake. Her eyes brightened. She saw her mother, so for a second Nora felt like that. Like her mother. She felt the strangeness of being connected to the world through someone else. 'Mummy, what were you doing?'\n\nShe was speaking loudly. She was deeply serious in the way that only four-year-olds (she couldn't have been much older) could be.\n\n'Ssh,' Nora said. She really needed to know the girl's name. Names had power. If you didn't know your own daughter's name, you had no control whatsoever. 'Listen,' Nora whispered, 'I'm just going to go downstairs and do something. You go back to bed.'\n\n'But the bears.'\n\n'There aren't any bears.'\n\n'There are in my dreams.'\n\nNora remembered the polar bear speeding towards her in the fog. Remembered that fear. That desire, in that sudden moment, to live. 'There won't be this time. I promise.'\n\n'Mummy, why are you speaking like that?'\n\n'Like what?'\n\n'Like that.'\n\n'Whispering?'\n\n'No.'\n\nNora had no idea what the girl thought she was speaking like. What the gap was, between her now and her, the mother. Did motherhood affect the way you spoke?\n\n'Like you are scared,' the girl clarified.\n\n'I'm not scared.'\n\n'I want someone to hold my hand.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I want someone to hold my hand.'\n\n'Right.'\n\n'Silly Mummy!'\n\n'Yes. Yes, I'm silly.'\n\n'I'm really scared.'\n\nShe said this quietly, matter-of-fact. And it was then that Nora looked at her. Really, properly looked at her. The girl seemed wholly alien and wholly familiar all at once. Nora felt a swell of something inside her, something powerful and worrying.\n\nThe girl was staring at her in a way no one had stared at her before. It was scary, the emotion. She had Nora's mouth. And that slightly lost look that people had sometimes attributed to her. She was beautiful and she was hers \u2013 or kind of hers \u2013 and she felt a swell of irrational love, a surge of it, and knew \u2013 if the library wasn't coming for her right now (and it wasn't) \u2013 that she had to get away.\n\n'Mummy, will you hold my hand...?'\n\n'I...'\n\nThe girl put her hand in Nora's. It felt so small and warm and it made her feel sad, the way it relaxed into her, as natural as a pearl in a shell. She pulled Nora towards the adjacent room \u2013 the girl's bedroom. Nora closed the door nearly-shut behind her and tried to check the time on her watch, but in this life it was a classic-looking analogue watch with no light display so it took a second or two for her eyes to adjust. She double-checked the time on her phone as well. It was 2:32 a.m. So, depending when she had gone to bed in this life, this version of her body hadn't had much sleep. It certainly felt like it hadn't.\n\n'What happens when you die, Mummy?'\n\nIt wasn't totally dark in the room. There was a sliver of light coming in from the hallway and there was a nearby streetlamp that meant a thin glow filtered through the dog-patterned curtains. She could see the squat rectangle that was Nora's bed. She could see the silhouette of a cuddly toy elephant on the floor. There were other toys too. It was a happily cluttered room.\n\nHer eyes shone at Nora.\n\n'I don't know,' Nora said. 'I don't think anyone knows for sure.'\n\nShe frowned. This didn't satisfy her. This didn't satisfy her one bit.\n\n'Listen,' Nora said. 'There is a chance that just before you die, you'll get a chance to live again. You can have things you didn't have before. You can choose the life you want.'\n\n'That sounds good.'\n\n'But you don't have to have this worry for a very long time. You are going to have a life full of exciting adventures. There will be so many happy things.'\n\n'Like camping!'\n\nA burst of warmth radiated through Nora as she smiled at this sweet girl. 'Yes. Like camping!'\n\n'I love it when we go camping!'\n\nNora's smile was still there but she felt tears behind her eyes. This seemed a good life. A family of her own. A daughter to go on camping holidays with.\n\n'Listen,' she said, as she realised she wasn't going to be able to escape the bedroom any time soon. 'When you have worries about things you don't know about, like the future, it's a very good idea to remind yourself of things you do know.'\n\n'I don't understand,' the girl said, snuggled under her duvet as Nora sat on the floor beside her.\n\n'Well, it's like a game.'\n\n'I like games.'\n\n'Shall we play a game?'\n\n'Yes,' smiled her daughter. 'Let's.'\n\n[ The Perfect Life ]\n\nAsh's gangly handsome boyishness had only been modestly dented by fatherhood. If anything, he looked healthier than he had done on her doorstep and, like then, he was wearing running gear \u2013 though here the clothes seemed a bit fancier and more expensive, and he had some kind of fitness tracker attached to his arm.\n\nHe was smiling and holding two cups of coffee, one of which was for Nora. She wondered how many coffees they had shared together, since the first.\n\n'Oh, thank you.'\n\n'Oh no, Nor, did you sleep in here all night?' he asked.\n\nNor.\n\n'Most of it. I meant to go back to bed but Molly was in a state. I had to calm her and then I was too tired to move.'\n\n'Oh no. I'm so sorry. I didn't hear her.' He seemed genuinely sad. 'It was probably my fault. I showed her some bears on YouTube yesterday before work.'\n\n'No worries.'\n\n'Anyway, I've walked Plato. I'm not in the hospital till midday today. It's going to be a late one. Are you still wanting to go into the library today?'\n\n'Oh. You know what? I might give it a miss.'\n\n'Okay, well, I got Mol some brekkie and will drop her off at school.'\n\n'I can take Molly,' said Nora. 'If you've got a big day.'\n\n'Oh, it's an okay one. A gall bladder and a pancreas so far. Easy street. Am going to get a run in.'\n\n'Right. Yes. 'Course. For the half-marathon on Sunday.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'Nothing. It doesn't matter,' Nora said, 'I'm just delirious from sleeping on the floor.'\n\n'No worries. Anyway, my sister phoned. They want her to illustrate the calendar for Kew Gardens. Lots of plants. She's really pleased.'\n\nHe smiled. He seemed happy for this sister of his who Nora had never heard of. She wanted to thank him for being so good about her dead cat, but she obviously couldn't so she just said, 'Thank you.'\n\n'For what?'\n\n'Just, you know, everything.'\n\n'Oh. Right. Okay.'\n\n'So, thank you.'\n\nHe nodded. 'That's nice. Anyway, run time.'\n\nHe drained his coffee and then disappeared. Nora scanned the room, absorbing every new piece of information. Every cuddly toy and book and plug socket, as if they were all part of the jigsaw of her life.\n\nAn hour later, Molly was being dropped off at her infant school and Nora was doing the usual. Checking her emails and social media. Her social media activity wasn't great in this life, which was always a promising sign, but she did have a hell of a lot of emails. From these emails she divined that she was not simply 'stopping' teaching at the moment but had officially stopped. She was on a sabbatical in order to write a book about Henry David Thoreau and his relevance for the modern-day environmentalist movement. Later in the year she planned to visit Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, funded by a research grant.\n\nThis seemed pretty good.\n\nAlmost annoyingly good.\n\nA good life with a good daughter and a good man in a good house in a good town. It was an excess of good. A life where she could sit down all day reading and researching and writing about her all-time favourite philosopher.\n\n'This is cool,' she told the dog. 'Isn't this cool?'\n\nPlato yawned indifference.\n\nThen she set about exploring her house, being watched by the Labrador from the comfy-looking sofa. The living room was vast. Her feet sunk into the soft rug.\n\nWhite floorboards, TV, wood-burner, electric piano, two new laptops on charge, a mahogany chest on which perched an ornate chess set, nicely stacked bookshelves. A lovely guitar resting in the corner. Nora recognised the model instantly as an electro-acoustic 'Midnight Satin' Fender Malibu. She had sold one during her last week working at String Theory.\n\nThere were photos in frames dotted around the living room. Kids she didn't know with a woman who looked like Ash \u2013 presumably his sister. An old photo of her deceased parents on their wedding day, and one of her and Ash getting married. She could see her brother in the background. A photo of Plato. And one of a baby, presumably Molly.\n\nShe glanced at the books. Some yoga manuals, but not the second-hand ones she owned in her root life. Some medical books. She recognised her copy of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, along with Henry David Thoreau's Walden, both of which she'd owned since university. A familiar Principles of Geology was also there. There were quite a few books on Thoreau. And copies of Plato's Republic and Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which she did own in her root life, but not in these editions. Intellectual-looking books by people like Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There were a lot of works on Eastern philosophy that she had never read before and she wondered if she stayed in this life, and she couldn't see why not, whether there was a way to read them all before she had to do any more teaching at Cambridge.\n\nNovels, some Dickens, The Bell Jar, some geeky pop-science books, a few music books, a few parenting manuals, Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, some stuff on climate change, and a large hardback called Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape.\n\nShe had rarely, if ever, been this consistently highbrow. This was clearly what happened when you did a Master's degree at Cambridge and then went on sabbatical to write a book on your favourite philosopher.\n\n'You're impressed by me,' she told the dog. 'You can admit it.'\n\nThere was also a pile of music songbooks, and Nora smiled when she saw that the one on top was the Simon & Garfunkel one she had sold to Ash the day he had asked her out for a coffee. On the coffee table there was a nice glossy hardback book of photographs of Spanish scenery and on the sofa there was something called The Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers.\n\nAnd in the magazine rack there was the brand-new National Geographic with the picture of the black hole on the cover.\n\nThere was a picture on the wall. A Mir\u00f3 print from a museum in Barcelona.\n\n'Have me and Ash been to Barcelona together, Plato?' She imagined them both, hand-in-hand, wandering the streets of the Gothic Quarter together, popping into a bar for tapas and Rioja.\n\nOn the wall opposite the bookshelves there was a mirror. A broad mirror with an ornate white frame. She no longer got surprised by the variations in appearance between lives. She had been every shape and size and had every haircut. In this life, she looked perfectly pleasant. She would have liked to be friends with this person. It wasn't an Olympian or a rock star or a Cirque du Soleil acrobat she was looking at, but it was someone who seemed to be having a good life, as far as you could tell these things. A grown-up who had a vague idea of who she was and what she was doing in life. Short hair, but not dramatically so, skin looking healthier than in her root life, either through diet, a lack of red wine, exercise, or the cleansers and moisturisers she'd seen in the bathroom, which were all more expensive than anything she owned in her root life.\n\n'Well,' she said to Plato. 'This is a nice life, yeah?'\n\nPlato seemed to agree.\n\n[ A Spiritual Quest for a Deeper Connection with the Universe ]\n\nShe found the medicine drawer in the kitchen and rummaged through the plasters and ibuprofen and Calpol and multivitamins and runners' knee bandages but couldn't find any sign of any anti-depressants.\n\nMaybe this was it. Maybe this was, finally, the life she was going to stay put in. The life she would choose. The one she would not return to the shelves.\n\nI could be happy here.\n\nA little later, in the shower, she scanned her body for new marks. There were no tattoos but there was a scar. Not a self-inflicted scar but a surgical-looking one \u2013 a long, delicate horizontal line below her navel. She had seen a caesarean scar before, and now she stroked her thumb along it, thinking that even if she stayed in this life she would have always turned up late for it.\n\nAsh came back home from dropping Molly off.\n\nShe hastily dressed so he wouldn't see her naked.\n\nThey had breakfast together. They sat at their kitchen table and scrolled the day's news and ate sourdough toast and were very much like a living endorsement for marriage.\n\nAnd then Ash went to the hospital and she stayed home to research Thoreau all day. She read her work-in-progress, which already had an impressive word-count of 42,729, and sat eating toast before picking Molly up from school.\n\nMolly wanted to go to the park 'like normal' to feed the ducks, and so Nora took her, disguising the fact that she was using Google Maps to navigate her way there.\n\nNora pushed her on a swing till her arms ached, slid down slides with her and crawled behind her through large metallic tunnels. They then threw dry oats into the pond for the ducks, scooped from a box of porridge.\n\nThen she sat down with Molly in front of the telly and then she fed her her dinner and read a bedtime story, all before Ash returned home.\n\nAfter Ash came home, a man came to the door and tried to get in and Nora shut the door in his face.\n\n'Nora?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Why were you so weird to Adam?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'I think he was a little bit put out.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'You acted like he was a stranger.'\n\n'Oh.' Nora smiled. 'Sorry.'\n\n'He's been our neighbour for three years. We went camping with him and Hannah in the Lake District.'\n\n'Yes. I know. Of course.'\n\n'You looked like you weren't letting him in. Like he was an intruder or something.'\n\n'Did I?'\n\n'You shut the door in his face.'\n\n'I shut the door. It wasn't in his face. I mean, yes, his face was there. Technically. But I just didn't want him to think he could barge in.'\n\n'He was bringing the hose back.'\n\n'Oh, right. Well, we don't need the hose. Hoses are bad for the planet.'\n\n'Are you okay?'\n\n'Why wouldn't I be?'\n\n'I just worry about you...'\n\nGenerally, though, things turned out pretty good, and every time she wondered if she would wake up back in the library, she didn't. One day, after her yoga class, Nora sat on a bench by the River Cam and re-read some Thoreau. The day after, she watched Ryan Bailey on daytime TV being interviewed on the set of Last Chance Saloon 2, in which he said he was 'on a spiritual quest for a deeper connection with the universe' rather than worrying about 'settling down in a romantic context'.\n\nShe received whale photos from Izzy, and WhatsApped her to say that she had heard about a horrid car crash in Australia recently, and made Izzy promise she would always drive safely.\n\nNora was comforted to know she had no inclination whatsoever to see what Dan was doing with his life. Instead, she felt very grateful to be with Ash. Or rather, and more precisely: she imagined she was grateful, because he was lovely, and there were so many moments of joy and laughter and love.\n\nAsh did long shifts but was easy to be around when he was in, even after days of blood and stress and gall bladders. He was also a bit of a nerd. He always said 'good morning' to elderly people in the street when walking the dog and sometimes they ignored him. He sang along to the car radio. He generally didn't seem to need sleep. And was always fine doing the Molly night shift even when he was in surgery the next day.\n\nHe loved to gross Molly out with facts \u2013 a stomach gets a new lining every four days! Ear wax is a type of sweat! You have creatures called mites living in your eyelashes! \u2013 and loved to be inappropriate. He (at the duck pond, the first Saturday, within Molly's earshot) enthusiastically told a random stranger that male ducks have penises shaped like corkscrews.\n\nOn nights when he was home early enough to cook, he made a great lentil dal and a pretty good penne arrabbiata, and tended to put a whole bulb of garlic in every meal he created. But Molly had been absolutely right: his artistic talents didn't extend to musical ability. In fact, when he sang 'The Sound of Silence', accompanied by his guitar, she found herself guiltily wishing he would take the title literally.\n\nHe was, in other words, a bit of a dork \u2013 a dork who saved lives on a daily basis, but still a dork. Which was good. Nora liked dorks, and she felt one herself, and it helped make her get over the fundamental peculiarity of being with a husband you were only just getting to know.\n\nThis is a good life, Nora would think to herself, over and over again.\n\nYes, being a parent was exhausting, but Molly was easy to love, at least in daylight hours. In fact, Nora often preferred it when Molly was home from school because it added a bit of challenge to what was otherwise a rather frictionless existence. No relationship stress, no work stress, no money stress.\n\nIt was a lot to be grateful for.\n\nThere were inevitably shaky moments. She felt the familiar feeling of being in a play for which she didn't know the lines.\n\n'Is anything wrong?' she asked Ash one night.\n\n'It's just...' He looked at her with his kind smile and intense, scrutinising eyes. 'I don't know. You forgot our anniversary was coming up. You think you haven't seen films you've seen. And vice versa. You forgot you had a bike. You forget where the plates are. You've been wearing my slippers. You get into my side of the bed.'\n\n'Jeez, Ash,' she said, a little bit too tense. 'It's like being interrogated by the three bears.'\n\n'I just worry...'\n\n'I'm fine. Just, you know, lost in research world. Lost in the woods. Thoreau's woods.'\n\nAnd she felt in those moments that maybe she'd return to the Midnight Library. Sometimes she remembered the words of Mrs Elm on her first visit there. If you really want to live a life hard enough, you don't have to worry... The moment you decide you want that life, really want it, then everything that exists in your head now, including this Midnight Library, will eventually be a dream. A memory so vague and intangible it will hardly be there at all.\n\nWhich begged the question: if this was the perfect life, why hadn't she forgotten the library?\n\nHow long did it take to forget?\n\nOccasionally she felt wisps of gentle depression float around her, for no real reason, but it wasn't comparable to how terrible she had felt in her root life, or indeed many of her other lives. It was like comparing a bit of a sniffle to pneumonia. When she thought about how bad she had felt the day she lost her job at String Theory, of the despair, of the lonely and desperate yearning to not exist, then this was nowhere near.\n\nEvery day she went to bed thinking she was going to wake up in this life again, because it was \u2013 on balance, and all things considered \u2013 the best she had known. Indeed, she progressed from going to bed casually assuming she'd stay in this life, to being scared to fall asleep in case she wouldn't.\n\nAnd yet, night after night she would fall asleep and day after day she would wake up in the same bed. Or occasionally on the carpet, but she shared that pain with Ash, and more often than not it was a bed as Molly was getting better and better at sleeping through.\n\nThere were awkward moments, of course. Nora never knew the way to anything, or where things were in the house, and Ash sometimes wondered out loud if she should see a doctor. And at first she had avoided sex with him, but one night it happened and afterwards Nora felt guilty about the lie she was living.\n\nThey lay in the dark for a while, in post-coital silence, but she knew she had to broach the subject. Test the water.\n\n'Ash,' she said.\n\n'What?'\n\n'Do you believe in the theory of parallel universes?'\n\nShe could see his face stretch into a smile. This was the kind of conversation on his wavelength. 'Yes, I think so.'\n\n'Me too. I mean, it's science, isn't it? It's not like some geeky physicist just thought, \"Hey, parallel universes are cool. Let's make a theory about them.\"'\n\n'Yeah,' he agreed. 'Science distrusts anything that sounds too cool. Too sci-fi. Scientists are sceptics, as a rule.'\n\n'Exactly, yet physicists believe in parallel universes.'\n\n'It's just where the science leads, isn't it? Everything in quantum mechanics and string theory all points to there being multiple universes. Many, many universes.'\n\n'Well, what would you say if I said that I have visited my other lives, and I think I have chosen this one?'\n\n'I would think you were insane. But I'd still like you.'\n\n'Well, I have. I have had many lives.'\n\nHe smiled. 'Great. Is there one where you kiss me again?'\n\n'There is one where you buried my dead cat.'\n\nHe laughed. 'That's so cool, Nor. The thing I like about you is that you always make me feel normal.'\n\nAnd that was it.\n\nShe realised that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality. As Thoreau wrote, 'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.' And Ash only saw the Nora he had fallen in love with and married, and so, in a way, that was the Nora she was becoming.\n\n[ Hammersmith ]\n\nDuring half term, while Molly was off school and on a Tuesday when Ash wasn't in the hospital, they popped on the train to London to see Nora's brother and Ewan in their flat in Hammersmith.\n\nJoe looked well, and his husband looked the same as he had when Nora had seen him on her brother's phone in her Olympic life. Joe and Ewan met at a cross-training class at their local gym. Joe was, in this life, working as a sound engineer, while Ewan \u2013 Dr Ewan Langford, to be precise \u2013 was a consultant radiologist for the Royal Marsden Hospital, so he and Ash had a lot of hospital-related stuff to moan about together.\n\nJoe and Ewan were lovely with Molly, asking her detailed questions about what Panda was up to. And Joe cooked them all a great garlicky pasta-and-broccoli meal.\n\n'It's Puglian, apparently,' he told Nora. 'Getting a bit of our heritage in there.'\n\nNora thought of her Italian grandfather and wondered what he had felt like when he realised the London Brick Company was actually based in Bedford. Had he been truly disappointed? Or had he, actually, just decided to make the most of it? There was probably a version of their grandfather who went to London and on his first day got run over by a double-decker bus at Piccadilly Circus.\n\nJoe and Ewan had a full wine rack in the kitchen and Nora noticed that one of the bottles was a Californian Syrah from the Buena Vista vineyard. Nora felt her skin prickle as she saw the two printed signatures at the bottom \u2013 Alicia and Eduardo Mart\u00ecnez. She smiled, sensing Eduardo was just as happy in this life. She wondered, momentarily, who Alicia was and what she was like. At least there were good sunsets there.\n\n'You okay?' asked Ash, as Nora gazed absent-mindedly at the label.\n\n'Yeah, sure. It just, um, looks like a good one.'\n\n'That's my absolute fave,' said Ewan. 'Such a bloody good wine. Shall we get it open?'\n\n'Well,' said Nora, 'only if you were going to have a drink anyway.'\n\n'Well, I'm not,' said Joe. 'I've been overdoing it a bit recently. I'm in a little teetotal patch.'\n\n'You know what your bro is like,' added Ewan, planting a kiss on Joe's cheek. 'All or nothing.'\n\n'Oh yeah. I do.'\n\nEwan already had the corkscrew in his hands. 'Had one hell of a day at work. So I'm happy to guzzle the whole lot straight from the bottle if no one will join me.'\n\n'I'm in,' said Ash.\n\n'I'm okay,' said Nora, remembering that the last time she had seen him, in the business lounge of a hotel, her brother had confessed to being an alcoholic.\n\nThey gave Molly a picture book and Nora read it with her on the sofa.\n\nThe evening progressed. They talked news and music and movies. Joe and Ewan had quite enjoyed Last Chance Saloon.\n\nA little while later, and to everyone's surprise, Nora took a left turn out of the safe environs of pop culture and cut to the chase with her brother.\n\n'Did you ever get pissed off with me? You know, for backing out of the band?'\n\n'That was years ago, sis. Lot of water under the bridge since then.'\n\n'You wanted to be a rock star, though.'\n\n'He still is a rock star,' said Ewan, laughing. 'But he's all mine.'\n\n'I always feel like I let you down, Joe.'\n\n'Well, don't... But I feel like I let you down too. Because I was such an idiot... I was horrid to you for a little while.'\n\nThese words felt like a tonic she had been waiting years to hear. 'Don't worry about it,' she managed.\n\n'Before I was with Ewan, I was so dumb about mental health. I thought panic attacks were a big nothing... You know, mind over matter. Man up, sis. But then when Ewan started having them, I understood how real they are.'\n\n'It wasn't just the panic attacks. It just felt wrong. I don't know... For what it's worth, I think you're happier in this life than the one where you're' - she nearly said dead - 'in the band.'\n\nHer brother smiled and looked at Ewan. She doubted he believed it, but Nora had to accept that \u2013 as she now knew only too well \u2013 some truths were just impossible to see.\n\n[ Tricycle ]\n\nAs the weeks went by, Nora began to feel something remarkable start to happen.\n\nShe began to remember aspects of her life that she had never actually lived.\n\nFor instance, one day someone she had never known in her root life \u2013 a friend she had apparently known while studying and teaching at the university \u2013 phoned her about meeting for lunch. And as the caller 'Lara' came up on the phone, a name came to her \u2013 'Lara Bryan' \u2013 and she pictured her completely, and somehow knew her partner was called Mo, and that they had a baby called Aldous. And then she met her and had all these things confirmed.\n\nThis sort-of d\u00e9j\u00e0-vu happened increasingly. Yes, of course there were the occasional slip-ups she made \u2013 like 'forgetting' Ash had asthma (which he tried to keep under control via running): 'How long have you had it?'\n\n'Since I was seven.'\n\n'Oh yes, of course. I thought you'd said eczema.'\n\n'Nora, are you okay?'\n\n'Yes. Um, fine. It's just I had some wine with Lara at lunch and I feel a bit spaced out.'\n\nBut slowly, these slip-ups became less frequent. It was as though each day was a piece fitting into a puzzle and, with each piece added, it became easier to know what the absent pieces were going to look like.\n\nWhereas in every other life she had been continually grasping for clues and feeling like she was acting, in this one she increasingly found that the more she relaxed into it, the more things came to her.\n\nNora also loved spending time with Molly.\n\nThe cosy anarchy of her playing in her bedroom, or the delicate bonding that happened at story time, reading the simple magical brilliance of The Tiger Who Came to Tea, or hanging out in the garden.\n\n'Watch me, Mummy,' said Molly, as she pedalled away on her tricycle one Saturday morning. 'Mummy, look! Are you watching?'\n\n'That's very good, Molly. Good pedalling.'\n\n'Mummy, look! Zoomy!'\n\n'Go, Molly!'\n\nBut then the front wheel of the tricycle slipped off the lawn and down into the flowerbed. Molly fell off and knocked her head hard on a small rock. Nora rushed over and picked her up and had a look at her. Molly was clearly hurt, with a scrape on her forehead, the skin grazed and bleeding, but she didn't want to show it even as her chin wobbled.\n\n'I'm all right,' she said slowly, in a voice as fragile as porcelain. 'I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm all right.' Each 'all right' got progressively closer to tears, then horse-shoed back around to calm again. For all her nocturnal fears about bears, she had a resilience to her that Nora couldn't help but admire and be inspired by. This little human being had come from her, was in some way a part of her, and if she had hidden strength then maybe Nora did too.\n\nNora hugged her. 'It's all right, baby... My brave girl. It's okay. How does it feel now, darling?'\n\n'It's okay. It's like on holiday.'\n\n'On holiday?'\n\n'Yes, Mummy...' she said, a little upset Nora couldn't remember. 'The slide.'\n\n'Oh yes, of course. The slide. Yes. Silly me. Silly Mummy.'\n\nNora felt something inside her all at once. A kind of fear, as real as the fear she had felt on the Arctic skerry, face to face with the polar bear.\n\nA fear of what she was feeling.\n\nLove.\n\nYou could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in S\u00e3o Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.\n\nAnd when she thought of her root life, the fundamental problem with it, the thing that had left her vulnerable, really, was the absence of love. Even her brother hadn't wanted her in that life. There had been no one, once Volts had died. She had loved no one, and no one had loved her back. She had been empty, her life had been empty, walking around, faking some kind of human normality like a sentient mannequin of despair. Just the bare bones of getting through.\n\nYet there, right there in that garden in Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall.\n\nAnd yet she sensed deep down that it would all come to an end, soon. She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn't be fixed because the flaw was the rightness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn't earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn't own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud. She wanted this to be her life. As in her real life. And it wasn't and she just wished she could forget that fact. She really did.\n\n'Mummy, are you crying?'\n\n'No, Molly, no. I'm fine. Mummy's fine.'\n\n'You look like you are crying.'\n\n'Let's just get you cleaned up...'\n\nLater that same day, Molly pieced together a jigsaw of jungle animals, Nora sat on the sofa stroking Plato as his warm, weighty head rested on her lap. She stared at the ornate chess set that was sitting there on the mahogany chest.\n\nA thought rose slowly, and she dismissed it. But then it rose again.\n\nAs soon as Ash came home, she told him she wanted to see an old friend from Bedford and wouldn't be back for a few hours.\n\n[ No Longer Here ]\n\nAs soon as Nora entered Oak Leaf Residential Care Home, and before she'd even reached the reception, she saw a frail elderly man wearing glasses whom she recognised. He was having a slightly heated conversation with a nurse who looked exasperated. Like a sigh turned into a human.\n\n'I really would like to go in the garden,' the old man said.\n\n'I'm sorry, but the garden is being used today.'\n\n'I just want to sit on the bench. And read the newspaper.'\n\n'Maybe if you'd signed up for the gardening activity session\u2014'\n\n'I don't want a gardening session. I want to call Dhavak. This was all a mistake.'\n\nNora had heard her old neighbour talk about his son Dhavak before, when she had dropped off his medication. Apparently his son had been pushing for him to go to a care home, but Mr Banerjee had insisted on holding on to his house. 'Is there no way I can just\u2014'\n\nHe noticed, at this point, that he was being stared at.\n\n'Mr Banerjee?'\n\nHe stared at Nora, confused. 'Hello? Who are you?'\n\n'I'm Nora. You know, Nora Seed.' Then, feeling too flustered to think, she added: 'I'm your neighbour. On Bancroft Avenue.'\n\nHe shook his head. 'I think you've made a mistake, dear. I haven't lived there for three years. And I am very sure you were not my neighbour.'\n\nThe nurse tilted her head at Mr Banerjee, as if he was a confused puppy. 'Maybe you've forgotten.'\n\n'No,' said Nora quickly, realising her mistake. 'He was right. I was confused. I have memory issues sometimes. I never lived there. It was somewhere else. And someone else. I'm sorry.'\n\nThey resumed their conversation, as Nora thought about Mr Banerjee's front garden full of irises and foxgloves.\n\n'Can I help you?'\n\nShe turned to look at the receptionist. A mild-mannered, red-haired man with glasses and blotched skin and a gentle Scottish accent.\n\nShe told him who she was and that she had phoned earlier.\n\nHe was a little confused at first.\n\n'And you say you left a message?'\n\nHe hummed a quiet tune as he searched for her email.\n\n'Yes, but on the phone. I was trying for ages to get through and I couldn't so I eventually left a message. I emailed as well.'\n\n'Ah, right, I see. Well, I'm sorry about that. Are you here to see a family member?'\n\n'No,' Nora explained. 'I am not family. I am just someone who used to know her. She'd know me, though. Her name is Mrs Elm.' Nora tried to remember the full name. 'Sorry. It's Louise Elm. If you told her my name, Nora. Nora Seed. She used to be my... She was the school librarian, at Hazeldene. I just thought she might like some company.'\n\nThe man stopped looking at his computer and stared up at Nora with barely suppressed surprise. At first Nora thought that she had got it wrong. Or Dylan had got it wrong, that evening at La Cantina. Or maybe the Mrs Elm in that life had experienced a different fate in this life. Though Nora didn't quite know how her own decision to work in an animal shelter would have led to a different outcome for Mrs Elm in this life. But that made no sense. As in neither life had she been in touch with the librarian since school.\n\n'What's the matter?' Nora asked the receptionist.\n\n'I'm ever so sorry to tell you this, but Louise Elm is no longer here.'\n\n'Where is she?'\n\n'She... actually, she died three weeks ago.'\n\nAt first she thought it must be an admin error. 'Are you sure?'\n\n'Yes. I'm afraid I am very sure.'\n\n'Oh,' said Nora. She didn't really know what to say, or to feel. She looked down at her tote bag that had sat beside her in the car. A bag containing the chess set she had brought to play a game with her, and to keep her company. 'I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't... You see, I haven't seen her for years. Years and years. But I heard from someone who said that she was here...'\n\n'So sorry,' the receptionist said.\n\n'No. No worries. I just wanted to thank her. For being so kind to me.'\n\n'She died very peacefully,' he said, 'literally in her sleep.'\n\nAnd Nora smiled and retreated politely away. 'That's good. Thank you. Thank you for looking after her. I'll just go now. Bye...'\n\n[ An Incident With the Police ]\n\nShe stepped back out onto Shakespeare Road with her bag and her chess set and she really didn't know what to do. There were tingles through her body. Not quite pins and needles. More that strange, fuzzy static feeling she had felt before when she was nearing the end of a particular existence.\n\nTrying to ignore the feeling in her body, she headed in the vague direction of the car park. She passed her old garden flat at 33A Bancroft Avenue. A man she had never seen before was taking a box of recycling out. She thought of the lovely house in Cambridge she now had and couldn't help but compare it to this shabby flat on a litter-strewn street. The tingles subsided a little. She passed Mr Banerjee's house, or what had been Mr Banerjee's house, and saw the only owned house on the street that hadn't been divided into flats, though now it looked very different. The small front lawn was overgrown, and there was no sign of the clematis or busy lizzies in pots that Nora had watered for him last summer when he'd been recovering from his hip surgery.\n\nOn the pavement she noticed a couple of crumpled lager cans.\n\nShe saw a woman with a blonde bob and tanned skin walking towards her on the pavement with two small children in a double pushchair. She looked exhausted. It was the woman she had spoken to in the newsagent's the day she had decided to die. The one who had seemed happy and relaxed. Kerry-Anne. She hadn't noticed Nora because one child was wailing and she was trying to pacify the distressed, red-cheeked boy by waving a plastic dinosaur in front of him.\n\nMe and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y'know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictures...\n\nThen Kerry-Anne looked up and saw Nora.\n\n'I know you, don't I? Is it Nora?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Hi Nora.'\n\n'Hi Kerry-Anne.'\n\n'You remember my name? Oh wow. I was in awe of you in school. You seemed to have it all. Did you ever make the Olympics?'\n\n'Yes, actually. Kind of. One me did. But it wasn't what I wanted it to be. But then, what is? Right?'\n\nKerry-Anne seemed momentarily confused. And then her son threw the dinosaur onto the pavement and it landed next to one of the crumpled cans. 'Right.'\n\nNora picked up the dinosaur \u2013 a stegosaurus, on close inspection \u2013 and handed it to Kerry-Anne, who smiled her gratitude and headed into the house that should have belonged to Mr Banerjee, just as the boy descended into a full tantrum.\n\n'Bye,' said Nora.\n\n'Yeah. Bye.'\n\nAnd Nora wondered what the difference had been. What had forced Mr Banerjee to go to the care home he'd been determined not to go to? She was the only difference between the two Mr Banerjees but what was that difference? What had she done? Set up an online shop? Picked up his prescription a few times?\n\nNever underestimate the big importance of small things, Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that.\n\nShe stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom \u2013 equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.\n\nThen someone appeared at her own window. A woman who wasn't her, holding a cat that wasn't Voltaire.\n\nThis was her hope, anyway, even as she began to feel faint and fuzzy again.\n\nShe headed into town. Walked down the high street.\n\nYes, she was different now. She was stronger. She had untapped things inside her. Things she might never have known about if she'd never sung in an arena or fought off a polar bear or felt so much love and fear and courage.\n\nThere was a commotion outside Boots. Two boys were being arrested by police officers as a nearby store detective spoke into a walkie-talkie.\n\nShe recognised one of the boys and went up to him.\n\n'Leo?'\n\nA police officer motioned for her to back away.\n\n'Who are you?' Leo asked.\n\n'I\u2014' Nora realised she couldn't say 'your piano teacher'. And she realised how mad it was, given the fraught context, to say what she was about to say. But still, she said it. 'Do you have music lessons?'\n\nLeo looked down as the handcuffs were put on him. 'I ain't done no music lessons...'\n\nHis voice had lost its bravado.\n\nThe police officer was frustrated now. 'Please, miss, leave this to us.'\n\n'He's a good kid,' Nora told him. 'Please don't be too hard on him.'\n\n'Well, this good kid just stole two hundred quid's worth from there. And has also just been found to be in possession of a concealed weapon.'\n\n'Weapon?'\n\n'A knife.'\n\n'No. There must be some mix-up. He's not that sort of kid.'\n\n'Hear that,' the police officer said to his colleague. 'Lady here thinks our friend Leo Thompson isn't the kind of kid to get into trouble.'\n\nThe other police officer laughed. 'He's always in and out of bother, this one.'\n\n'Now, please,' the first police officer said, 'let us do our jobs here...'\n\n'Of course,' said Nora, 'of course. Do everything they say, Leo...'\n\nHe looked at her as if she'd been sent as a practical joke.\n\nA few years ago his mum Doreen had come into String Theory to buy her son a cheap keyboard. She'd been worried about his behaviour at school and he'd expressed an interest in music and so she wanted to get him piano lessons. Nora explained she had an electric piano, and could play, but had no formal teacher training. Doreen had explained she didn't have much money but they struck a deal, and Nora had enjoyed her Tuesday evenings teaching Leo the difference between major and minor seventh chords and thought he was a great boy, eager to learn.\n\nDoreen had seen Leo was 'getting caught up in the wrong set', but when he got into music he started doing well in other things too. And suddenly he wasn't getting into trouble with teachers any more, and he'd play everything from Chopin through Scott Joplin to Frank Ocean and John Legend and Rex Orange County with the same care and commitment.\n\nSomething Mrs Elm had said on an early visit to the Midnight Library came to her.\n\nEvery life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations...\n\nIn this timeline right now, the one where she had studied a Master's at Cambridge, and married Ash and had a baby, she hadn't been in String Theory on the day four years ago when Doreen and Leo came by. In this timeline, Doreen never found a music teacher who was cheap enough, and so Leo never persisted with music for long enough to realise he had a talent. He never sat there, side-by-side with Nora on a Tuesday evening, pursuing a passion that he extended at home, producing his own tunes.\n\nNora felt herself weaken. Not just tingles and fuzziness but something stronger, a sense of plunging into nothingness, accompanied by a brief darkening of her vision. A feeling of another Nora right there in the wings, ready to pick up where this one left off. Her brain ready to fill in the gaps and have a perfectly legitimate reason to be on a day trip to Bedford, and to fill in every absence as if she was here the whole time.\n\nWorried she knew what it meant, she turned away from Leo and his friend as they were escorted away to the police car, the eyes of the whole of Bedford high street upon them, and she started to quicken her pace towards the car park.\n\nThis is a good life... This is a good life... This is a good life...\n\n[ A New Way of Seeing ]\n\nShe got closer to the station, passing the garish red-and-yellow zigzags of La Cantina, like a Mexican migraine, with a waiter inside taking chairs off tables. And String Theory too, closed, with a handwritten notice on the door:\n\nAlas, String Theory is no longer able to trade in these premises. Due to an increase in rent we simply couldn't afford to go on. Thanks to all our loyal customers. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. You Can Go Your Own Way. God Only Knows What We'll Be Without You.\n\nIt was the exact same note she had seen with Dylan. Judging by the date, written in small felt-tip letters from Neil's hand, it was from nearly three months ago.\n\nShe felt sad, because String Theory had meant a lot to people. Yet Nora hadn't been working at String Theory when it got into trouble.\n\nWell. I suppose I did sell a lot of electric pianos. And some rather nice guitars too.\n\nGrowing up, she and Joe had always joked about their hometown, the way teenagers do, and used to say that HMP Bedford was the inner prison and the rest of the town was just the outer prison, and any chance you had to escape you should take it.\n\nBut the sun was out now, as she neared the station, and it seemed that she had been looking at the place wrong all these years. As she passed the statue of prison reformer John Howard in St Paul's Square, with the trees all around and the river just behind, refracting light, she marvelled at it as if she were seeing it for the first time. It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.\n\nDriving back to Cambridge cocooned in her expensive Audi, smelling almost nauseatingly of vinyl and plastic and other synthetic materials, weaving through busy traffic, the cars sliding by like forgotten lives, she was deeply wishing she had been able to see Mrs Elm, the real one, before she had died. It would have been good to have one last game of chess with her before she passed away. And she thought of poor Leo, sat in a small windowless cell at a Bedford police station, waiting for Doreen to come and collect him.\n\n'This is the best life,' she told herself, a little desperately now. 'This is the best life. I am staying here. This is the life for me. This is the best life. This is the best life.'\n\nBut she knew she didn't have long.\n\n[ The Flowers Have Water ]\n\nShe pulled up at the house and ran inside, as Plato padded happily to greet her.\n\n'Hello?' she asked, desperately. 'Ash? Molly?'\n\nShe needed to see them. She knew she didn't have long. She could feel the Midnight Library waiting for her.\n\n'Outside!' said Ash, chirpily, from the back garden.\n\nAnd so Nora went through to find Molly on her tricycle again, unfazed by her previous accident, while Ash was tending to a flower-bed.\n\n'How was your trip?'\n\nMolly climbed off her tricycle and ran over. 'Mummy! I missed you! I'm really good at biking now!'\n\n'Are you, darling?'\n\nShe hugged her daughter close and closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair and the dog and fabric conditioner and childhood, and she hoped the wonder of it would help keep her there. 'I love you, Molly, I want you to know that. For ever and ever, do you understand?'\n\n'Yes, Mummy. Of course.'\n\n'And I love your daddy too. And everything will be okay because whatever happens you will always have Daddy and you will have Mummy too, it's just I might not be here in the exact same way. I'll be here, but...' She realised Molly needed to know nothing else except one truth. 'I love you.'\n\nMolly looked concerned. 'You forgot Plato!'\n\n'Well, obviously I love Plato... How could I forget Plato? Plato knows I love him, don't you, Plato? Plato, I love you.'\n\nNora tried to compose herself.\n\nWhatever happens, they will be looked after. They will be loved. And they have each other and they will be happy.\n\nThen Ash came over, with his gardening gloves on. 'You okay, Nor? You seem a bit pale. Did anything happen?'\n\n'Oh, I'll tell you about it later. When Molly's in bed.'\n\n'Okay. Oh, there's a shop coming any time... So keep an ear out for the lorry.'\n\n'Sure. Yeah. Yeah.'\n\nAnd then Molly asked if she could get the watering can out and Ash explained that as it had been raining a lot recently it wasn't necessary, because the sky had been looking after the flowers. 'They'll be okay. They're looked after. The flowers have water.' And the words echoed in Nora's mind. They'll be okay. They're looked after... And then Ash said something about going to the cinema tonight and how the babysitter was all arranged and Nora had forgotten completely but just smiled and tried really hard to hold on, to stay there, but it was happening, it was happening, she knew it from within every hidden chamber of her being, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.\n\n[ Nowhere to Land ]\n\n'NO!'\n\nUnmistakably, it had happened.\n\nShe was back in the Midnight Library.\n\nMrs Elm was at the computer. The lights wobbled and shook and flickered overhead in fast arrhythmic blinks. 'Nora, stop. Calm down. Be a good girl. I need to sort this out.'\n\nDust fell in thin wisps from the ceiling, from cracks fissuring and spreading like spider webs woven at unnatural speed. There was the sound of sudden, active destruction which, in her sad fury, Nora found herself managing to ignore.\n\n'You're not Mrs Elm. Mrs Elm is dead... Am I dead?'\n\n'We've been through this. But now you mention it, maybe you're about to be...'\n\n'Why aren't I still there? Why aren't I there? I could sense it was happening but I didn't want it to. You said that if I found a life I wanted to live in \u2013 that I really wanted to live in \u2013 then I'd stay there. You said I'd forget about this stupid place. You said I could find the life I wanted. That was the life I wanted. That was the life!'\n\nMoments ago she had been in the garden with Ash and Nora and Plato, a garden humming with life and love, and now she was here.\n\n'Take me back...'\n\n'You know it doesn't work like that.'\n\n'Well, take me to the closest variation. Give me the closest possible thing to that life. Please, Mrs Elm, it must be possible. There must be a life where I went for the coffee with Ash and where we had Molly and Plato, but I... I did something slightly different. So it was technically another life. Like I chose a different dog collar for Plato. Or... or... Or where I \u2013 I don't know \u2013 where I did Pilates instead of yoga? Or where I went to a different college at Cambridge? Or if it has to be further back, where it wasn't coffee on the date but tea? That life. Take me to the life where I did that. Come on. Please. Help me out. I'd like to try one of those lives, please...'\n\nThe computer started to smoke. The screen went black. The whole monitor fell to pieces.\n\n'You don't understand,' said Mrs Elm, defeated, as she collapsed back into the office chair.\n\n'But that's what happens, isn't it? I pick a regret. Something I wished I had done differently... And then you find the book, I open the book, and I live the book. That's how this library works, right?'\n\n'It's not that simple.'\n\n'Why? Is there a transference problem? You know, like what happened before?'\n\nMrs Elm looked at her, sadly. 'It's more than that. There was always a strong possibility that your old life would end. I told you that, didn't I? You wanted to die and maybe you would.'\n\n'Yes, but you said I just needed somewhere to go to. \"Somewhere to land\", that's what you said. \"Another life.\" Those exact words. And all I needed to do was think hard enough and choose the right life and\u2014'\n\n'I know. I know. But it didn't work out like that.'\n\nThe ceiling was falling down now, in pieces, as if the plaster was no more stable than the icing of a wedding cake.\n\nNora noticed something even more distressing. A spark flew from one of the lights and landed on a book, which consequently ignited into a glowing burst of fire. Pretty soon the fire was spreading along the entire shelf, the books burning as rapidly as if they were doused in petrol. A whole stream of hot, raging, roaring amber. Then another spark arced towards a different shelf and that too set alight. At about the same time a large chunk of dusty ceiling landed by Nora's feet.\n\n'Under the table!' ordered Mrs Elm. 'Now!'\n\nNora hunched down and followed Mrs Elm \u2013 who was now on all fours \u2013 under the table, where she sat on her knees and was forced, like Mrs Elm, to keep her head down.\n\n'Why can't you stop this?'\n\n'It's a chain reaction now. Those sparks aren't random. The books are going to be destroyed. And then, just as inevitably, the whole place is going to collapse.'\n\n'Why? I don't understand. I was there. I had found the life for me. The only life for me. The best one in here...'\n\n'But that's the problem,' said Mrs Elm, nervously looking out from beneath the wooden legs of the table as more shelves caught on fire and as debris fell all around them. 'It still wasn't enough. Look!'\n\n'At what?'\n\n'At your watch. Any moment now.'\n\nSo Nora looked, and at first saw nothing untoward \u2013 but then it was happening. The watch was suddenly acting like a watch. The display was starting to move.\n\n00:00:00\n\n00:00:01\n\n00:00:02\n\n'What's happening?' Nora asked, realising that whatever it was probably wasn't good.\n\n'Time. That's what's happening.'\n\n'How are we going to leave this place?'\n\n00:00:09\n\n00:00:10\n\n'We're not,' said Mrs Elm. 'There's no we. I can't leave the library. When the library disappears, so do I. But there is a chance that you can get out, though you don't have long. No more than a minute...'\n\nNora had just lost one Mrs Elm, she didn't want to lose this one too. Mrs Elm could see her distress.\n\n'Listen. I am part of the library. But this whole library is part of you. Do you understand? You don't exist because of the library; this library exists because of you. Remember what Hugo said? He told you that this is the simplest way your brain translates the strange and multifarious reality of the universe. So, this is just your brain translating something. Something significant and dangerous.'\n\n'I gathered that.'\n\n'But one thing is clear: you didn't want that life.'\n\n'It was the perfect life.'\n\n'Did you feel that? All the time?'\n\n'Yes. I mean... I wanted to. I mean, I loved Molly. I might have loved Ash. But I suppose, maybe... it wasn't my life. I hadn't made it by myself. I had walked into this other version of me. I was carbon-copied into the perfect life. But it wasn't me.'\n\n00:00:15\n\n'I don't want to die,' said Nora, her voice suddenly raised but also fragile. She was shaking from her very core. 'I don't want to die.'\n\nMrs Elm looked at her with wide eyes. Eyes shining with the small flame of an idea. 'You need to get out of here.'\n\n'I can't! The library goes on for bloody ever. The moment I walked in it, the entrance disappeared.'\n\n'Then you have to find it again.'\n\n'How? There are no doors.'\n\n'Who needs a door when you have a book?'\n\n'The books are all on fire.'\n\n'There's one that won't be. That's the one you need to find.'\n\n'The Book of Regrets?'\n\nMrs Elm almost laughed. 'No. That is the last book you need. That will be ash by now. That will have been the first book to burn. You need to go that way!' She pointed to her left, to chaos and fire and falling plaster. 'It's the eleventh aisle that way. Third shelf from the bottom.'\n\n'The whole place is going to fall down!'\n\n00:00:21\n\n00:00:22\n\n00:00:23\n\n'Don't you get it, Nora?'\n\n'Get what?'\n\n'It all makes sense. You came back here this time not because you wanted to die, but because you want to live. This library isn't falling down because it wants to kill you. It's falling down because it is giving you a chance to return. Something decisive has finally happened. You have decided you want to be alive. Now go on, live, while you still have the chance.'\n\n'But... what about you? What's going to happen to you?'\n\n'Don't worry about me,' she said. 'I promise you. I won't feel a thing.' And then she said what the real Mrs Elm had said when she had hugged Nora back at the school library on the day her dad had died. 'Things will get better, Nora. It's going to be all right.'\n\nMrs Elm placed a hand above the desk and hastily rummaged for something. A second later she was handing Nora an orange plastic fountain pen. The kind Nora had owned at school. The one she had noticed ages ago.\n\n'You'll need this.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'This one isn't already written. You have to start this.'\n\nNora took the pen.\n\n'Bye, Mrs Elm.'\n\nA second later, a massive chunk of ceiling slammed onto the table. A thick cloud of plaster dust clouded them, choking them.\n\n00:00:34\n\n00:00:35\n\n'Go,' coughed Mrs Elm. 'Live.'\n\nDon't You Dare Give Up, Nora Seed!\n\nNora walked through the haze of dust and smoke in the direction Mrs Elm had pointed towards, as the ceiling continued to fall.\n\nIt was hard to breathe, and to see, but she had just about managed to keep count of the aisles. Sparks from the lights fell onto her head.\n\nThe dust stuck in her throat, nearly causing her to vomit. But even in the powdery fog she could see that most of the books were now ablaze. In fact, none of the shelves of books seemed intact, and the heat felt like a force. Some of the earliest shelves and books to set on fire were now nothing but ash.\n\nJust as she reached the eleventh aisle she was hit hard by a chunk of falling debris that floored her.\n\nPressed under rock, she felt the pen slip out of her hand and slide away from her.\n\nHer first attempt to free herself was unsuccessful.\n\nThis is it. I am going to die, whether I want to or not. I am going to die.\n\nThe library was a wasteland.\n\n00:00:41\n\n00:00:42\n\nIt was all over.\n\nShe was certain of it once more. She was going to die here, as all her possible lives were ravished all around her.\n\nBut then she saw it, amid a brief clearing in the clouds. There, on the eleventh aisle that way. Third shelf from the bottom.\n\nA gap in the fire that was consuming every other book on the shelf.\n\nI don't want to die.\n\nShe had to try harder. She had to want the life she always thought she didn't. Because just as this library was a part of her, so too were all the other lives. She might not have felt everything she had felt in those lives, but she had the capability. She might have missed those particular opportunities that led her to become an Olympic swimmer, or a traveller, or a vineyard owner, or a rock star, or a planet-saving glaciologist, or a Cambridge graduate, or a mother, or the million other things, but she was still in some way all those people. They were all her. She could have been all those amazing things, and that wasn't depressing, as she had once thought. Not at all. It was inspiring. Because now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work. And that, actually, the life she had been living had its own logic to it. Her brother was alive. Izzy was alive. And she had helped a young boy stay out of trouble. What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind. She didn't need a vineyard or a Californian sunset to be happy. She didn't even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.\n\nShe heard Mrs Elm's voice, from under the table somewhere far behind her, cutting through the noise.\n\n'Don't give up! Don't you dare give up, Nora Seed!'\n\nShe didn't want to die. And she didn't want to live any other life than the one that was hers. The one that could be a messy struggle, but it was her messy struggle. A beautiful messy struggle.\n\n00:00:52\n\n00:00:53\n\nAs she writhed and pushed and resisted the weight on top of her, and as the seconds ticked on, she managed \u2013 with a great exertion that burned and stifled her lungs \u2013 to get back onto her feet.\n\nShe scrabbled around on the ground and found the fountain pen, thickly coated in dust, then ran through the particles of smoke to reach the eleventh aisle.\n\nAnd there it was.\n\nThe only book not burning. Still there, perfectly green.\n\nFlinching at the heat, and with a careful index finger, she hooked the top of the spine and pulled the book from the shelf. She then did what she always did. She opened the book and tried to find the first page. But the only difficulty was that there was no first page. There were no words in the entire book. It was completely blank. Like the other books, this was the book of her future. But unlike the others, in this one that future was unwritten.\n\nSo, this was it. This was her life. Her root life.\n\nAnd it was a blank page.\n\nNora stood there a moment, with her old school pen in hand. It was now nearly one minute after midnight.\n\nThe other books on the shelf had become charcoal, and the hanging light bulb flickered through the dust, vaguely illuminating the fracturing ceiling. A large piece of ceiling around the light \u2013 roughly the shape of France \u2013 was looking ready to fall and crush her.\n\nNora took the lid off the pen and pressed the open book against the charred stack of bookshelves.\n\nThe ceiling groaned.\n\nThere wasn't long.\n\nShe started to write. Nora wanted to live.\n\nOnce she'd finished the inscription she waited a moment. Frustratingly, nothing happened, and she remembered what Mrs Elm had once said. Want is an interesting word. It means lack. So, she crossed that out and tried again.\n\nNora decided to live.\n\nNothing. She tried again.\n\nNora was ready to live.\n\nStill nothing, even when she underlined the word 'live'. Everywhere now, there was breakage and ruination. The ceiling was falling, razing everything, smothering each of the bookshelves into piles of dust. She gaped over and saw the figure of Mrs Elm, out from under the desk where she had been sheltering Nora, standing there without any fear at all then disappearing completely as the roof caved in almost everywhere, smothering remnants of fire and shelf stacks and all else.\n\nNora, choking, couldn't see anything at all now.\n\nBut this part of the library was holding out, and she was still there.\n\nAny second now, everything would be gone, she knew it.\n\nSo she stopped trying to think about what to write and, in sheer exasperation, just put down the first thing that came to her, the thing that she felt inside her like a defiant silent roar that could overpower any external destruction. The one truth she had, a truth she was now proud of and pleased with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbled hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person present tense.\n\nA truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing.\n\nThree simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse.\n\n<I AM ALIVE.>\n\nAnd with that, the ground shook like fury and every last remnant of the Midnight Library dissolved into dust.\n\n[ Awakening ]\n\nAt one minute and twenty-seven seconds after midnight, Nora Seed marked her emergence back into life by vomiting all over her duvet.\n\nAlive, but hardly.\n\nChoking, exhausted, dehydrated, struggling, trembling, heavy, delirious, pain in her chest, even more pain in her head, this was the worst life could feel, and yet it was life, and life was precisely what she wanted.\n\nIt was hard, near impossible, to pull herself off the bed but she knew she had to get vertical.\n\nShe managed it, somehow, and grabbed her phone but it seemed too heavy and slippy to keep a grasp of and it fell onto the floor beyond view.\n\n'Help,' she croaked, staggering out of the room.\n\nHer hallway seemed to be tilting like it was a ship in a storm. But she reached the door without passing out, then dragged the chain lock off the latch and managed, after great effort, to open it.\n\n'Please help me.'\n\nShe barely realised it was still raining as she stepped outside in her vomit-stained pyjamas, passing the step where Ash had stood a little over a day before to announce the news of her dead cat.\n\nThere was no one around.\n\nNo one that she could see. So she staggered towards Mr Banerjee's house in a series of dizzy stumbles and lurches, eventually managing to ring the doorbell.\n\nA sudden square of light sprung out from the front window.\n\nThe door opened.\n\nHe wasn't wearing his glasses and was confused maybe because of the state of her and the time of night.\n\n'I'm so very sorry, Mr Banerjee. I've done something very stupid. You'd better call an ambulance...'\n\n'Oh my lord. What on earth has happened?'\n\n'Please.'\n\n'Yes. I'll call one. Right away...'\n\n00:03:48\n\nAnd that is when she allowed herself to collapse, forwards and with considerable velocity, right onto Mr Banerjee's doormat.\n\n[ The sky grows dark ]\n\n[ The black over blue ]\n\n[ Yet the stars still dare ]\n\n[ To shine for you ]\n\n[ The Other Side of Despair ]\n\n'Life begins,' Sartre once wrote, 'on the other side of despair.'\n\nIt wasn't raining any more.\n\nShe was inside and sitting in a hospital bed. She had been put on a ward and had eaten and was feeling a lot better. The medical staff were pleased, following her physical examination. The tender abdomen was to be expected, apparently. She tried to impress the doctor by telling her a fact Ash had told her, about a stomach lining renewing itself every few days.\n\nThen a nurse came and sat on her bed with a clipboard and went through reams of questions relating to her state of mind. Nora decided to keep her experience of the Midnight Library to herself because she imagined that it wouldn't go down too well on a psychiatric evaluation form. It was safe to surmise the little-known realities of the multiverse probably weren't yet incorporated within the care plans of the National Health Service.\n\nThe questions and answers continued for what felt like an hour. They covered medication, her mother's death, Volts, losing her job, money worries, the diagnosis of situational depression.\n\n'Have you ever tried anything like this before?' the nurse asked.\n\n'Not in this life.'\n\n'And how do you feel right now?'\n\n'I don't know. A bit strange. But I don't want to die any more.'\n\nAnd the nurse scribbled on the form.\n\nThrough the window, after the nurse had gone, she watched the trees' gentle movements in the afternoon breeze and distant rush-hour traffic shunt slowly along Bedford ring road. It was nothing but trees and traffic and mediocre architecture, but it was also everything.\n\nIt was life.\n\nA little later she deleted her suicidal social media posts, and \u2013 in a moment of sincere sentimentality \u2013 she wrote something else instead. She titled it 'A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody)'.\n\n[ A Thing I Have Learned ]\n\n(Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody)\n\nIt is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.\n\nIt takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.\n\nBut it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.\n\nWe can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.\n\nOf course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies.\n\nWe just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.\n\nWe only need to be one person.\n\nWe only need to feel one existence.\n\nWe don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.\n\nSo let's be kind to the people in our own existence. Let's occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever.\n\nYesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential.\n\nThe impossible, I suppose, happens via living.\n\nWill my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No.\n\nBut do I want to live?\n\nYes. Yes.\n\nA thousand times, yes.\n\n[ Living Versus Understanding ]\n\nA few minutes later her brother came to see her. He'd heard the voicemail she'd sent him and had responded by text at seven minutes after midnight. 'You okay, sis?' Then, when the hospital contacted him, he'd caught the first train from London. He'd bought the latest issue of National Geographic for her while waiting at St Pancras station.\n\n'You used to love it,' he told her, as he placed the magazine beside the hospital bed.\n\n'I still do.'\n\nIt was good to see him. His thick eyebrows and reluctant smile still intact. He walked in a little awkward, head cowed, hair longer than it had been in the last two lives in which she had seen him.\n\n'I'm sorry I've been incommunicado recently,' he said. 'It wasn't about what Ravi said it was about. I don't even think about The Labyrinths any more. I was just in a weird place. After Mum died I was seeing this guy and we had a very messy break-up and I just didn't want to have to talk to you or, recently, to anyone about it. I just wanted to drink. And I was drinking too much. It was a real problem. But I've started getting help for it. I haven't had a drink for weeks. I go to the gym and everything now. I've started a cross-training class.'\n\n'Oh Joe, poor you. I'm sorry about the break-up. And everything else.'\n\n'You're all I've got, sis,' he said, his voice cracking a little. 'I know I haven't valued you. I know I wasn't always the best, growing up. But I had my own shit going on. Having to be a certain way because of Dad. Hiding my sexuality. I know it wasn't easy for you but it wasn't easy for me either. You were good at everything. School, swimming, music. I couldn't compete... Plus Dad was Dad and I had to be this fake vision of whatever he thought a man was.' He sighed. 'It's weird. We both probably remember it in different ways. But don't leave me, okay? Leaving the band was one thing. But don't leave existence. I couldn't cope with that.'\n\n'I won't if you won't,' she said.\n\n'Trust me, I'm not going anywhere.'\n\nShe thought of the grief that had floored her when she had heard about Joe's death by overdose in S\u00e3o Paulo, and she asked him to hug her, and he obliged, delicately, and she felt the living warmth of him.\n\n'Thanks for trying to jump in the river for me,' she said.\n\n'What?'\n\n'I always thought you didn't. But you tried. They pulled you back. Thank you.'\n\nHe suddenly knew what she was talking about. And maybe more than a little confused about how she knew this, when she had been swimming away from him. 'Ah, sis. I love you. We were young fools.'\n\nJoe nipped out for an hour. Picked up the keys from her landlord, collected his sister's clothes and phone.\n\n[ She saw that Izzy had texted. Sorry I didn't get back last night/this morning. I wanted a proper discussion! Thesis antithesis synthesis. The whole works. How are you? I miss you. Oh, and guess what? I'm thinking of coming back to the UK in June. For good. Miss you, my friend. Also, have a TON of humpback pics coming your way. xxx ]\n\nNora made a slight noise of involuntary joy at the back of her throat.\n\nShe texted back. It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.\n\nShe went on the Facebook page of the International Polar Research Institute. There was a photograph of the woman she had shared a cabin with \u2013 Ingrid \u2013 standing with the field leader Peter, using a thin measuring drill to gauge the thickness of sea ice, and a link to an article headlined 'IPRI research confirms last decade warmest on record for Arctic region'. She shared the link. And posted a comment: 'Keep up the great work!' And decided that when she earned some money, she would donate.\n\nIt was agreed that Nora could go home. Her brother ordered an Uber. As they were pulling out of the car park Nora saw Ash driving into the hospital. He must have been on a late shift. He had a different car in this life. He didn't see her, despite her smile, and she hoped he was happy. She hoped he only had an easy shift of gall bladders ahead of him. Maybe she would go along and watch him in the Bedford half-marathon on Sunday. Maybe she would ask him out for a coffee.\n\nMaybe.\n\nIn the back of the car, her brother told her he was looking for some freelance session work.\n\n'I'm thinking of becoming a sound engineer,' he said. 'Vaguely, anyway.'\n\nNora was happy to hear this. 'Well, I think you should do it. I think you'd like it. I don't know why. I've just got a feeling.'\n\n'Okay.'\n\n'I mean, it might not be as glamorous as being an international rock star, but it might be... safer. Maybe even happier.'\n\nThat was a tough sell, and Joe wasn't entirely buying it. But he smiled and nodded to himself. 'Actually, there's a studio in Hammersmith and they're looking for sound engineers. It's only five minutes from me. I could walk it.'\n\n'Hammersmith? Yes. That's the one.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'I mean, I just think it sounds good. Hammersmith, sound engineer. It sounds like you'd be happy.'\n\nHe laughed at her. 'Okay, Nora. Okay. And that gym I was telling you about? It's right next door to the place.'\n\n'Ah, cool. Any nice guys there?'\n\n'Actually, yes, there is one. He's called Ewan. He's a doctor. He goes to cross-training.'\n\n'Ewan! Yes!'\n\n'Who?'\n\n'You should ask him out.'\n\nJoe laughed, thinking Nora was just being playful. 'I'm not even one hundred per cent sure he's gay.'\n\n'He is! He's gay. He is one hundred per cent gay. And one hundred per cent into you. Dr Ewan Langford. Ask him out. You have to trust me! It will be the best thing you ever do...'\n\nHer brother laughed as the car pulled up at 33A Bancroft Avenue. He paid, on account of Nora still having no money and no wallet.\n\nMr Banerjee sat at his window, reading.\n\nOut on the street, Nora saw her brother staring in astonishment down at his phone.\n\n'What's up, Joe?'\n\nHe could hardly speak. 'Langford...'\n\n'Sorry?'\n\n'Dr Ewan Langford. I didn't even know his surname was Langford but that's him.'\n\nNora shrugged. 'Sibling intuition. Add him. Follow him. DM him. Whatever you have to do. Well, no unsolicited nude pics. But he's the one, I'm telling you. He's the one.'\n\n'But how did you know it was him?'\n\nShe took her brother by the arm, and knew there was no explanation she could possibly give. 'Listen to me, Joe.' She remembered the anti-philosophy of Mrs Elm in the Midnight Library. 'You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it.'\n\nAs her brother headed towards the door of 33A Bancroft Avenue, Nora looked around at all the terraced houses and all the lampposts and trees under the sky, and she felt her lungs inflate at the wonder of being there, witnessing it all as if for the first time. Maybe in one of those houses was another slider, someone on their third or seventeenth or final version of themselves. She would look out for them.\n\nShe looked at number 31.\n\nThrough his window Mr Banerjee's face slowly lit up as he saw Nora safe and sound. He smiled and mouthed a 'thank you', as if simply her act of living was something he should be grateful for. Tomorrow, she would find some money and go to the garden centre and buy him a plant for his flowerbed. Foxgloves, maybe. She was sure he liked foxgloves.\n\n'No,' she called back, blowing him a friendly kiss. 'Thank you, Mr Banerjee! Thank you for everything!'\n\nAnd he smiled broader, and his eyes were full of kindness and concern, and Nora remembered what it was to care and be cared for. She followed her brother inside her flat to start tidying up, catching a glimpse of the clusters of irises in Mr Banerjee's garden as she went. Flowers she hadn't appreciated before, but which now mesmerised her with the most exquisite purple she had ever seen. As though the flowers weren't just colours but part of a language, notes in a glorious floral melody, as powerful as Chopin, silently communicating the breathtaking majesty of life itself.\n\n[ The Volcano ]\n\nIt is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective. And the most peculiar discovery Nora made was that, of all the extremely divergent variations of herself she had experienced, the most radical sense of change happened within the exact same life. The one she began and ended with.\n\nThis biggest and most profound shift happened not by becoming richer or more successful or more famous or by being amid the glaciers and polar bears of Svalbard. It happened by waking up in the exact same bed, in the same grotty damp apartment with its dilapidated sofa and yucca plant and tiny potted cacti and bookshelves and untried yoga manuals.\n\nThere was the same electric piano and books. There was the same sad absence of a feline and lack of a job. There was still the same unknowability about her life ahead.\n\nAnd yet, everything was different.\n\nAnd it was different because she no longer felt she was there simply to serve the dreams of other people. She no longer felt like she had to find sole fulfilment as some imaginary perfect daughter or sister or partner or wife or mother or employee or anything other than a human being, orbiting her own purpose, and answerable to herself.\n\nAnd it was different because she was alive, when she had so nearly been dead. And because that had been her choice. A choice to live. Because she had touched the vastness of life and within that vastness she had seen the possibility not only of what she could do, but also feel. There were other scales and other tunes. There was more to her than a flat line of mild to moderate depression, spiced up with occasional flourishes of despair. And that gave her hope, and even the sheer sentimental gratitude of being able to be here, knowing she had the potential to enjoy watching radiant skies and mediocre Ryan Bailey comedies and be happy listening to music and conversation and the beat of her own heart.\n\nAnd it was different because, above all other things, that heavy and painful Book of Regrets had been successfully burnt to dust.\n\n'Hi Nora. It's me, Doreen.'\n\nNora was excited to hear from her, as she had been in the middle of neatly writing a notice advertising piano lessons. 'Oh Doreen! Can I just apologise about missing the lesson the other day?'\n\n'Water under the bridge.'\n\n'Well, I'm not going to go into all the reasons,' Nora continued, breathlessly. 'But I will just say that I will never be in that situation again. I promise, in future, should you want to continue with Leo's piano lessons, I will be where I am meant to be. I won't let you down. Now, I totally understand if you don't want me to be Leo's piano teacher any more. But I want you to know that Leo is an exceptional talent. He has a feel for the piano. He could end up making a career of it. He could end up at the Royal College of Music. So, I would just like to say if he doesn't continue his lessons with me, I want you to know that I feel he should continue them somewhere. That's all.'\n\nThere was a long pause. Nothing but the fuzzy static of phone-breath. Then:\n\n'Nora, love, it's okay, I don't need a monologue. The truth is we were in town yesterday, the two of us. I was buying him some facewash and he said, \"I'm still going to do piano, right?\" Right there in Boots. Shall we just kick off where we left off next week?'\n\n'Seriously? That's amazing. Yes, next week then.'\n\nAnd the moment Nora came off the phone she sat at the piano and played a tune that had never been played before. She liked what she was playing, and vowed to remember it and put some words to it. Maybe she could turn it into a proper song and put it out there online. Maybe she would write more songs. Or maybe she would save up and apply for a Master's. Or maybe she would do both. Who knew? As she played, she glanced over and saw her magazine \u2013 the one Joe had bought her \u2013 open at a picture of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia.\n\nThe paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil \u2013 rich, fertile soil.\n\nShe wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. She'd have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.\n\nShe could plant a forest inside herself.\n\n[ How It Ends ]\n\nMrs Elm looked a lot older than she had done at the Midnight Library. Her formerly grey hair was now white and thin, her face tired and lined as a map, hands spotted with age, but she was as adept at chess as she had been years ago in the Hazeldene school library.\n\nOak Leaf Care Home had its own chessboard, but it had needed a dust down.\n\n'No one plays here,' she told Nora. 'I'm so pleased you came to see me. It was such a surprise.'\n\n'Well, I can come every day if you want, Mrs Elm?'\n\n'Louise, please call me Louise. And don't you have work to do?'\n\nNora smiled. Even though it had only been twenty-four hours since she had asked Neil to put up her poster in String Theory, she was already inundated with people wanting lessons. 'I teach piano lessons. And I help out at the homeless shelter every other Tuesday. But I will always have an hour... And to be honest, I have no one to play chess with either.'\n\nA tired smile spread across Mrs Elm's face. 'Well, that would be lovely.' She stared out of the little window in her room and Nora followed her gaze. There was a human and a dog Nora recognised. It was Dylan, walking Sally the bullmastiff. The nervous one with the cigarette burns who had taken a shine to her. She wondered, vaguely, if her landlord would allow her to get a dog. He'd allowed a cat, after all. But she'd have to wait until she'd caught up with the rent.\n\n'It can be lonely,' Mrs Elm said. 'Being here. Just sitting. I felt like the game was up. Like a lonely king on a board. You see, I don't know how you remember me, but outside of school I wasn't always the\u2014' She hesitated. 'I've let people down. I haven't always been easy. I've done things I regret. I was a bad wife. Not always a good mother, either. People have given up a little on me, and I don't entirely blame them.'\n\n'Well, you were kind to me, Mrs... Louise. When I had a hard time at school, you always knew what to say.'\n\nMrs Elm steadied her breath. 'Thank you, Nora.'\n\n'And you're not alone on the board now. A pawn has come and joined you.'\n\n'You were never a pawn.'\n\nShe made her move. A bishop sweeping into a strong position. A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.\n\n'You're going to win this,' Nora observed.\n\nMrs Elm's eyes sparkled with sudden life. 'Well, that's the beauty, isn't it? You just never know how it ends.'\n\nAnd Nora smiled as she stared at all the pieces she still had left in play, thinking about her next move."
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Library at Mount Char",
        "author": "Scott Hawkins",
        "genres": [
            "horror",
            "urban fantasy"
        ],
        "tags": [
            ""
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78. Most of the librarians, Carolyn included, had come to think of this road as the Path of Tacos, so-called in honor of a Mexican joint they snuck out to sometimes. The guacamole, she remembered, is really good. Her stomach rumbled. Oak leaves, reddish-orange and delightfully crunchy, crackled underfoot as she walked. Her breath puffed white in the predawn air. The obsidian knife she had used to murder Detective Miner lay nestled in the small of her back, sharp and secret.\n\nShe was smiling.\n\nCars were scarce but not unheard-of on this road. Over the course of her night's walk she had seen five of them. The one braking to a halt now, a battered Ford F-250, was the third that had stopped to take a closer look. The driver pulled to the opposite shoulder, gravel crunching, and idled there. When the window came down she smelled chewing tobacco, old grease, and hay. A white-haired man sat behind the wheel. Next to him, a German shepherd eyed her suspiciously from the passenger seat.\n\nAhhh, crap. She didn't want to hurt them.\n\n\"Jesus,\" he said. \"Was there an accident?\" His voice was warm with concern\u2014the real kind, not the predator's fake that the last man had tried. She heard this and knew the old man was seeing her as a father might see his daughter. She relaxed a little.\n\n\"Nope,\" she said, eyeing the dog. \"Nothing like that. Just a mess at the barn. One of the horses.\" There was no barn, no horse. But she knew from the smell of the man that he would be sympathetic to animals, and that he would understand their business could be bloody. \"Rough delivery, for me and for her.\" She smiled ruefully and held her hands to frame her torso, the green silk now black and stiff with Detective Miner's blood. \"I ruined my dress.\"\n\n\"Try a little club sody,\" the man said dryly. The dog growled a little. \"Hush up, Buddy.\"\n\nShe wasn't clear on what \"club sody\" was, but she could tell from his tone that this was a joke. Not the laugh-out-loud sort, the commiserating sort. She snorted. \"I'll do that.\"\n\n\"The horse OK?\" Real concern again.\n\n\"Yeah, she's fine. The colt, too. Long night, though. Just taking a walk to clear my head.\"\n\n\"Barefoot?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"They grow 'em tough around here.\" This part was true.\n\n\"You want a lift?\"\n\n\"Nah. Thanks, though. My Father's place is over that way, not far.\" That was true too.\n\n\"Which, over by the post office?\"\n\n\"It's in Garrison Oaks.\"\n\nThe old man's eyes went distant for a moment, trying to remember how he knew that name. He thought about it for a while, then gave up. Carolyn might have told him that he could drive by Garrison Oaks four times a day every day for a thousand years and still not remember it, but she didn't.\n\n\"Ohhh\u2026\" the old guy said vaguely. \"Right.\" He glanced at her legs in a way that wasn't particularly fatherly. \"Sure you don't want a lift? Buddy don't mind, do ya?\" He patted the fat dog in the seat next to him. Buddy only watched, his brown eyes feral and suspicious.\n\n\"I'm good. Still clearing my head. Thanks, though.\" She stretched her face into something like a smile.\n\n\"Sure thing.\"\n\nThe old man put his truck into gear and drove on, bathing her in a warm cloud of diesel fumes.\n\nShe stood watching until his taillights disappeared around a curve. That's enough socializing for one night, I think. She scrambled up the bluff and slipped into the woods. The moon was still up, still full. Americans called this time of year \"October\" or, sometimes, \"Autumn,\" but the librarians reckoned time by the heavens. Tonight was the seventh moon, which is the moon of black lament. Under its light the shadows of bare branches flashed across her scars.\n\nA mile or so later she came to the hollow tree where she had stashed her robe. She shook the bark out of it and picked it clean as best she could. She saved a scrap of the bloody dress for David and tossed the rest, then wrapped herself in the robe, pulling the hood over her head. She had been fond of the dress\u2014silk felt good\u2014but the rough cotton of the robe comforted her. It was familiar, and all she really cared to know of clothing.\n\nShe set out deeper into the forest. The stones under the leaves and pine straw felt right against the soles of her feet, scratching an itch she hadn't known she felt. Just around the next ridge, she thought. Garrison Oaks. She wanted to burn the whole place to ashes but, at the same time, it would be kind of nice to see it again.\n\nHome."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Carolyn and the rest were not born librarians. Once upon a time\u2014it seemed long ago\u2014they had been very American indeed. She remembered that, a little\u2014there was something called The Bionic Woman and another something called Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. But one summer day when Carolyn was about eight, Father's enemies moved against him. Father survived, as did Carolyn and a handful of other children. Their parents did not.\n\nShe remembered the way Father's voice came to her through black smoke that smelled like melting asphalt, how the deep crater where their houses had been glowed dull orange behind him as he spoke.\n\n\"You are Pelapi now,\" Father said. \"It is an old word. It means something like 'librarian' and something like 'pupil.' I will take you into my house. I will raise you in the old ways, as I myself was raised. I will teach you the things I have learned.\"\n\nHe did not ask what they wanted.\n\nCarolyn, not ungrateful, did her best at first. Her mom and dad were gone, gone. She understood that. Father was all that she had now, and at first it seemed that he didn't ask so much. Father's home was different, though. Instead of candy and television there were shadows and ancient books, handwritten on thick parchment. They came to understand that Father had lived for a very long time. More, over the course of this long life, he had mastered the crafting of wonders. He could call down lightning, or stop time. Stones spoke to him by name. The theory and practice of these crafts were organized into twelve catalogs\u2014one for each child, as it happened. All he asked was that they be diligent about their studies.\n\nCarolyn's first clue as to what this actually meant came a few weeks later. She was studying at one of the lamplit kiosks scattered here and there around the jade floor of the Library. Margaret, then aged about nine, sprinted out from the towering, shadowy shelves of the gray catalog. She was shrieking. Blind with terror, she tripped over an end table and skidded to a stop almost at Carolyn's feet. Carolyn motioned her under her desk to hide.\n\nMargaret trembled in the shadows for ten minutes or so. Carolyn hissed questions at her, but she wouldn't speak, perhaps could not. But Margaret's tears were streaked with blood, and when Father pulled her back into the stacks she wet herself. That was answer enough. Carolyn sometimes thought of how the hot ammonia of Margaret's urine blended with the dusty smell of old books, how her screams echoed down the stacks. It was in that moment that she first began to understand.\n\nCarolyn's own catalog was more dull than terrifying. Father assigned her to the study of languages, and for almost a year she waded through her primers faithfully. But the routine bored her. In the first summer of her training, when she was nine years old, she went to Father and stamped her foot. \"No more!\" she said. \"I have read enough books. I know enough words. I want to be outside.\"\n\nThe other children cringed back from the look on Father's face. As promised, he was raising them as he himself had been raised. Most of them\u2014Carolyn included\u2014already had a few scars.\n\nBut even though his face clouded, this time he did not hit her. Instead, after a moment, he said, \"Oh? Very well.\"\n\nFather unlocked the front door of the Library and led her out into the sunshine and blue sky for the first time in months. Carolyn was delighted, all the more so when Father walked out of the neighborhood and down to the woods. On the way she saw David, whose catalog was murder and war, swinging a knife around in the field at the end of the road. Michael, who was training to be Father's ambassador to beasts, balanced on a branch in a tree nearby, conferring with a family of squirrels. Carolyn waved at them both. Father stopped at the shore of the small lake behind the neighborhood. Carolyn, fairly quivering with delight, splashed barefoot in the shallows and snatched at tadpoles.\n\nFrom the shore Father called out the doe Isha, who had recently given birth. Isha and her fawn, called Asha, came as commanded, of course. They began their audience by swearing loyalty to Father with great sincerity and at some length. Carolyn ignored that part. By now she was thoroughly bored with people groveling to Father. Anyway, deer talk was hard.\n\nWhen the formalities were out of the way Father commanded Isha to instruct Carolyn alongside her own fawn. He was careful to use small words so that Carolyn would understand.\n\nIsha was reluctant at first. Red deer have a dozen words for grace, and none of them applied to Carolyn's human feet, so large and clumsy when seen next to the delicate hooves of Asha and the other fawns. But Isha was loyal to Nobununga, who was Emperor of these forests, and thus loyal in turn to Father. Also she wasn't stupid. She voiced no objection.\n\nAll that summer Carolyn studied with the red deer of the valley. It was the last gentle time of her life, and perhaps the happiest as well. Under Isha's instruction she ran with increasing skill through the footpaths of the lower forest, bounded over the fallen moss oak, knelt to nibble sweet clover and sip morning dew. Carolyn's own mom had been dead about a year at that point. Her only friend was banished. Father was many things, none of them gentle. So when, on the first frosty night of the year, Isha called Carolyn over to lie with her and her child for warmth, something broke open inside her. She did not weep or otherwise show weakness\u2014that was not in her nature\u2014but she took Isha into her heart wholly and completely.\n\nNot long after, winter announced itself with a terrible thunderstorm. Carolyn was not afraid of such things, but with each flash of lightning Isha and Asha trembled. The three of them were a family now. They took shelter together beneath a stand of beech, where Carolyn and Isha held Asha between them, cuddling to keep her warm. They lay together all that night. Carolyn felt their slight bodies tremble, felt them jerk with each crack of thunder. She tried to comfort them with caresses, but they flinched at her touch. As the night wore on she searched her memory of Father's lessons for words that might comfort them\u2014\"don't worry\" would be enough, or \"it will be over soon\" or \"there will be clover in the morning.\"\n\nBut Carolyn had been a poor student. Try as she might, she could find no words.\n\nShortly before dawn Carolyn felt Isha jerk and drum her hooves against the earth, kicking away the fallen leaves to expose the black loam below. A moment later the rain flowing over Carolyn's body ran warm, and the taste of it was salty in her mouth.\n\nThe lightning cracked then, and Carolyn saw David. He was above her, standing on a branch some thirty feet away, grinning. From his left hand dangled the weighted end of a fine silver chain. Not wanting to, Carolyn used the last light of the moon to trace the length of that chain. When lightning flashed again, Carolyn stared into the lifeless eye of Isha, spitted with her fawn at the end of David's spear. Carolyn stretched her hand out to touch the bronze handle protruding from the deer's torso. The metal was warm. It trembled slightly under her fingertips, magnifying the faint, fading vibrations of Isha's gentle heart.\n\n\"Father said to watch and listen,\" David said. \"If you had found the words, I was supposed to let them live.\" He jerked the chain back to himself then, unpinning them. \"Father says it's time to come home,\" he said, coiling the chain with deft, practiced motions. \"It's time for your real studies to begin.\" He disappeared back into the storm.\n\nCarolyn rose and stood alone in the dark, both in that moment and ever after."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "Now, a quarter century later, Carolyn knelt on all fours behind the base of a fallen pine, peeping through a thick stand of holly. If she angled her head just so, she had an unobstructed view down the hill to the clearing of the bull. It was twenty yards or so wide and mostly empty. The only features of note were the bull itself and the granite cairn of Margaret's grave. The bull, a hollow bronze cast slightly larger than life, stood in the clearing's precise center. It shone mellow and golden in the summer sun.\n\nThe clearing was bounded on the near side by the stand of wild cedar in which Carolyn now hid. On the far side, David and Michael stood at the edge of a sheer drop-off cut into the hill to make a little more room for Highway 78. Across the road, twenty feet or so below, the weathered wooden sign marking the entrance to Garrison Oaks hung from a rusty chain. When the breeze caught it right you could hear the creak all the way up here.\n\nCarolyn had snuck in very close indeed, close enough to count the shaggy, twining braids of Michael's blond dreadlocks, close enough to hear the buzz of flies around David's head. David was amusing himself by quizzing Michael about his travels. Seeing this, Carolyn winced. Michael's catalog was animals, and he had learned it perhaps a bit too well. Human speech was difficult for him now, even painful\u2014especially when he was fresh out of the woods. Worse, he lacked guile.\n\nEmily had visited the librarians' dreams the night before, saying that David required them to assemble at the bull \"before sundown.\" That was different from \"as soon as possible,\" a distinction that no one but Michael would overlook. Still, it might be for the best. Jennifer had been stuck alone with David for weeks, the two of them waiting on news of Father. Now, as David tormented Michael, Jennifer\u2014the smallest and slightest of the librarians\u2014worked at tearing down Margaret's grave. She trudged back and forth across the clearing, stooped over from the weight of head-sized chunks of granite, her strawberry-blond hair drenched in sweat. Still, after weeks alone with David, lugging granite in the hot sun was probably a relief.\n\nMentally, Carolyn sighed. I suppose I should go down there and help them. If nothing else, this would encourage David to divide his attentions among three victims rather than two.\n\nBut Carolyn did not lack guile. She would listen first.\n\nDavid and Michael stood looking down over Garrison Oaks. Michael, like his cougars around him, was naked. David wore an Israeli Army flak jacket and a lavender tutu, crusty with blood. The flak jacket was his. The tutu was from the closet of Mrs. McGillicutty's son. This was at least partly Carolyn's fault.\n\nWhen it became clear that they could not return to the Library, at least not in the near term, Carolyn had explained to the others that they would need to wear American clothes in order to blend in. They nodded, not really understanding, and set about rummaging through Mrs. McGillicutty's closets. David chose the tutu because it was the closest thing he could find to his usual loin cloth. Carolyn thought about explaining why this was not \"blending in,\" then decided against it. She had learned to take her giggles where she could find them.\n\nHer nose wrinkled. The wind smelled of rot. Is Margaret back as well? But no, she realized, the rot was David. After a while you didn't notice so much, but she had been away. Flies buzzed around his head in a cloud.\n\nA year or two ago, David took up the practice of squeezing blood from the hearts of his victims into his hair. He was a furry man and any one heart yielded only a few tablespoons, but of course they added up quickly. Over time, the combination of hair and blood hardened into something like a helmet. Once, curious, she asked Peter how strong this would be. Peter, whose catalog included mathematics and engineering, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking. \"Pretty strong,\" he said meditatively. \"Clotted blood is harder than you'd think, but it's brittle. The strands of hair would tend to alleviate that. It's the same principle as rebar in concrete. Hmm.\" He bent to his pad and scribbled numbers for a moment, then nodded. \"Yeah. Pretty strong. It would probably stop a twenty-two. Maybe even a nine-millimeter.\" For a while David had dripped it into his beard as well, but Father made him chisel this off when it became difficult to turn his head. All that was left was a longish Fu Manchu mustache.\n\n\"Where were you?\" David demanded, shaking Michael by the shoulders. He spoke in Pelapi, which bore no resemblance at all to English, or any other modern language. \"You've been off playing in the woods, haven't you? You finished up weeks ago! Don't lie to me!\"\n\nMichael was close to panic\u2014his eyes rolled wildly, and he spoke in fits and starts, conjuring the words with great effort. \"I was\u2026uh-way.\"\n\n\"Uh-way? Uh-way? You mean away? Away where?\"\n\n\"I was with\u2026with\u2026the small things. Father said. Father said to study the ways of the humble and the small.\"\n\n\"Father wanted him to learn about mice,\" Jennifer translated, calling over her shoulder, grunting at the weight of her rock. \"How they move. Hiding and the like.\"\n\n\"Back to work!\" David screamed at her. \"You're wasting daylight!\"\n\nJennifer plodded back to the pile and hoisted another rock, groaning under the load. David, six-foot-four and very muscular, tracked this with his eyes. Carolyn thought he smiled slightly. Then, turning back to Michael: \"Gah. Mice, of all things.\" He shook his head. \"You know, I wouldn't have thought it possible, but you might be even more useless than Carolyn.\"\n\nCarolyn, safe in her hiding blind, made a rude gesture.\n\nJennifer dropped another rock into the underbrush with a dry crash. She straightened up, panting, and wiped her forehead with a trembling hand.\n\n\"Carolyn? What? I\u2026not know\u2026I\u2026\"\n\n\"Stop talking,\" David said. \"So, let me get this straight\u2014while the rest of us have been killing ourselves trying to find Father, you were off playing with a bunch of mice?\"\n\n\"Mice\u2026yes. I thought\u2014\"\n\nA flat crack rang out across the clearing. Carolyn, who had long experience of David's slaps, winced again. He leaned into that one.\n\n\"I did not ask what you thought,\" David said. \"Animals don't think. Isn't that what you want to be, Michael? An animal? Come to that, isn't it what you actually are?\"\n\n\"As you say,\" Michael said softly.\n\nDavid's back was to her, but Carolyn could picture his face clearly. He would be smiling, at least a bit. If the slap drew blood, perhaps he'll be giving us a look at his dimples as well.\n\n\"Just\u2026shut up. You're giving me a headache. Go help Jennifer or something.\"\n\nOne of Michael's cougars rumbled. Michael interrupted it with a low yowl, and it went silent.\n\nCarolyn's eyes narrowed. Behind David, she saw from the grasses on the western edge of the valley that the wind was shifting. In a moment the three of them would be downwind of her, rather than vice versa. In her time among the Americans Carolyn had gotten acclimated to the extent that their smells\u2014Marlboro, Chanel, Vidal Sassoon\u2014no longer made her eyes water, but Michael and David had not. With the wind coming from the west she would not stay hidden long.\n\nShe took the risk of staring directly at their eyes\u2014Isha had taught her that to do so was to invite notice, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Now she was hoping for them to be distracted by something north of her. Sure enough, after a moment Michael's glance was drawn to a moth fluttering to a landing on the cairn. David and the cougars followed his gaze, as predators will do. Carolyn took advantage of the moment to slip back into the underbrush.\n\nShe circled down the hill, south and east. When she was a quarter mile distant she doubled back, this time walking without any particular caution, and announced her arrival by purposefully cracking a dry twig underfoot.\n\n\"Ah,\" David said. \"Carolyn. You're louder and clumsier than ever. You'll be a real American soon. I heard you blundering up all the way from the bottom of the hill. Come here.\"\n\nCarolyn did as she was told.\n\nDavid peered into her eyes, brushed her cheek gently. His fingers were black with clotted blood. \"In Father's absence, each of us must be mindful of security. The burden of caution is upon us all. You do understand?\"\n\n\"Of cour\u2014\"\n\nStill stroking her cheek, he punched her in the solar plexus with his other hand. She had been expecting this\u2014well, this or something like it\u2014but still the air whooshed out of her lungs. She didn't go to her knees, though. At least there's that, she thought, savoring the coppery taste of her hate.\n\nDavid studied her for a moment with his killer's eyes. Seeing no hint of rebellion, he nodded and turned away. \"Go help them with the cairn.\"\n\nShe forced herself to draw a deep breath. A moment later the fog around the corners of her vision cleared. She walked over to Margaret's cairn. Dry autumn grasses brushed against her bare legs. A truck roared by on Highway 78, the sound muffled by the trees. \"Hello, Jen,\" she said. \"Hello, Michael. How long has she been dead?\"\n\nMichael didn't speak, but when he came near he gave her neck an affectionate sniff. She sniffed back, as was polite.\n\n\"Hello, Carolyn,\" Jennifer said.\n\nJennifer dropped the stone she carried into the underbrush and wiped the sweat from her brow. \"She's been down since the last full moon.\" Her eyes were very bloodshot. \"So, that's what? About two weeks now.\"\n\nActually, it was closer to four weeks. She's stoned again, Carolyn thought, frowning a little. Then, more charitably, But who could blame her? She's been alone with David. All she said was, \"Wow. That's quite a bit longer than usual. What's she doing?\"\n\nJennifer gave her an odd look. \"Looking for Father, of course. What did you think?\"\n\nCarolyn shrugged. \"You never know.\" Just as Michael spent most of his time with animals, Margaret was most comfortable with the dead. \"Any luck?\"\n\n\"We'll see shortly,\" Jennifer said, and looked pointedly at the pile of rock. Carolyn, taking the hint, walked over to the pile and hefted a medium-sized stone. They worked in silence with quick, practiced efficiency. With the three of them at it, it wasn't long before the pile was gone, scattered throughout the surrounding underbrush. The ground beneath it had sunk only a little since the burial. It was still relatively soft. They squatted down on their knees and dug at it with their hands. Six inches down, the smell of Margaret's body was thick. Carolyn, who hadn't done this in some time, stifled a gag. She was careful to make sure David didn't see. When the hole was about two feet deep she touched something squishy. \"Got her,\" she said.\n\nMichael helped brush away the dirt. Margaret was bloated, purple, rotting. The sockets of her eyes boiled with maggots. Jennifer hoisted herself out of the grave and went to gather her things. As soon as Margaret's face and hands were uncovered, Carolyn and Michael wasted no time getting out of the pit.\n\nJennifer took a little silver pipe out of her bag, lit it with a match, and took a deep hit. Then, with a sigh, she hopped down and began her work. Stoned or not, she was very gifted. A year ago Father had paid her the ultimate compliment, surrendering the white sash of healing to her. She, not Father, was now the master of her catalog. She was the only one of them he had honored in this way.\n\nThis time the murder wound was a vertical trench in Margaret's heart, precisely the width and depth of David's knife. Jennifer straddled the corpse and laid her hand over the wound. She held it there for the span of three breaths. Carolyn watched this with interest, noting the stages at which Jennifer said mind, body, and spirit under her breath. Carolyn was careful to give no outward sign of what she was doing. Studying outside your catalog was\u2014well, it wasn't something you wanted to be caught at.\n\nMichael moved to the other side of the clearing, away from the smell, and wrestled with his cougars, smiling. He paid the rest of them no attention. Carolyn sat with her back against one of the bull's bronze legs, close enough to watch as Jennifer worked. When Jennifer took her hand away the wound in Margaret's chest was gone.\n\nJennifer stood up in the grave. Carolyn guessed this was to get a bit of fresh air rather than for any clinical purpose. The stench was bad enough over where Carolyn was, but in the pit it would be overwhelming. Jennifer took a deep breath, then knelt again. She furrowed her brow, brushed away most of the insects, then knelt and put her warm mouth over Margaret's cold one. She held the embrace for three breaths, then drew back, gagging, and set about rubbing various lotions on Margaret's skin. Interestingly, she applied the lotion in patterns, the glyphs of written Pelapi\u2014first ambition, then perception, and finally regret.\n\nWhen that was done, Jennifer stood up and scrambled out of the grave. She started toward Carolyn and Michael, but after two steps her eyes widened. She cupped her hand over her mouth, bolted into the underbrush, and retched. When her stomach was empty she walked over to join Carolyn. Her steps were slower and shakier than before. A thin film of sweat glistened on her brow.\n\n\"Bad?\" Carolyn asked.\n\nBy way of answer Jennifer turned her head and spat. She sat down close and laid her head on Carolyn's shoulder for a moment. Then she fished out her little silver pipe\u2014American, a gift from Carolyn\u2014and fired it up again. Marijuana smoke, thick and sweet, filled the clearing. She offered it to Carolyn.\n\n\"No thanks.\"\n\nJennifer shrugged, then took a second, deeper drag. The coal of the pipe flared in the polished bronze of the bull's belly. \"Sometimes I wonder\u2026\"\n\n\"Wonder what?\"\n\n\"If we should bother. Looking for Father, I mean.\"\n\nCarolyn drew back. \"Are you serious?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I\u2014\" Jennifer sighed. \"No. Maybe. I don't know. It's just\u2026I wonder. Would it really be that much worse? If we just\u2026let it go? Let the Duke, or whoever, take over?\"\n\n\"If the Duke repairs himself to the point where he can start feeding again, complex life will be history. It wouldn't take long, either. Five years, probably. Maybe ten.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know.\" Jennifer fired up her pipe again. \"So instead we have Father. The Duke\u2026well, at least his way would be painless. Peaceful, even.\"\n\nCarolyn made a sour face, then smiled. \"Had a rough couple of weeks with David, did you?\"\n\n\"No, that isn't\u2014\" Jennifer said. \"Well, maybe. It actually was a pretty goddamn rough couple of weeks, now that you mention it. And where have you been, anyway? I could have used your help.\"\n\nCarolyn patted her shoulder. \"I'm sorry. Here, give me that.\" Jennifer passed the pipe. She took a small puff.\n\n\"Still, though,\" Jennifer said. \"Doesn't it ever get to you? Serious question.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nJennifer waved her arm, a gesture that took in the grave, Garrison Oaks, the bull. \"All of it.\"\n\nCarolyn thought about it for a minute. \"No. Not really. Not anymore.\" She looked at Jennifer's hair and picked a maggot out. It squirmed on the end of her finger. \"It used to, but I adjusted.\" She crushed the maggot. \"You can adjust to almost anything.\"\n\n\"You can, maybe.\" She took the pipe back. \"I sometimes think the two of us are the only ones who are still sane.\"\n\nIt crossed Carolyn's mind to pat Jennifer's shoulder or hug her or something, but she decided against it. The conversation was already more touchy-feely than she was really comfortable with. Instead, by way of changing the subject, she nodded in the direction of the grave. \"How long will it be before\u2026?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Jennifer said. \"Probably a while. She's never been down this long before.\" She grimaced and spat again. \"Blech.\"\n\n\"Here,\" Carolyn said. \"I brought you something.\" She rummaged in her plastic shopping bag and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Listerine.\n\nJennifer took the bottle. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Put some in your mouth and swish it around. Don't swallow it. After a few seconds spit it out.\"\n\nJennifer looked at it, dubious, trying to decide if she were being made fun of.\n\n\"Trust me,\" Carolyn said.\n\nJennifer hesitated for a moment, then took a sip. Her eyes went wide.\n\n\"Swish it around,\" Carolyn said and demonstrated by puffing out first her left cheek, then her right. Jennifer mimicked her. \"Now, spit it out.\" Jennifer did. \"Better?\"\n\n\"Wow!\" Jennifer said. \"That's\u2014\" She looked over her shoulder at David. He wasn't looking, but she lowered her voice anyway. \"That's amazing. It usually takes me hours to get the taste out of my mouth!\"\n\n\"I know,\" Carolyn said. \"It's an American thing. It's called mouthwash.\"\n\nJennifer ran her fingers over the label for a moment, an expression of childlike wonder on her face. Then, with obvious reluctance, she held the bottle out to Carolyn.\n\n\"No,\" Carolyn said. \"Keep it. I got it for you.\"\n\nJennifer didn't say anything, but she smiled.\n\n\"Are you done?\"\n\nJennifer nodded. \"I think so. Margaret is set, at any rate. She's heard the call.\" She raised her voice. \"David? Will there be anything else?\"\n\nDavid's back was to them. He was standing at the edge of the bluff, looking across Highway 78 to the entrance to Garrison Oaks. He waved his hand distractedly.\n\nJennifer shrugged. \"I guess that means I'm done.\" She turned to Carolyn. \"So, what do you think?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Carolyn said. \"If Father is out among the Americans, I can't find him. Have you learned anything?\"\n\n\"Michael says he's not among the beasts, living or dead.\"\n\n\"And the others?\"\n\nJennifer shrugged. \"So far it's just us three. They'll be along presently.\" She stretched out on the grass and rested her head on Carolyn's lap. \"Thank you for the\u2014what did you call it?\"\n\n\"Listerine.\"\n\n\"Lis-ter-ine,\" Jennifer said. \"Thank you.\" She closed her eyes.\n\nAll that afternoon the other librarians filtered in, singly and in pairs. Some carried burdens. Alicia held the black candle, still burning as it had in the golden ruin at the end of time. Rachel and her phantom children whispered among themselves of the futures that would never be. The twins, Peter and Richard, watched intently as the librarians filled out the twelve points of the abbreviated circle, studying some deep order that everyone else was blind to. The sweat on their ebony skin glistened in the firelight.\n\nFinally, just before sunset, Margaret stretched a pale, trembling hand up into the light.\n\n\"She's back,\" Jennifer said to no one in particular.\n\nDavid walked over to the grave, smiling. He reached down and took Margaret's hand. With his help she rose on shaky legs, dirt raining down around her. David lifted her out of the grave. \"Hello, my love!\"\n\nShe stood before him, no taller than his chest, and tilted her head back, smiling. David dusted off the worst of the dirt, then lifted her by the hips and kissed her, long and deep. Her small feet dangled limp six inches over the black earth. It occurred to Carolyn that she could not think what color garment Margaret had been buried in. It might have been ash-gray, or the bleached-out-flesh tones of a child's doll left too long in the sun. Whatever color it actually was, it had blended well against Margaret herself. She is barely here anymore. All that's really left of her is the smell.\n\nMargaret wobbled for a moment, then sat down in the pile of soft earth next to the grave. David tipped her a wink and ran his tongue along his teeth. Margaret giggled. Jennifer gagged again.\n\nDavid squatted down next to Margaret and ruffled her dusty black hair. \"Well?\" he called out to Richard and Peter and the rest, \"What are you waiting for? Everyone's here now. Take your places.\"\n\nThey were gathered into a rough circle. Carolyn watched David. He eyed the bull, uneasy, and in the end stood so that his back was to it. Even now, he doesn't like looking at it. Not that she blamed him.\n\n\"Very well,\" he said. \"You have all had your month. Who has answers for me?\"\n\nNo one spoke.\n\n\"Margaret? Where is Father?\"\n\n\"I do not know,\" she said. \"He is not in the forgotten lands. He does not wander the outer darkness.\"\n\n\"So, he's not dead, then.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not.\"\n\n\"Perhaps? What does that mean?\"\n\nMargaret was silent for a long moment. \"If he died in the Library, it would be different.\"\n\n\"Different how? He wouldn't go to the forgotten lands?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\nMargaret looked shifty. \"I shouldn't say.\"\n\nDavid rubbed his temples. \"Look, I'm not asking you to talk about your catalog, but\u2026he's been gone a long time. We have to consider all possibilities. Just in general terms, what would happen if he had died inside the Library? Would he\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous,\" Carolyn said, not quite shouting. Her face was red. \"Father can't be dead\u2014not in the Library, and not anywhere bloody else!\" The others muttered agreement. \"He's\u2026he's Father.\"\n\nDavid's face clouded, but he let it go. \"Margaret? What do you think?\"\n\nMargaret shrugged, not really interested. \"Carolyn is probably right.\"\n\n\"Mmm.\" He didn't seem convinced. \"Rachel? Where is Father?\"\n\n\"We do not know,\" she said, spreading her hands out to indicate the silent ranks of ghost children arrayed behind her. \"He is in no possible future that we can see.\"\n\n\"Alicia? What about the actual future? Is he there?\"\n\n\"No.\" She ran her fingers through her dirty-blond hair, nervous. \"I checked all the way to the heat death of normal space. Nothing.\"\n\n\"He's not in any futures and he's not dead. How is that possible?\"\n\nAlicia and Rachel looked at each other and shrugged. \"It is indeed a riddle,\" Rachel said. \"I cannot account for it.\"\n\n\"That's not much of an answer.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you ask the wrong questions.\"\n\n\"Do I?\" David walked over to her, grinning dangerously, jaw muscles jumping. \"Do I really?\"\n\nRachel went pale. \"I didn't mean\u2014\"\n\nDavid let her grovel for a moment, then touched a finger to her lips. \"Later.\" She sank to the ground, trembling visibly in the moonlight.\n\n\"Peter, you're meant to be good with all that abstract crap. Figures and so forth. What do you think?\"\n\nPeter hesitated. \"There are aspects of Father's work that I was never allowed to see\u2014\"\n\n\"Father kept things from all of us. Answer my question.\"\n\n\"When he disappeared he was working on something called regression completeness,\" Peter said. \"It's the notion that the universe is structured in such a way that no matter how many mysteries you solve, there is always a deeper mystery behind it. Father seemed very\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, for fuck's sake. Do you know where Father is or don't you?\"\n\n\"Not exactly, but if you follow that line of thinking, it might explain\u2014\"\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop talking. Carolyn, get with Peter later and translate whatever he says into something normal people can understand.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said.\n\n\"Michael, what about the Far Hill? Was there any sign there?\"\n\nThe Far Hill was the heaven of the Forest God, where all the clever little beasts went when they died\u2014something like that, at any rate. Carolyn hadn't been aware that it was real. For that matter, she hadn't been certain that the Forest God was real until just now.\n\n\"No. Not there.\" His speech was better now.\n\n\"And the Forest God? Is he\u2014\"\n\n\"The Forest God is sleeping. He has massed no armies against us. Among his pack there were the usual intrigues, but nothing that concerns us directly. I see no reason to think\u2014\"\n\n\"Think? You? That's almost funny.\" He turned away. \"Emily, what about\u2014\"\n\n\"There's something else,\" Michael said. \"We are to have a visitor.\"\n\nDavid glared at him. \"A visitor? Why didn't you tell me earlier?\"\n\n\"You hit me in the mouth,\" Michael said. \"You told me to be quiet.\"\n\nDavid's jaw muscles jumped again. \"Now I'm telling you to not be quiet,\" he said. \"Who is coming?\"\n\n\"Nobununga.\"\n\n\"What? Here?\"\n\n\"He is concerned for Father's safety,\" Michael said. \"He wishes to investigate.\"\n\n\"Oh fuck,\" said Carolyn. This was startled out of her\u2014she hadn't expected Nobununga quite so soon. But she had the presence of mind to speak softly, and in English. No one noticed.\n\n\"When will he arrive?\"\n\nMichael's brow furrowed. \"He\u2026he will arrive, um\u2026when he gets here?\"\n\nDavid gritted his teeth. \"Do we have any idea when that might be?\"\n\n\"It will be later.\"\n\n\"Like, when, exactly?\" His hand curled into a fist.\n\n\"He doesn't understand, David,\" Jennifer said softly. \"He doesn't see time the way people do. Not anymore. Hitting him won't change that.\"\n\nMichael, panicky now, flitted his eyes from Jennifer to David. \"The mice have seen him! He approaches!\"\n\nDavid unclenched his fist. He rubbed his temples. \"Never mind,\" he said. \"It doesn't matter. He's even right. Nobununga will arrive when he arrives. All we can do is make him welcome. Peter, Richard\u2014collect the totems.\" The twins bounced up, scrambling to obey.\n\n\"Carolyn\u2014I need you to go back into America. We need an innocent heart. We will offer it to Nobununga when he arrives. Do you think you can handle that?\"\n\n\"An innocent heart? In America?\" She hesitated. \"Possibly.\"\n\nMisunderstanding, he said, \"It's easy. Just cut through the ribs.\" He scissored his fingers through the air. \"Like so. If you can't get it out yourself, send for me.\"\n\n\"Yes, David.\"\n\n\"That will be all for tonight. Carolyn, you can go whenever you're ready. The rest of you stay close.\" He glanced at the bull, uneasy. \"Richard, Peter, be quick about it. I want to, um, get back to Mrs. McGillicutty's,\" he said, winking at Margaret. \"Dinner will be ready soon.\"\n\nRachel sat down on the ground. Her children crowded around her. In a moment she was entirely hidden behind them. Carolyn wanted to speak with Michael, but he and his cougars had faded into the woods. Jennifer unrolled her sleeping skins and lay back on them with a groan. Margaret drifted into orbit around David.\n\nDavid rummaged around in his knapsack for a moment. \"Here you go, Margaret,\" he said. \"I brought you a gift.\" He pulled out the severed head of an old man, hoisting him by his long, wispy beard. He swung the head back and forth a couple of times, then tossed it to her.\n\nMargaret caught it with both hands, grunting a bit at the weight. She grinned, delighted. Her teeth were black. \"Thank you.\"\n\nDavid sat down beside her and brushed the hair out of her eyes. \"How long will it be?\" he called over his shoulder.\n\n\"An hour,\" Richard said, running his fingers through the bowl of totems\u2014Michael's hair of the Forest God, the black candle, the scrap of Carolyn's dress, stiff with blood, a drop of wax from the black candle. These would be used as nodes of an n-dimensional tracking tool that they were quite sure\u2014well\u2026fairly sure, at least\u2014would point them toward Father. Well\u2026probably. Carolyn had her doubts.\n\n\"No more than that,\" Peter agreed.\n\nMargaret took the head into her lap and began fussing over it\u2014caressing its cheeks, cooing at it, smoothing its bushy eyebrows. After a moment of her attentions the dead man's eyelids fluttered, then opened.\n\n\"Blue eyes!\" Margaret exclaimed. \"Oh, David, thank you!\"\n\nDavid shrugged.\n\nCarolyn snuck a peek. Perhaps the man's eyes had been blue once, but now mostly what they were was sunken and filmed over. But she recognized him. He had been a minor courtier in one of Father's cabinets and, once, the prime minister of Japan. Normally such a man would be protected. David must be feeling bold. The head blinked again and fastened his eyes upon Margaret. His tongue stirred and his lips began to move, though of course without lungs he could make no sound.\n\n\"What is he saying?\" David asked. After six weeks of banishment, most of them had picked up at least a smattering of American, but Carolyn was the only one who spoke Japanese.\n\nCarolyn leaned in close, her nose wrinkling at the smell. She tilted her head and touched the man's cheeks. \"Moo ichido itte kudasai, Yamada-san.\" The dead man tried again, pleading to her with sightless eyes.\n\nCarolyn sat back and arranged her hands in her lap demurely, left over right, in such a way that the palm of each hand concealed the fingers of the other from view. Her expression was peaceful, even pleasant. She knew that Emily could read her thoughts easily. David, too, could sense thoughts, at least the basic flavor. He knew when someone bore him ill will. In battle he could peer into the minds of his enemies and see their strategies, see the weapons that might be raised against him. Carolyn suspected that he might be able to look deeper if there were a need. But it didn't matter. If Emily or David chose to look into Carolyn's thoughts, they would find only the desire to help.\n\nOf course, genuine emotion is the very essence of self. It cannot ever be unfelt, cannot be ignored, cannot even be rechanneled for very long.\n\nBut with practice and care, it may be hidden.\n\n\"He is asking about Chieko and Kiko-chan,\" Carolyn said. \"I think they are his daughters. He wants to know if they are safe.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" David said. \"Tell him I gutted them for the practice. Their mother as well.\"\n\n\"Is it true?\"\n\nDavid shrugged.\n\n\"Sorera wa anzen desu, Yamada-san. Ima yasumu desu nee,\" Carolyn said, telling him that they were safe, telling him that he could rest now. The dead man allowed his eyes to droop. A single tear trembled on the edge of his left eyelid. Margaret studied it with bright, greedy eyes. When it broke free and ran down Yamada's cheek she dipped her head, birdlike, and licked it up with a single deft flick of her tongue.\n\nThe dead man puffed his cheeks and blew them out, the softest, saddest sound Carolyn had ever heard. David and Margaret laughed together.\n\nCarolyn's smile was just the right amount of forced. Perhaps she was overcome with pity for the poor man? Or maybe it was the smell. Again, anyone who bothered to peek in on her thoughts would find only concern for Father and a sincere\u2014if slightly nervous\u2014desire to please David. But her fingertips trembled with the memory of faint, fading vibrations carried down the shaft of a brass spear, and in her heart the hate of them blazed like a black sun."
            },
            {
                "title": "Buddhism for Assholes",
                "text": "\"So,\" she said, \"do you want to break into a house?\"\n\nSteve froze for a long moment, his mouth hanging open. Over by the bar he heard a series of clicks in the bowels of the Automated Musical Instruments juke. Somebody had dropped in a penny. He set his Coors back down on the table un-sipped. What's her name again? Christy? Cathy?\n\n\"Beg pardon?\" he said finally. Then it came to him: Carolyn. \"You're kidding, right?\"\n\nShe took a drag off her cigarette. The coal flared, casting an orange glow over a half dozen greasy shot glasses and a small pile of chicken bones. \"Nope. I'm completely serious.\"\n\nThe AMI juke whirred. A moment later the opening thunder of Benny Goodman's \"Sing, Sing, Sing\" boomed out across the bar like the war drums of some savage lost tribe. All of a sudden Steve's heart was thudding in his chest.\n\n\"OK. Fine. You're not kidding. So, what you're talking about is a pretty serious felony.\"\n\nShe said nothing. She only looked at him.\n\nHe scrambled for something clever to say. But what came out was \"I'm a plumber.\"\n\n\"You weren't always.\"\n\nSteve stared at her. That was true, but there was no way in the world she could have known it. He'd had nightmares about this sort of conversation. Trying to camouflage his horror, he grabbed the last wing off the plate and dipped it in bleu cheese, but stopped short of actually eating it. The wings there did not mess around. The smell of vinegar and pepper drifted up to him like a warning. \"I can't,\" he said. \"I've gotta get home and feed Petey.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"My dog. Petey. He's a cocker sp\u2014\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"That can wait.\"\n\nChange the subject. \"How do you like this place?\" he said, grinning and desperate.\n\n\"Quite a lot, actually,\" she said, fingering the magazine Steve had been reading. \"What's it called again?\"\n\n\"Warwick Hall. It used to be an actual speakeasy, back in the twenties. Cath\u2014the lady who runs the place\u2014inherited it from her grandfather, along with some old photos of how it used to look. She's a big jazz fan, so when she retired she restored it and opened it as a private club.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Carolyn sipped her beer, then looked around at the framed posters\u2014Lonnie Johnson, Roy Eldridge holding his trumpet, an ad for a Theatrical Clam Bake on October 3 and 4, 1920-something. \"It's different.\"\n\n\"It is that.\" Steve shook out a cigarette and offered her the pack. As she took it, he noticed that although the nails of her right hand were unpainted and gnawed away almost to the quick, the ones on her left were long and manicured, lacquered red. Weird. He lit their cigarettes off a single match. \"I started coming here because it was the only bar around you can still smoke in, but it grew on me.\"\n\n\"Why don't I give you a minute to chew on the idea,\" Carolyn said. \"I know I sprang it on you out of the blue. Where's the ladies' room?\"\n\n\"No need to think it over. The answer is no. Ladies' is back that way.\" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. \"I've never been in there, but on the urinals in the men's room you have to pull a brass chain to flush. It took me a minute to figure that out.\" He paused. \"Who are you, exactly?\"\n\n\"I told you,\" Carolyn said. \"I'm a librarian.\"\n\n\"OK.\" At first, the way she looked\u2014Christmas sweater, complete with reindeer, over Spandex bicycle shorts, red rubber galoshes with 1980s leg warmers\u2014made him think she was schizophrenic. Now he doubted that was it.\n\nOK, he thought, not schizophrenic. What, then? Carolyn wasn't unduly burdened with good grooming, but neither was she unattractive. He got the impression that she was also very smart. About an hour and a half earlier she'd sauntered up with a couple of beers, introduced herself, and asked if she could sit down. Steve, a bachelor with no attachments other than his dog, had said sure. They talked for a while. She peppered him with questions and answered his own questions vaguely. All the while she studied him with dark-brown eyes.\n\nSteve had kinda-sorta gathered the impression that she worked at the university, maybe as some sort of linguist? She spoke French to Cath, and surprised another regular, Eddie Hu, by being fluent in Chinese. Librarian kind of fits too, though. He imagined her, frizzy-haired, surrounded by teetering stacks of books, muttering into a stained mug of staff lounge coffee as she schemed her burglary. He grinned and shook his head. No way. He ordered another pitcher.\n\nThe beer beat Carolyn back to the table by a good couple of minutes. Steve poured himself another glass. As he drank, he decided to change his diagnosis from schizophrenic to \"doesn't give a fuck about clothes.\" A lot of people claimed not to give a fuck about clothes, but those who actually didn't were rare. Not entirely unheard-of, though.\n\nA guy Steve had gone to high school with, Bob-something, spent two years on a South Pacific island as part of some weirdly successful drug-running scheme. When he got back he was rich as hell\u2014two Ferraris, for chrissakes\u2014but he would wear any old thing. Bob, he remembered, had once\u2014\n\n\"I'm back,\" she said. \"Sorry.\" She had a pretty smile.\n\n\"Hope you're up for another round,\" he said, nodding at the pitcher.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nHe poured for her. \"If you don't mind me saying so, this is weird.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"The librarians I know are into, like, I dunno, tea and cozy mysteries, not breaking and entering.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well. This is a different kind of library.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I'm going to need a bit more in the way of explanation.\" As soon as the question was out of his mouth he regretted it. You're not actually considering this, are you? He took a quick spiritual inventory. No. I'm not. He was curious though.\n\n\"I've got a problem,\" Carolyn said. \"My sister said you might have the sort of experience required to solve it.\"\n\n\"Like, what sort of experience are we talking about?\"\n\n\"Residential locks\u2014nothing special\u2014and a Lorex alarm.\"\n\n\"That's it?\" His mind went out to the toolbox in the back of his truck. He had his plumbing tools, sure\u2014torch, solder, pipe cutter, wrench\u2014but there were other things as well. Wire cutters, crowbar, a multimeter, a small metal ruler that he could use to\u2014No. He clamped down on the thought, but it was too late. Something inside him had come awake and was beginning to stir.\n\n\"That's it,\" she said. \"Easy-peasy.\"\n\n\"Who's your sister?\"\n\n\"Her name's Rachel. You wouldn't know her.\"\n\nHe thought about it. \"You're right. I don't recall meeting anyone by that name.\" She certainly wasn't part of the small\u2014very small\u2014circle of people who knew about his former career. \"So, how does this Rachel person know so much about me?\"\n\n\"I'm honestly not clear on it myself. But she's very good at finding things out.\"\n\n\"And what, exactly, did she find out about me?\"\n\nCarolyn lit another cigarette and blew twin columns of smoke out of her nostrils. \"She said you've got a knack for mechanical things and an outlaw streak. And that you've committed over a hundred burglaries. A hundred and twelve, I think she said.\"\n\nThat was true, if almost ten years out of date. Suddenly his stomach was in knots. The things he had done and, worse, the things he hadn't done back then were always circling, never far from his thoughts. At her words they landed, tore into him. \"I'd like you to go now,\" he said quietly. \"Please.\"\n\nHe wanted to read Sports Illustrated. He wanted to think about the Colts' offensive line, not about how he could bump through a residential Kwikset in thirty seconds even without proper tools. He wanted to\u2014\n\n\"Relax. This could be very good for you.\" She slid something across the floor to him. He peeked under the table and saw a blue duffel bag. \"Look inside.\"\n\nHe picked the bag up by the handle. Already half suspecting what he might find, he unzipped it and peeked inside. Cash. Lots of it. Mostly fifties and hundreds.\n\nSteve set the bag down and pushed it back across the floor. \"How much is in there?\"\n\n\"Three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars.\" She stubbed out her cigarette. \"-ish.\"\n\n\"That's an odd amount.\"\n\n\"I'm an odd person.\"\n\nSteve sighed. \"You have my attention.\"\n\n\"Then you'll do it?\"\n\n\"No. Absolutely not.\" The Buddhist undertakes to refrain from taking that which is not given. He paused, grimaced. The previous year he had declared $58,000 on his taxes. His credit card debt was just slightly less than that. \"Maybe.\" He lit another cigarette. \"That's a lot of money.\"\n\n\"Is it? I suppose.\"\n\n\"It is to me, anyway. You rich?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"My Father.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Rich daddy. That explained some of it, anyway. \"How'd you come up with\u2014how much did you say it was?\"\n\n\"Three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars. I went to the bank. Money really isn't a problem for me. Will that be enough? I can get more.\"\n\n\"It should cover it,\" he said. \"I used to know people\u2014qualified people\u2014who would do a job like this for three hundred dollars.\" He waited, not unhopefully, for her to rescind the offer, or maybe ask for an introduction to the qualified people. Instead they stared at each other for a while.\n\n\"You're the one I want,\" she said. \"If it's not the money, then what's holding you back?\"\n\nHe thought of explaining to her how he was trying to do better. He could say, Sometimes I feel like a new plant, like I just sprouted from the dirt, like I'm trying to stretch up to the sun. Instead what he said was \"I'm trying to figure out what you get out of this. Is it some kind of rich-kid extreme sport? You bored?\"\n\nShe snorted laughter. \"No. I'm the exact opposite of bored.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"Something was taken from me a number of years ago. Something precious.\" She gave him a flinty smile. \"I mean to have it back.\"\n\n\"I'll need a little more detail. What are we talking about? Diamonds? Jewels?\" He hesitated. \"Drugs?\"\n\n\"Nothing like that. More like sentimental value. That's all I can tell you.\"\n\n\"And why me?\"\n\n\"You come highly recommended.\"\n\nSteve considered. Over Carolyn's shoulder, on the dance floor, Eddie Hu and Cath were practicing the Charleston. They're getting pretty good, too. Steve remembered what it felt like to be good at something. For a time, in some circles, he had been a little bit well-known. Maybe somebody remembered. \"All right,\" he said finally. \"I can accept that, I guess. Couple more questions, though.\"\n\n\"Shoot.\"\n\n\"You're sure that whatever it is, we'll just be dealing with basic, residential alarms? No safes, no exotic locks, nothing like that?\"\n\n\"I'm sure.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"My sister again.\"\n\nSteve opened his mouth to wonder about the quality of her information. Then it occurred to him that he couldn't have told you exactly how many jobs he'd done if you put a gun to his head. One hundred and twelve sounds about right, though. So, instead, he said, \"Last question. What if whatever it is you're after isn't there?\"\n\n\"You get the cash anyway.\" She smiled slightly and leaned in a little closer. \"Maybe even a bonus.\" She cocked an eyebrow, smiled just a little flirtatiously.\n\nSteve considered this. Before she dropped the burglary bombshell he'd been hoping that the conversation might head toward flirty land. But now\u2026\"Let's keep it simple,\" he said. \"The money should do me just fine. When do you want to go?\"\n\n\"You'll do it then?\" Her legs were strong and tan. When she moved you could see the muscles working under her skin.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said, already knowing in his heart what a terrible idea it was. \"I guess.\"\n\n\"No time like the present.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "One of the things Steve liked about Warwick Hall was how clean it was. Everything was polished wood, glowing brass, well-sprung leather seats shaped like a friendly invitation for your ass, black-and-white tile laid out on the floor in a way that would have tickled Euclid.\n\nThat atmosphere broke as soon as you went out the front door, though. To get back to the modern world you had to climb a couple of flights of greasy concrete steps up to the street. The stairwell was black with ancient dirt, the sort of place stray cats go to die. Drifts of McCrap accumulated in the corners\u2014cigarette butts, fast food bags, a Dasani bottle half full of tobacco spit. Tonight it was chilly, which kept the smell down, but in the summer he held his breath while he climbed.\n\nCarolyn didn't like it either. She had removed her rubber boots in the bar, but put them back on at the threshold, then took them off again at the top of the stairs. Her leg warmers were candy-striped in the many colors of the unfashionable rainbow. Oh hell, I've got to ask. \"Where did you even get those things, anyway?\"\n\n\"Hmm?\"\n\nHe pointed at the galoshes.\n\n\"I'm staying with a lady. She had them in her closet.\" Without the rain boots her feet were bare. The parking lot was crushed gravel. Walking on it didn't seem to bother her.\n\n\"That's my truck over there.\" It was a white work truck, a couple of years old, HODGSON PLUMBING stenciled in red letters on the door. The locks on his equipment cases were Medeco, the best. \"Chicks dig it, I know. Try to contain yourself.\" It had turned cold after the sun went down. His breath puffed white as he spoke.\n\nShe tilted her head at him, a quizzical expression on her face.\n\n\"Not funny. Never mind.\" He got in the driver's side. She fumbled at the door handle.\n\n\"Is it jammed?\"\n\nShe gave a small, nervous smile and fumbled harder. He reached across the seat and opened the door from the inside.\n\n\"Thanks.\" She tossed her galoshes and the bag with the $327,000 onto the floorboard, there to languish among the Mountain Dew bottles and empty bags of beef jerky. She curled up on the bench seat, legs folded beneath her, flexible as an eight-year-old.\n\n\"I got a spare jacket in the back. You want to borrow it? It's chilly out.\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No, thanks. I'm fine.\"\n\nSteve cranked the truck. It rumbled to life. Cold air began to pour out of the vents. Last chance, he thought. Last chance to back out of this. He glanced at the floorboard. In the phlegmy yellow glow of the streetlamp he could see a bundle of money outlined against the canvas of the bag. He grimaced the way you do when you swallow medicine. \"You got an address for this place?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then how am I\u2014\"\n\n\"Take a left out of the parking lot. Go two miles and\u2014\"\n\nHe held up a hand. \"Not yet.\"\n\n\"I thought we were doing it tonight?\"\n\n\"We are. But first we've got to talk.\"\n\n\"Ah. OK.\"\n\n\"You ever done this before?\"\n\n\"Not exactly. No.\"\n\n\"You the high-strung type? Nervous?\"\n\nShe flashed a small, wry smile. \"You know, I'm honestly not sure. If I am, I've got it under control.\"\n\n\"Well, that's good. I don't know what you're expecting, but this isn't going to be like bungee jumping. As a first-timer, you might be a little tense. That's normal. But after the first couple of times, it's actually pretty boring, more like helping a buddy move to a new apartment than anything you'd see in the movies.\"\n\nShe was nodding. \"I get that. I\u2014\"\n\nHe held up a hand. \"However. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. You got a cell phone?\"\n\nShe looked confused for a moment, then shook her head.\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Really. I don't have any kind of phone. Is that a problem?\"\n\n\"Nope. I was going to have you get rid of it. They can be tracked. It's just that everyone seems to have them these days. You got gloves?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I got a pair you can use. You'll need to put your galoshes back on too\u2014footprints. They're probably not going to give the full CSI hair-and-fiber treatment, not for a simple burglary, but they might dust for prints. Other than that, just follow my lead and try not to touch anything you don't have to. You don't have any guns, right?\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\n\"OK, good. Guns are bad news.\" Aside from not wanting to hurt anyone, Steve was a convicted felon. If he were caught in possession of a gun he'd be looking at five years, minimum.\n\n\"Let me get some things.\" Steve took his own cell phone out of his pocket and removed the SIM card. He knew that cops could put together a pretty accurate map of where a person had been by the cell towers their phone connected to as they moved around. If I remove the card, that should make it impossible, right? He wasn't sure. Back when he used to do this, cell phones didn't exist. It crossed his mind to put the phone in one of the equipment lockers in the back of the truck. He figured that would work about like an elevator in terms of insulating the signal. But you never know. Ah, fuck it, he thought. I'll just smash the thing. Probably that was overkill, but if he was going to do this he was going to do it right.\n\nHe was parked in the back corner of the lot\u2014under a light, but away from everybody else, and mostly out of sight. Old habits die hard. He smiled a little. The metal locker over the wheel well swung open on well-oiled hinges.\n\nHe started pulling out tools. A cordless Makita drill, a couple of screwdrivers, a small crowbar, a five-pound hammer, and a slim jim he had made himself out of sheet steel from Ace Hardware. Just, y'know, for practice. He wrapped his cell phone in a towel and ruined it with two whacks from the hammer. The rest of the stuff he put into his tool belt along with a couple of pairs of leather work gloves, then stuck the tool belt in a knapsack. Long time since I put a kit together. He felt a burst of something like nostalgia and squashed it down hard. He hated how he missed this so much. He wanted to do better and, mostly, he did. Even after ten years the slap that ended his burglary career, and the accompanying verdict\u2014You little asshole\u2014were never far from his thoughts.\n\nBut\u2026three hundred grand. He sighed. \"How far is it?\"\n\n\"About twenty minutes.\"\n\n\"What kind of place is it? House? Apartment?\"\n\n\"It's a house.\"\n\n\"Stand-alone? Not a duplex or anything?\"\n\n\"Yeah, stand-alone. It's in a subdivision, but the neighborhood is mostly empty. The owner works night shift, so we should have all the time we need.\"\n\n\"All right. First thing is, I've got to get us another car.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Well, among other things, this one has my name on the door.\"\n\n\"Oh. OK.\"\n\nThey drove to the airport. He parked in short-term parking, then slung the knapsack over his shoulder. They walked into the terminal and out the other side, then took a shuttle to long-term parking. He walked down the rows until he found a car with the ticket stub in plain sight. It was a dark-blue Toyota Camry, just about the blandest car on the road. The owner had dropped it off the day before. Perfect.\n\n\"Stand there, would you?\" he said.\n\nCarolyn took her place in front of the wheel well. He hung the crowbar from a belt loop and put the wire cutters in his back pocket. Then he took the long strip of sheet steel out of the knapsack, slid it in between the rubber and the window, and slipped open the lock. He was ready for the car alarm to go off, but it never did. He popped the trunk from inside the car and tossed his knapsack in there. \"You coming?\"\n\nShe walked around and got in on the passenger side. \"That was quick,\" she said. \"My sister was right about you.\"\n\n\"That's why they pay me the big bucks.\" He popped the cover off the steering column with the crowbar and used the screwdriver to pop out the ignition locking bolt. The Toyota started on the first try. Some of the exits from the lot were automated, but the electronic trail that his credit card would leave if he swiped it would be more or less conclusive proof of grand-theft Camry. So instead he replaced the metal cover on the steering column and had cash ready when he got to the window. He needn't have bothered. The lot attendant, a bored-looking black guy in his fifties, was watching TV. He never looked up.\n\nThey slipped out into the night."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "In his secret heart, Steve fancied that he was a Buddhist.\n\nA couple of years ago, following a whim, he'd picked up a copy of Buddhism for Dummies at the bookstore. He kept it under the bed. Now it was dog-eared, the pages stained with the pizza grease and spilled Coke of repeated readings. Sometimes when he couldn't sleep he fantasized about giving up all his worldly belongings and moving to Tibet. He would join a monastery, ideally one about halfway up a mountain. He would shave his head. There would be bamboo, pandas, and tea. He would wear an orange robe. Probably in the afternoon there would be chanting.\n\nBuddhism, he thought, is a clean religion. You never heard about how eight people\u2014two of them children\u2014just got blown the fuck up as part of the long-standing conflict between Buddhists and whoever. Buddhists never knocked on your door just when the game was getting good to hand you a tract about what a great guy Prince Siddhartha was. Maybe it was just the fact that he didn't know any Buddhists in real life, but he clung to the hope that they might really be different.\n\nProbably that was bullshit. Probably if you actually went to a Buddhist service you'd find out that they were just as petty and fucked-up as everyone else. Maybe between chants they talked about how so-and-so was wearing last season's robe, or how the incense little Zhang Wei burned the other day was the shitty, cheap stuff because his family was so poor, ha-ha-ha. But this was Virginia and he was a plumber. Why not pretend?\n\nHe never went so far as to even fantasize about buying a plane ticket, of course. He wasn't stupid. Pretend for the sake of argument that his vision of the Buddhist ideal had a basis in reality. The fact that he himself was still just a piece of shit with a shaved head and an orange robe was bound to come out sooner or later.\n\nProbably sooner, he thought. The Buddha was pretty clear on the subject of stealing. \"If you kill, lie, or steal\u2026you dig up your own roots. And if you cannot master yourself, the harm you do turns against you Grievously.\" The g in \"Grievously\" was capitalized.\n\nAnd yet, he thought, with the mental equivalent of a sigh, here I am.\n\n\"\u2014left up there,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Say again, please?\"\n\n\"I said turn left up there, by the red car.\"\n\nThey had been driving about twenty minutes, Carolyn giving directions. \"Left here. Right on the big road. Whoops, sorry, turn around.\" Her voice was low and throaty. It was hypnotic. Also, Steve's sense of direction was crap. Five minutes out from the airport he'd already been utterly lost. They might as well have been in Fiji. Nagoya. The moon. \"Are you sure you know where you're going?\"\n\n\"Oh yes.\"\n\n\"Are we getting close?\"\n\n\"Another few minutes. Not long.\"\n\nShe was sitting curled up in the passenger seat with her back to the door. Her posture, together with her tight bicycle shorts, showed a lot of leg. He was having trouble not staring at that leg. Every time they drove past a billboard or road sign on her side he'd sneak a peek. She didn't seem to mind or, indeed, notice.\n\n\"Turn there,\" she said.\n\n\"Here?\"\n\n\"No, next one down. Where that\u2014yes.\" She smiled at him, her eyes feral in the moonlight. \"We're close now.\"\n\nThe road ahead was dark. They were well outside the city, edging into farm country. They drove into a mostly empty subdivision. It was big, or designed to be big\u2014it had enough acreage for maybe a hundred houses with postage-stamp-sized yards. There were a few finished ones here and there, a few more poured foundations with weeds sprouting from the cracks. But mostly the lots stood empty.\n\n\"Perfect,\" Steve muttered.\n\n\"There.\" She pointed. \"That one.\"\n\nSteve followed her finger out to a smallish ranch house painted a pale shade of green, hideous even in the dark. The driveway was empty. The only source of light was a lonely-looking streetlamp on the corner.\n\nHe rolled past the yard slowly, which reminded him in some nonspecific way of a rap video, which made him feel ridiculous. A hundred yards farther down the road curved just enough that the house vanished from sight behind a stand of trees. He parked there and turned to look at Carolyn.\n\n\"Last chance,\" he said. \"You're sure you want to do this? If you'll tell me what it is you're after I can\u2014\"\n\nHer eyes flared in the moonlight. \"No. I have to go with you.\"\n\n\"All righty, then.\" He snuck another peek at her legs, then got out. The soft thunk of the door shutting sounded satisfactorily covert. He walked around to the back of the car and retrieved the knapsack. \"Are you\u2014\"\n\nShe brushed the back of his neck with her fingertips. He shivered, the little hairs standing up. He turned around to find her very close, close enough that he could smell her. She smelled a bit like she hadn't bathed in\u2026well, a while\u2014but it was a good kind of hadn't bathed in a while\u2014musky, feminine. His nostrils flared.\n\n\"Come on,\" she said. She had put the galoshes back on over the leg warmers.\n\nWhen they reached the house, Steve checked inside the mailbox. It was stuffed full, easily a week's worth of junk. Owner hasn't been home in a while, he thought. Perfect. He pulled out a magazine and angled it in the moonlight until he could read the cover. It read Police Chief Magazine in big blue letters, and was addressed to\u2026\"Detective Marvin Miner.\" He looked at Carolyn. \"This guy's a cop?\"\n\n\"Looks that way.\"\n\n\"What'd he do to you?\"\n\n\"Ruined my silk dress.\"\n\n\"How'd he do that?\"\n\n\"He got blood on it.\"\n\n\"Hmm. Did you try rinsing it with club so\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, it was too far gone. Are you in or not?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026I guess it doesn't make much difference, if we do it right. Anyway, it doesn't look like Detective Miner is home.\"\n\n\"Mmm.\"\n\nSteve hesitated, then stepped onto the driveway. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell. No response from inside the house.\n\n\"Why'd you do that?\"\n\n\"I wasn't expecting anybody, but if there's a Rottweiler or something it would be good to know about it now.\"\n\n\"Ah. Good thought.\" Her voice dripped with distaste.\n\n\"You don't like dogs?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"They're dangerous.\"\n\nSteve gave her a quizzical look. Most nights when he got home his cocker spaniel, Petey, wagged his tail so hard his whole butt wiggled. Maybe when this is done me and Petey will go to Tibet. He imagined hiking up the hill to the monastery on a bright spring day, Petey bouncing along beside him, Inner Peace waiting for them at the top of the hill.\n\nBusiness first. Steve picked up the doormat, looking for a key. Nothing. He slid his finger across the top of the frame. Carolyn looked at him quizzically. \"A lot of times people keep spare keys sitting out.\" The tips of his gloves came away dusty. There was no key. \"Oh well,\" he said. \"Have to do this the hard way.\"\n\nThey walked around to the back. Steve took out the crowbar and muscled it in between the door and jamb at the level of the bolt.\n\nHe slipped a Phillips and a flathead into his pocket, along with a pair of wire cutters. \"If the alarm is set you usually get a full minute to disarm it,\" he said. \"That should be plenty of time. You wait out here, though. I don't want to be tripping over you.\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\nSteve pulled at the crowbar, grunted. The doorjamb bent open an inch or so, enough that the bolt slipped free of its housing. The door popped open into darkness. Warm air rolled out from inside. He waited, but nothing beeped.\n\n\"I think we caught a break. The alarm isn't set.\"\n\nInside, it was very dark. All the windows were curtained\u2014thick heavy things that the moonlight and that lonely streetlamp couldn't penetrate. The only light in the living room came from an enormous stereo rack, fully as tall as Steve himself. The pale blue LEDs of the receiver shone down over a La-Z-Boy recliner rising up out of a sea of crumpled Busch cans.\n\n\"What are you waiting for?\" Carolyn asked. The sound of her voice came from in front of him. Steve didn't quite jump, but he was startled. He hadn't heard her move.\n\n\"Just giving my eyes a chance to adjust,\" Steve said. He glanced around. The microwave in the kitchen blinked endless green midnight over a greasy pizza box and a small mountain of crumpled paper towels. \"Hmm.\" He padded into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge, squeezing one eye shut so as not to re-blind himself. The white light of the fridge was startling in the dark. It was mostly empty of food\u2014just a half-empty jar of relish and a plastic squeeze bottle of French's mustard in the door\u2014but there was a box of beer in the back. Steve, thirsty, considered the question this posed for a moment, then shut the door and drank a plastic cup of water from the sink.\n\n\"Carolyn? You thirsty?\"\n\nShe didn't answer.\n\nHe poked his head out of the kitchen. \"Carolyn?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" She had moved again. Now her voice came from behind him. This time he did jump. He turned to look at her. She was very close.\n\n\"Do you want\u2026\" His voice trailed off.\n\nShe moved in closer, ran her fingers down his chest. \"Want what?\"\n\n\"Hmm?\"\n\n\"You asked me what I wanted.\" Faint emphasis on the last word.\n\n\"Oh. Right. Sorry. Lost my train of thought.\" He paused. \"You want me to help you look for\u2026whatever it is?\"\n\nShe said something he didn't understand.\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"Chinese. Sorry. So many languages. Sometimes when I get excited the words blend.\"\n\nHer touch was electric on his chest. He backed away from it. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Where before there had only been vague shapes, he now saw couch and television, chair and table. He walked over to a cabinet next to the television and opened it. \"Not bad,\" he said. The receiver was a German brand, much nicer than the house warranted. \"You want a stereo?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nSteve's own stereo, never particularly high-end, had developed some sort of short. He reached out for this one\u2014Hey, it's a burglary, right? His hand hovered over the power cord for a moment\u2026and then he pulled back, mentally kicking himself in the ass. If you kill, lie, or steal\u2026you dig up your own roots. When he looked up, Carolyn was gone. \"Hey,\" he said. \"Where'd you go?\"\n\n\"It's in here,\" she said. \"I found it.\"\n\nHer voice came from a different, adjoining room. Steve flinched again. Found what? He followed the sound. She was in the dining room. She sat on a long, formal table, feet dangling, silhouetted against the pale light of the streetlamp. The china cabinet loomed behind her like a black throne.\n\n\"Carolyn?\"\n\n\"Come here,\" she said. Her legs were slightly parted. He went and stood before her.\n\n\"Where is it?\"\n\n\"Here,\" she said. She reached out to him, slid her hand around the back of his neck, pulled him in close.\n\n\"Wait,\" Steve said, not resisting much. \"What?\"\n\nShe tilted her head a little, leaned forward, kissed him. Her lips were full, soft. She tasted of salt and copper. For a moment, he let himself go, sank down into the kiss. But it was in his nature that he did not close his eyes.\n\nBehind her, reflected in the glass plate of the china cabinet, something moved.\n\nSteve jerked away, spun around. In the shadows at the corner of the room stood a man. He was holding a long gun.\n\n\"Whoa,\" Steve said, raising his hands. \"Wait a minute\u2026\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Steve,\" Carolyn said. Somehow she had managed to slip off the table and move to the other side of the room.\n\n\"You're under arrest,\" the man said. He leveled the gun at Steve.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. He raised his hands slowly. \"OK. No problem.\"\n\nThe man stepped forward into the pale light of the streetlamp. His hair stood on end. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. What the hell is wrong with him? Thorazine? Brain damage?\n\n\"You're under arrest,\" the man said again, raising the gun to his shoulder.\n\n\"Right,\" Steve said. \"OK. Should I turn around now, or\u2026?\"\n\n\"Stop or I'll shoot,\" the man said. A trickle of drool ran down the side of his mouth.\n\n\"Wait! Wait, I'll\u2014\"\n\n\"Do it,\" Carolyn said.\n\nThe man fired. The muzzle flash was huge and bright in the small room, but Steve seemed not to hear the shot at all. When his vision cleared he was on his back, looking up. Behind him he heard a small, tinkling sound. He rolled his eyes toward it, saw a chunk of glass fall out of the china cabinet. It made a pretty sound. What's that on the plates? he wondered. It's all dark and drippy.\n\nCarolyn leaned into his field of vision. \"I'm sorry,\" she said again.\n\n\"I\u2026help\u2026I gotta get home\u2026gotta feed Petey\u2026got\u2026go\u2026\"\n\nShe reached down, touched his cheek.\n\nDarkness."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "When Steve was dead, Carolyn took a moment to get hold of herself. She squeezed her eyes shut and blew out a long breath.\n\n\"You're under arrest,\" Detective Miner said again. He had resumed tottering around. Now he was in the corner, his back to her. He took a step forward and bumped into the wall. She walked over to him, turned him around gently, took the shotgun from him. He surrendered it without protest.\n\nShe gave it an expert pump, jacking another round into the chamber, then set it on the dining-room table. She was careful not to look at Steve's body. Then she took Detective Miner by the shoulders and steered him into the archway between the dining room and the kitchen.\n\n\"Stand here,\" she said.\n\nHe focused on her for a moment, then rolled his eyes again. \"You're under arrest,\" he said. He didn't move, though.\n\nCarolyn walked around to Steve's right side. She picked up the shotgun and wrapped the dead fingers of his left hand around the pump, holding it in place with her own. She put his right index finger on the trigger. She aimed the gun at Detective Miner.\n\nMiner watched this without much interest. \"Stop or I'll shoot.\"\n\nShe pulled the trigger. The blast caught Miner in the chest, obliterating his heart and lungs and sending a good bit of tissue out a fist-sized hole in his back. He dropped to the floor.\n\nShe set the gun down and walked over to the light switch. There she took off her right glove and rolled her thumb across the brass plate around the switch, careful not to smear. When she was done she put the glove back on.\n\nFinished now, she took her hands away, leaving the gun in Steve's grip. She turned around and faced him. Even now she did not allow herself to weep. Instead, with infinite gentleness, she reached down and shut his eyes. \"Dui bu chi,\" she said, touching the skin of his cheek. \"U kamakutu nu,\" she said. \"Je suis d\u00e9sol\u00e9e\" and \"Ek het jou lief\" and \"Lo siento,\" \"Main\u016b m\u0101fa kara d\u0113v\u014d\" and \"Het spijt me\" and \"Je mi l\u00edto,\" \"Ik hald fan di\" and \"Ben bunu \u00e7\u00f6zecektir\" and \"A tahn nagara\" and on and on.\n\nShe sat beside Steve's body, rocking back and forth a little, hugging herself. She took his head in her lap. Silver moonlight lit the room full of broken things. Alone, she dispensed with lies. All that night she held him, brushing his hair with her fingertips, speaking softly, saying, \"I'm sorry,\" saying, \"forgive me,\" saying, \"I'll make it better\" and \"I promise it will be OK,\" over and over and over again in every language that there ever was."
            },
            {
                "title": "FROM THE EAST, THUNDER",
                "text": "After Isha and Asha were killed, David brought the two deer carcasses back with him to the Library, one over each shoulder. The next morning he skinned them in what had been the driveway of Lisa's parents. Father insisted that Carolyn help. She did this without complaint, delivering the rubbery, bloody pelts of her friends to Lisa for their leather, their intestines to Richard for bow strings. Father himself took the carcasses. That afternoon he spitted them, rubbed them with sugar and cumin, and roasted them in his bronze bull.\n\nCarolyn asked Father not to make a big deal about her homecoming, but he insisted. Everyone who was anyone in Father's court attended. The ambassador of the forgotten lands came bearing the regrets of his mistress. He wore a black robe, smoking hot against the cold of the living world. The last Monstruwaken made an appearance as well, which was a great honor. He lived barricaded in the crown of the black pyramid at the end of time, and rarely manifested in the former world. Some said that he was just an older incarnation of Father himself. Carolyn watched closely for signs of this either way, but saw nothing. There were others as well, two dozen in all\u2014the Duke, Liesel, others she did not yet know. The noble guests laughed and bantered among themselves as they ate. In the firelight the deer grease was shiny on their cheeks.\n\nCarolyn did not eat. Even before all of the guests had arrived, she asked to be excused to her cell. She wished, she said, to catch up with her studies. Father peered at her for a moment, then nodded. A week or so later he tested her, quizzing her about the events of the summer, first in Mandarin and then in the argot of low dragons. Father said that he was pleased with her progress. Carolyn smiled and thanked him.\n\nLife went on this way for some time.\n\nThe day Michael knocked on her door was perhaps a year after the banquet. She would have been about ten years old then. Carolyn's chamber beneath the jade floor of the Library was cool and dark, but out in Garrison Oaks the summer solstice was approaching. They were allowed to go outside in the evenings, but after what had happened the week before, she did not want to. She shuddered. Not after Rachel.\n\nRachel's catalog was concerned with the prediction and manipulation of possible futures. Sometimes this was accomplished via mathematical calculation. Other times she would read portents in the clouds, the waves. But for the most part, Rachel learned of the future by sending out agents. The agents were her children or, rather, their ghosts. In order to make agents of them, Father required that Rachel strangle them in their cribs, usually at about the age of nine months. It was important, Father said, that she do this herself.\n\nRachel first came to understand this on her twelfth birthday, three weeks previous. Two weeks later she attempted to escape. One night when Father was away she ran for it, darting through the long shadows of summer twilight, bare feet crunching down on lawns grown yellow and brittle in the drought. Thane saw her, of course. He and the other sentinels took her down just short of the subdivision sign. They ripped her to bits as the children watched.\n\nRachel's right hand, bloody, poked up out of the mass of furry bodies. Two fingers were gone. She grasped for\u2014\n\nThere was a sound at Carolyn's door, very soft, like the brush of a paw against wood. For a moment she considered ignoring it. Father was away on some errand. David had begun to look at her in ways that made her uncomfortable. The cell doors locked from inside as well as out, and if she\u2014\n\n\"Carolyn?\" It was Michael.\n\nCarolyn smiled. She undid the bolts that barred the door on her side and opened the door a crack. Michael stood in the hallway, naked and sunburned. On his shoulders she saw a fine white crust. Salt? He was clutching a scrap of paper. She waved him in, then shut the door behind him and locked it up again.\n\nHer cell was about four paces on a side, lined with bookshelves on every wall. The shelves were filled with Father's texts and Carolyn's notes on them. There were no windows, of course. She might have decorated\u2014it wasn't forbidden, and most of the others had a painting or two\u2014but she didn't. Her desk was the only furniture to speak of. The desk also stood out for being a notch or two above strictly utilitarian\u2014cherry wood, leather top, and some scrollwork. Her sleeping roll was merely comfortable. But the wall shelves were filled to bursting with books, and knee-high stacks teetered here and there across the floor.\n\n\"Michael!\" She hugged him, unmindful of his nakedness. \"It's been ages! Where have you been?\"\n\n\"In the\u2026\" His mouth opened and shut a couple of times. No sound came out. After a few seconds of this he waved his hand vaguely behind him.\n\n\"The forest?\" she suggested.\n\n\"No. Not forest.\" He pantomimed swimming.\n\n\"The ocean?\"\n\n\"Yes. That.\" Michael smiled at her, grateful for the help. \"I learn with\u2014study with\u2014Diver Eye.\" Diver Eye, a sea tortoise, was one of Father's ministers. Loyal and ancient, he had sole charge of the Pacific Ocean, and sole responsibility for guarding against the things in the Sea of Okhotsk. Michael touched Carolyn's cheek with one salty hand. \"Missed you.\"\n\n\"I missed you, too. How was the outside world?\" Carolyn spent almost all of her time inside the Library itself, with only occasional field trips to test her fluency in a new language.\n\nMichael's face was troubled. \"Different. Not like here. The ocean is very deep.\"\n\nCarolyn thought about this for a moment. There didn't seem to be anything to say to that. \"Yes. Yes, it is.\"\n\n\"How is here?\"\n\n\"Beg pardon?\"\n\n\"How\u2026how have\u2026it been here?\"\n\n\"Oh! Well, about the same. Maybe a little worse, lately. Margaret keeps waking everyone up with her screaming. Honestly, I think she's going nuts. It must be all those horrible cobwebby books Father has her read. Lately she's convinced Father's going to murder her soon.\" Carolyn rolled her eyes. \"She's so melodramatic.\"\n\n\"Oh. That is sad. And David?\" Michael and David had been good friends, back when they were Americans. They still played together when they could.\n\n\"Oh, you know David. Just a big goofball, he looooves everybody.\" Carolyn rolled her eyes. \"He's nice enough, but he's always so damn cheerful. It gets old.\"\n\n\"Yes. The wolves have a saying\u2014\" Here Michael made wolf noises.\n\n\"Um. Yes.\"\n\n\"It means, uh, 'heart too big for the hunt.' David is, maybe, too friendly? Too kind to be a fight?\"\n\n\"I think the word is 'fighter,'\" she said gently. \"But you may be right. Father said something very similar a few weeks back.\"\n\n\"And you?\"\n\n\"Could be worse.\" This was true, but she didn't know that yet. She thought she was lying. Then, to change the subject, \"What do you have there?\" She pointed at a scrap of paper he was holding.\n\nMichael held it up and looked at it. His brow wrinkled. The paper was covered in writing\u2014cuneiform, she saw. Not Pelapi. \"Father says\u2026\" He waved his hand up and down the paper, then handed it to her.\n\n\"Of course.\" It was fairly common for Father to send one child or another in to her for translations, and Michael could barely remember Pelapi words. Most of his education came from the woods and the creatures therein, not books. She took the paper from him and scanned it for a moment. \"Shall I read you the whole thing?\"\n\nMichael looked pained. \"Could you\u2026\" He made a squishing gesture with his hands and looked at her hopelessly. \"I not\u2026words are hard, now. For me.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Her tone was soft. \"I'll summarize it for you.\" He looked blank. \"Fewer words. Give me a minute.\" She skimmed the document with a practiced eye. \"This is old,\" she said. \"Well, it's a copy. But it's talking about a battle that happened in the second century, maybe sixty-five thousand years ago.\" He didn't understand that, either. She tried again. \"Long, long ago. Many winters, many lifetimes.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"It's about a\u2026hmmm. Give me a second.\" She went to the rear wall and took down an ancient, dusty scroll. She scanned it quickly, looking something up. She nodded. \"It's about Father, sort of.\"\n\n\"Father?\"\n\n\"Well, kind of. It says here that, mmm, originally the dawning didn't go as planned.\" \"The dawning\" was what everyone called the battle that marked the end of the third age. Everything after that was considered part of the fourth age, the current one, the age of Father's reign. \"The first sunrise worked OK, and the um, Silent Ones\u2014I think it's Silent Ones?\u2014were driven into shadow. But when Father prosecuted the final attack against the Emperor\u2014whoa! it says here that Father was 'cast down and broken.'\" She looked at Michael, eyebrows raised.\n\nHe gave her a blank look. \"I not\u2026I do not\u2014\"\n\n\"It means that Father was getting his ass kicked.\"\n\n\"Father?\" He looked shocked.\n\nShe shrugged. \"That's what it says here. Anyway, so Father was getting his ass kicked by this Emperor guy.\" Carolyn had heard of the Emperor before, but beyond the fact that he existed and that he had ruled the third age, not much was known. He must have been quite a character to go around casting Father down, though. \"Blah, blah\u2026smite, smite\u2026looking pretty bad for Father\u2026and then\u2026\" Carolyn trailed off.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe looked up. \"Sorry.\" She read aloud: \"'And then, from the east, thunder. And at the sound of this Ablakha'\u2014that's something they used to call Father\u2014'Ablakha did rise up. And looking to the east, Ablakha did see that the thunder was a voice of a man, and that this man was known to him. This one had been the\u2026' Um, I don't know what this word means. 'This man had been the something-or-other of the Emperor, and his trusted confidant. But now this one had seen wisdom, and cast his lot in with Ablakha. And seeing this, Ablakha's\u2026' mmm, fury? No, not fury. His warlike heart.\n\n\" 'Seeing this, Ablakha's warlike heart was renewed, and he did rise up. So too did the armies of Ablakha that had been rent asunder'\u2014killed, I guess?\u2014'rise up anew.' Blah, blah\u2026smite, smite, smite\u2026'and thus did dawn the fourth age of the world, which is the age of Ablakha.'\" She handed the paper back to Michael. \"Did that make sense?\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"OK, good. So what's all this for, anyway?\"\n\nMichael shrugged. \"I am to meet this one tomorrow\u2014begin my learning with him.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Her heart sank. Michael was the closest thing she had to a friend. She thought about asking how long he would be away, but he wouldn't know. Well, she thought, at least we've got tonight. In the Library you took your good times where you could find them.\n\n\"Name,\" Michael says. \"What was his name?\"\n\n\"Father?\"\n\n\"No. The thunder of the east. Him.\"\n\nCarolyn squinted down at the manuscript in her small hands, already dry and permanently stained with ink.\n\n\"Nobununga,\" she said. \"His name was Nobununga.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Denial That Shreds",
                "text": "On the morning after she murdered Detective Miner for the second time, Carolyn came awake on the floor of Mrs. McGillicutty's living room. It was shortly after dawn. As was her habit, she lay very still at first, eyes closed, careful not to give any sign that she was conscious. Mornings were always hardest for her. As far as she knew, no one\u2014not Father, not David, not even Emily\u2014could see into her sleeping mind, so it was only there that she did her real planning. But when she was fresh out of sleep it was difficult to keep the truth of her heart from tangling in the lies of her conscious mind, and her fingertips often trembled.\n\nShe sniffed the air in the room, learning what she could that way. Michael was gone. As they agreed, he had left before sunrise. They would meet later at the bronze bull.\n\nMost of the others were still there, still sleeping. Faintly, from the back bedroom, she caught a whiff of sour sweat and fresh blood\u2014David. Mingled with that, the smell of brown earth and rotting meat\u2014Margaret. Alicia was closer, just back from the far future and still smelling of methane. Mrs. McGillicutty was making food in the kitchen\u2014coffee, potatoes frying in garlic, some kind of sauce.\n\nCarolyn opened her eyes the barest crack. This American room still looked alien to her, like a half-remembered dream. In calendar years, Carolyn was something like thirty years old, but calendar years were only part of it. By the time it occurred to her to wonder what her true age was, she could only make the roughest guess. She understood all languages\u2014past and present, human and beast, real and imagined. She could speak most of them as well, though some required special equipment. How many in all? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? And how long to learn them? Even these days, it still took her most of a week to master a new one. But when she looked in the mirror she saw a young woman. Father had given her things to improve her memory, to help her mind work more quickly. But it was also true that time worked differently in the Library. And Carolyn, more than any of them, had passed her life in there.\n\nSo the America that had once been her home now felt exotic. The thing called a \"couch,\" while comfortable enough, was far too tall, much higher than the pillows she was used to. In the corner was a box called a \"television\" or \"teevee\" that could show moving pictures, but you couldn't step inside it or touch things. There were no candles, no oil lamps. And so on.\n\nMrs. McGillicutty was a living woman, an American, who had taken them into her home of her own free will. Well\u2026more or less. Lisa had had a chat with her, but the effects of that were only temporary. Also, Jennifer gave her a blue powder that made her less curious about their eccentricities. But it was also true that Mrs. McGillicutty, a widow who lived alone, liked having the company.\n\nThey had been there about six weeks. By the second night of their banishment from Garrison Oaks and the Library, it became clear that the whatever-it-was keeping them out of Garrison Oaks wasn't going away. Peter and a couple of others had been grumbling about sleeping rough. Everybody was hungry. They might have gone to one of Father's courtiers, but David thought it was unwise. \"Until we know who is behind this, we keep to ourselves.\"\n\nOn the horizon, the lights of America glittered.\n\nSo they set out en masse, walking east down the westbound lane of Highway 78. A mile or so outside of their valley, they walked up a hill, turned into the first neighborhood they found, and knocked on a door at random. It was just before midnight. Carolyn stood in front. David towered behind her, spear in hand.\n\nMrs. McGillicutty, a widow whose only son didn't ever call, came to the door in her housecoat.\n\n\"Hi!\" Carolyn said brightly. \"We're foreign exchange students! There's been some sort of mix-up with the program, and we don't have a place to stay! We were wondering if you might put us up for the night?\"\n\nCarolyn wore her student robe, a gray-green cotton thing along the lines of a kimono with a hood, tied at the waist with a sash. The others were dressed similarly. They did not look like foreign exchange students.\n\n\"Smile,\" Carolyn said under her breath, in Pelapi. They all did. Mrs. McGillicutty was not reassured.\n\nOh well, Carolyn thought. It was worth a shot. A lot of cultures had a tradition of sheltering strangers. Evidently not America, though.\n\n\"Er\u2026I think there's a Holiday Inn just down the road, there,\" Mrs. McGillicutty said. \"On the left.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Carolyn said. \"That probably won't work out.\" Then, in Pelapi, \"Lisa, can you\u2026?\"\n\nLisa stepped forward and touched Mrs. McGillicutty on the cheek. The older woman flinched at first, but when Lisa spoke her face softened. The sounds Lisa made weren't in any language that Carolyn knew, and if there were any sort of grammar or even a pattern to them, she had never noticed it. Whatever it was, it was outside of her catalog. But it worked on the old woman just as it did on all Americans. After a moment she said, \"Of course, dear. Won't you please come in?\"\n\nThey did.\n\nEven under the effects of Lisa's whatever-it-was, Mrs. McGillicutty was cool to them at first. Carolyn could see that she was afraid. She asked a lot of questions, and didn't seem satisfied with Carolyn's answers. Then the subject of food came up.\n\n\"You're hungry?\" Mrs. McGillicutty said. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes. If it isn't too much trouble, anything you have would be\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll make a lasagna!\" She grinned, perhaps for the first time in years. \"No, two lasagnas! Growing boys! Won't take but a moment!\"\n\nActually, it was more like a couple of hours, but she also put together some things she called amuse-bouche, which meant \"mouth amusement,\" a term Carolyn rather liked. These were bite-sized snacks of cheese, olives, salami, bread fried in oil and garlic, things like that. She had wine as well. Jennifer's silver pipe made a few rounds. By three a.m., when the lasagna arrived, they were all pleasantly buzzed and laughing, temporarily carefree.\n\nThere was only one bad moment. David, done with his olives, went to the counter for more wine. He dipped his finger in the cheese mixture and slurped off a bit of goo. Mrs. McGillicutty slapped his hand.\n\nEveryone froze.\n\nAh, shit, Carolyn thought. This was going so well.\n\nDavid's face clouded. He towered over the old woman. She tilted her head back and met his eyes. By now she understood that they did not speak English, at least not well. She waggled her finger in his face. David's eyes widened.\n\nCarolyn looked away and braced herself for blood.\n\nMrs. McGillicutty pointed at the sink. David looked confused. Everyone was confused actually\u2026but at least the old woman was still alive.\n\n\"Um\u2026David?\" Richard said after a moment.\n\nDavid glared at him.\n\n\"I think she wants you to turn on the taps? To wash your hands?\" He pantomimed doing this.\n\nDavid thought about this for a moment, then nodded. He walked over to the sink and turned on the water. Oh no, Carolyn thought, despairing. He's going to drown her in it. Boil her. Something.\n\nBut he didn't. Instead, David washed his hands, first letting the clear water rinse off the caked dirt and clotted blood, then giving them a good lather with something called Palmolive. When he was done his hands were shiny and clean halfway to his elbows. He showed them to Mrs. McGillicutty.\n\n\"You're a good boy,\" she said in English. \"What's his name, dear?\"\n\n\"David,\" Carolyn said. Her lips felt numb. \"His name is David.\"\n\n\"You're a good boy, David.\"\n\nDavid smiled at her. Then, perhaps the most amazing thing Carolyn ever witnessed happened. David mined the Paleolithic depths of his memory and returned with an English phrase: \"Tanks\u2026gamma.\"\n\nMrs. McGillicutty grinned.\n\nDavid grinned.\n\nMrs. McGillicutty presented her cheek.\n\nDavid, bending almost to the level of his waist, kissed it.\n\nJennifer looked at her little pipe, blinked, looked back up. \"Are you guys seeing this?\"\n\n\"Seeing, yes,\" Peter said.\n\nMrs. McGillicutty got a clean spoon and scooped out a bit of the cheese-and-egg mixture. She fed it to David, then used the spoon to wipe a little dribble off his chin. He rubbed his tummy and made \"yum\" noises.\n\nCarolyn looked around Mrs. McGillicutty's kitchen table. All she saw were wide eyes and slack jaws.\n\nDavid filled his wineglass and came back to the table. \"What?\" he said, looking at them. \"Oh, for gosh sakes. You guys always act like I'm some kind of ogre.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "Now, just over a month later, Carolyn rose and tiptoed between sleeping bodies to Mrs. McGillicutty's sanctum sanctorum. Some yellow sauce bubbled gently on the stove next to the ingredients\u2014cream, eggs, butter. Mrs. McGillicutty stood before her encyclopedic spice rack, tapping her cheek with a finger, considering. \"I'm out of the fresh ones,\" she said apologetically, waggling a little plastic lemon.\n\nCarolyn smiled. Mrs. McGillicutty was a gentle soul. All she really wanted out of life was to be feeding someone. And she's really good at it too. Breakfast turned out to be something called Eggs Benedict. Carolyn, normally indifferent to food, had two helpings. When she could eat no more she waddled off to clean herself up.\n\nComing out of the bathroom she saw that Peter's eyes were open, watching her. Silently, she held one finger at a particular angle on her chest. This angle corresponded to the height that the sun would be in the sky at around ten a.m.\n\nThat was when Peter would meet her and Michael at the bull.\n\nAccording to Rachel's ghost children, Nobununga would arrive sometime today. He would meet with all of them eventually, but Carolyn had arranged that she, Michael, Peter, and Alicia would have a private word first. Peter nodded silent understanding. Alicia wasn't awake yet, but Peter would pass the word along.\n\nWhen she got back to the kitchen, Jennifer was at the table. In front of her sat a steaming mug of black coffee.\n\n\"Good morning,\" Jennifer said in Pelapi.\n\n\"Good morning. Did you sleep well?\" Her smile was warm and genuine but, even though they had their privacy, she did not show Jennifer the sign she had exchanged with Peter. She liked Jennifer well enough, but at the meeting with Nobununga they would discuss matters of life and death. In Carolyn's estimation, Jennifer had drowned in her smoke and her fear a long time ago. She is of no use.\n\nMrs. McGillicutty looked over her shoulder at Carolyn. \"Could you ask your friend if she's hungry?\"\n\n\"She'll have some.\" Then, to Jennifer, \"I hope you're hungry.\"\n\nJennifer groaned. \"I'm still recovering from dinner. Is it really good?\" Carolyn gave her a grave nod. \"It's ridiculous. I don't know how she does it.\"\n\nWith real glee, Mrs. McGillicutty stirred a pot of simmering water and cracked an egg into the vortex.\n\nJennifer sighed. \"OK. Fine.\" She opened up the little leather pouch she kept her drugs in and sighed. It was almost empty. \"I don't suppose you thought to\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Carolyn said. \"Matter of fact, I did.\"\n\nJennifer grinned. \"My hero!\"\n\nCarolyn went to her bag and pulled out a foil-wrapped brick about the size of a paperback. She tossed it to Jennifer. \"There you go, Smoky.\"\n\nJennifer turned the brick over in her hands, eyeing it doubtfully. \"What's this?\"\n\n\"It's called hashish,\" Carolyn said. \"I think you'll like it. It's the same stuff you usually get, but more concentrated or something.\"\n\nJennifer unwrapped the brick, sniffed it, pinched off a piece. She crumbled it into her pipe and lit it. A moment later: \"Whoa!\"\n\n\"You like?\"\n\nShe nodded. Smoke trickled out of her nostrils. She coughed a little, then blew out the smoke with a satisfied sigh. \"My hero,\" she said again. She took another puff, then offered the pipe to Carolyn.\n\n\"No, thanks,\" she said. \"Bit early for me.\"\n\n\"Suit yourself.\" She took one last puff, then stashed the gear in her pouch. They sat in silence for a while, watching Mrs. McGillicutty cook.\n\n\"The poor woman,\" Jennifer said in Pelapi. She was shaking her head.\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"She has a heart coal. It's very distinct.\"\n\n\"She has a what?\"\n\nJennifer gave her a quizzical look. \"I thought you spoke all languages?\"\n\n\"I do and I don't,\" Carolyn said. \"I mean, I understand the words you used, but they don't mean a lot to me. I'm guessing it's a technical term? Something\u2026from your catalog?\" Then, hurriedly, \"I'm not asking you to explain!\"\n\nTalking about your catalog was the one thing truly and enthusiastically forbidden to them. Father never said why, exactly, but he was very serious about it. The general thinking was that he didn't want any one of them growing too powerful, but after what happened to David, no one ever dared ask.\n\n\"It's OK,\" Jennifer said. \"The rules are a little different for me. I can talk about medical conditions, about their symptoms, diagnosis, likely outcome, anything a patient might have a legitimate interest in. I just can't go into any kind of technical detail about treatments.\"\n\n\"Oh? I didn't know that.\" She and Jennifer didn't talk much, hadn't in years. \"So it's\u2026what? A bad valve, or something?\"\n\n\"No, no. Nothing physical. 'Heart coal' is just a term for the syndrome.\"\n\n\"Awfully flowery.\"\n\nJennifer shrugged. \"Father has a poetic streak.\"\n\nCarolyn stared at her. \"If you say so. So, what's wrong with her?\"\n\nJennifer pursed her lips, searching for the right words. \"She makes 'brah-neez.' \"\n\n\" 'Brah-neez?' You mean brownies?\"\n\n\"Right!\" Jennifer nodded. \"That! You do understand.\"\n\n\"Er\u2026no, Jennifer. I'm sorry. I'm not following you at all.\"\n\nJennifer's face fell. \"She makes brownies,\" she said. \"She doesn't eat them herself, but she makes them anyway. She does it every few days.\"\n\n\"I still don't\u2026\"\n\n\"Sometimes she sings when she does it,\" Jennifer said. \"That's how I know. It doesn't have to be words. Hearing someone sing or even just hum can tell me everything.\"\n\n\"About what?\" Carolyn asked, utterly lost.\n\n\"Her pathology,\" Jennifer said. \"The brownies aren't for her. They're for someone she lost a long time ago.\"\n\n\"Her husband?\" Mrs. McGillicutty's husband was a couple of years dead.\n\n\"No,\" Jennifer said. \"Not him. He spent most of their marriage at work. That was what defined him. And he had other women. Once she tried to talk to him about it and he beat her for it.\"\n\n\"Lovely.\"\n\nMrs. McGillicutty bustled in the kitchen, her eyes far away.\n\n\"But there was a child once. She doesn't even know it herself, but the brownies are for him.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"The boy liked getting fucked in the ass,\" Jennifer said. \"This made his father very angry. One day the two of them came home and found him doing it on the couch. It was an older man, one of his father's friends. She wouldn't have minded, not much, but it made the boy's father crazy. He beat the child rather badly, broke his left tibia and the mandible in two places. He was in the hospital for a long time, but the bones eventually healed. The damage to his spirit was catastrophic, though. The boy and his father had been close, when he was younger. The beating broke him. He started taking drugs\u2014amphetamines, mostly, but anything he could get his hands on. He withdrew. He stayed away for days at a time. Then one day he didn't come home. They spoke to him once or twice after that\u2014\" Jennifer pointed at the thing on the wall.\n\n\"It's called a telephone,\" Carolyn said. She had gotten Miner to explain about telephones before she killed him the first time.\n\n\"Right. That. They spoke twice on the tel-oh-phone, and once there was a note. He was in a place called Denver, then another one called Miami. Then they didn't get any more phone calls. That was ten years ago.\"\n\n\"Where is he?\"\n\nJennifer shook her head. \"Dead, probably. No one really knows. At first this was agony for her. Every phone call, every knock on the door ripped open the wound. She lay awake every night for years. Her husband recovered\u2026moved on, forgot. He was a man who never felt anything very deeply, just as Mrs. McGillicutty's own father was. But Eunice cannot move on. She lies alone in the dark and waits for her little boy to come home. The waiting is all that she has now.\"\n\nCarolyn looked at the sad woman bustling about in her kitchen and felt something stir inside herself. It was compassion, though she did not recognize it as such. It was not something she felt often. \"Oh,\" she said softly, \"I see.\"\n\n\"She thinks that if her son were to come home now it would be like waking from a dream. She would feel again. But the boy will not come home, and though she will not allow herself to know this, she knows it anyway. And so she makes brownies for the memory of her baby. She can't help herself\u2014faint comfort is better than no comfort at all, you see? Her world is very cold, and this is the thing she warms herself over with.\"\n\nJennifer looked at the old woman cooking eggs in the kitchen and smiled sadly. \"It is a heart coal.\"\n\n\"We should do something,\" Carolyn said. Her right index finger trembled, just the tiniest bit. \"Rachel could find her son. Even if he's dead, you could\u2014\"\n\nJennifer looked at her, surprised. \"That's kind of you, Carolyn.\" She shook her head. \"It wouldn't help, though. It never works out the way you would think. The problem with a heart coal is that the memory always diverges from the actual thing. She remembers an idealized version of her son. She's forgotten that he was selfish, that he enjoyed giving little offenses. It wasn't really an accident that they saw him and the other man fucking on the couch. If he came back now it wouldn't help. He would be gone again soon enough, only this time she would no longer have the comfort of the illusion. Probably that would destroy her. She isn't very strong.\"\n\n\"What then? Is there anything that can be done?\"\n\nJennifer shook her head. \"No. Not for this. She will either find a way to let the boy go, or she will die of the memory.\"\n\n\"I see.\" After that they sat in silence. Jennifer drank her coffee and asked for seconds. Carolyn sipped her lemon soda.\n\nThe others were waking up, drifting in. Carolyn translated breakfast orders between them and Mrs. McGillicutty, relayed thanks, helped wash things when it seemed appropriate. Then she announced that she was going to go for a walk and slipped into the woods heading west, toward the bull.\n\nAs Carolyn walked, she felt the coal of her own heart acutely. She wondered if she had ever hummed or sung around Jennifer. Certainly she wouldn't have done so in the last ten years, not since the plan began to come together, but before that she just couldn't remember. If Jennifer knew, she gave no sign, but\u2026She turned it over in her mind for a little while, then put the question aside. Jennifer might know, or she might suspect. Or she might not. It didn't matter.\n\nIt was far too late to turn back now."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "An hour later she stood on the ridge of the clearing, overlooking Highway 78. On the far side of the road down below, the weathered wooden Garrison Oaks sign creaked in the wind. It was ostentatious, in the way of real-estate signs, but now the raised wooden letters were silvery and cracked with age. Perfect, really. Among his other skills, Father was very good at camouflage.\n\nShe was a bit early, so she stopped there to collect her thoughts. The bronze bull loomed behind her, shiny clean and horrible, not quite out of sight behind the trees. That was where they were to meet, but she didn't want to be near it for any longer than she had to.\n\nShe was thinking about Nobununga. It was crucial that this informal meeting go well, and she was trying to think of things she might do to ingratiate herself with their noble guest. Ideally, she would have liked to have brought along Steve's heart\u2014currently marinating in a Ziploc bag in Mrs. McGillicutty's vegetable crisper\u2014but of course that would tip David off that things were taking place behind his back.\n\nBeyond that, she couldn't think of much. She and Nobununga had never met, and she didn't know much about him other than what she'd heard from Michael. He apparently had an appetite for raw meat, as did many of Father's ministers. There was the bit about \"thunder of the east,\" of course, but that was a long time ago. A very long time, actually. Unlike most of Father's early allies, Nobununga had never fallen from favor, never been stripped of his rank. He will be loyal, then. Unshakably so. Of course, there was more to it than that. Supposedly he and Father were friends as well, which was strange to think of. But Michael loved him without reservation, so probably he was a decent sort. And he was reputed to be clever. Possibly we can\u2014\n\nFar behind her, from deep in the forest, came the sound of cracking wood.\n\nCarolyn tilted her head, suddenly alert. That sounded big. She remembered enough from her time with Isha and Asha to be certain that this was not a falling tree. No. That was a branch cracking. Cracking under the foot of something very large indeed, by the sound. Barry O'Shea, maybe? Surely it's too soon for\u2014\n\nShe twisted on the rock to get a better angle, then let her eyes unfocus. She put all of herself into the act of listening. On the road below a car passed by, pleasantly distant. Not far off a whippoorwill called out something that she couldn't quite understand at the moment. It sounded urgent. Michael would know.\n\nCrack.\n\nThis time it was closer.\n\nShe hopped down off the boulder, suddenly wary. Isha and Asha had lived in fear of bears. She had never seen one, but Michael agreed that there were a few around, and a few unnatural creatures as well\u2014pneumovores and the like. They weren't any danger when Father was nearby, but now\u2026time to go, I think.\n\nEven so, she wasn't especially worried. Anything unnatural would smell the Library on her, and be afraid. About the worst possibility was a hungry bear, and after the week she'd had she couldn't quite manage to be afraid of something like that.\n\nAnother crack.\n\nThe whippoorwill screamed again. A rabbit darted out of the underbrush, panicky, heading for the bluff.\n\nWhatever it is, it's definitely coming my way.\n\nShe sighed and set out toward the bull at a trot. She moved with all the craft Isha had taught her, and more she had learned on her own. She was very quick, and she made absolutely no sound. She still wasn't especially worried. The bull had a presence on several planes other than the physical. Animals sensed this more than humans, and it made them uncomfortable. No natural beast would approach it. If she got within a stone's throw she would be safe.\n\nOff to her side she heard a rustling, slight but unmistakable. Is that\u2026is it stalking me?\n\nSurely not.\n\nThen, a hundred yards away, half-hidden behind a stand of crocus, she saw what was hunting her.\n\nA tiger? Really? In Virginia?\n\nTheir eyes met. The tiger nudged aside the spiky leaves of a datura stem that had broken up the lines of his face. He allowed her a brief look at the whole of him\u2014orange fur, black stripes, white underbelly\u2014then set out toward her. He trotted, hypnotically graceful, green eyes flicking here and there. His nostrils flared. Three feet of tail swished gently in his wake.\n\nHer instinct was to skid to a stop and run the other way as fast as possible. Instead, she turned toward it and sped up a little, involuntarily, as the adrenaline hit. She drew the obsidian knife from its sheath in the small of her back. Now she did scream, but it was a war cry, not panic, a low and brutal human sound.\n\nThe tiger's eyes widened ever so slightly.\n\nThen, suddenly, she was gone from its sight. With a single bound she broke left, hidden behind a thick pine. When she could no longer see it\u2014and, more important, it could not see her\u2014she launched herself at a second, smaller pine. She hit it a good five feet off the ground, wrapped her legs around it, then her arms. She began to shimmy up. The bark was rough against her chest, her belly, her thighs. It crumbled into her eyes as she climbed.\n\nA few seconds later she chanced a look down and was surprised to see that she was almost thirty feet up in the air. The ground below her was empty. For a moment she entertained the thought that she had imagined the whole thing, that it was\u2014\n\nNope, she thought, that's a tiger, sure enough.\n\nIt sidled out from behind the thick pine, languid. Even listening closely, she could hear no sound. It must have been toying with me earlier, she thought. Making little sounds, cracking branches, to see what I would do. It must have been\u2014\n\nThe tiger looked up at her and roared. Carolyn fought the urge to wet herself. She moved two more feet up the tree, as high as she dared. The trunk was getting thinner here, and she was concerned that her weight might\u2014\n\nThe tiger sat back on its haunches. It lifted one massive paw, inspected it, gave it a lick.\n\nA moment later, Michael stepped into view. \"Carolyn?\" he said. His speech was stilted, halting, the way it was when he had been conversing with animals. \"Why are you in the tree?\"\n\nShe squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth. \"Hello, Michael,\" she said. \"I'm just out for some fresh air and exercise. I thought it might be fun to climb a tree. How are you today?\"\n\n\"I am well,\" Michael said, clearly confused by the anger in her voice. \"You should come down, Carolyn. You look silly.\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, I don't doubt that I do.\" She began to inch her way down the tree.\n\nWhen her feet touched the earth Michael and the tiger watched her for a moment. Michael nodded at the ground. She looked blankly at him, not understanding. He pointed at the ground again, then patted his belly.\n\nOh, Carolyn thought. Right. She lay on her back and showed her belly to the tiger. He nuzzled her, taking a sniff here and there. When that was done Carolyn stood.\n\n\"Our Lord Nobununga honors us with his visit,\" she said.\n\nMichael translated, surprisingly deep rumbles booming from his small chest.\n\nThen, as an aside to Michael, \"You might have told me he was a fucking tiger, Michael.\"\n\nMichael blinked at her. His expression was blank, guileless. In that moment she could have strangled him and smiled as she did it.\n\n\"You didn't know? I thought everyone knew.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "With Nobununga's blessing, Carolyn backtracked a little bit to meet Peter and Alicia. She wanted to give them a bit of warning about Nobununga, spare them the sort of fright she'd had. Everyone was on edge already. She intercepted them at the bluff, half a mile or so back, walking together. That was a surprise.\n\n\"What did you tell David?\" she asked. Peter's catalog was mathematics. Alicia explored the permutations of the future. She could think of no business that might plausibly have required both of them to go out together.\n\nThey exchanged a glance.\n\n\"We, ah\u2026\" Peter began, then trailed off. He was blushing.\n\nAlicia took his hand, laced her fingers through his. \"We've been taking little walks together every so often for a while now, Carolyn,\" she said dryly. \"No one thought much of it today. I just sort of assumed that you knew?\"\n\n\"Why do you take\u2014oh! I, ah\u2026oh. I see.\" Carolyn rubbed her forehead. \"Sorry. The evidence is mounting that I need to be a bit more observant. But never mind that. Nobununga is here.\"\n\n\"He is? Where?\"\n\nCarolyn pointed down at Highway 78. Nobununga was padding down the eastbound lane. A car zipped by in the other direction. The driver, Carolyn saw, was yawning. Father had done something to make sure the neighborhood never seemed very interesting to Americans, but no one was quite sure what.\n\n\"That's him?\" Alicia said.\n\n\"He's a tiger?\"\n\n\"Oh, sorry guys,\" Carolyn said brightly. \"I just sort of assumed that you knew! Yeah, that's him. Quite the specimen, isn't he?\"\n\n\"I don't think I've ever seen a tiger up close before,\" Peter said.\n\n\"You have,\" Carolyn said. \"Me too, actually. There was one at the feast when I got back from\u2026from my summer away.\" Her summer with Isha and Asha. \"That almost had to have been him. But I left early. If we were introduced, I don't remember it.\"\n\n\"Oh, right,\" Peter said. \"I remember now.\"\n\n\"That's what\u2014who\u2014Michael has been apprenticing with?\" Alicia said. \"I thought Nobununga was, you know\u2026a guy.\" She watched him walk for a moment. \"Wow. Just\u2026wow.\"\n\n\"Not only Nobununga, I think,\" Carolyn said. \"Every time I talk to Michael he's back from somewhere different\u2014Africa, China, Australia\u2014but Nobununga always makes the introductions. He's well regarded.\"\n\n\"Fierce-looking fellow, isn't he?\"\n\nCarolyn nodded. \"Yeah. Really, you have no idea.\" She paused. Then, almost idly, \"I wonder if it might have been him.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nCarolyn rubbed her temples. \"I hate to admit it, but David has a point. Father has never been away this long.\" She gave them a long, level look. \"It's conceivable that something has happened to him. Something bad. Fatal, even.\"\n\n\"You don't seriously think\u2014\"\n\n\"I just said 'maybe.'\" Her fingertips were trembling again. She pressed them into her palm. \"But\u2026I think you'll agree that the pool of creatures who might do violence to Father is relatively small. Off the top of my head I can think of only three\u2014David, the Duke, and Nobununga.\"\n\n\"There might be others,\" Alicia said. \"Some of the ones we don't see much. Q-33 North, maybe?\" But she was looking at Nobununga, thoughtful.\n\n\"Is he the one with the tentacles?\"\n\n\"No, that's Barry O'Shea. Q-33 North is the sort of iceberg with legs, remember? Up in Norway.\"\n\n\"Oh, right.\"\n\n\"I still think it had to be David,\" Peter said. \"You remember what\u2014\"\n\n\"I remember,\" Carolyn said. \"On balance, I think I agree with you. It almost had to be David. That's why I suggested that we meet\u2014if David has moved against Father, he must have some sort of plan for dealing with Nobununga as well. Nobununga needs to be made aware of that. He could be walking into a trap.\"\n\n\"Nobununga is old,\" Alicia said. \"Some say sixty thousand years. Some say a lot more. I myself am not quite thirty, Carolyn. In his eyes we're barely children. Are you sure he needs advice from us?\"\n\n\"Father was old too,\" Carolyn said. \"Where is he now?\" She waited, but no one had an answer for that. \"Come on,\" she said finally. \"We don't want to be late.\"\n\nThey set out toward the bull, following along the edge of the bluff. All three of them watched Nobununga as they walked, fascinated. He had walked down the steps and across the road. He was standing in front of the Garrison Oaks sign. A pickup truck zipped by on Highway 78. The dog in the back gave a couple of bewildered barks, but the driver didn't seem to notice.\n\nNobununga paced back and forth in front of the sign\u2014once, twice, three times. Peter was enchanted by the sight of him. Alicia had to pull him back from walking off the edge of the bluff.\n\nWhen they were about two hundred yards away, Nobununga roared, calling out to Michael. Michael scrambled down the steps and across the street to attend his master. They spoke to each other for a time, deep growls that Carolyn couldn't quite hear, and gestures. Then Nobununga rubbed his shoulder against Michael's chest.\n\nMichael flailed about, wild, obviously upset. The tiger let him carry on for a moment, then roared. Michael went silent. He walked back across the road and squatted down on the lowest of the steps to the bull, head in hands, dejected.\n\nI wonder what that was about.\n\nNobununga turned his back to the highway. He faced Garrison Oaks and set one massive paw on the road that led to the Library.\n\nSlowly and deliberately, he began to walk forward.\n\n\"Wait\u2026what's he doing?\"\n\n\"What does it look like?\" Alicia said. \"He's going to look for Father.\"\n\n\"But,\" Peter said, \"if the\u2026whatever-it-is\u2026\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Carolyn said. \"There is that.\" She called out to Michael. \"Michael, did you tell him about\u2014\"\n\n\"Be quiet, Carolyn!\" Michael screamed. Carolyn was a little alarmed to see that he was crying. \"Be quiet! He has to concentrate!\"\n\nCarolyn nodded, more grimly this time. \"He is. He's doing it. He's going to look for Father.\"\n\nThe sign at the entrance to the subdivision marked the boundary of the barrier keeping them from the Library. A step or two past the sign and you'd begin to feel the effects\u2014headache, numbness, shortness of breath, sweating, whatever. It was different for everybody\u2014everybody affected by it, at least. Not everyone was. The others held their collective breath, waiting to see whether Nobununga would be immune. Carolyn, fingertips trembling under the weight of her lies, pretended to hold hers as well.\n\nNobununga walked past the sign slowly, with no obvious symptoms of distress.\n\n\"He's really doing it,\" Alicia said, awed. When she'd tried, she had made it two steps past the sign. There her eyeballs began to bleed. She turned back after that, and though Jennifer had stopped the bleeding, she hadn't really seen well for days.\n\nDavid made it the farthest\u2014eight steps. Then he turned back, blood streaming out of his ears, eyes, nose. He hadn't screamed\u2014it took a lot to make David scream\u2014but at the farthest point, just before he turned back, he had made a little moan, a suffering animal noise.\n\nWith four long strides Nobununga was past the point that had stopped David.\n\n\"It doesn't seem to be affecting him,\" Peter said.\n\n\"Possibly not,\" Carolyn said.\n\nIt was about three blocks from the gateway to the entrance to the Library. Nobununga made his way down the first block without showing any signs of distress. He stopped at the first intersection and looked back over his shoulder at Michael.\n\n\"This is reissak ayrial,\" the tiger called out. He spoke not in the language of tigers, but in their common language of Pelapi. His voice was a little growly, but perfectly understandable. \"I understand this now. It is the will of Ablakha that I hunt the token\u2014and destroy it, if I am able.\"\n\n\"He can talk?\" Peter said.\n\n\"What's reissak ayrial?\" said Alicia.\n\n\"It means 'the denial that shreds,'\" Carolyn said. \"Shh! I want to watch.\"\n\nNobununga took another step.\n\n\"He is immune,\" Alicia said, hope rising in her voice. \"I knew it. It looks like we're going to go home after\u2014\"\n\n\"Look,\" Carolyn said.\n\nThree steps past the stop sign marking the first intersection, Nobununga paused. He lifted one massive paw. Carolyn, whose vision was very good, saw that he was trembling.\n\nNobununga turned again to Michael. Now tears of blood dripped from his green eyes, ran down his muzzle.\n\n\"No!\" Michael screamed, then said something in the language of tigers. He set off running.\n\n\"Michael!\" Carolyn screamed in her turn, \"No!\" She watched, transfixed with dread, as Michael sprinted toward Garrison Oaks. She had thought she was ready for what came next, the things she had to do, but\u2026\n\nNot Michael. Not yet.\n\nShe set off after him. She was quick\u2014Carolyn was quicker than any of them except David\u2014but Michael was far ahead. She scrambled down the steep bluff, almost falling. But by the time she reached the asphalt, Michael was across the road.\n\n\"No!\"\n\nMichael covered the twenty feet or so between the road and the Garrison Oaks sign too fast for Carolyn to intercept. Momentum carried him another eight feet or so beyond that.\n\n\"No!\"\n\nThen he fell as if he had been shot in the brain. He lay very still.\n\n\"Michael!\" Carolyn screamed again, real anguish in her voice. She flashed on the day he had come back from the ocean to visit her, his skinny arms golden tan, the salt smell of his skin. A gold BMW bore down on her, coming fast, horn wailing. She shrieked back at it, teeth bared, apelike. The driver swerved onto the shoulder, not quite losing control, then sped off in a spray of gravel. She covered the hundred feet between her and Michael in a matter of seconds, sprinted past the boundary and, precisely as Michael had done\u2014she hoped, anyway\u2014fell flat on her face on the concrete.\n\nBut where Michael only lay still, Carolyn rose up.\n\nShe lifted herself onto her elbows, her knees. Her nose was broken. Blood streamed down her face from gashes in her nose and cheek. She crawled one step forward, then another. Her motion was spastic, halting, as if her nerves were no longer firing properly. She thought it was a good performance. Her twitches were indistinguishable from the real thing, and had the side benefit of camouflaging the completely genuine tremble in her fingertips.\n\nA third step. Two more and Michael's ankle was in reach.\n\nShe grabbed him by the ankle, then vomited up a flood of lemon soda and egg. When she had a good grip she turned and began moving back toward the main road, dragging Michael after her.\n\nInch by inch, she muscled the two of them to safety. Just outside the iron gate, right where the effects stopped, she flopped onto her belly, exhausted. A moment later Peter and Alicia approached, slow and cautious.\n\n\"Are you OK?\" Alicia asked.\n\nCarolyn rolled over on her belly and dry heaved a couple of times. Her face was covered in blood. \"I will be, I think,\" she said. \"Michael\u2026?\"\n\nMichael coughed, gagged.\n\n\"Turn him\u2026turn him on his side. So he doesn't choke.\" They did. Michael coughed some more, spat out blood.\n\n\"We need to get him to Jennifer,\" Carolyn said. She wiped blood from her eyes with one trembling finger. \"What about Nobununga? Where is\u2014\"\n\nPeter, looking off in the distance, was shaking his head. \"He made it about a block and a half before he fell over. He's lying on his side. For a while his chest was heaving but\"\u2014he glanced down at Carolyn\u2014\"\u2026not anymore.\"\n\nCarolyn squeezed her eyes shut. \"Ebn el sharmoota!\" she said in Arabic. Then, \"Fuck! Neik! Merde! Poopy-goddamn-cacka!\" She rolled over on her side and pushed herself up to a sitting position. She squinted down the block and saw that Peter was right. Not so much as a twitch. She suppressed a chilly little smile. \"Even if I could get in that deep, which I don't think I can, he's too heavy for me,\" she said. \"I couldn't move him. Not alone.\"\n\nPeter was looking at her with something between admiration and horror. \"Is there a word that means 'brave' and 'stupid' at the same time?\"\n\n\"There is,\" she said, \"lots of them.\" A little irked by Peter's implied jab, she considered explaining how the American word \"wussy\" might be applied to him. She didn't, though. It would have been counterproductive. Instead she crawled over to Michael and checked his pulse with her fingertips. At her touch his eyelids fluttered. \"Carolyn? Carolyn, where's\u2014\"\n\nHe read the answer from her eyes, then moaned. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. His grief was too deep for words.\n\n\"Shhh,\" she said, stroking his hair. \"Shhh, Michael. Shhhh.\" It was all she could think to say."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "An hour or so later, it became clear Michael was going to be OK\u2014physically, at any rate. His heart was broken. He wept the guileless, unaffected tears of a small child. Carolyn wanted to get somewhere a little less exposed\u2014being by the road made her nervous\u2014so together they helped Michael climb the steps that led to the clearing of the bull. But instead of making for the bull itself, they went into the woods. That was Michael's true home.\n\nNot far away a stream flowed over a small cliff, burbling pleasantly. Carolyn remembered the spot from her summer with Isha and Asha. Better still, you couldn't see the neighborhood from there, couldn't see Nobununga's body. The three of them helped Michael to it\u2014he couldn't quite walk under his own power. There they lay him down by the stream to rest.\n\nPerhaps misunderstanding, Peter and Alicia left the two of them alone.\n\nCarolyn and Michael were not lovers. They had tried to be, once, when they were\u2014what?\u2014in their early twenties? That was about a decade ago, though it seemed longer. She thought that night must have been her idea, though she couldn't imagine what she might have been thinking. She had never had any real interest in sex that she could remember, certainly not after the thing with David. Had that one night been some symptom of her desperation, or maybe simple loneliness? She didn't know.\n\nOne night when the others were away she seduced him, sort of. Or at least tried to. It ended badly. For reasons she never completely understood, Michael was unable to perform. He wanted to, she could tell that from the way he kissed her, the hungry way he pawed at her once he understood what she was about. But no matter what she did, his penis stayed limp in her hands, and even her mouth. After a long, awkward time of trying Michael pushed her away, very gently. That night they slept by the same fire, but did not touch. She woke in the night and heard him crying out in his sleep. He left before dawn the next day. After that she saw him less and less.\n\nThey were still friendly, though, if not precisely close. They bore each other no grudges, and protected each other when they could. Among the Pelapi that counted for a lot. Carolyn held him in her lap all through that autumn afternoon, saying things like \"I'm so very sorry\" and \"I know the two of you were friends.\" The words felt like ashes in her mouth. She knew every word that had ever been spoken, but she could think of nothing to say that might ease his grief. All she could do was wipe away his tears with the tips of her fingers.\n\nShortly before sunset, Michael rose. He washed his face in the creek, stood, called out to Peter and Alicia. They came a few minutes later. Both of them were flushed, and Alicia's robe was on inside out.\n\n\"Nobununga said something, before he left.\" Michael was sometimes childlike, but he was not weak. His voice had grown calm, controlled, despite his grief. \"You all need to hear this.\"\n\n\"We're so sorry, Michael,\" Alicia began, and reached out to him.\n\nHe waved her away. \"All of you know that Nobununga is\u2014was\u2014more than he appears, yes? He is ancient. He is wise. He told me that he understood what was going on here. He said that Father would let no harm come to him. It seems now that he was wrong about that part\"\u2014he gestured back at the neighborhood\u2014\"but, even so, we would be foolish to discount his other thoughts.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He knew what it was,\" Michael said. \"The thing keeping us out. He has seen such before. They were used in the third age. They are called reissak ayrial.\"\n\n\"Yeah, we heard him say that. What is it?\"\n\n\"It means 'the denial that shreds,'\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Yeah, Carolyn,\" Peter said. \"But what is it?\"\n\nCarolyn shrugged, thinking of \"heart coals.\"\n\n\"Poetic license?\"\n\n\"I know,\" Alicia said.\n\n\"You do?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I wasn't going to say anything. It's part of my catalog.\" Alicia's catalog was the far future.\n\n\"Well, then don't\u2014\" Peter began.\n\nShe put her hand on his arm. \"It's OK. Really. This reissak is happening today.\"\n\n\"What do you know about it?\" Carolyn said. \"That you can tell us, I mean.\"\n\n\"Well\u2026\" Alicia considered. \"Not much in terms of technical detail. I couldn't make one. But I know it's sort of a perimeter-defense mechanism. Basically, it's a sphere anchored in the plane of regret. There's some sort of token associated with it\u2014\"\n\n\"Token?\" Peter said. \"Like what?\"\n\n\"It could be anything. The token needs to be an actual physical object, but all it really is, is an anchor. The closer you get to the token, the more powerful the effects are.\"\n\n\"That fits,\" Carolyn said. Her voice was meditative.\n\n\"Wait. It gets better. There's also a trigger.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"It's something about a person that brings the reissak ayrial into focus.\"\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"The trigger would be something internal\u2014an emotion, an experience, a memory\u2026\" Alicia shrugged. \"Something like that. The people who share it feel the effects of the reissak ayrial. For everyone else, it's like it doesn't exist.\"\n\nPeter considered. \"That fits too,\" he said.\n\n\"Who among us would know how to make such a thing?\" Carolyn asked. \"David?\"\n\n\"Nooo\u2026no. Not David. The reissak has defense applications, obviously, but it's not like a spear or something. It's pretty complex.\"\n\nCarolyn gave her a suspicious look. \"You say in the future these things are pretty common. Are they maybe for sale, or\u2026something? If you wanted one, how hard would it have been to\u2014\"\n\n\"It wasn't me!\" Alicia said. \"And no. You have to alter the shape of spacetime locally\u2014space and time. It's very customized. You can't just pick one up at the market, even in the future.\"\n\nCarolyn continued to look at her.\n\n\"Come on, Carolyn,\" Peter said. \"We know it's not\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, OK,\" Carolyn said. \"I guess I'm inclined to believe you.\" When the barrier\u2014the reissak ayrial\u2014first came up, they had all tested themselves against it. Alicia came away with massive internal hemorrhaging. It wasn't immediately obvious, but within a day or so she was one big bruise. She stayed that way for weeks. Whatever the trigger was, it worked on her.\n\n\"If not David, who, then?\" Peter asked.\n\nAlicia gave him a sympathetic look. \"I hate to say it, dear, but the likeliest candidate is, well\u2026you?\"\n\n\"Me? Alicia, come on, you know that\u2014\"\n\nAlicia held up her hand. \"I know this. Carolyn and Michael may not.\" She turned to them. \"The reissak is mostly a mathematical construct.\" As such it would be part of Peter's catalog. \"Sorry, dear.\"\n\n\"Guys, I've never even heard of such a thing,\" Peter said. \"You can either believe me or not, but\u2014\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" Carolyn said, holding up a hand. \"I remember. I believe you.\" On the day the reissak was first set, the day that Father disappeared, Peter made it two steps beyond the sign and began to smoke. By the time he came back out, his skin was already blistering.\n\n\"Who, then?\" Peter asked.\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Carolyn said, \"but I have an idea. This trigger you were talking about\u2014is there any way to know what it is?\"\n\n\"None that I know of. Why?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Carolyn said, \"it occurs to me that the dead ones still get packages delivered most days. Also, there's always somebody driving in to deliver those big round cheese-bread things that David's fond of.\"\n\n\"Pizza?\" Peter said. \"I like that too. It's a good point. If the reissak worked on Americans, there'd be piles of them dead in the street by now.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Carolyn said. \"That crossed my mind as well. You said that the token can be anything, but the field of effect is a sphere. If that's the case, we can just map the outline of the effects and we'll know pretty much where the token is. Right?\"\n\nPeter was grinning. \"And if we know where it is\u2014\"\n\n\"We can find someone to move it,\" Alicia finished. She was grinning. \"Carolyn, you're a genius! Library, here we come.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, it's a little early to start celebrating. Among other things, we still need an American. Do you guys know anybody?\"\n\nThey shook their heads in unison. \"That's going to have to be on you, Carolyn. None of us even speaks the language.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" she said. \"OK. Fair enough. I'll come up with something. Also there are the sentinels to think about.\"\n\nThey plotted together until well after dark. Carolyn pretended to resist at first, but eventually she let them convince her that David would have to be involved as well."
            },
            {
                "title": "UZAN-IYA",
                "text": "By the third year of her apprenticeship, Carolyn had mostly forgotten the outside world. Most of the others supplemented their studies with outings, or at least vacations. Michael went to the woods or the ocean. David killed scores of men on every continent. Margaret followed them down to the forgotten lands. Jennifer called some of them back.\n\nCarolyn's studies did not require travel. Native speakers were brought to her when she needed practice, and after the summer with Isha and Asha she no longer cared to take vacations. So her world was only the Library, her studies the only escape. She spent her childhood in a circle of golden lamplight, bounded on all sides by teetering stacks of books; folios; dusty, crumbling parchment. One day when she was about eleven years old\u2014in calendar terms, at least\u2014it occurred to her that she no longer remembered what her actual parents looked like. Time was different in the Library.\n\nShe lost track of the exact count of languages she was fluent in at around fifty\u2014trophies were never her thing\u2014but she thought that whatever the count was, it was probably pretty high. One of the more challenging was the language of the Atul, a tribe of the Himalayan steppe that had died out about six thousand years ago. The Atul had been linguistically isolated. Their grammar was nearly impenetrable, and they had some exotic cultural norms. One such was the notion of uzan-iya, which was what they called the moment when an innocent heart first contemplated the act of murder. To the Atul, the crime itself was secondary to this initial corruption. Carolyn found that idea\u2014and its implications\u2014fascinating. She was turning this over in her mind one dry summer afternoon when she realized, with a bit of irritation, that her stomach was rumbling. When had she last eaten? The day before? The day before that?\n\nShe went down to the larder, but it was bare. She called out for Peter, whose catalog included the preparation of food. No answer. She walked to the front door and went out into Garrison Oaks.\n\nJennifer was sitting on the porch, studying. \"Hey, Carolyn! Good to see you outside for a change.\"\n\n\"Is there any food?\"\n\nJennifer laughed. \"Driven out by hunger? I might have known. Yeah, I think some of the dead ones got a grocery dump last week.\"\n\n\"Which ones?\"\n\n\"Third house down.\"\n\n\"Thanks. Want me to get you anything?\"\n\n\"Nah, I'm good. But\"\u2014Jennifer looked up and down the street furtively\u2014\"you might want to swing by my room tonight.\"\n\n\"Why, what's up?\"\n\n\"Michael brought this back from his last trip.\" She held up a little baggie with green leaves in it.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"It's called marijuana. Supposedly if you smoke it, it makes you feel good. We're going to try it tonight.\"\n\nCarolyn considered. \"Can't. I've got a test tomorrow.\" The last time she missed a question, Father gave her ten lashes.\n\n\"Oh, OK. Next time?\"\n\n\"Love to.\" Carolyn paused. \"You might ask Margaret, though. I think she could use a little fun.\" Margaret was no longer screaming herself awake every night, which was a relief, but she'd developed a nervous giggle that was at least as bad.\n\nJennifer made a sour face. \"I'll ask.\" She didn't sound happy about it.\n\n\"What's the problem? You two used to be buddies.\"\n\n\"Margaret stinks, Carolyn. And she and I haven't hung out in ages. You really need to get out of your room more.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Come to think of it, Margaret actually had smelled pretty bad the last couple of times Carolyn had seen her. \"Well\u2026it's not really her fault.\"\n\n\"No. It's not. But she still stinks.\"\n\nCarolyn's stomach rumbled, audible to both of them. \"I've got to go get something to eat,\" she said apologetically. \"I'll catch up with you later.\"\n\nShe hurried off down the street. The houses of Garrison Oaks belonged to Father now, as did the things that lived in them. Most of the homes had dead ones inside as camouflage. These were what remained of the children's actual parents, and some other neighbors who hadn't been vaporized on Adoption Day. Carolyn wasn't entirely sure how they had been transformed into dead ones, but she had a guess.\n\nFor a year or so Father had been murdering Margaret two or three times a week. He did this in various ways. The first time he snuck up behind her with an ax at dinner, startling everyone, not least Margaret herself. After that it was gunshots, poison, hanging, whatever. Sometimes it was a surprise, sometimes not. Another time Father pierced her heart with a stiletto, but only after telling her what he would do, setting the knife before her on a silver tray, and letting her contemplate it for three full days and nights. Carolyn would have supposed that the ax would be the worse of the two, but Margaret seemed to take that one in stride. After a day or so of looking at the knife, though, she started to do that giggle of hers. And after that, she never really stopped. Carolyn sighed. Poor Margaret.\n\nBut Margaret wasn't really the point. When she was dead she'd usually spend a day or two in the forgotten lands practicing whatever lesson was next in her catalog. Then Father would resurrect her. By this point Carolyn had seen enough of the resurrections to gather that they were a two-stage process.\n\nFirst, Father\u2014or, lately, Jennifer\u2014would heal whatever wound had done it for her in the first place. Then he would call her back into her body. Once, though, he'd taken a break in the middle of all this to go use the bathroom. That time Margaret's healed body had gotten up and wandered around the room, picking up random objects and saying \"Oh no\" over and over again. She seemed to be not all there.\n\nCarolyn suspected that was where the dead ones came from. They had been reanimated but not resurrected. They looked fairly normal, at least from a distance. They wandered the green lawns and grocery stores convincingly enough, but in every way that really mattered they were still in the forgotten lands. They could interact with one another and even with Americans\u2014they exchanged casseroles, filled the cars up with gas, ordered pizza, painted the house. They did these things automatically. It was useful and, she supposed, easier than hiring a lawn service. They could also follow orders if it was something they knew how to do already, which could be handy as well. But they could not take instruction, could not learn new things.\n\nPerhaps most important, they served as a security system. Every so often a stranger would stumble into Garrison Oaks and go about knocking on doors\u2014salesmen, lost FedEx drivers, missionaries. For the most part these outsiders noticed nothing terribly out of the ordinary. Once, though, a burglar actually made it into one of the houses. After he saw what was inside he couldn't be allowed to return to the outside world. When he tried to sneak out the window, the dead ones were waiting for him. They fell upon him and tore him to bits. Father did to him whatever he'd done to the others and the erstwhile burglar took his place in one of the houses as someone's cousin Ed. Or whomever.\n\nCarolyn and the other librarians could come and go as they pleased, though. Hungry, she opened the door of the house Jennifer had pointed at and went in. There were three of them inside: a little girl of about eight, a teenage boy, and an adult woman.\n\n\"Make me some food,\" she said to the woman.\n\nLately she had been focusing on mythical languages. The English felt strange on her tongue. Evidently it sounded as bad as it felt. She had to repeat herself twice before what was left of the woman understood her. Then it nodded and began pulling things from here and there\u2014a can of fish, white stuff from a jar, some sort of green goo that smelled like vinegar.\n\nCarolyn sat down at the table next to the little girl. It was drawing a family: mother, father, two daughters, a dog. The family stood in a park. Something that might have been the sun but wasn't blazed down on them, huge in both the sky and what passed for the little girl's memory. It was far too hot, far too close. As Carolyn watched, the little girl took a yellow crayon and added some flames to the father's back. The red O of his mouth, she suddenly realized, was a scream.\n\nCarolyn stood up fast, the wooden chair scraping across the linoleum. She didn't want to be there anymore. She fled to the family room. There a teenage boy sat slack-jawed in front of a lighted box. Do they still grow up, or will he be like this always? She couldn't figure out what he was doing at first, then it came to her. Television. She smiled a little. I remember television. She sat down on the couch next to the dead boy. He didn't seem to notice. She waved her hand up and down in his field of vision.\n\nHe turned his head, looked at her without much interest, and pointed at the television. \"It's time for Transformers.\" A trickle of drool ran out the side of his mouth.\n\nOn the screen, giant robots were shooting each other with rays.\n\nA few minutes later the woman drifted in and handed her a plate of food and a red can that said Coke. Carolyn fell on it, ravenous. The soda was sweet, delicious. She drank it too quickly and it burned in her throat. She had forgotten about Coke. The woman watched her eat, a flicker of disquiet crossing her face. \"Hello,\" she said. \"You must be\u2026\" She\u2014it\u2014trailed off. \"Are you one of Dennis's friends? Dennis, is this\u2026\" she said to the boy. She broke off. \"You're not Dennis,\" she\u2014it\u2014said to the boy. \"Where is Dennis?\"\n\nCarolyn knew what this meant. When Father reanimated the neighbors he had assigned them to houses more or less at random. The boy on the couch was not actually the woman's son. Probably the girl wasn't her daughter. The man she laid down with at night wouldn't be her\u2014\n\n\"Dennis?\"\n\nCarolyn stood up, grabbed the sandwich, and handed the plate back to the woman. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"You're welcome, dear,\" she said absently. \"Dennis?\"\n\nOn the television, a robot screamed. Carolyn strode back to the front door and out into the summer sunlight, slamming the door behind her. They would settle down once she was gone.\n\nBut when she saw what was waiting for her, she wished she had stayed among the dead. Halfway back to the Library black clouds boiled over the face of the sun. The pressure dropped enough to make her ears pop. The tips of the trees bent nearly double in the sudden wind. Here and there she heard flat wooden cracks as the weaker branches gave way.\n\nFather was home."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "They all knew from the thunder that he had returned. It was expected that they would meet him at the Library. They trickled in and gathered on the lawn\u2014Michael from the forest, Jennifer from the meadow, and so on\u2014all except Margaret. She was with him already.\n\n\"Look,\" Father said. They all did. Margaret's left arm was badly broken. It hung limp, a spur of bone poking out of her skin. Jennifer moved to help her, but Father waved her away. \"Why does she not cry out?\" he spoke lightly, as if talking only to the breeze.\n\nNo one answered.\n\n\"Why does she not cry out?\" he asked again. This time his tone was more menacing. \"Will no one answer me? Surely one of you must know.\"\n\nDavid mumbled something.\n\n\"What? I can't hear you.\"\n\n\"I said, 'gahn ayrial.' \"\n\nCarolyn's mind whirled. The words \"gahn ayrial\" meant, in a literal sense, the denial of suffering. The phrase itself was kind of meaningless\u2014suffering existed, just look around you\u2014but the way he pronounced the words suggested that it was the name for a skill set. Some sort of self-anesthesia? Carolyn knew that Father knew all sorts of things about that, and about staunching your own wounds, and healing. But he only teaches that sort of thing to David. With a kind of slow-boiling horror she realized what all this was about. If Margaret knows about gahn ayrial, then\u2026\n\n\"Someone has been reading outside of her catalog.\"\n\nThe young librarians made a sound like dead leaves rustling.\n\n\"I don't really blame Margaret,\" Father said meditatively. \"Her studies are often painful. Who could fault her for wanting to alleviate that? No. Not Margaret.\" He tapped his teeth with a fingernail. \"Who, then?\"\n\n\"Me,\" David whispered. \"It was me.\"\n\n\"You?\" Father spoke with mock surprise. \"You? Really. Interesting. Tell me, David, why do you think that I did not teach Margaret of gahn ayrial myself?\"\n\n\"I\u2026I don't know.\"\n\n\"Because I did not wish for her to learn it!\" Father thundered. All of them flinched at this\u2014all but David. He was Father's favorite, and knew it. \"Still\u2026if you have chosen to teach the craft of gahn ayrial, then surely you have mastered it. I had no idea you were so far along in your studies. I will admit that I am impressed.\" He waved his arm, beckoning. \"Come with me.\"\n\nThey all followed, afraid not to. Together they trailed Father and David down the main street of the neighborhood, past the houses of the dead, and oh how Carolyn wished then that she had died with them. She had never seen Father so angry. Whatever came next was sure to be very bad. They followed him across the road, and up the rough steps cut into the earth.\n\nThere, in the clearing at the top of the hill, they found Father's barbecue grill. Carolyn remembered the thing existed, but had never thought much of it. It was a hollow bronze cast in the shape of a cow or, rather, a bull. It was a bit larger than life-sized, made of yellowish metal about half an inch thick. When Father had been pretending to be an American he kept it in his backyard. Sometimes, at neighborhood picnics or whatever, he would cook in it, \"hamburgers,\" or sometimes pork. He seemed pretty normal back then. She vaguely remembered people\u2014maybe even her parents?\u2014commenting on the unusual grill, but it hadn't been a big deal.\n\nNot long after Father took them in he had the grill moved up to the clearing. She never found out why, but there must have been some sort of reason. The grill was phenomenally heavy. The dead ones gathered around it and heaved as one, sweating and straining in the summer sun. It surrendered a few slow, painful inches at a time, its hooves cutting trenches in the grass as it moved. Moving it took days, and at least a couple of reanimations.\n\nLooking at it for the first time in years, suddenly Carolyn's only real thought was Oh, right. That thing. She associated it mostly with the parties of her childhood, hamburgers and barbecue. The pork sandwiches, she remembered, were especially good.\n\nThen a darker memory surfaced. Actually, she thought, the last time I saw it was at the feast of my homecoming. She remembered seeing the hatch in the side of the grill opened, how the thick hickory smoke poured out. She remembered clamping down on her scream when the smoke cleared and she saw the meat in there, recognized the delicate curve of Asha's hindquarters, saw Isha's severed head staring back at her, skinned and sightless. It occurred to her that that moment had probably been her own uzan-iya. Yup, she thought, that was probably it. Up until then I was still in shock.\n\nIt also occurred to her that the bull could be used to cook things other than pork. She looked at David. The same thought must have occurred to him. He was staring at the bull with wide, horrified eyes.\n\nDavid was brave, though. He brought himself under control, grinned at Father. \"C'mon,\" he said. \"I'm sorry. I won't do it again. I didn't mean anything by it.\" He shadowboxed, the way they did sometimes.\n\nFather walked to the bull and opened the hatch in its side. The outside was polished bronze\u2014the dead ones kept it shiny\u2014but inside it was black, black. David, a boy of at most thirteen years, held up his hands in surrender. Father pointed inside. David did not kneel, but he trembled. \"Oh. Oh no.\"\n\nFather raised his eyebrows, waiting for more, but David fell silent.\n\nCarolyn's hatred of David was second only to her hatred of Father, but in that moment she could almost have felt sorry for him. The look in his eyes as he climbed inside the bull brought to mind another Atul phrase, \"wazin nyata,\" which was the moment when the last hope dies.\n\nThe bolts Father threw to lock the hatch shut were not bronze, but thick iron, ancient and pitted. Before that moment it had never occurred to her to wonder what purpose they served. Now she understood. Meat, she realized, doesn't try to climb out.\n\nFor the next hour or so the rest of them brought cut wood up from the stockpiles around the neighborhood houses, an armful at a time. Father called out a few of the dead ones\u2014Mother and \"Dennis\" among them\u2014and they helped as well. He even pitched in himself.\n\nThe bull shone golden and polished under the light of the afternoon sun. One by one they deposited their armfuls of wood around the base of it\u2014pine, mostly, fat and sticky with sap. Once Jennifer dropped to her knees, sobbing. She was always the kindest of them. Michael, by this point more accustomed to the thinking of beasts than that of men, watched the wood pile up without understanding its implications. Margaret just looked interested.\n\nNot long before sundown, Father struck a match. They had kindled well. The pile of wood caught quickly, going from a few tongues of flame to a full-on bonfire in a matter of minutes. Smoke came from the bull's nostrils\u2014first a trickle, then a stream.\n\nThey continued feeding the fire through sunset, expecting all the while to hear him cry out, but David was so very strong. The heat was such that by dark Carolyn could approach the bull no closer than ten feet or so. From there she pitched her logs into the flame as best she could. Even then, the heat scorched the hairs on her arm. The dead ones continued their slow slog to the fire, oblivious, their skin reddening and blistering.\n\nBut David was so very strong. It was not until full dark, when the bronze belly of the bull began to glow a dull orange, that he began to shriek.\n\nWhenever she thought of Father's face, it was by the light of that fire.\n\nHow rare it was to see him smile."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "Just before dawn the next day there were still small sounds coming from the bull, mostly from the head and neck. Carolyn wondered at this until she noticed that the bull's nostrils were actual openings; flues for those times the coals lay inside. The air from those openings must have seemed relatively cool, the only hint of mercy in all David's world.\n\nHow is he not dead by now?\n\nBut of course, it was his catalog. Father had trained him to survive grievous wounds and fight on. Also there were potions, tonics, injections. Like all of them, David was what Father had made. So however badly he might need to die, he could not.\n\nEven so, by noon he had gone mercifully silent. Father kept them feeding the fire until just before dark. David, he said, was still alive. Carolyn didn't doubt that he really could tell somehow.\n\nFather told them to stop feeding the fire shortly after twilight of the second day. It was out by midnight. By morning of the third day the bull had cooled enough to open, though the metal was still hot enough to leave a blister on Carolyn's forearm when she brushed against it.\n\nWhat was left inside wasn't as bad to look at as she had feared. More than most of them, David was a devoted pupil. His craft was already very strong, second only to Father's.\n\nHe had cooked away almost to the bone before he died.\n\nShe and Michael helped Jennifer take him out. What was left was surprisingly light, dry and brittle. They put him on a makeshift stretcher made from an ironing board and hauled him down to one of the empty houses. There they laid him out in a large room on the main floor with dusty, moldering furniture piled in one corner. This is what Americans call the \"living room,\" Carolyn thought, and giggled. Margaret smiled too. The others looked at her strangely.\n\nMargaret examined the charred remains of David's skull, his arms pulled up into a boxer's stance by the heat of the fire, his mouth still open in his last scream. \"He will be very deep.\" She turned to Father. \"May I join him? Help him find his way back?\"\n\nFather shook his head. \"Let him wander.\"\n\nCarolyn wondered at this. She thought that Margaret meant David would be deep in the \"forgotten lands,\" which, she'd gathered, was where you were both before you were born and after you died. But would he be deep because he had never died before, or because he had died so horribly? Or perhaps\u2014\n\nFather was glaring at her. When he saw that he had her attention he glanced significantly. She followed his gaze back up the hill, to the bull. The question, of course, was outside her catalog. He knows, she thought, despairing. How can he know what I am thinking? She put the thought aside, but Father still glared. The pupils of his eyes reminded her of the greasy blackness of the bull's interior. Pinned by his stare, for a moment she imagined herself inside the thing, her ears ringing from the clang as the door swung shut. The only light would be a faint or orange glow visible through the nostrils as the heat began to rise. It would be warm at first, then a little uncomfortable, and then\u2014\n\n\"Never!\" she hissed, desperate. I'll never think of it again! Never, never!\n\nOnly then did Father look away. She felt his gaze fall from her as if it were a physical thing. This is how the field mouse feels, when the shadow of the hawk passes him by.\n\n\"Jennifer. Attend me,\" Father said.\n\nJennifer, whose catalog was healing, bustled to her feet, stood before him.\n\n\"You will bring him back. Make him whole again.\"\n\nUp until then Jennifer had worked the craft of resurrection mostly with animals, and those only slightly dead\u2014roadkill and the like. \"I'll try,\" she said, casting a doubtful glance at the corpse. \"But I\u2014\"\n\n\"Try hard.\" He said it with an edge in his voice. \"The rest of you help. Bring her what she asks for.\"\n\nJennifer set to work. She dug three big bags of colored powder from her kit and set them around David's body. The rest of them fetched for her\u2014mostly water, but other things as well; salt, honey, a goat penis, several feet of eight-track tape. Jennifer chewed the tape in her mouth until it came away clear, then spat brownish stuff into David's eye sockets. Carolyn had no idea what this might be in aid of. Remembering Father's glare, she forbade herself to wonder.\n\nJennifer worked all through the night. Margaret sat up with her, though Carolyn and the others rested.\n\nWhen she woke the next morning, David had begun to fill back in. The withered flesh of his torso had inflated a bit. A hint of pink was now discernible here and there in all the black. By the afternoon of the fourth day this was true of the skin of his arms, then his legs. That evening his lungs became distinguishable, then his heart, though it did not yet beat. By the fifth day he had flesh over most of his body, though it was still black and charred.\n\nOn the sixth day he moaned. Jennifer sent Margaret to ask Father if she might do something to ease his pain. Margaret went to ask with a speed that Carolyn found rather touching. She returned with a nod. Jennifer touched David's forehead with a tool she kept in her pouch and, a moment later, his moaning ceased. He didn't thank her, probably couldn't, not yet, but when he rolled his lidless eyes toward Jennifer, Carolyn saw gratitude in them.\n\nBy the morning of the seventh day he was, to Carolyn's eye, completely healed. Perhaps that wasn't true, not yet, but it was close. He slept. His chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths. Jennifer was asleep as well, her first real rest in five days. Seeing Carolyn wake, Michael laid a finger against his lips. Carolyn nodded, then sat down near him.\n\nFather threw the door open around midmorning, momentarily blinding Carolyn with the sunlight. He walked over to David and kicked him awake. David snapped to his feet, lightning-fast once again, if slightly dazed and blinky. Father said something to him in the language of murder, which Carolyn did not yet speak. David hesitated for a bare instant, then went to his knees. Father asked him something. David answered. She didn't know what was said, but his tone was perfectly humble, perfectly respectful.\n\nThen, in Pelapi, \"And there will be no more sharing of catalogs.\" Father surveyed the room. \"Is that clear? Am I understood?\"\n\nAll of them nodded. Carolyn thought that, without exception, they all meant it. She certainly did.\n\nFather nodded then, satisfied. He left without shutting the door. When he was gone, Margaret went to David. She stood before him shyly, arms first dangling, then hugging herself. Then, surprising them all, she stretched her neck out and bit him on the ear, not quite hard enough to draw blood. \"You sang so beautifully!\" she said. She ran away, blushing.\n\n\"I think she likes you,\" Jennifer said, deadpan. They all laughed.\n\nDavid got quieter after that, more reserved, less prone to grin and tell jokes. A month or so later he broke Michael's arm for, he said, cheating on a wager, an archery contest between the two of them. Michael swore he had done no such thing. Jennifer fixed his arm without comment. Michael and David didn't hang around as much after that.\n\nThe following month, the final Monstruwaken paid them a visit. He was one of Father's favorite courtiers. They celebrated the visit with a feast. The pig, Carolyn was relieved to see, was dead before they roasted it. These feasts were always a big deal, even to her. If nothing else, the food was very good. But this time she thought the other children's celebrations were somewhat muted. The tongues of flame licking at the bull's belly reminded them of bad things.\n\nOnce, just for an instant, out of the corner of her eye, she caught David looking at the fire in a particular way. David did not notice her noticing him, nor did Margaret, standing next to him now. Carolyn did not say \"uzan-iya\" out loud, or even think it very clearly\u2014she was learning\u2014but for the rest of the night the phrase was never far from the surface of her thoughts. She recognized the look in David's eyes immediately. She had seen it many times, reflected in the black pools of her own heart.\n\nThe child who went into the bull had been aggressive, and sometimes casually cruel to the rest of them. But David had truly loved Father. But Carolyn knew for an absolute certainty that that was no longer true. Uzan-iya, they called it on the Himalayan steppe six thousand years ago. Uzan-iya\u2014the moment when the heart turned first to murder.\n\nOne day David would move to kill Father. She could not guess when that day would be. She knew only that it would come.\n\nFor the first time, it occurred to her to wonder whether David might be of some use.\n\nShe pondered on this for many months."
            },
            {
                "title": "Thunder",
                "text": "Erwin Charles Leffington was an unusual guy. He knew that about himself. For one thing, he insisted that people call him Erwin. He wouldn't accept Charles or E.C., and never, ever Chuck. Erwin. As a little kid he had gone by Chuck for the first seven years or so. Then he started taking classes two years ahead of his age group on account of because he was so smart and the teacher let his legal name slip. So, it was \"Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin\" that the McClusky twins screeched when they ambushed him after class, \"Erwiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn!\" when they pushed his wadded-up A+ in algebra through his pinched lips and into his mouth, \"Errrrrrrrrrrrwinnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!\" as they worked his jaw, \"ERRRRRRRRRRRRWIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNN!\" as they made him swallow, \"Erwin\" in a casual, almost friendly, tone while they beat him until he smiled and said thank you. After he grew up into a badass it crossed his mind to go back and pay the McClusky twins a visit, but in the end he decided against it. They had taught him a valuable life lesson at a young age, and on balance he was grateful.\n\nErwin had fight in him and, as luck would have it, he grew up to be a big motherfucker. Erwin was what the crowd chanted when he ground his way through the defensive line and scored the winning touchdown at the homecoming game in his junior year. Erwin was what they called him at Fort Bragg from the day he enlisted\u2014well, almost\u2014right up to the day he retired. Part of it was that \"Sergeant Major\" or \"Command Sergeant Major\" was a fucking mouthful and he didn't want to inflict that on his men. But mostly it was because he liked telling officers to call him Erwin, liked the way some of them got a little flicker in their eyes when he said it, but they did it anyway.\n\nErwin wasn't in the Army anymore. Thirteen years in\u2014just after his third tour in Afghanistan\u2014he'd decided he'd killed enough people. He wasn't post-traumatic or anything. He still loved his men. He still thought the enemy were a bunch of assholes. He was just done with it. It was a Tuesday and he'd seen an Apache gunship basically disintegrate a sixteen-year-old knucklehead. It was the right thing to do, he was grateful to the guy flying the Apache for doing it\u2014the kid was toting a Dragunov sniper rifle, a little banged up but perfectly serviceable, and he probably wasn't going into the hills to hunt goats. Given the same circumstances he'd cheerfully have massacred the little bastard himself. He just didn't want to be in those circumstances anymore.\n\nSo a little while later he took a discharge and went out into the world. There he ended up teaching middle school art. That was some soothing shit right there. Not exactly what he was expecting to do, but it turned out he had nothing against tempera paint. He actually kind of liked making clay pots. What's more, he was surprised to discover that he was good at it. And the kids loved him. They respected him too. Not once did he ever have to raise a hand to even a single one of the little bastards. Truth to tell, most of them seemed a little scared of him. Teachers too, for that matter. And the school board, once or twice. Did they see smoldering bodies piled ten deep when they looked in his eyes? Was he flanked by ghosts when he walked down the hall? He didn't know. But once they realized he wasn't going to stab them in the face or blow them up, they relaxed. Well, they relaxed a little bit. Most of them.\n\nAfter a while he relaxed too. He loved the kids\u2014he allowed himself to love them\u2014in a way he hadn't thought he was capable of anymore. When he got back from the war, his ability to love was in serious doubt\u2014all you had to do was take one look at the smoking ruin of his marriage or maybe ask his half-forgotten family. In the civilian world, the volume was a lot lower, but he was still shouting. He knew that, he just couldn't seem to do anything about it. It crossed his mind to eat a shotgun. But after he thought about it he decided to take a chance. Really, what did he have to lose? So one time when he caught this little dude named Dashaen Morning Flower Menendez\u2014he would never forget that name, why the fuck would you do that to a kid?\u2014when he caught little Dashaen eyeing the little plastic dish of mac-and-cheese on his desk the same way the skinnies in Somalia had looked at his MREs, he took the kid aside thinking maybe he was poor or his mom was a junkie or some sad shit like that. Who the fuck couldn't come up with the money for a goddamn sandwich? This was America, for chrissakes.\n\nBut it turned out little Dashaen's mom had plenty of money. She was a phlebotomist or some shit. Money wasn't the problem. The problem was that the kid's dad was in some kind of hippie religion and he'd taught little Dashaen about nonviolence and talking through your problems and all that other crap. Erwin had pointed out what a dumb idea this was at the parent-teacher conference and the crazy fuck brought up Gandhi. Clearly the man was insane, and little Dashaen was suffering for it. Erwin, himself no stranger to the problems of insane parents, took pity on him. It turned out he wasn't a nerd or anything like that, he'd just been handicapped by poor upbringing. All he needed was a clue. Once Erwin figured that out, he muttered a prayer of thanks to a God he didn't really believe in and set about providing said clue. He taught Dashaen how to kick the other little bastards in the balls, bloody their noses, sneak up behind them and clap both hands over their ears\u2014all the basics. Actually, he might have gone a bit far with that last one; Dashaen overdid it and one of the other mini dudes ended up with a little bit of permanent hearing loss. But after that everybody liked Dashaen and no one stole his lunch money, so basically it was a happy ending. Little Dashaen moved on to high school the following year. Erwin figured he'd seen the last of him. But then one rainy day in December he headed out to the mailbox in front of the duplex where he was staying. He remembered it perfectly. It was the eighteenth, a Saturday. School was out on winter break. The people next door, the Michaelsens, had two little kids, and they were all decorating their tree. It was two in the afternoon. He was on his eighth scotch. He could hear Christmas carols through the wall, that one about Good King Wenceslas, Jingle Bells, Gramma Got Run Over by a Fucking Reindeer. That shit didn't bother him. He wasn't jealous of the Michaelsens. He was happy for them. He didn't feel like he'd fucked up in life. Getting apocalyptically drunk by yourself was just the sort of thing bachelors did around Christmas. Also, he wasn't thinking of the shotgun in the corner of his closet. At all. Then he opened the mailbox and, mirabile visu, little Dashaen had sent him a Christmas card. He took that card out of the mailbox with trembling hands, opened the envelope, and read it standing right there at the mailbox. It said:\n\n\u2002Dear Erwin,\n\n\u2002Merry Christmas! I know it's not \"cool\" but I wanted to send you this card so you'd know all is good wit me. High scool sucks but it's also pretty cool, if you know what I mean. Probly it wouldn't of been if I hadn't met you. Wanted you to know I knew that. Wanted to say thanks. I'd invite you over for X-Mas dinner but I think my Dad is still mad.\n\n\u2002Dashaen\n\n\u2002p.s. - I got me a girlfriend. That's her in the picture. Hawt ain't she?\n\nWhen he was done reading it, Erwin went back into his half of the duplex and wept, the only time in his adult life he would ever do so. He wept for a good solid hour, then poured the rest of the scotch down the drain and turned on the TV and watched Charlie Brown. Before he went to bed he folded the card up and put it in his wallet. It would be there until the day he died.\n\nNot long after that he felt better, more like himself, more able to do the sort of work he was good at. He resigned his teaching job at the end of the school year. Most everyone was relieved, though they were too polite to say anything. Or nervous.\n\nWhatever."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "Now, on a sunny October morning with the last breath of Virginia summer hanging in the air, Erwin aimed his rental\u2014a shitty little Ford Taurus\u2014at an empty spot in the parking lot and slid to a stop with a spray of gravel. This drew glares from a couple of cops smoking and swapping lies around the corner of the jail. Erwin grinned at them and waved. He didn't give a fuck.\n\nHe got out of the car and looked around, then spat in the general direction of the sign reading COUNTY JAIL. He called out to the two guys sucking on their Marlboros, \"That shit'll kill ya, y'know,\" then tipped his hat and grinned at them. \"Just sayin'.\"\n\nThe younger cop peered over the top of his sunglasses at Erwin like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. The older one laughed. \"I'll keep it in mind,\" he said. Actually, Erwin was wrong. The cops had less than two hours to live, but smoking would not be a factor.\n\nThe lobby of the jail was about like every other government building built in the past twenty years: cinder-block walls painted light-tan or dark-pale or something like that, linoleum floors\u2014cheap but damn shiny\u2014and a gray water fountain that dispensed lukewarm water that tasted like piss. Erwin drank it anyway. He was thirsty, and he'd had worse.\n\nLooking around the lobby he counted at least half a dozen meth heads in various stages of strung-out, two drunks, and a redheaded kid who, in Erwin's opinion, was fucking schizophrenic.\n\nHe walked up to the window under the sign that said VISITORS REGISTER HERE and took out his badge. \"Yeah, I'm Erwin,\" he began. \"I'm with Homeland S'curity. I'm here to see\u2014\"\n\nThe attendant, a pudgy man in a green uniform that said VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS on one pocket and ROGERS on the other, didn't look up. \"Fill this out,\" he said, pushing a clipboard through a slot in the glass.\n\n\"Can I get\u2014\"\n\n\"Fill it out,\" said the deputy. \"Then we'll talk.\"\n\nErwin sighed. The form ran three pages long, back and front. By the time he got done, a goodish line had formed ahead of him. He took his place behind a fat lady with dirty feet and a skinny girl of about sixteen with a bad Lynyrd Skynyrd tattoo on her back. Erwin was a little surprised to see that tattoo. Ronnie Van Zant had to have been in his grave ten years or more when the kid was born. But, he reflected, for a certain demographic Skynyrd is gonna be timeless. Like Elvis or the Virgin Mary. To whatever degree such a demographic existed, these two were definitely part of it. The fat lady had a kid named Billy who got caught with a truckload of stolen cheese.\n\nCheese?\n\nIt emerged that this was Billy's third time receiving stolen goods, so he was looking at a good long stretch. Momma wept steadily and noisily, saying things like \"I raised them boys raht!\" every so often. The skinny girl doled out Kleenex. Every so often she'd say something like \"I just don't know what he was thinking,\" and pat her belly protectively. Erwin guessed that there would be another doomed idiot to take Billy's place in the trailer park in six months or so.\n\nFifteen sniffly minutes later he was back at the window. He didn't bother trying to talk, just passed the form in and waited for the verdict. As a thirteen-year veteran of Army bureaucracy he was pretty sure he'd filled it out properly, but with a certain species of asshole you could never really be sure.\n\nThe pudgy cop scanned the form carefully, all three pages, back and front. After a moment he nodded. \"Looks good,\" he said, clearly disappointed. \"I'll need to see two forms of identification, Officer\"\u2014he broke off and squinted at the form\u2014\"Leffington? Erwin Leffington?\" He looked up for the first time.\n\n\"That's me,\" Erwin said. He held his badge up.\n\n\"Are you\u2026you're not the Erwin Leffington, are you?\"\n\nAh, fuck, he thought. Here we go. If he had one regret in life\u2014which he did\u2014it was letting that fucker write the book about him. It seemed harmless at the time, but the book was what led to the movie. When the movie came out, that was basically all she wrote. \"Prolly not.\"\n\n\"Command Sergeant Major Erwin Leffington? B Company, Second Battalion?\"\n\nErwin just looked at him. For the first time in a good long while the taste of dust and cordite came back to him. He tried to cling to the image of little Dashaen, to the Christmas card, but all of a sudden he was drowning.\n\n\"Second Battalion of the Fifteenth?\"\n\n\"Not for a while,\" Erwin said. He spoke very softly. \"If we could just\u2014\"\n\n\"My brother is Jim Rogers,\" the fat guy said.\n\nErwin looked up at that, no longer drowning. \"How is Sergeant Rogers?\"\n\n\"He's better, sir. It was rough going for a while, but he's doing well now. He just had a son, born last May.\"\n\n\"Don't call me sir.\" Then, after a moment, \"How's his leg?\"\n\n\"He gets around OK. Now, anyway. Took the VA a while to get it adjusted right.\"\n\nThe news that Rogers was doing well helped, a little. \"Your brother is a good man,\" he said. \"You tell him I asked after him. Now, if we could\u2014\"\n\n\"Sir, he told us about you,\" the fat deputy said. \"He told us what you done.\"\n\nErwin shuffled his feet. Shit like this always made him uncomfortable. The silence stretched out. \"Your brother is a good man,\" he repeated.\n\n\"My brother says the same about you. No, that ain't true. He says you're a great man. He says you're about the best soldier who ever wore a uniform, and a certified badass to boot.\" The fat deputy was looking at him with worship in his eyes. His voice trembled as he spoke. \"He says you saved his life, his and everybody\u2014\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" Erwin growled. Then, calmer, \"All that, yeah, that was overhyped.\"\n\n\"My brother says different, sir.\" Then something horrible occurred to him. \"I'm sorry about making you fill out them forms! If I'da known you was you I never woulda done that.\" His lips trembled. \"I'm real sorry.\"\n\n\"S'aright.\"\n\n\"Who you here to see?\"\n\n\"A guy named Steve Hodgson.\"\n\nThe deputy's face darkened. \"The cop killer? What you want with him?\"\n\nErwin, clever, saw his way out. \"Can't talk about it,\" he lied. \"National security.\"\n\n\"For real?\"\n\n\"Oh yeah.\" He could see that Rogers's brother believed this completely. That made him feel a little bad. Not as bad as he would have felt continuing the conversation, but bad. \"Yeah. It's all real fucking classified and shit. Tell Sergeant Rogers I asked after him.\"\n\n\"I will, sir.\" He hesitated. \"Could I\u2026could I maybe get your autograph?\"\n\nErwin weighed his options. One of them was to beat the guy a little bit unconscious. That worked sometimes. Usually after they get a autograph they let me go, though. Plus the lobby was full of security cameras. \"Yeah. Sure.\"\n\nThe deputy passed out a clipboard with a blank sheet of typing paper. Erwin signed it, passed it back. Rogers's brother took the autograph and put it in a drawer with trembling hands. \"I'm gonna have to put you in the chapel.\"\n\n\"The chapel?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Visitation room is full, unless you want to wait.\"\n\n\"The chapel's fine.\" The toilet would have been fine. He just wanted out, away from Rogers's brother and the endless parade of awful shit that lurked, trembling and eager, just beneath the surface of his babble."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "Rogers's brother searched Erwin's bag and took his weapon, but let him keep the laptop and manila folders. As they searched, another deputy skittered around whispering. So Erwin wasn't surprised when a different guy\u2014a sheriff's lieutenant, no less\u2014handed him his guest ID and walked him down the long hall to the chapel. He's probably the highest-ranking guy in the building, Erwin thought, bracing himself.\n\nSure enough, when they got to the steel door: \"I, uh. I read. I read that book they wrote about you. Well, mostly. About what you did in\u2014how do you pronounce that place?\"\n\n\"Natanz,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Is it really true that\u2014\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Erwin said. He could go weeks at a time without anyone recognizing him, but there were also days where it seemed like everybody he ran into with even the tiniest connection to the military turned out to have read the book, or seen the movie, or that thing on the History Channel. Today was shaping up to be one of those. \"It's total bullshit.\" Maybe I should grow a beard?\n\n\"Oh. I don't read much, but\u2014\"\n\nErwin strode into the chapel, shut the door behind him. Inside, he looked around. His job carried him into the occasional jail, but this was his very first jail chapel. It was maybe twenty feet on a side and windowless. It smelled of paint. He had expected rows of metal folding chairs\u2014it was that kind of building\u2014but instead he saw six concrete benches set into the floor, each wide enough for three or four guys. Interestingly, there were no crosses in sight. Political correctness, maybe? The only real features were a plain pine podium at the front of the room and a framed painting on the wall.\n\nWith nothing better to do and not eager to settle his middle-aged ass onto the concrete bench, Erwin walked over to check the painting out. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, either. It had the simple, blocky representationalism of medieval iconography and prison tattoos. A small man with nut-brown skin\u2014Jesus? Mohammed? Other?\u2014stood in the center of the picture. The sun burned down behind him, leaving his face in shadow. He held out his hands, blessing a motley array of people and animals gathered in the light. The holy dude and his supplicants were surrounded by darkness.\n\nThe chapel door opened. A middle-aged guy in khakis and a grease-spotted Izod walked in. \"You Leffington?\"\n\n\"Call me Erwin. Yeah.\"\n\n\"I'm Larry Dorn.\"\n\n\"Yeah, hi. Where's the kid?\" Dorn was Steve Hodgson's public defender.\n\n\"He'll be along. I asked them to give us a minute first. I wanted to talk to you.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Erwin said. \"Be happy to.\" This was a lie. They had spoken on the phone a couple of times. Dorn came across as sort of a sack of shit, in Erwin's opinion. But he controlled access to the Hodgson kid.\n\nWhile Dorn looked the papers over, Erwin occupied himself with staring at the painting. At first glance the surrounding darkness was completely black, but from the right angle you could see that it wasn't, not really. The paint was layered. If you looked at it right you could see figures in the darkness, devils maybe, and\u2014\n\n\"Everything looks in order,\" Dorn said.\n\n\"Yeah. For what it's worth, I don't give much of a shit about your boy. Only reason I'm talking to him is that he might know something about another case.\"\n\n\"What a relief,\" Dorn said. His voice fairly dripped with sarcasm.\n\n\"Not real fond of him?\"\n\n\"Nope. I knew Detective Miner. Our daughters played together sometimes.\"\n\n\"That gonna be a problem for you, defending him?\"\n\nDorn shrugged. \"What's to defend? They found him passed out drunk on Miner's dining-room table. The gun that killed Miner was in his hands. It had his prints on it.\" Dorn looked like he wanted to strangle his own client. It ain't looking real good for the defense.\n\n\"Just his prints?\"\n\n\"No. Miner's too. And a thumb print on the light switch from a third party we haven't made yet.\"\n\nYeah, we have, Erwin thought. You just don't know it yet.\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Like anything.\"\n\nDorn pursed his lips for a moment, considering. Then he shrugged. \"Yeah. There was this.\" He rooted around in a folder and handed over a stack of 8 \u00d7 10 glossies of the crime scene.\n\n\"Lotta guts on that china cabinet,\" Erwin said. \"We know who they belonged to?\" Carolyn, maybe? Or maybe Lisa?\n\n\"We're still waiting on the lab work.\"\n\n\"It was a shotgun what did it, though. The same one?\"\n\nDorn popped an eyebrow. \"Good eye. You in forensics?\"\n\n\"Not really.\" He had killed a lot of people with shotguns. \"That there's a piece of lung, looks like. It ain't the victim's\"\u2014his lungs were mostly in the kitchen\u2014\"and this Steve kid is up and walking around, so it probably ain't his either. You guys wonder about that?\"\n\n\"Not really, no. What are you getting at?\"\n\nErwin sighed. How'd this guy make it through law school? \"Anybody gone looking for this mystery chick of his?\"\n\n\"Who?\" Dorn said. \"The one at the bar? He made her up.\"\n\n\"I thought you had witnesses who saw the two of them together.\"\n\n\"We do. But that's all we have. If she was ever at Miner's house, she didn't leave any fingerprints, any footprints, not so much as a stray hair. Do you know how hard it is to walk through someone's house and not leave any trace?\"\n\n\"I dunno. Pretty hard, I guess. Thing is, though, she did leave a print.\"\n\nDorn's face clouded. \"You're kidding me.\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\n\"Which, the one on the light switch? It wasn't in IAFIS,\" Dorn said, meaning the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.\n\n\"That's right,\" Erwin said. \"It wasn't.\" He was going to let the phrase hang there, pregnant with all sorts of sinister implications about the information he had access to, but just then the door to the chapel clanged open. This disappointed Erwin. It spoiled the fucking moment.\n\nA different deputy walked in clutching a skinny white guy with short brown hair. Erwin recognized Steve Hodgson from his mug shot. The deputy shoved him at Erwin the way you'd push a sack of trash into a landfill.\n\nErwin looked him over. Is that him? Is that all there is? He wasn't quite a kid, not anymore. Early thirties, maybe? He was in an orange jail jumpsuit, faded and fraying at the edges. No visible tattoos. He didn't look like a junkie, but his eyes jumped around, alert and maybe a little shell-shocked.\n\nDorn nodded at the guard. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"I gotta lock you in Mr. Leffington, sir,\" the guard said. \"I'm real sorry. I gotta say, though, it's a honor to\u2014\"\n\n\"It's no problem,\" Dorn said. \"Thanks.\"\n\nLooking thwarted, the guard shut the door.\n\nThe Hodgson kid immediately started asking Dorn about someone named Petey, whether Dorn had heard anything about him. Who the fuck is Petey? He made a mental note but didn't interrupt.\n\nDorn looked at the guy like he was a fucking idiot. \"Don't you have bigger things to worry about?\"\n\nErwin could see desperation in Steve's eyes, but he kept it out of his voice. \"Yeah. I know. I just wondered if\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah. OK. Fine. Your friend called. He said he picked up your dog. That's all I got.\"\n\nHodgson nodded, smiled a little. Tension visibly slid off him. He shuffled over to one of the concrete benches, his thin blue prison slippers scuffing against the shiny linoleum. The manacles didn't leave him much room to move.\n\nUp for murder one and all he cares about is his dog? When he got close enough Erwin stood up and held out his hand. Steve looked startled, but after a moment he reached out to the length of the chain and gave Erwin a little shake.\n\n\"I'm Erwin,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Steve Hodgson.\" He thought about it for a second. \"'Pleased to meet you,' isn't quite right, but I'll admit I'm curious. What can I do for you, Mr.\u2014\"\n\n\"It's Erwin,\" Erwin said. \"Always call me Erwin.\" Steve's eyes narrowed at this. Probably wondering if I'm playing \"good cop.\"\n\n\"I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions. You mind if I call you Steve?\"\n\n\"Sure. Whatever.\" Steve sat on one of the benches. \"I don't suppose you've got a cigarette, do you? I'd drop-kick the baby Jesus for a Marlboro.\"\n\n\"Sorry. Don't smoke. Want a dip?\" Erwin noticed that Steve took a couple of extra steps so that he could sit with his back to the wall. Erwin had done the same thing.\n\nSteve considered. \"I'll pass. Thanks, though.\"\n\n\"I've read your case file,\" Erwin said. \"If what you say is true, sounds like you got well and truly fucked over.\"\n\nSteve gave him a wry smile. \"Yeah. Oddly enough, I had that same thought.\"\n\n\"Any idea why she'd want to do such a thing?\"\n\nAgain, Steve looked startled. \"You believe me?\"\n\n\"Dunno yet. You ain't said much.\"\n\nSteve gave Dorn a resentful look. Dorn hadn't made a secret of the fact that he thought the woman, if she existed at all, was awfully convenient. \"Up until now no one seemed interested. But to answer your question, no. I have no idea why she'd want to do something like this to me. Or anyone else, for that matter.\" But something flickered in his eyes as he said it.\n\n\"You got a clean conscience, do ya?\"\n\nSteve gave him a long, appraising look. \"You don't miss much, do you? No. I don't have a clean conscience. I did something a long time ago. A friend of mine got hurt. Probably his parents hated me enough to do something like this, if they would have thought of it, but Celia died of a heart attack seven years ago and Martin shot himself the year after.\"\n\n\"That's a sad fucking story,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"You making fun of me?\"\n\n\"I am not,\" Erwin said. \"For what it's worth, I get it. I've got plenty of shit I wish I could take back. Keeps me up some nights.\"\n\nSteve studied him for a moment, then relaxed a little. \"OK. Sorry.\"\n\n\"You think this Carolyn chick has anything to do with that?\"\n\nSteve's brow wrinkled. \"I don't see how she could,\" he said. \"But there's a whole lot about her that I don't understand at all.\"\n\n\"Why don't you start at the beginning,\" Erwin said. \"Tell me everything you remember. Take your time. I got all day.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "\"Then I heard a guy behind me,\" Steve was saying. He had been speaking for almost an hour. He had a good memory for visual detail, less so for the exact wording of conversations. His description of the woman's funky attire\u2014bicycle shorts and leg warmers?\u2014was both interesting and surprisingly detailed. Also in Erwin's professional opinion, it had the ring of truth. If this guy is lying, he doesn't know it. He simply had no idea what had been done to him, or why. It made Erwin feel fucking sad.\n\n\"Then the guy\u2014Miner\u2014he said something along the lines of 'You're under arrest.' He said it at least twice. He acted kind of weird, like he wasn't sure what was going on. In a daze, you know?\"\n\n\"What happened next?\" Erwin asked.\n\nSteve looked down. Erwin noticed that he avoided looking at the chain around his ankles. \"I honestly don't remember. I remember thinking, Oh, shit, he's got a gun, and I can kind of picture his face, so I must have turned around. But my next clear memory is waking up on the floor. I had no idea where I was, and some guy was hollering at me.\"\n\n\"That would be Detective Jacobsen,\" Dorn said. \"He and Miner were friends. They were supposed to go out fishing that morning. He discovered Miner's body, and performed the initial arrest.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" Erwin lied. He didn't give a fuck about Jacobsen. He tapped his pen against the concrete bench, thinking. \"So you deny killing him? Miner?\"\n\n\"Does it matter?\"\n\n\"Prolly not,\" Erwin said. \"But I'm curious.\"\n\n\"I guess I do. Deny it, I mean.\"\n\n\"You guess?\" Dorn said, incredulous.\n\nSteve shrugged. \"Like I said, I don't remember. The last clear memory I have, he was alive. When I came to the next morning he was dead. I had no grudge against the guy.\" He sighed. \"I really wish I'd just gone home and gone to bed. Dunno if it would've helped him much, but I'd probably be at home with my dog.\"\n\n\"You think she'd have killed him anyway?\"\n\n\"Dude,\" Steve said with truly epic sincerity, \"I've got no fucking idea.\"\n\nErwin waited for more, but that was it. He's empty. He considered. \"OK,\" he said after a moment. \"I think you've been pretty straight with me. I appreciate that. A lot of the guys I talk to, they lie just 'cause they like the sound of it. So I'm going to spare you my dance moves. I got some information about this woman\u2014not much, but some\u2014that might be of use in your case. Maybe.\"\n\nSteve blinked. \"Go on.\"\n\nDorn looked up from his papers.\n\n\"I'm fairly sure that the woman you met is named Carolyn Sopaski. And what you said dovetails with the little bit we know about her.\"\n\nSteve looked attentive, maybe even hopeful. He didn't speak.\n\n\"I'm listening,\" Dorn said.\n\n\"Like I said, I work for Homeland Security. I'm a special agent. It's kind of like an FBI special agent, except we ain't gotta wear a suit if we don't want to.\" Today he was in a gray T-shirt and a navy-blue zip-up hoodie. The jeans he had on were the same size as the ones he wore to his high school graduation thirty years ago.\n\n\"So what do you do, exactly?\"\n\n\"It depends. A lot of times I just follow up on interesting coincidences.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"Well, these days Homeland Security is tied into pretty much everything. You know that, right? Phone records, Internet searches, library books, bank stuff\u2026everything. All that goes into this big air-conditioned room that they got up in Utah. What comes out the other end is a pile of weird coincidences that might be of interest to guys like me. So, like, if the same dude buys one bag of fertilizer at fifteen or twenty different Home Depots, this system might notice that. You follow?\"\n\n\"I guess.\"\n\n\"Or, like in this case, say a cop writes a report. They're forever writing reports, poor fucks. In addition to all the normal shit that happens with it\u2014prosecutors and lawyers and dust-gathering\u2014there's also a copy that goes in to these machines in Virginia. And on the last run one of the cases that popped out was\u2014\"\n\n\"Mine?\" said Steve, suddenly eager. \"You found something that clears me?\"\n\n\"Nope. Yours didn't get picked up. Nothing unexplained there. The connection that ended up on my desk had to do with a bank robbery. A really fucking weird bank robbery.\"\n\n\"Weird how?\"\n\n\"Part of it was the size of the haul,\" Erwin said. \"Most robberies, the guy gets ten, maybe fifteen thousand. A lot of times it's not even that much. But this one was more like three hundred thousand.\"\n\n\"Three hundred twenty-seven thousand,\" Steve said, \"-ish?\" Quoting the amount his mystery woman had said was in the blue duffel bag.\n\nErwin nodded. \"Actually, yeah. Same thought crossed my mind. Anyway, that's a pretty successful robbery. A lot more successful than most of them. It's unusual. So the computer took an interest, kicked it up to me. One thing that might have explained it was if the people who did it were trained.\"\n\nSteve wrinkled his forehead. \"Trained? You mean, like, government trained?\"\n\n\"Believe it or not, yeah. KGB ran a course on that very thing back in the '70s. Insurgent training or some shit. We did too, as part of the Green Beret Q Course. Not anymore, but a lot of the know-how is still floating around. Anyway, that's why I got called in. We get one like this every couple of months. Usually it turns out to be nothing.\n\n\"That's true here as well, at least in that we don't have any reason to think Ms. Sopaski is into any kind of terrorist shit. What's less clear is what exactly she is involved in. I mean, the bank tellers helped her do the fuckin' robbery. What's up with that?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Dorn asked.\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Just what I said. At around three p.m., Ms. Sopaski\u2014your Carolyn\u2014and another chick, identity unconfirmed, walked into the Oak Street branch of Midwest Regional in downtown Chicago. We got 'em on the lobby camera. They waited in line like good little customers for just over three minutes. When their turn came the two of them approached the teller, a Miz\"\u2014Erwin squinted at his notes\u2014\"Amrita Krishnamurti. The unidentified woman spoke with her calmly for thirty-seven seconds. Then\u2014well, never mind. Watch it yourself.\"\n\nErwin fired up his laptop. He punched up Microsoft something-or-other, spent a couple of seconds closing out porn, then pressed Play. \"Security-camera footage,\" he said. \"From the bank.\"\n\nSteve set the laptop on one of the concrete benches. Dorn watched over his shoulder.\n\n\"Why is she dressed like that?\" Dorn asked. Carolyn looked more or less reasonable, if a bit dated\u2014jeans and a man's button-down, barefoot\u2014but the other woman was in a bathrobe and cowboy hat.\n\n\"I ain't got a fuckin' clue,\" Erwin said. \"My first thought was meth, but I don't think that's it. She looks too sleepy.\"\n\n\"Plus she still has all her teeth,\" Dorn agreed. \"Could be LSD, though.\"\n\nErwin and Steve looked at him.\n\nDorn shrugged. \"About half the people who get booked tripping on acid are wearing bathrobes. It's, like, a thing.\"\n\nThey considered this for a few moments, then Erwin nodded back at the laptop. \"It's about to get good.\" The woman in the bathrobe was speaking to Amrita Krishnamurti. Carolyn handed her a blue duffel bag, like one you'd use to take stuff to the gym. Ms. Krishnamurti motioned to the other two tellers and they gathered round to listen. The bathrobe woman spoke for a few more seconds, then touched each of them on the cheek.\n\nThen the tellers split up and started filling bags of money. They worked quickly, slowing only to toss out dye packs and the occasional bill.\n\n\"Are those the marked bills?\" Dorn asked.\n\nErwin nodded.\n\nThe video ran for just under three minutes. When it was over Steve handed the computer back.\n\n\"They all helped,\" Dorn said.\n\n\"Yeah.\" Erwin bit back the urge to salute Captain Obvious. He needed Dorn. \"They did. That Krishnamurti lady was the, whatchacallit, branch manager. She worked there about twelve years. The other two had been there about a year each. None of them was fixing to go bankrupt or any shit like that. And they couldn't have got the job in the first place if they had criminal records. But they was just awful eager to fill up that bag, don't you think?\"\n\nDorn nodded. \"It's weird.\"\n\nErwin thought, but did not say, Maybe a little bit like a guy who'd kept his nose clean for ten years all of a sudden deciding to commit burglary and kill a cop? Or maybe not. But he'd bring that up later. \"Yeah, I thought so too. So I went and talked to them a little bit. They seemed nice enough. They all remembered where the alarm buttons were, didn't panic or anything like that, but not a one of them pushed one.\"\n\n\"Did they say why?\"\n\n\"Not at first. They lawyered up. But once I convinced them they weren't going to jail, one of the younger ones talked to me. She said she didn't set off any of the alarms 'because I was just too busy hunting for dye packs and radio transmitters.' Real matter-of-fact, see? I asked her why she'd do such a thing, and she said she had no idea. I'm pretty sure I believe her.\" Erwin gave a wry smile. \"I'll be honest, I'm fucking stumped. That's why I came here.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"I was hoping you might have some bright ideas.\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\nErwin nodded. \"You spent more time with her than anybody. Anything about that video jump out at you? Jog your memory, like?\" Erwin gave him a minute to think about it. His eye drifted once again to that fucked-up painting. The shapes in the darkness were black on black, but you could almost\u2014\n\n\"You don't think the tellers are in on it?\"\n\n\"Nah,\" Erwin said. \"I don't. I did what I could for them. They lost their jobs, but I don't think there's going to be a trial.\"\n\n\"And you're sure the woman in the video was Carolyn?\"\n\n\"The prints match.\"\n\n\"How did you get her name? Matching prints would give you a connection between the two cases, but for the name you'd need something else.\"\n\nSmart kid. \"Birth records,\" Erwin said. \"Hospital.\"\n\nDorn's eyes narrowed. \"I didn't know that was technically possible.\"\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Learn something every day, dontcha? I'm Big Brother, more or less. I've got access to all sorts of shit you wouldn't think. We couldn't find much on her, though, and our computer guys are pretty good. Whadda they call it, data mining?\" Erwin said, playing dumb. He'd published papers on data mining.\n\n\"I've heard of it,\" Dorn said. Erwin was pretty sure he was lying.\n\n\"Whatever. Point is, them nerds just about always come back with something. Not this time, though. I'm about convinced they came up dry because past a certain age there's just nothing out there to find on Miz Sopaski.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'past a certain age'?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Well, up until she turned eight or so, she shows up in the record about like any other kid. Birth records, shots, school\u2026\" He rummaged around in his folder and dug out an 8\u00d710, slid it across the table. \"That's Mrs. Gillespie's second-grade class. Carolyn's on the back row.\"\n\nSteve examined the picture.\n\nErwin waited for a lightbulb to go on, but it didn't. \"You notice anything else in that picture?\"\n\n\"Should I?\"\n\n\"Maybe not. I've had a lot longer to look at it than you. And I might be seeing things. But take a look at the girl in the second row, third from the right. She remind you of anybody?\"\n\nIt took Steve another couple of seconds. \"Is it\u2026the kid looks like the other lady from the bank robbery. The one who did all the talking. Same nose, same shape of her face\u2026\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. \"I thought so too. The kid's name is Lisa Garza. We're trying to find out what she's been up to for the last quarter century or so.\" He gave them a level gaze. \"Haven't found anything on her, either. Ab-so-lutely nothing.\"\n\nDorn let out a low whistle.\n\nSeeing that they were ready, Erwin dug out the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance. It was a photograph from a newspaper. The caption underneath it said \"Beating the Summer Heat! Carolyn Sopaski, 7, takes her turn on the water slide.\" A grinning girl with a missing front tooth was sliding down a long piece of plastic, haloed by a sparkling spray of water. In the background a small crowd of kids milled around, waiting their turn.\n\n\"What about that one?\" he asked. \"You notice anything\u2014\" He broke off. He sniffed the air. He couldn't identify the smell at first, and then he could. Blood. All of a sudden he was back in Afghanistan. He reached out for an M16 that wasn't there.\n\nIn the distance he heard a woman scream, then a gunshot. Then two more gunshots and a deep, booming laugh.\n\nThen, screaming."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "Thirty seconds later Erwin heard keys clattering in the lock. \"Aw fuck.\"\n\nThe door swung open on Sergeant Rogers's brother kneeling on the floor, head hung low, cheeks streaked with tears. He pointed at Steve with his left hand. His right, Erwin saw, was broken in at least two places. \"That's him,\" he said. \"Please. I got a baby\u2026\"\n\nErwin just had time to register the words when Rogers's head exploded. He crumpled the rest of the way to the floor, his short, dumb life mercifully over. Then the craziest looking asshole Erwin had ever seen stepped over the body into the chapel.\n\nHe was a white guy, tall and muscular, a \"healthy specimen\" as they had said back in the day. Erwin's first thought was that the guy had done himself up in red body paint like one of those tribes in Colombia. No. Not body paint. Blood. He was covered in blood from head to toe. Here and there bits of meat were stuck to him as well. A couple of feet of someone's small intestine dangled from his shoulder.\n\nThe big guy was spinning a pyramid-shaped weight on the end of a long chain. At the other end of the chain was a machete-sized knife mounted on a yellow metal shaft. Is that bronze? Also\u2014What the fuck? At first Erwin refused to believe what his eyes were telling him, but the guy was, in fact, wearing a tutu. Hmm, Erwin thought. There's something you don't see every day.\n\n\"Eshteeeeve?\" the big guy said. His eyes tracked back and forth between Erwin, Steve, and Dorn, reminding Erwin of the forward-mounted gun on an Apache. He had a strange accent, one Erwin couldn't place. The 's' sounded more like \"esh\" and he dragged his e out too long.\n\n\"Uh\u2026Steve?\" said Dorn. \"You're looking for Steve?\"\n\n\"Don't, Counselor,\" Erwin said.\n\nThe big guy's eyes locked onto Dorn. \"Eshteeve?\"\n\n\"That's him!\" Dorn said, pointing at Steve.\n\nThe guy gave Dorn a big smile. His teeth were brown. \"Eshteeeve?\"\n\nDorn nodded his head with comical enthusiasm, looking for a moment more like a headbanger than an attorney. \"Yeah,\" he said, jabbing his finger into the air in Steve's direction, \"that's him!\"\n\n\"Counselor, I don't think\u2014\"\n\nQuick as a panther, the big guy was at Steve's side. He put an arm around him, stroked his cheek with the blade of the knife. Erwin's professional eye noted that the blade was hand-forged. Don't see that much either. It looked very sharp.\n\n\"Eshteeeve?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026yeah,\" Steve said. \"That's me.\"\n\nThe big guy continued running the knife up and down Steve's cheek, not quite hard enough to draw blood. Then, with a movement so fast that Erwin's eye could not track it, the weighted end of the chain smashed out and obliterated Dorn's lower jaw. It literally disappeared. Probably part of it was mashed back into his throat, but other bits scattered hither and yon.\n\n\"Gubboy,\" the big guy said to Steve. \"You come.\"\n\nFrom the look in his eyes, Dorn realized that something had happened but not exactly what. He reached up and probed tenderly at the bottom half of his face. About the time he realized something was missing the first drops of blood began to rain down on his shirt. His eyes widened. \"OOOGH!\" he said. \"OOOOOOOGH!\" He began bouncing up and down on the bench like a little kid who needs to use the bathroom. \"OOOGH! OOOOOOGH!\"\n\nBoth Steve and the big guy were looking at Dorn, Steve in horror, the big guy with a slight, amused smile that brought out his dimples. After a moment of this he began to imitate Dorn's bouncing. He glanced at Steve and Erwin the way a man will when he is laughing among friends. He pointed at Dorn and said, \"Oogh! Oogh!\"\n\nSteve didn't seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the ruin of Dorn's face. The big guy's smile faded a bit. He turned to Erwin. He didn't like what he saw there, either. His smile disappeared. He shrugged. A split second later the spear on the other end of the chain flashed out and buried itself to the hilt in Dorn's eye socket. The pointy end of the blade poked out the back of Dorn's skull, yellow and bloody. After an interval just long enough for Erwin to register the fine silver chain running from the hilt to the big guy's hand it flashed back again. Dorn fell forward, his head hitting the concrete bench with a solid clunk. Blood and aqueous humor leaked from his eye and began puddling.\n\nThe silence seemed very loud.\n\nThe big guy savored the looks on their faces for a moment. He gave Erwin a wink, then began to spin the weighted end of the chain again.\n\nErwin realized he was about to die. Then his mind\u2014his clever little mind, which had been so good to him over the years\u2014came through again. He looked at the big guy's ridiculous dress\u2014brown loafers with the toes cut out, purple tutu\u2014a tutu? Da fuck?\u2014flak jacket, probably Israeli, and red tie. He thought of the woman who had done the bank robbery in a bathrobe and a cowboy hat. \"Say,\" he said, \"you wouldn't happen to know a chick named Carolyn, would you?\"\n\nThe big guy raised his eyebrow in surprise. \"Carolyn?\" The rotation of the chain slowed, just a little.\n\nErwin, whose instincts had been honed to exquisite sharpness through a decade-long association with murderous men, thought, The trick now is not to show panic. If he sees fear, it will excite him. \"Yeah,\" he said casually. \"Carolyn. Lisa, too.\"\n\n\"Wussay Carolyn?\"\n\n\"Eh?\" He put his hand to his ear. \"Say again, chum?\"\n\n\"Wut\u2026say\u2026Carolyn.\" He wiggled the knife for emphasis.\n\nWith a knot in his stomach that reminded him of the one and only time he had gone deep-sea fishing and hooked a \"big'un,\" Erwin said, \"Oh yeah, Carolyn and me go waaaaaay back. If she's told me one time she's told me a thousand, 'Erwin, if you ever need anything, anything at all, you just have to say my name\u2014Carolyn\u2014and I'll come a-running.' We're real good friends, me and Carolyn.' \"\n\nThe big guy scrunched up his face, confused. \"Carolyn?\"\n\n\"Oh yeah.\" Erwin nodded. \"Carolyn.\"\n\nThe big guy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. \"Nobununga?\"\n\n\"Yup. Nobunaga. Him too, yup.\"\n\nHe realized immediately that he had said the wrong thing. Not Nobu-nag-a, Nobu-nun-ga. Ah, fuck. The big guy's eyes narrowed. He resumed spinning his pyramid. Erwin was thinking, When he throws it I'll twist right, twist right and grab the chain if I can but he's so fucking fast\u2014\n\nThe big guy blinked. He leaned forward, brow furrowed. Then his eyes flew open wide, reminding Erwin of how Rogers's brother looked when he recognized Erwin's name on the form. He pointed. \"You\u2026Erwin?\"\n\n\"Umm\u2026\"\n\n\"Natanz?\" The big guy held his hand to his shoulder as if it were wounded, then pantomimed working a squad automatic weapon, sweeping it back and forth, singlehandedly suppressing an attack by a vastly superior force.\n\nErwin considered his answer in light of the Israeli flak jacket, the guy's obvious insanity. Ah, fuck it, he thought. \"Yeah. Natanz.\"\n\nThe big guy drew in breath. He stopped spinning the pyramid, then snapped to something almost but not quite like the US military's version of attention\u2014his feet were a bit too wide, his chest poked out a bit too far for the Army. Then, holding the spear perfectly vertical with his left hand\u2014parade rest?\u2014he raised his right fist and banged it on his chest. He said something in a language Erwin had never heard before.\n\nErwin wasn't going to salute him back\u2014not this guy\u2014but he nodded again. One of them days.\n\nDown the hallway he heard a clatter of bullets falling on the tile floor, a soft curse, the distinct sound of a rifle being cocked. AR-15, prolly. The cops are still trying to fight back. Both Erwin and the big guy glanced back at the door. The big guy frowned, not liking what he saw out there. Then, just like that, he punched Steve in the jaw. Steve slumped, dazed but not completely out of it. The big guy slung him over his shoulder. The two of them disappeared out into the hall.\n\nErwin heard gunfire, then screams, then a deep, booming laugh. He felt alive in a way he hadn't since Afghanistan. His veins were thrumming with energy. He got up and went looking for a gun.\n\nThe rifle he'd heard in the hall\u2014it was an AR-15\u2014was all bent-up. He found a pistol in the locker room, but by then the big guy was gone. Steve was gone with him. Erwin followed a trail of bare, bloody footprints down the hall. The security door was blocked open by the fat lady with the dirty feet. A hole the size of his hand gaped in her chest. Through it he could see a big blood vessel, probably her aorta, all shredded-up.\n\nThe skinny girl with the Skynyrd tattoo, apparently unharmed, knelt beside her, staring down with a blank expression on her face. \"Bev?\" she said. \"Beverly?\"\n\nErwin thought about telling the skinny girl that Beverly was with Ronnie Van Zant and Elvis, but he wasn't sure how that would go over. He settled for patting her on the shoulder.\n\nThe lobby was drenched with blood. Intestines dangled from the metal chairs, the light fixtures, the counter. Thick splinters of bulletproof glass lay strewn across the floor. He had seen that stuff break before, just once, when an Iraqi limousine got hit by a depleted uranium slug from an A-10 Thunderbolt. He made his way through the lobby, checking for pulses and finding none. The older cop he'd seen smoking outside had been decapitated. If his head were still around, Erwin didn't see it.\n\nHe stood over the dead cop for a long minute, lips pursed, considering. Lightning flashed off in the west. Someone in the lobby was screaming. He bent over and fished around in the dead cop's front pocket and retrieved a pack of Marlboro Lights and a Bic, then made his way back to the chapel.\n\nOnce inside he kicked the door shut. He moved to a spot where he could look at the painting and slid down along the wall until his ass hit the floor. The buzz of the fluorescent lights reminded him of a cloud of flies around a corpse. In a few minutes there would be sirens, ambulances, SWAT teams, reports. He shook out a smoke, lit it, and took a deep drag, relishing the head rush from the nicotine.\n\nOn the bench in front of him sat the newspaper picture of Carolyn on the water slide. In the background of the twenty-five-year-old photo someone who looked an awful lot like Steve Hodgson, aged about ten, waited for his turn. Shit, Erwin thought. I really wanted to ask him about that. Up on the wall Jesus\u2014or whomever\u2014held his hands out, keeping the dark things of creation at bay. He heard the rumble again, from the east, closer now.\n\nThunder."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Luckiest Chicken in the World",
                "text": "\"Wow,\" Aliane said. \"You weren't kidding. You do have lions in your backyard.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Marcus said. \"Just like in Scarface!\" He grinned, exposing what Aliane judged to be about twenty thousand Brazilian reis' worth of gold grills on his teeth.\n\nHow much would that be in dollars? More than Aliane's mother had made in a year of scrubbing floors, anyway. Aliane was only vaguely familiar with Scarface, but she could tell from his tone she was supposed to be impressed. \"Ooooh, baby,\" she said, smiling, and ran a fingernail down his forearm.\n\nShe could still hear the party a couple hundred meters behind them\u2014thumping bass, laughter, people splashing in the pool\u2014but they were far enough away that she could no longer see Marcus's mansion through the trees. They stood on a concrete walkway between two deep, lighted pits filled with fake rocks and a few bushes. Marcus faced her, standing a little bit inside of the invisible we're-just-friends line.\n\n\"The big male is Dresden. That one\"\u2014he pointed at the one on her left\u2014\"is called Nagasaki. Naga for short.\"\n\n\"I thought lions were supposed to have a mane?\"\n\nMarcus shook his head. \"Only the males. Don't you watch the Discovery Channel?\"\n\nAliane forced a smile. Growing up she was too poor to have a TV. \"She's small, too.\"\n\n\"She's only about half-grown. We think she's his daughter.\"\n\nShe turned and looked into the other pit, the one with the male. The sound of their voices had disturbed his sleep. He was awake now, studying her with unblinking yellow eyes. She shivered and stepped in a little closer to Marcus. \"He's really big.\"\n\n\"I'm living large.\" Marcus puffed his cigar and spread his arms wide, a gesture that took in the lion pit, the forty landscaped acres, the ten-foot concrete wall surrounding the grounds. Marcus\u2014Little Z to the hip-hop cognoscenti\u2014lived on a Connecticut estate that had once been the weekend getaway of a hedge-fund manager. He put his arm around Aliane's shoulders and pulled her forward to look down at the male.\n\n\"Hey, you want me to wake her up too?\"\n\n\"No!\" Aliane said, a little too quickly. \"No\u2026I mean, that's OK. Let it sleep.\" The big lion put his head back down, closed his eyes. She snuggled in close, stifling a cigar-smoke sneeze.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\" But when she looked at the sleeping lion, some deep part of her stirred. Before she'd become a model she lived in a small village in Brazil, near the Pantanal. Jaguar attacks were not unheard-of. A boy in her fourth-grade class had been killed. Once she saw a farmer with his scalp hanging loose, his face drenched with blood. \"Can they, you know, get out?\"\n\nMarcus shook his head. \"No way. That pit is fifteen feet deep. You can't tell from up here, but the walls slope back towards the inside. So, like, there's no way to get a grip or anything. Ain't no way they're climbing out of there.\"\n\n\"Oh. Well\u2026good,\" she said, trying to sound convinced. \"Wow, baby. That's really cool. Can we go back to the party?\"\n\n\"In a minute. Gotta feed them first.\" He grinned. \"You wanna go fishing?\"\n\n\"Fishing?\"\n\n\"Come with me.\" He circled around the side of the pit to a trail that led deeper into the woods.\n\n\"I don't know, Marcus\u2026it's pretty dark.\" She glanced back at the house. The party was in full swing. Marcus's latest single\u2014\"Pimp Hand\"\u2014was blaring out over the stereo. \"I'm out of wine.\"\n\n\"We'll get you some more wine in a minute. Come on, you really want to see this. It's the funniest thing ever.\"\n\nThe forest behind him was very dark, but his watch was a Patek Philippe. And he's going to put me in a video. Maybe.\n\n\"OK,\" she said. \"Fine.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "The big lion's dream was the same every night. Golden grass brushed at his whiskers. The breeze carried the scent of wildebeest and zebra. The sun hung low on the horizon, and the shadows of the baobab trees lay long.\n\nHome.\n\nIn Dresden's dream his daughter was still very small. She paced him as he walked, moving in his shadow just as Dresden had done with his own father. He was teaching her the rudiments of their craft: the location of the drinking holes, the proper way to drift in from downwind of one's prey, the words to show respect to the Forest God after a kill. It was a good memory, a good dream.\n\nBut then it turned.\n\nDresden froze in his tracks, one forepaw hanging just above the ground. He perked his ears up and leaned forward, straining to catch a scrap of sound carried by the breeze. Naga heard it too, deep and buzzy, a bit like a roar and a bit like the sound of angry bees except not at all like either one. It sounded like metal.\n\nIt sounded like men.\n\nWait, he said to Naga. Watch. She swished her tail, acknowledging the order. But Dresden was older than was common for a new father, and he had mostly forgotten what it was to be young and playful. He did not see the mischief in her eyes. He left her then, moving through the grasses, low and slow and silent. In the dream he was not afraid, not yet. But the part of him that was not dreaming ached to do something else, anything else, to take his cub and flee, to rip and tear, to shred those things that brought the sounds of men into his world. But of course he could do nothing. That was the way of this dream.\n\nDresden rose up in the grass to stand at his full height. His eyes glinted in the twilight, twin bright points framed by the inky shadows of his mane. The gazelle they had been stalking caught sight of him and fled. He did not care. His attention was all on the buzzing sound and, a moment later, on the brown cloud of dust that accompanied it.\n\nDresden watched them, uneasy. He knew of men, and he understood their guns well enough.\n\nThen unease turned to terror. Naga had not waited. Naga had not watched. Instead she approached the men with all the bravado of youth. As he watched, a man raised a gun to his shoulder and, with a puff and a crack, Naga fell. Dresden, roaring, charged across the veldt for the last time, not caring about the danger, wanting only to seize the prey that dared hurt his daughter, to rend and tear, to shred its life.\n\nInstead, mid-charge, he watched as the men raised the sticks to their shoulders, felt the sting of the needles in his back, his neck. Suddenly he could no longer stand.\n\nDresden, dreaming, understood he would wake in a distant land, wake in a high-walled trap, slick beyond climbing, tall beyond jumping. There would be no escape. The rest of his life stretched out before him, worse than any nightmare. Worse, they would take Naga as well. He had failed his cub. That knowledge bore down on his heart like a stone.\n\nHe and his cub would wake under strange stars, and all the days and nights of her life would be poisoned by the sounds and smells of men."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 24",
                "text": "Now, seasons later and an ocean away, Dresden jerked awake. He saw humans in the pit with him, three of them, very close.\n\nDresden wondered if he might still be dreaming. He raised his head, sniffed the night air. It stank of smoke. The horizon glowed with unnatural light. Not far away, machines roared and clanked. This is real, then. He gathered his feet under him and stood, rumbling a little deep in his chest. His craft stirred in him for the first time in a very long while. If they came just a bit closer, he would spring. If not, then he would sidle up to them, pretending to be\u2014\n\n\"Good evening,\" one of the three said. \"Please pardon our intrusion. We mean no disrespect.\" He spoke in the language of the hunt, spoke it perfectly, though perhaps with the tiniest hint of tiger accent. \"Are you the one they call the Thorn of Dawn?\"\n\nDresden blinked. Thorn of Dawn was the name his father had given him. He thought he would never hear it again. Astonished, he swished his tail. Yes.\n\n\"Good. I thought that it might be you. I am called Michael. I hunted for a time with the pride of the Red Wind.\" He glanced around the pit. \"It was there that I heard of your troubles.\"\n\nFor a moment, Dresden was speechless. The Red Wind lived a long run or so to the west of his home. They were fierce, and well respected. Hunted with them? A man? After a moment's consideration he made the sound he might have made if he saw another lion in the distance: Who are you? What do you want?\n\n\"That is a bit involved. Let me begin by saying that I am the adopted son of Ablakha, and apprentice to the tiger Nobununga. I bear Nobununga's scent, and hunt at his side. This is my brother David, who is the slave of murder, and my sister Carolyn, also of the house of Ablakha. We come bearing news of Nobununga. May we approach?\"\n\nAblakha? Dresden knew the name. He was a heretic, an enemy of the Forest God. But Nobununga was a different matter. He was an ancient tiger, said to be the ruler of all the forests of the world. Dresden padded over to the man and sniffed him, just as he might have done when receiving a fellow lion. And, sure enough, the man did smell of tiger. Hmm.\n\nDresden decided to err on the side of courtesy\u2014if even half of what he heard about Nobununga was true, that would be the wisest course. He froze and allowed himself to be scented in turn. The man gave his mane a quick sniff and backed away. This was exactly the proper thing for a junior hunter to do in these circumstances.\n\nDresden furrowed his brow. He had no love for men in general, and Ablakha was an enemy of God. But each night he spent under these strange stars, Dresden had prayed himself to sleep. He did not bemoan the fate that had fallen to him, did not protest that his lifelong piety was rewarded in this way. He asked nothing for himself. He prayed only that his cub be given a chance at life beyond this cage. Each night Dresden begged God to grant him this one prayer, to accept his own life as forfeit. He could not think how this might possibly be related\u2026but God had surprised him before.\n\nDresden settled back on his haunches and lifted his forepaw, gave it a quick lick. This was a respectful gesture, if not quite a welcome.\n\nDespite himself, he was curious to hear what the man had to say."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 25",
                "text": "\"\u2014and that motherfuckin' lion dropped not five feet away from me, I kid you not,\" Marcus was saying. \"He was pissed. If my third shot hadn't caught him just right\u2026\"\n\n\"For real?\" Aliane said.\n\n\"For real.\"\n\nThe little patch of forest they were in was supposed to look wild. It pretty much did from a distance. Up close, not so much. Even if you discounted the little Christmas-tree lights marking the path, something about it said \"landscaping.\" The palms were too evenly spaced, or something. But wild or not, Marcus's walled forest was plenty big. She could barely make out the sounds of the party.\n\n\"Anyway, once the big lion was asleep, I just walked over and picked up the cub. She was little-bitty then. And then when I did that, I heard this roar and here comes momma running after me now.\"\n\n\"What'd you do?\"\n\n\"Well, I put down the cub. But it was too late. Momma was a crafty bitch\u2014she snuck in a lot closer than the daddy had been, and all our tranquilizer guns were empty. So one of the native guys, he pulls out a rifle and shoots her.\"\n\n\"Aww! You shot her? She was just trying to protect her baby.\"\n\n\"Yeah, we shot her! She was fixin' to eat my ass. And lucky we did, too. She landed on one of them dudes we had toting our tents and tore his arm all up before she died. I heard later it had to get amputated.\"\n\nSome of what Aliane felt must have shown on her face.\n\n\"It's OK. I gave him some money.\" Marcus looked at her. \"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" she said. Then, in hopes of changing the subject, \"How long ago was this?\"\n\n\"Mmm\u2026this was maybe a month after I got off tour, so I guess it must be coming up on a year now. Naga\u2014she was the cub\u2014has grown a lot. Back at the house I got a picture of me standing with my foot on her dad while I'm holding her. Now she's pushing two hundred pounds, and she's only half-grown.\"\n\n\"Damn. How big's the daddy?\"\n\n\"Like, maybe four hundred pounds? It took four people to lift him. Twelve hours later we was all on a plane back to Connecticut.\"\n\n\"They let you bring lions in?\"\n\n\"I got a permit. This here's a zoo.\"\n\nAliane looked around her and shivered. The weed was doing its thing, but not in a good way. The landscaped forest seemed very dark, very deep. She could hardly hear the party at all anymore. For some reason she thought of Mae, her mother, thought of their last fight. Aliane had come home from the city to visit, but she had not brought enough drugs. After two days she grew sick. She lost control of her bowels, became weak. She huddled on the mat where she had slept as a child, sweating, shaking. Mae brought her a bowl of feijoada, a glass of water, and a cool cloth, her face soft and compassionate in the light of the candle. She remembered the hurt on Mae's face when she slapped the bowl out of her hands. She didn't want food. Food was not what she needed. She left the next morning without saying good-bye, fled to S\u00e3o Paolo, to the lights and the nightclubs and the men who would give her things if she would do things for them. She didn't mind. Anything was better than growing old in a simple shack on the edge of the Pantanal, wasting her life the way Mae had done. But here in the shadows Mae's face came to her again.\n\n\"Let's go back,\" Aliane said. \"I'm, um, cold.\"\n\n\"In a minute. We're almost there.\"\n\nA few steps later the path ended in a small clearing. Marcus opened up a panel in what had looked like a tree. All of a sudden the clearing was flooded with light.\n\n\"Whoa.\" She blinked. \"What's that building?\" It looked like a garden shed, except on stilts.\n\n\"Chicken coop,\" he said. \"The zoo guy said to keep it way over here so they can't smell the lions. It gets 'em all riled-up.\"\n\nJust like the towels and the marble foyer, the door to the chicken coop had been stamped with Marcus's initials, written in flowery Old English script. On a chicken coop? \"Palha\u00e7o,\" she said, louder than she intended.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\" She gave him her best cover-girl smile.\n\nMarcus smiled back. \"Here, take this.\" He handed her a long bamboo pole with a length of thin rope tied to one end.\n\n\"What's this for?\"\n\n\"Told you,\" he said. \"We're going fishing.\" He grinned. \"You'll probably want to wait out here. It's pretty smelly inside.\" A moment later she heard a wild cacophony from inside the shed, five parts angry chicken noises and one part irritated rap star.\n\n\"C'mere, you little shit!\"\n\nSquawk, flutter, cackle.\n\n\"Goddammit!\"\n\nAfter a couple of minutes of this the door opened and Marcus emerged holding a wire cage containing two chickens. The birds' wings flapped quite a bit, but they were reasonably calm, all things considered.\n\n\"Gimme that,\" he said.\n\nShe handed over the bamboo rod. Marcus put it over his shoulder like a fishing pole. The cage in his other hand reminded her of a tackle box. He made a lasso out of the string on the end of the pole and slipped it around one chicken's foot.\n\nAll of a sudden it dawned on her what he was going to do. \"Oh, Marcus, no\u2026\"\n\nHe flashed her his album-cover grin, his gold grill shiny against his white skin. \"Gangsta, baby. Come on.\" He headed back the way they had come. She followed, then stopped. \"Marcus?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I thought I saw something move over there.\"\n\nHe squinted out into the night. \"Probably a monkey,\" he said. \"We got a couple of monkeys in the trees. They won't bother you. Come on.\"\n\nAliane walked behind him, feeling sick. It seemed to her that the chickens grew agitated as they approached the lion pit. Only a little, though. If it was me getting fed to that cat I'd be squawking my head off, she thought. They're lucky they're so dumb.\n\nA minute or so later they emerged in the small clearing. Marcus walked out onto the bridge between the two lion pits and dangled the chicken over the edge. He let out some slack in the line. The chicken flapped its wings, helpless. It squawked in terror.\n\n\"Oh, Marcus, don't do this\u2026.\"\n\n\"Just watch!\" He snickered. \"It's hilarious.\" He bounced the chicken at the end of the string. \"C'mere, Dresden,\" Marcus called. \"C'mere, big guy! Suppertime.\"\n\n\"Baby, please, why don't we go back to the\u2014\" She broke off. Marcus wasn't smiling anymore. \"Baby, what's wrong?\"\n\n\"Dresden?\" Marcus said. \"C'mere, big guy.\" He looked back and forth across the pit. Aliane followed his gaze. The pit was an oval shape, deep but not terribly big. It was about forty feet across at its widest point. There was grass on the bottom, some concrete boulders, a couple of sawed-off tree trunks that were supposed to look natural but didn't. You could see every inch of the pit from where they were standing.\n\n\"Where's the lion?\" she asked.\n\nMarcus just looked at her. His eyes were very wide. The chicken dangling at the end of its string squawked again, outraged. Marcus dropped the pole. The bird fell five feet or so. The loop came off its foot. With a bit of fluttering it freed itself, then stomped around, making outraged clucks.\n\nNothing came to see what the fuss was about.\n\n\"Marcus, where's the lion?\"\n\n\"Shhhh,\" Marcus said. He held one manicured finger up to his lips. His brow was knotted. He lifted up the back of his shirt and pulled out a pearl-handled 9mm automatic.\n\n\"Are you saying it got out?\" she whispered. \"How could it get out? You said there was no way\u2014\"\n\n\"Shh!\" Marcus's face was strained. It was too dark to see much, but he could still listen. After a moment, Aliane listened with him.\n\nCrickets. The soft echoes of cars on the freeway. Up by the house, there was a big splash as someone fell into the pool. Laughter.\n\nThen, closer in\u2014not far away at all, really\u2014a branch cracked.\n\n\"Marcus?\" she said softly.\n\nHe turned and looked at her. There was no need for him to speak. The look on his face said it all.\n\nThe pit was empty.\n\nThe pit was empty and something was moving out in the night."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 26",
                "text": "\"Marcus, o que \u00e9 que \u00e9?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Marcus. He didn't speak Portuguese but, really, there was only one thing she could be asking about. But he did know. A stick had cracked, close by, a big one. He jacked the slide back on his pistol, cocking it. In the distance, up at the house, a bunch of asshole freeloaders were laughing. By now the album was on to the third track, something called \"Money Shot\" that his A&R man liked quite a bit and, oh, something was moving out there in the night.\n\n\"What do we do?\"\n\nMarcus rocked his head in time with \"Money Shot,\" thinking. Then it came to him: \"The Husbandry Room,\" he said. The zoo guy had shown it to him. It was an underground room between the two lion pits, very solid, with poured concrete walls and metal doors. There was a slit in the wall with a metal slide in it for watching the lions, like the slit in the door of a jail cell. \"We can get in there and\u2026\" What? Make a call? Hide out? It didn't matter. He would be safe. \"Come on.\"\n\n\"Yeah, fuck that,\" Aliane said behind him. \"I'm going back to the\u2014\" She stopped and gasped. \"Marcus?\"\n\nSomething in her tone made him turn. Just in front of her, less than five feet away, stood the lion she had come to see. His muzzle wrinkled back over thick yellow fangs.\n\nAliane turned toward him. Her expression was dreamlike. \"Tell Mae that I\u2014\"\n\nDresden sprang. The two of them went to the ground together, wrapped in a cloud of dust and small rocks. Aliane's head bounced off the ground. She squirmed a bit, but the lion gripped her with forepaws the size of shovel blades. Then it had its jaws around her neck. The angle at which it held her was such that she was looking directly at Marcus. She seemed resigned, even peaceful.\n\nA few moments later Marcus was a member of a fairly exclusive club. He had no idea how many people had been firsthand witnesses to not one but two lion attacks, but he thought that the number would be very, very small. Gangsta, baby, he thought, and wet himself.\n\nAbout two hundred yards away he could hear the party going on. Some chick with a thick Bronx accent was saying \"Oh. My. Gawd\" over and over. The sound of her voice was like ice picks in his ears. I fucking HATE my friends, he thought. Fuck it. I quit. No more rap-star bullshit for me. Starting tomorrow I'm going to flight school. The rapper thing had never been his first love. He sort of fell into it after a talent show in high school. If David Lee Roth can be a paramedic, I can be a pilot.\n\nThe lion, his muzzle bloodied, looked up from Aliane's body. He roared.\n\nMarcus screamed. He felt sudden weight in his boxers. He squeezed off three quick shots from his nine, kicking up dirt high and wide of the lion. The stink of his shit hung in the warm night air.\n\nMarcus moaned, thinking about the Husbandry Room. The entrance was on the far side of the lion pits, a closet-sized cinder-block building built to keep the rain off the stairs. The door to this stair house was thick steel. No lion could claw through it.\n\nI'll be safe in there.\n\nMarcus turned his back on Aliane without a second thought. He sprinted off the path and into the dark. The small, tasteful lights lining the path blinked off. The stair house entrance was well off the path, hidden behind a tall hedge, surrounded by undergrowth. Marcus didn't quite see it in time. He crashed into the metal door, splitting his lip open. He didn't even notice. The pain in his mouth was eclipsed by a terrible vision\u2014his key ring, hanging from a peg in the kitchen.\n\n\"Ah no,\" he said. \"No, no, no, no.\"\n\nHe fumbled at the door handle, sure that it would be locked. But the handle turned easily in his hand. \"Thank you, Jesus,\" he whispered, yanking it open. \"Thank you, thank\u2014\"\n\nThen he screamed, as much from surprise as terror.\n\nThere was a man just inside the door, standing on the top stair. He's blocking my waaaay, Marcus thought. Even his thoughts were moans now. Time seemed very slow. The guy was enormous, both in height and muscle, but\u2014what the fuck?\u2014he was wearing a lavender tutu.\n\nHow the hell did he get in there? Marcus wondered. Then, on the heels of that, A tutu? Marcus briefly entertained the idea that he was dreaming. It doesn't matter. All that mattered was that he was in the way. Marcus lifted his left hand to push the man aside, simultaneously raising his right to threaten him with the gun. Threaten my ass, Marcus thought. I'll shoot him if I\u2014\n\nThere was a sudden, bright explosion of motion. He felt a sort of pressure on the fingers of his gun hand, then found himself sitting on his ass in the dirt. He looked down and saw that his two smallest fingers were dangling at an odd angle. A splinter of bone poked out of his pinkie. Seeing this, he felt the first twinge of pain.\n\nHe looked up. The man in the tutu was examining Marcus's pistol. He ejected the magazine and twirled it between his fingers like the flourish at the end of a magician's trick.\n\nHe flashed Marcus a grin. His teeth were very dark, almost black. He stepped out of the stairwell and circled around behind Marcus, dropping the unloaded pistol in his lap as he passed.\n\nAnother man, this one completely naked, climbed up out of the dark stairwell.\n\n\"Are y'all with the party?\" It occurred to Marcus that someone might have spiked his wine cooler. That's it! I bet Wilson slipped some of that PCP in my Bayberry fizz. Good old Wilson. They would laugh about this later. \"You best not be butt-fucking down there! I don't want no faggot shit around up in my\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhh,\" said a woman's voice from the darkness. \"Out there. Lions.\"\n\nMarcus opened his mouth, then shut it. It wasn't an unreasonable point. When he spoke again his tone was softer. \"Who the fuck are you?\"\n\nThe woman stepped forward. \"I am Carolyn. This is Michael. That is my brother David.\"\n\n\"Yeah, hi, pleezdameetcha, now gimme a goddamn hand so we can get down in\u2014\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'no'?\" Something occurred to him. \"Heyyyy\u2026are y'all the ones who let my lions out?\"\n\n\"We are.\"\n\n\"Why the hell would you\u2014Are you crazy? Are you with PETA?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"I don't know what that is. No.\"\n\n\"Never fucking mind. Just get out of my way.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Suit yourself.\" He put his left hand on the ground, prepared to stand. If that bitch gets in my way, I will knock her on her\u2014\n\nA shadow fell over him. Marcus looked up.\n\n\"If you try to go downstairs, David will hurt you,\" she said. \"Maybe just a little, maybe a great deal. You should not try.\"\n\nMarcus looked the big man up and down, gauging his chances. His shoulders slumped. \"What do you want?\" All the fight was gone from his voice.\n\nDavid smiled.\n\n\"I am to give you a message,\" the woman said.\n\n\"From who?\"\n\n\"The message is from Dresden.\"\n\nFor a moment, he thought she meant the city. \"You talking about the lion? That Dresden?\"\n\n\"Yes. Why do you call them that?\"\n\n\"Dresden and Nagasaki? From, like, in the war\u2026\"\n\nOff to his side he heard laughter. He turned. The big man, David, made a ka-boom sound. He held his hands up in the air and drew them out as if there were a fireball between them.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Marcus said. \"Ka-boom.\"\n\nStill chuckling, the big guy patted him on the shoulder. Marcus answered him with a small but sincere smile. Finally. Someone gets it. That moment ended up being the high point of his day.\n\nThe woman squatted down to be at eye level with him. \"Do you watch television?\"\n\nThe question took a moment to sink in. \"Why the fuck you care?\"\n\nShe repeated herself, patiently enough. \"Do you watch television?\"\n\n\"I\u2026\" Marcus's eyes darted around, looking for safety. All around him the jungle pressed in. Humor the crazy people. \"Yeah, man, I watch TV.\"\n\n\"You have seen it when the television shows the hunt? In Africa? When a lion brings down a zebra, or a wildebeest?\"\n\nMarcus didn't like where this was going. \"I\u2026yeah\u2026I guess so.\" It wasn't a zebra that he had seen, but a gazelle. Close enough.\n\n\"Good. What you saw was called\"\u2014she twittered something at the naked guy, and he rumbled deep in his chest. He sounded exactly like a lion. The hair on the back of Marcus's neck rose.\n\n\"In the language of the hunt, that word describes a specific way of killing,\" the woman said. \"It is a thing of respect. Most times, the hunter has no wish to hurt his prey. It is only that he is hungry, that this is the way of things. When you were watching television, did you notice that past a certain moment, the zebra doesn't resist?\"\n\nMarcus had not seen that, exactly, but he remembered seeing the gazelle with three lions burrowing around in its guts. He'd thought it was dead. Then it lifted its head, looked down at what was being done to it, and looked away. He'd been smoked-up when he saw this, and it freaked him out enough that he had to change the channel.\n\n\"Good. You do know. The prey doesn't move because it feels no pain. The lion touches it in a certain way, and unbinds it from the plane of anguish. This is part of the craft of hunters. When the kill is this way, the lions say\u2026\" She nodded at the naked man.\n\nHe rumbled again, eerily lionlike.\n\n\"Your woman died in this way, if it matters to you. She didn't suffer at all.\"\n\nMarcus thought of the gazelle, staring into the camera, thought of the light receding from Aliane's green eyes.\n\n\"But there is another way of killing. This is done when the lion hunts out of hate, rather than hunger. For such times the big cats have a touch that enhances suffering rather than relieves it. Under this touch the prey's spirit is bound to the plane of anguish. The pain is like drowning. Often the damage to their spirit is such that there is not enough left of them to return to the forgotten lands. Those killed in this way are ruined forever. It is as if they were never born.\" Her eyes crinkled. \"I saw this done once. It was a terrible thing.\" She touched his arm with real sympathy. \"The lion wishes me to inform you that this is how you will die.\"\n\nMarcus's eyes flicked back and forth among the three of them, looking for some sign that this was a joke. The woman's face was grave. The guy in the tutu watched him avidly, his eyes cruel and alive. Marcus wasn't sure what was worse.\n\n\"So\u2026you're just going to feed me to that thing?\"\n\n\"We are, yes.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Marcus whispered. \"Why would you do something like that?\"\n\n\"Because that is what the hunter wants,\" she said. \"We came to an arrangement, you see. This is his price.\"\n\nThe big man in the tutu smiled at him. Moonlight glinted off the blade of his spear.\n\n\"If we free his daughter and give him the time to kill you as he wishes, he will help us. He will protect our agent as if he were his own cub.\" She shrugged, stood. \"What he asks isn't so much. It is fair, even.\"\n\n\"Fair?\u2026I\u2026\"\n\n\"You what?\" She looked down, her face mostly in shadow. The compassion he had seen before was gone. \"You invaded the lion's home. You murdered his mate, the mother of his cub. You kidnapped him and his daughter here and cast them down in a pit. Is that about right?\"\n\n\"Yeah, but\u2026I mean\u2026\"\n\n\"And why did you do this? To what purpose? You were going to steal their lives so they could growl and roar for the amusement of your whores?\"\n\n\"Sort of\u2026I guess. But I mean, you saw Scarface, right? It was\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop talking.\" She spoke to the naked man in a language he did not understand. He said something back to her, then made a sound amazingly like a lion's roar. \"Please excuse me,\" she said. \"I'd rather not watch.\"\n\n\"Hang on!\" Marcus said. \"I got a lot of money! We could\u2014\"\n\nShe and the naked man faded back into the stairwell and started down to the Husbandry Room. They shut the door behind them. The big man in the tutu smiled down at him. \"Hey, man,\" Marcus said. \"Help me out, here. You want to get into show business? I could\u2014\"\n\nThe big man smiled wider. He pointed over Marcus's shoulder, back into the woods.\n\nNot wanting to, Marcus turned to look. Dresden and his daughter stood just behind him, closer than he would have thought possible. Somewhere out in the impossible distances of the night he heard the Bronx chick saying \"Oh. My. Gawd.\"\n\nDown in the pit, safe and comfortable, the chicken squawked."
            },
            {
                "title": "About Half a Fuckton of Lying-Ass Lies",
                "text": "Steve woke up in 1987, more or less.\n\nIt was a teenager's bedroom. He was pretty sure about that part. The walls were covered with posters of singers\u2014Wham!, the B-52's, Boy George, others\u2014that he vaguely remembered from high school. A rack of cassette tapes hung across from the bed and, next to it, a collage of Polaroids. Teenage boys in acid-wash jeans and parachute pants mugged for the camera\u2014fake-singing, flexing their muscles, that sort of thing. In one of the Polaroids two boys were kissing.\n\nSteve blinked. Where the hell am I? He remembered being in the jail chapel, remembered the stinky dude in the tutu killing Dorn and the guard. Thinking of the tutu and the two guys kissing in the Polaroid, a horrible thought bubbled up: Maybe Tutu Guy kidnapped me as some sort of sex slave? Like that guy in Pulp Fiction?\n\nBut that was too terrible to contemplate. Think, think. He remembered getting slugged in the chapel. A few seconds later he was moving down the tile corridor, slung over the guy's shoulder, watching guts and severed limbs roll by like he was on the Horrible Shit ride at a high-end amusement park.\n\nSomeone's arm had been lying on the floor\u2014just the arm, nothing else. It looked surprisingly un-gross\u2014not much blood, and muscles like a medical drawing. A few paces farther down most of another guard came into view. He was an older dude, fiftyish, cut neatly in half just above the belly button. What did that? Steve remembered wondering. Giant scissors? The half of his face that Steve could see was bloodless and unmarked, eyes open. Steve remembered recognizing him, remembered squirming, and\u2026\n\nAnd then I woke up here.\n\nThe alarm clock on the nightstand pretty much had to be from 1987 as well. No one makes stuff out of wood-grain plastic anymore, right? The clock didn't work, though. Someone had stomped a crater in it, then drawn a circle around it in what looked like corn flour.\n\nSteve blinked at this for a few seconds, trying to imagine a remotely plausible reason why someone might do such a thing.\n\nSteve sat up and peeped out through the venetian blinds at the foot of the bed, wincing at the metal rattle they made. His head hurt. The sun was either just coming up or about to go down. At first he wasn't sure which, but then a couple of houses down some guy came home from work and got the mail. Kids were playing ball in the dude's backyard. Not dawn, then. I slept through the day.\n\nQuestions answered, Steve let the blinds fall closed. If he had known that this sunset would be the last he would ever see, he probably would have taken a couple of seconds to savor it.\n\nHe still had on the jail coveralls. That was sort of a relief, in light of his fears about becoming a butt slave, but still not ideal. The closet turned out to be full of things like parachute pants and acid-wash jeans. After a brief rummage he put on some black sweatpants\u2014tightish, but serviceable\u2014and a gray concert T-shirt. The logo of the band Heart was stenciled across the chest in bright-orange letters, glowing like a coal.\n\nHe followed the sound of voices out into the hall. Out there it was warmer than in the bedroom. It smelled good, like freshly baked something-or-other\u2014bread, maybe, or sweet rolls? His stomach rumbled.\n\nBut under that was a bad smell, something he didn't quite recognize. There was a metallic sound as well. Clink. Scratch. Click. It was vaguely familiar. Clink. Scratch. Click.\n\nSteve peeped around the corner into the living room. The big guy in the tutu was asleep on the floor in front of the TV. The sound was off, but Nazi artillery rumbled across North Africa on the History Channel. Steve wondered at this for a minute. TV? He doesn't speak English, does he? On-screen Rommel held binoculars to his face. I bet he does like tanks, though. Next to the tutu guy a halfway demolished pile of brownies rested on a white plate. Brown crumbs stuck to the dried blood in his mustache and on his chest. His bronze sword thingy with the chain lay at his fingertips.\n\nHalf a dozen other people, some almost as weird, sat here and there in the living room as well. They glanced at Steve without much interest as he walked in.\n\nNext to the couch stood a man in brown business slacks, cut off ragged at the knees, one pant leg a couple of inches higher than the other. His bare chest was tattooed with dozens of triangles, the smaller ones inscribed in the larger, down to a black dot at the midpoint of his breastbone.\n\nSeeing Steve, he put his hand on the shoulder of a woman sitting on the couch. She had dirty-blond hair, hacked short and carelessly. She wore what looked like the top half of a black one-piece bathing suit, cut into a sort of sports bra. She put her hand over the man's, laced her fingers in his.\n\nClink. Scratch. Click. In the darkest corner of the room a woman sat on the floor, knees huddled up to her chin. Skeletal arms poked out from the remains of an apocalyptically filthy gray dress. Half a dozen flies buzzed around her head. As Steve watched, she flipped open a Zippo. Clink. Lit it. Scratch. Closed it up again. Click.\n\nHer eyes never wavered from the place of the flame. Unsettled now, Steve jerked when a new person entered the room. He recognized the Christmas sweater and bicycle shorts immediately.\n\n\"You.\" Small knuckle pops as his hands clenched into fists.\n\nCarolyn held her finger to her lips. \"Shh.\" She pointed at the bloody man in the tutu sleeping on the floor between the knife and the brownies. She jerked her thumb back over her shoulder toward the kitchen.\n\nSteve opened his mouth to yell at her, then, with a glance at the napping murderer, nodded instead. He tiptoed around the couch as quietly as he was able. The couple stood up and followed in his wake. The woman with the lighter went clink, scratch, click.\n\nThere was another person in the kitchen, an older woman, kneading dough. To Steve's mild surprise she was dressed normally; floor-length fleece housecoat, a bit faded but clean, and slippers.\n\n\"Hello, there!\" She spoke in a half-whisper. \"I'm Eunice McGillicutty. Would you like a cinnamon roll? They're just out of the oven.\"\n\n\"Steve Hodgson. Uh, pleased to meet you.\" Somewhat to his surprise, he realized this was true. Unlike the others, she didn't seem like the sort of person who might keep a guy chained up in her basement. He briefly considered thanking her for this, but gave up when he couldn't think of a delicate way to phrase it. \"Sure. A cinnamon roll would be great.\"\n\nThe old lady smiled, pleased. She pointed at a baking dish. \"Coffee over there,\" she said. Steve grabbed a mug off a wooden peg and helped himself to a cup.\n\n\"Hello, Steve,\" Carolyn said, her voice not quite a whisper.\n\n\"Hi!\" he said, a little too brightly.\n\n\"That's Mrs. McGillicutty. She speaks English.\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, she certainly does.\"\n\nCarolyn jerked her thumb at the couple behind her. \"These are Peter and Alicia. They don't speak English. Not much, anyway.\"\n\n\"What about the big guy out in the living room?\"\n\n\"That's David. His English is pretty bad as well.\"\n\n\"And the other one? The one who keeps playing with the lighter?\"\n\n\"That's Margaret.\"\n\n\"No English?\"\n\n\"Hardly any anything. She almost never talks.\"\n\n\"Can I ask you something?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Can you think of any reason I shouldn't grab one of those kitchen knives and stab you in the fucking neck?\"\n\nCarolyn pursed her lips, considering. \"You might get blood on the cinnamon rolls.\"\n\n\"I'm only partly kidding.\"\n\n\"OK,\" she said. \"Fair enough. I can see why you might be a little upset.\"\n\nHis rage flared. Steve glanced at the knives, almost not kidding anymore. \"A little upset?\" he hissed. \"You framed me for murder! Of a fucking cop! They're talking about the death penalty, Carolyn! Lethal. Fucking. Injection. Life in prison! If I'm lucky!\n\n\"Try to keep it down,\" Carolyn said. \"You don't want to wake up David.\"\n\nNo, Steve thought, thinking of the swinging intestine that dangled from the ceiling outside the jail chapel, I probably don't. \"OK,\" he said in a fierce whisper. \"Fair enough. Why don't you quietly explain why you'd do such a thing to me? What did I ever do to piss you off?\"\n\nCarolyn winced a little. \"Nothing,\" she said. \"I'm not angry at you. That's absolutely the last thing that I am.\" She hesitated. \"For what it's worth, there are some sound reasons for all this. I can't go into details, but I really am sorry. I can see where it might be a bit\u2026upsetting.\"\n\n\"Upsetting,\" Steve marveled, unable to believe that he had heard right. \"Well, that is one way of putting it. Another way of putting it would be that you permanently and completely ruined my life. That's the version that I sort of prefer.\"\n\nCarolyn rolled her eyes. \"Don't be so melodramatic. You're not in jail anymore, are you?\" She pointed at the tray. \"Have another cinnamon roll. They're good.\"\n\nMrs. McGillicutty looked over her shoulder. \"Help yourself, dear.\"\n\nSteve felt like his heart was boiling. \"Melodramatic?\" His hand drifted, unbidden, toward the block of kitchen knives. \"Melodramatic?\"\n\n\"Calm down,\" Carolyn said. \"It's not as bad as all that.\"\n\n\"What do you mean it's not\u2014\"\n\n\"Quiet, Steve. Shut up for a second and I'll explain. I have a plan. If you'll do a small service for me, I can make every single one of these problems you've mentioned go away.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Yup.\" Carolyn rummaged around in the refrigerator and came out with a plastic bottle of orange juice. She twirled off the top and lifted it to her mouth.\n\n\"Glasses are over there, dear,\" Mrs. McGillicutty said pointedly.\n\n\"Sorry.\" Carolyn got a glass.\n\nSteve considered. \"You can make a murder charge go away? A death penalty case?\"\n\nCarolyn poured some orange juice and took a swig. \"Yup.\"\n\n\"And how, pray tell, might you be planning to do that?\"\n\n\"Grab me one of those cinnamon rolls and pull up a chair. I'll show you.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 28",
                "text": "Carolyn stood up and disappeared into the nether reaches of the house. While she was away, Steve went to the refrigerator looking for a Coke. All they had in the main compartment was diet, but he spotted something approximately the same shade of red as a Coke can in the vegetable crisper.\n\nCarolyn padded up behind him a moment later. \"Steve, this is\u2014\"\n\n\"Hold up a second,\" he said, staring into the crisper. \"Is this a heart?\" It's definitely not a Coke.\n\nCarolyn didn't answer immediately. \"Beg pardon?\"\n\n\"In this bag here. In the fridge. Is this a heart? Like, a person's heart? It looks like a person's heart in your refrigerator, Carolyn.\"\n\n\"Um\u2026no. I mean, yes, it's a heart. But not a person's. It's from a cow. A bull. David was going to make an hors d'oeuvre for a guest, but he had to cancel.\"\n\n\"Yeah, um, no.\" Steve turned. \"That's nowhere near big enough to be a bull's\u2014whoa.\"\n\nNext to Carolyn stood a blond woman who Steve hadn't seen before. Three children, silent and pale, clung to the woman's waist. One of the kids, a little boy, had huge purple bruises all around his neck. The girl next to him had a deep dent in her forehead.\n\nSteve knelt down in front of the children. \"You guys OK? Are you, like\u2026hurt?\" He reached out to touch the crater in the girl's skull. She cringed back.\n\n\"They only speak to their mother,\" Carolyn said. \"Steve, this is Rachel.\"\n\n\"Well, that's fucking weird. What the hell happened to the girl's head?\"\n\n\"It was, um, an accident. She fell. Off her bike.\" Then, hissing, \"Don't say anything, Steve. You'll embarrass her.\"\n\n\"And the boy?\"\n\n\"Football,\" Carolyn said, deadpan. The boy peeped out from behind his mother's waist and gave a small nod.\n\n\"Hmm.\" Then, pointing at Rachel, \"What about her? No English?\"\n\n\"No English,\" Carolyn confirmed. She and Rachel spoke for a moment in a vaguely singsongy language that sounded like the illegitimate child of Vietnamese and a catfight.\n\n\"What's she doing here, then?\"\n\n\"Rachel is good with secrets,\" Carolyn said. She lifted Mrs. McGillicutty's telephone receiver and set it down on the kitchen table. \"You still want me to fix your legal troubles, right?\"\n\nSteve looked at the heart in the vegetable crisper, opened his mouth, then shut it with a click of his teeth. He shut the refrigerator door. \"Yes, please.\"\n\n\"Then make it be loud,\" Carolyn said, pointing at the phone.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"So everyone can hear.\"\n\n\"Oh. Yeah, sure.\" He studied the receiver for a minute, then punched the Speaker Phone button.\n\n\"Now make it be the directory.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Where you tell them the name, and they give you the number.\"\n\nSteve dialed three digits.\n\n\"What city?\" said a mechanical voice.\n\n\"Washington, DC,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"What listing?\"\n\n\"White House switchboard.\"\n\nSteve raised an eyebrow.\n\nThe machine reeled off the numbers. When it asked if she wanted to be connected for an additional charge of fifty cents, Carolyn said yes. The operator picked up on the third ring.\n\n\"My name is Carolyn,\" she said. \"I'd like to be connected with the president.\"\n\nSteve gaped at her.\n\n\"Last name, please?\"\n\nCarolyn's brow furrowed. \"I'm not sure. Does it matter?\"\n\nThe operator sounded bored. \"I'm sorry, Ma'am. The president is unavailable at the moment. If you'd care to leave a message I'll see that\u2014\"\n\n\"He'll speak to me,\" Carolyn said. \"Prepare to authenticate. Today's code word is 'bolt.' \"\n\n\"Oh!\" the operator said. \"Hang on. I'll transfer you.\"\n\n\"Could it be Sopaski?\" Steve said, remembering what Erwin had told him.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Your last name. Could it be Sopaski?\"\n\nCarolyn thought about it for a second. \"Actually, yeah. That sounds\u2014\"\n\nA man's voice boomed out of the headset. \"This is Sergeant Davis,\" he said. \"Please authenticate.\"\n\nCarolyn pointed at Rachel and raised her eyebrows quizzically. Rachel beckoned to a little girl in a grimy gray sundress. The child whispered something in her ear. Rachel relayed it to Carolyn in that singsong language.\n\n\"The code is 'bear 723 walking 33744 dawn,'\" Carolyn said, translating.\n\n\"Please hold.\" There was a sound of typing. A moment later the man said, \"I'll connect you to Mr. Hamann's office.\"\n\nSteve thought about this for a moment, then his eyes opened wide. \"The chief of staff?\"\n\n\"Shh!\" Carolyn said. For about a minute they were in limbo\u2014no hold music, no recorded messages, just silence. Then, \"This is Bryan Hamann,\" a voice said.\n\nAre you fucking kidding me? Steve took a breath, focused on trying to appear calm. He wasn't sure, but he suspected he was doing a really shitty job of this.\n\n\"Mr. Hamann, I need you to get the president for me,\" Carolyn said. \"Thanks so much.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid that won't be possible, Miss, ah\"\u2014there was a sound of computery clicking\u2014\"Carolyn. The president is in a meeting. Is there something that I\u2014\"\n\n\"Get him out of the meeting.\"\n\nFor a moment there was silence on the other end of the line. Steve suspected that the man was simply having trouble crediting what his ears were telling him. He sympathized. Carolyn let him have a moment.\n\n\"Lady, there are exactly three people on the planet who are authorized to use the code you just provided, and I happen to know that you aren't any of them. Now, unless you tell me exactly who you are and how you came by those codes, you're going to be in for some extremely serious trouble. Either way, you've gotten as far up the chain as you're going to.\" There was a slight clicking on the line.\n\n\"I think they're tracing the call,\" Steve said. He felt like this was a valuable contribution.\n\n\"Hush,\" Carolyn said. She turned to Rachel. The two of them spoke for a few moments. The sound of it put Steve in mind of tropical birds fighting. \"Mr. Hamann, please pardon me for being blunt. You seem like a decent man, but I'm pressed for time. I know where the president was on the night of March 28, 1993. I know why Alyson Majors is so quiet these days. I even have access to photographs. If I'm not speaking to the man himself in one minute I'm going to hang up. My next call will be to the Washington Post.\"\n\nThere was a brief pause, perhaps two seconds. Hamann didn't bother to put the call on hold, he just dropped the receiver. Steve heard the sound of a door hitting a wall. There was a few seconds of silence, a distant commotion. Next he heard Hamann say, \"Clear out. Now. We need the room.\" There was the sound of a door shutting, then, \"This is the president.\"\n\nOh-ho! Steve thought. There's something you don't hear every day. He took a bite of his cinnamon roll. It was his third. They really are quite good.\n\nCarolyn smiled. \"How do you do, Mr. President? I'm sorry to be so pushy, but I'm afraid these are unusual circumstances. My name is Carolyn Sopaski.\"\n\nThere was a long silence. \"I'm afraid that I don't\u2014\"\n\n\"My Father is called Adam Black.\"\n\nThere was a very long silence. \"Can you repeat that, please?\"\n\nShe did.\n\nAnother pause, shorter this time. \"There are a lot of men named\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, but my Father is the Adam Black who was mentioned in the folder waiting for you on your desk on the day when you first took office. The yellowish paper, handwritten by Mr. Carter, I believe? Do you remember it?\"\n\n\"I do,\" the president said. His voice was faint.\n\n\"Excellent. I thought you might. Would you like to know what became of the piece of Air Force hardware with the number 11807-A1 stenciled on the side? I can tell you exactly. I was there.\"\n\nThe president made a whooshing sound. \"I see.\" His voice was weak. \"I\u2014that is, my understanding was that a condition of the treaty was that there was to be no contact between\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn laughed. \"Is that what you call it? A 'treaty'? That's rather grandiose of you, isn't it? The way I recall it, my Father told Mr. Carter to see to it that he was not bothered anymore. Mr. Carter said that he would be happy to take care of it, and be sure to call again if there was ever anything else he could do. My Father said we would. Now I am. Adam Black would be very grateful if you would do him a small favor. A service.\"\n\n\"A service?\"\n\n\"Yes. My understanding is that you have the power to issue criminal pardons. Is that correct?\"\n\n\"I do\u2026\"\n\n\"Excellent. I'll send you the details. Thank you, Mr. Pr\u2014\"\n\n\"May, ah, madam, if I may\u2014may I ask the nature of the offense?\"\n\nCarolyn's eyes narrowed. She didn't answer immediately. When she did her tone was noticeably cooler. \"Why would that matter?\"\n\n\"It, ah, it might have bearing on\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn sighed. \"The man in question hasn't been charged yet, but I'm told that it's just a matter of time. The incident revolves around the murder of a police officer. There are also likely to be some incidental charges\u2014breaking and entering, burglary, things of that nature. Oh, and escape. He left jail yesterday without permission. Some people died. I assume that's some sort of crime as well?\"\n\nThe president, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, agreed that it probably was.\n\n\"But it's the death-penalty case that we're primarily concerned with.\"\n\n\"Death penalty,\" the president said flatly.\n\n\"Yes.\" Carolyn paused. \"If it eases the sting any, I happen to know that the man being charged is quite innocent. I know this for an absolute fact.\"\n\n\"May I ask how?\"\n\n\"Because I was the one who killed Detective Miner,\" Carolyn said. \"Mr. Hodgson was present but\u2026unaware that anything of the kind was going on. Legal technicalities aside, he is completely innocent.\"\n\n\"I see,\" the president said at length. \"Even so, Ms. Sopaski, this could be politically very\u2014\"\n\n\"My understanding is that when you took office you were briefed on, among other things, a file with the code name Cold Home. The file had blue and red stripes along the border. It was about an inch thick and just chock-full of unanswered questions. Is that correct?\"\n\nThe president was silent for a beat. \"How could you possibly know about that?\" he hissed.\n\nCarolyn laughed. \"I'm afraid that will have to be another unanswered question,\" she said, and winked at Rachel. \"Add it to the file, why don't you? But the fact is that I do know, Mr. President. And if you've read the file on Cold Home then you have some idea of what my Father is capable of. I can assure you from my own personal experience that he is not a man you want to make angry. All I'm asking is that you sign a piece of paper. For what it's worth, I consider it very unlikely that the fact you did so would ever be made public.\"\n\nAfter a moment the president, who was not a fool, said, \"Very well.\"\n\n\"Thank you! I'll be sure to inform Father that you've been very helpful.\"\n\n\"That's very kind of you. Ms. Sopaski, this administration would very much like to open a dialogue with your father. We could\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Mr. President. I'm afraid that will not be possible.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\" said the president.\n\n\"There is one other thing you can do for me though. When is your next press appearance?\"\n\nThere was a pause. Someone in the background said, \"Tomorrow morning.\" The president said, \"Tomorrow morning, I believe.\"\n\nCarolyn thought about it for a moment. \"Sorry. That's not quick enough. Arrange one for tonight.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid that won't be\u2014\"\n\n\"That wasn't a request.\" Her tone was frosty.\n\nThere was a long silence at the other end of the line. Steve stared at her, slack-jawed.\n\n\"Very well,\" the president said softly.\n\n\"Good. When you're giving that speech I want you to say something for me. Say, mmm, oh, I don't know. Say 'Auld lang syne.' Do you think you could work that into your remarks without raising too many eyebrows?\"\n\n\"I suppose I could,\" the president said slowly. \"May I ask why?\"\n\n\"Because at some point in the next few minutes it's going to occur to the person you're about to pardon that mmmmaybe I'm talking to a man who just sounds like you. When he sees you say 'Auld lang syne' on live TV, that will go a long way toward alleviating those doubts.\"\n\n\"I see. Yes, I suppose that can be arranged.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" Carolyn said. \"Thank you, Mr. President. That will be all.\"\n\nShe hung up."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 29",
                "text": "An hour or so later Steve and Carolyn were alone in the living room. Not long after Carolyn had hung up on the president, the big bloody guy woke up and ate a couple of cinnamon rolls. Then he went to the stinky woman in the corner and took the lighter from her. She seemed to come out of herself then. She smiled up at him. The two of them moved to the back bedroom about the time the president came on.\n\nSteve wanted to focus on the press conference, but he was having trouble. The big guy and the smelly woman were having some truly epic sex back there. It started with squeaking bedsprings, but those were eventually drowned out by bear noises and something not unlike yodeling. The smell of sex and rotting meat wafted throughout the house. Mrs. McGillicutty's bed evidently wasn't rated for stunt fucking, though. Right before the big finish it collapsed with a splintery, wrenching sound. Steve, not unimpressed, noted that the happy couple didn't so much as skip a beat.\n\nHe looked around to see if Carolyn or any of the others were as amused by this as he was, but the only one who seemed aware anything was going on was Punkin Tinkletoes, the old lady's pet cat. He had been sleeping by the wall opposite the bedroom. When they bounced off it hard enough to make family photos rain down, the cat sauntered over to join Steve on the couch.\n\nCarolyn waved a hand in front of Steve's eyes and looked pointedly at the TV. \"Pay attention, OK? I don't want to have to call him back.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\nFor the last twenty minutes or so, the president had been yapping about some sort of bill that was supposed to stimulate the economy. He wanted to raise taxes, or maybe lower them. Now he was taking questions.\n\nSteve watched diligently for a couple of minutes. Then the big guy, wrapped in a bedsheet, walked back through the living room into the kitchen. He grabbed two brownies, a bottle of Wesson oil, and\u2014oh, gosh\u2014kitchen tongs. Then, grinning like a fiend, he sank back into the bedroom. Punkin Tinkletoes tracked this. Steve thought he might be wondering about the tongs as well. When the big guy disappeared around the corner, the cat turned to Steve with a quizzical blink.\n\nSteve shrugged. \"You got me, dude,\" he whispered. \"Honestly, I'm not sure I want to\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn poked him again, and Steve shut up. On TV, one of the reporters asked about an upcoming arms summit with the Russians. The president said that the location wasn't fixed yet, but that both he and the Russian liked the idea of doing it in Reykjavik, \"if nothing else, for auld lang syne.\" All the reporter people laughed.\n\nSteve didn't get the joke. That's the president, though, for really real. He felt dazed. Mrs. McGillicutty got all the cable channels, and the press conference was covered live on two of them. When it had started, he'd flipped back and forth between C-SPAN and Fox News, thinking maybe it was some sort of elaborate hoax, that they'd just gotten an actor who\u2026\n\nCarolyn was looking at him.\n\n\"OK,\" Steve said. \"Let's say I believe that you can get the president to sign a pardon for me.\" He was surprised to realize he actually did believe that. \"We still have a problem.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\n\"I have no reason at all to think that you will. You may remember, the last time I agreed to run an errand for you I ended up in jail. The day before yesterday my asshole lawyer said, and I quote, I was 'on a fast track to death row.' \"\n\nCarolyn's brow furrowed. She brushed her hair back with her fingers. \"I'm sorry about that. Really. It was unavoidable. If you do this for me, I can and will make it better.\" She reached behind the couch and tossed him the duffel bag full of money she had brought to the bar. \"Here's your cash, by the way.\"\n\nSteve looked down at the bag, then back up at her. The way she tossed it to him suggested a couple of possibilities. One was that she didn't give a fuck about $327,000. Another was that she knew Steve wasn't going to be around long enough to spend it. Still, he told himself, it's not like you have a lot of choices.\n\nThey'd been watching the news for an hour or so. Prior to the surprise press conference, one of the big stories had been his \"escape\"\u2014Steve thought \"kidnapping\" would be more accurate, but no one asked him\u2014from jail. Apparently the body count was up in the thirties. CNN was speculating that Steve might be the head of some hitherto unsuspected drug cartel. Fox thought he was probably part of a terrorist organization. Everybody seemed to agree that he was really, really dangerous. They flashed his mug shot about every ten minutes.\n\nThe big guy came back out of the room again. He wasn't grinning anymore. As he walked past, he glowered in a way that made Steve distinctly uneasy. He grabbed a couple of candles off the dining-room table and disappeared again, muttering under his breath.\n\nWhen he was gone, Steve turned to Carolyn. \"What did he say?\"\n\n\"Hmm? Who?\"\n\n\"Tutu Guy. He keeps grabbing stuff. I'm just curious\u2014what did he say?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Distracted, she searched her memory for a moment. \"He said, 'I just can't reach her. Not anymore. I just can't.' \"\n\n\"Huh.\" Steve, baffled, meditated on this for a moment. \"Any idea what he means by\u2014\"\n\n\"Would you like a brownie?\" Mrs. McGillicutty asked.\n\nSteve opened his mouth to say No, thanks, but what came out was \"Don't mind if I do!\" Three weeks of jail food had left him with an appetite. Plus, the brownies were ridiculously good. Mrs. McGillicutty brought him some milk as well. When he was done he turned to Carolyn. \"I don't suppose you've got a cigarette?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" She rooted around in her sweater and fished out a pack of Marlboros with some matches tucked into the cellophane. \"Can you pay attention now? Pretty please?\"\n\n\"Yeah, all right.\" They glared at each other as they lit up. \"So, what exactly is it that you want?\"\n\n\"How good of you to ask. Finally. The reason we broke you out of jail is that we want you to go for a jog.\"\n\nSteve blinked, thumped his cigarette. \"Say again?\"\n\n\"You're a jogger, right?\" He did vaguely remember mentioning something of the sort when they talked at the bar. \"We'd like for you to go for a jog.\"\n\n\"That's it?\"\n\n\"And pick something up.\"\n\nHere it comes, he thought. \"What sort of something?\"\n\n\"We don't know, exactly. We know with a very high degree of precision where it is, but it could look like anything.\"\n\n\"OK\u2026\" Steve said. \"But it will in fact be\u2026what? Drugs? High explosives?\" A horrible thought occurred to him. \"Not some sort of nuclear shit?\"\n\nCarolyn rolled her eyes, a don't-be-an-idiot look, and fluttered her hand. \"No, no. Of course not. Nothing like that. It's\u2014how can I put this?\u2014think of it as a very advanced system of perimeter defense.\"\n\n\"You want me to go get you a land mine? No. Actually, hell no. I'll take my chances in jail.\"\n\n\"It's not a 'land mine,'\" Carolyn said. \"It's absolutely nothing at all like a land mine. What it is, is a kind of, um\u2026do you know what a gravity well is? It's kind of like that, except in reverse, and it only works on certain people.\"\n\n\"I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.\"\n\n\"Hmm. OK, think of it this way. Do you know how microwaves work?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It's based on microwaves.\"\n\n\"Oh, wait. I just remembered. I do know how microwaves work, and what you're saying is bullshit.\"\n\n\"Fine. It isn't microwaves. But how it works really doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"If it doesn't matter, then why don't you tell me?\"\n\n\"Because it's very advanced. You don't have the background. Trust me, please?\"\n\n\"Fuck no. So, you're\u2026what? Some sort of weapons researcher?\" That, he could almost believe. \"Weird professor type\" covered a lot of ground. \"Look, I'm not going to even consider this until you tell me what it is I'm picking up.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"Try me.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"It's called a reissak ayrial. Its essence is a mathematical construct, a self-referencing tautology, consecrated in the plane of regret. The reissak works because the target has the trigger because the reissak works. The physical token that you'll be picking up is the reissak's projection into normal space. Do you see?\"\n\nSteve stared at her. \"You invented this thing?\"\n\n\"Not me. I'm more of a linguist. Can we get back to the point now?\"\n\nSteve grimaced. \"Sure.\" Thwarted by technobabble.\n\n\"The token that serves as the reissak's nexus is just sitting somewhere, probably out in the open. It could be a Coke can, a McDonald's bag, a mailbox, anything. And for most people\u2014almost certainly including you, Steve\u2014that's all that it actually is.\"\n\n\"But?\"\n\n\"But not everyone. For some people, it's like poison. The closer you get to it, the worse it hurts, the more damage it does. If you get close enough, it kills you.\"\n\n\"So, it's radioactive? I'm not picking up any radioactive crap.\"\n\n\"No. It's not radioactive.\"\n\n\"What if I don't believe you?\"\n\n\"Then I guess you're going back to jail, aren't you?\" she said brightly.\n\nSteve gritted his teeth.\n\n\"It isn't radioactive. I promise.\" She sniffed, a little offended. \"Nothing so crude as that.\"\n\n\"How do you know this thing, whatever it is, won't work on me?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026we don't. Not for sure. But the only ones it does seem to work on are the people connected to Father. Regular people, people like you\u2014FedEx drivers, pizza delivery guys, regular Americans\u2014come and go all the time. It doesn't seem to have any effect on them.\"\n\n\"That's why you did all this to me? You just picked me at random? Because I'm a regular guy?\"\n\nCarolyn nodded. \"That's about it, yeah.\"\n\n\"Bullshit.\"\n\nShe raised an eyebrow. \"I'm not sure that I unders\u2014\"\n\n\"I mean,\" Steve said, smiling, \"that you are fucking lying to me, you lying-ass liar.\"\n\n\"Steve, I can assure you that\u2014\"\n\n\"Save it.\"\n\n\"Beg pardon?\"\n\n\"Don't bother. I'm sure they're very nice lies but, really, don't bother. I'll do it.\"\n\nShe raised an eyebrow again.\n\n\"Discounting that duffel bag full of cash, which I seriously doubt you'd let me walk out of here with, I've got no money, no car, no ID, and no one I'm even close to close enough to go to for help. I figure I'd last twenty-four hours on my own, tops. Then I'd either be back in jail or, more likely, shot resisting arrest.\" And if I say no, you'll probably have that big guy cut my throat, or whatever. I don't think he'd mind at all.\n\n\"Well,\" she said, \"I guess that's good news.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you can see the joy in my eyes. I have some questions, though.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"What's the deal with the jogging? Why don't I just drive in? It'd be quicker, and if this whatever-it-is turns out to be too heavy to carry, then I can\u2014\"\n\n\"Welllll\u2026it's kind of a safety precaution.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" He leaned forward, smiling ferociously. \"Do tell.\"\n\n\"If\"\u2014she held up a finger\u2014\"if you did turn out to be susceptible to the effects, of the, ah, perimeter defense, then you wouldn't want to be in a car. At the speeds they move, you could hit a fatal depth before you really knew what was happening. On foot, you can just turn around if you start feeling sick.\"\n\n\"Sick how?\"\n\n\"It's different for everybody. David got a brutal headache. My face started bleeding. Peter caught on fire. Basically, if you're moving along feeling fine and you all of a sudden start feeling pain, turn back before it gets any worse.\"\n\n\"What if I do turn out to be susceptible? Do I still get the pardon and the cash?\" He wouldn't believe her answer, but he was curious to hear what it was.\n\n\"As to the pardon, sure. All we ask is that you try. And, like I said, the money is already yours.\"\n\n\"That was very convincing.\"\n\nShe rubbed her forehead. \"Steve, I don't know what to say to\u2014\"\n\n\"Save it. You said you know where this thing is, but not what it is? Can you explain that to me?\"\n\n\"Sure. Because of the way the perimeter-defense system works, the area that is affected is in the shape of a sphere. Basically we got a map and walked the perimeter of the circle. It has to be in the center of that.\"\n\nHe thought this over. \"What if it's in a tree or buried or something? It doesn't have to be at ground level.\"\n\n\"Fair point, but we tested for that, as well.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Very carefully. Look, we can go into the methods if you want, but I promise you, the object is at 222 Garrison Drive, fifty-seven feet back from the curb of the street, sitting about two feet off the ground.\"\n\n\"Two feet off the ground? Is it floating?\"\n\n\"It's on the porch.\"\n\n\"And you have no idea what the object is?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"It could be anything. Probably it will be something small, innocuous. That porch is usually empty.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\nShe scrunched up her face, considering how to answer. \"Because it's my house.\"\n\n\"Your house?\"\n\n\"Why does that surprise you?\"\n\n\"From the way you dress I figured you were homeless.\"\n\nShe frowned. \"Well, I'm not. The house belongs to our Father, but we all live there.\"\n\n\"All who?\"\n\nShe gestured at the room behind her. \"My family.\"\n\n\"Yeah\u2026you keep calling these guys your family. You don't look much alike.\"\n\n\"We're adopted.\"\n\n\"All of you?\"\n\n\"Yes. Father took us in when our parents died.\"\n\n\"Sounds like a real prince.\"\n\n\"That's why we're so anxious to be sure he's OK,\" she said dryly.\n\n\"So\u2026you think, what? Somebody is trying to keep you out of your own house?\"\n\n\"It appears that way, yes.\"\n\n\"Any idea why?\"\n\n\"Father is a more important person than he lets on. He's\u2026something of a kingmaker. He has powerful friends.\"\n\nThat, Steve decided, might be true as well. Certainly the president had jumped when the man's daughter said \"frog.\"\n\n\"And powerful enemies?\" She nodded. \"Yes. Some of them might like to inspect things he kept in the house. Books.\"\n\nSo\u2026what? Mob accountant? A Meyer Lansky type? \"What sort of people are we talking about here? If it's drug cartels, I think I'd just as soon take my\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn snorted laughter.\n\n\"What's funny?\"\n\n\"I'm trying to imagine Father involved in a drug deal. No. That isn't it.\"\n\n\"Who, then?\"\n\n\"I'm really not at liberty to say.\" She offered a frosty smile.\n\n\"Right.\" Steve sighed. \"So you think one of these enemies of your dad snuck in and set your perimeter-defense system?\"\n\n\"Possibly. Somebody had to put it there. The porch was empty when I left that morning. I'm sure of it. All we really know is that Father hasn't been seen since the perimeter-defense system was set.\" She fished a crooked Marlboro out of the pack and popped a wooden match alight against her lacquered thumbnail. The flame flickered a little as she held it under the end of the cigarette, amplifying a nearly imperceptible tremble.\n\n\"Maybe he was the one who set it. Did you ever think of that?\"\n\nShe frowned. \"That is conceivable. I really can't imagine why he'd do something like that, but\u2026maybe. If so, we'd like to go to him and very politely ask him why. Basically we need to get into the Library and look around. There are also reference materials there that may be of use. If you can help us with that, I absolutely guarantee you'll walk away unharmed, wealthy, and free of criminal entanglements.\"\n\n\"We'll pretend for the moment that I believe you. Anything else?\"\n\nShe bent over and unzipped the duffel bag. There was a holstered pistol inside. \"You might need this.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Is that a problem?\"\n\n\"No. It's actually sort of weirdly reassuring. Up until now this was sounding way too good to be true. Who might I be shooting, do you think?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026again, very probably no one. But as I said, Father is a powerful man. He has\u2026bodyguards. It is possible\u2014not likely, but possible\u2014that they might see you jogging and take it as a threat. In that case,\" she shrugged, \"better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.\"\n\nHe glanced at the case. It was an HK 9mm semiautomatic. \"Three magazines? That's a lot of bullets.\"\n\n\"You might be a lousy shot.\"\n\n\"It so happens that I am. Which means I'm less than enthusiastic about shooting it out with professional bodyguards.\"\n\nShe opened her mouth, hesitated, then shut it.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"What, Carolyn?\"\n\n\"If it came down to a\u2026an open conflict with the sentinels\u2026you would not be alone.\"\n\n\"Oh? And who, pray tell, would be helping me?\"\n\n\"Friends of my brother. They're very skilled, I promise. If it comes to that they can and will protect you. You would be safe.\"\n\n\"I don't doubt they're very good.\" And probably weird as hell. \"Do you mind if I look at the gun?\"\n\nShe slid the duffel bag across the table. He took the pistol out of the holster and examined it. He slipped a magazine in, cocked it, pointed it at her. \"What if I just shoot you and take the money?\"\n\nShe gave him a bright smile. \"Then I'd be out of this nightmare, I suppose. And my brother David would kill you. He'd probably take his time about it. And we'd find someone else to do the job instead.\"\n\nShe didn't seem even a little nervous. The sounds of sex emanating from the back room stopped. A moment later the big guy, David, peeped around the corner. He smiled at Steve. He said something to Carolyn in that birdsong language of theirs. She answered in kind.\n\nSteve smiled back, wide and reassuring. \"Just asking.\" He lowered the pistol. David watched him for a moment, then grabbed another brownie and went away again. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"No\u2026no.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I just\u2026I wish there was a way to keep in touch with you while you're out there. Doing the run. I just can't think of anything we could\u2026\" She trailed off. \"What?\"\n\nSteve was staring at her. He was thinking, This woman is\u2026not insane, exactly\u2026something else? What he said was, \"Have you not heard of cell phones?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she said. She nodded, wide-eyed and, to Steve's increasingly practiced eye, completely full of shit. \"Yeah. Sure. Lots of times.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "THE ANATOMY OF LIONS",
                "text": "[ Garrison Oaks ]\n\nAbout ten the next morning Steve jogged into the weeds on the shoulder of Highway 78 and slowed to a stop. Acutely aware of his mug shot on CNN, he pretended to be really interested in something in the woods until the car coming up behind him passed. It was a cool, gray morning, just right for a run.\n\nGarrison Oaks came into view as he rounded this last bend, half a mile away and a little downhill. It didn't look like anything special. A couple dozen houses flanked the main drive in neat rows. Three secondary roads branched off it, terminating in culs-de-sac. Some guy was out mowing his lawn. Yawn.\n\nSteve's burglar instincts reared up momentarily. The houses were OK, if a trifle on the modest side, but most of the cars out front were fading relics\u2014a 1977 Cutlass Supreme, a blue Datsun, even a station wagon. Do they even make those anymore? A good rule of thumb, he'd found, was that if a dude has enough cash to drop on a new car, he's also got enough to drop on electronic gizmos, jewelry for the wife, and other pawnable stuff. The converse, he'd found, was also true. Nah, he thought. This place isn't worth robbing.\n\nOf course, this was no normal burglary. Among other things, he'd never carried a gun before. Carolyn hadn't thought to provide a holster, but twenty minutes or so in Mrs. McGillicutty's garage took care of that. How, he wondered, did humanity ever get along without duct tape? The makeshift holster was comfortable enough, but the thought of the pistol smoldered in the back of his mind. Dry leaves swirled around his feet as he moved, blown down from the bluff that flanked his course on the left.\n\nWhen he was a hundred yards or so from the subdivision sign he slowed to a walk, then unclipped Mrs. McGillicutty's cell phone from the top of his sweatpants and punched number 1 on the speed dial: \"Home.\" Number 2 was someone named Cathy. The third slot was a funeral home. The other five slots were empty. He felt a little bad for Mrs. McGillicutty.\n\nCarolyn picked up on the first ring. \"Steve?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Where are you?\"\n\n\"About fifty yards out,\" he said, clipping the phone back in his waistband. Mrs. McGillicutty also had a Bluetooth headset, which he had found unopened in the box. Now it was clipped to his ear. Between that and the pistol he felt like a mall ninja pretending to be a Secret Service agent.\n\n\"OK. Remember, when you get near the gate, you want to enter gradually. If you feel anything out of the ordinary, turn around and head back the way you came.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" he said. He brushed the Garrison Oaks sign with his fingertips as he passed. \"I'm in.\"\n\n\"Feel anything?\" Clink.\n\n\"Nope. Nothing.\" Two steps, three. He thought about asking her if she was sure the whole thing wasn't in her head. Then he looked down. The asphalt under his feet was dark with congealed blood. There was a lot of it. The question died in his mouth.\n\n\"How far in are you?\" Clink.\n\n\"Twenty feet or so.\"\n\n\"OK,\" she said clinically. \"That means you don't have the trigger. If you did you'd be feeling it by now.\" Clink.\n\n\"If you say so. Hey, what's that clinking sound I keep hearing?\"\n\n\"Margaret is playing with her lighter.\" Carolyn said something in angry tones. The clinking stopped. \"Do you see anything unusual?\" Her voice was tense.\n\n\"The guy on the corner has a lot of dandelions in his yard,\" Steve said. \"A real infestation.\"\n\n\"I mean is there anyone watching you? Anything like that?\" She spoke pleasantly enough, but it sounded like she was gritting her teeth.\n\nSteve, pleased to be getting under her skin, smiled in a way the Buddha would have disapproved of. \"Nope. There's a guy out mowing his lawn. He's the only one I see.\"\n\n\"What about dogs?\"\n\n\"Nope. Oh, wait\u2026there is one.\" Deep in the shadows of someone's front porch there was a silhouette. And eyes, watching him.\n\n\"What does it look like?\"\n\n\"He's a pretty good size\u2014maybe eighty or ninety pounds?\u2014black, white, and tan fur. What do you call that breed? Bernese mountain dog, I think.\"\n\n\"Does he have one blue eye and one brown?\"\n\n\"I can't tell\u2026wait.\" The dog stood up, moved into sunlight. \"Yeah. How'd you know?\"\n\n\"Thane,\" Carolyn said under her breath.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"The dog's name is Thane,\" she said. \"He's the lord.\"\n\n\"The what?\"\n\n\"The pack lord. It's what they call\u2014never mind. He's the alpha dog. What's he doing?\"\n\n\"He's walking out into the yard,\" Steve said. Thinking of Petey, Steve waved. \"Hey, buddy!\"\n\n\"Are you insane? Don't engage him, Steve!\"\n\n\"What? Why not?\"\n\nCarolyn sighed. \"Just trust me, please? Ignore the dog. Ignore any dogs you see.\" She was gritting her teeth again.\n\n\"OK,\" Steve said, amiably enough. He continued walking. After a few steps he was in front of someone else's yard, this a red brick house of odd design, carved double doors in front, dark windows. It looked very familiar to him, though he didn't recall ever having been there before.\n\nThe mountain dog followed him. He barked, just once. In response another dog, a fat beagle, came trotting out from behind this house. It ran up to Steve on comically stubby legs and set about giving high alert.\n\nPretty good set of pipes on him for a little dude, Steve thought.\n\nCarolyn heard the barking. \"Is that a beagle?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nSteve quickened his pace a little, hoping the dogs would leave him alone once he was out of the beagle's yard. But they followed, the beagle barking his surprisingly baritone bark, Thane watching him with one ice-blue eye.\n\n\"Do you see any others?\"\n\nSteve didn't really want to take his eyes off the two immediate problems, but he heard the urgency in her voice. He glanced on the other side of the street. A little ways ahead a pair of Labrador retrievers, one black and one yellow, trotted alongside each other. They're pacing me. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Motion caught his eye. As he watched, a smallish German shepherd crested the hill in front of him. Seeing him, it barked once. \"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"Three more. Lotta dogs in this neighborhood.\"\n\n\"Only three?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Well, five in all.\"\n\n\"How far in are you?\"\n\n\"Almost a block. Coming up on the first intersection.\" He paused. \"Are these dogs known to, you know\u2026bite?\"\n\n\"Almost never.\"\n\n\"Almost never?\"\n\n\"Let me know when you get to the intersection. We'll see how they act then.\"\n\nSteve continued walking. Thane and the beagle continued to follow alongside though, thankfully, the beagle shut up when they were well outside of his territory. The Labs paced him on the other side of the street.\n\nNow he was up to the old guy mowing his yard. He was a sixtyish man, probably retired, wearing a ball cap and work boots.\n\n\"Are these your dogs?\" Steve called, forgetting momentarily that he was a fugitive who didn't want to draw attention to himself.\n\nThe old guy waved.\n\n\"Hey, buddy, can you call off your dogs for me?\"\n\nThe old guy wrinkled his face in confusion, put his hand to his ear. I can't hear you! He didn't shut off the mower.\n\n\"Can. You. Call off. Your DOGS,\" Steve said, louder.\n\nThe old man shook his head again, smiled, pointed at the noisy engine.\n\n\"Asshole,\" Steve muttered. He was walking very slowly now. The mower noise receded as the old guy moved down to the far end of his yard. The dogs matched Steve inch for inch.\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"Nothing, never mind. I'm almost there. OK, I'm at the intersection.\"\n\n\"Hold up there for a second. What are the dogs doing?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026the two Labs have trotted up to the German shepherd. And there's a new one in the mix, some sort of black-and-white breed, maybe an English spaniel, mid-size. Are these, like, guard dogs?\"\n\n\"Not the way you mean. Try taking a couple of steps forward.\"\n\nSteve did. The reaction was immediate and furious. The four dogs in front of him went from passively watching to full-on attack, barking, sprinting at him. At the same time the big mountain dog leaped up and clamped down on Steve's arm. The beagle latched on to the tongue of Mrs. McGillicutty's son's Reebok.\n\n\"Aaaah!\" Steve screamed as much out of surprise as actual pain. The pain arrived in a second, though. Thane, the mountain dog, had sunk his teeth into the meat of Steve's upper right arm. Now he dangled there, all ninety pounds of him pulling on the triceps. Steve elbowed him furiously, then reached around with his left hand to loosen the jaws. The dog's brown eye rolled at him, darkly furious. Steve's blood stained the white fur of his muzzle.\n\n\"What's happening?\" Carolyn said. \"Steve?'\n\nHe was making some progress on dislodging the mountain dog when the other four hit. The yellow Lab bit down on his left forearm. The black Lab latched on to his left ankle. The shepherd went for his left butt cheek but mostly just got the cloth of his sweatpants. It whipped its head back and forth. Steve heard cloth tear, felt cool autumn air on his ass.\n\n\"Steve? Steve, answer me! What's happening? Is it the dogs, Steve?\"\n\nThese dogs mean to kill me. The thought carried a burst of adrenaline. He twisted, gyrated, trying to shake them loose, but they hung on him like Christmas ornaments. He lurched a step back in the direction that he had come, thinking hysterically that that might do the trick, convince them to let him go. All this happened in silence. The dogs weren't barking anymore, because they had their mouths full. The pain was not yet so bad that he needed to scream again. The only sound was the lawn mower. He took another step. The beagle let go of his shoe and clamped down on Steve's Achilles tendon. The pain drove him to his knees, or maybe he tripped. The mountain dog let go of his right arm and bit at his ear, his scalp, his face.\n\nSteve struck out blindly, punching with his right hand. Now he was screaming.\n\n\"That's it,\" Carolyn said. \"I'm sending in the backup.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 31",
                "text": "Facedown on the asphalt, buried under the marauding dogs, Steve felt surprisingly peaceful. He heard the blood roaring in his ears but felt no real pain. Probably I'm dying. He noticed a piece of gypsum baked into the asphalt of the road, inches away from his eye. It was very interesting.\n\nThen, as if from a great distance, he heard a sound that was not a dog, not a lawn mower. It was a bass rumble, a roar. He felt it in the depths of his chest.\n\nA moment later the shadow of the mountain dog\u2014Thane, Steve thought, his name is Thane\u2014fell away from his face. Unexpectedly, he was in daylight again. The dog on his right arm fell away. Then his left leg was free.\n\n\"\u2014an you hear me, Steve? Answer me! Are you\u2014\"\n\nSteve, dazed, put his right hand down on the asphalt and examined it. He had a good, wide gash in his arm. When he flexed his fingers he could see the muscle work. Not much blood, though. The muscle of his forearm looked a lot like raw chicken. He found this very interesting as well, and clenched his hand a couple of times to watch it work.\n\n\"The gun, Steve! Use the gun!\"\n\nHey\u2026that's a pretty good idea. He put a hand down and pushed himself off the asphalt. The old guy mowing his lawn was headed his direction. Steve waved him over for help with one bloody, shredded hand. The old guy smiled and waved back. He cupped a hand to his ear and shook his head, pointing at the mower.\n\nWhat\u2026the\u2026fuck? That was weird enough to bring him back to himself, at least a little. He got to one knee, took a quick inventory. His right leg worked. The beagle hadn't been able to do much damage to his ankle. Not for lack of effort, though. His left, not so much. He'd been badly bitten in the calf. It hurt to put weight on it. Wonder what happened there?\n\n\"The gun, Steve! The gun! Shoot the dogs!\"\n\nThat did it. Steve, fully conscious again, remembered who\u2014what\u2014had done this to him. He was suddenly and acutely aware of the slavering dogs at his back. Black murder bubbled up into his heart, the Buddha's message of compassion for all life temporarily forgotten.\n\n\"C'mere, Thane,\" he said, drawing the pistol. \"I got a treat for you, buddy.\"\n\nWow, he thought, that's a really big dog. Must be\u2014what?\u2014four hundred pounds or so. Maybe five hundred.\n\nBut of course it was not a dog. It was a lion. Two of them actually, an adult male with a thick brown mane and a smaller female, standing between him and the dogs. Lions, huh? That's kind of unusual.\n\nHe pulled the slide back on the HK, cocking it. He leveled it, aiming at the center of the big lion's mane and carefully squeezed off a shot. He missed completely. The bullet went between the two lions and ricocheted off the asphalt, kicking up a small spark.\n\nThe big lion turned around and roared at him.\n\n\"Steve,\" Carolyn's voice came in his ear, \"what are you doing? Don't be an idiot! They're there to protect you! They're your backup!\"\n\n\"Say again, please?\"\n\n\"The lions saved you. They're the backup. Do not shoot them.\"\n\n\"How did you know I tried\u2014\"\n\nThe big lion roared again.\n\n\"He says there's more dogs on the way. Can you shoot? Use the gun. But be careful. How many dogs are there?\"\n\nSteve took stock. The beagle lay dead in the road, his back broken. Thane, bleeding from a wound in his ass, the fur on the back of his neck high, paced back and forth in front of the lions, studying them with his eerie mismatched eyes. Behind him the other four dogs stood, growling, slightly wounded, uncertain. Three new ones, two Rottweilers and a poodle, had arrived while Steve was out of it. As he watched a golden retriever crested the hill. \"I count nine.\"\n\n\"Shoot!\" Carolyn said. \"You're going to have to fight your way up the street.\"\n\nSteve squeezed off a shot at the English spaniel. He missed this time too, but it was a more credible effort. The big lion glanced over his shoulder and moved farther out of Steve's field of fire.\n\nThe spaniel was growling, growling, its muzzle wrinkled back, stained red with Steve's blood. It barked, took a half step forward\u2014\n\n\u2014and Steve shot it right between the eyes.\n\nThe lions roared their approval. Steve glanced off to his right. The guy with the mower had completed another row and turned around. This time he waved twice as he passed by, once at Steve and once at the lions.\n\nSteve shot the yellow Lab in the side. It took a couple steps forward and fell on its side, ribs heaving. I'm getting the hang of this. He fired at the black dog and missed completely, then shot it in the hip. It screamed, then began limping toward him. He shot it in the breastbone and it fell down dead.\n\nThe remaining six dogs charged. Three of them attacked the female lion, swarming her. She roared with pain, but Steve didn't care because the other three charged him, bypassing the male lion. Steve didn't really blame them. It was becoming evident that he wasn't much of a shot.\n\nHe shot the poodle in the chest. Not bad\u2026He shot at Thane, missing him completely. The shepherd, snarling and yellow-eyed, launched herself at him. He held his wounded arm up to block and she latched onto it, sharp white teeth sinking into exposed muscle. Steve screamed. He jammed the pistol into her belly and pulled the trigger. Guts showered out the other side, but the shepherd didn't let go. Now a pit bull was gnawing at the ankle that the beagle had been on.\n\nHe shot again, higher on the shepherd's body. The hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. The dog had to be nearly dead but it just wouldn't let go. The bite felt like being on fire. Steve screamed again, clubbing her in the head with the butt of his gun.\n\n\"Yaah!\" he screamed. \"Fucking get off me, asshole!\"\n\nWith a look of surprise, the shepherd fell away. Steve plopped down on his ass and began kicking at the pit bull with his free foot. It growled at him and sunk its teeth in deeper. Steve screamed.\n\nThen the two lions landed on the pit bull, a split second apart. Steve screamed again\u2014lion attacks will do that to a person\u2014but they didn't touch him at all. Instead they took the dog's spine in their jaws, one near the neck and one near the tail, and crunched down. Now it was the dog's turn to scream.\n\n\"Yaaah, you FUCKER!\"\n\nWhen they dropped the dog, it didn't move.\n\nThe lions turned and stood over him, inches away now. Their yellow eyes bored into him. They were panting. He felt their breath over his wounds, the slick sweat of his brow. It smelled of blood and rotting meat. Steve held up the empty pistol, then lowered it again. The big one rumbled a little, swished his tail. He took a step back, then raised his head and looked down the street. His brow furrowed.\n\nNot wanting to, Steve twisted to follow his gaze.\n\nBehind him there were a dozen more dogs, ten at least. Behind them, dozens or even hundreds more were on the way. They flowed out of the woods half a mile away like a river of murder, across the hay field, down the main road. The clicking of their toenails on asphalt sounded like a stampede.\n\n\"Oh shit,\" Steve whispered.\n\nThe lion roared.\n\nSteve stood up. He fumbled at his back. Carolyn had duct taped the two extra magazines there, like Bruce Willis did in the original Die Hard. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when he grabbed at one of the magazines it wouldn't come unstuck. He pulled again, harder this time. This time it came loose, but the magazines Carolyn had given him were slick with gun oil. It slipped out of his grip and clattered across the road, coming to rest not far from the streetlamp.\n\n\"Oh shit!\" Steve said again.\n\n\"What happened? What's going on?\"\n\n\"They're coming! There's hundreds of them! And\u2026and I dropped the fucking magazine.\" As he spoke he reached around, carefully this time, and put his hands on the final magazine taped to his back. He wrapped his fingers around it, gently but firmly, and pulled it free.\n\nCarolyn exhaled softly. \"You have to get indoors,\" she said. \"Get inside, Steve! Get inside!\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Anywhere! Whatever's closest! They're not locked! Go!\"\n\nSteve took off, limping as best he was able across the half-mowed yard. As he moved, he took the duct tape still clinging to the full magazine in his teeth and pulled. It came off.\n\nBehind him he heard the thunder of running dogs, a hundred more reinforcements coming to join the dozens already standing shoulder to shoulder twenty yards away. Only the lions stood between them and him. The old guy mowing the yard waved again.\n\n\"You're an asshole!\" Steve screamed.\n\nThe old guy cupped a hand to his ear, then pointed at the mower and shook his head.\n\n\"Steve, get indoors!\" Carolyn's voice was thick with tension. \"You have to get indoors now.\"\n\nStill moving, Steve ejected the spent magazine, let it drop into the grass. I hope it messes up his mower blade. He slammed the full magazine home and jacked the slide back, cocking the gun. Now he was on the porch. He put his hand on the knob, fully prepared to shoot it if it was locked. Surely that would work? It always does in the movies. But the door opened easily into an unremarkable foyer\u2014linoleum floor, floral wallpaper, dusty umbrella stand.\n\n\"What about the lions?\"\n\n\"Leave them. They're disposable. Just get indoors.\"\n\nSteve lurched inside, shutting the door behind him. \"I'm in.\"\n\n\"OK, you're safe. Which house are you in?\"\n\n\"Uhh\u2026the outside is white brick?\"\n\n\"Perfect. There's food, water, and medical supplies in the living room. Stay there. You'll be safe inside. I'll get you out of there as soon as I can, but it may be a day or two.\" She hung up."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 32",
                "text": "\"Shit,\" Carolyn said in Pelapi as she hung up the phone. She, Jennifer, David, Margaret, Rachel, and Peter were sitting around Mrs. McGillicutty's kitchen table.\n\nThe others could tell from her tone that things had gone bad, but none of them understood more than a smattering of English.\n\n\"What happened?\" David rumbled.\n\n\"He ducked in to one of the houses.\" She stood and walked over to the wall, where the phone's cradle hung. When she seated the phone she also unplugged the jack. No one noticed. The librarians weren't much good with technology, nor was Mrs. McGillicutty. Nor was she, for that matter, but she'd had time to read up on telephones. The other phone jacks in the house were already unplugged.\n\n\"Well,\" David said reflectively, \"I suppose it was going to be one of the two. Margaret, which do you think would be worse? Ripped apart by dogs, or gummed to death by the dead ones?\" He tickled her. She giggled and squirmed, unsettling a small cloud of flies. \"You'd know, wouldn't you?\" She giggled again.\n\nJennifer slapped her forehead. \"Oh, no! Didn't you warn him? Are you going to want him back, Carolyn? Because that's going to be a real mess.\" The dead ones would be friendly to strangers they encountered outside their houses, if somewhat odd. But on the rare occasion that some unfortunate soul from the outside world made it indoors, they fell on him with teeth, hands, clubs, kitchen tools, whatever was handy. Unless someone intervened quickly, there usually wasn't much left.\n\nCarolyn shrugged. \"He's disposable. If we get in there in the next little bit, maybe. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned he can stay dead.\"\n\n\"So\u2026new plan?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know. I think the basic plan is solid. The problem was that he didn't ignore the sentries.\"\n\n\"What did he do?\"\n\n\"He spoke to Thane, almost first thing.\"\n\nJennifer winced.\n\nCarolyn felt her index finger about to tremble. \"It never occurred to me to warn him.\" This was plausible. Most of the librarians had a horror of the neighborhood dogs that dated back to childhood. Even Michael tended to keep his distance. But Americans, for some reason, seemed to love the furry little bastards. It was one of their unfathomable quirks.\n\n\"So, what then?\"\n\n\"Unless anybody can think of something better, I guess I'll go out and see if I can round up another American,\" she lied. \"David? Does that suit you?\"\n\nDavid, perhaps thinking of the bloodbath at the jail, blessed this with a shallow nod.\n\n\"When will you go?\" Jennifer asked.\n\nCarolyn thought about it. \"Now, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Want to wait a bit? There will be food soon.\" Mrs. McGillicutty was bustling in the kitchen.\n\nCarolyn groaned. \"No! I've already eaten twice today. And I may have to do bar snacks. Has anyone seen those boots I had on? And the blue duffel bag with all the green paper? I'll need it as bait.\"\n\nCarolyn collected her things and emerged into the afternoon sunshine. That went rather well, she thought. Mission accomplished, and Steve is in a safe place. It was true that the dead ones were fierce defenders of their quarters. It had to be that way. Their private lives could not bear much inspection. But there were exceptions. The librarians could come and go as they pleased, as could others who had been resurrected.\n\nSteve would be fine.\n\nThe others did not know this, of course."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 33",
                "text": "Steve gave the interior of the house a quick glance\u2014weirdly empty\u2014and turned to the door. It had one of those little peephole things that gave a fish-eye view of the outside. The two lions were about five yards from the porch, backing up slowly.\n\nIt wasn't hard to see why. Now there were at least a hundred dogs in the street of all sizes and description\u2014Dobermans; Jack Russell terriers; poodles both large and small; German shepherds; Labs of the chocolate, yellow, and black variety; dozens of other breeds. They were advancing on the lions.\n\nThe big male looked back and forth over the assembled dogs and gave a full-throated roar. The sound echoed down the street, bouncing off the houses of Garrison Oaks. The female looked over her shoulder at the door. Her gaze seemed to bore into Steve.\n\nThe look in her eyes reminded Steve of something, but he couldn't quite think what.\n\nFuck, fuck, fuck. What do I do here? The lions had saved him. But, y'know, they're fucking lions. Still, he had been down for the count, barely conscious as the dogs tore into him.\n\nThat reminds me\u2014he looked down. He was dripping blood on the floor, but not actually spraying it, as far as he could tell. That was probably good. And Carolyn had said there were medical supplies. \"Medical supplies?\" That's suspiciously convenient. Then, God, I hate her. A lot.\n\nOutside the door a low rumble was building, the sound of a hundred dogs growling at once. Over that, the lawn mower. The female lion stood in the old man's path, teeth bared, fur up. He just steered around her. He didn't seem to notice the dogs at all.\n\nThe male lion took another half-step back. Thane advanced two steps, the rest of the dogs close behind him. One of the Rottweilers barked mechanically, over and over, spraying flecks of white foam. The yard was a sea of wrinkled muzzles, fangs, savage eyes.\n\nYeah, they're fucked. Even if the lions had somewhere to run, which they didn't\u2014they had cornered themselves covering Steve's retreat\u2014he had no doubt that at least some of the dogs could outrun them. And there were so many. Steve pounded the wall. \"Fuck, fuck, fuck!\"\n\nHe thought about dialing Carolyn back, but there wasn't time. The big lion took another step back, roared again. The Rottweiler charged him and he swatted it, sent it flying into the crowd. The female looked over her shoulder again. Steve would have sworn he saw reproach in those eyes. Wasn't there a thing on YouTube a couple of years back about lions and some English dudes buddying up? Steve thought hysterically. Ah, fuck it.\n\nHe opened the door.\n\nThe female lion looked at him. Possibly he was kidding himself, but he thought she looked grateful. \"Get in here! What are you waiting for?\"\n\nShe tried to bound, but her hind leg wasn't quite up to it. She did a belly flop onto the brick porch steps, then scrambled up. The male wasn't wounded, but he waited for her to get inside. Some of the dogs were just inches from him. He held them at bay with swipes of his paw and, Steve thought, the force of his personality.\n\n\"Come on!\"\n\nThe male spun and was through the door in two quick leaps. Steve, standing behind the door, tried to slam it shut, but was thwarted by the dogs. Two of them, both greyhounds, were pinned neck-deep between the door and the jamb. They snarled, snapped. Steve kicked at their heads with his good leg, holding himself up with the door. He kicked the top greyhound unconscious, or possibly to death. When he let the pressure off the door the other one backed out. He was able to shut the door then; there were a lot of dogs outside, but for whatever reason only a couple of them had come onto the porch. They scrabbled ineffectually against the door with their toenails.\n\nHe made extra-special sure that the latch caught, then released the handle. He locked it, then threw the deadbolt for good measure. The dogs outside clambered at the door, barking. Steve leaned against the wall and turned to see if the lions would eat him now.\n\nThey didn't. They ignored him completely, actually. The female had collapsed in the living room. She had a biggish chunk missing from her left rear leg. Blood wasn't spurting from the wound, but it oozed out in a steady stream. A red trail led from the foyer to where she lay.\n\nRight, Steve thought. Medical supplies. Carefully, keeping one eye on the lions, he limped into the living room. It was still bright outside, but in the house it felt like twilight. Thick curtains hung over all the windows, and there were no lights on. He fumbled around on the wall until he found a row of switches and flipped them at random until one worked. A single anemic bulb came on overhead, its dull ochre glow further diluted by the husks of dead insects in the fixture.\n\n\"Whoa,\" Steve said.\n\nThe living room was flat, empty space about the size of a two-car garage. All the furniture was heaped in the corner\u2014couch standing on one end, squished lamp shade poking out from a splintered bookcase, end-table legs jutting up like skeletal fingers. The ghost of the couch lingered as a cleaner spot on filthy carpet.\n\nThe framed photographs and art were in the pile as well, but the room was not undecorated. Most of the wall space was covered with crude paintings that looked like the work of a talented kindergartener. No, Steve thought. That's not quite right. They look like cave paintings.\n\nThese images had the same crude style, but they were not of animals. Well, mostly not. He saw a few four-legged beasties here and there, possibly dogs. But mostly these cave paintings were of modern things\u2014he recognized the square brown of a UPS truck, a small car with a sign on the roof, a stick-figure man bearing pizza beside it. A mail truck. A basketball hoop. A bicycle. But among the recognizable and commonplace stuff of American life, there were inexplicable things as well\u2014a black pyramid, a yellow bull standing in a fire, angry calamari bobbing in green waves.\n\nHe found the supplies Carolyn had mentioned stacked neatly in the corner opposite the furniture\u2014two cases of Dasani water, a case of Johnson & Johnson sterile gauze, two industrial-sized boxes of Band-Aids, a plastic bag full of beef jerky, what looked like a tackle box with a red cross stenciled on it. A plain white box held a collection of less-familiar things, neatly wrapped in an old wedding dress; three clay pots, a Styrofoam tray of glass ampoules, tiny bowls of powder. This stuff's fresh, looks like. It's been here a day or two at most. Steve walked over and spun the cap off a Dasani, guzzled it. He opened a Band-Aid box, peeled one, and stuck it over a small bite mark on his finger. Another box said AMOXICILLIN. He opened it and found a dozen syringes.\n\n\"Oh, hello!\"\n\nSteve started, spun around. It was an older woman, mid-sixties, in a flower-print skirt-and-pants combo, mostly purple. She herself was very pale, her lips a cyanotic blue. \"How lovely to see you! Won't you come in? May I take your coat?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2026hi. I didn't realize anyone was here. I'm sorry to break in. Really. There are dogs\u2014\"\n\n\"Won't you come in?\"\n\n\"I don't\u2014\" He stopped, squinted at her. He thought of how the mower guy kept pantomiming deafness, pointing at the mower over and over like it was the first time. His wife, maybe? They're perfect for each other.\n\n\"Won't you come in?\" she said again. \"How lovely to see you.\" The lion walked over, sniffed her. She looked down at the four-hundred-pound cat bleeding in her foyer and patted his thick, dusty mane. \"May I take your coat?\"\n\nThe lion looked over his shoulder at Steve and gave a dubious rumble.\n\nSteve shook his head. \"Beats the shit out of me, man.\"\n\nThe big cat swished his tail at Steve's words, agreeably enough, as if he understood\u2014maybe not the words, but the gist of his thoughts, the sentiment. For some reason this struck Steve as funny. When the sound of his chuckle prompted the woman to ask again if she might take his coat, he laughed long and loud.\n\nMaybe he was getting the hang of this weird-ass day."
            },
            {
                "title": "Cold Home",
                "text": "The secretary was a middle-aged black lady with a friendly face and eyes like ice. She'd tracked Erwin's approach the way a panther might watch a goat sidle up to a water hole. Behind her, a tall window overlooked a perfectly manicured garden. Erwin looked out that window with real longing. It was clear and sunny, cool but not chilly, maybe the best day of the fall. Erwin wanted to be out hiking in the woods, kicking his way through crunchy leaves.\n\nInstead he walked up and laid his visitor's badge on her desk. \"I'm Erwin,\" he said. He jerked a thumb at the curved door to his right. \"Got a call that he wants to see me.\"\n\n\"Erwin what?\" the secretary said, running her finger down a printed list of names. Erwin didn't answer. His last name was on the badge. She was just being a bitch.\n\n\"Ma'am, that is Erwin Leffington,\" said a voice behind him. \"The Erwin Leffington.\"\n\nErwin turned. A fit-looking middle-aged man in an Army general's uniform sat on the couch behind him. In his briefcase Erwin saw a number of file folders with black borders. Hmmm. He was aware that such classifications existed, but he'd never been in the room with one before.\n\n\"Ah,\" the secretary said, thwarted. \"I see. You're connected with\u2026the emergency?\"\n\n\"I guess,\" Erwin said.\n\nThe secretary pursed her lips. She consulted a different, shorter list, gave a curt nod. \"He is expecting you,\" she admitted. \"Have a seat, please.\"\n\nErwin nodded in return.\n\nBehind him, the general had gathered up the papers he was looking at and put them away in a briefcase cuffed to his wrist. Then he stood, smiling broadly, and walked over to greet Erwin. \"I'm Dan Thorpe,\" he said, holding out his hand to shake. \"It's a real honor to meet you, Sergeant.\"\n\nOut of habit, Erwin skimmed Thorpe's decorations\u2014an Airborne patch, the crossed arrows of Special Operations, a whole bunch of campaign ribbons. He knew the Joint Special Operations commander by reputation, though they had never met. Supposedly he was a pretty good guy. Erwin shook his hand. \"Meetcha,\" he said. \"Sir.\"\n\n\"Captain Tanaka said to say hello,\" Thorpe said. \"He wanted to come himself but he's\u2026otherwise occupied. Mission planning. He insisted that I bring you down for a beer when all this is over.\"\n\nErwin warmed a little. \"Yeah? You know Yo?\" He and Yoshitaka had served together in Iraq. \"Didn't realize he was with you guys.\"\n\n\"For about a year now. How come you never came out for selection?\" Thorpe asked. \"I know Clint invited\u2014\"\n\n\"The president will see you now,\" the secretary said. She stood up and walked over to the oddly shaped door and opened it for them.\n\nThe door wasn't very wide. Erwin, who'd retired as a command sergeant major, deferred to General Thorpe's rank, letting him go through first, then followed him into the Oval Office."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 35",
                "text": "It was Erwin's first time in the sanctum sanctorum. He'd been to the White House before, once as part of a tour group and once when he and a couple of other guys swung by to pick up some Distinguished Service Crosses. Erwin, who gave no fucks about medals, had come close to skipping that last. At the time, though, he'd been remodeling his house. He was curious to see how the carpenters handled the baseboards and crown molding on the curved walls of the Oval Office. But it kinda sucked. The ceremony had been in the Rose Garden, not the Oval Office, and the president\u2014not this guy, the one before last\u2014turned out to be a douche. He showed up drunk and spent most of his time drooling over the niece of a Marine pilot. As soon as she made it clear she didn't love her country in that way, Scotchy McPolitics disappeared. Also he got the pilot's name wrong during the ceremony.\n\nAnyway, nine years and two presidents later, here he was in the Room itself. It wasn't small, but it wasn't quite as big as he would have expected. But\u2026really nice job on the baseboards. Perfectly molded plinth blocks, good clean shoe molding, and nearly invisible joins on the scalloping up above. He looked around. The rest of the room was fancy too. Regal blue carpeting, alternating gold-and-cream stripe pattern on the walls. His eye lingered on the president's desk, an elaborately carved teak thing that depicted some sort of naval battle. Nice detailing, he thought. And can you even get teak anymore? He considered. Probably it's a antique or some shit.\n\n\"\u2014nd this is Erwin Leffington,\" Thorpe was saying. \"Formerly with the Eighty-Second, now a special investigator with Homeland Security.\"\n\nErwin looked up. In front of the desk two gold couches faced each other, a coffee table between them. The president and a bunch of guys he vaguely recognized from the news were sprawled out on them. They looked tense. Mentally, Erwin rolled his eyes. Here we go.\n\n\"Why is he here?\" asked an older woman, looking down at him over the top of her glasses. A classified-documents folder lay open in her lap. Another black border, Erwin saw. La-di-da. The label inside the jacket read COLD HOME.\n\n\"A number of reasons, Madam Secretary,\" Thorpe said. \"Sergeant\u2014sorry, Special Agent Leffington has proven to be well ahead of the curve on this one. Prior to yesterday's, ah, events, he was conducting an investigation of a related crime, a bank robbery. Leffington was also interrogating the escapee at the time of his prison break. He's the only person known to have seen the operatives and lived.\"\n\n\"It was just the one guy.\"\n\n\"Beg pardon?\" said the lady in glasses.\n\nErwin jerked a thumb at Thorpe. \"He said 'operatives.' But it was just the one guy. That I saw, anyway.\"\n\n\"Just one? What about the one who escaped custody?\" He rustled papers in his black bordered folder. \"Steve, ah\u2026Hodgson? The one you were interviewing?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't necessarily say 'escaped custody,'\" Erwin said. \"Looked more like 'kidnapped out of custody' to me.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Well, he was surprised as shit when the guy in the tutu showed up. We all were. Our jaws was all hanging open like we was morons.\" Erwin especially relished that last phrase. 'Like we was morons.' He only trotted it out on special occasions. \"Plus the guy in the tutu had to knock the fuck out of Hodgson to get him to stop squirmin'.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said a tall guy with coppery red hair. \"Did you say tutu?\"\n\nErwin dredged his memory and came up with a name. Bryan Hamann, he thought. White House chief of staff. \"Yup. Purple tutu and a flak jacket. Israeli, I think. That and a knife. He was barefoot too.\" Erwin shook his head a little. \"Fucking weird.\"\n\n\"So\u2026he was unarmed?\" Thorpe said slowly.\n\n\"It was a pretty big knife. But no guns, if that's what you mean.\"\n\n\"And there were how many casualties?\" the president asked, ruffling through papers.\n\n\"Thirty-seven,\" Erwin said, without looking at any notes.\n\n\"They were armed?\"\n\n\"Lots of 'em were, yeah. Didn't seem to help much. One guy in the hall, he had a forty-caliber Glock stuffed up his ass, way past the trigger guard. Only thing poking out was the butt of the magazine.\"\n\nThe secretary of state paused with a china cup halfway to her mouth, then set it back down, coffee unsipped. \"But he let you live,\" she said. \"Why is that, do you think?\"\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Fanboy.\"\n\n\"Beg pardon?\"\n\n\"It's kind of a long story.\" Erwin hated people who told long stories without an invitation. He scanned the room. The president made a come-on gesture. \"So, like, the guy in the tutu kicks in the door of the chapel and kills the cop that brung him there pretty much straight off.\" Erwin took his Copenhagen out of his shirt pocket, thumped it a couple of times to settle the tobacco, and put in a dip. \"Then, he asked which one of us was Steve.\" He imitated the big guy's voice: \"'Eshteeeeeeve?' Like that. Hodgson's lawyer blabbed\u2014he was a pussy\u2014and the big guy killed him, too, with like a weight on the end of a chain.\" Erwin put the Copenhagen back in his pocket. \"Man that guy was quick,\" he said, looking at Thorpe significantly. \"I ain't never seen nobody that fuckin' fast in my life.\"\n\nThorpe nodded. Message received.\n\n\"Anyway, I figured I was next. So I started thinking fast. And I asked him if he knew a chick named Carolyn. He recognized the name. I think that almost got me off the hook.\"\n\n\"What made you think to do that?\" the secretary of state asked.\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Her and him both dressed weird.\"\n\nThey were all looking at him now.\n\n\"Weird how?\" asked Hamann.\n\n\"Well, he was in the tutu.\" He scanned their faces. \"And Hodgson had said that this chick Carolyn was going around in a wool sweater and bike pants, them Spandexy things, the night he met her. And leg warmers. That was weird too. So that had already reminded me how one of them ladies who robbed the bank did it in a bathrobe and cowboy hat. It wasn't so much a connection as they just kinda reminded me of each other. Kinda thin, but I figured if he was getting ready to kill me anyway it couldn't hurt to try. So I asked if he knew her.\"\n\n\"And that worked?\"\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Almost. Slowed him down for a second, anyway. He didn't speak English, but I could tell he knew the name.\"\n\n\"What did he speak?\"\n\n\"Dunno. Funny accent. Couldn't place it. But when I said 'Carolyn,' he sat up and took notice. Then he said 'Nobununga'\u2014or something like that. I pretended like I knew him, too.\"\n\n\"Nobunaga?\" the president asked. \"Where do I know that name?\"\n\nErwin was surprised. Oh right, he thought. He was a history major. \"Oda Nobunaga. Yeah, he was my first thought too.\"\n\nThe president snapped his fingers. \"Right. That's it.\"\n\n\"Pardon me,\" said the secretary of state, \"but who are we talking about?\"\n\n\"Oda Nobunaga,\" Erwin explained. \"In sixteenth-century Japan he unified the shogunate. Mostly, anyways.\"\n\nThey were all staring at him now, the way dumb shits sometimes did when you surprised them. All except the president himself. He was smiling a little. \"Go on,\" he said.\n\n\"But I got it wrong,\" Erwin said. \"It wasn't No-bu-na-ga. He said No-bu-nun-ga.\"\n\n\"Who the hell's that?\" Hamann asked.\n\nErwin shrugged. \"Not a fuckin' clue. Maybe it was a code word, or some stupid shit like that.\" He nodded at the director of Central Intelligence. \"No offense.\"\n\nThe DCI shook his head. None taken.\n\n\"Anyway, I fucked up. When I said the wrong name, the guy in the tutu figured out I was trying to bullshit him. He was fixin' to kill me with that spear of his\u2014or try, anyway. But it turned out he was a fanboy. I dunno who was more surprised, him or me.\"\n\n\"A 'fanboy'?\" the secretary of state asked. \"So\u2026you two know each other? I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Nah. It's just sometimes\u2014\"\n\nThorpe's tone was cold. \"Madam Secretary, Command Sergeant Major Leffington is well-known within military circles. 'Living legend' is probably a fair description of his status. At Natanz, while wounded, he singlehandedly\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, anyway,\" Erwin said, \"he'd heard of me. You get to where you recognize the look.\"\n\n\"I see. And you think that's why he spared your life?\"\n\n\"Well, I wasn't gonna just sit there and let him kill me. But yeah. After he recognized me he just grabbed the Hodgson kid and took off.\"\n\n\"Did you pursue him?\"\n\n\"I gave it a shot.\" Erwin shook his head. \"Man that guy was quick.\" He looked at the president. \"Hey, you got a trash can or something? I gotta spit.\" He pointed at the wad of Copenhagen in his lip.\n\nThorpe looked at him, wide-eyed, then stifled a grin.\n\n\"Under the desk,\" the president said.\n\n\"Thanks.\" Erwin walked around behind the president's desk, retrieved his trash can, and spat a brown stream in it. He set the can on the desk. Might need it again in a minute. \"Say, can I ask you a question?\"\n\nThe president waggled his fingers in a come-on gesture.\n\n\"Why do you give a fuck?\"\n\n\"OK, that's about enough of\u2014\" Hamann began.\n\nThe president held up his hand. \"How do you mean, Agent Leffington?\"\n\nHamann's face was really red now. Yup, Erwin thought. Asshole. \"Call me Erwin,\" he said to the president. \"Yeah, what I mean is, why do you give a fuck? I mean, it was all horrific and shit, but ain't it a little below your pay grade?\" He meant this sincerely. A thirty-person massacre ain't so much, as presidents go.\n\nThe president and Hamann exchanged a glance. The president gave a small nod. \"Mr. Leffington\u2014\" Hamann began.\n\n\"It's Erwin,\" Erwin said.\n\nHamann's face got redder still. Erwin gave no fucks.\n\n\"Erwin, then,\" Hamann said, smiling through gritted teeth, \"do you have a security clearance?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Erwin said. He had one from the Homeland Security gig. He told them the level. It wasn't especially high.\n\nHamann looked smug for a moment, but when he glanced at the president his face fell.\n\n\"Tell him anyway,\" the president said.\n\n\"Sir, I don't think\u2014\"\n\nThe president gave him a look.\n\n\"Right,\" Hamann said. \"Ah, yesterday, this office received a call from a member of the terrorist organization. A woman.\"\n\n\"Carolyn? She called here?\"\n\nThey all looked at him again. \"That's correct,\" Hamann said.\n\n\"Nooooooo shit,\" Erwin said softly. \"Huh. What'd she want to talk about?\"\n\n\"Steve Hodgson was the reason she called,\" the president said.\n\n\"I ain't followin'.\"\n\n\"She wanted me to arrange a pardon for him,\" the president said.\n\n\"Oh?\" Erwin said, very interested now. \"You talked to her? Yourself? Personal-like?\"\n\n\"She had the access codes,\" Hamann said. He and the president exchanged another glance.\n\nErwin waited, but neither of them said anything more. He's holding something back, Erwin thought. Access codes will only get you so far. What did she say? What did she say to make that asshole put the president on the phone? He suddenly thought of the tellers at the bank robbery, of Amrita Krishnamurti, that spotless employee of twelve years, tossing away dye packs, marked bills, her career. But someone was speaking to him. The question was a good one, though. He tucked it away for later examination. \"Sorry,\" Erwin said. \"Say again?\"\n\nThe president didn't seem too put out about Erwin zoning out. Erwin provisionally decided that he liked the guy. \"I said,\" the president said again, \"what made you take an interest in her in the first place?\"\n\n\"She did a bank robbery three, four weeks back, her and some other lady. Left prints all over the place, at the bank. Everywhere, like. Then, just one single print at the house where they found this Hodgson guy.\"\n\n\"Just the one print?\" the president asked. He sounded like he understood why this was weird, which surprised Erwin again.\n\nOh. Right. He was a prosecutor. \"Yeah. Just the one. Weird, huh? Usually you either get lots of 'em, or none at all, if they wear gloves. But this time, just one. It was perfect, too. They found it on the plate over the light switch in the dining room, like she rolled it out on a pad.\"\n\n\"So she wanted us to find it,\" the president said. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Don't know,\" Erwin allowed. \"Good question, though. Wanted us to connect her with this Hodgson guy, maybe?\"\n\n\"We keep coming back to him. Who is he?\"\n\n\"Nobody in particular, so far as I can tell. He's a plumber.\"\n\nThe secretary of state, regal, studied him over the top of her glasses. \"A plumber?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. He spat in the president's trash can. \"You know\u2014them guys who make the toilets work? He seemed pretty normal, though,\" he said meditatively. \"Not like them bank-robber ladies or the tutu guy.\"\n\n\"Did anything strike you about him?\" the president asked.\n\nErwin considered the question. \"I didn't have a whole lot of time with him. But I don't think he had any more idea what was going on than I do. He seemed all guilty about something, though. I couldn't figure out what. He got busted selling a little weed when he was a kid, did two years when he wouldn't roll over on his supplier. No arrests after that, but he got mentioned in a lot of other guys' files.\"\n\n\"And now?\"\n\n\"These days he's clean, best I can tell. Other than the dead cop, I mean. And he denies that.\"\n\n\"Do you believe him?\" the president asked.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. \"I do. I think she set him up.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Leverage, I 'spect. What'd you say when she asked about the pardon?\" The president didn't answer. His eyes were like ice. He said yes, then. \"Never mind. None-a my fucking business. Sorry.\"\n\n\"You might be right,\" the president said. \"Leverage. Hmmm. What would she want from him?\"\n\n\"Dunno. Seems like a lotta trouble to get him to fix a faucet. Does it matter?\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"Well, you got Thorpe over there. He ain't much of a negotiator. You gonna kill 'em?\"\n\nEveryone was very quiet. Then, after a moment, Hamann spoke. \"Thank you, Erwin. That will be all.\"\n\nErwin waited a second, but this time the president didn't override him. \"Yeah. Sure.\" He spat again. \"I wouldn't.\"\n\nNow both Hamann and the secretary of state were glaring at him.\n\n\"Why not?\" the president said.\n\n\"I think it's what they want,\" Erwin said. \"What she wants. Whoever she is, she's not dumb. She had to know you'd trace the call, right? And she had to know it would piss you off, getting your cage rattled.\"\n\n\"She didn't rattle\u2014\" Hamann began.\n\n\"Yeah. Whatever. So, way I see it, you can either go skip-skip-skippin' down this merry trail she's blazed for you, or you can lay back in the tall grass for a while, see if maybe you can figure out what the fuck is going on.\"\n\nThe president eyeballed him for a long moment. \"Duly noted,\" he said. \"I'll think it over.\"\n\n\"You do that. You done with me?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nEveryone looked relieved.\n\n\"Erwin, can you wait for me in the lobby?\" Thorpe said. \"I'd like a chance to debrief you on a couple other details.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. He sighed inside, thinking of the fall leaves. \"Sure.\" He walked out the funky curved door, pausing just a moment to run his fingers across the perfect wainscoting."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 36",
                "text": "They conspired for another hour or so. Erwin, irritated, amused himself by annoying the secretary. Eventually the door opened. The herd of assholes spilled out, most of them glaring at Erwin as they left.\n\nThorpe was one of the last ones to leave. He walked up to Erwin, eyes wide. \"You know,\" he said, \"they talk about you, in the Unit. Yoshitaka and the others. I'd heard some of the stories. But before today, I never really believed\u2014\"\n\n\"Hey,\" the president called through the open door. \"Erwin? Got a second?\"\n\nErwin and Thorpe exchanged a look. \"He can't kill me,\" Erwin said with a shrug. \"I got the Distinguished Service Cross.\"\n\n\"Two of them. And the Medal of Honor.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, that one got all blown out of proportion.\" Erwin went back into the Oval Office. \"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"I wanted to thank you for your help today,\" the president said, \"and your service to your country, of course.\" He paused. \"It's been very memorable, meeting you.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Nice meetin' you, too.\" He waved a hand dismissively. \"Happy to help and shit.\" Erwin paused. \"Say, you mind if I ask you something?\"\n\nThe president gave the question serious consideration before he answered. \"Go ahead. I may take the fifth, though.\"\n\nErwin didn't smile. \"I didn't vote for you.\" He waited for a reaction. There wasn't one. \"Reason was, all the time you talked on TV, you always sounded like a dumbass. It was really convincing.\"\n\n\"Erwin, we should probably\u2014\" Thorpe said, from out in the lobby.\n\n\"Years of practice,\" the president said. \"What's your question?\"\n\n\"I was just wondering why you did that. Pretend to be a dipshit, I mean.\"\n\nThe president grinned. \"Prolly the same fuckin' reason you do.\"\n\nThey looked at each other for a second, then both of them laughed, long and loud.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. \"OK. I'm convinced. Good luck in November!\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" the president said. \"I won't need it.\"\n\nThey both laughed again. Erwin stepped back out into the bitchy secretary's lobby.\n\n\"Hey! Erwin?\"\n\nHe turned around. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"We do a card game, every other Tuesday. If you're in town, I'd love to have you sit in.\"\n\nErwin considered this. \"No ya wouldn't. I'll clean yer fuckin' clock.\"\n\n\"I can print money,\" the president said, grinning again.\n\n\"Hmm. Yeah. Good point. OK, I'm in. What time?\"\n\n\"Around six, usually.\"\n\n\"See you.\"\n\n\"Phyllis?\" The president's secretary looked up. \"Add Erwin to the Tuesday list. If I'm tied up, have Harold take him over to the residence.\"\n\nShe glowered, then jotted a note down on a legal pad. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nThorpe was looking at Erwin with something like awe. \"Be looking forward to it,\" Erwin said.\n\nHe kinda was, too."
            },
            {
                "title": "JACK",
                "text": "Steve had been about twelve when he was orphaned. Even now, he remembered life with his birth parents fairly well. But the car accident that killed them and put him in a coma was a blank, his memory completely gone after breakfast cornflakes three days prior. They told him this was common with violent brain injury. He remembered waking up in a hospital room. It was night, and he had been alone, though his aunt Mary showed up an hour or so later, all tears and hugs. His parents were dead. Steve himself had been in a coma.\n\nHe'd gotten a bad concussion. That led to swelling of the brain, hence the coma. If there was permanent damage, no one could find it. Other than his long nap\u2014a little over six weeks\u2014and some minor burns, he was unhurt, remarkably so considering the ferocity of the crash. Years later, in his senior year of high school, Steve tracked down a newspaper photo of the wreckage. A tractor trailer had run a stop sign on a back road, speeding. It smacked into the front end of his mom's Cadillac, essentially flattening the front half. This made jelly of his parents and catapulted Steve into a new life, quite different from the one he was used to.\n\nAfter an additional two-week hospital stay that ate up his father's life-insurance policy, Aunt Mary brought Steve home to her single-wide trailer. Steve, devastated, tripped over his grief with every thought: my-teeth-feel-fuzzy-better-brush-'em-because-Mom-says, I'm-hungry-wonder-if-Dad-will-get pizza. The loss throbbed in the core of him like a toothache.\n\nAunt Mary didn't let this ruin her plans. The night she brought Steve home she went out to a roadside bar called Lee's Stack and got very drunk. Around two a.m. she rolled back in with a guy named Clem. Steve, done with crying, watched the moon through the window as he listened to Mary and Clem bang the headboard on the other side of the flimsy plastic wall.\n\nThe next day Clem drove Steve back to his old house in Mary's aging, rattletrap Dodge. The estate was in bankruptcy\u2014apparently Steve's dad, a real-estate guy, had made some boo-boos. A trustee let them in with a key. Steve got to keep his Commodore 64 computer, his clothes, and a box full of comic books. There were other toys, but he had to pick and choose because space at Mary's place was limited. He wanted to get the television, but Clem snagged it for himself. The trustee hustled them out before the auction started.\n\nPredictably enough, Steve became an angry kid. Commuting to his old school was out of the question, so along with his parents he lost the friends he had known since childhood. Steve was still growing, but clothes were listed well below vodka and cigarettes on Mary's shopping list. A kindly English teacher noticed this and took him out to the Salvation Army, and bought him clothes that fit with her own money. Steve hated her for it, more so when the other kids figured out what was going on.\n\nThere were some jokes about that, but they didn't last. When Steve nearly drowned a well-dressed eighth-grader with a smart mouth in an unflushed toilet bowl, he was suspended for two weeks. The kid's parents, red-faced and screaming, wanted him arrested. No one said anything about his clothes after that. Not to his face, anyway.\n\nHe started shoplifting almost immediately\u2014books, cassettes, candy, whatever\u2014but it wasn't until a year or so after his parents' death that he committed his first burglary. In his freshman year in high school, on the Friday night of the football team's homecoming, Steve put on his Salvation Army sneakers and jogged through the back woods to an expensive neighborhood eight miles away. That night there was a faint glow in the east, near the neighborhood where he lived when he was young.\n\nHe selected a dark house at random, came out of the woods, and hopped the privacy fence around the pool. He carried a hammer and screwdriver, but ended up not needing them. The back door was unlocked. When Steve stepped over the threshold the dry husk of his old life fell away and was abandoned. He moved through the empty house with the savage glee of a marauding Hun. He'd brought a black pillowcase along with him to carry the loot. It fluttered from his hand as he moved, the flag of his new nation.\n\nSteve, childlike, stole what his eye was drawn to. A box of Milky Ways. Some Atari cartridges. Cassette tapes. Then, in the master bedroom, he happened on the object that set the course of his life. It was a lacquered wood jewelry box. Steve remembered gasping when he opened it. What lay inside glittered like a dragon's hoard: silver chain, diamond earrings, golden rings. As he stole these things his hands trembled the way a newly frocked priest's might, pouring the chalice of his first communion.\n\nLater, alone in his room in the single wide, Steve spread the gold out on his rickety bed and wept, smiling as he did so. In that moment he did not miss his parents at all.\n\nSome months later, he was the veteran of a dozen burglaries, and no longer quite so poor. Mostly through luck he had found an actual fence. Quiet Lou, fat and diabetic, lurked in the very darkest corner of a downtown pawn shop, his face lit from below by closed-circuit television monitors. Lou smoked vile cigars, and his shop had a permanent blanket of smoke floating at eye level. Many pawn-shop owners were legitimate, or mostly so. Lou was not one of these. He and Steve never became friends, but they understood each other.\n\nNot everything Steve stole went to Lou, though. Sometimes he kept things he particularly liked\u2014not smart, but it never completely blew up in his face, either. One such was a leather jacket. It was quilted and heavy, very thick, and smelled of pipe tobacco. Steve kept it for himself.\n\nA week later he met Jack. He was peeing in the boys' bathroom at school, later than usual for class that morning. One other kid was in there sneaking a smoke. Steve knew Jack slightly from a common gym class, but Jack was a junior, and rich. The gulf between them might as well have been the Grand Canyon\u2026except for the fact that Jack, the clean-cut scion of two devout Mormons, also had a feral streak.\n\n\"Nice jacket,\" Jack said, over the sound of urine on porcelain.\n\nSteve didn't look around. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Where'd you get it, if you don't mind my asking?\"\n\nSteve shook off and zipped up. \"The store.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah? Which one?\"\n\n\"I forget.\" Steve could feel his pulse pounding in his neck, in his temples.\n\n\"It wouldn't be the 'Maurley house' store would it? 'Cause I know a guy over at Kennedy whose dad had a jacket just like that. Same stain on the elbow and everything. Somebody robbed his house a couple weeks back. They got the jacket.\"\n\nSteve turned to Jack, looked at him.\n\nJack's grin faded. \"Relax, man. I ain't gonna say nothing. The kid's an asshole anyway.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Tell you what\u2014why don't you meet me after class? We can go hit the mall or something. You can tell me all about how you got that jacket. Maybe we'll burn one.\"\n\nA cautious smile flickered on Steve's face. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nAs it turned out, they burned not one but two joints on the way to the mall, and wandered through the stores high as kings. They didn't come home with Jack's trunk bulging with loot that time, but they did the next day and a lot of days after that.\n\nJack was an easygoing, wry guy. His own amorality flowed from a different place than Steve's. Steve, by nature an introvert, had long since figured out the basics of his own psychology. Jack he never quite understood. Jack's parents were solid, churchgoing types. To all appearances they were happy, and Steve got a pretty close look. Jack's brother was a church youth-group type.\n\nJack could be raw, angry. His temper snapped at unpredictable times. Steve once saw him beat the shit out of a guy behind a movie theater for spilling popcorn\u2014not on Jack himself, or even a person, just on the floor. He and Steve got into it more than a couple of times as well, blacking eyes, bloodying noses. Usually Jack started it, and he always came over to Steve's place afterward, shame-faced, and apologized. It got to where Steve would roll the joint in anticipation of his arrival and wave off the actual apology.\n\nWithin six months or so, Jack's family semi-adopted him. He spent three nights a week at their house, sleeping on the floor in Jack's room or in the bedroom down the hall. Jack's parents never said anything, but Steve got the feeling that they knew his situation, perhaps pitied him. Steve resented that at first, but Martin and Celia were so old-fashioned nice that he just couldn't dislike them. They bought him presents on his birthday, for fuck's sake.\n\nSteve had done dozens of burglaries by then, enough that it got written up in the paper. Jack was with him on seven of them. By the last two, Steve thought that Celia and Martin were beginning to suspect that something was up, but they never really probed. Steve figured they were afraid of what they might find out.\n\nPerhaps they were wiser than they knew. On the most recent burglary Jack had suggested that they use gasoline from the garage to burn the place down. \"We should torch the place, man! Cover our tracks!\"\n\nSteve, the acknowledged leader on the burglaries, vetoed this. That night he slept at Mary's trailer for the first time in several days. He lay awake in the moonlight until almost dawn, flopping around in the bed, wondering if his friend might be crazy. Two weeks later Jack shat on an old lady's bed and wiped his ass with her aging, yellowed wedding photo.\n\nJack funneled some of the pawn profits into a sideline business, buying small quantities of pot from a guy Steve knew, cutting it with oregano, selling it to other high school kids. It was a solid if unremarkable stream of spending money. Then one of their clients, a freshman girl, got caught with a baggie in her purse. In tears, she promptly confessed who she bought it from. The police showed up at Jack's house and searched his room. Jack left with them, in handcuffs.\n\nThe legal trouble ended up being not that big of a deal\u2014juvenile court, record expunged, blah-blah\u2014but from the standpoint of Jack's family it might as well have been Armageddon.\n\nNaturally enough, Celia and Martin blamed Steve. Probably, he thought now, there was some justification for this. At the time, though, it seemed like the grossest injustice. They forbade Jack from hanging out with Steve. He was barred from the house, exiled back to Mary's trailer.\n\nThe two of them still hung out, of course, but now they had to be circumspect. No more trips to the mall, at least not in Jack's car. Steve started thinking about ways to get his own car, started scanning the classifieds with a pen in his hand. But the numbers were oppressive. He could probably figure out a way to steal one\u2014it wasn't his specialty, but he was becoming very good with locks. Registering it would be another matter, however. Something decent would probably cost around $2,000, five times as much money as he had on hand. Steve went to Quiet Lou. They talked numbers. Lou mentioned pharmacies.\n\nA month later he and Jack climbed up the back of an independent pharmacy with a diamond-tipped circular saw normally used for cutting through concrete. Quiet Lou had sold them the saw at a good price, and promised to buy it back when they no longer needed it. It was noisy, but it got the job done. Three quick strokes cut a black triangle out of the roof. If that had tripped the alarm, there was no sign.\n\nSteve had tied footholds into eighty feet of strong nylon rope. One at a time they climbed down between the shelves, silent as wraiths. In residential burglaries Steve made a habit of turning on the lights\u2014flashlights bobbing through darkened houses would look odd to the neighbors\u2014but here he didn't have that option. He never found out for sure, but he thought it was their flashlights that had betrayed them. A neighbor? A passing car? Who knew.\n\nThe layout was unfamiliar, and it took time to locate the bottles that Lou was interested in. They split up and scanned the shelves in parallel. Steve's heart thumped in his chest. Jack whistled. One at a time the prizes fell to their search\u2014valium, Xanax, Vicodin, morphine sulfate, cough syrup, brand-name and generic, many doses, many bottles. Steve was still using the black pillowcase. Soon it bulged.\n\nAfter about fifteen minutes, Steve judged they had enough. Lou was a skinflint, but he never tried to cheat them. Steve's cut would be well over two thousand. With that, he could have his car. He had not told Jack this, but that meant something else to him as well. With his own wheels, he would not be so reliant on Jack for transportation. They could begin to go their separate ways.\n\nSteve went up first, pulling himself up the rope with his shoulders. Jack, still in darkness, tied the pillowcase to the end of the rope. Steve hauled up the loot.\n\nHe was getting it untangled when he saw the flashing blue lights in the distance. They weren't using sirens. For a long minute he hoped that it was just coincidence, but as they bore down he knew in his heart that it wasn't.\n\n\"Cops,\" he hissed to Jack.\n\n\"What? How far?\"\n\n\"Not far. Hurry.\"\n\n\"Ah, shit.\"\n\nA minute later Jack was halfway up the rope. \"Dude,\" Steve said, \"they're about two blocks away.\"\n\nJack looked up at him, his face pale in the moonlight. He seemed resigned, and not especially worried. Steve was scared enough for both of them.\n\n\"Go,\" Jack said. \"I'll catch up.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\"\n\n\"Seriously.\"\n\nSteve thought about it for a second, then took off. He left the bag on the roof. In later years he would lie awake in the dark and wonder why he had done that. The possibility of leaving Jack holding the bag\u2014literally, ha-ha\u2014either had occurred to him in that moment, or it had not. He simply could not remember.\n\nThen the blue lights were bearing down on him, too close for anything but flight. He climbed over the side of the roof, dangled, dropped, bypassing the storm drain he and Jack had climbed up. He darted into the shadows behind the strip mall a second and a half before the lights turned into the parking lot. He hid behind a Dumpster as the first car did a tentative probe. Steve could hear the radio through the squad car's open window. \"Suspect in custody.\" It did a U-turn and circled back to the pharmacy.\n\nThis time there would be no juvenile court, no pre-trial intervention. That ship had sailed. Jack was charged as an adult with burglary. He might have lessened his sentence if he ratted Steve out, but he didn't. Martin and Celia got him a good lawyer, though. They pleaded it down to three years, out in eighteen months on good behavior. It wasn't such a long time as these things go, but even from the first visit, Steve could tell it wasn't going well. The prison was medium-security, but Jack was young, relatively good-looking, and white. Quiet Lou had explained that he would be a prize, explained what that would mean. After only three days, Jack looked back at him with haunted eyes.\n\nHe lasted three months, then hanged himself with his underwear. Steve didn't go to the funeral, but he attended the graveside service. He watched from a hundred yards away, behind a tree. Celia saw him anyway. After she buried her oldest son she bore down on Steve, eyes bright, like a hawk descending on a field mouse. She didn't say anything. The woman who had bought him his one and only fifteenth-birthday present slapped him hard across one cheek and then the other and delivered her verdict.\n\n\"You\u2026you little\u2026you asshole.\"\n\nShe was crying. Steve didn't stop her, didn't try to say anything. There was nothing to say.\n\nAs the days and weeks and seasons wore on he found himself repeating this nothing, not wanting to. Gradually he came to understand that this particular nothing was all that he could really say now. He chanted it to himself in cell blocks and dingy apartments, recited it like a litany, ripped himself to rags against the sharp and ugly poetry of it. It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs."
            },
            {
                "title": "A Bone That Cannot Be Cracked",
                "text": "An hour or so after Steve and the lions took shelter in the room with the cave paintings, Mrs. McGillicutty's cell phone rang. Steve was sitting next to the female lion, checking her bandages. He stood with a grunt, limped across the room, and answered it on the fifth ring. \"Hello?\"\n\n\"Hi, Steve. It's Carolyn.\"\n\n\"Of course it is.\" He rummaged around in the supply pile for another piece of beef jerky. It was homemade, and very good. \"Who else would it be, really?\" He noticed that he was slurring a little. Probably the pain pills. Or maybe the blood loss.\n\n\"How are you?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm great,\" he said, putting a little edge in his voice. \"Thanks to you, I mean. I found the bandages and whatnot. Very helpful. I think the bleeding has stopped.\"\n\n\"Well, that's good.\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, it is. And suspiciously convenient.\"\n\nLong pause.\n\n\"There's a little clay pot with a cork in it,\" Carolyn said. \"Did you see that?\"\n\n\"Matter of fact, I did. Right next to the syringes? I wondered about what it was.\"\n\n\"That's the one. I got it from my sister. What's in there will help you with blood loss.\" She paused. \"If, um, you know\u2026if that's a problem.\"\n\n\"As it happens, yes. I believe that it is. However could you have guessed? I'm pretty light-headed, and I don't think it's just the pain pills. So, what\u2026do I chew up the little round things in the pot, or\u2026?\"\n\n\"Umm\u2026no.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"Well, you, ah, that is\u2026it's a suppository.\"\n\n\"I see. So I should stick it up my ass, then?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Interesting.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I was just thinking the same thing about you,\" Steve roared. \"Cram it up your ass, you crazy, horrible bitch!\" He reached for the Off button, then something occurred to him. \"Quick question, though, before I hang up on you.\" He waited for a long time. \"You still there?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Does the stuff work on lions?\"\n\n\"Lions?\"\n\n\"Yes. Lions. My backup. Thanks for them as well, by the way. Those guys were awesome. They got here just in the proverbial nick of fucking time. But the female is banged up pretty bad. She's lost a lot of blood. I put a couple of those pressure bandages on her, but I think she's still bleeding.\"\n\n\"They're not dead?\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Steve said, proud of himself for the first time in decades, \"I let them in.\"\n\n\"But\u2026I told you\u2026\"\n\n\"Yes. You mentioned that they were 'disposable.' I'm pretty sure that was your word. But seeing as how they'd just saved my life, I didn't feel like leaving them out there to fucking die was the dao way.\"\n\n\"The what?\"\n\n\"The dao way. It's Chinese. I meant it wasn't the right thing to do.\"\n\n\"Oh. Your pronunciation\u2026\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Never mind. But to answer your question, yes. It should work on lions as well.\"\n\nSteve was quiet for a long time.\n\n\"Are you still there?\"\n\n\"What? Yes. Sorry. I was trying imagine sticking something up a lion's ass. I don't think I'm quite there yet.\"\n\n\"Oh. Well\u2026it's up to you. Like I said, at this point they're disposable. But they won't hurt you. They've given their word.\"\n\n\"I see. Gave their word, did they? To you?\"\n\n\"Not me. My brother.\"\n\n\"The big scary guy?\"\n\n\"No. My other brother. Michael. He talked with the lions. He told them to look after you.\"\n\n\"Talked with the lions, did he?\"\n\n\"Yes. We made a deal. They will protect you as if you were their own cub.\"\n\n\"Maybe they were just being polite.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said seriously. \"Dresden may be in exile, but he is still king. In his language the word for 'promise' is the same as the word for 'a bone that cannot be cracked.' He will do as he says.\"\n\nSteve considered this. When he spoke, some of the joking was gone from his voice. \"If you say so. That seems to be what they're doing. And honestly, I'd almost figured out that they weren't going to hurt me.\" He paused. \"It just takes a while to wrap your head around the idea. When I got up this morning I was under the impression that lions were scary.\" He patted Dresden's mane, offered him the rest of the beef jerky.\n\nThe big lion sniffed, then took it gingerly from his hands, exposing canines thicker than Steve's thumb.\n\n\"These two seem OK, though. We've struck a mighty blow against prejudice this day.\" A thought occurred to him. \"Say, do you know the female's name?\"\n\nShe didn't answer at first. Then, he heard a deep, bass rumble that sounded exactly like a lion. Steve held the receiver away from his head, eyebrows raised. The male lion looked up at the sound, interested. \"Is there another lion with you?\"\n\n\"No. That was me. That's her name.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Steve paused. \"I don't think I can pronounce that right.\"\n\n\"Probably not. Theoretically I can't either.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'theoretically'? I just\u2014\"\n\n\"Never mind. It takes practice. And minor surgery, to really get it right. But\u2026you might call her Nagasaki. Naga for short. That was what the guy who kidnapped them did. They don't like those names, but they'd recognize them. They'd know who you meant.\"\n\n\"Dresden and Nagasaki, huh? Cute. Are they married, or whatever you call it?\"\n\n\"No. Naga's his cub.\"\n\n\"Pretty big for a cub.\"\n\n\"Well, his child. But she'll get bigger. She won't be full-grown for another couple of years.\"\n\n\"If she makes it that long.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Like I said, she's lost a lot of blood. And I can't go anywhere because of the dogs. There's at least a couple hundred of them out there. How are you planning to get me out of here?\"\n\n\"We'll walk. But it won't be until tomorrow, at the earliest.\"\n\n\"She\u2014Naga\u2014she's not going to make it that long. And what the hell do you mean 'we'll' walk? I thought you couldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"We'll talk about it when I get there. Maybe I can\u2014\"\n\n\"Can't you alter your schedule or something? This lion\u2026I mean, she saved my life.\" For a moment he saw Jack's face through the hole in the roof of the pharmacy, trapped in a darkness he would never leave. Go. I'll catch up.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Steve. I just can't. But the lion isn't important.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, maybe she's important to me.\" He hung up. \"And fuck you.\" She called back, then called back again. After the third time he turned the phone off."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 39",
                "text": "When he hung up, the female lion\u2014Naga, Steve thought, her name is Naga\u2014was still conscious, but only just. Despite his best efforts and admirable patience on her part, blood was still leaking out from under the bandage. More important, she seemed to be getting worse. Putting on the pressure bandage had obviously hurt her, but she hadn't mauled him, hadn't even growled.\n\nTalked with the lions, did they? He could almost believe it. Not quite, but almost.\n\nBut maybe on some level he did believe it, because when he lifted the thick flesh of Naga's muzzle to check her capillary response, he really wasn't afraid at all. Steve wasn't a veterinarian, but he'd had a lot of dogs over the years, including one who got run over. He knew that one way to check for blood loss in animals was to push your thumb into the gums and watch how fast the color returns. If it comes back fast, that's a good sign. If it takes a while, like it had on Angie after she got hit by the car, not so much.\n\nHe didn't think Naga was quite as far gone as Angie had been, not yet, but she was getting there fast.\n\nSo, as an experiment, he shook one of the suppositories out of the little clay jug that Carolyn left for him and took it into the bathroom. There he bent over and used one trembling finger to cram it up his own ass. When he turned on the tap to wash his hands afterward, nothing came out. He used a couple of bottles of Dasani instead, lathering up a dry, ancient bar of Ivory soap gathering dust in a dish over the sink. By the time he got the stink off his index finger he felt better. A lot better, actually. Even the slurring in his voice was gone. But he was really thirsty. He guzzled two more bottles of water and half of a third before he stopped feeling parched.\n\nThen, with a sigh, he pulled the cork out of the little clay jug and shook out another suppository. \"Heeere, kitty-kitty,\" he whispered under his breath.\n\nDresden looked at him quizzically.\n\n\"Sorry, big guy,\" Steve said. \"Bad joke.\" He limped across the room. Naga lay in a fairly sizable pool of her own blood. He didn't want to sit in it and soak his pants, and with the way his ankle and calf were torn up he couldn't squat. Naga herself was no longer conscious, but Steve felt the eyes of her father on him, yellow and alien in the dim light of the overhead.\n\nWhen he was ready, he bent at the waist and lifted her tail, exposing her rectum. She gave no response at first, but when Steve placed the small white globe against the puckered flesh and pushed it in, she trembled in her sleep. Dresden's brow furrowed. He took a step forward and showed Steve a flash of teeth.\n\nSteve stood up rapidly, held his palms out to Dresden. \"All done,\" he said. \"Sorry.\" He took a step back. Dresden, to his relief, didn't follow. \"I'm gonna go see if I can find a bowl,\" he said. \"If this works, she's liable to be awfully thirsty.\"\n\nThe old woman was in the kitchen. Her husband, done with his mowing, was milling around on the porch with a couple of dogs. He seemed lost, bumping here and there among the dogs like a pinball, jiggling the locked door handle every so often. Inside, his wife stood at the kitchen sink dry-washing ancient, dusty dishes with a rotting sponge.\n\n\"Um\u2026excuse me?\"\n\n\"Supper isn't quite ready, dear. Why don't you go watch the game?\"\n\n\"Do you have a bowl I could borrow? A biggish one? A mixing bowl, maybe?\"\n\nShe blinked. \"Why\u2026yes. Yes I do.\" She sounded almost as surprised as Steve was. She pointed at a cabinet under the stove. \"There.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Steve opened the cabinet door and rummaged around inside. There was a stack of bowls\u2014ceramic, stainless steel, plastic. With a clatter he slipped a good-sized one out of the pile.\n\n\"Supper isn't quite ready, dear.\"\n\n\"I'll go watch the game.\"\n\nShe smiled, nodded. He limped back into the living room. To his amazement, Naga was standing. As Steve watched, she took a single step. She wobbled but did not fall. Dresden moved to her hindquarters and sniffed at her butt with a quizzical look on his face.\n\n\"Feeling better?\" Steve heard real relief in his own voice. \"Awesome.\"\n\nProbably the lions heard it too. They swished their tails, accidentally and amusingly in sync. Steve went to the supply pile and emptied half a dozen bottles of water into the bowl. Naga's nostrils flared as he did this, and she took another step. This time when she lost her balance she did fall.\n\n\"Don't try to do too much,\" Steve said. \"I'll bring it to you.\" He set the bowl down in front of her. She lapped at it greedily until more than half was gone, then lay on her side.\n\nHesitantly, Steve touched her muzzle. She pulled away, causing Steve to jerk his hand back. You could call it overreaction, but if ever there was a good time to be jumpy, it's when fiddling around with a lion's mouth. Then she leaned forward and licked his knuckles. Dresden, watching this, swished his tail again.\n\n\"Do you mind if I\u2026?\" Tentatively, he touched her muzzle again. When she didn't draw back, he lifted her lip and pressed his thumb into the gum just behind her left incisor. He tested twice, comparing it against the same test done on his own fingernail. He judged her to be better, but not quite well.\n\nHe slid around to her hindquarters and inspected the pressure bandages on her hip. The bandage was bloated and dripping blood, saturated. Steve debated changing it, then settled for tying a third one, his last, over the first two. He pressed down on this, hoping that the direct pressure would help. It seemed like the sort of thing they did on doctor shows."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 40",
                "text": "An hour later he was still pressing down. Naga's bleeding was better, but it hadn't completely stopped. There was one more suppository left in the little clay jug. He went back and forth about when to use it. Now? Or at the last minute? He had no idea how the thing worked, so he couldn't begin to guess. Was it like a video game where if you drink your health potion too soon you waste some of the benefit? Or was it like sharpening a knife, where it was best to put forth a little effort to whet the edge every time you used it rather than waiting until it got really dull before you trotted out the sharpening stone? He didn't know.\n\nWhat he did know was that if he couldn't get the bleeding to stop, Naga was unlikely to be around for Carolyn's return. \"And you won't want to miss that,\" Steve whispered. \"It's bound to be weird.\"\n\nAs he waited, his mind drifted back to Jack, who had also been kind to him, and to whom he had brought ruin. Thinking this, looking down at Naga's wounded body, it came to him that there might be a new way to say the nothing that had weighed on his heart for so very long. He touched Naga's neck, gently. She lifted her head a little, looked at him.\n\n\"I'm going to get you out of here.\"\n\nHis words hung in the dusty silence of the living room. Dresden turned at the sound, golden eyes solemn over his blood-caked muzzle. Carolyn's words echoed in his mind. He is still king. His word for 'promise' also means 'a bone that cannot be cracked.' Steve met the lion's gaze. \"Yeah. I'm going to get her out of here if it fucking kills me.\"\n\nSteve stood and went back into the kitchen. The woman wasn't doing dishes anymore. Instead she stood at the wall, scraping away the dirt and the paint in lines shaped like a cave man's image of a dog. \"Supper isn't quite ready, dear.\"\n\n\"That's OK. I need to borrow your car.\" He looked around. He was hoping for her purse, or a bowl. Then his eye happened upon a peg with spare keys dangling from it. One of them was a leather tab with the Ford logo on it. \"Gotcha.\"\n\nHe hadn't paid a lot of attention to the house when he was outdoors, but he vaguely remembered the garage being on the far end. There was a hall leading in that direction, but it was dark. He found a switch and flipped it, but no light followed. He wandered down the hall in darkness, feeling ahead with his fingers.\n\nThe first room he came to was a bedroom that had been converted into an artist's studio. Someone\u2014the woman?\u2014had once used it for painting still life in oils\u2014flowers, fruit, a random jumble of costume jewelry. Most of them were rather good. Steve thought of the kindergarten scribbles lining the living-room wall. He shivered as he shut the door behind him.\n\nThe next room was indeed the garage, and the Ford was there, but it sat on four completely flat tires. The dust on the hood was so thick it was difficult to tell what color the car was. Steve tried the key anyway, but it didn't so much as click.\n\n\"Shit.\" He pounded the steering wheel. What, then? He shut the door to the garage and made his way back to the relative brightness of the living room. Dresden stood over Naga. The puddle of her blood was wider. Her sides heaved. Steve rattled the last suppository out of the little clay jug and crammed it up her butt next to the other one. He wiped his finger on the carpet and rinsed it off with half a bottle of Dasani, then drank the rest.\n\nHe limped back into the dim, windowless foyer. Then, from outside, he heard an engine. Carolyn? He ducked into the kitchen and looked out the window over the sink. Not Carolyn, but one of those little white jeeps that the Post Office uses. It was two houses away. Lawn-mower guy was nowhere in sight.\n\nUncounted dozens of dogs lay in the yard and nearby on the street. They watched the truck approach. Steve wondered what they would do.\n\nThe mailman was one house away now. He put the mail in the mailbox, but did not continue down the road, only sat there, engine idling. He's seen them. After a long moment, the mail guy rolled up his window. He turned into the driveway next door, then backed out of it pointing in the opposite direction. He drove off down the street.\n\n\"Shit.\" He couldn't think what help the mailman might conceivably have offered, but he sure did hate to see him go.\n\nThe dogs watched the jeep depart but did not follow. After it turned onto the main road they seemed to lose interest. Also, instead of just sitting on the lawn and staring at the house, now some of them were doing dog stuff\u2014humping each other, playing bite-tag or whatever that was, scratching at fleas. Over the next fifteen minutes or so, more than half of them wandered off. That's progress.\n\nNot all, though. Thane and a couple dozen others kept vigil on the yard. As Steve watched, a big dog\u2014Rottweiler, maybe?\u2014trotted up to the porch and sat down. \"Fuck.\" He went to the door and looked out through the peephole. His ankle was starting to throb. Well, he thought, I guess you could always call 911. They'd probably get you out of here.\n\nHe snapped his fingers and turned Mrs. McGillicutty's phone back on. When he had a good signal he dialed 411. A computer asked him, \"What city?\" Steve answered it, careful to enunciate clearly.\n\n\"What listing?\"\n\n\"Any taxi service.\"\n\nBehind him, from the porch, came a low deep growl. Steve moved away from the door.\n\nThe mechanical voice recited a nine-digit number, then asked if Steve would like to be connected for an additional charge of fifty cents. Steve said yes.\n\nThe phone rang once, twice, three times. Come on, come on, Steve thought. Four, five. He was just about to hang up and try a different service when someone answered the phone.\n\n\"Yucatan Taxi,\" a man said. He spoke with an Indian accent, thick and musical. \"Se habla espa\u00f1ol.\"\n\n\"How about English?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Of course,\" the man said. He sounded slightly hurt that Steve would ask.\n\n\"Great,\" Steve said. \"I need a cab. A big one. You got a minivan, something like that?\"\n\n\"I have two, but only one driver at the moment. She's just heading out on a call. Can you wait about an hour?\"\n\nBehind him the Rottweiler barked, scrabbled at the door. Naga's blood pooled at his feet.\n\n\"I'm afraid that's not convenient,\" Steve said, struggling to sound natural. \"Tell you what. I'll make it worth your while. How about a hundred bucks? We're not going far.\" He had no money, but there was the gun. He would apologize later. \"You'll be a couple minutes late for your other call, that's all.\"\n\n\"Sorry sir, but I cannot\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm really in a rush. Me and the kids are meeting my in-laws. My car won't start. There'll be hell to pay if I'm late. Tell you what\u2014five hundred.\"\n\n\"Five hundred dollars?\" the man asked. \"Ah. Now I understand. In my village we called people like yourself the 'shepherds of the shit mountain.' Such men were often caned. Good-b\u2014\"\n\n\"No, wait!\" Steve said. \"Five hundred dollars, cash! Really. Solemn promise. Plus whatever the fare costs. It won't be even a five-minute ride, I swear.\"\n\nThe man thought about it. \"Possibly. What is the address, please?\"\n\nThat was a tough one. Steve thought frantically. He limped to the kitchen window, peeked out at the mailbox. \"Two-eleven Garrison Drive,\" he said. \"In the Garrison Oaks subdivision. Do you know it?\"\n\n\"Garrison Oaks\u2026\" the man said. His voice sounded distant.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"Smallish neighborhood, just off Highway 78. Do you know it?\"\n\n\"Oh, right,\" he said vaguely. \"You know, I do not think I've ever been in there before.\"\n\n\"I'm not surprised,\" Steve said.\n\nOn the other side of the door the dog gave off a low, throaty bark. Another joined in, then another. Soon they were all barking.\n\n\"What is that noise?\" the cabbie asked.\n\n\"Nothing, just my dog.\"\n\n\"He sounds like a very big dog indeed.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"He's pretty big. He has separation anxiety. He hates it when I leave him alone.\"\n\n\"You cannot bring this dog in my cab, you understand.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't dream of it,\" Steve said.\n\n\"All right,\" the guy said. \"For five hundred, I will come myself. I will be there in ten minutes.\"\n\n\"Look, there's one other thing. My, ah, friend is coming with me. He's sort of agoraphobic and\u2014\"\n\n\"What? He's sick? I do not want a sick man in my taxi, sir.\"\n\n\"No, no. He's not sick. Agoraphobic means he doesn't like being outside. When you get here, pull up as close as you can get, open the door, and honk. Can you do that?\"\n\nLong silence. \"I do not think I like this, sir.\"\n\n\"What's not to like?\" Steve said, eyes squeezed shut, brow furrowed. \"Five hundred dollars is a pretty good tip.\" He forced himself to stop talking, gripped the phone with white knuckles.\n\nThe dispatcher thought about it for a while. \"I'll be there in ten minutes,\" he said. \"Make sure you have the money.\"\n\n\"It's a white-brick house.\"\n\n\"I'm sure it is a very nice one. Make sure you have the money.\"\n\nThe cab pulled up eleven minutes later, a white minivan with a photograph of the Mayan pyramid at Chich\u00e9n Itz\u00e1 on the side. The driver honked. He didn't pull around to the front door, though. Of course not, Steve thought. That would have been too easy. The dogs lounging in the yard watched all this, but they didn't bark, didn't growl.\n\nSteve, desperate, scrabbled for an idea. Even with just six dogs on the lawn, the thirty feet or so might as well have been a thousand miles. He wouldn't have tried to run for it even if he had been able to run. Limping, carrying a half-grown lion, he would stand absolutely no chance whatsoever.\n\nThe cabdriver honked again. Dresden padded over to the front door, sniffed, rumbled. He looked at Steve.\n\n\"I'm thinking, dammit!\" Seconds dragged out. He looked out the kitchen window. Maybe we could go out through the garage. There was an electric door opener, and\u2014\n\nThe cabdriver knocked at the door.\n\nSteve and Dresden looked at each other. Steve grinned. \"Coming!\"\n\n\"Sir, please can you hurry? I need to return to my office quickly.\"\n\nSteve hobbled to the front door and looked out the peephole. The Rottweiler was the only dog on the porch. Thane and five others stood on the lawn, watchful, under sunny blue autumn sky. Steve took the gun out of the holster, put his hand on the doorknob, did a mental count. Three, two,\u2026\n\nSteve, bloody and bandaged, yanked the door open with his right hand and shot the Rottweiler. The dog's head exploded in a crash of blood and thunder. Steve grabbed the cabdriver by the shirt. \"Get in!\"\n\nOut on the lawn Thane barked, furious.\n\nThe cabdriver instinctively raised his hands and went into a little half crouch. \"Do not shoot!\" He tried to back away. Steve leaned backward with all his weight, yanking the two of them into the foyer. His ankle gave out and he fell over backward. The cabdriver almost fell with him, but recovered.\n\nThe dogs were charging the door. Thane's ice-blue eye bore down on him. When his feet touched the sidewalk, Thane leaped and\u2014\n\nSteve kicked the door shut with his good foot, as hard as he was able. It slammed shut. A tiny fraction of a second later there was a meaty thud as Thane impacted the door.\n\nStill on his back, Steve spun around on the linoleum to deal with the driver. \"Don't move!\"\n\nBut the man wasn't moving. Dresden, all four hundred pounds of him, stood inches away. The cabdriver was a short, slight Indian man with caramel-colored skin. His eyes stretched wide in terror. His hands hovered near his face in a gesture of surrender, or perhaps self-defense. He was trembling.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" Steve said, striving for a comforting tone. \"He doesn't bite.\"\n\nThe cabdriver looked at Steve. \"That is a lion.\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, it is.\"\n\n\"You have a gun.\"\n\n\"That's true too.\"\n\n\"Well,\" the cabdriver said, speaking as if to a very dull child, \"why don't you shoot the lion?\"\n\nSteve laughed. \"Are you kidding? Dresden's my buddy.\" Then it came to him. YouTube. Christian the lion. \"Don't you watch the Internet?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Never mind. I need your keys.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"The keys. To your cab. Give them to me.\" Steve waggled the gun.\n\nThe driver's face fell. \"What about my five hundred dollars?\"\n\n\"Yeah, it turns out I was lying about that. Sorry.\" He thought for a moment. \"Look, I actually am kind of sorry.\" He gestured at Naga with the gun. \"If I don't get her out of here soon, then\u2014never mind. Long story. But supposedly there's a duffel bag full of cash waiting for me back at the other place. How about I mail it to you? I'll make it a thousand.\"\n\n\"I think that you are lying again.\"\n\n\"No, I will. Soon as I can, promise.\" He would, too. \"But right now, I'm going to need your keys. Sorry.\"\n\n\"You will not shoot me?\"\n\n\"Absolutely not.\"\n\nThe driver glanced down at Dresden. \"What about him?\"\n\n\"He's coming with me. Both of them are.\"\n\n\"Oh. Then, by all fucking means\u2026\" The cabdriver fished around in his pocket for his keys and handed them over. They jingled like the bells of heaven in Steve's hand.\n\n\"Thanks, man,\" Steve said. \"Really sorry about all this.\" Something else occurred to him. \"You got a cell phone?\" He didn't want the guy to call 911.\n\n\"In the cab.\"\n\nThe key was the old-fashioned kind, just a metal key, no Lock or Unlock buttons. \"Is the cab locked?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nSteve gestured with the gun. \"You better not be lying to me.\"\n\n\"Why would I lock it? I was just going to the front door.\"\n\n\"Yeah, OK.\" Steve squeezed his eyes shut, thought for a moment. \"OK, there's a bathroom right around that corner there. Go inside and shut the door.\" He saw that the guy's knees were literally trembling. \"Look, man\u2026for what it's worth, I'm really sorry about all this. I'm in sort of a situation, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I am quite sure. Please go fuck yourself.\" The guy backed up a single cautious step. Dresden rumbled a warning.\n\n\"No, it's OK, big guy,\" Steve said. The lion looked at him, confused. Steve put his arm around the smaller man's shoulders, gave him a little man-hug. \"It's OK. He's a friend, see?\" Then, to the cabdriver. \"Go on. Shoo.\"\n\nThe cabbie took one cautious step away, then another, his eyes never leaving Dresden. When he was close enough, he jumped inside the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Steve heard it lock.\n\nNaga was conscious, but she didn't look like she could stand. Steve checked her capillary response again\u2014it was just OK. She had lost some ground. He checked the magazine on the gun\u2014eight rounds, plus one in the chamber. There were seven dogs left. He went back into the living room and sat on the floor next to Naga. He slipped his hands under her, testing her weight. She was very heavy, two hundred pounds or so, but Steve thought he could probably lift her.\n\n\"OK,\" he said to Dresden, \"you ready?\"\n\nDresden looked at him quizzically.\n\nSteve jingled the keys, the way he had done when he was going to take Petey for a ride in the car. For a moment his heart ached. He wondered if he would ever see his dog again.\n\nDresden looked at the keys, still confused.\n\nSteve holstered the gun. He turned to look Dresden in the face. He took a handful of the big lion's mane in his right hand and patted Naga's side with his left. \"I. Am. Going. To. Get. Her\"\u2014here he patted Naga again\u2014\"Out. Of. Here.\" He pointed at the front door.\n\nDresden's brow unfurrowed. He roared a little bit, scaring the shit out of Steve. Then he stretched out and licked Steve's cheek.\n\nGood enough, Steve thought. He got his arms under Naga. She seemed confused, only semiconscious. I hope she doesn't forget that we're buddies, he thought, and lifted her. She squirmed a bit, then half stood, lifting her forequarters off the living-room floor. Steve ducked under her, lifting at the same time, and managed to get her over his left shoulder in a half-assed, crouched version of a fireman's carry. Lift with your legs, not your back, he thought, and tittered hysterically. He strained against her weight, pushing with his good leg and his bad. The pain was exquisite, blinding. He flashed on Carolyn's face and thought, I fucking hate that bitch! The adrenaline burst from this was just enough to get the lion up.\n\nOnce he was standing, it was easier. He took a single cautious step. He held his balance, but only just. He took a second, smaller step, almost hopping with his good leg, dragging the bad one behind him. That was better, if not exactly graceful. Naga, dangling over his back, made some cranky-sounding lion noises. Steve told her to shut the fuck up.\n\nHe inched his way to the door, Dresden following at his flank. The lion's eyes were fixed on the door, and what lay beyond. Yeah, he knows, Steve thought. He understands what we're going to do.\n\nStill weighted down by Naga, he turned and squinted out the peephole. They were now down to six dogs on the lawn, including Thane. Even so. Six is a lot of dogs. This is so going to suck, Steve thought. He looked down at Dresden. \"You ready?\"\n\nThe big lion swished his tail. He did not look at Steve. His face was like something cast in stone. Balancing Naga on his shoulder with his left hand, Steve slipped the pistol out of the holster and held it with his teeth. He tasted gun oil, metallic and alien. He put his hand on the doorknob, squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. \"Showtime,\" he grunted, throwing the door open.\n\nThane stood first, barked. Steve took the gun out of his mouth, aimed carefully, and shot him right between the blue and brown eye.\n\nDresden charged out, roaring. Seeing him, one of the dogs turned and ran the other way. Steve limped across the porch. Dresden launched himself at a big Doberman and landed on it. A second later Steve heard the dog scream. The other three dogs, all big, tore into Dresden wherever they could find a spot\u2014his shoulder, his front leg, his back.\n\nSteve, clutching the iron railing, limped down first one step, then two. Now he was on the sidewalk. On his shoulder, Naga stirred. \"Easy girl,\" he said. The cab was perhaps thirty feet away.\n\nWhen the Doberman was dead, Dresden turned his attention to the dog biting his right foreleg, a big German shepherd. He lifted his paw, exposing the dog's flank, and tried biting her. He missed the first time, but with his second bite he clamped down on the dog's hind leg. Steve heard a crack. The shepherd screamed.\n\nThree down! Steve thought. We're doing this! He inched his way down the front walk, past one rose bush, then a second. He was twenty feet away from the cab.\n\nDresden was having trouble reaching the dog on his back. Steve considered shooting it, then decided that, based on his record, he was just as likely to hit the lion as the dog. After a moment, Dresden retargeted. He bent to his right and snapped at the dog on his hindquarters. The dog let go and backed off, circling. It noticed Steve and gave its \"Alert!\" bark.\n\nThe sound of it\u2014rowrowrowrowrowrowrow\u2014echoed down the street. A second later Steve heard toenails clicking on asphalt, first one set, then two, then a stampede. Oh, shit. He was fifteen feet away from the cab.\n\nDresden pounced on the dog who had given the alert. Steve was past them now, so he couldn't see what was happening, but two steps later he heard another scream. Dresden's answering roar burbled through something wet.\n\nTen feet left.\n\nSteve risked a glance over his shoulder. There was one dog still on Dresden, hanging from his back\u2026but behind him, on the hill, dozens\u2014hundreds\u2014more of them streamed in to take his place. Where could they all be coming from? Steve wondered. There were far too many. Even Dresden could not stand long against such a horde.\n\n\"Come on, big guy! Time to get out of here!\" Only two feet remained between him and the cab. The cab's door was blessedly, wonderfully unlocked. Steve turned.\n\nDresden only looked at him. He was surrounded by corpses. The final dog, a Doberman, hung from his mane, scrabbling and growling. The lion made no move.\n\n\"Come on!\" Steve screamed again. He took another step and bumped into the cab, almost losing his balance. Muscles trembling against Naga's weight, he slid the minivan's door back. \"Come on!\"\n\nSteve looked over his shoulder to see what was keeping the lion. \"What the hell are you doing? Come on!\"\n\nDresden shrugged off the Doberman. Victorious now, he watched as Steve lay his daughter down in the backseat with a whoosh of deflating vinyl upholstery, watched as Steve slid the door shut. She is safe now. His yellow eyes met Steve's. Dresden, who was a king as of the old age, swished his tail\u2014just once. Then, deliberately, he turned to face the coming dogs. Every muscle stood out in stark relief. He roared. The sound echoed down the street, bouncing off the neat suburban houses and well-manicured hedges with the force of dynamite. The dogs flowed at him like a tide, bottomless and unstoppable.\n\nDresden charged them.\n\nSteve froze for a moment, feeling small, unable to look away from the forces at work before him. Carolyn's words came to him. They will protect you as if you were their own cub. Dresden smashed into the wave of dogs, a cannon shot of fury and blood. He's stalling them. He's delaying them for Naga\u2026and for me. Then, channeling Celia's voice: Don't waste it, asshole.\n\nSteve shook his head, forced himself to look away, opened the door, took his place in the driver's seat.\n\nThe dogs were on Dresden now. First one, then three, then a dozen, then two dozen with a hundred more on the way. Together they formed a living wall of muscle and fur. The cab couldn't push through that, Steve thought. A tank couldn't push through that. He slammed the cab door. Now Dresden was buried under them, invisible under a roiling mountain of fur and teeth\u2014Labs, poodles, Dobermans, Rottweilers, black, yellow, brown. The cabdriver's pale face watched all this from the bathroom window. Steve rolled down the van's window, frantic, then drew the pistol and steadied himself. He took careful aim, fired. A dog fell, screaming, and was replaced by three more. He fired again, fired until the pin clicked down on an empty chamber. \"Fuck you!\" he screamed. \"Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!\"\n\nOne or two of the dogs looked up at this. A chocolate Lab barked, then ran for the van. Steve rolled the window back up, but he wasn't quick enough. The dog hung on to the window by furry brown paws, barking and snapping, hind legs scrabbling at the door. There were only about three inches of room between the top of the glass and the door frame, not enough to get at Steve, but the dog's weight was such that he couldn't roll the window up. He flipped the dog the bird, put the key in the ignition.\n\nThe cab started immediately. He backed out of the driveway. The brown dog still clung to the window, blocking his view. Steve leaned back in the seat to check if, by some miracle, Dresden had emerged from the pile.\n\nHe had not.\n\nSteve pointed the cab at the exit and floored it. A few seconds later he squealed to a stop at the gate, tires smoking. He put on his blinker, turned right onto Highway 78, floored it again.\n\nThe Garrison Oaks sign dwindled in his rearview mirror."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 41",
                "text": "The cabdriver's name was Harshen Patel. Two hours later, cowering behind a shower curtain in a dusty green bathtub, he heard a woman's voice.\n\n\"Steve?\"\n\n\"Be careful!\" Patel said. \"I think that they are crazy!\" He cradled his left hand, bandaged in a roll of bloody toilet paper and what was left of his shirt.\n\n\"Steve?\" Her tone was doubtful now.\n\n\"I do not know who that is. If you're looking for the lying asshole with the two lions, he left.\"\n\n\"He left?\" She sounded incredulous.\n\n\"Yes. A couple hours ago.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"He stole my taxi.\"\n\nShe chuckled. \"He's resourceful. I'll give him that.\"\n\n\"You should be very careful,\" Harshen said. \"There are two of them, an old man and a woman. She came to me and said, 'Supper is ready!' and then they both started\u2026started\u2026biting me.\" He heard the edge of a scream in his voice and clamped down on it. \"They have eaten my left pinkie finger. And part of my thumb. They might still be out there. You should\u2014\"\n\n\"It's OK,\" the woman said. She rattled the doorknob. \"Can you open this, please?\"\n\nHarshen considered this for several seconds, then reached out with a shaking hand and opened the door.\n\nThe woman in the hall was on the small side, frizzy-haired, barefoot. She carried a blue duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She looked him up and down, surveying the wounds in his shoulder, his neck, his crotch. Her brown eyes were dark and intense, difficult to meet. \"You'll live.\"\n\n\"Do you think so?\"\n\n\"Yeah. You were lucky. Not a lot of people get to visit in this neighborhood.\"\n\nHarshen nodded, miserable. \"I believe you. I wonder\u2026may we please leave now?\"\n\nShe thought about it. \"Sure.\" She shrugged. \"I'll walk you out. What's your name?\"\n\nHe told her. They stepped out into the light together.\n\n\"Nice to meet you. I'm Carolyn.\"\n\n\"Do you\u2026do you live here?\"\n\n\"Not in this one.\" She jerked her thumb down the street. \"I'm a couple blocks deeper.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He looked at her, horrified.\n\n\"Relax. I won't hurt you. You helped Steve.\" She shook her head, smiling. \"He really is ever so good at slipping out of these petonsha, don't you think?\"\n\n\"These what?\"\n\n\"Sorry. That isn't English. They all start to blur after a while. I said 'petonsha.' It means 'little traps.' \"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nThey walked in silence for a block or so.\n\nShe spoke next. \"Still\u2026you did help Steve. I should repay the favor.\" She considered. \"Do you have a family? Do you live in the city?\"\n\n\"My wife. Esperanza. We have two boys. But no, we're out in\u2014\"\n\nShe waved her hand, cutting him off. \"I don't care at all. When we get to the end of the street, I'm going to disappear. When that happens, put your family in your car and\u2014\"\n\n\"I can't.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I can't put my family in my car. He stole it. I don't know where it is.\"\n\n\"Who stole it? Steve?\"\n\n\"Is he the lion man?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Yes. Him. He is the motherfucker who stole my cab.\"\n\n\"Oh. Hmm.\" Carolyn thought about it for a second, then handed him the blue duffel bag. \"Here. Take this. Buy another one.\"\n\nHe unzipped the bag, looked inside. Money. \"Oh!\"\n\n\"Yeah. Spend it fast. It won't be worth much in a week or two\u2014Barry O'Shea is out of hiding. Once he's established, there will be a sort of, umm, plague.\"\n\n\"What? What plague? Who is\u2014\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter. Pack up your wife and kids. Buy food, water, weapons. A generator, maybe. Go into the city\u2014someplace with a lot of electric lights, and a good power supply. Get indoors, on the top floor of a tall building, if you can. Stay away from windows. And if you see people with tentacles, stay away. Don't let them touch you.\"\n\nHarshen gaped at her. She spoke of insanities, but her voice was calm and certain. Her expression reminded him of a painting that frightened him as a child\u2014Kali the annihilator, smiling as small things died.\n\n\"It's about to get very dark, you see.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Asuras",
                "text": "Two miles west, Highway 78 merged into a four-lane that led into town, such as it was\u2014basically a couple of strip malls between Steve and more empty road. The speed-limit sign said 45. He glanced down and saw he was doing 80, the rattletrap taxi shaking like the magic fingers at a cheap motel. He rolled to a stop at the first red light, a little jerkily.\n\nThere's blood on the windshield, he thought. How did that get there? He squirted wiper fluid on it, hoping it would clean off some of the dog blood. It didn't, just smeared it around a little. He felt dazed.\n\nIn the back, Naga lifted her head and looked around, blinking.\n\n\"Feeling better?\" He thought the second suppository might be doing its thing. \"Don't try to move. We're out. No more dogs!\"\n\nShe twitched her tail a little, then bent around to her hindquarters and sniffed the bandages.\n\n\"Well, yeah,\" Steve sighed. \"There is that.\" Where the hell do you take a wounded lion? The zoo?\n\nA black Toyota truck inched to a stop beside him. Steve glanced over at it and found himself at eye level with the mud flaps. It was jacked up so high you'd almost need a ladder to get in and out. Do you call that a monster truck? What's the dividing line? Steve wondered. How big does it have to get before it becomes a monster? Is it just x number of inches higher than factory, or do the tires have to\u2014\n\nThe truck honked. Steve looked up. Three or four feet up, some guy in the passenger seat was gesturing for Steve to roll down his window. Steve did. \"Yes?\"\n\nThe passenger was a kid, about eighteen or twenty. His baseball cap was on backward. \"Yo, man,\" he said. \"You got, like, half a dog hanging off your back bumper.\"\n\n\"Do I?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Did you drive over it? On purpose, like?\"\n\n\"No. The Buddha teaches respect for all life.\" Then, under his breath. \"I guess I did shoot a couple though.\"\n\n\"There's blood all over your fuckin' door too, man. You get in a assident or something?\"\n\n\"Nope. Dog fight.\" Something occurred to him. \"Hey, is there a vet around here?\"\n\nThe kid looked at him like he was crazy. \"Man, ain't no vet gonna help that dog. He's cut in half, yo!\"\n\n\"It's not for him,\" Steve said. \"It's for her.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nSteve jerked his thumb at the backseat. The kid leaned out and down, peeping. \"Whoa!\" Then, to the driver, \"Hey, Frank, that guy got a fucking lion in his cab!\"\n\nThe driver leaned forward. \"Say whaaaaat? Lean back, I can't\u2014\"\n\nMaybe you should work harder on keeping a low profile, fugitive boy.\n\n\"Holy shit!\" the driver said. \"I know you! You that guy from Fox News!\"\n\n\"Nope!\" Steve said. \"Not me! I get that a lot, though! Ha-ha!\" This goddamn light is taking forever. He considered running it, just to get away from the kids in the truck. Nah. Bad idea. Instead he rolled up the window\u2014this actually helped; it was crusty with dog slobber\u2014and pretended to study the strip-mall sign a quarter mile up. He squinted. There was a Bi-Lo, a Walmart, some restaurant called Monsieur Taco\u2014What the fuck?\u2014and the Black Path Animal Hospital.\n\nSteve considered. He figured it was about 50/50 that the guys in the truck would call 911. He needed to get off the road, fast. On the other hand, there's Naga. She was nibbling at her bandages. They were saturated, dripping. The suppository had helped, but it wouldn't last.\n\nThe light turned green.\n\n\"Fuck it,\" he said. \"'The true Buddhist will not be a moral and intellectual coward.'\" He waited for the guys in the truck to roll away, then pulled in behind them. Half a block later he turned left into the strip mall, badly. The cab was a Chrysler Voyager minivan, a four-cylinder. It had a lot less power than his plumbing truck. Steve misjudged the gap to an oncoming BMW, obliging its driver to screech to a halt. She and Steve exchanged one-finger salutes. Naga lifted her head up again and roared. That startled him enough that he hopped the curb, clipped a hedge, and nearly T-boned a truck full of landscapers pulling out of the McDonald's drive-thru. \"Aaagh!\"\n\nNaga roared again.\n\n\"Shut up! I'm driving!\"\n\nIn the rearview, Naga gave him a reproachful look. Steve slowed to a walking speed and crossed the rest of the parking lot carefully, looking both ways at junctions, finally coasting to a stop in front of a vet. A sign out front read GET KITTY A FLEA DIP!\n\n\"Wait here,\" Steve said to Naga. \"I'll be right back.\" He put the pistol in the back waistband of his sweatpants and pulled his concert shirt down over it. Walking around the back of the taxi, he saw that there was indeed half of a dog dangling from the tailpipe. It was too bloody to be sure, but he thought it might have been the chocolate Lab that had latched onto his window. Maybe it got wedged under the muffler somehow? He vaguely remembered bumps in the road as he pulled out of Garrison Oaks.\n\nThinking that the veterinarian might not approve, he spent a second trying to get the corpse a little more out of sight, but it was both deeply, deeply disgusting and wedged solidly in place. When gall rose in his throat he gave up, wiped his hand on the back of his sweats, and limped to the office.\n\nThe waiting room had a tile floor and smelled like cat food. A fussy-looking man in a bow tie held a Yorkshire terrier on a short leash. Opposite him a middle-aged hippie sat with a cat carrier on her lap.\n\nSteve leaned against the receptionist's desk, his hands crusty with dried blood. \"I need to see one of the doctors.\" Panting. \"It's urgent.\"\n\nThe Yorkie, small and immaculate, barked at him.\n\n\"You'll need to fill this out,\" the receptionist said, eyeing him cautiously. \"And I'm afraid these two people are both ahead of you. Do you have an appointment?\"\n\nHe laughed, not quite hysterical. \"It's kind of an emergency. Have you got a stretcher? A big stretcher?\"\n\n\"Emergency?\"\n\n\"Ohhh, yeah.\" He rocked his head up and down. \"Big-time.\"\n\n\"It's OK,\" said the woman with the cat carrier. \"I'm not in a hurry.\" The guy with the Yorkie gave her a dour look.\n\n\"Gimme a sec,\" the receptionist said. She picked up the phone. \"Hey, Jer? We got a guy up here with an emergency. Can you grab Allie and bring the stretcher? Thanks.\"\n\n\"No,\" Steve said sincerely, \"thank you. Really.\" He almost added \"And I'm sorry,\" then thought better of it. He was sorry, though. He thought that the rest of the afternoon was liable to suck for everyone in the room.\n\nA moment later two youngish women in green scrubs trotted up. One of them carried a good-sized stretcher. \"Where is he? It's your dog, right?\"\n\n\"Umm\u2026she's in the car,\" Steve said. \"This way.\"\n\nThey followed him out. In the parking lot he saw that the guys in the jacked-up black truck had circled back. They idled in the parking lot in front of Walmart, watching, the rumble of their monster truck faint but still audible. Steve groaned.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" the taller vet tech asked.\n\n\"Nothing. My foot is sore.\" His foot actually did hurt. \"She's over here.\" He opened the sliding door of the minivan and stepped back behind the women. Naga raised her head, groggy but interested.\n\n\"Holy cow!\" the shorter one said.\n\n\"Is that a lion?\"\n\n\"Ha-ha! We get that a lot. She's actually a Labradoodle. We just shaved her like a lion. Pretty funny, huh?\"\n\nThe two of them peered at Naga. Steve held his breath. The tall tech said, \"We\"\u2014she pointed at the shorter tech\u2014\"are veterinary students. You understand that, right?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" said the shorter one, nodding. \"Bullshit.\" They both turned around to look at him. \"What do you think we are, idi\u2014Oh.\"\n\nNow Steve was holding the empty pistol, not pointing it at anyone. \"Here's what we're going to do. You hold the stretcher,\" he said. \"I'll lift her out. She's not going to hurt anyone. Neither am I. She's lost a lot of blood. We're going to take her in there to the doctor, then you two can go.\"\n\nThe techs absorbed this.\n\n\"I mean it,\" Steve said. \"Everything will be fine. I just need some help, is all. Will you guys help me? Please?\" C'mon, c'mon\u2026\n\nThey considered.\n\n\"No fucking way,\" said the short one. She looked at her partner for confirmation.\n\nThe tall tech was studying Naga. \"You drove here with a lion in the back of your cab?\"\n\n\"Pretty much, yeah.\"\n\n\"How do you know she's not going to bite?\"\n\n\"I just do. Look, she's in a bad way. I hate doing this to you, but\u2026\"\n\nThe tall tech was studying him now. Steve held his breath.\n\nAfter a moment, she said, \"How about if we carry the lion and you hold her\u2014her?\u2014head.\"\n\n\"That works!\" Steve said. \"I'm going to get in the taxi now.\"\n\n\"OK, mister,\" said the short tech, much too sincerely.\n\n\"You try to run and I'll kneecap you,\" Steve said, waggling the empty pistol. \"I mean it. I'm a marksman. I got a silver medal in the '92 Olympics. The shot won't kill you, but it'll hurt for the rest of your life.\"\n\nThwarted, she flashed a fake smile. \"Wouldn't dream of it.\"\n\nHe stepped into the cab. \"I'm going to put the gun away now.\" He tucked it away. \"There. You won't even see it again unless you try to run.\"\n\n\"Good to know,\" said the tall tech.\n\n\"OK, get the stretcher ready.\"\n\nThe two techs looked at the lion, then at each other. \"OK,\" the tall one said. \"Yeah.\" She probed Steve with her eyes. \"You hold her head, right?\"\n\n\"I hold her head.\"\n\nShe nodded at the other tech. They lifted the stretcher to a horizontal position.\n\nSteve smiled at them. \"Thanks,\" he said. \"Really.\" He stepped around them into the cab. \"Hey, Naga,\" he said. \"Hey, big girl. Almost there, sweetie.\" He patted her fur, made a show of checking her bandage.\n\nThe techs watched this, wide-eyed. \"Dude, I don't think you should\u2014\"\n\n\"Shh!\" As gently as he was able, he slid his arms under Naga. Naga rumbled a little but did not resist. He muscled her off the seat. She was very heavy. What he managed was not so much a carry as one controlled fall onto the floor of the cab and another onto the stretcher. I must have been jacked-up out of my mind to get her out of the house.\n\nOn the stretcher, Naga raised her head and squinted at the two techs. They blinked back at her, smiling and clearly terrified.\n\n\"Get her head,\" the tall tech said. She spoke with exaggerated gentleness. \"Mmm-kay?\"\n\n\"Step back a little,\" Steve said. \"I can't\u2014\"\n\nThey backed away from the cab a foot or so.\n\nHe hopped out, grunting at a lightning strike of pain from his bad ankle. He slid one arm under Naga's raised head and lay the other hand over her cheek, patted her muzzle. I couldn't possibly hold her if she decided she wanted to do something, but it might give them a second to get away. Together they waddled across the parking lot and into the waiting room.\n\n\"We need a room\u2026right\u2026now,\" the tall tech said.\n\nThe receptionist gasped, jerked up out of her chair, dropped her pen. \"Room, ah\u2026Room Two.\"\n\n\"Coming through.\"\n\n\"Dude, that's a lion,\" the hippie with the cat carrier said conversationally. Steve ignored her. The guy with the bow tie stood up and bolted out the front door. A moment later his Yorkie followed.\n\n\"What's going on\u2014\" came a woman's voice from the back of the office. \"Oh,\" she said. \"Oh, my.\"\n\n\"Are you the doctor?\"\n\nShe opened her mouth, shut it again.\n\nSteve didn't really blame her. \"It's OK,\" he said. \"Naga's not going to hurt anybody.\"\n\nShe considered this. \"Yeah, OK. I'm Dr. Alsace. Is she\u2014what's wrong with her?\"\n\n\"Dogs,\" Steve said. \"We got in a fight with some dogs. They tore up her leg pretty bad. I think they nicked an artery. She's had two, um, transfusions, but I can't get the bleeding stopped.\"\n\n\"Is she restrained?\"\n\n\"No,\" Steve said, \"but she won't hurt you.\"\n\n\"You can't know that. I'm not doing anything until that animal is restrained.\"\n\n\"OK. Fine. Get whatever. I'll put it on her.\" He was thinking of a muzzle, or maybe some sort of straps.\n\n\"He's got a gun,\" the short tech said.\n\n\"I'll be leaving now,\" the woman with the cat carrier said.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Steve said. \"I can't let you do that. And I do have a gun. I'm not here to hurt anyone, I swear, but I need help.\" In his mind's eye he saw Jack, trapped forever in darkness. His cheek stung with Celia's slap. He looked at the doctor, pleading.\n\nDr. Alsace pursed her lips, thinking it over. \"OK,\" she said finally. \"Two conditions. First, you let everyone here go. Second, you jab the injured lion with the syringe.\"\n\nSuch was Steve's gratitude that he was rendered mute. He said nothing. He nodded. The doctor made a shooing motion. The woman with the cat carrier ducked out. After a moment the receptionist followed. She turned to the techs. \"You guys too.\"\n\n\"I'll stay,\" the tall one said.\n\n\"Jerri, you don't have to\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll stay. Wouldn't miss this for the world.\"\n\nEveryone looked at the other tech. \"You guys have fun,\" she said. Steve took her end of the stretcher. She bolted.\n\n\"OK.\" The doctor turned her attention to her patient. \"Let's get her into Room Two. She's not full-grown. Any idea how old?\"\n\nSteve shook his head.\n\n\"Weight?\"\n\n\"I lifted her, but it was all I could do. Two hundred, maybe?\"\n\n\"I'd say two twenty-five, easy.\" She paused. \"You lifted her? Alone?\"\n\n\"She helped, a little.\" Still holding the stretcher he dipped his shoulder, pantomiming. \"Fireman's carry.\"\n\n\"Oh-kay. So\u2026what are you, a trainer, or\u2014\" She shook her head. \"Never mind. Later.\" Inside the exam room they lay the stretcher on the table. \"Jerri, go to the Merck and see what kind of dosage we need for a two-hundred-fifty-pound lion.\"\n\n\"Ketamine and xylazine?\"\n\nThe doctor wrinkled her face. \"Unless you know better? This is my first lion.\"\n\n\"That's what we used last summer. I'm on it.\"\n\n\"We'll also need an ET tube. Biggest we've got.\"\n\nNaga's hind paws dangled off the end of the table. She lifted her head, looked around the room, rumbled. The doctor jumped back a bit.\n\n\"It's OK,\" Steve said. He patted Naga's neck. \"Nothing to be scared of.\"\n\nThe tech\u2014Jerri\u2014returned a couple of minutes later bearing a big syringe and a bag full of plastic tubes. She handed it to the doctor.\n\nDr. Alsace checked the levels. \"That's it?\"\n\n\"We were a little short of ketamine.\"\n\nThe doctor raised her eyebrows.\n\n\"Just a little.\"\n\n\"OK. It will have to do.\" She looked at the lion, frowned, then handed Steve the syringe. \"You ever given an injection before?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Nothing to it. This goes in the muscle. Jab it in quick, then inject slowly. See if you can find a spot on the back leg, away from the wound.\" She handed Steve the syringe, then backed up near the door. \"Jerri\u2026behind me.\"\n\nSteve looked at Naga's hindquarter, found a spot with a good bit of muscle. He practiced jabbing. \"Like this?\"\n\nThe doctor nodded.\n\n\"It's like jabbing an orange,\" Jerri offered, from the hall.\n\n\"OK.\" Steve blew out a breath, focused. \"Here we go.\" He stuck Naga in her hip. She lifted her head, bared her teeth. She roared.\n\nSteve jumped back. The needle dangled from Naga's hip. He held up a finger as if disciplining an unruly child. \"Bad kitty! You be good!\"\n\nSlowly, her snarl faded. Steve took a step forward, then another. \"This is going to make you feel better.\" He laid his hand on the syringe.\n\nNaga jerked up at his touch. With a wild yowl that made Steve's bowels feel loose, she swatted his chest with her right forepaw. Her claws dug deep trenches into the meat of him. Steve jumped back, yelling. Naga sprang from the table, landed with her paws on his shoulders, bit him in the left arm. Somebody in the hall screamed.\n\nSteve, weirdly unafraid, worked his hands up to chest level and pushed as hard as he could, ripping Naga from his chest along with a good bit of skin from his back and shoulder. Naga bounced off the wall.\n\nFollowing an instinct he didn't quite understand, Steve slapped the lion in the face. She didn't bite or claw him, possibly too surprised to do so, but she roared again.\n\nSteve roared back. \"Go on! You want to end up dead? You're still bleeding, asshole! Bite me all you want and you can bleed out in the parking lot! See if anyone lugs your huge ass to the zoo! Go on, see!\" Drops of his blood fell to the floor and mingled with hers. They glared at each other. \"Go on!\"\n\nAfter a while, Naga sank back against the wall. A second or two later she stopped snarling.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"I thought so.\" He snatched the syringe up off the floor.\n\nFrom behind him, the vet's voice. \"I don't think you should\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah, yeah.\" He walked up to Naga. She snarled again, long white teeth against pink healthy gums. I bet her capillary response is pretty good now. Ignoring the snarl, he pulled her unwounded right hip away from the wall and jabbed the needle in it. She roared again, a deep bass sound that rattled the windows.\n\n\"Shut. The fuck. Up!\"\n\n\"Slowly,\" Dr. Alsace said. Her voice was muffled. Steve glanced back. The door was mostly shut. She peeped in, only the top of her head showing.\n\nHe pushed the plunger in, one excruciating millimeter at a time. In a few seconds it was empty. Steve pulled the syringe out, tossed it aside.\n\nNaga looked at him, confused.\n\n\"There,\" Steve said, sarcastic. \"Feel better now?\"\n\nNaga looked at him for a moment, then slumped. A moment later she laid her head down on the floor. Steve slumped too, back against the wall. His shoulder blades felt wet. He stood up straight again, turned and looked. Where he had leaned, there was a big bloodstain on the wall. He turned to the vet. \"You guys got a Band-Aid?\"\n\n\"Jerri, get me some gauze and some tape.\"\n\nNaga lay on the floor, semiconscious.\n\n\"I think you can get started now,\" Steve said.\n\n\"Not yet. Give it about ten minutes.\"\n\n\"Oh. OK. Am I bleeding bad?\" He walked over to her and presented his back.\n\nShe examined it. \"It's not good. But I think it's superficial. Probably leave some scars, though. You're going to need stitches.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't be a problem. I imagine someone will be along shortly to arrest me.\"\n\n\"I don't doubt it. That was about the dumbest thing I've ever seen.\" She paused. \"Not un-brave, but very, very dumb. Is that your lion?\"\n\n\"Not really. Kind of. We just met a couple of hours ago.\"\n\nShe raised her eyebrows.\n\nSteve shrugged. \"It's been an intense couple of hours.\"\n\nThe vet looked at Naga. \"She's bleeding pretty bad. She probably wouldn't have made it much longer.\"\n\nSteve looked at her.\n\n\"I've seen worse, though. That bandage will hold it until she's anesthetized. I'm pretty sure I can stitch her up in time.\" She looked at him levelly. \"If you were trying to save her life, you probably did.\"\n\nSteve turned this notion over in his mind, examining it. He smiled. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Yeah. It really was dumb, though.\"\n\nSteve sighed, wishing for a cigarette. \"The Buddha teaches respect for all life.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" She considered this. \"Are you a Buddhist?\"\n\n\"No. I'm an asshole. But I keep trying.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 43",
                "text": "Ten minutes later Naga was back on the table. They put the stretcher on the floor. Steve had muscled her onto it while she was still semiconscious. As he did this, Naga stretched her tongue out and licked blood off the back of his hand.\n\n\"It's OK,\" Steve said, stroking her cheek. \"No big.\"\n\nWhen Naga's eyes were shut he, Jerri, and Dr. Alsace lifted her up onto the examination table. While they were waiting for the anesthetic to fully kick in, Steve borrowed some bandages and started taping himself up.\n\nHalfway through what was shaping up to be a really bad job, Dr. Alsace said, \"Point that gun at me.\"\n\n\"Beg pardon?\"\n\n\"Point that gun at me.\"\n\n\"Er\u2026OK.\" Steve pulled the HK out of his waistband and lifted it in her general direction.\n\n\"What's that you say?\" Dr. Alsace said. \"If I don't bandage you up, you're going to shoot me? Well, I guess I have no choice, then.\"\n\nSteve blinked, smiled at her. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Jerri, turn your back. I'm about to set a bad example.\" Jerri obliged. Dr. Alsace cleaned out the scratches on Steve's back with a bottle of saline, then injected him with something. A minute or so later his back was numb. \"Get me a rapID, would you?\"\n\nJerri, gloved, went outside for a second and returned with a clear plastic tool about the size of a paperback book with two pinchable handles. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"Staple gun.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nKa-blap!\n\n\"Ow! Fuck!\"\n\n\"Sorry. Hold still.\" Ka-blap!\n\n\"Ow! I'm not a two-by-four!\"\n\n\"Don't be such a baby. I don't have time to suture.\"\n\nSteve managed to keep quiet for the next couple, but his face contorted with pain. He grunted on the sixth, seventh, and eighth ka-blaps.\n\n\"There we go,\" Dr. Alsace said. \"All done. Hold the gun on Jerri and tell her to bandage you up.\"\n\nSteve pointed the gun at her.\n\n\"Eeek! Don't shoot. Hang on, I need to get more tape.\"\n\nShe returned a second later, eyes wide. \"Um\u2026mister?\"\n\n\"My name is Steve.\"\n\n\"Steve? There's a guy out there. He says he wants to talk to you.\"\n\nSteve's stomach knotted. \"Cop?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. He has a gun.\"\n\nSteve thought about this for a second. He pursed his lips, nodded. \"Tell him it's OK. Tell him to come in. I won't shoot anything.\"\n\nA second later Erwin walked in. \"Glad to hear it,\" he said. He glanced at Naga. \"Hmm. Nice lion.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"When I heard the call come in, I had a feeling this might be you. You're really extra-fucking-special under arrest. You know that, right?\" Erwin pulled a set of those plastic cuffs that looked like cable ties out of his back pocket.\n\nSteve didn't move. He was thinking about the front door, the tree line behind the strip mall, the taxi.\n\n\"No,\" Erwin said, seeing him tense. \"You shouldn't do that.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"No.\" He pointed back in the general direction of the waiting room. \"There's a guy on the roof back behind that dry cleanin' place. I used to work with him. He's a good shot. You try anything, he's going to put a bullet through your center of mass. It'll leave a hole in your back about a foot across. Half your guts'll blow out with it. You'll be dead before you even know what hit you.\"\n\nSteve walked out into the lobby and peeped out the window. \"Oh\u2026\" he said. \"Oh, wow.\" There was indeed a guy on the roof of the cleaners with a rifle. There were also around ten squad cars in the parking lot, blue lights flashing. A hundred yards away people streamed out of Walmart, heads down, running. He scanned the roof line and saw another sniper on top of the Monsieur Taco. \"Fuck,\" he said. \"After all that.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said, \"it's a bitch.\" He jiggled the plastic cuffs in the air. \"You gonna let me do this, or do we gotta shoot ya?\"\n\nSteve looked at the front door, tested his weight on his bandaged ankle. Maybe I could duck out the back and\u2026\n\n\"If you decide to run, can you give me a second first? I want to get them nice ladies out of the line of fire before the deppities start shooting. They're all excited, like. I don't think they'll be real careful when they see you come running out with a gun. Be a shame if the rest of us got killed along with you.\"\n\nSteve put his palms up to his temples. He walked around the waiting room saying, \"Shit, shit, shit!\" He kicked a big bag of dog food. Then, with a sigh, \"OK. You're right. No way out. I've still got a problem, though.\"\n\n\"Yeah? What's that?\"\n\n\"I knew how this was probably going to end up, but I came here anyway. Now it occurs to me that if I just drop the gun\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't drop it,\" Erwin said. \"Might go off. Set it down gentle\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014yeah, sure. If I just drop it\u2014\"\n\n\"People on TV are always dropping guns. I saw a guy get shot that way once.\"\n\n\"OK. Understood. I'll just set it down. If.\"\n\n\"If what?\"\n\n\"If you\"\u2014he looked significantly at Erwin\u2014\"promise me you won't let them just come in here and kill her. Promise me you'll figure out, I dunno, something. A zoo. A circus.\" He searched Erwin's face. \"Please. If you do that, I'll help you as much as I can.\"\n\n\"Help me? How?\"\n\n\"I don't know a whole lot, but I do know where they are\u2014Carolyn and the rest.\"\n\nErwin considered this. \"Full cooperation? No holding back?\"\n\nSteve nodded.\n\n\"Can you sketch the interior of the place?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nErwin considered for a second. \"I can't take that lion back to my apartment, you understand.\"\n\n\"I understand that. I'm just asking you to tell me that you'll do your best.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. \"OK. You got my word.\"\n\nSteve nodded. He held out his wrists to Erwin.\n\n\"Put down the gun first.\"\n\nSteve set it on the reception desk, gently.\n\n\"Hands behind your back.\"\n\nHe did that too. Blue lights flashed through the windows. He tilted his head back, shut his eyes. The sound the cuffs made as they closed was just like zipping up a plastic cable tie.\n\n\"Smart,\" Erwin said. \"They really would have killed you.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nErwin leaned back and looked into Room Two. \"That there's a big-ass lion.\"\n\nSteve smiled a little. \"You think she's big, you should have seen her dad. Full-grown male. Maybe four hundred pounds?\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Erwin looked mildly alarmed. \"He around?\"\n\nSteve shook his head. \"Nope. Didn't make it out.\" He raised his voice. \"Hey, how's she doing, Doctor?\"\n\nThey had started an IV and were giving Naga some sort of clear fluid. The bandage was off and Dr. Alsace was hunched over Naga's leg. She didn't answer. Jerri said, \"Shh!\" She walked over to the door and closed it, but slowly, giving the thumbs-up sign with her free hand.\n\nSteve gave her a little nod. She nodded back, then shut the door.\n\n\"She yours?\" Erwin said. \"File didn't say nothing about you having a pet lion.\"\n\n\"Not really. We just met. We've kind of been looking after each other.\"\n\n\"Just ran into her on the street?\"\n\n\"Actually, yeah.\"\n\nErwin looked at him, waiting for a proper answer. After a minute or so he gave up. \"Any chance I can get you to give a little more detail on that?\"\n\n\"Sure, sorry. Other things on my mind. I was out for a jog and a whole bunch of mean dogs\u2014like, dozens of them\u2014tried to eat me. I shot some, but they had me down on the ground. I was a goner. Naga and her dad kind of came in out of nowhere and pulled the dogs off me. Saved my life.\"\n\n\"Yeah? No shit?\"\n\n\"No shit.\"\n\nErwin considered. \"That's unusual.\"\n\n\"I thought so too.\" Steve shrugged. \"Don't argue with Santa Claus, I guess.\"\n\n\"You think them lions have mebbey got something to do with this Carolyn chick of yours?\"\n\nSteve rolled his eyes. \"Hmm. I don't know. Let me think about that for a second.\"\n\n\"Sorry. Dumb question. Do they\u2026Hang on.\" Erwin put his hand to his ear. \"I'd love to keep chattin' with ya, but them cops are getting antsy outside.\" He lifted his wrist and spoke into his sleeve. \"Yeah, ah, suspect in custody and shit.\"\n\nTwo seconds later, the front door burst open. Half a dozen sheriff's deputies flowed in, guns drawn.\n\n\"Easy, fellas,\" Erwin said. \"Everything's fine. Federal custody, remember?\"\n\n\"I remember,\" said a guy with a lot of stripes on his sleeve. He spoke through gritted teeth. \"What about the lion?\"\n\n\"It's asleep,\" Erwin said. \"Havin' an operation. That's why he came here.\"\n\n\"Don't hurt her, OK?\" Steve said.\n\n\"What?\" The cop looked at him like he was a bug on the road.\n\nSteve felt his inner peace slip a notch. \"Pretty please?\"\n\n\"Animal Control is on the way. Can't keep a lion as a pet in this town, son,\" the cop said. \"City ordinance.\" A couple of the other cops snickered.\n\nSteve felt his rage boiling. \"Erwin?\"\n\n\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Remember what we said.\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\n\"Good. If you want, I can take you to where they\u2014\" The phone clipped to his waistband started ringing.\n\n\"Who's that?\"\n\nSteve thought frantically. \"It's her, probably. Carolyn. She gave me the phone. She's called a couple of times already. Want me to talk to her?\"\n\nErwin considered this. \"Nah. We'll be seeing her in a minute anyway.\"\n\n\"You already know where she is?\"\n\n\"Oh yeah. Nice little neighborhood about two miles from here. We've had the place surrounded since around lunchtime. We're waiting until we get all the neighbors evacuated, then we're going in.\"\n\n\"You don't sound too enthusiastic.\"\n\nErwin gave him a long look. \"Fact is, I'm not.\"\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"I'm just not sure what\u2014\" Erwin cut himself off. \"That's not true. I am sure. Something bad is going on, I just don't know what. I feel the way a rat must feel sniffing the peanut butter on a trap.\" He looked at Steve. \"Is your buddy in that house?\"\n\nSteve looked at him blankly.\n\n\"The guy with the knife thing. The one who broke you out of jail. Is he there?\"\n\n\"Oh. His name is David. Yeah, he's there. Last time I saw him, anyway.\"\n\nErwin frowned. \"I was afraid of that.\"\n\n\"He's not my buddy, though,\" Steve said. \"You're wrong about that. I've got no idea who those people are or what they want from me. And that guy's crazy. He scares the crap out of me. He scares the rest of them too, I think.\"\n\n\"The rest of who?\"\n\nSteve opened his mouth to speak, shut it. \"What about Naga?\"\n\n\"The lion? I'll try the zoo.\" Erwin sounded a million miles away.\n\nSteve gave him a skeptical look.\n\nErwin glanced up. \"You got my word. I'll figure something out.\"\n\nSteve continued to look skeptical.\n\nWith a sigh, Erwin turned to the guy with all the stripes on his sleeve. \"Frank? Listen up. That lion is evidence in a federal investigation. Take good care of it.\"\n\n\"Her,\" Steve said.\n\n\"The hell you say,\" Frank said.\n\n\"No,\" Erwin said. He turned to face the man. He spoke quietly. He was polite. But in that moment Steve understood for the first time how extraordinarily dangerous Erwin truly was. \"I do say. You call the fucking zoo, you call Animal Control, you call whoever you need to call, but if anything happens to that animal\u2026you and me, we're going to have a problem.\"\n\nThe cop was an inch or two taller than Erwin. When the two of them locked eyes, he was looking down. He held Erwin's gaze\u2026but only for a moment. Then he withered visibly. His chest un-puffed. He averted his eyes. His men watched this. \"All right,\" he said. \"Yeah. OK.\"\n\nErwin turned back to Steve. \"That good enough?\"\n\n\"Good enough,\" Steve said. His mouth had gone dry. He swallowed hard. \"Thank you. OK, I don't know a whole lot. The first time I ever saw him was the same time you did, at the jail. I saw what he did in the hall\"\u2014ropey guts dangling from the fluorescents\u2014\"and started squirming. He got pissed off and knocked me out, I think. I woke up in the house a couple miles from here, like you said. There were a bunch of them there. Carolyn said they were her brothers and sisters, but they didn't look like family to me. There were two black guys that looked like twins, and a creepy lady who smelled like dead ass\u2014I think she was, like, Polynesian or something, except she was so pale her skin was almost blue. But I dunno, maybe they're adopted. They all spoke the same language, anyway.\"\n\n\"What language? Could you tell?\"\n\nSteve shook his head. \"I never heard anything like it before. Maybe a little bit like Vietnamese? Except not.\"\n\n\"Are they like him? Carolyn and the rest? Dangerous? I'll tell you for free if my guys go in there and get hurt because you lied to us, I'll go hard on you.\"\n\nSteve considered the question, and not just because Erwin had threatened him. \"I don't know,\" he said finally. \"I don't think so. They all seem really afraid of him.\"\n\n\"Good,\" Erwin said. \"I'll\u2014\"\n\n\"But I think they might be dangerous in other ways,\" Steve said. \"Everything I told you about Carolyn was true. Everything. She's not like that David guy, but I think she's got\u2026something.\"\n\n\"Got something?\"\n\n\"I don't know. She just doesn't seem, I dunno, helpless. Some of the others, sure. A couple of them I'm pretty sure I could take. But not that David guy, and not her. There's something about her\u2026\" Steve shook his head. \"I don't know. I'd be careful, is all.\"\n\nErwin was studying him. \"How many of them were there? The family?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. I didn't count. About a dozen, I think, give or take. Plus the old lady who owns the house. She's normal, not one of them.\"\n\nErwin clicked his tongue, deep in thought.\n\n\"Don't you believe me?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. \"I think I do. A couple hours ago we had an RC-135 do a flyover. Infrared showed thirteen people inside. You didn't know that. If you were going to lie about something, that would have been a good place to start.\"\n\nInfrared? But that raised another question. \"Hey,\" Steve said, \"how'd you find me, anyway?\"\n\n\"You brought a lion into the vet, son. Even without the gun, a thing like that is bound to cause talk.\"\n\n\"So\u2026you were just here on vacation or something?\"\n\n\"Oh, I gotcha. No. I'm in town as sort of an expert advisor with the strike team. I'm the only one we know of who's seen him and lived. Besides you, a'course.\"\n\n\" 'Strike team'?\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah. Lotsa heavy hitters in town today. Delta, couple snipers from SEAL Six, even some Marine recon. Your Miss Sopaski, she's about to have company.\"\n\n\"How'd you find her?\"\n\nErwin frowned. \"Crazy bitch called up the White House. Can you believe that?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 44",
                "text": "Erwin walked Steve out of the vet's office and left him, handcuffed, in the backseat of a squad car for half an hour or so. At Steve's request Erwin cut off the plastic cuffs behind his back and re-cuffed him in front. That was a lot more comfortable.\n\nSteve found that half hour or so weirdly relaxing. It was a nice autumn day. The car window was cracked enough to let in the breeze. He wasn't in immediate mortal danger. There weren't any big decisions to make. Also, I don't have to worry about getting caught anymore. There's that, too. He didn't quite sleep, but he might have dozed a little. Erwin did paperwork and argued with the cops. After a little while a truck stenciled with the words EASTERN EXOTIC CAT SHELTER pulled up. Steve smiled at that.\n\nHe was hoping to see Naga again, but before they brought her out Erwin opened the door of the squad car. \"Wakey-wakey.\" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. \"Out.\"\n\nSteve blinked. Maybe he had slept, a little. \"Where to?\"\n\n\"My car.\"\n\n\"This isn't your car?\"\n\n\"Do I look like a cop?\"\n\n\"Actually\u2026\"\n\nErwin gave him a look.\n\n\"No,\" Steve said. \"Of course not.\"\n\nErwin nodded. He took Steve by the shoulder and walked him over to a nondescript Ford sedan parked thirty yards away.\n\n\"This is a State Department car. I signed for it.\" Erwin peered at him. \"You gonna give me any shit?\"\n\n\"I'm not planning on it.\"\n\n\"OK. You can ride in front if you want. I gotta leave the cuffs on, though.\"\n\n\"Sure, I understand. Hey, am I still bleeding?\"\n\n\"A little. Not much. Actually\u2026\" Erwin rooted around in the backseat, grabbed a newspaper. He unfolded the paper and laid the sports section across the passenger side of the front seat. \"OK. Sit on that.\"\n\nSteve looked stung.\n\n\"Son, your shirt's a mess. And you need a fuckin' shower. Any stains get on that upholstery, I gotta clean 'em. No offense.\"\n\n\"Nah,\" Steve said. \"It's OK.\" By now it was getting to be late afternoon, 4:13 p.m. according to the dash clock in Erwin's car. They turned out of the parking lot and headed back down Highway 78. Steve gave Monsieur Taco a longing look as they drove away. He was getting hungry. \"Where we going?\"\n\n\"DC.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\"\n\n\"Yup. Lotta people want to talk with you.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\nErwin looked at him like he was an idiot. Which, Steve thought, I suppose I am. \"Sorry. I guess what I meant was, 'What do they expect me to be able to tell them?' I'm as confused as anybody. More so, probably.\"\n\n\"Hmmm.\"\n\n\"Hmmm what?\"\n\n\"Just hmm. I sort of believe you, I guess.\"\n\n\"Yeah?\" Steve felt absurdly grateful to hear this. \"I appreciate that. I really do.\"\n\nUnexpectedly, Erwin turned off the main road and rolled to a stop in the parking lot of a lumber yard on top of a hill. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, but mostly the place was empty. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Well, like I said, I'm taking you to DC. This is just a little detour.\"\n\n\"Detour?\"\n\n\"Yeah. The Delta guys didn't want me riding along with them, even as an observer. I'm here to ID that David fella.\"\n\n\"They had cameras at the jail. When he broke me out, I mean. I saw them.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Funny thing about that. They didn't work. They were fine when I was talking with you. But when the big asshole showed up, them cameras just kinda magically broke.\" He gave Steve a look.\n\n\"That's kind of weird, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I'd say so, yeah.\"\n\n\"OK, so that's why you're in town. But why are we in the parking lot?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Erwin said. \"Nobody said I couldn't watch.\" He pointed. They were on the edge of a steep bluff, maybe a hundred feet high and almost vertical. Below them and about a half a mile away two military vehicles were pulling up outside of a small subdivision.\n\n\"Are those tanks?\"\n\n\"Nah. A tank's got a bigger gun. That there's a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. It's for carrying soldiers, mostly.\"\n\n\"What are they doing?\"\n\n\"It's called 'going in hard,'\" Erwin said. He pulled a big green knapsack out of the backseat and rummaged around in it, coming up with a pair of field binoculars. \"I got a night scope too. You can borrow it if you want to watch. Don't need the starlight, but it'll magnify about six-X.\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nErwin handed him a biggish rifle scope with ATN stamped on the side. Steve held it up. It magnified pretty well\u2014too well, actually. It took him a couple of minutes of scanning to identify the house.\n\n\"What are those guys\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhh!\"\n\nSteve shushed. He heard a thumping noise, and looked up from the scope. Two black helicopters were flying in from the west, low and fast. He could see them clearly, but their rotors were muffled somehow. They weren't quite silent, but they didn't have the thunder you'd expect, either. A moment later the Bradleys started up with a puff of blue smoke.\n\nThe helicopters hovered just over Mrs. McGillicutty's house. Black ropes dropped out of each one. Men slid down the ropes, a dozen in all. Their synchronization wasn't quite perfect, but it was close\u2014they touched ground within a second of one another. As Steve watched they lined up on either side of the French doors that opened onto Mrs. McGillicutty's back patio, black boots pounding silently over red brick in 6x magnification. The helicopters dropped back.\n\nThe men made hand gestures at one another. Two of them beat the doors in with a metal ram. A third man tossed something in. There was a flash and a bang. The men streamed into the house. Watching them, Steve thought of the dogs flowing out of the woods.\n\nMuzzle flashes began, first one, then a long pause, then two more, then a fusillade. The explosive brightness was startling in the long, dreamy shadows of this suburban afternoon. The sound of the shots arrived a moment later, carried on still autumn air. One of Mrs. McGillicutty's windows shattered.\n\nFaintly, from a great distance, Steve heard the sound of a woman screaming. An automatic weapon delivered a short burst of fire\u2026then a much longer one. There was another scream, a man's voice. Steve heard something that sounded a little bit like Dresden's roar. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.\n\n\"What the hell was that?\" Erwin asked.\n\nSteve shook his head. David, maybe?\n\nThere was more gunfire, more flashes. Another woman screamed. More broken windows. Glass rained down on Mrs. McGillicutty's neatly trimmed lawn, flashing in the sun. Holes appeared in the wall, sending splinters of aluminum siding flying. They're all shooting now. Steve heard screams, men's and women's voices mingled, rising. It must be hell in there.\n\n\"Hmm,\" Erwin said.\n\nOne of the black-clad commandos dove out a small window in the back of the house. His face was covered with blood. His helmet was gone. He didn't have his gun anymore. Probably he hoped to tuck and roll before he hit the ground, but he only made it about halfway out the window before something caught him. His torso crashed against the side of the house. Screaming, arms flailing, he was yanked back inside. Steve saw a flash of gold metal, a spray of arterial scarlet. All this happened in less than a second.\n\nNow the screams overlapped, building, rising to a crescendo.\n\nSteve nodded at Erwin's walkie-talkie sitting in the console. \"Can you hear what they're saying?\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Erwin said. \"They use encryption. I couldn't get it even if I knew what frequency they were on.\" He paused. \"It don't look real good, though.\"\n\nOne of Carolyn's people, a woman in gray-green robes, fell through the French doors onto the back patio. She lay where she landed, not moving. Her chest was covered in blood.\n\n\"Hey,\" Steve said. \"I recognize that one. I think her name is Jennifer?\"\n\nThe helicopters, still trailing their long ropes, moved a bit closer. A moment later they backed off again. The two Bradleys in front of the neighborhood started rolling. Once in front of the house, they each disgorged a small horde of men in green carrying automatic weapons.\n\nThe Army guys moved toward the front door. Only a couple made it. Automatic weapons fire from the house cut the rest down in the front yard\u2014head shots mostly, mercifully blurry at that distance. The soldiers fell in the grass, boneless. All but one lay still, but that one, a black guy, writhed and screamed. His legs didn't seem to be working.\n\n\"Holy fucking shit,\" Steve said. He looked over. Erwin's face was twisted with fury. His gray hair stood out wildly against his flushed red face.\n\n\"I told them,\" Erwin said. \"I told them this was different. I fucking told them.\"\n\nThree of the men from the Bradleys made it as far as the house. As the men from the helicopter had done, they stood on either side of the door and made hand gestures at one another. Steve thought, They're going to do it. They're really going to go in there. On purpose. \"Daaaaaaaaaaaamn.\"\n\nBut they didn't. Something punched through the wall. Again Steve caught a flash of bright-yellow\u2014brass and blood in the afternoon sunlight as a soldier's throat exploded. A moment later the other two dropped as well, one after the other in rapid succession. He's stabbing them through the wall. It reminded him of a sewing machine needle.\n\nSteve heard a whirring sound. The barrel of a Bradley's main gun began to turn on the house. They're going to blow up the house, he thought. They're going to blow it up, even with their own people inside.\n\nBut they didn't. The rear doors of both Bradleys were still open, so when David streaked out the front door there was nothing to stop him. My God, Steve thought. He's so fast. David disappeared inside the vehicle. A second later the hatch on the gun turret flipped up and a single hand, bloody, rose up. Fingers clawed at the air, helpless, then the hand slipped back inside.\n\nThe driver of the second Bradley began closing his back door. It was the right idea, but he wasn't quite quick enough. David dove over the back gate, smooth and graceful.\n\nA minute or so later the back hatch opened again. Now the Bradley was red inside. David stood alone in the back, carrying his spear and\u2014is that somebody's head?\u2014something tucked under his arm. For just a moment he seemed to lock eyes with Steve, half a mile away. The hair on the back of Steve's neck went all prickly. David grinned, then turned and darted back inside the house.\n\nThe helicopters moved in close again. Their guns started up and began to whir, chewing away the roof of the house, the siding, the windows, the chimney.\n\nThen Steve saw a man silhouetted against the blasted window of the house. He was holding a rifle. Steve hoped for a moment that it was one of the Army guys, but the fluff at his waist could only have been a tutu. David fired, just once, and sparks flew from the helicopter's tail rotor. It jerked, then spun around, level but moving backward. Its tail section crashed into the spinning rotors of the other chopper in a shower of sparks.\n\nBoth helicopters dropped the hundred feet or so to the ground. One of them landed on a neighboring house, the other landed half in and half out of the swimming pool behind it. The house exploded with an enormous gout of yellow flame and black smoke.\n\nThen the day was silent again.\n\n\"Holy fucking shit,\" Steve said. He turned to Erwin, hoping he might confirm this diagnosis, perhaps weigh in with insights of his own. But Erwin was otherwise occupied. His eyes were fixed on Carolyn. She was standing a couple of feet outside the driver's-side window, pointing a pistol at Erwin's head.\n\n\"Hi,\" she said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 45",
                "text": "\"Hi yourself,\" Steve managed. From this angle he saw yellow hair next to her at about waist height. His first thought was that she was standing next to a blond three-year-old. But when he stretched his neck up to see better, he met yellow eyes. \"Hey! Is that Naga?\"\n\nHe knew as soon as it was out of his mouth that it was a dumb thing to ask\u2014how many lions are there in a typical suburb? It was her. She stood on her own power, strong and alert.\n\n\"Yeah, I tracked the two of you to the vet,\" Carolyn said. \"I figured you might want me to patch her up for you.\"\n\nSteve, still cuffed, scrambled out of the car and went around to the driver's side. He was heading for Naga, but Carolyn put a hand on his shoulder and nodded at his cuffs. It took Steve a moment to recognize the thing in her hand as a stone knife. \"I don't think that'll be sharp enough to\u2014\"\n\nShe cut through the tough plastic in a single swipe.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nSteve knelt down beside Naga, hugged her neck. Her wound was mostly healed\u2014her fur hadn't grown back, but where only an hour ago there had been a bloody, gaping hole he now saw pink skin. She licked his cheek.\n\n\"I'm guessing you're Carolyn,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Good guess,\" she said. \"How you doing, Erwin?\"\n\n\"You know me.\"\n\nShe didn't answer. Steve noticed that her index finger was trembling, just a little.\n\n\"You gonna shoot me with that thing?\" Erwin asked.\n\n\"Don't hurt him, Carolyn,\" Steve said, still kneeling. \"This guy's OK.\" Then, to Naga, who was still licking him, \"C'mon, OK, that's enough.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't dream of it,\" she said. She opened the back door of the Ford and flopped down onto the backseat.\n\nErwin, sitting in the front seat, gave Steve a little nod.\n\nSteve waved it away. He stood by the open back door, looking down at Carolyn. She sat leaning against the rear headrest, eyes closed. The gun lay on the seat beside her. Steve looked at the smoking ruin of Mrs. McGillicutty's house. \"Were you caught up in that mess?\"\n\nCarolyn shook her head. \"No. I got out about an hour before the shooting started. I was looking for you at the house.\" She opened her eyes and gave him a stern look. \"You were supposed to wait for me there. It's not safe out here.\"\n\n\"Out here?\" Steve said, incredulous. \"Out here's friggin' Disneyland compared to that place. Anyway, I thought the whole point was that you couldn't go into\u2014\"\n\nErwin was studying her in the rearview mirror. \"You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?\"\n\nShe nodded again. \"This or something like it. The president is a prideful man. When I rattled his cage yesterday he needed to do something to show what a scary fellow he is.\"\n\nThey both looked at her. \"Yeah,\" Erwin said, all trace of the amiable hick gone from his voice, \"I'd say you pretty much nailed that one. I'm curious, though\u2014how did you get the codes to get through the switchboard?\"\n\nShe fluttered a hand in the air. \"I'm tricky.\"\n\n\"She is,\" Steve agreed.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said. \"I'm starting to get that.\"\n\n\"What happened to the rest of them?\" Steve asked. \"Your, um, 'brothers and sisters'?\"\n\nCarolyn opened her eyes. \"I was going to ask you,\" she said. \"Did anyone get out? Maybe someone with an animal?\"\n\n\"No one that I saw,\" Erwin said. \"I don't think so.\"\n\nCarolyn's expression was impossible to read. \"Then they're almost certainly dead. That was the most likely outcome.\"\n\n\"There's someone on the back porch,\" Steve said quietly. \"A woman. Blond hair, kinda short and spiky? You can borrow my scope if you\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn shook her head and closed her eyes again. \"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you. It's Jennifer.\" Then, speaking to herself, \"At least she went out stoned. She would have wanted it that way.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Thanks, Erwin. That's good of you to say. Now it's just David and Margaret and me.\"\n\n\"Margaret?\" Erwin asked.\n\n\"The one who smells bad,\" Steve said.\n\n\"Ah,\" Erwin said. \"How do you know she's not dead too?\"\n\nCarolyn smiled, still holding her eyes closed. \"David would never let anyone else hurt Margaret.\"\n\nSteve looked through the scope. The house was quiet now. Thin trickles of smoke leaked from the windows. As he watched, Mrs. McGillicutty staggered outside. She was bloody and dazed, but very much alive. \"Hey, there's the old lady! What's that she's holding!\"\n\nCarolyn took the scope and looked for herself, then handed it back. \"Muffins. She's got muffins.\" She shook her head, smiled a little. \"David must have saved her as well. Just when you think you know a person\u2026\"\n\n\"What do we do now?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Now we wait, for a little while.\"\n\n\"For what?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"For David to come back.\"\n\n\"Back?\" Erwin asked. \"Where'd he go?\"\n\n\"He's off to Washington.\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"He's going to kill the president, and everyone involved in what just happened. He'll use the broadest possible definitions of 'everyone' and 'involved.' \"\n\nSteve boggled at her. \"That's imposs\u2014can he do that?\"\n\n\"David? Yes. They might as well start digging the graves right now. The president's a dead man.\"\n\nSteve stared at her, aghast.\n\n\"Oh, for gosh sakes. It was his idea to start killing people, remember? Before his Army guys showed up, everyone was just sitting around and eating brownies. Anyway, I doubt most people will even notice. They'll have bigger things to worry about.\"\n\nErwin's eyes narrowed. \"What's that mean?\"\n\n\"What time is it?\"\n\n\"Uh,\" he glanced at the clock on the dashboard. \"Around four fifteen?\"\n\n\"Any second now.\" She gave a thin, feral smile.\n\nSteve felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. \"Carolyn, what did you do?\"\n\nShe didn't answer with words, just pointed at the sky.\n\nIt was just after four in the afternoon. The sun was still well above the tree line. The sky was clear. There was no eclipse. All of these things were true, but after a few seconds Steve was forced to accept what his eyes were telling him.\n\nThe sun was going out."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 46",
                "text": "For the next minute and a half or so the sun faded from the blazing yellow that was normal for this time of day to a mellower sunset orange, then red. Steve, watching this, thought, It's like someone's turning the switch on one of those dimmer bulbs reeeeeally slow.\n\nAt first Erwin hung his head out the driver's-side window to watch, but then\u2014evidently forgetting that he was kinda-sorta in custody\u2014he fumbled the Taurus's door open and stood in the parking lot next to Steve. \"Eclipse?\" Steve said softly, knowing it wasn't.\n\nErwin shook his head. \"Nah. Can't be. Maybe it's\u2026is it shrinking, too?\"\n\n\"I can't tell\u2026well\u2026yeah. Maybe.\" Steve held his thumbnail up for comparison. He could do this without even squinting. The sun had faded to a dirty and unenthusiastic brown. As it went finally to black he saw that it did visibly shrink, at least a little.\n\nThen it was gone.\n\nSteve felt the afternoon warmth fall away from his skin. The October breeze, its slight chill suddenly ominous, rustled dry leaves. How cold can it get? he wondered. How cold does it get on Pluto? Oxygen is a liquid there, isn't it? He shivered more than the breeze really warranted.\n\n\"Are you seeing this?\" Erwin asked softly.\n\n\"I think so,\" Steve said. \"Are you sure about the time?\" Ignoring the evidence before his eyes, he was clinging to the notion that maybe this was just a normal sunset.\n\nErwin checked his watch. \"Four eighteen, give or take.\"\n\n\"You're sure?\" Steve said. His heart pounded in his chest. The stars were out. They burned down on him like the eyes of distant monsters, huge and merciless. A streetlamp flickered on, coating the parking lot in phlegmy yellow light. Naga looked up at the sky and rumbled, uneasy.\n\n\"Right on schedule,\" Carolyn said from behind him. She sounded pleased with herself.\n\nSteve spun around. \"You did this? That's impossible. It's got to be\u2026\" He fluttered his hands, helpless. \"Why would you do this?\"\n\n\"That's sort of a long story.\"\n\n\"This is real?\" Erwin asked. His voice was flat, unemotional. His eyes flickered back and forth between her face and the gun in her hands. \"It's not a trick?\"\n\n\"I don't do tricks.\" She took a step back, out of range.\n\n\"Put it back!\" Steve said. \"Turn it on! We'll all\u2014turn it back on!\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"I can't.\"\n\n\"Jesus Christ, Carolyn! You've got to! We'll\u2026everybody\u2026we'll freeze!\"\n\n\"Not immediately,\" she said. \"I talked it over with Peter once. The atmosphere acts like a blanket. The residual heat will fade, eventually, but we've got some time.\"\n\n\"What are we going to do?\"\n\nShe considered. \"Are you hungry? I'm starving. We've got some time to kill. I know a good Mexican place down the road. The guacamole is\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not interested in any goddamn tacos, Carolyn!\"\n\n\"Oh, c'mon. It's really good.\"\n\n\"Look, I'm sick of this crap. Right now I want you to\u2014\"\n\n\"Get me some guacamole and I'll tell you anything you want to know.\"\n\nSteve, red-faced, drew in his breath to yell something else\u2026then shut his mouth with an audible click of his teeth. \"You will? Anything?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Yup.\"\n\n\"OK,\" Steve said. \"Yeah.\"\n\nCarolyn turned back to Erwin. \"We're going to take your car.\"\n\nErwin raised an eyebrow. He stood about six-two, Steve judged, and was in fantastic physical shape. He remembered the way the big cop had withered under his glare.\n\nCarolyn, pistol in hand, raised her eyebrows. She smiled pleasantly.\n\n\"Keys are in it,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Money,\" Steve said. \"Did you bring the duffel bag?\"\n\n\"What? Oh. No, sorry. I gave it to the cabdriver.\"\n\n\"To the cabdriver? All three hundred twenty-seven thousand?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I felt kind of sad for him. They ate some of his fingers.\"\n\n\"Wait, what? Who ate\u2014\" He broke off. \"On second thought, never mind. I don't want to know.\" Steve rubbed his forehead, then looked at Erwin. \"Have you got any money?\"\n\nErwin raised both eyebrows this time. But then he shrugged and rummaged through his wallet. He handed over three twenties, a five, and a couple of ones. \"That's all my cash. You want my AmEx, too?\"\n\n\"No, thanks.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Erwin,\" Carolyn said. \"You've been very helpful.\" Steve opened the Taurus's back door and patted the seat with his hand. Naga hesitated, then jumped in. Carolyn took the passenger seat. When Steve put the Ford in gear she said, \"Wait.\"\n\nHer HK was identical to the one she had given Steve. She thumbed the lever to drop the magazine out of it, then jacked the slide back, ejecting the round in the chamber. She clicked the loose round back into the magazine, then turned to Steve. \"How do I make the window go down?\"\n\nSteve pointed at a button on the door. When the window was down she waved Erwin over. \"Here,\" she said. She handed him the empty pistol, butt first. \"For protection. There's a lot of crazy people out tonight. Be careful.\"\n\n\"Ain't much good without bullets,\" Erwin observed.\n\n\"I'll set the magazine on the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill.\"\n\nErwin nodded. \"Thanks.\"\n\nWhen they were a little ways out of the parking lot, Steve pulled into a turn lane and stopped. Carolyn laid the magazine next to a streetlight and waved at Erwin. Erwin waved back.\n\n\"What was that all about?\"\n\n\"He seems nice.\" She gave him a vague smile.\n\nSteve knew that she was lying again."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 47",
                "text": "To Steve's irritation, Carolyn was right. The guacamole really was excellent.\n\nThe restaurant she liked turned out to be Monsieur Taco, which was in the same strip mall as the vet. Carolyn had insisted that they go there, that particular restaurant and no other, even though the parking lot was still boiling with cops. She said it wouldn't be a problem. Steve had a bad moment when the big cop that Erwin had humiliated looked their way, but nothing came of it. Steve parked in back, and Carolyn rumbled something to Naga. She rumbled back and curled up in the backseat to go to sleep.\n\nThe place was weirdly upscale for strip-mall Mexican\u2014among other things, there were valets and a doorman. Steve parked himself, though\u2014Naga was sleeping in the backseat, and he didn't think that would go over very well. He was also worried that the fact his butt was visible through a hole in his crusty sweatpants might be a problem. But the closest anyone came to giving them trouble was the ma\u00eetre d'. His right arm was in a cast, and he apparently remembered Carolyn from an earlier visit. When she asked for a table for two, he screamed and bolted for the door.\n\nSteve gave Carolyn a what-the-fuck look.\n\n\"Hmm? Oh. We came here a couple weeks ago. David doesn't understand about money. When he started to walk out without paying that guy grabbed him, and\u2026\" She trailed off.\n\n\"Wackiness ensued. Got it.\"\n\nThey ended up seating themselves at the bar.\n\nSteve didn't think he could eat, but Carolyn insisted he try the lobster tacos. While they were waiting he drank a half pitcher of margaritas, which cooled him out some. By the time the food was actually in front of him he had rediscovered his appetite. Carolyn, however, only managed a couple of bites.\n\n\"I hate to admit it, but this actually is fantastic.\" Steve munched a chip and pushed the guacamole bowl an inch or two closer to her. She ate a chip or two, but only pushed her dinner around on the plate. \"Something wrong? I thought you said you were starving.\"\n\n\"I am, but my stomach's a little upset.\" She shrugged. \"Nerves, maybe. I've got a lot on my mind.\"\n\n\"Hmm. You said you'd answer questions?\"\n\n\"Sure. Might as well. We've got time to kill, and it'll take my mind off\u2026other stuff. Ask me whatever you want.\"\n\nThe restaurant was starting to fill up. An elderly woman in a mink stole eyed Carolyn's leg warmers and Steve's bloody concert shirt, then did something haughty with her face. Steve waved at her Queen Elizabeth\u2014style, wrist only, and gave her a big toothy grin. She scurried away. \"Hmm. Where to start?\" He drummed his fingers on the table. \"Can you really talk to Naga? Like, I mean, really?\"\n\n\"I can, yeah. Animal languages are their own specialty, but I get by. My pronunciation isn't as good as Michael's.\"\n\n\"How did you guys learn that?\"\n\n\"Father figured it out. He took notes.\"\n\n\"Notes on talking to lions?\"\n\n\"That, yes. Other animals too. Everything that has a language, really.\"\n\n\"That must have taken him a while.\"\n\n\"A hundred years or so for the first couple of species, I think. Less once he got the hang of it.\" Then, seeing the look on Steve's face, \"He's very old, you see. And he stayed busy. Languages are really the least of it.\" She sighed. \"Really. The very least of it. Trust me on this.\"\n\n\"Like how old are we talking about?\"\n\n\"No one's really sure. At least sixty thousand years. Probably a lot more. But the question isn't really meaningful. He spent a lot of his life in the Library. Time is different there.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Steve said, slowly. \"And is that where you're from too? The Library?\"\n\n\"What? Well\u2026yes and no. I was born in\u2026Cleveland, I think? Someplace that starts with a c, anyway.\" She gave a small, sad smile. \"But\u2026yeah. I guess I am from the Library.\"\n\n\"I don't get it.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I do either, honestly. I mean, I know what he did to us, but I really don't have any idea why.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Father.\"\n\n\"Your dad?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"That's just what we call him. He wasn't my biological father. I'm not sure that would even be possible. No one really knows what he is.\"\n\n\"So\u2026what? He's, like, an alien?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Maybe? But I don't think so. But I don't think he's human, either. Originally, I mean. The world's a lot different now than it was in the third age. There probably weren't any people when he was born.\"\n\n\" 'Third age'?\"\n\n\"This age, the age of Father's rule, is the fourth. Before Father, creation was ruled by something else. It was darker then. By all accounts it was a worse time. That's the world Father was born into, the one he conquered.\"\n\n\"I don't\u2014\"\n\nShe fluttered her hand, as if waving away a distraction. \"How Father started doesn't really matter.\"\n\n\"Then what does?\" Steve asked, irritated. She made him feel like a child.\n\nHe was obscurely pleased when she took this question seriously, wrinkling her brow as she thought about how to answer. \"He's smart,\" she said finally. \"That's the key. I think it all flowed from that.\" She looked at him. \"This is just speculation, you understand. I don't really know.\"\n\n\"Welcome to my world.\"\n\nShe frowned.\n\n\"Sorry. Go on, please. I'm interested.\"\n\nShe nodded, peered down into her club soda. \"OK. This first part I'm fairly sure of. Imagine someone like Isaac Newton, a once-in-history genius. Maybe human, maybe not so much. All that matters about him is that he's really, really smart. That and the fact that he was born into a terrible time, probably worse than you can imagine. Something like hell, except real. It was ruled by a thing called the Emperor.\"\n\n\"With you so far.\"\n\n\"Good. Here's where I start guessing. In the Library there are twelve catalogs\u2014but the first one, the white catalog, is medicine. I think that might be significant. Maybe Father started out as whatever passed for a doctor in those days. Father stumbled over something that was very useful for repair\u2014a plant, a potion, whatever. Somehow he figured out how to stretch out his life, to buy himself time. And he used that time to learn more, live longer. Eventually he was satisfied that he could live as long as he wanted, heal whatever wounds came up. After that\u2026he used that time to teach himself other things.\"\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026the second catalog is war. I think that might not be a coincidence, either. Father is crafty. I imagine he was quiet at first, planning, arranging things, gathering his power. How do you guys say? 'Flying under the radar.' Then, eventually, when he was ready\"\u2014she tapped the bar with one lacquered fingernail\u2014\"he turned his attention to the author of his misery. He understood, I think. The only real escape from hell is to conquer it. He had allies\u2014Nobununga was a key player, and someone named Mithraganhi. They're the only ones who knew for sure what happened, and they aren't talking.\"\n\n\"The three of them killed him? This Emperor guy?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026I doubt Father let him off that easy. But yeah, they usurped him.\"\n\n\"OK. Then what?\"\n\n\"I don't know. The records are lost. But one way or another, the third age ended. There were other battles after that, betrayals, wars. Enemies rose and fell. The Duke, Q-33 North, others. Eventually Father grew powerful enough that no one could challenge him.\"\n\n\"So where do you come in? Collective 'you,' I mean. You and David and the rest.\"\n\nShe took a sip of her club soda. \"Sixty thousand years later, give or take. Twenty-three years ago. It was late summer. I was maybe eight or nine when they\u2026well. That was when he adopted us.\" She considered. \"Or maybe 'adopted' isn't the right word. We were more like his apprentices.\"\n\n\"Then what\u2026\" Steve trailed off. The TV behind the bar was tuned to CNN. During dinner the coverage had centered on the sun's mysterious absence\u2014what was up with that?\u2014but now, evidently, there was Breaking News.\n\nWolf Blitzer, looking dazed, was talking over some grainy camcorder footage taken from the sidewalk in front of the White House. A section of the wrought-iron fence around the front lawn was broken away. There was a bare, bloody footprint on the sidewalk next to the body\u2014unconscious or dead\u2014of a teenage boy. The camera looked up. In the background, the East Wing of the White House was in an uncontrolled blaze. Talons of fire thirty feet long clawed at the night sky. Wolf Blitzer was saying things like \"catastrophic loss of life,\" and \"constitutional order of succession.\"\n\n\"Fuuuuck me,\" Steve said softly.\n\nThe images were grainy, and whoever was holding the camera wasn't doing a very good job of keeping it steady. Even so, Steve could make out a man in the middle distance, silhouetted against the fire. He carried a long stick that flashed yellow when the light caught it right. And\u2026oh. Oh, wow.\n\nThe puffy bit at his midsection could only have been a tutu.\n\nSteve ordered a tequila.\n\nCarolyn followed his gaze. Seeing what was on TV, she nodded. \"Are you about done? We'll need to head out soon.\"\n\n\"I guess,\" Steve said, distracted.\n\nCarolyn got up and disappeared into the ladies' room. Now Wolf Blitzer was doing a live interview with a lawyer type who'd seen the attack on the White House. The lawyer, mildly hysterical, kept running his fingers through his thinning hair and repeating \"He killed three guys, man! Three of 'em! Messed 'em alllll up!\" Every so often Blitzer would nod, gravely but encouragingly. While they were talking, someone blew up the Capitol Building. Shrapnel from the blast\u2014it might have been an office chair\u2014ripped off the hysterical guy's left arm. The overpressure knocked Wolf Blitzer on his ass. A second later Erin Burnett cut to a recorded interview with a soccer mom in Maryland who had seen something \"bigger than an elephant\" walking down the side of the interstate.\n\nThe bartender refilled Steve's tequila without asking and poured one for himself.\n\n\"You ready?\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Yeah\u2014I mean no. Or maybe. I guess. Do we have another minute? I just\u2026\" He nodded at the tequila.\n\n\"OK. But hurry.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\" He knocked off half the tequila at a gulp. \"Did you have something to do with that?\"\n\nOn TV, the woman who had seen the elephant thing held up her hand. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She was screaming. The skin of her arm was pitch-black, as if it had been dipped in ink, and something was wrong with her fingers\u2014they quivered, not like fingers at all anymore. They looked to Steve like tentacles.\n\n\"Not really. Well\u2026indirectly. It comes from Barry O'Shea, or maybe one of his people. They're very contagious.\"\n\n\"Who? Contagious? What?\"\n\n\"She's got a\u2014it's called a reality virus. It's not actually that dangerous, it just looks bad. The tentacles act like, umm, antennas, sort of. They make her receptive to the underthoughts. If she lets it go untreated she could get possessed.\"\n\n\"Possessed? You mean, like, by demons? That kind of possessed?\"\n\n\"What? No.\" Carolyn laughed. For one horrifying moment Steve thought she might pinch his cheek. \"There's no such thing, Steve.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"Silent Ones. They're pure thought, but they manifest as big lumbering things, sort of silver. They're a relic of the third age. They can't be killed, but the sun's wide-spectrum radiation was deep enough to make them inert. With it gone, Barry's decided it's time to make his move. Does that make sense?\"\n\nSteve just looked at her. \"No. No, it really doesn't.\"\n\n\"Well\u2026don't worry about it. When things settle down I'll sort that part out. Barry is a lightweight.\" She nodded at the tentacle woman. \"Anyway, there's an easy cure.\"\n\n\"An easy cure for having your fingers turn into monster hands?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026easyish. The best thing, obviously, is just don't touch him in the first place.\"\n\n\"Oh, obviously.\"\n\n\"Don't worry so much, Steve. People will adjust.\"\n\n\"Adjust to what, exactly? I still don't understand what all this is about.\"\n\n\"It's about the Library,\" Carolyn said. \"Right now the only thing that matters is who takes control of Father's Library.\"\n\n\"Library? Who gives a damn about a library?\"\n\nCarolyn rolled her eyes. \"Americans.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You've seen a little of what we can do\u2014Lisa, me, David. What did you think?\"\n\nSteve swallowed. \"Some of it was\u2026yeah, it was pretty amazing.\"\n\nCarolyn's face was bathed in the red light of the bar lamps, but her eyes were dark. \"What you've seen is nothing, Steve. Parlor tricks. For all intents and purposes, the power of the Library is infinite. Tonight we're going to settle who inherits control of reality.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Just what I said.\"\n\n\"Carolyn\u2026that's just crazy. I know you can do some weird stuff, but\u2014\"\n\nShe held up her hand. \"We can argue later. But right now we need to go.\"\n\n\"Go where, exactly?\"\n\n\"Garrison Oaks,\" she said.\n\n\"Why would we do that? I just got away from there. It was the exact opposite of fun. And why the hell did you send me in there in the first pl\u2014\"\n\n\"Later. Now I have to meet David. He'll be done with Erwin soon.\"\n\n\"Erwin? David's with Erwin?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Erwin was trying for an ambush. If we don't hurry, David will kill him.\"\n\n\"When you say 'meet David,' what exactly do you mean? Are you\u2026you're not, like, conspiring with that guy, are you?\"\n\nShe didn't answer. Try as he would, she would say nothing else."
            },
            {
                "title": "SORE, AND IN NEED OF COMFORT",
                "text": "Carolyn died about five years after the bonfire of the bull. It happened at the very end of winter, during that six weeks or so when the breeze still blows cold but the forest nights are filled with the yowls of rutting cats. She was sixteen or seventeen then.\n\nMostly when people are resurrected they sleep for a while, but Carolyn came back to life like a match flaring at midnight. There were hands on her; she was being touched. She snapped out, caught hold of someone's hair, pulled herself in to bite.\n\n\"Fuck! Carol-aagh!\" Jennifer's eyes, inches away, terrified.\n\n\"Oh\u2026\" Carolyn blinked at her for a moment, then let her go. \"Sorry.\"\n\nJennifer skittered back a few feet, out of grabbing distance. \"Dammit, Carolyn!\" She put her hand to her heart. \"You scared the shit out of me! Sheesh!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" She made an effort to sound calm, mild. It\u2014whatever it was, she couldn't quite remember\u2014wasn't Jennifer's fault.\n\nJennifer eyed her, suspicious. She didn't look stoned. \"It's OK. You shouldn't try to move just yet.\"\n\nCarolyn nodded. If she's not high, I must have been pretty bad off.\n\n\"OK, then.\" She showed Carolyn her empty hands, then patted the air as if soothing an invisible animal. \"Friends, right?\"\n\nCarolyn nodded again.\n\nSomewhat reassured, Jennifer moved back in and took her pulse. As she did, Carolyn looked around. Her small room, normally immaculate, was a wreck\u2014half the shelves were overturned, with books and scrolls scattered across the floor. Her desk lay on its side. One drawer was jammed halfway open, crooked, pointing skyward. She wrinkled her nose. \"What's that smell?\"\n\n\"Er\u2026well. Maybe you, a little bit.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"It happened a couple of days ago. And, you know\u2026it's been warming up.\" Jennifer averted her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Carolyn. We all just figured you were studying.\"\n\n\"How long\u2026?\"\n\n\"Three days, I think. How are your arms?\"\n\n\"My arms? What do you m\u2014Oh. Right.\" Her face clouded a little bit. It was coming back to her.\n\nLooking down, she saw faint white scars on her forearms, where she'd been stabbed with the pens. She glanced at the desk. One of the pens\u2014a gunmetal Mont Blanc, her favorite\u2014was still embedded in the wood. In the center of her new scars were little black ink marks. She flexed her hands, her arms. It didn't hurt at all. \"I'm fine, I think. Just a little sore.\"\n\n\"Sorry. I'm still not perfect at that part. How's your jaw?\"\n\n\"My jaw?\" Then, remembering, \"Oh. Right.\" She opened her mouth, chewed the empty air for a second, wiggled her jawbone from side to side. \"Good. It's fine, really. Thank you, Jennifer. You do good work.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well. I get lots of practice. I'm glad you're OK. You were pretty\u2014\" She cut herself off. \"I'm glad you're OK.\" Her work done, Jennifer rooted around in her kit, came up with her silver pipe. \"You mind?\"\n\n\"Go ahead. So\u2026I'm confused, Jennifer. What happened?\"\n\nJennifer gave her a professional sort of look. \"Do you still not remember it?\"\n\nCarolyn furrowed her brow, concentrating. \"It's hazy.\"\n\n\"Give it a minute. I'll wait.\" She set the pipe aside for the moment.\n\nCarolyn looked around the room\u2014her chair was overturned behind the desk. Her bed was still neatly made, but a pot of ink had spilled on the quilt. Ruined. One of the books on the floor was open to a page painted with long, broad brush strokes.\n\nThat last sparked something. \"Oh, wait\u2026while I waited on Alicia, I was studying Quoth.\"\n\n\"Studying what?\"\n\n\"Sorry\u2014Quoth. It's the language of storms. They're great poets, some of them.\" The open page was a snippet of a decades-old squall from Jupiter, the gloomiest stanza of a larger work. Now, she read, is hell's blackest pit.\n\nNo, Carolyn thought, eyes widening ever so slightly. That was only part of it. I was pretending to study Quoth. She looked to the bookshelf in the corner, but from this angle it was hidden behind the desk. Faking a casualness she did not feel, she steadied herself against a shelf and stood\u2014or tried to, anyway. She made it far enough to see that the little brown bookshelf in the corner behind her desk was upright and undisturbed. Seeing this, her relief was such that her legs gave way. She collapsed, graceless, back onto the floor. \"Dammit!\"\n\nJennifer blinked. Carolyn was usually very mild. \"Take it easy. Your heart probably isn't quite up to speed yet. So\u2026you remember now?\"\n\n\"It's coming back to me.\" Even over the pain there had been his voice, his smile. Try to scream. Scream for me. If you scream for me, I'll stop. If you scream for me, I'll let you go.\n\n\"Was it David?\"\n\nCarolyn didn't trust herself to speak. She looked up at Jennifer, brow knotted, jaw muscles jumping.\n\n\"Sorry. Dumb question. What happened?\"\n\n\"I remember most of it. But not the, you know, the, the end.\"\n\n\"That's normal,\" Jennifer said. \"This was the first time you died, right? No one ever remembers the first time. Next time you'll retain a little more, and so on.\"\n\n\"Oh. I've heard that. Why is it? Do you know?\"\n\n\"I do, but I shouldn't say. My catalog. Sorry.\"\n\nCarolyn shook her head. \"It's fine.\"\n\n\"Go on,\" Jennifer said, still gentle. \"Tell me what happened.\"\n\nCarolyn sat silent for a long time, looking into the middle distance. When she spoke, her tone was perfectly calm, bored even. She might have been talking about lunch. \"Does it matter?\"\n\nJennifer raised her eyebrows a little. She put her pipe back in the bag. \"Doesn't it?\"\n\nSomething in her voice set off alarm bells. Carolyn came back to herself. \"Sure! I mean, of course it does. I'm, um, very upset. Obviously.\"\n\n\"Do you want to talk about it?\"\n\nThe actual answer to that was that she'd rather have gone another round with David. Almost. But she couldn't say that, couldn't even think it. If Jennifer thought she was\u2026whatever\u2026it might bring attention on her. She might even say something to Father. \"I'd hate to take up too much of your time. I'm sure you've got things to\u2014\"\n\nJennifer reached out and touched her forearm. \"I do, but they can wait. It's what friends are for. Anyway, it's sort of my job.\"\n\nThe door to her room was soundproof, but Jennifer had left it open. Up on the main hall, Peter was practicing his drums. The beats echoed strangely, rolling down the metal hall. Carolyn felt them as much as heard them, a low rumble in her temples, her heart. Trying to channel Asha, she gave her best plaintive look. \"All right,\" she said in a small voice. \"Just give me a second.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nShe concentrated and, after a moment, managed to produce a single tear. She let it roll down her left cheek for an inch or two, then brushed it away. Perfect.\n\nJennifer sat down beside her on the floor, an intimate distance. \"You mind?\"\n\nShe did. \"No, of course not. So\u2026the way it started was David came in with a scroll. He said he wanted my help with a translation.\" She looked at Jennifer. \"But he was naked.\"\n\nJennifer gave a dark little nod. Walking around naked wasn't quite the breach of etiquette for the librarians that it would have been for Americans\u2014among other things, the baths were unisex\u2014but it was unusual. When Michael was just back from the ocean he sometimes forgot to dress. People laughed at him for it. No one laughs at David, though. And there was really only one reason he might go naked to Carolyn's room.\n\n\"What did you do?\"\n\nCarolyn looked at her. \"I asked him to leave. He did, and that was the end of it.\"\n\nShe had intended this as a kind of joke, but when she said it aloud it sounded bitter, petulant. Jennifer said \"sorry\" again, but she was eyeing Carolyn with a dispassionate, clinical stare that Carolyn didn't like at all.\n\nFocus. \"I started to get nervous when I looked at the scroll. It wasn't anything exotic\u2014just Pelapi, but a little old-timey. 'Verily' this and 'forsooth' that, you know?\"\n\n\"He needed help with that?\"\n\n\"No. Of course not. It was an excuse.\"\n\n\"Why'd you let him in?\" The dormitory doors had a peephole, and they locked on both sides.\n\n\" 'Let' might be a little strong. I was expecting Alicia, so I had left the door cracked. We were supposed to practice Swahili. It's everywhere in the twenty-eighth cen\u2014Hey! That reminds me\u2014you said I was, you know, gone for what? Three days?\"\n\n\"About that, yeah.\"\n\n\"Alicia didn't show?\"\n\n\"Nope. She's got called off to the impossible centuries. She's picking up pneumovore teeth or something. Michael was the one who found you.\"\n\n\"Michael's back?\"\n\nJennifer shook her head. \"Later. Right now we're talking about you. What happened next?\"\n\nCarolyn fought down a nearly insurmountable urge to glance at the small bookshelf in the corner. David had either found what was hidden there, or he had not. She thought not\u2014if he had, she would have woken up in the bull, or more likely not at all. But it was important to focus. This conversation could still be the end of her. Try to sound hesitant, like you're feeling your way through a dark room. Like you're avoiding something.\n\nThinking that, she flashed on the sound her jaw made, cracking under David's grip. Try to scream. Scream for me. But the pulse in her neck barely quickened and when she spoke her tone was just right. She had been practicing. The tremor in her index finger was clearly visible, though. I need to work on that. \"Well\u2026I translated the piece for David. It was about the sacking of Megiddo, a couple thousand years ago. The armies of Abla Khan\u2014\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Abla Khan. It's just another name for Father. Ablakha, Abla Khan, Adam Black?\"\n\n\"Oh. Sure. Sorry.\"\n\n\"So, they conquered Megiddo. But\u2014and this was the part David wanted me to read\u2014the victory came at a high price. So\u2026\" Carolyn, not completely faking, squeezed her eyes shut at the memory. \"And so\u2026seeing that his warriors were downtrodden, sore, and in need of comfort, Abla Khan did say unto them, 'Go into the cities, and take what spoils you may find there. This place is yours now, and all that dwell within it. Use them, man and woman alike, and do with them what you will.'\" She opened her eyes. \"When I got to that part, David started grinning.\"\n\nJennifer winced. \"Oh, Carolyn\u2026\"\n\n\"So, then David said what a coincidence it was. Here he was, a warrior of Abla Khan. As it happened, he was also downtrodden\u2014another coincidence\u2014and\u2026\"\n\n\"And\u2026?\"\n\n\"And there I was,\" she said. \"The spoils.\"\n\nJennifer gave a small, furious nod.\n\n\"And then\u2026he sort of reached out and grabbed me.\" She nodded at her chest.\n\n\"Just like that?\"\n\n\"Yup. Just like that. The weird thing was, he didn't seem cruel about it.\"\n\nJennifer, eyebrows raised, looked around the room.\n\n\"Well, not at first. He acted like he thought he was being seductive. Like maybe he was doing me a favor, even.\"\n\nShe considered. \"I can see that. He does have an awfully high opinion of himself. What did you do?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I just looked at him.\"\n\nJennifer raised her eyebrows again.\n\n\"I didn't want to get him, you know, all riled up.\"\n\nJennifer gave her a measuring look. \"You know, Carolyn, you're pretty self-possessed, for a bookworm. Has anyone ever told you that?\"\n\n\"No. You're the first.\" Out in the hall the drums were pounding, pounding.\n\n\"Is that when he, you know\u2026\"\n\n\"No. I mean, he tried. But I got in a lucky shot.\"\n\n\" 'Lucky shot'?\"\n\n\"He threw me down on the ground, and I sort of mule-kicked him.\"\n\n\"You kicked David.\"\n\n\"A little.\"\n\n\"He didn't, you know, block it or whatever?\"\n\n\"I caught him off guard. I don't think he was expecting me to fight.\"\n\nJennifer boggled at her. \"No. Probably not. But Carolyn\u2026if you don't mind my asking\u2026why?\"\n\n\"Why what?\"\n\n\"Wouldn't it have been\u2026easier\u2026to just sort of go along? I mean, your mandible wasn't just broken, it was powdered, about the worst I've ever seen. And he nailed you to\u2014\"\n\n\"I remember, Jennifer. I was there.\"\n\n\"Sorry. But you see my point?\"\n\nJennifer was right. David was still Father's favorite. He had privileges. It would have been easier to fall back into herself, to go away until he was done. That was what she had done the first time David came naked to her chambers. She would undoubtedly do so again. It wasn't pleasant, but neither was it as bad as, say, her homecoming banquet.\n\nThis time, though, simply retreating into herself had not been an option. The angle at which she fell would have put David at eye level with her little corner bookcase. Raping her was one thing. But letting him get a look at her corner bookcase\u2014that she absolutely could not allow.\n\nJennifer was looking at her much too intently. Carolyn's pulse thrummed in her temples. If you scream for me, I'll stop. Up in the hall, Peter's drums were approaching some sort of crescendo. If you scream for me, I'll let you go. Now, just as she had provoked David so that he might beat her into some other corner before raping her, she understood that she must not\u2014must not\u2014let Jennifer guess why. Thinking fast, Carolyn let a little of her true heart slip out, let it show on her face. \"Why?\"\n\nThe beat of the drums rolled down the hall like the pulse of an angry giant.\n\n\"Why?\" she said again, a little louder this time. The best lies have an element of truth at their core. \"Why? You and David have met at some point, have you not?\"\n\n\"Well, sure, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Then don't ask me about why, Jennifer. Why should be fucking obvious to a blind person.\" Almost shouting now.\n\n\"Of course.\" Jennifer cringed back from her, desperation and helpless misery flashing across her face for a split second before her professional calm reasserted itself. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nCarolyn could see that she really was, too. She had believed every word. And, coward or no, Jennifer had a kind heart. She only ever meant to help. Carolyn took her voice down to conversational levels, slipped her fury back into its sheath. \"It's OK. I'm sorry too. It's been kind of a long day. Long week, whatever.\"\n\n\"Of course. Still friends?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" This was true. It was also completely irrelevant. She wondered if Jennifer understood that.\n\n\"Good. I'm sorry, Carolyn. I didn't mean to push. But we do need to talk. I think you're more upset than you let on.\"\n\n\"I'd like that.\" She felt like screaming. Instead she gave a wan smile. \"But not today, OK?\"\n\n\"OK. But soon.\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nJennifer nodded. Then, with her professional duties discharged, she turned her attention back to her little silver pipe. A moment later she blew out an enormous cone of smoke and made a little \"ahh\" sound. \"I have to say, though, you've got amazing coping skills.\" She shook her head. \"Between us, you aren't the first person David's nailed to a desk. Maybe it's like a fetish or something? He pulled the same thing on Peter last month. Peter at least lived through it, but he's a wreck. If I don't keep him drugged to the eyeballs, he just curls up in the nearest corner and cries.\" The bowl of her pipe flared orange as she took another drag. \"Not that I'm judging, mind you. I'd be a mess myself.\"\n\nCarolyn looked up, surprised. She assumed David had come to visit them all at one time or another. \"He's never\u2026?\"\n\n\"Nope. Not me. Not so far, anyway. I'm starting to think he never will.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Interesting. \"Why do you think that is?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I'm not sure. It could conceivably be gratitude. There have been times when he would have been in some pretty bad pain if it weren't for me.\"\n\n\"I remember. But\u2026gratitude? David?\"\n\nShe sighed. \"Yeah. You're right. Probably not. I always try to think the best of people. It's a weakness. It's more likely that he's worried that someday I'll just leave him dead.\"\n\nCarolyn had been chewing over ways to bring up this very topic. She thought she knew the answer, but she owed it to Jennifer to be sure. \"Would you?\"\n\n\"Would I what?\"\n\n\"Leave him. Dead.\"\n\nJennifer looked up from her pipe. \"Well, now. It's funny that you should ask. Something very like that came up just the other day. He and Margaret were having one of their evenings\"\u2014she arched an eyebrow significantly\u2014\"and I was supposed to come by in the morning and do my thing.\"\n\n\"Heal them?\"\n\n\"Resurrect them.\"\n\n\"Seriously? Both of them?\"\n\nJennifer nodded. \"At least once a month, lately. It's Margaret's idea, I think. It started a couple years ago with broken arms. Since then it's sort of escalated. Once he's done with her, he has a sort of hangman's noose for himself.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"Do you? Explain it to me, then.\" Jennifer sighed. \"Anyway, I was standing there looking at them\u2014it was a real mess, half a day's work at least\u2014and it occurred to me how no one ever seems to have any idea how much time has passed when I bring them back. And with Alicia's thing about clocks\"\u2014she smashed them if she saw them, Carolyn kept hers in a drawer\u2014\"it can be kind of difficult to tell one day from the next around here.\" Jennifer took another puff. \"So I thought about it for a minute, and then I shut the door and went down to get breakfast.\"\n\n\"Wow.\" Carolyn shook her head, grinning. \"A day or two without David, huh?\"\n\nJennifer grinned back. \"I didn't think any of you would mind.\"\n\n\"We would have given you a parade. Why didn't you say something?\" Jennifer's expression flickered to darkness. \"Well\u2026it didn't exactly work out.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Father came home early,\" Jennifer said quietly. \"That afternoon. He was the one who found them, who brought them back.\"\n\nCarolyn felt a cold burst of fear on Jennifer's behalf. Just as Carolyn did translations as needed, it was Jennifer's responsibility to resurrect them when they died, either at a preordained time requested by the deceased or, in the case of accident, as soon as possible. Intentionally forsaking your catalog wasn't as bad as sharing it, but it was bad enough. \"Oh\u2026oh no. What did he do?\"\n\nJennifer looked at her levelly. \"He took me up to the bull.\"\n\n\"Oh my God.\"\n\n\"I know. I've never been so scared in my life. He didn't make me get in it or anything, we just went up there. And I got a stern talking-to. Professional responsibility, the patient relies on you, et cetera.\"\n\nCarolyn goggled at her. \"That's it?\" The bull was probably a little excessive for this, even by Father's standards. But she would have expected something like fifty lashes. Fifty minimum. Nothing up to \"skinned alive\" would have surprised her.\n\nJennifer nodded. \"That's it.\"\n\n\"Any idea why?\"\n\nJennifer shrugged. \"He's never been as hard on me as on the rest of you, but for something like this\u2026well, I was as surprised as you are.\"\n\nCarolyn gave her an expectant look.\n\n\"I don't actually know, but\u2026look, this is just between us, OK?\"\n\nCarolyn nodded.\n\n\"It crossed my mind that if something happened to Father, I might be the only one around who could bring him back.\"\n\n\"What about\u2014\"\n\n\"Liesel\"\u2014one of Father's courtiers\u2014\"is getting on in years and, honestly, she was never much good to begin with. Anyway, I've heard rumors that there might be\u2026political issues. That was always an uneasy truce. Liesel was never particularly happy with this iteration of reality, is what they say. So far as I know she and I are the only other ones who've studied the white folio.\" The white folio, medicine, was where the secret of the resurrection was written down.\n\n\"Interesting.\" Carolyn considered. \"Have you thought about what you'd do if it came to that?\"\n\n\"Came to what?\"\n\n\"If Father were dead,\" Carolyn said levelly, \"and you were the only one left who could bring him back.\"\n\nJennifer's eyes went wide. Speaking formally, as if to an audience, she said, \"I would resurrect Father, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Carolyn said.\n\nThen, whispering, \"I\u2014Carolyn, I don't know if you know this, but there are things you don't even want to think about. Not around Father, maybe not anywhere. I mean that literally. Not even think.\" She paused, then said, very quietly, \"He can hear.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Carolyn said, also whispering. She did, too. But there's also such a thing as a calculated risk. She wondered if Jennifer knew about those. Probably not. Gentle, frightened people didn't think much about calculated risks. \"He can't be everywhere, always. Can he?\"\n\nJennifer's eyes narrowed. She looked away, then busied herself with the drawstring on her bag. \"I don't want to hear any more of this. I mean it, Carolyn. Not now, not ever. I won't say anything about it\u2014I won't even think anything about it, if I can help it, but don't ever say anything like that to me again. If you do I'll go straight to Father. Am I understood?\"\n\n\"You are,\" she said. The professional part of her mind noticed that Jennifer had used the phrase 'Am I understood?'\u2014Father's preferred version\u2014rather than the more colloquial 'Understand me?' that the rest of them used among themselves. Must be spending a lot of time with him, Carolyn thought. \"I won't. And I didn't really mean anything, Jennifer, I just\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah. That's fine. No problem, really. We'll pretend it never happened.\"\n\nCarolyn nodded. It seemed safer not to speak.\n\nJennifer slipped forceps into her bag and pulled it shut. \"OK, look. I need to go. And I imagine you could use some time to yourself.\"\n\n\"Also a bath. But thank you, Jennifer. For everything.\"\n\n\"You really are welcome.\" Jennifer hesitated. \"Look\u2026later tonight Rachel and Alicia and I are going to smoke some weed and go up and watch the Milky Way. Just us girls, but Peter made a picnic basket. We'd love to have you come along.\"\n\n\"That's really nice of you, but I can't. I'm a little behind. I've got a test coming up and\u2014\"\n\nJennifer held up her hand.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Forgive me, Carolyn, but that's bullshit. You're not behind in anything. The way you work you could be dead for a year and still be two weeks ahead of schedule. Why don't you come with us? It'll be fun. You still remember fun, right?\"\n\nCarolyn gave her another smile, noticeably cooler. \"I really can't.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Jennifer drummed her fingers against the door frame. \"I wasn't going to bring this up until later, but\u2014\"\n\n\"I really need to\u2014\"\n\n\"Just give me a second. OK? I'll be quick.\"\n\nCarolyn gave a very small nod. She wasn't smiling at all anymore.\n\n\"Thank you.\" Jennifer drew in a breath. \"Look\u2026part of my catalog is that they teach you how to talk to people. Some people, you want to talk around the edges of a situation. Others, you want to fluff things up, put the best face on it that you can.\"\n\n\"Oh? How interesting.\"\n\n\"But with the strong ones, the best approach is to dispense with that sort of thing. You just lay out the facts. That's what I'm going to do with you.\"\n\n\"I appreciate that. You've always been a good friend, Jennifer. You've always been very\u2014\"\n\nJennifer held up her hand again. \"Spare me. I'm being straight with you, Carolyn. Do me the same courtesy.\"\n\nCarolyn nodded. \"All right. If you like. What do you want to tell me?\"\n\n\"Thank you. Here's what I think: There's a particular species of crazy that people around here are prone to. Margaret has it worse than anyone I've ever heard of. David has it as well. They're both lost causes\u2014I'll try, but unless things change radically, what they have is not something I'm going to be able to fix.\"\n\n\"What's that got to\u2014\"\n\n\"You're showing signs as well,\" Jennifer said soberly. \"I was going to bring it up anyway, even before this\u2026business\u2026with David.\"\n\n\"Signs?\"\n\n\"With this particular species of crazy, you stop trying to make things better. You start trying to maximize the bad. You pretend to like it. Eventually you start working to make everything as bad as possible. It's an avoidance mechanism.\" Jennifer looked Carolyn directly in the eyes. \"It can't actually work. That's why they call it crazy.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Carolyn said. \"That's very interesting. Thank you for that information.\"\n\nSighing, Jennifer leaned back against the door frame. \"Yeah. OK. Just think about it, all right?\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\nJennifer opened the door and, blessedly, stepped out into the hall. \"Look, if you don't want to come tonight, that's fine. I can't make you. But I think you should. That's my professional opinion, and my opinion as your friend. Also, in the unlikely\u2014but welcome\u2014event that you'd like to talk more about, you know, the other stuff, you know where to find me. Lacking that, best of luck to you and you have my condolences.\"\n\nThey looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Carolyn said, \"Is that all?\"\n\nJennifer rolled her eyes. \"Yeah. That's all.\"\n\n\"Thanks again.\"\n\n\"Sure, of course. We're going to meet at the jade stairs around sunset.\"\n\nCarolyn shut the door."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 49",
                "text": "When Jennifer was gone, Carolyn went down to the baths. They were communal and unisex, but there was no one there at the moment. She filled one of the tubs with the hottest water and bathed herself. She stood up and dried off.\n\nShe took down a clean robe to dress, looked at it, then hung it back up again. She filled the tub a second time. She felt the filth of him on her even still. She rummaged in the closet until she found a very stiff brush and a caustic soap used to remove tar or certain toxins. She scrubbed herself with these until her skin was raw, scrubbed until her skin was bleeding. She only stopped when she noticed she was sobbing. Then she composed herself and dried off a second time.\n\nRachel came in while she was dressing. She gave Carolyn a sympathetic look. \"Hey,\" she said. \"How are you holding up?\"\n\n\"Fine. Why?\" She busied herself with putting up her hair.\n\n\"I, um\u2026you know. I heard.\" Rachel walked over and put her hand on Carolyn's shoulder. \"If you want to come by later, Alicia and I could\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn looked down at Rachel's hand. \"Thank you,\" she said, \"but I'm fine. Really, it was nothing.\"\n\n\"Um\u2026OK. If you say so. But if you change your\u2014\"\n\n\"You're very kind.\" Her tone sounded a little bit like David's. Neither of them recognized this consciously, but Rachel let her hand drop.\n\n\"OK,\" Rachel said again.\n\nCarolyn walked back down the hall to her room. On the way out she passed David and Father walking down the hall. They were both covered head to toe in ballistic armor, and sweating.\n\nFather didn't seem to notice her, but David gave her a two-dimple grin. \"Hello, Carolyn.\"\n\nShe nodded back at him, expressionless. \"Hello, David.\"\n\nHe tipped her a wink.\n\nCarolyn didn't react at all.\n\nIn her room she shut the door behind her, and locked it. She didn't waste any more time thinking about David. It was the first time he had killed her, true, but he had hurt her before and she'd survived. This was her world. She had adjusted.\n\nInstead, she cleaned. She was by nature a tidy person, and this business had left her room cluttered. Teeth gritted, she shelved the books first, then turned the desk back over and scraped off the blood. The Mont Blanc he had crucified her with was ruined, but she thought the Montegrappa he used on the other arm would be fine with a new nib. Jaw muscles jumping, knuckles white, she cleaned the pen with a solution of ammonia and water, polished it, and set it back in the coffee cup she used as a holder.\n\nBy sunset, around the time Jennifer and Rachel and Alicia were setting off on their picnic, she had the room back in something like good order. Only then did she return to the scrap of paper she had been holding when David came in. When he shut the door behind him, she used it as a bookmark for the text on Quoth. He hadn't noticed.\n\nThe bookmark was something she had found three years ago, in a Spanish text. It was a rough draft from a book on various methods of travel. It was not part of her catalog. It had apparently been left in the Spanish text by accident. It described something called the \"alshaq urkun\" which \"maketh the light to pass through.\" It was related to something called the \"alshaq shabboleth,\" which \"maketh the slow things swifte\" in some deep conceptual way. The alshaq shabboleth apparently had some side effects that rendered it impractical.\n\nAlshaq urkun, though, was eminently practical. The way alshaq urkun worked was by making physical objects transparent to the electromagnetic spectrum\u2014invisible, among other things. When it was invoked on, say, a person, that person might walk about freely and unobserved, no matter who was watching.\n\nIt had some drawbacks, too. The worst of them was that the rods and cones of the eyes were also transparent to light\u2014that rendered you completely blind for however long the alshaq was invoked. But if you were careful, and if you planned your route in advance, you could get around just fine.\n\nCarolyn picked up the book that was only slightly hidden on the small corner bookshelf, the book whose presence she had concealed from David at such horrific cost. David would have recognized it immediately, of course\u2014it was bound in red leather, as were all the books of his catalog. Carolyn's own catalog was green. The title of the red book was Mental Warfare vol. III: The Concealment of Thought and Intention. It was a master-level text. Carolyn had finished it just the night before she died.\n\nShe stood in the doorway of her cloister, then performed the ceremony of the alshaq urkun. She didn't need to consult the slip of paper, not anymore. Everything she needed was committed to memory. When she was done, the world went dark. Red book in hand, she turned right. There were thirty-seven steps down the hall to the staircase. There were thirteen steps up to the main level of the Library, each of them nine inches high. That brought her to the jade floor. From there, one thousand and eighty-two steps took her to the ruby floor, where all books with red bindings were shelved.\n\nStill counting her steps, she brought the book she had hidden back to the shelf from which it had come\u2014radial eight, case twenty-three, shelf nine. She returned it to the twelfth slot from the right, just where she had found it the week before. She would not need to consult it again. She had studied diligently. She had mastered the concealment of thought and intention. Now it was time to move on to other things.\n\nShe took down a different book from shelf two of the same case, slot eight. It would be red as well, she knew, with a cover the color of arterial spray.\n\nBack in her quarters, Carolyn shut the door behind her. She went to her desk, sat down, lit the oil lamp. Even with the blood gone, her desk was scarred with two holes, just under arm's length apart. She considered filling them, then decided against it. She would look at them from time to time. They would help her focus. Then, with a small smile, she opened the red book she had stolen\u2014well, borrowed\u2014from David's catalog.\n\nThis was cheating a little bit. She had first happened on the alshaq urkun bookmark about three years ago. She had been studying ever since. She started with Jennifer's catalog, then bounced around as her plan began to take shape. The course of study she'd laid out wouldn't have brought her to this volume for another month or two. But it was one she'd been looking forward to very much, and she thought that tonight she deserved a treat. The title and author were printed on the cover in the gold leaf of Western tradition. It was called The Plotting and Execution of Vengeful Murder by Adam Black.\n\nShe opened it to \"Chapter 11: Notes on the Subjugation of the Martially Superior Foe.\"\n\nShe read until late in the night.\n\nIt was very comforting."
            },
            {
                "title": "Notes on the Subjugation of the Martially Superior Foe",
                "text": "\"This is far enough,\" Carolyn said.\n\nSteve rolled to a stop about a quarter mile down the road from the entrance to Garrison Oaks. He didn't bother to pull over onto the shoulder. Carolyn was twitchy, nervous, swaying and rocking in her seat. Steve had never seen her like this. Naga watched from the backseat, fascinated.\n\nIt was around nine p.m. Now even the light of the stars was gone. Is it just cloudy, or did she do something to them, as well? He realized, dimly, that he was in something like shock.\n\n\"Why are we stopping?\"\n\nCarolyn pointed. Not far from the subdivision sign a streetlight shone down, a little island of light in the long sea of black. Steve squinted. Three people stood under the light. His vision wasn't good enough to make out faces, but one of them was clearly wearing a tutu. Somewhere in his belly fear squirted, bright and cold.\n\n\"Is that David?\"\n\nCarolyn pursed her lips, considering, then nodded. \"He's bleeding. Erwin must be better than I realized. It's been a long time since anyone made David bleed.\"\n\n\"That's Erwin down there?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"What's he doing here?\"\n\n\"He's angry. He came to 'fuck a bitch up.' \"\n\n\"Anybody in particular?\"\n\n\"The enemy. Me, David, anyone else who's left. He figured out that we'd turn up here eventually. He's very smart.\"\n\n\"But what\u2014\"\n\n\"Shh!\"\n\nErwin raised the pistol to David's face. David grinned. He leaned forward and put his nose right at the tip of the gun's barrel. Erwin fired. The pistol's slide slammed down on an empty chamber. David backhanded Erwin across the mouth.\n\n\"OK,\" Carolyn said. \"Game time.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Later,\" she said. \"Right now I want you to go to the Library. Do you remember which one it is?\"\n\n\"I do but\u2014you're not going down there, are you?\" Steve gestured at the streetlamp, David. In the backseat Naga rumbled.\n\n\"I am. And you're going to go to the Library. You'll be safe there. I'll be along when I've finished.\"\n\n\"What? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what that guy can\u2014\"\n\n\"Steve, you need to listen,\" Carolyn said. \"There isn't much time. I need to go down there, and you can't come.\"\n\n\"You're going there? Alone?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"I'll go with you,\" he said. \"Maybe I can\u2014\"\n\n\"Steve, listen. I'm not saying this to insult you, but if it came to a fight against David, you would have absolutely no chance of winning. None. It could not happen.\"\n\nSteve opened his mouth to reply, but then he remembered how David had come to the jailhouse armed only with his spear, how he had filled the corridors of that place with the corpses of armed men. He shut his mouth. Then, after a moment, \"Oh-kay. Point taken. And you do?\"\n\n\"More than just a chance.\"\n\n\"Carolyn, unless you can fight a lot better than you've been letting on\u2014\"\n\n\"Steve,\" she said. \"Go. Just go. I can do this. You'll be safe inside the reissak. No one that matters can get to you there.\"\n\n\"How could you possibly know that?\"\n\n\"I just do.\" She hesitated. \"A long time ago, there was a\u2026sort of homecoming party. A feast. The main course was two deer. That's the reissak's trigger. No one who tasted of their flesh can approach the Library. And that's everyone of consequence. You'll be safe there.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Just go, Steve. Everything will be fine if you leave it to me.\"\n\nThey glared at each other. After a long moment, Steve said, \"All right. OK. But what do you want me to do if it doesn't work out the way you think? Should I come back, or\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" Her tone was flat. \"Don't try anything. I could lose. It's possible. It might happen. We'll know one way or the other in a few minutes. If I don't come for you in an hour or so, or if you see David at all, ever\u2014don't try anything. Find a gun and blow your brains out. Or hang yourself. Or jump off a bridge. Anything. David can't do the resurrections, not yet. Probably by the time he learns he will have forgotten about you.\"\n\nSteve gaped at her.\n\n\"I mean that literally,\" she said. \"I am not kidding. It is not a joke. Tell me that you understand.\"\n\nAfter a long moment he gave her the barest sliver of a nod. \"Sure,\" he said. \"Yeah.\" He didn't know whether he meant it or not.\n\nShe smiled, a little, then blew out a long breath. \"But it will not come to that.\" She spoke calmly, and with great certainty. \"I will not allow it.\" She examined her hands. Steve looked too. Her fingertips were steady, untrembling. \"I still love you, Steve. You should know that, too.\"\n\n\"You what?\" He paused. \"'Still?\" He trailed off, baffled, completely empty of things to say. After an uncomfortable moment he opened his mouth. \"Carolyn, I\u2026\" dribbled out.\n\nShe smiled, a little sadly. \"Wait until they're busy with me, then you and Naga sneak in over there.\" She pointed over her shoulder into darkness. \"The fence doesn't go all the way around. You'll be fine.\"\n\nHe followed her finger, saw nothing. \"What about the dogs?\"\n\n\"What? No. They won't be a problem.\"\n\nThey were a pretty damn big problem yesterday, he thought, but bit it back. There was something about her now, something like a hooded cobra, swaying. Instead he said, \"How can you be sure? I thought they were your father's\u2014\"\n\n\"You won't be harmed, Steve. The dogs obey me. They've been mine all along.\"\n\nSteve stared at her, his expression darkening. Dresden. \"Carolyn\u2014\"\n\n\"Later.\" Her voice was infuriatingly calm.\n\nSteve's eyes narrowed. Dresden, swarmed by the pack, buried under them, but still fighting as\u2026He felt his anger rising, fought it down.\n\n\"Now, I have to go,\" Carolyn said. \"Do you understand what you need to do?\"\n\nSteve managed to nod without looking too pissed off.\n\n\"I'll explain later,\" she said. \"Really.\" She studied him, clearly unhappy with what she saw. She frowned, then leaned over and kissed him once, very quickly, on his right cheek. It was over almost before he realized it was happening. Then she sank back in her seat, shut her eyes, let out a long breath. Without a word, she opened the car door and stepped out in front of the headlights. Her shadow stretched out, eclipsing David and Erwin and Margaret.\n\nFor just a moment Steve watched, transfixed.\n\nCarolyn was barefoot, and wore the same ridiculous clothes\u2014bicycle shorts, sweater, leg warmers\u2014he had first seen her in, now torn and dirty. There was a streak of dried blood down the side of her thigh. Steve could see himself and Naga framed in the rearview mirror, both of them bloody and taut, the lion peering over Steve's shoulder from the backseat. But at the same time he saw Carolyn walking, saw the way the muscles of her calves flashed in the headlights with each step.\n\nSomething in this tableau\u2014he never quite settled on exactly what\u2014put him in mind of Dresden, turning to face the pack of dogs, how every muscle of the lion's anatomy stood out in taut relief, the mute vehicles of his titanic and furious will."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 51",
                "text": "David was twirling Erwin's pistol on his fingertip. Erwin knelt on the ground in front of him, trying to stand. David put the gun against Erwin's head and said, \"Bang!\" He laughed and tossed the pistol into darkness. Margaret sat with the president's severed head in her lap, cooing softly to it. The president's dead lips were moving.\n\nCarolyn couldn't tell what he was trying to say. \"Hello, David.\"\n\nDavid turned. He was crusted in blood from head to toe, mostly dried. The lace of his tutu was stiff with it. It jutted out like knives. Here and there little bits of meat stuck to his skin. He smelled metallic, with just a hint of rot underneath, or maybe the rot was Margaret. He grinned from ear to ear, as happy as she had ever seen him.\n\n\"Looks like you've had quite an evening,\" Carolyn said.\n\nMargaret tittered.\n\n\"Hello, Carolyn,\" David said. He winked at Margaret and punched Erwin in the face. Erwin sagged to the ground, semiconscious. David turned to face her. \"So\u2026it was you?\"\n\nCarolyn nodded.\n\n\"I have to say, I'm more than a little surprised. You're so\u2026mousy.\"\n\n\"It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for.\"\n\n\"I'll keep that in mind. Father's dead, isn't he?\"\n\nShe nodded again.\n\nDavid's grin widened a little bit. His teeth were strong and brown. \"You killed him.\"\n\nShe nodded again.\n\nDavid threw back his head and laughed, long and loud. \"Amazing,\" he said. \"Simply amazing. I'll bet\"\u2014he wagged a finger at her\u2014\"I'll bet someone's been reading outside of her catalog. Hmm? Hmmmm?\" Carolyn smiled, shrugged.\n\nHe laughed again. \"I hope you were careful. You can get in trouble for that.\"\n\n\"I was.\"\n\n\"How did you kill him, if you don't mind me asking? Father is\u2014was\u2014very good. Even discounting the rest of his skills, I think he may have been the single best hand-to-hand fighter in the world. He told me he was stiffening up a bit, but you couldn't tell it by me. I\u2014I\u2014wouldn't have wanted to fight him. Not yet, anyway. Please tell me how you killed him. I am simply dying to know. Scholarly curiosity and all that.\"\n\n\"I used a knife.\"\n\n\"A knife.\" His tone was incredulous.\n\nShe nodded. \"I had the element of surprise, of course.\"\n\nOn the asphalt behind David, Erwin stirred, trying to push himself up.\n\nDavid's brow furrowed under thick, bloody locks. He kicked Erwin, but in a distracted way. He was studying her, trying to decide if she was lying to him. He was a little telepathic, she knew. Not to the same degree that Father had been, but he could see things in the minds of his enemies, especially in the heat of battle. She might have concealed the truth of what she said, might have let him wonder, but she didn't.\n\n\"The element of surprise,\" he said slowly. \"Yes. I'd say that you do have that. With a knife.\" He shook his head. \"Amazing. For what it's worth, I was leaning towards a knife myself. The simplest weapons are the only chance, against one like Father. Most people wouldn't understand that.\" He squinted at her, considering. \"I may have underestimated you, Carolyn.\"\n\nCarolyn didn't want him to pursue that line of thought. \"Did anyone get out at Mrs. McGillicutty's?\"\n\nErwin was on his knees now, crawling slowly away from them.\n\n\"Nope! I'm pretty sure it was just me and Margaret. Those soldiers were good, for Americans. Maybe a mouse could have snuck out. Not much else. Oh\u2014sorry, Carolyn. You and Michael were buddies, weren't you?\"\n\nCarolyn felt Margaret's gaze on her, hot and greedy. She was careful to keep emotion from her voice when she spoke. \"No,\" she said. \"Not really.\"\n\nMargaret frowned, disappointed, and turned her attention back to the president's head.\n\n\"And I suppose it's your reissak ayrial as well?\" David's tone was casual, but he wasn't fooling anyone. If the reissak was hers, that meant she had worked alone. When she was dead, the Library would stand unguarded. David would find a way in sooner or later. Then, unopposed, he and Margaret would plunder Father's catalogs. The universe would enter a darkness that would make the third age seem like paradise. Out of the corner of her eye Carolyn saw that Erwin had reached the sidewalk.\n\n\"Mine, yes.\"\n\n\"I thought so. What was your plan, then? You thought Nobununga and I would do one another in, perhaps?\"\n\n\"It was a possibility I considered.\" This was true. She had also rejected it. \"But he died earlier than I was expecting.\"\n\nErwin, groggy, picked up the empty pistol. He looked at it as if he didn't quite remember what it was.\n\n\"So then\u2026what? Were those soldiers supposed to do me in? Americans? Kill me?\" He smiled. \"Is that it?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Conceivably. There were a lot of them. They had guns. You're not invulnerable, David.\"\n\n\"True enough.\" David smiled. \"Neither are you.\"\n\n\"What if I told you that I have a propos\u2014\"\n\nFaster than she could even see, David's hand shot out. Her left cheek exploded with pain. She tasted blood. \"\u2014proposal. We could join forces, David. I've always admired you, you know\u2014\"\n\nAnother slap. More pain, this time on the right side. Margaret giggled.\n\n\"\u2014that. Admired your strength.\" Her heart was like ice. She dropped to her knees, her face inches from his crotch. \"I could be yours,\" she said. \"Willingly. I've always wanted that, you know. I often thought about you. In secret. I would have said something, but I'm so very shy.\"\n\nThe cogs of her plan were ticking into final alignment. At first she had rejected this approach out of hand. It was too obviously a ploy. Only after deep study had she considered the idea seriously. Father's texts were adamant about its effectiveness. As illustrated in any number of footnotes, men are almost always 50 to 60 percent dumber in matters involving their crotch. Close proximity enhances the effect. Now, with clinical approval, she saw that something stirred in the depths of David's tutu.\n\nMargaret raised an eyebrow. Erwin staggered into Garrison Oaks, inside the boundary of the reissak.\n\nSafe for now.\n\nCarolyn turned all of her attention to David. He looked skeptical, but not disinterested. \"Here,\" she said, \"let me show you.\" She reached out and stroked his leg with the tips of her sharp nails.\n\nDavid stank of rotting meat and sour sweat. She raised her hand into the fluffs of fabric and probed, gently, until she touched the shaft of his penis. \"There,\" she said, \"there.\" She traced the tips of her fingernails down it to his scrotum and cradled it in her palm. David tilted his head back, shivering with pleasure.\n\n\"There.\" She snarled, simultaneously digging in with the long, lacquered nails of her left hand, twisting, and yanking down as hard as she could. She didn't get both of his testicles, but one of them came away in her hand. His training would be up to the task\u2014after what he had suffered in the bull, it would be up to almost anything imaginable\u2014but it would take him a moment to marshal it. She had bought seconds.\n\nDavid roared. He struck out blindly, trying to backhand her, but Carolyn ducked under it. She was not so quick as he, but she had been practicing this moment every day for ten years. She let go of his crotch. Reflexively, he jumped back a step.\n\n\"You nasty bitch,\" David growled, not without admiration.\n\nFather's notes were clear on this topic as well\u2014there were several ways to incapacitate men instantly, but striking them in the crotch was not one of them. It would take a second or two before the real pain hit.\n\n\"Wait,\" she said slowly, \"I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong? I thought you liked it rough.\" David stared at her with increasing disbelief as she said this\u2026but he listened to the whole sentence. It took about four seconds.\n\nBy the time she finished speaking, he was near the true depth of his pain. David groaned.\n\nCarolyn, smiling, flicked the blood off her claws. \"Oh well. My mistake.\"\n\nDavid roared again. He balled his hands into fists and stepped toward her, one hand held protectively over his groin, bent over almost double.\n\nCarolyn rolled over backward, sprang to her feet, and took off running toward the gates. David was faster than anyone\u2026usually. Right now, though, not so much.\n\nBut she couldn't outrun him for long. He would be on her as soon as he had the pain under control. She sprinted toward the entrance to Garrison Oaks. In a dozen steps she was inside the gate\u2026and inside the perimeter of the reissak. She stopped then, and turned.\n\nSnow was just beginning to accumulate on the ground. The tracks of her bare feet stretched back to where David stood, now bent over double with pain. She was gratified to see a few drops of blood staining the snow below.\n\nDavid blew out a hot breath, vapor cloud white under the streetlight. He drew himself up to his full height. Margaret handed him his spear and faded back, as from a fire that burned too hot.\n\nDavid looked down at the footprints in the snow, then out into the shadows. His eyes blazed with murder, ancient and savage, the malevolent glare of a death god's black idol.\n\n\"I'm coming for you, Carolyn.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 52",
                "text": "With the expression of a man diving into ice water, David waded into the reissak. She watched him closely. His face betrayed no pain with the first step, nor the second, nor the third. But on the fourth he grunted\u2014very softly.\n\nCarolyn, still standing alone in the dark, heard his pain and smiled.\n\n\"Over here!\" she said, cheerful and mocking. She took a single, measured step away from him, closer to the Library. \"This way!\"\n\nDavid thudded after her, heavy and relentless.\n\nDavid would be capable of going much deeper into the reissak than any of the others, much deeper than he had thus far chosen to go. She knew he would have tricks for controlling pain, minimizing internal damage. There would be techniques.\n\nEven so, seeing his strength with her own eyes, she was in awe of it, the raw, brute will of him. She had caught him off guard with the testicle shot. Probably he had been toying with her as well. But there was no play in what he did now. The tendons of his neck stood out like cables. Sweat ran off him in a literal stream, trickling down his arms and dribbling off the end of his spear to steam in the snow.\n\nShe braced herself for what came next. \"Had enough? You really should turn around before it's\u2014aaagh.\" The cry was startled out of her, as much surprise as pain. He was so very quick. She looked down to see the barbed point of his spear sticking out of her left leg and felt real fear. He drew back, threw, and skewered me literally so fast that I couldn't see it.\n\nGrinning, David yanked the chain. Carolyn's legs failed her. Suddenly she was on her back on the asphalt.\n\nHe began reeling her in. The pain was immense. Carolyn alternated between straining against the chain and crab-walking with it to avoid having her back grated off by the road.\n\n\"Oh, David, no\u2026\" she said, injecting a tremble in her voice, knowing that it would excite him further. Inside, though, she was like ice. When she judged the moment was right she reached down and broke off the spear point.\n\nShe allowed a single, measured moan to bubble out, then turned over and began crawling away.\n\n\"Raah, you bitch.\" David changed spearheads. A moment later she was pierced again, this time through the foot. This pain dwarfed anything she had previously felt, ever, in all her life. As she clawed at the asphalt her fingernails peeled back, and this was like candles measured next to the sun. David yanked her back toward him. She barely noticed.\n\nHis hand clamped down on her ankle. His grip was like iron pincers, his fingers thick with calluses. He flipped her onto her back. She scrabbled at the rough asphalt of the road, desperate, clawing at it with her fingertips. Tiny pebbles shredded her shoulder blades. They were so very deep in the reissak ayrial that she thought even a few more inches would be enough to kill him.\n\nBut she could not move. He was too strong.\n\nDavid was reeling her in. He reached up and took her knee. Small bones creaked in his grip. She knew what he would reach for\u2014nonononono\u2014and he did. He dug his index finger into the hole his spear had left in her leg. He pushed.\n\nShe felt another scream bubbling up under his hands, just as she had so many times before. She pushed it back down. She kicked at the asphalt with her bare heels, struggling to move deeper into the reissak. He tortured her wound for another moment, then reached up to her collarbone. He did something terrible and it snapped, the sound of it muffled by her skin.\n\nShe let a scream slip loose\u2014just one. It was necessary, it was the bait she needed to draw him in that one final inch, but it cost her, too, in a way she hadn't expected. There was a note of truth in that scream.\n\nNow his hand was at her throat. He dug his pinkie finger into a pressure point below her jaw while using the rest of his hand to cut off her air. This is how he murdered me the first time, she thought. Auld lang syne.\n\nHer mind, scrabbling and frantic, flipped through her mental grimoire for anything that might help. She pounded him with her small hands, scratched him, poked at his eyes.\n\nDavid was implacable. David was a stone.\n\nNow there was a cloud around the edges of her vision. It didn't work, she thought. David is going to win. He's murdering me one final time. She thought of Steve as he had been at age twelve, tall and lanky, grinning in the summer sun. Behind her eyes, black flowers bloomed.\n\n\"This is just the beginning,\" David whispered. \"When I've mastered the other catalogs I'll call you back. We'll do this over and over again. We'll do this every night forever.\"\n\nFar behind her, out in the night, she heard a soft metallic tap, the sound of the final cog clicking into place. Hearing this she ceased drifting, coalesced, came back to herself.\n\nNow.\n\nCarolyn opened her eyes. Hypoxia occluded her vision almost completely\u2026but she saw well enough. She composed herself, stopped struggling. She smiled up at him, reached up and stroked his dimple gently with the remains of one ragged, bloody nail.\n\nDavid's smile withered at her touch. His voice came to her as from a great distance. \"What?\" he demanded. \"What? Stop! Why are you smiling at me?\"\n\nHer lips moved, soundless.\n\n\"What?!\" David said, screaming now. \"What is it, you crazy, horrible bitch?!\" The question wasn't rhetorical. As he asked it he took his hands away from her throat.\n\nCarolyn felt the urge to gasp and cough, but mastered it. She sipped a single, cool breath of night air, drew it into her lungs slowly, savoring the first breath of the rest of her life. When she was perfectly ready she spoke.\n\n\"And then\u2026\"\u2014she spat, blood spattering on his face in a fine spray\u2014\"from the east\u2026\" The words hissed out of her ragged, shattered throat as she took her finger away from his cheek. \"Thunder.\"\n\nDavid's face exploded."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 53",
                "text": "Time was short now. The bullet had caught David a little bit high of perfect, half an inch or so too far up the cheekbone\u2014a small miscalculation. The left half of his face was mostly gone. She could see his brains. Even taking his training into account, David would die quickly, one or two more heartbeats at most.\n\nBut both of his eyes worked, and he still had an ear. Any one of those would have been enough. Carolyn wrapped her hands around the back of his neck and pulled herself up. She examined the gaping hole in his head, reached up with the tip of one finger, and touched him, very gently, in a deep part of his brain. A small spark flashed at her touch. Then, in the second heartbeat, she leaned in close and whispered in David's ear, speaking the word that Father whispered to Mithraganhi so very long ago when he called up the dawn of the fourth age.\n\nFor David, hearing this\u2026\n\n\u2026time\u2026\n\n\u2026stopped.\n\nCarolyn slumped back onto the asphalt. Her breath puffed white under the streetlamp. She smiled a little, but couldn't bring herself to do much more. I did it, she thought. I really did. She felt no real triumph, not even relief. She was numb.\n\nIt was a pleasant species of numbness, though.\n\nAs a side effect of being outside of time, David was now weightless. She pushed him off her with the barest touch. He hung frozen in the night air, bobbing slightly, like a deflating balloon.\n\nCarolyn heard footsteps behind her. \"Hello, Erwin.\" Her voice was very hoarse. She sat up, coughing, and wrapped her arms around her knees. \"Can you help me up?\"\n\n\"Err\u2026\" Erwin said, speaking through lips that were split and swollen, \"I ain't for sure. I'll try.\" He limped toward her a little quicker. He was holding his left hand over a bleeding hole in his leg. In his right was the HK with which he had shot David. Smoke curled up out of the barrel.\n\nErwin reached down with one thick hand. Carolyn took it. He lifted her easily.\n\n\"What's wrong with him?\" He poked David with a finger. He spun easily, a foot or two off the ground.\n\n\"Don't do that,\" she said. \"Let me in there for a second, would you?\"\n\nErwin looked at her, then shrugged and stepped back.\n\nShe stopped David's spinning, then turned him so she could examine the wound. It would certainly have been fatal, even for one such as David. The left side of his head was missing. \"Good shot,\" she said, \"almost perfect, really.\" She flicked her eyes at Erwin. \"The angle was a little off, but that was my fault. We were supposed to be at a seven degree angle to you, but it was more like nine. It was tough to focus with that darn spear hole in my leg.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Erwin said slowly. \"I 'spect it was. How'd you know I'd\u2014\"\n\n\"Command Sergeant Major Erwin Charles Leffington, US Army, retired. Born April 8, 1965, late of the Eighty-Second Airborne. Before that, two years in US Army Marksmanship Unit. When was the last time you missed a shot, Erwin?\"\n\n\"Before tonight, you mean?\" David had allowed Erwin to empty the pistol at him before they arrived, for sport. \"I don't remember exactly,\" he said. \"It's been a while.\"\n\n\"Don't beat yourself up about it. You couldn't have hit him earlier. No one could. Come over here; let me take a look at that leg.\" She squatted down to examine the cut in Erwin's thigh. \"You're OK. No arterial bleeding. He was going to play with you for a while.\" She lay back on the street. \"I'm sorry about that. I had to wait until you were pretty beaten down. That way he wouldn't consider you a threat.\"\n\n\" 'Saright. Don't mind takin' some licks in a good cause.\" Erwin spat. \"And that guy was a real asshole.\"\n\n\"You have no idea.\" Carolyn closed her eyes, collecting herself. I did it, she thought again. I really, actually did.\n\n\"So\u2026what did I miss?\" Steve asked. He and Naga were walking down the road from the direction of the Library. \"What happened here?\"\n\n\"Dammit, Steve!\" Carolyn said. \"I told you to wait in the Library. Don't you ever listen?\"\n\n\"You're not the boss of me.\"\n\nErwin looked over his shoulder. \"Hey, kid. How ya doin'?\"\n\nSteve gave him a little wave. \"C'mon, don't keep me in suspense. What happened?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Erwin said, \"basically that asshole there was all strangling her, so I kinda shot him a little. In the face, like.\"\n\n\"Thanks, by the way,\" Carolyn said.\n\nSteve furrowed his brow, confused. \"How'd you manage that? When we rolled up you had just run out of bullets.\"\n\n\"I wondered about that myself,\" Erwin said. \"It was the damnedest thing. So, like, when you guys showed up the big dude just dropped me. I was too punchy to fight. I was gonna fall back to that house over there\"\u2014he pointed at the only house on the street with lights on\u2014\"and call for backup. In training, they drilled it into us never to leave a weapon on the field\u2014I used to beat the shit out of guys for that\u2014so on the way I grabbed my pistol, even though it was empty. Kind of by reflex, like.\n\n\"Then, when I was circling around the streetlight, I happened to look down. And, y'know, fuck me if there wadn't a full magazine right there in front of the sewer. Not the cleanest I've ever seen, but after I wiped it off on my shirt it worked just fine. I couldn't believe it. It was like magic.\"\n\n\"No such thing.\" Carolyn blew twin columns of smoke out her nostrils.\n\n\"Whoa,\" Steve said. \"I bet I know where it came from. Can I see that?\"\n\nErwin held up the pistol but didn't hand it over.\n\n\"Is that the same gun I took when I went out running?\" Steve asked. \"The one you gave him earlier?\"\n\n\"It is, yeah,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Then the magazine you found must have been the same one I dropped when the dogs jumped me.\"\n\n\"Hey, I bet it is!\" Carolyn said. She laughed. \"Imagine that!\"\n\nBoth the men were looking at her now. \"So\u2026\" Steve said slowly. \"You set this whole thing up? Me running yesterday\u2026the dogs\u2026so I would drop the magazine, where Erwin could find it? Right then, when David was grabbing you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Carolyn's eyes blazed out like searchlights in the night. \"Yes. I did.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Well, David was kind of a jerk.\"\n\n\"No, I mean why go to all that trouble? Couldn't you just\u2014\"\n\n\"There's no 'just.'\" She stepped around David's floating body, examining him as she spoke. \"Not with one like David. He's too skilled. He was the master of his catalog in all but name. Once I watched him kill a hundred Israeli soldiers\u2014armed men\u2014with that knife of his. That was just an exercise, part of his training. If you didn't take measures to stop it, he could hear your thoughts. There's no one on Earth who could have beaten him in a fair fight. But here, inside the reissak\u2014\"\n\n\"The what?\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Reissak ayrial,\" Steve chimed in. \"It's kind of a perimeter-defense system. It's very advanced!\"\n\nErwin gave him a look.\n\n\"Nothing to do with microwaves, though. That part was bullshit.\"\n\n\"You're kind of a smartass, ain't you, kid?\"\n\nSteve nodded modestly, scuffing his feet in the dirt like John Wayne talking to the pretty schoolmarm. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Well, couldn't you have\u2014\"\n\n\"Sent in the Army, maybe? A shitload of professionals\u2014big, burly fellows, well trained, with a lot of guns? Mmmmaybe\u2014just maybe\u2014I could figure out a way to get someone like Delta Force involved. Surely that would do it?\" She made a show of sniffing the air. The breeze still carried a hint of burning oil from the crashed helicopters. \"Oh, wait\u2026\" She laughed again.\n\n\"OK,\" Erwin said. \"But how'd you know I'd be\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you like that job with Homeland Security? Interesting work, I bet. Right up your alley.\"\n\n\"Yeah\u2026\"\n\n\"How'd you end up there?\"\n\n\"Kind of an accident,\" Erwin said. \"I went out to lunch and\u2014\"\n\n\"Ran into an old buddy of yours? Someone you knew in high school? Just a chance thing? A real long shot?\"\n\nErwin didn't answer, only looked at her. Understanding dawned in his eyes.\n\nSteve got it too. \"Holy friggin' crap.\"\n\n\"I've been working on this for a long time,\" Carolyn said. \"I like to plan. It's something I'm good at. You've seen those guys who do trick shots in pool? Make the cue ball jump, or roll backwards or whatever? This was my trick shot.\"\n\nErwin and Steve looked at each other. After a moment, Erwin nodded. \"Ah-ite. If you say so, I guess I believe ya. But why's he all floaty like that?\"\n\n\"That was me too.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I figured,\" Erwin said. \"What I mean is, how?\"\n\n\"I put him outside of time.\"\n\n\"Come again?\"\n\n\"I changed some physical constants inside his body. For him, time isn't passing anymore.\" Her throat felt ragged, torn. She coughed, then spat blood into the snow. \"David won't fall because, falling, you see, that's a process. But if time doesn't pass, there really can't be a process, as such, can there?\"\n\nErwin chewed on this, then filed it away for later consideration. \"Yeah, OK. Why?\"\n\n\"Why what?\"\n\n\"Why'd you, uh, do it? He woulda been dead in just a second or two, I figure.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Yes. He would have. That's why.\"\n\n\"I don't follow.\"\n\n\"Have you ever died?\"\n\nErwin gave her a look. \"Can't say as I have.\"\n\n\"I have, a couple of times. It's not as bad as you might think. Not nearly bad enough for him.\"\n\n\"But this is?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. But he thinks it's worse. That's what matters.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"Well, David died a good bit. It was part of his training. Not as much as Margaret, but enough that he was used to it. A few years ago I overheard the two of them talking about it. By then Margaret didn't care. She'd kill herself if dinner was late. But she said that there was one part that still bothered her. Not the pain\u2014they could deal with pain. Any of us could. But she hated the realization.\"\n\nCarolyn paused. \"Well, no. That's my word, not hers. How did she put it? She said she still felt it, even now, in her stomach and the soles of her feet. When the wound was struck and no one could save her, her body knew. Margaret's died every way you could think of, but she said that part was the worst thing she knew. And David agreed with her.\"\n\n\"That's where David is now.\" She smiled. \"That moment when he feels it in his stomach and the soles of his feet. Wazin nyata\u2014the moment when the last hope dies. He'll be there forever.\"\n\nAt the sight of her smile Steve fell back half a step. Even Erwin flinched a little.\n\nHer instinct was to make her expression neutral. But why? There's no reason to hide. Not anymore. She looked down at her hand. Her fingertips no longer trembled.\n\n\"He pissed you off too, huh?\"\n\n\"A bit. Yeah. Got a smoke, Steve?\"\n\n\"Right before you did\u2026whatever\u2026before you froze him, you touched him,\" Erwin said. \"Inside the wound, like. Why'd you do that?\"\n\nSteve handed her a Marlboro, then lit another for himself.\n\n\"You saw that, huh? Yeah, I gave him a little shock. Static electricity, right in the parieto-insular cortex.\"\n\n\"The what?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"The pain center of his brain,\" Erwin said.\n\n\"Exactly. It wasn't much\u2014barely more than you'd get from touching a doorknob after you'd rubbed your feet across the carpet. But of course you don't need much, not when the anatomy is laid out in front of you like that.\"\n\n\"They did experiments,\" Erwin said. \"Cheney's guys, trying to figure out what to do with bin Laden. I heard stories. You give somebody a shock like that, it'd be the sum of\u2014well not just every pain you felt, but every pain you possibly could feel. All at once, like.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And then you froze him? In that moment, exactly?\" Steve thought about it for a second, then gave a low whistle. \"Why?\"\n\nCarolyn remembered how the rain ran warm, remembered the salty, coppery taste of Asha's blood. \"Because wazin nyata isn't enough. Not for him. This, though\u2026I'm pretty sure that it's the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, anywhere. Ever. I think it's the worst thing that can happen, the theoretical upper limit of suffering. Despair and agony,\" she said. \"Absolute. Unending.\"\n\n\"Damn,\" Erwin said. \"That's some fucked-up shit.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Erwin. That means a lot, coming from you.\" She blew smoke up into the night sky. \"I wanted to do it by impaling him on that spear of his, or maybe to nail him to a desk. But I couldn't figure out a way to make that work. This will have to do.\" She examined David with a surgeon's eye and a malice that had no bottom. \"And I think it will. Yes. It's working already.\"\n\n\"What is?\"\n\n\"Look in his eyes and tell me what you see.\"\n\nSteve and Erwin leaned in. \"They're black,\" Steve said. \"I mean, not like he got bruised. The whites of his eyes are black. And\u2026are they glowing, a little?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She saw it too. \"I thought so, but it could have been the light.\" Carolyn spun David to face her.\n\nIt was very dark out now\u2014no moon, no stars. The snow that fell on her did not melt. Her brow was in shadow, but when she took a drag from her cigarette, twin reflections blazed orange in the dark pools of her eyes. \"Scream.\" She spoke softly, in Pelapi. \"Try to scream. If you scream for me, I'll stop.\" Smiling now. \"If you scream for me, I'll let you go. Going once\u2026going twice\u2026no?\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 54",
                "text": "Now Steve and Erwin were both giving her looks. Anyway, David can't hear me. She let her hand drop. When she spoke next she made an effort to sound normal. \"Yeah, that's a good, strong connection. I must have timed it just right.\"\n\nNaga sniffed David, then yowled.\n\n\"You fed that lion lately?\" Erwin asked.\n\n\"She'll be fine.\" Steve patted Naga on her back. She shoulder-dived against his hip. \"She's just a big ol' sweetie. Ain't ya, girl?\"\n\nCarolyn smiled and crushed out the Marlboro under her bare foot. \"Got another?\"\n\nSteve fished out the pack. The two of them lit up. Steve held out the pack to Erwin.\n\nErwin waved it off. \"That shit'll kill ya.\" He put in a dip instead.\n\n\"You're bleeding,\" Steve said. There was real concern in his voice.\n\nShe looked down. Blood was dribbling out of the hole in her thigh\u2014it didn't squirt the way it would have if an artery was nicked, but it was bad enough. \"Oh, right. That. Steve, could I get you to run and get something for me?\"\n\n\"Sure. What do you need?\"\n\n\"I need to patch my leg up. Erwin's too. Remember that pile of stuff I left for you in the living room of that white house?\"\n\n\"Yeah, sure.\"\n\n\"There's a big canvas bag tied with twine. Get that, some bandages, and as much water as you can carry. Pressure bandages, if there's any left.\"\n\n\"Will do.\" Steve took off.\n\n\"Erwin, can I have one of your shoelaces?\"\n\n\"Er\u2026yeah. If you want.\" He took off his Reebok and extracted the lace, then handed it to her. \"What do you need it for?\"\n\nShe tied one end of the lace to David's hairy big toe, and the other to a mailbox. \"We've got one more thing to take care of, and I don't want him bobbing off.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 55",
                "text": "Carolyn wasn't as skilled as Jennifer, but their wounds weren't all that bad. She packed the hole in her foot and leg with a gray powder, then poured water on it. As she worked on Erwin, the powder knitted itself into flesh, pink and new.\n\nThey found Margaret just outside the gate, still playing with the president's head.\n\n\"You killed David,\" Margaret said. She didn't look up. \"How could you kill David?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\" Carolyn felt ferocious, triumphant\u2026but she was wary as well. It was hard to tell what went on in Margaret's head. \"That would have been too good for him. I found something worse.\"\n\n\"Worse than the forgotten lands?\"\n\nCarolyn's smile was streaked with blood. \"Much.\"\n\nMargaret looked up, interested for the first time. \"Really?\" She searched Carolyn's face. \"It is true. You did. You are a horror, then. I did not know.\" She smiled. \"We are sisters.\" Then, to the head, \"David said she might be reading outside her catalog, but I didn't beeee-leeeeeeeve him. She seems so pink and mousy.\" She punctuated \"pink\" and \"mousy\" by poking the president in his cheeks. The head tried to moan, but it had no air.\n\nMargaret moaned for it, weaving her head back and forth in the night. Then something occurred to her. \"Father will be upset.\" She made the head poke out its bottom lip.\n\n\"Father is gone too. I killed him.\"\n\n\"He'll be back. He always comes back.\"\n\n\"Not this time.\"\n\nMargaret wavered. She spoke softly. \"You have ended Father? Ended him forever?\"\n\nCarolyn thought she saw the faintest, tiniest flicker of expression in Margaret's face. Hope, perhaps? She couldn't tell. \"Yes. He's gone.\"\n\n\"Forever?\"\n\n\"Forever.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Again that little flicker of expression, hard to read. \"I believe you.\" She looked back down at the head, then back up, as something new occurred to her. \"Then you are horror and death. Yes?\" She looked at Carolyn seriously, waiting for an answer.\n\nCarolyn blinked. \"I guess you could put it that way.\"\n\n\"Then I suppose that makes you my mistress.\" She set the president's head on the ground, stood up, and curtsied. \"What would you have of me, madam?\"\n\nCarolyn didn't know what she had expected, but this wasn't it. \"Only one thing.\" She looked at Erwin, nodded. Erwin raised his pistol.\n\n\"Oh,\" Margaret said, bored again. \"You are sending me home?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\" She paused. \"May I ask one thing? Madam? A favor, please?\"\n\nCarolyn was in a generous mood. She touched Erwin on the shoulder, spoke in English. \"Not yet.\" Then, in Pelapi, to Margaret. \"Sure. Why not?\"\n\n\"Do you remember the way David died? The first time?\"\n\n\"Yeah. But Margaret, I wouldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"I would like to go home that way. Through the bull. The way David went.\"\n\nCarolyn squinted at her, unsure if she had heard right. \"Can you say that again?\"\n\n\"I would like to be roasted in the bull. Father said it would be my final lesson. I believe that I am ready.\"\n\n\"Margaret\u2026why would you possibly want such a thing?\"\n\n\"You don't know?\" She sounded disappointed.\n\n\"No. I really don't.\"\n\n\"David never understood either. I wanted to hear him, you know, but\u2026he couldn't get through. Not anymore. Not for a long time. But you and I are sisters, it seems. So perhaps\u2026\" Margaret frowned at her, searching for words. \"I'm very far now. Far from all of you, far from myself. I am in the outer darkness, you see.\" She blinked, imploring. \"I have wandered for so very long. You understand this much?\"\n\nCarolyn gave a small nod. \"I do.\"\n\n\"I often think of the bull, though. Do you think of the bull?\"\n\n\"Sometimes.\"\n\n\"You remember how it glowed? How the fire made it orange, under the moon, and David sang?\"\n\nCarolyn's mouth was dry. \"I remember.\"\n\n\"If someone were to light a fire like that for me\u2026I think I might feel it. Even here in the outer darkness, I might feel it. And\u2026if it were bright enough, and burned very long\u2026perhaps I could follow it back.\" Margaret, pale and atrocious, aged about thirty, gave a wistful smile. \"Back to myself, you see. I might even have a song called out of me. I think there might be one left to call.\" She looked to Carolyn with the ghost of hope dancing in her eyes. \"Just one. That's all I ask. Do you think? Perhaps?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Carolyn said quietly. \"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"You'll do it then?\"\n\nThey looked at each other. Maggots squirmed in Margaret's hair. When we were children, she had the best toys, Carolyn thought. Pretty little dolls. She let me borrow them sometimes. \"Yes. If that's what you want.\" Then, in English: \"Erwin, put the gun away. New plan. Margaret has a last request.\"\n\n\"I ain't shooting her?\"\n\n\"No. That's not insane enough, apparently.\"\n\nThe muscles at Erwin's temples jumped. \"What, then?\"\n\n\"It's easier to show you. There should be a wheelbarrow in that garage over there. Can you and Steve grab it for me? And some stove lengths, from the wood pile in back? We'll meet you at the top of the hill.\"\n\nErwin eyed her. \"Ah-ite.\" He uncocked his pistol and put the safety on. After a moment's hesitation, he held it out to Carolyn, butt first. \"Wanna borrow this?\"\n\nMargaret boinged up and down on the balls of her feet like a small child at a candy counter.\n\n\"Thanks, but I don't think I'll need it.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 56",
                "text": "The dead ones polished the bull every few days. Even under the faint light of the distant streetlamp it had a certain glow.\n\nFifteen minutes later, sweating, Erwin dragged the wheelbarrow up the last of the railroad-tie stairs cut into the bluff. His cart was full of knotty pine, dry and sticky with sap. He set it down next to the bull and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Then, rapping his knuckles against the bronze, \"What's this thing?\"\n\n\"That,\" Carolyn said, \"is the worst barbecue grill in the world.\"\n\nMargaret hadn't been able to wait. She was lugging logs from the wood pile by hand, her small body bent under the load. She carried them to the bull two at a time and arranged them just-so. Seeing Erwin's mound of pine, she smiled.\n\n\"We having a cookout?\" Erwin sounded suspicious and\u2026something else.\n\nHearing his voice, Carolyn thought of the diamond pattern of rattlesnake scales, almost but not quite hidden under autumn leaves. She considered sending him away. He's not David, but he's not nothing, either. \"Not exactly. It's\u2026something we do. Sort of a ritual.\"\n\nErwin's right hand drifted to his left shoulder, rubbed it. There was, she knew, a number 4 branded there. Everyone in his unit had gotten them in Afghanistan. Erwin would understand about ritual.\n\nMargaret dropped her armload of broken limbs. She flashed Erwin a greedy smile and plucked a split log from his wheelbarrow.\n\nErwin considered this. \"Yeah. OK. Want me to lug summa that wood?\"\n\n\"Sure. That'd be great.\"\n\nThe four of them settled into a rhythm, Steve and Erwin filling the cart, Erwin pushing and dumping it. Carolyn was supposed to be helping Margaret, but Margaret had some theoretically optimal vision of a wood pile in her mind, and she kept slapping Carolyn's hand away.\n\nAfter twenty minutes or so, Margaret stepped back and looked at the pile. \"This is enough.\"\n\n\"Margaret, are you sure you\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes. Any higher and it will be over too soon.\" Margaret took hold of the hatch, but she was a slight woman. The tendons in her neck stood out as she strained to open it, but the most she could manage was a couple of inches. Carolyn walked over to help. Together they raised it past the tipping point. The thick bronze clanged against the bull's back. \"Are you sure this is what you want?\"\n\n\"Oh yes.\" Her voice was eager.\n\nCarolyn spoke to Erwin in English. \"Can you give her a hand up?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Part of the ritual.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\" Erwin squinted at Carolyn, suspicious, then at Margaret. Margaret nodded, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Erwin knelt and made a sling out of his hands. Margaret lifted one bare, dirty foot, then hesitated. \"Here,\" she said, and held out her Zippo to Carolyn. \"For you.\"\n\nCarolyn didn't want to touch the thing. \"It's OK. I've got my own.\"\n\n\"Take it.\"\n\n\"Really, I\u2014\"\n\n\"Take it. You'll need it sooner or later.\" Margaret smiled. Her teeth were black. \"You're like me now.\"\n\nCarolyn felt a little squirt of horror at that but squelched it. Just get this over with. She took the lighter with two fingers, touching it as little as possible.\n\nMargaret scrambled into the bull.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" Steve said.\n\n\"I don't either. Not really. But this is what she wants.\"\n\nMargaret's eyes shone wide and white against the black grease inside\u2014excited, but not wanting to hope for too much.\n\n\"She wasn't always like this,\" Carolyn said. \"When we were little she\u2026she had a really big dollhouse. We'd play, sometimes.\" She sighed. \"Can one of you give me a hand with the hatch?\"\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Erwin asked. But he knew. He was American, not stupid.\n\n\"What does it look like? Give me a hand.\"\n\n\"Yeah, um, no. I can't let you do that,\" Erwin said.\n\nCarolyn sighed, exasperated. Maybe Steve could help? No. Just push. You can do this.\n\n\"You wanna put her down, that's fine. I'll shoot her myself. But you can't burn her. 'Tain't right to do that to a person.\" Erwin glared at her. \"Smart lady like you oughtta know that.\"\n\n\"I'm with Erwin on this one,\" Steve said.\n\nCarolyn frowned, tapped her teeth with her fingernail. \"If you guys don't want to be involved, that's fine. I don't blame you. Help me with the hatch and I'll meet you by the gate.\"\n\n\"I can't let you do that,\" Erwin said again.\n\nCarolyn turned to him. She spoke gently, as if explaining something to a small child. \"Erwin\u2026this isn't a negotiation. There's no 'let.' Are you going to help or not?\"\n\nErwin didn't move.\n\nCarolyn rolled her eyes, then turned back to the bull. She strained against the lid, arms quivering with effort. She didn't quite lift it past the tipping point before her strength failed. The hatch fell back open with a clang, deafeningly loud. The sound rolled out over Garrison Oaks like a gong. Down in the neighborhood, doors began to open. She heard one of the dead ones call out, saying, \"Here you dogs! Get out of that trash.\" But its voice was uneasy.\n\nBehind her, there was a tiny click as Erwin thumbed off the safety of his pistol. \"I can't let you do that,\" he repeated.\n\nShe heard a low, bass rumbling. It was still distant, but it was closing fast. \"Put down the pistol, Erwin.\"\n\n\"I'm thinking no,\" Erwin said.\n\nNaga looked up at the sky and roared. Down in the neighborhood the dogs had come out to join the dead ones. At the sound of Naga's voice, a couple of them barked. One of the dead ones called out, \"Heeeere kitty-kitty.\"\n\nAll of a sudden the night was very bright, very loud. A low-flying helicopter came around the curve of the ridge line. It had a search light, hot and white. Stubby wings on the side bristled with bombs, missiles, guns.\n\n\"What is that?\" Carolyn called out, shouting to be heard above the rotors.\n\n\"AH 64,\" Erwin said. \"Apache gunship.\"\n\nA moment later a second helicopter appeared as well. The two of them hovered over the clearing of the bull, searchlights blazing. The air filled with pine straw, dirt, leaves, small twigs. The light was painfully bright.\n\nMargaret peeped out of the bull to see what was happening. She said something, too soft for Carolyn to hear, then lay back down inside.\n\n\"What are they doing?\" Steve asked.\n\nOne of the helicopters had a PA system. \"SET DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. SET DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND STEP AWAY FROM THE DOG.\"\n\nNaga roared again. Steve patted her shoulder. \"She's not a dog!\" Naga brushed Steve's waist with her shoulders and swished her tail, grateful. Carolyn smiled. They really do get on well together.\n\n\"They're looking for me, I 'spect.\" Erwin set his pistol down and waved at the pilots. Then, yelling over the rotor wash, \"That's a M230 chain gun. Thirty-millimeter rounds.\" He held his fingers apart to illustrate. \"I saw a guy get hit in the chest with one of them. All that was left was his legs.\"\n\n\"Tell them to go away,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Can't. No radio. They wouldn't lissen, anyway.\"\n\n\"You're sure you want it this way?\"\n\nSteve touched Erwin on the shoulder. \"Erwin, I think you really ought to\u2014\"\n\nErwin shook his head. \"Nothing I can do.\"\n\n\"OK,\" Carolyn said. \"Fine.\" She turned back toward the neighborhood and spoke quietly, to no one in particular. \"Orlat keh talatti.\"\n\n\"What?\" Steve shouted.\n\n\" 'Project and defend.' \""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 57",
                "text": "At first there was nothing.\n\nThen, from the dark recesses of Garrison Oaks, came the sound of\u2026what? Something is coming, Steve thought with a shiver. Some terrible thing. He heard it even over the helicopters, low at first, but building\u2014the deep scream of nails wrenched from wood, the clatter and tinkle of breaking glass, thick pine cracking to splinters.\n\nThe light from the streetlamps was poor, and of course there was no moon. Even so, squinting down the street, he got a distinct sense of motion in the shadows. Whatever it is, it's big. He caught a flash of motion and looked over at Erwin. He sees it too.\n\nThe worry lines around Erwin's eyes were deep and well worn. He turned to the helicopter with the loudspeaker and waved his arms over his head. \"G'wan! Get the fuck outta here!\"\n\n\"Close your eyes,\" Carolyn said to Steve.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nThe helicopters were ignoring Erwin. He changed to a more complicated hand signal. \"Go on before she\u2014\"\n\n\"Steve. Close your eyes.\"\n\nBut she didn't wait\u2014she stepped behind him and clapped her hand over his eyes. A bare instant later, there was a bright flash, as if a camera the size of a football field had gone off.\n\n\"Ah, fuck,\" Erwin said. \"I'm blind.\"\n\n\"It's just temporary,\" Carolyn said. \"It wasn't aimed at you. Give it a few minutes and you'll be fine.\"\n\nThe pitch of the helicopters' rotors began rising, the engines cycling up toward a scream.\n\n\"Are they leaving?\" Steve asked, too quiet to be heard outside his own head.\n\n\"What?\" Erwin said.\n\n\"It's just temporary,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"WHAT? I CAN'T UNNERSTAND YA. TOO LOUD.\"\n\nThe searchlight that had been on them wavered a bit, then fell away entirely. Blinking, Steve looked up at the Apache. It banked to one side as if it had been called away on some urgent business. Then, neatly and professionally, it pointed its nose down, accelerated\u2014it was surprisingly quick\u2014and crashed into the road a hundred yards or so away. Even at this distance, the heat of the fireball was immense.\n\n\"Fuck!\" Steve said. \"Holy fucking fuck!\"\n\n\"Ah, shit,\" Erwin said. \"Was that what I think it was?\"\n\nA moment later the other helicopter performed a similar move\u2014nose down, a quick acceleration, then a tidy, professional crash. In the light of the fireball Steve recognized the bluff he had jogged around that morning. Suddenly the night was uncomfortably warm. Without the rotor wash, it was once again possible to converse normally.\n\n\"I said, it's only temporary.\"\n\n\"What's only temporary?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Erwin's blindness. It's a vehicle. The signal is bespoke\u2014it only kills hostiles, but it's blinding for everyone.\"\n\n\"Bespoke,\" Steve said. \"What?\"\n\n\"It means 'tailored,'\" Erwin said. \"What signal?\"\n\n\"The light you saw. It's a defense mechanism. It radiates out from the optic nerve and activates the slave neurons.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Slave neurons. They make you suggestible. The light activates them\u2014once they're part of the architecture of thought, a person will do as they're told.\"\n\n\"Like them bank tellers?\" Erwin said.\n\nI wouldn't have thought of that, Steve thought. Once he heard it, though, it made perfect sense. That Erwin's a clever guy.\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"What were the pilots told to do?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"An expeditious suicide. Painless if possible, but immediate.\" Carolyn paused. \"If you care, they probably didn't suffer. I'm told the overall experience is quite pleasant.\"\n\nSteve felt sick. Slave neurons? \"Jesus, Carolyn. Those guys were just doing their jobs. I mean, they probably had families, little kids and\u2014\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"It was their choice.\"\n\n\"Carolyn, they\u2014\"\n\n\"That's the risk in working to be a dangerous person,\" she said. \"There's always the chance you'll run into someone who's better at it than you.\"\n\nErwin's lips peeled back over his teeth in a flash of raw, simian aggression. Carolyn watched, sphinxlike.\n\nSteve stood between them. Dangerous people, indeed. \"Hey,\" he said. \"What's that?\"\n\n\"What?\" Erwin said.\n\n\"There's something moving back there. In the sky. I can see it blotting out the lights from town, but I can't quite make out what it is.\" He turned to Carolyn. \"Is it\u2026like, your mother ship? Something like that?\"\n\nShe ignored him and spoke to Erwin. \"Are your eyes any better?\"\n\n\"A little, yeah,\" Erwin said. \"I don't think she's an alien, kid.\"\n\n\"Good. You should be fine in a few more minutes. Steve, head back down the hill. I'll meet you there in a few minutes.\"\n\nSteve glanced at the bull, uneasy. \"Carolyn, I really don't think you should\u2014\"\n\n\"Just go, Steve. I know you don't understand, but it's what Margaret wants. I'm going to give her that.\" Then, softening, \"But you won't want to see it. Wait for me, at the bottom of the hill. I'll be along.\"\n\n\"What about Erwin?\"\n\n\"He'll be fine in an hour or so.\"\n\n\"Where are we going?\"\n\n\"Home.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 58",
                "text": "\"C'mon, Naga.\" Steve turned his back on Carolyn and Erwin and headed down the stairs. Back on Highway 78 he took a couple of steps toward a burning helicopter, thinking to look for survivors. But even from this distance the heat from the fires was enough to curl the hair on his arms. No one could have survived that. He walked a little closer anyway, morbidly fascinated\u2014then he heard a quick series of explosions. Pop! Pop-pop-pop!\n\nAmmunition cooking off. \"Ah, shit.\"\n\nHe turned and fled, hunched over, to the Garrison Oaks sign. He took cover with his back to the decorative stone column. He saw a bunch of people milling around in the neighborhood, and some dogs, too. They didn't seem interested in him.\n\nA few minutes later a clanging gong sound rolled down from the top of the hill. I guess Carolyn figured a way to shut the hatch. Morbidly curious and suppressing a shiver, he stood and looked back up the hill. There was a new fire up there, smaller than the burning helicopters. Carolyn was walking toward him, silhouetted against its yellow flame.\n\nShe was alone.\n\n\"What did you do?\" Steve said as she walked up. \"Did you\u2014\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"It's done. That's all. Come on.\" She walked past him without breaking stride. It was dark in the neighborhood. After only a few steps she was in shadow.\n\n\"What about Erwin?\"\n\n\"He wouldn't come. He wants to be with his people. Come on, Steve.\"\n\nSteve took a last look at the top of the hill. The third fire was blazing merrily now, a proper bonfire. He thought of Margaret's hand, pale skin against black bronze. He shuddered again. It occurred to him that the burning helicopters would also work very well as a roadblock. No one's getting through that until morning, at least, he thought. It's just the two of us now.\n\nThat was true in a way, but they were not alone. The dead ones were out\u2014dozens of them, maybe hundreds\u2014men, women, and children. They were dressed in decades-old rags\u2014polyester, ancient denim, and paisley. One kid held an Atari joystick. The cord hung limp between his bare, dirty feet. It looked like it had been chewed. He looked up at Steve and said, \"It's time for Transformers.\"\n\n\"You betcha.\" Steve jogged up to join Carolyn, grateful for Naga's bulk at his side. Carolyn was untying the shoelace that tethered David to the mailbox. The bubble of blackness that started at his eyes had grown, Steve saw. Now it was over two feet across. It encased his head completely, and a good bit of his chest as well.\n\n\"Don't be afraid,\" Carolyn said, gesturing at the people milling on the street. \"They won't hurt us.\"\n\n\"Well, good,\" Steve said, dubious.\n\nThe bonfire behind them was burning merrily now, and it put out a surprising amount of light. The dead ones stood watching it, bathing their faces in its yellow glow. Some of them had tears running down their cheeks. At first he thought they might be mourning\u2014Margaret, maybe? Was she their Dear Leader, or something? Then he noticed that many of them were smiling as well. Maybe it's the kind of crying you see at weddings? \"Hey, Carolyn? Why are these guys so worked-up?\"\n\n\"It's the fire. Around here fire means something.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nThere were dogs as well, Steve saw. He even recognized a few of them from before. They didn't seem to remember him, or maybe they just didn't care. They wandered freely among the people, un-petted. There were other animals as well\u2014a fox, something that might have been a bobcat, or maybe a lynx, and\u2014\"Holy crap!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Is that a tiger?\"\n\n\"It is. Don't worry. He won't hurt you. He's one of the sentinels.\"\n\n\"Hear that? 'Don't worry.'\" He and Naga exchanged glances. \"What's that thing next to it?\"\n\n\"It's from the future. Don't worry, Steve.\"\n\nThe animals and people and\u2026other\u2026milled around the street and the lawns. They moved out of the way when they saw Carolyn coming, but some of the dead ones reached out to brush her with their fingertips as she passed. They were speaking as well, muttering to themselves, one word over and over, a constant low murmur in a language he didn't know.\n\n\"What do they keep calling you?\"\n\n\"Sehlani.\"\n\n\"What does it mean?\"\n\n\"There's no good translation in English. 'Head librarian,' is literally correct, but the connotations are wrong.\" She made a sour face. \"It's what they used to call Father.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nAnd then, finally, they were at 222 Garrison Drive. What was left of it, at any rate. The Library, Steve thought. At long and painful last. Then, giving it a critical eye, Whatever it was that came out to \"project and defend\" really did a number on the place. The brick front was still standing, but that was about all. The sides and back had caved in on themselves. Behind the false front there was now only rubble.\n\n\"That's it?\" Steve asked. He was a little disappointed. Even before it had crumbled into itself, the Library must have been a rather unremarkable building\u2014a brick saltbox, four columns and a couple of windows.\n\nThen he looked up. A few hundred yards overhead, the very large, very dark whatever-it-was swooshed by in the night. He felt the wind of its passage on his face. Suddenly he was uneasy again. \"We're going in that?\"\n\n\"Kind of. Not really. That up there is just a projection. The real Library is, um, distant. This doorway is the passage.\" She walked up the brick steps to the porch and held her hand over the doorknob. \"Come on.\"\n\n\"A secret passage?\" He rolled his eyes. \"I should have known.\" He walked up the steps, but stopped just short of joining Carolyn and snapped his fingers as something occurred to him. He looked around. \"Hey, wait a second\u2026\"\n\n\"What?\" Carolyn said.\n\nThe porch was completely bare. Not even a welcome mat? \"Where's that token thing? The one you sent me in here for?\"\n\n\"That doesn't matter. Not anymore.\"\n\n\"I still want to see what it is. After all that I'm curious.\"\n\nCarolyn shrugged. She pointed to the shadow at the base of one of the columns. \"There.\"\n\nSteve walked over and squatted down. There, almost invisible in the shadows, he found it. \"It's a book?\"\n\nShe smiled. \"Of course it's a book.\"\n\nHe picked it up. It was old and tattered, the pages yellow with age and the grime of uncounted readings. The cover was missing, but there was something about it, something familiar\u2026\"Hey! I recognize this.\"\n\n\"Do you?\"\n\n\"Yeah! I had a copy when I was a kid. It's about that horse, right? The one that gets taken away to this terrible life. Dark Beauty, I think?\"\n\nCarolyn turned toward him, the muscles of her calves and thighs flashing in the light of the fires, her face half in shadow. \"Something like that.\"\n\nSteve frowned. \"It's funny. I know I read this, but I can't remember the ending.\"\n\n\"Are you coming?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"I guess I am. Should I bring the book?\"\n\n\"No. Leave it.\"\n\n\"What if it rains, or\u2014\"\n\n\"Leave it. That book has been through a lot. It's tougher than it looks.\" She reached out to the doorknob again but stopped just short of touching it. \"Are you ready?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026I guess. What's the big deal?\"\n\n\"It's easier if I just show you.\" She touched the knob gently with the tips of her fingers, then took a step back.\n\nThere was a soft clicking, metallic and well oiled. The sound, perhaps, of brass tumblers aligning in the world's largest lock. The door swung open into darkness. Warm air spilled out, dry as desert wind and heavy with the scent of ancient dust.\n\nBehind him Naga yowled, a feral, alien sound that Steve had never heard from her before.\n\nHe turned to steady her, and her fur was high, prickly under his hand. \"What's wrong, girl?\" But he knew. He felt it too.\n\n\"Animals don't like this place. She probably won't come in. Here, give me David.\"\n\nHe handed her the shoelace with David bobbing at the end. \"What is\u2026\" He trailed off, squinting into darkness.\n\n\"Come on.\" Carolyn stepped inside.\n\nSteve blinked. As she crossed the threshold she receded as if she had been shot out of a cannon. \"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"Fuck a whole bunch of that.\"\n\nHe turned to go, then froze. Behind him, the dead ones and the animals stood on the lawn, watching. He took a step down. One of the dogs growled, just a little. A quarter mile or so to the east and west on the highway, the Apaches blazed like bonfires. The wind was filled with the scent of burning kerosene, and every few seconds there was a pop or bang as the ammunition kicked off.\n\nBeyond that, approaching sirens wailed. How long would I last out there? Alone, broke, the most wanted guy in the country? Even if I don't wind up back in jail immediately, where could I go? Africa? Bolivia? The moon?\n\nFrom the hill he heard a woman's voice. He couldn't tell whether she was screaming or if it was the beginning of a song.\n\nSteve sighed, then turned back onto the porch. \"You up for this?\"\n\nNaga looked up at him for a long moment, dubious, then gave her tail a small swish.\n\nThey stepped over the threshold together."
            },
            {
                "title": "The Library",
                "text": "Thinking of how Carolyn had seemed to recede, Steve was expecting\u2026something. A yank, a sense of forward motion. Something. But it wasn't like that. He stepped into darkness. A moment later he stood on dry, ancient oak. Carolyn was waiting, hands poised to catch.\n\n\"Well, that wasn't so\u2026\" Then, seeing where he was, he staggered back against the wall behind him. \"Jeee-zus fuck.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Carolyn said, relaxing a little. \"That was pretty much my reaction. At least you didn't faint. A lot of people faint.\" She steadied herself against a nearby bookcase and set about peeling off her leg warmers.\n\n\"What\u2026I mean\u2026Jesus\u2026what is this place?\"\n\n\"It's Father's Library.\" Something occurred to her. \"Well\u2026I suppose\u2026it's mine now.\" She blinked. \"Hmm. Mine.\"\n\n\"Library,\" Steve said, his voice flat and toneless. At his side, Naga yowled. He patted her shoulder. \"Yeah, sweetie. Me too.\" He looked around, gaping. \"Jeee-zus fuck,\" he said again, this time with real reverence.\n\nThe Library was vast.\n\nIt was easily the largest structure he had ever been inside, ever heard of, ever imagined. Bookshelves stretched across the floor as far as the eye could see. He saw a globe of light high overhead\u2014like, skyscraper high\u2014and a ceiling somewhere beyond that. It was impossible to estimate how far away the ceiling was\u2014thousands of feet? Miles? The space he stood in was higher than the Superdome, wider than the airport terminal in Atlanta. \"You could fly a plane in here,\" he said. \"Maybe not a 737, but a Cessna\u2014easy. Probably even a Lear.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I guess.\" Her voice was muffled by cloth.\n\nSteve glanced over and saw that Carolyn was taking off her sweater. He clapped a hand over his eyes. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Getting out of these ridiculous clothes. Want a robe? One size fits all, and they're clean.\" Cloth hit the floor with a soft rustle.\n\n\"What? No, I'm fine.\" He peeked, just a little. Carolyn's bicycle shorts were puddled around her ankles. He turned his back to her and opened his eyes. A moment later she stepped into view wearing a gray-green robe of some rough cloth, vaguely monk-like. It suited her better than the Christmas sweater.\n\n\"Are you hungry?\" Carolyn said. \"I'm starving.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Food,\" Carolyn said. She rubbed her belly with one hand. \"All of a sudden I'm starving again. Walk with me, OK? I'll show you around.\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026\" He blinked, remembering the modest house with the crumbling porch. When she had said \"hidden,\" he had thought of an underground bunker, something like a fallout shelter. But this\u2026\"Big. How can it be so big?\"\n\n\"It's not that big. I paced it once. It's only about two miles on an edge, give or take.\"\n\n\"Edge?\"\n\n\"Yeah. We're in a pyramid. See?\" She poked a finger up.\n\nFollowing her finger he saw the pyramid's apex, three equilateral triangles meeting at a point impossibly high overhead. \"Oh,\" Steve said. \"I see. But what I meant was\"\u2014he did some quick algebra in his head\u2014\"a mile and three quarters is a lot of square footage for this neighborhood. Aren't you violating the building codes? Or the laws of physics?\"\n\n\"Building codes, probably. None of the wiring is grounded. But the laws of physics don't apply in here.\"\n\n\"Whatever the fuck might you be talking about, Carolyn dear?\"\n\n\"Can you freak out while we walk? Pretty please?\" She jiggled the shoelace impatiently. David, now almost completely swallowed by blackness, bobbed at the end of it.\n\nThe floor was mostly unfinished wood planks, wide and smooth\u2014acres of them. But he and Carolyn stood on jade, the endpoint of a main access path\u2014road?\u2014running the length of the floor. It was as wide as a three-lane highway, all of it neatly inlaid with jade tile. It glowed faintly underfoot. Carolyn set out down the road, walking quickly, not waiting to see if he would follow.\n\nSteve trotted after her. \"What's that?\" he asked, pointing. About halfway between him and the far wall something that looked like DNA stretched up to the sky, thin and spindly. It was capped by a jade disk. Maybe it's a lookout deck? Like on the roof of a skyscraper? Just over the platform a cloud of lights rotated slowly, bathing the hall with a warm, candle-like glow.\n\n\"That's where we're headed.\"\n\n\"Man,\" he said. \"This place is huge. Are we, like, still inside the house somehow?\"\n\n\"No. The house wasn't important. The only thing about it that mattered was the front door. It's one of the places where the Library and normal space overlap. Defensible choke points, you see. Father was very particular about who got to see his work.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'his work'?\"\n\nCarolyn spread her arms out to the uncounted thousands of bookcases. \"His work.\"\n\n\"One guy wrote all of this? There are, like, millions of books in here.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Like I said, Father was old. He did a few pages every day, sometimes on one thing, sometimes another. Over time it adds up.\"\n\n\"Wow.\" Here and there along the jade corridor there were teetering stacks of unshelved books, little trays for scrolls, mini shelves for folios. Naga was sniffing one such now. Actually\u2026Her look reminded him of the one Petey got when he was about to defile the carpet. He trotted over and patted her on the shoulder. \"Don't pee on the magic library, OK, sweetie?\"\n\nCarolyn, still walking, called back over her shoulder. \"No such thing as magic, Steve.\"\n\n\"If you say so.\" Steve looked around, then up. He blinked. The sides of the pyramid that were overhead had bookshelves as well. What, are they like nailed to the ceiling or something? All this was half a mile or more above him, far enough that he could see that their layout made a fractal pattern, complete with little clearings here and there. Squinting, he could make out tiny couches and desks, all of them apparently immune to gravity. Three broad, ruby walkways radiated out from the geometric center of the ceiling. It was like looking down when your flight was coming in for a landing.\n\nA couple of seconds of this gave him vertigo. He reached out to steady himself on the pile of books. He grabbed the top book, an oversize volume bound in purple leather, and set out after Carolyn, who was moving away at a surprising rate. It was too heavy to fully open while he walked, but peeking in he could see that the pages were all handwritten. \"So if these aren't magic, what are they about?\"\n\n\"Different things. There are twelve main catalogs.\" She glanced over. \"The violet ones are mathematics\u2014that one's a primer on alternate geometries, I think.\"\n\nHe cracked it open and peeked inside. \"It looks medieval. Like one of those, whaddya call them, a book of hours?\"\n\n\"That one's at least twenty thousand years old. And if the Inquisition caught you with it they would have started heating up the thumbscrews.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Very curious now, he stopped at the next tall pile of books and used it as a pedestal for the book. He cracked it open at a random spot. The pages were thick vellum, crammed with neatly inked pictograms arranged in vertical rows like cuneiform, or maybe hieroglyphics. He couldn't read the writing or even guess what language it might be in. A couple of pages later he found a two-page illustration\u2014pale ink, inlaid with gold leaf, hand-drawn and faded with age. It had a weird aesthetic, part technical diagram\u2014neatly ruled planes, measured angles, squiggles that were probably equations\u2014and part battle scene. Interspersed with the lines and parallelograms, an army of long-necked toothy things were clawing their way out of a hole in the sky. The forest below was littered with their corpses. A few survivors\u2014they looked a little like giraffes\u2014cowered before a man in black robes.\n\nThe hair on the back of Steve's neck got all prickly. Her Father's work.\n\nBeside him, Naga rumbled. She was hunched over, peering into the shadows between the shelves.\n\nFollowing her gaze, Steve thought he saw a hint of motion, out there in the dark. He patted Naga's neck, as much to reassure himself as to calm her. Her muscles were tense, quivery.\n\nHe glanced down the jade corridor. Carolyn hadn't stopped. Now she was half a football field away, the black ball bobbing behind her on its shoelace. \"Carolyn?\"\n\nShe didn't answer.\n\n\"Carolyn?\" He left the book on the pile and jogged to catch up with her, wiping the fingers that had touched it on his shirt. He caught up with her faster than he would have thought possible. It occurred to him that the jade floor might be helping him along somehow, like one of those slidewalks at an airport. \"I think I saw something move back there,\" he said, panting a little.\n\n\"Hmm? Oh. Yeah, you probably did. We have housekeepers. Remember the guy with the lawn mower? Like him. They take care of the menial stuff\u2014dusting and shelving and the like. They try to stay out of sight when real people are around.\"\n\n\"Well, that's creepy as fuck. And what was up with that pict\u2014\" He broke off. \"Daaaayum.\" They had come farther than he would have thought possible. Now the DNA spiral was just ahead of them. From here he could see that it was actually a staircase, however enormous. It hung in midair, thousands of feet tall but unsupported, leading to a vast cloud of light overhead. \"What is that?\"\n\nCarolyn pointed at the cloud. \"It's the universe. The normal one, I mean. The one you grew up in.\"\n\n\"Like a planetarium, or\u2014\"\n\n\"No. It's the real deal. The original.\"\n\n\"That's imposs\u2026\" He trailed off, then sighed. \"How? How could a thing like that be?\"\n\n\"Do you know the word 'superset'?\"\n\n\"Yes. I don't know. Maybe. Not really.\" He rubbed his temples. \"It sounds vaguely familiar.\"\n\nShe patted his shoulder. \"Don't beat yourself up too much. It's a lot to take in, especially at first. It was the same way for me.\"\n\n\"Good of you to say.\"\n\n\"The Library is a separate universe, a superset of the one you grew up in. There's a little bit of overlap, but not much.\"\n\n\"A separate universe?\"\n\n\"Yeah. There are some very dangerous, uh, people, who would do anything at all to get their hands on Father's work. He tried earthly fortresses\u2014towers, keeps, some very advanced defense mechanisms. But anything that can be locked can be unlocked. The stakes are enormous, and there were some close calls. Eventually, he created this place.\"\n\n\"But\u2026\" He looked up at the cloud of lights overhead. \"I mean\u2026the universe is, like, big? Right?\"\n\n\"Yes and no. Size is notional. It has to do with the structure of space. The door we came through was a gateway, but it's also sort of a transition function. You wouldn't be wrong to say that going through the transition makes you bigger.\"\n\n\"I feel the same size.\"\n\n\"Well\u2026you also wouldn't really be right to say it either. It's sort of mathy.\"\n\nSteve rolled his eyes or, perhaps, looked to the heavens for strength. \"I don't think she's being deliberately obtuse. And the words sound like English\u2026\"\n\n\"Think of the Library as the wrapper a Big Mac comes in.\"\n\n\"OK. What's the Big Mac?\"\n\n\"The universe. The other one.\"\n\n\"That's somewhat helpful,\" Steve said. \"Thank you. As long as you're feeling comprehensible, here's another one: What are we going to do up there?\"\n\n\"I need to hang David.\" She jiggled the shoelace, and he bobbed, weightless. The black ball had grown as they walked. Now only the bottom half of one foot was still visible, the shoelace tied to his hairy toe.\n\n\"Hang him?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Plus I left some food in a cooler. And there are lawn chairs, and a barbecue grill. I thought we could have a picnic! Do you like picnics?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026sure. Picnics are nice, I guess.\"\n\nShe flashed him a smile and, to his astonishment, giggled a little. Then she started up the stairs. \"Food!\"\n\nSteve looked up, daunted. Even setting aside both his fear of heights and the fact that the stairs hovered unsupported in thin air, the towering spiral was easily the tallest man-made thing he'd ever seen\u2014three thousand feet, minimum. Probably more. No railing, either. The disk at the top looked small enough to hide behind his thumbnail. \"You really want to walk all the way up this?\"\n\n\"Yeah. It's not as bad as it looks.\" And indeed, in just a few seconds she'd somehow traveled upward fifty feet or more.\n\n\"No elevator?\"\n\n\"No. Father thought they were ugly. I could fly you up, if you like.\"\n\nHe considered this. \"I'll pass. Thanks, though.\"\n\n\"Oh, come on! It's good exercise.\" She bounced on tiptoes a couple of times, flexing her calf muscles. \"Keep you fit! And there's steaks!\"\n\nStill he hesitated.\n\nCarolyn said something in lion-speak, possibly about lunch. Naga started up the stairs without so much as a glance back.\n\n\"Traitor!\" Steve called.\n\n\"There's also beer,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Beer?\"\n\n\"Beer.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said with a sigh. \"OK.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 60",
                "text": "It was still a bit of a climb, about the equivalent of five normal flights of stairs, but nothing like the pack-some-sammiches-and-we'll-make-a-weekend-of-it alpine ordeal he had envisioned when looking up from the base. Steve mentioned his thought about airport slidewalks. Carolyn said, \"Sort of,\" then explained\u2014if that was the word\u2014that the jade surfaces changed the way distance worked. Steve said, \"Oh.\" A few steps later he looked down to see that they were over a thousand feet up. Numb now, his only real reaction was to be grateful that there wasn't much of a breeze. Just as his calf muscles were starting to burn, they emerged at the top of the tower.\n\nIt was capped by a sort of observation platform, also jade, about a foot thick and about as wide as a football field. Steve was susceptible to vertigo in tall buildings, but this was more like being in an airliner. For some reason, that wasn't as bad. Anyway, it felt rock-solid underfoot. Over in one corner he saw a barbecue grill and half a dozen lawn chairs. His stomach rumbled.\n\nThen he noticed something else.\n\nNearer the geometric center of the disk the cloud of lights hung low, close enough to reach up and touch. Under that point he saw a small brown lump on the floor. He took a couple of steps toward it, squinting. Carolyn didn't follow\u2014she was looking up at the lights.\n\n\"Hey, who's this?\" The lump was a young woman\u2014barely more than a child, really\u2014sleeping on the floor, curled in the fetal position. \"Another one of your sisters?\"\n\n\"What?\" Carolyn frowned. \"No. There shouldn't be anyone here. Move away, Steve.\" Her tone was chilly again, the way it had been in the car. \"That's got to be Mithraganhi.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Mithraganhi. One of Father's anointed, from the third age. Nobununga's sister, I think. She was the sun, until a couple of hours ago.\"\n\n\"The sun?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Remember when it got dark out, a couple of hours ago? I changed her back.\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026if you say so. What's she doing up here?\"\n\n\"I don't know. She should have died up there.\" Carolyn walked around Steve, heading toward the girl. \"She must have climbed down somehow.\"\n\n\"From where?\"\n\nShe pointed up. Steve followed her finger, then froze. He hadn't noticed at first, but this close, the points of light in the cloud overhead weren't really points anymore. He saw now that each of them was itself a tiny swirling spiral, almost but not quite frozen. Galaxies? He reached up to touch one and\u2014\n\n\"Poru sinh Ablakha?\" The girl's voice was high, childlike. She was awake now, propped up on her elbows. She was a platinum blonde and pretty, if a trifle smudged. Her eyes were a shade of gray he'd only ever seen on battleships.\n\nCarolyn squatted down next to her, smiling. \"You'll be with him soon.\" She stroked the child's forehead with the back of her right hand. Her left moved to the small of her back and emerged with the obsidian knife.\n\nWhat the hell? \"Carolyn, no!\"\n\nCarolyn stabbed the girl in the neck, just once, then bounced backward, getting a surprising amount of air. She came down in a three-point stance, knife at the ready, her eyes fixed on the girl.\n\nAll three of them froze for a moment. We're the murder exhibit at a wax museum, Steve thought, horrified to the point of giggles. Blood squirted from the child's neck in a finger-thick stream\u2014once, then again. It landed on the jade with a splashing sound. Another squirt. A puddle began to collect.\n\nThe girl touched her hand to her neck. Her fingers came away red. She showed them to Carolyn. \"Moru panh? Moru panh ka seiter?\"\n\nCarolyn smiled the way a gargoyle might. \"Chah seh Ablakha.\"\n\nThe girl slumped. Another squirt of arterial spray, weaker this time.\n\n\"Jesus!\" Steve screamed. \"Carolyn, what did you do?\" He ran for the girl, thinking, perhaps, to hold his hand over the wound, stanch the bleeding somehow. But his course took him near Carolyn. Somehow, passing her, he tripped. He hit the jade floor hard.\n\n\"It's all right, Steve.\"\n\nHis front tooth was rough now, newly chipped. He tasted blood. \"All right? It's not all right! That kid is just a kid, Carolyn. What did she ever do to you?\" He felt Naga near him, muscular and violent.\n\nCarolyn spoke without emotion. \"She's sixty thousand years old, and she's loyal to Father.\"\n\n\"So. Fucking. What?\" He wasn't quite screaming.\n\nCarolyn blinked. \"You have no idea what the stakes are, Steve. You don't understand about Father, how dangerous this is.\"\n\n\"She's just a kid, Carolyn!\" Steve scrabbled to his feet and went to the girl. She clutched at his sweatpants with one bloody hand, pleading in a language he didn't know. Her lips were blue.\n\nSteve lifted her hand away, inspected the wound. Her carotid artery gaped open, a lipless mouth. \"Hold still,\" he said. \"I'll\u2014\"\n\nCarolyn put her hand on his shoulder. \"Don't. It'll be over in a minute.\" She didn't threaten him with the knife.\n\n\"Can I\u2026would you mind if I just held her hand?\" Naga paced between him and Carolyn, guarding him.\n\n\"No,\" Carolyn said. \"Too dangerous.\"\n\nSteve hesitated for a second, then took the girl's hand anyway. He could hear Carolyn's teeth gritting, but she didn't move to stop him. Mithraganhi's hand was small, birdlike in his palm. She looked at him with her gray eyes, pleading.\n\n\"I don't know what to do,\" Steve said to her. \"I'm so sorry.\"\n\n\"Moru panh?\" she said again. Her voice was fading.\n\n\"What's she saying?\"\n\n\"It means 'Why are you doing this?'\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"I'm so sorry.\" Steve reached out to her cheek, but she flinched away from his touch. Her eyelids drooped.\n\nThen she was gone.\n\n\"There,\" Carolyn said. \"That's done.\"\n\nSteve shut the girl's eyes, then looked at his hands. They were red. He showed them to Carolyn. \"Yeah. I guess so.\"\n\nSeeing the look on his face, she seemed to return to herself a little bit. Her face fell. \"You don't understand,\" she said again.\n\n\"You got that right.\" He was thinking, However handy she might be with that knife, I'm a lot bigger than she is. He was thinking, We're not that far from the edge.\n\nCarolyn's expression darkened. Her hand drifted to the small of her back. \"Don't.\"\n\n\"Don't what?\" His tone was pleasant.\n\n\"Just don't. OK? I won't kill you, but I'll hurt you if I have to. I don't want to\u2014I really don't want to\u2014but I will.\" Then, pleading, \"Steve\u2026let me explain.\"\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"Fine.\"\n\n\"Mithraganhi might have looked like a child, but she wasn't.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\nShe rubbed her forehead. \"I'm not sure. Not exactly. The records are lost, or maybe destroyed. But she was important. She was one of Father's key lieutenants. If she was still loyal to him\u2014and there's no reason to think anything else\u2014she might have found a way to bring him back.\"\n\n\"OK. All right. Fine. But\u2026so what?\"\n\nCarolyn boggled at him, laughed a little. \"We really are from different worlds, you know that?\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, that thought has crossed my mind once or twice as well. Can you maybe try to explain it to me? Small words?\"\n\n\"Father was\u2026\" She trailed off, then laughed a little. \"You know, I know literally every word ever spoken, but I can't think of a single one that's adequate to your question. Father was Father.\"\n\n\"That's not much help.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Carolyn held her hand up. \"Give me a minute.\" She pinched her chin for several seconds, then looked up at him. \"When one of my brothers was about nine, Father tasked him with convincing a Deep One to accept him as an apprentice.\"\n\n\"Deep One?\"\n\n\"A giant squid. Sort of.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Michael tried and tried, but the Deep One wouldn't go for it. Something to do with the Forest God, or maybe he just hated people. Probably that was the real lesson, but we still didn't understand how Father worked. We were young then. My brother tried to explain the situation, but Father wouldn't listen. He said my brother was 'not properly motivated.'\" She shuddered.\n\n\"You OK?\"\n\n\"I just\u2014even hearing those words, you know? 'Not properly motivated.' I want to throw up.\"\n\n\"You can stop if you want.\"\n\n\"No. Thanks, but no. You need to understand this.\" She was looking up at the lights overhead. The iron was back in her voice.\n\n\"So\u2026what happened?\"\n\n\"He got a hot poker and burned out Michael's eyes.\"\n\n\"What? Jesus! He blinded the kid?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Blinded him. Well\u2014not the way you probably mean. Not permanently.\"\n\n\"How can that\u2014\"\n\n\"The white catalog, Jennifer's catalog, is medicine. Exotic medicine. None of our physical wounds were ever permanent. Father could heal anything. Jennifer was even better.\"\n\n\"That's convenient.\"\n\n\"Well\u2026I suppose. Yes. It had its moments. But there are costs, too. Philosophical costs.\"\n\n\"Now I really don't understand.\"\n\nCarolyn knelt at the puddle of the child's blood. Her back was to him, but the blood was still, not yet coagulated, shiny. He could see her face reflected in it. \"It was different for us. For you, Americans, if things get bad enough\u2026well. You always have an out.\"\n\n\"Suicide?\"\n\n\"Death.\"\n\n\"But\u2026you guys didn't?\"\n\n\"No. Father burned Michael's eyes out. Every night, over and over. The rest of us had to attend him, had to watch. Each time took about twenty minutes\u2014the first eye was quick, but after that Michael had to. To. To watch. One-eyed, you see. He'd watch as Father, um, Father, you know, heated the poker back up. The next morning Jennifer would grow them both back. Both eyes, you see. And then they'd do it again.\" The muscles of her back bunched and coiled like thick snakes under her robe as she spoke.\n\n\"What happened? How did it end?\"\n\nCarolyn snarled. In the puddle of child's blood Steve saw a flash of white teeth, reflected. \"Michael became motivated.\" She spat the words out like someone vomiting up rotten food. \"After eleven days of this my brother concocted a way to bow the Deep One to his will.\"\n\nShe was trembling. It crossed his mind to go to her, to touch her shoulders and offer comfort, but he didn't quite dare. \"That's the worst thing I ever heard of.\"\n\n\"That,\" Carolyn said, \"is Father. He wasn't even really angry. It was routine. Just a discipline thing. Do you see?\"\n\nSteve thought about it before he answered. \"Yeah. Maybe I do. A little bit, anyway. And this kid, what's her name\u2014Mythronnie?\"\n\n\"Mithraganhi.\"\n\n\"She's buddies with this guy?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026she was.\"\n\nSteve groaned, feeling sick. He went to the edge of the platform and looked down. \"I went up to the top of the World Trade Center once,\" he said. \"This is higher.\"\n\n\"Yes. A lot.\"\n\n\"Let's say I believe you. About the girl.\"\n\n\"Do you?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Maybe. She looked harmless to me.\" He shrugged. \"But I'm not used to being up this high. Maybe the rules are different up here. Are they?\"\n\n\"I don't know that there are any rules,\" Carolyn said. \"I won. That's the only rule I'm aware of.\"\n\n\"Why me?\" He spoke softly. \"Why am I here? I don't understand.\"\n\n\"You're a klutz, Steve. I needed someone to drop the magazine. I couldn't do it myself, couldn't even look at it. David might have seen it, in my mind.\"\n\n\"That's it? You expect me to believe that you dragged me into this because I'm clumsy? That's why you ruined my life?\"\n\n\"Oh, you're exaggerating.\"\n\n\"EXA\u2014\" Steve cut himself off. Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it. That helped a little bit. \"You fucking framed me for fucking murder, Carolyn, and then tried to get me eaten alive by wild dogs. Remember?\" He patted Naga on the shoulders. \"Naga remembers.\"\n\nNaga shoulder-bumped Steve in solidarity. The two of them glared at Carolyn.\n\n\"OK, fine, yes, there is a bit more to it than just that you're clumsy.\"\n\n\"Well. That's progress.\" He and Naga exchanged a glance. \"Do, please, go on. Why me?\"\n\n\"I'll explain. I really will. But first, I need to hang David.\" She wiggled the shoelace. Blackness had swallowed him completely, even his last hairy toe.\n\nSteve felt his eyes go wide. The blackness around David had grown noticeably in just the last few minutes. Now, even from five feet away Steve felt the heat. It was like a furnace. He took a half step back. \"What's happening to him?\"\n\n\"Remember how I said he was frozen in time?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026I guess.\" The blackness around David had a fluid quality, the surface swirling.\n\n\"And do you remember what he was doing when I froze him?\"\n\n\"Is this a quiz?\"\n\n\"More like a teaching method. You'll understand better if I pull it out of you. Do you remember?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026yeah, I guess. He was dying, right? And you'd just given him a little zap in the pain center of his brain. You said it was 'the theoretical upper limit of suffering.'\" Then, under his breath, \"I mean\u2026damn.\"\n\n\"Exactly. But here's the difference. Suffering\u2014normal suffering\u2014is transient. What we perceive as emotion is just a quick connection between three-dimensional space and one of the higher physical planes\u2014rage, joy, pleasure, whatever. The repercussions can echo for years, but the actual link usually only lasts for a fraction of a second.\" She gave her gargoyle smile again. \"Usually.\"\n\n\"But\u2026not this time?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\" She jiggled the black sphere. \"Time isn't passing inside this. And I got it just right, too. David is connected to pure anguish, and he can't move on.\" She looked at Steve expectantly.\n\nSteve thought about this for a good long while, then gave up. \"Um. So what?\"\n\n\"So,\" she said, \"the potential energy between the planes will continue to be realized. It's like a capacitor with an infinite charge.\"\n\n\"Energy.\" He looked at David, now completely swallowed by blackness. The ball had grown visibly while they talked, and it was warmer now. \"You mean, the black stuff? That's energy?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"How big will it get?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. A million miles, give or take. That's why we came up here. We need to set him in the heavens, where there's room.\"\n\n\"Come again?\"\n\n\"By this time tomorrow, David will be our new sun.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 61",
                "text": "She reached into the cloud of stars overhead and made a shooing motion with her hand. The lights spun at her touch, not unlike the lazy Susan on the big corner table at a Chinese restaurant. When she had the right spot, she poked up a finger to stop the spinning, and pulled. Space rushed past them, the scale of the things they saw shrinking\u2014first whole galaxies, then clouds, then individual stars, and finally planets. \"Recognize that one?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026Jupiter?\" His lips felt numb.\n\n\"No, it's Saturn. See the rings?\"\n\n\"Right. Saturn. That's what I meant.\"\n\n\"It's OK. Now, hush for a second. I need to concentrate.\"\n\nSteve watched as she took David by the shoelace\u2014only a few inches were still poking out\u2014and pushed him gently through the thin membrane separating the reality Steve had grown up in and the Library. David seemed to shrink as he passed through.\n\n\"There we go,\" she said, and dusted her hands off theatrically. \"All done!\"\n\n\"How long before he's the sun?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. At least a couple of hours. I'll come back and fix the orbits later. Can't have the wee little marbles bumping into one another, can we?\"\n\nSteve, who was a plumber, spoke through dry lips. \"No. I guess not. When does he turn bright and yellow?\"\n\nHer face fell, a little. \"Well\u2026he doesn't.\"\n\n\"What do you mean? He's going to stay like that? All black, like?\"\n\n\"Yeah. It's a plane-of-anguish thing.\"\n\n\"Where will the light come from?\"\n\nShe frowned. \"There, ah, won't be quite as much. Light, I mean. Plenty of heat\u2014anguish is very hot\u2014and gamma radiation, and all of that, but there's not much for the visible spectrum.\"\n\n\"It's going to be dark all the time? Even when the sun's up? Forever?\"\n\n\"It'll be warm enough,\" she said defensively. \"No one will freeze. And people will adjust.\"\n\n\"Adjust.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"You can adjust to almost anything.\"\n\nSteve looked, but he couldn't find an answer in himself for that.\n\nAfter a long time, Carolyn spoke again. \"Well\u2026that brings me to the other reason I brought you up here.\"\n\n\"The food?\"\n\n\"No. Well, yeah. That too. But the bigger reason is\u2026I want to make a gift to you, Steve. I know you don't understand\u2014I'm still getting to that part\u2014but I owe you a great deal. It really wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I owe you everything. I've thought about this day for a very long time and, I\u2026I wanted to say that\u2026well, it would make me very happy if I could pay you back in some small way. I brought you up here so that you'd see David's ascension.\" She watched him, smiling and serious.\n\n\"OK. Why?\"\n\n\"The next time you see the sun rise you'll believe that I mean it when I say that I will give you anything\u2014absolutely anything\u2014you can think to ask for.\"\n\n\"You mean like a Maserati, or\u2014\"\n\n\"Sure, if you like. But more than that.\" She leaned in close. \"I can make you immortal. Invincible. Both, if you like. There are things in the apothecary that will make you smarter than the smartest man who ever lived.\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026\" The moment dragged out. \"Right now I just want some barbecue.\"\n\nHe noticed for the first time that Carolyn was sort of pretty when she laughed."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 62",
                "text": "\"Pretty good,\" Steve said. He licked his fingers. There had been steaks in the cooler, but also some things that looked like a giant scorpion and tasted a bit like pork. Carolyn said it had died out in the Pleistocene era, but it was one of her favorites. Steve didn't ask. It was good, though, if a lot of food. Naga ate three of the things by herself, plus two steaks and eight hamburgers. Then she curled up like a housecat and went to sleep. Steve debated giving her his leftovers but decided not to wake her. Poor kitty. She's had a tough day.\n\n\"Glad you like it,\" Carolyn said. \"Thanks for cooking.\"\n\n\"De nada.\" Whatever other skills she might possess, it was pretty obvious that Carolyn was a lousy cook. After she'd burned two sets of burgers Steve took over behind the grill. Now he settled back into his lawn chair with a contented sigh. At first he hadn't been crazy about sitting this close to the edge, but with a couple of beers in him he relaxed a little. It really is a fantastic view. The universe spun above them, casting a warm glow on the labyrinthine shelves below.\n\nCarolyn fished around in the ice chest and came up with a wine cooler. \"Another beer?\"\n\n\"Yeah, sure. I'll get to it eventually.\" He took a couple of swallows of Bud Light and burped softly, tasting extinct scorpion meat. \"So\u2026about this gift. Could you make me be president?\"\n\n\"Of what?\"\n\n\"The United States.\"\n\n\"Sure, if you like. I can't imagine why you'd want to be, though.\"\n\n\"Good point. How about Emperor of the Earth?\"\n\n\"Easy-peasy.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\" He thought about it for a minute. \"Could I be faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings in a single bound? And be able to shoot lasers out of my eyes?\"\n\n\"Lasers?\"\n\n\"Well, I think it's technically heat vision. And freeze breath. Could you do freeze breath?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Sure. It would take me a couple of weeks, but I could put all that together. Is that what you'd like?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026no. I was kidding.\"\n\n\"Well. OK. You can't help yourself, I get that. Just so that you know I'm serious. Absolutely anything at all. When we were kids, sometimes Father would play a game where he'd ask us to make up some impossible thing for him to do. If we stumped him, we got a prize.\" She looked at him. \"No one ever did, though. Not ever. Not once.\"\n\n\"Ride a flying alligator through a flying doughnut made of chorizo?\"\n\n\"Body modification is on the pearl floor, radial three, branch seven. Gravity is radial two, branch three. That covers antigravity as well. Charcuterie is somewhere on turquoise,\" she said, searching his face with her eyes. \"I'd have to look it up.\"\n\n\"Anything.\" All joking was gone from his voice. \"Anything at all.\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"That's\u2026wow. That's a really nice gift, Carolyn. Thank you.\" He drained his beer, picked up the next one.\n\n\"You're welcome. I'm glad you like it. Are you overwhelmed yet?\"\n\n\"For days now. Why?\"\n\n\"If you'd like, I can go into a little more detail. About what's been going on, I mean. Answer your questions, if you have any. Why you\u2026and all of that.\"\n\nSteve cracked his beer, spraying himself with cold foam. \"That'd be great. But won't it break you, or something?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"If you stop being really, really confusing all the time. Won't it hurt?\"\n\nShe held up her second-smallest finger.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I think it's called 'flipping the bird.' Am I not doing it right?\"\n\n\"Middle finger.\"\n\nShe adjusted. \"Better?\"\n\n\"Yeah, you got it.\" He paused, thinking. \"OK, I've got one. It seems like you know all about, y'know, the regular world\u2014who's president, how to use a phone, all that\u2014except when you don't. I mean, that first night you were having trouble getting the car door open. How does that work?\"\n\nShe smiled. \"Well\u2026sometimes I might have been playacting a little bit\u2014pretending to be more helpless than I really was. In case someone was watching, or whatever. They all think\u2014thought\u2014that I'm very sheltered. I'm not supposed to know much about anything except languages. But there were also some genuine gaps. I figured maybe 'Mr. Cell' was some guy who made the phone you plug into the wall, you know? They didn't have the portable ones when I was a kid.\" She rolled her eyes. \"And I don't think I'll ever get you guys' idea of clothes.\"\n\n\"So, you were an actual kid? You're not from outer space?\"\n\n\"Yeah, um, no. That's ridiculous. Whatever gave you that idea?\"\n\n\"I dunno. TV, or something. Well\u2026are you guys all possessed by demons? Or maybe something magical?\"\n\n\"Oh God. Shut up before you embarrass yourself.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said, meaning it. \"I just\u2026Carolyn, I can't begin to imagine something that would explain\u2026all this.\"\n\n\"No. Not a demon. And, like I said, there's no such thing as magic.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"I'm\u2026it's like I told you that first night. I wasn't lying. I'm a librarian.\"\n\nSteve considered this. \"I think we're using that word in different ways.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Yeah. Probably.\"\n\n\"When I say librarian, I think\u2026\"\n\n\" 'Tea and cozy mysteries'?\"\n\n\"Right. Exactly. See? You do understand.\"\n\n\"Not really. I like tea well enough, but\u2026I don't really know what a 'cozy mystery' is. That's just what you said, the first night, at Warwick Hall. That's what you think of when you say 'librarian.'\" She looked at him the way a small animal might look up, hiding in its burrow. \"But it wasn't like that,\" she whispered. \"Not at all.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said, leaning back. \"I'm starting to get that. But maybe you should tell me what it was like. So I won't ask so many dumb questions?\"\n\nShe hesitated for a long time, looking into the middle distance. But eventually she nodded. \"Yeah. Part of me wants to. Really.\" She opened her mouth, frowned, shut it.\n\n\"But\u2026?\"\n\n\"It's just\u2026I always had to hide what I was thinking, planning. I had to hide everything, even from myself. Always. Do you understand?\" There was a pleading quality to her voice that he'd never heard before.\n\n\"I don't think that I do,\" Steve said softly.\n\n\"No. Of course not. How could you?\" She nodded to herself one more time. \"I don't even know where to start.\"\n\n\"The beginning?\"\n\n\"All right,\" she said. She drew in a deep breath, and when she spoke the iron was back in her voice. \"The beginning, then. When I was a little girl, about nine or ten years old, I spent a summer living in the forest. This was about a year after Father took us in, just after our parents died. I made friends with two deer, Isha and Asha, they were called, and\u2026\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 63",
                "text": "Carolyn talked for hours. Steve thought she might have glossed over some stuff\u2014what, exactly, did she mean by \"heart coal\"?\u2014but she told him a great deal. She told him about David and the bull. She told him how Margaret's madness ate away at her little by little until one day licking tears from the cheeks of dead men was fun. She talked a little about how Michael came to look at indoor things with feral, haunted eyes. Speaking in detached, clinical terms, she told him the things David had done, showed him the ink spots on her forearms where he had nailed her to the desk with her pens.\n\nIn the small hours of the morning she came at last to Erwin, who had been her thunder of the east.\n\n\"Well,\" she said, downing the last of her wine, \"aren't you going to tell me what an asshole I am?\"\n\nSteve shook his head. \"No. I'm not. Other people might, but I'm not.\"\n\nShe waited for a beat, then two. \"But?\"\n\n\"But nothing. I'm kind of a shitty, bush-league Buddhist, Carolyn, but one of the first things they tell you is to try to look at other people with compassion. Not 'pity'\u2014that can be sort of a tough distinction to make, at least at first\u2014but compassion. In your case that's not hard. I probably would have shot myself about five minutes after I saw that kid get roasted alive. I literally cannot imagine what that must have been like.\"\n\n\"Peter did,\" Carolyn said softly. \"Jennifer too, I think.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Shot themselves. After the bull. Well, Jennifer used poison.\" She looked up at him, lost. \"Father brought them back. Then he punished them\u2014fifty lashes or something. I forget.\"\n\n\"But not you.\"\n\n\"Not me what?\"\n\n\"You never tried killing yourself? Or running away some other way?\"\n\n\"No. Never.\" Carolyn's eyes were like granite, against which soft things might smash and be broken. \"My work was still before me, you see.\" Right now she isn't acting, Steve realized. This is what she is when she doesn't have to pretend. He said \"Jesus,\" very softly. Roasted the kid alive? He felt numb.\n\nCarolyn shut her eyes. When she opened them again the shields were back up. \"I think it's time for bed.\"\n\n\"No, I didn't\u2014\"\n\n\"It's OK. I really am tired.\" Wan smile. \"This was a big day for me. And\u2026I'm just\u2026I don't talk much. I almost never talk about myself. I feel, I don't know\u2026\"\n\n\"Vulnerable?\"\n\nLong pause. \"Yeah. That.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Don't be. It isn't your fault. It's just\u2026I'm not big on\u2026whatever you call it.\"\n\n\"Basic human contact?\"\n\n\"Whatever. It makes me uncomfortable. But you asked, and I told you, and now you know.\"\n\nSteve nodded.\n\n\"One thing I am sorry for, though, is that I put you through so much,\" she said. \"It must have been confusing. Upsetting. I probably could have handled your part of this better.\"\n\n\"Oh? Do you think so? Do you really?\"\n\n\"Steve, I\u2014\"\n\n\"Just, y'know, for future reference, I probably would have done your little jog for a small fee. Two hundred bucks, maybe? All that stuff with framing me for murder was overkill.\" He nodded his head a couple of times, wide-eyed and exaggerated. \"Yup. Overkill. Big-time.\"\n\n\"OK, sure, but if you hadn't been resurrected, the dead ones would have\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait. Hold up. If I hadn't been what?\"\n\n\"Um\u2026nothing.\"\n\n\"What did you say, Carolyn?\"\n\nShe reached out, almost but not quite touching him. \"Steve?\"\n\n\"Hmm?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you if you want. But you'd be happier not knowing.\"\n\nHe considered this for a long moment. \"Yeah. OK. Coming from you, I'm prepared to accept that.\" He rubbed his temples. \"Anyway, I've got the mother of all consolation prizes.\"\n\n\"Right. Have you got any ideas about what you might want?\"\n\n\"No. Not really.\"\n\n\"OK. Well, think about it. We'll talk more tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Did you bring, like, sleeping bags or something?\"\n\n\"What? Oh. No. There are dormitories below the jade floor. I made one up for you, American-style.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026I sort of borrowed a penthouse. Out of a hotel, I mean. Have you heard of the Al Murjan? It's supposed to be really nice. C'mon, I'll show you.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 64",
                "text": "\"Good night,\" she said. \"I'll be upstairs if you need anything.\"\n\n\"You're not going to bed?\"\n\n\"Not just yet. I have a couple of things to take care of first.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Steve shut the door with a small measure of relief. The \"hall\" below the jade floor was like being inside the metal artery of some giant beast. But she was right\u2014the penthouse, wherever she had gotten it, was really nice, if perhaps a trifle exotic for his taste. The couch alone is probably worth more than my apartment. It was comfy, though\u2014Naga fell asleep on it immediately. Steve made himself a drink and explored a little, then plopped down next to her. Naga stopped snoring, then raised her head and showed him a fang.\n\nHe rubbed her between the ears. \"Go back to sleep, grumpypants.\"\n\nAll of the writing on the remote was in Arabic, but On buttons aren't hard to figure out. The TV also had a split-screen feature. After a bit of fumbling he set it up to watch CNN, Fox, and Al Jazeera all at once.\n\nDavid's damnation had progressed, it seemed. Now he was visible to the naked eye. It was still night in Virginia, but in places like Sydney, Beijing, and Fiji crowds of commuters drifted slack-jawed and motionless through city streets, watching the black dawn of this new age. As promised, David was warm enough and about sun-sized. But even at his brightest he was very faint, a dark gray disk against the backdrop of stars.\n\nCNN had a bunch of astrophysicists on teleconference. Anderson Cooper was polling them about why the sun was black all of a sudden. What, pray tell, was up with that? Some guy from Harvard was going on about dark matter, how poorly understood it was.\n\nSteve listened to him for a few minutes, then saluted him with his scotch. \"A valiant effort.\"\n\nHe flipped channels for an hour or so, increasingly drunk but too wound-up to sleep. MTV was doing a Beavis and Butt-Head revival, complete with videos. There was, of course, endless footage of the fire at the White House, the explosion at the Capitol. There had been a small earthquake in California\u2014nothing to get excited about, really! They had some footage of the black sun filmed from the little cupola thing on the International Space Station, which was pretty. The vice president was governing from a secure, undisclosed location. A couple of Norwegian snowboarders claimed that they saw part of a glacier get up and walk away. That was obviously ridiculous, but before and after photos showed that a big chunk of the glacier in question had indeed gone missing. Also the moon might be just a bit wobbly. Gravitational anomalies, perhaps caused by the solar incident, were suspected\u2014\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"Fuck this.\" He went out the double doors of the penthouse, leaving them open in case Naga got restless. \"Carolyn?\" he called.\n\nThe metal hall of the dormitories was rounded, arterial, maybe a hundred yards long. It was very dark.\n\n\"Carolyn?\"\n\nNo answer. He went anyway, padding down the uneven metal in his socks. He was much drunker than he had realized, it seemed, but he found that if he moved at a deliberate pace he didn't stumble too badly. At the far end of the hall oak stairs, rounded and smoothed by the passage of uncounted bare feet, floated in midair. Steve climbed them to stand among the stacks of the Library.\n\nHe had worried about how he might find her in that vast space, but it wasn't hard. Carolyn hovered a couple hundred yards above the floor, spinning in place like a figure skater doing a pirouette. Her arms were thrust above her in a V. The loose, oversized sleeves of her robe fluttered as she spun. She was shouting at the top of her lungs, babbling in a language Steve didn't recognize, still covered in David's blood, now dry and clotted. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Steve couldn't tell whether she was sobbing or laughing. Maybe both? Beneath her, the jade floor glowed. Looking up, Steve saw the universe he knew, hanging suspended in the center of the Library. Carolyn's shadow lay over it like black wings.\n\nSteve watched this for a time. He had come out there meaning to speak with her, to explain to her how bad things were outside, explain her mistake. They would have a laugh, after. But seeing her like this he could think of nothing at all that he might say. Eventually he turned, fled back down the metal hall to the \"penthouse,\" and slammed the door behind him. Naga raised her head at the sound.\n\nHe went into the bathroom, slamming that door behind him as well, then bent double over the toilet and threw up\u2014once, twice, again. He spat thick drool into the bowl. Oily sweat beaded his forehead. He thought of Carolyn spinning, cackling, thought of the dispassionate, just-relaying-information tone in which she told of ax murders at dinner, told of children roasted alive.\n\nSeeing her at the bar that first night he had thought, naturally enough, that she was like him. He understood now how wrong that was.\n\nHe went back out to the living room. Naga was waiting for him, wide-awake, real concern in her eyes. Steve opened a bottle of water and patted her hindquarters. \"It's OK. I'm OK.\"\n\nBut he wasn't. He was beginning to understand, and he wasn't OK. We're the only ones in here, he thought. No help. No one else is coming. \"What are we gonna do, huh? What are we gonna do?\"\n\nNaga didn't answer.\n\nBack on CNN Anderson Cooper had gotten around to an old woman with bright-blue eyes. She had the words \"Gretl Abendroth\" and \"Lucasian Professor\" written under her head. She was answering Anderson's question, or trying to. Choking with laughter, tears streaming from her eyes, she said that the other professors were fools, said that current theory could never be stretched to include the black sun. She cackled at them, saying, \"Admit it,\" saying, \"You don't know any more than I do. Our understanding is a bad joke. It always has been.\"\n\nSome of the panelists took offense to this. One of them said she sounded like a superstitious peasant. Another said something like \"OK, maybe it's not dark matter; why didn't she explain it to them if she was so goddamn smart?\" Anderson Cooper nodded, concerned.\n\nAbendroth went quiet. Steve, a longtime viewer of talk shows, thought she might be on the verge of tears. But when she spoke she sounded calm enough.\n\n\"I think perhaps God is angry.\"\n\nSteve suddenly wanted very much to buy Dr. Abendroth a drink. In all the world, she was the only other person who really got it. \"Well,\" Steve said, \"you're not wrong. But it's worse than that.\" He cast a shifty, paranoid glance into the shadows. \"I think she might be out of her fucking mind.\"\n\nHearing himself say this, the thought came to him fully formed as from the void: The vocabulary of such a creature would be different from what I am used to, different from what I know.\n\nIt was in that moment that he first began to understand what he had to do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 65",
                "text": "Sing, Sing, Sing!\n\nA little over a month later, Carolyn walked down the stairs from the Library proper to the dormitories. She was lugging a good-sized cardboard box, too big to see over. She probed each step with her toe.\n\nThe box held a bowl of popcorn, two bottles of Everclear, and half a carton of Marlboros. Steve had asked for the booze and smokes, but the popcorn was her idea. She didn't hold out much hope that he'd be grateful, but she thought there was a reasonable chance he might at least be civil.\n\nShe'd thought of calling down to him for some help, then decided against it. Steve didn't like the stairs. It bothered him that they hung in midair, unsupported. Steve said this \"weirded him out.\"\n\nThis wasn't surprising. The list of things that Steve found objectionable was long and growing. It included the Library itself (\"How can the furniture hang on the ceiling like that? It's creepy.\"); the jade floor (\"Jade isn't supposed to glow.\"); the apothecary (\"What the hell is that thing? I'm out of here.\"); the armory (David's trophies made him throw up); the Pelapi language (\"It sounds like cats fighting\"); her robes (\"Did you borrow those from Death?\" She hadn't.); and, of course, Carolyn herself.\n\nJust ask. He'd tell you aaaaaaaaaaaalllll about it.\n\n\"My robes?\" she muttered, peeping over the top of the box, trying to find her footing. \"What's wrong with my robes? They're just robes, for gosh sakes.\"\n\nCarolyn vaguely remembered the way it had been for her at first\u2014the vast spaces of the main hall, the sick, rudderless feeling of having everything she knew snatched away. It was disorienting, sure. But you'd think that after a month he'd be starting to adjust.\n\nHe hadn't, though. Transporting the penthouse had been a hassle, but now she was glad she had gone to the trouble. Steve seemed determined to set up camp in there.\n\nWhen she was younger, forming her plans and preparing, she had sometimes daydreamed about the things the two of them would do when they were together\u2014picnics, little vacations, reading together by the fire. Instead, he mostly got drunk and played video games.\n\nWell, not always. Sometimes he and Naga came up to play in the stacks, a cat's game where they took turns hiding in the shadows and pouncing on each other. And today the two of them were just back from a three-day trip to the Serengeti. Steve had invited her to come along, but when she said she was too busy his relief had been obvious.\n\nShe thought of Jennifer's voice, soft and pitying: She has a heart coal. And, worse, It never works out the way you would think.\n\n\"Fuck you, Jennifer,\" Carolyn said. \"I'll figure something out. I always do.\"\n\nThe slick metal of the dormitory hall still felt homey underfoot after her months on American carpet and asphalt. Steve, of course, hated that, too.\n\nThe polished wood and precise lines of Steve's door looked alien against the hall's organic smoothness. She set the box down and checked her reflection in one of the bottles. She'd had one of the dead ones do her hair. It seemed like a good idea at the time but\u2026\n\nWell\u2026it's different. The problem, she decided, was that she wasn't really sure what hair was supposed to look like. It's not bad, right? I mean\u2026it's at least tidy. Well, maybe. But she thought that it also smacked of desperation. And what are you going to do if this doesn't work out, Carolyn? What then? \"I'll make it work,\" she said again.\n\nBut she didn't sound sure.\n\nShe sniffed her armpits\u2014they, at least, were good\u2014then breathed out a stiff breath and arranged her face in something like a smile. Knock-knock.\n\nAfter a long time Steve opened the door, just a crack. \"Hi.\"\n\n\"Hi! Can I come in?\"\n\n\"Why do you bother asking?\" At the side of his neck his carotid artery was pulsing. His sweat smelled like fear. \"You could just come in. I couldn't stop you, right? No one could.\"\n\n\"I\u2026I wouldn't do that. Not to you.\" Her heart sank. Is he really afraid of me? She shook her head. Of course not. That's just silly. She let a little of the misery she felt show in her face.\n\nSteve's expression softened, a little. \"Yeah. Well. OK. Come on in.\"\n\nStepping inside, she stifled the urge to wrinkle her nose. The room stank of stale smoke and lion piss. She had brought in a kiddie pool and several pallets of Fresh Step, but by the time they convinced Naga to try it, the carpet was a lost cause.\n\n\"Have a seat.\" Steve flopped down.\n\n\"Thanks.\" It was a large sofa, but Carolyn chose to sit close to him. Back in the shadows, Naga studied her with golden hunter's eyes.\n\n\"How was Africa?\"\n\n\"Dark,\" Steve said. \"How did you think it would be?\"\n\n\"Steve, I\u2014\"\n\nHe held up a hand. \"Sorry. Forget I said anything. Naga had a great time, though. She met up with an aunt of hers. And we ate some wildebeest.\"\n\n\"How was that?\"\n\n\"Naga loved it. It was a little undercooked for my taste, but it was very, very fresh.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014they took you hunting?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Actually they insisted.\"\n\n\"Wow.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"That's a huge honor, Steve.\" Michael had lived in the veldt for two years before he was granted an apprenticeship\u2014and that was with the benefit of an introduction from Nobununga. \"Huge.\"\n\n\"Yeah? Well, that's nice.\"\n\nShe waited, but he didn't elaborate. Mentally, she shrugged. Fine. On the coffee table a three-ring binder lay open, surrounded by overflowing ashtrays. \"How's the studying going?\"\n\n\"I'm making progress.\" He turned and rumbled to Naga in the language of the hunt: \"Thank you for not eating me today.\"\n\nNaga's voice came from the darkness: \"Your affection is not meaningless to me, puny one. I shall devour you another day.\"\n\n\"Not bad,\" Carolyn said. Steve's accent was thick, but his pronunciation was better than she would have expected. \"I think you've got a knack for this. The cat dialects are tricky.\" She eyed the three-ring binder. He was well past the halfway point. \"How soon before you need the next one?\"\n\n\"Another week or so, I think.\"\n\n\"OK. I'll get started on volume two. You'll like that one. It covers hunting.\" Michael's texts tended to be about half diagrams, so translating them went relatively quickly. Even so, it was time she couldn't really afford. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"You're welcome.\"\n\nUncomfortable silence.\n\nThis time Steve cracked first. \"So\u2026what's up with the Farrah Fawcett do?\"\n\n\"What? I\u2014I'm sorry, I don't understand what that means.\"\n\nSteve traced the air next to her head. \"Farrah Fawcett? The chick from the poster? Your hair is\u2026\" Seeing her expression, he trailed off. \"Ah, forget it.\" He sighed. \"You look, um, nice, is all.\"\n\nShe could tell he was lying, but it didn't sound like a cruel lie. \"Thank you,\" she said, which was safe enough. \"Would you like some popcorn?\" She peeled the Tupperware lid off the bowl and held it out to him.\n\nHe looked at her. \"Popcorn?\"\n\n\"Sure. Don't you like it?\"\n\n\"No, it's not that.\" He hesitated. \"I just didn't figure you for a popcorn kind of gal, is all.\"\n\n\"Well\u2026it's been a while. My mother used to make it, when I was young. I remember that. I thought you might enjoy something, you know, familiar.\"\n\n\"Yeah, sure.\"\n\nShe set the bowl on the coffee table. He dug out a handful.\n\n\"Thanks, it's good.\"\n\nThey munched for a little while.\n\n\"Have you thought any more about what we talked about?\" Steve affected a casual tone when he said this, but he wasn't fooling anyone.\n\nMentally, Carolyn rolled her eyes. Steve refused to let go of the idea that David's light might be made yellow somehow. He brought it up every time they were together, at least once. \"Steve, even if I wanted to, I couldn't.\" At this point, she almost did want to. Forsake a revenge that was fifteen years in the making? Sure! Anything to shut him up. \"It's just not technically possible. Why is that so hard for you to accept?\"\n\nHe gave a knowing smirk, like she was hiding something but he was too clever for her. She felt like throttling him.\n\n\"Well, Carolyn, the last sun we had was yellow, and the sky seems to be full of stars that are\u2014\"\n\n\"The circumstances were different, Steve. David's spirit is crushed, and half his head is missing. Forging a connection to any plane besides anguish is going to be a problem.\"\n\n\"But what if you\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough, Steve.\" Then, calmer, \"It's not going to happen.\"\n\nThey sat silently for a while, munching popcorn and not looking at each other.\n\nIt was Naga who broke the silence: \"My Lord Hunter? Have you given my question to the dark one?\"\n\n\"Not yet, sweetie. I'm getting to it. Give me a minute, OK? Remember what we said.\"\n\nNaga bared her teeth. \"Very well.\"\n\nCarolyn gaped at them.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Did you hear what she called you?\"\n\nSteve shook his head. \"Er\u2026no? I mean, I heard it, but I still have a lot of gaps in\u2014\"\n\n\"She called you 'My Lord Hunter.' \"\n\n\"Awww,\" Steve said, skritching Naga's ears. \"Thanks, sweetie. That's nice.\" Then, seeing the look on Carolyn's face, \"What?\"\n\n\"You really don't understand.\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"How is this surprising?\"\n\n\" 'My Lord Hunter' is\u2026it's like an honorific. More than an honorific. It's a term of extreme respect. Lions only dust it off for special occasions.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He frowned. \"So, it's a big deal?\"\n\n\"Yeah, Steve. It's a big deal. It's the lion equivalent of getting your face carved on Mount Rushmore. And calling a person that\u2026wow. I've never heard of such a thing. Never. What did you do?\"\n\nSteve shifted. \"Er. Nothing. Not really.\" Then, in a small voice, \"We just talked.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\n\"Stuff.\"\n\n\"Naga, what did he do?\"\n\nThe lion looked at her. \"My Lord Hunter will be the one to save us all. It has been foreseen. He will\u2014\"\n\n\"Naga!\" Steve spoke sharply, cutting her off. \"We said I was going to handle this, remember?\"\n\nNaga swished her tail, faded back into the shadows.\n\n\"Handle what, exactly?\" Carolyn's tone was artificially bright.\n\nSteve put down the popcorn bowl. \"Have you been watching the news?\"\n\nInwardly, she groaned. The last time they talked she had promised that she would, and she had meant it. But she'd gotten distracted running down a rumor about the Duke, and\u2026\"I'm sorry. It must have slipped my mind.\"\n\nSteve's jaw muscles jumped. But all he said was, \"It's OK. I know you're busy. Would you mind if we took a look now? I want to show you something.\"\n\nShe forced a small smile. \"Sure.\"\n\nHe pressed a button and the screen lit up. \"Do you like the television? It's big!\" It was, in fact, huge. She had hoped that this would please him\u2014Americans liked garish things, right?\u2014but he didn't seem to care at all.\n\n\"Yeah, it's great.\" He flipped through channels. \"Here, this is a good one. Watch this.\"\n\nThe writing at the bottom of the screen said FOOD RIOTS IN OREGON. There was handheld video of the inside of a supermarket. The shelves were bare, and there was blood on the floor. Out in the parking lot, blue lights flashed.\n\n\"Had you heard about that?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"There was supposed to be a train full of wheat coming in from Kansas, but it never showed up. Hijacked, maybe? No one seems to know how you can lose a whole train.\"\n\n\"I could go look for it if\u2014\"\n\n\"That's nice of you, but that wasn't really my point.\"\n\nCarolyn felt Naga's eyes on her, watching from the shadows. \"No? What then?\"\n\n\"It was more about the riot. Those used to be fairly rare, once every ten years or so. Now there are at least a couple every day. And it's getting worse.\"\n\n\"Oh? That's interesting.\" Long pause. He was looking at her expectantly. \"Um, why is that, do you think?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026people are a little on edge. What with everything that's been going on lately\u2014the White House burning down, and the president being missing, and\u2026the other stuff.\"\n\nHe didn't mention David, but she knew what he was getting at. She tensed up another notch.\n\n\"People are scared,\" Steve said. \"Down in South Carolina there's a preacher who keeps going on about how these are the End Times. They call him Brother Elgin. He reminds me of a rabid possum, but there are a lot of people who take him seriously. He says he's the governor now. Supposedly he's seceded from the union.\"\n\n\"Is that a big deal?\"\n\n\"Bigish, yeah. The other day there was a firefight between him and the Army. Some tanks shelled the State House. Brother Elgin had a bunch of college kids chained up out front as human shields. A couple hundred people died. They'll probably get it sorted out eventually. But just a few weeks ago everything was\u2026y'know. Quiet. Normal.\"\n\nA few weeks ago? \"Oh-ho! So you're blaming me for this?\"\n\n\"Should I?\"\n\n\"Of course not! People are just overreacting.\"\n\n\"Overre\u2014\" Steve cut himself off, then drummed his fingers on the end table. \"OK. Maybe from your point of view that's true. I know you didn't intend for any of this stuff to happen. I'm guessing you probably didn't even notice. Am I right?\"\n\nCarolyn felt a flicker of irritation and squelched it. At least he's making an effort to be civil. She sighed. Plus, it's not like he's wrong. \"Yeah. OK. Some of this is new information. But I've been really busy!\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know. I get that, I really do. Your Father dying really shook things up. All his old enemies have their knives out for the new kid, right?\"\n\n\"Exactly. But I have the advantage.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"They will underestimate me,\" she said, smiling. Seeing this, Steve actually shivered. He tried to hide it, but of course she saw. He really is afraid of me, she thought and, oh, knowing that this was true hurt. She wouldn't cry; she never cried.\n\nBut it hurt so much.\n\nHoping for escape, she looked at the television. The writing on one corner of the screen said CNN. Beside that, the words NEUTRONIUM HULL? in larger letters. Above it all, the Library. It tumbled in place like a thrown die, a dark pyramid bigger than anything made by men. It was black outside, of course, but the camera crew had some sort of light-gathering lens that made everything an eerie green. Helicopters danced around the pyramid like fireflies around a beach ball.\n\n\"Is that us?\" Steve gestured at the TV with a handful of popcorn. \"That's the thing that was whooshing by in the sky, the night Erwin shot David? The 'project and defend' thing?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Is it the Library? Like, we're inside?\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"Sort of. It's a four-dimensional projection of a seventeen-dimensional universe. Kind of like a shadow, or the place where the circles overlap in a Venn diagram.\"\n\nOn the television, the camera panned down from the Library to a pretty woman in an overcoat. She stood in front of a roadblock on Highway 78. Carolyn recognized the spot. The sound was off, but Carolyn read her lips. She was saying things like \"day thirty-two\" and \"unusual activity,\" and \"military has not responded.\" Her teeth were very white. Then, from behind her, stern-faced soldiers came around the tank, waving their arms in \"shoo\" gestures.\n\n\"What's going on?\" Steve looked around for the remote.\n\n\"The Army is evacuating all the reporter people.\"\n\n\"What? Why?\"\n\n\"They're going to start bombing us in a few minutes.\"\n\nSteve stared at her. \"You know about that?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nHe raised an eyebrow. \"You don't want to, like, flee?\"\n\n\"I thought it would be fun to watch. David used to bomb things sometimes. The lights are kind of pretty.\" She smiled and held up the bowl. \"Plus, popcorn!\"\n\nSteve just stared at her.\n\nA moment later she got it. \"Oh. They can't hurt us. I promise.\"\n\n\"Umm. Have you heard of something called atomic bombs?\"\n\n\"I'm familiar with them. They won't try that. Well\u2026they talked about it, but I think they decided not to. Erwin and the Chinese guy wanted to, but the president kept saying 'not on American soil.' I'm pretty sure, anyway. I got bored and tuned out.\"\n\nHe boggled at her. \"How the hell do you know these things?\"\n\n\"I stole it from David's catalog. When someone is planning to harm me, I can tell.\" She glanced at Naga. \"It feels sort of like an itch, here.\" She tapped the base of her skull. \"When I got the itch, I listened in on them. It should start any minute.\"\n\nSteve rubbed his temples. \"Carolyn\u2026even if they don't use nukes, they have these things called bunker busters. And something else, I think it's called a 'daisy cutter'? Something like that. They're huge bombs, almost as big as nukes.\" He searched her face. \"Are you sure that won't\u2014\"\n\n\"Relax,\" she said, misunderstanding. \"There's nothing to worry about. I promise.\" She looked out at the wall behind the television. \"Actually, it's already started. The stuff on television must have been recorded, or something. Look.\" She made a gesture and the wall became transparent.\n\nSteve squinted against the glare. \"Has the sun come back?\"\n\n\"No, it's just the explosions. Hang on.\" She gestured again and the glare dimmed a bit. \"That's better.\"\n\nFor as far back as the eye could see, the air was filled with warplanes. Seeing them she thought of flocks of birds, migrating for the winter. A flight of cruise missiles streaked in through the night sky and blossomed against the wall of the Library, orange flowers in the night. \"See? Told you it was pretty.\" She ate a piece of popcorn. \"Don't you think?\"\n\n\"Uh\u2026I guess.\"\n\nNext in the line were three big bombers. The bomb-bay doors were open in their bellies. As they approached they disgorged their cargo. Now she could see them on the television as well as through the wall. Fireballs marched up the side of the pyramid in surprisingly tidy rows. One of them was a direct hit. Carolyn adjusted the brightness again.\n\nSteve walked over and put his hand on the wall. \"I can't even feel it. Nothing.\"\n\n\"Of course not.\" She gestured at the pyramid on the TV. \"Like I said, it's a projection. The bombs can't reach where we actually are. Think of it this way\u2014if someone shot your shadow, that wouldn't hurt, right?\"\n\n\"Hmm.\" Steve sat back down\u2014farther away from her than he had been\u2014and took a handful of popcorn. \"I have a confession to make.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"I knew they were going to bomb you. Well\u2026I knew they were thinking about it.\"\n\n\"Oh? Did you?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I've been talking to Erwin. And the president\u2014the new one, I mean. Not the head. Plus a couple of others.\" He held up Mrs. McGillicutty's cell phone.\n\nShe waved her hand in the air. \"I appreciate you saying something, but it's not a problem.\"\n\n\"You knew, didn't you?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Have you been eavesdropping on me?\"\n\n\"I'd never do that. Not to you.\"\n\n\"Then how?\"\n\n\"Different universe, remember? I had to set up a relay before your cell phone would work. Remember how the first couple of times you tried to make a call, nothing happened?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He paused. \"You're not mad?\"\n\n\"Nothing to be mad about.\"\n\n\"I sort of conspired to murder you. That's nothing?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Nope. On some level you knew it couldn't work.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\nShe tapped the base of her skull. \"No itch.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Steve thought to himself for a few seconds. He and Naga exchanged a look. Finally he nodded. \"Yeah,\" he said softly. \"OK.\" Then, to her, \"Can I get you a drink? There's something I want to talk to you about.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" A drink sounds really good. \"What's on your mind?\"\n\n\"Well, the first thing is, I wanted to talk to you about that wish.\"\n\n\"You know what you want?\" She tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice. Maybe he's coming around after all!\n\n\"Yeah. I thought of something. You remember me talking about my dog? The cocker spaniel?\"\n\n\"Er\u2026\"\n\n\"That first night, back at the bar.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she lied. \"Of course.\"\n\n\"Can you find him? Make sure he's OK? His name is Petey.\"\n\n\"Yeah, sure. I can do that. But Steve, that's nothing. If you have\u2014\"\n\nHe gave her a very earnest look. \"You promise?\"\n\n\"Sure. I promise. I'm not much good with dogs, but I'll figure something out.\"\n\nSteve sat back, nodded. \"Thank you, Carolyn. I really appreciate that.\"\n\nHe fell silent. After a long pause she pulled at the air, a get-on-with-it gesture. \"Steve?\"\n\n\"Mmm. Sorry. How do I put this?\" He pursed his lips. \"Look, first, I want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you told me the other night. What happened to you. How you got to be\u2026whatever you are.\"\n\n\"I told you, I'm just a libr\u2014\"\n\nHe held up his hand. \"Whatever. Just know, I'm making a real effort to put myself in your place. To understand why you do the things you do. Like, that's all I've really done since then.\"\n\nThere was something in his tone that she didn't like. \"Oh? And now you have\u2026opinions?\"\n\nHe ran his fingers through his hair. \"In terms of what you did? To David and Margaret? No. I personally try to stay away from stuff like that, the kicking of ass and so forth. On the other hand, no one's ever nailed me to a desk. So, really, who am I to judge?\"\n\nIce cubes clinked in a glass. In her heart, something unclenched. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"But I do have an opinion about something else.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"About what it did to you.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026for instance, most people I know wouldn't get bored and tune out of a conversation where someone was deciding whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on them. Even if they were pretty sure they'd live through it, they'd be curious to hear how the conversation turned out.\" He shook his head. \"Not you, though. It did not rise to your threshold of interest.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure what you're getting at.\"\n\n\"At first I thought you were fucking crazy. Maybe you are, by whatever standard the doctors have, but now I don't think crazy is the right word.\"\n\n\"What, then?\" Her lips felt numb, as if she'd been given some sort of toxin.\n\n\"I can't think of a word for it. It's like you're living at a different scale than the rest of us. Normal things\u2014fear, hope, compassion\u2014just don't register with you.\"\n\n\"That's\u2026OK. Maybe. There might be something to that.\" Her tone was guarded. He didn't mean her any harm, she'd know if he did, but there was something there, something\u2026\n\n\"It has to be that way,\" he said. \"I mean, really. How else could you have survived? But, the thing is, it cuts both ways.\"\n\n\"Steve, you're going to have to spell it out for me.\"\n\n\"Yeah, OK. I'm trying to.\" He poured half an inch of Everclear into her glass, then filled the rest with orange juice. He emptied the rest of the bottle into a steel stock pot. \"Letting it breathe,\" he said. He walked over and handed her the glass.\n\nShe sipped her drink, made a face.\n\n\"Don't like it?\"\n\n\"It's pretty strong.\" She drank it anyway.\n\n\"Yeah.\" He touched his cup to his lips, then set it aside. \"Like I said, I've been watching the news a lot lately. Are you aware that there have been some agricultural problems? With this new sun you put up?\"\n\n\"What sort of problems?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026most of the plants are dying. Almost all of them, really. Trees, grass, wheat, rice, the Amazon Basin\u2026pretty much everything. That has some people a little concerned.\"\n\n\"About plants?\" She was honestly confused. Americans were constantly killing one another. Every time you turned around there was another war. \"Why would they care about plants?\"\n\n\"The thing is, pretty soon there isn't going to be any food left.\"\n\n\"Oh! Right. Well, that's easy. There are plenty of molds and fungi and whatnot that will grow under the black sun. I've got books. When I get around to it I'll make a translation, and\u2014\"\n\n\"That's really nice, and I know people will appreciate it. But the problem is getting to be kind of urgent.\"\n\nShe shifted uncomfortably. \"I'll see if I can block out some time next week.\"\n\n\"CNN is running a series of special reports on how to get nutritional value from stuff you wouldn't normally think of as food,\" Steve said. \"Making stew out of shoe leather. Recipes for your house pets. Things like that.\"\n\n\"Hmm. Come to think of it, the store was out of guacamole.\"\n\n\"Did you notice the price on the Everclear?\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"Seven thousand dollars a bottle is a little higher than usual,\" he said. \"Probably the only reason you could find it at all is that it's as much an industrial chemical as a food product. I don't think anyone except high school kids actually drinks the stuff. They only do it because they don't know any better.\"\n\n\"Now that you mention it, the shelves did seem kind of bare.\"\n\n\"I bet.\" He made a concentrating face. \"The other day I saw something on the news that made me think of your deer. Isha and\u2026\"\n\n\"Asha.\"\n\n\"Right. The other week this kid, sixteen or so, got caught poaching deer on a rich guy's estate. That's a capital crime now. They caught him red-handed. Literally. He was sucking the marrow out of a doe's femur bone. His defense was that the deer were going to starve to death anyway, so why shouldn't someone get some nutrition out of them? I kind of saw his point.\"\n\nCarolyn flashed on a morning she had spent nibbling dew-drenched clover with Asha, watching the spring dawn. This brought a flicker of\u2026something\u2026but she pushed it down.\n\nSteve was watching her intently.\n\n\"What happened?\" she asked. Her voice was perfectly normal.\n\nSteve was silent a long moment before he answered, softly. \"They hanged the kid anyway. Afterwards there were more riots. Like I said, it's kind of an everyday thing now.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" She drained her glass.\n\n\"Another drink?\" His voice was stronger.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nHe walked back into the kitchen and opened the second bottle. He fixed her drink\u2014a full inch of liquor this time\u2014then poured the rest of that bottle into the stock pot with the first.\n\n\"Anyway. There's some other problems besides the famine. Earthquakes are the biggie. There's a new one almost every day. There's not much left of San Francisco. Tokyo is gone. Mexico City isn't far behind. And apparently there's some kind of volcano under Yellowstone that's rumbling. Nothing has really happened with it yet, but the geologists seem worried.\" He met her eyes. \"They say it's got to do with this place.\"\n\n\"The Library?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Apparently the pyramid thingy over Garrison Oaks is heavy. They say it's got the same mass as the moon, or something? It's shifting tectonic plates around?\" He took a sip of her drink before he handed it to her. \"You hadn't heard any of this?\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said. \"I figured. Keeping an eye on your Father's enemies, right? And catching up on all these other\u2014what did you call them?\"\n\n\"Catalogs,\" she said. \"I've been consolidating the catalogs. Strategizing. And laying the groundwork for some contingencies. Just in case.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Steve said. \"Sure. You're careful. You've got a lot on your mind. That's the world you live in, the world you know.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" She ran her fingers through her hair, stressed. \"Look, Steve, about the earthquakes and the famine and all that\u2014I'll figure something out. But there's more going on here than you know. Q-33 North is in motion, and I can't find him. If Liesel or maybe Barry O'Shea decided to make a move against me now, it would be bad for\u2014\"\n\n\"Bad for everyone. All of us. Regular people. I get that too. And these are legitimately large problems. I do not doubt you for even a single second.\" He drummed his fingers against the marble tabletop. \"But it leaves me with a problem of my own.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"I talked this over with Erwin. And the rest of them too, the president and the Army guys, but Erwin was the only one who seemed to really get it.\"\n\n\"Get what?\"\n\n\"How I can't get through to you.\" He held his hands out to her gently, palms up. \"I've said it every way I know how, and it's like you don't even hear me. I was talking to Erwin about it and he said it's because we don't have a common vocabulary.\"\n\nCarolyn's eyes narrowed. \"My English is pretty good.\"\n\n\"That's what I said too, but that's not what he meant. He told me about how when he got back from the war, everyone kept telling him to let it go, to find something that made him happy and do that. He said he heard the words, said they even made sense, but he just couldn't relate to them. Then he said there was this kid, this kid he helped somehow. And that was the thing that made him understand it was possible to move on. And after that the words made sense.\"\n\n\"Dashaen,\" she said. \"I remember him.\"\n\n\"So then I started thinking about how you must have had to shut down, inside. You had to be cold, didn't you? To get through things like a little kid getting her head split open with an ax, and people being roasted alive.\"\n\nCarolyn didn't answer.\n\n\"Cold. Yeah.\" Steve was peering at her again. \"But you're not frozen through. Not quite. There's that one little thing left, isn't there? The heart coal. That's it, isn't it? The very last thing.\"\n\nAfter a long moment she surrendered the barest possible sliver of a nod.\n\n\"I thought so. Yeah. That's going to be the only way anyone can reach you, isn't it? The only possible way for you to\u2026wake up. To not be cold anymore.\"\n\nShe didn't answer.\n\nSteve nodded to himself, then smiled.\n\nSomething about that smile was different. What's changed?\n\n\"You never came right out and said, but I think I've guessed what it is. The heart coal, I mean.\" Still smiling, he stood and walked over to the stock pot.\n\nIt took her a moment, but then she got it. He's at peace, she realized. That's what's different about him. It's the first time I've ever seen him look really happy.\n\nStanding at the counter, still smiling, he picked up the orange juice. \"Another drink?\"\n\n\"No.\" Her voice was hoarse. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I'm so glad you asked. Thank you for cooperating with my segue. Sure you don't want another drink?\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"Well, that's OK too.\" He picked up the stock pot filled with Everclear and poured it over his head.\n\nThe room filled with the sharp chemical scent of 90 percent pure ethanol. It would, Carolyn suddenly understood, be highly flammable.\n\nSteve spoke to Naga. \"Now, sweetie.\"\n\nCarolyn, very quick, moved to stop him. Naga, quicker still, moved to block her way.\n\nSteve smiled at her, calm and friendly. \"Before I move closer towards my vision of the Buddha, I would respectfully plead that you adopt a stance of compassion towards the small things of this world.\"\n\nHe closed his eyes. Somehow he was holding Margaret's lighter.\n\nClink. Scratch. Click.\n\nThen, suddenly, all of the great and eternal now was blue flame. Naga held the space between Carolyn and Steve, an impassable frenzy of claw and fang. Carolyn could only watch, helpless, as the flame rendered Steve into blazing tallow, rendered him into black smoke. Normal men, she understood for the first time, burn surprisingly fast. In less than a minute, he was dead. Therein, perhaps, we find God's mercy. Beyond that, the outer darkness.\n\nAlone now, Carolyn felt the regard of Isha and Asha settle cold upon her.\n\nSomeone was screaming."
            },
            {
                "title": "TITAN",
                "text": "Carolyn resurrected Steve, of course. It took a couple of weeks. She was getting the hang of medicine, but burns were tricky. He asked her for two more bottles of Everclear. She said she couldn't find any. A week later she came down and found him dead in the bathtub, razor at his side. She had to tranquilize Naga to get at the body. That one only took a day or so to fix, but she got the blood type wrong\u2014a rookie mistake, but she was upset\u2014and he died of heart failure almost as soon as he came back. She replaced the razors with an electric and brought him back a fourth time, but the next night at dinner he recited his little speech\u2014\"adopt a stance of compassion\"? what the hell did that even mean?\u2014before downing a glass of Liquid-Plumr with his roast.\n\nShe had left him dead, after that. She couldn't bear it. Not anymore.\n\nThat had been over a month ago. Now she was fully immersed in her studies. One day while she was researching the theoretical framework of reality viruses she happened upon something mis-shelved. There, among the pale violet mathematics, a brown folder. It turned out to be the crafting of the alshaq shabboleth.\n\nIt changed everything.\n\nIn and of itself the alshaq shabboleth was of little consequence. It was conceptually related to the technique she had found on the bookmark, the one that enabled her to move through the Library invisibly. Its only advantage over the alshaq urkun was that it could be invoked very quickly, with a single word. She had seen it used\u2014once.\n\n\"Adoption Day.\" She spoke softly, but the vast spaces of the Library seemed to seize on her words, amplify them. She looked down at the parchment in her hand.\n\nThrough my studyes of the one True Speeche which Commandeth Alle, I have wrought the Crafte of alshaq shabboleth, which maketh the slow things swifte.\n\nShe unrolled the scroll another few inches. It was ancient, written before Father came into the height of his power. It concerned itself with minor procedures of only occasional use. She might very well have gone years\u2014millennia\u2014without stumbling across it. Chance? Possibly, but in matters where Father was involved she was very suspicious of chance.\n\nHe meant for me to find this.\n\nTo the side was a hand-inked illustration of a man outrunning a lightning strike, and another, less faded, of the same man on fire and screaming. Her expression darkened. \"Alshaq shabboleth,\" she said, testing the sounds.\n\nBut approach the alshaq with trembling! It is a dangerous Crafte at the best of times, and though it may be a great friend in time of need, it can also be a grievous Enemy! Only the wise should\u2014\n\nNext to the pale, ancient ink, the following was scrawled in ballpoint pen:\n\n\u2002Carolyn,\n\n\u2002Onyx-7-5-12-3-3.7\n\n\u2002\u2014Father\n\nIt was a catalog designation\u2014Onyx floor, radial seven, branch five, case twelve, shelf three, third from the left. Chapter seven. Blood roared in her ears. Very softly, she whispered, \"Father?\"\n\nNo answer.\n\nThen, with something like a roar, Carolyn pitched the brown folio down the stacks. A dead one holding a feather duster shuffled away in distant, dreamlike terror.\n\nAdoption Day. That was what they'd called it\u2014the day their parents died, the day they stopped being Americans and became librarians, part of Father's world. Before that, Garrison Oaks had been just another subdivision. Before that, as far as anyone knew, Father was just Adam Black, some old guy who lived down the street.\n\nThere had been an attack. It was not an especially clever attack, but it was very strong, and executed quickly. It caught him off guard, or at least he let it seem so. She thought it might even have stood a chance of killing him. Not a large chance, perhaps, but a chance. It was this suspicion and what it implied that ultimately gave her the courage to act. Father was not quite omniscient. Sometimes he could be surprised. If he could be surprised, he might possibly be vulnerable.\n\nAll that came after sprang from that.\n\nNumb, feeling not quite all there, Carolyn made her way down the main corridor of the jade floor and onto the onyx face of the pyramid. There, moving alone through vast, empty spaces she walked over to the book he specified. It was in the apothecary section, part of Jennifer's catalog. The volume was titled An Assortment of Useful Elixirs. Chapter 7 was \"The Font of Perfect Memory.\"\n\nINSTRUCTIONS:\n\n\u2002Having prepared the liquid as indicated, retreat to a place of solitude. There begin your contemplations. You shall find that the formulation releases in you every smallest memory; it will be as if you are there again in the flesh, experiencing it with fresh eyes.\n\n\u2002She took down the book. Then, browsing the nearby shelves, she added a couple of others\u2014one on chemistry, another on lab techniques. She took the stairs down into the apothecary and set about assembling ingredients."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 67",
                "text": "Carolyn was not much of a chemist. It took three frustrating days before she learned enough of the basics to even understand what the formula was telling her to do. It was another week, long and almost sleepless, before she completed a batch that tested to the purity she required and didn't kill any mice.\n\nWhen she was reasonably confident she had it right, she went back to her chambers, ate a huge meal, and slept for twelve solid hours. The next morning\u2014or it might have been evening, it was impossible to tell and, really, who cared?\u2014she went back to her desk in the great hall and sat there for a moment, looking at the small glass vial that contained the fruit of her labors. Gently, careful not to spill, she wiggled the cork out and set it down on her desk blotter. She cut a lemon into quarters and set them next to the cork.\n\nThe vial contained about two tablespoons of brown, bitter liquid that smelled like tears. Grimacing, she tossed it back like a shot of liquor, then bit down on one of the lemon quarters to get the taste out of her mouth.\n\nThere begin your contemplations.\n\n\"Well,\" she said. \"All right.\"\n\nAdoption Day, she remembered, had been a holiday of some sort. It was one of the turning points of her life, probably the turning point, but she hadn't thought much about it in years. It was at the end of the summer, still hot out during the day, but if you were outdoors at night you could sometimes feel the first breath of winter, blowing down from the north. School had just started up a week earlier, and she remembered thinking that was silly. Why start school and then give you a vacation just a week later? It was a silly time to have\u2026\n\n\"Labor Day,\" she said out loud. Perfect memory indeed. An hour ago she couldn't have conjured that name to save her life.\n\nLabor Day, 1977. She would have been about eight years old. She woke up in the bedroom at her parents' house. There was a stuffed animal in bed with her, a green puppet shaped like a frog. Kermit, she thought. His name is Kermit the Frog. Next to Kermit sat Miss Piggy. She had slept in later than usual because she'd stayed up late the night before and watched The Waltons on TV.\n\nIn her memory, Carolyn went downstairs. Her mother, a pretty blond woman about the same age that Carolyn was now, was doing something in the kitchen. Mom went to the shelf and took down a box of Frosted Flakes\u2014Carolyn was too short to reach it herself\u2014then turned back to her cooking.\n\nCarolyn no longer had any clear memory of her mother's face. She remembered her only as a series of impressions\u2014laughter, cashmere, hair spray.\n\nUntil now. Hi, Mom, she thought. Pleased to meet you. Alone in the Library, she gave a small smile.\n\nStill, though, she was relieved that the woman's face remained unfamiliar to her. She wasn't sure what she would have done if Mom turned out to be one of the dead ones. She was glad she didn't have to find out. She made an effort to commit her face to memory. I'm sorry, Mom, she thought. This time I won't forget you.\n\nBack in 1977, when little Carolyn was done with her cereal she and her mother worked at making a big batch of potato salad for the picnic later\u2014boiling the potatoes, chopping things, mixing it all together in a bowl. Just as they were finishing up, her actual father came home from the hardware store. He was a handsome man, a few years older than her mother. His hair was graying at the temples. She addressed him not as \"Father\" but instead as \"Dad,\" which sounded delightfully informal to Carolyn's adult ear. Little Carolyn kissed his cheek. The stubble was rough against her lips. He hadn't showered. He smelled of sweat and, faintly, yesterday's Old Spice.\n\nWhen the potato salad was ready, Carolyn covered the bowl with Saran Wrap and put it in the \"fridge.\" She helped her mother clean up, then went back to her room to kill a couple of hours. The picnic wouldn't start until noon. Now, a quarter century later, she ached to stay in that kitchen, to be with them again for one last time, but the memory was immutable. Carolyn was a bookish child, even before Father had come into her life. She preferred to spend time in her room reading.\n\nJust before noon, the three of them put on suntan lotion and walked across the street toward the little park behind the houses. \"Dad\" held out his hand and she took it, weaving her small fingers around his large ones. His palms were rough, she remembered. He must have worked with his hands. But doing what? But she hadn't thought about it that day. Now it was gone, gone with his name, the stories he told, any other time they might have spent together.\n\nHe smiled down at her distractedly. Remembering this, Carolyn thought, He has such a kind face. With that her tears slipped free and rolled unnoticed down her cheeks.\n\nThe shortest route to the park took them through the yard of the man they knew as Adam Black. He was on his back deck, wearing shorts, an apron, and a chef's hat. Standing on the concrete slab that served as his back patio was his eccentric barbecue grill, a huge bronze cast in the shape of a bull. Carolyn remembered how this thing had been an object of fascination for her as a small child. One stormy afternoon she had snuck into his yard and lay her tiny hand against its smooth leg, seen her reflection in its shiny belly. Now, smoke drifted from the bull's nostrils.\n\n\"Hi, Adam,\" Dad called out. \"Mind if we cut through your yard?\"\n\n\"Adam\" raised a hand in greeting. \"Hi yourself!\" He spoke in English, suppressing his usual trace of Pelapi accent. \"Yeah, come on through.\"\n\nThey stopped on the way to chat for a minute. This is \"being neighborly\" Carolyn thought. Two decades ago Father looked exactly as she last saw him.\n\n\"Man, that smells great,\" her dad said. \"What you got in there?\"\n\n\"A little of everything\u2014mostly pork shoulder and lamb at the moment. They should be done in an hour or so. I've been smoking them all night. When the pork is ready I'll probably do a batch of burgers.\"\n\n\"One day would you teach me the recipe? I don't mind telling you, that stuff you made last year was about the best barbecue I've had.\"\n\n\"Sure. Why not? I've been in a teaching mood lately.\" He poked the meat with a carved wooden fork. \"The secret is to start with a hot fire, as hot as you can make. Such a fire will burn away impurities, you see. Plus, there's a ceremonial aspect to it. Fire gives a person something to focus on.\" He rapped the bull with his knuckles, grinning. \"So, yeah. Fire. That's the first step.\"\n\n\"Yeah? That's it?\"\n\n\"Well, there are some spices for the meat as well\u2014old Persian recipe.\" This time he let a little Pelapi accent slip in\u2014\"reshipeeeeee.\"\n\nEight-year-old Carolyn giggled. \"You talk funny!\"\n\n\"Carolyn!\" said her dad.\n\n\"No, it's OK,\" said Adam Black. He squatted down to be at eye level with her. She remembered how the giggles drained out of her when she saw his eyes. \"No\u2026\" she said, and buried her face in her dad's leg.\n\n\"Don't be scared,\" Adam Black said, and reached out to brush away her hair. \"You're right. Sometimes I do talk funny, but most people don't notice. You've got a good ear.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" She could tell from his tone that he meant to be comforting, but she was not comforted. Not in the least.\n\n\"How should I say it, honey?\"\n\nCarolyn peeked out from her dad's leg. \"'Recipe.' \"\n\n\"Reshipeee.\"\n\nDespite herself, she giggled. \"No, 'recipe'!\"\n\nThe giggle seemed to satisfy him. His face erupted again into that soft smile. \"Hey, you guys want to stay and chat with me for a minute? I don't think they're quite set up down in the park. I've got beer in the cooler, and soft drinks for your daughter.\"\n\nHer dad looked down at the park, where some men were setting up a volleyball net.\n\n\"Can I have one, Dad?\" She liked Sprite, but usually she wasn't allowed.\n\nDad considered. \"Yeah, sure. Why not? Grab me a beer, too.\"\n\nCarolyn had brought her book with her. She sat down on a metal lawn chair to read while the grown-ups talked.\n\n\"So, can I ask where you got that grill?\" Dad asked. \"Never seen anything quite like it.\"\n\n\"You know, I honestly don't remember. Somewhere in the Middle East, probably. I used to kick around there when I was a young buck.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah? Doing what?\"\n\n\"Soldiering, mostly. Seems like I walked up and down just about every hill in Asia at one time or another.\"\n\n\"Really? Wow. I bet you must have some stories.\"\n\n\"A few.\" They waited, but he didn't volunteer any of them.\n\n\"Is that what you do now? We don't see much of you around here.\"\n\nHe laughed. \"No, no. Not for years. Soldiering is a young man's game. Actually, I'm in the process of retiring,\" the old man said.\n\n\"Really? You look kind of young for that.\"\n\n\"Nice of you to say. I'm older than I look, though.\"\n\n\"Retiring from what, if you don't mind my asking?\"\n\n\"Don't mind a bit. I'm head of a small company. Well, small but influential. We're in the book business, kind of a family thing.\"\n\n\"Cool. How do you like it?\"\n\n\"It's interesting work. It can be kind of cutthroat, though. A lot of competition. My successor is liable to have a rough go of it, in the first few years anyway.\"\n\n\"Oh, you've got a guy all picked out?\"\n\n\"I do. Actually, it's a girl. It took me a long while to find the right person. Now it's just a question of getting her trained.\" Carolyn didn't remember noticing at the time, didn't remember any of this, but Adam Black was looking directly at her as he spoke. Something about the look in his eyes stirred her mom's maternal instincts and she put her arm around Carolyn's shoulder. It would be the last time they ever touched.\n\nNow, today, Carolyn sat alone in the heart of the Library with her jaw hanging open. Successor? Picked out? Surely he can't mean\u2026\n\n\"Who's the lucky gal?\" Carolyn's mom asked, ribbing her husband. Feminist issues were a source of mild friction in the marriage.\n\n\"Her name's Carolyn. She's a niece of mine\u2014well, sort of. She's a pretty distant relation, actually. I see a lot of me in her, though.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" her father said. \"Weird coincidence. That's our daughter's name.\"\n\n\"You don't say.\" Adam Black rooted around in the grill with a spatula, flipping ribs.\n\nHer father took a swig of his beer. \"So what's the training process involve, exactly?\"\n\n\"Actually, if you don't mind, I'd rather not get into too much detail. Trade secret and all that.\"\n\n\"Oh? Yeah. Sure, no problem, I understand.\" He obviously didn't.\n\n\"I can say, though, that the toughest part about it is going to be getting through it with her heart intact.\" Seeing the look on Mom's face, he added, \"Figuratively, I mean.\"\n\n\"Tough business?\"\n\n\"Oh yeah. Some of the competition are real monsters.\"\n\nHer dad interrupted. \"Really? What exactly are\u2014\"\n\nAdam Black let the interruption slide, but a little iron crept into his voice. \"I'm not worried about that, though. She's like me. She'll do whatever's necessary\u2014after I get her attention.\" He smiled, flipped a burger. His eyes blazed.\n\nMom gave a nervous smile. Dad, oblivious, sipped at his beer.\n\n\"The tricky part will come later\u2014after she's won. When I was young, the war was everything to me.\" Father's gaze burned into her. \"In the service of my will, I emptied myself. It was long and long before I understood what I had lost, and by then it was gone forever.\" He shrugged. \"Perhaps she will be wiser.\" In the ancient, dusty recesses of her memory, he tipped her a wink. Now, today, Carolyn felt like fainting.\n\nHer mom's eyes narrowed. She hadn't seen the wink, but this last exchange had pushed some mothery needle into the red. \"Well,\" she said, \"I guess we better get going.\"\n\n\"But I\u2014\" her dad said.\n\n\"We don't want to take up too much of Mr. Black's time, dear.\" Her tone had a distinct chill to it.\n\n\"Oh. Um, right.\" He smiled at Adam Black. \"Well, thanks for the beer. You going to come down and join us? Maybe play some volleyball?\"\n\nAdam Black smiled. \"I'll be along in just a minute. I want to get a good char on this pork first.\"\n\nCarolyn's parents exchanged a look. \"OK,\" said her dad. \"See you later.\" He took Carolyn by the hand and they set off down the hill."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 68",
                "text": "In those days Garrison Oaks had a common area, a sort of park, in the spot that was the lake today. The houses of the neighborhood ringed it, which gave everyone the illusion of a three-acre backyard. The park was full of people, adults sitting on the picnic benches drinking Coke or Sprite out of green glass bottles or smoking Tareytons. Children swarmed over the swing set and the wooden jungle gym. Adam Black's house stood on the highest hill in the neighborhood, so from there Carolyn, holding her dad's hand, had to pick her way down a moderately steep slope to get to the park. Her father's grip was gentle but not un-tight. At least once he saved her from a fall. When they reached the bottom of the hill she shook his hand off for the last time.\n\n\"Look, Dad, there's Steve!\" She waved. \"Hi, Steve!\" Steve was a bit older than her. He's eleven, she thought, or maybe twelve. He was playing tag with a herd of other kids.\n\nThere was David, reaching down to help a younger child who had fallen in the grass. \"You OK, Mike?\" David said. His voice was kind. At the sound of it the younger boy, who had seemed on the verge of tears, got to his feet and smiled. David smiled back, then tagged him and said, \"You're it!\" They ran off together, laughing.\n\nMargaret was there as well, she saw. She seemed a bit older than the rest\u2014nine or ten, perhaps? She was jumping her way across a hopscotch grid laid out on the basketball court in yellow chalk. Her pigtails flopped in the sunshine as she hopped. Her skin glowed from the exertion, pink and alive.\n\n\"Hi, Carolyn!\" said Steve.\n\nSomething inside her jumped at the sound of his voice. In those days Steve lived across the street from her. Our parents were friends. Sometimes we all ate dinner together. I thought he was \"cute.\" Once, she remembered, she had taken a crayon and written his name and hers together on pink construction paper and then encased the two names with a heart. She never told anyone this.\n\nHer father looked down at her, bemused and perhaps just a tad apprehensive. He waved at Steve. \"Hi.\"\n\nSteve waved back. \"Hi, Mr. Sopaski!\"\n\n\"Daddy, can I go play with Steve?\"\n\n\"Oh, honey, Steve doesn't want\u2014\"\n\n\"It's fine, sir,\" Steve said, and Carolyn's eight-year-old heart soared. \"Wanna go over to Scabby Flats and shoot a few?\"\n\n\"Sure!\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Go where?\" said her dad.\n\n\"The basketball court,\" she said. \"That's just what we call it.\" She and Steve had made-up names for a bunch of stuff in the neighborhood. The basketball court, paved with a mixture of black asphalt and rough gravel, was Scabby Flats. In her room there was a map, hand-drawn in crayon, with these and other names. The woods at the end of the road were Missing Muttland. The stream in the woods was Cat Splash Creek after an amusing accident. And so on.\n\n\"Oh,\" her dad said. \"Right. Well\u2026you guys have fun.\"\n\nThey walked together over to the basketball court. Steve bounced a ball as they walked.\n\n\"How are you?\" she asked, a little apprehensively. She hadn't seen him in months. The day after school ended, Steve's dad had been in a car accident. Mr. Hodgson was in the hospital for a week, and then he died. Steve and his mom had spent the summer with his grandparents in Wisconsin.\n\n\"I'm OK. It's good to be back.\" He bounced the ball on the asphalt. \"Good old Scabby Flats.\"\n\nHe didn't sound OK. Carolyn didn't blame him. Having her dad die was about the worst thing she could imagine. When she tried to picture something similar happening to her it felt like a bottomless hole opened up in her mind. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I mean, it sucks. But you adjust.\"\n\nShe looked up at him, awed. To Carolyn, eight years old, that one sentence seemed to contain all that might ever be known of courage. \"You do?\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"You just do. You can adjust to anything if you don't give up.\" He smiled wanly. \"That's what my dad used to say, anyway.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Hey, do you mind if we talk about something else?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" She tried to think of something to say, but anything that might have come was swallowed by the bottomless hole. After a long pause, she said, \"Like what?\" in a small voice.\n\nSteve chuckled. \"What have you been reading?\"\n\nSteve was the only kid in the neighborhood who was as bookish as she was. They didn't read much of the same stuff\u2014he liked spaceships and superheroes; she was more into animal stories and Beverly Cleary\u2014but they both enjoyed talking about what they'd read, and every so often there was some overlap. \"A Wrinkle in Time,\" she said. \"Have you read it?\"\n\n\"Yeah! It was really good. Did you know there's another one after that?\"\n\n\"What, like with the same characters?\"\n\n\"Pretty much, yeah. I'll bring it if you want.\"\n\n\"Thanks!\"\n\n\"Sure,\" he said, reaching into his pocket. \"But meantime, I brought you this one. I think you'll like it.\"\n\nShe examined the cover. \"Black Beauty. It's the one about the horse, right?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Is it sad? Margaret said it was sad.\"\n\n\"A little. Well, sort of. At the end\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't tell me!\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Steve raised the ball to shoot, then froze and cocked his head, listening. \"Do you hear that?\"\n\n\"Hear what? I don't\u2014\" She broke off then, because she did hear it, a whistling in the sky that grew louder, an approaching sound. She looked up and saw a long, thin, arch-shaped contrail. When she first saw it, it was very high in the sky, but it drew closer as she watched, then closer still.\n\n\"I think it's coming towards us,\" Steve said.\n\nShe saw that he was right, and for some reason that made her afraid. She reached out to take his hand and\u2014\n\n\u2026everything\u2026\n\n\u2026stopped\u2026\n\nI have wrought the Crafte of alshaq shabboleth, Carolyn thought now, which maketh the slow things swifte. To the children it seemed as if the world had frozen in place. She saw her dad talking to Mr. Craig from down the street. Dad's mouth was frozen open, midsentence. Mr. Craig was blowing out a puff of cigarette smoke. It hung in the air, motionless.\n\nThe leading point of the contrail was frozen above them. It hovered motionless about a hundred feet over their heads. Well, not quite motionless. As she watched, it moved down an inch or so, then another.\n\nHer young eyes saw what was coming for them. She thought at first it was a space capsule, like the kind she had seen on TV. But as she examined it a bit closer, she realized that wasn't right. It was too small, for one thing, too small to hold a man. And there were no windows. But it was shaped a bit like a space capsule, a plain cone of metal. It had an American flag and some writing on the side. USAF-11807-A1. Below that, hand-painted in bright red, was a smiley face and the words \"Hi 'Adam'!\"\n\nShe remembered thinking, They sent it for him. It's for Adam Black. But what is it? She knew now. David explained it to her some years later. \"It's called a Pershing missile,\" he said. \"It's a weapon. It holds a lot of things called 'kilotons.' Mostly it's for blowing up cities. The Americans thought it might be strong enough to kill Father.\"\n\nAt the time, though, Carolyn had no idea what she was looking at\u2014fireworks, perhaps?\u2014but, whatever sort of show this was, she thought it was rather pretty. She remembered how a small crack had appeared in the thing hovering over their heads, how it glowed inside as if it were an egg about to hatch something magical.\n\nShe looked at Steve. He was saying something, or his lips were moving at any rate, but she could hear nothing. We were too fast, she realized now. The alshaq shabboleth made us too fast for sound.\n\nThe crack grew as she watched. The light inside spilled out like the sunrise breaking over the mountains. It ate away the metal on which the letters USA were written.\n\nSteve clapped his hands over his ears and looked up the hill. A moment later she heard it too. The inside of her head rang with the voice of Adam Black. No, Carolyn thought. He's not Adam Black anymore. He's Father now.\n\n\"Those of you who would live may take shelter behind me,\" he said, not in the mild and amused old-man tones he had affected for her dad, but in his true voice, the voice that cracked mountains and called light out of darkness. It rolled through the children's minds like thunder.\n\nAt the sound of it Carolyn moved instinctively toward Steve for protection. That was when she noticed that something was different. When she moved, the parts of her skin that were exposed to the air felt hot, like the time she had held her hand over the outflow nozzle on a hair dryer and burned her fingers.\n\nNow, today, she understood what was happening. Friction, she thought. Friction with the air. Under the influence of the alshaq their speed was such that even the air burned.\n\nAt the time, though, she knew only pain. She and Steve gaped at each other in soundless terror. Fifty meters over their heads a small bright sun was flaring into life.\n\nShe cried out to her dad, lips moving soundlessly. She took a step toward him, feeling that strange warmth on her cheeks again as she moved. Her dad was still as a statue, the beer Adam Black had given him held to his mouth.\n\nHe was directly under the fireball.\n\nLater, when she learned to make the alshaq shabboleth for herself she understood why it worked on her but not him. The effects of the alshaq are felt first by the dead, then by the young, and last by the old. Her father was beyond help. Even today she could think of nothing that might have saved him.\n\nShe herself was in only slightly less danger, although she didn't realize it yet.\n\nSteve figured it out, though. He shook her shoulder and pointed at the fireball overhead, eyes wide. Then he pointed at Adam Black\u2014Father\u2014waiting for them on the hillside.\n\nCarolyn looked up at the ball of fire in the sky. It was growing. She nodded understanding and she and Steve set out toward the hill.\n\nThe real problem became apparent to them immediately. They set out together at a slow jog. She stopped after only two steps with a soundless cry.\n\nSteve was gritting his teeth, but he did not cry out. He looked up in the sky. She followed his gaze. If the fire doesn't stop getting bigger, it could swallow us up.\n\nShe could see from his face that Steve understood this as well. His face was very red, and his hair was smoking a little. He looked back at her, eyes wide with fear and pain, then took a half-step forward, moving slow and languorous in air that had turned cruel.\n\nShe imitated him. When she moved in this way it was still warm, but not so hot as it had been when she ran, certainly not so hot that she cried out.\n\nOn the crest of the hill Father watched this. He said nothing.\n\nTogether they inched their way toward the hill. The other children had been affected by the call of alshaq in the same way, and were dealing with the same problems. Some of them had frozen with terror, or fallen to their knees weeping. A skinny boy about age eight panicked. His name is Jimmy, she remembered. He's not very bright. Jimmy took off running toward his mother\u2014actually running, not just the light jog she had tried. After a few steps his skin blistered. He screamed, but apparently it didn't occur to him to stop. After three more steps his shirt was in flames. She looked away then.\n\nShe and Steve moved as quickly as they could without pain, but that wasn't very fast. They had a lead on the expanding ball of superheated plasma behind them, but it wasn't a large lead.\n\nSome of the others were luckier. David and Michael's impromptu game of tag had carried them to the base of the hill. She thought they would reach safety well before the fireball reached them. She and Steve, on the other hand, had started out directly under the missile. They might arrive quickly enough to take Adam Black up on his promise of safety, but then again they might not.\n\nThe ball of light grew quickly, and it was gaining on them. By the time they reached the base of the hill it had touched the ground. There it claimed another victim, a sixteen-year-old girl who had started in a reasonably good position but, because of her age, had been a bit late to hear the call of alshaq. She was about to become the first person who Carolyn ever saw die. As the light drew near her skin boiled away. Her eyes widened in agony; her mouth opened in a silent scream.\n\nIt was this moment that would haunt Carolyn's nightmares in years to come. She notched up her speed a little bit, then a little more, her terror overriding the pain.\n\nNow she was moving almost at a jog, heedless of the burning agony. Her shirt was smoking. She could smell burning hair, but she wasn't sure whether it was her own or Steve's. But the top of the hill was close. I'm going to make it!\n\nThen she tripped.\n\nA loose rock slid away beneath her foot. She put her hands out to break her fall and the rock cut her palm. Worse, she lost ground, slipping a few precious inches back down the hill.\n\nSteve had reached the summit. He was safe. He turned, almost smiling, but the smile faded when he saw her. His mouth moved, but she couldn't make out the words. He waved for her to come on. She read his lips saying, Get up.\n\nBut she couldn't. She had scraped up her hands, her knees. She wanted her mother. She was afraid. Her chin trembled. She remembered thinking, It's too hard, remembered thinking, I give up.\n\nSeeing this, Steve jumped back down the hill. His face was impossibly bright, lit by the approaching fireball now only five yards or so behind her. He reached where she had fallen with two giant, bouncing steps, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her to her feet. As she stood she saw that his hair and shirt had both caught fire, tiny tongues of flame beginning to grow.\n\nBurning, he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her. The fireball was only a few scant feet behind them now. Her shoulder socket stung with the jolt, but she didn't feel the fire; Steve was holding her in his wake. The burn was all on him. The left side of his shirt burned off his skin in a puff\u2026but now they were at the top of the hill.\n\nThey rushed into the crowd of children a few precious inches ahead of the fireball. They were the faces of her future\u2014David and Margaret, Michael, Lisa, Peter, Richard, others she didn't know then. They milled around behind Father, mouths wide O's of terror, screaming too fast for sound.\n\nWhen the ball of energy reached the crest of the hill, Father held out his hand. When the light touched him he winced\u2026but he did not burn. David later told her that there were thirty of the \"kilotons\" in that explosion. He seemed to think this was an impressive number. Probably it was. But when the four-hundred-kiloton blast reached the finger of Adam Black it stopped\u2026quivered for a moment\u2026then began to shrink.\n\nThe receding fireball left a perfectly round crater where the park and most of the houses had been. The edges of the crater glowed red. She traced the arc with her eyes until it came to something she recognized; a mailbox with \"305\" and \"Lafayette\" stenciled in gold. The Lafayettes had been her next-door neighbors. Half their house was still standing, snipped neatly open by the explosion. She could see into the bedroom of Diane Lafayette, who had a Barbie Dream House that Carolyn coveted. Her own house, where she and her mother had made potato salad, had been located a few yards inside the crater.\n\nOnly then did she think to look where her parents had been.\n\nWhen she last saw them they were standing in the park. Now that spot was a hole one hundred feet deep. Molten sand glowed like lava in its depths. Mom and Dad would have been among the first to be swallowed by the fireball. Carolyn understood that she was now an orphan.\n\nFarther out, where the volleyball game had been, other adults lay dead as well, their flesh blasted away, their chromosomes in shreds. She recognized them as well. The dead ones.\n\nFather did something and the alshaq fell away. Time returned to normal. The children were speaking, it seemed. Their voices rose as if someone had turned up the volume on a silent radio. But she heard only Steve.\n\n\"\u2014n't know what you were thinking,\" Steve said. \"You can't ever give up, Carolyn. You can't quit. Not ever.\"\n\nShe looked at him, wide-eyed.\n\nThen, kicking down the first stone of an avalanche, Steve said, \"You have to be strong.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 69",
                "text": "Adam Black turned to the children and regarded them with eyes that were calm and dark.\n\n\"Your parents are dead,\" he said. Some of them wept. Others looked up at him, dazed and uncomprehending. \"Most of you had no other family. In America, this means you would be taken away. You would live in an orphanage. You are too old. You are too ugly. You could not find new homes. No one would love you. No one would want you.\n\n\"But this is not America,\" Adam Black said. \"Things are here as they were in the old age. I will take you into my home. I will raise you as I was raised. You will be Pelapi.\"\n\n\"We'll be what?\" Carolyn remembered asking.\n\n\"Pelapi. It is an old word. There is no single word like it in English. It means 'librarian,' but also 'apprentice,' or perhaps 'student.' \"\n\n\"Pelapi.\" She tested the sound of it for the first time. At the time they had thought he was speaking to all of them. Now Carolyn understood he meant only her. Alone in the Library at the other end of her life, she mouthed the words again. \"What do you want us to study?\"\n\n\"We will start with the language. It is called Pelapi as well. All of you will learn that first.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"It is the language that your lessons are written in, for the most part. You can hardly do without it.\"\n\n\"What kind of lessons?\" Carolyn asked.\n\n\"For you, I think it will be the other languages.\"\n\n\"Like what? French and stuff?\"\n\n\"Yes. Those and others.\"\n\n\"How many?\"\n\n\"All of them.\"\n\nShe made a face. \"What if I don't want to?\"\n\n\"It won't matter. I'll make you do it anyway.\"\n\nShe said nothing to that\u2014she was starting to realize that Adam Black frightened her\u2014but she remembered how his words kindled the first, faint flicker of rebellion in her gut. Now, today, that same flame burned high and black over all the mountains and valleys of the Earth.\n\n\"And what about me?\" David asked.\n\n\"You? Hmm.\" Father squatted down in front of David and felt his forearm. \"You seem like a strong little fellow. You remind me of myself at your age. Would you like to learn how to fight?\"\n\nDavid grinned. \"Yeah! That'd be cool.\"\n\nFather spoke again, very quickly, not in English. At the time she could make no sense of what he said. It was only gibberish, quickly forgotten. Today, though, remembering it, she recognized the Pelapi for what it was. It will be as if you are there again in the flesh, the instructions on the elixir said, experiencing it with fresh eyes.\n\n\"You shall be the thing she fears above all others, and conquers,\" Father said in Pelapi. He touched David gently, with real love. \"Your way shall be very hard, very cruel. I must do terrible things to you, that you may become a monster. I am sorry, my son. I had thought you might be my heir, but the strength is not in you. It must be her.\"\n\nAt the time, they all thought David was the biological son of the Craigs, who had been chatting with Carolyn's own parents when the fireball hit. Now, today, Carolyn was thinking, His son? He did that to his actual son? Then, on the heels of that but worse, He did it for me?\n\n\"And me?\" Margaret asked.\n\nFather turned to her. \"Hello, Margaret.\"\n\n\"How did you know my name?\"\n\n\"I know lots of things about you. I've been watching you for a long time. Tell me, do you like exploring?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I guess.\"\n\n\"Good. There's a very special place I know of. Almost no one knows about it but me. I could send you there. You could learn your way around.\"\n\n\"Is it a fun place to go?\"\n\nFather pursed his lips. \"More of an adventure, I should say. Would you like that? It would make you very special.\" Then, at Carolyn, in rapid-fire Pelapi. \"When the time comes, Margaret will serve as your final warning.\"\n\nCarolyn remembered Margaret calling her \"Mistress,\" remembered her saying, You're like me now and We are sisters. How had those words passed by her so easily? Now the chill of them cut bone-deep.\n\nFather went down the line, speaking to each of the children in turn until he came, finally, to Steve. \"What about me?\"\n\n\"I saw what you did back there,\" Father said. \"You're a very brave boy.\"\n\nSteve's chest swelled with pride. But when the skin of his chest stretched, he winced. His torso was red, blistered from the fire, even black in spots. He did not cry out.\n\nFather knelt and examined the burns. \"Does it hurt?\"\n\n\"A little.\" His voice sounded strangled.\n\nFather took a Ziploc bag from the pocket of his jeans. He squeezed a pale green ointment from it and, working very gently, applied it to Steve's chest. Steve flinched at first, drew back from Father's touch\u2014then his eyes went wide and he leaned into it.\n\nWhen it was done, Father stood and dusted his jeans off. \"Is that better?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Steve said with obvious gratitude. \"A lot better. Thanks!\"\n\nFather smiled a little. He even patted Steve on the shoulder. Steve didn't wince. \"You're welcome. You should heal up OK.\" Then Father's smile faded. \"But I'm afraid I'm going to have to send you away. I can't use you.\"\n\n\"What?\" Carolyn and Steve spoke simultaneously.\n\nFather shook his head. \"There are only twelve catalogs, and each of them already has an apprentice. I'm sorry.\"\n\nSteve looked at him, not sure whether he was serious or not. Father fluttered his hands in a \"shoo\" gesture. \"Go on. Your aunt Mary will take you in, I think. We'll make it so that your mother died in the car alongside your father. You were badly hurt. You've been in the hospital all this time. You don't remember anything\u2026do you?\"\n\n\"What?\" Steve looked confused. \"I\u2026\"\n\n\"Just go.\" Then, in Pelapi: \"I must send you into exile, that you may be the coal of her heart. No real thing can be so perfect as memory, and she will need a perfect thing if she is to survive. She will warm herself on the memory of you when there is nothing else, and be sustained.\"\n\nRubbing his neck, Steve walked down the road to the entrance to Garrison Oaks. He stopped there, looked back over his shoulder, and waved at Carolyn. She saw real longing in his face.\n\nShe waved back.\n\nThen, without saying anything, Steve stepped out of Garrison Oaks and back into America. Carolyn, eight years old, looked up at Father and said, \"Couldn't he stay? He's my best friend.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Father said. \"I truly am so very sorry. It must be exactly this way, and no other.\" Then, lighting the coal of her heart, \"But perhaps you'll see him again someday.\"\n\nCarolyn, tears streaming down her cheeks, gave a fierce little nod.\n\nWhen Steve was gone, Father dried her tears. He let those of them who still had houses go back to them, to get toys, or clothes, whatever they liked\u2014but only as much as they could carry in a single trip. The twins returned with a partially burned gym bag full of G.I. Joe dolls. Michael piled his clothes into a red wagon and dragged it down the street.\n\nCarolyn's house had been vaporized, so for her there was nothing to pack. All she had left in the world were the clothes on her back and the copy of Black Beauty that Steve had given her. She walked with Father to the back patio.\n\n\"I do wish they would hurry,\" Father said, scanning the street for returning children. \"I haven't got all the time in the world. It will be suppertime soon, and I still have to punish President LeMay.\"\n\n\"Punish the president? Why?\"\n\n\"Well, he's the one who sent the bomb. Don't you think he deserves to be punished for that?\"\n\n\"Oh. Yes.\" She thought of her mom and dad. Her lip trembled. \"Punish him how?\"\n\n\"Well, for starters, he's not going to be president anymore.\"\n\n\"You can really do that?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. I really can.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026I'll tell you later. For now let's just say that the past kneels before me.\"\n\n\"That doesn't make any sense.\"\n\nFather shrugged. \"Maybe not. But it's true. Tell me, who do you think I should replace him with? Carter? Morris Udall? Jerry Brown?\"\n\n\"Which one is nicest? My dad says President LeMay is a mean man.\"\n\nFather considered this. \"Carter, I should think.\"\n\n\"Make him president, then.\"\n\n\"Carter it is. Would you like to watch me change the past?\"\n\nCarolyn said that she would. She was about to ask if that was all, if LeMay's only punishment for killing her mom and dad was that he wasn't president anymore, but she never got the chance. Knowing Father, though, I doubt that was all there was to it. As she was opening her mouth to ask, David returned, lugging a suitcase almost as big as he was. Father said that he was a strong little fellow. David grinned.\n\nWhen they were all back, Father led them around to the front porch and opened the door into the Library. The house seemed normal enough from the lawn, but with the door ajar the space inside seemed to loom. It was very dark. \"Come in,\" Father said. \"What are you waiting for? It's time to begin your studies.\"\n\nOne by one they filed in\u2014David first, then Margaret, Peter and Richard, Jacob, Emily, Jennifer and Lisa, Michael, Alicia, and Rachel. Carolyn waited until last. Even then she hesitated at the threshold.\n\n\"Don't be afraid. It will all be OK, in the end. Come. We'll go in together, shall we?\" Father reached down to her, smiling.\n\nStill she hesitated.\n\n\"Come along,\" he said, wagging his hand, a don't-leave-me-hanging gesture. \"Come along now.\"\n\nAfter a long moment, Carolyn took hold of his fingers, thick and rough. She did so reluctantly, but in the end it was of her own free will. They crossed the threshold together.\n\n\"Step down into the darkness with me, child.\" Just that once, Father looked at her with real love. \"I will make of you a God.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "The Second Moon",
                "text": "The entrance to the apothecary was on the onyx floor of the Library, between the catalogs of healing and mercy. Carolyn rarely came down that way. That was probably for the best\u2014she'd lost a lot of the dead ones on the night that she projected the Library into normal space, and there wasn't anyone around to do the housework. It had been ten weeks or so since anyone tidied up, and Jennifer's shelves were cobwebby. Carolyn left footprints in the dust as she walked.\n\nShe kept a smaller version of Jennifer's medical kit in her chambers, fleshed out to suit her specific needs. Medicine was never going to be her favorite subject, but she'd been chain-smoking Marlboro reds since she was sixteen and it was starting to catch up with her. Jennifer had fixed incipient carcinomas twice, and she'd treated her own emphysema a few weeks back. What she was dealing with today was a bit more serious than cancer, though. She would need extra supplies. \"Open.\"\n\nThe floor in front of her fell away, reassembling itself into stairs. Down below, the lamps in the hall lit themselves, lending the bronze walls a particular sort of glow. Seeing this, Carolyn winced. That glow was something she associated with Jennifer. Carolyn was no longer aging at a cellular level, but the choices she made were beginning to carve lines in her face.\n\nThe particular line that wincing brought out ran deep.\n\nJennifer's apothecary was a good-sized hall even by Library standards, ten acres or so. When Carolyn opened the door, a cloud of scent rolled over her\u2014nightshade, ethyl ether, a hint of fried clams, other things. She surrendered a small, nostalgic smile. Once, late at night, she'd gone to Jennifer for an aspirin and found her just ridiculously stoned, frying clams over a gas burner. Jennifer had been too high to use verbs, much less track down an aspirin. After a certain amount of unintentional slapstick she managed to communicate that she thought the weed would probably help Carolyn's headache. Carolyn, desperate, had conceded a couple of puffs. To her surprise it did help. Also it made the clams taste fantastic. That was a good night, she thought. They weren't all bad. Not all of them.\n\nThe apothecary was a minor labyrinth of exotica. Probably there was some system to it other than \"Be confusing,\" but Carolyn would need the map. Happily, it hung in plain sight, tacked up over Jennifer's desk in the far corner. As she made her way there she traced her fingers across the things lining her path\u2014tiny wooden drawers filled with dried roots, a two-foot bronze sphere engraved with runes of binding, a baby stegosaurus in a tank of liquid. The stegosaurus blinked at her as she passed.\n\nJennifer's desk was flanked by stacks of notebooks, teetering and, to Carolyn's eye, painfully untidy. Even so, seeing them made her smile a little. Jennifer, like Father, had something of a fetish for office supplies. A Miquelrius spiral notebook lay open on her desk. Carolyn picked it up and blew off the dust, stifling a sneeze.\n\nOn the morning that Carolyn consecrated the reissak, Jennifer had been working on an anatomical drawing. The notebook was open to a half-finished diagram of something like a millipede with a baby elephant's torso, its musculature laid bare. Carolyn didn't recognize it. Far future? Distant past? Shrug. Who knows. Whatever it was, according to a note in the margin it had \"hypertrophied inguinal mammae.\"\n\nWhatever that was.\n\nShe set the notebook down, closed it, laid her hand on the cover. \"I hope\u2026\" she began, then faltered. What, Carolyn? What do you hope, exactly? That wherever Jennifer is now, the clams are good? Then, suddenly furious: Keep it to yourself. You don't have the right.\n\nIn addition to her own first-aid supplies, she kept a fairly well-stocked resurrection kit upstairs\u2014she'd given up on bringing Steve back, but every so often the dead ones had an accident. Today she would need other things as well. She un-tacked the map from the wall. Using it as a guide she drifted through the shadows of the apothecary gathering supplies\u2014a Klein bottle half-filled with anaconda blood, the crystalline ash of a rare psychosis, two ounces of powdered arsenide of gallium-67. It took about an hour. When it was done she fled upstairs, not quite crying.\n\nThe floor closed behind her with a little whoosh of air. She breathed out a sigh and tilted her head back. High above, the lights of the Milky Way burned down upon her. It was getting up on lunchtime. Maybe I'll climb up there. She could spread out a picnic and\u2014 No.\n\nThe word for that is \"procrastination.\" Instead she trudged up to the ruby floor, radial seven, row sixteen.\n\nHis remains lay where they had fallen.\n\nThe wood floor was stained black with the juices of decomposition, but his body was pretty well mummified. Happily, the smell had dissipated. Yesterday, or whenever, she'd stashed a wheelbarrow there containing a keg of distilled water, two gallons of ammonia, enough food for a week or two, and a good-sized baggie of amphetamines. This was probably going to take a while.\n\nThe expression on her face when she took off her knapsack was that of a person picking up a burden rather than setting one down. It would be a spectacularly difficult resurrection, even for Jennifer, but Carolyn figured she'd make it work somehow. She always did.\n\nSighing again, she sat down next to the corpse and began to work.\n\nIt took longer than she thought, closer to three weeks. Maybe longer? She lost track of time\u2014she'd been doing that a lot lately\u2014but all the water was gone and she was almost out of amphetamines before she got a heartbeat. After a certain amount of trial and error, three days or so, she got him back to normal brain activity. Not long after that he started snoring.\n\nHer back ached, her knees ached, even her fingers hurt. She fell back the length of half a dozen shelves and put on a plain-looking but spectacularly lethal glove she'd gotten out of David's armory. There she squatted, intending to keep an eye on him until she was certain everything between them was good. Instead she collapsed almost immediately into something between \"deep sleep\" and \"mild coma\" on the responsiveness scale. Some time later it penetrated, gradually, that someone was shaking her foot.\n\n\"Fuggoff.\"\n\nInstead, he shook harder. Carolyn, remembering, jerked herself awake and held the gloved hand before her like a shield.\n\nHe stopped shaking her foot, then took half a step back and held out a steaming mug. \"Hello, Carolyn.\"\n\nShe sniffed. Coffee? She eyed him warily for another moment, then lowered the glove.\n\n\"Hello, Father.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 71",
                "text": "Normally she hated coffee, but someone had hidden her uppers while she was asleep. She took the mug, nodded thanks. \"How long have you been awake?\"\n\n\"Twelve hours or so. How long was I dead?\"\n\nShe rubbed her eyes. \"I'm really not sure. A while. Months.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"I thought so.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"It doesn't smell too bad. And everything's all dusty.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" A thought occurred to her. \"I'm, uh, sorry about\u2026you know.\"\n\n\"Murdering me?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"Forget it. We both know I had it coming. Nicely done, though. Been a long time since someone snuck up on me like that.\"\n\n\"Really?\" In light of Father's big Adoption Day revelation, it had crossed her mind that maybe he had let her kill him.\n\n\"Oh yeah. I know what you're thinking, but I didn't. If I'd seen it coming, I'd have shut you down. Shut you down hard. Nope. You got me fair and square. And you're so young. I wasn't expecting you to make your move for at least another fifty years. A century wouldn't have surprised me.\" He patted her on the shoulder, gently. \"I'm really proud of you, Carolyn. I hope you don't mind me saying.\"\n\n\"Mind?\" She thought about it. \"No. I don't mind.\"\n\n\"So\u2026who's left?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Just me.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"You're surprised?\"\n\n\"A little. I wasn't sure you'd have the heart to\u2026well. David and Margaret, sure. They wouldn't have been hard. But the others? Jennifer? Michael?\"\n\nMichael. Michael had always been kind to her\u2014a rare thing in itself\u2014but there was more to it than that. The first time David murdered her, Michael had been in Australia, but he'd known, somehow. He came back for her. He was the one to find her body. Then, after he fetched Jennifer he ducked back into the woods. At sunset he returned, this time in the company of a wolf pack and a pair of tigers. The lot of them set on David, practicing in the back field. He had to have known this was futile, had to have known that David would hurt him for the attempt, but he did it anyway. \"Yeah,\" she said. \"Even Michael. I couldn't leave any loose ends. You understand, right? The stakes were too high.\"\n\n\"It was the correct move. If it makes you feel any better, I arranged things so that you didn't have much choice. Knowing what you knew at the time, leaving anyone alive would have been an unacceptable risk.\"\n\n\"I understand that. But it doesn't help. Not really.\"\n\n\"No. Of course not. So\u2026what? You went to Liesel?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Americans.\"\n\n\"Ah. Interesting approach.\"\n\n\"It worked well enough.\"\n\n\"And Steve?\" Father's tone was gentle.\n\nShe didn't answer with words, only grimaced.\n\n\"Dead?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Some sort of dramatic suicide, I expect?\"\n\nShe blinked. \"How did you know that?\"\n\n\"It's the way he's wired. His great-great-great\u2014seventeen times great\u2014grandmother was the same way.\" Father made a dramatic face and pantomimed stabbing himself in the heart. \"'Free my people, Ablakha!'\" He lolled his head, let his tongue hang out the side of his mouth. \"Sound familiar?\"\n\n\"Close enough.\"\n\n\"How did he do it?\"\n\n\"Fire, the first time. A couple other things as well.\"\n\nFather winced. \"I'm sorry. That must have been hard for you.\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"You adjust.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"That we do. I'm still sorry.\" He paused. \"Could you bear a little fatherly advice?\"\n\n\"You're asking?\"\n\n\"I am, yes. You're in charge now, Carolyn. If you want me to keep my mouth shut, just say so.\"\n\n\"No\u2026no.\" She straightened. \"It's gracious of you to ask, but I'll attend any lesson that Ablakha might care to give. It would be an honor.\" She bowed her head a little.\n\nFather bowed back, a little deeper than she had. \"How did Steve seem, the first time? With the fire? Was there something different about him?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What do you think it was?\"\n\n\"He seemed\u2026happy, I think. Happier than I ever saw him. Well\u2026maybe not 'happy,' exactly. At peace. It was the only time I ever saw him that way.\"\n\nFather nodded. \"Just so. He meant well, and he was a brave boy. But if you hadn't been around, he would have found something else to martyr himself over.\" He watched her reaction carefully. \"Or, perhaps, he would have died mourning the lack of it.\"\n\n\"You're saying he was born that way?\"\n\n\"Partly. The potential was there. Some people have an enormous capacity for feeling guilt, deserved or otherwise. The bit with his friend dying cemented it. By the time you caught up with him, there really wasn't much to be done.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I've been studying. I think I can\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\" Father said, gently. \"Fix it? Make it so the two of you can be together?\"\n\n\"No! Not like that. I mean, maybe\u2026but it's not the point.\"\n\n\"What is the point, then?\"\n\n\"He was my friend,\" Carolyn said softly.\n\n\"Did you try talking with him?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"How did that go?\"\n\n\"He was\u2026kind. Compassionate, I think. That was the word he kept using, anyway. But\u2026\"\n\n\"But?\"\n\nShe sighed. \"But compassion was all there was. It wasn't like when we were kids. We didn't connect. There was this huge gap between us. We used the same words, but they meant different things, and\u2026and\u2026I couldn't figure out how to fix it.\"\n\n\"It's not surprising. The two of you had very different lives.\" Father's eyes went distant for a moment. \"I am sorry, though. I really do know how you feel.\"\n\n\"What should I do?\"\n\nFather shook his head. \"I can't answer that, Carolyn. But the way I see it, you have three options.\" He held up a finger. \"First, you could change the past. Make it so that Steve was Pelapi all along.\"\n\n\"I've been thinking about that.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I understand why you raised us\u2014raised me\u2014that way, but\u2026there were times\u2026\"\n\n\"It was hard, I know. I'm sorry, Carolyn. It was the only way.\"\n\n\"I understand that, too. But I'm not sure I want to subject Steve to it. I'm not sure I want to subject anyone to that.\" She sighed. \"What's the second choice?\"\n\n\"You could abdicate,\" Father said. \"Change it so that all of you were raised American. You and Steve could grow up together. Quietly. Peacefully.\"\n\nShe turned the notion over in her mind\u2014what would happen if she was out of the picture? The Duke would move first, almost certainly. But Barry O'Shea and Liesel couldn't afford to just stand by while the Duke eliminated intelligent life\u2014there wouldn't be anything left for them to eat. They'd pretty much have to ally against him, at least temporarily. She frowned. Either way, it wouldn't be long before people were\u2014 She felt Father's eyes upon her. He was smiling slightly.\n\n\"Well\u2026what would you do? If I abdicated.\"\n\nFather shrugged. \"I'd have to start looking for my successor again. I've looked after this world so long I don't think I could bear to know it was ruined.\" He flashed a small, ferocious smile. \"Call me sentimental.\"\n\nShe blinked. \"If you say so. What would it mean in practical terms?\"\n\n\"Hmmm. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. It took a long time to isolate your bloodline, and longer still to arrange for the lot of you to be in Garrison Oaks. I'd have to do something like that again.\" He pursed his lips. \"Or I suppose I could start from scratch? Work my way up from base clay? Perhaps I could\u2014well. Never mind. Either way, it would be more complicated this time, and your part of it would be over. All of you, I mean. On Labor Day, 1977, everyone would have a nice picnic and go home sunburned and overfed. A few days after that someone would notice that old Mr. Black has gone missing, and that would be the end of it.\" He looked at her. \"Is that what you want?\"\n\nOnce or twice, Carolyn had wondered about this. \"What would we have been, do you think? Without the Library? Without you?\"\n\n\"I can tell you exactly. Would you like me to?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\n\"You were quiet,\" Father said. \"A bit mousy. You and Steve were an item through high school. You took each other's virginity after your junior prom, but it didn't last.\" He shrugged. \"Both of you ended up marrying other people. You were friends, though. You stayed in touch until your forties.\"\n\n\"What did I do?\"\n\n\"For a living?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"Actually, you were a librarian,\" Father said. \"The American sort.\"\n\nShe snorted laughter. \"Seriously?\"\n\nFather chuckled too. \"Cross my heart. You can't make stuff like that up. You had a nice, quiet life. You worked at the University of Oregon. You were really good at office politics, but there weren't any major challenges. You got a little chubby after the second baby was born, so you took up competing in triathlons.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"It's a kind of race. You swim for a while, then run, then ride a bicycle.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nFather smirked. \"Also, you studied French in your spare time.\"\n\n\"Ha! Was I any good?\"\n\n\"Passable. Your vocabulary and grammar were decent, but your accent was atrocious. You never made it to Paris, though. Thyroid cancer, when you were fifty-nine.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" She thought about it. \"What's option three?\"\n\n\"You could let him go.\" He waited a long time, but she didn't answer. Finally, he said, \"Well, you think about it. What was the other part?\"\n\n\"Beg pardon?\"\n\n\"You said getting a consult on Steve was part of what you wanted to talk to me about. What was the other part?\"\n\n\"Oh. Right. I guess I understand what you did\u2014training me, I mean\u2014but I still don't understand why. And what do you mean when you say you're retiring? Are you, I dunno, getting an RV and going to Boca Raton or something like\u2014\"\n\nFather laughed. \"Not exactly. You said it's been, what? Six, eight months?\"\n\n\"Something like that.\"\n\n\"What catalogs have you been focusing on?\"\n\n\"The priority has been strategy and tactics. Q-33 North is in motion, and there have been some rumblings about the Forest God. He has a priestess that\u2014well. Never mind. It's not your problem anymore.\"\n\n\"Any mathematics?\"\n\n\"Only peripherally. Why?\"\n\n\"Are you familiar with the notion of regression completeness?\"\n\nShe had heard the term somewhere, but couldn't quite call up the meaning. \"No.\"\n\n\"It's the idea that however deeply you understand the universe, however many mysteries you solve, there will always be another, deeper mystery behind it.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\n\"You know I didn't create this universe, right? I left my mark on it, and I like to think I made improvements, but I was only working with rules that were in place from the third age. Light was one of my touches, and pleasure.\"\n\n\"We wondered,\" Carolyn said. \"No one was sure. But if not you, who?\"\n\nFather shook his head. \"I asked that same question, once. If there ever was an answer, it's been lost.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Whoever it was, though\u2026he was a craftsman. I've been studying his work for a long time. I've picked up some tricks\"\u2014he waved his hand, a gesture that took in the uncounted acres of books, scrolls, and folios of the Library\u2014\"but I'm no closer to understanding the whole picture than I was when I started.\"\n\n\"You think so?\"\n\n\"I've proven it. This universe is regression complete. I'll never understand the whole thing. No one will. So I'm leaving.\"\n\n\"Leaving?\"\n\n\"I'm creating my own universe. My place, my rules. That's my retirement.\"\n\n\"Sounds lonely.\"\n\nFather shook his head. \"I have my friends.\"\n\n\"Friends?\"\n\n\"While you were sleeping I resurrected Nobununga. Mithraganhi as well.\"\n\nCarolyn remembered Michael, speaking of his master. You understand that Nobununga is more than just a tiger, yes? She remembered Nobununga trudging into the reissak, his unshakable faith in Father. He said Father would let no harm come to him. And, as it turned out, he was right.\n\n\"Where are they?\" She felt uneasy.\n\n\"Waiting for me,\" Father said, pointing at the jade staircase. \"Would you like to see them?\"\n\nCarolyn thought of Mithraganhi holding out her small, bloody hand, asking, \"Moru panh ka seiter?\" Why are you doing this to me? She shook her head. \"Probably not a good idea.\"\n\nFather nodded. \"I understand.\"\n\nFor a moment she imagined the three of them together, Father and Nobununga and Mithraganhi, hanging out, maybe playing volleyball or something. It seemed outside of his nature. But she was coming to understand that Father's nature was, perhaps, something other than what had been presented to her. \"May I ask you something?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"You remember the\u2026the day of the bull? David?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Why were you smiling?\"\n\nFather looked at her for a long moment. \"Walk with me, Carolyn.\" He stood, still lithe, and set out through the shelves.\n\nCarolyn bustled to catch up. \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\"It's not far.\"\n\nHe led her out of the red catalog\u2014David's catalog, the meditations on murder and war\u2014and into the violet stacks. Violet was a small catalog, part of Peter's world. She wasn't even sure what sort of gem the floor was made of. Amethyst? Garnet? Tanzanite? She didn't recall ever setting foot in it before.\n\nFather stopped at a tall dusty shelf filled with titles like Larousse Gastronomique and Le Cordon Bleu at Home and The Joy of Cooking. Carolyn wondered, What the hell are we doing here?\n\nFather selected a three-ring binder. It was flimsy and cheap and half-hidden behind a book about Cornish pasties. The cover was stamped with the words \"Charlie's Angels.\" It had a picture of three pretty women printed on it.\n\nHe handed the notebook to her. Something caught her eye. In the deep shadows of the Library there was a flicker of motion, a small sound.\n\n\"What's this?\"\n\n\"That,\" Father said, \"is the black folio.\"\n\nCarolyn looked at him. \"Seriously?\" Supposedly the black folio contained instructions for altering the past. As such, its power was effectively limitless. Early on, she had spent years looking for this. She had finally concluded it didn't exist.\n\nHe nodded. \"It was mis-shelved, I'm afraid. Didn't want you stumbling over it before you were ready.\"\n\nShe opened the binder. The pages inside were ancient vellum, and the handwriting on them was not Father's. She blinked. As she watched, the writing changed on the page. A moment later it did so again. When it did so a third time she understood that though the verses set down in the black folio did not change, the language in which they were written did. Every few seconds the ink on the page rearranged itself. First it was Arabic, then Swahili, then the poetry of storms. \"Oh my God.\"\n\nFather nodded. \"Mine too, very possibly.\"\n\nThe black folio. \"Who wrote this? How old is it?\"\n\n\"No one knows.\" Father looked at her levelly. \"I took it from the Emperor of the third age. It wasn't his handwriting either.\"\n\nShe closed it. \"But what does this have to do with\u2014\"\n\n\"The reason I was smiling when we put David in the bull was because he begged.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Her face fell.\n\nHe held up a hand. \"I don't mean that the way you think.\"\n\nShe shook her head, confused.\n\n\"You understand that he was my son, right? I mean, you were all my children in some sense\u2014you most of all, Carolyn\u2014but David's mother was the only one I had actual sex with.\"\n\n\"Father! Ick.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"But that\u2026I mean\u2026I guess I don't understand. Doesn't that just make it worse? What you did to him? The fact that he was your son, I mean.\"\n\n\"It does, yes,\" Father said, grave. \"Much worse. Worse than you know. Worse than you ever know, I hope.\"\n\n\"Then why did you smile?\"\n\n\"Because he begged. You never did. Not once.\"\n\n\"I might have if you'd tried to put me in that damned thing.\"\n\n\"No. You didn't.\"\n\n\"What? I don't\u2014\"\n\nHe tapped the black folio. \"The past kneels before me, Carolyn.\"\n\n\"I still don't see\u2014\" Then she did. \"David\u2026was supposed to be your heir? In some\u2026some other version of the past?\"\n\n\"Correct.\"\n\n\"But\u2026it didn't work out?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because David wasn't strong enough,\" Father said. \"The culmination of the training was to conquer a monster. But he never could. I gave him a lot of chances. Too many. Nine times I roasted an innocent child alive so that David would have a monster to kill. Nine different times the monster won. It finally occurred to me that I was training the wrong kid.\" He shrugged. \"So I gave the monster a shot. That day, when David begged, I knew I'd finally figured it out, finally found my heir.\"\n\n\"Nine times?\" The belly of the bull, glowing orange in the black of night. \"Me?\"\n\n\"You never begged,\" Father said. \"Not once. I still can't believe it. You don't remember, of course, but I've ridden that bull a couple of times myself.\" He shuddered. \"Once I even roasted you two times, back to back, so you knew, really knew, what you were in for. I wanted to see what you would do. You just looked at me.\" He shook his head. \"I still have nightmares.\"\n\n\"What was I like?\"\n\n\"Like David,\" he said. \"But so much worse. Worse than me, worse than the Emperor\u2026worse than anything, anywhere, ever. You were a demon. A devil.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\"\n\nHe waited awhile. \"Do you have any more questions?\"\n\n\"No. I\u2014\" It was on the tip of her tongue to thank him, but she didn't. Not much later, she would regret that. \"No.\"\n\n\"Then Ablakha decrees that this fourth age of the world is ended. It's all yours now, Carolyn. 'Congratulations' isn't the right word, but I know you'll do well.\" Father stood, dusted himself off. \"And that means it's time for me to go.\"\n\nJust like that? \"Will I see you again?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"No. Never. There is no return from where we are going.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nFather turned and set out walking to the jade staircase, toward Nobununga and Mithraganhi and what came next for such as them.\n\nCarolyn watched him for a few steps. He did not look back. \"Wait!\" Carolyn said. \"There is one more thing.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"How did you know? That I'd resurrect you?\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\n\"Then what\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't know, Carolyn. I had faith in you.\" Father's eyes twinkled. \"You should probably start getting used to that.\"\n\nShe didn't get the joke.\n\nFather sighed. \"You're a strong one, Carolyn, but would it kill you to lighten up a little, maybe just every so often?\" He snapped his fingers. \"Oh! I almost forgot. I left you something.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"A surprise.\"\n\nShe was wary of Father's surprises. \"A good one?\"\n\nHe only smiled.\n\nShe watched him walk away until she was sure he couldn't hear her. Only then did she whisper, \"Good-bye, Father.\"\n\nShe never saw him again."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 72",
                "text": "Steve came back to life on the floor of the penthouse. He was accustomed to dying now; he had clear memories of everything up to the very last moments. Now, the apartment was thick with dust. The glass of Liquid-Plumr had partially dried up while he was away, crystallized. It sat where he had left it\u2026how long ago? He remembered the flavor of it, metallic but not all that unpleasant, remembered also how it had boiled away in his guts. The bottom was crystallized, but there was enough floating at the top for another drink. It's been waiting for me. Belly up to the bar, pardner!\n\nFor some reason this struck him funny, and he giggled.\n\n\"Don't do that.\"\n\n\"What?\" He turned to the sound of Carolyn's voice. She was perched on the granite island between the kitchen and living room like a gargoyle, smoking a cigarette.\n\n\"Don't giggle like that. You sound like Margaret.\"\n\n\"But I'm all dusty. Heh. Hee.\"\n\n\"It's been a while.\" She tossed him a pack of Marlboros, half full, and Margaret's lighter.\n\nHe caught them. \"Thanks. Where's Naga?\"\n\n\"She went home,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Back to Africa?\"\n\nCarolyn nodded.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"She wanted to be with her people. When, you know, at\u2026\" She trailed off.\n\n\"At the end?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"Jesus, Carolyn. How bad is it out there?\"\n\nCarolyn was silent for a time before she answered. \"Well, it's not the end.\" Then, softer, \"not yet.\"\n\nSteve nodded. \"You haven't changed.\" He looked at the Liquid-Plumr, and suppressed a shudder. Here we go again. Maybe this time I could get ahold of some explos\u2014\n\n\"Actually, I have.\" Then, following his gaze to the Liquid-Plumr, \"Here.\" She held up a pistol. \"I'll make it easy for you. Or isn't a gun horrible enough?\"\n\n\"I suppose I could make it work. Am I getting through to you at all?\"\n\nShe just looked at him.\n\nSteve sat up, brushed the dust off one of the kitchen chairs, lit his cigarette. \"You're getting better at the whole resurrection thing. I'm not even sore this time.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nHe squinted at her over his Marlboro. \"You do look different. How long did you say it's been?\"\n\n\"Three or four months, I think. I don't keep track. Different how?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. You don't look any older.\"\n\nShe snubbed out her cigarette. \"I wouldn't. I don't age. Not anymore. It's a trick of Father's.\"\n\n\"You've got a couple of lines, though.\" He traced his hand across her cheek.\n\n\"Yeah, well. What is it you guys say? 'It's not the years, it's the mileage'?\"\n\nThen he saw it. \"I know what it is. You don't seem so angry. Well\u2026grumpy, maybe. But not like you were.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"It used to be that your eyebrows were all crushed together all the time.\" He made a face imitating her. \"And your jaw muscles kept jumping when you thought no one was looking. Now, less so.\"\n\n\"Hmmm.\"\n\n\"So, what have you been up to?\"\n\n\"This and that,\" she said. \"Studying, at first. Thinking things over. Then I had a chat with Father.\"\n\n\"Seriously? I thought he was dead.\"\n\nShe shrugged.\n\n\"Hmm. Just a chat? Not a fight, or anything?\"\n\n\"Yeah. It was pretty civil, actually. Why?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026I bet an argument between the two of you would be something to see. Did you ever see that movie where King Kong fought the big dinosaur?\"\n\n\"I have no idea what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"That's a shame. I'm kind of funny.\"\n\nCarolyn's brow furrowed\u2026but then she relaxed. \"Yeah,\" she said, smiling a little. \"You are. I've missed that. And maybe I am less angry.\" She held her hand out for the lighter.\n\nSteve passed it over. \"That's good. You need to get stuff out of your system. If you let it fester, it'll eat you up.\" She was looking at him strangely. \"What?\"\n\n\"You're one to\u2014Nothing.\"\n\n\"So\u2026four months, huh?\"\n\n\"Give or take.\"\n\n\"That's longer than the last time.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Why'd you wait?\"\n\n\"I wasn't going to bring you back at all.\"\n\n\"Are you mad at me?\"\n\nShe winced. \"No. Not mad. I just\u2026I didn't think I could bear it if you\u2026did, you know, something. Again.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Steve considered this. \"Well\u2026I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"It's OK. I understand why you did it. Or, I think I do, anyway.\" She walked around the kitchen island and fetched the copy of Black Beauty off the counter. \"This is for you.\"\n\nHe took it. \"This is that, whatchacallit, the token thing? From the porch? Right?\"\n\n\"It is, yeah. Open it.\"\n\nHe handed it back to her. \"I don't have to.\"\n\n\"What? What do you\u2014\"\n\n\"It's got my name inside the cover, right? Handwritten, in red ink. This isn't like the one I had, it is the one I had. When I was a kid, I mean. Right?\"\n\n\"You remember?\"\n\n\"Sort of. I dreamed about it. After the fire. The first time I, you know\u2026\"\n\n\"You did?\"\n\n\"Yeah. And again, just now. I dreamed I was reading it in the car, on the day my parents\u2026you know, the day of the wreck. Then I was handing it to this little kid I was friends with, a little girl from the neighborhood. I hadn't thought about her in years.\" He shook his head. \"We used to talk about books and stuff. I couldn't remember her name, though.\" He smiled. \"And then I could. You used to be so blond.\"\n\nCarolyn smiled back. \"I've changed.\"\n\n\"Yeah. I guess you have. Me too, for that matter. I was wondering why that one house\u2014that one where the beagle was hanging out\u2014looked so familiar. I didn't recognize any of the rest though.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't. There was a fire. Most of it's been rebuilt.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" He frowned. \"It seems like I remember what happened, but\u2026it can't be real. Can't be. Your Father did something, didn't he? To my mind, my memory.\"\n\n\"He did, yeah.\"\n\n\"So what really happened? Wait! No.\" He rubbed his temples. \"On second thought, don't tell me. Whatever happened, I bet I was a huge asshole in some way.\"\n\nCarolyn blinked. \"No. You weren't an asshole. Not at all. You really couldn't be more wrong.\"\n\nHe looked up, not sure whether to believe her.\n\nCarolyn's expression was gentler than he had ever seen it. \"I have a proposal for you, Steve. What if I told you that there was a way to make it all better?\"\n\nSteve gave her a sharp look. \"What exactly are we talking about?\"\n\n\"The sun,\" she said. \"The earthquakes. Everything.\"\n\n\"You're going to put what's-her-name back?\"\n\n\"Not exactly. I really can't do that. Mithraganhi is with Father now.\"\n\n\"Dead, you mean?\"\n\n\"No. Not dead. They went away. Mithraganhi, Nobununga, Father. We won't see them again.\"\n\nSteve raised his eyebrows. \"What do you mean, 'away'?\"\n\n\"A new universe, I think. One Father created. One where he makes all the rules.\"\n\nSteve shook his head. \"You guys really are playing at just a completely other level. You know that?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026you might be surprised. I'm really not that different from you. Anyone could have done what I did.\"\n\n\"You know, I really doubt that.\"\n\nShe stood quiet for a long moment, looking down. Then, softly, \"It has a price, though. In the service of my will, I have emptied myself.\"\n\nSteve nodded. \"Yeah. I get that, too.\"\n\nShe looked at him. \"Do you? Do you really?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I really do.\"\n\nCarolyn smiled. \"You know, I believe that you do. Thank you.\" She reached out and touched his cheek. Her fingertips were warm. For some reason this surprised him. \"But I will be wiser than that.\"\n\n\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" She let her hand drop. \"I'm going to fix it, Steve. I should have listened to you. You were right all along.\"\n\nHe raised an eyebrow. \"Oh? You're going to bring the sun back?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"By this time tomorrow it will be just the way it used to be.\"\n\n\"I thought you said it was impossible. That David couldn't\u2014\"\n\n\"David is gone. I let him die.\"\n\n\"What? When?\"\n\n\"A couple of hours ago.\"\n\n\"What about your whole revenge thing?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I've had enough revenge. I'm done.\"\n\n\"Well\u2026yay you, I guess. But if he's not the sun, then how do you\u2014\"\n\nShe looked at him. \"I found another way.\"\n\n\"Wow. That's great, Carolyn. Really. But what about outside? There's a famine, right? People are still starving. And that volcano, and\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not quite that bad, not yet. And I won't let it get any worse. I spoke with the volcano under Yellowstone and calmed him down. As far as the famine\u2026there's a trick I know. A way to make a sort of bread out of clouds. It takes a lot of energy and a little time, but I have both. By the time the sun comes up tomorrow food will be falling down from the sky. All over the world. And I'll do that every couple of days until the crops come back.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"And the Library? The earthquakes?\"\n\n\"The Library is back in hiding. The earthquakes will cease. I've put the moon back in its old orbit\u2014the tides will normalize. Soon.\"\n\n\"Carolyn\u2026that's\u2026that's fantastic. But why?\"\n\n\"Because of you, Steve. Because of what you did.\"\n\n\"Me? What the hell did I do?\"\n\n\"You were my friend,\" she said. \"That's what. And you were a really, really good one. The best I'll ever have. Not just mine, either.\"\n\nCarolyn cupped her hands in front of her as if to drink. Mist rose from her palms, coalesced into a sphere. It took a moment for him to recognize it as the Earth, only basketball-sized and seen from below\u2014Antarctica on top, South America below, clouds, oceans. It hovered inches above her palm, turning slowly. Squinting, he saw the tiny contrail of a jet over the Pacific.\n\n\"Look, Steve. Right here. Billions of people. They're going to be OK now. As OK as they ever were, anyway. You have my word. I'm going to make it all better. Because of you.\"\n\nSteve looked. He stretched his hand out to touch, then thought better of it. He looked at Carolyn, still not understanding. Her eyes were shiny.\n\n\"You saved them,\" she said. \"Every last one of them. Naga. Petey. You saved them all. Just you.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nSteve smiled.\n\nA single tear broke and ran down Carolyn's cheek.\n\n\"Carolyn, why are you\u2014\"\n\nShe took her hands away. Earth hung there, unsupported now, still spinning. Steve watched, fascinated, as the contrail of the jet grew a tiny fraction of an inch.\n\nSaved them? Me? In his mind's eye, just for a moment, he saw Jack stepping out of the shadows into sunlight.\n\nCarolyn stepped around to the side and whispered in his ear, speaking the word that Father whispered to Mithraganhi so very long ago when he called forth the dawn of the fourth age.\n\nFor Steve, hearing this\u2026\n\n\u2026time\u2026\n\n\u2026stopped."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 73",
                "text": "Steve floated weightless in the kitchen of the penthouse. Carolyn fished a dusty club soda out of the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. She didn't touch her drink, but she smoked cigarettes slowly, one after another. Sometimes she didn't inhale, just let them burn down to a teetering column of ash.\n\nBy the time the pack was empty, Steve's head was encased in a sphere of boiling energy\u2014yellow-orange, just like the former sun. His connection to the plane of joy was very strong. If anything, he would burn even brighter than had Mithraganhi. She might have to fold space a little so that he didn't cook Mercury to a cinder.\n\nShe untied one of Steve's shoelaces and, using it as a leash, carried him through the great hall, up the stairs to the jade platform under the universe. David's body was there, bloody, under a plastic sheet. His pain was in the past now. Later, she would have the dead ones carry him down. She would find whatever was left of Margaret and wrap them in a single shroud. She would bury them together.\n\nShe set Steve in the heavens, then adjusted the orbits to the way things had been, before. She didn't even have to use a calculator. I'm getting the hang of this.\n\nShe had a great deal to do, but she didn't want to be in the Library anymore. Not today. The bombing had reduced Garrison Oaks to rubble, and it was surrounded by tanks, soldiers, but the Library had other doors, other facades. She chose a farmhouse in Oregon, a quiet place at the far end of a long road.\n\nIn this new place she went to the kitchen and made coffee. Unthinking, she picked up the plates and cups, washed them. When that was done she went into the bathroom\u2014it took her a minute to find it\u2014and drew a very hot bath. The tub's backsplash was lime-green tile, and the faucets were stiff with disuse. It's clean, though.\n\nA long time later she got out of the tub and dried herself. Steve hadn't dawned yet, and it was a trifle chilly\u2014something like ten below. She didn't know how to turn on the furnace. But looking through the closet she found a pink terrycloth robe hanging there, waiting for her. It was brand-new, with the tags still attached, just her size. It had almost certainly been hanging there since the beginning. She shook her head. Father.\n\nOn the floor below the robe she found a box containing a pair of overstuffed slippers. The slippers were ridiculous\u2014the stuffed head of some cartoon cat was mounted over the toes, grinning. She examined them, bemused. Father really did have a sense of humor. Who knew? But silly though they might be, they were also soft and warm.\n\nShe put them on, then went and stood at the back window. It looked out over a broad field, white with snow. There was a barn, and a small stream.\n\nShe blinked.\n\nOn the far side of this field, a man stood, almost hidden in the forest. She blinked again. \"That's impossible,\" she said, remembering the smoking, perforated ruin of Mrs. McGillicutty's house.\n\nThen Father's voice came to her. \"I almost forgot. I left you something.\" And another man's voice, hesitant and soft. \"I was with\u2026with\u2026the small things. Father said. Father said to study the ways of the humble and the small.\"\n\nAnd David. \"Maybe a mouse could have snuck out. Not much else.\"\n\nShe went to the back door, not quite running, and threw it open. \"Michael!\"\n\nHe came to her, flanked on his left by a cougar and his right by three wolves. They stopped just outside the yard. Michael stared at her, wide-eyed, and called her by Father's old title. \"Sehlani?\"\n\nCarolyn opened her mouth to deny it, then shut it again and, after a long pause, surrendered the smallest possible fraction of a nod.\n\nMichael spoke to the wolves and the cougar, and all of them lay on their backs in the snow, showing her their bellies.\n\nCarolyn stared at him, aghast. \"No! Don't! What are you doing? Get up!\"\n\nBut he wouldn't. He lay on his back, trembling and afraid. He wouldn't meet her eyes.\n\nShe plowed through the snow to him, the yellow eyes of her cartoon cat poking up through the crust. She clouted him in the ear\u2014gently. \"Get up, Michael. Please get up. It's only me.\"\n\nMichael stood slowly. \"You\u2026what you did\u2026you\u2026\"\n\n\"I'm so sorry, Michael. I had to. There was no other way. Don't you see?\"\n\nHe looked at her for a long time, doubtful. He didn't answer.\n\nDesperate, she smiled, then touched his cheek. \"It's freezing out. Are you hungry? Any of you? You should all come inside. There might be food, or\u2026\"\n\nMichael considered this for a moment then, slowly, he smiled back. Seeing this, something in Carolyn unclenched. Michael turned to the wolves. He spoke to them. She didn't quite understand it, but they wagged their tails.\n\nShe led them into the house.\n\nIt turned out that there was food in the refrigerator, lots of it, five roasts of beef and a whole turkey. Michael and the animals ate hugely, then huddled together and went to sleep in front of the bay window in the living room. Carolyn pulled a pillow onto the floor and sat with them.\n\nThen, for the first time in a very long while, the sun rose. Under its orange glow the shadows of Michael and his pack stretched long across the floor.\n\nSeeing the angle of the sunrise, she thought the American word for this time of year is \"April\" or, sometimes, \"spring.\" That was true, but it was also true that in the calendar of the librarians it was the second moon, which is the moon of kindled hope. Carolyn, clean and warm, sat watch over her sleeping friends. The pink cotton of her robe lay soft against her skin. The stuffed heads of the cartoon-cat slippers covered her toes. She sat this way for a time, watching as the new sun began to melt away the gray ice of the long winter.\n\nShe was smiling.\n\n[ Epilogue ]\n\nSo, What Ended Up Happening with Erwin?\n\nThe shit that landed Erwin in prison took place in the span of a single sweaty afternoon, but it ended up costing him ten years, minus time off for good behavior. This was just after the air raid on the pyramid, around the time that food was starting to get seriously scarce. There was a trial, but it only lasted about a week. After that he went straight to USP Big Sandy, a federal high-security prison in Kentucky. Erwin was surprised to discover he didn't mind prison.\n\nFor starters, the pressure was off. He'd sweated for a week or two before he finally took his hostage, wondering whether it was the right thing to do, worrying about, well, ending up in prison. Now that it was over and the deed was done, he could relax. Really relax. For the first time in years, there was nothing left to worry about.\n\nLife in Big Sandy had a regimented quality that sort of reminded him of basic training. He'd made a deal to keep his mouth shut about what he'd actually done in exchange for a relatively lenient sentence. The ten years sounded like a lot, but on the whole it could have been a lot worse. The president assured him they'd find a way to make it \"life without parole\" in Supermax if he gave them any crap. Jail was surprisingly comfortable. Not a luxury hotel, mind you, but his cell was newish and clean, and he had it to himself. Most everybody had seen the Natanz movie or read the book or whatever, so they knew who he was. In exchange for Erwin dropping an occasional war story, one of the guards, a card-carrying Natanz fanboy named Blakely, made runs to Barnes & Noble. Dashaen, the kid Erwin had taught to fight, was now in his twenties and a successful bond trader. He insisted on paying for the books, and also put a couple hundred into Erwin's commissary account every month. Erwin appreciated everyone going to the trouble. Also it was nice to have some way to pass the time besides jacking off.\n\nA couple of the other prisoners tested him, of course. Erwin understood. They had tested fucking Mike Tyson when he was inside. One guy tried to take his pillowcase, so Erwin knocked out his fillings. A couple of days later the guy's buddy, an Alabama weight lifter, came by to talk it over. Erwin hit the second guy so hard that for a couple of weeks he thought people were reading his thoughts. Actually he was muttering to himself without realizing it. He had brain swelling, or some shit. Erwin felt bad about it, but the big fella had rushed him. Listening to him think out loud was sort of comical, though. He got real excited when it was banana-pudding night in the cafeteria and made a lot of mental notes about who to jack off to when everyone was watching TV in the commons area. It cleared up after a couple of weeks, though, and after that everybody was polite to Erwin.\n\nOther than that, it was pretty peaceful. He got to Kentucky just after the sun came back, but for the first couple of weeks all the prisoners were still on food rations. Six hundred calories a day didn't leave you much energy to go starting shit. By the time that bread stuff started falling out of the sky, guards and prisoners alike had more or less concluded that the smartest thing to do with Erwin was let him be.\n\nThat suited Erwin fine.\n\nAs a new prisoner, he wasn't supposed to get mail for the first two months. But one of the guards knew of him from Afghanistan and another had actually been there at Natanz. They accidentally dropped off letters from Thorpe, Dashaen, other guys he had served with. They didn't know the full story, of course, but their faith in Erwin was absolute.\n\nIt was kinda nice.\n\nSo he had mail, he had books, he had a place to himself when he wanted it and people to play chess or whatever with when he didn't. Admittedly the food sucked, but whatcha gonna do? On the whole, he was content with his lot in life.\n\nTonight, though, lights-out snuck up on him. He was reading a new book he'd been looking forward to\u2014To the Nines, the next Stephanie Plum\u2014and he'd lost track of time. The guard, Blakely, had popped an eyebrow when Erwin asked him to pick up that particular title. Erwin explained that one of the perks of being a Medal of Honor winner was that he could read whatever the fuck he wanted to. Anyway, fucking Janet Evanovich was fucking funny as fuck. Blakely, cowed, asked if he could borrow it when Erwin was done. Erwin said sure.\n\nHe'd been planning to hand it over the next day, but he'd gotten a letter from Dashaen today, and he spent half an hour answering that, and so had ten pages left when it got dark. He gave a moment's thought to trying to read by the light spilling in through the observation slit in his door\u2014the book was good, and he'd just put in a fresh chew\u2014then decided against it. Instead, he folded down one of the pages and put the book on the floor next to his bunk.\n\nAs he was setting down the book, someone grabbed his wrist.\n\nErwin didn't yell, but it was a near thing. He twisted around to peer over the edge of the bunk. There was just enough light to see that there was an arm coming up out of the floor.\n\n\"Da fuck?\"\n\nErwin pulled hard, twisting, trying to break the hold on his wrist, but the angle was bad and whoever\u2014whatever\u2014it was, was strong. A moment later, the tip of another hand popped up through the floor. With a motion like someone pulling themselves out of a swimming pool, it gripped the concrete and pulled.\n\nA woman's head rose up through the concrete. She let go of Erwin's wrist and, pushing against the concrete, muscled her torso up out of the floor. She pulled her legs up\u2014nice legs, Erwin thought disjointedly\u2014and stood.\n\n\"Hello, Erwin.\"\n\nHe squinted forward, then leaned back with a sigh. \"Ah, shit. It's you, ain't it?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Carolyn said. \"What are you doing in here? It took me forever to track you down.\"\n\nErwin thought of mentioning that he might have asked her the same thing, but decided against it. \"Eh,\" he said, sitting up. \"You know how it is. I kind of roughed a guy up a little bit. Nothing much, just a couple cracked teeth, but\"\u2014shrug, spit\u2014\"he took offense.\"\n\nCarolyn furrowed her brow, confused. \"I don't see why that's such a big deal. It's part of your shtick, right?\"\n\n\"This particular guy was the president.\" Seeing the look on her face, he added, \"The new one. Not the head.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" She thought about this for a couple of seconds. \"Why'd you hit him?\"\n\n\"He kept squirming. I was afraid the gun was gonna go off.\"\n\n\"Gun? Did you kill him?\"\n\n\"Nah, just the teeth. Plus I held him hostage for, like, three or four hours.\"\n\n\"Oh. What happened then?\"\n\n\"He caved. I knew he would.\" Erwin spat in his cup. \"Pussy.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'caved'?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Erwin said, \"I was kinda blackmailing him. I told him if he didn't launch a couple of missiles, I was gonna spray his brains over all the nice woodwork. He thought about it for a little while, and then he launched 'em.\"\n\n\"At who?\"\n\n\"Well\u2026you.\"\n\n\"Really? Me? Why?\"\n\nErwin sat up on his bunk and turned to look at her face. His eyes were adjusting to the dark. \"That Steve kid told me what he was gonna do if our air raid didn't work. Which, you know, obviously it didn't. I gave it a week after that to see if he could convince you to un-fuck stuff, but no change.\" Erwin paused. \"Did he really go through with it? The Everclear and\u2026you know.\"\n\n\"The lighter,\" Carolyn said. \"Yeah. He did.\"\n\n\"Damn.\" Erwin was quiet for a moment. \"Well\u2026whether he had or not, it was obvious it didn't work. I couldn't see that we had much else left to try. The president didn't agree, though. He said he was 'exploring other options.' Maybe. But I'm pretty sure he was just worried about getting reelected.\" Erwin shrugged. \"After a while I got sick of arguing about it.\"\n\nCarolyn stared at him. \"So you blew up Mount Char? You nuked it?\"\n\n\"I blew up what?\"\n\n\"Come again?\"\n\n\"You said I blew up\u2026'Mount Char'?\"\n\n\"Did I?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Huh.\" She smiled a little.\n\n\"Yeah, I'm lost.\"\n\n\"What? Oh. Sorry. When we were kids, me and Steve used to have all these nicknames for things. Secret names, you know, the way kids have. We even drew a map. Scabby Flats and Cat Splash Creek and like that. Mount Char was Father's house.\"\n\n\"Any particular reason?\"\n\n\"You know, I don't\u2014\" She snapped her fingers. \"Actually, I do remember. Steve told you about Father, right?\"\n\n\"Some.\"\n\n\"Bear in mind, back then, we thought Father was just a regular guy. You'd see him outside every so often, but he never really socialized. I get it now\u2014boy, do I ever\u2014but at the time it was weird. People would invite old Mr. Black to come hang out, have a beer, but he always said the same thing: 'I'll be along once I get a good char on this pork.' Every time. The grown-ups made fun of him for it. And his house was on top of a pretty steep hill. So to Steve and me, his place was Mount Char. Back before the Library and\u2026all the other stuff. When we were just kids and\u2026you know\u2026everything was OK.\" Carolyn smiled. To Erwin she looked wistful but not especially unhappy. Then she snapped back to herself. \"Well, it made sense at the time. I wonder what made me think of that now. I haven't called it that in ages.\"\n\n\"I dunno,\" Erwin said, even though he thought he might have a guess.\n\n\"And you blew it up? Nuked it?\"\n\n\"Kinda, yeah.\" Erwin looked at her. \"You didn't notice? They was all direct hits. Twenty megatons, total. You could see the mushroom cloud two states away.\"\n\n\"Sorry, no. I must have missed it.\" She gave him an apologetic look. \"I've been really busy.\"\n\n\"'s OK.\" Erwin's brow wrinkled. \"I figured you was here to kill me. Revenge or whatever. But maybe that ain't it.\"\n\n\"Kill you? Don't be ridiculous.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"I'm here to offer you a job, Erwin.\"\n\n\"Come again?\"\n\n\"You've already been a big help. And there's plenty more to be done.\"\n\n\"Thanks, but I've kinda had my fill of shooting people.\"\n\n\"That's not what I had in mind. Well, maybe not never, but it wouldn't be the main point.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"Odds and ends. Errands. Things I'm not good at.\"\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\n\"The first thing I had in mind is that I want you to look for a dog.\"\n\n\"A dog? There's fucking dogs everywhere.\"\n\n\"No, I mean a particular dog. I really need to find him\u2014I promised\u2014but me and dogs don't get along.\"\n\n\"Oh. Which one?\"\n\n\"His name's Petey. He's a cocker spaniel.\"\n\n\"I don't know no cocker spaniels named Petey.\"\n\n\"Probably he's also dead.\"\n\nLong pause. \"Are you fucking with me?\"\n\n\"I would never, ever do that, Erwin.\"\n\nThen, from the stainless-steel toilet, a man's voice. \"Sheee would not. Carolyn like you.\"\n\n\"What the fuck?\"\n\n\"That's my brother. His name is Michael.\" Then, softly, \"His English isn't great, but he's trying. Be patient, OK?\"\n\n\"Yeah, sure,\" Erwin whispered back. Then, in a normal voice, \"Well, I'll be happy to look around the cell, but if he ain't in here I prolly won't be much help.\" He jerked a thumb at the cell door. \"That's locked, ya know.\"\n\n\"Don't be thick, Erwin. Of course I'll get you out. I'll do that even if you don't take the job\u2014I certainly owe you that much. But there are other benefits as well. I could teach you things.\"\n\n\"Things?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Interesting things. Lots of them, actually. I have a library now.\"\n\nHe chewed this over for a second. \"Maybe you'd start by telling me what the fuck you did at that bank? How you made them tellers be so helpful?\"\n\n\"Sure, if you\u2014\"\n\nThe man's voice again, rapid-fire blabber in some language Erwin didn't recognize.\n\n\"Cha guay,\" Carolyn said.\n\n\"Aru penh ta\u2014\"\n\n\"Cha guay,\" Carolyn said, more firmly this time. The toilet fell silent.\n\n\"What was that all about?\"\n\n\"He says they're coming.\"\n\nErwin heard a rumbling out in the hall, a huge noise, like the sound the World Trade Center towers made when they collapsed. Then, screams. Through the window slit, he saw a cloud of gray dust rolling down the hall.\n\nCarolyn grimaced. \"Decide now, Erwin. I'll do whatever you like, but I really do need to go. Are you coming?\"\n\nErwin thought about it for about half a second. \"Fuck yeah. Sign me up.\"\n\n\"Do you need to bring anything?\"\n\n\"Nope. Well\"\u2014he grabbed the Evanovich\u2014\"just this.\"\n\nCarolyn smiled. \"You're going to fit right in. Here, take my hand.\"\n\nErwin did. Out in the hall he heard a groan of wrenching steel. \"So\u2026you said 'they're coming.' Who's 'they'?\"\n\n\"I'm not completely sure yet. My Father had enemies. Some of them are my enemies too, now. They've begun to move against me.\"\n\n\"Dangerous folks? Dangerous like you, I mean?\"\n\n\"Some of them, yeah.\"\n\n\"Hmmm.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" Carolyn said. \"I have a plan.\""
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "title": "The Invisible Library",
        "author": "Genevieve Cogman",
        "genres": [
            "mystery",
            "steampunk"
        ],
        "tags": [
            "The Invisible Library"
        ],
        "chapters": [
            {
                "title": "Chapter 1",
                "text": "Irene passed the mop across the stone floor in smooth, careful strokes, idly admiring the gleam of wet flagstones in the lantern-light. Her back was complaining, but that was only normal after an evening's work cleaning. The cleaning was certainly necessary. The pupils at Prince Mordred's Private Academy for Boys managed to get just as much mud and muck on the floor as any other teenagers would. Clean indoor studies in the dark arts, military history, and alchemy didn't preclude messy outdoor classes in strategic combat, duelling, open-field assassination, and rugby.\n\nThe clock in the study struck the quarter hour. That gave her forty-five minutes before the midnight orisons and chants. She knew from months of experience\u2014and, to be honest, her own memories of boarding-school\u2014that the boys wouldn't be getting up a moment earlier than necessary. This meant most would be dragging themselves out of bed at eleven forty-five before heading to the chapel with hastily thrown-on clothes and barely brushed hair. So that gave her thirty minutes before any of them started moving.\n\nThirty minutes to steal a book and to escape.\n\nShe propped the mop in her bucket, straightened, and took a moment to rub her knuckles into the small of her back. Sometimes undercover work as a Librarian involved posing as a rich socialite, and the Librarian in question got to stay at expensive hotels and country houses. All while wearing appropriately high fashion and dining off haute cuisine, probably on gold-edged plates. At other times, it involved spending months building an identity as a hardworking menial, sleeping in attics, wearing a plain grey woollen dress, and eating the same food as the boys. She could only hope that her next assignment wouldn't involve endless porridge for breakfast.\n\nTwo doors down along the corridor was Irene's destination: the House Trophy Room. It was full of silver cups, all engraved with variations on Turquine House, as well as trophy pieces of art and presentation manuscripts.\n\nOne of those manuscripts was her goal.\n\nIrene had been sent by the Library to this alternate world to obtain Midnight Requiems, the famous necromancer Balan Pestifer's first published book. It was by all accounts a fascinating, deeply informative, and highly unread piece of writing. She'd spent a month looking for a copy of it, as the Library didn't actually require an original version of the text, just an accurate one. Unfortunately, not only had she been unable to track down a copy, but her enquiries had caught the interest of other people (necromancers, bibliophiles, and ghouls). She'd had to burn that cover identity and go on the run before they caught up with her.\n\nIt had been pure chance (or, as she liked to think of it, finely honed instinct) that had prompted her to notice a casual reference in some correspondence to \"Sire Pestifer's fond memories of his old school\" and, more, \"his donations to the school.\" Now, at the time that Pestifer had written this early piece, he'd still been young and unrecognized. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that in his desperation for attention, or simply out of the urge to brag, he'd donated a copy of his writings to the school. (And she'd exhausted all her other leads. It was worth a try.)\n\nIrene had taken a few weeks to establish a new identity as a young woman in her mid-twenties with a poor but honest background, suitable for skivvying, then found herself a job as a cleaning maid. The main school library hadn't held any copies of Midnight Requiems, and in desperation she'd resorted to checking the necromancer's original boarding-house. Beyond all expectation, she'd been lucky.\n\nShe abandoned her cleaning equipment and opened the window at the end of the hall. The leaded glass swung easily under her hand: she'd taken care to oil it earlier. A cool breeze drifted in, with a hint of oncoming rain. Hopefully this bit of misdirection wouldn't be necessary, but one of the Library's mottos was borrowed directly from the great military thinker Clausewitz: no strategy ever survived contact with the enemy. Or, in the vernacular, Things Will Go Wrong. Be Prepared.\n\nShe quickly trotted back down the corridor to the trophy room and pushed the door open. The light from the corridor gleamed on the silver cups and glass display cabinets. Without bothering to kindle the room's central lantern, she crossed to the second cupboard on the right. She could still smell the polish she'd used on the wood two days before. Opening its door, she withdrew the pile of books stacked at the back and pulled out a battered volume in dark purple leather.\n\n(When Pestifer sent the book to the school, had he fretted and paced the floor, hoping to get some sort of acknowledgement back from the teachers, praising his research, wishing him future success? Had they sent him a bare form letter to say that they'd received it and then dropped his work into a pile of other self-published vanity books sent by ex-pupils and forgotten all about it?)\n\nFortunately it was a fairly small volume. She tucked it into a hidden pocket, returned the other books to cover her tracks, and then hesitated.\n\nThis was, after all, a school that taught magic. And as a Librarian she had one big advantage that nobody else had\u2014not necromancers, Fae, dragons, ordinary humans, or anyone. It was called the Language. Only Librarians could read it. Only Librarians could use it. It could affect certain aspects of reality. It was extremely useful, even if the vocabulary needed constant revision. Unfortunately, it didn't work on pure magic. If the masters at the school had set some sort of alarm spell to prevent anyone from stealing the cups, and if that worked on anything that was taken out of the room, then she might be in for a nasty surprise. And it would be hideously embarrassing to be hunted down by a mob of teenagers.\n\nIrene mentally shook herself. She'd planned for this. There was no point in delaying any longer, and standing around reconsidering possibilities would only result in her running short on time.\n\nShe stepped across the threshold.\n\nSudden raucous noise broke the silence. The stone arch above the doorway rippled, lips forming from the stone to howl, \"Thief! Thief!\"\n\nIrene didn't bother pausing to curse fate. There would be people here within seconds. With a loud scream, she threw herself down on top of her mop and bucket, deliberately sprawling in the inevitable puddle of dirty water. She also managed to crack her shin on the side of the bucket, which brought genuine tears to her eyes.\n\nA couple of senior boys got there first, scurrying round the corner in nightshirts and slippers. Far too awake to have only just risen from sleep, they'd probably been busy with some illicit hobby or other.\n\n\"Where's the thief?\" the dark-haired one shouted.\n\n\"There she is!\" the blond one declared, pointing a finger at Irene.\n\n\"Don't be stupid\u2014that's one of the servants,\" the dark-haired one said, which demonstrated the advantage of stealing books while dressed as a servant. \"You! Wench! Where's the thief?\"\n\nIrene pointed a shaking hand in the direction of the open window. It chose that moment to swing conveniently in the rising wind. \"He\u2014he knocked me down\u2014\"\n\n\"What's this?\" One of the masters had arrived on the scene. Fully dressed and trailing a drift of tobacco smoke, he cleared a path through the gathering mob of junior boys with a few snaps of his fingers. \"Has one of you boys set off the alarm?\"\n\n\"No, sir!\" the blond senior said quickly. \"We just got here as he was escaping. He went out through the window! Can we pursue him?\"\n\nThe master's gaze shifted to Irene. \"You, woman!\"\n\nIrene hastily dragged herself to her feet, leaning artistically on the mop, and pushed back a straggle of loose hair. (She was looking forward to being out of this place so she could have hot showers and put her hair up in a proper bun.) \"Yes, sir?\" she snivelled. The book in her skirt-pocket pressed against her leg.\n\n\"What did you see?\" he demanded.\n\n\"Oh, sir,\" Irene began, letting her lower lip quiver suitably, \"I was just mopping the corridor, and when I came to the door of the trophy room here\"\u2014she pointed it out needlessly\u2014\"there was a light inside. So I thought that one of the young gentlemen might be studying... and I knocked on the door to ask if I might come in to clean the floor. But nobody answered, sir. So I began to open the door, and then all of a sudden someone pushes it open from inside, and it knocks me down as he runs out of the room.\"\n\nThe audience of boys, ranging from eleven to seventeen years old, hung on her every word. A couple of juniors set their chins pugnaciously, clearly imagining that they themselves would have been ready for such an event. They would undoubtedly have knocked the intruder unconscious then and there.\n\n\"He was a very tall man,\" Irene said helpfully. \"And he was all dressed in black, but something was muffled round his face so that I couldn't see it properly. And he had something under one arm, all wrapped in canvas. And then the alarm went off and I screamed for help, but he went running down the corridor and escaped through the window.\" She pointed at the clearly open window, an obvious\u2014perhaps too obvious?\u2014escape route for any hypothetical thief. \"And then these young gentlemen came along, just after he'd escaped.\" She nodded to the first two arrivals, who looked smug.\n\nThe master nodded. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. \"Morton! Palmwaite! Take charge of the House and have everyone get back to preparing for chapel. Salter, Bryce, come and inventory the room with me. We must establish what was taken.\"\n\nThere were muffled noises of protest from the milling crowd of boys, who clearly wanted to leap out the window and pursue the thief\u2014or, possibly, go down to the ground floor and then pursue the thief without leaping out of a second-floor window. But nobody actually tried that.\n\nIrene cursed inwardly. A large-scale pursuit of a non-existent intruder would have confused matters nicely.\n\n\"You,\" the master said, turning to Irene. \"Go downstairs to the kitchen and have some tea, woman. It must have been an unpleasant experience for you.\" Was that a flash of genuine concern in his eyes? Or was it something more suspicious? She'd done her best to leave a false trail, but the fact remained that she was the only person in the vicinity, and something had just been stolen. Most of the masters round here ignored the servants, but this one might be the unfortunate exception to the rule. \"Hold yourself ready in case we need to question you further.\"\n\n\"Of course, sir,\" Irene said, bobbing a little curtsey. She picked up the mop and bucket and pushed through the crowd of boys, heading for the stairs, taking care not to walk suspiciously fast.\n\nShe'd need two minutes to get to the kitchen to dump the mop and bucket. Another minute to get out of the House. Five more minutes\u2014three minutes at a run\u2014to get to the school library. She would be cutting it fine.\n\nThe kitchen was already bustling when she got there, with the house maids preparing kettles of post-chapel porridge. The housekeeper, butler, and cook were playing cards, and no one had bothered to investigate the alarms from upstairs.\n\n\"Something the matter, Meredith?\" the housekeeper enquired as Irene entered.\n\n\"Just the young gentlemen being their usual selves, ma'am,\" Irene answered. \"I think it's one of the other Houses playing some sort of prank on them. With your permission, may I step out to the washroom to get myself cleaned up?\" She indicated the dirty wash-water stains on her grey uniform dress and her apron.\n\n\"Be sure not to take too long,\" the housekeeper said. \"You'll be sweeping out the dormitories while the young gentlemen are in chapel.\"\n\nIrene nodded humbly and left the kitchen. Still no outcry from upstairs. Good. She quietly opened the boarding-house door, stepping outside.\n\nThe boarding-houses were in a row along the main avenue, with a central quadrangle holding the chapel, the assembly hall, and\u2014most important to her purposes\u2014the school library. Turquine House was the second along, which meant there was just one house to pass, preferably without drawing attention. Not run. She mustn't run yet. If anyone saw her running, it would only attract suspicion. Just walk, nice and calmly, as if she were simply running an errand.\n\nShe managed a whole ten yards.\n\nA window flew up behind her in Turquine House, and the master who'd spoken to her earlier leaned out. He pointed at her. \"Thief! Thief!\"\n\nIrene picked up her skirts and ran. Gravel crunched under her feet, and the first drops of rain slapped against her face. She came level with the next boarding-house, Bruce House, and for a moment she considered abandoning her arranged escape plan and simply ducking into there in order to break her trail and slow down pursuit. But common sense pointed out that it wouldn't work for more than a few minutes\u2014\n\nThe whistling screech from behind warned her just in time. She dived to the ground, throwing herself into a roll as the gargoyle came screaming down, its stone claws extended and clutching for her. It missed and struggled to pull out of its dive, its heavy wings sawing at the air as it laboured to gain height. Another one had swooped from the roof of Turquine's and was circling to reach a suitable angle of attack.\n\nThis was one of those moments, Irene reflected bitterly, when it would be wonderful to be a necromancer, or a wizard, or someone who could manipulate the magical forces of the world and blast annoying gargoyles out of the sky. She'd done her best to avoid attention, keep her cover, and not endanger bratty little boys who left mud all over the floor and didn't bother to hang up their cloaks. What had it got her? A swarm of attacking gargoyles\u2014well, only two gargoyles so far, but still, and probably a mass assault by pupils and masters within a few minutes. So much for the rewards of virtue.\n\nShe quickly reviewed what she knew about the gargoyles. There was one on the roof of each boarding-house. They were even listed in the boarding-school prospectus as a guarantee of student safety\u2014ANY KIDNAPPERS WILL BE TORN TO BLOODY RAGS BY OUR PROFESSIONALLY MAINTAINED HISTORICAL ARTEFACTS! Though after working here for several months, she thought the pupils themselves were much more lethal to possible kidnappers.\n\nOn the positive side (one must always look for the positive side), the gargoyles were extremely showy but not actually that effective over a short space of ground. On the negative side, running in a straight line to escape would make her a beautiful moving target. But getting back to the positives, the gargoyles were made of granite, as lovingly described in the prospectus, unlike anything else within earshot.\n\nThis would need careful timing. Luckily the gargoyles weren't particularly intelligent, so they would be focused on capturing her, not on wondering why she was standing conveniently still.\n\nShe took a deep breath.\n\nThe first gargoyle reached suitable swooping altitude. It called to the other gargoyle in a carrying screech, and then the two of them dropped towards her together, their wings spread in wide, dark traceries against the sky.\n\nIrene screamed, at the top of her voice, \"Granite, be stone and lie still!\"\n\nThe Language always worked well when it was instructing things to be what they naturally were or to do what they naturally wanted to do. Stone wanted to be inert and solid. Her command only reinforced the natural order of things. It was therefore the perfect antidote to the unnatural magic keeping stone gargoyles in flight.\n\nThe gargoyles stiffened mid-stoop, their wings freezing in place, and overshot her easily. One thumped squarely into the ground, pounding out a crater for itself, while the other came in at more of an angle. It ploughed a wide groove along the nicely smoothed gravel path before colliding with one of the stately lime trees bordering the avenue. Leaves rained down on it.\n\nThere was no time for her to pause and feel smug, so she ran.\n\nThen the howling started. It was either hellhounds or teenagers, and she suspected the former. They'd been in the prospectus too. The prospectus had been very helpful about the school's security precautions. If she ever had to come back here again, perhaps she could sell her services as a security consultant. Under a pseudonym, of course.\n\nA sudden burst of red light sent her shadow leaping down the avenue ahead of her and proved the hellhound theory. Right. She'd planned for hellhounds. She could plan for organized magic, even if she couldn't perform it. She just had to stay calm and cool and collected and get to the fire hydrant ahead before they caught up with her.\n\nAmong its modern conveniences, the school included running water and precautions against fire. Which meant fire hydrants spaced along the main avenue. The one that lay between her and the school library was twenty yards away.\n\nTen yards. She could hear pounding paws behind her, throwing up gravel in a rattle of ferocious speed. She didn't look.\n\nFive yards. Something panted just behind her.\n\nShe threw herself at the hydrant, an unimpressive black stub of metal barely two feet high. But as she did, a heavy scorching weight collided with her back, slamming her to the ground and pinning her there. She wrenched her head round enough to see the huge doglike creature crouching on top of her. It wasn't quite burning her, not yet, but its body was as hot as a banked stove. And she knew, if it wanted to, it could get much, much hotter. Its eyes were vicious coals in its flaming head, and when it opened its mouth, baring ragged teeth, a line of searing drool dripped across the back of her neck. Go on, try it, it seemed to be saying. Just try something. Give me an excuse.\n\n\"Hydrant, burst!\" Irene screamed.\n\nThe hellhound opened its jaws wider in lazy warning. The hydrant exploded at approximately knee level.\n\nFragments of twisted iron went spraying out in all directions with the first intense burst of water. Irene was torn between thinking Thank goodness I'm on the ground and That's what comes of sloppy vocabulary and word choice. A bit of metal sheared through the air a few inches above her nose and slapped into the hellhound almost casually, sending it cartwheeling backwards with a howl of pain.\n\nIt took Irene a moment to pull her wits together and scramble to her feet. The water should slow the hellhounds and douse their fires for a while, but she didn't have any other backup plans. And she still had to get to the school library. Her dress wet and her shoes soaked through, she broke into a stagger, then into a run.\n\nThe library doors were made of heavy studded wood, and when she yanked them open, warm lantern-light spilled out over her. Making you a target for anyone looking in your direction, her sense of self-preservation pointed out. She stumbled into the vestibule and swung the heavy door closed, but there was only one large lock on the door, and no key. Then again, she didn't need one.\n\nShe leaned over and murmured in the Language, \"Lock on the library door, lock yourself shut.\"\n\nThe sound of tumblers moving into the locked position was very satisfying. Especially when the next noise, a couple of seconds later, was the heavy thud of hellhound hitting the door on the other side.\n\n\"What's going on there?\" an annoyed voice called from deeper inside the library.\n\nIrene had scouted out the place earlier, with a duster and wax polish as an alibi. Directly ahead were the non-fiction stacks, shelves full of books on everything from astrology to Zoroastrianism. And to the right, there was a small office where books were stored for mending. More important, the office had a door she could use to get out of here, and that was what she needed.\n\nThere was another thump from behind her. The main door shivered slightly under the attack but stood firm.\n\nShe didn't bother replying to the voice she'd heard.\n\nInstead she brushed the gravel from her clothing, forcing herself to calmness. The atmosphere of the place soothed her automatically; the rich lantern-lights, the sheer scent of paper and leather, and the fact that everywhere she looked, there were books, books, beautiful books.\n\nAnother thump from the outer door, and the sound of raised angry voices. All right, perhaps she shouldn't relax too much.\n\nShe stood in front of the closed office door, taking a deep breath.\n\n\"Open to the Library,\" she said, giving the word Library its full value in the Language, and felt the tattoo scrawled across her back shift and writhe as the link was established. There was the usual flurrying moment of awareness and pressure, as though something huge and unimaginable was riffling through the pages of her mind. It always lasted just that little bit too long to bear, and then the door shuddered under her hand and opened.\n\nA sudden burst of noise indicated that her pursuers had managed to enter. She spared a moment to regret that she hadn't had time to grab any other books, and quickly stepped through. As the latch clicked shut behind her, it re-established itself as part of the world she'd left behind. However many times they might open it now, it would only ever reveal the office to which it originally belonged. They would never be able to follow her here.\n\nShe was in the Library. Not just any library, but the Library.\n\nHigh shelves rose on either side, too high and full of books for her to see what lay beyond. The narrow gap in front of her was barely wide enough to squeeze through. Her shoes left wet prints in the dust behind her, and she stepped over three sets of abandoned notes as she edged towards the lit area in the distance. The only sounds were a vague, half-audible creaking somewhere to her left, as irregular and uncertain as the slow oscillations of a child's swing.\n\nThe cramped space abruptly opened out into a wider wood-panelled room with a wooden floor. She glanced around but couldn't identify it offhand. The books on the shelves were printed, and some of them looked more modern than any from the alternate she had just left, but that in itself proved nothing. The large centre table and chairs were covered with dust, just like the floor, and the computer sitting on the table was silent. A single lantern hung from the ceiling, with a white crystal burning brilliantly in the centre. In the far wall, a bow window looked out over a night-time street lit by gas lamps, and a wind tugged at the tree branches, making them silently bend and sway.\n\nWith a sigh of relief, Irene sat down in one of the chairs, brushed loose gravel out of her hair, and drew the stolen book out of her hidden pocket. It was safe and dry. Another job done, even if she had been forced to abandon her cover identity. And she'd even given the school a legend. The thought made her smile. She could imagine new boys being told the story of \"The Night Turquine House Got Burgled.\" The details would expand over time. She'd eventually become a world-famous master thief who had infiltrated the place in disguise, seduced half the teachers, and summoned demons to aid her escape.\n\nThoughtfully she looked down at the book in her hands. After all this trouble to get hold of it, she was just a little curious about what great secrets of necromancy might be revealed within. Raising armies of the dead? Invoking ghosts? How to unnaturally extend your life for thousands of years?\n\nShe opened it at the beginning. The page read:\n\nIt is my theory that the greater truths underlying life and death can best be understood as a parable\u2014that is, as a fiction. There is no way that the human mind can understand, let alone accept, any of the fundamental principles that govern the transmission and return of souls, or the flux of energies which can bind a body on the line between life and death, in practical terms: the laws which other people have discussed, proposed, or even affirmed, in higher texts on the subject, slip past the boundaries of that level of understanding which would allow true inherent cognisance and manipulation of those necessities.\n\nToo many commas and overly long phrases, she decided.\n\nI have therefore decided to describe my work and my experiments, and the understanding which I have derived from it, in the form of a story. Those who wish to do so may take what they can from it. My sole desire is to explain and to enlighten.\n\nAnd, Irene hoped, to entertain. She turned the page.\n\nIt was on the morning of Peredur's birthday that the ravens came to him one last time. He had been three weeks at the house of the witches, and they had taught him much, but he had long been absent from the court of Arthur. The first raven stooped down and took on the form of a woman. When the morning light struck her, she showed the form he knew: a withered old hag, scarcely able to bear the helm and armour she wore. But when she stood in shadow, then she was young and comely: never had hair been so black or skin so pale, or eyes so piercing sweet.\n\n\"Peredur,\" she said, \"in the name of the Ladies of Orkney, I ask that you remain here one day longer: for my sisters and I have searched the stars, and I tell you that if you leave us now, then you will perish before your time, and that in a fool's quest: but if you stay one day more with us, then your path will be steady and your sister will meet you before all is done.\"\n\n\"I have no sister,\" said Peredur.\n\n\"Aye,\" the raven witch said. \"None that you have met...\"\n\nIrene shut the book reluctantly. Of course she had to send it to Coppelia first, for inspection and evaluation, but perhaps after that she could get her hands on it again.\n\nThere was nothing wrong with being curious about how a story turned out, after all. She was a Librarian. It went with the job. And she didn't want great secrets of necromancy, or any other sort of magic. She just wanted\u2014had always wanted\u2014a good book to read. Being chased by hellhounds and blowing things up were comparatively unimportant parts of the job. Getting the books\u2014now, that was what really mattered to her.\n\nThat was the whole point of the Library\u2014as far as she'd been taught, anyway. It wasn't about a higher mission to save worlds. It was about finding unique works of fiction and saving them in a place out of time and space. Perhaps some people might think that was a petty way to spend eternity, but Irene was happy with her choice. Anyone who really loved a good story would understand.\n\nAnd if there were rumours that the Library did have a deeper purpose\u2014well, there were always so many rumours, and she had missions to complete. She could wait for more answers. She had time."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 2",
                "text": "Irene focused on the next steps. The sooner she handed in this book and filed a report, the sooner she could get herself clean and dry and sit down with a good book of her own. And she should be able to expect a few weeks off for her own projects, which quite frankly she lusted after at the moment.\n\nThe computer in front of her hummed to life as she flicked the on switch. She wiped the screen with her sleeve and blew dust off the keyboard. It was a pity that nobody could control the re-entry point of forced passages back to the Library from alternate worlds. All you knew was that you'd end up in the Library\u2014although there were horror stories about people who'd spent years finding their way back up from some of the catacombs where the really old data was stored.\n\nThe screen flared with the Library logo, a closed book, with log-in and password windows. She typed quickly and hit return, and the book slowly opened, pages riffling to show her in-box.\n\nAt least nobody had figured out how to spam the Library computer system yet.\n\nShe called up a local map. It blurred into existence on the screen in a three-dimensional diagram, and an arrow in red pointed out her current room. She wasn't too far out, only a couple of hours' walk from Central. Reassured, she sent a quick email to Coppelia, her direct supervisor and mentor.\n\nIrene here. Have secured the required material. Request appointment to deliver. Currently in A-254 Latin American Literature 20th Century, about two and a half hours from your office.\n\nThe beep as she sent the email broke the room's silence.\n\nIt was a pity that mobile phones, or Wi-Fi, or any similar technologies all failed in the Library. Any sort of transmission not based on strictly physical links failed, or malfunctioned, or spouted static in bright warbling tones. Research had been done, research was being done, and, Irene suspected, research would still be being done in a hundred years. Technology wasn't the only failure, either. Magical forms of communication were useless too, and the sideeffects tended to be even more painful. Or so she'd heard. She hadn't tried. She liked her brains inside her skull where they belonged.\n\nWhile she was waiting for an answer, she caught up on her email. The usual stuff: mass-mailed requests for books on particular topics of research, comparisons of Victorian pornography across alternative Victorian worlds, someone touting their new thesis on stimulant abuse and associative poetry. She deleted a plaintive begging letter looking for suggestions on how to improve penicillin usage in Dark Age\u2013era alternates. But she highlighted a dozen Language updates, which she put aside to check later.\n\nThe only personal email in the whole batch was from her mother. A quick note, as quick and brief as Irene's own email to her supervisor, to let Irene know that she and her father would be in Alternate G-337 for the next few months. They were in Russia, looking for icons and psalm settings. The note expressed hopes that Irene was well and enjoying herself and asked vaguely what she might like for her birthday.\n\nAs usual, the note was unsigned. Irene was expected to read the name on the email address and not ask for more.\n\nShe rested her chin on her hands and stared at the screen. She hadn't actually seen her parents for a couple of years now. The Library kept them all busy, and to be honest she never knew what to say to them these days. One could always discuss work, but beyond that was a whole minefield of social interaction. Her parents would probably be retiring to the Library in a few decades, and hopefully by then she'd have worked out how to make polite conversation with them. It had been so much easier when she was younger.\n\nI'd love some amber, she replied to the email. That should be safe enough.\n\nThe Language updates were what she might have expected, given months of absence. No new grammar, but some new vocabulary, most of it world specific and dealing with concepts or items that hadn't come to the Library before. A few adjectival redefinitions. A collected set of adverbs on the action of sleeping.\n\nIrene scanned through them as quickly as she could. The problem with an evolving language that could be used to express things precisely was that, well, it evolved. The more contributory material agents like Irene brought into the Library, the more the Language changed. She wondered morosely if her recent prize would inspire a new word or two or just change an old one. Perhaps it would help define a particular shade of black.\n\nStill. There were compensations. Like being able to give orders to the world around you. But when she'd signed up for eternity, she hadn't quite expected to spend most of it revising vocabulary lists.\n\nThe computer beeped again. It was a reply from Coppelia, and it had arrived surprisingly fast. Irene opened it and blinked at the size of the response.\n\n\u2002My dear Irene,\n\n\u2002What a pleasure to see you back here again! Though of course, when I say see, I mean to be aware of your presence in the Library. It's been several weeks now, and you wouldn't believe how glad I am to have you back...\n\nIrene frowned. This looked like something that had been prepared ahead of time. She had a bad feeling about it.\n\n\u2002...and I have a little job for you to do.\n\nRight.\n\n\u2002Your frequent work out there in the alternates has left you behind on the required curriculum of mentoring new students, but fortunately I have been able to find a way round that.\n\nIrene snorted. Coppelia had certainly assured her that it'd all be sorted out. But she'd given the impression of managing to sidetrack it and get round it, rather than having to make it up later via some unpleasant duty.\n\n\u2002It just so happens...\n\nShe was just so totally screwed.\n\n\u2002...that we have a new recruit on our hands who's up for his first fieldwork, and naturally I thought of you as the ideal person to mentor him! You'll be able to give him all the benefits of your experience, while at the same time getting some credits on your record for handling him.\n\nHandling him? What was he, an unexploded bomb? She'd had quite enough of pupils in the last few weeks.\n\nIt's quite a short assignment and shouldn't take you more than a few days, maybe a week. You should be operating near a fixed exit point into the nominated world, so if there are any problems or delays you can send me a report.\n\nIt sounded, Irene reflected, as if Coppelia really wanted to cover her own back on this one.\n\nMy dear Irene, I have the utmost confidence in you. I know that I can rely on you to live up to the Library's traditions and expectations, while providing a valuable example to this new recruit.\n\nIt also sounded as if Coppelia had been reading too many bad recruitment brochures and codes of practice.\n\nI've authorized Kai (that's his name) to take one of the rapid shifts to where you are, so you can expect him any moment.\n\nIrene paused to listen nervously. If that was true, then Kai had been allowed to use one of the most closely restricted methods of transport in the entire Library. This meant either that Coppelia didn't want any argument and just wanted her out of the way and on the job, or that the mission was very urgent, or that there was something about Kai so dubious that he shouldn't be seen in public. Perhaps Kai simply couldn't handle normal Library navigation, which was bad news in itself... and that was multiple clauses based on an either/or, which was bad grammar. She hated bad grammar.\n\nHe's got all the details on the mission.\n\nNow, that was really bad. That could mean that Coppelia wasn't prepared to put it in an email. Irene could smell politics, and she didn't want to get involved with that at all. She'd always thought that Coppelia was a more reasonable, research-oriented, only-Machiavellian-once-in-a-while sort of supervisor. Not the sort of supervisor who'd dump her with an unprintable mission, an inexperienced trainee, and a rapid push out through the nearest Traverse exit point.\n\nDo leave your latest input material with the nearest Desk; tag it with my name, and I'll see that it gets processed.\n\nWell, that was something, at least...\n\nFrom the corridor outside came a sudden gust of wind and a thud. It was reminiscent of a pneumatic pressure tube delivering papers.\n\nA pause. A knock on a nearby door.\n\n\"Come in,\" Irene called, turning her chair to face it. The door swung open to reveal a young man.\n\n\"You must be Kai,\" Irene said, rising to her feet. \"Do come in.\"\n\nHe had the sort of beauty that instantly shifted him from a possible romance object to an absolute impossibility. Nobody got to spend time with people who looked like that outside the front pages of newspapers and glossy magazines. His skin was so pale that she could see blue veins at his wrists and throat. And his hair was a shade of black that looked almost steely blue in the dim lights, braided down the back of his neck. His eyebrows were the same shade, like lines of ink on his face, and his cheek-bones could have been used to cut diamonds, let alone cheese. He was wearing a battered black leather jacket and jeans that quite failed to play down his startling good looks, and his white T-shirt was not only spotlessly laundered; it was ironed and starched.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said. \"I am. You're Irene, right?\"\n\nEven his voice deserved admirers: low, precise, husky. His casual choice of words seemed more like affectation than actual carelessness. \"I am,\" Irene acknowledged. \"And you're my new trainee.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\" He strode into the room, letting the door close behind him. \"And I'm finally getting out of this place.\"\n\n\"I see. Please sit down. I haven't finished reading Coppelia's email yet.\"\n\nHe blinked at her, then strode across to the nearest chair and flung himself into it, triggering a choking cloud of dust.\n\n\u2002Handle matters smoothly and efficiently, and you may expect some spare time for private research when this is over. I regret having to send you out again this fast, but needs must, my dear Irene, and we must all make do with the resources available to us.\n\n\u2002Yours affectionately,\n\n\u2002Coppelia\n\nIrene sat back and frowned at the screen. She was no conspiracy theorist, but if she had been, she could have constructed whole volumes based on that paragraph.\n\n\"Coppelia says that you've got all the details on the mission,\" she said over her shoulder.\n\n\"Yeah. Madame Coppelia\"\u2014he stressed the honorific slightly\u2014\"gave me the stuff. Didn't look like much.\"\n\nIrene turned to face him. \"If you wouldn't mind?\" she said, extending her hand.\n\nKai reached inside his jacket and pulled out a thin blue envelope. He handed it to her carefully, making the gesture courteous rather than a simple transfer. \"There you go. Boss? Madam? Sir?\"\n\n\"Irene will do,\" she said. She hesitated for a moment, wishing she had a paper knife, but there wasn't one to hand and she didn't feel like showing Kai where she kept her hidden blade. With a slight wince at the inelegance, she ripped the envelope open and slid out a single piece of paper.\n\nKai didn't actually lean forward to peer at the letter, but he did tilt his head curiously.\n\n\"Objective,\" Irene read out obligingly. \"Original Grimm manuscript, volume one, 1812, currently in London, parallel B-395: closest Traverse exit within the British Library, located inside British Museum, further details available from on-site Librarian-in-Residence.\"\n\n\"Grimm?\"\n\n\"Fairy tales, I imagine.\" Irene tapped a finger against the edge of the paper. \"Not one of my areas. I'm not sure why I've\u2014why we've been assigned it. Unless it's something you've experience in?\"\n\nKai shook his head. \"I'm not well up on the European stuff. Don't even know which alternate that is. Do you think it's something that's unique to that world?\"\n\nThat was a reasonable question. There were three basic reasons why Librarians were sent out to alternates to find specific books: because the book was important to a senior Librarian, because the book would have an effect on the Language, or because the book was specific and unique to that alternate world. In this last case, the Library's ownership of it would reinforce the Library's links to the world from which the book originated. (Irene wasn't sure into which of the three categories her latest acquisition fell, though she suspected a case of \"effect on the Language.\" She should probably try to find out at some point.)\n\nIf this Grimm manuscript was the sort of book that occurred in multiple different alternate worlds, then it wouldn't have warranted a specific mission from Coppelia. By the time senior Librarians had become senior Librarians, they weren't interested in anything less than rarities. An ordinary book existing in multiple worlds would simply have shown up in someone's regular shopping list, probably along with the complete works of Nick Carter, the complete cases of Judge Dee, and the complete biographies, true and false, of Prester John. The question of why some books were unique and occurred only in specific worlds was one of the great imponderables, and hopefully Irene would actually get an answer to it some day. When she was a senior Librarian herself, perhaps. Decades in the future. Maybe even centuries.\n\nIn any case, there was no point standing around guessing. Irene tried to phrase her answer to make it seem sensible rather than simply shutting Kai down in the first ten minutes of their acquaintance.\n\n\"Probably best to find out from the on-site Librarian, when we reach the alternate destination. If Coppelia hasn't told you, and hasn't told me...\"\n\nKai shrugged. \"As long as it gets me out of here, I'm not going to complain.\"\n\n\"How long have you been here?\" Irene asked curiously.\n\n\"Five years.\" His tone was smoothed to careful politeness, like sea-worn stones. \"I know it's the policy to keep new people here till they've studied the basics and they're sure we're not going to do a runner, but it's been five sodding years.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Irene said flatly as she tapped in a quick response to Coppelia's email.\n\n\"Sorry?\"\n\n\"Yes. I was born into the job. My parents are both Librarians. It probably made things easier. I always knew what was expected of me.\" It was quite true; it had made things easier. She'd always known what she was being brought up to do. The years in the Library were rotated with years in alternates, and they'd gone by one after another, with study, practice, and effort and long, silent aisles of books.\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"I don't expect that waiting has been... fun.\"\n\n\"Fun.\" He snorted. \"No. Not fun. It was kinda interesting, but it wasn't fun.\"\n\n\"Did you like Coppelia?\" She dispatched the email, then logged out neatly.\n\n\"I've only been studying under her for the last few months.\"\n\n\"She's one of the more...\" Irene paused, considering what words she could use that wouldn't get her into trouble later if repeated elsewhere. She personally liked Coppelia, but words such as Machiavellian, efficiently unprincipled, and ice-hearted didn't always go down well in conversations.\n\n\"Oh, I liked her,\" Kai said hastily, and Irene turned to look at him, surprised at the warmth in his voice. \"She's a strong woman. Very organized. Commanding personality. My mother would have liked her. If. You know. They never take people to work here with close living relatives, right?\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene agreed. \"It's in the rules. It'd be unfair to them.\"\n\n\"And, um...\" He looked at her from under his long eyelashes. \"About those rumours that sometimes they make sure that there aren't any close living relatives? Or any living relatives at all?\"\n\nIrene swallowed. She leaned across to turn off the computer, hoping that it'd hide the nervous gesture. \"There are always rumours.\"\n\n\"Are they true?\"\n\nSometimes I think they are. She wasn't naive. She knew that the Library didn't always stick to its own rules. \"It wouldn't help either of us for me to tell you they were,\" she said flatly.\n\n\"Oh.\" He leaned back in his chair again.\n\n\"You've been here five years. What do you expect me to say?\"\n\n\"I was kinda expecting you to give me the official line.\" He was looking at her with more interest now. His eyes glittered in the dim light. \"Didn't expect you to hint it might be true.\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" she said quickly. She slid the paper back into the envelope and slipped it into the pocket of her dress. \"Here's my first suggestion to you as your new mentor, Kai. The Library runs on conspiracy theory. Admit nothing, deny everything, then find out what's going on and publish a paper on the subject. It's not as if they can stop you doing that.\"\n\nHe tilted his head. \"Oh, they could always get rid of the paper.\"\n\n\"Get rid of the paper?\" She laughed. \"Kai, this is the Library. We never get rid of anything here. Ever.\"\n\nHe shrugged, clearly giving up on the enquiry. \"Okay. If you don't want to be serious about it, I won't push it. Shall we get going?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" Irene said, rising to her feet. \"Please follow me. We can talk on the way.\"\n\nIt was half an hour before he began speaking again, apart from casual grunts of acknowledgement or disagreement. She was leading the way down a spiral staircase of dark oak and black iron; it was too narrow for the two of them to walk side by side, and he was a few paces behind her. Narrow slit windows in the thick walls looked out over a sea of roofs. The occasional television aerial stood out among classic brickwork edifices and faux-oriental domes. Finally Kai said, \"Can I ask some questions?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" She reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped aside so he could catch up. The wide corridor ahead was crammed with doors on either side, some better polished and dusted than others. The lantern-light glinted on their brass plates.\n\n\"Ah, if we're going by foot to the exit point, isn't this going to take a while?\"\n\n\"Fair point,\" Irene said. \"It's in B-395, you remember?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" he said, and looked down his nose at her. He was several inches taller than her, so that allowed for a fair amount of condescension.\n\n\"Right.\" She started off down the corridor. \"Now, I had a look at the map before you came in, and the closest access to B Wing is down this way and then up two floors. We can check a terminal when we get there and find the fastest way from there to 395. Hopefully it won't be more than a day or so from where we are.\"\n\n\"A day or so... Can't we just take a rapid shift to get there?\"\n\n\"No, afraid not. I don't have the authority to requisition one.\" She couldn't help thinking how much easier it would have made things. \"You need to be at Coppelia's level to order one of those.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He walked in silence for a few steps. \"Okay. So what do you know about B-395?\"\n\n\"Well, obviously it's a magic-dominant alternate.\"\n\n\"Because it's a B, or beta-type world, right?\"\n\n\"Yes. Which sort were you from, by the way?\"\n\n\"Oh, one of the gammas. So there was both tech and magic. High-tech, medium magic. They had problems getting them to work together, though\u2014anyone who was too cyborged couldn't get magic to work.\"\n\n\"Mm,\" Irene said neutrally. \"I'm assuming you don't have any machine augmentation yourself.\"\n\n\"No. Good thing too. They told me it wouldn't work here.\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" Irene said punctiliously. \"It's more that no powered device can cross into or out of the Library while still functioning. Devices would work perfectly well if you could turn them off while you were traversing and then on again once you were in here...\"\n\nKai shook his head. \"Not my gig. What's the use of it if I'd have to keep turning it on and off? I wasn't really into the magic, either. I was more heavy on real-world stuff, like physical combat, martial arts, things like that.\"\n\n\"How did you get picked up for the Library, then?\" she asked.\n\nKai shrugged. \"Well, everyone did research using online tools where I was. But from time to time I used to get jobs hunting down old books for this researcher. Some of them were, you know, not legal\u2014and real big-time not legal too... So I started looking into his background, thought I might find something interesting. And I think I sort of looked a bit too hard. Because next thing I was getting a visit from some real hardline people, and they told me I needed to come and work for them.\"\n\n\"Or?\"\n\nKai glanced at her icily. \"The 'or' would have been bad news for me.\"\n\nIrene was silent for the time it took to walk past several doors. Eventually she said, \"So here you are, then. Are you unhappy?\"\n\n\"Not so much,\" he said, surprising her. \"You play the game, you take the risks. It was a better offer than some people would have given me, right? One of the people teaching me here, Master Grimaldi, he said that if I'd had a family they'd never have made the offer. They'd just have warned me off some other way. So I can't complain about that.\"\n\n\"Then what can you complain about?\"\n\n\"Five years.\" They turned a corner. \"It's been five fricking years I've been here studying. I know about the time-continuity thing. It'll have been five years since I dropped out of my own world. All the guys I used to run with, they'll have moved on or be dead. It was that sort of place. There was this girl. She'll have moved on to someone else. There'll be new fashions. New styles. New tech and magic. Maybe some countries will have gone and blown themselves up. And I won't have been there for any of it. How can I call it my own world if I keep on missing parts of it?\"\n\n\"You can't,\" Irene answered.\n\n\"How do you cope?\"\n\nIrene gestured at the corridor. \"This is my world.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\"\n\nIrene's hand tightened on the copy of Midnight Requiems. \"Remember I told you that my parents were both Librarians? I wasn't born in the Library, but I might as well have been. They brought me in here when I was still a baby. They used to take me on jobs. Mother said I was the best prop she'd ever had.\" She smiled faintly at the memory. \"Father used to tell me a bedtime story about how they smuggled a manuscript in my nappy bag.\"\n\n\"No.\" Kai came to a stop. \"Seriously.\"\n\nIrene blinked. \"I am serious. I used to ask him to tell it every night.\"\n\n\"They took you on missions like that?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Irene could see what was bothering him now. \"Not dangerous ones, just safe ones where I was useful. They left me behind on the dangerous ones. And then later on, when I needed proper teaching and social acclimatization, they put me in a boarding-school. The only problem was that I had to be careful how much holiday time I spent in the Library or it'd have thrown me out of time sync with the world I was schooling in. They did talk about moving me between worlds to different schools so that I could have years at the Library in between, but we didn't think it would work.\" She'd been so proud to have had them talk it over with her, to have them treat her as an adult and ask her opinion.\n\n\"And you had... friends at boarding-school, right?\" Kai put the question tentatively, as though she was going to bite his head off for asking it.\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Still in contact with any of them?\"\n\n\"The time factor counts against it.\" Irene shrugged. \"With the amount of time I had to spend in dedicated study in the Library or in other worlds, it's been hard... I did stay in contact with some of them for a while. I dropped off letters whenever I could, but ultimately it didn't work. It was a school in Switzerland. A nice place. Very good on languages.\"\n\nThey turned another corner. Ahead of them, the corridor narrowed dramatically and began to slope upwards. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of the same creaking boards, worn and aged. Panel windows in the left wall looked out over an empty street lit by flaring torches, where muddy wheel-tracks marked the passage of traffic, but there was no sign of anyone there.\n\n\"Straight ahead?\" Kai asked.\n\nIrene nodded. The floor creaked under their feet as they began the climb.\n\n\"This is like a bridge,\" Kai said.\n\n\"Passageways between the Wings are always a little strange. I went through one once that you had to crawl through.\"\n\n\"How did they move books through that?\"\n\n\"They didn't, usually. They routed them round some other way. But it was useful if you were in a hurry.\"\n\nHe jerked a thumb at the window. \"Have you ever seen anyone out there?\"\n\n\"No. Nor has anyone.\" The passageway levelled out, then began to slope downwards again. \"Now, if only we could find a Traverse that accessed onto that, wouldn't it be interesting?\"\n\n\"Yeah. That was one of the big topics of conversation among the students.\" Kai sighed.\n\nIrene had been looking around, and she saw what she wanted on the left. \"Just a moment,\" she said, indicating a slot in the wall. \"Let me drop this book off for Coppelia.\"\n\nKai nodded and slouched against the wall, leaving Irene to take an envelope from the stack by the wall slot and slide her book into it. He did lean over just a little bit as she scribbled Coppelia's name on the envelope, just enough to see the title of the book, and his eyes narrowed in curiosity.\n\n\"You could always take it to her in person,\" he suggested. \"Say you wanted to make sure she got it, and ask her a bit more about the assignment while you were there.\"\n\nIrene dropped the envelope into the slot and raised an eyebrow at him. \"Yes, and I could also get myself called an ignorant buffoon who didn't know how to read orders, let alone follow them. Someone who clearly didn't deserve any sort of mission, if I was just going to come running back to her for more details when she'd given me everything I needed.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Kai sighed. \"Oh well.\"\n\n\"Did you think I hadn't heard that speech from her?\"\n\n\"I know I have. I was kind of hoping you hadn't.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Irene gave him a brief smile before starting to walk again. \"Good try, though. So, 395.\" The corridor turned and they walked into a room containing two terminals on a glossy ceramic table. One was being used by a young man, who didn't bother looking up, keeping his focus on the monitor's screen. His brown suit was scruffy and battered at the elbows and knees, and lace cuffs framed his bony wrists. It was probably appropriate for whatever alternate he'd just come from or was about to go to. And it was still better than Irene's current beat-up grey dress.\n\n\"See,\" Irene said, and took a seat at the other terminal. \"Give me a moment and I'll find the best route to get to the Traverse point for this mission.\" And pick up anything else I can about that world, she added to herself. She'd been too flustered by Kai's arrival to do the sort of research she'd normally put in on a mission. Also, even if they were briefed by the alternate's Librarian-in-Residence, it'd be useful to have some idea of where they were going.\n\nKai looked around pointedly at the lack of other chairs, then sank down to sit cross-legged with his back to the wall with an air of saintly patience.\n\nIrene quickly logged in and pulled up the map. The Traverse to B-395 was within half an hour's walk. Better than she'd hoped. No wonder Coppelia had sent Kai to her, rather than have Irene go to meet her. She reached for the usual pen and notepad and jotted down directions before looking for more information on the alternate itself.\n\nHer reaction must have shown on her face, because Kai straightened and frowned at her. \"What is it\u2014\"\n\nIrene hastily pointed at the other young man and mouthed Shhh, putting her finger to her lips in as obvious a manner as she could.\n\nKai glared at her, then relaxed again, looking away.\n\nShe scribbled down the few facts hastily, then folded the paper and logged off the computer. With a vague nod to the young man, she got to her feet and strode for the door.\n\n\"Come on, Kai,\" she said briskly.\n\nKai rose elegantly to his feet and strolled after her, his hands in his pockets.\n\nSome way down the corridor on the far side, once out of earshot, she said, \"I apologize for that.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't worry,\" Kai replied. He twitched a shoulder in casual dismissal, seemingly fascinated by the beech panelling and decorated plaster ceiling. His voice was arctic in tone. \"You're quite right; I shouldn't have made a noise and disturbed other students at work. I apologize for offending against the Library rules\u2014\"\n\n\"Look,\" Irene said before he could get any more sarcastic, \"don't get me wrong. I'm not apologizing for being rule orientated.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"No. I'm apologizing for snapping at you to shut you up, because I couldn't discuss classified information with someone else in the room.\"\n\nKai took a few more paces. \"Oh,\" he said. \"Right.\"\n\nIrene decided that was the closest to an apology she was going to get for the moment. \"Our destination is quarantined,\" she said briskly. \"It's listed as having a high chaos infestation.\" Which meant its risk factor went way beyond simply dangerous, she thought furiously. What was Coppelia thinking, sending them there? If a magically active world was quarantined, that meant it had been corrupted by chaotic forces. Its magic had tipped just too far the wrong way in the balance between order and disorder. As Kai would have been told, chaos corrupting ordered worlds was an age-old and potentially lethal hazard for Library operatives. And it went against everything that the Library represented, as an institution upholding order. A high level of chaos would mean that they could expect to meet the Fae, creatures of chaos and magic, who were able to take form and cause disorder on such a corrupted world. And that was never good news.\n\n\"And there's no balancing element that's trying to bring the world from chaos back to order?\"\n\n\"No. Either the dragons don't know about that alternate, or they're just staying well out of it.\" What she didn't say, as she was struggling to calm her own fears, was that without a balancing element, a corrupted world could tip all the way over into primal chaos. Nobody could be sure where the dividing line between chaos infestation and total absorption might lie. And she certainly didn't want to find out.\n\nKai frowned. \"I thought\u2014that is, we got told in basic orientation that the dragons always interfere if there's a high chaos level. That they could bring a world back into line. That the worse it got, the more likely they were to interfere.\"\n\n\"Well, according to the records, there's no sign of them there.\" It might be true that the dragons disliked chaos, being creatures of law and structure. Irene had received the same basic briefing as Kai. But that didn't necessarily mean they were going to interfere wherever it was found. From her own personal experience with alternate worlds, Irene had come to the conclusion that dragons preferred to choose their battles carefully. \"Perhaps the world's Librarian will know a bit more. His name's Dominic Aubrey. He's got a cover job on the British Library staff. Head of the Classical Manuscripts section.\" She tilted her head to look at Kai. \"Is something the matter?\"\n\nKai shoved his hands farther into his pockets. \"Look, I know they tell us students the worst possible scenarios in orientation so that we won't try anything stupid. And they probably make them seem even worse than they actually are, but a world with a high chaos infestation with no dragons to even start balancing it... sounds kind of risky for a first assignment for me and for...\"\n\n\"For a junior grade like me?\"\n\n\"You said it,\" Kai muttered. \"I didn't.\"\n\nIrene sighed. \"For what it's worth, I'm not happy, either.\"\n\n\"So how bad is it?\"\n\nShe considered running her hands through her hair, having a hysterical fit, and sitting down and not doing anything for the next few hours while she tried to figure out a way to avoid the job. \"They have steam-level technology, though there was a side-note that recent 'innovative advances' had been made. The chaos infestation is taking the form of folklore-related supernatural manifestations, with occasional scientific aberrancy.\"\n\n\"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"You can expect to find vampires. Werewolves. Fictional creations that go bump in the night. You might also find their technology working in unexpected ways.\"\n\n\"Oh well,\" Kai said with jaunty enthusiasm. \"No problem there.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I'm from a gamma, remember? I'm used to figuring out magic. Even if I didn't do it myself, we had to know how to work the system if we wanted to stay out of trouble. Magic always seems to involve taboos and prohibitions too. So all we have to do is work out what these are and then avoid them while we pick up the document or book. No problemo.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"So, high chaos infestation.\" The thought clearly worried her far more than it did Kai. Possibly because she'd had experience with a chaos infestation before and hadn't enjoyed it at all.\n\nChaos made worlds act unreasonably. Things outside the natural order infested those worlds as a direct result. Vampires, werewolves, faerie, mutations, superheroes, impossible devices... She could cope with some spirits and magic, where both operated by a set of rules and were natural phenomena within their worlds. The alternate she'd just come from had very organized magic, and while she hadn't actually practised it, it had at least made sense. She hoped that she could cope with dragons too. Again, they were natural to the order of all the linked worlds, a part of their structure rather than actively working to break down order.\n\nShe had no idea where to start coping with chaos. No one knew exactly how or why chaos broke through into an alternate\u2014or maybe that knowledge was above her pay grade. But it was never natural to that world and seemed drawn to order so it could break it down, warping what it touched. It created things that worked by irrational laws. It infected worlds and it broke down natural principles. It wasn't good for any world it entered, and it wasn't good for the humanity in that world.\n\nEven if it did make for good literature.\n\nThe Library had a whole set of quarantines for chaos infestations. But the one on this particular alternate was one of the most extreme she'd ever seen, while still permitting entrance. She wasn't happy about taking a student along on the job, however well he thought he could handle the situation.\n\n\"Pity Madame Coppelia didn't give us more information,\" Kai remarked. \"And don't look at me like that. We're both thinking the same thing, right? I'm just saying it so that you don't have to.\"\n\nIrene nearly laughed. \"Okay,\" she said. \"We agree on that one. And we both agree it's going to be bad, and neither of us really knows each other, either. So it's probably going to be messy, nasty, and dangerous. Then if we do manage to get the manuscript, I'm sure it'll be top-secret and we'll be lucky to get any sort of mention of it on our records at all because everything will be buried in the files.\"\n\n\"Remind me why I took this job,\" Kai muttered.\n\n\"People pointed guns at you. Right?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Something like that.\"\n\n\"And you like books.\" She glanced sidelong at him.\n\nHe flashed a quick, genuine smile at her. \"Yeah. That would be it.\"\n\nThey exited their latest corridor to find themselves overlooking a large hall. Their route continued along a wrought-iron bridge with ornate railings that arced grandly from side to side above the open book-lined space, staircases winding up the walls to meet it at various points.\n\n\"Hey,\" Kai said in pleased tones, \"I've been in this one before. There were a load of Faust variants down there.\" He pointed over to the lower right corner of the room. \"I was cross-correlating versions from different alternates for Master Legis. It was a training exercise, but it was one of the better ones, you know?\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"Could've been worse. Schalken had us looking up illustrations of mosaics when we were doing training. Far too much time spent sitting with a magnifying glass and a scanner trying to work out if there was a difference or if there was, um\"\u2014she tried to remember the turn of phrase and tone of voice\u2014\"'a comprehensible yet tolerable deviation from the norm, as expressed in the chosen world, given natural variations in the availability of minerals and colour...'\"\n\nA soft round of applause made her break off. Both she and Kai turned to look at the far end of the bridge. A woman in light robes was leaning against the railings, skin as pale as ice and hair like a dark cap.\n\nShe smiled. Irene didn't."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 3",
                "text": "\"You've captured him exactly,\" the woman said. \"Not surprising, given how often you had to listen to him say it until you got it right.\"\n\n\"Bradamant,\" Irene said calmly. The back of her mind noted that her stomach was twisting and that she felt sick\u2014and that she was not going to show it. \"How nice to see you. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?\"\n\n\"You can always tell when she gets annoyed,\" Bradamant said confidingly in Kai's direction. \"She gets so very correct.\"\n\n\"I don't think that we've met,\" Kai said. Irene was conscious of him at her elbow, though her attention was fixed on Bradamant. \"I assume you're one of Irene's colleagues.\"\n\n\"Precisely, dear.\" Bradamant stepped away from the railings. Her dark hair was cut smooth and short, like black silk against her skin. \"I'm here for that assignment you were given, Irene. There's been a change of plan.\"\n\n\"What? Within the last ten minutes?\"\n\n\"Plans change so quickly,\" Bradamant said without blinking. \"Be a good girl and hand it over.\"\n\n\"You don't seriously expect me to believe that.\"\n\n\"It'd make life easier for both of us, dear.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Bradamant smiled. \"It'd mean that the mission was actually completed, for a start.\"\n\n\"And leaving aside any questions of your competence or my lack of it,\" Irene said, calmly, so calmly, \"what could I possibly say to my supervisor?\" She was certainly not going to lose control, especially not in front of a student, just on this level of provocation. But she knew from bitter experience just how poisonous Bradamant could be, and there was always politics under the surface.\n\nBradamant shrugged. Her sheer garments rippled. \"That, my dear, is your problem. Though your record is adequate, I suppose. You'll just be facing a few decades of hard work to get any sort of status back.\"\n\n\"Wait just a moment,\" Kai said. \"Are you seriously suggesting just giving her the assignment?\"\n\n\"She is,\" Irene said. \"I'm not.\"\n\n\"I'll take the student as well,\" Bradamant offered. \"Dear Kai has such a good record.\"\n\nIrene could hear Kai's suppressed intake of breath. \"That won't be necessary,\" she answered. \"I have no reason to hand him over to you. Although you do have such a good record of dealing with students.\"\n\nBradamant hissed. \"Slander.\"\n\nIt was Irene's turn to smile. Bradamant might call it slander as much as she liked, but the facts were on record. The other woman hadn't managed to keep a student for more than a single mission, and whenever there'd been a problem with that mission, the student took the blame. Unfortunate when it occurred once or twice, but a nasty pattern when it recurred. \"No smoke without fire,\" said Irene.\n\n\"How would you know? Keeping track, are you?\" Bradamant seemed disproportionately angry, taking a couple of impatient steps towards them, her heels loud on the bridge.\n\nIrene smiled at Bradamant, making the expression as bland as possible. \"Now, why would I want to do something like that?\"\n\nThe other woman sniffed, composing herself. She studied her fingernails. \"I take it that you are going to be stupid, then.\"\n\n\"You may take it as you wish,\" Irene said. \"But I am not giving you my mission, and I am not giving you my student, and if I were the sort of person who kept pet rats, I would not give you my rat. Clear?\"\n\n\"Very,\" Bradamant said coldly. She swept a spare swathe of fabric around her shoulders in a loosely elegant motion. \"Do not expect me to be nice to you when I have to clear up your mess later.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Irene murmured, \"I'd never expect that.\"\n\nBradamant turned without another word. Her footsteps rang on the iron bridge as she vanished into the dark corridor beyond, then faded into a heavier tapping of high heels on wooden floor, then into silence.\n\n\"An explanation would be nice,\" Kai said quietly. But he didn't try to whisper and his voice echoed in the stillness.\n\n\"It would,\" Irene agreed. She frowned at the dark corridor. \"I wish I knew whether that was personal or political.\"\n\n\"You sounded as if you had personal history. Big-time.\"\n\n\"We don't get on,\" Irene said briefly. \"We never have. She gets the job done, but she's got a reputation. You wouldn't want to work with her.\" She began to walk towards the corridor.\n\n\"Irene,\" Kai said, and it surprised her in some indefinable way that he'd call her by name like that. \"I get it that you don't like her\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't like her at all,\" Irene cut in, keeping her steps calm and measured with an effort, not letting herself walk away from the conversation. \"I don't want my personal and very strong dislike of her to cause me to slander someone who is an efficient, competent, even admired Librarian.\"\n\nKai whistled. \"You really don't like her.\"\n\n\"We dislike each other enough that she might have staged that whole little scene purely as a whim and in order to mess with me,\" Irene continued. \"Except that it'd have taken a singularly unlikely set of coincidences for her to have found out that I was on a mission and to be here to intercept me. Which means politics.\" She stalked into the dark corridor, still a pace ahead of Kai.\n\n\"So who's her supervisor?\"\n\n\"Kostchei.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Kai was quiet for a few steps. \"Him. You know, I always kind of thought that was a bit of a dramatic name for him to choose, even for here.\"\n\nIrene shrugged, glad of the change of subject. It was true that Russian fairy-tale villains weren't the most obvious name choice. But then again her own choice of \"Irene\" had hardly been dictated by logic. At least \"the Undying,\" the epithet usually attached to the name Kostchei, was fairly accurate for a Librarian who'd made it to his age. \"When we were students, some people spent hours trying to pick what they'd call themselves after they'd been initiated. They'd go round saying, 'How about this one?' or 'Do you think Mnemosyne sounds all right, or is it too obvious?' or 'I like Arachne. Do you think it suits me?'\"\n\nKai snorted a laugh.\n\nThey walked on together, passing room after room of stockpiled books. While there were faster (and non-linear) ways to get around the Library, Irene would have needed authorization from a senior Librarian to use them. In the absence of such shortcuts, all she and Kai could do was walk and watch out for landmarks. Finally the corridor opened out into a small room whose dominant feature was the iron-barred door on the opposite wall. The walls were covered with full bookshelves, but sections of the books were overlaid with large posters that announced statements such as CHAOS INFESTATION, ENTRY BY PERMISSION ONLY, KEEP CALM AND STAY OUT AND THIS MEANS YOU.\n\nKai settled his fists on his hips and looked at the posters.\n\n\"Tell me,\" he said, \"are there some people round here who can't take a hint?\"\n\n\"You tell me,\" Irene said. \"Given some of the people you've probably met here.\" She reached into her pocket and pulled out Coppelia's mission briefing.\n\n\"Before we go any further,\" Kai said, more seriously, \"what about Kostchei and Bradamant? Do you think she's working for him?\"\n\nIrene tugged at her earlobe. We may be overheard. When Kai didn't seem to take the hint, she tugged at it more obviously.\n\n\"Or do you think\u2014\"\n\n\"I'd rather do my thinking through on the other side,\" she snapped. So much for Kai's potential streetwise criminality and any ability to take hints. \"Let's get a briefing from the Librarian there first before we come to any conclusions.\"\n\nKai's shoulders slumped. \"Sure,\" he said flatly. \"As you say.\"\n\nIrene resolved to apologize later\u2014well, to some extent\u2014and turned to slap the mission briefing against the door. The solid metal rang softly, like a distant bell, then re-echoed again, chiming back until the room was full of distant harmonies.\n\nKai edged closer, apparently willing to drop the sulks for a moment. \"What would've happened if that had been faked?\"\n\n\"It wouldn't have sounded half as nice,\" Irene replied. She tucked the briefing back into her pocket, then reached down to turn the door-handle. It moved easily, swinging open to let her and Kai through into another room full of books, glass cases, and flaring gas lamps.\n\nThe room had the indefinable air of all museum collections, somehow simultaneously fascinating yet forlorn. Manuscripts lay beneath glass cases, the gold leaf on their illuminations and illustrations gleaming in the gaslight. A single document was spread out on a desk in the centre of the room, next to a modern-looking notepad and pen. The high arched ceiling had cobwebs in the corners, and dust lurked in the crevices of the panelled walls. Next to the Library entrance was a rattletrap machine, all clockwork and gears and sparking wires, with a primitive-looking printer mechanism and vacuum tubes attached.\n\nKai looked around the room. \"Do we ring a bell or anything?\"\n\n\"We probably don't need to,\" Irene said. She closed the door behind them and heard it audibly lock itself. \"I imagine Mr. Aubrey has already been alerted. Librarians watching fixed Traverses like this one don't leave them unguarded.\"\n\nThere was a ping. Several vacuum tubes on the mechanical contraption lit up and the printer juddered into motion, spitting out a long paper tape, letter by letter.\n\nKai picked it up and looked at it. \"'Welcome,'\" he read out. \"'Please make yourselves comfortable and I will be with you\u2014'\"\n\nThe printer came to a halt with a grinding, permanent sort of noise.\n\n\"Shortly, I hope,\" Irene said.\n\n\"This is cool.\" Kai began to wander round the manuscripts, peering at them. \"Look, this one says it's an original of Keats's Lamia, though I'm not sure what it's doing in Classical Manuscripts in that case\u2014\"\n\n\"That would be because I'm cross-referencing it with the Plutarch material.\" The door at the far end of the room had swung open to reveal a middle-aged, dark-skinned man.\n\n\"Good day. I'm Dominic Aubrey. The action of seeing you is a pleasure,\" he added in the Language.\n\n\"The action of conversing with you is a pleasure,\" Irene replied. \"I'm Irene. This is Kai. We're here about the 1812 Grimm manuscript.\" She was conscious of Kai frowning and remembered from her pre-initiation days how strange the Language could sound. Listeners who weren't trained in it heard it in their native language, but with a certain unplaceable accent. Librarians, of course, heard it for what it was, which made it an ideal tool for cross-checks and passwords and countersigns. Like this.\n\nDominic Aubrey nodded. \"I'd invite you to take a seat, but there's only one chair. Please lean wherever suits you.\" He fiddled nervously with his glasses, pushing them back up on the bridge of his nose, then brushed at his coat. He was in what looked like vaguely Victorian-period garb from the most common timelines. His regalia included the standard white shirt and stiff collar, with a black frock-coat, waistcoat, and trousers. His straight hair was tied back in a crisp tail, reaching halfway down between his shoulder-blades. \"The situation has, um, developed a bit since I last sent in a report.\"\n\nIrene leaned against the edge of the desk, making an effort not to look condemnatory, judgemental, or recriminatory. However much she might feel it. \"I quite understand. This is a chaos-infested world, after all. Perhaps if you'd give us the briefing from the beginning?\" She glanced at Kai, and he nodded in acceptance, waiting for her to take the lead.\n\n\"All right.\" Dominic sat down in his chair, folded his arms, and leaned forward. \"I originally found out about the Grimm first edition after the death of Edward Bonhomme, when it came into circulation. He was a local property owner and bibliophile. Owned a nice selection of slums and made a very good profit out of them, and put the money into his books. Unfortunately, he was a hoarder of the worst sort. Never invited anyone round, never even let anyone look at his books, just kept them all locked away and gloated over them. You know the sort?\"\n\n\"I've had to visit a few people like that,\" Irene agreed. \"Anything suspicious about his death?\"\n\nDominic shrugged. \"He fell down stairs, broke his neck, and was found by the housekeeper in the morning. He was in his eighties, bought the cheapest candles on the market, and the stair carpet was threadbare. A lot of people did quite well out of his death, but none of them seem to have had a significant motive. The police treated it as an accident and it was left as such.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"So, the book?\"\n\n\"It went up for auction after Bonhomme's death, with some others of his collection. The money was to endow a scholarship in his name at Oxford. Typical post-death snobbery.\" He sighed. \"Anyhow. Word got round fast and the bidding went up very quickly. It was bought by Lord Wyndham. He's\u2014he was, rather\u2014more of a general collector of expensive trifles than an actual bibliophile, but the price on the book and the society interest made it something he wanted for his collection. And he got it.\"\n\n\"He was, you say.\" Irene had a growing feeling of doom.\n\n\"Ah yes. Precisely. Someone staked him a couple of days ago.\"\n\n\"Staked.\"\n\n\"He was a vampire. They used the traditional methods, you know. A stake through the heart, cutting off the head, inserting garlic in the mouth... though, to be fair, leaving his head impaled on the railings outside the front door, where all his party guests could see it, could be considered a little extreme.\"\n\n\"And the book then went missing, right?\"\n\n\"Yes!\" Dominic said brightly. \"How did you guess?\"\n\nKai raised a hand. \"Excuse me. Are vampires considered a normal part of society here?\"\n\n\"Mm, well.\" Dominic held up a finger. \"Being a vampire or werewolf isn't illegal in itself. Assaulting or murdering someone due to vampiric or werewolf urges is... As ever, having lots of money helps ease the rules. Lord Wyndham had a great deal of money.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"So he was murdered\u2014staked, that is\u2014at his party, and someone stole the book?\"\n\n\"The plot thickens.\" Dominic raised his finger again. \"A notorious cat burglar was observed escaping from the mansion that evening. Now, while she's never been known to kill anyone before, it seems a bit of a coincidence that she should just happen to be burgling the house on the same night Lord Wyndham was murdered.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"She was seen escaping, you say?\"\n\n\"Dramatically. She leapt from the roof of the house to catch a ladder dangling from a passing zeppelin.\"\n\n\"Wait. Zeppelins?\"\n\n\"It's part of the scientific ethos of this place. Zeppelins, death rays\u2014they haven't quite got those working properly yet, though\u2014and other instruments of destruction. Also they have biomutations, clockwork technology, electrical health-care spas...\"\n\nIrene glanced at Kai. He was wearing an expression combining acute interest with admiring attention. \"I told you I dislike chaos infestations?\" she asked. \"This is why.\"\n\n\"But zeppelins are neat,\" Kai protested. \"We couldn't have any in my old alternate because of the pollution, but I guess they'd be kind of cool. Up there in the sky, tossed by the winds, driving across the curve of the world with the lands and seas spread out beneath you...\"\n\n\"Falling a very long way down,\" Irene added.\n\nHe just looked at her.\n\n\"I do apologize,\" she said hastily to Dominic. \"Please go on. Tell us about this cat burglar.\"\n\n\"They call her Belphegor,\" Dominic said. He seemed more amused than annoyed by their interruptions. \"She's tall. Very tall. Apparently she wears a black leather cat-suit and a golden mask.\"\n\n\"Any details on the mask?\"\n\n\"I think people are usually too busy looking at the black leather cat-suit.\"\n\nIrene sighed. \"So we have an incredibly glamorous female cat burglar who slinks around in a black leather cat-suit, who kills vampires in her spare time?\"\n\n\"I'll tackle her,\" Kai said enthusiastically.\n\nIrene raised an eyebrow. \"How do you know that I don't want to tackle her?\"\n\n\"Do you?\"\n\n\"Involvements with glamorous female cat burglars never end up well.\"\n\n\"And you've had some?\"\n\n\"One,\" Irene said, and hoped that she wasn't blushing too badly.\n\n\"Oh, you're that Irene,\" Dominic said in tones of surprise. \"I remember Coppelia telling me about it now. Didn't you end up having some sort of showdown in the middle of a reception and\u2014\"\n\nIrene held up a hand. \"Could we possibly concentrate on the current problem? Please?\"\n\n\"It's a pleasure to see that you're taking to this so cheerfully,\" Dominic remarked. \"Now, some junior Librarians would be running for the Traverse at this point and trying to ditch the job. But not you. No, I can see you're up for the task and all eager to go.\" He smiled toothily.\n\nIrene took a deep breath. \"I'm looking on it as a challenge,\" she said blandly. And I'm damned if I'm going to let Bradamant manage this instead of me.\n\nKai raised a hand. \"May I ask a question?\"\n\n\"Please do,\" Dominic said.\n\n\"Do you have any sort of dossiers about this place that we can read up on?\"\n\nDominic nodded. \"I've a rough set of notes on current affairs, history, geography, all of that. I've also set up some spare identities, both male and female, for when I have Librarians visiting. I'll sign over a couple of these to you, together with funding and so on. Don't worry, I'm not going to hang you out to dry. I just wanted to see how you'd react to the situation.\"\n\n\"Frankly,\" Irene said, \"it sounds like a penny dreadful.\"\n\n\"Frankly,\" Dominic said, \"it is.\"\n\nIrene sighed. \"Well. So Lord Wyndham is dead, and not even undead any longer. The book is presumed stolen by the cat burglar Belphegor, and there is more, I take it?\"\n\n\"Not much,\" Dominic said apologetically. \"All this was only a couple of days ago, you understand. The newspapers are still buzzing about it. In fact, if you want to be researching the story for your cover...\"\n\n\"Good point,\" Irene agreed. \"What's the gender situation here?\"\n\n\"Women are generally accepted in most trades, except as serving soldiers in the army. They often end up in engineering divisions there. Nothing unusual about a female reporter, though they often end up with the high-society and scandal pages. So that'll be entirely appropriate.\"\n\n\"So is there magic?\"\n\n\"Not per se,\" Dominic said slowly, \"though we have vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures and so on. I've got a theory that the weird technology of this place is actually a structural evolution of what would elsewhere have manifested as directed magic, but I can't prove it.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"Do you have any theories about the lack of draconic interference?\"\n\nDominic snorted. \"Typical bureaucratic miscomprehension in summarizing my reports. The dragons don't intervene here because they don't need to. There may be a high level of chaos infestation, but there are also a lot of natural spirits inherent to the local order buzzing around the place\u2014metaphorically speaking, that is\u2014and they seem to be acting as a counterweight. In fact,\" he said enthusiastically, \"I think we have grounds here for an entire study on how a high level of magic in a world responds to a chaos infestation by working in nonchaotic ways. So, the natural order is reinforced via technology with weird science, and also strengthened supernaturally. The latter happens via a hierarchical structure of guardian spirits and fundamental reinforcement\u2014\"\n\n\"But you can't get the funding for it?\" Irene said sympathetically, before he could get any further.\n\nDominic slumped. \"Philistines,\" he muttered.\n\nKai raised his hand again. \"So, theoretically, would these local spirits be a useful source of information? I mean, I've been stuck in the Library for the last five years; I know the theory, but not how you go about it in practice...\"\n\n\"Good thinking,\" Irene said, but then she saw Dominic frowning. \"Why, is there a problem?\"\n\n\"They can be dangerous,\" Dominic said. He fussed with his glasses again. \"I wouldn't recommend it as a primary option. To be frank, I haven't had much chance to investigate things myself\u2014my cover, you know. There's only so much that I can get away with as head of Classical Manuscripts. You'll probably be able to find out more at ground level.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"We'll keep it as a fall-back option, then. Do you have any local Language updates that I should be aware of?\"\n\n\"I've put them in the briefing,\" Dominic promised. \"There aren't many, though. The vocab is all fairly generic. A vampire's a vampire as you'd expect, fangs and all, etcetera. Actually, if you want to wait here, I'll go and fetch the documentation, and then the two of you can slip out and get to work.\"\n\nKai looked down at his clothing. \"Like this?\" he asked.\n\n\"You'll have to claim to be barbarian visitors from Canada,\" Dominic said cheerfully. \"I do have some clothing for emergencies, but under the circumstances you can pass for students until you can buy some clothing that fits you better. You'll just need some overcoats until you can get to a shop.\" He stood up, brushing his hands together again. \"I'll be back in a moment. Don't fret.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Irene said, suppressing a sigh of relief, but he was already out the door. Perhaps his quick exit was due to embarrassment. Helping visiting Librarians maintain a low profile was supposed to be part of the Librarian-in-Residence's job, after all. It usually involved a little more than \"here's an overcoat and there's the nearest shop.\" She considered prospective excuses for the shopkeeper. I'm terribly sorry, but we just had all our luggage stolen while disembarking from the ocean liner...\n\nKai stretched and looked around restlessly. \"Do you suppose barbarian Canadians wear jeans?\"\n\n\"I hope female Canadian barbarians wear trousers,\" Irene said drily. \"They're easier to run in.\"\n\nKai turned to face her. \"Have you ever seen a really bad chaos infestation?\" he asked.\n\n\"No,\" she said quietly. \"Only mild ones. But I've heard things. I knew someone who went into one, once. I saw some of his reports.\"\n\nThere's something addictive about it, he'd written. The world itself seems so much more logical and plausible. There's a feeling that everything makes sense, and I know this is only because the world itself is shaping to fit the gestalt, but you wouldn't believe how comfortable it makes me feel.\n\nKai snapped his fingers in front of her face, and she blinked at him. \"Ahem. You could at least share with me, rather than sit there and brood about it and figure that you're protecting me or something.\"\n\n\"You do rate yourself highly,\" Irene said, trying not to feel irritated. \"All right. You remember the stages of infestation? Affective, intuitive, assumptive, and conglomerative?\"\n\nKai nodded. \"From what you and Dominic were saying, this world is affective going on intuitive, right? So the theory suggests it's being warped, and it would then reach the stage where things tend to fall into narrative patterns. So instead of natural order prevailing, events start taking on the kind of rhythm or logic you might find in fiction or fairy tales. Which could be terrifying. But it must be hard to spot, surely, as even in order-based worlds fact can prove stranger than fiction... It isn't fully there yet, is it?\"\n\n\"No. And that's interesting. It makes me think that Dominic's got a point with his theory that order is being asserted. I wish I understood more of it.\" Irene pushed away from the desk and began to wander round the room, staring absently at the various glass display-cases. \"Now, if a world could be stalled at this point, so it didn't head further into chaos, it'd be useful to know how it's done. We don't know how many worlds there are, so we don't know how many we lose to chaos. But we lose enough that we do know about. And the dragons aren't interested in talking to us about how they do whatever it is that they do.\"\n\nKai coughed. \"Just like we aren't interested in talking to them about how we do what we do?\"\n\nIrene turned to look at him. Witheringly, she hoped. \"Do you think you're the first person to have made that argument?\"\n\n\"Course not.\" He shrugged. \"Fact remains, though. We don't talk.\"\n\n\"I met one once,\" Irene said.\n\n\"What did you talk about?\"\n\n\"He complimented me on my literary taste.\"\n\nKai blinked. \"Doesn't sound like a life-threatening sort of conversation.\"\n\nIrene shrugged. \"Well, he was the one who got the scroll we were both after. You see, there was this\u2014\" She saw him glance away. \"Oh, never mind.\"\n\nThere was this room full of fabulous woods and bone, and I'd been escorted there by a couple of servants, and I was honestly afraid that I was going to be killed. I'd trespassed on his private property. I'd negotiated with one of his barons for that scroll without realizing it. I'd been dropped in the deep end and I was sinking fast.\n\n\"I don't mean to pry,\" Kai said unconvincingly.\n\nHe looked almost human. He had scales in the hollows of his cheeks and on the backs of his hands, as fine as feathers or hair. He had claws, manicured to a mother-of-pearl sheen. He had horns. His eyes were like gems in his face. His skin was the colour of fire, and yet it seemed natural; my own skin was blotchy and dull in comparison.\n\n\"There isn't much to tell,\" Irene said. \"He let me go.\"\n\nHe discussed the poems in the scroll. He complimented me on my taste. He explained that he did not expect to see me or any other representative of the Library in that area again. I nodded and bowed and thanked him for his kindness.\n\n\"Just like that?\"\n\nNo language that I knew had any words to describe him.\n\nIrene tried to look nonchalant. \"As I said, he approved of my literary taste.\"\n\nAn hour later, Irene was buttoning herself into a jacket and long skirt while Kai sat outside the dressing-room on a rickety chair and read through the dossiers. The cheap clothing shop Dominic had directed them to was certainly cheap, very definitely cheap, and had little that could be said for it other than the fact that it was cheap. If they were going to infiltrate high society, they'd need better clothing. And costumes that didn't rely on heavy overcoats.\n\n\"These lists don't make any sense,\" Kai complained. \"They say the same thing on both sides of the page.\"\n\nOf course, he was looking at the Language vocabulary pages. Since he wasn't a Librarian, he'd be seeing his native language instead of the Language. \"Yes,\" Irene agreed, \"they would, to you. Should I be surprised that you're trying to read them?\" She arranged her blouse's neckline so its ruffles sat above her jacket collar and opened the dressing-room door to join him.\n\n\"Can't blame me for trying,\" Kai said cheerfully. He looked her up and down. \"Are you going to wear the hair-piece? Most of the women we've seen so far wear their hair longer than yours.\"\n\nIrene looked unenthusiastically at the tattered partial wig that lay on the table like a mangy dark squirrel. \"Wearing that thing's going to cause more problems than going without,\" she decided. \"I'll be counter-fashionable. Let's just be grateful that corsets aren't required wear any longer.\"\n\n\"Why should I be grateful?\" Kai asked, raising an eyebrow.\n\n\"Because you don't have to deal with me while I'm wearing one,\" Irene said flatly. \"Now, give me a summary on what you've just been reading. Think of it as\u2014\"\n\nThere was a crash from the street and the sound of screaming. She turned to look at the window. Some sort of huge wind was blowing the smog outside into long grey veils, ripping through the sky like claws.\n\n\"As?\" Kai asked. He came to his feet in a single neat bound, assuming a smooth attitude of superiority and lack of distraction.\n\n\"Imminent disaster takes priority over on-the-job testing,\" Irene said. \"Let's see what's going on out there.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 4",
                "text": "Kai made it down the stairs and outside first, and promptly stopped dead, face turned up to gawk at the sky like everyone else in the street. Irene, a step behind, looked up as well.\n\nFive zeppelins hung in the foggy sky, their propellers cutting through the clouds. While all displayed the same dark blue and red livery, one was much larger than the vessels that had taken up positions around it. This particular zeppelin trailed glittering, somewhat tawdry, gold streamers and flaunted a coat of arms on its side.\n\nIrene strained her eyes, but she couldn't make it out. \"Kai,\" she muttered, \"can you see the design painted on that airship?\"\n\nKai raised his hand to shield his eyes and squinted. \"There's an eagle top left, in black and white on gold. Top right is a green crown on diagonal black and gold stripes. Bottom left is a vertically divided shield in red and white. And bottom right is some sort of harpy, again in black and white on gold. A hunting horn is right at the very bottom, with a horizontally divided shield in red and gold in the middle.\"\n\nIrene frowned, trying to remember her heraldry. She'd been to a few places where it had been important, but surely something that crowded would have stuck in her mind... Oh, wait, that was it. \"It sounds,\" she said slowly, \"like Liechtenstein.\"\n\n\"I thought that didn't exist,\" Kai said blankly.\n\n\"Course it does!\" a newspaper seller scolded. He was perched on a battered stool next to his newspapers and a dramatic board that declared, MURDERER STALKS LONDON. \"Best zeppelin builders in the world, ain't they?\"\n\n\"I'm terribly sorry,\" Irene said. \"My friend's from Canada and he doesn't know much about Europe.\"\n\n\"Oh. Oh well, then.\" The old man nodded as if it made perfect sense. \"Wanna buy a paper, love? Got all the news on the horrible murder of Lord Wyndham.\"\n\n\"Pay the man, Kai,\" Irene directed, and picked up one of the papers. It was thin, coarse paper, with thick black ink that threatened to come off on her gloves.\n\nKai handed over a few of Dominic's coins. \"Have they made an arrest yet?\" he asked.\n\n\"Naaah.\" The old man leaned forward and tapped the side of his nose, glancing at the zeppelins. \"But you know what they say?\"\n\n\"That the Liechtensteinians were involved?\" Irene guessed, pointing with the rolled-up paper at the zeppelins above.\n\n\"Well. I mean. Makes sense, dunnit. What with them turning up like this so soon after that lord died, and all. And they do say that their ambassador was Lord Wyndham's friend. Very personal friend, if you take my meaning.\" The old man winked. \"And they're saying as how he was also his arch-rival and that they were\"\u2014he paused to check the front page of his newspaper\u2014\"constantly intriguing against each other in the most diabolical manner.\"\n\n\"Is the ambassador a vampire too?\" Irene asked. It would be totally inappropriate of her to use Kai as bait, if the ambassador's tastes ran that way. That was the sort of thing Bradamant would do, she reminded herself.\n\n\"Naaah. Where've you been spending your time, love? Nah, he's one of them Fair Folk, see. Always has to have artists draw his picture in the papers, 'cause none of them cameras will work on him, not even the stuff them geniuses make.\"\n\n\"Fair Folk,\" Irene said, a cold feeling gripping the pit of her stomach. This was bad news.\n\nChaos liked (if liking was quite the word) to manifest into a world where it could take advantage of illogical laws. Vampires and werewolves were particularly vulnerable to chaos. After all, strictly speaking, why should werewolves be allergic to silver, or vampires to garlic, or sticky rice, or a dozen other things? And as for the reasoning behind vampires rising three days after death, or behind most of Dracula\u2014anyhow, the point was that chaos used creatures that obeyed illogical laws logically. Fae or fairies or elves or youkai or whatever they were called were among its favourite agents. Some of them were even living pieces of chaos, slipped sideways into various worlds and taking form from human dreams and stories. If there were Fair Folk manifesting in this world and being accepted by the population, then she needed to know. Dominic had made a note in the briefing about Liechtenstein being a \"potential chaos portal\" but hadn't gone into details. She wished that he had. Liechtenstein could be the nexus of all the chaos in this world, if it had perhaps been weakened by too many supernatural or Fae living there, though at this point she could only speculate. However, that would make any agents operating from Liechtenstein particularly suspect.\n\n\"Right,\" she said briskly, taking a few steps out of the old man's earshot and gesturing Kai over with a wave of the newspaper. \"We're splitting up. I want you to find out everything you can about the Liechtenstein ambassador, his embassy, and his involvement in the current situation. I'll check out Wyndham's place. We'll meet at the hotel in Russell Square\u2014eight o'clock at the latest. Find some way to get a message to me there if you're delayed.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Kai said slowly. \"You're just sending me off, like that?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Irene said firmly and tried to ignore her slight feelings of disquiet. \"You were already competent when the Library recruited you. It won't do either of us any good for me to keep you under my thumb all the time.\" And it'll drive me up the wall and onto the ceiling if I have to constantly operate with someone looking over my shoulder. \"We need information as fast as possible. I'm relying on you. Do you have any problems with this?\"\n\nHe looked at her for a moment, then put his right fist to his left shoulder and gave her a formal bow. \"You may rely on me to do my share of the work.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" She smiled at him. \"Then I'll be seeing you in a few hours.\"\n\nHe smiled back, his face surprisingly warm for a moment, then turned and headed briskly down the street, shoulders squared for action.\n\nShe'd known him for only a few hours, but there was something reliable about him. And she had to admit that the way that he'd said he'd do \"his share\" of the work was a well-balanced way of putting it. No attempts to do her share as well as his own, no trying to wriggle out of it...\n\nWas she actually starting to like him? It wouldn't be hard. Kai was likeable. She'd enjoy sharing a mission with someone she liked. It'd make a nice change.\n\nIrene drew her veil partly across her face to shield her mouth and nose from the smoke and steam in the air. Most of the other women in the street wore veils across the lower parts of their faces too, ranging from filmy drifts of silk for the better off to thick wads of cotton or linen for the poor. Men wore their scarves drawn up over their mouths. She wondered what they did in summer.\n\nShe scanned the newspaper's front page.\n\nLATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN WYNDHAM MURDER CASE, it read.\n\nOur correspondent informs us that the police have made great progress and expect an arrest at any moment.\n\nSo the odds were that the police were still baffled. Good. It'd be difficult to extract the target document from a police station, if they did manage to catch the cat burglar and lock her up.\n\nIrene rolled the newspaper up, scanning the street. The local type of taxi-cab was black and small and seemed to be a combination of old-fashioned hansom carriage and electric car. With some determined waving she managed to signal one over, and directed the driver to take her to the Hyde Park Corner Underground railway station, a couple of streets away from Lord Wyndham's residence.\n\nHer target was in an expensive street, with marble frontages and clean-scrubbed gutters, unusual in this grime-stained London. The place stood dark and empty, in contrast to the houses on either side, both already lit up against the afternoon dimness. With practised experience, Irene made her way round to the servants' entrance at the back.\n\nIt was locked.\n\nShe flicked a quick glance behind her. Although this back alley was far more active than the wide front street, nobody was currently in view\u2014or, more important, within earshot\u2014of her. She put her lips next to the lock and commanded in the Language, \"Servants' entry door-lock, sealed and closed, now open!\"\n\nThe tumblers of the lock shivered and clicked open with gratifying vigour. The door shuddered and the latch came undone, letting the door swing open into a dark passage.\n\nIrene walked through the servants' corridors into the main part of the house. The marks of the police search were obvious: drawers still hung open; there were piles of discarded linen and clothing everywhere and dirty boot marks on the luxurious crimson carpets. The place hadn't been tidied, either, after the \"rude interruption\" to the dinner party. Dirty plates and glasses were piled in stacks or left lying on polished tables, and ashtrays were full to overflowing with discarded cigar and cigarette ends.\n\nDespite searching with a certain horrified curiosity, she couldn't find any secret torture chambers or rooms containing strange vampiric devices. She did find that the books displayed prominently in every chamber had been dusted, but the spines were pristine and uncreased. They had the sad, untouched air of literature paraded for display purposes but never actually used.\n\nIt was profoundly depressing.\n\nWyndham's study was a large room with far too much pseudo-Degas artwork on the walls; a whole dozen pictures of women in ballet skirts showing off their legs. Thick crimson curtains matched the thick crimson carpet and the dark wood panelling. Her footsteps were silent.\n\nThe heavy oak desk was bare of papers, and all the drawers were locked. She could open them later if she had to. A deep score mark marred the desk's surface. Probably from the removal of Wyndham's head. Bloodstains had soaked into the wood, spilling outwards from the line of the cut. She didn't think they'd come out. The big chair behind the desk (ebony with black leather cushions\u2014how vulgar) had been pushed over at some point. It had been repositioned but had clearly been lying long enough to leave a dent in the plush carpet.\n\nBlood had soaked into the carpet too, but it was barely visible, a slightly darker brown amid the rich, thick crimson.\n\nThe glass display-case in the corner could have held the Grimm book, Irene decided. For one thing, the case was sealed with all manner of complicated locks, catches, and alarms. For another thing, it was now empty.\n\nIrene turned thoughtfully, looking around the room. Wyndham was the sort of man who would have needed a safe, and where better to keep it than in his study. She would have bet money on it. Now she just had to try to find it.\n\nUnsurprisingly, the biggest pseudo-Degas hid the safe.\n\nShe swung the painting back and examined the heavy iron door. Combination lock. Well, she could always talk it open, but...\n\nShe heard quick approaching footsteps on the main stairs. It must be a man; a woman wouldn't stride like that, not in these skirts. But there wasn't supposed to be anyone in the house! Perhaps another burglar? What marvellous timing.\n\nShe quickly concealed the safe and retreated behind one of the thick curtains. She needn't fear discovery within its folds. Merely suffocation.\n\nThe door swung open with a heavy creak. Clearly the intruder wasn't bothering with caution. She waited until she heard the sound of the painting swinging back before she carefully peered round the edge of the curtain.\n\nThe man had his back to her. He was of above-average height, with well-squared shoulders and a slender waist. His pale hair, a shade somewhere between silver and lavender, was gathered back in a short tail that fell neatly against his perfectly fitted jacket. His trousers were just as well cut, moulded elegantly to his body. It was perfect formal visiting gear. If your host hadn't been murdered. His top hat was tilted insouciantly to one side, and he was wearing pale grey kid gloves.\n\nHe reached out a hand to delicately brush the wheel handle of the safe, then snatched his fingers back with an angry hiss. A thin scent of burning flesh hung in the air, even through his gloves.\n\nIrene let the curtain fall back into place and considered. Clearly there was more to Lord Wyndham's alliance with the Fair Folk than met the eye, if he'd made sure that his safe was made of cold iron, so proof against Fae. This supported the newspaper's whole \"diabolical intrigue\" theory, and it rather fitted what she knew about the Fae. They liked complicated relationships. It didn't matter if they were loved or hated, as long as the other person had strong feelings towards them. Strong enough, for instance, to install a completely Fae-proof safe. And if she'd been able to choose her options a few hours ago, being trapped in a dead vampire's private study with an angry Fae would not have been one of them.\n\nThen, more alarmingly, she heard him sniff. It wasn't the phlegmatic nose clearing of a cold; it was a hungry sniff, a tasting of the air.\n\n\"Ohhhh.\" His voice hung on the air like incense. \"Come out, come out, little mouse. Or shall I come looking for you?\"\n\nIrene took a deep breath, set her face to an expression of polite unconcern, and moved the curtain back. \"The Liechtenstein ambassador, I presume?\" she guessed.\n\nHis face was as pretty as his body had suggested, but his eyes were slitted like a cat's and pure gold. \"Why,\" he said, tone as smooth as honey, \"you are quite correct. But what sort of little mouse hides behind the curtains? Are you a blackmailer, little mouse? A spy? A detective? A little rat in the arras, just waiting to be stabbed?\"\n\nShe seized the opportunity to present her cover story.\n\n\"I'm a journalist here to investigate Lord Wyndham's murder, sir. I was hoping to interview you. I hadn't dared hope to catch up with you so soon. If I could ask you for your views on the situation...\"\n\nHe glided a step towards her. \"What paper do you represent?\"\n\n\"The Times,\" she said. There was a Times in practically every single alternate she'd ever visited.\n\n\"And how did you know that I'd come here, pretty little mouse?\" There was something very predatory about his face now.\n\n\"Well, of course, I had no idea,\" she rattled off hastily, reaching into her reticule. \"It was a total surprise to meet you here, sir. But I suppose it's not surprising that on hearing of his death, you naturally hurried to his domicile, with the intention of expressing your condolences to his\u2014\"\n\nHis hand caught her wrist. \"No guns, little mouse. I don't think we want the police coming. No, this is all going to be very nice and quiet, and you're going to tell me exactly what's going on...\"\n\nShe could lie to him. She could try to resist him. Or she could simply get that cool, elegant, well-gloved, slender hand off her wrist. \"Take your hands off me, sir,\" she said, anger sliding into her voice. \"Or you will regret it.\"\n\nHe paused. \"You're very self-assured,\" he said, and for the first time there was a fraction of something other than malice or purring self-satisfaction in his voice. Perhaps an edge of uncertainty. \"I wonder. Are you perhaps a little more than you look?\"\n\n\"Aren't we all?\" Irene answered.\n\n\"And is there someone backing you?\"\n\n\"Someone you don't want to antagonize,\" she said. She'd got the measure of his suspicion now. She'd met only lesser Fair Folk before, but they practically defined \"so devious that they'd fall over if they tried to walk in a straight line.\" This one was thinking in terms of conspiracies and agents. She could play that game just as well as anyone else. \"But I can't give names. Not even to an ambassador. But what I can perhaps give is a degree of cooperation.\"\n\nHe released her wrist and raised a delicate eyebrow. \"You intrigue me.\"\n\nShe understood that sort of language. She was getting the message that he might find her useful loud and clear\u2014and intrigue had nothing to do with it. Instead, she nodded towards the safe. \"Perhaps we are both looking for the same thing, sir.\"\n\nHe nodded once, sharply. \"Perhaps we are. Well? Open it.\"\n\n\"Do you have the combination, sir?\"\n\nHe rattled off a list of numbers as she worked at the safe's combination mechanism. So it was just the iron that had kept him out. She wondered what he'd have done if she hadn't been here\u2014perhaps enchanted or coerced some passerby off the street, or brought a human agent here later.\n\nHis gloved fingers brushed the back of her neck, and she shivered. He needs you for the moment; he won't try anything until he's got what he's looking for; the best way to deal with him is to give him something more interesting to pounce on...\n\n\"Open it,\" he purred from far too close behind her.\n\nIrene swung the safe door open and put some distance between herself and the Fae, physically feeling his focus shift from her to the safe's contents.\n\nSeveral stacks of papers lay tidily in the large iron cavity. On top of them was a small piece of card, embossed with a golden mask, signed with the name Belphegor.\n\nThe Fae hissed. His hands clenched, and Irene heard his kid gloves rip. He turned towards her, his face furious.\n\nSaying Don't blame me or It wasn't my fault would just have been signalling that she was a victim. As calmly as she could manage, and wishing for a few more feet of distance between them\u2014actually, make that a few yards, or even a few miles\u2014she said, \"This makes no sense. If Belphegor stole the book and wanted to advertise the fact, why leave her card here inside the safe and not out on the desk?\"\n\nHe blinked once and seemed to take a step back mentally. \"Indeed,\" he said, pacing the room. \"It's the book that's important here. Keep talking, little mouse. Tell me what you know, what you see here. Tell me what you know about the book. Explain it to me. Make yourself worthwhile to me.\"\n\n\"There were two factions,\" Irene guessed. It was as good a theory as any. It might even be true. She needed more data. The ambassador seemed to be looking for the book as well, so why not others? Perhaps she could use that. \"And Belphegor wasn't necessarily after the book. She could have been after something Lord Wyndham kept in his safe. So what if the person or people who stole the book and who killed Lord Wyndham were entirely different? If they were waiting here in the study while he was hosting the party downstairs.\" She walked over to look at the glass display-case where the book had been. \"I can't tell whether they would have taken the book first and then killed him, or vice versa.\" Well, of course she couldn't tell; she was deducing all this on the spot or, to be more accurate, guessing wildly.\n\n\"But we know they beheaded him on the desk. Then they went out through the house and left his head on the railings outside the front door.\"\n\n\"Why not out through the window?\" he interrupted.\n\n\"It wouldn't open.\" She'd glanced down at the catch while hiding in the window embrasure. It had been soldered closed. \"It must have been one of Lord Wyndham's precautions. Besides, there was a party going on. It would have been simple enough to walk through the house and out through the front door if they'd concealed the head and if they looked enough like guests or servants.\"\n\n\"Mm.\" He turned and pointed a finger at her. \"And Belphegor?\"\n\n\"If she escaped by catching a rope from a passing zeppelin, then she must have gone up by the roof.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"And now a crucial point, little mouse. I'm not asking for the names of any people, but if you don't tell me what group you are working for, I shall be reluctantly forced to... Oh, really, why soften things? I won't be reluctant about it at all.\" His smile cut like a knife.\n\nIrene was fairly sure that she could invoke the Language against him before he reached her, or simply slam the safe door into him, but fairly sure wasn't enough. She tried to recall Dominic's dossier, as he'd provided a list of the better-known secret societies.\n\n\"The Cathedral of Reason. Sir,\" she said reluctantly, letting it be drawn out of her. That had been one of the more neutral groups, more concerned with general scientific progress than slaughtering horrific fiends and dangers to humanity. Or being dangers to humanity.\n\nHe nodded as if she had confirmed a hypothesis. \"Very good. Now, little mouse, I have a bargain for you. Or rather, for your masters. We both want the manuscript, but we'll get it faster by working together. A copy could be arranged. A deal can be made. Do you agree?\"\n\nWhat Irene truly wanted to say was that she didn't like being called little mouse. It wasn't even as if she was that small. She was five foot nine, which was a perfectly good height for a woman in most worlds. Fair Folk or not, this man was an arrogant, insulting, offensive boor, and if she could, she would personally make him run a marathon ahead of an oncoming locomotive.\n\nWhat she said was, \"Yes, sir.\" She dropped her eyes submissively. Fair Folk were so accustomed to falling into attitudes and high drama themselves that they half expected it from humans and were always gratified to find their expectations borne out. They thought of everything in terms of stories, with themselves as the main characters. They played roles\u2014no, they lived roles\u2014and they saw the world around them in terms of the mental movie in which they were starring. He wanted her to be a meek little agent. Very well, she'd play the part for him, and use it to get the job done, and try to ignore the burning throb of anger and incipient ulcers.\n\nHe smiled at her. This time it was more of a seductive smile than an angry thin-lipped snarl. It was warm enough that she could nearly have smiled back, if she hadn't known how much of a mask it was. It was inviting, somehow suggesting darkness and candlelight and closeness, a catch in the breath, a warm hand in hers, a pressure against her body...\n\n\"Good girl. Wait a moment.\" He walked across to the desk and withdrew a key from his pocket, unlocking drawers and rifling through them to find paper, pen, and ink. \"Where did he keep it\u2014ah yes.\" He dropped a sheet of paper on the dried blood, opened a bottle of purple ink, dipped a quill in it, and scrawled a quick note. \"There. We're having a ball at the embassy tomorrow. Here's a private invitation for you. Bring a friend. Bring a lover, even. Find me there and tell me what your masters say to my little proposition. And remember...\"\n\nHe let the sentence hang in the air. Obligingly Irene said, \"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"Remember that I would make a better master for you than the Cathedral of Reason.\" There was a glow about him, an aura of presence, as if the light that fell on him came from somewhere else, somewhere more beautiful, more special. His eyes were pure gold, reassuring, enchanting, all-encompassing. Even the slit catlike pupils now seemed more natural than human eyes ever could. He stepped forward to lay his hands on her shoulders, drawing her close against him. \"I will be everything to you, little one. I will protect and shield you. You will be my adored one, my own special love, my sweet, my pet, my beauty, my heart's delight.\"\n\nHe smelled of spice and honey. She could feel the coldness of his hands through his torn gloves and the fabric of her clothing.\n\n\"Say that you'll be mine,\" he murmured, his lips close to hers.\n\nThe markings across Irene's back burst into sudden agony and she pulled away harshly, gasping for breath. He took a step towards her, but she raised her hand, and he paused.\n\n\"I belong\"\u2014to the Library\u2014\"to the Cathedral of Reason,\" she spat. \"Seducing me so I'll betray my masters will not convince them to form an alliance.\"\n\n\"Oh well.\" He raised his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss. \"I felt like trying. I'll see you tomorrow, little mouse. Don't forget. Or I'll come and find you.\"\n\nHe turned on his heel and strode across to the safe, scooping up the papers and visiting card. She could see the care that he took not to touch the cold metal. \"Merely our private correspondence, my dear,\" he tossed over his shoulder. \"About library books. Nothing to concern you.\"\n\nIrene bit her tongue hard enough to hurt, trying to keep her face inquisitively bland. He could have used the word library just in passing. He didn't necessarily suspect her. Or he might have been talking in order to keep her attention on him, rather than on anything else...\n\nParanoia gibbered at the back of her mind. Some Fae did know about the Library. The powerful ones. Was this particular Fae that powerful?\n\nThe door slammed behind him.\n\nShe had nearly given way. He'd been more than she expected, in every sense. If it hadn't been for her bindings to the Library, she might not have been able to resist in time. And what then? The thought literally made her shiver. There had been other cases of Librarians who had been lost to chaos. The stories weren't reassuring. The undocumented cases even more so. And there was the one horror story that every Librarian knew, about the man who'd turned traitor to the Library and sold it out. He had never been caught and was still out there\u2014\n\nHer nails dug into her palms as she forced herself into proper posture and composure. She walked across to look at the document on the desk. It was a basic note of admission to the Liechtenstein Embassy, for tomorrow night, for a Grand Ball.\n\nIt was signed, Silver."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 5",
                "text": "\"I've found out all about it,\" Kai said as he sliced a bread roll into halves. \"Hey, this is real butter. Cool.\"\n\n\"We're lucky that it isn't flash-frozen with chemical supplements,\" Irene said. They'd had trouble finding a restaurant that wasn't billing itself as all new and all special, equipped with the latest scientific devices to preserve, enhance, and cook the food that was served inside. Post-meal condition of the diners was not mentioned.\n\n\"It makes a nice change,\" Kai said. He laid the knife down between the two pieces of buttered roll. \"So, do you want to go first, or me?\"\n\nKai was clearly bubbling with enthusiasm to tell her all about his investigation. Irene couldn't help but wonder just how discreet a criminal he'd been in his own alternate, before joining the Library. She made him keep quiet until the waiter had brought their wine and retreated into the curtained shadows of the restaurant, and tried not to be too amused by it all. Five years of enforced study had clearly left him with enough spare energy to run the lights for most of London.\n\n\"You first,\" Irene said. \"Give me a full breakdown.\"\n\n\"All right. Now, first of all, Liechtenstein is a major power in this world. They do the best zeppelins. And everyone knows it. That newspaper seller was right. And they do sell information, but not their big secrets.\"\n\n\"No industrial espionage?\" Irene asked. \"No reverse-engineering of technology or attempts to invade other countries?\"\n\n\"Ah, there's a reason for that.\" Kai took a sip of his wine. \"Hey, this isn't bad. For a cheap little hole-in-the-wall place like this.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"So, what's the reason?\"\n\n\"The Fae keep them out. They keep the entire country well protected to shield their own goings-on, and it keeps out the industrial and national spies as well. Remember the bit about the ambassador being one of the Fair Folk?\" Kai pressed his lips together for a moment in a gesture of pure disgust. \"It's not just him. There's a lot of them in Liechtenstein. They spawn there, or breed, or something. It's a nexus for their filth. The local populace tolerates them. They've been bought off with trinkets and flashy glamour.\"\n\nIrene frowned. It didn't sound as if Kai was going to be thrilled that they were going to the embassy ball tomorrow night. \"Ah,\" she said neutrally, and sipped her wine. \"So it's quite normal for Fair Folk to be amongst the Liechtenstein Embassy staff?\"\n\nKai nodded. \"They're known for it, even. Newspaper reporters were trying to get interviews at the embassy gates. One said that other nations dealing with the country carried cold-iron talismans now, it was that bad.\"\n\n\"Good to know that works,\" Irene said. \"Assuming it does?\"\n\n\"Well, they wouldn't carry them unless it did,\" Kai said. \"Unless...\" He paused. \"Unless the Fair Folk are just faking the whole thing in order to lure their victims into a false sense of security.\"\n\n\"Well, that's possible too,\" Irene agreed regretfully. She held up her hand to pause him as the waiter arrived with their soup, and they were quiet until the man had left. \"All right,\" she said, picking up her spoon. \"Go on.\"\n\n\"The current ambassador has held the post for the last eighty years,\" Kai said, picking up his own spoon. \"His name is Silver. Or rather, people call him Silver. It seems nobody knows his real name outside Liechtenstein, if anyone does. Though the fact that it's apparently a reportable fact about him that nobody knows his real name...\" He sighed. \"Fae. The reporter that I was talking to said that he hadn't changed at all in the last eighty years, except to update his wardrobe. He's got a fairly typical reputation for a Fair Folk. Seductive, arrogant, party-going, patronizes artists.\"\n\nIrene thought about that. \"Does he patronize engineers?\" she asked.\n\n\"The reporter didn't mention that,\" Kai said. \"Why?\"\n\nIrene shrugged. \"It just seemed relevant, given we're told this alternate favours technology, and if Liechtenstein's economy is based on airships. By the way, you know a lot about the Fair Folk.\"\n\nKai looked as though he was considering spitting on the ground. \"Those creatures\u2014we had something like them in the alternate that I came from. Pervasive thieves, wasters, destroyers\u2014they make their way into society and tear it apart. They destabilize reality. They're tools of chaos. They are chaos. You can't expect me to approve of things like that.\"\n\n\"Look, calm down,\" Irene said. \"Have some soup. I agree that they're malign. But we're not here on some sort of campaign to root them out. Remember the mission.\" She was surprised by his vehemence; it was more than she'd expect from a trainee. But personal experience was probably behind it. She wondered how personal the experience might be. An involvement with one of them? The loss of a friend or lover? \"Our job is to get the text and then we can get the hell out of here.\"\n\nKai stared at her for a moment, then lowered his eyes. \"I apologize for my improper behaviour,\" he said, suddenly formal. \"You are the head of this mission, of course. I just wish to convey my feelings on the subject. My extremely strong feelings on the subject.\"\n\nIrene tried to think of a way to respond that wouldn't seem dismissive. And he was shifting speech patterns again\u2014from slang to formal and back again. She wondered if he'd noticed it himself. Possibly the influence of the Library, compared to his previous edgy lifestyle?\n\nShe set those thoughts aside for later consideration and did her best to smile. \"It's all right. Really. You aren't the only one who's had problems with chaos. But we can't assess how to handle the situation until we have a full picture of it. Please tell me more about Liechtenstein and the embassy.\"\n\nKai returned a thin smile, but it was clearly a duty rather than a pleasure. \"Well, as I was going to say, the Fae infestation in Liechtenstein seems to help keep out neighbouring countries. Maybe because they're not sure what the Fae could do, or maybe they're worried about the Fae expanding into their countries. And Liechtenstein's a peach that a lot of people would otherwise want to pluck from the branch and sink their teeth into.\"\n\nIrene raised her eyebrows.\n\n\"Okay,\" Kai said, waving his spoon, \"a dramatic metaphor, but have you noticed how very balanced and counterbalanced this whole world is? If you take Liechtenstein, there are mad scientists everywhere. The people I questioned implied some kind of mad scientist race. I know I'm just a trainee, but surely the influence of science there could only be to balance the amount of chaos the Fae bring to the table\u2014especially in Liechtenstein itself?\"\n\n\"Or maybe the Fae are telling stories about science,\" Irene hypothesized. \"Or being involved in stories about science. Or maybe Liechtenstein is taking on the role of Belgium in this alternate. My father once did a check on it in as many alternates as he could find. Belgium always seems to get invaded, fall prey to meteorites, or get infested by alien fungus or something... and don't look now, but someone's just come in and is staring at us.\"\n\n\"It must be you he's looking at,\" Kai said hopefully, tilting his spoon in a vain attempt to catch a reflection of the room behind him. \"Do something odd and see if he reacts.\"\n\n\"He's coming this way,\" Irene said briefly. He appeared every inch the wealthy aristocrat. From the top hat to the silk-lined cape to the silver-headed cane (a sword-cane, she suspected). His eyes were fixed on Kai. \"Quickly,\" she murmured, \"did you do anything that you should have told me about?\"\n\n\"Definitely not.\" Kai turned to follow Irene's gaze. \"Hm. Wait. I saw him at the embassy.\"\n\n\"As I saw you, sir,\" the man said, doffing his top hat in a small bow to Kai, then a subsidiary one to Irene. \"May I join you at this table?\"\n\nKai flicked a glance to Irene. She nodded slightly. He turned back to the man. \"Of course,\" he said. \"Though I don't think we've been introduced?\"\n\nA waiter had come dashing up with an extra chair and withdrew with the man's hat and cloak.\n\nThe man seated himself and leaned forward, steepling his fingers. \"I trust I may speak freely before your associate?\" He nodded towards Irene. \"Some of what I have to say may not be fit for the ears of one of the gentler sex.\"\n\nKai looked at Irene for a moment. Irene hesitated, then looked down at her plate in a docile manner. She'd had to play this sort of role before, though admittedly not when coaching a junior at the same time. \"Please let me stay, sir,\" she said to Kai. \"I will simply take notes as normal.\"\n\nKai nodded to her in a lordly manner, then turned back to their guest. \"I assure you that Miss\"\u2014he barely faltered\u2014\"Winters here is entirely trustworthy and is a valued associate of mine. You may speak freely in front of her. Though I would be interested to know what you propose to discuss.\"\n\nPart of Irene's mind was surprised at Kai's sudden elegance of speech. He'd shifted again into that extreme formality she'd noted earlier. And while she could manage such linguistic shifts easily enough from experience in various alternates, she hadn't thought that he'd be so capable. Stranger and stranger from a boy who claimed to be from a cybered-up alternate, where he was a petty criminal. She very much wanted to talk to Coppelia about this. The other part of her mind wondered why he'd dubbed her \"Winters\" and what the cultural reference might be.\n\nShe watched their guest from under her eyelashes. He had relaxed a little now and was leaning back in his chair. He was a very aquiline physical type, with a well-defined nose, deep-set shadowy eyes, high cheek-bones, and long, delicate fingers. The perfect example of a lead protagonist in certain types of detective fiction. In fact she wondered if...\n\n\"Very well,\" the stranger said. \"Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Peregrine Vale, fifteenth Earl of Leeds.\"\n\nKai gave a little nod. \"Kay Strongrock, at your service. Might I ask the nature of your business?\"\n\nThe waiter cleared away the soup course and brought the main meal for Irene and Kai. He also brought a spare glass for the visitor, filling it unbidden, before retreating again. The intrusion allowed Irene to bite her lip and refrain from kicking Kai under the table, as she'd just managed to work out where he was getting his pseudonyms from. Strongrock\u2014Rochefort. Winters\u2014De Winter. She would have to explain to him why it was a bad idea to pull pseudonyms from literary sources. If the other person had read the book, it gave them far too much information. They'd start looking around for three possible musketeers or mysterious Richelieu-like manipulators behind the scenes.\n\nEven though she had to admit that being compared to Milady de Winter had its flattering side.\n\n\"I observed you this afternoon, Mr. Strongrock,\" the Earl of Leeds stated. \"You were outside the Liechtenstein Embassy. You arrived while they were unloading their zeppelins. You watched the newspaper reporters and then questioned them afterwards.\"\n\n\"Your lordship seems to have paid a great deal of attention to my movements,\" Kai said. There was an undertone of threat to his voice.\n\nThe Earl of Leeds tilted his hand. \"Call me Vale, please. After all, this is a purely private meeting in a very unofficial capacity.\"\n\nKai raised an eyebrow and sliced into his steak. \"Oh?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" Vale said. He smiled a little.\n\nAnd it was at that moment that Irene remembered where she'd seen his face before. She'd picked up some newspapers earlier, to get a quick impression of the current political and temporal dynamics. Vale had been on the third page of one; shot half in profile, with him half turned away, clearly unwilling to have the photograph taken. The caption had been NOTED DETECTIVE CONSULTS WITH BRITISH MUSEUM.\n\nIrene continued to eat, thinking furiously. If their companion was indeed a noted detective, investigating the Liechtenstein Embassy and working with the British Museum\u2014they were either unexpectedly lucky or in very serious trouble.\n\n\"So,\" Kai said. \"Leaving aside that I saw no sign of your following me...\"\n\n\"That,\" Vale said smoothly, \"is what you may expect to see when I am following you.\"\n\nKai choked slightly on his wine. \"Pardon me. But then, sir, why were you following me? What was so interesting about my activities?\"\n\nVale's smile narrowed even further. \"Why, Mr. Strongrock, the fact that they mirrored my own. I suspect that we are investigating the same matter. To be frank, sir, if we are both chasing the same hare, I would rather that you did not start it and cause us both to lose it.\"\n\nKai darted Irene a glance. As clear as daylight, she read a desperate plea for help in his eyes. \"Mm,\" he said meditatively.\n\nIrene gasped. It was probably a little theatrical, but, she hoped, not too much so. \"Mr. Strongrock! Our investigation is strictly private! Even if His Lord\u2014that is, even if Mr. Vale is a famous private detective, we could be looking into entirely different matters!\"\n\nShe hoped that conveyed the message of we need more information thoroughly enough.\n\nKai patted her on the hand soothingly. \"My associate has a point, Mr. Vale,\" he said. \"We are operating under conditions of strict confidentiality.\"\n\n\"As am I, sir,\" Vale said with equanimity, not seeming at all put off. \"Whatever minor assumptions I might make about you are simply the result of anything you may have revealed to me yourselves, rather than from any investigations on my part.\"\n\nKai raised his eyebrows. \"But we have revealed nothing to you,\" he said, a moment before Irene could kick his ankle.\n\n\"Forgive me when I say that it is obvious that you are strangers to London,\" Vale said. He turned his glass in his hand, regarding it with a dry smugness. \"I am not speaking merely of Mr. Strongrock's need to check the street signs when leaving the Liechtenstein Embassy. Neither of you have the accent of native Londoners, and to be truthful I cannot place either of you within the British Isles.\" He frowned a little. \"Which is unusual. Miss Winters might perhaps have a trace of Germanic brutality to her verbs\u2014possibly the result of a governess or boarding-school at an impressionable age? Mr. Strongrock, on the other hand, has the accent and the bearing characteristic of certain noble families of Shanghai. While neither of these in themselves is that unusual in London, both of you are dressed in a manner that suggests a hasty choice of clothing from a second-rate supplier. Miss Winters's gloves, for instance.\"\n\nUnable to resist the impulse, Irene glanced down at her gloves, which lay next to her table setting. She knew that they clashed with her dress, but there hadn't been much of a choice in the shop.\n\n\"Precisely,\" Vale said. \"A woman as carefully turned out as Miss Winters would not commit such an elementary error in dress. Similarly, Mr. Strongrock's shoes\"\u2014Kai shuffled his feet farther under his chair\u2014\"were clearly worn before him by a man with the habit of kicking the right side of his forefoot against his chair, but Mr. Strongrock himself does not do so. And if the two of you had been in London for a while now, and making enquiries about Lord Wyndham and the Liechtenstein Embassy, then I assure you that I would have known about it.\"\n\nKai opened his mouth, and Irene realized that he was about to say something like How did you know I asked about Lord Wyndham? Apparently he had never been taught the first defence in the science of provocative questioning: Keep Your Mouth Shut. This time she did manage to kick him under the table. He shut his mouth again.\n\n\"Mm,\" Vale said, apparently satisfied. \"A sharing of information could be quite useful. But on the other hand, as Miss Winters has said, we could be looking into entirely different matters. I believe we have come to the point where we decide whether to trust one another.\"\n\n\"So it seems,\" Kai said, making a recovery. \"Some more wine?\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Vale said, extending his glass to be filled. There was silence for a few minutes. Irene turned over various strategies in her mind. Unfortunately, most of them involved Vale briefly leaving the table so that she could talk urgently with Kai, and this seemed unlikely to happen. She was simultaneously impressed by the man's skills of observation and significantly worried by them. This sort of intellect was splendid in fictional characters, but in practice it risked making their task a great deal more awkward.\n\nFortunately, the situation was interrupted by screams and loud grinding noises from the street. Diners dropped their knives and forks to turn towards the doorway. A couple of men leapt to their feet, wineglasses still in their hands.\n\nKai managed an infinitesimal blink at Irene, then turned to Vale. \"Do you think we should investigate, sir?\"\n\n\"Of course!\" Vale exclaimed, rising. He picked up his sword-stick, balancing it casually in his left hand. \"Madam, kindly stay here. Mr. Strongrock, if you would accompany me\u2014\" He strode towards the door.\n\n\"What do I do?\" Kai muttered to Irene.\n\n\"Stay with him,\" Irene whispered. \"I'll hold back. Find out what's going on. Be careful, he's a detective.\"\n\n\"I'd worked that bit out,\" Kai muttered. But he displayed a wild enthusiasm as he raced after Vale, an eagerness for action.\n\nIrene glanced around as the two men hurried off. Nobody creeping out of the shadows to try to abduct her while their attention was elsewhere. Good. She picked up her bag and walked after them.\n\nThe restaurant's reception area had large glass windows, which provided a convenient view of the narrow street outside\u2014which was in total chaos. A giant mechanical centipede\u2014well, some sort of segmented insect with multiple legs; Irene was hardly going to stand there and count them all\u2014was wreaking havoc in the alleyway outside. She spotted a badly damaged cart and several broken windows. There was barely room for it to navigate, let alone turn around, and it was dancing a few steps forward and then a few steps back as its front feelers seemed to quest for something or someone. Oil oozed from its crevices, while steam puffed from its head segment and mingled with the ambient fog. She noticed that a couple of people had already been hurt and bystanders were screaming and running in all directions. Then of course pausing, at a theoretically safe distance, to watch what it did next.\n\nKai and Vale were standing in the doorway, assessing it. At least, Vale looked as if he was assessing it. Kai just looked stunned.\n\n\"How the hell did that thing get through the streets?\" Kai asked.\n\nVale sniffed. \"It probably came up from the sewers. The recent renovation programme has been a godsend to criminals across London.\"\n\n\"Vale!\" The creature's echoing voice boomed down the street. \"Prepare to face your doom!\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Vale said cheerfully, \"it's for me.\"\n\nKai looked hurt. \"It might have got us confused,\" he said. \"Perhaps it's for me.\"\n\n\"No, no, I assure you, it's for me,\" Vale said. \"But would you mind watching the rear end while I distract the front? Sometimes they have high-emission scintillotherms located there.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Kai said. \"Not a problem.\"\n\nIrene leaned against the wall and tried not to sigh. Perhaps Vale was an ethical person, if his enemy was happy to risk innocent lives to hunt him down. Assuming he hadn't staged the entire thing, of course, but it was also just one more distraction. How on earth was she supposed to manage an investigation with these constant interruptions?\n\nThe two men ran out into the street: Vale to the right, towards the creature's head, and Kai to the left, towards its rear. Irene debated which one to follow. Kai was under her protection, but following Vale could be far more informative.\n\nThe question was settled for her as the centipede threw itself into rapid reverse, metal claws scraping on the pavement as it danced backwards. Its head came into view: a monstrous steel model of mandibles and huge faceted glass eyes, large enough for a man to sit in, with steam jetting out in thick squealing bursts on either side. Vale stood before it, his sword unsheathed from its cane and blazing with electricity. Each time the centipede lowered its head to try to bite at him, he parried, and sparks flew to sizzle against pavement and walls.\n\nWith a dazzling burst of speed, he darted forward between the gnashing mandibles and leapt up onto the main part of the centipede's head, balancing there for a moment. He raised his blade and brought it down into one of the creature's eyes.\n\nElectricity blazed up in a great sparking column. The centipede gave a hissing scream and thrashed all along its length, one segment jolting into the next, with steam gushing out from all the apertures. A hatch dropped open beneath the creature, and a man in a greasy black boiler suit came rolling out of it, coughing and spitting.\n\nVale leapt down from the head, landing in a billow of coattails. He pointed his sword at the man. \"Talk, sir, or\u2014\" At that point Irene's attention was distracted by someone attempting to tug her bag out from under her arm. She turned to see one of the waiters\u2014no, it wasn't one of the waiters. It was a man in evening dress, with a napkin hastily thrown over one arm, posing as a waiter. His watch was far too expensive to be a waiter's, his grey moustache too well groomed. And his right hand, she noted in the clarity of the moment, had thin electrical burn lines running from knuckles to wrist.\n\nHe tugged again. Irene released the bag, keeping hold of the strap, letting him tug at it. She dropped into a semi-squat, balancing on her left heel, then brought her right leg out in a straight wide pivot. It caught him off balance and he fell to the ground with a curse.\n\nShe straightened again smoothly, pulling her bag back against her body, and picked up one of the flimsy restaurant chairs. It was of dubious quality, and as her antagonist tried to get up, it broke very thoroughly when it slammed into his body.\n\nHe staggered back. She picked up another chair.\n\nOutside there were more explosions. Inside, people were gasping and pointing at her and the pseudo-waiter.\n\nIrene tried to decide whether it was more important to maintain her cover as a helplessly feminine secretary or to beat the bag-snatcher over the head with the chair and take him prisoner. After all, he wasn't definitely involved with any larger conspiracies and might simply be a petty thief...\n\nThe hell with it. She brought the chair down on his head, and he went backwards like a sack of potatoes.\n\nShe dropped the remnants of the chair and put her free hand to her chest, hyperventilating. \"I\u2014,\" she gasped. \"I come here on holiday, and this man, this thief tries to snatch my bag, and nobody tries to help me. Not a single person comes to a helpless woman's defence...\"\n\n\"My dear Miss Winters, I am so sorry.\" Vale had stepped back into the restaurant, sheathing his sword. \"I do regret that you should have suffered assault at the hands of some hooligan\u2014\"\n\nHe looked at the face of the prostrate man and blinked.\n\n\"Do I understand that this man assaulted you?\"\n\n\"He attempted to snatch my bag,\" Irene said, sniffling a little. \"I\u2014I simply reacted on instinct\u2014\"\n\n\"You.\" Vale snapped his fingers, and two of the waiters responded. \"Have this man taken to the nearest prison at once.\"\n\nIt's good to be an earl and a noted detective, Irene reminded herself, a little wistfully.\n\nKai walked into the restaurant, brushing ashes and powder off his jacket. \"Well, that seems to be\u2014Irene! That is, Miss Winters! What happened?\" He glanced warily from Irene to Vale and back to Irene again, clearly wondering if the whole thing had been some sort of diversion.\n\nIrene pointed a finger at the man being dragged off by the waiters. \"That person attempted to grab my bag. I resisted.\"\n\n\"I suggest we return to our table at once,\" Vale said, lowering his voice. \"This merely confirms my suspicions.\"\n\nFive minutes later, they were round the table again. The steak had gone cold, but the wine was still drinkable. The general buzz of conversation had resumed its former level. Irene was surprised at how quickly people seemed to have forgotten the centipede attack. It implied that such things were common, which wasn't a comforting thought.\n\n\"Forgive me my earlier discretion,\" Vale said. \"And thank you for your assistance, Mr. Strongrock. But this attack on Miss Winters only proves what I suspected.\"\n\n\"And what is that?\" Kai demanded, turning towards Vale. Irene had the impression that he was slightly miffed that she hadn't asked about his valiant conduct vis-\u00e0-vis the centipede's tail. She made a note to get the full details at some point\u2014when a valuable contact wasn't engaged in sharing useful information.\n\n\"That your investigations into the Fair Folk have been noted.\" Vale leaned forward. \"I observed your questions at the embassy, Mr. Strongrock. And now a man whom I know to be a Fae agent tries to steal Miss Winters's handbag. Am I wrong to suspect a link?\"\n\nKai threw Irene a frantic glance. She gave him a slight nod.\n\n\"You are not wrong, sir,\" Kai said firmly. \"There is a link.\"\n\n\"I thought as much!\" Vale glanced between them. \"In that case, we are investigating the same matter\u2014though possibly from different directions. I, too, am concerned with the Fair Folk, Mr. Strongrock. With the recent thefts of occult material. And with Belphegor.\"\n\n\"Belphegor?\" Irene gasped. \"The mysterious cat burglar?\"\n\n\"Indeed.\" Vale's brows drew together. \"I have suspicions as to her identity. And what is more, I believe that all these things are connected. Even though you are both visitors to our city...\" He let the sentence trail away, as though expecting to be challenged on his deductions, then continued. \"Even though you haven't been here long, the newspapers have been blatant about the thefts. You can hardly open a paper without seeing a new headline. Let me be frank: is this what you are investigating?\"\n\nIrene caught Kai's eye and gave him a very slight nod. She suspected that Vale would pick up on this, but she hoped that he'd interpret it as a suggestion rather than the order that it was.\n\n\"You are correct,\" Kai said.\n\n\"Then I suggest we combine forces. My card.\" He flipped out a silver card-case, selected a card from it, and slid it across the table to Kai. \"Please call on me tomorrow morning, when we can talk more privately. Your associate is also welcome, of course.\" He gave Irene a dry nod, which made her wonder just how much he had guessed. \"Thank you for your time and assistance.\"\n\nVale rose. Kai and Irene rose too. There was a quick confusion of bows and curtseys, followed by Vale striding off, the waiter hurrying after him with hat and cloak.\n\nKai and Irene sat back down.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Kai said. \"I didn't see him following me earlier at all.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" Irene said. \"I suspect he's rarely spotted. But I think he could be a very useful contact.\"\n\nKai perked up. \"So we got lucky?\"\n\n\"It happens,\" Irene said. \"From time to time. Now, finish your wine and tell me about the centipede.\"\n\nShe was already working out a list of things that she needed to ask Kai later, in private. But for the moment, the centipede would do."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 6",
                "text": "\"Right,\" Irene said as they finished their coffee. \"We have to assume that our cover's blown.\"\n\n\"Because of Vale?\" Kai asked.\n\n\"No.\" Irene tilted the cup, staring at the dregs. \"The man who tried to snatch my purse. If he's working for the Fae, I can only think he saw me at Lord Wyndham's house. And if that's the case, then he knows my face, he probably knows my hotel, and now he knows you as well. We need to break our trail.\"\n\n\"But all our things are in the hotel room!\" Kai said. \"All the clothes we bought\u2014\"\n\n\"How many did you buy?\"\n\nKai tried to meet her gaze, but his eyes wandered down to his coffee cup. \"I was just setting up several possible identities, in case we needed to move among different circles of society,\" he said, unconvincingly.\n\nIrene patted his hand. \"Don't worry. In that case, they'll be sure we'll return, and you'll have tied up some of their resources.\"\n\nKai sighed.\n\n\"So,\" Irene said briskly. \"Standard measures.\" These were taught in the Library alongside languages and research but were rather harder to practise inside the Library's boundaries. But Kai's personal experience should mean he was good at this sort of thing. \"We'll leave here separately; I'll go first and draw off anyone obvious. They may only have a single watcher. You go to the hotel room, pick up our papers and our cash supply, then leave via the back of the hotel. Do your best to lose any followers. Meet me in front of...\" She considered, then checked her new clock-work watch. There was no point wearing something electronic when she might have to take it into the Library. \"Holborn Tube station at eleven o'clock. That should be busy enough to throw off any watchers. Damn. I'm never sure whether I prefer worlds that have invented mobile phone equivalents or not.\"\n\n\"It'd make communication easier,\" Kai said.\n\n\"But it would make it easier to track us too,\" Irene said. \"And would empower anyone who's trying to catch up with us. All right, are you okay with those instructions?\"\n\nKai nodded. \"What do I do if you don't turn up at Holborn?\"\n\n\"Contact Dominic,\" Irene said. \"He'll put you in touch with Coppelia, and she'll work out what to do next. But I don't expect that to be necessary.\"\n\nKai nodded. He picked up his coffee cup and tilted it sadly, looking at the dregs in the bottom. \"We're not doing very well so far, are we?\"\n\nIrene blinked. \"What? Where do you get that idea?\"\n\n\"Well, the book's been stolen, enemies are tracking us, we're having to abandon our base\u2014\"\n\n\"Get that out of your head right this minute,\" Irene said. \"Did you expect us to just be able to waltz in and pick it up?\"\n\nKai shrugged. \"I had sort of got the idea that it would be appropriate for an assignment involving a novice like me.\"\n\nIrene leaned forward in her chair. \"Point one: the Library never has enough people to be able to give novices 'easy' assignments. Never expect an assignment to be 'easy.' Point two: yes, the manuscript has been stolen, but we already have several leads to follow, including an appointment to meet a famous detective.\" The thought made her smile. Perhaps sometimes wishes did come true. \"Point three: it's not a base; it's a hotel room. Point four: the fact that we are being tracked is a lead in itself and means we can use them to work backwards to find the book. And point five: we've an invitation to attend a ball at the Liechtenstein Embassy, which ought to be very interesting.\"\n\nKai stiffened. \"We've got what?\"\n\n\"See you at Holborn,\" Irene said, rising and collecting her bag.\n\nThere was indeed someone waiting outside the restaurant. She spotted him while checking her reflection in a shop window. The glare of the actinic street lamps made them better mirrors than the fly-specked piece of glass in the hotel room. Small loss. The tail was an average-looking type, with a cheap bowler hat and a frock-coat frayed at lapels and elbows. He also wasn't very good at being inconspicuous. Maybe that was usually the job of the colleague who'd tried to snatch her bag.\n\nAt the next street corner, she managed a surreptitious glance back while waiting to cross the road and saw him murmuring into cupped hands. He opened them, and something buzzed out, circling his head before zooming upwards in a clock-work clatter of wings.\n\nTwo streets later, he'd rather obviously acquired reinforcements. She stopped to check her hat in another shop window and caught another glimpse of him, clearly gesturing to three newcomers and pointing in her direction.\n\nIrene jabbed a hat-pin back into place viciously and considered how best to lose them. This London was laid out like most Londons, and she was on the edge of Soho. It'd be easy enough to lose followers there, but a woman on her own would attract the wrong sort of attention, and it might take too long for her to extract herself inconspicuously. A department store might work, but if they had any sense they'd put watchers at front and back before searching for her inside. Also now there were at least four of them, and there could be others she hadn't spotted. The Tube itself was a possibility, but she hadn't investigated it yet. And while the crowds might let her hide herself from her pursuers, they'd also be ideal cover for an \"accident\" or kidnapping. She was halfway to Piccadilly by now too, so she needed to start turning back if she was to meet Kai comfortably by Holborn at eleven.\n\nHm. Wait. Covent Garden usually had a market of some sort in most alternate Londons, whether it was selling flowers or curios or simply a tourist trap. Even if there weren't many stalls open at this time of night, it should still be busy enough for her to lose her pursuers. That should do the trick.\n\nIrene should have expected it: Covent Garden market was a technology extravaganza. Stalls teetered on collapsible legs and sprayed rays of light from dangling ether lamps. The path between them was a constantly shifting maze as each stall manoeuvred for yet more space on its automated feet, bouncing and jarring against the ones next to it. Much like Covent Gardens she'd seen elsewhere, there were several open yards, and a central area with a high glass roof and several banks of permanent shops. Pavement caf\u00e9s added their own influxes of shoppers to the area, and regular jets of steam came shooting out of the sewer gratings and manholes.\n\nShe put on a burst of speed as she entered the crowd, before the men following her could get any closer. She then allowed herself to be drawn into a whirlpool of spectators orbiting a display of mechanical exsanguinators. (She decided that the little jabbing steel needles weren't specifically unpleasant in themselves, but the oiliness from the self-slathering antiseptics somehow made the whole thing inexpressibly gruesome. It was something about the way that it glistened under the electric flares.)\n\nThere were as many women here as men, but the real difference was between those she suspected were genuine artisans and engineers and everyone else. The former had neat equipment cases tucked under their arms or chained to their wrists. The latter included wanderers on the lookout for an interesting bargain, slumming members of the upper classes, and fascinated onlookers. The women all wore scarves or veils against the sooty fog, just as Irene did, concealing anything from just their mouths to their entire faces. Many of the men had wound mufflers around the lower parts of their faces in a similar way. It gave the whole place a very seedy feeling, akin to a market for Victorian bank robbers, a shady shoppery for shady people.\n\nNearby, bustling market stalls touted portable notebooks with self-adhesive toolsets, and she spotted pocket watches with built-in lasers (she nearly bought one for Kai). Then there were Constructa-Kit automata, followed by freshly fried doughnuts and self-tattooing kits\u2014Just add ink!), then shawls with attached portable heating units, then\u2014\n\nIt hit her like a whiplash across her back, throwing her to her knees on the dirty pavement. She could feel every inch of her Library tattoo burning, feel it mapped out across her back as clearly as if she could see it. The world shivered around her. She tasted bile in her mouth and struggled not to throw up.\n\nThe words were everywhere. She could see them on the newspaper stands, swimming up through the whiteness to crawl across the paper. She could see them on the back of the paperback novel the man in front of her had tucked into his pocket, on the crudely printed advertisements fluttering from every stall, and on the receipts the woman to her left was checking. They printed themselves on everything legible in a spreading circle around her.\n\nBEWARE ALBERICH\n\nPeople were calling out and swearing in surprise and alarm, blaming the engineers and stall-holders for some sort of experimental side-effect (and what that said about this place, Irene reflected in some distracted corner of her mind, didn't bear thinking about). In some cases shoppers were shaking the affected items in the hopes that the words would fall off. Some hope. Irene had never before been the victim of an urgent message from the Library, but she knew the words would be permanently burned in. It was a shocking thing to do to printed media, which was why it was saved for only the most desperate purposes. Members of the public could read them, but at least no one would know what the words meant.\n\nIf Alberich was involved in this, then the warning was definitely desperate and necessary.\n\nShe pulled herself together with an effort that set her teeth on edge and glanced over her shoulder to check on the men who'd been following her. Damn. They were closing fast. They must have decided to pick her up now rather than risk losing her.\n\nIrene allowed herself a vicious smile. Pester an agent of the Library, would they? Hassle her when she'd just received an urgent message? Get in her way? Oh, they were going to regret that.\n\nShe waited for a breathless half-minute, until the shifting patterns of moving stalls closed up behind her, blocking her pursuers. They'd open again in a moment, of course...\n\nShe spat out in the Language, loud enough for it to carry, \"Clock-work legs on moving stalls, seize up and halt, hold and be still!\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon?\" the man next to her said. \"Were you speaking to me\u2014\" He cut off as, in a widening circle within range of Irene's voice, the moving stalls all came stuttering to a halt, jointed legs going abruptly rigid and stopping where they were. The general swirl of people and stalls was thrown into sudden and shocking confusion, far more dramatic than the earlier printing incident. People who'd been preparing to zig suddenly found themselves forced to zag. Piles of goods teetered on the edges of stalls and were barely saved from sliding off\u2014or not saved, in quite a few cases, adding to the general uproar.\n\nBefore anyone could come to awkward conclusions about the centre of the circle, Irene darted forward and elbowed her way past several complaining clots of shoppers. She could hear the grinding whir of gears and levers struggling with disobedient mechanical legs. The flow of people carried her forward out of her cul-de-sac, leaving her pursuers trapped behind the barricade of frozen stalls (and, she hoped, being trampled underfoot by angry shoppers). Irene headed for the nearest opening in the maze of tables, then from there to an alleyway. After a bit of rearrangement to veil and jacket, it was out onto the main street again\u2014heading back and round towards Holborn. With nobody following her this time.\n\nWith each step the reality of the message from the Library sank more deeply into her guts. Beware Alberich. Beware Alberich. Beware Alberich.\n\nShe didn't need this. She really didn't need this. She was already in the middle of a complicated mission, with a trainee to handle on top of it all. She'd given Kai an optimistic summary to keep his spirits up, but that didn't mean that anything was going to be easy.\n\nAnd now this.\n\nAlberich was a figure out of nightmare. He was the one Librarian who'd betrayed the Library and got away with it and was still somewhere out there. His true name was long since lost, and only his chosen name as a Librarian was remembered. He'd sold out to chaos. He'd betrayed the other Librarians who'd been working with him. And he was still alive. Somehow, in spite of age and time and the course of years that would afflict any Librarian who lived outside the Library, he was still alive.\n\nIrene found herself shivering. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and tried to rein her thoughts back from a train of needlessly baroque images. Stupid thoughts. After all, it wasn't as if Alberich was on her trail at this very moment...\n\nWas it?\n\nThe message from the Library couldn't have been faked. It must have been sent by one of the senior Librarians, probably Coppelia. It wouldn't have been sent unless the situation was urgent, which meant that she had to assume that Alberich was in the area. Worst-case scenario.\n\nShe glanced back into a shop window. Nobody seemed to be following her.\n\nShe needed to talk to Dominic, urgently, but the British Library would be shut at this time of night. He'd be at home\u2014the address being somewhere in the papers Kai was safeguarding. Tomorrow morning would be easier. For the moment she and Kai had to find a new hotel and go undercover.\n\nIrene wanted to go very deeply undercover. She wanted to go so deeply undercover that it'd take an automated steam shovel to excavate her out of it. She also had to decide how much to tell Kai. It was too dangerous to leave him in the dark, not to mention simply unfair, but at the same time she didn't want to panic him. After all, look how panicked she was herself. One panicked person was quite enough. Two would be overkill.\n\nPossibly he'd be ignorant enough not to realize just how bad the situation might be. Possibly he wouldn't have heard the horror stories that had been traded round in quiet alcoves about some of the things that Alberich had done.\n\nAnd possibly, Irene decided, as she came within sight of Holborn Tube station and saw Kai loitering under a street lamp, pigs would fly\u2014which would at least mean bacon for breakfast. Oh well. Hotel first. Dramatic explanations later."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 7",
                "text": "\"I don't want to complain or anything,\" Kai said, \"but we're currently holed up in a cheap hotel.\"\n\n\"We are,\" Irene agreed. She sat down and began to work her buttoned boots off, with a sigh of relief.\n\n\"This place isn't just cheap; it's filthy!\" Kai gestured round at the tatty yellow wallpaper, the dirt-streaked window, the threadbare counterpane on the double bed, the sallow mirror on the rickety dresser. \"You can't seriously expect us to\u2014\"\n\n\"Kai,\" Irene said firmly. \"You're spoilt. What happened to the shady but useful background? What happened to being a cool street runner who could handle that sort of thing? Have five years in the Library really softened you up that much?\"\n\nKai looked around, and his nose wrinkled. \"Yes,\" he finally said. \"They have.\" He sat down on the very edge of the bed. \"Is this much deep cover really necessary? Couldn't we, you know, go and hide out at the most expensive hotel in town and claim we're Canadians?\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene said. She removed one boot and started to work on the other. \"Deep cover. For the moment, I want us untraceable. We'll clean up tomorrow and find a nicer place.\"\n\n\"Is something the matter?\"\n\nIrene pulled off the second boot. \"Oof.\" She had to tell him; it wouldn't be safe to keep him ignorant. \"There is a potential problem,\" she admitted slowly. \"I don't know that it's an immediate issue.\"\n\nKai just looked at her.\n\n\"I had an urgent message from the Library.\" The next few words were difficult to say and even more difficult to keep calm and reasonable. \"It warned me to beware Alberich. You can pour me some of that brandy now.\"\n\nKai's hand halted halfway to the brandy bottle, on Irene's list of essential supplies. \"Wait,\" he said slowly. \"When you say Alberich, do you mean the one who's supposed to be...\" He trailed off, leaving it hanging. And, Irene noted to her displeasure, not pouring her brandy, either.\n\n\"No,\" Irene said. \"I don't mean the one who's supposed to be. I mean the one who is. Not that I've ever met him, and with any luck we won't have to and this is just a precaution.\" She hoped. \"Now can I have that brandy?\"\n\n\"He's real?\" Kai said. Still no brandy.\n\n\"He's recorded in the Library. How could he not be real?\"\n\nKai looked blank. \"He could be fictional?\"\n\nIrene gritted her teeth. \"No. He was formally marked for the Library, given the initiation and everything. That's why he can't go back there. It'd know he was there. But it proves that he is real, that he's not some sort of urban legend like the thing about the pipes and the tentacle monster.\" That had been one of the popular ones when she was a trainee. The logic was that if rooms of the Library could be connected by the plumbing, then there was some sort of dark central cistern with a huge tentacle monster living in it that ate old Librarians. And of course it was all covered up by order from on high... She and other trainees had spent several hopeful hours rapping on pipes and trying to pass messages or find tentacles. \"Brandy?\" she finished.\n\nKai finally remembered to get up and open the bottle. He splashed a bare quarter inch into a battered china cup and offered it to her.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Irene said, and knocked it back in one gulp, then offered the cup for a refill. \"A bit more this time, please.\"\n\nKai stared at her. \"Are you sure you're all right?\"\n\n\"It's been a busy evening,\" Irene said. \"And I'm going to be sitting up for the next few hours studying the local Language listings that Dominic gave us. You can get some sleep.\"\n\n\"But we ought to tell Dominic at once! After all, if Alberich's here, it proves how important the book is! And we should warn Dominic\u2014\"\n\n\"How?\" Irene enquired. She'd decided a while back that Socratic questioning was a good idea, because (a) it got students thinking for themselves, (b) sometimes they came up with ideas she hadn't thought of, and (c) it gave her more time to think while they were trying to find answers.\n\n\"We can go to the British Library\u2014oh wait. It won't be open at this time of night.\"\n\n\"It won't,\" Irene agreed, \"which is going to be annoying if we need to sneak back in there at some point to get back to the Library. And he didn't give us a home address.\" It should have been in those papers he'd given them. It wasn't. Which, a niggling voice at the back of her mind pointed out, had been careless of Dominic. Almost to the point of outright dereliction of duty in such a dangerous location. She might have needed his help urgently.\n\n\"We can use the Language to contact him,\" Kai said triumphantly.\n\nIrene considered that. \"I can make a construct and send it to warn him, but it will need to travel and find him.\"\n\n\"Magic,\" Kai said.\n\n\"Not my field,\" Irene replied. \"Are you any good at it?\"\n\n\"I can command some spirits,\" Kai said modestly. \"But I haven't had time to introduce myself to any local ones. I wouldn't want to try that unless we have no other choice.\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"And Dominic did say they could be dangerous. So we'll go to the British Library in the morning and talk to Dominic in person, then. The Library will have updated him in any case, just as they did me. It's not as if we're leaving him in danger. This isn't a bad horror film.\" She smiled, hopefully reassuringly.\n\n\"Oh,\" Kai said. He glanced at the small case by the door with the documents in it. \"So,\" he said, with a little too much casualness, \"can you show me some of the Language words in there?\"\n\n\"I could, but it wouldn't do you any good.\" Irene put down the cup. \"It won't be any different from how it is inside the Library. It still won't look like anything other than normal speech to you.\"\n\n\"Did it hurt?\"\n\nIrene blinked at the change of subject. \"Did what hurt?\"\n\n\"Getting the Library mark.\" Kai threw himself back down on the bed. It creaked under him. \"If that's the only way to understand the Language.\"\n\n\"Yes, and yes.\" Since Kai evidently wasn't going to bring it over to her, Irene got up and walked across to fetch the case. \"Look, you should get some sleep. There's no point us both staying up all night.\"\n\nKai rolled onto his front, resting his chin on his hands, and looked up at her. \"Irene,\" he said, and there was something low and stroking in his voice. \"When you say sleep, do you really mean just sleep?\"\n\nIrene looked at him, the case in her hands, and raised her eyebrows pointedly. \"Yes. I do really mean just sleep.\"\n\n\"But you, me\u2014we're sharing rather a small space, don't you think?\" He stretched, and she noticed his trousers clung appealingly tightly. \"You're not feeling some kind of in loco parentis responsibility towards a novice, are you? Is that what it is?\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene said briefly. \"But it's irrelevant in any case.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Look,\" she cut him off, before he got any ideas about standing up and taking her in his arms or anything like that. \"Kai, I like you, you're extremely handsome, and I hope we'll stay good friends, but you are not my type.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said.\n\nShe walked back, sat down, and opened the case, starting to thumb through the papers inside.\n\n\"What is your type?\" Kai asked hopefully.\n\nIrene looked up to see that he'd removed his cravat and unbuttoned his shirt and was showing a triangle of smooth, pale, muscular chest. She could imagine what he would feel like under her fingers.\n\nShe swallowed. \"Do we really have to do this?\"\n\n\"I'm not just trying to flatter you,\" Kai said. There was a thread of annoyance in his voice now. \"But I like you, I think you're clever and witty and charming, and I have a lot of respect for you. And believe me when I say I am marvellous in bed.\"\n\n\"I do believe you,\" Irene said, looking for a way out of this. \"I'm sure that we would spend a very nice evening. But I wouldn't get any study done then.\"\n\n\"After the study,\" Kai said hopefully.\n\nIrene rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand. She was getting a headache. \"Look, I appreciate you being polite about this, I appreciate you being absolutely charming, and I wish I could be more polite about turning you down. But it's been a long day and I still have work to do, and you're not really my type. And before this goes any further, my type is darkly dangerous and fascinating, of dubious morality. And yes, this caused the whole problem in the cat burglar scandal that was mentioned earlier. Which was deeply embarrassing at the time. And still is. Also, let me make myself perfectly clear that if you repeat this I will skin you alive. Right?\"\n\nKai looked at her with big disappointed eyes. \"I would have enjoyed partnering you,\" he said. \"Really. You would too.\"\n\n\"Allow me to inform you that I am an exquisite bed partner,\" Irene said, a little sniffily. \"I have travelled through hundreds of alternates and sampled partners from many different cultures. If I took you to bed, you certainly wouldn't be complaining.\"\n\nKai gave her another deep stare from those drowning-dark eyes of his.\n\nShe sighed. \"But right now, we have a book to find, I have to study, and you need to sleep. Please?\"\n\nEventually he did, and she could work in peace, with only the occasional side thought about tempting offers and beautifully contoured muscles.\n\nA couple of hours later, with Kai soundly asleep, Irene put down her papers and rubbed her sore temples. She'd just memorized a dozen different adverbs for the way that an airship moved, and fifteen adjectives for types of smog. She was due a break.\n\nUnfortunately, thought came along with it.\n\nAlberich was known to be allied with some of the Fae; he'd gone to them when he first went renegade. Now he allegedly played on their various factions with the energy of a lunatic musician with a pipe organ. The few fragmented reports that the Library had on him\u2014at least those that were accessible to juniors like herself\u2014suggested that he was after immortality.\n\nShe stared at the papers without really seeing them. Immortality. The Library gave an effective sort of immortality, or at least a continued life until the person involved grew tired of it. As long as a Library initiate bearing its mark was inside the Library, he or she didn't age. Out in the multiple worlds, one grew old, but inside the Library, ageing just stopped. She'd spent years in the Library herself while she was training. She'd had years of experience that didn't show anywhere obvious. Except perhaps her eyes sometimes, but she tried not to think about that.\n\nThat was why the Library hierarchy functioned as it did. Junior Librarians operated out in the divergent worlds while they still had the years to spare. Once they grew old, they retreated to work in the Library for as long as they chose, with only the occasional trip outside if necessary. These were people like Coppelia and Kostchei, spending their days in the endless rooms, finally able to get their research done properly. Some Librarians just lived on and on until they decided that they'd had enough, or went out into the alternate worlds to finish their days somewhere they liked. The Library paid for it, however expensive or exotic, on the grounds that \"nothing is too good for those who've spent their lives in service to the Library.\" Of course, it was similarly aged Librarians who voted for the funding on that sort of thing...\n\nIrene wasn't going to start thinking about that sort of thing yet. She had years in the field ahead of her yet. Decades. Things to do. People to see.\n\nBut then there was Alberich. He'd left the Library five hundred years ago. There was no way that he could still be alive by the Library's normal methods. He must have made some sort of bargain with the Fae, creatures defined by their impossibility. Common horror or fantasy literature supplied half a dozen unpleasant ideas on how Alberich could still exist, though some of them might not count as living.\n\nAnd what did he want to do with that continued existence? The Library could use unique books to connect and bind itself to particular alternate worlds. But what could someone else\u2014someone from outside the Library\u2014do with those linking books? It wasn't an area within which junior Librarians had been encouraged to speculate. The best answer she could come up with at the moment was something bad.\n\nAfter all, what might it imply if Alberich could influence whole worlds simply by owning certain key texts?\n\nIrene seriously considered another brandy. This was all growing overly complicated. Bradamant wanting to take over the mission, the Fae involvement, Alberich... and then there was Kai.\n\nShe looked across at his sleeping form. He didn't snore. Kai breathed gently and regularly, like an advertisement for particularly comfortable pillows. And he'd managed to fall asleep in just the sort of position that might require her to smooth his brow or wake him with a kiss. As for that earlier shift of persona from street punk to semi-aristocrat\u2014he'd handled that detective like a gentleman born. And his current interest in wardrobe, seduction, and general adventure really didn't fit the young man who'd introduced himself to her as Coppelia's latest student. There was something off. Coppelia had to have noticed it herself.\n\nIrene realized that she was tapping her finger against the papers. She deliberately stopped herself. Habits were dangerous; they could get you killed.\n\nHad Bradamant's interest in Kai been suspicious?\n\nIrene had her own history with Bradamant, which she certainly wasn't going to discuss in front of Kai, or behind Kai, or in any place where Kai might end up hearing about it. The woman was a poisonous snake. No, that was unfair to snakes. Irene had been Bradamant's student once, and she knew exactly what it meant. Get used as a live decoy, somehow miss any of the credit, but catch all the blame. Then spend years putting your research credentials back together again, after the blot on your record caused by rejecting an older Librarian's offer to take you out on another mission.\n\nWith an effort, she stopped herself from tapping on the papers again.\n\nIt was just three in the morning; she could hear distant church bells and clock chimes drifting through the fog outside. Another hour of study; then she'd sleep and Kai could keep watch. She was paranoid enough to want someone keeping watch, however unlikely it was that Alberich or anyone else could find them here.\n\nParanoia was one of the few habits that was worth keeping.\n\nAt eight o'clock the next morning, the doors of the combined British Museum and British Library opened. Irene and Kai joined the crowd of people heading in. Luckily nobody was in the mood for talking at that hour of the morning. People kept their gazes fixed on their boots, stared blankly ahead, or buried themselves ferociously in notebooks.\n\nThe Department of Classical Manuscripts was open, but Dominic Aubrey's office was closed. The door was locked, bolted, and possibly even barred on the inside, for all that Irene could tell. She didn't remember noticing a bar when she'd been inside, but she might have missed it.\n\n\"Shall I pick the lock?\" Kai asked as they (not for the first time) straightened from peering at it and did their best to imitate hopeful students, just in time to smile at passing staff.\n\n\"I'll do it,\" Irene said. \"He may have put some sort of wards up against physical or sorcerous lock picking, but he can't ward against the Language.\" She paused. \"Stand back.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Kai said, doing as she'd told him.\n\n\"Well, wards are one thing, but traps and alarms are something else.\" She ignored Kai's expression of sudden dismay (really, he should be grateful; he was getting an excellent education) and quickly went down on one knee. There she informed the door in the Language that all seals and bars on it were undone, all locks and bolts opened, and all wards gone.\n\nIt swung open quietly when she set her hand on the handle. She beckoned Kai in quickly after her and closed the door behind him.\n\nThe room was just as it had been yesterday. Early morning sunlight came in dimly through the windows, muffled by the fog beyond, and gleamed on the gold leaf and glass cases. The Library door itself was secured by means of a chain and padlock, the chain running through both the door-handle and a metal link set into the wall. It would be useless to prevent anyone coming from the other side, as the power of the Library would prevail, but it was efficient enough to stop people from trying it from this side.\n\n\"Irene,\" Kai said uneasily.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"If the door out was bolted from this side, and if the door to the Library was padlocked from this side too, how did anyone leave the room?\"\n\n\"A good point,\" Irene said. Encourage useful habits of thought. \"There must be a secret door here somewhere. Or he left through sorcery.\"\n\n\"So can you use the Language to find the secret door?\"\n\nIrene sat down on the chair behind the desk. It was clearly Dominic Aubrey's personal chair. It yielded with the ease of long use, with a single graceful creak, and smelled of snuff and coffee. \"Not exactly. Field exam; tell me why.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's not fair... ,\" Kai started, then looked at her expression and shut his mouth to think. \"Okay,\" he said a moment later. \"Sorry. I think I've got it. Everything within range of the Language reacts to it unless the command or sentence specifies otherwise, right? So if you just tell everything within range to unlock...\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"Then I'll end up opening the cases, the drawers, the cabinets along the wall there, the padlock on the Library door, and quite possibly my handbag and your wallet and the windows while we're at it. It's a reasonable suggestion, but it won't do unless we have absolutely no other choice. Now tell me why I'm not going to use sorcery.\"\n\nKai thought, then shrugged. \"Because Dominic may have put wards on any secret door, which will blow up when you use sorcery to detect them?\"\n\n\"Actually, no.\" Irene leaned her elbows on the desk. \"It's because I'm bad at sorcery.\"\n\n\"What? But anyone can do sorcery!\"\n\nShe lifted her eyebrows.\n\n\"Seriously,\" Kai said. \"You must be joking. Sorcery's one of the simplest skills around. Even my\u2014my youngest brother could command the simpler spirits and invoke the elements. You're not telling me that...\" He ran out of words mid-sentence, with the uneasy look of someone who'd spotted that he'd said the wrong thing.\n\nIrene had noticed it too. \"Your youngest brother,\" she repeated softly.\n\n\"Irene, I\u2014\"\n\n\"If I'd had a family, you told me before.\" She remembered the conversation in the Library, as forgetting was the last thing a fully trained Librarian should do. Memories were as important as books and almost as important as proper indexing. \"Kai, you've been lying to me about some things and hiding others. I know it, and you know it.\" She wished that she could run her hands through her hair in the way that he was doing now, but she was the older Librarian, and he was her apprentice, and she couldn't afford to show weakness. She had to be in control. She liked him, and she didn't actually like many people, and she didn't want to accuse him. She didn't want to... drive him away. \"Do you want to talk about it?\"\n\nHe drew himself up and stood in front of her, suddenly appearing very tall and yet somehow fragile. \"I can't,\" he said.\n\n\"You can,\" Irene corrected him. \"But it seems you won't.\"\n\n\"Irene.\" He swallowed. \"I swear to you that it has nothing to do with the current situation. By my name and my honour and my descent, I swear it.\"\n\nSaying As far as you know was the obvious response, but it would have made light of his obvious struggle and sincerity. And he was sincere; Irene was certain of that.\n\nOf course, that didn't necessarily mean that he was right or that he wasn't an idiot.\n\nShe sighed. \"I accept your word and won't ask for more unless the current situation dictates otherwise. But I will have to tell Coppelia about this, Kai. I can't keep it secret.\"\n\n\"I'd expect that,\" Kai said. He raised his eyes to look nobly at the opposite wall. \"I would have known that you would report it, seeing as\u2014\"\n\n\"Assuming she doesn't already know,\" Irene said thoughtfully.\n\nKai twitched. \"She can't,\" he said, in a tone that was more desperate hope than genuine conviction.\n\n\"If I can spot something being odd in two days, then she can probably notice it in five years.\" Irene stood up and patted Kai on the shoulder. \"Relax. Now, let's find this secret door. I'll check the cabinets on this wall; you check the shelves on that wall.\"\n\nShe could hear Kai muttering behind her as she walked across to check the ranks of cabinets. They were full of carefully pinned-down pages, shards of pottery, pens, quills, typewriters, and other bits and pieces that obviously hadn't been dusted for at least a couple of years. The locks on the cabinets were good, but the wood was dry and fragile. Any serious thief (such as herself, on more than one occasion) would simply have broken the frame or cut out the glass rather than trying to pick the lock.\n\nKai sneezed.\n\n\"Found anything?\" she called across, not bothering to turn and look.\n\n\"Only dust,\" he said, and sneezed again.\n\nIrene went down on her hands and knees to check the bottom edge of the cabinets, looking for traces that they'd been moved. If this didn't get her anywhere, then she'd forget about confidentiality and go through the drawers of Dominic's desk. She didn't seriously expect him to keep anything incriminating or important there, but it might at least give them his home address. Failing that, she and Kai could check with the British Library administration. Failing that\u2014\n\nKai sneezed again.\n\n\"If there's that much dust,\" she called across, \"then any secret doors should be fairly obvious.\"\n\n\"It's not just dust,\" Kai said. He took a step. Paused. Took another step. \"There's something in this room which smells odd.\"\n\nIrene gave up on the cabinets and pulled herself to her feet, brushing off her skirt. \"What is it?\"\n\nKai sniffed. \"I'm not sure. Spicy. Salty. Somewhere round here...\" He wandered along the bookcases, sniffing again.\n\nShe followed him, fascinated by this new approach to finding secret doors.\n\n\"Got it!\" Kai leaned in and pointed at the small cabinet at the end of the shelves. Half a dozen volumes of The Perfumed Garden Summarized for the Young were piled on top of it, but the actual door of the cabinet was accessible, if locked.\n\n\"Let me see.\" Irene went down on her knees again to check it. \"Hm. Looks like a normal cabinet. Anything odd about the lock?\"\n\n\"Not that I can see,\" Kai replied, joining her at ground level. \"Do you want to open it or shall I?\"\n\n\"Oh, allow me.\" Irene leaned in and ordered the lock open in the Language.\n\nThe cabinet door didn't open.\n\n\"That's interesting,\" she said.\n\n\"How can it not open?\" Kai asked.\n\n\"The easiest explanation is that it's sealed by some other method, on top of the lock,\" Irene explained. \"Something that's not obvious, so I wouldn't know it's there to tell it to open. Or then again... you were saying you could smell something. On which side of the cabinet is the smell strongest?\"\n\nKai gave her a look suggesting that he wasn't here to sniff on her behalf, but he complied after a moment. \"This side,\" he said, tapping the right-hand panel of the cabinet.\n\n\"Right.\" Irene shuffled round to get a better look at it, then prodded carefully at the corners and the inlaid design.\n\n\"Hm. Yes. Thought so. When is a door not a door?\"\n\nKai just looked at her.\n\n\"When,\" Irene said triumphantly, \"it's a fake. Here.\" She pressed the upper corners simultaneously, and the whole side of the cabinet swung open on a hidden hinge. \"There. Now...\" She would have said more, but a powerful stink of vinegar hit her, and she rocked back on her knees, fanning the air in front of her nose.\n\n\"That's rather raw,\" Kai said. \"Is it a Library way of preserving documents?\"\n\n\"Not one that I've ever heard of.\" Irene regained her self-control and drew out the contents of the cabinet. It was a single Canopic jar in the ancient Egyptian style. \"So let's see what's in here.\"\n\n\"Should we?\" Kai asked.\n\n\"Kai,\" Irene said gently. \"If Dominic really wanted to keep this secret from us, he wouldn't have hidden it and then been late for work, knowing we'd snoop around.\"\n\n\"Just purely for information,\" Kai said, \"are all Librarians like this over private stuff?\"\n\nIrene didn't dignify his question with an answer. Besides, he'd learn better. A Librarian's mission to seek out books for the Library developed, after a few years, into an urge to find out everything that was going on around one. It wasn't even a personal curiosity. It was a simple, impersonal, uncontrollable need to know. One came to terms with it. She lifted off the Canopic jar's stylized jackal-head lid. \"There's something in here,\" she reported.\n\nKai forgot moral scruples and leaned in closer. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Some sort of leather.\" Irene rolled back her sleeves and pulled it out. It was larger than it looked, thin, delicate stuff with long trailing attachments. She shook it out to get an idea of its full length and shape, then froze, horrified. Behind her she could sense Kai's stillness and shock.\n\nIt was a complete human skin, all in one piece, with a single slit down the front from chin to groin.\n\nIt was Dominic Aubrey's skin."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 8",
                "text": "Kai drew back with an indrawn hiss, raising his hands in front of him like claws. The skin lay there on the floor, limp and wet, staining the polished boards with vinegar.\n\nIrene swallowed, holding on to the smell of the vinegar to keep her own nausea at bay. Dominic Aubrey's features looked so different like this. The flattened face was recognizable but lacking shape, spirit, and the congenial warmth that had animated it just the day before.\n\n\"Is it some sort of fake?\" Kai demanded.\n\nIrene flipped it over. The Library mark ran across its back in a complex tracery of flourishes. It was unmistakable; the Language couldn't be faked, even if someone tried to copy it. She felt the mark across her own shoulders twitch in a kind of sympathy. \"No,\" she said, numbly. \"It's real. But it's not possible for someone to shed their skin like this... I mean, it may just be possible to remove your skin, if you consider some wilder fictional texts, but you couldn't remove the Library's mark and survive.\"\n\n\"Alberich,\" Kai said.\n\nIrene didn't need to ask him what he meant. \"Certainly possible,\" she agreed. \"Even likely. But there's the Fae to consider as well, and there may be other factions at work. Right. We have to report this.\"\n\nKai sighed deeply in relief. \"I was afraid you were going to say that we had to investigate it ourselves.\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous,\" Irene said briskly. \"We may collect fiction, but we are not required to imitate the stupider parts of it.\" And let's hope we don't just get told to investigate this mess without backup anyway. \"First things first. We'll hide this thing again; then I'll open the door to the Library.\"\n\nThe handle of the outer door began to turn.\n\nIrene barely had time to think, But I know I locked it! She hastily shoved skin and jar behind one of the display tables and rose to shield it further with her skirts.\n\nKai managed two paces towards the door before it swung fully open.\n\nA tall young woman stood there, clutching some books to her chest. She looked at the two of them.\n\n\"I'm terribly sorry,\" Irene said quickly. \"Mr. Aubrey isn't here yet. Can we help you?\"\n\nThe woman stared at the two of them. \"I beg your pardon?\" she said slowly. \"Who are you?\" Her brown hair was looped untidily on the back of her head and smeared with dust, and there were traces of dust and ash on her grey skirt and jacket.\n\n\"Vermin preventative defence,\" Irene invented quickly. \"We're working through all the rooms, looking for signs of infestation. Tell me, Miss\u2014\" She paused invitingly.\n\n\"Todd,\" the woman said. \"Rebecca Todd. He told me to come in this morning about the Lamia manuscript.\" She shifted her grip on her books.\n\n\"He should be in soon,\" Irene said. \"I'm terribly sorry, but I can't ask you to wait inside because we need to deploy some hazardous chemicals while we're testing for silverfish. Would you mind waiting outside in the corridor? We'll be out in a minute.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Miss Todd said readily. \"If Mr. Aubrey does arrive while you're still testing, I'll let him know.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Irene said with a smile. She waited until Miss Todd was safely out of the room before breathing a sigh of relief.\n\n\"Silverfish?\" Kai muttered.\n\n\"Hush,\" Irene said. \"We'll be out of here before she knows it.\" She knelt down again, avoiding the growing puddle of vinegar, and hastily stuffed the skin back into the jar. \"Ugh. I need to wash my hands. Actually, I'll take this with us. Perhaps Coppelia or one of the others will know what it means.\" She passed the jar to Kai. \"You hold this.\"\n\n\"Must I?\" he said, taking it distastefully.\n\n\"I need to open the door.\" Irene walked across to the Library door. She remembered seeing the chain last time, but she rather thought it wasn't in use then, perhaps freed by their own journey through the door. It was clearly for show rather than substance, presumably to discourage outsiders from using it. And, of course, anyone like Irene could just use the Language.\n\n\"Chain, open,\" she said, laying her hand on the padlock.\n\nIt didn't explode. It burst open. It unfurled like a chrysanthemum and then fastened onto her palm, spreading across her skin in a slick of white-hot metal. But there was more to it than heat. Through the acute pain, Irene sensed active malice and deliberate will. Behind it all, as she almost lost consciousness, she caught a dazzle of brightness that ultimately faded to darkness.\n\n\"Irene,\" Kai was saying, but she had fallen to her knees and didn't have the space in her head to register his words or his expression. Or anything except the blazing pain crackling from her hand to shoot up her arm. \"Irene!\"\n\nThe mark across her back flared to life, automatically resisting the invasive chaotic forces linked to the padlock. Order and chaos now battled for authority over her body. And it was too late to recognize this as a trap laid for someone who'd use the Language, even though it was so clearly that in hindsight.\n\nShe could smell something burning. That would be her dress. Fabric was so flammable.\n\n\"Get me loose,\" she gasped. If only she could break the physical link that held her to the padlock, or the forces powering it, that might be enough to let her regain control and finish cleansing herself.\n\nKai closed a hand round her wrist and pulled. He didn't try touching the padlock.\n\nThe padlock was stuck to her hand. She couldn't even shift the grip that she had on it; her fingers were locked round what was left of it in a spasm that she couldn't break. Through the agony, she recognized this as a chaos-fuelled trap. A normal human being, one not sealed to the Library, would already have been warped to something on the verge of possible. Or he or she would have been accelerated all the way into something that couldn't exist in this alternate, and outright destroyed. Though a normal human being wouldn't have triggered the trap...\n\nShe felt her grip slipping.\n\nFor the moment her Library seal was saving her, but it couldn't last. The two competing forces would burn her out like an understrength fuse if she couldn't break the connection somehow.\n\n\"Irene!\" Kai yelled in her ear, as if volume would make a difference. \"Can I get you into the Library? Will that help?\"\n\nShe jerked her head in a shake. \"No,\" she gasped. She couldn't enter the Library in this state. \"I'm polluted\u2014can't\u2014\" She tried to think of any teachings covering this but could only remember it was called the Babelfish Principle, which was no use. And it was hurting; it was hurting...\n\nThen a solution came to her. But if the Library door wasn't the trap's power source, she was so screwed. \"Break my link to the door... break the chain!\"\n\n\"Right,\" Kai said as he pulled the chain taut, trying to wrench out the flimsy-looking loop holding it to the wall by brute force. It shifted but not nearly enough, and he slipped a knife from his sleeve, trying to prise open the links. One parted with a sudden snap, weakened by the forces flowing to the lock. Then the chain whipped free, and he yanked it through what remained of the original padlock.\n\nWith the chain gone, the power circuit broke, and the padlock clicked open to fall from Irene's hand to the floor. Irene knelt there, breathing in deep sobbing gasps, unable to quite look at her hand yet and see what damage had been done.\n\n\"Irene?\" Kai said. \"What the hell was that? Are you all right? How did you get it loose?\"\n\nShe looked up at him. Her vision was a little blurry.\n\nMaybe that was why he was swaying. \"It was a trap,\" she tried to explain. \"Set to react to the Language and bind to the user, using the Library door as an energy source. That was why it stopped functioning when you broke the chain. It was very energy-efficient.\" There was a buzzing in her ears. \"Kai? Can you hear something? Is it the silverfish?\"\n\n\"Irene,\" Kai said. He went down on one knee beside her. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nIrene looked at her hand. It was red all over the fingers and down the palm. \"Oh,\" she said, in deep comprehension. \"Kai. I think I'm...\" The buzzing was getting louder. \"I think I have to lie down for a bit.\"\n\n\"Irene!\"\n\nThe world slipped sideways. She felt him catching her as it all went dark.\n\nWhen the lights came on again, they did so slowly and blearily, through a haze of smoke and a drift of odd smells. She was propped at a strange angle, her skirts carefully draped to hide her ankles. The back of a sofa dug into her shoulders and her head was tilted to one side, hat still pinned to her hair. Someone had pushed a cushion under her cheek. It was horsehair. It prickled.\n\nFrom under her eyelashes, she could make out a room that had been forced into ruthless order by someone who believed in making large piles of things. Books. Documents. Clothing. Glassware. A dreamcatcher in Lissajous lines of wire and ebony spun in the window, turning slowly in a drift of breeze and fog. The walls were also crammed with books, and someone had hung paintings and sketches in front of them and piled small objects on top of the shelves. The place was crammed with... with stuff. She was surprised there was room for her on the sofa.\n\nHer hand ached less now. Someone had slathered it in something wet and wrapped it in bandages, and it lay like a foreign object in her lap. She twitched a finger, stifling a scream, and was pleased to see that it functioned.\n\n\"Irene!\" Kai said from behind her, far too loudly. \"Are you awake?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she murmured, \"but please don't shout.\" She pulled herself upright and managed to knock the horsehair cushion to the ground. \"Sorry. Where are we?\"\n\n\"In my rooms.\" Peregrine Vale stepped forward. \"Mr. Strongrock brought you here an hour ago. Miss Winters, you have been the victim of an appalling assault. Do you feel well enough to speak?\"\n\nIrene put her undamaged hand to her head. \"I'm so sorry. I have a dreadful headache,\" she said, not entirely untruthfully, \"and I don't know what's going on. The last thing I remember is touching this door-handle which was booby-trapped...\"\n\n\"It was some sort of electric shock,\" Kai said helpfully. He went down on one knee next to her, looking up into her face. \"I didn't know what to do. I wanted to try to get somewhere safe while we worked out what to do next, Irene. The only person who I was sure we could trust was the Earl of Leeds here\u2014\"\n\n\"Please,\" Vale interrupted, \"call me Vale. The title is unimportant. What is important now is locating and arresting the fiends who set this lethal trap.\"\n\n\"Well, I...\" Irene tried to think what to say next. \"I...\"\n\nVale held up a commanding hand. \"Say no more. I am aware that Mr. Strongrock here is your subordinate.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Irene said.\n\n\"It was blatantly obvious,\" Vale went on. \"Your signals to him in the restaurant, your ability to handle yourself in combat, and his unwillingness to speak while you were unconscious\u2014these all made it quite clear that you were in command of the mission. Miss Winters, I realize that you have your own agenda, but I ask you\u2014I appeal to you\u2014to trust me. I believe that our aims are congruent. I think we can help each other.\"\n\n\"Then Kai's told you...\" Irene let the sentence trail off meaningfully. This wasn't what she'd wanted. The man was a near-total stranger to her. However impressive his skills were, and while he fitted the character type of nobleman, so he should understand the principles of noblesse oblige well enough, there was still risk. There was always a risk. She was supposed to be manipulator, not manipulated.\n\nHer hand hurt. It was distracting her.\n\n\"He has told me nothing,\" Vale said, and Kai nodded in agreement. \"He turned up in a cab on my door-step with you unconscious in his arms, and he asked for shelter until you were awake again.\"\n\nIrene pushed straggling tendrils of hair back from her forehead. She didn't have to feign pain or confusion. \"I don't think that we're the only ones keeping secrets here, Mr. Vale. The attack on you last night was too deliberately timed to be coincidence.\" It was a guess on her part, but it hit a mark; his eyelids twitched very slightly. She looked up at him. \"I think there's more to all this\u2014the murder, the theft of the book, Belphegor\u2014than just a simple crime of greed. When we met last night, you referred to 'thefts of occult material.' This isn't the only book that's gone missing, is it?\"\n\nVale threw himself down into another armchair. \"You're correct, Miss Winters. Oh, sit down, sit down, Strongrock. To be frank, I need people that I can trust. The Fair Folk have contacts at every level of society. My enemies have even more. You two are strangers in London, and though you have no apparent links to the Fae, you have nobody to vouch for you or speak in your favour. I may have reasons to believe that you are reliable...\" He frowned. \"No. Leave that for the moment. I will explain my part in this affair, and then perhaps you will explain yours.\"\n\nIrene looked down at her hand. She wished she could rip off the bandages and see just how bad it was\u2014surely not a permanent injury? It was that infernal urge that came with any injury, wanting to see how it \"looked\" every minute of the day, as if she'd actually be able to see it getting better or worse. And if it did get worse, if she'd damaged herself for life? She couldn't stand the thought of being crippled... but investigating would have broken the flow of Vale's confidences, and she needed his information. \"Please,\" she said softly, looking up from her hand and trying to stop herself from fiddling with the bandages. \"Please, do go on.\"\n\nVale interlaced his fingers. \"When I introduced myself as the Earl of Leeds, it was accurate enough, but it is not a title that I care to use often. The dark associations of the city of Leeds and its earls go back to King Edward's reign in the fourteenth century. I broke from my family under\u2014under somewhat unpleasant conditions, and have no wish for further connection with them. My father is dead, and I cannot be disinherited, but equally I have no interest in the family lands, properties, and secrets.\"\n\n\"Is that why you live in London?\" Kai asked. Irene stole a glance at him. He was leaning forward with an expression of keen interest, but there were lines of clear disapproval in his face. His mouth was pursed in what was very nearly a censorious frown.\n\nVale nodded. \"My family have no interest in seeing me, nor I them. They hope that I will not marry and that the title will pass to my brother Aquila. However, a week ago I received a letter from my\"\u2014he hesitated a moment\u2014\"my mother.\" The words came with difficulty. \"She wished to advise me of a theft which had taken place, and to ask me, as detective if not as son...\" He fell silent for a moment, staring at his fingers as if they were somehow stained. \"To ask me if I would investigate the matter for her.\"\n\n\"And the subject of the theft?\" Irene enquired delicately.\n\n\"A book,\" Vale said. \"It was a family journal\u2014that is, not a printed work, but a collection of handwritten notes and studies, herbal references and fairy tales.\"\n\n\"Fairy tales,\" Kai said slowly.\n\nVale nodded. \"You will see why I am intrigued by Lord Wyndham's murder and the disappearance of his book. Taken in conjunction with certain other thefts which have taken place, it suggests a culmination of events. None of the other thefts have involved murder. And as for the explosion last night beneath the Opera\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\" Irene said, coming upright.\n\n\"Ah, you wouldn't have read the morning paper yet,\" Vale said. \"The incident bears the hallmarks of secret society activity. A number of cellars were collapsed, but the foundations seem to be undamaged. The police have not requested my assistance\"\u2014 Irene could almost hear the unspoken yet\u2014\"so I can only make do with the public reports.\"\n\n\"But what makes you think this is connected with the thefts?\" Kai asked.\n\n\"Two things,\" Vale said. \"Firstly, the timing. It took place the very night after the airships arrived in convoy from Liechtenstein. I do not think that I need to remind you about that.\" He looked up from his contemplation of his fingers. \"And secondly...\" He hesitated again before continuing. \"My family was involved with a certain society, and they believe it was connected with the loss of their book. The same group met beneath the Opera.\"\n\n\"You're being very careful not to name that society, Mr. Vale,\" Irene commented.\n\n\"Indeed I am,\" Vale said.\n\n\"Are they connected to the Fair Folk?\" she probed.\n\nVale laughed, a surprised bark of a laugh. \"My dear Miss Winters! Show me a society that isn't connected to the Fair Folk. I suppose you could say no more than most of them.\"\n\n\"And its connection to Liechtenstein?\" she continued.\n\n\"Ah. Now, here we come to the nub of the problem.\" Vale frowned. \"I should probably have offered you tea. I do apologize. I always forget that sort of thing. But in any case, from what I've heard, the Liechtenstein Fair Folk are very definitely not affiliated with\u2014well, let us call them the Society. So the ambassador's arrival, just before the Society was targeted in this way, is notable for its timing.\"\n\n\"You think he caused the explosion?\" Kai asked. \"Or the Society? Or were they the targets of the explosion?\"\n\n\"Possible.\" Vale waved a hand. \"Possible. Certainly it is worthy of further investigation. And now, Miss Winters, Mr. Strongrock, since I have done my part and told you why I am involved in all of this, I ask you to do the same.\" He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes hooded, and Irene wondered how much of what he'd said had been a carefully constructed bluff. Trust me. I've told you everything. Really I have. Now it's your turn. \"If we are to progress, then there must be some trust on both sides.\"\n\nIrene held up her good hand before Kai could speak.\n\n\"Before that, Mr. Vale, I'd like the answer to one more question.\"\n\n\"Within reason, I am at your disposal,\" Vale said.\n\n\"Why do you feel that you can trust us?\" she asked. Certainly she'd like to cooperate with him. It would make matters much easier; it might even make success in this mission possible, as opposed to out of the question. But it might also be a trap.\n\nHe might even be Alberich. How could she tell? The very thought made her swallow and made her bandaged hand throb and twinge again.\n\n\"That is a fair question,\" Vale allowed. \"I will be honest with you. I do have a few gifts from my family heritage. One of them is\u2014well, not exactly prognostication, but an ability to tell when something is going to be important in my future. I have used it to advantage in a number of my cases, though I do not discuss it with the public. When I met Mr. Strongrock the other day, I knew, in a way which I fear I cannot describe to you, that he was going to be closely involved with me in the near future. I had the same sensation upon meeting you, Miss Winters. On assessment of your characters, I choose to assume that you will be my allies rather than my enemies. I hope that you will not disappoint me.\"\n\nIrene glanced at Kai for a moment. He shrugged neutrally. But it wasn't as if it were his decision, in any case; this wasn't a democracy and he wasn't an equal partner. The decision, the risks, and the potential for disaster were all hers.\n\nVale's story hung together and made sense, which was more than one could usually expect of events. More than that, Irene had the feeling that she could trust him. She wanted to trust him. (Should that in itself make her suspicious?) And there was nothing that said they had to tell him everything. And this was only a single mission, after all. They could leave this entire alternate behind them, and he'd have no way to follow them. There wouldn't be any repercussions afterwards. And, well\u2014if he had been Alberich, then they'd already be dead. Just like Dominic Aubrey.\n\nShe made her decision and leaned forward to offer her good hand. \"Mr. Vale, I am grateful for what you have said. I believe we can cooperate.\"\n\nVale smiled briefly and clasped her hand. \"Thank you. Then perhaps you can tell me about yourselves?\"\n\nIrene glanced at Kai. \"You have already made it clear that you believe we're not English.\"\n\n\"Indeed not,\" Vale said crisply. \"Nor are you Canadians.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Irene said, and quickly rephrased her next statement. \"We are representatives of\u2014a society. You will understand if we don't name it, I hope.\"\n\nVale's smile was a little bitter. \"If you can vouch for its good intentions, that will be sufficient.\"\n\n\"I can vouch for its non-interference,\" Irene said scrupulously. \"We're after one thing: the book that was stolen from Lord Wyndham's house. We arrived here with the intention of purchasing it\"\u2014well, that would have been one option\u2014\"only to find the man, ah, vampire, murdered, and the book stolen. Now we want to recover it. If together we can discover the truth behind the book thefts, the murder, and the explosion, well, that would surely be the best of all possible ends.\" And, she thought privately, the Library might be interested in those other books as well. Except for the one from Vale's family. That one they could afford to give back, and he'd appreciate it.\n\n\"And your enemy?\" Vale gestured at Irene's bandaged hand.\n\n\"We only have his name,\" Irene said. It was probably safe enough to give that. \"Alberich.\"\n\nVale shook his head. \"I know no player in London by that name. But for the moment, yes: I think we can work together.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Kai said. Irene turned to look up at him. He was clearly holding himself in check with a great effort. \"May I speak to Miss Winters alone for a moment?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" Vale said. He rose from his chair. \"I will have some tea fetched. That is\u2014your society does drink tea?\"\n\n\"Always,\" Irene said."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 9",
                "text": "\"This is a bad idea,\" Kai said as soon as the door had closed behind Vale.\n\n\"I am listening,\" Irene said as she began to pick at her bandage, \"and I am paying attention, and if I do scream, it's because my hand is in worse condition than I thought. Go on.\"\n\n\"Why do you trust him?\" Kai demanded.\n\n\"I don't.\" Irene didn't look up from the tightly wrapped bandages. \"Not totally. But I think he's telling the truth about his family and about his gift. I'm not sure he trusts us, either.\"\n\n\"And that's another thing,\" Kai said. \"How can we possibly trust someone who'd betray their family?\"\n\nIrene let the bandages be and looked across at him. He had clenched his fists in his lap so tightly that she could see all the bones of his hands, and the blue veins up the insides of his wrists, clear beneath his pale, pale skin. \"We don't know the whole of that,\" she said. \"We don't know what they may have done to drive him away. If\u2014\"\n\n\"But he left them!\" Kai was nearly shouting. He controlled himself with an effort, rising to stand in front of Irene. \"He admitted as much. If he really disagreed with them, then he should have stayed with them and tried to change them from the inside. To just leave them, to walk out on them, to disobey his own parents\u2014how can that possibly be justified?\"\n\nIrene looked down at her hand again, partly to think, partly so that Kai wouldn't see her own expression. Didn't he realize how much he was giving away about himself? Or did he just not care? That sort of openness was, in its way... intoxicating. \"I hardly ever see my own parents,\" she said, and wondered at the quietness of her own voice.\n\n\"But you haven't defied them or deserted them.\" Kai looked down at her, meeting her eyes. \"You've followed their tradition. They were Librarians and so are you. I'm not saying that he should love his family, not if they really were malicious, but he shouldn't have left them. You can't trust a man who'd do that.\"\n\n\"I'm not saying we should trust him,\" Irene said. \"I'm saying that we need to work with him.\" She felt very cold, and she wasn't sure if it was because of her hand, or the earlier shock, or her own words. \"To serve the Library, I would work with murderers, or thieves, or revolutionaries, or traitors, or anyone who will give me what I need. Do you understand me, Kai? This is important.\" She reached out with her unwounded hand to touch the side of his face. \"I am sealed to the Library. I can make my own choices to some extent\u2014but at the end of the day, bringing back the book the Library wants is my duty and my honour, and that is all there is to it.\"\n\n\"Have you ever been forced to choose between the Library and your honour?\" Kai demanded.\n\n\"Kai,\" Irene said, \"the Library is my honour. And if you seal yourself to it, then it'll be yours too.\" She could feel herself smiling grimly. \"But you've already told me that you don't have any living family, haven't you? So it's not a choice you'll ever have to make.\"\n\nKai didn't even flinch at that; he simply glared at her. \"You're confusing the issue. There ought to be a way of finding our book that doesn't involve allying ourselves with an honourless, family-betraying creature like this. Irene, please. Walk out now and tell him no. We don't need this kind of help.\"\n\nIrene tried to think of a way to make him understand. Perhaps she was being too abstract in an attempt to make him comprehend this specific case\u2014but, damn it all, he was going to have to face tough moral choices himself some day. If he really wanted to be a Librarian. If he survived.\n\n\"Leaving aside the question of his personal honour,\" she said, \"we're not in a good situation. Dominic Aubrey's dead. There's an enemy in the city, quite possibly Alberich, and maybe others too. We're cut off from a direct retreat, and though I may be able to open a way back\u2014\"\n\n\"May?\" Kai broke in. \"What do you mean, may?\"\n\nIrene raised her bandaged hand. \"I mean that I may be chaos contaminated. I need to find out. It should get better in a few days, but at the moment I may not be able to open a way to the Library. It would keep me out in the same way that it'd keep out anything chaos tainted. So we don't have a convenient escape route.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Kai said. He bit his lip.\n\nShe was actually far less certain than she was willing to admit about how long it might take for her to access the Library again. It wasn't something that had happened to her before. She knew the theory, but this was her first case of actual contamination. Thinking about it made her feel ill. She wanted peace and quiet and a chance to actually look at her hand, plus a small library where she could run some tests.\n\nUnfortunately, what she had here and now was a nervous and highly principled subordinate to reassure. It wasn't a leader's place to cast herself trembling on a junior's shoulder and confess uncertainty. It wasn't even a leader's place to suggest that they might be in an indefensible position and should be grateful for any allies that they could get. It was a leader's job to project a calm mastery of the situation, while also encouraging subordinates to develop decision-making skills. Assuming that they made the right decisions.\n\nA leader's job was a crock of shit.\n\nThis was becoming one of Irene's least favourite missions ever. And that included the one with the evil dwarves under Belgium (what was it about Belgium?) and the one requiring a cartload of carved amber plaques to be shipped across Russia. Or even the one with the cat burglar.\n\n\"Would it help if we could find out more about his family?\" she offered. \"If we find out that they're not as bad as he's painting, we can re-evaluate how much we trust him.\"\n\nKai shook his head decisively. \"That makes no difference. We should reject his offer of help.\"\n\n\"That,\" Irene said quietly, \"is not an option.\"\n\nThey looked at each other for a moment. Kai's lips were drawn together, his eyes darkly furious as he stood there, glaring down at her. In that moment, there was something almost inhuman about him, something fiercer\u2014more elemental, perhaps. For the first time, she thought he might actually disobey her.\n\nIn the end, he was the first to drop his eyes. \"As you command,\" he said. But I don't approve of it was unspoken and unnecessary.\n\nIrene had met other Librarians who tried to manage their subordinates using shallow gender tactics. Bradamant, for one. She hadn't liked it. She wasn't going to try to sugar-coat this for Kai by softening now or by fluttering her eyelashes at him. \"Did you bring our stuff along when you got me out of the British Library?\" she asked.\n\n\"I did,\" Kai answered stiffly. \"Both your document case and the jar with the... the skin.\"\n\n\"I'm impressed,\" Irene said. \"It must have been difficult to handle both them and me.\"\n\nKai shrugged, but she had the feeling that he was pleased. \"I found a larger suitcase in the room, and I managed to get the jar and your document case in it. Do we tell Vale about those?\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene said quickly. \"That he doesn't need to know. Did anything else happen while you were getting me out of there? People following us, attacks, whatever?\"\n\n\"Nothing worth mentioning,\" Kai said smugly. \"I wrapped your face in your veil and propped you against my shoulder and got my arm round your waist, and sort of steered you, and I kept on telling you how you shouldn't have had so much gin last night. Nobody looked at us twice.\"\n\n\"Very prompt thinking,\" Irene said drily. \"Well done. Good job. And good selection of a place to hole up.\"\n\n\"If I'd known then what I know now... ,\" Kai muttered, but not quite as sullenly as before.\n\n\"You did the best you could on the information you had,\" Irene said. She started peeling off the bandage again.\n\n\"Are you sure it's safe to do that?\" Kai asked. \"You don't want it to get infected.\"\n\n\"I just want to see how bad it is...\" A chunk of bandage fell back to reveal a layer of ointment-soaked dressing. Bits of raw skin showed at the edges, red and oozing. A twinge of pain ran through her hand, and Irene suppressed a wince. \"All right,\" she said through gritted teeth. \"Who saw to this?\"\n\n\"I did,\" Kai said. \"That trap took the skin off your hand as neatly as if\u2014well, as if it was a glove being peeled off.\" He went down on one knee and took her hand in his, winding the bandage round it again. \"Vale gave me some antiseptics and bandages, and I set some healing spells on it, but try not to use it too much.\" His touch was careful and precise, his fingers dry and hot when they brushed her wrist. \"Normally I'd say that you can take the bandages off in a couple of days, but I don't know about chaos contamination.\"\n\n\"I can check that easily enough,\" Irene said confidently. \"This room has enough books in it for me to try asserting basic resonance.\"\n\nKai glanced around at the heavily shelved walls. \"You don't need to be in a real library for that?\"\n\nIrene shrugged, then grimaced in pain as the movement twisted her hand in Kai's hold. \"Sorry,\" she said, as he gave her a disapproving look. \"Not exactly. I'd need to be in a real library to open a passage, but a single room of books is enough for me to reaffirm my links. Of course, it has to be a lot of books...\" She smiled for a moment, remembering the smell of old celluloid and dustless air. \"Actually, any significant store of knowledge or fiction can be made to function. I did it in a film storage section once, an archive of old television programmes. Not a single book in sight, all film reels and computer data, but the similarity in purpose and function was enough.\"\n\n\"Go on.\" Kai leaned forward eagerly. \"Do it.\"\n\n\"All right.\" Irene was nervous, now that it actually came down to it. She'd spoken glibly enough about contamination, and while she knew the theory on the subject\u2014it'll wear off; just be sensible and avoid further exposure and stay away from the Library until you're clear\u2014she'd never actually experienced it herself. \"You may want to stand away from the walls.\"\n\n\"I'm nowhere near the walls,\" Kai pointed out.\n\n\"Oh. Right.\" Irene swallowed. \"Okay.\"\n\nShe took a deep breath, wetted her dry lips, and invoked the Library by her name and by her rank as Librarian, speaking the words in the Language that described it. Unlike nouns or other parts of speech, words that described the Library or the Language themselves were among the few parts of the Language that never changed.\n\nThe bandages covering her hand burst into flame. The shelves on the walls shuddered and groaned, wrenching from side to side and creaking like living trees in a winter storm, and books tumbled to crash on the floor. Tossed-aside newspapers and piles of notes rustled and moved, crawling along the floor in fractions of an inch, writhing away from her like crushed moths. The fountain pen on the desk jolted and rolled across the open notebook where it had been balanced, trailing ink behind it in a dark wet line.\n\n\"What the devil!\" Vale burst in, carrying an enamelled tea-tray. \"What do you think you're doing\u2014\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Kai snapped, grabbing the blue-and-white milk jug off the tray. He caught Irene's wrist in his other hand and shoved her blazing bandaged hand into the jug, flames and all.\n\nThere was a hiss and a gout of steam, and her hand went out.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Irene said, trying to get her breathing stable again. Her hand ached as if it had been stung by wasps all over and then left to get sunburned. \"I'm so sorry about the milk, but I take my tea black anyway...\" She was conscious that she was babbling, but she had to say something to try to explain things, and besides, her hand hurt.\n\n\"My books!\" Vale exclaimed in horror, looking around the room. \"My notes! My\u2014my\u2014\" He stood there, tea-tray shaking in his hands, glaring down at her in fury. \"Miss Winters, kindly explain yourself!\"\n\nIrene considered a number of things. She considered fainting. She considered claiming that it was a magical attack. She considered just giving up on Vale and walking out of the door. She also, with a pang of regret, considered how she'd feel if it had been her books all over the floor. Finally she said, \"I'm sorry, Mr. Vale. I was trying something and it went wrong.\"\n\nVale set down his tray on the nearest bit of uncluttered table with an audible thump and tinkle. \"Something. Went. Wrong,\" he said coldly.\n\n\"Yes,\" Irene said. She pulled her hand out of the jug. It dripped milk. \"I'm terribly sorry.\"\n\nVale tapped his fingers against the surface of the tray. \"May I ask if something is going to go 'wrong' again in the near future?\"\n\n\"I think it very unlikely,\" Irene said hopefully. \"I'm terribly sorry. Could I have some clean bandages, please?\" Vale stared at her.\n\n\"I've never seen her do it before,\" Kai put in. \"It was an accident.\"\n\n\"Simply an accident,\" Irene agreed. \"I truly am extremely sorry.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you are,\" Vale spat out. \"Very well. Bandages.\" He slammed the door behind him as he left the room.\n\n\"What does that mean?\" Kai demanded. \"The books! The papers!\"\n\n\"It means I'm contaminated after all,\" Irene said quickly and quietly. \"We can't get into the Library until I'm clear. And I can't use the Language reliably.\"\n\nKai stared at her. \"You're being awfully calm about this.\"\n\n\"Having your hand catch fire puts things into perspective... ,\" Irene said. Any words would do, anything that kept her from panicking. She couldn't afford to panic. She was contaminated with chaos, sick with the stuff, and she could only hope that she was right, that it would go away in time. But now she had to hold together and be in charge. \"I find that it distracts me.\"\n\nKai just looked at her for a few seconds longer, then turned to glare at the door. \"I don't believe Vale swallowed that.\"\n\n\"I'd say it's fairly conclusive proof that he needs our help badly,\" Irene said.\n\nVale stalked back in with a basin of water and some bandages. \"Far be it from me to criticize,\" he said, \"but setting the afflicted body part on fire is not a usual form of treatment for an injured hand. Though I hear that milk is high in calcium.\"\n\nKai gave Vale one of his affronted looks. \"Are you challenging Miss Winters's actions, sir?\"\n\n\"Oh no, no,\" Vale said. \"I will go so far as to spend the next half hour or so picking up the books which are for some reason all over my floor, and let you tend to her hand. Unless the lady herself has something to contribute.\"\n\n\"Actually,\" Irene said, \"I do. But I can do it while Kai's seeing to my hand, if you don't mind.\" Fortunately, staring at her hand gave her an excuse not to look at Vale. She knew that she must be blushing. Of all the stupid, ridiculous things to happen. This was not calculated to impress him at all.\n\nKai snorted, then sat down next to her and began to remove the soaked bandages. \"Please do go ahead,\" he said. \"What do you have in mind?\" Besides your inability to contact the Library came through the words quite clearly.\n\n\"I think we are all agreed that the Liechtenstein Embassy is involved in\u2014ow, careful\u2014this,\" Irene said, clenching her free hand.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Kai said, more as a pro forma than in genuine apology. \"Hold still.\"\n\n\"I would agree,\" Vale said. He picked a couple of the books off the floor and dusted their covers tenderly. \"Especially given that Lord Silver placed a very high bid by proxy for that book when it was being auctioned. Quite interesting, don't you think?\"\n\nIrene nodded. That was extremely interesting. \"Then I suggest we attend the embassy ball tonight,\" she said firmly.\n\n\"What?\" Kai said in horror. \"Mingle with the... that is, are you serious? Do you realize the danger we'd be putting ourselves in?\"\n\n\"Mr. Strongrock overstates the situation,\" Vale observed, \"but it isn't possible in any case. I agree that it is worth investigating, but unfortunately we won't be able to get in. The affair is strictly invitation only, and even if I can enter the place disguised, I am not sure that either of you would be able to do so.\"\n\n\"I agree that the Fae are probably behind it,\" Kai put in, \"but there has to be a better way of investigating them. As this one isn't going to work.\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene said. \"It will work. Because I have an invitation.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" Vale exclaimed.\n\n\"And,\" she added, \"I'll need a new dress.\"\n\n\"And a new hand?\" Kai asked through gritted teeth.\n\nIrene managed to catch his eye. \"Trust me,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, I do,\" Kai said. \"I just happen to think that this is one of the most reckless, hare-brained, soul-endangering plans I have heard of since\u2014\" He broke off. \"Never mind. I'm under your orders. But that invitation had better be for three people.\"\n\n\"It'll do,\" Irene said serenely, and tried to stay calm and composed, and everything that she didn't feel."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 10",
                "text": "Irene stood back and watched Kai at the buffet. There was something fascinating about the pure, focused dedication that he gave the caviar: it seemed to somehow elevate the little black grains into something holy, even divine. The curve of his wrist as he scooped it onto a triangle of toast was the last word in elegant efficiency. Of course, there were other reasons to watch. Thanks to Vale's tailoring recommendations, Irene was decorously gowned in a nice dark green, but Kai... well.\n\nKai managed to wear evening dress with a personal style that made Irene work very hard on repressing jealousy\u2014and on stifling a half-formed wish that she'd accepted his offer last night. It was not her business that Kai had such an air of inherent power, or the elegance of a nobleman combined with a somehow touching air of raffishness...\n\nThat made her think. When she'd first seen him he'd been in a leather jacket and jeans, with a young ruffian attitude to match. But once they'd established themselves here in this alternate, he'd shifted his style and his language as effectively as any spy (and that wasn't a comforting thought), easing into a more cheerful politeness that had certainly mollified her. At the ball, he'd adjusted himself again without a moment's hesitation. She took a sip from her glass of wine, held in her left hand. Dry white, appropriate to the largely fish buffet.\n\nShe still trusted him. That enthusiasm\u2014that vigorous, cheerful offering of himself last night\u2014and even his unwillingness to accept what he thought was a dangerous course of action, both rang true to her. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was sincere and he was on her side.\n\nHe couldn't be a fully fledged Librarian. He wouldn't have been so willing to share a bed with her if he'd needed to hide the requisite Library brand. That was one thing that make-up wouldn't cover, as Irene knew from personal experience. And she didn't think he was a creature of chaos. His distrust of all things Fae seemed very real. A nature spirit, perhaps? But from what she'd read, non-human spirits didn't actually like taking human form that much. And then again, there was one significant alternative. She stared at the back of Kai's head and thought about everything she knew about dragons, and wished she knew more.\n\nThere were dragons, after all, who looked like\u2014well\u2014dragons. And then dragons could take a partly human form. She'd met one of those and sensed a pride so sublimely unaware of itself that it was somehow graceful. There had been the sense of a being apart, and definitely not human. She didn't get that from Kai, except he did have the dignity. And Kai looked human. Impossibly handsome, but entirely human. Yet she'd been told that dragons could take that shape as well, if they wanted. Irene felt a rising sense of outrage at the thought that Coppelia must have known\u2014if this was true. So why hadn't she said\u2014and why had Bradamant wanted him?\n\n\"My little mouse, I believe,\" a voice said from behind her. \"How good of you to come.\"\n\nIrene had enough of a grip on herself not to spill her wine. Just about. And she hadn't been so engrossed in her student that she'd forgotten to watch the crowd. She just hadn't seen him coming. She turned and dropped into a curtsey, flicking a brief glance up at his face before lowering her eyes. \"Lord Silver.\" She had no idea whether he deserved the title, but it'd probably please him. He was as formally dressed as Kai, with some unspecified military order on his chest, and his pale hair was draped loosely over his shoulders. \"Thank you for your kind invitation.\"\n\n\"You do pick the most interesting people to accompany you,\" he said. His tone was amused rather than dangerous. \"But I appreciate it. I'd have invited Leeds myself if I'd thought of it.\"\n\n\"I didn't realize you were on those sorts of terms with him, sir,\" Irene said.\n\n\"I'm not.\" His lips curved in a private smile. \"Very definitely not.\"\n\nIrene straightened out of her curtsey. \"The ball seems very successful,\" she said neutrally.\n\nSilver glanced across the room with a smile of casual ownership. He scooped up a plate from the buffet, casually loaded it with a handful of crab p\u00e2t\u00e9 puffs, and offered it to her. \"I should hope so,\" he said. \"I've invited all the best people. Lords, ladies, authors, ambassadors, debauchers, grave-robbers, perverts, sorcerers, courtesans, deranged scientists, and doll-makers. And a few innocent socialites, of course, but generally I receive polite notes of refusal from their parents\u2014or invitations to be horsewhipped.\"\n\n\"Invitations?\" Irene said.\n\n\"Notes offering to horsewhip me in front of my club if I even approach their daughters...\"\n\nIrene swallowed nervously. Was it a joke? Should she so much as touch the crab p\u00e2t\u00e9 puffs? \"Some people might call that a threat, sir.\"\n\n\"A threat?\" He looked at her, genuine puzzlement in his eyes. \"Why on earth would you think that?\"\n\nShe couldn't quite bring herself to look him in the eyes while replying. If that was an example of Fae tastes, then she wasn't going to push it any further. \"They must be people of very limited scope, sir. Clearly.\"\n\nHe patted her shoulder fondly. His gloves were white kid, soft against her skin, and she could feel the heat of his flesh through them. It was more of a casual flash of power, as a shark might show its fin, than a deliberate attempt to englamour and seduce her, but she could feel it all the same.\n\nKai was still over by the caviar, but he was watching her with narrowed eyes, as sharp as a snake. She shook her head minutely, warning him to keep away. Vale looked bored and was talking on the other side of the room to a hunched man with a brass-rimmed monocle screwed into his right eye.\n\nThe room itself was large enough to hold about a hundred and fifty people comfortably, with buffet tables around the edges and waiters circulating silently. Improbable swords and lances hung along the walls in glittering decoration, with Liechtenstein banners positioned above. A string quartet in the corner picked through something light and unobtrusive. The whole room had an unwholesome feel to it, a hothouse sort of closeness and oppression, even though the temperature was perfectly normal. Irene wondered whether everyone present was hiding secrets, something that affected their every word and action.\n\nEven me, she thought with more than a touch of irony.\n\nSilver squeezed her shoulder again. \"I'll be back,\" he said smoothly. \"Don't go away.\"\n\nBetween one blink and the next, he was gone.\n\nIrene put her glass down before she was tempted to drink even more wine. There had to be some way to lure out Belphegor, or whoever had killed the vampire and taken the book. And if this ball was as packed with key society suspects as she expected, here would be the perfect place to gather information.\n\nSeveral conversations and about fifteen minutes later, she'd reached the Yoruban ambassador\u2014a kindly looking man a full head taller than her. He was sporting some sort of ceremonial outfit with gold bracelets that weighed more than her entire gown. She wondered how Silver had got him to visit. \"So, you see,\" she lied with the utmost sincerity, \"I'm writing an article on important figures in the literary world. I was going to interview Lord Wyndham, but his tragic death...\" She let her voice trail away artistically.\n\n\"I never knew that Lord Wyndham was a literary figure,\" the ambassador commented.\n\n\"Well, not as such. But he does seem to have been very au fait with up-and-coming novelists. I'd heard that he acted as patron to some.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" the ambassador said comprehendingly. \"I only knew about his collection.\"\n\nSince Irene had entirely invented the bit about Wyndham's patronage of new writers, she wasn't surprised. \"It was a fine one,\" she agreed. \"And he was always so good about making books available to other experts in the field. Not like some bibliophiles who hoard everything and then just gloat about it privately.\"\n\nThe ambassador looked slightly furtive, then loomed forward. \"One hesitates to speak ill of the dead,\" he said in lowered tones, \"but I think that is giving the gentleman a little too much credit. He was inclined to boast. His nature, you know. Vampires. They just can't resist it. I've known some very pleasant ones, of course,\" he added hastily.\n\n\"Oh, of course,\" Irene agreed quickly and meaninglessly. \"But I do think that you're right, Your Excellency. They are so very proud of their advantages.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" the ambassador said approvingly. \"I am glad that our host hasn't brought any here tonight. They always demand to be catered for in such an obtrusive manner\u2014the blood, the open veins, all that manner of thing. It does get in the way of a simple conversation.\"\n\nIrene nodded, suppressing annoyance that Silver hadn't invited any. She'd have liked the chance to question a few. In fact, why hadn't Silver invited them, if he enjoyed their company? Or even if he was feuding with them? From what Silver had said about the guest list, inviting half a dozen antagonistic vampires seemed like just the sort of thing he'd do. \"It does make matters simpler for everyone else,\" she agreed.\n\n\"And we're spared the anti-blood-sports protestors.\" The ambassador collected a fresh glass of wine from a passing waiter. \"But if you're a reporter, you've probably interviewed a few of them already!\" He rumbled a deep laugh.\n\n\"I like to think there's something to be said on both sides,\" Irene temporized. \"But about Lord Wyndham's boasts... oh, I beg your pardon.\" Vale was walking towards them, a slight urgency to his movement. \"If you will excuse me a moment, Your Excellency...\"\n\n\"Of course,\" the ambassador said. \"About that interview later\u2014\"\n\n\"I will contact your embassy staff, sir,\" Irene said, and retreated with another polite curtsey.\n\nVale shepherded her back over to the buffet table (was she ever going to get away from it?) and made an obvious show of getting her some canap\u00e9s. \"Miss Winters, we need to be careful,\" he muttered. \"One of my contacts tells me that there's going to be a strike here, at the Liechtenstein Embassy, this evening.\"\n\nIrene suppressed a groan. How many factions were involved in this thing? How was she supposed to conduct a rational investigation with this sort of interference? \"Who's doing the striking?\" she demanded in a murmur. \"And can we use it as a diversion to search the embassy?\"\n\nVale regarded her from under lowered eyebrows. \"Miss Winters, that's a very felonious suggestion.\"\n\n\"But it's a very practical one,\" she said, reminding herself that he was a private detective. Though he didn't seem to be particularly disapproving. Perhaps it was the fact that she'd suggested it, rather than him, that had forced him to condemn it.\n\n\"Hmph.\" He shovelled more salmon onto her plate. At this rate she'd have indigestion. \"In answer to your first question, the protestors are the Iron Brotherhood. They are notoriously anti-Fae, so it wouldn't be out of character for them.\"\n\n\"Do you think it would be worth notifying the embassy staff?\" she asked.\n\nVale shook his head. \"They'll already be expecting something like this. I checked earlier, and they have all the usual precautions\u2014anti-zeppelin guns, glamours, whatever. But do be careful, Miss Winters. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to speak to that lady who just came in.\"\n\nThe lady in question was currently invisible behind a squadron of male admirers, so Irene watched Vale edge across the ballroom and tried to hide her overstuffed plate behind a bowl of soup.\n\n\"There's something going on,\" Kai said from behind her shoulder.\n\nIrene very nearly spilled the soup. \"Really,\" she said through gritted teeth.\n\n\"Absolutely,\" Kai said. \"Let me get you some of those blinis.\" He picked up a new plate and started depositing more food on it. \"You need to eat more: it'll help the healing process.\"\n\n\"I also need to be able to walk without falling over,\" Irene said, watching with growing unease as he ladled on something involving crab meat. \"Or dance.\"\n\nKai edged a little closer. \"Have you found out anything yet?\" he muttered.\n\nIrene considered the facts she'd picked up so far. \"I think Silver's waiting for something. Or someone. He seemed on edge. But he's being distracted by the glitterati.\" She could see him at the other side of the ballroom, talking to a voluptuous pair of women in black who hung on each other's shoulders, clearly already half-drunk. \"I've been talking to a couple of other people. Apparently it's odd that Silver hasn't invited any other vampires tonight. I'm wondering if Wyndham's attack might have been anti-vampire rather than anti-Fae, and I'd like to ask Vale a few more questions about his family and if they have any links to vampires. Oh, and Vale thinks there's going to be an attack on the Liechtenstein Embassy by an anti-Fae society called the Iron Brotherhood, and\u2014oh, Kai, please not the sour cream.\"\n\n\"You need it for a proper contrast with the blinis,\" Kai said firmly.\n\n\"Have you found out anything?\" Irene asked.\n\n\"Nothing definite,\" Kai said slowly. \"And\u2014well, I haven't actually been trying to talk to any of the other Fae here. I don't think they'd tell us anything useful.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Irene agreed neutrally. \"But have you found out anything from anyone else?\"\n\n\"That lady in the corner.\" Kai flicked a glance to their left.\n\nThe woman in question was elderly, rouged, half-buried under a vast white wig, and dressed in a construction of black-and-white striped satin that was viciously corseted and heavily underwired. \"She's very well-informed. And she actually is part of the literary world, not just a poseur like Wyndham was.\"\n\n\"What's her name?\" Irene asked.\n\n\"Miss Olga Retrograde,\" Kai said. \"The elder Miss Olga Retrograde. She said so several times.\"\n\nIrene wondered what the younger Miss Retrograde looked like, as she moved towards her. \"You'd better introduce us. What is she?\"\n\n\"A retired lady of pleasure,\" Kai said, rather flatly.\n\n\"Well, at least she won't assume I'm looking for a job,\" Irene said cheerfully. \"Oh, Kai, don't look at me like that\u2014\" The crowd drifted apart, and Irene could finally see who had just entered the room.\n\nIt was Bradamant.\n\nShe was as perfect as a black-and-white photograph, her slender neck rising out of the deep grey silk folds of her bodice like a swan, the train of her dress undulating in smooth liquid elegance.\n\nKai frowned as Irene broke off mid-sentence, then followed her gaze. \"What?\" he demanded under his breath. \"Her? Here? How?\"\n\n\"Four very good questions,\" Irene said through gritted teeth. \"My god, she's wearing a Worth gown. That has to be a Worth gown.\"\n\nKai turned to stare at Irene. \"What's the gown got to do with it?\" he asked. \"Is it particularly effective in concealing weapons or something?\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene spat. \"It's just one of the best dresses from one of the best dressmakers of the period, or whatever the equivalent is in this alternate. Dear heavens, not only does she come in here to try to steal my mission from under me, she has the nerve to do it while wearing something which screams, Here I am, everyone\u2014look at me. I mean, do I go round collecting outfits from alternates just so I can be the bestdressed person at a party?\"\n\n\"Irene,\" Kai said, \"you're holding my arm a bit tightly.\"\n\nIrene had to stop herself from grinding her teeth. \"A Librarian is supposed to be about subtlety,\" she muttered. \"Getting the job done. Not being noticed\u2014oh, sorry.\" She removed her hand from Kai's forearm and watched Kai affrontedly smooth out the wrinkles on his jacket sleeve. \"Um.\" She could feel herself flushing. \"I apologize.\" What she wanted to do was scream, How dare she! until the chandelier crystals tinkled. But she couldn't.\n\n\"Perhaps she has important information and wants to talk to you,\" Kai said.\n\n\"But how would she know we were here? Or\u2014wait.\" Irene frowned. \"Dominic Aubrey could have told her\u2014did she enter this alternate before he died?\"\n\n\"Or did she have something to do with it?\" Kai said slowly, completing Irene's own thought.\n\nIrene was silent for a long moment, turning possibilities over in her head. \"Unthinkable,\" she finally said. \"I won't believe that of her.\"\n\nAt that moment the crowd shifted again, and Bradamant turned her head. She looked across the ballroom, and for a moment their eyes met. And in that moment, Irene saw something in Bradamant's face that she hadn't expected to see. Shock.\n\n\"She didn't expect us to be here,\" she murmured.\n\nBradamant recovered almost instantaneously and turned away with a contemptuous little twitch of her shoulder to bestow her attention on the man next to her, a skinny white-haired man in his eighties with his chest so encrusted with military medals and orders that it was a wonder he didn't fall over.\n\n\"Why don't you introduce me to Miss Olga Retrograde,\" Irene said to Kai, composing her face into what would with any luck be a pleasant smile. She'd work out what was going on. And this time she wasn't going to be Bradamant's stalking-horse, decoy, or tool.\n\nNot this time. Not again.\n\n\"Very well,\" Kai said, glancing at Bradamant over Irene's shoulder. \"But what is she doing here? I know she said she wanted the mission...\" His face lightened as a thought obviously occurred to him. \"If she's your senior, then maybe she has clearance now for you to cooperate on the mission. That would make things simpler, with the chaos contamination.\"\n\n\"Such a thing is possible,\" Irene said slowly, to give herself time to think and to find an answer why this could not, would not be the case. She wasn't sure that she would be able to physically obey if it was. Her loathing of the other woman was too bone deep for that. \"But if it were the case\"\u2014how careful, how conditional\u2014\"then she would have some sort of token from the Library, and she'd show it to me. She hasn't even tried to find me yet. So I'm dubious.\"\n\n\"I trust you,\" Kai said. He touched her hand briefly, reassuringly. \"I do trust you, Irene. I wish that you could tell me why you don't trust her.\"\n\nShe could have said, It's private, but something in her felt that he deserved better than that from her. Instead she said, \"It's personal, and if you really do want to know, I'll tell you later. It doesn't make her any the worse as a Librarian. Just as a person, to me. But later. All right?\"\n\nKai nodded, and then they were there. \"Miss Retrograde?\" he said. \"May I introduce my friend Miss Winters?\"\n\nIrene gave a small curtsey. \"Miss Retrograde. It's a pleasure to meet you.\"\n\n\"And you, my dear,\" the elderly woman said. Close up, her face was all rouge, white paint, and beauty patches. She deserved an award for thoroughness in concealing wrinkles, if not for artistry in doing so. Her dress might be heavily corseted and old-fashioned, but the fabric was high-quality, and the diamonds on her fingers looked genuine. \"I understand that you're not from these parts.\"\n\nKai must have given her the Canadian cover story. \"Oh no,\" Irene agreed. \"But I'm working as a freelance reporter at the moment\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh no, you're not,\" Miss Retrograde cut in.\n\nIrene shut her mouth before it could gape open too wide. \"I beg your pardon?\" she hastily said.\n\n\"My dear,\" Miss Retrograde said, \"I make it my business to know all the members of the fourth estate in London. I wouldn't have missed an intelligent-looking girl like yourself.\"\n\nIrene would have given Kai a venomous look, along the lines of What have you got me into and why didn't you tell me more about this? but it would have been too obvious a betrayal. \"I'm very new on the scene,\" she said quickly.\n\n\"I've been watching Silver,\" Miss Retrograde said. She leaned forward with a creak of whalebone. Her beady eyes focused in their heavily shadowed sockets. \"He spoke to you. I'd like to know why.\"\n\nIrene suspected that playing the innocent wasn't going to work here. She could feel Kai's arm tense under her hand, waiting (hopefully) for her to tell him which way to jump.\n\n\"I'm afraid that would depend on why you want to know,\" she finally said, letting the humour drain out of her face.\n\n\"I could make it worth your while,\" Miss Retrograde said, rubbing the ball of her thumb against one of her diamond rings suggestively.\n\nIrene tilted an eyebrow. There was some sort of noise in the corridor outside, thumping and crashes, but she didn't take her eyes off the older woman. If the Iron Brotherhood, or whoever, was attacking, then hopefully someone else would deal with it.\n\n\"Oh, very well,\" the woman said pettishly. \"That was crass, I admit it. Let's get down to business. Take a seat, young woman. Have your bodyguard\u2014I'm not stupid, young man\u2014have your bodyguard fetch us both some more wine. Then we can discuss matters\u2014\"\n\nAnd at that moment the alligators burst into the room."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 11",
                "text": "Irene had only ever seen alligators at the zoo before. She remembered them as being lazy, log-like objects, draped over cement \"rock formations\" or dozing in muddy pools.\n\nThe creatures invading the room moved with disturbing speed. If they were logs, then they were logs on a river in full flood. Some of them were fifteen feet or so long. Their mouths opened and closed as they scuttled forward. One of them clamped its jaws on the leg of a waiter and rolled sideways; the man screamed and went down. His leg came off in the alligator's jaws, wrenched off like a chicken wing, spraying blood across the polished floor. Through the m\u00eal\u00e9e, Irene spotted metal contraptions bolted onto their skulls and metal screwed onto their claws, before the press of the crowd became too great.\n\nGuests and waiters were screaming and running for the other doors, as alligators continued to spill through the main entrance. A few of the guests were firing previously concealed weapons, a mixture of pistols and ray guns, but most were simply trying to escape. The smell of blood was sharp and coppery on the air, rising above the blend of perfume and food.\n\n\"Have no fear!\" Silver shouted, leaping onto a convenient table, bestriding a centrepiece of oysters. \"The powers of my kind shall scourge these creatures back to the slime from which they crawled\u2014\"\n\nAmazing grammar in a crisis, Irene couldn't help noticing.\n\n\"Behold!\" Silver raised his hand. Fire flared round his fingers dramatically, then leapt to strike the alligators in burning orange whips.\n\nIt fizzled. There was no other word for it. The flames drooped and went out as if they'd been doused with cold water, leaving the alligators to rumble forward undeterred.\n\n\"Damnation!\" Silver swore. \"They have been armoured in cold iron! Johnson! My elephant gun!\"\n\nMuch as Irene would have enjoyed watching whatever happened next, fleeing the room before she was trampled by the crowd or eaten by alligators seemed a better idea.\n\n\"Quick!\" she snapped at Kai. \"Help Miss Retrograde\u2014\"\n\n\"The elder Miss Retrograde, if you please, young lady,\" the older woman said, rising to her feet. \"I knew I should have brought my pistol with me.\" They were jostled and bumped, but there was still just enough space to move freely as long as they kept next to the walls.\n\n\"Does this happen often at these balls?\" Kai asked. He seemed half-fascinated by the chaos, half-appalled by it. There were enough screaming, fleeing waiters and partygoers that the alligators weren't going to reach them for at least a few minutes. Hopefully Bradamant could take care of herself.\n\nThe elder Miss Retrograde clicked her tongue. \"People should know what to expect at a party thrown by Lord Silver,\" she said. \"Now\u2014what is going on over there?\"\n\nThe headlong escape was curdling in its tracks, as people came running back into the room. Over the hubbub, Irene could hear yelling about the outer doors being locked.\n\n\"This smells planned,\" Kai remarked.\n\n\"It is,\" Irene said. \"The Iron Brotherhood?\"\n\n\"It has their stink,\" the elder Miss Retrograde sniffed. \"Did you notice the cold iron on the alligators' claws? The easiest way to deflect Fae sorcery. I'm afraid we can't expect anything from Lord Silver tonight.\"\n\n\"Won't his subordinates be trying to rescue him?\" Kai asked. He cast a thoughtful glance at the weapons hanging on the wall.\n\nThe elder Miss Retrograde twitched a ruffled shoulder. \"A couple of them may, but I can almost guarantee that the rest will be thinking about promotion, so will take care not to rescue anyone until it's too late. Are either of you two young people skilled with alligators? Do they teach alligator training in Canada?\"\n\n\"Let me try something,\" Irene said, stepping forward.\n\nAn alligator turned its head and upper body. One rolling eye focused on her.\n\nIrene swallowed. This was not a time to give in to the roiling fear that churned in her stomach. This was not a time to consider that all she knew about alligators came from reading Rudyard Kipling. (Or had those been crocodiles?) This was the time to remember that she was a Librarian and that she had a responsibility to protect Kai.\n\nShe suppressed the urge to cross her fingers, raised her hand and pointed it at the nearest alligator, and commanded it in the Language to lock its legs and stay still.\n\nIt nearly worked.\n\nThe words were clear in her mouth, but something in the air, or still lingering in her body, twisted them and wrenched them out of focus. She felt the marks on her hand reopen under the bandages and saw traces of scarlet start to seep up through her glove.\n\nThe alligator's legs locked: that much worked. It squinted at her with a reptilian look of cold hatred as it skidded on the polished floor and came sliding right at her, gliding like a doom-laden missile with huge (and getting huger by the minute) jaws.\n\nThere was something hypnotic about those jaws. She should have been fleeing, but the sight held her until she thought that she could count every one of the approaching teeth.\n\n\"Hell,\" Kai said, and caught her by the waist, tossing her up onto the nearby table. Irene managed to catch herself with her good hand, pulling her skirts away from a steaming tureen of soup as the alligator went sliding by under the table. The white tablecloth rippled as the alligator went under one side and came out on the other, continuing its skid along the highly polished floor until it crashed nose first into the wall. It lay there, opening and closing its mouth and rolling from side to side, tail thrashing, apparently unable to flex its legs.\n\n\"I'm afraid it's not working properly,\" Irene informed Kai.\n\n\"Well, that much is obvious!\" Kai offered the elder Miss Retrograde his arm. \"Madam, if you'd kindly get up on the table\u2014\"\n\n\"And what are you going to do, young man?\" the woman demanded.\n\nIrene could tell what Kai wanted to do. It was evident in the set of his shoulders, the tension of his face. One of the most important aspects of command is not giving orders that won't be obeyed, she reminded herself. \"Get a sword down from the wall, Kai,\" she said. \"Find Vale, help him if he needs it. Do what you can to sort this out. I'll take care of myself.\"\n\nKai raised his head, and there was a dangerous gladness in his eyes. \"Do you really mean that?\" he asked.\n\n\"I am perfectly capable of staying out of the way of a few alligators,\" Irene said coolly. Especially if she stayed up on the table, but it would spoil the statement to add that. \"I don't think they can climb.\"\n\n\"I hope not.\" The elder Miss Retrograde rapped Kai on the shoulder. \"I'll take that assistance, young man. You two can tell me why you're pretending to be Canadian later.\"\n\nKai put one hand under the elder Miss Retrograde's elbow, bent to put the other under her shoe, and boosted her up on the table with barely a sign of effort. \"Later,\" he promised, and ran. He was heading for a low-hanging banner that dangled temptingly near a pair of ornate sabres hanging eight feet up.\n\nElsewhere around the room, Irene could see other men and women climbing on the tables, some of which had given way in the process. It was sheer luck that there had been only a few people left in their corner of the room, and so the tables were comparatively unoccupied. This was apparently not one of those alternate worlds where the British Empire mandated a tradition of women and children first. It was a case of survival of the fittest, and alligators take the hindmost.\n\nFrom her vantage point she looked around, finally sighting Bradamant. She was athletically swinging herself onto a free table and tossing a platter of mussels into the jaws of the pursuing alligator in one smooth motion. The alligator paused, grunting and shaking its head, as Bradamant smoothed her skirts and looked around.\n\nIrene's and Bradamant's eyes met. For a moment they looked at each other across the room; then Bradamant turned away with a jerk of her head and a little smile. She scanned the crowd, clearly looking for someone else. Irene swallowed bile. Was she still so preoccupied by Bradamant that she had to look for where she was first and be sure that she was safe? Interest in a fellow Librarian's welfare only went so far.\n\nAnd where was Vale? With a pang of guilt she scanned the crowd for him too, finally managing to catch sight of him. He'd been backed into a corner by two alligators and was defending himself with a silver tray as best he could. Of course, he would have had to leave his sword-stick at the door. It didn't look good.\n\n\"Kai!\" Irene turned to find him. He'd managed to climb up the banner, almost high enough to reach the sabres. \"Help Vale! Over there!\"\n\nJudging by his frown, Kai could see Vale struggling even better than she could. He clamped the banner between his legs, reached up with both hands, and grabbed the hilts of both sabres; then he simply let go. The sabres came free from their brackets with a shriek of metal, and Kai fell the eight feet to the ground, twisting smoothly in mid-air to land on both feet.\n\n\"Vale!\" he shouted, loud enough to be heard over the screaming mob. \"Here!\" People backed away from him at his shout, and he tossed one of the blades in a high arc through the air; it spun above the crowd in a shimmer of steel. Vale snatched it out of the air, the throw perfectly weighted to slap the hilt into his hand. Then he sheared the metal contraption off a lunging alligator's skull with one vicious slice.\n\nIrene let out a breath, unaware that she'd stopped breathing. Apparently both Kai and Vale possessed previously unappreciated keen fighting reflexes. Taking down a giant robot centipede seemed comparatively simple in retrospect.\n\nKai shouted something in a Chinese dialect that Irene didn't recognize, perhaps a battle cry or a curse, and leapt into the fight. He impaled one alligator, closing its jaws with a single sabre thrust just before the creature could bite into a waiter.\n\nIrene sidled farther along the table and tried to think of a plan. The alligators weren't showing any interest in the piles of spilled food that littered the floor. And while she wasn't an expert on reptilian psychology, animals would normally go for an abundance of convenient meals rather than armed dinner guests. Whether in the grip of a feeding frenzy or not. So maybe the buzzing metal things bolted onto their heads were controlling their behaviour\u2014a theory that seemed borne out from observation of Vale's former aggressor.\n\nThe alligator that had been de-metal-objected by Vale had retreated and was currently wandering around in a dazed way. That was promising. If they could de-weaponize all the alligators, then they'd have... well, they'd have a mob of normal alligators. Which wasn't much, but it would be something. Especially as neither Fae magic nor the Language was working. Bradamant, however...\n\nIrene sprinted along her table, skirts in hand. Bradamant was a table and an alligator-infested stretch of floor away. The table wasn't a problem. The chunk of floor was\u2014and there were people dying out there.\n\nShe just didn't have time to think about that. It was clear to her left. Clear to her right.\n\n\"Stay up here!\" an elderly gentleman sputtered behind her. \"Dash it, girl, don't go committing suicide! Wait just a minute and the police will be here\u2014\"\n\nNo. She couldn't wait. She tried to rationalize why, as really all the screaming, shooting, and sounds of ripping flesh were irrelevant to her mission to get the book\u2014to her duty as a Librarian. She could just stay put. But as she tried to shut out all the unimportant noises, she found herself already acting. She swung away from the man and dropped onto the floor, running for the other table.\n\nA man was lying under it, tumbled across a fold of fallen white cloth. He was bleeding freely, which meant that he was still alive.\n\nIrene pulled herself up onto the table, vaguely conscious that her skirt was fouled with blood and salmon.\n\n\"Bradamant!\" she called, pitching her voice to carry above the noise.\n\n\"Yes?\" Bradamant came stalking down the table, brushing aside other men and women by sheer force of personality. Her hair was still perfect, and her gown was stained only at the very edges. \"I hope you have something useful to say.\"\n\nIrene forced down her hostility. \"I do. I have an idea, but I'm having problems with the Language. I need your help.\" For a moment she wondered if Bradamant was going to put conditions on that help, but the other woman barely hesitated.\n\n\"What do you have in mind?\"\n\nIrene pointed up at the chandelier\u2014the elegant, huge, electric-lit chandelier. \"The things on the alligators' heads are specific and discrete. Use the Language to call electricity down into them. Even if it doesn't kill them, it'll wreck their control systems.\"\n\nBradamant turned her head to follow Irene's gesture. \"It might also kill some of the guests if they're in contact,\" she said neutrally.\n\nIrene hadn't thought of that. It took only a moment to imagine Vale or Kai with their blades in an alligator. \"So be precise in your language!\" she snapped. \"Or do you want me to find the vocabulary for you?\"\n\nBradamant sniffed. \"I don't think that I will need your help for that endeavour.\" Her tone suggested Irene's total incompetence would render any assistance worthless.\n\nIrene should have let her get on with it, but a sudden thought struck her. \"When did you come through from the Library?\"\n\n\"We have no time for this discussion,\" Bradamant declared. \"Stand back and let me work.\"\n\nIrene stepped back and scanned the crowd as Bradamant prepared. Silver was easiest to spot. He'd found an ornate pike and was busy impaling an alligator with it, gullet to tail. Vale and Kai were back to back, surrounded by half a dozen alligators. No one else was being targeted so heavily. She couldn't recall anything from Dominic Aubrey's notes about the Iron Brotherhood. They were fairly obviously anti-Fae, what with shoeing their alligators with cold iron and staging the attack here and now. But she wouldn't have thought that made them anti-Vale. Quite the opposite, really: Vale clearly had no particular liking for the Fae, and his attendance here was adversarial rather than friendly towards Silver. Were the alligators being somehow specifically directed? Or were they simply attacking those people who offered the most resistance?\n\nIrene turned back to Bradamant as the other Librarian called out a crisp string of orders in the Language. Fortunately the people around her were too preoccupied by the alligators to pay much attention.\n\nThe chandelier trembled where it hung, then shattered, prisms chiming and blowing apart in puffs of crystal dust. Electricity forked down in visible arcs of lightning, targeting the alligators' electronic attachments. The reptiles spasmed and thrashed, tails sweeping in wide curves as their jaws opened and closed on empty air.\n\nIrene watched in relief as Vale and Kai dodged the alligators that had been surrounding them. \"Nicely done,\" she said to Bradamant.\n\nBradamant sniffed, somehow managing to suggest that the words Of course were simply beneath her. \"I can't see why you didn't do it yourself,\" she said.\n\n\"Chaos contamination,\" Irene replied reluctantly. The alligators were slowing their thrashing now, their wild spasms becoming mere squirming wriggles. \"The door to the Library was sabotaged on this side. We think it must have been Alberich\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait.\" Bradamant grabbed her shoulder. Some of the high colour drained from her face. \"Alberich is here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Irene said bluntly. \"Didn't you get notified?\"\n\nThe expression on Bradamant's face spoke for itself. Belatedly, Irene put two and two together. \"You're here without authorization, aren't you? You came here even though this is a quarantined world and it was my mission\u2014\"\n\n\"And I just saved you and your student from getting eaten by alligators,\" Bradamant snapped. \"You owe me. I want the precise details about Alberich being here. Now.\"\n\n\"So why did you come here anyhow?\" Irene asked, ignoring the demand, as she checked that there was still enough chaos to cover their conversation. She and Bradamant weren't the only people staying up on the tables. A lot of other people were waiting to be absolutely sure that the alligators were dead before they came down to ground level again. \"To this party, that is. Not just to this alternate.\"\n\nBradamant was silent for a moment. There might even have been a trace of shame in her eyes, but Irene wasn't sure if it was shame at having stolen another Librarian's mission or just embarrassment at being caught. Finally she said, \"I needed to investigate the Iron Brotherhood.\"\n\n\"Congratulations,\" Irene said, and jerked her head in the direction of the alligators. \"You found them. Were they supposed to meet you here, or was it just a happy coincidence?\"\n\n\"You're very insolent tonight,\" Bradamant said softly, dangerously.\n\n\"Oh, don't you think that I have reason?\" Irene had enough control to keep her voice down, but not enough to keep back her words. \"If you have anything, anything to do with this piece of bloody lunacy\u2014\"\n\n\"I'd have thought that Alberich was more important than collateral civilian casualties,\" Bradamant said. Her eyes glittered. \"Shouldn't you be briefing me on that rather than wasting time on those people?\"\n\n\"Did you have anything to do with this?\" Irene repeated.\n\n\"No,\" Bradamant said. \"If that helps you answer my question.\"\n\nIrene glanced at the dying alligators again. She didn't trust Bradamant, but she couldn't refuse to warn her.\n\n\"Yesterday I was told to beware of Alberich, a direct communication from the Library. This morning Kai and I went to talk with Dominic Aubrey, at our Library entrance point. We didn't find him there, but we found his skin rolled up in a jar of vinegar, and a chaos trap on the door to the Library itself.\"\n\nBradamant blinked slowly. \"Dominic Aubrey is dead? Actually dead?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Irene said. \"Well, probably. Given the alternatives. When did you get here? Did you see him when you came through? If we can pin down when Alberich killed him and trapped the door\u2014\"\n\n\"Irene!\" Kai and Vale had converged on them unexpectedly. Vale had several cuts, but Kai was elegantly unruffled. He offered his hands to Irene. \"If you'd like a hand down\u2014and Bradamant, of course...\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Bradamant said in suddenly sweetened tones. She stepped past Irene, hips swinging, and placed her hands in Kai's, letting him assist her down.\n\nKai threw a martyred glance over Bradamant's shoulder at Irene. It said, more clearly than words, I couldn't possibly leave her to fall into the remains of the herring, could I?\n\nIrene sighed. She set her chin, sat down on the edge of the table, and swung off it to stand on the floor. Her gown was already ruined anyhow. \"I'm glad to see that both you gentlemen are safe and well,\" she said flatly. She could feel Vale's measuring stare on her, Kai, and Bradamant and tried to ignore it. There was no reason whatever for her to have any feelings on the subject at all.\n\nThe doors slammed open. A squad of men in vaguely military uniforms came barrelling through, rifles shouldered. They were led by a dark-skinned man with a turban and beard and moustache, his uniform differentiated by a wide green sash. They pointed their guns at the alligators and began to riddle them with bullets, ignoring the fact that the poor reptiles were now barely moving.\n\n\"Ah,\" Silver said from behind Irene's shoulder, \"the police at last. Inspector Singh is as vigorous as ever.\" He took Irene's hand between his. \"My dearest girl, you are wounded.\"\n\nIrene was conscious of both Kai and Vale staring at Silver in a distinctly freezing way. She wished that she could just have had even five minutes to get some answers out of them and Bradamant before Silver had turned up. \"A scratch,\" she said quickly, gingerly trying to slide her hand out of his grasp. \"Sir, no doubt Inspector Singh will want to speak to you...\"\n\n\"And you must introduce me to your beautiful friend,\" Silver said, his eyes on Bradamant, his grip on Irene's hand painfully firm.\n\nIrene glanced at Bradamant. Bradamant gave a small nod of agreement, her lips curling in a sweet smile.\n\n\"Lord Silver,\" Irene said formally, \"this is my friend Bradamant; I had no idea that she would be at this party, but of course I am delighted to see her.\" And I hope she falls over and plants her face in a dish of salmon roe. \"Bradamant, this is Lord Silver, one of the Liechtenstein Fae, who is visiting England\u2014\"\n\n\"And who would have come much sooner,\" Silver cut in smoothly, dropping Irene's hand and stepping forward to take Bradamant's elegant fingers in his, \"had I known that such beauty was to be found. How could I have missed a gem like you? Sweet lady, do me the favour to say that I may have the honour of your closer acquaintance?\"\n\nIrene could recognize an opportunity when it sat up and begged in front of her. She began to quietly edge away, as Silver raised Bradamant's hand to his lips.\n\nSilver's nostrils flared. He sniffed at Bradamant's hand, eyes brightening to an utterly inhuman shade of yellow. \"I know that smell!\" he spat. \"Belphegor! I have you at last!\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 12",
                "text": "\"What?\" Bradamant said, but her attitude was wrong. It was one of denial, not blank incomprehension.\n\n\"What?\" Vale said, in a very different tone of voice, taking a step forward.\n\n\"Impossible!\" Irene said, without too much hope of being believed.\n\n\"I'd be accusing you too, little mouse,\" Silver said, \"but you were there when we opened the safe, and I know you were as surprised as I was. You should be glad that I've identified one of our enemies. This woman is Belphegor. She is responsible for stealing a highly valuable book from Lord Wyndham, and maybe for his death. I recognized her scent from the card she left in his safe. Johnson! My horsewhip!\"\n\nA thin, pale-faced man in grey stepped up and offered a coiled horsewhip to Silver.\n\n\"This is all a terrible mistake,\" Bradamant said firmly. \"I demand that you release me.\"\n\nSilver looked at her with dangerous sharpness, lips curling to show unnaturally white teeth. \"Belphegor, you have no idea what you have blundered into. Give me your word to restore the book to me, and I will consider letting you go. For the moment, at least.\"\n\n\"Hst!\" Irene said loudly. \"The police are approaching. We don't want them to hear about this\u2014\"\n\nEveryone twitched and turned to see the inspector in the green sash marching towards them. His demeanour fairly shouted determination, and there was something worryingly satisfied about his smile.\n\n\"Inspector Singh,\" Vale murmured in Irene's ear. \"Over from the Indian Empire for the last two months, on a formal officer exchange between police forces. He didn't like the Fae there and he doesn't like them here. He'll take any opportunity to pry.\"\n\n\"Do we object to that?\" Irene murmured back, just as quietly. Bradamant was trying to wrench her wrist loose from Silver, clearly not quite willing to use the Language in front of him, but he was effortlessly maintaining his grip.\n\n\"That might depend on what we have to offer him,\" Vale said. His eyes were on Bradamant.\n\nWhile Irene could think of several ways for her, Kai, and Bradamant to get out of the current situation, very few of them involved keeping Vale as a reliable contact, much less Silver. Having the law hunt them as criminals would only make things more complicated. And she needed to know what Silver knew about the book, and why he wanted it. \"If Singh doesn't like Fae,\" she pointed out, \"then he won't accept Lord Silver's identification of her as Belphegor. We may be able to get more information out of her later if we help her now.\"\n\n\"She is your friend, you said,\" Vale murmured. His gaze was cold.\n\n\"She wasn't supposed to be here!\" Irene nearly spat in frustration. \"And I knew nothing about her being this criminal.\"\n\nThe inspector stopped and inclined his head slightly to Silver. It wasn't a bow. It was very definitely not a bow. It was barely a nod. \"Good evening, sir.\" He had a perceptible accent, but an Oxford one rather than Punjabi or any of the other Indian accents that Irene recognized. \"I understand that you've had some sort of minor problem this evening.\"\n\n\"A minor problem?\" Silver spat. He whirled to point at the dead alligators and the human corpses, still grasping Bradamant's wrist in his other hand. \"You call that a minor problem?\"\n\n\"To you, sir,\" Inspector Singh said coldly. \"I am sure that it was far more serious to the unfortunate people caught up in this, and my men are handling the casualties. I would be grateful if you could inform me exactly what took place.\"\n\nAs Silver filled him in, in melodramatic but fundamentally accurate detail, and Singh took notes, Irene took a silent breath of relief. He hadn't seen who controlled the electricity that took out the alligator threat. She noticed Bradamant relaxing a fraction as well.\n\n\"That is all,\" Silver concluded. \"You may inform me when you have any further details.\" He turned his back on the inspector.\n\n\"Actually, sir,\" Inspector Singh said, \"we are aware of the identity of your aggressors.\" Everyone stared at him. \"The Iron Brotherhood.\" He turned another page in his notebook and deliberately made a note before proceeding. \"Of course, sir, we are most interested in why they should try to attack your party in such a way.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Bradamant said, \"I think I can answer that.\"\n\nEveryone looked at her.\n\nShe lowered her head demurely, batted her eyelashes, and took a cute little gasp of breath that made her bosom heave in a way that was neither cute nor little. \"They were after a book which they thought was being kept here. In fact, I believe that this attack was a distraction\u2014\"\n\nSilver's eyes went wide. He flung Bradamant into Inspector Singh's arms with a muffled curse (she bounced) and ran for the door, Johnson two paces behind him.\n\n\"Well,\" Inspector Singh said, setting Bradamant back on her feet. \"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the station with me, madam. We have a few questions.\"\n\nBradamant rubbed the hand that Silver had mangled, the imprints of his fingers scarlet against her pale skin.\n\n\"May I just have a word aside with my friend Irene, Inspector? If you would be so kind?\"\n\n\"Of course, madam,\" Inspector Singh said, without taking so much as one step back.\n\nBradamant clasped Irene's non-bandaged hand between her own before Irene could react. Very rapidly, in the Language, but pitched low, she said, \"I bind myself by my name, by my oath, and by my word that if I find the book I will bring it to you before returning to the Library, and that I will consult with you tomorrow morning, if I am free to do so, about what to do next.\" She dropped back to English but kept her voice low. \"But for the moment I need you to do something about that Fae.\"\n\nInspector Singh stiffened, staring at the two of them from under heavy dark brows. Well, of course: to him it must have sounded as if Bradamant was talking in his native language and dialect. Irene tried to suppress an urge to feel smug about Bradamant having to explain that, along with everything else.\n\n\"Of course,\" she said in English. \"I will see you then. Please be careful.\"\n\nHowever, Bradamant had bound herself in the Language. She couldn't break that. She might be able to evade the precise spirit of the oath. Indeed, Irene could think of several ways to get around it, the first one being that \"bring you the book\" was not the same as \"give you the book.\" But even so, that still brought the book a lot closer than it was right now. And, to be completely frank, she was almost too exhausted to care. The oath would do for the moment.\n\nBradamant nodded and turned back to Inspector Singh.\n\n\"I am at your disposal, sir,\" she said.\n\n\"Perhaps we might also consider leaving,\" Vale suggested. \"Unless you want to discuss matters further with Lord Silver, Miss Winters?\"\n\nIrene thought about having to explain Bradamant to Silver. Having to explain anything to Silver. \"What an excellent idea,\" she agreed enthusiastically. \"Kai, unless you can think of anything that we've left undone, this might be a good moment to leave.\"\n\nKai wiped his sword with an unstained bit of tablecloth and put it down on the table. \"I am entirely at your disposal,\" he said. \"Where are we going?\"\n\nThen Irene remembered that they didn't have hotel rooms. Wonderful. One more thing to sort out.\n\nHer dismay must have shown on her face, and Vale stepped in, almost smiling. \"Allow me to offer you the hospitality of my rooms for the night, Miss Winters. I have a couple of spare bedrooms\u2014and what's more, it will allow your friend and Inspector Singh to find you in the morning.\"\n\nInspector Singh nodded, and Irene revised her opinion of his relationship with Vale by a few notches. Clearly the two men were used to working together. She'd have to bear that in mind.\n\nShe tried to remember exactly where India stood in the history of this alternate. It had become an independent trade partner of Great Britain rather than a colony (not due to any particular lack of imperialism on Britain's part, sadly), and the two empires still maintained close ties. That'd explain Singh's accent.\n\nKai stepped forward and offered Irene his arm. She took it, suddenly conscious of her weariness and of the confusion around her. The air was heavy with the smell of blood. Human bodies littered the floor together with alligator corpses\u2014mauled limbs, bloody torsos, screaming faces. Some men and women were still sobbing in corners. Others were filing out of the room, talking to the policemen, or simply drinking. Only a few of the tables were still upright; others had been battered down or had collapsed under the weight of people crowding onto them. The lovely floor was scarred by claws and gunshots and soaked with blood.\n\nThere was so much blood.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" Kai said softly.\n\nThere might have been a time when Irene would have said, No, I'm not, and shut her eyes for just a few minutes. But it was not now, and definitely not in front of Bradamant. She swallowed and tried not to breathe the air more than she could help. \"I will manage,\" she said curtly. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Your cloak, Miss Winters,\" Vale said, draping it over her shoulders. She must have been dangerously distracted, as he'd retrieved it without her noticing. She made a note to be more careful and filed it along with all the other notes to be more precise, more attentive, less squeamish, and less inclined to curl up and cry on someone's shoulder.\n\nInspector Singh clicked his heels together, half bowed, and turned away with Bradamant, staying a very precise half foot away from her. Bradamant didn't look back as she followed him.\n\nOutside, on the steps of the Liechtenstein Embassy, there was a mob of photographers, reporters, and interested parties. Street vendors were even selling roasted chestnuts, doughnuts, and candied peanuts. Their fragrance blended with the taint of Irene's bloodstained dress, and she had to struggle not to be sick.\n\n\"Did you see the elder Miss Retrograde leave?\" Kai asked.\n\nIrene shook her head. \"I saw her alive at the end but didn't see her go. I suppose she may be useful. If she knows something.\"\n\nVale came to a sharp halt, looking down at her. \"The elder Miss Retrograde? Miss Olga Retrograde?\"\n\n\"That was the lady in question,\" Irene said. \"Is there something that we should know about her, sir?\"\n\n\"Only that she's the biggest society blackmailer in London,\" Vale said. \"The lady is extremely well-known for knowing things. The unfortunate thing is that what she knows is rarely advantageous to anyone except herself. As to your acquaintance with her...\"\n\n\"It was the first time we'd met,\" Irene said hastily. The curl of Vale's lip made his opinion of the lady extremely clear. \"She realized that we weren't Canadians.\"\n\nVale snorted and turned away to signal a cab.\n\n\"Do you think we'll have a problem?\" Kai murmured.\n\n\"We're probably the least likely people in that room to have a problem with her,\" Irene answered, equally quietly. \"After all, what can she blackmail us with?\"\n\nKai laughed. \"True.\"\n\n\"Over here!\" Vale called. One of the swarming cabs had answered his uplifted hand. They had to elbow their way to it through the edges of the crowd, avoiding reporters with notebooks and cameras. Vale drew the shade across the window as they set off.\n\n\"Do you expect us to be watched?\" Irene asked.\n\n\"It seems likely, Miss Winters,\" Vale answered. \"In my own defence, I will say that I am not unknown to the criminal section of London\u2014nor them to me. But since I have not attempted to hide my identity, we may as well return to my lodgings directly.\"\n\nIrene nodded, settling back into her seat. The passenger compartment of the cab had two wide leather-covered benches facing each other. Its basic structure was similar to that of a classical hansom carriage, but it was electric-powered rather than horse-drawn, and built of metal rather than wood. She'd been in hansoms before now, and it was strange to be in something so close to one without hearing the sound of hoof-beats.\n\n\"About your friend,\" Vale said, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. The cab jolted as it turned a corner. \"Do you think Silver's accusations regarding her identity are correct?\"\n\nIrene would have liked to meet his eyes and unflinchingly deny it, but she honestly didn't think it would work. She wondered how much Vale might have deduced about Bradamant, simply from their brief meeting. It was the sort of thing that she would expect him to do. \"I wish that I knew myself,\" she finally said. \"I hadn't thought that she'd been in London\"\u2014or in this alternate\u2014\"long enough to have done such a thing. And I can't think why she'd do it!\"\n\n\"It is a common enough technique,\" Vale said austerely, \"to establish a pattern of thefts in order to conceal a single one. If she was planning to steal that book, then she could also have been the perpetrator of those early thefts to camouflage its significance.\"\n\nIrene considered that idea. It sounded uncomfortably plausible. \"But why would Bradamant have needed to hide the theft?\" she said out loud. After all, Bradamant herself could have just left the alternate immediately after stealing the book. But did she want the book for herself, or was she seeking it for the Library? She was here without authorization... Irene's blood went cold. Could Bradamant have turned traitor to the Library?\n\nKai was only a step behind her. \"But if she was trying to hide her theft from us as well as the authorities\u2014,\" he began.\n\nVale frowned. He raised a hand to interrupt Kai. \"A moment, please, Mr. Strongrock. Driver!\" He hammered with the head of his cane on the roof of the carriage. \"Driver! Why are we going this way?\"\n\nIrene pulled back the window shade. She couldn't recognize the buildings going past outside, but they were clearly on a main street. \"I think we're going faster,\" she began, then yelped in shock as chaotic power flared across the window. She managed to snatch her fingers back just in time before it could touch them. Across the carriage, Kai flinched back from the window on his side, bumping into Vale.\n\n\"Driver!\" Vale shouted. \"What is going on?\"\n\nThe cab jolted as it speeded up again. \"The name's Alberich,\" a voice called from above, audible over the rattling of the wheels and the creaking of the carriage. \"I suggest you ask your friends what that means, Mr. Vale.\"\n\nIrene was conscious that she'd probably gone pale, but she was too busy trying not to shake with sheer terror to spend much time bothering about it. She couldn't handle this\u2014she couldn't\u2014her hand was still infected\u2014this was Alberich, the Alberich, the one who had been cast out of the Library, there was no way she could handle this...\n\n\"Brace Miss Winters,\" Vale instructed Kai, then kicked out at the door with a coiled strength that should have burst it open.\n\nIt didn't. The door stayed firmly in position, and the walls of the cab flexed with it as if it was a continuous part of the cab's structure. Vale recoiled into his seat, thrown back by his own force, and bit back a muffled oath.\n\n\"I'm afraid you Librarians have become an inconvenience,\" the voice called down. Male, Irene noted with the part of her brain that was capable of doing something other than shudder and try to hide. No discernible accent. Precise. Something about the rhythm of it was vaguely familiar, as though she'd heard someone else speak in the same way. \"I require that book for my own collection. A pity to lose you as well, Mr. Vale, but I draw the line at stopping the cab to let you out.\"\n\nSomeone in the street ahead of them screamed as they dived out of the way of the speeding cab.\n\n\"I think not,\" Vale said coldly. He spun his cane in his hands and smashed the silver head against the window.\n\nThe glass took the blow without breaking or even splintering.\n\n\"He's sealed the cab.\" Irene forced the words out, nearly shouting against the banging and clattering of the wheels on cobble-stones. \"Chaos magic\u2014he's somehow bound it into a coherent whole, so nothing can get in or out\u2014you'd have to break the whole thing to break part of it.\"\n\n\"Quite accurate,\" the voice said. \"Though it's not airtight\u2014or watertight. A logical paradox which I'm afraid you won't have the time to appreciate.\"\n\n\"The river,\" Kai said, barely audibly, and the same knowledge was in Vale's eyes.\n\nIrene's thoughts ran round inside her head. There must be something I can do\u2014even if the Language isn't working reliably for me, could I use it enough to save us? But the cab itself is chaos contaminated and Alberich too, so maybe it would cancel out any Library powers anyway...\n\n\"Adieu,\" Alberich said. The cab rocked again and speeded up in one last rush towards the river.\n\n\"Together!\" Vale shouted. \"Enough weight and we can force it over\u2014\" He threw himself against the side of the cab, and a moment later Irene and Kai joined him, struggling together in the confined space. The cab tilted, regained balance, tilted again\u2014\n\n\"Yes!\" Kai exulted.\n\nAnd the cab went over into the river."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 13",
                "text": "The carriage did not sink elegantly into the water like a dying swan: it hit the surface of the river with a rattling crash that threw Irene into Kai, and Kai into Vale, and Vale into the wall of the carriage.\n\nForce equals mass times acceleration, Irene thought dizzily. She should be thinking of a way out of this, but her thoughts cowered like frightened rabbits. She didn't want to think.\n\nThe carriage tumbled as it began to sink, rolling over as the river tugged at it. The three of them automatically grabbed handles and benches, wedging themselves into corners until the vehicle came to a jolting stop on its side. Black Thames water covered the windows, not entirely cutting off all light, but making it only barely possible for the three of them to see one another.\n\n\"The usual protocol in these cases is to wait until we are fully submerged, then open a window to equalize the water pressure and swim up to the surface,\" Vale stated. Irene could hear the sheer control in his voice, over the creaking of the carriage and the slow trickling sound of water. \"But if that person has sealed the carriage, given that I could not break the window earlier, this tactic would be ineffective.\"\n\nRight. She had to explain to Vale about Alberich. She owed him an explanation about a great many things now. But what was the point, if they were just going to die? Well, it did remove the need for justifications. Yet there were other ways of dodging that sort of thing, and she was avoiding the subject again. And the water was pressing down, and they were all going to die...\n\nHe doesn't just want us dead. He wants us dying in fear, in the dark, and slowly. This isn't just wanting to get us out of the way, so he can work undisturbed. It's malice, pure and simple.\n\nShe had been afraid. She had been so very afraid that she'd been cringing in the corner, unwilling to speak, let alone act. But now something else woke in her.\n\nI will not tolerate this.\n\n\"Then we're just going to have to find a way to break it,\" Irene said. She forced herself to lean forward. \"What one man can do, another can undo.\" Saying the words made them possible, gave her strength.\n\n\"But you can't touch his magic!\" Kai said. \"When it infected you before it nearly killed you!\"\n\nShe wished that she had time to think this through calmly, to plan, to consider. \"Wait,\" she said, pulling the glove off her damaged hand and pointing her fingers at the window. \"I've got an idea.\"\n\n\"Would you care to explain?\" Vale invited tensely.\n\n\"I was attacked by the same forces he used earlier,\" Irene said. She could feel the cold water soaking into her slippers and stockings, curling up around her ankles. \"If I can identify them and expel them, it should break the binding, and we can swim out of here.\"\n\n\"Very good.\" Vale eased himself farther back in his seat. Perhaps it was only the dim light that made Irene think that he was trying to position himself as far away from her as possible. She'd sort things out later. She'd explain things later. Right now she just had to make sure there would be a later.\n\nIrene held her fingers a fraction of an inch away from the window and focused away from the water, the darkness, the two men in the carriage with her, and into a world where language structured reality.\n\nIt was a fact that Alberich controlled and used chaotic forces. The chaotic forces must therefore be discrete and identifiable. But she had no words in the Language for these forces, and she could control only what she could name or describe.\n\nHowever, she could name and describe herself.\n\nIt wasn't a thing that the Librarians did very often. Oh, certainly if you had a broken left arm you could try saying, My left tibia is in fact not fractured but perfectly whole. But while your tibia might obey, your muscles would still be torn and any wound would still be open. Unless you could name every single thing that required naming, you would probably end up with a partly healed wound that would be more trouble than letting it heal in the normal way. While some Librarians went in for that level of detail, and were very sought after, Irene was not one of them.\n\nBut a person, especially a Librarian, could be named and described holistically as a single entity. She bore the Library's mark on her flesh, and her name was in the Language. If she could enforce that strongly enough, deliberately enough, there would be no space for the chaos forces inside her. Without that to contend with, she could finally access her full powers as a Librarian.\n\nThis was not something she'd ever tried. Then again, she'd never been infested to this degree before. Only imminent death would force her to play with dangerous, untested, theoretical techniques; otherwise, maybe she'd have thought of this earlier.\n\nHer life was far too full of learning experiences.\n\nBefore she could lose her nerve, she shaped the words with her lips, barely audible, speaking in the Language. \"I am Irene: I am a Librarian: I am a servant of the Library.\"\n\nHer brand burned across her back as she enforced her will. But she felt curiously distanced from the pain, as though she could shrug it away and wish it gone. In a flash of insight, she realized that would be disastrous. What she felt in her was the conflict between self-definition and the contamination. She couldn't afford to ignore it. She had to embrace it.\n\nBut it hurt. She heard her breath catch, the sound strange in her ears.\n\n\"Irene?\" Kai said, his voice concerned. It was too dark to see him now.\n\nWith a racking surge, like vomit after eating spoilt food, the chaos power came jolting out of her. She tried not to think of the buffet earlier that evening (salmon, mussels, crab, soup, little prawns in sauce) and failed. The power spilled from her hand, boiling off her fingers in waves of shadow that rippled in the air\u2014and like any living thing, it looked for shelter, for something like itself.\n\nIt jumped for the window, arcing through the narrow span of air, and crackled into the glass. Irene had just enough time to wonder if she should jump away from the window, when it broke.\n\nNot just the window.\n\nThe whole carriage came apart. First the window, splintering into shards of glass; then sections of the carriage were toppling away from one another like a badly glued model. She barely had time to feel the splinters of glass in her arm before the water came in like a hammer-blow. And, surprisingly clearly in the near darkness, she saw Kai's face looking strangely decisive. His mouth was moving; he was saying something\u2014\n\nShe had several seconds of thrashing panic before she realized that she could breathe.\n\nThe three of them were drifting along together at the bottom of the river, enclosed in a long, continuous coil of dark water. It was a flexing, shifting, visible current in the river, separate from the rest of the water. It even felt cleaner. The shattered remnants of the carriage were already invisible in the shifting mud of the bottom, some distance behind them. Above, through the surface of the water, street lamps glimmered in hazy balls of white and orange. Kai floated a few strides ahead of herself and Vale, moving at the same pace as they were. He was saying something, but the river water filled her ears and she couldn't hear him.\n\nVale grasped at her sleeve. He mouthed something that was probably What is going on, Miss Winters?\n\nOn the positive side, Irene reassured herself, he must be feeling more composed if he was back to calling her Miss Winters. She shrugged as obviously as she could, gesturing soothingly. It is all under control, she mouthed back.\n\nVale didn't look as if he believed her, which was a shame, because she was now sure that things actually were back under control. To the extent that the three of them weren't about to drown, at least.\n\nNo, the real problem was something else entirely. Now she was sure what Kai really was. A river spirit might have changed himself to water to save them, and a nature spirit of some other type might have cajoled or persuaded the river to help them, but only one sort of being would give orders to a river.\n\nKai was a dragon. What the hell was she supposed to do about that?\n\nAnd he'd chosen to reveal himself in order to save them. Not himself: he would presumably have managed quite comfortably on his own. But them. Her and Vale. It was a commitment on Kai's part that made her worry whether she would be able to answer it. She didn't like commitments to other people. They could get... messy.\n\nThe tumbling rush of the current veered towards the far bank and then lifted the three of them out of the water itself, rising in an arc of dark water. They were placed on the dock-side, deposited as lightly as driftwood. A couple of beggars who'd been nursing their hands over a small fire just sat there, looking at the three of them numbly as the water sloshed over the pavement and ebbed back to the river again.\n\nA curl of the river still held itself aloft, curving towards where Kai stood. It wasn't quite like a serpent: the head had features something like a human and something like a dragon (yes, that again). There was also something of the lion, mane wet and draggled with weeds and dirt. Its eyes gleamed as yellow as fog-lamps, burning under heavy brows. This spirit was as polluted as the water itself, its body entwined with fragments of garbage and long streaks of filth. A heavy smell of oil and weed clung to it, wafting thickly along the dock.\n\nKai faced it and gave a small, precise inclination of his head. \"Your service is acknowledged,\" he said firmly. \"Return with my thanks and the thanks of my family.\"\n\nThe river spirit bowed its head in a long fluctuation that rippled along its body, then reared up and crashed back into the river in a spray of black water. The eyes were the last thing to vanish beneath the surface of the river, disappearing slowly rather than simply closing, visible for a long moment under the dark water.\n\nVale took a step forward. \"What was that?\" he demanded, shocked. \"What did you do? What is it that you have brought into my London, sir?\"\n\nKai turned with a snarl, his eyes an inhuman shade of blue, as fierce and dangerous as gas flames. \"What it was, sir, was\u2014\"\n\n\"Was under my orders,\" Irene said, stepping between them. She couldn't allow this to degenerate into a shouting match. And more than that, she could sense something archaic and furious within Kai, the dragon under the human skin now very close to the surface. She had to divert it now, give him familiar channels to work in, and give Vale a target\u2014herself\u2014whom he simply couldn't shout down without shattering his own rules of custom and propriety. She regarded Vale firmly, refusing to show him an inch of fear or terror or even, she hoped, nervousness. \"I have promised you more information, sir, and you shall have it, but I suggest we return to your lodgings first. Mr. Strongrock acted on my instructions to protect and save us all.\" It was a fairly small lie, really only a half lie as lies went, because Kai had certainly known she would want him to protect all of them. \"And this is no time for us to be arguing, when we are all fighting a greater enemy.\"\n\nVale regarded her for a moment, then granted her a small nod, nearly the mirror image of Kai's own salutation to the river spirit. \"Very well, Miss Winters. We shall return to my lodgings. I can only have faith in you, I suppose, as I have done before.\"\n\nThat stung. As no doubt it was meant to. She smiled as sweetly as she could, then turned to Kai. \"We can talk later,\" she said softly, \"or we can talk now, but either way, I know what you are, and it doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"You think very highly of yourself,\" Kai answered, equally quietly, but far more deadly, \"if you believe that it doesn't matter.\"\n\nThis was very different from handling Vale. There she had needed to hide her fear to convince him to wait for information. Here, with Kai, she needed to show her control and dispassion or\u2014she could feel it in her bones\u2014she would lose him to his true nature.\n\nShe couldn't afford that. She had a responsibility to the Library. And she had a responsibility to him.\n\n\"Are you still my student?\" she asked him directly. \"Am I still your mentor?\" Nothing more than that. The bond of loyalty and the bond of trust. Anything else was something that they would have to work out later.\n\nHe looked at her, and something inhuman seethed behind his eyes. \"Do you think you can command me?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, and she spoke in the Language.\n\nThe word hung in the air between them. Then Kai closed his eyes and reopened them, and now they were a human blue, sharp but no longer alien. \"Then I believe I am still under your orders,\" he said, and he managed a very small smile.\n\n\"Miss Winters, Mr. Strongrock, over here!\" Vale called. He had walked to where the dock ended and the houses began and had somehow managed to conjure up a carriage. As Irene followed Kai across to the carriage, struggling with her soaked skirts and cloak, she couldn't help but notice that Kai was perfectly dry. It didn't seem fair. But it was a comforting, small thing on which to concentrate. She could be aggravated by something simple, rather than floundering in terror at what she had just faced down."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 14",
                "text": "\"I would appreciate that explanation, Miss Winters,\" Vale said as he refilled their teacups.\n\nThere had been hot baths and bandaging of injuries. Even Kai, untouched by the dirty water of the Thames, needed to clean himself after the exertions of the reception and its accompanying alligator blood. As for Vale and Irene, they were soaked and filthy. The driver had been muttering audibly about getting his carriage cleaned, even after a very generous tip from Vale.\n\nIrene would gladly have soaked for a few more hours, but she hadn't felt it safe to leave Vale and Kai alone to talk for too long. Kai's temper was still touchy, and Vale might ask a question that was more dangerous than he realized. With a virtuous feeling of self-sacrifice, she'd dragged herself out of the hip-bath that she'd been allotted, wrapped herself up in the heavy flannel dressing-gown Vale had lent her, turbaned her hair in a towel, and gone out to join the others in Vale's study for tea and interrogation.\n\n(She hadn't asked why Vale had a spare woman's dressing-gown in his wardrobe. Presumably specifically for female victims of crime who'd had a drenching. However, she didn't think it belonged to any close female associate of Vale's. For one thing, it clearly hadn't been used for months, and for another, any female trying to be flirtatious would not choose a dressing-gown made of heavy flannel. For a third thing, Vale hadn't offered her any other female clothing. And Vale hadn't given her the sort of attention that even the politest of men might give a soaked wet woman in dripping clothing. He'd bustled her off towards the hot tub as briskly as the matron from her old boarding-school. Not that she wanted him to give her that sort of attention, anyhow...)\n\nIrene sipped her tea. Milk. Two lumps of sugar\u2014suitable for people suffering from shock. \"I should warn you that it is a little, ah, far-fetched,\" she said, trying to think how best to explain it, or, failing all else, lie about it.\n\nVale shrugged. His dressing-gown was red and black silk. His hair was still damp, combed into position, and gleaming darkly in the light from the lamps. \"I can hardly object until I have heard it.\" Somewhere amidst the confusion he had found time to rearrange his books, after the disorder Irene had inflicted on them, and neat piles of half-sorted literature sat around his chair like patient children.\n\nKai sipped his own tea (no milk, no sugar, black and brooding) and watched the two of them. There was still that feeling of distance about him. He was wearing what was obviously Vale's second-best dressing-gown\u2014the same colours and design, but more worn on the elbows, and with small burn holes marring the embroidery of the cuffs. His mouth was pinched in stubborn lines.\n\n\"Mr. Strongrock and I are agents of a library,\" Irene started. \"It is often known as the Invisible Library among those who have heard of it, as it's hidden from most.\"\n\n\"A reasonable enough name,\" Vale granted. \"Where is it based? I would hardly think that it could be London.\" Since I have never heard of it, he didn't bother to add.\n\n\"Ah. Now, this would be the implausible bit,\" Irene said. \"Are you familiar with the concept of alternate worlds?\"\n\nVale put down his cup, his regard assessing rather than outright disbelieving. \"The theory has been mooted by some of the more metaphysically inclined philosophers and scientists. While I do not necessarily believe in it, I must admit that it has a certain quality of inherent satisfaction. That is, to paraphrase\u2014it 'makes sense' that possible fulcrum points in history have created alternate worlds where things might have been different.\"\n\nIrene nodded. That way of looking at it would do for the moment. \"I and Mr. Strongrock are agents of a library which exists between the alternate worlds. Our task is to collect books for the Library from all those worlds, to preserve them.\" She glanced meaningfully at his crowded bookshelves. \"You must admit that to a keen reader\u2014like yourself, or like me\u2014that also would 'make sense.'\"\n\n\"Mm. Your argument would appeal to any bibliophile, Miss Winters. Should I take it that you are here in pursuit of a particular book?\"\n\nIrene nodded again. \"The copy of Grimm that Lord Wyndham had before his death. But it seems that we aren't the only people after it.\"\n\nVale hesitated for a long moment. \"Very well. I can postulate an interdimensional library hunting down rare books. I can accept the agents of that library having unusual powers.\" He glanced at Kai. \"Once one accepts the basic concept as possible, today's events become\u2014well, not entirely inexplicable. I have a great many questions, but one query in particular intrigues me, and I trust that you can give me a solid answer to it. Why should you be looking for Grimms' Fairy Tales? Why not the latest scientific advances?\"\n\nIrene smiled. This part had always warmed her somewhere deep inside. She leaned forward in turn, putting her cup down. \"Mr. Vale, while all the alternate worlds exist, and while they may have different metaphysical laws, their physical laws are the same. Iron is iron, radium is radium, gunpowder is gunpowder, and if you drop an object, it will fall according to the law of gravity. Scientific discoveries are the same across the alternates, and while they are no doubt important, we don't value them as we do creative work. There may be a hundred brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in a hundred different worlds, and each time they may have written a different set of fairy tales. That's where our interest lies.\"\n\nVale blinked. \"But in that case, you could import the discoveries from other worlds! You could bring more than simply fiction\u2014new technologies, new wonders of science. Have you no concept of the good you could do for these\"\u2014he remembered himself\u2014\"hypothetical alternate worlds?\"\n\n\"Wouldn't work,\" Kai said, staring at his tea.\n\n\"What my colleague is trying to say,\" Irene said patiently, \"is that, while it has been tried, firstly, the Library does not care to make itself public. Secondly, we cannot introduce material for which there is no support infrastructure. This is what would happen if we tried to bring in discoveries that your current science didn't support, and as a result the discovery wouldn't take root. It would probably be written off as a fake in short order. Also, please consider. What would be the dangers facing a person attempting to introduce entirely new scientific knowledge to this world? To this country?\"\n\nVale nodded slowly, his expression bitter. \"I take your point,\" he said. He didn't sound convinced, though.\n\n\"And lastly,\" Irene said, a little embarrassed that she had to point it out, \"all of us who are sealed to the Library are people who have chosen this way of life because we love books. None of us wanted to save worlds. I mean, not that we object to saving worlds...\" She shrugged, picking up her teacup again. \"We want books. We love books. We live with books. Someone who joined the Library just so that they could try to use the Library to benefit their own world... well, I suppose it would be ethical, but it isn't the purpose of the Library.\"\n\n\"Then what is the purpose of the Library?\" Vale asked.\n\n\"To save books,\" Irene said firmly. The words were so automatic that she didn't even need to think about them. She'd spent all her life with the idea. But the words had never sounded hollow to her before. She made herself focus on the familiar justification. \"To save created works. In time, if their original alternate loses them, we can give them back copies, so that they aren't lost. And in the meantime, the Library exists and endures.\"\n\n\"So why did Alberich leave?\" Vale asked.\n\nIrene swallowed. She hadn't expected him to get to that point quite that fast. The little that she knew about Alberich was bad enough that she had been happy to write him off as a myth. She didn't really want to think of him as a real person with potentially terrifying motivations. Then she blinked. \"Wait. How did you know that?\"\n\nVale waved a hand dismissively. \"Simple enough. The fellow is clearly a deserter from your own organization. Given what I know about it from you, his possible motives are either personal advantage, or he has overarching principles that conflict with your own stated mission\u2014which is to save books and not interfere in the workings of other worlds. But if it were a question of personal advantage, why bother to hunt down and assassinate other Librarians? If he wanted more fame or adventure, presumably other Librarians wouldn't get in his way, as long as he didn't obstruct your searches for specific books. And what specific book would be that important to him, if he were pursuing personal gain? So perhaps he has a larger plan, one that requires your non-interference. This would require him to be motivated by personal power or have some goal which he believes is more important than your Library's search for books. Your own response confirms this\u2014why else would Library agents feel such a sense of dread towards a mere rogue agent?\"\n\nIrene reminded herself bitterly not to underestimate Vale again. She also ignored Kai, who was twiddling his fingers in his lap with an air of smug unconcern. Fine. I suppose I should be glad his mood's improving. \"Alberich left the Library a while ago,\" she said reluctantly. \"I lack the clearance for full information on why.\" Or any information beyond the bare minimum.\n\n\"So\u2014this Alberich is a continual threat. Has he crossed your path before?\"\n\nIrene shook her head. \"No. Thank heavens. I had heard about him, of course; everyone hears about him\u2014\"\n\n\"Even I'd heard about him,\" Kai put in, not very helpfully.\n\n\"Kai is my junior,\" Irene said before Vale could ask for clarification of that statement. \"And I know that the idea of an evil rogue Librarian must sound like some kind of rumour. The sort of rumour which gets passed down through the years to frighten the novices. But there were stories about things happening to people one actually knew.\"\n\n\"Things?\" Vale asked.\n\n\"People dying,\" Irene said bluntly. \"With pieces of them being sent back.\"\n\nKai started. \"Was that why Dominic\u2014,\" he began, then stopped a fraction too late.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Irene said. She turned to Vale again. \"What Kai is trying to say is that the Librarian who was supposed to be stationed locally, in this alternate world, has apparently been killed and mutilated. We found out just before I triggered the trap I mentioned\u2014a trap set using chaos forces. These\u2014forces\u2014are something that Alberich uses.\" She couldn't keep the distaste out of her voice.\n\nVale nodded. \"So chaos... Is that what we would term 'magic'?\"\n\nIrene tried to think how to explain it. She'd been planning to side-step this part as much as possible, given Vale's apparent dislike of magic. \"Not exactly. According to our cosmological model\"\u2014there, that was tactful and avoided saying, This is how things really work\u2014\"there are lawful and chaotic forces active in all worlds. Sometimes they take on a physical form, appearing as entities\u2014or personifications of law or disorder if you like. The lawful forces support reason and natural laws. The chaotic forces support impossibility and things that are blatantly irrational or disorderly. For example, dragons are lawful forces and the Fae support chaos. Fact versus fiction, if you like.\"\n\nVale stiffened like a hound catching the scent. \"So Lord Silver is a supporter of chaos itself?\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"This alternate is strongly affected by chaos. Silver is certainly at least one of the lesser Fae, who are usually confined inside a single alternate. I don't know if he is one of the greater ones, but I sincerely hope not. Such creatures even have the power to move between worlds. But they have nothing to do with the Library.\" She wanted to make this extremely clear. \"We do not associate with them.\"\n\n\"Except when obtaining party invitations,\" Vale said drily.\n\n\"I want that book,\" Irene said flatly. \"So does he, it seems. And so does Alberich. I need to know who has it. If Silver or Alberich already had it, they wouldn't be looking for it. Once I have it, Mr. Strongrock and I will be out of this alternate and won't need to bother you again.\"\n\nVale nodded. \"Very well.\" Again there was the feeling of a confrontation being postponed until he had sufficient ammunition. Perhaps he wanted to bring her to justice as well. Or perhaps he simply wanted to visit the Library. \"So, tell me,\" he went on, \"when was the Librarian stationed here murdered, where, and how?\"\n\nIrene glanced at Kai. \"Well, it must have been somewhere between yesterday afternoon and this morning, because we first met him yesterday afternoon when we came through from the Library proper. The entrance is in the British Library,\" she added, a little reluctantly.\n\n\"Really,\" Vale said thoughtfully.\n\n\"And when we came back this morning to speak with him...\" Irene trailed off, wishing she didn't have to go into the next bit. \"Ah, we have reason to assume that he was dead by that point, possibly for several hours.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Vale demanded. \"You found his body?\"\n\n\"We found his skin,\" Irene said. \"In a jar of vinegar.\"\n\nKai reached across and touched her wrist. She knew that it was inappropriate for her to show weakness, but she found the gesture comforting.\n\nVale sat back in his chair. \"I see,\" he said. \"That must have been a great shock for you, Miss Winters.\"\n\nIrene remembered the pungent smell. Her stomach twisted. \"Yes,\" she said. \"It was. I am sorry, I'm afraid I find it difficult to be as detached as I should be.\" He'd been friendly, helpful, kind, just simply nice...\n\n\"And you are quite sure that it was your contact?\" Vale prompted.\n\nIrene nodded reluctantly. She hadn't wanted to admit this bit if she could have avoided it. \"All Librarians have a mark on their body,\" she said. \"It looks like a tattoo done in black ink. It cannot be removed.\"\n\nVale was quite clearly considering asking whether he could see hers, but after a moment's hesitation he nodded. Possibly the fact that she hadn't offered to show it was hint enough. \"And\u2014if I may be frank\u2014would the trap that had been set possibly have killed you?\"\n\nIrene had been trying to avoid thinking about it. She had plenty of productive ways to occupy her mind besides yet one more way in which she had almost died in the last couple of days. \"Yes,\" she said. \"If Mr. Strongrock had not broken my link to it, it might well have done. It would certainly have incapacitated me and left me helpless. And...\" She frowned, her mind sensing something important. \"Let me think. Alberich would have known I would touch the door, not Mr. Strongrock, because only I can access the Library. Even if I survived, he'd know the chaos contamination would prevent me accessing the Library. He'd also be aware that the contamination would only last for a few days.\"\n\nVale nodded. A spark kindled in his eyes. \"That seems logical,\" he said with more warmth than he had shown at any point previously. \"Let us theorize that your Alberich\u2014\"\n\n\"Hardly my Alberich,\" Irene snapped.\n\nVale snorted. \"Alberich, then. Let us theorize that he expected to have completed his plans in a few days, at which point it would no longer matter if you contacted the Library. As he was still around earlier tonight, with our murder in mind, those plans can't be completed yet. Especially as he was still trying to get us, or rather you, out of the way.\"\n\n\"That seems plausible,\" Kai said, emerging from his moody self-absorption. \"But, if he doesn't have the book, and we don't have the book, and Bradamant doesn't have the book, and Silver doesn't have the book\u2014and if the Iron Brotherhood is responsible for the alligators, so still on the offensive, then they don't have the book...\" He shrugged. \"Who does have the book?\"\n\n\"I dislike dismissing possible culprits without firm evidence,\" Vale murmured. \"But I see little reason why the Iron Brotherhood would be interested in a book of fairy tales. They tend more towards technological paradigms. Now, had it been one of the lost notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, that would be entirely different. Come to think of it...\" He levelled a stare at Irene. \"Why would your Alberich want to steal a book of fairy tales? Out of spite?\"\n\n\"Maybe there's something unusual about this particular copy of the book,\" Kai offered. \"Possibly there's something hidden in the binding, or a coded message...\"\n\nIrene shook her head. \"I don't think so. The reason I think the Library wants it is because it might contain something which other versions of Grimms' Fairy Tales in other alternates don't. That is, a new story, or several new stories. There would be no point in collecting it if it were just the same as the ones in other worlds. But if Alberich wants it? I don't even know what Alberich wants.\" She became aware that she was starting to whine, and she made herself concentrate. \"It can't be because there's a significant connection between the book and this alternate. It's not individual enough for that. There are too many other versions of Grimm out there. That sort of connection requires a very specific book with relevance to that alternate.\" Her hand twinged, and she rubbed it nervously, then tried to stop herself before she could make it any worse. Bradamant certainly wouldn't approve of what she was about to say. And her mentor, Coppelia, would undoubtedly have forbidden her to voice her suspicions.\n\nBut Coppelia couldn't have foreseen any of this. Could she?\n\n\"Sometimes information about the Library gets out,\" she said slowly. \"Not just in conversations like this. Librarians are observed, or they talk too much, or maybe the Fae are involved. It's not exactly something that I've been tutored in.\" She paused to translate her thoughts into a theory that would also make sense to Vale. \"And often when this does happen, this information ends up being recorded in works of\u2014well, fiction.\"\n\nKai blinked, eyelids flickering, without moving. \"I've heard as much.\"\n\nAnd that confirmed his nature for her. Trainees did not get told about this. Ever. Only Librarians fully sealed to the Library got even the most basic of briefings about it. Irene herself was a full Librarian, albeit a junior one, and even she had only had a few hints about it. If Kai had \"heard as much,\" then it had been from other dragons, not from Librarians.\n\n\"Indeed,\" she said, keeping her voice even. \"And if there is some secret pertaining to the Library in this book, then that might explain why Alberich is so eager to get his hands on it. Silver, too. Some Fae know about the Library and have an interest in it. If Silver believes that the book holds some secret\u2014if only because other people are trying to get their hands on it\u2014that would make it irresistible to someone like him.\"\n\nKai frowned. \"But if it's such a big secret, why send\u2014um, forgive me for this, Irene\u2014but why send someone who's just a journeyman Librarian after it? Why not send in an expert? Several experts?\"\n\n\"That could actually be construed as support for Miss Winters's theory,\" Vale said thoughtfully. \"In order not to attract Alberich's attention, your superiors could have chosen to send someone who had no idea of the book's importance. Someone who would not be seen as an obvious choice for important missions.\"\n\nIrene decided that this was not the time to have a hissy fit or make pointed comments about her status in the Library. Especially as Vale was right. \"But unfortunately Alberich found out about it anyhow,\" Irene continued the hypothesis. \"And, come to think of it, that would explain Bradamant. One of the senior Librarians might have thought I wouldn't be up to the task and decided to send her in.\" With an effort, she added, \"She does have more experience than I do, after all.\"\n\nAnd then there was Kai. Apparently just an apprentice, but in fact a dragon. Well, probably a dragon. She needed to have a private talk with him. They simply hadn't had a chance since the river incident. If Coppelia had known that, then assigning him to the mission was far more significant backup than it had originally seemed.\n\nVale nodded. \"So if your associate Bradamant\u2014another code-name, I take it?\"\n\nIrene nodded. \"We all have them.\" It was simpler than trying to explain the whole Librarianly choice of names to him.\n\n\"Very well. Your associate Bradamant arrived here before you did and created an identity as the thief Belphegor. An intelligent piece of work. She must have planned to conceal her theft of this specific book among the thefts of other books. A needle in a haystack, as the saying goes. Do you suppose she would be prepared to return the other ones?\"\n\nIrene thought about it. Vale's theory made a great deal of sense and was a step ahead of where she'd managed to get to. (She'd always wondered, or even daydreamed, what it was like to actually work with great detectives, rather than just read about them. It was more annoying than she'd expected.) The odds were that Bradamant had kept the books\u2014after all, if her private mission had been successful, then she could have donated them to the Library as well. \"I can ask her,\" she offered. \"The current mission is definitely more important than these other books.\"\n\n\"But it's our mission!\" Kai put in.\n\nIrene sighed. It was well past midnight. It had been a very full day. She was tired to the bone. \"Look, Kai. At the moment, the most important thing is keeping that book out of Alberich's hands. If he wants it, then it's paramount that he doesn't get it. And the second most important thing is getting it to the Library. I admit it's not going to look good on my record if I fail. But when it comes down to it, I don't care if I bring it in, or you bring it in, or if Bradamant brings it in and takes the credit and ends up spending the next ten years rubbing my nose in it. And if that means promising her the book in exchange for handing back the other books to Vale, then I will do it.\"\n\n\"That's very noble,\" Kai said dubiously, \"but it doesn't solve our original problem. Where is the book?\"\n\n\"I believe that is something we can discover when Madame Bradamant is here to be questioned,\" Vale said briskly. \"She agreed to come and see you tomorrow, I think? And if Singh does not release her, then we can go and question her in prison.\"\n\nIrene nodded. She was about to continue, when Vale held up his hand. \"One thing more. When you made that reference to 'significant connections' and 'books specific to an alternate'\u2014would you mind expanding on that?\"\n\nDamn him. Irene had been hoping to skate past that without going into further detail. Belatedly, she decided that she should never have mentioned that bit in the first place. Stupid of her. \"Some books have a significant connection to the alternate that they come from,\" she said reluctantly. \"They help anchor the Library to that alternate. It's not a bad thing in itself. The Library's a stabilizing force, so it even helps ward off chaos influences like Fae.\"\n\nThat was half of it. The other half of it\u2014the possibility that books with a significant connection to the alternate world could affect that world itself, could somehow even change it\u2014was only a theory at her level in the Library. It was a theory that she was increasingly wanting to research in more detail, but there wasn't time for that at the moment. It was also something that she definitely wasn't going to tell Vale. Call her a cynic, but Irene suspected that if she were to tell him that, then there would be no way in hell that he'd cooperate in getting the book for her. He'd be far too concerned at what it might mean for his own world. After all, he'd made it clear that he didn't necessarily trust the Library's intentions.\n\n\"And my world?\" Vale pounced on her words. \"Which books are 'significant' here?\"\n\n\"I don't know, sir.\" She saw Vale was about to object, and she shook her head. \"No, please. Believe me, Mr. Vale. We don't get told. They don't tell us. It's dangerous knowledge.\"\n\nHe leaned back in his chair, his expression hungry and unsatisfied. \"And aren't you ever curious, Miss Winters? Don't you want to know?\"\n\n\"You're suggesting that I have some sort of academic curiosity about the fact,\" Irene said curtly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Kai leaning forward. \"I've already told you that our interest is in books. Not...\" She looked for words that would convey her meaning with sufficient strength. \"Not in overarching world-changing forces.\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Winters,\" Vale said drily. \"That is indeed what you have told me.\"\n\nThe unspoken accusation of lying, or at the very least prevarication, hit her like a slap across the face. It didn't help matters that it was in some respects true. She lowered her eyes and couldn't answer him. Worst of all, for the first time in years, We're just doing this to save the books sounded petty, and choosing not to know more seemed childish.\n\n\"And yet there might be good reasons for not knowing,\" Vale went on, talking over her bowed head. \"Perhaps for fear this Alberich fellow might find out. Perhaps simply the senior members of this library would refuse to tell you, if they knew themselves. And perhaps you would simply refuse to tell me, for your own safety, or for mine.\" His voice was dispassionately kind. She didn't deserve it. \"It must be very frustrating, Miss Winters. Wondering.\"\n\nShe still couldn't bring herself to look up. \"If it was important,\" she said, \"then they'd tell me.\"\n\n\"Or possibly it is too important to tell you,\" Vale answered. \"Just as with the suggestion that the book contains classified information, which we discussed earlier. We lack sufficient information to know for certain which is true. But one thing is sure. We cannot allow this book to fall into Alberich's hands.\"\n\n\"You'll accept that?\" Kai demanded, his face brightening.\n\n\"I may be suspicious,\" Vale said, \"but I hope that I am not stupid. He has already made his position towards me extremely clear, after all.\"\n\nIrene took a deep breath. \"If you have no objection, there is one more thing I would like to do before we sleep.\"\n\n\"What is that?\"\n\nIrene smiled a little. It was good to know that this was within her power again, now that the chaos contamination was out of her system, and that Vale trusted her enough to consider it. It helped her feel less ashamed of herself. \"It's possible to link a suitably similar space to the Library.\" She surveyed Vale's office again. \"In practice, that means there has to be a reasonable number of books present, or some other sort of storage media. It won't enable passage, but it will... well, it can make that area a sort of annex of the Library, and that would prohibit creatures of chaos from entering. Or, more specifically, it will prevent Alberich from being able to get in. If he does realize that we survived...\"\n\n\"Ah. A good thought. Will this involve any sort of 'magic'?\"\n\n\"Only the innate force of the Library itself,\" Irene said, she hoped reassuringly. She didn't want to go into the whole question of the Language. She'd already said more than enough for one night, to an outsider. \"You probably won't notice anything at all.\"\n\n\"Why did your colleague who was murdered not do this?\" Vale asked. \"Or did he?\"\n\n\"It wouldn't have lasted,\" Irene answered. She'd been through this in basic training. \"The problem with declaring an area in sympathy with the Library is that it only works as long as nobody takes any books away from it. Your lodgings will be safe because nobody will be removing any books from here this evening. Mr. Aubrey couldn't have done the same to the British Library. The protection would have come down the moment someone took a book out of it.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Vale sat back in his chair. \"Very well. You may proceed, Miss Winters.\"\n\nIt didn't take long. She simply invoked the Library, in the Language, in the shortest possible way that it could conveniently be done without damage to the speaker or the surroundings. The more precise the definition, the more harm it might do to everything around it by linguistically shaking its surroundings into conformity. Declaring the Library's unabbreviated name, a single word, would remove everything that was not Library.\n\nIrene therefore used half a dozen sentences. She felt the snap of coherence as the synchronization took place, and with it a greater sense of comfort. She felt in control again.\n\n\"Odd,\" Vale said. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, frowning. \"I thought that I would feel something more than that.\"\n\n\"What did you feel?\" Irene asked curiously.\n\n\"Something of a headache, like the high pressure before a storm.\" Vale shrugged. \"I have no talent for such sorceries. Another reason for my differences with my family.\"\n\nIrene was about to say, It's hardly sorcery, but decided that it wasn't worth the argument. She was also wildly curious about Vale's break with his family, but this wasn't the moment to pry. \"It should keep Alberich out, which is the important thing,\" she reiterated.\n\n\"Excellent.\" Vale brushed his hands together and rose to his feet, all business once more. \"Then, for the moment, I suggest we all get some sleep. Madame Bradamant's information is necessary for any further hypotheses. Unless it is possible for you to reach her via some arcane method?\" he added hopefully.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Irene said. \"I have no specific link that I can use to reach her.\"\n\n\"Your connection to the Library?\" Vale suggested. \"Would that work on its own, or could it be used as the focal point for some other spell?\"\n\n\"That wouldn't work,\" Kai said. \"The Library link is to the Library rather than other Librarians, and it surpasses lesser sorceries. Irene and Bradamant are safe from Fae glamours and minor spells because they're directly connected to a greater power. Such glamours would be as insignificant as starlight in sunlight.\"\n\nVale raised his brows. \"But not yourself?\" he asked, giving Kai more friendly attention than he had done since the river-spirit incident.\n\n\"I'm still a trainee,\" Kai said, smiling as he stood in turn, then offering Irene a hand to help her rise. \"For the moment I don't have that sort of connection. What powers I have are my own and my family's.\"\n\n\"Your... family?\" Vale enquired, in a tone that was an invitation to expand on the subject.\n\n\"There is a temporary disagreement on the subject of my future,\" Kai said. \"I hope to win them round.\"\n\nIrene suspected there was more to it than that. The dragons\u2014very well, the single dragon whom she had met\u2014seemed to tolerate the Library as some sort of human eccentricity. It seemed notable only for its admirable taste in fiction, and certainly not a prospective life for one of their children. (Spawn? Eggs? Younglings? She didn't have vocabulary for this.) It was now quite obvious why Kai had claimed that his family was dead; she could understand why he'd told the lie, in view of the greater secret. What she didn't know was how he was going to resolve the situation. Or how the Library would resolve it for him.\n\nBut then again, if Coppelia knew about Kai's true nature, perhaps there were other dragons at large in the Library.\n\nMaybe there was a Secret Alliance. (That sort of thing would demand capital letters.) Perhaps the lower depths of the Library sheltered great slithering coils of ancient dragons and...\n\nAnd she was going to drive herself into paranoia at this rate. \"I agree that sleep would be a good idea,\" she said, causing both Vale and Kai to give her aggrieved looks. They could have a bonding session some other time, or after she had gone to sleep. Dragons might be stand-offish in general, but this particular dragon seemed inclined to be friendly, or even outright demonstrative, and possibly even a thorough romantic. She was much more detached. Semi-detached. Her brain was tired enough that her thoughts were making stupid connections. \"I hate to impose on you for a bed, Mr. Vale, but...\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Vale said, giving in gracefully. \"The bed in the spare room has already been made up for you. I'm afraid that Mr. Strongrock will have to make do with the couch in here. My housekeeper has put out some blankets. I'll just fetch them.\"\n\nThe moment he was out of the room, Kai turned to Irene.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Well, what?\"\n\nHe folded his arms defensively, drawing himself to his full height. \"I expected you'd want to talk about... well, you know. You've probably guessed.\"\n\nShe'd thought about how to handle this. She'd run through several different scenarios in her head, and none of them that started out So explain why you're a dragon had ended well. He was proud. She was familiar with the emotion. \"No,\" she said. \"I'm not going to ask you any questions.\"\n\nKai stood there like a beautiful statue (in a second-hand dressing-gown with frayed cuffs), blinking at her. The rain was audible on the window for several seconds before he could bring himself to speak again. \"You're not?\"\n\n\"My trust in you hasn't changed.\" She put her unbandaged hand on his wrist. \"I believe that if it mattered, if it was truly important, then you would tell me. You wouldn't jeopardize the mission for the sake of your own pride. But when it comes to your private matters\u2014yours and your family's\u2014I don't intend to pry.\"\n\n\"Irene.\" He swallowed. \"That's very generous of you.\"\n\n\"Think nothing of it,\" she said, turning away.\n\n\"And it makes me feel like hell,\" he said to her back.\n\nAh, guilt. Which Irene was very definitely feeling herself at the moment, for what she'd said and also what she hadn't said to Vale, and for the way that she'd manipulated Kai. She could tell herself that she'd only acted as was necessary in a dangerous situation, but she knew perfectly well that he'd confessed his nature to save her life, and she'd just... well, given him orders and enforced their relationship as superior and trainee. All her feelings of natural justice encouraged her to confess something to him in return, but she wasn't sure what she could say.\n\nAnd now he was offering her another chance to manipulate him. Under some conditions, Irene would happily have encouraged his guilt in the hopes of getting him to spill the full details, but in the middle of a mission wasn't one of them. I am not a nice person, she thought, to be thinking only of the mission, sparing nothing for my responsibilities to him.\n\n\"What do you want me to say?\" she asked, turning round to look at him. \"I'm grateful that you saved our lives. Thank you.\"\n\n\"You're taking this far too calmly.\" He ran one hand through his hair. \"You should be demanding answers, being furious\u2014\"\n\n\"I thought you said you knew me.\" She pointed a finger at him. \"Look. So far\u2014so far just today\u2014I have coped with discovering the skin of a senior Librarian, with running into a trap of chaos energies, with an attack by alligators, with an encounter with Alberich himself, and with an attempt to drown us in the Thames. And you have the nerve, the insolence, the undiluted gall\"\u2014she could hear her voice rising, and at this point she didn't much care\u2014\"to expect me to throw my hands in the air and run round in little circles just because you happen to be a dragon?\"\n\nKai made desperate calm-down gestures with his hands. \"I thought you were going to interrogate me! I was trying to think what to tell you!\"\n\n\"Well, I'm not going to interrogate you.\" Irene lowered her voice. \"So calm down. Will it make you feel better if I promise that later on we'll have some coffee and I'll ask you a lot of personal questions?\" Yes, she could look forward to that. She would look forward to that.\n\nIt surprised her that she was indeed looking forward to that.\n\nHe sighed. \"At least I'll have that to dread, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Kai.\" Irene gave him a very deliberate stare. \"Were you actually looking forward to telling me everything?\"\n\nKai tried to meet her eyes in a decisive way. He settled for looking over her shoulder. \"It isn't as if I've done this before,\" he muttered.\n\n\"Later,\" she said meaningfully. \"I promise.\"\n\nShe turned to see Vale at the door with an armful of blankets. \"Am I interrupting?\" he asked politely.\n\n\"Not at all,\" Irene said firmly, and swept past him with as much dignity as she could manage. He and Kai could stay up talking as long as they wanted.\n\nHopefully Bradamant wouldn't turn up with any emergencies until after breakfast."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 15",
                "text": "Kai and Vale were both up before Irene, and she walked in to find them sharing breakfast. Yesterday's awkwardness seemed to have vanished, and they were talking amiably enough now. They seemed to be enjoying discussing politics (a hindrance to all right-minded men), previous investigations that Vale had undertaken (though generally without books being involved), zeppelins, and the proper method for eliminating giant centipedes.\n\nIrene made the proper noises of Good morning and Yes, I slept very well, thank you for asking and Please pass the marmalade as she took a seat. She then inhaled coffee by the cupful until she felt more human, letting the men resume their conversation. Her hand was feeling much better, even if it was still in bandages. Last night's rain had passed, and outside the window the sky was\u2014well, as clear as could be expected, given the constant smog. Rays of sunlight were filtering down. No doubt birds were singing in the countryside. Things weren't too bad.\n\nShe wondered if she could actually get to quite like this alternate.\n\nThe door banged downstairs, and two sets of feet came hastening up the stairs.\n\n\"Ah!\" Vale said, dusting toast crumbs off his fingers with a napkin and pushing aside the spoon and egg he'd been using to demonstrate the finer points of zeppelin control. \"That would be Singh. I know his step. And no doubt Madame Bradamant with him.\"\n\nIrene hastily refilled her coffee cup and tried to ignore feelings of imminent doom. It had been such a nice morning, too. \"They're up early,\" she commented.\n\n\"Oh, Singh is always welcome here for breakfast,\" Vale said cheerfully. \"Especially when I'm working on a case that involves him.\"\n\nPerhaps that was why Singh had allowed Bradamant to meet them here, rather than keeping her at the station. Irene wondered a bit nervously if there had been any communication between Vale and Singh last night after she'd gone to bed. She stiffened her spine and was smiling pleasantly when Bradamant and Singh came in. Bradamant had somehow managed proper morning dress, neat and pristine in dove grey with violet cuffs and jabot, and had an umbrella tucked under one arm. Singh, behind her, was still in the same uniform as last night, but his moustache and beard had a spruce, freshly combed look to them. He carried a well-stuffed black briefcase that looked as though it had seen an investigation or two.\n\n\"Ah!\" Singh said, his eyes fixing on the breakfast table.\n\n\"My dear Singh,\" Vale said, springing to his feet and seizing the coffee-pot, \"we must speak a moment. Ladies, Mr. Strongrock, please excuse us. Miss Winters, please do invite your friend to some breakfast. We will be back in a moment.\" With one bound he had swept Singh out of the room, taking the coffee with him, and abandoning Bradamant in the process.\n\n\"Would you like some toast?\" Kai said helpfully, rising to his feet.\n\n\"By all means.\" Bradamant furled her skirts and seated herself on the sofa next to Irene. \"Is our host usually prone to such dramatic moments?\"\n\n\"I think he wanted to explain something to Inspector Singh,\" Irene replied. Her feeling of imminent doom was getting worse. She passed the toast and butter. \"They're old friends, and no doubt they wanted to discuss things without us listening. Quite reasonable.\"\n\n\"Oh, absolutely.\" Bradamant drew off her gloves, picked up a knife, and swiped butter across the toast. \"So what do we all have to say to each other while they're out of the room?\"\n\nIrene ran through her mental list of languages and their applicability to this alternate. She wouldn't put it past Vale to be listening to the conversation. Imperial Russia had conquered China and Japan a while back in this alternate, so the odds were against Vale knowing Japanese. However, Bradamant did know it, and all things considered, she rather thought Kai would as well. \"Last night I told Vale the basics of the Library,\" she said bluntly in Japanese.\n\nThe toast cracked and splintered in Bradamant's hand.\n\n\"You what?\"\n\nIrene returned the other woman's glare. \"We were attacked by Alberich on our way back here.\" She decided to leave Kai's contribution out of it. \"He trapped us in a carriage in the river and left us to drown. We escaped, but after that I had to give Vale some sort of explanation.\"\n\nNow she recognized the churning in her guts, the uncertainty in her mind. It was the nervous reaction she always used to get when reporting to Bradamant, decades back, when she had been a student and Bradamant had been mentoring her in the field. It was, apparently, something she still had to get over, if she could figure out how.\n\nBradamant hadn't been the type to insist on formality while Irene reported back. No, they'd always sat together or facing each other, as comfortable as one could possibly ask. And every time Irene had tried to explain something, she had been wrong. Always.\n\nBradamant considered the reply, clearly looking for holes. \"You could have given him a story about a secret society,\" she said. \"That's what I told Inspector Singh.\"\n\nIrene was going to answer in the negative again, say something like I didn't think that it would work or I couldn't think of a way to make it convincing, when she felt Kai's eyes on her. He clearly understood what they were saying. He was looking at her with something that took her a moment to identify as trust, as expectation that she could handle things. She had to deserve that trust.\n\nShe composed herself, took a firm grip on her cup of coffee, and turned to meet Bradamant's eyes. \"I took a field decision that Vale would be more useful and cooperative if he knew the truth\u2014well, some of the truth,\" she said. \"In this place and time, I am not a courtier to present an opinion to a king, but a general in the field, expected to handle things as they arise for the good of the Library. Vale is a highly intelligent man, well-informed on the current situation and trained in noticing discrepancies. Alberich had already made reference to the Library, and I was forced to use my own abilities to break free from his trap.\" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kai relax a fraction, leaning back into his chair. \"An incomplete story would only have roused Vale's distrust. We have enough enemies in this place and time as it is... Belphegor.\"\n\nBradamant snorted. \"My actions were a valid response to the situation.\"\n\n\"Do you still have the books?\"\n\nBradamant hesitated a moment. Possibly she could guess what Irene was about to suggest. \"I do. Some of them are rarities, you know. They would be appreciated by other Librarians.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt,\" Irene said wryly. \"You have always had excellent taste. But it may be necessary to return those stolen books to their owners in order to secure cooperation.\"\n\nBradamant put down her toast very deliberately and stared at Irene. \"You have no authority to order me to do such a thing. Or are you planning to turn me over to your new friends instead?\"\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous,\" Irene said, and tried to ignore the mental voice that pointed out that yes, it would certainly convince Vale and Singh that she was on their side. And Bradamant could easily escape from any prison cell anyway. \"I am assuming that you were sent by one of our superiors. Why?\"\n\n\"To find the Grimm book,\" Bradamant answered. \"And, yes, let me reassure you: I do have orders from one of our superiors to that effect.\"\n\nIrene tried not to show her relief. Bradamant was still loyal to the Library. A number of unpleasant possibilities had just been ruled out. Even if there was some sort of internal dispute going on inside the Library about who was supposed to be fetching the damned book, at least she didn't have to worry about Bradamant being in league with Alberich. \"It's possible that our target is one of those books that's linked to the whole alternate,\" she said. \"The fact that Alberich's after it shows just how important it is. And you could only know of my mission from someone highly placed. Surely these factors make it an absolute priority for us to work together to find the book and bring it to the Library? Or do you have some other goal?\"\n\nBradamant brushed crumbs off her fingers. The toast lay on her plate, slowly cooling. \"Certainly my highest priority is to bring the book back,\" she replied. \"But I cannot see why Alberich should want to kill you. It isn't as if you have the book.\"\n\n\"And you do?\" Kai put in, his tone highly formal. But it wasn't the formality of junior to senior: it was the formality of someone with authority in his own right, to a peer in another discipline.\n\nFrom the look on his face, he realized that a second too late.\n\nBradamant didn't seem to mind. She graced him with a delicate smile, and Irene wondered if anyone who didn't know her would have recognized the calculation in her eyes. \"If I did,\" she said, \"I wouldn't be here now.\"\n\n\"I think we would profit from a council of war,\" Irene said. \"Or we will all assuredly hang separately.\"\n\nBradamant thought about it, dusting her fingers again and again until not even the smallest crumb could have remained on them. Finally she said, \"I will agree to that much. For the moment.\"\n\nIrene nodded. She turned towards the door. \"You can come in now, gentlemen,\" she called. She'd have been listening if it had been the other way round, after all.\n\nVale opened the door and held it for Singh to enter. Both men looked a little irritated, Singh more than Vale\u2014but then, Irene reminded herself, who knew what Bradamant had been telling him last night? There were few things worse than thinking you knew everything about secret goings-on and then finding out you'd been fed a nice plausible mess of lies.\n\nVale occupied his armchair again. Singh looked at Kai in a way that suggested that he usually got the comfortable chair Kai was sitting in, then pulled over the high-backed chair from by the desk. He cleared off a stack of newspapers and settled down with a snort, flipping out notebook and pen.\n\n\"I have been discussing the situation with Inspector Singh here,\" Vale said. He steepled his fingers. \"It has become quite clear that we are all in pursuit of the same thing. Several members of the Iron Brotherhood were questioned last night, with Madame Bradamant's cooperation\"\u2014he nodded to Bradamant\u2014\"which has established some interesting facts.\"\n\n\"May I ask what you've found?\" Irene said, glancing at Kai, who looked impatient for news.\n\nInspector Singh regarded her with the same wary distrust that he was displaying towards Bradamant. What fun.\n\n\"You may recall the explosion a couple of nights ago, under the Opera House?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I only know the very basic details about that,\" Irene said. \"Was it related to the Iron Brotherhood?\"\n\nInspector Singh nodded. \"It was indeed, madam. They happened to meet there, and unfortunately the blast took out a number of their more senior members.\"\n\n\"Unfortunately?\" Kai said. \"Surely, if these people are criminals...\"\n\nInspector Singh shook his head. \"Your reaction is understandable, sir, but you must understand that we have infiltrated some of these societies to a degree. We know who runs them, Mr. Strongrock, and we know who's in charge. We have some idea of which way they're going to jump in a crisis, even if we can't bring any charges against them. For the moment,\" he added ominously. \"The unfortunate result of this little affair was that a woman of whom we know little is now leading the society. The Grand Hammer, I believe they call her. And this woman is, shall we say, an unknown quantity. I don't like unknown quantities, Mr. Strongrock. They don't fill my notebook and they don't go to prison as they should.\"\n\nIrene leaned forward. \"Are you saying, Inspector, that this 'unknown quantity' is linked to last night's events at the Liechtenstein Embassy?\"\n\n\"You would be quite correct, Miss Winters,\" Inspector Singh said. He rearranged his lips in a thin, distrustful smile. \"Now, from what Mr. Vale here has told me, I'm inclined to wonder if this woman is linked to the person you know as 'Alberich.' Given that one of the aims of last night's little exposition, alligators and all, was to search Lord Silver's rooms while he was otherwise occupied.\"\n\n\"For a book,\" Vale interjected.\n\n\"Indeed,\" Inspector Singh agreed. \"That's what our questioning confirmed. For a very specific book. The same book that was stolen from Lord Wyndham recently by a certain thief. Or should I say believed to have been stolen?\" He shot a glance at Bradamant. His face was inexpressive enough, but his eyes were very dark and very angry.\n\nBradamant seemed to crumple in on herself. If she had had a handkerchief, no doubt she would have held it to her eyes and sniffled bravely. As it was, her lower lip quavered and her eyes were wide and limpid. \"If Irene has told you about the Library,\" she said, \"then there's nothing more that I can say. I admit that I took\"\u2014Irene admired her careful avoidance of the word stolen\u2014\"some books in order to make the Grimm's disappearance look unimportant. But I certainly didn't kill Lord Wyndham. Why would I have wanted to? I didn't even know the man.\"\n\nIrene raised her hand to get Vale's and Singh's attention.\n\n\"Would you mind if I ask Bradamant a couple of questions, gentlemen? To fill in a part of the story on my side.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Miss Winters,\" Vale said. Singh gave her a brief nod.\n\nIrene turned back to Bradamant. \"I saw a card in Wyndham's safe. It was embossed with a gold mask and signed with the name Belphegor. Was that you?\"\n\nBradamant sighed. \"Yes. It was. I had the plans of the house from a local contact\u2014\"\n\n\"This Dominic Aubrey person?\" Vale cut in.\n\nBradamant glanced to Irene, with an I see you've been giving away all our local secrets look, then nodded. \"He and Wyndham had been acquaintances for a while. I think Aubrey may have actually been rather indiscreet in what he told Wyndham, but that's a different problem.\" Just as you've been with Vale, was the unspoken message. \"Anyhow, I came in by the roof while Wyndham was at his party downstairs. It was comparatively easy to deactivate the alarms on the display-case where he kept the book\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, was it now,\" Singh muttered.\n\n\"\u2014and after I'd taken the book, I left the card in the case before leaving, by the roof again. I don't know why it should have been in the safe.\" She shrugged.\n\n\"What time was this?\" Singh asked.\n\n\"About half past eleven,\" Bradamant answered. \"The party was in full swing downstairs. I didn't expect anyone to come up to Wyndham's study at that point.\"\n\nSingh nodded. He turned to Irene. \"According to our forensic specialists, Lord Wyndham was slaughtered somewhere between midnight and one o'clock. It is difficult to tell with vampires, but the fact that his head was found on the palings outside at one o'clock gives us some idea of the time frame.\"\n\nIrene wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be a joke. \"I see,\" she said neutrally. \"So in that case, who put the card in the safe? Lord Wyndham himself?\"\n\n\"It seems the most likely hypothesis,\" Vale agreed. \"The man\u2014I apologize, the vampire\u2014was beheaded in his study, at his desk. Some of the other guests at the party said that he went upstairs at midnight, saying that he was going to arrange a surprise.\"\n\nKai nodded. \"So when he walked in to find the book gone, he determined to preserve Belphegor's card for future investigation. Though it seems overly careful to put it in the safe rather than simply leave it in a drawer of his desk. But then he was attacked?\"\n\n\"That is so,\" Singh said. \"By members of the Iron Brotherhood. I have information from some of our agents. We believe they must have been masquerading as guests. They simply lopped his head off, walked out normally, and impaled it upon the palings as they left.\"\n\nIrene frowned. \"But then Wyndham's murder was before the Opera explosion and change in command in the Brotherhood. Is there a connection?\"\n\nSingh and Bradamant traded glances. \"That is a very interesting question, Miss Winters,\" Singh said. \"But at the moment, I am more interested in knowing the whereabouts of the book which Madame Bradamant stole.\"\n\nBradamant regarded him stonily. \"It was a fake.\"\n\nFor a moment everyone was talking, mostly along the lines of What? and Are you certain?\n\n\"And I know it was a fake,\" Bradamant said, cutting through the noise, \"because when I took it back to my superior, he looked at it and then explained to me that he was not interested in facsimiles. Especially those which were missing certain relevant parts.\"\n\n\"Which relevant parts?\" Irene demanded. She was fairly sure who the superior in question must have been. Bradamant answered directly to Kostchei, just as Irene answered directly to Coppelia. The possibility of someone else having been involved and giving Bradamant orders... well, it wasn't impossible, but it was too unlikely. At the moment the principles of Occam's razor, starting with the most obvious answer, seemed the best plan. \"Did he tell you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Bradamant said bitterly. For a moment her face betrayed genuine emotion: anger, bitterness, and sheer thwarted curiosity. \"I was given the strong impression that it was better for me not to know.\"\n\nIrene worked out times and dates in her head. \"Then, when you met myself and\"\u2014she almost said Kai but caught herself in time\u2014\"Mr. Strongrock, on our way to our assignment, this was after you'd discovered the book was a fake?\"\n\n\"It was,\" Bradamant agreed. See how honest and forthcoming I'm being, her vague smile said, her expression under control again. \"I thought that if I could intercept you on the way, then I could try to find the real book without your interference. Pardon my phrasing.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Irene said blandly. She was conscious of the three men listening. \"So after that, you decided to come through anyhow?\"\n\n\"I had the advantage of already knowing this place,\" Bradamant said. \"I didn't expect you to work as fast as you did.\"\n\nIrene glanced round at the three men. Somehow they shared a similar demeanour, whatever their reaction to this new information. Perhaps it was a kind of aristocratic poise, an in-built certainty that the world was going to cooperate with their needs.\n\nShe wished she shared it.\n\n\"Wyndham is the obvious candidate to have created the fake, since records show he had the original book,\" Vale said briskly. \"Inspector Singh, if you would\u2014\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Singh said. He pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. \"The clerks and difference engines at the Yard have tabulated records of Lord Wyndham's last few weeks. He only obtained the book two and a half weeks ago, at an auction of the late Mr. Bonhomme's effects. And it was certified as genuine by the auction-house at the time, which resulted in a quite remarkable price being set on it.\"\n\nVale nodded. \"I managed to trace one of the proxy bids to Lord Silver, through the solicitor that he employed. We can be sure of his interest.\"\n\n\"There were some threats after the auction too,\" Singh went on. \"This all resulted in the book being under tight guard. So if he had the fake made, then it was within that time period.\"\n\n\"Could it have been done that quickly?\" Irene asked, startled.\n\nVale leaned back in his chair. \"There are precisely three forgers in London at the present moment who could have done it,\" he said. \"And even they would have taken at least two weeks to do so.\"\n\n\"So there are,\" Singh agreed. \"And a delivery came from one of them\u2014\"\n\nVale held up a hand. \"Matthias?\"\n\n\"No, Levandis,\" Singh said smugly.\n\n\"I thought Matthias was the one he'd dealt with before,\" Vale said.\n\n\"Possibly why he chose not to deal with him this time,\" Singh said. \"In any case, one of our people was watching Levandis at the time\u2014the Severn matter, you know\u2014and she confirms that he was making daily trips to Wyndham's house. The servants agree that he called, but they had him down as a workman doing some alterations on the panelling in Wyndham's study. They can confirm that was where he was spending his time daily. He sent a final delivery to Wyndham three days before Wyndham's murder and didn't visit again after that.\"\n\nVale nodded. \"Convenient.\"\n\n\"Sometimes we get lucky,\" Singh agreed. \"She wasn't able to determine what was going on at the time, but given this other business...\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Kai said, frowning. \"Assuming that Wyndham had a forgery made for some reason and then displayed it, what did he do with the original?\"\n\n\"He hadn't given it to Lord Silver,\" Irene said thoughtfully, remembering the encounter in Wyndham's study. She saw Singh's lips twitch in an expression of distaste. \"Silver was searching Wyndham's study and his safe, and I think it was the book that he was looking for... Maybe Wyndham had intended to give it to Silver, or promised it to him.\"\n\n\"If Silver's involved, there could be all sorts of reasons Wyndham might have had a fake made,\" Bradamant agreed. \"If the book was hugely valuable, Wyndham might have wanted to safeguard it by only displaying the fake. Or perhaps he meant it as bait for Silver to attempt to steal it; we know that the Fae love things they can't have. Also they had a very close, if antagonistic relationship at times\u2014the papers have made a great deal of that. Maybe Wyndham wanted to show off by loaning Silver the real thing, or had even promised him it to repay a favour. Or maybe he meant to fob him off with the fake. It's impossible to know without questioning Silver.\"\n\nOr maybe the copy was meant for Alberich, Irene thought. Was that where Alberich fitted in all this? But if that was the case, then why didn't Alberich already have the book?\n\n\"Lord Silver was certainly Wyndham's best-known ally and contact,\" Vale was saying. \"As well as one of his best-known enemies. Fae relationships.\" His lips pursed in disapproval. \"But in that case, the book may still be in Wyndham's house.\"\n\nSingh was shaking his head. \"If it is, sir, then it's very well hidden.\" Irene suspected the sir was due to the presence of outsiders. \"We, ah, searched the place thoroughly after Lord Wyndham's murder. We did find a number of interesting items and documents, which have been enlightening with respect to other cases, but the Grimm book was not there.\"\n\n\"It could perhaps be very well hidden,\" Kai said hopefully.\n\n\"We had our best searchers on the job, Mr. Strongrock,\" Singh said, in a tone that closed the subject.\n\n\"So the real book is not in Wyndham's house,\" Irene reiterated, thinking aloud, \"and the forgery Bradamant stole couldn't have been started until Wyndham actually had the book. This would have taken at least two weeks to create. So was it moved during that period or copied before it arrived?\" She turned to Singh. \"Can we confirm that the book entered Wyndham's house directly after the auction and remained in a public place there until it was stolen?\"\n\nSingh nodded. \"We can. And after it arrived, testimony from the servants confirms that the book\u2014or a very good copy of it\u2014was in Lord Wyndham's study all day every day, madam. The maid who dusted it was quite definite on the subject. Lord Wyndham wanted it kept in perfect condition.\"\n\n\"Very good. So... either the real thing or an excellent copy was on display throughout, but Bradamant definitely picked up the fake. And the real book cannot have been removed until the forgery was ready. If the forgery was only ready a few days before Wyndham's murder\u2014given that the auction was a little over two weeks before the murder, and the forgery would have taken two weeks\u2014then the real book must have been taken from the house in those last few days. That is, if it isn't there now.\"\n\n\"An interesting train of thought,\" Vale murmured, and Irene had to work to suppress a blush of pride. It's nice to have just one little daydream come true. And it's even better when it's actually deserved. \"But why not keep it in the house?\"\n\n\"There is a risk of theft\u2014from someone other than Belphegor, that is,\" Singh suggested. \"His safe might be impregnable to the Fae, given that it was cold iron, but human thieves could have opened it.\" He gave Bradamant a meaningful look. \"If the real book wasn't hidden very thoroughly, and it came to light, it would show Wyndham's display copy was a fake\u2014whatever the reason for all this cloak-and-dagger subterfuge. I wonder what he was up to...\" Finally he nodded to Irene. \"I agree with your theory, madam. Although it does mean we'd have to assume Lord Wyndham handled the book himself, rather than passing it to some agent or third party to deal with.\"\n\n\"Let us commence with that as a working hypothesis,\" Vale said briskly. \"In those three days, where did he go? And when could he have been carrying a book with him? How large is the book, in any case?\"\n\n\"A large hardback,\" Bradamant said, sketching the shape in the air with her hands. \"Leather-bound and illustrated. Perhaps six inches by eight. Impossible to conceal under a fashionable coat. It could be carried in a briefcase easily enough.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" Vale said. \"That limits the possibilities. Lord Wyndham did not favour overcoats. What can you give us based on that, Inspector?\"\n\n\"Just a moment, please, sir,\" Singh said, flicking through the papers. \"I have some statements here from Lord Wyndham's valet, concerning his comings and goings over the last few days before his murder. We managed to assemble quite a timetable of the gentleman's movements while we were establishing who might have wanted to kill him. He didn't make that many outings during that period, so I believe we should be able to rule out a number of possibilities.\"\n\nTension hung in the room. The seconds went by painfully slowly. Irene considered suggesting that they all help by taking a paper each and checking them separately. Then she decided it was a stupid idea. Then she considered it again. Then she watched Singh's moustache and beard twitching as he muttered under his breath and turned pages.\n\nWith an effort, she glanced towards the window rather than watching Singh read. The weather outside still seemed to be good\u2014for this alternate, anyhow\u2014with high-flying clouds and sunshine. The dreamcatcher that she'd noticed earlier was dark against the pale sky.\n\nShe wondered what sort of dreams Vale had, that he, sceptic and logician, should hang a dreamcatcher in the window.\n\n\"Ah,\" Singh finally said. \"I think we may have something here.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 16",
                "text": "\"The day before his murder, Lord Wyndham visited his bank,\" Singh said. \"It wasn't a scheduled visit. Apparently he couldn't be seen immediately, and he made a few complaints, which caused some of the tellers to recall his visit when we were questioning them. While none of the statements there confirm that he was carrying a briefcase, they don't say that he wasn't, either. It'd be quite the normal sort of thing for a gentleman consulting his banker to be carrying.\"\n\n\"Who did he bank with?\" Bradamant asked.\n\n\"Lloyds,\" Singh said. He frowned. \"I'll need to get a search warrant if we're to look inside his safe-deposit box, sir. That'll take a few hours at least. And it'd be easier with a bit of evidence that we could take before the judge.\"\n\nThere was a glum silence throughout the room.\n\n\"Not impossible, of course,\" Singh added. \"But it might get us a warrant a trifle faster.\"\n\n\"If the Iron Brotherhood were behind last night's attack on the embassy, and they're looking for this book too, then they might try to steal the deposit box from Lloyds,\" Irene offered hopefully.\n\nSingh looked disappointed in her. \"I said evidence, madam. Not conjecture.\"\n\n\"Well!\" Vale brought his hands together in a brisk clap. \"Inspector, I suggest you set that in motion\u2014and if there's anywhere else that the gentleman might have concealed the book, we can review the possibilities while we're waiting. Is there anywhere else that's reasonably plausible, or even possible?\"\n\n\"There is one other thing,\" Singh said. He turned back to one of the earlier pages in his bundle of papers. \"Apparently Lord Wyndham did regularly donate books to various museums around London. They were usually ones which he had collected earlier, but which were no longer of interest to him or his associates.\"\n\nIrene twitched at the very notion. Give books away?\n\n\"How very frivolous,\" she finally said.\n\n\"More altruistic than keeping them to himself,\" Vale corrected her. \"Please go on, Inspector.\"\n\nSingh rustled his papers, just enough to emphasize that he was in charge of the situation. \"Two days before Lord Wyndham's murder, he sent a small box of such books to the Natural History Museum. Herbariums, bestiaries, that sort of thing. My men looked into it as a matter of course while in the process of investigating the goings-on before his murder. The clerk to whom they spoke said that nobody had got round to looking at it yet. Please don't stare at me like that, madam. It's quite regular for persons of quality to make donations to the museums. It might be months before anyone gets round to checking it, unless they'd been specifically notified that there was something of importance in it.\"\n\nKai frowned. \"Are you suggesting that he hid the genuine book in the crate of donations? Wasn't that, well, extremely risky? If even one person had found it there, he would have lost it. His bank deposit box seems much more likely.\"\n\n\"No, I can see the logic of it,\" Bradamant contradicted him. \"If there is a backlog of such donations, it could have been as much as a year before anyone opened it, and he could have asked for it back if he needed it to present to Silver\u2014or to anyone else,\" she added thoughtfully.\n\n\"Well, the gentleman was a vampire,\" Vale agreed, \"so it would fit certain scheming aspects of his character\u2014even though one should probably not speak ill of the undead.\" He paused, but nobody laughed. \"Oh, very well. Are there any other possible ways by which the book could have been smuggled out of the house, Inspector?\"\n\n\"Possible, certainly, sir,\" Singh said cautiously, \"but none plausible. I had my men check the cellars very thoroughly. There are no connections to the local sewers or to the Underground. Of course, if he trusted it to one of his servants, then we have a whole new set of possibilities. If that's the case, then we might do better watching the black market for such things to see if it shows up. Or we could see how the Iron Brotherhood go about finding it\u2014if they're after the damn thing too.\"\n\nIrene and Bradamant glanced at each other, and Irene could guess what the other woman was thinking. If they did have to resort to scouring the black market, or liaising with secret society members, then it might be better for Bradamant to break away from the group. She could then use any contacts that she'd made as Belphegor, rather than be known to be working with Singh and Vale. Of course, Bradamant could then find the book and be the one who took it back to the Library. So which was more important for Irene? Finding the book herself, or making sure that it was found? She knew what the answer should be, but that didn't mean that she liked it.\n\nVale and Singh were also looking thoughtfully at each other. Then Vale leapt to his feet. \"Well, then! I believe this calls for a visit to the Natural History Museum. Ladies, Mr. Strongrock, I trust I can prevail upon you to accompany us. Inspector, do you have a cab downstairs? You can give us a lift there before going on to get your search warrant.\"\n\nSingh looked at Bradamant, Irene, and Kai with less than total enthusiasm but controlled his expression. \"I have one, sir, but I believe that we may require a second one if we are not to subject the ladies to unduly close quarters.\"\n\n\"I'd rather not delay,\" Irene broke in. A growing sense of urgency was pricking at her. Maybe the bank deposit box was the more likely possibility, but what if they were wrong? \"Inspector, do you think you were followed here?\"\n\nSingh frowned. \"I can't deny that it is possible, madam. Not that anyone would find it strange. A great many people from the Yard come to visit Mr. Vale here, and very frequently at that.\"\n\nVale stepped across to the window and stood to one side of it, peering down at the street below. \"I can't say whether they followed you, Inspector, or whether they're watching me,\" he reported, \"but Hairy Jimmy of the Whitechapel Roaring Boys is watching my front door.\"\n\n\"That'll be Lord Silver, I believe,\" Singh said, slipping his papers back into his case. \"The Iron Brotherhood wouldn't have anything to do with werewolves.\"\n\nVale considered for a moment. \"Well, with London traffic the way it is at this hour of the morning, even if they are going to the museum, we should still make it there before they do.\" He snatched a coat from the overloaded hat stand, flung it on, and caught up his hat and sword-cane. \"Let us be off.\"\n\nKai had also sprung to his feet in wild enthusiasm and was busy finding his own hat and coat, which allowed Irene to tug Bradamant into the passage for a word in private.\n\n\"What is it?\" Bradamant asked quietly.\n\n\"What are the identifying marks for the book?\" She saw Bradamant begin to say something and held up a hand to stop her. \"Look. You said that you've already been fooled once with a fake. If it was your superior who sent you back\u2014if you're actually here with permission\"\u2014she saw Bradamant's eyes narrow in anger at that\u2014\"then he wouldn't have sent you back again without giving you some sort of way to identify the genuine article. Are you really going to risk losing the book because you're not prepared to share that with me? A book which may be that important to this world?\"\n\nBradamant's glare was pure poison. \"Don't rush me,\" she said. \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\"Think fast,\" Irene said. \"Vale will be coming to find us in a moment.\"\n\n\"Tale eighty-seven,\" Bradamant said. \"'The Story of the Stone from the Tower of Babel.' If it's there, then it's genuine.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Irene said. She picked up her hat and veil and skewered them in place with a hat-pin. Bradamant seemed about to say something but with a visible struggle managed to contain herself. She adjusted her own hat, then swept out, calling sweetly, \"We're coming!\"\n\nA few seconds later they were jumbled together into a hansom cab and heading to the Natural History Museum. From what Irene could remember of London's geography, it was at least half an hour away\u2014more, if the traffic was bad. Singh had muttered the instructions to the driver rather than shouting them loud enough to be heard across the street and was now brooding in the corner of the cab. Kai, Vale, and Singh were all sandwiched onto one seat, while Irene and Bradamant shared the seat opposite and tried not to look too comfortable.\n\n\"Do you know who we need to speak to when we get there, Inspector?\" Vale asked Singh.\n\nSingh nodded. \"I have the name from last time\u2014Professor Betony, and even if you can't find her, then you can find her office in the Department of Cryptidology downstairs. With any luck, you can be in and out of there before anyone who might be following you catches up. We can then establish if the book's here or not. And I'll be getting that search warrant in the meantime.\" He gave Bradamant one of his flat looks. \"And then this young lady can return the other books that she made off with.\"\n\nBradamant flushed, lowered her eyes, played with the strap of her handbag. She looked in every way like an innocent young woman who had been led into crime by bad company and wanted nothing more than to make amends. Irene had to admire the performance, especially given Bradamant's probable feelings of rage towards her.\n\n\"Do you often get sent on missions like this for this Library of yours, Miss Winters?\" Vale asked Irene. He tried to make it sound like casual conversation, but she could feel the deeper curiosity beneath his words.\n\n\"This one is a bit more... ah, dramatic than most of them,\" Irene said, a little relieved that Vale was asking her rather than Bradamant. And that was perfectly true. She'd had dozens of missions where she'd simply wandered in, quietly bought a copy of the book in question, and left without anyone so much as noticing her. And at least ten assignments where there had been some minor illegality involved, but none had featured chases through the streets, dangerously flamboyant personalities, or cyborg alligators. \"There was a time before this when I was in France.\" Well, a France. There were a lot of Frances. \"I was trying to secure a copy of a book about alchemy by someone called Michael Maier, a few hundred years old. It was called...\" She frowned. \"Something about nine triads, and it contained intellectual songs about the resurrection of the phoenix, or something along those lines. I ended up getting involved with a group of Templars and having to leave in something of a hurry.\" About five minutes before they'd broken the door down, to be precise, but no need to tell Vale that bit.\n\n\"And then there was the cat burglar affair,\" Bradamant said sweetly.\n\nIrene felt her hands tighten in her gloves. She forced herself to stay calm. \"Yes,\" she agreed. \"There was that.\"\n\nKai leaned forward. \"What was this cat burglar affair?\" he asked.\n\nBradamant smiled in a sympathetic, understanding, non-judgemental sort of way. \"Oh, it was when I was mentoring Irene, when she was first working in the field. We were trying to locate a book which had been stolen by a notorious thief. Everyone knew who she was. The best police officers in the city were watching her every move and still they couldn't catch her. And when Irene and I were trying to investigate her, well...\" She smiled again, tolerantly. \"The lady in question was very charming. And it isn't as if I was in any significant danger while Irene was so, shall we say, 'preoccupied' with her. And I managed to find the book, so all's well that ends well.\"\n\nIrene looked down at her knees and bit her tongue. It hadn't been like that at all, it hadn't, but that was all the story that anyone would know now. Bradamant had cheerfully spread it all over the Library in murmured detail, and anything that Irene had said then, or could say now, would simply make her sound as if she was making excuses. The alternate had been one with a very specific set of social standards. Theft was a comparatively petty transgression there, even if it was illegal; immoral behaviour was the sort of thing that could entirely destroy a woman's reputation. Bradamant had set the whole thing up, arranging an identity for Irene as a freelance thief herself, suggesting that perhaps the woman could be persuaded to hand the book over, and even fixing up an assignation. And then she'd simply burgled the woman's house while Irene had been sincerely trying to talk her round. And Irene had been left floundering and making excuses and trying to explain what had happened to the other woman's house, and her possessions, and her reputation...\n\nShe had come out of it with a bitter, lasting fury against Bradamant and a resolution that she would never do the same thing to someone who actually trusted her. Never. Never.\n\nAnd if she tried to object now, it'd be just the same as before. She'd look as if she was trying to make excuses for something that must have been her fault if she was making excuses for it. She'd look guilty. She'd look petty...\n\nShe'd look like a child.\n\n\"Yes,\" she agreed, with a smile as pleasant as Bradamant's own. \"All's well that ends well.\"\n\nKai glanced from Irene to Bradamant, then back again. \"Of course, this is the first time I've worked with Miss Winters,\" he said, a fraction too quickly. \"I was rather hoping we might be sent to fetch some poetry at some point. I have a high regard for poetry. My father and uncles always felt that it was very important for anyone who had any claim to culture.\"\n\n\"Hm.\" Singh leaned forward, looking genuinely interested. \"The epic poem, or shorter forms?\"\n\nThe conversation shifted, much to Irene's relief, into a debate on poetry that lasted for most of the journey. She herself was mostly silent, being more used to acquiring it than reading it. Bradamant put in a word or two in favour of the Elizabethan styles, and fortunately there had been an Elizabeth on this alternate. Vale had a fondness for Persian poets, though his pronunciation of their names was bad enough that Singh twitched. Singh himself refused to consider anything shorter than an epic poem as worthy of serious study. And Kai, not too surprisingly, favoured classical Chinese modes, with a passing nod to constructions like the sestina and villanelle.\n\nIt took a moment for her to realize that she was actually enjoying herself. Even if she wasn't contributing much to the conversation, she was taking part in it. She was speaking her mind, she was having an honest exchange of opinion, she was...\n\nAmong equals, the back of her mind supplied, with the unwillingness that came with the recognition of an unwanted truth. You are discussing a common interest without worrying about betrayal or about losing them, and you are enjoying it. How long is it since you did that?\n\nShe looked around at her party's various interested expressions and felt as if she had known them for years. It was ridiculous, and yet... it wasn't unwelcome.\n\nThe traffic outside had descended from merely bad to abominable, and their cab's progress had slowed to a walking pace, with occasional jolts at the traffic lights.\n\n\"There isn't any risk of us being overtaken, is there?\" Irene asked nervously.\n\n\"Very unlikely, madam,\" Singh answered. \"For that, they would need to know where we're going, and there are far too many places where we could be going for them to be certain.\"\n\n\"There is one thing that I've been wondering about,\" Kai said. \"While I know that you have difference engines and calculating mechanisms, I have yet to see any sort of long-distance communication device. Now I\u2014\" He became conscious of Irene's glare. \"That is, hasn't that sort of thing been investigated?\"\n\nVale sighed. \"Another of your alternate-world advanced pieces of technology, Mr. Strongrock? There has indeed been some research into the subject, but it proved simply too prone to demonic possession. While there have been a few successes with various forms of theologically based shieldings, on the whole the area cannot be said to reward investigation. Certainly it would be unsafe to put such things in the hands of the masses.\"\n\n\"But how do zeppelin pilots communicate with the ground?\" Irene asked.\n\nVale sniffed, and Singh looked disgusted. \"Fae magic,\" Vale said. \"Another reason why Liechtenstein has so heavy an influence on the zeppelin industry. I believe they also make some machinery for submersibles, but of course the large quantity of iron reduces the magic's efficiency.\"\n\nIrene nodded and wished that some of this had been in the information pack Dominic Aubrey had provided. He'd completely neglected the subject: there had been plenty of material on the current non-Fae situation, but hardly any on the Fae themselves, their political implications, and their ongoing plans for world domination\u2014since Fae always had plans for world domination. (It was more dramatic that way, after all.) Possibly he'd thought that she would be able to avoid Fae interference\u2014though, given Wyndham's involvement with Silver, that would scarcely have been possible. Could someone have managed to remove part of the information pack? And if so, how and when?\n\nShe also wished that she was sitting on Kai's side of the cab so that she could kick his ankle without it being obvious. Discussions along the lines of So why haven't you introduced this bit of technology in your alternate world? rarely went well. Often there were perfectly good reasons why it hadn't been introduced, and you opened a whole can of worms by just asking. And on the few occasions when it simply hadn't been invented and you had indeed introduced the alternate to a whole new concept, you could end up with problems like cold fusion. (Not that she'd been involved in that one, but stories had got round.)\n\nThe cab jolted to a stop, and the driver leaned down to the opening. \"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid as how traffic's very bad today, it'll be another ten minutes before I could reach the steps of the museum\u2014though you can see its wall there. If it won't be inconveniencing you, sir, yourself and your friends might be finding it easier to walk from here.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" Vale exclaimed, flinging the cab-door open. He glanced up to the driver. \"Wait here. We shouldn't be long. Here.\" He tossed a coin up to the driver. There was a keen energy driving his movements as they neared possible action. \"For your time.\"\n\nKai assisted Irene out of the cab, giving a little extra squeeze to her wrist as he helped her down the step.\n\n\"Almost there,\" he murmured.\n\nBradamant coughed meaningfully. With an apologetic look, Kai let go of Irene and turned to help Bradamant down as well.\n\nThe streets were full of traffic, moving slowly with a lot of shouting, and the air was full of smog. Irene folded her veil up across her face and stepped over to the museum wall to let people hurry past. The others joined her, waiting for Singh, who was talking to the driver. The wall was stained a deep filthy brown from decades of ingrained smoke and smog. The surrounding buildings were old brick and marble, similarly smog-stained. Many of the people bustling by were carrying books or briefcases. From what she remembered of the geography of some Londons, there was a university near here, sited conveniently near the museum.\n\nA passing zeppelin high above caught the corner of her eye, and she glanced upwards. Several small zeppelins were moored to the roof of the museum, with pennants hanging from them emblazoned with the museum's name. As she looked farther down the street, she could see more of them moored to the roofs of other large buildings.\n\n\"Ah,\" Vale said, following her line of sight. \"Splendid contraptions, aren't they? And so much faster than a cab, but sadly not as controllable. One of those little skimmers can make it across the Channel and back without needing to refuel.\"\n\n\"Across the Channel?\" Irene asked. \"Does the museum use them for such trips, then?\"\n\nVale nodded. \"They can transfer important small items and particular rarities. I understand that most large museums keep a few these days. And of course, much less risk of theft.\" His narrow gaze shifted to Bradamant for a moment and brooded on her oblivious back. It seemed that he hadn't forgiven or forgotten any little details about cat burglars.\n\n\"If you are from an alternate world yourself,\" Vale said, turning back to her, \"what is it like?\"\n\nIrene noticed that Kai had edged close enough to listen. The problem was that she didn't have a good answer. \"It was... well, it was just another world. The technology was a little more controlled than it is here. There weren't so many zeppelins, and there weren't any vampires or werewolves. My parents used to take me to the Library as often as they could, but I spent a lot of time in boarding-school. It was in Switzerland, and very good for languages.\" She wasn't going to mention some of the other things that they'd taught. The school had prided itself on sending out pupils who were ready for anything, and some parts of that world had been very dangerous.\n\n\"I did visit other alternates with my parents too,\" Irene added. \"Sometimes when they were on a mission, and they didn't think that it was too dangerous. Sometimes I was even helpful.\" She found herself smiling. \"And there were years in the Library, though there weren't many other children there. But I had to grow up mainly outside the Library.\"\n\n\"Why is that?\" Vale asked. \"Surely it would have been better for you to stay there and be tutored in safety, rather than taken into danger?\"\n\nIrene knew she was on dangerous ground here. There were some things that she shouldn't tell him. For his own safety. \"Time passes differently in the Library,\" she eventually said. \"My parents wanted me to grow up naturally. Well, moderately naturally. And if I was to be a useful Librarian, I had to know how to function outside the place.\"\n\n\"Is that why they usually recruit from outside the Library, rather than the children of Librarians?\" Kai asked.\n\nIrene nodded. \"That, and... well, to be honest, I don't think Librarians tend to have children very often, and even then there's no guarantee they'd want to become Librarians in turn. I think I'm the only one in a generation or so.\"\n\nShe caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Bradamant was turning away, but not quite fast enough to hide the expression on her face. There had been a corrosive jealousy in her eyes. Irene didn't think that she'd seen it in the other woman before... or had she? She'd tried to forget so many other things about Bradamant and failed so badly.\n\nSingh walked up to Vale, having finished his low-voiced conversation with the cab-driver. \"I'll send the cab back here for you, sir, once he's dropped me off at the Old Bailey. It shouldn't take you long to check whether the book's here.\"\n\nIrene controlled her impatience. It was a great relief to think that in half an hour she could even be heading back to the Library, book in hand, Kai in tow, Bradamant in... well, she didn't consciously want to think about Bradamant in disgrace. After all, everyone had a failure now and again. Things like glamorous cat burglars. Whatever.\n\nMaybe an hour. She didn't want to be too optimistic.\n\nInside the museum, the building widened out into a glorious cathedral-like hall with a high curving ceiling inset with windows, and a mosaic-inlaid floor. A diplodocus skeleton leered down bonily from high above the heads of the onlookers, and some harassed-sounding mother implored her little darling not to try to climb on its foot. A white marble statue at the head of the room's main stairway overlooked the whole thing with an air of dignified approval. It was about the only piece of non-smog-stained marble that Irene had seen in this alternate London.\n\nShe supposed that it was interesting enough. But it was sadly lacking in books.\n\nVale clearly knew his way around and led them up one of the staircases, through several minor rooms of exhibits, then past a wide range of stuffed animals, stuffed plants, and possibly stuffed mineral deposits (she didn't have time to check). Next they hurried down another staircase and into an even more cluttered and confused set of corridors, which was clearly where work actually got done. Crates were stacked against the walls, many with notes attached saying OPEN THIS TODAY. The only things that weren't dirty or dusty were the office doors' brass nameplates. These gleamed with a rather desperate shine, as if trying to compensate for their surroundings.\n\n\"Here we are,\" Vale said, pausing before one that apparently belonged to Professor Amelia Betony, MSc, PhD, and Doctor of Divinity. \"This was the person to whom the crate was addressed. Let's see if we can eliminate this possibility.\" He shoved the door open without bothering to knock.\n\nInside, the low-ceilinged office was larger than expected. The small desk in the corner was piled high with unopened envelopes and packages, and the large table in the middle of the room was strewn with bones, glue-pots, and measuring devices. The air smelt of dust and drying solvent. Then a young man entered from a side-door, a steaming mug of tea in his hand. He stood there, blinking at the four of them.\n\n\"Mr. Ramsbottom, I presume?\" Vale said, stepping forward briskly. \"Professor Betony's secretary?\"\n\nThe young man nodded and peered at Vale, and his eyes widened in recognition. \"Ah, I'm so terribly sorry, but the professor is away on the Egypt expedition, if you were wanting to consult her over a case\u2014\"\n\n\"Fortunately, I believe that you will suffice, Mr. Ramsbottom,\" Vale said. \"We are here to look into the matter of a parcel that may have gone astray.\"\n\nRamsbottom glanced guiltily at the stacks of incoming mail on the corner desk.\n\n\"We are looking for a crate from Lord Wyndham,\" Vale said. To his side, Irene could see Kai tense with excitement, watching Ramsbottom with a glare of anticipation that was probably unnerving the nervous-looking fellow. \"It would have been delivered about five days ago.\"\n\nWas it really that short a time since Wyndham's death, since Irene and Kai had arrived here? It felt so much longer, Irene thought.\n\n\"Ah,\" Ramsbottom said, sidling towards the desk. He abandoned his mug and selected a ledger. \"Actually, I think I do remember that one.\"\n\n\"You do?\" Vale asked.\n\nRamsbottom nodded. \"There were particular instructions enclosed with it. Please, um, gentlemen, ladies, Professor Betony will no doubt answer everything with full dispatch as soon as she returns.\" He glanced guiltily at the pile of post again. \"But she does have a very specific dislike of anyone else reading her post, and when she left, she told me that unless a letter or package specifically said that it should be opened...\"\n\n\"The crate, man!\" Vale snapped, striding forward. \"What happened to it?\"\n\n\"Ah, ahem.\" Ramsbottom twitched at his collar. \"The accompanying note stipulated that if Professor Betony did not return to open it within three days of its receipt, then her assigned subordinate, which is myself, was to open it and take all necessary actions with the contents.\"\n\nIrene swallowed. To one side, she could see Bradamant going white. To her other side, she could hear the hoarseness in Kai's breathing. This must have been some sort of last gambit by Wyndham, in case he wasn't able to collect his prized book... In expectation of his murder?! As just one more step in whatever relationship he'd had with Silver? As a deliberate ploy against Silver getting his hands on the book, or to hide it from someone else?\n\n\"The package contained an archaeopteryx skeleton,\" Ramsbottom went on, more nervous by the second, \"and another parcel, to be forwarded elsewhere\u2014\" He stuttered to an anxious stop.\n\n\"And where would that be?\" Vale prompted.\n\nRamsbottom hesitated. \"This is a matter of confidentiality, Mr. Vale, and while I do know your connections with the police, I, ah, that is...\" He trailed off, apparently unable to utter the words I'm not going to tell you.\n\n\"Mr. Ramsbottom.\" Vale stepped forward. \"Naturally I will not press the matter. But I would be grateful if you could reassure me that there will be no difficulty in tracing the package, should such a thing prove necessary.\"\n\n\"Of course!\" Ramsbottom exclaimed, looking deeply relieved. He tapped a small blue ledger. \"I have full details here of where the package went.\"\n\nThen the door in the opposite side of the room slammed open, and Silver strode through, followed by his bland-looking manservant and half a dozen hairy men in cheap suits and bad hats. \"At last!\" he declaimed, pointing dramatically. \"I have you now, my dear enemy!\"\n\nHe was pointing at Bradamant."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 17",
                "text": "\"What?\" Bradamant said, then quickly converted it to, \"But, ah, how did you find us so quickly?\"\n\nSilver laughed merrily. His hair, loose over his shoulders, tossed in a wind that somehow blew around him and ruffled his clothing but failed to stir a single hair on the louche, bearded thugs who crowded in behind him and leered at the room in general. Their clothing was as dirty and unkempt as Silver's was elegant and stylish, and they all had eyebrows that met in the middle.\n\n\"Hah!\" Silver preened. He pointed his cane at the unfortunate Ramsbottom, who was trying to retreat into a corner. Any corner. \"You! Hand over the book at once, and your rewards will be beyond your imagination!\"\n\n\"Careful, Silver,\" Vale said. His grip on his sword-stick was no longer quite as casual as it had been a few seconds earlier. \"You wouldn't want to have any witnesses to illegal actions on your part, would you?\"\n\n\"Illegal actions?\" Silver turned to his manservant. \"Johnson! Have I committed any illegal actions?\"\n\nJohnson checked his watch. \"Not within the last three minutes, sir.\"\n\nSilver turned back to Vale. \"There you have it. Rest assured that I am not at the moment committing any illegal actions. I am merely promising this hireling here that if he hands over the book I am looking for, then he will receive rewards beyond his wildest imaginings.\"\n\n\"Well, if there's nothing illegal in it... ,\" Ramsbottom said vaguely. His eyes followed Silver dreamily, watching his every gesture, his every breath. Irene remembered the glamour that Silver had tried to lay on her, back in Wyndham's study.\n\n\"My dear sir,\" Bradamant said, with a nerve that Irene wasn't quite sure she'd have managed to muster, \"you still have not explained how you managed to track us here.\" She stepped to her left, forcing Silver to take his attention off Ramsbottom if he wanted to keep his eyes on her.\n\nSilver waved a hand vaguely. \"The simplest of matters. I subcontracted. Knowing that I could not track an agent of the Library\u2014ah, you fooled me once, but not again!\u2014I approached the elder Miss Olga Retrograde.\"\n\nIrene and Bradamant exchanged quick shocked looks. It was one thing to think that Silver might be aware of the Library\u2014many Fae and dragons were, after all, just as the Library was aware of them\u2014but to have him say it so baldly and in front of witnesses was rather worrying, in that it suggested there would shortly be no witnesses. And how had Silver known, in any case? What had he seen? How much did he know about the Library?\n\nVale, meanwhile, looked outraged. \"You dealt with her?\"\n\n\"Merely a matter of convenience,\" Silver said airily. \"Normally she is far too sordid for me to do more than invite her to my parties. I don't suppose you would care to comment on that, would you, my dear private detective? From a, shall we say, family perspective?\"\n\nVale looked even more furious, if that were possible. \"I have nothing that I would wish to say about her,\" he spat.\n\n\"Then allow me to clarify,\" Silver said with great satisfaction. \"Her scrying attempts proved useless until you left your lodgings this morning. She caught the directions given to the cab-driver. From then it was simply a matter of reaching this museum first and having my minions here locate your destination.\" He smiled at the hirsute thugs.\n\n\"We know Mr. Vale's smell,\" one of them growled, his tongue coming unsettlingly far out of his mouth as he panted. \"We all know Mr. Vale's smell. There's a lot of us want to have a nice quiet little chat with Mr. Vale down some dark alley sometime.\"\n\n\"There, there,\" Silver said. \"I'm sure you'll get your chance someday very soon now\u2014if Mr. Vale doesn't advise his Library associate to comply with my requests.\" He smiled at Bradamant dazzlingly. Irene felt a little of the overspill of it, the burning surge of slavish desire and passionate adoration, and felt the brand across her back burn like raw ice in reaction. She also felt a quick burst of relief that apparently Silver hadn't recognized her as a Library agent. She was still incognito for the moment.\n\nRamsbottom's hands fell to his sides, and he gave up all attempts to be helpful to stare at Silver in mute fascination. Vale didn't seem to be affected. Irene was tempted to look behind her to see what Kai was doing, but as a dragon, he should surely be immune to anything that Silver could throw at him. At least, she hoped so.\n\nSilver thought that the book was still here. There had to be some way that they could use that. At least Bradamant was playing along and keeping Silver occupied.\n\n\"But how did you know I was from the Library?\" Bradamant asked, edging still farther to the left.\n\nOne of the thugs twitched forward as if to make a grab for her, but Silver shook his head. \"No, my adversary deserves to know at least that much. How well you fooled me, my dear! I was quite distracted by your mousy little minion over there in her drab dress\"\u2014he gestured at Irene\u2014\"and by your cunning thefts. How could I have realized that you were the mastermind behind it all? It was only after I put it all together that I saw you in your true light.\"\n\nIrene was torn between relief that he wasn't focusing on her and a certain amount of irritation that she was apparently a mousy little minion unworthy of his attention. Was she so utterly unnoticeable? Why wasn't he pointing a finger at Irene and declaiming about her being an impressive mastermind? In fact, why was Silver claiming that there was a mastermind at all?\n\nPart of her was aware that this was an incredibly stupid attitude to take, a reaction to his Fae charm or something. The same thing that was making her want to pout and preen at him. Maybe bare a shoulder or breathe deeply or somehow get him to notice her. To have him touch her with those beautiful long hands, his body pressing...\n\nRight.\n\nA thought at the back of her head was trying to get her attention. This is the problem with interacting with the Fae. An instructor's voice from back at the Library, talking to half a dozen trainees while they made notes (or surreptitiously tried to plot out bestselling novels), droning away while rain spattered against the window that looked out onto a deserted grey stone square full of empty market stalls. They see everything in terms of their own personal drama. If you are not careful, they will drag you into it. This is in fact a problem and a risk with all chaos-infected alternates...\n\n\"I see.\" Bradamant did a good job of drooping in response to Silver's accusations. \"Then you know everything.\"\n\n\"Everything!\" Silver declared. \"I am not surprised that Aubrey should have called for reinforcements from the Library with such a prize at stake, but now he will have to admit that he has failed. Our long rivalry is at an end!\"\n\nIrene blinked in shock. No. No. That couldn't be right. If Silver had known Dominic Aubrey and had learnt that he was a Library agent, then Dominic should have known about Silver being a threat. But Dominic hadn't said a single word about Silver being an enemy of his, or warned them about him, or even told them that Silver existed...\n\nAnd why was Bradamant nodding? What did she know? \"Aubrey warned me about you,\" she said, \"but I believe he did not prepare me enough.\"\n\nNo, surely this was impossible. There was no conceivable reason for Dominic to warn Bradamant but not her or Kai. They could well have come into contact, as the only door to the Library was in Aubrey's office. But there had been no sign that they had exchanged this sort of intelligence. Of course, Dominic might have had his own patrons in the Library, who wanted Bradamant to find the book first. That was entirely plausible and wasn't even an offence as such. But deliberately hiding the threat of Silver from her and Kai wasn't just a casual slip; it was a betrayal. If she'd got back and told her superiors, then Dominic might well have been removed from his post.\n\nCould Bradamant be lying? Her thoughts rattled in her head like computer keys. And the tension in the room escalated as Silver considered his next dramatic reply, as Vale and Kai shifted their positions behind her, and as the werewolves panted and waited to lunge.\n\nNo. It didn't fit. Oh, all right, maybe Bradamant and Silver might be secret allies staging an argument to convince her. But that was taking paranoia too far. So if Dominic knew about Silver and considered him significant enough to warn Bradamant\u2014but didn't even bother mentioning him to Irene later, when he knew Irene was on a confirmed mission\u2014then what did that imply? What had changed?\n\nShe thought back to her brief contact with Dominic Aubrey. His use of the Language was strangely old-fashioned. And then there was Dominic Aubrey's disappearance and skinning, which left his Library tattoo intact but no sign of his body at all. And how did Alberich operate in this alternate world? Alberich, who had lived for long enough to be a legend even among the Librarians... but nobody knew how, and nobody even knew what he looked like.\n\nAn idea was forming, an idea that she mentally flinched from, but one that answered a lot of questions. Stealing someone's skin and identity was covered in obscure folklore treatises, but it wasn't something that she ever expected to be real. She didn't want it to be real.\n\nSilver had advanced on Vale and was flourishing his cane menacingly. \"Wyndham only wanted the book because of information I gave him. Then he thought he could bargain for it. With me! Why, if the Iron Brotherhood hadn't disposed of him, I might have been forced to do so myself... But all is not lost, my dear.\"\n\nSo it was the Iron Brotherhood that had killed Wyndham.\n\nAssuming Silver was correct about it, that tied off one loose end. Good, Irene thought, at least that's one less unidentified group of assassins running around the place.\n\nSilver took a step forward, smiling brilliantly. Irene felt the air tingle with suppressed longing again. \"Hand over the book and I will be glad to agree to any terms that you might desire.\"\n\nOver by the desk, Ramsbottom seemed poised to tell all. His hand wavered towards the small blue ledger.\n\nKai was the one who moved. He sprang forward like a leopard and threw himself into a running dive across the desk, snatching the incriminating ledger out of Ramsbottom's hands. He tossed the ledger across the room to Irene and it spun through the air in a flutter of pages.\n\n\"Get that!\" Silver shrieked.\n\nIrene caught it.\n\n\"Back, ladies,\" Vale snapped, as a swift twist of his hand revealed the sword inside his walking cane. The length of steel glittered in the burning glow of the lamps, and with a sudden crack sparks cascaded down it, flaring up harshly between them. \"Lord Silver, restrain your dogs!\"\n\nKai was pushing Ramsbottom back against the wall, getting between him and Silver's snarling minions. Good for Kai, keeping the civilians out of it. Silver's minions were getting hairier by the second. Irene could see the spreading patches of iron-grey and black matted fur on their hands, their lengthening nails, their bulging jaws with sprouting teeth...\n\n\"Come on!\" Bradamant grabbed Irene's shoulder, pulling her towards the door.\n\nPure animal terror at the thought of being torn apart by half a dozen large wolves voted in favour of escape. Explanations could wait.\n\nShe stumbled out into the corridor behind Bradamant. If they ran to the right, they'd be leading the chase back towards regular museum visitors. And that not only would be morally invidious, but also would probably put them off museums for life.\n\nIrene tucked the ledger under one arm, picked up her skirts, and sprinted leftwards. She heard a muffled curse as Bradamant followed.\n\nTwo junctions later, she paused at a spot where two corridors crossed. The place was a rabbit warren. The air to the right smelled fresher, which argued a way out to the ground floor, or at least a fire escape of some sort, but the passage to the left was better lit. The passage directly in front had nothing to recommend it.\n\n\"Keep going,\" Bradamant ordered, pausing to catch her breath. \"The werewolves are right behind us\u2014\"\n\nBut the floor was shuddering violently underneath them. It felt like a passing Underground train, but more worryingly close to the surface. Then the floorboards directly ahead buckled upwards in slow motion, and something clawed and dark tore its way up and through. It dragged itself up into the passageway in a vast clashing of gears and clinking of metal. It was all oil-smeared steel except for the head, which was glass-panelled on either side to make two huge flat translucent eyes. It was clearly from the same root design as the metal creature that Kai and Vale had fought two nights ago, but smaller and faster.\n\n\"What's this?\" Bradamant asked calmly, her words oddly distinct against the sound of splintering wood, grinding metal, and distant howling.\n\n\"I think it must be the Iron Brotherhood,\" Irene answered. \"They probably followed Silver.\"\n\n\"Oh, this is simply getting ridiculous,\" Bradamant sniffed. \"Which way next?\"\n\nThe insectoid robot head swivelled to focus on Irene and Bradamant. It took a jointed pace down the corridor towards them, the claws attached to each segment of the body dragging it along and leaving horrible gashes in the wood. Its top scraped the ceiling, bringing down cobwebs that had probably been centuries in the making, leaving a long swathe of scoured white plaster in its wake.\n\n\"Go right,\" Irene shouted to Bradamant on no particular evidence, and ran in that direction. She was already calling vocabulary to her mind\u2014words for gears, joints, pedals, steel, glass, struts, and nuts and bolts. But there was always the chance that the construct would decide to chase Silver and the werewolves rather than them, and it seemed a shame to wreck it if so.\n\n\"It won't work, you know,\" Bradamant said, catching up and outpacing her. \"Do you seriously think that thing won't chase us?\"\n\n\"It's worth a try,\" Irene gasped. She turned and looked back over her shoulder.\n\nThe iron automaton came jolting forward in a screeching rattle of steps, then halted as it reached the junction. With a whirr the head turned to edge itself into the passage that Bradamant and Irene were running down. Its shoulders began to creak after it, manoeuvring so it could bear down the passage after them like an oncoming train.\n\nIrene and Bradamant looked at each other.\n\n\"I'll do the gears if you do the joints,\" Irene said.\n\n\"Right,\" Bradamant said. \"Give it a moment so that it can block the junction.\"\n\nThe robot managed to half negotiate the turn. Its claws dug into the floor as inner springs rewound themselves. The huge lenses set into the head reflected the two women, mirror-like. If they were in fact windows, it was impossible to see who might be lurking behind them.\n\n\"Gears, lock up!\" Irene shouted, pitching her voice to carry as far as possible. \"In head, in claws, in body, and in every part which can hear me\u2014gears, seize solid and stand firm!\"\n\nThe robot came to a standstill in a horrific mechanical screaming of blocked joints and gears. Even the distant howling of the werewolves was drowned out. Wires and cables tensed and broke. One claw rotated backwards, caught itself in the floor at an angle, and snapped. And a fragment of steel went flying, pinging off the wall with a high-toned ring of metal, audible even over the noise of the machine destroying itself.\n\nBoth women turned and ran down the corridor away from the thing, past closed offices and storerooms. The air was full of fresh dust, the smell of oil, and burnt metal. A part of Irene's mind wondered if it'd make tomorrow's front pages. Probably. She didn't like making headlines. A good Librarian was supposed to read headlines, not make them.\n\n\"There!\" Bradamant pointed unnecessarily to a stairway ahead of them. They plunged down it at a run, Bradamant swinging wide on the banister at the curve and almost hip checking Irene. The door at its base opened onto the ground floor, revealing a room full of shells and corals. Several family groups turned to look at them disapprovingly.\n\nIrene smiled her iciest smile, brushed some of the dust off her skirts, and took a firmer grip on the precious ledger. Behind her, Bradamant whispered something to the door lock. Irene couldn't quite make it out, but it had the cadence of the Language.\n\nHopefully they had a couple of minutes before any werewolves, Fae, Iron Brotherhood, or other book hunters caught up with them. Irene spotted a small office on the other side of the room and caught Bradamant's eye. \"Over there,\" she suggested, jerking her chin towards it.\n\n\"Absolutely,\" Bradamant agreed.\n\nThe two of them walked decorously across the room, skirting glass cases full of dried sea anemones, brittle polyps, and other brightly coloured objects that probably had been happier when they were underwater. With a polite nod to an elderly man shuffling along behind a walking frame, Irene quietly tried the handle of the office door.\n\n\"Is it shut, dear?\" Bradamant enquired softly.\n\n\"Oh no,\" Irene said, keeping her voice down. \"In fact, this door is open.\" The Language rolled in her mouth, and the latch loosened under her hand, turning obediently to let the pair of them in.\n\n\"Not bad,\" Bradamant said, closing the door behind them. She looked around for a key, saw none, and muttered, \"Door lock, shut.\" The lock clicked to again.\n\nIrene glanced round the room. It was clearly the office of someone important: the desk and chairs were newer than the ones downstairs, the pieces of artwork and diagrams hanging on the walls had frames, and there wasn't any dust.\n\n\"We'd better not take too long,\" she said, walking over to the desk. She sat down and flipped the ledger open. \"Someone might come in at any moment.\"\n\n\"My dear Irene,\" Bradamant said, raising her hands to adjust her hat and her hair, \"I may not be able to handle a set of werewolves and an angry Fae, but I can certainly handle one museum official. Especially as he is overweight.\"\n\n\"Overweight?\"\n\nBradamant's smirk was obvious in her voice. \"I don't need to be a great detective like your Vale to look at the chair you're sitting in and see that it's usually sat in by an extremely fat man.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Irene said, a little stung. Just because she had her own particular tastes in fiction didn't mean that she liked to be sneered at about them. She flipped through the pages, looking for entries dating two days ago. It arrived five days ago, then three days after that he would have sent it on... \"Ah!\" she said, finding the date. \"Mm. He's had a lot of packages going through. Professor Betony must get a lot of mail.\" She ran her finger down the page, looking for a mention of Wyndham's name. \"Got it. Package from Lord Wyndham, redispatched to\u2014\"\n\n\"To Dominic Aubrey, British Library!\" Bradamant said in shock, reading over her shoulder.\n\n\"Of course!\" Irene slapped her hand against the desk. \"You said it yourself: Dominic was indiscreet in what he told Wyndham! And Wyndham was afraid of Silver striking at him or trying to steal the book.\" Well, technically a cold-iron safe would keep a book safe from any thieves, not just Fae ones, but Silver had known to look there for the book. \"If Wyndham wanted to hide the book from Silver, and if he knew more or less about Dominic, or at least if he knew for certain that Dominic was an enemy of Fae in general, and Silver in particular... Wyndham must have sent this package before his death, once he had the copy of the book made, the one that you stole.\" She was aware that she was getting incoherent, and she took a deep breath. \"He must have expected to get the book back from Dominic later.\" Suddenly her earlier fears about Dominic returned to her. \"But that means\u2014\"\n\nA bright pain knifed into the side of her neck, as sharp and vivid as a wasp's sting. She would have exclaimed in shock, but the words were somehow fuzzy in her mouth and her lips were numb. She was sagging back into the wide seat, thoughts clear but body numb and loose, unable to form a single deliberate word.\n\n\"But that means,\" Bradamant said, wiping the end of her hat-pin on the shoulder of Irene's coat before sliding it back into her own hat, \"that I don't need you any more.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 18",
                "text": "\"What'reyoudoin'?\" Irene slurred. She could barely form the words in English, let alone in the Language.\n\n\"Making sure that this mission will be a success,\" Bradamant answered. \"I haven't broken my word. I promised you that if I found the book, I'd bring it to you before returning to the Library. I will still do so once I've collected it from Dominic Aubrey's office. But that will be at my own convenience and in a way that I choose. In the meantime, I don't want you interfering any longer.\"\n\n\"Stpd,\" Irene mumbled. Stupid. She needed to tell Bradamant what she suspected about Alberich, but Bradamant's attack on her had just made that impossible.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" Bradamant said. She stroked a fragment of strayed hair back under her hat. \"It's a curare derivative. You should be back on your feet in half an hour or so. It probably won't affect your breathing or your heart.\" She smiled maliciously. \"Or perhaps it will. It's not as if I've tested it that often, after all. Cheer up, Irene dear! Soon you'll be free of all these annoying worries about the Library and your actual job, and you can concentrate on your friends here instead. Perhaps you'll get another mission more commensurate with your talents. Gathering toilet paper, for example.\"\n\nIrene glared up at her, struggling to form words. You stupid idiot, don't you realize that I was about to tell you something important?\n\nThis would have been the perfect time to develop telepathy, except that as far as she knew, it was purely fictional.\n\nBradamant leaned across to retrieve the ledger. \"I'm not blind, you know,\" she said. \"I have been aware of you watching me. Your little sneers at the fact that I enjoy nice clothing. I've seen you turn up your little nose at my interest in completing the mission and my willingness to lie to get the job done. Your general... dislike of me? Yes, dislike is a good word. We wouldn't call it quite scorn now, but you don't like me at all.\"\n\nI suspect Dominic Aubrey isn't really Dominic Aubrey, Irene tried to convey with her eyes. I think Alberich replaced him days ago. I think that the kind man whom Kai and I met was actually something old and vicious wearing Dominic Aubrey's skin. And I think the only reason he hasn't found the book yet is that he didn't know about Dominic Aubrey's contacts. And, crucially, he hasn't bothered to check Dominic Aubrey's mail.\n\n\"Get over it.\" Bradamant smiled down at Irene. \"Some of us aren't the spoilt offspring of lucky parents, who then spend the rest of their lives being treated like little angels. Some of us are grateful to be out of places worse than you can imagine.\" A shadow flickered behind her eyes. \"We appreciate what we've been given. And we would do anything, anything at all, to do our job properly. You can play around with your great detective as much as you like, Irene\u2014oh, don't think I never worked that one out. I know who you want to be. But I know who I am. I'll sacrifice whoever and whatever I must sacrifice to complete the mission. If you really understood, if you were really a proper Librarian, then you'd do the same. Perhaps some day you will understand that.\"\n\nYou're about to walk right into his arms. Irene could feel tears burning at the corners of her eyes. You're going to walk in there and you have no idea.\n\n\"I'll lock the door behind me,\" Bradamant said helpfully. \"You shouldn't have any werewolves bursting in on you while you're helpless.\"\n\nI hope they bite your bloody nose off, Irene thought vengefully.\n\n\"Don't think of me as malicious,\" Bradamant said, then paused. \"Actually, do think of me as malicious. Think of me as a malicious bitch who's going to take your mission, your credit, and possibly your apprentice if you haven't spoiled him too much. Think what you like. But\u2014\" She leaned forward and patted Irene's cheek gently.\n\nIrene couldn't even feel the touch of Bradamant's hand against her skin.\n\n\"Think of me as a bitch who gets the job done,\" Bradamant said. She walked across to the door. \"Don't call me. I'll call you.\"\n\nThe door clicked shut behind her.\n\nIrene stared at the bare desk in front of her, sprawled like a doll in the chair. She couldn't turn her head, and she didn't have the muscular focus to scream. She tasted bitterness and despair.\n\nPerhaps she had been wrong to bind Bradamant by an oath in the Language, she thought through the confusion. Perhaps this betrayal ultimately came down to her own insult to Bradamant's integrity.\n\nOr then again, perhaps Bradamant was a backstabbing bitch.\n\nA nagging twitch of guilt lurked at the back of her mind. Yes, she had to admit it: she had enjoyed working with Vale. It wasn't just a case of her Great Detective fixation. (She'd always loved the Holmes stories. And the Watson stories. And even the Moriarty stories.) But there was more to Vale than just being a great detective. There was the prickly man who'd confessed to his split with his family but who was still ready to help them when they asked. There was his surprising generosity and courtesy. There was even the humanizing touch that he'd lent Kai his dressing-gown, and she'd found them sitting over breakfast discussing airships.\n\nShe wasn't a child looking for a role. She was a Librarian with a job to do, and sharing information with Vale and Singh had resulted in things getting done.\n\nLetting herself be immobilized by guilt would be as poisonous as Bradamant's curare, and as harmful.\n\nThere was something deeper to this, though. As she struggled to stay alert, as her mind fought not to follow her body into lassitude, she tried to think it through. She had nothing better to do, after all. Librarians didn't betray other Librarians like this. Bradamant had been playing the part thoroughly but, just once or twice, she'd seen that Bradamant had been afraid. She'd taken up someone else's mission\u2014something that was, if not actively forbidden, at least a serious breach of convention. She'd already tried and failed once to get the book. Now she'd assaulted Irene and left her in danger in order to reach the book first. Who could have pushed her that far?\n\nIrene felt chilled. Some of the older Librarians had... unsavoury reputations. A lifetime among books didn't cultivate depravity or debauchery as much as a love of mind games and politics. And those games could turn dark. Even Coppelia could have her own objectives. Look at Kai, for instance. He'd been planted on Irene in the middle of a mission involving Alberich. What precisely was going on there? How many people had guessed the truth about him?\n\nHer mind felt as if it were stuffed with marshmallows, clogged at the edges and fuzzy in the middle. It must be the drug. But she had to think: she had to work this out. She had the facts. She just needed to apply them.\n\nCompared with Coppelia, there were people like Kostchei, Bradamant's patron. He was reclusive and exacting. Nobody dared argue with his messengers when he \"requested\" a specific book. Rumour had it that he had a great deal of influence among the older Librarians, when he cared to use it. The fact that he'd chosen Bradamant as a prot\u00e9g\u00e9e was interesting in itself. The fact that she would assault other Librarians and steal their work in order to avoid disappointing him... was even more so.\n\nIrene was abruptly filled with a burning desire to read the damned elusive book, if it was so very important. (She was aware that this sort of logic had landed people in trouble before. Screw logic. She was furious.)\n\nWas that her finger twitching? Please let it be her finger twitching.\n\nShe tried to cough. Something resembling coherent noise came out.\n\nShe was so going to have Bradamant's ass for this. Metaphorically speaking.\n\nThe door-handle rattled. She could hear the murmur of voices outside but nothing distinct. She struggled to call out intelligibly, but only a ragged gurgle emerged. In desperation she jerked her leg, kicking out at the desk. There was a thud as her shoe banged into the hollow side.\n\nAnother brief exchange of conversation. A pause.\n\nThe door swung open with a bang. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Vale and Kai standing there, Vale refolding something about the size of a wallet and sliding it into his pocket. Both of them looked mildly battered and unkempt, but not lethally so.\n\n\"Irene!\" Kai exclaimed, rushing into the room. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nNo, I'm currently suffering from curare poisoning, she attempted to communicate. A gargle came out of her mouth.\n\nKai's eyes went to the scratch on her neck. \"Heaven and earth!\" he exclaimed. \"She's poisoned! Silver must have got here before us! I'm going to kill him\u2014\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Vale said, and picked up Irene's hand where it lay limply on the arm of the chair. He slid back her cuff and checked her pulse. \"The lady is conscious, as you can see, and seems in good enough health otherwise, so one must assume a paralytic...\"\n\n\"Irene, say something!\" Kai leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands, staring into her eyes. She could just barely feel the touch of his skin against her face. \"Can you hear us?\"\n\n\"Hear... ,\" she managed to force out. \"Cur... curare...\"\n\n\"She's been poisoned with curare!\" Kai swung round to Vale. \"Quick! Where can we find a doctor?\"\n\nIrene wondered sourly if dragons were particularly prone to stating the obvious at moments of crisis, or if it was just him.\n\n\"Aha.\" Vale brightened, his eyes flashing with enthusiasm. \"I believe we can deal with this here and now. I have a small amount of a strychnine derivative with me, which I use as a stimulant in moments of emergency\u2014\"\n\nMuch is now explained, Irene thought, even more sourly.\n\n\"\u2014and while there may be some minor side-effects, with any luck it should restore her enough to speak. Mr. Strongrock, if you would be good enough to hold her shoulders steady?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Kai said, stepping round behind her chair to grasp her shoulders. She could actually feel his fingers biting into her through the folds of clothing. Either the curare was wearing off, or that was a very firm grasp indeed.\n\nVale removed a small glass tube from an inner pocket of his coat. Leaning forward and turning his head away, he flipped the lid off and briefly passed it under Irene's nose.\n\nIrene inhaled. Her whole body jolted in an undignified convulsion, legs kicking wildly and tangling in her long skirt, the muscles in her arms clenching and contracting. Her head snapped back, and without Kai's grip on her shoulders, she would have sprawled out of the chair to thrash on the floor.\n\n\"Miss Winters?\" Vale said, closing the glass tube and putting it back in his pocket. \"Can you understand me?\"\n\nIrene coughed and focused on breathing for a moment, as the twitching in her limbs slowly eased. It just felt like cramps now. Really bad cramps. The sort of cramps that would ideally warrant a long, extremely slow rubdown in a hot bath house...\n\nThat must be the strychnine. She wouldn't normally let her mind wander like that.\n\n\"Mm, okay,\" she managed to mumble. \"Thank\u2014thank you. Got to\u2014it was Bradamant, the book's with Aubrey, not really Aubrey\u2014\"\n\nVale exchanged a meaningful glance with Kai. She could guess what they were thinking: She's still delirious.\n\nShe had to make herself understood.\n\nIrene closed her eyes for a moment, focused, thought vicious curses down upon Bradamant's head, and opened her eyes again. \"Three things,\" she said distinctly. \"First. The book was posted to Dominic Aubrey. I believe Wyndham must have wanted him to keep it safe from Silver. Second. Bradamant poisoned me. She wants to get the book first. Third. I think Alberich killed Dominic Aubrey before we arrived. Think he was posing as him when we arrived. The only reason he doesn't have the book yet is because he hasn't checked Aubrey's post.\"\n\nHer leg spasmed. She leaned over awkwardly and banged it with her fist. \"Ow,\" she said.\n\nVale and Kai exchanged glances again. She had the feeling that more was being communicated than she could see. Perhaps it was a manly thing. Perhaps it was a dragon thing on one side and a great detective thing on the other.\n\n\"Could Bradamant be working with Alberich?\" Kai asked. \"If she poisoned you?\"\n\nIrene shook her head and regretted it. She put her hands on the arms of her chair and struggled to push herself up to a standing position, glaring at Kai when he tried to help her. \"Bradamant has no clue,\" she snapped. \"Bradamant is an idiot. Bradamant ran off to get the book... I didn't get to tell her about Alberich and Dominic. I'm not sure she even believed me that Alberich is here. And if he's still around the British Library when she arrives...\" The thought made her throat go dry. She wanted to take some sort of painful and pointed revenge on Bradamant, but she didn't hate her that much. \"We have to get there first,\" she said firmly.\n\nShe took a step and almost fell over.\n\nVale caught her elbow and supported her. \"Miss Winters, you are in no condition to accompany us. You should rest here while Mr. Strongrock and I go in search of your errant comrade.\"\n\n\"While I would normally agree with you,\" Kai said, \"there are those werewolves.\"\n\n\"Didn't you even deal with the werewolves?\" Irene snapped. She was aware that she was being just a little unfair here, but at least presumed allies hadn't stabbed them in the back while they were trying to do their job. Or their neck. Whatever.\n\n\"True,\" Vale said. \"The werewolves may be a problem. We only inconvenienced them, rather than finishing them off. I have sent for the police, but they will need to reach here first. Perhaps if we\u2014\"\n\n\"Perhaps if yer what?\" a snarling voice enquired. A ragged figure stood in the open doorway, hair sprouting from his clothes at neck and cuffs, with snarling teeth gaping in his mouth. \"This time it's too late for Mr. bleedin' Vale\u2014\"\n\nKai snatched up the ink-well from the desk and threw it straight at the werewolf's face. Ink splattered everywhere, on the varnished floor and the papered walls, but mostly on the werewolf. He had time for a single black-drooling look of surprise before Kai's kick caught him in the chest and sent him stumbling back into the central hall. Kai followed it up with an elbow blow to the werewolf's chin, another kick to the back of his knee, and a two-handed smash to the back of his neck.\n\nThe werewolf lay flat in a splatter of drool and ink. Vale half supported, half dragged Irene out of the office and into the main hall. \"It seems you will have to come with us after all, Miss Winters,\" he said.\n\n\"Quick,\" Kai exclaimed, ignoring the general mob of bystanders either shrieking or staring. \"We need to catch a cab.\"\n\n\"A cab? My dear fellow, a cab would be far too slow,\" Vale said. \"We need to get to the roof.\"\n\n\"The roof?\" Irene said. She was possibly being a bit slow here, but she wasn't sure that Kai turning into a dragon and flying them there would be much use, unless... \"Oh. Of course. The airships.\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" Vale said, hurrying her to the stairs. \"Of course, there may be some problems with mooring subsequently, but it's our best option.\"\n\nKai caught up with them and grabbed Irene's other elbow to assist in the dragging-her-along-like-a-giant-doll process. \"I hear more of them coming... Which way, Vale?\"\n\n\"Left at the top,\" Vale instructed. They dashed past two astonished tour groups and turned left, entering a wide gallery full of large glass cases. Here, stuffed hyenas menaced stuffed deer, a giant stuffed polar bear towered over some bored-looking stuffed seals, and a rainbow of stuffed birds sat mournfully among dried flowers.\n\n\"Catch them!\" she heard Silver's voice calling from behind them.\n\nAn utterly blood-chilling howling rose ahead of them. Panicked visitors fled the room, forcing Irene and the two men to one side as they stampeded out the far doors.\n\n\"Get me a megaphone,\" Irene said quietly to Kai. Her legs were still cramping, and she had to hold on to Vale to stay upright. But she had an idea, and this time, just this time, she had the feeling it was going to work. \"The tour guides have them...\"\n\nKai grabbed a tour guide as he rushed past and swiftly relieved him of his megaphone. \"Will this do?\"\n\nThe first werewolf came howling into sight, rounding one of the glass cases. Its head and hands were totally wolf-like now, and its clothing was splitting down the seams as it changed shape.\n\nIrene tried the megaphone. \"IS THIS THING ON?\"\n\nFeedback fuzz echoed in the room.\n\nThe werewolf seemed to laugh. Another one joined it. They were approaching slowly. Clearly they were just as interested in fear as they were in bloodshed.\n\n\"Miss Winters,\" Vale began, \"if you have anything in mind\u2014\"\n\nIrene held up her hand in apology. Very precisely, she directed the Language through the megaphone, \"Stuffed creatures, come to life and attack werewolves.\"\n\nThe words shook in the air and drew energy from her to make themselves real in the world. It was simple enough to tell a lock to open, or a door to shut. These actions came naturally to those objects, and the universe was glad to oblige. But stuffed animals weren't in the habit of reanimating to attack things.\n\nExcept now, as Vale looked at her in growing comprehension and Kai smiled a sharp-edged smile, it was coming true.\n\nThe polar bear burst from its case with a silent roar, mouth open to display all those carefully preserved teeth. The glass panes crashed in a waterfall of shards onto the tiled floor, shattering in all directions. The seals came crawling after it, flopping in spasmodic jerks across the floor. Elsewhere in the room, more glass cracked as a flood of creatures fought their way out. A wolf pack staggered forward on stiff legs, and a carefully wired boa-constrictor came writhing out of its own case, uncaring of the glass daggers stuck into its sawdust-stuffed body, and even the birds threw themselves at the walls of their cases, struggling on the ends of their wires.\n\n\"Dear heavens,\" Vale said. \"Miss Winters. What have you done?\"\n\n\"They'll only attack the werewolves,\" Irene said, tossing the megaphone to one side. It crunched and tinkled as it hit the floor. \"We need to run while they're distracted, before Silver gets here.\"\n\nVale had a good instinct for knowing when to act now and ask questions later. It must be part of being a great detective, Irene decided giddily, wondering if the strychnine-curare cocktail was making her delirious. One of the werewolves tried to break away from the attacking mob of otters and crocodiles to get at them, but a persistent baby alligator (Observe the Young of the Species, Only Two Feet Long) chomped on its ankle and dragged it back into the m\u00eal\u00e9e.\n\nVale navigated confidently through more stairs and corridors, and then they were on the roof. The air outside was smoggy and cold. It hit Irene's throat and made her cough. Two small airships bobbed on the ends of moorings in a darkly ominous sky, hovering perhaps twenty feet above the roof of the museum.\n\nA guard came hurrying towards them. \"Mr. Vale!\" he said, moustache quivering. \"Now, excuse me, sir, I'm sure that you have very urgent business up here, but this is off-limits.\"\n\n\"There is no time for that, man!\" Vale declared. \"Barricade the doors. There are werewolves at large in the museum. Inspector Singh is bringing a force from Scotland Yard to sweep the place. In the meantime, I require one of your zeppelins to stop the perpetrator before he can escape.\"\n\nThe guard's eyes widened. He stroked his moustache nervously. \"Is it that urgent sir?\"\n\n\"It's a matter of life and death,\" Vale snapped. \"Inspector Singh will explain everything when he gets here. Are you with me, man?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" the guard declared, nearly snapping his heels together in his enthusiasm. Werewolves and assisting great detectives must be somewhat unusual. He turned to look up at the floating airships, waving an arm. \"Jenkins! Throw down a ladder, girl\u2014you've a run to do!\"\n\nWith a certain amount of pushing from below and pulling from above, Irene was assisted up the swaying rope ladder. She decided to be grateful that firstly, she hadn't just been left behind, and secondly, she was wearing traditional underpants rather than anything scantier. The rest of her mind was preoccupied with clutching the rope ladder with sweating hands, trying not to fall off and die.\n\nThe pilot was a woman, in canvas and leather clothing\u2014the first that Irene had seen in trousers so far in this alternate. Her goggles were shoved back over a coiled, heavy braid of hair, and she looked more suspicious than the guard had been. \"I don't know what's going on,\" she said, \"but I'll have to see some authorization.\"\n\n\"My name is Vale,\" Vale announced. \"I require your assistance to reach the British Library as fast as possible.\"\n\n\"That and a shilling'll buy you a pound of onions,\" the woman said. Unimpressed, she leaned back in her seat, a hammock-like sling of leather straps and creaking rubber. \"Go find some other poor sod to risk their job if you want to chase criminals.\"\n\nIrene considered the possible mental damage of what she was about to do. Librarians were generally supposed to avoid it, because of the risks of imposing on people's minds, not to mention the universe occasionally backlashing in interesting ways. But they were running out of time.\n\n\"Miss Jenkins\u2014\"\n\n\"That's Mrs. Jenkins to you,\" the woman snapped. \"I'm a respectable married woman, I am.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Jenkins,\" Irene continued, switching fluidly into the Language, \"you perceive that the detective here is showing you reliable and acceptable authorization.\"\n\nMrs. Jenkins frowned, staring at Vale. \"Well, I can't say as I like it,\" she finally said, \"but that seems to all be in order. British Library, you said?\"\n\n\"At once,\" Vale said, with only a quick frown at Irene. \"There is no time to lose.\"\n\n\"Very good, sir,\" the woman said. \"Kindly have you and your friends hang on to the straps further back in the cabin. This is going to be a bumpy ride. The wind's against us.\"\n\nIrene heard shouting in the background and looked down. Silver was standing on the roof, his cape billowing behind him as he pointed at the zeppelin.\n\nKai saw him too and took rapid action, casting off the mooring-cable. The whole zeppelin rocked, and Irene had to grab for the straps, but they were moving, jerking away from the museum at the sudden loss of their tether.\n\n\"Damn dilettante amateurs,\" Mrs. Jenkins muttered, and ran her hands over the controls, flipping two switches and spinning a dial before hauling on a joy-stick. The zeppelin tilted and jolted into forward motion. \"Passengers, we are now in the open air and heading for the British Library. Please talk among yourselves while I pilot this damn thing, because I don't like being distracted.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Vale said, turning to Irene. \"We need to talk, Miss Winters.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 19",
                "text": "Irene could think of so many things that Vale might want to discuss that it wasn't even funny. But she was going to sit down first.\n\nShe decided, as she perched on a ledge that might be a seat, that this sort of transport must be reserved for very small antiques. The compartment was cramped, with hardly enough room for the three of them, let alone the storage of large items. The engine was also incredibly noisy, which was good\u2014Irene didn't really want Mrs. Jenkins listening in on this.\n\nVale himself remained standing, holding on to an overhead strap, using the advantage of his height to tower over Irene. Possibly in response, Kai also stayed on his feet, moving over to loom behind Irene's shoulder supportively.\n\nIrene wished that they'd both been poisoned too; perhaps then they'd be a bit more understanding about wanting to sit down.\n\n\"Miss Winters,\" Vale said, retreating into formality, \"am I to understand that you have the Fae-like power to glamour and delude the minds of others?\"\n\nOh. So that was what had disturbed him. \"No,\" she said, then qualified it with, \"not precisely. And you're probably wondering why I didn't do such a thing before.\"\n\n\"Or why you suddenly revealed it now, after using it on me without my realizing it,\" Vale suggested, brows drawn together suspiciously.\n\nDamn. It was a logical suspicion she'd been hoping that he wouldn't have. Why did he have to use those qualities that she admired against her? \"I'm hardly that stupid,\" she said.\n\n\"But you might have been that desperate,\" Vale answered. \"An explanation, if you please.\"\n\nIrene sighed. She'd been hoping to avoid this. \"All right. You know that I can use the Language to, in blunt terms, make things do things. I can't change a door from a locked door to an open door, but I can make the lock on a door open itself. There are some subtleties to this, but I hope you'll understand that I can't explain everything in full detail and with footnotes. I can get away with telling my superiors that I explained some things to you, but there are limits.\"\n\n\"You show a sudden high regard for your superiors' opinion,\" Vale commented.\n\nShe was suddenly furious, his words reviving Bradamant's taunts on not involving others and doing the job\u2014no matter what. \"I'm not supposed to be sharing anything with you at all!\" She could feel her control slipping, which just made it worse. She should be handling this dispassionately, like a capable Librarian, as Bradamant would have done. She shouldn't feel this sudden lurch at the thought of ruining any sort of friendship with Vale. She was not supposed to be involved with him at all. With anyone.\n\n\"Standard procedure is getting in and out, leaving no traces. Standard procedure does not involve investigating local murders, going to local receptions, getting involved with local secret societies\u2014\"\n\n\"Or visiting local detectives,\" Kai put in.\n\nOr forming friendships, Irene heard behind his words. She wished that she had a spare hat-pin to jab into Vale. Or possibly Kai, who wasn't helping. \"Standard procedure tends to advise against high-speed chases in borrowed zeppelins too,\" she said flatly. \"Bradamant would have told you all this. Perhaps she's the one you should have been working with from the beginning.\" Yes. Bradamant would never have got so... involved. \"I still don't understand why your, ah, foretelling urges pointed you at us rather than at her. If you'd been working together, you'd probably have managed to track things down a great deal faster.\"\n\nVale simply stared down at her. \"None of this explains your ability to control the minds of others.\"\n\n\"Well...\" Irene tried to think how to explain it. \"When I use the Language to tell something to do something which is against its nature, the universe resists. This is why those stuffed animals are going to return to that state, probably quite soon. I hope Inspector Singh is there to sort that one out. It's easy to tell a lock to unlock\u2014these things are in a lock's nature. It's much harder to order something to behave in an unnatural manner.\"\n\n\"Such as having stuffed animals come to life,\" Vale agreed.\n\n\"Well, that's only mostly unnatural,\" Irene said. \"After all, they were once living animals. I couldn't require a building to jump up and fall on someone, but I could tell a roof tile to come loose. Do you understand me so far?\"\n\n\"I can see your logic,\" Vale said, clearly interested but also clearly lacking patience. \"But again, how is this relevant to controlling minds?\"\n\n\"I can tell someone that they're perceiving something other than what they're actually seeing,\" Irene said, wishing that English was better adapted for this sort of discussion. \"The problem is that the universe resists, as with objects asked to do unnatural things. Specifically, the person's mind resists, and continually resists until\u2014\" She paused. \"Well, some individuals manage better than others, but generally the results aren't pretty. That's what I was told in classes. But that's not the same as what I just did, and it won't last like a glamour does, either.\" She was fairly sure that Mrs. Jenkins couldn't hear this. She certainly hoped so. \"At the moment, Mrs. Jenkins's mind is telling her that, no, she did not see full authorization. When that overcomes my temporary adjustment, probably within the hour, then she will remember everything. But would you rather I'd just let Silver catch us?\"\n\nVale gave Irene a cold look and glanced out of the window at London beneath them, not deigning to answer.\n\nIrene propped her elbows on her knees. \"If the Library told us not to meddle with minds because it was unethical, that might be virtuous. But the fact is, it's very unreliable. And once the subject regains their memory, it can make a mission so much more dangerous.\" Irene tried not to dwell on her own lack of ethics. Surely she was more than just a book thief? Or was the only real difference between her and Bradamant that Bradamant looked good in black leather? It was easier to think of herself as a valiant preserver of books when there wasn't someone looking her in the eyes and questioning that. \"All I've done is applied a very temporary patch.\" She looked up at Vale. \"Because I couldn't see any other alternative, and we were in a desperate hurry. As you saw.\"\n\n\"Were we?\" Vale turned away.\n\nIrene raised her eyebrows, even if he wasn't looking at her. \"I realize that you don't see Alberich as a personal threat,\" she said, \"or even as a threat to public law and order.\"\n\n\"I admit the fellow did try to kill me,\" Vale said generously.\n\n\"He will continue to be a threat to you all as long as the book is here,\" Irene went on. She felt Kai squeeze her shoulder encouragingly. \"Once it's gone, he and Silver won't be competing for it any longer.\"\n\n\"Silver is hardly your concern, Miss Winters,\" Vale said. \"And I fail to understand your distress over one world, when you doubtless have so many to occupy your time. Why should you care about us, except as a source of books?\"\n\nIrene swallowed and felt her cheeks flush with mingled anger and embarrassment. There was an uncomfortable grain of truth to what he was saying. This was just one alternate world, and one book. \"So far, I have been assaulted, attacked by cyborg alligators, almost drowned in the Thames, had most of the skin stripped off my hand, been poisoned with curare, revived with strychnine, and chased by both werewolves and giant robots. Are you accusing me of not taking this seriously, sir?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, madam. I consider that you are taking this extremely seriously. Such devotion is worthy of a good cause. But consider this.\" Vale leaned back, bracing his shoulders against the cabin walls. \"I see a woman\u2014and her assistant\u2014who are prepared to go to extremes to secure a single book. I have watched you hijack a zeppelin in order to achieve your aims. I ask myself, Miss Winters, just how far are you prepared to go?\"\n\nWonderful. First Bradamant sneered at her for not going far enough, and now Vale was eyeing her as though she were a prize specimen of the criminal underworld. \"I just want to do my job,\" she said. \"I have a duty to the Library.\"\n\n\"Has the Library laws?\" Vale cut in. \"Has it signed treaties with all the worlds, allowing it to steal books? Has it any authority save that which it claims for itself? I would like to know if there is any reason in the world why I should respect it or its servants.\"\n\nIrene set her jaw mulishly. \"Have I personally broken any laws?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" Vale said. \"At least, none of which I am aware.\" The tone of his voice made it clear that he suspected she wouldn't hesitate.\n\nAnd would she? Well, it would depend on the law. Her body was humming like a high-tension wire, probably the effects of the mingled drugs. \"I don't want to harm your world,\" she said quietly, bowing her head. \"I just want a single book.\"\n\nShe could feel the weight of Vale's accusing stare. \"And so we have to hurry across London, deceiving the pilot and endangering her as well as ourselves, because you must have this book.\"\n\n\"Watch what you say,\" Kai said softly.\n\nVale shrugged. \"I ask Miss Winters questions to which she should have answers\u2014if such answers exist. If she has none, then perhaps you should consider your own allegiances. What is the point of this Library, if it demands such sacrifices?\"\n\nIrene pushed herself to her feet. \"Thank you, Kai, but you don't need to defend me. In answer to your questions, Mr. Vale, I am going to get this book. Not just because the Library wants it, but also because Alberich wants it, and he is far more dangerous than you seem to think I am.\" She gave him a withering look. \"Has it occurred to you that besides trying to kill us, he has killed other people? Librarians, people that I know about, even if you don't\u2014and we have no idea what he may have done in this world? That if I don't get this book out of here, he will probably kill others? And if I don't get to the British Library first, then\"\u2014her brain caught up with what she was saying\u2014\"then he is going to kill Bradamant,\" she finished.\n\nVale snorted. \"The woman is clearly capable of taking care of herself.\"\n\n\"Maybe she is,\" Irene said. \"But that's not the point. I am not going to let her just walk in there and...\" She thought of Dominic Aubrey and wondered with a shudder how his skin had ended up in that jar. She would not, could not, let that happen to someone else she knew when there was a chance of stopping it. \"You may think of me as you wish. I intend to save Bradamant. I refuse to feel guilty for what I've just done.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Vale stepped away from the side of the zeppelin and offered her his hand. \"Then I believe we can work together, Miss Winters.\"\n\nIrene nearly said Huh?\u2014which would have been inappropriate in so many ways. She just stood there limply.\n\n\"But, you were saying...\"\n\n\"Tch,\" Vale said. \"Really, madam. I can accept that you are an effective agent, much like your colleague Bradamant. I wanted to be sure that there was more to you than that. If the Library employs persons like yourself, then I suppose there must be something to be said for it after all.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Kai began.\n\n\"You were doing your duty in following orders, and no man could ask for more,\" Vale said. \"But Miss Winters is your commanding officer. The truth needed to come from her.\"\n\nHaving won the point, Irene felt a curious mix of emotions\u2014including rage. How dare he consider her ethics from such a lofty height? How dare he judge her? She took a deep breath, forcing down the anger with whatever justifications she could bring to mind. He had to make his own decisions. He needed to understand her to do so.\n\nStill, it stung.\n\nShe reached out and clasped his hand briefly. \"Thank you,\" she said. \"I appreciate that.\"\n\nKai stepped up and laid his hand across their joined hands. \"Together we shall put Alberich down and rescue Bradamant. Though personally, as she'd so disloyally betrayed\u2014\" He caught Irene's glare. \"Still, I am under your orders,\" he said heroically.\n\nIrene disengaged her hand as tactfully as was possible. Heroic fiction had plenty of manly handclasps in it, and she'd read enough of them. But it had never gone into how you retrieved your hand afterwards, and whether there were any relevant squeezes or other manoeuvres. \"I've been trying to think how to deal with Alberich,\" she said, though she didn't add in my copious spare time as she was tempted to, \"and I'd be interested to know if you have anything to suggest.\"\n\n\"Shoot the bounder,\" Vale suggested. \"That works on vampires or werewolves, and even on Fae under some circumstances.\"\n\nKai flexed his long-fingered hands. He seemed, for once, to be hesitating.\n\n\"Kai?\" Irene prompted.\n\n\"There are certain ways that we\u2014that is, um, my family\"\u2014which was probably the closest he was going to come to saying the d-word for the moment\u2014\"can reinforce an area against chaos. Alberich uses chaos, so he must be contaminated by it, so it should work against him too.\"\n\n\"How large an area?\" Vale said. \"And can you make it permanent?\" Clearly he had grand visions of driving the Fae out of his entire world, or at least the British Empire part of it.\n\nKai shook his head. \"If we could, then we wouldn't have this ongoing problem. We could just push them out and keep them out. The best I can do is mark out an area and ward it. And it has to be an area that I can travel around in a set period of time.\" He brightened up. \"Greater powers like my father or my uncles could guard an entire ocean within a single turning of the sun!\"\n\nIrene bit the inside of her cheek hard before she could make any comments about putting a girdle round the world in forty minutes. It probably wasn't an appropriate moment for Shakespeare, and she didn't think Kai would find the analogy funny. \"And yourself?\" she asked.\n\nKai's shoulders slumped, showing a hint of sulking adolescent. \"I'm more bound by physical constraints,\" he mumbled. \"And I can't actually force one of those creatures out if it's already inside my wards. I can only set up a boundary so that it can't get in or out.\"\n\n\"Yes, but how large an area?\" Vale pressed. \"The whole of London?\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Kai said. \"If you gave me all night. And I'd have to\u2014 ah, it would attract attention.\"\n\n\"From whom?\" Irene asked. \"The Fae?\"\n\n\"My relatives,\" Kai said. He looked as if he'd like to shrink into a corner at the thought. He seemed to be displaying the heroic nobility of a teenager doing the right thing, combined with the hang-dog despair of anticipating the removal of privileges for the next decade. She wondered how old\u2014or how young\u2014he was in terms of dragon ageing. He was so mature in some ways and so young in others.\n\nIrene frowned. \"Well, I can ward an area against chaos by attuning it to the Library. That might force Alberich out of an area if he's already in it\u2014but I can only cover a relatively small area that way. And there are issues of power...\" Yes, that was one way of putting it. Warding Vale's rooms the previous night had been fairly simple. Trying to block a larger area of reality, as it were, would take much more of her energy. She would also need a very thorough description of the area that she was trying to ward. But there had to be some way that she could use this...\n\nThe zeppelin rocked, throwing Irene off her feet. Something whirred and chittered like locusts in the air outside. Kai grabbed her round the waist, catching hold of a hanging strap with his free hand. Vale managed to balance himself against the far wall. \"What's going on?\" he shouted in Mrs. Jenkins's direction.\n\n\"We're under attack,\" Mrs. Jenkins snapped back. She didn't look away from the controls. Her right hand was locked into the middle of a brass-and-pewter orrery, and her left hand was pulling at a range of levers. She tugged at something that looked like an organ stop and frowned when it wouldn't respond. \"Trouble to starboard!\"\n\nIrene and the others crowded to the window.\n\n\"I can't see anything,\" Irene said. The only things in sight were rooftops and smog.\n\n\"There!\" Vale declared, pointing a finger. \"See that vapour trail?\"\n\n\"Something small,\" Kai said, leaning over Irene's shoulder. \"But I can't sense any Fae interference.\"\n\n\"You forget the Iron Brotherhood,\" Vale interrupted. \"They have their agents after us too.\"\n\n\"Hang on!\" Mrs. Jenkins called from the cockpit. The zeppelin lurched again, dragging sideways in a painful, ungainly movement that shook the cabin like a dice cup. Irene and the two men clung to handholds. Lengths of rope that hadn't been strapped to the walls swung out and flailed in the air, and an unsecured teacup bounced from wall to wall, leaving a trail of cold tea droplets.\n\n\"There he is!\" Vale exclaimed. A man had flown into view. He was strapped into some sort of mobile helicopter unit that whirred its tarnished blades dangerously close to his head, and he was wearing an oil-smeared leather helmet and overalls. In one hand he held a heavy pistol, with a cable running from it to something strapped to his lower back. He bobbed in the air, steadying the pistol with his free hand as he tried to line up a shot.\n\n\"Is there some way we can shoot back?\" Kai asked, reverting to smooth competence.\n\n\"Over here.\" Vale leapt into the cockpit and wrenched at a panel above Mrs. Jenkins's head. She ignored him, concentrating on steering the zeppelin. \"The weapons are kept here on museum vehicles\u2014ah, here they are.\"\n\nHe pulled out a brace of pistols, tossing one to Kai and another to Irene, who wasn't too confident about popping off shots at a flying target. \"Isn't there anything larger on board?\" she asked. \"A flare pistol or something?\"\n\nVale spared his attention from smashing a window to give her a sharp look. \"Really, Miss Winters! A flare pistol on a zeppelin? I thought you were more sensible than that.\"\n\n\"It's not something I've ever studied,\" Irene muttered, and decided to keep any other bright ideas to herself for the moment. Kai and Vale were both shooting out the window and could certainly do so without her assistance. She staggered forward to the cockpit. \"How much further to the library, Mrs. Jenkins?\"\n\n\"Almost at it,\" Mrs. Jenkins said bluntly, \"but it's not going to be a rat's ass of use, because we can't land with that maniac out there firing at us. I don't know what sort of stories you've heard about what zeppelins can and can't do, miss, but I need to hover while someone throws us a line and makes us secure. And that's what we call, in aviator parlance, a 'sitting target.' So I hope your friends are good shots, or I'm going to be making altitude and heading north until we lose him. Can't risk crashing with the streets this busy.\"\n\nVale shouldered over to grab Irene's arm. Apparently their shots had all gone wide. \"Miss Winters, can your abilities be of use here?\"\n\nIrene shook her head. \"I can't affect him or his gear. They can't hear me.\"\n\nVale stared at her. \"Hear you?\"\n\n\"The Language only works on the universe if the universe can hear it,\" Irene snapped. She was sure that she'd explained this to him earlier. Perhaps she hadn't. \"I can affect this zeppelin, but I don't see what good that would be\u2014\"\n\nVale suddenly snapped his fingers. \"I do! Mrs. Jenkins, bring us in to above the British Library, right now, if you please. And be ready for an abrupt descent.\"\n\n\"What are we trying?\" Kai asked, looking round from the window.\n\n\"I wouldn't mind knowing that myself,\" Mrs. Jenkins said. The zeppelin wheeled to the left, throwing them all off balance again. \"We're three hundred yards off, coming in at forty-five miles an hour, and the landing roof's only fifty yards long.\"\n\n\"On my word, Miss Winters,\" Vale instructed, \"tell all the structural components of the zeppelin to increase their weight by fifty per cent. Mrs. Jenkins, you are to deploy landing flaps.\" He checked his watch.\n\nAnother burst of chittering sounded outside. \"Damn,\" Mrs. Jenkins commented. \"I hate those things.\"\n\n\"Which things?\" Irene asked, frantically trying to remember vocabulary for zeppelin parts.\n\n\"Seed ammunition,\" Mrs. Jenkins said, adjusting the organ-stop controls. \"They chew right through an airbag. Stand by for rapid braking.\"\n\n\"Now!\" Vale declared.\n\n\"All zeppelin structure parts, increase your weight by a half again!\" Irene shouted, projecting her voice to ensure it would carry through both cabin and cockpit. She didn't want half the struts deciding to stay their original weight, making the whole thing break up in mid-air. Imagination could supply too many images, and none of them good.\n\nMrs. Jenkins slammed down half a dozen of the organ stops simultaneously using her left hand and forearm and threw herself back in her seat.\n\nThe zeppelin shuddered, leather straining and metal creaking, and the whirling motors outside howled in near-human agony. Kai had dropped his gun and was hanging on to the straps with one hand and Irene with the other, and Irene couldn't complain. Vale had tucked his elbow through a strap and was watching the view through the shattered window with keen curiosity.\n\nThey were sinking in the air, dragged down as if someone were hauling the craft's mooring rope from below, but they were still moving forward. The braking flaps were working, but, Irene thought, maybe not fast enough.\n\n\"Should I make it heavier?\" she shouted at Vale, her voice barely carrying above the howling of the air and the tortured noise of the metal struts.\n\nVale shook his head in clear negation.\n\nIt was at times like this that Irene really wished she believed in prayer. Sudden death was easy to cope with, seeing as you had no time to ponder. But their impending crash and burn over the British Library was leaving too much time for dread, with an inevitable fiery doom at the end. Every second seemed to stretch out into an eternal moment of panic.\n\nThen the zeppelin settled on solid ground with a thump that threw Irene entirely onto Kai, knocked Mrs. Jenkins back in her seat, and made Vale drop his watch. Irene could vaguely hear screams and shouts outside. Hopefully anyone who was standing on the roof had had the sense to run away.\n\nWith a muffled curse, Mrs. Jenkins started throwing switches. The hum of the motors began to slow as they shut down one by one. Suddenly the zeppelin was absurdly quiet after all the earlier noise, with only the cabin's creaks and groans as an eerie backdrop.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Vale said. \"Excellent piloting. I will be mentioning your conduct to your superior.\"\n\nMrs. Jenkins looked at him for a long moment, then picked up a rag and wiped her goggles with it. \"You'll find the exit to your right,\" she said flatly.\n\nKai released Irene and went to open the zeppelin door. Irene saw it coming, but it was too fast for the Language to stop it. The man in his mini-copter was hovering there, levelling his gun to shoot directly through the open door at the people in the cabin. At Kai standing there with his back half-turned.\n\nShe didn't have time to speak, but she did have time to move. She threw herself at Kai, and the two of them went sprawling on the floor together, Kai's mouth open in shock, as a whirring mass of silver flecks sliced through the air where he had been standing. The metal pieces sliced into the leather and wooden parts of the structure, chewing long gashes into them, and ricocheted off the metal struts, leaving long silver scars against the dark oiled surfaces. A couple of them sliced along Irene's left arm, cutting through the cloth of her sleeve and drawing blood.\n\nVale went down on one knee, snatched up Kai's pistol from where it had fallen, and fired.\n\nThere was a long, dwindling scream and a distant crash. Irene looked down at Kai's face for a moment. He was looking up at her with that lost, puppy-like look again, as if she had somehow perfectly filled a hole in his personal universe. It was no doubt immensely flattering, but she didn't have time for that. She didn't have time to tell him that she trusted him, or that he could trust her. She didn't have time for the immense feeling of gratitude that he was safe\u2014or for anything except finding the book, stopping Alberich, and saving Bradamant. She had to finish the job, or all their efforts and the danger she'd put people in would be wasted. And she couldn't waste time indulging herself with personal feelings. Even if she wanted to.\n\n\"All right?\" she said briskly, pulling herself to her knees. \"Good. Come on.\"\n\nVale offered his hand and pulled her to her feet. \"Good reflexes, Miss Winters.\"\n\n\"Good shooting, Mr. Vale,\" she replied. \"Thank you. Now, let's find that book.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 20",
                "text": "There were several guards on the roof who would have liked to discuss their crash landing and the ensuing gun-fire. But Vale simply strode past, and Irene and Kai marched along in his wake. Their commanding poise was spoiled a little by Kai's sidelong glances whenever he thought her back was turned. What did he expect from her?\n\n\"Through here,\" Vale said, pointing at a door in one of the smaller battlements circling the landing area. Beyond that bulged the wide, curved glass roof of what must be the Reading Room. Irene hadn't had time to admire it in this alternate, but she'd seen versions of it in other Londons, and she shuddered to think how close they'd come to landing on it. Though surely in a world of airships and personal helicopters, the curators must have taken some sort of precautions against things or people crashing through it from above?\n\nShe really hoped so. She'd seen too many glass pyramids and domed roofs and huge chandeliers that were just accidents waiting to happen.\n\nVale had a few quick words with the guard, who flung the door open and practically saluted them through. And then they were inside, and out of the wind, and surrounded by comforting walls and walls of books. The rich, delightful smell of old paper, leather, and ink permeated the place, washing away the pettier odours of blood and oil and smog.\n\nIrene felt a desperate surge of nostalgia for her Library. Her life was more than just airship chases, cyborg alligator attacks, and hanging out with this alternate universe's nearest analogue to Sherlock Holmes. She was a Librarian, and the deepest, most fundamental part of her life involved a love of books. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to shut the rest of the world out and have nothing to worry about except the next page of whatever she was reading.\n\n\"Which way is Aubrey's office?\" Vale demanded.\n\nIrene frowned, trying to remember the route. \"Third floor,\" she said, \"along from the south stairs, two rooms east, then one south, then east again. I think that most of the stuff along there was European history.\"\n\n\"This way,\" Vale said, leading the way down a gallery of drawings and prints. \"Do you have a strategy?\"\n\nA couple of men looked up disapprovingly from their sketchbooks at the noise. Their faces were full of We are far too polite to say so, but really you shouldn't be making any noise at all.\n\nIrene ignored them. \"Get the book,\" she said to Vale. \"Secure this building against Alberich. My invoking the Library won't keep Bradamant out, so she'll be safe once she gets here. I'll contact my central authority for direct assistance.\"\n\nVale raised an eyebrow. \"Aren't you going to tackle the fellow directly?\"\n\nIrene couldn't meet his gaze. \"I'd lose,\" she said.\n\n\"This language of yours\u2014,\" Vale started.\n\n\"I'd find it very hard to believe that other Librarians haven't tried that against him already,\" Irene snapped before she could help herself. \"And confrontations with Alberich generally end with him sending parts of their internal organs back to the Library. In neatly wrapped parcels. Someone said that they can tell it's a parcel from Alberich because he always folds the paper in the same way.\"\n\n\"Miss Winters, just because this fellow has reached the status of an urban legend...\"\n\n\"He's more than that,\" Kai said urgently. Their footsteps were loud in the stairwell. \"You were there last night, Vale. He sealed us in the carriage and put a block on it which even I couldn't undo.\" There was an unconscious arrogance to his voice. \"And Aubrey, the Librarian stationed here previously. He would have been more experienced than Irene\u2014no insult, Irene, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, don't worry,\" Irene said with a shrug, surreptitiously flexing her hands and trying to decide how fully recovered she was. For the moment she was functional, if damaged. \"You're quite right. He wouldn't have been stationed in an alternate like this unless he was competent, and he was older and more experienced than I am.\"\n\n\"It's this floor,\" Vale said. They came out of the stairwell into a room blazingly full of painted hieroglyphics, icons, and crosses with pointy end bits\u2014Coptic, Irene decided. The light was artificial, presumably to spare the papyri from natural sunlight, but the colours leapt at them in a riot of gold, red, and turquoise. \"Straight ahead, then left. And may I suggest that Mr. Aubrey had no warning that Alberich was coming. Presumably if he had done, then he could have secured himself and called for help from the Library, just as you intend to do?\"\n\nShe didn't want to hear this.\n\nCasual strollers saw them coming and stepped out of the way. A couple of elderly ladies muttered something condemnatory about young people these days, as Irene strained to listen.\n\nIrene knew that this was displacement behaviour, as the last thing she wanted to do was listen to Vale talking about tackling Alberich. Playing chess matches against masters who were certain to defeat you was one thing: you learnt about chess, and you didn't die in the process. Getting into a fight with someone who would kill you (messily) failed to teach you anything useful, unless reincarnation was genuine, and you did die in the process. It was hard enough to have to consider how important the book might be to this world. She could think only in small steps. If Alberich wanted the book, that meant it was important, possibly even vital, to this world, and he mustn't have it...\n\nShe was also trying to ignore Kai's sympathetic glances from behind Vale's back. Maybe there was a whole genre of literature written by dragons for dragons about how they sensibly stayed out of fights that they couldn't hope to win and flew away to do something very important somewhere else. Or maybe it was a bad idea to be distracting herself quite so thoroughly when they were almost at Aubrey's office.\n\n\"We can't possibly know how Aubrey tried to handle Alberich,\" she finally said. \"I believe the Aubrey I met was simply Alberich disguised. I never even met the real man. All I know is that I am not going to get into a fight which I can't win, when there are alternatives.\"\n\nVale nodded towards the exit. \"Through that way, then straight on for the next seven rooms, then turn left. Very well. I accept your judgement. Can you fetch help rapidly?\"\n\nIrene was glad she could agree. \"From what I've heard, the main problem is that my superiors rarely know where Alberich is. If they can actually pinpoint him to this world, then they can take steps\u2014\"\n\nVale cut in, and Irene realized it was a sign of his urgency that he'd actually interrupt. \"Miss Winters! A little logic, if you please. They already know he is in this world, as they warned you about him.\"\n\nSomething in Irene's stomach went cold. \"Oh,\" she said. She hadn't thought that through. \"Maybe\u2014maybe they just suspected he was here but had no actual proof...\"\n\nVale didn't say anything, but then again, he didn't need to, as Irene could feel the shallowness of her reasoning. Oh, it was fashionable among Librarians of her age to impute dubious motives to their seniors. She'd heard the gossip\u2014They'd use us as bait if they thought it was necessary. They edit the information they give us. They'd sacrifice us to get their hands on a text. But that didn't mean they believed it. At the bottom of her heart, Irene had faith in her superiors.\n\nGenuine doubt was worse than fashionable adolescent doubt had ever been.\n\n\"And possibly I've been misinformed,\" she said, forcing firmness into her voice. \"Can we at least assess the situation before we start assuming the worst?\"\n\n\"As you wish,\" Vale said, in tones stating, I know perfectly well you aren't going to stop thinking about it now. \"But why wouldn't he be in his office, though we might wish him elsewhere?\"\n\n\"The automaton attack at the museum,\" Kai suggested. \"If that was him, and if he expected to find the book there, wouldn't he be on the spot to collect it?\"\n\nVale rubbed his chin thoughtfully. \"That assumes that he was responsible for the automaton attack. And it would be rather overly controlling, wouldn't you say, to be there in person if he could command underlings...\"\n\n\"He did try to drown us in person,\" Kai answered. \"Isn't that the sort of thing that people usually have their subordinates do?\"\n\n\"True, true.\" Vale's frown lightened. \"If that should be so, let us by all means take advantage of it. And if not, well, I believe we may have the advantage in that he will not be expecting us. In either case, surprise and speed are our best option.\" He looked around at the vast quantity of rather dull Romano-Celtic objects in the room, noting, \"And I do believe we are almost there.\"\n\n\"We should clear the area,\" Kai said firmly.\n\n\"We can't without raising the alarm,\" Irene pointed out. If Alberich was in the immediate area, he'd react to something like fire alarms going off, security guards clearing the area, or any sort of disturbance involving people running round shrieking. And people always ended up running round shrieking. It was a law of nature or something. She wondered whether she could use the Language to pre-warn them as to whether Alberich was in his office. Nothing came to mind. \"I think we'll just have to knock on the door and play innocent.\"\n\n\"Hm. I believe it might work,\" Vale agreed. \"He has no reason to believe you have penetrated his imposture. I will hold back and be ready with my gun.\"\n\nIrene tried to think of how this plan might go wrong.\n\nAlberich couldn't have laid any sort of kill-everyone-who-touches-the-door spell on his office door (assuming that such a spell existed, something about which she had no clue whatsoever). That would be too likely to slaughter innocent British Library staff and visiting children. So that was positive. What he might have done\u2014what she would have done if she knew how\u2014would be to set a ward against Language use. Again, she had no idea whether it was possible, but she would assume for the moment that it was. So she should avoid the Language for the moment.\n\nThis bit of paranoid planning had helped her stroll through a number of Dark Ages exhibits without looking as panicked as she felt. Now, at last, their goal was through some last cases, then directly on the left.\n\nIrene took a deep breath. She gathered her determination, smiled blandly at Kai and Vale, then strolled forward. She tried to ignore the grandfather with a complaining brat to her right and the students over by the archway ahead. Possible witnesses also included the woman squinting near-sightedly at a display card, who did look vaguely familiar\u2014maybe she'd seen her before when she came here last time\u2014oh dear, she was procrastinating again, wasn't she?\n\nWhy couldn't this be the sort of story where she kicked the door down and burst in with a loaded gun? Probably because it was a heavy door, she was in long skirts, and she didn't have a loaded gun.\n\nPlastering her best look of sincere concern and gullibility on her face, she knocked on the door.\n\nNo answer.\n\nShe knocked again. A couple of the bystanders glanced across, then turned back to whatever they'd been doing.\n\nStill no answer.\n\n\"Cover me,\" Kai said in a low voice. He stepped forward, fishing a thin metal probe out of an inner pocket. He tapped it against the door-knob as Irene shielded him from view. She glanced around but nobody was paying them any attention\u2014except for Vale, who was hanging back and ostensibly ignoring them.\n\nThe tapping having drawn no visible reaction, Kai tried the handle. It didn't move, so he bent over and began picking the lock. Clearly his time as a juvenile criminal hadn't been a total fiction.\n\nIrene spread out her skirts and turned to watch the room, a smile pinned to her face. No, nothing going on here, absolutely normal. My friend here likes to stare into locks and wiggle bits of metal round in them; he does it every day and twice on Sundays...\n\nA moment later Kai was tapping her on the shoulder with a cool look of superiority.\n\nIrene gave him a nod and tried the door. It didn't explode.\n\nThis is good. I'm already ahead of the game.\n\nShe turned the handle and walked into the room. A quick glance around showed that it looked just as they had left it the last time. No sign of anyone. Nobody hiding under tables. Nobody hiding behind the door. No Alberich.\n\nShe breathed out a sigh of relief that she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and stepped aside so that Kai could come in. Vale followed a few seconds later, closing the door behind him.\n\nIrene cast around, looking for anything that resembled an in-tray. Score! There was a blatantly obvious one on Aubrey's desk. She remembered it having been tidy when they first arrived, but it was now crowded with papers and oddments. She quickly sorted through it, and the packet with the Natural History Museum's address on the back (RETURN TO SENDER) was the seventh item. It was an unobtrusive package in plain brown paper.\n\n\"Paper knife,\" she said, extending one hand.\n\nVale slapped a knife handle into her palm. It was elegant, made in ivory or whalebone, and had no doubt contributed to the extinction of at least one endangered species. It was also nice and sharp.\n\nIrene sliced through the twine and unfolded the wrappings. Inside were a book and an envelope. The book's title was Kinder und Hausm\u00e4rchen. Children's and Household Tales, she translated automatically, and breathed a sigh of relief. She flipped the book open to check the publication date: 1812. Better and better. Now, what was the definite proof that Bradamant had mentioned?\n\nShe turned to the index. There were eighty-eight stories listed. The eighty-seventh was titled, in German, \"The Story of the Stone from the Tower of Babel.\"\n\nShe breathed a sigh of relief. \"It's the one,\" she said.\n\n\"Yes!\" Kai said exultantly, and slammed his palm down on the desk. \"We've got it!\"\n\n\"What does the letter say?\" Vale asked.\n\nIrene put the book down again for the moment and opened the envelope. Thoughts of letter bombs came a few seconds too late. With a sigh, she shook the letter gently onto the desk. No bombs. Good.\n\nKai leaned across to read over her shoulder, then paused, tilting his head.\n\nA fraction of a second later, Irene heard it as well. Screams. Screams, and a horrid sort of rustling with a nightmarish familiarity to it.\n\nShe thrust the letter into her jacket. There would be time to read it later.\n\nThe door slammed open with a heavy boom, and a woman ran in, looking round desperately. She had been amongst the browsers outside, but now looked panicked and in a state of disarray. \"Where's the way out?\" she gasped.\n\nBehind her, through the open door, Irene could see more people running in all directions, but ultimately all in the direction of away. There was a spreading tide of something silver oozing across the floor in a horrible stop-motion way. It would reach a row of cases, and then it was suddenly crawling round the foundations of the next row. The noise it was making, a fierce, hungry rustling and skritching, echoed in the large room, underpinning the shouting. Further back, the silver flood was oozing over ominously shaped lumps on the floor, covering them so densely that she couldn't see the colour of clothing, hair, or skin.\n\n\"Silverfish!\" the woman screamed at them. \"Get out of here now!\"\n\nThe oncoming menace had nearly reached the chamber door.\n\nIrene was an intelligent, self-possessed, practical woman. (Or, at least, that was how she would describe herself on a performance review to any senior Librarian.) She yelped in panic and scrambled on top of the desk, pulling her skirts up and crouching there in horror. She desperately tried to remember if the Language had vocabulary for silverfish or instantly lethal insecticide and, if so, what it was.\n\nKai swept across the room in a motion almost as smooth as the approaching silverfish. He picked up the screaming woman and tossed her up onto the table beside Irene before joining them. Vale leapt onto a chair.\n\n\"You said you were here to do something about the silverfish!\" the woman screamed at Kai. \"Why didn't you get rid of them?\"\n\nIrene remembered her now. She'd been here when they were looking for Aubrey and found his skin instead. They'd fobbed her off with a story about insect infestation. Marvellous. She hated dramatic irony. \"Can they eat wood?\" she asked.\n\n\"You're the exterminators\u2014you tell me,\" the woman snapped.\n\n\"Silverfish eat anything starch based,\" Vale informed them from his chair. \"Glue, bookbindings, papers, carpet, clothing, tapestries... I imagine theoretically they could eat wood.\"\n\n\"If they don't crawl up here first,\" Kai said, leaning over the edge of the table to look down at the floor. The silverfish weren't actually trying to crawl vertically up the table legs yet, but Irene wasn't going to wait for empirical evidence. More and more of them were now flooding into the room, crawling over one another on the floor in a thick, seething mass of unhealthy silver.\n\nSomething at the back of Irene's mind was trying to get her attention. It wasn't the silverfish. It wasn't the woman next to her. It was the way that she could see a newspaper on top of a display-case, and it was moving. Without the aid of silverfish, it was actually shifting itself, millimetre by millimetre, across the top of the glass, in a light, rustling drift...\n\n\"Vale!\" she gasped. \"Could this be triggered by subsonic frequencies? Do you have knowledge of such things?\" She gestured at the swarming creatures covering the floor.\n\nVale caught her meaning. \"Possible,\" he said. He frowned at the silverfish as though they weren't starting to crawl up the legs of his chair. \"Though any frequency that could provoke those creatures would surely also have some sort of effect on humans. Causing panic, perhaps\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm definitely panicking,\" the woman said, with a little half-hysterical catch in her voice. \"And they're still coming in here, they keep on coming\u2014\"\n\n\"Right,\" Irene said, trying to keep her voice calm, deliberately not thinking about the insects crawling up inside her skirts and on her and... She swallowed. \"Right. They keep on coming in here. If there's a subsonic generator somewhere, then it must be either driving them or luring them in here.\"\n\n\"Heaven and earth,\" Kai swore with violent emphasis. \"It must have been keyed to our opening the door\u2014look at the timing of it!\"\n\n\"But if it was linked to the door, how did it\u2014\" Irene started to say, and at the same moment Vale pointed at the door's hinges. \"There!\" he snapped. \"That wire. It follows the skirting and leads to the cupboard in that corner. And they're swarming more thickly around it...\"\n\nIrene could barely see any traces of a wire, but she was prepared to trust Vale's eyes. The dark wood cupboard was set back into the corner of the room, and the silverfish were writhing around its base. They'd swarmed up to a foot off the floor, and now that she was paying attention, they were perceptibly more heavily concentrated there.\n\n\"That'll do,\" she muttered. Luckily, there was enough detailing on that particular piece of furniture for her to be precise. She'd meant to avoid Language usage in case of booby-traps, but she was prepared to be flexible. Any booby-traps would just have to look after themselves. She raised her voice. \"Oak-leaf-handle cupboard doors. Unlock and open.\"\n\nThe cupboard doors sprang open, swinging wide and ripping out bolts at both top and bottom. Inside the cupboard was an intricate tangle of machinery and wires, barely visible under the silverfish that were pouring over it like scaly water. Lights on it glinted, and something was humming.\n\n\"That's it!\" Vale said.\n\n\"Kai\u2014,\" Irene began.\n\n\"Already there,\" Kai said. He leapt from the table towards the cupboard. The silverfish crunched under his shoes as he hit the floor. Then he was already spinning, body turning gracefully as he launched into a high-flying kick. His leading foot crashed into the twisted machinery with a resounding thud and tinkle.\n\nThe humming stopped.\n\nSilverfish all over the room paused, then began to pour away. Some trickled down through imperceptible cracks in the flooring and skirting-boards. Others flowed out through the door again, scattering in all directions as soon as they could. A few still lurked around the machine, all trying to squirm underneath it and only about half of them succeeding. Kai hopped on one foot, trying to extract his other foot from the mangled device. He was swearing in what Irene assumed were words well-brought-up dragons used when they didn't want to shock lesser creatures.\n\n\"I was about to say, please hit it with a chair,\" Irene said as the hissing of moving silverfish died away to leave them in relative quiet. \"But thank you. Thank you very much. Nice work.\" The book lay safely in Dominic Aubrey's in-tray, untouched, unharmed. It hadn't been eaten. So much for Alberich's final gambit.\n\n\"Is that normally how you perform exterminations?\" the woman asked. She wasn't showing any sign of getting down from the table yet. To be fair, neither was Irene.\n\n\"I think they're in my shoes,\" Kai said in tones of deep disgust.\n\nVale cautiously stepped down from his chair. The few remaining silverfish took no interest in him. He walked gingerly over to Irene's table and offered her a hand down.\n\n\"Nicely done, Miss Winters.\"\n\n\"Thank you for noticing the wire,\" Irene replied. She took his hand and eased her way off the table, trying not to show too much leg in the process. She was going to enjoy being back in an alternate world where trousers were regular wear for women. \"Do you think that means\u2014\" She was about to continue, that Alberich is elsewhere, and he left this trap, when she noticed the meaningful glance Vale was giving over her shoulder. Oh. Of course. The woman. The sooner they could get her out of here, the better. \"Ah, thank you,\" she concluded.\n\n\"A trap for us?\" Kai said softly as she joined him.\n\n\"Plausible,\" Irene agreed, also keeping her voice down. Vale and the woman were murmuring to each other, so they shouldn't be overheard. \"A bit careless, though. It'd be bound to draw attention here, to this room. Unless it was a delaying action.\"\n\n\"It was a delaying action,\" the woman said.\n\nKai and Irene turned to look.\n\nBoth she and Vale were now wedged against the table, and Vale had an odd rigidity to his posture. His eyes were furious, but his body was entirely still, hands raised as if he'd just been helping the woman down and hadn't got round to lowering them. The woman had a knife to his throat. It didn't look elegant, but it did look brutally efficient. And maybe sharp enough to remove someone's skin.\n\n\"Door, close,\" the woman said. The room and cupboard doors both slammed shut. \"There. Now we should have a few minutes uninterrupted.\"\n\nIrene could feel her heart thudding painfully in her chest. \"You're Alberich?\" she said tentatively.\n\n\"Yes,\" the woman said. \"Our fourth meeting. And I hope that you are paying attention this time. Because if you do not do exactly as I tell you, then your friend will die.\" She paused. \"That is, he will die first, and with you watching.\""
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 21",
                "text": "\"We're listening,\" Irene said. She kept her hands still, avoiding anything that could be taken as provocation to slit Vale's throat. \"Please go on.\"\n\nShe hadn't realized that a change of skin could be quite so all-encompassing. She (no, he) spoke with a woman's voice, and it was quite different from the voice Irene had heard from inside their ill-fated cab. It was also different again from Aubrey's voice. Was he transplanting the vocal cords too? No, probably just a consequence of the entire magic transferral of skin, however that worked. It would be so helpful if she could see anything unusual in his (or her) appearance. But there was nothing at all.\n\n\"I'm willing to make concessions,\" Alberich said. \"You aren't all necessarily going to die. Be sensible about this, and we can all walk away.\"\n\nIrene did her best to smile in response. Somehow I don't believe you. \"I'm interested in staying alive,\" she said. \"So's Kai. Aren't you, Kai?\"\n\n\"Let Vale go and we can talk,\" Kai snarled. There was something in his voice that Irene hadn't heard before. For want of a better word, it sounded like possessiveness. A draconic emotion?\n\n\"Silence, boy,\" Alberich said. He very deliberately moved the knife in a fraction of an inch, and a trickle of blood ran down Vale's neck to mark his white collar. \"Stay where you are, don't try to jump me, and let your superior do the talking. Well. Do you have the book, Irene?\"\n\nSurely he'd noticed the book in the in-tray? If he hadn't, then she wasn't going to draw his attention to it. \"I can get hold of it,\" she offered. \"Is that the price?\"\n\n\"I want more than that.\" There was a glitter behind his eyes, and that she would recognize if she ever saw it again. A rapacious hunger, an endless emptiness that would never be filled, with all the madness that went with it. \"I have a number of questions. You can even sit down, if you like.\"\n\n\"We'd really rather stand,\" Irene said quickly.\n\n\"Suit yourself.\" His lips curved in a smile that was somehow more a man's than a woman's. \"Shall I go through the usual literary conventions? First I tell you that you've been told slanders about me, and you nod understandingly while not believing a word of it. Then I promise that you can go free if you hand over the book, and you lie and give me a forged copy. Then I kill you.\" He shrugged. The knife stayed in place. \"Or shall we break from the usual tropes and actually do something different? Something that might mean you survive this?\"\n\nIrene thought about how many other Librarians must have been in this position. There was a reason why he was an urban legend.\n\nThough if they all get killed, who comes back to tell the stories? an irritating part of her mind pointed out. She ignored it.\n\n\"I don't see how you can use both the Language and Fae magic,\" she blurted out, her mouth running on automatic while she tried to think. It wasn't hard to sound vaguely admiring, even if he'd see right through it.\n\n\"I'll give you that one for free,\" Alberich said generously, and Irene mentally lowered the odds on him letting them live even further. \"Once a person can use the Language, that can't be taken away. I've learnt to use chaos since then. It involves a certain amount of personal redefinition. Difficult, but not impossible. One doesn't have to die. Something to take into account in your future career, perhaps? There are far more opportunities open to you than you might think.\"\n\nOpportunities... What opportunities did she have right now? Kai might be able to use amazing dragon powers to stop Alberich entering an area, but that wasn't much use when he was already inside it. And she might be able to force Alberich out of an area using Language, but again that wasn't much help if he could simply wait outside its boundaries...\n\nBoundaries. A half-plausible thought moved through the back of her mind. She wished she'd had more time to ask Kai about his capabilities. When he warded an area, did the warding simply follow the track that he left? Or was it a more metaphysical sort of thing, with the boundaries of his warding being linked to whatever he intended to ward?\n\n\"Let's reduce the potential hostages,\" she said briskly, ignoring Kai's intake of breath from behind her. If this was going to work, she needed him outside and free to act. \"I'm the one you want. As you said, I'm Kai's superior. Having him stand here and maybe lose his temper won't help either of us.\" She tried to look gullible. Impressionable. As if she believed Alberich when he said she might survive this.\n\n\"You've already got one hostage, and you know I'm concerned about his well-being. If I wasn't, we'd already be attacking or running away. Let's clear the ground. Let Kai here go as a start to the negotiations.\"\n\nAlberich surveyed her thoughtfully, and again there was that flash of hunger in his eyes. \"It's true that my questions concern you, not him,\" he said slowly. \"And he's no initiate. I needn't fear him trying to open a door to the Library behind my back. Very well. I'll be reasonable. In return for a similar concession from you.\"\n\nIrene remembered to breathe. \"Such as?\" she said.\n\n\"Your birth-name,\" Alberich said quickly, and she realized this had been his plan all along.\n\nMagic had never been Irene's field of expertise. It still wasn't. But she didn't need to be an expert to know that Alberich's Fae magic, with knowledge of her true name, could be very bad news for her.\n\n\"Ha!\" Kai said. She suspected he was sneering.\n\nIrene nodded to Alberich, then turned to Kai. As she had thought, he was sneering. \"Kai,\" she said. \"I want you to do something very straightforward for me. I want you to go outside and stay outside. I don't want you setting one foot inside this library.\" How to convey to him I want you to set up that warding you talked about and do it as fast as possible? \"I'll handle this.\"\n\nKai blinked at her, totally blindsided. \"But\u2014,\" he started.\n\n\"But me no buts,\" Irene snapped. \"It's as Alberich said. You're not a Librarian and there's nothing you can do in this situation. You don't have the Language and you can't fight him. I'm not going to endanger yet another person. Now, are you going to obey my orders and get out\"\u2014she could hear her voice rising\u2014\"or am I going to have to worry about you as well as Vale here?\"\n\nKai gave her a long stare. It felt like a reproach. It was a reproach. She didn't want to do this to him, but Alberich wasn't stupid. The slightest hint of collusion would get Vale killed, and she could only hope that Kai understood that.\n\n\"You know perfectly well there's nothing I can do if I'm outside these walls,\" he said. Could he have grasped what she wanted? \"I'm supposed to be your colleague, not your brain-damaged dependent! At least let me stay nearby.\"\n\n\"It's all one to me,\" Alberich said blandly.\n\nIrene jerked her thumb at the door. \"These are your orders, Kai. Out, and stay outside, and I don't want to see your face until we're done.\" She glanced up at the window for a moment. \"And don't get any ideas about flying around on the zeppelins.\"\n\nKai's eyes narrowed fractionally, and she could only hope that he'd grasped the idea. \"Don't think I'm happy about this,\" he said, shoulders slumping to the very angle of their first meeting. It had looked better in a leather jacket.\n\nIrene nodded and turned back to Alberich. \"The door, please.\"\n\n\"Your name, please,\" he said, with the same intonation that she had just used.\n\n\"I give you my word that I will give you my birth-name the moment Kai stands safely outside that closed door,\" Irene said in the Language.\n\n\"Neat,\" Alberich commented. \"You think quickly. Room door, open.\"\n\nThe door swung open, squashing silverfish in its wake, and thudded against the wall. There was nobody in the room beyond\u2014at least, there was nobody alive. Just the huddled mounds of the few unfortunate bodies caught in the silverfish attack. Irene hoped queasily that they were just unconscious, overcome by ultrasonic waves or something like that. She couldn't handle more deaths.\n\n\"If you hurt her,\" Kai said softly, \"I swear by my father and his brothers, and by the bones of my grandfathers, that you shall pay for this.\"\n\nAlberich regarded him thoughtfully. \"What a curious way of putting it. I'm sure I've heard that somewhere before... Oh, never mind. I daresay I can dissect you later if it's absolutely necessary. Out of here now, before I change my mind.\"\n\nIrene didn't say anything, in case Alberich did change his mind. She gestured Kai towards the door and wondered how long it would take him to set up a barrier. And also how long she had before Alberich was finished with her.\n\nKai hunched his shoulders angrily and stalked out of the office.\n\n\"Close, room door,\" Alberich said, and it slammed shut with another squelch of splattered silverfish, leaving the three of them alone together.\n\nIrene felt the compulsion of her own oath like a noose around her neck. \"My parents gave me the name of Ray,\" she said, quickly choosing her words, before it could force out even more detail. The phrasing was more convoluted than it might have been, but it was true enough. \"I don't know their birth-names, so I can't give you a family name.\"\n\n\"Ray.\" Alberich looked as if he was about to laugh. \"And did they call you their little ray of sunshine?\"\n\nActually, yes, they had. Irene raised her brows. \"Is that relevant?\"\n\n\"Not particularly, but I have always been a curious man.\" His hand didn't move, and the knife at Vale's throat stayed steady. \"Why don't you know their birth-names?\"\n\nThere was no way she was telling him they were Librarians too. And now she'd answered, she wasn't bound and could lie as much as she wanted. \"They always kept secrets from me,\" she invented. \"I'm answering your question as best I can.\"\n\nAlberich narrowed his eyes, and she suspected with a chill that he didn't believe her. \"Relevant questions, then. What precisely has been going on?\"\n\nShe hadn't expected that one. \"Er, in what sort of detail?\"\n\n\"There have been far too many people interfering in what might otherwise have been a perfectly straightforward extraction. Believe me, Ray\u2014\"\n\nShe knew he saw her twitch when he used her name. She couldn't help it. She hadn't heard anyone use it to her for years. It was a childhood name, and she wasn't a child any longer.\n\n\"\u2014I didn't ask for any of this,\" he went on smoothly. \"I would much rather have simply taken the book and left. No mess. No fuss. So I'm asking you, in a perfectly reasonable way, to stand up straight, stop stammering, and give me a full report. Imagine I'm one of your superiors.\"\n\nHe could have been one of her superiors too. It was easy to imagine. They were diverse enough\u2014such as Coppelia with her clock-work limbs or Kostchei with his thousand-yard gaze. But all had the same air of authority that Alberich was displaying. Other than that and the rumours, she knew nothing about him. She didn't even know what he looked like. And he terrified her.\n\n\"Under the circumstances\u2014,\" Vale put in.\n\n\"Remember that I can and will freeze your vocal cords too,\" Alberich said. \"And your lungs. Unless you want to explain events yourself? In which case, Ray here becomes worthless...\"\n\n\"I believe Miss Winters can handle this,\" Vale said. \"I will only interrupt if I have something important to add.\"\n\nHe was probably used to coping while people held knives at his throat, Irene reflected savagely. \"Allow me,\" she put in. \"I believe that the main factor here was that Wyndham knew too much.\"\n\n\"Quite a claim, given how much Vale seems to know of Library business,\" Alberich said pleasantly.\n\nIrene decided to ignore that as she wondered how long Kai would take. And would she know when he'd finished? She needed to spin this out as long as possible, weave all her guess-work into a convincing narrative, and pray that Alberich would accept it. \"Wyndham had connections with the Fae,\" she started confidently, \"but he also knew that Dominic Aubrey was a Librarian and, as such, opposed to the Fae. Wyndham knew the book was significant to Silver and thought that he could use it as a bargaining chip to gain something in return. Or he might have been taking some sort of complicated revenge. It was one of those Fae relationships. He decided to make sure that the book was somewhere safe while he negotiated. So he sent it under cover of another parcel to the Natural History Museum.\" Could she persuade Alberich to go there to look for it? \"And then he was murdered.\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" Alberich said. \"I arranged his killing. My agents didn't find the book while they were there, but that would be because Belphegor got there first. The Iron Brotherhood were extremely useful. Vampire-killing assassins, automata to send after you, and other things too. It seemed the easiest way for me to get hold of the book. I didn't feel like dealing with Silver or the other local Fae. Some of my allies have issues with certain factions. But I won't bore you with the details. I entered this alternate, took control of the Iron Brotherhood, found the locally stationed Librarian, questioned him, and assumed his skin. Simple enough. Speaking of that, do you still have it?\"\n\nIrene abruptly wanted to be sick. She'd maintained some control during werewolf attacks, zeppelin near crashes, and silverfish fatalities, but this was different. Questioned him. Assumed his skin. \"It was you, wasn't it? The first time?\"\n\nHe understood her question, ill-formed as it was. \"Oh yes. I was the one who met you and your student when you first came through. To be honest, you've been rather a surprise to me.\"\n\n\"Flattery will get you nowhere,\" Irene said primly, counting seconds in her head.\n\nSomething else was clearly ticking over behind Alberich's eyes too. \"If you'd found the book in the Natural History Museum, you could have gone straight back to the Library by forcing a portal elsewhere. You wouldn't have needed to come here. And you've admitted Wyndham knew that Aubrey was a Librarian. Answer me, Ray. Did Wyndham send the book to Aubrey?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Irene said. The word came grating from her mouth in response to his question and his use of her name before she could waltz around the subject any further.\n\nA high colour showed on Alberich's cheeks. It must have been some sort of anger reaction transmuted by the skin he was wearing. \"Are you telling me that the book came here?\"\n\nIrene could feel the response dragging at her throat, trying to say itself. Vale's eyes met hers for a moment, as she weighed the benefit of distracting Alberich further against the risk of his cutting Vale's throat if he lost his temper. \"Yes,\" she said quickly, giving in and letting the word out, before Alberich felt the need to make good on his threats.\n\n\"And it's the book on the desk?\"\n\nIrene opened her mouth to deny it but couldn't. The word dragged itself from her lips. \"Yes.\"\n\nAlberich exploded. \"You pitiful little idiot! Do you have any idea how much effort I've had to put in here over the last few days?\" He was shrieking like a harridan, and though the knife at Vale's throat was steady, Alberich's face was wrong\u2014his mouth open a little too wide, his eyes staring furiously, spittle spraying the side of Vale's face. \"I shift skins twice. I take my attention away from very important projects. And because you have been running around hiding this book, my efforts have been wasted. Do you think that's funny, Ray? Do you?\"\n\nThe room began to shift and crawl around him. The papers on the desk ran into liquid and dripped away, running down to splash against the floor. Dead silverfish dissolved into vapour that blew outwards in widening curls, as though Alberich and Vale stood at the centre of a whirlwind. The panes of glass in the display-cases began to vibrate, thrumming as if someone were singing at an impossibly high pitch. And now Irene could feel it pulsing at the back of her skull, humming in her ears. \"Stop it!\" she cried out.\n\n\"No,\" Alberich said. He smiled at her, abruptly calm. \"No, it isn't funny. I'll take that book. You will give it to me.\"\n\n\"Or you'll cut your hostage's throat?\" Irene said. She was still shaken from the sudden flux. Everything about it had been wrong. The Fae were bad enough, but this softening of reality had been much worse. She'd been ready to face death, even, but that\u2014no.\n\n\"Be reasonable,\" Alberich said. \"I'll need a new skin soon. Another Librarian's skin would suit me quite well. So would Vale's position in society. Don't give me any excuses, Ray. Don't give me any more reasons to slit this man's throat and then rip your skin off. Be very polite, be very helpful, and listen to what I'm about to tell you.\"\n\nIrene simply jerked her head in a nod. She was afraid of touching off that anger again, afraid for Vale's sake\u2014and, more honestly, terrified for herself.\n\n\"Where was I?\" For a moment he reminded her of Dominic Aubrey, making her wonder how much of that charade had been imitation and how much had been genuine Alberich, filtered through a dead man's skin. She'd liked Aubrey. \"Ah yes. Motivations. Tell me, Ray, what is the purpose of the Library?\"\n\n\"To preserve,\" Irene said automatically.\n\nAlberich nodded as though he'd expected that answer. \"Now tell me\u2014tell me honestly and sincerely\u2014that you've never thought about using the knowledge you've helped preserve. To change the worlds around you for the better. Or do you think that they're already perfect?\" His voice dripped sarcasm.\n\nIrene felt as if she were having to run through a minefield blindfolded, with no idea what the correct answers were.\n\n\"Of course I've thought about it. But you know that they don't send us\"\u2014for a moment she wished she hadn't used the word us; it brought them onto the same level\u2014\"out on missions unless they're certain that they can trust us.\"\n\n\"And you accept that so readily?\"\n\n\"It's the price I chose to pay to get what I wanted.\" She'd never wanted anything else.\n\n\"Don't think I make this sort of offer to just any Librarian,\" Alberich went on. \"You've shown a degree of intelligence which has impressed me. Not all Librarians know when and how to break the rules.\"\n\n\"Excuse me a moment,\" Vale said politely, while Irene wondered if Alberich gave the normally I wouldn't spare your life, but you're special spiel to every Librarian he met. \"Might I ask what happened to the original Miss Mooney?\"\n\n\"Who?\" Alberich said blankly.\n\n\"The woman whose body you are occupying.\" Vale's tone dripped with cold disdain. \"Jennifer Mooney, one of the more influential figures in the Iron Brotherhood. I recollect the face from one of Singh's photographs. I wish I had remembered it earlier.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Alberich smiled. \"Ah, Ms. Mooney\u2014I had to take her identity in quite a hurry, in order to use the Brotherhood as a diversion.\"\n\nIrene could have kicked herself. Of course. The alligator attack on the embassy, to distract Silver. She clearly remembered him dashing off to protect \"a book.\" And Alberich had been right on the scene afterwards, leading to their almost drowning. Then there was the assault on the Natural History Museum\u2014all of it made sense now. That was what he'd meant earlier when he'd said that he had taken control of the Brotherhood. She saw Vale's face twitch in mortified humiliation. He must be having the same chain of thought and blaming himself for not deducing it earlier.\n\n\"And they have the most baroque ideas about false names and false identities. You'd think that a pro-technology group would be more efficient about record-keeping, wouldn't you? Now, if only you'd said 'Damocles,' I'd have known precisely whom you meant.\"\n\nHe didn't even know her name. For some reason, that utterly chilled Irene through and through. And Alberich must have seen it in her face, for he went on, \"And now, Mr. Vale, no more words: your vocal cords are locked shut.\"\n\nIrene saw the sudden flare of panic in Vale's eyes and saw his mouth move, but he made no sound.\n\nI don't think he copes well with being helpless.\n\nAnger fought with the fear that held her still too, its heat against the cold. And I don't think I cope well, either.\n\n\"Let us assume that you have three options, Ray,\" Alberich said, dropping back to his conversational tone.\n\n\"The first is that you agree to help me. Give me the book, swear your loyalty by certain oaths which I shall dictate to you, and join me. The Library was never meant to be just a storehouse for books and a school for the obsessive. It could change worlds. It could unite alternate worlds. It has potential\u2014you have potential, and that potential is being wasted. I would swear my protection to you, just as you would swear your loyalty to me, and you would be safe. You could learn to use Fae powers, just as I have done. Perhaps in time you would challenge me, but together we would do terrible and wonderful things. You know that some key books can change the worlds to which they are linked. Help me, and we will change them for the better. You'll have the power to make things better. If you refuse that power, then that's a choice in itself, isn't it?\"\n\nAll the worlds for her own. Of course she wasn't going to take the bargain. Of course she could never be his minion and slave. But the thought of the pure irresponsibility of doing precisely as she wanted, with the power to do it...\n\n\"The second choice is for you to put the book down and walk away.\" He was watching her closely through the stolen eyes of the woman whom he'd killed. \"Your elders won't blame you. They know my quality, my power. They'll consider that you did the sensible thing. I might even agree with them.\"\n\nShe gave a little jerk of her head in acknowledgement.\n\n\"And the third choice...\" Alberich shrugged. \"You would regret putting me to that trouble.\"\n\nIrene swallowed. Her imagination was functional and thus troublesome. It was now giving her unpleasant ideas about what Alberich might do if he actually exerted himself. If he viewed killing and skinning someone as merely regular business, what would he consider extra effort? Half-formed images nauseated her, and she swallowed back bile. She barely managed to keep her voice steady. \"I think that's only two choices, though.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" Alberich murmured.\n\n\"I have the suspicion that there's only one way I walk out of here alive.\"\n\n\"Well, true,\" Alberich admitted, \"but the second option would be comparatively painless for you. My word on it.\"\n\n\"Can I ask\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" His eyes narrowed. \"I think you're playing for time, Ray. I need your decision now. I'll throw your friend in as a signing bonus, but I want your decision in five seconds.\"\n\nFour. Three.\n\nIf she swore herself to him in the Language, she'd be bound for life. He wasn't stupid. He was the sort of person who'd have prepared the wording in advance. There would be no loop-holes.\n\nTwo.\n\nPerhaps people said he'd killed Librarians because nobody had ever come back. But maybe they'd all joined him. She could be joining a secret group who were going to change reality and make the universe a better place.\n\nOne.\n\nMaybe someone who went round skinning and killing people (order as yet unspecified) was not concerned with making the universe a better place. Just a thought.\n\nZero.\n\n\"Ray...\" Alberich said. He had a hopeful sort of smile on his face, as if he genuinely wanted her to say yes.\n\nHe probably did.\n\nShe was about to die.\n\nWhat she needed was a miracle.\n\nWhat she got was a dragon."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 22",
                "text": "Irene had always assumed, when she'd read about dragons roaring, that the descriptions were figurative or at least hyperbolic. She'd thought that phrases like shook the earth referred to the awe in which dragons were held. Naturally the world around them would be sundered by their fury. What else should one expect from dragons?\n\nBut the physical world wasn't shaken by a dragon's roar. Reality itself trembled.\n\n\"What the devil!\" Alberich swore, the words at odds with his prim female persona. His hand visibly tensed on the knife at Vale's neck, and Irene knew with a sickening dread that he was about to slash the detective's throat open purely on reflex. Then his eyes narrowed in thought. \"Too simple. Ray. By my will and by your name, you can neither speak nor move.\"\n\nIt wasn't the Language, it had nothing of the Language's command, but his words had their own power, and Fae magic hung in them like chains. Irene was pinned in place like a butterfly, her brand burning on her back as the Library's power fought his command. She was conscious of everything around her\u2014the crushed insects, her hurried breathing, the trickle of blood on Vale's neck, Alberich's calculating eyes\u2014and none of it was any use. There hadn't been time to invoke the Library and force him out of the room as she'd planned. She'd been as shaken as he was by Kai's roar; he'd just recovered faster. It made her feel stupidly embarrassed, but she had to remind herself that this wasn't a marks-will-be-awarded situation; it was a he's about to kill you situation.\n\nBut for all her fury, she couldn't move a muscle.\n\n\"A pity,\" Alberich said. \"I was really quite impressed with you. Bradamant was efficient but not remotely as perceptive. I'm afraid you've run out of time to decide, if there's a dragon in the picture, but rest assured that I will remember you fondly.\"\n\nThe door slammed open, and Alberich's eyes widened as he saw who it was. He opened his mouth to speak, but three bullets in rapid succession hit him in the centre of the forehead. It was as neat and quick as a sewing-machine's needle rapping down again and again. He staggered back from Vale, arms flailing as his skirts churned around his legs. He grasped weakly at the table, but no blood ran from the open wounds.\n\n\"Vale and Irene, move freely!\" Bradamant shouted in the Language. \"And get away from him!\" she added in English. \"I don't know if that's killed him.\"\n\n\"It hasn't,\" Alberich said. \"Gun, explode.\"\n\nBradamant threw the gun aside just in time. It came apart in mid-air in a burst of metal and fire. She ducked at the same moment, moving for cover. Vale threw himself to one side as Alberich gestured. But a ripple of air tore into Vale and flung him into one of the display-cases, which shattered in a burst of glass. There was an ugly cracking noise.\n\nVale didn't get up again.\n\n\"I really shouldn't give people so much time to decide,\" Alberich said. He ignored Irene as she stood, frozen. His Fae magic still held her, wrapped in chains around her name and spirit. \"Bradamant, my dear, would you like to make a deal for the lives of your friends?\"\n\n\"Only a fool would make a deal with you,\" Bradamant snapped. She'd taken cover behind a large free-standing cabinet.\n\n\"Accurate but impertinent.\" The holes in Alberich's forehead were bloodless and unnaturally dark, with neither flesh nor bone visible. He raised his hand, palm towards Bradamant. \"The greater lords of the Fae don't manifest in their true form in the physical worlds. Do you know why?\"\n\n\"Their chaos is too great,\" Bradamant answered, her tone as sharp as if she was being questioned in class. \"They would unmake a world.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" Alberich purred. \"And you wouldn't want that.\" The very air began to shudder around his hand. It smoked as if his flesh was liquid nitrogen, cold enough to burn a hole in reality. \"And to prevent that manifestation, I only need one of you with your skin intact...\"\n\nIrene breathed. He hadn't forbidden her to do that. And she was not going to accept the binding he had set on her. She was a Librarian, and while that made her the Library's servant, it was also a protection. The Language was her freedom. Bradamant had told her to move freely. She could not allow...\n\n...and her brand was a weight across her back, a heavy burden, trying to force her to her knees\n\n...she would not...\n\n...white-hot iron, searing into her\n\n...permit him to do this. She refused to submit. Even if he was a monster, something that had killed greater Librarians than herself, she was not going to accept his binding.\n\nIrene opened her mouth. The tiny movement of parting her lips seemed to take years as she watched dark fire blossom around Alberich's hand. She sought for something to distract him, to give her time to invoke the Library. And it came to her in a burst of inspiration. \"Jennifer Mooney's skin! Get off that body now!\"\n\nAnd it did. In rags and tatters, like a piece of clothing being ripped apart along the seams. The flame around Alberich's hand died, and he opened his mouth wide in a howl of pain. The dress disintegrated, falling apart like the pale fragments of skin. What lay behind it was so painful to Irene's eyes that she had to turn and shield them with her hand. Behind the stolen skin, Alberich was a living hole into some place or universe that should not exist on any human plane. In that brief moment she had seen living muscle, tendon, and blood\u2014but also colours and masses that left burning spaces on her retinas. She'd seen things moving that bent the light around them and shifting structures that made no sense. All her reality suddenly seemed as fragile as a curtain someone was about to rip through at any moment. Irene was aware that she was screaming, and she could hear Bradamant crying out as well. Yet behind it all was Alberich, his voice higher than any human's normal pitch, screaming in pure rage and pain.\n\nSo that's why he has to wear a skin, her thoughts rattled, as though the words could form a chain to sanity, link by link. So that's why he has to wear a skin...\n\nAlberich turned and pointed at her, and reality warped in the wake of his gesture. The wooden floor rotted under her feet, and mouths opened in it to gulp at dead silverfish and bite at her ankles. Thick knots of webbing dropped from the ceiling, full of spiders and drifting ash.\n\n\"They'll come for you,\" Alberich whispered. His voice had changed again; no longer female, or the voice of Aubrey, but something else. Something that hummed like the keys of an out-of-tune piano, just missing normal human harmonies to strike out a more painful music.\n\n\"You've hurt me and I'll hurt you in turn. I'll give you to the White Singers and the Fallen Towers...\"\n\nA fold of spider-web fell across Irene's face, and the sheer horror of having to drag it away, feeling the spiders begin to crawl into her hair, somehow yanked her back into sanity. Her horror turned from something alien and bone deep into more mundane human disgust. She needed a moment to speak the Library's name and so invoke it. That had been the plan. Minimal and pitiful as it was, that had been the plan. But Alberich would know it the moment she began, and she had his full attention. She'd never get the word out.\n\nBradamant was screaming. No help from that quarter. And Vale was unconscious. She hoped. Better unconscious than dead.\n\nGlass cracked and splinters from another display-case ripped into her dress, distorting into glass singing birds with bright claws and edged beaks. She flung her arm up to shield her face, and a glass bird lashed at her hand, thrashing wings leaving deep scratches. Blood ran like ink down her arm.\n\nOf course. A language was far more than the spoken word, after all.\n\nShe clamped her hands shut around the squirming bird and fell to her knees. She could hear herself screaming in agony as the thing sliced into her palm and fingers, but it seemed somehow distant. The impossibilities around her were far more real and visceral than the pain. She dimly wondered if she was destroying her hand. Again. But set against her life, or her sanity, then the choice was clear.\n\nThrough her tangled, cobwebbed hair she saw Alberich raise his hand, perhaps to call up more horrors or deliver the death blow.\n\nAlberich could have stopped her if she'd tried to speak. He ignored it when she drove the squirming bird into the soupy wood of the floor, as she scraped it along to create a long, blood-filled cut. He merely laughed as more debris came raining down on her shoulders from the now-unstable ceiling. But she needed an excuse to explain her actions. Something he would expect her to try.\n\nIrene raised both hands, pointing the bloody glass bird at him. \"Floor!\" she screamed in the Language. \"Swallow Alberich!\"\n\nThe heaving mass of rotten wood surged round his feet, but he remained above it as if walking on water. \"Let's try that the other way around, shall we?\" He laughed at her. \"Go down and drown in it!\"\n\nShe was already on her knees. She felt the wood slurp upwards around her legs like thick mud, sliding up to her thighs. It didn't soak through the skirts of her gown like water, but pressed against her like hungry lips. She had a moment of panic\u2014what would happen if her idea didn't work? She let herself scream and, driven by the energy of that terror, sliced the glass bird into the remaining floor. And again and again, as she sank farther into the wood, as if she were trying to save herself. Her blood spattered onto the scored lines as the wood closed around her waist. The bird's marks stood clear in the slowly oozing floor. Maybe because it was written in the Language, or just because it had to work or she was worse than dead.\n\n\"Beg me and I'll save you,\" Alberich said gleefully. \"Beg me and I'll make you my favoured student, my own sweet child\u2014\"\n\nThe cobwebbing covered her eyes now. She was working blind. But some things she knew even in the dark.\n\n\"No,\" she said, and cut the final line into place. The symbol representing the Library itself showed clearly in the rippling wood between them.\n\nThe Library didn't arrive like a roaring dragon or waves of chaos. But there was a light in the room that hadn't been there before, more penetrating and clearer than the fluttering gas lamps. The spider-webs that had clung to her face and shoulders flaked away as fine dust. The Library's authority pulsed through the room in a steady whisper, like pages turned in slow motion, and stability followed. The floor was now firm where Irene knelt on it, and the glass in her hand was sharp, but it wasn't a living bird. The light even muted the horror of Alberich's form, turning it to something seen as if through dull glass, retreating farther and farther away...\n\nHe was actually slowly withdrawing. The Library's presence was driving him back, and though its touch felt welcoming to her, like a feeling of home, it was forcing Alberich away. And if the sounds he was making were any judge, his expulsion was pure agony.\n\nHe hadn't quite finished with her yet, though. Blackness flared in his eyes and his open mouth. \"You call this a victory, Ray?\"\n\nAnd then his back touched the wall, and he started moving through it. The wall thinned to translucency around him as he struggled, partly immersed, like amber around a prehistoric insect.\n\nThen, as they watched, Alberich's back arched, and he screamed\u2014but this was on a different scale from anything they'd heard so far. Irene felt her heart lurch in unwanted sympathy as she saw the punishment that he was suffering. Alberich was crucified between the reality of the Library and the barrier that Kai had created outside, a squirming thing of chaos trapped between two surfaces of reality.\n\nIrene realized that she hadn't the remotest idea what would happen next. She didn't know. She didn't care as long as it got him away from here. There was no place for that sort of unreality in this world. It was abhorrent. What had he done to himself to become this? What sort of bargains had he struck?\n\n\"Release me... ,\" Alberich choked out. Blood drooled from his mouth. \"You can't trust the dragons\u2014they'll turn on you as well\u2014release me and I'll tell you.\"\n\n\"Don't be an idiot,\" Bradamant spat. She was pulling herself up off the floor, her dress in shreds, leaning on the wreckage of a chair to support herself. \"Do you really think we'd let you go now?\"\n\nThank you for so helpfully stating the obvious, Irene thought, but she managed to keep it to herself. She simply shook her head. A slow-burning flame of something that might be hope was kindling inside her. What they'd done had hurt Alberich. It had frightened him.\n\nThey might actually win.\n\nShe hadn't realized how much she'd assumed they'd already lost.\n\n\"You'll regret this,\" Alberich whispered in the Language.\n\nThe light increased, and he decreased in proportion, fading back and away from them like a disappearing stain. His last scream rang through the room, shattering the remaining glass and throwing books from the shelves.\n\nIrene caught a last glimpse of his face, a human face livid with rage, as he vanished.\n\n\"Irene!\" Bradamant was suddenly there, and Irene had lost a few moments of time. She'd been watching Alberich vanish and now Bradamant had an arm round her shoulder and was making her sit down. Vale\u2014hadn't Vale been unconscious?\u2014was fussing over her hands. \"Irene, listen, I promise I won't take it,\" Bradamant was saying. \"I will give you my word in the Language right now, if you like, and Vale is here too as witness. If you let go of that book it will make it a lot easier for us to take care of your hands. Irene, please, listen to me, say something to me here...\"\n\nThe door burst open. Again. \"Irene!\" That was Kai shouting. Irene could only hope that no civilians were close enough to hear it. \"Bradamant! What have you done to her?\"\n\nPlus ten for genuine concern for my welfare, Irene decided, minus several thousand for perception.\n\n\"Please,\" Vale said wearily. \"It was that Alberich person. Your plan worked perfectly, but I'm afraid that Miss Winters is in shock. If you would just help us persuade her to relax, so that we can bandage her hands\u2014I have some brandy here.\"\n\n\"Don't waste that on my hands,\" Irene mumbled. She hadn't even realized that she'd picked the book up. She let Bradamant ease it out from under her arm. \"I need a drink.\"\n\n\"Miss Winters!\" Vale exclaimed.\n\n\"Make that two healthy drinks. I'm in shock. Give me brandy.\"\n\n\"But your hands,\" Vale protested. \"They need immediate care.\"\n\nIrene didn't want to look, but she forced herself. There were deep cuts across both palms and the insides of her fingers. Flaps of skin hung loose, and she thought she could see bone. She looked away before she embarrassed herself by throwing up. The skirt of her dress was wet with her blood. She must be in shock, or it would be hurting even more than it already did. She'd never hurt herself this badly. She wasn't even sure if it could be fixed. \"There are people in the Library who can deal with this,\" she said firmly, desperately praying that she wasn't lying to herself.\n\nHer words came spilling out, quick and professional, a distraction from the reality of her hands. She could hear the forced lightness of her tone. Her speech sounded as if it were coming to her from a great distance, like the chirping of little birds very far away. \"Mr. Vale, thank you for your assistance, and I'm sorry that you were dragged into this. Bradamant, please can you check the door\u2014the inner door, the Library ingress\u2014for any traps?\"\n\n\"I don't think there could be any alien influences, after you invoked the Library inside this place,\" Bradamant said gently.\n\n\"Oh.\" She must be more in shock than she'd thought. \"All right, then. Kai, please help me stand.\"\n\nKai slipped an arm around her, helping her to her feet. Under other circumstances she might have been more careful about leaning on him, but at the moment it really didn't seem that important. So she was leaning on him. She was injured. He was her colleague. It was only sensible.\n\nHis clothing was disarranged but still there. So turning into a dragon didn't mean that you lost all your clothing. This seemed unduly significant, and she filed it away so she could ask questions later. \"Are you sure about this?\" he asked in an undertone.\n\n\"I think it's best that we're out of here before any questions need answering.\" That piece of wisdom was drilled into all Librarians very early on.\n\n\"Ahem.\" Vale brushed at the trickle of blood on his collar, rather pointlessly, considering his generally dishevelled state. \"While I am willing to abet Singh in, well, covering this up, I would also be interested in finding out more about this. Before you go, Miss Winters, all of you... can you tell me about the last story in that book?\"\n\nBradamant opened her mouth, and the first word was obviously going to be No, and so were all the rest of them.\n\nIrene held up one hand to stop her. \"Mr. Vale, are you sure that you want us reporting to our superiors that you read it? Whatever it is?\"\n\n\"I find it hard to believe that they will assume I didn't read it,\" Vale said drily.\n\nThat was true enough. \"I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't look over our shoulders as we check that it's the right book,\" Irene said slowly. She cast a quick glance at Kai, but he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut and not mention they'd already done so. \"Bradamant, you said to check the eighty-seventh story, correct?\" She indicated the book, now in Bradamant's possession. \"I would open it myself, but my hands\u2014\"\n\nBradamant pursed her lips, then nodded. Perhaps she sympathized. Or perhaps she intended to blame every last bit of unauthorized exposure on Irene. She wiped her hands clean of dust and blood on the battered skirts of her dress and flipped the book open. \"The eighty-seventh story, yes. 'The Story of the Stone from the Tower of Babel.'\" She breathed a deep sigh. \"It's here. Eighty-seventh of... eighty-eight?\"\n\nThe silence hung in the room as they all considered that point. If it was unusual that an eighty-seventh story should exist, Irene thought, then what was the eighty-eighth doing there? Could Bradamant have been given a mere indicator, as opposed to the true reason why the book was so important...?\n\n\"My German's not very good,\" Kai said plaintively.\n\nBradamant gave a put-upon sigh. \"Once upon a time,\" she began to translate, \"there lived a brother and a sister who both belonged to the same Library. Now, this was a strange library, for it held books from a thousand worlds, but lay outside all of them. And the brother and sister loved each other and worked together to find new books for their Library...\"\n\n\"No wonder your people didn't want this one getting loose,\" Vale said with satisfaction.\n\nBradamant paused to raise her eyebrows at him before continuing. \"One day, the brother said to his sister, 'Since this Library contains all books, does it contain the story of its own founding?'\"\n\n\"No,\" Irene said.\n\n\"Surely it must,\" Kai said. \"We probably just don't have access to it yet.\"\n\n\"If you don't mind,\" Bradamant said.\n\n\"I beg your pardon,\" Kai said.\n\nBradamant nodded coldly and went on. \"'I suppose so,' the sister said. 'But it would be unwise to seek it.' 'Why?' the brother asked. 'Because of the nature of the Library's secret,' the sister answered, 'that we both wear branded upon our backs.'\"\n\n\"It has the proper cadence for a Brothers Grimm story,\" Vale said helpfully. Irene felt her back itch.\n\n\"Now, the brother had never troubled to look at the mark upon his back,\" Bradamant went on. \"But that night he sought a mirror and read the writing on his skin, and what he read there sent him mad. He left the Library then and he colluded with its enemies against it. But most of all he swore vengeance against his sister, for she had spoken the words that set him on this path. A hundred years later, his sister returned to the Library following a quest that she had been set, and she was with child.\"\n\n\"A hundred years?\" Vale said.\n\n\"It can happen,\" Irene said. \"If she'd been in an alternate where there was some way to slow ageing\u2014high-technology, or high sorcery. But the pregnancy would be the problem\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, exactly,\" Bradamant said. \"And this caused great trouble, for there could be no birth nor death within the Library. Yet she feared to set foot outside it lest her brother should find her. So in pain she begged them to cut open her belly and take the child out and they did so, and she was delivered of a child. They sewed up her belly with silver thread and hid her among the deepest vaults for fear that her brother should seek her again.\"\n\nIrene could feel her stomach clench inside her in cold fear, very slowly and deliberately. \"So that's why he wanted this book,\" she whispered. \"It wasn't because he could use it to gain power over this world. It was because...\" She wasn't sure how to say it. Because someone knew this about his secrets? If this was Grimm, then it would have been written centuries ago. But time meant nothing in the depths of the Library, as long as someone stayed there. And Alberich was... well, nobody knew how old Alberich was. But how old would his sister be? And was she still there?\n\n\"A sister,\" Kai muttered. His eyes narrowed in thought.\n\n\"And his sister's child. How does it finish?\"\n\n\"That is how it finishes.\" Bradamant slapped the book shut, hesitated, then slid it back under Irene's arm again. \"There. Now we must be out of here at once. Mr. Vale, I hope we can rely on you...\"\n\n\"I don't think it would do any good to make the matter public,\" Vale said wryly. \"I am sure I can find someone to blame for all this\u2014the Iron Brotherhood, perhaps, or Lord Silver. He will be most unhappy to find himself without book, conclusion, or enemy.\" The thought made him smile. \"But I would value the chance to speak with you all again most highly.\"\n\nIrene pulled herself together. \"That depends on our superiors.\" A nagging honesty pulled at her. \"But... if we get the opportunity, I would like that too. But for the moment\u2014\"\n\n\"Quite,\" Bradamant said. She walked across to the far door. \"Kai, carry her if she can't walk.\"\n\n\"Some brandy would have helped,\" Irene complained as Kai steered her across the slippery floor. She hoped that Vale wouldn't get any stupid ideas about trying to pursue them through the entrance. \"And I'm quite capable of walking without being dragged.\"\n\n\"Allow me this small service,\" Kai growled in her ear. \"After throwing me out and denying me the chance to protect you, and getting yourself quite this badly hurt, I must insist on it.\"\n\nBradamant laid her hand on the door handle, murmuring in the Language, and the air shivered. The door swung open to show rows of shelves beyond.\n\n\"They do tell us not to get into arguments that we can't win,\" Irene whispered. She was weary now, and her hands were alive with pain.\n\nThey stepped through, and the door to the Library closed behind them."
            },
            {
                "title": "Chapter 23",
                "text": "The door swung shut behind them with a clang, iron-bound and solid. Someone had upgraded the warning posters in the Library room. They were all red ink and Gothic font now, and as her thoughts drifted, Irene wondered if they had been printed or hand-lettered.\n\n\"Sit her down here,\" Bradamant instructed Kai, pulling command around her like a cloak. \"I'll go and fetch some help.\"\n\n\"Just a moment,\" Irene interrupted. She suspected that once Bradamant was out of here, she wouldn't be back for quite a while, and there was something very important that she wanted to say to her first.\n\n\"You can barely stand,\" Bradamant said dismissively. \"You need help.\"\n\nKai looked round for a chair, found none, and carefully lowered her until she was sitting on the floor. \"Irene, Bradamant's right,\" he said in the patient tones that sympathetic men use to hysterical women. \"You're hurt.\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" Irene said, and watched his mouth drop open at her rudeness. She was dizzy, and her hands felt as if she'd dipped them in molten barbed wire. But she had to get this said before she lost the will to say it. \"Bradamant. You cut in on my mission, drugged me and tried to steal my book, and generally broke quite a number of unwritten rules. True or not?\"\n\nBradamant looked down at her. As usual, even in tattered clothing, her posture was effortlessly elegant, and Irene felt even scruffier than usual sprawled on the floor as she was. For a moment Bradamant was silent. Then, finally, she said, \"True enough.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\nBradamant shrugged. \"I can apologize, but I hope you don't expect me to say that I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I expect nothing of the sort,\" Irene said carefully. \"What I want...\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"What I want is for us to stop despising each other quite so much. It's a waste of time and effort.\"\n\nBradamant raised her eyebrows. \"My dear Irene, for me to despise you, I would have to bother to\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, please,\" Irene cut in. \"You told me all about it, remember? You think I'm a spoilt brat and you'd be quite happy to have me fail publicly and obviously, even if you'd rather not see me dead for it. You wouldn't bother putting an insult like that together if you didn't want it to sting.\" She saw the colour rising in Bradamant's cheeks. Kai's supporting arm behind her was a comfort that helped her hold herself together. \"I think what you want\u2014what we both want\u2014is to genuinely serve the Library.\"\n\n\"Split infinitive,\" Bradamant spat.\n\n\"Put it in your report,\" Irene said, tiredness dragging her down. \"Just don't waste time hating me anymore, all right? And I'll try to stop doing the same. Because I don't think it's helping. I don't think it's helping either of us.\"\n\n\"Get that help now,\" Kai said sharply to Bradamant.\n\n\"Please?\" Irene forced herself to look up and meet Bradamant's eyes. \"Think about it?\"\n\n\"I thought you wanted us to stop thinking about each other so much,\" Bradamant said coldly. She turned on her heel and walked away, skirts swishing.\n\nIrene's vision was narrowing, as Bradamant faded from view. \"Think about it,\" she mumbled, the words thick and heavy in her mouth.\n\nKai's fingers bit into her shoulder hard enough to make her refocus. \"If you pass out on me now, I'm going to kill you,\" he said conversationally.\n\n\"A bit counter-productive,\" Irene said.\n\n\"It'd cheer me up like nothing else.\" He leaned in closer, his face inches away from hers. \"You sent me away, you sent me away, and you nearly got yourself killed. Do you have any idea how stupid that was?\"\n\nPerhaps his control was slipping, because his skin was like blue-veined alabaster, and his hair seemed dark blue as well, so dark that it was nearly black. There was a deep fury in his eyes that was a long way from human anger. It was about possessiveness, pride, and a sort of ownership as well.\n\n\"It worked,\" Irene said, managing to return his stare. His pupils weren't human any longer either. They were slit like a snake's, like that other dragon she'd met. But the person behind them was more real to her than Silver and his apparent humanity. Or whatever had looked out at her from Alberich's stolen skin. She wanted to find the words to tell him as much. \"We drove him out. Thank you.\"\n\n\"He endangered you!\" he broke in. \"I shouldn't have left any human alive in there!\"\n\nShe could have thanked him for obeying or trusting her, or maybe because she could trust him. But for some reason, perhaps to divert him, she said, \"For helping me save Vale's life. I like him.\"\n\nTo her surprise, that made Kai turn aside and duck his head, a scarlet flush blossoming on those pale high-boned cheeks. The fingers digging into her shoulder relaxed their grip, and there was something more human about his face.\n\n\"He is a man to be valued,\" he muttered. \"I am glad you approve of him as well.\"\n\nIt might be a major concession for a dragon to admit he liked any human at all. \"Right,\" she muttered. \"Definitely. Could you get me some cotton?\" She realized that she'd used the wrong word. \"Coffee. I mean coffee. Bit dizzy.\"\n\n\"Stay still.\" How stupid of him; did he really think she was going to go running off somewhere? \"Bradamant will get help.\"\n\n\"It's just a flesh wound,\" she murmured, then darkness came down over her eyes and swallowed her up.\n\nLight came back grudgingly, filtered through long window blinds. Irene was lying on a couch, her heavily bandaged hands neatly arranged in her lap. She was in one of the rooms that overlooked the unknown city outside the Library walls. Someone had taken off her shoes and arranged the folds of her dress so that they covered her stockinged feet. That small thing, as petty as it was, allowed her to relax. There was only one person who'd go to that trouble.\n\n\"Coppelia,\" she said, raising her head to look for her supervisor. The tension inside her uncurled a little. Coppelia had always been fair. She was other things as well, such as sarcastic. And her level of expectations would challenge an Olympic high jumper. But Irene could rely on Coppelia.\n\n\"Clever girl.\" Coppelia was sitting in a high-backed chair near the couch. A portable desk covered her lap, stacked with hand-copied sheets of paper thick with the Language. She was sitting so the light fell across her desk but left her face and shoulders in shadow. She shifted, and her joints creaked. \"Do you think you're strong enough to give me a report?\"\n\nIrene rubbed at her eyes with her forearm. \"Could we have a little more light in here?\" The fluorescent panels in the ceiling were unlit, and the only meagre illumination came through the blinds. It left the whole room feeling dim and unreal, like a black-and-white film, where bleakness was a deliberate part of the artistry.\n\n\"Not quite yet,\" Coppelia said. There was something guarded about her voice, although her face was as bland and unreadable as always. Her bright white hair was braided back under a navy cap, showing in stark contrast to her dark skin. In the dim light, it formed a pattern of brightness and darkness to Irene's weary eyes. The artificial carved-wood fingers of her left hand tapped on the edge of her desk, something Irene found comfortingly familiar.\n\n\"You've put stress on your body in a number of ways that you don't even understand. We've been bleeding off some of the excess energies, but for the moment you need to be strictly under-exposed to any sort of stimulation.\"\n\nIrene raised her eyebrows. \"You don't think that telling you my story is going to be stimulating?\"\n\nCoppelia chuckled a wheezing little laugh. \"To me, perhaps. To you, it will merely be desensitization.\"\n\n\"How dull,\" Irene said. Then she sensed the gap at her side, the empty space between arm and ribs where she had been clasping the book. She flailed around with her bandaged hands, trying to find it. \"The book\u2014the Grimm\u2014\"\n\n\"Only seven out of ten for immediate reactions, I'm afraid,\" Coppelia said happily. \"Yes, we have it safe and Wyndham's letter as well. I suppose it would be too much to hope that you didn't read it? Of course it would. What on earth would anyone do under those circumstances?\"\n\n\"Well, ah, yes,\" Irene said, hoping that sympathy would translate into lenience. \"Of course I had to check that it was the right one.\"\n\nCoppelia's voice stayed merry, but her eyes hardened. \"And you knew to check that it was the right one how, precisely?\"\n\nThis was where she decided how much she wanted to sell Bradamant down the river. Well, Bradamant was trying to steal the book. Before I could bring it back, she poisoned me and left me in what she admittedly thought was a safe place. But she despises me, and I don't like her much, either...\n\n\"I met Bradamant there,\" she said, grateful that they were talking in English rather than the Language. She wasn't actually going to lie, but there was... well, there might be an element of flexibility. She knew it, and Coppelia probably knew it, but that was best left unsaid. \"When she discovered my mission, she provided some additional information that helped us identify the book. She helped us fight Alberich too.\"\n\n\"Demerit for using the verb helped twice in succession,\" Coppelia said. \"And then? I take it she also read it?\"\n\n\"Only as much as I did,\" Irene said, feeling on metaphorically thin ice.\n\n\"Which was?\" Coppelia pressed.\n\n\"The eighty-eighth story.\"\n\nShe genuinely liked Coppelia, and she thought it was reciprocated. Not just the sort of friendship that could flourish between any mentor and student, but a real, honest affection. It caused her to bring books back from assignment merely because Coppelia might enjoy them. It saw her oiling Coppelia's clock-work joints, or just spending hours talking with her in the timeless Library, where there were neither days nor nights. There was companionship under those constantly burning lights, as they observed the changing windows on the strange world beyond. She thought of all that and felt a barrier rise between them as Coppelia's eyes narrowed.\n\n\"And your conclusions?\" Coppelia said, entirely neutrally.\n\n\"Alberich had a sister,\" Irene said. This was not the time or place to pretend to stupidity. \"The sister had a child. And Alberich either wants to hide the information, or he's looking for them, or both. Or perhaps it was just because the book was linked to the fate of that world, and so it could bring Alberich power. The story about the siblings and the child could be pure coincidence. But I don't think that. And you wouldn't believe me if I told you I did.\"\n\n\"And that's all you think?\" Coppelia pushed. The dry twist at the corner of her mouth showed tacit agreement with Irene's last statement.\n\n\"That's all I can be sure of.\" There was a spike of pain in Irene's temple, and she raised a bandaged hand to rub at it. \"I can't see why Alberich would have gone to so much trouble to find the book, if it had just been some kind of diversionary tactic to distract from some larger plot. And he'd gone to such efforts merely for some scheme relating to that alternate\u2014but hunting the book seemed so very personal to him... But if Kai hadn't been with me, I'd have died.\" She did her best to give Coppelia a reproachful glance. \"You knew about Kai.\"\n\n\"What you can work out in a few days, I have at least a sporting chance of noticing over several years,\" Coppelia said smugly. But there was still that edge of caution behind her eyes. \"Does he know I'm aware of his nature?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Irene said. \"He knows I know.\"\n\n\"Well, clearly,\" Coppelia said. \"And does he know that you'll tell me what you know?\"\n\n\"He'd find it astonishing if I didn't,\" Irene said, after a moment's thought. \"His views on loyalty are very definite.\" She noticed that Coppelia wasn't asking whether she liked Kai. And seeing that she did, she felt it was best kept to herself. If they were looking for an excuse to assign him elsewhere, which was the last thing she wanted, acknowledging that she was less than objective about him would certainly do it. Which would be bad. So she would avoid subjectivity, or at least being caught at it.\n\n\"Well, he is a dragon.\" Coppelia nodded. \"Kindly don't speculate too much to him about how much we already comprehend about him, unless the situation requires it. You'll know when. For the moment, we'll have to assume he understands that we know all.\"\n\n\"All?\"\n\n\"We are the Library,\" Coppelia pointed out. \"What we don't know, we research. Now tell me the rest.\"\n\nIrene gave a brief, factual report of the details... and then there was Alberich. Alberich took up a great deal of the report. Even then, Irene found it not only easier, but essential to her sanity, to be minimalist in her descriptions.\n\nProbably her current urge to grab everyone she met and check that they weren't Alberich in disguise would eventually go away. She hoped so.\n\nFinally she trailed off. It seemed that they had slipped back into the casual banter of previous assignments. Everything had been simpler then, and arrogance had made it easy for Irene to talk glibly about secrets, about how elder Librarians could use her as a pawn. Now that that had probably happened, it was much less intriguing. It was like a splinter in her mind, which ached when she considered it.\n\n\"Could you have given me more information?\" she finally asked.\n\n\"You were warned about Alberich as soon as we were certain he was within that alternate,\" Coppelia said gently. \"Before that, you might have been able to complete the mission on the information given. Do you actually feel any safer, with your current knowledge, understanding he suspects that you have it?\"\n\nShe was about to reply, No, not really, but there was more to the question than that. \"I feel better able to handle matters now I've an idea about what's going on,\" she said. \"People having nervous breakdowns due to knowledge that man isn't meant to know\u2014that happens in horror literature. Not real life.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Coppelia sighed. \"And yes, I know you prefer crime literature.\"\n\n\"Detective stories,\" Irene corrected her.\n\nCoppelia raised an eyebrow. \"And is there anything else?\"\n\nIrene tried to guess her meaning, then gave up. \"Like what?\"\n\n\"This from someone who claims to be an investigator.\"\n\n\"But I didn't ever claim\u2014,\" Irene tried to put in.\n\n\"I must say that I think you could have done a better job as an undercover agent.\"\n\n\"But it was a very complex scenario, with limited information,\" Irene blurted out. This was like an examination from her nightmares. She could feel herself cringing back against the couch.\n\n\"Oh?\" Coppelia folded her arms in a manner that practically telegraphed stern judgement. \"Young woman, even though you're my student, you have overstepped a number of lines on this occasion. You've revealed facts about the Library to at least two uninvolved parties.\"\n\nIrene decided to just give up.\n\n\"You encouraged the manifestation of a dragon in public.\"\n\n\"Excuse me.\" That was a bit too much. \"I wasn't aware that was an offence against Library rules, and the Library sent him with me in the first place!\"\n\n\"Your comments have been noted,\" Coppelia said. She was sounding almost bored, but there was a spark of amusement in her eyes. \"Naturally I shall give them full consideration. I will also try to present them in a proper and reasonable light to the elder Librarians, should I need to justify your actions. Rather than treating them as a pitiful string of excuses.\"\n\nIrene glared at her. This was beyond unfair. This was outright unreasonable.\n\n\"I had expected better. Such a pity.\" Coppelia tapped her fingers against each other. They clicked like death watch beetles. \"Fortunately, as your mentor, I am competent to deal with this matter, and there is no need to refer it up higher.\" Now the message in her eyes was clearer. It was a warning. Irene just wished she had a better idea what it meant. \"As I said earlier, we are Librarians. What we don't know, we research. And you, my dear Irene, have a great deal to research.\"\n\n\"I do?\" Irene said, feeling her way carefully. \"I suppose that perhaps I do.\"\n\nCoppelia nodded. \"Yes. Exactly. In fact, I believe I am within my rights to place you on location duty in that alternate. That is, until you've cleared up a few loose ends in the investigation. Your apprentice will stay with you, of course.\"\n\nIrene had an extraordinary sense of being on a lift in free fall. \"But\u2014I\u2014Alberich\u2014\"\n\n\"Him at least you don't need to worry about,\" Coppelia said. \"Quite without any sort of proper training, you've actually managed to banish him from that alternate. I'm impressed. Nine out of ten for inductive reasoning. What you have done will have set up a resonance in the inter-world barriers which will stop him from entering it again via chaos-linked magic. And of course he can't use the Library itself. It will also cause serious inconvenience to local Fae, but I don't consider that particularly important. At least, not to the Library.\"\n\n\"You're wanting me to go back?\" Irene squeaked. She took a deep breath and forced her voice lower. \"That is, you want me to go back there on detached duty?\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" Coppelia said. She smiled warmly, in much the same way that an alligator, cyborg or otherwise, might smile after a full meal of whatever alligators ate. Librarians, maybe. \"I think that, at this moment, it's the best possible place for you. There is also a Librarian-in-Residence position vacant, and you are familiar with the world.\"\n\n\"That could almost sound as if you think it safer than the Library,\" Irene said tentatively.\n\n\"You might very well think so,\" Coppelia said. \"I couldn't possibly comment.\"\n\nFree fall had given way to an enormous vertiginous drop, but it wasn't actually that frightening anymore. It was even exciting. \"I'll need an expense account to support myself and Kai, of course, and identity papers.\"\n\n\"Irene,\" Coppelia said severely, \"I expect you to manage your own identity papers. Really. Here.\" She reached for a small leather briefcase and offered it to Irene. \"This contains Dominic Aubrey's full particulars, including his bank accounts. See about getting the money transferred. Have Kai pose as his long-lost cousin or something. I'm sure your friend Vale will be glad to help.\"\n\nIrene flushed. \"You think so?\"\n\n\"He sounds a practical man. I think he'll prefer to have you on his side.\" She paused for thought. \"You probably won't get Aubrey's office, so you must notify us once you have lodgings. That way any future visitors to the alternate will know where to find you. You will be the Librarian-in-Residence, after all.\"\n\n\"I will?\" Irene said, and blushed again, this time out of genuine humility rather than simple embarrassment. Librarian-in-Residence was a post of some responsibility. It was something she hadn't even thought about handling for decades yet. Excitement began to give way to panic. \"I don't know what to say\u2014\"\n\n\"Thank you and goodbye should cover it,\" Coppelia said briskly. \"Come now. Here you are, sitting around, with Kai fretting over you and worrying himself. A word of advice. Don't get yourself hurt if there's a possibility of him throwing himself in the way. He'll be far more upset about it than you will.\"\n\n\"Coppelia.\" Irene took a deep breath. \"Why?\"\n\nThe old woman closed her eyes for a moment. She was frail, even for the Library, and her wooden arm and legs were the only solid things about her. The rest was all fragile flesh, spider-web white hair, and eyes as cold as black stars.\n\n\"Don't ask,\" she said, her voice tired. \"Don't say anything; then I won't need to reply. And then later on, we can both answer truthfully that nothing was shared. You've always avoided asking questions in the past, but we've run out of time for that. It's true that we need to know more. You know the questions. Go and find answers, and let me report back that I sent you to investigate. It's true that you'll be safe there from Alberich. He's got bigger fish to hunt, that one. Let him do it. Let the rest of us throw ourselves in the way this time. Go and play detective, Irene, and do a good job of it. Make me proud of you.\"\n\nThere was a rustle at the door, then a brisk rapping.\n\n\"That will be Kai,\" Coppelia said. She opened her eyes again. \"You'd better be going. He knows the way from here to the alternate's entrance.\"\n\nIrene swung her feet down from the couch and stood up. \"Thank you,\" she said. It came out grudgingly, and she tried again. \"Thank you, Coppelia. I do appreciate it. That is, I am grateful.\"\n\n\"You don't, but you will,\" Coppelia said. She sighed again. \"Your hands have been pieced together\u2014I dragged old Wormius away from his runes to reattach all the bits and pieces. Another reason for you to be out in real time. They're not going to heal here in the Library.\"\n\nIrene realized that was true. Her hands might be stitched up and bandaged, but unless she left the Library, they'd never actually heal. \"Thank you again.\"\n\nCoppelia waited until Irene was almost at the door before saying, \"Your shoes are under the couch.\"\n\n\"Couldn't you have said that earlier?\" Irene snapped, losing a lot of her gratitude. \"Just a moment!\" she called to the door, then trotted back to the couch to sit down and put the shoes on.\n\n\"I'll be expecting regular reports,\" Coppelia said, watching Irene fumble at the boot-laces with her bandaged fingers. \"And don't get too involved. Remember who you are.\"\n\n\"I'm not likely to forget that,\" Irene said. She finished knotting the laces and sat back. \"I'm a Librarian.\"\n\n\"So you are,\" Coppelia said. She didn't speak again but nodded in dismissal, and Irene could feel her eyes on her with every step that she took towards the door.\n\nKai was waiting on the other side.\n\nIrene managed a few confident paces down the corridor once the door had been shut safely between them and Coppelia, before her purposeful walk slowed to a halting stumble. Kai frowned and offered her his arm. Maybe he really thought she was that badly injured. Or possibly possessiveness was a characteristic of draconic affection. They were supposed to be hoarders, after all. Not so different from Librarians.\n\nBut just for the moment\u2014just for this single moment, on their way back to this alternate that was now her home\u2014she could relax and appreciate what she'd been given. It was all hers. Her territory, her open treasure-box of new books to read. A new world of great detectives, zeppelins, Fae, and dragons. She wasn't going to complain.\n\nAnd she certainly wasn't going to run away. She had questions to ask and answers to find. She just hoped she lived long enough to enjoy it."
            }
        ]
    }
]